What is Donald Trump running away from so hard? Is it the fifth anniversary of his January 6 insurrection, which we will mark on Tuesday? It should be.
It could be Jack Smith’s newly released testimony, which is damning and damaging—and we haven’t even gotten the release date of Volume II of his special counsel report, due sometime in February unless Trump manages to hang it up in court. On balance, Congressman Jim Jordan’s “Weaponization” work is backfiring.
It could also be the Epstein Files. DOJ missed its reporting date to Congress over the weekend, and the full release of the files is still nowhere in sight.
Donald Trump has a lot to try to hide from. It could be all of the above, and it’s all closing in on him this week. In the past, he has always been able to delay or distract just long enough for the public to forget. But this week, the past seems to be catching up with the lame duck president.
That may be at least a partial explanation for Trump’s strike on Venezuela—distract, distract, distract. It’s a better explanation than Trump as a committed warrior against narcoterrorism. That one doesn’t work particularly well for Donald Trump, who pardoned Honduran ex-president Juan Orlando Hernández, a man who former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said in our Substack Live on Sunday morning, “personally trafficked tons of cocaine into the United States and actually said at one point he wanted to shove cocaine up the noses of the gringos.” When Trump pardoned Hernández, he said, “If somebody sells drugs in that country, that doesn’t mean you arrest the president and put him in jail for the rest of his life.” As Jake pointed out, and I agree, “the drugs excuse holds no water.”
This week, we’ll be watching Congress—and watching Trump watch Congress, which has been showing a few signs of life lately. I don’t want to oversell that, but this is definitely a week that warrants paying attention, particularly with the privileged War Powers Resolution I mentioned in last night’s post coming to the Senate floor this week. The ball is in Congress’ court.
Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war, as well as to “make rules concerning captures on land and water.” Presidents before and including Trump, as experts at the Brennan Centerexplain, have tried to claim some of that authority for themselves, using “outdated and overstretched war authorizations like the 2001 and 2002 authorizations for use of military force.” Multiple presidents have also “asserted an inherent authority to undertake airstrikes, raids, and other military interventions without prior congressional authorization. When Congress has authorized conflict, such as the War in Afghanistan and Iraq War, presidents have overread Congress’s approval and expanded U.S. military involvement into countries that Congress never contemplated. Compounding the problem, presidents often fail to give Congress the information it needs to oversee these conflicts.” This is not a Trump problem—presidents since at least George H.W. Bush have claimed a share of Congress’ power. But Trump, who is uniquely interested in amassing presidential power, has the potential to move on from Venezuela and keep going, if Congress doesn’t step in and assert itself.
It’s possible for two things to be true at once: it’s possible that Maduro was a corrupt, dangerous leader and also, that our Constitution and the separation of powers demand preserving. Our country does not, and indeed cannot, remove every dangerous leader around the globe from office with in-country strikes. We could strengthen local populations with stability-enhancing programs like USAID (which the Trump administration, of course, has cut) to increase the ability of local populations to act on their own impulses. We can engage in vigorous law enforcement, like the prosecution of Honduras’ former president. But we can do so without permitting our president to freelance as a warlord, especially one with dubious motives. So don’t buy into the false equivalency that says the smash and grab in Venezuela that resulted in Maduro’s arrest was a righteous exercise of the president’s power.
The constitutional prescription for fixing this problem of presidential overreach is Congress. New Jersey Senator Cory Booker had something to say about that over the weekend, in light of the Trump administration’s strike on Venezuela.
Cory Booker
@CoryBooker
Today, many leaders will rightly condemn President Donald Trump’s unlawful and unjust actions in Venezuela, and I join them. But just as glaring, and far more damning, is Congress’ ongoing abdication of its constitutional duty. For almost a year now, the legislative branch has
10:40 PM · Jan 3, 2026 · 70.8K Views
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“Today,” he wrote, “many leaders will rightly condemn President Donald Trump’s unlawful and unjust actions in Venezuela, and I join them.
But then, Senator Booker put the blame precisely where it is due. He continued, “just as glaring, and far more damning, is Congress’ ongoing abdication of its constitutional duty. For almost a year now, the legislative branch has failed to check a president who repeatedly violates his oath, disregards the law, and endangers American interests at home and abroad.”
He called out the Republican-led Congress for choosing “spineless complicity over its sworn responsibilities.” He condemned its inaction in the face of Signalgate, with Trump’s “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth escaping any censure for “the reckless leaking of classified information that put American troops at risk.” The senator also pointed to the “stunning absence of accountability” for the administration’s “illegal use of military force destroying vessels and killing people in the Caribbean and the Pacific without congressional authorization.”
Booker cited a litany of Congressional failures:
No hearings. No serious investigations. No enforcement of checks and balances. No accountability.
He called Congress cowardly and submissive.
We are long past due for someone to speak so plainly to the country about the Republican-led Congress’ failure to do its constitutional duty. The question is, who is listening, and will it lead to action this week? As my good friend Norm Eisen like to say, I am not optimistic, but I am hopeful.
Booker writes that “Republicans in Congress own this corrosive collapse of our constitutional order” and that their submission to Trump’s will “now stands as one of the greatest dangers to our nation and to the global order America claims to defend.” The fact that Maduro is “a brutal dictator who has committed grave abuses” does not, Booker concludes, suspend the Constitution. And so, he drives home the point of what must come next:
“The Constitution is unambiguous: Congress has the power and responsibility to authorize the use of military force and declare war. Congress has a duty of oversight. Congress must serve as a check, not a rubber stamp, to the President.”
“We face an authoritarian-minded president who acts with dangerous growing impunity. He has shown a willingness to defy court orders, violate the law, ignore congressional intent, and shred basic norms of decency and democracy. This pattern will continue unless the Article I branch of government, especially Republican congressional leadership, finds the courage to act.”
“What happened today [in Venezuela] is wrong. Congressional Republicans would say so immediately if a Democratic president had done the same. Their silence is surrender. And in that surrender lie the seeds of our democratic unraveling.”
“Enough is enough,” Booker concludes. With three years left in this administration, it’s time to stop the (constitutional) bleeding.
Senator Booker wrote at length at a time when many Americans have lost the will or the ability to take in an argument laid out like this. For some people, it’s easier to ignore common sense and stay in the fold of the cult. But Booker’s words are well worth our time and well worth sharing with others. His argument is not subtle or nuanced, and it’s accessible to anyone who has taken a fourth-grade civics class: Congress should do its job, not Donald Trump’s bidding. The future of the Republic depends upon it. They would demand it if a Democratic president had done what Donald Trump did—something that has been true over and over, but is all the more poignant with the anniversary of January 6 staring us in the face. Maybe Congress will remember what that day felt like and how they reacted. Maybe enough of them can muster some courage—if for no other reason than that the history books, and likely voters at the midterms, will condemn them if they don’t.
Make sure you share Senator Booker’s message with your elected officials this week. They need to hear it. They need to know you heard it.
A final note: a development we won’t be following this week, because it won’t be happening, is the federal criminal trial of former FBI Director Jim Comey, which was slated to start on Monday. This trial will not take place because the case was dismissed, in a serious blow to the credibility of Pam Bondi’s Justice Department. There are, in fact, some guardrails that remain in place. And this year, we’re going to rebuild more of them. Get ready to vote.
Where you get your news and analysis is a choice. I’m very appreciative that you’re here, with me, at Civil Discourse. Your subscriptions make it possible for me to devote the time and resources it takes to research and write the newsletter, and I’m very grateful for all of you. This is what community looks like.
IMMIGRATION & A PATH TO CITIZENSHIP HAS BEEN A LONG STANDING ISSUE
THAT CONGRESS HAAS FAILED TO ADDRESS!
Changing the Conversation on Immigration - SojoMail 11.15.07
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
The issue was gaining traction not based on thoughtful discourse, but based on sound bites and less than careful analysis.
- New York Governor Elliot Spitzer, who this week abandoned his plan to issue driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants - a plan that he had hoped would make for increased security, safer roads, and an opportunity to bring immigrants "out of the shadows." (Source: The New York Times)
Last spring, Sojourners helped launch Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform. Following Congress' failure to pass meaningful reform, we have continued to work to provide churches and clergy with effective educational materials, encouraged and mobilized congregations to oppose punitive laws, and supported a rapid response media team of religious leaders around the country to respond to reports of intolerance.
Yesterday, CCIR held a news conference to urge Americans to recall, in the week before Thanksgiving, both the blessings in their lives and the needs of "the least of these" in our nation, many of whom are undocumented immigrants working for a better life. I joined the Most Reverend John Wester, bishop of Salt Lake City, chairman, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Migration; Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference; and James Winkler, general secretary of the United Methodist Church, General Board of Church & Society.
The immigration system is broken. We all know that, we all agree on that. We missed a chance to fix it in this Congress and the debate since that time has gone sour. Today we are not here to advocate a bill but to share concerns about our conversation, how we are talking about people.
We've often cited Leviticus 19:34 – "The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you; you shall love the stranger as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God." Or as Jesus said so clearly, "I was a stranger and you welcomed me."
This immigration policy question is for us as people of faith the "welcoming the stranger" question. How do you treat those who are strangers in your midst? There is no doubt this debate has turned toward fear and anger. There are legitimate issues at stake. The rule of law is important, the system is broken. But the tenor of the debate has gone in an alarming direction. That's why we're here today. The way we talk about people is off course. Fear and anger dominate the conversation, not a civil discussion about the legitimate issues involved. How do we protect the dignity and the lives of the weakest and most marginalized among us?
I'm concerned about the restrictions, the new legislation being passed in many places. Oklahoma is one example, where in fact assistance to people who are undocumented is being questioned. When you're reaching out to hurting people, you don't check their papers. That's not our job. We don't do government's job for the government. And so we don't want to be in a situation where Christian ministry is made illegal. We're close to that now. You will hear from people in the churches across the political spectrum that if you tell us Christian ministry is illegal, we will go ahead and do Christian ministry whether it is legal or not. I'm concerned about these harsh restrictions that are coming from the states.
I'm also concerned about the talk. Talk is important. How we talk about people is very important. So I'm concerned when I read statements like an Arizona talk show host saying, "What we'll do is randomly pick one night every week where we will kill whoever crosses the border ... step over there and you die. You get to decide whether it's your lucky night or not. I think that would be more fun." Well, it wouldn't be fun. And that kid of talk poisons the body politic. We have to stand up against talk like that.
Thirdly, I'm concerned about what we call family values. The raids have been quite appalling. We are literally taking children from their mothers and fathers, we are separating families. This is not what in our tradition we should do. To protect and support families and those relationships is crucial to us.
So this is a conversation that is quickly going bad. I read today that it's the number two issue in the Iowa primary campaign. It will be a presidential election-year issue. So how we talk about undocumented people is a matter of life and dignity. In fact, Hispanics who have been here for four generations are being looked at askance now as if every Hispanic citizen was undocumented. All of a sudden, the country feels very unsafe and unwelcoming to people of Latino descent. This is something going wrong in our body politic.
We're here to say, let's pay attention how we talk about people and let's come back to the table. We're not going to have immigration reform for some time, perhaps, but let's start a new conversation about what will fix the system and how to treat people humanely in the meantime. It's a matter of life and dignity.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is holding its annual meeting this week. They have elected a new president, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, and will vote on their teaching document for the 2008 election. Two other actions are worth noting. The bishops approved a letter from their International Committee to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urging a diplomatic solution with Iran.
Several weeks ago, Larry and Andrea - Christian friends who live and work among Muslims in the Middle East - sent me their reflections on the recent U.S. visit of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad which outraged so many. My friends were bothered by what transpired too, but for different reasons. I think their reflections are well worth sharing here.
You've heard about, or maybe experienced first hand, the change in pregnant women's thoughts. This was true for me, but I wasn't able to talk about it for months. This is my story as I moved into the stream of mothers who carry children amidst turmoil and a future of total uncertainty.
New studies managed by the Pew Charitable Trusts show us how far the country still needs to go in achieving economic equality. A major finding is that the while overall incomes are rising, the income gap between African American and white families is also rising.
You haven't lived until you've scudded through Dehradun traffic in an autorickshaw. You haven't died either - but you probably haven't come so close before. The autorickshaw is a tiny three-wheeled gumdrop taxi powered by a hair dryer, feels like. No doors or seatbelts. I joined Dr. Reeta, the co-founder of the SNEHA school, for an autorickshaw ride to her facility. The ensuing dozen mini-brushes with mortality set just the right tone for meeting schoolkids recruited from Dehradun's grim slums.
Like Logan Laituri, I spent my Veteran's Day honoring one of my favorite Veterans – Martin of Tours. I spoke at the magnificent St. Peter's Cathedral here in Philadelphia on Sunday, and did my best to honor Martin's life and remember the millions of soldiers who have felt the collision of the cross and sword. A few thoughts from those reflections?
After a decade or more in the doldrums, the studio has been resurrected by Tom Cruise, and the first film released under this banner is the Redford-helmed 'Lions for Lambs' – a tub-thumping intellectual thriller that pits brains against brawn as a liberal university professor, a neo-conservative senator, and a smart journalist duke it out for the prize of 'who gets to direct the war on terror' - which the film shows still to be fought by the poor.
Several readers have correctly pointed out that the heart of the gospel is forgiveness, and judgment is ultimately up to God. You are right, and I apologize. What I meant to say was in the legal context of "If they are found guilty," deliberately lying about going to war should not be pardoned. Remember Gerald Ford pardoning Richard Nixon before he had even been tried for anything, or George H.W. Bush pardoning the leading Iran-contra figures? I do indeed believe in God's grace and forgiveness for anyone who repents. But the crime of lying about going to war should not be politically pardoned.
Christian leaders urge compassion in immigrant debate Religion News Service "How we talk about undocumented people is a matter of ... life and dignity," said the Rev. Jim Wallis, founder and CEO of Sojourners/Call to Renewal.
Democrats, evangelical leaders work together on abortion-reduction bill Associated Baptist Press [Jim] Wallis, an evangelical writer and political activist, said his involvement with the initiative came from his desire to “change the conversation on abortion.” There’s common ground around the country among people who want to stop using abortion as a polarizing issue or as a way to leverage votes, he said: “Abortion has been the third wheel in American politics for too long.”
Democrats hail abortion reduction measure Religion News Service Liberal evangelical author and activist the Rev. Jim Wallis called abortion "the third rail of American politics" and said the bill "fits where the American people are."
The Evangelical Crackup (letter to the editor) New York Times Magazine As a follower of Jim Wallis and reader of his book "God's Politics," I was cautiously optimistic that the conservative wing of the evangelical movement would be spending more energy on what they are for as opposed to what they are against.
"Sojourners in the news" articles are the most recent news clippings that mention Sojourners in any way - whether favorably or unfavorably. Though we provide the text on our site for your convenience, we do not necessarily endorse the views of these articles or their source publications.
American Baptist Seminary of the West is seeking a president to lead a multicultural, multiracial theological school in the ecumenical context of the Graduate Theological Union. Apply to Leona Bridges, Presidential Search Committee, ABSW, 2606 Dwight Way, Berkeley, CA 94704.
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f books can still have political impact (a big if), then Rage, Bob Woodward’s latest in his series of presidential profiles, should wind up an election-shaping blockbuster. He doesn’t merely quote anonymous sources dissing the policies and character of Donald Trump. He catches Trump himself in self-incriminating blather—17 interviews’ worth, from January to July of 2020—on the record, on tape. We’ve all been waiting for someone to leak secretly recorded tapes of Trump saying ghastly things. Who would have predicted that he’d say them to one of the world’s most famous reporters with a tape recorder in clear sight!
You’ve no doubt read or even heard the biggest scoop: Trump knew back in January that the coronavirus was much deadlier than the flu, that it spreads through the air, that it kills not just the elderly but young people too. Yet he told the public that all was well, that the germs would vanish soon—and, even now, he encourages thousands of barefaced supporters to attend jampacked rallies, makes fun of Joe Biden for wearing a mask, and pressures the Big Ten colleges to resume their football schedules, for his entertainment.
The genuine news here is that, contrary to what was thought at the time, Trump didn’t ignore the scientists or wave away their advice when the pandemic took off. No, he understood their analyses and forecasts perfectly well. He just decided not to do anything about it—and, worse still, to encourage others not to do much either. Before we could only speculate that Trump was personally responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands; now we know it.
Woodward scrounged up other, less reported, but still dramatic revelations.
For instance, he obtained the letters between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un—“beautiful letters,” Trump has called them—and they reveal Trump was an even bigger chump than we’d figured. “Dear Excellency,” Kim’s first letter begins, and Woodward adds that Trump noted the ultra-respectful greeting “with pride.” Another Kim gem began, “I feel pleased to have formed good ties with such a powerful and preeminent statesman as Your Excellency,” then likened their next meeting to “a scene from a fantasy film.” Woodward reports that CIA analysts “marveled” at these letters, at how skillfully their author appealed “to Trump’s sense of grandiosity” and his desire to be seen taking “center stage in history.”
When Woodward asks what it was like to meet Kim at their first summit in Singapore, Trump responds, “It was the most cameras I think I’ve seen, more cameras than any human being in history,” even more than he’d seen at the Academy Awards.
He then gives Woodward a poster-size copy of a photo of Trump and Kim shaking hands at the border separating North and South Korea. “This is me and him,” he tells Woodward, all excited. “That’s the line, right? Then I walked over the line. Pretty cool.” He goes on to brag that Kim “tells me everything. … He killed his uncle and put the body right in the steps where the senators walked out. And the head was cut, sitting on the chest. … Nancy Pelosi said, ‘Oh, let’s impeach him.’ You think that’s tough? This is tough.”
What a fanboy. No wonder Kim and every other dictator on earth plays the American president like such a wondrously easy mark.
At one point, when talking about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Trump tells Woodward, “It’s funny, the relations I have, the tougher and meaner they are, the better I get along with them. You know? Explain that to me someday, OK?” Woodward writes: “That might not be difficult, I thought, but I didn’t say anything.”
Throughout the book, Woodward proclaims shock (though one wonders why) at how shallow Trump is. Asked about his strategy for dealing with the plethora of crises hitting him, Trump replies, “I don’t have a strategy,” except to “do a good job.” Trump says he knew that he and Kim would get along instantly, in the same way that “you meet a woman, in one second you know whether or not it’s all going to happen.”
Over and over, Trump plasters his pathological insecurity on marquee display. “I don’t think Obama’s smart,” he says, adding, “Hey look, I went to the best schools, I did great. … You know, they talk about the elite … they have nice houses. No, I have much better than them, I have better everything than them, including education.” His uncle, as he has said many times, was a brilliant MIT professor who knew about nuclear weapons—“so I understand that stuff,” the president says. “You know, genetically.”
He boasts of being No. 1 on Twitter and Facebook, as if any grown human would care about such distinctions. Woodward then tracks it down and reports that, in fact, he has the ninth most popular account on Twitter and is outranked by several dozen on Facebook.
Finally, there is Trump’s—to put it generously—racial insensitivity. Amid the protests over the police killing of George Floyd, Woodward tells Trump that, as a privileged white person, he has only recently grasped the need to understand and address the anger and pain of Black people, and he asks Trump whether he has experienced a similar epiphany. Trump replies, “No. You really drank the Kool-Aid, didn’t you? Just listen to you. Wow. No, I don’t feel that at all”—then claims, for the umpteenth time, that he’s done more to help Black people than any president besides Abraham Lincoln, but adds, “honestly, I’m not feeling any love.”
“Trump is the wrong man for the job,” Woodward writes at the very end of the book, and while it’s not the stunner he clearly intended, it is a tiny eyebrow-raiser, in that it’s the sort of judgment that Woodward—the erstwhile upstart turned mild-mannered chronicler of the Washington high and mighty—has never expressed so openly in his previous books.
At age 77, well over half a lifetime after he and Carl Bernstein took down President Richard Nixon with their reporting on Watergate, Woodward seems more willing—perhaps entitled—to put himself in the narrative and state his own views explicitly.
In many ways, though, he’s the same Woodward. He’s an unparalleled amasser of secret documents, inside facts, dazzling scoops. But he’s also a prisoner of those scoops. He doesn’t quite know what to do with them. He fastidiously counts all the rings on the fallen trees, but doesn’t look closely at the forest or why the trees fell.
In a 1989 Playboy interview, conducted by the journalist-historian J. Anthony Lukas, Woodward acknowledged that analysis was not his strong point, adding, “I am just not capable—and this is a grave fault—of taking A, B, C, and D, and saying, ‘OK, now E.’ ”
If you want to know the motives Kim had in meeting with Trump, or why their second summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, was a disaster, Woodward is not your go-to author. If you’re looking for a tour of the broader political landscape in which Trump exercises power, again, look elsewhere.
What Woodward does is paint a picture of presidents dealing with power and crises. Even here, he is dependent on his sources, and you can always tell who Woodward’s best sources are, because they’re the ones who come off looking best. Retired Gen. Jim Mattis, who resigned in protest as Trump’s first secretary of defense, was clearly a big source for this book. Hence we read: “Mattis had a stoic Marine exterior and attention-getting ramrod posture, but his bright, open and inviting smile softened his presence.”
Another major source is Dan Coats, whom Trump fired as director of national intelligence. Hence: “Still waters ran deep in Dan Coats. He was cool and not defensive, unintimidated by complexity. Mattis found himself often thinking that Coats was a model of what was needed in government service—though maybe he was too decent.”
Woodward also seems to have talked a lot with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and special adviser, and so describes him as “intelligent, organized, self-confident, and arrogant”—words that Kushner has probably dined out on. But even Woodward sees through Kushner’s craven shallowness. He quotes former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (another well-treated source) as finding Kushner’s kowtowing toward Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “nauseating to watch.” And he quotes Kushner saying, after Mattis and Tillerson and others have quit or been fired, “We’ve gotten rid of a lot of the overconfident idiots,” so the administration now has “a lot more thoughtful people who kind of know their place and know what to do”—thus proving that Kushner is every bit as self-immolating and prone to projection as his father-in-law.
Rageis better and more valuable thanFear, Woodward’s first book about Trump’s presidency, because it’s built around his conversations with Trump himself—and the gasoline the president pours on himself is, even by his standards, remarkable.
Why did Trump agree to talk with Woodward? In part for the same reason many powerful people do: because it means they’ll end up in the history books, and if they can charm Woodward, they’ll come off well. Trump clearly thought he could charm Woodward. He quotes Trump as saying thatFear“was horrendous, but that was my fault. I would’ve loved to have seen you. But they didn’t tell me you were calling.” This too is a lie: Sen. Lindsey Graham urged Trump to talk to Woodward for that book and for this one, too—a favor that Woodward returns by saying that Graham sometimes “provided wise counsel, urging Trump to take a strategic view.” For instance, Graham tells Trump (or at least tells Woodward that he told Trump) that the president’s “law and order” approach to the nation’s racial tensions is reminiscent of George Wallace and that it will lose him the election.
The police officer was placed on administrative leave, according to local news outlets. (photo: Eric Risberg/AP)
ADDED
Raw Video: Lancaster police shooting, Sunday, Sept. 13
Ricardo Munoz, 27, of Lancaster, was shot and killed on Sunday, Sept. 13. Lancaster Police released this video of the shooting. The video was released by the Lancaster County District Attorney's Office. Please note, some viewers may find this video disturbing.
Police posted the officer’s body camera video on social media. It showed Ricardo Munoz, 27, chasing the officer down a sidewalk with a knife. The officer fired several shots while running away.
The officer was placed on administrative leave, according to local news outlets.
Hundreds took to the streets of Lancaster following the shooting, a crowd forming outside the police station. The department said multiple buildings and government vehicles were damaged.
The Lancaster county district attorney, Heather Adams, acknowledged the protests and called for calm.
“We ask that acts of protest remain peaceful as violence and destruction of property will become headlines and serve no purpose for the safety and wellbeing of our citizens and neighborhoods,” she said.
Regarding the use of “chemical munitions” against protesters early on Monday, police said the crowd was given several warnings to disperse before gas was deployed.
The crowd “failed to follow the instructions”, police said, adding that items including glass bottles, gallon jugs filled with liquid, parts of plastic road barricades and more had been thrown at officers.
nurse at the Irwin County Detention Center in Georgia is speaking out about a host of dangerous medical practices at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility amid the coronavirus outbreak.
The whistleblower, Dawn Wooten, says that Irwin, which is run by the private corporation LaSalle Corrections, has underreported Covid-19 cases, knowingly placed staff and detainees at risk of contracting the virus, neglected medical complaints, and refused to test symptomatic detainees, among other dangerous practices. On September 8, Wooten submitted a letter detailing her complaints to the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, with the help of attorneys from the Government Accountability Project. The grim situation inside the facility reflects what she called “a silent pandemic” running rampant behind the prison bars.
“You don’t want to see what you’re seeing,” Wooten told The Intercept. “You’re responsible for the lives of others,” but Irwin management, in her eyes, downplayed the threat of the virus from the start.
When the first suspected case of Covid-19 arrived at Irwin in March, Wooten says, she overheard the warden, David Paulk, tell a member of the nursing staff not to tell anybody that the man recently transferred might have the coronavirus. “He didn’t want there to be mass panic,” she said. (Reached by phone, Paulk said he had no comment.) Another member of the medical staff ordered Wooten to triage the man, even though she didn’t have a mask. She refused. “They’re still not taking this seriously,” Wooten said. “Enough was enough.”
In a series of interviews with The Intercept, Wooten described how she repeatedly complained to staff leadership before she was demoted in early July from working full time to an on-call position, where she was only offered a few hours a month — a move she charges was retaliation for speaking up and demanding stricter medical safety protocols. She has worked at the facility for three years in three separate stints as a licensed nurse practitioner, and has over 10 years of experience working as a nurse in prisons.
Her own health was imperiled while working at Irwin during the outbreak. She has sickle cell anemia, and although she told her supervisors her doctor had warned her that exposure to the coronavirus could be deadly, management at Irwin neglected to tell her that detainees she had contact with were symptomatic and, in three cases, had tested positive for Covid-19.
Wooten’s account was bolstered by interviews with another current member of Irwin’s medical staff — who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation — and four people currently or recently detained there.
The legal advocacy group Project South also submitted a complaint to the OIG on Wooten’s behalf, which also included similar testimony collected from interviews with detainees. Priyanka Bhatt, a staff attorney with the group, told The Intercept, “Ms. Wooten’s whistleblowing disclosures confirm what detained immigrants have been reporting for years — gross disregard for health and safety standards, lack of medical care, and unsanitary living conditions.”
LaSalle — which runs 18 detention centers throughout the South, capable of holding over 13,000 people — isn’t the only for-profit detention company to face scrutiny for dangerous mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic. But as the virus took hold in the region this summer, a pattern emerged of alleged abuses in LaSalle facilities. In July, medical staff at the LaSalle-owned Richwood Correctional Center in Louisiana submitted a letter to Congress detailing troubling allegations, including that LaSalle management withheld personal protective equipment from both staff and detainees, dismissed positive Covid-19 test results, and ignored symptoms. In the same month, medically vulnerable asylum-seekers detained at Richwood told The Intercept they were handcuffed, pepper-sprayed in the face, and thrown into solitary confinement after protesting the dangerous conditions. One of the men was transferred to River Correctional, another LaSalle-run detention center, where he told The Intercept that management there also neglected to take proper medical precautions to stop Covid-19’s spread. Asylum-seekers have described similar abuses at LaSalle-run Winn Correctional Center.
A spokesperson for LaSalle declined to respond to a detailed list of questions, saying only, “LaSalle Corrections is firmly committed to the health and welfare of those in our care. We are deeply committed to delivering high-quality, culturally responsive services in safe and humane environments.” ICE also declined to comment.
In July, LaSalle’s CEO Rodney Cooper submitted a letter to Congress outlining LaSalle’s response to Covid-19, claiming that the company was being “diligent in operating our facilities at the highest level,” and stating that no LaSalle detainees have “succumbed” to Covid-19. In fact, at least two LaSalle guards and one member of medical staff have died of the disease.
People detained at Irwin have been protesting since the first weeks of the pandemic, and have faced punishment from staff. A series of hunger strikes and protests chronicled in the New York Times Magazine in early June brought increased scrutiny to the facility, but according to Wooten, little has changed over the months. The perilous conditions the detainees decried earlier this summer continue, she said.
“I would cry,” Wooten said, reflecting on what she had seen after a shift. She worried about the detainees locked up and unable to protect themselves, but also about contracting the virus herself, imperiling her own health, and bringing it home to her children. “I’ve got a kid with asthma,” she said.
Lack of Testing Leads to Underreporting
According to ICE, 31 people detained at Irwin have tested positive for Covid-19 since the pandemic began. But Wooten suspects that there were most likely at least 50 by early July, when she was demoted, based on the number of detainees she personally knew who had tested positive, and what she heard from her colleagues. The other member of the medical staff agreed with her estimation.
Wooten maintains that management at Irwin has been underreporting cases of Covid-19 to ICE, the state of Georgia, as well as to LaSalle headquarters, and not conducting sufficient tests. Even when people had Covid-19 symptoms or had been in contact with people who had tested positive, only those individuals or other people who complained about symptoms were tested. She described one instance in which a person in a crowded dorm tested positive, and only his bunkmate was subsequently also tested. “Everybody in that dorm should have been tested,” Wooten said.
In her complaint to the OIG, Wooten claimed that the director of nurses “routinely rejected” symptomatic detainees’ requests to be tested. Other medical staff were also unsympathetic. “He ain’t got no damn corona, Wooten,” she was once told by a co-worker when she inquired about testing a detainee. Another detainee asking for a test, she said, was told, “Get your ass back in that room.” Wooten was also warned of “wasting tests” on people she suspected of being infected.
“‘Everybody want to be sick with corona, everybody want corona,’” she said other nurses would often say.
According to Wooten, ICE had purchased two testing machines for Irwin, which arrived in June, and which, she claimed, could deliver results in eight minutes. But to her knowledge, no staff had been trained to use them, and the machines were only used twice before being locked away. Instead, medical staff collected swabs from detainee testing and drove them in their personal vehicles to the local hospital to be processed, which was against protocol and inevitably meant delayed results.
“I was told by [management] that they were not going to be used and she was not going to put them out, because she didn’t want us testing each other,” Wooten said. “They were still sending people to the hospital and had these machines in the facility.”
The virus also spread among staff. According to Wooten, more than 15 LaSalle employees she knows personally have been infected with Covid-19; she provided the names of at least 12 staff members, including both correctional staff and health care workers, who tested positive.
The list included Marian Cole, the health services administrator who hired Wooten at Irwin. Cole had told Wooten she was being extra careful to avoid infection, traveling only from the facility to her home. But in March, Cole fell ill and passed away from complications from the virus.
Management at the facility said Cole had contracted the virus at a family event. “I knew better,” Wooten said. “And me, being who I am, said, ‘That’s not true.’ [Cole] told me she didn’t go anywhere but here and home.” (Cole’s daughter, reached for comment, did not want to discuss her mother’s passing.)
Wooten’s account of systematic undercounting of the true spread of the virus accords with what has been reported at other facilities, where ICE has resisted testing because it didn’t have space to quarantine people or ignored glaring symptoms. Detainees at Irwin, echoing those held at other detention centers, also said they were afraid to report their symptoms because they would be locked in solitary confinement, with little medical attention. “It is complete torture, because it’s like a punishment,” one immigrant said, who declined to give their name for fear of reprisals. “I didn’t want to say I had a pain in my throat, or that I had symptoms, because I didn’t want to go back to the punishment cell.”
Dangerous Practices
In March, when fears of coronavirus began spreading rapidly, LaSalle acquired hundreds of N95 masks, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended for health care workers. Each member of the medical staff at Irwin was given a single mask, though Wooten specified that most N95 masks were reserved for high-ranking staff, even if they had less contact with detainees. No masks, at the time, were given to detainees. Wooten received her N95 mask and wore it consistently while doing her rounds. By May, however, the strap had broken. When she asked for a replacement mask, supervisors refused her request. Worried about protecting herself and the detainees, Wooten purchased a homemade cloth mask. The other member of the medical staff The Intercept spoke with said that management had hundreds of replacement masks they were hoarding in storage.
Detainees, meanwhile, had begun to make their own masks out of whatever materials they had at hand. By late April, LaSalle offered them masks — provided not by the company but donated by a local church group. But one detainee said the masks have not been replaced unless a family member pushes ICE and LaSalle for a new one.
Wooten said that on at least three occasions, management ordered her to interact with patients who had tested positive for Covid-19 without informing her of the diagnosis. “I had been in all of three of their faces,” Wooten said. When Wooten and other members of the staff confronted management about the situation, they were told that revealing detainees’ test results would be a HIPAA violation, an illegal disclosure of confidential personal medical information.
Gregory Dober, an adjunct professor at Lake Erie College and expert in health care ethics and law regarding incarcerated individuals, told The Intercept that alerting staff that a detainee has tested positive for coronavirus “would not be a HIPAA violation.” In fact, Dober said that the failure to inform staff of positive cases could constitute reckless disregard of the health of an inmate, detainee, or staff worker.
The other medical worker, who is currently at LaSalle, said that even when they are working with patients in the medical area, not just doing the rounds with the general population, they don’t have enough gowns, face shields, or masks to properly protect themselves. Wooten also said the medical area was dirty: the floor infrequently swept, the exam tables not cleaned after use, and the area cluttered and dusty. “There was often blood on the floor that had not been cleaned up,” Wooten said. Detainees told The Intercept the bathrooms are dirty, and they had to disinfect phones and other materials themselves within their units.
Wooten described negligent or perfunctory care for sick detainees, which had been common before the beginning of the pandemic. She witnessed nurses shred and ignore “sick call” sheets, which detainees use to request nonemergency medical help, some of which included complaints of Covid-19 symptoms (the other member of the medical staff supported this claim, saying that the shredding of sick call sheets was common.)
“Every day she is shredding something and throwing it in her trash can,” Wooten said of another member of the medical staff. “I had one girl who put in about 12 sick calls. She was oozing out the belly button and nobody ever saw it.” In another case, a man with Covid-19 symptoms requested a test. He was isolated in solitary confinement, a swab was taken and sent to the hospital, and more than two weeks later, nobody had called the hospital to check for the test results. When Wooten called, she learned he had tested positive and informed the man herself.
Wooten was with another member of the nursing staff when she declared, without taking his temperature, that a man who had complained of a headache had a temperature of 97.7 F. She “pulled it out of the air,” Wooten said. “She falsified it. I watched her.” Wooten insisted that they actually take his temperature, and found that it was 101.8. Detainees with fevers were usually just given over-the-counter cold medication, Wooten said.
“A lot of the nurses were not doing nursing,” she said. “They were just bodies in the building.”
In response to the neglect and refusal to test detainees, Wooten described a “system” that detainees had developed, organizing to isolate people suspected to have Covid-19 near the door to the dormitory, both for their protection and to force the medical staff to test them. And yet, she overheard other medical staff tell detainees, “There was no Covid in here.” In one instance, according to Wooten, detainees staged a “mini-riot” to demand a Covid-19 test.
The frequent transfer of detainees between facilities compounded dangers. Wooten explained that while typically people were tested before being moved to Irwin, sometimes the transfer took place before the results of the test were in. Plus, newly arrived detainees were not always isolated from the others in the facility. She was also aware of at least one occasion in which a detainee who had tested positive for Covid-19 was deported to Mexico.
“They keep piling more people in here. They keep bringing more people in here, and in the end, it’s all about the money,” said a detained woman who had to wait over a week for her sick call. Wooten echoed the statement: “They get seen as a dollar sign. Their heads are counted not as humans but as dollars.”
Wooten’s Demotion
The tinder-box scenario finally brought Wooten to a breaking point. After months of observing troubling medical conditions and, at times, going out of her way to care for detainees who had been ignored, Wooten began to raise the alarm with management in the facility.
“When I started talking about the unfairness and injustice,” pressuring staff to conduct more Covid-19 tests, “I was written up,” Wooten said. “It’s dog-eat-dog in there, at the expense of the detainees.”
By mid-June, Wooten had already been tested twice for Covid-19. And each time, due to her prior health concerns, she was instructed by the hospital to wait until her results arrived before returning to work. Medical records reviewed by The Intercept confirm her third Covid-19 test took place on June 21. In a letter to Wooten’s employers, the medical facility where she was tested requested Wooten be excused from work for 10 days, until her results were available and her symptoms — including muscle aches, headaches, and diarrhea — had gone away.
After her first two tests, the doctors’ notes were sufficient to be excused from work. However, according to documents, on June 27 — six days after her third test — management reported her for “no call no show for her regular scheduled workday.” Her supervisors wrote that she was required “to call out each day she is off work.” They also pressured her to return to work, which she did, working two shifts on June 23 and June 25.
But as of June 27, there was no requirement for staff members to call in sick every day while awaiting Covid-19 test results; that policy was not implemented until July 1, according to a memo from facility management viewed by The Intercept. One day after the policy was in place, Wooten was demoted, reducing her from full-time status to “on-call,” and drastically cutting her hours. Wooten, who is Black, also said she suffered racism throughout the experience. White staff members who took time off for testing were given “Covid pay” and were not required to call in every day, she said.
With medical bills, sick family members, children to feed, rent to pay, and car payments to make, the reduction in her work hours was a serious blow. As her own health deteriorated and she suffered from consistent stress, Wooten relied on her eldest son to help pay off the car.
She says her demotion was an indirect threat to other health care staff at the facility who had expressed concerns, though more quietly.
“They’re afraid of being fired,” Wooten said. Irwin had treated her as an example, “I was thrown to the wolves.” But, she added, “I have nothing to lose at this point.”
Indianapolis Colts head coach Frank Reich, center, kneels the national anthem during the first half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Sept. 13, 2020, in Jacksonville, Fla. (photo: Phelan M. Ebenhack/AP)
NFL Broadcasts Promised 'Unity' Without Politics, but Some Players Didn't Stick to the Script Ben Strauss, The Washington Post Strauss writes: "The NFL is back, sidestepping the coronavirus pandemic to reemerge as America's most popular TV series, complete with a Brady-Gronk reunion and another season of the Lamar Jackson show. But if the football brought a sense of the familiar, the league on display didn't look or sound quite the same." READ MORE
Asylum seekers previously living in the Moria camp on Lesbos are now sleeping rough in front of a Greek supermarket in improvised shelters. (photo: Anna Pantelia/Al Jazeera)
After Fire Destroyed Greek Camp, Refugees Seek European Support Katy Fallon, Al Jazeera Fallon writes: "In the middle of the burned remains that were once the Moria refugee camp lies a notebook left behind by one of the thousands of people who rushed to save their lives when fires tore through the sprawling refugee camp on Lesbos." READ MORE
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The Arctic Is Shifting to a New Climate Because of Global Warming Henry Fountain, The New York Times Fountain writes: "The effects of global warming in the Arctic are so severe that the region is shifting to a different climate, one characterized less by ice and snow and more by open water and rain, scientists said Monday."
Open water and rain, rather than ice and snow, are becoming typical of the region, a new study has found.
Already, they said, sea ice in the Arctic has declined so much that even an extremely cold year would not result in as much ice as was typical decades ago. Two other characteristics of the region’s climate, seasonal air temperatures and the number of days of rain instead of snow, are shifting in the same way, the researchers said.
The Arctic is among the parts of the world most influenced by climate change, with sharply rising temperatures, thawing permafrost and other effects in addition to shrinking sea ice. The study, by Lara Landrum and Marika M. Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., is an effort to put what is occurring in the region in context.
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nurse at the Irwin County Detention Center in Georgia is speaking out about a host of dangerous medical practices at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility amid the coronavirus outbreak.
