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The billionaire’s generosity to the Supreme Court justice and his family raise a whole lot of questions about whether the “gifts” were declared properly.
Recent reports indicate that Crow provided Thomas’ grandnephew with tuition to a pricey boarding school in the 1990s. Thomas did not report this gift from Harlan Crow as required on his annual disclosure forms. But that is nothing new. ProPublica had previously reported on multiple luxury vacations provided to Justice Thomas and his wife via Crow’s yacht and jets—including an island-hopping junket in Indonesia that ProPublica valued at $500,000.
That Thomas has made multiple lapses in ethical judgment in not reporting the receipt of such valued largesse from Crow is something for him, SCOTUS, and now Congress to muse over.
But what about Crow’s judgment? Did he file gift tax returns and pay gift taxes on any of the gifts he provided to the Thomas family?
It is a reasonable question to ask, and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) appears to have formally done so, with a reported due date of a response May 8. In lieu of gift taxes, did Crow expense the value of the trips and tuition provided the Thomases on either personal or business income tax returns? Wyden wants to know.
If Crow took business expense deductions for the above referenced “gifts,” then he can’t claim they were gifts. And if that’s the case, he wouldn’t have had to file gift tax returns which—given a potential tax rate of up to 40 percent—would represent a pretty price for the billionaire real estate magnate.
The criteria for what constitutes an untaxed gift that exceeds the limit to avoid paying tax vary by year. For example, the limit was $13,000 per recipient in 2013, but $17,000 in 2023. The Indonesian junket—valued at over $500,000 by ProPublica—would generate gift taxes of approximately $200,000 for Mr. Crow.
Now, if Crow did take business deductions for the value of the luxury vacations provided to the Thomases, he would have opened up another can of worms for himself tax-wise. That’s because Crow has publicly stated he did not discuss any business before the court with Justice Thomas.
If that is true, then it is possible that Crow falsified his income tax returns by expensing the cost of the vacation provided the Thomases. It’s also possible the vacations provided the Thomas family could be viewed as income to Thomas—since he would be viewed as providing value to Crow through business discussions. To be very clear, this is speculative and none of this is proven, but the possibility alone makes it worth investigating.
What seems much more clear-cut is that Justice Thomas doesn’t seem to think he has to report gifts from wealthy businessmen, who also are generous corporate political donors, like Harlan Crow.
“Not reportable” is the phrase used by Thomas’ attorney/friend Mark Paoletta when he tweeted (incorrectly) about how the tuition payment by Crow to the school attended by the grandnephew was not reportable as a gift.
Oh my!
Such an admission by Paoletta suggests knowledge of gift tax requirements by both Thomas and Crow going all the way back to the 1990s. It also raises additional questions. Was Justice Thomas motivated not to disclose valuable junkets provided to him and his family in order to abet his buddy Crow’s non-filing of gift tax returns and/or expensing of the value of the trips on his tax returns?
Oh me oh my!
Now, Mr. Crow may think he has insulated himself by procuring a golden passport from St. Kitts and Nevis—which is a notorious tax haven and money laundering refuge in the Caribbean. Then there’s the fact that Crow’s yacht, the Michaela Rose, has a registered ownership under an entity called Rochelle Marine Limited—a company domiciled in Guernsey, another notorious tax haven located just off the shores of the U.K.
Mr. Crow clearly has employed some clever tax accountants and lawyers over the years. And we all look forward to the answers he provides to the questions posed by Sen. Wyden but, clearly, Crow has exhibited a predisposition for tax avoidance behavior. Did he cross the line into tax fraud? That is something to contemplate and discuss around the campfire.
But why is this question even significant?
It is murky as to whether any of Crow’s business dealings were ever subject to SCOTUS review—even indirectly. What is not unclear are the heavy-duty political campaign contributions made by Harlan Crow.
Has Mr. Crow donated to dark money PACs? We don’t know, because anonymity is the whole point of dark money PACs.
What about corporate political donations?
There is no limit to those given the Citizens United decision, wherein SCOTUS bestowed personhood on corporations and concluded that limiting corporate political contributions was tantamount to limiting freedom of speech—which was unconstitutional.
Might that issue have ever come up when Thomas was sailing on Crow’s yacht or flying on his corporate jet? Justice Thomas voted with the majority in Citizens United, which certainly had to make corporate executives everywhere in the U.S. pleased—even if it opened the door to contributions from overseas, and not just from Caribbean tax havens, and not just from dual passport holders.
That Justice Thomas was unethical in not disclosing receipt of luxury gifts provided to him is transparently obvious, though it seems inconsequential to date. But it does raise the question as to whether those who provide wealthy gifts to civil servants that hold positions of power should face any consequences, particularly when tax responsibilities are clear.
Should wealthy corporate executives who make large political donations to obtain results favorable to their business (or make luxury gifts to powerful people) be held accountable? Bottom line—does the wealth, power, and position of the wealthy insulate them from the consequences of their actions? (Normal tax-paying citizens would certainly face such a reckoning.)
These questions are bigger than just Thomas and Crow. They speak to the integrity of our political systems, and whether ordinary Americans should have to live by different rules than the wealthy and politically powerful.
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Emergency personnel work the scene of a shooting at Allen Premium Outlets in Allen, Texas, after a shooter opened fire at the outlet mall on Saturday. (photo: Stewart F House/Guardian UK)
Critics say the Republican senator should advocate for meaningful gun control rather than invoke prayer after mass, deadly violence
Cruz and other fellow Texas Republicans have faced similar backlash for citing general emotional support, thoughts, prayers, or a combination thereof after the slayings in Allen, Texas, on Saturday.
Criticism of Cruz grew several hours after the shooting when he tweeted: “Heidi and I are praying for the families of the victims of the horrific mall shooting in Allen, Texas. We pray also for the broader Collin county community that’s in shock from this tragedy.”
Shannon Watts, founder of gun safety group Moms Demand Action, said on Twitter: “YOU helped arm him with guns, ammo and tactical gear. He did exactly what you knew he’d do. Spare us your prayers and talk of justice for a gunman who is … dead”.
“The only accountability we can hope for is that gun extremists like you are thrown into the ash heap of history.”
Star Trek actor George Takei added: “You’re worse than useless.”
Another Twitter user said thoughts and prayers “are nothing but blasphemy and evil”. Yet another quipped: “Have you tried turning the prayer machine off and back on again.”
Cruz has received more than $442,000 from organization which support keeping guns as accessible as possible, according to Axios and Open Secrets. He has used language referring to thought and prayers rather than restrictions on guns in reaction to other previous mass shootings in his state.
After a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at the Robb Elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, on 24 May 2022, Cruz commented: “Heidi and I are lifting up in prayer the entire … community during this devastating time and we mourn the lives that were taken by this act of evil. None of us can imagine the anguish the parents in Uvalde are going through. Our hearts go out to them.”
In response to a racist shooting at an El Paso Walmart that left 23 dead in August 2019, Cruz similarly said: “Heidi & I are praying for everyone in El Paso. As events continue to unfold, please heed any warnings from local authorities and law enforcement and stay safe. #Pray4ElPaso.”
Cruz’s comment on a shooting that left two dead near one of his state’s universities a couple of months later was: “Heidi and I are lifting up in prayer those who were killed and injured in last night’s shooting at an off-campus party at Texas A&M Commerce @tamuc.”
Cruz has offered more than prayers in response to certain mass shootings, though, such as commentary on immigration policy. After authorities said that a Mexican national who had previously been deported shot five neighbors to death last month, Cruz tweeted: “Thank you to the brave men and women of law enforcement who worked tirelessly to apprehend this mass murdering illegal alien who killed 5 innocent people. The victims deserve justice. And this monster when convicted deserves the death penalty.”
In the hours and days leading up to Saturday’s shooting in Allen, Cruz touted his support of gun rights. Early Saturday afternoon, he retweeted a Senate Republicans post stating: “Ted Cruz’s challenger said he wishes the second amendment wasn’t written. Beto 2.0?”
Early on Saturday, Cruz said of declared 2024 challenger Colin Allred, a Democratic congressman: “Wow. This guy wants to represent Texas??” quoting him saying “Would it be better if [the second amendment] had not been written? Of course. But there’s no chance that we’re going to repeal” it.
Cruz used googly eyes in his tweet, which referred to the constitutional right for Americans to bear arms.
Republican US congressman Keith Self, whose district includes Allen, bristled on Sunday when asked about invoking spirituality after mass shootings like the one a day earlier.
“Those are people that don’t believe in an almighty God who is absolutely in control of our lives. Self said on CNN. “I’m a Christian – I believe that he is.”
Self went on to argue that the US’s lack of adequate mental health treatment was to blame for mass shootings. And then he said that the country’s focus should be on praying for the Allen victims’ families.
Texas’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, also sought to redirect the public conversation about the Allen mall shooting to mental health. Eve
“People want a quick solution,” Abbott said on Fox News Sunday. “The long-term solution here is to address the mental health issue.”
Abbott’s comment on mental health came after host Shannon Bream noted that a Fox News poll revealed that 80% of participants supported gun control measures, such as raising the minimum age to buy a firearm and mental health checks. Fox News’s viewers are largely Republican.
Neither Cruz, Abbott nor Self immediately responded to requests for comment.
Despite Texas’s history of mass shootings, Abbott in 2021 signed a law which allowed the state’s residents to legally carry guns without a license or training. Meanwhile, a federal judge last year struck down one of Texas’s few remaining gun restrictions, which barred people younger than 21 from carrying a handgun.
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U.S. military vehicles outside an outpost in northern Syria in 2018. (photo: Hussein Malla/AP)
THE DISCORD LEAKS | Iranian operatives and their affiliates in Iraq moved swiftly to capitalize on the February disaster that left tens of thousands dead, U.S. intelligence alleges
The findings, outlined in a leak of U.S. secrets circulated on the Discord messaging platform and obtained by The Washington Post, raise dire questions about the ability of the United States and its allies to intercept Iranian-sourced arms used routinely to target American personnel, partner forces and civilians in the Middle East. The top-secret document, which has not been previously disclosed, amplifies earlier reports of Iran’s alleged efforts to conceal defensive military equipment within aid deliveries to Syria after the February disaster devastated that country and neighboring Turkey.
A U.S. defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive disclosures, declined to address the document’s authenticity but said the activity it describes is consistent with past efforts by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to “use humanitarian aid going into Iraq and Syria as a way to get materials to IRGC-affiliated groups.”
Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not return a request for comment. Last month, Iranian officials told the Reuters news agency that its report, detailing Tehran’s alleged use of cargo planes to smuggle air defense systems into Syria under the guise of earthquake assistance, was “not true.” Reuters attributed its reporting to nine people in Syria, Iran, Israel and the West.
Iran’s alleged smuggling of offensive weapons into Syria includes unspecified small arms, ammunition and drones, according to the leaked U.S. intelligence assessment. The document says those deliveries were made using vehicle convoys from Iraq coordinated through friendly militant groups there and the Quds Force, Iran’s elite expeditionary unit that specializes in managing proxy fighters and intelligence gathering.
The Israeli military official, who like others interviewed for this report spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information, affirmed that the Quds Force was involved in such activity.
In the earthquake’s immediate aftermath, Iran and its affiliates moved quickly to exploit the chaos, the leaked intelligence document contends. On Feb. 7, a day after the disaster leveled scores of homes and other buildings, setting off desperate rescue efforts, a militia group based in Iraq “allegedly orchestrated the transfer of rifles, ammunition and 30 UAVs hidden in aid convoys to support future attacks on U.S. forces in Syria,” it says. UAV is military shorthand for unmanned aerial vehicle.
On Feb. 13, a Quds Force officer directed an Iraqi militia group to “embed weapons within legitimate earthquake aid,” the leaked U.S. document indicates, noting that another Quds Force officer maintained a list of “hundreds” of vehicles and goods that entered Syria from Iraq after the earthquake, an apparent effort to manage where all of the trafficked weapons were headed.
The leaked U.S. assessment also implicates the “PMC chief of staff,” an apparent reference to Abu Fadak Al-Mohammedawi, a senior official with Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces. The consortium of Shiite militias, aligned in many cases with Iran, receives Iraqi government funding through its formal state body, the Popular Mobilization Committee, or PMC.
The group denied claims that its affiliates have used humanitarian assistance shipments as a conduit for weapon deliveries. The aid packages were authorized by the Iraqi government and reached Syrian people in need, said Moayad Al Saadi, a spokesperson. Such allegations, he said, “will not discourage the Iraqi people from helping the Syrian brothers and standing with them in their humanitarian ordeal, away from any political or other considerations.”
The leaked intelligence findings spotlight an uncomfortable reality: that even as 2,50o U.S. troops continue to serve in Iraq as advisers, working alongside the Iraqi army, the government in Baghdad appears unwilling to pursue PMF militants who pose a threat to both militaries.
Iraq’s prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, came into office last year with the backing of Iranian-linked groups. A spokesperson declined to provide a response on the record. A senior official in his office, however, denied the U.S. document’s findings, calling them “fake” and saying there is no pretext needed to supply weapons to groups in Syria that work with Iran.
“In reality the borders are wide open; in fact we are still suffering from illegals sneaking through the Syrian border,” this official said. “Which means if these documents are right, it’s possible any time. Why wait for an aid convoy as a justification?”
Israel has targeted convoys suspected of hauling weapons to Syria and Lebanon, the leaked intelligence documents says, but the risk of hitting bona fide humanitarian deliveries has posed challenges. It is “very likely” that the Israelis will continue their interdiction efforts, but they require “stricter intelligence confirmation prior to striking alleged aid shipments,” the document says.
In Syria, where roughly 900 U.S. troops work with local forces to stifle a resurgence of the Islamic State, the threat from Iranian-aligned groups is persistent, U.S. officials say.
In March, for instance, a U.S. contractor working at a base there was killed by what the Pentagon said was an Iranian-made drone. The attack wounded another contractor there, and several U.S. service members suffered head injuries from the explosion.
U.S. officials are confident that the drone that killed U.S. contractor Scott Dubis was not smuggled into the country in one of the earthquake aid convoys, the U.S. defense official said, declining to provide further details.
Dubis, a longtime U.S. military contractor from South Carolina, was killed March 23 while working on an armored vehicle on a U.S. base near Hasakah, a city in northeastern Syria. The hangar he was working in during the attack was not as well protected as the rest of the base, a second U.S. military official said. An Avenger air defense system was there to guard against aerial threats, the official said, and it remains unclear why and how the system failed to engage the drone.
Soon after Dubis’s death, U.S. fighter jets struck the Iranian-backed militias believed to be responsible for the attack, prompting a stern warning to Tehran from President Biden, who said the United States would respond forcefully to violent attacks on American personnel.
Mike Dubis, Scott Dubis’s older brother, told The Post that U.S. officials have not provided his family with any details about the investigation. The lack of information has been dispiriting, he said, because serious questions remain about how the militants were able to penetrate the defenses of a U.S. military base.
“It sounds like not enough is being done to prevent it,” Mike Dubis said.
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From left, South Carolina State Senators Sandy Senn, Katrina Shealy, Mia McLeod, Penry Gustafson and Margie Bright Matthews. (photo: Audra Melton/NYT)
That prediction failed to anticipate the Sister Senators.
The Sisters, as they call themselves, are the women in the South Carolina State Senate — the only women, three Republicans, one Independent and one Democrat, in a legislature that ranks 47th among states in the proportion of women. As a block, they are refusing to allow the legislature to pass a near-total ban on abortion, despite a Republican supermajority.
Three times in eight months, Republican leaders in the chamber have tried to ban abortion beginning at conception. Three times, the women have resisted, even as fellow Republicans have threatened primary challenges and anti-abortion activists have paraded empty strollers and groups of children heckling the women as “baby killers.”
Before the most recent debate started in April, the anti-abortion group Students for Life dropped off gift bags at the offices of the three Republican women containing plastic spines, infant size but intended to encourage the women to grow one, with notes signed, “the pre-born.”
The women filibustered, taking the gifts to the podium on the Senate floor to declare themselves even more firmly in resistance. “I’ve got one hell of a spine already, but now I’ve got another backup,” Senator Katrina Shealy said, flanked by the two other Republican women, all holding their plastic spines like trophies.
After three days of debate, during which the women spoke for as long as four hours each at a time, Senate leadership acknowledged — again — that it did not have the votes to pass the ban.
“I don’t think the Republican Party saw us coming, because we didn’t do what they thought we were going to do,” Ms. Shealy, the senior member of the group, said in an interview with the other women around a table in her State House office. “They thought we would do just what they told us to do.”
But as men argued that abortion was killing babies, the five women insisted that abortion bans are about controlling women — and that they will not be controlled. They have argued the ban reduces women to “baby machines” like the dystopia of “The Handmaid’s Tale” and rejected as ludicrous claims from male legislators that women use abortion as birth control.
“I don’t believe any woman goes out on Friday night and has sex and gets pregnant so she can have an abortion the next day,” Ms. Shealy said.
The debate in South Carolina, a deeply red state where abortion for now remains legal up until 22 weeks, shows how much has not happened according to plan now that overturning Roe has made abortion bans a reality rather than a symbolic gesture or plank in a party platform.
Many Republican-controlled states have outlawed abortion, largely through bans triggered by the Supreme Court decision in June. But states that were expected to have not, stopped by voters in ballot measures (Kansas and Kentucky), Republican legislators (South Carolina and Nebraska) or courts that have temporarily blocked bans, saying they are likely unconstitutional (Utah and Wyoming).
“Pro-life” and “pro-choice” have proven muddy if not increasingly meaningless distinctions. And views on abortion have turned out to be far more nuanced than a red/blue divide: Polls show groups that might have been expected to generally back bans on abortion, Republican women among them, moving away from a desire to make most abortion illegal. Even in South Carolina, polls show most voters support some abortion access and disapprove of overturning Roe.
“There’s got to be gray area,” said Senator Penry Gustafson, another of the Republicans.
The three Republican women are white, the two others Black, and all describe themselves holding deep religious faith. They are all mothers, and several have fostered children or supported relatives or other young people through college, and they say their experience of pregnancy informs their views on abortion.
All the women support the right to abortion, but with some restriction, though they vary on gestational limits: Senator Margie Bright Matthews, a Democrat, and Senator Mia McLeod, who left the Democratic Party this year, lean toward codifying Roe, which allowed some right to abortion up until fetal viability, around 24 weeks.
Ms. Gustafson and Sandy Senn, the third Republican, would prefer to restrict abortion after the first trimester, with exceptions. Ms. Shealy said if it were up to her personally, she would leave the decision to women, their partners and their doctors: “Women know what’s best for their bodies.”
Still, she and other Republican women describe themselves as pro-life, not pro-choice. They proudly embrace the state’s Republican creed, which begins “I do not choose to be a common man” and includes a pledge “to think and act for myself.” They also believe that women should be allowed to think and act for themselves, and that most would say that the decision on abortion should be left up to them.
“There are millions of women who feel like they have not been heard,” Ms. Gustafson said during their filibuster last month. “And that’s why I’ve been standing up here this long.”
Their positions hardly make them champions to reproductive rights groups. Two of the three Republican women, Ms. Shealy and Ms. Gustafson, voted in favor of a six-week ban, which the Senate passed. This is before most women know they are pregnant. The Republican women successfully insisted on adding exceptions for medical emergencies or cases of rape, incest or fatal fetal anomalies.
They call it a compromise between the ban at conception and bills they put forward that would have placed the question of abortion rights to voters on the ballot, or banned abortion after the first trimester, with exceptions. The Republican leadership in the Senate declined to put those measures to a vote. Ms. Senn voted no on the six-week bill, saying any ban should begin at the end of the first trimester, no earlier.
The House has refused to vote on the six-week bill, holding out for the ban at conception, but still has until Thursday to do so. Instead, it has pressured the Senate to repeatedly vote on the ban at conception. Senate leadership has done so, despite having acknowledged it did not have the votes.
“If they had done it the one time, that’s one thing,” Ms. Senn said. “But then a second time and a third time. They knew what the outcome was going to be. They were forewarned.”
“It’s like they dared them,” agreed Ms. Matthews.
“I’m like, you’re going to get it,” Ms. Senn added. “You’re going to get an earful.”
An earful she delivered: “We the women have not asked for, nor do we want, your protection,” she said, addressing her male colleagues on the floor, wearing flip flops for comfort during the filibuster. “We don’t need it. We don’t buy into the ruse that what you really want is to take care of us.”
Ms. Gustafson, elected in 2020, got her first taste of politics when a friend took her to a Tea Party rally in 2016. She had owned a restaurant and acted in community theater, including in the role originated by Dolly Parton in the classic film about strong Southern women, “Steel Magnolias.”
Banning at conception “allows nothing for the in-between or things we can’t even conceive of,” she said. “There are too many things that can happen.”
The women have found support from a few male Republicans in the chamber. But others have accused them of betraying the party by seeking bans short of one starting at conception.
“I’m not willing to sit by and let the goal posts be moved for what it means to be pro-life for the Republican Party,” Senator Richard Cash said.
As other states in the region have restricted abortion,the Republican women worry that South Carolina has become a destination for it. The number of abortions has risen since Roe was overturned, and nearly half are women coming from other states, according to state figures.
The South Carolina legislature is an unexpected place to find so much talk of women’s rights. It took until 1969 to formally ratify the 19th Amendment, which gave all American women the right to vote in 1920.
Abortion rights supporters were shocked in January when the state’s highest court declared that privacy protections in the state Constitution extended to a right to abortion, overturning a six-week ban with limited exceptions.
That opinion was written by the only woman on the court, who has since retired, and the legislature replaced her with a man. The Republican leadership is trying to pass the new six-week ban in the hopes the new court will overturn the decision.
Both Ms. Shealy and Ms. Gustafson knocked off popular incumbents to win their seats; Ms. Shealy ran as a petition candidate against a Republican, and wore bedazzled Wonder Woman sneakers to win it. (“I still wear them when I get mad,” she said.) A newspaper editorial at the time accused her of an “over-eager desire to be liked.”
For three years, she was the only woman in the chamber, and leaders continued to address the body as “Gentlemen of the Senate.” One Republican colleague said women should be barefoot and pregnant, not in the legislature, and later told her women were a “lesser cut of meat.”
Now chair of the committee on family and veterans’ services, Ms. Shealy is the self-described “Mama Hen” of the five women. “Come girls,” she said, herding them to a photograph, “Chop chop.”
Female legislators are still unusual enough to attract attention. “The women!” a lobbyist exclaimed as the quintet passed him on the escalator. “I need to go with y’all!”
A parent in the Upstate region of South Carolina objected to “The Handmaid’s Tale” in a school library after Ms. Senn mentioned the book during the filibuster. But she and the other senators say most of their constituents agree with them. Older women in particular, Ms. Senn said, have sent notes with small donations. “One of them said, ‘This old crone is proud of you.’”
And women who staff the legislative offices have flashed them thumbs up. One stopped Ms. McLeod as she got out of her car on Wednesday. “She said thank you for what you did last week,” she said. “Many of them work for Republican men.”
Ms. Matthews added: “They always say, ‘We can’t say what we think.’”
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Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic announces amendments to the law on weapons and ammunition controls and increased police presence around schools in the wake of two mass shootings this week. (photo: Milos Miskov/Anadolu Agency)
Gun control measures could further erode civil liberties under President Aleksandar Vucic.
Though Serbia is tied for the third-highest rate of civilian gun ownership in the world, with 39.1 firearms per 100 residents, mass shooting events are quite rare; the last one was in 2016, when a man killed five and wounded 22 in a shooting at a cafe in the village of Zitiste, in northern Serbia. This week’s shootings have inspired Vucic to call for widespread disarmament similar, much as Australia did after the 1996 Port Arthur massacre. However, the measures that Vucic has proposed, including a moratorium on new gun licenses and a month-long general amnesty for illegal firearms, cannot address the violence that is deeply entrenched in Serbia, and which often benefits Vucic and those in power.
On Wednesday, a 13-year-old boy killed nine people — eight students and a security guard — at a Belgrade-area elementary school with two pistols he had taken from his father’s apartment. According to Serbian police, the alleged shooter also had four Molotov cocktails, a map of his planned route, and a list of his targets, Politico Europe reported Wednesday. Six children and a teacher were also injured in the shooting, and the father of the shooter has also been arrested.
Just a day later, a 20-year-old gunman killed eight people and wounded 14 about 50 miles away from Belgrade, apparently using illegally obtained firearms. The alleged shooter apparently had an altercation in a schoolyard in the village of Dubona, left to get a handgun and a rifle and opened fire, according to Serbian state broadcaster RTS. He then continued shooting from a car, firing seemingly at random at people in two other villages before police found him at his grandfather’s house, where there was a stockpile of weapons including an automatic rifle, ammunition, and grenades, Reuters reported.
In response, Vucic called for a one-month amnesty for people to turn in their illegal firearms and a two-year ban on issuing new gun licenses, as well as heavier fines or longer prison sentences for keeping illegal weapons after the amnesty period ends. “If they do not hand them over, we will find them, and the consequences will be dire for them,” Vucic said in a press conference Friday.
His government has also proposed an increase in police presence, with 1,000 police officers to be sent to schools in the next six months to “reduce peer violence,” the New York Times reported Friday, as well as increased surveillance at shooting ranges.
Additional penalties on top of Serbia’s already-strict firearms laws are likely to help in theory, but critics question the capacity and willpower of the government to actually effect change — and preserve the civil liberties of Serbs under ever-increasing surveillance and police presence.
Fighting entrenched violence in Serbia will take time
Serbian gun laws are already fairly stringent, especially when compared with regulations in the US. Adults 18 and over may have a gun license only after a thorough background check with the police which includes interviews with family and friends, and a medical check that must be repeated every five years. People with serious mental illness, drug or alcohol abuse disorders, or criminal history are supposed to be denied gun permits, and a permit can be revoked if a gun owner is deemed irresponsible, Reuters reported Wednesday.
In order to obtain a firearm, Serbian citizens must also take a training course and pass a test about gun legislation. Firearms must be stored in a designated cabinet, and concealed carry permits are hard to obtain; firearms are meant to be kept at home or used for hunting.
There have been successful amnesties in the past as well; SEESAC, the South Eastern and Eastern Europe Clearinghouse for the Control of Small Arms and Light Weapons, tracks the number of illegal firearms handed over to the state. After the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s, small arms flooded the region as is typical in post-conflict zones, providing opportunities for people to illegally obtain not just firearms, but ammunition and light weapons such as grenades.
But illicit weapons, by their nature, are difficult to monitor and difficult to control. “We don’t even have an assessment of how many illegal weapons are out there and what kind,” said Aleksandar Zivotic, a historian at Belgrade University, told Reuters. Furthermore, whether the government has the will to truly deal with the problem of gun violence as Australia and the United Kingdom both did after devastating mass shootings is unclear.
“The president announced complete disarmament, but this is more of a populist statement than a realistic measure,” Maja Bjelos, a senior researcher at the Belgrade Center for Security Policy told Vox. “It is more realistic to expect some cosmetic changes in legislation and criminal procedures to be made in haste and without real public discussion and the involvement of civil society.”
Firearms, though, are only part of the problem, according to Belgrade University psychology professor Dragan Popadic. After the shootings, “people suddenly have been shaken into reality and the ocean of violence that we live in, how it has grown over time and how much our society has been neglected for decades,” Popadic told the Associated Press. “It is as if flashlights have been lit over our lives and we can no longer just mind our own business.”
The overlapping mechanisms of violence in Serbia — of the state against its citizens, of ethnic tensions exploited for the government’s benefit, and gender-based violence — come from the top down, Bjelos told Vox.
“To understand this situation, you need to understand the nature of the regime and the political leadership,” Bjelos said. “The current regime is repressive and has been labeled as a hybrid regime or autocracy by various international organizations. The top leadership, especially the president, are rebranded nationalists and radicals. The modus operandi of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) is based on violence within the party and against citizens through usurped institutions.”
Gang and mafia violence is also allegedly enmeshed with the government in Serbia, and overlaps with ethnic tension leftover from the violent breakup of Yugoslavia. Vucic has managed to play both of these elements to his advantage, painting himself as a leader who will stamp out corruption by weakening democratic institutions and increasing government surveillance, while also periodically stoking conflict with neighboring Kosovo over the status of the Serb minority there.
“The state is the main instigator of violence though institutions (e.g. police brutality), the state media and loyal tabloids, informal groups like hooligans, right-wing and pro-Russian groups, [and] criminals,” Bjelos said. “Impunity for perpetrators is the rule, not the exception.”
The Vucic reforms open the door to abuse civil liberties
Under Vucic, Serbia has imposed increasingly draconian surveillance measures, including “cutting-edge” technology to keep watch on citizens and political rivals, Bjelos said. Now, the president could use the recent attacks to push forth even more problematics laws and policies aimed at control, rather than security.
“The public is not against disarmament, but there is resistance to potential repressive measures that could limit civil rights and freedoms,” she told Vox. Those repressive populist measures, she said, include the increased police presence the president has introduced, as well as increased surveillance and his proposed reintroduction of the death penalty, which goes against the present Serbian constitution.
Looking even further ahead, Vucic could use the mass shootings this week to push through a draft law — which has already been introduced and retracted multiple times — which would allow for the use of general facial recognition technology to monitor public spaces as well as other biometric mass surveillance.
“The government is determined to legalize biometric surveillance [through] the draft law on internal affairs,” Bjelos said. “The introduction of such intrusive technology was first justified by the government’s need to fight terrorism and organized crime, and later to prevent sexual harassment of minors on the internet and child abduction.” The changing rationale for such surveillance could easily shift to mass shootings, though Vucic has not yet introduced mass surveillance as a solution for gun violence.
Serbia, first under Yugoslav-era leader Slobodan Milosevic and now under Vucic, is considered a victim of state capture — “a process in which (political) actors infiltrate state structures with the help of clientelist networks and use these state structures as a mantle to hide their corrupt actions,” according to a 2020 policy brief from the Netherlands Institute of International Relations. Under Vucic, every political and government apparatus, as well as the media, have become organs — clients — of his political party, whether because they’re been filled with party loyalists, or because their funding depends on the government, in the case of the media.
Under the SNS and Vucic, the apparatus of the state has been reoriented from public service to serving the powerful few, to the detriment of society. Whether the mass shootings present a turning point for Serbia to either move further toward authoritarianism or try to claw back the nation’s institutions is unclear, but for many, it has served as somewhat of a wake-up call.
“People are currently furious,” Bjelos said. “They have a feeling that the whole system failed, from the top to the bottom.”
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People walk next to a house destroyed by the floods in the village of Nyamukubi, South Kivu province, in Congo, Saturday, May 6, 2023. The death toll from flash floods and landslides in eastern Congo has risen, according to the governor and authorities in the country's South Kivu province. (photo: Moses Sawasawa/AP)
Thomas Bakenge, administrator of Kalehe, the worst-hit territory, told reporters on the scene Saturday that 203 bodies had been recovered so far, but that efforts to find others were continuing.
In the village of Nyamukubi, where hundreds of homes were washed away, rescue workers and survivors dug through the ruins Saturday looking for more bodies in the mud.
Villagers wept as they gathered around some of the bodies recovered so far, which lay on the grass covered in muddy cloths near a rescue workers post.
Grieving survivor Anuarite Zikujuwa said she had lost her entire family, including her in-laws, as well as many of her neighbors. "The whole village has been turned into a wasteland. There's only stones left and we can't even tell where our land once was," she said.
Michake Ntamana, a rescue worker helping look for and bury the dead, said villagers were trying to identify and collect the bodies of loved ones found so far. He said some bodies washed down from villages higher in the hills were being buried shrouded just in leaves off the trees. "It's truly sad because we have nothing else here," he said.
Rivers broke their banks in villages in the territory of Kalehe, close to the shores of Lake Kivu on Thursday. Authorities have reported scores of people injured. One surivor told AP the flash floods came so fast that they took everyone by surprise.
South Kivu Gov. Théo Ngwabidje visited the area to see the destruction for himself. He posted on his Twitter account that the provincial government had dispatched medical, shelter and food supplies.
Several main roads to the affected area have been been made impassable by the rains, hampering the relief efforts.
President Felix Tshisekedi has declared a national day of mourning on Monday to honor the victims, and the central government is sending a crisis management team to South Kivu to support the provincial government.
Heavy rains in recent days have brought misery to thousands in East Africa, with parts of Uganda and Kenya also seeing heavy rainfall.
Flooding and landslides in Rwanda, which borders Congo, left 129 people dead earlier this week.
Local government official Bakenge told AP, "This is the fourth time that such damage has been caused by the same rivers. Not 10 years pass without them causing enormous damage."
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Spraying pesticide at grape vineyard in the San Joaquin Valley, California. (photo: Education Images/UIG)
PFAS are present at ‘potentially dangerous’ levels in widely used chemicals sprayed on food crops destined for Americans’ plates
The Environmental Protection Agency has previously been silent on PFAS in food pesticides, even as it found the chemicals in non-food crop products. The potential for millions of acres of contaminated food cropland demands swifter and stronger regulatory action, the paper’s authors say.
“I can’t imagine anything that could make these products any more dangerous than they already are, but apparently my imagination isn’t big enough,” said Nathan Donley, environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), which co-authored the study. “The EPA has to take control of this situation and remove pesticide products that are contaminated with these extremely dangerous, persistent chemicals.”
The groups last Monday submitted the test results to the EPA and the California Department of Pesticide Regulation, asking them to remove these products from use until contamination can be addressed.
PFAS are a class of about 15,000 chemicals often used to make thousands of consumer products across dozens of industries resist water, stains and heat. The chemicals are ubiquitous, and linked at low levels of exposure to cancer, thyroid disease, kidney dysfunction, birth defects, autoimmune disease and other serious health problems. They are called “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally degrade.
The testing found PFAS in three out of seven agricultural pesticides, including Intrepid 2F, which state of California data shows is the second most widely applied product behind Roundup. In 2021, the most recent year data is available, more than 1.7m pounds of it were applied to over 1.3m cumulative acres of California land. Use was highest in the Central Valley on crops such as almonds, grapes, peaches and pistachios.
The study also found the chemicals in Oberon 2SC Malathion 5EC, the latter of which contains the neurotoxin malathion.
Multiple studies have established that crops absorb PFAS and they can be ingested by humans. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) began monitoring PFAS in food in 2019 and has detected them in fruits and vegetables, but has not set any limits.
The fertilizers are also probably polluting water with PFAS. The level of PFOA, one kind of PFAS compound, found in Malathion 5EC was over 100,000 times higher than the level the EPA considers safe in drinking water, though no limit has been set for PFAS in pesticides.
“There is no better way to poison Americans than contaminate our food supply and soils with PFAS, and the blame for this lies squarely on the shoulders of EPA,” said Kyla Bennett, a co-author and science policy director with Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (Peer).
It is unclear why the chemicals are added to pesticides, though some in the industry have theorized they are used as a dispersing agent. The Intrepid 2F manufacturer Corteva-Agriscience in a statement to the Guardian said the product did not contain intentionally added PFAS.
The results are the latest in an ongoing dispute among federal regulators and independent researchers over the scale of PFAS contamination in US pesticides, and the response.
Bennett, a former EPA scientist, first discovered PFAS in pesticides in 2020, and alerted the agency and the Massachusetts department of environmental protection.
After conducting its own pesticide testing, the EPA concluded in early 2021 the chemicals were leaching from plastic containers in which they were stored, and said the contamination was limited to pesticides used in mosquitocides. The EPA issued an open letter to the industry reminding it that PFAS can leach, and asking companies to alert it if they were adding PFAS.
But the contamination continues. In late 2022, testing of insecticides used primarily for cotton, but which could potentially be used on food, found PFAS. That testing, along with CBD and Peer’s research, also detected PFAS compounds not known to be used or formed when the chemicals are added to plastic.
The discrepancy suggests the PFAS are not coming from plastic bins, but are added to pesticides by manufacturers, either as active or inactive ingredients, or are inadvertently inserted into products somewhere in the supply chain.
In December, the EPA banned some types of PFAS compounds – but not all – that can be used as inert ingredients in pesticide products, and said at the time that active ingredients are being reviewed. “EPA will share results of that investigation as soon as possible,” an agency spokesperson said. No results have been released, but an EPA spokesperson said the agency has “already analyzed some of the specific pesticides mentioned by CBD and Peer and plans to release those results in the coming weeks”.
PFAS have also previously been found in some widely used flea and tick pesticide products.
In a statement, the EPA said it “has taken significant scientific, regulatory and enforcement actions to address this issue, will continue to take such actions”.
However, it did not say it would halt sales of the pesticides while it investigatesBennett told the Guardian the EPA is “missing in action”.
“The fact that we are likely spraying pesticides with PFAS on food at a time when EPA acknowledges there is no safe level of some of these chemicals is nonsensical,” she added.
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