10 June 23
Live on the homepage now!
Reader Supported News
Were it not for his illustrious name, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would be just another crackpot in the growing number of bottom-feeding right-wing fringe politicians seeking high office.
But the Robert F. Kennedy brand is political gold.
RFK Jr. is now polling in the double digits against Biden. The latest CNN poll, taken less than three weeks ago, has him at 20 percent.
He just won a surprise endorsement from Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey. On Monday he spent two hours on Twitter Spaces with Elon Musk (along with fellow crackpots former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and vaccine skeptic Kelly Slater), where he pushed baseless claims such as the coronavirus being a bioweapon.
Instagram announced Sunday it had lifted its ban on him, two years after it shut down Kennedy’s account for breaking its rules related to COVID-19, because “he is now an active candidate for president of the United States.”
RFK Jr.’s rise poses no direct threat to Biden’s nomination, although it may be an indication of Biden’s vulnerabilities among Democrats who continue to worry about his age.
My bigger worry is that all the attention coming his way may convince RFK Jr. to launch a third-party candidacy that could hurt Biden in the general election. Never underestimate the distorted reality of an engorged political ego.
It’s necessary to expose RFK Jr. for who and what he is.
***
Make no mistake. Junior has nothing whatever to do with his father — who stood up for economic and social justice (and for whom I worked in the late 1960s).
The younger RFK is a right-wing nut case.
He plans to travel to the Mexican border this week to “try to formulate policies that will seal the border permanently.”
He wants the federal government to consider the war in Ukraine from the perspective of Russians.
He doesn’t support a ban on assault weapons and blames the rise of mass shootings in America on pharmaceutical drugs.
He attacks Biden as a warmonger. He charged on Musk’s broadcast earlier this week that Biden “has always been in favor of very bellicose, pugnacious and aggressive foreign policy, and he believes that violence is a legitimate political tool for achieving America’s objectives abroad.”
He claims that a 2019 tabletop exercise about a mock pandemic, archived on YouTube, revealed a secret plan involving U.S. spymasters to enrich drug companies and suppress free speech.
For years, he’s promoted the baseless claim linking vaccines to autism. He’s been a leading proponent of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, suggesting the vaccine has killed more people than it has saved.
In his 2021 book The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, he alleged, without plausible evidence, that Fauci sabotaged treatments for AIDS, violated federal laws, and conspired with Bill Gates and social media companies to suppress information about COVID-19 cures in order to leave vaccines as the only options to fight the pandemic.
RFK Jr.’s misinformation about vaccines continues to endanger public health. The United States is now in the midst of the largest measles outbreak in 25 years, but not nearly enough young people have been vaccinated against the disease.
(Ironically, in 1962, RFK Jr.’s uncle, President John F. Kennedy, signed the Vaccination Assistance Act to, in the words of a CDC report, achieve as quickly as possible the protection of the population, especially of all preschool children ... through intensive immunization activity.”)
***
RFK Jr.’s candidacy also saddens me. He could have done something meaningful with his life and his name. Earlier on, he showed promise as a staunch environmentalist before veering into gonzo conspiracy theories. He has correctly identified widening inequality and corporate power as threats to American democracy.
I remember him at the age of 13, running around the pool at RFK’s family compound at Hickory Hill amid whooping and hollering of the vast Kennedy clan, full of energy and laughter.
Mostly, though, I remember his dad, and all the promise RFK represented for America. And, of course, the heartbreaking assassination on June 6, 1968, the evening RFK won the California primary.
That Robert F. Kennedy’s namesake would attract 20 percent of Democratic voters 55 years later is testament to the continuing power of that memory.
It’s also a tragic reminder of how far America has veered from it.
READ MORE 
Donald Trump. (photo: Erin Schaff/NYT/Redux)
ALSO SEE: The Judge Assigned to Oversee Trump's Criminal Case Was Appointed by Trump Himself
Trump took classified documents including information on nuclear weapons and secret plans to attack a foreign country
The former US president, alongside a military valet, now faces a sweeping 37-count felony indictment related to the mishandling of classified documents.
Here are some of the most shocking revelations in the indictment.
Trump took nuclear documents out of the White House
Upon leaving the White House in January 2021, Trump took with him boxes of classified documents, including information regarding US nuclear capabilities, as well as those of a foreign country.
One classified document from June 2020 contained information “ concerning nuclear capabilities of a foreign country”. Investigators found another undated document “concerning nuclear weaponry of the United States”.
Trump stored classified documents in the shower, among other places
The former president stored boxes of classified documents in various locations at Mar-a-Lago, including an office space, his bedroom, a storage room, a bathroom, a ballroom and in the shower, according to the unsealed indictment.
On 5 April 2021, a Trump employee texted a colleague to ask whether boxes in the business center could be moved to make room for staff to use it as an office.
The employee responded, “We can definitely make it work if we move his papers into the lake room?”
First employee: “There is still a little room in the shower where his other stuff is. Is it only his papers he cares about? Theres some other stuff in there that are not papers. Could that go to storage? Or does he want everything in there on property?”
After that text exchange, some boxes containing documents were moved from the business center to a bathroom and shower in a space at the Mar-a-Lago club known as the Lake Room.
Trump conspired with his valet to hide documents from attorneys
Trump’s valet, Waltine Nauta, was indicted alongside his former boss for conspiring to hide classified documents from attorneys searching for them. Nauta faces six federal charges, including concealing evidence and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
According to the indictment, Trump directed Nauta, who is currently a personal aide to the former president, to move boxes containing documents in order to hide them from his attorneys, the FBI and a grand jury.
When questioned under oath, Nauta said he was unaware Trump held on to boxes with classified documents. That was a lie, prosecutors found during their investigation, as Trump had instructed Nauta to move them from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago resort.
Trump shared secret attack plans even though he was unauthorized to do so
In July 2021, Trump shared unauthorized information about his desire as president to attack a certain country and a classified conversation with a senior military official during an interview with an unnamed writer and their publisher.
“Look what I found, this was [the Senior Military Official’s] plan of attack, read it and just show … it’s interesting,” Trump told the writer, the publisher and two members of his staff, acknowledging he held on to classified documents detailing the plans. None of those he spoke with had security clearances to know that information.
“See as president I could have declassified it,” Trump said. “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”
“Now we have a problem,” said a staffer.
Trump: “Isn’t that interesting?
Trump suggested attorneys lie to DoJ about having no documents
The indictment suggests when lawyers for Trump met with him to discuss how to respond to a May 2022 subpoena seeking documents marked as classified at Mar-a-Lago, Trump allegedly suggested they should tell the justice department that they had no materials that needed to be turned over.
The indictment stated that Trump said: “I don’t want anybody looking, I don’t want anybody looking through my boxes, I really don’t, I don’t want you looking through my boxes.”
He allegedly added: “What happens if we just don’t respond at all or don’t play ball with them?” and “Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?”
READ MORE 
People being evacuated from flooded areas after the explosion at the Kakhovka hydropower plant. (photo: Anadolu Agency)
ALSO SEE: As Ukraine Struggles With Floodwaters, Russia Strikes Odesa, Killing Three
Signals point to explosion early on Tuesday, as Ukraine says intercepted call proves Russia was responsible
Norsar, the Norwegian Seismic Array, said signals from a regional station in Romania pointed to an explosion at 2.54am. Norsar did not draw conclusions on who was responsible.
The New York Times quoted a senior Biden administration official as saying US spy satellites had also detected an explosion at the dam just before its collapse, but adding that US intelligence analysts still had not concluded who caused the explosion or exactly what happened.
The Ukrainian government has said Russian occupying forces had control of the hydroelectric infrastructure on top of the dam and were using it as a garrison at the time of the blast. Explosive experts have said it would be much easier to blow up the dam from within than by firing on it from a distance.
On Friday morning, the Ukrainian security service published what it claimed was an intercepted phone call proving Russian responsibility for blowing up the dam on Tuesday.
The SBU posted on Telegram a recording of a 90-second phone conversation and claimed it was between two “occupiers”, the word normally used by Ukrainian officials for Russian soldiers.
The two men discuss the destruction of the dam, and one of them assumes it was carried out by Ukrainians but the other speaker corrects him, saying “our guys did it”.
“Our saboteur group is there. They wanted to cause fear with this dam. It did not go according to the plan. More than they planned,” the speaker said.
The authenticity of the call could not be verified. The SBU statement did not identify the speakers, nor indicate the time or place the call was supposed to have taken place. An SBU source said the call was intercepted on Thursday and that more details could not be provided as the recording was part of a criminal investigation.
Ukrainian officials have expressed frustration that Kyiv’s account of the dam’s destruction, that it was blown up from inside by Russian forces, has not so far been confirmed by US, UK or other intelligence agencies.
Ihor Syrota, the director general of the Ukrainian hydroelectric power company Ukrhydroenergo, said suggestions that the dam could have been destroyed by Ukrainian shelling or catastrophic structural failure were Russian propaganda.
“The plant was designed to withstand a nuclear strike,” Syrota told the Guardian in an interview in Kyiv. “To destroy the plant from the outside, at least three aircraft bombs, each of 500kg, would have had to be dropped on the same spot. The station was blown up from the inside.”
He added: “They brought hundreds of kilograms of explosives there. Ukraine reported last year that the station was mined. The Russians were just waiting for the right day to blow it up.”
Volodymyr Zelenskiy held an online meeting with environmental activists from around the world to establish an expert group to rally support to help recover from the ecological disaster caused by the dam’s destruction.
“Tens of thousands of birds and at least 20,000 wild animals are at risk of death,” the Ukrainian president said. “Obviously, the Kakhovka reservoir has been turned into a huge graveyard for millions of living beings.”
He said it was becoming a global problem as contaminated flood waters flowed into the Black Sea.
In his nightly video address, recorded on a train after a visit to the flood zone, Zelenskiy thanked Ukrainian troops and repeated Kyiv’s earlier claims of military success around the city of Bakhmut.
He did not discuss the southern front, which so far appears to be the main focus of Ukraine’s emerging counteroffensive. “We see every detail. But it’s not time to talk about it today,” he said.
Ukraine’s deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar said battles on the southern front were continuing for the settlement of Velyka Novosilka, and Russian troops were mounting an “active defence” of the town of Orikhiv.
Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Ukraine had launched its counteroffensive but that Russian lines had held firm.
“It can be said for sure that the Ukrainian offensive has begun; this is evident by their use of strategic reserves,” the Russian president told journalists at a conference in Sochi.
“Ukrainian troops did not achieve their goals in any sector, thanks to the courage of Russian soldiers, proper organisation of troops,” he said. Though he added that Kyiv still had offensive potential.
Putin also said Russia was lacking modern weapons but that the country’s arms industry was developing quickly.
Russian official sources and military bloggers reported intense fighting overnight and early on Friday around the village of Lobkove, south of the Ukrainian-held city of Zaporizhzhia, and Orikhiv, about 30 miles farther east along the front.
Unverified videos posted online showed a German-made Leopard tank and US-made Bradley infantry fighting vehicles damaged and abandoned on the battlefield. Unconfirmed accounts from Russian military bloggers portray only small advances by Ukrainian forces at a high cost in casualties and loss of equipment.
“Ukrainian forces conducted a limited but still significant attack in western Zaporizhzhia oblast on the night of June 7 to 8,” the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reported. “Russian forces apparently defended against this attack in a doctrinally sound manner and had reportedly regained their initial positions as of June 8.
“Ukrainian forces penetrated the initial defensive lines, Russian forces pulled back to a second line of fortifications, and Russian reserves subsequently counterattacked to retake the initial line of defences,” ISW said.
READ MORE 
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. (photo: Annie Leibovitz/Vogue)
The Supreme Court voted not to make federal Medicaid law virtually unenforceable.
But the Court rejected that approach in a 7–2 decision. It’s also Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s first majority opinion in a case with this kind of sweeping policy stakes.
The case involved a somewhat byzantine area of federal law. Medicaid is a “conditional grant” program, meaning that the federal government offers a significant chunk of money to each state (total federal Medicaid spending in 2020 was more than $670 billion), which states are free to take or leave. Should they take the money (and all 50 states take at least some Medicaid funds), however, the states and Medicaid-funded health providers are required to comply with certain requirements laid out in federal law.
These conditions range from broad requirements that state Medicaid programs must cover certain individuals, such as low-income pregnant patients and children, to granular rules governing how Medicaid-funded facilities must operate. The Talevski plaintiffs, for example, accuse a Medicaid-funded nursing home of violating several provisions of Medicaid law that regulate how these facilities must care for patients — including a law that forbids nursing homes from using psychotropic drugs “for purposes of discipline or convenience and not required to treat the resident’s medical symptoms.”
Under well-established law, at least some of the conditions Medicaid law imposes on states and health providers may be enforced through private lawsuits. The defendants in Talevski effectively tried to neutralize all of these lawsuits, leaving patients who are mistreated by Medicaid officials or by Medicaid-funded health providers powerless if their legal rights were violated.
In any event, that won’t happen. The Court voted 7–2 to leave current law in place, in a fairly curt opinion by Jackson that rejects this effort to “reimagine” federal law “and our precedent interpreting it.” Indeed, only one justice, Clarence Thomas, signed onto the Talevski defendant’s most aggressive arguments. Justice Samuel Alito also dissented, but on narrower grounds that might still have allowed some of federal Medicaid law to be enforced by private litigants.
Talevski is also, again, Justice Jackson’s first majority opinion that deals with a major policy question with sweeping stakes for millions of Americans — though she previously authored three majority opinions in relatively minor cases.
Given the lopsided result in the Talevski case, it may seem like Medicaid was never in any real danger. But three of the Court’s current members — Thomas, Alito, and Chief Justice John Roberts — signed onto a 2015 opinion by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, which argued that “the modern jurisprudence permitting [Medicaid] beneficiaries to sue does not generally apply” to conditional grant programs like Medicaid.
In any event, two of those justices appear to have reconsidered, at least in part. And the full Court voted overwhelmingly to reject this attack on Medicaid.
What was at stake in Talevski?
One of the most consequential federal laws ever enacted by Congress is a statute lawyers refer to as “Section 1983.” This law permits state officials — and, in certain circumstances, private individuals implementing state programs — to be sued in federal court if they deprive someone of “any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws.”
This statute is the reason why state government officials may be sued if they violate the Constitution. It also permits suits if those officials violate ordinary federal laws, thus ensuring that both the Constitution and federal law remain superior to the whims of such officials.
About a half-century of law establishes that Section 1983 permits Medicaid patients (or, in the Talevski case, their estate) to bring lawsuits enforcing some provisions of federal Medicaid law. As the Court said in Edelman v. Jordan (1974), “suits in federal court under § 1983 are proper to secure compliance with the provisions of the Social Security Act on the part of participating States.” Medicaid was created by a 1965 amendment to the Social Security Act.
Indeed, the argument that Medicaid law may be enforced through § 1983 suits could not be more straightforward. Section 1983 permits lawsuits against certain individuals who violate rights “secured by the Constitution and laws.” And Medicaid laws are laws. As Jackson writes in her opinion reaffirming that the rules governing Medicaid law will remain exactly as they are, “we have consistently refused to read § 1983’s ‘plain language’ to mean anything other than what it says.”
Nevertheless, the Talevski defendants, an Indiana health system operated by local government officials, and a private company that manages nursing homes, essentially claimed to have unearthed a secret history of § 1983 that undercuts its text and the way the Court has previously read this statute.
Much of this argument rests on a single line in the Supreme Court’s opinion in Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman (1981), which described conditional grant programs as “much in the nature of a contract” because states agree to comply with certain conditions in return for federal money. The Talevski defendants argue that, when § 1983 was enacted during the Reconstruction era, contract law did not allow third parties who were not signatories to the original contract to bring a lawsuit enforcing the contract.
Under this argument, Medicaid patients cannot sue to enforce Medicaid law because the Medicaid program is a contract between the federal government and the states, not between Medicaid providers and their patients.
In any event, the historical support for this argument is very weak. The Talevski defendants cite a hodgepodge of 19th-century legal sources, including an 1881 speech by future Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, a list of contract cases decided by state courts in the 1800s, and an 1880 book by Harvard Law School dean Christopher Columbus Langdell.
But there is also considerable evidence suggesting that the Talevski defendants’ understanding of 19th-century contract law is simply wrong. Among other things, the Supreme Court said in Hendrick v. Lindsay (1876) that “the right of a party to maintain assumpsit,” an antiquated term for breach of contract lawsuits, “on a promise not under seal, made to another for his benefit, although much controverted, is now the prevailing rule in this country.“
In other words, the Supreme Court said in 1876 — just a few years after § 1983 became law — that, while courts disagree on whether third parties may sue to enforce contracts, most courts had concluded that third parties could file such suits. That one fact alone is devastating to the Talevski defendants’ historical argument. As Jackson writes, “something more than ‘ambiguous historical evidence’ is required before we will ‘flatly overrule a number of major decisions of this Court.’”
Again, nothing about this outcome should surprise anyone. The Talevski defendants’ historical argument was laughably weak, so weak that it is shocking that any judge took it seriously. It contradicts § 1983’s text, longstanding Medicaid precedents, and a 19th-century Supreme Court decision all at once.
If not for Scalia’s quizzical attempt to restrict Medicaid suits, and if not for the fact that several current justices seemed to endorse those efforts in previous opinions, there would have been no reason to take the Talevski case seriously. But Scalia’s old opinion raised the alarming possibility that a majority could be cobbled together on the Court to render Medicaid law virtually unenforceable (had the Talevski defendants’ historical argument prevailed, the federal government still would have had some tools to enforce Medicaid law, but those tools are rarely used — and for good reason).
As it turns out, that did not happen. Justice Jackson’s opinion in Talevski disarms a bomb that has threatened Medicaid for several years now.
READ MORE 
The showroom at a car dealership. (photo: Smiley N. Pool/Dallas Morning News)
Cars have been the poster child of the current inflation crisis. Dealership executives have made clear in earnings calls why: not because they’re passing on higher costs to consumers, but because they want to net record profits.
Maybe no product has embodied today’s inflationary pressures quite like cars have, as shortages of parts coupled with continuing strong demand for vehicles has sent their prices soaring. While we’ve been told that firms are simply passing along higher production costs to consumers, car dealers have also been making record profits, with Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond president Tom Barkin telling the New York Times that carmakers and dealers had “discovered that a low-volume, higher-price model was actually a very profitable model.” A Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) study from this past April determined that dealer markups contributed majorly to inflation in the price of new cars.
This is backed up by the words of the executives of the country’s largest dealerships themselves, who on earnings calls have explicitly talked about selling cars at inflated prices and making a tidy profit. It points to the need for robust government action to provide relief for consumers against such private sector greed.
“We Actually Would Have Made Less Money”
Take CarMax, the largest used car dealer in the United States. On an earnings call this past April, CEO Bill Nash explained how the firm’s “extensive price elasticity tests,” which look at what happens to the level of demand when prices are raised or lowered, convinced the company it could safely get away with the very low-volume, higher-price model Barkin spoke about. The company had “determined that we could have sold a few more cars, but we actually would have made less money,” Nash explained.
On an earlier earnings call from December 2022, Nash responded to questions about other competitors lowering their prices to move cars off their lots and how that would impact CarMax’s strategy. Nash again cited the firm’s determination that they would have made less money, concluding that “what I’ve always said is . . . what we’re going after is profitable long-term market share gains.” He mentioned that the firm had price-tested both up and down, which “gives us confidence that we made the right decision from a profitability standpoint.”
“In a lot of cases,” Nash said about his competitors’ strategy to sell more units by dropping prices, “it’s not sustainable over the long term because you’re just not making the money that you need to.”
It’s a similar case with Lithia Motors, as of last year the largest dealership group in the country. Asked in a February 2022 earnings call if he was “seeing any hesitation at all among consumers to the elevated prices,” executive vice president Chris Holzshu replied, “Absolutely not.”
“Demand is very high right now, and we’re taking advantage as much as possible in both new and used in that capacity,” he said.
Asked if the firm was selling above the manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP), the cost that carmarkers like Ford or Nissan recommend dealers should sell a vehicle for, CEO Bryan DeBoer answered, “We do have some stores that are charging over MSRP.”
“We allow our network to make the decisions closest to what their customer base is and what the supply and demand is in that local market,” he added.
AutoNation chief financial officer Joe Lower likewise told investors in February 2023 that “more than half of our vehicles were sold at or above MSRP” in the previous year’s fourth quarter, which had “trended down, but it’s still far higher than historical levels.” The quarter before that, CEO Mike Manley noted that revenue was up 4 percent to $6.7 billion, “driven by higher average selling prices of new and used vehicles” and which had “more than offset lower sales of” both.
Two quarters earlier, when asked if inflation becoming a longer-term problem would entice the company to sell more inexpensive brands at lower prices, or if it would stick with “the premium side because those customers perhaps aren’t as bothered by inflation,” Manley replied, “It doesn’t really change my view on the balance that we have in our portfolio” and simply “reinforces we have a good balance.”
In the company’s most recent earnings call, Manley explained that the supply of late-model used cars had dropped, as had their turnover, since consumers were holding on longer to their cars. To offset this, “We focused on enhancing economics through effective staff-sourcing, reconditioning, speed to market, and of course, pricing,” he explained. Later, Lower explained that the firm wanted to “make sure that we maximize the inventory that we had” in terms of used cars, and that “with that, it means that we were even more diligent, I think, in terms of pricing.” According to AutoNation’s filing for that quarter, gross profit from used cars was $154 million for the first three months of 2023, up $18 million from the same period last year.
Coming straight from the mouth of executives of some of the country’s largest dealership firms, this would appear to corroborate the BLS study and confirm the suspicions of those looking at dealers’ record profits and sensing something is off.
Deal of the Century
As Bill Nash’s remarks about CarMax’s competitors deciding to lower their prices shows, these firms aren’t necessarily representative of the entire industry. But it’s hard to argue in light of all this that the inflated car prices consumers have been dealing with the past few years are simply because dealers are passing on their own higher costs.
Instead, executives at some of the country’s largest dealerships have been openly telling investors that they’re calibrating prices to what will net them the most profit, often by taking advantage of strong consumer demand to charge prices that are higher than they need to be — and explicitly rejecting an approach of selling more cars at lower prices because it’s less profitable.
What was once labeled a “conspiracy theory” — that much of the inflation we’re seeing is driven by corporate greed to feed record profits — is now more and more being widely acknowledged as reality. But unfortunately, those in power are still yet to do much about it, whether instituting price controls to prevent corporate price gouging or passing a windfall tax to claw back the inflated profits that result. And it’s the ordinary American worker who’s being stuck with the bill.
READ MORE 
Zury Ríos is the daughter of Efraín Ríos Montt, dictator from 1982-1983 and architect of genocide against Guatemala's Maya majority. (photo: Moises Castillo/AP)
Guatemala’s June 25 elections are troubled by anti-democratic backsliding and dominated by traditional elites, raising questions about their legitimacy.
Running on both the left and the right, these candidates represent dramatically different political agendas and potential futures for Guatemala. Regardless of their political affiliations, the participation of so many legacy candidates in this year’s elections represents not only the continued dominance of traditional political elites, but also the ongoing erosion of democratic norms and the rule of law in Guatemala.
Zury Ríos is the daughter of Efraín Ríos Montt, dictator from 1982-1983 and architect of genocide against Guatemala’s Maya majority. Juan Francisco Solórzano Foppa is the grandson of Alaíde Foppa, a feminist poet and public intellectual who was disappeared by the Guatemalan state in 1980. Roberto Arzú is the son of Álvaro Arzú, president from 1996-2000, who signed the final peace accords bringing an end to Guatemala’s 36-year civil war after a decade of negotiations between the military and the leftist guerrilla coalition. Bernardo Arévalo is the son of Juan José Arévalo, the first democratically elected president of Guatemala who served from 1945 to 1951.
The Candidates
Ríos and Arévalo are vying for the presidency, which will most likely go to a runoff vote in August.
When the campaign season kicked off on March 28, Arévalo launched his campaign with a 20 second spot centering his family legacy. “I am Bernardo Arévalo. I was born during the exile of my parents Juan José Arévalo and Margarita de León. From my parents I inherited love for Guatemala and the strength to fight tirelessly.” Despite his famous surname Arévalo continues to poll well behind other candidates, collecting between 1.5 and 3 percent of respondents’ support.
While Arévalo and his coalition have emphasized his heritage, Zury Ríos has declined to actively spotlight her father in her campaign, despite a political stance that staunchly defends his bloody past. Ríos, who is a member of the populist right wing Valor Party, continues her father’s ultra-conservative political legacy, opposing abortion and advocating in support of the death penalty. Nonetheless, Efraín Ríos Montt has remained an active topic of discussion, especially as the country commemorated the 10-year anniversary of his historic conviction for genocide in May (later overturned by the Constitutional Court under a technicality).
The Guatemalan Constitution bans individuals and their families who seized power through a coup from running for the presidency, the basis upon which Ríos was excluded from running in 2019. The Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) reversed its stance this year allowing her candidacy to go forward, reflecting a deterioration of the rule of law.
While Ríos had been leading in the polls, she recently began to trail behind Carlos Pineda, a businessman and TikToker with almost a million followers who as of early May had become the leading candidate. Pineda has been criticized for his attacks on the press as well as his ties to narcotraffickers. In a disturbing—but not surprising—move, however, the TSE released a preliminary decision on May 20 barring Pineda from the election. He is now the third major presidential candidate excluded from the race, clearing the way for Ríos to advance to the August runoff. Ríos did not respond to requests for comment on this article
Polls show the presidential race—with more than a dozen candidates—has remained unstable as candidates are disqualified and rumors swirl on social media. Edmond Mulet, of the humanist party Cabal, and Sandra Torres, of the social-Christian National Unity of Hope (UNE), currently lead the field alongside Zury Ríos, all hovering around 20 percent of popular support in the polls.
Edmond Mulet, a United Nations diplomat who came in third in the 2019 elections, is accused of running child trafficking rings in the 1980s. Torres, former spouse of President Álvaro Colom (2008-2012), finished second in 2019 and has been unable to shake troubling accusations of ties to narcotraffickers and organized crime. With candidates like these, it is unsurprising that almost a quarter of voters aged 30 to 44 have signaled their intention to vote null in the upcoming elections.
Candidates Sidelined
Roberto Arzú, a right-wing presidential candidate, was disqualified from the race: the TSE annulled his candidacy for campaigning ahead of the official campaign period, and despite appeal efforts the decision was upheld by the Constitutional Court on May 25. Arzú claims his candidacy was revoked as backlash for signaling alleged corruption by the current administration of Alejandro Giammattei.
Indigenous human rights defender Thelma Cabrera and her running mate Jordán Rodas, of the Movement for the Liberation of the People (MLP), were also excluded from the ballot, attracting denunciations from Washington as well as a fact finding mission by human rights watchdog Amnesty International and the Washington Office on Latin America. The TSE claimed that Rodas, a former human rights attorney who served as Ombudsman from 2019 to 2022, was being investigated for an unspecified criminal complaint against him. Cabrera and Rodas continue to contest the TSE’s ruling, and the MLP is calling on its supporters to vote null in the presidential contest to protest their exclusion.
Foppa, for his part, was gaining momentum as a coalition candidate for mayor of Guatemala City and polling in second place behind incumbent Ricardo Quiñonez until the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) revoked his inscription. He was arrested on April 20 for alleged obstruction of justice for his role as defense lawyer for journalist José Rubén Zamora. Foppa’s arrest is part of a much larger wave of criminalization of anti-corruption investigators, politicians, and activists.
The frontrunner in the Guatemala City mayoral race, Quiñonez, is part of the conservative political coalition Valor-Unionista, represented in the presidential race by Zury Ríos and in the congressional race by Álvaro Arzú, son of the late former president with the same name and brother of the disqualified presidential candidate Roberto Arzú. Quiñonez has served as mayor of Guatemala City since 2018, succeeding Álvaro Arzú the father, who died in office after serving as mayor for nearly15 years.
While Quiñonez has overseen improvements to the city's infrastructure, these projects have been plagued by corruption and targeted wealthy areas of the city, leaving other zones woefully neglected. The progressive Semilla-URNG-Winaq coalition put forward another mayoral candidate, the architect and urban planner Ninotchka Matute Rodríguez, but her candidacy has failed to garner the support held by Foppa.
Similar dynamics unfolded in Guatemala’s last election cycle in 2019 when Thelma Aldana, former attorney general and the leading opposition candidate from the center-left party Movimiento Semilla, was also barred from running. Since then, Aldana has been joined in exile by a majority of Guatemala’s remaining independent judiciary, many of whom have congregated in Washington in an odd reversal of 20th century international relations. Sadly, the exclusion of leading candidates has become a common occurrence in recent elections and has only intensified this year.
“El fraude ya está hecho”
Much like the recent shuttering of ElPeriodico and the wave of electoral exclusions, the prominence of historic political families in the upcoming election is a sign of Guatemala’s increasing authoritarianism. At a recent event hosted by the Foro de Mujeres (Women’s Forum) on women in politics, the congressional candidate Silvia Solórzano Foppa, daughter of Alaíde Foppa and mother of Juan Francisco Solórzano Foppa, explained that although she has always been a “political animal,” she felt compelled to run for elected office based on her assessment of Guatemala’s current political situation as “disastrous.” While some candidates on the Left, such as Silvia Solórzano Foppa, seem to have been drawn to the elections out of genuine concern for the country’s struggling democracy, the participation of so many notorious surnames is in itself an obstacle to the strengthening of democracy in Guatemala.
In recent years, Indigenous candidates have made some inroads into the Guatemalan political system, most notably excluded Maya Mam presidential candidate Thelma Cabrera. Cabrera and the MLP represent the potential for real change in Guatemala, and Cabrera recently attributed her exclusion to elites’ fear of disruption of the status quo. The dominance of traditional ladino families ensures the continuation of established racial hierarchies within the political system and the sustained political and economic exclusion of Guatemala’s Indigenous majority.
“The elections appear fraudulent,” José Tení, a taxi driver in Guatemala City, told me, “because they don’t allow all the ideological currents to participate.” His preferred candidates in 2019 and this year, Thelma Aldana and Carlos Pineda, respectively, were both excluded from running; he is undecided about who he will vote for on June 25. Like many Guatemalans, Tení is worried about government corruption, especially ties to narcotraffickers. Although he plans to vote, he understands that many voters, especially youth, are “disillusioned with politics.”
The Arzú, Río, Foppa, and Arévalo families have had an outsized role in shaping Guatemala’s past. After June 25, we will know what role they will continue to play in shaping Guatemala’s future. While much remains to be seem, many Guatemalans claim that "el fraude ya está hecho," or the fraud is already complete. Given the harrowing political landscape, it is hard to see how the elections will be free or fair.
READ MORE 
The Statue of Liberty seen Tuesday covered in haze and smoke caused by wildfires in Canada. (photo: Amr Alfiky/Reuters)
Wildfire smoke experts said that it would have been difficult to foresee such dramatic impacts but that climate change is also reshaping natural hazards at a startling pace.
But there was only so much that could be done. New York and other East Coast cities responded to the wildfire smoke crisis without the same protective laws, preparedness measures and planning common in the often smoke-choked West Coast.
Even for a city that has spent years planning to deal with climate change, smoke has not been a major concern.
“Wildfires were not really a scenario, in all honesty, that I recall us specifically contemplating,” said Daniel Kass, who was New York City’s deputy commissioner for environmental health from 2009 to 2016.
Kass, who is now senior vice president for environmental, climate and urban health at Vital Strategies, a nonprofit global public health organization, said that efforts were made to create detailed maps of communities and populations that are particularly vulnerable to climate emergencies but that the reports did not typically include wildfires and their associated air pollution.
Wildfire smoke experts said that it would have been difficult to foresee such dramatic impacts to cities like New York but that climate change is also reshaping natural hazards at a startling pace and leaders throughout the country need to prepare better for impacts. The smoke is a reminder that it is difficult, if not impossible, to isolate from the threats associated with climate change.
Scientists have not yet studied the weeks of heat and subsequent fires in northern Canada in detail, but decades of research on wildfire and smoke say there is more risk of severe wildfire and impactful smoke as the climate warms.
New York state, unlike California, Washington and Oregon, does not have a law to protect outdoor workers from smoke impacts. The city’s hazard mitigation plan makes scant mention of wildfire smoke. City leaders did not broadly publicize specific locations of cleaner air centers for people to take breaks from the smoke, a common practice in cities like Seattle, Washington, and Portland, Oregon, when the air turns dangerous.
More than two days after the smoke event began, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., asked the city on Twitter to “open city cooling centers to offer purified air” and to provide personal protective equipment to vulnerable New Yorkers.
Officials and scientists acknowledged they were surprised by the magnitude of the threat.
“People on the East Coast aren’t used to seeing these types of situations. There was a much slower response,” said Peter DeCarlo, an associate professor of environmental health and engineering at Johns Hopkins University. “We can probably learn a thing or two from our West Coast friends.”
Marshall Burke, an associate professor of Earth system science at Stanford University, called the smoke a “historic event” but also “a wake-up call.”
Burke analyzed Wednesday’s smoke event and found that it was the worst day of smoke exposure per person in the U.S. since 2006. Tuesday was the fourth worst. Smoke exposure levels did not climb as high as they have in the West Coast cities in the past, but the overall impact was greater because the smoke struck population centers like New York City.
During the crisis, New York state and city officials did communicate many of the messages experts say are best, about staying inside and seeking cleaner air. They shuttered outdoor events as visibility declined and health risks skyrocketed.
After New York City sent its first notifications about smoke, Mayor Eric Adams said Tuesday he went outside and realized the city was dealing with something novel and brutally unpleasant.
“It wasn’t until I went outdoors and basically said, ‘What the hell is this?’” Adams said at a news conference when reporters asked him when he realized the smoke was a bigger problem. “It was clear there was something different that was happening in the city.”
New York City’s emergency planning documents and website, which are designed to assess all the hazards that could affect the city, have few mentions of wildfire smoke.
Zachary Iscol, the commissioner of NYC Emergency Management, said at a news conference Tuesday that the agency was working to develop triggers for smoke and other climate impacts.
“The other types of weather events where we have an off-the-shelf plan, that leads to certain specific actions. So that’s something that we are now developing,” he said.
In a statement to NBC News, NYC Emergency Management said its existing emergency plans are “scalable and flexible” to a variety of hazards, including the recent air quality emergency. The agency said that it was hosting multiple interagency calls every day to address the hazard, that it had sent notices about smoke through Notify NYC, its emergency notification system, and that other city agencies had distributed high-quality masks.
Unexpected climate impacts have stung unprepared cities.
Seattle did not have a specific plan for heat waves in June 2021, when temperatures soared to 108, 5 degrees hotter than its previous record, in an event scientists later said would have been “virtually impossible” without the influence of climate change. The city was not ready for heat: Just two of its community centers had air conditioning, and only 20% of its drinking fountains — turned off during Covid — were operational on the first day of extreme temperatures. City leaders later said they did not have a sufficient plan to help older residents. A historic number of medical and fire calls challenged first responders and overwhelmed local emergency departments.
Smoke-filled summers on the West Coast have pushed officials to revamp their emergency planning processes to contend with days of unhealthy or hazardous smoke.
In the Portland area, tormented by oppressive smoke in 2020, among other years, officials have developed a playbook shared across local agencies that outlines specific actions to take, triggered by air quality index measures. Oregon officials have adopted a similar set of measures.
Before smoke season, which typically starts in late summer in the Pacific Northwest, health officials mount a weeklong campaign called “Smoke Ready Week,” which urges residents to buy mechanical air filtration systems and develop clean air spaces within their homes, said Andrea Hamberg, the director of environmental health services at the Health Department in Multnomah County, which includes Portland. Throughout the year, the state and the county work to distribute air cleaning devices to low-income residents.
The playbook has several thresholds for AQI that trigger specific health guidance and actions across city and county departments, Hamberg said. During prolonged smoke events, the city and the county will open cleaner air centers — public spaces with air filtration designed to give people a break from the smoke.
The county keeps a list of public buildings equipped with air scrubbers, Hamberg said. It also keeps a limited amount of supplies on hand to help people construct do-it-yourself air filtration boxes when smoke strikes.
During “very unhealthy” air events — which have happened twice in the Portland area — officials will cancel all outdoor events, recommend that people shelter in place and keep students at home, Hamberg said.
There are also laws to address smoke risks faced by workers.
Oregon legislators passed a law in 2021 requiring stringent workplace rules for smoke events. Employers must provide N95-quality respirators for employees’ voluntary use when AQI measures exceed 100 — levels considered “unhealthy for sensitive groups.” Respirators are required when the AQI hits 251, or “very unhealthy.”
The rules require communication with employees about smoke and to relocate workers indoors and change their schedules during poor air quality days. Washington and California have adopted similar measures.
New York state has no law to govern workers’ exposures specifically to wildfire smoke, said Marina Jabsky, a policy expert with the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health.
Kevin Riley, the director of UCLA’s Labor Occupational Health … Safety program, said he was not aware of any states apart from Washington, Oregon and California that have specific smoke protections for workers.
The conditions that brought smoke to the eastern U.S. are becoming increasingly common because of climate change and historical policies of fire suppression in North America.
A decade ago, less than half a million people in the U.S. lived in areas that experienced unhealthy levels of wildfire smoke for at least a day. In research last year, Burke and other researchers found the number had risen to more than 8 million.
The Clean Air Act and other legislation have made marked improvements in industrial and tailpipe pollution in the U.S., which has dramatically boosted overall air quality. Now, wildfire smoke — which is not regulated by the act — is reversing that progress in parts of the country.
“In the past five to 10 years, we’ve seen a slowdown of progress in the West. And in the Northern Rockies, we’ve seen a reversal,” Burke said.
As temperatures rise, wildfires are expected to increase in frequency and severity in the U.S., according to the U.S. National Climate Assessment. Smoke is expected to increase, too. The Pacific Northwest, for example, is expected to see more than 1.5 times as much smoke by midcentury, the report says.
The same wildfire trends are playing out in Canada, said Xianli Wang, a fire research scientist with the Canadian Forest Service, whose modeling projects lengthier fire seasons, hotter temperatures, less overnight cooling critical to dampening wildfire — and more smoke.
“We are living it,” Wang said of climate change’s influence, adding that historical policies of fire suppression also play a role by boosting the amount of material ready to burn in North American forests.
The East Coast, historically, has not been immune to wildfire smoke impacts, but this month’s event is unexpected, even for researchers like Burke.
“It’s the worst possible setup right now for how the winds are moving and where the fires are. It’s a fire hose onto the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S.,” Burke said, calling it a historic event that highlights the need to better prepare for smoke events in all regions of the country.
“Maybe we’re prepared and we don’t get another event like this in a decade, and that’s wonderful. Maybe we’re prepared and we get one in July.”
Follow us on facebook and twitter!
PO Box 2043 / Citrus Heights, CA 95611
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.