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Election disinformation campaigns targeted voters of color in 2020. Experts expect 2024 to be worse

As the 2024 election approaches, community organizations are preparing for what they expect to be a worsening onslaught of disinformation.


In this image provided by Sarah Shah, the advocacy group Indian American Impact, which runs the fact-checking site Desifacts.org, passes out Parle-G cookies with voting plan stickers at a Diwali even in Doylestown, Pa., on Oct. 23, 2022. Community organizations are gearing up for what they expect will be a worsening onslaught of disinformation targeting voters of color as the 2024 election approaches. (Sarah Shah via AP) | AP


By ASSOCIATED PRESS
07/29/2023 

CHICAGO — Leading up to the 2020 election, Facebook ads targeting Latino and Asian American voters described Joe Biden as a communist. A local station claimed a Black Lives Matter co-founder practiced witchcraft. Doctored images showed dogs urinating on Donald Trump campaign posters.

None of these claims was true, but they scorched through social media sites that advocates say have fueled election misinformation in communities of color.

As the 2024 election approaches, community organizations are preparing for what they expect to be a worsening onslaught of disinformation targeting communities of color and immigrant communities. They say the tailored campaigns challenge assumptions of what kinds of voters are susceptible to election conspiracies and distrust in voting systems.

“They’re getting more complex, more sophisticated and spreading like wildfire,” said Sarah Shah, director of policy and community engagement at the advocacy group Indian American Impact, which runs the fact-checking site Desifacts.org. “ What we saw in 2020, unfortunately, will probably be fairly mild in comparison to what we will see in the months leading up to 2024.”

A growing subset of communities of color, especially immigrants for whom English is not their first language, are questioning the integrity of U.S. voting processes and subscribing to Trump’s lies of a stolen 2020 election, said Jenny Liu, mis/disinformation policy manager at the nonprofit Asian Americans Advancing Justice. Still, she said these communities are largely left out of conversations about misinformation.

“When you think of the typical consumer of a conspiracy theory, you think of someone who’s older, maybe from a rural area, maybe a white man,” she said. “You don’t think of Chinese Americans scrolling through WeChat. That’s why this narrative glosses over and erases a lot of the disinformation harms that many communities of colors face.”

Tailoring disinformation

In addition to general misinformation themes about voting machines and mail-in voting, groups are catering their messaging to communities of color, experts say.

For example, immigrants from authoritarian regimes in countries like Venezuela or who have lived through the Chinese Cultural Revolution may be “more vulnerable to misinformation claiming politicians are wanting to turn the U.S. into a Socialist state,” said Inga Trauthig, head of research for the Propaganda Research Lab at the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin. People from countries that have not recently had free and fair elections may have a preexisting distrust of elections and authority that may make them vulnerable to misinformation as well, Trauthig said.

Disinformation efforts often hinge on topics most important to each community, whether that is public safety, immigration, abortion, education, inflation or alleged extramarital affairs, said Laura Zommer, co-founder of the Spanish-language fact-checking group Factchequeado.

“It takes advantage of their very real fear and trauma from their experiences in their home countries,” Zommer said.

Other vulnerabilities include language barriers and a lack of knowledge of the U.S. media landscape and how to find credible U.S. news sources, several misinformation experts told The Associated Press. Many immigrants rely on translated content for voting information, leaving space for bad actors to inject misinformation.

“These tactics exploit information vacuums when there’s a lot of uncertainty around how these processes work, especially because a lot of election materials may not be translated in the languages our communities speak or be available in forms they are likely to access,” said Clara Jiménez Cruz, another co-founder of Factchequeado.

Misinformation can also arise from mistranslations. The Brookings Institute, a nonprofit think tank, found examples of mistranslations in Colombian, Cuban and Venezuelan WhatsApp groups, where “progressive” was translated to “progresista,” which carries “far-left connotations that are closer to the Spanish words ‘socialista’ and ‘comunista.’”

Disinformation, often in languages like Spanish, Mandarin or Hindi, flows onto social media apps like WhatsApp and WeChat heavily used by communities of color.

Minority communities that believe their views and perspectives aren’t represented by the mainstream are likely to “retreat into more private spaces” found on messaging apps or groups on social media sites like Facebook, Trauthig said.

“But disinformation also targets them on these platforms, even though it may feel to them to be that safer space,” she said.

Messages on WhatsApp are also encrypted and can’t be easily seen or traced by moderators or fact-checkers.

“As a result, messages on apps like WhatsApp often fly under the radar and are allowed to spread and spread, largely unchecked,” said Randy Abreu, policy counsel for the National Hispanic Media Coalition, which leads the Spanish Language Disinformation Coalition.

Abreu also raised concerns about Spanish YouTube channels and radio shows that are growing in popularity. He said the coalition is tracking more and more YouTube and radio personalities who are spreading misinformation in Spanish.

A 2022 report by the left-leaning watchdog group Media Matters tracked 40 Spanish-language YouTube videos spreading misinformation about U.S. elections. Many of these videos remained on the platform, despite violating YouTube election misinformation policy, the report said.

Disinformation and disenfranchising communities of color Amid changes in voting policies at state and local levels, advocates are sounding the alarm on how disinformation about voting in 2024 may target communities of color. Many of these efforts have surged as Asian American, Black and Latino communities have grown in political power, said María Teresa Kumar, founding president of the nonprofit advocacy group Voto Latino.

“Disinformation is, at its core, meant to be a sort of voter suppression tactic for communities of color,” she said. “It targets communities of color in a way that feeds into their already justifiable concerns that the system is stacked against them.”

The tactics also feed into a history “as old as the Jim Crow era of attempting to disenfranchise people of color, going back to voter intimidation and suppression efforts after the Civil Rights Act of 1866,” said Atiba Ellis, a professor of law at Case Western Reserve University School of Law.

While many of the same recycled claims around alleged fraud in the 2020 and 2022 elections are expected to resurface, experts say disinformation campaigns will likely be more sophisticated and granular in attempts to target specific groups of voters of color.

Trauthig also raised concerns about how layoffs and instability at social media platforms like Twitter may leave them less prepared to tackle misinformation in 2024. It also remains to be seen how new social media platforms like Threads will approach the threat of misinformation.

Changes in policies like WhatsApp launching a “Communities” function connecting multiple groups and expanding group chat sizes may also “have big implications for how quickly misinformation will spread on the platform,” she said.

In response to the mounting threat of misinformation, Indian American Impact is ramping up its fact-checking efforts through what the organization says is the first fact-checking website specifically for South Asian Americans.

Shah said the group is drawing inspiration from 2022 projects, including a voting toolkit using memes with Bollywood characters and passing out Parle-G crackers with voting information stickers at Indian grocery stores.

Cruz of Factchequeado is paying close attention to misinformation in swing states with significant Latino populations like Nevada and Arizona. And Liu of Asian Americans Advancing Justice is reviewing misinformation trends from previous elections to strategize about how to inoculate Asian American voters against them.

Still, they say there is more work to be done. Critics are urging social media companies to invest in content moderation and fact-checking in languages other than English.

Government and election officials should also make voting information more accessible to non-English speakers, organize media literacy trainings in community spaces and identify “trusted messengers” in communities of color to help approach trends in misinformation narratives, experts said.

“These are not monolithic groups,” Cruz said. “This disinformation is very specifically tailored to each of these communities and their fears. So we also need to be partnering with grassroots organizations in each of these communities to tailor our approaches. If we don’t take the time to do this work, our democracy is at stake.”

THE WEIRDEST POLITICAL CONSPIRACY THEORIES IN 19TH CENTURY AMERICA

THE GRUNGE

Though it may seem like a modern plague, conspiracies have been with us for quite a long time. Generations of humans have been worrying about mysterious cabals and shadowy yet powerful figures for ages. In fact, strange conspiracy theories have been bubbling in the human consciousness for millennia, stretching back to ancient Romans fretting over who started the fire that burned much of their capital city in A.D. 64 (via Memory Studies). And, as Lapham's Quarterly notes, Jewish people in medieval Europe could be killed by mobs fueled by false rumors of a well-poisoning conspiracy, all supposedly put in place to eliminate the Gentiles. Around the same time, many also fretted about the specter of a secret yet immensely powerful network commanded by the Knights Templar, while others were constantly on the lookout for an as-yet-unrevealed Antichrist whose appearance had been prophesied in the Bible (per USC News).

When it comes to American history, conspiracies had a serious heyday in the 19th century. It makes sense given the nation was rocked by political parties constantly jockeying for power and increasingly dire tensions over the issue of slavery. Even after the nation had begun its recovery from the Civil War, conspiracies still lingered, pointing to hidden actors in the nation's political system. As so often happens with unfettered speculation over time, things could get pretty strange. These are some of the weirdest conspiracy theories in 19th-century American politics.

19TH CENTURY POLITICAL CONSPIRACIES DIDN'T COME OUT OF NOWHERE

American politics have nearly always been mired in some sort of conspiracy theory. Less than a decade after the American Revolution drew to a close in 1783, political parties were already volleying claims of backroom deals at one another.

The trouble began in the last decade of the 18th century. According to TIME, Massachusetts minister Jedidiah Morse seemed to be the source of the trouble, at least on American soil. In his sermons, Morse began to claim that the "Bavarian Illuminati" had infiltrated American society with the aim to upend both the newly-formed government and Christianity itself. He pointed to the revolution that was at the time tearing France apart, taking particular note of the atheistic Jacobins who were busy closing French churches and promoting a secular way of life. The Illuminati, he claimed, was also ready to promote a lurid way of life that laughed at notions of fidelity, chastity, and social order.

Morse went even further to tie in the future president Thomas Jefferson and his Democratic-Republican party. Morse was a devoted Federalist, counting himself among the political opponents of the Democratic-Republicans. Soon enough, others fell in line with Morse's alarmist thinking, including the president of Yale. As the new century dawned, the conspiracy fell out of favor but never fully went away. Even today, some Americans still fear that the mysterious Illuminati are running things toward evil, despite a considerable lack of evidence.

CATHOLICISM BECAME LINKED TO POLITICAL CONSPIRACY

In the early decades of the 19th century, American nativists were fighting for their rights against the invaders. Only these nativists were not American Indians indigenous to North America. Instead, as Smithsonian Magazine reports, they were members of a quasi-secret society who purported to be of "pure" Anglo-Saxon heritage. And the invaders? Well, Catholics, of course.

The society in question would eventually come to be known as the "Know Nothing" party, so called for its members' habit of feigning ignorance of the group when questioned. Though the political party would grow in power, its main fears centered on the notion that immigrants from majority Catholic nations, such as Ireland, were undermining the fabric of American society.

The United States in the 1840s was indeed accepting a wave of Irish Catholic immigrants, as Politico reports. According to this conspiracy theory, these Catholics were not true Americans, instead holding allegiance only to the Pope, who was set on destroying Protestant America. To that end, Catholic representatives were said to be guilty of lurid misdeeds, such as murdering infants and kidnapping young women. Never mind that no evidence of such crimes was ever uncovered. In response to the accusations, the Know Nothings and other nativist political groups helped pass laws that limited alcohol consumption and restricted immigration. This made it all the more difficult for new arrivals to participate in civic life or even find employment in their new home.


THE KNOW NOTHING PARTY THRIVED ON CONSPIRACY

The Know Nothing party first took shape as a secret society, originally called the Order of United Americans, then the Order of the Star Spangled Banner. According to Smithsonian Magazine, the order eventually became an organization of powerful players, established its own political party, and reached its apex of influence in the 1850s. Know Nothings became governors and legislators throughout the nation, briefly becoming a serious force in American politics. They were elected largely because of their conspiratorial view toward immigrants, who they argued were intentionally destroying the American way of life. It wasn't just Irish Catholics who loomed unnaturally large in the political imagination. The Know Nothings positioned German immigrants and women's rights suffragists as equally nefarious groups. People became so riled up by these opportunistic political conspiracies that they burned churches and formed violent gangs.

The Know Nothings rose to prominence by playing on the fear and rage of their fellow Americans. But this was not a strong enough foundation and the group soon crumbled. As time wore on, it became more and more difficult for the party to ignore the issue of slavery, which it had tried to avoid. Furthermore, devotees of the party may have also realized that its vision of a United States peopled only by "pure" white Protestants was ridiculously unattainable.

ANTEBELLUM SLAVEHOLDERS FEARED A BLACK REPUBLICAN CONSPIRACY

In the lead-up to the American Civil War, political conspiracies became widespread and widely believed, according to "Plots, Designs, and Schemes." They also became more and more focused on what was surely the most divisive issue at that point in American history: slavery.

In the South, slave owners became convinced that agents from the North were infiltrating their communities and wreaking havoc to undermine their way of life. During the 1830s, one of the prevailing theories was that abolitionists were actually being directed by the British, who were intent on destroying rebellious American democracy (and economic competition). Others argued that the call was coming from inside the house and that bigwigs in the Republican Party were engaged in a conspiracy to outlaw slavery. They became known as "Black Republicans."

Some kernels of truth inflamed these conspiracies further. As The Guardian reports, Abraham Lincoln (himself a Republican), referred to the "ultimate extinction" of slavery in 1858. Although the party did work to limit the expansion of slavery, pre-Civil War Republicans did little to actually stop the practice or roll back the institution of slavery as it had been entrenched in the South. For some Southern leaders, those details didn't matter. William Harris, who advocated for the secession of Mississippi, wrote that his state "will never submit to the principles and policy of this black Republican administration." Though it wasn't true, the conspiracy clearly had some very real effects.


ABOLITIONISTS HELD THEIR OWN CONSPIRACY THEORIES

While Southern slave owners were becoming alarmed at the idea of outsiders actively working to disassemble their culture and economy, anti-slavery abolitionists had their own suspicions. The "slave power" conspiracy alleged that slave owners had already infiltrated all levels of the government and were working to make their way of life the norm for all (via "Plots, Designs, and Schemes").

Though abolitionists on their own may not have been able to make it all the way to the Emancipation Proclamation, "Plots, Designs, and Schemes" notes that they were given a boost by the "slave power" conspiracies and similar suspicions. Northerners who were previously indifferent to slavery or who even held some seriously racist beliefs began to believe that maybe, just maybe, the Southerners really were worming their way into too much power. Some even alleged that it went all the way to the top, with the president himself either one of them or too weak to resist the "slave power" conspirators.

Though there was no evidence ever uncovered to support this — in fact, that would have been diametrically opposed to the conspiracies popular in the South — the "slave power" suspicions seem to have united many disparate groups in the buildup to the Civil War. Scholars even argue that, strange as it may have sounded to some, this particular conspiracy led to the rise of the Republican Party in the 19th century.

SOME STATES SECEDED BECAUSE OF CONSPIRACY

While some American political conspiracies may have seemed laughable in the first decades of the 19th century, they became harder to ignore as time went on. Tensions over the issue of slavery grew, as did fights over just how states were supposed to handle the issue. Eventually, things reached a breaking point. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union. According to the National Park Service, this and the following secessions were touched off by the 1860 election of Republican Abraham Lincoln. Yet a closer look at secession declarations shows that conspiracies played their role in the breakup, too.

In its declaration of secession, Texas was convinced the North had sent emissaries to wreak havoc in its territory. This didn't just involve undermining the culture of the South or spreading fear and doubt in the minds of Southerners. The purported misdeed also included more obvious crimes, including such nefarious acts as poisoning the water supply of communities and committing arson in towns throughout the state. According to The Atlantic, other states made similar claims, arguing that Lincoln and his allies wanted not only to upend their way of life but to simply kill Southerners. Given Lincoln's recorded intent to reconcile with the South after the Civil War ended — to the point where even his allies thought he was being too soft on the rebels (via History) — this seems all the more unbelievable.

REAL SLAVE REBELLIONS WERE WARPED INTO FEAR-MONGERING CONSPIRACIES

In the 19th century, American slave owners thought the threat of a slave rebellion loomed largely. Could enslaved people have grown so tired of their inhumane treatment that they were planning a large-scale revolt? The idea makes sense. According to Britannica, the Haitian Revolution concluded in 1804 after a rebellion ousted the French and established the first country to be run by former slaves. Was it such a stretch to imagine that a similar thing might happen on U.S. soil?

As The Atlantic points out, slave rebellion did occur in the U.S. So too did conspiracy theories abound of organized slaves on the threshold of revolution, perhaps helped along by the abolitionists. It didn't help that John Brown actually did attempt to encourage an armed uprising amongst slaves in 1859 Virginia. Never mind that his attack fizzled and Brown himself was executed later that year. For some, this was enough evidence to confirm a widespread slave rebellion plot, with a few indulging in fantastical tales of vicious, well-organized people who wanted nothing more than bloody revenge. It was only a short step from that to believe that emancipation would be nothing less than the end of all white people. However, as the rest of United States history after the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation has made clear, no such thing ever happened.

NEWSPAPERS TIED LINCOLN ASSASSINS TO A LARGER PLOT

On April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln's outing at Ford's Theater ended in his assassination by actor John Wilkes Booth. According to History, Booth had assembled a small group of conspirators to first kidnap Lincoln. When that plan failed, they decided instead to murder the president.

But was the assassination really the work of only a few people? As Ford's Theatre reports, some thought that the plot was beyond the abilities of some second-rate actor and his friends. Almost immediately after Lincoln's death, newspapers began hinting that the president's demise was the work of a larger, more organized group of Southern rebels.

The roster of potential masterminds behind the supposed plot included Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Confederate Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin. Old religious prejudices came into play, with some arguing that Benjamin (who was Jewish) was influenced by a larger network of anti-Lincoln European bankers. Or was it the Catholics? After all, weren't some of the Booth conspirators devout followers of the Pope? Could Irish-Americans, who had largely opposed the war and rioted against a Union draft, be behind it? Heck, the murder might even have been ordered by Union officials who weren't keen on Lincoln's soft approach to the former Confederacy. However, Ford's Theatre points out that none of these conspiracies were ever proven true. Instead, the consensus remains that the assassination was in fact the work of Booth and a few of his associates.


SOME CONSPIRACISTS LIED TO THE PRESIDENT HIMSELF

When it comes to conspiracies, one of their reliable throughlines is that they're usually bunk. For many, most conspiracy theories are utterly ridiculous, like the idea that we are ruled by lizards or that the Earth is flat. Yet, every once in a while, conspiracy theories turn out to be true, like when the Iran-Contra affair really was a conspiracy to sell weapons and fun a Nicaraguan rebellion, as reported by NewScientist.

In the 19th century, one conspiracy theory fooled even the president. But those involved believed they were doing it for a good reason, given that the president was dying. According to The Washington Post, it all began with an assassination attempt. On July 2, 1881, Charles Guiteau — himself the victim of a conspiratorial thought that had him believing he was a political force and not a mentally ill nobody — shot President James Garfield at a train station. Garfield's doctor attempted to find the bullet lodged in his body by digging around in the wound with unsterilized equipment and hands. The president lingered for weeks before dying of a massive infection on September 19. Before that, his doctors issued cheerful reports to the newspapers, saying that he was "sleeping sweetly" or that "his eyes have regained their old-time sparkle." This was apparently an attempt to bolster the confidence of both the American public and Garfield himself, though eventually even the doctors had to admit their lie when the president finally died.


THE CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT WAS BASED ON CONSPIRATORIAL THINKING

By now, it's probably painfully clear to everyone that, wild as they may be, conspiracy theories can have some very serious consequences in the real world. They've been used as excuses to start wars, gain power, and sell newspapers. Even when a conspiracy isn't quite poised to tear a nation to pieces, it can be used to alienate an entire group of people for no reason other than the fact that they are "different."

In the post-Civil War world of American politics, that concept may have reached its zenith with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which seriously restricted immigrants based on Chinese racial background. According to History, the act didn't come out of nowhere. It followed years of increasing worries that Chinese workers, who entered the country to work in the mining and construction booms of the mid-19th century, were going to bring society and the economy down. Real economic downturns, increasing labor competition, and concerns about "racial purity" led to the passage of the act.

Proponents of the act, such as San Francisco mayor James D. Phelan, alleged that Chinese immigrants weren't just somehow simultaneously barbaric and "cunning", but part of a larger force that would devastate America through disease and erosion of the much-beloved, vaguely-defined American way of life. This anti-Chinese sentiment, tinged with hints of conspiracy, sadly came to light again in the U.S. with the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic .

BY SARAH CROCKER

OCT. 4, 2022 

FOR PICTURES  & GRAPHICS

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Americans Strongly Favor Lab Leak Theory

WHOWHATWHY STAFF 07/29/23

While the intelligence community remains torn on the issue, Americans feel strongly that the COVID-19 pandemic began in a Chinese lab.

Scientists and the US intelligence community remain split on whether the virus that triggered the COVID-19 pandemic developed naturally or came from a lab. For example, a recently declassified intelligence report said that both theories remain plausible. The American people are feeling a lot less ambivalent, according to a new poll. A solid majority of them believes that the virus originated in a Chinese lab.

Nearly one-third of respondents thought it was “definitely true” that the virus came from a lab while another 29 percent felt it was “probably true,” the poll, which was conducted by The Economist and YouGov, found.

That viewpoint was especially prevalent among voters of former President Donald Trump. A whopping 87 percent of them believe that the virus definitively or probably came from a lab.

But even Democrats are more likely to think that the “lab leak theory” is true than not. Only a quarter of them are of the opinion that it is false as opposed to 44 percent who believe it is true.

Perhaps the most striking finding of the poll is the low number of Americans who think that the lab leak theory is “definitively false.” Overall, only 5 percent of them feel that way as opposed to more than six times as many who think it is “definitively true.”

The poll also included several other interesting findings. For example, a quarter of Trump voters denied that there even was a COVID-19 pandemic. It doesn’t really make sense that 87 percent of them believe the pandemic started in a lab but 25 percent think it didn’t happen.

Republicans were more likely to say that they had tested positive for COVID-19. A total of 39 percent of them said they had personally tested positive as opposed to 31 percent of Democrats. That is probably not surprising as conservatives were more likely to resist lockdown and social distancing measures early on in the pandemic.

The poll also showed that about one-quarter of Americans have not been vaccinated at all. Predictably, that number is highest among Republicans, 32 percent of whom did not receive any COVID-19 shots. What stands out is that 30 percent of independents also said they had not been vaccinated.

Two-thirds of Americans have received two or more shots, and this is a figure that is consistent among all age groups and most demographics.

About the same number of poll respondents said that they believe that the pandemic is now over, while only about a quarter of Americans think it is ongoing. Once again, the starkest contrast is between voters for President Biden and former President Trump.

Nearly 40 percent of Biden voters expressed their belief that there is currently a COVID-19 pandemic. Only 9 percent of Trump voters shared that view.

Finally, 30 percent of Americans said they either had a family member or a close friend who experienced ongoing symptoms referred to as “long COVID.”

ELECTIONS

One-Third of Americans Anticipate Another Insurrection If Biden Wins

WHOWHATWHY STAFF 07/29/23

Will Trump supporters stage another insurrection if Joe Biden wins reelection? One-third of Americans think so.

Just about one-third of Americans believe that Republicans will stage another violent insurrection at the US Capitol if President Joe Biden wins reelection next year, according to a new poll.

That is a staggeringly high number for a country that, until Donald Trump, prided itself on a peaceful transfer of power every four (or eight) years for more than 200 years.

However, large numbers of Americans across the ideological spectrum apparently feel that this is now a thing of the past.

While this opinion was most prevalent among Democrats, more than a quarter of Republicans also believed that it is either somewhat or very likely that “there will be a violent attempt at taking over the Capitol” to stop Congress from certifying the election.

Obviously, seeing how he is the runaway favorite to win the GOP nomination next year, the result could be a reflection of the belief of Americans that Trump, specifically, would incite violence again.

It is interesting that people who voted for the former president in 2020 were least likely to say that another insurrection was upcoming if Biden won.

Among all of the demographics that were quizzed in this poll, conducted by The Economist and YouGov, young people felt most strongly that more violence was on the horizon if the Republican candidate lost.

Nearly half (46 percent) of Americans from the ages of 18 to 29 anticipate another attack on the Capitol.

The poll also found that 18 percent of people believe that Democrats would stage their own insurrection if Biden lost.

With another indictment related to the events of January 6, 2021, looming, a plurality of Americans felt that Trump should be charged with a crime. However, the country is almost evenly split on the issue.

Things are a bit clearer when it comes to whether Trump bears responsibility for what happened. Less than one-third of Americans believe that the former president is completely blameless for what happened. That number would be significantly lower if 62 percent of his own voters hadn’t expressed that they felt that way.

Nearly half of all Americans (and independents) said Trump urged his supporters to engage in violence on that day.

Overall, the country does not approve of what happened on January 6. Three out of four Americans said they disapproved of the takeover of the Capitol. This is also a position held by 60 percent of Republicans.

Finally, Americans are split on whether the congressional investigation into the January 6 insurrection and Trump’s role in it was a serious attempt to get to the bottom of what happened or an attempt to embarrass the former president.

Thirty-six percent of respondents said the probe was a good-faith effort while 32 percent believe it was politically motivated. Another 20 percent felt that it was a bit of both.

Supporters of Donald Trump breaching the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Photo credit: Brett Davis / Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)

'X' logo installed atop Twitter building, spurring San Francisco to investigate

By The Associated Press
Published July 28, 2023 

Haven Daley
APA large metal "X" sign is seen on Friday on top of the downtown San Francisco building that housed what was once Twitter.

SAN FRANCISCO — The city of San Francisco has opened a complaint and launched an investigation into a giant "X" sign that was installed Friday on top of the downtown building formerly known as Twitter headquarters as owner Elon Musk continues his rebrand of the social media platform.

City officials say replacing letters or symbols on buildings, or erecting a sign on top of one, requires a permit for design and safety reasons.

The X appeared after San Francisco police stopped workers on Monday from removing the brand's iconic bird and logo from the side of the building, saying they hadn't taped off the sidewalk to keep pedestrians safe if anything fell.

Any replacement letters or symbols would require a permit to ensure "consistency with the historic nature of the building" and to make sure additions are safely attached to the sign, Patrick Hannan, spokesperson for the Department of Building Inspection said earlier this week.

Erecting a sign on top of a building also requires a permit, Hannan said Friday.

"Planning review and approval is also necessary for the installation of this sign. The city is opening a complaint and initiating an investigation," he said in an email.

Musk unveiled a new "X" logo to replace Twitter's famous blue bird as he remakes the social media platform he bought for $44 billion last year. The X started appearing at the top of the desktop version of Twitter on Monday.

Musk, who is also CEO of Tesla, has long been fascinated with the letter X and had already renamed Twitter's corporate name to X Corp. after he bought it in October. One of his children is called "X." The child's actual name is a collection of letters and symbols.

On Friday afternoon, a worker on a lift machine made adjustments to the sign and then left.

How many transgender and intersex people live in the US? Anti-LGBTQ+ laws will impact millions

People gather in support of transgender youth during a rally at the Utah State Capitol Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2023, in Salt Lake City. New laws targeting LGBTQ+ people are proliferating in GOP-led states, but often absent from policy decisions is a clear understanding of how many people will be directly affected. 

(AP Photo/Rick Bowmer,File)

A protester outside the Kansas Statehouse holds a sign after a rally for transgender rights on the Transgender Day of Visibility, Friday, March 31, 2023, in Topeka, Kan. New laws targeting LGBTQ+ people are proliferating in GOP-led states, but often absent from policy decisions is a clear understanding of how many people will be directly affected

 (AP Photo/John Hanna, File)

BY REBECCA BOONE AND JEFF MCMILLAN
July 27, 2023

New laws targeting LGBTQ+ people are proliferating in GOP-led states, but often absent from policy decisions is a clear understanding of how many people will be directly affected.

There has been relatively scant data collected on the number of LGBTQ+ residents in the U.S., particularly intersex people — those born with physical traits that don’t fit typical definitions for male or female categories. That means lawmakers are often writing laws without the same kind of baseline information they might have for other demographic groups.

“We can’t study the impact without knowing the population,” said Christy Mallory, legal director of the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. The Williams Institute is a think tank that researches sexual orientation and gender identity demographics to inform laws and public policy decisions.

RELATED STORIES

Many transgender health bills came from a handful of far-right interest groups, AP finds

Oklahoma, Arizona governors sign transgender sports bans

Kansas lawmakers botched the drafting of a new anti-trans law, agency attorney says

Here’s a look at what we know and what we don’t know about the number of people in the U.S. who are LGBTQ+ or intersex.
___


WHY DOES IT MATTER?

Legislative decisions to ban transgender women and girls from playing school sports often fail to consider the impact on intersex students.

A new Kansas law defines a person’s sex as male or female, based on what it calls the “biological reproductive system” identified at birth, leaving no room for intersex people, and ignoring the existence of transgender and nonbinary Kansans.

Meanwhile, conversations about gender-affirming care bans were at times clouded by a discredited 2018 study that claimed kids might experience gender dysphoria because of peer influence. This led to erroneous suggestions that the number of trans people was inflated.

Arguments based on the discredited study helped gender-affirming care bans pass in Georgia, Idaho and elsewhere.

“Social media and social pressures that are put on our youth, and I do think that could play into this a little bit,” said Idaho Republican Sen. Doug Ricks during a statehouse debate earlier this year. “It’s difficult. And the conflicting testimony about the studies — there’s good arguments that validate those, and others that disvalidate that.”

While most states’ bans on gender-affirming care have attempted to carve out exceptions for people who are born intersex, they could still make it harder for intersex people to receive medical care, said Erika Lorshbough, executive director of InterACT, an advocacy group that works to advance the rights of children born with intersex traits. Physicians and other medical practitioners who treat intersex people might be confused by the laws or unsure about their potential liability, especially if an intersex patient also identifies as LGBTQ+, Lorshbough said.
___

HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE INTERSEX?

Most advocacy groups estimate that 1.7% percent of people are born intersex — the equivalent of about 5.6 million U.S. residents. That estimate is based on a review published in the American Journal of Human Biology that looked at four decades of medical literature from 1955 to 1998. The estimate includes people with extra or missing sex-linked chromosomes, and those born with other physical variations that don’t fit into categories of “male” or “female.”

Intersex people are born with at least one of about 40 naturally occurring variations relating to their genitalia, internal reproductive organs, chromosome patterns or hormones.

Not all intersex people are identified as such at birth, and those who are may still be listed as either “male” or “female” on their birth certificate. That’s because only about 16 states currently allow a gender marker designation other than “male” or “female” on birth certificates, and not all hospitals have intersex-affirming policies.

Some intersex characteristics might not be evident until puberty or later — in fact, sometimes people don’t know they are intersex until they seek treatment for infertility or undergo other unrelated medical procedures. Others might only find out if they run across medical records from their childhood, because many intersex infants and children are subjected to surgeries and treatments without their consent to make their bodies conform to categories of male or female, according to the American Academy of Family Physicians. Since 2018, the AAFP has opposed medically unnecessary genital surgeries performed on intersex children.

“Some people never know they’re intersex if they have what we think of as a milder variation,” said Lorshbough. “And there are plenty of folks with variations in sex characteristics who don’t identify as intersex, and these issues impact them equally. It’s all about consent and autonomy.”

Hospitals aren’t required to track information about how many babies are born with intersex characteristics, and there has never been a nationwide survey on intersex status done by the U.S. Census Bureau, the National Institutes of Health or another government agency that normally collect demographic data, said Lorshbough.

That means there isn’t enough data to calculate a definitive population number.
___

HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE LGBTQ+?

There are more than 13 million people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender in the U.S. ages 13 and older, including about 300,000 young people and 1.3 million adults who identify as transgender, according to the Williams Institute. Nearly half of them live in states without protections from discrimination at work, in school, in housing, public accommodations and credit.

Polling by KFF and The Washington Post shows that there are nearly 2 million people nationwide who identify as transgender or trans, representing less than 1% of all adults. The poll found that most trans adults are younger than 35 years old, and the vast majority — nearly 8 in 10 — say that transitioning made them more satisfied with their life. Two-thirds of trans adults say they realized they were trans in childhood, and about one-third say they began to understand when they were 10 years old or younger.

The Census Bureau did not add questions about sexual orientation and gender identity until 2021, though it did begin collecting data about households led by same-sex couples in the 2010 census. The 2021 U.S. Census Household Pulse Survey found that 0.6% of responding adults described themselves as transgender and 1.7% described themselves as neither male, female nor trans.

The same census survey found that 4.4% of adult respondents thought of themselves as bisexual, 3.3% said they were gay or lesbian, and 88.3% said they were straight. Around 2% said they were “something else” or that they didn’t know.
___

ARE MORE PEOPLE IDENTIFYING AS LGBTQ+ NOW?

It’s difficult to tell. Efforts to quantify the number of LGBTQ+ people, including intersex people, in the U.S. were scarce until the last few decades, and stigma likely prevented some from disclosing their identities. There is some overlap between the groups; intersex people are included in the plus sign in LGBTQ+, and some intersex people also identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or queer.

From their demographic studies in 2017 and 2022, The Williams Institute noted a slight increase in the number of young people identifying as transgender, but Mallory said additional research will give a more accurate picture.

“This kind of data collection on transgender status is very new for youth,” and some of the increase could be because more states are asking about transgender status during surveys of high school students, Mallory said. “But you know, some of it is probably youth feeling more comfortable identifying as trans.”

Fukushima residents worry nuclear plant’s wastewater release in a few weeks will be another setback

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is expected to start releasing treated radioactive wastewater into the sea within weeks. It’s unclear whether, or how, damaging that would be, but residents say they feel helpless.

BY MARI YAMAGUCHI
July 24, 2023

VIDEO

IWAKI, Japan (AP) — Beach season has started across Japan, which means seafood for holiday makers and good times for business owners. But in Fukushima, that may end soon.

Within weeks, the tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is expected to start releasing treated radioactive wastewater into the sea, a highly contested plan still facing fierce protests in and outside Japan.

Residents worry that the water discharge, 12 years after the nuclear disaster, could deal another setback to Fukushima’s image and hurt their businesses and livelihoods.


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“Without a healthy ocean, I cannot make a living.” said Yukinaga Suzuki, a 70-year-old innkeeper at Usuiso beach in Iwaki about 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of the plant. And the government has yet to announce when the water release will begin.

While officials say the possible impact would be limited to rumors, it’s not yet clear if it will be damaging to the local economy. Residents say they feel “shikataganai” — meaning helpless.

Suzuki has requested officials hold the plan at least until the swimming season ends in mid-August.

“If you ask me what I think about the water release, I’m against it. But there is nothing I can do to stop it as the government has one-sidedly crafted the plan and will release it anyway,” he said. “Releasing the water just as people are swimming at sea is totally out of line, even if there is no harm.”

The beach, he said, will be in the path of treated water traveling south on the Oyashio current from off the coast of Fukushima Daiichi. That’s where the cold Oyashio current meets the warm, northbound Kuroshio, making it a rich fishing ground.

The government and the operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, or TEPCO, have struggled to manage the massive amount of contaminated water accumulating since the 2011 nuclear disaster, and announced plans to release it to the ocean during the summer.

They say the plan is to treat the water, dilute it with more than a hundred times the seawater and then release it into the Pacific Ocean through an undersea tunnel. Doing so, they said, is safer than national and international standards require.

Suzuki is among those who are not fully convinced by the government’s awareness campaign that critics say only highlights safety. “We don’t know if it’s safe yet,” Suzuki said. “We just can’t tell until much later.”

The Usuiso area used to have more than a dozen family-run inns before the disaster. Now, Suzuki’s half-century old Suzukame, which he inherited from his parents 30 years ago, is the only one still in business after surviving the tsunami. He heads a safety committee for the area and operates its only beach house.

Suzuki says his inn guests won’t mention the water issue if they cancel their reservations and he would only have to guess. “I serve fresh local fish to my guests, and the beach house is for visitors to rest and chill out. The ocean is the source of my livelihood.”

The March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami destroyed the Fukushima Daiichi plant’s cooling systems, causing three reactors to melt and contaminating their cooling water, which has since leaked continuously. The water is collected, filtered and stored in some 1,000 tanks, which will reach their capacity in early 2024.

The government and TEPCO say the water must be removed to make room for the plant’s decommissioning, and to prevent accidental leaks from the tanks because much of the water is still contaminated and needs retreatment.

Katsumasa Okawa, who runs a seafood business in Iwaki, says those tanks containing contaminated water bother him more than the treated water release. He wants to have them removed as soon as possible, especially after seeing “immense” tanks occupying much of the plant complex during his visit few years ago.

An accidental leak would be “an ultimate strikeout ... It will cause actual damage, not reputation,” Okawa says. “I think the treated water release is unavoidable.” It’s eerie, he adds, to have to live near the damaged plant for decades.

Fukushima’s badly hit fisheries community, tourism and the economy are still recovering. The government has allocated 80 billion yen ($573 million) to support still-feeble fisheries and seafood processing and combat potential reputation damage from the water release.

His wife evacuated to her parents’ home in Yokohama, near Tokyo with their four children, but Okawa stayed in Iwaki to work on reopening the store. In July, 2011, Okawa resumed sale of fresh fish —but none from Fukushima.

Local fishing was returning to normal operation in 2021 when the government announced the water release plan.

Fukushima’s local catch today is still about one-fifth of its pre-disaster levels due to a decline in the fishing population and smaller catch sizes.

Japanese fishing organizations strongly opposed Fukushima’s water release, as they worry about further damage to the reputation of their seafood as they struggle to recover. Groups in South Korea and China have also raised concerns, turning it a political and diplomatic issue. Hong Kong has vowed to ban the import of aquatic products from Fukushima and other Japanese prefectures if Tokyo discharges treated radioactive wastewater into the sea.

China plans to step up import restrictions and Hong Kong restaurants began switching menus to exclude Japanese seafood. Agricultural Minister Tetsuro Nomura acknowledged some fishery exports from Japan have been suspended at Chinese customs, and that Japan was urging Beijing to honor science.

“Our plan is scientific and safe, and it is most important to firmly convey that and gain understanding,” TEPCO official Tomohiko Mayuzumi told The Associated Press during its plant visit. Still, people have concerns and so a final decision on the timing of the release will be a “a political decision by the government,” he said.

Japan sought support from the International Atomic Energy Agency for transparency and credibility. IAEA’s final report, released this month and handed directly to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, concluded that the method meets international standards and its environmental and health impacts would be negligible. IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said radioactivity in the water would be almost undetectable and there is no cross-border impact.

Scientists generally agree that environmental impact from the treated water would be negligible, but some call for more attention on dozens of low-dose radionuclides that remain in the water, saying data on their long-term effect on the environment and marine life is insufficient.

Radioactivity of the treated water is so low that once it hits the ocean it will quickly disperse and become almost undetectable, which makes pre-release sampling of the water important for data analysis, said University of Tokyo environmental chemistry professor Katsumi Shozugawa.

He said the release can be safely carried out and trusted “only if TEPCO strictly follows the procedures as planned.” Diligent sampling of the water, transparency and broader cross-checks — not just limited to IAEA and two labs commissioned by TEPCO and the government — is key to gaining trust, Shozugawa said.

Japanese officials characterize the treated water as a tritium issue, but it also contains dozens of other radionuclides that leaked from the damaged fuel. Though they are filtered to legally releasable levels and their environmental impact deemed minimal, they still require close scrutiny, experts say.

TEPCO and government officials say tritium is the only radionuclide inseparable from water and is being diluted to contain only a fraction of the national discharge cap, while experts say heavy dilution is needed to also sufficiently lower concentration of other radionuclides.

“If you ask their impact on the environment, honestly, we can only say we don’t know,” Shozugawa, referring to dozens of radionuclides whose leakage is not anticipated at normal reactors, he says. “But it is true that the lower the concentration, the smaller the environmental impact,” and the plan is presumably safe, he said.

The treated water is a less challenging task at the plant compared to the deadly radioactive melted debris that remain in the reactors, or the continuous, tiny leaks of radioactivity to the outside.

Shozugawa, who has been regularly measuring radioactivity of groundwater samples, fish and plants near Fukushima Daiichi plant since the disaster, says his 12 years of sampling work shows small amounts of radioactivity from the Fukushima Daiichi has continuously leaked into groundwater and the port at the plant. He says its potential impact on the ecosystem also requires closer attention than the controlled release of the treated water.

TEPCO denies new leaks from the reactors and attributes high cesium in fish sometimes caught inside the port to sediment contamination from initial leaks and a rainwater drainage.

A local fisheries cooperative executive Takayuki Yanai told a recent online event that forcing the water release without public support only triggers reputational damage and hurts Fukushima fisheries. “We don’t need additional burden to our recovery.”

“Public understanding is lacking because of distrust to the government and TEPCO,” he said. “The sense of safety only comes from trust.”

For clergy abuse survivors, Sinead O’Connor’s protest that offended so many was brave and prophetic


Irish singer Sinead O’Connor stands alone while the crowd boos her at Bob Dylan’s 30th anniversary celebration in New York on Oct. 16, 1992, 13 days after she ripped a photo of Pope John Paul II during an appearance on “Saturday Night Live,” left, and Pope John Paul II appears in his popemobil in Prague on April 21, 1990. More than 30 years later, her Saturday Night Live performance is remembered by some as an offensive act of desecration. But for others — including survivors of clergy sex abuse — O’Connor’s protest was prophetic, forecasting the global denomination’s public reckoning that was still to come.

 Cassettes and CDs by Irish singer Sinéad O’Connor are flattened by a pavement roller on New York City’s Avenue of the Americas, Oct. 21, 1992. The recordings, donated by unhappy record fans, were collected by the National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations, which planned to deliver the crushed remains to the singer. In 1992, O’Connor destroyed a photo of Pope John Paul II on U.S. national television. The pushback was swift, turning the late Irish singer-songwriter’s protest of sex abuse in the Catholic Church into a career-altering flashpoint. 

(AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File)

BY HOLLY MEYER
 July 27, 2023

In 1992, Sinéad O’Connor destroyed a photo of Pope John Paul II on U.S. national television. The pushback was swift, turning the late Irish singer-songwriter’s protest of sex abuse in the Catholic Church into a career-altering flashpoint.

More than 30 years later, her “Saturday Night Live” performance and its stark collision of popular culture and religious statement is remembered by some as an offensive act of desecration. But for others — including survivors of clergy sex abuse — O’Connor’s protest was prophetic, forecasting the global denomination’s public reckoning that was, at that point, yet to come. O’Connor, 56, died Wednesday.

The SNL moment stunned David Clohessy, a key early member of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. In his 30s at the time, he had only recently recalled the repressed memories of the abuse he suffered. He found O’Connor’s act deeply moving. It was something he and other survivors never thought possible.

That night O’Connor, head shaved and looking straight into the camera, stood alone singing Bob Marley’s song “War” a capella. She finished the final lines, “We know we will win/ We have confidence in the victory/of good over evil,” and then moved an off-screen photo of Pope John Paul II in front of the camera.

Then O’Connor ripped it to pieces. She called out, “Fight the real enemy,” before she threw the scraps to the ground. Clohessy remembers it well.

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“We were all just deeply convinced that we would go to our graves without ever seeing any public acknowledgment of the horror and without any kind of validation whatsoever,” Clohessy said. “That’s what made her words so very powerful.”

THE RIPPLES IT CAUSED

Reaction at the time was fierce from many corners. Later that month she was booed at an all-star tribute to Bob Dylan at Madison Square Garden. One group destroyed more than 200 of her albums, cassettes and CDs with a steamroller lumbering down New York’s Sixth Avenue.

The SNL performance also appalled Thomas Plante, a Catholic psychology professor at California’s Santa Clara University, and his wife who is Jewish. Plante was well aware of the issue since he was researching, evaluating and treating clerical sex offenders at the time.

“It is understandable that people would want to make strong statements about their issues with the Catholic Church, but tearing up a picture of the Pope on live TV was way over the top,” Plante said in an email. “Many people feel free to ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’ when it comes to criticism of the Catholic Church.”

He also noted the prevalence of anti-Catholic hate, especially following the Boston Globe’s 2002 report revealing widespread abuse and cover-up by the church. Plante said the clergy abuse crisis was horrible, but people often fail to recognize that it is a problem of the 20th century and earlier — cases are extremely rare in this century, he said.

“Much progress has been made and current policies and procedures are actually working,” he said.

The quarter-century legacy of John Paul II — then pope, now a saint — has been badly tarnished by evidence he turned a blind eye to abuse even when the Vatican had copiously well-documented cases and even when bishops in the U.S., facing mounting legal liability, begged the Vatican for fast-track ways to defrock abusers in the 1980s.

Vatican officials have long excused John Paul’s attitude by arguing that he had seen first-hand how priests in his native Poland were intentionally discredited with false accusations by Communist authorities, and thus believed any accusations against clerics were mere “calumnies” intended to harm the church.

O’Connor was found unresponsive Wednesday at her home in southeast London. Saddened by her passing, Brenna Moore, a theology professor at Fordham University in New York and a big fan of O’Connor, described her as “a kind of prophetic truth-teller.”

Society, especially in the English-speaking world, is used to men taking on this role, Moore said, but when a woman does it, she’s accused of being crazy and angry. Moore, referencing O’Connor’s memoir, said the singer was more than a rebel with a shaved head.


“She sort of stands in a long line of artists and poets who have a kind of rebellious punk ability to speak truth to power in a very performative way,” Moore said. “She was a profoundly spiritual person, a profound seeker of transcendence and the truth.”

FOR SOME, THE ACT WAS COURAGEOUS AND EVEN WISE

Jamie Manson, president of Catholics for Choice, was a teen living on Long Island with her traditional Catholic Italian family in 1992; she recalled just how horrified they were by O’Connor’s protest. But for Manson, who was feeling a call to the priesthood at the time, looked at it more with curiosity.

Manson called O’Connor a visionary, especially given that neither the Irish or U.S. Catholic hierarchy had yet publicly reckoned with the pervasiveness of clergy sex abuse.

“Not many people that we would call prophetic are willing to risk everything, and she was. … And she lost almost everything as a result,” Manson said. “It is very, very scary to challenge the church in a very public way. And it takes enormous bravery and a willingness to be able to let go of everything.”

Clohessy also depicted the 1992 protest as courageous: “I think young people can’t know — and older people to some extent have forgotten — just how extraordinarily powerful the Catholic hierarchy was in those days.”

Invoking the famous Martin Luther King Jr. quote, Clohessy said that “the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice. She’s proof of that. And it bends so slowly — and it bends backwards along the way.”

Attorney Jeff Anderson, who has represented victims of Catholic clergy sex abuse in numerous cases across the U.S., connected with O’Connor around the time of her SNL appearance. In a statement, Anderson called her wise and ahead of her time.

“Sinéad saw predator priests not as a ‘couple bad apples’ but as signs and proof of a deeply corrupt and almost untouchable clerical system,” Anderson said. “It took tremendous courage for her to be one of those early, lonely voices for the voiceless.”

Michael McDonnell, interim executive director of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said O’Connor “wore the anguish of victims of clergy abuse and it seems as though she knew in 1992 the horrors that hadn’t yet been revealed.

“Ultimately,” he said, “she relieved the pain for tens of thousands of victims with rebellion.”
___

Associated Press correspondent Nicole Winfield contributed from Rome. AP religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. Follow AP’s Holly Meyer at http://twitter.com/HollyAMeyer

Sinéad O’Connor, Who Told the Truth about the Catholic Church, Walks On

BY NEELY BARDWELL 

 

JULY 26, 2023

Sinéad O’Connor, Irish singer-songwriter who was known for her iconic shaved head and outspokenness both on and off-stage, died on Wednesday, July 26, at age 56. 

Born in Dublin on December 8, 1966, to parents John, an engineer, and mother, Johanna, a dressmaker, her biggest hit was a rendition of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” but what she was most known for was her appearance on Saturday Night Live in 1992. On the show, she ended an acapella performance of Bob Marley’s “War” by ripping a photo of Pope John Paul II into pieces as a stance against sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church. “Fight the real enemy,” she said. 

Sexual abuse committed by clergy of the Catholic Church was pervasive for centuries against children around the world, including in Ireland. Native American children sent to Indian Boarding Schools that were operated by Catholic Churches suffered as well, separated from their families and tribes. 

After tearing up the photo during the live performance, she was met with widespread criticism that resulted in her being booed at a Bob Dylan tribute concert at Madison Square Garden. NBC had to apologize (and never invited her back), and her album “Am I Not Your Girl?” only made it to No. 27 on the charts. Her next album “Universal Mother,” released in 1994, never broke from No. 36 on the charts.

The act of tearing up the Pope’s image was considered extremely controversial at the time, and many thought her career was over. 

“I’m not sorry I did it. It was brilliant,” O’Connor told the New York Times in an interview in 2021. “But it was very traumatising. It was open season on treating me like a crazy bitch.”

In 2021 she published a memoir, Rememberings, detailing her troubled childhood, her experience with the music industry, and her struggles with mental health. Earlier this year, she received the inaugural award for Classic Irish Album at the RTÉ Choice Music Prize awards, established to highlight Irish music of excellence. She dedicated it to Ireland’s refugee community. “You’re very welcome in Ireland,” she said. “I love you very much and I wish you happiness.”

Prior to the singer’s death, Belfast filmmaker Kathryn Ferguson had been working on a documentary film about O’Connor titled “Nothing Compares,” which is set to be released this Saturday.

Native people and the Irish have long been allies. During Ireland’s Great Famine, the Choctaws collected $170—the equivalent of $4,400 in today’s dollars—and sent it across the Atlantic Ocean to help feed the starving people in Ireland.

Black Residents are at a loss after newspaper that bound community together shuts in declining coal county

Months after Missy Nester ended The Welch News’ 100-year run, she can barely stand to walk through the office doors of the newspaper her mother taught her to read with growing up in West Virginia’s southern coalfields. It’s still too painful. 

BY LEAH WILLINGHAM

July 26, 2023


WELCH, W.Va. (AP) — Months after Missy Nester ended The Welch News’ 100-year run, she can barely stand to walk through the office doors of the newspaper her mother taught her to read with growing up in West Virginia’s southern coalfields. It’s still too painful.

The Welch News owner and publisher’s desk is covered with unpaid bills and her own paychecks — a year’s worth — she never cashed. Phones that used to ring through the day have gone silent. Tables covered with typewriters, awards and a century’s worth of other long-abandoned artifacts are reminders that her beloved paper has become an artifact, too.

Wiping away tears, Nester said she wishes people understood why she fought so hard to protect the last remaining news outlet in her community, and why it feels like the people left behind by the journalism industry are often those who need it most.

“Our people here have nothing,” said Nester, 57. “Like, can any of y’all hear us out here screaming?”

In March, the McDowell County weekly became another one of the thousands of U.S. newspapers that have shuttered since 2005, a crisis Nester called “terrifying for democracy” and one that disproportionately impacts rural Americans like her.

Residents suddenly have no way of knowing what’s going on at public meetings, which are not televised, nor are minutes or recordings posted online. Even basic tasks, like finding out about church happenings, have become challenging. The paper printed pages of religious events and directories every week and that hasn’t been replaced.

Local crises, like the desperately needed upgrade of water and sewer systems, are going unreported. And there is no one to keep disinformation in check, like when the newspaper published a series of stories that dispelled the rumors of election tampering at local precincts during last year’s May primaries.

“It was like a heartbeat, like a thread that ran through the community,” said World War II veteran Howard Wade, a retired professor specializing in Black history.

A coal truck drives past the welcome sign in Welch, W.Va. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)–

Sitting on a rocking chair in pajama pants in his ranch house at the base of lush, green hills, Wade said he hasn’t read any news since the paper stopped printing. He’s worried about the county history the newspaper chronicled throughout his life. At 97, he was born three years after it opened its doors in 1923.

The decline of American newspapers is well-documented. The people most impacted tend to be older, low-income and less likely to have graduated high school or college than people living in well-covered communities.

For McDowell residents, the news was still a shock. Many said they didn’t realize how much they depended on the paper until it was gone.

Sarah Hall, the first Black prosecutor elected in McDowell County in the 1980s, said it’s tragic when any community loses its newspaper. But for communities like hers, it’s detrimental.

Missy Nester owner of the The Welch News walks around the now closed office on Wednesday in Welch, W.Va. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)–



The 535-square-mile (1,385-square-kilometer) county is dominated by rugged mountain terrain, where residents live miles apart in hollers connected by winding roads and no interstate access, leaving people isolated. Cell and internet service is inconsistent — or nonexistent — and there are no locally-based radio or television stations.

“We’re in a unique situation because our community is unique,” she said. “We have no other substantial way of communicating.”

It bothers Hall not to know about decisions county commissioners are making with taxpayer money and she misses the legal notices the paper published informing residents about developments like utility rate increases. With the school year set to start, she’s worried families won’t know about a ministry program in early August providing free school supplies.

For Nester and her staff of three, the grief of closing the paper has felt impossible to confront after years of sacrifices, both financial and personal. Nester took out a loan and scraped together all the money she could in 2018 to save it, the crumbling building with a caving roof, cracked walls and a 1966 Goss printing press in the basement.

The Welch News team felt buoyed as protectors of democracy in a place where people sometimes feel forgotten or overlooked by the rest of the country.

Sprawling across the Cumberland Mountains of Appalachia, McDowell County was once seen as a symbol of American progress: the self-proclaimed “Heart of the Nation’s Coal Bin” was the world’s largest coal producer and attracted thousands of European immigrants and Black families fleeing the Jim Crow South looking for work and a better life.

In 1950, nearly 100,000 people lived in McDowell, and a fourth of that population was Black, unconventional in the predominately white state. The county earned the moniker the “Free State of McDowell” because of the lack of segregation and unprecedented Black representation in government.

Today, 80% of the 17,850 remaining residents are white, still making it one of West Virginia’s most diverse counties. It’s also the poorest, with some of the lowest graduation and life expectancy rates in the nation. A third of all McDowell County residents live in poverty. The per capita income is $15,474.

Over the years, the county lost big box stores, schools, thousands of jobs and people. But it still had its newspaper — one that tracked government spending, published elections, spelling bee and basketball game results and spreads with color photos and biographies of every member of the graduating class.

Now, because many older residents don’t use the internet, they are missing crucial information the newspaper would have reported on. A pandemic-era meal service for seniors was cut, and there was no easy way to inform residents. People who relied on the obituaries have struggled keeping up with loved ones’ deaths.

“Now when people die, a lot of people don’t even realize they’re dead,” said Deputy Magistrate Court Clerk Virginia Dickerson, 79, while on a break outside her office, watching coal trucks lumber by.

Dickerson, who delivered the paper when she was growing up, said losing the paper was like “losing a family member.”

“Anything that happen usually in the community and anywhere in McDowell County, it would be in that paper. Without no paper, you can’t find out nothing,” she said.

Paulina Breeden, who works behind the counter at the sole gas station in the neighboring community of Maybeury, said people still come in and ask about the paper. She’s the one who has to inform them it’s closed. They’re often incredulous.

“They say, ‘Oh, really? Are you serious?’ I mean, they were shocked,” she said.

Breeden said she trusted the information she read in The Welch News: “You hear a lot, and I know maybe in there it’s not the actual truth,” she said of rumors around town. “Let’s just read the newspaper.”

The political and socioeconomic implications of the newspaper’s closure are widespread, but not always immediately visible. Although the county is now without a local news source, residents are no strangers to news coverage — often by national outlets that focus on the poverty rate, opioid use, infrastructure woes and the declining coal industry.

The paper was a vital platform for residents to tell their story from their perspective — a lifeline for a community that’s often been misrepresented and misunderstood.

Shawn Jenkins, a pharmacy owner who works down the street from The Welch News, said he feels national coverage of McDowell County — and West Virginia in general — is overly “political, unfair and often negative.” But he never felt that way about the local newspaper.

“I never saw anything that really raised my hackles. I thought they were pretty much center line, which is the exception these days,” he said, adding that he advertised in the paper. “I wanted them to survive.”

Before Nester took over in 2018, the paper ran summaries of local government meetings written up by a county employee. That changed when 32-year-old Derek Tyson, the paper’s single reporter and editor, began covering meetings. The attention seemed to bother some local officials, who would call late at night to grumble about stories. The city of Welch declined to comment on the newspaper’s closure.

Without the paper and its journalist asking questions, residents are going to find it harder to stay informed about things that matter locally, Nester said.

“I think that’s unfair to the people that live in the community,” she said.

One of the major stories the paper was following for years is the work of the McDowell Public Service District, which focuses on upgrading systems in coal communities with aging infrastructure. For decades, some people in the county relied on mountain streams polluted with mine runoff because of disintegrating — or completely absent — systems. Others, like those in the majority-Black community of Keystone, lived under a boil water advisory for 10 years — a nearly unheard-of length of time — until the district replaced the water lines under two years ago.

Now, long-awaited federal support is expected to go out to communities with the passage of the historic bipartisan infrastructure act. But the paper won’t be there to cover it.

The void created by the disappearance of The Welch News is being filled by cable news and social media, something that deeply concerns Tyson. Much of what he sees circulating locally on Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets is unverified.

The newspaper used to act as a counter to that misinformation. During last year’s May primary, rumors ran rampant on Facebook about election tampering after some residents arrived at long-time precincts on voting day to find their names missing from the poll books.

Tyson wrote multiple stories digging into the claims and clarifying that the confusion was caused by an issue with the West Virginia Secretary of State’s voter database. Although people were forced to vote in different locations or to cast provisional ballots, all votes were counted.

During one meeting among local officials discussing the issue, a county commissioner said he believed the lack of daily news sources in the county contributed to the misinformation’s spread. He credited The Welch News for its work.

When Nester was raising her three children as a single mother in the 1990s and 2000s, the county’s older residents would stop by her house on surprise visits with meals and cash they’d tape to her front door. Many of the people who read the newspaper are aging, she said.

During her time at the newspaper, delivery drivers would drop off bread and milk with The Welch News at some houses, along with other essentials.

“I saw keeping the paper going as a way to repay them — or to try to — for everything they did to take care of me,” she said.
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