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Shirin Ali | Actually, John Fetterman's Debate Performance Was Fine
Shirin Ali, Slate
Ali writes: "Pennsylvania has one of the most contentious Senate races in the country this term, and on Tuesday night, during the one and only debate between candidates, eyes were on Democrat John Fetterman, who had a stroke in May just days before his party's primary."
Here’s what to make of the obvious impairments the Democratic candidate showed on stage.
Pennsylvania has one of the most contentious Senate races in the country this term, and on Tuesday night, during the one and only debate between candidates, eyes were on Democrat John Fetterman, who had a stroke in May just days before his party’s primary. After taking three months off to recover, Fetterman returned to the campaign trail, and the debate was one of the highest profile appearances he’s had since.
It did not go particularly well for the Democrat: 53-year-old Fetterman struggled to communicate while facing off his Republican challenger Mehmet Oz, missing words, repeating himself, and pausing to collect his thoughts throughout the debate. In the aftermath, members of the media and Republicans alike have expressed doubts about his health and questioned why he agreed to a debate in the first place.
The Fetterman team tried to set expectations low before the debate, framing their candidate as someone who has never been a natural debater, and emphasizing that he is still in recovery mode. In a memo sent to journalists ahead of the big event, they admitted debates were not, “John’s format,” and, “if we’re all being honest, Oz clearly comes into Tuesday night with a huge built-in advantage.” Fetterman’s doctors, however, have repeatedly said he is capable of taking on the full workload that would be required of him in public office.
Some of Fetterman’s visible issues were directly explained by the moderators: As a result of his stroke, Fetterman was given closed captioning for both questions and answers. It’s a common accommodation for stroke patients to help with auditory processing issues, and has been unfairly questioned. Prior to the debate, Fetterman’s doctor explained that the condition can come across as hearing difficulty, but that the pauses and delays actually signal a word was not processed properly. The issue was that on the debate stage, and with time limits and an opponent and moderators occasionally interrupting, these delays resulted in Fetterman often struggling to clearly express himself or articulate his positions succinctly. The question became: Is this the result of a processing problem, or could it be signaling some greater impairment than what his campaign has disclosed?
To answer that question, I talked to two doctors about how we should view Fetterman or assess his abilities, after watching him debate. Kevin Sheth, director of the Yale Center for Brain … Mind Health, told me it’s clear that Fetterman’s stroke was significant—but it’s also evident he’s made significant progress in the past five to six months since. He’s not only been continuing to campaign but was able to participate in last night’s debate, get on stage, and get into extended question and answer sessions. To Sheth, “that says something, clearly he does have some challenges still with his speech and his language, but those in some ways are not unexpected.”
The aftermath of stroke recovery varies greatly depending on which section of the brain was impacted and how severe it was. The American Stroke Association boils it down to: if a stroke occurs in the left side of the brain, the right side will be affected and that includes speech and language problems, though Fetterman’s campaign hasn’t shared specific details on the extent of his stroke. Paralysis and memory loss are also potential symptoms that can impact strokes that happen no matter which side of the brain the stroke occurred on.
Pooja Khatri, division chief of neurology and rehabilitation medicine at the University of Cincinnati, told me Fetterman pushing through his impairments could actually help with his stroke recovery. She explained that it’s a principle of speech therapy—a form of rehab Fetterman’s doctor has confirmed he’s been attending on a regular basis. However, stress can make recovery more challenging, Sheth noted, adding that that’s something the job of a senator usually comes with.
Taking all of that into consideration, Sheth said he thinks Fetterman appears to be doing OK! Sure, he has some lingering auditory processing issues, but Sheth thought his ability to get into complex responses during Tuesday night’s debate should be viewed as reassuring, even if he was noticeably slower than his opponent (who is, to be fair, a TV veteran). Generally, the first three months following a stroke are considered the most important for recovery and when patients see the most improvements, and Fetterman is about five months post-stroke. But Sheth doesn’t think that means Fetterman is at the end of his road to recovery—he said there’s certainly still potential for more progress.
Many people who experience strokes end up with some level of disability—in fact it’s considered a leading cause of disability in the U.S. It’s possible that Fetterman will continue to struggle with processing, but it shouldn’t be viewed as a proxy for his cognition or thinking. When I asked about the reaction to Fetterman’s performance, Sheth thought that it was a reflection of American society’s preconceived judgements, “We definitely often have biases against a range of disabilities and I think that’s what you’re seeing play out here,” he said.
Strokes are pretty common in America, with someone experiencing one every 40 seconds. In fact, there are currently two other Democratic members of Congress who have also experienced strokes: New Mexico Senator Ben Ray Luján and Maryland’s Chris Van Hollen, who experienced his stroke the same day as Fetterman. Both Congressmen recovered and continue to serve their respective offices.
Some recognized the feat that it was for Fetterman to not only publicly recover from a stroke but chose to participate in a nationally televised debate and the decision may have actually boosted his Senate campaign. Even with all the discourse, it’s worth noting that within three hours of Tuesday night’s debate, Fetterman raised $1 million. In fact, he’s has pretty consistently raised more money than Oz during their senate bid. Perhaps his own bet—that being transparent about his incredibly common health struggle—is the strategically sound approach after all.
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The IK-3 penal colony where jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny was reportedly transferred in the city of Vladimir, Russia, in 2021. (photo: Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP)
Griner Faces Difficult Conditions at Russian Penal Colony, Former Prisoners and Advocates Say
Phil McCausland and Curtis Bunn, NBC News
Excerpt: "Brittney Griner will enter a system of isolation, grueling labor and psychological torment when she is transferred to a penal colony, the successor to the infamous Russian gulag, to fulfill a nine-year sentence handed down Tuesday in Moscow, former prisoners and advocates said."
Like the Soviet gulag system they replaced, the prisons "were often harsh and life threatening,” a 2021 State Department report on Russian human rights abuses said.
Brittney Griner will enter a system of isolation, grueling labor and psychological torment when she is transferred to a penal colony, the successor to the infamous Russian gulag, to fulfill a nine-year sentence handed down Tuesday in Moscow, former prisoners and advocates said.
Human rights violations are a regular feature of many of the camps, according to the U.S. State Department, human rights groups and others who have maintained regular contact with prisoners in Russia. That the WNBA star, who lost her appeal Tuesday, is a gay Black woman could add unknown variables to a penal system that is known to be remote and harrowing.
“Conditions in prisons and detention centers varied but were often harsh and life threatening,” a 2021 State Department report on Russian human rights abuses said. “Overcrowding, abuse by guards and inmates, limited access to health care, food shortages, and inadequate sanitation were common in prisons, penal colonies, and other detention facilities.”
The report notes that “physical and sexual abuse by prison guards was systemic,” that torture of prisoners was pervasive — at times resulting in death or suicide — and that discriminatory protections against women and people of color were not often enforced. The law also does not prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.
“Russian prisons are grim, even relative to prisons in other countries. And the Putin regime has ramped up hostility towards gays and lesbians as part of its broader policy of hard-line nationalism,” said Muriel Atkin, a Russian history professor at George Washington University.
That adds further concerns to a fraught situation. While tensions between the White House and the Kremlin continue to boil over the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Griner’s agent, Lindsay Colas, emphasized Tuesday that she believes Moscow is using Griner’s imprisonment as leverage against the U.S.
“Brittney Griner’s nine-plus year sentence is regarded as harsh and extreme by Russian legal standards,” Colas said in a statement Tuesday on Twitter. “Today’s disappointing, yet unsurprising, appeal outcome further validates the fact that she is being held hostage and is being used as a political pawn. Brittney Griner is being held by Russia simply because she is an American.”
The type of penal colony Griner — who was arrested for carrying two cartridges of cannabis oil — will be sent to is most likely a repurposed Soviet gulag, a brutal system of labor camps and prisons that incarcerated millions of people from the 1920s to the 1950s. Prisoners were used for farming, mining or logging in sparsely populated areas of the country or worked in sweatshop conditions.
Typically such compounds are found in the far northern and eastern reaches of Russia as part of a unique system that aims to both imprison and exile convicts, according to an Amnesty International report published last year. It can often take weeks for prisoners to arrive at the prisons on prison trucks and specially designed train carriages called Stolypins.
Prisoners are extremely vulnerable and can be difficult to locate during the arduous journeys, Amnesty International noted. That has gained notice with the imprisonment of high-profile figures, such as oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Pussy Riot band member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, among others.
‘Treating incarcerated women like cattle’
Tolokonnikova provided some insight into a Russian prison camp in a letter to a Russian media outlet in 2013, a year into her sentence, in which she declared a hunger strike for the conditions she and others were forced to live in.
For those imprisoned alongside her in Penal Colony No. 14 in the Republic of Mordovia, she described working up to 17-hour days in a sewing shop, sleep deprivation, freezing conditions, a lack of basic hygiene, dangerous and humiliating working conditions, and regular assaults on other prisoners.
Tolokonnikova said that she was spared some of the abuse because of her celebrity but that she would continue her hunger strike “until the administration starts obeying the law and stops treating incarcerated women like cattle ejected from the realm of justice for the purpose of stoking the production of the sewing industry; until they start treating us like humans.”
The conditions do not seem to have changed since then.
Trevor Reed, a U.S. citizen and former Marine, spent nearly two years in a Russian penal colony also in Mordovia, about eight hours east of Moscow, until the Biden administration was able to negotiate his release.
Reed refused to work in the camps and was put in solitary confinement for months as a result, said Jonathan Franks, who consulted on the negotiations on behalf of the family. Reed lost over 40 pounds and became extremely sick, as he was not given adequate clothes to deal with the cold Russian winter and was fed substandard food like “spoiled meat that the prison cats wouldn’t even eat,” Franks said.
“The Russian hinterlands are pretty bleak,” he said. “The prisons barely feed the prisoners, so it’s often on the families to deliver most of the nutrition, and that has become increasingly difficult when it became impossible to engage in financial transactions in Russia.”
Anna Berbeneva fled Russia with her husband after he was arrested for protesting Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine in 2014. Now a member of the Voices of Russian Opposition in Sacramento in California, she corresponded with Russian prisoners for many years to give their cases greater attention.
She said the inmates would tell in their letters how administrators of the jails would use and abuse them.
“They can torture them, they can threaten them, they can blackmail them or do whatever they want. They’re like a toy to the jail administration,” Berbeneva said. “Nobody can protect them.”
Franks said he believed that, like Tolokonnikova, Griner could get greater protections than other prisoners because the Russians view her as valuable, although he added that “you can be psychologically traumatized and physically safe at the same time.”
Black, gay and female in a Russian penal colony
Rudra Sil, a Russian historian and political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said he is not exactly sure what life will be like for Griner if she is moved to a penal colony. But if form and history hold true, he said, it will undoubtedly be brutal for her as a high-profile gay Black woman.
Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon, a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania who focuses on the Black experience in Russia, agreed. She noted that Russia can use much about Griner to make outlandish requests as the Kremlin preys upon America’s racial tensions and culture war issues.
“She’s Black. She’s gay. And this is a marijuana case,” Julian-Varnon told NPR. “What are the three biggest issues in the United States in terms of domestic politics? Marijuana convictions, LGBTQ issues, anti-Black racism — and the carceral system.”
Julian-Varnon said racism against Black people in Russia has heightened in recent years under Vladimir Putin, which does not bode well for Griner.
“The image of suffering, particularly African American suffering, became the controlling image of Blackness in Russia. ... In many ways, Russia has always used anti-Black racism and Black suffering for its own gain,” she said.
That image, Julian-Varnon said, may have played a part in the denial of Griner’s appeal and the possibility of nine years in prison. “What Brittney represents is new in terms of treatment of African Americans in Russia, because she no longer has the privilege that many African Americans had. African Americans were treated better than Africans in the Soviet Union. The Africans were seen as the little brothers who needed socialist education and needed the leadership of the Soviet Union to obtain modernity.”
But that has changed, Atkin said, along with some major gender issues. According to a report by Penal Reform International, an organization that supports criminal justice reform around the world, there are about 69,000 women in Russian prisons, and the conditions are hostile. “Russia has been undergoing a process of reform of the criminal justice system over the last 20 years, but there is still far too little consideration given to the promotion of gender equality and protection of the rights of women and girls in conflict with the law,” the report said.
Sil said Griner’s being a Black gay woman will make it even harder to reach a diplomatic agreement or secure her release.
“Even in the best of times, it is not easy to simply get someone released in a foreign country, especially if there is a legal process getting underway,” he said. “Still, sometimes deals are cut and exchanges do take place.”
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Georgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker speaks at a campaign event on Oct. 11, 2022, in Carrollton, Georgia. (photo: Elijah Nouvelage/Getty)
Woman (a Different One) Says Herschel Walker Drove Her to Get an Abortion
Ryan Bort, Rolling Stone
Bort writes: "Trump's pick for Senate in Georgia sure seems to have a rich history of helping women get abortions for someone who says they're anti-choice."
Trump's pick for Senate in Georgia sure seems to have a rich history of helping women get abortions for someone who says they're anti-choice
Herschel Walker drove a woman to get an abortion in 1993, the woman, identified only as Jane Doe, claimed in a press conference on Wednesday with high-powered lawyer Gloria Allred.
“Herschel Walker is a hypocrite, and he is not fit to be a U.S. senator,” the woman said, noting that she was not revealing her identity in order to protect herself, her family, and her livelihood. “Herschel Walker says he is against women getting abortions, but he pressured me to have one. I am coming forward now because I heard Herschel deny claims by another woman who said he paid for her abortion.”
The woman recounted the particulars of her six-year affair Georgia Senate candidate, claiming they met in the 1980s when Walker was playing football. She said the romantic relationship began in Dallas, and that Walker regularly said he loved her and even promised her he was going to divorce his wife to be with her. The woman says she became pregnant in 1993 despite being on birth control, and that Walker convinced her to get an abortion and gave her money for it. She says she went to get one but didn’t follow through with it, after which an upset Walker pressured her to go back.
“He then drove me to the clinic the following day and waited for hours in the parking lot until I came out,” she said. “He then drove me to get medications and supplies as described, and then drove me home. I was devastated because I felt like I had been pressured into having an abortion.”
The revelation comes just weeks after the Daily Beast reported that Walker paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion. Walker denied the report while promising to sue the outlet the following morning. The lawsuit never materialized, and Walker’s story about his relationship with the woman — who has said she later had a child with Walker — hasn’t been coherent. “Everything has been a lie,” one of Walker’s sons, Christian, said in the wake of the Daily Beast’s report. “Family values people: He has four kids, four different women, wasn’t in the house raising one of them. He was out having sex with other women. Do you care about family values?”
Walker has been running as a stridently anti-choice candidate, and has equated abortion to murder. He’s shifted his position here, as well. Walker said as recently as August that he opposed any exceptions to an abortion ban, but when pressed during a debate this month about supporting a national abortion ban without, he denied he did. Walker also said in a recent interview that he would support Sen. Lindsey Graham’s bill to ban abortion nationwide, despite saying seconds earlier in same interview that he thinks the issue should be left up to states.
Walker’s confused abortion stance — as well as his past facilitating them, allegedly — is only one of several troubling issues with is campaign, which has been rocked by scandal, hypocrisy, and a blatant unfitness for office atypical for such a high-profile election. Walker appears to have been caught lying about everything from his education to his business record to how many children he has. He’s rejected evolutionary science, and trotted out a series of bizarre claims about climate change, including that America’s “good air” is floating over to China and being replaced by China’s “bad air.” Walker’s past is also filled with concerning incidents, including allegedly holding a gun to his then-wife’s head and threatening to “blow her brains out.” The list goes on.
Nevertheless, Republicans have lined up behind Walker because they know he’ll do what they tell him to do once he’s in the Senate. Sens. Tom Cotton and Tim Scott appeared with him at a campaign event shortly after it was reported that he paid for his ex-girlfriend’s abortion, and Trump has continued to reaffirm his support while bashing the media for reporting on Walker. “They are trying to destroy a man who has true greatness in his future, just as he had athletic greatness in his past,” the former president said in a statement earlier this month. “It’s very important for our Country and the Great State of Georgia that Herschel Walker wins this Election.”
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A mob loyal to President Donald Trump at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (photo: John Minchilo/AP)
Big Tech Is Failing to Fight Election Lies, Civil Rights Groups Charge
Naomi Nix, The Washington Post
Nix writes: "A coalition of 60 civil rights and consumer groups backed a report that offers a dim assessment of tech companies' plans to protect the 2022 midterms."
A coalition of 60 civil rights and consumer groups backed a report that offers a dim assessment of tech companies’ plans to protect the 2022 midterms
Two years ago, Silicon Valley’s biggest technology giants faced criticism from activists and voter suppression experts for not moving sooner to restrict Donald Trump’s accounts after his repeated false claims disputing the legitimacy of the 2020 election.
Now, a coalition of 60 consumer and civil rights groups says Meta, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube are just as ill-prepared to fight disinformation from politicians and other public figures whose public pronouncements about the 2022 midterms could undermine Americans’ faith in the electoral process or lead to violence.
The Change the Terms coalition, which includes the civil rights group Color of Change and the good-government group Common Cause is releasing on Thursday a scathing 19-page analysis of the major tech companies’ election-related policies and whether they are living up to their pledges to fight disinformation ahead of the vote.
The report argues that the tech companies’ plans to fight disinformation and connect users with credible information arrived too late and were not aggressive enough to address proliferating false claims about widespread voter fraud or specific attacks against election officials.
“Election misinformation and disinformation are not anecdotal or seasonal. Lies — particularly the brand of election-denialism rhetoric that rose in 2020 — have been ubiquitous online for years, and this crisis has no end in sight,” the groups write.
“To treat ‘election-related’ disinformation in particular as episodic ignores that it is present year-round and shapes beliefs and opinions that lead to harassment of election officials, and election-related hoaxes and violence.”
The coalition’s report, which was written primarily by researchers and activists at the media advocacy group Free Press, offers a dim assessment about the way tech companies have wielded their power to shape public discourse during a high-stakes campaign season when Americans will decide who will represent them in the House of Representatives, a third of the Senate and numerous state offices. Millions of voters already have cast their ballots.
“We went to the brink of violence and saw the effect of social media’s influence on January 6th,” said Nora Benavidez, a senior counsel and the director of digital justice and civil rights at Free Press. “Despite that, the companies are doing no better. They have failed to clearly update their systems in time for the elections.”
YouTube spokeswoman Ivy Choi said in a statement that the company disagrees with the report’s characterization of the company’s policies. “Inciting violence against poll workers or alleging the 2020 U.S. presidential election was stolen or rigged is not allowed on YouTube, and we enforce our policies regardless of the speaker,” Choi said.
TikTok spokesman Ben Rathe said in a statement that the company removes election misinformation and that it provides access to authoritative information about elections through its “Election Center, which is available in more than 45 languages.”
Twitter spokeswoman Elizabeth Busby said in a statement that the company has “taken deliberate, meaningful steps to elevate credible, authoritative information about the U.S. midterms, and to ensure misleading information isn’t amplified.”
A spokesperson for Meta, which is the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, declined to comment on the report but referred a Washington Post reporter to an August news release outlining Meta’s intention to fight misinformation about how to vote and threats of violence or harassment against election workers.
The report follows a months-long campaign the coalition waged to encourage the tech companies to address hateful, misinformed and violent content on their platforms. Over the summer, the coalition began meeting with executives at the four companies to talk about specific strategies they could adopt to address problematic information. Months later, the coalition argues, the companies have followed few of its recommendations.
Over the summer, the tech companies announced they were largely sticking to the strategies they’d deployed in past electoral cycles to fight false claims about the electoral process while elevating credible information. They pledged to ban and remove content that misleads users about how or when to vote while promoting accurate information about the electoral process. Twitter, TikTok and YouTube also said they would take action against posts that falsely claim the 2020 election was rigged. Meta barred such posts only in political advertisements.
But the report alleges that severe gaps exist in the companies’ policies and in their enforcement of their own rules. The advocacy groups were especially critical of exceptions to the rules that all four companies grant because they deem some content to be newsworthy or in the “public interest,” according to the report.
The activists argue that “every promising protective policy seems as though it could be circumvented with each platform’s arbitrary ‘newsworthiness’ or ‘public interest’ exception.”
That issue has gained renewed interest since the tech mogul Elon Musk, who on Friday is expected to become the owner of Twitter, said he would reverse Twitter’s ban on former president Donald Trump.
Hundreds of GOP candidates have embraced Trump’s false claims about his defeat in the 2020 presidential race, and some are using social media to trumpet unsubstantiated claims about election fraud.
Busby said that Twitter rarely applies the public interest exception and that when it does, the tweet is ineligible to be retweeted and is placed behind a notice providing context about the rule violation.
Choi said that although YouTube does “allow content with sufficient educational, documentary, scientific or artistic (EDSA) context or countervailing views — this is not a pass to violate our policies based on ‘newsworthiness.’ ”
Rathe pointed a Washington Post reporter to TikTok’s content guidelines, which state that the company may apply exceptions to its rules in “certain limited circumstances,” as in the case of content that is important for documentary, scientific or artistic reasons.
The coalition’s report also urges the platforms to bolster their policies to protect election workers from violence and harassment. Election workers and their families have been experiencing death threats as well as sexual and racist attacks spawned by their refusal to back Trump’s claims of a rigged election or because they have been caught up in false claims that they were part of an election-rigging scheme.
The tech companies have embraced policies that bar certain kinds of harassment or disclosures of personally identifiable information about users, including election workers.
The civil rights groups argue the companies should be more transparent about their efforts to prevent election workers’ personal information from being spread online and should do more to remove misinformation that could make election workers a target in the first place.
“The ‘Big Lie’ spreads across platforms; examples also abound on Meta and Twitter, where hateful and misleading posts pack a one-two punch: encouraging violence against election workers because of demonstrably false claims about stealing the 2020 election from Donald Trump,” the groups wrote.
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In two rural California counties, voters are showing increasing hostility and aggression toward election workers. (photo: Elias Funez/AP)
'A Madness Has Taken Hold' Ahead of US Midterms: Local Election Officials Fear for Safety
Dani Anguiano, Guardian UK
Anguiano writes: "Elections offices didn't used to think about security in this way, Allen said. Now they can't afford not to."
In two rural California counties, voters are showing increasing hostility and aggression toward election workers
Inside the office of the Shasta county clerk and registrar of voters, which runs elections for about 111,000 people in this part of far northern California, Cathy Darling Allen can see all the security improvements she would make if she had the budget.
“We have plexi on the counter downstairs for Covid but that won’t stop a person. It’s literally just clamped to the counters,” the county clerk and registrar said. For about $50,000, the office could secure the front, limiting access to upstairs offices, she estimated. Another county put bulletproof glass in their lobby years earlier, she knew, something officials there at one point considered removing, though not any more.
Elections offices didn’t used to think about security in this way, Allen said. Now they can’t afford not to.
Following Donald Trump’s refusal to acknowledge his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, Allen says the once low-profile job of non-partisan local election official has transformed in counties like hers. A culture of misinformation has sown doubt in the US election system and subjected officials from Nevada to Michigan to harassment and threats. The FBI has received more than 1,000 reports of threats against election workers in the past year alone.
In California, officials in small, rural and underresourced counties such as Shasta say they are encountering hostility and aggressive bullying from residents who believe there is widespread voter fraud – many are inundating local elections offices with public records requests as part of a relentless quest to try to prove their claims.
Residents in Shasta county have tried to intimidate election workers while acting as observers, crowding around Allen during a tense election night confrontation in June, and visiting voters’ homes while claiming to be a part of an “official taskforce”. In north-eastern California’s Nevada county, the registrar-elect had to take out a restraining order against residents who harassed her and pushed their way into her office, assaulting a staffer, she said.
“It’s really an unprecedented time,” said Kim Alexander, the president of the non-partisan California Voter Foundation, a non-profit organization that works on improving election processes. “A colleague recently referred to it as a sort of madness that’s taken hold.”
‘This is our Tiananmen Square’
On a Tuesday in September, speaker after speaker went before the Shasta county board of supervisors decrying the “election fraud” they believed – without evidence – is taking place. Dressed in red, white and blue, the residents described their effort as a David-and-Goliath-like battle.
“It’s called a citizen’s audit and we’ve been going out and collecting the evidence that shows there is fraud in our process,” one speaker said. “This is our Tiananmen Square. We’re going to stand in front of the tanks and say no more to the machines.”
The group of residents casting doubt over Shasta’s elections is small but highly visible, and speaks regularly at county board meetings. They have filed dozens of public records requests to Allen’s office, showed up in large numbers for election observation, and even visited the homes of certain voters while wearing gear labeled “official voter taskforce” – an act that Allen said may amount to voter intimidation.
Their opposition comes amid broader political upheaval in this rural northern county, stemming from anger among some residents over Trump’s loss and pandemic restrictions and vaccine mandates imposed by California’s progressive government.
The anger coalesced into an anti-establishment movement, backed with unprecedented outside funding from a Connecticut millionaire and supported by the area’s militia groups, that led to the recall of a longtime county supervisor in February. Behavior seen during that election prompted Allen’s office to make security changes, including tracking everyone who enters the facility.
During the primaries in June, when the school superintendent, district attorney and sheriff were on the ballot, a crowd of observers tried to intimidate county staff, Allen said, and someone installed a trail camera outside the office, seemingly intending to monitor election workers. The sheriff stationed deputies outside the office. After four of the candidates backed by the anti-establishment group lost outright – Allen beat her opponent and was re-elected to her fifth-term – the candidates requested a hand recount.
The county’s use of Dominion voting machines, which Trump supporters have maligned as part of a false conspiracy theory that the company played a role in swinging the 2020 election for Biden, has drawn particular concern from residents who believe in widespread election fraud. Some of them have attempted to share content with Allen, such as 2000 Mules, a debunked documentary that has promoted false claims about voter fraud.
One high-profile figure in the election denial movement recently held a $20 event at a church in the area. The grandstanding from people making money from spreading debunked narratives around elections is particularly frustrating for Allen.
If there are problems around elections, she said, she would rely on the actual experts she knows who have worked in the field for decades and share information for free: “I guarantee you, they’re not gonna charge people 20 bucks a head at a church in Redding, California, to tell the story. That’s making you a dollar, that’s not trying to make anything better.”
Allen’s office has seen aggressive behavior and bullying, she said, but no threats yet. Given the threats elections officials across the US are facing, she suspects it’s only a matter of time.
“This is not what anybody signed up for,” she said. “I’ve had people tell me I should have private security. It’s not right. But it’s the world we live in right now.”
‘Just another form of harassment’
About 150 miles away in the Sierra Nevada foothills in eastern California, Natalie Adona said her office, too, was experiencing the same challenges: “If it’s happening in Shasta, chances are it’s also happening here. The loudest would-be disruptors of elections share information between our counties.”
Political tensions in Nevada county, which is home to about 100,000 people in historic towns and settlements that were at the center of California’s Gold Rush, have been rising since after the 2020 election, said Adona, the assistant county clerk recorder.
Earlier this year a group of residents attempted an aggressive and ultimately unsuccessful campaign to recall the entire board of supervisors, accusing them of enabling “crimes against humanity” for supporting Covid safety measures.
While running for her position this spring, Adona said she and her office were subjected to a months-long public harassment campaign, as well as racist language in an election mailer that featured a darkened photo of her and efforts to disqualify her over false claims that she failed to pay filing fees. After Adona won by nearly 70%, opponents requested a recount.
“I considered it to be just another form of harassment and I think one of the other purposes was to try to get at other documents that aren’t normally [obtainable] in the regular observation process,” she said.
At the same time, her office has received a flurry of public records requests in recent months that appear to be copy-and-pasted, Adona said: “What we’re today is either deliberate attempts to put a kink in elections process or just sort of an inundation of requests that really reflect how little the requestor knows about elections.”
Adona has also received one threat, she said, which was not actionable by law enforcement.
“It’s certainly not at the level of Georgia or Wisconsin. I do feel fortunate but at the same time a lot of it is unnerving,” she said.
The Nevada county office has increased its budget for security at its headquarters and is working more closely with law enforcement.
“I have the best job in the world. I get to serve voters, I get to serve the public but over the last few years election administration has become harder,” she said. “It’s raised a lot of questions for my team about how we keep in-person election workers safe, how do we keep our staff safe and at the same time offer the same levels of transparency in elections the public deserves.”
‘We haven’t had a break in about five years’
Across the US the climate has grown so tense that one in five election workers has said they are unlikely to remain in their positions through the next presidential election, according to a survey conducted by the Brennan Center for Justice. About one in six say they have been personally threatened.
Throughout California, small but vocal groups inspired by uninformed or malevolent actors, have been led to believe false narratives about how the state conducts elections, Alexander, of the California Voter Foundation, said, prompting the organization to make the safety of election workers increasingly a focus.
The group, along with the Brennan Center, recently sponsored legislation signed into law by the California governor that allows workers to keep their home addresses confidential.
“I never imagined when I started working on elections security almost 30 years ago that it would include the physical security of people who run our elections,” Alexander said.
But things have changed rapidly, she said. Her organization is trying to support election officials by providing de-escalation training and other resources to their offices. More help is needed, and has been for a long time.
“The chronic underfunding of election administration in the US is one of the conditions that led to the vulnerability of our election workers. If the offices weren’t understaffed and underresourced in the first place they would have more security,” she said.
California election offices were already challenged by back-to-back elections for the last few years, including 2021’s recall election of the governor. Months after that, Shasta county had its local recall election.
“We haven’t had a break in about five years,” said Allen, who is also on the board of directors for the California Voter Foundation. “None of my staff has been able to really disconnect – not for any length of time. I can’t even go to the top of Mount Lassen, where I know no one can get a hold of me.”
In the past, demystifying the election process with guided tours of the office and a walk-through of their procedures helped allay people’s fears, Allen said. This year, the office is attempting to fight against the tide of misinformation and disinformation with a steady trickle of good information publicized by her office through social media and webinars, she said, attempting to reach the voters they can. The county recently hired someone to work on voter education and outreach.
But as misinformation proliferates, there’s a growing contingency of people who won’t believe any message coming out of the office, she said.
“I don’t know how to dissuade people from a belief that they have swallowed wholesale like it’s a religion,” she said. “We’ll still try.”
Still, Allen remains hopeful things will get better. On a table in her office is a stack of thank you cards from residents expressing gratitude for her office’s work. She won re-election by a massive margin.
“In June, all the folks who believe in some of this bad information about election fraud and elections being stolen – six of those folks ran for office in June’s election – and none of them won. Not one of them,” she said. “To me, that’s the story: the voters of Shasta county saw through that.”
As far as the national challenges for election workers, “this too shall pass,” Allen said.
“I do think it’s going to get worse before it gets better – but it will get better,” she said.
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Former Brazilian president Luis Inacio Lula Da Silva greets supporters during a rally in Curitiba, Brazil. (photo: Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters)
Out of Prison and Leading in Polls, Lula Nears Full Political Comeback
Paulina Villegas, The Washington Post
Villegas writes: "When former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva emerged from the federal police headquarters in Curitiba on Nov. 8, 2019, freed after serving more than 19 months on charges of corruption and money laundering, the hundreds of supporters waiting for him erupted in cheers - and the lion of the Latin American left resumed campaigning for the office he held from 2003 to 2010."
They camped outside the prison for 580 days. Each morning, they chanted, “Good morning, president,” loudly, so he could hear them.
When former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva emerged from the federal police headquarters in Curitiba on Nov. 8, 2019, freed after serving more than 19 months on charges of corruption and money laundering, the hundreds of supporters waiting for him erupted in cheers — and the lion of the Latin American left resumed campaigning for the office he held from 2003 to 2010.
“They didn’t lock up a man,” he declared that day. “They tried to kill an idea. But an idea can’t be destroyed.”
Now, Lula, who was convicted in Brazil’s sprawling Operation Car Wash scandal but was released when the Supreme Court ruled that he had been denied due process, is on the verge of completing a stunning political resurrection. He won the first round of the presidential election here this month with more than 48 percent of the vote, and polls show him ahead for the second round Sunday against President Jair Bolsonaro.
Lula, who turns 77 on Thursday, holds a singular place in Brazil’s history. His Workers’ Party, which he co-founded in 198o, when the country was ruled by a military dictatorship, has won four of the nine presidential elections since democracy was restored in 1985. In his two terms, Lula himself presided over a period of prosperity, fueled by a global commodities boom, that lifted millions of Brazilians out of poverty. President Barack Obama once called him “the most popular politician on Earth.”
“He is in every Brazilian,” said Duke University historian John French, the author of “Lula and His Politics of Cunning: From Metalworker to President of Brazil.” “Everyone recognizes his deep voice, his smile, his sense of humor.”
Beloved by millions of Brazilians and despised by millions of others, Lula is typically described in hyperbolic terms: He’s a champion of social justice and protector of the poor — or a corrupt leftist radical who would lead the country to financial and moral bankruptcy.
“Lula is the people,” said Juno Rodrigues Silva, owner of the restaurant Gijo’s in São Bernardo do Campo on the outskirts of São Paulo, its walls covered with pictures of the former president.
“He has a love for the people and people adore him back, and throughout the years he has remained the same person,” said Silva, who is not related to the former president.
Silva, who met Lula in 1969 when both were metalworkers, was the only person received at Lula’s São Bernardo apartment on the eve of the 2002 election, in which he won the presidency. He had asked Silva to bring him beef chops and wine, according to the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo.
Years later, they remain friends, Silva said.
“When he was president, there was no lack of rice, no lack of beans. He wanted everyone to eat barbecue every day,” he said. “Today, people are abandoned, eating garbage, picking up leftovers from the trash, and buying just the bones. This is what Bolsonaro serves to the poor people of Brazil.”
But to Deborah Guzman, Lula represents everything she rejects: Same-sex marriage, communism and drugs. The 45-year-old homemaker in Brasilia cited false claims on social media that Lula planned to legalize drugs and persecute or ban religion. (His campaign has denied any such plans.)
Guzman also pointed to the corruption in Lula’s and other Workers’ Party administrations. “Only in Brazil can we consider reelecting a man who was in prison, and who wants to turn this place into Venezuela,” she said. She said she does not believe the annulment of his conviction means he’s not guilty.
Lula has been campaigning since he left prison three years ago to reassert himself as Brazil’s dominant political figure, giving speeches, holding rallies and forging alliances in the Brazilian Congress. Legions of supporters have been elated that the man who they insist was the victim of a right-wing political ambush was back.
Lula has pitched himself to voters as the one who will restore stability after nearly four chaotic and isolating years of Bolsonaro. He promises to tackle hunger and homelessness. He has vowed to raise taxes on the rich, increase the minimum wage, and expand social spending to lift millions out of poverty. He has vowed to make the environment a priority by cracking down on illegal mining and other crimes in the Amazon and reversing Bolsonaro-era policies that have weakened protections and enabled growing deforestation.
But he could not legally run for office until the Supreme Court annulled his conviction last year. The court ruled that the trial judge had been biased against Lula.
The Operation Car Wash investigation into bribery and corruption has ensnared scores of politicians and business executives in Brazil and across Latin America. Lula was convicted of receiving more than $1 million of bribes in the form of a beachfront apartment. He denied the property was his.
To many Brazilians, Lula is still a thief who was released on a technicality, not because of innocence. The revelations left him and the Workers’ Party weakened and fueled massive protests that led to the 2016 impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff.
Still, Lula’s message of social mobility and empowerment continues to resonate with millions in a country increasingly marked by growing inequality.
He began his political career as a metalworkers union leader in the 1970s and ’80s, when he helped to organize massive strikes in defiance of the dictatorship.
French said Lula’s stamina, charisma and ability to bring people together enabled him to defy the authoritarian state, cemented his influence and opened his path to the presidency.
“His capacity to speak with, not at, people, and to create shared political meaning was fundamental to his political triumphs,” he said.
But it is Lula’s story — he was born to illiterate parents, left school after the fifth grade and shined shoes as a child but became a skilled metalworker, a powerful union leader and eventually president — that for many Brazilians embodies the hopes and dreams of the nation: striving against all adverse circumstances, surmounting crisis after crisis, always growing.
As Brazil’s first working-class president, Lula made the struggles of the poor central to his government; he pushed social initiatives credited with lifting millions out of poverty while enabling more low-income and Afro-Brazilian students to access higher education. He left office with an approval rating above 85 percent.
“Not only did he put three meals a day on millions of poor people’s plates, but they were then also able to start buying cars, access a loan for a house, which invigorated the economy even more,” said the journalist Fernando Morais, the author of the biography “Lula.”
Years after Lula left office, many Brazilians credit his social and economic policies with transforming their lives. Jorge Freire, born into a poor Afro-Brazilian family, said Lula’s quota programs for underserved students enabled him to attend university.
“I am a fruit of Lula,” said Freire, a 39-year-old cultural event producer. “He is the reason I am middle-class now,” he said.
Critics say Lula did little to dismantle power structures that allowed systemic corruption to persist, structures from which they say he benefited. They credit much of his success to an accident of timing: His administration coincided with a regional commodities boom that fueled economic development and helped to pay for social programs.
After the first-round of this year’s election, on Oct. 2, Lula was endorsed by two key politicians: Simone Tebet, who finished third in the first round with 4 percent of the vote, and former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, an influential figure in business circles who said he would vote for Lula in the name of “a history of struggle for democracy and social inclusion.”
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A river gauge marks near record low water levels on the Mississippi River at New Orleans. It's many feet lower than it typically would be and it's creating all sorts of problems. (photo: L. Kasimu Harris/NPR)
Saltwater Is Moving Up the Mississippi River. Here's What's Being Done to Stop It
Debbie Elliot, NPR
Elliot writes: "With little or no rainfall coming from the Midwest, the drought is causing problems along the river. Ships and barges are running aground, and navigation is slowed up and down the busy shipping corridor."
Ducks have taken roost on a sandy strip along the Mississippi River – a bank that's typically underwater.
"We have this nice little beach here that Black-bellied whistling ducks are enjoying," says Heath Jones, chief of emergency management at the New Orleans District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Drought has sent water levels plunging to near record lows on the Mississippi River. A river gauge near Corps headquarters registers just 3 feet above sea level.
"It's approaching some historical lows that we've had here," Jones said on Oct. 19 as he looked out from the river levee.
The meandering Mississippi has a cool blue-green hue – different than the muddy current that typically rushes by.
More than a third of the rain in the United States ends up in the Mississippi River system. Jones says with little or no rainfall coming from the Midwest, the drought is causing problems along the river. Ships and barges are running aground, and navigation is slowed up and down the busy shipping corridor.
The salty Gulf is pushing upriver
Here in south Louisiana it's causing a unique phenomenon, changing the point at which the freshwater river and salty sea meet.
"As the flows in the Mississippi River drop, the Gulf of Mexico essentially comes upstream," Jones explains.
A saltwater wedge has crept along the river bottom nearly 64 miles upriver from the mouth of the Mississippi.
"It's almost like a triangle," Jones says. "As this flow in the Mississippi River drops, it loses its ability to keep saltwater at bay."
The saltwater intrusion is threatening both municipal drinking water supplies in the New Orleans metro area and commercial water users like oil refineries that depend on fresh water from the Mississippi.
The biggest impact so far is in Plaquemines Parish with about 24,000 people and water-dependent industries south of New Orleans.
"The Gulf is winning," says councilman Benny Rousselle.
The parish has declared a state of emergency and issued a drinking water advisory.
Rousselle says salt water has already compromised two of the parish's water treatment plants and is threatening a third.
"We're bringing in some desalinization units," he says. "To be able to take the salt out and manufacture water."
Building a submerged levee to stop the saltwater wedge
To save Plaquemines' biggest plant, and protect the larger Orleans Parish water system, the Corps of Engineers is trying to block the saltwater from encroaching farther.
"We are building, for lack of a better term, an underwater levee," Jones says. "We call it a saltwater sill, but essentially it's a big mound of sand, a berm of sand that stops the saltwater."
A contractor pumps the sand from the river bed to create a submerged wall stretching from bank to bank across the Mississippi. The sill is built to allow 55 feet of clearance so big ships can still pass over it.
It's hard to imagine being able to stop water from flowing over a deep dam, but Jones says the dense saltwater stays at the bottom of the water column.
"The Gulf doesn't have the force to push it over the top."
Saltwater comes upriver to some extent every year, but has only threatened water supplies about every ten years. The Corps built similar multi-million-dollar underwater levees in 1988, 1999 and in 2012.
A taste of sea level rise
Some experts say saltwater intrusion could be a more frequent threat now that the Corps is dredging the Mississippi river even deeper for navigation, which allows the saltwater to move in faster. And, then there's climate change.
"You're really tasting sea level rise," says Mark Davis, director of the Tulane Institute on Water Resources Law and Policy.
"The more sea level rises, the more saltwater comes in," Davis says. "We've made it easier this year because we recently dredged the mouth of the river so it would be deeper, so larger cargo vessels can come in. And that just opens the door for even more salt."
For now, the underwater levee will remain in place until the Mississippi River has enough flow to eventually wash it away.
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