1 in 3 US Asians and Pacific Islanders faced racial abuse this year, AP-NORC/AAPI Data poll shows

TERRY TANG and LINLEY SANDERS
Mon, November 13, 2023 


Jen Ho Lee, a 76-year-old South Korean immigrant, poses in her apartment in Los Angeles on March 31, 2021, with a sign from a recent rally against anti-Asian hate crimes she attended. Despite ongoing efforts to combat anti-Asian racism that arose after the pandemic, a third of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders say they have experienced an act of abuse based on their race or ethnicity in the last year. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

Despite ongoing advocacy and legislation to combat anti-Asian racism that arose after the pandemic, about a third of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders say they have experienced an act of abuse based on their race or ethnicity in the last year, including being on the receiving end of verbal harassment, slurs, physical threats or cyberbullying.

A new poll from AAPI Data and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds 15% of Asian American and Pacific Islanders specifically say they believe they have ever been the victim of a hate crime. About half — 51% — believe racism is an “extremely” or “very serious” problem in the U.S.

From as early as a decade ago to as recently as two weeks ago, Jennifer Lee, a 29-year-old Filipino American in San Diego, can recall being called racial slurs and being discriminated against. She recently interviewed for a job at a tutoring service.

The interviewer assumed Lee was Japanese and said: “You people are always so obedient. Why? That’s so pathetic,” she shared.

About 2 in 10 Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (23%) say they have experienced being verbally harassed or abused in the last year, and 22% have been called a racial or ethnic slur. About 1 in 10 say they have been physically assaulted or threatened physically. About a third of Asian American and Pacific Islanders say they often or sometimes face discrimination because of their race or ethnicity when applying for jobs.

Last month, the FBI reported an overall 7% increase in hate crimes, even as the agency’s data showed anti-Asian incidents in 2022 were down 33% from 2021. That seeming contradiction doesn't surprise Stephanie Chan, director of data and research at Stop AAPI Hate, an advocacy group.

“We know that Asian Americans are among the most likely to not report the crime that they’ve experienced," Chan said. "It’s really sobering to see that even when the world seems to have returned to normal, after the pandemic, these levels are still really elevated in terms of anti-Asian American hate.”

The poll also shows President Joe Biden gets mediocre ratings from Asian Americans, who viewed him favorably at 52%. That's still higher than U.S. adults overall who viewed the president favorably at 44% in a June AP-NORC poll. Vice President Kamala Harris, who is of Asian American and African American descent, is also seen favorably by about half (47%) of Asian Americans.

Lee, a Democrat, believes the president should be a role model and not turn a blind eye to racism. But she has reservations about Biden, who is just shy of his 81st birthday, filling that role.

“It seems like he’s more performative and he’s trying to say whatever the people want to hear. Also, I understand he’s of an older age, not that all people of that age are Joe Biden. But mentally, I think he’s not all there,” Lee said.

“Asian Americans are really no different than the national mood, which is Biden favorability is low,” said Natalie Masuoka, professor of political science and Asian American Studies at UCLA. “The relatively lower favorability for Biden actually could impact turnout at lower-level offices."

The lukewarm feelings about Biden should be a warning for the Democratic Party not to take AAPI voters, who tend to be mostly Democrats, for granted, Masuoka added.

Still, former President Donald Trump, who is seeking a rematch with Biden, fares even worse than the current commander-in-chief, with 7 in 10 saying they have an unfavorable opinion of Trump. No current Republican candidate asked about in the poll is viewed favorably by more than 1 in 4, while two candidates of Indian descent — Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley — each remain largely unknown by at least 4 in 10 Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

Thomas Lee, of Long Island, New York, fears the possibility of Trump getting reelected could lead to an increase in discrimination and hate crimes.

“His followers are typically more of the like ... very far radical rights. They don’t mesh well with minorities,” Thomas Lee said. “Of course, it’s got to be dependent on him becoming president, but that is kind of like the direction where I feel like it’s very likely that something’s going to happen.”

The 42-year-old Taiwanese American switched from Republican to Democrat before the 2020 presidential election, partly due to the anti-Asian sentiment he attributed to Trump. In the first year of the pandemic, Thomas Lee felt like he needed protection every time he and his family went out. He also has unease about Biden's age, but would rather have him than Trump back in the White House.

But Tia Davis, a 26-year-old Pacific Islander and Black California resident, downplayed the idea that people like her face significant racism and praised Trump. As a person of Samoan descent, she said the worst other Samoans have to endure is “healthy teasing.”

Beyond that, Davis, who switched from Democrat to Republican after Trump was elected, said she wants a president who is a smart businessman. How they deal with racism and hate crimes is not a crucial factor.

“I’m more concerned about feeding my family,” she said.

The survey shows how AAPI communities’ perceptions of levels of discrimination runs along political party lines. Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say that Asian Americans and other people of color face “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of discrimination and that white Americans do not. Overall, the poll shows about half of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders identify as Democrats and about a quarter lean Republican.

Many Asian American and Pacific Islanders are not optimistic about anti-Asian racism easing in the future. About half believe they are at least somewhat likely to be a victim of discrimination because of their race or ethnicity within the next five years, and 40% believe it’s at least somewhat likely they will be the target of a hate crime based on race or ethnicity within the same period. Of those who have been hate crime victims, 20% believe it’s “very” or “extremely likely” to happen again sometime in the next five years.

Still, Chan, of Stop AAPI Hate, hopes this poll lessens people's ignorance surrounding anti-Asian discrimination. She hopes people will understand it's more than just hate crimes, which tend to get the most media coverage.

“People’s daily lives are impacted by things like verbal harassment or bullying in schools or online acts of hate or civil rights violations,” Chan said. “Like not even being allowed to dine at a restaurant or stay at a hotel or being rejected for an Uber ride. I would say pay attention to these. These are the experiences that we’re having in America today.”

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The poll of 1,178 U.S. adults who are Asian, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islanders was conducted Oct. 10-20, 2023, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based Amplify AAPI Panel, designed to be representative of the Asian American and Pacific Islander population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.

China Copper Giant’s Downfall Sealed as Court Accepts Bankruptcy

Bloomberg News
Mon, November 13, 2023


(Bloomberg) -- Maike Metals International Co., once one of the most powerful traders in China’s massive copper market, filed for bankruptcy after more than a year of debt struggles.

The firm founded by entrepreneur He Jinbi in the early 1990s was until recently responsible for more than a quarter of China’s copper imports. On Monday, Maike said the Intermediate People’s Court of Xi’an accepted its filing, a step toward a final ruling by the court to wind up the company.

The court case caps a tumultuous period in the world’s biggest copper market after a sagging economy squeezed the country’s private sector, leading to Maike’s dramatic cash crunch and He’s disappearance. The company’s woes have rippled internationally, leading some of the most active banks in metals to pull back from financing.

The latest development in Maike’s saga comes as hundreds of executives from the global metals industry gather in Shanghai for Asia Copper Week, an annual event of contract negotiations, market discussions and networking.

The nation’s copper demand has proved relatively healthy this year, largely thanks to the rapid expansion of the country’s new-energy sectors — especially solar power and electric vehicles. But traders have struggled with the legacy of the pandemic as well as the country’s prolonged property slump and tighter rules on commodity trading.

Maike and He have been targeted with legal action by creditors since the firm ran into payment difficulties in 2022 during China’s extended Covid lockdowns. By September of that year, its trading activities had largely ground to a halt, and it filed for “preliminary restructuring” with the Xi’an court in February.

Maike will “fairly pay off all types of creditors’ rights” in accordance with market principles and the rule of law, it said. The company declined to comment further on the bankruptcy proceedings or on He’s latest whereabouts, after executives lost contact with him in early October.

Chairman He was sued this year by ING Groep NV in Hong Kong over $147 million in unpaid debt. The case involved overdue payments owed by a trading arm of Maike, according to court filings. The Chinese company has previously declined to comment about the case.

Another big copper merchant and conglomerate, Amer International Group Co. has also struggled. The Fortune 500 firm owned by billionaire Wang Wenyin has seen an exodus of staff — including some of its top metals traders — as a result of the challenging market conditions.

--With assistance from Alfred Cang.

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

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China on track to operate African Tazara railway as powers vie for control of mineral trade routes


South China Morning Post
Sun, November 12, 2023 

China has chosen China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) to negotiate a concession to operate the Tanzania-Zambia Railway line, as geopolitical tensions rise over control of trading routes for critical minerals in Africa.

CCECC, a subsidiary of the China Railway Construction Corporation, is expected to negotiate a public-private partnership concession in the form of a build-operate-transfer model with Tanzania and Zambia to operate Tazara.

It is also expected to upgrade the railway - which Chinese President Xi Jinping has called "a symbol of China-Africa friendship" - at an estimated cost of US$1 billion.

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The concession is expected to give a much-needed lifeline to the almost 50-year-old line, also known as Tazara, which was originally funded by Mao Zedong's government as a foreign aid project.

Last month, the Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority announced the news, saying Chinese investors and CCECC were poised to play a significant role, hence the company's proposal was "expected imminently".

Observers have said the funding for the railway pointed to Beijing's keen interest in using Tazara for mining exports from Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

But China is not alone - competition in the area with both the European Union and the United States is intensifying as the race for critical minerals used in the production of electric vehicle batteries heats up.

Tim Zajontz, a lecturer in global political economy at the University of Freiburg, said while the Chinese consortium would commit to invest in Tazara's ailing infrastructure and insufficient rolling stock, it was not an aid mission.

"The Chinese investors have made it unmistakably clear in previous negotiations that Tazara is no longer considered an aid project but that it must be a commercially viable venture," said Zajontz, who is also a research fellow in the Centre for International and Comparative Politics at Stellenbosch University.

Aly-Khan Satchu, a sub-­Saharan Africa geoeconomic ­an­­­­­­­­­­a­­­­­­­­­lyst, said the Tanzanian and Zambian governments seemed to be looking for a major revamp of the railway and were happy to concede the running of this line to the private sector.

"So I expect this to be a revamp, to operate as the concessionaire for a meaningful period of time," Satchu said.

He also noted Xi's keen interest in upgrading Tazara.

"This railway is a symbol of the Sino-African story and President Xi understands the power of the narrative," Satchu said.

Xi had promised to overhaul the railway when Tanzanian counterpart Samia Suluhu Hassan visited China last year and during Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema's visit in September.

"China is willing to support the upgrading and transformation of the Tanzania-Zambia Railway in accordance with the principles of marketisation and commercialisation," Xi said when he met Hichilema.

Zajontz said Tazara was part of the DNA of Sino-African relations, and often used to emphasise that China's dealings with Africa were based on equality, solidarity and anti-imperialism.

"Notwithstanding the official rhetoric, Beijing has also keen geoeconomic interests in Tazara's rehabilitation which would improve the performance of the Dar es Salaam corridor, not least for mining exports from Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo," said Zajontz, whose coming book, The Political Economy of China's Infrastructure Development in Africa, discusses Tazara's planned privatisation.

When China's involvement in the Tazara railway began in the 1970s, the country was facing its own financial difficulties.

Meanwhile, Zambia was desperate for a railway link to the Tanzanian coast for its main export, copper. Neighbouring white-controlled Rhodesia - now Zimbabwe - had cut Zambia's only route to the sea in response to its transfer of power to the black majority.

The US and Russia both refused to fund a new railway, so China stepped in, building Tazara for about a billion yuan, or billions of US dollars at today's rates.

The Tazara Memorial Park in Zambia's Lusaka province commemorates Chinese nationals who died during the construction of the railway line in the 1970s. Photo: Xinhua alt=The Tazara Memorial Park in Zambia's Lusaka province commemorates Chinese nationals who died during the construction of the railway line in the 1970s. Photo: Xinhua>

From 1970 to 1975, as many as 50,000 Chinese workers were deployed to build the 1,860km (1,155 miles) of track stretching from Zambia's copper belt to the Tanzanian port of Dar es Salaam on the Indian Ocean.

It remains China's biggest overseas project to date, and managed to boost Beijing's political capital during the Cold War.

However, the American embassy in Zambia said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that although China had funded Tazara's construction, it was the US that kept it running, with over US$45 million in help for "new locomotives and rolling stock" as well as "substantial technical assistance".

"Tazara has never reached its full potential," the embassy wrote on Thursday. "By the end of 1978, only two trains were operating daily."

"In the 1980s, the United States joined international partners in responding to Zambia and Tanzania's request to rehabilitate Tazara, with the US government providing over US$27 million through USAID," it added.

Zajontz said the embassy's post was a great example of how the "great powers" competed for public opinion across Africa.

"Everyone who knows a little bit about Tazara knows that eventually it will be privatised and that the Chinese would not allow a non-Chinese firm to run it - for obvious historical reasons," Zajontz said.

He added that the tweet showed how "desperate" both China and the West were in stressing how much they had invested in African infrastructure initiatives.

Tazara's upgrade follows EU and US announcements that they will fund the building of a railway from the Zambian copper belt to an existing line to the Angolan port of Lobito. They will also develop the Lobito transport corridor, which will connect inland southern DRC and northwest Zambia to regional and global trade markets via the Angolan port city.

The interest in the central African countries all circles back to minerals that are vital to the manufacture of electric batteries, including cobalt which is mined in the DRC and Zambia. Chinese companies have made vast investments in both countries.

"The US wants to chalk up something on the board and this Lobito corridor is a relatively bite-sized investment - but the US is a Johnny-come-lately and woefully behind the curve," Satchu said.

Zajontz said the West was keen to control its own transport routes in the region.

"Both the US and the EU want to prevent a situation in which Chinese transport or logistics firms could interrupt critical value chains if prompted as part of geopolitical escalations," Zajontz said.

"For Beijing, the recent announcement of Western investments along the Lobito corridor has certainly increased the geopolitical incentive to invest in and operate Tazara."

Emmanuel Matambo, research director at the University of Johannesburg's Centre for Africa-China Studies, said China understood the ideological and intangible value of Tazara, and so "the concession will not place high demands, if at all, on Zambia and Tanzania".

As a landlocked country, Zambia in particular had struggled to make efficient use of its neighbours' seaports and China was alive to that, he said. "The Tazara is more than a railway; it embodies China's long-standing solidarity with the developing world."

Matambo added that, unlike Tanzania where the ruling party had a firm hold on the incumbency, Zambia was more politically open and China had wanted to retain Zambia's friendship through leadership changes. Helping in tangible ways such as reviving Tazara would boost China's image in the eyes of Zambians, he said.

Copyright (c) 2023. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

Biden administration slow to act as millions are booted off Medicaid, advocates say

AMANDA SEITZ and KENYA HUNTER
Mon, November 13, 2023 

A Medicaid office employee works on reports at Montefiore Medical Center in New York. Error-ridden state reviews have purged millions of the poorest Americans from the Medicaid program, and poverty experts across the country worry the Biden administration is not doing enough to stop them.

 (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson, File) 

WASHINGTON (AP) — Up to 30 million of the poorest Americans could be purged from the Medicaid program, many the result of error-ridden state reviews that poverty experts say the Biden administration is not doing enough to stop.

The projections from the health consulting firm Avalere come as states undertake a sweeping re-evaluation of the 94 million people enrolled in Medicaid, government’s health insurance for the neediest Americans. A host of problems have surfaced across the country, including hours-long phone wait times in Florida, confusing government forms in Arkansas, and children wrongly dropped from coverage in Texas.

“Those people were destined to fail,” said Trevor Hawkins, an attorney for Legal Aid of Arkansas.

Hawkins helped hundreds of people navigate their Medicaid eligibility in Arkansas, as state officials worked to “ swiftly disenroll ” about 420,000 people in six months’ time. He raised problems with Arkansas' process — like forms that wrongly told people they needed to reapply for Medicaid, instead of simply renew it — with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Nothing changed, he said.

“They ask questions but they don’t tell us what is going on,” Hawkins said of CMS. “Those should be major red flags. If there was a situation where CMS was to step in, it would have been Arkansas.”

Nearly a dozen advocates around the country detailed widespread problems they’ve encountered while helping some of the estimated 10 million people who've already been dropped from Medicaid. Some fear systemic problems are being ignored.

Congress ended a COVID-19 policy last year that barred states from kicking anyone off Medicaid during the pandemic, requiring them to undertake a review of every enrollee's eligibility over the next year. But the Democratic-led Congress also gave Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra the power to fine states or halt disenrollments if people were improperly being removed.

HHS has shared little about problems it has uncovered.

Earlier this year, the agency briefly paused disenrollments in 14 states, but did not disclose which states were paused or for what reasons.

In August, HHS announced thousands of children had been wrongly removed in 29 states that were automatically removing entire households, instead of individuals, from coverage. CMS required the states to reinstate coverage for those who had been terminated under that process, said Daniel Tsai, the director of the CMS Center for Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program Services.

“We are using every lever that we have to hold states accountable," Tsai said.

Florida tried twice to remove Lily Mezquita, a 31-year-old working mom in Miami, Florida, from Medicaid during her pregnancy this year. She pleaded her case in 17 phone calls — some with wait times stretching as long as two hours — before she was finally reinstated in August from her hospital bed while in preterm labor. Mezquita would explain the state's law, which says she's guaranteed coverage through her pregnancy and 12 months after giving birth.

“No matter how much I tried to explain, no one was willing to listen,” she said. “They’re making errors, and they’re very confident in their errors.”

Because her coverage didn’t immediately register in the state’s system, Mezquita paid out-of-pocket for pills doctors prescribed to prevent pre-term labor from arising again, and she missed follow-up appointments to check on her baby girl.

If trends continue, as many as 30 million people could end up being dropped from Medicaid once states finish reviewing their Medicaid rolls, according to Avalere's projections. The numbers dwarf the Biden administration’s initial projections that only 15 million people would lose coverage throughout the process.

“We have to say it’s going poorly,” Massey Whorley, a principal at Avalere, said of the Medicaid redeterminations. “This has been characterized by much higher-than-expected disenrollment.”

Most have been removed for procedural reasons, like failing to send back their renewal form or mail in proper paperwork. That points to bigger problems with how the states are determining Medicaid eligibility: their notices aren't reaching people, don't make sense or they're requiring unnecessary paperwork. Many of the people removed for those reasons may still qualify for Medicaid.

In Arkansas, which has finished its Medicaid redeterminations, public records shared with the AP show more than 70% of people were kicked off Medicaid because the state couldn’t reach them, they didn’t return their renewal form or provide requested paperwork.

“I can’t say how many calls I’ve gotten from people who just got out of the emergency room and found out they don’t have coverage,” Hawkins said.

The state's Department of Human Services says it tried to reach people with additional calls, emails and texts. It believes the high number of procedural disenrollments were the result of people who no longer qualified for Medicaid not mailing back their renewal forms, spokesman Gavin Lesnick told AP in an email. Lesnick said CMS has never asked Arkansas to pause disenrollments.

Long phone wait times and notices that don't include reasons why people are being kicked off Medicaid have plagued the process in Florida, said Lynn Hearn, an attorney at the Florida Health Justice Project. Hearn helped Mezquita appeal her case to the state. Earlier this year, the nonprofit sued the state over its handling of the process.

“We’ve seen CMS reluctant to step in on the issues that we’ve raised,” Hearn said. “We have seen errors in state processing that indicate more than anomalies — more like systemic issues."

The Florida Department of Children and Families has had an 87% response rate to its renewal forms and call wait times are under five minutes, spokeswoman Mallory McManus said in an email.

Medicaid enrollees in North Carolina, meanwhile, are also having trouble reaching their local office by phone or getting calls returned when they leave a message, said Cassidy Estes-Rogers, the director of family support and healthcare at the Charlotte Center for Legal Advocacy. State officials didn't immediately respond to questions about phone troubles.

Estes-Rogers said she meets regularly with local CMS officials about problems.

“They just don’t come back to us with any information on how that was resolved, and we don’t see any immediate effects from it,” she said.

Similar problems have arisen in Texas, where website and app outages have meant families don't even get the electronic notices stating their Medicaid coverage was up for renewal, said Graciela Camarena, the child health outreach program director for the Children's Defense Fund in Texas.

"They were visiting the doctor's office or the pediatricians' office — that's where they found out they were denied," Camarena said.

Camarena said CMS has met with her organization to go over some of the issues. Some Texas lawmakers have asked CMS to investigate issues in the state, where nearly 1 million have lost Medicaid.

CMS has not asked the state to stop the process, Texas Health and Human Services spokeswoman Jennifer Ruffcorn said in an email. The agency “is continuously working to improve” its app and website, she added.

Local groups have also been funneling up problems to national groups that CMS meets with weekly, Tsai said. In some cases, issues raised to the agency don't violate federal regulations.

“However," Tsai said, “You look at what's happening and you say, ‘how is this a good, consumer friendly-process?’”

CMS has tried to play nice with states on Medicaid, hoping they can help improve the enrollment process for many years to come said Jennifer Wagner, the director of Medicaid eligibility and enrollment for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The organization has been working with local groups to notify CMS of problems.

“There is a question, in some states, if it’s time to shift toward enforcement," she said.

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Hunter reported from Atlanta.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Confederate military relics dumped during Union offensive unearthed in South Carolina river cleanup

JAMES POLLARD
Mon, November 13, 2023 

A Confederate sword blade is displayed at a press conference celebrating the early completion of the Congaree River cleanup on Monday, Nov. 13, 2023 in Columbia, S.C. Hundreds of Civil War relics were unearthed during the $20 million project.

 (AP Photo/James Pollard) 

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Hundreds of Civil War relics were unearthed during the cleanup of a South Carolina river where Union troops dumped Confederate military equipment to deliver a demoralizing blow for rebel forces in the birthplace of the secessionist movement.

The artifacts were discovered while crews removed tar-like material from the Congaree River and bring new tangible evidence of Union Gen. William T. Sherman's ruthless Southern campaign toward the end of the Civil War. The remains are expected to find a safer home at the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum in the state capital of Columbia.

Historical finds include cannonballs, a sword blade and a wheel experts believe belonged to a wagon that blew up during the two days of supply dumps. The odds of finding the wagon wheel “are crazy,” according to Sean Norris.

“It's an interesting story to tell,” said Norris, the archaeological program manager at an environmental consulting firm called TRC. “It's a good one — that we were able to take a real piece of it rather than just the written record showing this is what happened.”

One unexploded munition got “demilitarized” at Shaw Air Force Base. Norris said the remaining artifacts won't be displayed for a couple more years. Corroded metal relics must undergo an electrochemical process for their conservation, and they'll also need measurement and identification.

Dominion Energy crews have been working to rid the riverbed of toxic tar first discovered in 2010, at times even operating armor-plated excavators as a safeguard against potential explosives. State and local officials gathered Monday to celebrate early completion of the $20 million project.

South Carolina Republican Gov. Henry McMaster said this preservation is necessary for current generations to learn from history.

“All those things are lost on us today. They seem like just stories from the past," McMaster said. "But when we read about those, and when we see artifacts, and see things that touched people's hands, it brings us right back to how fortunate we are in this state and in this country to be where we are."

___

Pollard is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.


Toxic gunk cleansed from Congaree River 13 years after first reported. What’s next?

Sammy Fretwell
Mon, November 13, 2023 at 12:10 PM MST·6 min read

Thirteen years after a kayaker reported stepping into a stinging patch of muck in the Congaree River, contractors have cleaned up the toxic mess that covered a stretch of the river bottom below the Gervais Street bridge in Columbia.

Work crews excavated and removed some 38,500 tons of coal tar from two sections of river bed between the Gervais and Blossom street bridges in what has been one of the largest environmental cleanup projects in Columbia’s recent history.

The $20 million Congaree cleanup effort was pronounced officially complete during a public event along the river Monday that featured Gov. Henry McMaster, Columbia Mayor Daniel Rickenmann and Keller Kissam, Dominion Energy’s South Carolina president.

Officials said the cleanup work, underway for more than a year, finished about a year ahead of schedule.

“There were many who doubted that it could be done, but I’m here today to say proudly that not only did our exceptionally talented and dedicated team do it, they did it in a manner that sets an example for others to follow,’’ Kissam said in a prepared statement.

McMaster, who took a personal interest in the cleanup effort, told the crowd gathered at the river that having to clean up the Congaree shows why it is important to protect the environment. The coal tar is believed to have drained into the river from an old manufactured gas plant, which operated on Huger Street from around the turn of the 20th century to the 1950s.

“There’s a lesson in here: That it’s easy to mess things up, but it’s hard to clean up,’’ McMaster said. ‘’Here we are cleaning up something that was done probably inadvertently without thinking. Everything went into the river back way back then.’’

“We have to be sure now that what we are doing is not messing something up so somebody has to clean it up later.’’

With the work completed, Rickenmann said plans to develop parts of the river can move more smoothly. Columbia leaders have long envisioned having a riverfront park near where the cleanup occurred.

The city also wants to expand the system of trails along the area’s rivers and plans are on the table to open Williams Street, which runs parallel to the Congaree between Gervais and Blossom streets.

“Opening up the river and the connectivity is something we have talked about for so long,’’ Rickenmann said. “This riverfront is really ..... the catalyst for Columbia.’’

Perhaps more importantly, the cleanup makes it safer for swimmers and kayakers below the Gervais Street bridge. The area near the end of Senate Street has historically been a popular spot to launch watercraft.

Dominion contractors dug up the material and hauled it away after building two temporary dams to hold back water in parts of the river. The dams, highly visible in Columbia during the cleanup, have now been removed and the state Department of Health and Environmental Control says the project was a success.

Gov. Henry McMaster speaks during a Nov. 13, 2023 public event to announce the completion of an environmental cleanup of the Congaree River in Columbia. Tons of toxic coal tar were removed from the river.

Work done in the river occurred on about three acres that contained the vast majority of the coal tar, which was located in two spots where the public might most be likely to have come in contact with it. A small amount of coal tar was left in other, less accessible parts of the river, according to Dominion. Overall, the coal tar was scattered over an 11-to-14-acre area.

Dominion’s Tom Effinger said the muck dug from the river bottom was hauled to a landfill on Screaming Eagle Road in Richland County for disposal.

During the cleanup, more than coal tar was removed. Work crews pulled out 2.5 tons of trash and debris, such as tires, Kissam said.

Contractors also found more than 100 Civil War era relics, including a wagon wheel, a Confederate saber, cannon balls and an anchor. Some of the Civil War era relics were believed to have wound up in the river during the time of Union General William Sherman’s assault on Columbia in 1865.

Hundreds of other artifacts were recovered from other eras, including from when Native Americans lived in the area.

Work crews found at least one unexploded bomb that was from an era after the Civil War. A special military bomb crew hauled it off. To protect workers, armor-plated heavy equipment was used to dig through the mud, Kissam said.

The cleanup work started in May 2022 after years of disagreements on whether to remove the tar or cover it up with rocks and leave the material in place.

SCE&G, later acquired by Dominion, had initially considered cleaning up the tar in the face of pressure from DHEC. But the company then changed its mind after saying cleaning up the tar would be a difficult, expensive process.

Leaving the tar in place and covering it up with stones and fabric would have saved the company $11 million at the time. SCE&G said it was having trouble getting environmental permits for the work, which is why it opted for leaving the material.

Critics said, however, that it was the company’s responsibility to get the tar out of the river since the pollution had drained from the manufactured gas plant site on Huger Street.

Then, after the Congaree Riverkeeper organization threatened a pair of lawsuits, Dominion restarted efforts to cleanse the river bottom of coal tar. The power company restarted the project and got the permits it needed.

The Congaree River is one of Columbia’s three major rivers. This photo is near the Gervais Street bridge.

Once the cleanup work finally began in May 2022, it went smoothly, officials said.

Coal tar is a goopy black substance generated from the 1800s to the 1950s at manufactured gas plants that produced energy. It is filled with toxins, including cancer causing benzene and substances that can cause tumors on fish.

Nationally, an estimated 5,000 coal tar sites exist across the country, including spots in other parts of South Carolina, besides the Congaree River.

In 2010, a kayaker notified DHEC that he had stepped in the substance, prompting the agency to post public warning signs along parts of the river. Other people, including riverkeeper Bill Stangler, also came in contact with the burning muck.

Stangler, the riverkeeper for the Congaree, Broad and lower Saluda rivers, said the coal tar cleanup took a lot of effort on the part of his organization, state regulators and local politicians. Had people not pushed the power company to restart the cleanup, it may never have been done, said Stangler, who said he was not invited to Monday’s public event along the river.

“We’ve been advocating on this for more than a decade, ever since a local river user stepped in that tar,’’ Stangler said. “It took a lot of work to get there. It was contentious at times, but we are happy to see this project get done.

“It sends a signal to our community and communities across the country that if you stand up and speak and fight for your rivers, great things can happen.’’


Confederate relics were discovered in the Congaree River during a cleanup of toxic coal tar. These relics were displayed Nov. 13, 2023 during a public event on the Congaree.

A former Fox News reporter who is refusingto divulge her sources could be held in contempt of court

ERIC TUCKER and ALANNA DURKIN RICHER
Mon, November 13, 2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a case with potentially far-reaching press freedom implications, a federal judge in Washington is weighing whether to hold in contempt a veteran journalist who has refused to identify her sources for stories about a Chinese American scientist who was investigated by the FBI but never charged.

The judge previously ordered former Fox News reporter Catherine Herridge to be interviewed under oath about her sources for a series of stories about Yanping Chen, who was investigated for years on suspicions she may have lied on immigration forms related to work on a Chinese astronaut program. Chen has sued the government, saying details about the probe were leaked to damage her reputation.

But after Herridge refused to divulge to Chen’s lawyers how she acquired her information, the scientist’s attorneys are asking U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper to hold the reporter in contempt — a sanction that could result in steep monetary fines until she complies.

The long-running lawsuit, now nearing a crucial decision point, represents the collision of competing interests: a journalist’s professional obligation to protect sources and an individual’s right to pursue compensation over perceived privacy violations by the government. It’s being closely watched by media advocates, who say forcing journalists to betray a promise of confidentiality could make sources think twice before providing information to reporters that could expose government wrongdoing.

“Allowing confidential sources to be ordered revealed means that the public will have less information. The more significant the story, the more significant topic, the greater the loss to the public in not knowing the truth about what’s going on,” said longtime First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams. Abrams represented New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who spent 85 days in jail after being held in contempt for refusing to divulge a source in an investigation of leaks about an undercover CIA agent.

The judge acknowledged the stakes in an August decision that forced Herridge to be interviewed, writing, “The Court recognizes both the vital importance of a free press and the critical role that confidential sources play in the work of investigative journalists like Herridge,” who now works at CBS.

But Cooper said that “Chen’s need for the requested evidence overcomes Herridge’s qualified First Amendment privilege in this case.”

The stories by Herridge were published and aired by Fox News in 2017, one year after the Justice Department told Chen she would not face any charges in its yearslong investigation into whether she may have concealed her former membership in the Chinese military on U.S. immigration forms.

The reports examined Chen's former alleged ties to the Chinese military and whether she had used a professional school she founded in Virginia to help the Chinese government get information about American servicemembers. They relied on what her lawyers contend was items leaked from the probe, including snippets of an FBI document summarizing an interview, personal photographs, and information taken from her immigration and naturalization forms and from an internal FBI PowerPoint presentation.

Herridge was interviewed under oath in September by a lawyer for Chen, but declined dozens of times to answer questions about her sources, saying at one point: “My understanding is that the courts have ruled that in order to seek further judicial review in this case, I must now decline the order, and respectfully I am invoking my First Amendment rights in declining to answer the question.”

Herridge’s attorney, Patrick Philbin, who served as deputy White House counsel during the Trump administration, said that forcing the journalist to turn over her source or sources would destroy her credibility and hurt her career.

“The First Amendment interest in protecting journalists’ sources is at its highest in cases, like this, involving reporting on national security,” Philbin wrote in court papers. “And confidentiality is critical for government sources who may face punishment for speaking to the press.”

In a statement, Fox News said that “sanctioning a journalist for protecting a confidential source is not only against the First Amendment but would have a chilling effect on journalism across the country as the ability to hold truth to power is essential in a democracy.”

The network said it fully supports Herridge’s position. CBS News said it does as well, asserting in its own statement that the motion for contempt “should be concerning to all Americans who value the role of the free press in our democracy and understand that reliance on confidential sources is critical to the mission of journalism.”

Legal fights over whether journalists should have to divulge a source are rare, though they’ve arisen several times in the last couple decades in Privacy Act cases like the one filed by Chen. Some lawsuits have ended with a hefty Justice Department settlement in place of a journalist being forced to reveal a source, an outcome that remains possible in Herridge’s case.

In 2008, for instance, the Justice Department agreed to pay $5.8 million to settle a lawsuit by Army scientist Steven Hatfill, who was falsely identified as a person of interest in the 2001 Anthrax attacks. That settlement resulted in a contempt order being vacated against a journalist who was being asked to name her sources.

In Herridge’s case, the scientist’s lawyers say they’re seeking a fine that would increase over time until she identifies her source. Unlike in Miller’s situation, it’s a private plaintiff demanding to know the identity of the source rather than representatives of the Justice Department.

Courts have recognized that journalists have a limited privilege to keep confidential their sources, allowing reporters to block subpoenas in the past. But judges in some cases, like Herridge’s, have found that privilege can be outweighed by the need for the information if the person seeking the source has failed to find it through other means.

Many states have reporter shields, which offer various protections from subpoenas and the forced disclosure of sources, but there is no such protection in federal law. Gabe Rottman, of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said Herridge’s case is a stark illustration of the need for a federal shield law.

“If sources can’t be given credible assurances of confidentiality, they won’t come forward,” said Rottman, director of the group's Technology and Press Freedom Project. “And that chills the free flow of information to the public and it limits journalists' ability to do their jobs.”

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Richer reported from Boston.

Who's getting evicted in America? The latest data shows a grim reality for millions of US adults — and kids — facing eviction as the housing crisis worsens for renters


Serah Louis
Mon, November 13, 2023

Propelled by rising rents and a shortage of affordable housing, eviction filings are skyrocketing across the country — leaving many Americans scrambling to cover costs, find a new place or face the risk of homelessness.

The rental crisis was already worrying before the pandemic: Roughly 7.6 million Americans faced eviction each year from 2007 to 2016, according to a recent report from The Eviction Lab and U.S. Census Bureau tallying for the first time the number of individuals, not just households, under threat.

Fast forward to today, and eviction filings are more than 50% higher than the pre-pandemic average in multiple cities.

Eviction Lab researchers are tracking eviction filings in 34 cities across 10 states, and the data provides a grim snapshot of the risks facing a growing number of American renters right now.

Here’s what is pushing the rental crisis to new heights — and the disturbing truth about who is most at risk.

The typical rent in the U.S. now sits at $2,011 — 3.2% higher compared to last year and up slightly from September — according to a November report from Zillow.

And the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) notes a full-time worker would need to earn $28.58 an hour on average to afford a modest, two-bedroom rental — far higher than the national minimum wage of $7.25.

This puts low-income Americans at major risk of losing out on housing — and facing homelessness.

While monthly rent growth is slowly cooling ahead of the winter months, more low-income workers are rent-burdened, as they struggle with wages that aren’t keeping pace with inflation and no more pandemic programs to help keep them afloat.

To compound this issue, the U.S. is facing a shortfall of 7.3 million rental homes that are affordable to renters with extremely low incomes (incomes at or below either the federal poverty guideline or 30% of their area median income), reports the NLIHC.

Read more: Thanks to Jeff Bezos, you can now use $100 to cash in on prime real estate — without the headache of being a landlord. Here's how

Who is at greatest risk of eviction?

Just over half of the 7.6 million individuals highlighted in the newest Eviction Lab report lived in a household that received an eviction judgment.

But aside from spotlighting how many people face eviction, the report points to a surprising group most at risk for removal from a rental property: Children.

Each year, 2.9 million children under 18 are threatened with eviction, while 1.5 million are evicted — representing 2 in 5 of the entire population that face eviction each year.

“When I started writing about these issues, I kind of thought kids would shield families from eviction,” said Matthew Desmond, principal investigator at The Eviction Lab, in an interview with The New York Times. “But they expose families to eviction.”

The eviction filing rate for adults living with a child was 10.4%, over double the risk for those without children. This increased risk could be due to additional financial costs — like higher grocery and child-care costs — reduced working hours or even discrimination from landlords who might not want to deal with potential noise and damage.

There are significant racial disparities as well. While less than one in five renters in the U.S. is Black, over half of all eviction notices are filed against Black renters and about one in 10 are evicted each year.

In comparison, only one in 24 white renters are threatened with eviction and one in 40 are evicted annually.

“The face of the eviction epidemic is moms and kids, especially poor moms from predominantly Latino and African American neighborhoods,” Desmond told The Atlantic back in 2016, noting that about one in five African American women who rent report being evicted at some point in their lives.

Eviction risk generally decreases with age and income, although the study notes this is far from just a young person’s problem, with nearly 830,000 renters over 50 facing the threat of eviction each year.

What needs to change?

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the government introduced emergency rental assistance programs that prevented eviction filings from spiraling out of control as many Americans lost their jobs or faced reduced working hours, leaving them unable to afford their monthly rent.

In fact, The Eviction Lab reported earlier this year that COVID-era policies slashed eviction filings by more than half, compared to pre-pandemic times.

Diane Yentel, CEO and president of the NLIHC, says these protections need to come back.

“We absolutely should make this program permanent and permanently funded, keep this infrastructure that we built throughout the country, build off of these lessons that we learned, and continue to keep people stably housed into the future,” Yentel told PBS News in June.

She believes the housing crisis can be resolved with short-term emergency rental assistance programs and longer-term rental assistance. She also emphasizes the importance of preserving and building more apartments that are affordable to folks with extremely low incomes, as well as robust tenant protections.

“But it's going to require increased political will at all levels to be able to get the solutions at the scale needed to truly address this challenge,” she said.

Earlier this year, President Joe Biden proposed a new budget to lower housing costs, expand supply, improve access to affordable rental options and increase efforts to end homelessness and prevent housing discrimination.

But with the government narrowly avoiding a shutdown and Congress in disarray after Rep. Kevin McCarthy was ousted as speaker, the Biden Administration is facing an uphill battle to move forward with any legislation in the Republican-controlled House.