18 May 23
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The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, "The Borowitz Report."
The teacher, Carol Foyler, claimed that she thought it was “O.K.” to show the incendiary film because the character in question was a deer.
Governor Ron DeSantis, however, begged to differ, arguing that Florida’s children were being “indoctrinated to emulate the deer’s sick life style.”
“Students in Florida’s schools have not been taught to distinguish between themselves and deer,” he said.
DeSantis also objected to a controversial scene early in the film in which the main character’s mother is shot and killed. “I will not rest until Florida’s schools are rid of such blatant anti-Second Amendment propaganda,” he vowed.
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Several states have passed laws that could sentence people for years if they provide 'obscene' books to minors. (photo: Michelle Kondrich/The Washington Post)
ALSO SEE: Penguin Random House and Florida Parents Sue School District Over Book Bans
Several states have passed laws that could sentence people for years if they provide ‘obscene’ books to minors
At least seven states have passed such laws in the last two years, according to a Washington Post analysis, six of them in the past two months — although governors of Idaho and North Dakota vetoed the legislation. Another dozen states considered more than 20 similar bills this year, half of which are likely to come up again in 2024, The Post found.
Some of the laws impose severe penalties on librarians, who until now were exempted in almost every state from prosecution over obscene material — a carve-out meant to permit accurate lessons in topics such as sex education. All but one of the new laws target schools, while some also target the staff of public libraries and one affects book vendors.
One example is an Arkansas measure that says school and public librarians, as well as teachers, can be imprisoned for up to six years or fined $10,000 if they distribute obscene or harmful texts. It takes effect Aug. 1.
Library and free speech advocates were unaware of any instances so far in which a school staffer had been charged under the new laws. Most of the laws do not spell out precisely who will decide what counts as obscene but suggest the judgment should come from the courts.
Some educators and activists say the laws will forge a climate of fear among school librarians, spurring the censorship of books by and about LGBTQ individuals — even as the nation already faces a historic onslaught of challenges to books in those categories.
“It will make sure the only literature students are exposed to fits into a narrow scope of what some people want the world to look like,” said Keith Gambill, president of the teachers union in Indiana, one of the states that adopted obscenity laws. “This is my 37th year in education. I’ve never seen anything like this. … We are entering a very frightening period.”
Those on the political right, however, contend that the legislation is necessary to prevent children from exposure to pornographic and sexual content that will harm their mental health and warp their development. In every case but one, a bipartisan bill in Missouri, Republican lawmakers or Republican-dominated committees introduced the laws.
School employees should be held accountable, said Idaho state Rep. Jaron Crane (R), who co-sponsored a bill this year that would have allowed parents to sue districts for $2,500 over sexually explicit material. His bill passed the legislature but was vetoed by Gov. Brad Little (R), who warned that the law would burden libraries financially and have “unintended consequences.” Little did not respond to a request for comment.
Crane wrote in a statement to The Post that the legislature failed to override the governor’s veto by one vote.
“If teachers and librarians are scared to do their jobs,” Crane added, “that confirms the fact that there is indeed material in their libraries that is harmful to minors.”
In addition to Idaho and Arkansas, Indiana, Missouri, North Dakota and Oklahoma enacted laws mandating fines or imprisonment, or both, for school employees and librarians. Tennessee has passed two measures, one that targets schools and another that targets book publishers or vendors selling to schools.
The consequences vary slightly between states: The Indiana law, signed by the governor in May, says school staffers can be forced to pay up to $10,000 or serve 2½ years in prison for providing obscene or harmful material to minors. A 2022 Oklahoma law says school employees and public library staffers can be fined up to $20,000 or serve up to 10 years in prison for facilitating “indecent exposure to obscene material or child pornography.” One of the Tennessee laws, passed this year, says book publishers, distributors and sellers can face up to six years in prison and up to $103,000 in fines for providing obscene matter to K-12 schools.
Library administrators across the country say the flood of obscenity laws are already instilling terror in librarians.
In Arkansas, a dozen librarians have sought help from Nate Coulter, executive director of the Central Arkansas Library System, worried they will be prosecuted once their state’s law takes effect this summer. Coulter said he promised legal support. In Indiana, school librarians have begun removing books that deal with LGBTQ issues, sex, race and violence — sometimes of their own volition, sometimes at the direction of their principals — according to Chad Heck of the Indiana Library Federation, which advocates for libraries in the state.
And in Idaho, the mere introduction of legislation had an immediate effect, said Lance McGrath, president of the Idaho Library Association. A day after Crane put forth an early version of his bill, the Idaho Association of School Administrators circulated a list of 25 titles lawmakers proposing library-related bills were most likely to find objectionable, including “This Book is Gay” and “Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out.” The Kuna School District quickly designated all these as “behind the shelf” books, meaning that if a school possessed them, students must obtain a signed permission slip from their parents to read them, according to Allison Westfall, a spokeswoman for the district.
“Kuna was walking a fine line between providing access and providing that level of control being sought through the legislation,” McGrath said, speculating that the district withdrew the books in hopes of avoiding controversy and negative attention.
All 50 states maintain obscenity laws, which typically prohibit the distribution of obscene material to minors and impose heavy fines and prison sentences for violations. But the vast majority adopted exemptions for schools, public libraries and museums in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s to ensure educators could provide full information to children on topics such as biology, health and sex education without facing expensive litigation, according to a research report from the advocacy group EveryLibrary.
Back then, lawmakers took it for granted that schools and libraries were not trying to disseminate “criminally harmful material,” said John Chrastka, executive director of EveryLibrary, which is tracking library obscenity laws.
But that assumption of good intent no longer exists, he said.
“We are, as a country, at a very broken place right now,” he said. “We have a fundamental break in trust between some groups of society and the educational system.”
At the time the exemptions were enacted, legislators probably could not have imagined a book like “Gender Queer” — a memoir about being nonbinary that features oral sex, masturbation and a scene in which an apparently teenager is about to engage in fellatio with an older bearded man — Heck of the Indiana Library Federation said.
“Gender Queer” is a favorite target of conservative politicians and parents who charge that it is inappropriate for children. It was the most challenged book in 2021 and 2022, according to the American Library Association. During a February hearing arguing for his Senate version of a library obscenity law, Indiana state Sen. Jim Tomes (R) cited “Gender Queer” as an illustration of the problem. The text is “something you’d see in an adult bookstore,” said Tomes, who did not respond to a request for comment.
“I just want these away from our kids,” he said. “We’re trying to prevent students from being exposed to books that are absolutely raw pornography.”
Heck, though, said he thinks there is a reason to keep books with sexual content available to children, especially older students.
“Teens are sexual, sexuality is part of their life, and I think it is important that we represent their authentic experience in our collections,” he said. “Sex is part of that, and to censor that message isn’t exposing them to their own reality.”
Some of the library obscenity laws may be vulnerable to legal challenge, said David Hudson, a Belmont University assistant professor who studies constitutional law. The most effective attacks will contend that the laws violate the First Amendment, because they are so broadly worded as to chill free speech, he said.
“What you always worry with ‘obscenity’ and ‘harmful to minors’ type laws is the vague language,” Hudson said. He pointed to “the alarming degree of subjectivity with regard to whether something … is really patently offensive.”
In February, the Missouri ACLU filed suit to overturn the state’s 2022 law establishing that school staffers can be fined up to $2,000 or imprisoned for a year for providing “explicit sexual material” to students. The lawsuit, brought on behalf of the Missouri Association of School Librarians and the Missouri Library Association, alleges an over-broad violation of First Amendment rights. Coulter of the Arkansas Central Library System said his organization plans to file a federal lawsuit challenging his state’s law within the month — partly relying on a First Amendment argument.
“There are fundamental defects with these statutes,” Coulter said. “They’re a stick, a club that can be used to threaten librarians.”
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Protesters hold signs as North Carolina House members debate, Tuesday, May 16, 2023, in Raleigh, N.C., whether to override Democratic governor Roy Cooper's veto of a bill that would change the state's ban on nearly all abortions from those after 20 weeks of pregnancy to those after 12 weeks of pregnancy. (photo: Chris Seward/AP)
The House completed the second and final part of the override vote after a similar three-fifths majority — the fraction necessary — voted for the override earlier Tuesday in the Senate. The party-line outcomes represent a major victory for Republican legislative leaders who needed every GOP member on board to enact the law over Gov. Roy Cooper’s opposition.
Cooper vetoed the measure over the weekend after spending last week traveling around the state to persuade at least one Republican to side with him on the override, which would be enough to uphold his veto. But in the end, the four Republicans targeted by Cooper — including one who recently switched from the Democratic Party — voted to override.
Republicans pitched the measure as a middle-ground change to state law, which currently bans nearly all abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, without exceptions for rape or incest.
The votes came as abortion rights in the U.S. faced another tectonic shift with lawmakers in South Carolina and Nebraska also considering new abortion limits. North Carolina and South Carolina have been two of the few remaining Southern states with relatively easy access.
Such restrictions are possible because the U.S. Supreme Court last year struck down the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, which established a nationwide right to abortion.
Under the bill that had been up for a vote Tuesday in the South Carolina House, abortion access would be almost entirely banned after about six weeks of pregnancy — before women often know they’re pregnant. The South Carolina state Senate previously rejected a proposal to nearly outlaw abortions.
However, a final vote would have to wait until later Wednesday after the South Carolina House moved to reconvene at 10 a.m. while the computer system rebooted.
Nationally, bans on abortion throughout pregnancy are in effect in 14 states.
Abortion is banned or severely restricted in much of the South, including bans throughout pregnancy in Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia. In Georgia, it’s allowed only in the first six weeks.
The Carolinas, Florida and Virginia are now the main destinations in the region for those seeking legal abortions. Florida has a ban that kicks in 15 weeks into pregnancy. Under a recent law, that would tighten to six weeks pending a court ruling. Further west, women often travel to Illinois, Kansas, New Mexico or Colorado.
If both the North and South Carolina bans become law, combined with Florida’s recent ban, “it would be just devastating for abortion access in the South,” Jamie Lockhart, executive director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Virginia, said earlier Tuesday.
After the final vote Tuesday in the North Carolina House, abortion-rights advocates and Democrats in the chamber gallery loudly booed the outcome and shouted “Shame!” Many observers in the gallery were escorted out by General Assembly police.
Similar displeasure poured out after the earlier North Carolina Senate debate, although many anti-abortion demonstrators also were in the audience, pleased with the outcome.
“Today marks the beginning of North Carolina’s first real step towards becoming a pro-life state,” Tami Fitzgerald, executive director of the socially conservative North Carolina Values Coalition, said after the House vote.
Senate Republicans said Cooper ignored $160 million within the measure that would boost funding to increase contraceptive services, reduce infant and maternal mortality and provide paid maternity leave for state employees and teachers.
“This bill provides resources for the pregnant woman. It provides broad resources and a significant knowledge base to enable her, to equip her in finding a path forward — a path forward for her, and a path forward for her unborn child,” said Rep. Kristin Baker, a Cabarrus County Republican and psychiatrist.
The new abortion limits set to take effect July 1 also will include rape or incest exceptions through 20 weeks of pregnancy and exceptions for “life-limiting” fetal anomalies during the first 24 weeks. An existing exception for when the life of the pregnant woman is in danger will remain.
Democrats focused on details of the abortion rules, which they said would place barriers between women and their doctors, leaving those who are pregnant in danger, with less access to abortion services.
“Women did not ask for your oversight. We didn’t ask for your approval,” Rep. Julie von Haefen, a Wake County Democrat, told GOP colleagues. “It’s our fundamental right to make decisions about our own bodies and our own health care.”
Cooper said in a statement after the vote that he’ll “continue doing everything I can to protect abortion access in North Carolina because women’s lives depend on it.”
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the law ”will make it even more difficult for women to get the reproductive health care they need.”
North Carolina Republicans were able to complete the override due in large part to Mecklenburg County Rep. Tricia Cotham’s party switch to the GOP last month. That gave Republicans veto-proof seat majorities in both chambers.
Cotham has supported abortion rights in the past. She said in a statement late Tuesday that the bill “strikes a reasonable balance” that anyone not holding “extremist positions” on abortion can support.
In South Carolina, the impasse dates back to a special session last fall when House lawmakers demanding a near-total ban did not meet to negotiate with their Senate counterparts pushing for a ban around six weeks.
The stalemate persisted even after the state Supreme Court in January struck down a previous law banning abortions once cardiac activity is detected.
That decision left abortion legal through 22 weeks of pregnancy. A sharp increase in abortions since then has rankled Republicans.
The House was weighing a Senate bill similar to the one they denied last year. The measure would ban abortion when an ultrasound detects cardiac activity, around six weeks.
A late night is expected even after Republicans invoked rules to limit debate. House Speaker Murrell Smith has said the chamber will not adjourn until the measure gets approval. Democrats slowed the process Tuesday by speaking for all three allotted minutes on each of their hundreds of amendments and forcing other procedural votes.
In Nebraska, conservatives in the Legislature got just enough votes Tuesday to fold a proposed 12-week abortion ban into a bill that would ban gender-affirming health for minors.
Throughout, hundreds of protesters filled the Capitol rotunda just outside the chamber doors, nearly drowning out debate at times with chants, shouts and foot stomping.
The plan won the 33 votes it needed in the state’s one-chamber, officially nonpartisan legislature to end debate and set up other votes to advance it. It must now survive a final round, which could happen as soon as Thursday, to pass.
In Montana, Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte’s office announced Tuesday that he had signed into law a bill that makes performing the abortion method most commonly used after 15 weeks of gestation a felony. Planned Parenthood of Montana asked a judge to temporarily block the ban on dilation and evacuation abortions.
A separate challenge to abortion access will be considered Wednesday, when a federal appeals court hears arguments on whether the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the widely used abortion drug mifepristone should be overturned. A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will review a ruling last month by a federal judge in Texas who ordered a hold on approval of mifepristone, a decision that overruled two decades of scientific approval of the drug. That ruling was stayed while the appeal is pending.
The three judges who will hear the case each have a history of supporting restrictions on abortion. A ruling is not expected immediately.
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Artist Andy Warhol and the musician Prince were both centre stage Wednesday in a case at the U.S. Supreme Court. (photo: Richard Drew/AP)
The court rules that Warhol should have paid photographer a fee for use of her photo of singer Prince in a project.
The ruling on Friday upheld a lower court ruling in a lawsuit brought by celebrity photographer Lynn Goldsmith in relation to a 1981 photograph she had taken of singer Prince. Warhol had used the image in his Orange Prince series, which included 14 silkscreens and two pencil illustrations of the photo, most of which were not authorised by the photographer.
The case was watched closely in the art world and entertainment industry for its implications regarding the legal doctrine called fair use, which promotes freedom of expression by allowing the use of copyright-protected works under certain circumstances without the owner’s permission.
Courts typically determine if a new work has a “transformative” purpose such as parody, education or criticism.
An appeals court had previously reversed a lower court ruling that Warhol’s art transformed Goldsmith’s depiction of a “vulnerable” musician into a “larger-than-life” figure.
The appeals court said that Warhol’s paintings were closer to adapting Goldsmith’s photo in a different medium than transforming it.
Its ruling said that judges should not “assume the role of art critic” by considering its meaning, but instead decide whether the new work has a different artistic purpose and character from the old one.
The Supreme Court’s last ruling on fair use in art was in 1994, when it said that rap group 2 Live Crew’s parody of singer Roy Orbison’s song Oh, Pretty Woman made fair use of the 1960s hit.
Warhol is credited as a leading figure of the pop-art movement of the 1960s, which dealt with takes on celebrity culture and advertising. He worked across several mediums.
In 2022, his silkscreen Shot Sage Blue Marilyn, depicting actress Marilyn Monroe, sold for $195m, setting the record for the most expensive work by a US artist sold at auction.
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Representative Cori Bush speaks during a press conference held by Just Majority on May 8, 2023, in St Louis, Missouri. (photo: Dilip Vishwanat/Just Majority)
"The United States has a moral and legal obligation to provide reparations for the enslavement of Africans and its lasting harm on the lives of millions of Black people," Bush said in a Wednesday news conference attended by Reps. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., and Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., as well as other stakeholders.
"America must provide reparations if we desire a prosperous future for all," Bush said.
Her resolution is the latest in a long line of congressional efforts by Democrats to compensate Black Americans for centuries of racial inequity. Similar language about reparations has been introduced in every legislative session since 1989.
"We know that we continue to live under slavery's vestiges. We know how slavery has perpetuated Jim Crow. We know how slavery's impacts live on today," Bush said, citing the racial wealth gap, voter suppression, infant mortality rates and other negative health outcomes for Black people.
"It's unjust and it wouldn't happen in a just and fair and equitable society," she said. "Those are not the natural consequences of human society."
"They are directly caused by our federal government's role in the enslavement and exploitation of Africans and Black people throughout our history."
While the conversation around reparations has picked up traction in recent years, with about a dozen cities and the state of California considering reparation programs, the concept remains broadly unpopular with Americans.
About three-quarters or more of white adults oppose reparations, and so do a majority of Latinos and Asian Americans.
Black Americans overwhelmingly support the proposal, and young people in general are more likely to support cash payments to the descendants of enslaved people than their older counterparts.
But more than 90 percent of Republicans say they oppose it, while Democrats are split nearly 50/50 on whether descendants should receive compensation.
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People wait along the border wall in El, Paso, Texas. According to CBP, the child died while held with her family at a facility in the Rio Grande valley. (photo: Patrick T Fallon/AFP)
Child died following a ‘medical emergency’, Customs and Border Protection says, a week after a teen died in custody in Florida
According to a statement by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the child died following a “medical emergency” while held with her family at a detention facility in Harlingen, a city in the Rio Grande valley.
“Emergency Medical Services were called to the station and transported her to the local hospital where she was pronounced dead,” the statement said.
No details were released about the child’s identity or cause of death or the welfare of her family. The US justice department’s Office of Professional Responsibility will investigate, as is protocol for such deaths in custody.
The eight-year-old’s death came less than a week after a teenager from Honduras died in Florida while detained at a facility for unaccompanied children.
Ángel Eduardo Maradiaga Espinoza died on 10 May, five days after entering a facility contracted by the US health department in Safety Harbor, a city on the west shore of Tampa Bay.
The Honduran government has called for a full investigation including prosecutions if there is evidence of criminal wrongdoing.
A humanitarian crisis at the US-Mexico border continues amid failure by consecutive US governments to reform the dysfunctional, outdated and underfunded immigration and asylum system.
US administrations have implemented stop-gap measures, failing to tackle systemic problems or improve the plight of those seeking asylum or a safe route to migration.
On 12 May, the Biden administration lifted Title 42, a Trump-era policy which used the pandemic to stop most migration at the border on public health grounds.
Despite fear-mongering about a “surge” in people crossing the border after the lifting of Title 42, numbers seeking to enter the US have returned to normal after an initial spike.
The Biden administration also ended the policy of holding families in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers and is hiring more immigration judges, though such is the backlog that more than 2 million people are waiting for cases to be heard.
Biden has expanded other Trump-era policies that he condemned and promised to end during his 2020 election campaign, including banning people from specific countries – Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador – from seeking asylum at the US border.
Death at the border is at record levels. Last year, at least 853 people died while trying to cross – more than two a day. The true death toll is likely to be higher as victims in desert areas are often discovered years later or not all.
Deaths at the border have been rising since the “prevention through deterrence” strategy was launched almost 30 years ago by the Clinton administration, a strategy advocates have condemned as cruel and inhumane.
Since then, administrations from both parties have increased militarisation at the border, forcing people towards more isolated and dangerous crossings in the desert and the Rio Grande.
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As FEMA struggles to keep up with climate disasters, extremist groups see an opportunity. (photo: Walt Jennings)
As FEMA struggles to keep up with climate disasters, extremist groups see an opportunity.
A Category 4 hurricane named Harvey had just dumped feet, not inches, of water on the state, sparking one of the most expensive disasters in United States history. The scale of the damage was so vast that the then-director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, put out a request for volunteers. “We need citizens to be involved,” he said on August 28, 2017, a few days after the storm struck Texas. The Oath Keepers answered the call.
Rhodes was wearing an Oath Keepers cap and T-shirt. He was there with another Oath Keeper, the organization’s Southeast regional assistant coordinator, Alex Oakes. The men were interviewing Beau Sullivan, a Conroe local who had been organizing hurricane relief efforts after the storm.
“Thank you, gentlemen, for coming out here,” Sullivan said, shaking Rhodes’ and Oakes’ hands. “You know, normally y’all gotta be a little more brass tacks, but y’all come out here with a message of love this time, and camaraderie, and I really appreciate that. That’s what’s needed now in this rebuilding effort.”
The exchange, captured on video and disseminated by the Oath Keepers on AltCensored, a right-wing alternative to YouTube, neatly distills why a group mainly preoccupied with uncovering made-up evidence of government tyranny might participate in hurricane relief efforts: It wins people over.
For nearly a decade, the Oath Keepers — which formed in 2009 in the wake of Barack Obama’s election to the presidency — have responded to disasters like hurricanes and floods by administering rescue operations, serving hot meals, and doing construction work. Disasters provide the Oath Keepers with opportunities to fundraise and gain the trust of people who might not otherwise be sympathetic to their anti-government cause. By arriving to crisis zones before federal agencies do, the Oath Keepers take advantage of bureaucratic weaknesses, holding a hand out to people in desperate circumstances.
This all serves to reinforce the militia members’ conviction that the government is fallible, negligent, and not to be trusted. And every time a new person sees the Oath Keepers as the helpers who respond when the government does not, it helps build the group’s fledgling brand.
The group has been in disarray since some of its leaders and most active members, including Rhodes, were arrested, tried, and convicted for their participation in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol in 2021. Facing public backlash and social media bans, the Oath Keepers have retreated from the public sphere. For a time, they took down their website and stopped gathering in public. But the retreat has been short-lived. “Militia groups are finding some footing again,” said Hampton Stall, a research specialist at Princeton University who runs a watchdog site called MilitiaWatch. “2023 will be the year they start to reactivate.”
The first phase of an Oath Keepers remobilization is taking place in Chino Valley, Arizona. A man named Jim Arroyo, the former state vice president for the Arizona Oath Keepers chapter — the group’s largest state contingent to date — is on a mission to rebrand his chapter as a disaster assistance organization. His group, which he has registered as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is called the Yavapai County Preparedness Team, named after the county it’s based in. Arroyo is fond of calling the outfit, known as YCPT, a “nonviolent, apolitical, nonpartisan” organization.
“Our main issue is disaster preparedness,” he told Grist, an assertion local officials and others in Arizona have taken at face value. But that’s not the full story. The fringe group is trying to ride the coattails of disaster preparation and relief work into the mainstream, experts told Grist. Its success thus far hints at a frightening post-disaster outcome in a warming world: What happens if the government fails to show up and communities start to rely on the extremists next door?
Rhodes founded the Oath Keepers on the premise that a violent clash between American citizens and the United States government wasn’t just possible, it was inevitable. Rhodes subscribes to the far-fetched notion that the government is conspiring to strip its citizens of their rights and force them to participate in a “new world order” defined by a “tyrannical, globalist, and socialist one-world government.” Fear of government tyranny isn’t a new concept; it’s one of the tenets upon which this nation was founded.
Anti-government militias are a key part of the so-called patriot movement, a loose coalition of nationalistic and often violent far-right groups. The Oath Keepers recruit current and former members of the military, first responders, and law enforcement. Like other sects of the patriot movement, the Oath Keepers are overwhelmingly white, but otherwise they look and act differently than many of their allies.
“They live much more on the side of the spectrum that wants mainstream political legitimacy,” Sam Jackson, a University of Albany professor and the author of Oath Keepers: Patriotism and the Edge of Violence in a Right-Wing Antigovernment Group, told Grist. “One of the ways that Oath Keepers has done this is by trying to portray itself as a civic organization.”
In 2013, Rhodes launched a program aimed at preparing communities for a natural disaster, a civil war, or anything in between. He originally said the program — a national network of community groups akin to neighborhood watches — was intended to create “civilization preservation teams.” He soon gave them a far more innocuous-sounding new name: “community preparedness teams,” or CPTs. CPTs provide volunteers with medical, disaster, and fire safety training. As the Oath Keepers grew, changed, and increasingly made themselves known in the public sphere, the CPT program remained a relative constant — something “the group seems to view as core to its identity,” Jackson wrote in his book.
The CPTs kept their eye on events with potential for conflict with government agencies. In 2014, they responded to Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s call to arms, after he refused to pay federal land management agencies millions of dollars in required fees to graze his herd of cattle on public land. They defended a gold mine from the Bureau of Land Management in Oregon in 2015. They were present that same year in Ferguson, Missouri, providing security, according to the group, for business owners during widespread protests on the anniversary of the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager who was killed by police in 2014. And they provided relief in Conroe after Hurricane Harvey made landfall in 2017.
That year saw the dawn of a new era for FEMA. Harvey and two other hurricanes called Irma and Maria made landfall on U.S. soil in the same 30-day period, claiming thousands of lives, causing widespread destruction, and generating hundreds of billions of dollars in cumulative costs. The back-to-back disasters made it exceedingly clear that the federal government is unprepared for the consequences of climate change — more intense hurricanes, heavier floods, rising sea levels.
Despite years of abnormal weather events that have laid its shortcomings bare, FEMA still doesn’t have the personnel or the budget it needs to ready Americans for disasters or respond adequately when multiple disasters strike at the same time. Experts say that federal lawmakers, who decide how much funding FEMA gets every year, lack the foresight required to actually prepare for climate change. Instead, disaster management centers around response, which means FEMA is constantly playing a game of catch-up.
The agency’s shortcomings leave gaps for militias to step in. Teams of Oath Keepers moved into Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico in the wake of the 2017 trio of hurricanes. They showed up again in Florida in 2018 after Hurricane Michael struck the state. Leaked Oath Keeper chats, shared with Grist by the nonprofit watchdog group Distributed Denial of Secrets, show that members of the group put out a call for volunteers following a damaging outbreak of tornadoes in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Tennessee in the spring of 2021.
It’s not just the Oath Keepers. Armed vigilantes reportedly set up roadblocks and interrogated people fleeing wildfires in Oregon in 2020; a different militia tried to recruit people affected by the Oak Fire in central California last summer. “Disaster relief in this country is pretty broken because of the way it often takes months to get federal funding activated,” Stall said. “There’s a long time during which groups can often get active.”
And FEMA’s large-scale efforts to help communities in the aftermath of disasters inadvertently provide these groups with fodder for their conspiracy theories. When a hurricane hits, FEMA goes to work building out a massive network of field camps, relief stations, and other physical infrastructure that makes the work of disaster aid possible. Where the unindoctrinated might see logistics at work, the far right sees a sinister plot unfolding.
“There’s a long-standing conspiracy theory among the far right that everything that FEMA does is dual use,” Jackson said. “It has this surface-level purpose of responding to emergencies and disasters and all that kind of stuff. But also it’s building up the infrastructure so that one day when martial law is declared, there are these huge detention camps and there are deployed resources to be used by troops who are enforcing martial law.”
Many Oath Keepers subscribe to that belief, but they’re not vocal about it. Publicly, Jackson said, they portray themselves as supplementing FEMA’s efforts and even working in tandem with the agency. It’s part and parcel of the group’s founding ethos — understand the system, work within the system, and be prepared to defeat the system when the time comes.
If there’s one thing Jim Arroyo, leader of the Yavapai County Preparedness Team, understands, it’s how the system works. The 62-year-old gunsmith trained as an army ranger in the early 1980s, regularly volunteers with the Chino Valley Police Department, and assists his county’s local emergency management program, in addition to serving as the Arizona chapter vice president for the Oath Keepers for several years starting in 2014. Arroyo insists that neither his organization nor the Oath Keepers qualify as militias, and he vehemently rejects accusations that the Oath Keepers are in any way anti-government.
“That’s completely stupid,” he told Grist. “We are the government.”
Grist reached Arroyo on his landline in mid-March. He answered questions with occasional coaching from his wife Janet, who helps him run YCPT. In 2022, as the groups that stormed the U.S. Capitol confronted mounting legal and social repercussions, Arroyo officially broke ties with Oath Keepers national. He says his chapter is no longer in contact with the larger organization or Stewart Rhodes. But he still puts up the Oath Keeper flag at meetings and sports branded Oath Keeper gear.
“We still believe in the mission of the Oath Keepers,” Arroyo said, though he admitted that his efforts to partner with local governments outside of Arizona since the Capitol insurrection have been difficult due to his association with the organization. For the time being, he’s focused on building YCPT into a national network. “At this stage of the game, our mission is to train individuals,” he said. He declined to say what he aims to do with the group in the future, but the YCPT website claims the group has outposts in 14 U.S. states and three countries — Canada, Panama, and the U.K.
Arroyo offers YCPT attendees training in person and via Zoom twice a month. He lectures in front of a large banner that lists some of the threats the group says it’s focused on mitigating: fires, floods, food shortages, and economic collapse, to name a few. Many of the trainings focus on skills that come in handy during natural disasters — like contacting people by radio in the event that internet and cellular networks break down, or administering CPR and other emergency medical procedures. Topics have also included how to prepare for electrical outages, plant a garden, and keep warm in freezing conditions.
But the group isn’t just preparing for hurricanes and floods; it’s getting ready for war. In fact, that’s the bulk of the “preparedness” work it’s doing. Though the YCPT website makes it seem like the organization is primarily focused on teaching participants basic survival skills, recordings of the group’s monthly general meetings make it clear that YCPT’s agenda goes far beyond those mainstream offerings. At every meeting, Arroyo invites a guest to give a lecture or offers one himself, an Oath Keeper cap perched on his graying head and a handgun holstered to his hip.
At one recent meeting, a self-described information warfare officer and retired Army lieutenant colonel named Steven Murray preached a potent cocktail of misinformation. “Trans, gay, transhumanist agendas” were infiltrating the public sphere. China had undermined every office in Arizona’s government, and the sovereignty of Yavapai County had been “transferred” to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which will ultimately “usurp the constitution.” FEMA had built a “containment” camp in Arizona, he said. “That should bother everybody in this room.” Each point Murray made was aimed at inspiring action. “Our job now is to resist,” he said, “to outthink, outsmart, and out-act our enemy.”
The next guest, the head of YCPT’s security team, taught attendees how to build their own tripwires, decoys, and booby traps. One mechanism, a tripwire that makes a loud noise to scare off intruders, requires a shotgun blank, he said. “It doesn’t have to be a blank,” a member of the crowd shouted.
Arroyo later warned the group about the legal consequences of putting a live cartridge in a trip alarm. But he closed out the meeting with a warning about the “police state,” which he said controls elements within federal, state, and local law enforcement as well as the media, corporations, and the court system. Those entities, he claimed, are preparing to attack. “I’m getting prepared for the inevitable,” Arroyo said. “We’re already engaged in the preliminaries before we get ready to go full kinetic.”
Arroyo told Grist that YCPT’s goal isn’t to teach people how to participate in a civil war. “Face it,” Arroyo said, “the vast majority of our people here are in their 60s, 70s, and 80s. We are not teaching them to fight in a war. We’re teaching them how to survive it.”
YCPT has the idea “that there will be some eventual moment when they are going to need particular skills,” said Rachel Goldwasser, a research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center who studies the Oath Keepers and has kept track of YCPT meetings. “There’s going to come a day when the government is going to go, essentially, full tyrant.” According to Arroyo, that day isn’t too far off.
YCPT’s political arm, a group called the Lions of Liberty, staked out ballot dropboxes in Arizona last November as early voters submitted their ballots. Arroyo told Grist that he organized the surveillance effort in Yavapai County, and said “there is overlap” between the groups. “People who are Oath Keepers or people who come to the YCPT trainings and meetings also attend the Lions of Liberty meetings.” The unauthorized surveillance came to a halt after roughly a week when the League of Women Voters of Arizona sued the Lions of Liberty for violating the Voting Rights Act.
Arroyo told Grist that he believes that the world’s economic systems are on the verge of collapse, that unnamed attackers might disable U.S. power grids with an electromagnetic pulse, that the U.S. has already entered a civil war, and that the globe is in the first phase of a third world war. Unlike his guest speaker, Arroyo says he doesn’t believe that FEMA is currently planning to imprison Americans in its camps, though he told Grist he does think FEMA could overstep its authority at some point down the line.
“Governments all the time can do crazy things,” he said.
While Arroyo’s views may seem far out to the average American, it’s obvious there’s an audience for them in Arizona and beyond. Arroyo said that between 100 and 150 people regularly show up to his gatherings. Goldwasser and other experts who track these meetings confirmed they’re well attended. Republican candidates running for seats in Arizona’s House of Representatives, Senate, attorney general’s office, and Department of Education have spoken at YCPT meetings. In 2022, Eli Crane, a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, spoke at a meeting. He subsequently ousted the Democratic incumbent in the midterm elections. An Arizona state representative, Quang Nguyen, has been a guest speaker at least three times. Mitch Padilla, candidate for local justice of the peace, spoke at a YCPT meeting before winning his 2022 race. Multiple current and prospective county sheriffs have given speeches.
For attendees, the risks are minimal. Though YCPT meetings are fueled by conspiracy theories, the organization has a harmless name and isn’t bogged down by the controversy surrounding the national Oath Keepers organization. That may allow the group to expand its reach in coming years.
“There is a gap now and a vacuum where Oath Keepers was,” said Goldwasser, who thinks Arroyo will hoover up Oath Keepers who have been standing idly by as the national organization’s leadership has splintered apart.
Disasters are already chaotic. Adding in teams of armed volunteers, jacked up on conspiracy theories about the government, civil unrest, and global war, adds an unpredictable dimension to already complicated and flawed state and federal relief efforts. “The vast majority of Oath Keeper beliefs and activities are still embodied in YCPT,” Goldwasser said. “Even if Arroyo doesn’t agree with an all-out coup attempt, the things he might agree to that are dangerous, that are intimidating, that are potentially in conflict with the government, those still exist.”
Some well-established relief groups, like the Red Cross, might link up with the Yavapai County Preparedness Team without realizing it’s a spinoff of the Oath Keepers, Goldwasser said.
And then, of course, there’s the matter of who, exactly, these groups are targeting for disaster assistance.
It’s hard to say how these older, majority white veterans and other volunteers currently think about the communities they aim to provide disaster assistance to, but in the past, Jackson said, Oath Keeper relief missions have focused on helping predominantly white communities. “They’re focusing on the suburbs, and they’re seeing the inner city as a source of problems and threats that need to be patrolled rather than people that need help.” FEMA has faced persistent criticism for shortchanging minorities and low-income Americans in its relief efforts. If the Oath Keepers bring racist bias to their disaster recovery work, it could make disasters even more dangerous for communities of color.
Arroyo disputes the idea that his group discriminates. “We’ve got transgenders in our organization, we’ve got members of the LGBTQ community, we’ve had Democrats come in and participate in our training,” Arroyo said. “The narrative that the Oath Keepers are white nationalist, white supremacist, that’s a false statement.”
As the planet warms, more calamities will strike the U.S. and, if the recent past is any indication, create new opportunities for militias and other extremist groups to mobilize and recruit. But researchers have been examining productive counter-extremist messaging methods for decades now, and experts told Grist they see a few interventions that could limit militias’ power during natural disasters.
Brian Hughes, co-founder of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab at American University, said his group has had success using credible messengers — a trusted community group, a loved one, or an authority figure — to teach potential recruitment targets to avoid being manipulated by extremists. Those targets are people who are disillusioned with the “system” or simply have too much time on their hands. “We try to reach people as early in the radicalization process as possible and ideally even before it begins,” he said.
Hughes has had success experimenting with a technique called “pre-bunking,” a mix of media literacy and counter-propaganda education. The method teaches people how to recognize extremist recruitment tactics and reject them on sight. “You can say something like, ‘If somebody is telling you a story that sounds like they’re saying you need to stockpile guns because society is going to collapse, there’s a good chance this person is representing an extremist group or an extremist point of view,’” Hughes said. His lab’s research has shown that people who have been pre-bunked are less likely to find extremist messaging credible and are more likely to develop their own counterarguments against it.
States can also play a firmer role in curtailing extremist activity. Many states have laws on the books that prohibit private militias from operating, but most state attorneys general don’t enforce them. In fact, some states are trending in the opposite direction. Idaho lawmakers recently passed a law that repeals legislation prohibiting militias and paramilitary activity.
“The states seem reticent” to enforce anti-militia laws, “and some states don’t even know that they can utilize this,” Goldwasser said. “But it’s something that is absolutely necessary moving forward.”
Stall is particularly heartened by organizations that enlist retired law enforcement and veterans — the same groups targeted by the Oath Keepers — to do relief work while ditching the heavy dose of extremist ideology. Team Rubicon, a humanitarian organization headquartered in California, recruits veterans, first responders, and other volunteers to help communities prepare for and recover from disasters. The group has built out a network of 150,000 volunteers, half of whom are veterans, and conducted some 1,500 missions in its 13 years of operation. Art delaCruz, Team Rubicon’s CEO and a veteran himself, told Grist that the organization’s work in disaster zones helps make the transition from soldier to civilian easier for its volunteers.
“I like to say that military veterans and people who have retired out of law enforcement or fire departments, whatever it might be, you have muscles that you’ve built up over the years and you love to use them,” delaCruz said. “The ability to use those muscles in a manner that’s meaningful is really, really powerful.”
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