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Regardless of the legal obstacles to convicting the former President, Hutchinson’s testimony reconfirmed that he must never again be allowed anywhere near power.
In fact, there were no historical precedents for the testimony that Hutchinson delivered in an astonishing two hours of television after Bennie Thompson, the Democratic co-chair of the committee, swore her in. Answering questions from the co-chair, the Republican Liz Cheney, Hutchinson calmly described an utterly unhinged President who, on January 6, 2021, was so determined to join his supporters—many of them armed and, he knew well, intent on causing trouble—in their march on Capitol Hill that he tried to grab the steering wheel of his Presidential S.U.V., yelling “I’m the fucking President. Take me up to the Capitol now!” When the head of his Secret Service detail grabbed his arm and ordered Trump to return to the White House, he allegedly lunged at the agent’s throat. (On Wednesday night, several news organizations, quoting anonymous sources, reported that the agents who were with Trump disputed that he grabbed the steering wheel or lunged at the agent. A Secret Service spokesman told The New Yorker that the agents would respond on the record to the House committee regarding the incident.)
Regardless of this detail, Hutchinson’s testimony appeared to strengthen the criminal case against Trump. One of her revelations was that, a few days before January 6th, Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel, had explicitly warned that if Trump did go to Capitol Hill on January 6th he could potentially be implicated in the crimes of obstructing justice and obstructing the electoral count. “This would be legally a terrible idea for us,” Hutchinson recounted Cipollone saying. She also testified that, on January 5th, Trump told Meadows to speak with Michael Flynn and Roger Stone, two Trump loyalists who were part of a “war room” at the Willard hotel. After initially trying to meet Flynn and Stone in person, Hutchinson said, Meadows then spoke with them by phone. (Hutchinson also recalled how, days earlier, Meadows had said to her, “Things might get real, real bad on January 6th.”)
It will be up to Merrick Garland to decide whether this adds up to a winnable case against Trump on charges of obstruction, incitement, or another offense, and the pressure is growing on him to act. “There is no doubt in my mind that [Trump] was involved in criminal activity,” Representative Elaine Luria, one of the Democratic members of the January 6th committee, told CNN after the hearing. Summing up what the evidence at each hearing is making ever more difficult to deny, Luria described the events of that day as “a conspiracy—a failed coup, essentially.”
As ever, the challenge to prosecutors would be proving that the former President had criminal intent in a case where he would insist that he sincerely believed the 2020 election had been stolen. Regardless of the legal obstacles to convicting Trump, however, Hutchinson’s testimony reconfirmed, in perhaps the most graphic way yet, that he must never again be allowed anywhere near power. If Dean, the White House counsel to the Nixon Administration, in his June, 1973, testimony to the Senate Watergate Committee, provided firsthand evidence that Richard Nixon was a scheming, lying coverup artist, Hutchinson provided an inside-the-West Wing confirmation that Trump isn’t fit to lead a support group for reformed rageaholics, let alone lead the country. The idea of the nuclear codes being handed back to him is surely now unthinkable.
When Trump reached the Ellipse on the morning of January 6th, Hutchinson observed that “he was fucking furious” that the relatively small crowd inside the secure area would look bad on television. In a tape of her previous testimony to the committee’s investigators, Hutchinson expanded on Trump’s mind-set. “He was furious about the mags”—magnetic metal detectors. “He was angry we weren’t letting people through the mags with weapons.”
Hutchinson said that Trump demanded the Secret Service take down the checkpoints and let his supporters in with their weapons. She recounted how another White House staffer, Anthony Ornato, one of Meadows’s deputies, explained to Trump that the reason many of his supporters didn’t want to go through the checkpoints was that they wanted to go straight from the speech to the Capitol, and have with them their arms, which included AR-15 rifles and Glock pistols. Trump seemed unconcerned. Hutchinson recounted him saying, “I don’t effing care that they have weapons. They aren’t here to hurt me. Take those effing mags away.”
During his speech, Trump told his supporters he would march with them to the Hill. After he finished and got into an armored black S.U.V., Hutchinson took up what happened as it was recounted to her a bit later in the day by Ornato. The head of Trump’s security detail, Bobby Engel, told him they couldn’t go the Capitol because the Secret Service didn’t have sufficient resources to guarantee his safety. It was then that Trump demanded to be driven to the Hill and reached for the steering wheel.
“Sir, you need to take your hand off of the steering wheel, we’re going back to the West Wing, we’re not going to the Capitol,” Engel informed Trump, according to Hutchinson. She went on: “Mr. Trump then used his free hand to lunge toward Engel, and when Mr. Ornato recounted the story to me, he motioned to his clavicles.”
In a statement on his social-media platform, Trump dismissed Hutchinson’s testimony as “fake,” “sick,” and “fraudulent.” That was true to form. Hutchinson is far more believable. She said Engel was in the room when Ornato told her the story about the altercation in the Presidential vehicle and apparently didn’t correct or disagree with any of it. She also recounted Trump exhibiting out-of-control rage on other occasions, including in December, 2020, when he learned that his Attorney General, Bill Barr, had publicly dismissed his claims of election fraud.
Hutchinson, whose West Wing office was down a short hall from the Oval Office and the President’s dining room, recalled how she heard a loud noise and went to investigate. “I first noticed there was ketchup dripping down the wall, and there was a shattered porcelain plate,” she said. “The valet had articulated that the President was extremely angry at the Attorney General’s AP interview and had thrown his lunch against the wall, which was causing them to have to clean up. So I grabbed a towel and started wiping the ketchup off the wall to help the valet out.”
That was the reaction of a normal person. Trump, as we all know, and as Hutchinson’s historic testimony has vividly reconfirmed, is not nearly normal. If this doesn’t finish him, what will?
Cassidy Hutchinson, who was an assistant to then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, testifies before the House Jan. 6 committee on Jan. 28. (photo: Demetrius Freeman/WP)
Cassidy Hutchinson delivers stunning revelations about White House events on the day of the Capitol attack
The testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, who was an assistant to then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, was the most chilling to date in the House select committee’s Jan. 6 investigation. Recounting granular detail and private dialogue, she presented to the public a penetrating account of Trump’s actions and mind-set as the Capitol came under siege from his own supporters, who were determined to stop the counting of electoral votes and impede the certification of Joe Biden’s victory.
Testifying alone, her appearance punctuated by clips from taped depositions given by herself and others, the 25-year-old Hutchinson detailed how Trump and other powerful officials around him alternately encouraged, tolerated and excused the insurrection as it unfolded in front of them.
Informed that his supporters had come to the rally armed with weapons, Trump urged that security precautions at his rally be lifted, Hutchinson testified.
“They’re not here to hurt me,” she recalled him saying.
Even after the day’s violence had ended, Hutchinson said, Trump persisted in his support for the rioters.
“He didn’t think they did anything wrong,” she said, summarizing Trump’s attitude. “The person who did something wrong that day was Mike Pence.”
In addition to her account of Trump’s actions, her revelations included confirming that Meadows and Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer and a key proponent of his false election claims, sought pardons for potential criminal offenses related to Jan. 6. She also recalled hearing discussion of violent far-right groups such as the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys in Giuliani’s presence in the run-up to the riot and confirmed serious discussion in Trump’s Cabinet of removing him from the presidency under the 25th Amendment.
Hutchinson shared her account in the sixth hearing of the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack — one that was scheduled only a day in advance, creating widespread anticipation and speculation about the revelations to come. While prior hearings examined the run-up to the Jan. 6 electoral count — including the effort to spin false theories of election fraud, the plot to persuade Vice President Mike Pence to upend the tally, and a near-coup that unfolded inside the Justice Department — Tuesday’s proceedings focused largely on the searing day of violence itself.
“We are all in her debt,” said Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who questioned Hutchinson on Tuesday. “Our nation is preserved by those who abide by their oath to our Constitution. Our nation is preserved by those who know the fundamental difference between right and wrong. And I want all Americans to know that what Ms. Hutchinson has done today is not easy.”
Trump called Hutchinson a “total phony” on social media Tuesday and suggested she could not be trusted because she had sought a position on his staff in Florida after he left the presidency.
“I personally turned her request down,” he wrote in one of many posts on Truth Social, the social media network he launched after being banned from most major sites. “Why did she want to go with us if she felt we were so terrible? I understand that she was very upset and angry that I didn’t want her to go, or be a member of the team. She is bad news!”
House Judiciary Committee Republicans responded to Hutchinson’s testimony during the hearing, tweeting that it was “literally all hearsay evidence.”
Hutchinson arrived at the hearing Tuesday with impeccable GOP credentials. A former aide to House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), she held various roles in the White House before serving as a close aide to Meadows — a post that gave her frequent close contact with Trump in the weeks before and on the day of the Capitol attack.
The hearing was accelerated, a person familiar with the matter said, because the committee hoped Hutchinson would drive others on the fence to come forward and testify. Another factor, the person said, was that there were extensive security threats against her in recent days. Hutchinson had faced resistance from her previous lawyer about testifying and changed lawyers after he suggested they not publicly cooperate, a second person familiar with the matter said. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.
In some of her most gripping revelations, Hutchinson described a fierce struggle inside the senior White House ranks in the days leading up to the Jan. 6 electoral vote count over Trump’s desire to personally travel to the Capitol that day. What Trump would actually do there was unclear, she said. Some aides discussed him giving another speech on the Capitol grounds, and some discussed having Trump enter the House chamber itself, where Congress was set to gather to count the electoral votes.
As early as Jan. 3, Hutchinson testified, White House counsel Pat Cipollone made clear he was dead set against Trump making any sort of journey to the Capitol, and he enlisted Hutchinson to help persuade Meadows to oppose it, as well: “He said to me, ‘We need to make sure that this doesn’t happen.’”
Cipollone raised the issue with Hutchinson again on the morning of Jan. 6, she said, this time in stark terms. “We’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable if we make that movement happen,” she recalled him saying, enumerating crimes that could include obstruction of justice, defrauding the election and inciting a riot.
As early as 10 a.m. on Jan. 6, top White House officials were aware that many of those who had gathered in Washington were armed. Hutchinson testified that she was present when Tony Ornato, the deputy White House chief of staff for operations, shared reports with Meadows that marchers had been spotted with guns, knives, bear spray, body armor and even spears. Meadows, she said, “looked up and said, ‘Have you talked to the president?’ And Tony said: ‘Yes, sir, he’s aware, too.’ He said: ‘All right, good.’”
While Hutchinson’s testimony about Trump’s actions in that case, and some others, was secondhand, she described directly overhearing the former president backstage at the Jan. 6 Ellipse rally, where he exhorted his followers to march to the Capitol.
Before he took the stage, Hutchinson said, Trump was angry that the area that had been set aside for the rally just south of the White House was not full. The issue wasn’t that people were having trouble getting in, she said, but rather that thousands of marchers were unwilling to pass through Secret Service magnetometers at the event’s perimeter and risk having their weapons confiscated. Many were happy to stay across Constitution Avenue, where they could hear the rally but not be subject to search.
“He was angry that we weren’t letting people through the mags with weapons,” she said, adding, “I overheard the president say something to the effect of, you know, I don’t f-ing care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me. Take the f-ing mags away. Let my people in.”
But she said Trump’s anger had yet to peak. After leaving the stage, Trump returned to his motorcade under the apparent belief that he would then be taken to the Capitol — a belief that Meadows, despite the warnings from Cipollone and others, had done nothing to undercut. Hutchinson described being told by Ornato what had happened next: Trump got into an armored presidential vehicle with Robert Engel, the chief of his Secret Service security detail.
Engel, according to Hutchinson’s account, then told Trump he could not travel to the Capitol. It was not secure, and Trump would have to return to the White House.
“The president had a very strong, a very angry response to that,” Hutchinson said, relaying Ornato’s account. “The president said something to the effect of, ‘I’m the f-ing president. Take me up to the Capitol now,’ to which [Engel] responded, ‘Sir, we have to go back to the West Wing.’”
Trump, at that point, “reached up towards the front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel,” Hutchinson said. “Mr. Engel grabbed his arm and said, ‘Sir, you need to take your hand off the steering wheel. We’re going back to the West Wing. We’re not going to the Capitol.’ Mr. Trump then used his free hand to lunge towards Bobby Engel, and when Mr. Ornato had recounted this story to me, he had motioned towards his clavicles.”
Hutchinson said that Engel was present when Ornato relayed the account and that neither man cast doubt on the story then or since.
The Secret Service released a statement Tuesday that did not directly address the substance of Hutchinson’s testimony but said the agency “has been cooperating with the Select Committee since its inception in spring 2021.”
Three Secret Service agents who accompanied Trump on Jan. 6 disputed that Trump assaulted or grabbed at the leader of his security detail and that he grabbed for the steering wheel of the Suburban sport utility vehicle in which he was traveling to try to steer it to the Capitol, according to one current and one former law enforcement official familiar with their accounts.
The three agents — Engel, Ornato and the agent driving the Suburban that carried the president away from his speech at the Ellipse — are also willing to testify under oath to the committee about their recollection of events on Jan. 6 in the Secret Service vehicle, said the two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive subject.
The three agents do not dispute Hutchinson’s account that Trump was furious upon learning they were not taking him to the Capitol and exchanged tense words with Engel when the detail leaders told him it would be unsafe and impossible to go the Capitol alongside Trump’s supporters.
Hutchinson’s lawyer, Jody Hunt, tweeted Tuesday night: “Ms. Hutchinson testified, under oath, and recounted what she was told. Those with knowledge of the episode also should testify under oath.”
The Secret Service incident was not the only fit of presidential rage Hutchinson described. A month prior, she said, she had been summoned to the Oval Office dining room in the moments after the Associated Press published an interview with Attorney General William P. Barr, who said that the Justice Department had “not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”
“There’s ketchup dripping down the wall and there’s a shattered porcelain plate on the floor,” she recalled. “The valet had articulated that the president was extremely angry at the attorney general’s AP interview and had thrown his lunch against the wall.”
Hutchinson said it was one of “several times throughout my tenure with the chief of staff that I was aware of him either throwing dishes or flipping the tablecloth to let all the contents of the table go onto the floor.”
Hutchinson’s testimony painted a consistent and unflattering portrait of Meadows, the former congressman turned Trump acolyte who left the House to become chief of staff. She frequently described him as staring at his phone and detached from events unfolding around him. Hutchinson has not spoken to Meadows since early 2021, and has lost touch with most of the other figures in the Trump and Meadows orbit, people familiar with the matter said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly.
At one point, Hutchinson recalled informing Meadows of a rising threat of violence at the Capitol: “He almost had a lack of reaction. I remember him saying, all right, something to the effect of ‘How much longer does the president have left in this speech?’”
Later, as the rioters moved closer and closer to the Capitol, she recalled trying again to rouse Meadows to action. Again, she said, she found him glued to his phone: “He was just kind of scrolling and typing. I said, ‘Hey, are you watching the TV, chief?’” she recalled, asking him if he had spoken to Trump about the threat: “He said, ‘No, he wants to be alone right now,’ still looking at his phone.”
It was only when she raised the personal safety of Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a political ally and personal friend, that Meadows appeared to react: “You might want to check in with him, Mark,” she recalled saying. “And he looked at me and said something to the effect of, ‘All right, I’ll give him a call.’”
Moments later, Hutchinson said, Cipollone rushed into Meadows’s office and urged him to confront Trump about the violence occurring 16 blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue. “Mark looked up and said, ‘He doesn’t want to do anything, Pat,’” she recalled, before summarizing Cipollone’s response: “Mark, something needs to be done or people are going to die and blood is going to be on your f-ing hands. This is getting out of control. I’m going down there.”
Both men at that point went to the Oval Office dining room, where Trump sequestered himself as the riot unfolded. Hutchinson described heading there later and briefly overhearing conversations about the chants ringing around the mob: “Hang Mike Pence.”
A few minutes later, Meadows and Cipollone returned from the dining room to Meadows’s office — with Cipollone continuing to push for further action to quell the mob: “They’re literally calling for the vice president to be hung,” Hutchinson recalled him saying there. She said Meadows replied, “‘You heard him, Pat. He thinks Mike deserves it. He doesn’t think they’re doing anything wrong.’”
Around that time, Trump sent a tweet rebuking Pence for not having the “courage to do what needs to be done.”
“In my judgment Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony today would not withstand a basic cross examination,” said Meadows lawyer George Terwilliger.
Hutchinson declined to comment Tuesday after the hearing.
“Ms. Hutchinson is justifiably proud of her service to the country as a Special Assistant to the President,” her lawyers said in a statement. “While she did not seek out the attention accompanying her testimony today, she believes that it was her duty and responsibility to provide the Committee with her truthful and candid observations of the events surrounding January 6. Ms. Hutchinson believes that January 6 was a horrific day for the country, and it is vital to the future of our democracy that it not be repeated.”
Closing the hearing Tuesday, Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) praised Hutchinson’s courage and made an appeal to the witnesses who have at least partially stonewalled the committee — who include Meadows, former Trump strategist Stephen K. Bannon and economic adviser Peter Navarro — as well as others who might have cooperated only partially.
“Your attempt to hide the truth from the American people will fail,” he said. “If you’ve heard this testimony today and suddenly you remember things you couldn’t previously recall or there are some details you’d like to clarify or you discovered some courage you had hidden away somewhere, our doors remain open.”
"Another factor, the person said, was that there were extensive security threats against her in recent days."
This is all the right wingers know to address the TRUTH -THREATS!
This goes further and it's time to investigate the KOCH tentacles:
The Glue that Connects Jeffrey Clark, John Eastman, Ginni Thomas, and the Guy Who Was Air-Dropped into the DOJ, Is Charles Koch’s Money
https://wallstreetonparade.com/2022/06/the-glue-that-connects-jeffrey-clark-john-eastman-ginni-thomas-and-the-guy-who-was-air-dropped-into-the-doj-is-charles-kochs-money/
"Another factor, the person said, was that there were extensive security threats against her in recent days."
This is all these poorly educated sheep know when confronted with the TRUTH!
The tRumpers haven't figured out that the LIAR IN CHIEF tells LIES.
Maybe they missed the part where his bankruptcy attorneys insisted on meeting with Daffy Don with 2 attorneys present because his 'stories' varied.
It's beyond evidence of a poor memory, likely a significant cognitive decline that was clearly apparent years ago.
The sheep are too enamored to ever to a FACT CHECK of their Fearless Leaders statements.
Trump’s false or misleading claims total 30,573 over 4 years
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/24/trumps-false-or-misleading-claims-total-30573-over-four-years/
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, center, shakes hands with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, second left, after signing a memorandum in which Turkey agrees to Finland and Sweden's membership of the defense alliance in Madrid on Tuesday. (photo: Bernat Armangue/AP)
'We now have an agreement that paves the way for Finland and Sweden to join NATO,' said Jens Stoltenberg
After urgent top-level talks, alliance Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said "we now have an agreement that paves the way for Finland and Sweden to join NATO."
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has prompted Sweden and Finland to abandon their long-held nonaligned status and apply to join NATO. But Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had blocked the move, insisting the Nordic pair change their stance on Kurdish rebel groups that Turkey considers terrorists.
Finnish President Sauli Niinisto said the three countries' leaders signed a joint agreement after talks on Tuesday.
Turkey said it had "got what it wanted" including "full co-operation ... in the fight against" the rebel groups.
Summit meeting will set future course of the alliance
The agreement comes at the opening of a crucial summit dominated by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. U.S. President Joe Biden and other NATO leaders arrived in Madrid for a summit that will set the course of the alliance for the coming years.
Stoltenberg said the meeting would chart a blueprint for the alliance "in a more dangerous and unpredictable world."
"To be able to defend in a more dangerous world we have to invest more in our defence," Stoltenberg said. Just nine of NATO's 30 members meet the organization's target of spending two per cent of gross domestic product on defence.
Spain, which is hosting the summit, spends just half that.
Top of the agenda for leaders in meetings Wednesday and Thursday is strengthening defences against Russia and supporting Ukraine.
Biden, who arrived with the aim of stiffening the resolve of any wavering allies, said NATO was "as united and galvanized as I think we have ever been."
Moscow's invasion on Feb. 24 shattered European security and brought shelling of cities and bloody ground battles back to the continent. NATO, which had begun to turn its focus to terrorism and other non-state threats, has had to confront an adversarial Russia once again.
"Ukraine now faces a brutality which we haven't seen in Europe since the Second World War," Stoltenberg said.
Diplomats and leaders from Turkey, Sweden and Finland earlier held a flurry of talks in an attempt to break the impasse over Turkey's opposition to expansion. The three countries' leaders met for more than two hours alongside Stoltenberg on Tuesday before the agreement was announced.
Erdogan is critical of what he considers the lax approach of Sweden and Finland toward groups that Ankara deems national security threats, including the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, and its Syrian extension. American support for Syrian Kurdish fighters in combatting the Islamic State group has also enraged Turkey for years.
Turkey has demanded that Finland and Sweden extradite wanted individuals and lift arms restrictions imposed after Turkey's 2019 military incursion into northeast Syria.
Ending the deadlock will allow NATO leaders to focus on their key issue: an increasingly unpredictable and aggressive Russia.
Kyiv mayor urges alliance to do 'whatever it takes' to stop war
A Russian missile strike Monday on a shopping mall in the central Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk was a grim reminder of the war's horrors. Some saw the timing, as Group of Seven leaders met in Germany just ahead of NATO, as a message from Moscow.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is due to address NATO leaders by video on Wednesday, called the strike on the mall a "terrorist" act.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko travelled to Madrid to urge the alliance to provide his country with "whatever it takes" to stop the war.
"Wake up, guys. This is happening now. You are going to be next, this is going to be knocking on your door just in the blink of an eye," Klitschko told reporters at the summit venue.
Stoltenberg said Monday that NATO allies will agree at the summit to increase the strength of the alliance's rapid reaction force nearly eightfold, from 40,000 to 300,000 troops. The troops will be based in their home nations, but dedicated to specific countries on NATO's eastern flank, where the alliance plans to build up stocks of equipment and ammunition.
Beneath the surface, there are tensions within NATO over how the war will end and what, if any, concessions Ukraine should make to end the fighting.
There are also differences on how hard a line to take on China in NATO's new Strategic Concept — its once-a-decade set of priorities and goals. The last document, published in 2010, didn't mention China at all.
The new concept is expected to set out NATO's approach on issues from cybersecurity to climate change — and the growing economic and military reach of China, and the rising importance and power of the Indo-Pacific region. For the first time, the leaders of Japan, Australia, South Korea and New Zealand are attending the summit as guests.
Some European members are wary of the tough U.S. line on Beijing and don't want China cast as an opponent.
In the Strategic Concept, NATO is set to declare Russia its number one threat.
Russia's state space agency, Roscosmos, marked the summit's opening by releasing satellite images and co-ordinates of the Madrid conference hall where it is being held, along with those of the White House, the Pentagon and the government headquarters in London, Paris and Berlin.
The agency said NATO was set to declare Russia an enemy at the summit, adding that it was publishing precise co-ordinates "just in case."
Kina Collins and Danny Davis. (photo: Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service/Getty Images/Erin Hooley)
A long-tenured incumbent’s defeat to a progressive challenger is the latest in a string of losses for the left
Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.), the incumbent in Illinois’ 7th congressional district, had been in office for almost 25 years. From Collins’ perspective, he hadn’t done enough to deal with those problems. But she reserved special ire for Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the fourth-ranking House Democrat who had just endorsed Davis through a new PAC he’d founded to beat back primary challengers. ”We don’t see the federal resources when a hundred people get shot in a weekend,” Collins said. “But the one time that you want to spotlight the west side of Chicago is to silence me. I’m enraged by that.”
That was that. Collins had called out Jeffries by name. For the better part of the next year, Jeffries and his House leadership colleagues did not forget it.
Collins’ challenge to Davis flew under-the-radar compared to similar Democratic primaries, which attracted both national attention and the sort of spending often reserved for tight general election contests. But a powerful coterie of Democrats quietly watched this race with rapt attention: Black House lawmakers eager to bury their party’s left flank, whom they have long accused of unfairly singling out Black incumbents in pursuit of building progressive power. And the left, for its part, was eager to oust an incumbent it views as too cozy with corporations and the Democratic establishment.
Davis defeated Collins on Tuesday evening, narrowly beating his challenger by a seven-point margin. His victory is a major defeat for the party’s left flank, which have lost all but one primary challenge to incumbent Democratic House members this cycle.
The contest’s discord was part of a larger conflict that has pitted a new type of progressive Democrat against an older generation that still holds the party’s top positions. “We were progressive before progressive was a term,” said a Democratic source close to the incumbent. “Just because CBC members aren’t painting themselves with that brush doesn’t mean they aren’t standing up for those values.” Collins’ allies insist they aren’t targeting Black members, but simply giving voters in the Chicago-base district a choice. “For many voters, especially in deep blue areas, primaries are the only elections where people have a voice to hold their representatives accountable,” said Waleed Shahid, the communications director for the Justice Democrats. The left-wing organization backed Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-N.Y.) 2018 surprise victory and endorsed Collins in this race.
The feud began in the aftermath of the 2018 midterms, when Jeffries defeated Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) in House leadership elections, an outcome viewed by the left as payback for Ocasio-Cortez’s upset over Joe Crowley. Politico later reported that Ocasio-Cortez had told confidantes Jeffries was the “highest priority” for future primary challenges. The threat never materialized — Ocasio-Cortez denied it and the reporting was never confirmed — but it sealed the bad blood between the factions.
That divide deepened the following year when Justice Democrats endorsed candidates against two Congressional Black Caucus incumbents in 2020. “Let me make the message strong and clear: When you attack a hard-working member of the Congressional Black Caucus, we fight back,” warned Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), one of the challenged incumbents, in 2019. Beatty quashed her challenger. But the other left-wing insurgent, activist Cori Bush, channeled nationwide outrage over George Floyd’s murder into defeating a 20-year Black incumbent in a St. Louis-based district that includes Ferguson, when Bush had led protests in the aftermath of a 2014 police killing of an unarmed Black teenager.
Progressive allies likened Bush’s path to Collins’ prospects. The 31-year-old grew up in a neighborhood on Chicago’s west side plagued by violence. After witnessing a murder as a child, Collins went on to lead a gun safety non-profit. Her expertise earned her a spot in President Joe Biden’s transition task force for gun policy. Collins supports the usual buffet of left-wing planks, such as Medicare for All and the Green New Deal.
Justice Democrats endorsed Collins early in the race and have helped her build a field, communications, and — most significantly — fundraising strategy. Collins outraised Davis every quarter of the primary. “They’re quite literally understanding the assignment about what it takes to win these races, the messaging and understanding the pulse of the district,” Collins said in an interview last week.
The 80-year-old Davis brings his own progressive bona fides, including one-time ties to Democratic Socialists of America. He, too, is no stranger to gun violence: He lost his 15-year-old grandson in a 2016 shooting, and his commitment to the issue earned him an endorsement from an arm of the nonprofit at which Collins once worked.
Davis had been bolstered by Team Blue PAC, the political outfit led by Jeffries and two House colleagues to do for incumbents what Justice Democrats does for progressive insurgents: Help them put up a fight. “There are forces of antagonism that will deliberately and intentionally target them solely based on their role as traditional ‘get-stuff-done’ Democrats who don’t live on Twitter,” Jeffries said. “People are far better prepared to more effectively communicate their vision, message and accomplishments to the people they’re privileged to represent.”
The ideological similarities distanced some big spenders from the race. AIPAC and Democratic Majority for Israel, two pro-Israel PACS that have dumped millions into defeating progressive challengers this cycle, stayed out of the contest given Davis’ tough stances against Israel during his quarter century in the House. The faceoff between two Black candidates also kept some of Collins’ would-be endorsers at bay, not eager for the optics of crossing the Congressional Black Caucus and its powerful leaders. (Bush, for her part, refused to weigh in on the primary, offering only that “primary challengers aren’t horrible people” when asked about it.)
The distinction Collins attempted to draw was generational, which she described as a need for a “fresh perspective” for the district. She named the lack of movement on climate legislation, police reform, and canceling student debt as evidence of Davis’ lack of vigor. “Just any blue will not do,” she said. (The Chicago Tribune agreed, presenting Collins with a rare non-incumbent endorsement earlier this month as the paper called for “new blood.”) Collins rejected punditry that suggested the George Floyd “moment” is over, given the backlash against police reform efforts and the progressive prosecutors who aided them. “People haven’t been saying ‘defund the police’ in our district, but they have been saying ‘fund the community,’” she said.
“Where was the Congressional Black Caucus when the Laquan McDonald tape came out?” Collins said back in September. “We were getting beat by CPD and none of them called for Rahm Emanuel to step down.”
There have been recent examples of older CBC members offering limp responses to the GOP’s culture wars. Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), the House’s third-ranking Democrat, ignited outrage among devastated Democrats when he described the overturn of Roe as “a little anticlimactic.” Davis dabbled in the trans rights discourse at a recent forum hosted by a local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. “I don’t think that women should be trying to play football with the Bears,” he said. The assertion may not have seemed so tone deaf to Davis’ contemporaries: Older Black voters, a particularly moderate strain within the party — and the demographic on whom Tuesday’s results were expected to rely.
There is a time for generational progress, CBC allies said, pointing to recent Black primary victors like Summer Lee in Pennsylvania and Jasmine Crockett, both of whom vyed for open seats. That progress, they maintained, should not come at the expense of Black incumbents. Party leaders have signaled they agree: Both Jeffries and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) stumped for Davis, and President Joe Biden offered a rare primary endorsement of him over the weekend. Opportunity for All, a new super PAC, dumped more than $440,000 during the race’s final days to boost Davis. (Justice Democrats spent $422,000 on Collins’ behalf.)
“Democratic leadership and Democrats in general should be very careful of being dismissive of young, working class Black women like myself,” Collins said in response to the blitz. “The message that’s being sent to my campaign and the people who are helping me in this campaign said I am not welcome in the party.”
Did Davis’ win settle the feud between the party’s wings? That depends on what happens next. “If the online shadowboxers are looking for the next congressman they believe is not sufficiently progressive to target, look no further than the 8th congressional district,” Jeffries said. “Come on in, the water is warm. They have an open invitation to primary me.”
Police holding rubber-bullet guns and batons move to dispense a crowd of abortion-rights activists protesting after the fall of Roe v. Wade in Los Angeles. (photo: Frederic J. Brown/Getty Images)
“While I'm filming a police vehicle, I look to my left and stare down the barrel of a 40mm riot gun.”
Officers were told to allow reporters to do their jobs “based on the behavior of the individual,” LAPD spokeswoman Capt. Kelly Muniz told the Los Angeles Times. But in one video with over 1.5 million views on Twitter, a cop shoves an independent journalist to the ground as she tries to document an arrest of a protester. After showing the officer her press pass, the cop who pushed her insisted he was trying to protect her.
Last October, after the 2020 protests following George Floyd’s death, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law strengthening the media’s ability to document civil unrest unimpeded. But several examples of LA riot police jabbing their batons into reporters and pushing them to the ground as they marched down the street demanding press members “leave the area” were caught on video and posted to social media over the weekend. One reporter even had a weapon pointed in their face as they tried to film.
“While I'm filming a police vehicle, I look to my left and stare down the barrel of a 40mm riot gun,” reporter Vishal Singh tweeted along with their video of the armed officer. “This is how LAPD responded tonight. With violence.”
In another instance, a reporter with the Los Angeles Times tweeted that officers refused to let him walk down a street where cops were using zip ties to arrest people. Videos of protesters being beaten with batons and shoved by police were also posted on social media and received thousands of views.
Los Angeles wasn’t the only city where local law enforcement responded to demonstrations with force. In Phoenix, cops fired canisters of tear gas at demonstrators from the state senate building Friday, after a handful of protesters gathered at the state capital began banging on the door of the state senate building. Despite the use of force, the Arizona Department of Public Safety announced that no arrests were made.
On Saturday, however, four people were arrested for disorderly conduct and suspicion of rioting after they tore down a fence erected outside the Arizona Capitol, according to AZ Central. Others, including legal observers, were detained by state police, the outlet reported.
In Providence, Rhode Island, Jennifer Rourke, a Democratic candidate for state senate, was punched in the face by her Republican opponent, police officer Jeann Lugo, Friday night. Rourke had been mediating between abortion-rights activists and counterprotesters when a fight broke out between two people, video shows. In the video, Lugo can be seen walking up to Rourke and hitting her in the face several times.
“This is what it is to be a Black woman running for office,” she tweeted Saturday. “I won't give up.”
Lugo, who’s a member of the Providence Police Department, dropped out of the state Senate race following the assault. He’s been charged with assault and disorderly conduct and placed on paid administrative leave as police investigate, according to Providence police, and is due in court on July 8.
On Saturday, police in Greenville, North Carolina, shoved and tackled several protesters to the ground, tasing some as other officers kept the gathering crowd at bay. At least six people were arrested, according to local CBS news affiliate WSPA.
Greenville Police told WSPA that they became involved after anti-abortion and abortion-rights protesters confronted one another in the street. Police say they separated the crowds, but a few stragglers refused to disperse. After police arrested one person, several others were detained for interfering, police said.
“These Greenville, SC, police officers ruthlessly and violently handled peaceful protesters — pushing, tackling, and even dragging them on the concrete,” civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who posted a video of the arrests to Instagram, wrote. “It’s clear that this excessive use of force was unnecessary and unacceptable!”
Not all of the violence documented at protests around the country involved law enforcement. On Friday night, a person drove a truck into a crowd of abortion-rights protesters as they chanted while standing at a crosswalk in downtown Cedar Rapids, Iowa, eyewitnesses told Iowa News Now. One woman said her foot was run over. Witnesses say two of the protesters got into a verbal spat with the driver before the vehicle drove toward them. In video of the moment, protesters can be seen holding onto the vehicle in hopes of slowing it down before it speeds away.
Cedar Rapids Police have not yet identified the driver or made an arrest, according to Iowa News Now.
After months of signaling from the states and even a leaked document preempting its decision, on Friday the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide. The ruling, which was opposed by the court’s three liberal justices, is poised to affect 26 states, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which tracks abortion restrictions. Thirteen states, including Mississippi and Utah, already had trigger laws in place that outlaw abortion immediately or within a few weeks of Roe falling. As of Friday, at least eight of those states had started enforcing those laws, according to Guttmacher.
Colombian president-elect Gustavo Petro, left, and Francisco de Roux, president of the Truth Commission shake hands during the presentation of the final report of the Truth Commission at the Jorge Eliecer Gaitan theater in Bogota, Colombia, June 28, 2022. (photo: Luisa Gonzalez/ Bogota)
Commission presents final report on civil conflict, calls for sweeping changes to country’s drug policy.
The long-awaited report from the Truth Commission on Tuesday said the effect of the conflict between the Colombian military and rebel groups has been “massive and intolerable”. It also called for substantial reforms in Colombia’s approach to drug policy, which it said helped prolong the civil war, and urged redress for the victims of the conflict.
The commission was set up as part of a 2016 peace deal between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). It was tasked with documenting abuses and explaining what caused the conflict to persist for so long.
It said that the war, which started with a Marxist peasant armed uprising in 1964, extended across the country over the course of nearly six decades and deteriorated in the 1990s due to drug trafficking and the rise of paramilitary factions that often worked in collusion with the military and politicians.
Based on interviews with more than 14,000 victims of the conflict, as well as military leaders and former fighters, the report gave an updated toll of the violence. In addition to the 450,664 people who were killed between 1985 and 2018, it said at least 121,768 people were also disappeared.
Some 55,770 were kidnapped between 1990 and 2018, while at least 7.7 million people were displaced between 1985 and 2019.
Launching the report in the Colombian capital, Bogota, Francisco de Roux, Truth Commission President Francisco de Roux called for the construction of a “great peace” and expressed confidence in President-elect Gustavo Petro’s commitment to implement the commission’s recommendations.
Petro, who attended the presentation, was a former fighter of the M-19 armed group that demobilised under a peace process. On the campaign trail, he had pledged full support for the 2016 peace deal and promised to implement provisions that had languished under outgoing President Ivan Duque.
At Tuesday’s event, Petro said that the truth cannot be used to create a “space for vengeance”. Instead, the truth would be needed to end cycles of armed violence and open dialogues, he said.
Duque, who had traveled abroad and was absent from the ceremony, previously told a local newspaper that he hoped the report would not be biased. Critics have accused the outgoing president of obstructing the peace deal, which addresses key causes and drivers of the conflict, such as underdevelopment and the drug economy.
‘New possibility’
The commission is part of a comprehensive transitional justice system that is designed to help the country move towards a path of reconciliation and peace. A peace tribunal is judging atrocities committed during the conflict and holding perpetrators accountable.
In its report, the Truth Commission urged the Colombian government to end its militarised approach to drug policy that for decades has prioritised prohibition over regulation.
The report showed that the local drug economy boosted armed groups and exacerbated the violence. While the United States flushed the Colombian government with millions of dollars under Plan Colombia, launched in 2000, to help combat a twin war against drug trafficking and armed rebels, the cultivation of coca, the base crop in cocaine, has continued unabated.
Under the peace deal, thousands of farmers were supposed to substitute coca with legal plants, such as cacao or coffee, but when the government subsidies to support the transition never arrived, farmers resorted once again to coca crops.
The report also criticised entrenched impunity in Colombia, saying there has been a lack of justice in cases related to the armed conflict. It said that the Attorney General’s Office had reported filing cases for 185,000 victims in 2018, a fraction of the 9 million victims registered in the official figures.
Addressing impunity will be crucial to ending the cycles of violence, the report argued, while also calling for the full implementation of the 2016 peace deal and continuing talks with the National Liberation Army (ELN), Colombia’s largest remaining rebel group.
Analysts say the commission’s recommendations could bring Colombia closer to peace, if implemented.
“The fact that this report is published less than two months before a new government takes power can be seen as a new possibility for Colombia when it comes to building the peace the country so badly needs,” said Carolina Jimenez Sandoval, president of the Washington Office on Latin America.
The report, which also examined the effect of war on vulnerable populations such as women, the LGBTQ community, and Afro-descendants, comes at a time of renewed violence in Colombia, with new and old armed groups vying for strategic drug routes and targeting social leaders that resist their control.
In many rural pockets across the country, victims said they hoped the Truth Commission’s findings – which will be disseminated throughout the country in the next two months – will help end the violence.
Sandra Pena, head of the North Cauca Women, Children, and Youth Corporation, said her community needed peace.
“The effects of the war have not completely healed yet we’re already living through new violence,” she said.
Until now, critically endangered West African lions were thought not to form prides. But here in Senegal's Niokolo-Koba National Park, Florence, a radio-collared female, lies alongside a female pride member. (photo: John Wendle/National Geographic)
It's crucial to learn as much about these rare cats as fast as possible to save them from local extinction, conservationists say.
Seemingly out of nowhere, we hear paws crunching through dry leaves close by. We’ve been here all night, staking out the bait, but are suddenly very awake.
Then, silence. Everatt, a Canadian biologist with the wild cat conservancy Panthera who has worked in Africa for more than a decade, has the vacant, intent expression of someone trying to see with his ears.
To my surprise, he begins huffing the deep grunting purrs of a contented lion. The ruse works, and the invisible animal sets to feasting on the bait, a hunk of meat and guts tied to a tree a hundred feet away. Through the dark, we hear sinew tearing and bones splintering.
We’re in the far southeastern corner of Senegal, in the little-known Niokolo-Koba National Park, a 3,500-square-mile reserve that became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981. The nation’s park service and Panthera are in a race here to save roughly 30 critically endangered West African lions from local extinction.
West African lions were recognized only recently as more closely related to Asiatic lions in India than to those of the southern African savannas. Indeed, compared to their relatives, the cats of West Africa are taller and more muscular, and they lack those hallmark luxurious manes.
The last holdout lions in Niokolo-Koba are threatened by poaching of the animals they prey on, such as antelope and buffalo. Conservationists worry that the lions themselves are vulnerable too: Lion skins, teeth, claws, and meat all fetch high prices, mostly in Africa and Asia, where lion bone is a substitute for increasingly rare wild tiger bone in traditional medicine.
It’s difficult to say how many West African lions have been lost to poaching. What is known is that their original range has shrunk by 99 percent, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which sets the conservation status of species.
In Niokolo-Koba, poaching, the expansion of farming, and the increasing incidence of wildfires led UNESCO in 2007 to add the park to its list of World Heritage in Danger. Meanwhile, artisanal goldmining nearby has intensified the pressures.
“There are problems to be solved,” says Jacques Gomis, the head of the park. “We want to get the park off the red list. The goal is 2024.”
Across West Africa, there are only between 121 and 374 mature lions, according to Philipp Henschel, Panthera’s director for the region and head of the project in Niokolo-Koba, who began surveying lions in the park in 2011. In addition to the Senegal lions, a number live in the conflict-ridden W-Arly-Pendjari transboundary reserve, where Niger, Benin, and Burkina Faso meet; others survive in two very small parks in Nigeria. When Henschel began studying Niokolo-Koba’s lions (to date, he’s conducted two surveys), he estimated that there were only about a dozen cats and none of the park’s rangers had ever even seen a lion, he says.
“We’re in danger of watching one little population after another blink out,” Henschel says of West Africa’s lions, “then we’ll only be left with a few in southern Africa.” During the past two decades, the continent’s overall lion population has dropped by half. Exact numbers are hard to pin down, but there are probably somewhere between 20,000 and 25,000 wild lions today.
This is why it’s so important to study Niokolo-Koba’s lions right now, Henschel says. “We have to be faster than the poachers.”
He and Everatt think the park can support between 180 and 240 lions. Panthera and the park service are aiming for that number because recovery of this apex predator will help the revival of its entire ecosystem.
“We select lions not just because they’re really cool, and we love lions—which is definitely true—but also because they play such a key role in a functioning ecosystem,” Everatt says. “They also serve as an umbrella species,” he says, because to protect an apex predator you have to protect everything below them on the food chain.
‘Still a blind spot’
The Gambia and Niokolo rivers nourish a diverse landscape of forests, plateaus, and valleys. The park harbors not only to the world’s northernmost and westernmost populations of lions, chimpanzees, and elephants but also Lord Derby elands, wild dogs, leopards, hyenas, baboons, kobas (the roan antelope for which the park is named), some 60 other species of mammals, and more than 300 kinds of birds.
Yet Niokolo-Koba—and its few lions—remains terra incognita. “From a scientific perspective, it’s still a blind spot,” Henschel says. “There’s still so much more that we want and need to learn”—especially about the lions if they’re to be saved.
Africa’s savanna lions are well studied, but with West African cats, everything from pride size and range to diet and mating behavior await scientific documentation. Fitting lions with GPS collars, which are funded by the National Geographic Society, is essential for gathering varied information about them—that’s why Everatt and the team have been waiting all night for a lion to come feed on the bait.
As the lion eats, Mouhamadou Ndiaye, a field assistant with Panthera, slowly lowers his flashlight. The moment the pale beam finds the cat, Everatt squeezes the trigger of his dart gun. There’s a puff, and the lion falls asleep. Everatt drives over, gets out, and tosses a twig at one leg. The lion doesn’t budge.
I’m quietly lowering my foot to the sandy road when Everatt urgently orders, “Get back in the truck. The whole pride is here.”
This lion, a female, is young, which means the other members of her family are almost certainly nearby. It also means Everatt won’t put a collar on her: She’ll outgrow it too quickly in the coming months. The Panthera team has collared eight males so far, but only one female, Florence. As blue morning light fills the forest, Everatt injects her with the antidote, and as soon as she stands up, she starts eating again.
Filling in the lion family tree
Henschel and his Panthera colleagues are fighting tenaciously to ensure that West Africa’s little lion populations don’t “blink out.” Conservation isn’t the only goal. As Henschel worked his way across the forests of West Africa searching for lion enclaves, he collected genetic samples that are helping to expand our understanding of the lion family tree.
In May, Laura Bertola, a researcher at the University of Copenhagen, and her colleagues published a study describing their sequencing of the genome of lions throughout Africa and in a reserve in the Indian state of Gujarat.
Their work shows that lions in West Africa are more closely related to the cats in India than to those in southern Africa. It formalizes a new division between “northern lions” (Panthera leo leo) in India and West Africa and “southern lions” (Panthera leo melanochaita) in southern Africa.
“We didn’t come up with a new subspecies or anything like that,” Bertola says. “We just redrew the boundaries. Instead of having an Africa-Asia distinction, which was the case previously, we now have this northern-southern distinction, which is in line with the evolutionary history of the species.”
Although southern lions can breed with northern ones, Henschel says, it would be a mistake to bring southerners to Niokolo-Koba to replenish the population: It would undermine their genetic uniqueness. This makes it even more urgent to save the Niokolo-Koba lions, he says.
“I had a map pinned to the wall,” Bertola says. “Every time [Henschel] reported back, there were, unfortunately, more populations that I could cross off the map. So, I had a map that slowly filled with red crosses, because lion presence couldn’t be reconfirmed in those areas. It was quite depressing.”
‘It’s like CSI’
We smell the kill before we see it. Everatt and Ndiaye are crossing a field of thigh-high, lion-colored grass and pushing into the woods, a hushed chaos of vines and thorny acacia. As we descend toward a concealed watering hole, the stink of rot grows stronger.
“Easy hunting habitat for a lion,” Everatt whispers. Glancing at his GPS, he halts. The coordinates indicate the location of a possible kill by a recently collared male. The two researchers spread out, heads bent, looking for clues.
“I love this part—it’s like CSI,” Everatt says as he picks through the undergrowth. It’s like a crime scene, but one where the killer is still on the loose—and may be nearby.
Ndiaye calls out. He’s found scat, a possible clue to where the prey was eaten. He marks the spot with the GPS and puts a sample in a plastic vial for later genetic analysis. The team fans out again.
“He’s seeing the subtleties,” Everatt says of Ndiaye, who had no experience tracking or studying lions before joining the team. “For conservation and ecology in Africa, the future is going to be completely dependent on it being back in the hands of Africans.”
Nearby, the researchers find parts of a jaw and the crown of a skull with a bit of horn. These help solve the mystery: The animal was a young roan antelope. “The spot over there is the kill site, but this is where he ate the head,” Everatt says.
“It’s just all part of better understanding these West African lions,” Everatt says. “One of the questions is habitat use at this really fine scale—at the scale of killing and eating something.” The GPS collars allow the researchers to see where the lions go, how they interact, what they eat. “You really do get to know the individuals,” he says. So little is known about these cats that building baseline knowledge will be crucial for figuring out how best to protect them.
Patrolling for poachers
The impression of bicycle tires wiggles through the sandy road and into the forest. This incongruous track is the sign of a poacher, Sergeant Mamadou Sall says. Sall, the leader of a group of eight armed national park service rangers, gathers his men, and for the next three hours, we follow the trail over rough terrain for 11 miles toward the national road and villages that form the park’s northern border.
We’re deep in the bush in the north-central region of the park, decimated by decades of poaching and fires; nearly all the undergrowth has been burned away. Soon, the single tire tracks are joined by several others, and rising to a flat patch, we come upon small, empty camps dotting the bush. They’re mostly just circles of stones around firepits, but some have drying racks to process wild meat.
For lions, poaching has turned parts of Niokolo-Koba into a “war zone,” Henschel says. Various efforts around the perimeter have aimed at raising awareness among local communities about the park’s importance, but so far, the burning and illegal hunting haven’t stopped. Usually, the poachers want bigger animals such as antelope, the prey lions need to survive. “Empty-park syndrome” was Bertola’s diagnosis of the outer areas of Niokolo-Koba when she visited in 2014.
“It’s very difficult to ban someone who gets their food from the bush,” Sall says. The hunting is both subsistence and commercial, done mostly by Senegalese but also by people from neighboring Guinea. They use shotguns and assault rifles, not snares or poison. This makes the killing less indiscriminate but riskier for the rangers, who occasionally get shot at, he says.
Panthera has been supporting the rangers since 2016 and now funds three anti-poaching ranger teams and their trucks. A total of six permanently funded teams with their own vehicles would be just about enough to protect the whole park, Henschel says.
By the end of the patrol, I’ve drunk a gallon of water, and the squad hasn’t encountered a poacher. This is usually how their days play out—as Everatt says, even the irregular presence of rangers serves to some extent as a deterrent.
As we return to the more heavily patrolled center of Niokolo-Koba, the rangers’ positive effects are visible: The undergrowth is robust, the animals more plentiful. During one week there, I see five lions, genets, civets, and two species of mongoose, as well as eight species of antelope, ranging from hulking roans to dainty oribis. And driving with the team through dense forest and past watering holes as they looked for likely spots to set up bait to catch another lion, I also saw crocodiles, warthogs, Guinea baboons, monkeys, and 14 species of birds, including the critically endangered African white-headed vulture; its presence after a decade-long absence suggestive of the park’s partial recovery.
Everatt likens the difference between the park’s perimeter and center to time travel: The outer areas still resemble the empty place Bertola saw eight years ago, and the center shows how a more positive future might look.
‘Kind of a big deal’
“Where?”
“There.”
“Where?”
“There!” Ndiaye says, pointing. Florence and two young females, most likely her daughters, are camped out behind a screen of dry grass in the shade of a big spray of palm fronds, right in front of me. Kris guesses a young male, her son, may be nearby.
Everatt and Ndiaye have tracked the small pride using Flo’s collar. We park nearby and get our binoculars out. The lions lie snoozing, occasionally sitting up to watch us watching them. As the afternoon gives way to evening, the lions yawn in turns, revealing enormous canines. Stretching powerful legs and paws, they’ll soon be on the prowl for dinner.
“This is kind of a big deal,” Everatt says as he lies flopped on the roof of the truck. Big cats lounging together under a tree present a postcard image of the African savanna, but some researchers had hypothesized that West African lions don’t form prides, so seeing this group in the park is “new information,” he says.
To date, Everatt and Henschel have identified six or seven small prides, two larger prides, and a few single males. During this year’s collaring campaign, they also found and fitted collars on two members of a coalition of three young males. A coalition, which helps younger males win territory and mates, has never been documented in West Africa, and might be another sign of recovery in Niokolo-Koba, Everatt says.
To repopulate the park with up to 240 lions, Henschel says more funding is needed to expand Panthera’s research program and bolster anti-poaching patrols. The opening of Niokolodge, a tented ecotourism camp in the center of the park, signals the beginnings of higher-end tourism. “A hunter can make a lot of money with a dead lion,” Henschel says, “whereas, at the moment, a living lion doesn't really pay for itself. Not yet.” But visitors hoping to spot a lion and other animals have begun spending time—and money—in the park.
For now, Flo and her daughters, relaxing in the shade, are proof that recovery can happen. “I’m hopeful. I think it’s very possible,” Everatt says. “I mean, it will take 20 years, but for us, it’s a long-term effort.”
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