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A trail of documents shows the DHS watchdog disclosed serious issues with records access in general terms in October 2021.
But documents obtained by The Intercept show that the DHS Office of Inspector General disclosed its access issues in general terms in semiannual reports to Congress in September 2021 and March 2022 and also shared its issues with other inspectors general in October 2021. The reports were met with skepticism by President Joe Biden’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, who appeared to make light of their seriousness. Meanwhile, oversight officials tasked with investigating January 6 are growing increasingly frustrated with what they say is DHS agencies’ refusal to cooperate with the inquiry.
While Congress’s January 6 committee investigation has garnered the most media attention, parallel investigations into the raid of the Capitol are also being conducted by inspectors general at the departments of Defense, Justice, and Interior. Inspectors general enjoy an array of tools including criminal investigators, auditors, and forensics specialists, who are authorized to have timely access to all records relevant to IG responsibilities. Inspectors general are independent from the agencies in which they are embedded and cooperate with each other via the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, or CIGIE.
In the semiannual report to Congress covering April 1, 2021, to September 30, 2021, the DHS OIG describes the agency’s lack of cooperation with its January 6 probe, without getting into details. “The Department significantly delayed access to OIG’s access to Department records,” the office writes, noting that it is required to disclose when that occurs, “thereby impeding the progress of OIG’s review of the January 6 events at the Capitol.”
Asked about the access issues, a spokesperson for the DHS OIG declined to comment, saying, “To preserve the integrity of our work and protect our independence, we do not discuss our ongoing reviews or our communications with Congress.”
On October 7, Cuffari notified other inspectors general in an email that the DHS OIG was facing an unusual amount of pushback on getting relevant records from January 6 — and that the office had reports that DHS employees were being told not to comply. “We have received communication from DHS employees that they have been directed not to comply with our requests,” according to a copy of the email reviewed by The Intercept. “They have also reported concerns regarding their communications with our office about the January 6th and other previous matters.” He also said the office’s general counsel was meeting with the DHS general counsel on the matter.
On October 18, Mark Greenblatt, vice chair of the CIGIE and inspector general for the Department of the Interior, followed up with Cuffari. “Just checking in to see whether things have improved regarding your access issues?” he wrote. “Let me know if we at CIGIE can help in any way.”
Cuffari responded: “DHS OIG carefully documented concerns we had about our access to DHS’ January 6 events at the Capitol documents. I am pleased that we have been able to work through those issues. As I may have mentioned, we are nonetheless issuing a management alert and more formally documenting the concerns in our SAR.” A management alert notifies senior officials at an agency that there is a threat of waste, fraud, or abuse; an SAR is a semiannual report to Congress.
Despite Cuffari’s optimism in October 2021 that the issues with DHS were coming to a close, in the following semiannual report, which covered October 2021 through March 2022, the DHS OIG reported that the access interruptions were continuing. From the report: “During the previous reporting period we included information about Secret Service’s significant delay of OIG’s access to Secret Service records, impeding the progress of our January 6, 2021 review. We continue to discuss this issue with Secret Service.”
While these mentions are vague, they do show that the DHS OIG was actively pursuing the records and raising the access issues outside its own office.
Mayorkas has repeatedly downplayed the notion that the Secret Service was not being cooperative, as well as the OIG’s semiannual reports warning of the same, and instead suggested that the OIG’s requests were unreasonable. Mayorkas may also be concerned about giving ammunition to House Republicans if they come to power following the midterms. Republicans have not been shy to threaten that they are collecting evidence and “building a case” against Mayorkas for not adhering to their hardline border policies.
In a June 14 letter to House Oversight Committee Ranking Member James Comer, Mayorkas wrote that in response to the OIG’s “sweeping” requests, the Secret Service and other DHS agencies have made available “countless documents.” He also complained that many of the records produced “required discussion to ensure proper handling of highly sensitive information.” Of the semiannual reports mentioning the Secret Service’s alleged noncompliance, Mayorkas said he was “concerned” that the report to Congress “does not always provide sufficient context.”
“It is particularly disturbing,” he writes, “that the OIG does not provide any specifics concerning this unfounded assertion, with which the DHS strongly disagrees.”
There may also have been a reason the DHS OIG didn’t disclose the details about the deleted texts in the semiannual report: The office reportedly told the Secret Service later in July that the inquiry into the Secret Service was criminal in nature, and criminal investigations are typically closely held.
The role that the Secret Service played on January 6 is one of the biggest remaining questions about what happened that day. During the unrest, Vice President Mike Pence’s Secret Service detail tried to evacuate him from the Capitol, which would have prevented him from certifying the election results, had Pence not refused. Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a member of the January 6 committee, called Pence’s terse refusal— “I’m not getting in the car”— the “six most chilling words of this entire thing I’ve seen so far.”
Appointed by President Donald Trump in 2019, Cuffari was unanimously confirmed by the Senate, but that may be where the smooth sailing for him ended. Almost immediately, Cuffari was thrust into a brutal power struggle within the OIG, as The Intercept reported last year. Within months, a misconduct investigation into several top OIG officials was launched. The results of that investigation found, among other things, a senior official fantasizing about a fictional assassin from “Game of Thrones” “taking care of” John V. Kelly, then the head of the agency, and generally painting a picture of acrimony and chaos within the agency. Cuffari is now himself under investigation for launching that investigation.
The Intercept was not able to immediately corroborate Cuffari’s suspicions that DHS employees were being told not to cooperate with the oversight office on the January 6 investigation, but a briefing memo from early July shows DHS coaching Customs and Border Protection leadership on ways they could push back against the OIG’s records requests. The memo, which cites discussions with the DHS Office of the General Counsel, was shared with The Intercept by a CBP official concerned that its parent agency was attempting to block inspector general oversight.
The memo bemoans “the high number of OIG audits,” noting that “the OIG has been persistent” in its request for “direct, unfettered access to CBP systems.” (The OIG has reported to Congress detailed allegations about being denied access to the same specific systems, among others.) Legally, the OIG is entitled to transparent access to all internal discussions, documents, and other agency records unless a specific law expressly limits the OIG’s access. It isn’t clear that there is any such law.
“OIG’s access to information is not unlimited,” states the memo, which was produced to prep CBP officials prior to a meeting with the DHS OIG. “For example, CBP is not required to provide information if it is … protected from disclosure in the interest of national defense or national security or in the conduct of foreign affairs.”
The briefing also suggests another legal route to obscure OIG access: the Inspector General Act, which established agency watchdogs in 1978 following the Watergate scandal, could be interpreted to include a reasonableness standard that could be used to deny IG records requests.
The memo cites a single passage in the law dictating what should happen when a request for information is “unreasonably” refused by an agency — and uses the passage as a jumping-off point to speculate about what a “reasonable” refusal might look like. “Although the Inspector General Act does not provide guidance on what is considered ‘reasonable,’ it is possible that the cost could be a factor in deciding whether an OIG request is reasonable, if an appropriate decisionmaker determines that compliance is too costly,” the memo reads, also suggesting that requests could be denied if they were deemed “not relevant” or “overly broad.”
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee, expressed similar concerns about DHS compliance in an August 2 letter to Mayorkas.
Portman’s letter lays blame for the impediments to the DHS OIG’s January 6 investigation on Mayorkas, and a careful reading of Mayorkas does suggest that he wants to limit OIG access. Mayorkas has communicated, Portman writes (emphasis his), “that the Department has worked ‘to provide broad access to information … subject to the Department’s legal obligations’ and noting your commitment to provide ‘timely access to relevant information,’ while also taking issue with the breadth of the requests and their relevancy to the OIG’s review.”
Cuffari had previously told Congress, Portman also notes, that DHS’s general counsel had directed DHS agencies “not to provide the OIG requested documents and information directly” but instead to “first provide responsive records to the General Counsel for review before producing them to the OIG.” This, Portman maintains, is not legally necessary.
For his part, Mayorkas vigorously denies that DHS has played any role in restricting or delaying the inspector general’s access. In the June 14 letter to Comer, Mayorkas writes, “At no time did the Department refuse access to relevant information or impede progress in either of January 6-related reviews.”
However, in an internal memo sent to DHS employees on September 30, 2021 — around the same time Cuffari was raising flags about access — Mayorkas reminds staff that they should cooperate with the DHS OIG. “Any effort to conceal information or obstruct the OIG in carrying out its critical work,” he writes, “is against Department directives and can lead to serious consequences.”
Syria's President Bashar al-Assad meets with Iran's foreign minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, in Damascus, Syria, August 29, 2021. (photo: Reuters)
Opposition war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and activist collective Deir Ezzor 24 said the airstrikes targeted the Ayash Camp in Deir Ez-Zor province run by the Fatimiyoun group made up of Shiite fighters from Afghanistan. The war monitor reported that at least six Syrian and foreign militants were killed in the airstrikes, while Deir Ezzor 24 reported 10 deaths.
Deir Ez-Zor is a strategic province that borders Iraq and contains oil fields. Iran-backed militia groups and Syrian forces control the area and have often been the target of Israeli warplanes in previous strikes.
In Iran, Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani issued a statement later Wednesday condemning the American strike “against the people and infrastructure of Syria.” He also denied that Iran had any link to those targeted. Iran routinely denies arming militia groups targeting U.S. forces in the region, despite weaponry linking back to them.
The U.S. military’s Central Command said the strikes “took proportionate, deliberate action intended to limit the risk of escalation and minimize the risk of casualties.” It did not identify the targets, nor offer any casualty figures from the strikes, which the military said came at the orders of President Biden.
“Today’s strikes were necessary to protect and defend U.S. personnel,” Central Command spokesman Col. Joe Buccino said in a statement.
The U.S. Treasury said the Fatimiyoun has fought numerous battles in Syria and is led by Iran’s elite Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guard.
“The Ayash warehouse is a very important one for Iran’s militias,” Deir Ezzor 24 Chief Executive Omar Abu Layla told the Associated Press. “We expect that Iran will respond, either in al-Tanf or possibly in Iraq.”
Buccino added that the attack was in response to an Aug. 15 attack targeting U.S. forces. That attack saw drones allegedly launched by Iranian-backed militias target the Tanf Garrison used by American forces. U.S. Central Command described the assault as causing “zero casualties and no damage” at the time.
There was no immediate acknowledgment by Syria’s state-run media of the strikes hitting Deir Ez-Zor.
U.S. forces entered Syria in 2015, backing allied forces in their fight against Islamic State.
Stelter's approach to holding the Trumpist media accountable has no place at the new CNN. (photo: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images)
ALSO SEE: Brian Stelter Rebukes CNN on Final Show:
'It's Not Partisan to Stand Up to Demagogues'
Why Brian Stelter’s axing is a very bad omen for CNN.
On this point, if perhaps only on this point, Stelter was in agreement with the CNN executives who had axed Reliable Sources after 30 years and precipitated the host’s departure from the network. In February, CNN’s longtime CEO Jeff Zucker left the network amid declining ratings and several internal scandals, including his own failure to report a consensual office romance with a subordinate. In April, CNN’s parent company, WarnerMedia, merged with Discovery; the new entity celebrated the merger by almost immediately pulling the plug on CNN’s new streaming service, CNN+. Since then, the network’s new CEO, Chris Licht, has been clear about his desire to fortify the network and restore its reputation as the world’s preeminent name in cable news. But the fact that Reliable Sources was Licht’s first target raises real questions about the sort of network he and his colleagues hope to build.
I suppose there were plenty of reasons for CNN to cancel Reliable Sources, which was always a niche show for a niche audience. As a media critic myself, I know far too well that the media beat is generally of marginal public interest—trust me on this—which perhaps made Reliable Sources an easy target for new network bosses looking to trim some fat. To me, it always sort of felt like CNN was effectively donating the time slot for the benefit of the public, even if the public was not always interested in Reliable Sources.
The show sometimes felt like a relic of the pre-internet era, back when media had not yet been disaggregated and mechanisms did not yet exist for regular folks to broadcast their own media criticisms to the world every hour of every day. “We are all members of the media, all helping to make it better,” said Stelter on Sunday, and the assertion perhaps explains why the show no longer felt as necessary as it once did. Even so, the very fact of Reliable Sources’ continued existence said something meaningful about the role CNN saw itself playing in the media sphere, and about the sort of network CNN aspired to be.
For decades, CNN stood for objective, down-the-middle news reporting in the mind of the American media consumer. The network’s pioneering coverage of the Gulf War lent it a certain stature, and it quickly grew a reputation for neutral, credible reporting, becoming uniquely authoritative in the American media sphere. With Reliable Sources, the network aimed to leverage its reportorial credibility into honest, authoritative criticism and analysis of the rest of the media. If you trusted the network’s reporting on the nation and the world, then why wouldn’t you trust its reporting on the media?
The flaw here is that over the past several years, more and more people have come to distrust CNN’s reporting and analysis—a phenomenon that is at least partially attributable to the continuous attacks Donald Trump and his allies have launched at the network in order to blunt the impact of its reporting on and analysis of his incompetent, dishonest presidency. By loudly deeming the network’s output “fake news” and using every justifiably critical story about Trump as evidence that CNN has a grudge against the former president, Trump and his allies have served to undermine the network’s stature while attempting to neutralize its voluminous—and warranted—negative coverage of his presidency and post-presidency. “The president said he wanted to give an award based on which network is the most, quote, dishonest, corrupt, and/or distorted, but his problems with journalism seem to be rooted in the exact opposite,” CNN’s Jake Tapper said on air during a 2017 episode of The Lead. “He hates that which is honest and ethical and precise. Ask yourself why might that be.” Fair question!
I’ll be the first to say CNN could use some fixing. Under Zucker, the network got flabby, increasingly foregrounding less-than-inspiring personalities such as Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon while initially paving the way for the Trump presidency by treating his candidacy as a fun novelty. Then, as if in penance, CNN spent Trump’s presidency in full rebuttal mode, and at times the network felt even more addled by Resistance Brain than its competitor MSNBC did. But if it seemed like some of CNN’s marquee news anchors were frequently stepping outside of their “objectivity” to call out the Trump administration’s mendacities, well, there’s a case to be made that it is actually the job of a free press to resist dishonest demagogues who stand in opposition to democratic principles. (Perhaps especially if you feel like your outlet played a role in elevating those demagogues to power!)
The fact that CNN spent so much of the Trump presidency pushing back on the lies and half-truths peddled by the president as well as his allies in Congress and the right-wing media says less about CNN than it does about the sheer number of lies and half-truths that came out of the Trump administration. The role of an authoritative source in a time of factual instability is to help its audience differentiate between fact and fiction. If, to take a totally arbitrary example, one politician says the election was stolen and another says it wasn’t, it would be a dereliction of reportorial responsibility to simply report the debate rather than to help correct the record. Reporters are supposed to hold public servants accountable—especially those public servants who do a terrible job of serving the public. That’s not bias. That’s just journalism.
The post-merger leadership at CNN have indicated their desire to fix the network by reemphasizing hard news and thus hopefully broadening its appeal across the political spectrum. Sounds nice! Practically, however, what this seems to mean is that the network has become intent on dialing back some of its criticism of Donald Trump, Trump world, and Trump-friendly media outlets—and the hosts and programs most associated with pushing back on Trump are being neutralized or shown the door. Current Warner Bros. Discovery board member John Malone told CNBC last November that he “would like to see CNN evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with, and actually have journalists, which would be unique and refreshing.” In the same interview, Malone, a director emeritus of the libertarian Cato Institute and a big donor to Trump’s 2017 presidential inauguration, also praised Fox News for having “followed an interesting trajectory of trying to have ‘news’ news, I mean some actual journalism, embedded in a program schedule of all opinions.”
This is a very unusual analysis of Fox News’ recent trajectory, to say the least, and it’s an analysis that runs counter to the opinions often voiced on Reliable Sources by Brian Stelter, who in 2020 published a book about Fox News titled Hoax. In it, as well as on his show, Stelter pointed out many of the ways in which Fox News and the Trump administration became increasingly intertwined over the course of the president’s term in office. Stelter’s clarity about Fox News’ flaws led some on the right to describe him as biased. Now, the fear is that these bad-faith critiques have found a receptive audience in the network’s new leadership.
“I know it’s not partisan to stand up for decency and democracy and dialogue. It’s not partisan to stand up to demagogues. It’s required. It’s patriotic. We must make sure we don’t give platforms to those who are lying to our faces,” Stelter said on Sunday. It is dispiriting to think that the new leadership at CNN wants to replatform the charlatans while canceling people like Stelter in the name of balance and objectivity. Not only is this shift hard to justify in journalistic terms—it’s also stupid from a ratings perspective, because nothing CNN does will ever win back those people who are determined for their own reasons to categorize the network as “fake news.” The right won’t stop hating on CNN if CNN goes easy on Trump now; the right will just keep on calling it fake news anyway. If anyone will flock to a less aggressive CNN, it is the board room class, of which Malone is a member, which felt fine about, say, Trump’s tax cuts but are smart enough to know Fox News is never going to report things to them straight.
So what happens next? Stelter, in his signoff, argued that the world needs a strong CNN, and I agree with him. That said, we are never going back to 1991, to a time where there was no internet and massive news outlets could command and sway public opinion. We are never going back to a time where a plurality of Americans will ever trust CNN again. That’s not to say the network no longer speaks with authority; it still does. But strength for CNN is not equivalent to capitulation to bad-faith whining, and it certainly isn’t equivalent to mandating alleged ideological balance on its airwaves. Strength for the network is having the courage to be a reliable source for a world that needs it, even if half the people in that world are never going to want to hear what you have to say.
President Biden speaks at the White House on Aug. 9. (photo: Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
The president is also cancelling up to $20,000 for Pell recipients, and is extending a pause on federal student loan payments through Dec. 31
The forgiveness is expected to apply to Americans earning under $125,000 per year, or $250,000 per year for married couples who file taxes jointly. The White House estimates that nearly 90 percent of relief will go to people earning less than $75,000 and that roughly 20 million borrowers could have their debt completely canceled.
The president is also is extending a pandemic-era pause on federal student loan payments, first implemented under the Trump administration, through Dec. 31.
“In keeping with my campaign promise, my Administration is announcing a plan to give working and middle class families breathing room as they prepare to resume federal student loan payments in January 2023,” Biden tweeted Wednesday. He is expected to discuss the decision more in the afternoon.
Current students with loans are eligible for relief, if their household income was under $250,000 during the last federal student aid award year. Loans must have been originated before July 1 to qualify.
The announcement puts to rest months of deliberation over whether Biden would use his executive authority to forgive a portion of the federal student debt burden. It arrives ahead of congressional midterm elections and could give the Democrats a boost with some voters, but also threaten their standing with those who say the amount is not enough — or too much.
Biden has drawn the ire of activists and some student loan borrowers who were growing tired of promises of a decision that stretched over more than a year. Biden had previously expressed reluctance to grant forgiveness to people who attended elite universities, while moderate Democrats and Republicans derided the policy as fiscally irresponsible.
“With the flick of a pen, President Biden has taken a giant step forward in addressing the student debt crisis by canceling significant amounts of student debt for millions of borrowers,” Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said in a joint statement. “No president or Congress has done more to relieve the burden of student debt and help millions of Americans make ends meet.”
Schumer and Warren had urged the administration to go much further and cancel at least $50,000 per borrower. They said reducing the burden of student loans would help stimulate the economy and close the racial wealth gap, as Black borrowers shoulder a disproportionate amount of debt.
The decision to add additional forgiveness for Pell Grant recipients reflects the White House’s desire to limit debt relief to Americans most in need. Pell grants are a form of aid for families typically earning less than $60,000 a year. It is the largest federal grant for higher education and a critical resource for students from lower-income households.
Seven in 10 college graduates with federal loans also received a Pell Grant, and Pell recipients have on average an additional $4,500 more debt than other college graduates, according to the Institute for College Access & Success, an advocacy organization.
“It’s great to see the president take action to forgive the crushing debt burdens of borrowers from the most disadvantaged backgrounds,” said Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, a left-leaning think tank.
The White House’s decision rejects the warnings of centrist Democratic economists — such as Larry Summers, the former Democratic treasury secretary — who have said it will increase inflation and add to the federal deficit. Republican lawmakers are also expected to blast the White House over the move, arguing it offers unnecessary subsidies to Americans who made bad decisions while doing nothing for those who did not go to college.
Previous estimates have found that canceling $10,000 in student debt per borrower could cost the federal government roughly $230 billion, but that number will be higher with the larger amount for Pell Grant recipients.
“Canceling student debt is expensive, inflationary and unfair to those who paid their student loans and most likely illegal,” said Brian Riedl, a policy analyst at the Manhattan Institute, a center-right think tank. “It does nothing to prevent universities from raising costs and students from borrowing more money in anticipation of future loan forgiveness.”
Republicans have remained steadfast in their disapproval of broad cancellation, arguing that Biden would be placing the burden of the broken student loan system on the backs of taxpayers.
This month, a group of congressional Republicans, led by Rep. Virginia Foxx (N.C.), released what they called an alternative to Biden’s blanket debt-forgiveness plans. The proposal would establish new borrowing limits, reduce interest and simplify repayment options while ending popular loan-cancellation programs. It also calls for an end to the suspension of federal student loan payments.
A recent Government Accountability Office report, requested by Foxx, shows the federal government is on track to lose $197 billion in revenue from the lending program in part due to the suspension of payments and interest.
On Wednesday, Foxx said, “This is a slap in the face to those who never went to college, as well as borrowers who upheld their responsibility to taxpayers and paid back their loans. It’s a signal to every freshman stepping foot on campus to borrow as much as they can because taxpayers are picking up the tab.”
The current pause had been set to end Aug. 31. But now, approximately 41 million Americans will have another four months before their payments resume. The moratorium was first instituted in 2020 because of the economic upheaval caused by the pandemic. The Trump administration twice extended it, and Biden’s White House has now done so five times.
The latest extension is as much a reprieve for the Education Department as it is for borrowers. The federal agency has a host of initiatives underway — including lifting millions of people out of default, and helping millions more move closer to loan forgiveness — and limited staff to do them.
More than 100 congressional Democrats raised those concerns in a letter to Biden last month, urging the president to maintain the suspension of payments while the department executes those actions. They argued that resuming payments would also force millions to choose between paying their loans and living expenses as consumer prices sit at record highs.
Still, the Biden administration has frustrated borrowers, policymakers and its own student loan servicers by waiting to announce an extension days before payments were set to resume. The delay created confusion, as some borrowers received notices of the impending restart from their servicers in error.
A Russian serviceman guards in an area of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station in territory under Russian military control, southeastern Ukraine, May 1, 2022. (photo: AP )
Speaking with The Daily Beast, employees at the Zaporizhzhya power plant in Ukraine risked Putin’s wrath to reveal what’s really going on in Europe’s largest nuclear facility.
Escalating attacks on the Ukrainian city of Enerhodar, where the Zaporizhzhya plant is located, have sparked global panic—and for good reason. Ukraine has accused Russia of shelling the city from the plant grounds. Ukrainian soldiers say they shoot at Russian positions in the town, but not the direction of the plant. In an alarming warning this month, the United Nations nuclear watchdog announced that the situation at the plant has reached a “grave hour.”
Meanwhile, the workers needed to keep the plant safe and operational are left caught in the crossfires of a Catch 22 for the ages.
A power plant specialist in his forties, who chose to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of his position at the facility, told The Daily Beast he feels duty-bound to remain in the city despite the danger, fearing a worse fate for his country and the world should Ukrainians abandon the city.
“I’m staying because I don’t want another Chernobyl,” he said from a humanitarian center in Enerhodar, referring to the 1986 nuclear disaster in Ukraine’s north, which was part of the Soviet Union at the time. “The difference is that Chernobyl was six times smaller than the power plant we now have. Should something happen to this one, it will be a disaster for the whole world. Work is work and I feel responsible. Ukrainians must do their job.”
That’s not to say he’s not afraid for himself and his family. “The place is becoming unsafe,” he said, adding that both Russian intelligence and Ukrainian intelligence forbid the plant’s workers from speaking openly. “We are sending our families to safer places, but the men must stay behind.”
But other Ukrainian workers are choosing to leave. Thirty-year-old Serhii, an engineer and electricity specialist at the plant, recently quit his job at the plant after eight years, choosing to take his wife and baby daughter to Kyiv. “The shelling has become much worse, and it is no longer safe to stay for me and my family,” Serhii told The Daily Beast.
“Some workers have worked in the plant for generations, like their fathers and grandfathers. They can’t imagine their lives without it. But I will not return unless the place is free from occupation.”
Residents visiting the humanitarian center said they believed the escalated bombardment was triggered a month ago—after Ukrainian forces used a drone to target Russian military locations in areas surrounding the plant, which caused some casualties on the Russian side.
Some residents have claimed that Russian forces at checkpoints of Enerhodar are trying to convince residents to stay, referring to areas taken by Russian forces as “liberated territories” previously under “Nazi control.”
Any workers choosing to leave, including Serhii, must undergo a registration process and investigation by Russian forces into the reasons given—a process which takes up to five days of queuing at a Russian checkpoint.
The Zaporizhzhya power plant was built during the former regime of the Soviet Union. It was attacked and taken over by Russian military forces within days of the start of the war around six months ago, leaving Ukrainian staff to continue to operate the plant under Russian military guards ever since.
The town was mainly built for the power station, so the majority of the residents have connections to the plant. Most live in a complex of buildings specifically built for nuclear plant workers and their families.
A Ukrainian mother who was on her way out of the city with her daughter and granddaughter told The Daily Beast she was heading to Kyiv after almost 30 years in Enerhodar. Her husband and son-in-law, who work at the plant, are choosing to stay.
“It was a tough decision for us to leave after such a long time,” said the woman who worked as a teacher and requested anonymity. “I was always confident that the city would be protected because it has the nuclear plant… [but then] I saw the Russians from my window while they were shelling into the city from residential buildings. When artillery shells and bombardment became frequent, we became very scared,” she added.
At Vasylivka checkpoint, the last checkpoint controlled by Russian forces some 60 kilometers from Zaporizhzhya city, “the Russians were interrogating me about everything. They searched my laptop and our mobiles,” said the teacher.
One electric engineer, who wanted to go by the alias “Alexander,” still hopes that the latest bombardment of the strategic nuclear city is nothing more than a fear mongering ploy by Russia to gain the upper hand in the conflict. “There are very few strategic benefits of bombarding this place other than spreading fear,” he told The Daily Beast.
The 37-year-old, who has been working for the plant for 13 years, said he was on duty when the Russians came March 3 and seized control of the plant. As the shelling intensified this month, he decided to take an unpaid “vacation” from his position at the plant, but plans to return.
“It is risky now to go back. I’ve already sent my family away a while ago,” he told The Daily Beast. “But at least this is my home.”
Activists hang a banner outside the Palestinian Al-Haq Foundation in the West Bank city of Ramallah after Israel raided and closed an entrance to their offices, 18 August 2022. (photo: AFP)
Experts say the recent closure of six Palestinian civil society groups will further block ties to international institutions from which they receive most of their funding
So far, European governments, the UN and the US have said they would maintain their relationships with the organisations despite Israel's moves to outlaw them. However, experts say that as long as Israel is able to impede their operations domestically, they soon may have no ability to work with international institutions and could cease to exist altogether.
Last week, Israeli forces raided and closed the offices of seven Palestinian NGOs: Al-Haq; Addameer; the Bisan Center for Research & Development; Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCIP); the Union of Palestinian Women's Committees; the Union of Agricultural Work Committees; and the Union of Health Workers Committees (UHWC).
"The raid and closure of the organisations' offices and the targeting of the general directors already makes it harder for these organisations to normally continue with their work and cooperation with other states and institutions," attorney Rabea Eghbariah of Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, told Middle East Eye.
For months, Israel has been working to outlaw these groups. In October, Israel declared all of the groups, except UHWC, "terrorist groups" - a claim repeatedly denied by the NGOs.
Israel then delivered classified intelligence dossiers to Europe and the US, explaining the claims that the groups had ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a leftist political party with a paramilitary branch.
So far, the European Union has rejected Israel's actions, saying in a nine-member joint statement that they would "continue to stand by international law and support [civil society organisations] that have a role to play in promoting international law, human rights, and democratic values".
The United Nations also condemned Israel's move, with UN experts calling on the international community to continue, and even increase, its funding of the groups.
Eghbariah added that while Israel's designation does not have any international jurisdiction - and so far no other country has followed Israel's lead - the terror labelling may still "expose third parties to liability under Israeli law and deter international actors from cooperating with, platforming or funding these institutions".
The attorney for Adalah, which is representing the six organisations, added that the issuance of travel bans, prison sentences, and the seizure of funding all are real and tangible obstacles that could impede the groups' work at home and abroad.
Travel bans have already been used against the directors of two organisations - Sahar Francis of Addameer and Ubai Aboudi of Bisan - when they were refused entry to the US. Meanwhile, Khaled Quzmar, general director of DCI-Palestine, was arrested by Israel over the weekend.
Funding concerns
Civil society organisations, a key pillar in the social and economic development of Palestinians living in territories occupied since 1967, obtain most of their funding from donor states abroad.
So when Israel moved to label the groups as "terrorists", many experts saw it as a plan to cut off their international funding streams.
"Most people looked at these designations when they first came out 10 months ago and understood this to be an effort to cut off international funding to them. If you cut off international funding to them, they're no longer able to function," Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, told Middle East Eye.
The concerns turned into a reality when in May 2021, European donors of two of the groups - Al-Haq and PCHR - halted payments to them after receiving classified Israeli intelligence claiming that the six prominent Palestine-based NGOs were using EU money to fund the PFLP.
In June, following a 13-month suspension of funding, the EU announced it would resume funding after it found "no suspicions of irregularities and/or fraud" and "did not find sufficient ground to open an investigation".
But even though the donors have recommitted to funding the Palestinian NGOs, Israel's domestic actions against them may make it difficult for Palestinian civil society to utilise or even obtain the funds they need to operate.
"It does mean that these organisations wouldn't be able to have bank accounts even in the Palestinian banks," Adam Shapiro, Director of Advocacy for Israel-Palestine at Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn), told Middle East Eye.
"European countries that are funding these organisations have said that they will resume their funding. Now, that in principle, that's fine," Shapiro said.
But in practice, it can wreak havoc with the mechanism for funding.
"So even though these European countries might want to continue funding, I think they have to find a way to practically get their money into these organisations."
US inaction
On Monday afternoon, 11 advocacy groups led by Dawn sent a joint letter to the Biden administration calling on Washington to demand that Israel reverse its closure of the six Palestinian NGOs.
"The US government's failure to censure Israel's human rights violations while continuing to provide it with matchless military and political support is understood as US acquiescence to these actions," the letter said.
The United States, one of Israel's closest allies, has met the country's targeting of the Palestinian groups with a mixed and relatively muted response.
In a report by The Guardian on Monday, a CIA assessment "doesn't say that the groups are guilty of anything", in response to Israel's dossier pertaining to the six Palestinian groups' alleged terror links.
Yet despite this, the US has yet to condemn Israel's actions against the group or call for a reversal of the terror label.
On Monday, State Department Spokesperson Ned Price declined to comment on the CIA's reported assessment but said that the US government had analysed Israel’s evidence for the terror charge.
"We have not followed through with any designations, nor have we changed our approach to these organisations," he said.
"We continue to seek additional information from our Israeli partners."
Friedman said that by not offering a clear rejection of Israel's actions, "it's like being guilty until proven innocent".
"It's as if we're going to basically operate in a space where we're never going to stand up to Israel on this," she told MEE.
"How long do you keep this process open before these organisations really can't function anymore? At which point taking a position is irrelevant."
A bulldozer clears forest that will be the line of the Maya Train in Puerto Morelos, Mexico, on Aug. 2. (photo: Eduardo Verdugo/AP)
Residents fear it will pollute the caves that supply them with water, endanger their children and cut off their access to the outside world.
One controversial stretch cuts a more than 68-mile (110-kilometer) swath through the jungle between the resorts of Cancun and Tulum, over some of the most complex and fragile underground cave systems in the world.
It is one of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s signature projects and has drawn objections from environmentalists, archaeologists and cave divers, who have held protests to block backhoes from tearing down trees and scraping clean the thin layer of soil.
But for the largely Maya inhabitants of the village of Vida y Esperanza — a clutch of about 300 people and 70 houses whose name means “Life and Hope” — the train is going to run right by their doors. They fear it will pollute the caves that supply them with water, endanger their children and cut off their access to the outside world.
A few miles away from the acres of felled trees where the train is supposed to run, archaeologist and cave diver Octavio Del Rio points to the Guardianes cave that lies directly beneath the train’s path. The cave’s limestone roof is only two or three feet thick in some places, and would almost certainly collapse under the weight of a speeding train.
“We are running the risk that all this will be buried, and this history lost,” Del Rio says.
López Obrador dismisses critics like Del Rio as “pseudo environmentalists” funded by foreign governments.
As with his other signature projects, including a new airport in the capital and a massive new oil refinery on the gulf, the president exempted the train from environmental impact studies and last month invoked national security powers to forge ahead, overriding court injunctions.
Many critics say López Obrador’s obsession with the projects threatens Mexico’s democratic institutions. But the president counters that he just wants to develop the historically poor southern part of Mexico.
“We want to take advantage of all the tourism that arrives in Cancun, so they can take the Maya Train to see other natural beauty spots, especially the ancient Mayan cities in Yucatán, Campeche, Chiapas, Tabasco,” which are poor neighboring states, López Obrador said earlier this month.
But the Maya themselves are people scraping a living from the limestone bed of the dry tropical jungle. The ancient Mayan civilization reached its height from 300 A.D. to 900 A.D. on the Yucatan Peninsula and in adjacent to parts of Central America, and they are best known for constructing monumental temple sites like Chichen Itza.
The Mayas’ descendants continue to live on the peninsula, many speaking the Mayan language and wearing traditional clothing, while also conserving traditional foods, crops, religion and medicine practices, despite the conquest of the region by the Spanish between 1527 and 1546.
“I think that there is nothing Maya” about the train, said Lidia Caamal Puc, whose family came from the Mayan town of Peto, in the neighboring Yucatan state, to settle here 22 years ago. “Some people say it will bring great benefits, but for us Mayas that work the land, that live here, we don’t see any benefits.”
“Rather, it will hurt us, because, how should I put it, they are taking away what we love so much, the land.”
When marines showed up last month to start cutting down trees in preparation for the train on the edge of the village, residents who hadn’t been paid for their expropriated land stopped them from working.
The head of the village council and a supporter of the train, Jorge Sánchez, acknowledged that the government “had not paid the people who were affected” even though the government has said they will get compensation.
But it’s not just about the money, Sánchez said. “It will bring back jobs for our people.”
The 950-mile (1,500-kilometer) Maya Train line will run in a rough loop around the Yucatan Peninsula, connecting beach resorts and archaeological sites. But in Vida y Esperanza, the train will cut directly through the narrow, rutted four-mile (six-kilometer) dirt road that leads to the nearest paved highway.
For more than two years, Mayan communities have been objecting to the train line, filing court challenges arguing the railway violated their right to a safe, clean environment, and to be consulted; in 2019, the Mexico office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights found that what consultations the government did do were flawed.
The question about the economics of the train, and tourism income, is more complex, in part because no credible feasibility studies were done. The project is expected to cost about $8 billion — but appears likely to rise to as much as $11 billion — while the government calculates it will bring in $9.5 billion in revenue or “benefits.”
But those estimates are widely doubted because López Obrador is essentially betting on luring sun-and-sand beachgoers to the ruins and Indigenous towns for so-called “cultural tourism.” It is not clear how many want to combine those two activities, especially if the highspeed train zooms past the beauties of the low jungle.
International tourism to the country has started to recover from pandemic losses, with the strongest showing from U.S. visitors. In the first half of 2022, just over 10 million tourists arrived from January to June, 1.5% higher than the first half of 2019. But overall tourist spending remains below pre-pandemic levels.
Unless the army, which is building the train line, constructs a large overpass bridge above the tracks, villagers would be forced to take a back road four times as long to get to the highway. It would no longer make economic sense to live there.
The government tourism agency that oversees the train project, Fonatur, says an overpass will be built for Vida y Esperanza. But such promises have gone unfulfilled in the past.
And the army plans to fill the underground caves to support the weight of the passing trains, which could block or contaminate the underground water system.
The high-speed train can’t have at-grade crossings, and won’t be fenced, so that 100-mile per hour (160-kph) trains will rush past an elementary school. Most of the students walk to get there.
Just as bad, the train project has divided Vida y Esperanza.
Luis López, 36, who works at a local store and opposes the train, said “it might bring minor benefits, but it has downsides.”
“The cenotes will be filled or contaminated,” he said, referring to the sinkholes that villagers rely on. “I survive on the water from a cenote, to wash dishes, to bathe.”
Many residents of Vida y Esperanza, who rely on diesel generators, would much rather have electricity than a tourist train that will rush by and never stop there.
Mario Basto, 78, a wiry resident who works as a gardener, said he’d rather have decent medical care than the train.
“It seems like the government has money it just needs to get rid of, when there are hundreds of hospitals that don’t have medicine,” Basto said.
And there are some people in Vida y Esperanza who support the train project, almost entirely because of jobs it has brought during construction.
Benjamin Chim, a taxi and truck driver who is already employed by the Maya Train, will also lose part of his land to the project. But he says he doesn’t care, noting “it is going to be a benefit, in terms of jobs.”
“They are taking a bit of land, but it’s a bit that doesn’t have any symbolic value, for me it doesn’t mean anything,” Chim said.
While the president’s supporters have claimed that anybody who opposes the train isn’t really Mayan, that would be news to people in Vida y Esperanza, where residents swear that Mayan spirits, known as “Aluxes,” inhabit the forest.
Locals pacify the spirits by leaving a small drink of wine out for them.
Bright blue-green Toh birds, tarantulas, blue morpho butterflies, iguanas and the occasional jaguar cross the roads and jungle.
And it would also threaten something older than even the Mayas.
Del Rio, the archaeologist, discovered human remains of the Maya’s ancestors that may date as far back as 13,700 years in another cave network — but it took him and other divers 1 1/2 years to snake through a single cavern system. “This is work that takes years, years,” he said.
López Obrador wants to finish the entire train in 16 months by filling the caves with cement or sinking concrete columns through the caverns — the only places that allowed humans to survive in this area.
But for the villagers, much of the damage has already been done.
“They have already stolen our tranquility, the moment they cut through to lay the train line,” Caamal Puc said.
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