El Paso Residents Say “Border Crisis” Is Manufactured, Reject Militarization


Border militarization, not immigration, is what is making El Paso unsafe, residents say.

By Sam Carliner ,

TRUTHOUT

PublishedOctober 16, 2023

A Texas National Guard soldier stands vigil at a makeshift migrant camp near the U.S.-Mexico border fence on May 11, 2023, in El Paso, Texas.

JOHN MOORE / GETTY IMAGES
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El Paso, Texas, has increasingly become the subject of an intense national conversation.

The New York Times, The Washington Post and Wall Street Journal report that migrant surges are straining the city, the country and the economy. These are just three headlines from a barrage of coverage of the “crisis” at the border.

Nastassia Artalejo, an El Paso resident whose family has lived in the city for generations, is sick of hearing her home described this way.

“It’s really frustrating to be here and see and hear so many polarizing opinions,” Artalejo said. “So much of what is talked about in the media is from a third-party or outsider perspective, as opposed to the opinion being from someone that actually lives here.”

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Ivonne Diaz, a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient and immigrant rights activist, expressed similar frustration.

“When I meet with people that don’t live here and are visiting for the first time, they say it’s nothing like [they’ve] been hearing,” Diaz said. “El Paso is not like how they put it in the news.”

Both acknowledged the large number of migrants making their way to the U.S.-Mexico border. Neither feels that the increase in migrants is fueling violence or chaos in the city. However, Artalejo, Diaz, and several other residents of El Paso had a lot to say about how the response to migrants and the mainstream rhetoric about the city is changing their home.

“More and more military is coming into the city,” Artalejo said. “It’s not making us safer. It’s making the city more violent.”

“What They’re Trained to Do Is Kill People”

El Paso is not just any border city. It is the second-most crossed point of entry into the United States. As the U.S. government has steadily developed more restrictions to entry into the country, El Paso has also become a hub for various federal agencies to police migration. It is also a military city, located right next to Fort Bliss, an Army base spanning 1.12 million acres across Texas and New Mexico. For decades it has been the norm for residents of El Paso to see these various federal agents and soldiers operating in and around the city.

There have been several points in the city’s history where residents have noticed a surge in the presence of these forces.

In 2021, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott launched Operation Lone Star, deploying Texas National Guard troops to the border. Other Republican governors from 14 different states have sent their states’ soldiers to the border as part of the operation. While these Republicans justify the deployments by arguing that the Biden administration has had lenient border policies, the president has actually continued many of the anti-immigrant laws passed by the Trump administration. Recently, Biden waived 26 federal laws to construct a border wall in South Texas which will run through public lands and habitats for endangered species. In May, the federal government deployed an additional 1,500 soldiers to the border. A fact sheet published by the White House in March boasts: “Over the past two years, the Biden-Harris Administration has secured more resources for border security than any of the presidents who preceded him, deployed the most agents ever — more than 23,000 — to address the situation at the border…”

“More and more military is coming into the city,” Artalejo said. “It’s not making us safer. It’s making the city more violent.”

Diaz said that the presence of federal agents and soldiers is intimidating, especially for immigrants living in El Paso.

“I have to drive by the border and I see more persons and it doesn’t make me feel safer,” Diaz said. “Especially me having DACA. I can only imagine having people who are still undocumented here.”

Robert Heyman, strategic advisor at the Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, which advocates for immigrant rights and provides legal services to low-income immigrants, has lived in El Paso for decades and witnessed various ways that border enforcement has ramped up.

“Especially in these moments of national moral panic around the border, things that would not be acceptable in other parts of the country are done to folks living at the border,” Heyman said.

Heyman compared the current militarization of El Paso to the 1990s. During that decade, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton oversaw several initiatives which increased the presence of Border Patrol and U.S. military forces around the U.S.-Mexico border. These operations increased the number of migrant deaths, but it wasn’t until U.S. Marines deployed at the border killed an 18-year-old American citizen that the military suspended its policing of the border.

While the recent National Guard deployments have yet to produce a similar example of U.S. troops killing a U.S. citizen on domestic soil, there have been two instances this year of soldiers injuring people while policing the border. In January, a soldier shot and injured a migrant, and in August another soldier shot at a Mexican citizen across the border.

Heyman did not mince words criticizing the deployment of soldiers to the border.

“The U.S. military has different soldiers in different roles, but a core tenet of what they’re trained to do is to kill people,” Heyman said. “When you start putting them into roles that require different skill sets that are fundamentally misaligned with that, you really start creating risks.”

Artalejo’s family history makes her uniquely aware of these risks.

“Obviously, it’s significantly more militarized now, but there’s always been a really large military presence in El Paso for as long as the city has been a legitimate city,” Artalejo said.

She described how during World War II, two soldiers stationed at Fort Bliss had been drinking late at night at a bar across from the apartment complex where her great-grandfather lived with his wife and kids. The soldiers and two women ended up loudly playing Marco Polo outside of the building, prompting Artalejo’s great-grandfather to come outside and tell them to quiet down so his kids could sleep. One of the soldiers used a pair of brass knuckles to hit Artalejo’s great-grandfather in the head, killing him.

“My family was left without a parental or father figure,” Artalejo said. “Just a single mother with lots of children.”

One of those children was her grandfather, who passed the story down to her. She felt it was important for people to understand that the base, not just border enforcement operations, is central to the militarization of the city and the violence that it entails.
“We Had to Be the Order”

El Paso has always been militarized to some degree, but 2016 placed it at the center of national politics and unleashed violent dynamics which continue to shape the city.

Donald Trump infamously launched his presidential campaign by calling immigrants “drug dealers,” “criminals” and “rapists,” and promised to build a wall to keep migrants out. As president, Trump enacted many brutal policies including family separation. He also talked about migrants as “invaders” posing danger to the United States.

The El Paso community witnessed the logical result of Trump’s provocative rhetoric in 2019 when Patrick Crusius came to their city. Inspired by Trump’s fearmongering about migrants, Crusius shot up a Walmart parking lot, killing 23 people and injuring another 22.

Trump activated many white supremacists throughout the country. He also activated many immigrant rights organizers who remain at the forefront of aiding migrants coming to El Paso. One such organizer is Juan Paul Flores Vazquez, a DACA recipient whose family came to the United States from Mexicali. Trump’s attacks on immigrant rights inspired Flores Vazquez to move to El Paso in 2018 to organize against these attacks. He reflected on the sense of danger that came with Trump’s presidency.


“The feds were lurking around alleys and streets, snatching people of all ages.”

“There was always a lingering feeling of dread,” Flores Vazquez said. “I immediately saw how that affected the border and our community right from the jump.”

He has continued his activism through the group Undocumented 915 which provides news and community alerts for El Paso’s undocumented community, and provides donations including food and clothing for migrants arriving in the city. He said there has not been much of a difference under the Biden administration. The migrants coming to El Paso still rely on local activists to help them find shelter, food, legal assistance, and other needs that the government does not provide. The federal agencies continue to harass migrants and activists in the city.

Flores Vazquez described some of the repression he witnessed around a migrant shelter earlier this year.

“The feds were lurking around alleys and streets, snatching people of all ages,” he said. “There [were] multiple videos from security cameras of local businesses that would catch Border Patrol being aggressively violent with young people … There’s a couple videos being leaked. Imagine all the stuff we don’t get to see.”

Juan Ortiz is an organizer at Casa Carmelita, a migrant shelter in El Paso. Ortiz’s family is Rarámuri, one of several communities indigenous to the land that the U.S.-Mexico border cuts across. During the Trump administration, Ortiz felt personally connected to the administration’s family separation policies because his sister-in-law was undocumented and he worried she could be separated from her kids. Through Indigenous rights activism, immigrant rights activism and mutual aid, he proudly continues what he describes as El Paso’s rich history of leftist activity, which has included the 1917 Bath Riots, the Chicano rights movement and recent activity to support migrants. He has seen his share of repression, but says that some of the worst he’s ever witnessed has been in El Paso.

“I call it a police city-state now,” Ortiz said. “When the youth had a lot of rallies around George Floyd … at one point, they had a rally downtown and there was so much presence.… It was different colors and shades of uniforms but everyone looked like they were prepared for war.… You couldn’t tell who was military, who was Border Patrol, who was police.”

He added that during the protests against racist police violence in 2020, white supremacist militias also flocked to the city.

While federal agencies and militarized forces proliferate in El Paso, the city remains one of the poorest zip codes in the United States. The city’s poverty stands in stark contrast to the estimated $333 billion that the federal government has spent on immigration enforcement since the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003.

Flores Vazquez spoke about how this money could have helped shelter migrants, as well as the city’s houseless population.

“[A housing complex] which has been abandoned for years just caught on fire,” Flores Vazquez said. “One of the things that everyone’s been saying is, ‘Wow, they could’ve used all that money they’ve been spending on building a fortress around the border, and invested it in reopening some of those complexes for migrants or for people who are just out in the street.’”

Ortiz feels that how most people talk about the situation at the border fuels the dynamics that are hurting the city. He wishes that more people would look to the example the El Paso community has set by assisting migrants.

“People need to understand it’s a human-created, policy-created crisis,” Ortiz said. “Create the machinations that create the chaos, and then point to it and say chaos.… The system was always going to be the chaos, so we had to be the order. The people on the border are the order.”

Hot-button words trigger conservatives and liberals differently

by Yasmin Anwar, University of California - Berkeley
  

Graphic shows differences in liberal and conservative brain responses to news media Credit: Yuan Chang Leong

How can the partisan divide be bridged when conservatives and liberals consume the same political content, yet interpret it through their own biased lens?

Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University and Johns Hopkins University scanned the brains of more than three dozen politically left- and right-leaning adults as they viewed short videos involving hot-button immigration policies, such as the building of the U.S.-Mexico border wall, and the granting of protections for undocumented immigrants under the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Their findings, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, show that liberals and conservatives respond differently to the same videos, especially when the content being viewed contains vocabulary that frequently pops up in political campaign messaging.

"Our study suggests that there is a neural basis to partisan biases, and some language especially drives polarization," said study lead author Yuan Chang Leong, a postdoctoral scholar in cognitive neuroscience at UC Berkeley. "In particular, the greatest differences in neural activity across ideology occurred when people heard messages that highlight threat, morality and emotions."

Overall, the results offer a never-before-seen glimpse into the partisan brain in the weeks leading up to what is arguably the most consequential U.S. presidential election in modern history. They underscore that multiple factors, including personal experiences and the news media, contribute to what the researchers call "neural polarization."

"Even when presented with the same exact content, people can respond very differently, which can contribute to continued division," said study senior author Jamil Zaki, a professor of psychology at Stanford University. "Critically, these differences do not imply that people are hardwired to disagree. Our experiences, and the media we consume, likely contribute to neural polarization."


Specifically, the study traces the source of neural polarization to a higher-order brain region known as the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, which is believed to track and make sense of narratives, among other functions.

Another key finding is that the closer the brain activity of a study participant resembles that of the "average liberal" or the "average conservative," as modeled in the study, the more likely it is that the participant, after watching the videos, will adopt that particular group's position.

"This finding suggests that the more participants adopt the conservative interpretation of a video, the more likely they are to be persuaded to take the conservative position, and vice versa," Leong said.

Leong and fellow researchers launched the study with a couple of theories about how people with different ideological biases would differ in the way they process political information. They hypothesized that if sensory information, like sounds and visual imagery, drove polarization, they would observe differences in brain activity in the visual and auditory cortices.

However, if the narrative storytelling aspects of the political information people absorbed in the videos drove them apart ideologically, the researchers expected to see those disparities also revealed in higher-order brain regions, such as the prefrontal cortex. And that theory panned out.
 

Study shows conservative-liberal disparity in brain response to hot-button vocabulary.

 Credit: Yuan Chang Leong

To establish that attitudes toward hardline immigration policies predicted both conservative and liberal biases, the researchers first tested questions out on 300 people recruited via the Amazon Mechanical Turk online marketplace who identified, to varying degrees, as liberal, moderate or conservative.

They then recruited 38 young and middle-aged men and women with similar socio-economic backgrounds and education levels who had rated their opposition or support for controversial immigration policies, such as those that led to the U.S.-Mexico border wall, DACA protections for undocumented immigrants, the ban on refugees from majority-Muslim countries coming to the U.S. and the cutting of federal funding to sanctuary cities.

Researchers scanned the study participants' brains via functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) as they viewed two dozen brief videos representing liberal and conservative positions on the various immigration policies. The videos included news clips, campaign ads and snippets of speeches by prominent politicians.

After each video, the participants rated on a scale of one to five how much they agreed with the general message of the video, the credibility of the information presented and the extent to which the video made them likely to change their position and to support the policy in question.

To calculate group brain responses to the videos, the researchers used a measure known as inter-subject correlation, which can be used to measure how similarly two brains respond to the same message.

Their results showed a high shared response across the group in the auditory and visual cortices, regardless of the participants' political attitudes. However, neural responses diverged along partisan lines in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, where semantic information, or word meanings, are processed.

Next, the researchers drilled down further to learn what specific words were driving neural polarization. To do this, they edited the videos into 87 shorter segments and placed the words in the segments into one of 50 categories. Those categories included words related to morality, emotions, threat and religion.

The researchers found that the use of words related to risk and threat, and to morality and emotions, led to greater polarization in the study participants' neural responses.

An example of a risk-related statement was, "I think it's very dangerous, because what we want is cooperation amongst the cities and the federal government to ensure that we have safety in our communities, and to ensure that our citizens are protected."

Meanwhile, an example of a moral-emotional statement was, "What are the fundamental ethical principles that are the basis of our society? Do no harm, and be compassionate, and this federal policy violates both of these principles."

Overall, the research study's results suggest that political messages that use threat-related and moral-emotional language drive partisans to interpret the same message in opposite ways, contributing to increasing polarization, Leong said.

Going forward, Leong hopes to use neuroimaging to build more precise models of how political content is interpreted and to inform interventions aimed at narrowing the divide between conservatives and liberals.


Bringing people on both sides of the aisle together on climate change
More information: Yuan Chang Leong et al, Conservative and liberal attitudes drive polarized neural responses to political content, PNAS first published October 20, 2020; doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2008530117

Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Provided by University of California - Berkeley

Letters to the Editor: Immigrant children living in fear is a disgrace. So is Congress' failure to help
Los Angeles Times Opinion•June 21, 2020

DACA recipients and their supporters rally outside the Supreme Court on Thursday in Washington. (Getty Images)

To the editor: Our ill-conceived and poorly executed immigration laws epitomize our political divisiveness. That successive presidential administrations have failed to bring the parties together on this issue highlights the government's inability to solve major problems. ("With its DACA decision, the Supreme Court makes it clear Congress must fix this," editorial, June 18)

Because of our failure to enact a viable policy and legally admit necessary workers, we have millions of people who came illegally and provided necessary labor but were denied wage and benefit protections. During the pandemic they have been on the front lines in hospitals and the food industry.

They and the young children they brought here do not deserve to live in constant fear and underprivilege. We need to provide a path for legalization and citizenship.

On the other hand, our borders have been too porous for decades. We need to better define our laws and provide an adequate system of speedy adjudication.

I legally immigrated as a child with my parents. We waited five years to get our visas. For people living with the yoke of illegality, the opportunities that my parents and I enjoyed are far more dream than reality. We can solve this if we only try.

Michael Telerant, Los Angeles

..

To the editor: The Supreme Court has spoken. California can continue to "not help" federal immigration officers. That, however, does not mean the federal government has to stop enforcing immigration law. It will just be harder and therefore more costly.

By making enforcement more costly, other states will help bear the increased cost of apprehension and deportation. That is not fair.

The federal government should seek to recover this increased cost from California and other states. Since a separate tax is not feasible, the most fair way is to reduce federal money going to local law enforcement.

California and other sanctuary governments should put forth a statement on what type of immigration policy they would support. Do they favor open borders? Unless they do, some enforcement is necessary.

Rich Malone, Rancho Cucamonga

..

To the editor: The Los Angeles Times Editorial Board has become very forthright in calling out President Trump's illogic and inhumanity. It should do the same for Congress.

The Times says that Congress' failure to enact immigration reform "is a testament to its dysfunction." On the contrary, Republicans in Congress have been quite successful in achieving many of their goals, including enacting huge tax breaks for the wealthy and filling the judiciary with staunch conservatives.

They are also very effective at obstruction, and the failure to enact comprehensive immigration reform is a prime example.

It should be made more plain that it's the Democrats in Congress who are fighting to save the U.S. Postal Service and fending off cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Democrats are no saints, but there is a distinct difference between the two parties, and they should not be painted with the same brush.

Grace Bertalot, Anaheim

Column: That unbelievably racist ad during the Dodgers playoff? Ex-Trump aides were behind it


Michael Hiltzik
Mon, October 17, 2022

Former White House senior advisor Stephen Miller is connected to a racist TV commercial attacking President Biden and Democrats. (Evan Vucci / Associated Press)

As if Dodger fans didn't have enough to nauseate them during Saturday's playoff game against the San Diego Padres, the telecast featured an openly racist commercial blaming President Biden and other Democrats for illegal immigration.

Airing during the mid-fourth inning break of the game that eliminated the Dodgers from the post-season, the ad consisted of video images depicting a torrent of obviously Latino immigrants pouring over the border.

"This giant flood of illegal immigration is draining your paychecks, wrecking your schools, ruining your hospitals, threatening your family," stated the overwrought narrator, over the obligatory ominous soundtrack. "Mixed among the masses are drug dealers, sex traffickers and violent predators."



Vote to keep our borders, jails and bathrooms open. Vote progressive

Sarcastic billboard sponsored by right-wing Citizens for Sanity

Who's behind this commercial? The ad identifies its sponsor only as "Citizens for Sanity," but that last line should give you a further clue: It's an organization of several former Trump aides who spearheaded his administration's attacks on immigrants.

The ad's characterization of immigrants as criminals almost exactly echoes Trump's line during his announcement of his presidential campaign in 2015 about Mexican immigrants: "They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists."

The leaders of Citizens for Sanity are associated with the America First Legal Foundation, which was founded by Stephen Miller, its president.

Notoriously, Miller was an architect of Trump's cruel and crude immigrant family separation policy, his Muslim ban and his shutdown of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which defers deportation for immigrants brought to the U.S. as minors by their parents and allows them to work, but requires regular renewals.

A whole page on the website of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, is devoted to Miller.

The immigration ad isn't Citizens for Sanity's only product during this election cycle. Another video blames "woke" politicians — specifically Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Vice President Kamala Harris — for fomenting a tide of urban violent crime, illustrated by a sequence of random videos of gunplay, shoplifting and street assaults.

Another video attacks transgender athletes with the tagline, "Tell Biden and his radical allies: No men in girls' sports."

The group has also erected billboards nationwide, including in California, with sarcastic, infantile glosses on Democratic policies: "Vote to keep our borders, jails and bathrooms open. Vote progressive"; "Demand Transportation Equity for Pansexuals NOW"; "Too much freedom is a bad thing. Get your IRS audit today." And so on.

The connections tying together Miller, the America First Legal Foundation, and Citizens for Sanity have been laid out by the nonprofit group Open Secrets, which tracks money in politics. A public document cited by OpenSecrets identifies the top executives of Citizens for Sanity as Gene Hamilton, Ian Prior and John Zadrozny.

Prior told OpenSecrets that his group has “no relationship with America First Legal Foundation.”

Is that so? Prior identifies himself on his own LinkedIn page as "Senior Advisor for America First Legal." Hamilton is vice president and general counsel of America First Legal. Zadrozny is identified on America First Legal's website as its deputy director for investigations.

All three have impeccable credentials as former Trump aides.

Prior was a Justice Department spokesman during the Trump administration. While working in the Trump administration, Hamilton wrote the memo that formally ended DACA, according to a deposition he gave that was cited by the New Yorker. Zadrozny worked at the State Department and the White House under Trump, according to emails published by the progressive organization Democracy Forward.

Citizens for Sanity didn't respond to my request for comment.

That brings us back to the playoff commercial. It isn't clear how widely the commercial has been aired, but it's not a California-only phenomenon — Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer caught that one and the urban violence commercial during Phillies playoff telecasts. Fox Sports didn't respond to my questions about the commercial schedule or whether the ad was reviewed by any standards department at Fox.

Citizens for Sanity has indicated that it will spend at least six figures promoting its messages.

If that's so, brace yourself for an outpouring of misleading and mendacious ads. The immigration commercial, for example, makes much of the arrest of an immigrant in connection with the rape of a 3-year-old child.

The ad asks, "Who is Joe Biden letting into our country?" The image associated with that point, however, refers to the case of Christopher Puente, which occurred in 2020.

According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Puente was deported in 2014, under the Obama administration, but managed to re-enter the country with false papers. At the time of the alleged sexual assault, he was at large after being arrested by the Chicago Police Department and then released despite a request by ICE to detain him, according to the agency.

There are several candidates for blame in that episode, but Biden is not among them.

As for where the money for the ad campaign is actually coming from, good luck finding out. Citizens for Sanity is a "dark money" group, meaning that it doesn't have to disclose its donors. Had the commercial been directed at a local political campaign or a California ballot initiative, its principal funders would have to be listed on the air. But it's a national ad, so its backers are anonymous.

The demonization of outsiders for political gain isn't new, of course. In 1934, when the writer and socialist Upton Sinclair ran for governor of California on a leftist platform, movie studios contributed to the campaign against him by producing newsreels depicting tramps and hobos surging over the state line to take advantage of the generous pensions Sinclair proposed for resident seniors; in that case, the images were stock footage from movies then in production.

And who can forget the Willie Horton affair, when George H.W. Bush's campaign aired a commercial aiming to blame Michael Dukakis, his Democratic opponent, for the rape and murder committed by a Black felon who was on a weekend furlough from prison.

That ad had all the same grand guignol elements as the Citizens for Sanity commercial — mainly racism and fear of crime — but it seems almost understated today compared with the turbocharged bigotry on view on your television screens today. Can anyone look at this product and say American politics are in a healthy condition?

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Trump ‘is so much anti-life,’ Kentucky Catholic bishop says in abortion discussion

Mike Stunson,
Miami Herald•August 7, 2020


The Rev. John Stowe has long been critical of President Donald Trump, and the Catholic bishop of the Diocese of Lexington did not hold back in recent comments about what it means to be pro-life.

In a live video chat July 31 with the International Catholic Movement for Intellectual and Cultural Affairs, Stowe said Trump is “so much anti-life.”

“For this president to call himself pro-life, and for anybody to back him because of claims of being pro-life, is almost willful ignorance,” Stowe said. “He is so much anti-life because he is only concerned about himself, and he gives us every, every, every indication of that.”

Stowe’s comments come as Trump has been vocal about the beliefs of Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden’s own beliefs.

Trump attacked the former vice president Thursday, saying Biden, a practicing Catholic, would take away constitutional freedoms if elected president, The Hill reported.

“Take away your guns, take away your Second Amendment. No religion, no anything,” Trump said of Biden. “Hurt the Bible. Hurt God. He’s against God. He’s against guns. He’s against energy.”

Stowe channeled previous comments made by Pope Francis in saying why Trump should not be considered pro-life.

“Pope Francis has given us a great definition of what pro-life means,” Stowe said. “He basically tells us we can’t claim to be pro-life if we support the separation of children from their parents at the U.S. border, if we support exposing people at the border to COVID-19 because of the facilities that they’re in, if we support denying people who have need to adequate health care access to health care, if we keep people from getting the housing or the education that they need, we cannot call ourselves pro-life.”

Pope Francis questioned Trump’s pro-life stance in 2017 when the president tried to end DACA, a federal immigration program that offered protections to some people who were brought to the United States illegally as children.

“I have heard the President of the United States speak,” the pope said at the time, according to the National Catholic Reporter. “He presents himself as a pro-life man. If he is a good pro-lifer, he should understand that the family is the cradle of life and you must defend its unity.”

In June, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of DACA and its so-called Dreamers, marking a major blow to the Trump administration.

Trump became the first sitting president last year to speak at the March for Life in Washington, an annual gathering to protest abortion.

He advocated for limiting abortion access, saying he would “defend the right of every child, born and unborn, to fulfill their God-given potential,” NBC News reported.

Following a 2019 controversy at the March for Life gathering that included a confrontation between Catholic high school students from Kentucky and a Native American elder, Stowe shunned the students’ apparel. Some of them were wearing Trump’s “Make America Great again” hats.

“It astonishes me that any students participating in a pro-life activity on behalf of their school and their Catholic faith could be wearing apparel sporting the slogans of a president who denigrates the lives of immigrants, refugees and people from countries that he describes with indecent words and haphazardly endangers with life-threatening policies,” Stowe wrote in a Herald-Leader opinion article.

“We cannot uncritically ally ourselves with someone with whom we share the policy goal of ending abortion,” he continued.

‘Maus’ evades a ban in Iowa after school district cites ‘ambiguity’ in new state law

After uproar, Urbandale Schools outside Des Moines walks back removal of Holocaust graphic novel

By ANDREW LAPIN

Today, 

An illustrative image of Art Spiegelman's 'Maus.' (Philissa Cramer/JTA)

JTA — A new Iowa state law forbidding instruction on sexual and gender identity prompted one school district this week to briefly order staff to remove Art Spiegelman’s “Maus” and hundreds of other books from its shelves.

But days later, following national outrage, the district reversed course, issuing a trimmed-down list of 65 books for removal that contained neither “Maus,” nor several other Jewish-themed books on the first list.

The quick about-face in Urbandale Schools, a suburb of Des Moines, was the latest example of the confusing and often contradictory landscape for Jewish texts amid the growing nationwide “parents’ rights” movement targeting what its proponents say are inappropriate books in schools. In Iowa and other states, that movement has fueled legislation targeting educators who distribute content that could be interpreted as sexual.

“We have determined that there is ambiguity regarding the extent to which books that contain topics related to gender identity and sexual orientation need to be removed from libraries,” the district’s superintendent, Rosalie Daca, wrote in a memo to staff Thursday that an Urbandale spokesperson shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

“As such,” the memo continued, with bolded emphasis, “we will pause removing books that reference gender identity and sexual orientation until we receive guidance from the Iowa Department of Education.”

The memo followed one from earlier this week that, as reported in the Des Moines Register, instructed staff to comb their libraries for more than 300 books in potential violation of the law, including “Maus,” Judy Blume’s “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” the Holocaust novel “Sophie’s Choice” and Jewish author Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play for adults, “Angels in America.” That initial list prompted a passionate response from the literary free-expression advocacy group PEN America, which implored the district not to follow through with its removals.

In pointed language, administrators blamed the state’s education department for issuing vague and unclear guidance on how to comply with the new law, which Iowa’s Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, signed in May and is scheduled to take effect in January 2024. The law states that it is “prohibiting instruction related to gender identity and sexual orientation in school districts” and also forbids “any material with descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act.”

It’s unclear how “Maus” wound up on the initial list of books flagged for removal, or how the district’s decision not to touch books related to “gender identity and sexual orientation” resulted in a stay of execution for Spiegelman’s book. “Maus” recounts the author’s parents’ traumatic experiences surviving the Holocaust, and doesn’t contain any discussion of gender or sexual identity. It does contain a single panel of a nude mouse representing Spiegelman’s mother after she dies by suicide.

The same image previously provoked the ire of a Tennessee school board, which removed “Maus” from its district’s middle-school curriculum over the image last year and catapulted the book into the center of the nationwide book-ban debate. Districts in Missouri also previously removed or considered removing “Maus” over the wording of a new state law forbidding the distribution of explicit materials.

Daca’s memo noted that the Urbandale district compiled its initial list of books by culling “book lists from other states who had passed similar laws.” The district did not respond to follow-up questions about ”Maus.”

Other Jewish books that have been rescued from district-wide book removals include “The Fixer” in South Carolina and “Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation” in Texas, though other districts in Florida have permanently removed the Anne Frank adaptation as well as a Holocaust novel by Jodi Picoult and a picture book about Purim featuring a same-sex couple.

One Jewish-themed book that remains on Urbandale’s removal list is Andre Aciman’s novel “Call Me by Your Name,” which details a Jewish LGBTQ youth’s coming of age and is explicit in its description of sexual acts.

AOC Warns Pelosi and Schumer: 'We Can't Negotiate Reconciliation Bill Down to Nothing'

"The Build Back Better reconciliation package is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build a sustainable and prosperous future for our country."



Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks at a rally in New York City on June 5, 2021.

 (Photo: Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

JAKE JOHNSON

COMMON DREAMS

October 12, 2021

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined seven of her fellow New York Democrats on Tuesday in issuing a warning to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer: Don't cut funding for housing, transportation, or immigration reform from the emerging reconciliation bill in an attempt to appease right-wing lawmakers.

"We can't let corporate interests, Big Pharma, and a few conservative Democrats stand in our way of delivering."

"We can't negotiate the reconciliation bill down to nothing," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.

In their letter, the New York Democrats argued that "the Build Back Better reconciliation package is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build a sustainable and prosperous future for our country—affordable housing; quality, sustainable, and accessible public transportation; and sound immigration reform must remain priorities in the debate."

Specifically, the House Democrats urged Pelosi and Schumer to ensure that the final reconciliation package includes $80 billion in funding for public housing, a $10 billion investment in public transportation, and $107 billion to "expand safety-net protections and create a pathway to citizenship for millions of DACA recipients, people with temporary protected status, essential workers, and farm workers."

"It is vital that we preserve the entirety of this funding allocation, not only because these communities have been the backbone of our national economy throughout this pandemic and beyond, but also because the U.S. is their only home and refuge from the political, economic, and climate disasters they are fleeing," the lawmakers wrote.


The message from Ocasio-Cortez and other members of the New York congressional delegation was made public hours after Pelosi circulated a "Dear Colleague" letter indicating that the Democratic leadership could be considering cutting programs from the reconciliation bill in order to lower its $3.5 trillion price tag—an effort aimed at securing the votes of Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), and other corporate-backed holdouts.

"Overwhelmingly," Pelosi wrote, "the guidance I am receiving from members is to do fewer things well so that we can still have a transformative impact on families in the workplace and responsibly address the climate crisis."

That approach could spark backlash from progressive lawmakers such as Ocasio-Cortez, who has argued that Democrats should shorten the duration of programs to reduce costs, not cut out key priorities. Pelosi did not specify which programs are at risk of being removed from the reconciliation package, which is a centerpiece of President Joe Biden's domestic policy agenda.

"One of the ideas that's out there is: fully fund what we can fully fund, but maybe instead of doing it for 10 years, we fully fund it for five years," Ocasio-Cortez said during an interview with CBS earlier this month. "I think it's unfortunate that we have to even, as Democrats, have a discussion about not having a child tax credit. I think it's unfortunate that we have to compromise with ourselves for an ambitious agenda for working people."

Speaking to the press Tuesday morning, Pelosi suggested that Democrats could go the route suggested by Ocasio-Cortez and other progressives—a message that conflicts with the sentiment of her "Dear Colleague" letter. The House Speaker voiced "hope" that Democrats ultimately won't have to drop any programs from the reconciliation measure.

The push by right-wing Democrats to slash the reconciliation bill's price tag has set off a scramble among lawmakers to ensure that programs they support—from Medicare expansion to the expanded child tax credit to paid family leave—aren't left on the cutting room floor. Progressive lawmakers in the House and Senate have argued that there is no need to pit priorities against one another in the name of fiscal restraint.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) told reporters Tuesday that "$3.5 trillion is already a major compromise."

"The time is now long overdue for Sen. Manchin and Sen. Sinema to tell us… where do they want to cut?" Sanders added.

Referring to progressives' effort to expand Medicare benefits to cover dental, hearing, and vision, the Vermont senator said: "This to me is not negotiable. This is what the American people want."



During a recent closed-door Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) meeting, according to the Washington Post, "members stood up one by one to vouch for establishing universal pre-K, making the child tax credit permanent, and guaranteeing 12 weeks of paid family leave."

"Others mentioned the need to expand Medicare to cover dental, hearing, and vision, which would get them one step closer to the progressive goal of Medicare for All," the Post noted.

In a tweet on Tuesday, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)—chair of the 96-member CPC—declared that "the agenda that Progressives are fighting for IS the president's agenda."

"We must pass the full Build Back Better Act—and we can't let corporate interests, Big Pharma, and a few conservative Democrats stand in our way of delivering," Jayapal added.

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Sanders, Jayapal Say Medicare Expansion in Reconciliation Package 'Not Negotiable'

"This is what the American people want," the socialist senator from Vermont insisted.


Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) appear at a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on June 24, 2019. (Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

BRETT WILKINS

COMMON DREAMS

October 12, 2021

As congressional progressives push back against right-wing Democrats seeking to shrink the size and scope of the Build Back Better Act, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Pramila Jayapal on Tuesday insisted that expanded Medicare benefits must remain part of the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation package.

"I do understand that the healthcare industry does not like this idea, but maybe, just maybe, we stand with the American people."

In a call with journalists reported by The Hill, Sanders (I-Vt.), who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, adamantly declared that dental, hearing, and vision benefits must be added to Medicare as part of the Democrats' flagship package.

"This to me is not negotiable," he said. "This is what the American people want."

Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, backed Sanders—the group's only Senate member—saying his stance is also "the position of the House Progressive Caucus."

Sanders, in recent tweets, has pointed to polling showing that expanding Medicare to cover dental, hearing, and vision is overwhelmingly popular, with 84% of U.S. voters supporting the proposal. A new survey published Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation also found that 83% of respondents favor empowering Medicare to leverage its prodigious purchasing power to secure lower prescription drug prices.

Sanders noted industry opposition to Medicare expansion during Tuesday's call.

"I do understand that the healthcare industry does not like this idea, but maybe, just maybe, we stand with the American people," he said. "There are millions of seniors who have rotting teeth in their mouths or are unable to hear what their grandchildren are saying."

Echoing her progressive colleagues, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) tweeted: "We are fighting for roads and bridges, universal child care, Medicare expansion, and climate investments. We know what we need and progressives in Congress will continue to hold strong."

Earlier Tuesday, Common Dreams reported that eight House Democrats representing New York City—including progressive Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman—sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) warning them against slashing funding for public housing, transportation, and immigration reform from the Build Back Better Act.

"We can't negotiate the reconciliation bill down to nothing," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.

However, Pelosi indicated in a Monday letter to House colleagues that Democratic leaders are open to considering scaling back the proposed legislation to reduce its $3.5 trillion cost in a bid to win the support of right-wing Democrats including Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), who have balked at the bill's price tag.

Responding to the letter, Sanders said that "$3.5 trillion is already a major compromise."

Tweeting Tuesday against potential cuts in the bill, Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.) said that "we cannot pit child care against Medicare expansion, or pre-K against free community college."

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The Media Keeps Getting It Wrong: The Democrats Are Not Divided

Just a few members out of the hundreds of Democrats elected to the House and Senate are stalling the President's agenda.

(L-R) Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE), Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) and other Congressional Democrats hold a rally and news conference ahead of a House vote on health care and prescription drug legislation in the Rayburn Room at the U.S. Capitol May 15, 2019 in Washington, D.C. 

(Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

PETER DREIER

October 12, 2021

 by Talking Points Memo (TPM)

Historians describe Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1936 presidential victory (with 60.8% of the popular vote), Lyndon Johnson's 1964 triumph (61.1%), and Ronald Reagan's 1984 win (58.8%) as "landslide" elections. Likewise, in 2018, the San Diego Union-Tribune and many other news outlets described Democrat Gavin Newsom's defeat of Republican John Cox for the California governorship by a 62% to 32% margin as a "landslide." When a recent poll found that 65% of Americans support vote-by-mail during the COVID pandemic, a USA Today headline proclaimed that the support was "overwhelming." Reporting on a survey showing that 73% of American voters supported President Biden's plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan, another news outlet, The Hill, described it as an "overwhelming majority." A news story reporting that 94% of American voters embrace universal background checks for gun-buyers called that support "near unanimous." A few years ago, another news story used the same phrase—"near unanimous"—when 61 of 64 coaches (95.3%) ranked the University of Alabama football team as the best in the country.

Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Krysten Sinema of Arizona, typically described as "moderates" or "centrists," are the only hold-outs.

Currently, 96% of Democrats in Congress support President Biden's social safety net and clean energy reconciliation package, but the the media have consistently described the Democrats as "deeply divided," "fractious," "feuding," and even "in disarray" over the plan. "The Democrats are at war with each other," said Washington Post reporter Robert Costa on a recent episode of the Bill Maher show.

In the Senate, 48 of the 50 Democrats (96%) embrace the Biden legislation. Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Krysten Sinema of Arizona, typically described as "moderates" or "centrists," are the only hold-outs.

In the House, 210 out of 220 Democrats (again, 96%) have indicated that they will vote for Biden's plan, which would invest $3.5 trillion over ten years in child care, education, health care, and climate change. Only 10 House Democrats (also described as "moderates" or "centrists")—Carolyn Bourdeaux (Georgia), Ed Case (Hawaii), Scott Peters and Jim Costa (California), Henry Cuellar, Filemon Vela, and Victor Gonzalez (Texas), Jared Golden (Maine), Josh Gottheimer (NJ), and Kurt Schrader (Oregon)—are not yet on board the Biden plan.

The 95-member House Progressive Caucus initially embraced Senator Bernie Sanders' plan for a $6 trillion (over ten years) package, but agreed to support Biden's much trimmed-down $3.5 trillion alternative. As a result, almost every Democrat in Congress—all the progressives and liberals and even most of the so-called moderates—agree on the Biden plan.

In other words, the Democrats are quite unified. But they are being held hostage by a handful of corporate-friendly Democrats. The problem is that the Democrats' margins in both chambers are so slim that they can't afford defections. The Democrats are clinging to an eight-seat majority in the House. The Senate is split between 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans, requiring Vice President Kamala Harris to break ties votes. As a result, even a small number of defectors can derail the Democrats' agenda—forcing Biden to make huge cuts or killing the plan altogether—which gives the tiny handful of hold-outs undue influence.

This doesn't mean that 96% of elected Democrats who support the Biden plan agree on every policy issue, from abortion to bank regulation to military spending. Some disagree with parts of the president's plans, but are willing to swallow their concerns for the sake of unity. By embracing Biden's Build Back Better plan, they recognize the importance of restoring Americans' faith in the ability of the federal government to address fundamental problems and to help the country recover from the existential crisis we faced, and that still persists, because of Trump and Trumpism.

Soon after Biden took office in January, he, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer agreed to draft two bills that reflected key parts of the president's campaign promises. One involved a $1 trillion (over ten years) public-works infrastructure plan, about $550 billion of which would be new spending not previously allocated by Congress. The other focused on expanding the nation's social safety net and addressing climate change, and would cost $3.5 trillion over ten years—though that figure is misleadingly high, as explained below.

In August, the Senate approved a $1 trillion physical infrastructure plan to rebuild roads, replace water pipes that have toxic lead, expand broadband internet, shore up coastlines against climate change, modernize the electric grid, protect public utility systems from cyber attacks, pay for new public transportation, and upgrade airports and railroads. Speaker Pelosi has postponed a vote on that bill; Biden, Schumer and Pelosi have all insisted that both bills should move in unison.

The safety net and climate change plan is stuck primarily because Manchin and Sinema won't go along. Manchin has demanded that at least $2 trillion be lopped off Biden's plan, which would result in a $1.5 trillion bill—an amount that Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) dismissed as "crumbs." Sinema won't even say what her ideal figure is.

The Build Back Better plan would expand Medicare and, for the first time, provide dental, vision, and hearing coverage to the 60 million elderly and disabled Americans who rely on it. It would expand health care for roughly four million low-income people in the states (most of which are run by Republicans) that have refused to expand Medicaid on their own. The provision to expand the Child Tax Credit to $300 a month per child under six and $250 a month per child age 6 to 17 would cut child poverty by half, according to some estimates. The Biden plan would also offer free public pre-kindergarten and two years of free community college and provides 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave, which would guarantee that all Americans have the time to care for themselves and their families and loved ones.

The plan also includes provisions to deal with climate change and cut greenhouse gas emissions, including a clean-electricity program designed to significantly reduce fossil fuel emissions from U.S. power plants by 2035. It would invest billions of dollars to build 500,000 electric-vehicle charging stations and update the electrical grid to make it more effective during extreme weather events.

The Republicans and the handful of Democratic dissenters typically describe the plan as "massive," "big government," and "unprecedented."

In fact, the plan would only amount to roughly 1.5% of the country's gross domestic product. This is a smaller increase than that of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal (which included Social Security and unemployment insurance) and President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs (which included Medicare and Medicaid).

Even the $3.5 trillion figure is misleading. It would stretch over ten years, a fact that many news reports ignore or downplay. One expert estimated that the total cost is less than three dollars (actually $2.88) a day.

Moreover, the $3.5 trillion would be offset by $2.9 trillion in new revenue, according to recent estimates. So the actual cost is just $0.6 trillion.

To pay for the plan, Biden proposed raising the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 26.5 percent on companies' annual income over $5 million. He's also proposed restoring the top tax rate to 39.6 percent on individuals earning more than $400,000—or $450,000 for couples—plus a 3 percent surtax on wealthier Americans with adjusted income over $5 million a year. As such, the plan would partially reverse the trillions that the Trump administration and the Republican Congress gave away to the wealthy and big business in tax cuts through their signature legislative achievement of the Trump era. Moreover, Biden's plan would reduce federal taxes for eight out of 10 households.

One thing is certain. Those Democratic dissenters are out of sync with what Americans—and not just Democratic voters—think.

The Democrats' plan is very popular among Americans.

A Quinnipiac poll conducted July 27-Aug. 2 asked, "Do you support or oppose a $3.5 trillion spending bill on social programs such as child care, education, family tax breaks and expanding Medicare for seniors?" and found 62% support, 32% opposition.

Support is even higher for some key provisions of the plan. For example, over two-thirds of voters (69%) support raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations. A whopping 84 percent of likely voters (including 74 percent of Republicans) support paid family leave programs. According to recent polls, 84% of voters want to expand Medicare coverage to include dental, vision and hearing; 88% want Medicare to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to reduced prescription drug prices. Data for Progress polling earlier this year found that nearly two thirds of likely voters support government action moving the country away from fossil fuels to a fully clean energy grid by 2035, including 86% of Democrats, 60% of independents, and 40% of Republicans.

So why are those two Democratic senators and 10 Democratic House members trying to subvert legislation that most Americans and 96% of their own colleagues support?

Most of the 10 House Democrats who are still waffling over the Biden plan are from swing congressional districts that they won by small margins, although other Democrats from battleground districts are on board with the plan. But in each of their districts, the Build Back Better plan would significantly improve the lives of their constituents as well as lower their taxes.

The opposition of the handful of Democrats can be explained in part by their close ties to big business and wealthy donors. They are doing the bidding of corporate America, which wants the physical infrastructure projects that is part of the separate $1 trillion bill, but doesn't want the higher taxes or stiffer regulations to reign in corporate greed that is part of the $3.5 trillion safety net and clean energy bill.

For example, Rep. Scott Peters of California is leading the opposition to the drug pricing provisions. Last month, he voted to block it from advancing out of the Energy and Commerce Committee. Since he was elected from his San Diego area district in 2012, the pharmaceutical industry has showered him with $860,465 in campaign donations. So far this year alone, he's received $88,550 from the drug lobby—the most of any member of Congress, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks political spending on the website OpenSecrets.org.

Manchin and Sinema insist that their stances reflect the concerns of voters in their home states. Last November, 68 percent of West Virginians voted for Trump, though Arizona narrowly went to Biden by a 49.4% to 49.1% margin.

But both West Virginia and Arizona are states with high levels of poverty and poorly funded schools and health centers, so there's no question that their residents would benefit from the plan's key provisions regarding health care, education, and other programs—indeed, more than residents of most other states. Manchin's insistence that the bill incorporate means tests and eligibility caps, and Sinema's fierce opposition to allowing Medicare to negotiate with drug companies to lower the price of medicine, will only hurt their constituents.

Manchin also has opposed many of the plan's provisions to deal with the climate crisis—provisions that could hurt both his political fundraising and his pocketbook. He's pocketed more contributions from coal, oil, and gas companies this campaign cycle than any senator, according to OpenSecrets. And his ties run deeper than the campaign donations he's received from these corporate interests. Last year, Manchin made half a million dollars in stock dividends from a coal company that is now controlled by his son, according to the New York Times. The Intercept reported that since joining the Senate, he has earned more than $4.5 million from that coal company and another, both of which he founded in the 1980s.

For her part, Sinema promised to push to lower prescription drug prices when she ran for the Senate in 2018. Now she's changed her tune, having taken in over $750, 000 from the pharmaceutical and medical device lobbies since then. In late September, Sinema held a fund-raiser with five business lobby groups that oppose the Biden bill.

Since Biden took office, America's corporations have significantly ramped up their campaign donations and lobbying efforts. According to OpenSecrets, corporations have deployed more than 4,000 lobbyists to scuttle core provisions of the Biden bill. During the first six months of this year, business groups spent $1.5 billion lobbying Congress, much of it directed at undermining the Build Back Better legislation. In addition, business lobby groups have significantly increased their campaign contributions to key members of Congress, including Manchin and Sinema.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the National Association of Manufacturers, and other business lobby groups are investing big bucks to kill the proposed tax increases on big corporations and the rich. The oil and coal companies don't want to wean the country off fossil fuels and are working overtime to kill Biden's clean energy provisions. During just one week last month, oil giant Exxon Mobil spent $275,000 on Facebook ads against the Biden plan.

Prescription drug prices in the U.S. are about three times higher than in other affluent democratic countries, according to a RAND Corporation study. But the pharmaceutical companies don't want to negotiate with Medicare to lower drug prices and are swarming Congress with big donations and lobbying efforts. The industry spent $171 million and deployed almost 1,500 lobbyists through the first half of the year, more than any other industry. Even the American Dental Association is mobilizing its 162,000 members to fight a proposal to include dental coverage for all Medicare recipients

On behalf of their corporate benefactors, Manchin and Sinema may be sabotaging the potential success of Biden's presidency and the odds that the Democrats will have legislation to tout as they seek to maintain even their slim hold on Congress in next year's midterm elections. They may also be undermining the last best chance to address America's most pressing problems.

Democrats' support for the Biden plan is—pick your adjective—overwhelming or near unanimous.

If Biden's bill doesn't make it through Congress, don't blame "the Democrats." Blame every Republican, and the tiny faction of Democrats, who have put their personal ambitions over the public good.


Peter Dreier is the E.P. Clapp distinguished professor of politics at Occidental College. He is the author of "The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame" (2012) and an editor (with Kate Aronoff and Michael Kazin) of "We Own the Future: Democratic Socialism, American Style" (2020). He is co-author of the forthcoming "Baseball Rebels: The Reformers and Radicals Who Shook Up the Game and Changed America" (2021).

These Freshman Lawmakers Will Join AOC

 and the Squad in the Progressive Caucus

© Drew Angerer/Getty Congresswoman U.S. Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) speaks outside of the Democratic National Committee headquarters on November 19, 2020 in Washington, DC. Bush joined the progressive caucus of the Democratic party on Sunday after being…

The November election saw a number of victories for fresh Republican faces like Representative Madison Cawthorn, who replaced Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as the youngest member of Congress, and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a supporter of the QAnon conspiracy theory. But Sunday's swearing in of new congressional members also includes a number of progressives.

The so-called Squad, a group of progressive House Democrats including Ocasio-Cortez as well as Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley, inducted a second class of new representatives, thus bolstering the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which includes Senator Bernie Sanders.

As the divide between the Democratic Party's progressive wing and centrist Democrats continues to deepen, the impact these incoming officials will have on the party's future is still to be determined.

Progressives like Tlaib have argued that while Democrats lost House seats in the general election, it was candidates who ran on progressive platforms who were able to hold on to their seats or win their House races.

Here are the four new congressional members joining Sanders, the Squad and other members of the Democratic Party's progressive wing.

Representative Cori Bush

The veteran racial justice activist and former nurse elected to represent Missouri's 1st Congressional District ran on progressive platform, championing policies like the Green New Deal and Medicare for All. Bush first entered politics after becoming involved in the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Missouri, after Michael Brown's fatal shooting by a police officer.

Bush's landslide victory came after she defeated 10-term incumbent William Lacy Clay in an upset during the Democratic primaries, which came on the same night Missouri voters decided to expand the state's Medicaid eligibility.

In her third run for Congress, she was backed by Sanders, the youth-led Sunrise Movement and the left-wing group Justice Democrats, which is well known for recruiting Ocasio-Cortez.

Bush is the first Black woman to serve the House of Representatives from Missouri.

"To all the counted outs, the forgotten abouts, the marginalized and the pushed asides. This is our moment," Bush tweeted on the night of her victory. "We came together to end a 52-year family dynasty. That's how we build the political revolution."

Representative Jamaal Bowman

Bowman, a former schoolteacher and principal, defeated 16-term Democratic incumbent Eliot Engel after being recruited by the Justice Democrats and went on to win in a landslide in New York's 16th Congressional District.

He was endorsed by Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Sunrise Movement, New York state's Working Families Party and the editorial board of The New York Times.

Bowman has said he'd like to elevate the issue of slavery reparations in the same way Ocasio-Cortez did with the Green New Deal.

"I was watching it from afar, watching Bernie Sanders run, and then watching AOC and the Squad not just win but truly come in as voices for the underserved. So to be joining them in Congress in 2021 is surreal and exciting, and I think it illustrates a shift happening in the Democratic Party," Bowman told NBC News earlier this month.

In a Tuesday tweet, Bowman advocated defunding the police after the Justice Department announced that the police officers involved in the 2014 fatal shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland would not face federal charges.

"A system this cruel and inhumane can't be reformed. Defund the police, and defund the system that's terrorizing our communities," the representative wrote.

Bowman and Bush have both declined to comment on whether they will vote for Nancy Pelosi as House speaker, a position Ocasio-Cortez has said should go to someone else.

© Stephanie Keith/Stringer Congressman Jamaal Bowman greets supporters on June 23, 2020 in Yonkers, New York. Bowman is another progressive joining the Squad in the U.S. House of Representatives. Stephanie Keith/Stringer

Representative Marie Newman

Newman, a former marketing consultant and anti-bullying advocate, won her seat in November after defeating an anti-abortion Democrat in Illinois' 3rd Congressional District.

Another Justice Democrat-backed candidate, she was endorsed by Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders, Warren, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Senators Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand in the primaries, where she beat eight-term Representative Dan Lipinski.

Lipinski frustrated the party's left by opposing abortion access, voting against the Affordable Care Act and refusing to endorse former President Barack Obama in his 2012 re-election bid.

Ocasio-Cortez told the Times that Newman "is a textbook example of one of the ways that we could be better as a party—to come from a deep blue seat and to be championing all the issues we need to be championing."

Newman ran on a platform of progressive policies that included Medicare for All, universal basic income, green jobs, the legalization of marijuana, immigrant protections in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and "unambiguous" immigration policies.

© Sarah Silbiger/Stringer Representative Marie Newman (D-IL) arrives to the Hyatt Regency hotel on Capitol Hill on November 12, 2020 in Washington, DC. Newman ran on a platform of progressive policies including Medicare for All and protections for DACA recipients. Sarah Silbiger/Stringer
Representative Mondaire Jones

Jones, a former Obama Justice Department lawyer from New York, won a competitive race in the Democratic primaries after longtime incumbent Democrat Nita Lowey decided not to seek reelection.

Running on a platform of Medicare for All and the Green New Deal in one of the wealthiest of New York City's suburbs, Jones won the nomination and subsequently the general election in the state's 17th Congressional District.

"I'm part of a generation that stands to inherit a planet that's devastated by climate catastrophe," Jones told NBC News. "For me, there's no alternative to a Green New Deal. We have to be fighting for a thing that will make our planet inhabitable for ourselves and our children and their children."

He was endorsed by Obama, Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and Warren.

"We are uniquely positioned to lead the Democratic Party into the 21st century, and I don't think that has happened yet," Jones said. "I don't think that we have fully addressed as a party the unprecedented challenges that Americans now face, such as the student loan crisis."

Jones and fellow Democratic Representative Ritchie Torres, who represents New York's 15th Congressional District, are the first openly LGBTQ Black members of Congress.

© Timothy A. Clary/AFP Mondaire Jones, Representative for New York's 17th Congressional District, poses outside his home in Nyack, New York, July 23, 2020. Jones, who ran on a platform of Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, joined a new class of progressive lawmakers after being sworn into Congress on Sunday. Timothy A. Clary/AFP

What Do We Really Know About The National Sheriffs Association?

The Association’s funding sources and political affiliations are suspect. That hasn’t stopped them from lobbying Congress and tanking police reforms.

BY JESSICA PISHKO

FEB 11, 2022
JURISPRUDENCE

Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb speaks at the Rally to Protect Our Elections sponsored by Turning Point Action at the Arizona Federal Theatre in Phoenix, July 24, 2021. 

USA TODAY NETWORK via Reuters Connect

This week, the National Sheriffs Association held their Winter Conference in Washington, D.C. The meeting is held in the nation’s capital every year, but this year a new event was added to the agenda: a “Hill Day,”in which the NSA arranged meetings between county sheriffs and their congressional representatives to discuss issues that are “meaningful to Sheriffs,” ranging from policing issues to medical care.

Since the summer of 2020, when the nation erupted into protest over police violence, police unions have been hard at work using their immense political power to thwart reform efforts. While police unions generally operate locally, there are state-wide and nation-wide organizations that purport to represent the interests of various law enforcement groups: police chiefs, police captains, and sheriffs. Sheriffs, in particular, have displayed immense resistance to efforts to change policing. Yet the national association that ostensibly represents their interests, and lobbies Congress on their behalf, remains under-examined and under-studied.

Last fall, for example, after every major national law enforcement lobbying group agreed to a set of modest, bipartisan policing reforms hashed out by Sens. Tim Scott and Corey Booker, the sheriffs refused to budge from their hardline position, especially when it came to reforming qualified immunity, the legal doctrine that makes it near-impossible to hold rogue and criminal law enforcement officers liable in civil suits.

Since then, sheriffs, under the leadership of the National Sheriffs Association (NSA), have gone on the warpath, pushing false narratives about a “war on cops” and whipping up unsubstantiated panic about increasing crime. In one instance, Louisiana Sheriff Vernon Stanforth, the President of the NSA, went on a local news station to call for federal support in arresting alleged shoplifters because they were “terrorizing their communities.” His request was backed up by a general NSA call for an action by the Biden administration on retail theft (which isn’t a federal crime).

The next day, Executive Director and CEO of the NSA Jonathan Thompson – who is a paid employee of the organization and not an elected sheriff – went on Fox News to complain about the NFL’s discretionary donations to groups engaged in criminal system reform through the “Inspire Change” initiative. Thompson topped his complaints with a veiled threat that players should “spend one night in a cruiser or a jail to see the horrendous effects of runaway crime.”

The sheriffs even went so far as to slam a leaked draft executive order, purportedly from the Biden administration, that appeared to address a variety of federal law enforcement reforms and provide additional funding for certain programs. (Biden seems to be walking back this plan based on recent meetings with law enforcement.)

How did the sheriffs come to be such a unified front against policing reform? Through the work of the National Sheriffs Association, a big-tent organization that nominally represents the interests of county sheriffs. Part of that representation requires the creation and reiteration of a mythology about sheriffs that serves to secure their place in the American pantheon of law enforcement organizations. This objective is even written into their “constitutional charter.” They mean it. When the county commissioners of Loudoun County, Virginia, considered reducing the role of the county sheriff by creating a police force (that would be under the control of the mostly Democrat county government), the NSA was there to argue forcefully against it. They claimed that sheriffs were more cost-efficient and better at patrol and policing than county-run police forces, and called the county government “political hacks.”

While the NSA claims to be nonpartisan, its leadership has proven to be less so, with the most recent slate of leaders leaning further to the right than past leadership. At least one member of the Executive Committee – Sheriff Chris West of Oklahoma — was at the Capitol on Jan. 6. At least three others are members of Protect America Now, a far-right sheriff’s organization, or the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, a group that believes sheriffs are the ultimate arbiters of the constitution. The current chair of the Government Affairs Committee is Collin County, Texas, Sheriff Jim Skinner, who was responsible for the high-profile jail death of Marvin Scott III, whom deputies killed by restraining him, placing a hood over his head, and dousing him with pepper spray. As part of the committee, Skinner is tasked with developing the NSA’s policy positions on law enforcement and homeland security in addition to representing the Association before Congress and the White House. The NSA has also consistently lobbied in favor of civil asset forfeiture, which, despite bipartisan opposition, remains the law in Texas.

These political affiliations have only become more tangled with the rise of the constitutional sheriffs movement. The NSA has yet to disavow the growing number of sheriffs who have refused to enforce vaccination orders, expressed anti-government rhetoric, or spread disinformation about election fraud. In fact, spokesperson for the NSA praised Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, who formed a far-right sheriffs group and has ties to Donald Trump and Michael Flynn, the ex-government official who we now know was pushing a plan for the military to seize voting machines to overturn the 2020 election. The spokesperson praised Lamb as a “unicorn” during an interview in October of 2021, adding that Lamb was simply standing up for the office of the sheriff.

While the NSA officially disavows connections between corporate sponsors and their policies, the degree of corporate funding is shadowy and belies their alleged neutrality. The Association is a 501(c)(4) organization, which is not required to disclose its donor and lobbying expenditures publicly. What we do know is that the NSA manages to raise in the neighborhood of $8 million in “dark money” every year. (A spokesperson from the NSA says the money is a mix of member dues, government grants, and corporate sponsorships). The available public information about funding indicates that the NSA is beholden to the corporations that have built the prison industrial complex and produce billions of dollars in profits off the backs of people in cages. Such for-profit industries, which include telecommunications companies like Verizon, GTL, PayTel and correctional health care companies as well as more anodyne corporations like Airbnb and The Home Depot can purchase access to sheriffs. For top donors their purchase includes a “reception” with NSA leadership as well as a “Private Dinner with Members of NSA’s Executive Committee and Headquarters’ Leadership.”

These sponsorships are really the tip of the iceberg of the many troubling alliances that betray the nominally nonpartisan spirit of the NSA.

For example, this year, ex-police officer named Matthew Griffin, who wrote a book about mental health for law enforcement, gave the keynote speech and was made an “honorary sheriff.” Griffin, who has never been a sheriff, served as a police officer in New Hampshire, but left after he was added not once, but twice, to a statewide list of officers who committed misconduct. According to one news source, Griffin at one point claimed to be a “reserve officer” for an unincorporated New Hampshire town and worked as a police trainer. His speech was sponsored by Axon,the company that makes body cameras and Tasers, and, according to a 2021 Washington Post article, was also a police trainer .

There is further evidence that the NSA courts corporate sponsorship in exchange for sheriff sponsorship. In 2016, the NSA took $350,000 from Purdue Pharma, which it used to distribute naloxone overdose kits and train deputies to reverse overdoses. The Association also took an undisclosed amount from Alkermes, Inc, the manufacturer of Vivitrol, an overdose prevention drug, to “raise awareness among law enforcement of the alarming opioid epidemic.” (ProPublica reported that Alkermes has heavily marketed Vivitrol to law enforcement and judges because, while less effective than methadone and Suboxone, the shot blocks the ability of people to feel the pleasurable high of opiates.) The NSA also spent over $500,000 to air televisions ads featuring sheriffs voicing their opposition to imported prescription drugs, which was the subject of a bipartisan proposal to bring down the costs of medicines in the U.S.

In the past few years, the NSA has pushed surveillance technology by channeling federal grants and promoting private industry, making them a major player in the public-private partnerships that have promoted surveillance cameras and AI-driven technologies. One such push is eye scanning technology from a corporation called B12 Technologies that has been implemented in some jails with federal funding. Another includes a partnership with Clearview AI, a corporation that markets facial recognition technology used by law enforcement, which has increased its contracts under the Biden administration.

A final plank of the NSA’s political strategy involves the filing of numerous amicus briefs in various cases across the country in which they take troubling positions that oppose the Constitutional rights of individuals. Many in the public are already familiar with the entanglement between the National Rifle Association and sheriffs; the NSA has joined other gun organizations in amici that argue in favor of invalidating gun restrictions. In 2015, the NSA filed a brief opposing DACA alongside FAIR and Center for Immigration Studies, another Tanton group. The NSA has also filed amici briefs supporting the seizure of hotel guests lists without a warrant, qualified immunity in a case where sheriffs’ deputies killed a suspect during arrest while city officers watched, warrantless searches even where there has been an error on the part of law enforcement, and application of a negligence standards for liability in jail deaths.

But the troubling fusion of private industry money, lobbying activities, and mass surveillance makes the public comments and inaction of the NSA more suspect when considering the overall landscape for police reform. It’s true that the structure of the NSA is legal and one used by groups on the left and the right. But, communities have a right to know about the corporate (and individual) funders who profit from additional policing, especially organizations that appear to tolerate wrong-doing. The NSA should be seen as part of the network of dark money groups who are influencing legislation and grants rather than a nonpartisan general interest group.

Another path is possible. In California, district attorneys have split away from the state prosecutor’s association because of its retrograde positions, which is a first step towards disentangling dark money, corporate interests, and an industry that has profited from caging people. It’s time for sheriffs to do the same.