04 June 22
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Opposition to U.S. adventurism is principled. But this is Putin’s adventurism, and the left must stand firmly against it.
Hitchens turned out to be totally wrong about this. As the next 20 years demonstrated, he should in fact have been quite concerned about the overreaction, which would comprise multiple—and some still ongoing—military interventions, lead to the proliferation of adversaries, kill hundreds of thousands of people, and displace millions. It would also embolden very similar forces, marching under different flags but adhering to a no less radical ideology, here in the U.S. In short, a series of devastating and still mounting losses for the principles Hitchens espoused.
A number of leftists were scalded by Hitchens’s opprobrium in the piece, which marked a full embrace of the armed interventionism that would characterize his remaining years (he died of cancer in 2011). One target that stands out is Susan Sontag (who would die of cancer three years later), who had dared to suggest that the attacks were partly a consequence of U.S. policies (a claim, ironically, the Bush administration would affirm with its own short-lived “Freedom Agenda,” which sought to reverse decades of U.S. support for Middle East authoritarians) and that Americans should not allow our collective trauma to be exploited to support a new Crusades.
“Let’s by all means grieve together. But let’s not be stupid together,” Sontag wrote in The New Yorker. “A few shreds of historical awareness might help us understand what has just happened, and what may continue to happen.” Hitchens scoffed at this “disdainful geopolitical analysis.” Sontag’s piece was, in retrospect, more courageous and prescient than anything he would ever write again, asking tough and necessary questions at precisely the moment they were needed, when asking them would be the costliest.
There is, however, a line from Hitchens that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately as I consider the Biden administration’s response to Russia’s war on Ukraine and the debate within the U.S. left about it. All the left’s objections, Hitchens wrote, “boil down to this: Nothing will make us fight against an evil if that fight forces us to go to the same corner as our own government.”
Yes, it was hyperbolic and unfair. I would like to make sure it remains so. Hitchens saw 9/11 as a moment to decisively break from the left and, if not to join the right, at least to join the pro-war herd. I am interested in building the left. Today, the U.S. left is stronger and more influential, and growing faster than at any time in my lifetime. On the most important national security, economic and trade policy, and social justice issues of our time, the left has gotten it right. But it’s important to think through how our values of social justice, human security and equality, and democracy are best served in a response to Russia’s war on Ukraine.
We should acknowledge absolutely that skepticism toward the kind of righteous sloganeering we’ve seen around Russia’s war is entirely reasonable. Our political class advocates military violence with a regularity and ease that is psychopathic. Our politicians demand others show more courage in the face of Vladimir Putin’s violence than they’ve ever been able to muster in the face of Donald Trump’s tweets. We should not, however, let all of this absurdity blind us to the instances when provision of military aid can advance a more just and humanitarian global order. Assisting Ukraine’s defense against Russian invasion is such an instance.
The endless military interventions of the last 20 years have engendered a hard-won skepticism not just among the left but among the American people toward the use of force. Our arms dealer–funded think tanks don’t like it, but this is the appropriate default position for a responsible democracy. It’s hard to escape the impression that many in Washington see the war on Ukraine as a boon, something to help both transcend our internal battles and lift U.S. foreign policy out of the doldrums and restore its meaning and potency. This is incredibly dangerous.
But we should also recognize that the Biden administration is not the Bush administration. The Biden team clearly did not seek this war, in fact they made a strenuous, and very public, diplomatic effort to avert it. Having been unable to do that, they’ve acted with restraint and care not to get drawn into a wider war with Russia while also making clear the stakes of the conflict for the U.S., for Europe, and for the international system. I have not been shy about criticizing this administration where it has failed to uphold progressive principles. It’s a long, depressing, and growing list. But Ukraine is an area where I think the administration is getting it mostly right.
Still, for many of my friends on the left, this is all too familiar. It is all too convenient that, having finally drawn the longest war in our history to an ignominious close in Afghanistan, we should now happen into a new one to give us meaning. I get that sentiment. But I think we should interrogate it.
In the interest of “steel manning” leftist objections to the U.S. role in Ukraine—that is, addressing the arguments in their strongest form—I’ll look at arguments from two of the giants of the international left, two people for whom I have tremendous respect, MIT Professor Noam Chomsky and Brazilian opposition leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
In an April interview with Current Affairs’ Nathan Robinson, Chomsky said, “There are two options with regard to Ukraine”:
As we know, one option is a negotiated settlement, which will offer Putin an escape, an ugly settlement. Is it within reach? We don’t know; you can only find out by trying, and we’re refusing to try. But that’s one option. The other option is to make it explicit and clear to Putin and the small circle of men around him that you have no escape, you’re going to go to a war crimes trial no matter what you do. Boris Johnson just reiterated this: sanctions will go on no matter what you do. What does that mean? It means go ahead and obliterate Ukraine and go on to lay the basis for a terminal war.
Those are the two options: and we’re picking the second and praising ourselves for heroism and doing it: fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian.
In an early May Time magazine interview, Lula said, “Putin shouldn’t have invaded Ukraine. But it’s not just Putin who is guilty”:
The U.S. and the E.U. are also guilty. What was the reason for the Ukraine invasion? NATO? Then the U.S. and Europe should have said: “Ukraine won’t join NATO.” That would have solved the problem.… That’s the argument they put forward. If they have a secret one, we don’t know. The other issue was Ukraine joining the E.U. The Europeans could have said: “No, now is not the moment for Ukraine to join the E.U., we’ll wait.” They didn’t have to encourage the confrontation.
First, of course we should be pushing for a settlement. The longer this war grinds on, the worse it will be, foremost for the Ukrainians but also for a world already suffering from a pandemic and climate change–induced food crisis. As of this writing, I have seen no evidence of a settlement in the offing—as in, a deal that Putin would actually entertain, let alone accept—that we’re refusing to “push for.” Ukraine presented Russia with a far-reaching set of proposals over a month ago, including a commitment to “permanent neutrality.” Volodomyr Zelenskiy continues to offer to negotiate directly with Putin to end the war. As for the claim that the U.S. and allies are “fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian,” this disingenuously suggests that Ukrainians are merely instruments of U.S. policy. But it should be clear by now that the Ukrainian people are going to fight the Russian invasion whether we help them or not. The U.S. should certainly be actively engaged in finding a diplomatic path to end the war, and avoid committing to maximalist aims that could foreclose one, but for the moment that path is unclear.
With regard to Lula’s claim about NATO, it is worth remembering that in the weeks leading up to the war, U.S. allies, specifically German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron, signaled clearly that these issues were on the table. Scholz and Macron both came out of their separate hours-long meetings with Putin and specifically cited the issue of Ukraine’s potential NATO membership as items under discussion. Or, more exactly, not under discussion, as in it was not going to happen. It was not enough. To be clear, it was entirely appropriate to discuss these concerns if there was even the smallest possibility of averting this catastrophe. But we should recognize that Putin has now made that discussion moot.
Look at what Putin himself said in the speech he gave on the eve of the invasion, in which he laid out a vision of reclaiming not only the Soviet sphere but a pre-Soviet vision of a new Russian imperium. While we should not dismiss the political salience of NATO expansion within the Russian political system—multiple U.S. officials have acknowledged those concerns over the past decades—we also shouldn’t pretend it’s the whole story. As Putin has made clear, NATO expansion is only one part of a much larger set of grievances. One can perhaps always insist that “we should’ve done more,” but based on what we know now of Putin’s goals and grander vision, it seems absurd to suggest that even an ironclad public pledge from President Biden that Ukraine would never be accepted into NATO would have convinced Putin to draw back the 180,000 troops he had placed on Ukraine’s borders.
It would be foolish, however, not to recognize that Lula is giving voice to many in the global south who are skeptical toward rallying calls from a U.S. that acts with total impunity, and toward appeals to a “rules-based international order” from countries that break those rules when they see fit. Recognizing that hypocrisy, and recognizing the role that the U.S. and its allies have played in undermining the order they themselves built, is essential for building a better, more stable, humane, and progressive one. But preventing powerful countries from invading and obliterating weaker ones should be a core principle of any such order. And past hypocrisy shouldn’t serve as an excuse for failing to say that clearly, and act on it.
Yes, it is maddening to see calls for accountability for Putin’s atrocities from the same people who endorsed, defended, and continue to oppose any meaningful accountability for America’s own. It is infuriating to see our political class chuckling about George W. Bush’s recent Kinsley gaffe about “the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq,” as if it isn’t the confession of a war criminal. But suggesting that Bush’s impunity is a reason not to hold Putin accountable is asking Ukrainians to join Iraqis in footing the bill for our corruption.
As a counterpoint to Lula’s position, consider the stance of Gabriel Boric, Chile’s new president. Few countries in the world are more entitled to point the finger back at the U.S. than Chile, whose socialist President Salvador Allende was overthrown by a U.S.-backed military coup in 1973, followed by decades of repression under the brutal military government of Augusto Pinochet. Yet Boric—whose Cabinet includes Allende’s granddaughter—declared solidarity with Ukrainians. “Russia has opted for war to solve conflicts. From Chile we strongly condemn the invasion of Ukraine, the violation of its sovereignty and the illegitimate use of force,” he said in a March 1 statement. “Our solidarity is with the victims, and the peace efforts.”
The question of solidarity is one we on the left have to take seriously. And here we should acknowledge what our Ukrainian colleagues and others from the region are saying. “The argument of the left should be that in 2003, other governments did not put enough pressure on the United States over Iraq,” wrote Ukrainian historian and activist Taras Bilous. “Not that it is necessary to exert less pressure on Russia over Ukraine now.”
This solidarity has been hard to find in some of the statements from the Democratic Socialists of America. To be clear: The cherry-picking of their statements by the White House’s rapid response director and left-punching of floundering moderates is transparently cynical and opportunistic. Centering opposition to U.S. imperialism and militarism is an entirely appropriate starting point for any U.S. left organization, even if it’s not the whole race. Hard questions need to be asked, especially now, about the goals and interests NATO actually serves. But we also need to ask hard questions about how our struggle against militarism works alongside our commitment to colleagues around the world who require more than just a call to stop the war.
With that said, it’s important to differentiate between the genuine anti-war anti-imperialism of DSA and others in the American left and the pernicious authoritarian agitprop of The Grayzone and the like. The right’s goal is to divide the left, and we should not help them, but the goal of building a stronger left is served by identifying, engaging, and organizing with those genuinely acting on principles of solidarity, democracy, and human rights and not wasting time with atrocity-denying grifters and click-baiting provocateurs.
It is right to be cautious about getting drawn into something bigger than we want. It is right to be concerned that the administration’s rhetoric is, to paraphrase one of the Reagan era’s military recruiting films, increasingly writing checks that its policy can’t cash. Here, as after 9/11, fear of overreaction is entirely appropriate—our foreign policy apparatus is designed to stoke, and then cash in on, overreaction. And our job is not simply to allow Ukrainians to write U.S. policy. Americans—all of us—are now implicated in this war. If the American people are providing arms, as we are to the tune of tens of billions of dollars, then we have a reasonable interest in, and reasonable expectation of influence on, its outcome. The Biden administration has made clear the kind of outcome the U.S. is trying to produce, but also rightly made clear the limits of U.S. engagement and the overriding concern about avoiding nuclear escalation.
One thing the left definitely should not do, nor anyone, is buy into the narrative that Russia’s war on Ukraine has restored America’s mission and purpose. That our country can seem to allocate money efficiently only toward weapons and little else should be a source of shame, not pride. Observing how easily tens of billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine were moving through our otherwise obstreperous and unproductive Congress, Adam Tooze summed it up: “That they can agree on that and not on health care or climate change policy is a sign of America’s own dysfunction.”
Despite the enchantment of our political class, Russia’s war on Ukraine is not a manic pixie dream conflict that will lift our country out of its legitimation crisis. If we allow this moment to be used simply to reassemble a broken Washington foreign policy consensus, we will not reverse that crisis, we’ll deepen it. An influential, well-organized, and growing political left is essential to repairing this country—and that includes its foreign policy. The response to Russia’s war on Ukraine is a key part of that. It is possible, indeed it is essential, to apply the historical awareness that Sontag urged, and not be stupid together, while acknowledging that supporting the defense of Ukraine is the right thing for the global left to do. Even if our own government is doing it.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. (photo: Ronaldo Schemidt/Getty Images)
"The president is here. Our team is much bigger. The armed forces of Ukraine are here. And most importantly: our people, the people of our country are here. We have been defending Ukraine for 100 days now. Victory will be ours. Glory to Ukraine!"
A war that Western countries believe Russia planned to win within hours has ground on for more than three months, with Moscow having been driven back from the capital but launching a huge new assault in the east.
Ukrainian forces on Friday still held part of the eastern industrial city of Sievierodonetsk, as Russia poured its forces into the battle, aiming to capture the city and control the Luhansk region.
Members of Ukraine's foreign legion - volunteer fighters from around the world - arrived in the city on Thursday, and prepared to fight.
22-year old Zurab said it is a war for Georgians as well.
"We're going to push the Russians back. It will take a day, a month, or a year, it does not fucking matter. We are on the right side of history. So we're going to make sure all of us, we're gonna get back home with our families. And we're gonna make sure the occupiers won’t do the same.”
Nearby Lysychansk is one of the remaining areas in Luhansk region still controlled by Ukraine's forces.
Civilians there say they struggle to live without electricity and running water, as Russia tightens its grip on the area.
But for some, the loss of internet and cell phone networks connecting them with family is the hardest part.
“Our grandchildren left. How they are, how they are doing? We have no connection…“
The massive Russian assault in the east in recent weeks has been one of the deadliest phases of the invasion.
But on Friday, Kyiv residents viewing a display of captured Russian weapons in the city center remained hopeful for victory.
“We are very strong, stronger than we thought. [...] We will certainly win. I am 100 percent sure.”
Former Trump adviser Peter Navarro. (photo: Alex Brandon/AP)
The Trump loyalist was indicted Thursday for refusing to comply “in any way” with a subpoena issued by the House committee investigating the Capitol riot.
Navarro was taken into custody on Friday morning by FBI agents from the bureau’s Washington field office, The Daily Beast confirmed, after an indictment alleged he refused to comply “in any way” with a subpoena issued by the committee in February.
His appearance in federal court on Friday afternoon before Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui was anything but normal, seeming more like a heated TV appearance than the typical muted hearing. Navarro, who already knew he was under investigation by the Justice Department, said he specifically asked an FBI agent who visited him at his apartment in D.C. on Wednesday to contact him if they planned to arrest him. Instead, he fumed, an FBI team caught up with him just as he was boarding a plane at the airport on his way to Nashville for a TV hit.
“I actually live right next to the FBI. It’s like a 100-yard walk to my door. What did they do instead of that? They let me get all the way to the airport, try to board the plane, come at me, put me in handcuffs, not let me use my phone, take me down, and put me in a jail cell,” he told the judge. “Who are these people? This is not America. I was with distinguished public servants for four years. Nobody ever questioned my ethics.”
Navarro, who told the judge he would be representing himself, is the second Trump loyalist to be charged for refusing to engage with the committee after Steve Bannon was federally indicted last November. In fact, two of the same prosecutors going after Bannon—Amanda Rose Vaughn and Molly Gulland Gaston—are working on the case against Navarro.
His arrest appeared to spell trouble for Trump’s social-media guru Dan Scavino, who was held in contempt by House lawmakers at the same time as Navarro. A source confirmed to The Daily Beast on Friday that Scavino still has not complied with his subpoena.
But The New York Times, citing people familiar with the matter, reported late Friday that the Justice Department had decided not to charge Scavino or former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, whom the House had voted to hold in contempt for defying a subpoena.
The Justice Department announced Friday that Navarro was charged with two counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to appear for a deposition, and another count for refusing to produce documents. The 72-year-old former White House trade adviser faces up to a year in prison for that criminal misdemeanor charge.
Navarro had claimed he ignored the subpoenas and skipped a scheduled deposition on March 2 because he was bound by executive privilege asserted by his former boss, then-President Trump.
But the indictment notes that the committee emailed Navarro after he failed to appear to say there are “topics, including those discussed in the [subpoena’s cover letter], that the Select Committee believes it can discuss with you without raising any executive privilege concerns at all. In any event, you must appear to assert any executive privilege objections on a question-by-question basis during the deposition.”
Navarro replied the next day, again insisting the privilege was “not mine to waive.” He said it was up to the committee to “directly negotiate” with Trump and his lawyers on the matter.
Much of the information the committee wanted to probe was information Navarro had already discussed publicly either in his book or in countless media appearances. For example, he bragged to The Daily Beast last year that he and Bannon were behind the “Green Bay Sweep” plan, a last-ditch effort to keep overturn Joe Biden’s victory and keep Trump in power.
But Navarro nevertheless dug in. In a statement to The Daily Beast after the House committee held him in contempt in March, he fumed that it was “an unprecedented partisan assault on executive privilege,” and claimed he’d be happy to testify if Trump waived executive privilege.
He stepped it up again this week, filing a lawsuit against a Department of Justice grand jury subpoena and running to MSNBC to claim his case had become a referendum on the constitutionality of executive privilege and separation of power. “This is why I’m fighting. This is why I’m willing to go to jail for this,” he said.
“You’re waging this legal battle not to talk to the committee, not to talk potentially to DOJ,” host Ari Melber told him. “So you’re risking going potentially to jail not to talk to them, but you’re out here talking in public.”
But most, if not all, of the claims in Navarro’s lawsuit have already been tossed aside by the Supreme Court in a critical lawsuit brought by his former boss. When facing the prospect of a thorough investigation by the House committee, who were seeking his old White House records, Trump sued the committee, claiming he could keep administration documents private by citing some kind of leftover executive privilege. But a federal judge firmly rejected the idea that Trump could override his successor’s decision to make government documents public, noting that Trump is neither a king nor the current president. An appellate panel—which included Ketanji Brown Jackson, who has since become the newest member of the Supreme Court—shot down Trump's argument too. And the Supreme Court ultimately said the committee could get the documents it sought.
But that didn’t stop Navarro from claiming in court on Friday that the criminal prosecution against him should be paused so that his civil lawsuit can make its way through the courts.
“This was a preemptive strike by the prosecution against that lawsuit. And it simply flies in the face of good faith and due process,” he told the judge. “That committee is a sham committee that doesn’t have the power to issue subpoenas... they basically weaponized their investigatory powers in a way that violated separation of powers.”
Although Navarro was assigned a government-paid defense attorney—Ubong E. Akpan—for his criminal case, he said in court that he would continue to represent himself in some capacity.
“I don’t want to spend my retirement savings on lawyers,” he said.
The judge told Navarro he would take seriously his allegations of misbehavior by prosecutors and law enforcement agents, but he repeatedly reminded the boisterous former Trump White House official that he was under oath in court—and his assertions could be used against him at a future trial.
Federal prosecutors told the judge that the case involved just a few hundred pages of records, giving the impression that it’s relatively simple. But their similar stance in the Bannon case has shown that not to be the case, as Trump loyalists have flexed their ability to grind down the Justice Department with procedural tactics and big questions about constitutional rights.
Navarro was released from custody and ordered to restrict his travel and stay in touch with the court.
“This is not frustration. This is disappointment in our Republic,” he grumbled at the hearing’s end.
He is expected back in court later this month for an arraignment before Judge Amit Mehta, who is intimately familiar with the democracy-threatening tension of the final days of the Trump administration, given that he oversees several criminal cases of insurrectionists and has already issued scathing rulings against Trump for his role in inciting violence on Jan. 6, 2021.
Navarro did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment on Friday.
Pro-choice protesters march outside the Texas State Capitol in Austin. (photo: Sergio Flores/Getty Images)
Texas already bans abortion after six weeks and has a trigger law to ban it entirely if Roe v. Wade is repealed. But Austin City Council members may have found a loophole, modeled after marijuana decriminalization, to protect local abortion access.
It remains to be seen how states hostile to abortion access might try to enforce abortion bans across state lines. Connecticut recently passed the Reproductive Freedom Defense Act, a law that will protect medical providers and patients seeking abortion care in Connecticut who may be traveling from states that have outlawed abortion. Other states like New York are dedicating funding for abortion providers and nonprofit organizations to increase access to care, including support for people traveling to the state. Going forward, we’ll continue to see a patchwork of laws and resolutions at the local level, as blue cities in red states and blue states in red regions use whatever legislative tools they can to protect and expand access to reproductive health care.
In Texas the situation is urgent. Since Senate Bill 8, which bans abortion care after around six weeks of pregnancy and allows private citizens to sue providers or anyone suspected of aiding and abetting an abortion, was passed in September 2021, many patients have already been forced to travel out of the state for care. Abortions in Texas dropped 60 percent in the first month of the ban. Abortion funds like the Frontera Fund and the Lilith Fund are connecting patients with resources, funding abortion services, and increasingly acting as travel agents for people seeking care.
Texas is one of thirteen states to have a trigger ban on the books, ready to go into effect when Roe falls. In 2021, the Republican-controlled state legislature passed a law that would criminalize almost all abortions as a first degree felony with punishment of up to life in prison, plus fines up to $100,000 for providers who violate the abortion ban. It’s expected that twenty-six states are likely to ban abortion when Roe is overturned, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
But while opponents of the right to abortion are in motion in Texas, so are defenders. A new resolution sponsored by Austin City Council Member José “Chito” Vela offers a creative carveout to allow city residents to continue to access care after the state abortion ban goes into effect. The GRACE Act (Guarding the Right to Abortion Care for Everyone) is a functional decriminalization of abortion in the city of Austin. The carveout is accomplished through a resolution that will make it difficult to prosecute cases against providers charged with violating the abortion ban.
The proposed policy recommendation would prohibit the investigation of abortion by any Austin personnel, including the police. The resolution, which would go into effect within thirty days after city council’s approval, would ban the use of city funds to investigate anyone who is suspected of providing abortion care, and it would instruct city police to turn a blind eye toward any reports of violations. The police department would designate any reports of violations of the abortion ban as the lowest possible priority. They would keep records of reports made, but wouldn’t pursue investigations and wouldn’t tag reports as abortion-related — in effect using bureaucracy as a protective mechanism.
A spokesperson for City Council Member Vela’s office says, “The resources of the City of Austin must always be dedicated to the health and wellbeing of its residents, especially members of marginalized communities who are disproportionately affected by obstacles to abortion care.”
The aim of the resolution is to mitigate the legal risks as much as possible on a local level. It’s expected that the city police chief would choose to follow the recommendation, making its effectiveness entirely dependent on one sympathetic appointed official with enormous power. And because it’s a policy recommendation, not a law, it will be tough to challenge in court.
Because Senate Bill 8 is a state law that is civilly enforced, it will still be legally risky for clinics in Austin to provide abortion care after fetal activity is detected. But it’s an important step to protect care for those early in their pregnancy within the city. Council Member Vela’s office is working with Ground Game Texas and Local Progress to facilitate policy sharing between cities in Texas; if this resolution is successful, other cities in the state could adopt it.
The GRACE Act is based on a similar policy recommendation from 2020, when the Austin City Council approved a resolution to stop arresting or ticketing people for most low-level marijuana possession offenses. Its mechanism of de-prioritizing marijuana-related offenses and banning city funds for their use was effective. There have been no arrests for the personal possession of marijuana in Austin since October 2020.
Progressive cities in conservative-led states will be paying close attention to how this resolution plays out. Though Texas is unique in having abortion bans that could carry criminal penalties and penalties enforced through civil suits, other conservative-led states may soon be in a similar position. The resolution’s protections could help thousands of people get care they would otherwise have to travel out of state for. It could also be replicated to protect those providing gender affirming care to trans patients in states criminalizing that care.
These limited protections are far from what we really need: abortion care that’s free and accessible to all. But realistically, local policies are going to be the future in the near-term. Unless Congress is able to pass a federal law to make abortion accessible, supporters will have to pursue local protections, and patients will have to navigate an increasingly complex web of local restrictions.
Activists rallying to defend DACA in Washington, D.C. (photo: Andrew Stefan/RSN)
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals is set to consider Texas' lawsuit challenging Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals on July 6.
In the meantime, the hopes of Dreamers across the country hang in the balance as they await a solution to gaining permanent residency status.
"I know (DACA) is not enough and my dream is to become a U.S citizen, to be fully protected," Juan Carlos Cerda told ABC13. Cerda works as a deputy campaign manager for the American Business Immigration Coalition.
Thursday, ABC13 hosted a town hall gathering leaders in law, activism and business to discuss the tug of war over Dreamers and their fight to secure a legal pathway to citizenship.
Joining Cerda on the town hall panel were:
- Samantha Uriel Serna, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) attorney
- Stan Marek, CEO of Marek Construction
ABC13 extended panel invitations to multiple conservative and Republican Party leaders, but did not receive a response.
The town hall dispelled some myths about who Dreamers are, their contributions to the U.S., and also highlighted what's ultimately at stake.
"We have a worker shortage," Marek said. "In my experience with Dreamers and immigrants is that they come here to work. They don't want welfare, they just want to work."
For much of his life, Cerda was living as an undocumented person in the U.S. until DACA came into the picture.
He said without the program, he never would have seen his dreams realized, from studying at Yale to helping to impact students in the classroom.
"I didn't give up on my dreams of working in education. I studied and worked hard and...thanks to the DACA program, I was able to serve my community as a Kindergarten teacher," Cerda said.
Last August, a federal judge in Houston ruled DACA was unlawful, saying President Barack Obama exceeded his authority when he created the program in 2012.
The ruling prevented the Department of Homeland Security from approving new applications, but allowed immigrants enrolled in DACA to stay and work in the U.S.
"We will be in court arguing on behalf of DACA recipients, asking the 5th Circuit to overturn the decision of the district court," Serna said.
The Migration Policy Institute estimates there are 2.3 million Dreamers residing in the U.S. Out of this number, only 611,400 have DACA and were allowed to renew their permits after the court's ruling.
The remaining 1.6 million immigrants have no protection from deportation and are denied the opportunity to work legally in the U.S.
Police officers and soldiers take a man to a detention center in San Salvador, El Salvador. (photo: Jose Cabezas/Reuters)
The report, released Thursday, found that since late March, nearly 2% of the country has been detained, with at least 18 people having died in state custody.
On March 27, the country was placed under a state of emergency to tackle an uptick in homicides, driven by gangs Barrio 18 and MS-13. The country’s Legislative Assembly passed the measure at the request of President Nayib Bukele after an upsurge in violence left 62 dead in a single day. It has been extended twice.
More than 36,000 people have been detained since, according to a Tuesday statement from the Salvadoran government.
Salvadoran authorities are “committing widespread and flagrant violations of human rights and criminalizing people living in poverty,” on the “pretext of punishing gangs,” Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International said.
“Instead of offering an effective response to the dramatic violence caused by gangs and the historic public security challenges facing the country, they are subjecting the Salvadoran people to a tragedy,” she added.
In what appeared to be a pre-emptive response to the report, which had been distributed to the media on embargo on Wednesday night, Bukele said “these organizations should also worry about the victims of gangs.”
“Hopefully, just as they care because we have captured criminals, they would care about our children, about our elderly, about our working people, about the innocent Salvadorans who have suffered at the hands of those same criminals,” he said during a speech before the Legislative Assembly.
According to Amnesty, at least 1,190 children have been detained and held in youth facilities, with many of them charged with being a member of an illegal group of terrorist organizations.
In one case, two cousins, aged 14 and 15, were detained in April while playing outside their house, just outside of San Salvador. Their families told Amnesty that police accused them of “looking like criminals,” and told their mothers that they would spend 30 years behind bars, according to the report. Since, the mothers have been unable to communicate with their children and are unclear about the trial that they will face – with a public defender assigned to the case “barely” arguing on behalf of their clients, Amnesty reported.
The state of emergency suspends constitutional guarantees, including freedom of association, and an alleged offender’s right to state-sponsored legal defense in court. It also extends provisional detention from 72 hours to 15 days and allows authorities to intervene in telecommunications without needing a judge’s authorization.
Those in detention face tough circumstances, according to Amnesty, which has documented cases of torture and ill-treatment inside detention centers.
Amnesty detailed cases of such alleged abuse in their report.
In one instance, a 16-year-old, who was arrested in April and held for 13 days for being an alleged member of an illegal group, was chained to a wall of the detention center, where he said he was beaten by police. Later, he was transferred to youth detention center, where he was beaten by gang members, who he said also threw a bag of urine at his head, it said.
Many of the detainees are being held without due process “purely because the authorities view them as having been identified as criminals in the stigmatizing speeches of President Bukele’s government, because they have tattoos, are accused by a third party of having alleged links to a gang, are related to someone who belongs to a gang, have a previous criminal record of some kind, or simply because they live in an area under gang control, which are precisely the areas with high levels of marginalization and that have historically been abandoned by the state,” according to Amnesty.
El Salvador has a long history of organized crime groups fighting against security forces and among themselves to control territory and drug routes across Central America. The small Central American country – roughly the size of Massachusetts – led the world for the number of homicides related to the size of its population for several years in a row in the 2010s.
Bukele, the self-proclaimed “world’s coolest dictator,” took office in June 2019 with broad support, after promising to stand tough against gang violence, which has racked El Salvador for decades.
In February 2020, Bukele sent armed troops into Congress as he demanded that lawmakers approve his plan to secure a $109 million loan to tackle gang violence. In June, he pulled El Salvador out of an anti-corruption accord backed by the United States.
And last September, El Salvador’s highest court ruled the president can serve two consecutive terms in office, paving the way for Bukele to run for re-election in 2024.
Bukele’s hard line remains popular among voters however, who have lauded an overall decrease in violence to his presidency.
The Gulf of Mexico's dead zone is fueled by nutrient runoff from farms along the Mississippi River. (photo: Jeff Schmaltz/NASA Earth Observatory)
Scientists have been monitoring one such dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico—considered the largest in U.S. waters—for over three decades. On June 2, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced the Gulf of Mexico dead zone is expected to reach 5,364 square miles (or about eight times the size of the city of Houston) this year. This forecast is only a smidge lower than the five-year average of 5,380 square miles, and about 15 percent smaller than last year’s measurement. But it's still nowhere close to the federal-state target of 1,900 square miles set in 2001.
Dead zones are primarily created when runoff containing chemicals like nitrogen and phosphorus from agricultural practices, industrial activities, and population growth enter nearby waters and stimulate algae to grow like crazy. Overgrown algae sink and decompose and the decomposition process strips water of its oxygen, depriving marine life.
Climate change only worsens the situation since water holds less oxygen as it warms up, making it easier for dead zones to form. This is compounded by the fact that marine animals require more oxygen in warmer weather since they’re expending more energy.
The Gulf of Mexico’s dead zone is fueled by nutrient runoff from farms along the Mississippi River. The Interagency Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Task Force have been using NOAA’s hypoxia forecasts—based on computer modeling from five universities and one government agency—and the U.S. Geological Survey’s nutrient monitoring to set nutrient reduction targets across the Mississippi watershed states.
To confirm the forecasts and size of the dead zone, NOAA supports a monitoring survey each summer to incorporate any major coastal weather conditions that could impact a dead zone’s size and oxygen levels like hurricanes and tropical storms.
“The Gulf dead zone remains the largest hypoxic zone in United States waters, and we want to gain insights into its causes and impacts,” said Nicole LeBoeuf, assistant administrator of NOAA’s National Ocean Service, in a press release put out by the agency. “The modeling we do here is an important part of NOAA’s goal to protect, restore, and manage the use of coastal and ocean resources through ecosystem-based management.”
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