26 June 22
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The Court’s originalist justification for striking down a New York gun law is more than capricious—it relies on a fundamentally anti-democratic historical record that deliberately excludes women and people of color.
In Bruen, lawyers for the State of New York presented a rich, centuries-long tradition of restrictions that balance two interests: gun ownership and public safety. Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority, dismissed all of it. “The Second Amendment was adopted in 1791; the Fourteenth in 1868,” Thomas wrote. “Historical evidence that long predates either date may not illuminate the scope of the right.” That chronological rule didn’t stop him from dismissing, as well, evidence between those two dates, or after them, that supported New York’s case. For Thomas, the rule of evidence appears to be: if I agree with it, it’s evidence—if I don’t, it’s not.
Originalists are always narrowing the pool of available historical corroboration. What counts? Five sources: The Constitution, James Madison’s notes on the constitutional convention, the records of the ratifying conventions, the Federalist Papers, and Samuel Johnson’s 1755 “Dictionary of the English Language.” That’s basically it. How about a volume titled, “Laws enacted in the third sitting of the eleventh General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, which commenced at Philadelphia, on the fourth day of September, in the year of our Lord, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-seven”? That is, a book of laws passed at the very time and place the constitutional convention was meeting, Philadelphia, in September 1787, a book that includes this law: “whereas it hath been usual for merchants and traders . . . to keep large quantities of gun-powder in their dwelling houses and shops, to the manifest danger of the inhabitants; Be it therefore enacted . . . that that no person or persons whatsoever . . . shall . . . keep in any house, shop, cellar, store or other place . . . any more or greater quantity than twenty five pounds weight of gun-powder, which shall be kept in the highest story of the house, at any one time; unless it be at least fifty yards from any dwelling house.” That, of course, is a gun-safety law. If the government can limit how much gunpowder you keep in your house or shop, shouldn’t it be able to limit how many guns you keep there, too, or where you carry them? “When confronting such present-day firearm regulations, this historical inquiry that courts must conduct will often involve reasoning by analogy,” Thomas recommended. This one seems pretty straightforward.
The court’s opinion in Bruen suggests that you can’t beat originalism by following its growing number of strictures on what counts as historical evidence. There is no method to it, nothing but inconsistency and caprice. Robert Bork, one of the early architects of originalism, itself an invention of the nineteen-seventies, strenuously argued, in 1989, that the original intention of the Second Amendment was “to guarantee the right of states to form militia, not for individuals to bear arms.” Only later did originalists come to disagree with this position. And, as Bork also made clear, originalists don’t really care about chronology. “If someone found a letter from George Washington to Martha telling her what he meant by the power to lay taxes was not what other people meant,” Bork wrote in 1990, “that would not change our reading of the Constitution in the slightest.” If Washington didn’t say it at the constitutional convention, or if he said it but Madison didn’t write it down, it doesn’t count.
Originalists have another evidentiary rule, one that seems, at first glance, like a good one. What counts as evidence, if it’s not in that set of five historical sources, has to have been written and enacted by an elected body. But the problem with this rule is that during the eras of American history that originalists say they care about—roughly, 1787 to 1791 and 1865 to 1870—the majority of people living in the United States could neither run for office nor cast a ballot. They could not elect, and they could not enact; the historical analysis employed by the Court to make decisions about the constitutionality of laws concerning everything from guns to abortion relies on a fundamentally anti-democratic historical record. It deliberately excludes, as inadmissible, all constitutional and legal thought authored by women and people of color—a form of distortion that the Yale legal scholar Reva Siegel calls “the politics of constitutional memory.” Everyone living in the United States today has to abide by decisions made by Supreme Court justices, even though most of us, if we’d been alive during the times that originalists look to, would have had no vote and no voice in what laws were passed. The most democratic jurisprudence, then, would go searching for historical evidence that can tell the court what people disenfranchised in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—and well into the twentieth—would have wanted, if they’d been able to influence the writing and rewriting of the Constitution.
As far as historical analysis is concerned, there’s no good reason for discounting that kind of evidence. And, as far as democracy is concerned, there’s a very good argument to be made for including in the constitutional record the voices of people who, for centuries, have been left out of it. “When it comes to interpreting the Constitution, not all history is created equal,” Clarence Thomas wrote in Bruen. True. What the disenfranchised would have wanted should matter more, not less.
Tellingly, Bork, in his hypothetical, spoke only of the absurdity of reading a letter from George to Martha Washington. He apparently couldn’t fathom that the courts might consider, as evidence, a letter to George from Martha, or from Harry Washington, a man born in Gambia and later enslaved by the Washingtons at Mount Vernon. What would gun or abortion laws look like if the courts did consider that kind of evidence? In May, 1787, Benjamin Franklin’s sister Jane wrote to him from Boston. He was about to be sequestered for the constitutional convention, and she wanted to wish him luck in advancing a “grate design for the Benifitt of mankind, and your own Nation in Perticular.” Jane Franklin Mecom, born in 1712, had lived through not only the Revolutionary War and the chaotic evacuation of Boston but also the British Army’s occupation of that city, which, in addition to the Boston Massacre, when troops fired on a crowd of townspeople, had involved a lot of soldiers raping women. She had one concern or, really, two. She was worried about guns, and she was worried about capital punishment (or halters, meaning nooses used at the gallows). She hoped that, “with the Asistance of Such a Number of wise men as you are conected with in the Convention,” he could put a stop to such violence. “I had Rather hear of the Sword being beat into Plow-Shares, and the Halters used for Cart Roops, if by that means we may be brought to live Peaceably with won a nother.”
Use evidence from 1787 to 1791. Reason by analogy. Fine. Beat your swords into plowshares. Advice sent by a woman to a delegate to the constitutional convention: Americans, lay down your arms.
Bodies being delivered to a morgue in Kyiv on June 15. (photo: CNN)
Dressed in full protective suits and masks they lower body bags, one by one, onto gurneys and roll them inside. Investigators stand back, clipboards in hand, waiting to start their grueling work.
Inside each bag is a “John Doe,” a person whose remains have been left in the ruins of war for weeks and are so badly decomposed that they are unrecognizable.
“Of course, it’s hard. But this is not an ordinary job. It is a desire to help,” said Olena Tolkachova, chief of family services for the Azov Regiment.
Thousands of Ukraine’s war dead are unidentified. Police, soldiers, investigators, morticians and forensic experts — desperate to return remains to loved ones — are working tirelessly to find out who they are, so their bodies can be laid properly to rest.
In most cases, only DNA analysis can provide the answers needed.
Child’s drawing clue
The 64 bodies that arrived the day CNN visited the morgue were retrieved from the Azovstal steel plant, one of the last holdouts for Ukrainian defenders in the port city of Mariupol, where fighters finally surrendered in mid-May.
They were handed over by Russian forces in exchange for 56 of their own dead fighters, Tolkachova said.
The body of Daniil Safonov, a 28-year-old Ukrainian policeman who became popular on social media for posting updates from the frontlines, was believed to be among the remains recovered from Azovstal.
“Holding the line, but it’s very difficult,” he posted on Twitter on April 3. “If I don’t write any more, I’m sorry, we did everything we could. Glory to Ukraine!”
But when Olha Matsala, Safonov’s sister, examined what were thought to be his remains at the Kyiv morgue, she says she could not distinguish any of his features. Safonov is believed to have been killed in a mortar attack in early May; his body had lain in the heat for almost six weeks.
“He was an extremely good man. He gave his life for Ukraine. He told me he accepted he may never return from Mariupol, and I feared that’s what happened,” Matsala said.
But tucked into the pocket of Safonov’s uniform was the evidence needed to identify him: Two small crayon drawings from his 6-year-old son, one of a Christmas tree, the other of a rain cloud, somehow still intact.
“This makes it easier,” Matsala said, crying. “Now, I can bury him, and I will be calmer knowing his grave is nearby. I was waiting for him.”
Her relief is rare. In nearly every case, the only hope for identification is through DNA analysis, but it’s a lengthy and complex task.
DNA samples matched
The process begins inside the morgue, where morticians extract tissue samples from the dead. Because of the bodies’ advanced states of decomposition, often a piece of bone is the only option.
The samples are delivered to a Kyiv laboratory, where analysts work to build DNA profiles.
“If the bone is disintegrating, we must make dozens of attempts to pull a DNA profile. Sometimes it can take months, but we never stop trying,” said Ruslan Abbasov, the head of the DNA laboratory of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
“We work 24/7 to help Ukrainians find their loved ones. We hope that we will be able to name each victim, identify every serviceman. And to bury them with dignity.”
Using special software, a forensic expert then tries to find a match to the remains by comparing the John Doe’s DNA to a government database of thousands of people searching for their loved ones.
“The more profiles we have, statistically, the more matches we make. It’s obvious we don’t have enough DNA from relatives of the missing persons,” said Stanislav Martynenko, chief forensic expert at the lab.
“It will take years after the war ends to find all the unidentified human bodies.”
Of the 700 unidentified bodies so far catalogued, 200 have been matched to a family so far, according to Abbasov.
Martynenko is behind many of those identifications. “When I make a match, I feel like I’ve done my job,” he told CNN. “And I need to inform everyone about this match starting with the police.”
To widen the government database, authorities have set up a hotline for families to report a missing person and arrange to give a DNA sample at a local police station. About 1,000 people have come forward to do so since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February.
But some of those lost to this war will likely never be returned to their families.
“Some bodies are so damaged it is impossible to extract DNA,” Tolkachova, of the Azov Regiment, explained through tears. “We have parents who tell us: ‘I understand you cannot find my child, but at least bring me some of the dirt they walked on from Mariupol to bury.’”
Her voice conveys the agony felt by those who will never know the fate of their loved one, never receive a body to bury, and perhaps never find closure.
That’s the outcome that Ukraine’s forensic experts are working so hard to avoid. But with more remains arriving day by day, and the war grinding on in Ukraine’s east and south, the task is daunting.
Pedestrians walking in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. (photo: Natasha Elkington/CIFOR)
It is one of the deadliest such attacks in recent memory as ethnic tensions continue in Africa’s second most populous country.
“I have counted 230 bodies. I am afraid this is the deadliest attack against civilians we have seen in our lifetime,” Abdul-Seid Tahir, a resident of Gimbi county, told The Associated Press after barely escaping the attack on Saturday. “We are burying them in mass graves, and we are still collecting bodies. Federal army units have now arrived, but we fear that the attacks could continue if they leave.”
Another witness, who gave only his first name, Shambel over fears for his safety, said the local Amhara community is now desperately seeking to be relocated somewhere else “before another round of mass killings happen.” He said ethnic Amhara that settled in the area about 30 years ago in resettlement programs are now being “killed like chickens.”
Both witnesses blamed the Oromo Liberation Army for the attacks. In a statement, the Oromia regional government also blamed the OLA, saying the rebels attacked “after being unable to resist the operations launched by (federal) security forces.”
An OLA spokesman, Odaa Tarbii, denied the allegations.
“The attack you are referring to was committed by the regime’s military and local militia as they retreated from their camp in Gimbi following our recent offensive,” he said in a message to the AP. “They escaped to an area called Tole, where they attacked the local population and destroyed their property as retaliation for their perceived support for the OLA. Our fighters had not even reached that area when the attacks took place.”
Ethiopia is experiencing widespread ethnic tensions in several regions, most of them over historical grievances and political tensions. The Amhara people, the second-largest ethnic group among Ethiopia’s more than 110 million population, have been targeted frequently in regions like Oromia.
The government-appointed Ethiopian Human Rights Commission on Sunday called on the federal government find a “lasting solution” to the killing of civilians and protect them from such attacks.
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz appears willing to go to extraordinary lengths — even being prepared to risk destroying the company he created in order to break the union — to maintain unilateral control of the workplace. (photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
Starbucks and its union-busting law firm are pulling out all the stops in Seattle in an attempt to destroy the union push that has swept the country.
Now, in the company’s hometown of Seattle, Starbucks is restructuring its operations in an effort to create a multiple-store bargaining unit – a “Heritage District” of three stores – which would undermine organizing activity at one of its most prized stores. But just as has happened at other pro-union stores — in Seattle, Portland, Eugene, Boston, Buffalo, Ithaca, Richmond, Virginia, Overland Park, Kansas, Columbia, South Carolina, and elsewhere — Starbucks workers at one of the proposed Heritage District stores, which has already petitioned for a NLRB election, are striking to protest management’s unlawful anti-union practices.
Few corporations are associated as closely with their home cities as Starbucks is with Seattle. The company’s first store, which opened in March 1971 in Pike Place Market, plays an important role in the Starbucks’s history and folklore. Today, the store is a tourist destination (customers regularly queue up to get in) that sells an enormous amount of company merchandise. The second important Pike Place store, located at First and Pike — the store that appears on countless photos of the iconic market — is also critical to its corporate identity, and Starbucks HQ would be loath to allow workers at either of these two stores to vote union.
Freed From Management’s Watchful Eye, Starbucks Workers Go Union
One reason that Starbucks union drive has been so successful is its stores’ relative lack of managerial supervision. Store managers don’t often work on the floor, which means baristas have plenty of time to talk union. When they are left to decide for themselves, they overwhelmingly choose to unionize, even in some of the most conservative parts of the country.
Starbucks’s original Pike Place Market store, on the other hand, has three to four store managers — and mostly long-term workers, many of whom identify closely with management. The First and Pike store is standard-sized (the average size of bargaining units has been twenty-six) and has two store managers — one of whom was flown to Buffalo for the anti-union shock-and-awe campaign last fall — and one assistant store manager.
Despite this significantly higher number of management personnel, organizing at the First and Pike store started in April and was given an added impetus by the abrupt Heritage District announcement. As in other stores that have organized, workers endured several group and individual captive-audience meetings. Yet in the first week of June, fifteen of its twenty-three employees signed union cards, and the store petitioned for an NLRB election. If Starbucks gets its way, these workers may never get to vote for a union.
Moreover, workers in the other stores are equally unhappy, with one worker from the original store posting a long, critical comment on the reorganization plan on Reddit. She subsequently reached out to the union. The worker at the original Pike Place Starbucks store wrote, “Another big reason behind this I think is to prevent the spread of unions. Our stores are so close to unionizing but to prevent it from spreading to other districts they cut us off from the rest of the company.”
Starbucks Believes Multistore Bargaining Units Would Kill the Organizing Campaign
Starbucks has repeatedly, and unsuccessfully, tried to get the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to sanction multistore bargaining units, in the belief that this would undermine organizing. One big union-avoidance firm wrote, “Had Starbucks prevailed in that argument, it may have been able to get more baristas who were not in favor of a union to participate and change the outcome.” Another stated, “Starbucks knows it has the votes if you include all of the stores that it seeks to include.” Union-avoidance law firms have long sought to manipulate bargaining units to undermine worker organizing, usually by padding the unit with employees they believe will vote against the union.
Littler Mendelson lawyers argued at the board last year that the first bargaining unit should be composed of every single Buffalo Starbucks store — about twenty-one stores in total, most of which were not engage in organizing activity at the time — instead of having store-by-store NLRB elections, which have always been the norm for such elections in the food-service sector.
The regional director and then the full NLRB rejected Starbucks’s arguments. But its lawyers continued to appeal single-store bargaining units, while presenting no new facts, at regional boards around the country, in order to delay the elections and vote counts by months.
The Heritage District Is Designed to Get Multistore Units
In Seattle, Starbucks hopes it has figured out how to get the NLRB to accept a multistore bargaining unit. In late May, it announced plans to combine three separate stores: its original store, opened in 1971, in Pike Place Market; its flagship store at First and Pike on the corner of the market; and a newer store at First and University into a so-called “Heritage District,” which it says represents the “past, present, and future” of Starbucks. (The store at First and University — “the future” — is cashless, pickup, and mobile order only.)
Starbucks has told workers at the three stores that Heritage District baristas will not be assigned to any particular store but will receive additional training (and a 5 percent raise) that will enable them to rotate between the three stores, and it hopes that this interchange of workers will persuade the NLRB to agree to a multistore bargaining unit.
Starbucks’s reorganization plan is undoubtedly motivated by its determination to keep the union out of its two landmark stores at Pike Place Market. Combining the three stores in order to dilute pro-union workers and obstruct the organizing drive at the First and Pike store (which recently petitioned for an election) would be illegal; the NLRB would weigh the timing of Starbucks’s restructuring plans and its knowledge of union activity at the store or any other evidence of anti-union animus.
Given the vast resources it’s devoting to its anti-union campaign, Starbucks will try to prove its reorganization was planned before the union campaign at First and Pike started. If the board were to accept a three-store bargaining unit —though, given Starbucks’s national pattern of unlawful anti-unionism, it shouldn’t — Starbucks should not be allowed to combine further individual stores into a single unit, and its future plans to combine more stores should be considered deeply suspect.
But the restructuring doesn’t just involve egregious manipulation of bargaining units.
As part of the restructuring process, workers at all three stores were abruptly informed that they must reapply for their positions, told current workers at the stores will not be given any preference, and were given extremely limited time to arrange mandatory interviews. This announcement, which has caused significant worker anger and confusion, spurred renewed organizing at the Firstand Pike store, which had first started in April. The store’s lead organizer is confident they would have comprehensively won the election, just like other unionizing Starbucks stores in Seattle have done.
Most of the workers at the First and Pike store signed cards, and four members of the organizing committee signed the letter to Howard Schultz asking for union recognition. Thus, known union supporters are having to reinterview for their jobs. Starbucks personnel conducting the hiring process apparently includes the store managers from First and Pike, who undoubtedly know their union supporters, and district managers who have been involved in anti-union campaigns at other nearby Seattle stores that have organized.
One worker from Fifth and Pike who had helped organize the store and participated in an unfair labor practice (ULP) strike was interviewed by a district manager who had worked there to keep it operating during the strike. Workers at Fifth and Pike voted unanimously for union representation, as did workers at the first Seattle store to unionize. So management knows that any applicants from those stores, or from others that voted union overwhelmingly, are likely supporters of the union.
Several workers from First and Pike and, likely, from other stores were unable to interview because they attend school or work a second job during the allotted days and times, and they say management made little or no effort to accommodate them. If any worker’s application is unsuccessful, they will be transferred to another store; when transferring stores, Starbucks workers must list their top three preferences, but they are not guaranteed to get these stores, and transferring out employees from all three stores will likely cause a huge disruption for workers.
Pro-union workers at First and Pike will seek justice at the NLRB. Starbucks Workers United has filed a complaint against the company for removing pro-union workers from their jobs and increasing interrogations and surveillance at the store. But this will take time, and Starbucks and its Littler Mendelson lawyers know that delay is frequently a killer for union campaigns. NLRB ULP hearings on Starbucks’s store restructuring and rehiring process could disclose more evidence of anti-union animus, but even an incompetent management lawyer can manage to abuse the board’s proceedings for the purposes of delay.
On Saturday workers at the First and Pike store participated in a ULP strike to protest Starbucks’s union busting. The following two days, management told them not to report to work but said they would be paid. Then on Tuesday, several workers at the store received notification that they no longer work there. Those who had reapplied and interviewed for their positions were told that they would be transferred to other stores; it’s not yet clear what will happen to those who were unable to reinterview within the limited time period made available by Starbucks.
Starbucks Workers United has filed a ULP charge on both the structuring plan and now also on the involuntary transfers and potential layoffs. The NLRB will likely need to scrutinize the hiring process for the Heritage District stores. Starbucks could have packed the new three-store Heritage District unit with workers who are not already pro-union simply by not hiring known union supporters from the First and Pike store.
Discrimination against union supporters in hiring is unlawful, as are layoffs and involuntary transfers intended to get rid of “troublemakers.” The situation is still murky, but all of these issues could be at play here. The board understands well these kinds of anti-union tactics, and if pro-union workers were to lose their jobs as a result of the anti-union reorganization plan, the regional NLRB director can seek a federal court order known as a 10(j) injunction to force Starbucks to reverse course and reinstate the laid off workers without delay.
On the same day as the workers found out that they would no longer by working at First and Pike, where some have worked for several years, the regional director in Buffalo sought a 10(j) injunction to impose a national cease and desist order against Starbucks, order it to reinstate seven fired workers, and impose a bargaining order on one store. The court order would require Starbucks to stop a variety of unlawful anti-union activities at all stores. The NLRB is clearly escalating its action against Starbucks. But as the Seattle debacle shows, it must act more quickly and more decisively in order to stop the union busting from derailing the union campaign.
The Man Who Would Break His Company to Break the Union
If the board needs any further evidence of Starbucks’s anti-union animus — which is centralized, affecting stores nationwide, and coming from the very top of the company — it need look no further than Howard Schultz’s recent filmed interview with the New York Times. Schultz announced he would never agree to engage with the union because of the potential negative impact that would have on the customer experience.
Unfortunately for him, the question is not whether a “third party” might be bad for the customer experience, but whether collective bargaining is what his employees want. But Schultz appears willing to go to extraordinary lengths — even being prepared to risk destroying the company he created in order to break the union — to maintain unilateral control of the workplace. So it should not come as a surprise that Starbucks would restructure the organization of its stores in order to rid its two prize stores of union supporters and thus keep the union out.
The developments in Seattle could have a national significance for the union campaign. Starbucks’s reorganization plan in Seattle could be a harbinger for its future anti-union plans. Just as the inspirational and innovative Starbucks Workers United campaign has been rewriting the rules of union organizing at powerful anti-union corporations, so too Starbucks HQ and its law firm have been rewriting the rules of union busting. For decades, the NLRB has allowed powerful anti-union corporations to abuse its cumbersome processes and inadequate remedies, thereby making it the place where union campaigns go to die. The Joe Biden NLRB must not let Starbucks’s egregious Heritage District union busting in Seattle succeed.
Protesters in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, fall as a driver careens into them during a demonstration Friday against the overturning of Roe v. Wade. (photo: Lyz Lenz)
A truck driver careened into a group of demonstrators in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Friday as they crossed the street during an otherwise peaceful protest of the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
The unidentified male driver of a Ford truck rammed into several protesters — all of them women — at the tail end of a procession, rolling over one woman’s ankle and sending her to the hospital, witnesses said.
“He tried to murder them,” said a local journalist and witness to the attack, Lyz Lenz. “These women see him coming and a bunch of people put their hands out to stop him. And he just keeps going.”
Multiple witnesses, including one of the victims, described the scene in interviews with HuffPost: The male driver was waiting behind several cars at a red light downtown as a throng of protesters crossed the street.
He became “impatient,” as several witnesses said, and hit the gas, maneuvering around several cars to ram protesters.
Video taken by Linn County Supervisor Stacey Walker shows several women standing in front of the truck with their arms outstretched, trying to get the driver to stop. But the driver keeps pushing forward and bowls them over, injuring several of them.
A truck driver plowed through multiple pro-choice protesters in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on Friday, sending at least one woman to the hospital.
— Andy Campbell (@AndyBCampbell) June 25, 2022
Video provided by Linn County Supervisor Stacey Walker shows several victims — all women — trying to stop the driver as he careens into them pic.twitter.com/jcGTcfcK8X
One of the demonstrators, Alexis Russell, can be seen in the video holding a protest sign and reaching into the driver’s side window as the truck rolls forward. She told HuffPost that she was trying to steer him away from the other protesters.
“I had a fight-or-flight response,” Russell told HuffPost. “He had his window down. I grabbed the back of the window to keep up with his car and tried to grab the steering wheel. At some point he grabbed my sign and ripped it, and I fell, and he proceeded to run over one of the girls.”
Russell said she was “shaken up” but otherwise uninjured. The hospitalized woman, she said, was “totally distraught.”
City Councilwoman Ashley Vanorny confirmed that Cedar Rapids police had been called and were investigating.
They reportedly interviewed the driver Friday night but no arrests were made.
Several witnesses argued that the attack was motivated by anger over the protest, which was just one of many that flared up across the nation after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood on Friday.
Molly Monk, a witness, told HuffPost that the man didn’t give any audible indication that he was anti-abortion, “but he did go out of his way to hit protesters in the street who had very visible, very clear signs that they were pro-choice.”
“It makes me feel like the pro-life movement is a complete lie if, in order to be against people who are protesting for abortion rights, you try to murder them in my street, in my neighborhood,” said Monk. “It makes me very, very sad, very hurt and very angry that this is what people think pro-life means.”
Despite recent calls from Republican lawmakers to protect their fellow abortion opponents from harm in the wake of Friday’s Supreme Court ruling, the anti-abortion movement has a long history of violence.
In the last 43 years, anti-abortion activists have committed at least 11 murders, 26 attempted murders, 956 known threats of harm or death, 614 stalking incidents and four kidnappings, according to the National Abortion Federation. The supposedly “pro-life” movement has bombed 42 abortion clinics, set fire to 194 and made 667 bomb threats.
Tax dodges. (image: Lisa Larson-Walker/Getty Images)
After a year of reporting on the tax machinations of the ultrawealthy, ProPublica spotlights the top tax-avoidance techniques that provide massive benefits to billionaires.
1. The Ultra Wealth Effect
Our first story unraveled how billionaires like Elon Musk, Warren Buffett and Jeff Bezos were able to amass some of the largest fortunes in history while paying remarkably little tax relative to their immense wealth. They did it in part by avoiding selling off their vast holdings of stock. The U.S. system taxes income. Selling stock generates income, so they avoid income as the system defines it. Meanwhile, billionaires can tap into their wealth by borrowing against it. And borrowing isn’t taxable. (Buffett said he followed the law and preferred that his wealth go to charity; the others didn’t comment beyond a “?” from Musk.)
2. The $5 Billion IRA
Other billionaires used less conventional ways to avoid income, we found. Tech mogul Peter Thiel amassed a $5 billion Roth IRA, a type of account that shields income from taxes and is intended to help low- and middle-class savers prepare for retirement. Back in 1999, Thiel stuffed low-valued shares of the company that would become PayPal into the account, a maneuver tax lawyers said risked running afoul of IRS rules. (It’s not clear if the government ever challenged the move.) He set himself up to reap billions in untaxed gains. (Thiel did not respond to questions for the original article.)
3. The $1 Billion Parlor Trick: Turning High-Tax-Rate Trading into Low-Tax-Rate Income
Even when tech billionaires do show income on their tax return, they tend to pay relatively low income tax rates. That’s because of the type of income they have: Gains from long-term investments, such as from stock sales, are taxed at a lower rate. But what do you do if you’re making over $1 billion every year, and it’s largely from short-term trading? Do you just accept that you’ll pay the higher rate on all that income? As we reported this week, Jeff Yass, head of one of the most profitable firms on Wall Street, did not meekly accept this fate. Instead, his firm, Susquehanna International Group, found creative ways to transform the wrong sort of income into the right kind, generating tax savings that exceeded $1 billion over just six years. (Susquehanna declined to comment but in a court case that centered on similar allegations, it maintained that it complies with the law.)
4: The Magic of Sports Ownership: Make Money While (Legally) Reporting Losses
The tax code offers business owners a slew of methods to erase income through deductions, none more awesome than buying a sports team, as former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer did with the Los Angeles Clippers. It doesn’t matter whether the team is actually profitable and growing in value. It can still be a write-off. (In some cases, we found, owners could effectively deduct a given player’s contract not once, but twice. They’re allowed to take deductions comparable to those for factory equipment that loses value as it ages, even as teams almost inevitably gain in value.) That’s one reason owners tend to pay far lower tax rates than the athletes they employ, or even the people serving beer in the team’s stadium. In our story, we found a Clippers arena worker who made $45,000 a year and paid a higher tax rate than the billionaire Ballmer. (Ballmer said he pays the taxes he owes.)
5. Build, Drill and Save: The Real Estate and Oil Businesses Can Both Be Tax Havens
In certain industries, like real estate or oil and gas, the tax breaks are so plentiful that billionaires can erase their income entirely even as they grow richer. That’s how real estate developer Stephen Ross (who also happens to own the Miami Dolphins) went 10 years without paying any income tax. Ross said that he followed the law. Another mogul, this one in the oil business, managed to tap a near bottomless well of write-offs via one of the biggest oil spills in history. (The mogul’s representatives did not respond to requests for comment.)
6. Even a Billionaire’s Hobbies Can Pay Off at Tax Time
Deductions from hobbies and side projects, which the ultrawealthy can structure as businesses, are another fun option. For some billionaires, it’s race horses: We found that six owners of thoroughbreds at the 2021 Kentucky Derby had taken a combined $600 million in tax write-offs on their horse racing operations. For others, like Beanie Babies founder Ty Warner, it’s luxury hotels. The billionaire splurged on a couple of landmark Four Seasons locations and then went 12 years without paying any income tax. (Representatives for Warner did not respond to requests for comment.)
7. Think Your Taxes are Too High? Change the Tax Laws
Sometimes, it pays to fight for a new tax break. For the billionaires who contributed millions to Republican politicians, the payoff came in the form of Trump’s “big, beautiful tax cut” for passthrough businesses. We found the change sent $1 billion in tax savings in a single year to just 82 ultrawealthy households. Some business owners also boosted their savings with a trick: They slashed their own salaries and categorized the money instead as passthrough income.
8. Why Tech Billionaires Pay Less Than Hedge-Fund Managers
With so many options to reduce taxes, the richest Americans often manage low income tax rates. We analyzed the incomes and taxes of the country’s top 400 earners, those averaging over $110 million in income per year. Overall, the group paid relatively low rates, but certain segments (tech billionaires, heirs, private equity executives) stood out even within this elite population because they were able to draw on the sorts of techniques detailed above. (Also drawing on these techniques were wealthy politicians, like the governors of Colorado and West Virginia.)
9. Brother, Can You Spare a Stimulus Check?
But the real standouts were the billionaires who reported such low incomes that they qualified for government assistance. At least 18 billionaires received stimulus checks in 2020, because their tax returns placed them below the income cutoff ($150,000 for a married couple).
The holes in the estate tax, we found, are even more remarkable. There are well-worn ways to make sure Uncle Sam doesn’t get his cut of a fortune being passed on to heirs, and the most common is through a trust. How common no one can say, but we found evidence that at least half of the nation’s 100 richest individuals had used estate-tax-dodging trusts. In another story,we followed three century-old dynasties down through the generations, showing how they used trusts to avoid taxes, so that a fortune could pass all the way from the original early 20th century tycoon to, for example, the great-great-granddaughter who recently collected $210 million before her 19th birthday.
A member of the Nshongi mountain gorilla family. (photo: Justin Rowlatt/BBC News)
BBC climate editor Justin Rowlatt visits Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, Uganda, to find out what mountain gorilla conservation can tell us about protecting other species.
Then suddenly a baby gorilla tumbled through the undergrowth and past us both. She looked across and our eyes met. Instinctively I lowered my gaze. She wasn't hostile, she just wanted to make sure I knew my place. What was surprising was that I understood exactly what her glance meant. And, even more astonishing, I knew she understood me too.
It is that visceral sense of connection between species which makes visiting mountain gorillas in the wild such a profound experience. Spend just a few minutes in the company of a family of gorillas and the concept of "us and them" dissolves. You meet as equals.
Yet until fairly recently, the world's mountain gorillas appeared to be on an inexorable path to extinction. Sir David Attenborough recently described how his famous encounter with a mountain gorilla family in 1979 had been "tinged with sadness". It was one of the most memorable experiences of his life, he said, but he worried he might be meeting "the last of their kind".
Sir David understands that extinction is part of the evolutionary process - some species die away as others evolve. The problem is species are currently becoming extinct far more rapidly than is usual in evolutionary history. Scientists estimate species extinction is happening at least 100 times more than the normal "background rate". They warn the world is experiencing an extinction event comparable in scale with the disaster that saw the dinosaurs wiped out.
This matters because biodiversity underpins so much of the functioning of the natural world - from the food we eat to the air we breathe and the water we drink. It also helps protect us from pollution, floods and climate breakdown.
But UN negotiations to stem the tide of extinction in Geneva earlier this year ended in deadlock. This week delegates meet in Nairobi to try to reboot the talks. The aim is to agree 21 targets, including protecting at least 30% of the world's land and seas by 2030.
The hope is to provide a framework for a landmark international agreement under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity that will be signed by governments in Kunming in October. The ultimate goal could hardly be more lofty - for humanity to "live in harmony with nature" by 2050.
We talk a lot about the climate crisis, but much less about the biodiversity crisis. Justin Rowlatt asks what the success of mountain gorilla conservation tells us about protecting other species.
So, does the fate of the mountain gorilla hold lessons for how we can conserve threatened species?
When Sir David visited the family of gorillas there were around 600 mountain gorillas left. The species was listed as "critically endangered". Mountain gorillas cannot survive in captivity so protection in the wild was their only hope.
They live in two groups. One in the Virunga Forest, which straddles the borders between Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the other in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest in Uganda.
They faced the same challenges as many threatened species do today - the habitat they live in was rapidly being cleared by farmers, conservation efforts were being hampered by conflict, and they were sometimes killed by poachers.
But 40 years later, the population is now more than 1,000-strong and growing. The species is now listed as just "endangered" - a significant improvement. In fact, there has been something of a baby boom in the past couple of years. Five mountain gorilla infants were born in Bwindi in late 2020 - an unprecedented number. Just three were born in the whole of 2019.
The secret of this success? Dr Gladys Kalema Zikusoka was the Uganda Wildlife Authority's first vet in 1995, then she set up the charity Conservation Through Public Health. Perhaps surprisingly, she says, carefully managed tourism has been crucial.
"Tourism really does help wild animals if it is done right." But only, she clarifies, if the income from tourism really does flow into the local community.
A gorilla encounter figures high on many bucket lists, and tourist lodges and rest houses, craft stalls and trekking centres, now encircle the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest national park.
"When I first started out there were only about five lodges, now there are as many as 70," says Dr Gladys. "The lodges have created jobs, the NGOs have created jobs." Gorilla tourism has boosted the entire regional economy, she says, and now the revenues it generates covers much of the cost of running Uganda's wildlife protection service.
Bwindi's chief warden, Nelson Guma, agrees the income from tourism has been crucial because it underpins the support of the local community. "These communities live next to the park. And so we feel that they should be a part of the conservation, and they should get benefits from conservation."
Visiting a gorilla family is not cheap. You pay $600 per person, Uganda's gorillas receive up to 40,000 visits a year. Local communities get a 20% cut of the revenue from the park.
And mountain gorilla conservation has another huge benefit. To protect the gorillas you need to protect the entire forest ecosystem. The Bwindi Impenetrable Forest is one of the most biodiverse places on earth, so thousands - possibly tens of thousands - of other species are conserved as well.
What's more, the cash the gorillas help earn has been used to neutralise other threats. Mountain gorillas used occasionally to be caught in the traps poachers set to catch deer, wild pigs and other animals. They would either sell their catch as bush meat or use it to help feed their families.
But once the gorillas became a lucrative tourist attraction, the authorities could afford to make poachers an offer that was hard to refuse - get caught hunting in the park and you'll go to jail, they were told. Stay out and we'll find work for you either in the park or on land provided by charities.
"Now we are the ambassadors of the park," says Vincent Nshmarairw proudly. He's a former poacher who works for an agricultural project funded by the UK-based Gorilla Organisation charity.
Mr Nshmarairw hopes gorillas will be the key to his family's future prosperity. "My children are all at school," he tells me. "And with time maybe they can get jobs from the park."
Tourism is not without problems. Tourists can disturb animals and disrupt their natural behaviour, it generates pollution and waste, and can undermine local cultures. But most of the world's major conservation organisations, including the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Conservation International and the World Wildlife Fund, now support carefully managed ecotourism as a useful conservation tool.
Tourism is also rarely a complete solution. Despite their economic heft, the mountain gorilla population remains vulnerable. The national parks that the two mountain gorilla populations live in are large, but they represent a tiny fraction of the vast jungle that used to cover the region and, as the gorilla population grows, space is becoming an issue.
"We're definitely seeing that gorilla families are more crowded," says Tara Stoinski who runs the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.
Gorillas are "bumping into each other more", warns Ms Stoinski. These encounters are associated with aggression and fights, sometimes with tragic consequences: "We're seeing higher rates of infanticide. Infants can oftentimes be killed when these families come together."
Research by the Gorilla Fund suggests that, in some areas of the Virunga Forest, the growth in the gorilla population is slowing for the first time in decades.
"We would love to see this population grow but in order to do so, there's really going to need to be more habitat available to them," says Ms Stoinski.
The answer would be more land set aside for the gorillas - exactly what the UN says needs to happen worldwide. But taking productive land out of action costs money and the developing world says they need financial support to do it. This is one of the main sticking points in negotiations. Developing countries are demanding the developed world pay them $100bn a year to support conservation.
The success of mountain gorilla conservation shows we can save species from the brink of extinction, says the UN's head of biodiversity, Elizabeth Mrema. She is confident the delegates in Nairobi will be able to find compromises when they meet this week.
The question for the world is how much energy and resources we are willing to put into the effort to protect biodiversity. Ms Mrema issues a stark warning: "We've been told by scientists we only have this century to solve the biodiversity crisis. There is no planet B," she says.
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