Breonna Taylor Is On The Cover Of O Magazine — The First One Ever Without Oprah

"Breonna Taylor had dreams," Oprah Winfrey said. "They all died with her the night five bullets shattered her body and her future."

Julia Reinstein BuzzFeed News Reporter


Posted on July 30, 2020, at 11:58 a.m. ET

For the first time in its 20-year history, Oprah Winfrey will not appear on the cover of the latest issue of O Magazine.

oprahmagazine

Verified

For the first time in 20 years, @oprah has given up her O Magazine cover to honor Breonna Taylor. She says, “Breonna Taylor. She was just like you. And like everyone who dies unexpectedly, she had plans. Plans for a future filled with responsibility and work and friends and laughter. Imagine if three unidentified men burst into your home while you were sleeping. And your partner fired a gun to protect you. And then mayhem. What I know for sure: We can’t be silent. We have to use whatever megaphone we have to cry for justice. And that is why Breonna Taylor is on the cover of O magazine. I cry for justice in her name.” Tap the link in our bio to read more about Oprah’s tribute to Breonna—and her recent conversation with her mother, Tamika Palmer. Breonna: This one’s for you 🙏🏽 The September issue will be available wherever you buy or download your magazines on 8/11. (🎨: @alexis_art)

Instead, an image of Breonna Taylor — who was killed by police in March — is being featured.

“Breonna Taylor. She was just like you," Winfrey said in an announcement of the cover on Thursday. "And like everyone who dies unexpectedly, she had plans. Plans for a future filled with responsibility and work and friends and laughter."

Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was asleep in her bed on March 13 when police broke down the door of her Louisville home as part of a drug investigation. Thinking the police were home invaders, Taylor's boyfriend fired his weapon. Police then fired at Taylor, who was unarmed, eight or more times.

One of the officers, Brett Hankison, was fired for misconduct. The other two other officers, Sgt. Jon Mattingly and Myles Cosgrove, were placed on administrative reassignment. None have been arrested or charged in connection with her death.

For months, calls to "arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor" have been a constant refrain at protests and on social media.

Taylor was an emergency room technician with a bright future, her family told BuzzFeed News in June. She was working toward buying a house and starting a family with her boyfriend, and she had plans to go back to school to get her nursing degree.

In a tribute to Taylor, Winfrey shared details about how her loved ones will remember her.

"Breonna Taylor loved cars and treated her 2019 Dodge Charger like a trusted friend," Winfrey wrote. "Breonna Taylor loved chicken any way you could cook it. Breonna Taylor put hot sauce on everything, especially eggs. Breonna Taylor appreciated every kind of music and the dances that went along. Breonna Taylor treated all her friends like besties. Breonna Taylor was a force in the life of her 20-year-old sister."

"Breonna Taylor had dreams," she said. "They all died with her the night five bullets shattered her body and her future."


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Salvador Hernandez · July 15, 2020

Julia Reinstein is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.

Obama Used His John Lewis Eulogy To Condemn Trump's Response To The Portland Protests

Barack Obama gave a powerful eulogy for Rep. John Lewis at his funeral service.

]Tasneem NashrullaBuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on July 30, 2020

Alyssa Pointer / AP



Barack Obama used his eulogy at the funeral for Rep. John Lewis on Thursday to compare President Donald Trump's sending of federal officers to quash protests in Portland, Oregon, to the tactics of George Wallace, the segregationist Alabama governor who sent state troopers to violently break up peaceful civil rights demonstrations in the 1960s.


Lewis, a civil rights icon who died on July 17 at age 80, was nearly beaten to death in Selma by Alabama troopers authorized by Wallace to stop a historic march for voting rights on March 7, 1965, in what came to be known as Bloody Sunday.


Speaking at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Obama also compared the current use of force by police against Black people to the racist actions of Bull Connor, the commissioner of public safety in Birmingham, Alabama, in the 1960s who was known for using fire hoses and police dog attacks against civil rights activists in Alabama.

"Bull Connor may be gone, but today we witness with our own eyes police officers kneeling on the necks of Black Americans," Obama said, referring to the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis.

"George Wallace may be gone, but we can witness our federal government sending agents to use tear gas and batons against peaceful demonstrators," he added.



BuzzFeed News@BuzzFeedNews
Barack Obama at John Lewis' funeral: "Even as we sit here, there are those in power doing their darndest to discourage people from voting"06:14 PM - 30 Jul 2020
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Wallace, a Democratic politician and the 44th governor of Alabama, was a staunch segregationist who, as Lewis wrote in a 1998 New York Times opinion piece, "fought the civil rights movement with every fiber of his being."

"He was a demagogue whose words and actions created a climate that allowed for violent reprisals against those seeking to end racial discrimination," he wrote.

In March 1965, civil rights leaders, including Lewis, planned to lead a 54-mile march of around 600 activists from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery to protest a Black man's fatal shooting by troopers and to demand full voting rights for Black Americans.

Wallace, citing concerns of traffic flow, ordered state troopers "to use whatever measures are necessary to prevent" the march.

"Such a march cannot and will not be tolerated," Wallace said during a press conference at the time, according to a newspaper clipping from the Los Angeles Times.

Cameras captured state police violently breaking up the demonstration, using tear gas and clubs to beat up hundreds of marchers. Lewis, who said he nearly died that day, suffered a fractured skull, among other injuries.




Uncredited / AP, AP Photo/File

In Portland, dozens of widely shared videos have captured federal officers quashing what had been largely peaceful Black Lives Matter protests by using tear gas, "less lethal" munitions, and batons.


Zane Sparling@PDXzane
Here’s the longer version of the protester being struck repeatedly by federal police tonight in Portland06:17 AM - 19 Jul 2020
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Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP

A demonstrator tries to shield himself from tear gas deployed by federal agents during a Black Lives Matter protest at the Mark O. Hatfield US Courthouse in Portland, Oregon, July 29.

Trump has repeatedly described protesters in Portland as "anarchists and agitators" and emphasized the need for federal troops to "protect" federal property in the city.

But the Trump administration agreed on Thursday to begin withdrawing federal officers from Portland as long as Oregon authorities take steps to protect federal buildings.

In the 1998 Times piece, Lewis wrote that when he met Wallace in 1979, he was a "changed man" who acknowledged his bigotry and "wanted to be forgiven."

Lewis wrote a final opinion piece for the New York Times prior to his death, which was published Thursday to coincide with his funeral. In it, the late Democratic lawmaker compared Black Lives Matter to the civil rights movement of his era.

"When historians pick up their pens to write the story of the 21st century," he wrote, "let them say that it was your generation who laid down the heavy burdens of hate at last and that peace finally triumphed over violence, aggression, and war."

MORE ON THIS
Moving Photos Show John Lewis Being Carried Over The Edmund Pettus Bridge For The Last Time

Tasneem Nashrulla · July 26, 2020

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The Photos From Portland This Week Look Pretty Dystopian

Kate Bubacz · July 23, 2020

Tasneem Nashrulla is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.

Omaha Police Arrested An Entire Black Lives Matter March. Protesters Said That’s Just Fired Them Up.

A new generation of leaders is looking to change how the city protests. “Omaha isn’t a city that’s known for its resistance.”

Amber Jamieson BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on July 31, 2020


Anna Reed / AP
Protesters march to the Old Market in Omaha, June 3. He and others were demonstrating against the death of James Scurlock.

Police in Omaha, Nebraska, trapped an entire Black Lives Matter protest march on a bridge last Saturday night, funneling all 120 people, including journalists and a legal observer, into police custody and long stretches in jail.

They shot pepper balls at protesters. They tackled the march leader, Bear Alexander, and “started kneeing me in the stomach, kneeing me in the ribs,” he told BuzzFeed News. By the end of it all, every protester was charged.

“It’s psychological warfare,” said Alexander, 23, who is a leader at ProBLAC, a new local Black-led protest group. “They wanted to discourage any future thought of doing direct action.”

Instead, it’s had the reverse effect. Organizers and protesters recently activated by the Black Lives Matter movement in Omaha told BuzzFeed News they are more determined than ever to take to the streets.

Facebook: video.php



Now, four members of the Progressive Black-Led Ally Coalition, or ProBLAC, are currently in Portland, Oregon, where federal officers have brutalized protesters for weeks, to learn best practices for protesting and organizing.

On Thursday, a workshop organized in part by the American Civil Liberties Union offered legal advice to the 120 protesters facing charges.

And earlier this week, protesters testified at a city council hearing about funding night vision goggles for the Omaha police, calling on the city government to slash the police budget.

It has been a long and hard summer of protest in Omaha, where the movement’s new leaders are reacting to the huge cultural forces shaping the nation while fighting the entrenched cultural forces embodied in the state’s now-defunct tourism slogan, “Nebraska Nice.”

“‘Nebraska Nice’ is not protesting. ‘Why would you ruin someone’s Saturday morning?’ ‘Nebraska Nice’ is not talking about race. ‘Why would you do that? Think about all the good things we have in Omaha,’” said Halley Taylor, a 34-year-old biracial Black woman who works as an English teacher at Nebraska’s largest public high school. “It is a cancer.”

Saturday’s march was the first one Alexander has ever led, and it was the first in Omaha since early June. It took place shortly after a white bar owner shot and killed James Scurlock, a 22-year-old demonstrating during the first weekend of Black Lives Matter protests after police killed George Floyd in Minneapolis.


For the protest movement, Scurlock’s death — one of their own, during a demonstration calling for an end to violence against Black bodies — was a major shift.

Jake Gardner, a white bar owner, stood armed outside one of his businesses in the Old Market neighborhood during the protests. After an altercation with two men, Gardner began shooting — he later told authorities they were “warning shots” — and Scurlock, who was not part of the original altercation, jumped on his back to stop him. Gardner shot and killed him. Multiple associates have since come forward to say Gardner was known for making racist comments. Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine declined to charge Gardner, announcing that his actions were in “self-defense.” After public outcry and protest, Kleine announced on June 3 that he would petition for a grand jury.

Even though Scurlock was a young Black father who many believe jumped on Gardner to protect others, protests in his name didn’t begin straight away.

“The night James Scurlock died, the next day we didn’t do anything. It goes to show the type of city Omaha is,” Alexander said. “We were told by our local Black leaders to not do anything — to calm down and go home and to rest, and to let them all handle it.”

Alexander calls himself “a prime example of systematic racism.” At age 20, he spent a year in state prison for selling marijuana. He’d been a third-year college student, wanting to be a teacher, but the felony charge ensured that was impossible, so he learned videography.

The 2020 Black Lives Matter movement shifted his life.

“Me going to prison, it didn't fuel me enough,” said Alexander. “It added a little fire in me, added knowledge and perspective. Those George Floyd protests were what really, really got me. That’s just what took me into hyperdrive.”

Now he’s determined to help lead the movement in Omaha. “Omaha isn’t a city that’s known for its resistance,” he said. “It’s almost a city of obedience.”


Halley Taylor
Halley Taylor and her little sister hold protest signs.


Taylor, the English teacher, agreed. “Nebraska Nice,” she said, is evidence of the community’s history of upholding the status quo.

“Because of the toxicity of the message of ‘Nebraska Nice,’ what you do not see is a historic culture of protesting here,” she told BuzzFeed News.

Until this summer, Taylor’s activism had been strictly in the classroom, where she leads her school’s “Young, Gifted, and Black” group and teaches her students to stand up against injustice.


It was watching videos of her students and other young people being brutalized by police during the May’s George Floyd demonstrations that compelled her to drive 30 minutes to the protest with water and supplies.

“I saw them screaming for help,” Taylor said. “Begging to be treated humanely by police officers treating them like rag dolls. As a teacher that was horrifying.”

That first protest she was teargassed and shot with pepper balls. The next night, she was one block away from Scurlock in the Old Market area when he was killed.

That shooting, she said, “gave us an opportunity to directly use this injustice he faced to continue why we are protesting.”

“To continue why we were there in the first place — to continue, period,” she said. “This is my Black life, too.”

Taylor grew up in West Omaha, one of the few biracial families in the predominantly white and wealthy area. It’s the same part of town that Kleine lives in, and where she spent 12 days protesting him in June.

For 36 straight days — in response to the 36 hours it took the Douglas County attorney to decide not to press charges after Scurlock was killed — protesters stood outside Kleine’s gated community in West Omaha. The “Justice for James Scurlock” protests were organized by Culxr House, a local creative group and event space.


Cole Christensen
Cole Christensen, whom police shot with pepper balls last Saturday night, volunteered as a shift leader during the Scurlock protests, attending 34 days. The 28-year-old knew the man who killed Scurlock personally. He said knowing Gardner’s racist background and that he hasn’t been charged yet moved him into action.

“The message in our eyes being sent to everyone in Omaha is ‘If you are wealthy and white and bring this city money through multiple tacky bars, we will give you a different set of rules, and this is your playground,’” said Christensen, who is white. “We don’t find that acceptable.”

Saturday’s protest was one of many held around the country in solidarity with Portland — but local organizers ensured it was also to honor Scurlock. “We will stand in solidarity with Portland as a call to action to end police brutality while also demanding JUSTICE FOR JAMES SCURLOCK,” read ProBLAC’s announcement.

Protesters gathered on Farnam Street in Midtown at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, an area with more foot traffic and businesses than where protests are traditionally held. After an hour of speeches and chants, Alexander led the group of 150 to 200 on a march through the streets.

Omaha police, in a timeline released Wednesday, said the event’s organizer “did not contact police for safety assistance and had not obtained a parade permit.”

ProBLAC did not work with police nor inform them of their plans in advance — that’s the point. “We will never ask the oppressor how to protest or when to protest against their oppression,” Alexander said.


“This is not a parade,” Taylor said. “This is a protest.”

During the protest, police drove ahead and blocked off cross streets to keep everything orderly. But police said the very act of protesters being in the streets caused them to shut the demonstration down.

“This is the Omaha Police Department; this has been declared an unlawful assembly,” an officer said, according to the police timeline. “You are all subject to arrest. Failure to disperse now will result in your arrest.” Police announced it over a cruiser’s speaker system 10 times between 8:50 p.m. and 9:09 p.m.

Then, 27 minutes passed, and protesters marched an additional 1.2 miles. They were one block from their end point, where the plan, they said, was to hold a minute of silence for Scurlock and then go home. It’s there police used a “kettle” maneuver — condensing a group of people and sometimes funneling them in one direction — with their cruisers on a bridge over the interstate.

Police confronted the protesters.

“It looked like they were ready to go to war,” said Riley Wilson, a 31-year-old law student and veteran who attended the protest as a legal observer. “They had weapons pointed up at people and they said, ‘Everyone is getting arrested; you’re all getting arrested.’”

There was no warning about mass arrests or a call to disperse before arrests began, according to the police’s timeline and eyewitnesses.

When asked why people were arrested, Omaha Police Capt. Mark Matuza told the Omaha World-Herald, "It leaned toward the potential of getting violent." Police also said some construction barrels and barricades had been placed by protesters to stop police cruisers following them. Wilson disputed the police narrative: “There was no violence, no property damage, no fires, no vandalism. Nothing.”

Police also told the World-Herald on Sunday that they deployed one pepper ball, a “less lethal” form of ammunition, and rubber bullets that also contained a chemical irritant.

But eyewitness video shows multiple shots were fired. The timeline released Wednesday by police acknowledged that “PepperBalls,” plural, were deployed.

Christensen, who was at the front of the march when arrests began, sent BuzzFeed News photos that show four separate injuries from pepper balls across his body.

“I was bleeding through my shirt the entire night I was in jail,” Christensen said. The chemical irritant in the pepper balls remained all over his body and mask while he was detained. He could not remove it, even with multiple showers and bottles of soap after returning home.

“It was unreal how aggressive these officers were,” he said.

Police kept Wilson and protesters on the bridge for two hours before leaving them waiting another four hours in a parking lot outside the correction facility and charging them, he said. In that time, their hands were still in zip ties and they were not given any food and only occasional water. Minors were also detained with them, he added.

Facebook: RileyWilson
When Wilson was arrested, he was wearing a high-visibility yellow vest with the words “legal observer” written across it. He spent 22 hours in custody.

Alexander also spent 22 hours in police custody, most of that in solitary confinement. “It was really diminishing and demoralizing,” he said. At one point, he feared he’d been forgotten or that legal services had been unable to help.

A reported computer delay at the Douglas County Correctional Center meant some protesters were imprisoned up to 24 hours, kept in cramped holding cells with more than 40 people and overflowing sewage.

“A deliberate decision was made by [the] Omaha Police Department. The process was as slow as it could possibly be,” said Wilson, a second-year law student at Creighton University. “They could have ended that night and nobody could have been harmed or injured, and they made a willful decision to do what they did.”

Wilson said that when a doctor at the correctional facility was giving him a medical check, a corrections officer leaned in and said to the doctor: “What percentage of these guys do you think are going to do this again after tonight?”

The correctional officer replied to herself, Wilson said: “I bet zero. I bet they’ll see the $500 [bail] and decide it’s not worth it.”

“When she said that, it cemented in my mind the way the whole process is being treated is just to make it as slow and arduous and difficult as possible, and do that deliberately to send a message,” Wilson said. “To make it clear, ‘if you're going to protest the police, if you’re going to protest us, this is the price you’ll pay.’”

After the arrests on Saturday night, the ProBLAC members at the Portland protests suggested that Omaha had to be back out again in the streets the next day.

“They told us, ‘Why aren’t you out? You need to be protesting right now,’” Alexander said. “Omaha just isn’t ready for that — protests back to back to back to back.”

He’s currently organizing a protest calling for the city to defund the police on Aug. 11, during a public hearing on the city’s 2021 budget.

“We have a ways to go,” he said, “but we’re getting there.”

Riley Wilson is with Stacy Gravning and 33 others.

July 27 at 8:52 PM · 

As some of you may or may not have heard, I was arrested by the Omaha police over the weekend while I was acting as a legal observer during the protest that took place between the Midtown and Downtown areas.

As a legal observer, I was wearing a yellow reflective vest clearly marked with "LEGAL OBSERVER" on both the front and back. I am bound to the same laws as any other citizen, and for this reason, I was very careful to adhere to all applicable laws as I observed a protest as it was occurring, not taking part in it. This means I kept on the sidewalk, observed all crosswalk signs, etc., however, none of this mattered to Omaha police when an officer grabbed me by the upper arm/shoulder and kick swiped me to the ground and yelled at me and others to stay down.

As the protest moved back towards Midtown, and was only blocks away from where it started, the police, comprised of Omaha SWAT and Omaha Police Gang Unit members, blocked the protesters, journalists, and myself in on both sides of an overpass bridge and proceeded to conduct mass arrests. They pointed weapons at the crowd, shot pepper bullets at people, and indiscriminately arrested those in the area. Among some of the first to be attacked by the Omaha police was Mark Benjamin Vondrasek and Bear Alexander. I heard one officer bragging to a group of predominately women who were zip-tied and on the ground that he was strong enough to beat any of them up.

I, along with roughly 100+ protesters, were zip-tied for approximately 6 hours. During this period, protesters were denied water for a long period of time, and one protester even passed out, hit his head on the concrete, and was hospitalized, before eventually being brought back to Douglas County Corrections. Trans individuals were placed in solitary confinement (ostensibly for their own protection). At one point, 43 of us were placed in Holding Cell 1, a holding cell fit for perhaps 15 to 20 people maximum if I had to guess. The cell became increasingly hot, and request after request for keeping the door open for fresh, cool air was denied. One of the correction officers told the women being held in Holding Cell 6 that their conditions could be blamed on "Sinéad O'Connor," referencing Taylor Leigh.

Despite being eligible for bail, many of our friends, family, and The Nebraska Left Coalition (NLC) were unable to actually pay for people's bail, as they were told that the "system was down." I would like to thank NLC for their assistance this weekend. So many of us in jail were very thankful for their nonstop work on the outside to ensure that our bail was posted. If you can make a donation to them, know that your money is going to a good cause. In addition, I would also like to thank Peyton Zyla (who should be credited for the video below), Jazari Kual of Kualdom Creations, and Melanie Buer for documenting the events that took place on Saturday night.

All in all, I was detained for roughly 22 hours before finally being released shortly after 7pm on Sunday night.

For those who have told so many of us for so long that they do not disagree with the message that we offer, but simply disagree with the tactics and wish to see peaceful protests over violent riots, this is exactly the type of protesting you should be applauding. Acts of civil disobedience that bring attention to the most abhorrent acts of our government are noble and deserve the respect of any decent human.

The Omaha police arrived to the scene ready to escalate and harm people who were taking part in a peaceful protest; they made the willful decision to cause harm to peaceful protesters when they had the opportunity to escort protesters along the route and ensure the safety of drivers and protesters alike, but they did not. If you truly believe that violence is not the answer, I hope to hear you make a forceful stand against the behavior of Omaha police that we all witnessed in our city this weekend.

The police continue to be the source of the problem, which is exactly why it is so necessary for us to defund the police, with a move towards abolition, and reallocate those resources to actual programs within our city that help people, not hurt them, such as affordable housing, libraries, healthcare, skills training and jobs programs, education, mental health resources, crisis and substance abuse counselors, and social workers. There is a better future for our city, and it can begin when we choose to make a policy decision that elects help over harm and people over profit.

Lastly, if you were arrested on Saturday night or know somebody who was, please let me know so that I can tag you/them in this post.

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“Flat-Out Unconstitutional”: Federal Officers In Unmarked Vans Are Snatching People Off The Streets In PortlandCraig Silverman · July 17, 2020

Amber Jamieson is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.

WWF Says It Is “Troubled” By An Alleged Human Rights Violation At A Park With A History Of Violence

“Conservation should never come at the expense of human rights and well-being.”

Katie J.M. Baker BuzzFeed News Investigative Reporter

Tom Warren Investigations Correspondent

Posted on July 31, 2020,

Nurphoto / Getty Images



Sauraha, Chitwan National Park, Nepal, 2019.


After guards at a wildlife park funded by the World Wide Fund for Nature were accused of killing a 24-year-old Nepali man earlier this month, the leading conservation charity said it will "advocate for diligence" in the investigation.

The case bears striking resemblance to another alleged killing in Chitwan, highlighted in a 2019 BuzzFeed News investigation into the beloved megacharity’s funding of guards accused of human rights abuses. The series led WWF to overhaul its human rights policies, commission a sweeping internal review of its practices, and promise to take “swift and appropriate action” to address any “shortcomings uncovered by the review.”


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Raj Kumar Chepang died on July 22 after he was allegedly tortured by army personnel who help patrol the park, the Kathmandu Post reported.

The week before Kumar’s death, he and his friends were briefly detained by the army for collecting Ghongi, a type of snail considered a delicacy, the Post reported. His father told the newspaper that Kumar complained of “physical discomfort” after the army released him and later in the week went to the hospital, where he died. Police said they are waiting on the autopsy report which will confirm the cause of death.


Courtesy Chepang Family
Raj Kumar Chepang

A friend who said he was also detained told the newspaper the soldiers had beaten them, and also forced them to carry heavy wooden logs and do 100 push-ups. The Nepal army denied torturing or beating them.

WWF is "very troubled by these reports" and has “reached out to government authorities to understand the events that took place and urge that they are properly investigated,” a spokesperson told BuzzFeed News. “We understand the Government of Nepal has commenced such an investigation.”

“In our ongoing dialogue with government officials, WWF has emphasized that conservation should never come at the expense of human rights and well-being,” the WWF spokesperson added. “WWF has been and intends to remain in close contact with the Government of Nepal and advocate for diligence as they investigate these events and take appropriate steps to bring any perpetrators to justice.”

Chitwan National Park did not respond to a request for comment.

Multiple human rights groups have launched their own investigations, which will also probe the park’s alleged involvement in the forceful eviction of an Indigenous settlement living near its borders. Chitwan officials set fire to two huts, one of the organizations said in a statement, and destroyed eight others using elephants, leaving villagers homeless in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic.

“WWF must investigate this case seriously and ensure family justice,” said Praveen Kumar from THRD Alliance, one of the groups investigating Kumar’s death.

“The army only cares about animals,” said Birendra Mahato, the chair of the Tharu Cultural Museum and Research Center. “They are also supposed to support local people, but they are not serious about supporting marginalized communities.”

BuzzFeed News has previously detailed WWF’s decadeslong support for the armed guards that fight poaching at Chitwan National Park. During that time, Indigenous villagers have accused the guards of beatings, torture, sexual assaults, and killings. Park officials have confiscated their firewood and vegetables, they allege, and forced them into unpaid labor.

In 2006, several Chitwan anti-poaching guards were charged with murder after they arrested Shikharam Chaudhary without evidence and allegedly tortured him to death. Afterward, WWF’s staff on the ground in Nepal leaped into action — not to demand justice, but to lobby for the charges to disappear. When the Nepalese government dropped the case months later, the charity declared it a victory in the fight against poaching. WWF Nepal continued to fund the park and work closely with the rangers who were accused of his killing.

WWF Nepal later hired one of them to work for the charity. It handed a second, Kamal Jung Kunwar, a special anti-poaching award. By then Kunwar had written a tell-all memoir that described in detail how he used waterboarding as an interrogation technique.

Kunwar’s photo appeared in a January 2020 WWF Nepal blog post about the ongoing work the charity is doing to help fight poaching. WWF removed the post after BuzzFeed News reached out for comment.

WWF Nepal’s website says Chitwan National Park is funded in part by the United States Agency for International Development. USAID did not respond to a request for comment by press time. The charity doesn’t disclose how much money it spends on paramilitary anti-poaching forces and law enforcement.

American taxpayers have spent millions of dollars financing WWF-backed forces in areas where guards have been accused of rape and murder, according to documents obtained by BuzzFeed News. Some of the funds have gone to parks where WWF knew guards were accused of brutal abuses against local villagers — not the international poaching kingpins the charity says are its target.

The BuzzFeed News investigation found a pattern of abuses in national parks not just in Nepal but across Asia and Africa. Top executives at the World Wide Fund for Nature had personally reviewed detailed evidence that anti-poaching forces funded by the charity raped and tortured innocent people, but continued to support those forces.

The series spurred a bipartisan investigation and legislation that would prohibit the government from awarding money to international conservation groups that fund or support human rights violations. It also prompted reviews by the Government Accountability Office and the Interior Department, and separate government probes in the UK and Germany.

In April 2019, WWF appointed Navi Pillay, the former UN high commissioner for human rights, to chair its own inquiry into alleged abuses. The panel originally planned to publish its findings by the end of 2019 but did not do so. The panel did not respond to a request for comment.


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WWF Has Suspended Support For Rangers At A Major Nature Reserve After A Suspicious Death

Tom Warren · Dec. 11, 2019

Leaked Report: WWF-Backed Guards Raped Pregnant Women And Tortured Villagers At A Wildlife Park Funded By The US Government

Tom Warren · July 11, 2019

The EU Has Found “Shortcomings” In WWF’s Treatment Of Indigenous People At A Proposed Nature Reserve

Tom Warren · May 12, 2020

Katie Baker is an investigative reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in London.

Tom Warren is an investigations correspondent for BuzzFeed News and is based in London.

Trump Just Stacked A Fetal Cell Research Panel With Abortion Opponents

Seen as the “gold standard” in many areas of medical research, fetal cells are widely used in coronavirus vaccine research.

Dan VerganoBuzzFeed News Reporter Posted on July 31, 2020,

Wikimedia Commons / Via en.wikipedia.org
Human embryonic kidney cells


On Friday, a Trump administration panel erected to judge the ethics of federally funded research relying on fetal stem cells met more than a year after it was first announced. Just hours before the meeting, the panel was revealed to be stacked with abortion opponents hostile to such research.

Human fetal cells are widely used in medical research to develop vaccines — notably in at least a half dozen current candidate coronavirus vaccines — as well for studying diseases including AIDS. The National Institutes of Health Human Fetal Tissue Research Ethics Advisory Board was initially announced in June of last year, putting a hold on grant applications for medical research involving human fetal cells. It followed the Trump administration’s moves to cancel related federal research contracts and audit human fetal cell research.


“The committee was carefully constructed to block funding,” bioethicist R. Alta Charo of the University of Wisconsin Law School, who spoke during the one-hour open session of the meeting, told BuzzFeed News by email. The next five hours of the meeting will be closed to the public to review federal grants.

The ethics panel will review all NIH medical research grant applications already approved for possible funding that include use of fetal cells, reporting directly to Department of Health and Human Services head Alex Azar, and bypassing NIH chief Francis Collins. The first meeting was quietly announced earlier this month in the Federal Register, and its membership was not made public until 8 a.m. on Friday morning.

The panel will be headed by bioethicist Paige Comstock Cunningham, interim president of the evangelical Taylor University in Indiana, the home state of Vice President Mike Pence, widely seen as the leading abortion opponent in the Trump administration. Its 15 members include David Prentice of the Charlotte Lozier Institute, known for his opposition to human embryonic stem cell research during the Bush administration, and other opponents who have previously testified against fetal cell research to Congress.

NIH official Lawrence Tabak, who opened the meeting, noted that the committee’s role was not to review the science of the proposed research, which had already been approved for NIH grant funding, but to comment on its ethics for Azar. The board is not required to come to a consensus in its views.


The yearlong wait for the ethics board meeting had stalled research on HIV, Down syndrome, and diabetes, the Washington Post reported in January. The cells, grown from induced abortion tissues collected decades ago, serve as a “gold standard” in research, according to a Wednesday statement signed by more than 90 major medical universities and scientific organizations.

“Research using human fetal tissue has been essential for scientific and medical advances that have saved millions of lives, and it remains a crucial resource for biomedical research,” said the letter.

During the coronavirus pandemic, the use of fetal research tissue has emerged as a flashpoint in the Trump administration’s handling of the epidemic, noted Stanford University researcher Irving Weissman, who spoke during a public comments session. NIH blocking fetal cell research has already shut down academic research aimed at testing coronavirus vaccines and treatments in mice grafted with human fetal lung cells, he said. That notably could include intranasal inoculations that could block coronavirus infections in the mouth, nose, and throat.

"They are withholding therapies for the rest of us, including their own families," Weissman told BuzzFeed News.

In April, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and other abortion opponents told the Trump administration that it should “incentivize” the development of coronavirus vaccines made without human fetal cells, but did not oppose two “Operation Warp Speed” vaccines that did. Whether coronavirus vaccine research proposals would be reviewed by the ethics board on Friday was unknown, due to confidentiality rules.

Abortion opponents are split on the ethics of the Moderna mRNA vaccine, whose Phase 3 clinical trial launched on Monday is the first US vaccine to undergo wide testing in people. While the vaccine itself does not involve fetal cells, some of its development work may have involved them, John Di Camillo, an ethicist with the National Catholic Bioethics Center, told BuzzFeed News.


The balance of the ethics panel’s membership, whether research supporters or abortion opponents, will largely determine what opinions are delivered to Azar, added Di Camilo. By its charter, the board is required to contain a balance of viewpoints, but during the group’s introductions, numerous members of the panel identified themselves by affiliation with a religious institution or faith while describing their scientific or medical credentials.


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The Trump Administration Won A Legal Fight To Slash Federal Payments To Hospitals During The Coronavirus Pandemic

The DC Circuit ruled the administration could cut a Medicare reimbursement rate by nearly 30% for hospitals that serve patients with low incomes.
Zoe TillmanBuzzFeed News Reporter
Reporting From Washington, DC
Posted on July 31, 2020,


Brendan Smialowski / Getty Images
Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar (left) with President Donald Trump.


WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court ruled on Friday that the Trump administration didn't violate federal law when it scaled back a billion-dollar drug reimbursement program that benefitted public and not-for-profit hospitals serving patients with low incomes.

The legal fight predated the coronavirus pandemic, but the stakes of the case became higher this year as hospitals have lost tens of billions of dollars as nonessential services and elective surgeries were put on hold.

Starting in 2018, the Department of Health and Human Services slashed the reimbursement rate paid to certain hospitals for outpatient drugs prescribed to elderly and disabled patients covered by the Medicare program. Under what's known as the 340B program, these hospitals buy drugs at a discounted rate, and then file claims with the federal government for reimbursement.
Hospitals participating in the program collectively have earned billions of dollars annually through the program because of the difference between what they paid and the higher reimbursement rate paid out by the government.

The Trump administration argued hospitals shouldn't be earning a windfall from the discounted drug rates and approved a plan to cut the reimbursement rate by approximately 30%. The hospitals argued that Congress intended to give hospitals a way to put the money they saved by paying a discounted rate for drugs back into services for poor and underserved communities.

A federal district judge in Washington, DC, sided with the hospitals, writing in a December 2018 opinion that the rate cut's “magnitude and its wide applicability inexorably lead to the conclusion” that the agency “fundamentally altered” what Congress intended. The lower rate has been in effect notwithstanding the judge's decision, though — he declined to block it while the litigation was pending, writing that forcing the government to pay back hospitals in the meantime was "likely to be highly disruptive."

HHS estimated that the rate change would save the Medicare program $1.6 billion in 2018 alone, and that money would be distributed back to hospitals through increases in other Medicare-related reimbursements.

Hospitals that participated in the 340B program argued they would still lose money even if the agency redistributed the money. Some hospitals filed affidavits in court saying they would lose millions of dollars each year.

In a 2–1 decision written by Judge Sri Srinivasan, the DC Circuit on Friday reversed the district judge's decision, finding that the Trump administration's decision to reduce the rate "rests on a reasonable interpretation of the Medicare statute."

Congress gave HHS two options for how to set the rate, using either an average of what hospitals were actually paying for drugs, or what the drugs cost in the marketplace. HHS had been using the average drug cost information because it didn't have survey data on what hospitals were paying, and the hospitals argued the law didn't allow HHS to use that data to make such a substantial cut. The hospitals also argued that a 30% cut was too big to qualify as an "adjustment" under the law.

Srinivasan wrote that Congress hadn't "unambiguously" prohibited HHS from using average drug costs to come up with a reimbursement rate to match what hospitals were paying for the drugs, even if they didn't have the actual purchase data. The hospitals' position would make Congress's decision to give the department an alternative way to calculate the reimbursement rate "superfluous," the judge wrote.

Srinivasan was joined by Judge Patricia Millett. Judge Nina Pillard dissented, writing that she agreed with hospitals that the Medicare law could only adopt "large reductions" if it had the specific survey data of what hospitals were paying for the drugs. She also wrote that the record showed Congress anticipated hospitals would earn revenue through the program.

"The net effect of HHS’s 2018 and 2019 OPPS rules is to redistribute funds from financially strapped, public and nonprofit safety-net hospitals serving vulnerable populations — including patients without any insurance at all — to facilities and individuals who are relatively better off. If that is a result that Congress intended to authorize, it remains free to say so. But because the statute as it is written does not permit the challenged rate reductions, I respectfully dissent," Pillard wrote.

Representatives of HHS and the Justice Department, as well as the American Hospital Association, one of the hospital groups that led the challenge, did not immediately return a request for comment.


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Zoe Tillman is a senior legal reporter with BuzzFeed News and is based in Washington, DC.