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Nearly half of Americans fear their country will erupt within the next decade. Ahead of the midterm elections this week, three experts analyse the depth of the crisis
Are America’s fears overblown? The most frequent question I get asked following my book How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them is whether a civil war could happen again in the US. Sceptics argue that America’s government is too powerful for anyone to challenge. Others argue that secession will never happen because our country is no longer cleanly divided along geographic lines. Still others simply cannot believe that Americans would start killing one another. These beliefs, however, are based on the mistaken idea that a second civil war would look like the first. It will not.
If a second civil war breaks out in the US, it will be a guerrilla war fought by multiple small militias spread around the country. Their targets will be civilians – mainly minority groups, opposition leaders and federal employees. Judges will be assassinated, Democrats and moderate Republicans will be jailed on bogus charges, black churches and synagogues bombed, pedestrians picked off by snipers in city streets, and federal agents threatened with death should they enforce federal law. The goal will be to reduce the strength of the federal government and those who support it, while also intimidating minority groups and political opponents into submission.
We know this because far-right groups such as the Proud Boys have told us how they plan to execute a civil war. They call this type of war “leaderless resistance” and are influenced by a plan in The Turner Diaries (1978), a fictitious account of a future US civil war. Written by William Pierce, founder of the neo-Nazi National Alliance, it offers a playbook for how a group of fringe activists can use mass terror attacks to “awaken” other white people to their cause, eventually destroying the federal government. The book advocates attacking the Capitol building, setting up a gallows to hang politicians, lawyers, newscasters and teachers who are so-called “race traitors”, and bombing FBI headquarters.
Pages of The Turner Diaries were found in Timothy McVeigh’s truck after he attacked a federal building in Oklahoma City in April 1995. Patrick Crusius, the alleged El Paso Walmart gunman, and John Timothy Earnest, the accused shooter at a synagogue in Poway, California, echoed the book’s ideas in their manifestos. A member of the Proud Boys can be seen on video during the insurrection on 6 January 2021 telling a journalist to read The Turner Diaries.
The US is not yet in a civil war. But a 2012 declassified report by the CIA on insurgencies outlines the signs. According to the report, a country is experiencing an open insurgency when sustained violence by increasingly active extremists has become the norm. By this point, violent extremists are using sophisticated weapons, such as improvised explosive devices, and begin to attack vital infrastructure (such as hospitals, bridges and schools), rather than just individuals. These attacks also involve a larger number of fighters, some of whom have combat experience. There is often evidence, according to the report, “of insurgent penetration and subversion of the military, police, and intelligence services”.
In this early stage of civil war, extremists are trying to force the population to choose sides, in part by demonstrating to citizens that the government cannot keep them safe or provide basic necessities. The goal is to incite a broader civil war by denigrating the state and growing support for violent measures.
Insurgency experts wondered whether 6 January would be the beginning of such a sustained series of attacks. This has not yet happened, in part because of aggressive counter-measures by the FBI. The FBI has arrested more than 700 individuals who participated in the riot, charging 225 of them with assaulting, resisting or impeding officers or employees. Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers, will almost certainly go to jail for his role in helping to organise the insurrection, as will numerous other participants. But this setback is likely to be temporary.
Civil war experts know that two factors put countries at high risk of civil war. The US has one of these risk factors and remains dangerously close to the second. Neither risk factor has diminished since 6 January. The first is ethnic factionalism. This happens when citizens in a country organise themselves into political parties based on ethnic, religious, or racial identity rather than ideology. The second is anocracy. This is when a government is neither fully democratic nor fully autocratic; it’s something in between. Civil wars almost never happen in full, healthy, strong democracies. They also seldom happen in full autocracies. Violence almost always breaks out in countries in the middle – those with weak and unstable pseudo-democracies. Anocracy plus factionalism is a dangerous mix.
We also know who tends to start civil wars, especially those fought between different ethnic, religious and racial groups. This also does not bode well for the US. The groups that tend to resort to violence are not the poorest groups, or the most downtrodden. It’s the group that had once been politically dominant but is losing power. It’s the loss of political status – a sense of resentment that they are being replaced and that the identity of their country is no longer theirs – that tends to motivate these groups to organise. Today, the Republican party and its base of white, Christian voters are losing their dominant position in American politics and society as a result of demographic changes. Whites are the slowest-growing demographic in the US and will no longer be a majority of the population by around 2044. Their status will continue to decline as America becomes more multi-ethnic, multiracial, and multireligious, and the result will be increasing resentment and fear at what lies ahead. The people who stormed the Capitol on 6 January believed they were saving America from this future and felt fully justified in this fight.
America’s democracy declined rapidly between 2016 and 2020. Since 6 January 2021, the US has failed to strengthen its democracy in any way, leaving it vulnerable to continued backsliding into the middle zone. In fact, the Republican party has accelerated its plan to weaken our democracy further. Voter suppression bills have been introduced in almost every state since 6 January. Election deniers are running for office in 48 of the 50 states and now represent a majority of all Republicans running for Congressional and state offices in the US midterm elections this week. Trump loyalists are being elected secretaries of state in key swing states, increasing the likelihood that Republican candidates will be granted victory, even if they lose the vote. And America’s two big political parties remain deeply divided by race and religion. If these underlying conditions do not change, a leader like Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers can go to jail, but other disaffected white men will take his place.
What is happening in the US is not unique. White supremacists have leapt on projections that the US will be the first western democracy where white citizens could lose their majority status. This is forecast to happen around 2044. Far-right parties of wealthy western countries have issued ominous warnings about the end of white dominance, seeking to stoke hatred by emphasising the alleged costs – economic, social, moral – of such transformation. We are already seeing elements of this in Europe, where rightwing anti-immigrant parties such as the Sweden Democrats, the Brothers of Italy, Alternative für Deutschland in Germany, the Vlaams Belang in Belgium, the National Rally in France and the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs in Austria have all seen their support increase in recent years.
What can we do about this? The obvious answers are for our political leaders to invest heavily in strengthening our democracies and to have their political parties reach across racial, religious and ethnic lines. But here in America, the Democratic party does not have the votes to institute much-needed reforms of our political system, and the Republicans have no interest; they are moving in the opposite direction.
But there is a potentially easy fix. Regulate social media, and in particular the algorithms that disproportionately push the more incendiary, extreme, threatening and fear-inducing information into people’s feeds. Take away the social media bullhorn and you turn down the volume on bullies, conspiracy theorists, bots, trolls, disinformation machines, hate-mongers and enemies of democracy. The result would be a drop in everyone’s collective anger, distrust and feelings of threat, giving us all time to rebuild.
The United States is a textbook example of a country headed towards civil war. The trends increasingly point one way, and while nobody knows the future, little – if anything – is being done, by anyone, to try to prevent the collapse of the republic. Belief in democracy is ebbing. The legitimacy of institutions is declining. America increasingly is entering a state where its citizens don’t want to belong to the same country. These are conditions ripe for political violence.
No civil war ever has a single cause. It’s always a multitude of factors that lead to decline and collapse. The current US has several of what the CIA calls “threat multipliers”: environmental crises continue to batter the country, economic inequality is at its highest level since the founding of the country, and demographic change means that the US will be a minority white country within just over two decades. All of these factors tend to contribute to civil unrest wherever they are found in the world.
But the US is more vulnerable to political violence than other countries because of the decrepitude of its institutions. For 40 years, trust in institutions of all kinds – the church, the police, journalism, academia – has been in freefall. Trust in politicians can hardly fall any lower. And there is no reason for trust. The constitution, while unquestionably a work of genius, was a work of 18th-century genius. It simply does not reflect, nor can it respond to, the realities of the 21st century.
The divide between the American political system and any reflection of the popular will is widening, and increasingly it cannot be ignored. The electoral college system means that, in the near term, a Democrat will win the popular mandate by many millions of votes and still lose the presidency. The crisis of democracy will only grow. With around 345 election deniers on the ballot as candidates in November, the Republicans appear to have evolved a new political strategy, seemingly based on the gambling strategy of Joe Pesci’s character in Casino: if they win, they collect. If they don’t, they tell the bookies to go away. Unless there is a completely separate Republican leadership in place by 2024, they will simply ignore the results they don’t like.
The American electoral system is already hugely localised, outdated and held together by good faith. Any failure to recognise electoral outcomes, even in a few states, could result in a contested election in which nobody reaches the threshold of 270 electoral college votes. In that case, the constitution stipulates a “contingent election” – acclimatise yourself to this phrase now – in which each state gets a single vote. That’s right: if no candidate in an American presidential election reaches the threshold of 270 electoral college votes, the House delegations from individual states, overwhelmingly dominated by Republicans, pick the president, with each state having one vote
In 1824, the candidate who won the popular vote and the most electoral college votes, Andrew Jackson, did not become president. John Quincy Adams fudged his way through. A contingent election is one mechanism, just one, by which an American government could be perfectly constitutional and completely undemocratic at the same time. The right has been preparing for exactly such a reality for a while, with a phrase they repeat as if in hope that it will mean something if they say it enough: “We’re a republic, not a democracy.”
Quasi-legitimacy is what leads to violence. And America’s political institutions are destined to become more and more quasi-legitimate from now on. One of the surest markers of incipient civil war in other countries is the legal system devolving from a non-partisan, truly national institution to a spoil of partisan war. That has already happened in the US.
The overturning of Roe v Wade, in June, was both a symptom of the new American divisiveness and a cause of its spread. The Dobbs decision (in which the supreme court held that the US constitution does not confer the right to abortion) took the status of women in the US and dropped it like a plate-glass window from a great height. It will take a generation or more to sweep up the shards. What women are or are not allowed to do with their bodies – abortions, IVF procedures, birth control, maintaining the privacy of their menstrual cycles, crossing state lines – now depends on the state and county lines in which their bodies happen to reside. The legal reality of American women is no longer national in nature. When a woman travels from Illinois to Ohio, she becomes a different entity, with different rights and duties.
The court itself is well aware of the legal carnage it has caused. “If, over time, the court loses all connection with the public and with public sentiment, that is a dangerous thing for democracy,” associate justice Elena Kagan said shortly afterwards. Her conservative colleague Samuel A Alito responded: “It goes without saying that everyone is free to express disagreement with our decisions and to criticise our reasoning as they see fit. But saying or implying that the court is becoming an illegitimate institution or questioning our integrity crosses an important line.” But what anyone says or implies is of little to no importance at this point. The percentage of the American public having almost no confidence in the supreme court reached 43% in July, up from 27% in April. The confusion of legal status of a separate group of persons is a classic prelude to civil war.
The justices of the court, and the American public, are just catching up with the inevitable consequences of the refusal of Congressional Republicans to allow President Obama to select Merrick Garland for the court and then going on to confirm three Trump nominees, resulting in a court skewed six: three to the right. The supreme court feels illegitimate because it is illegitimate. The Dobbs decision does not reflect the will of the American people because the supreme court does not reflect the will of the American people.
Elections have consequences, right up until the point when they don’t. On a superficial level, the 2022 midterms couldn’t matter more; American democracy itself is at stake. On a deeper level, the 2022 midterms don’t matter all that much; they will inform us, if anything, of the schedule and the manner of the fall of the republic. The results might delay the decline, or accelerate it, but at this point, no merely political outcome can prevent the downfall. America has passed the point at which the triumph of one party or another can fix what’s wrong with it, and the kind of structural change that’s necessary isn’t on the table. This is a moment between two American politics. The wind has been sown. The whirlwind is yet to be reaped.
America is rushing headlong into another civil war, and it’s a matter of when, not if. As political scientist Prof Barbara F Walter argues, civil wars are likely in the presence of two factors: anocracy and ethnic factionalism. When one considers the centrality of race to American politics, it is clear that ethno-nationalism is hastening the movement towards anocracy.
Think about the role of race in the first civil war and the one we’re headed towards. It’s well documented that the repulsive nature of the institution of slavery was the principal cause of the civil war, driven by moral as well as economic and political concerns. In 19th-century America, the Democratic party was a relatively reactionary institution in the south, whereas the Republican party was a relatively progressive institution located in the north. Republicans supported the abolition of slavery, whereas 19th-century Democrats were all for it. Regardless of the outcome of the war – driven as it was by the prospect of material gain or loss, moral redemption or amorality – the war came to rest on the fulcrum of race and racism.
Throughout history, political identity in the US has ultimately been driven by the parties’ respective positions on race, with divisions sorting primarily by way of racial identity and racial attitudes. Contemporary Republicans, for instance, tend to be white and relatively racist. Democrats are more likely to draw from a more diverse pool and, as such, are, typically, less racist. To illustrate this point, Republicans are far more alarmed by a diversifying country.
Likewise, white people were and are more likely to support Trump, driven by the anxiety associated with the rapid racial diversification of “their” country. What, you may ask, do white people and the Republican party have in common? Well, 80% of Republican voters are white.
The consequences of the centrality of race and racism to American politics and the threat of internal war are dire. It was racism that was ultimately responsible for the rise of the Tea Party, a reaction to Obama’s (racialised) presidency. The Tea Party (now the Maga movement), in turn, moved the GOP to the right, eventually setting the stage for Trump.
With Trump pushing the “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen, and many Republicans buying into it, the stage is set for another American war of all against all. We’ve seen this before. The civil war, as it happens, was set in motion by the refusal of the Democrats to accept Abraham Lincoln as the legitimate winner of the 1860 contest given his views on slavery: he thought it morally wrong.
But it wasn’t the economics of slavery that motivated the south’s insistence on maintaining what was known as the “peculiar institution”. Only 3.2% of white southern families owned slaves. Clearly, then, the maintenance of slavery as an economic institution carried no value for almost all white southerners. With economic reasons absent, why were white southerners willing to fight a war over slavery? The southern way of life: white supremacy. As part of southern culture, these people were not ready to forfeit their social dominance, relative to the Black community.
These conditions remain in place. As many white people (Republicans) confront the fear that by 2044 they’ll no longer be in the ethnic majority, they feel the need to take drastic measures to maintain white supremacy. It’s all they’ve ever known. It happened in the 1860s; what’s to prevent it from happening now?
Look for the next civil war to take place after the 2024 election cycle, when the next wave of violence is likely to emerge. Similar to the original civil war, there’s too much at stake for both sides. Then, as now, the threats are existential. In the 19th century, Democrats viewed the newly established Republican party as a threat to their way of life. Republicans, for their part, saw southern intransigence on the issue of slavery as a threat to the union.
Today, Republicans, driven by the existential threat of losing “their” (white) country, will continue their attack on democracy as a means towards preserving America for “real” Americans. Democrats, on the other hand, see the “Magafication” of the GOP as an existential threat to liberal democracy.
Election-related violence generally takes place when the following four factors are present: a highly competitive election that can shift power; partisan division based on identity; winner-takes-all two-party election systems in which political identities are polarised; and an unwillingness to punish violence on the part of the dominant group. All four are present in America now, and will be more amplified in 2024.
We’re almost there. White angst over increasing racial diversity makes another Trump candidacy (and presidency) likely, pushing us into anocracy. Democrats are having none of that. They’ll resist going down the slippery slope to autocracy the same way that their 19th-century counterparts, the party of Lincoln, refused to let the Confederacy bust up the union. Likewise, should Democrats prevail in 2024, Republicans will revolt – the 6 January Capitol attack is a forewarning.
Either way, I’ll wager that a civil war featuring terrorism, guerrilla war and ethnic cleansing will be waged from sea to shining sea. In the end, race and racism will lead to another very American conflagration.
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An election worker collects an absentee ballot from a voter outside the Detroit City Clerk’s Office on Sunday. (photo: Nick Hagen/WP)
The lawsuits coincide with a systemic effort by GOP leaders to persuade voters to cast ballots in person, not absentee
In Pennsylvania, the state Supreme Court has agreed with the Republican National Committee that election officials should not count ballots on which the voter neglected to put a date on the outer envelope — even in cases when the ballots arrive before Election Day. Thousands of ballots have been set aside as a result, enough to swing a close race.
In Michigan, Kristina Karamo, the Republican nominee for secretary of state, sued the top election official in Detroit last month, seeking to toss absentee ballots not cast in person with an ID, even though that runs contrary to state requirements. When asked in a recent court hearing, Karamo’s lawyer declined to say why the suit targets Detroit, a heavily Democratic, majority-Black city, and not the entire state.
And in Wisconsin, Republicans won a court ruling that will prevent some mail ballots from being counted when the required witness address is not complete.
Over the past two years, Republicans have waged a sustained campaign against alleged voter fraud. Experts say the litigation — which could significantly affect Tuesday’s vote — represents a parallel strategy of suing to disqualify mail ballots based on technicalities. While the rejections may have some basis in state law, experts say they appear to go against a principle, enshrined in federal law, of not disenfranchising voters for minor errors.
The suits coincide with a systematic attempt by Republicans — led by former president Donald Trump — to persuade GOP voters to cast their ballots only on Election Day. Critics argue that the overall purpose is to separate Republicans and Democrats by method of voting and then to use lawsuits to void mail ballots that are disproportionately Democratic.
“They’re looking for every advantage they can get, and they’ve calculated that this is a way that they can win more seats,” said Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections for Common Cause, a nonpartisan democracy advocacy organization. “Research has shown that absentee ballots are more likely to be discarded if they are voted by young people and people of color, which are not generally seen as the Republican base.”
Albert said legal battles over mail ballot eligibility have the potential to delay results and even change outcomes. In some cases, the disputes could wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The potential for chaos is especially high in Pennsylvania, where the legal fight is ongoing and could influence or postpone the outcome in some of the state’s tightest races, including a contest that could determine control of the U.S. Senate.
Republican National Committee spokeswoman Emma Vaughn said in a statement that the committee sued in Pennsylvania “because we are simply asking for counties to follow the state law, which by the way, dozens of Democrats supported.”
“We look forward to continuing our legal actions to ensure that elections are administered in accordance with this bipartisan rule of law,” Vaughn added.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D) issued a statement Sunday night in which he asserted that “no voter should be disenfranchised simply because they made a minor error in filling out their ballot.”
“This was not a controversial concept in our country or our commonwealth until recently, with the rise of the Big Lie and the efforts to spread mis- and disinformation in the days leading up to the general election,” Wolf continued. “I urge counties to continue to ensure that every vote counts.”
Election officials are braced for a repeat of a protracted standoff following Pennsylvania’s May primary between state officials and three counties — Berks, Fayette and Lancaster — that refused to include undated ballots in their certified results.
Wolf’s administration sued those counties in July to force them to include the ballots, the majority of which were cast by Democrats, court records show. In August, a state judge ordered the counties to include “all lawfully cast ballots,” including those with missing dates, in their certified results.
Republicans then successfully persuaded the state Supreme Court to reverse that policy for the general election in a decision released last week. The state court deadlocked on whether rejecting the ballots was a violation of voters’ federal civil rights.
Common Cause and others quickly filed a federal suit seeking to overturn the state court ruling on the grounds that rejecting ballots over a technical error violates the Civil Rights Act. The case remains pending.
The date printed on the envelope of a mail ballot is a “meaningless technicality” that has no bearing on officials’ ability to judge whether the ballot has been cast on time by a qualified voter, the complaint says.
The federal courts have already weighed in on the issue: Earlier this year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit found that failing to count undated mail ballots is a violation of federal civil rights law. However, the U.S. Supreme Court injected uncertainty into the issue by vacating that decision and instructing that the case be dismissed as moot because the election in question had already passed.
In the meantime, voting rights groups and others have launched a full-court press to notify voters across Pennsylvania whose ballots had been rejected and needed to be fixed or replaced. At least 7,000 such ballots have been rejected statewide for a variety of reasons, including the missing date, according to data compiled by the Pennsylvania Department of State. Activists said the figure is probably much higher because many counties have refused to publish the information.
In Philadelphia, the state’s largest city and a Democratic bastion, more than 2,000 such ballots have been rejected. Election officials posted lists of voters online with instructions to come to City Hall up through Election Day to cast a replacement ballot. Nick Custodio, a deputy city commissioner, said in a telephone interview that a steady trickle of residents showed up over the weekend to vote anew.
Shoshanna Israel, a coordinator with the liberal Working Families Party in Philadelphia, said her organization assigned 49 volunteers to contact voters with ballots needing a fix. The group has contacted 1,800 voters since last Tuesday.
But not everyone can make it to City Hall.
“I am totally disabled,” said Jean Terrizzi, 95, who was listed as having returned a ballot with a missing date. She added that she had an important medical appointment on Monday and would just have to “let it go” and not have her vote counted.
“This voting situation is terrible,” she said, declining to state her political affiliation. “It’s very disgraceful.”
Republicans also sued to block counties from notifying voters who neglected to date their ballots to give them the chance to fix them. The effort failed, but counties may choose whether to do so, meaning not all voters will be given an opportunity to correct ballot errors.
Small numbers of votes could make a difference in the sort of close races to which Pennsylvania has become accustomed.
“If you can eliminate 1 percent of the votes and they tend to lean Democratic, then that gives you that statistical advantage,” said Clifford Levine, a Pittsburgh-based election lawyer for Democrats.
“This is not about stopping fraud,” Levine said. “It’s about discounting mail ballots. There’s just no question.”
Republican candidates in Pennsylvania, including gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano, have been vocal in urging supporters to cast ballots on Election Day, not by mail.
Jeff Mandell, a Democratic election lawyer in Wisconsin, said there has been less of a coordinated effort in that state to steer Republicans toward Election Day, although Trump made that pitch at an appearance this year.
Under Wisconsin law, an absentee voter must find a witness — usually a spouse, relative or friend — to attest that the voter legally completed the ballot. The witness must sign the ballot envelope and provide an address.
Republicans successfully sued this year to toss guidance from the Wisconsin Elections Commission allowing local election officials to fill in incomplete witness addresses on ballots. When voting rights groups sought new guidelines on what missing elements in the address would allow for tossing a ballot, judges ruled that it was too close to the election to change state policy.
“There is a concerted effort by the Republican infrastructure, the party, and others working with it, as well as Republican leaders in the legislature, to undermine absentee voting and make it harder for people to vote that way,” Mandell said.
Wisconsin Republicans who spoke out in favor of the suit said state law is clear that only a voter may correct an incomplete address.
“Lawless ballot curing cannot and will not be allowed to continue,” Republican Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu said in a statement issued at the time. “We’re putting the full weight of the legislature behind this lawsuit to shut down [the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s] defiant and flagrant abuse of the law.”
Republicans and Democrats in Michigan say they think the lawsuit brought by Karamo, the GOP secretary of state nominee, has little chance of success. Democratic election lawyer Mark Brewer called the Karamo lawsuit “racist, frivolous, and sanctionable.”
In a text exchange, Karamo lawyer Daniel Hartman said the candidate, who is Black, filed the suit in Detroit in part because of what he described as the city’s history of election security breaches. Karamo has been an outspoken proponent of the baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
Even if the suit fails, other challenges are playing out: In recent days, county clerks across Michigan have received emails from organized groups attempting to dispute the eligibility of voters who requested or cast absentee ballots, suggesting there could be more litigation to come.
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Eliza Luna, a ballot designer with the Maricopa County Elections Department, counts ballots for the Arizona Presidential Preference Election at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S., March 17, 2020. (photo: Adriana Zehbrauskas/The New York Times)
The harassment in Maricopa County included menacing emails and social media posts, threats to circulate personal information online and photographing employees arriving at work, according to nearly 1,600 pages of documents obtained by Reuters through a public records request for security records and correspondence related to threats and harassments against election workers.
Between July 11 and Aug. 22, the county election office documented at least 140 threats and other hostile communications, the records show. "You will all be executed," said one. "Wire around their limbs and tied & dragged by a car," wrote another.
The documents reveal the consequences of election conspiracy theories as voters nominated candidates in August to compete in the midterms. Many of the threats in Maricopa County, which helped propel President Joe Biden to victory over Trump in 2020, cited debunked claims around fake ballots, rigged voting machines and corrupt election officials.
Other jurisdictions nationwide have seen threats and harassment this year by the former president's supporters and prominent Republican figures who question the legitimacy of the 2020 election, according to interviews with Republican and Democratic election officials in 10 states.
The threats come at a time of growing concern over the risk of political violence, highlighted by the Oct. 28 attack on Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband by a man who embraced right-wing conspiracy theories.
In Maricopa, a county of 4.5 million people that includes Phoenix, the harassment unnerved some election workers, according to previously unreported incidents documented in the emails and interviews with county officials.
A number of temporary workers quit after being accosted outside the main ballot-counting center following the Aug. 2 primary, Stephen Richer, the county recorder who helps oversee Maricopa's elections, said in an interview. One temporary employee broke down in tears after a stranger photographed her, according to an email from Richer to county officials. The unidentified worker left work early and never returned.
She wasn't a political person, she told Richer. She just wanted a job.
On Aug. 3, strangers in tactical gear calling themselves "First Amendment Auditors" circled the elections department building, pointing cameras at employees and their vehicle license plates. The people vowed to continue the surveillance through the midterms, according to an Aug. 4 email from Scott Jarrett, Maricopa's elections director, to county officials.
"It feels very much like predatory behavior and that we are being stalked," wrote Jarrett.
ATTACKS PERSISTED
Since the 2020 election, Reuters has documented more than 1,000 intimidating messages to election officials across the country, including more than 120 that could warrant prosecution, according to legal experts.
Many officials said they had hoped the harassment would wane over time after the 2020 results were confirmed. But the attacks have persisted, fueled in many cases by right-wing media figures and groups that continue without evidence to cast election officials as complicit in a vast conspiracy by China, Democratic officials and voting equipment manufacturers to rob Trump of a second presidential term.
In April, local election officials in Arizona participated in a drill simulating violence at a polling site in which several people were killed, according to an April 26 email from Lisa Marra, the president of the Election Officials of Arizona, which represents election administrators from the state's 15 counties. The drill aimed to help officials prepare for Election Day violence, and left participants "understandably, disturbed" said the email to more than a dozen local election directors.
In a statement, Marra said: "This is just one other tool we can use to ensure election safety for all."
Maricopa officials appeared at times overwhelmed by threatening posts on social media and right-wing message boards calling for workers to be executed or hung. Some messages sought officials' home addresses, including one that promised "late night visits." Employees were filmed arriving and leaving work, according to emails among county officials.
Two days after the Aug. 2 primary election, the county's information security officer emailed the FBI pleading for help.
"I appreciate the limitations of what the FBI can do, but I just want to underline this," wrote Michael Moore, information security officer for the Maricopa County Recorder's Office. "Our staff is being intimidated and threatened," he added. "We're going to continue to find it more and more difficult to get the job done when no one wants to work for elections."
A special agent for the FBI acknowledged the agency's limitations, according to the emails. "As you put it, we are limited in what we can do - we only investigate violations of federal law," the FBI agent responded in an Aug. 4 email. Reporting threats to local law enforcement is "the only thing I can suggest," the agent wrote, "even if at this point it has not resulted in any action."
The FBI declined to comment on the agent's response to Moore. It also declined to confirm or deny the existence of ongoing investigations into the threats.
Moore did not respond to requests for comment, but Richer, his boss, said in a statement that he greatly appreciated the FBI's partnership and vigilance. "This is an inherently emotional topic - communications of the most vile nature have been repeatedly sent to my team," the statement said.
One anonymous sender using the privacy-protective email service ProtonMail sent "harassing emails" for almost a year, Moore, wrote in an Aug. 4 email to the FBI. One message warned Richer that he'd be "hung as a traitor."
"I'd like to have a black and white poster in my office of you hanging from the end of a rope," the sender wrote.
The harassment and threats were affecting the mental health of election workers, Jarrett wrote in his Aug. 4 memo. "If our permanent and temporary staff do not feel safe, we will not be able (to) recruit and retain staff for upcoming elections."
In all, county officials referred at least 100 messages and social media posts to FBI and state counter-terrorism officials. Reuters found no evidence in the correspondence that officials saw any of the messages as breaching the expansive definition of constitutionally protected free speech and crossing into the territory of a prosecutable threat.
The U.S. Justice Department declined to comment on specific ongoing investigations but said it has opened dozens of cases nationwide involving threats to election workers. Eight people face federal charges for threats, including two who targeted Maricopa County officials.
DOJ spokesperson Joshua Stueve said that while the "overwhelming majority" of complaints the agency receives "do not include a threat of unlawful violence," he said the messages are "often hostile, harassing, and abusive" towards election officials and their staff. "They deserve better," Stueve said.
ONLINE INSPIRATION
Misinformation on right-wing websites and social media fueled much of the hostility towards election staff, according to the internal messages among Maricopa officials.
On July 31, the Gateway Pundit, a pro-Trump website with a history of publishing false stories, reported that a Maricopa County election official allowed a staff technician to gain unauthorized access to a computer server room, where he deleted 2020 election data that was set to be audited. The website published the names and photos of the official and the tech; readers responded with threats against both.
"Until we start hanging these evil doers nothing will change," one reader wrote in the Gateway Pundit's comment section. Another suggested death for the computer tech identified in the story: "hang that crook from (the) closest tree so people can see what happens to traitors."
The tech hadn't deleted anything, according to a Maricopa spokesperson. The county election director had instructed him to shut down the server for delivery to the Arizona State Senate in response to a subpoena. A review of server records confirmed nothing was deleted, the spokesperson told Reuters, and all data from the 2020 election had been archived and preserved months earlier.
Election employees singled out in Gateway Pundit stories "tend to see a surge in being targeted" for threats and harassing messages, Moore, the county's information security officer, said in a Nov. 18, 2021, email to the FBI. Those stories, he added, are often "flagrantly inaccurate." A Reuters investigation published last December found the Gateway Pundit cited in more than 100 threatening and hostile communications directed at 25 election workers in the year after the 2020 election.
Other right-wing news outlets and commentators elicited similar hostile comments in response to their allegations against Maricopa officials. In August, right-wing provocateur Charlie Kirk posted a comment in Telegram accusing Richer, the county recorder, and "his cronies" of making Arizona's elections "a Third-World circus."
"When do we start hanging these people for treason?" one reader commented. Another simply added, "Kill them."
The Gateway Pundit and Kirk did not respond to requests for comment.
After a security assessment by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in late 2021, Maricopa strengthened doors, added shatterproof film on windows and bought more first aid kits, according to the documents.
But the harassment has continued.
"This goes beyond just onsite security. It is a mental health issue," Jarrett, the county elections director, wrote in an email to county officials two days after the primary.
"I very much respect freedom of speech and welcome public scrutiny," Jarrett added. "However, allowing this predatory activity to occur is damaging and threatening the viability of the elections department."
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As Ukraine struggled to cope with Russian attacks on its infrastructure, a municipal worker on Friday installed a backup water line from Kyiv to the suburb of Hostomel that was powered by gravity and would function without electricity. (photo: Brendan Hoffman/NYT)
LSO SEE: Occupied Kherson Loses Power,
as Kyiv Mayor Urges Residents to Prepare for Total Blackouts
The city is also establishing 1,000 heating centers for its 3 million residents, as Russia pounds away at civilian targets.
The situation is already so dire, with 40 percent of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure damaged or destroyed, that municipal workers are setting up 1,000 heating shelters that can double as bunkers while engineers try to fix bombed-out power stations without the needed equipment.
To try to keep the grid from failing altogether, Ukraine’s national energy utility said on Saturday that it would continue to impose rolling blackouts in seven regions.
The tremendous strain on Ukraine’s ability to provide power is the result of the widespread bombardment by Russian forces of critical energy infrastructure across the country, a tactic that analysts say President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has resorted to as his troops have suffered repeated setbacks on the battlefield.
The damage caused by the Russian strikes has heaped new suffering on Ukraine’s civilians and forced officials to reckon with the possibility that further damage could render them unable to provide basic services.
“We understand that if Russia continues such attacks, we may lose our entire electricity system,” Roman Tkachuk, the director of security for the Kyiv municipal government, said in an interview, speaking of the city.
Officials in the capital have been told that they would be likely to have at least 12 hours’ notice that the grid was on the verge of failure. If it reaches that point, Mr. Tkachuk said, “we will start informing people and requesting them to leave.”
For now at least, the situation is manageable, and there were no indications that large numbers of civilians were fleeing Kyiv, he said. But that would change quickly if the services that relied on city power stopped.
“If there’s no power, there will be no water and no sewage,” he said. “That’s why currently the government and city administration are taking all possible measures to protect our power supply system.”
As winter approaches, the city is preparing 1,000 heating shelters that can also protect civilians from Russian missiles. Most are inside educational facilities, but the authorities have asked that their precise locations not be reported lest they become easy targets.
In one school, the basement had been stocked with bottled water; makeshift classrooms had been set up; and a fire truck was stationed just outside the auditorium. Across the hall from a stack of disaster preparedness kits was a stark reminder of the normalcy the school once enjoyed: a large poster of Minnie Mouse.
When Russia launched its latest barrage of more than 50 cruise missiles on Monday, most were shot down, Ukrainian officials said. But those that got through hit power plants and substations, immediately depriving thousands of people of power.
On Friday, another Russian strike hit a facility run by the company that distributes power to people’s homes. It was the 12th energy facility hit in the last month, the company said.
Across the city, engineers were working to repair the damaged electricity infrastructure, despite having no easy way to obtain the hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of equipment they would need to fully restore the network. To reduce the damage caused by future attacks, they were protecting power stations with blast walls.
Ukraine’s national electric utility, Ukrenergo, confirmed on Saturday the need to continue rolling blackouts, saying they were necessary to “reduce the load on the networks, ensure sustainable balancing of the power system and avoid repeated accidents after the power grids were damaged by Russian missile and drone attacks.”
The cuts would affect Kyiv and its environs, and the regions of Chernihiv, Cherkasy, Kharkiv, Poltava, Sumy and Zhytomyr, the utility said.
Ukraine’s Western allies have stepped up their pledges to provide the country with more air defenses. But putting them in place has been challenging, and opposition to the aid effort is bubbling up in the West as many countries face their own economic headwinds.
But U.S. and European leaders have so far remained unswayed.
On Friday, President Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said during a visit to Kyiv that Washington’s support for Ukraine remained strong and that aid would continue to flow after the midterm elections.
“I’m confident U.S. support for Ukraine will be unwavering and unflinching,” Mr. Sullivan told reporters in a sandbagged conference room in the presidential office.
Buttressing that pledge on Friday was an announcement by the Defense Department that it was setting up a new command to oversee how the United States and its allies train and equip the Ukrainian military.
It also announced a new package of $400 million in security assistance, bringing to a total of $18.9 billion the military assistance that the United States has committed to Ukraine since Russia invaded on Feb. 24.
The Pentagon’s new commitments show that the United States expects the threat that Russia poses to Ukraine and its neighbors to persist for many years, current and former senior U.S. officials said.
Also on Saturday, Iran’s foreign minister acknowledged for the first time that his country had sent armed drones to Russia, although he said they had been delivered before Moscow invaded Ukraine.
Throughout the war, but particularly in recent weeks, Russia has used Iranian-made drones to launch deadly strikes that have wreaked havoc on Ukrainian cities, according to Ukrainian and Western officials.
Iran has denied sending drones to Russia for use in Ukraine, and the Kremlin has denied using Iranian drones to attack civilians. But international calls for accountability have mounted as Russia has carried out repeated deadly assaults.
The European Union and Britain have imposed new sanctions on Iran over the attack drones, and the United States is considering its own sanctions on top of those already in place over nuclear weapons concerns.
According to the Iranian state news media, Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir Amirabdollahian, pushed back on Saturday on accusations from Western nations that Iran had supplied Russia with drones to use in Ukraine.
The deliveries in question took place months before the invasion, Mr. Amirabdollahian said. He did not give any details on the types or numbers of drones provided.
The statement appeared to be an effort to protect Iran from even greater sanctions from Western nations than those that have already profoundly weakened its economy.
But it was unlikely to change the strong perception in Western capitals that Iran backed Russia’s war effort.
Current and former U.S. officials have said that Iran has sent trainers to Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine to help Russian fighters operate the drones. Such collaboration underscores how ties between Iran and Russia have grown stronger as the Kremlin has sought to offset its international isolation.
Iran has said that it would not provide either side of the conflict in Ukraine with military equipment, but had previously confirmed that a drone deal with Russia was part of a military agreement that predated the invasion of Ukraine.
Adama Bah in front of Lady Liberty with her father, who has been let back into the U.S. (photo: Glamour)
As thousands of asylum seekers continue to arrive on buses in New York, we speak with a man from Venezuela about his journey, and two New Yorkers who have been helping since August to welcome them with dignity and ensure they get the housing, food and other assistance they need. “The system here in New York City is not created for this type of community, which is the migrants that are arriving,” says former asylum seeker, Adama Bah. “It is our job as New Yorkers to be able to welcome them in this city that is a so-called sanctuary city,” adds Power Malu, with the group Artists, Athletes and Activists. Bah and Malu also discuss how their work is being repeated nationwide.
ILZE THIELMANN: A bus arrived from Texas. This is one of the buses that have been sent by Governor Abbott since August. We had a lot of families on this bus, a lot of little kids. We handed out some teddy bears and toys and food and water. Now we’re interviewing the families and finding out what they need. We’re going to give them some clothing and we’re going to get them to where they need to go.
There was a woman who had a neck brace and we immediately got her to the medical triage tent. There is a little medical center set up inside the Port Authority Bus Terminal. The first bus we greeted there was a young lady, well, a 12-year-old girl who had diabetes who had not had insulin for four days. One of my volunteers is a former nurse and she quickly identified the problem and got her to the hospital. But we have had that at least a couple of times where someone was diabetic and hadn’t had insulin. People who have not had their proper medications. They had their medications taken from them.
We have had people who are completely dehydrated. We had a little boy who had a seizure because he had not had his proper medications. It’s just we’ve seen all kinds of terrible results from people being mistreated at the border and then being put on a bus for a 36-hour, 40-hour journey without proper food, without proper water.
AMY GOODMAN: Ilze Thielmann speaking outside the Port Authority Bus Terminal in the center of Manhattan. She and many other New Yorkers have also opened their homes to the newly arrived asylum seekers who would otherwise face living in New York’s already overwhelmed shelter system or in the streets.
On Thursday, Democracy Now!’s María Taracena spoke to a Venezuelan asylum seeker who arrived in New York in September and is now staying with Thielmann. He was apprehended at the Texas-Mexico border and detained for two days. He said he was put on a bus to Washington, D.C. and then another to New York City. He asked to remain anonymous for safety.
VENEZUELAN ASYLUM SEEKER: [translated] I left due to the economic situation in my country. You cannot make much money there. I have my daughters, my mother, and I have to support them. That’s why I came to the United States. It took me about two months to make it here. I was homeless a lot of the time. I went through the Darién jungle. I was in there for seven days eating only bread. I got out of there and made it to Panama, then Costa Rica, then Nicaragua. It was complicated. We were always running.
I made it to Guatemala and then we crossed into Mexico. Mexico was a nightmare. They attacked Venezuelans a lot. The police, immigration officials. When I made it to the state of Monterrey, I didn’t have money anymore. I had nothing. We searched for a train that’s known as “The Beast.” The train took us all the way to Piedras Negras, near the U.S.-Mexico border. We hid and ran so that immigration agents wouldn’t arrest us. We saw Mexican Immigration in the Rïo Bravo River so we waited for them to pass on their boats. Then we decided to jump in the river. The water completely covered me. I was being pulled by the river but swam and made it to the other side. That is when we turned ourselves into the U.S. immigration police and they apprehended us.
I came to the United States without any money. All I had was faith in making it here. I would pray to God to take care of me. A lot of the people I came here with who did so much to come here died. The river took them and they drowned. So when I made it, the first thing I said was, “Thank God.” I was blessed in New York. I didn’t know anyone here. The woman who I’m staying with has supported me so much. The shelters didn’t have room so she brought us here to her apartment. She gave us food. She gifted me a bicycle. She gave us clothing. I am so thankful to her.
I hope I have the opportunity to stay here and work and if there is the opportunity to bring family with me, one of my daughters, I will do it. That is why we’re here, to fight for our families and our children.
AMY GOODMAN: Last month the Biden administration started expelling Venezuelan asylum-seekers to Mexico under an expansion of the Trump-era, pandemic-era Title 42 policy that has blocked at least two million migrants from applying for asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border.
For more, we are joined by two people who are working with Ilze Thielmann and others in New York and around the United States to welcome the thousands of asylum seekers who continue to come and those already here who need support as their cases wind through the U.S. immigration courts. One of our guests, Adama Bah, first joined us on Democracy Now! in 2010, when she was 22 years old and had been placed on the no-fly list even though she had been granted asylum from Guinea where she faced female genital mutilation. This is part of our interview then.
ADAMA BAH: I came to this country when I was two years old with my mother and when I was 16 I was detained for immigration reasons. I didn’t know I was illegal, so that’s when I found out. After three years of battling I got an asylum in 2007. I wore an ankle bracelet for three and a half years.
AMY GOODMAN: Wait, explain why you got the political asylum, what it was you faced in getting it.
ADAMA BAH: I got the political asylum, because in my country, they circumcise women.
AMY GOODMAN: And you were afraid if you went back this would happen to you as it did to all the women members of your family?
ADAMA BAH: All the women in my family have gotten it done, even my mother.
AMY GOODMAN: Why did you wear an ankle bracelet?
ADAMA BAH: They wanted to track my immigration. I don’t know.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Adama Bah in 2010. She joins us now as a community organizer, also author of her own biography, Accused: My Story of Injustice. Also with us is Power Malu, a community organizer who runs the group Artists, Athletes and Activists. They both have been working closely with Ilze Thielmann and others to assist thousands of newly arriving asylum seekers to New York. We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Adama Bah, it is just remarkable what you yourself went through. You have now just gotten your citizenship?
ADAMA BAH: Yes, I just became an American citizen a year ago.
AMY GOODMAN: But here you are, rather than sort of getting away from the trauma of what you left behind, working to help other people who like you are desperate to come to this country. Talk about what you have been doing here and what you face with the thousands of people, in this case in New York, just coming here.
ADAMA BAH: Because of my experience, it was very important for me to be on the ground and help advocate. The system here in New York City is not created for this type of community which is the migrants that are arriving. So we are at Port Authority every single day welcoming them and helping them navigate into the shelter system. Once they are in the shelter system, we’re also helping them with resources, social services. We are also at the airports and other bus terminals. I think one of the things that we definitely want to highlight, Port Authority is not the only route these migrants are coming from. They are coming from airports, other bus terminals around New York City.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about where those buses are coming from. We see you at Port Authority greeting the asylum-seekers. What are they telling you and what about these journeys and where do they think they are coming to?
ADAMA BAH: The buses coming at Port Authority are coming from Texas. The ones that are not coming from Port Authority are coming from other states, so Arizona, Ohio, Indiana. Those are just some of the few states that they’re coming from. But the migrants that are coming specifically from Texas, or the Abbott buses we call them, they are just forced into the buses. They are waking up at 1:00 in the morning and told to get on these buses and they’re not sure where they’re going. You have some of them who know that they’re going to New York and a lot of them who don’t have any idea. So as soon as they arrive in New York City, my colleague here, Power, the first thing he tells them—”You’re in New York City, at Port Authority, in Manhattan.” It’s the best way to identify where they are so there’s no confusion. And briefly we tell them what the next step is.
AMY GOODMAN: Power Malu, what is the next step? And how did you get involved with your group Artists, Athletes and Activists, and being there as a greeter and a person who orients these asylum-seekers? Why this is so important to you?
POWER MALU I’m born and raised in the Lower East Side. I’m a Nuyorican, so my mom and dad were born in Puerto Rico. I was born here in New York but I still consider myself an immigrant. I think it is very important for people to realize that if you weren’t born here 500 years ago, you are an immigrant. If you’re not a native to this country, you are an immigrant. This country was built off the backs of immigrants, and I just want to make that clear.
When they come to New York City, this is the first place that we actually have an opportunity to right the wrongs. When they first step foot into the United States, they are mistreated. They are put in these cold cells, these cold air-conditioned spaces with just wearing t-shirts. So they arrive to New York sick. They arrive to New York with anxiety levels through the roof. It’s up to us, it’s our jobs as New Yorkers to be able to welcome them in this city that is a so-called sanctuary city with the love and the care and the dignity that they deserve.
So when we get on the bus, the first thing we do tell them is that they are in New York City and although they may see police officers and now because we have the National Guard stationed there they may see people in uniform, military uniform, they are not to be afraid. They are free. They are free and they are welcomed here in New York City and we are going to do our best to advocate for them.
We try to find out if they have family members here in New York or family members on the way. Because one of the main things that we like to do is reunite families. Because at the border, they’ve been separated. There is no rhyme or reason. We have reunited so many families. And I’m talking about thousands of families that have been separated where the mom and the dad don’t see each other for weeks or months at a time. The children. There’s two daughters that were separated from the mom and dad and their younger siblings. One was sent to Ontario, California. The other one was sent to San Diego, California. We worked diligently to do the research to try to get them together and reunite them here in New York City. That is one of the main things that we pride ourselves in, is having a conversation with them. Because for the first time they’re actually having someone listen to them, someone that actually cares and wants to know what are their needs.
And so the follow-up, it takes into consideration us sharing our phone number with them, and then it is spread throughout the community. People come to us for all types of help, whether it is questions about their immigration or they’re coming because they need some clothing or some food. Any type of resources that are supposed to be shared with them and that they’re not getting, they come to us. They come back to the Port Authority.
So yes, we are receiving hundreds and hundreds of people at the Port Authority. Now it’s up to like 20,000-plus that are in New York City. But the follow-up means that they’re not getting the resources that they deserve so they trust this place that they first were welcomed and then they share that within their community and we try our best to connect with grassroots organizations who are the ones that are doing the work.
And we want to be clear with that, because there is a lot of miscommunication or misinformation that the city is doing so much for these migrants and they are well-off. That is not the case. We are advocating for them every single day and we have to be on the ground fighting for them. And they know this. That is why they come back to us and say, “Hey, we have been at this hotel for two weeks and we still haven’t enrolled our child in school” or “We still haven’t gotten any type of resources. We’re getting cold food” or “We’re not getting food at the time, because we don’t know when the food is being served.” So there’s a language barrier.
It’s up to us to continue to advocate for these people and let the city know and people that really care that it’s the grassroots organizations that need the support because we’re not getting the support that we need to be able to make this sustainable. That’s all we want to be able to do, continue to help these people because they deserve to be helped and treated as human beings, not as political pawns as they have been treated for these past several months that they’ve been trying to come here to the city.
AMY GOODMAN: Power, it is so moving to see you and Adama and others greeting, laying hands on, having signs that welcome people to New York. We see a woman in a neck brace. There was a child who didn’t have insulin who was a diabetic. She was four years old. Adama Bah, can you talk specifically about Black asylum-seekers and if they are treated differently than others?
ADAMA BAH: Oh, yeah. There’s over 10,000 Black migrants in New York right now. Black migrants are coming the same route as our South American brothers and sisters. But once they arrive in Texas, they are then transported to another detention center and they are not released until their asylum cases are proven. They have something called positive or negative. If their asylum case is positive, that means that they have a credible fear of not returning to their country and then they are released.
But they are not just released just like that. The majority of the Black migrants that we are working with have a bond. The highest bond I’ve personally seen was $6,000. But these bonds go higher than $6,000. Black migrants have to wear an ankle bracelet. Our Hispanic counterparts are just being released with a cell phone, are not wearing an ankle bracelet. So Black migrants are really discriminated and the city doesn’t really have the resources or the language access for them. There has really never been a system created for them.
And so my job now, and the job of my colleagues and of the organizers that I work with, is advocating for them. Advocating for language access, cultural needs. Because these Black migrants have already been through a lot in the system, being discriminated, and then when they arrive to New York, they’re being discriminated even more.
AMY GOODMAN: The issue of Haitians, thousands of Haitians fleeing to this country, the latest news, NBC reporting the Biden administration considering expanding operations at the U.S. military base and prison at Guantanamo Bay to hold Haitians who are caught at sea trying to reach the United States. In the 1990s, I remember well the United States using Guantanamo to hold as many as 12,000 Haitians who had fled the U.S.-backed coup in Haiti against Jean-Bertrand Aristide. So you have that situation, and I don’t know what you’ve heard about that. And then in New York, Randall’s Island being used as a major site to hold people, particularly single men, I think up to 500 or 1,000 but only a few have gone there.
ADAMA BAH: That is actually correct. I heard about the Haitians being held at Gitmo, and I was horrified because we know the traumas and the things that have happened there. The men that are currently at Randall’s, we do follow up with them and we ask them how they’re doing. They do tell us that they are being taken care of very well. But a lot of the issues that they’re facing is there’s no social services for them, so they are coming back and asking us, “What support is there for us?”
POWER MALU I also want to touch base on that because the center at Randall’s Island, when it was opened, it was made for it to be temporary. And now we are the ones that are actually sending a lot of people because people are coming by plane and so the buses have decreased. Another thing I want to touch on is the fact that there has been African migrants that were now put into the Randall’s Island HERRC and that was done by Sadie [sp] and Adama Bah, different organizations working together with them. I want to highlight that and allow Adama to speak about what just occurred this past Sunday because there is a different story that’s being told and I want to be able to use this time to share that. Adama, you should talk about that.
ADAMA BAH: Sadie [sp] is this incredible woman. Her organization is called Abisha [sp]. She has actually been the main point person who has been paying the bond for these Black migrants. Once she pays the bond for these Black migrants, they are literally just dropped off the streets of Louisiana, Atlanta, Chicago. Then when they’re dropped off, they’re contacting Sadie [sp[ to be ticketed to New York City. They heard that there is an opportunity in New York City, that they are safe as Black migrants in New York City.
When they arrive in New York City, they contact me. They contact organizers that they know that are on the ground. Thousands of Black migrants have been sleeping in mosques around the country. And it’s unfortunate conditions. They are very horrific conditions. When I saw these conditions, I flagged it to the city to bring awareness to our struggle. And with that opportunity we took the chance to put them in HERRCs in Randall’s Island. This past Sunday we took about 45 African men and sent them to the HERRC. It was a successful mission. It was successful because these men are now in warm beds. They are safe. They are being fed. But still, they need more support. They need more resources.
AMY GOODMAN: I also understand on the issue of Haitians being held near Guantanamo that the UNHCR has called on the United States to refrain from forced returns of Haitians. Finally, I want to ask you both about what you think the city should be doing that they are not doing now. That is New York City. And then take that national. What you are doing, Adama and Power, as a model for what should be done around the country. Are people reaching out to you?
ADAMA BAH: I think one of the most important things is that the city needs to be honest about what services and resources they need help with. New Yorkers, we’re amazing, we’re incredible. We’re willing to step up and say, “Hey, I’m a doctor, I’m a nurse, I’m a lawyer, I can take some time to help.” And most importantly to work with grassroots that are on the ground. We know the community very well. Power and I are connected to about 38 states. We are just contacting other orgs that are on the ground trying to find solutions and resources. So I want to highlight all of the organizations that have been on the ground. But it is also very important to fund us, to give us funding to continue the work that we’re doing.
POWER MALU Adama makes a great point because if people think that everything is under control then they don’t even see the grassroots organizations and the work that we are doing. We are the backbone and the foundation of what is happening right now and we are the advocates that are not being noticed or not being recognized. So people don’t see a reason to donate to us and they don’t feel that [inaudible] think, “Hey, the city has it under control.”
So we want to be clear that it is the grassroots organizations, for example I’ll reach out to EVLovesNYC for food and they’ve been feeding thousands of migrants that are arriving and the ones that are in the shelter system because we bring food to them. These are organizations that are on shoestring budgets but they are actually stepping up and we want to be clear that when we reach out to other organizations across the country, they are doing the same thing.
If we can do it as grassroots organizations, so can mammoth organizations that have bigger budgets or that have connections to philanthropy and they can actually help us to continue this work. All they have to do is reach out. We have the model, we have the solutions, because we are actually on the ground creating this network. All we do need is the support. We don’t need the silos being built. This is not a competition.
AMY GOODMAN: Power Malu, community organizer who runs the group Artists, Athletes and Activists. Adama Bah is a community organizer, author of Accused: My Story of Injustice. Adama is a refugee from Guinea and has lived in the United States since she was two years old. This is what mutual aid looks like. A very special thanks to our Democracy Now! producers María Teracena and Tey-Marie Astudillo, Renée Feltz and Robby Karran.
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Susie Talevski has gone through years of legal back-and-forth with the state agency in Indiana that operates the nursing home where her father, Gorgi, resided before his death. Farah Yousry/Side Effects Public Media
"This case has taken on, really, a life of its own way beyond what I could have foreseen," said Talevski, a resident of Valparaiso, Ind.
Talevski filed a lawsuit in 2019 alleging that her father's rights were violated at a nursing home where he resided to get 24/7 care for his dementia.
"He went from being able to walk and talk ... to not being able to move," Talevski said. "[The nursing facility] treated my dad like trash, like a dog. In fact, dogs are treated better than that."
In court filings, the Talevski family claims that her father was overmedicated to keep him asleep, his dementia wasn't properly managed, and he was involuntarily transferred to different facilities hours away from the family's home, which accelerated his decline. Gorgi Talevski died a year ago, in October.
Talevski sued the Health and Hospital Corp. of Marion County, the public health agency in Indiana that owns the nursing facility. The agency declined to comment on the case. In court documents, it argued that Gorgi Talevski was violent and sexually aggressive and that affected his care.
HHC tried to get the case dismissed, saying Talevski didn't have the right to sue. But federal courts said the lawsuit could move forward.
So, the public health agency made an unexpected move. It took the case to the nation's highest court and posed a sweeping question: Should people who depend on initiatives that are funded in part by the federal government — such as Medicaid and programs that provide services for nutrition, housing and disabilities — be allowed to sue states when their rights are violated?
A ruling in favor of the Marion county Health and Hospital Corp. could mean millions of Americans who rely on federal assistance programs would lose that right. The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments on Tuesday — Nov. 8.
"The reach of an adverse decision would be catastrophic," said Jane Perkins, an attorney at the National Health Law Program. "It would leave these programs really standing out there without a true enforcement mechanism."
How a case regarding one man's rights grew to have national implications
HHC of Marion County owns and operates 78 skilled nursing facilities across the state of Indiana in a public-private partnership with American Senior Communities.
The answer to the question of whether people who depend on federal assistance programs can sue if their rights are violated has been settled precedent for decades, said Perkins, who has litigated numerous civil rights cases for Medicaid beneficiaries over the years.
For that reason, she was shocked when she learned the Supreme Court had chosen to hear this case. The Supreme Court is asked to review nearly 7,000 cases each year and they often agree to look at only 1 to 2 % of them.
Perkins said she sees parallels between this case and the recent Supreme Court decision that overturned the constitutional right to an abortion.
"The idea that the court would accept this case and accept that question of whether you can ever enforce these laws is of concern," Perkins said. "The recent court decisions — Dobbs in the abortion context coming to mind — shows the court is willing to set aside precedent."
Since the Supreme Court agreed to look at the case, 25 entities filed amicus briefs, which provide courts information from people not directly involved in a case. Most of them sided with the Talevskis — including current members of Congress like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Whip James Clyburn, AARP, American Cancer Network, American Public Health Association, and Children's Health Care Providers and Advocates. Marion County will be represented by Lawrence S. Robbins, who has argued 19 cases before the Supreme Court and represented Christine Blasey Ford during the confirmation hearing of Justice Brett Kavanagh. Talevski will be represented by Andrew Timothy Tutt of Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer. Recently, Tutt has argued and won a case before the Supreme Court that safeguarded the reemployment rights of thousands of veterans and servicemembers.
What exactly is at stake?
Programs like Medicaid that rely on federal money flowing from Congress to states typically come with a set of provisions or requirements that states are supposed to follow in order to receive and use this money. Civil rights lawsuits are one of the primary enforcement mechanisms beneficiaries of those programs have to hold state agencies accountable if the agencies violate their rights or fail to provide entitled services.
There are other means of oversight, which supporters of the Indiana state agency's petition tout as viable alternatives to lawsuits. One of those alternative enforcement mechanisms, for example, is federal oversight by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The agency can investigate and threaten to withhold funding from state programs that fail to comply with federal provisions. But this usually involves lengthy legal processes that can be counterproductive, stalling benefits to individual patients, instead of helping them.
"If [HHS] tries to turn off the money, the state could take them to court immediately and get an injunction," arguing that the ceasing of federal funds would cause irreparable harm, said Sara Rosenbaum, professor of health law and policy at George Washington University. "People [would be] left totally without their benefits, or the providers are left totally without their payments."
Former senior HHS officials say that federal oversight is far from sufficient and that civil rights lawsuits remain a crucial enforcement mechanism. Private enforcement through lawsuits is indispensable for nursing home residents, they say, especially in places like Indiana where the state owns the vast majority of nursing homes.
The former officials said in a court brief that a decision in favor of Marion County would potentially raise the risk of waste, fraud and abuse of Medicaid funds, leading to widespread underenforcement and leaving "millions of individuals, providers, and other beneficiaries more vulnerable to violations of their statutory rights."
Nearly 83 million Americans, a quarter of the U.S. population, are enrolled in Medicaid. This means HHS oversees more than half a trillion dollars in spending across 56 states and territories — and the federal agency, the former officials argue, lacks the logistical and practical capacity to "meaningfully remedy individual violations in many cases."
Why some argue beneficiaries of federal entitlements should not be able to sue
Indiana's Attorney General Todd Rokita is among allies publicly supporting the state's perspective. Rokita, in a court brief filed along with 21 other Republican attorneys general, said civil rights lawsuits burden states and cripple them with legal expenses, just to line the pockets of attorneys rather than benefit Medicaid enrollees.
"The state has litigated 1,200 civil rights cases just in the last three years," Rokita said in a written statement.
Legal experts told Side Effects that the number Rokita cites is highly misleading because it lumps together all civil rights lawsuits, not just those that have to do with federal entitlement programs, which are at the heart of this case.
For example, civil rights lawsuits can be filed by people who are wrongly denied a permit to protest, alleging the state violated their right to freedom of expression, or by people who are subjected to excessive use of force by police, or denied medical treatment while in prison. The right to file those kinds of lawsuits will not be affected by the outcome of this case.
Chris Schandevel, an attorney at the legal nonprofit Alliance Defending Freedom, which sides with the state of Indiana in this case, said cases like Susie Talevski's infringe on states' autonomy, and give the power to dictate what's best for states and their beneficiaries to unelected federal judges.
This case is not about taking away people's rights, Schandevel and some nursing home associations and other state officials argue. It's about a contract between two parties, the federal government and the states, that a third party — beneficiaries of public programs — want to meddle with.
Schandevel gives a hypothetical example of a contract between himself, as an investor, and a construction company to build a shopping mall in one neighborhood. A lawsuit like the Talevski case would be akin to a neighbor suing the construction company because the shopping mall "is not being built fast enough."
"Should that third party be able to file a lawsuit in federal court against me and say that I'm not holding up my end of the deal in the contract? We would say that basic fairness says no," Schandevel said. "And the same should apply for contracts between the federal government and states, too."
But advocates and public policy experts say Schandevel's analogy is not sound. What he describes as a contract between the state and the federal government is more of a "treaty" to serve that third party — the beneficiaries of entitlement programs.
Plus, they point out, what's at stake is not a shopping mall. It's the health and well-being of the nation's most vulnerable residents.
How civil rights lawsuits have helped vulnerable people in the past
A few years ago, Sarah Jackson, a mother of six in Fort Wayne, Ind., who had hepatitis C, couldn't get access to the medication that doctors said she needed. Jackson was on Medicaid, and recovering from a substance use disorder. Indiana was among several states that severely restricted which Medicaid patients qualified for this drug, because of its high cost — despite medical opinions saying this treatment should be standard of care for most hepatitis C patients.
Jackson was desperate for the hepatitis C medication. She sought help from the ACLU of Indiana, and attorney Gavin Rose took her case.
Rose filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of Jackson and other Medicaid recipients in her situation.
"There was a significant outbreak in Southern Indiana at the time and we ultimately ended up with a settlement that said Indiana is going to start providing [coverage] consistent with what every doctor says they should be doing," said Rose, senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Indiana. The lawsuit resulted in Jackson and thousands of others gaining access to the life-altering treatment.
If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the Health and Hospital Corporation, these lawsuits may not be possible in the future, said Emily Munson, an attorney with the advocacy group Indiana Disability Rights.
When states tried to cap the benefits of people with disabilities in Indiana and across the nation, civil rights lawsuits have helped these patients gain access to things like in-home support with day-to-day tasks, known as attendant care.
Munson has litigated similar cases. She has a disability herself, and the prospect of a Supreme Court decision in favor of Marion County terrifies her.
"I rely on Medicaid for attendant care, for wheelchair repairs," Munson said, "and losing the ability to go to federal court if need be is very scary, because the administrative procedures that folks like Attorney General Rokita say we can rely on are not effective."
What's next for the case
During the latest monthly Health and Hospital Corp. board of trustees meeting in mid-October, the monumental case was absent from the agenda. But when the meeting opened for public comment, state representatives, patients and advocates seized the opportunity to voice their concerns.
They had one demand for the agency: withdraw its Supreme Court petition.
State Representatives like Robin Shackleford, a Democrat from Indianapolis, have been vocal about their concerns. Shackleford said many of her constituents are on Medicaid and SNAP, the USDA's supplemental nutrition program.
"They would be horrified ... if they knew the board was the driver behind removing their rights," Shackleford said.
But even if the agency complies with the demands and withdraws its petition, legal experts say it might be too late. Now that the Supreme Court has shown interest in looking at such a sweeping question, there's a good chance it could pick up the next case that raises it.
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House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) (image: Read Sludge)
As it collects record profits, Big Oil is donating more than ever to the largest Republican super PACs.
Companies including Chevron and Koch Industries, and lobbying groups like the American Petroleum Institute, have donated nearly $32.8 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF) and the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF) as of Oct. 19 in the 2022 cycle. The super PACs are the two highest-spending outside groups this election cycle, flooding the airwaves with pro-Republican and anti-Democrat ads ahead of the Nov. 8 elections. The CLF and the SLF do not have formal ties to McCarthy and McConnell due to campaign finance regulations, but they are known to be closely aligned with and steered by the Republican leaders.
A Republican majority in either or both chambers of Congress would likely seek to weaken or reverse climate change mitigation measures like those that were enacted in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to promote clean energy and electric vehicles, regulate methane emissions from oil and gas facilities, and more. The fossil fuel lobby opposed the IRA as it was being advanced by the Democrats, saying in a letter to House leaders that it was particularly concerned about the bill’s tax increases and provisions constraining oil and gas development.
Fossil fuel industry donations to the CLF and the SLF, which can receive donations of unlimited size, have been steadily rising over recent election cycles. A Sludge review found that organizations in the fossil fuel industry contributed $24.5 million in the 2020 cycle and just over $20 million in the 2018 cycle to the PACs. Donations from fossil fuel companies and trade groups make up about 6.6% of the super PACs’ overall fundraising this cycle.
The largest fossil fuel industry lobbying group, the American Petroleum Institute (API), has donated a total of $3 million this cycle to the CLF in its efforts to make Kevin McCarthy the next House speaker. Two-thirds of that haul came in September, according to FEC records. The funding was API’s largest-ever donation to the CLF—by comparison, in the 2018 election cycle, it contributed just $10,000 to the super PAC.
The API has also donated $2 million so far this cycle to SLF, with half that amount coming on Oct. 3.
TV ads bought by the Republican groups aim to blame Democrats for high energy costs and inflation, when a recent economic analysis by the progressive think tank Roosevelt Institute has identified corporate profits as the primary driver of rising prices. The just-posted third quarter profits of five oil majors, including Chevron and fellow API member ExxonMobil, reached nearly $50 billion, setting record quarterly highs at many firms.
Fossil Fuel Donations Rush In Just Weeks Before Election Day
The highest-donating companies to the Republican super PACs this cycle, Chevron and Occidental Petroleum, are both members of API and other trade associations that lobby against restrictions on the extraction and burning of fossil fuels.
Valero, whose donation totals include $1 million given to the CLF on Oct. 19, is a member of the trade association American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), which has given $400,000 to the CLF and $100,000 to the SLF. In August, AFPM opposed the IRA’s energy provisions, calling one of them “a punitive targeted tax” against manufacturers; more recently, its president and CEO said that a tax on windfall oil industry profits would be “bad for consumers.” Neither API nor AFPM have ever donated to the two main super PACs aligned with Democratic leaders in Congress.
Companies founded by billionaire megadonors have opened their checkbooks. Koch Industries has given a combined $4.5 million to the CLF and the SLF, and pipeline company Energy Transfer, led by Texas Republican megadonor Kelcy Warren, has donated $3 million to the CLF, including $1 million on Oct. 7.
In addition to the fossil fuel companies and trade groups, many individuals in the industry made large donations this cycle to the CLF and the SLF:
- Fracking pioneer Trevor Rees-Jones, founder of energy company Chief Oil & Gas, and his spouse Jan have given $750,000 to the CLF and $1 million to SLF, including a donation of a quarter of a million dollars on Oct.18.
- Texas oil mogul Syed Javaid Anwar, founder of Midland Energy, donated more than $600,000 to the CLF, including $100,000 given on Oct. 26.
- Richard B. Gilliam, founder of coal company Cumberland Resources, donated $300,000 to the CLF and $200,000 to the SLF.
- Jim Teague, co-CEO of pipeline firm Enterprise Partners donated $25,000 to the CLF.
- David Modesett of Houston, president of Vega Energy Holdings, donated $35,000 to the CLF.
- Joe Craft III, CEO of coal and mineral company Alliance Resource Partners, donated $500,000 to the CLF.
- The late Stephen Chazen, former CEO of Occidental Petroleum, donated $305,000 to the CLF.
- Billionaire Gary Chouest, CEO of offshore drilling vessel company Edison Chouest, donated $100,000 to the CLF.
Climate Policy at Stake
With Democrats taking a bare majority in the 50-50 U.S. Senate last year, API has been at the forefront of lobbying against legislation that would keep the U.S. within the targets of the Paris Agreement on climate change. A list of priorities for 2022 posted on the group’s website called for increased extraction of oil and gas, even though the International Energy Agency, an autonomous organization composed of 29 industrialized countries, and other scientists have warned that no new oil and gas production can be permitted if the world is to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.
In its wide-ranging lobbying to head off policies that would reduce polluting emissions, the API expects to have allies in a potentially Republican-controlled House, with Kevin McCarthy’s caucus largely remaining quiet on the climate crisis. Donations by API’s PAC have backed Republican candidates by a three-to-one margin.
The fossil fuel industry aims to halt environmental measures like those included in the shipwrecked Build Back Better Act from resurfacing in the 118th Congress. The Build Back Better Act’s $1.7 trillion budget reconciliation package was passed narrowly by House Democrats in November 2021 but it was blocked in the Senate by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) and every Republican member. A policy included in the legislation, the Clean Electricity Performance Program, would have mirrored a clean energy standard by providing grants to utilities that reach clean electricity targets and penalizing those that fall short.
The industry would likely also seek to advance permitting reform legislation similar to what Manchin proposed when he agreed to vote for the IRA. That bill, which would have sped up the environmental review process of interstate energy projects like oil pipelines and exporting terminals, was shelved after Manchin determined he didn’t have enough support in the Democratic Congress. API and 60 other industry groups specifically mentioned the lack of permitting reform in the IRA in its letter to House leaders opposing the bill.
Rules around oil and gas drilling on public lands could also be wrangled over in the next Congress. The IRA mandates the Biden administration reopen sections of the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska for new drilling, one of a few industry-boosting giveaways that were included to secure the vote of Manchin. Environmental groups like the Center for Biological Diversity have decried the drilling plans.
The IRA also broke ground by enacting a methane fee, the first of its kind by the federal government, enabling the Environmental Protection Agency to collect charges from the oil and natural gas sector unless controls on methane emissions are implemented. However, the measure squeaked through the Senate in a 51-50 vote with two major loopholes: the majority of emissions aren’t subject to the charge, which is only levied on facilities that exceed certain thresholds; and companies are being relied on to self-report their emissions.
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