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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
Evidence has emerged that the FBI played a direct role in infiltrating racial justice protests after the police killing of George Floyd in 2020. A new podcast, out today, called Alphabet Boys documents how the FBI paid an informant at least $20,000 to infiltrate and spy on activist groups in Denver, Colorado. The informant also encouraged activists to purchase guns and commit violence. This is the trailer to Alphabet Boys.
PROTESTERS: Black Lives Matter! Black Lives Matter!
TREVOR AARONSON: The summer of 2020.
PROTESTER 1: It’s about to get bad.
PROTESTER 2: I know. I’m going to go get my gas mask.
TREVOR AARONSON: Millions protested for racial justice across the country, with some of these protests turning violent.
PROTESTER 3: Over the heads of the shields!
TREVOR AARONSON: That summer, it felt like history in the making. Big changes were coming. And then, the protests just stopped. There were these rumors that government agents had infiltrated the movement, pushing it toward collapse. It sounded paranoid, right? But you know what?
SCOTT DAHLSTROM: OK. It is August 28th, 2020, at approximately 4:02 p.m.
TREVOR AARONSON: It wasn’t. I’m Trevor Aaronson, and I’m a journalist covering federal law enforcement, the alphabet agencies.
FBI AGENT 1: As the FBI, sometimes you’ve got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy.
TREVOR AARONSON: This is Alphabet Boys, a new series from Western Sound and iHeartPodcasts. Each season, we’ll take you deep inside an undercover investigation. In season one, we’re headed to Denver —
FBI AGENT 2: UC 7775 in Denver, Colorado. Today is August 25th.
TREVOR AARONSON: — where FBI agents are investigating political activists following the murder of George Floyd.
PROTESTERS: If we don’t get no justice, then they don’t get no peace!
TREVOR AARONSON: A mysterious man rolls into town. He’s wearing military fatigues, and he has a cigar dangling from his lips. The car he drives is unmistakable: a silver hearse.
ZEBBODIOS HALL: He was very convincing, but he did explain, you know, he was for this BLM movement. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns.
TREVOR AARONSON: Was this the guy the movement needed to take things to the next level?
MICKEY WINDECKER: At the end of the day, you can come to me. I’ve got something for you. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
TREVOR AARONSON: Or did he have a secret agenda?
UNIDENTIFIED: He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, a meeting spot. And then, for sure, he was trying to get it to happen.
UNIDENTIFIED: He’s a bad guy. And bad guys attract bad guys. And I feel like he’s going to keep doing this forever.
UNIDENTIFIED: They want to cover up the fact that local, state and federal law enforcement caused violence here.
AMY GOODMAN: The trailer to the new podcast Alphabet Boys, out today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or any other podcast platform. The podcast centers on an FBI informant named Mickey Windecker, a convicted felon, who once fought, he said, with the Kurdish Peshmerga. This clip from Alphabet Boys begins with a Denver racial justice activist named Zebbodios Hall, who will be joining us, talking about Mickey Windecker.
ZEBBODIOS HALL: I didn’t know much about him, but he drove a hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns, you know, like AR-15s and all other kind of [bleep]. I had never held one of those before in my life. And I held it, and I was like, “Oh [bleep]!” And I’m pro-gun and everything, but I never held anything like that. Yeah, it was just this badass dude, you know, talking about he worked in a foreign military and he was for the Black Lives Matter movement. And, you know, it just seemed interesting, you know.
TREVOR AARONSON: In August 2020, with millions of Americans protesting across the country, activist Zebb Hall invites a guy he’s met at one of the demonstrations to his apartment in Denver to talk about plans for the future.
MICKEY WINDECKER: The way I look at it is like, if [bleep] has to happen, it has to happen. But it’s like you said. I mean, how extreme do you expect it, would you want it to go?
AMY GOODMAN: An excerpt from the podcast Alphabet Boys. The FBI informant, Mickey Windecker, played a key role in organizing the protests in Denver. He would also go on to give the activist Zebbodios Hall $1,500 to buy a gun for him, which led to Zebb Hall being arrested for transferring a firearm to a felon. Some of the FBI’s actions have been compared to the agency’s covert COINTELPRO program — that’s Counterintelligence Program — which targeted civil rights groups and other activist movements in the 1960s and ’70s.
In a moment, Zebbodios Hall will join us from Denver. We’ll also be joined by former FBI agent Mike German, who now works at the Brennan Center. But first, let’s turn to Trevor Aaronson, who created the Alphabet Boys podcast. Trevor is an award-winning investigative journalist, contributing writer for The Intercept. He’s author of the book The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism.
I mean, this is an astounding podcast series, Trevor. You’ve got the undercover recordings of, for example, the Black activist, Zebb, speaking to this man, Mickey Windecker, who would travel around in a silver hearse. First, if you can tell us where you got these recordings, if you can? But just lay out the story for us.
TREVOR AARONSON: Sure. I can’t talk about sourcing for the recordings or the records, but what I can say is that what’s significant about this show is that it’s the first behind-the-scenes look at how the FBI infiltrated and investigated racial justice groups and the racial justice movement during the summer of 2020, which for two years now has always been an open question, which is: How did the FBI respond to the racial justice movement, given the context that the FBI had previously designated Black political activists as so-called Black identity extremists or anti-government extremists?
And what’s significant about this is that the FBI in Denver, according to internal FBI recordings — or, internal FBI reports and undercover recordings, hired a convicted felon with a history of sexual assault and menacing with a weapon to infiltrate these groups, while being paid thousands of dollars.
And the shades of COINTELPRO that are part of this rise from the fact that Mickey Windecker, the informant, ended up becoming a leader in the protest movement, just as we saw informants in the 1960s and 1970s during COINTELPRO become leaders in those movements, and then accuse other leaders or the real leaders of these groups of being informants, a practice called snitch-jacketing, that was used to devastating effect against Black political groups in the 1960s. And that’s exactly what happened in Denver. Mickey became a leader of the racial justice movement there, accused real leaders of being informants when they were not, and then, once he was in a position of leadership, attempted to entrap local activists in crimes, in some cases violent crimes. In fact, Mickey and the FBI went so far as to try to stitch together a supposed plot to assassinate Colorado’s attorney general, Phil Weiser, which ultimately went nowhere, but shows you the scale that the FBI had in trying to manufacture a plot that activists could get behind, that would then reveal these activists as being violent.
And I think it’s important to understand the context in which this happened. In 2020, the Trump administration at the time was really beating the drum on this idea that antifa and Black Lives Matter activists were potentially violent. This was a narrative that was being reinforced and echoed by right-wing media at the time. And what you’re seeing in these undercover recordings is the FBI essentially trying to make that possible and happen. Ultimately, that does not happen. Obviously, there was no assassination plot or attempt against Phil Weiser, the Colorado attorney general. But the FBI, using this paid informant, went to extreme lengths to try to make that happen.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Trevor, as you mentioned, this was a tactic used often during COINTELPRO in the '60s and the ’70s, but it's become standard practice for the FBI and law enforcement. I think back to during the Seattle World Trade Organization protests. There were undercover agents then trying to spur extreme action among the protesters. During the period after the 9/11 attacks, there were undercover FBI agents who tried to infiltrate Muslim groups around the country, trying to get them to participate in violent acts. So this has been a regular feature of the FBI. Have you been able to see whether they were doing this to the same extent among the right-wing groups that were actually involved in major terrorist attacks across the country?
TREVOR AARONSON: Absolutely. So, this is a tactic that became commonplace in the post-9/11 era, which was that the FBI used undercover agents or informants to, in the case of counterterrorism investigations, go in the Muslim communities, find someone who might be interested in violence, and make everything possible, providing the means, the opportunity and, in most cases, the bomb or the weapon that ultimately would be used, then arrest that person and announce to the public a terrorism plot foiled.
And so, what’s significant here is that we’re seeing a lot of the powers and tactics used against would-be terrorists or supposed terrorists in the post-9/11 era being applied against political activists in Denver in the summer of 2020. And the reason that is significant is that the internal FBI records show, in the case in Denver, that the FBI launched its investigation based on nothing more than First Amendment-protected activities, which were, essentially, things that Zebbodios Hall and other activists had said, which in some cases were quite incendiary, but ultimately were First Amendment-protected activities. And yet they launched this investigation based solely on that, without any reason to believe that any of these activists were moving toward a plot of violence or anything of the like.
And as for the question of whether this happens on the right, it does. You know, obviously, there have been other plots that have targeted right-wing activists. The most well known right now is the plot that targeted a group of men in Michigan in a supposed plot to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer. And so, I think what’s important about this story now is that we are entering this phase when Jim Jordan and the Congress are about to launch this committee that is specifically looking to establish this narrative that the FBI is solely focused on this type of tactic against right-wing groups and right-wing political activists, when that isn’t true. What ultimately is true is that the FBI has an enormous amount of power that deserves a lot more oversight than it currently receives. And all sorts of groups, from left to right, are subjected to this kind of activity by the FBI. And so, this narrative that the right wing is attempting to establish, that the FBI is prejudiced against right-wing groups and we’re only seeing this activity among right-wing groups — there is evidence of that, and no doubt Jim Jordan will find it, but the truth is that this is far more extensive. It involves many groups. And in most cases, I would argue, if you look at the history of prosecutions in the post-9/11 era, these types of tactics are used far more against left-wing activists and left-wing political groups than they are against right-wing groups.
AMY GOODMAN: Even though the intelligence committees have found that it is domestic terrorism, far-right-wing, that is the greatest threat to the United States right now. And you’re talking about the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, chaired by Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, that’s meeting on Thursday. But let’s turn to a video capturing when FBI informant Mickey Windecker met with his FBI handlers — by the way, he’s denying he’s an FBI informant — met with his FBI handlers, before he met with the Denver activist Zebb Hall.
SCOTT DAHLSTROM: It is August, August 28th, 2020, at approximately 4:02 p.m. Special agent Scott Dahlstrom with special agent Byron Mitchell, CHS, for meet with Zebbodios Hall.
MICKEY WINDECKER: Thank you. You can do this if I put it in my front pocket, right?
SCOTT DAHLSTROM: Yeah.
MICKEY WINDECKER: OK, got it. See? Got my [inaudible] there. Video look good?
SCOTT DAHLSTROM: Yeah.
MICKEY WINDECKER: Yeah? Look handsome?
SCOTT DAHLSTROM: Mm-hmm.
MICKEY WINDECKER: Not as handsome as that kid.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Mickey Windecker talking to his handlers, going out to meet the guest we’re joined by right now, Zebbodios Hall, or Zebb Hall, a Denver activist targeted by the FBI featured in the Alphabet Boys podcast, joining us from Denver.
I mean, Zebb, this is such an amazing story, because you’d think if the FBI wanted to infiltrate a group, like a Black Lives Matter group, they wouldn’t have someone who just appears so different in every way, this white guy who is blatantly driving this silver hearse filled with automatic weapons. I mean, it is amazing. So, talk about how you met up with him, your involvement in BLM, Black Lives Matter, and why you came to believe that he was, you know, a fellow traveler, if you will.
ZEBBODIOS HALL: I first met — well, thanks for having me. I first met Mickey at one of the earlier protests. Either it had been July, early July, or late June. He was around a lot of folks, you know, taking information, phone numbers and whatnot. It was quite odd. You know, we were all confused. We didn’t know what to expect. And it was very terrifying down the line when found out more about him. You know, it’s a very dangerous history this gentleman had. And I think it’s very terrifying, especially the fact that, you know, he was sent to our BLM movement in the hopes of tarnishing it.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Zebb Hall, what led you to begin to think that he might not be on the up and up? And why did — what were some of the examples of ways he tried to get people to do things they normally would not do?
ZEBBODIOS HALL: Yeah, it’s towards — I would probably say towards — you know, there was a march on the headquarters of the police department. And people were just starting to get, you know, more — how would I say — rowdy than usual. And, you know, he’s yelling at people, you know, ordering — making orders and whatnot. And sometime down the line, you know, it was really evident when the Colorado Springs antifa released an article explaining more about this gentleman. It was very heinous and scary.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: So, until that article came out, you had no suspicion that he might be an agent provocateur or undercover informant?
ZEBBODIOS HALL: It was very confusing. You know, we were — there was so much going on that summer, we didn’t know what to expect, but we never would have thought that the FBI would have sent a gentleman like that to our movement. Everything was really confusing. You know, it’s so hard to put things together looking back now, but I would say, at the end of the day, that I think most of the things that happened, either it be violent or confusion, wouldn’t have happened without the FBI and their informant, Michael Windecker.
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to hear the FBI informant, Mickey Windecker, in a recording he made after he was accused of being an informant. He spoke in front of a flag for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party and an AR-15-style assault rifle. That was his background.
MICKEY WINDECKER: So, there’s a group that — or, a individual that’s claiming that they are antifa Colorado Springs. And, in fact, that I believe that they are actually not antifa Colorado Springs, because I believe they are actually a cop. This individual has posted stuff discrediting other individuals that are fighting against the fascists in Denver, Colorado, such as Cutting the Plastic and other communist groups and other individuals. I, for one, am not amused or pleased about the [bleep] that’s going on.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Mickey Windecker accusing antifa of being the informants. Zebb Hall, talk about how you were entrapped then, how he gave you money to buy a gun for him, and what happened next.
ZEBBODIOS HALL: Yeah. I’ll start off saying, you know, I was scared, but, you know, I’ve got to own the fact that I purchased the firearm. You know, it was just quite odd. And, you know, then the way in which he had me — he explained it to me, I just didn’t understand. I never purchased a gun before. And I get this gun for this gentleman, and, you know, shortly after, the information comes out about his criminal history and who he is. And, you know, I’m terrified at this point. And come around January, an article comes out, you know, with Mr. Shelby, who will be mentioned later on. And at that point, I was absolutely terrified. You know, it’s — I was just afraid. You know, I own what I did. And, you know, I never thought I’d be in situation like this, but, you know, here we are. It was just a terrifying experience. We were all afraid.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I’d like to bring in former FBI special agent Mike German, now a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School. He’s written a book titled Disrupt, Discredit, and Divide: How the New FBI Damages Democracy. Mike German, talk to us about these efforts by the FBI to especially target movements, social movements on the left.
MIKE GERMAN: Thanks for having me. You know, Trevor has spent a large part of his career covering this change in the FBI’s undercover tactic, where they have aggressively used informants, had informant-driven operations targeting mostly Muslim Americans in terrorism investigations, with a tactic that wasn’t designed to uncover criminal activity that was ongoing, but rather to manufacture criminal activity, to create a case where no case had existed before.
And what I think is really critical about the reporting on Alphabet Boys is that in many of those cases, Trevor had to rely on court documents or Freedom of Information Act records and statements of the defendants. And defenders of these tactics, at the FBI and elsewhere, would often say, “Well, the FBI probably had some other kind of information that justified the use of these tactics, that couldn’t be released in court or discussed openly,” where, here, Trevor has the entire investigative file, and we can see that the FBI here chose somebody with a serious criminal record to infiltrate a social movement and target people who were much less involved in any criminal activity, and actually to stoke violence at these protests. And that’s a tactic that, you know, as discussed, is straight out of the COINTELPRO playbook, where the tactics were meant to disrupt and divide the social movements rather than to uncover serious crime.
AMY GOODMAN: Zebb, you were sentenced to three years’ probation. I’m wondering, with the police killing of Tyre Nichols, and also you were dealing not only with George Floyd but, in Aurora, Colorado, at the time, the horrific police killing of Elijah McClain, with the massive crackdown on protesters after that as they would engage in violin vigils, because he played violins for cats and dogs at the local shelter injected with this massive dose of ketamine, has this changed your approach to the world? Are you afraid to be an activist?
ZEBBODIOS HALL: No, I’m more committed. You know, it was a terrifying experience, but I know what I signed up for. This is a lifelong thing. You know, even though it does affect us as Black people more, I do understand this is a situation that all people in America have to deal with. So, no, I’m more committed than I was before. This is going to be a lifelong thing.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Trevor Aaronson, in the last 30 seconds we have, what you want people to take away from this podcast series dropping today, Alphabet Boys?
TREVOR AARONSON: So, I think it’s important to recognize that not only did Mickey Windecker try to set up activists like Zebb in specific crimes, but that he played a large role in turning what were otherwise demonstrations and protests into what became full-out assaults on police stations in Denver. Some of the most violent incidents that we saw in Denver that summer had Mickey’s fingerprints all over them. He was hyping them up. He was encouraging people to attend. He was encouraging people to become more and more violent. And so, at least in Denver, we have evidence that the government — a government agent was behind many of these protests that ultimately turned violent.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, this is a truly astounding podcast series. Trevor Aaronson, the host of the new Alphabet Boys podcast, award-winning investigative journalist, contributing writer for The Intercept. Zebbodios Hall, thanks so much for joining us from Denver, an activist targeted by the FBI, featured in the podcast, and Mike German, for joining us, as well, former FBI agent, now a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice. That does it for our show. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
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President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address. (photo: Jacquelyn Martin)
ALSO SEE: Rowdy Republicans Interrupt, Taunt Biden During His State of the Union
The spectacle of Biden smiling and offering a pointed riposte through multiple rounds of heckling from some House Republicans was, in many ways, an apt illustration of his presidency and a useful preview of his likely 2024 candidacy.
A majority of Americans say he hasn’t accomplished much, many Democrats aren’t thrilled at the prospect of him running for reelection and he faces clear disdain from most Republicans.
But Biden powered through. Delivering what was widely viewed as a test run for his reelection announcement, Biden claimed credit for progress made during his first two years in office while stressing the job isn’t finished.
He faced sometimes-unruly Republicans, with whom he spiritedly sparred from the podium on spending cuts. The feisty display drew cheers inside the White House and offered the best preview to date of the energy Biden hopes to bring to the campaign trail soon.
The speech carried a strain of populism rooted in strengthening the middle class – vintage Biden, but delivered at a pivotal moment for his political future.
No president enters his State of the Union wanting to recite a laundry list of accomplishments and proposals, but – almost inevitably – the speech often veers in that direction. Biden’s was no different, even as the president sought to tie everything together with a refrain of “finish the job” – a phrase that appeared 12 times in his prepared text.
Rather than tout any one accomplishment, however, Biden hoped to address the national mood, one that remains downbeat even as the economy improves and the country attempts to return to normal amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
Here are six takeaways from Biden’s State of the Union:
Biden spars with sometimes-unruly Republicans
In a room full of elected officials, identifying an adult shouldn’t be difficult. But heading into Tuesday’s speech, both Republican leaders and Biden’s team telegraphed a desire to act as the night’s “adult in the room” – the mature voice seeking common ground and lowering the temperature.
For the first 45 minutes of Biden’s address, that appeared to be the play for both sides. But when Biden began castigating Republicans for plans that would slash Social Security and Medicare, the decorum dropped.
His accusations seemed to provoke Republicans, who lobbed accusations of “liar” from their seats in the chamber.
That in itself wasn’t unprecedented. What happened next was rarer: Biden leaned into the opening, responding and engaging his hecklers.
“I enjoy conversion,” he quipped, suggesting they were in agreement on the need to protect the programs for senior citizens.
For Biden, House Republicans act as a useful foil as he prepares to announce his intentions for 2024. His jousting on Tuesday was the best glimpse of how he’ll approach his candidacy, at least until a Republican opponent emerges from the GOP primary process.
White House officials were thrilled by the off script back and forth.
“Couldn’t have written a better moment,” one official said.
More than the substantive back and forth, one official noted how it appeared to animate Biden in real time.
“He gets energy from his audience,” the official said. It’s not a new view on how Biden operates - his advisers constantly talk about how he finds his energy from engaging with people.
Biden and his team believe a serious focus on governing contrasts favorably with House Republicans, who they accuse of threatening to send the nation into default and piling up distractions as they investigate the president and his family.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy entered the speech vowing to treat Biden respectfully – and urging his Republican colleagues to do the same. It was a tall order, given the loose grasp he has on his conference and the propensity from certain Republicans for stunts.
As lawmakers like Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene interrupted Biden, McCarthy was silent – but his glare into the crowd spoke for itself. Later he found himself shushing his conference multiple times at outbursts interrupted the president.
Showing vigor
For the third year in a row, Biden set the record for the oldest president to deliver an address to a joint session of Congress. It’s an underlying fact of his presidency: No one older has ever served.
As Biden prepares to ask voters to keep him in office until he is 86, it was critical he look and sound like someone who is able to keep doing the job.
His delivery was energetic, even if he stumbled over a few of his prepared lines. When Republicans interrupted him, he responded quickly, deftly turning their heckles back around into challenges.
Over the weekend at Camp David, aides set up a podium, microphone, lights and teleprompter in a conference room inside the Laurel Lodge for Biden to practice his speech with his team. The potential for hecklers was something White House officials had in mind as they prepared for the speech.
At the White House, a similar set up has been used in the Map Room to practice the address.
Aides were focused on the message – but also the language, ensuring the speech lent itself to a vigorous presentation. After all, for many in Biden’s television audience, Tuesday’s speech was one of the only times they actually heard and saw the president this year.
Vintage Biden
Perhaps more than his previous two addresses to Congress, Tuesday’s speech was salted with riffs and lines that appear nearly every time he speaks: inherited wisdoms from his father, anecdotes about inequality and his views of the middle class.
“So many of you feel like you’ve just been forgotten,” he said, directly appealing to a demographic that used to vote reliably for Democrats but has more recently turned to the GOP.
“Amid the economic upheaval of the past four decades, too many people have been left behind or treated like they’re invisible. Maybe that’s you, watching at home,” he said. “You wonder whether a path even exists anymore for you and your children to get ahead without moving away.”
“I get that,” he said.
Appearing for the first time in front of a divided Congress, Biden also leaned into his record working across the aisle – even as he faced heckling from Republicans.
In many ways, both Biden and McCarthy hoped a more mature showing would set the tone for the next two years of divided government, even if they remain sharply divided on policy.
“Mr. Speaker, I don’t want to ruin your reputation but I look forward to working together,” Biden said as he launched into his speech.
He acknowledged that over the first years of his presidency “we disagreed plenty.” But he appealed to his political rivals for cooperation.
“To my Republican friends, if we could work together in the last Congress, there is no reason we can’t work together in this Congress as well,” he said.
Trying to connect
If there is one political conundrum Biden’s advisers are urgently working to solve, it is why so many Americans seem to believe he has accomplished so little. By all accounts, Biden has passed large, historic pieces of legislation that could have transformational effects on the US economy. But polls show large majorities aren’t feeling them.
Biden hoped in his speech to bridge that gap, to demonstrate he cares about what Americans care about and to identify the problems he’s looking to fix.
His focus on highly specific issues – like eliminating “junk fees” for consumers or reining in tech companies – are areas the White House believes will resonate with Americans who aren’t necessarily attuned to the ins-and-outs of Washington.
At moments, his speech seemed tailor-made for a nation of annoyed consumers, down to annoyances about baggage fees on airlines and fine print on hotel bills.
“Americans are tired of being played for suckers,” he said, listing off the litany of common grievances.
But Biden and his team are acutely aware that simply telling people their lives are improving won’t cut it – they have to actually feel it. Many of the accomplishments Biden helped passed over the past two years are still in the implementation phase, making their effects elusive for now.
Biden seemed to acknowledge that when he urged lawmakers to extend a price cap on insulin – a benefit that is still coming into effect.
China focus
The furious Republican backlash to Biden’s handling of a suspected Chinese spy balloon proved illustrative for many at the White House.
China was included in the text of Biden’s speech well before the balloon slipped into American airspace. But the incursion, which has generated a diplomatic backlash from China and drawn second-guessing from Republicans, lent new urgency to Biden’s message about competing with Beijing.
“Make no mistake: As we made clear last week, if China threatens our sovereignty, we will act to protect our country. And we did,” Biden said in his speech.
Biden and his aides believe steps to counter China are one of the rare areas where he could find bipartisan support. He saw some success on that front with the passage of a law boosting US semiconductor production last year.
Biden is sensitive to accusations he is weak on China, according to people around him, while still intent on stabilizing the world’s most important bilateral relationship.
Republicans look to ‘new generation’
The GOP’s choice to deliver their response to Biden’s speech, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, is – at 40 years old – the nation’s youngest governor. Half the president’s age, her selection was a clear choice to contrast a different generation of leaders.
In part because she lacked an audience and in part because Biden was energetically provoked by Republicans in his own address, her speech was a far more staid affair than the State of the Union. Delivered solemnly from the governor’s mansion in Little Rock, the speech was instead a somewhat dark warning against Democratic policies she deemed “crazy,” a descriptor she used three times.
“The dividing line in America is no longer between right or left,” she said. “The choice is between normal or crazy.”
She accused the Biden administration of appearing “more interested in woke fantasies than the hard reality Americans face every day” and leaned heavily on culture war issues that she claimed her party “didn’t start and never wanted to fight.”
And while she cited her tenure as White House press secretary to Donald Trump, she did not rely heavily on her association with the former president.
Instead, she appeared to call for a changing of the guard – an appeal for generational change that could apply as much to Democrats and Biden as it could to Republicans and Trump.
“It’s time for a new generation to lead. This is our moment. This is our opportunity,” she said.
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Chauncey Peltier, Leonard's son, speaks at a 2016 festival in support of his father's freedom. (photo: Nurphoto/Getty Images)
“The United States has kept me locked up because I am American Indian,” said the ailing Indigenous rights activist who Biden could free, but hasn’t.
The FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office made a fall guy out of Peltier, now 78, when they convicted him of murdering two FBI agents during a 1975 shootout on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. They never had evidence that he murdered anyone, and the amount of wrongdoing that took place in his trial is mind-boggling: Government prosecutors hid exculpatory evidence. The FBI threatened and coerced witnesses into lying. Peltier was separated from his co-defendants, all of whom were acquitted on grounds of self-defense. A juror admitted she was racist against Native Americans on the second day of the trial but was allowed to remain on the panel.
Peltier has maintained his innocence for all of these years, even as it almost certainly prevented him from being paroled.
His decadeslong parole process has been so problematic that United Nations legal experts last year made the unusual decision to revisit his case. Over the summer, they called on President Joe Biden to release Peltier immediately.
Their working group concluded in a damning 17-page legal opinion that between Peltier’s advanced age, deteriorating health, frequent placement in solitary confinement and the difference between his time in prison compared to non-Native Americans convicted of similar offenses, “Mr. Peltier continues to be detained because he is Native American.”
Peltier is still sitting in a Florida penitentiary despite all of these problems; despite pleas for his freedom by international human rights leaders including Pope Francis, Nelson Mandela and Coretta Scott King; despite nearly 50 years of concerts and letter-writing campaigns and petitions circulated by thousands of supporters, politicians, Indigenous leaders and celebrities urging his release. He uses a walker now. He is blind in one eye from a partial stroke. He has serious health concerns related to diabetes and an aortic aneurysm.
Why is he still in prison? The FBI simply doesn’t want him to get out, ever, even as its stated argument for keeping him there is wildly outdated, misleading and flat-out wrong.
Biden, who has been a strong advocate for policies that lift up tribes and Native American communities, could unilaterally release Peltier if he wanted to. Two years into his presidency, though, he has stayed silent.
Asked Monday if Peltier is on Biden’s radar and if he is considering granting him clemency, a White House spokesman referred to the last statement sent to HuffPost on this topic. HuffPost routinely asks the White House about Peltier but does not get a response.
The last time HuffPost remembers getting a response was in Feb. 2022, with this statement from a Biden spokesman: “We are aware of Mr. Peltier’s request for a pardon and the outreach in support of his request. As many of you know, President Biden has a process for considering all requests for pardon or commutation, which is run through our White House Counsel’s Office. I don’t have more to share on Mr. Peltier’s request at this time.”
The Office of the Pardon Attorney, which reviews inmates’ clemency petitions, does not respond to questions about the status of clemency petitions. A Monday email to this office triggered an auto-response that directed HuffPost to the office’s website to search for information on the status of any inmate’s clemency petition. The status of Peltier’s petition, which was filed more than a year and a half ago, simply says, “Pending.”
Peltier had some thoughts to share Monday on the 48th anniversary of his imprisonment.
“Living in here, year after year, day after day, week after week, plays on your concepts of time and your process of thought beyond what you can imagine,” he said in a written message provided to HuffPost.
“We have had to live in a state of survival ever since Columbus landed,” Peltier continued, referring to the country’s treatment of Indigenous peoples. “There is nothing about my case, nothing about the Constitution, which is a treaty between the American people and the government, that warrants my continual imprisonment.”
To his supporters, Peltier signed off his message with a request: “From my heart to yours, plant a tree for me.”
Here’s a copy of his full message:
Greetings my friends, supporters, loved ones. I know I’ve probably said this, or things like this, many times. Every time I say it, it is as heartfelt as the first time. From the bottom of my soul, I thank you for your support.
Living in here, year after year, day after day, week after week, plays on your concepts of time and your process of thought beyond what you can imagine.
Every day, I have to say a prayer in the morning, about keeping my spirit up and the spirits of our people.
The struggles of the American Indian Movement, which are the struggles of all of us, have never ended for me. They go on, week after week, month after month, year after year.
When I speak, sometimes I think I may sound a bit too sensitive, but my love for my people and the love supporters have shown me over the years is what keeps me alive.
I don’t read vour letters with my intellect. I read them with my heart.
My imprisonment is just another example of the treatment and policies our people have faced since the arrival of the first Europeans.
I’m just an ordinary man and I come from a live and let live society, like all our people.
And yet we have had to live in a state of survival ever since Columbus landed.
There is nothing about my case, nothing about the Constitution, which is a treaty between the American people and the government, that warrants my continual imprisonment.
They have historically imprisoned or killed our people, taken our land and resources. Any time the law was in our favor they ignored the law or changed the law to benefit their agenda.
After they have gotten what they wanted, a generation later, some politician would apologize.
They have never negotiated sincerely with us unless we had something they wanted and could not take, or we were an embarrassment before the world, or we were some sort of opposition.
The opposition has always been the dominant reason for them making treaties with us.
I could go on and on about the mistreatment of our people and on and on about my case, but the United Nations said it.
That the United States has kept me locked up because I am American Indian.
The only thing that really makes me different from other American Indians who have been mistreated, had land taken, or been imprisoned by our government, is that it is all a matter or court record in my case. The violation of my Constitutional rights has been proven in court. The fabrication of every piece of evidence used to convict me has been proven in court. The United Nations itself, comprised of 193 nations, has called for my release, noting I am a political prisoner.
In my case as a political prisoner there does not have to be a prisoner exchange. The exchange they need to make is from their policy of injustice to a policy of justice.
It does not matter what your color and ethnicity are. Black, red, white, yellow, brown - if they can do it to me, they can do it to you.
The Constitution of the United States is hanging by a thread.
Again. I want to say, from my heart to your heart, most sincerely - do your best to educate your children. Teach them to defend themselves physically, mentally, and spiritually. Make them aware of our history.
Teach them to plant a food forest or any plant that will provide for them in the future.
Again, from my heart to yours, plant a tree for me.
In the Spirit of Crazy Horse.
Doksha,
Leonard Peltier
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A person holds a sign with Tyre Nichols’s name at a protest in New York City on 28 January. (photo: Jeenah Moon/Reuters)
Demetrius Haley sent photographs of Nichols to other officers and a female acquaintance
The officer, Demetrius Haley, stood over Nichols as he lay propped against a police car after the lengthy assault, and took photographs, which Haley sent to other officers and a female acquaintance, according to documents released by the Tennessee peace officers standards and training commission on Tuesday.
“Your on-duty conduct was unjustly, blatantly unprofessional and unbecoming for a sworn public servant,” the Memphis police department wrote in requesting that Haley and the other officers be stripped of their professional certification as law enforcement personnel.
All five have already been fired and charged with second degree murder and other felonies following the attack on a defenseless Nichols after a traffic stop on 7 January and his death in hospital three days later.
Nichols’s death sparked protests and fresh calls for reform of police in Memphis and nationwide.
Haley’s lawyer declined to comment, and lawyers for the other four officers either declined to comment or did not respond to requests from the Associated Press.
The new documents offer the most detailed account to date of the actions of the five officers, Haley, Desmond Mills Jr, Tadarrius Bean, Justin Smith and Emmitt Martin III.
Another officer has also been fired and a seventh has been relieved of duty in connection with the latest police killing to prompt angry nationwide protests and an intense public conversation about how police officers treat Black residents.
As many as 13 Memphis officers could end up being disciplined, officials said on Tuesday.
The newly released documents are part of a request by the Memphis Police Department that the five officers who have been charged with murder be decertified and prohibited from working in law enforcement again. The Memphis police chief, Cerelyn “CJ” Davis, signed each of the five requests to decertify the officers.
Haley, who was driving an unmarked car and wore a black sweatshirt hoodie over his head, forced Nichols from his car using loud profanity, then sprayed him directly in the eyes with a chemical irritant spray, according to the statement.
“You never told the driver the purpose of the vehicle stop or that he was under arrest,” it states.
Haley did not have his body camera on when he stopped Nichols but was on a phone call with someone who overheard the encounter.
Nichols ran from the officers but was apprehended again a few blocks away. At that point, Haley kicked him in the torso as three other officers were handcuffing him. Other officers kicked Nichols in the face, punched him or struck him with a baton. According to footage captured on a utility pole camera, one of the officers appears to quickly take a photo of Nichols on his phone as flashlights are shined on him.
Martin claimed Nichols tried to snatch the officer’s gun from his holster after another officer forced him out of the vehicle, with Martin helping by grabbing Nichols’ wrist. However, video evidence doesn’t corroborate the gun-grab claim, the documents said.
Martin also failed to disclose in a required form that he punched Nichols in the face and kicked him multiple times, and instead added in his later statement to investigators that he gave “body blows”, the documents said. Video showed Martin kicking Nichols repeatedly and punching him in the face five times while two officers held Nichols’ arms.
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Polly Samson and Roger Waters. (photo: Getty Images)
Waters has replied that he ‘refutes entirely’ the ‘incendiary and wildly inaccurate comments’ made by Polly Samson, lyricist and wife of guitarist Dave Gilmour
“Sadly [Waters] you are antisemitic to your rotten core,” she wrote. “Also a Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalomaniac. Enough of your nonsense.”
Sadly @rogerwaters you are antisemitic to your rotten core. Also a Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching,misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalomaniac. Enough of your nonsense.
— pollysamson (@PollySamson) February 6, 2023
In response to Samson’s tweet, Waters posted a statement on his own Twitter, reading: “Roger Waters is aware of the incendiary and wildly inaccurate comments made about him on Twitter by Polly Samson, which he refutes entirely. He is currently taking advice as to his position.”
— Roger Waters (@rogerwaters) February 6, 2023
Samson’s tweet is seemingly in reference to an interview Waters did with the Berliner Zeitung newspaper earlier this month, reposted in translation on Waters’ website, in which he wonders if “Putin [is] a bigger gangster than Joe Biden and all those in charge of American politics since World War II”, and says that Putin “governs carefully, making decisions on the grounds of a consensus in the Russian Federation government.”
In the interview, Waters also said that “Israel Lobby activists” were trying to have his concerts in Germany cancelled, and that “the Israelis are committing genocide. Just like Great Britain did during our colonial period … We believed ourselves to be inherently superior to the indigenous people, just as the Israelis do in Palestine.” He also expresses his continued support for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, and that he would still play in Moscow, “given that Moscow does not run an apartheid state based on the genocide of the indigenous inhabitants.”
Rogers has long been accused of antisemitism due to his repeated comparisons between the Israeli state and Nazi Germany. Writing for the New York Observer in 2013, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach wrote that Waters had “no decency, you have no heart, you have no soul” for comparing “Jews to monsters who murdered them”. Waters, in response, acknowledged that “the Holocaust was brutal and disgusting beyond our imagination,” but that he “deplore[s] the policies of the Israeli government in the occupied territories and Gaza,” and that he was “not an antisemite”.
In 2017, German public broadcasters cancelled the broadcast of Waters’ concerts in Berlin and Cologne due to “accusations of antisemitism against him”.
Last year, two scheduled Waters concerts in Poland were cancelled due to an open letter he sent Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska in which he said that “extreme nationalists” in Ukraine were to blame for “this disastrous war”.
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Conducting an ultrasound during a mobile medical outreach by a team of doctors in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine. Such efforts aim to bring a semblance of normalcy to the area. (photo: NYT)
For eight months, the village of Levkivka in eastern Ukraine was under occupation by Russian troops, who cut off roughly 300 residents from the outside world. There was no running water or power, and Russian soldiers would often snatch their cellphones and stomp on them, fearful that locals would betray their locations, residents said. The only medical care was provided by two village nurses, who braved the constant shelling to make house calls with limited supplies and medicine.
Though Ukrainian forces recaptured Levkivka in September, reconnecting the village to basic services has come slowly. Power and water are back, but medical care is still hard to come by. The medical truck, provided by the United Nations Population Fund and staffed with doctors from the city of Kharkiv, 75 miles to the north, travels around the region, part of a continuing Ukrainian government effort to bring a semblance of normalcy to once occupied villages in the east.
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A charging station, right, and its home integration system enable two-way power flow from the F-150 Lightning to serve as a backup energy source. (photo: Sunrun)
The next generation of EV batteries will feed energy to your home — and the grid
The next time the power failed, Graham was prepared. He had a power strip and a $150 inverter, a device that converts direct current from batteries into the alternating current needed to run appliances, hooked up to his new Chevy Bolt, an electric vehicle. The Bolt’s battery powered his refrigerator, lights and other crucial devices with ease. As the rest of his neighborhood outside Albuquerque languished in darkness, Graham’s family life continued virtually unchanged. “It was a complete game changer making power outages a nonissue,” says Graham, 35, a manager at a software company. “It lasted a day-and-a-half, but it could have gone much longer.”
Today, Graham primarily powers his home appliances with rooftop solar panels and, when the power goes out, his Chevy Bolt. He has cut his monthly energy bill from about $220 to $8 per month. “I’m not a rich person, but it was relatively easy,” says Graham “You wind up in a magical position with no [natural] gas, no oil and no gasoline bill.”
Graham is a preview of what some automakers are now promising anyone with an EV: An enormous home battery on wheels that can reverse the flow of electricity to power the entire home through the main electric panel.
Beyond serving as an emissions-free backup generator, the EV has the potential of revolutionizing the car’s role in American society, transforming it from an enabler of a carbon-intensive existence into a key step in the nation’s transition into renewable energy.
Home solar panels had already been chipping away at the United States’ centralized power system, forcing utilities to make electricity transfer a two-way street. More recently, home batteries have allowed households with solar arrays to become energy traders, recharging when electricity prices are low, replacing grid power when prices are high, and then selling electricity for a profit during peak hours.
But batteries are expensive. Using EVs makes this kind of home setup cheaper and a real possibility for more Americans.
So there may be a time, perhaps soon, when your car not only gets you from point A to point B, but also serves as the hub of your personal power plant.
I looked into new vehicles and hardware to answer the most common questions about how to power your home (and the grid) with your car.
Why power your home with an EV battery
America’s grid is not in good shape. Prices are up and reliability is down. Since 2000, the number of major outages has risen from less than two dozen to more than 180 per year, based on federal data, the Wall Street Journal reports. The average utility customer in 2020 endured about eight hours of power interruptions, double the previous decade.
Utilities’ relationship with their customers is set to get even rockier. Residential electricity prices, which have risen 21 percent since 2008, are predicted to keep climbing as utilities spend more than $1 trillion upgrading infrastructure, erecting transmission lines for renewable energy and protecting against extreme weather.
U.S. homeowners, increasingly, are opting out. About 8 percent of them have installed solar panels. An increasing number are adding home batteries from companies such as LG, Tesla and Panasonic. These are essentially banks of battery cells, similar to those in your laptop, capable of storing energy and discharging electricity.
EnergySage, a renewable energy marketplace, says two-thirds of its customers now request battery quotes when soliciting bids for home solar panels, and about 15 percent install them. This setup allows homeowners to declare (at least partial) independence from the grid by storing and consuming solar power overnight, as well as supplying electricity during outages.
But it doesn’t come cheap. The average home consumes about 20 kilowatt-hours per day, a measure of energy over time. That works out to about $15,000 for enough batteries on your wall to ensure a full day of backup power (although the net cost is lower after incentives and other potential savings).
An alternative is in the driveway. A typical EV stores about 67 kWh in its battery, more than three days’ worth of electricity, sitting unused (vehicles are parked for about 95 percent of their useful life). Until recently, the only way to tap it was by rigging an inverter system like Graham’s. But bidirectional charging, the ability for vehicle electricity to flow both ways, is now a commercial reality in the United States. By 2024, numerous makes and models will be in dealerships.
You can even buy one today: The Ford F-150 Lightning, an all-electric version of America’s best-selling pickup truck. It’s scrambling the economics of home energy.
How an EV battery can power your home
Ford changed how customers saw their trucks when it rolled out a hybrid version of the F-150, says Ryan O’Gorman of Ford’s energy services program. The truck doubles as a generator sporting as many as 11 outlets spread around the vehicle, including a 240-volt outlet typically used for appliances like clothes dryers. During disasters like the 2021 ice storm that left millions of Texans without electricity, Ford dealers lent out their hybrid F-150s as home generators.
The Lightning, the fully electric version of the F-150, takes the next step by offering home backup power. Under each Lightning sits a massive 98 kWh to 131 kWh battery pack. That’s enough energy, Ford estimates, to power a home for three days (10 days if rationing). “The vehicle has an immense amount of power to move that much metal down the road at 80 mph,” says O’Gorman.
Instead of plugging appliances into the truck, the truck plugs into the house, replacing the grid. This requires some equipment: an 80-watt bidirectional charger and a home integration system, which is a hardware unit that allows you to disconnect your house from the grid and power it with the truck. Sunrun, the nation’s largest residential solar installer, is Ford’s preferred installation partner, although any licensed professional can install them.
How much it will cost
Installing the extra hardware will cost about $5,000. (Ford includes the bidirectional charger with its premium models). Home wiring upgrades, or an optional solar array, would push the cost higher.
Even at that price, the F-150 may be the cheapest home battery on the market.
When battery prices surged last year because of rising demand and supply chain issues, automakers were first in line thanks to their enormous scale. That allowed them to make deals that appear to have radically undercut home battery prices.
Take the $56,000 F-150 Lightning. With the standard 98 kWh battery, it offers energy storage equivalent to seven Tesla PowerWalls ($15,500 each installed) for about half the price per kWh. So, for slightly over the U.S. median car price of $50,000, you get a home battery and a car.
For now, the Lightning only offers a house-size backup battery. But the next round of software upgrades will monitor home energy usage to decide the best time (and price) to recharge vehicles. During peak hours, it can disconnect your home from the electricity grid, relying on battery power, until prices fall.
Utilities across the country are also starting to allow EVs to supply electricity to the grid. Owners can opt into vehicle-to-grid services that allow utilities to call on their car’s battery during peak demand, for a price. Sunrun CEO Mary Powell says the company has already received about 1,000 orders for the F-150’s home battery systems around the country, particularly in places like California and Texas rocked by blackouts related to extreme weather (about 10 percent also opted to add solar).
Eventually, it aims to build a coordinated network as it does for home stationary batteries that could help balance the grid and power millions of homes. The potential is enormous. The Natural Resources Defense Council estimates that if, as expected, California’s new clean air standards add 14 million zero-emission vehicles to garages by 2035, the collective battery storage could power all of California’s homes for three days.
Will this help the climate?
The idea is companies like Sunrun, along with utilities, will recruit vehicles like the F-150 Lightning to form virtual power plants. These networks of thousands or millions of devices can supply electricity during critical times. By 2030, according to the clean energy nonprofit RMI, this could reduce peak loads in the United States by 60 gigawatts, equivalent to the average consumption of 50 million households. That would cut the number of power plants we need to build, and help redistribute clean energy throughout the day.
Here’s why. Think of today’s electricity grid as a very expensive highway system with dozens of lanes crisscrossing the nation. Yet it’s only at full capacity a few times a year. Because utilities must always keep the lights on, they invest billions of dollars in (polluting) power plants that may only operate for a few hours or even a few minutes each year. As the share of renewable energy increases, utilities may need even more of these plants to smooth out fluctuations when the wind or sun isn’t available.
Batteries offer an alternative. By storing energy and dispatching it at the right time, they can help utilities ramp up renewables without expensive new natural gas plants as a backup.
Still, using an EV as a home battery might not be the best way to cut your overall emissions, especially if you buy an oversize one. (The new Hummer EV, for example, pollutes more per mile than small gas-powered sedans).
The most effective way to zero out emissions, researchers argue, is reducing personal dependence on cars. Mass transit, cycling, walkability, better zoning and land use planning are all necessary to hit emission reduction targets in the transportation sector, which is now the largest source of U.S. emissions, even as EVs replace their fossil fuel counterparts.
But cities won’t develop walkable designs and ubiquitous transit systems overnight — if they ever do. America was built for cars: 93 percent of U.S. households own a vehicle.
So if you aren’t getting rid of your vehicle, you’ll face new choices the next time you walk into a car dealership: How do you want to power your home and the grid?
Many of the EVs rolling off assembly lines today will give you that option, says Douglas Alfaro of WallBox, an EV charging and energy management company. The company is partnering with automakers to design hardware that works with almost any vehicle — Ford’s charging infrastructure, so far, is proprietary. This is already starting to happen: Makers of the Hyundai Ioniq 5, Lucid Air, Kia EV6, VW’s ID.4, Mitsubishi Outlander, and Chevy Silverado EV have announced they will offer home electricity services in the next year or so.
As Graham realized after his last power outage in New Mexico, electrifying your life means rethinking how your vehicle is connected to everything else. In the future, our cars will be plugged into our homes and other intelligent devices, trading electricity with each other and the outside world.
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