17 June 23
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I don’t recall that Richard Nixon used the word during Watergate or Bill Clinton when he was impeached for perjuring himself but I don’t think it will carry much weight now because the federal indictment was brought by Jack Smith, which is a great name for a prosecutor. It’s right out of a Dick Tracy comic. The name “Merrick Garland” sounds a little fruity to me, but I imagine DOJ looking down the list of prosecutorial names and eliminating the ones that ended with a vowel or a “ski” or “ovich,” until they found “Jack Smith” and yelled, “That’s it! Weaponize him!”
But the word is available for our use and the other morning when my wife looked at me and handed me a Kleenex and said, “Blow your nose,” and I did and then she pointed to her left nostril and I blew my left nostril and she said, “Again,” and I did it again and she said, “Okay” — it occurred to me that I could’ve said, “You are weaponizing that Kleenex in order to humiliate me and frustrate my attempt to make our home great again,” but it was too late. She was busy with her Dustbuster.
And then I looked at the Kleenex and saw what I’d blown into it and was somewhat chastened. I am a college graduate, the author of a couple decent novels and some sonnets that stand up pretty well, and I don’t think I should be going around the streets of New York with a noseful for the general public to observe. The doorman at our apartment building is not going to hand me a Kleenex and say, “Blow,” nor is anyone in the 86th Street subway station. (Maybe a retired third grade teacher might, but how many of those are you likely to encounter? I assume they’ve all gone to live in cabins in the Poconos.) Nor will a woman on the downtown B train say, “You have mustard on your shirt.” My wife is the only person who provides this service. Likewise, she does not turn to a policeman on the corner and say, “Would you mind scratching my back up between the shoulder blades?” That is my job and my privilege. I am her scratcher.
We are here to serve each other. Laws are meant to be enforced. The legal system, while it has its faults, is crucial to the maintenance of a civil society so that I can walk out the door and down the street with some confidence that a bozo won’t yell, “Go back where you came from!” and poke me in the snoot.
I am a man of privilege. I freely admit it. I am, I believe, the only writer in America who wrote a screenplay in which I played myself and the character played by Meryl Streep kissed me — it was right there in the script and she did it and unfortunately she required no retakes, but I wrote myself being kissed by her and thousands of people saw this back when there were movie theaters with giant screens — and yet I am a mortal human being too, and I sometimes snort in my sleep and my wife pokes me and tells me to turn the other way. And sometimes I am so absorbed in the artistry of my writing that I don’t notice what’s going on with my nose, and she has to hand me a Kleenex.
The indictment handed down by Jack Smith really should name Melania as a conspirator. It is a wife’s responsibility to say, “What in the world are you doing with those boxes?” when she sees a hundred of them piled in the basement and when she spots the “Top Secret” printed on them in bright red she’s supposed to yell, “Are you out of your mind? Get these out of here or I’m taking the kid and going to Slovenia.” But a wife who lets her husband go around with his hair like that, the little dinguses behind his ears, you have to wonder.
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Donald Trump. (photo: Erin Schaff/NYT/Redux)
The DOJ requested a protective order limiting Trump’s access to evidence, in a move similar to Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg
Trump was arrested and arraigned in Miami on Tuesday on 37 criminal counts including violations of the espionage act, conspiracy to obstruct justice, corruptly concealing a record or document, and concealing a document in a federal investigation. The charges were brought by the DOJ as a result of their months-long investigation into Trump’s hoarding of classified documents following his departure from office.
As the case moves into discovery, Smith is seeking to protect materials that may be provided to Trump’s defense team that could potentially contain “information pertaining to ongoing investigations, the disclosure of which could compromise those investigations and identify uncharged individuals.”
According to the filing, “the government has conferred with counsel for Defendant Donald J. Trump and Defendant Waltine Nauta, who have no objections to this motion or the protective order.”
The order would require that materials provided to Trump’s team remain “in the custody and control of Defense Counsel,” and that the former president’s attorneys must securely store the materials and “make it clear that the materials are subject to the Order.” The order is likely explicit given that a significant portion of the government’s case against Trump revolves around the insecure storage of highly classified and sensitive information.
Furthermore, the order bars Trump, his co-defendant Walt Nauta, and his legal counsel from “[disclosing] the Discovery Materials or their contents directly or indirectly to any person or entity other than persons employed to assist in the defense, persons who are interviewed as potential witnesses, counsel for potential witnesses, and other persons to whom the Court may authorize disclosure.” This includes a direct prohibition against sharing materials with the public or media – including through social media platforms.
Trump will only be allowed to view materials “under the direct supervision of Defense Counsel or a member of Defense Counsel’s staff.” He may not retain any copies of what’s shown to him, and his notes must be stored “securely” by his lawyers.
The request is extremely similar to a protective order sought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in his own criminal case against Trump. The former president was arrested in April on 34 counts of falsifying business records in relation to his 2016 hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.
Bragg raised similar concerns over Trump’s potential abuse of evidence and discovery materials with Judge Juan Manuel Merchan in April. The order was granted in May.
Smith is also conducting a separate probe into Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump’s defense team may be seeking to block testimony given by his former Vice President Mike Pence from the grand jury’s decision on whether or not to charge the former president in relation to the probe.
Smiths probe has been expansive. In April, The Washington Post reported that the DOJ had begun exploring allegations that the Trump campaign defrauded donors by touting false claims of election fraud, as well as digging into efforts to subvert election results in individual states.
But a third criminal case against Trump is still a ways away. Sources tell the Journal that some of Smith’s questions to witnesses indicate the special counsel may be aiming to produce a comprehensive report rather than an indictment.
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Migrants transported by bus from Texas. (photo: Stefani Reynolds/AFP)
Los Angeles mayor says Texas governor ‘using human beings as pawns’ amid reports migrants were not given food or drink on bus
On Wednesday, 42 migrants, including 15 youth and three babies, arrived at Union Station in downtown LA, said Jorge-Mario Cabrera, the communications director for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights-Los Angeles (Chirla), who met the group when they arrived. The travelers he spoke to came from Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala and Haiti, and one came from China, he said, adding some told him they had been on the bus for nearly a day without any food or drink.
Abbott tweeted that it was the “1st bus of migrants” arriving in LA, claiming Texas border towns “remain overrun & overwhelmed because Biden refuses to secure the border”. Recent reports, however, have found that the number of migrants crossing the US-Mexico border is at its lowest levels since the start of Joe Biden’s presidency. Abbott has faced increasing scrutiny for his bussing program over the last year, which has reportedly sent tens of thousands of migrants to Democratic-run cities, including New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington.
Immigrants’ rights groups have said the practice can be exploitative and cruel, noting last year that one bus Abbott sent to Philadelphia had a 10-year-old girl on it who had to be hospitalized from dehydration and a high fever. Last month, the governor sent buses to vice-president Kamala Harris’s residence in Washington.
The LA councilmember Eunisses Hernandez said on Thursday several city agencies and non-profits triaged the situation, offering health screenings, mental health care, connections to legal aid, assistance with family reunification and homeless services if needed.
“Our community organizations do this every single day, the only difference here is these migrants were used as a political stunt, transported to our city for political means,” she said. “This action by the governor of Texas is a reflection of how incapable he is of running a state, of meeting a crisis head-on. It’s just really pathetic. But Los Angeles is a place where we value and welcome everyone.”
LA’s mayor, Karen Bass, said in a statement that after she took office last year, she directed city agencies to plan for possible scenarios in which LA “was on the receiving end of a despicable stunt that Republican governors have grown so fond of”.
“This did not catch us off guard, nor will it intimidate us. Now, it’s time to execute our plan. Our emergency management, police, fire and other departments were able to find out about the incoming arrival while the bus was on its way and were already mobilized along with non-profit partners before the bus arrived,” she said.
Advocates in LA transported the group to a nearby church where they were connected with services and, when possible, put in touch with family members. Some have since been transferred to San Diego or northern California, and everyone remaining in LA was getting shelter, Cabrera said. He said the group seemed exhausted but that the children were playing with each other and were well taken care of: “The governor [of Texas] will need to check his heart and his conscience. What we will do is treat migrants like the human beings they are, with dignity and respect. These individuals are seeking safe harbor, and that’s the least we can do.”
At least one migrant told Cabrera he had a court date scheduled in New York, raising concerns about whether California was an appropriate destination for everyone on the bus. “He said, ‘Is New York close by?’” The migrants have been authorized to enter the US, due to findings that they have credible fears, but have not yet been granted asylum, which will be a long process: “This will be an uphill battle for many of these folks who are hugely traumatized. So we cannot add to their trauma by acting unconscionably and cowardly.”
Hernandez said she learned of one hungry toddler who arrived at the church saying he had had no food or drink, but was fed and seemed to be doing well. She also learned of two arrivals who said they had no connections to the state of California.
Tiffany Burrow, the director of operations for the Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition, based in Texas, said her group helps coordinate transportation for migrants arriving across the US-Mexico border and had reached out in advance to advocates in LA about the arriving bus, but was not involved in the operations of this bus. Texas’s emergency management division would typically coordinate this kind of trip, she said.
Burrow said that while it can be beneficial to offer free transportation that gets migrants out of remote towns and closer to their final destinations, “when politics get in the middle of it, that’s less helpful and makes it more of a challenge”. She added: “It’s important to assess if it’s really truly helping the migrants or not, and the big question here is, was California indeed the final destination for these folks?”
Andrew Mahaleris, a spokesperson for Abbott, said in an email that the governor launched the “border bus mission” in April 2022 and has since sent 21,000 migrants to cities with sanctuary policies, adding: “Each bus is stocked with food and water and makes stops along the trip to refuel and switch drivers. Migrants are allowed to purchase any needed provisions or disembark at any of these stops, as they have been processed and released by the federal government.” Texas will continue the trips “to provide relief to our overwhelmed border towns”, he said.
Shiu-Ming Cheer, the interim co-executive director of the California Immigrant Policy Center, which recently pushed for LA to adopt a sanctuary city policy, praised the city’s handling of the migrants: “Los Angeles has telegraphed its strong support for migrants and been on the forefront of making sure migrants who arrive here, and people who’ve been here for decades as immigrants, are really treated compassionately and are able to receive services.”
The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, a Republican running for president, has also faced a backlash for sending migrants to Democratic regions. A sheriff recently recommended criminal charges over a flight he sent to Massachusetts, saying migrants were “lured under false pretenses”. Earlier this month, DeSantis flew asylum seekers to Sacramento, California’s capital, prompting the state attorney general to threaten that Florida officials could be guilty of “state-sanctioned kidnapping”.
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Abortion rights protesters chant during a Pro Choice rally. (photo: Sandy Huffaker)
The records show that after long struggling to attract members, the American College of Pediatricians gained outsize political influence in recent years, primarily by using conservative media as a megaphone in its quest to position the group as a reputable source of information.
The organization has successfully lobbied since 2021 for laws in more than a half-dozen states that ban gender-affirming care for transgender youths, with its representatives testifying before state legislatures against the guidelines recommended by mainstream medical groups, according to its records. It gained further national prominence this year as one of the plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit to limit access to mifepristone, a key abortion drug.
Despite efforts to invoke the credibility of the medical profession, the American College of Pediatricians is viewed with skepticism by the medical establishment. For years, the group has presented statistics and talking points to state legislators, public school officials and the American public as settled science while internal documents emphasize how religion and morality influence its positions. Meeting minutes from 2021 describe how the organization worked with religious groups to “affect the idea makers through the high courts, professional literature, and legislatures.”
It promotes conversion therapy, a discredited practice intended to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of LGBTQ people that most medical societies warn can result in harm. Pediatric experts deemed a June 2022 report crafted by the group that undergirds a new Florida policy banning transgender care for Medicaid recipients as “unscientific.” Francis Collins, former longtime director of the National Institutes of Health, accused the group in 2010 of distorting his research to “make a point against homosexuality.”
Jill Simons, executive director of the American College of Pediatricians, disputed criticism that her organization promotes policies that do not follow science. “Our recommendations are based on the medical research and what is best for children,” she said.
Her organization exists to represent “all the good pediatricians out there who agree with us who maybe are afraid to step forward,” Simons, a Minneapolis pediatrician, said in an interview with The Post. “Very smart people in the field of medicine have disagreed with a lot of the so-called consensus that is out there.”
Sam Wineburg, a Stanford University psychologist who studies online disinformation, highlights the American College of Pediatricians in his research as an example of a group that uses its name and scientific jargon to convey authority.
“It looks like an official medical organization, and you’re easily duped into thinking that this is the umbrella organization for pediatricians in the United States,” Wineburg said, noting the group has “all of the superficial bells and whistles of credibility.”
The records of the American College of Pediatricians — a cache of more than 10,000 confidential files including strategic plans, meeting minutes, membership rosters, financial statements and email exchanges spanning at least 15 years — were exposed after the organization left the contents of its Google Drive publicly accessible, according to two people who individually accessed the material following the inadvertent breach and shared copies with The Post. The Post examined the documents’ metadata, including the dates of each file’s creation and modification, to determine that they have not been recently manipulated. The document breach was first reported by Wired.
Simons characterized the exposure as a “malicious cyberattack and hate crime” that was “intended to intimidate and incapacitate.” She would not comment on the contents of the documents.
“Those who are against us know that they can’t beat us in debate about the facts of science or the research,” Simons said. “This deliberate attack on us shows that the American College of Pediatricians is having a huge impact, and that they’re afraid of us.”
The organization’s quest to ban the use of puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender minors has culminated in a string of recent legislative wins following lobbying in at least eight states, internal documents show.
Arkansas first enacted such a law in 2021, after Michelle Cretella, then executive director of the American College of Pediatricians, described such care as “experimental and dangerous” to legislators. A federal appeals court temporarily blocked it.
Versions of the law have since passed at least 20 other state legislatures, including Florida, Idaho, Indiana, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Missouri, Montana, Texas, North Dakota and Louisiana this spring alone; some face court challenges and one was vetoed by a governor. Similar bills are making their way through legislatures in North Carolina and Ohio.
At the federal level, Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), an OB/GYN, recently reintroduced legislation endorsed by the American College of Pediatricians that would prevent doctors from performing “gender transition procedures” on minors and bar federal funds from being used for such procedures. Marshall’s spokesperson said he is not a member of the group.
The American College of Pediatricians formed in 2002 after dozens of conservative doctors split from the nation’s leading interest group of pediatricians, the 67,000-member American Academy of Pediatrics, over the academy’s support for same-sex parenting. The academy had determined from its review of scientific literature that children with same-sex parents fare as well as those with heterosexual parents in emotional, cognitive, social and sexual functioning.
Joseph Zanga, founder of the American College of Pediatricians, who had led the American Academy of Pediatrics in the late 1990s, described the splinter organization as “a Judeo-Christian, traditional-values organization” in a 2003 interview with the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality, which promoted conversion therapy. His organization’s core beliefs are “that life begins at conception, and that the traditional family unit, headed by an opposite-sex couple, poses far fewer risk factors in the adoption and raising of children,” he said at the time. Zanga declined a Post request for an interview.
Internal records from 2010 show how the group tied homosexuality to health risks — even death — in a letter campaign to educators, citing a 1991 study to demonstrate that for each year adolescents delay “self-labeling as ‘gay’,” the risk of suicide decreases by 20 percent.
According to more recent research, suicide risk rises with therapy directed at changing sexual orientation. Lesbian, gay and bisexual people who experienced conversion therapy were almost twice as likely to think about suicide and to attempt suicide compared with peers who had not experienced conversion therapy, according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
The 2010 letter from the American College of Pediatricians to 14,800 public school superintendents urged school officials not to affirm any student expressing homosexuality. It directed them to a website operated by the group that pushed “sexual reorientation therapy” for those with “unwanted homosexual attractions.”
Collins, the former NIH director who led the international Human Genome Project, said in a written statement at the time that the American College of Pediatricians pulled language out of context from his 2006 book to “support an ideology that can cause unnecessary anguish and encourage prejudice.” The group’s characterization of homosexuality in its letter to superintendents is “misleading and incorrect, and it is particularly troubling that they are distributing it in a way that will confuse school children and their parents,” Collins said.
In recent years, the group has trained its focus on transgender care.
Records show the American College of Pediatricians launched a campaign against a St. Louis-based Catholic health system’s transgender care policy in 2017 after SSM Health outlined guidance that included hormone therapy and potential referrals for “gender assignment surgery.”
Cretella, then president of the American College of Pediatricians, urged the archbishop of St. Louis at the time, Robert Carlson, to issue a statement “that will denounce SSM Health’s embrace of transgender ideology over science and sound medical ethics, and demand that they rescind this policy,” according to a Feb. 8, 2017, letter.
Carlson, in his March 31, 2017, response, informed Cretella that he had contacted other bishops who had SSM hospitals in their diocese or archdiocese. Carlson also included a copy of a letter to SSM Health requesting the system cease the implementation of the transgender treatment policy within the next 30 days and revise it in accordance with Catholic moral theology.
SSM Health, which operates hospitals in Missouri, Illinois, Oklahoma and Wisconsin, told The Post it changed its transgender care policy in 2018 to comply with Catholic directives, but it would not say how the policy changed.
Kellan Baker, executive director of the Whitman-Walker Institute, a D.C.-based research, policy and advocacy center focused on LGBTQ health, accused the American College of Pediatricians of “intentionally and aggressively laundering pseudoscience through this veneer of respectability.”
“At first blush without knowing what’s actually behind it, you would think it is a pediatric medical professional organization,” Baker said. “It’s not. It’s a tiny group of fringe conservatives who didn’t like the fact that the field was leaving them behind.”
The group serves as a “vital counterweight” to the “ideological capture” facing medical societies, said Roger Severino, vice president of domestic policy at the Heritage Foundation, a prominent conservative think tank that he said relies on the American College of Pediatricians for scientific expertise.
“They have had the courage to take stands in court and to speak as medical professionals in relating their experience when it comes to questions of human dignity in unborn life, freedom of conscience, and the protection of children,” Severino said.
But Mark Del Monte, chief executive of the American Academy of Pediatrics, noted the vast differences in membership size and policies between his more established, widely respected organization and the similarly named American College of Pediatricians.
“To the extent that people would be confused about who was presenting evidence-based science, that is a concern for us,” Del Monte said. “Every policy statement of the American Academy of Pediatrics represents a rigorous review of the available scientific evidence and an extensive writing process that includes extensive peer review — and a unanimous vote by the board.”
The academy, which said more than 95 percent of its members are physicians, has pointed to “strong consensus among the most prominent medical organizations worldwide that evidence-based, gender-affirming care for transgender children and adolescents is medically necessary and appropriate.”
Records from early 2022 show membership of the American College of Pediatricians at about 700 people — just over 60 percent of whom self-identified as possessing medical degrees, including some holding prominent positions as hospital chiefs and a state health commissioner. The group, citing privacy, would not comment on the size or makeup of its membership.
Documents show the American College of Pediatricians worrying about its finances and trying to expand its reach in recent years. The group, supported by membership fees and donors, reported $123,131 in available funds as of January 2022, according to its financial spreadsheets.
The organization sent 15,000 mailers to “conservative” physicians between 2018 and 2019, according to postal receipts and spreadsheets of names and addresses. One 2018 planning document instructed the group to “TARGET CHRISTIAN MDs” in red letters as well as recruit pediatricians in “red states.” It also suggested contacting academics who have doctorates in sociology, epidemiology and bioethics.
Among the most prominent names listed on its internal membership records: John Hellerstedt, the Texas health commissioner from 2016 until 2022. Hellerstedt, in two phone conversations, declined to be interviewed.
Other members run departments at major hospitals in Ohio, Tennessee and Texas, as well as a school health service in California, according to a Post analysis of the group’s membership list.
While agendas show the group opened and closed its meetings with prayer, Simons said, “We’re not a religious organization. Many of our members are people of faith.”
The group found an eager audience through conservative media, including the Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham shows on Fox News, the documents detail. Since 2016, the American College of Pediatricians has been mentioned in more than 200 articles published by conservative news sites such as Breitbart, Daily Wire, the Epoch Times, the Washington Examiner, the Blaze and the Gateway Pundit, according to a Post analysis. Its profile has continued to rise. The volume of articles mentioning the group during the first four months of 2023 was five times that of the same period in 2020, according to GDELT’s online news database.
“They’re part of a coordinated, politically motivated anti-science ecosystem,” said Peter Hotez, dean of Baylor College of Medicine’s National School of Tropical Medicine and an expert in misinformation.
Cretella, whose Rhode Island medical license expired in 2020, according to state medical board records, equated transgender care to child abuse during an appearance on Carlson’s show in July 2017. Neither Cretella nor the American College of Pediatricians responded to questions about the circumstances leading to the expiration of her medical license.
A senior booker on Carlson’s show contacted Cretella and other doctors affiliated with the group in August 2017 to respond to a Denver Post story about a transgender professional cyclist, according to emails in the documents. “How would a male who is now a female not be at an advantage?” the booker wrote.
“Scientifically speaking, all we can say is that a man dressed in chemical drag is still a man who should not be allowed to compete in women sports,” replied Cretella, who was unable to appear on the show that night.
She suggested the booker contact another member, Paul Hruz, a pediatrics professor at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis who voiced concern about children seeking hormone therapy during his appearance on the show. In a 2022 opinion on a North Carolina lawsuit over state coverage of gender-affirming care, a U.S. district judge excluded some of Hruz’s testimony on transgender care after deeming it “unreliable” and lacking scientific basis. After initially agreeing to an interview, Hruz did not respond to subsequent outreach from The Post.
Despite its prominence in conservative circles, the group was concerned it had an image problem, documents show. The Southern Poverty Law Center had designated the American College of Pediatricians as a “hate group” in 2012 for its anti-LGBTQ positions — a label that Amazon said prevented the American College of Pediatricians from receiving donations through the company’s now-defunct charity program, AmazonSmile. The group complained to Amazon, calling its policy unfair, according to emails to the company between 2014 and 2017. The company denied the group’s appeals, writing “that decision is final” in its September 2017 response. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Post.)
Slides for a 2018 American College of Pediatricians board meeting focused on recruiting featured an image of Ku Klux Klan members titled “Perception” as well as an image of Justice League superheroes titled “What Our Friends Think of Us,” illustrating how drastically opinion about the group varied, with some viewing them as villains and others as heroes.
Since 2006, the group has partnered with other conservative organizations to file amicus briefs across at least 30 high-profile cases pertaining to same-sex marriage, gay parental rights, abortion and, in later years, transgender issues, according to a 2021 “funding request prospectus.” The group had also submitted an amicus brief in the Supreme Court case that overturned Roe v. Wade last year, emphasizing the group’s belief in the “sanctity of human life.”
The recent release of internal documents has only amplified its cause, said Simons, the group’s executive director. The group is now fundraising for “cyberattack recovery efforts.”
“There’s a silent majority out there that stands with us,” she said. “This act has awoken a sleeping giant.”
The Heritage Foundation sent out a fundraising appeal on behalf of the American College of Pediatricians following the exposure of its internal documents: “It’s more important than ever for us to stand together — and support our pro-life, pro-American ally, American College of Pediatricians.”
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A UPS driver. (photo: CNN)
Push in new contract include air conditioning in vehicles, pay increases for part-time workers and end to two-tier wages
Voting began last week at local union halls around the US. Workers voted 97% in favor approving the strike authorization. Negotiations on the national agreement between UPS and the Teamsters began in early May 2023 and remain ongoing.
“We’re not trying to go on strike. We’re going to lose money. We have families, this is going to affect everybody, even our customers. But this is on the company. The company can make it right and finish the contract, and give us what we’re asking for,” said Viviana Gonzalez , a UPS package car driver in Palmdale Village, California, for nine years and a union shop steward.
She added: “It’s not a secret that we all worked through the pandemic. We put our lives at risk. We work crazy hours, and we never saw any sort of pay from being an essential employee. We were just making the world move and they made billions of dollars off of us and we haven’t seen anything to compensate us for putting ourselves at risk. None of us have seen it, especially our part-timers.”
Workers at UPS have been pushing for numerous demands in their new contract, including air conditioning in UPS vehicles, pay increases for part-time workers to at least $25 an hour, elimination of two-tier wages for package drivers, ending the use of subcontracting, eliminating driver-facing cameras, an end to a forced sixth day of work in a week and more full-time opportunities.
“The job is physically demanding. The wages they’re starting at now aren’t enough to keep them in the door in the local market. They come in, they get beat up in the morning in a very physical, fast-paced job. They get part-time hours, but what I feel is like a full-time job worth of work in four or five hours,” said Ted Breen, a pre-load worker at UPS in Glens Falls, New York, for 14 years.
UPS workers have highlighted the company’s immense profits in recent years and through the pandemic, with an emphasis on pushing for those profits to reflect gains in their next contract.
The Teamsters union noted UPS has reported $56.3bn in profits under the current contract so far, from 2019 to 2023.
“We worked very hard through very tough times, when most people couldn’t or wouldn’t go to work, the UPS workers came to work at the risk of their own health. The company was always about cheerleading, ‘Oh heroes work here, heroes work here,’” said Scott Gove, who has worked at UPS for 35 years. “They need to start sharing the profits that were made through the pandemic across the backs of those Teamsters.”
The Teamsters have announced 43 non-economic changes to the UPS Teamsters national agreement achieved so far in negotiations, and announced earlier this week that the union secured air conditioning for the UPS fleet, which was a major demand for the union as UPS workers have reported grueling heat exposure on the job. Negotiations on economic proposals are set to begin next week.
Teamsters have taken a more aggressive stance on the new contract, as the Teamsters president, Sean O’Brien, was elected in 2021 as part of a slate of reform candidates after the previous UPS contract in 2018 was ratified by union leadership despite membership voting against it.
A spokesperson for UPS said in a statement: “We continue to make meaningful progress on a variety of topics in our negotiations with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.”
They also provided a May report by Deutsche Bank conducted for UPS on the assessment of a strike risk at UPS, which noted “we feel comfortable that a strike will not occur”, claimed the Teamsters’ financial readiness for a strike is limited, and predicted UPS shares performance would rebound after the strike threat passes.
They added on the strike vote, “The International Brotherhood of Teamsters announced it received approval from its UPS members who voted on its strike authorization. The results do not mean a strike is imminent and do not impact our current business operations in any way. Authorization votes and approvals are normal steps in labor union negotiations. We continue to make progress on key issues and remain confident that we will reach an agreement that provides wins for our employees, the Teamsters, our company and our customers.”
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Former president Jair Bolsonaro. (photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg)
Lieutenant Colonel Mauro Cid was one of Bolsonaro's personal assistants who stayed on as an aide after he stepped down. He is under arrest over allegations that he faked Bolsonaro's COVID-19 vaccination card.
According to an analysis of Cid's seized cell phone, a federal police report said he had "gathered documents with the aim of obtaining 'legal and judicial' support for the execution of a coup d'état."
Cid's lawyer Bernardo Fenelon said in a statement that his client would only defend himself to investigators.
Federal police also accused Cid of looking into "the possibility of using the armed forces, on an exceptional basis, to ensure the independent and harmonious functioning of the Powers of the Union, through determination of the President of the Republic."
Cid's research may have formed the basis of a step-by-step guide, also found on his phone, into how a possible coup could play out, police said.
JUDGE UNSEALED POLICE REPORT
That planning document was first reported by news magazine Veja, prompting Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes to unseal the police report and supporting documents.
Moraes is leading various investigations into Bolsonaro and his supporters' conduct before, during and after the election narrowly won by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
It is unclear whether the material found on Cid's phone reached Bolsonaro.
The former president's lawyer Fabio Wajngarten posted a statement to social media saying the Veja story "proved, once again, that President Bolsonaro never participated in any conversation about a possible coup d'etat."
The material found on Cid's phone adds to evidence that members of Bolsonaro's inner circle were looking at ways to block Lula from taking office and strip the powers of Brazil's top federal courts.
In January, police found a draft presidential decree designed to meddle with the results of the election in the house of former Justice Minister Anderson Torres.
Among the material found on Cid's phone was a possible road map for blocking Lula's Jan. 1 inauguration, first reported by Veja. To justify such an institutional rupture, the document accused the judiciary and media of unconstitutional actions to favor Lula in the election.
The document called for the nomination of an "intervener" with power over the armed forces and all of Brazil's federal public security agencies. Offending justices in the Supreme Court and the federal electoral court would be investigated, removed and replaced, it said.
The revamped electoral court would then oversee new elections to take place once the military had decided the constitutional order had been reestablished.
Brazil's army said any "opinions and personal comments do not represent the thinking of the ... chain of command, nor the official positioning of the Force."
"Any individual conduct judged to be irregular will be dealt with in court," it added.
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A green sea turtle. (photo: Ali Bayless/NOAA/PIFSC/PSD)
Researchers from Florida State University used sand from beaches at the FSU Coastal and Marine Laboratory and mixed it with black and white microplastics. The microplastics made up between 5% to 30% of the total volume of the samples of sand mixtures.
To measure sand temperature, the team placed thermometers into each sample at the same depth that loggerhead sea turtles lay their eggs, about 40 centimeters below the surface of the sand and about 30 centimeters from the drum wall.
The researchers recorded temperatures from July 2018 to September 2018. In general, sand samples with more microplastics had higher temperatures. Samples with 30% of black microplastics showed the highest increases in temperature, with temperatures around 0.58 degrees Celsius higher than the control group’s temperatures.
The amount of microplastics in the samples had the greatest influence on temperature, while the color of the microplastics “had an ambiguous effect on sand temperature,” according to the study authors. They published their findings in Frontiers in Marine Science.
“Sea turtle sex, fitness and hatchling success is influenced by temperature,” lead author Mariana Fuentes, an associate professor at Florida State University’s Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science, said in a statement. “Not much is known on how the presence of microplastic affects the thermal profile of sand. Understanding how changes to the environment could affect the temperature of nesting grounds is important for monitoring the future of these keystone species.”
The higher temperatures of sand mixed with higher concentrations of microplastics could be explained by the specific heat in polyethylene, which is higher than sand, according to the study. This could mean that sand samples with more microplastics are not losing heat overnight as quickly.
Although the high 30% concentration of microplastics used in the study has not been replicated in the environment just yet, the team is concerned that even smaller concentrations of microplastics could influence the temperature of sand enough to impact sea turtle hatchlings.
According to the Sea Turtle Conservancy, increasing temperatures could cause more sea turtle hatchlings to be female, which threatens the genetic diversity of the species. While climate change was already putting sea turtles’ food sources at risk and influencing hatchlings, this new study also spotlights concerns over growing amounts of microplastic pollution in the environment.
“Sea turtle eggs are sensitive to temperature, and microplastics are another factor adding to the heat they face,” Fuentes said. “This study gives us a baseline for future research on how they are affecting the nesting environment.”
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