CRYPTO CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Senators write a scathing letter to Binance alleging it’s a ‘hotbed of illegal financial activity’ and has helped pay criminals billions

BYOLGA KHARIF AND BLOOMBERG
March 2, 2023 

Changpeng Zhao, Co-Founder & CEO, Binance, at Media Village during day one of Web Summit 2022 at the Altice Arena in Lisbon, Portugal.
BEN MCSHANE—SPORTSFILE FOR WEB SUMMIT/GETTY IMAGES

US Senators representing both Democrats and Republicans are demanding that Binance and Binance.US provide a detailed accounting of their finances and efforts to maintain regulatory compliance, according to a letter signed by Senators Elizabeth Warren, Chris Van Hollen and Roger Marshall

“[What] little information about Binance’s finances is available to the public suggests that the exchange is a hotbed of illegal financial activity that has facilitated over $10 billion in payments to criminals and sanctions evaders,” the senators wrote in the letter, which was dated March 1.

The letter, addressed to Binance.US President Brian Shroder and Binance Chief Executive Officer Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, cited recent Reuters reporting that cast doubt on the extent to which the two entities were really independent of each other. This line of questioning echoes a recent court filing from Texas officials related to the proposed Binance.US acquisition of the bankrupt crypto broker Voyager Digital. Binance and Binance.US have the same majority owner in Zhao, according to the details laid out in the Texas filing. The global entity had secret access to a bank account belonging to the US exchange, according the Reuters report.

Binance is the world’s biggest crypto exchange, with nearly 60% market share as of mid-February, according to research firm CryptoCompare. Over the past several years, it’s faced investigations from US agencies including the Department of Justice, the Internal Revenue Service and the Securities and Exchange Commission. The senators’ letter cited “investigations into criminal sanctions evasion, money laundering conspiracy, unlicensed money transmission, questions about its financial health, and increased scrutiny over its intentionally ‘opaque corporate structure.’”

That increasing scrutiny has also extended to Binance partners and counterparties. In February, the issuer of a Binance-branded stablecoin acknowledged that it had received a Wells notice from the SEC. The company, Paxos, had also been directed by the New York State Department of Financial Services to stop any further issuance of the BUSD stablecoin, which was at the time the third-largest in the market by circulation. Earlier this year, investigators identified Binance as a counterparty to Bitzlato, a digital-asset platform accused of processing millions of dollars in illegal funds.

The senators allege in the letter that Binance allowed US users to access its global site, which they are supposed to be prohibited from using. It likened Binance to the collapsed FTX exchange, which filed for bankruptcy in November after revealing it misused customer funds.

“Mr. Zhao’s assertion that Binance.US is fully independent is eerily similar to claims Sam Bankman-Fried made regarding the distinction between FTX US and FTX – claims that appear to be false, given that FTX US has filed for bankruptcy, its users have lost access to their funds, and its new CEO has declared that it is, in fact, insolvent,” the senators wrote. “With this scheme in place, and in pursuit of profits, Binance has intentionally allowed US-based users to illegally access and trade unregulated products on the main exchange.”

The letter criticized the exchange’s compliance efforts, saying: “Binance’s business strategy appears to depend, at least in part, on the maintenance of a laughably weak anti-money laundering compliance program.”

Binance’s Chief Strategy Officer Patrick Hillmann told Bloomberg in a recent interview that the exchange had compliance “gaps” in the past, but has since addressed and closed them. Hillmann said the company is in settlement discussions with US regulators but couldn’t provide a timeline or a potential settlement amount. Binance also hired a new chief compliance officer in January: Noah Perlman joined the exchange after a stint at the Winklevoss-founded Gemini Trust.

“Unfortunately, a lot of misinformation has been spread about our company and we look forward to correcting the record,” Binance said in a statement to Bloomberg. “As a globally regulated exchange, we receive queries from officials in jurisdictions in which we operate on a regular basis and we always respond in an attempt to both explain our business operations and cooperate with our regulators. Binance.com does not operate in the US, nor do we have US-based customers, however we appreciate the senators’ request and will provide information to help them better understand why we remain the most trusted platform with users across the globe.”


Binance.US didn’t return a request seeking comment.

SEC objections to Voyager-Binance deal criticized by U.S. judge

By Dietrich Knauth

Representations of cryptocurrencies and Voyager Digital logo 

are seen in this illustration taken, July 7, 2022. 

REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustrations/File Photo


March 2 (Reuters) - A U.S. bankruptcy judge on Thursday criticized the Securities and Exchange Commision for casting vague doubts about crypto lender Voyager Digital's proposed sale to Binance.US, saying the regulator had essentially asked to "stop everybody in their tracks" without explaining how to address its concerns.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Michael Wiles made the remarks at a court hearing in New York to consider Voyager Digital's restructuring plan that would sell its assets and transfer its customers to crypto exchange Binance.US.

Even if Wiles confirms the plan, the sale, which Voyager values at $1.3 billion based on current crypto prices, cannot close until it gets final approval from the SEC and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which has also raised doubts about the deal.

The SEC, which has objected to the sale, is currently investigating whether Voyager's crypto lending business involved the sale of unregistered securities. It has raised concerns in court filings that Voyager cannot prove that the Binance deal or any other crypto transaction complies with U.S. securities law.

When pressed by Wiles as to whether the SEC believed that the Voyager sale violated U.S. securities laws, SEC attorney William Uptegrove did not have a definite answer.

"We can't take a position at this point," Uptegrove said. "The SEC is a deliberative body, and it's process is a nonpublic one by federal law."

Wiles was not satisfied with that response.

"Deliberative is one thing, but what have you done?" Wiles asked. "If there are reasons to be concerned here, I need to hear specifics."

Wiles is expected to rule on whether Voyager's bankruptcy plan should be confirmed later on Thursday.

The Binance transaction includes a $20 million cash payment and an agreement to transfer Voyager's customers to Binance.US's crypto exchange. The crypto assets deposited by Voyager customers account for the bulk of the deal's valuation, according court documents.

Once Voyager's customers have Binance.US accounts in place, they will be able to make withdrawals for the first time since Voyager froze their accounts last summer.

Voyager filed for bankruptcy in July, months after the crash of major crypto tokens TerraUSD and Luna sent shockwaves across the digital asset industry.

It estimates the sale will allow customers to recover 73% of the value of their deposits at the time of Voyager's bankruptcy filing, the company's attorney Christine Okike said at Thursday's hearing.

CFIUS did not formally object to the Binance sale, but it warned that its ongoing review of national security concerns could end up blocking the deal.

Binance.US has said that it is "fully independent" of its international parent company Binance, which is owned by Chinese-born and Singapore-based Changpeng Zhao.

Volunteer work at a Romanian shelter inspires Northeastern graduate to write play about survivors of sex trafficking

In a simple setup, bunk beds are arranged on stage in a shared bedroom as women go about their daily routines—studying, putting on makeup or preparing for a job interview. They are interrupted in their banter when a 15-year-old enters the shelter for the first time, holding a duffel bag with her belongings.

This moment of normality is a far cry from where they came from. All are survivors of sex trafficking in Romania.

The opening scene is part of Northeastern graduate Bianca Vranceanu’s play, inspired by her volunteering at the Open Doors Foundation while living and visiting Romania.

The shelter rehabilitates Romanian women who have escaped human trafficking. Women typically stay for 18 months, where they receive psychological care, learn life skills, and are assisted in finding jobs and apartments after they leave.

During her volunteering, Vranceanu developed relationships and friendships with the women.

“I realized that these situations could happen to anyone, no matter their appearance or background,” says Vranceanu. “Human trafficking could happen to anyone.”

The play will undergo a two-week intensive workshop at Mills College at Northeastern University in Oakland, California. Readings of the play will run from March 19 to April 2, with two Friday and Saturday performances set a week apart.

 

Victor Talmadge, professor of the practice and director of theater studies, poses for a portrait at Lisser Hall in Oakland, California. Photo by Ruby Wallau for Northeastern University

“What I find exciting, as much as anything, is having her presence on campus here in Oakland,” says Victor Talmadge, a professor of the practice and director of Theater Studies at Mills. “But also, the format is relatively untraditional in that it’s a playwrighters workshop with a focus on her and making sure that she gets the time to refine her piece as much as she can.”

The workshop replicates the National Playwrights Conference at the O’Neill Theater Center in Connecticut. The process allows the playwright to work with a director and actors to revise the script. In addition, there are two public performance readings during the program to allow for revisions.

It is the first time the Mills campus is doing anything like this, at least as far as Talmadge knows. He began working in the theater program at Mills in 2014.

“We’ve never been lucky enough to have a playwright in residence,” says Talmadge. “This is the first time we’ve produced a new play or workshopped a play from a playwright outside of the Mills campus.”

It was only a year ago when Vranceanu wrote this play in a class taught by professor Melinda Lopez at the Boston campus. Lopez says she was taking off as a writer when she proposed writing a play about the women in the shelter.

Lopez, who Vranceanu considers her mentor, worked with her to approach the material ethically.

 

Invisible no more: Northeastern professors study mental and physical health of teen victims of sex trafficking

“She made this beautiful container that allows for the humanity of these individuals and allows them to be more than their past circumstances,” says Lopez.

The story of the women explores three phases of their life—their childhood, human trafficking experience, and their rehabilitation at the shelter. The women also come from different backgrounds and range in age from 15 to 27.

While developing the play, Vranceanu knew the stories were heavily rooted in trauma and wanted to implement a “Do No Harm” ethical approach in every production stage.

This began with assuring the women she interviewed were comfortable and supported during the interview process by having a psychologist present in case they were triggered. Vranceanu also secured their consent to tell their stories while keeping her subjects anonymous by changing their names and not providing details that would expose their location.

Vranceanu also considered how the actors would deal with the material on stage. She provided outlets for them during their performance—like doing origami, putting makeup on, or even dancing to help relieve stress and ground themselves.

Lastly, Vranceanu thought about the audience once they finished the play. She wrote a mandatory talkback at the end of each performance so the audience could digest the information, communicate, and ask questions to help them process the material before moving forward.

In the future, Vranceanu would like to have a production of the play take place. Eventually, she hopes to pitch the play to theater companies in the area.

“It explores their courage, their trust and their resilience,” says Vranceanu. “I want it to be this empowering story that showcases their strength.”

“I wrote this play from a place of passion,” Vranceanu added. “It’s a topic and story that means so much to me.”

Beth Treffeisen is a Northeastern Global News reporter. Email her at b.treffeisen@northeastern.edu. Follow her on Twitter @beth_treffeisen.

CAPITALI$T ANARCHY

One Year Later, There’s No End in Sight to the Baby Formula Shortage

Many store shelves remain bare as the private and government response struggles to produce results and federal aid dries up. For parents of color most of all, it’s been a year of pain and panic.

CHABELI CARRAZANA, 

THE 19TH 

FEBRUARY 27, 2023

Shelves of baby formula with sign about customer limits due to supply shortage, Publix, West Palm Beach, Florida.

LINDSEY NICHOLSON/UCG/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY IMAGES

This story was originally published by The 19th

Amber Romero’s son, Max, has known nothing but a formula shortage.

He was born in February 2022, the same month that the largest formula plant in the country closed down due to a recall. This has left Romero, a breast cancer survivor who had to rely on formula, in an impossible situation. Her son’s only food source is routinely missing — and only through perseverance, a network of friends and strangers on the Internet have they been able to piece together a steady supply as long as they have.

When Max turns 1 this month and begins transitioning away from formula, it’ll be a somber reminder that the shortage has outlasted them, and not the other way around.

“We have never had any normalcy with this situation. I don’t know what it’s like to grab a few things at the grocery store and pick up some formula.”


“We have never had any normalcy with this situation. I don’t know what it’s like to grab a few things at the grocery store and pick up some formula,” said Romero, 41.

The ongoing formula shortage, which peaked in May and June last year, has largely fallen out of public awareness. In-stock numbers have improved, and the country appears to have moved on to the next crisis (though a scarcity of eggs, parents noted, is not as panic-inducing as a shortage of the one food many babies eat). Yet families in many parts of the country still report bare store shelves and limited options, particularly in rural communities with fewer retailers. Big-box stores, including CVS and Target, continue to limit how much formula a family can buy at one time. And starting next month, low-income families who rely on federal assistance to pay for formula will have even fewer options as waivers enacted during the height of the crisis begin to expire.

By now, the shortage has been going on for so long that all types of formula are missing from stores, not just the sensitive brands that were initially — and are still — in short supply. Romero’s son drinks Enfamil Neuropro, a brand that wasn’t even manufactured at the Abbott Nutrition plant that shut down last year. Enfamil is a brand of Reckitt, which was the second-largest formula producer in the United States until recently, when it took over more than 50 percent of the market share from Abbott after desperate parents switched their kids over.

In the past year, Romero turned to friends in her home of Des Moines, Iowa, for help on social media, posting to Facebook when she was low and asking others to look out for her son’s brand. The added pressure she feels as a first-time parent, navigating the sea of unknowns that already come with a new baby, has felt suffocating at times.

“As soon as I start to see [our formula stash] go down — it’s almost like panic for me. My husband sometimes thinks I’m overreacting. I don’t know if it’s a motherly-instinct-type thing pulling through, but it’s stressful,” Romero said.

A formula shortage like this was poised to happen at any moment if just one component of the supply chain broke down. Because of heavy regulation, three companies — Abbott, Reckitt and Gerber — controlled almost the entire formula market in the United States at the start of the shortage. Between them they operate just nine factories, and the one that shut down was the largest. On top of that, as much 65 percent of all formula is purchased by families on WIC, the supplemental program for low-income women and children. But state contracts limit the types of formula WIC participants can purchase, so when shortages began, shelves emptied quickly.

“It is one of those things where you don’t really know how messed up the system is until the system breaks completely.”

“It is one of those things where you don’t really know how messed up the system is until the system breaks completely,” said Elyssa Schmier, the vice president for government relations at MomsRising, an advocacy group that has worked with President Joe Biden’s administration on solutions to the formula crisis.

The same communities that struggle with access to food are seeing those issues again with the formula shortage, and there hasn’t been a clear answer from the Biden administration or the private companies as to why those distribution challenges have lingered for a year.

Low-income families and parents of color are more likely to be on WIC and purchase formula, while also being overrepresented in jobs that don’t allow them the flexibility to pump or breastfeed. Parents of color are also less likely to live near hospitals that offer breastfeeding support. By the time babies are six months old, when they generally start consuming food as well as milk, only about 19 percent of Black women and 24 percent of Latinas are still exclusively breastfeeding, compared with 27 percent of White women, according to a 2019 estimate from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The formula crisis is a microcosm of the broader systemic challenges facing low-income families accessing basic necessities, said Jamila Taylor, president and CEO of the National WIC Organization, a nonprofit that works with state and local WIC agencies. Taylor said the agency’s partners on the ground have also found that higher-income people from other communities have gone into neighborhoods with higher need and purchased formula there.

“Those that ​‘have’ have contributed to the shortage among other families that need it,” Taylor said. ​“There are still some real challenges on the ground. And to be quite honest, the White House — they weren’t as responsive as they should have been initially when it came to this issue, so we’re kind of still trying to play catch up.”

According to data from NielsonIQ, on average about 13 percent of formula stock has been missing from store shelves over the past eight weeks. At the worst of the shortage, in late May, about 24 percent of stock was missing. The shortage is worst in Southern states, including Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, as well as Colorado and California, where 15 to 20 percent of formula was out of stock over the past two months, according to NielsonIQ.

Nationwide, about 16 percent of families reported difficulty obtaining formula during the first week of January, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Marginalized communities struggled the most: 30 percent of Latinx families and 19 percent of Black families reported difficulty, compared with 12 percent of White families. About 8 percent of families said they had less than a week of formula on hand. Half of all families said they switched formula brands and 35 percent received formula online or from family and friends, while some turned to more drastic options, including watering formula down (5 percent) and making their own (2 percent).

Andrea Ippolito, the founder of SimpliFed, a virtual breastfeeding and baby feeding support platform, said that a year later, the frustration among her clients is that no systemic changes have been put in place.

“These are our more vulnerable humans, and we’ve put band-aids on huge, gaping holes in the system,” she said. ​“We have too few players that control too much of the market.”

The federal government is still trying to piece together exactly what went wrong. The Department of Justice last month opened a criminal investigation into the Abbott facility in Michigan that shut down on February 17, 2022. Initially, the Food and Drug Administration launched an investigation into Abbott after four infants became sick with bacterial infections. Abbott said further investigations found no ​“definitive link” between its formula and the babies’ illnesses.

A whistleblower complaint alerted the FDA to potential safety concerns at the Michigan plant in October 2021, but it didn’t reach the highest officials at the FDA until February 2022, a breakdown in communication that contributed to the botched response to the crisis. Last month, the head FDA official overseeing the formula shortage, Frank Yiannas, resigned as a result. The FDA is now beginning a significant overhaul of its entire food safety division, with plans to put one person in charge of overseeing food safety and policy.

The FDA said in a statement that ensuring the availability of safe infant formula is ​“of the utmost importance to the agency,” adding that it ​“has made significant progress in the last year in its efforts to ensure nutritious, safe infant formulas (including specialty metabolic formulas) are on store shelves for Americans who rely on these products.”

As the federal response is ongoing, it will still likely be some time before the situation stabilizes for consumers.

In December, Robert Cleveland, Reckitt’s senior vice president of North America and Europe nutrition, said he expects the shortage to ​“persist to some degree” until the spring. In the meantime, tariffs on international formula have been reinstated after Congress’ Formula Act expired at the end of 2022. That means it will be more costly for stores to stock those formulas.

It’s all happening as the waivers created for families on WIC start to phase out in the coming months, leaving no safety net.

As of March 1, WIC participants will once again be limited on which brand of formula they can purchase using the program. States have a contract with a singular manufacturer, either Abbott, Reckitt or Gerber, which have held all WIC contracts for three decades. At the start of the shortage, a rule was relaxed to allow WIC families to purchase whatever formula they can find. But soon, they will be restricted to the formula their state contracts with.

On May 1, WIC families will also no longer be able to use WIC to buy larger or varied container sizes of formula, eliminating a flexibility also designed to increase availability for families. Formula comes in either a powder or liquid form in multiple sizes.

By July 1, flexibilities that allowed families to purchase imported specialty formulas with WIC will also expire.

Advocates want to see those changes made permanent.

“They can’t be temporary changes because we can’t go through this again,” Taylor said. ​“We saw it blow up for families and be such a challenging issue — not to mention the mental health impact that it had on moms.”

Kathleen Nagy, a mother of an 18-month-old and 4-month-old in New Jersey, has now been through the formula shortage with both of her kids. Her older daughter was still on formula, a specific Enfamil brand for children with dairy allergies called Nutramigen, when the shortage began. But Nagy couldn’t find Nutramigen at the start of 2022, driving to ​“seven, eight, nine different stores” to find it. Even though she had WIC, and even though her state contracted with Enfamil already, she said her local WIC office couldn’t ship her the formula after March 2022. They couldn’t find it, either.

When her son was born in September, they were OK until about November, when she started noticing that his formula, a sensitive type called Enfamil Gentlease, was also missing from stores. They had to begin buying larger boxes of powder formula at $50 each — it was the only thing left. It lasted them, at most, two weeks.

“I can’t keep doing that,” Nagy said. ​“It’s super stressful.”

Some changes to the WIC program could help parents in the case of another shortage, advocates said. Allowing families to use WIC to purchase items online could help mitigate the added transportation and regional issues with the shortage for families who are already low-income. So would allowing them to use their WIC benefits in another state.

“I have people begging, ‘Where can you find this?’”

In West Virginia, where Breanna Dietrich runs a Facebook group for parents searching for formula, that’s a constant issue.

The families in the rural area she helps live near the border with Ohio. On her Facebook page, which has nearly doubled in size since May, it’s often the case that families in one state have the formula a family is looking for in another. But parents may not have the funds to travel to get it or to pay for formula without using WIC.

“I have people begging, ​‘Where can you find this?’” said Dietrich, 36.

Dietrich’s youngest daughter was on formula when the shortage began, and she said the impact on her family was profound. When Dietrich’s eldest daughter was recently out of town for a cheerleading competition, she sent her a picture of the formula aisle at a grocery store. Her older son also reflexively walked down the formula aisle when he stopped at Kroger recently, and sent a photo to his mom. In both photos, the shelves were largely empty.

“The fact that my children that are teenagers see it because they’ve been there with the baby? The mental side of this — I am still not OK,” she said.

There are a few potential solutions in the works. The FDA announced last month that it is creating a ​“pathway” for international formula providers brought in during the shortage to continue marketing their products while simultaneously working toward FDA accreditation to stay in the U.S. market. Eleven companies have expressed interest in doing so.

The agency is using a pandemic data analysis tool to help track in-stock rates of formula and anticipate shortages. It’s also establishing a new Office of Critical Foods to manage oversight of medical foods and formula that people rely on as their singular source of nutrition.

In California, a bill has been introduced that would create a formula stockpile for the state, similar to supply build-ups for medication. Abbott also recently announced plans to open a second U.S. plant in Ohio, but commercial production of formula isn’t slated until 2027.

Schmier said that in working with the administration it’s clear some of the issues are down to the private companies — “[the administration] can’t get into a truck and distribute formula from a private manufacturer, so some of the concerns are hyper-localized,” she said. But the federal government does have the ability to make permanent the regulations it has changed in the past year.

The moment to act is now, she said.

“While that crisis is still really fresh in the minds of a lot of people, there’s far more that probably could be done in this area to make sure that nothing happens in the future,” Schmier said. “…We are not totally out of the woods. It should never be that one factory goes down and the entire country is thrown into a tailspin.”

For parents like Romero, what comes next won’t soon erase the pain of the past year. She said she felt misled by formula companies and the federal government when they gave assurances at the height of the shortage in the spring that the situation would stabilize in a few months.

But that help never came in time for her and her son.

“I’m kind of like, ​‘What is it now? What’s causing the hold-up now?’” she said. ​“We as a country say that we want to put our kids first and we don’t. We’ve failed mothers and kids so much.”

Peasant Wages for Lordly Feats

Medieval Times performers strike against dismal pay and hazardous conditions.

EMILY JANAKIRAM 

IN THESE TIMES

MARCH 2, 2023

An illustration of a knight holding an "Unfair Labor Practice Strike" sign while on horseback.P

HOTO COURTESY OF MEDIEVAL TIMES PERFORMERS UNITED

Outside the Medieval Times castle in Buena Park, Calif., a sudden Monty Python-like spectacle emerges — twoscore knights, queens, squires and trumpeters, all marching on the boss to demand a fair contract. The protest is part of an indefinite unfair labor practice strike that comes after three months of stalled negotiations between newly unionized workers and Medieval Times management.

In 2022, workers at two of Medieval Times’ ten castles unionized, claiming that the medieval-themed dinner theater was paying them peasant wages to enact lordly feats of strength — jousting on horseback, with real weapons. ​“I absolutely love my job, and the people that I work with,” says Jake Bowman, a knight speaking from the picket line in California. But Bowman makes just $18.50 an hour in one of the highest cost-of-living regions in the country, a wage he says is almost impossible to live on. ​“One of our knights is sleeping in his car right now,” Bowman adds. According to a post by @MTUnitedNJ on Twitter, stable hands — who take care of the horses essential to the show — make so little that they qualify for food stamps. The union demands wages be increased to the hourly living wage minimum for Orange County, which is currently estimated to be $23.66.

According to Monica Garza, who works as a queen at the unionized Medieval Times castle in Lyndhurst, N.J., as well as Erin Zapcic, a queen and union steward in Buena Park, in bargaining sessions, the company told workers at each castle that it does have money — it just chooses not to spend it on workers. Medieval Times management did not respond to multiple email requests for comment.

Knights are sleeping in their cars, while stable hands make so little they qualify for food stamps.

Instead, the largesse of the kingdom is being doled out to those who bend the knee. The five workers interviewed for this article confirmed that in January, nonunion castles received 20% to 25% raises while union castles were offered 2% to 3% in negotiations, which worked out to mere cents per hour. Multiple workers called this figure ​“a slap in the face.” Further, they say, some job roles are being undervalued. Trumpeters were initially not offered raises at all, according to Jessica Gibson, a trumpeter with the New Jersey location. ​“In their mind, we play a few calls [to announce ceremonies],” Gibson says. ​“We do so much more — we’re backstage helping the queens set up, doing radio communications — but they don’t see that.”

In addition to low pay, workers who spoke with In These Times all named serious safety concerns as one of their top grievances. ​“You’re working with live animals in a live show, where real weapons are swung at you,” Bowman says. Jonathan Beckas, a knight at the Medieval Times castle in New Jersey who goes by J.C., recounted a recent incident when he was tossed from a horse because management scheduled extremely noisy construction during rehearsals — a nail gun went off and startled the horse. J.C. says he only avoided injury because, as someone who was trained in stage combat before joining Medieval Times, he managed to fall and land with proper technique.

Workers say management’s training methods also expose them to risk of injury. Sean Quigley, a former ​“lord marshal” at the Lyndhurst castle (he left in January), says his Medieval Times instructor had a horse throw him off without warning during his knight training in 2017. Quigley, who says he was provided no helmet or protective gear, landed fully on his back and bruised his spine. Since then, workers say, the only improvements to the safety measures is that female performers, such as queens, now wear helmets when they ride a horse — if there are enough helmets. ​“There are very obvious safety measures that are overlooked,” says Garza.

The largesse of the kingdom is being doled out to those who bend the knee, with nonunion castles receiving 20% to 25% raises in contrast to the 2% to 3% being offered to unionized workers.

Chronic understaffing further increases the safety risks, workers say. ​“We never have enough people,” Bowman says. All the workers In These Times spoke to say understaffing leads actors to perform the strenuous jousting act several times back-to-back, which heightens the risk of injury. According to Garza, there are also no dedicated event staff and virtually no security, leaving workers on stage open to harassment. She recounts being physically accosted on stage by a drunk audience member, whom she had to fight off herself.

Workers say understaffing burdens existing staff with extra responsibilities. For instance, Garza says two trumpeters at the Lyndhurst castle were asked to operate the spotlight right as a show was about to start. The task — which involves climbing onto scaffolding above the stage and moving heavy, specialized lighting equipment — was not part of trumpeters’ job descriptions, but when trumpeters refused to perform it, Garza says they were fired. (On February 27, Medieval Times posted a job listing for a spotlight operator at their Lyndhurst location, proclaiming in all-caps: ​“FOR A LIMITED TIME, WE ARE OFFERING A $250 SIGN-ON BONUS AFTER 60 DAYS OF EMPLOYMENT!”)

The union has raised these issues in bargaining, but workers say the company and its lawyers have been dismissive, reportedly telling workers, ​“you’re not Hollywood, you’re not Broadway” and ​“anyone can do your job.” After four bargaining sessions, workers say management still refused to negotiate on wages or staffing minimums, leading workers to consider striking.

In New Jersey, Medieval Times has a whole show’s worth of scabs waiting in a hotel "in case we strike like California,” workers say.

The last straw precipitating the Buena Park strike was litigation against the union. The company is suing Medieval Times Performers United and the American Guild of Variety Artists for trademark infringement for using the Medieval Times company name and logo in union branding — a strategy not even notorious union-busters like Amazon and Trader Joe’s have tried. ​“They were trying to send a message that, if you organize, you can expect a day in court. It was clearly retaliation and intimidation,” says Zapcic. According to Zapcic and Bowman, Medieval Times has also reported the union’s social media accounts for trademark infringement, in the process getting the union’s TikTok account banned, which — at 8,200 followers — had been a key organizing tool.

Strikers claim aggressive litigation isn’t the only strike-breaking tactic the company is resorting to. Within a week of the strike beginning, the company had called upon its cavalry: Not-so-parfait-gentil knights from other locations to work as scabs in the Buena Park castle.

In New Jersey, according to Garza and J.C., the company has a whole show’s worth of scabs waiting in a hotel. ​“My manager was very candid with me … saying that they are there in case we strike like California,” says Garza.

“They’re also doing a nice PR campaign against us on the inside, that we’re ruining people’s jobs and we’re being unreasonable,” says Bowman.

But the union has its own cavalry coming in: ​“We are part of AFL-CIO and a network of people who will drop everything and come out to support you,” Zapcic says. ​“We had some of the girls from Star Garden [Topless Dive Bar] out picketing with us. … Starbucks [Workers] United has been out picketing with us, and we get more people to join the line every day — we’re turning it into a big party … Over the last week, I’ve had a new appreciation for what being in a union means.”

Courage did not wane in the hearts of the thousands of peasants who, armed with old bows, sticks and axes, revolted across England in the wake of the Black Death, demanding an end to serfdom. Nor does it wane now in the hearts of Medieval Times Performers United. With the force of the labor movement behind them, the workers are confident that, unlike the peasants of 14th-century England, their quest will not be in vain.

VIEWPOINT

As Russia Pulls Back From the Nuclear Treaty, The Fate of Humanity Hangs in the Balance

The fragility of the arms control treaty lays bare the need for nuclear abolition.

FRIDA BERRIGAN MARCH 2, 2023

Peace activists wearing masks of Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden march in support of the NEW Start Treaty on Jan, 29, 2021

(PHOTO BY JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES)

There’s not a lot of good news.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved its Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds to midnight to dramatize the global peril posed by nuclear weapons and climate catastrophe. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine just passed the somber and maddening one year mark. Now, in apparent retaliation for President Joe Biden’s unannounced trip to Ukraine last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that his nation was done with the New START Treaty, the last remaining nuclear arms control agreement between the United States and Russia.

The New START Treaty, signed in 2011, curbed a decades-long arms race that produced tens of thousands of nuclear warheads, nearly bankrupted both nations and threatened the whole world with devastating nuclear firepower. The treaty capped at 1,550 per nation the number of nuclear warheads deployed on long-range bombers, submarines and intercontinental missile systems. Moscow and Washington further agreed to a schedule of regular inspections to confirm progress. In 2018, they mutually verified that each nation had taken enough warheads offline — by scrapping them or holding them in strategic reserve — to be in full compliance with the treaty. In 2021, they agreed to extend the terms of the treaty until 2026. But the two nations suspended inspections during the pandemic, and then the war in Ukraine ratcheted up tensions to near-apocalyptic levels.

Since Russia’s invasion a year ago, Washington and other allies have provided Ukraine with weapons, military aid, training and solidarity. The United States alone has supplied more than $27 billion in security assistance to Ukraine, including more than 1,600 Stinger anti-aircraft rocket systems, 8,500 Javelin anti-tank missile systems and over 1 million 155mm artillery rounds.hardware, training and ammunition.

The stakes were high from the beginning as nations lined up behind the invader and the invaded. Now, the future of arms control is at stake.

In a speech marking the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin highlighted Western interference in the war effort for his decision to opt out of New START. ​“They want to inflict a strategic defeat on us and claim our nuclear facilities,” the Russian president told parliament on February 21, thus ​“I am forced to state that Russia is suspending its participation in the strategic offensive arms treaty.” The Russian government later said it would continue to exchange nuclear data with the United States and abide by the treaty’s limits, but observers fear Russia is one step closer to full withdrawal.

Biden called Putin’s move ​“a big mistake,” urging Russia to come back to the table. There’s a chance that will happen, but this flashpoint demonstrates that arms control is a poor guarantor of global stability. And it points to the need for something new.

As Dr. Ira Helfand of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War declared, ​“If we don’t get rid of nuclear weapons, they’re going to be used. And if they’re used, nothing else that we’re doing is going to make any difference.”

The global community has an opportunity to push hard for nuclear abolition. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) condemned Putin’s withdrawal from the treaty in strong terms. But Alicia Sanders-Zakre, ICAN’s policy and research coordinator, also stresses that ​“the weakening of the last remaining bilateral arms control agreement underscores the need for multilateral disarmament instruments, including the UN Treaty on the Prohibition for Nuclear Weapons,” or TPNW. So far, the TPNW has collected 92 signatory countries and 68 ​“states parties” still in the process of gaining ratification through their governing bodies.

The TPMW is the only global treaty to explicitly ban countries from using or threatening to use nuclear weapons. It also provides a verifiable pathway for nuclear disarmament. ​“Every country that joins this treaty strengthens the normative barrier against nuclear weapons,” notes Sanders-Zakre, ​“something that is desperately needed given the unprecedented level of nuclear risk we are facing.”

Florian Eblenkamp, an ICAN campaign officer, points to the upcoming G7 Summit as an opportunity to push the richest and most powerful countries in the world toward abolition. The meeting will be held in mid-May in Hiroshima, Japan — the first of only two cities to ever suffer the devastating impacts of a nuclear bomb attack, when the United States dropped the atomic bomb on August 6, 1945. Hiroshima is officially a ​“city of peace” and one role of the city government is to work for nuclear abolition. Mayor Kazumi Matsui is the President of Mayors for Peace, which represents more than 8,000 cities in 166 nations, and which issued a February 14 statement that read in part, ​“The only guarantee to protect humanity and the planet from the threat of nuclear weapons is their total elimination.”

ICAN, Hiroshima University and others are organizing a ​“Youth Summit” in Hiroshima ahead of the G7 meetings this spring, calling on young people from around the world to come and ​“experience the power of Hiroshima, a city that embodies the hope for a world without nuclear weapons.”

The G7 includes nuclear states the United States, France and the United Kingdom, as well as Canada, Germany, Italy and Japan. Russia left the international body in 2018, and China has yet to attain the requisite ​“developed nation” status despite its economic and military power. While Russia and China will not be in Hiroshima, they will be watching the proceedings closely.

Against the backdrop of the ongoing war in Ukraine, overheated rhetoric and collapsing bilateral arms control regimes, the G7 Summit is the perfect time for the richest and most powerful nations of the world to embrace the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. At 90 seconds to nuclear midnight, it is not a minute too soon.

FRIDA BERRIGAN writes for TomDispatch, Waging Nonviolence and other outlets. Her book, It Runs in the Family: On Being Raised By Radicals and Growing Into Rebellious Motherhood, was published by OR Books in 2015. She lives in New London, Conn., with her husband, three kids and six chickens.

Why Russia’s suspension of participation in New START augurs badly for arms control?

March 2, 2023
By Hamdan Khan

MODERN DIPLOMACY


On February 21st, President Putin while delivering his state of the nation address announced that “Russia is suspending its membership in the New START Treaty”. He went on to clarify that it was not a withdrawal but rather a suspension of participation. Interestingly, the treaty does not contain a provision about the parties (to the treaty) “suspending” their membership. Nevertheless, in article XIV the treaty recognizes the parties’ right to withdraw if they decide that “extraordinary events related to the subject matter” of the treaty have “jeopardized” their “supreme interests”. The withdrawing party would have to give notice containing “a statement of the extraordinary events”, which could jeopardize its supreme interests.

Signed in 2010, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) took effect in 2011 for a period of 10 years; in 2021, the treaty was extended for another 05 years. In article II, New START caps the number of deployed warheads for both countries besides limiting the number of deployed and non-deployed delivery systems. Moreover, the treaty delineates the locations for basing deployed and non-deployed warheads besides stipulating a comprehensive mechanism of notifications for the exchange of information about changes in respective arsenals and most importantly the on-site inspections for verifications.

What is behind Russia’s suspension of its membership?

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine prompted the Western capitals to rally around the sole agenda of disgruntling Russian objectives in Ukraine, which Moscow entwines with its existential security interests. Western sanctions against Russia and the unremitting supply of weapons to Ukraine — which empowered Kyiv to drastically roll back Russian advances — pushed the antagonism between Moscow and the West all times high since the end of the Cold War. As the zero-sum interplay thrived, the positive-sum arrangements, such as arms control, were predictably going to be a casualty and this is exactly what transpired.

In August 2022, Russia “temporarily” halted inspection activities citing the lopsided travel restrictions on its inspectors by Washington imposed in the wake of the war in Ukraine and “no obvious indication” of a decline in the number of COVID-19 cases in the US. Moscow, however, underscored its full commitment to the other provisions of the treaty and as per the US State Department, stepped up the notifications under the treaty. Later, the talks to resume inspections slated in November were postponed by Moscow accusing Washington of “toxicity and animosity”. In late January 2023, the US State Department spokesperson criticized Russia for refusing to allow inspections and cautioned that Russian actions threaten the “viability of US-Russia nuclear arms control”.

During his state of the nation address, Putin alleged that repeated requests by Russia to inspect US facilities have been turned down by Washington. He claimed that “the West is directly involved in Ukraine’s attempts to strike” Russian strategic aviation bases and alleged that drones used in the attacks were “equipped and updated” by NATO. The attacks reportedly occurred in December 2022 at Engels air base which houses Russian long-range strategic bombers. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) later alleged that the US undertook the attempts to “probe the protection” of Russian strategic facilities and that attacks on the facilities were launched by the US “military-technical and intelligence assistance”. Putin also rejected that matters related to strategic weapon systems can be disassociated from the war in Ukraine and the Western avowals to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia. The Russian MFA claimed that the US policies aim to “undermine Russia’s national security”, which belies the principle of “indivisible security” enshrined in the preamble of the New START. It goes without saying that the antagonism intensified by the war in Ukraine had finally spilled over to strategic arms control.

What would change after Russia suspended its membership?

Russia’s MFA upheld that Moscow would “strictly comply” with “qualitative restrictions” for strategic arms set by the treaty until its annulment. It also affirmed that the exchange of notifications on ICBM and SLBM launches would continue as per the 1988 Soviet-U.S. agreement. If the parties choose to adhere to the two items, there are few chances of an immediate arms race imperiling strategic stability.

Nevertheless, provided the inspections had already been stopped, the notifications for “removal from accountability” and changes in data concerning the strategic arms enshrined in articles VI and VII respectively would likely come to an end and so would the meetings of the Bilateral Consultative Commission (BSC). The developments would essentially mark an end to reciprocal transparency and mutual trust, which would have been crucial once the attempts to conclude a follow-on agreement to New START were to be made.

How the suspension would affect the future of arms control?

New START was the last remaining arms control treaty between the US and Russia, which together account for nearly 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons. Once the five-year extension of the treaty annuls in 2026 and given the cynicism around a follow-on agreement, it would be the first time since 1970 that there would be no limitations on the US and Russian strategic arsenals and delivery means. The non-existence of arms control between Washington and Moscow coupled with the obsolescence of some of the existing strategic systems and the emergence of new systems with strategic applications, a new and more intense strategic arms race would likely unfold.

On top of that, apart from the nuclear rivalry between the US and Russia, Washington — besides its threat perception of North Korea and that of its Pacific allies like South Korea and Japan — has recently been vociferously expressing concerns about what it claims is the large-scale modernization and expansion of the Chinese nuclear arsenal, which, as per the estimates by Pentagon, could have as many as 1000 warheads by 2030. Likewise, President Putin in his address alluded to the nuclear arsenals of Great Britain and France, which are “directed against” Russia and form NATO’s “combined offensive capabilities”. He did not miss adding the caveat that before talks on Russia restoring its membership of New START, Moscow “must have a clear idea” of the strategic capabilities of Great Britain and France.

Therefore, it is unlikely that either the US or Russia would agree to new arms control unless their other respective nuclear adversaries are also brought into the fold. And if China is to join arms control talks — which it has shown little interest till now — Beijing would unlikely overlook India’s growing strategic capabilities, which itself is vying to gain a strategic edge over its arch-rival Pakistan. Even if all the Nuclear Weapons States (NWSs) agree to participate in arms control talks, not only the participation of more parties would render it difficult to reach a consensus, but also the inclusion of de facto nuclear powers in arms control talks would further add to the complications. Contrariwise, in the absence of arms control, the arms race between the USA and Russia would also channel down the nuclear chain to impact the force postures of all the NWSs.

Congressional Black Caucus demands response from DOJ on police accountability

BY CHEYANNE M. DANIELS - 03/02/23 

Rep. Steven Horsford (D-Nev.) is seen as the House votes to adjourn on the second day of the 118th session of Congress on Wednesday, January 4, 2023. The House held three more ballots for Speaker, with neither Reps. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) or Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) getting enough votes.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) on Thursday announced they have sent a letter to the Department of Justice demanding data around the status of President Biden’s 2022 executive order on police accountability.

The executive order, Advancing Effective, Accountable Policing and Criminal Justice Practices to Enhance Public Trust and Public Safety, called for establishing a national law enforcement accountability database to track officer misconduct, as well as creating guidance and practices to address mental health crises and improving safety conditions in prisons and jails.

“Some of these provisions should have been completed by now,” said. Rep. Steven Horsford (D-Nev.), chairman of the caucus. “Tyre Nichols and other lives depend on it.”

Horsford said Attorney General Merrick Garland has received the letter and indicated he will be responding to the CBC.

The caucus’s announcement came during a press conference listing the group’s successes of the 117th Congress and its goals for the 118th, which include housing and job opportunities.

But one of the biggest priorities of the CBC this session will be public safety reform, Horsford said, specifically in areas of police accountability, transparency and standards.

“People have talked about the brutal, brutal beating of Tyre Nichols, which resulted in his death and is a reminder that we have a long way to go and solving systemic police violence in America,” said Horsford.

Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, was pulled over by Memphis police officers on Jan. 7 for allegedly driving reckless. But the traffic stop soon turned violent, with five Black police officers beating Nichols unconscious. Nichols succumbed to his injuries from that encounter and died on Jan.10.

“What we are saying as the Congressional Black Caucus is that no one should die as a result of a traffic stop,” Horsford said. “No child who goes to a park should not come home. No one should die in the middle of the night when someone busts through their door in their home.”House Democrat accuses GOP of ‘misplaced priorities’ on educationEPA to require Norfolk Southern to test directly for dioxins in East Palestine

Horsford added that the CBC was not “going after law enforcement as a whole,” but rather targeting bad policing.

“We don’t want to end policing. We want to put an end to bad policing,” Horsford said. “All of us, regardless of party, should agree that bad policing has no place in America. That is why we are working to build consensus. This is not a Black issue alone. This is not a Black, Brown or white issue. This is a public safety and accountability issue. It is not a Republican, Democratic or Independent issue. It is a public safety and accountability issue.”

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.