US Attorney General Says He Would Not Object to Designating Wagner a Foreign Terrorist Organization

Attorney General Merrick Garland testifies as the Senate Judiciary Committee examines the Department of Justice, at the Capitol in Washington, March 1, 2023.

March 02, 2023 
Masood Farivar

WASHINGTON —

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland says he would not "object" to designating Russia's Wagner mercenary group as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, calling its founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a "war criminal."

In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Garland was asked by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a staunch supporter of Ukraine, if he agreed that the Wagner group "should be a Foreign Terrorist Organization under U.S. law."

"I think they're an organization that is committing war crimes, an organization that's damaging the United States," Garland said, noting that the designation is made by the State Department.

Graham, along with a bipartisan group of senators, is sponsoring legislation that would direct the secretary of state to designate Wagner as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

Senator Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., questions Attorney General Merrick Garland as the Senate Judiciary Committee examines the Department of Justice, at the Capitol in Washington, March 1, 2023.

Pressed by Graham if he would "object to me making it a Foreign Terrorist Organization," Garland said, "I don't object, but I'd defer in the end to the State Department."

Although the Justice Department is not directly involved in designating foreign terrorist groups, Garland's comments amount to an endorsement in the case of Wagner.

Before making a designation, the secretary of state is required to consult both the attorney general and the treasury secretary.

"The fact that he would not object, I think, is important because what that indicates to me is the fact that in his view ... the activities of the Wagner Group throughout the world, I'd say, primarily in Africa, meet the statutory definitions," said James Petrila, a retired CIA lawyer now an adjunct professor at the George Washington University Law School.

Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin is seen at the Beloostrovskoye cemetery outside St. Petersburg, Russia, Dec. 24, 2022.

Founded in 2014, the Wagner Group is run by Prigozhin, a sanctioned oligarch with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

With an estimated 50,000 fighters in Ukraine, the majority recruited from Russia's prisons, the paramilitary force has become a veritable arm of the Russian military in Ukraine. It is also accused of committing war crimes and other abuses in Ukraine and elsewhere.

In recent months, the U.S. government has sought to crack down on the Wagner Group.

In December, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken designated the group as an "entity of particular concern."

In January, the U.S. Treasury Department labeled it a Transnational Criminal Organization, a designation that allows the government to seize and block its assets.

A still image taken from video released March 2, 2023, by founder of Russia's Wagner Group Yevgeny Prigozhin's press service, shows what it said to be Wagner fighters standing with a flag on top of a building in Bakhmut, Ukraine. 

(Press service of Concord/Handout via Reuters)

But Graham and others pressing for designating Wagner as a Foreign Terrorist Organization say these measures don't go far enough.

Of far greater consequence for the group, they say, would be an FTO designation.

Among other things, it would make providing support of any kind to Wagner tantamount to the provision of "material support to terrorism."

"What that means is that individuals who provide material support, which is broadly defined, to an FTO, have violated the material support to terrorism statutes," Petrila said.

While the designation won't end all support for Wagner, it could make some legitimate businesses that currently do business with the group more reluctant, Petrila said.

The State Department has not said whether it is considering applying the designation to Wagner. But in a recent interview with VOA, Beth van Schaack, the State Department's ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice said, "It's extremely important that the most serious consequences that we have in terms of sanctions and accountability criminal accountability, also be focused on the Wagner Group."

Prigozhin has long been in the Justice Department's crosshairs.

In 2018 he was indicted in connection with Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

As part of the effort, the Internet Research Agency, a St. Petersburg-based "troll farm" controlled by Prigozhin, allegedly created hundreds of fictitious online personas and used the stolen identities of Americans.

The FBI is offering $250,000 for information leading to his arrest.

Branding Prigozhin a "war criminal," Garland said, "Maybe that's inappropriate for me to say as a judge before getting all the evidence, but I think we have more than sufficient evidence at this point for me to feel that way."

Oleksii Kovalenko of VOA's Ukrainian Service contributed to this article.

BAN WAGNER GROUP 

INSTEAD OF PKK

MAINSTREAMING HATE: ANTI-LGBTQ FAMILY RESEARCH COUNCIL HIRES REPUBLICAN EX-CONGRESSMAN

March 02, 2023
R.G. Cravens

Republican former Rep. Jody Hice of Georgia has joined the Family Research Council (FRC) as a senior adviser to the anti-LGBTQ hate group’s longest-serving president, Tony Perkins. FRC helped launch the religious right as an overt political movement in the 1980s and remains one of the largest anti-LGBTQ organizations in the U.S. Hice described working for the anti-LGBTQ hate group as a “personal mission.”

Former Rep. Jody Hice of Georgia walks on the House steps of the U.S. Capitol on June 16, 2022. (Photo by Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images)

Since joining the group, Hice has guest-hosted multiple episodes of Perkins’ daily streaming program “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins,” where he has promoted anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. While hosting, Hice has falsely claimed that “extreme gender ideology” is causing medical professionals to target children for “experimental” surgical procedures, asserted that “gender theory” is infiltrating schools, and endorsed the work of groups that spread pseudoscientific claims about transgender people and attempt to eliminate gender-affirming healthcare in the U.S. The former Congressman has been joined on the program by multiple sitting Republican members of Congress.

Anti-LGBTQ hate groups attempt to mainstream their message within the Republican Party through direct engagement with current and former elected officials. Hice, who served four terms in Congress, is the most recent politician to join the organization. During the George H.W. Bush administration, FRC senior fellow Ken Blackwell served in the departments of State and Housing and Urban Development. Michele Bachmann, the former GOP member of Congress who also owns a clinic claiming to specialize in LGBTQ conversion therapy, serves on the FRC board of directors. Perkins was a Republican state representative in Louisiana.

The new role at FRC and retirement from the House come after Hice lost a primary election in 2022 for Georgia Secretary of State. Hice’s campaign was endorsed by former President Donald Trump in the race against incumbent Brad Raffensperger, who reportedly denied the ex-president’s request to “find” enough votes to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia. Hice, notably, made discredited election conspiracies in the state part of his unsuccessful campaign.

FRC’s continued attempts at mainstreaming anti-LGBTQ hate fall out of alignment with public opinion indicating that most Americans support LGBTQ rights including anti-discrimination laws and marriage-equality laws, among others, and that Americans’ attitudes toward transgender rights continue to trend toward support.

HICE AND FRC SHARE AN ANTI-LGBTQ RECORD

Hice was first elected to Congress in 2014 and was a member of the House Freedom Caucus – an ultra-conservative group of congressional Republicans, nearly all of whom objected to certifying President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. Before that, he was a pastor in Loganville, Georgia, and hosted multiple radio programs broadcast throughout the South and on satellite radio. He has said his first contact with FRC occurred when Perkins spoke at an event in Barrow County, Georgia, to defend a display of the Ten Commandments on government property.

That event led Hice to form his own organization dedicated to placing copies of the Ten Commandments in government buildings in order to “reclaim our Godly heritage” – a goal that resonates with white Christian nationalist ideology. Hice is also known for participating in an organized campaign to thwart and repeal tax laws that prohibit groups that do not pay federal taxes, like churches, from engaging in political activity.

Although Hice purports to defend religious freedoms, he previously said freedom of religion under the First Amendment should not apply to Islam and called Islam a “totalitarian way of life with a religious component.”

Hice has also said women should run for political office only with the permission of their husbands, and as a member of Congress, he opposed the Violence Against Women Reauthorization and Equality Acts. Hice also praised the overturn of Roe v. Wade and suggested abortion-rights activists would begin targeting reproductive rights in the states as part of a “great battle” to restrict access to reproductive and gender-affirming health care.

He is also known for his dangerous anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, a characteristic shared by FRC. In the U.S. House, he opposed legislation to protect LGBTQ people from discrimination and opposed marriage equality, claiming the “homosexual movement is destroying America” and marriage. In a recent interview while hosting Perkins’ “Washington Watch” program, Hice lamented “extreme gender ideology” as a threat to children, in reference to gender-affirming care that is necessary to the health and well-being of young LGBTQ people.

Founded in 1983, the Family Research Council is an anti-LGBTQ hate group with a long history spreading dehumanizing rhetoric and disinformation about LGBTQ people, attacking LGBTQ rights and falsely claiming that conservative Christians are under attack from LGBTQ rights advocates. The group regularly advocates for anti-LGBTQ policies while claiming to defend religious freedom. Anti-LGBTQ ideologies like those espoused by FRC are largely based on demonizing rhetoric that portrays LGBTQ people as a danger to society, not simply because of their religious beliefs.

Tony Perkins, whom Hice will advise, has spoken at a meeting of white supremacists and once oversaw a U.S. Senate campaign that purchased services from former Klan leader David Duke. He also has been instrumental in the anti-LGBTQ movement. Despite his extremism, as a former state legislator, Perkins and FRC continue to make inroads into mainstream Republican political circles.

FRC largely operates at the national level, but at least 36 state-level “policy councils” follow the FRC model, using divisive rhetoric and stoking fears of Christian persecution to advance anti-LGBTQ policy in states and cities across the country. Recently, FRC and as many as 45 other national groups, some of whom have close ties to Republican politicians, endorsed a plan to exploit unfounded fears about children’s safety to push anti-transgender policy at the state-level.

Hatewatch has reported how this kind of rhetoric is amplified by right-wing social media personalities and acted upon by extremist groups who harass and intimidate LGBTQ people, libraries and hospitals. These false claims have fueled an increase in right-wing extremism and violence against LGBTQ people in recent years. However, at a House Oversight Committee hearing on the subject in December 2022, Hice appeared to dismiss concerns expressed by survivors of the Club Q mass shooting in Colorado over increasing violence against LGBTQ people caused by the kind of false information and conspiracy theories he and FRC have spread.

ANTI-LGBTQ IDEOLOGY TOO EXTREME FOR MANY RANK-AND-FILE REPUBLICANS

Anti-LGBTQ hate groups like FRC are far from the mainstream of American public opinion. According to public opinion polling from the Public Religion Research Institute, more than 3 in 4 Americans support laws that prohibit discrimination against LGBTQ people. More than half of all Americans support such protections over “religious objections” from businessowners. The same poll also shows that nearly two-thirds (62%) of Republicans support nondiscrimination protections.

Longer-running studies of Americans’ attitudes and beliefs also show the public is not buying the anti-LGBTQ movement’s rhetoric. The General Social Survey, for example, shows broad support for gay and lesbian teachers in Americans schools and keeping gay and lesbian-themed books in public libraries. And a 2019 study from PRRI (Public Religion Research Institute) showed most Americans are comfortable having close friends who are transgender and with trans teachers in their local school.

Reflected in Hice’s hiring, anti-LGBTQ hate groups such as FRC seek and often find acceptance with Republican Party leadership. FRC’s Perkins, for example, was elected to the GOP platform committee in 2016 and 2020 – the body responsible for drafting the party’s national positions on important issues. Both years, the platform featured support for anti-transgender laws, overturning marriage equality and even the dangerous and discredited practice of conversion therapy.

The extreme anti-LGBTQ ideology of groups like FRC has caused divisions within the Republican Party. Some gay party members have publicly expressed concern that anti-LGBTQ extremism could “cleave the party” and characterized anti-LGBTQ ideologies as “fringe.” Some LGBTQ Republicans elected to state and local governments also have expressed the importance of representation within the party and pushing back on anti-LGBTQ narratives. Some have abandoned the GOP altogether.

In 2022, more than three dozen Republicans in the U.S. House supported the Respect for Marriage Act, as did a dozen Republican senators. In contrast to Hice’s adversarial approach to civil rights, after voting for the act, Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah said: “Civil rights are not a finite resource. We do not have to take from one group to give to another.”

And, although anti-LGBTQ groups including Alliance Defending Freedom, FRC and state-level organizations have attempted litigious and legislative campaigns to bring the issue back before the U.S. Supreme Court, more than two-thirds of Americans and more than half of Republicans support marriage equality.

WORK TO BE DONE IN THE SOUTH

While attitudes trend positively in every region of the country, the rollback of LGBTQ rights in the South is noticeable, with communities experiencing policy attacks at the state and local level, legal battles and Main Street anti-LGBTQ+ demonstrations. In Texas, more than three dozen bills targeting LGBTQ rights have been filed in the Republican-controlled legislature in 2023 while Gov. Greg Abbott weaponized the state’s child welfare agency against families with transgender children, and state Attorney General Ken Paxton attempted to generate a list of all trans people in the state.

In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state’s Republican-led legislature adopted and have begun enforcing a “Don’t Say Gay or Trans” bill, resulting in radical anti-inclusive education practices like book bans and jeopardizing the health and welfare of LGBTQ children.

In Tennessee, 2021 broke a record for the number of anti-LGBTQ bills adopted in a legislative session, and 2022 matched that pace. Gov. Bill Lee and the Republican-led legislature allowed the state to become the first in the nation to require businesses with public restrooms to post signs notifying customers if they allow transgender people to use their facilities, a law the state later agreed was unconstitutional. Republican state political leaders have also targeted Vanderbilt University Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, for its gender-affirming care practices.

In such a climate, public perceptions in the media tell a story that anti-LGBTQ ideologies will always be entrenched in Republican politics and in states across the South. However, Middle Tennessee State University history professor Marisa Richmond says that even though there may be few electoral consequences for Republicans who embrace anti-LGBTQ ideologies right now, history will recognize how they treated LGBTQ people.

“There’s a long history of hate here in the South, and we look back on that as historians, and it doesn’t look good for the South to embrace that level of hate in the late 19th and in the 20th century,” Richmond said. “So now, as that hate shifts more and more toward the LGBTQ community, I think this is going to play badly for the Republican party within the field of history.”

Richmond also says focusing on the state level alone misses the important progress LGBTQ advocates achieve at the local level, usually despite state-level efforts to thwart progress. Richmond, who is also one of five trans members of local appointed boards in Tennessee, noted the state’s LGBTQ community has mobilized to elect LGBTQ candidates to state and local offices and secure nondiscrimination protections in the state’s largest cities and from some of the state’s largest employers.

Even in states like Tennessee, where anti-LGBTQ ideologies have been mainstreamed in state houses and governors’ offices, public opinion reflects how out of touch anti-LGBTQ groups and politicians are: In all but three Southern states, clear majorities support both LGBTQ nondiscrimination laws and marriage equality. In the other states, opinions on marriage equality are trending positively, but haven’t yet reached a majority.

SUPPORT FOR LGBTQ RIGHTS IS THE MAINSTREAM

FRC’s history of demonizing rhetoric has often focused on the discredited and dangerous recruitment conspiracy. The anti-LGBTQ movement has long repeated this myth to stoke fear of LGBTQ people and stifle LGBTQ rights, especially at the state and local level. These prejudices are also reflected in contemporary campaigns to restrict information about LGBTQ people in public schools, ban books about LGBTQ people, attack public libraries and launch efforts to stop transgender people from receiving affirming health care or accessing public accommodations.

Political Research Associates, a social justice research and strategy center, has shown groups like FRC intentionally stoke anti-transgender hatred and spread dangerous disinformation about LGBTQ people. Other researchers have shown these institutions of the religious right engage in such practices, in part, to maintain power and relevance within the Republican Party. Hatewatch has reported on how other groups feed on this extremism and are more willing to use violence to suppress LGBTQ people and those they politically disagree with.

Like Hice, though, FRC has minimized the role of anti-LGBTQ vitriol in attacks against LGBTQ people. In a recent “Washington Watch” episode, Perkins said anti-LGBTQ activism had “nothing to do” with the violence that occurred at Club Q in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where five people were murdered, insinuating instead that the shooting happened because the alleged perpetrator is “sexually confused.”

These extremist anti-LGBTQ attitudes are fast becoming representative of the diminishing proportion of the American population who identify as white, cismale, heterosexual and evangelical. Likely because this shrinking group is overrepresented in America’s political institutions and Republican Party leadership, anti-LGBTQ policies have flourished in recent years. As America diversifies and younger populations with even more accepting attitudes toward LGBTQ people become active in politics, those intent on mainstreaming hate will likely find it harder to maintain power.

“As people age, they become more politically engaged and that’s going to play badly, I believe, in the future” for anti-LGBTQ politics,” Richmond said, suggesting the gap between younger voters’ and majority-conservative legislators’ political priorities is already evidenced in Kentucky, where voters recently rejected an anti-abortion constitutional amendment referred by the Republican-controlled state legislature, and in Georgia, where pro-LGBTQ candidates have won three U.S. senate elections in the past two years.

Carbon Dioxide Emissions Reached a Record High in 2022

The report was described as disconcerting by climate scientists.

By The Associated Press

Published on 3/2/2023 at 10:10 AM

Steam rises from the coal-fired power plant Neurath near Grevenbroich, Germany, Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2022. (AP Photo/Michael Probst, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — Communities around the world emitted more carbon dioxide in 2022 than in any other year on records dating to 1900, a result of air travel rebounding from the pandemic and more cities turning to coal as a low-cost source of power.

Emissions of the climate-warming gas that were caused by energy production grew 0.9% to reach 36.8 gigatons in 2022, the International Energy Agency reported Thursday. (The mass of one gigaton is equivalent to about 10,000 fully loaded aircraft carriers, according to NASA.)
Carbon dioxide is released when fossil fuels such as oil, coal or natural gas are burned to powers cars, planes, homes and factories. When the gas enters the atmosphere, it traps heat and contributes to the warming of the the climate.

Extreme weather events intensified last year's carbon dioxide emissions: Droughts reduced the amount of water available for hydropower, which increased the need to burn fossil fuels. And heat waves drove up demand for electricity.

Thursday's report was described as disconcerting by climate scientists, who warn that energy users around the world must cut emissions dramatically to slow the dire consequences of global warming.

“Any emissions growth — even 1% — is a failure,” said Rob Jackson, a professor of earth system science at Stanford University and chairman of the Global Carbon Project, an international group. "We can’t afford growth. We can’t afford stasis. It’s cuts or chaos for the planet. Any year with higher coal emissions is a bad year for our health and for the Earth.”

Carbon dioxide emissions from coal grew 1.6% last year. Many communities, primarily in Asia, switched from natural gas to coal to avoid high natural gas prices that were worsened by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the IEA said

And as global airline traffic increased, carbon dioxide emissions from burning oil grew 2.5%, with about half the surge resulting from the aviation sector.

Global emissions have grown in most years since 1900 and have accelerated over time, according to data from IEA. One exception was the pandemic year of 2020, when travel all but came to a standstill.

Last year's level of emissions, though a record high, was nevertheless lower than experts had expected. Increased deployment of renewable energy, electric vehicles and heat pumps together helped prevent an additional 550 megatons of carbon dioxide emissions, the IEA said.

Strict pandemic measures and weak economic growth in China also curtailed production, helping to limit overall global emissions. And in Europe, the IEA said, electricity generation from wind and solar power exceeded that of gas or nuclear for the first time.

"Without clean energy, the growth in CO2 emissions would have been nearly three times as high,” Fatih Birol, the IEA's executive director, said in a statement.

“However, we still see emissions growing from fossil fuels, hindering efforts to meet the world’s climate targets. International and national fossil fuel companies are making record revenues and need to take their share of responsibility, in line with their public pledges to meet climate goals."

Though emissions continue to grow at worrisome levels, a reversal that would help achieve the climate goals that nations have committed to remains possible, said John Sterman, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan Sustainability Initiative.

Nations must subsidize renewables, improve energy efficiency, electrify industry and transportation, set a high price for carbon emissions, reduce deforestation, plant trees and rid the system of coal, Sterman argued.

“This is a massive, massive undertaking to do all these things, but that's what's needed,” he said.

___

By CATHY BUSSEWITZ

Carbon emissions from boreal forest fires 

rose in 2021

Smoke from wildfires that burned frosty, northern forests of North America and Eurasia in 2021 contributed the most to global fire carbon emissions since 2000, according to a new study

BY DREW COSTLEY - AP Science Writer
Mar 2, 2023 

THEY CALLED IT THE 'BEAST'

A wildfire moves towards the town of Anzac from Fort McMurray, Alberta., on May 4, 2016. Smoke from boreal fires in 2021 contributed the most to global fire CO2 emissions since 2000, according to a new study in Science being released with a press briefing at the annual AAAS meeting. Using satellite-based atmospheric measurements, researchers from around the world determined that boreal fire smoke made up 23% of global fire CO2 emissions when it typically accounts for 10% of these emissions.Jason Franson - foreign subscriber, The Canadian Press

Phillip Meintzer was hours away by car from the largest fires raging in the forests of British Columbia and Alberta in summer of 2021, but the air was still thick with smoke from the Canadian infernos.

“The fires weren't next door. It was a little ways away,” Meintzer, a conservation specialist with the Calgary-based environmental group Alberta Wilderness Association. “But we spent the whole month under a blanket of smoke.”

Fires like these in North American and Eurasian boreal forests created historic amounts of climate-changing carbon dioxide in 2021, according to a new study Thursday in the journal Science.

Smoke from these wildfires made up 23% of global fire emissions — the largest share from boreal forests since 2000, said findings presented at the annual meeting of American Association for the Advancement of Science. They usually only make up 10% of global fire emissions.

That summer was particularly dry and warm in Canada — even in the country’s boreal forests, the cold, carbon-dense ecosystems in the north. In one of them, the Marguerite River Wildland Provincial Park, over 69,000 acres (28,000 hectares) of forest burned.

But such conditions will become more normal as the climate changes, leading to more intense fire seasons that could create more carbon emissions and reduce the amount of trees available for storing carbon, the study authors said.

“This warming that's massing in the Arctic and boreal regions is going to continue,” said Steve Davis, a climate scientist at the University of California, Irvine. “So we’re what we’re worried about is that it’s not actually an anomaly. It’s like the new normal. And there’s going to be a lot of these boreal forests burning in the coming years.”

Much attention has been paid to wildfires in the western United States, tropical rainforests such as the Amazon and even the Australian bush. But boreal forests have received less attention, Davis said.

That's concerning, he said, because there is a lot of carbon stored in these northern ecosystems, which are among the most rapidly warming on the planet, according to the U.N.'s panel on climate change

In addition to the carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere from boreal forest fires themselves, the loss of trees and soil from more frequent and intense wildfires could mean Earth is losing a major source of carbon storage. The danger scientists say, is that boreal forests could tip further toward emitting more carbon than they absorb.

“One very important but complicated piece of the puzzle .... is what happens to the carbon balance of boreal landscapes after large and severe fires,” said Park Williams, a climate hydrologist at UCLA who was not involved in the study.

One question with global warming, he said, is whether a longer growing season would stimulate new growth in boreal forests and pull carbon out of the atmosphere or whether warming and burning would create new sources of emissions, such as permafrost thawing.

“We don’t know what end of that ledger will be, whether we’ll be in the red or in the black,” said Dan Thompson, a fire research scientist with the Canadian Forest Service who was not involved in the study. “It is a little bit uncertain.

The study attributed the 2021 record for boreal forest fire emissions to dry and warm conditions in both North America and Eurasia, not just one or the other.

To reach their findings, researchers examined satellite data from 2000 through 2021 to measure how much carbon monoxide has been created in the world’s boreal forests and found a steady increase over the last two decades. Then they used the amount of carbon monoxide, which is more easily detectable by satellite than carbon dioxide and is created along with it during fires, to figure out how much carbon dioxide was emitted

Study co-author Davis pointed out that burning fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas and coal remains the greatest source of carbon dioxide emissions by far. But he said that, if boreal forest fires continue to become more frequent and intense, it's more likely that the forests can't sequester as much carbon as they have historically.

“If we see more and more of these fires," he said, "it could be that all of these forests are no longer helping us so much as they’re a new source of emissions to just pile on to the human emissions and make our climate challenge even greater." ___

Follow Drew Costley on Twitter: @drewcostley.
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Biden Says Labor Nominee Julie Su Represents American Dream

“She’s committed to making sure that dream is in reach for every American,” Biden said in remarks at the White House.

By The Associated Press

Published on 3/1/2023 at 5:53 PM

President Joe Biden talks about his nomination of Julie Su, left, to serve as the Secretary of Labor during an event in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, March 1, 2023. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden said Wednesday that his labor secretary nominee, Julie Su, is a “real leader” who has supported unions, enforced worker safety and protected the victims of human trafficking.

“Julie is the American dream," Biden said in remarks at the White House. “She’s committed to making sure that dream is in reach for every American.”

The daughter of an immigrant mother who arrived on a cargo ship, Su said she believes “in the transformative power of America.” She noted that a union job gave her parents a path to the middle class, one that eventually led her to college at Stanford University and law school at Harvard University.

“To all workers who are toiling in the shadows, know that we see you, we stand with you, and we will fight for you," Su said.

Su, the current deputy labor secretary, would replace the departing incumbent, former Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, whom Biden hailed by saying, “If I ever want anybody in the foxhole with me, I want Marty Walsh.”

A civil rights attorney and former head of California's labor department, Su was central to negotiations between labor and freight rail companies late last year, working to avert an economically debilitating strike. She also has worked to broaden employee training programs and crack down on wage theft. If confirmed by the Senate, Su would also be the first Asian American in the Biden administration to serve in the Cabinet at the secretary level.

Su was considered to lead the department when Biden won the White House but instead became the department’s deputy. Walsh announced his intention to leave the administration earlier this month to lead the National Hockey League Players’ Association. Su will serve as the acting secretary until the Senate acts on her nomination

Biden had been under pressure from the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus and other Asian American and Pacific Islander advocates to select Su to head the department. This administration was the first in more than two decades to not have a Cabinet secretary of AAPI descent, despite its regular declarations that it was the most diverse in history. Vice President Kamala Harris and U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai are of AAPI descent but don’t lead a Cabinet department.

Acknowledging twice the push by Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., to have an AAPI Cabinet secretary, Biden joked Wednesday that if he didn’t pick Su, he would be “run out of town.”

Su, if confirmed, would also expand the majority of women serving in the president’s Cabinet. She was confirmed by the Senate to her current role in 2021 by a 50–47 vote.

Su's nomination drew swift support from Democrats on Capitol Hill, with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer saying Tuesday that she would be “phenomenal” in the job.

“The president couldn’t have picked a better nominee," he told reporters. "I’m really excited about her, and we’re going to move to consider her nomination very, very quickly.”

But Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, the top Republican on the Senate health, education and labor committee who opposed Su when she was selected for deputy secretary, called her work overseeing the department “troubling” and “anti-worker.”

The committee should “have a full and thorough hearing process,” Cassidy said.

In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed Su to lead the state Labor and Workforce Development Agency, which included the department responsible for paying unemployment benefits during the pandemic.

The state had massive amount of fraud, estimated at $20 billion. Nearly all of that fraud was part of a hastily approved expansion of unemployment benefits by Congress that state officials said lacked key safeguards. But a state audit also blamed Newsom’s administration for “significant missteps and inaction.”

Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., who chairs the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, said she was “overjoyed” by the selection, thanking Biden in a tweet for “nominating your first AAPI Cabinet Secretary!”

“It certainly is better late than never,” Chu said in a brief interview, citing CAPAC support for Su two years ago for the top Labor post and praising Su's credentials as a leader and enforcer of labor laws including minimum wage and occupational safety standards. She said GOP criticism about Su had been fully vetted two years ago and that the coming confirmation process will show their charges “have no basis.”

Su's nomination also comes at a key moment for labor unions, which have been facing a decline in membership for decades. Unions gained some momentum as workers at major employers such as Amazon and Starbucks pushed to unionize. But Biden — an avowed pro-union president — had to work with Congress to impose a contract on rail workers last year to avoid a possible strike.

The Labor Department said just 10.1% of workers last year were union members. That figure has been cut nearly in half since 1983 and could fall further, as younger workers are less likely to belong to unions.
___

By SEUNG MIN KIM and JOSH BOAK

U$A

Communities Await First Us Limits on “Forever Chemicals”

Experts say removing them will cost billions, a burden that will fall hardest on small communities with few resources.

By The Associated Press
Published on 3/2/2023 

Eric Kleiner, center, sorts samples for experimentation as part of drinking water and PFAS research at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Center For Environmental Solutions and Emergency Response, Thursday, Feb. 16, 2023, in Cincinnati. 

(AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)

The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to propose restrictions on harmful “forever chemicals” in drinking water after finding they are dangerous in amounts so small as to be undetectable. But experts say removing them will cost billions, a burden that will fall hardest on small communities with few resources.

Concerned about the chemicals' ability to weaken children's immune systems, the EPA said last year that PFAS could cause harm at levels “much lower than previously understood.”

"We as a community of scientists and policymakers and regulators really missed the boat early on,” said Susan Pinney, director of the Center for Environmental Genetics at the University of Cincinnati.

There is also evidence the compounds are linked to low birthweight, kidney cancer and a slew of other health issues. It’s unclear what the EPA will now propose and how well it will protect people from these recently-understood harms.

PFOA and PFOS are part of a larger family of compounds called PFAS, for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, that are widespread, don’t degrade in the environment and have been around for decades. They’ve been used in nonstick pans, food packaging and firefighting foam. Their use is now mostly phased out in the U.S., but some still remain.

Water providers are preparing for tough standards and testing that will undoubtedly reveal PFOA and PFOS in communities that don’t yet know the chemicals are in their water.

“This rule would help ensure that communities are not being poisoned,” said Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz, senior attorney, toxic exposure and health at Earthjustice.

Over the last decade, an increasing number of cities and towns, often abutting manufacturing plants or Air Force bases, suddenly realized they had a problem. In 2016, for example, Sarah McKinney was on maternity leave when she got word there was too much PFOA and PFOS in the tap water in her Colorado Springs suburb. She picked up her weeks-old daughter and hustled out to buy enough bottled water for her family of five.

“If I’m just spitting it out, can I brush my teeth?” she remembers wondering.

In response to concerns from people who had been drinking the water for years, McKinney’s water utility switched to a different source, provided water bottle filling stations and installed a $2.5 million treatment system that was the first of its kind in the country, according to Lucas Hale, the water district manager. The chemicals had gottem into the water from nearby Peterson Air Force base, which then builta treatment facility.

For communities with the pollutants, it's not a cheap problem to solve.

Nationally, it could cost roughly $38 billion to remove enough of the chemicals to meet a strict EPA rule limiting them to where they can’t be detected, according to an estimate prepared by engineering consultant Black & Veatch for the American Water Works Association, an industry group. There also will be ongoing costs for filter material and testing.

The consultant looked at federal and state test results and estimated that 4% to 12% of water providers nationally will need to treat for PFAS due to the EPA rule.

Smaller, poorer communities will have a harder time affording the new systems and training staff on how to use them, experts said. And in general, smaller water providers with fewer resources already violate water quality rules more often than utilities that serve large cities.

“Small systems often need technologies that are more simple to operate,” said Jonathan Pressman, engineer and EPA water researcher. The agency offers technical assistance to states and communities and it recently made $2 billion available to states for contaminants like PFAS.

Inside the EPA’s research facility in Cincinnati, a row of vertical, forearm-sized glass tubes were partially filled with a resin material that can remove PFAS. The work ensures the agency knows how long it will last and how much PFAS it removes. That's important for designing treatment systems.

Last year the agency lowered its conservative, voluntary health thresholds to levels that tests can’t even detect – a fraction of a part per trillion. In 2016, it was 70 ppt. Before that, it was even higher. As the EPA recognizes the increased danger of these compounds, it will mean people who were once told their water was safe to drink will find out it actually requires treatment.

When people feel misled about the safety of their tap water, they are less likely to drink it. Instead, they tend to reach for expensive bottled water and consume sugary drinks more often, choices associated with health problems like diabetes.

"We do have challenges in this community with trust,” said Abel Moreno, the district manager of the South Adams County Water & Sewer District that serves Commerce City, an industrial stretch of Denver. Contaminants leaked from a nearby chemical manufacturing plant decades ago. Although the district built a facility to treat the contamination, it sparked long-simmering distrust in the predominantly Latino neighborhood, and questions about how long people had been exposed.

Last year, Betty Rivas was startled by a letter telling her that the drinking fountains her 8-year-old used at school weren't safe. PFAS stories had been in the local news and the school district told families to use bottled water. It reinforced Rivas’s fears.

“With this recent PFAS issue, it’s one more reason to be certain that you shouldn’t drink the water in Commerce City,” she said.

Moreno responded that the district tested for PFAS long before the news reports, in 2018. It discovered extremely high levels in certain wells, but once the water went through the treatment plant, it didn't surpass the EPA health advisory threshold in place at the time. Moreno's agency closed the wells. He said the letter Rivas received was frustrating because PFAS hadn't spiked — it had just made the news. Now, the district purchases and mixes in water from Denver to keep PFAS at undetectable levels and plans to build a treatment plant for a permanent fix.

Across the U.S., so far only local utilities and state regulators have imposed changes, not the federal government. Michigan set a drinking water limit and paid for testing. Those tests helped quickly find and fix some places with contamination and Michigan officials have said since then its limits haven't proved too expensive.

New standards, however, will force tradeoffs, according to Chad Seidel, president of a water consultant company.

“Resources going towards addressing this are in some ways coming at a cost” of other needs, like removing dangerous lead pipes and replacing aged water mains, he said.

Kalmuss-Katz of Earthjustice said too many people are drinking contaminated water. Cost can't be a barrier.

“The solution is to do whatever you have to do to ensure that people are not getting sick,” he said.

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By MICHAEL PHILLIS and BRITTANY PETERSON

Biden Administration Announces Measures to Curb Illegal Child Labor

March 02, 2023 
Aline Barros

Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra 

The Biden administration this week announced a task force and extra measures to curb child labor in response to a significant increase in the illegal employment of migrant children in the United States and a recent New York Times investigation of migrant child labor.

The Labor Department reported on Monday a 70% increase in child labor violations since 2018, and it said that nearly 835 companies violated child labor laws in fiscal 2022.

“Every child in this country, regardless of their circumstance, deserves protection and care as we would expect for our own child,” Xavier Becerra, secretary of health and human services, said in a statement to the press.

The number of migrant children arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border without parents has steadily grown in recent years. In fiscal 2020, 33,239 unaccompanied children were processed at the border. In 2021, that number jumped to 146,925, followed by 152,057 migrant children in 2022 and 46,825 so far in fiscal 2023.

They are largely from Central America and are first placed in U.S. custody.

“The government then releases them into the custody of a sponsor - so in some cases, it's a family member; in some cases, it's a family friend - while these kids are going through their immigration court proceedings. And what they [reporters] found was many of these kids are ending up in exploitative labor situations,” said Jennifer Podkul, vice president for policy and advocacy at Kids in Need of Defense.

Investigations by the Times and Reuters found children as young as 12 working shifts of more than 10 hours in dangerous conditions across the United States in multiple industries, including food processing plants, farms and slaughterhouses. Many of them were not enrolled in school.

Labor Secretary Marty Walsh 

In a statement, U.S. Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh said, “Everyone has a responsibility here. This is not a 19th-century problem - this is a today problem. We need Congress to come to the table, we need states to come to the table. This is a problem that will take all of us to stop.”

Migrant advocates say they have been urging the government to implement more protective measures to make sure migrant children are safe once they are released from U.S. government custody.

“There were some really tragic stories about very dangerous working conditions and wholly inappropriate working conditions for children,” Podkul said.

Following the Times investigation, Biden officials announced new measures, including efforts nationwide to use “all available enforcement tools, including penalties, injunctions, stopping the movement of goods made with child labor, and criminal referrals where warranted.

“And today, the Department of Labor and HHS announced that they will create a new interagency task force to combat child exploitation. They will also increase scrutiny of companies that do business with employers who violate child labor laws,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday.

Chiara Galli, an assistant professor at the University of Chicago and a migration and asylum scholar with a focus on children, said unaccompanied minors often come from very low-income backgrounds, and they usually have relatives relying on them to send money back home. Those factors help make them a target for exploitative situations as work becomes normalized in their lives.

 

Migrant children play soccer inside a shelter in Tijuana, Mexico, Dec. 21, 2022.

Children from poor backgrounds from Central American countries more often than not had to drop out of school to work at an early age, Galli said.

“They struggle in many realms. They struggle in school because they've had interrupted schooling and it's very hard to catch up. … Schools aren't super well-equipped to help kids who maybe had to drop out two [or] three years before migration because they had to help their families and work,” she said.

Since the Times report, U.S. government officials have said they are investigating the employment of children at various companies, including Hearthside Food Solutions, one of the companies cited in the report.

A spokesperson from Hearthside wrote in an email to VOA that the company would work with the Department of Labor in its investigation and said it was appalled by the migrant child labor taking place at one of its locations.

“Our hearts break for the young people whose stories are documented in the [Times] article,” according to a statement from Hearthside.

The penalty in the U.S. for a child labor violation is $15,138 per child, which some U.S. officials and migrant children advocates say is not high enough.

“Everyone from employers to local law enforcement and civic leaders must do their part to protect children,” Becerra said.