EDUSA

Fixing the Broken High School-to-College Pipeline

Chauncy Lennon and Anne Stanton
Mon, October 18, 2021


As the nation struggles with the COVID-19 pandemic, a double-edged educational crisis has emerged: a surge in high school dropout rates and a precipitous decline in community college enrollment.

The details are all too plain — the nation’s public schools lost more than 1.1 million students last year, or 2 percent, versus an anticipated decline of less than 0.4 percent before the pandemic. Community colleges enrolled 476,000 fewer students last year than the year before, an 11.4 percent drop

As learning moved online, adolescents lost the support and stimulation of their peers, the discipline of extracurricular activities and, often, adult supervision to keep them on track. Many also had to work or care for younger siblings or ailing relatives. Prospective community college students declined to enroll because of pandemic-induced financial limitations, new family responsibilities and concerns about online courses, among other factors.

The pandemic pushed these problems to the forefront, but for decades, high schools have ill-served students with an academic model that is inflexible and often irrelevant, while community colleges have not sufficiently addressed the needs of the first-generation students from low-income families who often make up the bulk of their enrollment.

A fundamental problem — the structural flaw that brings these crises together — is the unnatural divide between secondary and postsecondary education. Americans think of K-12 and the years afterward as two distinct and separate parts, when they should be viewed as a continuum. Reimagining this system means that colleges must reach down, and high schools must reach up. Together, they need to ensure that students are learning skills and earning credentials that will prepare them for careers and success in today’s economy.

What does such a connection look like? Some promising examples come from Linked Learning, an education approach that works to transform the high school experience through rigorous technical training, work-based learning and robust student supports. It does so by disrupting tracking, a traditional practice that has deepened disparities by forcing students to choose between pursuing academic, pre-college studies and training for a trade.

In one large California district served by Linked Learning, Long Beach College Promise links high schools with public colleges. The partnership provides clear learning pathways for students, starting in their freshman year, with high-quality college and career preparation. All students at Long Beach Community College get free tuition their first year, and all Promise students meeting college prep requirements are guaranteed admission to California State University Long Beach. The schools reach out to students and families starting in sixth grade and continue the support through the transition to high school and college.

In Texas, the Dallas Independent School District has been working to expand alignment between high school curriculum and the expectations of employers and colleges. Starting in ninth grade, students can attend one of eight traditional early college high school programs or follow one of 18 technical pathways to earn an associate degree, tuition free, as well as gain valuable job experience through internships in fields such as health sciences, information technology and criminal justice. Other Dallas high school students may qualify for OnRamps, a program in which high school teachers join instructors at the University of Texas at Austin to teach college-level courses at the high school. The credits students earn automatically transfer to any public college in the state.

To help ensure a seamless handoff between senior year of high school and the first year of a degree or certificate program, high school and college educators in Monterey County, California, worked together to design a 12th grade math course that equipped all students to transition to postsecondary math. This is particularly important because poor preparation in high school math is a big barrier to success in college. When first-year community college students are required to take remedial, or developmental, math before progressing to credit-bearing courses, they often drop out. The Monterey K-12 and postsecondary educators joined forces to create a course that makes math more relevant and engaging, accommodates different student learning styles, and promotes tenacity and critical thinking — skills that support college and career success.

To encourage more students to take advantage of dual enrollment — an arrangement under which high school students take for-credit college classes for free — Indian River College in Florida regularly invites middle and high school students to its campus, where they get hands-on experience in classrooms and labs and can meet with an adviser to develop a college plan. Central Carolina Community College embeds college counselors – full-time employees of the college, funded by a grant program — in nine area high schools. And at Lorain Community College in Ohio, advisers work with high schools and partner with four-year colleges to map high school and community college curricula that lead to several popular majors and specific careers.

To ease the transition by giving teens a genuine college experience, Clemson University’s Emerging Scholars program brings high schoolers, starting in their sophomore year, to campus every year for a summer bridge program that helps them establish a college-going mindset through academic enrichment, tutoring and lessons in leadership. During the school year, they participate in various activities that promote college readiness. The aim is not necessarily to get students into Clemson, but to any college, two- or four-year, that’s right for them.

Many more exemplary colleges are adopting reforms aimed at better connecting with high school students and ensuring college completion. They are offering more holistic advising and accelerated and flexible schedules, embedding remedial coursework with credit-bearing courses and better attending to students’ social, emotional and financial needs.

Clarity, guidance, relevance: These are what students seek at both the high school and college levels. Our education system owes them all three. And it needs to deliver them acting as a united force.

Chauncy Lennon is vice president for learning and work at Lumina Foundation, an independent, private foundation based in Indianapolis. Anne Stanton is president of Linked Learning Alliance, a coalition of education, industry and community leaders and organizations dedicated to improving California’s high schools and preparing students for success in college, career and life.

Georgia High Schoolers Say Administrators Did Not Punish Students Waving Confederate Flag, But Chose to Suspend the Black Students Who Planned to Protest

Atahabih Germain
Mon, October 18, 2021

A group of students at a North Georgia high school say just as they were planning to protest this month against peers caught carrying around a Confederate flag during a school event, their Black organizers were suspended.

Meanwhile, students carrying the controversial emblem were let off the hook.

“I feel the Confederate flag should not be flown at all. It is a racist symbol and it makes me feel disrespected,” student organizer Jaylynn Murray at Coosa High School in Rome, Georgia, told Atlanta news station WGCL-TV. Murray said four students were flying the flag on a spirit day called “farm day.”

Meanwhile, fellow student organizer Deziya Fain said she “felt really disrespected how the school didn’t do anything about it and when we are not allowed wear BLM (Black Lives Matter) stuff and they are allowed to carry a racist flag around.”

White and hispanic students allege they were not suspended while Black students were for planning to protest other students who paraded a Confederate paraphernalia at their North Georgia high school. (Photo: CBS46 Atlanta/YouTube screenshot)

The group, composed of Black, white and Hispanic classmates, decided to organize a protest after administration failed to discipline the four individuals spotted in the video.

Students noted that the school has a policy against students wearing Black Lives Matter apparel and believes there is an ongoing issue with racism at the school, as the four students carrying the flag were also accused of using racial slurs against Black students.

When administration became aware of the coming protest, they ordered students not to carry out their plans and informed them that they would be disciplined if they decided to follow through. By Thursday, Oct. 7, a school administrator issued a similar warning to the remaining student body over the intercom, the station revealed.

“The administration is aware of tomorrow’s planned protest,” they said in a recording of the announcement provided to the outlet. “Police will be present here at school, and if students insist on encouraging this kind of activity they will be disciplined for encouraging unrest.”

Students told WGCL that when the organizers of the protest complied with school administrators’ request that Thursday to report to the office to discuss the planned protest and hand over any flyers promoting the demonstration the meeting became contentious as the teens complained about the school’s hands-off attitude toward students who use racial slurs.

Administrators reacted by suspending only the Black students in that diverse group that day, the teen protesters claim.

The following day many of the students held a protest just outside of the school property as police kept the school ringed off from any possible disruption.

The teens told WGCL that they had been punished for defying administration — but not all were. Black protesters say only they were targeted while their white and Hispanic peers weren’t.

“All the African-Americans they suspended them, and they didn’t suspend them. They didn’t suspend me and I was yelling and loud. It’s because I’m white,” Lilyan Huckaby, a white student, said. “We’re not allowed to wear Black Lives Matter shirts or the LGBTQ flag, but kids can have Confederate flags and they have said nothing.”

Lekysha Morgan told a reporter her three children were suspended for planning to participate in the protest and that complaints made to school about racial discrimination fall on deaf ears.

The students’ suspension lasts through Oct. 22.

To read more stories like this, visit AtlantaBlackStar.com

Lieberman book details help he received from GOP in 2006

OF COURSE HE DID 

HE WAS THE CHICKEN HAWK DEMOCRAT

FILE - Former Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman gives a 'thumbs-up' as he leaves the West Wing of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, May 17, 2017. Lieberman details in a new book how aid from top Republicans helped him win reelection against a more left-leaning Democrat and a Republican. The Hartford Courant reported Monday, Oct. 18, 2021 that Lieberman provides new details in the book about help from Karl Rove, a top advisor to then-President George Bush.

 (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)


Mon, October 18, 2021

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Former U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut details in a new book how aid from top Republicans — including strategist Karl Rove — helped him win reelection against a more left-leaning Democrat and a Republican.

Lieberman ran as an independent in 2006 after losing the Democratic primary to now-Gov. Ned Lamont, who unlike Lieberman opposed the Iraq War. Lieberman writes in his book “The Centrist Solution,” scheduled to be released on Tuesday, that Rove called him on the day of the primary and offered his help in the tight race, the Hartford Courant reported.

The former senator quotes Rove, then-President George W. Bush’s top strategist, as saying “the ‘Boss’ asked me to call you ... he knows that the political problems you are having are because you have stayed strong on the war in Iraq. So, he wanted me to tell you that if you lose today and run in November, we will help you in any way we can.”

Lieberman, 79, also writes about help from former U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole, another prominent Republican and a family friend.

Dole, as chair of the Senate Republican Campaign Committee, “proudly” told Lieberman that the group steered support away from the GOP candidate in the race. And after the surprise call from Rove, Lieberman said he began receiving campaign contributions from big Republican donors.

Lamont, a wealthy businessman, was ultimately defeated alongside Republican Alan Schlesinger in the three-way general election contest.

Asked about the book, Lamont said Monday that his Senate campaign “knew there were a lot of conversations going on between the White House and Senator Lieberman’s campaign" in 2006.

“I think both sides saw that Senate race, going back 15 years ago, as a referendum on the war in Iraq,” Lamont said. “And it’s now 15 years later, people are making up their mind whether invading Iraq and those trillions of dollars and thousands and thousands of dead was an investment worth making, was it a war worth fighting.”

Lieberman told the Courant in an interview that the call from Rove ultimately helped him on Election Day.

“I got a stunning vote among Republicans in Connecticut in the exit poll. I got a solid majority of independents and about a third of Democrats. I’m grateful," said Lieberman, who did not seek reelection in 2012.

FBI searches homes linked to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska


FBI agents searched homes in Washington, D.C., and New York City linked to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who was sanctioned by the Treasury Department in 2018. 

File Photo by Anatoli Zhdanov/UPI | License Photo

Oct. 19 (UPI) -- FBI agents on Tuesday reportedly searched two homes connected to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.

Agents searched homes in Washington, D.C., and New York City as part of unspecified "law enforcement activity" related to Deripaska, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin who was indicted by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2018, NBC News and The Washington Post reported.

A spokeswoman for Deripaska told NBC News both properties belong to his relatives.

"The searches are being carried out on the basis of two court orders, connected to U.S. sanctions," the spokeswoman said.

Deripaska, a billionaire oil tycoon, was one of dozens of Russian oligarchs sanctioned in 2018 for what the Treasury Department described as brazen behavior and attacks on Western democracy.

"Deripaska has been investigated for money laundering and has been accused of threatening the lives of business rivals, illegally wiretapping a government official and taking part in extortion and racketeering," the Treasury Department said at the time.

He was also an associate of former President Donald Trump's one-time campaign manager Paul Manafort who tried to offer "private briefings" to Deripaska about the 2016 presidential race, according to emails included in the Mueller report.

Russian businessman funded ex-Giuliani associates' account, court records show

FILE PHOTO: Combo file picture shows Ukrainian-American businessman Lev Parnas and Russian born businessman Igor Fruman exiting the United States Courthouse in New York

Luc Cohen
Mon, October 18, 2021,

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Russian businessman funded an account used by two ex-associates of Rudy Giuliani to donate to U.S. political campaigns, according to documents shown in court on Monday.

Prosecutors presented the financial records to a Manhattan federal court jury in the second week of the trial of one of the former associates, Lev Parnas, on charges of violating campaign finance laws.

Prosecutors say the Ukraine-born Parnas and another Giuliani associate, Belarus-born Igor Fruman, illegally funneled money from Moscow-based businessman Andrey Muraviev to candidates in U.S. states where the group was seeking licenses to operate cannabis businesses. Parnas pleaded not guilty.

Two Muraviev-owned firms wired $1 million to an account held by Fruman's FD Import & Export Corp between June and December 2018, bank statements showed.

That account then paid off more than 99% of the balance on a credit card account Parnas, Fruman and a company they founded used to make more than $150,000 in donations to candidates and committees ahead of the Nov. 6, 2018 election, the records showed.

Fruman pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance laws in September.

Parnas' attorney, Joseph Bondy, said in opening arguments last week that Muraviev's money was used for business ventures, not Parnas' campaign contributions.

The case has drawn attention because of the role Parnas and Fruman played in helping Giuliani - Donald Trump's former personal attorney and a former New York City mayor - investigate Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 election. Biden, a Democrat, defeated Republican Trump's re-election bid.

Giuliani's attorney has said the Parnas case is separate from a federal inquiry into whether Giuliani violated lobbying laws while working as Trump's lawyer. Giuliani has not been charged with any crimes and denies wrongdoing

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; editing by Richard Pullin)

Former aide to Rep. Pete Sessions testifies at trial of Giuliani associate




Josh Gerstein

POLITICO
Mon, October 18, 2021

A former chief of staff to Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) testified on Monday as a prosecution witness at the criminal campaign-finance trial of an associate of former President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

Caroline Boothe, who is now finance director for Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), detailed interactions with the defendant, Florida businessperson Lev Parnas, in 2018 as Sessions was facing a tough campaign for reelection.

Boothe described Parnas’ visits to Sessions, a VIP tour she gave to Parnas and confirmed that he had — at least for a time — Sessions’ jersey from the congressional baseball team. But the bulk of her testimony to a federal jury in New York was about the mechanics of fulfilling a pledge Parnas made to donate or raise $20,000 for Sessions’ campaign. Boothe said Parnas and two other men who’ve already pleaded guilty in the case, Igor Fruman and David Correia, visited Capitol Hill in June 2018 in the company of longtime Sessions friend Roy Bailey.

The initial indictment in the case suggested that Parnas’ offers to donate and raise money for Sessions were linked to an effort to oust the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine at the time, Marie Yovanovitch. Parnas and Fruman worked closely with Giuliani in that drive, which ultimately led to Trump’s first impeachment. However, Giuliani has not been charged in the case and the Justice Department quietly removed that allegation from an updated version of the indictment last year.

Boothe wasn’t asked about that aspect of Parnas’ dealing with Sessions, but said that when the men offered to help the congressman’s campaign financially, she suggested they discuss it outside the building.

“I said, ‘I’d love to talk about this further. Let’s take it across the street,’” Boothe said, taking the group to the Capitol Hill Club. “You can’t conduct any campaign or unofficial business on government property,” she explained to the jury.

Boothe said the men were enthusiastic about aiding Sessions. “They were really excited to help out. Lev said he’d max out, but also help bundle contributions,” she recalled. “He mentioned bundling around $20,000.”

However, a request from Parnas’ assistant days later to put a $20,000 donation on a single credit card raised some questions, Boothe said. She consulted Sessions’ longtime chief of staff who had just stepped down, Matt Garcia, who told her that it was permissible but that it would “look better” for the money to be charged on separate cards. Boothe testified that she ultimately referred the issue to Sessions’ fundraiser.

In the end, only $5,400 came in and fundraisers were told to attribute half to Parnas and half to Fruman. Sessions donated the money to charity after the men were arrested in 2019.

Boothe also added some colorful testimony to the trial, acknowledging that Parnas looked a bit out of place at the Capitol and in fundraising photos because of his fondness for gold chains. While reviewing photos introduced as evidence at the trial, she confirmed that Parnas sat in Sessions’ chair’s chair during a tour of the House Appropriations Committee room and that in photos taken at the Trump International Hotel, Parnas was wearing Sessions’ congressional baseball jersey.

“Congressman Sessions is a very friendly man and he likes to do friendly things,” she told Parnas’ defense attorney Joseph Bondy. “I don’t know exactly why.”

Lawyers for Parnas and a business associate on trial with him, Andrey Kukushkin, have argued to jurors that campaign finance law is complex and nuanced. The defense attorneys are seeking to raise doubts about whether the government has proven that the pair knew they were breaking the law by donating money that was loaned by a Russian businessperson.

Under questioning by the prosecution, Boothe said flatly that any money coming from a foreign national or donated in the name of another person would have been rejected, if she had known. “That’s illegal,” she said during about 90 minutes on the witness stand broken up by a one-hour lunch break.

But when cross-examined by Bondy, Boothe acknowledged some of the campaign-finance rules have exceptions, like one that allows foreigners with green cards to give money. She said that she “had no reason to” think Garcia wanted to break the law, but that she wanted to be extra careful.

“At the end of the day, I saw what is black and white and we’re going to go that way. I don’t want any gray,” Boothe said. “I was chief for 72 hours at that point, so I wanted to make sure I was crossing all my t’s and dotting all my i’s.”

“Great minds can differ,” Bondy added later.

Boothe may also have inadvertently underscored the defense’s point about the complexity of the law by claiming at the outset of her testimony that individuals under 18 can’t donate. Such a ban was in the McCain-Feingold law passed in 2002, but the Supreme Court struck down that provision the following year.

Sessions wound up losing the 2018 race to Democrat Colin Allred, but regained another House seat in 2020 after moving his residence from Dallas to Waco.

Prosecutors appear set to rest their case on Tuesday after announcing they had dropped plans to call Joseph Ahearn, finance director of the pro-Trump super PAC America First Action. Bondy said he might seek to call Ahearn as a witness, perhaps later Tuesday. U.S. District Court Judge Paul Oetken said he’d approve a defense subpoena for Ahearn when the court received it.

Still unclear is whether Parnas will take the stand in his own defense. Prosecutors and the defense are expected to wrangle on Tuesday morning about the scope of potential cross-examination of Parnas, should he choose to testify.

THE 80'S WERE THE PORN DECADE

Olivia Newton-John Recalls When 'Physical' Was Banned for Being Too Sexy on Song's 40th Anniversary

© ET

Liz Calvario

Olivia Newton-John is reflecting on her hit song, "Physical."

It's been 40 years since the single took over the airwaves. "Physical" was Newton-John's fifth No 1. single and the most successful song in her career, selling 10 million copies. But some radio and TV stations banned it for being too sexual.

"The things that are out there now! The things they talk about and say freak me out," Newton-John jokes to ET's Nischelle Turner, adding her song "is like a lullaby!"

"Physical" came out in September of 1981, but the Grease star admits she was hesitant about the song and even tried to stop it from being released.

"A dear friend of mine wrote the song and I thought, 'This is a great song!' And I recorded it with John Farrar, who's my producer and also my friend, and after it was finished, that's when I freaked out," she recalls. "I went, 'I never even thought about the double entendre here!' I called my manager and said, 'We have to, we have to kill it! Let's stop it because I think I've gone too far.' And he said, '[It's] already on the charts, doll. It's doing really well, we can't stop it.'"

"I'm finding that very often the things you are most afraid of or tentative about doing are the things you need to do," she acknowledges. "So I'm very thrilled that I didn't pull it off the charts."

Forty years for Newton-John "feels like yesterday and it feels like a century ago," but she couldn't be happier that artists like Dua Lipa and Doja Cat are sampling her music.

"I'm honored and the people still love the song 40 years later," she notes. "I'm thrilled for Stevie [Kipner] because he wrote it and I never dreamt in my life that 'Physical,' 40 years later, people would still be loving it. I feel very lucky."



A deluxe edition of "Physical" will be out Oct. 22. Newton-John also partnered with Crunch Fitness and Third Love to celebrate the 40th anniversary of her song to help raise funds and awareness for her Olivia Newton-John Foundation Fund. The goal of the physical challenge is to set a world record for the number of leg raises.

"I doubt I can even lift a leg now," the superstar jokes. "I think it's a fantastic idea of them trying to set a world record about how many people do it at the same time!"

Newton-John recently turned 73 and is living on her Santa Barbara ranch and focusing on her health after her cancer battle.

"I had breast cancer in '92 and I had a recurrence a few years ago, so I've been through chemotherapy and radiation and all things," she shares. "And my dream always was when going through those things, because it's difficult and they're not comfortable, was to try and find treatments that were kinder."

"And my husband, John, has been growing me cannabis for a long time and making me these tinctures," she adds. "And I think that's why I'm still here. I feel very fortunate. It helps with my pain, it helps a lot of things."

For more on Newton-John, see below.

Olivia Newton-John Explains How She Was Forced to Go Public About Her Cancer Diagnosis (Exclusive)

Leonardo DiCaprio Joins Prince Harry’s Campaign To Stop Oil Drilling In Africa

Prince Harry and Leonardo DiCaprio are joining forces for a good cause

.

© Photos: Shutterstock Prince Harry and Leonardo DiCaprio

Aynslee Darmon 

The Oscar-winning actor, 46, along with Forest Whitaker and Djimon Hounsou, have joined the Duke of Sussex, 37, and leading conservationists at Re:wild to call for a stop to oil and gas drilling in the Okavango River Basin in Africa.

According to a press release from Re:wild, Canadian oil and gas company Reconnaissance Energy Africa (ReconAfrica) began drilling the Okavango River Basin in late 2020 despite concern from local communities. The Okavango River Basin travels through Angola, Botswana and Namibia supplying water to nearly 1 million people.

Re:wild is a non-profit that "protects and restores the diversity of life on Earth through innovative collaborations among individuals, communities, Indigenous peoples, governments, scientists, and businesses to drive the most pressing nature-based solutions to our planet’s urgent crises."

"We believe this would pillage the ecosystem for potential profit," Harry and Namibian environmental activist, conservationist and poet Reinhold Mangundu wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post earlier this month. "Some things in life are best left undisturbed to carry out their purpose as a natural benefit. This is one of them."

"There is no way to repair the damage from these kinds of mistakes," they continued. "Drilling is an outdated gamble that reaps disastrous consequences for many, and incredible riches for a powerful few. It represents a continued investment in fossil fuels instead of renewable energies."

Adding, "The risk of drilling will always outweigh the perceived reward. In a region already facing the abuse of exploitation, poaching and fires, the risk is even higher. Knowing the above, why would you be drilling for oil in such a place?"

DiCaprio also shared an Instagram video asking fans to add their names to an open letter from Re:wild calling for the end.

leonardodicaprio

Verified

#SaveTheOkavango

From @rewild: Calling #TeamRewild! We need your help. Act now to #SaveTheOkavango by adding your name to the open letter calling for a moratorium on oil and gas drilling in southern Africa’s Okavango River Basin. Link in bio.

There is no resource more precious than water in the Okavango River Basin, where Canadian company ReconAfrica is drilling for oil and gas. Local and Indigenous communities are concerned for their homes, their water supply, and the ecosystem that supports all life around them.

The Okavango Delta is a UNESCO World Heritage site, a Key Biodiversity Area, and an ecological wonderland so vast it is visible from space. This region sustains nearly one million Indigenous and local people by providing clean water, food, livelihoods and places to live.

The Okavango watershed is also home to some of the world’s most threatened wildlife, and the stomping grounds of the largest remaining population of elephants on Earth. It is a lifeline to a desert ecosystem prone to drought. There is already too little water to spare; the cost of polluting what remains is too high.

Re:wild stands with the people of the Okavango River Basin, who depend on the health of the watershed for their survival. ReconAfrica is poised to pollute their farms and destroy a beautiful landscape—one that benefits all life on Earth—forever. Join us by signing the open letter at the link in bio. Together, we can #SaveTheOkavango.

For all wildkind.

Leonardo DiCaprio on Instagram: “From @rewild: Calling #TeamRewild! We need your help. Act now to #SaveTheOkavango by adding your name to the open letter calling for a…”

ZEBRA ARE NOT NATIVE TO MARYLAND
One of Maryland’s escaped zebras dies in illegal trap

Adam Gabbatt 


One of a group of escaped zebras that have spent almost two months running wild through the east Maryland suburbs has died, authorities said, in a blow to thousands who have followed the animals’ bid for freedom.

The fate of the zebras, who bolted from a farm near Upper Marlboro in late August, has captured the attention of people locally and beyond, with a number of Marylanders sharing videos and photos of the animals roaming and grazing on residents’ lawns.

Related: Stripe zone: on the trail of suburban Maryland’s elusive zebras

Now, however, has come the news no one wanted to hear: one of the zebras has died, after being caught in a snare trap. The animal was found dead on 16 September, Prince George’s county officials said, but for unknown reasons the zebra’s fate was only made public nearly a month later.

The remaining zebras have managed to avoid the bungling efforts of the local animal services division for almost two months.

Officials claimed in early September that the animals would be caught within a matter of days, and in a further misstep, animal services later revealed it had managed to miscount the number of zebras they were hunting – after originally stating that five were on the loose, the division now says only three escaped.

The local television channel Fox5 reported that Maryland’s department of natural resources police found one of the zebras dead in a trap in mid-September, but did not report this to Prince George’s county officials until 28 September. It took another two weeks for Prince George’s county to reveal that the animal was dead.

Snare traps are illegal in Prince George’s county, and police are investigating who laid the trap.

Prince George’s county workers have spent several weeks attempting to lure the escaped zebras into a corral. Last Friday the county’s department of the environment unveiled a new strategy, which involves using more captive zebras as bait for their free brethren.

“The current capture plan is to utilize food and other zebras to attract the zebras at large into a corral so they can be returned to the herd and eliminate any other potential risk to the animals,” Prince George’s county DoE said in a press release.

With winter approaching, some have expressed concern over the zebras’ ability to deal with the Maryland temperatures, which can drop below freezing.

Daniel Rubenstein, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University, previously told the Guardian that zebras thrive on the frigid slopes of Mount Kenya, so they should be just fine.

If the cold does prove too much, the zebras could choose to migrate south toward warmer climes, Rubenstein said – unless they are finally caught.

Ryder, Gatik team up to roll out U.S. autonomous delivery network



By Nick Carey

(Reuters) - Truck fleet operator Ryder System Inc and Gatik said on Tuesday they will build a national U.S. autonomous short-haul, "middle-mile" logistics network for Gatik, a Silicon Valley self-driving startup, to deliver goods to business customers.

Ryder's corporate venture capital arm RyderVentures has also invested in Gatik's latest funding round of $85 million that was announced in August.

Gatik works with Walmart Inc and Loblaw Companies Ltd to deliver goods to retail stores from warehouses using autonomous trucks with safety drivers - though in Arkansas is already running some driverless deliveries.

As part of the partnership, Gatik will lease a fleet of medium-duty trucks from Ryder - initially around 20 vehicles in the Dallas area.

Gatik will add its autonomous driving systems to those trucks, which will transport goods to retail locations from fulfillment centers or "dark stores" — distribution centers catering to e-commerce business.

Ryder will also service and maintain Gatik's leased trucks.

"The significance and importance of this partnership is that it enables us to expand our footprint nationwide," Gatik Chief Executive Officer Gautam Narang told Reuters.

Miami-based Ryder has worked to build up self-driving expertise.

Ryder manages and maintains a test fleet for Waymo Via, the self-driving truck unit of Google parent Alphabet Inc.

Self-driving truck technology company TuSimple Holdings Inc is using Ryder's maintenance sites as terminals to help it expand its U.S. autonomous freight network.

And self-driving truck technology developer Embark Trucks Inc has teamed up with Ryder to launch a U.S. network of transfer points to support Embark's coast-to-coast autonomous operations.

Embark is merging with blank-check firm Northern Genesis Acquisition Corp. II.

"We want to be a leader in understanding how this all works," said Karen Jones, Ryder's chief marketing officer. "Ultimately, getting in early with these customers is the best way to do that."

(Reporting By Nick Carey; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

The DOJ Is Investigating Americans For War Crimes Allegedly Committed While Fighting With Far-Right Extremists In Ukraine

The probe involves seven men but is centered on former Army soldier Craig Lang, who is separately wanted in connection with a double killing in Florida and is fighting extradition from Kyiv.

Christopher Miller BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on October 8, 2021

Oksana Parafeniuk for BuzzFeed News
Craig Lang in Kyiv on Feb. 18, 2021


KYIV — One chilly day in February, Craig Lang, a former US Army soldier wanted for allegedly killing a married couple in Florida, pleaded with three stern-faced judges in a Kyiv courtroom to allow him to stay in Ukraine. He first came in 2015 to fight with a far-right paramilitary unit, defending the country from Russia-backed forces. And he believed that if he were extradited back to the US, he could face war crimes charges.

“Any separatist or Russian soldier that I have killed would be a murder charge” in the US, Lang, 31, said in his gruff North Carolina drawl. “Understand that some of my fellow combatants are under investigation by the FBI for war crimes.”

That was a stunning statement. It would be extremely rare for the US government to investigate its own citizens for alleged war crimes committed on foreign soil — no one, experts say, has ever been prosecuted, let alone convicted, under the US War Crimes Act. Lang’s claim, overheard by this BuzzFeed News reporter, could not be corroborated at the time.

But now, BuzzFeed News can reveal that the Department of Justice and the FBI have in fact taken the extraordinary step of investigating a group of seven American fighters, including Lang, under the federal war crimes statute. Authorities suspect that while in eastern Ukraine, Lang and other members of the group allegedly took noncombatants as prisoners, beat them with their fists, kicked them, clobbered them with a sock filled with stones, and held them underwater.

Lang, the DOJ believes, may have even killed some of them before burying their bodies in unmarked graves.

The war crimes investigation was detailed in a DOJ appeal for assistance sent to the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine in 2018 along with two Ukrainian documents responding to the appeal the following year. The documents were leaked to an obscure pro-Russian website. BuzzFeed News reviewed and authenticated the documents and interviewed six people, in Kyiv and stateside, with direct knowledge of the US investigation. They include a top Ukrainian law enforcement official; a former Ukrainian National Police official who was involved in gathering information to fulfill the US appeal; and two other people who have assisted the FBI and spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.

BuzzFeed News also interviewed Dalton Kennedy of North Carolina and David Kleman of Georgia, both 24, who had interviews with federal agents and provided proof of those encounters. They, along with Quinn Rickert, 27, of Illinois; Santi Pirtle, 30, of California; Brian Boyenger, 33, of North Carolina; and David Plaster, 37, of Missouri were investigated by the DOJ and FBI in the probe. When they arrived in Ukraine, Lang, Rickert, and Pirtle allegedly joined Right Sector, a volunteer far-right nationalist group that formed in November 2013 and later created a paramilitary force to respond to Russia’s invasion of eastern Ukraine in spring 2014. Human rights groups have accused Right Sector fighters of abusing and torturing civilians and combatants.


Courtesy David Kleman
Brian Boyenger (left) and David Kleman in eastern Ukraine

All the men were connected to Lang, who also briefly served in Ukraine’s military, and privy to his actions in the country. Their alleged roles in the war crimes vary, and BuzzFeed News has found that some were likely not present when they are believed to have taken place.

The DOJ — based on video and photo evidence, as well as interviews with some of Lang’s fellow American fighters — says in the documents that Lang was the main instigator of the alleged torture of detainees in eastern Ukraine. In April, BuzzFeed News detailed how Lang became increasingly radicalized while fighting in Ukraine and had ties to white supremacists. He now resides with his Ukrainian partner and their child in Kyiv. He was detained by Ukrainian border guards in August 2019, wears an ankle monitor, and is banned from leaving the country while he fights extradition to Fort Myers to face trial in the 2018 killings of Deana and Serafin “Danny” Lorenzo in Florida. Authorities allege that Lang and another former Army soldier who fought with Right Sector in Ukraine lured the couple to a meeting to buy guns — but instead ambushed them and robbed them of $3,000, used to fund Lang’s foreign fighting adventures.

A separate message obtained exclusively by BuzzFeed News suggests the FBI was investigating Lang and the others as early as April 2017, and had already received information on them from search and seizure warrants.

The DOJ appeal doesn’t make clear whether US authorities had interviewed any alleged victims in Ukraine or confirmed that anyone was killed. But based on the evidence gathered, the DOJ appeal says, the Americans “allegedly committed or participated in torture, cruel or inhuman treatment or murder of persons who did not take (or stopped taking) an active part in hostilities and (or) intentionally inflicted grievous bodily harm on them.”




Pages from the DOJ appeal for assistance sent to the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine


It continues: “Such actions, if committed by US citizens or directed against them, respective to the United States War Crimes Act, are classified as war crimes in the context of the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine.”

Two sources who have aided the DOJ and the Americans under investigation who spoke to BuzzFeed News in the past four months said that they believe the probe is active. But, to date, no related charges have been filed. Calls and emails sent to the DOJ and FBI officials named in the leaked appeal went unanswered. The US Embassy in Kyiv also declined to comment. The FBI and DOJ spokespeople each said they do not confirm or deny the existence of an ongoing investigation.

During extradition hearings in Kyiv over the past year, Lang has denied involvement in the Florida killings and said federal authorities are going after him because of his political views and extremist ties. Four of the six sources, including Kennedy and Kleman, said they believed the DOJ’s focus now is getting Lang extradited to the US, something Irina Venediktova, Ukraine’s prosecutor general, told BuzzFeed News this month that she would also like to see happen. “We did our homework [on Lang],” she said, noting that she approved the US request for extradition last year. (The European Court of Human Rights ordered a stay on Lang’s extradition until it reviewed his case. The court had not yet made a decision when this article was published.) In May, the US government said during a court hearing that it would waive the death penalty for Lang in order to speed up the process.

Lang didn’t respond to a request for comment. His Ukrainian lawyer, Dmytro Morhun, declined to respond directly to the DOJ investigation and claims made against Lang, saying he would only do so if presented with evidence of alleged crimes, not assumptions of law enforcement agencies. He said the US investigation was proof of what he has argued since Lang was detained in Ukraine — that the US efforts to bring him back home were political in nature and are “connected precisely with his participation in the armed forces of Ukraine in the east, while fighting against the Russian aggressor.”

In interviews in person and by phone, Kennedy, Kleman, Plaster, and Boyenger confirmed they had fought in Ukraine, but they all denied the allegations that they committed or aided any possible war crimes and said they were never part of Right Sector; the four served with the regular Ukrainian military and provided documentation showing they did. Rickert didn’t respond to messages seeking comment, and Pirtle couldn’t be reached. But a family member of Pirtle’s told BuzzFeed News by phone that Pirtle spoke to the FBI at least twice about his experience once he left Ukraine and returned home to San Jose. The family added that Pirtle is currently serving in the US Army and is based in Louisiana. An Army spokesperson confirmed Pirtle is an active-duty infantryman with no combat deployments who has served since October 2020.

Thousands of foreign fighters have flocked to eastern Ukraine to join a war that Russia incited in spring 2014 — using troops in unmarked uniforms and local separatist proxies — that has killed more than 14,000 people. Venediktova told BuzzFeed News that her office is investigating 250 foreign fighters from 32 countries for war crimes. All of them have fought with Russia-led forces.

Venediktova said that, for now, there are no active investigations into foreign fighters who joined the Ukrainian side. But Gyunduz Mamedov, the deputy prosecutor general of Ukraine, said in an interview in Kyiv in August that after learning of the US war crimes probe in 2019, he considered opening his own into Lang’s alleged crimes. “I thought that a proper legal assessment of the situation should be done in Ukraine as well,” he said, adding, “My main concern was [Lang’s] crimes in Ukraine.” Mamedov said he asked US authorities to share the evidence used to build their case against Lang and the other Americans. “Unfortunately,” he said, “there has been no response.”

Roughly 40 other Americans have fought on the Ukrainian side, according to BuzzFeed News’ reporting and expert research. Many are veterans or men who had hoped to join the US military but couldn’t, and wanted to help a democratic ally in its fight against Russia’s aggressive authoritarianism. Others are opportunists who see a shot at a once-in-a-lifetime adventure and a fresh start. And several are combat enthusiasts who hop from war to war.

But some are far-right extremists who have set their gaze on Ukraine, a place that has become a destination and training ground for such types in the West. As far-right extremism has risen in the US, so has the interest among American white supremacists in militarized right-wing Ukrainian groups that have had success in growing and mainstreaming their organizations and movements. They include violent neo-Nazis like those from the Rise Above Movement who have gone to Ukraine to meet and train with some of the groups — and then export what they learned to the US.


Timo Vogt / EST&OST
Members of “Task Force Pluto.” Front, from left: Austrians Benjamin Fischer and Alex Kirschbaum. Back, from left: Americans Quinn Rickert, Craig Lang, and Santi Pirtle.

The seven Americans arrived in Ukraine at different times. Plaster, who has familial ties to Ukraine, was in the country before the war broke out. The other six arrived between 2015 and 2016.

Lang touched down in May 2015, after two tours with the US Army in Iraq and Afghanistan. He served in the infantry and was dishonorably discharged in 2014. A string of disturbing personal events the previous year, including an incident in which he allegedly threatened his wife, court documents show, led to their divorce and him losing custody rights and a job.

Ukraine offered adventure and a new start. He joined Right Sector, he said earlier this year, “because I thought they were the most active on the front line.” The far-right paramilitary group handed him a loaded AK-47 the moment he arrived, he said.

As one of the first and most visible American fighters in eastern Ukraine — his Facebook page, which has since been removed, showed him firing machine guns and AK-47s in interviews with Ukrainian media, running through trenches, and posing in uniform on the battlefield — he quickly became a key contact for others looking to join the war and Right Sector. The DOJ also believes that Lang used Facebook to actively recruit other Americans to the unit.

Among them were Rickert and Pirtle, who, along with Lang and two Austrian fighters, formed a close-knit, informal group that called itself “Task Force Pluto,” after the Greek god of the underworld. Photographs shot by a German photographer in early 2016 show them cleaning their AK-47 rifles and firing rocket-propelled grenades at the front line together.

While Rickert was once close with Lang, he seems to be one of the government’s prime sources of information and evidence in its war crimes case. Lang, he apparently told investigators, was the Task Force Pluto leader while the group was stationed at a makeshift military base located on the edge of Novohrodivka, an unremarkable coal mining town in the Donetsk region that is under Ukrainian government control.

Rickert, the DOJ document says, told the FBI about several instances of Lang allegedly abusing people at the base in late 2015 or in 2016. In one, Rickert said that Lang went to a nearby village and captured a local man. Rickert claimed that Lang brought the man back to the Right Sector base and “severely beat and tortured” him in a cell and “eventually took him out of the base and killed him.” Rickert told the DOJ that he had video footage of the incident and others.

Rickert also told investigators he witnessed Lang and Benjamin Fischer — an Austrian who, the DOJ notes, fought with Right Sector and has also been accused by his government of war crimes in Ukraine and was briefly detained in 2017 before reportedly being released due to a lack of evidence — committed “numerous killings and tortures” of prisoners. These happened, Rickert said, in a small room at the base in spring 2016. After the torture sessions, Rickert told DOJ, Lang took them outside, killed them, and buried their bodies in a field near the base.


Timo Vogt / EST&OST
A view of the Right Sector base near Novohrodivka in eastern Ukraine

Rickert told the DOJ he also had a video of Lang beating and drowning a woman who Fischer injected with adrenaline to keep her from losing consciousness. According to Rickert, another foreign fighter filmed the incident on video. Fischer’s whereabouts are unknown and he could not be reached for comment.

Pirtle told investigators, according to the DOJ document, that Rickert filmed several of the interrogations and uploaded the videos to his Google accounts, including one in which a man was detained, thrown into a shower stall, and beaten with a sock filled with stones. According to Pirtle, the man was thought to have fought with Russia-backed forces. Pirtle told investigators he saw Lang punch and push the man, demanding his password to a Facebook account because Lang thought that it was holding information on pro-Russian fighters.

Pirtle’s family member said he returned to the US in spring 2016 because he had grown tired of the poor living conditions in eastern Ukraine and was worried about “somebody who did terrible things.” That person, the family member said, was Lang. Pirtle, according to the family member, emailed them explaining that “things are going downhill and he didn’t want any part in it.”

Morhun, Lang’s lawyer, did not directly respond to these or any specific allegations, saying “in order to deny or confirm any accusations, they must be brought,” and since the DOJ has not presented he or Lang with evidence, “we are talking about assumptions, and that makes no sense to comment on.”

The DOJ appears to have obtained and viewed that video and others, writing in the appeal that investigators got a warrant authorizing them to search the Google account and emails apparently belonging to Rickert.

“In the first video, LANG’s voice is heard demanding that the man give his password from a social network account,” the DOJ writes. “After the man refuses to give LANG his password, behind the scenes someone says, ‘You need to beat him.’ LANG hits the man several times with his knee in the abdomen and head, throwing him on the floor, where he writhes in pain.”

A second video, according to the DOJ, “shows a Ukrainian man repeatedly hitting a man with something hard in a sock in his cell. After this beating, a person similar to RICKERT enters the shower and demands the man’s password. After that, you can see how RICKERT punches the man in the back of the head.”

Rickert’s and Pirtle’s accounts to the DOJ, and the agency’s descriptions of the videos, closely align with what BuzzFeed News was told by an American fighter in Ukraine who knew the Task Force Pluto members and described them as having a “fetish for death and torture.” It also aligns with a screenshot of a video viewed by this reporter that shows a man who appeared to be Lang standing over a man seated and bound in a small room. That scene also closely resembles one described by a Vice News journalist who interviewed Lang, Rickert, and Pirtle at the Novohrodivka base in 2016. In that story, a man was detained by Right Sector fighters, held in “a standing-room-only shower stall” with the lights on for a week, and beaten with a sock “stuffed with sharpened rocks.”

The Google account data, the DOJ writes, also uncovered numerous images of Rickert, Lang, Pirtle, and other people handling weapons and explosives in eastern Ukraine, including in “a trench dug for combat.”

The DOJ document doesn’t describe any instances in which Kennedy, Kleman, Boyenger, and Plaster took an active part in the abuse of civilians. Plaster, who now runs an NGO in Kyiv that helps Ukrainian veterans, said he “kept a distance from anyone with radical ideologies” and provided “medical aid and training” to the country’s soldiers during his time on the front line. Boyenger said, “I have always conducted myself with honor and fidelity, as a taxpayer I do expect the government to investigate to the fullest extent any and all allegations of wrongdoing and I look forward to seeing the results of their investigation as much as anyone."

The DOJ document also says that US authorities believe that Lang and Kennedy, after spending time back in the US, “returned to Ukraine with the intention of planning and participating in an armed attack on the Ukrainian [parliament]” in 2017.

The DOJ says in the document that US authorities in Kyiv received reports around March 14, 2017, that Lang was detained upon his arrival at a Ukrainian airport because authorities “found something similar to a rifle with a silencer and a full box of ammunition” on him.

Kennedy told BuzzFeed News that he never planned any such attack on Ukraine’s parliament building, calling the accusation “bullshit.” He showed BuzzFeed News his passport, which indicated that he wasn’t in Ukraine at the time the DOJ claimed he was there. But Kennedy did say that Lang had told him about being detained at a Ukrainian airport and found to have gun parts in his luggage. Lang didn’t respond to questions about the alleged incident.

“I do believe the FBI is unfairly demonizing and trying to prosecute us for no real reason other than our involvement in Ukraine,” Kennedy told BuzzFeed News.

Kennedy — who also served for a time as a soldier in the Ukrainian armed forces — said Lang convinced him to join Right Sector in April 2016, and that he stayed only for a couple of months. “When I was there nothing like that happened,” Kennedy said of the alleged war crimes. “We didn’t even take any prisoners the whole time I was there.”


Brendan Hoffman for BuzzFeed News

Lang stands with his partner Anna Osipovich and members of the Right Sector battalion following an appeals hearing on a request by the United States to extradite Lang on murder charges at the Kyiv Court of Appeal on Feb. 23, 2021.

The DOJ and FBI investigation marks the first attempt to hold American volunteer soldiers accountable for their alleged actions in Ukraine. Besides going after alleged war criminals, the extraordinary investigation also ticks another box for the DOJ: a case against far-right extremists. The Biden administration has said fighting extremism is a top priority.

At least two of the other men under investigation could be described as far-right extremists: Kennedy, who was briefly in the US Army, told BuzzFeed News in an interview that he’s now “apolitical,” but he was once a member of the American neo-fascist group Patriot Front and photographed making a Nazi salute. Kleman’s social media presence includes a video of him making a Nazi salute, a photo of a Nazi WWII flag, and posts with white supremacist language. He told BuzzFeed News from his home in Boston that he “was never a Nazi” but is “very into Germany.”

The DOJ appeal document was first leaked by an obscure pro-Russian website called UkrLeaks on April 9, after BuzzFeed News published an investigation into Lang’s alleged involvement in the double killing in Florida and the issue of American extremists fighting in Ukraine. UkrLeaks is run by Vasily Prozorov, a Ukrainian who worked from 1999 to 2018 as a consultant in the country’s security service, the SBU, before defecting to Russia. In a Facebook post in March 2019, the SBU claimed he had been fired for his poor job performance and heavy drinking.

Since arriving in Russia, Prozorov has used UkrLeaks and appearances on state television to push some of the Kremlin’s favorite conspiracy theories about Ukraine. But Prozorov had access to sensitive and classified information, and while he seems to have used some of it to smear Ukraine and his former employer, some things he leaked have checked out. For instance, Prozorov has published information about the SBU detaining pro-Russian Ukrainians and holding them in secret detention centers. And although the security service has vehemently denied using such facilities, Ukrainian journalists, international human rights groups, and the United Nations have investigated the claims, interviewed people who were detained, and found the centers to be real.

Prozorov, who fled Ukraine before the DOJ appeal was sent to Kyiv, told BuzzFeed News the appeal and two related Ukrainian documents were given to him by a source in the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office whom he declined to name.

The bar for charging someone under the War Crimes Act is incredibly high, according to Beth Van Schaack, a law professor at Stanford University who previously served as the deputy to the ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues in the State Department’s Office of Global Criminal Justice. “No US citizen has ever been tried or convicted under the country’s war crimes statute” since it became law in 1996, she told BuzzFeed News.

(One US citizen came close: Boston-born Charles Emmanuel, aka Chuckie Taylor, aka Roy Belfast Jr., the son of Charles Taylor, the former President of Liberia. He led the Liberian Anti-Terrorist Unit that tortured and killed civilians opposed to his father’s rule. His 2008 US conviction for torture committed in a foreign country was the first of its kind. He was sentenced to 97 years in prison.)

Edgar Chen, a former attorney in the DOJ’s Office of Special Investigations, the department’s unit tasked with targeting and prosecuting human rights violators and war criminals, told BuzzFeed News that during his nearly 10 years there he wasn’t aware of any US citizen being investigated for committing a war crime in circumstances similar to the Ukraine case.

“They’re not going to do that unless they think they’ve got the goods,” Chen said, suggesting that the DOJ might see the case against Lang and the other American fighters as its opportunity to finally put the War Crimes Act to use.

One person who has assisted the FBI with the probe told BuzzFeed News that investigators had expressed that very thought to them. Speaking on the condition of anonymity so they could talk about discussions with the federal agents, the person said, “They want to make Craig the first [American] to be tried for war crimes” in the US. ●

Tanya Kozyreva contributed reporting from Kyiv.

Here’s What It Actually Means To Cut $1 Trillion From The Democrats’ Big Social Spending Bill

Democrats will have to choose between greatly watering down all of their policies or giving up on some big promises.

Paul McLeodBuzzFeed News Reporter
Reporting From
Washington, DC


Posted on October 11, 2021, 

Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi conducts a rally to promote climate benefits in the Build Back Better Act.


WASHINGTON — Democrats are facing torturous choices of which social programs to slash or get rid of altogether, as they will have to cut $1 trillion or even $2 trillion out of their signature social spending bill.

While the topline numbers have gotten a lot of attention, there’s been little public discussion about what cutting the Build Back Better Act in half actually looks like: abandoning programs and reforms badly wanted by progressives and centrists alike.

Do you give up on a child tax credit that helped cut the child poverty level in half, or the country’s first universal paid family leave program? Do you drop prekindergarten subsidies or expanding Medicare to cover vision, hearing, and dental? What if you can afford investments in green energy or expanding the Affordable Care Act but not both?

After winning the White House and Congress, Democrats kicked off an ambitious plan to holistically reform America’s social safety net and tackle climate change with massive investments in green energy. The total price tag, including tax credits, was set at $3.5 trillion over 10 years. Now, they’re looking at something around half that.

Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are pushing their party to drastically shrink the size of their Build Back Better Act. It’s not clear what the final number will be but guesses range from $1.5 trillion — Manchin’s proposal — to President Joe Biden’s counteroffer of somewhere over $2 trillion.

One of the top Democratic priorities is universal paid family and medical leave, allowing people to take paid time off due to illness, having a baby, or looking after a sick family member. Estimates peg this at about $550 billion. (All numbers are projected costs over 10 years, which is how Congress calculates the price.

Take that policy and add a few hundred billion to move the country toward green energy, plus around $800 billion to make permanent the universal child tax credit, enacted on a temporary basis earlier this year, that is giving parents up to $3,600 per year for each child. At that point, you’ve pretty much hit your budget cap.

But this hypothetical bill doesn’t include things like expanding the Affordable Care Act to provide health insurance to over 2 million people, long-term care for older adults, universal prekindergarten for 3- and 4-year-olds, funding for schools, and many other prized progressive ideas. To add any of these, you have to either take something else out or shrink it way down.

Democrats have two choices: They can either cut out major planks of the bill or they can winnow each program down, making them skimpier and temporary to fit into the budget. If you only extend the child tax credit for five years and bet that in 2026 the government of the day will extend it again, that brings down the price tag substantially. But if you bet wrong, the tax credit ends.

“If you set up programs so they are automatically going to expire, that creates the risk that they actually do expire,” said Ben Ritz, a director at the Progressive Policy Institute. “I think it’s very problematic for Congress to create a new benefit that people come to rely on and then a few years later it goes away.”

Ritz pointed to the Affordable Care Act signed into law, permanently, by President Obama. Republicans have failed to actively repeal the ACA despite years of vowing to do so. But it would be a very different calculus if they could simply do nothing and let it expire on its own.

Ritz put together a framework of what a roughly $2 trillion Build Back Better Act could look like. It includes:


$800 billion to make the child tax credit permanent.


$600 billion of green investments, including funding for public transit, energy grid modernization, and industry subsidies for utilities that switch to green energy.


$425 billion to expand ACA subsidies and Medicaid eligibility to provide health insurance to 2.2 million people with lower incomes.


$175 billion for prekindergarten, plus some funding for job training.

No estimates of what a $2 trillion plan would look like have come out of Congress, because the party is still fighting over the size of the bill. Sen. Bernie Sanders recently called on Manchin and Sinema to stop hiding behind numbers and say exactly what policies they want cut out of the bill.

“We’ve got 48 senators who support $3.5 trillion. We’ve got two who don’t,” said Sanders. “It is wrong, it is really not playing fair, that one or two people think they should be able to stop what 48 members of the Democratic caucus want, what the American people want, what the president of the United States wants.”

But the Senate being split 50-50 means any single Democratic senator has the power to tank the bill. Manchin has expressed a willingness to compromise, but not to go anywhere near a bill the size of $3.5 trillion. Sinema has said even less about her demands, at least publicly.

Democrats may need to decide whether to cut a slew of smaller programs out of the Build Back Better Act. Affordable housing funding ($332 billion), increased financial assistance for students ($111 billion), child nutrition programs such as free meals at schools ($35 billion), and upgrades to Veterans Affairs facilities ($18 billion) are among the less-talked-about items that flesh out the bill. Many or all of them may need to be jettisoned.

Again, it comes down to the choice of having the bill do a few things well — and permanently — or a great number of things with less funding and on a temporary basis.

Ritz argued that Democrats will have an easier time running on passing a few large, impactful programs, potentially allowing them to pass more in the future.

“It makes sense to have a bill that we can message, say this is what the purpose of the bill is: having an inclusive recovery and focusing on the future,” Ritz said. “Trying to do 50 different programs, I think it’ll come off as a progressive wish list and the purpose gets lost.”

Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said the honest policy debates haven’t begun yet as progressive and centrist Democrats angle for positioning. “It would be great to have the details of what we’re actually talking about,” she said.

Her group doesn’t take a position on which policies should be included, but they’ve made one exception in opposing a contentious tax break referred to by the shorthand SALT.

A group of Democrats and Republicans, dubbing themselves the SALT Caucus, are pushing to raise the cap on the State and Local Tax (thus the acronym) Deduction, allowing filers to save on their federal income tax if they pay high taxes to their local governments. The most vocal Democrats who support the policy tend to come from California, New York, and New Jersey, where constituents would most benefit.

Lifting the SALT cap provides only a small benefit to middle-income earners but can greatly benefit tax filers with over $1 million in income. Budget-wise, it could cost as much as $100 billion per year.

It’s in stark contrast to the rest of the Build Back Better Act. The bill could end up raising about $2 trillion in tax revenue from large corporations and wealthy Americans, depending on what the final text looks like. Even Manchin supports increasing taxes on the rich to pay for social programs.

SALT would do the opposite, cutting into money for social programs to pass a tax cut that disproportionately benefits the wealthy.

A group of House Democrats are vowing not to support the reconciliation bill unless SALT relief is included. It’s one of the many sticking points that have no obvious solution, and with the size and contents of the bill in flux, no one knows the prospects for it getting in. But among all the proposals in the Build Back Better Act, SALT relief is getting among the most pushback.

“It’s the most regressive tax cut basically you could craft,” MacGuineas said. “In an entire package that is designed to help families that need it the most, there’s not a single justification for that one.”