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In both countries, policing still devalues Black lives, but there is good news: we have seen progress, and know our struggle yields results
The white mobs here were eerily similar to the white mobs we witnessed while protesting in places like Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Similar stares, similar hate, similar use of the “N-word”, similar unease, similar tension and a similar lack of justice. More than three decades later, I return to share my film, Loudmouth, which chronicles my lifelong journey advocating and fighting for civil rights. While there has been progress that I have witnessed first-hand, both the US and the UK are still dealing with an excessive amount of police brutality. Whether it is back home or across the pond, the need for effective, thorough police reform is long overdue and we are here to demand it in unison.
As I left the US, my thoughts were still with the family of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man who was beaten to death by officers according to videotape footage. I delivered the eulogy at his funeral and stood alongside his grieving mother, stepfather and loved ones. The pain that they will carry for the rest of their lives is just like the grief and agony that every family member of victims of police brutality endures whether in the US, the UK or elsewhere. Back home, there is case after case of officers killing unarmed Black and Brown folks in disproportionate numbers, as well as profiling, arresting, incarcerating and just plain targeting them. In the Nichols case, the accused officers are Black. This abuse is a systemic problem, just as it is a systemic problem in the UK.
Last September, the Metropolitan police shot and killed unarmed 24-year-old Chris Kaba. Police followed his vehicle and Kaba died from a single shot by an officer, according to reports. He was about to become a father. His family, members of the community, activists and even some politicians have called for accountability in the case. Similar to protests in the US, many on the ground in the UK have led rallies for reform. The Independent Office for Police Conduct said that it is conducting an investigation, but it may take anywhere from six to nine months. That is simply too long. This heartbroken family must receive answers and justice.
The problems with policing, whether here or in the states, often begin with dehumanising and devaluing Black and Brown lives. At an early age, our children are criminalised, perceived to be older than their age and treated harshly and unfairly. We saw that in the UK in a case in 2020 that garnered international outrage when a 15-year-old Black girl was strip-searched by female officers without the presence of her parents or another adult. The young girl was taken to the school’s medical room and strip-searched (while she was menstruating) by officers reportedly looking for cannabis. No drugs were found. This was not an isolated incident. According to the children’s commissioner for England, 650 children were strip-searched by police in London from 2018-2020. The majority were boys, and about 58% were Black. Simply unacceptable.
Impacts from systemic racism and a police culture that does not view us as deserving of basic human rights has detrimental reverberations. In June 2020, two sisters, Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry, were murdered and their bodies discovered in a park. Two Met police officers took pictures of their bodies, circulated them to others and made crass comments. The family also learned that a missing person log was incorrectly closed, and police failed to take any real action on the day the young women went missing. Not only was this gross negligence, but it again highlights the lack of care, respect and treatment that our communities receive. Those officers may not have killed them, but they caused further harm by their utter disregard and reprehensible behaviour.
These are just a few of the cases in recent years that have rocked neighbourhoods and communities in the UK, along with many others. It is similar to the pattern and practice misconduct we have been dealing with in the US for years and years. That’s the bad news. There is, however, a glimmer of hope and some good news. Many who’ve fought for justice in the UK are having their voices heard. Stephen Lawrence’s mother, Doreen, is a respected peer. Simon Woolley, the activist I came to protest with in 1991, is now Lord Simon Woolley and the principal of Homerton College, Cambridge. In the US, we elected our first Black president, Barack Obama, and now our first Black vice-president, Kamala Harris, who just gave a moving statement at Tyre Nichols’s funeral.
So yes, we have gained, but many things sadly remain the same. We have gained because it has not been in vain. The struggle continues as we fight for civil rights, police reform, equal treatment and justice. After all, whether in the US, the UK or around the world, none of us are free, until we are all free.
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Ukrainian soldiers near a recently collapsed bridge Thursday near the town of Irpin. The bridge was the target of a Russian missile. (photo: Wolfgang Schwan/Getty)
The task was assigned to Dollar: the code name for a civilian who had been secretly providing targeting coordinates and information on enemy operations in Kherson and the surrounding region, the operative said.
Reuters held extensive interviews with Dollar and two other members of the underground partisan network in Kherson after the city was captured in early November.
Their separate accounts provide a rare window into how information and sabotage operations were coordinated with Ukrainian intelligence services behind enemy lines, operations that are still ongoing elsewhere in Ukraine.
While Reuters could not corroborate the specific events they described, two U.S. officials said that such operations by an underground of intelligence operatives, ex-soldiers and amateurs helped hasten Russia's withdrawal from Kherson - one of the biggest setbacks for the Kremlin in a war that marks its first anniversary on Feb. 24.
Dollar, who declined to give his name for security reasons, said he began driving by the Hotel Ninel – Lenin spelled backwards – with his wife, a fellow operative who is part of the network and uses the code name Kosatka, Ukrainian for killer whale.
The gun-toting security men they regularly saw outside the hotel convinced the couple that FSB officers were staying inside; Dollar said he texted his observations to his handler at the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).
Ukraine's SBU and Russia's FSB did not respond to requests for comment on Dollar’s account or other partisan operations. The defense ministry also did not respond to requests for comment.
Before dawn on Oct. 5, a huge explosion ripped through the hotel, according to Ukrainian media reports and regional lawmaker Serhii Khlan, who wrote on Facebook that two FSB officers and seven Russian military officials died.
"I received an SMS (text) that said, 'Have a look and see how the Hotel Ninel is doing,'" recalled Dollar, who took Reuters to view the shattered hulk. "I went over and reported back: 'There is no more Hotel Ninel.'"
Reuters was unable to review the text message. Dollar and other partisans say they regularly deleted their chats and social media for security reasons.
Dollar and Kosatka received decorations from Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov inscribed with thanks for "cooperating with the armed forces," according to a photograph seen by Reuters dated Dec. 1 in which the inscriptions are visible. Mart and Kolia, the other two members of their four-person cell, were also decorated by Reznikov, Dollar said.
Asked about resistance operations in occupied territory, an official from Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence (GUR) said “the local population is supportive,” declining to provide details of specific activities.
Operations to target Russian security personnel and disrupt their plans are continuing across swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine held by Russia and its allies, according to several Ukrainian and Russian-installed officials as well as members of the Kherson partisan cell.
The Institute for the Study of War also says Ukrainian partisan warfare is being waged in Melitopol, Tokmak and Mariupol in the south and Donetsk and Svatove in the east.
Serhiy Haidai, the exiled governor of the eastern Luhansk province which has been under Russian control since last June, said partisans there were conducting sabotage operations there and attacks on suspected Russian collaborators.
In an interview on Jan. 23, he credited partisans with a recent attack on a railway line that Russia’s military was using to transport troops and equipment. He declined to provide further details for security reasons and Reuters could not independently confirm partisan involvement in the attacks.
CAPTURED PARTISANS
Risking arrest, interrogation, torture and death, partisans in Kherson hung Ukraine's blue-and-yellow national colors on trees and relayed Russian positions on Google Earth and other online maps to Ukrainian security officials, Dollar said.
Vitalyi Bogdanov, 51, a regional council member, said that during the eight-month Russian occupation, he collected and relayed to law enforcement authorities in Kyiv information later used to launch investigations into suspected collaborators.
"We were able to start a very big number of criminal cases," he said. He declined to provide further details because the investigations were ongoing.
Kolia, part of the 4-member Kherson cell, said that the group was told by its handlers not to use firearms because information was a more potent weapon.
Other partisans took up arms.
Alexei Ladin, a lawyer in Russian-occupied Crimea, told Reuters he was defending two Ukrainians held there, accused by the FSB of violent attacks against the Russians.
Pavlo Zaporozhets served in the Ukrainian army from 2014-17 and joined Ukraine's GUR military intelligence during the occupation of Kherson, Ladin said.
Zaporozhets was arrested while attempting to attack a Russian military night patrol and faces up to life imprisonment on charges of international terrorism, Ladin said.
He said Zaporozhets was being held in a detention facility in Simferopol and that he and his client attended a preliminary court hearing in the Russian port city of Rostov-on-Don by video link on Feb. 2. The court ordered Zaporozhets' transfer to a facility in Rostov, Ladin said.
According to an FSB account seen by Reuters, Zaporozhets, then 31, was arrested in Kherson by FSB officers on May 9 carrying two grenades, a fishing line and two plastic bottles that he had made into homemade bombs.
Zaparozhets told his questioners he was contacted by a Ukrainian GUR handler codenamed Optium and agreed to carry out his orders for 30,000 hryvnias ($800) a month, according to the FSB case documents seen by Reuters.
Ladin said the FSB account was based on testimony obtained when his client was tortured during questioning and showed Reuters a copy of a handwritten note from Zaporozhets dated from last August in which he described being beaten and subjected to electric shocks while in custody.
While some details about the FSB account were true, Ladin said, the FSB falsely accused Zaporozhets of deliberately targeting civilians as well as the night patrol. The military action was meant to be carried out during the curfew with intention of avoiding civilian casualties, Ladin said.
Ladin said the "optimal solution" would be an exchange of Zaporozhets and another client, Yaroslav Zhuk - who was arrested in Melitopol in June and accused of setting off a home-made bomb - for Russian POWs held by Ukraine. Zhuk denies attacking civilian targets, Ladin said.
The FSB has declined to recognize Zaporozhets as a Ukrainian serviceman eligible for a prisoner swap, saying they could not verify a document presented by the defense confirming his status, Ladin said. In the case of Zhuk, Ladin says his client is a combatant covered by the Geneva convention; the FSB has not accepted the designation.
Reuters was unable to speak to the two detainees directly.
FLEEING KHERSON
Dollar, Kolia and Mart – another member of the cell - said they felt compelled to resist the Russian takeover of Kherson because there was no organized defense of their city when the Russians attacked on Feb. 24.
Dollar and Mart’s first overt bid to confront the Russians came on March 1, they said, when they drove a truck loaded with concrete blocks toward the Antonovskiy Bridge, a main entry point to the city, aiming to slow Russia's advance.
They turned around because they feared the invaders already were in the city, they said.
Dollar considered his options: organize a civil disobedience movement, take up arms or gather intelligence.
Friends put him in touch with an SBU officer. Dollar and Kolia, who were old friends, agreed to collect and relay information on the Russians and build a network of retired police officers, former SBU officials, pensioners, and others, they said.
Kolia, a seasoned hunter who knew the Kherson countryside, solicited information from local villagers, including an elderly woman who would count Russian convoys as she milked her cow.
Between reconnaissance forays, the pair would meet sources in a coffee shop to gather intelligence.
Over the summer one farmer gave Kolia the position of a Russian truck-mounted missile launcher known as a Tochka-U around the village of Muzykivka, about 12 km (7.5 miles) north of Kherson. Dollar said he passed on the information.
The next day the farmer reported to Kolia that there was only a hole in the road where the truck once stood, Dollar said. Reuters could not independently confirm the attack.
Dollar's wife, Kosatka, recruited her own network of informants, he said. Kosatka declined to comment for this story.
THE AIRPORT
At the same time, Mart pursued an independent intelligence gathering effort, visiting people living near the Kherson International Airport in Chornobaivka on April 10 and urging them in person and over Telegram chats to send him information about Russian troop movements. He codenamed his five-person cell Miami. Reuters did not view the chats, which Mart said he deleted.
Russian forces in March had established their headquarters within the three-square kilometre airport complex, which was repeatedly bombed by Ukrainian forces.
Kyiv said large numbers of Russians soldiers were killed, including at least two generals, while aircraft and ammunition stores were also destroyed. Moscow withdrew its military hardware in October.
As Russian losses mounted, some members of the cell Mart had recruited grew over-confident and began taking greater risks, said Mart and Dollar.
When the Russians arrested four of the Miami members at the end of August, Mart feared they would give him away. Reuters was unable to determine what later happened to the four members.
Mart fled to Vasliyevka village in Zaporizhzhia province, the only checkpoint where Russians allowed Ukrainian civilians to cross into Ukrainian-controlled territory, and then made his way to Kyiv.
Despite the liberation of Kherson, Dollar said he and Kosatka would continue aiding the resistance until Ukrainian troops recover Crimea, where the couple owns an apartment.
"The end of the war for me will be when I move back into my apartment," he said.
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Jackson mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, on Republican's new bill, 'It reminds me of apartheid.' (photo: Vivkie D. King/Mississippi Today)
Mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, calls proposed law ‘some of the most oppressive legislation in our city’s history’
The bill, which local leaders have likened to apartheid-era laws and described as unconstitutional, would also expand a separate capitol police force, overseen by state authorities. The force would expand into all of the city’s white-majority neighborhoods, according to Mississippi Today. Jackson’s population is over 80% Black.
Speaking after House Bill 1020 passed on Tuesday evening, Jackson’s mayor, Chokwe Lumumba, branded the proposed law “some of the most oppressive legislation in our city’s history”.
“It’s oppressive because it strips the right of Black folks to vote. It’s oppressive because it puts a military force over people that has no accountability to them. It’s oppressive because there will be judges who will determine sentences over people’s lives. It’s oppressive because it redirects their tax dollars to something they don’t endorse nor believe in,” Lumumba said.
The bill passed largely along party lines in a 76-38 vote and will now travel to the state senate, where Republicans also hold a significant majority. The passage was preceded by an intense, four-hour floor debate in which members of the state’s Black caucus made impassioned pleas to reject the legislation and compared the bill to the state’s Jim Crow-era constitution of 1890.
The legislation was proposed by house Republican Trey Lamar, who is white and represents a district in the state’s north-west, which is majority white.
Lamar, who does not live in Jackson, has cited county court backlogs and crime rates in the city as his motivation for the proposed law. During floor debate, Lamar was asked if any of his constituents had asked for the bill. He replied: “I don’t live in Jackson … but you know what I like to do … I like to come to Jackson because it’s my capital city.”
The bill, which is over 1,000 pages long, would expand Jackson’s existing capitol complex improvement district, which is patrolled by the state’s capitol police and currently covers parts of the city’s downtown that house state government buildings. The district’s expansion would cover areas in the city’s north, which, according to local press, include entertainment and shopping neighborhoods.
The new court district would feature two judges directly appointed by Mississippi’s supreme court chief justice, Michael K Randolph, who is white. There would be two prosecutors, appointed by the state attorney general, Lynn Fitch, a white Republican. And two public defenders appointed by the state defender’s office.
Proposed amendments offered on Tuesday included calls to make the judges residents of the Jackson area and to compel elections for the positions. Both amendments failed.
The proposed bill is the latest in a line of extreme legislation in the state, which last year introduced a sweeping anti-critical race theory law, which met vocal opposition from the state’s Black caucus.
Jackson has also suffered from a series of water outages due to ailing infrastructure, which has been chronically underfunded by the state for years. Black residents in the poorest parts of the city have been disproportionately affected.
In November last year, the city’s water system was taken under federal government oversight after the Environmental Protection Agency found the city in violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act.
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Texas governor Greg Abbott speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas in August 2022. (photo: AP)
The engineer works for a large tech company in Austin and owns a house in the city. He’s lived here since finishing grad school in Pennsylvania four years ago, and he invests in real estate as a side gig. But he worries that could change under a bill that would bar him from buying new property in Texas.
The reason: He is a Chinese citizen.
Details of the proposed law, which would also target citizens of Iran, North Korea and Russia, are still being worked out, according to its Republican sponsor. But Jing isn't the only one anxious about what the coming months in Texas might hold.
He recently joined a protest at the Texas Capitol over the legislation, which arrives as anti-Asian hate crimes have been on the rise and, for critics, evokes an ugly history of anti-Asian discrimination facilitated by state and federal law.
Jing wasn't planning to leave the state just yet, but he and his wife have already talked about moving to San Diego or the San Francisco Bay Area, he said. The direct implications for his investments or purchasing a home in the future were one concern; the sentiment behind the bill was another.
Did he still feel welcome in Texas?
"I feel like most people like me," Jing said. "On the other hand, if this law passes — wow."
The bill’s most prominent champion, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, has said his goal is to stop "countries that are hostile to the interest of the United States" from buying up farmland and other land. Other Republican leaders, including those, like Abbott, rumored to be open to 2024 presidential runs, are eyeing more narrow property restrictions focused on agriculture as part of a tough-on-China push. Some Democrats, too, have expressed similar concerns.
Discord between the U.S. and China has only intensified since Abbott tweeted last month that he would sign the bill. Last week, Americans were unnerved by a Chinese balloon suspected of conducting surveillance floating across the United States. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken subsequently canceled a trip to China, and once the balloon moved off the South Carolina coast, the U.S. military shot it down.
The episode is expected to heighten pressure on lawmakers to counter China. And even though Chinese investment in U.S. agricultural land and other acreage remains very small — "less than 1 percent of foreign-held acres," according to a USDA report covering 2021 — the Texas bill, which extends to all property, portends a possible future, and its risks. It has already had a disquieting effect among Texans of Chinese descent.
The bill's author, Republican state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, contends that once the details are worked out and exceptions added, the bill won’t apply to U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents. But the path to U.S. citizenship can take years, and critics fear the expansive bill could ease the way for broader discrimination.
The Texas legislation will make some people more "willing to express their hatred toward certain race groups," said Hao Zhu, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin. "From COVID, already just because of our skin color, we were hated."
Zhu attended the rally with her husband and 2-year-old son, who was balanced in his dad's arm holding tiny Texas and American flags.
"Look around," Zhu said, as families and businesspeople — many waving American flags and chatting in English or Mandarin — walked past the Capitol. The bill is not affecting a "security issue at the national level" but "regular people's lives."
She started to bring up fears about her son going to school, then paused, in tears.
She explained later that even though she didn't think she and her family's rights would be directly affected by the bill, she worried about where it might lead. She pointed to the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.
"We feel pretty safe by and large in the Austin community," she said. "Maybe in the 1940s, the Japanese Americans [didn't] feel unsafe."
A growing movement
In 2021, long before Americans noticed the white balloon drifting over the western U.S., Texas lawmakers enacted legislation that blocks companies tied to China and the three other countries from entering into critical infrastructure agreements.
Their move followed a Chinese billionaire's large land purchase and proposed wind project in southwest Texas. Greenalia, a Spanish company, has since acquired the wind farm project, according to a spokesperson. The Chinese investor could not be reached for comment.
The sponsor of the new Texas bill, Kolkhorst, cited "the purchase in 2021 of over 130,000 acres in South Texas by a Chinese-controlled firm" and its proximity to an Air Force base as among the concerns that necessitated further legislation. In addition to banning citizens from the four countries from buying or acquiring property, the bill restricts their companies and governments from buying Texas land. It does not address foreign nationals from those countries who already own property in the state.
The bill in some ways mirrors a broader legislative push to target foreign investment in agricultural and other land, particularly by the Chinese Communist Party. A new House select committee on China is expected to look at this issue, and bipartisan bills introduced last month in the U.S. House and Senate would increase review of foreign investment in U.S. agriculture. A California bill, authored by a Democrat, to restrict foreign ownership of agricultural land passed the Legislature last year but was vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
But in the vein of former President Trump, ambitious Republicans are particularly focused on this issue as they jockey over China.
In September, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, widely viewed as a Republican presidential contender, warned of China’s influence “from server farms to farmlands” and proposed prohibitions on certain foreign purchases of agricultural land and land near military bases. Recently, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia also put out a video asking for a bill prohibiting Chinese Communist Party purchases of farmland.
China is "going to be a really big topic for both parties this year, especially for the Republicans," said Scott Jennings, a GOP strategist. "Last week's events, in my opinion, put a lot of pressure on Joe Biden to also show some toughness on China."
Jennings said he expected the movement targeting the Chinese Communist Party and agricultural land “to grow, honestly, especially now with the balloon story," he said. "It's a reminder: You cannot give the communists the benefit of the doubt. I think most Americans will look at this and say, 'I can't believe they're allowed to buy any land.'"
The Texas bill, by currently including Chinese citizens, in effect does not distinguish them from China's Communist Party.
It signals a possible legislative direction for Republicans, but also the pitfalls: Abbott has more recently suggested the bill won't affect people who "intend to be citizens."
Abbott's office did not respond to requests for comment. Kolkhorst’s office declined repeated requests for interviews.
Democrats "know the bill is going to have safeguards for all of our Chinese community that seeks to buy a home," said Bobby Eberle, the Fort Bend County Republican Party chairman. "That's just obvious."
But several people at the rally described waiting up to a decade to obtain a green card, and it remains unclear how a ban might ultimately affect people with different immigration statuses.
Some experts wonder whether policies that turn away from America's democratic strengths will only hurt the U.S. in the long term.
"A ban that targets a person’s country of origin, particularly if it includes those on a pathway to U.S. citizenship, goes against everything that the United States stands for," said Jessica Chen Weiss, a political scientist and government professor at Cornell University.
"There are better ways to scrutinize potentially problematic investments without resorting to sweeping measures that would undermine our values and reduce our appeal as a destination for global talent and investment," she wrote in an email.
Despite Republican assurances that the proposed legislation, which hasn’t yet been referred to a committee, will undergo changes, some suggest it's already had a chilling effect.
Lynn Yuan, the founder of a real estate firm in Austin, said her Chinese clients include tech workers, business owners and real estate investors. Almost all are U.S. residents, she said.
"None of those are related to government," she added. But concerns over the bill have made some of them hesitate in moving their businesses to Texas. "If they could go to another location or even another country, why would they risk it?"
"Texas is our home!"
A measure that says some people "are less equal than others" is a "really dangerous thing," said Texas state Rep. Gene Wu, a Houston Democrat. In an atmosphere of rising anti-Asian hate and violence, he said, "you have the government of one of the largest states in the nation saying these people are fair game."
At the Austin rally, people held signs that said, "STOP Chinese Exclusion," evoking the Chinese Exclusion Act, a 19th century law that blocked citizenship to Chinese residents in the U.S., affirming the exclusion of Asian immigrants from a 1790 naturalization law. A speaker also referenced "alien land laws," racist laws in California and other states that restricted Asian immigrants and others from owning property, including agricultural land.
Lawmakers' framing of the new bill as a national security measure also in some ways echoes the past.
Madeline Hsu, a history professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said that in historically justifying anti-Chinese immigration laws, Chinese immigrants were portrayed "as this threat to the civilization of the United States."
The national security focus now might be through the lens of COVID-19, technology or property purchase, she added in an email, but in using those threats as justification, racially designated groups have been targeted.
At the rally, as people marched near the Capitol, seemingly ending up at the same place, some worried about the future for themselves and their families. And some reflected on what drew them to call Texas home in the first place.
"If people ask me, 'Where are you from,' I say, 'I'm from Houston, Texas,'" Jim Wu said.
The U.S. citizen has lived in Houston for over two decades; he moved to the city from Beijing in 2001, got his MBA at the University of Houston and now works in international trade and business consulting.
"I love this state. I love this country,” he said. “Because of the freedom."
During his H1-B-visa-holding period, Wu bought a condo, he said. But if people cannot buy a house, he wondered, "How can they survive?"
He imagined a scenario in which he's asked to show his passport to buy a house.
If that happens, he said, then "it's not a free country anymore."
At the rally, chants of "stop Asian hate" and "stop discrimination," were often interspersed with hopeful bursts of state pride: "We love Texas! Texas is our home!"
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White House officials are privately worried about the far-reaching implications if the FDA's mifepristone approval is struck down and what they see as the limited options they have for responding. (photo: Phil Walter/Getty)
Far-right groups have asked to reverse the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, which has been on the market for decades
Reproductive rights advocates say the ruling could have a “devastating” impact on the already fragile abortion care landscape, severely eroded last June by the US supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade.
In November, anti-abortion activists, represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian conservative legal advocacy organization, filed suit in the Northern District of Texas asking Trump-appointed Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk to require the US Food and Drug Administration to reverse its longstanding approval of mifepristone, the first in a two-step abortion pill regimen. If the group – which played a key role in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health, the supreme court case that ushered in Roe’s demise – is granted a nationwide injunction, as requested, the decision could apply to states where abortion remains legal. The court could issue a decision as soon as 10 February, when briefing in the case is complete.
“This ruling could be devastating for abortion care,” said Andrea Miller, president of the National Institute for Reproductive Health. “Cutting off critical access to abortion medication – which is the preferred method for more than half of abortion patients in the country – would cause significant harm, especially at a time when Dobbs has made it difficult or impossible for many to get care at clinics.”
The FDA first approved the use of mifepristone, which is taken alongside the drug misoprostol during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, for abortion care in 2000. More than 3.7 million women have used the drug since it became available in the US. Mifepristone works by blocking the pregnancy hormone progesterone, which prevents a pregnancy from growing. Taken up to two days later, misoprostol induces cramping and bleeding to empty the uterus.
The agency broadened access to abortion pills in 2021 by allowing patients to receive them by mail through telehealth rather than requiring in-person hospital or clinic visits, a rule change prompted by the Covid pandemic. The FDA widened access further when it announced in January it would allow certified retail pharmacies to dispense mifepristone, known under the brand name Mifeprex. The use of abortion medication has steadily risen over time and now comprise at least 53% of abortions in the US, making it the most common choice for pregnancy termination.
The lawsuit, filed by four physicians and anti-abortion organizations including the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine and the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, claims that the FDA “exceeded its regulatory authority” by fast-tracking approval of the drug two decades ago. The groups allege that the agency erred in its legal obligations to “protect the health, safety, and welfare” of pregnant women by eliminating necessary safeguards and “ignoring” evidence of harm.
“The FDA is entrusted to protect the public from dangerous drugs but it has failed women and girls by approving these abortion pills without the basic levels of protection when evaluating for safety and effectiveness,” said Erik Baptist, Alliance Defending Freedom senior legal counsel.
In response to the suit, the FDA called the legal request to remove a pharmaceutical drug from the market “extraordinary and unprecedented” saying that withdrawing access to mifepristone would “cause significant harm” by depriving patients of a safe and effective drug that has been in use for more than 20 years.
“Plaintiffs have pointed to no case, and the government has been unable to locate any example, where a court has second-guessed FDA’s safety and efficacy determination and ordered a widely available FDA-approved drug to be removed from the market – much less an example that includes a two-decade delay,” wrote attorneys for the US justice department in a 13 January filing.
Greer Donley, associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh Law School and expert in FDA law, says the suit’s legal argument is rife with “falsehoods and mischaracterizations” of the regulatory agency’s decision-making. Donley says the FDA “rigorously” reviewed mifepristone before approving it, requesting additional clinical trials and restrictions in distribution. She points to a 55-page audit from the Government Accountability Office which found that FDA’s approval of mifepristone was consistent with its approval and oversight for other drugs.
“This drug was certainly not approved in a rush or haphazardly,” says Donley. “In fact, many argue the FDA has actually been largely overprotective and restrictive when it comes to mifepristone, so it’s a bit ironic that these onerous regulations around the drug are being used as evidence of leniency.”
As one of the most studied drugs in the world, abortion medication – in use for more than two decades in the US – is found to be safe and effective, and backed by major medical organizations including the the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. It holds a safer track record than Penicillin, Viagra and even Tylenol. Legal abortions have been found to be 14 times safer than childbirth.
Removing medication abortion as an option holds “terrifying potential consequences” for abortion patients across the US, says Elizabeth Nash, principal policy associate with reproductive health research group the Guttmacher Institute. The non-invasive method allows patients to terminate a pregnancy in their own homes, especially helpful if travel to clinics is out of reach. Some providers have signaled that if mifepristone is banned, they will offer misoprostol-only abortions, a safe alternative method, but one that can carry more side effects and a slightly higher failure rate – misoprostol alone was found in a new study to be 88% effective, while the pill combination has been shown to have a success rate of 98%.
Without access to pills, patients would likely need to undergo procedural – also known as “surgical” – abortion. These procedures must be performed in-clinic and necessitate more travel, resources, time, staff and space – increasingly difficult as overburdened clinics face an influx of displaced patients. Even if the impending ruling takes a more narrow approach than pulling the drug off the market completely – for example, by blocking medication by mail, or by reinstating the in-person dispensing requirement – it would still significantly hinder access.
The suspension of an FDA-approved drug by the judiciary set not only a “troubling precedent” for other reproductive health care but have “serious and broad implications” for all pharmaceutical drugs approved by the federal agency which would see its authority severely weakened, says Donley.
Reproductive health advocates and many legal observers worry that a suit that would be “laughed out of court” in other circumstances could find a champion in Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a former religious liberties lawyer who has a history of attacking abortion rights and birth control. Appointed to the bench by former President Donald Trump in 2019, Kacsmaryk most recently ruled against a federal program that allows Texas teenagers to access birth control without their parents’ permission.
“It is clear that this is a very intentional and strategic decision by the plaintiffs to forum-shop for a judge that holds similar radical views,” says Donley.
If Kacsmaryk rules for the plaintiffs and the Biden administration chooses to appeal, it will contend with the fifth circuit court of appeals, one of the most conservative appellate courts in the US. From there, the case could reach the US supreme court.
The FDA lawsuit is part of a multifront war waged by anti-abortion activists against medication abortion. While the federal agency has loosened some restrictions on mifepristone, abortion is still banned in 13 states across the US with 18 states carrying laws that limit the use of abortion drugs. As they reconvene this year, conservative statehouses across the country are ramping up proposals to further restrict abortion medication by banning the mailing of pills and making it illegal to distribute, manufacture, or prescribe, the medication, says Nash. Extreme measures introduced in Oklahoma and Arkansas would allow those who self-manage their abortions with pills to be prosecuted. Meanwhile, two lawsuits out of North Carolina and West Virginia seek to challenge those states’ restrictions on the pills, arguing that the FDA’s regulations on abortion medication should override state law.
“Opponents of reproductive freedom set their sights on shutting down abortion clinics and found success after the fall of Roe v Wade,” says Miller. “Now, they are turning their attention very intensely – and very aggressively – to medication abortion as their next battleground because they know it still provides a remaining pathway to access.”
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People gather on the rubble as the search for survivors continues, in the aftermath of the earthquake, in Aleppo, Syria, February 7, 2023. (photo: Firas Makdesi/Reuters)
A magnitude 7.8 earthquake hit Turkey and Syria early on Monday, toppling apartment blocks, wrecking hospitals and leaving thousands of people injured or homeless.
At least 1,444 people were killed in Syria and about 3,500 injured, according to figures from the Damascus government and rescue workers in the northwestern region controlled by insurgents.
Molham Volunteering Team, a Syrian non-governmental organisation active in north-western areas, has already collected more than 1.6 million euros via an Instagram campaign.
However, its success has prompted complaints on social media that contributions will not get to Syrians in regions under the control of President Bashar al-Assad's government.
"Our team is prohibited from working in the government-controlled areas," Atef Nanoua, a founding member of Molham Team, told Reuters.
"I come from the town of Jableh, one of the areas most impacted by the earthquake and I would love to help my people there, but the Syrian regime only allows humanitarian aid from organisations affiliated with it," he said, adding:
"Anyone who cooperates with our organisation is regarded as a terrorist."
Around 80% of the donations came via Instagram from people in Europe, the United State and Australia, said Nanoua.
Some Syrians even said they fear donations will end up going to the government itself.
"Syrians abroad don't feel confident about sending donations to organizations that work under the control of President Assad despite the dire need," said Malath Alzoubi, 39, who lives in London.
Alzoubi said most Syrian expatriates believed the majority of aid donations would end up under the control of individuals close to the government.
In Damascus, there was no immediate response from a spokesperson at the Ministry of Local Administration to a Reuters request for comment on the assertion that political rifts would prevent aid reaching quake victims and that aid could end up with people connected to the government.
In New York, Syria's U.N. Ambassador Bassam Sabbagh met U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday and said he asked for U.N. help. But Sabbagh told reporters any assistance had to be done in coordination with the government and delivered from within Syria and not across the Turkish border.
Syria has long been opposed to a humanitarian operation that has delivered aid into Syria from Turkey since 2014, saying assistance should be delivered via the Syrian capital Damascus.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock called on Russia to help pressure Syria into allowing in humanitarian aid for earthquake victims quickly and without additional obstacles.
Under the hastag #StopSanctionsOnSyrians and a map from the Flightradar24 website showing no flights over Syria, people called for an end to international sanctions against the war-torn country, now hit by its worst natural disaster in decades.
"Unfortunately ... from comments I saw on social media, people want to donate to one party and believe that other Syrian cities don't deserve aid because they are affiliated with another party," said Ali Fattouh, 36, a Syrian living in Dubai.
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People look at a dead gray whale at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, California, in May 2019, a year when 122 gray whales died in the U.S. Last year, 47 of the whales died. (photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty)
Since Dec. 1, at least 18 reports have come in about large whales being washed ashore along the Atlantic Coast, according to the Marine Mammal Stranding Network. The losses are hitting populations that were already under watch, due to ongoing rises in unexpected deaths.
"Unfortunately, it's been a period of several years where we have had elevated strandings of large whales, but we are still concerned about this pulse" in deaths that's now been going on for weeks, as Sarah Wilkin, the coordinator for the Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program, said on a recent call with journalists.
Scientists are particularly concerned about the recent spike in deaths, Wilkins said, because the increase is being seen in "a relatively tight geographic area," and over a short timeframe.
Here's a look at what's happening, and some of the possible reasons:
Which whale species are seeing spikes in deaths?
On the East Coast, two whale species — the humpback and the North Atlantic right whale — have each been suffering a spike in deaths over the past six or seven years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The agency declared an unusual mortality event, or UME, for both types of whale. It defines a UME as an unexpected stranding that "involves a significant die-off of any marine mammal population" and requires an immediate response.
Since 2016, 180 humpbacks have been reported to be stranded on the coast of U.S. states from Florida to Maine. At least seven strandings have already been reported in 2023, including four in New Jersey — equaling the state's 2022 total.
For right whales, more than 20 percent of the population has been affected by the UME that's been documented since 2017, an alarming statistic for an endangered species that was last estimated to have 350 whales remaining. The UME figure includes whales that were found dead, injured, or ill.
On the West Coast, NOAA has been tracking a UME involving gray whales. Since early 2019, 303 gray whale strandings have been reported in the U.S. If Mexico and Canada are included, the overall number rises to 608. More than a third of those deaths occurred in the first year of the UME; the numbers have fallen sharply since.
All three of the whale species in question have previously been hunted close to extinction. And while the gray and humpback whales have rebounded, right whales remain an endangered species, with more deaths than births each year.
What about disruptions from offshore wind farms?
Even early in the unexpected humpback strandings, questions were being raised about the possible harm done to whales by wind farms. Those questions have grown during the current surge, as interest is surging in offshore wind energy projects that require using powerful devices to map the ocean floor.
The questions have only grown louder in the past two months, as crews perform surveys off of New York and New Jersey to learn details about the seafloor, both to learn where facilities could be located and where cables could be run.
The New Jersey-based group Clean Ocean Action has called for a halt to ocean wind projects and an investigation into the potential harm done to whales. Local and state officials have joined that effort, along with several members of Congress.
But officials from NOAA and other agencies are pushing back on suggestions that wind farms might somehow be contributing to whale deaths.
"There are no known connections between any of this offshore wind activity and any whale stranding regardless of species," Benjamin Laws, deputy chief for the permits and conservation division at NOAA Fisheries, said in a briefing call.
The kind of equipment being used in the area isn't as problematic as projects such as marine oil and gas exploration, said Erica Staaterman, a bioacoustician at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management's Center for Marine Acoustics.
"Those in oil and gas are called seismic air guns, and they're specifically designed to penetrate kilometers into the seafloor. So they're very high energy, very loud sources," Staaterman said. In contrast, she added, the tools used to prepare for offshore wind sites are "high resolution geophysical sources, and they're typically smaller in the amount of acoustic energy they put into the water column."
"Many of them are used for very short periods of time with a long quiet time in between," Staaterman said, adding that some of the instruments also produce "a very narrow cone of sound," rather than blasting it in all directions.
"I just want to be unambiguous," Laws stated, "there is no information that would support any suggestion that any of the equipment that's being used in support of wind development [to perform surveys] could directly lead to the death of a whale."
So, what is killing the whales?
Overall, experts say that human interactions are a leading factor in whale deaths, through ship strikes or entanglements from ropes and other fishing gear.
That's a particular threat this winter, when animals that are typically the whales' prey have reportedly come close to shore, NOAA officials say. That shift leads humpbacks and other whales to follow along, creating more overlap where whales and ships share the same waters.
And as Wilkin notes, whale population growth could be a factor. "As whale abundance increases, we will get more whales in different places," she said.
For right whales, the agency says human interaction is the leading cause of death. Around half of the humpback whales that have died in the recent spike have had some level of necropsy exam, NOAA says. Of that number, about 40 percent showed evidence of a vessel strike or entanglement.
Causes of whale deaths can be determined in only a fraction of cases, partly because of the difficulty of examining a whale that dies in the wild, from their huge size to the various states of decomposition that might have occurred.
For the UME affecting gray whales in the Pacific Ocean, the cause is still undetermined, although researchers note that of the dead whales that were examined, several of them showed "evidence of emaciation."
One thing the ongoing UMEs on both sides of the coast have in common is their broad scale: While historically some UMEs have been very localized, tracking maps show that the humpback, gray and right whale strandings have happened up and down the Atlantic and Pacific coastlines.
That's a sharp contrast to previous clusters of deaths, like the 14 humpback whales that died from a biotoxin in 1987 — all of them in an area around Cape Cod, Mass. In that case, the deaths were attributed to saxitoxin, which is produced by red tide algae and can accumulate in mackerel — which the whales then eat.
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