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The high court rules abortion pill mifepristone will remain broadly available as the legal battle moves forward
A majority of justices voted in favor of keeping mifepristone available, though it’s not clear which or how many. At least two justices publicly dissented from the unsigned order: Samuel Alito said the applicants “have not shown that they are likely to suffer irreparable harm” if the lower court’s decision were upheld, and Clarence Thomas who asserted he would have denied the Justice Department’s request to put the lower court’s decision on hold, but did not elaborate further.
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights said in a statement on Friday. “The lower court ruling out of Texas has zero basis in fact or law — and yet it has sowed chaos, confusion and panic for patients and providers across the country, including those in states with strong protections for abortion rights.”
For now, patients and providers will still be able to access the care that they need as the case unfolds. Anything short of an order of this kind would have, in the words of Carrie Flaxman, senior director of public policy litigation and law at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, unleashed “really devastating impacts on access, access to care, and [sown] confusion and chaos for providers and patients.”
Had the court sided with the anti-abortion advocates who brought the case, it could have ordered the FDA to rescind its approval of mifepristone, forcing medical providers in states where abortion remains legal to resort to other, less effective methods for early termination.
“I continue to stand by FDA’s evidence-based approval of mifepristone, and my administration will continue to defend FDA’s independent, expert authority to review, approve and regulate a wide range of prescription drugs,” President Joe Biden said in a statement hailing the decision on Friday.
Many providers were making plans to offer abortions using misoprostol — the second drug used in a typical medication abortion, and one which can also be taken alone to induce a miscarriage — a medication that remains widely available without a prescription. Democratic governors of states like Massachusetts, Washington, New York and California were stockpiling both drugs as a precaution in advance of the ruling.
The Supreme Court’s decision heads off the judicial crisis created by dueling federal court decisions — both of which ordered the FDA to take contradictory actions — and follows a months-long saga that has sowed chaos around the country.
In November, a coalition of anti-abortion medical societies filed a lawsuit arguing that the FDA had not adequately investigated mifepristone’s safety when the drug was first approved in 2000, or when additional restrictions were lifted in 2016. The flawed lawsuit was intentionally brought before Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Donald Trump-appointed judge sympathetic to the anti-abortion movement, and he, unsurprisingly, granted the plaintiff’s wish and ordered the FDA to withdraw its two decade approval of mifepristone.
That ruling was answered 20 minutes later by a federal judge in Washington state, who ordered the FDA to maintain approval of mifepristone in 17 states and the District of Columbia, which had petitioned to keep the drug available. Kacsmaryk’s ruling was appealed and partially upheld by the conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, before the Supreme Court stepped in on Friday to temporarily halt the decisions from going into effect.
More than 100 studies conducted over the course of more than 30 years in 26 countries have repeatedly proven mifepristone to be extremely safe and effective with very few complications.
The pharmaceutical industry is also breathing a sigh of relief. Drug companies, their executives, and investors had warned of a destabilizing period that would have upended the process for both approving drugs and maintaining approval of drugs, concerned any drug could be subject to a similarly baseless lawsuit that drives it off the market.
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A man stands near the wreckage of a vehicle damaged in an errant U.S. drone strike during the American evacuation of Afghanistan in August 2021. (photo: Hoshang Hashimi/AFP)
THE DISCORD LEAKS | A classified Pentagon assessment portrays the threat to Europe, Asia and the United States as a growing security concern
The attack planning, detailed in U.S. intelligence findings leaked on the Discord messaging platform and obtained by The Washington Post, reveal specific efforts to target embassies, churches, business centers and the FIFA World Cup soccer tournament, which drew more than 2 million spectators last summer in Qatar. Pentagon officials were aware in December of nine such plots coordinated by ISIS leaders in Afghanistan, and the number rose to 15 by February, says the assessment, which has not been disclosed previously.
“ISIS has been developing a cost-effective model for external operations that relies on resources from outside Afghanistan, operatives in target countries, and extensive facilitation networks,” says the assessment, which is labeled top-secret and bears the logos of several Defense Department organizations. “The model will likely enable ISIS to overcome obstacles — such as competent security services — and reduce some plot timelines, minimizing disruption opportunities.”
The Afghanistan findings are one facet of a complex and evolving terrorist threat described in the leaked documents, now linked to a criminal case in which a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard is accused of sharing classified information with friends online. Other reports in the same documents trove reveal persistent efforts by the Islamic State in other parts of the world to obtain expertise for creating chemical weapons and operating drone aircraft, and a plot in which the group’s supporters would kidnap Iraqi diplomats in Belgium or France in a bid to secure the release of 4,000 imprisoned militants.
The documents will almost certainly be used as a political cudgel by congressional Republicans and others still seething about the Biden administration’s chaotic management of the U.S. exit from Afghanistan in August 2021.
Hastily orchestrated, the evacuation enabled more than 120,000 people to flee the Taliban’s return to power. Tens of thousands of American allies were left behind, however, and the two-week operation saw horrific suffering. As the mission neared its end, an Islamic State suicide bomber killed an estimated 170 Afghans along with 13 American troops before U.S. drone operators, believing they had identified another would-be ISIS attacker, killed 10 civilians in a botched airstrike days later.
Biden administration officials declined to verify the leaked documents’ authenticity, but defended their counterterrorism record since taking office.
Adrienne Watson, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said in a statement that the United States “maintains the ability to remove terrorists from the battlefield without permanent troop presence on the ground,” and has reorganized U.S. counterterrorism operations to address future threats “anywhere.” She cited as evidence, among other actions the administration has taken this year, a U.S. Special Operations raid in Somalia that killed Bilal al-Sudani, an Islamic State leader whom U.S. officials have said had influence with the group’s component in Afghanistan. Unlike Afghanistan, the Pentagon keeps a small military force in Somalia.
A senior U.S. defense official said in an interview that, historically, the number of Islamic State plots in play have ebbed and flowed, with many never occurring. In Afghanistan, the Taliban has served as a check on the ISIS affiliate there, known as Islamic State-Khorasan or ISIS-K, the official said. The two groups have warred openly, with ISIS-K launching attacks on ethnic minorities and government institutions, and Taliban security forces conducting raids on Islamic State hideouts.
“I would never want to say that we had mortgaged our counterterrorism to a group like the Taliban, but it’s a fact that, operationally, they put pressure on ISIS-K,” the official said. “In a strange world, we have mutually beneficial objectives there.”
ISIS-K’s standing within the broader organization has risen, the official said, attributing that in part to the ongoing campaign to extinguish Islamic State cells in other locations. The United States also has better methods now, and better technology, for tracking ISIS operatives, the official said.
“We see a lot of discussion and not a lot of action at this point,” the senior official said.
Other current and former U.S. officials, while declining to comment on the specifics of the classified documents, said the reports appear to bear out previous warnings about the potential for a terrorist resurgence in Afghanistan after the U.S. withdrawal.
“ISIS-K has enjoyed safe haven in Afghanistan since the administration withdrew 20 months ago,” said Nathan Sales, the State Department’s coordinator for counterterrorism during the Trump administration. While its campaigns have mostly targeted Afghans, the group “has the ambition to attack American interests in the region and, ultimately, the U.S. homeland itself,” said Sales, who called for the urgent formulation of a plan to attack the group’s leadership and infrastructure.
The leaked assessment appears to complement congressional testimony from Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, who told the House Armed Services Committee in March that the Islamic State had a stronger presence in Afghanistan than it did a year ago and could be capable of attacks outside the country within six months “with little to no warning.” Kurilla, who oversees U.S. military operations in the region, added then that the United States can see only “broad contours” of the Islamic State’s planning there but not “the full picture.”
A spokesman for Kurilla declined to comment.
The Islamic State rose to power beginning in 2013, sweeping across hundreds of square miles in Syria and Iraq in a bloody campaign that included grisly executions recorded on video and women forced into sexual slavery. The group was driven into hiding after a U.S.-led coalition destroyed the remnants of its self-declared caliphate in 2019. Since then, the organization has carried out hundreds of terrorist attacks in those countries, most of them small-scale and lacking in coordination. It has lost multiple leaders in coalition military raids and airstrikes, and largely failed in its efforts to regain momentum or carry out significant operations elsewhere.
It’s unclear the extent to which the Afghan chapter coordinates its operations with the group’s central leadership, believed to be based in Syria, but the leaked documents highlight that components in those countries are looking to attack Western targets. The most worrisome reports detail efforts by the group to recruit technical experts online for terrorist attacks abroad.
One document written in March described an attempt last summer to acquire the services of a British sympathizer who claimed to possess “aerospace and chemical engineering skills.” The unidentified individual offered to provide guidance on missiles and unmanned aircraft, as well as the construction of a chemical weapon. The Briton was encouraged to send his information remotely rather than risk a dangerous trip to Syria or Iraq.
Separately, Iraq-based Islamic State operatives were observed vetting engineering students at a Damascus university to determine if their skills would be helpful. In another instance, the terrorist group sought information from a “Ukraine-based individual” about building a drone strong enough to carry a substantial a payload, the March document shows.
The Islamic State has explored the possibility of using chemical weapons and drones in terrorist attacks since at least 2015. A U.N. investigating panel has documented an extensive effort during the caliphate era to manufacture mustard gas and other chemical agents, some of which were used in battle and tested on prisoners.
Despite the ongoing efforts to acquire a weapon of mass destruction, the March 2023 document notes, encouragingly, that the terrorist group’s ambitions were severely undermined by the collapse of the caliphate.
Since 2019, the group has struggled to find safe locations and personnel for constructing weapons, and it has been forced to rely on far-flung sympathizers for support and advice, according to the leaked document. It assesses that the Islamic State would be restricted in the near future to “small-scale manufacturing” of conventional explosives or possibly chemical or biological weapons, and that such efforts would continue to be thwarted by an inability to acquire necessary precursors and expertise.
The documents also detail the Islamic State responding to several recent world events, including consideration for sending a suicide bomber to Qatar to attack the World Cup tournament last year.
Militants also weighed multiple retaliatory plots in response to Quran burnings by far-right activists in Sweden and the Netherlands. Those plots included calls for attacks on Swedish or Dutch diplomatic facilities in Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Russia, Turkey and other countries, the leaked documents said, though it does not appear any such strike was carried out.
As a collection, the documents indicate that U.S. intelligence agencies have succeeded repeatedly in intercepting the communications among Islamic State cells. Such intercepts appear to have led to the disruption of plans for kidnappings and small-arms attacks on government buildings in Europe.
In recent weeks, U.S. forces have carried out two strikes in northern Syria targeting what the Pentagon described as senior Islamic State leaders. An April 4 strike killed a man said to be “responsible for planning ISIS attacks in Europe,” according to a statement. A helicopter raid by U.S. Special Operations forces on April 17 killed a second Islamic State official described as an “operational planner responsible for planning terrorist attacks in the Middle East and Europe,” a spokesman said.
The documents also suggest that the al-Qaeda organization once headed by Osama bin Laden continues to decline. While the reports highlight the emerging threat from ISIS in Afghanistan, there is no mention of an al-Qaeda resurgence there, something many counterterrorism experts had feared would happen following the U.S. withdrawal.
The group’s reclusive leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, sought refuge in Kabul but was identified and targeted in a CIA-led operation that culminated in July 2022 in a lethal strike on an apartment where Zawahiri was staying in the Afghan capital in proximity to the former U.S. Embassy.
Since then, evidence suggests that bin Laden’s group “is not reconstituting,” said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA counterterrorism official who advised successive U.S. administrations on strategy for battling the group.
“The withdrawal from Afghanistan is a disaster, especially for Afghan women,” Riedel said. “But the administration is right about al-Qaeda: It is all but destroyed.”
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The case continues to wind through America’s court system and remains challenged by anti-abortion groups. (photo: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP)
US supreme court has preserved access to mifepristone for now, but blue states announce plans to safeguard abortion rights
On Friday, the supreme court decided to temporarily block a lower court ruling that would have significantly restricted the availability of mifepristone, an FDA-approved abortion medication.
Nevertheless, as the case continues to wind through America’s court system and remains challenged by anti-abortion groups, more Democratic states are now stockpiling abortion pills amid an unpredictable legal battle.
Earlier this month, Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas issued a preliminary injunction that suspended the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, calling it a drug that is used to “kill the unborn human”.
Swiftly after Kacsmaryk’s ruling, Democratic states have been stockpiling abortion pills including mifepristone as well as misoprostol, the second drug in the abortion regimen which can also be used on its own, although less effectively.
At the Massachusetts governor Maura Healey’s request, the University of Massachusetts Amherst has purchased approximately 15,000 doses of mifepristone. The stockpile is expected to offer “sufficient coverage” in the state for over a year.
“Mifepristone has been used safely for more than 20 years and is the gold standard. Here in Massachusetts, we are not going to let one extremist judge in Texas turn back the clock on this proven medication and restrict access to care in our state,” Healey said last week.
Meanwhile, the Democratic governors of New York and California both announced plans to stockpile misoprostol in attempts to safeguard their states’ abortion access.
New York’s governor Kathy Hochul announced last week that New York will be purchasing misoprostol in order to stockpile 150,000 doses, a five-year supply.
Hochul also pledged that if mifepristone is removed from the market, New York will commit up to an additional $20m to providers to support other abortion methods.
In a similar move, governor Gavin Newsom of California announced last week that the state has secured an emergency stockpile of up to 2m misoprostol pills
“We will not cave to extremists who are trying to outlaw these critical abortion services. Medication abortion remains legal in California,” Newsom said, adding that California has shared the negotiated terms of its misoprostol purchase agreement to assist other states in securing the pill at low cost.
Since then, additional Democratic states have followed suit.
The governor of Maryland, Wes Moore, recently announced a partnership with the University of Maryland’s medical system to purchase a “substantial amount of mifepristone”.
“This purchase is another example of our administration’s commitment to ensure Maryland remains a safe haven for abortion access and quality reproductive health care,” said Moore, who also released $3.5m in previously withheld funding for the state’s abortion care clinical training program.
On Thursday, Oregon made a similar announcement, with its governor Tina Kotek revealing the state has secured a three-year supply of mifepristone, regardless of the supreme court’s ruling on the pill.
“Here in Oregon, I will make sure that patients are able to access the medication they need and providers are able to provide that medication without unnecessary, politically motivated interference and intimidation,” Kotek said.
With Democratic states rushing to stock up on abortion pills, the tumultuous legal fight for abortion access is far from over. In the last nine months, 13 states have banned abortion. With anti-abortion groups fighting for increased pill restrictions nationwide, even states that have legalized the procedure may become affected.
Following the supreme court’s decision to temporarily block mifepristone restrictions, the next stage of the litigious battle over the drug will take place in the fifth circuit, with oral arguments scheduled for 17 May. The case will then likely return back to the supreme court.
In a statement to the New York Times, Erik Baptist, a senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal organization representing a coalition of anti-abortion groups and doctors, pledged to continue fighting against abortion care.
“The FDA must answer for the damage it has caused to the health of countless women and girls and the rule of law by failing to study how dangerous the chemical abortion drug regimen is and unlawfully removing every meaningful safeguard, even allowing for mail-order abortions,” he said about the 23-year-old FDA-approved drug.
Meanwhile, the Joe Biden administration and civil rights organizations promised to continue fighting for reproductive rights.
“I’ll continue to fight attacks on women’s health. The American people must also continue to use their vote as their voice and elect a Congress that will restore the protections of Roe v Wade,” Biden tweeted shortly after the supreme court issued its decision.
The American Civil Liberties Union echoed similar sentiments, with Jennifer Dalven, ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project director saying: “Make no mistake, we aren’t out of the woods by any means … And as this baseless lawsuit shows, extremists will use every trick in the book to try to ban abortion nationwide.”
Dalven added: “But if our opponents think we will allow them to continue to pursue their extreme goals without fierce backlash, they are sorely mistaken.”
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This image provided by the Minnesota Department of Corrections shows Kim Potter. The former Brooklyn Center police officer is scheduled to be released from prison on Monday. (photo: Minnesota Department of Corrections/AP)
Minnesota Department of Corrections spokesman Andy Skoogman announced Friday that former officer Kim Potter was to be released after serving about 16 months of her two-year sentence. He said the exact timing of her departure Monday from Minnesota Correctional Facility-Shakopee won't be disclosed for security reasons.
"Our criminal investigative analysts are working closely with law enforcement to monitor the situation to ensure Kim Potter, like all incarcerated persons, is safe as she leaves our facility," Skoogman said in a statement.
The shooting happened April 2021 as Derek Chauvin was on trial in Minneapolis on murder charges in George Floyd's killing. Wright's death sparked several days of protests.
Judge Regina Chu had said at Potter's sentencing that she would be required to serve two-thirds of her sentence — 16 months — then spend the rest on probation.
Potter, now 50, appears much thinner in a new photo released by the Department of Corrections. Her attorney, Earl Gray, said he had "no idea" why her appearance changed.
"It just shows it's rough doing time," Gray said. "I don't know many mug shots that show somebody in a good light."
A message left with civil rights attorney Ben Crump, the lawyer for Wright's family, wasn't immediately returned.
Wright, a 20-year-old father, was killed on April 11, 2021, after Brooklyn Center officers pulled him over for having expired license tags and an air freshener hanging from his rearview mirror. Officers discovered he had a warrant for a misdemeanor weapons possession charge and he was shot during a struggle as officers tried to arrest him.
Civil rights advocates say laws against hanging objects from rearview mirrors have been used as a pretext for stopping Black motorists.
Potter is heard on video yelling "Taser" several times just before she fires her pistol as Wright tried to drive away from the traffic stop.
The state attorney general's office had sought a sentence recommended by state guidelines of just over seven years in prison. Wright's family and Crump denounced the two-year sentence as too lenient and accused the judge of giving more consideration to the white officer than the Black victim.
Wright's mother, Katie Wright, said after the sentencing that Potter "murdered my son," adding: "Today the justice system murdered him all over again."
Chu said at the time that the case wasn't the same as other high-profile killings, including George Floyd's death that resulted in a 22 1/2-year sentence for Chauvin. "This is a cop who made a tragic mistake," she said.
Defense attorneys argued at the sentencing hearing that Potter deserved leniency because Wright was trying to drive away and Potter had the right to defend herself.
Potter, a 26-year police veteran, apologized to Wright's family at sentencing and spoke directly to his mother: "Katie, I understand a mother's love. I'm sorry I broke your heart ... my heart is broken and devastated for all of you."
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'Ghost guns' that were secured by the D.C. police are displayed at a 2020 news conference held by Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), who announced new legislation to ban the import of kits and parts used to make the untraceable guns. (photo: Astrid Riecken/WP)
We discuss the U.S. gun violence epidemic with historian Andrew McKevitt, who says, “We ought to conceive of our gun problem as a problem of gun capitalism.” He covers the history of the proliferation of individual gun ownership since World War II in his forthcoming book, Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture & Control in Cold War America. McKevitt also discusses how the NRA and pro-gun lobby impedes progress on gun control through the implicit threat of “political violence.”
Meanwhile, in New York, a 65-year-old man has been charged with second-degree murder for fatally shooting a 20-year-old woman named Kaylin Gillis, who had mistakenly pulled into the wrong driveway. In Elgin, Texas, two cheerleaders were shot by a man in a parking lot of a grocery store on Tuesday after one of them mistakenly tried to get into his car, thinking it was her own. Meanwhile, a North Carolina man has turned himself in after shooting a 6-year-old and her parents, after the girl tried to retrieve a basketball that had rolled into the man’s yard.
The number of mass shootings in the United States this year has now reached 166. On average, there’s been more than one mass shooting every day this year in the United States.
In Alabama, six people have been arrested on murder charges in connection with the recent mass shooting at a “Sweet 16” birthday party in Dadeville, Alabama, that left four people dead and 32 injured.
Over the weekend, the National Rifle Association held its annual convention in Indianapolis, Indiana, less than two hours from Louisville, Kentucky, where a gunman armed with an AR-15-style semiautomatic assault rifle killed five people at a bank where he used to work, April 10th.
To talk more about the gun epidemic in the United States, we’re joined now by Andrew McKevitt, associate professor of history at Louisiana Tech University, author of the forthcoming book Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture & Control in Cold War America.
Drew, welcome to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us, though under horrible circumstances. Why don’t we start off where I just left off? And that is, as you have one mass shooting after another — right? — Louisville followed Nashville, where six people were killed, three of them 9-year-olds and three adults — the NRA holds its meeting. Republican presidential wannabes flock to that meeting. It is less than two hours from Louisville, where a mass shooting had just taken place. Can you put this all in context for us?
ANDREW McKEVITT: Sure, Amy. Well, thanks so much for having me. And I do wish this were not the kind of conversation we were having, but it does seem inevitable and perennial at this point.
I do think — I think — to put this in some context, I think we talk about our gun problem all wrong. I think the way we talk about it and the precise language we use to talk about these problems is the kind of language that the NRA and the gun lobby wants us to use. We often think about our gun problem in the language of rights and the law and the Second Amendment. We adopt the language of good guys with guns and bad guys with guns and the so-called law-abiding citizen. And when we do that, we’re using the very same language that they’ve crafted to understand these crises that we’re seeing more and more.
Instead, as I said at the beginning there, I think we ought to conceive of our gun problem as a problem of gun capitalism — that is, as a material problem. We are rapidly approaching the point at which we will be a country of a half-billion guns. That will happen before the end of this decade. And I don’t think it’s possible to conceive of solutions to our gun problems without that larger — without recognizing that larger materiality of guns in which we live, in which we are effectively swimming.
AMY GOODMAN: So, you’re talking about more guns than people in the United States. I want to go to this issue of the NRA, just a day after the five people were killed in a mass shooting in neighboring Kentucky. Indiana Senate Republicans honored NRA chief Wayne LaPierre ahead of the NRA’s annual convention in Indianapolis. Moms Demand Action responded in a report by WTHR 13.
CATHY WEINMANN: They have the audacity — the audacity — to stand on the floor of our Senate, in our state House, and honor the organization that far and away is most responsible for the proliferation of guns in our country. … It’s really a painful reminder that the Republican Party of the state of Indiana doesn’t care.
JENNIE RUNEVITCH: 13 News asked LaPierre directly about the criticism.
WAYNE LAPIERRE: We think all the federal gun laws ought to be enforced, and we could dramatically reduce crime in America.
AMY GOODMAN: That last voice, Wayne LaPierre. Well, at the NRA convention, Donald Trump gave the keynote address and called for firearms training for teachers.
DONALD TRUMP: I will also create a new tax credit to reimburse any teacher for the full cost of a concealed carry firearm and training from highly qualified experts. Who’s better? Who’s better? If even 5% of teachers, people that are skilled with arms — we want that — 5% were voluntarily armed and trained to stop active shooters, we would achieve effective deterrence, and the problem would cease to exist.
AMY GOODMAN: Your response to President Trump?
ANDREW McKEVITT: Yeah, well, I don’t know where the evidence for that claim comes from. We don’t have any — we don’t have any evidence that arming teachers in schools prevents mass shootings, will be a deterrent in any way, particularly for mass shooters who are often motivated, who see what they’re doing as a sort of endgame kind of action, that they intend their lives to end in those particular instances. And so, arming teachers is in no way going to be a deterrent.
But I think, more broadly, these comments speak to the extent to which guns are simply the material reality in which we live, particularly when it comes to things like handguns. This is a conversation we don’t often have so much, because we’re so often focused on these fearsome assault weapons, that have now become the target of even President Biden. But instead, thinking of this problem more in terms of the sort of mundane and commonplace relationship we have with firearms, such that it makes perfectly sense to many people in this country, in certain parts of this country, to suggest that teachers go to school armed, because those teachers already live in communities flooded with guns, and they don’t think — they don’t think it would violate any sort of moral or ethical norms for those teachers to go to school armed.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, Drew McKevitt, I mean, look at — could you have a more gun-friendly state than Texas? And look what happened in Uvalde, as child —
ANDREW McKEVITT: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: — after child was gunned down, as SWAT teams, troopers, police, all of them — more than a hundred of them — waited for an hour. Talk about fully armed. We’re talking about military-level arming.
ANDREW McKEVITT: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: And they wouldn’t move forward. And yet you expect to have teachers?
ANDREW McKEVITT: Right, teachers with, essentially, no or little training, the equivalent of perhaps the kind of training you might get in a concealed carry class or self-defense class or something like that, not something like the kind of training you might expect police officers to go through — many police officers, too, who’ve also had sort of military training. So, the idea that we would arm teachers is simply absurd.
When I think about my campus, I don’t want anyone on my campus armed, including any of the teachers. And I don’t want myself armed. I think, beyond the very obvious mechanics of potential violence that that creates, there is also that notion of intimidation and the already — the power relationships that already exist between students and faculty and administrators. And introducing guns into that equation is just insane, to my thinking.
AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, what it does for those that are promoting it, it’s just buying more guns. Can you talk about the arming of Wayne — the honoring of Wayne LaPierre? This is the NRA, well known for its corruption, near bankruptcy. How does it possibly maintain the power over state and federal public officials, that do not represent — even the NRA membership is for levels of gun control. I mean, for example, in Colorado now, the Legislature just failed to pass an assault weapons ban, despite having a Democratic-controlled House, Senate and governor. Several House Democrats sided with Republicans to kill the bill in committee at 1 a.m. two nights ago.
ANDREW McKEVITT: Yeah. So, I think the NRA’s power comes from three places. One is the one to which we usually point, which is money. The NRA can dump hundreds of millions of dollars into elections, and obviously has been doing that for a long time now, though I think we tend to overestimate that a bit.
The other two ways in which the NRA can wield this kind of power are a little more subtle. One is the way in which they’re able to rally their base very quickly. They’ve been able to do this since the 1960s. They were one of the pioneers of direct mail campaigning and so forth, that was able to rally upwards of a million people already by 1968 to write their congresspeople, to lobby their local and state politicians to vote against potential federal and state legislation.
And the third way, which is the one we don’t talk about — and we don’t really want to talk about — is that the NRA really wields a lot of intimidation and power in that sense. There are, I am confident, politicians who will not cross the NRA, not because of the money issue and not because of the vote issue, but because they’re afraid of violence, but because they’re afraid of the kind of violence that — social violence and political violence, that the NRA could encourage if it wanted to.
AMY GOODMAN: You talk about the connection between guns and gun capitalism. What does capitalism have to do with it, Drew? That’s central to your forthcoming book.
ANDREW McKEVITT: Yeah, so, and again here, my argument is that I think we focus a little too much on questions of rights and abstract concepts like the interpretation of the Second Amendment, and not quite enough on just how much gun capitalism exploded, expanded, in the postwar era especially. This goes back to the end the Second World War. And in the 1950s and the 1960s, we see this incredible expansion of gun consumerism in the United States. In [inaudible] there was about 45 million —
AMY GOODMAN: We’re having a little trouble with the internet. A tree fell on Drew McKevitt’s house, so there are some problems there. But I wanted to go to Tennessee. As Tennessee is reeling, legislators pushed this week to pass laws that shield gun manufacturers instead of children. There is this 2005 law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, that protected gun manufacturers. We’re going to go to break and then come back to Drew McKevitt. His forthcoming book is called Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture & Control in Cold War America. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: “All is Grace” by Palace Brothers. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we continue our conversation with Drew McKevitt, author of the forthcoming book Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture & Control in Cold War America. He’s associate professor of history at Louisiana Tech University. We’re talking to him in Shreveport. We only have a few more minutes, Drew, but if you — you got cut off right in the middle of you making that connection between this massive proliferation of guns in America — I mean, we don’t see anything like this in any industrialized country in the world — the connection between that and capitalism.
ANDREW McKEVITT: Yeah, that’s right. And bringing the world in is a really important component there, too, because it’s partly the world that helps arm Americans after World War II. We often think of how the United States is responsible for the proliferation of weapons and violence after the Second World War, which is of course all true throughout the Cold War, but more so arms come into the United States after the Second World War. And the American population is armed with the weapons that had been used in the Second World War and left over on battlefields in Europe and Asia. There’s a whole cohort of wily entrepreneurs, gun entrepreneurs, who maximize the profits they can get by grabbing these guns from Europe, sometimes for as cheap as less than a dollar each, bringing them over to the United States, and then selling them to an eager population, now increasingly, after the Second World War, with more leisure time, with more money, more income available for those kinds of activities. And, of course, the most famous of these war surplus imports — there were millions of them that come into the United States in the 1950s and the 1960s. The most famous of these is the Carcano rifle used by Lee Harvey Oswald to kill John F. Kennedy in 1963. But it’s just one of millions that come into the country and truly remake the consumer market for guns in the United States.
And they do that in two ways. One, they make it one centered around war, and firearms that have been involved in war and firearms that can be used for war. And that’s where we get — that’s where we see the trajectory leading to something like the popularity of the AR-15. And then, the other aspect is that it simply emphasizes cheapness. American consumerism drives down the price of these guns, and a $10 gun becomes just as accessible as a $150 gun. And that’s going to dramatically expand the gun market. As I said, the number of guns in the United States doubles every 25 years or so after the end of the Second World War, precisely because of that phenomenon.
AMY GOODMAN: And then you have the other way — it going the other way. I mean, you’ve got the gun violence in the United States and the U.S. involvement in international small arms trade, in trafficking, and refusing to sign off on, being an obstacle at the U.N. to sign off on treaties that would limit small guns in the world.
ANDREW McKEVITT: Yeah, that’s right. I mean, if we look back at the process in the United Nations beginning in the mid-1990s and leading all the way up to, finally, the signing of a completely watered-down treaty in 2013, we saw the real powerful influence of the NRA there, and in particular the NRA’s kind of bulldog, John Bolton, who went to the U.N. in 2001 and tried to shut down every international effort that would have created any kind of substantive controls on international small arms sales.
AMY GOODMAN: And then, very quickly, two issues — Tennessee. I mean, perhaps the trying to get rid of the two youngest Black lawmakers — the Republican House speaker and his allies in the Tennessee Legislature — was about trying to prevent the push for gun control in Tennessee, which so many support, though you wouldn’t know it within the Legislature. And now, while they’re not protecting the children, they want to protect the arms industry, a bill that’s now going to Bill Lee’s desk, the Tennessee governor, who signed off on a gun deregulation bill in a Beretta gun factory?
ANDREW McKEVITT: Yeah. So, you know, I had heard you mention the 2005 law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which already shields — which already shields gunmakers from liability in a number of ways. And that law was written in the wake of a wave of lawsuits against gunmakers by gun control organizations, by large municipalities, that sought to force the gunmakers to pay for the consequences of the seemingly uncontrolled proliferation of firearms that was dramatically — that had ticked up dramatically in the early 1990s. In addition to the very obvious human trauma, there are, of course, economic costs to gun violence, as well. And so, the PCLAA — or, the PLCAA, the intention of that was to shield gunmakers nationally. And, of course, it’s signed into law by the George W. Bush administration, so that gunmakers could not be sued for their guns working as they are designed: to maim and kill human beings.
What the Tennessee Legislature is doing, I think, is essentially a kind of lip service to — or, it’s essentially a moot point, in that there are already those protections in place. But I also think the Tennessee Legislature watched what happened last year in the Remington case, when Remington, the rifle maker Remington, settled with the Sandy Hook families for $73 million. And that’s what they’re trying to prevent, gun control organizations and activists from looking for loopholes in the 2005 law, like, for instance, in the case of Sandy Hook, targeting their advertising rather than the guns themselves. And Tennessee wants to cut that off, because, ultimately, the sanctity of gun capitalism must remain secure.
AMY GOODMAN: Drew McKevitt, I want to thank you so much for being with us, author of the forthcoming book Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture & Control in Cold War America, speaking to us from Shreveport, where he’s an associate professor of history at Louisiana Tech University.
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In this photo provided by Maheen S, smoke fills the sky in Khartoum, Sudan, near Doha International Hospital on Friday. (photo: AP)
Biden thanked the U.S. troops who carried out the mission to extract American staffers in Sudan. With the last American embassy worker out, Washington shuttered the U.S. mission in Khartoum indefinitely.
The U.S. said it had no current plans for a government-coordinated evacuation of an estimated 16,000 other Americans remaining in Sudan, calling the situation too dangerous.
Biden said he was receiving regular reports from his team on efforts to assist those remaining Americans in Sudan "to the extent possible."
The roughly 70 American staffers were airlifted from a landing zone at the embassy to an undisclosed location in Ethiopia, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the mission. U.S. troops carried out the operation as fighting between two armed Sudanese commanders —which has killed more than 400, put the nation at risk of collapse and could have consequences far beyond its borders—moved into a second week.
"I am proud of the extraordinary commitment of our Embassy staff, who performed their duties with courage and professionalism and embodied America's friendship and connection with the people of Sudan," Biden said in a statement. "I am grateful for the unmatched skill of our service members who successfully brought them to safety."
Biden also thanked Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Saudi Arabia for their help with the mission.
Biden ordered American troops to evacuate embassy personnel after receiving a recommendation earlier Saturday from his national security team with no end in sight to the fighting.
"This tragic violence in Sudan has already cost the lives of hundreds of innocent civilians. It's unconscionable and it must stop," Biden said. "The belligerent parties must implement an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, allow unhindered humanitarian access, and respect the will of the people of Sudan."
The State Department has suspended operations at the embassy due to the dire security situation. It was not clear when the embassy might resume functioning.
"The widespread fighting has caused significant numbers of civilian deaths and injuries and damage to essential infrastructure and posed an unacceptable risk to our Embassy personnel," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.
The fighting erupted April 15 between two factions whose leaders are vying for control over the country. The violence has included an unprovoked attack on an American diplomatic convoy and numerous incidents in which foreign diplomats and aid workers were killed, injured or assaulted.
An estimated 16,000 private U.S. citizens are registered with the embassy as being in Sudan.
Biden said he was receiving regular reports from his team on efforts to assist those remaining Americans in Sudan "to the extent possible."
The embassy issued an alert earlier Saturday cautioning that "due to the uncertain security situation in Khartoum and closure of the airport, it is not currently safe to undertake a U.S. government-coordinated evacuation of private U.S. citizens."
Fighting in Sudan between forces loyal to two top generals has put that nation at risk of collapse and could have consequences far beyond its borders.
The fighting, which began as Sudan attempted to transition to democracy, already has left millions trapped in urban areas, sheltering from gunfire, explosions and looters.
Army chief Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan said Saturday he would facilitate the evacuation of American, British, Chinese and French citizens and diplomats from Sudan after speaking with the leaders of several countries that had requested help. The rival Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, in a Twitter posting said it cooperated with U.S. forces.
The U.S. evacuation planning got underway in earnest on Monday after the embassy convoy was attacked in Khartoum. The Pentagon confirmed on Friday that U.S. troops were being moved to Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti ahead of a possible evacuation.
Saudi Arabia announced the successful repatriation of some of its citizens on Saturday, sharing footage of Saudi nationals and other foreigners welcomed with chocolate and flowers as they stepped off an apparent evacuation ship at the Saudi port of Jeddah.
Embassy evacuations conducted by the U.S. military are relatively rare and usually take place only under extreme conditions.
When it orders an embassy to draw down staff or suspend operations, the State Department prefers to have its personnel leave on commercial transportation if that is an option. When the embassy in Kyiv temporarily closed just before Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February, 2022, staffers used commercial transport to leave.
However, in several other recent cases, notably in Afghanistan in 2021, conditions made commercial departures impossible or extremely hazardous. U.S. troops accompanied personnel from the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, Libya, in an overland convoy to Tunisia when they evacuated in 2014.
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Tanzania. (photo: Grist)
Maasai leaders say they have few options as Tanzanian officials lock down protected areas.
“We, the Maasai people of Loliondo and Ngorongoro in Tanzania, are fighting against the Tanzanian government and wildlife trophy hunters who are threatening our livelihood, culture, ancestral wisdom, legacy, and basic human rights,” Edward Porokwa, executive director of the Pastoralists Indigenous Non Governmental Organization’s Forum, said. “There is no justification for this crisis created by the government.”
The Maasai land conflict in Tanzania is focused on two main areas: the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and Loliondo. The Ngorongoro Conservation Area is a UNESCO World Heritage Site that attracts over half a million visitors every year for safaris to see the park’s “Big 5” game — elephants, lions, leopards, buffalo, and rhinoceros. Around 80,000 Indigenous Maasai call the park home, but have faced decades of government efforts to push them off their land.
In a statement delivered at the Permanent Forum, Porokwa said that, since June 2022, the government has closed four nursery schools, nine water sources, and six mobile health clinics. The government says that Maasai are voluntarily leaving the area for resettlement sites, but the Maasai say that they are essentially being forced out. “It is a forceful relocation by ensuring that people don’t get the basics,” Porokwa said. “They are there to die.”
And in Loliondo, which is legally demarcated Maasai village land, state security forces shot at Maasai in a violent campaign to drive them from their lands last June. In the attack, dozens of Maasai were injured and many fled across the nearby border to Kenya for medical attention. At least two dozen others were arrested, while some were not permitted to leave their homes.
Last June, nine United Nations experts raised concern about forced evictions and resettlement plans, but the Maasai representatives at the United Nations say that the government has not changed its approach.
The Maasai say that since June 2022, Tanzania has taken or killed over 600,000 of their cows and demanded over $2.5 million in fines for grazing. This is all part of what Maasai say is a massive campaign to destroy their pastoralist way of life.
At the Permanent Forum, a representative from the Tanzanian government pushed back on the Maasai’s claims, pointing to the East African Court of Justice’s 2022 dismissal of an eviction case brought by the Maasai, stating that the Maasai could not prove their claims about violent evictions. The Oakland Institute, a US-based nonprofit that advocates for Indigenous rights, called the ruling a “shocking blow to Indigenous land rights.” Tanzanian representatives at UNPFII declined to comment on the matter.
In January, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights conducted a monitoring visit to investigate the situation. But Maasai community organizations say that at every step, the visit was controlled by the government. Commission representatives were shepherded around by state security forces who intimidated Maasai and excluded them from some meetings. Some Maasai waited for hours to speak with the Commission, only for them to never show up. While the Commission’s final report on the visit did express concern about the situation, it also commended Tanzania’s commitment to protecting human rights. The Commission also recommended starting new consultations with the Maasai, as well as addressing their concerns about the resettlement program.
In December, José Francisco Calà Tzay, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples was scheduled for a week-long visit to Tanzania, but the visit was indefinitely postponed. Maasai leaders believe that the visit was scuttled out of concern that the Special Rapporteur would not be given full access to investigate. At the Permanent Forum, Calà Tzay called for a halt to the evictions and for the government to consult with the Maasai, but did not address the postponed visit.
With few options remaining, the Maasai have turned to the Permanent Forum to raise their concerns. Briane Keane is the director of Land is Life, an international organization that works with Indigenous peoples, including providing travel funding, medical assistance, and security assessments to the Maasai. Keane says that the United Nations is an important platform for the Maasai. “It’s a place where they can be heard. The government of Tanzania is not listening,” he said.
The Maasai hope that international pressure may convince the government to finally listen to their concerns. But speaking out on the international level also comes with risks for the Maasai. Several leaders who spoke out against government abuses were forced to flee the country for their safety.
“Indigenous peoples are the most among the most criminalized peoples of the world,” said Keane. “There’s people being thrown in jail. There are threats. So it’s very dangerous work sticking up for your rights when you’re as marginalized as the Maasai are in Tanzania.”
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