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The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, "The Borowitz Report."
According to the reports, Thomas also accepted a set of red, white, and blue face paints from the same donor.
A combative Thomas told reporters that the fur pelts and horns she received were not luxury items but were derived from budget-priced rabbit and bison.
She said that she would “not let this latest tempest in a teapot interfere with all the good work I am doing on the United States Supreme Court.”
Her husband, Clarence Thomas, had no comment.
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'This is just the first of a series of indictments, each focused on very different conduct-and on allegations that are more closely related to his conduct as President.' (photo: Delcia Lopez/AP)
It has been one week since Donald Trump was arrested and arraigned in a Manhattan courthouse
How has Trump behaved during this last week? With apparent public mental decompensation, fabulism, lies, bluster, rage, claims of victimhood, and threats of violence and menace against his "enemies" — including the judge, and his family, who is presiding over the hush money trial in Manhattan. To that point, Trump unleashed the following foul fusillade on his Truth Social disinformation platform Monday morning:
"THE ONLY REASON I HAVE THESE ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS INVESTIGATIONS AGAINST ME , HEADED UP BY RACISTS, LUNATICS, AND RADICAL LEFT MANIACS, IS FOR PURPOSES OF ELECTION INTERFERENCE. IT WILL BE HARDER FOR THE DEMOCRATS TO CHEAT LIKE THEY DID IN 2020, SO THEY ARE GOING RIGHT TO THE OLD SOVIET UNION PLAYBOOK AND USING THE DOJ, FBI & OTHERS IN "JUSTICE" TO INTERFERE IN OUR ONCE SACRED ELECTIONS. WE'VE GOT TO SWAMP THESE CHEATERS, AND WE WILL WIN!"
Uncowed by the litany of charges against him and the possibility, however unlikely, that he will be incarcerated for his crime spree, Trump has been selling t-shirts and other paraphernalia emblazoned with his "mug shot". This fascist carnie move has proven to be very lucrative: it has been reported that Donald Trump's followers have given him millions of dollars in "donations" since he was indicted and then arrested and arraigned in Manhattan on felony charges.
Because Trump is addicted to narcissistic energy, he made a surprise appearance at last Saturday's UFC 287 mixed martial arts pay-per-view event in Miami, where he was greeted by cheers, sustained applause, and chants of "USA! USA!" by the many thousands of people in attendance. Trump was in his glory.
In an attempt to make sense of Trump's arrest and arraignment in Manhattan, what it reveals (or not) about the country's democracy crisis, and how Trumpism and ascendant neofascism continue to poison America's political health and political culture, I asked a range of experts for their insights and concerns about this next chapter in the Age of Trump.
These interviews have been lightly edited for clarity.
Norm Ornstein is emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and contributing editor for the Atlantic. He is also co-author of the bestselling books "One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate, and the Not-Yet Deported."
I know there are many respectable lawyers and former prosecutors dubious about the New York indictment of Trump, but I have been persuaded by former top Manhattan Assistant DA Karen Friedman Agnifiilo and all-star lawyer Norm Eisen that the case, under New York law, is stronger than many think.
Is this the most shocking and despicable set of actions that may bring Trump repeatedly to the bar of justice?
Of course not. Lying to his lawyers to obstruct justice and retain illegally top secret documents for his own financial gain tops that. Trying openly to overturn election results in Georgia tops it. And the incitement to violent insurrection, threatening the lives of the Vice President and members of Congress, tops that. But this action coming first, blasted with anti-Semitic and racist rhetoric by Trump and his acolytes in the GOP, will make it much harder for the lickspittles like Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz to condemn using the same tactics when these other serious charges are filed.
The media coverage of the arraignment and the spectacle that surrounded it showed yet again how feckless our mainstream media is, and how inflammatory is the tribal right-wing media. The breathless coverage of every minute of Trump's journey to New York, followed after the arraignment with commentary about how weak the indictment was, did not serve the country well. And the wall-to-wall coverage ignored other key stories as they unfolded, including the elections in Wisconsin and the party switch in North Carolina, both cases where GOP supermajorities will be used to stymie Democratic governors, and the unspeakably evil action by the Tennessee Republican legislature to expel three members because they spoke out for gun control.
Dave Neiwert is an investigative journalist and an expert on right-wing extremism and terrorism. He is also the author of several books including the forthcoming "The Age of Insurrection: The Ongoing War on American Democracy".
A central element of any kind of autocratic rule is a degraded and corrupt, two-tiered version of the rule of law, in which the authoritarian rulers are by nature exempt from all legal constraints, while the people they rule over are subject to draconian and often discriminatory enforcement of laws. That's what Donald Trump's defenders have been working toward since the day of his election in 2016, and it's what they're battling for in court now.
Like all good authoritarians, they're trying to convince the public that this kind of de facto immunity from accountability, legal and otherwise, is the birthright of powerful men like Trump, the natural state of things. And until the advent of democratic rule, that probably was more or less the case.
This is what we'll hear from the neofascists who are out there preparing once again to man barricades on Trump's behalf—and not just the Proud Boys and Three Percenter types, but the Tucker Carlsons and the Jim Jordans as well. This is about undermining and ultimately demolishing our democratic institutions—among which the rule of law is probably the most fundamental.
Federico Finchelstein is a professor of history at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College in New York. He is the author of several books, including "From Fascism to Populism in History." His most recent book is "A Brief History of Fascist Lies."
Wannabe fascist leaders like Trump often enter a maelstrom of self-destruction, but they always have an impact on the lives of others in a negative way before leaving the scene. They have a very negative effect on citizens in a democracy.
Trump wants to turn the normal work of justice into another episode a civil war he fantasizes about and even wants to create. This is predictable in terms of how such demagogues and fascistic and fascist leaders respond to being held accountable under the law for their crimes.
One of the most common mistakes in how the public and the media and political elites understand – or fail to actually – Trumpism is by how they focus on the minutia such as the optics, his plane, the theater criticism, his antics without actually critically engaging what Trumpism and fascism more broadly mean for the country. That is a grave error.
Of course, an emphasis on the rule of law and justice are central to confronting and stopping antidemocratic leaders. But that is not enough if there is not a more holistic and broad intervention made across society to root out the deeper cultural and political problems that have generated the aspiring fascist politics that Trumpism represents and embodies.
Andrea Roth, Professor of Law at UC Berkeley School of Law. She is an expert on criminal law and criminal procedure and a former federal public defender.
These charges are typical in some ways - a prosecutor takes one group of related transactions and charges them under as many laws, and with as many counts, as they can. Prosecutors do this frequently because multiple counts gives them more leverage in plea negotiations; more chances to secure a conviction if some counts have proof problems; and gives jurors a sense that the defendant must surely be guilty of something if there are so many counts ("where there's smoke there's fire").
What is notable is that (1) these counts are for conduct that is less serious than the conduct alleged in Georgia and with respect to January 6, but is the only conduct that occurred in New York and the Manhattan DA was the fastest to charge; and (2) the counts are unusual in that they are felonies only because of the allegation that the conduct was intended to further another crime, and there is a question as to whether a federal campaign finance law can be that "other crime."
Some reports seem to suggest that the sheer number of counts or vagueness as to some of the underlying conduct or underlying "other crime" is unusual in an indictment. On the contrary; prosecutors often charge numerous counts for one transaction or a related series of transactions (which generally doesn't violate double jeopardy); and indictments and other charging documents are often somewhat vague as to the precise theory of prosecution. It's true that under the 6th Amendment you have a right to know the nature and cause of the accusation, but the defense can file for what's called a "bill of particulars" to learn more about the precise allegations.
Overall, the arguments as to why this prosecution seems unfair or an overreach apply to numerous federal and state prosecutions brought every day and the complaints that this prosecution is unusual in these respects seem to reflect an unfamiliarity with American criminal justice.
On the other hand, the commentators who are saying "if he committed a crime, he should therefore be prosecuted for it" are not really acknowledging the vast amount of discretion prosecutors wield every day around the country in declining to bring charges even when they think they can prove a crime. The Alameda County DA, where I live, didn't charge possession of marijuana cases for years even when it was a crime. Here, prosecutors could have chosen to bring these cases as misdemeanors; could have brought fewer counts; or could have chosen to pursue administrative remedies instead of a criminal prosecution. Many variables go into a decision to prosecute other than simply whether a crime can be proven, and that's true in all prosecutions, not just this one.
Eric Schickler is a political scientist and co-director of the Institute of Governmental Studies (IGS) at UC Berkeley. He is co-author of "Investigating the President: Congressional Checks on Presidential Power."
Much of the discussion of the Trump indictment and arraignment has understandably focused on the details of the New York case and questions about whether it will hold up given the partial reliance on federal election law to upgrade the offenses to felonies. However, it seems increasingly likely that this is just the first of a series of indictments, each focused on very different conduct -- and on allegations that are more closely related to his conduct as President. Given the intense polarization today, those additional indictments may still not do much to move Republican voters away from Trump. But they will likely generate a more concerted push by Trump's rivals to persuade Republicans that his nomination would be bad for their party and help Joe Biden's reelection.
I would not trust any confident predictions about whether those efforts will work or fail. On the one hand, the party base has so far stuck with Trump through a number of events that, in the past, would have been devastating to a candidate. On the other hand, nominating a candidate who is a defendant in multiple criminal cases might give just enough Republican primary voters pause, particularly when there are alternative candidates working hard to demonstrate that they can promote Trumpism more effectively than the original.
Jason Van Tatenhove is a former member of the right-wing paramilitary group the Oath Keepers, where he served as their media spokesperson for two years. He also testified before the House Select Committee on Jan 6th. His new book is "The Perils of Extremism: How I Left the Oath Keepers and Why We Should be Concerned about a Future Civil War."
The news coverage of Trump's arrest and arraignment made me feel like I was having a flashback to the late 90s. It reminded me of the OJ Simpson chase, which interrupted the NBA Finals and drew an audience of almost 95 million viewers. While this week's coverage was less dramatic than a murder case, it still points to something insidious: the normalization of threats of violence, racist rhetoric, and calls for disregarding the rule of law. This normalization of bad behavior by those who are white, wealthy, straight, and powerful is one of our generation's Pandora's boxes. The criminals who open this box and shred our democratic systems do not care about our country's future. They only care about themselves.
The barely veiled threats of violence and dehumanizing language against those attempting to hold criminals accountable are just the beginning. As these tactics become more normalized, we can only expect things to get worse. We must hold tight to the moral belief that no one person is above the law in America - especially those who have abused our democratic systems. We need to cry out not for the privileged few but for the masses victimized by these same systems. We must strive for equality for all.
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Containers of mifepristone and misoprostol - medications used to end a pregnancy - sit on a table inside of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Fairview Heights, Illinois. (photo: Jeff Roberson/AP)
The FDA has the power to ignore the mifepristone ruling, legal experts say. But only the courts can cure its dangerous implications.
The ruling by the far-right, Trump-appointed judge was lawless and should come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to the ratcheting up of tensions over the legality of abortion since the United States Supreme Court upended constitutional protection for the procedure last summer in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
In fact, Kacsmaryk’s ruling in the mifepristone case, known as Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, has a lot in common with the Dobbs opinion penned by Justice Samuel Alito: It ignores science, wholly reimagines facts, and cites less-than-credible sources to arrive at a preordained destination.
The opinion threatens to block access to mifepristone nationwide. Kacsmaryk stayed his ruling for seven days to give the federal government a chance to appeal to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, perhaps the most conservative and results-oriented appeals court in the country, which is expected to bless Kacsmaryk’s decision. On Monday, the Justice Department filed its appeal, writing that Kacsmaryk had “upended decades of reliance by blocking FDA’s approval of mifepristone and depriving patients of access to this safe and effective treatment, based on the court’s own misguided assessment of the drug’s safety.”
Meanwhile, on the heels of Kacsmaryk’s ruling, Washington state District Judge Thomas O. Rice issued his own opinion in a separate mifepristone-related lawsuit brought by 17 states and the District of Columbia, barring the FDA from taking any action that would make mifepristone unavailable in those jurisdictions.
The two opinions deploy diametrically opposed approaches. Kacsmaryk has positioned himself as a scientist in a black robe, free to second-guess the FDA and medical experts whenever and however he chooses, while Rice has made it clear that his job is to respect the science and stay in his lane, considering only whether the agency has satisfied its legal obligations.
Whether the government will find reason to appeal Rice’s decision remains to be seen. But if the 5th Circuit does what it usually does — that is, rubber-stamp even the most extreme and unhinged interpretations of the law — then it will be up to the Supreme Court to decide whether science or ideology will prevail.
Second-Guessing the Science
Mifepristone is the first drug in a two-drug protocol approved for early pregnancy termination. Mifepristone blocks progesterone, a hormone needed to continue pregnancy, and softens the uterine lining; the second drug, misoprostol, is taken 24 to 48 hours later and causes the uterus to contract, expelling the pregnancy. Today, the regimen accounts for more than half of all pregnancy terminations in the U.S. and is also used for miscarriage management.
In 2021, after two decades of enforcing a slew of restrictions tied to mifepristone that advocates and providers had long argued were medically unnecessary, the FDA lifted a requirement that the drug be dispensed in person and has since taken steps to expand access in states where abortion is legal.
Mifepristone is one of the most widely studied medications out there; it has been used in more than 630 published clinical trials, including more than 420 randomized, controlled studies, the “gold standard for research design,” according to a friend-of-the-court brief filed in support of the FDA by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and eight other leading U.S. medical groups. The risk of serious complications is less than 1 percent.
“Mifepristone’s safety profile is on par with common painkillers like ibuprofen and acetaminophen, which more than 30 million Americans take in any given day,” the brief read. Procedures like wisdom teeth removal, colonoscopy, and plastic surgery have higher complication and death rates, as does the use of Viagra. “Put simply,” the brief stated, “medication abortion is among the safest medical interventions in any category — related to pregnancy or not.”
Kacsmaryk wasn’t buying any of this. In his 67-page ruling, he lifted talking points from the legal filings of the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, which incorporated itself in the Texas Panhandle city of Amarillo in August for the express purpose of challenging the approval of mifepristone. The Alliance argued that medication abortion was wildly unsafe, that the FDA recklessly approved its use its use in 2000, and that it has since lowered the guardrails to the detriment of anyone who might consider taking it. Because of the way the federal judiciary is organized in North Texas, filing in Amarillo guaranteed that the Alliance’s lawsuit would land on Kacsmaryk’s desk.
The five out-of-state groups that make up the Alliance represent a shadow medical community that exists to promote counterfactual narratives about the risks associated with abortion. In his opinion, Kacsmaryk added his own spin to the Alliance’s baseless assertions, liberally deploying italics to convey his righteous indignation at the very notion that the FDA approved mifepristone in the first place.
Kacsmaryk routinely used medically incorrect and inflammatory terminology beloved by the anti-abortion movement. In his first footnote, he declared that “jurists” often use the word “fetus” in “unscientific ways.” Had he meant that other judges used the word “fetus,” which denotes the developmental stage beginning around eight weeks, when they should have used “embryo,” which encompasses gestation from two to eight weeks, he might have had a point. But instead of using the proper medical terms, he declared he would instead adopt the terms “unborn human” and “unborn child” to encompass all stages of gestation, terms that are not only unscientific, but also oxymoronic. (Accuracy isn’t the point here; rather, it is a none-too-subtle nod toward the goal of many anti-abortion groups, which is to deem a pregnancy at any stage of gestation a “person” under the law, otherwise known as “fetal personhood.”)
To support the proposition that medication abortion is wildly unsafe, he cited almost exclusively anti-abortion sources, including an analysis of anonymous posts to an anti-abortion website and at least one academic whose work has been repeatedly challenged. He also dropped in the opinions of former GOP lawmakers, including disgraced and now deceased former Indiana Rep. Mark Souder, who offered his take on the dangers of medication abortion during a 2006 House subcommittee hearing, and deceased former Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, who, in 2007, said he’d heard a story about a woman whose medication abortion allegedly failed and led her to give birth to an infant with congenital disorders.
Kacsmaryk concluded that the scientists at the FDA haven’t been doing their job right, leaving him no choice but to usurp their authority and enter a ruling to block access to mifepristone across the country.
“The court does not second-guess FDA’s decision-making lightly,” he wrote. Nonetheless, he determined that the scientific studies the agency relied on to approve the drug in 2000 were “unsound,” forcing him to offer a course correction. Quoting directly from the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine’s lawsuit, he wrote that the “physical and emotional trauma that chemical abortion inflicts on women and girls cannot be reversed or erased.”
Unsatisfied by merely turning the clock back two decades on medical progress, Kacsmaryk’s opinion also tried to breathe new life into the prudish zombie law known as the Comstock Act, which, in 1873, outlawed sending via the mail anything considered “obscene, lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy or vile”— which at the time included contraceptives — and “every article or thing” that could be used for abortion. The law has not been enforced since the 1930s; Congress removed references to contraceptives in the 1970s; and over the years, judicial actions have largely neutered its reach. Last year, the Department of Justice told the U.S. Postal Service that the dormant law did not prohibit sending medication abortion to patients in places where abortion is legal.
Kacsmaryk disagreed with all of this, calling the act’s provisions “important public policy,” meaning that sending medication abortion pills anywhere for any reason would violate federal law. “The Comstock Act plainly forecloses mail-order abortion,” he wrote.
The Status Quo
Rice’s opinion in the Washington case stands in stark contrast to Kacsmaryk’s ruling. While both are preliminary opinions in advance of further litigation, Rice’s is by far the more conservative.
In that case, the plaintiff states asked the judge to bar the FDA from enforcing the remaining administrative restrictions on the provision of mifepristone, including an unwieldy “prescriber agreement” doctors are required to file with each pharmacy that might fill the prescriptions they write. Rice declined to do so, saying it was too early to make such a call. He concluded that to preserve the “status quo,” he would leave in place the remaining restrictions but block the agency from imposing any new restrictions on access to mifepristone in the 18 jurisdictions that are parties to the lawsuit.
In contrast, Kacsmaryk concluded that preserving the status quo meant going back to the era preceding the FDA’s approval of mifepristone in 2000. “Chemical abortion is only the status quo insofar as defendants’ unlawful actions … have made it so,” he wrote.
Unlike Kacsmaryk, Rice specifically noted that it was not his job to play scientist: “It is not the court’s role to review the scientific evidence,” he wrote. “That is precisely FDA’s role.” Rice noted that there are questions about whether the remaining restrictions are being imposed legally; the agency has said they’re needed to ensure the drug is used safely, while it has also declared mifepristone supremely safe. But sorting out the underlying legal details, Rice concluded, was a task for another day. He declined to issue a nationwide ruling, which are reserved for “exceptional cases.”
Kacsmaryk’s approach has been widely criticized as unhinged. “The court’s disregard for well-established scientific facts in favor of speculative allegations and ideological assertions will cause harm to our patients and undermines the health of the nation,” American Medical Association President Jack Resneck Jr. said in a statement. “Substituting the opinions of individual judges and courts in place of extensive, evidence-based, scientific review of efficacy and safety through well-established FDA processes is reckless and dangerous.”
Whether the U.S. Supreme Court will agree is an open question. The three Trump-appointed justices — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — were promoted to the bench based on their anti-abortion bona fides. All three joined in Alito’s opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, a screed similar in tone and intellect to Kacsmaryk’s mifepristone ruling.
Given the Supreme Court remains an unfortunate wild card, scholars have pointed out several key details impacting the state of play. Kacsmaryk’s conclusion that the Comstock Act forbids mailing medication abortion applies only to the FDA, noted David Cohen, a law professor at Drexel University. “NO ONE ELSE in the country is required to follow that ruling,” he wrote in a Twitter thread. And, as Cohen and law professors Greer Donley and Rachel Rebouche pointed out in a recent piece for Slate, the FDA has the power to ignore Kacsmaryk’s ruling. Because the agency doesn’t have the capacity to police “every nonapproved product on the market,” they wrote, “it has long been settled law, decided in a unanimous 1985 Supreme Court decision, that the agency has broad enforcement discretion, meaning the agency, not courts, gets to decide if and when” it will pursue such a ban.
In the wake of the Texas ruling, Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden encouraged the Biden administration to simply ignore Kacsmaryk’s mandate. “The FDA, doctors, and pharmacies can and must go about their jobs like nothing has changed and keep mifepristone accessible to women across America,” he said.
Still, advocates caution that ignoring Kacsmaryk’s decree won’t solve the larger problem he has created. If the Supreme Court allows the ruling to stand, it “will radically alter the process for approving drugs and will chill innovation in bringing new drugs to market,” Jennifer Dalven, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Reproductive Freedom Project, said on Monday. “If the courts allow this decision to stand, they will be, in essence, telling every fringe group with an opposition to a medication or vaccine, ‘Just go find a politically aligned judge who can then, with the stroke of a pen, deny Americans the ability to get the critical, life-saving treatment they need.’”
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Ron DeSantis and his wife, Casey, carry flowers to the site of the Pulse nightclub in Orlando on the third anniversary of the shooting. (photo: Orlando Sentinel/TNS)
ALSO SEE: Poll: 20 Percent of Americans Have Lost a Family Member to Gun Violence
Bill passed by Republican-controlled state legislature to allow permitless carry reflects a rightward lurch in Florida’s politics
With Republicans’ sweeping control of the state legislature and governorship, the bill – which would allow Floridians to carry guns without a permit or training – easily passed both chambers before being signed into law by DeSantis. The Florida house approved the bill late last month in a vote of 76 to 32, and the senate then passed the proposal in a vote of 27 to 13.
The Republicans’ latest push reflects a broader rightward lurch in Florida’s politics since DeSantis took office in 2019, even though Trump carried the battleground state by just three points in 2020. Polls show that a majority of Floridians oppose the policy, and previous surveys have indicated that Florida voters overwhelmingly support other gun safety measures like universal background checks and mandatory waiting periods.
Gun safety groups have provided evidence suggesting the permitless carry law will contribute to an increase in violence. They accuse the governor of prioritizing presidential ambitions over his constituents’ safety in a state that has witnessed two of America’s deadliest mass shootings.
“It all has to do with talking points and setting him up to run for higher office,” said Congressman Maxwell Frost, a Democrat of Florida. “And as a result, people will die.”
No ‘permission slip’ required
Republican legislators across the country have embraced permitless carry, or “constitutional carry” to its supporters, in recent years. The policy has won praise from rightwing activists who view any firearm-related regulation as a violation of their second amendment right to bear arms. Florida law previously stipulated that those who wish to carry a concealed gun must complete safety training and undergo a more detailed background check, but Republicans moved to do away with those requirements.
“I believe that this comes down to one pretty clear thing that shall not be infringed,” the Republican state senator Jay Collins said at a committee hearing last month. “We don’t need to have the government get in the way of law-abiding citizens’ rights.”
Twenty-five states have already enacted laws allowing residents to carry concealed firearms without a permit, and Florida will become the 26th in July, when the policy goes into effect.
“A constitutional right should not require a permission slip from the government,” DeSantis said in his State of the State address last month. “It is time we joined 25 other states to enact constitutional carry in the state of Florida.”
The proposal had been endorsed by the Florida Sheriffs Association, which represents the 67 elected sheriffs across the state.
“Violent career criminals are not applying for a state permit to carry a gun,” Al Nienhuis, the association’s president and sheriff of Hernando county, said at a January press conference. “Removing the permitting process will assist our law-abiding citizens with the protections they need to defend themselves and their families from those criminals who intend to do them harm.”
Florida crime statistics appear to challenge that argument. The 2021 Annual Uniform Crime Report showed Florida’s crime rate had reached a 50-year low, a fact that DeSantis himself touted in his state of the state address.
Research suggests that removing the permitting requirement to carry concealed guns may instead contribute to a rise in violent crime. One study released in 2019 found that states saw an increase of 13% to 15% in violent crime rates in the years after they loosened regulations on carrying concealed firearms.
Those concerns have fueled a divide among Florida’s law enforcement officers. Although the Florida Sheriffs Association supported the bill, a number of officers said they fear the policy will only further endanger them and their colleagues.
“It’s not going to make our communities safer,” Sheriff John Mina of Orange county said on The Problem With Jon Stewart. “It’s going to make them more dangerous.”
At the March committee hearing on the permitless carry bill, dozens of Florida residents echoed those fears. Isabella Burgos, a volunteer with the gun safety group Students Demand Action and a first-year student at Florida State University, gave emotional testimony about how she regularly fears for her life as she walks around campus. Burgos spoke just weeks after a gunman attacked Michigan State University, killing three students.
“I’m at war with the terrors of the chance I may die young,” Burgos said through tears. “This epidemic will turn to utter war with this bill in place. So I urge you all to oppose this deadly bill that would be destructive to our minds and destructive to society – vote no. My life, my children’s lives and your children’s lives depend on it.”
A ‘uniquely heinous proposal’
In February, Florida marked five years since the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, which claimed the lives of 14 students and three educators. The attack came less than two years after a gunman killed 49 people at Pulse, an LGBTQ+ nightclub, in Orlando.
For gun safety advocates, Republicans’ introduction of a permitless carry bill on the heels of the Parkland anniversary feels cruel. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a former Democratic congresswoman from Florida and now senior adviser to the gun safety group Giffords, described Republicans’ actions as “shameful”.
“We are one of the largest states in the country, where we have seen two of the worst mass shootings,” Mucarsel-Powell said. “And we have to continue to do the work to make sure that we protect the lives of Floridians.”
As Mucarsel-Powell noted, Florida legislators came together in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting to craft a bipartisan gun safety bill. The legislation, which raised the age requirement for buying a long gun from 18 to 21 and established a “red flag” law allowing law enforcement to seize firearms from those deemed to be dangerous, was signed by the then governor, Rick Scott, a Republican.
“Everybody can say that partisanship has increased and the partisan divide is getting bigger, and I think that’s really evident in Florida,” said Cate Allen, a survivor of the Parkland shooting and leader of Students Demand Action. “Our representatives, our congressmen are pursuing political ambitions and personal gain over what their constituents actually want.”
Surveys indicate that Florida residents broadly oppose permitless carry. One recent poll conducted by the University of North Florida’s Public Opinion Research Lab showed 77% of Florida voters, including 62% of Republicans, do not support the proposal.
“I’m not going to say that the bills that [DeSantis] pushed in the past were good, but I think this one in particular is uniquely heinous,” said Alyssa Ackbar, a Tallahassee-based organizer for the gun safety group March for Our Lives. “The notion of getting rid of the permitting for concealed carry is honestly devastating.”
To DeSantis’s critics such as Frost, the governor’s robust support for permitless carry is a particularly alarming example of how his political aspirations have endangered Floridians.
“This is just one in a laundry list of legislation that will result in deaths, that will result in harm, that will result in trauma,” Frost said. “But it’s all part of a greater plan here because he’s more interested in running for president than he is in running the state of Florida.”
‘Bullying people into submission’
Although the permitless carry bill has now passed, gun safety advocates say they are still committed to holding Republican legislators accountable for supporting the widely unpopular bill.
“I think it’s important to let lawmakers know that we’re watching them,” said Shannon Watts, founder of the gun safety group Moms Demand Action. “If they do the right thing, we’ll have their back, and if they do the wrong thing, we’ll have their job.”
Advocates put a significant share of the blame for the bill on the shoulders of DeSantis, accusing Republican legislators of allowing their allegiance to the governor to take priority over the wishes of their constituents.
“We’re seeing a rise of extremism and radicalism from DeSantis and the legislators that are completely loyal to him,” Mucarsel-Powell said. “They will not do anything that he doesn’t support.”
Ackbar said she had heard from legislators that some of their colleagues only expressed support for the permitless carry bill because they want to stay in DeSantis’s good graces.
“DeSantis has a way of bullying people into submission, into doing what he wants, and I truly believe that this bill is part of that as well,” Ackbar said.
Gun safety advocates fear DeSantis will only escalate his demands to relax Florida’s gun regulations as he prepares to launch a presidential campaign, given that he has previously received criticism from hardline gun rights activists. The governor faced accusations of hypocrisy from gun safety advocates and gun rights activists alike in February, after the Washington Post reported on emails showing that DeSantis’s campaign team quietly sought to ban concealed weapons from his own election night party in Tampa last November.
Watts mocked DeSantis’s stance as “guns everywhere for thee but not for me”, adding: “The governor knows that it is dangerous for people to have easy access to guns and then show up at his events. And yet, he wants those same people in our schools and in public places. It is the height of hypocrisy.”
Gun rights activists have similarly criticized DeSantis for holding events where firearms are prohibited. A gun rights protester was arrested in October for trespassing at an Alachua county Republican party event where DeSantis was speaking, although those charges were later dropped. The protester held a sign reading: “I will not be disarmed by DeSantis.”
Even the permitless carry proposal has sparked frustration among gun rights activists, who say the legislation does not go far enough. Those activists instead want a law similar to the one used in Texas, which allows residents to openly carry a gun in public without a permit instead of limiting the policy to concealed weapons. DeSantis’s failure to enact an open permitless carry law reflects “political impotence”, as one gun rights supporter put it at the committee hearing last month.
Given those complaints from rightwing activists, gun safety advocates worry that DeSantis will eventually push for an open permitless carry policy in his quest to woo Republican primary voters. The human toll of such a political strategy, they say, could be devastating.
“All of his political moves and all of the bullying that he does to have people vote his way, it costs lives,” Ackbar said. “They’re not just talking points. They’re not just political notions. They are real, and there are young people in communities in this state that are constantly harmed by the ways that he pushes these bills.”
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Talib al-Majli, 57, lives in a poor area in Baghdad. He says his detention in Abu Ghraib prison left him destitute and too physically weak and psychologically traumatized to find a reliable job. (photo: Ruth Sherlock/NPR)
Majli, 57, can recall in detail the torture he says he endured by U.S. soldiers during the 16 months he was held in the notorious prison in Iraq. He was never charged with anything — one of the thousands of men swept up in U.S. forces' house raids following the invasion in 2003, most of them detained by mistake, according to military intelligence officials cited in an International Committee of the Red Cross report on the detentions. Almost two decades later, the Abu Ghraib detention has ruined him.
"To this day I feel humiliation for what was done to me," he says. "The time I spent in Abu Ghraib — it ended my life. I'm only half a human now."
The imprisonment has left him destitute and too physically weak and psychologically traumatized to hold down a job, he says. His wife left him, taking their two daughters with her. His sons were so badly bullied in school over the abuse their father had endured that they dropped out, never finishing their education. Now they and their father live in a home of two rooms and an outside toilet in a poor neighborhood in Baghdad.
The abuse of detainees by U.S. soldiers in Abu Ghraib prison is one of the grim legacies of the Iraq War. Photographs leaked in April 2004, and broadcast from newsrooms around the world, show men stripped naked and leashed like dogs or forced into contorted or sexual positions, with U.S. forces posing gleefully with them.
In one image, naked detainees with bags over their heads are piled on top of each other in a grotesque human pyramid. An American soldier — Sabrina Harman — leans over them from behind, grinning. Her smiling colleague, Charles Graner, gives a thumbs up.
Majli believes he is one of the men in the human pyramid photograph. He remembers being forced to lie, naked, on the bare skin of another prisoner, and the feeling of being crushed as other naked detainees were piled on top of him. "I was heavier back then, so they put me close to the bottom," he remembers. "I wished for death. I would rather have been dead than to be in that position."
"Different types of torture"
Majli describes a culture of abuse and humiliation inside Abu Ghraib. He remembers an American soldier threw sound grenades into his and other detainees' cells. He recalls guards poking at his genitals with wooden sticks, setting snarling police dogs on inmates and soldiers firing live ammunition around them. Majli says he developed pneumonia after guards flooded his cell with cold water as a tactic to stop the prisoners from getting rest. "They wouldn't let us sleep for days."
"There were different types of torture," he says. "They completely destroyed us psychologically."
Majli still has a card showing his prison ID and other documents that confirm his time in Abu Ghraib. Detained on Oct. 31, 2003, he was marked as prisoner No. 152516.
Majli says American forces detained him in a village in western Iraq's Anbar province, where he was visiting his uncle. U.S. soldiers arrived, asked for people's IDs and rounded up many of the men there. "Without any discussion, they put a bag over my head and took me away," he says.
"In the first days in Abu Ghraib, I cried. I kept thinking of my children and praying that I'd be released soon. I was innocent, so I thought I would be out in a few days," Majli says.
But the days turned to weeks and then months.
Majli swears he never took part in the insurgency against the U.S. or committed any other crime. When he was eventually released, a year and four months later, he says the American officer handling his case was confused about why he'd been held because there were no charges in his file. A document Majli later obtained from the Iraqi Ministry for Human Rights confirms there is a record of his detention in Abu Ghraib, but it gives no reason for his imprisonment.
Military intelligence officers from U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq later told the International Committee of the Red Cross that between 70% and 90% of Iraqis detained after the U.S. invasion were actually arrested by mistake, according to a leaked confidential ICRC report. And now the military says it cannot locate the records identifying any of the detainees.
When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, Majli was happy, he says. He was 37-years-old, living in Mosul and trying to support his wife and their four young children on the meager salary he earned as a foot soldier in the Iraqi army. He says tough U.S. economic sanctions and the instability and fear caused by Saddam Hussein's wars with Iran and Kuwait had made their lives miserable. Majli wanted Saddam gone.
"Before I was detained in the American prison, if I'd seen George Bush, I would have thanked him with all my heart and welcomed him to Iraq," he says. "But his good deed became my curse."
A life destroyed
When Majli walked out of Abu Ghraib in February 2005, he says, he was penniless and physically and emotionally broken. He suffered nightmares and felt uncontrollable rage for what had been done to him. Almost worse than the torture itself, Majli says, was the humiliation of his community knowing the degrading treatment he'd suffered.
Everyone saw the photographs published of the abuses in Abu Ghraib. Even though Majli is a victim — and survivor — of abuse far out of his control, he says his community attached a stigma to him and his family. Eventually, Majli says, his wife couldn't cope with it. "She divorced me because of what happened to me in the prison and the scandal of it," he says.
Majli says his wife took their two daughters with her. Their two sons remained with him and they moved to a different part of Baghdad to try to make a fresh start. But eventually neighbors again learned about his time in Abu Ghraib. That's when Majli says his children left school for being bullied. They moved to another house again.
Majli speaks with NPR, sitting on a thin plastic mat covering the cold tile floor of his two-room apartment in Baghdad. During the day, the bedding is piled on top of a small wooden cupboard in the corner. The toilet is in a cinder-block cubicle outside. Gaps in the roof mean the rain runs down the interior walls. Outside, water pools on the mud street that has no proper drainage.
This is all Majli can afford. He does odd jobs, sometimes earning around $30 per week to put up advertisement posters for a company.
Majli says his health has never recovered from his time in Abu Ghraib. He has no money to visit a doctor and so has never received a diagnosis. But he says he struggles to put on weight, feels physically weak and has little energy to be able to work.
No U.S. compensation
In the United States, 11 soldiers were eventually convicted in 2006 of crimes at Abu Ghraib. Lynndie England, one of the soldiers who Majli says abused him, was sentenced to three years in prison for charges including committing an indecent act and maltreating detainees.
But Majli says he and other Iraqis abused in Abu Ghraib need financial compensation so they can build back their lives.
In the months and years after his release, Majli says he tried to obtain payment from the U.S. military for what he went through. He couldn't afford a lawyer and didn't know how to seek compensation, so he went to the Iraqi Bar Association in Baghdad in search of advice. But he says they only told him they didn't deal with these kinds of cases. He then sought help from the Iraqi Ministry for Human Rights. They wrote him a letter confirming they had him in their system as a former prisoner of Abu Ghraib, but said that's all they could do.
He didn't know where else to turn. It's possible there was nowhere for him to go. Baher Azmy, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, believes "no administrative mechanism was ever set up" in Baghdad to seek justice for victims of abuse by U.S. soldiers.
Almost 20 years on, none of the men who appeared in those photos that shocked the world has ever been compensated by the U.S. military for the mistreatment they suffered in Abu Ghraib.
Azmy did manage to secure a limited settlement for some survivors of abuse in U.S. detention facilities, including some individuals held in Abu Ghraib, from a private security firm whose translators operated in the prison. And his organization has a case against another private security company, CACI, that's been going for over 15 years and is currently stalled in the courts. But he says the U.S. military itself does not tend to compensate torture victims.
"This has been the position of the United States government across a range of atrocities they've committed against predominantly Muslims in the post-9/11 era: denying compensation for victims of torture in Abu Ghraib and in CIA black sites; denying compensation to those who the United States, you know, quite literally kidnapped and spirited away under the extraordinary rendition program to third countries where we knew and in some cases directed torture," Azmy says.
Col. Joe Buccino, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, told NPR that the "military prioritizes any claim of detainee abuse, torture and other grave breaches alleged against service members, as well as contractors supporting combat operations."
Buccino said: "Abu Ghraib was a shame on those responsible and we are saddened by Mr. Majli's story. This is a case that has already been litigated and the responsible service members have been punished. There is no record of compensation for the victims in this case."
For Majli, this case is anything but closed. Every day, he says, he has flashbacks to the terror, pain and humiliation he endured. He remains consumed by the need to find some kind of justice.
This is why he says he speaks to the media. His sons don't want him to, fearing this will bring further shame on their family. But for Majli, it's a way to keep searching for recognition of what was done to him. He needs something, he says; even just an apology
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Russian president Vladimir Putin and Egyptian president Abdel Fatah El-Sisi enter a hall during their meeting in Sochi, Russia, Oct. 17, 2018. (photo: Pavel Golovkin/AP)
President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi in February planned to produce 40,000 rockets for Russia and instructed officials to keep production and shipment secret ‘to avoid problems with the West’
A portion of a top secret document, dated Feb. 17, summarizes purported conversations between Sisi and senior Egyptian military officials and also references plans to supply Russia with artillery rounds and gunpowder. In the document, Sisi instructs the officials to keep the production and shipment of the rockets secret “to avoid problems with the West.”
The Washington Post obtained the document from a trove of images of classified files posted in February and March on Discord, a chat app popular with gamers. The document has not been previously reported.
The disclosure comes as Russia is fighting a war with Ukraine, in which both sides are seeking resupply of depleted arsenals.
In response to questions regarding the document and the veracity of the conversations it describes, Ambassador Ahmed Abu Zeid, spokesman for Egypt’s Foreign Ministry, said that “Egypt’s position from the beginning is based on noninvolvement in this crisis and committing to maintain equal distance with both sides, while affirming Egypt’s support to the U.N. charter and international law in the U.N. General Assembly resolutions.”
“We continue to urge both parties to cease hostilities and reach a political solution through negotiations,” he said.
A U.S. government official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to address sensitive information, said: “We are not aware of any execution of that plan,” referring to the rocket export initiative. “We have not seen that happen,” the official added.
Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh noted that the Justice Department has opened a probe into the leak of classified documents.
Providing arms to Russia for its war in Ukraine would represent a potentially explosive gambit for Egypt, a nation that, despite deepening ties with Moscow, remains deeply invested in its partnership with the United States, which for decades has provided the country more than $1 billion a year in security aid. The document does not explicitly say why Russia is interested in acquiring the rockets, but its military has been expending huge amounts of ammunition in the war, and the U.S. government has claimed that North Korea is clandestinely supplying Russia with artillery rounds and that China is considering doing the same.
Egypt and other American partners in the Middle East have attempted to stay on the sidelines of Western nations’ standoff with Russia over Ukraine, seeking a potential hedge against America’s declining role in the region and new means to ensure their economic and military security. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has raised commodity prices globally and put serious pressure on Egypt, the world’s top importer of wheat, which has received more than 80 percent of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine in recent years.
“Egypt is one of our oldest allies in the Middle East,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations and Appropriations committees. “If it’s true that Sisi is covertly building rockets for Russia that could be used in Ukraine, we need to have a serious reckoning about the state of our relationship.”
Sarah Margon, director of U.S. foreign policy at the Open Society Foundations and the Biden administration’s onetime nominee for the State Department’s top human rights post, said that “an intentional sale and delivery of rockets to the Russian government, which has committed such explicit war and other atrocity crimes, is just beyond the pale, especially for an ostensibly close U.S. ally.”
The revelations in the document, if true, raise the question of whether the United States “should continue to defend and support” Egypt if Sisi’s government is seeking a sale that would “serve Cairo’s immediate needs but is likely to have serious negative global impact,” she said.
During a visit to Cairo in March, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin asked Egyptian leaders to supply artillery ammunition to Ukraine but got no clear agreement, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Michael Hanna, director of U.S. programs at the International Crisis Group, noted that the Biden administration has been leading Western efforts to deny Russia and its mercenaries technology and arms needed for its war in Ukraine and punishing American adversaries such as Iran and North Korea who have done so.
“The idea that it would be Egypt in this role — that’s an embarrassment to the U.S.,” he said.
The document describes Sisi issuing instructions on Feb. 1 for keeping the supply of rockets secret in order “to avoid problems with ‘the West,’” telling a person referenced only as Salah al-Din that factory workers should be told the projectiles are intended for the Egyptian army. Salah al-Din is probably Mohamed Salah al-Din, the minister of state for military production. The gunpowder offered to Russia would come from Factory 18, the document said, which is the name of a decades-old chemical manufacturing plant.
The document quotes Salah al-Din as saying he would “order his people to work shift work if necessary because it was the least Egypt could do to repay Russia for unspecified help earlier.” The document does not make it clear what the earlier Russian help was. The leaked document quotes Salah al-Din as saying the Russians told him they were willing to “buy anything.”
Moscow and Cairo have inked several significant deals recently, including an agreement this year for Russia to build a massive railway workshop in Egypt. Rosatom, Russia’s state atomic energy corporation, also began construction last year on Egypt’s first nuclear power plant.
Perhaps most importantly, after the war in Ukraine disrupted access to Ukrainian wheat, Cairo began relying heavily on purchases of Russian grain. The arrangement has helped Egypt avoid wheat shortages that could spark social unrest in a country where poverty is widespread and bread is served with nearly every meal. Egypt is eager to avoid an uprising at home, where an acute economic crisis, including a devalued currency, high inflation and soaring food prices — fueled in part by the war in Ukraine — are stirring up frustrations among civilians.
In the document, Sisi is quoted as saying that he was considering selling “ordinary stuff” to China to make room for “more Sakr 45 production,” a reference to a type of 122mm rocket manufactured by Egypt. The document does not explicitly say whether the rockets that would be produced for Russia were Sakr 45s, but such rockets would be compatible with Russian Grad multiple rocket launchers.
Provision of weapons to the Russian government might also trigger U.S. sanctions on Egypt.
Military-owned companies have thrived under Sisi’s rule. He has overseen the opening of several new military factories in recent years, including one in 2020 called Factory 300, which produces small arms, ammunition and missiles. That same year, Egypt presented a plan to expand its production of such materiel, including producing more ammunition and parts for different kinds of weaponry.
While the document does not state how the U.S. government gleaned the details of the Egyptian deliberations, some of the information in the recently leaked documents appears to come from signals intelligence, which refers to technical means such as communications intercepts. The U.S. government has long had a vast eavesdropping capability and a history of intercepting communication from foreign leaders.
On Tuesday, Egyptian state-run TV channel Al Qahera quoted a government source who described the allegations as being “false” and having “no basis in truth.” Other state media republished the same quote.
The Feb. 1 conversation involving Sisi would have occurred just days after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Egypt’s president during a visit to Cairo. Immediately after Blinken’s visit, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry traveled to Moscow for talks with Russian leaders. Relations between the United States and Egypt have been strained in recent years as the Biden administration has increased pressure on Sisi’s government over its record of repressing civil society, jailing dissidents and employing force against critics.
Sarah Yager, Washington director for Human Rights Watch, which has previously called for an arms embargo on Egypt for its security forces’ involvement in abuses, said that rocket sales to Russia would enable more abuses abroad.
“I would also question whether any U.S. security assistance is being used to manufacture these arms that might go to Russia,” Yager said.
In September, U.S. officials announced they would withhold $130 million from Egypt’s annual allotment of $1.3 billion in security aid over Cairo’s human rights record. They cited steps toward releasing political prisoners in their decision not to withhold more aid, part of the administration’s attempt to balance concern about human rights with U.S. and regional security interests.
Successive American administrations have valued Egypt’s role in brokering agreements to contain violence in the long-running Israeli-Palestinian dispute. In March, representatives from Israel and the Palestinian territories met in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in an attempt to cool tensions around the latest flare-up of violence.
But for its part, Egypt has grown increasingly dissatisfied with its U.S. relationship, including the conditions Washington places on human rights and democratization. Cairo believes its position is weakened if it grows over-reliant on the United States and has sought to use its long-standing relationship with Russia as a way to exert leverage, said Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“The military feels taken for granted by the U.S.,” he said.
Hanna said the fact that the two countries’ partnership had withstood intense disagreements in the past may have encouraged the Egyptian government to believe it could risk a move that would be sure to be met with intense disapproval in Washington.
“The story of the relationship is that it just continues,” he said. “There’s a lot of inertia and path dependence here.”
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The Chevron refinery in Pascagoula, Mississippi. (photo: Kathleen Flynn/ProPublica)
A senator questioned the EPA chief and a group sued the agency after ProPublica and the Guardian revealed that the EPA gave a Chevron refinery approval to make a fuel that could leave people nearby with a 1-in-4 lifetime risk of cancer.
The new scrutiny is in response to an earlier investigation by ProPublica and the Guardian that revealed the EPA approved the new chemicals even though its own scientists calculated that pollution from production of one of the plastic-based fuels was so toxic that 1 in 4 people exposed to it over their lifetime would be expected to develop cancer. That risk is 250,000 times greater than the level usually considered acceptable by the EPA division that approves new chemicals, and it’s higher than the lifetime risk of cancer for current smokers.
On Friday, a community organization sued the EPA in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., over the agency’s decision to allow a Chevron refinery in Pascagoula, Mississippi, to produce the fuels derived from plastic waste, including the one that could subject people nearby to a 1-in-4 lifetime cancer risk. Cherokee Concerned Citizens, which represents residents in a housing subdivision close to that refinery, is asking the court to invalidate the EPA’s approval of the new chemicals.
Earlier in the week, the chair of the U.S. Senate subcommittee that oversees chemical safety questioned the head of the EPA over the agency’s approval of those fuels. Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon, told EPA Administrator Michael Regan in a letter sent on Wednesday that he found what ProPublica and the Guardian discovered “especially troubling.”
“While it is urgent that our country takes actions to address climate chaos we need to ensure that the steps we take actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions and do not do so by sacrificing historically marginalized communities and those who are already overburdened by toxic pollution,” Merkley wrote.
The plastic-based fuels were given a green light under an EPA program designed to make it easier to create alternatives to fossil fuels. As ProPublica and the Guardian noted in the February story, making fuel from plastic is in some ways worse for the climate than simply creating it directly from coal, oil or gas. That’s because nearly all plastic is derived from fossil fuels, and additional fossil fuels are used to generate the heat that turns discarded plastic into fuels.
Federal law does not allow the EPA to approve new chemicals that have serious health or environmental risks unless the agency finds ways to minimize them. Yet, the agency approved the new plastic-based fuels without requiring lab tests, air monitoring or controls that would reduce the release of cancer-causing pollutants or nearby residents’ exposure to them, ProPublica and the Guardian found.
The sky-high risks and lack of safeguards for the people who would breathe pollution from the refinery’s smokestack are at the center of a lawsuit brought by residents of Pascagoula’s Cherokee Forest subdivision. The subdivision, which is near a number of industrial facilities, was inundated with cancer-causing pollution well before the new fuels were approved, as ProPublica reported in 2021, and the residents have been working for years to curb local emissions.
Barbara Weckesser, a resident who co-founded the group that’s suing the EPA, said she was surveying her neighbors about illnesses she fears are related to pollution just before she read about the approval of the plastic-based fuels on ProPublica’s website. “I was sitting down in my chair and I said holy — I won’t say the rest of it,’” said Weckesser. “Here we go again.” She noted that five of her neighbors are currently undergoing chemotherapy.
Katherine O’Brien, an Earthjustice senior attorney who represents the community group, said the law requires the EPA to address “unreasonable risks” presented by chemicals. The agency can impose specific limits or requirements that companies must follow and, when necessary, prevent them from making or using a chemical. “The community should not be subjected to additional emissions of novel toxic chemicals, particularly where EPA found that the chemicals will pose jaw-dropping risks to human health,” O’Brien said.
An EPA spokesperson on Friday declined to comment about the lawsuit. When asked about the fuels in February, a spokesperson for the agency said that the 1-in-4 cancer risk calculation was “a very conservative estimate with ‘high uncertainty,’” meaning that it erred on the side of caution in calculating such a high risk.
The spokesperson at that time explained that the EPA included plastic-based fuels in a program focused on biofuels because the initiative also covers fuels made from waste. As of February, the program had approved 34 fuels; 16 of them were made from waste. All 16 of the waste-based fuels were subject to consent orders, documents that the EPA issues when it finds that new chemicals or mixtures may pose an “unreasonable risk” to the environment or human health. Consent orders spell out the risks and specify the agency’s plans for mitigating them.
Asked about Sen. Merkley’s letter, the EPA said in a written statement that it “looks forward to the opportunity to clarify the record as well as its approach to reviewing” these new chemicals, “communicate more clearly about the risks associated with the submissions the agency has already reviewed, and discuss ways EPA plans to improve this approach in the future.”
In a written statement, Chevron told ProPublica and The Guardian in February that the company had followed the EPA’s process under the Toxic Substances Control Act, which regulates chemicals. The statement said, “We are taking steps to address plastic waste and support a circular economy in which post-use plastic is recycled, reused or repurposed.”
Chevron also recently created a webpage that it says answers questions raised by the community about the February article. On it, the company describes its new fuels as “part of an advanced sustainable recycling program” and notes that it has not begun to produce them. The website also describes the 1-in-4 cancer risk as “based on EPA’s initial risk screening.”
In fact, that high lifetime cancer risk was the EPA’s own calculation and was detailed in a final consent order that was signed by a manager at Chevron’s Pascagoula refinery and the director of EPA’s new chemicals division.
The Chevron website also says that the cancer risk “was taken out of context and doesn’t reflect how it would actually be done given the processes and safeguards we use every day at the refinery to ensure we do everything safely or not at all.” The company website says Chevron did a trial of the process about a year ago and found that “the refinery functioned normally” and emission levels “remained normal.”
The website says that the company “will not do anything that is unsafe for our workers or our neighboring communities. We will ensure it can be done safely or not at all.”
A Chevron spokesperson declined to comment about the lawsuit. Asked about Sen. Merkley’s letter, the company in a new written statement said it stood by its earlier comments and noted that the EPA review under the Toxic Substances Control Act “begins with an initial screening analysis to identify preliminary chemical risks. The next steps include adding workplace safety and environmental protections, which are also in that consent order.”
Chevron also wrote, “A variety of environmental regulations and permitting processes govern air, water and handling hazardous materials,” including the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. “Any responsible reading of chemical risks will be informed by these requirements.”
As ProPublica and the Guardian noted in February, the Clean Water Act does not address air pollution, and the new fuels are not regulated under the Clean Air Act, which applies to a specific list of pollutants. The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act governs the management of waste.
While state regulators can add specific pollutants to permits that regulate air emissions, it would be difficult in this case, because critical details about the fuels were hidden by the EPA. The consent order even blacked out the names of the chemicals. The agency said that these basic facts were considered confidential business information.
In his letter, Merkley asked EPA Administrator Regan which federal rules and regulations apply to the air pollution emitted during the production of the plastic-based fuels. Merkley had other pointed questions for the agency, including why it approved the new chemicals without a more thorough understanding of their risks and how it plans to monitor their production to ensure environmental safety and public health.
Merkley — chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Chemical Safety, Waste Management, Environmental Justice, and Regulatory Oversight — reminded Regan that the EPA told the public the new fuels program supported a federal climate change plan that lists promoting environmental justice as a key goal. “How does the EPA balance or reconcile that goal with the increased environmental and public health hazards imposed by these new chemicals?” he asked.
Merkley also wrote, “So-called ‘chemical recycling’ has been touted by companies like Chevron as a way to reduce plastic waste through repurposing it but turning plastic waste into fuel increases greenhouse gas emissions, subsidizes the petrochemical industry, and harms frontline communities located near these facilities.”
The senator also asked for a list of all the new waste-based fuels approved and all consent orders issued under this program. ProPublica and the Guardian requested this same information earlier this year, but the agency wouldn’t provide it. Merkley gave Regan an April 30 deadline.
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