STATEMENT from AMY HANAUER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE INSTITUTE ON TAXATION AND ECONOMIC POLICY:

“This abominable bill will make history – in appalling ways. Never before has legislation taken so much from struggling families to give so much to the richest. It makes the biggest cuts to food aid for hungry families, executes the largest cuts to health care ever, adds trillions to the national debt – all to give $117 billion to the richest 1 percent in a single year. It’s no wonder that this bill is also extremely unpopular. Historians – and voters – will look back at this as a dark day in U.S. history.”

BY THE NUMBERS:

Analysis of Tax Provisions in the Senate Reconciliation Bill: National and State Level Estimates

The megabill’s tax impact is highly regressive, a regressivity that is amplified by the legislation’s deep cuts to health care, food assistance, and other services:

• More than 70 percent of the net tax cuts would go to the richest fifth of Americans in 2026, only 10 percent would go to the middle fifth of Americans, and less than 1 percent would go to the poorest fifth.
• The richest 5 percent alone would receive 45 percent of the net tax cuts next year.
• The richest 1 percent of Americans would receive an average net tax cut of $66,000, many, many times more than the average tax cut received by other income groups.
• The richest 1 percent of Americans would receive a total of $117 billion in net tax cuts in 2026. The middle 20 percent of taxpayers on the income scale, a group that has 20 times the number of taxpayers as the richest 1 percent, would receive less than half that much, $53 billion in net tax cuts that year.
• The $117 billion in net tax cuts going to the richest 1 percent next year would exceed the amount going to the entire bottom 60 percent of taxpayers (about $77 billion).
• The effects of President Trump’s tariff policies alone offset most of the tax cuts for the bottom 80 percent of Americans. For the bottom 40 percent of Americans, the tariffs impose a cost that is greater than the tax cuts they would receive under this legislation.
• Even foreign investors who own shares in U.S. companies would benefit more than many Americans. These foreign investors would enjoy $32 billion in tax cuts in 2026 compared to just $1.5 billion for the bottom 20 percent of Americans.
• The legislation provides the greatest rewards to high-income people living in states that have low state and local taxes on the wealthy. In these states, high-income people are not much affected by the cap on deductions for state and local taxes, which the Senate bill would make permanent. The states where the richest 1 percent of residents receive the largest average net tax cuts would mostly be states that have particularly unfair tax systems because they have no personal income tax.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Arkansas Act 573 of 2025 requires the scriptural displays to be a minimum of 16 x 20 inches in size and hung in a “conspicuous place” in each classroom and library. The text of the Ten Commandments must be printed “in a size and typeface that is legible to a person with average vision from anywhere in the room.” The law also mandates that a specific version of the Ten Commandments, associated with Protestant faiths and selected by lawmakers, be used for every display.

In their complaint filed today in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas, the plaintiffs, who are Jewish, Unitarian Universalist, or non-religious, assert that Act 573 violates longstanding U.S. Supreme Court precedent and the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment. More than 40 years ago, in Stone v. Graham, the Supreme Court ruled that the separation of church and state bars public schools from posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms.

Following this precedent, a federal district court held last year in Roake v. Brumley that a Louisiana law similar to Act 573 violates parents’ and students’ First Amendment rights. That case, in which the plaintiffs are represented by the same counsel as the plaintiffs here, is currently on appeal.

“As American Jews, my husband and I deeply value the ability to raise our children in our faith, without interference from the government,” said plaintiff Samantha Stinson. “By imposing a Christian-centric translation of the Ten Commandments on our children for nearly every hour of every day of their public-school education, this law will infringe on our rights as parents and create an unwelcoming and religiously coercive school environment for our children.”

Plaintiff Carol Vella agreed: “My children are among a small number of Jewish students at their school. The classroom displays required by Act 573 will make them feel like they don’t belong simply because they don’t follow the government’s favored religion. The displays will also violate core Jewish tenets, which emphasize tolerance and inclusion and prohibit evangelizing others.”

According to the complaint, which includes claims under both the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment, Act 573’s classroom and library displays will interfere with parents’ First Amendment right to direct their children’s religious upbringing and create a religiously coercive school environment:

“Permanently posting the Ten Commandments in every classroom and library—rendering them unavoidable—unconstitutionally pressures students into religious observance, veneration, and adoption of the state’s favored religious scripture. It also sends the harmful and religiously divisive message that students who do not subscribe to the Ten Commandments—or, more precisely, to the specific version of the Ten Commandments that Act 573 requires schools to display—do not belong in their own school community and pressures them to refrain from expressing any faith practices or beliefs that are not aligned with the state’s religious preferences.”

In addition to the complaint, the plaintiffs plan to file a motion for a preliminary injunction, which will ask the court to issue an order temporarily preventing implementation of the law, which takes effect on August 5, 2025, while the lawsuit is pending.

“Our Constitution’s guarantee of church-state separation means that families – not politicians – get to decide if, when and how public-school children engage with religion,” said Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “This law is part of the nationwide Christian Nationalist scheme to win favor for one set of religious views over all others and nonreligion – in a country that promises religious freedom. Not on our watch. We’re proud to defend the religious freedom of Arkansas schoolchildren and their families.”

“The right to decide which religious beliefs, if any, to follow belongs to families and faith communities, not the government,” said John Williams, legal director for the ACLU of Arkansas. “We will not allow Arkansas politicians to misuse our public schools to impose scripture on children.”

Heather L. Weaver, senior counsel for the ACLU added: “Public schools are not Sunday schools. Apparently, Arkansas lawmakers need a lesson in the First Amendment.”

FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor said, “This is a clear imposition of religious doctrine on Arkansas public school children. We will fight to uphold this nation’s foundational constitutional principles.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Janine Jackson interviewed independent journalist Katya Schwenk about Boeing’s non-prosecution deal for the June 6, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

AP (5/23/25)

Janine Jackson: There’s no need for me to rewrite the AP story on how Boeing and the Justice Department got together and decided no crime was committed when Boeing’s 737 Max planes crashed in 2018 and 2019, killing 346 people. So I’ll just cite it:

Boeing did not tell airlines and pilots about a new software system, called MCAS, that could turn the plane’s nose down without input from pilots if a sensor detected that the plane might go into an aerodynamic stall.

The Max planes crashed after a faulty reading from the sensor pushed the nose down and pilots were unable to regain control. After the second crash, Max jets were grounded worldwide until the company redesigned MCAS to make it less powerful and to use signals from two sensors, not just one.

The Justice Department charged Boeing in 2021 with deceiving FAA regulators about the software, which did not exist in older 737s, and about how much training pilots would need to fly the plane safely. The department agreed not to prosecute Boeing at the time, however, if the company paid a $2.5 billion settlement, including the $243.6 million fine, and took steps to comply with anti-fraud laws for three years.

Federal prosecutors, however, last year said Boeing violated the terms of the 2021 agreement by failing to make promised changes to detect and prevent violations of federal anti-fraud laws. Boeing agreed last July to plead guilty to the felony fraud charge instead of enduring a potentially lengthy public trial.

But now that we’re up to speed, here’s a reporter whose work, unlike that of AP, is not headlined with a little ticker telling you how Boeing stock is doing. Katya Schwenk is a journalist whose work appears at the Lever, the Intercept and the Baffler, among other outlets. Welcome to CounterSpin, Katya Schwenk.

Lever (1/10/24)

Katya Schwenk: Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

JJ: I used that long quote for information, but I do hope that listeners know that those Indonesia and Ethiopia 737 crashes weren’t the start of all of this. And I know that listeners will have clocked the bit about Boeing agreeing to plead guilty if it would spare them a “lengthy public trial.” So if I kill a few hundred people, I don’t think I can say, “Well, yeah, I did it, and I knew I was doing it, but here’s some change from my bottomless bucket of money, because otherwise I might have to lose my whole summer in court.”

I can’t help but be startled at the reception to this agreement, as though it actually, as a DoJ spokesperson said, “provides finality and compensation for the families and makes an impact for the safety of future air travelers.” Is there any indication of that happening?

KS: Yeah, I think the answer to that is a pretty resounding “no.” I mean, the families do not support this agreement. They had wanted to see Boeing face a trial, face some kind of criminal penalty, face real accountability after the crashes. The families of these people who died in the planes, they had been fighting for years and years to get some small measure of accountability in court.

Jacobin (5/18/24)

And it looked like they might actually see that, when the Justice Department had given Boeing a sweetheart deal under the first Trump administration. It was walked back last year; it seemed like Boeing might actually plead guilty. And then this has basically completely undone all of that.

The fine, in terms of, if you think about how much money Boeing has, it’s somewhat negligible. It includes credit for what they’ve already paid in this case. So I think it’s pretty disappointing for everyone who wanted to see Boeing face real public accountability.

JJ: What is a “non-prosecution agreement,” which is coming up a lot in this? What does it do? What does it not do?

KS: Basically, the Justice Department has agreed to drop all criminal charges against Boeing, and has said that so long as Boeing pays this fine, invests more in its “compliance programs,” it will not be moving forward with any criminal charges. It’s dropping the case, basically.

And this is different from what had been the previous sweetheart deal; it’s even better than the first sweetheart deal, which was a deferred prosecution agreement, which basically meant, we’ll wait and see if we’re going to prosecute you. We’ll see if you comply–if you invest more in your anti-fraud programs, in this case. And the deal that was just released today, this is like, they’re not even going to continue monitoring Boeing. It’s just like, total blank slate, charges are gone.

JJ: The idea that if you just throw enough money at it, it’s not a crime, I just know how weird that lands with everybody who is understanding that that just means if you’re rich, you can do what you want. Or if you’re a corporation and you have enough money, you can commit a crime, and we won’t call it a crime because you can pay. It just sounds wrong.

KS: Yeah. This is like the Trump administration approach to white-collar crime and holding corporations accountable, which is part of a longer-term trend in the US government for decades. But corporations, even when, in this case, many, many people died, right, often are given deals that allow them to just pay a big fine, say they’ve implemented reforms, and get away scot free.

And there was a moment where it felt like Boeing might not. There was so much public scrutiny, there was so much pressure on the DoJ to actually hold them accountable, and instead we’re seeing that.

JJ: I just talked with Jeff Hauser, from the aptly named Revolving Door Project, and it seems like cronyism, and “it’s a big club and you ain’t in it,” has been a part of your focus as you’ve reported this story out for some time now.

Katya Schwenk: “You can really see how close the relationship is between Boeing and people at the highest positions of power in our country.”

KS: Yeah, absolutely. Boeing spends quite a lot of money lobbying Washington. There are people that go into roles at the DoJ or the FAA that have previously worked for Boeing. It’s very much the revolving door at work, and they do quite a lot of business with the federal government.

And so we’ve seen, under the Trump administration, they have granted various giveaways to Boeing. They facilitated a massive deal; the government of Qatar gave Boeing a huge contract to work on fighter jets. You can really see how close the relationship is between Boeing and people at the highest positions of power in our country.

And I think that, definitely, that’s explaining a lot of what’s going on. And I think the more people that we can have paying attention, not only to Boeing, but again to these sort of mechanisms, levers of power, challenging either–I mean, you mentioned the stock price of Boeing is often the focus of a lot of media attention. I think there are many people who would say it’s not good that you have a company responsible for all this air travel that’s totally ruled by Wall Street. And so I think that really needs to be the focus of reporting moving forward, how it’s going, buying influence, who are they answering to? Is it their engineers, is it the flying public? Is it travelers, or is it their shareholders?

JJ: And just finally, if folks do pick up a paper today and look for a story on Boeing, they will likely see a story about how China is scrambling to make something as good as a Boeing plane. That seems to be the way Boeing is showing up in the media right now.

It’s almost as if the story, it’s done. That was yesterday, and now we’re moving on to this corporation that has these deep contracts, military contracts, government contracts. If an individual killed hundreds of people, the story wouldn’t just die because we thought, “Oh, they’re going to go on and do something good, maybe.” It’s a malfeasance on journalism’s part, I feel.

KS: Absolutely. It sends a message, right? It sends a message that you can do something like that, and we’ll move on and we won’t pay attention. So, yeah, I totally agree.

JJ: We’ve been speaking with journalist Katya Schwenk. Her work on Boeing can be found at the Lever and at Jacobin, and no doubt elsewhere. Thank you, Katya Schwenk, very much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

KS: I appreciate it. Thanks.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Janine Jackson.

BBC Persian journalists in London told The Guardian and CPJ that their families back in Iran have faced threats in recent months, including interrogations, travel bans, asset seizure warnings, and passport confiscations. BBC Director-General Tim Davie said in a statement that the Iranian government’s campaign represented a “significant and increasingly alarming escalation” against the news outlet.

“The Iranian government’s escalating harassment of BBC Persian journalists’ families is a deliberate attempt to silence the press,” said CPJ Regional Director Sara Qudah. “Interrogations, passport seizures, and other threats are tools of transnational repression, and a direct assault on press freedom and human dignity.”

Rozita Lotfi, the news editor of BBC Persian, told CPJ that the intimidation began with the 2009 launch of BBC Persian’s TV channel, calling it “a testament to the impact and reach of our independent and impartial journalism.” 

“No journalist should have to pay the personal price we are paying, and no family member should ever be punished because of our work,” Behrang Tajdin, a BBC Persian correspondent, told CPJ.

The developments come weeks after British police charged three Iranian nationals in a counterterrorism investigation involving alleged plots against Iran-linked targets in the U.K., including journalists. 

CPJ emailed the Iranian mission to the United Nations in New York requesting comment but did not receive a response.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

This story discusses graphic details of slavery, sexual abuse and violence

Pacific children as young as six are being adopted overseas and being made to work as house slaves, suffering threats, beatings and rape.

Kris Teikamata — a social worker at a community agency — spoke about the harrowing cases she encountered in her work, from 2019 to 2024, with children who had escaped their abusers in Auckland and Wellington.

“They’re incredibly traumatised because it’s years and years and years of physical abuse, physical labour and and a lot of the time, sexual abuse, either by the siblings or other family members,” she said.

• READ MORE: Other Pacific child abuse reports

“They were definitely threatened, they were definitely coerced and they had no freedom.

“When I met each girl, [by then] 17, 18, 19 years old, it was like meeting a 50-year-old. The light had gone out of their eyes. They were just really withdrawn and shut down.”

In one case a church minister raped his adopted daughter and got her pregnant.

Teikamata and her team helped 10 Samoan teenagers who had managed to escape their homes, and slavery — two boys and eight girls — with health, housing and counselling. She fears they are the tip of the iceberg, and that many remain under lock and key.

“They were brought over as a child or a teenager, sometimes they knew the family in Samoa, sometimes they didn’t — they had promised them a better life over here, an education and citizenship.

“When they arrived they would generally always be put into slavery. They would have to get up at 5, 6 in the morning, start cleaning, start breakfast, do the washing, then go to school and then after school again do cleaning and dinner and the chores — and do that everyday until a certain age, until they were workable.

“Then they were sent out to factories in Auckland or Wellington and their bank account was taken away from them and their Eftpos card. They were given $20 a week.

“From the age of 16 they were put to work. And they were also not allowed to have a phone — most of them had no contact with family back in Samoa.”

‘A thousand kids a year… and it’s still going on’
Nothing stopped the abusive families from being able to adopt again and they did, she said.

A recent briefing to ministers reiterated that New Zealanders with criminal histories or significant child welfare records have used overseas courts to approve adoptions, which were recognised under New Zealand law without further checks.

“When I delved more into it, I just found out that it was a very easy process to adopt from Samoa,” she said.

“There’s no checks, it’s a very easy process. So about a thousand kids [a year] are today being adopted from Samoa. It’s such a high number — whereas other countries have checks or very robust systems. And it’s still going on.”

As children, they could not play with friends and all of their movements were controlled.

Oranga Tamariki uplifted younger children, who were sometimes siblings of older children who had escaped.

“The ones that I met had escaped and found a friend or were homeless or had reached out to the police.”

Loving families
When they were reunited with their birth parents on video calls, it was clear they came from loving families who had been deceived, she said.

While some adoptive parents faced court for assault, only one has been prosecuted for trafficking.

Government, police and Oranga Tamariki were aware and in talks with the Samoan government, she said.

Adoption Action member and researcher Anne Else said several opportunities to overhaul the 70-year-old Adoption Act had been thwarted, and the whole legislation needed ripping up.

“The entire law needs to be redone, it dates back to 1955 for goodness sake,” she said.

“But there’s a big difference between understanding how badly and urgently the law needs changing and actually getting it done.

“Oranga Tamariki are trying, I know, to work with for example Tonga to try and make sure that their law is a bit more conformant with ours, and ensure there are more checks done to avoid these exploitative cases.”

Sold for adoption
Children from other countries had been sold for adoption, she said, and the adoption rules depended on which country they came from. Even the Hague Convention, which is supposed to provide safeguards between countries, was no guarantee.

Immigration minister Erica Stanford said other ministers were looking at what could be done to crack down on trafficking through international adoption.

“If there are non-genuine adoptions and and potential trafficking, we need to get on top of that,” she sad.

“It falls outside of the legislation that I am responsible for, but there are other ministers who have it on their radars because we’re all worried about it. I’ve read a recent report on it and it was pretty horrifying. So it is being looked at.”

A meeting was held between New Zealand and Samoan authorities in March. A summary of discussions said it focused on aligning policies, information sharing, and “culturally grounded frameworks” that uphold the rights, identity, and wellbeing of children, following earlier work in 2018 and 2021.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

• Links to where to get help

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The provision benefits companies like RealPage, a software data company sued by the Justice Department for alleged collusion on prices in the rental housing market; platforms that use artificial intelligence to drive down wages and benefits for nurses; and retailers that use artificial intelligence and personalized data to set discriminatory prices. Groundwork Collaborative’s Executive Director Lindsay Owens reacted to the vote:

“Not only are House Republicans giving their billionaire donors and large corporations a massive tax handout, they are giving RealPage and bad actors like them a free pass to rip off working families. They are paving the way for more predatory landlords to jack up rent, more apps to drive down gig worker wages, and more retailers to hike prices on consumers. The GOP tax bill tells you everything you need to know about the Republican party’s priorities and how unserious they are about lowering costs for working families.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

Just weeks after creating a $50 million tax credit to help families pay for private school tuition and homeschooling, Idaho has shut down a program that helped tens of thousands of public school students pay for laptops, school supplies, tutoring and other educational expenses.

The Republican leading the push to defund Idaho’s Empowering Parents grants said it had nothing to do with the party’s decision to fund private schools. But the state’s most prominent conservative group, a strong supporter of the private school tax credit, drew the connection directly.

The Idaho Freedom Foundation, on its website, proposed adding the $30 million that fueled Empowering Parents to the newly created tax credit, paying for an additional 6,000 private and homeschool students to join the 10,000 already expected to benefit from the program.

The new voucher-style tax credits have major differences from the grants lawmakers killed.

The tax credits are off-limits to public school students, while the grants went predominantly to this group. And there’s limited state oversight on how the private education tax credits will be used, while the grants to public school families were only allowed to be spent with state-approved educational vendors.

Rep. Soñia Galaviz, a Democrat who works in a low-income public elementary school in Boise, condemned the plan to kill the grants in a speech to legislative colleagues.

“I have to go back to the families that I serve, the parents that I love, the kids that I teach, and say, ‘You no longer can get that additional math tutoring that you need,’” she said, “that ‘the state is willing to support other programs for other groups of kids, but not you.’”

When states steer public funds to private schools, well-off families benefit more than those in lower income brackets, as ProPublica has reported in Arizona. The programs are pitched as enabling “school choice,” but in reality, research has found the money tends to benefit families that have already chosen private schools.

Idaho lawmakers passed such a program this year with the new tax credit, which some describe as a version of school “vouchers” that parents in other states spend on schools of their choosing.

The credit allows private and homeschool families to reduce their tax bills by $5,000 per child — $7,500 per student with disabilities — or get that much money from the state if they owe no taxes. Lower-income families have priority, and there’s no cap on how many credits each family can claim. The law says funds must go to traditional academic expenses like private school tuition or homeschool curricula and textbooks, plus a few other costs like transportation. But families don’t have to provide proof of how they spent the money unless they’re audited.

The Empowering Parents grant program that lawmakers repealed was open to students no matter where they learn, although state data shows at least 81% of the money went to public school students this academic year — more than 24,000 of them. It offered up to $1,000 per student, with lower-income families getting first dibs and a family limit of $3,000.

Idaho Gov. Brad Little created a similar program in 2020 called Strong Families, Strong Students with federal pandemic funds, to help families make the abrupt shift to remote learning. State lawmakers created the current program in 2022, also using one-time federal pandemic recovery money, and liked it so much they renewed it with ongoing state funding in 2023.

Charlene Bradley used the grant this school year to buy a laptop for her daughter, a fifth grader in Nampa School District. Before the purchase, Bradley’s daughter could use computers at school, but there was no way to do schoolwork at home, “besides my cell phone which we did have to use sometimes,” Bradley said in a Facebook message.

Debra Whiteley used it for home internet and a printer for her 12-year-old daughter, who attends public school in north-central Idaho. Whiteley’s daughter resisted doing projects that needed pictures or graphs. “Now when she has a project she can make a tri fold display that’s not all hand written and self drawn, which looking back on, I didn’t have a clue she may have been embarrassed about,” Whiteley said in a Facebook message.

Annie Coltrin used it to get “much needed” tutoring for her daughter, a sophomore in an agricultural community in southern Idaho. The grant paid for Coltrin’s daughter to receive math tutoring in person twice a week, which took her grade from a low D to a B+.

Such families were on the minds of education leaders like Jason Sevy when they advocated for preserving the Empowering Parents program this year.

Sevy, who chairs a rural public school district board in southwestern Idaho and is the Idaho School Boards Association’s president-elect, said families in his district used the Empowering Parents grants for backpacks and school supplies, or laptops they couldn’t afford otherwise.

“You’re looking at families with five kids that were only making $55,000 a year. Having that little extra money made a big difference,” Sevy said. “But it also closed that gap for these kids to feel like they were going to be able to keep up with everybody else.”

Few families in Sevy’s district will be able to use the state’s new tuition tax credits for private education, he said. A tiny residential school is the only private school operating in Sevy’s remote county. The next-closest options require a drive to the neighboring county, and Sevy worries those schools wouldn’t take English-language learners or children who need special education. (Unlike public schools, private schools can accept or reject students based on their own criteria.)

“This is the program that was able to help those groups of people, and they’re just letting it go away” to free up money for private schools, Sevy said.

The freshman legislator who sponsored the bill to end Empowering Parents is Sen. Camille Blaylock, a Republican from a small city west of Boise.

Blaylock’s stance is that the grants aren’t the proper role of government.

Speaking on the Senate floor in March, Blaylock highlighted the fact that the vast majority of the Empowering Parents money went to electronics — mostly computers, laptops and tablets.

“This program has drifted far from its original intent,” Blaylock said. “It’s turning into a technology slush fund, and if we choose to continue funding it, we are no longer empowering parents. We are creating entitlements.”

In an interview, Blaylock denied any desire to divert public school money to private education and said she was unaware the Idaho Freedom Foundation took that “unfortunate” position.

“The last thing I want is for this to be a ‘taking away from public schools to give to school choice,’ because that is not my intent at all,” Blaylock said.

She told the Senate’s education committee this year that her hope in ending the grants was to cut government spending by $30 million. But if the savings had to go somewhere, she’d want it to benefit other public school programs, especially in a year when lawmakers created the $50 million tax credit for private and homeschooling.

Regardless of how the $30 million in savings will be spent in the future, Blaylock’s assertion that the grants weren’t supposed to help families buy computers goes against what’s in the legislative record.

Lawmakers pitched Empowering Parents three years ago as a way to help lower-income students be on equal footing with their peers, with one legislator arguing that tablets and computers are such a part of education now that “without the ability of families to afford those devices, a student’s learning is substantially jeopardized.”

Republican Sen. Lori Den Hartog, opening debate on her bill to create Empowering Parents in 2022, said it was partly to address pandemic learning loss. “But,” she said, “it’s also a recognition of the ongoing needs that students in our state have, and that there is a potential different avenue to provide resources to those students.”

First in the list of eligible expenses Den Hartog spelled out: computer hardware, internet access, other technology. Then came textbooks, school materials, tutoring and everything else. (Den Hartog, who voted to repeal the program this year, did not respond to a request for comment.)

Killing the grants also went against the praise that Little, the state’s Republican governor, has showered on it. He has described the program as itself a form of “school choice,” touting how it helped low-income parents afford better education.

“The grants help families take charge of tools for their children’s education — things like computers and software, instructional materials and tutoring,” Little said in January 2023 when announcing his intent to make Empowering Parents permanent.

He called the grants “effective, popular and worthy of continued investment” because they “keep parents in the driver’s seat of their children’s education, as it should be.”

In the months before Idaho lawmakers voted to kill the program, Little again cited Empowering Parents as a success story, a way “to ensure Idaho families have the freedom and access to choose the best fit for their child’s unique education and learning needs.” He pointed out that the grants mainly went to public school students. He again touted it in his State of the State address in January, not as a temporary pandemic-era program but as “our popular” grant program “to support students’ education outside of the classroom.”

Nonetheless, the Idaho House and Senate both voted to kill the grant program by wide margins, and Little signed the bill on April 14.

Blaylock disagreed that the grant’s creators foresaw it would be used mostly for laptops and electronics. And, despite acknowledging state lawmakers decided to make it permanent, she disagrees that it was intended to be an ongoing program. She said public schools already get $36 million a year from the state to spend on technology, which they use to furnish computers students can take home, so families don’t need state money to buy more.

Little, in a letter explaining his decision to join lawmakers in killing the grants, said he was “proud of the positive outcomes” from the program. But, he wrote: “Now that the pandemic is squarely in the rearview mirror and students have long been back in school, I agree with the Legislature that this program served its purpose.”

When looking back at how Empowering Parents was created, Sevy, the local school board chair, suspects it was a soft attempt “to get the foot in the door” toward vouchers, not purely an effort to meet the needs of all students.

He remembers telling Den Hartog that the program was helping low-income families in his district. “She was super-excited to hear that,” Sevy said. “It’s like, OK! And here we are two years later, just getting rid of it.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Audrey Dutton.

As leaders from different generations, we see this attack on the government workforce as a threat to both current federal workers and the next generation of public servants.

Federal employment has been transformative for Black Americans. Though wages in government positions are often lower than in the private sector, their significantly better benefits, anti-discrimination protections, and job security have proven to be a stronger path to wealth building for Black families.

As the Center for American Progress reports, Black workers in the private sector only have about 10 percent of the wealth of white workers — but Black workers in the public sector have almost half the wealth of white workers. The Trump administration’s cuts threaten to erase this opportunity for greater economic security for Black families.

The U.S. government has historically led the way in providing workforce opportunities for Black Americans. Many of us grew up watching our parents and grandparents build careers in federal service — like the Postal Service, where Black employees make up 27 percent of the workforce. The military and the government sector more broadly has often set standards for racial progress where the private sector lagged behind.

For example, in 1948 President Harry Truman ordered the desegregation of the federal workforce and the armed forces. This tradition of merit-based advancement in federal service set a norm that the private sector would gradually integrate. These jobs laid the basis for a Black middle class.

In his research prior to the Great Recession, economist Steven C. Pitts documented that public administration was among the five most common occupations for Black workers, with those Black workers earning “20 percent to 50 percent more than in the other four most common occupations.”

The data showed what many Black families already knew from experience: federal jobs offered not just employment, but a genuine path to greater economic security.

But today, the radical shake up of government employment and the attack on diversity, equity, and inclusion threaten to turn back these gains. The unprecedented firing of Equal Employment Opportunity Commissioners (EEOC) and National Labor Relations Board officials — including Gwynne Wilcox, the first Black woman to serve on the labor board — signals a dramatic shift against worker protections.

On campus, we’re already seeing the effects. Talented students who once dreamed of careers in public service are now looking elsewhere. “Why invest years preparing for a government career if they can just fire you for political reasons?” one recently asked.

When civil servants are replaced with political appointees, or when key jobs go unfilled, we all suffer. All Americans will feel the effects with potentially slower processing of Social Security claims, delays in veterans’ benefits, compromised food safety oversight, and a heightened risk of cronyism replacing expertise.

A broad-based and merit-focused workforce is fundamental to delivering quality government services, holding leaders accountable, and preventing corruption. These are outcomes every citizen relies on. But when career experts can be fired at will, they’re less likely to stand up to political pressure or report wrongdoing.

Progress in federal employment didn’t come easily. Each generation had to fight to expand and protect these opportunities. Today’s assault on federal workers isn’t just about current employees — it’s an attempt to break this chain of progress.

We must protect current federal workers while strengthening pathways for the next generation of public servants. This means maintaining strong civil service protections and ensuring that young people of all backgrounds see a future for themselves in government service.

We must defend these institutions against those who would dismantle them. The future of the Black economic advancement — and the promise of opportunity for all Americans — hangs in the balance.

The post Trump’s War on Federal Workers is a War on a Threat to Black Families appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Tyler Mitchell – Dedrick Asante-Muhammad.

Intimate, infuriating and ultimately hopeful, “Before a Breath” braids together the stories of three mothers determined to make pregnancy safer after losing children to stillbirth.

After the loss of her daughter Autumn, Debbie Haine Vijayvergiya discovers that more than 20,000 stillbirths occur every year in the U.S. — and at least 1 in 4 is likely preventable. She goes to Washington, battling political inertia as she fights to make stillbirth research and prevention a federal priority. Kanika Harris, a maternal health advocate and doula, tells the story of her twins, Kodjo and Zindzi, as she trains a new generation of Black birth workers. And Stephanie Lee, a nurse leader at a Manhattan hospital, seeks answers about what might have led to her daughter Elodie’s stillbirth as she takes a leap of faith and becomes pregnant again.

Inspired by ProPublica’s groundbreaking reporting on the stillbirth crisis, which was a finalist for a 2023 Pulitzer Prize, the film is a powerful story of grief, healing and three mothers demanding that the U.S. do better by expecting parents.

Watch “Before a Breath” on YouTube

Watch video ➜

Watch video ➜

Watch video ➜

“Before a Breath” is free to stream on YouTube. If you’d like to host a screening or conversation in your community, please sign up here and use these guides to help you get started.

Download the guide for a community screening

Download the guide for health professionals

You can find our trailer, sneak peek scenes and additional videos on the “Before a Breath” playlist on YouTube.

Read ProPublica’s reporting and participate in our stillbirth memorial.

• You can read ProPublica’s guide, “What You Need to Know About Stillbirths,” and our whole stillbirths series.
• Hear the stories of other families by visiting our stillbirth memorial and create your own.

Get more information about stillbirths and care for parents of loss.

• The Rainbow Clinic at Mount Sinai is one of several clinics opening around the country that care for pregnant patients with a history of perinatal loss.
• The University of Utah recently opened a Stillbirth Center of Excellence, a hub of efforts to end preventable stillbirths in the U.S.
• The International Stillbirth Alliance promotes collaboration for the prevention of stillbirth and newborn death worldwide.
• Bereavement support groups for families of loss are available around the country and online. Your local hospitals and birth centers may suggest some.

• Have you hosted a screening? Tell us about it!

• Nadia Sussman, Director and Producer
• Liz Moughon, Director of Photography and Producer
• Duaa Eldeib, Reporter and Producer
• Lisa Riordan Seville, Producer
• Margaret Cheatham Williams, Editor
• Mahdokht Mahmoudabadi, Additional Editor
• Mandy Hoffman, Composer
• Almudena Toral, Executive Producer

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by .

Intimate, infuriating and ultimately hopeful, “Before a Breath” braids together the stories of three mothers determined to make pregnancy safer after losing children to stillbirth.

After the loss of her daughter Autumn, Debbie Haine Vijayvergiya discovers that more than 20,000 stillbirths occur every year in the U.S. — and at least 1 in 4 is likely preventable. She goes to Washington, battling political inertia as she fights to make stillbirth research and prevention a federal priority. Kanika Harris, a maternal health advocate and doula, tells the story of her twins, Kodjo and Zindzi, as she trains a new generation of Black birth workers. And Stephanie Lee, a nurse leader at a Manhattan hospital, seeks answers about what might have led to her daughter Elodie’s stillbirth as she takes a leap of faith and becomes pregnant again.

Inspired by ProPublica’s groundbreaking reporting on the stillbirth crisis, which was a finalist for a 2023 Pulitzer Prize, the film is a powerful story of grief, healing and three mothers demanding that the U.S. do better by expecting parents.

Watch “Before a Breath” on YouTube

Watch video ➜

Watch video ➜

Watch video ➜

“Before a Breath” is free to stream on YouTube. If you’d like to host a screening or conversation in your community, please sign up here and use these guides to help you get started.

Download the guide for a community screening

Download the guide for health professionals

You can find our trailer, sneak peek scenes and additional videos on the “Before a Breath” playlist on YouTube.

Read ProPublica’s reporting and participate in our stillbirth memorial.

• You can read ProPublica’s guide, “What You Need to Know About Stillbirths,” and our whole stillbirths series.
• Hear the stories of other families by visiting our stillbirth memorial and create your own.

Get more information about stillbirths and care for parents of loss.

• The Rainbow Clinic at Mount Sinai is one of several clinics opening around the country that care for pregnant patients with a history of perinatal loss.
• The University of Utah recently opened a Stillbirth Center of Excellence, a hub of efforts to end preventable stillbirths in the U.S.
• The International Stillbirth Alliance promotes collaboration for the prevention of stillbirth and newborn death worldwide.
• Bereavement support groups for families of loss are available around the country and online. Your local hospitals and birth centers may suggest some.

• Have you hosted a screening? Tell us about it!

• Nadia Sussman, Director and Producer
• Liz Moughon, Director of Photography and Producer
• Duaa Eldeib, Reporter and Producer
• Lisa Riordan Seville, Producer
• Margaret Cheatham Williams, Editor
• Mahdokht Mahmoudabadi, Additional Editor
• Mandy Hoffman, Composer
• Almudena Toral, Executive Producer

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by .

An open letter signed by 100 Christian leaders, calling for the granting of humanitarian visas to Aotearoa New Zealand for families of Palestinians trapped in Gaza has been handed over on the steps of Parliament.

The letter was presented yesterday on Ash Wednesday to opposition Labour Party MP Phil Twyford, who was joined by six other members of Parliament.

Minister for Immigration Erica Stanford and Associate Minister for Immigration Chris Penk were invited to receive the letter, but both declined the invitation.

• READ MORE: Israel, Hamas continue truce talks; Arab states present Gaza plan to US
• The Christian open letter

The open letter was signed by leaders from Anglican, Baptist, Presbyterian, Catholic, Quaker, non-denominational and Methodist movements, and leaders from organisations and groups such as Caritas, Student Christian Movements and Te Mīhana Māori.

The open letter is part of the Christians United for Refuge Aotearoa Campaign, and calls on the New Zealand government to help reunite families and bring them to safety by:

• Granting immediate emergency humanitarian visas to Palestinians in Gaza who have family in New Zealand;
• Providing sustained diplomatic pressure on the Israeli government to allow visa-holders to safely evacuate from Gaza and humanitarian aid to freely enter; and
• Providing robust resettlement assistance once these families arrive in New Zealand.

Hoped for troops withdrawal
The letter comes after the end of the first phase of the Gaza Ceasefire agreement — which was due to see Israel withdraw its military forces from the border between Gaza and Egypt.

Christians United for Refuge spokesperson Esmé Hulbert-Putt said: “When we first prepared this letter, we hoped and prayed that we would see the withdrawal of military forces from the border.”

She added that this opening, alongside strong diplomacy and visa pathways, would allow for the family reunification that Palestinians in Aotearoa had been asking for for more than a year.

Following this handover, a separate group, organised by Aotearoa Christians for Peace in Palestine completed a 10km pilgrimage in Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington, symbolising the distance between Bethlehem and Jerusalem and the many military checkpoints along the way.

These pilgrimages each involved praying at the arrivals terminals of the respective international airports — in prayerful hope that one day these doors would open to families of Palestinians in Gaza.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Paolo* was just 15 years old when he witnessed the Philippine National Police (PNP) mercilessly kill his father in 2016.

Nearly nine years later, the scales are shifting as Rodrigo Duterte, the man who unleashed death upon his family and thousands of others, now faces the weight of justice before the International Criminal Court (ICC).

“Finally, naaresto din, [pero] dapat isama si [Senator Ronald dela Rosa], dapat silang panagutin sa dami ng pamilyang inulila nila. (Finally, he’s arrested but Dela Rosa should’ve been with him, they should be held accountable for how many families they left in mourning),” he said.

• READ MORE: Special Rappler coverage: The arrest of Rodrigo Duterte
• PHOTOESSAY: Buried in debt only to have their loved ones get a burial — Pacific Journalism Review
• Other Rodrigo Duterte reports

Paolo, then a minor, was also accosted and tortured by Caloocan police — from the same city police who would kill 17-year-old Kian delos Santos less than a year later.

He was threatened not to do anything else or else end up like his father. Paolo carried the threats and the fear over the years, even as he hoped for justice.

This hanging on for hope in the face of devastation was not for nothing.

Duterte was arrested today by Philippine authorities following the issue of a warrant by the ICC in relation to crimes against humanity committed during his violent war on drugs.

The ICC has been investigating the killings under Duterte’s flagship campaign, which led to at least 6252 deaths in police operations alone by May 2022. The number reached between 27,000 to 30,000, including those killed vigilante-style.

The Presidential Communications Office said that the government received from the Interpol an official copy of a warrant of arrest.

Duterte was presented by the Philippine government’s Prosecutor-General with the ICC notification of an arrest over crimes against humanity upon his arrival from Hong Kong on this morning.

Slow but sure step to justice
Paolo is not the only one rejoicing over Duterte’s arrest. Many families, including those from drug war hot spot Caloocan City, see this as the long-awaited step toward the justice they have been denied for years.

When the news broke, Ana* was overcome with joy and thanked God for giving families the strength and unwavering faith to keep fighting for justice. She knew the weight of loss all too well.

In 2017, police stormed into their home in Caloocan City and brutally killed her husband and father-in-law in a single night.

Ana, who was five months pregnant at that time, was caught in the violence and was hit by a stray bullet. She and other victims have since been supported by the In Defence of Human Rights and Dignity Movement.

“Sa wakas, unti-unti nang nakakamit ang hustisya para sa lahat ng biktima (At last, justice is slowly being achieved for all the victims),” she recalled thinking when she read that Duterte had been arrested.

But Ana is wishing for more than just imprisonment for Duterte, even as she welcomed the long-awaited accountability from the former president and his allies.

“Sana din ay aminin niya lahat ng kamalian at humingi siya ng kapatawaran sa lahat ng tao na biktima para matahimik din ang mga kaluluwa ng mga namatay (I hope he also admits to all his wrongdoings and asks for forgiveness from every victim, so that the souls of those who were killed may finally find peace),” she said.

Brutality they endured
For the families, the ICC’s move and the government’s action are an acknowledgment of the brutality they endured. The latest development is also a validation of their grief and provides a glimmer of hope that accountability is finally within reach. After years of being silenced and dismissed, they see this moment as the start of a reckoning they feared would never come.

Celina, whose husband was shot dead in a drug war operation, feels overwhelming joy but is wary that the arrest is just part of a long process at the ICC.

“Ang sabi nga po, mahaba-habang laban ito kaya hindi po sa pag-aresto natatapos ito, bagkus ito ay simula pa lamang ng aming mga laban [at] naniniwala kami at aasa sa kakayahan at suporta na ibinibigay sa amin ng ICC [na] sa huli, mananagot ang dapat managot, maparusahan ang may mga sala,” she said.

(As they say, this is a long battle, so it does not end with the arrest. Rather, this is only the beginning of our fight. We believe in and will rely on the ICC’s capability and support, knowing that in the end, those who must be held accountable will face justice, and the guilty will be punished.)

It is a stark contrast to the reality they have lived following the deaths of their loved ones. They were constantly under threat from the police who pulled the trigger. Many families had to flee to faraway places, leaving behind their own communities and source of livelihood.

“Nakakaiyak ako, hindi ko alam ang dapat kong maramdaman na sa ilang taon naming ipinaglalaban ay nakamit din namin ang hustisyang aming minimithi (I’m in tears — I don’t know what to feel. After years of fighting, we have finally achieved the justice we have long been yearning for),“ said Betty, whose 44-year-old son and 22-year-old grandson were killed under Duterte’s drug war.

For Jane Lee, the arrest only underscores the glaring disparity between the powerful and the powerless.

“Mabuti pa siya, inaresto ng mga kapulisan. Ang aming mga kaanak, pinatay agad,” she said. “Napakalaki ng pagkakaiba sa pagitan ng makapangyarihan at ordinaryong taong tulad namin.”

(At least he was arrested by the police. Our loved ones were killed on the spot. The difference between the powerful and ordinary people like us is enormous.)

Lee’s husband, Michael, was gunned down by unidentified men in May 2017, leaving her to raise their three children alone. Since then, she has volunteered for Rise Up for Life and for Rights, a group composed mostly of widows and mothers who remain steadfast in demanding justice for drug war victims.

Collective rage
Families from Rise Up in Cebu also voiced their collective rage against Duterte who ordered killings from the presidential pulpit for six years. They hope that Duterte will feel the same pain they felt when their loved ones were forcibly taken away from them.

This afternoon, Duterte condemned the alleged violation of due process following his arrest. His allies are also echoing this messaging, calling the arrest unlawful.

His longtime aide, Senator Bong Go, Go, tried to access Duterte in Villamor Air Base, asking the guards to let him deliver pizza since they hadn’t eaten yet.

“Katiting lang iyan sa ginawa mo sa amin na sinira mo ang aming buhay at hanapbuhay dahil sa iyong pekeng war on drugs,” the families of drug war victims in Cebu said. “Wala kang karapatan na kumuha ng buhay ng iba [kasi] Diyos lang may karapatan kaya sa ginawa mo, maniningil ang taumbayan lalo na kaming mga pamilya ng mga naging biktima.”

(That is nothing compared to what you did to us. You destroyed our lives and livelihood because of your fake war on drugs. You have no right to take another person’s life; only God has that right. Because of what you have done, the people will demand justice, especially we, the families of the victims.)

There is still no clear information on what comes next, whether Duterte will be immediately transferred to the International Criminal Court headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands, or if legal battles will delay the process.

But Mila*, whose 17-year-old nephew was killed by police in Quezon City in 2018, hopes for one thing if the former president finds himself in a detention cell soon: “Sana huwag na siya lumaya (I hope he is never set free).” 

Republished from Rappler with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Paolo* was just 15 years old when he witnessed the Philippine National Police (PNP) mercilessly kill his father in 2016.

Nearly nine years later, the scales are shifting as Rodrigo Duterte, the man who unleashed death upon his family and thousands of others, now faces the weight of justice before the International Criminal Court (ICC).

“Finally, naaresto din, [pero] dapat isama si [Senator Ronald dela Rosa], dapat silang panagutin sa dami ng pamilyang inulila nila. (Finally, he’s arrested but Dela Rosa should’ve been with him, they should be held accountable for how many families they left in mourning),” he said.

• READ MORE: Special Rappler coverage: The arrest of Rodrigo Duterte
• PHOTOESSAY: Buried in debt only to have their loved ones get a burial — Pacific Journalism Review
• Other Rodrigo Duterte reports

Paolo, then a minor, was also accosted and tortured by Caloocan police — from the same city police who would kill 17-year-old Kian delos Santos less than a year later.

He was threatened not to do anything else or else end up like his father. Paolo carried the threats and the fear over the years, even as he hoped for justice.

This hanging on for hope in the face of devastation was not for nothing.

Duterte was arrested today by Philippine authorities following the issue of a warrant by the ICC in relation to crimes against humanity committed during his violent war on drugs.

The ICC has been investigating the killings under Duterte’s flagship campaign, which led to at least 6252 deaths in police operations alone by May 2022. The number reached between 27,000 to 30,000, including those killed vigilante-style.

The Presidential Communications Office said that the government received from the Interpol an official copy of a warrant of arrest.

Duterte was presented by the Philippine government’s Prosecutor-General with the ICC notification of an arrest over crimes against humanity upon his arrival from Hong Kong on this morning.

Slow but sure step to justice
Paolo is not the only one rejoicing over Duterte’s arrest. Many families, including those from drug war hot spot Caloocan City, see this as the long-awaited step toward the justice they have been denied for years.

When the news broke, Ana* was overcome with joy and thanked God for giving families the strength and unwavering faith to keep fighting for justice. She knew the weight of loss all too well.

In 2017, police stormed into their home in Caloocan City and brutally killed her husband and father-in-law in a single night.

Ana, who was five months pregnant at that time, was caught in the violence and was hit by a stray bullet. She and other victims have since been supported by the In Defence of Human Rights and Dignity Movement.

“Sa wakas, unti-unti nang nakakamit ang hustisya para sa lahat ng biktima (At last, justice is slowly being achieved for all the victims),” she recalled thinking when she read that Duterte had been arrested.

But Ana is wishing for more than just imprisonment for Duterte, even as she welcomed the long-awaited accountability from the former president and his allies.

“Sana din ay aminin niya lahat ng kamalian at humingi siya ng kapatawaran sa lahat ng tao na biktima para matahimik din ang mga kaluluwa ng mga namatay (I hope he also admits to all his wrongdoings and asks for forgiveness from every victim, so that the souls of those who were killed may finally find peace),” she said.

Brutality they endured
For the families, the ICC’s move and the government’s action are an acknowledgment of the brutality they endured. The latest development is also a validation of their grief and provides a glimmer of hope that accountability is finally within reach. After years of being silenced and dismissed, they see this moment as the start of a reckoning they feared would never come.

Celina, whose husband was shot dead in a drug war operation, feels overwhelming joy but is wary that the arrest is just part of a long process at the ICC.

“Ang sabi nga po, mahaba-habang laban ito kaya hindi po sa pag-aresto natatapos ito, bagkus ito ay simula pa lamang ng aming mga laban [at] naniniwala kami at aasa sa kakayahan at suporta na ibinibigay sa amin ng ICC [na] sa huli, mananagot ang dapat managot, maparusahan ang may mga sala,” she said.

(As they say, this is a long battle, so it does not end with the arrest. Rather, this is only the beginning of our fight. We believe in and will rely on the ICC’s capability and support, knowing that in the end, those who must be held accountable will face justice, and the guilty will be punished.)

It is a stark contrast to the reality they have lived following the deaths of their loved ones. They were constantly under threat from the police who pulled the trigger. Many families had to flee to faraway places, leaving behind their own communities and source of livelihood.

“Nakakaiyak ako, hindi ko alam ang dapat kong maramdaman na sa ilang taon naming ipinaglalaban ay nakamit din namin ang hustisyang aming minimithi (I’m in tears — I don’t know what to feel. After years of fighting, we have finally achieved the justice we have long been yearning for),“ said Betty, whose 44-year-old son and 22-year-old grandson were killed under Duterte’s drug war.

For Jane Lee, the arrest only underscores the glaring disparity between the powerful and the powerless.

“Mabuti pa siya, inaresto ng mga kapulisan. Ang aming mga kaanak, pinatay agad,” she said. “Napakalaki ng pagkakaiba sa pagitan ng makapangyarihan at ordinaryong taong tulad namin.”

(At least he was arrested by the police. Our loved ones were killed on the spot. The difference between the powerful and ordinary people like us is enormous.)

Lee’s husband, Michael, was gunned down by unidentified men in May 2017, leaving her to raise their three children alone. Since then, she has volunteered for Rise Up for Life and for Rights, a group composed mostly of widows and mothers who remain steadfast in demanding justice for drug war victims.

Collective rage
Families from Rise Up in Cebu also voiced their collective rage against Duterte who ordered killings from the presidential pulpit for six years. They hope that Duterte will feel the same pain they felt when their loved ones were forcibly taken away from them.

This afternoon, Duterte condemned the alleged violation of due process following his arrest. His allies are also echoing this messaging, calling the arrest unlawful.

His longtime aide, Senator Bong Go, Go, tried to access Duterte in Villamor Air Base, asking the guards to let him deliver pizza since they hadn’t eaten yet.

“Katiting lang iyan sa ginawa mo sa amin na sinira mo ang aming buhay at hanapbuhay dahil sa iyong pekeng war on drugs,” the families of drug war victims in Cebu said. “Wala kang karapatan na kumuha ng buhay ng iba [kasi] Diyos lang may karapatan kaya sa ginawa mo, maniningil ang taumbayan lalo na kaming mga pamilya ng mga naging biktima.”

(That is nothing compared to what you did to us. You destroyed our lives and livelihood because of your fake war on drugs. You have no right to take another person’s life; only God has that right. Because of what you have done, the people will demand justice, especially we, the families of the victims.)

There is still no clear information on what comes next, whether Duterte will be immediately transferred to the International Criminal Court headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands, or if legal battles will delay the process.

But Mila*, whose 17-year-old nephew was killed by police in Quezon City in 2018, hopes for one thing if the former president finds himself in a detention cell soon: “Sana huwag na siya lumaya (I hope he is never set free).” 

Republished from Rappler with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

The Laotians are buying materials to hastily fix their homes following the blast in Nami village in Oudomxay province’s Xay district on Feb. 14 caused by illegal explosives inside a burning Chinese-owned vehicle parts shop.

The explosion killed one Laotian and three Chinese nationals and injured nine others. Police said they are investigating the incident, which also severely damaged nearby buildings and some vehicles.

Provincial officials sent about 380 soldiers to the area on Feb. 14-17 to help residents repair homes, while relevant officials assess the cost of the damage to compensate those affected, a villager who is a relative of an affected resident said Wednesday.

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“Those affected cannot live in their houses, so they are fixing them immediately on their own,” he said.

The roofs, ceilings, door and outside gates of several nearby homes were damaged in the explosion, though the main structures are intact, said the person who declined to be identified for fear of reprisal for speaking to the media.

However, the residents don’t expect aid from the government, so they are repairing their houses at their own expense because provincial authorities have not publicly discussed any compensation for them, he said.

A local official told RFA that relevant authorities have been collecting information about the damage so they can plan a budget to compensate those affected.

“The officials have been busy collecting information since last week, and they are now finalizing the figures,” he said.

Translated by Ounkeo Souksavanh for RFA Lao. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Laos.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief Weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues.

The military planes departed from Texas in quick succession, eight flights in as many days. Each one carried more than a dozen immigrants that the U.S. alleged are the “worst of the worst” kinds of criminals, including members of a violent Venezuelan street gang.

Since Feb. 4, the Trump administration has flown about 100 immigrant detainees to the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a facility better known for having held those suspected of plotting the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Officials have widely touted the flights as a demonstration of President Donald Trump’s commitment to one of the central promises of his campaign, and they’ve distributed photos of some of the immigrants at both takeoff and landing. But they have not released the names of those they’re holding or provided details about their alleged crimes.

In recent days, however, information about the flights and the people on them has emerged that calls the government’s narrative into question. ProPublica and The Texas Tribune have identified nearly a dozen Venezuelan immigrants who have been transferred to Guantanamo. The New York Times published a larger list with some, but not all, of the same names.

For three of the Guantanamo detainees who had been held at an immigration detention center in El Paso, Texas, ProPublica and the Tribune obtained records about their criminal histories and spoke to their families. The three men are all Venezuelan. Each had been detained by immigration authorities soon after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border and was being held in custody, awaiting deportation. In some cases, they had been languishing for months because Venezuela, until recently, was largely not accepting deportees. According to U.S. federal court records, two of them had no crimes on their records except for illegal entry. The third had picked up an additional charge while in detention, for kicking an officer while being restrained during a riot.

Relatives of the three men said in interviews on Tuesday that they have been left entirely in the dark about their loved ones. They all said that their relatives were not criminals, and two provided records from the Venezuelan Interior Ministry and other documents to support their statements. They said the U.S. government has given them neither information about the detainees’ whereabouts nor the ability to speak with them.

Attorneys say they have also been denied access. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on Wednesday, arguing that the U.S. Constitution gives the detainees rights to legal representation that shouldn’t be stripped away just because they have been moved to Guantanamo.

“Never before have people been taken from U.S. soil and sent to Guantanamo, and then denied access to lawyers and the outside world,” said Lee Gelernt, the lead attorney in the ACLU case. “It is difficult to think of anything so flagrantly at odds with the fundamental principles on which our country was built.”

Yesika Palma sobbed as she spoke about her brother Jose Daniel Simancas, a 30-year-old construction worker, and how it felt to think of him being treated like a terrorist when all he’d done was attempt to come to the United States in pursuit of a decent job. Angela Sequera was distraught about not being able to speak to her son, Yoiker Sequera, who’d worked as a barber in Venezuela.

Michel Duran expressed the same dismay about his son, Mayfreed Duran, who also worked as a barber. “To me it’s the desperation, the frustration that I know nothing of him,” he said in a phone interview in Spanish from his home in Venezuela. “It’s a terrible anguish. I don’t sleep.”

In response to questions about the Guantanamo detentions, officials at the Department of Homeland Security insisted, without pointing to any evidence, that some — but not all — of the immigrants they have transferred to Guantanamo are violent gang members and others are “high-threat” criminals. “All these individuals committed a crime by entering the United States illegally,” an agency official said in a statement. Some detainees are being held in Guantanamo’s maximum-security prison while others are in the Migrant Operations Center that in the past has been used to house those intercepted at sea.

DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, responding to the ACLU lawsuit, said in an email that there was a phone system that detainees could use to reach attorneys. Writing in all caps for emphasis, she added, “If the AMERICAN Civil Liberties Union cares more about highly dangerous criminal aliens including murders & vicious gang members than they do about American citizens — they should change their name.”

In the past, the U.S. government has withheld information about cases that it says involve a threat to national security. In those cases, the authorities say, information they’re using to make custody determinations is confidential. The government said some of the people sent to Guantanamo are tied to the Tren de Aragua criminal organization, which Trump designated a terrorist group when he took office. Among the things law enforcement has used to identify members of the group have been certain tattoos, including stars, roses and crowns, though there’s disagreement on whether the practice is reliable. Lawyers have expressed concern that the government sometimes uses national security concerns as a pretext to avoid scrutiny.

The Guantanamo detentions may be among the highest-profile moves the Trump administration has made as part of its mass deportation campaign, but federal agents have also fanned out across the country over the last several weeks to conduct raids in neighborhoods and workplaces. Data obtained by ProPublica and the Tribune shows that from Jan. 20 through the first days of February, there have been at least 14,000 immigration arrests. Around 44% of them were of people with criminal convictions, and of those, close to half were convicted of misdemeanors. Still, Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, has said that he’s not satisfied with the pace of enforcement.

Government data obtained by the news organizations shows that the Trump administration has averaged about 500 deportations per day, well short of the more than 2,100 per day during the 2024 fiscal year under former President Joe Biden. However, the difference could be attributed to lower numbers of border crossings, which have been dropping since last year.

Trump directed the departments of Defense and Homeland Security last month to prepare 30,000 beds at Guantanamo and later said the site was for “criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people.”

Relatives of three of those currently detained in Guantanamo said the immigrants all had tattoos. And one of them, Simancas, was from Aragua, the state where Tren de Aragua was born. The detainees’ relatives dispute that their loved ones have anything to do with the group. “This doesn’t make sense. He’s a family man,” Palma said in Spanish of her brother. “Having tattoos is not a sin.”

Palma, who is currently living in Ecuador, said her brother left Venezuela years ago, first living for a time in Ecuador and then in Costa Rica. He decided to try his luck in the United States last year, crossing with a group that included his wife and cousin, who were soon released into the U.S. to pursue asylum claims, they both said in interviews. All three women said Simancas was proud of his work on construction sites and shared TikTok videos he made showing the progress of some of his projects, set to music. Simancas called his cousin on Feb. 7 saying he was being taken to Guantanamo. “It is truly distressing,” his sister said. “I have to have faith because if I break down I can’t help him.”

Duran’s father only learned of his son’s potential whereabouts after recognizing his face in a TikTok video with some of the images released by the U.S. government of men in gray sweats and shackles being led into military planes in El Paso.

Duran had left Venezuela hoping to one day open his own barbershop in Chicago, where he had relatives. He described his son, who has a toddler, as a jokester and a dedicated worker. Duran was detained in July 2023 on his third attempt crossing the border, his father said. He remained in detention following a conviction for assaulting a federal officer during a riot at the immigration center in El Paso in August, about a month after his arrival. He’d called his father on Feb. 6, asking him to gather documentation that could prove he had no criminal record in Venezuela because officials were trying to tie him to Tren de Aragua. That was the last his father heard of him.

Angela Sequera was used to talking to her son every day on the phone while he was detained in El Paso, but then she abruptly stopped hearing from him. On Sunday she got a call from a detainee inside the El Paso center telling her that her son Yoiker had been transferred, but she wasn’t able to speak to him; when she looked him up online, it still showed him as being at the border.

She’d last heard from him a day earlier. “Estoy cansado,” I’m exhausted, she said he told her in Spanish. “It’s unfair that I’m still detained.” He’d been held inside the detention center in El Paso since September, after turning himself in to the Border Patrol in Presidio, nearly four hours south of El Paso.

Yoiker Sequera, who was first identified by the online publication Migrant Insider, is among the three Venezuelans named in the lawsuit filed by the ACLU. The 25-year-old had wanted to be a barber ever since he was a boy, his mother said, just like his uncle. That’s how he made a living wherever he went, in Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia. He continued to cut hair along the migrant route, as he was trying last year to make his way to his family in California, and inside the detention center.

Angela Sequera said her son had planned on crossing the border and trying to seek asylum in the United States. “Now they want to tie him to criminal gangs. Everything that’s happening is so unfair.”

We are still reporting. Do you have information about the U.S. immigration system you want to share? You can reach our tip line on Signal at 917-512-0201. Please be as specific, detailed and clear as you can.

Pratheek Rebala contributed reporting.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Perla Trevizo and Mica Rosenberg, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.

“Instead of tackling rising prices and delivering relief for American families, House Republicans are charging ahead with trillions of dollars in deeply unpopular tax breaks for billionaires like Donald Trump and Elon Musk. And, they’re paying for their billionaire handouts by ransacking health care, food assistance, and other vital programs that American workers and families rely on.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Min Din didn’t want to be a soldier. He joined the Myanmar military 33 years ago, seeking a steady income for his wife and his newly born son. Seven months ago, that long career came to a bloody end. The 57-year-old army sergeant was felled by a rocket fire in a rebel assault on a besieged military base in Shan state. His body was buried nearby.

Far from enjoying financial security, his wife Hla Khin is now a widow without income. She’s still waiting for a payout from his military pension.

Min Din’s grown-up son, Yan Naing Tun, who has fled Myanmar to escape military conscription, is bitter about the leaders who ordered his father into battle in the first place.

“Old soldiers like my father fought and sacrificed their lives, but their deaths did not benefit the people,” Yan Naing Tun told RFA, his eyes sharp and full of pain. “My father’s death was not worth it; he gave his life protecting the wealth of the dictators.”

(Citizen photo)

Four years after the coup against a democratic government that plunged Myanmar into civil war, the military has inflicted terrible suffering on civilians. Torching of villages, indiscriminate air strikes and stomach-churning atrocities have become commonplace. Even the military’s own rank and file are paying a price.

This is a story about two veteran soldiers of the Tatmadaw, as the military is known inside Myanmar, whose bereaved families spoke to RFA Burmese about how they’ve struggled to survive after the soldiers’ deaths in combat after more than 30 years of service. All their names have been changed at their request and for their safety.

While reviled by many for its long record of human rights abuses, the Tatmadaw remains the most powerful institution in the country - and one that has traditionally offered a career path for both the officer class and village recruits.

But any appeal that a military career once had has been eroded – not just through its reputation for corruption and atrocities, but by setbacks on the battlefield. By some estimates, it now controls less than half of a country it has long ruled with an iron fist. Its casualties from fighting with myriad rebel groups likely runs into the tens of thousands.

(AFP)

There are growing signs it can’t look after its own.

Aung Pyay Sone, the son of Myanmar’s military leader Min Aung Hlaing, has been accused of running a predatory life insurance scheme in which all soldiers make contributions. They are also obliged to make monthly contributions to a sprawling military conglomerate known as Myanmar Economic Holdings. According to families, the life insurance scheme is no longer paying out on the death of a soldier. Families also struggle to get pension payments they are due.

A way to support a family

Another recent Tatmadaw fatality, Ko Lay, signed up for the army during what might be considered as its oppressive heyday in the early 1990s when the military was in the ascendant against ethnic insurgencies and expanding its business interests.

He enlisted soon after the country’s first multi-party democratic election. The pro-military party lost by a landslide, but the ruling junta refused to hand over power – leaving the winning party’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest. (That’s a situation similar to now. Suu Kyi, who had led the now-ousted civilian government for five years, has been imprisoned at an undisclosed location since the 2021 coup).

Against this backdrop of democracy suppressed and the military in control, Ko Lay enlisted aged 20. He was a villager from central Myanmar’s Bago region, who had dropped out of school because his parents could not pay the fees.

His wife maintains that joining up was never a political decision. The military offered a pathway to employment and a way to support a family.

“My husband was uneducated,” his wife Mya May told RFA. “He didn’t even pass the fourth grade. His parents did not remember when he was born. When he joined the army, one of the officers looked at him and estimated his birth date and the year and enlisted him.”

Ko Lay only married in his 40s, but once he did his family moved with him every time he was transferred, which is customary. But after the 2021 coup, with fighting intensifying as people across Myanmar took up arms against the junta, they sent their 10-year-old son to live with relatives near Yangon.

At the start of 2024, with rebel forces in northeastern Myanmar gaining in strength, Ko Lay was deployed with Infantry Battalion No. 501 in Kyaukme, in northern Shan State. Mya May and her 89-year-old father Ba Maung followed him.

Under fire

In February, villagers were starting to flee the area as a military showdown beckoned. Ko Lay’s battalion was meant to be strengthened for this fight, but in reality, it numbered fewer than 200 troops, less than a third of full strength. By late June, the combined forces of the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) and a People’s Defense Force unit from the Mandalay region were closing in.

(Courtesy of Mya May)

Mya May said that Ko Lay was stationed on the outer perimeter of the military camp at Kyaukme. Inside the camp, Mya May, along with other wives, were put to work loading and carrying ammunition.

“My husband was stationed on the outer perimeter near a monastery. Resistance forces used the monastery as a strategic position, drilling holes into the brick walls to fire guns and launching missiles from above,” she said.

As the attack intensified, frontline soldiers, including Ko Lay, retreated into the camp. Snipers began picking them off. At 7:30 a.m. on June 27, Sgt. Ko Lay was killed by sniper fire.

Mya May never retrieved his body. She believes he was buried at a rifle range.

She and her father were now under fire themselves. As they sheltered in a building inside the base, rebel rocket fire hit the building and showered glass over them. They fled during a lull in the fighting in vehicles organized by the military that transported them and other families to another military base.

The remaining soldiers were left to fight. Within a month, their commander would be dead, and almost the entire battalion wiped out.

Struggling to get by

Mya May, her 10-year-old son, and Ba Maung are now living near Yangon with relatives. She still feels deep sorrow that she was not able to bury her husband or be with him in his final moments.

She’s also struggling to make ends meet.

It took Mya May three months to receive her husband’s pension. She now gets a monthly stipend of 174,840 kyats (about $40), with an additional 19,200 kyats ($4.30) per month for her son – which is scarcely enough to survive in Myanmar’s stricken economy. But because her husband died on the frontline, she received an additional one-off payment of 13,166,500 kyats ($3,006).

(Courtesy of Mya May)

This frontline death payment was a much-touted inducement offered prior to the 2021 coup aimed at encouraging young men from poor families to sign up.

Her father, Ba Maung laments their situation after Ko Lay’s death.

“Seeing my daughter in trouble, having lost her husband and all her belongings, is deeply disappointing,” the 89-year-old said. “When she got married, she promised to support me. She is very clever. But now I can’t help her, and it fills me with great sadness.”

They’ve also been short-changed by the life insurance scheme that Ko Lay bought. For the past five years, the sergeant had paid 8,332 kyats (almost $2) a month for a policy aimed at providing for his family in the event of his death. Four months after her husband’s death, Mya May has received exactly the same amount that had been taken from her husband’s wages. Not a kyat more.

Dying in a war zone

The widow of the other fallen military veteran mentioned in this story, Min Din, who served in the same battalion as Ko Lay and also died in June, has fared even worse.

His wife Hla Khin learned from a soldier in his company that Min Din was killed in a direct hit on the battalion headquarters by a short-range rocket. He was buried near the central gate of the base.

“Due to the dire situation in Kyaukme, we couldn’t travel there to see him or pay our respects,” Hla Khin said, adding that the best they could do was to offer alms to monks and donate 100,000 kyats to a monastery in his honor.

Her attempts to secure a military pension or any payment has so far been unsuccessful.

Applications are meant to be made in person where the soldier last served, which is no easy matter in a war zone.

“There was nobody in Battalion 501 as many people died. Almost all documents have been lost as some office staff moved out, some died and some are still missing,” she said.

(Courtesy Min Din's family)

But Hla Khin, now living in her elderly parents’ house in Ayeyarwady region, said that now the necessary paperwork has been submitted. She sent a formal letter to the commander of another battalion where some of the soldiers and families have relocated. She’s waiting for a response.

Her plight is compounded by the knowledge that her husband had been desperate to retire from the military for years before his death. Months before the 2021 coup, Min Din, then aged 54, had made that request because of high blood pressure and a heart condition. He went to the army hospital at the cantonment city of Pyin Oo Lwin but was told he would have to wait until he was aged 61 to retire.

Instead, he ended up deployed on the frontline of the junta’s fight against the rebels – first at Laukkaing, a strategic town on the border with China, where junta forces surrendered under a white flag. After that humiliation, Min Din requested discharge again, and again was denied. He was then redeployed to Kyaukme, where he died.

Holding onto hope

Min Din’s eldest son, Yan Naing Tun, 33, said he is filled with overwhelming sadness. He remembers his father as kind and someone who deeply cared for his children. The family often lacked food, and he recounted his father once donating his own blood to earn some kyats to buy food and cook for them.

(AFP)

Like many of his young countrymen, Yan Naing Tun has voted with his feet, fleeing Myanmar for Thailand to avoid the draft and fighting for the “dictators” he says are only interested in protecting their wealth.

“There are countless young people fleeing the country, many sacrificing their lives, and countless others enduring great suffering. Our shared hope is for an end to the fighting and the arrival of peace. I am one of the young people holding onto this hope,” he told RFA.

Edited by Mat Pennington.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Aye Aye Mon for RFA Burmese.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

Two families have sued an East Tennessee school district in federal court, arguing that school officials violated students’ rights when they called the police under a Tennessee law that seeks to severely punish threats of mass violence.

One 11-year-old was arrested at a restaurant even though he denied making a threat. A 13-year-old with disabilities was handcuffed for saying his backpack would blow up, even though only a stuffed animal was inside.

ProPublica and WPLN News wrote about both cases last year as part of a larger investigation into how new state laws result in children being kicked out of school and arrested on felony charges, sometimes because of rumors and misunderstandings. Our reporting in Hamilton County found that police were arresting, handcuffing and detaining kids, even though school officials labeled most of the incidents as “low level” with “no evidence of motive.” The students arrested were disproportionately Black and had disabilities, compared to those groups’ overall share of the district’s population.

The lawsuits against Hamilton County’s school district, filed this month in federal court in Chattanooga, are two of several brought against school officials in Tennessee in response to the threats of mass violence law. Advocates hope to push for changes to the law in the legislative session that begins this month. But the law’s Republican sponsor, Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton, told ProPublica and WPLN News that he is “not looking to make any changes to the law.”

“The zero-tolerance policy for even uttering the words ‘shoot’ or ‘gun’ is an unconstitutional kneejerk reaction by the legislature, and has led school administrators to make rash decisions concerning student discipline,” states one of the lawsuits, filed Thursday on behalf of the 11-year-old autistic student arrested at the restaurant.

When asked by another student last September if he was going to shoot up the school, the 11-year-old said, “Yeah,” according to the lawsuit. The school reported the comment to the police, who tracked him down and arrested him.

The other federal lawsuit, filed Jan. 3, involves the 13-year-old student with “serious intellectual impairments,” who told his teacher last fall that the school would “blow up” if she looked inside his backpack. The teacher found just a stuffed animal in the backpack, but school officials reported the incident to police anyway.

“Despite the clear absence of any true threat, and in the context of a student with Doe’s intellectual and emotional impairments, Doe was isolated, handcuffed by the [student resource officer], and transported to juvenile detention,” the lawsuit reads. (Both suits refer to the children involved as John Doe to keep them anonymous.) The school later determined that the student’s behavior was a manifestation of his autism, according to documentation included in the lawsuit.

Both lawsuits allege that district officials violated state law by allowing students receiving special education services to be physically restrained and by failing to follow proper procedure before facilitating the students’ arrests. The school district “infringed on Doe’s First Amendment rights and did so with deliberate indifference,” both lawsuits read.

The juvenile court cases against both students have been dismissed.

The Hamilton County Schools superintendent referred a request for comment to the school board’s attorney, citing pending litigation. The attorney did not immediately respond to a subsequent request for comment. The district has not yet filed a response to either lawsuit.

Disability rights advocates fought for a broader exception in the law that would have prevented police from charging kids who might, as a result of their disability, say or do something that could be construed as a threat.

“What we’re seeing coming out with all of these lawsuits, it’s sort of exactly what we were trying to educate about last year,” said Zoe Jamail, the policy coordinator for Disability Rights Tennessee.

Instead, lawmakers only excluded people with “intellectual disabilities,” failing to address students with other disabilities that affect their communication or behavior. The law does not state how police should determine whether a child has an intellectual disability before charging them. In fact, our reporting found that police arrested the 13-year-old in the lawsuit although school records showed he did have an intellectual disability.

Disability Rights Tennessee and other organizations plan to push for an amendment to the law this legislative session to protect more students with disabilities, especially when the threat is not credible. “The question should really be how can we better support those young people in the school environment, and how can we handle these cases with compassion and reason, rather than reacting and interpreting the law in a way that is not really reasonable,” Jamail said.

A federal judge allowed a lawsuit against a suburban Nashville school board to move forward in November. Two parents had sued Williamson County’s school board on behalf of their children, claiming they were wrongfully suspended and arrested after being accused of making threats of mass violence at school.

The families, Judge Aleta Trauger ruled, had a “plausible claim” that the school board violated the students’ due process rights by suspending them.

Part of the lawsuit involved a middle school student referred to as “H.M.” Teased by friends in a group chat about “looking Mexican,” she jokingly texted her friends, “On Thursday we kill all the Mexicos.” The school board argued in a legal filing that state law required officials to suspend the student and call the police, regardless of whether the threat was serious. In response to a request from ProPublica and WPLN, a school board official declined to comment further.

Trauger questioned Williamson County school board’s analysis of the law, which she said “leads to absurdity.”

“The implausibility of an action — here, a middle school student killing all Mexicans — ought to affect the threat analysis,” she wrote. “What if, for example, H.M. had threatened to cast a magical killing spell on a large group of people? What if H.M. had threatened to fly to the moon and shoot at people using a space laser?”

She denied the Williamson County school board’s motion to completely dismiss the lawsuit. The suit is pending.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Aliyya Swaby, ProPublica, and Paige Pfleger, WPLN/Nashville Public Radio.

“We were not prepared for what we were going to see,” says Human Rights Watch researcher Hiba Zayadin, who recently visited one mass execution site turned mass grave in Syria, following the sudden fall of the authoritarian Assad family from power. More than 150,000 Syrians remain unaccounted for after being held in Assad’s prisons, and many are believed to be buried in mass graves. We speak to Zayadin about what’s been uncovered so far and the struggle to preserve evidence, particularly in the face of a new regime that has not prioritized tracking records of the Assad government’s crimes, and of Israel’s ongoing shelling of crucial sites. “Every minute that passes where there is inaction, where these documents, these sites are not being preserved, are not being secured, is just one more family possibly never knowing what happened to their loved ones,” she says.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

The families, who mostly live in the capital of Vientiane, were forced from their land by the project, part of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “Belt and Road Initiative” of infrastructure development linking China to its neighbors.

Khamphan Phommathat, the president of Laos' State Inspection Authority, confirmed that the 371 families remain uncompensated at a meeting of the Lao National Assembly last week, noting that the government had already paid US$83 million to 6,504 of 6,875 families affected by the project.

“The reason why the issue remains unsolved is because the government and affected families still cannot agree on the calculation of a unit price for their houses, farmland, and trees lost to the project, while in other cases, some families simply can’t accept the unit price offered by the government,” he said.

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In August last year, residents told RFA that they had been offered 80,000 kip (US$4.10) per meter, but were asking for 150,000 kip (US$7.70) per meter.

The US$6 billion railway connecting the two Communist neighbors opened in December 2021. The World Bank projected that it would boost tourism, freight transport and trade in agriculture.

The line runs from Vientiane into northern Laos, passing through 10 stations in the country, including the major tourist draw of Luang Prabang and the Chinese border town of Boten. It ends in Kunming in the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan.

It’s the first railroad to penetrate any distance into Laos, a country whose transport infrastructure has long been constrained by poverty, mountainous terrain and sparse population.

But the project has been criticized for displacing several thousand farmers from their land. Many have faced long delays in getting reimbursement for their lost property, as others have been shortchanged in the payments they did receive.

Speaking to RFA, an official who is involved in compensation negotiations said that the primary reason for the delay is because the government is low-balling residents.

“There will be an increase to the previously offered unit price that [the government] agreed to,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the situation with the media. “However, many years have already passed and the economic situation [in Laos] has shifted, so it looks like the offered unit price is too low.”

Another official working on the compensation issue, who also declined to be named, echoed the assessment that the government’s offering is too low.

“The National Assembly already approved the unit price for compensation, but in practice families affected see it as too low and won’t agree to accept it,” he said. “The government also cannot agree to the unit price that affected families proposed. The only thing the government can do is to push villagers to accept its offer.”

There is currently no projection for when the compensation scheme will be complete, but the State Inspection Authority’s Khamphan Phommathat told the National Assembly that the government will do its best to finalize the offer’s unit price.

“We will continue to push in order for people to get compensation from what they already lost to the Laos-China railway project,” he said.

Translated by Phouvong. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Lao.

Karenni Nationalities Defense Force, or KNDF, and troops from other militias used the occasion of All Souls Day to remember their friends and family members by singing songs, lighting candles and praying over their graves.

A woman who gave her name as Katarina, 48, said her son, Thomas, 24, died in an airstrike in Shan state, just north of Kayah state. She folded her small, wiry frame by the side of her son’s grave and wept deeply at her loss.

“He was a very good kid,” she said through a translator later in the day, her eyes red and swollen from the tears.

When Thomas was 14, he left home to work in area mines in order to support the rest of the family. She gave her blessing when her son said he wanted to join the fight against the military, which seized power from a civilian administration in a 2021 coup.

But without his financial support, Katarina said her family has struggled. Fighting forced them to flee their home to an internally displaced persons camp known as 6-mile village in Demoso, one of tens of thousands of IDPs in the state.

They have to depend on outside support to survive. “It’s very difficult,” she said.

Nearby, Josephine, 29, mourned the loss of her husband, Ray Mon Do Pencu, who was killed in fighting in Northern Shan state. He was a farmer before the war and did “everything” for the family, she said. Now she and her son, who will be 5 on Nov. 19, are also living in an IDP camp.

It’s a struggle to survive, she said, but she’s proud of her husband’s sacrifice against the “dogs,” using a common refrain people here use to refer to military soldiers.

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The graves are closely packed together and above ground to ensure the bodies therein remain dry even in monsoon season. Most featured pictures of the people entombed below, smiling proudly in their military uniforms with carvings of their battalion numbers and the dates of their deaths.

Members of People’s Defense Forces, militias that largely fight under the National Unity Government, a group promoting the return of a civilian-led government, also attended the ceremony.

Gabriel, 28, and other members of his Demoso PDF unit remembered “Brawny,” 30, with members of his family. The soldiers brought beer and food and laughed while singing songs, determined to help ease the family’s pain.

“Brawny was very disciplined. When he decided to do something, he always did it,” Gabriel said. “He was always very kind.”

Military sources said about 400 KNDF soldiers have died since the fighting began three years ago.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Staff.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

Alma Nuñez, a longtime South Phoenix restaurant cashier with three kids, attended a community event a few years ago at which a speaker gave a presentation about Arizona’s school voucher program. She was intrigued.

Angelica Zavala, a West Phoenix home cleaner and mother of two, first heard of vouchers when former Gov. Doug Ducey was talking about them on the news. He was saying that the state was giving parents money that they could then spend on private school tuition or homeschooling supplies. The goal was to ensure that all students, no matter their socioeconomic background, would have access to whatever kind of education best fit them. Zavala thought: This sounds great. Maybe it will benefit my family.

And Fabiola Velasquez, also a mother of three, was watching TV with her husband last year when she saw one of the many ads for vouchers that have blanketed media outlets across metropolitan Phoenix of late. She turned to him and asked, “Have you heard about this?”

Working-class parents like Nuñez, Zavala and Velasquez have often said in surveys and interviews that they’re at least initially interested in school vouchers, which in Arizona are called Empowerment Scholarship Accounts. Many across the Phoenix area told ProPublica that they liked the idea of getting some financial help from the state so that they could send their children to the best, safest private schools — the kind that rich kids get to attend.

Yet when it comes to lower-income families actually choosing to use vouchers here in the nation’s school choice capital, the numbers tell a very different story. A ProPublica analysis of Arizona Department of Education data for Maricopa County, where Phoenix is located, reveals that the poorer the ZIP code, the less often vouchers are being used. The richer, the more.

In one West Phoenix ZIP code where the median household income is $46,700 a year, for example, ProPublica estimates that only a single voucher is being used per 100 school-age children. There are about 12,000 kids in this ZIP code, with only 150 receiving vouchers.

Conversely, in a Paradise Valley ZIP code with a median household income of $173,000, there are an estimated 28 vouchers being used per 100 school-age children.

The question is, if there’s interest in school vouchers among lower-income families, why isn’t that translating into use, as conservative advocates have long promised would happen?

In our interviews, several families said that they simply didn’t know about the program. Some mentioned that they didn’t have the social contacts — or the time, given their jobs — to investigate whether vouchers would be a better option for their kids than public school, which is generally simpler to enroll in and navigate.

But others, like Nuñez, Zavala and Velasquez, said that they knew plenty about Empowerment Scholarship Accounts. Still, they had come to understand that the ESA program was not designed for them, not in a day-to-day sense. Logistical obstacles would make using vouchers to attend private school practically impossible for them and their children.

It starts with geography. The high-quality private schools are not near their neighborhoods.

ProPublica compiled a list of more than 200 private schools in the Phoenix metro area using a survey conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, as well as a Maricopa County listing and other sources. We found that these schools are disproportionately located to the north and east of downtown — in Midtown, Arcadia, Scottsdale, Paradise Valley and the suburbs — rather than to the south and west, the historically segregated areas where Nuñez, Zavala and Velasquez live.

Only six of all of these private schools are in Census tracts where families earn less than 50% of the county’s median income of $87,000.

So even if lower-income families were able to secure spots at a decent private school and could use vouchers to pay the tuition, they would still have to figure out how to get their children there. After all, while public schools generally provide free transportation via school buses, private schools rarely do.

Would they send their kids on $30-plus Uber rides each way every day? Or on city bus trips that might take up to two hours in each direction, because the routes aren’t designed for students the way that school bus routes are? This might require their little ones to make multiple transfers, on their own, at busy intersections.

Zavala used an app that showed the private schools near her home; there weren’t many, but she did know of one, St. Matthew Catholic School, that served students her daughters’ age and was in the vicinity. It also had sports and a dual-language program, which not many private schools provide.

She filled out all the forms to apply for her daughters to attend St. Matthew using vouchers, before deciding that the stress of transportation — there wouldn’t be a school bus — wasn’t worth it. (Zavala also said she realized that the academics wouldn’t necessarily offer an improvement over public school.)

Then there’s tuition. Zavala, as well as Nuñez and Velasquez, learned that a voucher might not even cover the full price of a private school.

A typical voucher from Arizona’s ESA program is worth between $7,000 and $8,000 a year, while private schools in the Phoenix area often charge more than $10,000 annually in tuition and fees, ProPublica found. The price tag at Phoenix Country Day School, one of the best private schools around, ranges from $30,000 to $35,000 depending on the age of the student. (The Hechinger Report has also found that private schools often raise their tuition when parents have vouchers.)

“Just because you gave me a 50%-off coupon at Saks Fifth Avenue doesn’t mean I can afford to shop at Saks Fifth Avenue,” said Curt Cardine, a longtime school superintendent, principal and teacher who is now a fellow at the Grand Canyon Institute, a left-leaning public policy think tank in Phoenix.

Next add the cost of food: breakfast, lunch, afternoon snack. These are provided by public schools to students from lower-income families, but at private schools, parents typically have to pay for them.

And throw in a supply of uniforms with the private school’s logo — hundreds of dollars more.

Plus there is pressure to spend money at auctions, raffles and other fundraisers. (It’s Christian to do so, many religious private school websites say.)

Consider the choices available to Nuñez. For 17 years, she was a cashier at a restaurant, working 10 or more hours a day. Now she is raising three children, two of whom have autism. Private schools have some appeal to her in part because they might have smaller class sizes and more support for her son in third grade, whom she describes as “an earthquake.”

This section of the story works best on ProPublica's website.

Alma Nuñez lives in this ZIP code, where 24% of households are in poverty.

Neighborhoods with high poverty also have very low rates of school voucher use. For families like Nuñez’s, private schools just aren’t accessible, even with a voucher.

She considered using a voucher to send her third grader son to a private school for kids with autism. But the closest such school, ProPublica found, is Banner Academy, which is too far away without a school bus.

If she considered all private schools, no matter whether they provide special education, there would still only be four options within 3 miles of her home.

One of those private schools charges about $4,000 more than Arizona’s standard voucher amount would cover, so she probably can’t afford to send her son there.

Alma’s son may qualify for additional funding because of his disability, but she doesn’t know how much more or how to apply for it.

She can only afford a private school if it provides free lunch, as public schools do. That eliminates two more of the nearby schools, leaving St. Catherine of Siena as her only option.

St. Catherine, like most private schools, doesn’t provide free transportation like public schools do. It would be hard for Nuñez to drive her son every day, so her third grader would have to take two public buses on his own to get to school. It would be a 40-minute trip each way.

None of those options seemed practical for Nuñez, so she decided to keep her son enrolled at the public school down the street.

For all of these reasons, Nuñez, Zavala and Velasquez — despite their initial interest — chose not to use Arizona’s voucher program. Instead, they have each decided to start volunteering at the neighborhood public schools that their kids attend and to organize other busy parents to help make those schools better. They meet with their school administrators regularly. They lend a hand at drop-off and pick-up. They’ve organized “cafecitos”: an informal sort of PTA coffee hour.

“I’m committed to the idea of public school for my and my neighbors’ children,” Velasquez said. “I have zero regrets about not using ESA.”

This school year, ProPublica is examining Arizona’s first-in-the-nation “universal” school voucher program: available to all families, no matter their income. We are doing so because more than a dozen other states have enacted, or are attempting to enact, voucher initiatives largely or partly modeled after this one.

Arizona’s experience holds lessons for the rest of the country amid an election season in which the future of education is at stake, even as issues like immigration and inflation grab more headlines.

As they were initially conceived, school vouchers were targeted at helping families in lower-income areas. The first such programs, in cities like Milwaukee and Cleveland, provided money specifically to poor parents who had children in struggling, underfunded public schools, to help them pay tuition at a hopefully better private school.

Conservative advocacy groups still say that this is the purpose of vouchers. “School choice provides options for low-income families” by breaking “the arbitrary link between a child’s housing and the school he or she can attend,” the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank with deep ties to former President Donald Trump, said in 2019. “At the core of the school choice movement is the aspiration that every family obtain the freedom to pursue educational excellence for their children — regardless of their geographic location or socioeconomic background,” the Goldwater Institute, the Phoenix-based conservative think tank that pioneered and helped enact Arizona’s ESA law, has asserted.

But now that groups like these have successfully pushed for vouchers to be made universal in several states, the programs are disproportionately being used by middle- and upper-income parents.

“Arizona is the school choice capital of the U.S. — great, but if it’s not quality schools within a reasonable distance, then it’s not meaningful choice for our families,” said Stephanie Parra, CEO of ALL In Education, a pro-public-education Latino advocacy group that Nuñez, Zavala and Velasquez have been working with.

Michael J. Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a pro-charter-school and school voucher education reform think tank, told ProPublica that Arizona’s version of vouchers “is not well-designed to achieve the goal of providing more choice for low-income and working-class families.” He said that “if you were going to design a program that really wanted to unlock private school choice for those families, you would design it very differently than Arizona did.”

Petrilli said that this would at least include means-testing the program: in other words, making larger vouchers available to lower-income parents, rather than giving the same amount to the very wealthy, who do not need the help. (Some states with near-universal voucher programs, he noted, give priority to lower-income families, unlike Arizona.) This would help poor parents cover the cost of transportation, among other things.

Arizona’s program does allow parents to use their ESA money on transportation costs, but those who’ve already spent their voucher on tuition don’t have anything left for a year’s worth of Uber rides, city bus fares or gas. ESAs can also be used for homeschooling supplies, but most working parents can’t homeschool.

Some private schools provide additional scholarships or financial aid to students from lower-income backgrounds, though the process can be complicated to navigate. In some instances, ProPublica found, private school application systems even require a nonrefundable fee to apply for need-based aid.

Advocates for vouchers argue that many of these inequities already exist and are just as bad in the public school system. They note that poor families are often practically limited to the public schools nearest to them; it’s not as though the government provides transportation if parents want to send their kids to a better public school across town. (At least not since the end of the desegregation-era practice of busing Black children to mostly white schools. Busing helped to desegregate the public schools and improved academic outcomes for Black students, but it was broadly unpopular.)

Michael McShane, director of national research for the pro-voucher advocacy and research organization EdChoice, said that it’s still “early days” for universal programs like Arizona’s, and that “there is an adoption curve anytime any new innovation takes place.”

Asked why these efforts haven’t yet clearly helped lower-income families, McShane said that the “first movers” in a newly reformed system “tend to be more risk-takers, which sort of comes with affluence.” For lower-income parents whose children have long just been assigned to a public school, he said, school choice is “a muscle that has to be learned.”

He acknowledged, though, that more still needs to be done to help students from less-affluent areas access private schools, especially in a sprawling state like Arizona. This could include providing larger vouchers based on students’ socioeconomic circumstances as well as working on the “supply side” of the system — developing new private schools in places where there aren’t many.

But the question remains whether quality private schools, interested in making a profit, will have any reason to build new locations in South or West Phoenix, where most parents can’t pay tuition beyond their $7,000 voucher. So far, in these areas of the city, the free market has mostly just provided strip-mall, storefront private schools as well as what are called microschools, with little on their websites that working parents can use to judge their curricula, quality or cost. (Private schools in Arizona aren’t obligated to make public any information about their performance.)

These schools might not be accredited. Their teachers might not be certified. They might close soon. They are certainly not the large, established, elite private schools of the American imagination.

While lower-income families are struggling to access or even learn about ways to use vouchers, wealthier parents enjoy a smoother path.

Affluent parents in the Phoenix area whose kids were already attending private school, for example, told ProPublica that they are now being sent webinars and other emailed advice — from the private school administrators to whom they are already paying tuition — on how to apply for vouchers to subsidize that tuition.

Erin Rotheram-Fuller, a mom in South Scottsdale who is sending her daughter to a private school using the ESA program, is also an Arizona State University associate professor of education. She said that the program has largely worked for her family, in part because she lives in an upper-middle-class area and there are quality schools serving her daughter’s needs that are relatively nearby. Moreover, she has been able to rely on word of mouth and help from her social circle, asking other ESA parents for advice about navigating logistical issues, like which documents to submit during the application process.

“As a parent, I’m grateful for it,” Rotheram-Fuller said of the program. “But there are several layers of barriers.”

“Parents near us can make so many more choices than other families who really need it,” she said.

The moms in South Phoenix agree.

Zavala said that another reason that she didn’t ultimately submit those forms to send her daughters to private school using vouchers was that what she could provide materially was less than what she predicted the other kids at the private school would have. She worried that her little girls, if not equipped with the latest cellphone, laptop and other indicators of wealth, would feel left out or be bullied.

Velasquez, meanwhile, wondered if she would be received in the same way at a private school as she is as a public school parent leader.

“Yes, there might be a nicer playground and basketball court, but would I be able to advocate for them?” she asked, referring to her children.

Dani Portillo, superintendent of the Roosevelt School District in South Phoenix, which these three mothers all send their children to, told ProPublica that ultimately “parents will speak by choosing our schools.” She said, “The idea that if they don’t go to a private school, they’re not giving their child the best — no, that’s false.”

These parents made a clear school choice of their own, Nuñez, Zavala and Velasquez said: to say no to vouchers.

Mollie Simon contributed research.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Eli Hager and Lucas Waldron.

We speak with Oscar-winning filmmaker Errol Morris about his new documentary, Separated, based on NBC correspondent Jacob Soboroff’s book of the same name. The film details the horrors of the Trump “zero tolerance” immigration policy, under which thousands of immigrant children were forcibly separated from their parents after they crossed the southern U.S. border, part of the administration’s broader crackdown on immigration. The cruel policy was enforced as early as July 2017, initially without public acknowledgment by Trump officials. It was ultimately rescinded amid widespread outrage, but it continues to impact the families who were targeted, and about 1,000 children remain effectively orphaned years later, with authorities and rights groups still unable to locate their parents. “It wouldn’t have happened were it not for decades of bipartisan deterrence-based immigration policy that continues to this day,” says Soboroff. Morris says “the most appalling part of the policy” was the lack of record-keeping. “OK, let’s separate the children, but let’s not actually keep a record of how to ever reunite them. Let’s separate them for good. Let’s just create orphans, abandon children,” he says. Separated plays for a week at the IFC Center in New York, starting tonight, before it gets wider theatrical distribution and airs on MSNBC this December.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Chen Zijuan, the U.S.-based wife of rights attorney Chang Weiping, said that while her husband was released in July following a prison term for taking part in a gathering of dissidents in Xiamen in December 2019, he remains under a travel ban, and can't be with them.

Mid-autumn festival takes place around the autumn equinox in September, and involves family gatherings to eat mooncakes, light lanterns and admire the full moon. The moon also symbolizes togetherness for people forced to be apart, with countless poems dedicated to moon-viewing and feelings of loss or nostalgia.

Mid-Autumn Festival, traditionally a harvest celebration, starts on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month, when the moon appears at its roundest and largest.

This year's Mid-Autumn Festival fell on Tuesday and coincided with worldwide viewing of the supermoon eclipse. 

But not everyone in China is in a position to take part.

"In recent years, the Chinese Communist Party has increasingly used family separation as a form of punishment for dissidents," Chen told RFA Mandarin ahead of the festival. "Even two years after his release, I'm not optimistic. I think they'll claim that his departure would endanger national security."

"It's very damaging for a family not to be able to see each other over a long period of time," she said. "They just want to make you suffer — it's also a way to intimidate everyone else in society."

For the spouses and children of political prisoners, national holidays, when everyone else is meeting up with loved ones, are the hardest and saddest times.

"I worry about him — he looks thinner and kind of sallow," she said of Chang. "He has lost his lawyer's license, and it's hard for him to get by now that he has lost his career."

"He is very anxious right now, and doesn't know what he can do," Chen said. "I don't have a good solution — all I can do is take good care of the kids; at least he doesn't have to worry about us any more."

'They just cut you off'

Meanwhile, the U.S.-based wife of jailed rights attorney Ding Jiaxi, who is currently serving a 12-year jail term for subversion after taking part in the Xiamen gathering, said she misses her husband very much, and is very worried about his health in prison.

"I worry about his health on a daily basis," Luo Shengchun told RFA Mandarin in a recent interview. "He has high blood pressure and needs to take medication."

"In China now, the way the authorities do things is not to tell you anything, not to respond to anything, and not to pass on any information — they just cut you off," she said.

Luo has appealed to her local Congress representative, but the Chinese government won't discuss Ding's situation with them either, she said.

But she still gets letters from Ding, who was jailed in 2023 alongside prominent rights activist Xu Zhiyong, and says he is her inspiration.

"I feel his influence from his letters and his actions — I believe in the resonance of souls," Luo said. 

And she refuses to buckle despite the pressure of spearheading a public campaign to support her husband.

"I won't let them succeed in silencing Ding Jiaxi and Xu Zhiyong's voices, and I won't let them turn me into someone who weeps every day," Luo said.

"I am a total believer in non-violent resistance," she said. "The more the Chinese Communist Party tries to stop me from doing something, the more I will do it."

Xu's partner, the feminist activist Li Qiaochu, has since been released from prison.

Ahead of the Mid-Autumn Festival this year, she posted a photo of herself and Xu together in a moon-shaped frame to social media, calling on people to write to him in prison to offer their support during the festival, according to Luo.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Roseanne Gerin.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Chen Zifei for RFA Mandarin.

Carnegie caricatured by “Spy” for the London magazine Vanity Fair, 1903 – Public Domain

Defenders of ruling elites have seldom been satisfied with the argument that the rich deserve their wealth because of their grudging willingness to provide jobs for everyone else. Very commonly, the tendency is to celebrate the rich and powerful as being different kinds of people from the rest of us—suggesting that they built their gigantic companies up from scratch by their own almost miraculously superior knowledge, relentless drive, and willingness to make tough calls.

The works of Herbert Spencer, for example, were the Bible of the Gilded Age millionaire industrialists and financiers. Some- times called the Marx of the rich, Spencer claimed to extend to society the scientific insights of Charles Darwin, whose theory of evolution through processes of natural selection had revolutionized biology. Darwin claimed that competition by organisms for the scarce resources of survival meant the preferential reproduction of organisms well-suited to their natural environment, leading to the incredible variety of adaptations to every niche in the living world today.

Spencer claimed to apply this watershed insight to social analysis. But rather than organisms evolving by passing on traits suited to changing ecosystems, Spencer claimed in the competitive economy human individuals also had to fight for scarce resources, and those who became rich were the best-suited to life. And not just best-suited, it also turned out the rich were better people too, why just look at their elegant estates and their many luxurious pos- sessions and their fine diction.

Andrew Carnegie, the great Gilded Age steel monopolist, wrote, “While the law [of natural selection] may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department,” although he frankly ad- mitted capitalism was creating “rigid castes” and called the wealth gap “the problem of our age.”6 Danny Dorling draws out the unflattering implications of these views in Inequality and the 1%: “It is remarkable . . . to have to acknowledge that some people really do believe that some of us are actually of ‘better stock’ than others. They don’t say this out loud, of course. Animal breeding metaphors are hardly acceptable as a way to talk about fellow citizens.”7

More concretely, a paper for the Peterson Institute for Inter- national Economics found that while “the superrich in the United States are more dynamic than in Europe,” still “just over half of European billionaires inherited their fortunes, as compared to one- third in the United States.”8 That’s still a lot of inheritance going on, and for billions of dollars of wealth that are desperately needed by so many people.

But what research we have does not suggest the rich are superior to us, and in fact their wealth-drenched lives seem to lead in the opposite direction. There is a common, and institutionally encouraged, pattern of carefully hoarding wealth and keeping it within the family, and putting personal relationships, even marriage, beneath economic imperatives.

The heiress Abigail Disney wrote for the Atlantic about her inheritance and how she was “Taught from a Young Age to Protect My Dynastic Wealth,” especially once she came into the money at the age of twenty-one. She was “taught certain precepts as though they are gospel: Never spend the ‘corpus’ (also known as the capital) you were left. Steward your assets to leave even more to your children, and then teach them to do the same. And finally, use every tool at your disposal within the law” to keep the money from the government, which will only waste it on health care for poor people. She also learned to “marry people ‘of your own class’ to save yourself the complexity and conflict that come with a broad gulf in income, assets, and, therefore, power.”9 She adds, “Having money—a lot of money—is very, very nice . . . I have wallowed in the less concrete privileges that come with a trust fund, such as time, control, security, attention, power, and choice.”

And more specifically, we can turn to the body of rigorous social science research on the rich, which tends to reveal that they are assholes. A group of psychologists at the University of California conducted an impressive series of lab and field tests to probe the moral fiber of wealthier people and published the results in the highly prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They found “upper-class individuals behave more unethically than lower-class individuals,” being in particular “more likely to break the law while driving, relative to lower-class individuals,” and in the lab “were more likely to exhibit unethical decision-making tendencies,” as well as to lie, cheat, and take goods from others.10 The first two studies involved assessing the class signals of oncoming cars at a California traffic intersection, and recording whether the driver obeyed traffic laws and allowed a waiting car to pass or in- stead cut them off. The second study replaced the second car with a pedestrian, with both studies finding that after controlling for other factors like sex, age, traffic conditions, and the time of day, “upper-class drivers were the most likely to cut off other vehicles” and “were significantly more likely to drive through the crosswalk without yielding to the waiting pedestrian.”

In the lab, participants were given a survey to state their subjective view of their personal social and economic standing, and given a well-established exercise to heighten class feeling, by comparing themselves to people with more or less money, education, and better or worse jobs. They then participated in simple lab activities to gauge behavior—being offered candy from a jar that the subject is told will later be given to a room full of children, meaning the more the subject takes, the less remains for kids. Richer subjects took more candy than lower-ranked subjects. Asked to privately roll a die and told the highest-total roller would receive a cash prize, upper-class subjects were more likely to lie to the experimenter and report a higher total roll (all rolls were pre- determined to sum up to twelve).

The psychologists then ask rhetorically, “Is society’s nobility in fact its most noble actors?” You can guess their conclusion. They chalk up the shitty behavior of the rich to their increased independence, both from economic need and from regard for others’ opinions, as well as having the resources to cope with any costs of their unethical behavior.

You can be high-class and pretty classless.

The post The Best Families: Enduring Ruling-class Alibis appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Rob Larson.

On the evening of July 27 and the early morning of July 28, the island of Wihwa in the country’s northwest was completely submerged by flooding in the Yalu River that separates North Korea from China.

RFA reported last week that not only did the country’s leader Kim Jong Un refuse help from China to evacuate Wihwa and other islands before they were claimed by the raging river, he arrived on the scene to “lead rescue efforts,” long after the waters had subsided.

North Korean state media reported that after the floods, Kim Jong Un held an emergency meeting in the city of Sinuiju, and he said that he blamed Kang Bong Hun, the provincial party committee secretary of Chagang Province, and Ri Thae Sop, the minister of social security, for “causing unacceptable casualties” and dismissed them from their positions.

In the days following their evacuation, the residents who made it off the island were forced to watch propaganda videos that paint Kim as a hero, and they must avoid showing even a hint of sadness on their faces, a resident of the northwestern province of North Pyongan told RFA Korean on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“An official who participated in the flood investigation said that hundreds of people from Wihwa were still missing,” he said, adding that some of them were evacuated from the island by helicopter and are taking shelter in hotels and inns in the city of Sinuiju.  

“On the first day, flood victims cried in despair because their elderly parents and young children were washed away by the flood, but they were stopped by guards.”

The guards are police officials, he said. As part of their rescue efforts, they surveil the flood victims and force them to watch videos of Kim Jong Un rescuing people in the flooded areas. 

“The guards insisted that the victims be thankful for Kim Jong Un’s love for his people,” the resident said, adding that the flood victims are under nonstop surveillance. “They are unable to cry … resentment is building up in their hearts.”

Wihwa island was the worst hit of several islands located near the mouth of the Yalu, another resident, who requested anonymity for personal safety, told RFA.

“The missing and dead number will exceed 1,000, when all of the islands … are accounted for,” he said, adding that many of the flood victims are disturbed by the images of the flooding they are being made to watch.

“Their families were washed away by the current or killed when their homes collapsed due to heavy rain, but they are unable to even show a sad expression on their faces due to surveillance from the authorities,” the second resident said. 

But they must still watch propaganda videos and give thanks to their leader for saving them every day, he said.

“The authorities gather the flood victims every morning and show a video of the Highest Dignity commanding the flood disaster site,” he said, using an honorific to refer to Kim Jong Un. “They are continuing the propaganda that the people are fortunate to have such a leader. Some flood victims turned around and expressed their anger.”

Translated by Claire S. Lee. Edited by Eugene Whong.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Son Hyemin for RFA Korean.

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Soon after longtime New Orleans attorney Wendy Vitter became a federal judge in the Eastern District of Louisiana, she heard a lawsuit against the local government in Plaquemines Parish, a peninsular province encompassing the final 70 miles of the Mississippi River, between New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico.

A group of paramedics had sued the parish, seeking compensation for unpaid overtime. Vitter oversaw a pair of jury trials in 2019 and 2021, both resulting in wins for the parish. But an appeals court later ruled Vitter had erred in judgment and overturned her final order. That paved the way for the paramedics to be awarded more than $500,000 in compensation, plus hundreds of thousands more for their attorneys.

Throughout those proceedings, Plaquemines Parish leaders had a paid ally on their side: the judge’s husband, U.S. Sen.-turned-lobbyist David Vitter.

But there was no way for the parties in the case to easily know this. Wendy Vitter never told the EMTs’ attorneys. And they couldn't have looked it up in any court records. While the law requires federal judges to report their spouses’ income on annual financial disclosures, Vitter listed her husband as a “self employed attorney” with the name of the payroll company, TriNet HR III, that cut his checks. In fact, he is a partner and lobbyist for powerhouse Washington firm Mercury Public Affairs.

ProPublica didn’t uncover evidence that David Vitter’s business relationships played a role in his wife’s rulings. But the American Bar Association recommends judges disclose such relationships to let the parties decide for themselves if they are significant enough to contest. Since it’s not required by federal code, however, judges seldom do it, ethics experts say.

In the Plaquemines case, Wendy Vitter should have voluntarily told paramedics’ attorneys about the potential conflict, five legal ethics experts told ProPublica. That would have allowed them to consider making motions for disqualification if she did not recuse herself.

Vitter wrote in a statement to ProPublica that she relied on guidance from the Judicial Conference Committee on Codes of Conduct that says recusal may not be necessary if a spouse’s client is not a direct party to the case.

Vitter said her husband was not working for the parish at the time of the trials. Public records show his contract with the parish expired in late 2018. But federal disclosures show he continued to work into 2024 for the Plaquemines Port, a political agency that is controlled by the parish’s nine council members and has identical borders to Plaquemines Parish.

David Vitter did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment but told news partners at ABC News he had “absolutely nothing to do with the lawsuit” before his wife and that the Plaquemines Port “is a different entity with a different governance structure than Plaquemines Parish.”

Wendy Vitter told ProPublica her husband’s income was “properly disclosed” on her financial reports, but she will start including details of his lobbying work in her disclosures moving forward.

Concerns that judges on the nation’s highest courts have not properly disclosed personal conflicts — and have failed to recuse when such issues arose — have been at the center of a recent national debate. Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito have faced calls to recuse themselves from cases due to their wives’ political activities. Chief Justice John Roberts’ wife has a high-powered job as a headhunter for law firms with Supreme Court practices.

Last year, ProPublica exposed how Thomas and Alito took trips funded by billionaires but failed to properly disclose them. In 2021, The Wall Street Journal found at least 131 judges broke the law by hearing cases in which they had a financial interest. And in 2020, Reuters identified thousands of judges who broke the law but remained on the bench.

A ProPublica analysis found a lack of transparency regarding conflicts plagues federal and state courts where loose rules, inconsistent enforcement and creative interpretations of guidelines routinely allow judges to withhold potential conflicts from the parties before them.

In an examination of more than 1,200 federal judges and state supreme court justices, ProPublica, in partnership with student journalists at Boston University, found dozens of judges, including both Republican and Democratic appointees, who chose not to recuse when facing potential appearances of impropriety involving familial financial connections. Ethics experts say that the judges’ interpretation of the rules may often lie within the letter of the law, but at the expense of its spirit.

In Florida, a state Supreme Court justice presided over a gambling case in which a Native American tribe sought to protect billions in betting revenue. During the proceedings, the tribe made an unusually large campaign contribution to the justice’s wife, a state legislator. The judge later helped form a court majority that struck down the constitutional challenge, protecting the tribe’s business.

In Minnesota, a federal judge heard an antitrust case against a corporation that was a major client of the public relations firm owned by his wife. He went on to dismiss the case, in the corporation’s favor.

And in both Ohio and North Carolina, state supreme court justices rejected calls from ethics watchdogs to recuse themselves from multiple cases involving a parent who is a powerful state politician.

Amid cratering confidence in the impartiality of both the federal and state judicial systems, experts worry that such failures to police conflicts of interest only further erode public confidence.

“We ignore it at our own peril,” said Robert Westley, professor of legal ethics and professional responsibility at Tulane University. “I really believe the entire system is at stake if we don’t get this right.”

Federal law requires judges to recuse themselves from any case in which a close relative has an interest in the result, or when the judge’s “impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”

While some judges go to great lengths to disclose potential conflicts and recuse scrupulously from those cases, the guidelines are ambiguous and the adherence is haphazard, according to experts.

In most cases, judges oversee their own decisions to recuse, raising concerns about the lack of checks and balances on judges’ judgment. The challenges posed by familial conflicts could be mitigated with more judicial transparency, experts say.

The American Bar Association guides judges to disclose any information potentially relevant to attorneys who might consider a motion for disqualification. But the guidance has not been codified by all states — or the federal judiciary. Without it, judges are under no obligation to inform a party appearing before them when a judge’s family member may be working on behalf of the party’s opposition.

Federal laws do require judges to report their spouses’ assets and income each year, but they generally don’t require judges to disclose their spouses’ clients. Calls from watchdogs in 2022 to close the client loophole failed to get traction in Congress.Making matters worse, U.S. courts have failed to comply with federal law in promptly posting disclosures online.

More than a dozen states don’t require judges to post any details at all about their family members’ income, and a majority of states don’t make disclosures easily available online, according to Fix the Court, a nonprofit advocating for more transparency and accountability in U.S. courts.

“People are as honest as their circumstances permit,” Westley said. “When circumstances allow them to be dishonest without being discovered, many people will choose to do that.

“The system is not working. But I think it can work when there is oversight.”

Familial conflict-of-interest decisions get more complicated when the spouse of a judge is a high-ranking state official, as is the case with Florida Supreme Court Justice Charles Canady and his wife, Republican state Rep. Jennifer Canady. Charles Canady was appointed to the state’s top court in 2008 by former Republican Gov. Charlie Crist; Jennifer Canady won her first legislative race in 2022.

In December, Charles Canady’s court received a legal brief from the Seminole Tribe of Florida, asking the seven-member body to reject a constitutional challenge to its exclusive sports betting deal with the state, worth billions. The tribe was not a party to the case but stood to benefit.

Five days later, the tribe then cut a $10,000 campaign check to Jennifer Canady’s political action committee. Of the more than 100 donations the Seminoles made to Florida legislators in 2023, a handful matched the size of but none were larger than Canady’s.

Charles Canady did not publicly disclose his wife’s connection to the tribe, and in early 2024, he voted to uphold the Seminoles’ deal.

“It’s a huge concern,” said Bob Jarvis, professor of law at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale. “It’s the same social circles, particularly if you’re talking about a town like Tallahassee. It’s a very small town — everyone knows everyone else.”

Florida’s Supreme Court — unlike the federal judiciary — has adopted the ABA’s guidance regarding possible conflicts, requiring justices to disclose information that “the parties or their lawyers might consider relevant to the question of disqualification, even if the judge believes there is no real basis for disqualification.”

While the Seminole connection went unreported, Charles Canady faced a barrage of public calls for recusal last winter when another case closely connected to his wife reached Florida’s Supreme Court: a constitutional challenge to the state’s new law banning abortions after six weeks.

His wife was one of two co-sponsors of the controversial bill.

Charles Canady elected to stay on the case, making no public comments about his wife’s connection to it, and then helped the court form a majority in April that ruled his wife’s legislation constitutional. The law went into effect May 1.

“Justice Canady owes it to the public to be more transparent and more deferential to perception of bias,” Jarvis said.

Anthony Alfieri, professor of law and director of the University of Miami Center for Ethics and Public Service, said the justice “should err on the side of disqualification, whether or not there is a real basis for disqualification.”

ProPublica found no evidence the Seminole donation played a role in Charles Canady’s ruling. The justice declined multiple requests for comment. Representatives for Jennifer Canady did not respond to requests for comment, either, but the lawmaker — prior to winning office — told the News Service of Florida in 2021 that “around the dinner table, if something comes up about a pending or impending case, we don’t discuss it ever.”

A spokesperson for the Florida Supreme Court said “considerations of recusal are complex and nuanced — each justice gives careful deliberation to their responsibilities” in accordance with Florida Supreme Court rules and the Code of Judicial Conduct.

When asked for a list of cases Charles Canady has recused on, the spokesperson said no such list was available.

In a written statement, the Seminole Tribe of Florida said it “supports numerous candidates with diverse perspectives. It is also involved in multiple legal cases at various levels. Any connection here is purely coincidental.”

Experts caution the perception of bias is likely to be a recurring problem in Florida, with Jennifer Canady now in line to become House speaker in 2028. That would provide her a large role in crafting every major piece of legislation passing through the Florida House from now through the end of the decade — including controversial laws that will ultimately end up in her husband’s court.

She’s also expected to solicit sizable campaign contributions from the state’s largest corporations, some of which might have cases before the highest court in the state.

Charles Canady was among the dozens of federal and state supreme court judges ProPublica identified who were married to politicians, creating new challenges the country’s generations-old ethics rules haven’t yet caught up with.

“Decades ago, it wasn’t a problem because women didn’t work,” Jarvis said.

He added that “it comes down to the good faith of the couple” to “be aware, disclose and possibly recuse from cases.” The politicians could reject or return campaign checks from companies with business before the court.

Senior Judge John Tunheim, serving the federal district of Minnesota, did not disclose when one of his wife’s biggest clients appeared on his docket in 2019.

Kathy Tunheim is the co-founder and CEO of a large Twin Cities public relations firm, Tunheim, which performed public relations work for the Cargill corporation for several years. During this time, a group of cattle ranchers brought a federal antitrust case against Cargill and other meat producers, alleging a scheme to fix beef prices.

The case was assigned to John Tunheim, who did not recuse.

His annual financial disclosures, obtained through the Free Law Project archive, also did not disclose his wife’s role as CEO of the Tunheim firm, instead describing her since 2006 as a “self-employed public relations consultant.” It’s a distinction the judge said was prescribed by the U.S. Courts’ Committee on Financial Disclosure, which says “self employed” is sufficient if the spouse’s income is from “a partnership of which the spouse is a member.” Experts say Tunheim’s interpretation of disclosure rules makes identifying possible conflicts challenging.

The judge threw out the cattle ranchers’ claims several times over the course of the litigation, which has continued into 2024. One former attorney on the case said a disclosure from Tunheim about his wife’s Cargill connection might not have resulted in a request for recusal, but it would have been welcomed, since attorneys cannot weigh those decisions without the information.

Tunheim also heard two Cargill cases in 2018.

Appointed to the federal bench by then-President Bill Clinton in 1995, Tunheim told ProPublica he considered recusing in Cargill cases but concluded it was not necessary based on the same 2009 advisory opinion cited by Wendy Vitter.

“I did a thorough evaluation of all the facts and applied the guidance from the Committee on Codes of Conduct in the advisory opinion concerning the business relationships of a judge’s spouse,” Tunheim said in an email statement.

The advisory opinion guides judges to consider factors such as the closeness of the spouse-client relationship and how involved the spouse is in the client work.

The Tunheim agency publicly touted its Cargill relationship for years and boasts online about Kathy Tunheim’s “active role in many of the agency’s client relationships.”

Kathy Tunheim declined to comment, but her firm scrubbed most references to Cargill from its website soon after ProPropublica reached out.

The advisory opinion Vitter and Tunheim cited instructs judges to recuse themselves from any case in which an objective observer might reasonably question their impartiality. But in almost every example examined, the objective observer test was performed by that same judge.

Charles Gardner Geyh, distinguished professor of law at Indiana University, said federal law grants judges a “presumption of impartiality.” But even with case law suggesting judges should err “in favor of recusal,” some still cite conflicting case law to justify a decision to stay on a case.

Experts explain that some judges don’t care for the stigma that comes from a recusal. Judges can also fail to perceive either that they are biased or that they appear biased.

For as little oversight as there is regarding potential conflicts of interest on the federal bench, there’s even less for state supreme courts. Since they are the court of last resort at the state level, there’s no opportunity to review the recusal decisions of most states’ justices, short of the U.S. Supreme Court. But it almost never hears those cases.

Geyh said the lack of oversight compounds the “self-policing” problem since lawyers are typically wary of antagonizing judges by challenging their potential biases. When they do, he said appellate courts often defer back to the judges’ decision anyway.

Without the threat of discipline, Geyh said the “buck stops with the judge.”

“If you put those people in the position of grading their own homework — ruling on their own biases — then you have a problem.”

It’s not just spousal conflicts. In at least two states, the sons of powerful state politicians sit on the supreme court. In both cases, they’ve refused to recuse on consequential cases involving their parents.

In North Carolina, Supreme Court Justice Phil Berger Jr. has repeatedly heard cases in which his father, Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger Sr., not only publicly lobbied for a specific result but also was a named party in the case.

The justice repeatedly sided with his father’s interests, including cases in which Phil Berger Sr. was a named defendant: a challenge to the constitutionality of a partisan redistricting plan and a challenge to a voter ID law spearheaded by Phil Berger Sr.

The justice had recused himself from the voter ID case while serving on the Court of Appeals but said he did not need to as Supreme Court justice because his father was a defendant only in his “official capacity.”

Watchdogs also criticized Ohio Supreme Court Justice Pat DeWine for what they say were hypocritical promises in 2018 to recuse from cases in which his father, Mike DeWine — then the state’s attorney general and now its governor — was “personally involved.”

But the younger DeWine chose to hear several high-profile cases in which his father was active in the litigation, including a series of impactful redistricting cases in which Pat DeWine helped cast a swing vote in a 4-3 decision that dismissed challenges to the controversial maps drawn by a Republican-led committee. Mike DeWine sat on that committee and publicly advocated for the constitutionality of its work.

Geyh, who filed an amicus brief in one of the Berger cases, said ethics laws are “pretty bloody explicit” when it comes to recusing from a case in which a parent is a named party.

Neither justice returned requests for comment.

Amid calls to bring conflict-of-interest laws into the 21st century, a bevy of Band-Aids have been proposed, but no comprehensive solutions.

Experts hesitate at the suggestion of tougher recusal rules, fearing mass disqualification could shut down the judiciary. Most also reject the idea of limiting judicial spouses’ careers or speech.

“As soon as you reform the system, you’re penalizing one spouse,” Jarvis said.

The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law proposed a series of reforms in 2016, including independent review of all motions for disqualification — at both the U.S. and state supreme courts — so judges don’t effectively serve as the final arbiters of their own biases. Brennan also advocated ending the common practice of judges keeping their reasons for recusal — or non-recusal — secret, which can stymie the appeals process and create a void in case law.

Critics have argued the reforms could slow the wheels of justice and allow political actors to weaponize recusal. Many advocates for reform see transparency measures as an achievable next step.

“The fix is really hard,” said Amanda Frost, professor of law at the University of Virginia. But “transparency would improve the process for everyone.”

To produce this story, ProPublica partnered with the Justice Media Computational Journalism co-Lab, a collaboration between Boston University’s College of Communication and the Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences’ BU Spark! program. Contributing students included Emilia Wisniewski, Serena Ata, Amisha Kumar and Amanda Bang.

Do you have any information regarding a state supreme court justice or federal judge failing to disclose a familial conflict of interest? Contact Noah Pransky confidentially via Signal at NoahPransky.55 or on any social media platform at @NoahPransky.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Noah Pransky, Brooke Williams and Andrew Botolino for ProPublica.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. This story was reported in partnership with CBS News.

Year after year, while Roe v. Wade was the law of the land, Texas legislators passed measures limiting access to abortion — who could have one, how and where. And with the same cadence, they added millions of dollars to a program designed to discourage people from terminating pregnancies.

Their budget infusions for the Alternatives to Abortion program grew with almost every legislative session — first gradually, then dramatically — from $5 million starting in 2005 to $140 million after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the right to an abortion.

Now that abortion is largely illegal in Texas, lawmakers say they have shifted the purpose of the program, and its millions of dollars, to supporting families affected by the state’s ban.

In the words of Rep. Jeff Leach, a Republican from Plano, the goal is to “provide the full support and resources of the state government … to come alongside of these thousands of women and their families who might find themselves with unexpected, unplanned pregnancies.”

But an investigation by ProPublica and CBS News found that the system that funnels a growing pot of state money to anti-abortion nonprofits has few safeguards and is riddled with waste.

Officials with the Health and Human Services Commission, which oversees the program, don’t know the specifics of how tens of millions of taxpayer dollars are being spent or whether that money is addressing families’ needs.

In some cases, taxpayers are paying these groups to distribute goods they obtained for free, allowing anti-abortion centers — which are often called “crisis pregnancy centers” and may be set up to look like clinics that perform abortions — to bill $14 to hand out a couple of donated diapers.

Distributing a single pamphlet can net the same $14 fee. The state has paid the charities millions to distribute such “educational materials” about topics including parenting and adoption; it can’t say exactly how many millions because it doesn’t collect data on the goods it’s paying for. State officials declined to provide examples of the materials by publication time, and reporters who visited pregnancy centers were turned away.

As they restricted access to abortion, lawmakers also poured money into a program that was first called Alternatives to Abortion and recently rebranded as Thriving Texas Families. The program funds counseling, baby items and brochures, but not medical care.

For years, Texas officials have failed to ensure spending is proper or productive.

They didn’t conduct an audit of the program in the wake of revelations in 2021 that a subcontractor had used taxpayer funds to operate a smoke shop and to buy land for hemp production.

They ramped up funding to the program in 2022 even after some contractors failed to meet their few targets for success.

After a legislative mandate passed in 2023, lawmakers ordered the commission to set up a system to measure the performance and impact of the program.

One year later, Health and Human Services says it’s “working to implement the provisions of the law.” Agency spokespeople answered some questions but declined interview requests. They said their main contractor, Texas Pregnancy Care Network, was responsible for most program oversight.

The nonprofit network receives the most funding of the program’s four contractors and oversees dozens of crisis pregnancy centers, faith-based groups and other charities that serve as subcontractors.

The network’s executive director, Nicole Neeley, said those subcontractors have broad freedom over how they spend revenue from the state. For example, they can save it or use it for building renovations.

Pregnancy Center of the Coastal Bend in Corpus Christi, for instance, built up a $1.6 million surplus from 2020 to 2022. Executive Director Jana Pinson said two years ago that she plans to use state funds to build a new facility. She did not respond to requests for comment. A ProPublica reporter visited the waterfront plot where that facility was planned and found an empty lot.

Because subcontractors are paid set fees for their services, Neeley said, “what they do with the dollars in their bank accounts is not connected” to the Thriving Texas Families program. “It is no longer taxpayer money.”

The state said those funds are, in fact, taxpayer money. “HHSC takes stewardship of taxpayer dollars, appropriated by the Legislature, very seriously by ensuring they are used for their intended purpose,” a spokesperson said.

None of that has caused lawmakers to stop the cash from flowing. In fact, last year they blocked requirements to ensure certain services were evidence-based.

Leach, one of the program’s most ardent supporters, said in an interview with ProPublica and CBS News that he would seek accountability “if taxpayer dollars aren’t being spent appropriately.” But he remained confident about the program, saying the state would keep investing in it. In fact, he said, “We’re going to double down.”

What’s more, lawmakers around the country are considering programs modeled on Alternatives to Abortion.

Last year, Tennessee lawmakers directed $20 million to fund crisis pregnancy centers and similar nonprofits. And Florida enacted a 6-week abortion ban while including in the same bill a $25 million allocation to support crisis pregnancy centers. John McNamara, a longtime leader of Texas Pregnancy Care Network, has been working to start similar networks in Kansas, Oklahoma and Iowa. He’s also reserved the name Louisiana Pregnancy Care Network.

And U.S. House Republicans are advocating for allowing federal dollars from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program — intended to help low-income families — to flow to pregnancy centers. In January, the House passed the legislation, and it is pending in the Senate. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., castigated Democrats for voting against the bill.

“That’s taking away diapers, that’s taking away resources from families who are in need,” she said in an interview with CBS News after the vote.

But, as Texas shows, more funding doesn’t necessarily pay for more diapers, formula or other support for families.

Lawmakers rebranded Alternatives to Abortion as Thriving Texas Families in 2023. The program is supposed to promote pregnancies, encourage family formation and increase economic self-sufficiency.

The state pays four contractors to run the program. The largest, which gets about 80% of the state funding, is the anti-abortion group Texas Pregnancy Care Network.

Human Coalition, which gets about 16% of the state funding, said it uses the money to provide clients with material goods, counseling, referrals to government assistance and education. Austin LifeCare, which gets about 3% of the state funding, could not be reached for comment about this story. Longview Wellness Center in East Texas, which receives less than 1% of the funds, said the state routinely audits its expenses to ensure it’s operating within guidelines.

Texas Pregnancy Care Network manages dozens of subcontractors that provide counseling and parenting classes and that distribute material aid such as diapers and formula. Parents must take a class or undergo counseling before they can get those goods.

The state can be charged $14 each time one of these subcontractors distributes items from one of several categories, including food, clothing and educational materials. That means the distribution of a couple of educational pamphlets could net the same $14 fee as a much pricier pack of diapers.

A single visit by a client to a subcontractor can result in multiple charges stacking up. Centers are eligible to collect the fees regardless of how many items are distributed or how much they are worth. One April morning, a client at McAllen Pregnancy Center, near the Texas-Mexico border, received a bag with some diapers, a baby outfit, a baby blanket, a pack of wipes, a baby brush, a snack and two pamphlets. It was not clear how much the center invoiced for these items.

McAllen Pregnancy Center and other Texas Pregnancy Care Network subcontractors were paid more than $54 million from 2021 to 2023 for distributing these items, according to records.

How much of that was for handing out pamphlets? The state said it didn’t know; it doesn’t collect data on the quantities or types of items provided to clients or whether they are essential items like diapers or just pamphlets, making it impossible for the public to know how tax dollars were spent.

Neeley said in an email that educational materials like pamphlets only accounted for 12% of the money reimbursed in this category last year, or roughly $2.4 million out of $20 million. She did not respond to questions from ProPublica and CBS News about evidence that would corroborate that number.

The way subcontractors are paid, and what they’re allowed to do with that money, raised questions among charity experts consulted for this investigation.

In the nonprofit sector, using a fee-for-service payment model for material assistance is highly unusual, said Vincent Francisco, a professor at the University of Kansas who has worked as a nonprofit administrator, evaluator and consultant over the past three decades. It “can run fast and loose if you’re not careful,” he said.

Even if nonprofits distribute items they got for free or close to it, the state will still reimburse them. Take Viola’s House, a pregnancy center and maternity home in Dallas. Records show that it pays a nearby diaper bank an administrative fee of $1,590 for about 120,000 diapers annually — just over a penny apiece. Viola’s House can then bill the state $14 for distributing a pack of diapers that cost the center just over a quarter.

But before they can get those diapers, parents must take a class. The center can also bill the state $30 for each hour of class a client attends.

Rep. Donna Howard, a Democrat from Austin, said the program could be more efficient if the state funded the diaper banks directly. Last year, she proposed diverting 2% of Thriving Texas Families’ funding directly to diaper banks, but the proposal failed.

Records show that in fiscal year 2023, Viola’s House received more than $1 million from the state in reimbursements for material support and educational items plus another $1.7 million for classes. Executive Director Thana Hickman-Simmons said Viola’s House relies on funding from an array of sources and that just a small fraction of the diapers it distributes come from the diaper bank. She said the state money “could never cover everything that we do.”

In some cases, reimbursements have created a hefty cushion in the budgets of subcontractors. The state doesn’t require them to spend the taxpayer funds they get on needy families, and Texas Pregnancy Care Network said subcontractors can spend the money as they see fit, as long as they follow Internal Revenue Service rules for nonprofits.

McAllen Pregnancy Center received $3.5 million in taxpayer money from Texas Pregnancy Care Network over three years, but it spent less than $1 million on program services, according to annual returns it filed with the IRS. Meanwhile, $2.1 million was added to the group’s assets, mostly in cash. Its executive director, Angie Arviso, asked a reporter who visited in person to submit questions in writing, but she never responded.

The nonprofit McAllen Pregnancy Center is a case study showing how anti-abortion centers can amass a surplus from the Alternatives to Abortion program, which is now called Thriving Texas Families

“This is a policy choice Texas has made,” said Samuel Brunson, associate dean for faculty research and development at the Loyola University Chicago School of Law, who researches and writes about the federal income tax and nonprofit organizations. “It has chosen to redistribute money from taxpayers to the reserve funds of private nonprofit organizations.”

Tax experts say that’s problematic. “Why would you give money to a recipient that is not spending it?” said Ge Bai, a professor of accounting and health policy at Johns Hopkins University.

The tax experts disagree with Texas Pregnancy Care Network’s argument that the money is no longer taxpayer dollars after its subcontractors are paid.

“It’s still the government buying something,” said Jason Coupet, associate professor of public management and policy at Georgia State University, who has studied efficiency in the public and nonprofit sectors. “If I were in the auditor’s office, that’s where I would start having questions.”

State legislators and regulators haven’t installed oversight protections in the program.

Three years ago, The Texas Tribune spotlighted the state’s refusal to track outcomes or seek insight into how subcontractors have spent taxpayer money.

Months later, Texas Pregnancy Care Network cut off funding to one of its biggest subcontractors after a San Antonio news outlet alleged the nonprofit had misspent money from the state.

KSAT-TV reported that the nonprofit, A New Life for a New Generation, had used Alternatives to Abortion funds for vacations and a motorcycle, and to fund a smoke shop business owned by the center’s president and CEO, Marquica Reed. It also spent $25,000 on land that was later registered by a member of Reed’s family to produce industrial hemp.

In an interview with ProPublica, a former case manager recalled how Reed would get angry if employees forgot to bill the state for a service provided to a client.

The former case manager, Bridgett Warren Campbell, said employees would buy diapers from the local Sam’s Club store, then take apart the packages. “We’d take the diapers out and give parents two to three diapers at a time, then she would bill TPCN,” said Campbell.

Reed declined to comment to a ProPublica reporter or to answer follow-up questions via email or text. Neeley, the Texas Pregnancy Care Network’s executive director, said the pregnancy center was removed from the program because its nonprofit status was in jeopardy, not because it had used money on personal spending. She said the network wasn’t responsible for monitoring how A New Life for a New Generation spent its dollars: “The power to investigate these matters of how nonprofits manage their own funds is reserved statutorily to the Texas Attorney General and the IRS.”

The Texas attorney general’s office would not say whether it has investigated the organization. Records show that after KSAT’s story, state officials referred the case to an inspector general and that the Texas Pregnancy Care Network submitted a report detailing how it monitored the subcontractor.

The state requires contractors to submit independent financial audits if they receive at least $750,000 in state money; Texas Pregnancy Care Network meets this threshold. However, its dozens of subcontractors don’t have to submit these audits — something experts in nonprofit practices said should be required. In the fiscal year before the alleged misspending came to light, A New Life for a New Generation received more than $1 million in reimbursements from the state, records show.

When ProPublica and CBS News asked how the Health and Human Services Commission detects fraud or misuse of taxpayer funds, Jennifer Ruffcorn, a commission spokesperson, said the agency “performs oversight through various methods, which may include fiscal, programmatic, and administrative monitoring, enhanced monitoring, desk reviews, financial reconciliations, on-site visits, and training and technical assistance.”

Through a spokesperson, Rob Ries, the deputy executive commissioner who oversees the program at Health and Human Services, declined to be interviewed.

The agency has never thoroughly evaluated the effectiveness of the program’s services in its nearly 20 years of existence.

It is supposed to make sure its contractors are meeting a few benchmarks: how many clients each one serves and how many they have referred to Medicaid and the Nurse-Family Partnership, a program that sends nurses to the homes of low-income first-time mothers and has been proven to reduce maternal deaths. The Nurse-Family Partnership does not receive Alternatives to Abortion funding.

In 2022, the Texas Pregnancy Care Network failed to meet two of three key benchmarks in its contract with the state: It didn’t serve enough clients and it didn’t refer enough of them to the nursing program. The state didn’t withhold or reduce its funding. McNamara disputed the first claim, saying the state changed its methodology for counting clients, and said the other benchmark was difficult to hit because too few clients qualified for the nursing program.

In May 2023, when lawmakers passed the bill rebranding the program, the state also ordered the agency to “identify indicators to measure the performance outcomes,” “require periodic reporting” and hire an outside party to conduct impact evaluations.

The agency declined to share details about its progress on those requirements except to say that it is soliciting for impact evaluation services. Records show the agency has requested bids.

Lawmakers decided last year against enacting requirements that would ensure certain services were evidence-based — proven by research to meet their goals — instead siding with an argument that they would be too onerous for smaller nonprofits.

Texas’ six-week abortion ban took effect in 2021, and more than 16,000 additional babies were born in the state the following year. Academics expect that trend to continue.

But the safety net for parents and babies is paper thin.

Texas has the lowest rate of insured women of reproductive age in the country and ranks above the national average for maternal deaths. It’s last in giving cash assistance to families living beneath the poverty line.

Mothers told reporters they are struggling to scrape together enough diapers and wipes to keep their babies clean. A San Antonio diaper bank has hundreds of families on its waitlist. Outside an Austin food pantry, lines snake around the block.

Howard, the Austin state representative, said ProPublica and CBS News’ findings show that the program needs more oversight. “It is unconscionable that a [Thriving Texas Families] provider would be allowed to keep millions in reserve when there is a tremendous need for more investment in access to health care services,” she said.

Do you have any tips on state-funded anti-abortion programs? Cassandra Jaramillo can be reached by email at cassandra.jaramillo@propublica.org or by Signal at 469-606-9665.

Caroline Chen and Kavitha Surana contributed reporting.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by .

In a landmark case in Florida, a federal jury has ordered Chiquita Brands International to pay over $38 million in damages to the families of eight Colombian men who were killed by paramilitaries the banana giant funded. Chiquita previously pleaded guilty to paying the far-right United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia paramilitary group, or AUC, $1.7 million from 2001 to 2004. Though Chiquita argued the payments were meant to protect company employees, the AUC has been found responsible for committing mass human rights abuses and murdering civilians from 1997 to 2006. “Chiquita essentially had a partnership with the paramilitaries,” says Marco Simons, general counsel for EarthRights International. “They voluntarily paid these groups in order to protect Chiquita against left-wing guerrillas and essentially to pacify the operating environment in the banana-growing region of Colombia.” Chiquita is one of the world’s largest banana producers and says it plans to appeal the jury’s verdict. The company is due to face a second so-called bellwether trial starting July 15. “For the past 17 years, we have been trying to get justice,” says Simons. “This is only the start of the judicial reckoning for Chiquita.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with WABE. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

Malik Johnson thought he was doing well after he turned 21 and left foster care, working two jobs to afford his apartment south of Atlanta.

But last fall, everything started to fall apart: His car transmission failed, so he couldn’t reach his second job. He fell behind on rent.

He didn’t know about a federal housing program that could have reduced his housing costs. It’s open to foster youth in all states as long as local government agencies put in an application for the funding. But in Georgia, they didn’t make that request for Johnson — or for almost anyone else.

Instead, at 23, he was on his own. As he faced his mounting bills, the stress got to be overwhelming.

“I was to the point where I was so behind on everything, I just almost stopped caring,” Johnson said.

In Georgia’s foster care system, about 500 young people become adults each year and, sometime between age 18 and 21, they’ll have to make it on their own. Without the safety net the foster care system provides, they’re especially vulnerable to becoming homeless.

That risk is why, in 2019, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development created the Foster Youth to Independence program, which offers between three and five years of rental assistance to young adults who have moved on from foster care. The program is the only long-term federal housing assistance targeted at former foster youth as they navigate adulthood, and advocates hoped it would help prevent situations like Johnson’s from ever happening.

But there’s a catch: The money comes not directly through the federal government, but through the states, which have to apply for and coordinate the funding. WABE and ProPublica found Georgia has barely done that.

Through the program, each local housing authority can request up to 25 FYI vouchers each year. In Georgia, where 20 housing authorities are eligible, that means as many as 500 vouchers could be available, bringing in as much as $5 million in rent money from the federal government each year.

According to HUD’s latest data from last fall, housing authorities in Georgia have received only eight FYI vouchers total since the program began. By contrast, a third of states have each received at least 75 of these vouchers in the program’s first several years. Texas, Florida and Washington have received more than 400 each; California has upwards of 800, helping hundreds of young people afford stable housing. Only five states, all significantly smaller than Georgia, had requested fewer vouchers.

The failure to tap federal vouchers for foster youth in Georgia is a symptom of a child welfare system that has paid little attention to the housing needs of families and children, WABE and ProPublica have found. Previous reporting showed how the state Division of Family and Children Services had put few of its resources toward housing assistance for families in recent years, even as it cited “inadequate housing” among its reasons for removing 20% of children from their parents.

In the case of the FYI vouchers, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has instructed state welfare agencies to work with local housing authorities to ensure the program is used, and in states that have received the most vouchers, child welfare agencies have actively promoted the program and sometimes hired new staff.

But in Georgia, staffers at roughly half of the state’s eligible housing authorities said they hadn’t heard from the state agency about the vouchers in the program’s first five years. A couple of housing authorities said they struggled to get in touch with DFCS to complete the application, while others said they were not eligible to apply because the agency had not helped them to use up other housing funds they needed to distribute before they could tap the program.

DFCS spokesperson Ellen Brown said the staff overseeing services for older foster youth had recently changed and she couldn’t speak to what had happened previously. But she said the agency is now working to strengthen partnerships with housing authorities — efforts that have taken place as WABE and ProPublica started reporting on the issue in recent months and after a local volunteer began pushing the state to expand its use of the FYI program.

Brown also said DFCS staff meet regularly with young people before they exit foster care to “discuss their future plans,” which includes figuring out their housing. “Our team works tirelessly to help them plan and prepare for a safe, stable and successful transition out of care and into adulthood,” she said.

Still, Ruth White, who directs the National Center for Housing and Child Welfare and was central to getting the federal program created, questioned why DFCS wasn’t more aggressive in bringing the vouchers to the state.

“Imagine being an entity that goes in and removes a kid from their house,” White said, “and then not being the agency that’s chomping at the bit to make sure you get a housing voucher for that young person.”

Study after study has shown the high risk of homelessness among young adults who age out of foster care. A 2021 national survey of 21-year-olds who had been in foster care across the country showed that a little more than a quarter of them had been homeless during the previous two years. The same survey also showed similar numbers in Georgia.

For years, child welfare advocates and former foster youth pushed Congress to address this housing crisis.

“We have the numbers, and we have the data,” said Lisa Dickson of the foster youth alumni organization ACTION Ohio in her 2018 testimony to Congress. “What our nation needs is a sense of urgency about this problem.”

HUD already had its Family Unification Program, which provides housing funds to families and youth who’ve been affected by the foster care system. But HUD found that, in the competition for those limited resources, young people were losing out: They received just 5% of those vouchers in 2019, with the rest going to families.

So HUD created the Foster Youth to Independence program, earmarking some vouchers exclusively for young people. As with any Section 8 housing voucher, young people contribute a third of their income toward rent; the federal government covers the rest.

But unlike other voucher programs, FYI requires significant buy-in from child welfare agencies, which must identify eligible young adults and also offer them other support, like job training and financial counseling. That’s why housing authorities and child welfare agencies have to work together to take advantage of the program.

That didn’t happen in Georgia. In Cobb County, northwest of Atlanta, the chief operations officer of the Marietta Housing Authority tried to pursue vouchers in 2020. Mark Wright reached out to the local DCFS director, but he didn’t get the signed agreement from the agency that the program requires. After that, Wright said, “I kind of felt like we were not going to get the kind of buy-in from other agencies to make it successful.” He gave up.

Housing authorities in Atlanta and neighboring DeKalb County already had partnerships with DFCS because they offered the Family Unification Program. But they still had a hard time accessing the FYI funding. In recent years, they said, DFCS hadn’t identified enough young adults or families for the Family Unification Program, and this prevented them from qualifying for the FYI vouchers under HUD’s rules.

In Texas, by contrast, the child welfare agency took the lead in making sure the vouchers reached young people. The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services hired Jim Currier as housing specialist. He, in turn, designated liaisons in each of the child welfare system’s regions, trained them in the rules of the program and incorporated information about the vouchers in the manuals for foster youth aging out of care. The child welfare agency now has 40 partnerships, and DFPS initiated 38 of them.

Currier said vouchers have transformed the lives of some of the young people they’ve gone to. “They now have a safe, permanent home; they can begin to work on their well-being; they can work on their education,” he said.

Recently, in Georgia, DFCS and housing authorities began talking about how to serve more of those former foster youth — thanks in part to the work of one persistent volunteer.

Anne Carelli got to know teenagers in foster care when she volunteered at a group home in Atlanta. As they aged out of the system, she saw some of those teenagers end up homeless. So when she learned about the FYI vouchers a few months ago, she couldn’t believe Georgia wasn’t using them.

“To have housing vouchers for youth aging out of care — that is an incredible opportunity for all of us to come together and figure this out,” said Carelli, who has founded a nonprofit called Up3 to help connect young adults with the resources they need.

Carelli said she has sent more than 60 emails to housing authorities, public officials and DFCS to kickstart meetings about getting vouchers to young people she knows who qualify.

She’s hoping one of them will be Johnson, who she met through the group home. He’s still spending nearly four hours every day on buses and trains to get to work. The assistance would help him save for another car.

Johnson knows the value of a little outside support. Last fall, Carelli loaned him the money that allowed him to make up his rent until his income was stable again. As much as he’s tried to be responsible for himself — keeping his apartment vacuumed and clear of clutter, earning an employee of the month plaque from his job — he faced a crisis he couldn’t handle on his own.

“But I had help,” Johnson said. “And that was the best part about it too — being able to receive help when you need it.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Stephannie Stokes, WABE.

"We will never forget the lives that were lost to those brutal bullets or crushed by tanks on June 4 35 years ago," the letter said.

"Those who disappeared, whose relatives couldn't even find their bodies to wipe away the blood and bid them a final farewell," the letter said. "It is too cruel that this happened along a 10-kilometer stretch of Chang'an Boulevard in Beijing in peacetime."

Public mourning for victims or discussion of the events of spring and summer 1989 are banned in China, and references to June 4, 1989, are blocked, filtered or deleted by the Great Firewall of government internet censorship.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, died when late supreme leader Deng Xiaoping ordered troops into the Chinese capital to clear protesters and hunger-striking students from Tiananmen Square. 

While any account of the events of that summer have been scrubbed from the public record, younger people have been able to find out about it by visiting overseas websites, and have started taking part in annual commemorative activities around the world alongside exiled Hong Kongers.

Campaigning for accountability

The letter is the latest to be addressed to China's highest-ranking leader in what has become an annual ritual for the Tiananmen Mothers, a group of bereaved relatives that campaigns for official accountability, transparency about the death toll and compensation for victims' families.

It said official rhetoric on the crackdown was "intolerable" to the families of victims because it "reverses right and wrong, and ignores the facts."

The letters have never gotten a reply, and bereaved relatives are typically asked to keep a low profile when the sensitive anniversary of the bloodshed rolls around.

Calls to group spokesperson You Weijie and member Zhang Xianling rang unanswered on Friday after the letter was published.

Former 1989 student protester Zheng Xuguang, who now lives in the United States, said he isn't surprised by the deafening silence from Beijing, which has described the weeks-long student-led pro-democracy movement on Tiananmen Square as "counterrevolutionary rebellion," or “political turmoil.”

"How can they admit that they were wrong to kill people?" Zheng said. "Xi Jinping and the Communist Party are co-dependent; if Xi were to reappraise the official verdict of June 4 ... the Communist Party would fall from power."

"I don't think he's going to do that, because there's no room in his ideology for these ideas."

Tseng Chien-yuen, an associate professor at Taiwan's Central University, said today's China is in sore need of some reflection on the massacre, however.

"They need to look at it again and reappraise it, apologize and compensate the innocent students and others who were shot and killed back then, and think about whether to hold those responsible accountable," Tseng said. 

"I don't think Xi Jinping would need to bear the historical responsibility for the legacy of [late supreme leader] Deng Xiaoping," he said.

Poll: What would you do?

RFA's Mandarin Service asked its followers and listeners in a poll on X whether they would join the 1989 student movement today, if they could travel back in time to 1989.

Many listeners responded outright that they would, while others said their view of the tragedy was colored by the official view, and didn't change until they left China. Others said they have become more radical than the 1989 protesters.

"We were very naive back then, because we didn't want to overthrow the Communist Party, but to reform it," a person who gave only the nickname Matt responded. "Unfortunately, the Communist Party didn't even give people the chance to do that."

"For our generation, June 4 is an unfamiliar expression," wrote a high schooler from the northeastern city of Qingdao. "Growing up under the red flag of this fake party, we have been indoctrinated with the idea that loving the party and loving the country are the same thing."

Another responded by email that they hadn't believed overseas media reports about the massacre at first, despite finding them on overseas websites.

"Mainland Chinese were either misled by their pro-party stance, or they knew a little more than that, but still thought that the protests had to be brought to an end somehow," they said. 

A respondent who gave the nickname Key said he had learned about the massacre and the student movement from older people in his family, and said he admired the 1989 protesters, but added: "Times have changed, and the younger generation needs to fight for their rights in a peaceful and rational way."

User "wophb" wrote: "35 years on, the June 4 incident still has a profound impact on us and is worth reflecting on. Each generation has a unique mission."

Drawing a parallel with the "white paper" protests across China in 2022, the user said they would consider taking part in the 1989 movement if they could go back in time.

Successful brainwashing

Wu Heming, a Chinese student currently in California, said he is still noticing the after-effects of his education at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party two years after arriving on American soil.

"This is mainly because the Chinese Communist Party's brainwashing in education is very, very successful," Wu said. "From childhood onwards, people have no other channels through which to access any other information, so all of your thought patterns get solidified by that rhetoric."

Another student and former "white paper" protester Zhang Jinrui said the two movements had a lot in common. “

"If you compare those who participated in the June 4 incident and those who participated in the white paper movement, they were both trying to promote democracy in China, but in different contexts," Zhang said.

White paper” protesters got their name from holding up blank sheets of paper during spontaneous protests at the end of November 2022 amid pent-up frustration with years of COVID-19 restrictions that came to a head after an apartment building fire in Urumqi, in the far-western part of the country, killed inhabitants who reportedly were trapped inside.

Zhang also believes that times have changed, however.

"Many people of my generation have absorbed liberal ideas that have developed in the world over the past few decades, including national self-determination, respect for the identities of sexual minorities and of ethnic minorities," Zhang said.

"In the 1980s, a lot of people were asking 'what kind of China do we want?' instead of wondering whether the concept of China is even necessary," he said. "Now my generation is starting to deconstruct this concept."

More darkly, Zhang added: "I think they were motivated by hope, while our generation is motivated by despair -- we did what we did out of despair under [COVID-19] lockdown. All we could do was to take a gamble."

Author and university professor Rowena He, who took part in the 1989 movement, said she still marks the anniversary every year, and holds onto the hope she felt back then.

"We all felt that we had nothing," she told a symposium marking the 25th anniversary at Georgetown University on April 18. "They had guns, tanks, and machine guns."

"But in the end, I think many of my generation...still kept the faith alive, while Hong Kong lit candles for us for 30 years, for truth and justice." 

"I think history is on our side," He said. "One day we will see truth and justice."

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Qian Lang and Kitty Wang for RFA Mandarin.

A security guard has been posted outside the home of Zhang Xianling, a founding member of the Tiananmen Mothers victims group whose 19-year-old son died in the military assault on Beijing, group spokesperson You Weijie told RFA Mandarin.

"Most of the victims' families haven't been placed under guard for the 35th anniversary this year," You said. "Only Zhang [Xianling] has -- there are guards outside her door."

"We have all been told not to give interviews to journalists in our homes because the anniversary of June 4 is nearly here," she said. 

The move is part of the ruling Chinese Communist Party's "stability maintenance" system that aims to control the words and movements of anyone they think might cause some kind of trouble for the authorities on politically sensitive dates.

Public mourning for victims or discussion of the events of spring and summer 1989 are banned in China, and references to June 4, 1989, are blocked, filtered or deleted by the Great Firewall of government internet censorship.

Hunger strike

Xu Guang, a former student leader of the 1989 protest movement at Hangzhou University stood trial in the eastern province of Zhejiang in April 2023 for “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble,” a charge frequently used to target peaceful critics of the Communist Party, after he refused food and drink in detention to commemorate the Tiananmen massacre.

You said the group plans to lay offerings to their lost loved ones at the cemetery privately, as they have on past anniversaries, under the watchful eye of state security police.

She said Zhang and group founder Ding Zilin are elderly, with age-related health issues, but "aren't doing too badly."

Meanwhile, former 1989 student hunger-striker and rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang has been taken out of Beijing on an enforced "vacation" by state security police ahead of the anniversary, a person familiar with the situation told RFA.

Dissident journalist Gao Yu could soon follow suit, the person said.

A Beijing-based rights activist who gave the pseudonym Mr. Qin for fear of reprisals said it's hard for anyone with ties to human rights activism or the pro-democracy movement to go anywhere at this time of year.

"The atmosphere in Beijing is very tense right now," he said. "It's hard to get together for a meal with friends if you're on the list of so-called sensitive figures."

"They will stop people from getting together to cook and eat together in their homes, even if they're not on the list," Qin said. "Naturally, it's more sensitive here in Beijing, because that's where [the massacre] happened."

"I think a lot of people in Beijing will be taken on 'vacations' this year," he said.

Taken out of town

Ji Feng, an independent commentator who led student protests in the southwestern province of Guizhou in 1989, said he is also being taken out of town ahead of the anniversary, despite no longer living in Beijing.

"Every anniversary ending in 5 or 0 is a bigger one, and there will be quite an uproar overseas this year, for the 35th anniversary," Ji told RFA Mandarin in a recent interview.

"This year, we're not allowed to mention the anniversary or June 4, and we're not allowed to go far," Ji said. "In the past, they would take me anywhere, even around Beijing."

"Now, we have to stay in the vicinity of Zunyi city," he said, adding that the local authorities seem less willing to spend money on "stability maintenance" measures this year.

"Maybe finances are tight, and they have no money," Ji speculated, in a reference to recent reports of cash-strapped local governments.

In Shanghai, rights activist Shen Yanqiu said she has been called in to "drink tea" with state security police almost daily in the run-up to the anniversary, and warned off going anywhere or meeting anyone.

"Rights defenders and dissidents alike are under tight surveillance around June 4," Shen said. "We can't arrange anything because they're afraid we'll contact foreign media organizations or hold citizen gatherings."

"It's basically because the authorities are afraid," she said.

Shen said she had postponed plans to try to visit pandemic citizen journalist Zhang Zhan following her May 13 release from Shanghai Women's Prison, because she expects Zhang to be under particularly tight surveillance.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Chen Zifei for RFA Mandarin.

A security guard has been posted outside the home of Zhang Xianling, a founding member of the Tiananmen Mothers victims group whose 19-year-old son died in the military assault on Beijing, group spokesperson You Weijie told RFA Mandarin.

"Most of the victims' families haven't been placed under guard for the 35th anniversary this year," You said. "Only Zhang [Xianling] has -- there are guards outside her door."

"We have all been told not to give interviews to journalists in our homes because the anniversary of June 4 is nearly here," she said. 

The move is part of the ruling Chinese Communist Party's "stability maintenance" system that aims to control the words and movements of anyone they think might cause some kind of trouble for the authorities on politically sensitive dates.

Public mourning for victims or discussion of the events of spring and summer 1989 are banned in China, and references to June 4, 1989, are blocked, filtered or deleted by the Great Firewall of government internet censorship.

Hunger strike

Xu Guang, a former student leader of the 1989 protest movement at Hangzhou University stood trial in the eastern province of Zhejiang in April 2023 for “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble,” a charge frequently used to target peaceful critics of the Communist Party, after he refused food and drink in detention to commemorate the Tiananmen massacre.

You said the group plans to lay offerings to their lost loved ones at the cemetery privately, as they have on past anniversaries, under the watchful eye of state security police.

She said Zhang and group founder Ding Zilin are elderly, with age-related health issues, but "aren't doing too badly."

Meanwhile, former 1989 student hunger-striker and rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang has been taken out of Beijing on an enforced "vacation" by state security police ahead of the anniversary, a person familiar with the situation told RFA.

Dissident journalist Gao Yu could soon follow suit, the person said.

A Beijing-based rights activist who gave the pseudonym Mr. Qin for fear of reprisals said it's hard for anyone with ties to human rights activism or the pro-democracy movement to go anywhere at this time of year.

"The atmosphere in Beijing is very tense right now," he said. "It's hard to get together for a meal with friends if you're on the list of so-called sensitive figures."

"They will stop people from getting together to cook and eat together in their homes, even if they're not on the list," Qin said. "Naturally, it's more sensitive here in Beijing, because that's where [the massacre] happened."

"I think a lot of people in Beijing will be taken on 'vacations' this year," he said.

Taken out of town

Ji Feng, an independent commentator who led student protests in the southwestern province of Guizhou in 1989, said he is also being taken out of town ahead of the anniversary, despite no longer living in Beijing.

"Every anniversary ending in 5 or 0 is a bigger one, and there will be quite an uproar overseas this year, for the 35th anniversary," Ji told RFA Mandarin in a recent interview.

"This year, we're not allowed to mention the anniversary or June 4, and we're not allowed to go far," Ji said. "In the past, they would take me anywhere, even around Beijing."

"Now, we have to stay in the vicinity of Zunyi city," he said, adding that the local authorities seem less willing to spend money on "stability maintenance" measures this year.

"Maybe finances are tight, and they have no money," Ji speculated, in a reference to recent reports of cash-strapped local governments.

In Shanghai, rights activist Shen Yanqiu said she has been called in to "drink tea" with state security police almost daily in the run-up to the anniversary, and warned off going anywhere or meeting anyone.

"Rights defenders and dissidents alike are under tight surveillance around June 4," Shen said. "We can't arrange anything because they're afraid we'll contact foreign media organizations or hold citizen gatherings."

"It's basically because the authorities are afraid," she said.

Shen said she had postponed plans to try to visit pandemic citizen journalist Zhang Zhan following her May 13 release from Shanghai Women's Prison, because she expects Zhang to be under particularly tight surveillance.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Chen Zifei for RFA Mandarin.

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The city of Uvalde, Texas, will overhaul police training and hiring policies as well as support more mental health services for survivors of the 2022 massacre at Robb Elementary School as part of a settlement with the families of 19 victims announced just two days before the second anniversary of the shooting.

Attorneys for the families said in a news conference this week that the city will also pay $2 million in restitution and help construct a permanent memorial.

The settlement is the first to be reached with families as lawsuits pile up against local and state officials and companies, including the manufacturer of the killer’s weapon, over the school shooting in which 19 children and two teachers died. Among the key failures that it seeks to address is providing sufficient training for law enforcement to respond to a mass shooting.

City officials did not respond to questions seeking more details about the settlement, which included anagreement to implement a new “fitness for duty” standard for local police officers in coordination with the Justice Department and committed to providing enhanced training for police. But they issued a statement saying they were thankful to have arrived at an agreement “that will allow us to remember the Robb Elementary tragedy while moving forward together as a community to bring healing and restoration to all those affected.”

Legal action could have bankrupted the city of Uvalde, which the families did not want, according to attorneys, who added that the details of the settlement, specifically those related to training, are still being finalized. A separate agreement is being negotiated with Uvalde County, which had 16 deputies responding, including the sheriff, according to attorneys.

Most civil settlements in mass shootings are with private companies and therefore tend to be confidential, so the public rarely learns what they entail, said Jaclyn Schildkraut, executive director of the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium at the Rockefeller Institute of Government, a public policy think tank in Albany, New York.

While in some high-profile cases, the public may learn about the financial payoff, Schildkraut said that she has never heard of a legal settlement including a stipulation for more training. When there have been recommendations or changes related to training, as occurred after the 1999 Columbine school shooting, they tend to come from law enforcement or local, state or federal authorities. She said that the families agreeing to a settlement with such specific training stipulations in the Uvalde case demonstrates that “it was never about the money.”

“It was about accountability and making it better so that it doesn’t happen again,” said Schildkraut, who has studied mass shootings for 17 years. “And so I think in that respect, if that was their goal, to have their loved ones not have died in vain with no change, then that absolutely is a positive.”

Though hundreds of officers descended on the elementary school on May 24, 2022, none confronted the shooter for 77 minutes, wrongly treating the situation as one with a barricaded suspect instead of an active threat even as children and teachers pleaded with 911 dispatchers for help. They failed to follow multiple best practices taught as part of active shooter training, including setting up a clear command structure.

An investigation published in December by ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and FRONTLINE found that about 72% of the at least 116 state and local officers who arrived at the school before the gunman was killed had received some form of active shooter training during their careers. A majority, however, had only taken it once, which is not enough, according to law enforcement experts. Federal officials declined to provide their training records to the news organizations or to the Justice Department, which released a separate review a month later.

The news organizations analyzed training requirements across the country, which revealed that children are required to train more often for the possibility of a school shooting than law enforcement officers.

During a press conference in Uvalde, Josh Koskoff, the families’ attorney, said the state’s failure to prevent the deaths began long before the shooting occurred. He said Texas failed to provide small communities like Uvalde, a city of about 15,000 people, with enough resources to train their officers.

“You think the city of Uvalde has enough money, or training, or resources? You think they can hire the best of the best?” Koskoff said. “As far as the state of Texas is concerned, it sounds like their position is: ‘You’re on your own.’”

Attorneys said they are working with Uvalde families who plan to file additional lawsuits before the statute of limitations for such cases ends Friday. The lawyers announced the first of those suits on Wednesday.

The new federal lawsuit against the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, an energy management company and a telecommunications company seeks at least $500 million in damages on behalf of the families of 17 children who were killed and two who were injured.

The 98-page lawsuit claims that the failure of more than 90 DPS troopers to engage the shooter endangered children and cost lives, Koskoff and other attorneys argued in the lawsuit. It also names the former school district police chief, Pete Arredondo, the school’s principal, Mandy Gutierrez, a school resource officer, Adrian Gonzales, and Jesus R. Suarez Jr., a member of the school board and reserve officer for the Southwest Texas Junior College Police Department, citing their inaction. Reached on his cellphone, Suarez said he hadn’t seen the lawsuit and referred questions to his attorney, who did not respond to calls and emails. An attorney for Gutierrez and Gonzales also did not return calls and texts sent to his listed cell phone number. Arredondo could not be reached for comment, but his attorney has previously argued that he was being scapegoated.

The lawsuit argues that while the “craven actions” of the school district police are well known, “equally culpable actions” by DPS officers have been “shielded from public scrutiny.” It notes that DPS has fought the release of its officers’ body-camera footage, radio communications, officer interviews and other records. The Tribune, ProPublica and other media organizations are suing the agency for such records. A state district judge ruled last year that DPS should release those records, but the agency has appealed.

Spokespeople for DPS and the school district declined to comment on the lawsuit.

“For two long years, we have languished in pain and without any accountability from the law enforcement agencies and officers who allowed our families to be destroyed that day,” Veronica Luevanos, whose daughter Jailah and nephew Jayce were killed, said in a statement. Luevanos said that while the settlement with the city reflects a first good-faith effort to begin rebuilding trust, “it wasn’t just Uvalde officers who failed us that day.”

“Nearly 100 officers from the Texas Department of Public Safety have yet to face a shred of accountability for cowering in fear while my daughter and nephew bled to death in their classroom.”

Only about a dozen officers from the nearly two dozen agencies that responded to the shooting have been fired or suspended, or have retired as a result. At least five DPS officers were among them.

The lawsuit also names as defendants two companies: Massachusetts-based Schneider Electric USA Inc., which it claims manufactured or installed the door-locking mechanisms at Robb Elementary, arguing that the designs are “unreasonably dangerous” because they force teachers to step outside their classrooms to lock doors, and Motorola Solutions Inc., which designed or sold the radio communication used by police and medics at the scene. The devices are “defective and unreasonably dangerous” because they left some first responders without access to necessary communications, according to the lawsuit.

A spokesperson for Motorola did not respond to emailed questions about the lawsuit. A spokesperson for Schneider Electric USA Inc. wrote in an email that the company did not make the locks at Robb Elementary and said that its inclusion was an error. He noted the company had been dropped in a previous lawsuit for that reason and was in touch with attorneys for the families in the current filing. He said the company expects to be dropped from this case.

A spokesperson for the attorneys said that if Schneider Electric USA Inc. provides information confirming it did not make the locks, the company will be removed from the suit.

The settlement and lawsuit bring some needed accountability after an “unbearable two years,” said Javier Cazares, whose 9-year-old Jacklyn Cazares was killed in the shooting.

“There was an obvious system failure out there on May 24. The whole world saw that,” Cazares said. “The time has come to do the right thing.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by .

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Last month, former President Donald Trump announced he would not pursue a federal abortion ban, as many of his supporters hoped, and he criticized states with bans that make no exception for rape or incest.

Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, who at the time was on a short list of candidates to become Trump’s pick for vice president, responded immediately. Even though her state’s ban has neither exception and is considered one of the strictest in the country, Noem highlighted the parts of Trump’s message that she agreed with and sidestepped the rest.

“.@realDonaldTrump is exactly right… this is about ‘precious babies.’ It should be easier for moms, dads, and families to have babies — not harder,” she wrote on X following Trump’s announcement. “South Dakota is proud to stand for LIFE and support babies, moms, and families.”

But some state lawmakers, health care advocates and political observers in South Dakota say that Noem does not always follow through on that rhetorical promise. Since she became the first female governor of South Dakota in 2019, she has rejected programs and millions of dollars in federal funds that would have benefited pregnant people, parents and children — policies that might be at odds with her vision of limited government.

That Noem doesn’t always follow through on her talk is an oft-repeated criticism, said Jon Schaff, a political science professor at Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota, who put it another way: Noem, he said, is “all hat and no cattle.”

“You look like a cowboy, but you’re not one,” Schaff said of the well-worn phrase. “I think there’s been a sense that she’s maybe overly concerned about sort of the imagery of politics rather than the substance.”

Much of that criticism has been eclipsed by the fallout from Noem’s memoir, “No Going Back,” in which she provides an account of shooting and killing a pet hunting dog called Cricket two decades ago. Still, Noem has pitched herself as a governor, rancher and mom passionate about family values and a second Trump presidency. For his part, Trump has not yet publicly eliminated her as a potential running mate, so her record on taking “care of moms and their babies both before birth and after” bears examination.

Noem’s office declined to comment, saying responses from state agencies were sufficient. But her record does, in fact, include measures that support families. In 2020, she helped create the first paid family leave policy for state employees, and she expanded it last year from eight to 12 weeks. She extended the length of time that people in prison can spend with their newborns in a “mother-infant program” from 1 month to 30 months. And she expanded a program called Bright Start, which pairs nurses with first-time parents, to cover the entire state with a $2.5 million budget increase.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the South Dakota Department of Health wrote that Noem is “committed to freedom for life” and pointed to a recently launched mobile health clinic called Wellness on Wheels, which provides services to rural communities such as connections with federal Women, Infants and Children benefits and pregnancy risk assessments. Over half the state counties are defined as a maternal care desert.

“DOH programs like Bright Start, Wellness on Wheels, WIC, pregnancy care and many more support this initiative in ensuring our future generations are healthy and strong,” the statement said.

At times, Noem has tried to put distance between herself and the state’s abortion ban, which was put in place by a trigger law that was passed before she took office. The ban only allows the procedure to “preserve the life of the pregnant female.” But she has not embraced opportunities to add exceptions to the ban’s language, even after calls to do so from within her own party.

Three female Republican lawmakers attempted to enact legislation to add “risk of death or of a substantial and irreversible physical impairment of … major bodily functions” to the permissible circumstances for an abortion. Rep. Taylor Rehfeldt, Sen. Sydney Davis and Sen. Erin Tobin — all registered nurses who identify as pro-life — met several times with Noem staffers as they tried to build support for the measure, and they believed they had Noem’s support. But as opposition emerged from anti-abortion advocates, principally South Dakota Right to Life, Noem did not help. Rehfeldt withdrew the bill.

“I never got an official statement from her office,” Rehfeldt said. “But I will tell you that there was consensus, and then all of a sudden there wasn’t.”

In the next legislative session, Rehfeldt brought a new bill that mandated that the Department of Health and the state attorney general create an educational video intended to clarify — but not change — the ban’s language; Noem signed that one in March. Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America released a statement thanking Noem “for making South Dakota the first state to protect women’s lives with a Med Ed law.”

Maternal and infant health outcomes are particularly alarming in the state’s Native American population. About 44% of all pregnancy-associated deaths from 2012 to 2021 were Native Americans and Alaska Natives. In 2023, more than 3% of all Native American babies born in South Dakota had syphilis, part of an unprecedented modern outbreak.

One component of the problem is the chronically underfunded Indian Health Service hospitals and clinics, which are overseen by the federal government. If South Dakota expanded eligibility for its Medicaid program, as 39 other states and the District of Columbia have done, it would infuse IHS facilities with badly needed additional money from newly covered patients.

“That may be like a job position for a new doctor or salary for a dentist,” said Janelle Cantrell, head of the Medicaid and health care exchange enrollment program at Great Plains Tribal Leaders’ Health Board in Rapid City, South Dakota.

But Noem has opposed and delayed expansion. In 2022, South Dakota voters took the decision out of her hands by approving a ballot initiative for Medicaid expansion. According to state Rep. Linda Duba, a Democrat, Noem has dragged her feet on the expansion, which has resulted in far fewer residents enrolling than expected. At the same time, Noem supports adding a work requirement to Medicaid eligibility, which is popular among GOP governors.

“There’s nothing proactive going on,” Duba said. “That comes from the administration. They didn’t want Medicaid expansion. They’re doing everything they can to slow-walk it and keep the enrollments down.”

Department of Social Services Cabinet Secretary Matt Althoff said in a statement that Medicaid expansion enrollment is going “efficiently and smoothly,” and that he expects a monthly average of 40,000 enrollees a month in the next fiscal year. He pointed to the state’s low unemployment rate and rising per capita personal income as an explanation for below-expected enrollment.

South Dakota has no state-funded preschool program. Noem’s administration declined to apply for $7.5 million in federal money to pay for a free summer meal program for low-income children, something several GOP governors have also done. She also helped defeat proposals to pay for school lunches for eligible students and once called subsidized child care a “line in the sand” she wouldn’t cross.

“I just don’t think it’s the government’s job to pay or to raise people’s children for them,” she said in a radio interview in December 2023.

Some of Noem’s own initiatives have fallen flat. A pledge to eliminate the state’s 4.5% grocery tax, a full sales tax on all food items that only South Dakota and Mississippi charge, was a cornerstone of her 2022 reelection campaign. Repealing the tax, she said, would help “single moms who may rent an apartment and have a tough time feeding their kids with the rising food costs that we have.”

But the bill to repeal the tax failed to pass one of its first committee hearings, despite the Legislature’s Republican supermajority.

“It is amazing to me how much of a national profile that Kristi Noem has, in some ways not being all that successful in terms of achieving legislative agendas,” said state Sen. Reynold F. Nesiba, a Democrat and the chamber’s minority leader.

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This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Jessica Lussenhop.

Worried New Caledonian expats in Aotearoa admit they are “terrified” for friends and family amid ongoing violence and civil unrest in the French Pacific territory.

The death toll remained at four tonight, and hundreds have been injured after electoral changes sparked widespread rioting by pro-independence supporters in the capital of Nouméa.

French President Emmanuel Macron has declared a 12-day state of emergency and about 1200 police enforcements are due to arrive from France.

• LISTEN TO RNZ CHECKPOINT: Latest on unrest in New Caledonia
• Expats worried about families in New Caledonia
• READ MORE: Nouméa ‘was on fire’ – New Zealander in New Caledonia tells of unrest
  France declares state of emergency in New Caledonia – four die in riots
• Other Kanaky New Caledonia crisis reports

Many worried locals have been confined to their homes.

New Zealand-based New Caledonians have explained how the situation in their homeland has left them on edge.

Pascale Desrumaux and her family have been in Auckland for two years.

With parts of the country in turmoil, she said she was scared for her family and friends back home in Nouméa.

“I’m terrified and I’m very stressed,” Desrumaux said.

“[My family] are afraid for their lives.”

‘Locked in’
The precarious situation is illustrated by the fact her family cannot leave their homes and neighbouring stores have been ransacked then torched by protesters.

“They are locked in at the moment, so they can’t move — so they feel anxiety of course,” Desrumaux said.

“On top of that, shortly they will run out of food.

“The situation is complex.”

Desrumaux is checking in with family members every few hours for updates.

Amid the current climate, she said she had mixed emotions about being abroad.

“This shared feeling of being relieved to be here in New Zealand and grateful because my kids and husband are not in danger,” she said.

“At the same time I feel so bad for my friends and family over there.”

‘A beautiful place’
She stressed her home country remained “a beautiful place” and hoped the crisis could be resolved peacefully.

Fellow Auckland-based New Caledonian Anais Bride said she had been left distraught by what was unfolding.

In the past 48 hours, her parents have vacated their Nouméa home to stay with Bride’s sister as tensions escalated.

Based on her conversations with loved ones, she said that international news coverage had not fully conveyed the fluid crisis facing citizens on the ground.

“It took my mother a little while for her to accept the fact that it was time to leave, because she wanted to stay where she lives.

“My sisters’ just told her ‘at the end of the day, it’s just your house, it’s material’.

“It’s been hard for my parents.”

One supermarket standing
She said there was only one supermarket left standing in Nouméa, with many markets destroyed by fire.

Kevin, who did not want his surname to be published, is another New Caledonian living in New Zealand.

While his family has not seen much unrest first hand, explosions and smoke were constant where they were, he said.

He said it was hard to predict how the unrest could be straightened out.

“It’s hard to tell,” he said.

“The most tragic thing of course is the four deaths, and many businesses have been burned down so many people will lose their job.

“The main thing is how people rebuild connections, peace and of course the economy.”

‘Timely exit’ from Nouméa
Christchurch woman Viki Moore spent a week in New Caledonia before making a “timely exit” out of Nouméa on Monday as civil tension intensified.

“There was a heavy police presence out at the airport with two [armoured vehicles] at the entrance and heavily armed military police roaming around.

“Once we got into the airport we were relieved to be there in this sort of peaceful oasis.

“We didn’t really have a sense of what was still to come.”

She admitted that she did not fully comprehend the seriousness of it until she had left the territory.

Warnings for travellers
Flights through Nouméa are currently grounded.

Air New Zealand said it was monitoring the situation in New Caledonia, with its next flight NZ932 from Auckland to Nouméa still scheduled for Saturday morning.

Chief Operational Integrity and Safety Officer Captain David Morgan said this “could be subject to change”.

“The safety of our passengers, crew, and airport staff is our top priority and we will not operate flights unless their safety can be guaranteed,” he said.

“We will keep passengers updated on our services and advise customers currently in Nouméa to follow the advice of local authorities and the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

DDCom, formed by former President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih in 2018 to probe unsolved murders, disappearances, and abductions under the previous government, has not released its full investigative reports on the 2014 disappearance and murder of journalist Ahmed Rilwan Abdulla and the 2017 murder of blogger Yameen Rasheed. Impunity persists in both cases.

Read the full press release below:

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

On Monday, President Joe Biden announced the 60 organizations that, under the administration’s Solar for All program, will receive a combined $7 billion in grants to bring residential solar into low-income neighborhoods. The funding will flow into state, municipal, and tribal governments as well as nonprofits to support existing programs for low-income solar and battery storage installations and spur new ones. Such efforts are expected to bring affordable clean energy to 900,000 households.

While the climate and environmental benefits of this effort are critical, the households poised to benefit will feel the most immediate impacts on their pocketbooks.

“Low income families can spend up to 30 percent of their paychecks on their energy bills,” Biden said while announcing the funding in Virginia. “It’s outrageous.”

That reality is central to the administration’s program, which will cut energy costs for those families who monitor their spending to ensure they can make it to the end of the month. By bringing rooftop and community solar to communities in need, Solar for All could save energy-burdened families on average $400 a year.

The 60 recipients were selected by dozens of review panels composed of experts from across the executive branch. The Environmental Protection Agency will finalize contract details in the days and weeks ahead, and awardees are expected to receive the funding in summer to begin implementing their efforts.

Without the low-income solar programs that will be established and expanded with these funds, most families can’t afford to place energy-producing panels atop their homes. Most rooftop installations cost tens of thousands of dollars, and even with a long-term loan and the promise of a year-end tax credit to help cover a steep upfront cost, that places the technology out of reach for many Americans.

As Solar for All brings energy savings to low-income and disadvantaged families nationwide — advancing Biden’s Justice40 Initiative, which aims to ensure that at least 40 percent of climate investments directly benefit frontline communities — it will also accelerate progress toward the administration’s goal of achieving 100 percent clean energy nationwide by 2035. The EPA estimates that the $7 billion will underwrite 4 gigawatts of solar installations nationwide, enough to power more than 3 million homes. All told, the program is expected to prevent over 30 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from ever entering the atmosphere while also creating 200,000 jobs and affording tribal nations an improved path to energy sovereignty.

For years, Indigenous communities across America have been using solar and other renewables to liberate themselves from an energy system that pollutes their air and establish something that they own. With $500 million slated specifically for tribal governments, Solar for All can help accelerate those efforts. One such award for over $135 million will go to the Northern Plains Tribal Coalition, a partnership of 14 Indigenous nations brought together by the Native-led nonprofit Indigenized Energy and the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation

“This is a once-in-a-generation award that will begin to transform how tribes achieve energy sovereignty,” Cody Two Bears, executive director of the Native-led nonprofit Indigenized Energy, said in a press release. “The shift from extractive energy to regenerative energy systems will be the legacy we leave for our future generations.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Biden’s ‘Solar for All’ awards $7B to bring affordable energy to low-income families on Apr 23, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Syris Valentine.

The post Low-income, Minority Families Spend More on Bottled Water Due to Poor Water Infrastructure, Advertising appeared first on Project Censored.

This content originally appeared on Project Censored and was authored by Shealeigh.

Ten days into 2024, Port Moresby descended into chaos as opportunists looted and burned shops in Waigani, Gerehu and other suburbs.

That morning, police, military and correctional service personnel gathered at the Unagi Oval in protest over deductions made to their pays that fortnight. Unsatisfied with the explanations, they withdrew their services and converged on Parliament to seek answers.

It took just a few hours for the delicate balance between order and chaos to be tipped to one side.

• READ MORE: Other Black Wednesday reports

In the absence of police, people took to the streets. They looted shops nearest to them and forced the closure of the entire city. Several people died during the looting.

The politicians — the lawmakers — were left powerless as the enforcers of the law became spectators allowing the mayhem to worsen.

While many saw the so-called Black Wednesday, 10 January, 202, as a one off incident caused by “disgruntled” members of the services, the warning signs had been flashing for many years and had been largely ignored.

Two weeks back, I asked a constable attached with one of Lae’s Sector Response Units (SRU) about his take home pay. It is an uncomfortable discussion to have.

Living conditions
But it is necessary to understand the pay and living conditions of the men and women who maintain that delicate balance in Papua New Guinea.

He said his take home pay was about K900 (NZ$385). When the so-called “glitch” happened in the Finance Department, many RPNGC members like him had up to one third of their pay deducted. That’s a sizable chunk for a small family.

Policemen and women won’t talk about it publicly.

They also won’t talk about the difficulties and frustrations they face at home when there’s a pay deduction like the one in January.

Black Wednesday showed the culmination of frustrations over years of unpaid allowances, poor living conditions and successive governments that have ignored basic needs in favour of grand announcements and flashy deployments that prop up political egos.

Why am I raising this? What does Black Wednesday have to do with anything?

That incident showed just how important the lowest paid frontline cops are in the socioeconomic ecosystem that we live in. The politicians, make the laws, they “maintain law and order” and we’re supposed to obey.

Oath of service
Police, military and correctional service personnel, entrust their welfare to the state when they sign an oath of service. This means the government is obliged to care for them, while they SERVE the state and the people of Papua New Guinea.

But for decades, successive governments seem to have forgotten their obligations.

Out of sight. Out of mind.

Politicians have opted for short term adhoc welfare “pills” like paying for deployment allowances while ignoring the long term needs like housing and general living conditions.

The Acting ACP for the Northern Division, Chris Kunyanban has seen it play out time and time again. He said, as a commander, it is difficult to get a cop who is struggling to fix his rundown police housing to work 12 hour shifts while there’s a leaking roof and a sick child.

It’s that simple.

The government says it is committed to increasing police numbers. Recruitments are ongoing. But there is still a dire shortage of housing for police.

Republished from Lekmak with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

"Federal watchdogs should hold the data broker accountable for abusing Americans' private information," he added. "And Congress needs to step up as soon as possible to ensure extremist politicians can't buy this kind of sensitive data without a warrant."

"That data brokers can track people visiting Planned Parenthood is terrifying enough. That law enforcement agencies can simply buy this type of sensitive data—rather than getting a warrant—is even worse."

Since the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court reversedRoe v. Wade with its June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, anti-choice state policymakers have ramped up attacks on abortion rights, elevating concerns about patient privacy.

Wyden explained in a Tuesday letter that his office launched an investigation after The Wall Street Journalreported last May that the Veritas Society, a nonprofit established by Wisconsin Right to Life, hired the advertising agency Recrue Media for an anti-abortion ad campaign targeting clinic visitors, whose locations were tracked by the data broker Near Intelligence.

As Wyden wrote to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler:

My staff spoke with Steven Bogue, the co-founder and managing principal of Recrue Media on May 19, 2023, who revealed that to target these ads, his employees used Near's website to draw a line around the building and parking lot of each targeted facility. On May 26, 2023, my staff spoke with Near's chief privacy officer, Jay Angelo, who confirmed that, until the summer of 2022, the company did not have any technical controls in place to prevent its customers targeting people who visited sensitive facilities, such as reproductive health clinics.

On a webpage that has since been taken down, but was saved by the Internet Archive, the Veritas Society stated that in 2020 in Wisconsin alone, it delivered 14.3 million ads to people who visited abortion clinics, and "served ads to those devices across the women's social pages, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat." The scale of this invasive surveillance-enabled ad campaign remains unknown, however, Mr. Bogue told my staff that the company used Near to target ads to people who had visited 600 Planned Parenthood locations in the lower 48 states.

Justin Sherman, who studies data brokers at Duke University, toldPolitico that "this is the largest targeting campaign we've seen to date against reproductive health clinics based on brokered data."

Wyden also highlighted Journalreporting from October about Near selling location data to defense contractors that resold it to U.S. Defense Department and intelligence agencies. He wrote that Angelo, the privacy officer, "confirmed that the company had for three years sold location data to the defense contractor AELIUS Exploitation Technologies."

"Mr. Angelo revealed that after joining Near in June of 2022, he conducted a review of the company's practices and discovered that the company was facilitating the sale of location data to the U.S. government that had been obtained without user consent," the senator continued, noting the removal of "misleading statements" from Near's website.

"The former executives that led Near during the period in which it engaged in these egregious violations of Americans' privacy are now under criminal investigation, according to a statement made by the company's lawyer during a December 11, 2023, bankruptcy hearing. But prosecuting those individuals for engaging in financial fraud will not address Near's corporate abuses," Wyden argued, urging the FTC and SEC to take various actions over the company's "outrageous conduct" that "recklessly harmed the public and investors."

Wyden's letter comes as the Republican-controlled U.S. House plans to take up the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act, which would reform Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), spying powers temporarily extended late last year that agencies—especially the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)—have abused.

Section 702 only allows warrantless surveillance targeting foreigners located outside the United States, but Americans' data is also swept up, and privacy advocates within and outside of Congress—including Wyden—have long been pushing for warrant protections, a key issue in this week's debates about the Republican-led reform bill.

Responding to Wyden's letter, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said Wednesday that "this is outrageous. Americans' most personal private health data is being bought and sold for politics. Major surveillance changes are needed. i.e. If Congress acts, reforms from our Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act must be part of a FISA reform."

Reintroduced by Lofgren, Wyden, and a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers last July, that bill would require the U.S. government to get a court order compelling data brokers to disclose information as well as bar law enforcement and intelligence agencies from buying data on people in the U.S. and Americans abroad if it was obtained from a user's account or device, or deceptive practices.

Privacy rights campaigners and experts also responded to Wyden's letter with renewed calls for closing the data broker loophole.

"That data brokers can track people visiting Planned Parenthood is terrifying enough. That law enforcement agencies can simply buy this type of sensitive data—rather than getting a warrant—is even worse," said Ashley Gorski, senior staff attorney at the ACLU's National Security Project. "This Thursday, Congress must vote to close the loophole for law enforcement purchases from data brokers. The government shouldn't be able to buy its way around the Fourth Amendment."

The organizations Demand Progress and EPIC concurred in social media posts sharing Politico's reporting on the letter.

"The continued sale of our most sensitive information to and by shady data brokers not only fuels harmful surveillance advertising systems, but enables government agencies—from local police departments to state attorneys general to the FBI—to sidestep the Fourth Amendment," said EPIC counsel Sara Geoghegan in a statement. "We urgently need to rein in data brokers and enact comprehensive privacy rules to protect us from these grave harms in the post-Roe era we live in."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Donald Newson entered the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, with a mix of nerves and excitement. He had not seen his father, Nasih Khalil Ra’id, in almost 20 years. Born Odell Corley, Ra’id was sent to federal death row when Newson was just a teenager. Although he insisted he’d been wrongfully convicted, his hope of freedom faded over time, and he fell out of contact with his son. Now 35, Newson wondered if his father would even recognize him. The last time they were together, Newson was just a skinny kid. “I definitely didn’t have a beard.”

Growing up, Newson did not know the details of his father’s case. Ra’id was simply the dad with a playful sense of humor who loved Prince and kung fu movies and teaching his son to weightlift. Although his parents separated when Newson was young, he’d seen Ra’id frequently; the year before his father’s arrest, Newson traveled from his home in Atlanta to spend the summer in Michigan City, Indiana, where Ra’id ran a car wash and spent nights working security at the zoo. “We would look at all the animals and basically get like a backstage pass,” Newson recalled.

In 2002, Ra’id was arrested alongside several other suspects following a botched bank robbery that left two people dead and another paralyzed. His co-defendants pointed to him as the mastermind, which Ra’id adamantly denied. “I did not take part in that atrocity,” he told the court following his trial. “I did not shoot and kill anyone.”

Newson attended his father’s sentencing hearing, along with his mother, Jeannie Gipson-Newson. A death sentence would be “devastating to my child,” she remembered testifying. But it felt futile. The jurors seemed to have made up their minds. In 2004, Ra’id was sentenced to die.

Like many parents, Ra’id didn’t show his children he was struggling. “He never really liked to be a burden to anyone,” Newson recalled. After his first several years on death row, Ra’id stopped reaching out to Newson. When he later learned about his grandchildren, he was reluctant to form a relationship with them. “Even if they meet me, it will be behind glass,” Newson remembered him saying. “I couldn’t touch them. I couldn’t hug them.”

In the spring of 2020, however, the Federal Bureau of Prisons began allotting hundreds of free phone minutes to people in federal custody under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act. Ra’id began calling his son. Soon, they were talking multiple times a week. Ra’id’s grandchildren eventually “won him over,” Newson said. Before long, Ra’id was sending portraits of the kids drawn in his death row cell.

Drawings that Nasih Khalil Ra’id made of his grandchildren hang on the walls of Donald Newson’s home in Atlanta on Jan. 31, 2024.

Later that year, the Trump administration began carrying out the first federal executions in 17 years. One by one, Ra’id saw longtime neighbors taken to die. “It definitely was nerve-wracking for him,” Newson said. “He’s like, ‘People that I’ve been in here with for the last 10, 15 years … you see them get called and never come back.’” Like all his neighbors, Ra’id feared getting an execution date himself. In the end, he survived.

In 2022, Ra’id’s legal team told Newson about a new program to help families visit loved ones on federal death row. The initiative was started by anti-death penalty activists who raised money to provide financial support for travel, lodging, and meals. Ra’id, who had always been firm that Newson should not spend money on him that could be spent on his kids, seemed enthusiastic. A self-described procrastinator, Newson did not fill out the paperwork right away. But last May, he flew from Atlanta to Indianapolis, where he was picked up by volunteers, then driven straight to the penitentiary.

Things did not go according to plan. At security, Newson was told he was in violation of the dress code and would not be allowed inside. He called his ride and went to a nearby Walmart. By the time he returned in new clothes, there was only an hour left of visitation.

Newson’s agitation dissipated when he spotted his dad. “It was a flood of emotions coming over me,” he said. The last time they’d seen one another, Ra’id was in the best shape of his life. Now Newson stared at his gray beard, overwhelmed by the years they had lost. He wanted badly to reach out but was stopped by the thick plexiglass. He struggled to understand the rationale. “I’m his son. What is he going to do to me?”

The hour went quickly. By the end of Newson’s second visit that weekend, they had talked about virtually everything. Ra’id was eager to share what he was reading; he had recently finished “King Leopold’s Ghost,” about Belgium’s violent exploitation of Congo. He urged his son to pay attention to the state of politics in the U.S. “There are some things out there that should terrify you,” he said. “And you just gotta be ready for whatever’s coming.”

Saying goodbye was “gut-wrenching,” Newson said. He resolved to apply for another visit, this time with his wife and kids.

On the Monday after Thanksgiving, Ra’id turned 59 years old. When Newson wished him a happy birthday, he replied, “Ain’t nothing happy about this,” then changed the subject to his grandson, who was about to turn 10. He kept his son company on the phone the next day as Newson rushed to get his kids ready for school.

On Thursday, Ra’id called early in the morning. Newson was in the middle of a serious conversation with his wife, so Ra’id said he would call back. He never did. The next day, during a break at work, Newson retrieved his cellphone from his locker and saw a flurry of messages from family members. Ra’id had been found unresponsive at the prison that morning. He was declared dead shortly afterward. The cause, Newson later learned, was suicide.

A drawing that Nasih Khalil Ra’id made of himself and his son, Donald Newson, right, before his death by suicide on federal death row.

“We Have to Do Something”

The Death Row Visitation Project was an attempt to make something good out of something horrific.

Even for veteran abolitionists, the execution spree that began in Terre Haute in 2020 was an unprecedented nightmare: twelve men and one woman killed in the federal death chamber over the course of six months. The killings were carried out amid a deadly pandemic, and the virus spread among those who traveled to Terre Haute. By the last executions in January 2021, prison staff, death penalty lawyers, reporters, and the condemned men themselves had gotten sick with Covid-19, while the Supreme Court did nothing to intervene.

Among those scarred by the executions was Bill Breeden, a longtime pacifist and Universalist minister who served as spiritual adviser to Corey Johnson, the 12th person put to death. Inside the execution chamber, officials refused to let Breeden deliver the statement he’d written with Johnson, words filled with love for Johnson’s family and remorse for his crimes. Breeden was especially haunted by the fact that Johnson had spent 29 years in solitary confinement without a visit from relatives. In the run-up to the execution, Breeden raised money from his congregation to bring Johnson’s family to Terre Haute. But Johnson’s legal team offered to cover the costs, leaving Breeden with unexpected funds.

It’s not unusual for people on death row to become estranged from their families. The stigma of a death sentence compounds the practical challenges of staying in touch. Phone calls, stamps, and emails get expensive quickly — and visits are often prohibitive. While studies have consistently shown the importance of maintaining close ties to loved ones while in prison, they tend to be framed around reducing recidivism, which does not apply to people the government intends to kill. And though the BOP boasts a “policy to place individuals within 500 miles of their release residence, as available and appropriate,” the policy is irrelevant to people on federal death row.

“No matter where that person’s from, they are housed here in Terre Haute,” said Barbara Battista, an activist and Catholic sister with the local Providence of St. Mary-of-the-Woods, which has a longstanding relationship with the penitentiary. “That’s a real burden for persons with minimal resources, not just financial but emotional, psychological.”

Like Breeden, Battista served as a spiritual adviser during the federal executions, accompanying two men, including Keith Nelson, who was among the first to die. “Keith was the one who said to me, ‘I want you to tell the world what goes on in here,’” she recalled. To her, this meant not only the chillingly sanitized ritual of lethal injection, but also the brutal isolation that generated so much suffering for the condemned and their loved ones. In conversations with Breeden, “we were like, ‘We have to do something about this,’” Battista said.

“So many local people would visit if they could. The system is set up to fail human beings.”

Helping families visit death row seemed like an ideal use of the leftover funds. Breeden and Battista teamed up with veteran death penalty lawyer Margaret O’Donnell, who had joined the execution vigils in Terre Haute and was well acquainted with the BOP’s myriad rules, some of which she had never been able to comprehend. Men on federal death row, for example, are prohibited from receiving visits from anyone who did not know them prior to their convictions, a policy that stifles new relationships. “So many local people would visit if they could,” O’Donnell said. “The system is set up to fail human beings.”

The group formed a committee to review applications and approve spending decisions. In June 2022, they sent a letter to everyone on federal death row announcing the Terre Haute Death Row Visitation Project. Battista’s name and email address were on the bottom of the form. She was soon inundated with responses.

Today, the burgeoning program has funded at least 18 visits for a quarter of the 40 men on federal death row. Applications are processed four times a year, with a small network of volunteers providing everything from airport rides to gift cards at local restaurants. With a shoestring budget sustained by small donations, the program has limited capacity. “Each guy can have one funded visit a year,” O’Donnell explained. Eventually, they hope to provide more.

To O’Donnell, the project is about “inserting a little bit of humanity into an inhumane system.” While it cannot undo the psychic toll of living under a death sentence, the visitation program provides a critical lifeline. In the wake of the execution spree, Ra’id’s suicide underscored the unseen trauma among those who survived. For families who lived through the executions, the visits are a chance to reunite with relatives whose future remains uncertain. With Donald Trump vying to return to office, many fear that their loved ones may not survive a new administration.

Yet the looming specter of executions is only one reason the visits feel so urgent. Families I spoke to expressed deep concern over the day-to-day conditions on federal death row, especially the impact of long-term solitary confinement on their loved ones’ mental health. After his father’s death, Newson has returned to this again and again. “We can’t even begin to imagine what the last 20 years for him has been like,” he said.

A “no trespassing” sign outside the U.S. penitentiary that houses federal death row in Terre Haute, Ind., on July 15, 2020.

Invisible Grief

I went to Terre Haute a few weeks before Ra’id’s suicide, in November 2023. It was the first time I’d been back since the execution spree. Outside the Dollar General across from the penitentiary, anti-death penalty signs had been left by activists passing through town, one of which read, “Execution is not the solution.”

The presence of protesters was often the only hint of the killings being carried out at the sprawling prison complex. News coverage was relatively sparse, eclipsed by the coronavirus pandemic, national upheaval over the killing of George Floyd, and the chaos of the 2020 presidential race.

Through it all, the Dollar General became a gathering spot for demonstrators, reporters, and occasionally family members of the condemned, who were otherwise rendered invisible. Unlike victims’ loved ones, who received a range of support from the BOP and had a chance to address the press after executions, relatives of the condemned were not allowed in the media room at all.

This erasure was part of a larger experience known as disenfranchised grief, in which pain and loss are not socially validated. For many death row families, a loved one’s sentence is something they do not share with their employers, classmates, or neighbors. Executions become something to process in private. As the sister of Dustin Higgs, the last man put to death by the Trump administration, told me, “It’s hard to explain how you feel to people because this is not a normal grief.”

Many activists and family members felt a glimmer of hope after the executions ended. Although Trump’s killing spree had been mostly ignored during the presidential race, Joe Biden vowed to “pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level” and encourage states to do the same. In a letter written on behalf of 45 members of Congress, Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y., and Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., urged then-Attorney General nominee Merrick Garland to stop seeking new death sentences and “direct the Bureau of Prisons to dismantle the federal death chamber.”

That didn’t happen. The execution chamber remains intact. And while the Biden Justice Department took the death penalty off the table in a number of cases inherited from the Trump administration, it has continued to seek new death sentences. Last year, a federal jury voted in favor of the death penalty for Robert Bowers, the man who killed 11 people at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018. Last month, the Biden administration announced it would seek the death penalty against the 18-year-old mass shooter who killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket in 2022.

“It’s hard to explain how you feel to people because this is not a normal grief.”

Today, many death row families feel forgotten by Biden. Despite a new BOP director who promised reform of the notoriously dysfunctional federal prison system, conditions have not improved for the men in Terre Haute. In October, the population of the Special Confinement Unit had to be moved to a different part of the prison due to an electrical malfunction that was impacting the opening and closing of cell doors. Staff shortages often have prison guards working mandated overtime — 16-hour shifts that lead to burnout and frustration too easily taken out on the men in their custody.

I met Mark Issac Snarr’s family in a quiet corner of the Drury Inn and Suites on Route 41. Snarr’s younger brother, Zach, had just left the prison with his wife, Kelsey. The brothers’ father had died in August, just one month after being diagnosed with cancer, and the pain of the loss was written on Zach’s face. With blue eyes and a long, shaggy beard, he bore a strong resemblance to his brother and dad alike.

The Snarrs had spent the past three days visiting Mark. The days were long; they arrived around 8 a.m., went through security, and waited to be escorted to the top floor of the building, where visitation lasted until 3 p.m. Yet the time went fast — “too fast,” Zach said. He looked forward to buying his brother snacks and microwaveable sandwiches from the vending machine. “I got him a chicken cordon bleu today,” Zach said with a slight smile. “He liked it.”

Snarr was already incarcerated when he was convicted and sentenced to death for killing a man at a federal prison in Beaumont, Texas. He arrived in Terre Haute in 2010. Even by the standards of the Special Confinement Unit, Snarr has almost no freedom of movement, spending 23 hours a day in his cell. Zach calculates that he has spent almost 25 years in segregated housing, which is unheard of in the rest of the world.

Snarr’s survival is almost certainly rooted in strong ties to his family. He and his brother talk once a week, and he calls his mother every day. “She kind of reports back to the family,” Kelsey said. Through his relatives, Snarr receives reminders that he has not been entirely forgotten. “People from when he was a kid, 10 years old, you know, they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, please tell him I love him. I’m thinking about him,’” Kelsey said.

Kelsey was one of the first people to apply for the visitation program. After the family’s first application was declined for lack of funds, they were approved to visit in 2023 but canceled due to Zach’s father’s illness. As Kelsey recalled, the woman she spoke to reassured her that they would hold their spot. “She’s like, ‘Just contact us whenever the time is right.’ And that was very kind of them.”

Willingness to adapt to families’ changing circumstances is important for those who don’t have much flexibility in their lives. Although Zach and Kelsey would likely have found a way to visit Snarr on their own, many people are not in a position to do the same. “Most of these families are indigent,” Zach said. “Or health-wise, they’re not good.” The journey to Terre Haute is especially daunting for families who live as far away as they do. From their home in northern Utah, the drive takes some 22 hours, or about three days on a Greyhound bus. “Then you go visit four or five days,” Zach said. “It’s really exhausting.”

Zach was thankful that the program had allowed his father to come to Terre Haute before he died. Although he and Snarr’s mother split up when he was young, the two remained close; they visited their son together, staying at a lakeside cabin on the lush, leafy grounds of St. Mary-of-the-Woods. The cabins are secluded and designed for quiet contemplation, a welcome oasis after a day spent inside a prison. There was even an equestrian center nearby, which delighted his father, who raised horses. “It was paradise for him, honestly,” Zach said. “Couldn’t have asked for a better place for him to be for his last visit.”

From death row, Snarr sent the Catholic sisters a gift: a framed oil painting of two birds against a brilliant orange sunset. “I want to thank you all for making it possible to see my family,” he wrote. “I am forever grateful.”

A few days later, I met Mariette Mendez, the sister of Daniel Troya, who has been on death row since 2009. She had managed to make the trip to Terre Haute only one other time since his conviction. She drove with her parents and brother from South Florida, where she lived at the time. It took nearly 18 hours.

Troya and a co-defendant were sent to death row for killing a family of four in a drug-related shooting on a Florida highway. His sentencing judge lamented that despite growing up in a “wonderful family,” Troya had no regard for human life. But this didn’t capture the brother Mendez knew. And it was certainly not true of the man he’d become. Now 40, he had matured, she said, describing him as “an old soul in a young body.”

Mendez was being hosted by volunteers with the program. The basement guest area was spacious, with a large bed and sofa bed covered with quilts. There was a kitchenette with Zebra Cakes on the counter, along with microwavable macaroni and cheese. Mendez wore a weary smile, her long black hair pulled back in a bun. On her forearm, she had a tattoo that read “resilient.”

“I’m still not settled, you know?”

Mendez was drained after a long day at the prison. She had flown from Houston the night before with her two teenage sons and her 2-year-old, Jasai, then got up early to be at the prison. It was a lot for Jasai — “my little monster” — but Mendez was determined to make the most of the trip. “When I got that email, I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is really happening,’” she said. “If it wasn’t for this, I don’t know when I’d be able to come and see him.”

Like other families who lived through the execution spree, Mendez had been gripped by the fear that her brother could be next. “I was terrified.” Any time Troya called, she would brace herself for the possibility that his time was up. It was on her mind “all day, every day,” she said. “I’m still not settled, you know?”

Mendez became emotional describing the moment she saw her brother. “It was pure, like, ‘Oh my God!’” she said. “You just want to reach out and touch, but you can’t.” His whole face lit up when he saw her youngest son, whom he’d never met. “It took my breath away to see his smile.”

For Troya, the opportunity to have a relationship with his nephews gave him a sense of purpose and pride. He recalled how his sister used to tell her boys to turn off the TV when he called. “I thought to myself, ‘These kids might think I’m important. I’m sure there’s not much of that from anyone else.’” The realization motivated him to improve himself, to learn how to “handle the responsibilities of being a loving and caring uncle.” He has tried to be a good influence, warning them to stay out of trouble and cautioning them about interactions with police. “I can’t claim to be an angel, but I know one thing. I am a great fucking uncle. … And the visiting project allows me to do that in person.”

Rose Holomn holds a photo of her son, Julius Robinson, who is on federal death row, at her home in Atlanta on Jan. 31, 2024.

“One Long Death”

A few weeks after my visit to Indiana, I got a press release from the Bureau of Prisons. It was titled “Death at USP Terre Haute.” At 9:25 a.m. on December 1, it read, “Odell Corley was found unresponsive” and pronounced dead. Ra’id’s biography was distilled into 78 words, listing his age, the crimes for which he was convicted, and the date he arrived on death row.

O’Donnell, the death penalty lawyer, heard about Ra’id’s death from his legal team, who asked if the visitation fund might be able to help Newson and his family attend the funeral in Michigan City. The committee approved it unanimously. Although O’Donnell was saddened by Ra’id’s death — there had not been another suicide on federal death row in her nearly 40 years of practice — it didn’t entirely surprise her. “Our clients live difficult, difficult lives,” she said. She was heartened that Newson had been able to see his father before losing him. “To have spent time with him even as limited as it was. … That’s why I wanted this program to exist.”

“You’re not living when you’re in solitary confinement. You’re dying.”

Ra’id’s death came as a gut punch to Breeden, the minister, who had spent time with Newson in Terre Haute. Breeden got the news from a close friend on death row, who himself had attempted suicide three times. “I think the general population can’t understand what solitary confinement is like,” Breeden said. “People need to understand that death row is really just one long death. You’re not living when you’re in solitary confinement. You’re dying.” For his friend, the temporary unit where they have spent the past few months has a silver lining. Unlike the regular Special Confinement Unit, which only affords a partial view of the cell across the way, “they can see each other.”

Two weeks after Christmas, I met Rose Holomn at her home in Atlanta. Her chihuahua, Goldie, was curled up on the couch while Holomn showed me photos of her son, Julius Robinson. Once a year for the past several years, Goldie has made the trip to Terre Haute alongside Holomn, usually in August — Robinson’s birthday month. In a set of recent pictures, he wore khaki pants, a brown jacket, and white sneakers. On the back of one photo, he’d written his age: 47. On another: “Lookin good and feeling good!”

Rose Holomn and her chihuahua, Goldie.

Holomn had not heard much about the suicide in Terre Haute. Although she was in frequent contact with her son, he tried to shield her from things like that. She knew Robinson had been affected by the killing spree. “I could hear it in his voice. As a mother, you know when your child is hurting.” The executions had been traumatic enough watching from the outside. “Every month … it was like, God, Jesus,” she said. “That’s somebody’s child.”

Robinson was disturbed by the killing of Corey Johnson, who was intellectually disabled. “He didn’t even know why he was getting executed,” Holomn remembered her son telling her. And he was especially wounded by the execution of Christopher Vialva, who was an integral part of Robinson’s faith community and admired for his talent at crochet — a popular pastime on death row. For Holomn’s birthday last year, Robinson sent a large blue blanket displaying their family tree, the names of his relatives neatly crocheted with bright orange yarn.

Robinson was sentenced to die in 2002 for a series of murders tied to a drug ring in North Texas. He was 25 years old. For most of his first decade on death row, Holomn was living in Dayton, Ohio, which meant Terre Haute was relatively close. She tried to visit every weekend, sometimes driving out and back in a day. The no-contact visits were painful at first, but she got used to it. “I can’t touch my son, but at least I can go and see him,” she said. She kept going even when others could not keep up, like Robinson’s older brother. “When he did go, he would take it so hard. He just stopped going for a while.”

“Every month … it was like, God, Jesus. That’s somebody’s child.”

After nine years in Ohio, however, Holomn moved back to her hometown in rural Arkansas, just over the Mississippi border. Her visits dwindled to once a year. As she got older and moved to Atlanta, health and financial challenges made the trips even harder. But she stays in touch with Robinson via email and phone calls. When I visited, she was teasing him over her beloved Dallas Cowboys’ thumping of the Washington Commanders.

Holomn lit up talking about her son. She felt optimistic about his ongoing appeals, which she discussed with Robinson’s legal team the last time she was in Terre Haute. But there was sadness just beneath the surface. She felt betrayed by Biden. “He didn’t keep his promise,” she said. “As a mother, having a son on death row, it’s a hard, aching experience.”

Holomn was filled with gratitude for the visitation program. The drive from Atlanta takes about eight hours, and she could usually only stay for a weekend. Now she can stay a whole week. The program has also helped other family members visit, most recently Robinson’s 70-year-old father, Jimmie, who had not seen his son in four years. Holomn went with him; she laughed recalling a fevered argument father and son had over religion. “I could’ve stayed at home,” she said. “They had a marvelous time.”

Jimmie died of a heart attack a few weeks later. It was painful to break the news to Robinson, who was stunned. But Holomn was certain he would get through the loss the way he has survived everything else. “My baby has been so strong,” she said. “And if he hasn’t, he’s doing a good job of hiding it.”

A few days after visiting Holomn, I met Newson at his home south of Atlanta. “Welcome to our comfortable happy sometimes loud usually messy full of love home,” a wall decoration read.

To my surprise, Newson had only recently learned about the circumstances of his father’s death. No one from the prison had ever reached out to him, he said. He read the details in a news story, which pained and confused him. The article said his father had discussed his plans with loved ones beforehand, but he’d never said anything to Newson. He was still grappling with what to believe. “Parents put on masks for their kids no matter what’s going on,” Newson reasoned. “But I genuinely can’t remember a time that I saw him sad.”

There are signs in Ra’id’s case files that he struggled with his mental health. In a petition challenging his death sentence in 2010, Ra’id’s attorneys highlighted bouts of depression and jail records that suggested he’d attempted suicide once before. The petition also described a childhood marked by trauma, abuse, and racism, including at the hands of a grade school art teacher who told him he’d never amount to anything.

In fact, Ra’id’s artistic talent remains a point of pride for Newson, whose home is filled with lovingly rendered portraits of his family, including the grandchildren Ra’id never got to meet but reproduced from photographs. When Ra’id heard that his grandson had been accepted into a local elementary school for the arts, “he was ecstatic,” Newson recalled. He wished he could be there to nurture his grandson’s talent. Instead, he sent his pencils, erasers, and sketchbooks from death row.

In one of their last phone calls, Ra’id admitted that he wasn’t in the best headspace. “He didn’t call it a depression,” Newson said. “He said, ‘I’m kind of in this funk that I can’t seem to shake.’” He thought he might snap out of it if he tackled a new drawing he’d been planning. “But I don’t think he ever got around to it.” Ra’id’s final portrait, of his granddaughter and her cousin, came in the mail a few days after he died.

“I don’t want to say the word ‘closure,’” Newson said about seeing his father one last time. But he treasured the time they got together. He wanted people to understand that men on death row have families who love them. “And this is impacting them too.” Newson’s wife came home as our visit was wrapping up. For years, she had watched as Ra’id’s relationship with his son had blossomed. “His presence was felt,” she said. “I’m so happy that I got to witness it. It was a beautiful thing.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Liliana Segura.

For the purposes of argument let us say that the same tiny sadist elite holds the purse for all major ideological institutions. Competitive sports is one of them, a central tool for mass indoctrination.

Social engineering is based on multiple layers of indoctrination and structural organisation, whether labor process or reproduction. The outrage over transgender terror cannot be suppressed by neutralizing of women and healthy heterosexual men, meanwhile labeled with bizarre terms like “cis”. As yet there are no reliable replacements. Sports sell products and they sell weapons. NASCAR races are traditional promotion for the military. They also support the creation of masses of “losers” who engage in vicarious triumph through the selected heroes in each discipline.

Hence it is imperative to disrupt and undermine all forms of natural life. That is being done through compulsory use of pharmaments and restructuring of the indoctrination organs, to which sports belong. Before injections were introduced to control the potential for illness from the “dangerous” (now called “deplorable”) class, sports were industrialized as mass spectator operations, first for patriotism and then for consumption. Private-public partnerships have already brought the conventional military to an advanced stage.

Anyone who doubts that sports are instrumental in managing consumption only has to examine contemporary footwear. It is also a branch of the identity industry. Identity politics is nothing less than the marketing of recombinant genetic engineering. Dependent on corporate managed consumption, identity can be created and erased like software updates. After all software is the digital extraction of human intellectual labor — no less exploitative than using children to crack coal or other extractive operations. Despite many apparent service advantages (except for its employees) Amazon is essentially the template for a digital synthetic culture. The 2020-21 lockdowns from which it profited enormously were the test field for “digital enclosures”.

It may take a while until the entire competitive sports sector has been reorganized around anti-human values but the campaign is very aggressive. On the fringe are disciplines like robot football. Robot soldier prototypes are in advanced stages too.

Hollywood has been selling this vision for decades now. When real humans die off through wars and pharmaments combined with poisoned foods, the social structures will be complete to subordinate the remaining humans to planned obsolescence.

There is a certain tragedy in the 19th century struggle to assert the value of labor. The result has been that it is valued above all those who actually perform it. The sincere effort to eliminate oppression of women and children has resulted in the destruction of the social bonds that sustained human life — as opposed to abstract surplus value. “Freeing” peasants from the land and women from child bearing has not benefited either as a group. Even today we can see that the benefits promised by such relief have been hoarded by the ruling class. This was accomplished by isolating nominal freedoms and promoting them to destroy the social fabric in which those freedoms might actually mean something. Another public-private partnership under the umbrella of the intergovernmental public-private partnership cartel, aka United Nations, the International Organisation for Migration promotes politically and materially the vision that labor is just an internationally distributed natural resource to be moved wherever it can be most efficiently profitably exploited. War is just another means of resource allocation the UN promotes.

The once helpful analytical tool by which systems of domination and exploitation were shown not to be natural, but the product of ruling class violence has now been appropriated so that ordinary human activity is defined as an artificial social construct. The difference between the critical theory and the current ideology lies in the definition of human life as artificial while its management by the ruling oligarchs is elevated as natural. The pretenders to divinity in their mountain retreats have turned critique into a strategy for destroying human society as living environment. Margaret Thatcher was not exaggerating when she said there is no “society”.[1] Her ostensibly libertarian assertion belied the fact that corporations under her long reign certainly constituted a “society” from which she and her family personally benefited- unlike Yorkshire miners. The aim of her handlers was to destroy it. It is the organisational complement to genetics and recombinant biological manipulation. That is also why it is not too harsh to properly apply Daniel Goldberg‘s banal and mendacious term “willing executioners” but to the “Wokie Dokies” rather than some fictional Germans under NSDAP rule.[2] It has been the “woke” who were most easily persuaded to collude in the extermination of the old and infirm since the outbreak of the Covid War.

The “third way”, a chimera propagated by Tony Blair, Bill Clinton and cohorts of “young global leaders” and still churned by Soros’ alma mater the LSE, triumphed as the cult of the new trans-human millennium. Its principal pathology is exhibited in the myopia that induces innumerable people-not just acolytes- to support the depopulation of Ukraine and the Middle East- that is the function for which the same people created Israel and the Zelensky regime. Bound by the malignant narcissism and nihilism of their masters they may be embarrassed by the crudity of the current campaign in Palestine but they support albeit unwittingly their own redundancy and obliteration. First they will cheer the carnage as purification. By the time they are led to the slaughterhouse it will be too late.

ENDNOTES

[1] “They are casting their problems at society. And, you know, there’s no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours.” – in an interview in Women’s Own (31 October 1987)

[2] Daniel Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (1996). Goldhagens initially scandalous book was eventually discredited as scholarship but not before its slanderous impact as “holocaust porn”.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by T.P. Wilkinson.

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

The city of Newport News, Virginia, and Christopher Newport University are creating a joint task force to reexamine the destruction of a Black neighborhood to make way for the school’s campus starting in the 1960s, and recommend possible redress for uprooted families.

The new commission, announced Monday, will scrutinize four decades of the school’s property acquisitions, probing the decisions that led to locating and expanding its campus in the midst of a once-thriving Black community. It will also contact families displaced by Christopher Newport’s steady growth to ask what “restorative justice” would mean for them, and seek state assistance with potential relief for victims, according to a draft action plan.

The formation of the task force follows publication of a series by the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO and ProPublica, which revealed that Christopher Newport and other Virginia state universities grew by decimating thriving Black communities. It also documented race-based decision-making by the City Council by locating the school in a Black neighborhood despite having cheaper options and by seizing properties by eminent domain. CNU’s expansion has whittled down the Shoe Lane neighborhood in Newport News to just five houses.

In their announcement, Newport News Mayor Phillip Jones and Christopher Newport University President Bill Kelly said that the task force’s goals are to develop a “comprehensive understanding” of historical events and to ensure that residents are treated better in the future. “Understanding and acknowledging our past is important to moving forward in a transparent and thoughtful way. Christopher Newport is committed to this work,” Kelly said.

“I was deeply disturbed to know that this happened in our community,” Jones said. “I feel a personal obligation to ensure the city speaks to its role in displacing families and disrupting the sense of community in this historic area.”

The city will align itself with CNU’s plan to boost Black enrollment, according to the draft action plan obtained by VCIJ and ProPublica. Black people make up 44% of Newport News residents but only 8% of Christopher Newport students, down from 17% in 1996, VCIJ and ProPublica reported.

The announcement marks the latest and one of the broadest efforts in the country by a university and its host city to revisit their role in urban renewal and the disruption of once-stable Black communities. City and school reexamination of the historic displacement of marginalized communities has led to greater recognition of the plight of former residents near the University of Colorado Denver and the University of Georgia in Athens. The Denver university has also established a scholarship fund for descendants of families in the displaced Aurorian community.

Besides municipal and university action, the VCIJ-ProPublica series has also stirred a state legislative response. Delegate Delores McQuinn introduced legislation this month to create a commission to study how Virginia public colleges have uprooted Black communities and to explore routes of redress.

The first phase of the Newport News and CNU review will examine property records and assessments from 1958 to 1997 to determine whether property owners were properly paid for their land. The task force will also review city and university records, family archives and church documents to identify displaced families and calculate potential compensation, according to the draft action plan.

Additionally, the working group will survey affected families and consult with historians, lawyers and restorative justice experts. The task force will also suggest changes to the city’s policy for using eminent domain to seize properties.

The city has not released details about how many members would be appointed to the task force, when it would be expected to conclude its work or when findings would be released.

Newport News Vice Mayor Curtis Bethany and CNU Provost Quentin Kidd will co-chair the task force, which is expected to include representatives of the city, the university administration, alumni, students and the community, according to the action plan.

The ProPublica series detailed how universities have taken advantage of federal funding and court rulings to displace tens of thousands of families of color. A 1959 amendment to the Federal Housing Act gave colleges generous subsidies to join with cities to expand into stable neighborhoods, often by using eminent domain. While these efforts were promoted as ways to revitalize deteriorating neighborhoods, they frequently resulted in the destruction of Black middle-class communities. Christopher Newport and other Virginia state universities grew at the expense of Black neighborhoods.

Following the first story in the series, Kelly acknowledged in a message to faculty and staff that the university’s progress “has come at a human cost, and we must continue to learn about and understand our complicated history.”

Kelly also shared the series and a related documentary film with students, faculty and staff, and CNU hosted a panel discussion in November on its history. There, before an overflow crowd, panelists and audience members lashed out at the university. “A school that’s built on land that was taken from Black Americans should be more diverse,” said panelist Audrey Perry Williams, president of the Hampton Roads Association for the Study of African American Life and History.

Another panelist, professor Johnny Finn, chair of the Christopher Newport sociology department, floated the idea of reparations for affected families. “I think we need to think about materially, in addition to the symbolic and the representational, how we deal with this,” Finn said.

In 2019, Christopher Newport implemented the Community Captains program, designed to prepare students from Newport News high schools to enter the university and increase enrollment of Black students. Other Virginia universities have taken steps to rectify the historical displacement of marginalized communities caused by their campus expansions. Beginning in the 1960s, Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, took over part of the predominantly Black Lambert’s Point neighborhood. ODU has since worked to improve relations with remaining residents by increasing enrollment of students of color and awarding scholarships to residents of Lambert’s Point and nearby areas. The University of Virginia, which also dislodged Black residents, appointed two executive commissions to study its historical support for racist policies and has set a goal to create affordable housing for Charlottesville residents on university-owned properties.

Around 1960, the area bounded by Shoe Lane and three other streets was a growing Black middle-class neighborhood. Residents included teachers, dentists, a high school principal and a NASA engineer, and there were plans to develop farmland for additional housing. But an all-white Newport News City Council blocked those plans by seizing the core of the community in 1961 to establish a college. A former Christopher Newport University president said he was told that the goal was to “erase the Black spot,” in part because the area was near an all-white country club where city and business leaders gathered. The city paid the homeowners 20% less for the properties than the value set by an independent appraiser, council records show.

Even after the 1960s seizure, Black families continued to live around the perimeter of the college. However, Christopher Newport kept expanding. Between 1987 and 2019, it acquired at least 70 properties in the Shoe Lane area, according to an analysis of real estate records. Contending that the university’s expansion hurt their property values, because no one else would want to buy the property, homeowners unsuccessfully sued the university in federal court in 1989.

Paul Trible, CNU’s president from 1996 to 2022, said publicly he wouldn’t need to invoke eminent domain. But his administration used it as leverage to force at least one homeowner to sell in 2005, records show. That same year, the school’s governing board approved its use for three other properties that Christopher Newport said it ultimately acquired without resorting to eminent domain.

Dwayne Johnson, who grew up on Shoe Lane, urged the task force not only to compensate families for underpayments and loss of property value but also to pay them punitive damages. Johnson’s great-grandfather purchased 30 acres of land on Shoe Lane in the early 1900s.

“Do we want reparations? That would be nice,” Johnson said. “But do we think it will be meaningful in that it actually is reflective of our losses? I don’t know.”

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Brandi Kellam, Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Akela Lacy.

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with WABE. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

Brittany Wise ran through the options in her head.

It was a sunny April morning in Cobb County, Georgia, a suburban area northwest of Atlanta. Wise was heading back to the cul-de-sac of budget motels where her family was staying after receiving an eviction notice from her landlord in January when the blue lights appeared in her Chevy Tahoe’s rearview mirror.

The police officer had stopped Wise for an expired tag. But when he looked up her name, he discovered a bench warrant for a traffic ticket she hadn’t paid. She remembers that the officer was kind and gave her a warning about her tag. For her warrant, however, he told her that she had to go to jail.

Wise’s mind went to her children. Six of them were there in the SUV. The other two were walking up to the motel parking lot. In all, they ranged in age from 4 to 18. Wise, a 35-year-old single mother, had to figure out where they all would go.

Wise didn’t have any other family members nearby. She knew she could leave her children in the care of her oldest daughter. But one has autism and another has severe behavioral issues, which would be too much to put on a teenager, she thought.

So Wise asked the officer to contact the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services. She hoped that the agency could care for her children just for as long as she had to be in jail — which turned out to be three days.

When Wise got out of jail, however, DFCS didn’t return her children. The reason, according to court documents and the case plan the agency gave her, was that she lacked stable housing and income for her kids.

In recent years, child welfare advocates and policymakers across the country have been working to prevent situations like this, arguing that no parent should ever lose their children just because they can’t afford housing. A handful of states now have laws and policies prohibiting government agencies from taking children into foster care because of homelessness. Georgia has not adopted such a rule, but the state Court of Appeals has ruled a number of times that unstable housing and employment “in no way constitutes intentional or unintentional misconduct resulting in abuse or neglect” that would justify child removals.

But Wise’s experience illustrates how an inability to afford housing still stands between parents and their children in many child welfare cases in Georgia.

Between fiscal years 2018 and 2022, DFCS reported “inadequate housing” as the sole reason for removing a child in more than 700 cases, according to an analysis by WABE and ProPublica.

The analysis, using data from the federal Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System, which tracks child removal cases in each state, also shows that in thousands of additional cases — about 20% of Georgia’s nearly 31,000 child removals during the five-year period — DFCS reported housing as one of multiple reasons. Housing was the third most reported reason after substance use and neglect.

Wise’s case is not included in the analysis because it began in April 2023.

When Georgia removes children for housing — either as the sole reason or in conjunction with other issues — it becomes something that parents must fix in order to regain custody of their children. Child welfare advocates and attorneys say that’s a uniquely difficult barrier to overcome. When families are facing other issues, such as a parent’s drug addiction or untreated mental health condition, DFCS often steps in and provides remedial services. But the agency rarely provides families with housing assistance.

According to a review of agency spending records for the same five-year period, DFCS spent more than $450 million on programs that can be used to keep families together. But the agency directed only a tiny portion — less than half of 1% — of the money toward housing assistance.

DFCS’ spending on housing assistance is noticeably smaller than in some other states. Several child welfare agencies, even in states with smaller populations than Georgia, dedicate millions of dollars more each year toward housing assistance.

Child welfare advocates say it doesn’t make sense for DFCS to do so little to help families with housing, given that the agency can end up spending just as much or more after taking children into foster care.

DFCS spends a minimum of $830 to $980 a month to house a child in foster care, according to the state’s published daily rates for foster parents. That’s roughly equivalent to the monthly fair market rate to rent a one-bedroom apartment in most of Georgia outside of metro Atlanta, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s estimates.

The cost for foster care can be significantly higher if a child has complex mental health or behavioral needs, as some of Wise’s kids do. Under the state’s current rates, specialized foster care for a single child in an institution or group home can reach $6,390 a month.

Josh Gupta-Kagan, who directs the Family Defense Clinic at Columbia Law School, said it’s baffling that DFCS would not provide housing assistance instead of removing children. “Why do we allow kids to be separated from their parents who we won’t help with housing — only to place them with strangers who we will help with housing?” he asked.

DFCS spokesperson Kylie Winton said the agency does refer families to outside resources provided by local nonprofits or other state agencies, in addition to the small amount of assistance DFCS offers directly.

But according to Winton, more housing assistance would not change the outcome for many families. When the state takes children into foster care, she said, housing often is not the sole — or even primary — reason. Most of the time, she said, another issue is driving the intervention.

“If a family is chronically unhoused and a connection to a community resource doesn’t resolve it, we typically find that there is a root cause issue, such as untreated mental health concerns or substance abuse,” Winton said in an email.

Citing confidentiality laws, Winton declined to comment on Wise’s case, even after WABE and ProPublica provided a waiver, signed by Wise, giving permission to the agency to discuss it. In Wise’s case plan, however, it did not list any serious underlying issues, beyond unstable housing and income, that explained why the court didn’t return her children.

Wise couldn’t understand how housing could be a justification in any case — but especially hers. That’s because the day of the traffic stop was not the first time she called DFCS. Months earlier, while she was trying to stave off her family’s eviction, she had reached out to the agency for housing assistance to maintain their stability — with no success.

As she confronted the loss of her children, Wise sat, with a scrunched-up tissue in her hand, alongside the advocate she met through that process, Sarah Winograd, who works to help parents avoid the foster care system, and explained what took place.

“I cried, I yelled, I prayed, I screamed,” Wise said. “Like, how did we get here?”

As a single mother of a large family, Wise had faced financial challenges before. In North Carolina, where she’s from, she occasionally had to call assistance programs or relatives when she couldn’t work or when bills left her without enough money for food. Still, she always had the necessities covered for her close-knit family, according to her oldest daughter, Halle Mickel, who’s now 19. “She did that and more,” Mickel said.

As for their housing, Wise rarely had to worry because for several years she’d received a federal housing voucher through a North Carolina agency.

It was only when Wise left the state in 2021, to get away from an abusive relationship, that housing became a serious issue for her family. She didn’t realize how hard it would be for her to find a place that would accept a family the size of hers in Georgia. Her voucher program gave her a limited amount of time to locate housing in the new state, and she exceeded that, causing her to lose her long-term assistance.

When Wise finally did find a four-bedroom townhome in Cobb County, it wasn’t cheap.

Wise paid the $2,200 a month at first with rental assistance through a local nonprofit. When that ran out, she tried to manage the amount on her own. She received roughly $1,800 in disability payments for her daughter with autism and for Mickel, who had survived cancer as a teenager, and supplemented that by working at a fast food restaurant and selling home-baked desserts at car washes and barber shops. “I did the best I could,” she said.

But Wise couldn’t keep it up. The school suspended her daughter with autism and her son with behavioral issues multiple times, and Wise lost work to watch them. Her rent payments became out of reach.

When the eviction notice came in January, Wise had already contacted all of the assistance programs she could find. All of them told her they were out of funds. So she turned to her last resort. “I picked up the phone and called DFCS because I thought they would be a resource for my family,” she said.

To Wise’s surprise, DFCS responded by opening an investigation. A caseworker came to the apartment, looked in her fridge, interviewed her kids and took samples of Wise’s hair and urine for a drug test. Wise didn’t have her case files from DFCS at the time, but, according to texts from her caseworker that Wise shared with WABE and ProPublica, the agency didn’t find anything worth pursuing. “There’s no concerns on our end,” the caseworker wrote to Wise in February.

As for Wise’s need for housing assistance — the reason she called DFCS in the first place — the caseworker said there wasn’t much that she could offer. She texted Wise information about different nonprofits, along with the number for Winograd, who’s now co-founded a nonprofit called Together With Families. But as far as what DFCS could do, she was clear: “The issue is funding. DFCS isn’t provided with government funding to house families,” the caseworker told Wise in a text.

Only one of DFCS’ family preservation programs, called Prevention of Unnecessary Placement, describes an option to help families with their rent, utilities or mortgage. The analysis of agency spending records shows that DFCS spent just $278,000 on housing assistance under this program in 2022. No other state agency in Georgia offers housing assistance specifically to families in the child welfare system.

By contrast, child welfare agencies in several states have spent significantly more on programs aimed at preserving families whose children are at risk of being removed or who are having trouble getting reunited because of housing. In 2022, New Jersey, which has a population similar in size to Georgia’s, dedicated more than $17 million for its program. Connecticut, with less than half the population, spent close to $20 million. California, which has four times greater population than Georgia, allocated exponentially more: nearly $100 million.

The New Jersey Department of Children and Families effort has served around 1,000 families, according to Assistant Director of Housing Kerry-Anne Henry. The agency has seen 90% of the families in its program stay housed after two years, she said.

“If we are really taking our charge seriously, as a child and family serving system,” Henry said, “we have to be responsive to their needs.”

Some child welfare agencies have also partnered with their states’ housing agencies to provide federal vouchers to families in their systems. The Family Unification Program from HUD offers vouchers for this purpose. According to HUD's data, Washington state, which has a population smaller than Georgia’s, has claimed around 2,000 vouchers. Ohio and neighboring North Carolina, which have populations similar in size to Georgia’s, have more than 900 each.

Georgia, on the other hand, has received 530. Only a handful of city and county housing authorities have claimed the vouchers — but Cobb County, where Wise lived, is not among them. DFCS has not worked with the state housing agency, called the Department of Community Affairs, to apply for the vouchers.

Philip Gilman, deputy commissioner for housing assistance and development, said in a statement that the department didn’t have staff capacity to handle these vouchers. For her part, Winton, the DFCS spokesperson, said the agency is reviewing the possibility of applying in the future.

Meanwhile, Winton said DFCS is working on a housing-focused effort of its own. As part of a pilot program in Fulton County, which includes Atlanta, the state awarded a nonprofit $1 million to house 50 families over the course of the next year so parents can reunite with their children or remain with their children who may be at risk of entering foster care.

But child welfare advocates, like Ruth White of the Maryland-based National Center for Housing and Child Welfare, said DFCS shouldn’t be limiting housing assistance to a few dozen families. If the state is ever intervening because of housing, she said, the agency has a duty to help. “They should be serving every family that needs to be housed,” she said.

For Wise’s family, in the weeks leading up to the traffic stop in April, there were no other housing options. By the time she reached Winograd, Wise owed around $10,000 in rent and utility bills. The only plan Winograd could propose was for her organization to pay to relocate her family to Florida, where Wise’s grandmother lived — an arrangement DFCS accepted.

While Wise also agreed, she knew it couldn’t be a long-term solution. Her grandmother was in her 70s. Wise knew she couldn’t bring a family of nine into her home permanently.

Believing she could find a more sustainable solution on her own, Wise brought her family back to Cobb County a couple of weeks later. They paid daily for a hotel as she continued her search for housing assistance. She didn’t imagine that in another couple weeks she would have to call DFCS again — this time, because of a traffic stop — to get her kids.

Wise’s caseworker had told her that DFCS didn’t make housing assistance available to families, like hers, because that was not the agency’s job. “Technically,” the caseworker had texted her in March, “the DFCS agency is only responsible for the safety of children/housing children.”

Since the traffic stop that sent seven of Wise’s children to foster care, DFCS has paid for their housing. The cost of housing them has quickly exceeded the amount of her family’s overdue rent.

DFCS has been paying at least $6,200 a month. That estimate is based on the rates for foster parents set by the state and is the minimum possible amount required to cover seven children in their age range — not including any special subsidies for the two with additional behavioral needs.

The estimate doesn’t account for the administrative costs of paying case managers to visit the children in their foster homes, as they’re required to do in all cases. It also doesn’t cover the costs of transporters who take the children to and from court-ordered visitations, which could amount to hours of driving time.

While some of these expenses may be covered by federal funds, longtime parent attorney Amber Walden said she still has seen foster care costs add up to much more than the price of housing in many of the cases that she has handled over the years.

“How much money are we talking about with that — when you could just have them all in the same home with the parent?” Walden said.

As DFCS made these payments to foster care providers, the result has not only been that Wise was in a separate home from her children. They also have been in separate foster homes from one another.

Wise saw the effects of these disruptions on her children. One afternoon, as she was about to leave the county DFCS office after a meeting with staff, Wise learned her two sons were in the building. Although she was able to have an impromptu visit, that wasn’t the reason her sons were there — they had been fighting with their foster parents, Wise said the caseworker told her.

The caseworker brought the boys into the office while she figured out their next placement, Wise said. One was the son who already had behavioral issues. He had turned 9 in the month since he and her other children entered foster care. She had already told him that they’d have a celebration when they were all back home. As he played with toys in the DFCS office, she said he reminded her: “Mom, are we still gonna have my birthday? Are we still gonna get a cake?”

Wise hung her head and rubbed the tears in her eyes as she walked out of the office. “It just makes me sad because I didn’t mean for them to go and be tossed around,” she said, “to go through all of this.”

Wise said she later learned from her caseworker that her sons had to spend that night in the DFCS office because the agency still could not identify a new placement for them.

In recent years, DFCS has frequently resorted to placing children in need of specialized care in offices and hotels — at an average cost of $1,500 a night, according to January testimony to the state legislature by DFCS Director Candice Broce. The costs, totalling more than $77 million between 2018 and 2022, have sparked hearings at the state Capitol. But state legislators charged with reviewing Georgia’s system have not proposed new prevention funding for families, including for their housing.

The need is clear to people who have worked for the agency, like Nikita Raper, who resigned this past summer after two years with Cobb County DFCS.

Raper said so much of her job as a child abuse investigator was scrambling to find housing resources for families, who were sleeping in their cars, staying in homeless encampments or getting kicked out of their hotels. All the time spent on these cases distracted caseworkers, like her, from instances of actual abuse, she said.

“More funding for the housing cases would offer relief to families and take them off the radar of DFCS so that we could focus on the bigger cases,” she said.

When she was with DFCS, Raper could access the Prevention of Unnecessary Placement program funds only if she could demonstrate the family wouldn’t need help again. “It’s really difficult to show that,” she said.

According to WABE and ProPublica’s spending analysis, Cobb County did not approve this funding for housing even once in the fiscal years 2021 and 2022. Wise said she never even heard about the program from her caseworker.

Living on her own, Wise has struggled even more to secure housing and employment that would comply with the requirements of DFCS and the judge in her case. When she was in contact with the agency in January, her caseworker referred her to any resources that would provide her family with basic shelter. But once her children were in foster care and her case was before the court, DFCS and the judge wanted her to show housing and income that were “stable.”

“The court finds these children have lived in unstable living environments long enough,” the order from late April said.

But DFCS has no statewide definition of stable housing. The agency said that’s because the meaning depends on the details of each individual case. Attorneys who work on Georgia child welfare cases in half a dozen counties said DFCS regularly requests that parents maintain a lease for six months before returning their kids.

This standard shows up even in cases where housing wasn’t initially a driving factor, said Darice Good, who has represented parents in Georgia for 20 years. “They won’t send the children home if there’s not stable housing,” she said.

Wise tried to fight the court’s requirement in her case. Right after she got out of jail in mid-April, she managed to obtain a spot at a homeless shelter for families, along with her daughter, Mickel, and she believed DFCS had no reason to not return her children there.

“I have no history of drugs & alcohol abuse, endangerment, physical, mental or emotional abuse I have caused on my family,” Wise wrote in her notebook to prepare for a virtual call with DFCS at the beginning of May. “I kept us safe!”

But Wise’s effort didn’t get her very far. In the call, which she recorded and shared with WABE and ProPublica, the facilitator said it was the judge’s decision to keep her children in foster care. Wise pushed back, asserting that the judge was acting on DFCS’ recommendation. The two were soon talking over each other for several minutes until the facilitator hung up.

Throughout this time, Wise was also working to get permanent housing. Winograd could finally identify a nonprofit that could pay back the rent at Wise’s old townhome. Wise was even able to move back in — but only temporarily. Right when the nonprofit was supposed to cut the check, it told Wise that it was reversing its decision: Upon further review, an email said, she didn’t meet the criteria for the funding program — including the ability to show that she could maintain her rent after she was caught up.

So, in mid-summer, Wise stayed with Mickel, who managed to get housing through a program for young adults. Wise found jobs, but they only paid around $10 to $15 an hour, and a couple of times she had to call out as soon as she was hired in order to make court hearings and visitations with her kids. She also found herself so concerned about her children that it was hard to work.

“Who can really function or focus in a situation where everything around you is on fire?” Wise said.

Winograd, who volunteered as an advocate for foster children before she started her work preserving families, said this is common among parents who have to prove stability to the child welfare system. “People might think, ‘OK, now, they don’t have the responsibility of their children, they don’t have to worry about child care, they don’t have to worry about doctors’ appointments,’” she said.

In reality, Winograd said, many parents struggle even more. “The mental health piece becomes a huge issue for them to be able to go and get stable because they’re so worried about their child,” she said.

Wise has since located transitional housing in North Georgia. She has also found the support of another nonprofit, which has offered rental assistance to help her obtain housing and stabilize her family. But the nonprofit will provide the rental assistance only if the court first agrees to return her kids — and the court has not made such an agreement.

Meanwhile, Wise’s children have now spent nine months in foster care. She still finds herself trying to make sense of the reason.

How is it “that we had to endure all of this catastrophe and chaos and trial and trauma, just because I couldn’t pay a couple of months of rent?” she said.

We analyzed data from the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System to examine the reasons Georgia’s child welfare agency reported for taking children into foster care.

The AFCARS data, obtained from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect, required steps to clean and deduplicate before we could analyze it. We used unique identifiers for children called AFCARS IDs and dates when a child was last taken into foster care to remove duplicates. We then filtered the dataset to removals that occurred from July 1, 2017, to June 30, 2022, corresponding to Georgia’s 2018 to 2022 fiscal years. We then grouped by removal reason and counted the number of removals in which housing was reported, both alone and in combination with other removal reasons, and compared that to the total number of removals during the same period.

We chose not to compare the percentage of housing-related removals with other states because there are wide variations in how states report the reasons for taking children into foster care. In limiting the analysis to Georgia, our analysis was not affected by those differences.

The data used in this story was obtained from NDACAN via Cornell University and used in accordance with a terms of use agreement license. The Administration on Children, Youth and Families; the Children’s Bureau; the original dataset collection personnel or funding source; NDACAN; Cornell University; and their agents or employees bear no responsibility for the analyses or interpretations presented here.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Stephannie Stokes, WABE; Data analysis by Agnel Philip, ProPublica.

Recently, state-controlled media have run a number of reports about hacker groups selling accounts that allow people to access hundreds of cameras in bedrooms, bathrooms, student dorms, spas and massage parlors.

One group posted an advertisement on the Telegram messaging network claiming: "The group specializes in hacking videos from super hidden cameras of families and facilities in Vietnam. They are hidden and offer hot scenes of families," according to the VnExpress news site.

Dissidents and relatives of political prisoners are doubly concerned, saying police are already monitoring their every move with cameras pointing at their homes.

Le Thi Ha is the wife of former Dak Lak Pedagogical College music lecturer Dang Dang Phuoc. He was sentenced to eight years in prison in June, accused of “propaganda against the state.”

She lives in Dak Lak province’s Buon Ma Thuot city. On Monday, she told Radio Free Asia the police were spying on her.

“Neighbors secretly told me that local police installed cameras on Dec. 15. The camera was installed on the neighbor's porch across from my house and pointed directly at my house," Ha said.

“I don't know whether images from the camera will be posted online or used for some other purpose. But having a camera pointed directly at my house violates my privacy and shows that they want to closely monitor my daily schedule."

RFA Vietnamese called the Tan Loi Ward police to ask about the camera but the person who answered the phone  asked the reporter to go to the agency's headquarters. RFA also called the Dak Lak provincial police department to ask about the incident but no one answered the phone.

Nguyen Thi Chau, wife of prisoner Nguyen Ngoc Anh, told RFA that the police of Binh Dai district in Ben Tre province installed two cameras pointing directly at her house several years ago, after her husband was arrested and charged with "conducting anti-state propaganda.”

On Monday she told RFA the police had ignored her concerns about the cameras.

“When I complained to the local police, they said the cameras were installed to prevent crimes,” she said. “I asked them not to point them at my house and they promised to fix it, but they didn't fix it and just kept monitoring my family for the past three years."

Concerned about the invasion of privacy, Nguyen Thi Chau tried to disable or reduce the ability of the two cameras pointed at her home by putting a black grille over the gate and fence.

RFA reporters repeatedly called Binh Dai district Police to ask about the cameras but no one answered.

Former political prisoners face the same surveillance as the families of current prisoners. Le Quy Loc was released in early September after a five year prison sentence for "disturbing security" and is currently serving two years’ probation in Truong Quang Trong ward, Quang Ngai city. He told RFA that his gate now has a camera pointed at it.

This camera was installed in the house of a neighbor who works as a police officer about 10 days before he left the prison.

When he questioned the neighbor, he was told the camera was for the purpose of preventing theft, not aimed at former political prisoners.

However, he said the local police recently went to his house and planned to install a new camera near his house.

National monitoring system

In February 2021, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh approved a project of the Ministry of Public Security with a budget of VND 2.15 trillion (US$90 million) to install surveillance cameras and traffic command and control equipment across the country. The plan has now been taken up at a local level.

On Dec. 13, the Dak Lak Electronic Newspaper reported that the chairman of Buon Ma Thuot City People's Committee Vu Van Hung had announced plans to install over 100 security cameras in the city, including some with facial recognition, for security and order reasons. Buon Ma Thuot city has already installed 454 cameras in wards and communes. They will be connected to the surveillance center of the ward and commune police, the city police and the Provincial Smart Urban Operation Monitoring Center.

Vietnamese law has provisions to protect personal information. Article 38 of the 2015 Civil Code regulates the right to protect private life, personal secrets, and family secrets. According to the law, the collection, storage, use, and disclosure of information related to private life and personal secrets must be approved by the person concerned.

Article 21 of the Vietnamese Constitution stipulates: everyone is entitled to the inviolability of personal privacy, personal secrecy and familial secrecy and has the right to protect his or her honor and prestige. Information regarding personal privacy, personal secrecy and familial secrecy is safely protected by the law.

However, local security forces often send policemen to guard and monitor social events or visits by high-ranking foreign officials and the growing use of security cameras means that political activists and their families feel that the state is constantly watching them.

Translated by RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Mike Firn.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Vietnamese.

The families were driven from three villages in Saravan Province’s Samoey District about two months ago, according to some fellow Christians and officials.

District authorities eventually arranged for new land for the families in one of the villages where they could rebuild their homes, but no compensation or financial assistance has been provided, the sources told Radio Free Asia.

“Now, the authorities have put them together in one place separated from the other villages,” a Christian who has been assisting the families with the resettlement said. 

“Our brothers and sisters have to build their own new homes,” he told RFA on Wednesday on condition of anonymity; “They can’t be on their feet yet. They don’t have much money.”

Even though Laos has a national law protecting the free exercise of faith, similar assaults on Christians have become common in the one-party communist state with a mostly Buddhist population.

In Saravane province, 15 Christians from seven families were evicted from villages between 2020 and 2021.  

Earlier this year, 15 families and a pastor were forced to leave Mai village in northwestern Luang Namtha because of their Christian beliefs. 

The village is home to many members of the Ahka minority, which has its own spiritual beliefs. But when 15 families in the village converted to Christianity, their neighbors banded together and chased them out of town.

‘Religion of foreigners’

A Christian in a different village in southern Laos said he was told to leave by security guards.

“They don’t want us to live with them,” he said. “We can’t organize any ceremony like a wedding. We’re not allowed to get together or set up loudspeakers.”

A Christian pastor in northern Laos told RFA that some villagers think Christianity is a threat to their community because it’s “the religion of foreigners.”  

In several recent cases, crimes against Christian victims have gone unsolved in Laos. 

In February 2022, attackers burned the house of a Christian ethnic family in Savannakhet province. In Khammouane province, a pastor was found dead in October 2022. His body showed signs that he had been tortured prior to his death. 

No suspects have been arrested in either case.

The Christian who has been helping the families recently evicted in Samoey District said that no one has been charged in their case as well. 

“Even though they are now living in a separate village, they still receive threats and harassment from residents of their old villages, another Christian said of the families. “They can’t live in peace.”

A Samoey District official said that setting aside land for the families was the most important way for authorities to help the families. Additionally, other villagers and village authorities have been ordered to stop their harassment, he said.

Translated by Max Avary. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Lao.

This story details allegations of violence against Indigenous women and girls.

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with the Anchorage Daily News. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

KOTZEBUE, Alaska — The hum of a clothes dryer, zippers clinking, filled Saima Chase’s house one afternoon in September as she set down a steaming dish of moose stir-fry. “Egg roll in a bowl,” she said of the quick after-work recipe. The conversation turned to the reason for my visit: unsolved killings, unexplained deaths and suicides that might not really be suicides.

A 41-year-old Inupiaq woman raised in Kotzebue, Chase recently became the city’s mayor. Before that she worked for the Alaska State Medical Examiner Office, preparing autopsy tables, and at a local nonprofit that offers legal help to domestic violence survivors.

When Chase’s friend Sarah Stallsworth was found dead at her home in 2010, Kotzebue police labeled the case suicide. Chase has always suspected otherwise.

“I know she didn’t kill herself,” said Chase, who learned about the condition of the body from Stallsworth’s mother and sister. “She was beat up really bad. She had missing teeth.”

The death came years before Chase won city office, but she offered to help the family obtain police records in the case.

“I really want to bring Sarah peace,” she messaged Stallsworth’s family at the time, a text she shared with a reporter years later. “I know something bad happened to your family and nobody did anything about it and it needs to be brought back to the surface.”

The family never did get the police records. Their questions remain unanswered. (In a Nov. 16 email, Kotzebue Police Chief Roger Rouse said that Stallsworth’s death is officially considered a suicide. He said he couldn’t comment on the department’s communications with the family prior to his becoming police chief in 2020.)

And so it goes in dining rooms and office lobbies across Kotzebue. Rouse said earlier this year that he knew of only one unsolved killing in this Arctic Circle city, that of Susanna “Sue Sue” Norton in 2020, whose case we wrote about this month.

Many people we spoke with, the new mayor included, aren’t so sure.

When Anchorage Daily News photographer Emily Mesner and I stopped by the local high school to research Norton’s yearbook photos, a front desk clerk said her own sister-in-law died in a case police stopped short of labeling homicide. (The police department said the cause of death in that case, involving a gunshot wound to the chest, is considered “undetermined.” Though the death was not labeled a homicide, it remains an “open cold case,” Rouse replied in an email.)

When Norton’s childhood friend posted a note to Facebook asking about unexplained deaths in the Northwest Arctic, her phone bubbled with names and cases.

I’d first started asking for information about Norton in 2020, and this June, after years of receiving little to no information, I decided it was finally time to visit and take a closer look. What I didn’t expect was to come home with a notebook full of additional names.

When I visited Norton’s burial site on a bluff overlooking the Chukchi Sea, her family pointed out two adjacent graves. One belonged to a woman who, Norton’s niece said, “was hit on the head by her boyfriend and died” in 2022. According to the police department, bruises found on the woman’s body did not contribute to her death, which resulted from a brain injury due to lack of oxygen after a heart attack related to ethanol withdrawal. Buried beside her was the woman we had heard about at the high school, who died by gunshot in 2016.

Alaska has the third-highest suicide rate in the nation, and the numbers are especially high in the northwest Arctic. Over the years, police have told me that families might have trouble accepting that a loved one committed suicide or died by accident and may be looking for alternate explanations.

But in such cases as the death of Jennifer Kirk, which we learned about while looking into Norton’s homicide, major questions remain unanswered. Police said she shot herself, but her body also showed signs of strangulation, according to the department’s death investigation report. Kirk’s body was found at a home on the property of former city mayor Clement Richards Sr., the same property where Norton was found strangled two years later. No charges have been filed in either case.

Though Kirk’s death has been labeled a suicide, her boyfriend, the mayor’s son, admitted to causing injuries found on her body the day she died. The boyfriend told police he did not kill Kirk, and he has not been charged in her death. He had previously been convicted of domestic violence assault involving Kirk, including two cases of nonfatal strangulation. (He did not respond to interview requests.)

The Kotzebue Police Department does not have a designated homicide detective or investigator, according to the current chief. The FBI and state troopers will assist in a murder investigation if they are asked or, Chase said, if the case is considered one that might make the news or draw political pressure.

Asked how the department decides when to request outside help in a homicide case, Rouse replied: “If a case has reached a point that additional resources beyond KPDs capabilities or manpower beyond what KPD is capable of handling are needed to bring the case to a conclusion.”

Otherwise, years pass and cases grow colder. Across Western Alaska and the Arctic, from St. Michael to Utqiagvik, I’ve met families who wonder about cases labeled as accidents or suicide. Some, like the 2016 gunshot death, are suspended in limbo with the cause of death classified as “undetermined.”

The failure of Kotzebue police to solve the strangling death of Norton in the center of a town of 2,900 only deepens those suspicions. It doesn’t help that every officer on the police force lives hundreds or thousands of miles away from Kotzebue, in other Alaska cities or other states. They commute to the city for two-week shifts, then fly home. Some have been featured on a TV show.

In some instances, neighbors and even police believe they know what happened and who did it. One mother I spoke to about her daughter’s 2012 death in Utqiagvik has since died. Norton’s mother suffered a stroke a few months after we first interviewed her in 2020 and now has trouble speaking. Stallsworth’s mother, Patsy Mendenhall, is now 71.

How long must they wait?

At her dinner table, Chase texted Stallsworth’s family and arranged for us to talk. After a few wrong turns, Emily and I found the house. Stallsworth’s sister, Mary Ann Towksjhea, stood beckoning from the doorway of the qanitchaq, or arctic entry. (Many Alaska homes have this in-between room, where visitors peel off winter gear before stepping inside the warm house.)

Inside, driftwood and stones hung from the ceiling, by the dozens. Mendenhall likes to comb the beach for artifacts to add to the collection. On the wall, a finger of whale baleen hung above a wooden snowshoe and an image of Jesus.

Mendenhall said she couldn’t understand why police didn’t put up crime scene tape or prevent people from coming and going from the house immediately after her daughter’s body was found. One visitor cleaned up blood in the bathroom, she said.

From deep in the house, Mendenhall unearthed an accordion folder filled with court records and correspondence. Among the documents: a yellowed copy of a letter the family addressed to the city 10 days after Stallsworth’s death.

“On July 16, 2010 my mother & I went to speak to Chief Ward to see if a police report was done as to what happened to Sarah S. Stallsworth who passed away on July 6, 2010 & Chief Ward told us they didn’t need one,” the letter said. “My mother & I Mary Ann Towksjhea said that it wasn’t right” and that authorities were supposed to do a thorough investigation “as to what happened to Sarah.”

Former Kotzebue Police Chief John Ward said in a phone interview that he doesn’t recall the Stallsworth case and doesn’t recall seeing the letter. He said he retired at the end of July 2010.

The family never received a written police report. Chase said she tried and failed to help obtain the documents. For more than a year, Stallsworth’s mother and sister kept returning to the police station, they said. Rouse, the current police chief, said in an email that “KPD does not have any record of the request in 2016 for Stalsworth information, or if any information was provided to the requestor.”

Mendenhall said police told her to stop watching so much “CSI.” “I didn’t even have TV at the time!” she said. (Ward, who was police chief at the time of Stallsworth’s death, said he doesn’t remember making any comment about the TV show. Rouse, the current chief, said: “KPD cannot comment on why the previous police chief at that time would make CSI comments.").

Stallsworth’s daughter, Rena Mendenhall, then 5 years old, was home when her mother died.

I asked if we could talk to Rena, who is now 18 and was living in Anchorage at the time of our visit. Moments later, Patsy Mendenhall reached her on a cellphone. Rena Mendenhall said she still remembers the night her mother died.

“It was real late. They were partying,” she said. “I woke up and heard lots of noise in the living room.”

She remembers going back to sleep. The next morning, Stallsworth was dead.

“I don’t think she would kill herself knowing I was there,” the daughter said.

In August, the Alaska Department of Public Safety released a Missing Indigenous Persons report to great fanfare. Sue Sue Norton’s name isn’t on it. Nor are such cases as Eliza Simmonds in Utqiagvik and Chynelle “Pretty” Lockwood in St. Michael. That’s because the report lists people who haven’t been found. It doesn’t include the names of those whose deaths remain unsolved.

It also includes only cases reported by Alaska State Troopers and the Anchorage Police Department, not the Kotzebue Police Department, North Slope Borough Police Department or dozens of others that serve smaller cities and towns.

Still, there are 345 names, as well as new information about certain cases that shows for the first time whether police believed these disappearances were related to criminal activity.

“This report was definitely a step in the right direction,” Charlene Aqpik Apok, executive director of Data for Indigenous Justice, said at the time.

Before leaving Kotzebue, we added Stallsworth’s name to the list of death investigations to request from the city police department. We’re awaiting the results of those public records requests.

As part of the fact-checking process for this story, I emailed Rouse to ask if he still believed Sue Sue Norton’s death was the only unsolved homicide. On Monday, he replied that the police department is now taking a fresh look at other cases.

“We are digging through our historic records to see if there are any additional investigations that may be open cold homicide cases that we are unaware of,” Rouse wrote. In fact, he wrote, Kotzebue police have now asked the state’s Murdered and Missing Indigenous Persons unit to review the 2016 gunshot death that we heard about at the high school. They are also looking at cases where the cause of death was ruled “undetermined” to see if they, too, should be reexamined.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Kyle Hopkins, Anchorage Daily News.

Craig Elmore’s family history is the stuff of Westerns. His grandfather, John Elmore, a poor son of a Missouri preacher, arrived in California’s Imperial Valley in 1908 and dug ditches to deliver water to homesteaders.

Thanks to his marriage to a citrus magnate’s daughter, reputed good fortune as a gambler and business acumen, he amassed the Elmore Desert Ranch, part of roughly 12,000 acres that two branches of the family still farm.

All that land in the blazing-hot southeastern corner of California came with a huge bonanza: water from the Colorado River. In 2022, the present-day Elmores consumed an estimated 22.5 billion gallons, according to a Desert Sun and ProPublica analysis of satellite data combined with business and agricultural records. That’s almost as much as the entire city of Scottsdale, Arizona, is allotted.

That puts the Elmores in exclusive company. They are one of 20 extended families who receive fully one-seventh of the river’s flow through its lower half — a whopping 1,186,200 acre-feet, or about 386.5 billion gallons, the analysis showed.

The Colorado River system, which supplies 35 million people in seven U.S. states and Mexico, nearly collapsed last year. Even after a wet winter, it is dwindling due to overuse and climate change. But no matter how low its reservoirs sink, the historic claims of these families and all of Imperial County place them first in line — ahead of every state and major city — for whatever water remains.

How a handful of families and a rural irrigation district came to control so much of the West’s most valuable river is a story of geography and good timing, intermarrying and shrewd strategy, and a rich but sometimes ugly past when racist laws and wartime policies excluded farmers of color. Together, they winnowed the greatest access to these 20 clans, who today use more of the river than all of Wyoming, New Mexico, or Nevada. A vast, laser-leveled green quilt of crops covers this naturally bone-dry valley, all of it grown with Colorado River water.

The water is held “in trust” by the Imperial Irrigation District and two smaller agencies, meaning they are legally required to deliver the water to any county landowner for use on their property.

But many farmers here see the river water as virtually their private property, though nearly all acknowledge it can’t be sold apart from their land.

“It’s not a public resource,” says Rachel Magos, executive director of the Imperial County Farm Bureau. “It’s called prior perfected rights.”

That phrase “prior perfected rights” is shorthand for legal decisions spanning 100 years, including three by the U.S. Supreme Court, that have perpetuated those rights since early would-be developers staked claims for the Imperial Valley that amounted to the river’s entire flow.

Blood ties, and the ceaseless buying of lands from less successful farmers or descendants who want a “windfall,” have concentrated thousands of farm fields and the water that comes with them into an ever-smaller number of hands, says county tax assessor Robert Menvielle.

Menvielle, a third-generation resident, and his extended family own about 1,700 acres that they largely lease to farmers, some of whom he’s known his entire life. “You’ve got this small group of families, and … they’ve all intermarried, and it’s almost like a feudal-type system, where we’re combining our little kingdoms,” he says.

Those fiefdoms exclude most of Imperial’s 180,000 residents. Agricultural operations — which in addition to historic farming families include universities, the Mormon Church, outside speculators, and a Middle Eastern hay company — get 97 percent of the irrigation district’s river water, while every town, strip mall, and other business combined get 3 percent. And the county ranks among the poorest in California, with a 2021 per capita income of $19,005. The U.S. per capita income that year was $70,480.

Irrigation district spokesperson Robert Schettler didn’t dispute the Desert Sun and ProPublica analysis showing who uses the valley’s water and what they do with it. But he said in a statement that despite distributing half of its water to 20 extended families, the district “provides equitable water delivery service to all,” including small landowners, towns, and businesses.

The disparities in wealth and water disturbed Benny Andrés Jr. when he was growing up in Imperial County, and he became a historian partly to study their origins.

“How is it that a region conducive to year-round farming, with half a million acres of rich soil, plentiful and subsidized water … has bred widespread poverty and unhealthiness?” Andrés, now an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, asks in his book, Power and Control in the Imperial Valley. His research shows that outside speculators and absentee landlords also amassed huge amounts of land and water while people of color were systematically excluded, condemning most to eventual poverty.

Growers say that without agriculture, unemployment and poverty here would be even worse.

Meanwhile, outside threats to the area’s outsize water supply are looming. As federal officials force hard choices to keep the river afloat, states and cities facing water cuts are eyeing the Imperial Valley. The big farmers and their irrigation district say they know they’ve got a target on their backs.

Jay Famiglietti, a University of Arizona hydrologist who studies global water supplies, says large-scale farming in southwestern deserts like the Imperial Valley is “not sustainable, it just can’t go on.” Ultimately, production may need to shift to wetter regions.

Elmore and other farmers say that could devastate year-round food supplies in the U.S. — you can’t grow leafy greens and alfalfa in the Midwest in February. But they are striving to use far less water and to devise new ways to profit from an ancient flow.

Just add water

Elmore’s grandfather arrived a year after the Southern Pacific Railroad forced the then-raging Colorado River to resume its normal course to Mexico, ending two years of flooding in the valley. For eons, the river was a wild, unpredictable force that shaped this landscape. At times, it flowed west and north into a huge trough between emerging mountain ranges. Here, the ancient river deposited millions of tons of mineral-rich soil.

In the mid-1800s, physician O.M. Wozencraft, a would-be land developer, realized that if the river could be diverted into its ancient path, the silty top coat of what was then known as “the Valley of Death” could be farmed. He persuaded California to deed him most of present-day Imperial County, but he couldn’t convince Congress to pay for a canal to carry river water to his land. A member of Congress called the scheme a “fantastic folly of an old man.”

But the lure of that water was irresistible. From 1895 through 1899, according to M.J. Dowd’s book, “The First 40 Years,” dreamers, schemers, and agents for land barons posted notices on the river’s western bank, invoking California law protecting downstream mining claims, and filed them with the county recorder. “Each of these appropriations was for a flow of 10,000 cubic feet per second of the water of the Colorado River,” writes Dowd.

Collectively, they claimed the river’s entire flow and then some, Andres says. “They wanted it all, they didn’t want Arizona or anybody else to get a drop.”

But he and other experts note such claims had to be actively worked on, by seeking investors, building infrastructure, and eventually providing water for “beneficial uses.”

By 1901, the California Development Co. had acquired rights to as much water as it could use. That year, Colorado River water was diverted via the first canal to what had been grandly christened the Imperial Valley, and by 1910, thousands of small farmers had arrived. The following year, the Imperial Irrigation District was formed, and a few years later, it bought out the private company and its rights.

Restless young men from India, Japan, Europe and the eastern U.S. arrived in the next 30 years. Many quickly went belly up and sold to more successful neighbors, like ancestors of the Elmores, Abattis, Strahms, Saikhons, Taylors, Morgans, Schaffners, Grizzles, Brandts, LaBrucheries, Rueggers, and Osterkamps, all among the top 20 families using Imperial water today.

No limits

The rose-colored vision of hardy pioneers “settling” the “virgin West” — after driving Native Americans from their ancestral lands — was enshrined in the federal Homestead Act of 1862 and Reclamation Act of 1902. Farmers were permitted to occupy and irrigate a maximum of 160 acres of free land and make it their own.

However, Imperial County landowners and complaisant U.S. Bureau of Reclamation officials ignored that limit, allowing rapid consolidation of land, says Andrés, who wrote his doctoral dissertation on the county’s early years. Thousands of formerly small holdings were now “farm units” absorbed by growing spreads like the Elmores’, a cotton syndicate, and hundreds of absentee landlords, he found. A 1924 report estimated 85 percent of Imperial landlords lived on the California coast or out of state.

Many farmers in the county were not white: By 1922, there were 2,200 Japanese immigrants farming 28,000 acres, and 495 people from India farmed 36,000 acres. Japanese growers, some of whom had worked on Hawaiian pineapple plantations, were often highly skilled and successful across California. Similarly, immigrants from the Punjab region of India knew how to coax vegetables from the valley’s often claylike soil in triple-digit heat. Some owned land; others farmed absentee owners’ holdings.

These migrants regularly endured racism. Landowners, county officials, and even farmers of differing nationalities ranked migrants — Japanese, Indians, Filipinos, Mexicans, and eventually Black southerners — in terms that would be familiar to white eugenicists. They classified them by their farming knowledge, ability to do backbreaking labor in searing heat and “reliability,” which meant they were unlikely to walk off the job or to demand higher wages or better living conditions.

“Like immigrants always, these groups were more desperate to succeed, so they were willing to work harder,” Andrés says.

White groups statewide decried the success of people of color. State Alien Land Laws banned Asians from owning land or leasing it long term. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the second ban, but it was rarely prosecuted in Imperial. Still, it was not easy. Japanese families built wooden “mobile” shacks that they could carry from one set of fields to another after leases ended or if they were forcibly evacuated.

The exclusionary law drove out people of color who worked as merchants, too, and “began to depopulate the countryside,” said Andrés. Many large landowners also ceased using full-time workers who lived nearby and hired contractors to bring in cheap, temporary labor from across the border.

Elmore says his grandfather operated differently than many during that era, building a school that all children from the surrounding remote area could attend. Elmore still lives in Imperial County, has about 50 full-time employees, and pays their health and life insurance benefits.

Today, instead of a vibrant local workforce, thousands of day laborers line up as early as 1 a.m. at the Mexicali-Calexico border, waiting for hours to be bused to fields, then back again. Meanwhile, Imperial had the highest unemployment rate in California in September, 19.7 percent, compared with 4.4 percent statewide.

Imperial Valley United

When the Great Depression hit, a flood of Dust Bowl “Okies” and other poor white and southern Black migrants arrived, upending the “whites first” racial caste system.

A few years later, during World War II, anti-Asian sentiment reached a fever pitch. FBI agents forced more than 100 Japanese community leaders from their homes in February 1942, including a Buddhist priest and a Christian minister. Then on two nights in May of that year, the entire Japanese population of Imperial County — hundreds of successful farmers, merchants, religious leaders, and their families — was removed from their homes to be forcibly relocated to the Poston incarceration camp in Arizona. Some of the valley’s first farmers were among those imprisoned.

Their parcels, like land owned by detained Japanese farmers across the state, were likely acquired by neighbors and investors at foreclosure sales. Elmore says his grandfather and father had Japanese farmer friends who were forcibly removed. “That shouldn’t have happened,” he says. He’s not sure who acquired the local Japanese families’ land. “I know we didn’t.”

Near the end of the war, a huge anti-Japanese rally was held on the Brawley high school football field. A resolution was adopted petitioning the president, Congress, and governor of California and protesting the return of any Japanese people to the Imperial Valley. Speakers at the rally condemned local churches for trying to aid their former neighbors.

There were financial motives behind the xenophobia. Powerful white shippers and growers organized the event, telling the local chamber of commerce that two people from the Poston camp “had appeared in town, announcing their intention to return to Brawley.” About 2,500 more former Imperial Valley residents of Japanese ancestry were due to be released.

A broad coalition of community groups dubbed “Imperial Valley United” vowed to permanently exclude Japanese people from the valley. Today, one Japanese-American farmer is listed on the Imperial Valley Vegetable Growers Association roster, and it’s not clear if he used any water last year.

“Prior perfected”

Imperial officials lobbied for years for massive federal infrastructure to “tame” the Colorado and diminish the impact of drought and flooding. Growing southwestern cities wanted a steady water and power supply, too. It took until 1935 to complete what was then the world’s largest dam, in Boulder Canyon, Arizona.

In exchange for Hoover Dam, California and six other states signed a “Law of the River” compact. It divided the Colorado into upper and lower basins and set maximum amounts that each could take annually.

The Imperial Irrigation District had to agree for the first time to cap its river allocation. On paper, the era of no limits was over. But in practice, the agency would for decades order as much free river water as its farmers wanted.

There were challenges to their dominance.

As Phoenix and other cities in the Southwest grew exponentially, Arizona challenged California’s historic claim to the Colorado River. Arizona lost, but in 1960, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that California would keep 4.4 million acre-feet, Arizona would be entitled to 2.8 million acre-feet and Nevada would get 300,000 acre-feet. Imperial County came out on top, with a legal claim to three-quarters of California’s share.

An idealistic New York doctor named Ben Yellen, who had built a practice in Brawley caring for low-income residents and farmworkers, also wrote “yellow sheets,” denouncing Imperial landowners’ long-standing violation of the 160-acre homesteading limit and the irrigation district’s delivery of massive amounts of river water to them in violation of the 1902 Reclamation Act. He successfully intervened in a case challenging the water district, and California’s highest court eventually ruled the 160-acre irrigation limit had been illegally ignored.

But Elmore’s father and other major farmers fought back. In 1980, the Supreme Court ruled that the farmers could keep their large tracts and all the river water being delivered to them. The court ruled that the Imperial Irrigation District held “prior perfected” rights acquired from private irrigation companies under state law, neither of which had imposed limits on how much acreage could be irrigated. A framed copy of the decision hangs on Elmore’s ranch office wall.

U.S. Senator Alan Cranston that year slipped language into a bill supposedly designed to reform the Bureau of Reclamation that permanently exempted Imperial County farmers from the 160-acre limit.

The number of farmers continued to shrink. From the 1960s to the 1990s, hundreds of smaller Imperial County farmers — largely descendants of Filipino migrants and other people of color — were decimated. U.S. Department of Agriculture research led to sturdier tomatoes that could be transported long distances, including from Mexico, which slashed demand for tastier but more perishable tomatoes grown by more than 500 Filipino farmers in and around Niland, in the valley. The North American Free Trade Agreement sent even more farming across the border, wiping out more small Imperial operations.

Sending water to cities

It was the Elmores who first cost their fellow growers some water. In 1982, Craig Elmore’s dad sued neighboring farmers and the irrigation district. The Elmores’ land sat at a lower elevation than nearly every other farmer’s fields, and they alleged that aging canals and overwatering by some had caused costly flooding on their fields.

The courts found that the irrigation district and its farmers were wasting water. The settlement agreement forced the district to partner with the urban Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which supplies 19 million residents in coastal counties. In exchange for a cut of Imperial’s water, Metropolitan Water District funded the lining of the earthen All-American Canal and miles of side ditches.

As cities and suburbs drew millions more residents, Imperial’s power continued to erode. In 2002, President George W. Bush’s Interior secretary, Gale Norton, threatened to take some of Imperial’s water for cities; a year later, U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein bluntly warned Imperial Irrigation District officials that if they didn’t agree to transfer 300,000 acre-feet per year to suburban San Diego and the Coachella Valley, the U.S. Interior secretary might strip away their “senior” water rights. It would be the largest transfer of agricultural water to an urban area in the nation’s history, and the irrigation district would be paid handsomely by urban customers.

A thin majority of the district’s board approved the deal. Most farmers have now accepted that they, like everyone else, have a limit on how much water they can use. But with urban areas wielding far more political power, some are not sure there will be farming here in another century.

“We adapt”

Ralph Strahm, who with his brother and nephews used an estimated 81,000 acre-feet of water last year, the second-highest amount in the district, thinks people’s need for drinking water may win out over the need for food in most politicians’ minds.

He and other prominent growers are willing to seasonally fallow some fields for two months during the summer, if they’re paid to do so and keep their “senior” river rights. The federal government is weighing whether to award Imperial Irrigation District and local growers more than $600 million not to farm certain fields.

Andrés, the historian, says that approach is what led to most of the county’s impoverishment. He has his own vision for the valley’s future: The irrigation district and farmers should sell less-productive or unused land and pay out of their own pockets to ensure they use water efficiently. Public funds and training should instead support the diverse group of small farmers, he says.

But Elmore says hefty public subsidies and possible private investments are needed for farmers to grow crops more efficiently, then be paid to possibly transfer the conserved water elsewhere or leave it in the river’s massive reservoirs.

Elmore’s son is the southwest region farm manager for Water Asset Management, a Wall Street investment firm whose mission is to tap into a potential trillion-dollar water transfer market. Elmore has spoken at WAM’s annual meetings, and like another top vegetable farmer, Jack Vessey, now leases and farms acreage that WAM has bought in the valley.

Elmore is building support in the irrigation-district for funding a $4.4 million pilot reservoir on his land, which could ultimately hold water for farming or for sale. The private sale of water outside the valley is currently prohibited, but that could change if public funding for conservation dries up.

However it shakes out, the Elmores and Imperial’s other dynasties will likely continue profiting from the Colorado River.

“I’m optimistic,” Elmore says in a throaty rumble. “Every time there’s a change, we adapt. If there’s one thing the Imperial farmer has learned how to do in these harsh conditions, it’s to adapt.”

Elmore, 66, says he’s thinking about who will benefit long term: “My grandson is 6 years old. I’d like to see him go into farming.”

Mark Olalde contributed reporting.

Janet Wilson’s reporting was supported by funding from Stanford University’s Bill Lane Center for the American West.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The historic claims that put a few California farming families first in line for Colorado River water on Nov 19, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Janet Wilson, The Desert Sun.

Critics say this practice drives up home prices and worsens the housing shortage, making it harder for families to afford to buy. Industry advocates dismiss such charges, arguing that large investment firms own a tiny fraction of single-family rental housing across the U.S. – less than 4% of the total.

As a professor of public policy at Georgia Tech, I wanted to understand how this trend was affecting my neighbors. So I analyzed more than 1 million property sales in the Atlanta metropolitan area from 2007 to 2016. Since the study period included the mortgage crisis, I excluded bulk sales, such as the packages of
foreclosed homes, that aren’t available to typical homebuyers. I examined only arm’s-length transactions of single-family detached homes, where buyers and sellers act independently.

I found that global investment firms buying up local properties are indeed hurting Atlanta families – specifically, Black ones.

Neighborhood transformations

In the period I studied, homeownership declined across the Atlanta metro area by more than 5 percentage points, similar to a nationwide trend. For an average neighborhood, home purchasing by large corporate investors explained one-quarter of that decline.

But when I broke the analysis down by race, I found that Black families were hit much harder: Large investment firms buying up local properties explained fully three-quarters of the decline in African American homeownership. In contrast, non-Hispanic whites were largely unaffected.

It turns out that while Wall Street firms control just a sliver of the single-family rental market nationally, they can have much more influence at the local level. In the Atlanta metro area, these firms own nearly one-third of all single-family rental properties. They’re even more concentrated in predominantly Black neighborhoods, where more than 10 houses in a row can be owned by the same corporation.

In my study, I found that large investors tend to snap up housing in majority-nonwhite, lower-income suburban neighborhoods. This makes homebuying even more challenging for middle-class families of color, as they get pushed out of the bidding market by global investors.

Home is where the financial security is

Homeownership has long been one of the main pathways for the American middle class to accumulate wealth. Despite this, the national homeownership rate declined by 5.5 percentage points between 2007 and 2016, reaching a five-decade low of 62.9%. Although homeownership has rebounded somewhat since 2016, it remains below pre-2008 levels.

And who owns these homes is starkly divided by race. Between 2015 and 2019, more than 70% of white families owned a home, compared with just 41% of Black families, according to an analysis by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

To be sure, policies like racial covenants, discriminatory mortgage lending practices and redlining fueled low homeownership rates for Black Americans long before the Great Recession. But global investors’ growing control of single-family homes only widens existing racial gaps in homeownership and wealth.

Directions for new research

While my study focused on Atlanta, it’s not the only place where residents are competing with global investors for housing. Investment firms’ single-family rental portfolios are largely concentrated in Sun Belt metro areas, including Phoenix, Charlotte and Jacksonville. It wouldn’t be surprising to see similar conflicts playing out in those cities.

Since my analysis stopped in 2016, I can’t be sure that Black Atlanta residents are still affected by Wall Street firms buying up housing. Many investment firms have recently been switching from a buy-to-rent business model to a build-to-rent model, which could complicate matters.

In the meantime, while residents and policymakers have claimed that large corporations don’t invest in local communities, researchers lack robust evidence this is the case. Academics should study whether properties owned by institutional landlords are more likely to be poorly maintained or have code violations, as anecdotal evidence suggests.

It’s also worth investigating whether big investment firms undermine local revenue collection by serially filing property tax appeals.

An open-source tool for housing policy research

It’s been hard for researchers to identify corporate-owned, single-family homes, since it requires proprietary real-estate data and labor-intensive number crunching. In a separate project, my colleagues and I have developed a simple, user-friendly methodology that gets around such challenges with the use of open-source software and public tax parcel data.

Local governments and nonprofits can use our methodology to unveil all the corporate-owned residential properties in any neighborhood and link them to outcomes such as code violations. Using data-driven approaches like this is an important step toward developing policy solutions.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Brian Y. An.

Lead is a powerful neurotoxin with irreversible impacts, which is why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, has designated this week as National Lead Prevention Week. Exposure can cause brain damage in early childhood, harm the fetuses of pregnant women, and trigger miscarriages. Even low levels of lead exposure can cause kidney problems and heart disease in adults. Like many other heavy metals, it accumulates in the body over time. There is no known safe level of lead exposure. 

Families around the country — most infamously, in Flint, Michigan — are dealing with lead in their water infrastructure. But Chicago is a hotbed of contamination, with the highest number of lead service lines in the nation. Experts believe that over 400,000 lead pipes supply water to homes throughout the city. A recent independent analysis by the Guardian found that one in 20 Chicago homes had tap water exceeding federal lead contamination standards. A third of the 24,000 tests showed lead levels above those permitted in bottled water, and 71 percent of homes exceeded the level the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends as a maximum lead level for kids in schools. 

Chicago was one of the last cities in the nation to stop installing lead service lines. The city mandated them in new construction until Congress outlawed the practice in 1986. The result is a vast network of lead pipes that still feed contaminated water to homes and families throughout the city. The fallout from this toxic legacy is everywhere. Thousands of families live with lead-contaminated tap water, and testing found that drinking fountains in schools and parks throughout the city also had high lead levels.

This poisoning of Chicago’s tap water has had multi-generational impacts. Like Ramirez, Crystal Guerra, a parent, artist, and activist, grew up in Chicago’s South Side. Her father worked in the city’s steel mills, and her mother was a teacher at a local elementary school. In 2019, she got a letter from the local hospital. Her 1-year-old son, who was still breastfeeding, had high blood levels of lead. 

Guerra was shocked. “I had a healthy baby, and the next thing I knew, he had a high level of lead,” she says. “He was only a year old, and I couldn’t protect him from this. I was angry.” Doctors tracked her son’s lead levels and developmental milestones for the next several years. Thankfully, after the family began drinking filtered and bottled water, his most recent tests showed that the amount of lead in his blood had significantly dropped, and he has shown no developmental delays. 

Driven by her personal experience, Guerra helped found Bridges Puentes, a collective that responds to community needs through art and activism. Vanessa Bly is another Chicago artist who helped found and run the organization. “We’re a low-income neighborhood with old houses,” she says. “We need the city to assist with fixing this issue.”

Ramirez, who now works as the Midwest outreach manager for the Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, agrees. Ramirez’s parents are retired on a fixed income, and her mother has limited mobility. After decades of buying bottled water — which cost the family up to $600 per year — they decided to apply for a city program that replaces lead service lines for households below a certain income threshold. The complex and intimidating application process took over two years, but in June 2023, Ramirez finally saw the lead pipes that fed water to her childhood home replaced by the city. The process took six hours, and Ramirez estimates that it involved 20 different people. “I was impressed with how fast they replaced it, but I was also a bit overwhelmed at how many people and trucks showed up,” she says. “It was all for just one house.”

Other cities have found more efficient or effective approaches to the issue. In Newark, New Jersey, the city replaced almost 24,000 lead service lines in just three years at no cost to residents. The city and surrounding county raised bonds to pay for the replacements that are mostly covered by fees paid by the local port authority. Oscar Sanchez, a community planning manager with the Southeast Environmental Task Force, a Chicago-based environmental nonprofit, believes Newark’s strategic approach created the positive outcome. “One important tactic was that they worked on clusters, instead of just one house at a time,” he says. “If they found one house with a lead pipe, they just changed out the whole block.”

Another approach could be to put lead filters at locations using lead pipes for drinking water. This “filter first” approach is poised to be adopted in the state of Michigan, which will mandate filtered water in all schools and childcare centers. “They’ve pushed the filter first approach, and they’re being very strategic about prioritizing spaces where children spend many hours each day,” such as schools and daycare centers, says Sanchez. “A similar government-funded filter program in Illinois would be a really good solution to ensure people have access to clean water for the long-term.”

NRDC’s Safe Water team has worked on Chicago’s lead service line issue for many years, with campaigns ranging from grassroots community organizing and education to high-level policy and advocacy. In a recent NRDC poll, lead service lines were one of the top priorities for the Chicago community. “We need to put the approaches that have worked in other places, like Newark’s lead service line replacement program, into action here in Chicago,” Ramirez says.

The federal government is also finally taking action: The EPA is about to release an updated rule that tackles lead in tap water. Advocates are pushing for the agency to require all lead pipes to be removed within 10 years, and for water utilities to pay to replace the full pipe rather than shifting any of the costs to residents. These changes could force Chicago and other cities to accelerate their lead service line replacement. 

But while the Biden administration has earmarked billions to address lead service lines, funding will be a challenge for Chicago. The city will only be able to access a small portion of the $15 billion in federal funding for lead service line replacement due to some technical red tape: The city is not designated as a disadvantaged community by the state of Illinois — a requirement to access more funding.

And due to Chicago’s specific construction requirements, permit fees, and other policies, replacing a single lead service line can cost up to $30,000 — a price tag far higher than virtually any other city — that is out of reach for many homeowners and renters. “I’m buying a house, and it has a lead service line,” says Ramirez. “I don’t qualify for the equity line replacement program and don’t have a bunch of extra money lying around, so I’m going to have to live with filtering and bottled water.” 

Another hurdle for Chicago is the lack of trained technicians to replace the lead service lines—but this issue could be reframed as an opportunity. “We should use this to create employment for the disenfranchised communities that this issue has harmed,” says Brenda Santoyo, a senior policy analyst with the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization. “It’s a chance to work with local colleges to create a training program and a pipeline to get people into these trades and create good jobs. This is a large-scale problem, and we will need a workforce to solve it.” In Newark, the city worked with a local union to train local residents, many of whom were unemployed, to replace the city’s lead lines. Those trained employees now can use their new skills to help other cities replace their lead pipes.

The monumental scale and impact of Chicago’s lead service line issue means that the city, state, and federal government will need to work together to find a solution — and that support can’t come soon enough. “When I look at the shopping carts of families in my neighborhood, they’re all filled with cases of water,” says Ramirez. “We shouldn’t have to live this way, buying bottled water, not trusting our tap, and suffering from water-related health ailments. We have a right to healthy, clean water.”

Sign NRDC’s petition to the White House urging the Biden administration to remove lead service lines as quickly and as equitably as possible.

NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) is an international nonprofit environmental organization with more than 3 million members and online activists. Established in 1970, NRDC uses science, policy, law, and people power to confront the climate crisis, protect public health, and safeguard nature. NRDC has offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Bozeman, MT, Beijing, and Delhi (an office of NRDC India Pvt. Ltd). Visit us at www.nrdc.org and follow us on Twitter @NRDC.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Toxic tap water: Corroded lead pipes supply water to families throughout Chicago on Oct 26, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Grist Creative.

The organization spoke to survivors and eyewitnesses, analysed satellite imagery, and verified photos and videos to investigate air bombardments carried out by Israeli forces between 7 and 12 October, which caused horrific destruction, and in some cases wiped out entire families.Here the organization presents an in-depth analysis of its findings in five of these unlawful attacks. In each of these cases, Israeli attacks violated international humanitarian law, including by failing to take feasible precautions to spare civilians, or by carrying out indiscriminate attacks that failed to distinguish between civilians and military objectives, or by carrying out attacks that may have been directed against civilian objects.

“In their stated intent to use all means to destroy Hamas, Israeli forces have shown a shocking disregard for civilian lives. They have pulverized street after street of residential buildings killing civilians on a mass scale and destroying essential infrastructure, while new restrictions mean Gaza is fast running out of water, medicine, fuel and electricity. Testimonies from eyewitness and survivors highlighted, again and again, how Israeli attacks decimated Palestinian families, causing such destruction that surviving relatives have little but rubble to remember their loved ones by,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General.

For 16 years, Israel’s illegal blockade has made Gaza the world’s biggest open-air prison – the international community must act now to prevent it becoming a giant graveyard.
Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General

“The five cases presented barely scratch the surface of the horror that Amnesty has documented and illustrate the devastating impact that Israel’s aerial bombardments are having on people in Gaza. For 16 years, Israel’s illegal blockade has made Gaza the world’s biggest open-air prison – the international community must act now to prevent it becoming a giant graveyard. We are calling on Israeli forces to immediately end unlawful attacks in Gaza and ensure that they take all feasible precautions to minimize harm to civilians and damage to civilian objects. Israel’s allies must immediately impose a comprehensive arms embargo given that serious violations under international law are being committed.”

Since 7 October Israeli forces have launched thousands of air bombardments in the Gaza Strip, killing at least 3,793 people, mostly civilians, including more than 1,500 children, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza. Approximately 12,500 have been injured and more than 1,000 bodies are still trapped beneath the rubble.

In Israel, more than 1,400 people, most of them civilians, have been killed and some 3,300 others were injured, according to the Israeli Ministry of Health after armed groups from the Gaza Strip launched an unprecedented attack against Israel on 7 October. They fired indiscriminate rockets and sent fighters into southern Israel who committed war crimes including deliberately killing civilians and hostage-taking. The Israeli military says that fighters also took more than 200 civilian hostages and military captives back to the Gaza Strip.

“Amnesty International is calling on Hamas and other armed groups to urgently release all civilian hostages, and to immediately stop firing indiscriminate rockets. There can be no justification for the deliberate killing of civilians under any circumstances,” said Agnès Callamard.

Hours after the attacks began, Israeli forces started their massive bombardment of Gaza. Since then, Hamas and other armed groups have also continued to fire indiscriminate rockets into civilian areas in Israel in attacks that must also be investigated as war crimes. Meanwhile in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, at least 79 Palestinians, including 20 children, have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers amid a spike in excessive use of force by the Israeli army and an escalation in state-backed settler violence, which Amnesty International is also investigating.

Amnesty International is continuing to investigate dozens of attacks in Gaza. This output focuses on five unlawful attacks which struck residential buildings, a refugee camp, a family home and a public market. The Israeli army claims it only attacks military targets, but in a number of cases Amnesty International found no evidence of the presence of fighters or other military objectives in the vicinity at the time of the attacks. Amnesty International also found that the Israeli military failed to take all feasible precautions ahead of attacks including by not giving Palestinian civilians effective prior warnings – in some cases they did not warn civilians at all and in others they issued inadequate warnings.

“Our research points to damning evidence of war crimes in Israel’s bombing campaign that must be urgently investigated. Decades of impunity and injustice and the unprecedented level of death and destruction of the current offensive will only result in further violence and instability in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories,” said Agnès Callamard.

“It is vital that the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court urgently expedites its ongoing investigation into evidence of war crimes and other crimes under international law by all parties. Without justice and the dismantlement of Israel’s system of apartheid against Palestinians, there can be no end to the horrifying civilian suffering we are witnessing.”

The relentless bombardment of Gaza has brought unimaginable suffering to people who are already facing a dire humanitarian crisis. After 16 years under Israel’s illegal blockade, Gaza’s healthcare system is already close to ruin, and its economy is in tatters. Hospitals are collapsing, unable to cope with the sheer number of wounded people and desperately lacking in life-saving medication and equipment.

Amnesty International is calling on the international community to urge Israel to end its total siege, which has cut Gazans off from food, water, electricity and fuel and urgently allow humanitarian aid into Gaza. They must also press Israel to lift its longstanding blockade on Gaza which amounts to collective punishment of Gaza’s civilian population, is a war crime and is a key aspect of Israel’s system of apartheid. Finally, the Israeli authorities must rescind their “evacuation order” which may amount to forced displacement of the population.

Gaza’s civilians pay the price

Amnesty International investigated five Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip, which took place between 7 and 12 October. Between 2012 and 2022, the Israeli authorities have denied, or failed to respond to, all of Amnesty International’s requests to gain access to Gaza. For this reason, the organization worked with a Gaza-based fieldworker who visited attack sites and collected testimony and other evidence. Amnesty International researchers interviewed 17 survivors and other eyewitnesses, as well as six relatives of victims over the phone, for the five cases included in this report. The organization’s Crisis Evidence Lab analysed satellite imagery and verified photos and videos of attack sites.

In the five cases described below Amnesty International found that Israeli forces carried out attacks that violated international humanitarian law, including by failing to take feasible precautions to spare civilians, or by carrying out indiscriminate attacks that failed to distinguish between civilians and military objectives, or by carrying out attacks that may have been directed against civilian objects.

Under international humanitarian law, all parties to the conflict must, at all times, distinguish between civilians and civilian objects and fighters and military objectives and direct their attacks only at fighters and military objectives. Direct attacks on civilians or civilian objects are prohibited and are war crimes. Indiscriminate attacks – those which fail to distinguish as required – are also prohibited. Where an indiscriminate attack kills or injuries civilians, it amounts to a war crime. Disproportionate attacks, those where the expected harm to civilians and civilian objects is excessive in comparison with the “concrete and direct military advantage anticipated,” also are prohibited. Knowingly launching a disproportionate attack is a war crime.

Whole families wiped out

At around 8:20pm on 7 October, Israeli forces struck a three-storey residential building in the al-Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City, where three generations of the al-Dos family were staying. Fifteen family members were killed in the attack, seven of them children. The victims include Awni and Ibtissam al-Dos, and their grandchildren and namesakes Awni, 12, and Ibtissam, 17; and Adel and Ilham al-Dos and all five of their children. Baby Adam, just 18 months old, was the youngest victim.

Our entire family has been destroyed.
Mohammad al-Dos

Mohammad al-Dos, whose five-year-old son Rakan was killed in the attack, told Amnesty International:

“Two bombs fell suddenly on top of the building and destroyed it. My wife and I were lucky to survive because we were staying on the top floor. She was nine-months pregnant and gave birth at al-Shifa hospital a day after the attack. Our entire family has been destroyed.”

Amnesty International interviewed a neighbour whose home had been damaged in the attack. Like Mohammad al-Dos, he said that he had not received warning from Israeli forces, and nor had anyone in his family.

“It was sudden, boom, nobody told us anything,” he said.

The fact that the building was full of civilians at the time of the air strike further supports the testimony of survivors who said Israeli forces did not issue any warnings. It took relatives, neighbours and rescue teams more than six hours to remove the bodies from beneath the rubble.

Amnesty International’s research has found no evidence of military targets in the area at the time of the attack. If Israeli forces attacked this residential building knowing that there were only civilians present at the time of the attack, this would be a direct attack on a civilian object or on civilians, which are prohibited and constitute war crimes. Israel offered no explanation on the incident. It is incumbent on the attacker to prove the legitimacy of their military conduct. Even if Israeli forces targeted what they considered a military objective, attacking a residential building, at a time when it was full of civilians, in the heart of a densely populated civilian neighbourhood, in a manner that caused this number of civilian casualties and degree of destruction would be indiscriminate. Indiscriminate attacks that kill and injure civilians are war crimes.

On 10 October, an Israeli air strike on a family home killed 12 members of the Hijazi family and four of their neighbours, in Gaza City’s al-Sahaba Street. Three children were among those killed. The Israeli military stated that they struck Hamas targets in the area but gave no further information and did not provide any evidence of the presence of military targets. Amnesty International’s research has found no evidence of military targets in the area at the time of the attack.

Amnesty International spoke to Kamal Hijazi, who lost his sister, his two brothers and their wives, five nieces and nephews, and two cousins in the attack. He said:

“Our family home, a three-storey house, was bombed at 5:15 pm. It was sudden, without any warning; that is why everyone was at home.”

Ahmad Khalid Al-Sik, one of the Hijazi family’s neighbours, was also killed. He was 37 years old and had three young children, who were all injured in the attack. Ahmad’s father described what happened:

“I was at home in our apartment and Ahmad was downstairs when the house opposite [belonging to the Hijazi family] was bombed, and he was killed. He was going to have his hair cut at the barber, which is next to the entrance of our building. When Ahmad left to go get a haircut, I could not imagine that I would not see him again. The bombing was sudden, unexpected. There was no warning; people were busy with their daily tasks.”

The barber who was going to cut Ahmad’s hair was also killed.

According to Amnesty International’s findings there were no military objectives in the house or its immediate vicinity, this indicates that this may be a direct attack on civilians or on a civilian object which is prohibited and a war crime.

A Flourish data visualization

Inadequate warnings

In the cases documented by Amnesty International, the organization repeatedly found that the Israeli military had either not warned civilians at all, or issued warnings which were inadequate. In some instances, they informed a single person about a strike which affected whole buildings or streets full of people or issued unclear “evacuation” orders which left residents confused about the timeframe. In no cases did Israeli forces ensure civilians had a safe place to evacuate to. In one attack on Jabalia market attack, people had left their homes in response to an “evacuation” order, only to be killed in the place to which they had fled.

On 8 October, an Israeli air strike struck the Nuseirat refugee camp in the centre of the Gaza Strip, killing Mohammed and Shuruq al-Naqla, and two of their children, Omar, three, and Yousef, five, and injuring their two-year-old daughter Mariam and their three-year-old nephew Abdel Karim. Around 20 other people were also injured in the strike.

Ismail al-Naqla, Mohammed’s brother and the father of Abdel Karim, told Amnesty International that their next-door neighbour received a call from the Israeli military at around 10:30am, warning that his building was about to be bombed. Ismail and Mohammed and their families left the building immediately, as did their neighbours. By 3:30pm, there had been no attack, so the al-Naqlas and others went home to collect necessities. Ismail explained that they had thought it would be safe to do so as five hours had elapsed since the warning, though they planned to leave again very quickly.

But as they were returning to their apartments, a bomb struck the building next door, destroying the al-Naqlas’ home and damaging others nearby. Mohammed and his family were still in the courtyard of their building when they were killed. Ismail described seeing part of his five-year-old nephew Yousef’s brain “outside of his head” and said that three-year-old Omar’s body could not be recovered from under the rubble until the next day. He told Amnesty International that Mariam and Abdel Karim, the two surviving children, were released from hospital quickly as Gaza’s hospitals are overwhelmed with the volume of casualties.

Giving a warning does not free armed forces from their other obligations under international humanitarian law. Particularly given the time that had elapsed since the warning was issued, those carrying out the attack should have checked whether civilians were present before proceeding with the attack. Furthermore, if, as appears, this was a direct attack on a civilian object, this would constitute a war crime.

‘Everyone was looking for their children’

At around 10:30am on 9 October, Israeli air strikes hit a market in Jabalia refugee camp, located a few kilometres north of Gaza City, killing at least 69 people. The market street is known to be one of the busiest commercial areas in northern Gaza. That day it was even more crowded than usual, as it was filled with thousands of people from nearby areas who had fled their homes empty-handed earlier that morning after receiving text messages from the Israeli army.

Amnesty’s Crisis Evidence Lab reviewed six videos showing the aftermath of the airstrike on Jabalia camp market. The images show a densely populated area with multi-storey buildings. Videos of the aftermath and satellite imagery show at least three multi-storey buildings completely destroyed and several structures in the surroundings heavily damaged. Numerous deceased bodies are also seen under the rubble in the graphic footage.

A Flourish data visualization

According to the Israeli military, they were targeting “a mosque in which Hamas members had been present” when they struck Jabalia market, but they have provided no evidence to substantiate their claim. Regardless, membership in a political group does not in itself make an individual targetable. Satellite imagery analysed by Amnesty International showed no mosque in the immediate vicinity of the market street.

Based on witness testimony, satellite imagery, and verified videos, the attack, which resulted in high civilian casualties was indiscriminate and must be investigated as a war crime.

Imad Hamad, aged 19, was killed in the strike on the Jabalia market while he was on his way to buy bread and mattresses for the family. His father, Ziyad Hamad, described to Amnesty International how a day earlier their family had left their home in Beit Hanoun after receiving a warning message from the Israeli army, and had walked almost five kilometres to a UNRWA-run school, which was operating as a shelter, in Jabalia camp.

On the walk, his son, Imad, had carried his toddler brother on his shoulders. The next day, Ziyad told Amnesty International, he was carrying Imad’s dead body on his own shoulders, taking his son to be buried.

My children are wetting themselves, of panic, of fear, of cold. We have nothing to do with this. What fault did we commit?
Ziyad Hamad

Ziyad described the hellish scenes he encountered at the morgue where he found his son’s body, along with many others.

“The bodies were burned, I was scared of looking. I didn’t want to look, I was scared of looking at Imad’s face. The bodies were scattered on the floor. Everyone was looking for their children in these piles. I recognized my son only by his trousers. I wanted to bury him immediately, so I carried my son and got him out. I carried him.”

When Amnesty International spoke to Ziyad and his displaced family, they were at a UNRWA-run school which was sheltering displaced people. He said there were no basic services or sanitation, and that they had no mattresses.

Ziyad’s despair at the injustices he has suffered is palpable.

“What did I do to deserve this?” he asked.

“To lose my son, to lose my house, to sleep on the floor of a classroom? My children are wetting themselves, of panic, of fear, of cold. We have nothing to do with this. What fault did we commit? I raised my child, my entire life, for what? To see him die while buying bread.”

While Amnesty’s researcher was talking to Ziyad over the phone, another air strike hit nearby.

Since Amnesty researchers interviewed Ziyad on 10 October, conditions for internally displaced people have deteriorated further, due to the scale of the displacement and the extent of the destruction and the devastating effects of the total blockade imposed since 9 October. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the number of internally displaced people in Gaza had reached 1 million by 19 October, including over 527,500 people who are staying in UNRWA emergency shelters in central and southern Gaza.

‘We cannot even count our dead’

On 10 October an Israeli air strike hit a six-storey building in Sheikh Radwan, a district of Gaza City, at 4:30pm. The strike completely destroyed the building and killed at least 40 civilians.

Satellite imagery suggests damage to buildings on this street sometime between 12:11UTC on 10 October and 7:30UTC on 11 October. The Crisis Evidence Lab geolocated two videos posted to social media that corroborate the destruction of homes in Sheikh Radwan. One of the videos, which was posted online on 10 October, shows people pulling the body of a dead infant from the rubble.

Amnesty International spoke to Mahmoud Ashour whose daughter, Iman, and her four children, Hamza, six months, Ahmad, two years, Abdelhamid six, and Rihab, eight, were all killed in the attack.

I couldn’t protect them, I have no trace left of my daughter.
Mahmoud Ashour

He said:

“My daughter and her children came here to seek safety because this area was relatively safe in previous attacks. But I couldn’t protect them, I have no trace left of my daughter.”

Mahmoud described the extent of the devastation:

“I’m talking to you now as I’m trying to remove the rubble with my hands. We cannot even count our dead.”

Fawzi Naffar, 61, said that 19 of his family members, including his wife, children and grandchildren, were all killed in the air strike. When Amnesty International spoke to Fawzi five days after the air strike, he had only been able to retrieve the remains of his daughter-in-law and his “son’s shoulder.”

Amnesty International’s research found that a Hamas member had been residing on one of the floors of the building, but he was not there at the time of the air strike. Membership in a political group does not itself make an individual a military target.

Even if that individual was a fighter, the presence of a fighter in a civilian building does not transform that building or any of the civilians therein into a military objective. International humanitarian law requires Israeli forces to take all feasible precautions to minimise harm to civilians and civilian property, including by cancelling or postponing the attack if it becomes apparent that it would be indiscriminate or otherwise unlawful.

These precautions were not taken ahead of the air strike in Sheikh Radwan. The building was known to be full of civilian residents, including many children, and the danger to them could have been anticipated. This is an indiscriminate attack which killed and injured civilians and must be investigated as a war crime.

Amnesty International is calling on;

The Israeli authorities to:

• Immediately end unlawful attacks and abide by international humanitarian law; including by ensuring they take all feasible precautions to minimize harm to civilians and damage to civilian objects and refraining from direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects, indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks.
• Immediately allow unimpeded delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza’s civilians.
• Urgently lift its illegal blockade on Gaza, which amounts to collective punishment and is a war crime, in the face of the current devastation and humanitarian imperatives.
• Rescind their appalling “evacuation” order, which has left more than one million people displaced.
• Grant immediate access to the Independent Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory to carry out investigations, including collecting time sensitive evidence and testimonies.

The international community and particularly Israel’s allies, including EU member states, the US and the UK, to:

• Take concrete measures to protect Gaza’s civilian population from unlawful attacks.
• Impose a comprehensive arms embargo on all parties to the conflict given that serious violations amounting to crimes under international law are being committed. States must refrain from supplying Israel with arms and military materiel, including related technologies, parts and components, technical assistance, training, financial or other assistance. They should also call on states supplying arms to Palestinian armed groups to refrain from doing so.
• Refrain from any statement or action that would, even indirectly, legitimize Israel’s crimes and violations in Gaza.
• Pressure Israel to lift its illegal 16-year blockade of the Gaza strip which amounts to collective punishment of Gaza’s population, is a war crime and is a key aspect of Israel’s apartheid system.
• Ensure the International Criminal Court’s ongoing investigation into the situation of Palestine receives full support and all necessary resources.

The Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to:

Urgently expedite its ongoing investigation in the situation of Palestine, examining alleged crimes by all parties, and including the crime against humanity of apartheid against Palestinians.

Hamas and other armed groups to:

Immediately end deliberate attacks on civilians, the firing of indiscriminate rockets, and hostage-taking. They must release civilian hostages unconditionally and immediately.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

In attacking the Canadian Union of Public Employees for standing in solidarity with Palestinians Robyn Urback tweeted, “Points for alleging a Jewish conspiracy, but if CUPE really wanted to go full antisemitic trope, they should have mentioned something about poisoning the wells.” Below her message Urback quote tweeted a colleague stating, “CUPE Ontario says it’s targeted by ‘trolls’ – ‘a highly organized pro-Israel lobby,’ which targeted [Union president] Fred Hahn and CUPE 3906 for ‘recognition of Palestinians’ rights under international law to resist occupation through armed struggle.’”

But Urback knows full well there are many organizations backed by substantial wealth promoting Israel. This is not a trope. This is reality that is easily fact checked and should have been by any honest journalist.

In a sign of her dishonesty, Urback previously wrote about a lobby sponsored trip to Israel she participated in. Urback went on BirthRight, a program that pays for young Jews to go Israel to become “intellectual ambassadors” for the country.

The preeminent force in the “highly organized Israel lobby” is the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. CIJA has over 40 staff and a $10 million budget. In addition, B’nai B’rith has a handful of offices across the country. For its part, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center Canada’s budget is $7-10 million annually. These groups work closely with StandWithUs Canada, CAMERA, Allied Voices for Israel, Israel on Campus, Honest Reporting Canada and other Israeli nationalist political organizations. Additionally, more than 200 registered Canadian charities assist projects in Israel and engage in at least some pro-Israel campaigning domestically. There are also numerous Jewish private schools, summer camps and community centres that actively promote Israel.

All these groups are backed by substantial wealth. Patron of CIJA, the Jewish federations of Toronto, Montréal, Winnipeg, Windsor, Calgary, Edmonton, Hamilton, London, Ottawa, Vancouver and Atlantic Canada raise $200 million annually and have over $1 billion in assets.

A large amount of private wealth strengthens Israel lobby groups’ influence. Since 2013 the chief fundraiser for the Trudeau Liberals has been Stephen Bronfman, scion of an arch Israeli nationalist family. Bronfman has millions invested in Israeli technology companies and over the years the Bronfman clan has secured arms for Israeli forces and supported its military in other ways. Bronfman openly linked his fundraising for Trudeau to Israel. In 2013 the Globe and Mail reported:

Justin Trudeau is banking on multimillionaire Stephen Bronfman to turn around the Liberal Party’s financial fortunes in order to take on the formidable Conservative fundraising machine…. Mr. Bronfman helped raise $2-million for Mr. Trudeau’s leadership campaign. Mr. Bronfman is hoping to win back the Jewish community, whose fundraising dollars have been going more and more to the Tories because of the party’s pro-Israel stand. ‘We’ll work hard on that,’ said Mr. Bronfman, adding that ‘Stephen Harper has never been to Israel and I took Justin there five years ago and he was referring at the end of the trip to Israel as ‘we.’ So I thought that was pretty good.’

Other notable Canadian moguls have long histories of ensuring ties between Israel and Canada. Worth more than $3 billion prior to his death, David Azrieli was among the richest Canadians. In his youth he served in the paramilitary Haganah group during the 1948 war. His unit was responsible for the Battle of Jerusalem, including forcibly displacing 10,000 Palestinians. Azrieli was also a real estate developer in Israel and in 2011 he made a controversial donation to Im Tirtzu, a hardline Israeli-nationalist organization (deemed a “fascist” group by an Israeli court).

Worth $1.6 billion, Gerald Schwartz and his wife Heather Reisman created the Heseg Foundation for Lone Soldiers, which provides millions of dollars annually for non-Israelis who fight in the IDF.

In recent years Canadian-Israeli billionaire Sylvan Adams has plowed hundreds of millions of dollars into various sports and cultural initiatives to rebrand Israel. 

Other Canadian billionaires Larry Tanenbaum, Mark Scheinberg, David Cheriton, Mitch Garber, Daryl Katz, Seymour Schulich, as well as the Zekelman, Reichmann and Sherman families, all back Israel. Again, none of this a conspiracy theory or antisemitic trope. It is simple reality and easily fact-checked if one is interested.

It is good, not bad, that a union leader mentions powerful lobbyists influencing Canadian politicians to take certain policy positions. Democracy requires shining a light on such lobbying. Is Urback against this very common practice of good journalists?

Canadians politicians express unmatched fidelity to a state all leading human rights groups say is committing the crime of apartheid. Trudeau’s government organized a pizza party for Canadians fighting in the Israeli military, sued to block proper labels on wines from illegal settlements and announced that should Canada win a seat on the United Nations Security Council it would act as an “asset for Israel” on the council. In recent days Canadian politicians have fallen over themselves to express support for Israel as that country obliterates Gaza, kills dozens in the West Bank and bombs Lebanon, Egypt and Syria.

There’s nothing conspiratorial or untoward about citing the role of a “highly organized Israel lobby”. In fact, there would be nothing conspiratorial or untoward to describe it as a “highly organized Jewish Israel lobby”. A slew of self-described Jewish organizations are deeply involved in anti-Palestinian campaigning and no other lobby focused on a country/ethnicity/religion is near as well-resourced or organized as the above mentioned Canadian Jewish groups.

That’s not to say there aren’t other political and cultural forces shaping Canadian backing for Israel. Zionism began in Canada in the latter half of the 1800s as a Christian movement and there’s still Christian Zionist forces. At the turn of the 20th century Canada became staunchly pro-Zionist due to its close ties to the British empire and Washington’s perspective has significant influence today. There’s also a European ‘settler solidarity’ element to Canadian Zionism and Israel advocates wield a unique and powerful stick: The ability to play victim and smear those advocating for justice as racist.

Robyn Urback knows full well there’s a “highly organized Israel lobby”. Her claim that CUPE is anti-Jewish to mention this is ridiculous. It is also bad journalism and most likely a projection of her (perhaps unintentional) anti-Palestinian racism.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Yves Engler.

Pakistan has been on edge since dozens of people were killed in two suicide bombings during the last week of September. 

Days later, on Oct. 3, Pakistan said it would expel all migrants without documentation, including 1.73 million Afghan refugees, who did not leave the country by Nov. 1. Authorities said that 14 of 24 suicide bombings in the country this year were carried out by Afghan nationals, the Associated Press reported.

Caretaker Interior Minister Sarfraz Bugti told reporters that migrants without a valid residence permit who remained after the deadline would face deportation, Pakistani media reported.

Nearly 20 Uyghur families – or about 100 people – who had fled Afghanistan and settled in Rawalpindi in northern Pakistan face deportation because they lack Afghan or Chinese passports and Pakistani residence permits, said Omer Khan, founder of the Pakistan-based Omer Uyghur Trust.  

The Uyghurs have sought help from the United Nations Office for Refugees in Pakistan for  years, but without success, he said.

“Time is running out, with only 20 days remaining,” he said. “If a solution is not found within this time frame, the Pakistani police will apprehend them. We find ourselves in an extremely dire situation."

1960s migration

Most of the Uyghurs are descendants of individuals who migrated to Afghanistan in the 1960s from places like Yarkand county and other areas of Kashgar prefecture in Xinjiang because of repression by Chinese authorities, he said. They lack any kind of documentation and have been denied it by the Pakistani government.

During the former Soviet Union’s offensive against Afghanistan in the 1980s, some of the Uyghurs migrated to Pakistan alongside millions of Afghan refugees.

These Uyghurs have resided in a community in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, for many years without receiving legal residence permits or government recognition. 

The U.N.’s refugee office in Pakistan and headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, said by email that they could not respond to individual inquiries “due to the current high volume of applications and communications.”

The Pakistani Embassy in Washington did not respond to RFA’s phone calls or email inquiries.

A Uyghur named Abdulahed who lives in Rawalpindi said he fears being sent back to Afghanistan along with his wife and four children.

“If they send us back to Afghanistan, we don’t know what dangers we might face under the Taliban government,” he told RFA.

Abdulahed and other Uyghurs, who have had no contact with China for decades, are also worried that if they refuse to go to Afghanistan, the Pakistani government could deport them to China. 

“This is a group of Uyghurs that’s already quite vulnerable because their status was unclear in Afghanistan, and now it’s also uncertain in Pakistan,” said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch. 

“But this is happening at a time when we know that severe human rights abuses are continuing in the Uyghur region, and so this is a community that needs the kind of protections that international human rights law affords,” she said. 

Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Gulchehra Hoja for RFA Uyghur.

The 35 recipients, from Muang village in Champassack province’s Khong district, received a total of 13 billion kip (US$636,000, or an average of about $18,000 each), as their land is leveled and grass is planted for fairways, bunkers are dug out and clubhouses erected. 

The golf resort is in a nearly 10,000-hectare (24,000-acre) special economic zone that has received Chinese investments totalling about $9 billion. It is touted by its supporters as a way to revitalize the local economy through tourism. 

But the case repeats a pattern of inconsistency in major Lao development projects. Those who have not been compensated worry about when they will be paid – if ever.

“These people won’t get any of the benefits from the golf course,” one villager told RFA Lao on condition of anonymity for security reasons. “They are poor villagers, common farmers. They will not get anything from the project.”

Another villager who lives close to the resort said it will likely open soon.

“The golf course development is progressing fast,” the second villager said. “I heard that many villagers lost land to this project, but I don’t know much about the villagers’ compensation.

Greener pastures

A former provincial official said that in the long run, the development will benefit the region and people by bringing tourists and jobs.

“The golf course is so huge so that’s why it is affecting so many,” he said. “It’s all for tourism. Those who have money want to play golf. It’s a game for rich people, so that’s a part of tourism.”

An entrepreneur who operates a tour service in the district said it would be great for business once the project is complete.

“There will be loads of Chinese people coming here to play golf, because this is a Chinese project, not a Laotian one,” he said. “It will be mostly foreigners who come to play golf in this special economic zone that belongs to the Chinese investors.

Much of Laos’s recent economic growth has been generated through land concessions to China, Thailand, and Vietnam to exploit natural resources including timber, agricultural products, minerals, and energy. 

But the policies have sparked friction over cases of environmental pollution and land taken without proper compensation.

Lao villagers affected by land grabs often fear to speak out publicly over their concerns because they fear official retribution.

Translated by Sidney Khotpanya. Edited by Eugene Whong.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Lao.

New Zealand’s Green Party says it will double the Best Start payment from $69 a week to $140 — and it will also make it available for all children under three years.

Greens co-leader Marama Davidson announced the policy today, saying it is part of a “fully costed plan” paid for with a fair tax system.

“One in 10 children are growing up in poverty. For Māori, it is one in five. How is it possible that in a wealthy country like ours, there are thousands of children without enough to eat, a good bed, warm clothes, and decent shoes?,” she asked.

• READ MORE: Other NZ election 2023 reports

“That is why the Green Party would ensure all families have what they need for these early years, by doubling Best Start from $69 a week, to $140, and make it universal for all children under three years.”

Currently, families can receive the $69 weekly Best Start payment until their baby turns one, no matter the income.

However, they do not get that payment while they are receiving the paid parental leave payment. After the first year, only families earning under $96,295 are eligible to receive the payment until their child turns three.

The doubling of the Best Start payment is part of the Green Party’s Income Guarantee plan.

“This universal payment for the first three years recognises that just like in our older years through superannuation, the very first years of a new baby’s life are a time when every family needs extra support,” Davidson said.

Fairer Working for Families
“Under this plan we’ll also reform Working for Families into a simpler, fairer system.

“This will provide a payment of up to $215 every week for the first child, and $135 a week for every other child, in addition to the Best Start payments.

“With the Green Party in government, we can take action to guarantee every whānau has enough to get by no matter what.

“There is no reason for any child in Aotearoa to go hungry or to live in a damp, cold house. Poverty is a political choice.

“Our plan will provide lasting solutions that will guarantee everyone has what they need to live a good life and cover the essentials — even when times are tough.”

Since 2021, the Labour government has increased the Best Start payment from $60 to $69 a week.

• Monday night’s Newshub-Reid Research poll gave the Greens a boost, rising to 14.2 percent, as the Labour Party dipped slightly to 26.5 percent.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Vietnam and the United States are expected to announce a formal upgrade in diplomatic ties after Biden touches down on Sunday. The two countries are looking to solidify trade relations while also addressing common concerns about China’s aggressive behavior in the South China Sea.

But the relatives are calling on Biden to also remember Vietnam’s political prisoners when he visits the country on his way home from the Group of 20 Summit in New Delhi.

As of July 5, Vietnam has jailed more than 150 political prisoners according to New York-based Human Rights Watch.

“We believe that with the values of freedom, democracy, and human rights that American people cherish, attach importance to, and protect, the upgrading of the two countries’ diplomatic relationship will create an impact on the currently dire human rights situation in Vietnam,” said a Sept. 1 letter from the families.

Vietnam’s one-party state ignores the fundamental rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international covenants that Hanoi has signed and ratified, the letter states. 

“We wholeheartedly call on President Biden to pressure Vietnam to improve its human rights situation, particularly to stop taking revenge against prisoners of conscience (PoCs) at detention facilities, provide proper treatment to sick PoCs, release all of those suffering from groundless accusations, and stop using PoCs as trade-offs in negotiations with the governments of free states,” the relatives wrote.

A coalition of 37 Vietnamese diaspora pro-democracy organizations made a similar plea in a joint open letter released in late August. Biden should insist that Vietnam offer greater freedoms to its people, the coalition said.

“Specifically, the U.S. should voice its support for freedom of expression and independent labor unions in Vietnam, as conditions for diplomatic upgrade of bilateral relationship,” the letter said.

‘A minimum of common values’

Reporters Without Borders and seven other human rights organizations also urged Biden “to address the dire situation of press freedom and the right to information” in Vietnam in a separate joint letter sent on Sept. 5.

“A strategic partnership between the two countries will contribute to protecting Vietnam,” the letter said. “However, for this partnership to be beneficial in the long term for both peoples, it is essential that the two countries share a minimum of common values.”

Biden administration officials also heard from representatives of the Khmer Kampuchea Krom Federation during a meeting at the White House on Sept. 5. 

The nearly 1.3-million strong Khmer Krom live in a part of Vietnam that was once southeastern Cambodia. They have faced serious restrictions on freedom of expression, assembly and movement. 

Federation Executive President Prak Sereivuth told Radio Free Asia that he asked that Biden urge the release of Khmer Krom people arrested in July for distributing books about indigenous peoples’ rights.

He also asked that the president try to persuade Vietnam to allow Khmer Krom to have freedom to practice their cultural and religious ceremonies. When Khmer Krom want to become monks, they need to ask permission from the Vietnamese government – a new restriction, he said.

Translated by Anna Vu and Yun Samean. Edited by Matt Reed.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Vietnamese.

We get an update from the Texas border, where human rights advocates are condemning Republican Governor Greg Abbott’s “Operation Lone Star” for its human rights abuses. Texas troopers have reportedly separated over two dozen migrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border in a major change of policy. This comes amid a deadly heat wave and after the first deaths linked to floating barrels wrapped in razor wire that Abbott put in the Rio Grande to block asylum seekers from crossing. “We’re calling for an end to the use of all of these detractions that are getting in the way of people being able to seek protection,” says Marisa Limón Garza, executive director of Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, which is based in El Paso, Texas.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Nebraska had a 20-week abortion ban in place in April 2022, when Burgess's stillbirth took place.

Prosecutors ultimately dropped the misdemeanor charges against Burgess in exchange for her plea of guilty to a felony charge of concealing or abandoning a dead body. On the Facebook messaging application, Burgess and her mother had discussed "burning the evidence" of the stillbirth and burying it, which they did with the help of a third person named Tanner Barnhill, who has been sentenced to probation.

According toJezebel, police received a tip about the disposal of the remains and obtained a warrant to view the mother and daughters' Facebook messages after Celeste Burgess mentioned the correspondence when she was being questioned by law enforcement.

Meta, the company that owns Facebook, complied with the warrant and released the messages, which were not subject to end-to-end encryption.

Digital rights groups have long called on Facebook and other online messaging platforms to make end-to-end encryption the default setting for users' conversations.

Burgess' case illustrates "the real, human cost of mass surveillance of everyone's private digital communications," said Meredith Whittaker, president of the encrypted messaging app Signal.

Emma Roth, a staff attorney at Pregnancy Justice, which advocates for people who face pregnancy-related criminal charges, toldJezebel that police and prosecutors in Nebraska charged Burgess out of desperation to "criminalize what they view as immoral behavior," in the absence of state laws against the 17-year-old's procurement of abortion pills.

"When [prosecutors] are faced with the limitations of state law and the fact that a self-managed abortion or a pregnancy loss is not illegal under state law, it's almost as if they start throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks," Roth said. "Prosecutors are much more likely to try to 'make an example' of someone who seeks an abortion later on in pregnancy because they deem that less morally acceptable, and they may seek charges in the hope that the public will find the facts of the case egregious and will welcome a prosecution."

"But the risk, of course, is that any type of precedent that a prosecutor sets when bringing a case against someone who sought a later abortion can be applied against somebody seeking an earlier abortion," she added.

In the case of Burgess, noted journalist Jessica Valenti, one detail that made it into numerous media reports was a claim that the 17-year-old said in her Facebook messages that she couldn't "wait to get the 'thing' out of her body."

In reality, Valenti wrote, "that sentence is nowhere in the Facebook messages; in fact, the language is actually a police officer's interpretation of the teenager's conversation."

Prosecutors in Madison County, Nebraska "tried to paint a portrait of this mother and daughter in a negative light and to deprive them of their humanity and to erase the fact that we're talking about a teenager who was not ready to have a child," Roth told Jezebel.

While prosecutors have long filed charges against people for pregnancy losses and self-managed abortions, saidJezebel reporter Susan Rikunas, "Celeste Burgess may be the first person charged and sentenced for crimes related to an abortion since the Supreme Court's Dobbs ruling."

Last year's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization reversed nearly a half-century of national abortion rights affirmed by Roe.

As progressive advocacy group Indivisible said, Burgess' jail sentence represents Republican lawmakers' "deranged vision for our country."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Nebraska had a 20-week abortion ban in place in April 2022, when Burgess's stillbirth took place.

Prosecutors ultimately dropped the misdemeanor charges against Burgess in exchange for her plea of guilty to a felony charge of concealing or abandoning a dead body. On the Facebook messaging application, Burgess and her mother had discussed "burning the evidence" of the stillbirth and burying it, which they did with the help of a third person named Tanner Barnhill, who has been sentenced to probation.

According toJezebel, police received a tip about the disposal of the remains and obtained a warrant to view the mother and daughters' Facebook messages after Celeste Burgess mentioned the correspondence when she was being questioned by law enforcement.

Meta, the company that owns Facebook, complied with the warrant and released the messages, which were not subject to end-to-end encryption.

Digital rights groups have long called on Facebook and other online messaging platforms to make end-to-end encryption the default setting for users' conversations.

Burgess' case illustrates "the real, human cost of mass surveillance of everyone's private digital communications," said Meredith Whittaker, president of the encrypted messaging app Signal.

Emma Roth, a staff attorney at Pregnancy Justice, which advocates for people who face pregnancy-related criminal charges, toldJezebel that police and prosecutors in Nebraska charged Burgess out of desperation to "criminalize what they view as immoral behavior," in the absence of state laws against the 17-year-old's procurement of abortion pills.

"When [prosecutors] are faced with the limitations of state law and the fact that a self-managed abortion or a pregnancy loss is not illegal under state law, it's almost as if they start throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks," Roth said. "Prosecutors are much more likely to try to 'make an example' of someone who seeks an abortion later on in pregnancy because they deem that less morally acceptable, and they may seek charges in the hope that the public will find the facts of the case egregious and will welcome a prosecution."

"But the risk, of course, is that any type of precedent that a prosecutor sets when bringing a case against someone who sought a later abortion can be applied against somebody seeking an earlier abortion," she added.

In the case of Burgess, noted journalist Jessica Valenti, one detail that made it into numerous media reports was a claim that the 17-year-old said in her Facebook messages that she couldn't "wait to get the 'thing' out of her body."

In reality, Valenti wrote, "that sentence is nowhere in the Facebook messages; in fact, the language is actually a police officer's interpretation of the teenager's conversation."

Prosecutors in Madison County, Nebraska "tried to paint a portrait of this mother and daughter in a negative light and to deprive them of their humanity and to erase the fact that we're talking about a teenager who was not ready to have a child," Roth told Jezebel.

While prosecutors have long filed charges against people for pregnancy losses and self-managed abortions, saidJezebel reporter Susan Rikunas, "Celeste Burgess may be the first person charged and sentenced for crimes related to an abortion since the Supreme Court's Dobbs ruling."

Last year's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization reversed nearly a half-century of national abortion rights affirmed by Roe.

As progressive advocacy group Indivisible said, Burgess' jail sentence represents Republican lawmakers' "deranged vision for our country."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

In what is described as a “significant relief”, seven Papua New Guinea teachers and their families were rescued from an attempted kidnapping in the remote Mt Bosavi region in Hela Province.

Hela Education Director Ronny Angu said the teachers and their families were rescued safely by the Hela Education Division from their attempted kidnappers.

He said the teachers are from the Wagalu primary school, the same primary school where 17 school girls were recently kidnapped, raped and held hostage for ransom.

• READ MORE: PNG gunmen ‘kidnapped, raped’ 17 schoolgirls before freeing them
• Other PNG law-and-order reports

Angu said the teachers and their families have escaped from an organised kidnapping and potential harm by criminals after a successful rescue operation, executed with the help of key stakeholders that demonstrated “unwavering commitment and collaboration”.

He said the “heroic efforts” from Hela police and Moro police, the Hela Provincial government and the Hela Education Division, ensured that the teachers and their families were successfully relocated to safety.

“Their dedication and selflessness significantly contributed to the success of the rescue mission,” he said.

“To commemorate the safe return of the teachers and their families and for God’s guidance and protection, the Hela Education Division organised a welcome party. It was a moment of immense joy and relief, where experiences and challenges were openly discussed, and tears were shared.

Support for healing
“Hela Education Division is committed to providing the necessary support to the staff members to help them settle back into their respective homes.

“We aim to provide an opportunity to the teachers to reconnect with their families and begin the process of healing from the traumatic experiences they endured.

“The success of the rescue mission is a powerful testament to the unwavering commitment of the education division to serve the community and provide quality education in Hela Province.

“The division expressed sincere gratitude to those who supported and made the rescue operation successful, especially the Hela police, Moro police, Hela Provincial government, and Hela Education Division,” Angu said.

“This successful rescue operation is a significant relief to Hela Province. The safe return of the teachers and their families after such a perilous experience cannot be more relieving news.

“We wish all of them a speedy recovery from their ordeal.”

Jeffrey Elapa is a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The recently erupted conflict in Sudan has pushed millions more people out of their homes this year, bringing the mid-year total to 110 million.

More than 32.5 million people have also been displaced by disasters, including those caused by the climate crisis, and 21% of those refugees have left their homes in the world's least developed countries and small island nations.

Dominique Hyde, director of external relations for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said the agency's report marks "a world record that no one wants to celebrate."

The majority of people—58%—who have been forcibly pushed out of their homes have gone elsewhere in their own countries. More than 35 million people have fled their home countries to find refuge from conflicts, persecution, and the effects of planetary heating, including drought and flooding.

The war in Ukraine has caused the fastest growth in refugee numbers since World War II and was the main driver of displacement in 2022, with 5.7 million people having fled the country by the end of last year.

Violence in Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Myanmar have also displaced more than one million people each, as vulnerable residents fled to safety within their own countries.

In Somalia, an extreme drought that began in January 2021 has now displaced one million people. The drought has been linked to the climate crisis and the food shortage it's caused has been exacerbated by the war between Russia and Ukraine, which collectively used to provide Somalia with 90% of its wheat.

"This one-million milestone serves as a massive alarm bell," said Mohamed Abdi, the Norwegian Refugee Council's (NRC) director in Somalia. "Starvation is now haunting the entire country."

While low- and middle-income countries are where refugees typically come from, countries in the Global South also disproportionately take responsibility for welcoming and resettling displaced people, compared to wealthy nations.

More than three-quarters of refugees are hosted in low- and middle-income countries.

"The 46 least developed countries account for less than 1.3% of global gross domestic product, yet they hosted more than 20% of all refugees," said the UNHCR.

Iran is currently hosting 3.4 million refugees, including many from Afghanistan. Colombia and Peru have also welcomed millions of Venezuelan refugees, while countries including the United States have enacted policies in recent months making it more difficult for people fleeing persecution and conflict to find refuge there.

"We see increasingly a reluctance on the part of states to fully adhere to the principles of the [1951 refugee] convention, even states that have signed it," Filippo Grandi, the high commissioner for refugees at the U.N., toldReuters.

The record-breaking number of international refugees shows that policymakers "are far too quick to rush to conflict, and way too slow to find solutions," said Grandi in a statement.

"The consequence is devastation, displacement, and anguish for each of the millions of people forcibly uprooted from their homes," he added.

The agency noted that the refugee crisis has exploded in the past decade after roughly 20 years of relatively stable numbers that hovered around 40 million people worldwide prior to the conflict in Syria that began in 2011. Now, more than one in every 74 people is displaced.

Hyde noted in a column at Reuters that there are solutions that would help mitigate the refugee crisis, both by allowing people to stay safely in their homes and ensuring they are given support in host countries.

"When refugees are included in national systems and given opportunities to study and work, they move out of a state of dependency to one of self-reliance, contributing to local economies to the benefit of themselves and their hosts," wrote Hyde. "If host countries were given proper support on job creation, educational provision, technology, climate change mitigation, healthcare, and more, both the displaced and local communities would benefit."

"We have also seen refugees and IDPs [internally displaced people] return home when the conditions are right," she added. "During 2022, at least 5.7 million IDPs returned home, while 339,300 refugees were also able to go back to their country of origin. But this can only happen if lasting peace is achieved."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

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When the PGA Tour announced a long-term partnership with LIV Golf, the upstart organization bankrolled by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, no one sounded angrier than survivors of the 9/11 attacks and the families of those who were killed.

The pact on June 6 marked an abrupt reversal for the PGA, which had fought LIV Golf since it emerged in 2021. The rival league courted star golfers with vast payouts that were widely seen as part of a global public-relations campaign by the Saudi government.

“All of these PGA players and PGA executives who were talking tough about Saudi Arabia have done a complete 180,” one spokesperson for the families, Brett Eagleson, said in an interview. “All of a sudden they’re business partners? It’s unconscionable.”

Before the new alliance, PGA officials had highlighted the Saudi government’s alleged role in the 9/11 attacks, along with the kingdom’s record of human rights abuses, as important reasons for their opposition to LIV Golf.

The Saudi government has long denied that it provided any support for the attacks. But, over the past few years, evidence has emerged that Saudi officials may have had more significant dealings with some of the plotters than U.S. investigations had previously shown.

Since 2017, the 9/11 families and some insurance companies have been suing the Saudi government in a Manhattan federal court, claiming that Saudi officials helped some of those involved in the Qaida plot.

The Saudi royal family was a declared enemy of al-Qaida. In the early 1990s, it expelled Osama bin Laden, the son of a construction magnate, and stripped him of his citizenship. At the same time, the kingdom funded an ambitious effort to propagate its radical Wahhabi brand of Islam around the world and tolerated a religious bureaucracy that was layered with clerics sympathetic to al-Qaida and other militant Islamists.

From the start of the FBI’s investigation into a possible support network for the 9/11 plot, one of its primary suspects was a supposed Saudi graduate student who helped settle the first two hijackers to arrive in the United States after they flew into Los Angeles in January 2000.

The middle-aged student, Omar al-Bayoumi, told U.S. investigators that he met the operatives by chance at a halal cafe near the Saudi Consulate in Culver City, California. The two men, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, were trained as terrorists but spoke virtually no English and were poorly prepared to operate on their own in Southern California.

Bayoumi insisted he was just being hospitable when he found Hazmi and Mihdhar an apartment in San Diego, set them up with a bank account and introduced them to a coterie of Muslim men who helped them for months with other tasks — from buying a car and taking English classes to their repeated but unsuccessful attempts to learn to fly.

As ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine detailed in an in-depth report on the FBI’s secret investigation of the Saudi connection in 2020, agents on the case suspected that Bayoumi might be a spy. He seemed to spend most of his time hanging around San Diego mosques, donating money to various causes and obtrusively filming worshippers with a video camera.

Yet both the FBI and the bipartisan 9/11 Commission accepted Bayoumi’s account almost at face value. In a carefully worded joint report in 2005, the CIA and FBI asserted that they had found no information to indicate that Bayoumi was a knowing accomplice of the hijackers or that he was a Saudi government “intelligence officer.”

But FBI documents that were just made public last year sharply revised that assessment.

While living in San Diego, one FBI document concludes, Bayoumi was paid a regular stipend as a “cooptee,” or part-time agent, of the General Intelligence Presidency, the Saudi intelligence service. The report adds that his information was forwarded to the powerful Saudi ambassador in Washington, D.C., Prince Bandar bin Sultan, a close friend to both presidents Bush and their family. The Saudi Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to questions about Bandar’s alleged relationship with Bayoumi.

As Bayoumi was helping the hijackers, FBI documents show, he was also in close contact with members of a Saudi religious network that operated across the United States. He also dealt extensively with Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemeni American cleric who the documents suggest was more closely involved with the hijackers than was previously known. Awlaki later became a leader of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and was killed in a 2011 drone strike ordered by President Barack Obama.

One of the Saudi officials with whom Bayoumi appeared to work, Musaed al-Jarrah, was both a key figure in the Saudi religious apparatus in Washington and a senior intelligence officer. After being expelled from the United States, Jarrah returned to Riyadh and worked for years as an aide to Prince Bandar on the Saudi national security council.

Another Saudi cleric with whom Bayoumi worked, Fahad al-Thumairy, was posted to Los Angeles as both a diplomat at the Saudi Consulate and a senior imam at the nearby King Fahad Mosque — a pillar of the global effort to spread Wahhabi Islam that had opened in mid-1998.

According to another newly declassified FBI document from 2017, an unnamed source told investigators that Thumairy received a phone call shortly before the two hijackers arrived in Los Angeles from “an individual in Malaysia” who wanted to alert him to the imminent arrival of “two brothers … who needed their assistance.”

In mid-December 1999, according to the 9/11 Commission report, a key Saudi operative in the plot, Walid bin Attash, flew to Malaysia to meet with Hazmi and Mihdhar. Although the men were kept under surveillance by Malaysian security agents, they were allowed to fly on to Bangkok and then Los Angeles, using Saudi passports with their real names. The FBI source said that Thumairy arranged for Mihdhar and Hazmi to be picked up at the Los Angeles International Airport and brought to the King Fahad Mosque, where they met with him. Thumairy and Jarrah have both denied helping the hijackers.

The FBI revelations were especially stinging for the 9/11 families because previous administrations made extraordinary efforts to keep them under wraps. President Donald Trump, who promised to help the families gain access to FBI and CIA documents, instead fought to shield them as state secrets. (Trump has been a vocal supporter of LIV Golf, hosting several of its tournaments at his golf courses and saying after the merger, “The Saudis have been fantastic for golf.”)

The more recent disclosures — which came in documents declassified under an executive order that President Joe Biden issued just before the 20th anniversary of the attacks — are now at the center of the federal litigation in New York. While the families are pressing to reopen discovery in the case based on the new FBI information about Bayoumi and others, lawyers for the Saudi government continue to insist there is no evidence of the kingdom’s involvement in the plot.

To prove their case, the families must show that people working for the Saudi government either aided people they knew were planning a terrorist action in the United States or helped members of a designated terrorist organization like al-Qaida. At the time that Bayoumi aided Hazmi and Mihdhar in California, officials have said, the CIA and Saudi intelligence had identified the two as Qaida operatives.

The two federal judges overseeing the Manhattan litigation have yet to rule on requests from the families, based on the newly declassified FBI documents, for further inquiries to the Saudi intelligence service.

The PGA official who brokered the new alliance with LIV Golf, James J. Dunne III, told the Golf Channel he was confident that the Saudi officials with whom he negotiated were not involved in the 9/11 plot. Dunne, an investment banker, added, “And if someone can find someone that unequivocally was involved with it, I’ll kill him myself.”

Eagleson, whose father, John Bruce Eagleson, died in the same south tower of the World Trade Center where 66 employees of Dunne’s bank were killed, suggested that he read the declassified FBI documents about Bayoumi, Thumairy and other Saudis. “It’s the same government,” Eagleson said.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Tim Golden.

"We concluded that all duty bearers are engaged in limiting the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful association," U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said in a statement. "We were particularly alarmed by the situation of Palestinian human rights defenders, who are routinely subject to a range of punitive measures as part of the occupation regime."

The commission found that "the Israeli authorities' silencing of civil society voices that challenge government policies and narrative is intrinsically linked to the goal of ensuring and enshrining the permanent occupation at the expense of the rights of the Palestinian people."

"This includes criminalizing Palestinian civil society organizations and their members by labeling them as 'terrorists,' pressuring and threatening institutions that give a platform for civil society discourse, actively lobbying donors, and implementing measures intended to cut sources of funding to civil society," the report states.

According to the publication:

The Israeli authorities' use of anti-terror legislation to categorize civil society organizations as terrorist organizations aims to delegitimize and isolate them and undermine their activity, and to harm their international funding and support. The commission concludes on reasonable grounds that the designations by Israeli authorities of six Palestinian NGOs as terrorist organizations and a seventh Palestinian NGO as unlawful were unjustified, undertaken to silence civil society voices, and violate human rights, including freedom of association, freedom of expression and opinion, and the rights to peaceful assembly, to privacy, and to fair trial.

Israeli officials claim the six humanitarian groups—Addameer, AlHaq, the Bisan Center for Research and Development, Defense for Children International—Palestine, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, and the Union of Palestinian Women Committees—have ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a secular political movement with an armed wing that has carried out resistance attacks against Israel. The groups deny the accusation, and a probe by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency found no evidence supporting Israel's claim.

The report further states that "Israeli authorities are increasingly using surveillance to monitor the activities of human rights defenders, including through spyware planted on mobile phones," including by planting Pegasus spyware manufactured by the Israeli company NSO Group on the phones of Palestinian human rights workers and Israeli activists participating in 2020 protests against the last Netanyahu government.

A section of the report on the far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu notes:

In late 2022, a new government in Israel was sworn in, with a stated mission of weakening the judiciary and increasing government control of the media and freedom of expression, which would have a significant impact on civil society in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory. In February 2023, the government started enacting new legislation to weaken judicial independence amid large-scale countrywide demonstrations. The proposed changes would dismantle fundamental features of the separation of powers and of the checks and balances essential in democratic political systems. Legal experts have warned that they risk weakening human rights protections, especially for the most vulnerable and disfavored communities, including Palestinian citizens of Israel, asylum-seekers, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer persons.

The report states that Israeli authorities are subjecting both Israeli and Palestinian journalists to monitoring and harassment, with Palestinians being "particularly targeted" for intimidation, "attacks, arrests, detention, and accusations of incitement to violence, seemingly as part of an effort to deter them from continuing their work."

According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, Israeli forces have killed 20 journalists this century, with none of the killers ever facing prosecution. These include at least one U.S. citizen, Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh, who was shot dead by an Israeli sniper while covering a May 2022 raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. Al Jazeera producer Ali Samodi was shot in the back but survived. An independent international probe subsequently concluded that Abu Akleh's "extrajudicial killing" was "deliberate."

On Wednesday, 22-year-old Palestinian photojournalist Momen Samreen, who was covering Israeli forces' demolition of a suspected Palestinian militant's family home—an illegal act of collective punishment—was shot in the head with a "less-lethal" projectile and was hospitalized in serious condition.

The Israeli government—which maintains that the commission of inquiry "has no legitimacy"—rejected the report's findings. Israel's U.N. mission in Switzerland said that "Israel has a robust and independent civil society which is composed of thousands of NGOs, human rights defenders, [and] national and international media outlets, that can operate freely."

The report also states that the Palestinian Authority and Hamas are targeting human rights defenders "with the aim of silencing dissenting opinions," and that activists, journalists, and others have been harassed, intimidated, and in some cases arbitrarily arrested and jailed.

"The commission has received information on the use of torture and ill-treatment to punish and intimidate critics and opponents by internal security officials in Gaza and intelligence services, preventive security officials, and law enforcement officials in the West Bank," the report says. "The frequency and severity, and the absence of accountability, suggest that such cases are widespread."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Damian Rance said around 1,700 people have had to evacuate from flooded homes in the major southern city, and one of most direct threats is a doubling or even tripling of the threat posed by landmines, being swept away to new locations.  

Oleksandra Burynska began by asking him what the latest was on the ground in the disaster area: 

This content originally appeared on UN News - Global perspective Human stories and was authored by UN News.

The report details how the current patchwork of parentage laws across the country – many of which haven’t been updated in decades – leaves LGBTQ parents and their children vulnerable. Nearly 1 in 3 LGBTQ adults in the U.S. are raising children under the age of 18, many of them in states that still have outdated laws. This means that far too many children in LGBTQ families are potentially at risk.

Why Parentage Is So Important to Children and LGBTQ Families

Parentage is the legal relationship between a child and their parents, which is essential to children's security and well-being. Parentage is crucial so that parents can make critical healthcare and education decisions for their children, and so that children have access to important benefits including insurance coverage, social security survivor benefits, and inheritance. Legal parentage also ensures a child does not lose their important connection to a parent in circumstances such as the death of one parent or the end of the parents’ relationship.

“All children, regardless of who their parents are, should be able to establish a secure legal tie to the parents who love and care for them. Yet, many states’ parentage laws are more than 40 years out of date. This leaves too many LGBTQ families navigating complicated and costly systems to safeguard their connections to their children.,” said Naomi Goldberg, Deputy Director of MAP and the lead author of the report.

State-By-State Examination of Parentage Laws Shows Many Are Out of Date and Out of Step with How Families Form

The report reviews the ways in which legal parentage may be established, which states have updated their laws, and in which states LGBTQ families remain at risk. Families form in many different ways. Yet despite the increasing number of LGBTQ families and the increasing number of all families formed through assisted reproduction, to date fewer than a dozen states have comprehensively updated their parentage laws to reflect the diverse ways today’s families form.

More than half of states lack clear, accessible, and equitable pathways for LGBTQ parents to establish parentage. As a result, many families face complicated, time-consuming, and costly processes to establish legal ties between parents and children. LGBTQ parents in many states must still undergo demeaning and unnecessary “home studies” to adopt their own children and spend thousands in legal costs to secure their parentage. And for many parents that cost, and access to the courts, is completely out of reach, leaving them at tremendous risk because their state has not updated its parentage laws. In the most heart-wrenching cases, children have been pulled into the child welfare system because a parent who loves and cares for them wasn’t recognized as a legal parent, and non-birth parents who planned for and raised their kids have been stripped of their parental rights because a court relied on outdated laws that fail to acknowledge the existence of same-gender parents.

“LGBTQ families are a part of every community across the country, yet many LGBTQ families still face expensive and demeaning barriers to providing legal security for their children,” said Stacey Stevenson, CEO of Family Equality. “Parents shouldn’t have to navigate a complicated legal system just to ensure their kids are protected.”

“LGBTQ families form through love, intention and care and children of LGBTQ parents, like all children, need and deserve to know their families are secure. Our laws should protect families, not create barriers to their stability,” said Jordan Budd, Executive Director of COLAGE.

“We are seeing far too many heart-breaking examples of the discrimination that LGBTQ+ parents continue to face in the United States. When states and courts refuse to give LGBTQ families the same protections as other families, it leaves parents at risk of being shut out of their child’s life and children at risk of losing a parent who loves and cares for them,” said Nesta Johnson, NCLR Family Law Staff Attorney.

Progress is Happening Across the Country to Update State Parentage Laws and to Protect LGBTQ Families

While detailing the importance of legal parentage and outlining the risks to LGBTQ families, the report also shows the path forward. It highlights states that have taken crucial steps to update their parentage laws in recent years, including Colorado, Connecticut, and Rhode Island–and states like Massachusetts, which has the opportunity right now to protect LGBTQ families.

“Families form in many ways and our laws must reflect that so children have equality and security. States like Maine, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Colorado have led the way by updating their laws to ensure child-centered, equal, and accessible paths to legal parentage for all families, including LGBTQ families. Especially as LGBTQ families face growing threats across the country, we urgently need more states to pass comprehensive parentage reform to recognize contemporary families and protect all children, regardless of the circumstances of their birth,” said Polly Crozier, Director of Family Advocacy at GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD).

Story spotlight: parents should not be at the mercy of chance

Outdated parentage laws can mean children don’t have their parents when they need them most, like during a medical crisis, as happened to parents Moira and Hillary.

When Moira underwent an emergency c-section and their daughter June was immediately rushed to the NICU, Hillary had no legal standing as a parent because their second-parent adoption was still pending. With Moira incapacitated and Hillary’s parental status unclear, neither parent was able to make medical decisions for June and the NICU staff were left to do what they thought was best. Thankfully they were kind enough to let Hillary be with June, but she knows that was not guaranteed.

“Had we been at a different hospital, or had we interacted with different staff,” Hillary says,” I might have been shut out entirely. Even though things worked out, parents like us should not be at the mercy of chance.”

Moira, Hillary and June’s story helped encourage the Rhode Island legislature to update their state parentage laws in 2020 to ensure other families don’t face that same uncertainty at a time of crisis.

About the Report

The report was authored by the Movement Advancement Project, in partnership with COLAGE, Family Equality, GLAD, and NCLR, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. It is available online at: www.mapresearch.org/2023-parentage-report

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

The travelers stood atop the steep, rolling hill. They were just a few steps north of the border wall, having passed through a gap in the towering steel barrier. They gathered beneath Coches Ridge, a remote feature of the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge in southern Arizona where, last summer, a white nationalist border vigilante chased an unarmed man into Mexico at gunpoint.

The group was small. A man, two women, and two children, a boy and a girl. Their bright shirts made them easy to spot against the green and gold of the desert. The boy waved his arms above his head as I drove nearer, like a shipwreck survivor on a deserted island. I rolled down my window. He looked to be about 8 years old, maybe 9. Just tall enough to peek over my door, he said hello in English. The man beside him looked exhausted and desperate. I asked if they needed help. They did.

It was the morning of Friday, May 12. Roughly 12 hours had passed since President Joe Biden lifted a public health order known as Title 42, which had strangled asylum access at the border for more than three years. He replaced the measure with a new suite of border enforcement policies that would have much the same effect.

Across the country, the headline was chaos. The details didn’t matter as much as the perception. Title 42 created a massive backlog of asylum-seekers south of the border, and now it was going away. The president’s critics did the smugglers’ advertising for them, repeating ad nauseam the lie that the border was now open and Biden wanted the migrants to become Americans.

In a press conference earlier in the week, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, outlined the new enforcement framework. “Our overall approach is to build lawful pathways for people to come to the United States and to impose tougher consequences,” he said. Simply showing up at the nation’s doorstep was no longer enough. Asylum-seekers could download an app and to join an electronic line now. Those who failed to seek asylum in another country first would not get in. Deportations would be fast-tracked, and new tweaks to the asylum interviews were aimed at making them harder to pass.

How it would all play out remained to be seen. “I think DHS is just absolutely terrified and clueless,” a senior asylum officer, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press, told me while Mayorkas spoke on Thursday. The administration had reason to be concerned: The estimated arrival numbers were historic, and Republicans clearly smelled blood.

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“When you’re 75, eh — it’s just like, don’t mess with an old woman. I’m not afraid.”

“A family might get two people registered and then it’s shut down because all the appointments have been taken. So it’s separating families.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Ryan Devereaux.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

The story discusses gun violence and suicidal ideation.

On a cold evening in March, at a school board meeting in Oxford, Michigan, Buck Myre approached members with a sheaf of papers. As they were passed down the line, he paced and fidgeted.

For three minutes, the room was quiet. One board member covered her eyes with both hands. Finally, Myre stepped to the lectern. He released a shaky exhale, crackling the microphone.

“I don’t even know where to start, and I don’t even know what to say,” he said. “But imagine — you can’t imagine. But imagine going to the coroner’s office and picking this up.”

The papers were copies of his 16-year-old son’s death certificate.

On Nov. 30, 2021, Tate Myre and three other students — Hana St. Juliana, 14; Madisyn Baldwin, 17; and Justin Shilling, 17 — were shot and killed inside Oxford High School by a 15-year-old sophomore. Seven more were shot but lived.

The shooter, who pleaded guilty to murder, terrorism and other felonies, awaits a hearing to determine whether he’ll face a life sentence without parole. His parents, who bought a gun for the troubled teenager four days before the shooting, are charged with involuntary manslaughter and awaiting trial.

But for many families, that’s not enough. They want a full accounting of what happened and whether it could have been prevented — which they still haven’t received.

“I do believe that things went wrong that day,” Myre told the school board in March. “And I don’t understand why we’re running from it. I don’t get it.”

Oxford has ordered an external review of the shooting, and school officials say they too want answers. But many parents say those same officials have stonewalled them, delayed the review and not committed to full transparency or accountability.

Nationwide, there’s no protocol for such reviews. If they happen at all — “usually where we see higher body counts” — they vary widely in process and purpose, said James Densley, co-founder and president of the Violence Project, a nonprofit research center. Such a haphazard approach not only leads to mistrust inside communities, experts say, but wastes an opportunity to extract lessons that may prevent the next tragedy.

After the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in February 2018, a state commission delivered a preliminary report 322 days later, reaching the community before the first anniversary.

In Newtown, Connecticut, the local state’s attorney issued a report 346 days after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. After a 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech, a state panel’s report arrived in 136 days.

In Oxford, it’s been more than 525 days, and counting.

Two weeks after the shooting, Oxford’s school board voted unanimously for a review to begin “immediately.” But the board declined multiple offers from Michigan’s attorney general to investigate. For six months after the shooting, following guidance from a lawyer retained by its insurance company, the board insisted a review must wait for criminal and civil cases to resolve.

Finally, in May 2022, after facing community pressure, Oxford decided to hire Guidepost Solutions, a company that has investigated abuse allegations at the Southern Baptist Convention.

But Guidepost struggled to get people to cooperate with its review, including those who work for the district. Unions and the lawyer brought in by the school’s insurance provider cautioned against talking. “In our experience, the extent of third-party interference of this investigation has been unusually extraordinary,” Guidepost has said in a statement.

During the tumult, two board members resigned, later saying that they felt the board was not well served by the lawyer’s involvement.

Guidepost declined to comment for this story. Oxford Community Schools and its insurance company didn’t respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment. The lawyer, Timothy Mullins, didn’t respond to ProPublica’s inquiries about his actions on behalf of the board.

“Obviously, this community wants answers,” the school board’s president, Dan D’Alessandro, told ProPublica. “That’s why we hired Guidepost — to get those answers.”

He added: “Once we have an opportunity to look at everything, then we’ll make any changes that are necessary.”

Guidepost delivered a report this month that assessed Oxford’s current strategies for security, suicide intervention and threat assessment. But it’s the second report, the one that will examine the events surrounding the shooting, that many parents feel is essential. It will draw from interviews as well as case files from investigators. However, it is unclear when it will be released.

Meanwhile, in lieu of a timely and comprehensive accounting, many Oxford families are left with unsettling questions.

“Every Tuesday marks another week without those four precious children that didn’t get to come home,” said a woman who works for the school at the March meeting, “and we still don’t get to have the answers for what happened, and people are still working at this school who were directly involved.”

I’m here, she added, to “demand the report be given to us.”

On the rural-urban fringe of southeast Michigan, where about 1,800 students attended Oxford High School, the final weeks of 2021 had everyone on edge.

In November, a student displayed a severed deer head in the courtyard with red paint looking like blood. He was disciplined, but less than a week later, in a boys’ restroom, students found a bird’s head in a jar.

Law enforcement and school personnel investigated but were unable to determine its origin, the district superintendent said in an email sent weeks later. As it happened, a sophomore named Ethan Crumbley was responsible for the bird’s head. He recorded the decapitation on his phone and wrote about it in his journal.

This is one of many disturbing details from the weeks before — and the day of — the shooting that were described in court documents and public testimony.

Ethan was spiraling, public records show. His Spanish teacher emailed school counselor Shawn Hopkins, saying he seemed sad. In a brief meeting outside a classroom, Hopkins told Ethan he was available if he wanted to talk.

On Nov. 26, Ethan’s father bought him a SIG Sauer 9 mm handgun. Three days later, an English teacher caught him searching online for bullets. She emailed Nicholas Ejak, dean of students, and Pamela Fine, another counselor.

At a five-minute meeting with Fine and Hopkins, Ethan told the counselors it was hobby research. Appearing calm, he said he’d gone to the range with his mom that weekend with his new gun. (She posted about it on Instagram: “Mom and son day testing out his new Xmas present.”)

Fine left a voicemail with Ethan’s mom, saying guns may be a hobby but searching for ammunition during class wasn’t good behavior.

His mom texted Ethan: “Seriously? Looking up bullets in school?? … Lol, I’m not mad you have to learn not to get caught.”

That evening, Ethan posted on Twitter: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. See you tomorrow Oxford.”

Early on a foggy Tuesday morning, Hopkins got an email sent by Ejak about an English teacher who’d caught Ethan watching a shooting video. Some 20 minutes later, a math teacher informed Ejak that on a test review, Ethan drew a picture of a handgun, a bullet, a laughing face with tears and a twice-shot figure with blood pouring from its mouth.

“Blood everywhere,” Ethan wrote.

“My life is useless.”

“The world is dead.”

“The thoughts won’t stop.”

“Help me.”

The video he watched was only a game, Ethan said in the counselor’s office.

Hopkins, Ejak and Fine are among the school staff that have faced civil suits from the case, including in federal court. Mullins, a lawyer representing them and the school district, said in an email that because of ongoing litigation, he wouldn’t comment on the facts of the case. In a motion to dismiss federal lawsuits, Mullins wrote that “nothing about what the individual defendants knew could have put them on notice” that Ethan “posed the specific risk of shooting multiple students.”

Hopkins asked about the drawing. By then, Ethan modified it, adding phrases like “Harmless act” and “I love my life so much!!!!”

Ethan said the drawing depicted a game he wanted to design. Asked about “my life is useless,” Ethan’s demeanor became sad, according to Hopkins’ testimony in a pretrial hearing in the criminal case against Ethan’s parents. He described difficulties, including a grandparent’s death and a family dog dying.

He said he wasn’t a danger to anyone, but Hopkins felt “there was enough suicidal ideation” to call Ethan’s mom, the counselor testified. Both parents arrived about 10:30.

The description of what happened next is based on court documents and public testimony, including from Hopkins. There is not yet a full public account from Ethan or his parents about the office meeting.

Ethan needs help, Hopkins remembered telling the parents, “today, if possible.” He provided a list of mental health resources.

But, the counselor testified, Ethan’s mom said they couldn’t take him that day because they needed to return to work. Hopkins was taken aback. It was the first time he’d had such a meeting where parents would not take their child home, Hopkins said. He told them he wanted Ethan to get support within 48 hours. “I’ll be following up,” he recalled saying.

Looking at his drawing, Ethan’s dad told his son he had people he could talk to and his journal to write in.

“Are we done?” Ethan’s mother asked.

Hopkins asked Ejak if any disciplinary issue prevented Ethan from returning to class. No, Ejak said.

“I guess so,” Hopkins said.

Less than 15 minutes after the meeting began, it was over. Ethan’s parents left without him.

Hopkins wrote Ethan a pass. At some point that morning, Ejak retrieved Ethan’s backpack from math class and returned it to him. No one asked about Ethan’s access to weapons or searched his backpack.

Back at work, his mom mentioned to her boss that she needed to find Ethan a counselor. She texted her son. “You ok? … You know you can talk to us and we won’t judge.”

At a pretrial hearing, a lawyer for Ethan’s mother noted that Hopkins was a mandatory reporter; if he truly felt Ethan was at risk of not getting proper medical attention, including psychological, he must report it to Children’s Protective Services. But no one called outside authorities. Nor did he insist that Ethan leave school.

He wasn’t forced to leave school, Hopkins testified, because “there was no discipline issue.” At the time, Hopkins was concerned that Ethan was a threat to himself and thought it best for him to not be alone. He intended to follow up the next morning about mental health services.

When a lawyer asked if Hopkins thought he should have done anything differently that day, Hopkins said: “I want that situation to be as different as possible. I acted off the information I had available.”

Ethan’s lawyer didn’t respond to requests for comment. A gag order prevents attorneys involved in his parents’ criminal cases from speaking to the media.

Less than two hours after the meeting with his parents, Hopkins and Ejak, Ethan emerged from a bathroom with the gun that had been in his backpack, along with ammunition and his hard-bound black journal. Every entry described shooting the school, including the last one: “The shooting is tomorrow. I have access to the gun and ammo.”

Ethan turned left and fired.

When a plane crashes, a federal agency begins an automatic and immediate investigation. Olivia Upham, whose brother was close to where shots were first fired, thought something like that would happen after a school shooting.

“I assumed that an outside agency, whether it be the attorney general, or the FBI, or some sort of commission of education and rule of law experts, would come in and help us with that,” said Upham, who, along with her mother, taught at Oxford’s middle school at the time.

In fact, comprehensive, third-party reviews of school shootings aren’t particularly common.

They typically happen in high-profile cases, said Densley of the Violence Project. “Higher body counts mean more scrutiny, more media attention, more parents who are asking questions about their loved ones.”

Even then, it’s a patchwork process. Multiple government agencies may issue distinct, sometimes overlapping reports, each informed by different investigative tools. Private companies, which may boast of former law enforcement officers and risk management professionals on their staff, are more often brought in for security assessments than for accountability reviews. Victim privacy and preserving a defendant’s right to a fair criminal trial also can add complexity.

Stephen J. Sedensky III, the local state’s attorney who authored one of several reports on the Sandy Hook shooting, said in an email that such reviews by public agencies are “often necessary and helpful in answering questions the public may have, in assisting policy and law makers and in preventing speculation as to the unknown.”

However, he noted, even with numerous Sandy Hook reports, speculation and conspiracies still took root in a vocal minority. “Victims’ families suffered and continue to suffer.”

Parkland is unusual in how thoroughly it was investigated. The state appointed a commission with parents, educators, law enforcement, advocates, public officials and mental health professionals. Even with the alleged shooter facing trial, the commission issued the preliminary report before the first anniversary. Within 20 months, it delivered its full 389-page report.

It was a deep dive into the shooter’s life and exposed chaotic breaches of protocol by school officials and law enforcement. The report catalyzed a number of significant new policies. The commission, which is funded by Florida’s Legislature through 2026, continues to address school safety and threat assessment statewide.

Max Schachter, a commissioner whose 14-year-old son died in the Parkland shooting, said the work was difficult “because every time we met, I basically had to relive Alex’s murder all over again.”

But, he said, the commission is devoted to making sure “that something good comes from this tragedy.”

Both of Steve St. Juliana’s daughters were at Oxford High School the day of the shooting. Only one came home.

Hana — athletic, empathetic, “a really bright soul,” her dad said — was shot and killed. As early details emerged about the shooter’s interactions with school officials, St. Juliana said he tried “desperately to give them the benefit of doubt.”

School officials sent some signals that they wanted to get answers for families like his.

Within a week, Oxford’s superintendent and the school board president at the time called for a third-party review. The board subsequently voted 7-0 on an eight-part resolution for a review that “will look far beyond the criminal investigation and into all the systemic factors that were at play.”

But by then, Mullins had assumed a large role in shaping decisions, advising the board and speaking on behalf of the district. Scarcely three hours after the shooting stopped, the district’s insurance company, SET SEG, connected Mullins with Oxford.

The insurer retained Mullins, and it would come at no cost to the district, according to a Nov. 30 email from a SET SEG claim manager to two top school officials. Mullins can “provide any legal assistance you may need.”

Mullins’ speciality: school immunity. He has successfully defended districts when a school conducted strip searches of students and when a football player died at practice.

Tom Donnelly, then the school board president, told ProPublica that it seemed that Mullins never wanted a review. “He had no intention of it happening.”

Mullins later told a Detroit News reporter that a review was premature and a waste of money. “Any lawyer would say don’t talk to anybody but us,” he said.

In December, state Attorney General Dana Nessel made her first of three offers for an investigation. The district turned her down. Mullins replied to Nessel in an email saying the district was already cooperating with the local prosecutor and sheriff, according to The Detroit News.

“I’m disappointed, quite honestly,” Nessel said on CNN. She said she hoped the district “cares as much about the safety of their students as they do shielding themselves from civil liability.”

Weeks passed. Months. No investigation.

To St. Juliana, the stakes couldn’t have been higher. “If you can’t even talk about it, if you can’t even admit what you did wrong, how are you supposed to fix it?” he said. “And we’re just supposed to have faith that you’re going to fix this behind the scenes? … And, more and more, you find out just how badly they messed up.”

A small cohort of community members began to conduct their own investigation of sorts, exploring not only Oxford’s policies on paper but its practices. They questioned whether Oxford consistently trained staff in threat assessment — a process for determining if a student poses a threat of violence — and whether it had in place the threat assessment team described in its own policies. If there was such a team, they asked, why wasn’t it activated in November 2021?

“We were not prepared,” said Danielle Krozek, an Oxford mom. “And so as a parent with a kid in school now, are we prepared now?”

In an email to community members in January 2022, the superintendent at the time said that “we have always taken threats very seriously and will continue to listen to students and parents who report threats to the district. In reminding everyone to ‘say something if you see something’ we are in no way suggesting that our community has ever hesitated to do so in the past.”

The principal, administrators, teachers and support staff “followed their training and implemented our District’s detailed emergency plans and protocol” on Nov. 30, 2021, and “put the safety of our students above their own safety,” wrote then-Superintendent Tim Throne, who has since retired.

The board insisted that a formal review couldn’t proceed because it would interfere with the criminal cases against the shooter and his parents. Two former board members said they believed this because of what Mullins told them.

The prosecutor’s office contradicted that explanation. Following inquiries from parents, it sent a March 4 letter to Oxford families saying that a review wouldn’t interfere with criminal proceedings — and that it had communicated this to school attorneys, too.

“To be clear,” the letter said, “decisions about what, when and how to conduct any investigation or assessment are up to the School Board and the community, and our office is not asking anyone to delay those efforts.”

But board members continued to blame looming legal cases for the delay. Lawyers for the district never delivered the prosecutor’s message to them, according to Donnelly and former board member Korey Bailey. They felt they had few options. Their understanding, they said, was that if they didn’t heed the advice of the attorney retained for Oxford by SET SEG, the insurer could rescind its coverage.

“Insurance companies had us by the throats,” Donnelly said. “We couldn’t be honest, and we couldn’t do our jobs, and we couldn’t be true to our community.”

Parents forwarded the prosecutor’s message to school officials, spoke at meetings and held a press conference. Donnelly and Bailey acknowledge it took two more months for the board to realize that the parents were right. In May, after the prosecutor’s office issued a letter affirming its support for an independent investigation, the board changed course. It retained its own law firm and soon hired Guidepost.

“I did not feel the level of confidence and trust in the attorney from the insurance company to allow him to continue representing me as a board member,” Bailey said, “and I strongly supported the board finding our own legal representation that we could trust.”

As Guidepost began seeking interviews with school employees, Mullins played a role in urging union members to be careful about participating.

Doug Pratt, the Michigan Education Association’s director for public affairs, told ProPublica in an email that the union passed along Mullins’ advice, which he said was that “members who are or could be litigants shouldn’t participate in the third party review, which is voluntary.” Some members have participated, and some declined, Pratt said.

In an email to ProPublica, Mullins said that “critical witnesses have all been interviewed by law enforcement officials. They have also been deposed — under oath — by victims’ attorneys. Their sworn testimony has been set forth in voluminous transcripts, which are available to all parties and were provided to Guidepost by my firm.”

By fall, Donnelly and Bailey had seen enough. They resigned from the board and held a press conference alleging failures in Oxford’s threat assessment practices.

Bailey said he believes that in the aftermath of school shootings, there needs to be a high-level agency that automatically investigates what happened. Without one, “the school’s insurance company was allowed to come in and take charge.”

D’Alessandro, the current board president, said he’s aware of the community’s anxiety and mistrust as it waits for answers. “Sometimes the messaging that comes out from the legal system and the legal teams isn’t necessarily reflective of that of what the school district is trying to do,” he said.

In January, Guidepost reported that it didn’t have interviews with 20% to 30% of witnesses and 50% to 60% of critical witnesses. Noting the absence of criminal allegations against school personnel and immunity protections for government employees, Guidepost urged people to come forward.

Over nearly 18 months, Oxford has taken steps to invest in the physical security of the high school, as this month’s 179-page report documented. That includes installing a weapons screening system at several entrances, using a camera-based artificial intelligence technology intended to detect weapons and mandating that students only carry clear backpacks during the school day. It also made changes to its threat assessment protocol. The report described strengths in current policies and practices, as well as gaps and excesses.

That’s not enough, said Brian Cooper, the father of two high schoolers. He wants to see the report on what went wrong. “I feel like they’re delaying it intentionally to make people give up. And that’s damaging for families that lost children, and had their children shot.”

Oxford will soon graduate the second class of students who escaped with their lives.

“You are running out of time to look these kids in the eye and tell them what was broken on Nov. 30,” 2021, said Renee Upham at an April board meeting. Along with her daughter Olivia, she used to teach at Oxford Middle School, and her son was inside the school during the shooting.

In March, a circuit court dismissed civil allegations against the district and its employees, including school counselors and the dean of students, affirming that the defendants are protected from the claims against them by governmental immunity. An appeal is expected. On Friday, a federal judge issued an opinion on 10 related lawsuits, granting them in part and dismissing them in part. The claims that Hopkins, Ejak and Oxford Community Schools presented a state-created danger can go forward.

“I don’t want to make a profit off of this. This is about forcing them to change,” said Andrea Jones, co-founder of the student-parent group Change4Oxford, which initiated a federal lawsuit. “And it’s really sad, if you think about it, that we have to bring a lawsuit to do that.”

The community remains shaken, and tensions roil. An Instagram account run by students shares their poetry, with titles like “Stuck,” “Why” and “Nothing will happen if we do nothing.” Parents report problems with bullying and kids struggling to attend class in the same building where they were shot at.

Some students, including Reina St. Juliana, Hana’s sister, created the group No Future Without Today to prevent future tragedies. She and her father advocated at the state Capitol for gun safety bills, which, after a February shooting at Michigan State University, were signed into law.

And a battle is brewing over the May 18 graduation ceremony. Many students want to wear orange cords sent to them by Students Demand Action, which is part of Everytown for Gun Safety, an advocacy group. But the superintendent said in a statement that no unapproved apparel is allowed.

Family members protested in emails to school officials. Despite the school’s “lack of procedures and protocols that allowed November 30 to happen, these students continue to show up and participate to earn enough credits to graduate,” wrote Chalmers Fitzpatrick, an Oxford mom. “They want to wear orange, and this should be a no-brainer.”

After hearing from family members and students, the district offered to let students wear navy and gold cords to acknowledge “the incomparable challenges they have had to face in their journey.”

“I get the impression they want people to graduate, move on, forget,” Olivia Upham said. “The less people in Oxford that were there that day, the less pressure they’re going to get.”

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Mariam Elba contributed research.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Anna Clark; Photography by Sylvia Jarrus for ProPublica.

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This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief Weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues.

When Patty Troyan’s son Logan Castello died by suicide in November 2019 in his Central Texas home, she immediately tried to understand what prompted him to take his own life not long after getting married and days before a planned family Thanksgiving gathering.

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Castello was a 21-year-old private first class in the Army. He was stationed at Fort Hood but had died in his off-post home in Killeen, a city of about 156,000 people that abuts the massive military installation. Troyan assumed she’d get some details about what happened from the civilian police, who responded to the scene.

But what she got back only left her with more questions. The city of Killeen’s legal department sent her 19 pages of police records, but almost every detail about what happened was redacted. No one told her that they suspected foul play, and there’s no indication that Castello was being investigated by police at the time of his death.

“I couldn’t understand it. I couldn’t understand why so much was redacted,” Troyan said.

“I thought that there was either a lot that they weren’t telling us or they were very inept and didn’t do a thorough job,” she said. “If they send me black pages, then I can’t question the thoroughness.”

Killeen officials denied Troyan the records by citing an exception in Texas’ public records law that allows law enforcement agencies to withhold or heavily redact police reports if a person has not been convicted or received deferred adjudication in the case. The rule was established in 1997 as a way to protect the privacy of people who were accused of or arrested for criminal activity that’s never substantiated.

However, law enforcement agencies have often used the exception, sometimes referred to as the dead suspects loophole, to withhold information in cases in which suspects die in police custody or at the hands of police officers. KXAN-TV, an Austin television station, published an extensive series on the practice in 2018.

What has gotten far less attention are cases like Castello’s. He wasn’t a suspect in a crime. He didn’t die in law enforcement custody. He took his own life and was discovered only after a relative arrived at Castello’s apartment and couldn’t get in because the deadbolt was locked from the inside. The relative called 911; Killeen police entered the second-floor apartment using a ladder, according to an Army investigative report, and discovered Castello dead in a bedroom. No one else was in the home, and there were no signs of forced entry, the report said. The Army investigation listed Castello’s death as a suicide and said no criminal act had occurred.

ProPublica and The Texas Tribune have identified at least two other cases like Castello’s involving apparent non-officer-related suicides in which the city of Killeen refused to release complete police records, citing the “no convictions” exception.

In all three cases, the people involved were soldiers stationed at Fort Hood who died off-post in Killeen, one in December 2004 and another a few weeks before Castello in 2019.

Texas Democratic state Rep. Joe Moody, who is trying to pass a bill this legislative session that would close the loophole, told the news organizations the use of the exception in the case of a service member’s suicide “is so far outside the contemplated exception, that I find it odd that it’s even raised.” Moody has also said he feared that the loophole would be used to hide records involving a mass shooting last year at a Uvalde elementary school. But officials have so far cited other exceptions to withhold those records.

When government agencies want to deny the release of public records, they must ask for a ruling from the Texas attorney general’s office. The attorney general upheld Killeen’s request to withhold the complete police report on Castello from Troyan, saying the office reviewed the city’s arguments and the police report and concurred with the city’s conclusion.

Ofelia Miramontez, a spokesperson for the Killeen Police Department, said department leadership would not speak about pending legislation and referred the news organizations to the city’s legal department.

Killeen City Attorney Holli Clements refused to answer specific questions the news organizations sent her. She wrote in an email that the city “strictly adheres to the provisions of the Texas Public Information Act and the interpretive opinions of the Texas Attorney General and the courts. The City has released information required to be released by law. The City has no further comment.”

Lt. Col. Tania P. Donovan, a spokesperson for the 3rd Corps at Fort Hood, referred questions to the city of Killeen and the Texas attorney general’s office.

ProPublica and the Tribune reached out to First Amendment advocates and lawyers in the state who said the use of this public records exception in these suicide cases reflected the broader trend of law enforcement agencies trying to withhold information whenever they can.

“If this provision of the Public Information Act is being used in this particular way by law enforcement, it’s yet another reason this part of the law needs to be repealed,” said Kelley Shannon, executive director of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas. “It’s a misuse of the Public Information Act.”

Reid Pillifant, a First Amendment attorney, said: “The application of this has spread well beyond what was intended and has led to these kinds of absurd results in cases where the public clearly has a right to know what happened.” (Pillifant represents a coalition of media outlets, including ProPublica and the Tribune, in two lawsuits seeking the release of information about the Uvalde shooting.)

“The fact that family members can’t even get records about their deceased relatives just shows how kind of perverse the application of this provision has been,” he said.

When Troyan got the redacted report back from the Killeen police, she immediately called the city’s legal department. The woman Troyan spoke to — she cannot remember her name or title — apparently told her the city didn’t have to release any records.

Under Texas law, records are presumed public unless a government agency cites an exemption in the Public Information Act that supports withholding those records. Cities have discretion over whether to invoke the no conviction exception.

Castello’s father, Kenny Castello, was equally stunned by the city’s decision. He’d had a 20-year career in law enforcement in Ohio and could understand withholding records if a criminal investigation was ongoing.

“But if this was a cut-and-dry suicide, why the hell are you, why are you blacking things out? Why are you not letting us see the entire report?” Kenny Castello said. “At times that makes me think there was something more than what they’re leading on.”

Moody, the state representative, said governmental agencies’ decisions to withhold this information naturally leaves families with nothing but unanswered questions.

“If you have unanswered questions, and no willingness from the governmental entity to release records, you’re probably gonna start making assumptions that something bad, that something wrong happened,” he said. “Otherwise, why use the exception?”

Starting in 2017, Moody has filed bills every legislative session attempting to revise the exception. In his first two attempts, the bill made it out of committee but was never approved by the state House of Representatives. In 2021, the bill did not get a committee hearing. Moody’s bill cleared the Texas House last week and now moves to the state Senate.

The exception drew intense attention on May 24 last year, when an 18-year-old man fatally shot 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde before law enforcement killed him. It was the deadliest school shooting in the state’s history. Days later, Republican Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan tweeted it would be “absolutely unconscionable” if the dead suspects loophole were used to deny the public more information about how the shooting unfolded. He went on to tweet, “I think it’s time we pass legislation to end the dead suspect loophole for good in 2023.”

Phelan declined comment for this story.

So far, governmental agencies that have denied records requests related to the Uvalde shooting have cited another exception that allows records to be withheld if an investigation is ongoing. However, many First Amendment advocates fear agencies will cite the no conviction exception should no one ultimately be prosecuted in the case.

Moody’s latest proposal, House Bill 30, would modify the public records law so the exception couldn't be used if someone other than a police officer is the subject of the police report and is either dead or incapacitated or has consented to the information being released.

Law enforcement agencies such as the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas, the state’s largest police union, have argued releasing this information could reveal public information about peace officers who are falsely accused of wrongdoing. Language in the proposed bill would also allow for the release of information about a police officer’s alleged misconduct in their personnel file if the person described in the information is dead or incapacitated or consents to its release.

CLEAT Executive Board President Marvin Ryals, with the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office, testified against Moody’s bill last month before a Texas House committee. He said he would be fine if only families could get the records.

Troyan recalled the Killeen official telling her that if the city released the full police report to her, then anyone could get those records.

“And my response was, ‘I don't care if you print it on community flyers as long as you give it to us,’” Troyan recalled.

Every suicide has its own set of ramifications, said Joseph Larsen, a First Amendment attorney and board member of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas. There’s also some measure of public good that can come from understanding soldier suicides, which may very well be tied to their military service, he said.

Suicide rates of active-duty service members have gradually increased since 2011, although the 2021 rate was lower than the previous year, according to a recent Department of Defense report. Families of military personnel who die by suicide are often left grasping for information; the military can takes months or years to release investigative files, and those can still leave loved ones with questions. Troyan eventually got Army reports on her son’s suicide, but she said much of that was redacted as well.

If you or someone you know needs help, here are a few resources:

• Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988
• Text the Crisis Text Line from anywhere in the U.S. to reach a crisis counselor: 741741

Three and a half years after Castello’s death, Troyan is trying her best not to focus on how he died but on the person he was. Captain of his high school football team and class president. Caring, charismatic and joyful. “He did not know a stranger,” she said.

She now accepts that he died by suicide, that he was experiencing depression though his parents had no idea until after his death.

“I don’t think I’ll get any more answers than what I already have, which is minimal,” Troyan said. “I’m going to keep hitting that wall. Now hopefully if this law changes, it won’t be like that.”

Lexi Churchill contributed research.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Vianna Davila.

We speak with Jumana Abo Oxa, project manager at the Greek refugee project, Elpida Home, who is in Washington, D.C., where she is meeting with Biden administration officials and lawmakers in an effort to seek help for 82 families, including many women parliamentarians, who evacuated from Afghanistan but have been stuck in Greece for over a year and a half.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

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From the first weeks after the 9/11 attacks, suspicions about a possible Saudi government role in the plot have focused on a mysterious, 42-year-old graduate student who welcomed the first two Qaida hijackers after they landed in Los Angeles in January 2000.

The Saudi student, Omar al-Bayoumi, claimed to have met the two terrorists entirely by chance; he said he was just being hospitable when he helped them settle in San Diego. Both the FBI and the 9/11 Commission supported Bayoumi’s account, dismissing the suspicions of agents who thought he might be a Saudi spy.

After nearly 20 years, however, the FBI has changed its story. In documents declassified last year, the bureau affirmed that Bayoumi was in fact an agent of the Saudi intelligence service who worked with Saudi religious officials and reported to the kingdom’s powerful ambassador in Washington.