MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell is joined by Rachel Maddow to discuss, "Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra," and to explain how she discovered the largely forgotten threat to American democracy revealed in the podcast.
Tuesday, December 13, 2022
Jan. 6 Committee To Hold Public Meeting On Dec. 19
Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., told reporters the January 6 committee would be holding their final public hearing on Monday, December 19 and release their full report to the public later that week. NBC's Julie Tsirkin reports from Capitol Hill.
FTX's Bankman-Fried Indicted On Fraud Charges By New York Court, SEC
Eight charges were filed in New York and by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission against the former CEO of cryptocurrency giant FTX. The eight charges Sam Bankman-Fried was indicted on included fraud committed against customers and investors and violating campaign finance laws.
'This Is The Tip Of The Iceberg': New Texts Show GOP Efforts To Overturn 2020 Results
Talking Points Memo Investigative Reporter, Hunter Walker, joins Morning Joe to discuss new reporting that then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows exchanged text messages with at least 34 Republican members of Congress as they plotted to overturn President Trump’s loss in the 2020 election.
34 House Republicans implicated in Trump plot COAT DRIVES: Today’s Action: Host or donate to a winter coat drive in your area!
Today's Top Stories:
Mark Meadows exchanged texts with 34 members of Congress about plans to overturn the 2020 election
A damning new report reveals that at least 34 Republican members of Congress were involved in the plot to overturn the 2020 election, showing that the rot of treason and sedition goes much deeper than we previously believed — and that Meadows was the middleman for the entire operation.
Take Action: Expel the GOP congressmen who won’t condemn Trump’s call to terminate the Constitution!
VIDEO OF THE DAY: Marjorie Taylor Greene makes disgusting claim in public speech
The far-right Georgia congresswoman proved that there really is no bottom to the MAGA movement by making truly stunning comments about the insurrection.
Take Action: Don't let Republicans starve critical investments in children and healthcare!
Fox hosts humiliate themselves protecting Trump after midterms
No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen: Beyond pathetic.
The pandemic and war — not government spending — caused inflation, according to Nobel Prize winner
Despite the best efforts by right-wingers to pin the blame for inflation on President Biden's necessary — and in some cases life-changing — investment programs, it was actually the historically destructive pandemic and brutal war in Ukraine that drove up prices, not to mention corporate greed. In other words, there is absolutely no reason why Democrats should not aggressively push to expand social programs and advance additional investment initiatives.
Take Action: Tell your Congressmember to co-sponsor the Billionaire Minimum Tax bill!
Hundreds of Oath Keepers have worked for DHS, leaked list shows
The far-right extremist militia played a crucial role in Trump's insurrection on Jan. 6, so the revelation that they also managed to successfully infiltrate a powerful government agency is nothing less than terrifying. One must wonder what other branches of law enforcement are staffed with white supremacists.
Take Action: Reject and disqualify Trump from running for President!
Elon Musk booed by crowd during surprise appearance at a Dave Chappelle performance, videos show
The attention-seeking and approval-desperate tech bozo hoped he was going to enjoy a moment of glory when he joined fellow transphobe Dave Chapelle onstage in San Francisco, but was met with a chorus of boos so loud Chapelle felt the urge to yell "shut the f*ck up!" Musk would then take to Twitter for a meltdown, claiming that um, actually, it was only 10% boos and clearly he had triggered the "leftists" with his abrupt verge into right-wing hate since his ex-wife Grimes left him for a trans woman.
Take Action: Tell Elon Musk to keep Trump off of Twitter for good!
Supreme Court takes up second case on President Biden's student loan forgiveness plan
The White House's efforts to materially improve the lives of millions of Americans has hit one Republican roadblock after another. The Supreme Court's decision to take a second appeal dealing with President Biden's $400 billion student loan forgiveness plan means the next battle in this war is right around the corner.
Now that Republicans have taken the House, we need the Progressive Caucus more than ever
Pramila Jayapal for Congress: Pramila Jayapal is gearing up to lead our progressive champions in Congress against the radicalism and depravity of Marjorie Taylor Greene and her MAGA cronies — but she needs your help to do it. Can you chip in to help Rep. Jayapal focus on the fight for the values we hold dear against the onslaught of GOP extremists?
Capitol Police officer injured on Jan. 6 cites trauma of riot in resignation letter
There are countless, serious criticisms that can be leveled at American police — and a complete rethinking of law enforcement in this country is necessary and long overdue — but there can be no argument that the police who defended the Capitol from Trump's deranged foot soldiers on Jan. 6 were patriots and heroes. They'll be dealing with the consequences of that horrific day for the rest of their lives. One such officer, Sergeant Aquilino Gonell, has revealed that he is leaving the force after 16 years to focus on healing "physically and mentally."
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass declares state of emergency on homelessness
The newly-elected mayor of America's second-largest city is hitting the ground running on the city's worsening homelessness crisis. Her promise to provide shelter and housing for those experiencing homelessness is certainly welcome — but news that she intends to "clear" homeless settlements is deeply concerning and a proven losing strategy. Clearing homeless encampments is a temporary, superficial "fix" to an intractable, systemic problem. Without addressing the underlying issues that lead to homelessness in the first place, this policy is nothing more than a dehumanizing, performative game of Whack-A-Mole.
Marjorie Taylor Greene panics, claims her boast that insurrection would have succeeded if she organized it was just "sarcasm"
The QAnon congresswoman proudly claimed that the deadly attack would have succeeded with her leadership because the insurrectionists would have been "armed." Now, calls for a grand jury to address her sedition have her scrambling to backtrack.
Judge tosses Trump's lawsuit, ending special master review of Mar-a-Lago documents
A federal judge dismissed the disgraced ex-president's lawsuit that sought to reinstate a special master review of government documents seized at Mar-a-Lago, after an appeals court ruled such a review was unnecessary. The decision comes as just the latest stinging defeat for Trump, who is currently struggling to maintain his stranglehold on the GOP in the wake of another disastrous election performance for Republicans.
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Today’s Action: Host or donate to a winter coat drive in your area!
As we move into winter and subzero temperatures settle in across large swaths of the country, it’s imperative that we remember our neighbors experiencing homelessness and those struggling with housing insecurity. Approximately 700 at-risk or already unhoused people die from hypothermia and winter weather-related incidents in the United States each year, and many will struggle to find shelter from the cold this winter, as anti-homeless “street-sweeping” operations and hostile architectural “deterrent” strategies are both sadly on the rise.
One simple ,effective way you can help right now is by organizing a winter coat drive, or supporting an existing coat drive in your area. Something as simple as an old coat that you’ve outgrown or no longer use could be the difference between a neighbor staying warm and getting sick this winter.
One Warm Coat can help you find coat drives in your area, as well as the resources to plan and promote your own. Check out their map of coat drives and make plans to donate and promote an event! If there aren’t any coat drives already underway in your community, follow One Warm Coat’s six steps to hosting a successful drive! No matter how you participate, your community will be better for it.
PS — Please don't forget to sign the petition stopping the GOP tax scam 2.0, and be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
@advocacy | 1002 Hull St., Louisville, KY 40204
PUTIN'S SCRIPTED PRISONER SWAP!
PUTIN scripted the prisoner exchange of Brittney Griner to distract from tRUMP's election losses and create divisiveness.
You'll notice that the uninformed quickly step forward to offer an opinion with no FACTS or information!
Brittney Griner's Swap for the "Merchant of Death" Is Just the Latest Deal
https://www.rsn.org/001/brittney-griners-swap-for-the-merchant-of-death-is-just-the-latest-deal.html
Freedom-Loving Conservatives Are Mad that Brittney Griner Is No Longer in Russian Jail
https://newrepublic.com/post/169398/conservatives-mad-prisoner-brittney-griner-freed-russian-jail
Donald Trump, who ignored Paul Whelan for two years, says deal to return Brittney Griner to US was ‘stupid’
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-brittney-griner-paul-whelan-b2241800.html
tRUMP lies:
Donald Trump Says He Turned Down Russian Swap Deal for Paul Whelan
https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-says-he-turned-down-russian-swap-deal-for-paul-whelan
Velshi: Whelan Begged Trump To Get Him Out Of Russia. Trump Stayed Silent
You'll notice that the uninformed quickly step forward to offer an opinion with no FACTS or information!
Brittney Griner's Swap for the "Merchant of Death" Is Just the Latest Deal
https://www.rsn.org/001/brittney-griners-swap-for-the-merchant-of-death-is-just-the-latest-deal.html
Freedom-Loving Conservatives Are Mad that Brittney Griner Is No Longer in Russian Jail
https://newrepublic.com/post/169398/conservatives-mad-prisoner-brittney-griner-freed-russian-jail
Donald Trump, who ignored Paul Whelan for two years, says deal to return Brittney Griner to US was ‘stupid’
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-brittney-griner-paul-whelan-b2241800.html
tRUMP lies:
Donald Trump Says He Turned Down Russian Swap Deal for Paul Whelan
https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-says-he-turned-down-russian-swap-deal-for-paul-whelan
Velshi: Whelan Begged Trump To Get Him Out Of Russia. Trump Stayed Silent
Velshi: Whelan Begged Trump To Get Him Out Of Russia. Trump Stayed Silent
Forced labor, malnourishment, corporal punishment, medical neglect and psychological pressure are conditions you might expect in the infamous Soviet Gulag. It’s certainly not what you’d picture in a modern-day prison system on the European continent. But, some 30 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, conditions like that still exist in Russian prisons. Today, the most common type of prison in Russia is a “corrective labor colony”, also known as a penal colony. They are notoriously harsh and inhumane. American Paul Whelan remains imprisoned in Russia. He was sentenced in 2020 to 16 years hard labor on espionage charges. The U.S. maintains Whelan was framed. Whelan’s family is calling out the President who let him sit there for two years. It’s not President Biden. It’s former President Donald Trump.
Elon Musk Is Setting Fans on Ex-Twitter Employees, It's Getting Dangerous
12 December 22
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Reader Supported News
Musk insinuated that the former head of Twitter’s Trust and Safety team was a pedophile. He is now getting targeted with violent and homophobic threats.
On Saturday, Musk tweeted an excerpt from the 300-page doctoral dissertation of Yoel Roth, who resigned from Twitter weeks after Musk took control of the company.
“Looks like Yoel is arguing in favor of children being able to access adult Internet services in his PhD thesis," Musk tweeted. The out-of-context excerpt comes from Roth’s 2016 thesis entitled “Gay Data” which looks at Grindr, the dating app used by the LGBTQ community.
Musk posted the excerpt, which does not suggest that Roth wants to give children access to adult content, in response to a user quoting a 2010 tweet from Roth that links to a Salon article discussing when, if ever, it’s possible for high school students to consent to sex with their teachers.
Roth’s 12-year-old tweet has been dredged up by Musk’s supporters and those on the right as some sort of evidence to back up the baseless allegations being leveled against Roth, an openly gay, Jewish man.
“Explains a lot,” Musk tweeted in response to the 12-year-old tweet.
Among the accounts that amplified Musk’s attack on Roth was LibsofTikTok, the online persona of Brooklyn real estate agent Chaya Raichik, who has been at the forefront of the right’s attacks on the LGBTQ community over the last year including inciting attacks on hospitals providing gender-affirming care. Raichik’s followers immediately posted violent threats against Roth.
Right-wing media also jumped on Musk’s post, calling Roth a “groomer” in headlines, a term that has been employed in recent months about LGBTQ people that claims they make connections with young people in order to abuse them. .
On TheDonald, a pro-Trump message board frequented by extremists, members discussed Musk’s tweets in multiple threads. One discussion on the platform, reviewed by VICE News, quickly descended into deeply antisemitic and homophobic language, with one user writing: “Kill them all. Let God sort them out.”
A few weeks ago, Roth spoke publicly for the first time since departing Twitter on Nov. 10. In an on-stage interview with Kara Swisher, Roth said Twitter was a less safe place since the billionaire took control and criticized Musk’s policies to allow banned accounts back on the platform.
In recent weeks he has shared on his Twitter account and elsewhere some of the hate mail he has received since departing Twitter and facing Musk’s anger.
“Watching Elon launch a digital mob against his former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, an openly gay Jewish man, is one of the most vile and disgusting things I've ever seen,” Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at the Harvard Law School Cyberlaw Clinic and LGBTQ+ advocate, tweeted on Saturday. “He's putting Yoel's life in danger and he knows it. It's sick, twisted, and sociopathic.”
Roth did not immediately respond to VICE News’ request for comment about Musk’s posts over the weekend and the increased threats against him.
Musk on Sunday continued his attack on the LGBTQ community on Sunday, when he tweeted that his pronouns were “Prosecute/Fauci,” a tweet that managed to be both transphobic and anti-vaccine at the same time.
When astronaut Scott Kelly responded by pleading with Musk not to “mock and promote hate toward already marginalized and at-risk-of-violence members of the #LGBTQ+ community,” the Twitter CEO, who has an 18-year-old transgender daughter, responded: “I strongly disagree.”
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Donald Trump. (photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the case Monday morning.
On Monday morning, U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon followed orders handed down from a federal appellate court and dismissed the lawsuit in its entirety.
The case, which only lasted a little over three months, was remarkable in the way it showed how this South Florida federal judge entertained the former president’s novel legal theories—all in the service of attempting to slow down a potential criminal indictment that threatens his return to power.
From her private chambers in Fort Pierce, Florida, Cannon dismissed the case by acknowledging she lacked jurisdiction to ever entertain it.
The one-page order and its extremely brief explanation, “dismissed for lack of jurisdiction,” completely unraveled the 24-page screed she issued in September—one that shocked the legal profession because of the unprecedented way she justified inserting herself into an ongoing Department of Justice investigation.
Monday’s order noted that all deadlines are terminated, future hearings are canceled, and pending legal arguments are “denied as moot.” Gone is the legal reasoning she gave for coming to her president’s defense—along with her appointment of a special master to grind the investigation to a halt.
“Three months late but at least it’s over,” commented national security lawyer Bradley P. Moss, who sometimes advises The Daily Beast on public records disputes.
The case arose from the FBI’s Aug. 8 raid at Trump's Florida estate Mar-a-Lago, where special agents found nearly 100 classified documents in his office furniture and in cardboard boxes stacked around the busy ocean club. Prosecutors rationalized conducting the unprecedented search because of what they said was a pending threat to national security because of the sloppy and careless way some of the country’s secrets were kept at an estate that is home to political rallies, large parties, and fundraisers featuring people from all over the world—including foreign spies.
Trump’s lawyers waited three weeks to push back on those claims, engaging in a yet-unexplained game of judge assignment roulette to wait and land the friendliest judge they could. Where a past attempt had failed, this one succeeded—and Cannon waited little time before pouncing.
On Sept. 5, she issued an order that stopped the FBI agents from even touching some of the evidence they’d recovered. She also arranged for another judge—all the way in Brooklyn—to conduct a painstakingly slow review of more than 11,000 pages.
The move immediately concerned legal scholars, who called this out as blatant advocacy by a judge who owed her ascent to the very target of the investigation.
But it was only later that her own court staff screw-up revealed that she was even acting in bad faith, claiming that the former president was suffering “a real harm” by being “deprived of potentially significant personal documents.” For example, some of the “medical records” she professed to worry that feds might leak to the press—an act she deemed a “risk of irreparable injury” to the former president—actually included a doctor’s note that Trump himself made public when running for the White House in 2016 as part of a publicity stunt.
Then, when the respected, semi-retired federal judge she appointed as special master tried to hurry up the document review and speed the investigation along, Cannon went out of her way to slow it down yet again.
Last month, a panel of conservative judges at the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals finally weighed in, rejecting the legal arguments put forward by Trump’s lawyers and warning that they could severely disrupt the way the nation’s legal system works.
“We would have to be concerned about the precedent we create that would allow any target of a federal investigation to go into a district court and have it entertain this... and interfere with the executive branch’s ongoing investigation,” one of the judges said on the call.
These judges, who were all appointed by former President George H. W. Bush, a Republican, and Trump himself, showed they were unwilling to throw Trump a lifeline.
“The case ends in what should be humiliation for Judge Cannon,” said Loyola Law School professor Jessica Levinson. “She was resoundingly slapped down by her conservative colleagues who explained that it’s not just that she had a creative interpretation of the law. It’s that she inserted herself into a case where she didn’t belong—and essentially acted as another advocate for the former president of the United States.”
“Her decisions just completely lacked judicial restraint. That’s way out of the bounds of what’s acceptable. And she made political decisions with no legal basis,” Levinson added. “This is about as bad as it can get for a judge who seeks jurisdiction when she shouldn’t, which is to have like-minded appellate judges say, ‘What were you even thinking here?’”
The federal investigation continues, and it is now being led by special counsel Jack Smith, an aggressive war crimes prosecutor who left his post in Europe last month.
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There are reports of mobilised Russian troops locked in cellars and basements for refusing to fight in Ukraine. (photo: Insider)
When his son was sent to fight in Ukraine, Sergei begged him not to go.
Sergei and Stas are not the real names of this father and son. We've changed them to protect their identities. Sergei has invited us to his home to tell us their story.
"So off he went to Ukraine. Then I started getting messages from him asking what would happen if he refused to fight."
Stas told his father about one particular battle.
"He said the [Russian] soldiers had been given no cover; there was no intelligence gathering; no preparation. They'd been ordered to advance, but no one knew what lay ahead.
"But refusing to fight was a difficult decision for him to take. I told him: 'Better to take it. This is not our war. It's not a war of liberation.' He said he would put his refusal in writing. He and several others who'd decided to refuse had their guns taken off them and were put under armed guard."
Sergei made several trips to the front line to try to secure his son's release. He bombarded military officials, prosecutors and investigators with appeals for help.
Eventually his efforts paid off. Stas was sent back to Russia. He revealed to his father what had happened to him in detention: how a "different group" of Russian soldiers had tried to force him to fight.
"They beat him and then they took him outside as if they were going to shoot him. They made him lie on the ground and told him to count to ten. He refused. So, they beat him over the head several times with a pistol. He told me his face was covered in blood.
"Then they took him into a room and told him: 'You're coming with us, otherwise we'll kill you.' But then someone said they'd take my son to work in the storeroom."
Stas was a serving officer when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February. President Vladimir Putin promised that only professional soldiers would take part in his "special military operation."
But by September that had all changed. The president announced what he called a "partial mobilisation", drafting hundreds of thousands of Russian citizens into the armed forces.
Many of the newly mobilised troops were quick to complain that they were being sent to a war zone without sufficient equipment or adequate training. From Ukraine there have been multiple reports of mobilised Russian troops being detained - in some cases, locked in cellars and basements - for refusing to return to the frontline.
"It's a way of making people go back into that bloodbath," says Elena Popova from Russia's Movement of Conscientious Objectors. "The commanders' aim is to keep the soldiers down there. The commanders know only violence and intimidation. But you cannot force people to fight."
For some Russians, refusing to return to the front line may be a moral stand. But there's a more common explanation.
"Those refusing to fight are doing so because they've had more than their fair share of front line action," explains Elena Popova. "Another reason is the foul way they're being treated. They've spent time in the trenches, getting cold and hungry, but when they come back they just get shouted and sworn at by their commanders."
The Russian authorities dismiss reports of disillusioned soldiers and detention centres as fake news.
"We do not have any camps or incarceration facilities, or the like [for Russian soldiers]," President Putin insisted earlier this month. "This is all nonsense and fake claims and there is nothing to back them up with."
"We do not have any problems with soldiers leaving combat positions," the Kremlin leader continued. "In a situation when there is shelling or bombs falling, all normal people cannot help but react to it, even on the physiological level. But after a certain adaptation period, our men fight brilliantly."
Andrei, a Russian lieutenant, stopped fighting. Deployed to Ukraine in July, Andrei was placed in detention for refusing to carry out orders. He managed to contact his mother, Oxana, back in Russia to tell her what was going on. Once again, we have changed their names.
"He told me he had refused to lead his men to a certain death," Oxana tells me. "As an officer he understood that if they went ahead, they wouldn't get out alive. For that they sent my son to a detention centre. Then I got a text message saying he and four other officers had been put in a basement. They haven't been seen for five months.
"Later I was told that the building they were in had been shelled and that all five men were missing. They said no remains had been found. Their official status is missing in action. It doesn't make sense. It's absurd. The way my son was treated wasn't only illegal, it was inhuman."
Back in his living room, Sergei tells me that what happened to Stas in Ukraine has brought them closer together.
"We're on the same wavelength now," Sergei tells me. "The wall of misunderstanding between us has gone. All his bravado has gone. My son told me, 'I never thought my own country would treat me this way.' He's changed completely. He gets it now."
"People here don't understand how much danger we're in. Not from the opposing side. But from our own side."
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The U.S. Supreme Court is seen in the early morning hours of November 4, 2022 in Washington, DC. (photo: Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
The challenge has been brought by two individual borrowers – Myra Brown and Alexander Taylor – who are not qualified for full debt relief forgiveness and who say they were denied an opportunity to comment on the Education Secretary’s decision to provide targeted student loan debt relief to some.
The justices have already announced they will hear arguments in a different case this term, in a dispute brought by a group of states. The court did not say whether it would ultimately consolidate the two cases.
The court did ask for briefs, however, on whether the challengers in the new case had the legal right or “standing” to bring the case. The court also asked the parties to discuss whether Biden’s plan was “statutorily authorized” and was adopted in a “procedurally proper manner.”
The court said it would not, for now, lift a block on the program that remains in place.
The court’s action Monday does not change the state of play as the program has already been frozen while legal challenges play out. It does, however, add new plaintiffs to the mix.
Biden’s program would offer up to $20,000 of debt relief to millions of qualified borrowers, but it has been met with legal challenges since it was announced.
Last month, the Biden administration began notifying people who are approved for federal student loan relief. About 26 million people had already applied to the program by the time it was frozen prompting the government to stop taking applications. No debt has been canceled thus far.
In the case at hand, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar had urged the justices to lift a block on the program and hear oral arguments this term. They agreed only to the latter request.
“This is the second of two cases in which lower courts have entered nationwide orders blocking the Secretary of Education’s plan to use his statutory authority to provide dept relief to student-loan borrowers affected by the Covid-19 pandemic,” Prelogar argued in court papers.
The program is designed to aid borrowers who are at highest risk of delinquency or default. Once debt cancellation begins, the plan could offer up to $10,000 in student loan debt relief to eligible borrowers making less than $125,000 ($250,000 per household.)
In addition, borrowers who received a Pell grant can receive up to $20,000 in relief.
READ MORE
President Barack Obama arrives to participate in a news conference in the Rose Garden of the White House, Wednesday, April 17, 2013, in Washington, about measures to reduce gun violence. With Obama is former Rep. Gabby Giffords, left, and Mark Barden, the father of Newtown shooting victim Daniel. (photo: Carolyn Kaster/AP)
The tragedy sparked a movement to end gun violence that has never been more robust. Ten years later, it's seen some successes, but gun deaths remain at a historic high
It’s a Friday in early December, and I ask Nelba Márquez-Greene how she’s doing. In roughly two weeks, it will be 10 years since her daughter, Ana, was killed at the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. She’s fending off interview requests from news producers casually asking if she’s available to tell their audience “a little about what that day … felt like.” She’s reeling from a cable news chyron that described a recent trip survivors of the 2021 high school shooting in Oxford, Michigan, took to Uvalde, Texas: “Instead of grief, we saw joy,” the screen declared, as if any such sojourn could be captured so simplistically. She’s keeping tabs on the latest unspeakable mass shooting — six dead at a Virginia Walmart — and hoping that the victims’ families don’t face demands that they release photos of their bullet-torn loved ones. That’s a request Márquez-Greene has faced countless times — both from people who deny that the shooting took place, and from gun-reform advocates who believe that the graphic photos will fibrillate the nation into action.
“That is a specific ask with children because we believe that level of horror and gore might do something,” she says.
Márquez-Greene knows tragic cause does not invariably lead to triumphant effect. The death of her daughter and 19 other first graders at Sandy Hook was supposed to be a “political epiphany,” explains Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who represented Newtown in Congress at the time of the massacre. But “that’s not how politics works.” It’s not how it worked after nine Black worshippers were shot in their church basement in Charleston in 2015. It’s not how it worked after 61 concertgoers lost their lives at a Las Vegas music festival in 2017. It’s not how it worked after a classmate killed 18 students and staff at a high school in Parkland, Florida the following year. The only time it may have worked was after Uvalde, when Congress passed its gun law in nearly three decades.
Some of the parents in Uvalde made the choice to publicize the horrific images of their murdered children. Kimberly Rubio, who lost her daughter Lexi in the shooting, testified before Congress three days before her daughter’s funeral to demand an assault weapons ban; she pled with lawmakers as she explained that “a mom is hearing our testimony and thinking to herself, ‘I can’t even imagine their pain,’ not knowing that our reality will one day be hers.” Congress was moved to act — though the resulting Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which passed in June, merely tinkered at the fringes of what the vast majority of Americans think lawmakers should do to end such tragedies. The White House celebrated its passage; Manuel Oliver, the father of a student killed at Parkland, spoke for many in the movement when he interrupted the fete, shouting at President Joe Biden from his Rose Garden folding chair: “You have to do more!”
This is the moment, in a nutshell. A decade after Sandy Hook, the gun violence-prevention movement has never been bigger, better funded, or more influential on Capitol Hill. The National Rifle Association, the one-time behemoth of gun rights, is hemorrhaging money and sway. Some 90% of Americans support universal background checks. More than 500 bills aimed at curbing gun violence have been passed at the local, state, and federal levels — not to mention the hundreds of gun rights bills that have been defeated. More Republican senators voted for the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act than they did for any other Biden priority.
And yet, Americans have never owned more guns, and gun deaths are higher than they’ve been in nearly a half century. For the nearly two dozen survivors, activists, and elected officials Rolling Stone spoke with, it’s been a complicated, difficult decade. “We’re in a race,” Murphy says. “The anti-gun violence movement is winning at an increasing rate — the number of guns that are flooding into our communities, it’s unfortunately outpacing our ability to pass laws.”
That a breakthrough came in 2022, advocates say, is a result of their groundwork, encapsulated in an anecdote Murphy conveyed to an audience at the Center for American Progress last Wednesday. When his two lead Republican negotiators on the legislation went to share progress with their GOP colleagues, they were met with resistance — but not the sort of resistance Murphy had anticipated. “One senator stands up and says, ‘Why are you going to force us to vote on this?’” Murphy recalled. “’If I vote for this, I’m going to give all sorts of trouble. But if I vote against this bill, I don’t know that I can get reelected.’” Murphy paused and smiled. “That’s a phrase that would have never been uttered five or ten years ago.”
To advocate for stricter gun laws before Sandy Hook was to “feel like you were yelling into empty halls,” says Christian Heyne, the vice president of policy at Brady. Congress was full of politicians from both parties with “A” ratings from the NRA, and when tragedy struck, they offered only their “thoughts and prayers.” Case in point: Twelve people had been murdered at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado — five months before the Sandy Hook tragedy — and “it was brushed under the rug,” recalls Sandy Phillips, whose daughter Jessi died in the massacre.
Sandy Hook had all the makings of a tipping point. After two decades of avoiding the gun issue, Democrats sprang into action. President Barack Obama deputized then-Vice President Joe Biden to lead the White House’s response. He convened a group of experts to put together a bill to expand background checks, seen as a measure most likely to pass chambers beholden to the NRA’s influence. The legislation was even written with the NRA’s input, which included industry sweeteners that would have weakened some existing gun laws.
Which made the legislation’s defeat all the more demoralizing — especially to devastated Sandy Hook parents who’d brought their grief to Washington. “There were times that we were walking into the room directly after NRA lobbyists, or they were walking into the room directly after us,” says Nicole Hockley, who lost her son Dylan in the shooting. She was shocked that she, a political novice, knew the bill’s contents better than the lawmakers with whom she met. “They were intentionally misinformed by NRA lobbyists,” she recalls. In some respects, that was easier to stomach than the senators “who would cry in front of us,” she says — those “who would say that they knew this would help save lives, but because of politics, they couldn’t support it.” That was an “inflection point,” says Mark Barden, whose son Daniel died in the tragedy. “We learned in that experience just how slowly and clunky and cumbersome and fraught with influence the political mechanism in Washington is.”
Barden and Hockley retreated from politics as their primary pursuit. Sandy Hook Promise, the nonprofit they founded, pivoted its attention from passing stricter gun laws to training young people how to recognize the signs of someone who might be a risk to themselves and others. Other gun reform-minded activists set out to change the politics of the issue. Moms Demand Action, the grassroots group founded by Shannon Watts, turned its attention to city councils and statehouses, passing model legislation across the country to prove the issue wasn’t politically toxic. Groups like Giffords, founded by former Arizona congresswoman Gabby Giffords, and Everytown for Gun Safety, founded by former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, dumped millions of dollars into federal races, aided along the way by more tragedies that sent once-purple, vote-rich suburbs into solidly blue territory.
As the tragedies stacked up, so did money and volunteers, but none of it translated into congressional action. “You didn’t have the requisite political majorities,” explains Peter Ambler, the executive director of Giffords. Jaclyn Corin, a survivor of the 2018 high school shooting in Parkland, Florida, saw something else. “The fact that nothing substantial was done after Sandy Hook created this normality of accepting inaction,” Corin says.
On the Sandy Hook families’ first trip to Washington, Márquez-Greene recalls stepping off Air Force One and meeting with William Modzeleski, an Education Department official who had worked on school safety issues since the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School. White haired with a neat beard, Marquez-Greene recalls him looking wise. So she trusted him when he didn’t pull any punches: The families would be looking at a minimum of 15 to 25 years before they saw anything of significant change. “We’re enamored with this concept that if we do this one thing, then people will be moved to action,” Márquez-Greene says. “And really, if you look at any social movement, what history teaches us is it’s not one action — it’s everybody moving in lockstep together.”
But “moving in lockstep” didn’t happen right after Sandy Hook. Largely absent from policy conversations was how to address the everyday gun violence that had ravaged Black and Brown communities for decades. “You have to be the perfect victim for people to care,” Márquez-Greene says. “What elevated Newtown? They were the perfect victims. They were children and teachers in a quaint white town in Connecticut.” Márquez-Greene, whose daughter had been a child of color to die in the tragedy, remembers trying to advocate for other mothers of color who had lost their children in more quotidian, but no less devastating, shootings. “‘That is different from Newtown,’” she recalls being told by one gun violence prevention group when she mentioned those mothers. “‘If we do that, we’re going to lose focus on the message.’”
Critical to staving off everyday bloodshed was community-based violence intervention programs, which build relationships to disrupt patterns that lead to violence. Local leaders like Chico Tillmon, a veteran of such programs from Chicago, had been successfully deploying these efforts for decades, but with little recognition from the mainstream movement. Tillmon credits the Parkland survivors for using their platform to elevate the solutions that existed and the leaders who did that work. “They were the first group to recognize that what they experienced as an isolated event was happening consistently in Black and Brown communities,” Tillmon says. “Now everybody is saying gun violence is an epidemic.”
Congress’ 2022 legislation has $15 billion in funding that can be used, in part, on programs like Tillmon’s — though it almost didn’t make it into the bill. “I kind of assumed that this was more political, that Republicans’ feelings on this were more hardened — not true,” Murphy told the Center for American Progress crowd. “They just didn’t know the lives that were being saved and changed by this funding.”
The movement is also reckoning with whether the NRA has truly been vanquished. The organization filed for bankruptcy in 2021 and has lost much of the cache it once enjoyed on Capitol Hill. But the sentiments it espoused have lingered among the GOP. “We had this idea that we would shine a light on the misdeeds of the NRA and once that happened, they would lose,” Watts of Moms Demand Action explains. Instead, “their agenda has been usurped by the right wing and it’s used now as an organizing principle to get new people in the door, to get them interested in other issues that don’t have anything to do with guns — abortion and CRT and anti-trans rights.”
The NRA wasn’t at the table as the 2022 legislation came together — but the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which represents the interests of gun sellers and manufacturers, was. The influence of those groups is still visible at the state level, where 25 GOP-controlled states have passed bills to allow for concealed carry of firearms without a permit.
These developments have left some activists questioning whether the movement has been too delicate in how it’s framed gun ownership. There are 400 million firearms dispensed across America — a 100 million increase from 2018 alone. The upward trend began in the early 2000s, when gun rights advocates succeeded in convincing the public that firearms made them safer. Sales spiked during Covid and after the murder of George Floyd. “Our messaging strategy has really focused on keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous people, which overlooks the fact that guns are dangerous, period,” says Nina Vinik, the founder of Project Unloaded, a youth-focused gun violence prevention organization that focuses on culture change. “The desire to build bridges with gun owners has made some organizations more reluctant to acknowledge that guns don’t make use safer.”
What does a parent like Barden make of the moment? “I see this as a trend in the right direction, and it’s being driven by several factors, some good, some not so good.” Sandy Hook was “a big bang and all those parts are still in motion,” he observes, noting how much political and social progress has been made. But so much of that momentum is “driven by tragedy,” he observes. “We see these horrific high-profile events unfolding frequently, and that is just driving people to examine this and to become involved.”
Among those becoming involved: Countless survivors of gun violence, more than ever before. “I don’t think there’s a more important voice in the fight to end gun violence than those who have been impacted,” Brady’s Heyne says. For too long, Heyne explains, the NRA had owned the moral high ground by talking about patriotism and personal freedoms. “It takes those who were impacted by gun violence to make real what has seemed unfathomable,” he says. “We’re not going to be able to move the needle if we can’t connect with people on an emotional level.”
Many of those survivors descended upon Washington last at an annual summit, hosted by the Center for American Progress. It’s not a gathering open to the public, or even the press, but rather an opportunity for those in the movement to come together and advance their cause through sessions on storytelling, media skills, and getting funding for their work. On Wednesday morning, fifty survivors packed into a small conference room to for a conversation about “trauma-informed advocacy” — how to keep telling their survivor stories, reliving their trauma, for the sake of their work.
The front of the room was lined with panelists who had become advocates in the face of tragedy. Sandy and Lonnie Phillips, who lost their daughter in the 2012 Aurora movie theater shooting, talked about the mindfulness practice they do. Delphine Williams, who lost two of her children to stray bullets on two separate occasions, shared how she stays sane spending time with her deceased son’s surviving dog. Patricia Oliver, who lost her son Joaquin in Parkland, talked about the ripples of trauma she’s endured — first, at the loss of her son, and again at the trial of his killer earlier that summer. Kimberly Rubio, the mother who had testified before Congress after she lost her fourth grader in Uvalde, silently teared up as she said she was eager to learn as much as contribute to the discussion.
They, like their audience of fellow grievers, wore pins with the names of their lost loved ones. Heyne, who lost his mother in a 2005 shooting, moderated the conversation, holding space for tears and frustration. “When you’re hit with bureaucratic red tape and legislative progress — that’s a very common problem for many people who get involved in this work,” Heyne told me afterward. “You’re so vulnerable to share how traumatic this is. When it falls on deaf ears or a process that takes time, it can be a really hard story.”
Hockley of Sandy Hook Promise describes the hardship of a decade in that fight. “It’s so personal, and I’m so aware of the continued violence that’s going on out there,” she explains. “I’m like, ‘We just need to move faster, harder, be more effective.’” And yet, she and Barden have made a difference — their data show they’ve stopped 11 school shootings, as well as hundreds of suicides. “Our team has to remind Mark and I to take time to celebrate the successes along the way,” she says.
As the anniversary approaches, Barden is holding space for both what the tragedy of Sandy Hook represents and his deeply personal grief. “For me, it’s almost two different things,” he explains. “Our seven-year-old son, Daniel, was a victim and part of this catastrophe. And then, separately, I have to reckon with the fact that Daniel is gone forever,” he says.
“Those are kind of two different things that I have to process in different ways,” he adds. “At the end of it all, I just miss him desperately.”
To be the surviving family of a loved one lost to gun violence is to know loneliness, something Márquez-Greene understands. “Who will stay with you when the cameras go away? Who will stay with you when you’re no longer hot — when you’re no longer the ‘it’ tragedy site?” she says. “It’s gross, this even coming out of my mouth. But it is real.” She pauses. “I want people to know how healing and special it is when 10 years later, someone says ‘I know how much you must miss your daughter.’”
As she reflects on her own work to honor her daughter’s memory, she takes faith in scripture: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. And for us, that’s what we are determined to do.” She will try to hold all the parts of her: A mother to Ana and her surviving son, Isaiah; wife to her husband, Jimmy, a therapist; a lover of flowers and birds and baking. And she will go quiet in the coming days as she remembers and misses her daughter.
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Winnipeg police inspector Shawn Pike provides an update to an ongoing homicide investigation in Winnipeg, Thursday, December 1, 2022. (photo: John Woods/Canadian Press)
ALSO SEE: Daughters of Murdered Indigenous Woman Push Canada for Action
Police in Winnipeg, Canada say they won't search a landfill where two women are believed to be buried because it would be too difficult.
“The circumstances combined with the safety hazard formed the basis of a difficult decision not to go forward with the search at Prairie Green (landfill),” Winnipeg Police Chief Danny Smyth told reporters on Tuesday.
The decision has been met with criticism, including from family members of the victims.
“I feel very wronged and I am so heartbroken,” Cambria Harris, the daughter of Morgan Harris, one of the victims, told reporters in Ottawa this week. “Time and time again, our Indigenous women and brothers and sisters have to come here and we have to shout and we have to raise our voices, begging for change and begging for justice for our people.”
“I should not have to come here and be so mad and beg and beg, so that you will find and bring our loved ones home,” Cambria added. “My mother didn't pass away with a home so let’s pay her the respect that she deserves by finally giving her one that's not a resting place at the Prairie Green landfill.”
The investigation into alleged serial killer Jeremy Anthony Michael Skibicki, 35, dates back to May 16, when Winnipeg police found the partial remains of 24-year-old Rebecca Contois, a member of Crane River First Nation, in Winnipeg, according to a police press release. Two days later, officers arrested and charged Skibicki with one count of first-degree murder.
Last week, police charged Skibicki with three more counts of first-degree murder. All of the charges are yet to be proved in court, and his lawyer said he will not plead guilty during the trial in the new year.
Skibicki also has a history of domestic violence, with two exes, both identifying as Indigenous, saying he threatened to kill them, CBC reported after obtaining court documents. He was convicted in 2015 of physically assaulting his ex while she was pregnant.
In addition to Contois, victims include Marcedes Myran, a 26-year old member of Long Plain First Nation and 39-year-old Harris, also of Long Plain First Nation. A fourth victim is yet to be identified. Police believe the unidentified victim wore a reversible Baby Phat jacket and are asking members of the public to come forward if they have any information. Community members have started referring to the victim as Mashkode Bizhiki'ikwe, or Buffalo Woman, CBC reported.
Police suspect the victims were murdered between March and May of this year.
In the summer, Contois’ partial remains were discovered in Winnipeg’s Brady Landfill—a separate landfill from Prairie Green. According to police, Prairie Green is a harder site to search in part because garbage there is compacted and buried, unlike at Brady.
“This is not how we wanted it to end, and my heart goes out to the families expecting and hoping for a different outcome,” Smyth said at the news conference in Winnipeg earlier this week. “We acknowledge that a lot of people are angry, and we're doing our best to bring justice for the families.”
Winnipeg police did not offer any updates when contacted by VICE News, but passed along links to previous news conferences.
The tragic killings come amid an ongoing crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous peoples across North America, and an already record-breaking year for homicides in Winnipeg, the capital city of the province of Manitoba, where nearly one-fifth (18 percent) of the population is Indigenous. Winnipeg itself has the largest urban Indigenous population of any Canadian city.
The latest murders have reiterated long-standing frustrations that Indigenous people and their allies have with the lack of action as Indigenous women and girls continue to be targeted
“We have to come here over and over again for these tragic events,” Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak Grand Chief Garrison Settee told reporters on Monday.
A nationwide inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls produced a final report, published in 2019—and Indigenous leaders say it holds the answers to solving the crisis. Indeed, it includes 231 calls to action.
“Sit down with us; let’s work on this together,” Settee said. “We have the solutions but we don’t have the resources and if they want us to do the job for them we will – just give us the resources. We’ll do it.”
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A smooth hammerhead shark (Sphyrna zygaena) is thrown overboard from a Taiwanese longline fishing vessel in the Pacific Ocean. (photo: Paul Hilton/Greenpeace/Mongabay)
The measure, adopted last week at the annual meeting of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC), is seen as a major and potentially precedent-setting win for conservationists who say urgent action is needed to stave off extinction for many shark populations. Shark numbers in the open ocean have plunged by an estimated 71% in the past half-century, with humans thought to kill 100 million of the animals each year.
“The science was on our side,” Kelly Kryc, the head of the U.S. delegation to the WCPFC, which co-proposed the measure with Canada, said in an interview after the meeting concluded. “By taking these steps, the conservation gains are quantifiable and measurable for vulnerable shark populations like oceanic whitetip and silky sharks.”
The first type of banned gear, shark lines, helps longline fishing vessels hook the ocean predators as opposed to other kinds of fish.
The second type, wire leaders, increases the likelihood of retaining a shark once it’s caught on the line. The animals’ sharp teeth can easily bite through a nylon or monofilament leader (a short segment of line attaching a hook to the main fishing line) as opposed to a leader reinforced with wire.
While the two devices were already outlawed in some countries’ territorial waters, last week’s decision marked the first time that one of the main bodies overseeing tuna fishing in international waters had outright banned their use. The decision may pave the way for other regional fisheries management organizations, or RFMOs, to do the same.
The WCPFC previously outlawed the simultaneous use of wire leaders and shark lines, but vessels could still deploy one or the other. A similar proposal to ban them was not adopted at last year’s meeting.
The gear ban comes amid a brewing debate over whether tuna RFMOs should take a heavier hand in regulating shark fishing.
While the WCPFC and its counterparts in the Atlantic, Indian and eastern Pacific oceans were created to govern tuna fishing, some fleets operating under their mandate actually target certain species of shark.
Sometimes the fleets declare their shark fishing activities. Japan and Taiwan each have submitted a shark management plan to the WCPFC, as the body requires of flag states whose fleets deliberately catch sharks.
Other times, shark hunting happens under different auspices — as in the case, experts say, of Spain.
Spain had seven longliners operating in WCPFC waters in 2021. This so-called “Spanish swordfish fleet” indeed caught 1,778 metric tons of swordfish, representing 37% of its total catch. But it also caught 2,264 metric tons of blue shark (Prionace glauca) and 447 metric tons of mako shark (Isurus), according to WCPFC catch data.
While the EU does not appear to have submitted a shark management plan to the WCPFC, experts say the catch data strongly suggest the Spanish vessels are targeting shark rather than merely pulling them up accidentally, as so-called bycatch.
“Reputationally, it’s not something they necessarily highlight in terms of them being a shark fishery,” said Rod Cappell, director of Poseidon Aquatic Resource Management. “But you don’t need to scratch too far below the surface to see that they absolutely are targeted fisheries.”
Poseidon, a U.K.-headquartered consultancy, valued the global blue shark trade at $411 million in a recent report it co-authored for the international marine conservation NGO Oceana. Cappell stressed that while targeted shark fishing wasn’t necessarily illegal, it was widely unregulated by RFMOs.
“There’s a bit of a policy vacuum as far as this is concerned,” he said.
Under the WCPFC’s new gear ban, boats operating under a shark management plan could potentially still use wire leaders and shark lines, though they would have to gain approval from the body’s scientific committee. Vessels targeting “tuna and billfish,” which includes swordfish, would be barred from using the gear, sources with knowledge of the measure’s final language told Mongabay.
While banning wire leaders in particular will make it harder for boats to target sharks, it won’t prevent them from doing so entirely, according to Raúl García Rodríguez, senior fisheries officer at WWF Spain.
“They say they will lose basically most of the catches of blue shark” without wire leaders, he said in an interview. “I don’t think it could be like this because blue shark catches were happening already at [an] industrial level before the inclusion of this innovation. But probably they will lose a lot of weight [in terms of their overall blue shark catch].”
WCPFC member states needed until the final hours of the closing day of the meeting, Dec. 3, to reach a consensus on the gear ban, with the EU holding out until the last moment, sources with knowledge of the negotiations confirmed.
For the EU, the stakes of the WCPFC decision are relatively low: the seven Spanish longliners were the bloc’s only vessels fishing in WCPFC waters in 2021, compared with hundreds of vessels from flag states like Japan and China. And the gear ban only applies to the latitudes between 20 degrees north and 20 degrees south of the equator, which means the Spanish boats can keep using wire leaders in the South Pacific.
But the larger issue is whether the shark-fishing gear will be outlawed in other parts of the global ocean, where some 250 Spanish and Portuguese longliners target mainly blue shark for their fins and, increasingly, their meat.
“If countries agreed to it here, that should set a precedent for other big RFMOs,” said Kryc, an appointee of U.S. President Joe Biden who serves as deputy assistant secretary for international fisheries at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The U.S., she added, would “see how much of an appetite there is” to pursue similar policies elsewhere.
Normally, Rodríguez said, he would not expect the EU to resist efforts at marine conservation, a front on which the bloc is typically progressive. Its carding system, for example, has helped improved fishing governance in countries such as Thailand that supply the EU market.
“But as usual, when you attach the economical interest,” priorities can change, he said. “And this is valid [to say] for almost every country.”
Press contacts for the European Commission did not respond to a list of questions by press time.
Despite the issues around undeclared targeted shark fishing, the gear ban was framed in terms of increasing the survivability of critically endangered oceanic whitetip sharks (Carcharhinus longimanus) and vulnerable silky sharks (Carcharhinus falciformis) by preventing them from being pulled up accidentally by vessels fishing for other animals. “It’s specifically about bycatch,” Kryc said.
Also in the proposal was a requirement that sharks like oceanic whitetips, which cannot be retained under any circumstances, be freed with as little fishing gear as possible remaining attached to their bodies. However, WCPFC only adopted this survivability measure in the form of a guideline, not a requirement.
And while the final language prohibits boats from using wire leaders, it allows them to stow the devices on board, creating enforcement challenges in an environment where oversight is already lax.
Longliners across the fleet of Dalian Ocean Fishing, a company that has claimed to be China’s biggest supplier of sashimi-grade tuna to Japan, for example, spent years running a massive illegal shark finning operation in WCPFC waters, according to a Mongabay investigation published in November.
The company also used the long-banned combination of wire leaders and shark lines to deliberately catch huge numbers of sharks, the investigation showed.
The best thing RFMOs can do to improve enforcement, conservationists say, is to increase the percentage of boats required to have an observer, whether human or electronic, on board. Currently the WCPFC only mandates that 5% of fishing efforts aboard longliners be covered by an observer.
“That’s very low,” said Grace Bauer, a senior associate attorney at the Seattle-based nonprofit Earthjustice, whose 2020 lawsuit against NOAA Fisheries helped set in motion the events that led the U.S. to push for the wire leader and shark line ban internationally.
“In addition to having measures requiring compliance with certain parameters, you need to ensure the fleets are actually adhering to those requirements,” she added. “And that requires observer coverage and enforcement.”
The U.S. unsuccessfully proposed raising observer coverage of longliners to 20% at last year’s WCPFC meeting. “We would love to see that increase,” Kryc said of the 5% requirement.
Overall, the ban on wire leaders and shark lines was a “huge conservation win,” according to Kryc.
“It’s a huge success story, not just for the Pacific, but for what’s possible in the future at other RFMOs,” she said.
This article was originally published on Mongabay.
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