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Phillips Payson O’Brien | The West Must Give Ukraine the Weapons It Needs to Win
Phillips Payson O’Brien, The Atlantic
Excerpt: "Wars are won or lost well behind the front lines. Allies should arm Ukrainians accordingly."
Wars are won or lost well behind the front lines. Allies should arm Ukrainians accordingly.
For the past four months, people around the world have witnessed the macabre process of Russian forces making repeated assaults near the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut for only the tiniest of gains. By some counts, Russia has lost about five of its soldiers for every Ukrainian soldier lost—to say nothing of massive equipment losses. Although in theory a country can win a war by using its military forces to make forward assaults against an enemy’s forces, that’s just not a smart way to fight. Military technology long ago evolved to arm both sides in conflicts with extremely lethal weaponry, and any army that tries to approach this machinery head-on is likely to suffer major, and in some cases horrific, losses.
Far more effective is to weaken your opponent’s forces before they get to the battlefield. You can limit what military infrastructure they’re able to build, make sure what they do build is substandard, hamper their ability to train troops to operate what they build, and hinder them from deploying their resources to the battlefield. These steps are doubly effective in that they save your own forces while degrading the other side’s. Over the past two centuries, the powers that have emerged triumphant have been the ones that not only fought the enemy on the battlefield but also targeted its production and deployment systems—as the Union did by controlling the waters around the Confederacy during the Civil War and as the United States and Britain did from the air against Nazi Germany.
In light of such dynamics, the manner in which the West is supporting Ukraine’s war effort is deeply frustrating. Though NATO countries have a variety of systems that can target Russian forces deep behind their lines, recent aid has been overwhelmingly geared toward preparing Ukraine to make direct assaults against the Russian army. The most widely discussed forms of equipment—such as Leopard 2 tanks, Bradley armored personnel carriers, and even Archer long-range artillery—are not the kinds of systems that can disrupt or degrade Russian forces far behind the front lines.
In short, Ukraine is being made to fight the war the hard way, not the smart way.
Ukrainian forces have indeed been pushing back against Russia at the front. But when they have been able to create or obtain the right technology, they have also attacked Russian supply and troop-deployment chains. This approach to war was probably most evident last summer, when the Ukrainians, as soon as they gained access to HIMARS rocket launchers and other Western multiple-rocket-launcher systems, embarked on a highly effective campaign against Russian supply points from Kherson to the Donbas. They managed to wreck a logistics system that had been supplying the Russian armies with huge amounts of firepower daily.
Almost immediately the Russians had to move their large supply depots out of range of the Ukrainians’ new rocket launchers, keeping essential equipment much farther from the front. This has severely limited Russia’s operations. It can fire significantly fewer shells each day and apparently can concentrate fewer vehicles on the front. The area where the Russians can properly supply their forces for operations has shrunk.
This overall approach led the Ukrainians to one of their great successes last year: the liberation of the west bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson province. When faced with a large, relatively experienced Russian force around the city of Kherson, the Ukrainians tried two different tacks. One involved direct armed assaults against the Russian salient west of the river. These assaults achieved at best modest results. The Ukrainians were able at points to push the Russian front back a few miles, but they were never able to break the line for any major gain.
Yet, in the end, the Russian army withdrew from Kherson last fall. Why was that? Because the other tack had made its supply situation more and more tenuous: After a months-long Ukrainian campaign targeting Russian-held depots, bridges, and river crossings, Russian commanders decided that Kherson was not strategically valuable enough to be worth the effort to hold it. The attacks on Russian supplies and logistics, which sapped their ability to deploy and maintain forces, were what made the difference.
The tanks and other assistance that Ukraine is currently receiving will help it attack the Russian army directly—which appears likely in the next few months. Ukrainian troops are training for such an operation in many partner countries and in Ukraine itself. They might well end up breaking the Russian line and advancing into the gap—the Ukrainian military has proved extremely resourceful and determined so far—but any success will likely be at significant cost to Ukraine’s own forces.
Their task would be easier if their allies had given them a stronger capacity to attack Russians from a greater distance. They clearly want to do it. One of the most extraordinary abilities the Ukrainians have shown is developing homegrown long-range systems, often incorporating drones, to attack Russian forces many miles from the front. Yet these homegrown systems are limited. NATO states could have given Ukraine longer-range equipment—including a missile system known as ATACMS and advanced fixed-wing aircraft—or made a massive effort to help the Ukrainians develop and improve their own ranged systems.
Unfortunately, NATO states, including the U.S., have been reluctant to provide the Ukrainians with missile systems with too long of a range, seemingly for fear of escalating tensions with Russia. Instead of allowing the Ukrainians to degrade Russian forces far from the front line, Ukraine is being prepared to attack that line. The Ukrainians’ fortitude and ingenuity up to this point suggest that they could indeed accomplish their task—but it’s been made much harder than it needs to be.
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Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney. (photo: John Bazemore/AP)
Georgia Judge Orders Prosecutors to Reply to Trump Challenge
Jeff Amy, Associated Press
Amy writes: "A Georgia judge on Monday ordered the Fulton County district attorney’s office to respond to a motion by former President Donald Trump to throw out a report by a special grand jury that investigated attempts to interfere in the state’s 2020 presidential election."
AGeorgia judge on Monday ordered the Fulton County district attorney’s office to respond to a motion by former President Donald Trump to throw out a report by a special grand jury that investigated attempts to interfere in the state’s 2020 presidential election.
The motion by Trump’s legal team also seeks to toss out all testimony from the inquiry and to bar Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from continuing to investigate or prosecute Trump.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ordered Willis to respond by May 1 and to let him know whether an in-person hearing is needed to resolve any issues. A spokesperson for Willis said her office would reply through its court filings.
The filing is an effort by Trump to escape one of the multiple legal challenges he faces, including a state inquiry in New York into hush money payments to women who alleged sexual encounters with the former president as well as a pair of U.S. Justice Department criminal investigations. One examines his efforts to overturn his loss in the 2020 election. The other examines Trump’s possession of hundreds of classified documents at his Florida estate.
Willis began her investigation shortly after the release of a recording of a January 2021 phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. In that conversation, the then-president suggested that Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, could “find” the exact number of votes needed to overturn Trump’s narrow election loss in the state to Democrat Joe Biden.
The special grand jury heard from about 75 witnesses and considered other evidence before issuing a report that includes recommendations for Willis on criminal charges. McBurney released the report’s introduction and conclusion, as well as a section in which the grand jurors expressed concerns that some witnesses may have lied under oath, but the rest of the report has remained under wraps so far.
Willis said in a January hearing that decisions on indictments were “imminent.”
The challenge by Trump’s legal team, filed last Monday, also contended that McBurney misinterpreted Georgia law and erred by not disqualifying Willis from the entire probe when he ruled in July that Willis could not pursue charges against Burt Jones, now Georgia’s lieutenant governor.
Trump’s lawyers asked for another judge besides McBurney to hear the challenge. He did not acknowledge that push in Monday’s brief order.
The lawyers also faulted Willis for granting repeated news interviews, citing a list of 39 media appearances and saying her comments cast ”a shadow of bias over her office and the entire investigation.”
Trump’s lawyers similarly argued that interviews that the foreperson and other grand jurors have given should disqualify the case.
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A Rankin County Sheriff's Deputy SUV drives past the Rankin County Confederate Monument in Brandon, Miss., Friday, March 3, 2023. (photo: Rogelio V. Solis/AP)
Deputies Accused of Shoving Guns in Mouths of 2 Black Men
Michael Goldberg, Associated Press
Goldberg writes: "Several deputies from a Mississippi sheriff’s department being investigated by the Justice Department for possible civil rights violations have been involved in at least four violent encounters with Black men since 2019 that left two dead and another with lasting injuries, an Associated Press investigation found."
Several deputies from a Mississippi sheriff’s department being investigated by the Justice Department for possible civil rights violations have been involved in at least four violent encounters with Black men since 2019 that left two dead and another with lasting injuries, an Associated Press investigation found.
Two of the men allege that Rankin County sheriff's deputies shoved guns into their mouths during separate encounters. In one case, the deputy pulled the trigger, leaving the man with wounds that required parts of his tongue to be sewn back together. In one of the two fatal confrontations, the man's mother said a deputy kneeled on her son's neck while he told them he couldn't breathe.
Police and court records obtained by the AP show that several deputies who were accepted to the sheriff's office's Special Response Team — a tactical unit whose members receive advanced training — were involved in each of the four encounters. In three of them, the heavily redacted documents don't indicate if they were serving in their normal capacity as deputies or as members of the unit.
Such units have drawn scrutiny since the January killing of Tyre Nichols, a Black father who died days after being severely beaten by Black members of a special police team in Memphis, Tennessee. Nichols' death led to a Justice Department probe of similar squads around the country that comes amid the broader public reckoning over race and policing sparked by the 2020 police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
In Mississippi, the police shooting of Michael Corey Jenkins led the Justice Department to open a civil rights investigation into the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department. Jenkins said six white deputies burst into a home where he was visiting a friend, and one put a gun in his mouth and fired. Jenkins’ hospital records, parts of which he shared with AP, show he had a lacerated tongue and broken jaw.
Deputies said Jenkins was shot after he pointed a gun at them; department officials have not answered multiple inquiries from the AP asking whether a weapon was found at the scene. Jenkins’ attorney, Malik Shabazz, said his client didn’t have a gun.
“They had complete control of him the entire time. Six officers had full and complete control of Michael the entire time,” Shabazz said. “So that’s just a fabrication.”
Rankin County, which has about 120 sheriff's deputies serving its roughly 160,000 people, is predominantly white and just east of the state capital, Jackson, home to one of the highest percentages of Black residents of any major U.S. city. In the county seat of Brandon, a towering granite-and-marble monument topped by a statue of a Confederate soldier stands across the street from the sheriff's office.
In a notice of an upcoming lawsuit, attorneys for Jenkins and his friend Eddie Terrell Parker said on the night of Jan. 24 the deputies suddenly came into the home and proceeded to handcuff and beat them. They said the deputies stunned them with Tasers repeatedly over roughly 90 minutes and, at one point, forced them to lie on their backs as the deputies poured milk over their faces. The men restated the allegations in separate interviews with the AP.
When a Taser is used, it’s automatically logged into the device’s memory. The AP obtained the automated Taser records from the evening of Jan. 24. They show that deputies first fired one of the stun guns at 10:04 p.m. and fired one at least three more times over the next 65 minutes. However, those unredacted records might not paint a complete picture, as redacted records show that Tasers were turned on, turned off or used dozens more times during that period.
The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation was brought in to investigate the encounter. Its summary says a deputy shot Jenkins at approximately 11:45 p.m., or about 90 minutes after a Taser was first used, which matches the timeframe given by Parker and Jenkins. The deputy’s name was not disclosed by the bureau.
Police say the raid was prompted by a report of drug activity at the home. Jenkins was charged with possessing between 2 and 10 grams of methamphetamine and aggravated assault on a police officer. Parker was charged with two misdemeanors — possession of paraphernalia and disorderly conduct. Jenkins and Parker say the raid came to a head when the deputy shot Jenkins through the mouth. He still has difficulty speaking and eating.
Another Black man, Carvis Johnson, alleged in a federal lawsuit filed in 2020 that a Rankin County deputy placed a gun into his mouth during a 2019 drug bust. Johnson was not shot.
There is no reason for an officer to place a gun in a suspect’s mouth, and to have allegations of two such incidents is telling, said Samuel Walker, emeritus professor of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska.
“If there are incidents with the same kind of pattern of behavior, they have their own set of rules,” he said. “So these are not just chance experiences. It looks like a very clear pattern.”
Jenkins doesn't know the name of the deputy who shot him. In the heavily redacted incident report, an unidentified deputy wrote, “I noticed a gun.” The unredacted sections don't say who shot Jenkins, only that he was taken to a hospital. Deputy Hunter Elward swore in a separate court document that Jenkins pointed the gun at him.
Elward's name also appears in police reports and court records from the two incidents in which suspects were killed.
The sheriff's department refused repeated interview requests and denied access to any of the deputies who were involved in the violent confrontations. The department has not said whether deputies presented a search warrant, and it's unclear if any have been disciplined or are still members of the special unit.
The news outlet Insider has been investigating the sheriff’s department and persuaded a county judge to order the sheriff to turn over documents related to the deaths of four men in 2021. Chancery Judge Troy Farrell Odom expressed bewilderment that the department had refused to make the documents public.
“(The) day that our law enforcement officers start shielding this information from the public, all the while repeating, ‘Trust us. We’re from the government,’ is the day that should startle all Americans,” Odom wrote.
The AP requested body camera or dashcam footage from the night of the Jenkins raid. Jason Dare, an attorney for the sheriff’s department, said there was no record of either.
Mississippi doesn’t require police officers to wear body cameras. Incident reports and court records tie deputies from the raid to three other violent encounters with Black men.
During a 2019 standoff, Elward said Pierre Woods pointed a gun at him while running at deputies. Deputies then shot and killed him. In a statement to the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation obtained by the AP, Elward said he fired at Woods eight times. Police say they recovered a handgun at the scene of the Woods shooting.
Court records place Christian Dedmon, another deputy who shot at Woods, at the Jenkins raid.
Dedmon was also among deputies involved in a 2019 arrest of Johnson, according to the lawsuit Johnson filed alleging that one of the deputies put a gun in his mouth as they searched him for drugs. Johnson is currently imprisoned for selling methamphetamine.
Other documents obtained by the AP detail another violent confrontation between Elward and Damien Cameron, a 29-year-old man with a history of mental illness. He died in July 2021 after being arrested by Elward and Deputy Luke Stickman, who also opened fire on Woods during the 2019 standoff. A grand jury declined to bring charges in the case last October.
In an incident report, Elward wrote that while responding to a vandalism call, he repeatedly shocked Cameron with a Taser, punched and grappled with Cameron at the home of his mother, Monica Lee. He said after getting Cameron to his squad car, he again stunned him to get him to pull his legs into the vehicle.
After going back inside to retrieve his Taser, deputies returned to find Cameron unresponsive. Elward wrote that he pulled Cameron from the car and performed CPR, but Cameron was later declared dead at a hospital.
Lee, who witnessed the confrontation, told the AP that after subduing her son, Elward kneeled on his back for several minutes. She said when Stickman arrived, he kneeled on her son’s neck while handcuffing him, and that her son complained he couldn't breathe.
Lee said she later went outside, hoping to talk to her son before the deputies drove him away.
“I walked outside to tell him goodbye and that I loved him, and that I would try to see him the next day. That’s when I noticed they were on the driver’s side of the car doing CPR on him,” Lee said. “I fell to the ground screaming and hollering.”
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'The Internet Archive, which strives to provide 'universal access to all knowledge,' said its emergency online library was legal under the doctrine of fair use.' (photo: Pierre Bamin/Unsplash)
A Judge Sided With Publishers in a Lawsuit Over the Internet Archive's Online Library
Joe Hernandez, NPR
Hernandez writes: "A federal judge has ruled in favor of a group of book publishers who sued the nonprofit Internet Archive for scanning and lending digital copies of copyrighted books in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic."
Afederal judge has ruled in favor of a group of book publishers who sued the nonprofit Internet Archive for scanning and lending digital copies of copyrighted books in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.
The four publishing houses — Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, John Wiley … Sons and Penguin Random House — accused the Internet Archive of "mass copyright infringement" for loaning out digital copies of books without the publishers' permission.
At issue is the National Emergency Library, a temporary online collection established in 2020 that lent digital books while brick-and-mortar libraries were closed during COVID-19 lockdowns. It operated from March 24 to June 16 of that year.
With its other online collections, the Internet Archive had been lending out one digital copy of a book to one reader at a time, but the nonprofit suspended that policy for the National Emergency Library, allowing many readers to borrow the same book at once.
The Internet Archive, which strives to provide "universal access to all knowledge," said its emergency online library was legal under the doctrine of fair use.
But on Friday, U.S. District Court Judge John G. Koeltl of the Southern District of New York sided with the publishers, saying established law was on their side.
"At bottom, IA's fair use defense rests on the notion that lawfully acquiring a copyrighted print book entitles the recipient to make an unauthorized copy and distribute it in place of the print book, so long as it does not simultaneously lend the print book," Koeltl said in his opinion.
"But no case or legal principle supports that notion. Every authority points the other direction."
Koeltl noted that the Internet Archive can still scan and publish copies of books that are in the public domain.
The Authors Guild, a professional organization for published writers, praised the ruling, saying that "scanning … lending books w/out permission or compensation is NOT fair use—it is theft … it devalues authors' works." The Association of American Publishers said the ruling reaffirmed the importance of copyright law.
The Internet Archive said it will appeal the ruling.
In a statement, Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle suggested the judge's opinion would harm libraries, readers and authors.
"Libraries are more than the customer service departments for corporate database products," Kahle said. "For democracy to thrive at global scale, libraries must be able to sustain their historic role in society—owning, preserving, and lending books."
Authors have previously lobbed criticism at the Internet Archive, accusing the nonprofit of flouting well-established book lending rules and loaning out works without permission, thereby depriving writers of potential earnings.
The National Emergency Library was just one part of the Internet Archive, which is also known for its popular website archiving service, the Wayback Machine.
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The A train as it entered 125th Street in New York City. (photo: Hiram Alejandro Durán/THE CITY)
How to Save America's Public Transit Systems From a Doom Spiral
David Zipper, Vox
Zipper writes: "Don’t let buses and subways become another casualty of the pandemic."
Don’t let buses and subways become another casualty of the pandemic.
America’s largest public transportation systems are facing their greatest challenge in generations — a crisis with the potential to decimate their service, cripple local economies, and diminish quality of life.
When Covid-19 arrived three years ago, most transit passengers stopped riding, shrinking transportation agencies’ fare revenues. Today, ridership remains far below pre-pandemic levels. Unless they can quickly find new sources of funding, big transit systems will be forced to drastically curtail service, which would drive away still more passengers and place those systems in an even deeper financial hole.
Such a scenario would directly affect current riders, but it would also devastate cities whose post-pandemic priorities — such as revitalizing downtowns, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and boosting equity — rely on the ready availability of mass transportation.
But a death spiral is not inevitable. To escape it, transit leaders must offer a full-throated defense of their essential role in American life. They must then secure new and reliable revenue streams from state and regional sources, which will require convincing residents and legislators that transit is worthy of subsidy — not an easy thing to do in a country where the vast majority of people don’t ride the bus or train. “Do you know how many times the median American rides transportation each year?” Brian Taylor, a professor of urban planning and policy at UCLA, asked me.“Zero.”
In March 2020, public transit ridership plummeted.
It still hasn't recovered.
The only realistic way for transit officials to garner public support for the funding they desperately need is to demonstrate an ability to replace car trips, not just serve economically disadvantaged people who lack other means to get around their city. Otherwise, they forfeit the pro-transit arguments that resonate most with the public: curtailing congestion, reducing auto emissions, and boosting economic growth.
And to replace cars, transit agencies must offer fast, frequent, and reliable trips. This should be the core mission of any functional public transportation system, but increasingly, transit leaders are being pushed to focus on distracting priorities like electrifying buses, eliminating fares, and fighting crime. The biggest US transit agencies must be allowed to simply focus on delivering high-quality service. There is no Plan B.
20th-century suburbanization triggered a fiscal crisis for transit
To appreciate the urgency of transit’s current predicament, one must first understand its turbulent past. “The cycle I’m worried about now is one we saw from 1945 to 1970,” said Nicholas Bloom, a professor of urban policy and planning at Hunter College and the author of the forthcoming book The Great American Transit Disaster: A Century of Austerity, Auto-Centric Planning, and White Flight.
Mass transportation’s heyday came in the early 20th century, when privately run streetcars were ubiquitous throughout urban America, and residents of cities like Boston and New York City flocked to new subway lines. But the rapid ascent of the automobile prompted many regular passengers to decamp for car-oriented suburbs, with employers following. Declining ridership eroded transit companies’ finances, leading to deteriorating service that drove away still more riders.
With transit companies teetering on the brink of collapse after World War II, local and state governments intervened to prevent service from disappearing altogether. A wave of public takeovers included the creation of Chicago’s CTA (1947), Boston’s MBTA (1964), Philadelphia’s SEPTA (1964), and New York City’s MTA (1968).
Adding to transit’s postwar woes was a federal government focused on cars, not buses and trains. The landmark 1956 Federal-Aid Highway Act, for instance, launched the modern interstate system that catalyzed suburbanization while destroying many dense urban neighborhoods. Only with the 1964 Urban Mass Transportation Act did Congress start to provide a modicum of financial support for transit.
But it came with a big catch: The feds would subsidize capital expenditures, such as purchasing new buses or building a new rail line, rather than the ongoing provision of service, which was mostly paid from a combination of fare revenues and contributions from state and local governments.
In 1960, just over 12 percent of commutes to work occurred on transit, but by 2019 that figure had fallen to 5 percent. It was even lower in most of the country; the national average was propped up by a few populous metro regions that developed before the automobile’s arrival, where residents had more reason to use the bus or train because of limited downtown parking.
In New York City, for instance, 32 percent of commuters in 2019 traveled to work via transit; the figure in Boston was 13 percent and in Chicago 12 percent. Those three regions plus San Francisco, Washington, DC, and Philadelphia accounted for around 65 percent of total transit trips nationwide.
In major metros, transit has been indispensable
Unlike in the rest of the United States, transit agencies in these big, dense cities have long derived much of their operating revenues from passenger fares. In 2019 New York City’s MTA recovered more than half of its operating expenses through farebox revenue, while Chicago’s CTA drew 41 percent and Philadelphia’s SEPTA 35 percent. By comparison, the comparable figure for Phoenix’s Valley Metro was 14 percent, and for Dallas’s DART 12 percent.
Fare revenues allowed the biggest transit systems to provide more service, which made taking the bus or train more appealing for those who could otherwise use a car. Research has consistently found that transit’s regularity and reliability — more than its price — exert a powerful influence over mode choice. “The two most important factors driving satisfaction with transit are service frequency and travel time,” observed the nonprofit TransitCenter in a 2016 report.
Big transit systems’ singular ability to replace driving has brought them powerful allies. Their regional business groups often see transit as a means to avoid the crippling congestion that would hinder economic growth and depress real estate values. In Washington, DC, an alliance of corporate executives called the Federal City Council played a key role rallying the region to create Metrorail, which opened in 1976.
Such agencies have also found support in regional referendums and state budgets. According to the American Public Transportation Association, state and local governments contributed more than $500 billion toward transit systems between 1975 and 2019, with the largest systems getting a disproportionate share of those funds. Although suburban and rural residents may never ride the bus or train themselves, many still appreciate transit’s ability to mitigate congestion, grow local economies, and reduce greenhouse gasses and air pollution.
“It’s essential that transit lead people to drive less in order to win a statewide coalition,” said Monica Tibbits-Nutt, the undersecretary for the Massachusetts Department of Transportation. “When talking to people who don’t use the T [Boston’s rail system], I’ve always said, ‘The more people who ride the T, the more people who get off the road.’” The same argument was lampooned by The Onion in a 23-year-old headline, “98 Percent of US Commuters Favor Public Transportation for Others,” but it’s true — subsequent research found that many people really do support transit subsidies in the hopes that others will drive less.
Although pre-Covid transit was far from perfect in megalopolises like Chicago, New York, and Washington, DC, agencies’ ability to offer service competitive with car travel set them apart from peers in the rest of the country, which primarily serve low-income riders with limited (if any) access to a car.
Then came the pandemic.
After Covid, big transit systems’ finances fell off a cliff
Few parts of the American economy were upended by Covid as much as public transportation. Ridership nationwide plummeted around 80 percent in March 2020, shrinking farebox revenues as it fell.
That decline was less crippling for smaller transit agencies than those of major metros. A system that collects only 11 percent of its operating budget from fares (like Austin’s Metro did pre-pandemic, for example) could endure a massive drop in riders without incurring a significant budget deficit. But similar ridership declines would — and did — devastate bigger agencies that were far more reliant on fares. Adding to their pain, the largest systems often endured the steepest drops in ridership because their relatively more affluent passengers were more likely to work from home or have access to a car. By April 2020, transit trips in metro areas with over 2 million residents were down 83 percent, compared to 66 percent for smaller regions.
Seeking to avoid a repeat of transit’s near-death experience in the mid-20th century, Congress threw agencies a lifeline in 2020 by approving the first of several Covid relief packages, ultimately totaling $69 billion. That aid broke with federal precedent by directly funding big agencies’ operating costs, which allowed them to minimize service cuts even with far fewer riders.
But now the federal money is running out, while fare revenues remain low as ridership in big metros like Boston is barely half its pre-pandemic level and downtowns are still suffering from the remote work trend. “We’re calling it the ‘big red,’” said Randy Clarke, general manager of WMATA, the transit system of the DC region, which is projecting a deficit of over half a billion dollars by fiscal year 2025. New York City’s MTA faces an even larger gap, estimated at $2.5 billion in 2025 and increasing thereafter.
At the same time, ridership patterns have been scrambled, requiring agencies to navigate a fast-changing environment. Downtown lines have generally seen ridership fall the furthest and recover the slowest, but demand for routes connecting neighborhoods has been more resilient, especially during off-peak hours.
Facing a financial cliff, transit agencies are raising the alarm. In a blog post last December, Chicago’s Regional Transportation Authority, a financial oversight body, warned, “If no action is taken, the CTA, Metra, and Pace [Chicagoland’s three major transit systems] will be faced with difficult choices to cut service, raise fares, or both.” The Bay Area’s BART recently created a public website titled “Financial Crisis” to draw attention to its plight. “We can’t afford to lose transit,” it proclaims. “Don’t let BART go broke!”
To keep BART running, the agency says it needs more financial support from California — not, notably, the federal government. David Bragdon, the executive director of the nonprofit TransitCenter, doesn’t expect Congress to ride to the rescue again. “I don’t think there’s ever been — or will be — a point in time when federal funds are transit’s primary source of revenue,” he said. “Politically, that’s not how this country works with regard to its urban areas. Even in the most flush times, the vast majority of mass transportation funds are generated regionally and at the state level.”
To avoid a downward spiral of falling revenue, curtailed service, and lower ridership, transit agencies will need to convince governments and voters to give them more money. To do that, they need to focus on transit’s competitiveness with driving — and not be distracted by other priorities.
Eliminating fares sends transit in the wrong direction
During the pandemic, popular discourse about public transportation’s societal value underwent a shift. With so many people staying home, transit’s ability to mitigate traffic by replacing car trips seemed less urgent. Instead, public discussions focused on its role providing mobility for low-income “essential workers” who would otherwise be unable to reach jobs that housebound residents relied on them to perform.
“The people using transit now are working in hospitals that are saving lives,” wrote transit consultant and author Jarrett Walker in Bloomberg CityLab in April 2020. “They are creating, shipping, and selling urgently needed supplies. They are keeping grocery stores functioning, so we can eat.” A few months later, anti-racism protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder also contributed to discussion of access to public transportation as an equity and justice issue.
With transit users increasingly perceived as an economically vulnerable group, a rising chorus of activists, along with influential urban officials like Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and Washington, DC, Councilmember Charles Allen, spearheaded policies to eliminate fares entirely, rejecting the more targeted approach of providing discounts only for low-income riders, which was adopted in places like New York.
Transit riders are more likely to be poor than the general public, so dropping fares is a progressive policy move, although most low-income riders still say they would rather see agencies prioritize faster and more reliable trips. But eliminating fares requires transit systems to find even more outside funding to be able to function, making it harder to provide high-quality service. And it’s not clear that equity-based appeals will resonate in the suburbs and rural areas. There is no evidence that fare-free transit can meet the key goal of reducing driving, because those with car access typically care more about trip times and reliability than the cost of a transit trip.
“The fare-free dialogue can make it more difficult to win statewide support” for funding transit, said Tibbits-Nutt, the Massachusetts undersecretary of transportation. “It continues to focus the conversation on the city of Boston” rather than the interests of those living outside the city.
Forgoing state and regional funds wouldn’t be a problem if big cities, whose elected leaders are often the most bullish on fare-free transit, could themselves provide the additional money that their transit systems need. Joshua Schank, a research associate at San Jose State University’s Mineta Transportation Institute, said he would welcome a new emphasis on equity, even if it upends transit’s historical alliance of corporate, suburban, and state interests. “Maybe transit would function better if you blow up that old coalition,” he said. “You’d lose some funding in the short term, but it’s not as though transit was thriving before the pandemic. That coalition wasn’t working.”
But Bloom, the Hunter College professor, thinks it would be a catastrophic mistake to focus funding appeals on inequality. “There’s this idea of having a social equity awakening about transit,” he said. “As someone who spent the last 20 years studying public housing, social equity has not impressed me as a way of getting consistent, high funding for important and crucial public services. I just don’t see it.”
Taylor, the UCLA professor, agreed. “When framed as a social service, transit hasn’t done well securing funding,” he said. “But when it’s framed as an environmental benefit or as getting people off the road, that can work.”
Jeffrey Tumlin, the leader of San Francisco’s transit system, is already building his case for aid around the beneficial effects of replacing car trips. “Part of the argument is about climate,” he said. “Here in California, transportation is 47 percent of emissions, and of that, 72 percent is private cars and trucks. Transit is absolutely essential.”
Compared to climate change, transit’s ability to mitigate congestion and strengthen downtowns seems even easier to grasp. But the credibility of both appeals rests on transit’s ability to reduce driving. And that requires providing trips that are reliable and rapid, with the next bus or train only a few minutes away.
Let transit agencies focus on providing good service
Despite acute staffing challenges during the last year, thanks in part to an uptick in retirements, many transit agencies have found ways to improve service, enhancing its appeal to those who could otherwise travel by car. In the Washington, DC region, for instance, WMATA in February managed to deploy additional weekday rush hour trains in response to rebounding demand.
San Francisco’s Muni, meanwhile, revamped its schedule to drop peripheral routes and boost frequency on core lines like the 22 and 49 that serve neighborhoods including the Marina District, the Castro District, and the Mission District, which have always had relatively high ridership and, Tumlin said, are now seeing more passengers than before the pandemic. Neither route serves San Francisco’s Financial District, suggesting that agencies could grow ridership (and reduce driving) by adding service in areas that are within central cities but outside of downtowns.
Service improvements like these are indispensable, but some of the other priorities transit agencies are currently balancing are not. For instance, with ridership still depressed, now seems like a good time to deprioritize expensive capital projects like vehicle purchases and rail expansions, and reallocate the money toward maintenance that makes service more reliable and frequent. Or better yet, agencies could find ways to transfer money from their capital budgets to their operating budgets, where it can help them hire desperately needed operators. (President Biden’s new budget proposal would give agencies temporary authority to make such transfers with federal funds.)
With ridership still recovering and dollars scarce, it’s also unclear why transit agencies should be spending money on pricey service expansions. Massachusetts residents, for instance, might question why MBTA is planning an extension of its Silver Line at a time when ridership is still so far below pre-Covid levels that the system faces a 2024 budget deficit of up to $421 million, and when wait times between Red Line trains have increased from 90 seconds in the 1940s to 4.5 to 11 minutes today.
Another dubious move: prioritizing bus electrification, as California has done by demanding that all buses within the state emit zero emissions by 2040. Although their adoption makes for good headlines (and is eligible for generous federal subsidies), electric buses force already stretched transit staff to navigate a thicket of operational challenges, such as figuring out where to place charging stations and how to handle extreme weather. “Mandatory fleet and facility conversions should not come at the expense of the survival of transit operations,” Tumlin said.
To meet climate goals, state and local officials would be better off focusing on nudging people out of cars and into buses instead of electrifying their bus fleets. The OECD has found that diesel buses produce fewer emissions per passenger mile than even electric cars. “Getting someone on the bus is already green,” said WMATA’s Clarke. Creating Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) lines with dedicated lanes and priority for buses at traffic signals can cost far less than purchasing new vehicles, and unlike electric buses, it measurably improves transit service in ways that win over new riders.
BRT is just one of the smart, low-cost ways that cities and states could strengthen transit service. Another is the adoption of onboard bus cameras that automatically photograph and ticket car drivers who illegally block bus lanes, slowing down service and making schedules less reliable. New York City was the first big US city to use such cameras at scale, and initial evidence suggests it has substantially sped up bus trips.
States and cities could also give transit a lift by assuming responsibility for managing rising concerns over public safety on buses and subways, which can suppress ridership. Agencies are increasingly being forced to reallocate precious dollars away from operations and toward public safety, which is the core competence of mental health and law enforcement departments. Such departments, not transit agencies, should be handling transit’s growing safety and social services needs.
“I can either hire operators or hire security staff,” said Tumlin, noting that in the last year, his agency created 50 new security positions. “That’s a few bus lines’ worth of people.” In fact, high-frequency transit service is itself a powerful countermeasure against crime because it allows riders to exit uncomfortable situations without enduring a lengthy wait for the next vehicle.
“If we had a more functioning society, we would be focused more on being a transit operator,” said Clarke of WMATA, which recently paid for DC police to patrol Metrorail stations following the shooting death of an employee. “If you go to Singapore, the agency’s staff are not doing these things. They’re running transit.”
Inequality, global warming, and crime are obviously critical societal challenges. But transit agencies can help solve all three simply by providing the fast, frequent, reliable service that lies at the core of their mission. New mandates risk distracting transit officials, undermining their ability to deliver on the very goals that advocates most want.
“MBTA staff are not only being asked to address our crisis with congestion; they’re being asked to address asthma rates in low-income communities,” said Tibbits-Nutt. “They’re being asked to electrify their entire system, to open up to those who can’t afford a car, to modernize stations. There is so much being asked of them right now that it’s making it hard for the system to operate.”
Cities can’t function without robust transit
As transit’s perceived responsibilities multiply, federal dollars are dwindling. The most immediate and obvious way for state and regional governments to help is by establishing recurring sources of funding. For that reason, implementing New York City’s congestion pricing plan, which will charge motorists up to $23 to enter Manhattan’s central business district and add around $1 billion annually to MTA’s capital budget — funding that could improve maintenance and service quality — can’t happen soon enough.
New York is an exception; for most large transit agencies, obtaining necessary funds will require months if not years of negotiation and advocacy. The stakes could not be higher — not only for transit riders, but for everyone who benefits from mass transportation. We can’t have vibrant cities without it.
Those who want to see transit not just survive but thrive, including public officials as well as everyday citizens, can improve agencies’ chances for success by doing two things. First, support staff who are working to provide maximally useful service, so that residents are more likely to leave their car at home (or maybe even get rid of it). Bus Rapid Transit, bus lane enforcement, and prioritizing maintenance over service expansions are all consistent with that goal.
Second, they can resist the temptation to complicate agencies’ challenges with well-intentioned but counterproductive mandates to go fare-free, electrify buses, or spend their own money on public safety.
The focus must be on providing the high-quality service that reinforces transit systems as assets worthy of investment. The alternative — widening budget deficits and deteriorating service — would be a tragedy for some of America’s greatest cities.
“Right now we are still in a crisis,” said Bloom. “But if you want to make today’s low the permanent low, cut the transit service.”
“You won’t get it back.”
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Policemen stand outside a house during an anti-gang patrol at Las Margaritas neighborhood, following a year-long state of emergency against gangs, in Soyapango, El Salvador on March 24, 2023. (photo: Jose Cabezas/Reuters)
Belén Fernández | El Salvador: A Nation Under Hypnosis
Belén Fernández, Al Jazeera
Fernández writes: "After a year of President Bukele’s state of emergency, a ‘new reality’ is settling into the country."
After a year of President Bukele’s state of emergency, a ‘new reality’ is settling into the country.
In May, a 40-year-old woman – we’ll call her “Ana” – was arrested in downtown San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador. She presided over a shabby bar and eatery in an area known as the Ex Biblioteca – or Ex-Library – a reference to the institution that had occupied the grounds prior to the devastating earthquake of October 1986.
Her family has not heard from her since.
Ana was detained for alleged gang ties, two months into the state of emergency that kicked off on March 27, 2022 in response to a spike in homicides occasioned by a collapse in negotiations between gangs and Nayib Bukele, president of El Salvador and self-proclaimed “coolest dictator in the world”.
Over the past year, about 66,000 people have been imprisoned in accordance with the “emergency” – most of them condemned to indefinite detention and relieved of even the most basic rights. Many have nothing whatsoever to do with gangs aside from residing in a gang-saturated country.
As luck would have it, the Ex Biblioteca is now the ex-Ex Biblioteca, if you will, as much of the space has been cleared to make way for Bukele’s vision of a revamped downtown that is more aesthetically pleasing to the international bitcoin crowd he is fervently courting – and other important representatives of “development”, “investment” and similar euphemisms for capitalism’s war on poor people.
When I spoke recently in San Salvador with a former employee of Ana’s, he dismissed the possibility that she had any gang affiliations but speculated that her arrest had indeed served as a useful warning to other folks in the downtown area to comply with the sweeping “voluntary evictions” that were about to take place.
To be sure, mass incarceration is one way to temporarily disappear domestic problems, particularly if you also imprison lawyers who defend people accused of gang ties. A case in point is attorney Nubia Morales, who was arrested this month for representing “suspected gang members”.
And while there is no denying that El Salvador has long been terrorised by gangs, the current obliteration of rights is also definitively terrifying.
It bears reiterating that the gangs themselves are nothing more than a product of United States policy, Salvadoran state negligence and the good old capitalist war on the poor – all of which serve to underscore that Bukele’s much-celebrated “new reality” is not really anything new at all.
Over the past several decades, gangs have provided a convenient excuse for all manner of US-backed Salvadoran state repression, including extrajudicial killings by law enforcement personnel. Now, they continue to constitute a handy scapegoat for all societal ills – as well as the justification for a potentially eternal “state of emergency” and suspension of fundamental freedoms.
Just the other day in downtown San Salvador, I was accosted by a policeman and threatened with five years in prison for having taken a photograph of an apparently inebriated woman who had just been smacked by a private security guard.
After deleting the image from my phone and my phone’s trash bin and receiving a pompous lecture, I was eventually allowed to go, another manifestation of gringo privilege to which the average Salvadoran obviously cannot aspire.
A young man from the municipality of Apopa, previously one of the most gang-ridden zones in the San Salvador metropolitan area, recently commented to me that, while it was nice to be able to enter neighbourhoods where he would have once been killed, the “other side of the coin” of the Bukelian emergency was that he could now “be thrown in jail forever for no reason”.
Meanwhile, Bukele’s international acolytes are having near-orgasms over the option to buy ice cream on the beach using cryptocurrency.
Call it the other side of the bitcoin.
As of mid-March, the human rights organisation Cristosal had documented 126 in-custody deaths during the state of emergency although the presumed existence of clandestine graves within detention centres would boost that number even higher.
Abuse and torture of detainees is rampant, and Bukele himself delights in conspicuously mocking the very concept of human rights on Twitter, his preferred platform for governance.
One pride and joy of the world’s “coolest dictator” is El Salvador’s new Centre for the Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT), located about 75km (45 miles) southeast of San Salvador, where Bukele has sworn that suspected gang members will disappear for “decades”. With a maximum capacity of 40,000 people, CECOT is said to be the largest such facility in the Americas.
The jail was built in a record seven months, unhampered by any sort of financial transparency – such is the nature of business in the “new reality”. The week before the one-year anniversary of the state of emergency, I drove out to CECOT with a Salvadoran acquaintance of mine who, as we approached the looming white monstrosity and corresponding military checkpoint, entered into a visible state of panic and swung the car around.
Back in San Salvador later on, my acquaintance, a former Bukele devotee, confessed to having suddenly experienced a reckoning with the reality that nothing and no one could stop the Salvadoran authorities from locking him up for life if they wished to do so.
And yet the brand of politics hawked by Bukele, a former advertising executive, enjoys dangerously high approval ratings as many Salvadorans have enthusiastically embraced what amounts to a war on themselves. This seemingly blind rapture, an almost spiritual ecstasy, can perhaps be explained by El Salvador’s contemporary history of unceasing violence and Bukele’s marketing of himself as an instant saviour.
The day before I drove out to CECOT, I was downtown drinking beer with two Salvadoran friends who were lamenting the “voluntary eviction” of Ana’s spot in the Ex Biblioteca. At one point during our conversation, a young man sitting next to us felt the need to interject his own opinion, which was that we were wrong, Bukele was right, and “modernity and tourism” were all that mattered.
Judging from his appearance, this young man hailed from El Salvador’s lower socioeconomic echelons, meaning that, if someone were to spontaneously accuse him of gang ties, no amount of “modernity and tourism” was going to save him. Just as no amount of “modernity and tourism” will ultimately save El Salvador from crushing poverty.
Indeed, what is lost in the present national hypnosis is that poverty kills too.
On Monday, as Bukele’s crackdown celebrates its first anniversary – and a “new reality” that is neither new nor real continues to destroy a whole lot of lives – there is no end to the state of emergency in sight. And that is the real emergency.
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Jerrycans, used for storing water, shortly before being disbursed to displaced families by the non-government organization World Vision International in the Kaxareey IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) settlement on October 12,2022 in Doolow, Somalia.(photo: Giles Clarke/UNOCHA)
Indigenous Leaders Demand a Seat at International Water Negotiations
Lyric Aquino, Grist
Aquino writes: "World leaders are gathering in New York this week for the United Nations Water Conference to negotiate a Water Action Agenda, the first in almost 50 years, as countries struggle with drought and water pollution."
After decades of exclusion, communities most impacted by ongoing drought insist they be heard.
World leaders are gathering in New York this week for the United Nations Water Conference to negotiate a Water Action Agenda, the first in almost 50 years, as countries struggle with drought and water pollution. The conference serves as a midway check-in point for the International Decade for Action “Water Sustainable Development”. Since 1977, when the first UN Water Conference was held in Argentina, the Earth’s population has nearly doubled, and access to clean water is one of the top risks facing the planet.
During the conference, nations will be discussing items like the Sustainable Development Goal on Water and Sanitation, international water cooperation, and resilience and disaster risk reduction. The hope is leaders will create a workable water action agenda that can then be implemented and kept in check.
But Indigenous leaders have demanded a seat at the table, citing historic exclusion of Indigenous voices in international decision making. In a declaration sent to the UN this week, representatives from Indigenous nations, communities and organizations have requested attendees address additional points of discussion to their agendas, including violence against water protectors and protesters, the monetization and capitalization of water, and the inclusion of Indigenous leaders in water-based decisions that affect their lands and communities.
“I want governments to understand and be open to negotiations with Indigenous peoples and including Indigenous peoples through the framework of the UN declaration of Indigenous People’s Rights and all of the UN applicable declarations,” said Juan Leon Alvarado, who is Maya K’iche from Guatemala, and a human rights and biodiversity consultant for the International Indian Treaty Council. “We want Guatemala and other governments to respect Indigenous people’s rights instead of killing and criminalizing them.”
Nearly a quarter of the world’s population doesn’t have access to clean drinking water, and between 2007 and 2014, UN human rights treaty bodies addressed mining, oil and gas extraction, and logging projects with adverse effects on Indigenous communities in 34 countries, with almost half of those cases having serious impacts on water.
More than a fifth of the world’s basins have recently undergone rapid fluctuations in surface area. Additionally, over the past 300 years, over 85% of the planet’s wetlands have been lost. Wetlands are critical pieces of the world’s delicate ecosystems, are considered to be the most biologically diverse of all ecosystems, and are breeding grounds for 40% of the world’s plant and animal species. The UN reports these changes in basins and wetlands are due to population growth, changes to land cover and land use, and climate change. Leon Alvarado said Indigenous peoples worldwide should be in the conversation to address these issues.
“Most Indigenous peoples guard water and other resources, like mountains, biodiversity and other knowledge,” Leon Alvarado said. “The government doesn’t respect the knowledge, practice, organization and the old ways that Indigenous peoples use and other measures they take to have clean water.”
Leaders at the UN Water Conference will discuss how to substantially increase water-use efficiency, how to ensure sustainable withdrawals and supply of freshwater, and how to strengthen the participation of local communities in improving water and sanitation management.
In North America, more than 900 water protectors and rights defenders in the U.S. and Canada still face legal action for protesting oil and gas pipeline developments.
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