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Tech barons’ lip-service to democracy and pluralism was always conditional on preserving their own positions at the top
Since Elon Musk took over Twitter, he has encouraged far-right conspiracy theories, consistently articulated rightwing extremist ideas and coddled extremists who propagated them, changed or undermined content moderation in a way that allowed hate speech and far-right abuse to flourish, and constantly derided Democrats, liberals and anyone he perceives as part of “the Left” in an escalating crusade against “wokeism”. He is now banning critical voices, including those of mainstream journalists, under obviously disingenuous pretenses.
Musk’s actions are fully consistent with the worldview that dominates among far-right reactionary extremists. Yet, many observers seem reluctant to acknowledge that what is happening is exactly what it looks like. People who cover the tech world are still searching for a grand business strategy that would explain all this behavior. And some people whose main occupation is to cover politics are also struggling. The New York Times recently declared Musk’s politics “tricky to pin down”, and said that “what he stands for remains largely unclear”.
The source of confusion seems to be that Musk’s actions collide with certain assumptions about the supposedly liberal tech world and with Musk’s own previous claims about his political leanings. But the male-dominated tech world seemed “liberal” only because it was associated with technical progress, while most of the (predominantly male) tech oligarchs were happy to present a culturally permissive image. And people say all sorts of things about their political leanings and may even believe them – that doesn’t mean we should take their proclamations at face value. What people actually do, the political projects they support, is far more relevant.
So, what’s up with Musk’s politics? There are more or less fruitful ways to tackle that question. It is not very useful to obsess over what Musk “really” believes, or react to every one of his trolling attempts by trying to disprove and debunk them. We should instead engage the underlying political project – because it constitutes a direct threat to democracy and it is the reason why simply ignoring a man with such a powerful platform will not work.
From a democratic perspective, it’s highly problematic that tech oligarchs like Musk are amassing so much power and influence. They are not democratically controlled in any way or guided by any concern for the public good. Musk is yet another example of how short the path from a certain kind of libertarianism to the far right is, a reminder that this type of libertarianism is driven by a desire for freedom from regulation and criticism of any kind.
Musk believes that the world works best if people like him are in charge and get to do as they please, unhampered by regulations or demands for equality – because their interests ought to be the same as humanity’s. It’s an inherently anti-democratic worldview that tracks very well with the reactionary idea that the world should be run by wealthy white men. This is what is pulling these people to the right, and why they eventually gravitate toward autocratic regimes at home and abroad.
But what about the fact that Musk doesn’t subscribe to all the typical “conservative” policy positions and never described himself as a “conservative”? Well, he certainly subscribes to the only position that matters on the right today: he is rabidly anti-“Left”. It has become dogma on the right to define Democrats, liberals and “the Left” as an illegitimate, “un-American” threat – that all measures, regardless of how extreme, are justified in the defense of “real America” against the “woke” onslaught. That’s exactly where Musk is.
This doesn’t necessarily signal a fundamental change of his politics and worldview. It’s more plausible to think of his trajectory as an activation of reactionary sensibilities and an accelerating process of radicalization, but not an aberration. Much like other predominantly white, predominantly male elites who have been radicalizing to the right, Musk’s acceptance of democracy and pluralism was always conditional and contingent largely on whether or not it would be set up in a way that preserved their status at the top. That certainly doesn’t mean Musk was ever on board with the idea of leveling traditional hierarchies of wealth, race, or gender – clearly, he was not. As soon as his elite status as an obscenely wealthy white man was scrutinized, his fundamental politics was activated.
And now that inherently anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian worldview is animating the man in charge of the world’s most important political communications platform, a virtual public square functioning as an essential part of democratic culture. Twitter could have been, should have been, so much better. But its enormous influence on the broader public, media and political discourses is undeniable.
Twitter established a conversation between people in positions to shape the political and public imaginary – journalists, politicians, public figures – and people who would otherwise never have access to those levels of influence. Most importantly, Twitter has been instrumental in amplifying the voices, demands, and critiques of traditionally marginalized groups. That’s where it really demonstrated its democratizing potential.
Much of the moral panic over “cancel culture” – which animated Musk to buy Twitter in the first place – is a reaction to the fact that traditionally marginalized groups gained technological means to affect the political debate.
Twitter has been crucial in this uphill struggle: a tool for organizing, a platform, a global amplifier that enabled people with no traditional access to power to speak to powerful elites directly and criticize them in the public square. How valuable this has been is evidenced by the fact that many of those elites are so consistently bemoaning “persecution” – and, like Musk, wish to sabotage and destroy this instrument for public criticism. To the extent that traditional societal elites – and elite white men in particular – face a little more scrutiny today than in the past, Twitter has helped to democratize public life.
Losing this will hurt – it will hurt the attempts to finally make America live up to the promise of egalitarian multiracial pluralism, to become the democracy it never has been yet. It is a massive failure that those elected to safeguard democracy have seemingly cared little about this.
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Despite capital gains that boosted his bottom line in 2018, the entirety of former President Donald J. Trump's core businesses continued to report losses every year, totaling $60 million during his presidency. (photo: Doug Mills/The New York Times)
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The former president reported a burst of income after entering the Oval Office, but by the end of his term, his tax filings had reverted to large losses, according to data released by a House panel.
The data, which includes details of Mr. Trump’s federal tax returns from 2015 through his full term in the White House, shows that he began his presidency suffering the sort of large business losses that had defined much of his career and paid almost nothing in income tax. But his fortunes changed in 2018, as he reported $24.3 million in adjusted gross income and paid nearly $1 million in federal tax.
Mr. Trump’s tax returns show that he was in the black the following year as well, reporting $4.4 million in income and paying $133,445 in tax. But in 2020, as the country staggered under the coronavirus pandemic, his finances reversed course: Mr. Trump reported a loss of $4.8 million and zero income tax.
The fresh details of Mr. Trump’s taxes emerged from two reports released late Tuesday by the House Ways and Means Committee, which had waged a legal battle to obtain the records from the Internal Revenue Service that went all the way to the Supreme Court. The reports contain the committee’s summation of its findings but not the raw tax returns, which are expected to be released in coming days.
The new information adds to what is publicly known about Mr. Trump’s income tax history, something he had fought for years to keep hidden. Two years ago, The New York Times detailed tax-return data extending over more than two decades for Mr. Trump and the hundreds of companies that make up his business organization. Those records told a story fundamentally different from the one he had sold to the American public.
His reports to the I.R.S. portrayed a businessman who took in hundreds of millions of dollars a year, yet racked up chronic losses that he aggressively employed to avoid paying taxes. But while the personal income tax data analyzed by The Times ran only through his first year in the White House, 2017, the information released Tuesday encompasses his entire presidency.
As previously reported by The Times, Mr. Trump paid just $750 in federal income tax and reported $12.9 million in losses in his first year as president, in keeping with a long pattern of reporting losses and paying little or no taxes. The newly released data shows that in 2018, his sudden burst of income occurred largely because he had sold properties or investments at a gain of $22 million. He also appears to have exhausted business losses he had been rolling over year after year to reduce his taxable income. The precise source of the income gain is not clear from the reports.
By 2020, however, Mr. Trump had returned to reporting losses. In fact, despite the capital gains that boosted his bottom line in 2018, the entirety of his core businesses — mostly real estate, golf courses and hotels — continued to report losses every year, totaling $60 million during his presidency. He was able to recoup $5.47 million because he had made millions of dollars in estimated tax payments that he ended up not owing.
Tuesday’s report also raises questions about some of Mr. Trump’s business practices, and the committee has requested that the I.R.S. investigate some of them further. Among them are his charitable contributions.
The tax records previously obtained by The Times show that Mr. Trump made significant charitable donations over the years, but that the vast majority of them came in the form of land donations, often after he had exhausted efforts to develop it.
The new tax data showed that while in the White House, Mr. Trump made charitable contributions in cash, something the House committee said warrants further investigation.
“We would have inquired as to whether the large cash contributions were supported by required substantiation,” the report said.
The Times’s findings were cited several times in the report, and helped shape the direction of the committee’s investigation.
For instance, Mr. Trump owns an estate in Westchester County, N.Y., called Seven Springs. For years it was classified as a personal residence. The tax records obtained in 2020 by The Times showed that in 2014, Mr. Trump reclassified the estate as an investment property.
Since then, he has written off $2.2 million in property taxes as a business expense — even as the law allows individuals to write off only $10,000 in property taxes a year.
On Tuesday, the committee revealed that the I.R.S. was looking at this tax maneuver.
The reports also showed that Mr. Trump continued to collect large sums of interest income, a total of $38.1 million during his presidency. They do not disclose the source of that income, but the tax returns previously obtained by The Times showed that through 2017 nearly all of his interest income came from his share of profits earned by a partnership that is controlled by Vornado Realty Trust.
The partnership owns two valuable office towers: 1290 Sixth Avenue in Manhattan; and 555 California Street in San Francisco. Mr. Trump, who has a 30 percent share in the partnership, has no authority over its management, and it has consistently been his strongest-performing asset.
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Discarded shoes lie in the dirt at a vehicle barrier which serves as the U.S.-Mexico border fence on October 12, 2021. (photo: John Moore/Getty)
The Biden administration has asked the Supreme Court to temporarily keep in place Title 42 until after December 27. The Trump-era pandemic policy has been used to block over 2 million migrants from seeking asylum in the country. Meanwhile, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts on Monday temporarily blocked the Biden administration from ending Title 42, siding, at least for the moment, with a group of U.S. states with Republican attorneys general who want to keep Title 42 in place. According to Human Rights First, over 13,400 accounts of murder, torture, kidnapping, rape and other violent attacks on migrants and asylum seekers blocked in or expelled to Mexico under Title 42 have been reported since President Biden took office.
We turn now to immigration news. The Biden administration has asked the Supreme Court to temporarily keep in place Title 42 until after Christmas. The Trump-era pandemic policy has been used to block over 2 million migrants from seeking asylum in the U.S. In a filing Tuesday, the Biden administration asked the top court to allow it to end the policy, but not until at least December 27th to give border communities more time to prepare for what’s expected to be an increase in the number of people seeking refuge in the United States. On Monday, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily blocked the Biden administration from ending the Title 42 policy, [siding], at least for the moment, with a group of U.S. states with Republican attorneys general who want to continue to enforce Title 42.
We go now to San Francisco, where we’re joined by Julia Neusner, the research and policy attorney with Human Rights First. She helped write a new report titled “Human Rights Stain, Public Health Farce.” The group has tracked over 13,000 reports of murder, torture, kidnapping, rape and other violent attacks on migrants and asylum seekers blocked in or expelled to Mexico under Title 42 since President Biden took office.
Julia, welcome to Democracy Now! Talk about your findings and the significance of what’s taking place right now at the highest court. What’s going to happen?
JULIA NEUSNER: Good morning, Amy. Thanks so much for having me.
So, we’ve been tracking the Title 42 policy under the Biden administration since its inception. And as you’ve said, we’ve now tracked 13,480 kidnappings and other violent attacks against migrants and asylum seekers stranded in Mexico or expelled under Title 42. And that number is absolutely staggering, and it continues to climb for as long as the policy is in progress. We know that migrants and asylum seekers who are stranded at the border are specifically targeted by organized criminal groups, and even police and state actors, for extortion, kidnappings and other attacks. And this policy has just made it so much worse.
And so, as you explained, the Supreme Court has stayed the termination of the policy, and the U.S. government yesterday submitted its response opposing the stay but requesting additional days to be able to implement — to be able to prepare for the lifting of Title 42. So, we don’t know how the court is going to decide on that, but the government did indicate that it has new policies that it’s planning to implement in preparation.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Julia, could you talk about the erroneous view that many Americans have that Title 42 has helped to reduce the migrant — the asylum seekers and migrant flows from along our southern border?
JULIA NEUSNER: Yeah. Title 42 has absolutely not had that effect at the southern border. What it’s done is it’s prevented people from seeking asylum at ports of entry, which is their legal right. So, people previously, under U.S. and international law, were able to present themselves at a port of entry, and if they request protection, they’d be taken into U.S. custody and go through the asylum process. But Title 42 closes off that avenue to seek protection, so it’s forced people to cross between ports of entry and kept many just trapped at the border.
But we’re seeing the numbers of people crossing between ports of entry are much, much, much higher than they were before the policy was implemented. That’s because the same forces that are forcing people to leave their homes — organized crime, climate disasters, political persecution — many of the people arriving are Venezuelan, Nicaraguan, fleeing authoritarian governments. And in many cases, those issues have gotten worse over the pandemic.
So people are still coming. And this policy and any attempt at a deterrent, at using cruelty to deter people from coming, has been completely ineffective. And it’s counterproductive, because it encourages repeat entries. That’s why the statistics we hear from Border Patrol and CBP about crossings are very inflated, because many of the people who they count as individual encounters are in fact people who have attempted to cross many times and, because of this policy, have been expelled right back to Mexico.
And another consequence of these rising crossings between ports of entry that Title 42 has forced is that people are — these crossings are extremely dangerous. People need to walk through deserts or make their way across very, very dangerous rivers, often at the mercy of organized criminal groups who control border crossings. And we have seen more deaths of people crossing the border this year than any year since the government started tracking the deaths in 1998. So, it’s been a total disaster.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And in terms of the legal situation with Title 42, with Chief Justice Roberts issuing this order, what happens now? Does it go to the full Supreme Court, or how do you see the legal unraveling or the resolution of this conflict?
JULIA NEUSNER: So, the states that sought to intervene in this case, claiming that the government was inadequately representing their interests — again, this was a case initially brought by plaintiffs represented by the ACLU who were impacted by Title 42, and the government has defended the policy. And a district court found that the policy was illegal, and ordered that it end this month. And the states sought to intervene. They were denied by the circuit court and by the appellate court, because their request to intervene was made after final judgment. It was very late. So, then, in kind of a last-ditch effort, they went to the Supreme Court and sought this stay and were — and Justice Roberts issued this administrative stay pending briefing by the parties.
So, the government, as I mentioned earlier, has submitted its brief opposing the request of the states who are seeking to intervene. The states have asked that the court stay the policy, pending its decision on the question of whether the states should be allowed to intervene. And the government has asked that that stay be lifted, but with time to implement some new policies and prepare for the lifting of Title 42. So, they’ve asked until at least December 27th for — before that stay will be lifted. So —
AMY GOODMAN: And we’re going to follow that, of course. Julia Neusner, research and policy attorney with Human Rights First.
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Florida governor Ron DeSantis gives a victory speech after defeating Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist, at the Tampa Convention Center on November 8, 2022. (photo: Octavio Jones/Getty)
At the behest of Ron DeSantis, Florida Republicans just passed a bill freeing property insurance companies from the responsibility to pay claimants’ legal fees in the event of a suit. It’s a big win for insurance giants — and a big loss for regular Floridians.
The woman, whose name was Farren Ivey, had to see a doctor because of injuries to her left leg and right shoulder. But Allstate refused to pay for her full treatment.
So Ivey sued — and she won. Allstate even admitted that it should have paid Ivey’s full medical bill right from the beginning.
How is it that one woman in Miami could afford to take one of the richest insurance companies in the world to court? Because of a long-standing provision in Florida law that also forced Allstate to pay her legal bills.
“It is clear to us that the purpose of this provision is to level the playing field so that the economic power of insurance companies is not so overwhelming that injustice may be encouraged because people will not have the necessary means to seek redress in the courts,” Fred Lewis, a former justice of the Florida Supreme Court, wrote in a December 2000 ruling that ensured Allstate paid for Ivey’s lawyers.
Fred Lewis stepped down from the state’s highest court in 2019, one of several justices who have since been replaced by Governor Ron DeSantis. And now DeSantis and the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature just gutted the provision that Lewis once defended, and that once helped hold Allstate accountable.
Florida legislators went back to Tallahassee last week, where they rushed a 105-page rewrite of the state’s property insurance laws through a three-day special session. DeSantis, who urged lawmakers to hold this special session, signed it into law on Friday.
This a sweeping piece of legislation, and it makes a bunch of big changes. The most consequential of those changes erases what is known as Florida’s “one-way attorney fee” law.
This may sound complicated, but it’s really quite simple.
In most lawsuits, each side usually pays for its own lawyers. But Florida’s one-way attorney fee law allows a policyholder who successfully sues an insurance company that refused to pay a claim to make that insurance company pay their legal bills, too.
This law is essentially a slingshot that David can use to fight Goliath. It’s meant to discourage insurance companies from dragging their feet when a policyholder files a claim — and to ensure those policyholders aren’t punished if they must sue to collect.
“It is an undue hardship upon beneficiaries of policies to be compelled to reduce the amount of their insurance by paying attorney’s fees when suits are necessary in order to collect that to which they are entitled,” the Florida Supreme Court once wrote in another opinion addressing Florida’s one-way attorney fee law.
Not surprisingly, insurance companies detest this law. They have been lobbying against it for many years, arguing that the prospect of one-way attorney fees encourages people to sue their insurance company unnecessarily, which drives up costs for everybody else.
The insurance industry has had a lot of success with that argument lately, amid Florida’s latest property insurance crisis. Industry lobbyists had already successfully persuaded DeSantis and the state legislature to weaken the one-way attorney fee law twice in the past two years. (Campaign contributions have helped.)
But now they’re just eliminating the law altogether.
It’s hard to overstate how momentous a change this is. Florida has had some version of its one-way attorney fee law on the books since at least 1893, according to research by legislative staffers.
Now, this legislation (HB 1A, SB 2A) only eliminates one-way attorney fees in lawsuits involving property insurance policies. But you can bet that lobbyists for auto insurers and health insurers and all the rest will soon be pressing lawmakers to give them the same break, too.
And while eliminating one-way attorney fees is the most significant provision in the bill, it’s by no means the only change making it much harder for a consumer to sue an insurance company. (There are, however, no similar restrictions in the legislation on the ways insurance companies are siphoning profits out of Florida by paying fees to their parent and sister companies.)
For instance, this bill strips consumers of their right to transfer their claims under a policy to someone else who might have more money to pursue a lawsuit. It makes it harder to get extra penalties levied against an insurance company that intentionally stonewalls a claim.
It even forces customers of the state’s insurance company, Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, who file a claim for water damage to prove that the damage was not caused by flooding — rather than requiring Citizens to prove that the water damage was caused by flooding. (Citizens, like private carriers, does not cover damage from floods).
Ron DeSantis was unusually quiet about the special session while it was happening. But there’s no doubt that he’s the guy who made this legislation happen. The governor, who is likely to launch a presidential campaign later this year, went on CNN in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian and called out the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature for not doing enough to cut down on insurance litigation.
“You need to get rid of the scams and the litigation and I’m willing to do that,” DeSantis said. “The Legislature has not been willing to do that thus far. But I’m confident after the election they will.”
And make no mistake, this is a legacy bill for DeSantis — whether he ultimately wants to take credit for it or not.
Taken together, the changes in this insurance legislation amount to the most significant new restrictions on civil lawsuits in Florida since Jeb Bush’s final year as governor. That’s when Bush and the Legislature eliminated a legal doctrine known as “joint and several liability” — a change that business lobbyists gloatingly referred to as the “Holy Grail” of lawsuit reform.
Ron DeSantis is about to bring Florida into a brave new world in property insurance — without any assurance that these changes will actually reduce prices for policyholders.
If you’re a homeowner who needs to get a claim paid next year . . . good luck.
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Pro-abortion rights demonstrators protest outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in November. (photo: Eric Kayne/AP)
Planned Parenthood in US state of Kansas offers video consultations following statewide vote affirming abortion rights.
The move is seen as a small step towards potentially offering much broader abortion access in a state that has become a destination for the procedure after an August vote affirming abortion rights.
That statewide vote came less than two months after a decision by the US Supreme Court to overturn Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that legalised abortion across the country. The decision to strike down Roe has left the legality of abortion largely up to individual states.
Planned Parenthood Great Plains said it began offering telemedicine consultations — held via video conference on a smartphone, computer or tablet — on Monday to patients visiting its clinic in Wichita, Kansas’s largest city.
The affiliate’s president and CEO Emily Wales said the immediate goal is to have more days that patients can go there to get medication abortions.
She also said her affiliate hopes to offer the service “in short order” to patients visiting its other two clinics on the Kansas side of the Kansas City region, a metropolitan area that sits on the state border with Missouri. The goal is to eventually allow patients in doctors’ offices and clinics across the state to teleconference with Planned Parenthood physicians.
The move comes as Kansas abortion providers say they are seeing a flood of requests for appointments from women in states with more strenuous restrictions on abortion than Kansas — particularly Oklahoma and Texas. Kansas voters in August decisively voted to retain state constitutional protections for abortion rights.
Tuesday’s announcement comes less than a month after a state-court judge blocked enforcement of Kansas’s ban on telemedicine abortions. The ban would have required a doctor to be in the same room with a patient taking what is typically the first of two doses of medication to end a pregnancy.
The abortionfinder.org website lists 26 other states in which residents seeking abortion medications can teleconference with doctors, including Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan and Wyoming. However, for some states, the website lists only online pill providers, such as Aid Access or carafem.
“My vision for telehealth medication abortion is the same as my vision for abortion generally, which is that it would be widely accessible by many providers,” Wales said in an interview before the announcement.
Another provider, a Wichita clinic operated by the abortion rights group Trust Women, offered telemedicine abortions for a few months late in 2018 but stopped because the legal climate was uncertain at the time.
Trust Women also expects to offer telemedicine abortions but has said it is considering what additional staff and infrastructure it will need.
Eighteen states have bans on telemedicine abortions in place, according to national groups on both sides of the debate. They include Arizona, Indiana, Nebraska and North Carolina.
Abortion opponents have long argued that telemedicine bans protect women’s health by ensuring a physician is present to deal with major problems, though research has shown that abortion pills are safe.
The long-term goal, Wales said, is to work with a network of doctors or clinics across the state so that women do not have to travel to Wichita or the Kansas City area to obtain abortion medications.
Patients in states with more restrictive abortion laws still would have to travel to Kansas, as they do now. Doctors doing the teleconsulting also would have to be licensed to practise medicine in Kansas, as they must be now.
For now, Planned Parenthood Great Plains is using existing staff and physicians to offer telemedicine abortion consultations to patients in Wichita. Wales said that, while the clinic sometimes has a doctor there three or four days a week, one day a week is typical.
Her affiliate’s medical director, Dr Iman Alsaden, said there would have been no abortion appointments on Monday in Wichita without teleconferencing.
The Planned Parenthood affiliate already offers some telehealth services, such as refilling birth control prescriptions or gender-affirming care visits for transgender patients. Wales said the affiliate is still deciding day-by-day how quickly to expand telemedicine abortion appointments.
Abortion providers had to wait until this year for a clearer picture of the legality of telemedicine abortions. The statewide vote in August preserved a Kansas Supreme Court ruling in April 2019 that access to abortion is a “fundamental” right under the state constitution.
The vote came as Trust Women was pursuing a lawsuit to against the state’s ban on telemedicine abortions. That lawsuit led to the state-court judge’s order blocking enforcement of the Kansas telemedicine abortion ban.
“We’re pretty confident that the courts are on our side and that we have a very strong legal leg to stand on,” said Erin Thompson, Planned Parenthood Great Plains’ general counsel.
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On Tuesday, the Taliban banned women in Afghanistan from attending university. The ban came as students were taking final exams. This photo from 2013 shows a sophomore at Kardan University in Kabul. (photo: Ahmad Jamshid/AP)
The Taliban government issued a statement suspending all women from attending university, the highest level of education most Afghan girls will be able to attain is grade 6 — the final year of primary school.
A spokesman for the ministry of higher education, Ziaullah Hashmi confirmed the news to NPR and tweeted out the announcement himself with the words "important news."
"What news could be worse than this?" said Zahra in a voice message to NPR, left in response to a question about how she felt. She requested her family name not be used, fearing she'd be identified by Taliban officials. "I've been shaking with anger. I can't even cry."
"The Taliban took our last hope from us. The female students had their last exam tomorrow," she said. "But the Taliban closed the gates of university today."
One more blow to the education of girls and women
It's another move by the Taliban to halt the education for females. After the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021, they banned most women and girls from attending high school.
While they had repeatedly promised the international community that the ban was temporary, in March the group abruptly reneged on a promise to allow most girls back to school. The decision was made so suddenly that many female students had returned to class when their teachers were forced to kick them out. Many students broke down in tears.
Taliban officials have since given an array of pretexts for the continued ban, from wanting to review the girls' curriculum to discussions over their uniforms.
But because of a quirk in the decision-making process, women were still allowed to attend university, albeit with strict conditions: They had to cover their hair and faces at all times, wear long, loose black robes and abide by strict gender segregation. It is not clear how many women were still attending university.
Earlier this month, Taliban authorities even allowed women to take university entrance exams for the next scholastic year.
It was a ruse, says Obaidullah Baheer, a Kabul-based lecturer at the American University of Afghanistan. "This ban was in the pipeline," he tells NPR. About two months ago, he says that "a rumor originated from the Taliban themselves that an edict was going to come out banning women from going to universities."
He believes that certain Taliban officials spread the rumor, hoping it would trigger international pressure that would "be enough reason for the leadership to reconsider such a ban."
Baheer's comments point to the privately expressed dismay among many mid-level Taliban officials over the continuing ban on girls' education. The ban has also been resisted by broad swaths of Afghan society, including clerics affiliated with the group who have publicly rebuked the Taliban over the decision; respected elders; high school teachers who run secret schools; and the girls themselves.
Putting the ban in context
Researchers and Western diplomats who maintain contacts with high-level Taliban officials say the ban on girls attending school came from the Taliban supreme leader, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada and a handful of other ultra-hardliners who surround him.
"I genuinely think that the man in charge thinks that this is what an Islamic society ought to look like," Baheer says, referring to Akhundzada. "And he had this very specific view of where women or young girls should be within the society, which is within their households. So I guess for all intents and purposes, this is a gender apartheid. This is nothing short of that."
The Taliban's move quickly triggered reactions from the international community, which has refused to recognize the Islamic group's takeover of Afghanistan.
"The U.S. condemns the Taliban's indefensible decision to ban women from universities, keep secondary schools closed to girls and continue to impose other restrictions on the ability of women and girls in Afghanistan to exercise their human rights," said State Department spokesman Ned Price in a video statement posted on Twitter.
The ban on nearly all education for women comes amid a worsening humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. Most Afghans are skipping meals because they do not have enough money to buy food. The international community has not recognized the Taliban's rule and is still imposing sanctions on the country, which has imperiled the economy.
Western diplomats have repeatedly said that the Taliban lifting their ban on women and girls seeking education is key for discussions to begin on international recognition.
That day seems ever further away – and for women in Afghanistan, the few that had doggedly pursued higher education, so is the dream of ever continuing their studies.
"Such a decision made by Taliban has shattered my dreams," said another young woman who spoke to NPR. Warrang, who was about to finish her first year of her civil engineering degree, said she had just undertaken her final exam of the semester.
Now, she said, "everything is over for me. The only thing I wanted [was] to be educated and to be a good person in my community and to be an engineer and to serve people. But I cannot do that anymore. Life means nothing for me."
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Emergency crews work to clean up the largest U.S. crude oil spill in nearly a decade, following a leak at the Keystone pipeline operated by TC Energy in rural Washington county, Kansas. (photo: Drone Base/Reuters)
An investigation into the pipeline’s largest spill is under way in Kansas as a recent report points to a deteriorating safety record
It is also the case that previous estimates from earlier spills on the pipeline have turned out to be much larger than the initial estimates.
Four dead mammals and 71 dead fish were recovered from the latest spill site, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, which is involved in cleanup efforts with the US Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), state and local agencies, the pipeline owner and operator TC Energy and the company’s contractors. About 5,500 barrels of oil and water and 5,000 cubic yards of oil-contaminated soil have been recovered in initial cleanup efforts.
Most of the undamaged parts of the pipeline resumed operations last week, as cleanup efforts and an investigation into the cause of the spill continue. On Tuesday it was reported that TC Energy had submitted its plan to regulators for fully restarting it.
“That’s our livelihood out here,” Bill Pannbacker, a farmer whose land was affected by the spill, told CBS News. “Probably an acre, an acre-and-a-half of grasses was totally covered with oil. But that’s on a slope so it would run down, and that’s when it ran down into the creek.”
The spill was the largest onshore oil spill since at least 2013 and the largest spill in the Keystone pipeline system since it began operating in 2010.
“Waterways and land should not be put at risk so Canada and big oil can get their product to market,” said Jane Kleeb, founder and president of the Nebraska non-profit Bold Alliance, which helps communities fight fossil fuel projects. Kleeb is also the chair of the Nebraska Democratic party. “It’s a tremendous burden that pipeline companies put on landowners. They not only take their land through eminent domain for the pipeline company’s private gain, they also take an [access] easement forever.”
Kleeb argued these spills demonstrate how unfair the relationship between pipeline corporations and landowners is. She also pointed to how the Keystone pipeline was labeled the “safest pipeline ever built” during the push for approval for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. The latter was a proposed extension to the Keystone pipeline that was eventually scrapped: its permits were initially revoked by the Obama administration, reinstated by the Trump administration and then canceled by the Biden administration.
“This spill in Kansas is going to take years to clean up. TC Energy currently is pretending that this is going to be a two-week cleanup job and everything’s going to be fine,” added Kleeb. “That topsoil that has now been destroyed on that farmer’s property is gone forever. If you’re in the agriculture industry, you know how precious topsoil is, and how much farmers and ranchers do to protect that topsoil. That’s gone, it’s never coming back, that land will never be the same.”
The crude tar sands oil transported by the Keystone pipeline differs from conventional oil. It consists of a heavy oil called bitumen that is cut with a lighter gas called a diluent to facilitate transportation through pipes.
“Oil spills pose both short and long-term risks to ecological communities,” said Dr Diane Orihel, an assistant professor in aquatic ecotoxicology at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. “In the days following a spill, oil exposure can cause acute toxicity in wildlife from oil ingestion, inhalation, smothering, drowning or hypothermia. However, scientists now know that the ecological impacts of oil spills can be far more wide-reaching and persist for decades after the spill.”
Dr Orihel conducted a study on bitumen’s impact on a freshwater lake. She observed that it sinks below the water surface and accumulates on the sediment surface in a matter of hours or days.
She also found the diluted bitumen spill resulted in a strong decline in the abundance of insects emerging from the lake. Meanwhile, only a small percentage of the main contaminants of concern in bitumen – called polycyclic aromatic compounds – dissolved into the water column of the lake.
“This propensity for bitumen to sink in freshwater ecosystems also makes oil cleanup much more challenging,” added Dr Orihel.
Incidents like Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon have showed that oil spills can have large-scale, long-term effects. “Some wildlife populations may take years to recover from the deaths initially caused by the oil spills, but also certain components of oil are persistent and remain in the ecosystem, continuing to be taken up and causing chronic health effects on wildlife,” she says.
Yet, other major spills, like the one linked to the Hebei Spirit, have offered a lesson. “They have taught us that rapid and extensive cleanup of oil spills can help ecosystems to recover from the disturbance and limit the long-term impacts,” Dr Orihel added.
About 22 oil spills have occurred on the Keystone pipeline in the past 12 years, with two other large incidents. TC Energy has only paid $300,000 in fines for previous spills on the Keystone pipeline, even if the spills caused more than $111m in property damage.
“It is a lemon,” said Paul Blackburn, an attorney who specializes in pipeline law with Bold Alliance. “It’s leaked a remarkable number of times and while there may be certain kinds of specific causes for each leak, the fact that it leaks so often suggests that there may be some underlying systemic reasons on what’s going wrong.”
A 2010 report from an environmental law center identified a pattern of production and use of substandard steel in new pipelines amid a pipeline construction boombetween 2007 and 2009. A manufacturer linked to the Keystone pipeline was included.
After construction, the Keystone pipeline received numerous warnings from federal regulators about the lack of corrosion protection and deficiencies in corrosion control. The problems took years to be fixed. A recent US Government Accountability Office (GOA) report noted the Keystone pipeline’s safety record has been deteriorating and identified “construction issues”, resulting in large spills on the Keystone pipeline in 2017 and 2019.
Blackburn argued the possibility of fines levied on pipeline corporations are included in the cost of doing business for these multibillion-dollar corporations, which often pass the costs on to customers if they are not already covered by insurance. He noted regulators can force pipeline corporations to conduct more frequent in-line inspections, such as imaging tools that can perform ultrasounds on pipelines to identify possible points of failure and remedy them before a spill occurs.
“All pipelines leak and depending on where they leak, it can be catastrophic, and it certainly is catastrophic for the people who live there whose land is impacted,” added Blackburn. “There are much better tools to prevent these kinds of leaks and PHMSA should require that they be used more often.”
TC Energy claims 6,973 barrels of oil have been recovered from the creek as of 17 December. “The affected segment of the Keystone Pipeline System remains safely isolated as investigation, recovery, repair and remediation continue to advance,” TC Energy said in a statement. “This segment will not be restarted until it is safe to do so and when we have regulatory approval from PHMSA.”
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