14 October 22
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The final hearing of the January 6 committee lays the foundation
The committee voted unanimously to subpoena Trump to answer questions before the committee under oath. Elizabeth Cheney, committee vice-chairman, said “he must be accountable. He is required to answer for his actions.” But subpoenaing Trump seems largely a symbolic gesture — unless Trump decides he wants to present “his side” to the American people and is prepared to lie up the wazoo, regardless of legal consequences. Although the legal issues involved in subpoenaing a former president may pass legal muster, the length of time it would take to litigate the issue will all but certainly carry on beyond the select committee’s tenure, which ends in January.
Today’s hearing provided the final piece of the puzzle for making a criminal case against Trump: his state of his mind -- what he knew and intended in committing at least two federal crimes: 18 U.S.C. 371, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and 18 U.S.C. 1512, obstruction of Congress. The issue of criminal intent will be central to any criminal trial.
Today’s hearing comes 27 days before a critical midterm election in which most Republican candidates deny that Biden won the 2020 presidential election — not because of any credible evidence but solely because Trump has continued to make the baseless claim that he won, and has convinced almost two-thirds of Republican voters of that Big Lie.
Recap of the first seven hearings:
Today’s hearing recapped much of the first seven hearings, including:
— An Oval Office meeting on December 18, where Trump had to choose between what Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien called “Team Normal” and what some Trump advisers called “Team Crazy.” In that “unhinged” meeting, “Team Crazy,” including Trump lawyer Sidney Powell and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, produced a draft executive order they had prepared where they proposed that the U.S. military seize state election machines. “Team Normal” opposed the plan.
— On December 19, just hours after the draft Executive Order was rejected and the hours-long meeting ended, Trump sent his “will be wild” tweet. The evidence presented made clear that the far-right militia and other figures understood that tweet as a call to violence.
— Michael Flynn and Roger Stone, both of whom Trump had pardoned during the time between the election and January 6, had direct relationships with violent right-wing groups. One rally organizer explained that Trump wanted to surround himself with such people because they were “very very vicious in publicly defending him.”
— Trump endangered the safety of Vice President Pence and his family on January 6 by tweeting criticism of Pence, which unleashed the mob to go after Pence, chanting “hang Mike Pence.” Trump watched the riots unfold on television for hours without lifting a finger to protect the Vice President, his family, or Members of Congress, despite pleas from Trump family members, White House advisors, and Republican congressional leaders.
— Trump sought to name a Justice Department minion as the new Attorney General who then planned to send letters to Trump-friendly state legislatures alleging widespread fraud in their states – without a shred of evidence. The proposed letters would urge these friendly state legislatures to exploit the “failed choice” loophole in antiquated 19th-century laws and substitute their own Trump presidential electors for the Biden electors that had been chosen by the voters on Election Day. Trump’s own top Justice Department officials killed this scheme to steal the presidency.
Today’s hearing:
Today’s final hearing also presented damning new evidence about Trump’s state of mind. As committee vice-chair Liz Cheney stated: “Today we will focus on his state of mind. Trump had a premeditated plan to claim the election was stolen before Election Day. Trump was better informed about the absence of widespread election fraud than almost any American.”
The committee then showed evidence that:
1. Trump concocted his plan long before Election Day. Knowing that mail-in votes would be more likely cast for Biden and would not be counted until possibly days after Trump had taken the lead on Election Day, Trump planned to give a false election victory speech on the evening of Election Day. Even though the networks were starting to call the race for Biden, Trump declared victory and demanded that voting counts stop. “This is a fraud on the American public, an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election, we did win this election.”
2. Trump knew he lost. He also knew that there was no evidence of fraud or irregularities sufficient to change the outcome. In none of 62 court cases was he able to establish election fraud. His Attorney General told him there had been no fraud. His advisors repeatedly told him there was no evidence of fraud sufficient to change the outcome. The Supreme Court rejected his case on December 11. Electors voted on December 14. His senior staff advised him to concede. Nonetheless, Trump’s intended to ignore the rule of law to stay in power.
3. Trump was personally and directly involved in a plan to remain in power, regardless.
(1) He knew he was lying when he told the public that Dominion Voting machines were rigged against him, when he told the public there were more votes than voters, and when he told the public about a “vote dump” in Detroit. He purposely and maliciously repeated these lies to the public over and over again.
(2) He knew his allegations of fraud in Georgia were false. But he nonetheless sought to pressure the Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger into giving him the votes he needed, saying “I want to find 11,780 votes.” When the secretary of state demurred, Trump threatened that he’d be prosecuted.
(3) He also tried to pressure election officials in Arizona and Michigan, knowing he lost those states.
(4) Knowing he lost the election, he also pressured the Justice Department to change the results of the election until Justice Department officials threatened mass resignation.
(5) He sought to replace real Biden electors with fake Trump electors on January 6. He knew this was illegal.
(6) He tried to get Vice President Pence to unilaterally disregard the electoral count. Trump knew this was illegal.
(7) He intentionally summoned his supporters to the Capitol, and then, knowing they were armed, intended that they march to the Capitol.
(8) Even before his Ellipse speech, he knew there would be violence. He knew people coming to Washington planned to attack the Capitol and that multiple users online were targeting members of Congress. The Secret Service had this information at least 10 days before the attack. On January 6, during his speech on the Ellipse, Trump knew the crowd was armed and dangerous.
4. Even when Trump knew about the violence unfolding at the Capitol on January 6, he refused to call off the mob.
Next steps?
This is probably the last of the committee’s hearings. If Republicans succeed in their drive to win the House majority (which seems likely), they will almost certainly disband the committee in January and shut down any official accounting by Congress for the largest attack on the Capitol in centuries.
This means the panel has less than three months to finish up its investigation, write and release its final report (likely in December), make any legislative recommendations, and decide whether to make a criminal referral to the Justice Department.
The January 6 committee, led by Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-WY), has done America a great service — giving the nation exactly what it has most needed: an accounting of what occurred January 6, why it occurred, and Trump’s role in it.
Whether this will lead to Trump being held criminally accountable does not depend on the committee making a criminal referral. Regardless of whether it makes such a referral, that decision is solely up to the U.S. Attorney General, Merrick Garland (who would now be sitting on the Supreme Court had it not been for Mitch McConnell and a Republican Senate majority).
But the committee’s work — its investigation and its public hearings — have played a part in persuading Garland to move forward with a criminal case against Trump. If you’d asked me six months ago, I’d have said Garland would not do so, for fear of dividing the nation even more deeply. Now, I believe he will.
READ MOREMembers of the Oath Keepers provide security for Roger Stone at a rally in Washington on Jan. 5, 2021, the night before a mob attacked the U.S. Capitol. (photo: Jim Urquhart/Reuters)
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol held what may have been its final public hearing Thursday. The meeting ended with the committee unanimously voting to subpoena former President Donald Trump, setting up a likely court battle. Committee members said the former president is at the center of what happened January 6th, when far-right insurrectionists attacked the Capitol in an effort to keep Trump in power.
Today we spend the hour airing excerpts of the hearing. We begin with Democratic Congressmember Zoe Lofgren of California, who detailed how Trump had developed a plan to declare victory in the 2020 election regardless of the actual outcome.
REP. ZOE LOFGREN: A few days before the election, Mr. Trump also consulted with one of his outside advisers, inside activist Tom Fitton, about the strategy for election night. The select committee got this pre-prepared statement from the National Archives. As you can see, the draft statement, which was sent on October 31st, declares, “We had an election today — and I won.”
And the Fitton memo specifically indicates a plan that only the votes counted by the Election Day deadline — and there is no Election Day deadline — would matter. Everyone knew that ballot counting would lawfully continue past Election Day. Claiming that the counting on election night must stop, before millions of votes were counted, was, as we now know, a key part of President Trump’s premeditated plan.
On Election Day, just after 5 p.m., Mr. Fitton indicated he had spoken with the president about the statement. “Sending along again. Just talked to him about the draft below…” Again, this plan to keep — to declare victory was in place before any of the results had been determined.
In the course of our investigation, we also interviewed Brad Parscale, President Trump’s former campaign manager. He told us he understood that President Trump planned as early as July that he would say he won the election even if he lost.
And just a few days before the election, Steve Bannon, a former Trump chief White House strategist and outside adviser to President Trump, spoke to a group of his associates from China and said this.
STEPHEN BANNON: And what Trump’s going to do is just declare victory. Right? He’s going to declare victory. But that doesn’t mean he’s the winner; he’s just going to say he’s the winner. …
The Democrats — more of our people vote early that count. Theirs vote in mail. And so, they’re going to have a natural disadvantage, and Trump’s going to take advantage of it. That’s our strategy. He’s just going to declare himself a winner. So, when you wake up Wednesday morning, it’s going to be a firestorm. …
Also — also, if Trump is — if Trump is losing by 10:00 or 11:00 at night, it’s going to be even crazier. No, because he’s going sit right there and say, “They stole it.”
UNIDENTIFIED: Yeah, agree.
STEPHEN BANNON: “I’m directing the attorney general to shut down all ballot places in all 50 states.” It’s going to be — no, he’s not going out easy. If Trump — if Biden is winning, Trump is going to do some crazy [bleep].
REP. ZOE LOFGREN: As you know, Mr. Bannon refused to testify in our investigation. He’s been convicted of criminal contempt of Congress, and he’s awaiting sentencing. But the evidence indicates that Mr. Bannon had advance knowledge of Mr. Trump’s intent to declare victory falsely on election night, but also that Mr. Bannon knew about Mr. Trump’s planning for January 6th. Here’s what Bannon said on January 5th.
STEPHEN BANNON: All hell is going to break loose tomorrow. … It’s all converging, and now we’re on, as they say, the point of attack, right? The point of attack tomorrow. … I’ll tell you this: It’s not going to happen like you think it’s going to happen. OK? It’s going to be quite extraordinarily different. And all I can say is strap in. … You have made this happen, and tomorrow it’s game day. So, strap in. Let’s get ready.
REP. ZOE LOFGREN: Another close associate of Donald Trump apparently knew of Mr. Trump’s intentions, as well. Now, Roger Stone is a political operative with a reputation for dirty tricks. In November 2019, he was convicted of lying to Congress and other crimes, and sentenced to more than three years in prison. He’s also a longtime adviser to President Trump and was in communication with President Trump throughout 2020. Mr. Trump pardoned Roger Stone on December 23rd, 2020. …
Right before the election, here’s Roger Stone talking about what President Trump would do after the election.
ROGER STONE: Let’s just hope we’re celebrating. I suspect it’ll be — I really do suspect it will still be up in the air. But when that happens, the key thing to do is to claim victory. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. “No, we won. [Bleep] you. Sorry. Over. We won. You’re wrong. [Bleep] you.”
I said, [bleep] the voting, let’s get right to the violence.
UNIDENTIFIED: That’s what I’m [bleep] saying. There’s no point.
ROGER STONE: We’ll have to start smashing pumpkins if you know what I mean.
UNIDENTIFIED: Oh, yeah.
REP. ZOE LOFGREN: The select committee called Mr. Stone as a witness, but he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
INVESTIGATOR: Do you believe the violence on January 6th was justified?
ROGER STONE: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer your question on the basis of the Fifth Amendment.
INVESTIGATOR: And, Mr. Stone, did you have any role in planning for the violence on January 6th?
ROGER STONE: Once again, I will assert my Fifth Amendment right to decline to answer your question.
REP. ZOE LOFGREN: Although we don’t yet have all the relevant records of Roger Stone’s communications, even Stone’s own social media posts acknowledge that he spoke with Donald Trump on December 27th as preparations for January 6th were underway.
In this post, you can see how Roger Stone talked about his conversations with President Trump. He wrote, “I also told the president exactly how he can appoint a special counsel with full subpoena power to ensure those who are attempting to steal the 2020 election through voter fraud are charged and convicted and to ensure Donald Trump continues as our president.”
As we know by now, the idea for a special counsel was not just an idle suggestion. It was something President Trump had actually tried to do earlier that month.
We know that Roger Stone was at the Willard Hotel on January 5th and 6th, and we know from other witness testimony that President Trump asked his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to speak with Roger Stone and General Michael Flynn that night.
In addition to his connection to President Trump, Roger Stone maintained extensive direct connections to two groups responsible for violently attacking the Capitol: the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys. Individuals from both of these organizations have been charged with the crime of seditious conspiracy.
And what is seditious conspiracy? It is a conspiracy to use violent force against the United States, to oppose the lawful authority of the United States.
Multiple associates of Roger Stone from both the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys have been charged with this crime. Close associates of Roger Stone, including Joshua James, have pled guilty to this crime.
We know that at least seven Oath Keepers who have been criminally charged provided personal security for Roger Stone or were seen with him on January 6th or in the weeks leading up to January 6th. For example, Joshua James, the leader of the Alabama Oath Keepers, provided security for Roger Stone and was with him on January 5th. This is the picture of the two together on January 5th. James entered the Capitol on January 6th. He assaulted a police officer. Earlier this year, he pled guilty to seditious conspiracy and obstruction of Congress.
Another example is the married couple, Kelly and Connie Meggs. Kelly Meggs was the leader of the Florida chapter of the Oath Keepers. Both he and his wife provided security for Roger Stone, and both are charged with leading a military-style stack attack of Oath Keepers, attacking the Capitol on January 6th.
Perhaps even more disturbing is Roger Stone’s close association with Enrique Tarrio, the national chairman of the Proud Boys. Roger Stone’s connection with Enrique Tarrio and the Proud Boys is well documented by video evidence, with phone records the select committee has obtained. Tarrio, along with other Proud Boys, has been charged with multiple crimes concerning the attack on January 6th, including seditious conspiracy. During the attack, Tarrio sent a message to other Proud Boys claiming, “We did that.” He also visited the White House on December 12th. Later that day, he posted a disturbing video claiming credit for the attack. This video, posted on January 6th, was apparently created prior to the attack.
This big lie — President Trump’s effort to convince Americans that he had won the 2020 election — began before the election results even came in. It was intentional, it was premeditated. It was not based on election results or any evidence of actual fraud affecting the results, or any actual problems with voting machines. It was a plan concocted in advance to convince his supporters that he won. And the people who seemingly knew about that plan in advance would ultimately play a significant role in the events of January 6th.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Democratic Congressmember Zoe Lofgren of California.
Andriy and Iryna Grycenko (center) mourn the death of their 11-year-old daughter, Anastasiya, at her funeral in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Sept. 20. Anastasiya was killed on Sept. 17 when a Russian S-300 missile obliterated her home in Chuhuiv. At right is Iryna's sister, Anastasiya's aunt, Rimma Leiba. (photo: Pete Kiehart/NPR)
Iryna Grycenko and her husband, Andriy, proposed to their 11-year-old daughter, Anastasiya, that they should get out of Kharkiv for a few days and spend the weekend at their dacha, a traditional country home, in nearby Chuhuiv. "Nasta," as the girl's family called her, was excited about the plan. She had a bike in Chuhuiv that her parents let her ride.
Soon after they arrived, Andriy and Iryna went out to deliver some food packets to local elderly residents. Nasta stayed home. Then three large explosions rocked the city.
"This is where she was lying," says neighbor Mychailo Kantemyriv, who found Nasta after the missile struck. He says she was still alive and conscious, lying next to the crater where the house had once stood.
"And she asked, 'Why did this happen to me? I didn't do anything bad to them.'" The burly man who says he's the chief of this street chokes back tears as he recalls Nasta in her final moments before she died.
Across town, her parents heard the explosions. They could see the smoke. Iryna's first thought was, "Nasta!" and she raced toward their cottage.
Every day, local officials in Ukraine announce grim statistics about the war. This number of people were injured. That number of people died.
United Nations human rights workers have verified at least 6,221 civilians killed in the more than seven months of war — hundreds of them children — but say they believe the actual civilian death toll is much higher.
Nasta's father, Andriy, is adamant that his 11-year-old daughter isn't just a statistic.
A statistic isn't someone you pick up from the loading dock of the morgue back in Kharkiv.
Andriy and Iryna stood in a cold, drizzling rain behind the city's main public hospital. The loading dock is a concrete slab that drops off sharply to allow trucks and ambulances to dispense their cargo more easily. It could be the loading dock for a commercial kitchen.
Eventually, a pink, satin-lined coffin holding Nasta's body is carried out. Iryna throws herself on the coffin, wailing. Eventually Andriy gently pulls Iryna back. Friends of the family carry Nasta's body down from the loading dock and slide the coffin into the back of a waiting white cargo van.
Leaving the morgue, NPR translator Polina Lytvynova notes that the scene there was incredibly hard to watch. And she says listening to a mother sobbing over her daughter's body was even harder.
"I could hear her saying [in Russian], 'Forgive me. Forgive me,'" Lytvynova says.
"She said: 'I don't want to live without you. Who will meet me when I come home from work?'"
The white van carries Nasta's coffin to a complex of simple Soviet-era apartment blocks. The Grycenkos' apartment is on the fourth floor. Nasta grew up here. Despite the rain, her open casket is placed on the walkway leading up to the apartment building.
Neighbors place bouquets of flowers on her coffin. A girl who appears to be about Nasta's age, 10 or 11, cries inconsolably.
One of the Grycenkos' downstairs neighbors, Valentina Ovcharenko, who says she's known Nasta since she was born, passes out small bags of sweets. Ovcharenko has a flat two floors below the Grycenkos and says people in the neighborhood have been crying for days over Nasta's death. But she says it's been the worst for Nasta's mother.
"Her mother wanted to jump from the balcony," Ovcharenko says. "But she was rescued from this."
Nasta's parents both work for a clothing manufacturing company. Their apartment isn't fancy. Their cottage in Chuhuiv, with its apple trees and a vegetable garden, was also a simple, unassuming house before it was obliterated. It wasn't on a prime piece of land. It backed up against an oil storage depot.
The same barrage of Russian missiles that killed Nasta also blew up several large fuel tanks.
Like most kids in Ukraine, Nasta had been attending online classes.
Sitting on benches in the playground outside their apartment block, Nasta's parents recount how she had always wanted a dog. This year, her 23-year-old brother found a white Labrador for her that she loved. She also liked to sing and to watch patriotic videos on YouTube of Ukrainian soldiers.
"Every time I came back home from work, she showed me videos," Iryna says of her daughter. "And she said, 'Mom, look at them. They're having so much fun.' She really believed that they would protect her."
Iryna stares into the distance as she talks about her daughter.
Ukraine's second-largest city, Kharkiv, is about 30 miles south of the Russian border. The city is predominantly Russian speaking, and it maintained close economic, cultural and social ties to Russia before the war. Iryna and Andriy go back and forth between speaking Russian and Ukrainian as they talk about their daughter being killed by a Russian missile.
"You know, I believe that not all people in Russia are so cruel and horrible like Russian soldiers," Iryna says. She pauses as if she's pondering all of the Russians, all of the soldiers. Then she adds, "But I just want the war to stop."
Nasta's funeral takes place under a chilling rain at a sprawling graveyard named Cemetery 18 in Kharkiv.
Just a few hundred yards from her grave, a funeral is also taking place for a soldier in a section of the cemetery adorned with yellow-and-blue Ukrainian flags.
After the nails are pounded into Nasta's pink coffin and she's lowered into the ground, Andriy comes over to me and Lytvynova. "Tell the world what the Russians did to my daughter," he says.
Iryna can barely walk. Her sister eases her into a car as they leave.
A few days after the funeral, Iryna says she's still trying to accept the fact that there's a person in Russia who pushed the button that launched the missile that killed her daughter.
"I don't wish them death," Iryna says slowly. "Because I never wish anyone dead." She seems to be trying to picture the killer in her mind. "But I wish them to suffer," she adds. "To suffer like we suffer and to feel all our pain, like we feel this pain."
Iryna wipes away tears as she talks. Staring into the void in front of her, she says, "Because losing a child is the worst pain in the world."
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A U.S. Border Patrol agent checks for identification of immigrants as they wait to be processed by the Border Patrol after crossing the border from Mexico at midnight on June 21, 2022, in Yuma, Arizona. (photo: Qian Weizhong/Getty)
Major companies are trying to get good PR by joining a nonprofit that supposedly works to improve the livelihoods of refugees. But those same companies are bankrolling virulently anti-immigrant GOP politicians.
However, these same companies are bankrolling GOP politicians who are raising campaign money off of their public abuse of immigrants — while mistreating their workers and expressly tying the worth of refugees to their labor productivity.
This situation reveals how companies leverage the nonprofit industry and social justice rhetoric to foster a progressive public image while turning the refugee crisis into for-profit schemes and supporting anti-immigrant politicians.
For example, in late September, the private equity giant Blackstone Group announced it had just joined the Tent Partnership, with its CEO Stephen Schwarzman noting in a press release, “At Blackstone, we believe diverse teams make stronger companies. Our unique platform has already supported nearly 500 jobs for refugees globally, bringing valuable talent into our portfolio’s workforces.”
Schwarzman, however, is one of the largest individual donors to the pro-deportation GOP, delivering $20 million to their House and Senate super PACs this election cycle.
Blackstone isn’t the only Tent Partnership member with financial ties to anti-immigrant politicians. Of the 260 companies that are part of the Tent Group, nearly forty are also donors to the Republican Governors Association (RGA), which elects GOP governors. The RGA recently launched a Facebook ad campaign that asked, “Where should GOP governors send Biden’s buses of illegal immigrants?”
In the 2020 and 2022 election cycles alone, Tent Partnership companies like Uber, Lyft, Microsoft, Pfizer, DoorDash, and the United Parcel Service (UPS) donated more than $14 million to the RGA, according to data from Political MoneyLine.
“The Minute a Refugee Gets a Job Is the Minute They Stop Being a Refugee”
In 2016, Chobani food brand CEO Hamdi Ulukaya launched the Tent Partnership for Refugees to tackle the refugee crisis through employment. According to the nonprofit’s mission statement, Ulukaya is known for saying that “the minute a refugee gets a job is the minute they stop being a refugee.”
While minimizing the distressing journeys of those seeking refuge, such a view “welcomes” displaced people only to facilitate the gains of corporations.
According to a commentary written for the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation, the Tent Partnership conceives of refugees primarily in terms of their labor value, rather than their humanitarian need. The group’s executive director wrote:
We’ve seen time and again that businesses create opportunities for refugees to contribute economically and become productive members of their host communities when they take steps to hire refugees, integrate them into their supply chains, invest in refugee entrepreneurs, and deliver goods and services to refugee customers.
Part of the organization’s disconcerting reasoning is that refugees make for better workers. In an analysis of the Venezuelan refugee crisis, the Tent Partnership wrote that refugee labor “is good for business,” adding: “Refugees are some of the most highly motivated and loyal employees, and research shows that they have higher retention rates than non-refugee employees.”
According to historian of immigration A. Naomi Paik at the University of Illinois, the deportability and criminalization of migrants is a central way that big businesses take advantage of immigrants, migrants, and refugees. Because “deportability functions as a tool of labor discipline,” Paik writes in her book Bans, Walls, Raids, Sanctuary, “migrant labor is made all the more exploitable, and migrant workers more disposable, through racist targeting.”
These conditions embolden corporations and the state to treat migrant workers as basic commodities in a supply chain and, in turn, justify their exploitation.
Labor Violations Undermine Any “Commitment” to Refugees and Immigrants
The RGA uses the millions it gets from Tent Partnership members and other corporations to actively shape GOP governors’ anti-immigrant agenda. The association recently formed the American Governors’ Border Strike Force, which will increase the criminalization of people at the US southern border by ensuring that “every state is a border state” with coordinated policing and security. But donating to anti-immigrant groups like RGA isn’t the only way Tent Partnership members are undermining the organization’s ostensible commitment to amend how “refugees often face increased barriers to work — and are more vulnerable to forced labor.”
Some of the most well-known Partnership members, for example, have a history of labor and human rights violations.
Take Blackstone, a firm with massive real estate interests. In 2019, the chairs of United Nations Working Groups on housing, human rights, and transnational corporations accused company CEO Schwarzman of contributing to the global housing crisis. In a letter written directly to Schwarzman, the UN officials described how Blackstone’s aggressive profiteering in largely working-class neighborhoods across the globe is having “deleterious effects on the right to housing,” causing mass evictions and displacement.
Meanwhile, Amazon, one of the Tent Partnership’s newest and largest members, is the technological backbone behind the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency’s deportation machine. Amazon profits from its massive software contracts with ICE and its co-ownership of some of the most brutal airline infrastructure used to detain and deport immigrants.
Other Tent Partnership members have their own questionable track records. Amy’s, the nation’s biggest producer of organic and vegetarian frozen meals, brands itself as a socially conscious company committed to “doing well by doing good.” At the same time, the company has paid more than $100,000 in Occupational Safety and Health Administration violations in recent years for grueling working conditions, while leading an aggressive union-busting campaign against its largely Latina and low-income workers.
Taco Bell and Burger King, meanwhile, are currently pushing to stall and kill recent labor reforms won by half a million fast-food workers, including many Latinas and recent immigrants, in California.
Shipping giant UPS refuses to install air conditioning in its delivery trucks as workers have been facing mounting numbers of severe heat-related injuries. The company also recently settled with the Justice Department to resolve allegations of immigration-related discrimination.
Starbucks is among the most prominent corporations facing a groundswell of worker organizing and is leading aggressive anti-union campaigns to stop the push.
Finally, ridesharing firms Uber and Lyft attempt to lure people of color and recent immigrants to drive for them with false promises of high pay, while as many as 20 percent of drivers reportedly make zero dollars after expenses.
It’s likely that these Tent Partnership members believe that positive PR can help overshadow how they use their power to suppress the rights of workers. For these companies, the refugee crisis simply presents a good marketing opportunity. As the Tent Partnership notes on its website, “Brands can ‘do good’ by making positive contributions in the lives of refugees, and ‘do well,’ by attracting consumer support at the same time.”
Amid nationwide legislative attacks on transgender youth, Minnesota residents hold a rally in St. Paul., Minnesota, March 6, 2022. (photo: Universal Images Group)
And in Congress, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wants to bring the same penalty to the national level.
House Bill 6454 seeks to change the very definition of child abuse to explicitly apply to anyone who “knowingly or intentionally consents to, obtains, or assists with a gender transition procedure for a child.” The language applies not only to gender-affirming surgery — which is very rare for teens — but also to hormone treatments and puberty blockers. If found guilty, parents and medical professionals could face a maximum life sentence of 25 years for assisting a minor in obtaining care that has been deemed, again and again, medically necessary by every major pediatric institution in the country. Providing or helping with such treatment would be penalized as child abuse in the first degree, a classification more severe than those for causing intentional or neglectful harm to children.
Republicans hold a narrow majority in the Michigan House, and they are expected to throw full support behind the bill — although if the state’s Republican-held Senate passes it too, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is likely to veto. (In November, Whitmer faces a reelection challenge from Trump-endorsed right-wing commentator Tudor Dixon, who lags behind the incumbent by about 11 points in recent polls.) Beyond barring the provision of new treatment, the legislation also mandates that trans teens in the state who are currently receiving gender-affirming medical care would be forced to stop their treatments and undergo compulsory medical detransition, with potentially deadly psychological consequences.
For refusing to torture trans kids, then, parents, caregivers, and doctors could spend the rest of their lives in prison.
Nationwide, GOP politicians now walk in lockstep to promote their eliminationist agenda against trans youth and adults. In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott in February issued a directive to state agencies — bending the law to the Republican will — to assert that gender-affirming health care constitutes child abuse and that those who provide it or support children in accessing it should be investigated as potential abusers. The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services has been duly terrorizing families with such investigations ever since. Hundreds more bills taking direct aim at the lives of trans kids and adults are moving through statehouses at a chilling pace.
While the Michigan bill hardly stands alone, it is notable for the extremity of punishment proposed. It is already a felony to provide gender-affirming surgery to minors in Alabama; other forms of gender-affirming treatment, like puberty blockers and prescribed hormones, were covered by the same law but blocked from felony enforcement by a federal judge. Gender-affirming care is banned, but not deemed felonious, in Arizona; and in Arkansas, a ban was passed into law but is currently blocked by a crucial court order.
In Congress, far-right extremist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., is pushing a searing model like Michigan’s. In August, she introduced the first piece of federal legislation, co-sponsored by a whopping 40-plus House Republicans, to outlaw gender-affirming care for minors nationwide. That law, too, would make providing such care a felony punishable by up to 25 years in prison.
As I’ve noted numerous times, the ubiquity of these anti-trans legislative assaults is no sign of some grassroots concern echoing nationwide. Anti-trans panic has been manufactured, top-down, by think-tanks like the Promise to America’s Children coalition, which disseminate model legislation to Republican state lawmakers. It’s a deeply cynical electoral strategy playing on illegitimate conservative concerns, but no less profound an ideological war for that fact.
There’s no inconsistency in the GOP championing “parental choice” on most every issue aside from a parent’s choice to love and support a gender-nonconforming child. “Parental choice” was only about parenting as an institution — the nuclear family — for reproducing the right’s Christo-nationalist order. When a parent’s choice is that schools not teach the brutal realities of U.S. white supremacist history, or the existence of gay people, parent’s choice is sacred. To produce the wrong kind of child, meanwhile, is deemed criminal — alongside the refusal to produce a child from a pregnancy. Fascistic pro-natalism has always, necessarily, gone hand in hand with the organized elimination of oppressed populations. There can be no doubt that these anti-trans efforts are genocidal.
The GOP has made clear that it will not stop or temper its assault on the very existence of trans people. For this reason, it is all the more critical for liberal media organs to reject and counter the outright falsehoods of Republican anti-trans claims and to actively support trans kids. Trans children are not new, and more than two centuries of scientific research have challenged the validity of gender and sex binaries.
A recent New York Times story correctly stressed that the (very, very few) trans teens who do receive gender-affirming “top surgery” have their lives immensely improved. Regret is exceedingly rare — especially considering that almost all medical interventions, from back surgery to cis women’s breast enhancements, carry a risk of regret — and the number of surgeries and hormones provided to cis teens far surpasses the number of those provided to their trans peers. Most trans young people in America, keep in mind, have neither the resources nor the support to access the care they need in the first place.
Yet even though the facts and content of the Times piece spoke strongly for gender-affirming treatment, the feature was hinged on and infused by the notion of trans youth as some impending site of risk. “Small studies suggest that breast removal surgery improves transgender teenagers’ well-being” the story notes, before adding, “but data is sparse” — thus framing the piece around uncertainty from the outset.
Those who would oppose the right’s fascist, eliminationist agenda must do better. The stakes for the lives of trans kids are too high for such unwarranted equivocation. As historian Jules Gill-Peterson, author of “Histories of the Transgender Child,” put it, “We need to really learn to say we want trans children. Not that we want all children to be trans. But when children tell us they’re trans, we are happy. And we are happy with that as an outcome.”
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At least 160 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank since the beginning of the year. A doctor is among two Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Jenin on Friday. (photo: Anadolu Agency)
At least 160 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank since the beginning of the year.
The Palestinian health ministry identified the doctor as Abdullah al-Ahmad, in his 40s, and said he was shot in the head by Israeli forces on Friday morning in front of the Jenin public hospital.
The second man killed on Friday morning is 20-year-old Mateen Dabaya, a health ministry spokesperson told Al Jazeera.
In a statement, the Jenin Brigades, a Palestinian armed resistance group that was formed last year, identified Dabaya as a local commander in their group.
Dabaya was shot with a bullet to the head, ministry spokesperson Mohammad Awawdeh said.
The killings took place shortly after dozens of Israeli armoured vehicles raided Jenin on Friday at 8am (05:00 GMT), during which armed clashes and confrontations broke out with Israeli forces.
Videos shared by local journalists appeared to show Israeli forces shooting at ambulance crews.
At least five other Palestinians have been wounded with live ammunition on Friday morning in Jenin, according to the health ministry.
Earlier on Friday, the state news agency Wafa announced that a Palestinian teenager had succumbed to wounds he sustained during his arrest by Israeli forces last month.
Wafa, as well as the Palestinian Authority’s Detainees Commission, identified him as 17-year-old Mohammad Maher Ghawadreh.
Ghawadreh, from the Jenin refugee camp, died while being treated at the Tel Hashomer hospital in Israel. He was arrested after he allegedly carried out a shooting attack on a bus full of Israeli soldiers in the occupied Jordan Valley, wounding seven, on September 5.
Increasing settler attacks
Tensions on the ground between Palestinians on one side, and Israeli forces and settlers on the other, have escalated over the past week.
On Saturday, an Israeli soldier was killed by a Palestinian man in a drive-by shooting attack at the main checkpoint into the Shuafat refugee camp in occupied East Jerusalem.
Israeli forces proceeded to enforce a blockade on the camp and surrounding areas, where some 130,000 Palestinians live, for four days, while searching for one identified suspect, who remains on the run.
Residents of the camp and surrounding areas called for Palestinians to mobilise and launched a general strike on Wednesday to pressure for ending the siege, which was slowly lifted on Thursday morning.
Confrontations broke out with Israeli forces and settlers in dozens of neighbourhoods, towns and villages across occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank on Wednesday and Thursday.
A Palestinian youth, 18-year-old Osama Adawi, was shot dead by the Israeli army during the confrontations on Wednesday in the Arroub refugee camp north of Hebron city in the occupied West Bank.
On Thursday night, dozens of Israeli settlers shouting “death to Arabs” attacked residents and their properties in the flashpoint Palestinian neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah in occupied East Jerusalem.
The Palestinian Red Crescent reported that its medical teams dealt with 20 injuries from physical assault and rock-throwing by settlers, including five that were transferred to hospital for treatment.
One Palestinian man suffered a broken arm, while another, a 48-year-old man, is suffering internal bleeding due to fractures to his skull and is currently hospitalised, according to residents and local media.
Mahmoud Ramadan, a resident of Sheikh Jarrah, said Thursday night’s escalation of violence was serious.
“There is nothing left other than they start raiding our homes under the protection of the police. They used rocks, pipes, pepper spray,” Ramadan told Al Jazeera.
“They were hitting us and breaking our cars in front of the eyes of the police and in front of the surveillance cameras,” he continued, adding that Israeli forces arrested at least 10 youth from the neighbourhood.
“The rocks they were throwing could kill some one. They come in a monstrous way like they are ready to kill. We have zero faith in Israeli police to protect us, just as we have zero faith in Israeli courts,” he added.
Local journalists said right-wing member of the Israeli parliament (Knesset) and one of the most popular politicians, Itamar Ben-Gvir, raided Sheikh Jarrah along with the settlers on Thursday night. Ben-Gvir pulled out a gun and told settlers that “If [Palestinians] throw stones, shoot them,” according to the journalists.
‘State of horror’
On Tuesday and Wednesday, gangs of armed Israeli settlers also attacked residents, homes and stores in the Palestinian town of Huwarra south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank.
Wajeeh Odeh, a member of the local council, said Israeli settlers armed with rifles, rocks and pipes smashed stores, cars, and physically assaulted residents under the protection of Israeli forces. The attack was documented in videos shared by journalists.
“The attacks have been going on for two days in a row, with support from the Israeli army,” Odeh told Al Jazeera. “Some residents were physically beaten, while youth were injured with rocks and pepper spray.”
Odeh said both settlers and the Israeli army fired live bullets towards residents and into the air, but that there were no injuries from live ammunition.
“The settlers were shooting live ammunition in front of the soldiers,” he continued. “This is creating a state of horror for people.”
Between 600,000 and 750,000 Israeli settlers live in at least 250 illegal settlements scattered across the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem. The majority were built by the Israeli government, or were retroactively legalised by it.
Israel has been carrying out near-daily raids in the West Bank, largely focused on the towns of Jenin and Nablus, where Palestinian armed resistance is becoming more organised.
Shooting attacks and killings of soldiers by Palestinians have increased over the past month.
On Tuesday, an Israeli soldier was killed near the illegal settlement of Shavei Shomron, northwest of Nablus, in a shooting attack by a Palestinian man from a passing vehicle.
Israeli forces closed off all roads leading to Nablus, which lies on the main road between Jenin and Ramallah, and heavily restricted movement for two days following the shooting.
The Lion’s Den armed group in Nablus claimed responsibility for the attack.
At least 160 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the illegally occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip since the beginning of the year, including 51 Palestinians during Israel’s three-day assault on Gaza in August, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
Local and international rights groups have condemned what they call Israel’s excessive use of force and “shoot-to-kill policy” against Palestinians including suspected assailants in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which Israel occupied in 1967.
Senior Israeli politicians have encouraged “Israeli soldiers and police to kill Palestinians they suspect of attacking Israelis even when they are no longer a threat”, according to the Human Rights Watch.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has noted in its reports that Israeli forces “often use firearms against Palestinians on mere suspicion or as a precautionary measure, in violation of international standards”.
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The Ivory-billed woodpecker. (photo: Pixabay)
A new study suggests that the Endangered Species Act, a bedrock tool of conservation, has become bogged down by delays and inaction that are hampering its mission.
The researchers who evaluated some 970 cases involving the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over the past three decades found that species remained on waiting lists for protection far longer than the act intends. When species are finally listed as endangered or threatened, their populations are often so small that they struggle to fully recover.
The study suggests that the Endangered Species Act, a bedrock tool of conservation, has become bogged down by delays and inaction that are hampering its mission.
“Since it was passed in 1973, the Environmental Species Act has served as an inspiration and model for conservation policy,” said Erich Eberhard, a doctoral student at Columbia University and an author of the research. “Our analysis suggests its strength is being undercut by listing too late with too small populations and too little funding.”
The slow process to list species has rankled conservation organizations for years.
Decisions on whether species should be listed are supposed to take two years, according to Noah Greenwald, the endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity. But the study found that they typically exceed that timeline no matter which political party is in charge.
And since Congress enacted the act, just 54 species have been fully recovered, the study says. Additional species have seen their status changed from endangered to threatened.
“If you wait until species are critically endangered, it’s that much harder to recover them, and it makes recovery less likely and makes the choices that much harder,” Greenwald said. “Species are slipping through the cracks.”
The new study builds upon research that began decades ago in a study that analyzed species listed from 1985 through 1992.
The new study, which reported data from 1993-2020, borrowed the same methods to collect and evaluate data about the size of species’ populations at the time they were listed under the Endangered Species Act.
In comparing the two time periods, the researchers found little had changed. The Fish and Wildlife Service is currently no more proactive about listing species before their numbers dwindled than it had been during the late 1980s.
The Fish and Wildlife Service did not respond to a request for comment about the new study. Although few species have fully recovered and been delisted, it’s important to remember that the Endangered Species Act has been instrumental in preventing extinction, Greenwald said.
“99% of species protected under the Endangered Species Act still survive, which is highly significant,” he said. “In a lot of ways it is working. That’s despite underfunding, despite political interference and despite what I would consider an inept agency in charge of implementing it.”
Species extinction is accelerating worldwide. A U.N. report on biodiversity found that 1 million species will face extinction, many within the next decades, unless more action is taken. Humans are the primary drivers of biodiversity change and the pace of extinction was accelerating, the report said.
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