10 August 22
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Donald Trump faces the law
The FBI search yesterday of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, including the seizure of documents from his private safe, continues to reverberate across the nation.
The spotlight of justice, which many Americans have long craved and others feared, is now shining unambiguously on the former president. His fate in our national narrative remains to be written, and this uncertainty only intensifies the acrimony across our myriad political divides. It is a moment fraught with danger, including threats of violence. But it is also a moment of hope, that a wave of redemptive energy will finally engulf the outrages of the previous administration and the grave threat it posed to the continuity of the United States as a nation of law.
We must begin with some words of caution: This is a moment in the news cycle when speculation far outpaces facts. And that is especially true in this case because of the nature of the activity. This may be the most sensitive criminal investigation in American history. First, one does not pursue a president lightly. And second, we may be dealing with classified materials removed improperly when Trump left the White House. What’s in those documents and what Trump might have done with that information, we do not know. But for these reasons, this search and seizure was, and had to be, shrouded in secrecy.
We believe the FBI had a court-approved search warrant as required by law. In our current political environment, it might be helpful for the FBI to publicly share that warrant (if they feel they can do so) or at least explicitly state that they had one, and explain how it was obtained. Just to turn down the volume on any potential claims that the FBI is "running wild,” or similar. Or if Trump really feels he’s been so wronged, he could release the warrant himself:
A prudent consumer of news should recognize all we do not know. In a world where we expect to be inundated with information by the nanosecond, we have no choice but to be patient and see how this unfolds. It may be frustrating, but there really is no alternative.
What is not in dispute is that this is a very big deal. It likely represents the most significant criminal investigation of a current or former president ever, and that includes Richard Nixon. This search does not take place on a whim or by a rogue team of prosecutors. This move was clearly vetted by the very top of American law enforcement, and specifically by two men constitutionally averse to condoning a partisan witch hunt: FBI Director Christopher Wray (a lifelong Republican appointed by Trump) and Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Furthermore, early reporting indicates that FBI agents knew exactly what they were looking for. That suggests a detailed investigation and possibly a key informant or informants inside Trump world. A federal judge would likely not have signed off on this warrant unless presented with credible evidence of a crime.
It is not surprising that after years of activity by Donald Trump that appeared to warrant investigation, news of the FBI search and seizure was greeted with pent-up elation from many. Even though we don’t know the specifics, there is a sense among those who have long bemoaned Trump’s many misdeeds that finally, finally, he might have to answer for his actions.
Among those for whom the cult of personality remains unabated, it was to be expected that reaction to the news was quite different. This crew is incapable of recognizing its shameless hypocrisy. So the very same people who cheered the FBI’s announcement of an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails as she stood for presidential election now are likening America’s preeminent law enforcement operation to the Gestapo.
“Overreach.” “A coup.” “The end of freedom,” they bewail. Some, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, even are calling for defunding the FBI. Apparently “Back the Blue” doesn’t count when we’re talking about Trump. But we already knew that, of course, with the insurrection of January 6.
One of Trump's remarkable tendencies, dating back decades, is his ability to avoid any and all accountability. And he has infused that impervious mindset into the movement he leads. “The law is for thee, but not for me” might as well be his motto. It is rich to see a man who flagrantly politicized the administration of justice, who was impeached twice, and who would gladly see his political adversaries subjected to fabricated charges, complain when the gears of the law grind forward in his direction. It is pathetic to see all those who have normalized Trump’s worst excesses rally once more to his defense. And it is frightening to see extremist elements in the Trump firmament call for violence.
This is a perilous time, but we must not let that deter us from seeking justice. What’s at stake is the rule of law in America. Donald Trump, for all his money and his minions and his dangerous rhetoric, is no longer in control of his destiny. That has to worry him. Plenty. And it should.
For the rest of us, it is a time to stay calm and carry on, while reminding ourselves that in our country, no person should be above the law. And no person is guilty until proven so beyond reasonable doubt.
Now it is up to the justice system to do its work.
Former President Donald Trump departs Trump Tower on Wednesday in New York, on his way to the New York attorney general's office for a deposition in a civil investigation. (photo: Julia Nikhinson/AP)
Trump arrived at state Attorney General Letitia James' offices in a motorcade shortly before 9 a.m., announcing more than an hour later that he "declined to answer the questions under the rights and privileges afforded to every citizen under the United States Constitution."
"I once asked, 'If you're innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?' Now I know the answer to that question," the statement said. "When your family, your company, and all the people in your orbit have become the targets of an unfounded politically motivated Witch Hunt supported by lawyers, prosecutors and the Fake News Media, you have no choice."
As vociferous as Trump has been in defending himself in written statements and on the rally stage, legal experts say the same strategy could have backfired in a deposition setting because anything he says could potentially be used in the criminal investigation.
His decision comes just days after FBI agents searched his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida as part of an unrelated federal probe into whether he took classified records when he left the White House.
The civil investigation, led by state Attorney General Letitia James, involves allegations that Trump's company, the Trump Organization, misstated the value of prized assets like golf courses and skyscrapers, misleading lenders and tax authorities.
"My great company, and myself, are being attacked from all sides," Trump wrote beforehand on Truth Social, the social media platform he founded. "Banana Republic!"
Messages seeking comment were left with James' office and with Trump's lawyer.
In May, James' office said that it was nearing the end of its probe and that investigators had amassed substantial evidence that could support legal action against Trump, his company or both. The Republican's deposition — a legal term for sworn testimony that's not given in court — was one of the few remaining missing pieces, the attorney general's office said.
Two of Trump's adult children, Donald Jr. and Ivanka, testified in recent days, two people familiar with the matter said. The people were not authorized to speak publicly and did so on condition of anonymity.
The three Trumps' testimony had initially been planned for last month but was delayed after the July 14 death of the former president's ex-wife, Ivana Trump, the mother of Ivanka, Donald Jr. and another son, Eric Trump, who sat for a deposition in James' investigation in 2020.
On Friday, the Trump Organization and its longtime finance chief, Allen Weisselberg, will be in court seeking dismissal of tax fraud charges brought against them last year in the Manhattan district attorney's parallel criminal probe — spurred by evidence uncovered by James' office. Weisselberg and the company have pleaded not guilty.
James, a Democrat, has said in court filings that her office has uncovered "significant" evidence that Trump's company "used fraudulent or misleading asset valuations to obtain a host of economic benefits, including loans, insurance coverage, and tax deductions."
James alleges the Trump Organization exaggerated the value of its holdings to impress lenders or misstated what land was worth to slash its tax burden, pointing to annual financial statements given to banks to secure favorable loan terms and to financial magazines to justify Trump's place among the world's billionaires.
The company even exaggerated the size of Trump's Manhattan penthouse, saying it was nearly three times its actual size — a difference in value of about $200 million, James' office said.
Trump has denied the allegations, explaining that seeking the best valuations is a common practice in the real estate industry. He says James' investigation is politically motivated and that her office is "doing everything within their corrupt discretion to interfere with my business relationships, and with the political process." He's also accused James, who is Black, of racism in pursuing the investigation.
"THERE IS NO CASE!" Trump said in a February statement, after Manhattan Judge Arthur Engoron ruled that James' office had "the clear right" to question Trump and other principals in his company.
Once her investigation wraps up, James could decide to bring a lawsuit and seek financial penalties against Trump or his company, or even a ban on them being involved in certain types of businesses.
Meanwhile, the Manhattan district attorney's office has long pursued a parallel criminal investigation. No former president has even been charged with a crime.
That probe had appeared to be progressing toward a possible criminal indictment of Trump himself, but slowed after a new district attorney, Alvin Bragg, took office in January: A grand jury that had been hearing evidence disbanded. The top prosecutor who had been handling the probe resigned after Bragg raised questions internally about the viability of the case.
Bragg has said his investigation is continuing, which means that Trump could invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and decline to answer questions from James' investigators during the deposition in a Manhattan office tower that has doubled as the headquarters of the fictional conglomerate Waystar Royco — run by a character inspired partly by Trump — on HBO's "Succession."
In fighting to block the subpoenas, lawyers for the Trumps argued New York authorities were using the civil investigation to get information for the criminal probe and that the depositions were a ploy to avoid calling them before a criminal grand jury, where state law requires they be given immunity.
Weisselberg and Eric Trump each invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 500 times when questioned by James' lawyers during separate depositions in 2020, according to court papers.
Marat Gabidullin, a member of the Wagner Group, shown here on a previous mission in Syria. (photo: Marat Gabidullin/Al Jazeera)
The mysterious network of mercenaries is embracing an ever-public image as the war on Ukraine drags on.
It does not file tax returns, its alleged backers deny any connection to it and officially, private military companies (PMCs) are illegal in Russia.
“Mercenaries have no official status, so they don’t have the same rights or guarantees as an official representative of the armed forces, and payment is only after completing a mission,” Marat Gabidullin told Al Jazeera. “You finish the mission, get paid and you can go on vacation.”
Gabidullin, whose identity has been confirmed by Russian and Ukrainian media, is the only former mercenary of the Wagner Group to publicly come forward about his experiences.
He now lives in southern France, where he says he is in the process of seeking asylum, and has written a memoir, In the Same River Twice, about his experiences.
Founded by intelligence officer Dmitry Utkin in 2014 to back Ukrainian separatists, Wagner has since represented the interests of Russia and its allies across Africa and the Middle East, taking part in Syria’s civil war on the side of President Bashar al-Assad – and its fighters are accused of several atrocities.
Previously a shadowy force, it is now embracing an ever-public image as the Ukraine war grinds on.
“It’s always been a part of either military intelligence or the special operation forces,” Russian military expert Pavel Luzin told Al Jazeera. “It’s never been private or somehow autonomous.”
According to Luzin, Wagner serves two purposes.
The first is to make use of hot-headed individuals who might otherwise pose a security risk at home. The second is to redistribute the balance of power away from the official armed forces.
“We deal with the fragmentation of military power that is typical for authoritarian regimes,” explained Luzin.
“Wagner are neither elite forces nor well-trained commandos, they are just another sort of cannon fodder with the purpose of counterbalancing any political threat from the generals. The Kremlin just does not trust the armed forces.”
The mercenary outfit is allegedly bankrolled and controlled by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch known as “Putin’s chef” for his many catering contracts, through a network of front companies.
For instance, a business named Europolis LLC reportedly agreed with Damascus to conduct military operations in Syria in exchange for 25 percent of the oil and gas it finds. Its founder is known to be close to Prigozhin and has been seen in the company of Utkin. In 2017, Uktin and Wagner were sanctioned by the administration of former United States President Donald Trump for dispatching fighters to Ukraine.
Prigozhin denies connections to Wagner, to the point of filing complaints to the authorities after being asked about the matter by journalists.
But as Wagner’s participation in Ukraine has grown, it has proudly stepped into the spotlight.
A Telegram user recently posted an image purporting to show billboards in Russia promoting and recruiting for Wagner, while job adverts reportedly offer wages of 240,000 Russian roubles (just under $4,000) per month, far higher than the pay of a typical soldier.
“Essentially, Wagner has now become so public precisely because of the change in its status,” Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russian security matters, told Al Jazeera.
“Whereas it was once an arm’s length, deniable instrument of the Russian state, as well as a fairly autonomous commercial venture, now it is indeed little more than an extension of the military. It is an alternative source of combat manpower, necessary precisely because this is just a ‘special military operation’ and thus the Kremlin can’t simply mobilise the men it needs.”
Motivated by money
“Any idealistic reasons [for becoming a mercenary] is just for cover; practically everyone’s motivation is money,” Gabidullin, who served in Wagner from 2015 to 2019, told Al Jazeera by phone.
“At that point, I was in a state of depression, unsure what to do with myself, what to do and where to go. I’d been unemployed for quite some time. Then I heard of this opportunity to return to my previous occupation – I’d been a professional soldier and served 10 years in the airborne forces.
“When I joined the fold, most of the people there had combat experience from more than one war – Chechnya, Georgia – and the bulk had come from those who’d been fighting in Ukraine since 2014.”
Gabidullin took part in the Syria campaign, where he was wounded by a grenade blast during the battle of Palmyra.
“The [Russian] high command was selling this as a bloodless overseas war but quickly came to terms with the fact this concept doesn’t work in Syria,” he recalled. “Airpower and artillery is one thing but victory is achieved by taking territory, and the Syrian army were simply no match for ISIL (ISIS).”
Gabidullin described the Syrian army as unprofessional and unmotivated, with rampant corruption flourishing in every rank.
“But the Russian high command needed to save face so they deployed mercenaries, because the losses suffered by mercenaries were not counted among the official figures,” he said. “So the illusion of a bloodless war was achieved, but in reality there was a lot of bloodshed.
“We carried that war. No one else could do what we did.”
In 2018, dozens of Russian mercenaries are thought to have died in US air raids on pro-government forces in Syria after attacking an oil facility which the Americans were defending.
But little is known about the mercenaries who die, in part because their families are under pressure to keep quiet.
Allegations of torture, executions not investigated
Aside from Syria, Wagner has been active in Africa since 2017.
In Sudan, it reportedly oversees gold mining operations, working closely with Sudan’s military government. Activists and bloggers accuse Russia of supporting the military coup in Sudan and stealing the country’s gold.
In the Central African Republic (CAR), Wagner repelled a rebel advance on Bangui in January last year. A statue of a Russian soldier defending a local family was built in the capital, and an action movie, The Tourist, has been released, glorifying the group’s exploits in CAR.
In 2018, three Russian journalists who were investigating the group were killed in an ambush while reporting on Wagner in CAR.
Human Rights Watch has accused the mercenaries of torturing, executing and kidnapping civilians in the country.
In Syria, Wagner employees have been accused of torturing, shooting and beheading a deserting soldier. So far, these claims have not been investigated by Russian authorities.
Gabidullin said that his group was not involved in such atrocities.
“As for Syria, that was a savage killing; four sadistic morons were let loose,” he said of the alleged beheading. “But this was a rare, practically singular incident. The majority of Wagner have a normal mentality without any observable inclination to such cruelty.”
After February, many of these mercenaries were redeployed to Ukraine.
Open recruitment
While Wagner was previously dependent on the Russian military, analysts believe it has been consolidated into the armed forces almost entirely over the past few months.
Wagner mercenaries are understood to have taken part in strategic battles for the Ukrainian towns of Popasna and Lysychansk, as well as the Vuhlehirsk power plant.
Prigozhin himself was photographed in the occupied Luhansk region in April.
So far, Moscow, which has not officially declared war on Ukraine, has avoided declaring mass mobilisation.
At the same time, the recruitment drive for contract soldiers, volunteers and mercenaries has gathered pace.
Other Russian mercenary outfits fighting in Ukraine include Redoubt, which rapidly mobilised disgraced or blacklisted ex-soldiers, and then suffered heavy casualties.
In July, the independent news outlet Meduza, which covers Russian affairs and is considered a “foreign agent” by Moscow, reported that Redoubt “still has a substantial number of combatants in Ukraine” and “is under the Russian defence ministry’s complete control”.
Looking ahead, as Russian losses in Ukraine mount, recruiters are expanding their options.
Journalists in Kyrgyzstan have reported that Wagner is seeking Uzbek and Kyrgyz recruits for “the special operation zone in Ukraine”, offering the 240,000 rubles per month salary and a quick route to Russian citizenship.
And while the Kremlin remains tight-lipped about casualties in Ukraine, Wagner mercenaries deployed as front-line forces are ill-equipped and reportedly suffering heavy losses.
“This is a war taking place on made-up pretexts to interfere in a neighbouring country,” said Gabidullin. “It’s a tragedy, a criminal mistake that should never have been allowed.”
Facebook messages have been used to prosecute teen for seeking health care. (photo: Tim Robberts/Getty Images)
Nebraska Police used a teen's Facebook messages to charge her for allegedly having an illegal abortion. What does this mean for a post-Roe world?
That’s exactly what happened to a Nebraska teen, who is being charged as an adult for obtaining an illegal abortion based on evidence obtained from her Facebook messages, according to the Lincoln Journal Star.
Prosecutors allege the teen and her mother, Jessica Burgess, discussed how to help her have an abortion at home over private Facebook chats, which were subpoenaed by law enforcement.
Jessica Burgess, who is white, is facing five criminal charges – including three felonies, for allegedly assisting her daughter with her abortion at 23 weeks and subsequently burning and burying the fetus.
The attorneys representing Jessica Burgess and her daughter did not respond
Although Jessica Burgess is white, her family’s story echoes those of Black and Brown women who, even before the fall of Roe v. Wade, had their personal devices weaponized against them, in order to prosecute them for allegedly having abortions.
Now, as more states move to ban abortion, the unholy matrimony of technological surveillance and anti-abortion fever is likely to get even more dangerous for women of color.
Let’s not forget, Latice Fisher, a Black Mississippi woman, who in 2017 was charged with second-degree murder after suffering a stillbirth at 35 weeks, according to the Washington Post.
Investigators used Fisher’s web searches on her phone, which showed she’d researched abortion medication, as evidence that she’d had an abortion past the state’s legal limit.
Fischer isn’t the only woman of color whose phone has been used against them as evidence that they’d illegally obtained an abortion.
Purvi Patel, an Indian woman living in South Bend Indiana, was sentenced to 20 consecutive years in 2015 after delivering a stillborn baby at 30 weeks.
Indiana investigators used text messages between Patel and a friend, where Patel allegedly said she was going to take abortion medication, to prove that she had intentionally ended her pregnancy, according to The Washington Post.
In both Patel’s and Fischer’s cases, prosecutors used the discredited “float test” to prove that their babies had been born alive. The test involves putting the fetus’ lungs in water to see if they’ll float, which is supposed to indicate whether a breath has been taken.
Although Patel’s and Fischer’s cases predated the Supreme Court overturning Roe, experts rightly saw them as harbingers of what was to come.
As states ban abortion at earlier and earlier stages of pregnancy (when miscarriages are more likely), and our lives become even further enmeshed with technology, it’s likely these types of cases will only become more common.
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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, second from left, and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, right, walk out of the US Supreme Court after arguments in their case about the “Remain in Mexico” immigration policy on April 26. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
It’s easy to secure court orders blocking major policies when you can choose your own judges.
In August of 2021, for example, a Trump-appointed judge named Matthew Kacsmaryk ordered the Biden administration to reinstate a Trump-era immigration policy, known as “Remain in Mexico,” which forced many migrants to live in awful conditions on the Mexican side of the US/Mexico border. Although the Supreme Court eventually determined that Kacsmaryk egregiously misread federal immigration law, it left his order in place for nearly a year — and the Court’s most recent decision concerning Remain in Mexico makes it very easy for Kacsmaryk to seize control of federal border policy once again.
Indeed, the status of this case, known as Texas v. Biden in Kacsmaryk’s court, is changing almost by the hour. On Monday, Kacsmaryk lifted his original order requiring the Biden administration to implement Trump’s policy — something he had to do given the Supreme Court’s decision — and the administration swiftly announced that it would wind down the program.
But almost as soon as Kacsmaryk lifted his original order, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a new motion asking Kacsmaryk to seize control of federal border policy once again.
This one Trump judge’s ability to override an elected president’s policies and assume the powers of a Cabinet secretary is just one aspect of a much larger problem. With the Supreme Court’s tacit blessing, Texas officials and other right-wing litigants can handpick the trial judge who will hear their challenges to Biden administration policies. And when those handpicked judges overreach in ways that even this Supreme Court deems unacceptable, decisions by men like Kacsmaryk can remain in place for as much as a year — effectively replacing governance by an elected presidential administration with rule by unelected Republican judges.
In another, similar case, the Supreme Court allowed a Trump judge named Drew Tipton to temporarily strip Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas of much of his authority over Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This is the same Drew Tipton who issued a legally dubious order six days after Biden took office, which blocked the Biden administration's call for a 100-day pause on deportations while the new administration was figuring out its immigration policies.
And then there’s Judge Reed O’Connor, the Fort Worth, Texas, judge known for rubber stamping nearly any legal outcome requested by Republicans. O’Connor is best known for his order in Texas v. United States, holding that Obamacare must be repealed in its entirety. That decision was so poorly reasoned that seven justices — including four Republican appointees — eventually ruled that no federal judge had any business hearing Texas’s anti-Obamacare lawsuit in the first place.
But that experience did nothing to humble the Rubber Stamp of Fort Worth. In January, O’Connor forced the US Navy to deploy personnel that it deemed unfit for deployment because they are not vaccinated for Covid-19. The Supreme Court blocked most of O’Connor’s ruling in March, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh writing that the highly partisan judge “in effect inserted [himself] into the Navy’s chain of command, overriding military commanders’ professional military judgments.”
Meanwhile, O’Connor is widely expected to strike down the Affordable Care Act’s provisions requiring health insurers to cover a wide range of vaccinations and preventive care in a pending case called Kelley v. Becerra.
The fact that all these cases — and this is just a sample of the many policy-setting lawsuits being shunted to a handful of the most conservative judges in Texas — are winding up before a few GOP-appointed judges is not a coincidence. It is a deliberate strategy, made possible by procedural rules that effectively allow litigants to select which judge will hear their lawsuits, and by all appearances, intentionally pursued by the Texas attorney general’s office.
These Texas federal judges’ orders, moreover, appeal to the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, almost certainly the most conservative federal appeals court in the country, which tends to regard those orders with the same level of partisanship that is a feature in Kacsmaryk, Tipton, and O’Connor’s courtrooms.
So the Biden administration’s policies are routinely blocked, not because an impartial judge gives those policies a fair hearing and determines them to be illegal, but because Republican litigants can ensure that lawsuits seeking to undermine President Biden are heard by some of the most partisan judges in the country.
Why Texas gets to choose which judges hear its lawsuits
Chance normally plays a big role in federal litigation. When a plaintiff files a lawsuit, that suit is typically assigned to a district judge at random from among the federal trial judges who sit in the same geographic region. On appeal, the overwhelming majority of cases are heard by three-judge panels selected at random from among an appeals court’s judges. Only at the Supreme Court level, where a fixed panel of nine justices hears all cases, are litigants normally sure which judges will hear their case.
In Texas, however, things work a little differently. Texas is divided into four large geographic regions known as “districts,” each overseen by a federal district court. These districts are further subdivided into smaller “divisions.” Anti-Obamacare Judge O’Connor, for example, sits in the Fort Worth Division of the Northern District of Texas.
A problem arises, however, because federal law permits each federal district court to determine how cases are divided among the court’s judges, and Texas’s district courts divide their work in ways that make it easy for plaintiffs challenging a federal policy to choose which judge will hear their case.
When a plaintiff files a lawsuit in a division of one of Texas’s federal district courts, their case will typically be heard by one of the judges in that division. Some divisions, however, are fairly small and may have a single judge who hears all or nearly all of the cases. In the Amarillo Division of the Northern District of Texas, for example, 95 percent of all civil cases are assigned to Kacsmaryk. In the Victoria Division of Texas’s Southern District, Tipton hears virtually all civil cases.
To be clear, it’s unlikely that these geographic case assignment rules arose from an intentional effort to let litigants choose their own judges — they are most likely a response to the fact that Texas is very large, and litigants don’t want to travel hundreds of miles to a federal courthouse in a distant part of the state every day for a lawsuit — but they’ve certainly had that effect. While the Texas case assignment rules would be benign in a world where federal judges can be trusted to be fair and impartial, they take on a much more sinister cast in a world where judges like O’Connor exist. It’s the combination of well-known judges who act as rubber stamps for a political party, and local court rules that frequently allow plaintiffs to select which judge will hear their case, that effectively rigs Texas’s federal court system for the GOP.
Many normal litigants still file at their closest federal courthouse. But if you are a plaintiff determined to undermine Biden, why would you file a lawsuit in Austin or Dallas when you can drive a few hours to a courthouse presided over by a Kacsmaryk or a Tipton?
The Texas attorney general’s office is particularly ruthless in doing just that, manipulating the rules to ensure that its lawsuits will be heard by the GOP’s allies on the bench.
As Steve Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas, documented in a recent amicus brief filed in the Supreme Court, “the Texas Attorney General appears to have filed 19 cases in the Texas district courts” against the Biden administration. Of these 19 cases, “judges appointed during Republican presidencies are presiding in all but one.”
Texas achieved this feat by being very selective about where it files lawsuits. As Vladeck writes, Texas filed 12 of its 19 lawsuits against the Biden administration “in divisions where judges appointed during Republican presidencies preside over 100 percent of newly filed civil cases.” The remaining seven “were filed in divisions where judges appointed during Republican presidencies preside over 95 percent of new civil cases.”
Notably, the Texas AG’s office has not filed a single case in Austin — the city where that office is actually located — a choice that most likely can be explained by the fact that half of all federal cases filed in Austin are heard by Judge Robert Pitman, an Obama appointee.
The Supreme Court has largely encouraged this behavior
Although the Supreme Court has, at times, disagreed with the judges Texas’s Republican leaders selected to hear their lawsuits, it’s done nothing to discourage the Texas AG’s judge-shopping. Indeed, if anything, it’s encouraged it.
Recall, for example, the Supreme Court’s decision in Biden v. Texas, which determined that Judge Kacsmaryk mangled federal immigration law when he ordered the Biden administration to reinstate the Remain in Mexico program. While that was a victory, both for Biden and for the rule of law, it was an exceedingly narrow one.
Ten months before the justices handed down their decision rebuking Kacsmaryk, the Biden administration asked the Supreme Court to block his order while the case was making its way through the appeals process. But the Court refused to do so, with only its three Democratic appointees registering their dissent. That meant that Kacsmaryk wielded much of DHS Secretary Mayorkas’s policymaking authority for nearly an entire year.
Then, even when the Court did rule against Kacsmaryk in its Biden decision, it explicitly left open several legal questions which Kacsmaryk could easily latch onto to seize control of federal border policy once again. Texas has already asked Kacsmaryk to do so.
Just a few weeks after its decision in Biden, moreover, the Court issued a similar order to the one allowing Kacsmaryk to set border policy for 10 months. In this case, Judge Tipton effectively placed himself in charge of ICE’s decisions about which immigrants to target for enforcement actions by striking down a memo from Mayorkas that set enforcement priorities for the agency.
Tipton’s order is egregiously wrong — among other things, a federal statute explicitly gives Mayorkas the power to establish “national immigration enforcement policies and priorities.” Nevertheless, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to leave that order in place, at least until the justices can fully consider the case later this year. Even if the Court does correct Tipton’s error in this case, it could feasibly not hand down its decision until June of 2023 — leaving Tipton as the de facto head of ICE for nearly a full year.
Notably, the Court was far quicker to intervene when lower court judges blocked Trump administration policies. In early 2020, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned that her GOP-appointed colleagues were “putting a thumb on the scale in favor of” the Trump administration in cases asking the Court to temporarily block lower court decisions while a case was still on appeal.
Around the same time, conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch complained about a system where any one of the “more than 1,000 active and senior district court judges, sitting across 94 judicial districts” could block one of the Trump administration’s policies. Although liberal litigants typically did not engage in judge-shopping to the same degree that Texas now does, litigants suing the Trump administration would often file lawsuits in left-leaning districts such as the Northern District of California.
In any event, Gorsuch appears to have lost interest in solving the problem of judge-shopping and nationwide injunctions after a Democrat moved into the White House.
So what can be done?
Every year Chief Justice John Roberts releases a “year-end report on the federal judiciary.” The document is normally quite brief; his 2021 report was only nine pages long, and three of those pages were charts and statistics describing the workload of the federal courts.
And yet, Roberts devoted a considerable amount of that report to what he described as “an arcane but important matter of judicial administration.” Patent litigators throughout the country were taking advantage of the same judge-shopping rules that Texas uses to its advantage in order to shunt a high percentage of patent infringement suits to a single federal trial judge in Texas (not one we’ve discussed here). And Roberts announced that he’d asked one of the federal judiciary’s internal governing bodies to look into this problem of judge-shopping in patent litigation.
In what was likely a response to Roberts’s rebuke, the Western District of Texas recently announced that it would randomly assign patent cases to one of 12 judges, thus ending this one judge’s monopoly over so many of these cases. But Texas’s federal courts have not taken similar action to stop Texas Republicans from shopping around for sympathetic judges. And Roberts has not urged them to do so.
If the courts want to solve the problem of judge-shopping, it would not be hard for them to do so. One solution is to apply the same rule to Texas’s anti-Biden litigation as the Western District of Texas now applies to patent litigation — if a party seeks an order blocking a federal policy, that case will be randomly assigned to any judge within the entire district court where it is filed, not just one in the smaller division.
Alternatively, a court could assign lawsuits seeking a nationwide injunction against a federal policy to a panel of three judges. That’s the solution Fifth Circuit Judge Gregg Costa proposed in a 2018 piece published by the Harvard Law Review’s blog.
In any event, the details of such a solution don’t matter all that much. The important thing is that litigants who are actively trying to sabotage the United States government should not be allowed to handpick judges who share their agenda. For the moment, however, the courts seem to lack the will to address this problem. Texas Republicans can shop around for the judges they want, and that seems to suit a Supreme Court dominated by Republican appointees just fine.
Colombia's new president, Gustavo Petro, gestures after delivering a speech during his inauguration ceremony at BolÃvar Square in Bogotá, Colombia, on August 7, 2022. (photo: Juan Barreto/AFP/Getty Images)
On Sunday, Gustavo Petro became the first left-wing president in Colombian history. Here, Petro speaks about his dream of a new Colombia founded on principles of solidarity and human dignity.
To arrive here undoubtedly involves a life journey. An immense life that is never traveled alone. My mother Clara is here; nothing would exist in my mind at this moment without her. My father Gustavo, of the Caribbean, is here, and so are my siblings, Adriana and Juan, who put up with me. My children are also here: Nicolás Petro, Nicolás Alcocer, Andrea and Andrés, and SofÃa and Antonella, my little ones whose hearts and souls are blossoming. And so is Verónica Alcocer, my companion, who has given me children and so the gift of life itself. Her love has made everything possible. She is here not only to accompany me but also to accompany the women of Colombia in their efforts to move forward, to create, to fight, to exist; to overcome violence inside and outside the family; to build the politics of love.
The people, just as they have been on the journey of my existence, are also here. The humble hands of the worker, the peasant women, and those who sweep the streets. The hearts of labor are here and the dreams of those who suffer; so are the working women who embrace me when I falter, when I feel weak; and love for the people, for those who suffer and are excluded. All of this has brought me here to unite and build a nation.
This is how One Hundred Years of Solitude by our beloved Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez ends: “Everything written there was, and has and always will be, unrepeatable because the lineages condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second chance on earth.”
Many times in our history, we Colombians have been condemned to the impossible, to the lack of opportunities, to a resounding “No.” I want to tell all Colombians who are listening to me in Plaza BolÃvar, in the surrounding areas, throughout Colombia and abroad, that our second chance begins today. We have earned it. You have earned it. Your effort was and will be worth it. It is time for change. Our future is not already written. We hold the pen, and we can write it together, in peace and unity. Today, a Colombia of possibilities begins.
We are here against all odds, against history that said we would never govern, against the same old people, against those who did not want to let go of power. But we did it. We made the impossible possible. With work, by traveling and listening, with ideas, with love, with effort. As of today, we begin work on making more of the impossible become possible in Colombia. If we made it here, we will make peace possible.
We must end, once and for all, six decades of violence and armed conflict — in fact, I would say, two centuries of permanent war, of eternal war, of perpetual war in Colombia. It can be done. We will comply with the peace agreement, we will follow the recommendations of the Truth Commission Report, which tells us of the deaths of 800,000 Colombians, the majority of them humble people. We cannot continue living in this nation of death; we must now build a nation of life, and we will work tirelessly to bring peace and tranquility to every corner of Colombia. This is the government of life, of peace, and it will be remembered as such. Peace is possible if we establish social dialogue in all regions of Colombia, so we can meet in the midst of our differences, so we can express ourselves and be heard, so we can find, through reason, the common paths to coexistence.
It is society as a whole that must initiate a dialogue about how we might stop killing each other and how to advance. In the binding regional dialogues, we call on all unarmed people to find the paths to coexistence within their territories. No matter what conflicts there may be, our task is to express them in words, to find solutions through reason. I propose more democracy and more participation to put an end to this violence. But we also call on all armed groups to lay down their arms in the shroud of the past, to accept legal benefits in exchange for peace, in exchange for a definitive halt to the violence, and to work as owners of a prosperous but legal economy that will put an end to the underdevelopment of the regions.
For peace to be possible in Colombia, we need dialogue, a lot of dialogue; we need to understand each other, to look for common ways forward, to produce changes. Of course peace is possible if we change. The policy on drugs, for example, must be seen as a war for a strong preventative policy for drug consumption in developed societies.
It is time for a new international convention that accepts that the “war on drugs” has failed — and failed resoundingly; that it has led to the murder of a million Latin Americans — the majority of them Colombian — over the past forty years, and that it causes 70,000 Americans to die of drug overdoses every year; that the war on drugs has strengthened the mafias and weakened our governments.
The war on drugs has led states to commit crimes — our state has committed crimes — and it has blurred the horizon of democracy. Are we going to wait for another million Latin Americans to be murdered and 200,000 overdose deaths in the United States each year? Are we going to wait for another forty years and for another million Latin Americans to die of homicide and 2,800,000 North Americans to die of an overdose? Or rather, do we exchange failure for success that will allow Colombia and Latin America to live in peace?
The time has come to change the anti-drug policy in the world, so that it guarantees life and does not generate death. They keep telling us that they want to support us in peace — they tell us again and again in all their speeches. So they must change the anti-drug policy that is in their hands — the world powers, the United Nations. They have the power to do it.
May equality become possible. Just 10 percent of the Colombian population owns 70 percent of the wealth. This is absurd and amoral. We must not naturalize inequality and poverty. We must not look the other way; let us not be accomplices. Through determination, redistribution, and a program of justice, we will make Colombia more egalitarian and create more opportunities for all. Equality is possible if we are able to create wealth for all and if we are able to distribute it more fairly. That is why we propose an economy based on production, work, and knowledge. And that is why we propose a tax reform that produces justice.
It is not true that the world is equal. It is not true that in most countries of the world, this social inequality that we have in Colombia exists. We are one of the most socially unequal societies on planet Earth. And it is an aberration that we cannot sustain if we want to be a nation, if we want to live in peace.
To take a part of the wealth of the people who have the most and earn the most, to open the doors of education to all children and young people, should not be seen as a punishment or a sacrifice. It is simply a solidarity payment that someone who is fortunate makes to a society that allows and guarantees their fortune. If we are able to bring a part of the wealth that is created to undernourished children through something as simple as paying regular taxes, we will be more fair, and we will be more peaceful.
It is more than a matter of charity; it is a matter of human solidarity. Solidarity is what has allowed nations to survive and achieve the greatest cultural and civilizational advances. Humanity has not made progress by competing; we have done so by helping one another. That is why we are alive on this planet. We will be equal when those who have most pay their taxes with pleasure, with pride, knowing that they will help their fellow boy, girl, baby, young man or woman to grow healthily, to think, to live fulfilled by the nutrition and education of the brain and the soul. Solidarity is the tax paid by those who can afford it and the state expenditure that goes to those who need it during their childhood, their youth, or their old age. The expenditure of the state is not for political mafias; it is for the people of the nation.
That is why we have proposed tax reform, health and pension reform, labor contract reform, and education reform. That is why we have prioritized investment in education, health, drinking water, irrigation districts, and local road infrastructure in our budget. Taxes will not be confiscatory; they will simply be fair for a country that must recognize the enormous social inequality in which we live as an aberration, for a state that must protect transparent expenditures, and for a society that deserves to live in peace.
To be a society of knowledge — a society where all members have the highest level of schooling and culture — is not a utopia. Nations that were poorer than ours just decades ago are now societies of knowledge only because they have prioritized investment in public education. The time has come to repay the debt we owe to our public education system to make it the highest quality and accessible to all.
The time has come for us to acknowledge that hunger is advancing. It is advancing throughout the world because the idea of food security based exclusively on international trade has collapsed. International trade in itself is neither positive nor negative, but if not managed intelligently and planned, it can destroy economies and lives. The world today is learning the importance of food sovereignty.
Food sovereignty is the guarantee that every society must have enough in order to consume its essential nutrition. Colombia is a country that must and can enjoy food sovereignty to achieve zero hunger. A mission of the state — with any support that the private sector may wish to provide — must be to guarantee the full and healthy nutrition of the entire Colombian society and achieve export surpluses.
In this land where human beings discovered corn, we must produce corn again. The state will have to provide irrigation, credits, techniques, improved seeds, and protection. The peasantry and private enterprise can provide the work and daily commitment to ensure that our fields once again produce the food that our people need. We will once again build irrigation districts with the army and rural houses and roads with the soldiers of the homeland. Army, society, and economic production can unite in a new indestructible social ethic.
Our helicopters, airplanes, and frigates not only serve to bomb or shoot. They also serve to create the first infrastructure for the preventive health of the Colombian people. Only if we produce will we be rich and prosperous as a society. Wealth is in labor, and labor is, ever more, the work of intelligence. That is why, as of today, all of the assets in forfeiture from the SAE (Special Assets Society) will become the basis of a new productive economy administered by peasant organizations, by urban cooperatives of young workers, and by popular women’s associations.
May gender equality become possible. We cannot continue to allow women to have fewer job opportunities and earn less than men, to have to devote three or four times as many hours to caregiving and to be underrepresented in our institutions. It is time to fight all these inequalities and level the scales.
May the green future become possible. Climate change is a reality. And it is urgent. Neither the Left nor the Right say so — science says so.
We have to and can find a model that is economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable. There will only be a future if we balance our lives and the world’s economy with nature. Science has announced the possible extinction of the human species in just one or two centuries due to the health effects of the climate crisis. The COVID virus gave the whole of humanity a real and vivid warning of this possibility. Science does not seem to be wrong. That is why, from this Colombia, we ask the world for action and not hypocrisy.
We are willing to move to an economy without coal and oil, but we are not helping humanity very much by doing so. We are not the ones emitting greenhouse gases. It is the wealthy of the world who do so, bringing human beings closer to extinction, but we do have the largest absorption sponge of these gases after the oceans: the Amazon rainforest. One of the pillars of climate balance and life on the planet is the Amazon rainforest. Are we going to let this rainforest be destroyed to reach the point of no return in the extinction of humanity? Or are we going to save it with humanity itself that wants to continue living on this earth? Where is the global fund to save the Amazon rainforest?
Speeches will not save it. We can convert the entire population that inhabits the Colombian Amazon into a population that cares for the rainforest today, but we need the world’s funds to do so. If it is so difficult to get the money that carbon taxes and climate funds should grant to save something so essential, then I propose an exchange of foreign debt for domestic spending to save and recover our jungles, forests, and wetlands for humanity. Reduce foreign debt, and we will spend the surplus to save human life. If the IMF [International Monetary Fund] helps to exchange debt for concrete action against the climate crisis, we will have a new, prosperous economy and a new life for humanity. No more “it can’t be done” and “it has always been this way.”
Today, a Colombia of possibilities begins. Today, our second chance begins. As of today, I am the president of all Colombia and of all Colombians, and this is my duty and my hope.
Colombia is not only Bogotá. The government of change will be decentralized. I promise you that we will be present and work throughout the country, from Leticia to Punta Gallinas, from Cabo Manglares to Isla San José. The absence of the state in many parts of the country hurts a lot. No more. I am going to work so that your place of birth does not condition your future and so that the state is present in every corner of Colombia. I am grateful for the presence of presidents and other representatives of the brother peoples of Latin America and the world.
In times when we see sister nations bombing each other, here, in the heart of Colombia, in the heart of Latin America, there are a dozen regional presidents, with ideological diversity and different backgrounds, but all are united in sharing this true celebration of democracy. It is time to leave behind the blocs, groups, and ideological differences to work together. Let us understand once and for all that what unites us is much more than what separates us, and that together we are stronger. May we realize the unity dreamed of by our heroes, such as [Simón] BolÃvar, [José de] San MartÃn, [José Gervasio] Artigas, [Antonio José de] Sucre, and [Bernardo] O’Higgins.
It is not utopia or romanticism. It is the way to become strong in this complex world. If we can channel the power of knowledge, the power of the economy, the power of coexistence, the voice of Latin America will be heard in the great concert of peoples of the world.
Today we need to be more joined and united than ever. As BolÃvar once said, “Unity must save us, just as division will destroy us if it is introduced among us.” May the division of Latin America come to an end. But Latin American unity cannot be just rhetoric, a mere discourse. We have just lived through perhaps the worst of the COVID pandemic, and Latin America was not able to come together to coordinate, to buy the cheapest vaccines; it was practically exploited without negotiation capacity, dispersed in its governments.
Are we going to have a Latin America with no capacity for scientific research, a Latin America with no capacity to coordinate its health services, with no capacity to coordinate the purchase of medicines in a unified way? Latin America is united by some institutions but not by concrete projects. Have we achieved the connection of all our electrical networks? Is there an electrical network that covers all of America? Have we managed to make our energy sources clean? Is it not time to encourage public oil companies and our electrical transmission companies to build the Latin American business and financial instrument that will encourage investments in the generation of clean energies and in the transmission of that energy on a continental scale? Colombia will put its international emphasis on reaching the most ambitious agreements possible to curb climate change and defend world peace.
We are not for war. We are for life. We will seek greater alliances with Africa, where we come from; we will seek an alliance of black peoples in the Americas; we will strive for San Andrés to be a health, cultural, and educational center of the Antillean Caribbean; and that is where all the ambassadors of Colombia for the Antilles will come from. We will seek an alliance with the Arab world on the road to move toward the new decarbonized economies.
We will seek to join our Buenaventura and our Tumaco with rich and productive East Asia. Our anthem, which is one of the most beautiful in the world, says “feel or suffer.” Colombia has accumulated centuries of suffering. A mother who cannot feed her child suffers. A young man who emigrates because he cannot find opportunities suffers. A grandmother or grandfather who does not have a decent pension suffers.
The Colombia we dream of, the Colombia we want, the Colombia we deserve is the Colombia we want to feel. The Colombia that vibrates, that strives, that yearns and works to achieve peace; that wants a prosperous land, with equal possibilities regardless of place of birth, regardless of parents’ surnames or skin color. That is the Colombia we want to feel and will work for until the last day of our mandate. In this first speech as president of Colombia, before the legislative branch and before my people, I would like to share the ten-point program of my government and my commitments.
- I will work to achieve true and definitive peace: like no one else, like never before. We will comply with the peace agreement and follow the recommendations of the report of the Truth Commission. The “government of life” is the “government of peace.” Peace is the meaning of my life; it is the hope of Colombia. We cannot fail Colombian society. The dead deserve it. The living need it. Life must be the basis of peace: a just and safe life; a life to live “sabroso,” to live happily, so that happiness and progress are our identity.
- I will care for our grandfathers and grandmothers, for our children, for people with disabilities, for people whom history or society has marginalized. We will make a “policy of care” so that no one is left behind. We are a caring society that cares and cares for others. May your government do the same. We will make a policy sensitive to the suffering and pain of others, with tools and solutions to create equality.
- I will govern with and for the women of Colombia. Today, here, we begin a government with gender parity with a ministry of equality. Finally! With our vice president and minister, Francia Márquez, we are going to work so that gender does not determine how much you earn or how you live. We want real equality and security so that Colombian women can walk peacefully and not fear for their lives.
- I will dialogue with everyone, without exceptions or exclusions. This will be an open-door government for anyone who wants to discuss Colombia’s problems — whatever their name is, wherever they come from. The important thing is not where we come from but where we are going. We are united by our desire for the future, not by the weight of the past. We are going to build a Great National Accord to set the roadmap for Colombia in the coming years. Dialogue will be my method, agreements my goal.
- I will listen to Colombians, as I have done for years. We do not govern from a distance, far from the people and disconnected from their realities. On the contrary, we govern by listening. We are going to design mechanisms and dynamics so that all Colombians feel heard in this government. I will not be trapped in the curtains of bureaucracy. I will be close to the problems. I will walk alongside and together with Colombians from all corners of the country. Only those who are present can understand and put themselves in the place of the other.
- I will defend Colombians from violence, and I will work so that families feel safe and at ease. We will do so with a comprehensive security strategy. Colombia needs a strategy that goes from prevention programs to the prosecution of criminal structures and the modernization of the security forces. Lives saved will be our main indicator of success. Security is measured in lives, not in deaths. When security is measured in deaths, that leads the state to commit crime. And this state will not stand for heinous crime. This state is a social state of law. Crime is fought in many ways. All of them are essential. I want to defend Colombian families from daily and everyday insecurity — be it from machista violence or any other violence.
- I will fight corruption with a firm hand and without hesitation — a government of “zero tolerance.” We will recover what was stolen, we will be vigilant so that it does not happen again, and we will transform the system to discourage this type of practice. Not family, not friends, not colleagues, not collaborators — no one is excluded from the weight of the law, from the commitment against corruption, and from my determination to fight against it. From now on, the state intelligence corps will not persecute the political opposition, nor the free press, nor the judiciary, nor those who think differently. Today, the main objective of the state intelligence corps is to locate and fight corruption.
- I will protect our soil and subsoil, our seas and rivers, our air and sky. Our landscapes define us and fill us with pride. And for that reason, I will not allow the greed of a few to put our biodiversity at risk. We will confront the uncontrolled deforestation of our forests and promote the development of renewable energies. Colombia will be a world power of life. Planet Earth is the common home of human beings. And Colombia, from its enormous natural wealth, will lead this fight for planetary life.
- I will develop national industry, the popular economy, and the Colombian countryside. We will prioritize the peasant woman, the woman of the popular economy, the micro, small, and medium entrepreneurs of Colombia. But our invitation is to produce, to work, to be aware that we will only be a rich society if we work, and that work — more and more in the twenty-first century — is a property of the knowledge of the brain, of human intelligence. We will accompany and support all those who work hard for Colombia: the farmer who rises at dawn, the artisan who keeps our culture alive, the entrepreneur who creates jobs. We need everyone to grow and redistribute wealth. Science, culture, and knowledge are the fuel of the twenty-first century. We are going to develop a society of knowledge and technology.
- I will comply with our constitution. As stated in Article I: “Colombia is a social State under the rule of law, organized as a unitary, decentralized Republic, with autonomy of its territorial entities, democratic, participatory and pluralistic, founded on respect for human dignity, on the work and solidarity of the people who make it up and on the prevalence of the general interest.” We will also develop a new legal framework to make our development sustainable, fair, and egalitarian.
The law, as Paolo Flores d’Arcais says, is the power of those who have no power. We need better laws, new laws at the service of the great majorities, and to guarantee their compliance. I am very confident that the debates in our legislative assemblies will be fruitful and offer results for Colombian society. There is a lot of work to do, and I have full confidence in our representatives.
And finally, I will unite Colombia. We will unite, among all of us, our beloved Colombia. We have to put an end to the division that confronts us as a people. I do not want two countries, just as I do not want two societies. I want a strong, just, and united Colombia. The challenges we face as a nation demand a period of unity and basic consensus. It is our responsibility.
I conclude here with what an Arhuaca child said to me in the ancestral possession ceremony we did on Friday in “the heart of the world,” as the children of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta call it:
In order to harmonize life, to unify the peoples, to heal humanity — feeling the pain of my people, of my people here — may this message of light and truth spread through your veins and through your heart and become acts of forgiveness and global reconciliation, but first in our hearts and in my heart.
Children of Colombia, we have a second chance under the heavens of the earth. Thank you.
Paramedics try to cool Noel's temperature with a cold wet towel around his neck and IV cold fluids before heading to the hospital. (photo: Guardian UK)
As temperatures soar at triple digits, heat-related 911 calls have increased 34% since 2020, with first responders facing the brunt
Noel, an Englishman with diabetes and hypertension, had been moving furniture when his legs gave way. His core temperature was 104F – dangerously hot. (The typical range for a healthy older adult is 97 to 99F.) His blood pressure was also very high at 242/110, and his pulse was racing.
Noel had been lying on the piercing hot concrete ramp for about 45 minutes. A firefighter wrapped an ice cold towel around his neck and inserted IV lines into both arms. It was 3.30pm and the outside temperature hovered above 100F – below the average for the time of year in Phoenix, but several degrees hotter than the previous week when monsoon rains cooled the city.
This was not an isolated incident.
So far this year, 1,215 emergency calls have been designated by dispatch as heat-related – a 34% increase on the same period in 2020, and 18% more than last year. The 911 dispatch data showed 11 heat calls that day but did not include Noel, suggesting the actual numbers could be higher.
Hotspots include areas where the city’s growing unsheltered population are concentrated, but calls are spread across the metropolitan area.
Heat can kill, so once the call comes in it’s a race against time.
The ambulance arrived within five minutes, and the crew helped Noel on to a gurney and into the air conditioned vehicle, where they placed ice packs under his armpits and on his chest. He was hooked up to a cold saline IV drip to start cooling down his core temperature.
“I feel so stupid, I pushed myself too hard,” said Noel, who was lucid but could barely open his eyes as the paramedics turned on the sirens and sped off to the ER.
It’s getting hotter in America’s hottest city, and the fire service is on the frontline of dealing with heat-related emergencies.
So far this summer, almost half the US has been under a heat advisory at one point or another, with record daytime temperatures from the Pacific north-west to Kansas and Oklahoma in the midwest to Texas and Phoenix in the south and New England and Philadelphia in the east.
Scientists warn that dangerous heatwaves will become more frequent and unpredictable unless sweeping action is taken to stop burning fossil fuels and curtail global heating.
But the scale of the health burden – the impact of heat-associated deaths, injuries and illness on individuals and services – is not fully known due to variations in the way incidents are investigated and recorded at the local level.
The Guardian recently shadowed a crew at fire station 18 in central Phoenix on three separate days in order to better understand the impact of extreme heat on first responders.
Station 18 is the busiest in Arizona, with two trucks and two ambulances covering a densely populated section of the city with few trees but plenty of strip malls, low-income apartment blocks and a growing homeless population. Each vehicle has an ice chest with cooling towels, bottled water and saline packs for heat calls.
Three teams – the A, B and C shift – work 24 hours on, 48 hours off, although many do overtime as citywide, the service is short-staffed. The station mascot is a bedbug, an ode to the frequent encounters with the tiny blood suckers.
By the end of July the B shift, which the Guardian followed, had at least five patients – two women, three men – with core temperatures over 108F – which is when their thermometer maxes out and simply reads “high”. All were unconscious and needed intubation (help breathing).
In one case a passerby called 911 after spotting a man face down, unconscious behind a wall. His core temperature at the hospital was 112F – the hottest so far this year.
The crew ripped off his clothes, placed cold towels and ice packs under his armpits, groin, and neck, and administered cold IV fluids through a hole drilled into his shin. He had no gag reflex when the crew tested it, and burn blisters on his arms and neck.
In the ER, he was put inside a body bag filled with ice, what’s known as a hot pocket, in a last-ditch attempt to cool him down. A catheter was inserted to remove any hot urine before transferring him to the ICU.
“You could feel the heat coming off his body … we do everything we can but it’s very hard to come back from that temperature,” said Brennan Johnsson, 27, who is assigned to an ambulance.
Last year’s record for Johnsson was a young homeless woman in her 20s, whose core temperature was 114F. He is relatively new to the service and remembers all the heat calls.
Excessive heat can exacerbate chronic medical conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and asthma, while some drugs – prescription and illicit – can elevate the risk of heat illness. Public health experts agree that heat-associated morbidity and mortality is preventable, but socioeconomic risk factors such as homelessness, addiction and fuel poverty are rising.
Since records began in 2014, there have been just three days during the months of June and July with no 911 calls for heat illness in Phoenix, according to an analysis by APM Research Lab shared with the Guardian.
“Heat affects so much of what the fire service does,” said Rob McDade, the fire department’s public affairs chief. “This environment can be very inhospitable and it’s getting hotter.”
It was around 1pm and 106F when the fire alarm sounded, triggering a Pavlovian-type response from the guys (the crews are all male) who were cleaning up after lunch. The alarm for a fire is distinct to a medical call, and within seconds all four crews were en route with sirens and lights blazing, pulling on heavy protective gear as they rode towards the smoke.
Lofty flames emanated from an air conditioner on the roof of a gift store, the corner unit of a strip mall. Old AC units can overwork, overheat and catch on fire.
It was the third week of June, and by 2pm it was 110F outside. The captain pulled out the crew battling the blaze after about half an hour: when it’s this hot outside, they fatigue faster and it’s harder to cool down. As another team took over inside, the station 18 crew stripped down, poured cold water over their heads and chugged water and Gatorade. Half an hour later, they went back inside.
As temperatures rise every summer, more fire crews are needed to make sure they can be rotated every 30 minutes. At one point, there were seven fire trucks and three ambulances at the scene.
“If you get too hot or dehydrated, it’s game over,” said Brian Peter, a ladder specialist from a neighboring station.
Training is key. As a desert city, Phoenix gets relatively cool in the winter, so when temperatures start edging back up, the firefighters must re-acclimate to extreme heat.
Outside at the station building, a whiteboard details the skills training regimen which includes dragging tires, ladders and sledge across the car park in full gear – twice when the temperature is below 105F, once when it’s above. Station 18 is a teaching hub, and rookies train for hours listening to thrash metal, while the crews make time between calls, cooking, gym workouts and occasional power naps.
“The summer months take a physical toll. Maybe it’s my age, but it’s definitely getting hotter and harder,” said Tim West, 39, a captain with 16 years in the service who said he loses five to 10lb every year.
t’s not just his age. On 13 July 2022, dispatch recorded 52 heat calls – the highest number since records began in 2014. Five of the 10 highest heat call days have been this year, APM Research Lab found.
…
Overheated hikers are among the most costly and challenging calls, and last summer four firefighters were hospitalized after conducting mountain rescues in triple digit temperatures. It’s not just badly prepared out-of-towners, a sprained ankle or snake bite can also turn into a heat emergency as hikers can be hard to reach.
As a result, some popular trailheads now close when the National Weather Service (NWS) issues a heat advisory.
“Hiking calls put a lot of stress on some teams, 100%,” said McDade. “But heat trickles down into everything we do.”
On a hot day, any call can turn into a heat emergency.
A person injured in a traffic accident or a homeless person without shade or adequate clothing can end up with severe burns if their skin is in contact with a hot surface like a road or bench. “If the body is sandwiched between the ground at 150F and direct sunlight, it won’t end well,” said Johnsson.
In Phoenix, the trifecta of extreme heat, homelessness and substance misuse have contributed to hundreds of preventable deaths in recent years.
In one call the Guardian attended, a security guard at a Circle K convenience store found an unresponsive man who had been smoking fentanyl. In another, a recently evicted man with sores over his arms and legs was responsive but confused . Intoxicated individuals can easily overheat, burn and become dehydrated without realizing, but neither wanted to go to hospital, which is pretty much all the fire crew can offer.
But some of the worst heat emergencies this year have come after sundown.
In June and July 2022, the night-time low in Phoenix didn’t fall below 80F on 45 occasions, including 11 nights over 90F. Night-time temperatures in Phoenix are rising twice as fast as daytime temps, according to the NWS. The impact of heat is cumulative, and the body only starts to recover when it drops below 80F.
Last month, the crew responded to what dispatch said was a traffic accident involving a cyclist. It was around 8.30pm but still very hot, and the man had collapsed with heatstroke. He was confused and combative, his core temperature 107F. “At that time, it should be the home straight, people think they’ll be OK,” said firefighter Geoff Pakis, 40. “Heat deaths are 100% preventable.”
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