16 April 23
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We are witnessing the logical culmination of win-at-any-cost politics – and Donald Trump has encouraged it
We have a Democratic party, which – notwithstanding a few glaring counter-examples, such as what the Democratic National Committee did to Bernie Sanders in 2016 – is still largely committed to democracy.
And we have a Republican party, which is careening at high velocity toward authoritarianism. OK, fascism.
What occurred in Nashville last week is a frightening reminder of the fragility of American democracy when Republicans obtain supermajorities and no longer need to work with Democratic lawmakers.
The two Tennessee Democrats who Republicans expelled from the Tennessee house have been restored to their seats until special elections are held, but the damage to democracy cannot be easily undone.
The two were not accused of criminal wrongdoing or even immoral conduct. Their putative offense was to protest against Tennessee’s failure to enact stronger gun controls after a shooting at a Christian school in Nashville left three nine-year-old students and three adults dead.
They were technically in violation of house rules, but the state legislature has never imposed so severe a penalty for rules violations. In fact, over the past few years, several Tennessee legislators have kept their posts even after being charged with serious sexual misconduct. And the two who were expelled last week are Black people, while a third legislator who demonstrated in the same manner but was not expelled is white.
We are witnessing the logical culmination of win-at-any-cost Trump Republican politics – scorched-earth tactics used by Republicans to entrench their power, with no justification other than that they can.
Democracy is about means. Under it, citizens don’t have to agree on ends (abortion, healthcare, guns or whatever else we disagree about) as long as we agree on democratic means for handling our disagreements.
But for Trump Republicans, the ends justify whatever means they choose – including expelling lawmakers, rigging elections through gerrymandering, refusing to raise the debt ceiling and denying the outcome of a legitimate presidential election.
Wisconsin may soon offer an even more chilling example. While liberals celebrated the election last Tuesday of Janet Protasiewicz to the Wisconsin supreme court because she will tip the court against the state’s extreme gerrymandering (the most extreme in the nation) and its fierce laws against abortion (among the most stringent in America), something else occurred in Wisconsin on election day that may well negate Protasiewicz’s victory.
Voters in Wisconsin’s eighth senatorial district decided (by a small margin) to send Republican Dan Knodl to the state senate. This gives the Wisconsin Republican party a supermajority – and with it, the power to remove key state officials, including judges, through impeachment.
Several weeks ago, Knodl said he would “certainly consider” impeaching Protasiewicz. Although he was then talking about her role as a county judge, his interest in impeaching her presumably has increased now that she’s able to tip the state’s highest court.
As in Tennessee, this could be done without any necessity for a public justification. Under Republican authoritarianism, power is its own justification.
Recall that in 2018, after Wisconsin voters elected a Democratic governor and attorney general, the Republican legislature and the lame duck Republican governor responded by significantly cutting back the power of both offices.
Meanwhile, a newly installed Republican supermajority in Florida has given Ron DeSantis unbridled control – with total authority over the board governing Disney, the theme park giant he has fought over his anti-LGBTQ “don’t say gay” law; permission to fly migrants from anywhere in the US to destinations of his own choosing, for political purposes, and then send the bill to Florida’s taxpayers; and unprecedented prosecutorial power in the form of his newly created, hand-picked office of election “integrity”, pursuing supposed cases of voter fraud.
Without two parties committed to democratic means to resolve differences in ends, the party committed to democracy is at a tactical disadvantage. If it is to survive, eventually it, too, will sacrifice democratic means to its own ends.
In these circumstances, partisanship turns to enmity and political divisions morph into hatred. In warfare there are no principles, only wins and losses. America experienced this 160 years ago, when the civil war tore us apart.
Donald Trump is not singularly responsible for this dangerous trend, but he has legitimized and encouraged the ends-justify-the-means viciousness now pushing the GOP toward becoming the American fascist party.
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In an image from video, Matthew Kacsmaryk, who was nominated by President Donald Trump to be a U.S. district judge, answers questions at his Senate confirmation hearing in Washington on Dec. 13, 2017. (photo: Reuters)
The judge who delivered a high-stakes abortion pills ruling last week removed his name from a law review article during his judicial nomination process, emails show
The Obama administration, the draft article argued, had discounted religious physicians who “cannot use their scalpels to make female what God created male” and “cannot use their pens to prescribe or dispense abortifacient drugs designed to kill unborn children.”
But a few months after the piece arrived, an editor at the law journal who had been working with Kacsmaryk received an unusual email: Citing “reasons I may discuss at a later date,” Kacsmaryk, who had originally been listed as the article’s sole author, said he would be removing his name and replacing it with those of two colleagues at his legal group, First Liberty Institute, according to emails and early drafts obtained by The Washington Post.
What Kacsmaryk did not say in the email was that he had already been interviewed for a judgeship by his state’s two senators and was awaiting an interview at the White House.
As part of that process, he was required to list all of his published work on a questionnaire submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee, including “books, articles, reports, letters to the editor, editorial pieces, or other published material you have written or edited.”
The article, titled “The Jurisprudence of the Body,” was published in September 2017 by the Texas Review of Law and Politics, a right-leaning journal that Kacsmaryk had led as a law student at the University of Texas. But Kacsmaryk’s role in the article was not disclosed, nor did he list the article on the paperwork he submitted to the Senate in advance of confirmation hearings in which Kacsmaryk’s past statements on LGBT issues became a point of contention.
Now, six years later, as Kacsmaryk sits as a judge in Amarillo, Tex., his strong ideological views have grabbed the country’s attention after his ruling last week that sought to block government approval of a key drug used in more than half of all abortions in the country — an opinion that invoked antiabortion-movement rhetoric and which some medical experts have said relied on debunked claims that exaggerate potential harms of the drug.
Kacsmaryk did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for First Liberty, Hiram Sasser, said that Kacsmaryk’s name had been a “placeholder” on the article and that Kacsmaryk had not provided a “substantive contribution.” Aaron Reitz, who was the journal’s editor in chief at the time and is now a deputy to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), said Kacsmaryk had been “our chief point of contact during much of the editing” and “was the placeholder until final authors were named by First Liberty.”
On Saturday, after this story was first published, Sasser provided an email showing that Stephanie Taub, one of the people listed as an author on the published article, was involved in writing an early draft.
But one former review editor familiar with the events said there was no indication that Kacsmaryk had been a “placeholder,” adding that this was the only time during their tenure at the law review that they ever saw author names swapped. The former editor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal, provided emails and several drafts of the article.
The circumstances surrounding the article’s authorship raise questions about whether a judicial nominee was seeking to duck scrutiny from a process designed to ensure that judges are prepared to interpret the law without personal bias, said lawyers who worked on judicial nominations in Republican and Democratic administrations — speaking hypothetically and not specifically about Kacsmaryk.
Adam H. Charnes, who worked on judicial nominations while the principal deputy in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy under President George W. Bush, said he would not have advised potential nominees to withdraw articles they had written or to publish them under others’ names.
“I’m pretty sure the Senate would expect you to produce something like that,” Charnes said.
The scenario “strikes me as problematic,” he said — and, he added, “a little shady.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee’s questionnaire requires nominees to disclose any publication with which they are associated, regardless of whether they are formally listed as authors, said Alex Aronson, who was a former chief counsel to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R. I) and led judicial nominations for the senator. Whitehouse questioned Kacsmaryk during his confirmation hearing.
“That would certainly seem to encompass a published article that a nominee effectively ghostwrote,” Aronson said.
To leave such a publication off the questionnaire, he added, is “unethical” and raises concerns about “the candor and honesty of the nominee.”
The Post also interviewed another Republican lawyer who worked on judicial nominations in the Bush White House, at the recommendation of a friend of Kacsmaryk’s, who was told about this story ahead of publication. That lawyer, Mike Davis, said the situation did not raise any ethical concerns.
“A judicial nominee is not required to disclose draft legal writings under the Senate Judiciary Committee’s rules or practice,” said Davis, who runs a nonprofit entity that advocates for conservative judges.
“It looks like [Kacsmaryk] didn’t want to have any political controversy,” Davis added. “It’s still within the rules.”
When Kacsmaryk submitted the article in early 2017, he was deputy general counsel for First Liberty. By early April, he was well on his way to a judicial nomination. He was interviewed by members of the Federal Judicial Evaluation Committee in Dallas on March 3, then flew to D.C. to meet with Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, both of Texas, on April 3, according to a timeline Kacsmaryk submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
One week later, on April 11, he emailed an editor with a draft of the article, noting that he had made one small change, attaching a file titled “MJK First Draft.” (“MJK” are Kacsmaryk’s initials.)
“I modified the last sentence in the opening paragraph of section III,” Kacsmaryk wrote. At the end of the message he added, “Keep fighting the good fight!”
In late April — about a month before Kacsmaryk traveled to D.C. to meet with lawyers from Trump’s White House Counsel’s Office — he informed his editor that after consulting with the editor in chief, he would be replacing his name with two others’.
“For reasons I may discuss at a later date, First Liberty attorneys Justin Butterfield and Stephanie Taub will co-author the aforementioned article,” he said, according to an email obtained by The Post.
Butterfield and Taub, who still work at First Liberty, did not respond to requests for comment.
Before this story was published, Sasser said he had emails proving Kacsmaryk was not the actual author, but declined to share them with The Post.
“Matthew appears to have not gotten to the project so Stephanie decided to do a first draft that Justin edited,” Sasser wrote in a statement. “It appears Matthew provided some light edits.”
After publication, Sasser sent what he said were emails showing that Taub, who was then associate counsel, was involved in writing the article as early as December 2016. She sent an outline to Kacsmaryk, according to the emails provided by First Liberty, and then a first draft one month later.
“Here is a first draft of the article,” Taub wrote on January 17, 2017, according to emails provided by First Liberty. “Please let me know if you’d like more work on this or if you’ve got it from here.”
Neither Taub nor Butterfield’s name appears in the draft originally submitted by Kacsmaryk, including in the footnotes, according to emails and documents provided by the editor.
When Kacsmaryk requested the authorship switch, the editor familiar with the events said they raised the issue with Reitz, the law review’s editor in chief. The lower-ranking editor asked why Kacsmaryk was making the request.
Reitz smiled, the editor recalled, then said, “You’ll see.”
Reitz did not address the exchange with the editor in his statement to The Post. But he said that “because of their work on the article, Mr. Butterfield and Ms. Taub rightfully received credit as authors.”
Even after Butterfield and Taub were designated the authors, Kacsmaryk remained involved, the emails show, offering additional minor edits. The final version is almost identical to the one submitted under Kacsmaryk’s name.
Trump nominated Kacsmaryk to the federal bench in September 2017, the same month the article was published.
During his confirmation hearing that December, Democratic senators questioned Kacsmaryk extensively on his views on LBGT rights and abortion — issues at the heart of the article he had submitted to the law journal.
The journal article argues against a 2016 Department of Health and Human Services rule forbidding doctors to discriminate against patients who seek gender-affirming care or pregnancy termination. The rule from the Obama administration, the article says, should contain a “conscientious objector” exception.
A law review article is exactly the kind of material the Senate Judiciary Committee is trying to gather in the judicial confirmation process, several people said, because it provides a sense of the judge’s personal opinions.
While it is unfair to judge a nominee on work done on behalf of a client, said Charnes, the Republican who worked under Bush, “a law review article is different.”
“Those are [the author’s] views,” Charnes said — exactly what the Senate is trying to evaluate.
Kacsmaryk has defended his ability to be impartial in his work.
“As a judge, I’m no longer in the advocate role,” he said during his confirmation hearing. “I’m in the role of reading and applying with all good faith whatever Supreme Court and 5th Circuit precedent is binding.”
Asked whether transgender Americans should have equal protections, Kacsmaryk told the Senate Judiciary Committee that they should have “what the law provides.”
Many of Kacsmaryk’s recent decisions have been wins for the right, including two that struck down new Biden administration protections for transgender people. One decision, issued late last year, involved the same issues raised in the journal article, “Jurisprudence of the Body.”
Kacsmaryk sided with doctors represented by America First Legal Foundation, set up by former Trump White House adviser Stephen Miller, who challenged HHS guidelines designed to protect transgender patients against discrimination.
In his ruling, Kacsmaryk said that under Biden, HHS had wrongly interpreted a provision of Obama’s Affordable Care Act and had misapplied the landmark Supreme Court case extending workplace protections to gay and transgender individuals. The judge credited the doctors’ position that they should in certain situations still be able to refuse hormonal therapy and other forms of gender-affirming care for transgender patients.
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Bicycles burn during a protest outside the Paris City Hall on Friday, the day France's Constitutional Council approved an unpopular plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. (photo: Michel Euler/AP)
Macron's signature and publication in the Official Journal of the French Republic allowed the law to enter into force. The authorized changes will start being implemented in September, French government spokesperson Olivier Veran said.
On Friday, the Constitutional Council rejected some parts of the government's pension legislation but approved the higher minimum retirement age, which was central to Macron's plan and the focus of opponents' protests.
The nine-member council's decision capped months of tumultuous debates in parliament and fervor in the streets. Spontaneous demonstrations took place in Paris and across the country after the ruling.
France's main labor unions, which organized 12 nationwide protests since January in hopes of defeating the plan, have vowed to continue fighting until it is withdrawn. They called for another mass protest on May 1, which is International Workers' Day.
The government argued that requiring people to work two years more before qualifying for a pension was needed to keep the pension system afloat as the population ages; opponents proposed raising taxes on the wealthy or employers instead, and said the change threatened a hard-won social safety net.
Opinion polls show Macron's popularity has plunged to its lowest level in four years. The centrist president, who made raising the retirement age a priority of his second term, plans to make a televised national address on Monday evening, Macron's office said.
"The president's remarks are very much awaited" and will both seek to appease tensions in the country and explain decisions that have been made in the past months regarding the pension reform, government spokesperson Veran said.
Macron was first elected in 2017 on a promise to make France's economy more competitive, including by making people work longer.
Since then, his government has made it easier to hire and fire workers, cut business taxes and made it more difficult for the unemployed to claim benefits.
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South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem. (photo: Chris Bergin/Reuters)
Kristi Noem tells audience at NRA forum toddler has a shotgun, a rifle and a pony
While speaking on Friday at a National Rifle Association (NRA) lobbying leadership forum in Indiana, the Republican governor Kristi Noem told audience members her toddler grandchild has multiple guns, reported Mediaite.
During her remarks, Noem spoke about her grandchildren: Addie, who is almost two, and Branch, who is a few months old. Noem then said that Addie already had a shotgun and a rifle.
“Now Addie, who you know – soon will need them, I wanna reassure you, she already has a shotgun and she already has a rifle and she’s got a little pony named Sparkles too. So the girl is set up,” said Noem.
Noem’s remarks on her grandchild have gone viral on social media, with many commenters decrying the governor promoting gun ownership among children.
“Absolutely sickening. How the hell is this real life in America?” wrote the Tennessee Democrat Chris D Jackson on Twitter.
Another user commented: “Call CPS”.
Noem’s comments follow yet another recent mass shooting involving children. Last month, three children and three adults were killed by a shooter – a former student – at a private Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee.
Noem also signed an executive order during her remarks that seeks to “further protect the second amendment rights of South Dakotans”, and was joined on stage by the NRA’s CEO, Wayne LaPierre.
“South Dakota is setting the standard for the most second amendment friendly state in the nation,” said Noem when discussing the executive order.
The executive order would prohibit state agencies from contracting with any business that discriminate against a “firearm-related entity”, KELO reported.
Former vice-president Mike Pence also spoke at the conference, but was booed loudly by audience members as he made his way to speak in his home state – possibly because some of the Republican base turned on him after he certified the 2020 election results.
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Thomas's disclosure history is in the spotlight after ProPublica revealed that a Texas billionaire took him on lavish vacations and also bought from Thomas and his relatives a Georgia home where his mother lives, a transaction that was not disclosed on the forms. (photo: Jonathan Newton/WP)
The misstatements, which began when a family business transferred its holdings to another company, are part of a pattern that has raised questions about how the Supreme Court justice views his obligation to accurately report details about his finances to the public.
But that company — a Nebraska real estate firm launched in the 1980s by his wife and her relatives — has not existed since 2006.
That year, the family real estate company was shut down and a separate firm was created, state incorporation records show. The similarly named firm assumed control of the shuttered company’s land leasing business, according to property records.
Since that time, however, Thomas has continued to report income from the defunct company — between $50,000 and $100,000 annually in recent years — and there is no mention of the newer firm, Ginger Holdings, LLC, on the forms.
The previously unreported misstatement might be dismissed as a paperwork error. But it is among a series of errors and omissions that Thomas has made on required annual financial disclosure forms over the past several decades, a review of those records shows. Together, they have raised questions about how seriously Thomas views his responsibility to accurately report details about his finances to the public.
Thomas’s disclosure history is in the spotlight after ProPublica revealed this month that a Texas billionaire took him on lavish vacations and also bought from Thomas and his relatives a Georgia home where his mother lives, a transaction that was not disclosed on the forms. Thomas said in a statement that colleagues he did not name told him he did not have to report the vacations and that he has always tried to comply with disclosure guidelines. He has not publicly addressed the property transaction.
In 2011, after the watchdog group Common Cause raised red flags, Thomas updated years of his financial disclosure reports to include employment details for his wife, conservative activist Virginia “Ginni” Thomas. The justice said at the time that he had not understood the filing instructions. In 2020, he was forced to revise his disclosure forms after a different watchdog group found he had failed to report reimbursements for trips to speak at two law schools.
A judicial ethics expert said the pattern was troubling.
“Any presumption in favor of Thomas’s integrity and commitment to comply with the law is gone. His assurances and promises cannot be trusted. Is there more? What’s the whole story? The nation needs to know,” said Stephen Gillers, a legal ethics expert at New York University.
Gillers said all three branches of government should investigate Thomas’s compliance or noncompliance with federal ethics law. “The Supreme Court has been the glue that has held the republic together since 1790 with the Civil War the only interruption. We need the public to respect it even when it disagrees with it and to understand why it is important. Generally, the public has,” he said. “But that respect is now in serious jeopardy, and others must do something to stop the free fall.”
Thomas did not respond to emailed questions sent through a court spokeswoman. His wife also did not respond to requests for comment.
Thomas’s income from the firm he describes as “Ginger, Ltd., Partnership” on the financial disclosure forms has grown substantially over the last decade, though the precise amounts are unknown because the forms require only that ranges be reported. In total, he has reported receiving between $270,000 to $750,000 from the firm since 2006, describing it as “rent.” Thomas’s salary as a justice this year is $285,000.
The company’s roots trace back to two lakeside neighborhoods developed decades ago by Ginni Thomas’s late parents in a community in Douglas County, just outside of Omaha.
Ginger Limited Partnership was created in 1982 to sell and lease real estate, state incorporation records show, and its partners were Ginni Thomas, her parents and her three siblings. The firm owned and leased out residential lots in two developments, Ginger Woods and Ginger Cove, collecting rent annually from each occupied plot of land, according to copies of lease agreements on file with the county.
When he was nominated to a federal appeals court in 1990, Thomas listed the firm in a financial statement as one of his wife’s assets — worth $15,000 at the time.
The firm was dissolved in March 2006. Around the same time, Ginger Holdings, LLC was created in Nebraska, according to state records, which list the same business address as the shuttered company and name Joanne K. Elliott, the sister of Ginni Thomas, as manager.
The same month, the leases for more than 200 residential lots in Ginger Woods and Ginger Cove were transferred from Ginger Limited Partnership to Ginger Holdings, LLC, property records in Douglas County show.
Reached by phone, Elliott referred questions about the two companies to Ginni Thomas.
“You could call her and she could answer anything that she wants you to know,” Elliott said before hanging up.
Ginni Thomas is not named in state incorporation records related to Ginger Holdings, LLC.
In his most recent disclosure, in 2021, Thomas estimated that his family’s interest in Ginger Limited Partnership, the defunct firm, was worth between $250,000 and $500,000. He reported receiving an income from it between $50,000 and $100,000 that year.
On Friday, congressional Democrats with oversight of federal courts cited Thomas’s “apparent pattern of noncompliance with disclosure requirements” in calling on the Judicial Conference — the policymaking body for the federal courts — to refer him to the attorney general for an investigation into whether he violated federal ethics laws.
In addition to the recent revelations about Thomas’s financial relationship with Harlan Crow, the Texas billionaire, they cited a period in the 2000s in which Thomas failed to disclose his wife’s employment as required by law until the omission was reported by the watchdog group Common Cause.
Ginni Thomas earned more than $686,000 from the conservative Heritage Foundation from 2003 until 2007, according to the nonprofit’s tax forms. Clarence Thomas checked a box labeled “none” for his wife’s income during that period. He had done the same in 2008 and 2009 when she worked for conservative Hillsdale College.
Thomas acknowledged the error when he amended those filings in 2011. He wrote that the information had been “inadvertently omitted due to a misunderstanding of the filing instructions.”
In some years before those omissions, however, Thomas had correctly reported his wife’s employment.
Thomas failed to report the sale of the three Georgia properties to Crow in 2014, and he also continued to report that he owned a share of those properties as late as 2015, his disclosure forms show. In addition, beginning in 2010, his disclosures described the properties as being located in Liberty County, Ga., even though they were actually located in Chatham County.
Thomas also did not report reimbursement for transportation, meals and lodging while teaching at the universities of Kansas and Georgia in 2018. After the omission was flagged by the nonprofit Fix the Court, Thomas amended his filing for that year. He also amended his 2017 filing, on which he had left off similar reimbursements while teaching at Creighton Law School, his wife’s alma mater.
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The Sudanese military and a powerful paramilitary group battled for control of the chaos-stricken nation for a second day Sunday, signaling they were unwilling to end hostilities despite mounting diplomatic pressure to cease fire. (photo: Marwan Ali/AP)
Heavy fighting involving armored vehicles, truck-mounted machine guns and war planes raged Sunday in the capital of Khartoum, the adjoining city of Omdurman and in flashpoints across the country. The rival forces are believed to have tens of thousands of fighters each in the capital alone.
At least 56 civilians were reported killed, including three employees of the U.N. food agency. The Sudan Doctors’ Syndicate said it believed there were dozens of additional deaths among the rival forces. It said close to 600 people were wounded, including civilians and fighters.
The clashes are part of a power struggle between Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, the commander of the armed forces, and Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, the head of the Rapid Support Forces group. The two generals are former allies who jointly orchestrated an October 2021 military coup that derailed Sudan’s short-lived transition to democracy.
In recent months, internationally backed negotiations revived hopes for an orderly transition to democracy. However, growing tensions between Burhan and Dagalo eventually delayed a deal with political parties.
In Khartoum and Omdurman, fighting was reported around the military headquarters, Khartoum International Airport and state television headquarters. A senior military official said RSF fighters clashed with troops at military headquarters early Sunday and that a fire broke out at a facility for ground troops.
“The battles have not stopped,” said prominent rights advocate Tahani Abass who lives near the military headquarters. “They are shooting against each other in the streets. It’s an all-out war in residential areas.”
Abass said her family spent the night huddling on the ground floor of their home. “No one was able to sleep and the kids were crying and screaming with every explosion,” she said. Sounds of gunfire were heard while she was speaking to The Associated Press.
The military and the RSF both claimed to be in control of strategic locations in Khartoum and elsewhere in the county. Their claims couldn’t be independently verified.
Both sides signaled late Saturday that they were unwilling to negotiate.
Burhan’s military called for dismantling the RSF, which it labeled a “rebellious militia.” Dagalo told the satellite news network Al Arabyia that he ruled out negotiation and called on Burhan to surrender.
Meanwhile, diplomatic pressure appeared to be mounting.
Top diplomats, including the U.S. Secretary of State, the U.N. secretary-general, the EU foreign policy chief, the head of the Arab League and the head of the African Union Commission urged the sides to stop fighting. Members of the U.N. Security Council, at odds over other crises around the world, called for an immediate end of the hostilities and a return to dialogue.
Arab states with stakes in Sudan — Qatar, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — made similar appeals.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he consulted with the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. “We agreed it was essential for the parties to immediately end hostilities without pre-condition,” he said in a statement early Sunday.
At the Vatican, Pope Francis said he was following “with worry” the events unfolding in Sudan. “I am close to the Sudanese people already so tried, and I invite prayers so that arms are laid down and dialogue prevails, to resume together the path of peace and harmony,” the pontiff said in remarks Sunday to the public in St. Peter’s Square.
The rival forces were fighting in several locations across Sudan, including the western Darfur region where tens of thousands of people live in camps for displaced people after years of genocidal civil war.
In the province of North Darfur, three Sudanese employees of the World Food Program were killed in clashes in the town of Kebkabiya, said Volker Perthes, the U.N. envoy to Sudan.
He said U.N. and other humanitarian premises were attacked and looted in several locations in Darfur.
“These recurring acts of violence disrupt the delivery of life-saving assistance and must end,” he said. He urged all sides to “ensure the safety and security of U.N. and all humanitarian personnel and respect the integrity of premises and assets.”
Dozens of people were also killed and wounded since Saturday at a camp for displaced people in North Darfur, said Adam Regal, a spokesman for a Darfur charity.
In Nyala, the capital of South Darfur province, the two sides fought for control of the city’s airport, said a military official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief media.
The official said fighting also spread to the eastern region, including the provinces of Kassala and al-Qadarif on the borders with Ethiopia and Eritrea. He said battles centered around RSF and army bases.
The recent tensions stem from disagreement over how the RSF, headed by Dagalo, should be integrated into the armed forces and what authority should oversee the process. The merger is a key condition of Sudan’s unsigned transition agreement with political groups.
Pro-democracy activists have blamed Burhan and Dagalo for abuses against protesters across the county over the past four years, including the deadly break-up of a protest camp outside the military’s headquarters in Khartoum in June 2019 that killed over 120 protesters. Many groups have repeatedly called for holding them accountable. The RSF has long been accused of atrocities linked to the Darfur conflict.
Sudan, a country at the crossroads of the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa, is known for its history of military coups and civil conflicts since it gained independence in 1950s.
The country has borders with six African nations and a strategic coastline on the Red Sea. A decade-old civil conflict resulted in the secession of South Sudan in 2011.
The clashes will increase hardship in Sudan, where the U.N. says some 16 million people — or one-third of the population — already depend on humanitarian assistance.
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(photo: Grist/Michael Nigro/Pacific Press/LightRocket)
More than 50,000 pages of newly released documents detail how the security firm targeted pipeline opponents and tried to profit off its surveillance tactics.
By October, TigerSwan, founded by James Reese, a retired commander of the elite special operations Army unit Delta Force, had established a military-style pipeline security strategy.
There was one nagging problem that threatened to unravel it all: Reese hadn’t acquired a security license from the North Dakota Private Investigation and Security Board. Although Reese claimed TigerSwan wasn’t conducting security services at all, the state regulator insisted that its operations were unlawful without a license.
TigerSwan turned to Jonathan Thompson, the head of the National Sheriffs’ Association, a trade group representing sheriffs, for help. The security board “has a problem understanding and staying within their charter,” Shawn Sweeney, TigerSwan’s senior vice president, wrote to Thompson. If he could “discuss possible political measures to apply pressure it will assist in the entire project success [sic],” the employee appealed.
Thompson was enthused to work with TigerSwan. “We are keen to be a strong partner where we can help keep the message narrative supportive,” he wrote back. “[C]all if ever need anything.”
Despite Thompson’s offer of assistance, TigerSwan continued to operate in North Dakota with no license for months. The company managed dozens of on-the-ground security guards, surveilled and infiltrated protesters, and passed along profiles of so-called “persons of interest” to one of the largest midstream energy companies in North America.
The revelation of TigerSwan’s close working relationship with the National Sheriffs’ Association is drawn from more than 50,000 pages of documents obtained by The Intercept through a public records request to the North Dakota Private Investigation and Security Board. In 2017, the board sued TigerSwan for providing security services without a license. The state eventually sought a $2 million dollar fine through the administrative process, but Tigerswan negotiated a $175,000 fine instead — well below standard fines for such activities.
A discovery request filed as part of the case forced thousands of new internal TigerSwan documents into the public record. Energy Transfer’s lawyers fought for nearly two years to keep the documents secret, until North Dakota’s Supreme Court ruled in 2022 that the material falls under the state’s open records statute. Because an arrangement between North Dakota and Energy Transfer allows the fossil fuel company to weigh in on which documents should be redacted, the state has yet to release over 9,000 disputed pages containing material that Energy Transfer is, for now at least, fighting to keep out of the public eye.
The released documents provide startling new details about how TigerSwan used social media monitoring, aerial surveillance, radio eavesdropping, undercover personnel, and subscription-based records databases to build watch lists and dossiers on Indigenous activists and environmental organizations.
At times the pipeline security company shared this information with law enforcement. In other cases, WhatsApp chats and emails confirm Tigerswan used what it gathered to follow pipeline opponents in their cars and develop propaganda campaigns online. The documents contain records of TigerSwan attempting to help Energy Transfer build a legal case against pipeline opponents, known as water protectors, using the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, a law that was passed to prosecute the mob.
The Intercept and Grist contacted TigerSwan, Energy Transfer, the National Sheriffs’ Association, as well as Thompson, the group’s executive director. None of them responded to requests for comment.
To TigerSwan, the emergence of Indigenous-led social movements to keep oil and gas in the ground represented a business opportunity. Reese anticipated new demand from the fossil fuel industry for strategies to undermine the network of activists his company had so carefully gathered information on. In the records, TigerSwan expressed its ambitions to repurpose these detailed records to position themselves as experts in managing pipeline protests. The company created marketing materials pitching work to at least two other energy companies building controversial oil and gas infrastructure, the records show. TigerSwan, which was staffed heavily with former members of military special operations units, branded its tactics as a “counterinsurgency approach,” drawing directly from its leaders’ experiences fighting the so-called War on Terror abroad.
TigerSwan did not just work in North Dakota. Energy Transfer hired the company to provide security to its Rover Pipeline in Ohio and West Virginia, the documents confirm. By spring 2017, TigerSwan was also assembling intelligence reports on opponents of Energy Transfer and Sunoco’s Mariner East 2 Pipeline in Pennsylvania.
The documents from the North Dakota security board paint a detailed picture of counterinsurgency-style strategies for defeating opponents of oil and gas development, a War-on-Terror security firm’s aspirations to replicate its deceptive tactics far beyond the Northern Great Plains, and the cozy relationship between businesses linked to the fossil fuel industry and one of the largest law enforcement trade associations in the U.S. The impetus for spying was not simply to keep people safe, but to drum up profits from energy clients and to allow fossil fuels to continue flowing, at the expense of the communities fighting for clean water and a healthy climate.
“For them, it was an opportunity to help create a narrative against our tribe and our supporters,” said Wasté Win Young, a citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the one of the plaintiffs in a class action civil rights lawsuit against TigerSwan and local law enforcement. Young’s social media posts repeatedly showed up in the documents. “We weren’t motivated by money or payoffs or anything like that. We just wanted to protect our homelands.”
The Intercept published the first detailed descriptions of TigerSwan’s tactics in 2017, based on internal documents leaked by a TigerSwan contractor. Nearly six years later, there have been no public indications that the security company obtained major new fossil fuel company contracts. Meanwhile, corporate lobbyists spurred the passage of so-called “critical infrastructure” laws widely understood to stifle fossil fuel protests in 19 states across the U.S. Collaborations between corporations and law enforcement against environmental defenders have proliferated, from Minnesota’s lake country to the urban forests of Atlanta.
No significant regulatory reforms have been enacted to prevent firms from repeating counterinsurgency-style tactics. And TigerSwan is far from the only firm to use invasive surveillance strategies. The North Dakota documents show that at least one other private security firm at Standing Rock appears to have utilized similar schemes against pipeline opponents.
“We need to always be very clear that the industry knows what a risk the climate movement is,” said May Boeve, the executive director of 350.org, a climate nonprofit that was repeatedly mentioned in TigerSwan’s marketing and surveillance material. “They’re going to keep using these kinds of strategies, but they’ll think of other things as well.”
TigerSwan’s aspirations
“Gentlemen, as you are aware there has been a shift in environmentalist and ‘First Nations’ groups regarding the tactics being used to prevent, deter, or interrupt the oil and gas industry,” said a February 2017 email drafted by TigerSwan employees to a regional official at ConocoPhillips, a major oil and gas producer — and a potential Tigerswan client.
“Recently in our area the situation has become extremely tense with ‘protestors’ using terrorist style tactics which are well beyond simple civil disobedience,” the email continued. “If steps have not already been taken to prevent and plans to mitigate [sic] an event or events like these to Conoco I may be able to suggest some solutions.”
TigerSwan’s marketing materials read like a playbook for undermining grassroots resistance. ConocoPhillips was just one of the companies the private security firm had in its sights.
In another case, a PowerPoint presentation drafted for Dominion, which was building the Atlantic Coast natural gas pipeline through three mid-Atlantic states, offered detailed profiles of local anti-pipeline groups and individuals identified as “threat actors.” (The planned pipeline was canceled in 2020.) TigerSwan laid out the types of services it could provide, including a “Law Enforcement Liaison” and access to GuardianAngel, its GPS and mapping tool. (Neither ConocoPhillips nor Dominion responded to questions about whether they hired the security firm.)
In January 2017, a TigerSwan deputy program manager emailed a presentation titled “Pipeline Opposition Model” to Reese and others, explaining that it was meant to serve as a business development tool and a “working concept to discuss the problem.” The presentation claimed external forces had helped drive the Standing Rock movement and pointed to outside tribes, climate nonprofits like 350.org, and even billionaires like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, who had a “vested interest in DAPL failure” because of their investments in the rail industry.
Water protectors used an elaborate set of social movement theories to advance their cause, another slide hypothesized, including “Lone Wolf terror tactics.” Specifically, TigerSwan speculated that pipeline opponents could be using the “hero cycle” narrative, a storytelling archetype, to recruit new movement members on social media and energize them to take action — a strategy, the presentation said, also used by ISIS recruiters.
Anyone whose work had touched the Standing Rock movement could become a villain in TigerSwan’s sales pitches. One PowerPoint presentation included biographical details about Zahra Hirji, a journalist who worked at the time for Inside Climate News. Another included a photo of a water protector’s former professor and her course list.
As a remedy, the company offered up a suite of “TigerSwan Solutions.” To the security firm, keeping the fossil fuel industry safe didn’t just mean drones, social media monitoring, HUMINT (short for human intelligence, such as from undercover personnel), and liaising with law enforcement — all included on its list — it also meant local community engagement, counter-protesters, building a “pipeline narrative,” and partnering with university oil and gas programs.
“Win the populace, and you win the fight,” the presentation stated, repeating a key principle of counterinsurgency strategy.
Reese approved. “I’d like to have these cleaned up and branded so I can use,” he wrote back.
Reese used similar material to shore up his relationship with existing clients. In December 2016, he requested a copy of a presentation titled “Strategic Overview,” which he hoped to send to Energy Transfer supervisors working on building the Rover natural gas pipeline. The presentation, a version of which The Intercept previously published, draws heavily from a 2014 report by the Republican minority staff of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, claiming that a “club” of billionaires control the environmental movement.
In a memo called “The Standing Rock Effect,” Tigerswan lays out a set of seven criteria the company had developed for identifying anti-pipeline camps sprouting up across the country. “TigerSwan’s full suite of security offerings offsets the risk these camps pose to a company’s bottom line,” the company concluded.
Tigerswan utilized its promotional materials to target both energy companies and states with oil and gas resources. In April 2017, the security firm and the National Sheriffs’ Association planned to brief more than 50 state employees in Nebraska, including staffers in the governor’s office, the state Emergency Management Agency, and the State Patrol, on the “lessons learned” from the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. A contractor for the National Sheriffs’ Association wrote that the briefing was in part “to prepare the state of Nebraska for the Keystone Pipeline issues coming in months ahead.”
Targeting water protectors
TigerSwan’s obsessive tracking of environmental activists is laid out in detail in the North Dakota documents. Assisted at times by National Sheriffs’ Association personnel, the company targeted little-known water protectors, national non-profits, and even legal workers.
The first page of a template for intelligence sharing encouraged TigerSwan employees to enter information about any “New Person of Interest.” TigerSwan personnel routinely referred to its targets as “EREs,” short for Environmental Rights Extremists, apparently a version of the Department of Homeland Security’s classification of “Animal Rights/Environmental Violent Extremist” as one of five domestic terrorism threat categories.
A document labeled “Background Investigation: 350.org” helps explain why the company kept tabs on a national environmental organization with little visible presence on the ground at Standing Rock. Using an “Influence Rating Matrix,” TigerSwan ranked 350.org’s “formal position in organization/movement” and its “criminal history” as “0” — but gave its highest rating of “5” to the group’s size, funding, online presence, and history with similar movements.
TigerSwan also attempted to dig up dirt on legal workers with the Water Protector Legal Collective, which represented pipeline opponents. The security company used the CLEAR database, which is only available to select entities like law enforcement and licensed private security companies, to dig up information on attorney Chad Nodland. The company concluded that Nodland was also representing a regional electric cooperative that generates some of its power through wind — apparently considered a rival energy source to the oil the Dakota Access Pipeline would carry. (Nodland told The Intercept and Grist he never worked for the cooperative.) TigerSwan also put together a whole PowerPoint presentation on Joseph Haythorn, who also worked for the legal collective and submitted bail money for clients to be released.
At the same time, the National Sheriffs’ Association was building its own profiles and sharing them with TigerSwan. In one instance, a contractor for the sheriffs’ group passed along a six-page backgrounder on LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, a prominent Dakota Access Pipeline opponent and historian, to TigerSwan. The document included statements Allard made to the press, her public appearances, social media posts, and details about tax liens filed against her and her husband.
Targeting individual pipeline opponents like Allard seems to have been part of TigerSwan’s strategy particularly when it needed to have something to show its client, Energy Transfer Partners. In one exchange with employees, Reese suggested digging up more intelligence on a pipeline opponent who goes by the mononym Tawasi.
“We need to start going after Tawasi as fast as we can over the next couple weeks so we can show some more stuff to ETP,” Reese wrote, using an abbreviation for the company’s old name, Energy Transfer Partners. The documents show that TigerSwan kept close tabs on Tawasi, reporting his movements in daily situation reports, monitoring his social media, and at one point noting that he had gotten a haircut.
Tawasi, who had a large social media following but was not a prominent leader of the anti-pipeline movement, was bewildered that he had been so closely monitored. “They didn’t have anything at all,” he told The Intercept and Grist. “And they picked me as somebody that they thought they could make something out of.”
“It makes me feel unsafe,” he said, “because the same contractors could be working for a different company, still following me around under a different contract from the next oil company down the line.”
Prairie McLaughlin, Allard’s daughter, said records of TigerSwan’s activities remain important, even six years later. “It matters because it gives somebody a handbook on what could happen — what might happen.”
Not a ‘Mercenary Organization’
After The Intercept published its first set of leaked TigerSwan documents in 2017, the company attempted to downplay the impact of the revelations. In a memo, TigerSwan shrugged off the story’s importance. “The near-term impact of the article is positive for the company,” TigerSwan claimed. The revelations had caused water protectors to limit their social media activity, rendering them “incapable of effectively recruiting members, raising operational funding, or proselytizing,” TigerSwan wrote.
The company intended to use “information operations” to maintain the paranoia: “This looking over-their-shoulder behavior will continue for several months because of internal suspicions and targeted information operations.”
Internally, the company scrambled to mount a public relations response, calling on help from Chris LaCivita, a Republican political consultant now reportedly being considered for a senior role in Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. A memo emailed to LaCivita by TigerSwan’s external affairs director said that, as a defensive strategy, the company would assert on background that “TigerSwan is not a ‘mercenary organization.’” It was a point that must never be made on the record, the document says, because it “would be like saying ‘no I don’t beat my wife.’” (LaCivita did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
TigerSwan’s offensive strategy primarily consisted of trying to marshal evidence showing that water protectors were violent lawbreakers, professional protesters, un-American, and not even very Indigenous. The document author advised TigerSwan to locate “Any visuals, video of demonstrators waving flags or using insignia of an enemy of the United States.” Another suggested talking point said, “Upon our arrival, we quickly learned that a vast majority of the protestors were not indigenous not [sic] part of the peaceful water movement.”
In a final act of law enforcement collaboration, the memo advised TigerSwan to identify one local and one federal law enforcement source that could defend them — but only off the record.
Outside the public relations strategy, TigerSwan didn’t dramatically shift its tactics in response to the story, the documents suggest. In an email dated June 20, 2017, nearly a month after The Intercept’s first exposé, an intelligence analyst distributed a list of anti-pipeline camps across South Dakota, where the Keystone XL pipeline was supposed to be built.
“Maybe your folks can take a look at the list, check the social media for the sites, and figure out if A) you can get in and B) if there’s value to being inside and C) do you have the creds you need to get in. If you figure out that you need to attend some more events to build cred and access we can do that,” he said. “That should feed the beast until the next shiny thing.”
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