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Asawin Suebsaeng and Adam Rawnsley | Trump Plans to Challenge the 2022 Elections — Starting in Philly
Asawin Suebsaeng and Adam Rawnsley, Rolling Stone
Excerpt: "The former president is fixated on challenging the results of Pennsylvania’s Senate race, which he views — as one source puts it — as a 'dress rehearsal for Trump 2024.'"
The former president is fixated on challenging the results of Pennsylvania’s Senate race, which he views — as one source puts it — as a “dress rehearsal for Trump 2024”
In early September, Donald Trump welcomed a handful of Republican allies to Manhattan’s Trump Tower with an urgent message: He saw a “scam” happening with midterm election voting in Philadelphia and elsewhere in Pennsylvania, and he wanted conservatives to do something about it.
“During our briefing, he was concerned that 2020 is going to happen again in 2022,” says former senior Trump administration official Michael Caputo, referencing Trump’s debunked assertion that voter fraud in Philadelphia helped win Pennsylvania for Joe Biden. Caputo — who attended the meeting alongside Bradford County Commissioner Doug McLinko and retired CIA officer Sam Faddis — says they had a message back to the former president: “Our team encouraged him to be concerned … [Furthermore], I’m advising Republicans to recruit and train election observers and a team of attorneys to oversee historically problematic precincts.”
But it’s not just one meeting, and it’s not just Philly.
In recent months, Trump has convened a series of in-person meetings and conference calls to discuss laying the groundwork to challenge the 2022 midterm election results, four people familiar with the conversations tell Rolling Stone. In these conversations, pro-Trump groups, attorneys, Republican Party activists, and MAGA diehards often discuss the type of scorched-earth legal tactics they could deploy.
And they’ve gamed out scenarios for how to aggressively challenge elections, particularly ones in which a winner is not declared on Election Night. If there’s any hint of doubt about the winners, the teams plan to wage aggressive court campaigns and launch a media blitz. Trump himself set the blueprint for this on Election Night 2020, when — with the race far from decided — he went on national television to declare: “Frankly, we did win this election.”
Trump has been briefed on plans in multiple states and critical races — including in Georgia. But Pennsylvania has grabbed his interest most keenly, including in the Senate contest between Democrat John Fetterman and the Trump-endorsed GOP contender Mehmet Oz. If the Republican does not win by a wide enough margin to trigger a speedy concession from Fetterman — or if the vote tally is close on or after Election Night in November — Trump and other Republicans are already preparing to wage a legal and activist crusade against the “election integrity” of Democratic strongholds such as the Philly area.
Trump’s focus on Pennsylvania, however, seems to be more about his own political future than about party allegiance or fealty to his celebrity endorsee. As he hosts meetings on possible 2022 election challenges, he’s also been laying the groundwork for a run in 2024 — where Pennsylvania again promises to be critical and competitive. As one source who has spoken to Trump several times about a potential post-election-day legal battle over the Oz-Fetterman race puts it, Trump views a potential midterm challenge as a “dress rehearsal for Trump 2024.”
Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 and then lost it to Biden in 2020 by more than 80,000, and if the two candidates rematch in 2024, it could well be the state that picks the next president. At the Trump tower meeting in September, Trump also pushed the officials on their efforts limit mail-in voting, the Morning Times and Semafor report. (The biggest 2022 boon for Trump’s 2024 hopes could come if Doug Mastriano — the state’s Trump-touting, 2020 election denying GOP nominee for governor — manages to pull off an upset. But the people in Trump’s orbit, reading the same polls as everyone else, see little chance of that happening.)
Trump is gripped by the belief that he got cheated in Philadelphia in 2020, and this time around, he has privately demanded his allies concentrate additional firepower and legal resources in the commonwealth’s largest and most racially diverse metro area. In recent weeks, according to two people with knowledge of the situation, the ex-president has asked several advisers and at least one of his attorneys what national and Pennsylvania Republicans are doing to prevent Democrats from — in his words — “steal[ing] it in Philadelphia [like] they did last time.”
Trump’s preparation to undercut the midterm elections is part of a broader GOP attack on electoral democracy. Since Trump’s tumultuous and ultimately violent campaign to overturn the results of 2020, he and other prominent conservatives have turned lies about “voter fraud” and “stolen elections” into GOP orthodoxy. And that orthodoxy has supercharged existing Republican Party efforts to limit ballot access — all in the name of election security.
That’s not, however, how team Trump describes its own efforts. “It’s important to prepare for legal fights that will inevitably arise,” says Hogan Gidley, a former White House official who is now vice chair for the Trump-aligned Center for Election Integrity at the America First Policy Institute. “The effort that the Center for Election Integrity is focused on started at the beginning of this year…We’ve been seeding efforts across the country in important states…[because] having people on the ground locally is key to these efforts — because if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.”
Other prominent Trump loyalists also say they’ve been gearing up for a potential electoral fight, particularly if there are close races.
“No matter what happens, I’m not giving up on getting rid of those voting machines … I will not stop until the machines are gone,” says Mike Lindell, who notes he is similarly prepared to spend millions of dollars on lawyers and possible 2022 legal battles. The MyPillow CEO, a personal friend of Trump’s, was a major financial supporter of multiple efforts to overturn and delegitimize the 2020 presidential election results.
Patrick Byrne — the former Overstock CEO who advised then-President Trump when the latter was weighing using increasingly authoritarian means to cling to power — is working with Trump’s onetime national security advisor Michael Flynn. The duo have formed a group called the America Project, to enlist like-minded activists and Trumpists. “We have made proper preparations for post-election challenges if necessary, but our overwhelming focus is on having a clean, transparent election, which obviates the need for post-election legal scuffles,” he says.
However, the simple Trump and GOP definition of a “clean” election is typically one in which their side wins.
For the moment, the most heated battle over Pennsylvania election law is focused on the state’s rules for mailed in ballots, and is being waged by legal teams for the Republican National Committee. The dispute, which surfaced both in the 2020 election and the 2022 Republican senate primary, Republicans have since tried to stop election boards from counting any mailed-in ballots cast without handwritten dates.
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in May that tossing out undated ballots violated the Civil Rights Act by “disenfranchising otherwise qualified voters” over a “meaningless requirement” that has no bearing on a voter’s eligibility. The case led the Third Circuit to instruct Pennsylvania election boards to count undated ballots In a ruling last week, the Supreme Court threw out the Third Circuit’s decision but did not rule on the underlying legality of counting undated ballots.
Absent a clear federal position on the ballots, the state is left with conflicting court rulings on whether or not to count them. The state’s Commonwealth Court previously ruled against the Oz campaign and ordered undated ballots can be counted in a non-precedential case filed by his primary challenger, David McCormack, in May. In a 2020 split decision, Pennsylvania’s state Supreme Court ruled that undated ballots would count in that year’s election but not in future elections.
Governor Tom Wolf and Acting Secretary of State Leigh Chapman have both issued guidance that counties should count undated ballots, citing both the Oz case and Third Circuit ruling. But last week the Republican National Committee and a coalition of Pennsylvania Republicans filed a suit in the state Supreme Court asking it to rule that election boards should not count the ballots.
The feud over mailed ballots in Pennsylvania marks a case of deja vu for the state. The GOP is being represented in its undated ballot suit by attorneys Kathleen Gallagher and John Gore.
The two previously represented the Pennsylvania Republican party in its attempts to overturn the 2020 election over late-arriving mail-in ballots through a Supreme Court challenge.
(Porter Wright and Jones Day, the firms involved in the 2020 suit, both faced an intense public backlash for efforts aligned with Trump’s push to overturn the election.)
And much like the 2020 fight over mailed ballots, rhetoric in the run up to midterm elections is growing heated. MAGA candidates like Arizona’s Kari Lake and Blake Masters, running for the state’s open governor and senate seats, and New Hampshire senate candidate Don Bolduc have all refused to commit to accepting results on Election Day.
Trump supporters in the media have also begun to float a familiar narrative. Fox News’ Tucker Carlson recently backed Lake’s refusal to accept election results, declaring “If it is fair, Kari Lake’s going to win.” In Pennsylvania, Radio host Mark Levin has accusedDemocrats of “trying to steal the election for Fetterma” over the issue of undated ballots. (Chapman, whose office oversees the state’s elections, says workers have been receiving a number of “violent threats” over the issue of undated ballots.)
Republicans downplay the similarities to 2020. “It’s normal for there to be all kinds of challenges heading into an election and after,” says Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union and a Trump ally. “This is good, and this is the way competent campaigns run.”
Even before the election, conservative and pro-Trump groups have closely monitored state and county election rules. America First Legal, a nonprofit run by former Trump advisor Stephen Miller, launched a successful bid in Chester County to require increased security at ballot drop boxes in the county and segregation of ballots after security camera footage obtained through an open records request showed voters dropping off more than one ballot into boxes.
Trump’s apparent focus on buttressing Republican legal infrastructure in Pennsylvania stands in contrast to the relatively small sums the former president has put into the race to boost Oz. MAGA Inc, the Trump-backed Super PAC supporting MAGA congressional candidates in 2022, has so far spent just $770,000 in TV ads for Oz—a small amount relative to the $34 million the Senate Leadership Fund super PAC has pledged to spend on Oz.
Trump and national Republicans have also not opened the funding floodgates for Doug Mastriano, who Trump backed in the Republican gubernatorial primary. As governor, Mastriano would have great influence over the state’s election rules in the next presidential election. But his campaign has operated on a shoestring with little outside funding and a near total absence from Pennsylvania airwaves.
At least some Republicans in the state say they have taken notice of the lack of funding from the former president is a sore subject. “There’s a lot of people that were Trump supporters, who backed him through thick and thin,” one Pennsylvania Republican attorney active in politics tells Rolling Stone. “That’s not lost on them.”
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A Russian soldier guards an area at the Alley of Glory exploits of the heroes - natives of the Kherson region, who took part in the liberation of the region from the Nazi invaders, in Kherson, Ukraine. (photo: AP)
Pressure Mounts for Russians in Kherson as Ukraine Presses Forward
Asami Terajima, The Kyiv Independent
Terajima writes: "Russia is withdrawing from Kherson as Ukraine's counteroffensive advances, the southern military command said."
ALSO SEE: Kherson Resident Describes a Ghost Town of Exhausted People,
With Acute Shortages of Medicine
Key developments on Oct. 23
- Ukraine says Russia hastily relocated manpower, equipment away from Kherson
- Report: Russia cuts internet, mobile connection in Kherson to 'isolate' city
- Minister: 90% of wind power, 50% of solar power facilities in Ukraine lost due to war
- Russia fires 2 missile strikes, 25 airstrikes across Ukraine
Russia withdraws from Kherson as Ukraine's counteroffensive advances, the southern military command said on Oct. 23.
The command's spokeswoman Natalia Humeniuk said Russian troops are being relocated to the left bank of the Dnipro River as Ukrainian troops approach the regional capital.
Ukraine liberated 88 settlements in Kherson Oblast as of Oct. 21, according to Deputy Head of the President's Office Kyrylo Tymoshenko.
According to the National Resistance Center, a website launched by the Special Operation Forces of Ukraine's military, Russian forces had dismantled telecommunication equipment to cut internet and mobile connection in Kherson, in an attempt to "isolate" the city.
The report said that Moscow sought to create an information blockade in Kherson during the counteroffensive.
"In the future, the Russians plan is to leave the city without communications, television, and radio broadcasting," according to the National Resistance's report.
Eastern front
On the eastern battlefield, Russians appear to be preparing for a further Ukrainian counteroffensive in mostly occupied Luhansk Oblast.
The U.K. intelligence said that "Russia is making a significant effort to prepare defenses in-depth behind the current front line" in Luhansk Oblast amid the ongoing counteroffensive.
In neighboring Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine's General Staff reported that it had repelled attacks near seven settlements in the region, including Bakhmut and Avdiivka.
According to Ukraine's General Staff, Russia is trying to hold onto occupied territories in Ukraine by sending inexperienced soldiers.
The General Staff also reported that Ukraine shot down 12 Iranian-made Shahed-136 kamikaze drones across the country on Oct. 23.
Power outages
The weekend began with a renewed barrage of Russian missile strikes, predominantly in the country's west, that targeted energy facilities across Ukraine early on Oct. 22,
Tymoshenko said that over 1.4 million households in seven regions were left without electricity as of Oct. 22.
The next day, energy company DTEK said that the situation remains difficult with the energy system. Kyiv had witnessed sporadic power outages.
State-owned grid operator Ukrenergo reported that Oct. 22 Russian strikes on energy facilities might be worse than the attacks on Oct. 10-12.
Ukraine needs effective air defense systems to reduce the number of Russian missiles hitting energy infrastructure, Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko said on Oct. 23.
The minister said in the same interview that 90% of wind and 50% of solar power facilities in Ukraine are no longer being used due to the war.
He added that green energy made up about 10% of Ukraine's energy system in 2021.
Casualties and attacks
Russian forces launched two missile strikes and 25 airstrikes across Ukraine on Oct. 23, according to Ukraine's General Staff.
In Donetsk Oblast, Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said that Russian forces shelled an intensive care hospital in Bakhmut with artillery. He added that the building was partially destroyed, but there were no casualties.
Kyrylenko reported that authorities found four bodies of civilians over the past day.
In Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Governor Oleksandr Starukh said Russia attacked Zaporizhzhia with Shahed-136 kamikaze drones. Russia also attacked the region with S-300 missile systems overnight.
No casualties were reported, according to Starukh.
Further south in Mykolaiv, regional council head Hanna Zamazieieva said that Russian forces launched missiles on the city overnight, destroying residential buildings, a playground, a heating station, and dozens of cars.
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Rishi Sunak, the Conservative Party leadership candidate, leaving the campaign office in London on Monday. (photo: Aberto Pezzali/AP)
Rishi Sunak to Become UK Prime Minister
William Booth, Karla Adam, Jennifer Hassan and Leo Sands, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "Rishi Sunak will be Britain’s next prime minister, the first person of color in the job, after dark-horse challenger Penny Mordaunt withdrew from the Conservative Party’s leadership contest."
Rishi Sunak will be Britain’s next prime minister, the first person of color in the job, after dark-horse challenger Penny Mordaunt withdrew from the Conservative Party’s leadership contest. Sunak, 42, will be Britain’s third leader in less than two months. Sunak, the former finance minister who led the revolt against Boris Johnson and was runner-up to Liz Truss in September, will succeed them both, with the challenges of improving Britain’s economic trajectory and public trust in the Conservative Party.
Mordaunt, the House of Commons leader, did not secure enough backing to mount a successful challenge. “It is clear that colleagues feel we needed certainty today,” Mordaunt said in a message posted to Twitter announcing her withdrawal, moments before Sunak was announced by lawmakers. “This decision is a historic one and shows, once again, the diversity and talent of our party. Rishi has my full support.”
Here’s what to know:
- The ascent of Sunak, whose parents are of Indian origin, was cheered in India and among the South Asian diaspora in Britain.
- Sunak, born in England, has talked about how his family gave him “opportunities they could only dream of” and how Britain “gave them and millions like them a chance of a better future.”
- Prime Minister Liz Truss will step down after her replacement is determined, officially becoming the shortest-serving prime minister in British history, after she was unable to overcome the country’s poor economic headwinds, made worse by her own missteps and deep divisions within her party. Her successor will face the same daunting landscape: spiraling inflation, government finances in dire straits, and an increasingly distrustful public.
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Western wildfires burning in 2018, like the River Fire in Lakeport, Calif., sent plumes of smoke to the Central U.S. where it helped seed more destructive thunderstorms. (photo: Noah Berger/AP)
Western Wildfires Are Making Far Away Storms More Dangerous
Lauren Sommer, NPR
Sommer writes: "In late July of 2018, massive wildfires blazed across Northern California. At the same time in Colorado, weather alerts went out warning of heavy thunderstorms and baseball-sized hail."
In late July of 2018, massive wildfires blazed across Northern California. At the same time in Colorado, weather alerts went out warning of heavy thunderstorms and baseball-sized hail.
The two disasters were separated by a thousand miles, but scientists are now finding they're connected.
The massive clouds of smoke and heat that rise out of Western wildfires are having far-reaching effects across the country, even beyond hazy skies. That summer, the smoke blew to the Central U.S., where it ran headlong into summertime thunderstorms that were already forming.
The collision made those storms even more extreme, boosting the rainfall and hail by more than 30 percent, according to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"It's surprising to many people, probably," says Jiwen Fan, Laboratory Fellow at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and an author of the study. "I really wanted to look at if there's any connections between them."
Understanding the effects of wildfires on weather patterns far downstream could help improve forecasts in those areas. In the Central U.S., extreme summer storms can pose a dangerous threat, often doing millions of dollars in damage.
"Scientists are showing that things are really connected to each other," says Danielle Touma, a postdoctoral researcher at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, who was not involved in the study. "And we can't just think about where we live, but we have to think about what's happening in other parts of the world."
Smoke helps fuel extreme rainfall
While it may seem like raindrops simply pour out of clouds, those drops won't form without a seed to get them started. Raindrops need microscopic particles, known as aerosols, which can be dust, soot, or even microbes, floating in the air.
"Lots of people do not realize, before rain, you have to have the tiny particles," Fan says. "They're tiny particles you cannot see with the bare eye."
The particles give water something to condense onto, eventually getting heavy enough to fall to the ground. In 2018, as the Carr Fire and Mendocino Complex burned in California, massive amounts of particles floated east across the Rockies, where they collided with large thunderstorms.
More particles created the conditions for more raindrops, as well as hail, which occurs when powerful storms lift particles high into the cloud and water freezes on them. Running complex computer models, Fan and colleagues found that the Western wildfires boosted heavy rainfall in the storms by 34 percent and large hail by 38 percent.
The heat released from wildfires also played a major role, since it can strengthen the winds that blow to the Central U.S.. Those winds picked up extra moisture on the way, providing more fuel for the thunderstorms and strengthening the intense dynamics inside the storms themselves. In the July 2018 storms, the winds in Colorado topped 100 miles per hour.
"These kinds of things can cause hail damage or flooding, depending on where the precipitation is falling," Sonia M. Kreidenweis, professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University. "If the Central U.S. wasn't already set up to have a storm, it might not have the same kind of impact."
Improving weather forecasts for extreme storms
Historically, the West's fall fire season didn't overlap much with the summer thunderstorm season in Central U.S. states. But with climate change creating drier, hotter conditions for wildfires, that overlap could become more common, since destructive wildfires are happening earlier in the year.
Understanding this long-range influence of wildfires could help improve weather forecasts, giving communities in the Central U.S. more accurate warnings when destructive hail and rain are on the way.
"If they know that California or Oregon are having an above average wildfire season, they might want to be on the lookout for more severe storms coming their way," Touma says.
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Smart Communications has offered multiple sheriff's departments trips to Florida and cruises from Tampa (shown above) to the Caribbean. (photo: Ajay Suresh/Flickr)
Sheriffs Offered Caribbean Cruises and Florida Retreats as Part of Jail Telecom Contracts
Hayden Betts, The Appeal
Betts writes: "Smart Communications, a for-profit Florida company that sells phone, videochat, and email-like services to prisons and jails, told at least one sheriff’s department that it can live 'the resort life' on a trip to Florida."
Smart Communications, a for-profit Florida company that sells phone, videochat, and email-like services to prisons and jails, told at least one sheriff’s department that it can live “the resort life” on a trip to Florida.
Members of five sheriffs offices across the country were offered cruises from “Tampa Bay to the Caribbean” as part of jail telecommunications contracts with the vendor Smart Communications, according to documents obtained by The Appeal.
Smart Communications is a for-profit company that sells communications services including phone, video call, and email-like messages to people incarcerated in publicly funded prisons and jails. It contracts with the public agencies that operate those facilities, often sheriffs offices, to secure the exclusive right to operate within them. Its Florida-based CEO and founder, Jon Logan, is already controversial among critics of the criminal legal system—Logan has faced scrutiny for posting lavish images of himself on Instagram on board his yacht, driving luxury cars, and wearing expensive suits, among other high-end pursuits funded by selling expensive communications services to incarcerated people. In the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center, Smart Communications charges people $3.00 for a 30-minute video call, $.50 per electronic message, and $1.00 per electronic image.
Activists and families of incarcerated people have long criticized Smart Communications’ digitized mail services—which scan hard copies of prison mail, create searchable databases of imprisoned people’s communications, and prevent imprisoned people from receiving original versions of items like birthday cards or drawings from children—as invasive and lacking humanity.
But some of the company’s other offerings are sure to irritate legal reformers: trips to Florida and cruises that set sail from Tampa Bay. The sheriff’s offices of Washoe County, Nevada; Fairfax County, Virginia; Webb County, Texas; Brazos County, Texas; and Dawson County, Georgia—five counties for which The Appeal was able to obtain contract data—gave Smart Communications contracts to operate telecommunications services in jails. As part of the bidding process, Smart Communications’ proposals promised “complimentary rooms” for sheriff’s department staff on an “Annual Technology Training Summit Cruise” that “sails out of Tampa Bay to the Caribbean” each year. The documents say the cruise provides sheriff’s office staff with “accredited workshops and training classes.”
In a 2021 email obtained by The Appeal, a Smart Communications employee offered employees of the Dawson County Sheriff’s Office a free trip to the company’s annual training summit in Tampa, Florida from April 6 to 8 of that year. That event, however, did not appear to include a cruise ship.
Representatives for the Fairfax County, Washoe County, Dawson County and Brazos County Sheriff’s Offices said that members of their departments have not attended and will not be granted permission to attend any Smart Communications cruises, despite their contracts allowing them to do so. The Webb County Sheriff’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
In some cases, contracts included language explicitly verifying an office’s right to complimentary tickets to the cruise as described in Smart Communications’ vendor proposal. The Fairfax County Sheriff’s contract, for example, reads: “Customer shall have the capability to send up to 8 individuals… to attend the Annual Training Summit.” A proposal from Smart Communications stated that the complimentary tickets were at least an $84,000 value.
In other cases, the right to attend the training cruise was not explicitly stated in the contract. The Washoe County contract mentions that Smart Communications will “Provide initial and on-going training for… staff.”
In at least one case, Smart Communications’ cruises even drew scrutiny from a rival prison telecom provider. In an email obtained via a public records request, Bill Pope of NCIC, a different firm that operates phones in prisons, contested Washoe County’s award of its telecom contract to Smart Communications. Pope complained to a county employee that he was told that he was not allowed to give out free binders to county staff, as they would be considered “gratuities.”
“In Smart Communications’ RFP response… cruises valued up to $105,000 have been offered to Washoe County employees and family members,” Pope wrote. “Would this not also be considered a gratuity?”
The offices mentioned in this story may not represent all sheriffs entitled to Smart Communications’ trips. The company contracts with at least 100 government agencies according to its website. Of that number, The Appeal reached out to 26 of those agencies. The Appeal was able to obtain documentation for five government counties.
The jails in those five counties—the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center, the Washoe County Detention Facility, the Brazos County Detention Center, the Webb County Jail, and the Dawson County Detention Center—incarcerated approximately 3,000 people in 2018, according to federal data. According to a report from the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, more than one in three families of incarcerated people go into debt to pay for calls and visits to prisons.
Asked to comment on Smart Communications’ promises of Caribbean cruises in its vendor proposals and telecom contracts, elected officials and activists were alarmed.
Virginia State Delegate Patrick Hope, who represents Virginia’s 47th District, which includes the Fairfax County Sheriff’s office, told The Appeal that “[c]omplimentary Caribbean cruises are not complementary. These so-called ‘training summit cruises’ are paid for through a mark-up in the jail contract. This is a gross mishandling of funds that … come mostly from low-income families… It may be legal but it’s a loophole in the law that should be closed.”
Bianca Tylek, Executive Director of Worth Rises, a nonprofit with a long history of activism on prison telecom issues, told The Appeal that the offers of cruises are troublesome.
“In some senses this is not surprising,” she said. “For many sheriffs, kickbacks are almost an accepted part of practice. Kickbacks from these companies are like legal bribery. But there’s something particularly grotesque about the idea of offering vacations on the backs of people who are incarcerated and suffering.”
In response to an inquiry from The Appeal, Logan, Smart Communications’ CEO, stated that the technology summit cruises have never occurred.
“There has never been a technology summit cruise,” he said via email. “So, I’m not sure what you could write about something that has never happened?” Asked why cruises are mentioned in proposals to government agencies if the “cruise has never happened or is not going to happen,” Logan did not respond directly.
He added instead that the company has “never done a summit cruise. We do however have technology summits all the time that we provide to agencies, both customers and non-customers of Smart Communications… We view this as a win-win to inform agency leaders on new technologies and also learn what pain points they have so we can help innovate new technologies.”
Logan added that The Appeal was “welcome to come visit me at our headquarters in Florida and join a technology summit and be part of the future of incarceration innovation and reform with us.”
Smart Communications’ offer of Caribbean cruises is one of the most lurid examples of a decades old phenomenon of prison and jail telecom providers offering kickbacks as part of government contracts.
Wanda Bertram, a spokesperson for the Prison Policy Initiative, told The Appeal that the company’s actions are indicative of a larger trend within the prison contractor industry.
“Smart Communications is the most shameless actor in an industry full of companies that have become increasingly more creative in the kickbacks they offer to jails,” she wrote.
Shawn Weneta of the Virginia ACLU took care to point out that culpability for the system as it exists lies not just with unscrupulous companies, but also with the public officials who continue to contract with them. Speaking about the Fairfax County Sheriff’s decision to work with Smart Communications, he alleges, “There’s a reason why phone calls in prisons and jails are so expensive.” He added: “And it’s not because the vendors who win contracts are providing the best service and rates to poor families. It’s because the phone provider has to provide sheriffs and their staff with Caribbean cruises.”
Smart Communications is far from the most significant player in prison telecommunications in the United States. It operates in 115 facilities compared to the thousands that for-profit behemoths like GTL and Securus, which offer multiple services including phones, video visits, tablets, and email for incarcerated people, operate in.
In the last few years, several major cities have made prison calls free. Last year, Connecticut became the first state to make calls free entirely. Currently, the FCC can cap the cost of interstate calls, which it has restricted to a maximum of 21 cents per minute, but cannot regulate in-state calls, video, or messaging, which constitute a majority of prison and jail communication. In March a bill advanced out of the U.S. Senate’s Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee that would allow the FCC to address these issues. The Senate has yet to hold a full vote on the measure.
While the cruises may not actually take place, Logan made it clear to that Smart Communications regularly holds training summits. Invitations include all-expense paid offers to attend these summits. These events, Logan assured The Appeal, happen regularly.
An invitation sent to a member of the Fairfax County Sheriff’s office includes a picture of a jet ski. Smart Communications’ Logan said in a statement that receiving complimentary invitations to such training events are “in no way contingent on doing business with Smart Communications.”
In 2021, a representative for Smart Communications emailed the Dawson County Sheriff’s Office in Georgia to offer a “complimentary training event (… including travel, hotel accommodations, meals & excursions) held at our headquarters in Tampa Florida April 6th-8th!” At the end of the message, the company noted that attendees will be “Living the resort life.”
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Fredrick Harris Jr. shows scars resulting from being shot by an officer of the Fremont Police Department in California in March 2018. (photo: Brian Howey/WP)
The Unseen Toll of Nonfatal Police Shootings
Brian Howey, Wesley Lowery and Steven Rich, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "The way Kenneth Gilbert Jr. and his father tell the story, it had been a busy morning running errands in east Atlanta when their pickup was suddenly cut off by a dark truck and forced onto the curb."
Untallied nationally, the shootings leave those who survive with injuries, emotional trauma and legal fallout.
The way Kenneth Gilbert Jr. and his father tell the story, it had been a busy morning running errands in east Atlanta when their pickup was suddenly cut off by a dark truck and forced onto the curb.
Once Gilbert Sr. got back on the road, he said, the truck swerved back into their lane. Gilbert Sr. said he hit the gas and sped around it, making a sweeping motion with his hand as he shouted at the driver to “move over.”
Gilbert Sr. said that as he slowed for the next stoplight, he saw the truck catching up — and a gun pointing at him from its passenger window. He yelled for his son to get down as a bullet shattered one of their rear windows and struck Gilbert Sr. in the head.
Gilbert Jr. then grabbed his gun, which he legally owned, from the floorboard of the pickup and returned fire. He, too, was shot in the head.
Both survived. And both insist they had no idea that the man shooting at them was an Atlanta police officer riding in an unmarked SWAT vehicle. The department would later say that Officer Scott Oliver, who was unharmed, opened fire only after seeing the younger Gilbert load and point a gun. The officer said he ordered Gilbert Jr. to drop it.
After an initial burst of media attention, the March 13, 2019, shootings quickly faded from the headlines.
Although The Washington Post has documented nearly 1,000 fatal police shootings nationwide every year, there is no comprehensive data on incidents in which officers shoot and wound someone.
That has made it difficult not only to know how often this happens, but also to hold departments and officers accountable.
“That kind of information is necessary to develop strategies to reduce officer-involved shootings,” said Chuck Wexler, who runs the nonprofit Police Executive Research Forum, adding that nonfatal police shootings deserve just as much scrutiny as fatal ones. “What matters is it was a shooting, whether they died or not. The real question is, what can we learn from that?”
To help fill this gap, The Post and Berkeley Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program filed public records requests for information about nonfatal shootings from every department with five or more deadly police shootings from 2015 through 2020.
Analysis of data obtained from 156 departments found that in addition to the 2,137 people killed in fatal shootings, officers in those departments shot and wounded 1,609 more.
In other words, for every five people shot and killed by police in these departments, four others were shot and survived.
This is the unseen reality of police use of deadly force in the United States: a hidden population whose circumstances largely echo those in fatal shootings but who survive to grapple with a lifetime of debilitating wounds, emotional trauma and legal fallout.
Because The Post examined incidents only in the deadliest departments, the tally of those wounded by police is undoubtedly far higher.
In some cities, woundings heavily outnumbered fatal shootings. The New York Police Department had 87 nonfatal shootings compared with 43 fatal ones. In Chicago, police wounded 63 people and killed 38. The Atlanta Police Department, one of whose officers shot the Gilberts, had the largest disparity of any department examined, wounding three times as many people as it killed: 40 nonfatal police shootings since 2015, compared with 13 fatal shootings in that period.
America stands out in comparison with other nations for its prevalence of guns. Police are trained to anticipate that anyone they encounter may have a gun and pose a threat. Experts note that officers are trained to shoot when they perceive a serious, imminent threat to themselves or someone else — and to shoot at “center mass” until that threat subsides.
Police in New York and Atlanta declined to comment.
The Chicago Police Department said in a statement that it has updated its use-of-force policies in recent years to “prioritize the sanctity of human life” and that it regularly reviews officers’ use of force to recommend policy and training changes. “The Chicago Police Department is committed to treating all individuals fairly and respectfully.”
The Post data revealed that these incidents also can pose a threat to police: Officers were shot in about 7 percent of all fatal and nonfatal shootings examined.
The information that departments provided to The Post about their nonfatal shootings varied.
Some shared case notes, including demographic and narrative information, while others provided just a raw number of shootings — complicating efforts to conduct a thorough analysis.
In cases where detailed information was available, the circumstances in which people were wounded by police gunfire largely paralleled those in fatal shootings at the same departments: Nearly all of those shot and wounded were men, and many struggled with addiction, homelessness and poverty. At least 1 in 5 were experiencing mental health crises, and police said most were armed with guns when the shootings occurred.
The racial disparity in nonfatal shootings, however, was more pronounced than in fatal shootings across the departments studied: Black residents accounted for 16 percent of the combined population policed by these departments, but they represented 30 percent of those fatally shot by police and 41 percent of those shot and wounded. Officers in The Post’s sample shot nearly the exact number of Black people (1,109) as they did White people (1,111) — although these communities have nearly three times as many combined White residents as they do Black ones.
Jim Pasco, the longtime executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police, the largest union representing rank-and-file officers across the country, said that officers are not to blame for racial disparities in police use of force, although racial bias on the part of some individual officers may contribute to the overrepresentation of Black people who are shot and wounded by police in The Post’s data.
“Police officers are deployed where the crime is, and crime is usually a lot more likely to occur in poor communities, underserved communities, and underrepresented communities, and so that’s where they are, and those communities, sadly, tend to be people of color,” Pasco said.
“What we’ve got to talk about is why that neighborhood is the way it is, and why Black people are stuck there without economic opportunity, good education or anything else.”
Phillip Atiba Goff, who leads Yale University’s African American studies department and is one of the nation’s foremost policing-data experts, said the racial disparities documented by The Post across the 156 departments align with research conducted by his Center for Policing Equity.
Goff said that because police prioritize drug- and poverty-based crimes in communities of color, they are more likely to encounter and use force against Black people — no matter the suspected offense. “We’ve chosen a set of things to criminalize, we’ve chosen a group of people to have constant police interactions, and those folks are the same folks who have historically been our most vulnerable,” he said.
The Post’s analysis of shootings at the 156 departments also found that Black people shot by police more often survived (46 percent) than White people (34 percent). Policing experts said that whether someone survives a police shooting often depends on a combination of variables — how many bullets strike the person and where on the body, how quickly medical aid is rendered, and luck.
Controlling the narrative
In fatal shootings, the police account is the first and sometimes only record of what happened. When people survive, there’s an opportunity to hear another side of the story — one that sometimes contradicts the police account.
Consider the case of Shacory Daniels and Fredrick Harris Jr. in San Leandro, Calif. The men were shot by police in March 2018. Their story and the account offered by the police differ on a critical point: whether the men were armed.
By their own admission, Daniels and Harris had been breaking into cars. When officers caught up with them in a San Leandro mall parking lot, two unmarked police cars blocked in their car.
That’s when, police said, Daniels drove at them — prompting another officer to ram into Daniels with an unmarked police van. Amid the chaos, police say, an officer saw Harris reach toward the center console of the vehicle in which he was a passenger.
“I see him come up and I see a black object come up towards the passenger side window and basically thrust in my direction,” Fremont police officer Jamil Roberts, who was driving the police van, would later tell police investigators. “I thought I was gonna be shot and hurt seriously, killed.”
Roberts fired through his vehicle’s driver side window, striking Harris in the back, arm and face, and hitting Daniels in one calf. Harris was arrested at the scene. Daniels fled and hid in nearby bushes for several hours before police found him.
On the advice of his attorney, Harris declined to discuss details of the incident with The Post, although he did talk about his injuries and the aftermath of the case. In a videotaped interview between Harris and investigators obtained by The Post, he told detectives he put his hands up before Roberts shot him.
Gregory Fox, an attorney representing Roberts, said that one of the officers said he saw Daniels drop and then pick up and run away with a “metallic object.” No weapon was found in the car or at the scene. Both men insist they were unarmed.
In an interview with The Post, Daniels, 35, said an unmarked car rammed him and he tried to swerve away, not realizing it was the police. “Yes, we was doing something bad,” Daniels said. “It wasn’t [bad] enough for you to shoot us.”
The men were among 12 people shot by Fremont Police Department officers from 2015 to 2020. Four others survived, and six were killed. The department declined to comment on the shooting, as did the nearby San Leandro Police Department, whose officers investigated the shooting. Both departments found that Roberts had violated no administrative policies.
Harris was charged with second-degree burglary of a vehicle, a misdemeanor, and for violating his parole related to two prior burglary charges on his record. Daniels was charged with four counts of assault on a police officer, felony evading arrest and second-degree burglary.
Daniels’s attorney, Chike Odiwe, said that in this case and in many police shootings that he has handled, police and prosecutors sometimes file more serious charges to ensure that the person police shot agrees to a plea deal or settlement.
Defense attorneys say they often advise their clients to avoid the media, so as not to anger prosecutors.
It would be unethical for prosecutors to consider a police department’s civil liability when considering criminal charges, said Greg Totten, the chief executive of the California District Attorneys Association.
He said prosecutors may feel pressure to bring serious charges in cases in which police have shot and wounded someone.
But, he added: “No DA should be filing a charge that he or she does not think can be proven beyond reasonable doubt. It’s not at all uncommon for someone to be arrested and charged by police, and it’s presented to the DA, and the DA’s office decides to file something less serious.”
Ultimately, the Alameda County district attorney dropped all of the charges against Daniels except for evading arrest, for which he received probation. He also served 18 months in prison for violating his parole by being arrested.
Harris served four days in jail followed by three years of probation. Bullets remain lodged in his face and back, he said. He later sued the Fremont Police Department and reached a settlement in which he was paid $600,000, city records show. In exchange, Harris said, he agreed not to discuss the details of the case publicly.
The district attorney’s office declined to comment on the case.
Daniels also sued, and his lawsuit is pending. He repairs roads for CalTrans, the state agency that manages California’s highway system. He said that his leg aches when he works and that he can no longer play basketball with his 11-year-old son. But Daniels said he is glad finally to be telling his story.
“If you shot somebody and it was wrong, then that needs to be acknowledged and not just slipped up under the rug,” he said.
‘Either one of us could have died that night’
Such encounters endanger police as well. Out of the 3,746 fatal and nonfatal police shootings The Post examined, there were 246 shootings in which at least one officer was shot. In those shootings, 28 officers were killed and 279 wounded.
Officers Rashad Martin and Jason Scott of the Richmond police were among those who took fire. About 1:30 a.m. on June 2, 2020, the pair responded to a call reporting a man with a gun.
As they reached the South Side area in their cruiser, they saw three men walking on Semmes Avenue. The officers assumed the men would flee. “They’re about to run,” Scott declared to his partner as they exited their cruiser.
Cameras worn by the officers recorded what happened next.
All three men complied with the officers’ commands to stop walking and show their hands. Martin then asked one of the men, 19-year-old Waseem Hackett, to lift his shirt and show his waistband. Hackett instead asked if he was being detained.
Martin said he was: The city was under an 8 p.m. curfew because of the protests occurring after George Floyd’s death at the hands of police in Minneapolis about a week earlier. At that point, Hackett lifted his shirt to reveal a handgun, and Martin quickly moved to handcuff him.
“Put your hands behind your back,” Martin ordered. He grabbed Hackett by one arm.
“What the hell?” Hackett responded, pulling away.
Hackett ran, drew his gun and began firing at the officers, both of whom returned fire. All three men — Hackett and the officers — were wounded. Hackett was shot once in the shoulder, while the officers faced more serious injuries: Scott was shot in the abdomen and chest, and Martin was shot in an arm and knee.
“Either one of us could have died that night,” Martin said in an interview with The Post. “We were just fortunate that we ended up making it home.”
Both officers required multiple surgeries, lengthy hospital stays and physical therapy. Martin is still awaiting an operation to repair his knee, and neither officer has fully healed from his wounds nor been able to return to full duty. They said in a joint interview that the hardest part has been the damage to their mental health. Both have attended therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder and struggle to sleep.
“Even two years later,” Scott said, “as soon as my head hits the pillow, it’s like, ‘Well, I guess we’re gonna think about the shooting.’ ”
In October 2021, as part of a deal with prosecutors, Hackett pleaded no contest to two counts of aggravated malicious wounding and one count of possession of a firearm by a violent felon. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison. In a phone interview from Virginia’s Nottoway Correctional Center, Hackett said he regrets his actions that night.
Hackett said that at the time of the shooting, he was homeless and carrying a gun for protection. He said he and the other men had been drinking and using drugs that night. (The two other men told police, in interview recordings obtained by The Post, that they did not know Hackett before the shooting and did not see what happened once the gunfire started. Neither man could be located for comment.)
Hackett said he pulled away only after Martin grabbed him.
“In my mind, I’m like, ‘They’re trying to kill me.’ ” he said. “I’ve been seeing how the police has been killing unarmed Black people for years, so knowing that I have a gun on me, I’m thinking they’re going to kill me.”
Hackett said that he was interviewed by police that night at the hospital without a lawyer present and that he was under the influence of drugs and alcohol. Facing charges that could have resulted in a prison term of more than 50 years, he made a deal with prosecutors.
“The situation never should have gone down that way,” Hackett said, adding that if he could change what happened, he “would never have brought a gun out with me that night.”
Officer Martin defended his actions. In the moment, he said, he assumed — ultimately correctly — that Hackett was carrying the gun illegally and that the young man would therefore be inclined to flee.
“I was as polite as possible, given the situation. … I could have said, ‘Hey, will you please lift your shirts up?’ It wouldn’t have mattered, because he didn’t want to go to jail,” Martin said. “So when I went to grab him and detain him, it became a reality for him that, ‘Hey, this is a situation where I might go to jail, and I just simply don’t want to do that. So what I’m gonna do is kill these cops and get away.’ And that’s exactly what he tried to do.”
‘Did you guys get the other people?’
In Atlanta, as Kenneth Gilbert Jr. was being loaded into the ambulance, he called his mother: He told her that he and his father had been shot by a “White dude” riding in what appeared to be some sort of “dogcatcher truck.”
“When I was in the ambulance, I asked them, ‘Did you guys get the other people? Did you guys find the other people? Did they get away?’ ” Gilbert Jr. said. “I didn’t know who these people were.”
Meanwhile, at the scene, a law enforcement official offered the police account to local media. “When they pulled up alongside the suspect vehicle, they looked and they saw the suspect loading a handgun,” Atlanta Police Deputy Chief Jeff Glazier said. “They certainly feared for their life,” he said.
At the hospital, both the father and son required blood transfusions. Gilbert Jr.’s scalp bore a jagged line of staples. Gilbert Sr. said the doctor who dislodged the bullet from his skull told him that had it struck a half-centimeter to one side it would have left him brain dead. “Thank God for a hard head,” Gilbert Sr. said.
Neither father nor son was interviewed by Atlanta police, they said. Angela Sendek, Gilbert Jr.’s mother, said the investigators from the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office who spoke with her at the hospital finally explained that the men had been shot by a police officer. They seemed focused on the officer’s conduct and gave no indication that either her son or ex-husband would be charged with a crime, she said.
After four days in the hospital, the men were sent home believing they would be vindicated. The officer had fired on them without provocation, they said, and never identified himself. “My car has tinted windows on it. How did you look into my car and see my son loading a handgun?” Gilbert Sr. said. “It never happened.”
But in the days that followed, the Gilberts’ version of what happened went unreported. Local media quoted police labeling Gilbert Sr. as a “convicted felon with a warrant out for his arrest” and questioning whether the Gilberts had been on their way to commit a crime at the time of the shooting. They also noted that Gilbert Jr. had been arrested in connection with a 2017 shooting.
The Gilberts were not quoted in any of the stories.
In an interview, Gilbert Sr. acknowledged felony convictions for shoplifting and possession of cocaine in the late 1990s and early 2000s, which he said stemmed from a time when he struggled with a drug addiction. He denied the police claim that there was a warrant out for his arrest the day of the shooting, and The Post was unable to find any record of one. At no point after the shooting was Gilbert Sr. taken into custody.
Records show that Gilbert Jr.’s 2017 case had been dismissed by a judge who concluded that Gilbert Jr. had fired in self-defense.
Gilbert Jr. said that six days after going home from the hospital, he was awakened in the middle of the night by pounding on his front door. He said an officer pulled him shirtless from bed and handcuffed him facedown in the grass in front of the home. He was booked into jail and charged with two counts of assault with a deadly weapon and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony in connection with the shooting. His father was neither arrested nor charged.
Three years later, the case is unresolved.
Citing the still-pending charges against Gilbert Jr., the Atlanta Police Department and the union that represents its rank-and-file officers declined to comment or make Officer Oliver available for an interview.
Both Gilberts said they still suffer the effects of that day. A strange tingling shoots through Gilbert Sr.’s jaw whenever he chews, he said, and flashbacks jolt him awake at night.
Gilbert Jr. said his head throbs so much at night that he needs medication to sleep. He said he rarely leaves the house and has struggled to find work. “He doesn’t feel like a man,” his mother said through tears. “He can’t buy his daughter a pencil.”
That prosecutors still have not taken Gilbert Jr. to trial, said his lawyer Ash Joshi, is evidence that the facts support his client’s version of events. “If the government felt they had a strong case to bring, they likely would’ve brought it by now,” he said.
In August, prosecutors told The Post that their investigation continues. Days later, an investigator with the prosecutor’s civil rights unit contacted Joshi to request a new round of interviews with the Gilberts.
The Gilberts took that as a sign that perhaps the investigation is once again focused on Officer Oliver’s actions that day and said they plan to speak with investigators.
“I have a voice now,” Kenneth Gilbert Jr. told The Post. “I’m just glad to be here so I can tell my story."
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Microplastics, pesticides and other toxins could be causing increase of neurological disorders. (photo: David Kelly/Photograph David Kelly/The University of Queensland)
Exposure to Environmental Toxins May Be Root of Rise in Neurological Disorders
Nina Lakhani, Guardian UK
Lakhani writes: "The mystery behind the astronomical rise in neurological disorders like Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s could be caused by exposure to environmental toxins that are omnipresent yet poorly understood, leading doctors warn."
Doctors warn exposure to omnipresent yet poorly understood chemicals such as microplastics could play a role in dementia
The mystery behind the astronomical rise in neurological disorders like Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s could be caused by exposure to environmental toxins that are omnipresent yet poorly understood, leading doctors warn.
At a conference on Sunday, the country’s leading neurologists and neuroscientists will highlight recent research efforts to fill the gaping scientific hole in understanding of the role environmental toxins – air pollution, pesticides, microplastics, forever chemicals and more – play in increasingly common diseases like dementias and childhood developmental disorders.
Humans may encounter a staggering 80,000 or more toxic chemicals as they work, play, sleep and learn – so many that it is almost impossible to determine their individual effects on a person, let alone how they may interact or the cumulative impacts on the nervous system over a lifespan.
Some contact with environmental toxins is inevitable given the proliferation of plastics and chemical pollutants, as well as America’s hands off regulatory approach, but exposure is unequal.
In the US, communities of color, Indigenous people and low income families are far more likely to be exposed to a myriad of pollutants through unsafe housing and water, manufacturing and agricultural jobs, and proximity to roads and polluting industrial plants, among other hazards.
It’s likely genetic makeup plays a role in how susceptible people are to the pathological effects of different chemicals, but research has shown higher rates of cancers and respiratory disease in environmentally burdened communities.
Very little is known about impact on brain and nervous system disorder, but there is growing consensus that genetics and ageing do not fully account for the sharp rise in previously rare diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) – a degenerative disease more likely in army veterans and neighborhoods with heavy industry.
Neurologists and their surgical counterparts, neurosurgeons, will spotlight the research gap at the American Neurological Association (ANA) annual meeting in Chicago.
“Neurology is about 15 years behind cancer so we need to sound the alarm on this and get more people doing research because the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] is absolutely not protecting us,” said Frances Jensen, the ANA president and chair of the Department of Neurology at the University of Pennsylvania.
Scores of well-known dangerous toxins such as asbestos, glyphosates, and formaldehyde continue to be used widely in agriculture, construction, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics in the US, despite being banned elsewhere. Earlier this week, the Guardian reported on corporate efforts to influence the EPA and conceal a possible link between the popular weed killer Paraquat and Parkinson’s.
Jensen added: “It’s like dark matter, there are so many unknowns … it’s truly going to be an epic exploration using the most cutting edge science we have.”
Neurology is the branch of medicine focused on disorders of the nervous system – the brain, spinal cord and sensory neural elements like the ears, eyes and skin. Neurologists treat stroke, multiple sclerosis, migraines, Parkinson’s, epilepsy, and Alzheimer’s, as well as children with neurodevelopmental disorders like ADHD, autism and learning disabilities.
The brain is the most complex and important organ in the body – and likely the most sensitive to environmental toxins, but was largely inaccessible to researchers until sophisticated imaging, genetic and molecular techniques were developed in the past 20 years.
Going forward, research could help explain why people living in neighborhoods with high levels of air pollution have a higher risk of stroke, as well as examine links between fetal exposure and neurodevelopmental disorders.
Rick Woychik, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, said: “It’s not just about pesticides. PFAS chemicals are ubiquitous in the environment, as are nanoplastics. And there are trillions of dollars’ worth of demand for nanomaterials, but it’s sobering how little we know about their toxicology.”
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