07 November 22
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Whatever happens, it will be momentous
Mixed in with feelings of disorientation are swells of anxiety and even fear. Many of us scour the news looking for clues as to what might happen — the polls, the early vote totals, what we are hearing anecdotally from family and friends. We grasp at data points seeking to settle the pit in the stomach or to confirm our dread.
What will be the results on Tuesday? Or will we even know? How long will it take for the votes to be counted? And even if those who deny our democracy, seek to undermine free and fair elections, and promote the Big Lie end up losing, what then? What more chaos lies in store for us as calamitous conspiracy theories continue to take root and flourish?
These questions rush forth like tributaries feeding an even bigger river of doubt — what will our country become? What does the future hold for the United States of America? Will we recognize it? Will our core tenets still remain as the foundation for our governance?
It is important to face facts. That too many of our fellow Americans refuse to do just that is a big part of what got us into this mess. And the facts are what they are. There is a sizable movement in this country that seeks to literally vote out democracy. This movement is fueled by a coordinated campaign on right-wing media. It exploits the frailties of our institutions. It weaponizes lies. And it leverages our fractured technologies to turn the very notion of “the truth” into a partisan attack line.
To write all of this to you who undoubtedly know it and feel it is to hopefully provide context for a broader perspective. In detailing the danger, we should not minimize the courage, resilience, determination, and grit of all those who are battling not only to save our nation but to improve it. The reason the would-be autocrats seek to lock in minority rule through partisan gerrymandering, court packing, and manipulating antiquated procedures like the filibuster is that they know that in a true vote of the majority of Americans they would almost assuredly lose.
They know that Republican presidential candidates have won the popular vote only once since 1988. They know that when policy issues like raising the minimum wage, expanding Medicaid, or extending voting rights to former felons are on the ballot, even in red states, they tend to win. They can see that labor unions are showing some signs of a comeback. They understand that major corporations recoil from being associated with hate speech. They know that their brand is unpopular with young voters.
In short, the flexing of power by the forces who would tear down American democracy is actually an admission of weakness. They are afraid that an America that prioritizes privilege over justice, that seeks to bask in a mythic past rather than embrace the future, that wants to stoke division instead of build unity is not an America in which most Americans want to live. For them, power is everything, and they fear they could lose it.
And they are right.
This is not to say that we aren’t in trouble. This is not to say that we can take the continuity of democracy as a given. This is not to say that the forces of anger and hate can’t wreak havoc and pain.
All that can be, and is, the case. But we should not count out the tens of millions who reject this dark future. We should not overlook the leaders, especially from younger generations, who are determined to push back. We should not diminish the larger arc our nation has taken, often by defeating, time and again, the entrenched forces that wanted to derail progress.
The polls are so close that they are irrelevant. Maybe they portray an accurate snapshot of a closely divided electorate. Or maybe they are missing something, in one direction or the other. There is a plausible future in which Republicans win big. And there is a plausible future where the Democrats somehow hold both houses of Congress.
Whatever happens, it will be momentous.
And yet the fight for the future of the nation will endure. This election is but the latest chapter in an unlikely narrative that stretches back centuries. The story of the United States is one of progress and regression, pain and hope, injustice and justice. Doing the work of improvement is often exhausting. But when one recognizes the strength of the movement and the millions of allies, it should never be considered hopeless.
Come what may Tuesday, the country will continue. It will be up to us to nurture a future of opportunity where America’s most noble values can thrive anew.
Steady.
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Supporters of Kari Lake. (photo: Getty Images)
“Don’t give the enemy an early number they need to get to, overwhelm the system on election day only,” one user posted on Telegram.
Far-right extremists, QAnon supporters, and MAGA fans are all preparing to get everyone to vote on Election Day because, they believe, that will disrupt a possible Democratic steal.
“Massive turnout on election day, as late in the day as possible, to catch the hacker off guard. Make him think he’s got the cheat in the bag and nobody will notice, then overwhelm him during the last hour with a turnout he can’t keep up with,“ Toni Shuppe, a QAnon-linked conspiracist and adviser to GOP candidate for Pennsylvania governor Doug Mastriano, wrote on her Substack in September.
And the edict to vote as late as possible has come from the very top. At a recent rally, Trump told the crowd that voting on Election Day was key because “it’s much harder for them to cheat that way.”
To be clear, just like there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, there is no evidence to suggest the 2022 midterms will be stolen.
The plan to overwhelm has been communicated directly with voters. In Eagle County, Colorado, unaffiliated voters were sent text messages urging them to vote only on Election Day. The messages claim to come from the Eagle County Republican Party and echo a message on the party’s website that states: “Vote in person November 8th by visiting your polling center before 7 pm. We must overwhelm the system and not stay home.”
It’s also taken hold on fringe message boards and election conspiracy channels on Telegram.
Last week, David Clements, one of the major stars of the election-denier movement, posted a meme that compared the battle to win the 2022 midterms to the famous battle scene from the film Braveheart.
One follower responded: “Hey GOPers, don’t vote early—don’t vote by mail or drop box, make it your duty to vote on election day, no other time. Don’t give the enemy an early number they need to get to, overwhelm the system on election day only.”
The “Election Fraud 2020” Telegram channel, which has coordinated campaigns to spread election disinformation over the course of the last two years, wrote that voting in person would “make them cheat harder, so that the fraud will be easy to spot.”
Jesse Littlewood, the vice president for campaigns with voting rights group Common Cause, told VICE News that while he has seen references to the plan to “overwhelm” the system pick up in recent weeks, he thinks that the idea is still relatively marginal.
There are, however, dangers posed by the spread of this message, particularly the idea that people should vote as late in the day as possible.
“The danger is that it could cause some of the voters who listen to this idea to miss their chance to vote,” Littlewood said. “If you believe that you need to vote late in the day on Election Day, if you have a family emergency, you could miss your opportunity to vote, so it could disenfranchise individuals who should have the right to participate in the election.”
Election officials already know about the plan to “overwhelm the system” come Nov. 8. “We are aware of efforts to disrupt Election Day operations and are working with our county and law enforcement partners to ensure that Election Day runs as smooth as possible,” Sophia Solis, the deputy communications director for Arizona secretary of state, told VICE News. Arizona has become ground zero for election conspiracists and voter intimidation in the lead-up to the vote.
Solis also said that her office has heard that certain groups are encouraging voters to write in their candidate because it would force a manual review. “Doing this would actually nullify the vote,” Solis said.
In Colorado, election officials are confident that the processes they have put in place will withstand any attempt to undermine the election.
“Whether a Colorado voter casts their ballot during early voting or in-person on Election Day, whether they choose to use their mail ballot or receive one at a voting center, their vote will be counted accurately and securely,” Jena Griswold, Colorado’s secretary of state, told VICE News. “Colorado county clerks and their dedicated staff have already processed nearly half a million ballots, including mail ballots. The Colorado Election Model withstands this election misinformation.”
Still, efforts to intimidate voters has become a significant problem even before Election Day, with widespread reports of harassment campaigns in states like Arizona and Texas in the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s vote.
But for some Trump supporters, the lies about stolen elections have become so ingrained that they believe any efforts to fight back are already doomed to fail.
“The plan to ‘overwhelm the system’ is a joke,” wrote one user on a QAnon Telegram channel. “The machines and their counting assures that they have final say. Just look how it worked out for [Brazil’s Jair] Bolsonaro. There’s a reason [Microsoft founder Bill] Gates is predicting civil war after the elections: Because he knows they’re going to steal them in plain view and there is nothing else we can do about it.”
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Businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, right, with Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2010. (photo: Alexey Druzhinin/ Sputnik/AFP)
Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin says a day before US elections that he will continue meddling.
“We have interfered, we are interfering and we will continue to interfere – carefully, accurately, surgically and in our own way, as we know how to do,” Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Monday in comments posted by the press service of his Concord catering firm on Russian social media.
“During our pinpoint operations, we will remove both kidneys and the liver at once,” the Russian businessman wrote on VK, the Russian equivalent of Facebook.
He did not elaborate.
A 2018 US Justice Department indictment accused a Prigozhin-linked troll farm, the Internet Research Agency, of sowing divisions in the US electorate during the 2016 election campaign by using Facebook and Twitter.
Prigozhin usually keeps a low public profile but has become more outspoken in the course of the Ukraine war and has criticised Russian generals.
In September, after years of secrecy, he admitted to founding the Wagner Group, which has been active in Syria, African nations and now Ukraine.
On Friday, the Wagner Group opened a defence technology centre in St Petersburg, a further step by Prigozhin to highlight his military credentials and take a more public role in Russia’s defence policy.
Prigozhin owns a network of companies and is often referred to as “Putin’s chef” because his catering company has Kremlin contracts.
In July, the US State Department offered a reward of up to $10m for information on Prigozhin in connection with “engagement in US election interference.”
Those allegations have led the US, United Kingdom and European Union to sanction Prigozhin.
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Rosa Soto Alvarez visits her mother’s grave on All Souls Day at Monte Calvario Cemetery in Tucson. (Joshua Lott/WP)
Victor is also known as an “ICWA kid,” a label that includes a familiar acronym here — one that refers to a landmark Indian law whose fate is on the line at the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday. The Indian Child Welfare Act governs foster care and adoptions involving Native American children, prioritizing placing them with relatives, fellow tribal members or in other Native homes.
“The culture that we do here — I’m just glad I’m in it,” Victor said. “It’s a blessing.”
The law passed unanimously in 1978 to help rectify what Congress then called “the most tragic and destructive aspect of American Indian life today”: the widespread and sometimes forced removal of Native children to boarding schools and families with no links to their tribes. Tribes’ existence, Congress asserted, depended on their children.
Now, in a case that originated over the adoption of a Native boy by a White Texas couple, seven individuals and Texas are asking the court to strike down the law, which they say discriminates on the basis of race and unconstitutionally requires states to enforce federal law. Defending the act are the Biden administration and five tribes, including the Cherokee and Navajo, which argue that the law is tied to tribal membership — a political, not racial, category.
The case, Haaland v. Brackeen, is being watched with anxiety throughout Indian Country, where many expect the conservative high court to overturn the law in whole or in part. Depending on the grounds, legal experts say, the ruling could have far-reaching implications that undermine tribal sovereignty and federal laws related to Indian gaming, fishing rights and other matters.
“If the plaintiffs win, it is an earthquake,” said Dan Lewerenz, an assistant professor at the University of North Dakota law school, an attorney with the Native American Rights Fund and a member of the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska. “The reverberations will be felt in all areas of law.”
The act, the plaintiffs argue in a court filing, puts “‘Indian children’ in a disfavored position, depriving them of a placement decision based on their best interests, and instead requiring placements” based on the child’s biology. Non-Indian adoptive parents end up “last in line to adopt an Indian child,” the filing said.
The Pascua Yaqui reservation, a 3.4-square-mile stretch where southwest Tucson strip malls give way to saguaros, offers a glimpse of what tribes say is at stake. Here, the Supreme Court battle feels at once urgent and removed, a distant academic argument that could upend a day-to-day practice that the tribe has made a central mission.
The Pascua Yaqui have built an entire infrastructure around ICWA, or “ICK-wah,” which gives tribes the right to intervene in cases involving children who are members or eligible to be members and don’t live on the reservation. About one-quarter of the tribe’s 22,000 members live on the reservation, where custody proceedings are handled by a tribal court.
Over the past six years, the tribe’s attorney general has used federal funding to build out a staff of three ICWA attorneys and three other employees devoted to the cases. When a state notifies the office about a removed child who might be a member, a paralegal quickly orders a family tree, based on tribal enrollment, to identify kin who could provide a home. The tribe’s social services department has four ICWA social workers who traverse Arizona, and sometimes beyond, to visit kids and families involved in cases.
The expanded staff allows a tribal representative to be present at every state court hearing, attorneys said. Two years ago, the Pascua Yaqui worked with the Pima County state court to establish an ICWA-specific court, one of 17 nationwide. It serves 11 tribes.
The reason for the tribe’s focus on these cases is simple, Pascua Yaqui Chairman Peter Yucupicio said. Children are the future of a small tribe that was not federally recognized until 1978, he said — and the tribe, he added, is their heritage.
“You start losing who you are. You start assimilating into the general population,” Yucupicio said of children disconnected from their tribes. “Then someday they’re going to wake up and say, ‘I’m tribal. How do I get back to being tribal? That’s what I was supposed to be.’”
The ‘gold standard’
When the Indian Child Welfare Act passed, studies showed that 25 to 35 percent of Native children were being removed from their parents for foster care or adoption, and that upward of 85 percent of placements were in non-Native homes.
Researchers found that social workers rarely removed children for abuse, a congressional report said, but rather because they equated Indians’ disproportionate poverty with neglect, and caretaking by extended family — common in Native communities — with parental abandonment.
That still happens, Alfred Urbina, the Pascua Yaqui attorney general, said as he drove around the reservation’s quiet streets on a recent evening, past the construction of sleek homes he said were also aimed at stabilizing families by helping address a dire housing shortage. Urbina said he has consulted on ICWA issues with the neighboring Tohono O’odham Nation, whose vast reservation, he said, includes some houses with dirt floors.
“Just because there’s a dirt floor doesn’t mean that’s a neglectful situation,” Urbina said. “But a state court judge will refuse to place them out there even though there’s a loving grandparent.”
Over time, the philosophy behind ICWA has come to be known as the “gold standard” in child welfare practices nationally.
“Policies within the United States, from federal down to state governments, in the last two decades have moved toward favoring family placements and kinship placements over others in all circumstances, not just with Native children,” said Barbara Atwood, a University of Arizona law professor and an expert on the act.
The Pascua Yaqui Tribe says its focus has borne results, speeding placements with relatives and keeping families together. The tribe typically intervenes in cases within three days, down from 10 in 2006. In 2009, 18 percent of its ICWA cases closed with children and parents reunified — the top goal. In 2021, 49 percent did. Between 2016 and 2020, children have been placed with tribal members in 91 percent of cases, Urbina said.
But the tribe insists it is not rigid: If a nontribal placement is best for a child, attorneys said, they go with it but strive to cultivate cultural connections. One open case, they said, involves a 16-year-old Yaqui girl in Oregon being adopted by a non-Native family. Recently, Oregon flew her to the reservation, where she met with a man she had learned was her uncle: Yucupicio, the chairman.
‘Saved’ by community
As the law has come under threat, Urbina said, more Yaquis have emerged to defend it. At an ICWA conference hosted by the tribe in the spring, two Army veterans tearfully divulged to the crowd that they were foster father and son.
“This community, that’s what saved me,” said the son, Augustine Lopez, 47. Lopez said he was taken from his mother, a drug addict, as an adolescent in Tucson and placed on the reservation with Alex Alvarez, a behavioral health counselor.
Rosa Soto Alvarez, 46, and her three siblings were removed as small children from their mother in Tucson. At first, she was separated from her siblings and placed in a non-Native home. After a social worker realized the children were Yaqui, a Yaqui couple became permanent guardians to them all. They later moved to the reservation, and Soto Alvarez, a former tribal councilwoman, winces at the alternative.
“I would have been raised without my siblings. Without knowing that I was Yaqui,” she said. “Away from people that know my family.”
Many Yaquis are devout practitioners of a form of Catholicism tinged with touches of pre-Columbian practices. On Nov. 2, All Souls Day, the reservation cemetery filled with families sitting near the graves of ancestors whose spirits they believe were departing after visiting during October.
Soto Alvarez had prepared her late loved ones’ favorite foods as offerings — enchiladas for her foster mother, chocolate cake for her brother — and taken them to the cemetery, where she plans to be buried between them. One row over were the graves of her birth mother and birth grandmother. All around were people she greeted.
“I like to say I’m related to just about everybody, through blood or ceremony,” Soto Alvarez said.
Briefs supporting the Indian Child Welfare Act have been submitted by nearly 500 tribes, tribal law scholars, the American Medical Association, and child welfare and adoption organizations, among others. Two dozen state attorneys general, including Arizona’s, warn that invalidating the statute “could force states and tribes to start from scratch.”
Some states, including New Mexico this year, have adopted state ICWA statutes that experts say would protect existing practices if the Supreme Court ruling struck down the federal law on grounds that it “commandeers” states.
Arizona has not. But in August, its Department of Child Safety signed an agreement with the Pascua Yaqui to continue to prioritize keeping Yaqui children with family or other tribal members, “regardless of federal protections,” DCS Director Mike Faust said at the signing. The Navajo Nation has a similar agreement with Arizona.
That provides a measure of comfort, Urbina said. He feels confident the Pascua Yaquis’ solid ICWA program could pivot if the federal law is struck down. The same might not be true for tribes that lack such resources for their child welfare systems.
But there are concerns. The tribe could seek to transfer all state cases to tribal court, where it would have exclusive jurisdiction, he said — but triple its caseload. If ICWA dies, the tribe would have no right to be notified when Yaqui children are removed in states other than Arizona.
Arizona on Tuesday will also elect a new governor who could approach Native American relations differently. But governors come and go, Yucupicio said, as do court decisions.
“Whatever force we’ve had for 500 years of colonization, that has sustained us,” he said. “So it’s not going to be a Supreme Court case that takes it away.”
Victor, the young dancer — also a high school student and baseball player — practices his craft three times a week. He said he was hooked when he first saw ceremonial dancing as a toddler, and his skills are now in high demand at tribal events.
He ended up here because his mother was Yaqui, and ICWA required California to notify the tribe when he was removed from her care. Tony Sanchez, a longtime Pascua Yaqui ICWA social worker, flew with the infant to Arizona — not the first time he had retrieved a Yaqui baby. “They used to call me ‘the stork,’” he said.
In Arizona, tribal social workers turned to Vicky Humo, 67, a distant aunt and reliable foster parent.
At first, Humo recalled, state social workers were concerned that she already had several foster children in her home. But the tribe’s ICWA attorney at the time, she said, made a persuasive argument.
“She said: There’s no such thing as too many kids in an Indian home,” Humo said.
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Tear gas is deployed against pro-Trump rioters breeching the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 in Washington, D.C. (photo: Shay Horse/NurPhoto/Getty Images)
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan radicalized a generation of veterans, many of whom face trials for sedition and other crimes.
Forrest was in the first wave of American veterans who turned to domestic terror once they returned home. It also happened after World War I and II, after the Korean and Vietnam wars — and it is happening after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The sedition trial now taking place in Washington, D.C., features five defendants accused of trying to overthrow the government on January 6, 2021, and four are veterans, including Stewart Rhodes, who founded the Oath Keepers militia. In December, another sedition trial is set for five members of the Proud Boys militia — four of whom served in the military.
The point here is not that all or most veterans are dangerous. Those who engage in far-right extremism are a fraction of the more than 18 million Americans who have served in the armed forces and returned to civilian life without indulging in political violence. Of 897 people indicted after the January 6 insurrection, 118 have military backgrounds, according to the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. The point is that a relatively small number of veterans are having an outsized impact on white supremacist violence, thanks to the respect that flows from their military service. While they are outliers from the mass of law-abiding vets, they are the tentpoles of domestic terror.
“When these guys get involved in extremism, they shoot to the top of the ranks and they are very effective at recruiting more people to the cause,” noted Michael Jensen, a senior researcher at the University of Maryland’s Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.
This is a consequence of our society venerating a massive army and going to war at regular intervals: The last 50 years of far-right terror have been dominated by men with military backgrounds. Most infamously, there was Gulf War veteran Timothy McVeigh, who set off the Oklahoma City bomb in 1995 that killed 168 people. There was Eric Rudolph, an Army vet who planted bombs at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics as well as two abortion clinics and a gay bar. There was Louis Beam, a Vietnam veteran and Klansman who became a dark visionary of the white power movement in the 1980s and was tried for sedition in 1988 (he was acquitted, along with 13 other defendants). The list is nearly endless: A founder of the neo-Nazi Atomwaffen Division was a vet, while the founder of the Base, another neo-Nazi group, was an intelligence contractor for the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan. And the man who attacked an FBI office in Cincinnati after federal agents searched the Mar-a-Lago home of former President Donald Trump in August was — you guessed it — a veteran.
Adjacent to the violence, key figures in far-right politics come from the military and boast of their wartime service, such as former Gen. Michael Flynn, who has emerged as a high-profile promoter of QAnon-ish conspiracy theories as well as an election denialist. In New Hampshire, former Gen. Donald Bolduc is the GOP candidate for Senate and a spreader of lunatic ideas that include the notion that school children are allowed to identify as cats and use litter boxes (do a web search of “Bolduc litter box”). GOP gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, reportedly the “point person” for Trump’s fake elector scheme in Pennsylvania, blanketed his campaign with so much military imagery that the Pentagon told him to dial it back.
The “why” of this pattern is complex. When wars are drenched in as many high-level lies and pointless deaths as the ones in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, there is no shortage of good reasons for veterans to feel betrayed by their government. Leaving the service can be a fraught process even without that baggage. After years in an institution that brought order and meaning to their lives — and that defined the world in a simplistic binary of good versus evil — veterans can feel adrift at home and yearn for the purpose and camaraderie they had in the military. As the special forces veteran-turned-journalist Jack Murphy wrote of his comrades who fell into QAnon and other conspiratorial mindsets, “You get to be part of a movement of like-minded people, you’re fighting evil in a worldview that you have become comfortable with. Now you know why you don’t recognize America, not because you had a silly preconception of it from the beginning, but rather because it has been undermined by a satanic cabal.”
There is an added twist that historian Kathleen Belew points out: that while the role of veterans in domestic terror is underappreciated, they are not the only ones unhinged by war.
“The biggest factor [in domestic terror] seems not to be what we have often assumed, be it populism, immigration, poverty, major civil rights legislation,” Belew noted in a recent podcast. “It seems to be the aftermath of war. This is significant not only because of the presence of veterans and active-duty troops within these groups. But I think it’s reflective of something bigger, which is that the measure of violence of all kinds in our society spikes in the aftermath of war. That measure goes across men and women, it goes across people who have and have not served, it goes across age group. There’s something about all of us that is more available for violent activity in the aftermath of conflict.”
In 2005 the so-called war on terror was justified by President George W. Bush as “taking the fight to the terrorists abroad so we do not have to face them here at home.” The irony is that those wars — which cost trillions of dollars and killed hundreds of thousands of civilians — instead radicalized a generation of American zealots who for years to come will inflict violence on the country they were supposed to protect. This is yet another stupendous offense for which our political and military leaders should face history’s vengeance.
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A demonstration by the families of the Ayotzinapa victims on the International Day of the Victims of Forced Disappearances in 2017. (photo: Inter-American Commission on Human Rights/Flickr)
Is the Mexican government's dubious new evidence part of another “historical truth?”
The 467 images were obtained by the COVAJ, which gave the screenshots to the press and published them in a redacted form without first sharing them with the GIEI or the Special Investigation and Litigation Unit for the Ayotzinapa Case (UEILCA). The COVAJ, which President López Obrador established by decree in his first act in office in December 2018, showed the censored version of its report to the families of the 43 missing students and their legal representatives just hours before publicly releasing the findings.
These screenshots are the new evidence that distinguishes the COVAJ report from three GIEI reports and all the other prior investigations. According to the COVAJ, these images supposedly provide evidence for an alternative version of events that the current government seeks to present in place of the previous administration’s attempt to cover-up state involvement in the crimes.
Known as the “historical truth,” the Enrique Peña Nieto administration claimed that police officers in Iguala stopped the students and turned them over to a small group of cartel hitmen, who then spent that night incinerating all 43 students in an open-air trash dump, in the rain. The “historical truth” has been debunked by numerous eye-witness testimonies and independent forensic analyses. It has also been shown without a doubt that the confessions the government used to build its case were produced under torture. In addition to medical records and testimonies, we know this because the torturers recorded videos of their acts, and many of those videos have been leaked to the press.
The new narrative suggests that the 43 missing students were separated into three groups and killed in brutal ways; that the colonel in command of the 27th Infantry Battalion of Iguala allegedly personally ordered the murder of six of them, who four days later were still alive; and that subsequently their remains were allegedly exhumed to be moved to new locations, including the Battalion 27 base.
Weeks after the report was released, journalist Peniley Ramirez published some of the unredacted screenshots on her Twitter account on September 24. In her column in Reforma, she wrote that a source leaked the images to her. She did not question the veracity of the information at any point. She did not speak to the families. Thus, once again the families of the missing students were forced to read a horror story about their children in a public forum, even though the information supposedly supporting the grotesque tale—which mentioned incinerations and dismemberments—had not been verified.
Almost eight years ago another journalist did something very similar with the “historical truth.” Esteban Illades published an article in Nexos magazine—without going to Ayotzinapa and without talking to the surviving students, other witnesses, or the families of the disappeared—in which he dramatically narrated the content of the case file that was leaked to him. The testimonies included in that file were made under torture to support a false version of the attacks.
After the COVAJ’s press conference and Ramírez’s leaked images, I wondered if we were then facing a new, digital Cocula trash dump: a place where nothing happened. And in early September I asked whether López Obrador and his government wanted to cover up for the army's high command. That question still seems pertinent to me.
The GIEI, which has been investigating the mass forced disappearance since 2015, just confirmed what I saw coming: the 467 screenshots that officially exist on a USB memory stick—not on the original telephone devices—present several anomalies that make their verification impossible. According to the expert report carried out outside the country at the request of the GIEI: in 181 of the screenshots, the date on the image and the date in the metadata do not match; in several images there are elements of the WhatsApp application—a double blue checkmark, a video call icon—that did not exist on the date that the messages were supposedly sent and received.
The GIEI also emphasized that the 83 arrest warrants in the case produced by the special prosecutor's office are not based on and have no relation to the screenshots or the information in the COVAJ’s report.
Some urgent questions arise: If the screenshots are false, who fabricated these images? Who gave them to COVAJ? Why did the COVAJ decide to hide these images, against all protocols and against the established practice of sharing all investigative information confidentially between the GIEI, the COVAJ, and the special prosecutors and, once verified, with the families of the 43 missing students?
These questions, to me, are haunted by another key question that dates back to October 2014: Who planted the incinerated piece of Alexander Mora Venancio's bone on a tarp next to the San Juan River in Cocula in the midst of an illegal operation involving the Attorney General’s office, the Navy, and the Federal Police? Forensic analysis of the bone fragment confirmed Mora Venancio’s identity in December 2014.
Many wonder if the COVAJ report and the screenshots are part of a “new historical truth,” or “histrionic truth.” The GIEI, in their press conference, said no. They described COVAJ's actions as “clumsiness” that risks overturning the case and guaranteeing impunity.
The “clumsiness,” however, is of such magnitude that the GIEI decided two of its members should withdraw from the case—in protest, it is understood—and the other two continue on as a “follow-up mechanism” just as they did after the Peña Nieto government refused to renew a mandate to provide technical assistance in the investigation in 2016.
It is possible that the COVAJ officials who decided to break the protocols, keep the information to themselves, publish it in a censored manner, and then leak the images to a reporter (her source may have been someone else, but if so, who?), did so thinking that they had solid and truthful information.
But the point is that such brutal handling of this now-disqualified evidence—because I insist: to force the families, after all they have suffered, to read another unverified horror story in the media is in itself an atrocity—did not happen in a vacuum. Rather, it was part of what appears to be yet another coordinated maneuver from the highest levels of government to bring down the case—to detonate it from within, tire the investigators, and buy time while saying in front of the cameras that the administration is committed to the families and to the truth.
This all began with the presentation of the COVAJ’s report on August 18. It continued the following day with the televised arrest of former Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam, which was made with a hastily assembled accusation. At the same time, the special prosecutor in the case, Omar Gómez Trejo, was on a plane to Israel to talk to Israeli authorities about Mexico’s extradition request for the former director of the Criminal Investigation Agency, Tomás Zerón, now a fugitive accused of torture and obstruction of justice in relation to the Ayotzinapa cover-up. Murillo Karam's initial hearing before a judge was carried out by prosecutors from a different office who did not know the case.
Afterwards, a series of moves within the Attorney General's office contributed to the mishandling of information: internal affairs officials and other agents took over the special prosecutor’s office; detectives working with the UEILCA were withdrawn from the case, paralyzing the unit’s work; the special prosecutor and several members of his team resigned due to the interference in their investigation; and a new prosecutor—a life-long friend of the president with no relevant experience and who does not know the case—was appointed.
Weeks later, in the midst of a political debate over shifting the National Guard, Mexico´s new federal police force created under López Obrador, from civilian to military control, 21 arrest warrants were cancelled, 16 of them against military personnel.
At the march to commemorate the eighth anniversary of the disappearance of the students at the end of September, the message from the mothers and fathers were clear: the army should be prosecuted and the investigation should continue to move forward with verified evidence.
And yet, the questionable handling of information was also evident in the media. In addition to the leaks, on October 26 the The New York Times published an article that revealed the recording of a meeting in Israel between Alejandro Encinas, undersecretary of human rights and head of the COVAJ, and Tomás Zerón, the fugitive accused of torture and forced disappearance.
In the recording, Encinas offers the president’s guarantee of impunity in exchange for information about the students’ whereabouts. Encinas did this without any legal authority to negotiate such a deal.
As if that were not enough, a hack of the Army's emails last month revealed that Secretary of National Defense Luis Cresencio Sandoval has been advocating to the president in favor of some of the detained military personnel.
And yet, despite all this “clumsiness,” in one of his recent morning press conferences President López Obrador described the resignation of the prosecutors who would not accept the manipulations of the case as a “kind of rebellion.”
It may not be a new “historical truth,” as the GIEI indicated in their press conference, but these latest missteps are serious. And what they achieve is halting the advances in the investigation, breaking the GIEI, making the families suffer more, and creating the conditions to once again ensure impunity.
Even if this is not a “histrionic truth,” there is something unforgivable and perverse about giving the families of the disappeared students a bit of hope only to detonate it from within.
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Voting. (photo: Brendan SmialowskiAFP/Getty Images)
Climate change is on the ballot this week. Here are six races we’re watching.
The prospect of new climate policies getting passed in this country largely depends on what happens on Tuesday. If Democrats retain control of Congress, they could pass, or at least try to pass, measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or address the impacts of rising temperatures. There’s a growing appetite among Democratic lawmakers for climate action, as evidenced by their recent landmark climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. If Republicans emerge victorious, the odds of Congress enacting new climate policy are much, much lower, as evidenced by the lack of a single Republican vote for the aforementioned landmark climate bill. Despite vague murmurs in support of free-market climate policies coming from far-flung corners of the GOP in recent years, the party has never produced a comprehensive emissions plan that’s in line with what experts say is necessary to preserve a livable planet.
From a climate perspective, there’s a lot at stake — and not just in Congress. Climate advocates are up for election at the state and local levels, too. With new federal funds earmarked for climate initiatives headed to states, tribes, utilities, and consumers thanks to the $1 trillion infrastructure legislation that passed in 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act, those races could shape the next couple of years of climate policy in communities around the country.
“If we are going to keep making the progress we know we need, we must continue to elect leaders at every level of government who will put climate action at the top of their agenda,” Pete Maysmith, senior vice president of campaigns at the League of Conservation Voters, said. Here are six of the races across the country that could wind up playing a consequential role in the country’s response to climate change over the next few years.
Luke Warford vs. Wayne Christian, Texas Railroad Commission
Because the Texas Railroad Commission oversees the sprawling oil and gas industry in the Lone Star State (but not, ironically, railroads), the powerful three-member agency plays an outsize role in Texas’ emissions footprint. Luke Warford, a 33-year-old who used to work for the Texas Democratic Party, is trying to capitalize on outrage over last year’s deadly winter power outages to unseat his opponent, Republican incumbent commission chair Wayne Christian. Warford has been traveling across Texas by train educating voters about the effect extreme weather will have on the power grid in coming years. He’s said that his race is “the most important climate race in the country.”
It’ll be a tough fight. A Democrat hasn’t won a statewide office seat in Texas in 28 years. The Railroad Commission has been all-Republican for nearly as long. Christian, the Republican incumbent who has served on the commission since 2016, said Warford is running on a platform that will “put our local oil and gas companies out of business and kill jobs.” But Warford isn’t shying away from messaging around the climate crisis. “In today’s market, there is more demand for low-emissions and renewable energy than ever, and Texas needs to evolve to compete. It’s too important to wait,” he said in a statement.
Catherine Blakespear vs. Matt Gunderson, California 38th state Senate district
Catherine Blakespear, the Democratic current mayor of Encinitas, is making a play for California’s 38th state Senate district. Blakespear’s campaign told the California publication Capital … Main that she is “standing up to Big Oil.” The oil industry, which is taking flak from both sides of the aisle after a devastating oil spill off the coast of Orange County last year, isn’t taking that on the chin.
A political action committee, or PAC, called the Coalition to Restore California’s Middle Class has spent more than $800,000 backing Blakespear’s opponent, Republican Matt Gunderson. The PAC’s top donors are Valero, Chevron, Phillips 66, and the Marathon Petroleum Corporation and its affiliates. The Coalition to Restore California’s Middle Class has also spent nearly a million dollars on opposition research and ad campaigns attacking Blakespear. District 38 has rapidly shifted from Republican to slightly Democratic-leaning in recent years. Blakespear currently holds a narrow lead over Gunderson in the polls, but the race is by no means a done deal. If Gunderson prevails, the oil and gas industry will have successfully wielded its influence over yet another election.
Steve Sisolak vs. Joe Lombardo, Nevada governor
The super-tight gubernatorial race in Nevada is a 2022 test of the strength of a Trump endorsement. Democratic incumbent Steve Sisolak is up against Trump-endorsed Republican Joe Lombardo. Sisolak, who became Nevada’s first Democratic governor in 20 years when he was elected in 2019, signed legislation that will increase the proportion of the state’s electricity generated by renewables to 50 percent by 2030, approved a bill funding electric school buses, and appointed Nevada’s first-ever “climate czar.” Sisolak says he will continue to advance his climate and conservation agenda if reelected next week.
His opponent, Lombardo, does not have a climate plan. On his website, he says he aims to protect Nevada’s water resources and protect residents from wildfires, but doesn’t say how he will do that or mention the role climate change plays in exacerbating drought and wildfires in the state. It’s anyone’s guess who will win the governor’s seat on Tuesday. A recent poll shows Sisolak leading Lombardo by 4 percentage points, within the poll’s margin of error.
Ohio Supreme Court
The elections that will fill three open seats on Ohio’s highest court are among the lowest-profile races in the state, but the way these races shake out could have huge implications for the future of Ohio’s energy policies. The state’s Supreme Court has been dominated by Republicans for decades. Democrats have a chance to regain control this cycle, but all three races will be very close. Ohio energy companies have donated thousands to the Republicans in these three races.
And there is good reason for that. After the election, the winners of these Supreme Court races will help resolve several open questions surrounding clean energy deployment in Ohio. The court is expected to decide cases that could determine whether a permit for a wind farm can be overruled by residents and if the Ohio Power Siting Board should take climate change into account when siting new renewable energy projects.
Monica Tranel vs. Ryan Zinke, U.S. Representative from Montana
You remember Ryan Zinke, the Secretary of the Department of the Interior under former President Donald Trump who resigned from his job because he was the subject of multiple ethics probes? He’s running for Montana’s sole seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, which he previously occupied between 2015 and 2017. The Republican has acknowledged humanity’s role in causing climate change, but that’s about the extent of his climate platform. He called the Inflation Reduction Act a “wish list for the climate change people.”
His Democratic opponent, Monica Tranel, has a different take. She said the bill is “awesome” and has a plan to deal with what her website calls the “climate emergency.” She wants to expand Montana’s clean energy industry and create new jobs in the rapidly-growing state. Tranel spent four years working as an attorney for the Montana’s Public Service Commission, which regulates utilities in the state. She has also represented renewable energy developers in court. Having Tranel in the House would be a big deal for the Democratic caucus, which could use a clean energy expert from Montana in its ranks. Zinke is favored to win, but the race is surprisingly close, in part because of a Libertarian candidate poised to divide the conservative vote in the state.
Mandela Barnes vs. Ron Johnson, U.S. Senator from Wisconsin
In Wisconsin, former businessman and Republican incumbent Senator Ron Johnson is leading Democratic challenger Mandela Barnes — the first Black lieutenant governor of Wisconsin — in recent polls, but not by a lot. And just one of the handful of toss-up Senate races taking place across the country next week could determine which party gets control of the upper chamber. The Barnes vs. Johnson race is a showdown between a clear climate advocate and a climate skeptic.
In an October debate, both candidates were asked about climate change and what they’d like to see done about it. “The climate has always changed,” Johnson, who insists he doesn’t deny the existence of climate change, said. “The question is, can you really do anything about it when China, when India, they’re going to be burning fossil fuels. America’s going to have to burn fossil fuels,” he added.
Barnes, on the other hand, said he wants Wisconsin to be a leader in the transition to clean energy. Barnes is a member of the Wisconsin governor’s Task Force on Climate Change, which has proposed a number of policies since it was established in 2019 and helped create a state Office of Environmental Justice this year. “What we need to do is reduce carbon emissions,” he said in the debate. “What we also need to do is move towards a clean energy economy and make sure Wisconsin is in the driver’s seat.”
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