31 July 22
Live on the homepage now!
Reader Supported News
And the inspector general has known they were missing since February.
This discovery of missing records for the senior-most homeland security officials [acting Secretary Chad Wolf and acting deputy secretary Ken Cuccinelli], which has not been previously reported, increases the volume of potential evidence that has vanished regarding the time around the Capitol attack. It comes as both congressional and criminal investigators at the Department of Justice seek to piece together an effort by the president and his allies to overturn the results of the election, which culminated in a pro-Trump rally that became a violent riot in the halls of Congress.
What appears to have been an almost maniacal frenzy of ass-covering in the final days of the previous administration—one that’s extended, largely underground, well into the current one—has opened a brand new universe of investigation for all concerned.
The office of Inspector General Joseph V. Cuffari did not press the department leadership at that time to explain why they did not preserve these records, nor seek ways to recover the lost data, according to the four people briefed on the watchdog’s actions. Cuffari also failed to alert Congress to the potential destruction of government records. The revelation comes on the heels of the discovery that text messages of Secret Service agents — critical firsthand witnesses to the events leading up to Jan. 6 — were deleted more than a year ago and may never be recovered […] In a nearly identical scenario to that of the DHS leaders’ texts, the Secret Service alerted Cuffari’s office seven months ago, in December 2021, that the agency had deleted thousands of agents’ and employees’ text messages in an agency-wide reset of government phones. Cuffari’s office did not notify Congress until mid-July, despite multiple congressional committees’ pending requests for these records.
Sooner or later, coincidence begins to look suspiciously like modus operandi. This is not a scandal in a straight line. It’s not even a single scandal. It’s a mosaic of smaller scandals comprising a larger one, all organized around a central point: the character of El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago and the enormous blunder this country made in electing him to be its president.
The discovery of missing records for the top officials running the Department of Homeland Security during the final days of the Trump administration raises new questions about what could have been learned, and also about what other text messages and evidence the department and other agencies may have erased, in apparent violation of the Federal Records Act.
This is just the beginning of things, still just the beginning of things. We have no idea where it might end.
Rep. Peter Meijer (R-Mich.) speaks during a roundtable discussion on Capitol Hill in Washington. (photo: Scott Applewhite/AP)
The Republican trio have remained steadfast in support of their votes against Trump but have otherwise mostly kept their heads down and tried to work hard on issues they have long focused on.
Meijer, an Army intelligence officer in the Iraq War from Michigan, has been a major critic of the Biden administration’s handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Herrera Beutler, from a massive rural district in southwestern Washington, just got a bill passed to transfer land from the U.S. Forest Service to a local county government.
And Friday, Newhouse took to the House floor to speak out against Democratic legislation as “bureaucratic red tape” that would fail to combat wildfires, a perennial issue in his vast district in eastern Washington.
On Tuesday, all three will learn their political fate with Republican voters back home, helping determine if there was ever a path to victory for a Republican who so directly rebuked Trump. And it will go a long way to determining whether there will be one, two or more pro-impeachment Republicans left when the new Congress is sworn in next January.
“I think we’ve got some very good members of Congress we’re talking about here. It would be a shame to see them not return, because they contribute a lot, are very productive and, I think, represent their districts very well,” Newhouse said in a brief interview after his Friday floor speech. “It’s important to have all opinions represented in any discussion,” he added.
Four of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach have opted to retire rather than face almost certain defeat in their primary races. Another, Rep. Tom Rice (R-S.C.), lost by a more than a 2-to-1 margin last month, while Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who has drawn the most vociferous opposition from Trump, faces an uphill battle in her August primary.
That has left the anti-Trump faction of the party hoping that at least some victories come among the trio of Herrera Beutler, Meijer and Newhouse to provide voices inside a House Republican conference that are not in lockstep with the former president.
“I think if they win, there’s still a battle, there’s still a fight,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), who voted to impeach Trump and decided to retire last fall, said in an interview.
Early on, after that impeachment vote, the 10 Republicans stayed close and talked often, helping raise money for one another. “We had a common thread of kinship,” Rep. John Katko (R-N.Y.), who chose to retire, said recently.
But for those that sought reelection, it became important to not be viewed solely as part of that group, to be identified more for what they have done for their constituents rather than focusing on impeachment. The group still talks, particularly on experiences related to their Trump vote, but they are running for reelection almost like lone wolves.
“We share a lot of things in common to talk about on that particular subject,” Newhouse said, “but I don’t know that I have a better relationship with the 10 than I do with other people.”
Just one Republican who voted to impeach Trump, Rep. David G. Valadao (Calif.), has secured his party nomination for the November general election, in large part because Trump never endorsed a challenger.
Most Republican insiders suspect that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) used a ton of political capital to keep Trump out of the Valadao primary, as he is a close friend of the party leader and considered the only Republican who can win in a district that gave President Biden a margin of victory of nearly 11 points. With Valadao facing a tough reelection, there remains a chance that all 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump will be swept out of Congress by the end of the year.
Cheney and Kinzinger took the highest profiles in attacking Trump and his role in the insurrection, both serving on the select committee investigating his actions in the Capitol riot in January 2021. Rice spent the final days of his primary last month castigating Trump in national television interviews and calling impeachment the true “conservative vote” in defense of the constitution.
Valadao went on more with his head down and rarely talked about Trump, and now this next trio is attempting something of a hybrid approach. They will defend their votes, if asked, but will also talk about the ongoing work they do that matches up with what their constituents have come to expect.
“The way we look at it, it’s another tough election,” Herrera Beutler told local reporters earlier this month. “I’m not changing course. I’m still the same Republican I’ve always been.”
Meijer, who won the 2020 general election by a comfortable margin of 6 points, faces a unique political situation in which his district lines were redrawn through the decennial redistricting and now sits in a district that Biden won two years ago.
For that reason, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has launched a nearly $500,000 campaign attempting to boost his Trump-endorsed opponent, John Gibbs, whose campaign is basically broke and unable to air its own ads, believing Gibbs would be an easier candidate to defeat in November.
Meijer hopes that shows undecided Republicans in the Grand Rapids-anchored district that he remains their best hope to win in November. “I think the momentum is certainly on our side,” he said in a brief interview Friday, “and I think if anything, the last week, the last 72 hours has shown, that even in a town that is used to some pretty despicable hypocrisy, the D-trip’s meddling has awakened a new sense of, are you kidding me?”
Some Democrats have also expressed alarm that the DCCC, with much of its revenue coming from funds raised by lawmakers, would target someone they consider honorable for his impeachment vote. “I’m disgusted that hard-earned money intended to support Democrats is being used to boost Trump-endorsed candidates,” Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) wrote on Twitter.
“I think Peter is exactly the kind of Republican we want to have around, but at the end of the day we have to win the majority and that is the bigger concern,” Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), who flew with Meijer into Kabul during the chaotic withdrawal, said Friday.
Democrats have stayed out of the two Washington state primaries, districts that will likely stay in the Republican column regardless of who the nominee is. The district Newhouse represents is so conservative that twice in his four elections the top two vote-getters were Republican candidates in the all-in state primary system, so the November general election was an all-Republican contest.
There is a possibility that could happen again, thus extending his race until November. Newhouse’s vote to impeach Trump was one of the more surprising, as he comes from such a conservative district and he had initially signed a legal brief in December 2020 in support of Trump’s effort to contest the election.
Newhouse is somewhat soft-spoken and avoids the spotlight — “I’m not going to be very talkative, not to be rude,” he said at the start of the brief interview Friday — but Trump’s inaction amid all the violence of that day flipped a switch in his principled psyche. “Our country needed a leader, and President Trump failed to fulfill his oath of office,” he said in a statement released before he voted to impeach.
While they may not talk or text as often as they once did, these anti-Trump lawmakers are all closely watching one another’s races, hopeful that enough of them can win their primary as well as in November so that there is a future for Republicans like them. “If they all lose, I think it means we’re doomed in the near term,” Kinzinger said.
Abortion rights protest. (photo: Jon Cherry/Getty Images)
Police vehicles are parked outside the headquarters of the Yonkers Police Department in Yonkers, N.Y. Since 2007, the U.S. Department of Justice has been investigating the Yonkers Police Department and recommending areas for reform. (photo: Jose A. Alvarado Jr./NPR)
She alleged later in a lawsuit that on the way to retrieve her license from her car, she was violently assaulted by four male officers — pushed to the ground, kicked, grabbed by her throat and lifted to her feet, and repeatedly thrown against the trunk of her car. Cardile claimed that what happened was unprovoked. Officers took her to a holding cell, and after she requested medical care, according to her lawsuit, the police took her to a Yonkers hospital several hours later. There, she was treated for a fractured hand and injuries to her arm and shoulder.
"The uniform makes them feel like 'we can do what we want, and you sit there and shut up,'" says Cardile, who was 37 at the time of the incident.
In her federal civil rights lawsuit, filed two years after the incident, Cardile alleged that the officers used unreasonable and excessive force. The city of Yonkers denied wrongdoing — but settled with Cardile for $50,000.
Civil suits like this are often the only recourse citizens have for holding police officers accountable, and for some people the only way to obtain any sense of justice.
Yonkers is a small city just north of New York City. The Yonkers Police Department does not look like the community it serves. Yonkers is 19% Black and 40% Latino. But the police force of about 600 officers is nearly 75% white, according to the department.
NPR obtained records of payouts by the city of Yonkers for incidents of alleged police misconduct that took place between 2007 and 2020. When the city of Yonkers settled cases, it was made clear that the city and the officers involved in the lawsuits denied any wrongdoing.
We focused on this period because the incidents that resulted in payouts occurred as the U.S. Department of Justice was investigating the Yonkers Police Department and recommending areas for reform.
Even with the extra scrutiny from the Justice Department, the payouts by the city over alleged misconduct did not seem to have signaled that there were deeper systemic issues within the police department. Over the years, the number of incidents that resulted in a payout fluctuated: They peaked at 17 in 2012, dropped to a low of two in 2016, and bumped back up to eight in 2018.
Among our findings:
- During this period of Justice Department investigation and oversight, there were at least 102 lawsuits that alleged misconduct that resulted in either a settlement or a jury verdict. The vast majority of the cases, 95, were settled, with the city and officers denying any liability. Seven payouts came after jury verdicts against the city, in which the plaintiffs were able to make their case in court. The cost to the city of Yonkers totaled more than $5.5 million, according to our analysis of court documents. The average payout was $55,056. Some payouts, even in cases of alleged assault by officers, were as low as $1,500.
- The majority of these plaintiffs claimed that officers used an excessive amount of force, such as being beaten by officers' batons or being thrown against vehicles.
- Other allegations included false arrest, illegal search and seizure, infliction of emotional distress, destruction and theft of property, evidence tampering, sexual abuse, delayed medical care, religious discrimination, and the falsification of search warrants and other documents. In two cases, lawsuits were filed by family members of people who died during an arrest.
- Many officers were sued repeatedly over the years. At least 10 officers were named between four and nine times in the lawsuits we reviewed. The city paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to settle cases involving their alleged misconduct. Still, the officers often received departmental awards, and in two cases, a promotion.
And according to Frank DiDomizio, public information officer for the Yonkers Police Department, "the Police Department does not play a role in the settlements."
He also noted, in a statement to NPR, that "we are an agency that averages 160,000 calls for service per year." He added that the NPR investigation only identified about 300 officers named in lawsuits over roughly 15 years, a tiny fraction "compared to the total contacts with the public."
"There is no policy ... of using less force."
When the Department of Justice began investigating the Yonkers Police Department in the summer of 2007, it was looking for a pattern of unlawful policing.
The Justice Department found what it called "significant concerns."
Two years into its investigation, it outlined findings in a 26-page letter to the city. It said that the Yonkers police did not have a "comprehensive" policy on the use of force, and that its manual contained little guidance for officers about when and how to use force.
Rather than providing definitions or legal standards of "reasonable" or "justified" force, the DOJ found that the Yonkers Police Department left it up to individual officers to define these terms for themselves. For example, its manual instructed officers to apply force to "appropriate" areas of the body, without giving further explanation. Regarding its policy on "deadly" use of force, the manual did not classify actions such as using an object to strike someone on the head, or putting them in a chokehold, as potentially fatal. The DOJ said the manual's piecemeal approach was "dangerous" and noted that the Yonkers police manual lacked information about how officers might use de-escalation techniques in lieu of force.
"There is no policy, nor even a suggestion, of using less force," the Justice Department concluded.
It outlined key areas of reform for the police department, including a recommended revamp of its use of force policies, and changes in how incidents involving force are reported.
The Justice Department inquiry was prompted by Karen Edmonson, who lives in Yonkers and worked for the Yonkers NAACP at the time. Around 2006, residents were reaching out to her with their stories about police misconduct. She says the first complaint she received was from a man who said he was assaulted by officers, then assaulted again in the waiting area of a Yonkers hospital where they took him for treatment. "I'll never forget that case," Edmonson says. "I was so furious about that."
Edmonson started spreading the word that she was collecting more stories. She opened up "town halls," at places like the public library, where people could come and describe what they experienced with police. "I called it therapy. People were coming and venting; they wanted to be heard. And I was listening," she says.
Eventually, Edmonson collected about 60 complaints of officer misconduct and forwarded those to the DOJ. "My job was to show the pattern," she said. "That was the only way to get the DOJ to come in."
Edmonson said she had hoped the DOJ's intervention would help reform the department and set things right: "My goal was for institutional best practices, to make it stop, and to make it a better police department."
Some reforms did take place. But our investigation found that despite the complaints Edmonson collected and the more than 100 payouts by the city of Yonkers while the Justice Department was providing oversight, incidents of alleged police abuse continued.
From broken bones to missing teeth
In state and federal court documents, plaintiffs claimed they were punched, kicked, tackled, or choked — sometimes as officers used racial slurs. Many alleged they were beaten with officers' batons or guns. Some claimed that officers kneeled on their backs and necks while they were face down on the ground.
One plaintiff alleged that officers put him in the back of a police car after arresting him, sprayed mace directly in his face and shut the doors, leaving him without ventilation. He claimed that police then took him to the parking lot of a local hospital and assaulted him again before bringing him inside for treatment. In a different case, a man alleged that as he was being choked and kicked by police, another officer arrived on the scene, called it a "party," and asked the other officers, "How could y'all start without me?"
In almost half of the 102 cases we reviewed, people said they were hospitalized. Plaintiffs alleged in court documents that they had suffered a range of injuries: broken and fractured bones, head traumas, internal bleeding, loss of consciousness, eyes swollen shut, broken and missing teeth, and wounds that needed to be closed up with stitches or staples. Some claimed they faced repeated surgeries and chronic pain.
Most of the payouts in these cases were relatively small — sometimes as little as $1,500. The largest was a $1.15 million settlement to a woman severely injured by an officer who had responded to a call at a local bar. According to allegations in court records, she suffered a broken jaw, severe bruising to her face and other injuries.
Ray Fitzpatrick, an attorney who represents the city of Yonkers, said that since this large payout in 2017, the city has not seen any incidents involving use of force that are "very, very troubling." But our investigation found that the city paid $268,500 to settle 12 lawsuits alleging excessive use of force that occurred since that payout in 2017. In one, a man alleges that as he was retrieving his driver's license from his car, he was tasered and beaten. He claims he had to be treated for fractures to his face at a Yonkers hospital. While not admitting wrongdoing, the city of Yonkers settled his case for $50,000.
Rewarding repeat offenders
After we had amassed a list of payouts over alleged misconduct, NPR discovered that the names of certain officers appeared over and over again. Ten officers were named in four or more settled cases for incidents that allegedly happened since 2007, and six officers were named in six or more cases.
There may be even more such cases since the court documents we reviewed left many officers unnamed. We counted more than 300 officers who were identified by name. Many others appeared simply as "John Doe."
We found that one officer, Alex Della Donna, was involved in at least nine settlements over alleged misconduct that happened after the DOJ started its investigation. The city has paid out $402,500 for cases that he was involved in. One case is still being litigated, although Della Donna retired at age 45 in late 2021.
NPR made numerous attempts to contact Della Donna, by phone and by email and through the police union, but was unable to reach him.
A plaintiff in one of those cases, who was 15 at the time, stated in her court complaint that police stopped her for driving a stolen vehicle. She alleges that police pointed a weapon at her, opened the driver's side door and pulled her out. She claims she hit the ground face first. She alleges that Della Donna and four other male officers severely beat her, that she suffered a broken nose and several missing teeth, and needed to be hospitalized. In her complaint, she says she heard officers laughing at her missing teeth; then she lost consciousness. She received a $33,000 settlement.
Another woman alleged in a court complaint that Della Donna coerced her to have sex with him at least seven times in an unmarked vehicle while he was on duty, promising her that in exchange he would get her drug charges dropped. In the court complaint, she claimed she was worried the charges could lead her to being deported and losing her children. She claims that she became suicidal. She received a $20,000 settlement.
Della Donna faced a disciplinary hearing 11 months after the suit alleging sexual assault was filed. His supervisors wrote that "his sexual relationship with a criminal defendant exhibited a ... lack of professionalism that reflected unfavorably upon the department." They revoked 30 days of paid leave and ordered him to retake an ethics training course.
In general, officers who were involved in frequent payouts were rarely disciplined, and when they were, their penalties were light.
That wasn't Della Donna's first disciplinary hearing. In another incident, according to department disciplinary records, Della Donna allegedly pinned down a man being held in the city jail. The records say he used his knee on the man's neck, even though the man wasn't resisting. Della Donna's supervisors revoked four days of paid leave.
Despite that disciplinary hearing and several subsequent lawsuits alleging misconduct, Della Donna received 14 departmental awards. In total he received 59 awards throughout the course of his nearly 15 years with the Yonkers Police Department.
This was part of another pattern we discovered: Even as the city of Yonkers was paying out hundreds of thousands of dollars involving complaints against these 10 officers, the Yonkers Police Department was rewarding many of them.
One officer, for example, was promoted to sergeant just three years after the city made the last of four payments in cases in which he was one of the defendants. Three of the four cases resulted in a settlement; the other was a jury verdict. The city paid out more than $417,000 in those cases. From the time of the first lawsuit to the last, the officer received 38 departmental awards.
Another officer, now retired, has been named in six cases — all alleging excessive force. The city has so far paid out more than $130,000 to settle those cases. In response to a request, the city could not provide any disciplinary records for this officer. During the years the city was negotiating the settlements, the officer received eight departmental awards.
Overall, of the 10 officers named at least four times in lawsuits where the city made a payout, seven of them received some kind of department commendation.
The Yonkers Police Department says the awards and any payouts for alleged misconduct are separate matters. "Officers receive departmental awards for specific incidents that they are involved in, exclusive from any previous events," says DiDomizio, the public information officer for the Yonkers Police Department.
He added: "Only the details surrounding a particular event are taken into consideration when reviewing departmental recognitions. Although an Officer may have had an incident(s) in the past that resulted in litigation, it does not preclude them from being recognized for an exemplary job during another incident that is deserving of an award."
"A couple of dollars to shut up?"
Victims who got paid said they still feel that justice wasn't done. What they wanted was for the cops to be held accountable.
The Yonkers Police Department — because of the oversight from the Department of Justice and reforms pushed by former Police Commissioner John Mueller — has made changes.
In 2017, it updated its use of force policy to include de-escalation practices and techniques. It now requires officers to issue verbal warnings, when "practical." And it requires officers to de-escalate a situation if a subject being arrested stops resisting.
Officers must also now wear name tags.
The number of times officers reported using force went down while Mueller was in charge, and the crime rate in Yonkers went down too. Mueller left the force in April of this year.
However, complaints leading to payouts, though up and down over the years, persist.
The department and the city of Yonkers say the settlements are meant to compensate people for harm done. Andrew Quinn, a lawyer for the union representing Yonkers police officers, said that settlement amounts are determined by estimating how much income a person and their dependents will have lost while recovering from injuries.
For some people, the settlements are meaningful, according to Rose Weber, a civil rights lawyer who has represented many plaintiffs in Yonkers. "From the perspective of many of my clients, who are very low-income, what seems like a low settlement to you or me, could be life-changing for them." She recalled one plaintiff who was able to get off the streets and pay rent in an apartment for a year or so after receiving his settlement.
Edmonson, the former NAACP activist who held the public "town halls" that helped get the Justice Department involved in Yonkers, sees it differently.
"People who came and told their stories wanted to see certain officers go to jail. Others wanted to feel heard and feel a sense of some justice," she says. " It's not about getting money. Money won't fix the emotional trauma."
Cardile, the woman who claims she was pushed to the ground and pulled up by the neck at her boyfriend's house, says the $50,000 settlement she received was not entirely satisfying.
"I didn't care about the money," she said. "They were giving me a couple of dollars to shut up? I wanted those officers to lose their jobs, or their pensions."
Without accountability, Cardile said of officers who engage in misconduct, "they're free to do this to somebody else."
Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., takes part in a markup on June 29, 2022, on Capitol Hill. (photo: Francis Chung/AP)
A subcommittee led by Rep. Barbara Lee is embracing a Bush-era policy to let the U.S. skirt international standards.
Now that policy appears set to continue unabated. As lawmakers move ahead with negotiations over the final pieces of the 2023 fiscal year’s appropriations package, congressional Democrats, led by anti-war stalwart Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., are poised to waste their best — and for the foreseeable future, likely last — shot at permanently ending American sales of cluster munitions.
The standard under international norms — embraced by more than 100 countries, including staunch U.S. allies like the U.K. and prior victims of American cluster bombs like Iraq — is to ban the sales outright, recognizing that their unpredictable method of dispersal makes them particularly liable to cause noncombatant deaths. Lee, as chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs, has repeatedly advocated for a total ban on cluster bombs. “Cluster munitions are outdated and simply cruel,” she said in 2016. “They are indiscriminate killers, serve no useful purpose, and must be discontinued.”
Following the markup of the relevant appropriations bill by the subcommittee Lee leads, House Democrats are on track to once again embrace a George W. Bush-era policy that allows cluster munitions sales to continue with loose restrictions. Senate Democrats have indicated that they will follow suit. Lawmakers in both chambers point to rules that purport to lessen the devastating toll on civilians the weapons are infamous for inflicting, but arms control experts told The Intercept that enforcement is questionable.
When cluster munitions are launched, they disperse into smaller bomblets that rain over the targeted area. While most of those bomblets explode, a considerable portion often do not. Much like land mines, those unexploded bomblets pose risks to civilians and nonmilitary infrastructure for years after a conflict has ended.
Under current policy, U.S. transfers of cluster bombs are allowed as long as the bomblets dispersed by the weapons explode at least 99 percent of the time and purchasers agree to only use the munitions in noncivilian areas. Experts told The Intercept that those restrictions have made a considerable difference to the U.S.’s complicity in the ongoing use of cluster bombs but fall far short of bringing the country in line with international standards.
Over 100 countries have joined the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which bans the use and sale of the weapons outright. When that treaty was negotiated, between 2007 and 2008, the U.S. did not participate, even as an observer. But the international pressure helped set the stage for the current restrictions.
According to Jeff Abramson, a senior fellow at the Arms Control Association, today’s restrictions have led to a massive depletion of the U.S. arsenal of cluster munitions over time. While sales of the munitions remain legal, the high standard on unexploded bomblets has increased the weapons’ costs and lessened their desirability. As a result, he told The Intercept, “at this point, the United States is not really selling, transferring, or using cluster munitions.”
Rather than building on the reduction and progressing to an elimination, the ongoing reluctance to ban the weapons outright opens the door for future sales, Abramson warned. It also harms the U.S.’s ability to apply political pressure on governments that continue to use these weapons.
“The United States is weakened in its condemnation of countries like Russia by having poor policy and dangerous policy around cluster munitions,” Abramson pointed out.
The Bush-era policy was resuscitated following a brief regression in the early years of the Trump administration, but its inclusion this time around represents a surprising missed opportunity. Lee has been one of the only members of Congress to advocate consistently to rein in the U.S. war machine. As the Armed Services committees and Appropriations defense subcommittees in both chambers have predictably failed to make headway on the issue, Lee’s current powerful seat puts her in a unique and fleeting position to do so.
By custom, appropriations bills originate in the House, so Lee’s subcommittee is responsible for creating the starting position for negotiations. Should Democrats lose control over one or both chambers of Congress in November — as appears increasingly probable — Lee will likely be demoted to ranking member, and the party will lose its advantage in driving policy.
“The SFOPS bill includes longstanding language limiting the sale and availability of cluster munitions, including to ensure that that concerns regarding unexploded ordnance and use against civilians are addressed. Arms sales are traditionally not in the Committees jurisdiction, but this provision was put in place to protect civilians against unexploded ordinance,” a representative for Lee’s office wrote in a statement to The Intercept. “Without the SFOPS language, there would not be any limitation on the provision of this equipment. However, the authorization of equipment provided overseas is a larger discussion with other stakeholders. Consistent with Chairwoman Lee’s longstanding position of the use of such weapons, we continue to monitor closely U.S. government use of these exceptions.”
Erik Sperling, the executive director of Just Foreign Policy and a former House staffer who worked on the issue, expressed surprise at the work produced by Lee’s subcommittee. “She’s always been a strong opponent of cluster bombs,” he told The Intercept. “So I’m surprised to hear that she or her team would want to keep an explicit exemption to allow the U.S. to transfer them in her own bill.”
On the Senate side, where the filibuster enables Republicans to wield some leverage over the process, the corresponding subcommittee is chaired by Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., a close ally of the Biden administration who has a history of deference to the demands of the Pentagon and State Department. But the larger Appropriations Committee is chaired by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who has a long history of advocacy against cluster munitions and land mines.
Tim Rieser, an adviser to Leahy and the Senate Appropriations Committee, told The Intercept that the Vermont Democrat maintains his unconditional opposition to the munitions. But Rieser indicated that the Defense Department has opposed giving up the weapons — and the Pentagon’s opposition, coupled with the narrow divide in both chambers of Congress, currently makes more aggressive policy changes impossible.
Abramson, of the Arms Control Association, lamented the lack of political will in the Biden administration to finally close the door on cluster munitions sales and transfers. In his view, Russia’s war in Ukraine — which has also seen some uses of the weapons by Ukrainian forces — presents a rare opportunity to align the United States with international norms.
“The condemnation heaped on Russia for its indiscriminate attacks, including using cluster munitions, should have given President Biden the moment to finally reject these weapons,” Abramson said. “The timing was right. The timing is still right.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, right, takes selfie with a wounded soldier in a city hospital in Odesa, Ukraine, Friday, July 29, 2022. (photo: Ukrainian Presidential Press Office/AP)
Meanwhile, Russia kept launching attacks on several Ukrainian cities, hitting a school and a bus station.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the ICRC and the United Nations have a duty to react to the shelling of the prison complex in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk province, and he called again for Russia to be declared a terrorist state.
“Condemnation at the level of political rhetoric is not enough for this mass murder,” he said.
Separatist authorities and Russian officials said the attack Friday killed 53 Ukrainian POWs and wounded another 75. Russia’s Defense Ministry on Saturday issued a list naming 48 Ukrainian fighters, aged 20 to 62, who died in the attack; it was not clear if the ministry had revised its fatality count.
Satellite photos taken before and after the attack show that a small, squarish building in the middle of the Olenivka prison complex was demolished, its roof in splinters.
Both Ukraine and Russia alleged the attack on the prison was premeditated and intended to silence the Ukrainian prisoners and destroy evidence.
The ICRC, which has organized civilian evacuations and worked to monitor the treatment of POWs held by Russia and Ukraine, said it requested access to the prison “to determine the health and condition of all the people present on-site at the time of the attack.”
“Our priority right now is making sure that the wounded receive lifesaving treatment and that the bodies of those who lost their lives are dealt with in a dignified manner,” the Red Cross said.
But the organization said late Saturday that its request to access the prison had not been granted yet.
“Granting ICRC access to POWs is an obligation of parties to conflict under the Geneva Conventions,” the ICRC said on Twitter.
Russia claimed Ukraine’s military used U.S.-supplied precision rocket launchers to target the prison in Olenivka, a settlement controlled by the Moscow-backed Donetsk People’s Republic.
The Ukrainian military accused the Russians of shelling the prison to cover up the alleged torture and execution of Ukrainians there.
The Institute for the Study of War, a think tank based in Washington, said the competing claims and limited information prevented assigning full responsibility for the attack but the “available visual evidence appears to support the Ukrainian claim more than the Russian.”
Moscow has opened a probe into the attack and the U.N. said it also was prepared to send investigators. U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said “we stand ready to send a group of experts able to conduct an investigation, requiring the consent of the parties, and we fully support the initiatives” of the Red Cross.
Elsewhere in eastern Ukraine, Russian rockets hit a school in Kharkiv and a bus station in Sloviansk, among other strikes. In southern Ukraine, one person was reported killed and six injured in shelling in a residential area in Mykolaiv, local officials said.
Russian and separatist forces are trying to take full control of the Donetsk region, one of two eastern provinces that Russia has recognized as sovereign states.
Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk warned Saturday that Ukrainian-controlled parts of Donetsk will face severe heating problems this winter because of the destruction of gas mains. She called for a mandatory evacuation of residents before the cold weather sets in.
The prison attack reportedly killed Ukrainian soldiers captured in May after the fall of Mariupol, a Black Sea port city where troops and the Azov Regiment of the national guard famously held out against a months-long Russian siege.
On Saturday, an association of Azov fighters’ relatives dressed in black demonstrated outside Kyiv’s St. Sophia Cathedral and called for Russia to be designated a terrorist state for violating the Geneva Convention’s rules for the treatment of war prisoners.
A woman wearing dark glasses who gave only her first name, Iryna, was waiting for news of her 23-year-old son.
“I don`t know how is he, where is he, if he is alive or no. I don`t know. It`s a horror, only horror,” she said.
On the energy front, Russia’s state-owned natural gas corporation said Saturday it has halted shipments to Latvia because of contract violations. Gas giant Gazprom said the shipments were stopped because Latvia broke “terms for extraction of gas.”
The statement likely referred to a refusal to meet Russia’s demand for gas payments in rubles rather than other currencies. Gazprom has previously suspended gas shipments to other EU countries, including the Netherlands, Poland and Bulgaria, because they would not pay in rubles.
EU nations have been scrambling to secure other energy sources, fearing that Russia will cut off more gas supplies as winter approaches.
Aerial view of homes submerged under flood waters from the North Fork of the Kentucky River in Jackson, Kentucky, on 28 July. (photo: Leandro Lozada/AFP/Getty Images)
Heatwaves are getting ‘more dangerous and deadly’ from climate change as catastrophic flash flooding leaves at least 26 people dead
Earlier this week, the state saw eight to 10 inches of rainfall in a 24-year period, marking what experts are calling a 1-in-1,000 year rain event. Amid the onslaught of rain and catastrophic flash flooding, at least 26 people have died while dozens more are reported injured.
Kentucky governor Andy Beshear has warned that the death toll will likely continue to rise as officials struggle to reach certain areas of the state that have been badly affected by the floods. On Sunday morning he told NBC it was raining hard in the region and there are renewed warnings of additional flooding.
On Thursday, Beshear said that the flooding was the worst that he has seen in his lifetime. “I wish I could tell you why we keep getting hit here in Kentucky. I wish I could tell you why areas where people may not have much continue to get hit and lose everything. I can’t give you the why, but I know what we do in response to it. And the answer is everything we can,” he said.
However, to climate scientists, the answer to such frequent and drastic weather events can be attributed to climate change that has largely been human-caused and expedited.
Jonathan Overpeck, an earth and environmental sciences professor at the University of Michigan, explained that because human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels have significantly warmed the atmosphere in recent years, the atmosphere now holds more moisture than it used to. As a result, whenever rainfall occurs, it is more drastic.
“This means the risk of flooding is going up dramatically over much of the planet where people live, and Kentucky is one of those places. The evidence is clear that climate change is a growing problem for Kentucky and the surrounding region–more floods like this week, and more floods when wetter tropical storms track north over the state,” Overpeck told Inside Climate News.
Flash floods happen as a result of torrential rainfall that occurs within a short period of time, often resulting in the water having nowhere to go. Because grounds can often be already saturated, they are unable to absorb all the excess water.
“It gathers speed, it gathers power, it can pick up debris. And that is a flash flood. It’s really dangerous. It can carry away cars, it can carry away houses, and it can kill people,” said Rebecca Hersher from NPR’s climate team.
Opeck explained that in addition to more frequent flash floods, Kentucky will also likely experience more tornado risks in the future. Last December, Kentucky faced its deadliest tornado outbreak when numerous tornadoes tore through the state and killed 80 people. Among the multiple tornadoes, one cut through over 165 miles and was nearly half a mile wide.
“Heatwaves are clearly getting more dangerous and deadly due to human-caused climate change, and there is growing evidence that thunderstorms are getting supercharged by the warming atmosphere as well, and that can mean higher tornado risks,” he said.
As the eastern region of Kentucky struggles with rebuilding efforts that will likely take years, residents from the western parts of the state are also feeling the impacts of climate change in various ways.
Steve Fisher, a 61-year old farmer told the Guardian that the floods have driven him to use increased fungicide on his crops due high moisture content.
Additionally, volatile weather conditions have forced farmers like Fisher to change their farming methods and routines. One method Fisher now uses is no-till farming, a technique used to address soil erosion that washes away the topsoil which supports plant growth and helps to retain moisture during long periods of drought.
“We’ve gone from tilling the soil up and making the soil real loose to no-till farming which basically drills the seed into the ground without having to work the soil up to save the moisture in the ground to prevent moisture loss and soil erosion,” he said.
Follow us on facebook and twitter!
PO Box 2043 / Citrus Heights, CA 95611
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.