01 July 23
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Yevgeny Prigozhin is a disinformation artist whose failed rebellion was marked by a burst of radical honesty.
Prigozhin is a pathological liar, a professional disinformation artist who was indicted in the United States in connection with the internet troll farm he ran, which was at the forefront of Russian efforts to intervene in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to help Donald Trump win.
But as the mercenary boss began his mutiny in late June, he experienced a brief and surprising bout of honesty when he launched into an online tirade against what he said were the lies used by Moscow to justify the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine. His comments were so candid and off-message for a Russian leader that it seemed as if someone had mistakenly handed him a speech meant for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The invasion was nothing more than a massive land grab by the Russian oligarchy, Prigozhin charged, designed to enrich the country’s powerful elites while poor Russians served as cannon fodder. Russian claims that a Nazi regime in Ukraine, backed by NATO, was about to attack Russia were lies, Prigozhin said. The war was started by the Russian oligarchy to benefit themselves and gain power. In his rant, Prigozhin did not criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin by name, focusing instead on the broader Russian elite, and specifically on his personal enemy Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
“The Ministry of Defense is trying to deceive the public and the president and spin the story that there were insane levels of aggression from the Ukrainian side and that they were going to attack us together with the whole NATO bloc,” Prigozhin said on his Telegram channel on June 23. The truth, he said, was that “there was nothing extraordinary happening on the eve of February 24,” the day last year when Russian invaded. Ukraine was not planning any kind of attack against Russia, he added.
Russia’s invasion “was started for a completely different reason,” Prigozhin said. “What was the war for? The war was needed for Shoigu to receive a hero star. … The oligarchic clan that rules Russia needed the war,” he said. “The mentally ill scumbags decided: ‘It’s OK, we’ll throw in a few thousand more Russian men as cannon fodder. They’ll die under artillery fire, but we’ll get what we want.’”
“Shoigu killed thousands of the most combat-ready Russian soldiers in the first days of the war,” Prigozhin said, adding that the invasion began even as Zelenskyy and Ukraine were eager for peace. The Ukrainian leader “was ready for agreements. All that needed to be done was to get off Mount Olympus and negotiate with him.”
Prigozhin thus punctured the main argument used by Russian propagandists and their Western lackeys: that NATO’s eastward expansion since the end of the Cold War caused the war in Ukraine. Putin has constantly railed against NATO, and his misleading narrative that the U.S. caused the war in Ukraine by pushing for alliance’s expansion has resonated widely among pro-Putin right-wing extremists in the West.
Prigozhin quickly followed up his criticism of the war by leading his Wagner mercenaries in an armed rebellion. They left Ukraine, seized the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, and marched north toward Moscow. By June 24, just as Prigozhin and his troops were closing in on Moscow, he lost his nerve and cut a deal with Putin. The deal was brokered by Belarus dictator Alexander Lukashenko, a close Putin ally. Prigozhin is apparently going into exile in Belarus while the status of Wagner forces in Ukraine and elsewhere remains in flux.
But even as Prigozhin exits the scene, his rare bout of honesty could have a delayed impact. If Prigozhin’s comments become widely known in Russia despite the regime’s strict censorship, they could lead to a further erosion of Russian support for the war. Putin’s hold on power, meanwhile, has already been seriously weakened by Prigozhin’s rebellion.
It is still unclear whether Prigozhin’s candor will have any impact on right-wing extremists in the U.S. who support Putin and have defended his invasion of Ukraine. Right-wing pundits like former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson have been cheerleaders for Putin’s war, disseminating pro-Russian conspiracy theories like the false claim that the U.S. funded bio-weapons labs in Ukraine. The right-wing support for Putin and his invasion is strongest among Christian nationalists, a segment of pro-Trump evangelical Christians who have come to hate Western liberalism and yearn for an autocrat like Putin who would wipe away wokeness. They have been joined by members of other fringe groups, like those who claim to be anti-imperialists while supporting Putin’s imperial ambitions.
Prigozhin is a terrible messenger of the truth. He certainly had his own selfish reasons for stating that Russia’s war is built on lies. Yet his truth-telling may ultimately help rip off the façade Putin erected to conceal the reality of his war in Ukraine.
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"Nahel's death is another chapter in a long and traumatic story." (photo: NBC)
The killing of 17-year-old Nahel shows how little has changed since the deaths of two teenagers fleeing police in 2005
I first became involved in antiracist campaigning after a 2005 event that had many parallels with the killing of Nahel. Three teenagers aged between 15 and 17 were heading home one afternoon after playing football with friends when they were suddenly pursued by police. Although they had done nothing wrong (and this was confirmed by a subsequent inquiry) these terrified youngsters, these children, hid from the police in an electricity substation. Two of them, Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré, were electrocuted. The third, Muhittin Altun, suffered appalling burns and life-changing injuries.
Those boys could have been my little brothers, or my younger cousins. I remember the sense of incredulity: how could they simply lose their lives to such terrible injustice? “If they go in there [to the power plant], I don’t fancy their chances of making it” were the chilling words spoken by one of the police officers as he watched this horrific event play out.
France was ablaze for weeks with the rioting that followed – the worst in years. But just as now, with the death of Nahel, the initial media and political reaction in 2005 was to criminalise the victims, to scrutinise their past, as if any of it could justify their atrocious deaths. As if responsibility for their tragedy lay in their own hands. Nicolas Sarkozy, who was interior minister at the time, sullied the memory of young people whose fear had led to their death with the remark: “If you have nothing to hide, you don’t run when you see the police.”
The numbers of cases of police brutality grow relentlessly every year. In France, according to the Defender of Rights, young men perceived to be black or of north African origin are 20 times more likely to be subjected to police identity checks than the rest of the population. The same institution denounced the absence of any appeal against being checked as a form of systemic police discrimination. Why would we not feel scared of the police?
In 1999, our country, the supposed birthplace of human rights, was condemned by the European court of human rights for torture, following the sexual abuse by police of a young man of north African origin. In 2012 Human Rights Watch said: “the identity check system is open to abuse by the French police … These abuses include repeated checks – “countless”, in the words of most interviewees – sometimes involving physical and verbal abuse.” Now, after the death of Nahel, a UN rights body has urged France to address “profound problems of racism and racial discrimination” within its law enforcement agencies.
Even our own courts have condemned the French state for “gross negligence”, ruling in 2016 that “the practice of racial profiling was a daily reality in France denounced by all international, European, and domestic institutions and that for all that, despite commitments made by the French authorities at the highest level, this finding had not led to any positive measures”. More recently, in December 2022, the UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination denounced both the racist discourse of politicians and police ID checks “disproportionately targeting certain minorities”.
Despite such overwhelming findings, our president, Emmanuel Macron, still considers the use of the term “police violence” to be unacceptable. This time, Macron has unequivocally condemned an act that he called “unacceptable” – which is significant. Yet I fear that the focus is being placed on an individual police officer instead of questioning entrenched attitudes and structures within the police that are perpetuating racism. And not a single one of the damning reports and rulings has led to any meaningful reform of the police as an institution.
Worse, a law passed in 2017 has made it easier for police to resort to the use of firearms. Officers can now shoot without even having to justify it on the grounds of self-defence. Since this change in the law, according to the researcher Sebastian Roché, the number of fatal shootings against moving vehicles has increased fivefold. Last year, 13 people were shot dead in their vehicles.
Nahel’s death is another chapter in a long and traumatic story. Whatever our age, many of us French who are descended from postcolonial immigration carry within us this fear combined with rage, the result of decades of accumulated injustice. This year, we commemorate the 40th anniversary of a seminal event. In 1983, Toumi Djaïdja, a 19-year-old from a Lyon banlieue, became the victim of police violence that left him in a coma for two weeks. This was the genesis of the March for Equality and Against Racism, the first antiracist demonstration on a national scale, in which 100,000 people took part.
For 40 years this movement has not stopped calling out the violence we see targeted at working-class neighbourhoods and more broadly black people and people of north African origin. The crimes of the police are at the root of many of the uprisings in France’s most impoverished urban areas, and it is these crimes that must be condemned first. After years of marches, petitions, open letters and public requests, a disaffected youth finds no other way to be heard than by rioting. It is difficult to avoid asking if, without so many uprisings in cities across France, Nahel’s death would have garnered the attention it has. And as Martin Luther King rightly said: “A riot is the language of the unheard.”
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University students at a graduation ceremony. (photo: Erica Lansner/Redux)
"I would say Congress needs to pass this, but that's not going to happen," says Graeme Strickland, a 25-year-old borrower in Raleigh, N.C. "It's become a culture war around this issue. And like, this is my income. This affects the money I'm able to spend on groceries."
Strickland attended the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, as an in-state student. In order to attend, he had to take out roughly $30,000 in federal loans, which is on par with the national average for a bachelor's degree from a public institution.
He graduated in 2020 at the height of the pandemic, and has yet to consider loan payments or interest yet – both have been on pause since he was a student. Now, with Biden's student loan relief plan officially dead, and payments set to resume in the fall, Strickland has resigned himself to his new debt-laden reality.
"So in terms of loan forgiveness, where do we go from here? I don't think there's anywhere we can go."
If Strickland sounds defeated, he's not alone.
For years, borrowers have been left in a holding pattern waiting for the path to debt cancellation that President Biden promised on the campaign trail. His administration finally announced his plan for student loans last August, canceling up to $20,000 for qualifying borrowers.
But the Supreme Court's recent ruling has overturned the program, and put the final nail in the coffin on widespread debt relief.
"There was no trust before. There is no trust now."
Carolina Rodriguez spends her days talking to borrowers like Strickland at New York's Education Debt Consumer Assistance Program (EDCAP). She says such feelings of defeat and resignation aren't unusual.
"There was no trust before. There is no trust now," she says. Most borrowers she speaks to these days are more focused on other paths to forgiveness, such as Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) and income-driven repayment (IDR) plans.
Under the Biden administration, she's seen investment in these programs and a deluge of changes to the student loan landscape: "We sometimes joke in the advocacy community, it's like a decade's worth of changes in two years."
And with the influx of new policies has come a new relationship with deadlines. Rodriguez says her staff has come to expect extensions and last minute changes – so have borrowers. She rarely gets calls anymore about the impending restart to federal student loan payments because, she says, borrowers have been here before.
But she's expecting a surge as the summer comes to a close, and payments do finally resume: "A lot of the borrowers are still going to be in denial that they now have to plan for this."
Michael J. Petrilli, president of the conservative-leaning Thomas B. Fordham Institute and a longtime critic of Biden's plan, understands the denial, and says the blame falls squarely on the administration.
"They were taking a big risk ... in getting people's hopes up, and now seeing those hopes dashed," he says. "This is politics, right? But I think it comes with a lot of deceit and the administration should be called out for that."
He called the debt relief program a "cynical ploy" by the administration, a harmful one: "The goodwill that could come from targeted student loan forgiveness can be put at risk by trying to provide forgiveness to virtually everyone."
Borrowers prepare for smaller budgets, more financial stress, as payments resume
Ariana Cuellar, a 31-year-old borrower from San Antonio, says the payment pause was "a gift," one that she will miss dearly. She has gotten used to small comforts like having a steady savings account and not stressing out about every "purchase larger than $20."
She has over $30,000 in student loans, which is more than what she initially took out for her degree, due to a brief period of forbearance after she graduated in 2013.
This pause has allowed her to switch careers and pay off her car, things that felt overwhelming with the weight of her student loan payments. All of her loans are federally held and, under the Biden administration's plan, she would have received $10,000 in cancellation. She remembers that the day it was announced was "really joyous" – it gave her some hope. But not enough to ease the pressure of paying interest on top of her original debt.
"I will never be able to get rid of these loans. I think even if we got that $10,000 worth of forgiveness, unless the interest rates are changed, I will not be able to get out from under it."
Now, with return to repayment imminent, she's resigned herself to a smaller budget, and more financial stress. The winding road to the Supreme Court's decision has worn her out.
"I lost faith in any sort of justice," she says. "I don't feel like it's going to get better. I don't trust the government to take care of us."
Borrowers have been frustrated with the federal student loan system for years
Biden's relief plan didn't cover all federal student loan borrowers. Initially, people who took out older Perkins loans and Federal Family Education Loans (FFEL) could qualify for the program. But, in a quiet reversal, the U.S. Department of Education changed its guidance around those loans, saying they're no longer eligible.
FFEL loans, issued and managed by private banks but guaranteed by the federal government, were once a pillar of the federal student loan program, until they were phased out in 2010. When NPR reported on the FFEL guidance change, an administration official said roughly 800,000 borrowers would be excluded from relief.
Chris and Brigid Kennedy, a married couple in South Carolina, are among those who were left out of Biden's plan because they have FFEL loans. And it is not the first time their type of loan dictated whether they received forgiveness.
Years ago, the Kennedys, who are both educators, consolidated their student loans as part of a short-lived Education Department program for married couples. What they didn't realize is that those new, joint consolidation loans would disqualify them from potentially getting their debts erased through Public Service Loan Forgiveness.
Brigid Kennedy says this recent blow is hurtful, but nothing new.
"We really do feel like it's our responsibility to pay these loans," she says. "But we've also paid the principal back about two and a half times what we took out."
Their student debt is in the hundreds of thousands, an intimidating figure for two public educators. Moreover, Chris is currently battling cancer, which means he could qualify for interest-free deferment. The couple has gone back and forth with their servicer, asking for that deferment while he undergoes treatment. They finally got an answer recently: Since their loans are consolidated into one loan, both of them would have to have cancer in order to qualify for an interest-free pause in payments.
"I just started laughing, and then I started crying because, I mean, the absurdity of the way that this is set up against us is laughable," Brigid says. The couple is now in forbearance, a less forgiving way to pause their payments in which interest continues to pile up, as they put their resources toward Chris' treatment.
Their group of consolidated borrowers won a hard-fought victory last year, getting a bill through Congress, which the president signed, to officially separate their loans and, in turn, qualify for federal forgiveness programs.
However, in another blow to the Kennedys' trust in the federal student loan system, there's been radio silence since the bill passed. The couple says the last time they got someone on the phone, they said they wouldn't see a fix until the end of 2024.
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Donald Trump. (photo: Erin Schaff/NYT/Redux)
Trump also repeatedly asked Vice President Mike Pence to call Ducey and prod him to find the evidence to substantiate Trump’s claims of fraud, according to two of these people. Pence called Ducey several times to discuss the election, they said, though he did not follow Trump’s directions to pressure the governor.
The extent of Trump’s efforts to cajole Ducey into helping him stay in power has not before been reported, even as other efforts by Trump’s lawyer and allies to pressure Arizona officials have been made public. Ducey told reporters in December 2020 that he and Trump had spoken, but he declined to disclose the contents of the call then or in the more than two years since. Although he disagreed with Trump about the outcome of the election, Ducey has sought to avoid a public battle with Trump.
Ducey described the “pressure” he was under after Trump’s loss to a prominent Republican donor over a meal in Arizona earlier this year, according to the donor, who like others interviewed for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. The account was confirmed by others aware of the call. Ducey told the donor he was surprised that special counsel Jack Smith’s team had not inquired about his phone calls with Trump and Pence as part of the Justice Department’s investigation into the former president’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, the donor said.
Ducey did not record the call, people familiar with the matter said.
Now out of public office, the former governor declined through a spokesman to answer specific questions about his interactions with Trump and his administration.
“This is neither new nor is it news to anyone following this issue the last two years,” spokesman Daniel Scarpinato said in a statement. “Governor Ducey defended the results of Arizona’s 2020 election, he certified the election, and he made it clear that the certification provided a trigger for credible complaints backed by evidence to be brought forward. None were ever brought forward. The Governor stands by his action to certify the election and considers the issue to be in the rear view mirror.”
A spokesman for Trump declined to respond to questions about the call with Ducey and instead falsely declared in a statement that “the 2020 Presidential election was rigged and stolen.” The spokesman said Trump should be credited for “doing the right thing — working to make sure that all the fraud was investigated and dealt with.”
It is unclear if Ducey has been contacted by Smith’s office since meeting with the donor. Investigators in the special counsel’s office have asked witnesses about Trump’s calls with governors, including the one to Ducey, according to two people familiar with the matter. It is unclear if prosecutors plan to eventually bring charges or how the calls figure into their investigation. Prosecutors have also shown interest in Trump’s efforts to conscript Pence into helping him, according to witnesses and subpoenas previously reviewed by The Washington Post.
Trump phoned the governor’s cellphone on Nov. 30, 2020, as Ducey was in the middle of signing documents certifying President Biden’s win in the state during a live-streamed video ceremony. Trump’s outreach was immediately clear to those watching. They heard “Hail to the Chief” play on the governor’s ringtone. Ducey pulled his phone from out of his suit jacket, muted the incoming call and put his phone aside. On Dec. 2, he told reporters he spoke to the president after the ceremony, but he declined to fully detail the nature of the conversation. Ducey said the president had “an inquisitive mind” but did not ask the governor to withhold his signature certifying the election results.
But four people familiar with the call said Trump spoke specifically about his shortfall of more than 10,000 votes in Arizona and then espoused a range of false claims that would show he overwhelmingly won the election in the state and encouraged Ducey to study them. At the time, Trump’s attorneys and allies spread false claims to explain his loss, including that voters who had died and noncitizens had cast ballots.
After Trump’s call to Ducey, Trump directed Pence, a former governor who had known Ducey for years, to frequently check in with the governor for any progress on uncovering claims of voting improprieties, according to two people with knowledge of the effort.
Pence was expected to report back his findings and was peppered with conspiracy theories from Trump and his team, the person said. Pence did not pressure Ducey, but told him to please call if he found anything because Trump was looking for evidence, according to those familiar with the calls.
A representative for Pence declined to comment.
In each of the calls, Ducey reiterated that officials in the state had searched for alleged widespread illegal activity and followed up on every lead but had not discovered anything that would have changed the outcome of the election results, according to Ducey’s recounting to the donor.
After learning that Ducey was not being supportive of his claims, Trump grew angry and publicly attacked him.
It is unclear if Ducey and Trump had additional conversations. Publicly, the governor said the state’s election systems should be trusted, even as Trump and his allies sought to reverse his loss.
In Arizona, Trump and his attorney, Rudy Giuliani, called then Speaker of the House Rusty Bowers (R) on Nov. 22, 2020. They asked the speaker to convene the legislature to investigate their unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud, which included that votes had been cast en masse by undocumented immigrants and in the names of deceased people. Weeks later, on Dec. 31, 2020 the White House switchboard left a message for the chair of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, Clint Hickman, seeking to connect him with Trump. The supervisor, a Republican, did not return the call.
Trump and his allies made similar appeals to officials in Michigan and Georgia. On Jan. 2, 2021, Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) and said he wanted to undo his loss there by finding additional votes. The next night, the White House switchboard left Hickman another voice mail seeking to connect him to Trump. Hickman did not call back.
Investigators with Smith’s office interviewed Raffensperger this week, and they interviewed Giuliani last week. “The appearance was entirely voluntary and conducted in a professional manner,” said Giuliani spokesman Ted Goodman.
More than half a dozen past and current officials in Arizona contacted by Trump or his allies after his defeat have either been interviewed by Smith’s team or have received grand jury subpoenas seeking records, according to four people familiar with the interviews. Those interviewed include Bowers, the former Arizona House speaker, and three current members of the governing board of Maricopa County, the largest voting jurisdiction in the state that affirmed that Biden won.
Spokespeople for Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) and Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D), told The Post this week that their offices have not received correspondence from Smith’s team seeking records about the 2020 election. The Arizona Secretary of State’s office received a grand jury subpoena dated Nov. 22, 2022, that sought information about communications with Trump, his campaign and his representatives, according to an official familiar with the document but not authorized to publicly speak about it.
During his time as governor, Ducey navigated a hot-and-cold relationship with Trump. Ducey, who struck a more conventional approach to governing, was slow to embrace Trump during his first bid for the White House. The two men warmed to each other, and amid the pandemic and Trump’s second bid for the White House, Ducey campaigned for him.
But after Ducey certified Arizona’s election results, affirming the wins of Biden and other Democrats, Trump ridiculed him on social media: “Why is he rushing to put a Democrat in office, especially when so many horrible things concerning voter fraud are being revealed at the hearing going on right now … What is going on with @dougducey?”
That same day, allies of the president gathered in Phoenix to air unproven claims of widespread fraud and claim that state lawmakers could reject the will of voters. Giuliani attended the event, along with Republican lawmakers and activists; Trump dialed in.
The president invoked Ducey repeatedly in the days that followed, according to an archive of his tweets. On Dec. 3, Trump asked if “allowing a strong check of ballots” in Arizona would “be easier on him and the great State of Arizona.” On Dec. 5, Trump wrote that Ducey and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) “fight harder against us than do the Radical Left Dems.”
A week later, Trump attacked the men again, asking “Who is a worse governor?” He labeled them “RINO Republicans” and baselessly claimed that “They allowed states that I won easily to be stolen.”
Ducey, long eyed by national Republicans as a formidable candidate for the U.S. Senate, passed on a 2024 bid after his standing with the Trump base cratered after Trump’s attacks. After leaving office in January, he was a fellow at the Sine Institute of Policy & Politics at American University, where he spoke about the policies he enacted while in office. Earlier this month, Ducey announced that he is leading a free-enterprise focused political action committee, Citizens for Free Enterprise.
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Joe Biden. (photo: Frank Franklin II/AP)
President Biden said he won’t expand the Supreme Court because doing so would “politicize” the court in an unhealthy way. But it’s a political institution by its nature — and a disturbingly undemocratic one.
Fair enough. But when the most powerful officeholder in the United States says something like that, it’s reasonable to ask what he plans to do about it. And in this case the answer seems to be . . . nothing.
The cost of doing nothing is high. Whatever you make of the relationship between the version of affirmative action the court just struck down and the broader goal of achieving a more equal society, this was yet another sign of the aggressiveness of the court’s right-wing majority. On Friday, the Supreme Court ruled against Biden’s student debt relief plan.
During the MSNBC interview, Nicole Wallace asked Biden if he’d be willing to consider appointing additional justices to shift the court’s balance back in a more “normal” direction. He immediately ruled that out. “If we start the process of trying to expand the court,” Biden said, “we’re going to politicize it maybe forever in a way that is not healthy, that you can’t get back.”
The problem with this answer is that the Supreme Court has always been political. By its very nature, it’s a political institution — and a disturbingly undemocratic one.
The Supreme Court Versus Basic Rights
Attention-grabbing cases like the ones ruling against affirmative action, canceling student debt relief, and last year’s landmark overturning of Roe v. Wade are only the tip of the iceberg. Recent rulings whittling away at workers’ right to strike and weakening laws against corruption fly under the radar of casual news consumers but speak volumes about the ideological orientation of the court.
In some of these cases, the court is upholding laws. In others, they’re overturning them. But in all cases, the court is a powerful political actor. Two-thirds of the public, for example, told pollsters that they wanted Roe to stay in place. But the justices are free to disregard that supermajority.
Many people think that independence from public opinion is an unambiguously good thing. The official myth of the institution is that the justices are trying their level best to interpret the majestic ambiguities of the US Constitution in an ideologically neutral way. Anyone who believes that must think it’s an amazing coincidence that all six conservative justices signed onto Thursday’s ruling and thus effectively voted to enact a conservative policy preference (abolishing affirmative action) while all three liberals dissented. Even a casual glance at past rulings will uncover many, many such coincidences.
Why Not Pack the Court?
The obvious reality is that a constitutional lawyer who doesn’t know how to make a case for or against any of these rulings isn’t much of a constitutional lawyer. I’d note that, even in cases without the kind of strict partisan breakdown we saw in the affirmative action ruling, whichever justice or justices do dissent always come up with something to say.
Once we acknowledge that Santa and the Easter Bunny don’t exist and that justices of the US Supreme Court are political actors much like their counterparts in the other branches, the real question is why everyone should lie down and accept whatever rulings they make.
Nothing in the Constitution specifies a maximum number of justices. Congress could just decide tomorrow that twelve or fifteen is a better number than nine. President Franklin D. Roosevelt unsuccessfully proposed doing exactly that in 1937 — and while he couldn’t convince Congress to do it, his attempt may have rattled the court enough to change an important ruling. Owen Roberts had previously sided with the conservatives on the court in blocking New Deal legislation, but in the famous “switch in time that saved nine” he sided with the court’s liberals to uphold the constitutionality of minimum wage laws. Whether this switch was motivated by fear of court expansion is a historically controversial issue, but it’s at least plausible that the threat helped to nudge him in the right direction.
Biden’s stated reason for not following in FDR’s footsteps is that once the Supreme Court is “politicized” there’s no going back. If he isn’t seriously trying to suggest that the justices are ideologically neutral right now — that they’re all just earnestly trying to channel the spirits of the framers of the Constitution — then presumably it means that it’s a bad idea to openly acknowledge that the justices are political actors and unabashedly act to counteract their influence. But why not? Because Republicans will do the same? Fine. If both sides going forward are willing to throw their weight around to counteract overly aggressive court majorities, then the voters will have the ultimate say — which is how democracies are supposed to work. And if we never go back to a situation where we allow nine unelected lawyers trained at ruling-class universities like Harvard and Yale to act as a super-legislature that feels free to do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, that’s a good thing.
Joe Biden is comfortable with the status quo because, even if he’d prefer a more liberal ruling here and there, he’s a centrist who values the stability of the system more than any of the policy outcomes impacted by these rulings. Anyone who wants a substantially more just society than the one we’ve already got will have other priorities.
It shows an Amazon contract delivery driver coming close to collapsing on a Cypress family’s front porch while dropping off a pile of packages in triple-digit heat.
"It kind of reminded me of me, 'cause on this past Sunday, I kind of had that feeling," another Amazon driver said.
He didn't want to be identified.
"I threw up a lot," he said.
He and other workers who reached out said they love a lot about their jobs but they believe Amazon should adjust what’s known as its EOC, or Engine Off Compliance, that requires engines to be shut off during delivery stops. They feel it's especially important in areas where summer is sizzling.
"Like, if we can leave the engine on to where our A/C can continuously circulate, you won’t have as many people getting hot,” a second driver said.
They said making multiple stops, often in the same neighborhoods, doesn’t give vans time to really cool down.
"And, even with hydration, you know, we’re dealing with unprecedented heatwaves, even for Texas," the second driver said.
While breaks are allowed, drivers said they may impact productivity metrics by which they are measured.
Amazon addressed some concerns in a new statement.
"Currently in Texas, up to an additional two hours of breaks are being built into delivery routes, as drivers are being encouraged to take additional breaks to cool off and stay hydrated while working," an Amazon spokesperson wrote. "In addition, drivers are encouraged to take their breaks inside their vehicle with the air conditioning running whenever routes have been adjusted because of hot weather."
The company said idling is acceptable in some cases as long as safety measures are observed.
Amazon is not the only delivery company that has dealt with heat-related concerns.
UPS decided just this month to equip trucks with air conditioning.
And, according to a recent report, some 70% of U.S. Postal Service vehicles don’t have A/C.
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A rhino in Nepal. (photo: Getty Images)
But the water also brings an unwelcome visitor: plastic waste. When the floods recede, plastic bottles, bags and sachets cover the river banks where the rhinos come to graze on the grass.
A recent study has found that rhinos ingest plastic items of different sizes and shapes, which could pose a serious threat to their health and survival. The study, published in the journal Global Ecology and Conservation, analyzed 258 dung samples from the park and found that 10.1% of them contained visible plastic.
The researchers found plastic balls, soft drink bottle caps, chewing tobacco sachets, polythene bags, and biscuit, chocolate, and shampoo packaging in the dung. They also found that more dung samples from the core zone of the park, where human activity is restricted, contained plastic (18%) than from the fringe zone (6%), where people live and visit.
The findings come amid reports that almost all towns and villages in Chitwan dump their waste in landfills setup on the banks of the river. The waste piles up year round and is washed away by the river during the monsoon floods.
The results of the dung analysis suggest that the rhinos are not only eating plastic from the river but also from other sources, such as masks, tobacco packaging and bottle caps tossed away by visitors. They also indicate that the rhinos are moving between the zones and spreading plastic waste in the park.
“Chewing tobacco sachets (popularly known as ‘gutkha’ in South Asia) were the most pervasive compared to other items,” said Balram Awasthi, lead author of the study and a Ph.D. student at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden.
Awasthi said he was surprised to find plastic in the dung when he was studying the ecological services that rhinos provide, such as seed dispersal. “As part of my study on the ecological services megafauna such as rhinos provide, I was looking at their dung when I found a lot of plastic in them,” he told Mongabay.
The study did not examine the long-term effects of plastic ingestion on the rhinos, but Awasthi said it could cause problems with their digestion, metabolism and reproduction. He said there have been reports of more rhinos dying from unknown causes in Chitwan, and plastic ingestion could be one of them.
“We only looked at plastic that could be spotted with the naked eye. There may be smaller plastic particles that are doing the damage,” he said.
Amir Sadaula, a veterinarian at Nepal’s semi-government body National Trust for Nature Conservation (NTNC), said it was concerning that plastic items were found in the dung of rhinos. “However, we don’t have evidence to suggest that rhinos have died by ingesting plastic,” he added.
Sadaula, who was not involved in the study, said that plastic could block the digestive tract of an animal or release harmful chemicals into its body. “That’s rarely been seen in rhinos,” he said. He added that more research is needed to assess the impact of plastic on the animals.
According to a census conducted by Nepal’s government in 2021, 752 one-horned rhinos live in Nepal’s wildlife sanctuaries, up from 645 in 2015. The species is listed as vulnerable on IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, with fewer than 2,200 individuals remaining in India and Nepal.
Awasthi suggested that the government and its conservation partners should conduct cleanup programs after the monsoon is over to remove plastic waste from the river banks. He also said towns and villages upstream should adopt sustainable waste management plans and practices to prevent plastic pollution in the rivers.
“Our research also shows that focusing cleanliness activities in the core areas doesn’t work as animals bring in waste from fringe areas as well,” he said.
This article was originally published on Mongabay.
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