HANDMAIDS TALE

A TX Woman Was Denied an Abortion Even Though Ectopic Pregnancy Was Killing Her

The case is yet another example of how Texas’s “life-saving” abortion exception has been ignored.

By Chris Walker , TRUTHOUT

February 26, 2024

PABLOHART / E+ / GETTY IMAGES

A 25-year-old college senior in Texas was denied emergency surgical care for a non-viable pregnancy — the latest example of medical providers refusing to make exceptions to the state’s total abortion ban out of fear of being criminally prosecuted.

Kelsie Norris-De La Cruz told The Washington Post that she was looking forward to the birth of her child when she discovered she was pregnant in January. However, after experiencing severe cramps and bleeding, she went to Texas Health Arlington Memorial Hospital, where she was told she likely had an ectopic pregnancy.

Such pregnancies, in which a fertilized egg develops in a location other than the uterine wall (typically in the fallopian tubes), are non-viable, and are responsible for between 5 to 10 percent of all pregnancy-related deaths.

Despite the life-threatening risks, Norris-De La Cruz was told that she should go back home until the pregnancy developed further, as there was a minimal chance that she could miscarry on her own or that the fertilized egg could migrate somewhere else. After about a month’s time — and after experiencing cramps so severe she could hardly stand up — Norris-De La Cruz returned to the hospital in mid-February.

There, two OB/GYNs and an on-call doctor at Arlington Memorial Hospital reviewed her case. According to medical records, the on-call doctor wanted to immediately perform surgery to rectify the situation. However, the two OB/GYNs refused to sign off on the surgery, a requirement at that hospital in order to perform the life-saving procedure.

RELATED STORY

Texas Abortion Ban Has Ripple Effect on Medical Care for Pregnant People

Pregnant patients face medical uncertainty and risks, from hyperemesis gravidarum to cancer treatment.

By Kendall Turner , OPENDEMOCRACY February 11, 2024

Despite the on-call doctor stating that he did “not feel comfortable discharging her home” and that it was not “in her best interest” to leave without surgery, Norris-De La Cruz was discharged. Only after she sent images of her sonogram to a friend, who was visiting a different OB/GYN elsewhere, did a health provider finally tell her that she needed an abortion right away.

Norris-De La Cruz underwent that procedure, from a different hospital, 24 hours after being denied an abortion at Arlington Memorial Hospital. According to an OB/GYN who treated her at the second hospital, Norris-De La Cruz’s life would have been “in extreme danger” had she waited any longer.

After terminating the pregnancy that was causing her excruciating pain and threatening her life, Norris-De La Cruz expressed despair and anxiety, telling The Washington Post that she was worried over whether she could become pregnant again in the future.

“I was scared I was going to … lose my entire reproductive system if they waited too long. I knew it could happen at any moment,” she said.

Experts whom The Post consulted in reporting Norris-De La Cruz’s story said that she should have been granted an abortion right away, in compliance with Texas’s abortion law that allows the procedure if it is necessary to save a pregnant person’s life.

“That should have been a bread and butter slam dunk diagnosis. It doesn’t make sense to me that they would send her away, unless they had a fear that the surgery … could be perceived as causing an abortion” that violated Texas law, said Clayton Alfonso, an OB/GYN at Duke University who reviewed Norris-De La Cruz’s case for The Post.

However, there are dozens of examples of people in states with strict abortion bans — which supposedly make exceptions in medical emergencies — being denied life- or health-saving abortions due to medical providers’ fears that they could be punished by the state for violating the law.

Those fears are not necessarily misplaced, as evidenced by the case of Kate Cox, a woman in Texas whose fetus had Trisomy 18, a fatal condition that will result either in miscarriage or the infant dying within a few days of birth, and which can also threaten the health of the pregnant person. After doctors denied Cox an abortion, she appealed to the state courts. Ultimately, the conservative state Supreme Court said in December that she still couldn’t get an abortion, forcing Cox to flee the state in order to have the procedure.

Other cases abound of people being denied abortions in Texas in spite of clearly needing them. Early last year, five women sued the state after their pregnancies nearly killed them. One of those women, Amanda Zurawski, said that she got sepsis twice from her non-viable pregnancy, which resulted in scar tissue so severe that one of her fallopian tubes no longer functions.

“Nothing about this is pro-life,” she told NBC News at the time.



This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

CHRIS WALKER is a news writer at Truthout, and is based out of Madison, Wisconsin. Focusing on both national and local topics since the early 2000s, he has produced thousands of articles analyzing the issues of the day and their impact on the American people. He can be found on most social media platforms under the handle @thatchriswalker.

STOP COP CITY

Domestic Terror Statute

Activists targeted insurers and investors in Tucson as the Georgia legislature and police target organizers in Atlanta.

By Candice Bernd ,

TRUTHOUT

February 26, 2024

Organizers who attended the Nationwide Summit to Stop Cop City in Tucson, Arizona, rally outside the primary insurer of the Cop City project in Scottsdale, Arizona, on February 26, 2024.

SASHA BERKMAN


Truthout is a vital news source and a living history of political struggle. If you think our work is valuable, support us with a donation of any size.

UPDATE: At least six activists were arrested later Monday after blockading the entrance to a gated community in Fountain Hills, Arizona, by duck-taping their hands to concrete-filled tires. An executive of Nationwide Insurance allegedly lives in the subdivision.

On Monday morning, about 50 activists and organizers targeted the offices of the primary insurer of the $109 million police training center under construction in unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, that opponents have dubbed “Cop City.” A few activists briefly blocked entrances before rallying outside the Scottsdale, Arizona, offices of Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company subsidiary Scottsdale Insurance Co. Truthout first obtained Cop City’s certificate of insurance, which revealed the company’s involvement, in May 2023.

The action capped off the four-day Nationwide Summit to Stop Cop City in Tucson, Arizona, in which activists from more than 30 Weelaunee Defense Society chapters across the United States held camp at a parking lot near Mansfield Park and organized decentralized workshops and panels focusing on the interconnections between proposed police training facilities across the country, violence on the border, and Israeli apartheid and genocide, among other linkages. Activists refer to forested area of the Cop City site as “Weelaunee,” the Mvskoke word for the watershed, in part to highlight the tribe’s forced relocation from the area in the 1830s.

“The movement stop Cop City has experienced pretty significant repression, from the killing of Tortuguita, to the three raids that happened [this month], to the [Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO)] charges,” said Sasha Berkman, who requested a pseudonym and traveled to the Tucson summit from Austin, Texas, in an interview with Truthout. “But the Nationwide Summit has been a way to retake the initiative to show that we aren’t afraid to expand the struggle nationwide to Nationwide [Insurance Company].”

Organizers who attended the Nationwide Summit to Stop Cop City in Tucson, Arizona, rally outside the primary insurer of the Cop City project in Scottsdale, Arizona, on February 26, 2024.

SASHA BERKMAN

Berkman was referring to years of intense police-perpetrated repression and violence since the movement to Stop Cop City first formed in 2021, including the 2023 fatal shooting of Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, the first environmental protester killed on U.S. soil at the Cop City site; SWAT-style raids on three houses in Atlanta on February 8; and at least 61 Stop Cop City activists who have been charged under Georgia’s state-level RICO statute.

Tucson police detained at least five people Sunday night following a separate protest in which about 90 activists marched through downtown as some smashed windows at Wells Fargo and a PNC offices, according to organizers. A Wells Fargo executive sits on the board of the Atlanta Police Foundation, the nonprofit backing Cop City. PNC is a funder of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which activists also oppose. Local Tucson Stop Cop City activists are planning to demonstrate outside Tucson Police Department headquarters to demand activists’ release.

Cop City Protesters Face Felonies for Flyering as Police Repress Student Sit-Ins

Truthout obtained Cop City’s certificate of insurance as activists and students target the project’s investors.  By Candice Bernd , TRUTHOUT  May 8, 2023

“Starting [Sunday], we moved into action mode, and different affinity groups started taking a variety of actions, from nighttime spray-painting to combative street marches in which two banks that are funders of the project were vandalized,” Berkman tells Truthout. Overall, he says, the gathering has been beautiful and affirming event for organizers. “There were lots of cultural events, poetry readings, a rave in the desert where we were surrounded by cacti, and a punk show.”
Continued Repression in Atlanta

The summit in Arizona is wrapping as organizers in Atlanta engaged in a diversity of tactics, including a legal ballot referendum campaign, face heightened police repression in the form of SWAT-style raids and continued surveillance as Democratic city leaders deliberately stall a signature-verification process that could put Cop City on a May or November ballot.

Vote to Stop Cop City Tactical Coordinator Marisa Pyle tells Truthout that, even after passing legislation codifying regulations for the city’s referendum process that reintroduced a signature-matching process decried by both voting rights groups and Democratic Party leaders in other contexts, city leaders are essentially “hiding behind” an expected federal appeals court ruling on the legality of the group’s petition-gathering process to delay tallying the signatures. Arguments in that case were heard in December, and a decision could come at any time.

The appeals court challenge came after a federal judge ruled in favor of residents in unincorporated areas of Dekalb County who argued they were unfairly excluded from the petition drive despite living near the training center site. The city appealed after the judge’s order expanded residency requirements for canvassers and restarted a 60-day timeline to gather signatures, allowing the coalition to deliver nearly double the required signatures in September. The city has refused to begin the verification process until the appeals court issues a decision.

“There is nothing about the appeal legally that prevents [the city] from starting a verification process. They are choosing to use it as an excuse.”

“There is nothing about the appeal legally that prevents [the city] from starting a verification process. They are choosing to use it as an excuse,” Pyle told Truthout. If the city began verifying the 16 boxes of 116,000 signatures stacked up in the clerk’s office, the issue could possibly make a May ballot if the appeals court doesn’t issue a ruling against the coalition before then.

In that scenario, the city would have 50 days to verify at least 58,000 signatures. The coalition members say they’re confident they’ll cross the threshold despite the city’s suppressive matching process that will almost certainly throw out a fraction of the signatures. A negative appeals court ruling, however, could derail the referendum process even further.

But Pyle points out that Atlanta City Council members could also just choose to pass legislation putting the matter on the ballot directly. In fact, members did just that last week for an unrelated issue, easily passing legislation allowing a referendum vote on a six-year, 1 percent sales tax for water and sewer projects on the same May 21 special election ballot organizers also want to see Cop City on.

While the referendum coalition hasn’t faced nearly the same level of police repression as other organizers who have engaged in tactics like nonviolent direct action, Pyle says the entirely legal campaign has still been met with intimidation and harassment. A local open records request obtained a June 2023 report by the Atlanta Police Department’s Homeland Security Unit, a task force that monitors for potential domestic terrorism activity, depicting an Instagram post of Pyle posing with boxes of collected signatures.

But other opponents of Cop City, she says, have it much worse. Earlier this month, state and federal law enforcement officers raided several organizers’ homes, forcing a woman out of her house topless, displaying a nude photo of a separate woman, and dragging out one man by his hair. Police arrested one activist, John Mazurek, on a charge of first-degree arson in connection to an incident in July in which eight police motorcycles were set alight. Activists burned construction equipment at least twice in January, and another pair locked themselves to an Atlanta construction site linked to Brasfield & Gorrie, a Cop City contractor.

The pre-dawn February 8 raids on the three houses were the third SWAT-style operations in residential areas of Atlanta and unincorporated DeKalb county tied to the Stop Cop City movement. The Guardian reported that a search warrant authorized FBI agents to confiscate laptops, cellphones, “Defend the Atlanta Forest” stickers and posters, and personal journals.

“The house is still in disarray, and it feels basically like it’s been burglarized. They broke several doors, and so we’re having to repair those and put a lot of effort into it. And obviously, it’s isolating because they stole people’s phones and electronics.”

Stop Cop City organizer April, who requested a pseudonym, owns one of the homes that was raided this month but wasn’t present at the time of the raid. April told Truthout that FBI agents refused to show her roommates and allies a broadly written federal search warrant and confiscated electronics, stickers and a poster related to the movement. The residents were detained in a police vehicle for more than an hour that morning before being released.

April said the aftermath of the raid has created a lingering environment of fear for the household. “The house is still in disarray, and it feels basically like it’s been burglarized,” she told Truthout. “They broke several doors, and so we’re having to repair those and put a lot of effort into it. And obviously, it’s isolating because they stole people’s phones and electronics and things that they use to keep themselves safe…. It feels like political targeting based on our being locals who support the movement and have been vocal about our advocacy on behalf of the movement as neighbors.”
Georgia Lege Intensifies Repression

In addition to the 61 Cop City activists who have been indicted for violating Georgia’s RICO act, at least 42 activists have pending domestic terrorism charges. Now, the state legislature is seeking to expand the state’s domestic terrorism statute even further. Last week, the legislature introduced Senate Bill 523, which would create two new felony crimes punishable by up to 20 years in prison for providing “material support or resources” for “terrorism.” The bill also criminalizes broadly defined “acts of terrorism.”

Pyle, who is also currently lobbying lawmakers at the State Capitol during the current Georgia General Assembly session, tells Truthout she watched a hearing on the bill last week, and that the bill’s language was initially so vague it had to be amended in order to not sweep up defense attorneys as providers of “material support” for domestic terrorism.

“It potentially criminalizes things like street medic training … and makes that prosecutable as terrorism.”

“It potentially criminalizes things like street medic training … and makes that prosecutable as terrorism,” she told Truthout. “It’s also quite odd, because sometimes the domestic terrorism statute in Georgia has lower sentencing guidelines than this bill, which would mean somebody could do something that is defined as domestic terrorism and receive a one-year sentence, but somebody who helped them or provided like a de-escalation training for them could potentially get 20 years.”

Pyle and the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia point out that prosecutors in the state are already using overly broad state-level domestic terrorism and RICO statutes to paint those indicted as criminals based on activities including camping, occupying trees, protesting, and now, even taking basic measures to protect digital privacy.

Last month, Deputy Attorney General John Fowler argued in state court that 19-year-old Ayla King’s mere possession of a simple cellphone without internet capability indicates the activist’s criminal intent to commit conspiracy under Georgia’s RICO statute. The argument poses serious civil liberties implications for anyone engaging in protected First Amendment activity who takes similar steps to protect their digital privacy, including using a VPN or encrypted messaging platforms like Signal.

The recent moves add to other repressive measures taken by the legislature this session in a clear effort to quell dissent against those organizing in opposition to expanded militarized policing infrastructure. On February 6, the state legislature passed a bill mandating cash bail for offenses like racketeering, domestic terrorism, criminal trespass and “unlawful assembly.” It would also drastically limit bail funds’ ability to bond out protesters who engage in nonviolent civil disobedience, such as locking their bodies to construction vehicles.

The voter suppression and police repression efforts at both the state and local level in Georgia and Atlanta is why organizers like Pyle continue to emphasize that the movement against Cop City should remain national and mustn’t be tied to the specific location of the proposed police training center in unincorporated DeKalb County, as the summit in Tucson this weekend clearly demonstrated.

“Atlanta is not the only city with a private police foundation. Atlanta is not the only city now where these multimillion-dollar training center complexes are being proposed.”

Pyle points out that Atlanta’s Cop City is far from the only militarized police training center slated for construction in the country: Researcher Renee Johnston recently mapped at least 69 proposals for similar police training facilities across the U.S. The only states that currently don’t have any such plans are Wyoming, North Dakota and Vermont.

“It’s been very clear that this is a test case in what people will accept,” Pyle tells Truthout. “The movement has kind of grown and gotten national support. I think it’s very encouraging because it shows that there’s a way for folks to resist this when it comes to their community too, because Atlanta is not the only city with a private police foundation. Atlanta is not the only city now where these multimillion-dollar training center complexes are being proposed.”

CANDICE BERND is senior editor/staff reporter at Truthout. Her work has also appeared in several other publications, including The Nation, In These Times, the Texas Observer, The Real News Network, Salon, Rewire News Group, Sludge, Scalawag, YES! Magazine and Earth Island Journal. Her work has received awards from the San Francisco Press Club, the Fort Worth chapter of Society of Professional Journalists, the Native American Journalists Association, and the Dallas Peace and Justice Center. Follow her on Twitter: @CandiceBernd.

Honoring Emmett Till Means Never Looking Away From the Horror of White Supremacy

Emmett Till’s murder exemplifies both anti-Black racism and the spirit of those who refuse to suffer it in silence.

By George Yancy ,

TRUTHOUT

February 26, 2024

A mural featuring a portrait of civil rights martyr Emmett Till looks out from an abandoned building front as volunteers gather nearby with family members of Tamiko Talbert-Fleming after passing out flyers in the Chicago Lawn neighborhood seeking information about her murder on January 19, 2022, in Chicago, Illinois.

SCOTT OLSON / GETTY IMAGES


Truthout is a vital news source and a living history of political struggle. If you think our work is valuable, support us with a donation of any size.

James Baldwin once said Black history is emboldening because “it testifies to nothing less than the perpetual achievement of the impossible.”

His use of the phrase “perpetual achievement” speaks to the processes of political and psychological endurance that have enabled our struggle to continue regardless of the hell that Black people have had to face within the context of an anti-Black world — a world that has conspired to make our very survival “impossible.”

In this way Baldwin invites us to reflect on what it means to be a people of deep vision, pride, dignity and resilience. On what it means to be a people who have engaged in forms of striving and surviving that speak to a spiritual indefatigability.

It is an idea that is also expressed in Maya Angelou’s poem, “And Still I Rise”:

“You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I’ll rise”

It is against the backdrop of Black endurance that I want the world, and especially the United States, not to forget the horrors of anti-Black hatred and lynching, and not to confuse “Black endurance” with an exaggerated sense of “superhuman” physical and moral strength. Black people have had their bodies crushed, flayed, burned, broken, dismembered, raped, held in contempt and rendered abject.

It is within this context that I turned to philosopher A. Todd Franklin, who is professor of philosophy and Africana studies at Hamilton College, to reflect on 14-year-old Emmett Till who was brutally murdered by two white men in Money, Mississippi, in 1955 after being falsely accused by a white woman of having “grabbed and verbally harassed her in a grocery store.”

In Honor of Emmett Till, Let’s Build a World Where Black Youth Aren’t Targets

The freedom to grow up without being viewed as a threat is a basic human right still being denied to Black youth. By Rotimi Kukoyi , TRUTHOUT August 28, 2023

George Yancy: We must tell our entire history. Could you talk about why remembering the murder of Emmett Till is so important during Black History Month?

A. Todd Franklin: I can think of no better way to begin a reflection on the significance of calling for remembrance than by calling attention to James Baldwin, who above all else saw himself as one who was called to bear witness to the trials, tribulations, tragedies, and triumphs of Black people within a nation historically determined to deny their humanity and destroy all hope of their full and equal regard within society. Add to that Maya Angelou’s voice of defiance as she tells all the world that even still, I as a person, and we as a people, have the wherewithal to rise, and you have what I would consider the perfect context for pointing out the importance of taking Black History Month as an opportunity to remember the murder of Emmett Till.

Thank you, George — both for framing the importance of remembering the horrors of anti-Black hatred more broadly and for giving me an opportunity to speak to the importance of remembering this specific horror more particularly.

Bluntly put, it’s important to remember the heinous murder of Emmett Till because it speaks to and exemplifies both the depravity of anti-Black racism and the indominable spirit of those who rise up against it first and foremost by refusing to suffer it in silence.

In what ways have you integrated the tragic story of Emmett Till within the context of your classrooms? Philosophically and pedagogically, what is the aim? And what has the impact been on your students? For me, this integration of Till’s tragic story is your way of refusing to suffer in silence.

One of my primary goals as an educator is to foster critical consciousness in ways that compel students to recognize their agency and to use it to reckon with the realities of race within the social world.

In order to do so, I strive to force students to grapple with issues of race phenomenologically. Plainly put, I try to create a space in which students encounter others sharing stories of the lived experience of race in ways that force them to contend with the ways in which they too experience and play a role in the social realities of race.

Nothing in all my years of doing so has proven more poignant and powerful than taking them through the story of Emmett Till. Primarily, I use Stanley Nelson Jr.’s documentary, The Murder of Emmett Till. Nelson masterfully weaves together interviews and archival footage that introduce the audience to an array of figures and perspectives both directly and indirectly involved in and impacted by the murder of Emmett Till. In doing so, the documentary makes space for students to reflect upon how they themselves relate to the event and to think seriously about being as such. Ultimately, the documentary serves as a visceral focal element that allows me to provoke each student to see themselves as in some way personally connected to what transpired and what followed.

For most of my Black students and those who are situated similarly, what hits home is the juxtaposition of Black embodiment as a form of undue danger and Black agency, both that of others and potentially their own, as a potent force for demanding that society take steps to address their predicament.

For most of my white students, and those who are mostly regarded as white, what proves striking is the way in which the story of the murder of Emmett Till is in part the story of whites callously closing ranks when it comes to race and how whites today, themselves included, are faced with the challenge of actively breaking ranks with white supremacy or otherwise being complicit in the vicious and vile ways in which it continues to find expression.

Fortunately, most of my students emerge from the experience eager to play an active role in denouncing and eradicating the subtle and not so subtle forms of white supremacy that continue to plague our society and place many in peril.

How were you personally impacted once you found out about the killing of Emmett Till? How did that knowledge shape how you began to see yourself as a young Black male?

In many ways, it’s my own personal story that served as the basis for what I just described as my pedagogy. For many of my students, seeing the documentary serves as their first introduction to the murder of Emmett Till. For me, it was an old Jet magazine that I discovered when I was no more than 10 years old. At the time of the murder, Jet covered the event and its aftermath extensively; and in doing so, it published a host of images of Emmett as a happy young boy with his mother and of the horrific and grotesque state of his corpse as it lay on display just prior to and during his funeral. Like Emmett, I was a young Black boy who was his mother’s only child — and seeing someone who looked just like me and who was socially positioned just like me scared the hell out of me. It was right then and there that racism became real to me and much of my adult life has been devoted to addressing the ways in which racism proves so pernicious.

Discovering that picture of Emmett Till in Jet is telling. What you shared made me think of the poet Patricia Smith’s powerful poem, “That Chile Emmett in That Casket,” where that picture functions as what I would call a “mnemonic archive,” a site of remembering, mourning and a powerful warning for young Black people vis-à-vis anti-Black racism. In one of my co-edited books, Our Black Sons Matter: Mothers Talk about Fears, Sorrows and Hopes, mothers of Black sons discuss the pain and sorrow that they endure in the face of so many young Black boys and adult Black men who have been murdered in the U.S. by the state or by proxies of the state who see themselves as “protectors” of all things white, gated and “pure.” These mothers understood the emotional gravitas of what it would mean to lose their own sons. I’m thinking here of Emmett Till’s dear mother, Mamie Till. Discuss how you understand Mamie Till’s insistence that the world bear witness to the disfiguration of her precious son’s Black face. At this moment in history, what do you think Black people should take away from her insistence?

Years ago, I gave a talk on campus and the title of it was “Let the People See.” The posters I used to announce it were plain and simple: a black-and white image of me against a blue background with large black letters that said, “Let the People See” and smaller ones that indicated the date, time and location. Colleagues and students were baffled by the poster and clamored for me to tell them more about the talk — in reply, I told them that the only way that they would get a sense of what I had to say would be by showing up to see and hear me speak.

I deliberately scheduled the talk for one of my mother’s visits from out of town. In addition, I also made sure that my son would be there too. Well, as the day and time finally arrived, I stepped into a standing room-only auditorium and gave a little context for the occasion. More specifically, I told the audience that my talk was a deeply personal way of marking the occasion of my son’s 14th year, and with that, I touched a button on an A/V console and projected a screen-sized image of the horribly disfigured face of Emmett Till.

Standing against the backdrop of this image, I told the audience that as horrific and traumatic as seeing it might be, that placing it on display was the least I could do to pay homage to Mrs. Mamie Till and the countless other Black mothers forced to endure this and similar sights of their young sons. Moreover, I shared with the audience how Emmett’s mother courageously opened the casket containing her 14-year-old son’s remains and called upon the nation and the world to see the heinous handywork of white supremacy in action.

Turning off the image, I began to tell the audience how for me and many like me it’s an image that never goes way. I told them how as a young child it was an image that made me ever fearful for my own life, and how as a father it’s one that makes me ever fearful for the life of my son.

However, following in the footsteps of Mamie Till, I went on to talk about the importance of never turning away from the task of calling out the deeds and challenging the dangers of white supremacist figures and forces — a disposition exemplified by mothers like Mamie Till and instilled in me by my own. To wit, I turned to talk about how the horror and grief of the callous killing of a Black child in 1955 was compounded by the fact that it was done without consequence; and how more than 55 years later, the anti-Black sentiments born of white supremacy continue to result in the callous killing of young Black males with social and legal impunity.

At the time, I called on all who were present to step up and answer the call to see and address the existential threat of white supremacy. Moreover, at the time, I called on all who were present to see and respond to the visual evidence of anti-Black racism and hatred. Today, however, I think that Mamie Till would consider it vitally important for not only Black people but all people to insist that the nation and the world see and respond as well to the less obvious ways in which Black people and others suffer hatred and harm in virtue of their race.

In short, at this moment in history, I see the legacy of Mrs. Mamie Till as a legacy that calls on Black people and others to insist that we see and address not only the shocking expressions of racism and hatred that threaten the lives of those beyond the pale, but also the ones that are more subtle.

GEORGE YANCY is the Samuel Candler Dobbs professor of philosophy at Emory University and a Montgomery fellow at Dartmouth College. He is also the University of Pennsylvania’s inaugural fellow in the Provost’s Distinguished Faculty Fellowship Program (2019-2020 academic year). He is the author, editor and co-editor of over 20 books, including Black Bodies, White Gazes; Look, A White; Backlash: What Happens When We Talk Honestly about Racism in America; and Across Black Spaces: Essays and Interviews from an American Philosopher published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2020.

US Refuses to Assure UK Judges That Assange Won’t Be Executed If He’s Extradited

UK law prohibits extradition to a country that may impose capital punishment.

By Marjorie Cohn , 

TRUTHOUT

February 27, 2024

Stella Assange (center-left) attends the rally for Julian Assange on February 21, 2024, in London, England.

DAVE BENETT / DAVE BENETT / GETTY IMAGES

On February 20 and 21, as hundreds of Julian Assange’s supporters gathered outside the London courthouse, a two-judge panel of the High Court of Justice presided over a “permission hearing.” Assange’s lawyers asked the judges to allow them to appeal the home secretary’s extradition order and raise issues that the district court judge had rejected without full consideration.

The High Court panel, Dame Victoria Sharp and Justice Jeremy Johnson, were concerned that the U.S. government could execute Assange under the Espionage Act if he is extradited to the United States, a penalty outlawed in the U.K. Although Assange faces 175 years in prison for the charges alleged in the indictment, there is nothing to prevent the U.S. from adding additional offenses which would carry the death penalty.
The Trump Administration Indicted Assange for Exposing U.S. War Crimes

Assange is charged with 17 counts of alleged violations of the Espionage Act, based on obtaining, receiving, possessing and publishing national defense information. He is accused of “recruit[ing] sources” and “soliciting” confidential documents just by maintaining the WikiLeaks website that stated it accepted such materials. Assange is also charged with one count of “conspiracy to commit computer intrusion” with intent to “facilitate [whistleblower Chelsea] Manning’s acquisition and transmission of classified information related to the national defence of the United States.”

The basis for the indictment, Assange’s lawyers told the panel, is WikiLeaks’s “exposure of criminality on the part of the U.S. government on an unprecedented scale.” Assange is charged for revealing war crimes committed by the United States in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay. The indictment has nothing to do with Hillary Clinton and the 2016 election or Swedish allegations of sexual misconduct, which have been dropped.

WikiLeaks revealed the “Iraq War Logs” — 400,000 field reports including 15,000 unreported deaths of Iraqi civilians, as well the as systematic rape, torture and murder after U.S. forces handed over detainees to a notorious Iraqi torture squad. The revelations also included the “Afghan War Diary” — 90,000 reports of more civilian casualties by coalition forces than the U.S. military had reported.

Julian Assange Is “Dangerously Close” to Extradition for Revealing US War Crimes

This is the first time a publisher has been charged under the Espionage Act for disclosing government secrets.  By Marjorie Cohn , TRUTHOUT  July 15, 2023

In addition, WikiLeaks revealed the “Guantánamo Files,” 779 secret reports with evidence that 150 innocent people had been held at Guantánamo Bay for years, and 800 men and boys had been tortured and abused, in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

WikiLeaks also revealed the notorious 2007 “Collateral Murder Video,” in which a U.S. Army Apache attack helicopter targeted and killed 11 unarmed civilians in Baghdad, including two Reuters journalists and a man who came to rescue the wounded. Two children were injured. The video contains evidence of war crimes prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.

And WikiLeaks exposed “Cablegate” — 251,000 confidential U.S. State Department cables that “disclosed corruption, diplomatic scandals and spy affairs on an international scale.” According to The New York Times, they told “the unvarnished story of how the government makes its biggest decisions, the decisions that cost the country most heavily in lives and money.”

“These were the most important revelations of criminal U.S. state behavior in history,” Assange attorney Mark Summers argued to the High Court panel.
Assange’s Appellate Issues

Assange is asking the U.K. High Court to review issues of treaty obligations, human rights violations and political persecution.

The U.S.-U.K. Extradition Treaty would allow the U.S. to amend or add charges which could expose Assange to the death penalty, a punishment prohibited in the U.K. In response to questioning by one of the judges, the prosecutor admitted that the U.S. had not provided assurances that Assange would not be subject to the death penalty if extradited.

Article 4(1) of the extradition treaty does not allow extradition for political offenses. Espionage is the “quintessential” political offense, Assange attorney Edward Fitzgerald told the panel. “The gravamen (and defining legal characteristic) of each of the charges is thus an alleged intention to obtain or disclose US state secrets in a manner that was damaging to the security of the US state,” which makes them political offenses, Assange’s lawyers wrote. The defense claimed it was an abuse of process for the United States to pursue extradition of Assange for a political offense.

The U.S. argued that the U.K. Extradition Act does not contain an explicit exception for political offenses. But the defense said that the political offense exclusion is an “age-old” prohibition found in “virtually every” U.K. extradition treaty. It is included in U.K. treaties with “156 out of 158” countries. Fitzgerald said you can’t infer a deliberate intention to forbid extradition for political offenses from the absence of explicit language in the Extradition Act. Since the exception is not specifically included in the act, U.K. District Judge Vanessa Baraitser didn’t fully consider the issue in her ruling after Assange’s extradition hearing.

“This prosecution is motivated by … a concerted intent to destroy or inhibit the publishers of evidence of state criminal ability, and thereby put a stop to the process of investigating, prosecuting and preventing such international crimes in the future.”

Article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) says, “No one shall be held guilty of any criminal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a criminal offence under national or international law at the time when it was committed.” Assange could not have been reasonably expected to know that he could be prosecuted for publishing in the public interest, because no publisher had ever been prosecuted under the Espionage Act for publishing in the public interest before.

Article 10 of the ECHR protects freedom of expression, which includes the right “to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.” The information that WikiLeaks revealed was true and Manning was acting in good faith and in the public interest when she provided it to WikiLeaks. Extradition would constitute a “flagrant denial” of Assange’s right to freedom of expression, particularly because he might be denied the protection of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Assange’s lawyers argued to the panel.

Article 6 of the ECHR guarantees the right to a fair trial — It will be very difficult for Assange to get a fair trial if he is extradited to the United States. Assistant District Attorney Gordon Kromberg and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo said that as a non-U.S. citizen, Assange has no First Amendment rights. The First Amendment allows journalists to publish material that was illegally obtained by a third person if it is a matter of public interest. Justice Johnson was concerned that the U.S. had given no assurances that foreign nationals have First Amendment protection and asked both sides to provide clarity on this issue. Additionally, if extradited, Assange would be prosecuted in a federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia, where the jury pool will be drawn from people associated with the U.S. government national security agencies and contractors.

Articles 2 and 3 of the ECHR protect the right to life and the right to be free from torture or inhuman or degrading treatment, respectively. Evidence emerged after Assange’s extradition hearing in Baraitser’s court that the CIA planned to kidnap and assassinate Assange, an indication he will likely be subject to inhuman and degrading treatment if extradited to the U.S. “If these state agencies were prepared to go to these lengths whilst he was under the protection of an embassy and located in the UK, there must be a real risk of similar extra-judicial measures or reprisals if he is extradited to the US,” Assange’s lawyers wrote.

Article 4(3) of the extradition treaty forbids extradition if the request is politically motivated and not made in good faith. Assange’s lawyers wrote that “this prosecution is motivated by matters other than the proper and usual pursuit of criminal justice. It is motivated instead by a concerted intent to destroy or inhibit the publishers of evidence of state criminal ability, and thereby put a stop to the process of investigating, prosecuting and preventing such international crimes in the future.” One panel judge asked the defense where they could find more information on this point.

Summers argued to the panel that although the WikiLeaks revelations at issue in the indictment occurred in 2010-2011, Assange wasn’t indicted until 2018-2019. That was because WikiLeaks revealed CIA spying tools in 2017, known as “Vault 7,” which enabled the CIA to tap into people’s cell phones and smart TVs, turning them into listening devices. Those revelations infuriated Donald Trump’s CIA Director Pompeo, who denounced WikiLeaks as a “hostile, non-state intelligence service,” a designation that would allow the CIA to act without the knowledge of Congress. U.S. officials drew up plans to kidnap and/or kill Assange. The Justice Department expedited the indictment of Assange to facilitate prosecution once he was sent by extraordinary rendition to the U.S. “This prosecution only emerged because of that rendition plan,” Summers said.
“The Most Important Revelation Since Abu Ghraib”

The Collateral Murder video is “the most important revelation since Abu Ghraib,” Summers told the panel. “The cables Assange published disclosed extrajudicial assassinations, rendition, torture, dark prisons and drone killings.” Summers said the Guantánamo Files revealed a “colossal criminal act.” The defense pointed out that WikiLeaks’s revelations actually saved lives. After WikiLeaks published evidence of Iraqi torture centers established by the U.S., the Iraqi government refused President Barack Obama’s request to grant immunity to U.S. troops who committed criminal and civil offenses there. As a result, Obama had to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq.

The Obama administration, which prosecuted more whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all prior U.S. administrations combined, considered prosecuting Assange, but feared it would violate the First Amendment. The administration was unable to distinguish what WikiLeaks did from what The New York Times and The Guardian did since they also published documents that Chelsea Manning had leaked.

But the Trump administration did indict Julian Assange. The U.K. arrested Assange and has held him in Belmarsh Prison for nearly five years pending a decision on whether he should be extradited to the U.S. to stand trial.

In January 2021, following a three-week hearing, Baraitser denied extradition after finding that Assange’s mental health was so frail there was a “substantial risk” of suicide if he was extradited to the U.S. because of the harsh conditions of confinement in which he would be held. But she rejected all other legal objections to extradition that Assange had raised.

U.S. “Assurances” That Assange Will Be Treated Humanely

After Baraitser had already ruled, the U.S. came forward with diplomatic “assurances” that Assange would be treated humanely if extradited to the United States. The Biden administration assured the court that Assange: (1) would not be subject to onerous Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) that would keep him in extreme isolation and monitor his confidential communications with his attorneys; (2) would not be housed at the notorious ADX Florence maximum security prison in Colorado; (3) would receive psychological and clinical treatment in custody; and (4) could serve any custodial sentence in Australia.

But the U.S. said the assurances wouldn’t apply if Assange committed a “future act” that “met the test” for the SAMs. That unspecified contingency would be based on a subjective determination of prison authorities with no judicial review.

Although the United States has reneged on nearly identical assurances in the past, the High Court accepted them at face value, saying it was satisfied that the U.S. was acting in good faith, and in December 2021, the High Court reversed Baraitser’s denial of extradition.

However, in a 2023 decision, the U.K. Supreme Court unanimously held that the court has an independent duty to determine the validity of assurances, writing, “The government’s assessment of whether there is such a risk is an important element of that evidence, but the court is bound to consider the question in the light of the evidence as a whole and to reach its own conclusion.”

In June 2023, a single High Court judge, Jonathan Swift, refused Assange permission to appeal in a cursory three-page ruling. The hearing on February 20 and 21 was an effort by Assange’s legal team to reverse that decision so that the High Court will entertain his appeal.

Assange Redacted Names of Informants to Protect Them

At the February 21 hearing, prosecutor Clare Dobbin told the panel that documents in which names hadn’t been redacted were published, putting the individuals and the U.S. at grave risk. One of the judges asked Dobbin if it wasn’t true that this information was published by others first, to which Dobbin replied that Assange was responsible for putting the information in the hands of others in the first place.

Several witnesses testified at the 2020 extradition hearing that Assange took great care to ensure that the names were redacted. Other outlets published the unredacted cables before WikiLeaks with no adverse consequences. John Young, from cryptome.org, testified at the extradition hearing and wrote in a Justice Department submission form, “Cryptome published the decrypted unredacted State Department Cables on September 1, 2011 prior to publication of the cables by WikiLeaks.” Digital experts testified that the publication of a password by Guardian journalists Luke Harding and David Leigh ultimately led to the unredacted publication.

Moreover, Brig. Gen. Robert Carr testified at Manning’s court martial that no one was harmed by the WikiLeaks releases. Summers told the panel that Baraitser never balanced the public interest in the disclosures against the fact that no harm came from them.
Conviction of Assange Would Chill Investigate Journalists From Exposing Government Secrets

In November 2022, The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, DER SPIEGEL and El País signed a joint open letter calling on the Biden administration to drop the Espionage Act charges against Assange. They wrote, “Publishing is not a crime,” noting that Assange is the first publisher to be charged under the Espionage Act for revealing government secrets.

The indictment would punish conduct that national security journalists routinely engage in, including cultivating and communicating confidentially with sources and soliciting information from them, shielding their identities from disclosure, and publishing classified information. If Assange is prosecuted and convicted, it will discourage journalists both in the U.S. and abroad from publishing evidence of government wrongdoing.

No publisher has ever been prosecuted under the Espionage Act for disclosing government secrets. The U.S. government has never prosecuted a publisher for publishing classified information, which constitutes an essential tool of investigative journalism.

But rather than dropping Trump’s prosecution of Assange consistent with the position of the Obama-Biden administration, Joe Biden has zealously pursued extradition and prosecution.

Pending House Resolution Would Call for Dismissal of All Charges Against Assange

On December 13, 2023, House Resolution 934 was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Rep. Paul A. Gosar (R-Arizona), with cosponsors from both political parties. It would express “the sense of the House of Representatives that regular journalistic activities are protected under the First Amendment, and that the United States ought to drop all charges against and attempts to extradite Julian Assange.” The resolution states that the WikiLeaks disclosures “promoted public transparency through the exposure of the hiring of child prostitutes by Defence Department contractors, friendly fire incidents, human rights abuses, civilian killings, and United States use of psychological warfare.”

Assange was charged with one count of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, HR 934 notes, “despite the fact that said intelligence analyst already had access to the mentioned computer, that the purported breaching of the Defense Department computers was impossible, and that there was no proof Mr. Assange had any contact with said intelligence analyst.” The conviction of Assange under the Espionage Act, the resolution continues, “would set a precedent allowing the United States to prosecute and imprison journalists for First Amendment protected activities, including the obtainment and publication of information, something that occurs on a regular basis.”

On February 14, I joined nearly 40 law professors in sending a letter to the Department of Justice, stating that the Espionage Act charges against Assange “pose an existential threat to the First Amendment.” We expressed alarm that the constitutional implications of prosecuting Assange “could extend beyond the Espionage Act and beyond national security journalism [to] enable prosecution of routine newsgathering under any number of ambiguous laws and untested legal theories.”

At the conclusion of the two-day hearing, the High Court panel set a due date of March 4 for further written submissions from the parties. If the court agrees to review at least one of Assange’s appellate issues, there will be a full hearing. Meanwhile, Assange, who is in poor physical and emotional health, remains in prison.

If the High Court denies his right to appeal, Assange can ask the European Court of Human Rights to hear his case. If that court finds “exceptional circumstances” and an “imminent risk of irreparable harm,” it can order provisional measures, including a stay of execution while the case is pending in the European court. But there is a danger that the U.K. could immediately extradite Assange to the United States before the European Court of Human Rights has a chance to consider Assange’s petition.


MARJORIE COHN  is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and a member of the national advisory boards of Assange Defense and Veterans For Peace, and the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. She is founding dean of the People’s Academy of International Law and the U.S. representative to the continental advisory council of the Association of American Jurists. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues. She is co-host of “Law and Disorder” Radio.

AMERIKA

Stalked by Nazis: How extremists tried to stop me from reporting on their violence

Six neo-Nazis — holding burning flares and raising their arms in Nazi salutes — demonstrated in front of author Jordan Green's home on Feb. 10, 2024. One held a sign threatening "consequences."

Jordan Green

Raw Story

February 27, 2024

Since last year, the neo-Nazi group 2119 has committed acts of violence targeting Jews, Black people, LGBTQ+ people and other perceived enemies.

I began reporting on 2119 in an effort to expose its actions. As I investigated the group’s leadership and activities, and publication of a two-part project neared, neo-Nazi threats against me escalated. Online harassment led to phone calls and doxxing, which devolved into death threats and, most recently, visits to my home.

My ordeal began in November, when 2119 called me out by name in profane Telegram posts laden with racism, antisemitism and homophobia.

RELATED ARTICLE: Inside the neo-Nazi hate network grooming children for a race war

Soon, I began receiving threatening phone calls and voicemails. Someone took pictures of me with a telephoto lens, private investigator-style, and posted them online. A pizza delivery showed up at my doorstep, unrequested, courtesy of 2119. And earlier this month, matters culminated with six avowed white supremacists standing in front of my house, holding burning traffic flares, their arms up in Nazi salutes. One held a sign warning me of “consequences.”

Harassment and even death threats are, unfortunately, an occupational hazard for journalists on this beat. The leader of the neo-Nazi terror group, Atomwaffen, unhappy about being the subject of a ProPublica story, conspired with others to carry out a swatting attack — a tactic in which the perpetrators place bogus calls for the purpose of eliciting a law enforcement response to the victim’s residence — on journalist A.C. Thompson.

Other examples abound: Journalist James LaPorta, for one, learned his name was on a hit list in the possession of a neo-Nazi accused of plotting race war. In another case, a journalist received a death threat from the leader of a Nazi group called Feuerkrieg Division to try to discourage them from reporting on his group.

I first ran across 2119, also known as Blood and Soil Crew, while combing through Telegram chats in December 2022. They’ve been firmly on my radar since the spring of 2023, when I began to tally up racist and antisemitic incidents and attacks made in 2119’s name. Starting in late October 2023, my editor let me spend significant time investigating what — and who — 2119 truly is.

Almost as soon as they became aware of my reporting, the 2119 members responded with hostility and threats in a naked attempt to stop me from reporting on what had become a multi-state campaign of racist, antisemitic and homophobic violence.

Four days before Thanksgiving, an anonymous Telegram channel published my professional headshot, home address and phone number.

This wasn’t the first time such a thing has happened during my many years covering neo-Nazis, and other extremists. Online posts that include my personal information have been a semi-regular occurrence for the past four years. What was notable this time is that 2119 members immediately amplified this doxxing, highlighting it to like-minded extremists on their Telegram channel.

The accompanying note included a complaint from 2119 that “the bastard above” — me — had “been found out to be harassing our boys.”

Over the next two months, their tactics would become ever more extreme — and strange.

‘You're being watched'

Just before New Year’s Eve, I received a phone call from a restricted number at dinner time. Someone identifying himself as “Bozak” warned me that I was “being watched by international bricksters.”

I already knew by that time that “Bozak” was 2119 member Aiden Cuevas, but the caller hung up before I had an opportunity to confront him.

I understood this “bricksters” term as a reference to an antisemitic attack last summer in Pensacola, Fla., where another 2119 member, Waylon Fowler, threw a brick through the window of a Jewish center while two rabbis sat inside having dinner.

Written on the brick: a swastika and the words “No Jews.”

A couple minutes after the “Bozak” phone call, the same person made a transparent attempt at misdirection by calling back and leaving a voicemail. He claimed to be Thomas Rousseau, leader of the white power group Patriot Front, and again warned: “I’m letting you know that we have people on standby. You’re being watched. Quit messing with us.”

In early January, early on a Sunday afternoon, an unidentified 2119 member placed an order for a pizza delivery at my house. It’s clear a 2119 associate was parked down the street with a camera and a telephoto lens because, the following day, a 2119 member posted a photo on Telegram that shows me standing in my doorway.

The experience was unsettling, but their efforts at intimidation only confirmed in my mind that we had a story that was worth telling. Just as any investigative journalist would do in the course of reporting a story, I called the subjects to offer them an opportunity to be interviewed and to ask them questions.

I began calling 2119 members — and their parents. The response was an odd mixture of silence, defiance, confessions and pleas for understanding.

'We'll keep shooting'

But one particular interview — with Mathew Bair, a Marine Corps veteran who, at 34, is roughly twice the age of most of his fellow 2119 members — stood apart.

Bair readily confirmed much of my reporting about 2119’s activities and goals. And unlike some of his younger cohorts, he was unapologetic, even appearing to take pleasure in confirming some of the most unsavory aspects of 2119’s racist and antisemitic intentions.

As we came to the end of the interview, I dropped what I expected to be one of the most difficult questions.

I asked Bair about a video he had posted showing a flier with the words “Shoot your local judge” that includes a URL to the 2119 Telegram channel.

Bair danced around the question. He initially attempted to deflect by suggesting that the reference was to a specific firearm model — a Taurus Judge.

Regardless, he told me he wasn’t concerned about how a potential victim might interpret the message.

He might have left it at that — an ambiguous, vaguely worded threat shrouded in plausible deniability.

But instead he veered back to the more direct interpretation, mentioning that he is “close” to where an anti-feminist extremist went to a federal judge’s home New Jersey, in 2020, and fatally shot her son.

Then, he casually tossed out the phrase “just like you live in the Raleigh/Durham area, right?”

As it so happens, I don’t live in that area. But the implication was clear: I could be a target, too.

A couple of days later, on Jan. 21, Bair forwarded a message from a private Telegram channel complaining about my reporting.

“Jordan Green, you have a healthy respect for a Taurus Judge now, yes?” the message concluded. “Keep phishing for minors and we’ll keep shooting our local Judge.”

A Telegram post forwarded by Mathew Bair on Jan. 21, 2024 contains an implied threat.

One might be tempted to chalk this up as nothing more than online bluster. But gun violence directed at journalists is very real. This became apparent when shots were fired into the home of an online news publisher in Tennessee last April.

Concurrent with Bair’s warning, an anonymous Telegram account patronized by avowed extremists doxxed me again — this time with the photo of me standing in my doorway when 2119 sent a pizza to my home.

A couple weeks later, the account posted more personal information about me, accompanied by a note: “It’s not over, yet. More to come soon.”

They weren’t lying.

Around 5 p.m. on Feb. 10, six Nazis approached my house on a quiet, residential street in Greensboro, N.C. They held burning traffic flares as they raised their arms in Nazi salutes.

Photos show that at least three of the men are subjects of my reporting on extremism.

Among them: Sean Kauffmann, leader of the Tennessee Active Club, stood in the middle holding a sign warning about a “consequence” for exercising freedom of the press. Flanking Kauffmann were David William Fair, leader of the Southern Sons Active Club, and Jarrett William Smith.

The three men have a history of glorifying and pursuing violence.

Kauffmann and Smith met through Terrorgram, a loose collective of Telegram channels that extol mass shooters, while promoting graphic violence and wildly flagrant racism, in 2019.

Smith, then a soldier in the Army, advised Kauffmann on how to hide firearms from law enforcement when Kauffmann was worried that the police would take them due to a custody dispute with an ex-partner.

According to a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center, sheriff’s deputies responding to a domestic violence incident in 2021 encountered Kauffmann waving around an assault rifle and later “received information that Kauffmann stated he was going to get into a shootout with police.”

Smith was arrested and charged with distributing information related to explosives and weapons of mass destruction in 2019, a couple months after his exchange with Kauffmann on Telegram. The government alleged that Smith shared information with others on Facebook about how to make improvised explosive devices and suggested to an FBI informant that then-Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) would make a suitable assassination target.

During his prosecution — for which he ultimately pleaded guilty and served 14 months in prison — federal prosecutors presented evidence that Smith stated in a text message that it was on “my bucket list to KO an antifa member” and advised other Telegram users on how to get away with committing arson against a Michigan podcaster.

The channel that helped organize the flash rally in front of my home followed with an eerie sequel. The subsequent post showed some of the protesters posing with a historical marker commemorating the Greensboro Massacre. The sign marks the site where a coalition of neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members fatally shot five civil rights and labor activists near a public housing community in 1979.

The caption in the Telegram post emphasizes the point that the shooters were acquitted during state and federal criminal trials by arguing that they acted in self-defense.

The message to me isn’t subtle.

Jordan Green is a Raw Story investigative reporter who covers domestic extremism.

The biggest robber barons of this Second Gilded Age are trying to end workers' freedom

Members of the United Auto Workers 

(Creative Commons)

Robert Reich

February 27, 2024

I never believed Jeff Bezos, the second-richest person in America (worth an estimated $114 billion), and Elon Musk, the richest (at $180 billion), would brazenly use their wealth and power to try to eliminate labor unions and thereby suppress the wages of American workers even further.

In my naivete, I assumed they wouldn’t reveal themselves as no better (and in many ways worse) than the robber barons of the first Gilded Age, whose riches were unrivaled and who fought with all their might against labor unions.

It’s not that Bezos’s Amazon has exactly hidden its objective. The company has fought off every attempt to organize its workers — holding anti-union meetings, targeting union supporters, challenging union elections, and firing workers who tried to organize.

But in a legal filing last Thursday, Amazon went even further. It argued that the National Labor Relations Board, which supervises and enforces labor law, is unconstitutional because it mixes judicial and executive functions.

Jeff Bezos’s view (I’m assuming Amazon’s filing reflects his view) is the same as that of retrograde Elon Musk, whose SpaceX made an almost identical argument in a lawsuit last month.

The NLRB is the agency that enforces the National Labor Relations Act — the 1935 Act that legitimized labor unions.

Bezos and Musk’s argument was rejected by the Supreme Court 86 years ago in NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp.

In that case, the NLRB found that the giant steel corporation Jones & Laughlin had violated the National Labor Relations Act by firing workers for trying to organize a union. The board ordered the corporation to reinstate them, pay them back wages, and refrain from any further actions to discourage workers from exercising their rights under the Act.

In an opinion by Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, the Supreme Court upheld the NLRB’s order, holding that Congress acted within its constitutional authority to pass the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, including the National Labor Relations Board to enforce it.

But modern-day robber barons Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk want the Supreme Court to reverse its 1937 ruling and return America to a time before workers had the right to form unions.

Both of these tycoons hate unions. Both have illegally fired workers for trying to organize them. Bezos’s Amazon — having had one of its warehouses vote to unionize — is actively patrolling its workplaces against any signs of unionizing activity. Musk’s Tesla is the target of organizing efforts by the UAW and a number of European unions.

Evidently, it’s not enough for Bezos and Musk to amass more wealth than any two people on the planet. Not enough for them to monopolize their respective industries (Amazon is now being sued by the Federal Trade Commission, Musk’s SpaceX and his X platform are also monopolies). Not enough for them to fight their workers who want better pay and safer working conditions. Not enough for them to wage a war on the freedom of workers to join labor unions.

No, they want even more wealth and covet even more of the power — and don’t want to share any of it with their workers, or any other American workers.

Evidently, they believe that today’s Supreme Court — packed with right-wing justices who have few scruples about reversing long-held judicial precedents or even taking money from wealthy people with a financial interest in how they rule — will find their argument compelling.

I hope they’re wrong.

Robert Reich is a professor at Berkeley and was secretary of labor under Bill Clinton. You can find his writing at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

Red America has a new religion

Image via Nicole Glass Photography/Shutterstock.

Robert Reich

February 24, 2024

In a case centering on wrongful-death claims for frozen embryos that were destroyed in a mishap at a fertility clinic, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled last Friday that frozen embryos are “children” under state law. As a result, Alabama in-vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics are ceasing services, afraid to store or destroy any embryos.

The underlying issue is whether government can interfere in the most intimate aspects of people’s lives — not only barring people from obtaining IVF services but also forbidding them from entering into gay marriage, utilizing contraception, having out-of-wedlock births, ending their pregnancies, changing their genders, checking out whatever books they want from the library, and worshipping God in whatever way they wish (or not worshipping at all).

All of these private freedoms are under increasing assault from Republican legislators and judges who want to impose their own morality on everyone else. Republicans are increasingly at war with America’s fundamental separation of church and state.

READ: How the religious GOP freaks will use data brokers to track women

According to a new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution, more than half of Republicans believe the country should be a strictly Christian nation — either adhering to the ideals of Christian nationalism (21 percent) or sympathizing with those views (33 percent).

This point of view has long been prominent among white evangelicals but is spreading into almost all reaches of the Republican Party, as exemplified by the Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling.

It is also closely linked with authoritarianism. According to the survey, half of Christian nationalism adherents and nearly 4 in 10 sympathizers said they support the idea of an authoritarian leader powerful enough to keep these Christian values in society.

During an interview at a Turning Point USA event last August, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said party leaders need to be more responsive to the base of the party, which she claimed is made up of Christian nationalists.

“We need to be the party of nationalism,” she said. “I am a Christian and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists.”

A growing number of Republican voters view Trump as the second coming of Jesus Christ and see the 2024 election as a battle not only for America’s soul but for the salvation of all mankind.

Many of the Trump followers who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, carried Christian symbols, clothes, and signs invoking God and Jesus.

An influential think tank close to Trump is developing plans to infuse Christian nationalist ideas into his administration if Trump returns to power, according to documents obtained by Politico.

Spearheading the effort is Russell Vought, who served as Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget during his first term and remains close to him. Vought, frequently cited as a potential chief of staff in a second Trump White House, has embraced the idea that Christians are under assault and has spoken of policies he might pursue in response.

Those policies include banning immigration of non-Christians into the United States, overturning same-sex marriage, and barring access to contraception.

In a concurring opinion in last week’s Alabama Supreme Court decision, Alabama’s chief justice, Tom Parker, invoked the prophet Jeremiah and the writings of 16th- and 17th-century theologians. “Human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God,” he wrote. “Even before birth, all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.”

Referring to the Book of Genesis, Parker noted that “the principle itself — that human life is fundamentally distinct from other forms of life and cannot be taken intentionally without justification — has deep roots that reach back to the creation of man ‘in the image of God.’”

Before joining the court, Parker was a close aide and ally of Roy Moore, the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court who was twice removed from the job — first for dismissing a federal court order to remove an enormous granite monument of the Ten Commandments he had installed in the state judicial building, and then for ordering state judges to defy the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision affirming gay marriage.

So far, the U.S. Supreme Court has not explicitly based its decisions on scripture, but several of its recent rulings — the Dobbs decision that overruled Roe v. Wade, its decision in Kennedy vs. Bremerton School District on behalf of a public school football coach who led students in Christian prayer, and its decision in Carson v. Makin, requiring states to fund private religious schools if they fund any other private schools, even if those religious schools would use public funds for religious instruction and worship — are consistent with Christian nationalism.

But Christian nationalism is inconsistent with personal freedom, including the First Amendment’s guarantee that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

We can be truly free only if we’re confident we can go about our private lives without being monitored or intruded upon by government, and can practice whatever faith (or lack of faith) we wish regardless of the religious beliefs of others.

A society where one set of religious views is imposed on a large number of citizens who disagree with them is not a democracy. It’s a theocracy.

Robert Reich is a professor at Berkeley and was secretary of labor under Bill Clinton. You can find his writing at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

Economist Paul Krugman: Here’s what’s driving 'white rural rage' and 'the MAGA narrative'

Donald Trump supporters in 2016 (Creative Commons)

Alex Henderson

February 27, 2024

Despite being a native New Yorker who was born and raised in Queens and later studied business at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, 2024 GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump's strongest support has come from white rural Americans. Trump struggles with urban and suburban voters, but his popularity among white rural voters and evangelical Christian fundamentalists has not dwindled — even as he faces four criminal indictments.

Trump has gone out of his way to feed his base's anger, declaring "I am your retribution" — a thirst for "retribution" that, according to Never Trump conservative and former Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley doesn't satisfy.

Liberal economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman examines the causes of "white rural rage" in his February 26 column, citing "technology" as a key factor in driving "the MAGA narrative."

READ MORE:Former RNC chair explains why Nikki Haley doesn’t fill MAGA Republicans' thirst for 'retribution'

"Technology eliminates some jobs," Krugman explains, "but it has always generated enough new jobs to offset these losses, and there's every reason to believe that it will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. But progress isn't painless."

Krugman observes that although technology "has made America as a whole richer," it has created a lot more high-paying jobs in urban and suburban areas than it has in rural areas — where it has "reduced economic opportunities," creating "hardship" and a "loss of dignity."

"Maybe that loss of dignity explains both white rural rage and why that rage is so misdirected — why it's pretty clear that this November, a majority of rural white Americans will again vote against Joe Biden, who as president, has been trying to bring jobs to their communities, and for Donald Trump, a huckster from Queens who offers little other than validation for their resentment," Krugman argues. "This feeling of a loss of dignity may be worsened because some rural Americans have long seen themselves as more industrious, more patriotic and maybe even morally superior to the denizens of big cities — an attitude still expressed in cultural artifacts like Jason Aldean’s hit song 'Try That in a Small Town.'"

Krugman continues, "In the crudest sense, rural and small-town America is supposed to be filled with hard-working people who adhere to traditional values, not like those degenerate urbanites on welfare, but the economic and social reality doesn't match this self-image…. It helps explain why the MAGA narrative casts relatively safe cities like New York as crime-ridden hellscapes while rural America is the victim not of technology but of illegal immigrants, wokeness and the deep state."

READ MORE: 'Right-wing psychos': Inside Trump's plan to 'infuse Christian nationalist ideas' in his 2.0 agenda

Paul Krugman's full New York Times column is available at this link (subscription required).

Childcare Crisis Grips US as IRS Chief Says Wealthy Tax Dodgers Cost $150 Billion a Year

"If we can afford to spend over $1 trillion on tax breaks for the top 1% and large corporations making record-breaking profits, we can afford to provide working class families with the childcare they desperately need."


A sign in St. Paul, Minnesota advertising for bus drivers and bring your child to work with you.
(Photo by: Michael Siluk/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

JON QUEALLY
Feb 25, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

A survey of early childhood educators and caregivers released Sunday shows the post-pandemic collapse of federal funding is fueling a national crisis for young children and their families as centers suffer and out-of-pocket costs soar.

The findings of the survey—titled "We Are NOT OK" and put out by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC)—resulted from questions posed to over 10,000 professionals in the early childhood education sector.

Of those polled, more than 50% reported staffing shortages in the various kinds of centers they own or operate, including faith-based programs, family child care homes, Head Start facilities, and childcare centers. Those shortages, according to respondents, stem in part from low wages and burnout from staff who are overloaded but underpaid since federal support dried up.

"Significant public investment in child care is needed urgently to ensure programs can retain qualified educators and remain open to serve children and families."

Rising costs but diminishing support from public subsidies have forced operators to increase tuition which in turn has put pressure on families to withdraw—creating a vicious loop.

"The loss of federal funds that helped the early childhood sector weather the pandemic has exacerbated long-standing challenges like low wages and high operating costs, leading to staff shortages, program closures, and rising family tuition rates," said Michelle Kang, the CEO of NAEYC.

Among other key findings of the 50-state survey:56% of center directors and family childcare owner/operators said they were under-enrolled relative to their current capacity, with the reasons varying from staffing shortages (89%), low pay (77%), and lack of affordability for families (66%).

55% of all respondents were aware of at least one childcare program closing in their community in the past six months, while only 30% were aware of a new program opening. 11% said four or more programs had closed in their community in that time.
36% of center directors and family childcare owner/operators reported increased rent costs and half reported increased insurance costs over the past 6 months. To cover costs, 48% increased tuition rates for families.

46% of all respondents reported increased burnout since January 2023. 32% said their economic situation has worsened, compared to only 16% who said it has improved.
Such troubling findings, said Kang, make clear that "significant public investment in child care is needed urgently to ensure programs can retain qualified educators and remain open to serve children and families."

Republicans in Congress, joined by too many right-leaning Democrats, have backpedaled on social spending in the wake of the pandemic. Multiple economic analyses and reams of data have shown that public investments in childhood education and poverty reduction had immediate and far-reaching positive impacts, but austerity-guided policies and refusals to raise federal revenues by taxing the rich or corporations have seen those gains erased.

Last fall, Sens. Patty Murray and Bernie Sanders put forward a bill to provide $16 billion in annual childcare funding over five years to prevent what experts predicted would be a childcare disaster.

"We are here today to sound the alarm and put forward a commonsense solution, before childcare providers might have to close their doors, before kids lose their childcare slots, and before parents could face higher costs—or simply be forced to leave their jobs to take care of their kids," warned Murray at a September press conference introducing the legislation.

No Republican in the Senate backed the measure and the bill still languishes in Congress thanks to GOP control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

On Thursday, Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service Danny Werfel toldCNBC in an interview that the U.S. government loses approximately $150 billion annually from tax evasion by the nation's wealthiest individuals.

"When I look at what we call our tax gap, which is the amount of money owed versus what is paid for," said Werfel, "millionaires and billionaires that either don't file or [are] underreporting their income, that's $150 billion of our tax gap."

Earlier this month, the IRS announced that it could collect approximately $560 billion in additional tax revenue over the next decade so long as Republican lawmakers were thwarted in their efforts to claw back large portions of $80 billion in funding the agency was provided as part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

As the advocacy group Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) said in response to Werfel's comments on Thursday, a $150 billion annually would amount to $1.5 trillion over the coming decade.

That's enough, ATF added, "to expand the Child Tax Credit for 10 years, lifting millions of kids permanently out of poverty. We can do great things when we crack down on wealthy tax cheats."

That $150 billion figure is also nearly ten times what it would cost to fund the Murray-Sanders childcare bill for one year.

As Sanders said in September, "If we can afford to spend over $1 trillion on tax breaks for the top 1% and large corporations making record-breaking profits, we can afford to provide working class families with the childcare they desperately need."