​Watchdog Memos Show a Trump 'Utterly Indifferent to the Public Interest' in First Term

The group's leader said the media should "cover the Biden vs. Trump election as a comparison between how each president administered the immensely important executive branch."

The Revolving Door Project on Monday released a set of reports on corruption and mismanagement in executive agencies during the Trump presidency, calling on the media to focus on presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump's poor governing record as he campaigns to retake the Oval Office.

The new reports, called "retrospective memos," show that Trump's executive branch was rife with cronyism and corporate influence from 2017 until 2021. RDP, a watchdog group focused on the executive branch, released the reports as a way to fight "Trumpnesia" and focus the political discussion on the governance records of Trump and President Joe Biden, a Democrat seeking reelection.

"Donald Trump's most important legacy as president wasn't what he said, or even what bills he signed, but how he turned the federal government into a favor machine to benefit his family and cronies," Jeff Hauser, RDP's executive director, said in a statement. "The media should not focus on the aesthetics of this week's presidential debate but rather cover the Biden vs. Trump election as a comparison between how each president administered the immensely important executive branch."

"It's important to revisit how poorly he ran the executive branch his first time round."

RDP issued eight memos, covering disaster management, the environment, financial regulation, housing, immigration, labor, education, and transportation.

Each provides evidence of a Trump administration that was "utterly indifferent to the public interest," as Timi Iwayemi, RDP's research director, said in the statement.

In many cases, Trump appointees were hostile to the original aims of the agencies. they served.

Mick Mulvaney, Trump's choice to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, tried to roll back rules limiting predatory payday lending—a practice that "preys on the working poor," the financial regulation memo says.

Mulvaney—who's now suggesting a "revenge-a-thon" against Trump's foes—also appointed political cronies and failed to undertake the enforcement actions against companies that were the CFPB's raison d'être. A 2019 feature in The New York Times Magazine was titled, "Mick Mulvaney's Master Class in Destroying a Bureaucracy From Within."

Trump's National Labor Relations Board was led by Peter Robb, a management-side lawyer who was the Reagan administration's lead attorney on litigation dealing with the air traffic controllers' strike of 1981, in which the federal government fired about 11,000 workers and banned them from being rehired. Like Trump's Department of Labor, which was ultimately run by the son of former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the NLRB under Robb was pro-management—and reportedly dysfunctional.

Other federal agencies were hardly more committed to serving the public interest in the late 2010s.

"Trump's Interior Department advanced the interests of extractivist industry on public lands while refusing to account for how its actions would worsen climate change," according to RDP's environment memo. "The Trump administration auctioned off over 10 million acres of land and water to oil and gas drilling, including by drastically reducing the size of national monuments like Bears Ears in Utah, a sacred homeland to five tribal  nations, in order to open them up to development."

The Department of Housing and Urban Development, run by former presidential candidate Ben Carson, was plagued by "handouts to friends and family," a series of "deadly budget cut proposals," and a "war on fair housing," according to the RDP's housing memo.

Trump's disaster management choices were particularly consequential. The Federal Emergency Management Agency " horrifically" mismanaged the response to two consecutive hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico in 2017, which got minimal—and very delayed—relief compared to Texas communities that were hit by a hurricane during that period.

RDP's catalog of Trump administration failures is designed to clarify the stakes of the 2024 election.

"The series serves as a reminder to the public that the president's primary responsibility is to direct the vast apparatus known as the executive branch of the federal government," RDP said. "Sadly, former president Donald Trump either neglected this responsibility or wielded it in favor of corporations throughout his four years in office."

Iwayemi said "Even as current conversations wisely focus on Project 2025 and Trump's promise to leverage executive power to harm political enemies, it's important to revisit how poorly he ran the executive branch his first time round as a cure to the public's apparent Trumpnesia."

Then-President Donald Trump spoke to reporters in the Oval Office in July 2020. 

(Photo: Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images)

COMMON DREAMS

RSN: Juan Cole | Trump's Secret Police Whisk Portland Protesters Into Unmarked Cars, but Allowed Right Wing Armed Militiamen to Invade Michigan State House

20 July 20

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Juan Cole | Trump's Secret Police Whisk Portland Protesters Into Unmarked Cars, but Allowed Right Wing Armed Militiamen to Invade Michigan State House

Juan Cole, Informed Comment

Cole writes: "The video does not show a violent mob, and a democracy cannot be having anonymous agents of the state bundling people into unmarked vehicles without probable cause (or even with probable cause)."

PB maintains that the individual was suspected of criminal activity and had to be removed from the area abruptly for fear of a violent mob. Its officials also defended the lack of name tags on the grounds that agents have been targeted by doxing campaigns (the publication of their home addresses and personal details on the internet).

The video does not show a violent mob, and a democracy cannot be having anonymous agents of the state bundling people into unmarked vehicles without probable cause (or even with probable cause).

The ACLU has filed a lawsuit against the Federal agents in Portland, alleging, according to Skanner, that

• “These agents, which have been deployed over the widespread objections of local leaders and community members, have been indiscriminately using tear gas, rubber bullets, and acoustic weapons against protesters, journalists, and legal observers. Federal officers also shot a protester in the head Sunday with a rubber bullet fracturing the person’s face and skull. Today’s lawsuit seeks to block federal law enforcement from dispersing, arresting, threatening to arrest, or using physical force against journalists or legal observers.”

These are the actions of a secret police. Secret police are a common institution in authoritarian states. They target dissidents and protesters, focusing on thought crimes rather than dealing with what you might call actual crimes. They report directly to the executive. They run secret prisons and camps.

The right of peaceable assembly is enshrined in the First Amendment to the US constitution, though it is a right often not de facto recognized by government.

Moreover, the US constitution, Article 1, Section 9, requires the preservation of habeas corpus except in times of foreign or civil war. Only Congress can suspend it. Habeas corpus is the principle that a judge may require law enforcement to produce an arrestee in court and specify the charges against the person or release him or her.

This constitutional principle cannot be upheld if the state agents who arrested the person are unknown and he or she has been whisked away in an unmarked vehicle. To whom would the judge apply for habeas corpus? That is, what the CPB did in Portland profoundly undermines the constitution.

CPB agents, Federal Marshals and agents of the Department of Homeland security were detailed to Portland, ostensibly to protect the Mark O. Hatfield federal courthouse and other Federal property during the past six weeks of demonstrations in Portland. The courthouse has often been painted with graffiti. The Feds say they have defended the building from charges at it by demonstrators.

It is not clear to me why the defense of the courthouse in Portland is not the responsibility of the civil police in Portland. The Trump administration, as we saw in Washington DC at Lafayette Park, likes having shadowy goons at its service.

U.S. Attorney Billy Williams concurs that an investigation of the arrests is warranted.

That these arrests were a Gestapo sort of politics rather than law enforcement is easily demonstrated.

On May 1, armed protesters entered the State House in Michigan. Some broke into the legislative chamber and stood, with guns, over the state representatives, one of whom put on a bullet proof vest. The militias and right wing agitators came again two weeks later and the legislative session was canceled. These were a right wing mob protesting the shut down of some economic activities by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer as a mitigation measure against the coronavirus. As a result of Whitmer’s measures, Michigan is in a substantially better place than the slavishly pro-Trump Deep South this July.

Trump had encouraged such lawlessness, tweeting, “Liberate Michigan.”

You will notice that no CPB agents were flown out to Lansing to defend the State House from this potentially violent armed mob. None were hustled into unmarked vehicles by nameless Federal agents.

The difference in response to the the two protests demonstrates conclusively that the CPB agents in Portland were functioning as Trump’s secret police, since they were only concerned with suppressing dissent when it was dissent against the policies favored by the president. It is not about a neutral rule of law for all. The infiltration of US security agencies by far right wing conspiracy theorists such as QAnon makes these infractions against the Constitution even more frightening.

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People wait in line in June to vote at the Kentucky Exposition Center. (photo: Michael Blackshire/For The Washington Post)

The Data Proves Mail-In Voting Is Safe From Fraud and COVID-19
Edie Goldenberg, The Conversation
Goldenberg writes: "As millions of Americans prepare to vote in November-and in many cases, primaries and state and local elections through the summer as well-lots of people are talking about voting by mail. It is a way to protect the integrity of the country's voting system and to limit potential exposure to the coronavirus, which continues to spread widely in the U.S."
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Eviction Filings Are Already Rising
Jordan Weissmann, Slate
Weissmann writes: "Here is some bad news on top of even more bad news about how America's renters are faring as the coronavirus crisis wares on."
READ MORE

(image:Spencer Platt/Getty Images/Slate)

It's Perfectly Fine to Call It "Defunding" the Police
John McWhorter, Slate
McWhorter writes: "So for example, Black Lives Matter. It's common for some people to say, 'No, all lives matter.' They're missing the point. Black Lives Matter doesn't mean black lives matter more. It means black lives matter, too. Black lives matter as well."
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Transgender people and their supporters gather in Parliament Square to protest against potential changes to the Gender Recognition Act on July 4, 2020 in London. (photo: WIktor Szymanowicz/NurPhoto/Getty Images)

A Proposed Anti-Trans Rule Would Let Homeless Shelters Judge Who's a Woman

Katelyn Burns, Vox

Burns writes: "A proposed Housing and Urban Development rule would allow federally funded homeless shelters to judge a person's physical characteristics, such as height and facial hair, in determining whether they belong in a women's or men's shelter, according to a copy of the rule's text obtained by Vox."

EXCERPTS:

Dylan Waguespack, a spokesperson for True Colors United, an advocacy group that focuses on supporting LGBTQ homeless youth, told Vox in early June that HUD Secretary Ben Carson is “talking out of both sides of his mouth.”

Waguespack told Vox Friday that Carson is showing a “willful disregard for the survival of transgender people” and risks putting trans people in harm’s way. “He’s on the wrong side of history and the wrong side of the law,” he said. “It’s critical that trans people across the US hear the message loud and clear that they are legally entitled to gender-appropriate homelessness services under the law.”

Even though it has yet to be released, the HUD rule has already received congressional pushback. In a letter to HUD Secretary Ben Carson dated June 29, Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-VA) and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) urged the agency to reconsider the release of the HUD rule because of the Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County on June 15, which held that discrimination against trans people is considered sex discrimination.

Carson responded to the lawmakers with a letter of his own on July 13, which was obtained by Vox, rejecting the premise that Bostock would apply to the proposed rule. “[A]n individual’s sex is relevant in the specific category of cases covered by the Department’s proposed rule, which is concerned with single-sex temporary or emergency shelters,” read the letter. “These facilities, by virtue of their temporary nature, are not deemed ‘housing’, do not fall within the purview of the Fair Housing Act. Therefore they may lawfully elect to serve only one sex. We note that the Bostock decision assumed that ‘sex’ referred ‘only to biological distinctions between male and female.’”

Carson goes on to claim that the existing rule, which requires shelters to house trans people according to their gender identity, “permits any man, simply by asserting that his gender is female, to obtain access to women’s shelters.”

Associating vulnerable trans women with predatory men is a classic anti-trans dog whistle. In truth, there’s no evidence of wide-scale instances of men posing as trans women just to enter women’s spaces. Instead, advocates say the opposite is true — that putting trans women in men’s shelters is a recipe for harassment and potential assault.

Carson and Wexton have had a lengthy — and public — back and forth on trans issues, stemming back to a May 2019 hearing of the House Committee on Financial Services in which the lawmaker asked Carson whether the agency had any plans to change the Equal Access rule, which currently requires homeless shelters to house trans people according to their gender identity. At the hearing, Carson said there were no plans to do so, but the very next day the agency announced its intention to change the rule. 

Wexton immediately called the move out on Twitter.

In an October 2019 HFSC hearing, Wexton challenged Carson over comments in which he called trans women “big, hairy men” at an internal meeting with HUD staff in San Francisco a month earlier. Carson refused to apologize, instead decrying “political correctness.”

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At Least 8 Farmers Killed by Armed Group in Columbia, 120 Forced to Flee
teleSUR
Excerpt: "Colombia's Peasant Association of Catatumbo (ASCAMCAT) Saturday denounced the murder of at least eight of its members by the narco-paramilitary group 'Los Rastrojos.'"

The massacre occurred in the village of Totumito Carboneras, Catatumbo, in the department of Norte de Santande.

"We urge the Regional Ombudsman's Office of Cúcuta and the municipal authorities of Tibú to initiate an investigation into this violent act," the organization said in a statement.

This massacre has deepened the existing humanitarian crisis in the country and has forced at least 120 people from the municipality of Cucuta to leave their communities.

The displaced people fear a possible incursion by armed groups against the community.

"Ivan Duque's government must guarantee the life and safety of our communities and our stay in the territory," the organization added.

Colombia's House of Representatives legislator for the Revolutionary Alternative Force of the Common (FARC) party Sergio Marin also rejected the massacre.

The peace agreement signed in 2016 is very weak now. Is this the Colombia they wanted us to come back to?" Marin tweeted.

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Andrew Cuomo. (photo: Grist/Scott Heins/Erik McGregor/LightRocket/Getty Images)

One Year Later, What Has New York's Landmark Climate Law Accomplished?
Rachel Ramirez, Grist
Ramirez writes: "One year ago today, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) into law, committing the state to net-zero emissions by 2050. It was New York Renews, a statewide coalition of nearly 200 advocacy groups, who fought to bring what is now the Empire State's landmark climate law to fruition."

Despite a bumpy ride, both the CLCPA and a companion environmental justice bill finally went into effect in January. For the one-year anniversary of the CLCPA’s passage, New York Renews is keeping tabs on the law’s progress: On Thursday, the coalition called for a public audit of statewide agency spending to ensure that New York is complying with the law’s mandate that at least 35 percent of state energy and climate spending is invested in pollution-burdened communities.

“Goals are no good unless you meet them,” Timothy Kennedy, a state senator who co-sponsored the CLCPA, said during a virtual town hall on Friday. “We need to make sure that we take the CLCPA and enforce environmental standards that protect the very communities that are disproportionately impacted by COVID-19.”

The CLCPA has recently helped remove obstacles that prevent low-income New York residents from accessing clean energy resources. Last month, the state announced a slate of grants totaling more than $10.6 million to help underserved New Yorkers access affordable solar energy. The grants, administered by New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, will help offset predevelopment costs to address resource barriers that typically prevent low-income residents — particularly communities of color — from installing clean energy or energy storage in their homes.

PUSH Buffalo — a community-led organization in Buffalo, New York, that focuses on advancing economic and environmental justice — has long promoted a just transition away from fossil fuel dependence, and its particular focus is retrofitting old buildings to meet sustainability standards. Rahwa Ghirmatzion, the organization’s executive director, said that PUSH is already taking steps to implement these grants with a multi-site, 53-unit net-zero emissions housing project that would contain a rooftop solar power installation and geothermal heat pumps. PUSH, which is also one of the founding groups behind New York Renews, also seeks to provide unemployed people or youth who can’t attend college with training opportunities to participate in the green development project.

“We don’t want to just think about legislation — we also want to work on an implementation strategy to make sure the law has teeth,” Ghirmatzion told Grist. “Oftentimes as organizers, we pass a lot of bills and then they become weak and watered down and not actualized.”

Environmental advocates say that New York’s climate targets can’t be met without certain major reforms that need to be executed. Replacing so-called peaker plants — power plants that typically only run during peak periods of high demand in electricity, especially during scorching summer heat waves — is a major demand that environmental justice groups are calling for under the CLCPA’s climate targets. A recent report found that New Yorkers over the last decade have shouldered more than $4.5 billion in electricity bills to pay the private owners of these polluting power plants, just to keep those plants online in case they’re needed — even though they only operate between 90 and 500 hours a year.

“Billions of dollars invested in fossil fuel infrastructure is definitely not part of the equation to get us to our targets fast and equitably,” Summer Sandoval, energy democracy coordinator with UPROSE, a grassroots organization focusing on sustainability and environmental justice, told Grist. “It’s not just about reducing emissions, but also taking a hard look at the different aspects tied to emission reductions, like environmental health risks.”

There have been some victories on this front: Environmental justice groups have been using the CLCPA as a powerful tool to oppose fossil fuel construction and expansion. So far, the biggest victory this year has been putting an end to the controversial Northeast Supply Enhancement project, also known as the Williams Pipeline. National Grid, the gas utility that operates in Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island, would have been the sole customer of the pipeline’s gas. At one point, the fate of New York’s climate targets was hanging in the balance because the project was still moving forward. But in May, the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) officially killed the pipeline by rejecting a key permit for the project, because it wouldn’t meet the state’s water quality standards. While the CLCPA was not the basis for the decision to deny permits, a DEC letter to the company leading the project proves that the climate law clearly weighed heavily in the ultimate outcome, when the project’s qualitative impacts were assessed.

To keep state agencies on track to achieve its goals, the CLCPA created two significant decision-making bodies. The first is the Climate Action Council, which is in charge of writing the entire scoping plan for New York’s economy to transition off of fossil fuels. The second is the Climate Justice Working Group, which is meant to guide the state in carrying out its ambitious climate targets by ensuring that the environmental justice provisions of the CLCPA —such as clean energy spending, green jobs, and affordable resources — are enforced and distributed equitably to low-income communities of color. Its appointees were announced last month, and they include some of New York’s most prominent environmental justice advocates, including Ghirmatzion.

The CLCPA was a long time coming. The Republican-controlled state senate blocked the bill for three consecutive years until Democrats took control in 2018. Then, before penning his signature on the bill, Governor Cuomo not only changed the name by adding the word “leadership” at the last minute, but he also slashed some major provisions that advocates from marginalized communities had pushed for, such as a crucial labor section that advocated for displaced fossil fuel workers and promoted fair wages for workers building the renewable energy sector. Cuomo’s version of the bill also included vague language that made it unclear how much cash would actually flow to “disadvantaged communities.”

With climate change still accelerating against the backdrop of a global pandemic that has disproportionately impacted Black and brown communities, New York Renews says that the state is still moving too slowly and isn’t taking the CLCPA’s social justice provisions seriously. The Climate Action Council has only met twice since it formed in March, while the Climate Justice Working Group has yet to have its first meeting, which is scheduled for later this month.

“We have to work together in an intersectional way,” Ghirmatzion told Grist. “We have to address the root causes, which means focusing on the most impacted in our communities, if we’re ever really going to create the world we want to live in.”

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RSN: David Sirota | Polls Showed Many Americans Opposed to Civil Rights Protests in the 1960s. But That Changed.

15 June 20

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David Sirota | Polls Showed Many Americans Opposed to Civil Rights Protests in the 1960s. But That Changed.

David Sirota, Jacobin
Sirota writes: "If you find yourself playing pundit and citing current polling as proof that today's civil rights protests against police violence and calls to 'defund the police' will inevitably fail, do yourself a favor: pause and look back at polling from the last successful civil rights uprising in American history."
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A bartender wears gloves and a mask while taking orders amid the coronavirus pandemic on May 1, 2020, in Houston. (photo: Mark Felix/AFP/Getty Images)

"Totally Predictable": State Reopenings Have Backfired
Brian Resnick, Vox
Resnick writes: "Call it a reopening backfire. But really: No expert thought that reopening this quickly was going to work in the first place."
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Montgomery County, Maryland police officer and instructor Craig Dickerson demonstrates an X2 taser during a demonstration for Reuters at the department's training academy in Rockville, Maryland, U.S. September 7, 2016. (photo: USA-Taser/Science Reuters/Gary Cameron)

Black Americans Disproportionately Die in Police Taser Confrontations
Linda So, Reuters
So writes: "As police confront protesters across the United States, they're turning to rubber bullets, pepper spray, tear gas and other weapons meant to minimize fatalities. But some are using a weapon that has potential to kill: the Taser."
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Mando Avery's son, whose name is being withheld for privacy reasons. (photo: Shenelle Williams/Guardian UK)

Outrage Over Video Showing Police Macing Child at Seattle Protest
Hallie Golden, Guardian UK
Golden writes: "The footage captures the outrage of protesters who demand to know why police maced a child, and made no attempt to help."

Footage captures fury of protesters who demand to know why police maced a child, and made no attempt to help

tanding among a group of peaceful anti-racism protesters in downtown Seattle on a recent Saturday afternoon, Mando Avery held his seven-year-old son’s hand as he and three generations of his African American family finished a prayer with members of their church.

Only feet away, Evan Hreha, 34, a hairstylist, arrived at the protests alone.

That was when, Avery said, out of nowhere, a police officer fired mace at the group. It hit his son square in the face.

As the young boy screamed and clutched on to his father, Hreha caught it all on camera. He confronted the officer he believed had maced the boy and told him the footage was going online. He then posted it on social media.

The footage captures the outrage of protesters who demand to know why police maced a child, and made no attempt to help.

Since then, Hreha has been arrested and spent two days in jail for what some are calling police retribution for a video which went viral. The young boy is still traumatized, reeling from the chemical burn on his cheek and asking his parents what he did to deserve it.

“I would say that you were targeting my boy,” Avery told the Guardian, asked what he would say to police.

“I don’t know if you were trying to set an example and strike fear into him. You did a great job.”

What upsets him most, Avery said, is that officers and a group of emergency medical technicians standing about a block away did not step in to help.

“No officer, who’s paid to protect, chose to stand up, break the ranks, go help this child,” he said.

“I just don’t understand how any of them can sleep.”

Police violence and arrests in response to mostly peaceful protests have become one of the themes of nationwide demonstrations triggered by the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May. Protesters have been teargassed, beaten, hit with rubber bullets and kettled. Thousands have reported injuries, some life-threatening, with thousands more arrested. Many face jail time.

After the first weekend of protests in Seattle, the city’s Office of Police Accountability reported at least 12,000 complaints. The majority were related to Avery’s son, whose name is being withheld to protect his privacy.

The OPA has said it is expediting its investigation. Last week, officials announced they would ban the use of teargas during protests for 30 days.

On Saturday 30 May, Avery said, his family drove nearly an hour north from Tacoma, Washington, to be a part of the anti-racism movement and fight for police reform. The family has received some criticism online about bringing their young child to the protests. But when they circled the blocks around the demonstrations, looking for parking, they spotted other families with young children and pets. It felt completely safe, they said.

Within 45 minutes, the boy, who will be entering third grade in the fall, had been maced.

Shenelle Williams, his mother, said hearing his scream was the “most gut-wrenching feeling”.

“I kind of feel like a failure as well,” she said, “because I feel like I couldn’t protect him, but there was nothing that we could do at that time to prevent it.”

Protesters poured milk on the boy’s face, and offered water. On video, they can be heard trying to comfort the screaming child, saying, “It’s going to be OK” and “Give her some space” – many initially mistaking the boy for a girl.

The family is working with a lawyer who is examining what went wrong in this case and many others in Seattle, and what needs to be changed, before deciding on next steps.

“We just wanted to stand up for what was right,” Avery said. “Ultimately our boys will become men and our daughters will become women. And they will ultimately have to face some of the same racial injustices. And enough is enough. Black lives matter.”

Avery said the family’s experience has only served to emphasize the importance of protests and police reform. He said his son has already told him: “One day, daddy, we’re going to get back out there.”

‘It shattered that false narrative’

As his video footage racked up thousands of views, Hreha continued to attend the protests.

But a week later, he was walking home after spending an evening helping a friend hand out free hotdogs to protesters when a group of at least seven police officers surrounded him. They told him, he said, that he had been identified as someone who pointed a laser in an officer’s eye. The officers handcuffed him and took him off to jail.

Hreha said he kept telling the officers he didn’t have a laser and had spent the evening at the hotdog stand. Nonetheless, he was denied bail and ultimately held for two days.

His lawyer, Talitha Hazelton, said there were no pending charges against him and no sign of any “documentation with any narrative about the incident that allegedly justified his arrest”.

Hreha, who is white, said he believes the arrest was in response to the video he took and posted. He now feels there is a target on his back, which has given him a very small taste of what black people deal with every day.

“It’s woken me up a bit,” he said. “It just kind of shattered that false narrative that was in my head that cops always protect and serve.”

The Guardian contacted the Seattle police department for comment, and was referred to the OPA, which said it did not know if a complaint had been received about Hreha’s arrest. Seattle PD referred a further request for comment to the city attorney, which said the Seattle PD had not yet referred the case.

The OPA said the “child pepper spray case” was “currently being investigated. We should have a public update on the progress soon.”

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Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson has expressed concern about the impact on residents of women-only shelters when transgender women are allowed to share bathroom and shower areas. (photo: Astrid Riecken/The Washington Post/AP)

HUD to Discriminate Against Transgender in Rules Flip for Single-Sex Homeless Shelters
Paige Winfield Cunningham, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "Single-sex homeless shelters could choose to accommodate only people whose biological sex matches that of those they serve, under a rule to be proposed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the coming weeks."
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Former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, who was detained and accused of espionage, holds a sign as he stands inside a defendants' cage during his verdict hearing in Moscow on Monday. (photo: Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)

American Paul Whelan Convicted of Spying by Russia, Gets 16 Years in Prison
Isabelle Khurshudyan, The Washington Post
Khurshudyan writes: "Former Marine Paul Whelan was sentenced to 16 years of hard labor in a Russian prison for espionage Monday, the conclusion to a case that has added tension to already strained relations between the United States and Russia."

EXCERPT:

Whelan, 50, said throughout the trial that he was framed. His lawyer, Vladimir Zherebenkov, said his client was unwittingly handed a flash drive containing “state secrets” while visiting Russia for a wedding in late 2018. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Whelan was caught “red-handed.”

Whelan has said he thought the flash drive that he received from an acquaintance contained holiday photos. He said Monday that he plans to appeal the court’s decision.

Now that Whelan has been convicted, speculation is rife about a possible prisoner exchange with the United States. Zherebenkov, Whelan’s attorney, said Monday that “Paul expected this decision because even when he was detained, he was told [by Russian security service agents] that he would be exchanged.”

Without revealing his source, Zherebenkov said he was told Konstantin Yaroshenko, a pilot who was arrested in 2010 for conspiracy to smuggle cocaine into the United States, and Viktor Bout, a gun runner who inspired the 2005 Hollywood film “Lord of War,” are the people the Kremlin is focused on as possible trades for Whelan’s release.

“I heard talk that, why should we waste time on the appeal if we can just go ahead with the exchange?” Zherebenkov said. “I can't give you any names, but I know that the exchange is being discussed.”

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Richard Byma from By Acre farms in Sussex County, New Jersey, tends to his Holstein herd in 2007. (photo: Neville Elder/Corbis/Getty Images)

These Small Dairy Farms Are a Model for a Resilient Food System
Andrew Carlson, Daniel Rubenstein and Simon Levin, YES! Magazine
Excerpt: "Rather than selling their milk to large dairy processing companies, vertically structured local farms raise cows, process milk and other foods, and sell them directly to consumers at farm-operated markets and restaurants."
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