It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Monday, September 12, 2022
Sea lion jumps onto boat to escape killer whales
Sept. 8 (UPI) -- A pair of boaters off the British Columbia coast received a shock when their small vessel was nearly capsized by a sea lion fleeing from killer whales.
Ernest and Viesia Godek said they cut their engine when they spotted a trio of killer whales near their boat while fishing at Pedder Bay, near Victoria.
The pair said they soon heard a banging on the bottom of the boat, followed by the appearance of a sea lion at the side of their craft.
The sea lion then jumped onto the side of the boat in an apparent attempt to escape the killer whales.
"It tipped the boat over to the point where we had to hang on to the gunnels, the water started pouring into the boat ... I was just hoping that we wouldn't totally tip over," Ernest Godek told the Times Colonist.
The boat righted itself and the sea lion plunged back into the water. The couple said it continued to follow them as they headed back to shore.
Photos and video of the encounter were captured by passengers on a nearby whale watching boat.
Mark Malleson, the vessel operator, estimated the California sea lion weighed 700-800 pounds.
"If that animal had landed in the boat, somebody could have gotten seriously hurt, just from the sheer size or from the teeth," Malleson told CTV News.
A pregnant South Carolina woman is 'struggling for the life of her baby' as she serves 4 years in prison after verbal encounter with police during BLM protests, her lawyer says
Sarah Al-Arshani
Demonstrators march on Main St. on June 5, 2020 in Columbia, South Carolina.Sean Rayford/Getty Images
A South Carolina woman got into a verbal encounter with police during a June 2020 BLM protest.
Earlier this year, Brittany Martin was sentenced to four years in prison following the encounter.
Her lawyers are asking a judge to reconsider the pregnant woman's sentence as she faces health issues.
A pregnant South Carolina woman serving a four-year prison sentence after a verbal encounter with police during Black Lives Matter protests is facing declining health, according to an attorney representing her.
Lawyers for Brittany Martin, 34, are petitioning a judge to reconsider her prison sentence. Sybil Dione Rosado, one of Martin's attorneys told CNN that in the past few months, Martin, who is expecting a baby later this year, has lost weight and suffered from several health conditions.
The Associated Press reported that Marin was found guilty earlier this year of breaching the peace in a high and aggravated manner. The charges stemmed from an encounter with police during protests in in June 2020 following the killing of George Floyd.
Rosado told CNN that Martin's remarks to police were along the lines of: "I'm willing to die for the Black, are you willing to die for the blue? This is just a job for you. This is my life."
Martin's lawyers told CNN she wasn't "physically violent or threatening" during the protest.
Rosado, and Martin's sister, Whitney Martin told the AP that Martin was taken to the hospital twice in July. Once for experiencing contractions and another time for going into preterm labor at 25 weeks. Despite being pregnant, Martin lost 12 pounds that month.
The AP reported that Martin in prison was sent to solitary confinement for refusing to cut her dreads. Rosado told the outlet that she's saw scratches on Martin's face as well as a bloody eye during a recent visit. Additionally, the AP citing jail records reported that Martin was sent to detention twice for threatening to inflict harm on an employee and for refusing or failing to obey orders.
"She's spending four years in jail and pregnant and struggling for the life of her baby because she's loud and Black. It's an absolute travesty of justice," Rosado told CNN.
‘Waiting for men to spot prostate cancer symptoms is failing one in three’
David Cox Sun, September 11, 2022 Bill Turnbull, the much-loved BBC Breakfast presenter,
died earlier this month at the age of 66 - Andrew Crowley
LONG READ
Will Hide was 52 when he found out he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. A travel writer who had seen his sources of work dry up during the early stages of the pandemic in spring 2020, Hide volunteered to take part in a University College London Hospitals (UCLH) clinical trial, in which all participants received an MRI scan of their prostate.
“My decision to volunteer in the UCLH trial was driven largely by a desire to do my bit for science as well as the fact that I had nothing much better to do,” says Hide. “At 52, I’d been having an annual check for prostate cancer – PSA [prostate specific antigen] blood tests – for the past five years or so, and my most recent one in December 2019 had shown nothing irregular, so I wasn’t worried at all.”
But a few months later, Hide received a surprise phone call. To his shock he was informed that the MRI had picked up signs of a tumour. “I can’t remember the exact words, just something like: ‘It’s about 6mm long; 90 per cent of it looks slow-growing but 10 per cent isn’t,’ ” he says.
Hide was one of the estimated 48,500 new cases of prostate cancer in the UK every year, a disease that has an annual death toll of 11,700 – more than those from breast cancer. But while mammograms are routinely available on the NHS for all women aged between 50 and 70, there is no such screening programme for prostate cancer.
Last week, former Scotland rugby star Kenny Logan revealed he had also been diagnosed with prostate cancer in February at the age of 50. Logan had been urged by his wife Gabby to do a PSA test which showed elevated levels, leading his doctor to recommend further investigation. “It was a huge shock,” Logan said, speaking on BBC Breakfast, revealing that he underwent surgery to have his prostate removed, but was “95 per cent” back to normal.
Both Hide and Logan were among the lucky ones. Because their disease had been picked up at an early stage, they were able to undergo surgery to have the whole of their prostate removed. This means they have a far greater chance of being cured compared with those for whom the disease has spread to other organs. Gabby and Kenny Logan -
There are many different types of prostate cancer. Around 30 per cent of these cancers are indolent, meaning they would cause little or no problem if left untreated, while many are curable with radiotherapy or surgery.
However, as Johann de Bono, professor of experimental cancer medicine at the Institute of Cancer Research in London explains, around one in four cases of prostate cancer is very aggressive and spreads extremely quickly, making it far more difficult to treat, especially if it is diagnosed at a later stage. This was the case for Bill Turnbull, the much-loved BBC Breakfast presenter who died earlier this month at the age of 66, and who was only diagnosed after the disease had spread to his legs, hips, pelvis and ribs, in 2017.
Much research has been devoted to identifying the subgroups of men who are most likely to be at risk of aggressive prostate cancer and could benefit most from screening. While age is the biggest risk factor – the majority of cases are over 50 – a combination of genetics, ethnicity and lifestyle factors, such as eating a high-fat diet, are also thought to contribute to the risk.
“Genetic changes underlie at least part of the risk of prostate cancer,” says Nick James, consultant clinical oncologist at the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust. “Men of African or African-Caribbean ancestry have roughly twice the risk of white men. Men with a strong family history of prostate cancer at an early age – under 65 – or breast or ovarian cancer in female relatives are also at a higher risk.”
The charity Prostate Cancer Research says key warning signs include difficulty or pain in passing urine, having to rush to the lavatory to pass urine, frequent visits to the lavatory at night, starting and stopping while urinating, and having a constant feeling of having not fully emptied the bladder.
They recommend that men experiencing these symptoms see their doctor. Anyone concerned, for example because of their age or family history, can opt to have a PSA test which measures the levels of the PSA protein in the bloodstream, although this test has come under increasing scrutiny owing to the high number of false positives it yields. Because PSA is secreted by both cancerous and non-cancerous tissue in the prostate, around three in four men with an elevated PSA level will not have cancer, while one in seven men with a normal PSA level will have the disease.
While experts feel that PSA still has a role to play as part of the process which leads to further investigation, more sophisticated screening is needed.
“Currently, it’s the best thing we have,” says Oliver Kemp, chief executive of Prostate Cancer Research. “It’s cheap, and it should be part of the process leading to further investigation. But the issue is the false positives, after which a lot of people are then treated quite aggressively with biopsies.”
However, more advanced screening methods are on the way. While Hide benefited from having an MRI scan as part of his clinical trial, the Surrey and Sussex Cancer Alliance is running a pilot study in which men with elevated PSA readings only undergo a biopsy and further investigation once they have had a multi-parametric magnetic resonance imaging (mpMRI) scan. This is new technology that is being called “the male mammogram” and works by creating detailed images of the prostate which are much higher quality than conventional MRI.
Will Hide - Geoff Pugh
“Around a third of patients with elevated PSA who then have an mpMRI scan do not have prostate cancer and can safely avoid biopsy, which involves inserting a needle into the prostate to take tissue samples,” says Kemp. “The procedure can be uncomfortable and unnecessary for those with low-risk cancers which are unlikely to progress, and it also comes with the risk of infection.”
Because mpMRI is much more cost effective than standard MRI, Kemp feels that if the Surrey and Sussex Cancer Alliance trial proves successful, there is a case for making regular screening available on the NHS for all men deemed to be at greater risk. In the best-case scenario, this could happen by 2024.
For the most aggressive forms of the disease, it seems that genetics play a key role. “Our research has shown that at least one in 10 cases of aggressive prostate cancer is linked to inherited mutations of DNA repair genes,” says de Bono. “Developing new focused prevention strategies for these at-risk men is particularly important. These strategies could, for example, involve genetic screening of men for these high-risk genes, and then offering more frequent monitoring for early signs of prostate cancer where necessary.”
One approach being explored by the Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden Hospital is the use of genetic risk scores and socio-demographic targeting. This would involve giving a DNA test to men believed to be more susceptible to the disease, either because of their ethnicity or family history of prostate cancer, and using the results to calculate their risk. Individuals with a high-risk score could then be recommended for regular mpMRI scans.
“The current way we do things, waiting for men to spot symptoms and get checked by their GP fails at least one in three men,” says James. “GP appointments are hard to get and they don’t offer automatic health checks for prostate cancer.”
Kemp also points to the biotech company GlycoScoreDx, which is developing a simple blood test specifically aimed at detecting aggressive forms of prostate cancer, based on more than a decade of research by scientists at University of Newcastle. This has found that malfunctioning glycans – sugars that coat cells and decorate most proteins – are an important driver of prostate cancer growth and spread, and a test that can detect a unique combination of these glycans could help identify patients at risk of more aggressive disease.
Overall, Kemp feels that the future is positive for identifying prostate cancer early and making it a more treatable disease.
“A national screening programme based on PSA alone would not be viable because it is not considered accurate enough to be justifiable,” he says. “The Surrey and Sussex Cancer Alliance pilot screening programme is important because the evidence generated could support rollout of screening across the UK if successful. In addition, cancers are more likely to be detected earlier, reducing risk for patients.”
Why a Texas health care ruling could have dire impacts on affordability of care
Gianna Melillo Sat, September 10, 2022 at 4:00 AM·6 min read Story at a glance
Under the 2010 Affordable Care Act, employers are required to provide full coverage for certain preventive services.
However, a new ruling out of Texas found coverage of certain services, like pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), violates employers’ rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Should this decision be upheld, experts say it will undermine efforts aimed at preventing a myriad of diseases and conditions, including HIV.
Affordable health care in the United States falls far behind other developed nations and is especially unattainable for certain racial minorities and low-income Americans. A new ruling out of Texas could make matters even worse.
Federal Judge Reed O’Connor struck down Wednesday a key provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that requires employer-sponsored insurance to cover certain preventive services – including pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), a medication that drastically reduces the likelihood of contracting HIV – to ensure patients would not shoulder out-of-pocket costs.
The judge ruled that the provision violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act by requiring people to provide coverage that conflicts with their faith or personal beliefs. The decision, which is expected to be challenged, jeopardizes individual health decisions for the more than 13 million Texans and 150 million Americans overall who have employer-sponsored health insurance.
Higher costs and added barriers for patients
Even before Wednesday’s decision, most Americans vulnerable to HIV infection used PrEP at disproportionately low rates. Overall, 25 percent of the 1.2 million people for whom PrEP is recommended were prescribed it in 2020 – that’s up from 3 percent in 2015. And coverage is not equal, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
White Americans make up 66 percent of PrEP coverage, whereas Black Americans comprise 6 percent of coverage and Latino Americans represent 16 percent of coverage. This is despite Black and Latino Americans accounting for 42 and 27 percent of new HIV diagnoses in 2021. White Americans accounted for 26 percent of new HIV diagnoses.
Gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men are most at risk for HIV, and this is especially true for Black and Latino communities. HIV also particularly affects Black women, transgender women, and people who inject drugs.
Heterosexual men made up 7 percent of new HIV diagnoses and heterosexual women accounted for 16 percent in 2019.
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New HIV infections are also concentrated in the South, where Americans generally lack affordable access to reproductive health care for HIV and sexually transmitted diseases, birth control, abortion and gender-affirming care. In Texas, more than 22,000 people were prescribed PrEP and more than 123,000 people were at high risk for HIV in 2020.
A month’s supply of a brand-name PrEP is around $2,000 without insurance, while a generic version costs $30 to $60 per month. Most insurance packages offer the medication for free.
If the ruling is upheld, communities most vulnerable to HIV infections – many of whom already face discrimination and stigma – would be tasked with overcoming another financial barrier to receiving preventative treatment, Perry N. Halkitis, a dean and professor at Rutgers School of Public Health, told Changing America.
Halkitis is a public health psychologist who has focused most of his work on infectious disease, and is the founder and director of the Center for Health, Identity, Behavior & Prevention Studies at Rutgers University.
“The last thing you want to do is put another obstacle in place, and if that other obstacle is now financial, then there is going to be even more of a likelihood that uptake will be decreased,” Halkitis said.
Financial burden on workplaces and the economy
The new ruling could make medical costs more expensive for workers, employers and the economy, Halkitis says.
That’s because it is ultimately cheaper to prevent HIV than to treat it, and managing chronic conditions is costlier to employers than preventative services. A company would spend more covering chronic diseases like HIV than it would if it also covered preventative care – something it’s incentivized to do not only to keep costs down but also to ensure the health of their employees.
“You take away PrEP then what’s going to happen is that a subset of your workplace will become HIV infected,” Halkitis said. “So, in turn, you’re going to be paying for lifelong medications. The burden to the economy and to the company is much greater in treating HIV than preventing HIV and that is such a clear argument for PrEP, and such a clear argument that would encourage this organization and this judge to uphold PrEP access.”
The Texas decision also risks opening up the door for employers to deny coverage for any preventive service they feel violates their religious beliefs, risking affordable access to screenings for cancer and heart disease, for instance.
“To me, it speaks about the need for a more universal health care system in our country,” Halkitis said. “Where these kinds of decisions by employers are not being made, where my health decisions are being made by me and not by the person that I work for, where people who need jobs can take jobs without fear of repercussion that their employers are going to tell them who to have sex with, how to have sex, and what to do with their bodies.”
The future of HIV and preventative care
While it’s unclear if the ruling would be enforced outside of Texas or the employers challenging the ACA provision, it would have strong implications for preventative care of all kinds.
In his decision, O’Connor ruled against requiring coverage for other preventative services like screenings for colorectal and other cancers, depression, and hypertension — arguing that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force’s system for deciding which services should be fully covered was unconstitutional.
Outside of affecting the ACA, the decision from Texas could also impact the country’s goal of eliminating new infections of HIV by the end of the decade.
In the lawsuit, Texas employers argued that paying for health plans that cover PrEP can “facilitate or encourage homosexual behaviour,” adding they do not want or need the coverage themselves because they “are in monogamous relationships with their respective spouses” and “neither they nor any of their family members are engaged in behavior that transmits HIV.”
But access to PrEP does not lead to homosexual behavior, Halkitis noted, likening the argument to those made in the 1990s that claimed putting condoms in schools would promote teenage sex.
“This notion that somehow we make somebody gay because we give them a medication that prevents them from becoming sick is perhaps the most ludicrous, anachronistic, homophobic and completely atheocratic way of thinking about sexual identity,” he said.
HIV can also be transmitted from positive mothers to their children and through needle sharing.
Notably, since the introduction of PrEP and other viral suppressing medications, which make patients unable to transmit the virus, rates of new HIV infections have decreased, especially in high uptake areas like New York.
In 2019, former President Trump’s administration introduced a plan to eliminate transmission of HIV in the United States by 2030.
But if this decision is upheld, it could undermine that mission, while “the goal of having no new HIV infections by 2030 will be completely, completely a non-reality,” Halkitis said. “This is the last thing we need to get this virus under control.”
Democrats are seizing on a federal judge’s ruling against ObamaCare’s prevention coverage as an opportunity to campaign on preserving health care just two months before the midterm elections.
The ruling on Wednesday by Judge Reed O’Connor in Texas escalates another battle over ObamaCare, and could jeopardize access to preventive care for millions of Americans, including screenings for colorectal and other cancer, depression and hypertension, among many other services.
Running on saving the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has proven effective for Democrats in the past: The party used the GOP’s attempt to repeal the law in 2017 to mount a successful campaign in 2018 to take control of the House. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court’s June decision to overturn Roe v. Wade gave Democrats another health issue with which to galvanize their base — and now it appears they’re looking to build on that strategy with O’Connor’s ruling.
“With the GOP’s utter disdain for our health, safety and freedom, it is only a matter of time that another drug, treatment, vaccine or health service becomes the next target of their extremism,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement shortly after the ruling.
Pelosi also indicated that Democrats will look to tie the ruling directly to the GOP’s “extreme MAGA” agenda and the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
“This extreme MAGA ruling comes just months after the Republican-controlled Supreme Court discarded precedent and privacy in overturning Roe v. Wade. Since then, House Republicans have plotted an unhinged, dangerous campaign to punish our most personal decisions, from abortion care to birth control and more,” Pelosi said.
Frederick Isasi, executive director of the liberal group Families USA, said it’s a “very straight line” between the Supreme Court’s abortion decision and O’Connor’s ruling.
“I think the big signal here is it’s another example … where a small group of folks who have a very ideological, or hardcore religious perspectives are now changing our laws to restrict the freedom of people and their ability to access health care services,” Isasi said.
While issues like inflation, gas prices and immigration have dominated campaign rhetoric on the GOP side, Democrats have been hammering Republicans on health issues like abortion and the cost of prescription drugs. The decision from O’Connor injects more fuel into the fight.
“As a thirty-five-year ovarian cancer survivor, I am outraged that this judge would take us back to the days before the ACA when individuals suffered pain and even death because coverage for routine cancer screenings were not guaranteed without cost-sharing,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) said.
The ruling shows “that conservatives on the bench are on the march to overturn a number of hard won freedoms earned by Americans,” DeLauro said.
O’Connor has a history of ruling against ObamaCare, as well as other Democratic policies. In 2018, O’Connor sided with a coalition of GOP state attorneys general and struck down the entire health law as unconstitutional, a decision that was eventually overturned at the Supreme Court in 2020.
The Biden administration said it was reviewing the ruling, and is expected to appeal. Additional briefings from both sides were due Friday, but O’Connor granted an extension until Sept. 16.
Under ObamaCare, any service or drug that gets an “A” or “B” level recommendation from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), a volunteer panel of experts, must automatically be added to a list of free services covered by insurers.
There are more than 100 services on the list, and experts say the requirement has led to better health outcomes
But O’Connor ruled any services recommended by members of the USPSTF are invalid because they “are unconstitutionally appointed.”
The ruling also specifically targeted the HIV drug regimen known as preexposure prophylaxis, or PrEP. O’Connor said ObamaCare’s requirement that PrEP be fully covered violated the religious freedom of a company owned by Steven Hotze, a well-known Republican donor who has challenged ObamaCare on other occasions.
Hotze argued that being forced to cover PrEP “facilitates and encourages homosexual behavior, intravenous drug use and sexual activity outside of marriage between one man and one woman.”
Katie Keith, director of the Health Policy and the Law Initiative at Georgetown University’s law school, said O’Connor didn’t specify how broad the decision will be. It could apply only to the plaintiffs who filed this lawsuit, or he could strike down the whole ACA provision.
Keith said it was “disheartening” to see another legal challenge to the ACA.
“We know now that access to all of these incredibly important evidence-based preventive services are at risk,” Keith said. “If we lost these provisions, we would really return to a pre-Affordable Care Act era where each individual employer and insurance company can pick and choose what preventive services they want to cover and whether they can charge you cost sharing.”
Health care has not been a winning campaign topic for Republicans in recent cycles. Since failing to repeal the health law in 2017, the GOP has been largely silent on the topic of ObamaCare.
Vulnerable GOP candidates have also lately softened their language on abortion and even tried to scrub references to past comments on the issue from their campaign websites.
Isasi said if Republicans oppose O’Connor’s decision, they need to speak up.
“We know that this is a judge who’s very aligned with Republican politics. He’s very ideological. And it’s incumbent upon conservative members of the [Republican Party] to speak up and say that is too far,” Isasi said.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal says Trump's rhetoric is fueling the rise in threats to Congress members after an armed man showed up to her home and shouted 'go back to India, I'm going to kill you'
Hannah Getahun
Sat, September 10, 2022
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wa.) at her home on Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2022, in Seattle, WashJovelle Tamayo/ forThe Washington Post via Getty Images
Rep. Pramila Jayapal says former President Trump's rhetoric encourages violence against Congress members.
Jayapal released voicemails on Thursday that included threats to "go back to India."
Capitol Police data shows that threats to members of Congress have increased 144% since 2017.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal, who was harassed and threatened outside her home by a man with a gun, says the increase in threats to Congressional members is linked to rhetoric about the 2020 election by former President Donald Trump and other members of the GOP.
In July, an armed man was arrested and charged with felony stalking after camping outside Jayapal's neighborhood and threatening her. One neighbor told police she heard the man shout: "Go back to India, I'm going to kill you."
Jayapal told MSNBC's Ali Velshi on Saturday that she wanted people to understand the connections between stolen election rhetoric and the increased threats that Congressional members are facing.
"I think that what has changed is there's a sense that everything is so unfair and it's been propelled by Donald Trump," Jayapal said. "'The institutions are unfair,' and that the only recourse is to violence and that is an extremely dangerous thing. And we saw it come to fruition on January 6, and now in ways that you know, I've seen outside my door."
On Thursday, Jayapal released voicemails of threats against her and her family. The person in the recording tells Jayapal she is going to get "exactly what you deserve" and tells her to "go back to India."
"Typically, political figures don't show their vulnerability," Jayapal wrote. "I chose to do so here because we cannot accept violence as our new norm. We also cannot accept the racism and sexism that underlies and propels so much of this violence."
Threats to lawmakers in congress have increased by 144% since 2022, according to Capitol Police data shared with Axios. In the first three months of 2022, nearly 2,000 threats made to Congress members resulted in the Capitol Police opening cases.
Congress members like California Rep. Eric Swalwell and Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who is on the House Committee Investigating Jan. 6, have also released threatening voicemails targeting them and their families.
In a Washington Post profile released Thursday, Jayapal recounted her experiences dealing with harassing and threatening voicemails. She said she often wanted to hide the threats because she didn't want people to know how they emotionally affected her.
"But at the same time," Jayapal told the Post, "it's important people understand how ubiquitous this is, and how much a part of our psyche it is taking up."
Muslim Americans see their political clout grow 20 years after 9/11
Shirin Ali and Sarakshi Rai Sun, September 11, 2022
Story at a glance
In the years following 9/11, anti-Muslim sentiment grew in the United States.
From 2000 to 2009, hate crimes against Muslims spiked 500 percent.
Muslim Americans coalesced and in 2020 out of the 1.5 million registered to vote, 71 percent cast a ballot.
The political and cultural power of Muslim Americans has grown in the past 20 years as a result of an expanding voter base and record numbers of candidates running for office at both at the local and national level.
But the rise in political power has come with its difficulties.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks carried out by Al Qaeda on American soil, Muslims living in the U.S. have experienced political and cultural firsts along with an exponential rise in hate crimes, bullying, harassment and racial profiling.
In the years following 9/11, anti-Muslim sentiment grew in the United States.
Wa’el Alzayat, CEO of Emgage, a Muslim American civic group, explained to Changing America that Muslim Americans could have stayed silent in the aftermath of 9/11 as a “way to defend their interests and their freedoms” because of hostile rhetoric.
But eventually, Alzayat said, the community warmed to a more affirmative agenda, engaging in political discourse and becoming an active voter block in U.S. elections.
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By 2020, a record number of Muslim Americans voted and were running for elected office.
Emgage found there were 1.5 million registered Muslim American voters in 2020 and that well over half — 71 percent — cast a ballot. The figure was four percentage points higher than the national average of about 67 percent.
The country has also seen an increase in the number of Muslim candidates and elected officials.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) was the first Muslim elected to Congress in 2007.
In addition, Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) became the first Muslim women to be elected to Congress. The progressive “squad” members are two of the most prominent Muslim voices in American politics, elected in the “blue wave” 2018 midterms during the Trump administration.
A record 81 Muslim American candidates ran for office in 2020 across 28 states and Washington, D.C., according to a report by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
But these milestones have been accompanied by a growing rise in Islamophobic incidents in the U.S.
Data from Brown University revealed that from 2000 to 2009, hate crimes against Muslims spiked 500 percent.
Beyond former President Obama’s presidency, critics contend that former President Trump’s policies exhibited animosity toward the community including his travel ban, which included predominately Muslim countries.
In 2020, the Justice Department (DOJ) found there were 110 anti-Muslim incidents in the U.S., the second highest after anti-Jewish acts.
The DOJ also found that religion was the second-most common reason for single-bias incidents in the U.S.
A Pew Research survey found Republicans increasingly associated Muslims and Islam with violence, with 72 percent of Republicans in 2021 believing Islam was more likely than other religions to encourage violence.
Among Democrats, 34 percent felt the same.
Abdullah Hammoud, the first Muslim American mayor of Dearborn, Mich., told Changing America that there was a sense of urgency among members of the Muslim American community to step up and push back against Islamophobia in a post 9/11 America.
Before becoming mayor, Hammoud ran for a seat in Michigan’s state legislature. He shared that doors were “slammed in his face” when he introduced himself.
Hammoud, a Michigan state lawmaker has won the Dearborn mayoral race, making him that city’s first Arab American mayor. (Robin Buckson /Detroit News via AP)
“I knocked on a neighbor, who was a primary Democratic voter, two blocks from my house at the time. And when I said, ‘I’m Abdullah Hammoud and I’m running for office, he replied, ‘I’m disgusted that you’re my neighbor,’ and slammed the door in my face.”
Hammoud told Changing America that one of the first questions his parents asked him when he shared his intentions to run for elected office was if he would run on the name “Abdullah”.
“Many told me I would never win with a name like Abdullah and told me to change my name to Abe Hammoud,” he shared.
Tlaib and Omar have previously shared that they’ve received violent threats during their brief time in Congress.
During a press conference, Omar played a voicemail she received in which the caller characterized her as a “f—ing Muslim piece of shit” — one hellbent on “taking over our country.”
The Minnesota Democrat published a statement last year that called out the Republican party for not holding their members accountable for anti-Muslim hate and harassment.
“This is not about one hateful statement or one politician; it is about a party that has mainstreamed bigotry and hatred. It is time for Republican Leader McCarthy to actually hold his party accountable,” the 2021 statement said.
Hatem al-Bazian, Director, Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project at University of California, Berkeley said that both Omar and Tlaib experience “constant assault” on their status, personhood and more.
“The attacks are not only from the Republicans but sometimes even from centrists or establishment Democrats, so you can see this in how Islamophobia is the ‘big elephant’ or the ‘big donkey’ in politics and has no party affiliation,” he said.
Attacks on both Omar and Tilab fit into this sense of defining “who is an American” and who’s not, according to al-Bazian.
“It’s constantly trying to delegitimize who they are and in essence their religion and constant demonization because of their religion,” he added.
But despite these challenges, Muslim Americans are not only increasing their presence in politics but also in American pop culture.
Marvel Studios showcased its first Pakistani-American character in its Ms. Marvel series while Netflix has featured Palestinian-American comedian Mo Amer’s scripted show and Indian-American Hasan Minhaj’s stand up specials.
Al-Bazian said that despite representations in cinema and entertainment, they are not a sign prejudice against Muslims has been eradicated.
“For any community to have the space to be able to articulate and narrate stories about themselves is a positive development,” he said. “But if we take inclusion on the screen, and in different settings, as a sign that racism and Islamophobia is at an end, then the Black and Jewish community’s strides in cinema would show that the strong currents of racism still persist.”
He added that there’s still an “avalanche” of negative content out there in both television shows and movies where Muslims are portrayed as terrorists.
Hammoud says that he hopes these “firsts” of Muslim representation are not the last.
“The hope is that they’re not the last to hold that office or to have their own TV shows and films. What I hope is that if my daughter Maryam decides to run for office, I hope that her name is welcomed and it’s not challenged because of who she is,” he added.
“That if somebody with an accent runs for office, people aren’t apprehensive. I think that there’s no office that’s out of sight for Muslim Americans,” he said.
Trump-Appointed Judge’s ‘Originalist’ Claim Is Absurd
David R. Lurie Sat, September 10, 2022 Photo Illustration by Erin O'Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty, Rmesanic/Wikimedia Commons and Wikimedia Commons
During her confirmation hearing to become a federal judge in July 2020, Aileen Cannon, like virtually every GOP nominee, described herself as an “originalist.” Originalists claim to be paragons of judicial restraint, devoted to limiting the scope of their rulings, thereby not veering into the role assigned to the democratically elected branches of government to make laws and decide political and social policy. But Judge Cannon’s recent ruling in Donald Trump’s case against the United States government—ordering the partial shutdown of an investigation into the purloining of national security materials by the former president who appointed her—demonstrates that conservative jurisprudence has devolved into a brazen power grab, at direct odds with our democratic system of government, and the constitutional separation of powers.
Cannon's order may ultimately be voided; but the fact that she issued it will remain as a stark warning about just how far Trump judges and other similarly minded GOP nominees—hundreds of whom have been installed, at all levels of the federal judiciary—are willing to take the very judicial “activism” they claim to abhor to serve radically anti-democratic goals.
In recent decades, GOP judges have (i) selected a president, (ii) remade the electoral process, including by gutting campaign finance laws, as well as the heart of the Voting Rights Act; and (iii) trashed a constitutional fundamental right generations of Americans relied upon.
Now, avowed originalist Judge Cannon, installed during the waning days of the Trump administration, has engaged in one of the most audacious acts of right wing judicial overreach to date: Directly interfering with the current president’s performance of his core, constitutionally assigned, duties to protect national security and enforce the criminal laws enacted by Congress. It is hard to imagine a more brazen act of judicial supremacy.
Cannon's ruling is a very good subject for legal realist analysis. Legal realism was a theory of judicial decision-making developed in the first half of the 20th Century, and initially associated with liberal scholars, who posited that judicial rulings purportedly grounded on abstract legal principles are inevitably actually products of the political and normative views of the judges who issue them.
While not an exponent of realism, Felix Frankfurter, a Harvard Law School professor, and later appointed to the Supreme Court by Franklin Delano Roosevelt,, shared realists’ skepticism about the often unacknowledged motives underlying judicial decisions.
Frankfurter had been perhaps the leading liberal lawyer and scholar of his generation.He courageously led the unsuccessful effort to obtain due process for alleged anarchist terrorists Sacco and Vanzetti during the height of the racially tinged Red Scare that overtook the country during and following World War I. But after joining the Supreme Court in 1939, and initially voting to uphold FDR’s New Deal reforms as enacted by Congress, Frankfurter became an increasingly squeaky wheel on a liberal post-World War II Supreme Court–most notably where issues of school desegregation were concerned.
Frankfurter’s view was that judges must hesitate to move into the purview of the political branches, and therefore he spent much of his career on the bench seeking to police what he viewed as the danger of judicial overreach.
Cannon’s ruling exemplifies just that danger. A realist would say Cannon apparently issued her ruling for career reasons, and that her audience is a future GOP president who might elevate her to a higher court.
In this regard, Cannon appears to be following the strategy employed by some Trump appointees to the Supreme Court, including Neil Gorsuch, who famously argued, in a lower court dissent, that a “textual” reading of a federal safety law permitted an employer to fire a trucker for leaving his damaged trailer during subzero weather to avoid dying of hypothermia. Gorsuch’s dissent was absurdly cruel and nonsensical, but it sure got him noticed by Trump’s judge pickers.
Similarly, Cannon is likely betting that—even though her opinion is being rightfully mocked as sloppy and at odds with the law—it will please, and ensure she is noticed favorably by, those who matter to an ambitious Trump judge: those who select appellate
There is a dark irony to this development, because concerns about the risk of judicial overreach were also a purported foundation of the “original understanding” theory initially advocated by conservative judicial luminaries Robert Bork and Antonin Scalia. And, purportedly, adopted by Judge Cannon herself.
In an odd parallel with realists (who favored empirical approaches to judicial decision-making), originalists purported to ground their rulings on historically driven inquiries into the prevailing “understanding” of a given law or constitutional provision at the time of its enactment. Originalists claimed that their historical approach to adjudication would limit the risk of judicial overreach, by preventing judges from inserting their own normative and political views in their decisions, thereby leaving it to voters and the officials they elect to do heavy lifting of governance and public policy, as they should. Realists are skeptical of such claims, and in the case of self-described originalists on the right, such skepticism has proven to be merited.
Cannon’s claim to be an originalist goes to show how absurdly unmoored supposed originalists, like Cannon and Alito (who was once nicknamed Scalito) have become from the original rationale for originalism. They’re now brazen opportunists, willing to use the thinnest of analytic and factual bases to reach the results they want.
In Alito’s case, his plain goal is to impose reactionary social and political policies on the entire nation, voters’ preferences be darned. In Cannon’s case, the likely goal is simply personal aggrandizement. But, in both cases, the damage to the democratic system, and to the separation of powers that is fundamental to our constitutional system of government, is equally grave.
Frankfurter would be shocked to see how the principle of judicial restraint he hewed to—at the cost of being regularly criticized by his past liberal allies—has been betrayed by right wingers who disingenuously employ rhetoric of restraint to engage in judicial overreach.
It is hard to believe, however, that Antonin Scalia, the patron saint of all right wing originalists, would share the same unhappiness. Scalia was never a particularly principled adherent to the judicial philosophy he championed. He had a curious tendency to consistently “find” that the original understanding of constitutional provisions matched up exactly with his own favored right wing social policies. Scalia’s most outrageous departure from his own originalist theory was in the Bush v. Gore case, where he and four other right wing justices on the Supreme Court employed the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause—which Scalia and others had devoted decades to undermining—as a basis to install George W. Bush in the White House (don’t ask me to explain how). The Court’s “reasoning” was so embarrassingly flimsy that the majority opinion expressly warned against lower courts relying upon it in the future.
Before issuing the decision effectively declaring Bush the winner of the election, the Court ordered a halt to the recount of votes in the state of Florida. Scalia, in a concurrence to that earlier decision, observed that it was important to end the counting of votes, because it risked “casting a cloud upon what [Bush] claims to be the legitimacy of his election.” Put otherwise, the recount risked demonstrating that Gore received more votes.
In her Trump ruling, Cannon curiously echoed Scalia’s reasoning, stating that she was blocking the criminal investigation of Donald Trump in part because of the risk that a review of the evidence could lead to an indictment that could inflict grave “reputational harm” to the former president. Of course it is true that a meritless indictment does great damage to the defendant (and I, as a lawyer, have proudly sought to vindicate the rights of wrongfully accused persons). But assuming that the use of evidence obtained pursuant to a properly issued search warrant will lead to a wrongful indictment, an argument concerned about reputational harm to Trump—like Scalia’s assumption that counting duly cast votes would undermine the “legitimacy” of Bush’s claim to the presidency—is not only absurd, but more than a little disturbing.
Both judicial remarks are emblematic of the now routine overreach that has come to permeate the right wing judiciary, at grave cost to our nation, and its constitutional and democratic order. There is every reason to be concerned that the worst is yet to come.
‘Albino Hunters’ Accused of Kidnapping and Butchering Children
Philip Obaji Jr.
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty/Alamy
ABUJA, Nigeria—Some five hundred villagers gathered in front of a police station in Madagascar’s southeastern district of Ikongo, armed with sticks and machetes.
It was Aug. 29, and they had just learned that four people suspected of kidnapping an albino child and killing the child's mother were to be transferred from the local police station—where they’d been held since the incident occurred a week earlier—to the Tsiafahy maximum security prison in the capital.
Scenes of violence and bloodshed ensued.
“We believed that if these people were taken to Tsiafahy or even left in the [Ikongo] police station, they'll eventually be released and not made to face justice because the police and some of those working in the prison are corrupt,” said one protester, Nomena, who The Daily Beast is choosing to identify by his first name to protect him from possible retribution. “We wanted the police to hand these people [the suspects] to the villagers… or to the military, who we know can handle the matter without being biased.”
“Criminals cannot continue to kill albino children in Ikongo while adults like us just keep quiet and not do anything about it,” Rajo, a 31-year-old auto mechanic who took part in the protest, told The Daily Beast. “We don't trust the police to do what is right because some officers have been bribed by these criminals.”
Reports of abductions, attacks and killings of children with albinism are far too common throughout Madagascar. In the past two years, more than a dozen attacks and killings of albino children have been recorded across the impoverished country in incidents the United Nations said probably occur more often than is being officially reported. According to the UN, the attacks are expected to increase as dangerously false beliefs that the body parts of albino people can be used in rituals to bring wealth and protection continue to grow.
In recent months, according to a number of locals, numerous albino people—some as young as 4—have been kidnapped or killed in and around Ikongo, based on the myth that concoctions mixed with their body parts bring good fortune. Their butchered bodies are often found later without parts like skin, hair, breasts, limbs, nose, eye or genitals depending on the nature of the rituals. In some cases, grave robbers have dug out corpses to retrieve dead bodies of albinos.
One such attack occurred early this year when a 4-year-old albino boy was kidnapped one afternoon while playing with his peers outside his family's compound, according to locals who said his mutilated body was later found lying on a street in an area outside Ikongo. The incident, they said, was reported to police who claimed to have arrested a male suspect but later said the suspect was let go because they couldn’t prove he was responsible for the abduction.
“We don’t believe anyone was arrested at all because there were some officers who told us in confidence that they never saw the suspect at the station,” said Rajo.
The attacks, according to those with knowledge of how they are carried out, are often blatant. In some cases, kids are seized from their parents in broad daylight while walking on the streets. Compounds are attacked and people are kidnapped regardless of the hour. In a few instances, fingers have been pointed at family members and close friends. Even police officers have been accused of such crimes.
Most of the attacks on people with albinism, a genetic disorder that prevents the skin from producing enough melanin, occur in impoverished areas with low education levels and strong superstitious beliefs.
“Attacks on albinos even happen right in front of security officers who look the other way,” Dorion, a 40-year-old welder in Ikongo who took part in the Aug. 29 protest, told The Daily Beast. “No one is bothered about protecting albino people here.”
In March, according to Darion, the 6-year-old albino daughter of his close friend was snatched while standing right in front of her home outside of Ikongo. Her parents allegedly tried to fight the three unarmed attackers off, but without success. “Policemen stood just 50 meters away watching without making any attempt to intervene,” Darion alleged.
The Madagascar National Police did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast's request for comments.
A Madagascan woman, who once lived in Ikongo with two of her albino daughters, told The Daily Beast that people with albinism, a condition that is said to affect as many as 1 in every 1,400 people in Africa, are often forced to remain indoors in order to avoid attacks. “If you get noticed as an albino, your home could be visited by kidnappers,” said Marie Ramanantsoa, who said her daughters narrowly escaped being kidnapped after she and her neighbors fought off body-part hunters who came for her girls two years ago.
The kidnapping of albino children, according to Ramanantsoa, who now lives in Nigeria, has become a lucrative business for hunters who traffic dismembered body parts to other parts of East Africa, where they are also used in similar witchcraft rituals.
“Someone in Ikongo told me I could make thousands of U.S. dollars if I sold my daughter to a body-part trader in Malawi, where the demand is high,” said Ramanantsoa. “If these body-part hunters can't steal your child, they'll offer you money to take them away.”
For Madagascans who are against the continued killing of albino children for rituals, the best way to fight the crime is to ensure that those who are caught in the act are immediately made to face justice.
Futuristic military dreams of an Iron Man exoskeleton suit might be giving way for something simpler: a lightweight wearable to help with back pain.
The new suit, which weighs just three pounds, is a soft harness that soldiers strap around their shoulders and legs. Soldiers can press a button on the suit by their left shoulder, which activates the straps running along their back to help ease the burden when lifting heavy objects like artillery rounds, boxes or guns.
Its name is a mouthful, dubbed the Soldier Assistive Bionic Exosuit for Resupply, or SABER. It is developed by the U.S. Army and Vanderbilt University, and slated to be deployed in the field in 2023.
SABER is a departure from the clunky, robotic "warrior suits" the military has designed in the past, and is instead a lightweight, flexible accessory soldiers can wear while moving heavy machinery or artillery around. Creators say this approach is better, because it solves a specific problem soldiers have while not getting in the way.
"[The Army] initially tried to create Iron Man," Karl Zelik, a lead designer for SABER and associate professor of mechanical engineering at Vanderbilt University, said. "They had these full-body robotic systems that hoped to do everything but ultimately effectively did nothing because they [were] too bulky and heavy and complex and costly . . . This exosuit is about as far away from Iron Man as you can get."
Back pain is widespread in the Army and has a significant impact on operations. Lower back injuries result in more than 1 million lost, or limited, service days for soldiers each year, according to the U.S. Army Public Health Center. Roughly 460 soldiers are diagnosed with back overuse injuries every day, U.S. Army data shows.
To solve that, the military turned to its Pathfinder project - which aims to innovate Army operations by having soldiers collaborate with universities - and invested $1.2 million into creating the SABER prototype suit.
To date, roughly 100 soldiers have tested the suit at three different Army bases. In May, 11 soldiers with the Army's 101st Airborne Division used the SABER exoskeleton suit while on a training mission at Fort Knox, which required them to lift heavy boxes of ammo and move a howitzer gun multiple times a day, Zelik said.
"Lifting 60-pound rounds you get worn out," Dale Paulson, a private first class with the 101st Airborne Division who tested the suit, said in a statement. "Wearing the suit really helped a lot, especially with getting the rounds out of the back of the truck."
Now, the design of the suit moves from Vanderbilt University and the Pathfinder project to a spinoff corporation called HeroWear that will manufacture the device, Zelik said.
The challenge ahead, Zelik added, is getting the product approved through the Army's "very complicated" acquisition process. If that happens, the effects could be significant.
"You have a lot of people who are getting hurt," he said. "We have the opportunity to help prevent some of those injuries."
