ACLU warns Trump win would herald 'new era of mass incarceration'

Edward Carver, 

Common Dreams
July 20, 2024

Photo by Umanoide on Unsplash

The ACLU on Friday issued a memo warning that a second term for former President Donald Trump would "exacerbate inequalities" in the criminal justice system and laying out plans to push against a potential Republican administration's efforts to do so.

The 14-page memo argues that Trump's agenda would be to expand incarceration, abusive policing practices, and the use of the death penalty, all of which the ACLU, a nonprofit human rights organization, opposes.

"We know from this country's history that these extreme and immoral policies harm communities and infringe upon our rights and humanity," Yasmin Cader, director of the ACLU's Trone Center for Justice and Equality, said in a statement that accompanied the release of the memo. "The ACLU is prepared to meet the Trump administration with the same fierce response as we did during his last term in office should he be reelected."

Most of the U.S. criminal legal system is run at the state or local level. More than 1.6 million people are incarcerated in state and local jails or prisons, compared to just over 200,000 in the federal system.

However, a second Trump administration would set the "tone" and create a "ripple effect across the country," threatening a "new era of mass incarceration," the ACLU said. The memo warns that Trump would do so in the following ways:Escalating punitive, draconian sentencing and incarceration approaches;
Incentivizing dramatically worse conditions for the nation's 1.9 million incarcerated people;
Reincarcerating nearly 3,000 people released to federal home confinement during the pandemic; and

Undermining recent reforms, including the First Step Act.

The memo also argues that Trump encourages police abuses and has made an "open endorsement of authoritarian and violent policing." Trump's first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, had the Department of Justice "pull back" on investigations of police abuse, the memo notes.

The ACLU also drew attention to Trump's extreme position on the death penalty. More people were executed by the federal government during his four-year term than had been in any in over a century, and his administration went on what ProPublicacalled a "last-minute killing spree" before his term ended.

Trump's pro-death penalty position dates back decades. In 1989, he took out full-page advertisements in The New York Times and several other city newspapers calling for a reinstitution of the death penalty in New York state following the rape and assault of a jogger in Central Park. Five Black and Latino teenagers were wrongfully convicted of the crime.

"Bring back the death penalty and bring back our police!" the advertisement said in all caps.

Anti-China Missouri candidate campaigning on bus owned by lobbyist of Chinese pork producer

Rudi Keller, Missouri Independent
July 21, 2024 

Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe exits his campaign bus in Cuba, Missouri, on July 11 (Jason Hancock/Missouri Independent).

In his campaign for governor, Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe has promised Republican voters he will stop China “from buying up our farmland.”

He’s doing so while traveling the state in a bus owned by Jewell Patek, a former legislator who is the only lobbyist employed by the only Chinese business that owns a significant chunk of agricultural land in the state.

The Republican primary for governor has nine candidates listed on the ballot, with three – Kehoe, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and state Sen. Bill Eigel – running full-scale campaigns. The issue of foreign land ownership, especially by China, has been one of the major issues.

State senator throws first punches of 2024 Missouri governor’s campaign

Eigel made it the subject of his first advertisement of the campaign, and Ashcroft has backed legislation to bar China and other hostile nations from owning farmland and enlisted his father, former Gov. John Ashcroft, to deliver the message.

The cost of using Patek’s bus isn’t listed among the expenses reported in Kehoe’s latest campaign finance report. Instead, his campaign spokeswoman Gabriella Picard said the bus cost is covered by a June 4 entry showing Kehoe himself made a $25,000 “in-kind” donation.

The bus, she wrote in an email to The Independent, was “personally leased” by Kehoe.

The exterior wrap on the bus, with campaign messages and a larger-than-life photo of the candidate and his wife Claudia, is reported among the campaign’s expenses. It cost $15,591 at Impact Signs Awnings Wraps Inc. in Sedalia.

“The Kehoes personally didn’t want to use the campaign funds for a bus,” Picard said in an interview. “The reason that it was reported as an in-kind donation by Mike Kehoe is for that reason, because we just didn’t want to use money that people have donated for a bus. And he wanted to personally make that contribution himself.”

Charter bus rental can cost $1,200 to $1,700 a day plus mileage, depending on the size and interior amenities. The bus owned by Patek is a 2000 model, according to records in the Moniteau County Collector’s office, and is assessed at the nominal value of $100.

Picard would not say whether the reported amount is how much Kehoe is paying Patek for use of the bus.

“All fuel and associated costs with the bus tour are being covered by the campaign,” she said in a message Saturday. “The lease for the bus was negotiated between Mike Kehoe and the owner. Everything has been reported to the MEC as required.”

Since 2007, Patek has lobbied for Smithfield Foods, which in 2013 was acquired by Shuanghui International, now known as WH Group, China’s largest pork producer. Smithfield operates a facility once known as Premium Standard Farms on more than 40,000 acres near Princeton in northern Missouri.

Patek is Smithfield’s only lobbyist but not Patek’s only client. Patek became a lobbyist in 2003 and his Missouri Ethics Commission filings list 44 other clients, including utility providers Evergy and Spire, the Heavy Constructors Association of Kansas City and Cheyenne International, a discount cigarette manufacturer.

Patek did not return a call seeking comment.

Prior to 2013, Missouri law banned foreign ownership of agricultural land. To accommodate the sale of Smithfield, lawmakers that year made it legal for up to 1% of the state’s farmland to be foreign owned.

Kehoe, a member of the Senate at the time, voted for the bill and to override a veto by then-Gov. Jay Nixon.

In his veto message, Nixon wrote that the allowance for 1% foreign ownership was never debated until it was inserted into the legislation at the last minute “without the benefit of a hearing that would have allowed for public testimony” and over the objections of agricultural groups.

Criticism of the legislation didn’t take long to develop – backers of Josh Hawley’s campaign for attorney general broadcast an ad in 2016 with actors speaking Chinese attacking his Republican primary opponent, then-state Sen. Kurt Schaefer, for backing the legislation.

Schaefer, of Columbia, this year is seeking the Republican nomination for Congress in the 3rd District.

Despite growing bipartisan support for repeal or revisions to the 2013 legislation – 13 bills altering the 1% allowance were introduced by Republicans and Democrats this year alone – nothing has passed to the governor’s desk.

Eigel won Senate approval this year of an amendment barring foreign ownership of Missouri farmland within 500 miles of a military base, but it was stripped out before the bill was sent to Gov. Mike Parson.

In January, Parson issued an executive order banning land purchases by “foreign adversaries” within 10 miles of “critical military facilities.”

In an interview earlier this month with The Independent, Kehoe said he doesn’t believe “an enemy of our country should own anything here.”

He defended his 2013 vote, saying “you’re talking about very different circumstances in the relationship the U.S. had with other countries than today.”

“That happened 11 years ago,” he said. “Times have changed, and so we would move forward with the position that I have very clearly stated that I do not want any enemy of this country owning anything.”

Using a bus owned by Smithfield’s lobbyist – and obscuring that fact by calling it a donation from Kehoe – drew fire from Eigel and Ashcroft’s campaigns, who have both worked to portray him as too close to interest groups.


“China has owned Kehoe for a long time, and of course they’ll own him as governor, too,” said Sophia Shore, campaign manager for Eigel. “He voted four times to sell Missouri to the Chinese; everything that has followed is completely unsurprising.”

The bus is symbolic of Kehoe’s whole campaign, said Jason Roe, an adviser to Ashcroft.

“Kehoe has hundreds of lobbyists supporting his campaign,” Roe said. “Any lobbyist could subsidize the bus for him, but this one is pretty interesting.”

Missouri Independent is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com. Follow Missouri Independent on Facebook and X.

Church knew of abuse claims against revered priest: researchers

Agence France-Presse
July 20, 2024 

The Abbe Pierre, a beloved humanitarian and French priest, is accused of sexually assaulting several women and a girl © Gilles LEIMDORFER / AFP

Paris (AFP) – The Catholic Church already knew by 2021 of claims of sexual abuse against a beloved humanitarian French priest, the late Abbe Pierre, members of an independent commission said Saturday

Abbe Pierre, or Henri Groues, was a Capuchin monk and an ordained Catholic clergyman who died in 2007 aged 94. He left a legacy as a friend to the poverty-stricken and founder of the charities Emmaus and the Abbe Pierre Foundation.

Revered for his uncompromising position defending the homeless and other people on the margins of life in France, he regularly topped polls as the most popular public figure in the country.

On Wednesday, however, it was revealed that seven women had made allegations of sexual assault or harassment by the elderly cleric dating back to between 1970 and 2005.

And on Saturday, four researchers for an independent commission into sexual abuse in the French Catholic Church said that they had already presented testimonies accusing the preacher to the Church in October 2021.

"Among the 1,200 or so testimonies processed by our team, three involved Abbe Pierre," the four researchers wrote in an article published in Le Monde.

One of those "very probably corresponds" to testimony B in the report published Wednesday, concerning events that took place in the early 1980s in Naumur, Belgium.

In that testimony, one woman accuses Groues of having groped her breast and inserted his tongue in her mouth.

'Criminal' acts

For the four researchers, the work of the two reports showed that "Abbe Pierre's sexual compulsion, which led to recidivist acts of assault, seems unmistakable".

Abbe Pierre "had committed acts that violated common civility and morality, criminal legislation and canonical precepts", they added.

Some 17 years after his death, Groues remains a familiar sight on charity shops posters and in metro stations urging French people to think of the poor.


He gave his inheritance away aged 18 to join the order of Capuchin monks, later becoming active in the Resistance to Nazi occupation and spending several post-war years as a member of parliament.

In 1949, he founded the Emmaus community that preaches self-help for excluded people, which has since spread to dozens of countries.

He was also a backer of the "Restos du coeur" soup kitchens movement and clashed with city authorities that failed to lodge the homeless.

The commission presented its findings to the French episcopate in October 2021. It estimated that over the past 70 years, around 330,000 people had been abused within the Church when they were minors.

‘We have nothing’: SD flood victims say government failures continue after botched warning

Joshua Haiar, South Dakota Searchlight
July 20, 2024 

Damages remain visible in the McCook Lake community on July 3, 2024, after a massive flood hit the area on June 23. (Joshua Haiar/South Dakota Searchlight)

McCOOK LAKE — Neither Morgan Speichinger nor many of her neighbors came away worried on June 23 after listening to Gov. Kristi Noem talk about flooding in the southeastern corner of South Dakota.

“Noem’s press conference made it sound like it wasn’t going to be bad for us,” Speichinger said. “There was no talk of a massive flood coming our way.”

McCook Lake catastrophe shatters complacency around old flood plans

Four hours later, Speichinger and her neighbors were fleeing for their lives, while Noem was at a political fundraiser in Tennessee, having flown out after her press conference in North Sioux City.

The floodwaters that slammed into the McCook Lake neighborhood destroyed and badly damaged dozens of homes, temporarily knocked out electricity, gas and water service, and carved deep gouges in the land.

Speichinger and some other McCook Lake residents say the effects of the botched warning have been exacerbated by a disorganized recovery effort and by Gov. Kristi Noem’s decision not to dispatch the National Guard.

“We have no idea what’s coming next for us,” said flood victim Nathaniel Cutsinger.
A press conference and a flight to Memphis


Authorities began expecting flooding as historic amounts of rain fell for three days, June 20-22, in southeast South Dakota, southwest Minnesota and northwest Iowa.

In the southeast tip of South Dakota, McCook Lake, North Sioux City and Dakota Dunes are situated alongside the Big Sioux and Missouri rivers, making the communities especially vulnerable.

At 11 a.m. on Sunday, June 23, the North Sioux City Council held an emergency meeting and activated a 48-year-old flood mitigation plan. The city got the state’s blessing to close a section of Interstate 29 and build a temporary levee across it. The temporary levee plugged a gap in permanent levies that protect parts of North Sioux City and Dakota Dunes.

Noem led a press conference later that day in North Sioux City, beginning at 2:30 p.m., that focused on the construction of the temporary levee and a voluntary evacuation order that Dakota Dunes issued for its residents.

“Knowing that’s where we’re most vulnerable,” Noem said at the time.

None of the local, state or federal authorities at the press conference clearly explained that the temporary levee was intended to direct Big Sioux River floodwaters toward McCook Lake, where the overflow would hopefully drain toward the Missouri River while causing minimal damage.

When somebody in the audience asked what McCook Lake residents should do, Noem said they should protect their personal property, “because we do anticipate that they will take in water.”

“That’s what we’re preparing for,” she said. “If we don’t, then that’s wonderful that they don’t have an impact, but they could see water flowing into McCook Lake.”


Noem shared projections during the press conference indicating the Big Sioux River in North Sioux City would peak at 42 feet by 1 p.m. the following day.

As the press conference concluded around 3 p.m., the crest projection had been updated to 42.3 feet by 7 p.m. that evening, and the projection continued to change as the situation worsened.

Sometime after the press conference, Noem flew to Memphis, Tennessee, where she was the featured speaker that evening at the Shelby County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day Gala fundraiser. The event started at 6 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Central.

Phone alerts fail to reach stunned residents

Based on what Speichinger heard from the afternoon press conference, which she’d streamed on her phone, she was comfortable allowing her kids to play at a neighbor’s pool while authorities and contractors worked on the temporary interstate levee and after they completed it around 3:30 p.m.

“There were people still out in their boats on the lake as the flood was coming,” Speichinger said. “Nobody had any idea. I didn’t even know there was this diversion plan.”


She had moved into her home on Penrose Drive near the lake in 2019. Some other lake residents also lacked knowledge of the plan to divert water to McCook Lake or were caught off guard by the severity of the flooding, including a few police officers in the neighborhood, according to residents.

Speichinger said a sudden gush of water flowed through her backyard around 7 p.m.

“People were running and screaming, ‘Get out! Get out!’” she said.


Union County Emergency Management Director Jason Westcott said first responders, including two emergency rescue boat teams, conservation officers, law enforcement and firefighters were all on standby in case “the worst-case scenario happened.”

“And that’s what happened,” he said.

Those first responders immediately began alerting residents to evacuate and performing rescues, Westcott said. He targeted an alert to the smartphones of residents along the north shore of McCook Lake at 8:21 p.m.


“We were relying on other people to know about the issues going on,” he said. “A lot of stuff was happening very fast.”

Speichinger and some others said they didn’t receive the phone alert.

“I’ve only heard of a few people who got that alert,” Speichinger said. “It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. The flood was here.”

Wescott said the alert system has weaknesses. He said the area’s poor cell service may have contributed to the problem, and some people may have disabled the location tracking on their phone.

“There are a million different ways you won’t get one,” he said of the alerts.

At 8:35 p.m., Westcott posted an urgent message to his office’s Facebook page.

“𝐄𝐕𝐀𝐂𝐔𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐄 𝐍𝐎𝐑𝐓𝐇 𝐒𝐈𝐎𝐔𝐗 𝐂𝐈𝐓𝐘 / 𝐌𝐂𝐎𝐎𝐊 𝐋𝐀𝐊𝐄 𝐀𝐑𝐄𝐀,” the message said in bold and all-caps. “𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐍𝐓’𝐒 𝐎𝐍 𝐍𝐎𝐑𝐓𝐇 𝐒𝐇𝐎𝐑𝐄 𝐅𝐑𝐎𝐌 𝐄𝐗𝐈𝐓 𝟒 𝐓𝐎 𝐃𝐀𝐊𝐎𝐓𝐀 𝐕𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐄𝐘 𝐇𝐈𝐆𝐇 𝐒𝐂𝐇𝐎𝐎𝐋 – 𝐏𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐄 𝐄𝐕𝐀𝐂𝐔𝐀𝐓𝐄!”

Speichinger saw that message, although it has since been deleted from the page. Her webcam-enabled Ring Doorbell shows the water was about 3 feet high outside her home at 8:35 p.m.

Nathaniel Cutsinger was finishing up his shift at Dollar General in North Sioux City as water rushed into his home across the street from Speichinger’s.

“There was absolutely no notice of anything that was going on,” Cutsinger said.

When he got home, he waded into floodwaters to rescue his pets and an elderly neighbor.

“He was waiting at the window for someone to come,” Cutsinger said of the neighbor.

They got into Cutsinger’s Tahoe and drove down a flooded street until the vehicle stalled. Then they walked a few blocks in knee-high water to safety.

Emergency responders spent the night performing rescues, wading through knee-deep water, knocking on doors and shouting to alert residents, while others used boats to reach stranded families.

The Big Sioux River crested at 10:30 p.m., reaching a new record in North Sioux City of 44.98 feet after a 13.48-foot rise since 9:15 a.m.
Aftermath: ‘We have nothing’

An estimated 30 homes at McCook Lake were destroyed and at least 100 damaged, though Wescott said those numbers are preliminary.

Some homes were ripped from their foundations, while others collapsed or suffered severe erosion around their perimeters. Washed-out roads were littered with debris, trees were ripped from the ground, and there were dozen-feet-deep gashes in the land. Electricity, gas and sewer services were disrupted.

“We have nothing,” Cutsinger said several days after the flood. “We’re not rich people. People on this street have put everything into these houses.”

Problems continued after the floodwaters receded.

“The government response immediately after was terrible,” Cutsinger said.

At press conferences during the days after the flood, reporters asked Noem why she didn’t deploy the National Guard to help flood victims. She said no local officials requested it, and she also cited the expense of activating soldiers.

But during a July 1 public meeting, North Sioux City Mayor Patricia Teel said she did request the National Guard’s assistance.

“I asked for them,” Teel said. “I was told at first they were gone and ‘we are sending extra law enforcement’ instead.”

The Highway Patrol provided additional security to keep people out of dangerous areas immediately after the flood. Some residents were frustrated that they weren’t able to see or evaluate their homes, and authorities made them schedule appointments to be escorted into the neighborhood.

Mayor Teel did not respond to messages from South Dakota Searchlight. Westcott said Teel requested the Guard’s help with security, but Westcott agreed with Noem that law enforcement was better suited to keep the area protected. He said a specific request for help with debris cleanup has to be made to get that help – something some residents say would have been useful.

North Sioux City hired a contractor, Blue Cell, to “help organize communications and operations,” according to the Governor’s Office. Additional contractors have been hired to help repair roads, electric distribution lines, and water and natural gas pipelines.

The contractors’ work has been limited to fixing public infrastructure, according to multiple lake residents. That has left residents to clean up their homes themselves, hire help, or wait for volunteers.

On July 3, volunteer Mary Lee Lazarowicz was spending the day removing soaked drywall from a basement. She said an apparent lack of organization, beyond the already stretched-thin local lake association, was leading to inefficient aid distribution.

“I have to think that if we had some kind of centralized command center for volunteers, I just wonder if things would be running a lot more smoothly,” she said.
Confronting the ‘harsh truth’

Ten years ago, the same levee plan was utilized in response to flooding. Then-Gov. Dennis Daugaard warned McCook Lake residents at a press conference that the plan meant the homes surrounding the lake would be in danger of flooding. He sent National Guard troops to Union County to assist in preparation and relief.

Gov. Noem’s spokesperson, Ian Fury, has repeatedly defended Noem’s actions in relation to the flood and the aftermath. Fury said in a written statement June 27 that all local emergencies are handled through the county emergency manager, with support and resources provided by the state when requested.

“Since the first forecast of significant rainfall coming to our area, Governor Noem and the South Dakota Office of Emergency Management started communicating with impacted counties to help them prepare,” Fury wrote.

He shared a document showing a series of projections from June 21 to 24. The modeling indicates how high and when the Big Sioux River was expected to crest. With each update, the water was expected to come sooner, and many updates included a higher crest.

One of the most dramatic changes to the projections occurred immediately after Noem’s press conference, Fury highlighted.

“Officials can only use the best, available data in decision making and warning processes,” the document reads. “Due to limited data, modeling showed that this was not going to be a historic flood event that it ended up being.”

But the claim that authorities didn’t foresee a “historic flood event” is contradicted by the data in Fury’s own document, which includes a projection from Friday night, June 21 — two days before the McCook Lake flood — already predicting that the Big Sioux River in Sioux City was headed for a record-high crest.

McCook Lake residents say their homes were sacrificed, and they want a new flood plan

Westcott initially rejected claims that residents were not adequately warned, but later acknowledged to South Dakota Searchlight that residents were not given enough warning to prepare. He said authorities expected the flood mitigation plan to work as it had in the past, when McCook Lake was spared catastrophic damage.

“We did not know we had a 1,000-year flood coming at us. That was not part of the plan,” Westcott said. “That’s the hardcore truth of it.”

Westcott and Fury each said if the flood mitigation plan had not been utilized and the temporary levee had not been built, the flood would have overwhelmed North Sioux City and Dakota Dunes. They point to modeling showing just that.

Westcott said flood response work began immediately after residents were deemed safe. Those efforts included restoring water, electricity and gas services, working with the Red Cross to help flood victims, organizing volunteer and donation efforts, and bringing in emergency supplies.

During the July 1 public meeting, Mayor Teel read a statement to residents. She said her team was short-staffed and was not equipped to handle such a severe emergency; therefore, it relied on the state for help.

“We trusted the team that was provided by the state. By Thursday,” she said, referring to the fourth day after the flood, “we knew that the help provided wasn’t really helping us.”

Teel said she requested more help and was advised to hire a contractor, which she did.

Residents at the meeting also shared frustrations.

“I think we deserve to know why none of you thought it was necessary to tell the residents this flood was coming,” one said.

“What I’m disgusted with is the lack of response after it happened,” said another, who added that bottled water didn’t arrive until June 26.

“We had to run for our actual lives,” another resident said. “My kids are having PTSD.”

Some residents, including Cutsinger and Speichinger, do not have flood insurance. The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s flood maps do not require insurance in the neighborhood, and Cutsinger said the optional insurance would cost his family $5,000 a year.

Noem is seeking flood recovery assistance from FEMA. Westcott hopes that effort will bring financial help to McCook Lake residents, but he doesn’t know when it will happen, and he doesn’t expect it to fully replace their losses.

“The program is only designed to get people on their feet again,” he said. “That’s the harsh truth.”



South Dakota Searchlight is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com. Follow South Dakota Searchlight on Facebook and X.

Inside the risky U.S. probe of allegations that drug mafias financed Obrador campaign

ProPublica
July 20, 2024

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador attends an independence day military parade RODRIGO ARANGUA AFP/File

LONG READ

In the summer of 2010, as U.S. agents dug into allegations that a powerful drug mafia had poured money into Mexican politics, the investigators took direct aim at the man who is now the country’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

According to confidential government documents obtained by ProPublica, the Drug Enforcement Administration knowingly risked a political furor to try to penetrate López Obrador’s campaign organization before Mexicans could elect a government that might be beholden to the traffickers.

From the start, the documents indicate, the Americans’ primary target was López Obrador, then the leader of the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party, or PRD, and the front-runner in the 2012 presidential race.

“Should this investigation yield the evidence suggested by the multiple cooperating witnesses, the DEA will seek to indict AMLO and members of his staff and political party,” one Justice Department document states, referring to López Obrador by his initials.

“Thus, this investigation could ultimately affect who runs for president from the PRD party.” The candidate’s possible indictment in the United States, the document adds drily, “would certainly create media attention.”

The investigators initially had remarkable success, co-opting a midlevel campaign operative to act as a DEA mole inside López Obrador’s political team. They then drew up an audacious plan for a sting operation in which an undercover operative would offer the campaign millions of dollars in exchange for future protection, the documents show.

But that plan never went forward. The inquiry was shut down by senior Justice Department officials in late 2011, as the attorney general, Eric Holder, came under heavy political fire for the failure of another undercover operation in Mexico, a gun-tracking effort known as the “Fast and Furious” case.

That decision effectively ended U.S. law enforcement scrutiny of the matter, even as the extradition of major Mexican drug traffickers to the United States brought investigators new allegations about drug ties to López Obrador’s political apparatus in the years that followed.

The disclosure of the DEA’s investigation this year by ProPublica and two other news organizations jolted U.S.-Mexico relations and enraged López Obrador, who denied ever taking drug money and went on a weekslong tirade against the DEA, ProPublica and others he said were conspiring against him.


“It’s that the DEA no longer likes the policies we are applying because we are an independent and sovereign country,” López Obrador said last month, alluding to his repudiation of the closer antidrug cooperation of earlier Mexican governments with Washington.

The president’s spokesperson, Jesús Ramírez Cuevas, said López Obrador would not respond to questions about “false allegations” related to the 2006 campaign. But in a letter, he said the president wanted answers to his own questions about ProPublica’s sources and motives in reporting on the DEA inquiry. “Your reporting has damaged the image of the government and the president of Mexico,” the letter added.

Biden administration officials have sought to pacify López Obrador, on whom they are relying to hold back the flow of migrants trying to reach the U.S. southern border. While not denying reports of the DEA investigation, the officials emphasized that it has long been closed and the Mexican president is no longer under investigation.


Still, the revelations again raised a question that has long troubled U.S. officials working on Mexico: How should they deal with evidence of high-level corruption in an allied government that is steadily losing ground to some of the world’s most powerful criminals?

The documents obtained by ProPublica, which have not been previously disclosed, illuminate how U.S. officials initially weighed that question at a high point in their law enforcement relationship with Mexico and help to clarify why, after the political winds shifted, Justice Department officials halted the investigation before agents had come close to finishing their work.

The documents point to some uncertainties of the case, which began with allegations that traffickers had funneled some $2 million into López Obrador’s first presidential campaign, in 2006. (López Obrador lost that race and the one in 2012 before being elected president in 2018.) Although U.S. agents did ultimately corroborate that account with at least five different sources, they never developed any firsthand confirmation that López Obrador himself approved or even knew of the reported donations, officials said.


The DEA’s investigation of drug traffickers’ links to López Obrador’s campaign began with Roberto López Nájera, a young Acapulco lawyer who went to work for one of Mexico’s more notorious drug bosses, Edgar Valdez Villareal, a Texas-born trafficker known as “La Barbie.”

When López Nájera joined La Barbie’s gang in 2004, it was effectively a branch of the drug organization led by the kingpin Arturo Beltrán Leyva — who was in turn one of several leading figures in the trafficking syndicate known as the Sinaloa Cartel. The alliance was fluid enough, López Nájera later told investigators, that gang leaders sometimes gathered their gunmen for meet-and-greets, lest they encounter one another on the street and mistakenly start shooting.

López Nájera eventually turned on La Barbie and made his way to the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, where he offered his help to the DEA. He was moved into protective custody in the United States and became a prized informant, sitting for endless debriefings and even typing up reminiscences of traffickers he had known and episodes he had witnessed.


Despite López Nájera’s acknowledged role as a bribe-payer, it took the DEA almost two years to start digging into his account of a January 2006 gathering at which he said La Barbie and two of his key lieutenants met emissaries from López Obrador’s then-surging presidential campaign.

As López Nájera told the story, officials said, the meeting at a hotel in the Pacific Coast resort of Nuevo Vallarta ended with a handshake agreement: In return for some $2 million he donated to López Obrador’s campaign, La Barbie was promised official protection if the candidate won, including a say in the choice of key police commanders and even the federal attorney general.

In the first months of the investigation, López Nájera worked with the DEA to set up meetings in Florida and Texas with Mauricio Soto Caballero, an operative from López Obrador’s campaign team with whom he had arranged the delivery of La Barbie’s contributions in 2006. The two men remained friendly, and López Nájera told agents that Soto had expressed an interest in making some quick money by perhaps acting as an investor on smaller drug deals.


On the night of Oct. 21, 2010, Soto met at a bar in McAllen, Texas, with a couple of men he thought were associates of López Nájera’s. In fact, the men were undercover DEA agents, and they arrested Soto at his hotel hours later. Within days, officials said, he pleaded guilty in New York to a single federal charge of conspiring to traffic cocaine. To avoid prison and return home, he agreed to help the investigators pursue others who had been involved with the traffickers’ donations to López Obrador’s campaign.

The agents, drawn from DEA teams in Mexico City and New York, submitted a “sensitive investigative activity” request to the DEA’s global operations chief, seeking authorization to use Soto as an undercover source. In essence, they were asking to plant an informant inside López Obrador’s second presidential campaign in 2012 and potentially develop evidence against the candidate himself.

“Without a confidential source in this position, it would be impossible for any entity to identify the level of corruption involved with a presidential campaign,” one undated document states. Soto “will be in a direct position to tell when a Drug Cartel provided monies to the campaign.”


“The ultimate target of this investigation,” the request adds, “is Andres Manuel LÓPEZ-Obrador.”

A list of other campaign staff members whom the agents intended to examine, included in a separate document, names two of López Obrador’s former bodyguards from the 2006 campaign and the one-star army general who headed the security team, Audomaro Martínez, now the powerful head of Mexico’s state intelligence agency.

According to several current and former officials familiar with the case, the agents had different criteria for choosing their targets for scrutiny. One former bodyguard, Silvio Hernández Soto, had been introduced to López Nájera as a contact who might prove helpful with his cocaine-smuggling efforts. Martínez, who supervised the bodyguards, was viewed as a gatekeeper to the candidate but does not appear to have been implicated in any criminal activity. (An attorney for Hernández did not respond to messages seeking comment, while Martínez did not respond to questions submitted to the president’s spokesperson.)


The agents’ first focus of attention was Mauricio Soto’s friend and former boss on the 2006 campaign, Nicolás Mollinedo Bastar, who remained one of López Obrador’s closest aides. Mollinedo had served as the campaign’s logistics chief, responsible for setting up rallies and other events around the country. In an interview, Mollinedo denied that he or the campaign ever took drug money. Soto, who did not respond to numerous requests for comment, has insisted to Mexican journalists that he was never arrested in the United States or collaborated with the DEA. (ProPublica has reviewed six U.S. government documents that state otherwise.)

Throughout the 2006 race, Soto told the U.S. investigators, he and other campaign workers would be approached by “unidentified individuals” offering “cash or high value items,” according to a document that summarizes some of Soto’s interviews. “It was understood that these individuals represented the local drug cartel and in return would request security for their organization to traffic narcotics to the United States.”

“Although at first MOLLINEDO directed his subordinates not to accept these offers, SOTO-Caballero was instructed to maintain a relationship with these individuals should they need anything in the future,” the document continues. That role continued, another summary of the investigation states, when Mollinedo authorized Soto “to receive the illicit funds and other support” that La Barbie sent to the campaign.


Soto told the investigators he discussed the Sinaloa contributions only with Mollinedo, to whom he turned over two large deposits of the traffickers’ cash, former officials familiar with the case said. The agents suspected that López Obrador, who had a reputation as a micromanager, could not have been unaware of such a large donation. But Soto told them he did not know if the candidate discussed the money with Mollinedo, one of his most trusted aides, or with the two businessmen who had claimed to represent his campaign at the meeting in Nuevo Vallarta.

López Nájera had told the investigators he had been introduced to López Obrador during a 2006 campaign stop in the northern state of Coahuila, where the candidate spoke to a huge crowd assembled with financial help from La Barbie.

López Nájera said he called La Barbie and handed his cellphone to López Obrador, who then thanked the trafficker for his donations. But officials familiar with the case said agents treated that claim skeptically: Even if López Obrador knew who was on the phone, whatever López Nájera thought he heard of the conversation would be hearsay. (López Obrador has said he would resign the presidency immediately if anyone could prove he spoke to the trafficker.)

Although the agents’ target list was both ambitious and sensitive, DEA officials said they assumed from the start that the limits of such an investigation would inevitably be set by senior policy officials in the Justice Department and other agencies.

“We were going to try to collect as much information as we could,” said a former senior DEA official who oversaw the matter for a time but, like others, would only discuss it on the condition of anonymity because of its continuing sensitivity. “You knew it was going to be a long road because of the political ramifications. And it was not surprising to us that they basically pulled the plug.”

From the start, the investigators faced a deadline: The federal prosecutors who were guiding their efforts from Manhattan believed the statute of limitations on drug-conspiracy crimes related to López Obrador’s first race would run five years from the day of the vote, July 2, 2006. By early 2011, the investigators had only months left to bring charges based on the earlier campaign.

While working secretly with the U.S. agents, Soto attended weekly meetings in Mexico City with López Obrador and the small team that was preparing his 2012 presidential run, documents show. Soto remained close to Mollinedo, who was almost constantly at López Obrador’s side.

Once officials approved Soto’s deployment as an undercover source, the agents focused their attention on Mollinedo. Hoping to further confirm his role in accepting the 2006 donations, the agents gave Soto a concealed recording device and sent him off on April 8, 2011, to surreptitiously record a chat at López Obrador’s political headquarters.

The results were disappointing. The recording was partly unintelligible, and at one point Soto shut off the device — accidentally or perhaps deliberately, the agents weren’t sure.

A two-page summary of the conversation states that Soto (referred to as “the CS,” or confidential source) told Mollinedo he was concerned that the Mexican authorities had arrested both La Barbie and a lieutenant who had joined him at the Nuevo Vallarta meeting, Sergio Villarreal Barragán, an imposing former police officer known as “El Grande.”

In the recording, Soto said he was also worried about a still-mysterious government witness who had been identified in court papers and news reports by the code-name “Jennifer.” The witness was then making headlines as the source for a big drug-corruption case, “Operation Clean-up,” and the two men had apparently figured out that Jennifer was in fact López Nájera — the young trafficker with whom Soto had dealt during the 2006 campaign.

Mollinedo was apparently worried, too. He said he doubted the traffickers would be credible witnesses, and he cut short the conversation, saying he had to meet his wife and daughter. Soto offered him a ride, but during the drive Mollinedo “mostly talked about a mistress he was currently involved with,” the summary states.

Referring to Soto, the document adds: “The CS advised investigators that he/she was not able to specifically discuss the money payments during the 2006 campaign because the CS and MOLLINEDO were never able to speak in private at the office.”

A month later, the agents tried again. A second recorded conversation on May 9 focused partly on a former bodyguard from López Obrador’s 2006 campaign, Marco Antonio Mejía, who had been making statements to prosecutors after being arrested on corruption charges while running a prison in Cancún.

Back in 2006, Soto had introduced Mejía to López Nájera as a potentially useful contact for the traffickers. In talking with Mollinedo, Soto worried aloud that López Nájera and Mejía could turn against them. (Mejía, who denied any wrongdoing during his legal case, could not be reached for comment.)

Mollinedo was a step ahead of Soto, having already obtained a copy of Mejía’s confidential court file with the statements of various witnesses.

“It’s just vague things,” Mollinedo said of the prosecutors’ file. “But they probably have a file on us.”

Parts of the conversation were again unintelligible, and much of the men’s language was ambiguous or deliberately coded. There were a few references to money that was delivered (presumably to the campaign) and a mention of the man who had first introduced Soto to López Nájera (presumably to arrange delivery of the traffickers’ donations).

DEA agents viewed the transcript as proof that Mollinedo — one of López Obrador’s closest confidants — was fully aware of La Barbie’s donations in 2006 and who had delivered them. “These meetings have revealed evidence corroborating the initial information,” the agents wrote in a subsequent investigative plan.

But Mollinedo made no explicit statements about the traffickers’ donations or what his responsibility for them might have been. As potential evidence, the prosecutors thought it was thin — the sort that a good criminal defense lawyer could tear to pieces in court.

“When you’re dealing with a sensitive, high-level political setting, the level of predication you need goes way up,” a former Justice Department official familiar with the case said, referring to the strength of the evidence needed to prove a corruption case. “That’s true domestically, too.”

Over the next few months, as the statute of limitations deadline came and went, the agents pivoted to a more ambitious plan: They would set up a sting operation, officials said, using Soto to introduce Mollinedo to a carefully chosen undercover operative — perhaps a real former trafficker from another Latin American country who was cooperating with the DEA.

As the presidential race heated up, the operative would offer a huge donation, maybe $5 million, in return for a promise that a López Obrador government would tolerate his future trafficking activities. If Mollinedo accepted, the purported donor would offer a down payment or good-faith gift of $100,000 cash. If Mollinedo pocketed it, they would seek to have him arrested and try to pressure him to cooperate against others, including possibly López Obrador, officials said.

Over the course of the investigation, the documents indicate, the DEA chief in Mexico, Joseph Evans, briefed senior U.S. diplomats in Mexico on its progress. (Evans declined to comment on the matter.) But the inquiry coincided with a period of upheaval at the U.S. Embassy. The ambassador, Carlos Pascual, resigned in March 2011 after conflicts with the Mexican government that escalated when Wikileaks released secret diplomatic cables in which he had criticized Mexican counterdrug efforts.

The documents viewed by ProPublica underscore officials’ concerns about the sensitivity of the investigation and the perils of running an undercover operation inside Mexico — a step they were generally obliged to inform the Mexican government about under the terms of a 1998 agreement on law enforcement cooperation.

Like other especially risky operations, the agents’ plan was submitted to a panel of DEA and Justice Department lawyers and policy officials called a Sensitive Activity Review Committee. That review, on Nov. 22, 2011, in Washington, “revolved around the concerns of what the Mexicans have been briefed on and what they will or will not be briefed on in the future,” a summary of the case states.

DEA officials noted that the problem of official corruption was at the core of Mexico’s failure to make real headway against the traffickers, officials said. U.S. law enforcement agencies were then working for the first time with a strongly supportive Mexican government, that of President Felipe Calderón, a bitter rival of López Obrador’s. DEA officials suggested that they could discuss their plan with Calderón’s intelligence chief, who could brief the president without other Mexican officials learning of it.

But, as some foreign policy and Justice Department officials saw it, the proposal could hardly be more fraught with peril for the U.S. relationship with Mexico. “A sting operation against the leading presidential candidate, who is also the arch-rival of the sitting president?” one former senior U.S. diplomat asked rhetorically. “Are you kidding me?”

A former Justice Department official familiar with the debate added: “You’re not in a situation where you can put an agent in there, so you’re dealing exclusively with people who are informants and criminals. It’s not just about the target of the investigation — it’s about what you’re proposing to do.”

Despite Calderón’s strong partnership with the United States and a flurry of strikes against major traffickers including the Beltrán Leyva gang, the potential for things to go catastrophically wrong in the two countries’ relationship was already on public display.

For months, a major scandal had been raging over a long-running effort by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to secretly track illegal U.S. guns going into Mexico. Hundreds of guns had been allowed to move freely to the trafficking gangs and other criminals, but the tracking had failed miserably. When the guns were identified from crimes or seizures, it was determined that they had been used in the killings of more than 150 Mexican citizens. The Mexican people, including Calderón, were furious.

“You have to have a long view about the relationship and the costs,” the Justice Department official said. “Not just the foreign policy concerns of other agencies, but also to DOJ. I had 10 other prosecutors who had cases that depended on working with (the Mexican government). And they were going to be really angry if this blew up.”

On Oct. 1, 2013, with no further prospects for the DEA investigation, Soto returned secretly to federal court in Manhattan to be sentenced on the cocaine-conspiracy charge to which he had pleaded guilty almost three years earlier, officials said. With the prosecutors’ endorsement, a judge gave him five years’ probation but did not require him to report back in person.

He flew home almost immediately, officials said, and went back to work in the Mexico City government.

Robert Reich debunks the myth that 'corporate tax cuts create jobs'

Robert Reich
July 21, 2024 

Robert Reich (YouTube)

I’m tired of hearing Republicans claim that we should reduce taxes on corporations because corporate tax cuts create jobs. It’s untrue.

Also untrue are the repeated Republican assertions that tax increases on corporations, and regulations requiring corporations to better protect the health and safety of their consumers and workers and the environment, are “job killers.”

Here’s the truth: Most American jobs are created by poor, working, and middle-class people whose increased spending on goods and services causes businesses to create more jobs.

If most Americans don’t have enough purchasing power to buy the stuff businesses produce, businesses will lay workers off. If they have more purchasing power, businesses will add jobs.

In 1914, Ford boosted its workers’ wages. As a result, Ford employees — and the employees of other big firms who felt they had no choice but to raise their wages to compete in the job market with Ford — could afford to buy Model T Fords, enlarging the demand for Model T’s, thus creating more jobs at Ford (and at every other automaker).

The Great Crash of 1929 ushered in the Great Depression of the 1930s because people didn’t have enough money to buy the goods and services the economy could produce. Which caused a vicious cycle of fewer jobs and even less money in the pockets of average people.

The cycle ended only when the government stepped in through vast public spending on World War II.

So when you hear that corporations need tax cuts in order to create more jobs, or that tax increases on corporations or regulations on corporations are job killers, know that this is baloney.

The best way to create more jobs is to put more money into the pockets of more workers.

Which is why we need a higher minimum wage, an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit, and stronger unions that can bargain for higher wages. All these will increase demand for the goods and services businesses produce, thereby creating more jobs.

Remember, it’s working people who create jobs when they have enough money in their pockets to buy.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/

The Job Creation Hoax I 10 Economic Myths Debunked #8 | Robert Reichyoutu.be

Chief economist says Trump's 'tax on American consumers' will 'add to inflation'
David McAfee
July 21, 2024 

Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks after exiting the courtroom during his hush money trial at Manhattan Criminal Court on May 20, 2024, in New York City. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

Donald Trump's plans for new tariffs would "add to inflation and equate to "a tax on American consumers," an economist told MSNBC.

Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi appeared on the cable news network on Saturday, and was asked about Trump's economic plans for 2025 if he is able to defeat President Joe Biden and the Democrats.

"It would add to inflation. The tariffs are a tax on American consumers, particularly lower or middle income consumers who spend a lot larger share of their budgets on the goods that are imported," he said. "That adds to the inflation."

Watch the video below or click the link.

Texas’ Christian-influenced curriculum spurs worries about bullying

Jaden Edison, Texas Tribune
July 20, 2024

Photo by Samantha Sophia on Unsplash

Andy Wine thinks most children can understand the Golden Rule. Talking over your peers is rude. Insulting others is mean. Don't hurt people. In short, it’s common sense, Wine said.

That’s why the 43-year-old parent of two, who is an atheist, finds it appalling that the Texas Education Agency wants to incentivize public schools to teach the Golden Rule as a core value in the Bible.

“We teach kids to be nice to each other and to share,” said Wine, a member of the Freethinkers Association of Central Texas, a social organization of religiously unaffiliated people. “You don't need to bring up any religion in order to do it.”

Religious and nonreligious groups have raised concerns like this since the TEA proposed a curriculum that would insert Bible teachings into K–5 reading and language arts lessons. They worry the increased emphasis on Christianity could lead non-Christian students to face bullying and isolation, undermine church-state separation and grant the state too much control over how children are taught about religion.

“It's a question of inclusivity,” said Jackie Nirenberg, regional director of Anti-Defamation League Austin, an organization fighting antisemitism and bias against Jewish communities. “It's also a very slippery slope. Because once we open the door to that kind of content, it's much easier to get more and more religious content into the curriculum.”

The State Board of Education will vote on the proposed curriculum in November, which is now available for public viewing and feedback online. The proposal came after the Texas Legislature passed House Bill 1605, a law that directed the TEA to create its own free-to-use textbooks with the goal of helping teachers save time preparing for classes.
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If approved, the decision to adopt the curriculum would rest with school districts. Those that do would receive an incentive of up to $60 per student. The extra funds could be particularly attractive after the Legislature failed last year to approve a significant boost to the base amount of money every school gets per student, leaving them to grapple with multi million-dollar budget deficits.

Religious and nonreligious organizations say they are reviewing the material and plan to show up at city council meetings, school boards and the Texas Capitol to voice their concerns.

“What I hear a lot in Texas is parental rights — that we have the right to be able to make decisions about our children's education,” said Nabila Mansoor, a Muslim who is the executive director of Rise AAPI, which primarily serves Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities. “And yet, this particular faith tradition is being superimposed on children who come from many different faith backgrounds and whose parents would find it very offensive.”


TEA Commissioner Mike Morath told The Texas Tribune in May that the curriculum as a whole — which consists of lesson plans for K–12 students and spans other subjects that don’t include religious references like math and science — is based on extensive cognitive science research and will help improve student performance in reading and math.

Morath noted that religious references only make up a small “but appropriate” fraction of the content pie and that the textbooks mark a shift from a skills-based curriculum to a more “classical, broad-based liberal arts education.” Conservatives nationwide are championing a similar approach to education, which Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis described as “focusing on core academic subjects and rejecting indoctrination.”

The proposed curriculum would prompt teachers to relay the story of The Good Samaritan — a parable about loving everyone, including your enemies — to kindergarteners as an example of what it means to follow the Golden Rule. The story comes from the Bible, the lesson explains, and “was told by a man named Jesus” as part of his Sermon on the Mount, which included the phrase, “Do unto others as you would have done unto you.” Many other religions have their own version of the Golden Rule, which the lesson plan acknowledges.


A first-grade lesson about the Liberty Bell would teach students a story in which “God told Moses about the laws he wanted his people to follow — laws that were designed to help ensure that the Hebrew people lived in peace in the freedom of their new land.”

There’s also a fifth-grade lesson on Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper that challenges students to consider “how the disciples may have felt upon hearing Jesus telling them about his betrayal and death.”

References to other religions are also included. A second grade lesson highlights the Jewish celebration of Purim. A fourth grade poetry unit includes Kshemendra, a poet from India who “studied Buddhism and Hinduism.”


The materials drew praise from top Republican officials while raising eyebrows among some school district leaders, parents and education advocates. A handful of people who testified at an SBOE meeting last month raised questions about the lessons’ age-appropriateness, their potential impact on non-Christian children and the motives behind the heavier Christian emphasis. Some people said they believe TEA officials are making curriculum decisions based on their personal beliefs.

Megan Benton, a strategic policy associate at Texas Values, an organization that describes itself as being dedicated to the Judeo-Christian faith, family and freedom, said her group supports “an objective reading of the Bible and other religious texts” in public schools.

“In fact, they'll elevate the quality of education being offered to all Texas students by giving them a well-rounded understanding of important texts and their impact on the world,” Benton said about references to religious texts.


But critics worry the TEA’s proposal is a symptom of a growing Christian nationalist movement, the belief that the United States’ founding was ordained by God and that its laws and institutions should favor Christians.

Texas is one of the most religiously diverse states in the nation. Seventy-seven percent of adults adhere to some form of Christianity, according to a study conducted in 2007 and 2014 by the Pew Research Center. Non-Christian faiths, such as Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam, constitute 4% of adults, while 18% are not affiliated with any religion.

Still, state leaders have increasingly pushed to grow Christianity’s presence in public schools.


Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who presides over the Senate, pledged last month to revive a bill that would require schools to post the Ten Commandments on classroom walls, following in the footsteps of Louisiana. The Legislature passed a measure last year allowing volunteer chaplains to provide mental health services to students. Legislators passed a law in 2021 requiring public schools to display donated posters with the message “In God We Trust.”

Gov. Greg Abbott has made passing school voucher legislation his top priority, which would allow families to use taxpayer dollars to pay for private schools, most of which have a religious focus in Texas. The nation’s largest voucher programs give most of their funds to religious schools, according to a Washington Post analysis.

Texas sits at the center of the Christian nationalist movement, said Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons, communications director for the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, and he said it has taken a particular interest in public schools, where children are most impressionable.


“I think what we're seeing right now is Christian nationalism taking these religious symbols, the Bible, specifically the Ten Commandments, and pushing them in a way that is trying to say that to be a good Texan, you need to be a Christian,” said Graves-Fitzsimmons, whose organization advocates for church-state separation. “I think it has a major impact on the religious freedom protections of students and families.”

Religious liberty advocates and legal experts are also worried the TEA’s proposed curriculum might violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which prohibits states from endorsing or promoting an official religion.

Efforts to infuse more Christianity in schools across the nation are currently facing several legal challenges, but legal experts note that recent rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority have eroded decades of precedent and made it unclear what state actions are unconstitutional. In its 2022 ruling on Kennedy v. Bremerton, for example, the high court found that a Washington high school football coach did not violate the First Amendment by conducting personal prayers on the field after team games.


In doing so, the Supreme Court put an end to what was known as the Lemon test, a standard the court used to assess whether the primary purpose of a government action was secular, whether it promoted or inhibited religion and whether it represented an excessive entanglement between church and state.

During the same term, justices also ruled that states could not exclude religious schools from programs that use taxpayer dollars to fund private education.

Hannah Bloch-Wehba, a law professor at Texas A&M University, said conservative activists and officials are testing the waters of how far the courts will go in eroding church-state separation precedents.


“I would say there is currently no test for assessing the constitutionality of this curricular change,” Bloch-Wehba said about the TEA proposal. “In a constitutional void where nobody can really predict what the rules are going to be, it facilitates these advances to both entrench religion in public life and also to diminish the protections that are afforded to religious minorities.”

Some Texans, including some Christians, worry about the impact the proposed curriculum’s religious allusions could have on children of other faiths.

“In a public school, you've got people from a variety of backgrounds,” said Paul Ziese, a Lutheran pastor who serves as treasurer of the San Antonio chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “And I think that's a concern — that no one feels that they're not equal to anyone else or that their position or their faith is less, including people who have no faith.”

Gipson Arnold, an atheist who is also a member of the Freethinkers Association of Central Texas, said he is worried that any perceived preference toward Christianity could lead to children of other religious faiths, or no faith, being bullied or ostracized by their classmates.

Amatullah Contractor, a senior adviser with Emgage Texas, an organization advocating for the rights of Muslim communities, said the emphasis on Christianity could create an identity conflict for some Muslim students. She also questions whether K–5 students need to be taught religious context in public schools at all, considering the diversity of religions and their complexities.

Wine, one of the members of the Freethinkers Association of Central Texas, is uneasy about what the curriculum could mean for his 5-year-old son, Aidan, who is entering kindergarten in the Boerne Independent School District this year.

He is not at the point where he feels like Aidan understands enough to engage in deeper conversations about religion. And he doesn’t want his school to be the one starting that discussion.

“My taxpayer dollars going toward indoctrinating my child into a religion that I don't believe in just sounds terrible,” Wine said.

Disclosure: Texas A&M University has been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.


This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/07/19/texas-christianity-school-curriculum-worries/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org

Turkey-Syria rapprochement likely to be gradual: analysts

Beirut (Lebanon) (AFP) – After a long estrangement, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad may be edging towards a meeting, but analysts say normalisation will likely be gradual due to thorny issues.


Issued on: 21/07/2024 -

This combination of file pictures created on July 7, 2024 shows Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (L) in May 2023 and Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in July 2023. Erdogan has said he might invite Assad for a meeting to ease strained ties

 © Adem ALTAN, LOUAI BESHARA / AFP

Ankara initially sought to topple Damascus after the Syrian conflict erupted in 2011 with the repression of anti-government protests, and Erdogan branded Assad a "murderer".

As Damascus regained territory, however, Erdogan reversed course. Since 2022, top Syrian and Turkish officials have met for Russia-mediated talks, with Moscow pushing for a detente.

Erdogan said this month he could invite Assad to Turkey "at any moment", while Assad said any meeting would depend on the "content".

Mona Yacoubian, vice president of the Middle East and North Africa centre at the United States Institute of Peace, said any normalisation "is not going to happen overnight... even if there's an Assad-Erdogan meeting".

Given the complexities, she said, "this will be a very gradual and drawn-out process".

But "even the semblance" of normalisation "is something that Erdogan is looking for", she added.

Since the war began, Syrians including opposition figures have flooded into Turkey, which now hosts about 3.2 million refugees.

Anti-Syrian sentiment and economic woes have piled pressure on Erdogan for their return.

"Syria and the Syrian refugees have become a massive liability for Erdogan," said Aaron Stein, president of the US-based Foreign Policy Research Institute.

"Ankara's investment in the Syrian opposition, from a military standpoint, is a complete failure," he added.

'Takes two to tango'

A Turkish defence ministry source said Thursday that "Turkey is in Syria to eliminate terrorist attacks and threats against its territory... and to prevent the establishment of a terrorist corridor in northern Syria as a fait accompli", referring to Kurdish forces.

Turkish troops and Turkey-backed rebel factions control swathes of northern Syria, and Ankara has launched successive cross-border offensives since 2016, mainly to clear the area of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

Assad said this week he was open to meeting Erdogan but noted "support for terrorism, and the withdrawal from Syrian territory" of Turkish troops were the "essence of the problem".

According to Stein, if Erdogan says an encounter with Assad is possible, it may happen.

"But in this process, it takes two to tango, and his dance partner is a murderer who hates him," he said.

The US-backed, Kurdish-led SDF spearheaded the battle that dislodged Islamic State group jihadists from their last scraps of Syrian territory in 2019. The Kurds have established a semi-autonomous administration spanning swathes of the north and northeast.

Assad accuses the Kurdish administration of "separatism" and views US forces in SDF-held territory as an "occupation".

Turkey sees the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), which dominate the SDF, as an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which it considers a "terrorist" group.

Any Syria-Turkey rapprochement raises serious concerns for the Kurds, who risk seeing hard-fought gains during years of war wiped out.

Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute, said Ankara "wants Assad to snuff out the PKK so the organisation will go dormant".

This would start "the real normalisation in the northwest, with Turkey gradually committing to withdraw troops", he said.

'Tricky part'

A transitional arrangement could see Erdogan recognise Assad's authority in northern Syria while keeping security "in Ankara's hands", with Turkey's eventual goal being to repatriate Syrian refugees there, he said.

But "the tricky part" is that many civilians in Turkish-controlled areas of Syria do not want to live under Assad and could turn against Ankara, Cagaptay added.

North and northwest Syria have seen anti-Turkish protests in recent weeks and witnessed demonstrations in 2022 when ties began to thaw.

In the Kurdish-controlled northeast, Stein noted the US presence would make any Syrian-enabled Turkish offensive against PKK-linked groups more challenging.

"The one tool available is the Adana Agreement... which sanctions Turkish operations within a few kilometres of the border," Stein said.

Under the 1998 accord, Damascus agreed to withhold support for the PKK and to expel its fighters from Syrian soil after Turkey threatened military action.

Yacoubian said it remained to be seen whether the Adana agreement could be "repurposed" now, with the Kurds controlling large swathes of territory.

Moves towards normalisation could "be in anticipation of a potential shift in American policy" concerning Syria and troops there, she noted, with US elections on the horizon.

© 2024 AFP

Oil-tainted lake a symptom, and symbol, of Venezuela's collapse

Maracaibo (Venezuela) (AFP) – A putrid smell hangs over the black-stained shores of Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela, where an oil slick is emblematic of the steep decline in the country's once-enviable petroleum industry.

Issued on: 21/07/2024 

A fisherman with boots covered in oil stands on a contaminated shore of Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela, on July 11, 2024 

© Federico PARRA / AFP

Here, much like elsewhere in what was once Latin America's richest country, economic hardship drives much of the discussion ahead of July 28 elections, in which President Nicolas Maduro will seek a third six-year term.

"We suffer. Fishing from the shore is no longer possible because of the oil," fisherman Yordi Vicuna, 34, told AFP, adding that catches have fallen tenfold.

He said nets must constantly be washed or replaced after being soiled by oil that leaks from decayed pipes which the government cannot afford to fix.

Much of Venezuela's economic collapse -- fueled partly by a sharp international drop in oil prices after 2014 -- has happened under the watch of Maduro, who has been in office since 2013.

Many Venezuelans -- including Vicuna -- blame US sanctions for the dire situation.

"The pipeline is damaged because of the (economic) blockade," the fisherman said, echoing the government's official line, as he and others shoveled oil-soaked sand from the lake shore.

"We ask the competent agencies, people from outside, to support the government in any way... to fix the pipelines," Vicuna added.

Boom to bust

More than a century ago, the hydrocarbon-rich Maracaibo Basin was the birthplace of a business that transformed Venezuela into one of the world's top 10 oil producers -- fueling a decades-long period of incredible prosperity.

The country, which has the world's largest proven oil reserves, was producing 3.5 million barrels of oil a day by 2008, with the United States as its main client.

But in just 12 years this dropped to fewer than half a million barrels following the nationalization of the industry and a crippling, months-long strike at state oil company PDVSA in protest against then-President Hugo Chavez.

Chavez sacked thousands of PDVSA staff and managers, who observers say were replaced mainly by non-expert loyalists.

As oil production dipped, Venezuela fell into an economic crisis marked by years of recession and hyperinflation that has seen an estimated seven million people -- almost a quarter of the population -- flee the country in just under a decade.

Most analysts blame the industry's rapid decline on corruption and inept management at PDVSA, worsened by the toughening of sanctions on Venezuela after Maduro's 2018 reelection, which was not recognized by dozens of countries.

'The lake is lost'

A few oil pumps still operate on Lake Maracaibo's polluted shore, but dozens of machines stand idle.

The Puyuyo beach near the Bajo Grande refinery is black with oil. It was once a popular swim spot but most small hotels and bars here are now closed.

"People used to come here... Families came from all over to visit, eat fish and swim but now there are 30 centimeters (11.8 inches) of oil" on the bottom of the lake, said Guillermo Albeniz Cano.

The 64-year-old owns a beach cafe but has no clients. Instead, he barters rice and flour for the occasional fish or crab meat.

When AFP visited Puyuyo, only one table of the cafe was occupied -- by crabbers playing dominoes who said they would rather be working.

"Since there is a lot of oil in the lake, we could not go out today," said father-of-four Luis Angel Vega.

"Sometimes we don't eat for a whole day, the 26-year-old added.

His colleague Alvaro Villamil, 61, tried his luck nevertheless. On his boat "Carmen Rosa," he showed his catch of a few blue crabs he managed to get from the less-polluted center of the lake.

But it is not enough to make a living.

"It's hard... The lake is lost. There's a lot of oil," Villamil told AFP, his long-sleeved T-shirt stained with the stuff.
'For sale'

Maracaibo was a flourishing city in the 20th century, with its colonial buildings, Art Deco theater and tramline.

Today, "for sale" signs on properties far outnumber election campaign posters, while tall grass and crumbling walls abound in the industrial zone.

Some 200 companies, including the German firm Siemens, once had a presence in the area. Today there are about 30.

Yet there are signs that Venezuela's oil fortunes may be looking up again.

Despite the renewal of sanctions after Maduro reneged on negotiated conditions for elections, Washington is allowing companies such as Chevron and Repsol to apply for individual licenses to keep operating in Venezuela.

And Oil Minister Pedro Tellechea said in May he was optimistic that Venezuelan oil production would reach a million barrels per day this year.

This will depend largely on what happens in next Sunday's vote, with widespread fear that Maduro will steal the election and unlock a new era of international pariahdom.

© 2024 AFP
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