Iowa football settles race bias lawsuit using taxpayer money


IIn this Dec. 19, 2019, file photo, Iowa State Auditor Rob Sand speaks in Des Moines, Iowa, Dec. 19, 2019. A proposed settlement for more than $4 million has been reached in the lawsuit brought by former Iowa football players who alleged racial discrimination in coach Kirk Ferentz's program. The office of State Auditor Rob Sand disclosed the proposed settlement on Monday, March 6, 2023, and he was scheduled to speak at a news conference where he will announce his opposition to using taxpayer money to pay a portion of the settlement unless university athletic director Gary Barta is fired. (Brian Powers/The Des Moines Register via AP, File, File)

ERIC OLSON
Mon, March 6, 2023

Iowa taxpayers will pay $2 million to help the University of Iowa athletic department settle a lawsuit brought by former football players who allege racial discrimination existed in coach Kirk Ferentz's program, a state board decided in a vote Monday.

The state's Appeal Board voted 2-1 to approve the use of taxpayer funds for half of the $4.175 million settlement over the objection of State Auditor Rob Sand, a board member who said athletic director Gary Barta should be fired for a series of lawsuits ending in settlements under his watch.

“I can’t imagine a private company that would still have someone at the helm after four discrimination lawsuits under that person’s leadership,” Sand said at a news conference before the vote. "The athletic department, they’ve got the funds for it. The broadcast deal brings tens of millions of dollars every year going forward. I don’t know why they can’t cover their own mistakes and pay for their own mistakes instead of having taxpayer’s do it.”

The lawsuit filed in November 2020 involved former players including former star running back Akrum Wadley and career receptions leader Kevonte Martin-Manley. They alleged they were demeaned with racial slurs, forced to abandon Black hairstyles, fashion and culture to fit the “Iowa Way” promoted by Ferentz, and retaliated against for speaking out.

A message was left for Tulsa-based attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons, who brought the lawsuit on behalf of about a dozen Black former players.

In response to a request for comment from Barta, the athletic department sent a statement attributed to him, saying the department “remains committed to providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for every student-athlete and staff member involved in our program.”

“The Hawkeyes over-arching goal to win every time we compete, graduate every student-athlete that comes to Iowa, and to do it right, remains our focus,” the statement reads.

Barta has been Iowa's athletic director since 2006. In a statement to the Appeal Board, Sand noted four discrimination cases totaling nearly $7 million in damages under Barta's watch. The largest of those was $6.5 million to settle a lawsuit in 2017 over the firing of former field hockey coach Tracey Griesbaum. The money used to pay that settlement came from the athletic department, which does not rely on taxpayer funding.

State treasurer Roby Smith and Department of Management director Kraig Paulsen are the other two Appeal Board members.

Paulsen, before voting yes, said it's not up to the board to play a role in Barta's employment status.

“We’re here to make a decision as to what’s in the best interest of (Iowa) and it seems to me, upon the recommendation of the Attorney General, this is the wise decision to make,” Paulsen said, according to Des Moines television station KCCI.

Barta, Ferentz, his son and offensive coordinator Brian Ferentz and former strength coach Chris Doyle were dismissed from the lawsuit last week, which signaled that a proposed settlement was imminent.

Kirk Ferentz said in a statement he is “greatly disappointed” in how the matter was resolved. He said negotiations took place between the plaintiffs’ attorney and the Iowa Attorney General’s Office, which represents the university and the state Board of Regents.

“These discussions took place entirely without the knowledge or consent of the coaches who were named in the lawsuit,” Ferentz said. “In fact, the parties originally named disagree with the decision to settle, fully believing that the case would have been dismissed with prejudice before trial.”

Ferentz added that “as part of the settlement, the coaches named were dismissed from the lawsuit and there is no admission of any wrongdoing.”

The agreement calls for $2.85 million to be divided among 12 players and $1.9 million to go to Solomon-Simmons Law for fees and expenses.

In addition, the university would direct $90,000 to support graduate or professional school tuition for the plaintiffs, with no individual receiving more than $20,000, and provide mental health counseling for the plaintiffs through March 15, 2024. The athletic department also is required to hire University of Texas Black studies professor Leonard Moore to oversee a five-year diversity, equity and inclusion plan.

The players initially sought $20 million in damages plus the firings of Barta and the Ferentzes.

Doyle agreed to leave Iowa five months before the lawsuit was filed after widespread accusations that the longtime strength coach used his position to bully and disparage former players, particularly those who are Black. Iowa agreed to pay Doyle $1.1 million in a resignation agreement.

In 2020, before the lawsuit, the university hired the Husch Blackwell law firm to review the program after dozens of former players, most of them Black, spoke out on social media to allege racial disparities and mistreatment. Their activism came as protests against racial injustice swept the nation following the death of George Floyd and after attempts to raise concerns inside the program resulted in only minor changes.

The report said that some of the football program’s rules “perpetuated racial or cultural biases and diminished the value of cultural diversity.”

Iowa football settles race bias lawsuit using taxpayer money

ERIC OLSON
Mon, March 6, 2023 

Iowa taxpayers will pay $2 million to help the University of Iowa athletic department settle a lawsuit brought by former football players who allege racial discrimination existed in coach Kirk Ferentz's program, a state board decided in a vote Monday.

The state's Appeal Board voted 2-1 to approve the use of taxpayer funds for half of the $4.175 million settlement over the objection of State Auditor Rob Sand, a board member who said athletic director Gary Barta should be fired for a series of lawsuits ending in settlements under his watch.

“I can’t imagine a private company that would still have someone at the helm after four discrimination lawsuits under that person’s leadership,” Sand said at a news conference before the vote. "The athletic department, they’ve got the funds for it. The broadcast deal brings tens of millions of dollars every year going forward. I don’t know why they can’t cover their own mistakes and pay for their own mistakes instead of having taxpayer’s do it.”

The lawsuit filed in November 2020 involved former players including former star running back Akrum Wadley and career receptions leader Kevonte Martin-Manley. They alleged they were demeaned with racial slurs, forced to abandon Black hairstyles, fashion and culture to fit the “Iowa Way” promoted by Ferentz, and retaliated against for speaking out.

A message was left for Tulsa-based attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons, who brought the lawsuit on behalf of about a dozen Black former players.

In response to a request for comment from Barta, the athletic department sent a statement attributed to him, saying the department “remains committed to providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for every student-athlete and staff member involved in our program.”

“The Hawkeyes over-arching goal to win every time we compete, graduate every student-athlete that comes to Iowa, and to do it right, remains our focus,” the statement reads.

Barta has been Iowa's athletic director since 2006. In a statement to the Appeal Board, Sand noted four discrimination cases totaling nearly $7 million in damages under Barta's watch. The largest of those was $6.5 million to settle a lawsuit in 2017 over the firing of former field hockey coach Tracey Griesbaum. The money used to pay that settlement came from the athletic department, which does not rely on taxpayer funding.

State treasurer Roby Smith and Department of Management director Kraig Paulsen are the other two Appeal Board members.

Paulsen, before voting yes, said it's not up to the board to play a role in Barta's employment status.

“We’re here to make a decision as to what’s in the best interest of (Iowa) and it seems to me, upon the recommendation of the Attorney General, this is the wise decision to make,” Paulsen said, according to Des Moines television station KCCI.

Barta, Ferentz, his son and offensive coordinator Brian Ferentz and former strength coach Chris Doyle were dismissed from the lawsuit last week, which signaled that a proposed settlement was imminent.

Kirk Ferentz said in a statement he is “greatly disappointed” in how the matter was resolved. He said negotiations took place between the plaintiffs’ attorney and the Iowa Attorney General’s Office, which represents the university and the state Board of Regents.

“These discussions took place entirely without the knowledge or consent of the coaches who were named in the lawsuit,” Ferentz said. “In fact, the parties originally named disagree with the decision to settle, fully believing that the case would have been dismissed with prejudice before trial.”

Ferentz added that “as part of the settlement, the coaches named were dismissed from the lawsuit and there is no admission of any wrongdoing.”

The agreement calls for $2.85 million to be divided among 12 players and $1.9 million to go to Solomon-Simmons Law for fees and expenses.

In addition, the university would direct $90,000 to support graduate or professional school tuition for the plaintiffs, with no individual receiving more than $20,000, and provide mental health counseling for the plaintiffs through March 15, 2024. The athletic department also is required to hire University of Texas Black studies professor Leonard Moore to oversee a five-year diversity, equity and inclusion plan.

The players initially sought $20 million in damages plus the firings of Barta and the Ferentzes.

Doyle agreed to leave Iowa five months before the lawsuit was filed after widespread accusations that the longtime strength coach used his position to bully and disparage former players, particularly those who are Black. Iowa agreed to pay Doyle $1.1 million in a resignation agreement.

In 2020, before the lawsuit, the university hired the Husch Blackwell law firm to review the program after dozens of former players, most of them Black, spoke out on social media to allege racial disparities and mistreatment. Their activism came as protests against racial injustice swept the nation following the death of George Floyd and after attempts to raise concerns inside the program resulted in only minor changes.

The report said that some of the football program’s rules “perpetuated racial or cultural biases and diminished the value of cultural diversity.”

___

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Duke comes out against Ph.D. student union in letter, students respond


Robert Willett/rwillett@newsobserver.com

Brian Gordon
Wed, March 8, 2023 

On Friday, Duke University doctoral students filed to form a federally recognized union, one with the power to negotiate wages and benefits on their behalf. Three days later, the school administration announced its position on the union — and it wasn’t favorable.

In a Dec. 6 letter addressed to Duke Ph.D. students and faculty, interim Provost Jennifer Francis wrote, “Ph.D. students are not admitted to do a job; they are selected because of their potential to be exceptional scholars.”

Doctoral students pursue their own research and don’t pay tuition but they also serve as teaching and research assistants, with duties including instructing classes, grading papers and working in labs. This academic year, Duke Ph.D. students earned a stipend of $34,660, which will rise next year to $38,600.

“Duke works because we do,” the organizing group, Duke Graduate Students Union (DGSU), wrote to Duke University President Vincent Price in late February. At the time, DGSU said a “growing majority” of the school’s 2,500 doctoral students supported unionization and was asking the administration to voluntarily recognize the union. It did not, and on March 3, DGSU and the Service Employees International Union petitioned the National Labor Relations Board for a union.

The union question seems poised to come down to an election overseen by the NLRB. A date has not yet been set. How hard the university will campaign against the union is also not yet known, though Monday’s letter makes its position clear.

“Labor unions have contributed significantly to giving employees voice and agency in our nation and around the world, and Duke has strong working relationships with several unions representing our employees,” Francis acknowledged. “However, the educational context matters greatly. The university’s institutional position remains that Duke’s relationship with our students is centered on education, training, and mentorship, fundamentally different from that of employer to employee.”

Francis pointed out that Duke Ph.D. students voted down a union in a 2017 election.
‘The win rate is astronomical’

But pro-union advocates are confident this time would be different.

In the past six years, graduate students have successfully unionized at other elite private universities, including Brown, MIT and Harvard. In the past three months, grad students have, by wide margins, approved unions at the University of Southern California, Boston University and Yale.

“The thing that has struck me more than even just the number of organizing drives is the win rate is astronomical,” said Jeff Hirsch, a labor law professor at the UNC School of Law.

Hirsch said graduate students “are not the easiest group to organize typically,” given their temporary status and the power dynamics inherent to academia.

“Your ability to get an academic job is highly dependent on recommendations from your current professors, and not to generalize, but a lot of them absolutely do not like the idea of grad students unionizing,” he said.

Yet universities are also imagine-conscious, Hirsch noted, and coming out as anti-union can be a public relations blunder. “The rest of the student body cares too, oftentimes, including undergrads,” he said.

On Twitter Monday, pro-union advocates blasted the university for Francis’ letter, with some accusing the school of “union busting.”

“Unfortunately, my “potential to be an exceptional scholar” doesn’t pay the bills,” one Duke doctoral student wrote in response to the letter.

This story was produced with financial support from a coalition of partners led by Innovate Raleigh as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work.
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The women who stood with Martin Luther King Jr. and sustained a movement for social change

Vicki Crawford, Professor of Africana Studies, Morehouse College

THE CONVERSATION
Wed, March 8, 2023 

Women listen during the March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963.

Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

Historian Vicki Crawford was one of the first scholars to focus on women’s roles in the civil rights movement. Her 1993 book, “Trailblazers and Torchbearers,” dives into the stories of female leaders whose legacies have often been overshadowed.

Today she is the director of the Morehouse College Martin Luther King Jr. Collection, where she oversees the archive of his sermons, speeches, writings and other materials. Here, she explains the contributions of women who influenced King and helped to fuel some of the most significant campaigns of the civil rights era, but whose contributions are not nearly as well known.
An activist in her own right

Coretta Scott King is often remembered as a devoted wife and mother, yet she was also a committed activist in her own right. She was deeply involved with social justice causes before she met and married Martin Luther King Jr., and long after his death.

Scott King served with civil rights groups throughout her time as a student at Antioch College and the New England Conservatory of Music. Shortly after she and King married in 1953, the couple returned to the South, where they lent their support to local and regional organizations such as the NAACP and the Montgomery Improvement Association.

They also supported the Women’s Political Council, an organization founded by female African American professors at Alabama State University that facilitated voter education and registration, and also protested discrimination on city buses. These local leadership efforts paved the way for widespread support of Rosa Parks’ resistance to segregation on public busing.

Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife Coretta Scott King work in his office in Atlanta in July 1962. TPLP/Archive Photos via Getty Images

Following her husband’s assassination in 1968, Scott King devoted her life to institutionalizing his philosophy and practice of nonviolence. She established the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, led a march of sanitation workers in Memphis and joined efforts to organize the Poor People’s Campaign. A longtime advocate of workers rights, she also supported a 1969 hospital workers’ strike in South Carolina, delivering stirring speeches against the treatment of African American staff.

Scott King’s commitment to nonviolence went beyond civil rights at home. During the 1960s, she became involved in peace and anti-war efforts such as the Women’s Strike for Peace and opposed the escalating war in Vietnam. By the 1980s, she had joined protests against South African apartheid, and before her death in 2006, she spoke out in favor of LGBT rights – capping a lifetime of activism against injustice and inequalities.
Women and the March

While Scott King’s support and ideas were particularly influential, many other women played essential roles in the success of the civil rights movement.

Take the most iconic moment of the civil rights struggle, in many Americans’ minds: the Aug. 28, 1963, March on Washington for Jobs and Freeedom, at which King delivered his landmark “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

As the 60th anniversary of the march approaches, it is critical to recognize the activism of women from all walks of life who helped to strategize and organize one of the country’s most massive political demonstrations of the 20th century. Yet historical accounts overwhelmingly highlight the march’s male leadership. With the exception of Daisy Bates, an activist who read a short tribute, no women were invited to deliver formal speeches.

Members of Carmel Presbyterian Church donating money for the March on Washington. Carl Iwasaki/The Chronicle Collection via Getty Images

Women were among the key organizers of the march, however, and helped recruit thousands of participants. Dorothy Height, president of the National Council of Negro Women, was often the lone woman at the table of leaders representing national organizations. Anna Arnold Hedgeman, who also served on the planning committee, was another strong advocate for labor issues, anti-poverty efforts and women’s rights.

Dorothy Height stands with Martin Luther King Jr. in November 1957. Afro American Newspapers/Gado/Getty Images

Photographs of the march show women attended in large numbers, yet few historical accounts adequately credit women for their leadership and support. Civil rights activist, lawyer and Episcopalian priest Pauli Murray, among others, called for a gathering of women to address this and other instances of discrimination a few days later.
Hidden in plain view

African American women led and served in all the major campaigns, working as field secretaries, attorneys, plaintiffs, organizers and educators, to name just a few roles. So why did early historical accounts of the movement neglect their stories?

There were women propelling national civil rights organizations and among King’s closest advisers. Septima Clark, for example, was a seasoned educator whose strong organizing skills played a consequential role in voter registration, literacy training and citizenship education. Dorothy Cotton was a member of the inner circle of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, of which King was president, and was involved in literacy training and teaching nonviolent resistance.

A civil rights marcher exposed to tear gas holds an unconscious Amelia Boynton Robinson after mounted police officers attacked marchers in Selma. Bettmann/Getty Images

Yet women’s organizing during the 1950s and 1960s is most evident at local and regional levels, particularly in some of the most perilous communities across the deep South. Since the 1930s, Amelia Boynton Robinson of Dallas County, Alabama, and her family had been fighting for voting rights, laying the groundwork for the struggle to end voter suppression that continues to the present. She was also key in planning the 50-mile Selma-to-Montgomery march in 1965. Images of the violence that marchers endured – particularly on the day that came to be known as Bloody Sunday – shocked the nation and eventually contributed to the passage of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Civil rights activist Amelia Boynton Robinson attends an awards ceremony in New York in 2011. Marc Bryan-Brown/WireImage via Getty News

Or take Mississippi, where there would not have been a sustained movement without women’s activism. Some names have become well known, like Fannie Lou Hamer, but others deserve to be.

Two rural activists, Victoria Gray and Annie Devine, joined Hamer as representatives to the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, a parallel political party that challenged the state’s all-white representatives at the 1964 Democratic Convention. A year later, the three women represented the party in a challenge to block the state’s congressmen from taking their seats, given ongoing disenfranchisement of Black voters. Though the congressional challenge failed, the activism was a symbolic victory, serving note to the nation that Black Mississippians were no longer willing to accept centuries-old oppression.

Many African American women were out-front organizers for civil rights. But it is no less important to remember those who assumed less visible, but indispensable, roles behind the scenes, sustaining the movement over time.

This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. 

It was written by: Vicki Crawford, Morehouse College.

Read more:

John Lewis and C.T. Vivian belonged to a long tradition of religious leaders in the civil rights struggle

Wikipedia at 20: Why it often overlooks stories of women in history

In Burkina, motorbikes bring treasured independence for women

Marietou BÂ
Wed, March 8, 2023 


The motorcycles that buzz along the streets of Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, have a story to tell.

Once the preserve of men and a sign of male status in this West African country, today they are used ubiquitously by women -- and are a prized tool of emancipation.

When Nigerian filmmaker Kagho Idhebor first came to Ouagadougou he was overwhelmed by how many women whizzed about on a motorbike.

"I'd never seen women drive with such attitude, such independence," he said. "There are more motorbikes than cars, and more women than men on these motorbikes."

He was so struck by the phenomenon that he made "Burkina Babes" -- a documentary which ran at the pan-African FESPACO cinema and TV festival in Ouagadougou that ended last weekend.

Dressed in jeans or a suit, some with a baby slung on their back, women of all ages ride around on motorbikes in Burkina Faso.

"The motorbike is above all a necessity" for getting around, said Valerie Dambre, who had stopped at a traffic light.

But they are also a symbol of autonomy for many women in a deeply poor country beset with problems imposed by a brutal years-long jihadist insurgency.

Nearly one person in seven in Burkina's population of 22 million has a motorbike, according to transport ministry figures for 2020.

Between 2011 and 2020, the number of motorbikes tripled as a share of the population, cementing their role as a solution for mobility.

- Breaking barriers -

"In the coastal countries (in West Africa), people went straight to cars" from walking or using bicycles, said anthropologist Jocelyne Vokouma. "But we (in Burkina) turned to motorbikes before using cars."

The key period of change was the early 1990s, she said.

Until then, "a woman would proudly say that her motorbike had been bought by her husband. 'My husband is doing OK,' was what women used to say," Vokouma said.

But the country went through wrenching austerity and many men lost their jobs.

It was women who picked up the baton, setting up small businesses such as selling fruit and vegetables to make money -- and as time progressed, many used their savings to swap their bicycle for a motorbike.

With that came greater freedom, in developing their business, taking the children to school, seeing friends or just going out for a ride.

But, said Vokouma, some important seeds had already been sown by Burkina Faso's revolutionary leftwing leader, Thomas Sankara.

During his four years in power in the 1980s, which ended traumatically with his assassination, Sankara "played an emancipating role, breaking down traditional mindsets and thrusting women into the public space, outside the home," she said. "Young women today were brought up on his ideas."

- Training -

Hand in hand with the new mobility has come an entry for women into the male-dominated business of auto maintenance.

Since 1997, the Women's School for Skills Initiation and Training (CFIAM) has trained more than 700 women to be mechanics and bodywork repairers.

Its CEO and founder, Bernard Zongo, said he set up the school to help "girls... into non-traditional areas of work, so that they can become economically independent."

He hired a full-time woman psychologist and installed a nursery for students with babies.

The centre gets by through donations from NGOs, which account for 75 percent of revenue, while the remaining income comes from fees.

The two-year course costs 100,000 CFA francs ($163) -- a hefty sum in a country where annual per-capita income is little more than $900.

Other African countries, including Niger, Ivory Coast and Mali have sent representatives to the CFIAM to see how it operates, and "boys are asking to enrol," Zongo said with a smile.

"There are people we know who are jealous of us," said one student, Salamata Congo, speaking above a racket of cutting and hammering.

But patriarchal habits and machismo die hard.

"Men try to discourage you," said Berenice Zagali, who is learning to become a mechanic.

"They say, 'You're a woman, what are doing here? This is man's work. Your place is the kitchen, the office'."

bam/pid/ri/lc

Tesla could begin producing autos in Mexico next year -Mexican official


Tesla plans a new gigafactory in northern Mexico, in Santa Catarina

Mon, March 6, 2023 

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Tesla Inc could begin producing its first cars in Mexico next year, with the electric vehicle maker close to receiving its final permits allowing factory construction to begin in Nuevo Leon near the U.S.-Mexico border, the state's governor said on Monday.

"They are waiting for the final permits ... once that's done, they can start, hopefully this very month, in March," Nuevo Leon Governor Samuel Garcia said in an interview.

"I think by next year, in 2024, there will be the first autos."

The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk announced the investment last week, saying the Austin, Texas-based company had selected Mexico for its next "gigafactory" with plans to produce a "next gen vehicle."

Mexican officials have said the factory will be the world's biggest to produce electric vehicles, with investment worth $5 billion.

Subsequent phases of the plant could involve making components such as chips and batteries, Garcia said.

"That's why they bought a very large plot of land," he added.

The site in Santa Catarina, next to the state capital of Monterrey, spans several thousand acres, the local mayor said last week.

Garcia said the investment would act as an "anchor" attracting Tesla suppliers, and that the green light given to Tesla by Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador - after the latter had expressed concerns over scarcity of water - sent a positive signal to other potential investors.

"It's like a kind of guide, that when they want to come set up here, it's very important they follow the law," he said, noting he had sent Lopez Obrador technical memos about the state's industrial water supply.

"The president, by authorizing and backing Tesla, sent a message to the world that they should come to Mexico."

(Reporting by Daina Beth Solomon in Mexico City; Editing by Matthew Lewis)

House GOP Prepares to Slash Federal Programs in Coming Budget Showdown

Carl Hulse and Catie Edmondson
Wed, March 8, 2023

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) during a news conference at the Capitol in Washington, March 1, 2023. (Kenny Holston/The New York Times)

WASHINGTON — Hard-right House Republicans are readying a plan to gut the nation’s foreign aid budget and make deep cuts to health care, food assistance and housing programs for poor Americans in their drive to balance the federal budget, as the party toils to coalesce around a plan that will deliver on their promise to slash spending.

Republicans are ready this week to condemn President Joe Biden’s forthcoming budget as bloated and misguided, and have said they will propose their own next month. But uniting his fractious conference around a list of deep cuts to popular programs will be the biggest test yet for Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who will need to win the support of Republicans in competitive districts and conservative hard-liners to cobble together the 218 votes needed to win the passage of a budget plan.

Privately, even some top party officials have questioned how Republicans will meet their spending objectives while keeping their members in line.

The most conservative lawmakers in his conference — who are emboldened after their four-day standoff with McCarthy, a California Republican, earlier this year during his election as speaker — are pursuing cuts that they concede could cause political pain and blowback among their colleagues.

“There is going to be a gnashing of teeth,” said Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, an arch-conservative member of the House Budget Committee, as the Republican majority works to produce its spending blueprint. “It is not going to be a pretty process. But that’s how it should be.”

The ugliness owes in part to a paradigm shift among GOP lawmakers. After decades of futile efforts to cut the enormous costs of Social Security and Medicare, Republicans have pledged not to touch the biggest entitlement programs, whose spending grows automatically and are on an unsustainable trajectory as more Americans reach retirement age. Coupled with their promise not to raise taxes, that leaves the GOP to consider a slash-and-burn approach to a slew of federal programs and agencies whose budgets are controlled by Congress.

As they meet privately to develop their plan, Republicans say they are relying heavily on a budget outline developed by Russell T. Vought, the former Trump administration budget director who now leads the far-right Center for Renewing America.

In an interview, Vought said it made strategic sense to shift away from politically impregnable Social Security and Medicare and instead target an array of programs that conservatives have criticized for years.

“We’re in a total strategic cul-de-sac on the right, and our fiscal warriors and strategists have totally failed in the sense that, point to any cuts we’ve had success-wise since 1997,” Vought said in an interview. “I actually think that that’s the worst part of the federal spending, because it’s the bureaucracy.

“I’m not saying you can balance on discretionary alone,” he said, referring to the part of the federal budget controlled by Congress. “But a work requirement food stamp program is a lot easier to sell than premium support,” he added, referring to a plan to make Medicare beneficiaries shoulder more of their costs.

The strategy suggested by Vought, who has become something of an intellectual and tactical guru to many of the hard-liners in the House Republican Conference, would enact deep spending cuts to what he called the “woke and weaponized government.”

The outline includes a 45% cut to foreign aid; adding work requirements for food stamp and Medicaid beneficiaries; a 43% cut to housing programs, including phasing out the Section 8 program that pays a portion of monthly rent costs for low-income people; cutting the FBI’s counterintelligence budget by nearly half; and eliminating Obamacare expansions to Medicaid to save tens of billions of dollars.

Nearly 40 states have accepted federal funding for expansion under the Affordable Care Act, providing health care coverage for an estimated 12 million individuals living near or below the poverty line.

The proposal would also eliminate the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the Pentagon, cut $3.4 billion in State Department migration and refugee assistance, and make Pell grants available only to students whose families cannot contribute any money toward a college education.

Adding work requirements to programs like food stamps is “a given,” according to Norman.

“We’re $32 trillion in debt,” said Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas. “We’ve got to get people back to work, get the economy going.”

A proposal with such cuts will draw attacks that Republicans are targeting the truly needy while avoiding touching the other benefit programs that serve many older Americans with other sources of income. But Republicans say the savings have to be found.

If politicians cannot “change the trajectory on discretionary spending, then we’ll never have the courage to tackle the bigger issues,” said Rep. Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma, a first-term conservative Republican on the Budget Committee. “So we’ve got to have the courage to go after the nondefense discretionary areas that everyone may not agree on.”

Democrats are eager for Republicans to roll out their spending plan, expecting it to provide powerful ammunition to show the GOP intends to slice a range of federal programs relied upon by Americans across all incomes.

“Show Us Your Plan” has become a rallying cry for Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, as he and his fellow Democrats have called on Republicans to make public the budget cuts they want in return for raising the federal debt limit later this year to avoid a federal default.

Biden has made a point of singling out Vought and his budget proposal, stressing his ties to Trump and warning that the plan “could cause nearly 70 million people to lose services,” most of them “seniors, people with disabilities, and children.”

Rep. Brendan F. Boyle of Pennsylvania, the top Democrat on the Budget Committee, called Vought’s budget plan “an outright war on middle-class America.”

“If you say that you’re going to eliminate the deficit by the end of the decade, but you say you’re not going to touch Social Security, you’re not going to touch Medicare, you’re not going to touch defense — that means you have to cut 100% of everything that’s left,” Boyle said. “So I welcome this debate. Math is on our side.”

Some Democrats are calling for both parties to find a way to compromise, urging Republicans to drop their threats to use the debt limit to force concessions and Democrats to recognize the need to rein in out-of-control spending.

“We will never solve the problem by having each party running in the opposite direction,” Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said in an extended Senate floor speech last week as he painted a dire federal fiscal picture. “We will only be able to change course by coming together, embracing common sense, and finding common ground.”

Under the current approach, House Republicans hope to merge the competing budget proposals that have in the past emerged from various conservative factions into one plan that can clear the Budget Committee on its way to the House floor. Members of the panel, who recently gathered for a closed-door conference, credit Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, the new Budget Committee chair, for being open to their ideas and sharing many of them.

“It is my strong view that it would be reckless and irresponsible to raise the debt limit without common-sense spending controls on Congress,” Arrington wrote recently in The Hill.

With the GOP holding such a narrow House majority, Republicans conceded that securing the 218 votes needed to approve a budget replete with politically charged cuts would be extremely difficult.

“It is daunting,” said Norman, who said committee Republicans nonetheless would make clear what their budget-cutting plans were when the moment came. “We are going to spell it out.”

© 2023 The New York Times Company

Virginia DOC says execution audio tapes should remain secret





- Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, left, stands near a gurney with Greensville Correctional Center Warden Larry Edmonds, right, at the correctional center in Jarratt, Va., prior to signing a bill abolishing the state's death penalty, March 24, 2021. The Virginia Department of Corrections has recorded audio of at least 30 executions over the last three decades, but it has no plans to release the tapes publicly. The department rejected an Associated Press request under the state's public records law to release the recordings after NPR obtained and reported on four of them. They offer a rare glimpse into executions. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, File)

DENISE LAVOIE and SARAH RANKIN
Mon, March 6, 2023 


RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — On a 1989 audio recording crackling with static, an inmate is barely audible as he offers his last words before he is executed in Virginia's electric chair.

“I would like to express that what is about to take place ... is a murder," Alton Waye — who was convicted of raping and murdering a 61-year-old woman — can be heard saying, before a prison employee clumsily tries to repeat what Waye said into a tape recorder.

“And that he forgives the people who's involved in this murder. And that I don’t hate nobody and that I love them," the employee says.

The recording of Waye's execution, which was recently published by NPR, is one of at least 35 audio tapes in the possession of the Virginia Department of Corrections documenting executions between 1987 and 2017, the department recently confirmed.

The Waye recording offers a rare public glimpse into an execution, a government proceeding often shrouded in secrecy and only witnessed by a select few, including prison officials, victims, family members and journalists. Even those who are allowed to witness are often prevented from seeing or hearing the entire execution process.

But the department has no plans to allow more recordings to be released to the public.

The Associated Press sought the Virginia audio tapes under the state's open records law after NPR recently reported on the existence of four execution recordings, including the Waye tape, that had long been in the possession of the Library of Virginia.

But shortly after NPR aired its story, the Department of Corrections asked for the tapes back and the library complied. The department then rejected the AP’s request for copies of all of the execution recordings in its possession, citing exemptions to records law covering security concerns, private health records and personnel information.

Several death penalty experts said the four recordings in Virginia and another 23 Georgia execution tapes released two decades ago are believed to be the only publicly available recordings of executions in the U.S.

Richard Dieter, the acting interim director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit organization that tracks and has been highly critical of capital punishment, said he would not be surprised if some other states have secretly recorded executions “just to protect themselves" against lawsuits.

“States are wary of things being done right and being challenged in court, and want to have their evidence,” Dieter said.

“So much is secretive that I don't know that they would want to reveal if they have such tapes," he said.

A 2018 report by the center found that of the 17 states that carried out a total of 246 lethal-injection executions between January 2011 and August 2018, 14 states prevented witnesses from seeing at least part of the execution, while 15 states prevented witnesses from hearing what was happening inside the execution chamber.

Virginia, long one of the country's busiest death penalty states, ended capital punishment in 2021, and lawmakers have since defeated legislative efforts to bring it back for certain crimes. But researchers and transparency advocates said the department's decision to withhold the tapes raised concerns and would limit the ability to scrutinize or research previous executions.

The tapes obtained in NPR's investigation were donated to the library in 2006 by a now-deceased former Department of Corrections employee named R. M. Oliver, the library said in a statement to AP.

NPR reported that how Oliver ended up with the tapes and why he donated them remains a mystery.

Carla Lemons, a spokeswoman for DOC, said the files that ended up at the library were taken “without VDOC’s knowledge or permission.” The department asked for them back “so we could appropriately maintain them with the other execution files in the agency’s possession,” Lemons wrote in an email.

The library said it agreed after consulting with its legal counsel.

Lemons said the DOC generally keeps execution records in its possession until at least 50 years after the execution. She defended the department’s decision to withhold the records.

“Although the department may have discretion to release certain materials contained within the execution files, VDOC gives deference to the privacy interests of current and former VDOC employees, victims, and inmates and, therefore, chooses not to publicly release these sensitive materials,” she wrote.

Dale Brumfield, an author, journalist and death penalty opponent who has written a book about capital punishment and its abolition in Virginia, said he also received the four tapes NPR covered last year from the library after an initial request was rejected years earlier.

Brumfield said he thinks the value of the tapes to the average listener is minimal, though he said they offer insight when compared to other records and news accounts.

NPR cited accounts by three local reporters who watched the 1990 execution of Wilbert Lee Evans — who was convicted of murdering a sheriff's deputy — and said that after the administration of the first jolt of electricity from the electric chair, Evans started to bleed from his eyes, mouth and nose.

But the tape of the execution does not record those details. The DOC employee who narrated the recording did not mention any evidence of blood.

Brumfield said state law has forbidden taking pictures and shooting video during the execution process since the early 20th century.

“It's the only window into a live execution that we’ve ever had," Brumfield said of the tapes.

Megan Rhyne, executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government, said that the exemptions cited by DOC in its denial of AP's request to release the tapes follow the pattern of many law enforcement, judicial and corrections agencies.

“There’s a tendency or a knee-jerk response to withhold everything," she said.

"It takes everything off the table, and the public and the advocates and lawmakers are all left in the dark trying to figure out what’s the best way to administer our justice system," she said.

Dieter said that following a string of bungled executions in recent years, some states that allow the death penalty have passed new secrecy laws that prevent the public from obtaining information about executions. He said he favors releasing the recordings.

“Executions have been botched ... you just don’t know what’s going on, and it’s a matter of life and death," Dieter said.

LEBANON

Hezbollah says it backs Christian ally to become president





Lebanon HezbollahSupporters of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group raise their fists and cheer as they listen to a speech by Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah via a video link, during a rally to mark the "Wounded Resistance Day," in the southern Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh, Lebanon, Monday, March 6, 2023. The leader of Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group said Monday that they back former Cabinet minister and strong ally Sleiman Frangieh to become Lebanon’s next president.

 (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)


BASSEM MROUE
Mon, March 6, 2023 

BEIRUT (AP) — The leader of Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah said Monday the group backs a former Cabinet minister and strong ally to become Lebanon’s next president.

It was the first time that Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah openly named Sleiman Frangieh as the candidate they support to win the top post in the crisis-hit country. Despite Hezbollah’s support, Frangieh still needs the backing of other blocs — support that could prove hard to get.

Frangieh, a Maronite Christian, does not have the backing of the largest Christian blocs in parliament and many in the Western-backed coalition oppose him because of his alliance with Hezbollah and his close personal friendship with Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Frangieh, 57, and army commander Gen. Joseph Aoun, are the top candidates for president. Hezbollah is believed to oppose the army chief's bid for president because he enjoys backing by the U.S..

Lebanon’s deeply divided parliament has failed to elect a president during 11 sessions held since the term of President Michel Aoun, also a Hezbollah ally, ended in late October.

“The natural candidate that we back in the presidential elections and has the specifications that we take into consideration is minister Sleiman Frangieh,” Nasrallah said in a speech during a rally honoring the group's wounded fighters. He reiterated that Hezbollah doesn’t want a candidate who “stabs the resistance (Hezbollah) in the back.”

Nasrallah said Hezbollah will not accept that foreign countries impose a president on Lebanon and will also not accept a foreign “veto” against any candidate, an apparent reference to Frangieh.

Nasrallah’s announcement came days after Lebanon’s Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri also said he backs Frangieh for president. Frangieh has not publicly announced he is running for office.

Despite the support of Hezbollah and Berri’s Amal Movement, the two largest Shiite groups in the country, Frangieh will still need the backing of other parliamentary blocs as no coalition has a majority in the 128-seat legislature.

Frangieh said recently that his close alliances with Hezbollah and Assad’s government give him an advantage against other candidates as he can speak with them to make concessions for the good of Lebanon.

According to Lebanon’s power-sharing system, the president must be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and the parliament speaker a Shiite Muslim. The parliament and Cabinet seats are equally divided between Christians and Muslims.

Frangieh, the leader of the Marada Movement, hails from a well-known political family from northern Lebanon. His grandfather — the man whose name he carries — was a former Lebanese president. When he was 13, his father, Tony Frangieh, was killed along with his mother and sister in an infamous 1978 massacre perpetrated by rival Christian Maronite forces in the mountain resort of Ehden.

In 2018, Frangieh reconciled with Christian leader Samir Geagea who led the raid in Ehden but was seriously wounded and withdrew from the operation.

Geagea, whose Lebanese Forces Party has the largest bloc in parliament, is strongly opposed to Frangieh becoming president and vowed to do all he can to prevent him from obtaining the post.

TRANSGENDER RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS
Arkansas Senate OKs bathroom bill that critics call extreme


ANDREW DeMILLO
Tue, March 7, 2023 

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — A bill that would criminalize transgender people using restrooms that match their gender identity won initial approval in the Arkansas Legislature on Tuesday, introducing a restriction critics said would be the most extreme in the country.

The bill approved by the majority-Republican Senate on a 19-7 vote would allow someone to be charged with misdemeanor sexual indecency with a child if they use a public restroom or changing room of the opposite sex when a minor is present. The bill now heads to the majority-GOP House.

The legislation goes even further than a North Carolina bathroom law that was enacted in 2016 and later repealed following widespread boycotts and protests. That law did not include any criminal penalties.

"What this is is an attack on the continued existence in public of transgender people, and the criminalization of being transgender in public," said Cathryn Oakley, state legislative director and senior counsel at the Human Rights Campaign.

The bill comes amidst a flood of bills targeting transgender people, and increasingly hostile rhetoric against trans people in statehouses. So far this year, at least 155 bills targeting trans people's rights have been introduced, according to the Human Rights Campaign.

Republican Sen. John Payton, the Arkansas bill's sponsor, called the measure narrowly crafted since it would only apply when minors are present and acknowledged it would be difficult to prosecute someone for violating the restriction.

“I just don’t see this as being the bill that stops people from going into the wrong bathroom,” Payton said before the vote. “Hopefully it just limits it to when children are present.”

But Sen. Joshua Bryant, the only Republican who voted against the bill, said the measure would allow someone to be prosecuted regardless of their intent. He compared it to charging someone with armed robbery if they took a concealed handgun into a building where it's not allowed.

Bryant also noted that the bill would also apply to a transgender person who's undergone complete gender affirming surgery.

"I may not understand why they did it, I may not agree with why they did it but it was their decision as an adult," Bryant said.

The proposal narrowly won approval in the 35-member Senate, with several Republican lawmakers not voting on the measure another GOP senator voting “present” — which has the same effect as voting no.

Despite the backlash over North Carolina's now-repealed bathroom bill, there has been a resurgence of similar restrictions proposed by GOP lawmakers. At least 17 bills related to who can use bathrooms have been introduced in 11 states so far this year.

Another bill pending in the Arkansas Legislature would prevent transgender people at public schools from using bathrooms that match their gender identity. Similar laws have been enacted in Alabama, Oklahoma and Tennessee. Lawsuits have been filed challenging the Oklahoma and Tennessee restrictions.

There are some exemptions in the bill approved by the Senate on Tuesday, including for parents and guardians accompanying children under the age of 7.

Even with that exemption, the bill would pose a difficult choice for transgender activist Miss Major Griffin-Gracy and her partner Beck Major, who is also transgender. The Little Rock couple have a two-year-old son and would eventually have to decide whether to send him into public restrooms alone rather than accompany him and risk being charged under the law.

“Those are two horrible choices for a parent to make,” Beck Major said. “What choice would you make?"

The legislation also worries Kathy Brown-Nichols, of Arkansas, who describes herself as a butch lesbian and said she’s already regularly harassed and questioned when she uses the women’s restroom in public because of her appearance. Brown-Nichols said she's worried that harassment would only increase if the proposed restriction becomes law.

“They are putting a big bullseye on people that are different,” she said.

Germany says Nord Stream attacks may be 'false flag' to smear Ukraine


Wed, March 8, 2023 
By Sabine Siebold and Andrew Gray

STOCKHOLM, March 8 (Reuters) - German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius on Wednesday warned against reaching premature conclusions on who was responsible for blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines, suggesting the attack could also have been a "false flag" operation to blame Ukraine.

Pistorius was speaking after a New York Times report, citing intelligence reviewed by U.S. officials, said a pro-Ukrainian group may be behind the blasts that became a flashpoint between the West and Russia after last year's Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The report, while not pointing to any official Ukrainian involvement, comes at a time when Kyiv is urging its Western allies to ramp up supplies of high-end weapons to drive back Russian forces as the war enters its second year.

Investigations are ongoing as to what caused the Nord Stream pipelines, supplying Russian energy to Europe, to rupture and spew bubbles of natural gas into the Baltic Sea last September. Western countries believe the explosions were deliberate but have not concluded who was behind them.

Russia, which has previously blamed the West, seized on the news on Wednesday to demand a transparent investigation in which it also wants to participate.

A separate report by Germany's ARD broadcaster and Zeit newspaper on Tuesday said German authorities were able to identify the boat used for the sabotage operation. It said a group of five men and one woman, using forged passports, rented a yacht from a Poland-based company owned by Ukrainian citizens, but the nationality of the perpetrators was unclear.

"We have to make a clear distinction whether it was a Ukrainian group, whether it may have happened at Ukrainian orders, or a pro-Ukrainian group (acting) without knowledge of the government. But I am warning against jumping to conclusions," Pistorius said on the sidelines of a summit in Stockholm.

Pistorius said earlier the likelihood was "equally high" that it could have been a "false flag operation staged to blame Ukraine".

Citing Germany's federal prosecutor, the ntv broadcaster said German investigators had raided a ship in January suspected of involvement but there was no reliable information on perpetrators or motives.

UKRAINE PLAYS DOWN CONCERNS

The New York Times said there was no evidence that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy or other Ukrainian government officials had played any role in the attacks.

At the same summit in Stockholm, Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov said the media reports were a "little bit strange" and had "nothing to do" with the Ukrainian government.

"It's like a compliment for our special forces," he joked. "But this is not our activity."

Reznikov said he was not worried about the prospect of the media reports weakening support for Ukraine. Pistorius batted away a similar question about Western support as "hypothetical".

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov suggested the media reports were a coordinated bid to divert attention and questioned how U.S. officials could assume anything about the attacks without an investigation.

"The very least that the Nord Stream shareholder countries and the United Nations must demand is an urgent, transparent investigation with the participation of everyone who can shed light," Peskov said.

The U.S. intelligence review suggested those who carried out the attacks opposed Russian President Vladimir Putin "but does not specify the members of the group, or who directed or paid for the operation", the New York Times wrote.

"Officials who have reviewed the intelligence said they believed the saboteurs were most likely Ukrainian or Russian nationals, or some combination of the two. U.S. officials said no American or British nationals were involved," according to the New York Times report.

Investigators founds traces of explosives on the yacht, which the group took from Rostock, Germany, on Sept. 6, according to ARD and Zeit. They also reported that intelligence indicated that a pro-Ukrainian group could be behind the attack, but German authorities have not yet found any evidence.

Reuters could not independently verify the information.

Russia last month gave the U.N. Security Council a draft resolution which - if adopted - would ask U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to establish an international, independent investigation into the attack. (Reporting by Sabine Siebold, Andrew Gray, Lidia Kelly, Mark Trevelyan, Riham Alkousaa, Kirsti Knolle; Writing by Matthias Williams; Editing by Nick Macfie)