Public consultations for the proposed Shield, which European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced in 2024, closed on May 26.

The Commission has stated that defense of the press will be an “important part” of the initiative, which seeks to address foreign interference online, and counter disinformation and information manipulation, as well as other threats to democratic processes. 

During its 2019 to 2024 term, the European Commission stepped up its defense of media freedom, with actions including: 

• The 2024 European Media Freedom Act to stop media capture by vested interests;
• A 2022 Directive and Recommendation to limit the use of vexatious lawsuits filed to censor critical reporting, known as SLAPPS, or Strategic Lawsuits against Public Participation;
• The 2021 Recommendation on journalists’ safety, which guides member states on how to protect journalists.

“Brussels has created the tools for strengthening media freedom in Europe, but journalists need to see that they work,” said CPJ Deputy Advocacy Director, EU, Tom Gibson. “The European Democracy Shield should provide a clear roadmap to push existing reforms forward. EU member states should respond with both financial commitments to ensure its success and renewed political will to save journalism in Europe.”

The impact of recent initiatives has yet to be seen. As CPJ noted in its 2023 report, “Fragile Progress: The struggle for press freedom in the European Union”, improved and sustained action from Brussels is needed to ensure member states deliver on the reforms.

The question of Europe’s political will coincides with a dire financial outlook for the media worldwide, including a shift to digital platforms and declining advertising revenues. The Trump administration’s withdrawal of U.S. financial support has plunged many independent media outlets in Europe into crisis.

Negotiations over the EU’s 2028 to 2034 budget, the Multiannual Financial Framework, are likely to be tense, in part because of diverging outlooks from member states and economic pressures. 

Read CPJ’s full recommendations to the European Commission on the European Democracy Shield here.

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

Cardinal Robert Prevost of the United States has been picked to be the new leader of the Roman Catholic Church; he will be known as Pope Leo XIV.

Now, as greetings resound across the Pacific and globally, attention turns to what vision the first US pope will bring.

Change is hard to bring about in the Catholic Church. During his pontificate, Francis often gestured toward change without actually changing church doctrines. He permitted discussion of ordaining married men in remote regions where populations were greatly underserved due to a lack of priests, but he did not actually allow it.

• READ MORE: ‘Leone!’ Vatican crowds hail Leo XIV as new pope of the Catholic Church
• Papua New Guinean Catholic students extend congratulations to Pope Leo

On his own initiative, he set up a commission to study the possibility of ordaining women as deacons, but he did not follow it through.

However, he did allow priests to offer the Eucharist, the most important Catholic sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, to Catholics who had divorced and remarried without being granted an annulment.

Likewise, Francis did not change the official teaching that a sacramental marriage is between a man and a woman, but he did allow for the blessing of gay couples, in a manner that did appear to be a sanctioning of gay marriage.

To what degree will the new pope stand or not stand in continuity with Francis? As a scholar who has studied the writings and actions of the popes since the time of the Second Vatican Council, a series of meetings held to modernize the church from 1962 to 1965, I am aware that every pope comes with his own vision and his own agenda for leading the church.

Still, the popes who immediately preceded them set practical limits on what changes could be made. There were limitations on Francis as well; however, the new pope, I argue, will have more leeway because of the signals Francis sent.

The process of synodality
Francis initiated a process called “synodality,” a term that combines the Greek words for “journey” and “together.” Synodality involves gathering Catholics of various ranks and points of view to share their faith and pray with each other as they address challenges faced by the church today.

One of Francis’ favourite themes was inclusion. He carried forward the teaching of the Second Vatican Council that the Holy Spirit — that is, the Spirit of God who inspired the prophets and is believed to be sent by Christ among Christians in a special way — is at work throughout the whole church; it includes not only the hierarchy but all of the church members.

This belief constituted the core principle underlying synodality.

Francis launched a two-year global consultation process in October 2022, culminating in a synod in Rome in October 2024. Catholics all over the world offered their insights and opinions during this process.

The synod discussed many issues, some of which were controversial, such as clerical sexual abuse, the need for oversight of bishops, the role of women in general and the ordination of women as deacons.

The final synod document did not offer conclusions concerning these topics but rather aimed more at promoting the transformation of the entire Catholic Church into a synodal church in which Catholics tackle together the many challenges of the modern world.

Francis refrained from issuing his own document in response, in order that the synod’s statement could stand on its own.

The process of synodality in one sense places limits on bishops and the pope by emphasising their need to listen closely to all church members before making decisions. In another sense, though, in the long run the process opens up the possibility for needed developments to take place when and if lay Catholics overwhelmingly testify that they believe the church should move in a certain direction.

Change is hard in the church
A pope, however, cannot simply reverse official positions that his immediate predecessors had been emphasising. Practically speaking, there needs to be a papacy, or two, during which a pope will either remain silent on matters that call for change or at least limit himself to hints and signals on such issues.

In 1864, Pius IX condemned the proposition that “the Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church.”

It wasn’t until 1965 – some 100 years later – that the Second Vatican Council, in The Declaration on Religious Freedom, would affirm that “a wrong is done when government imposes upon its people, by force or fear or other means, the profession or repudiation of any religion. …”

A second major reason why popes may refrain from making top-down changes is that they may not want to operate like a dictator issuing executive orders in an authoritarian manner.

Francis was accused by his critics of acting in this way with his positions on Eucharist for those remarried without a prior annulment and on blessings for gay couples. The major thrust of his papacy, however, with his emphasis on synodality, was actually in the opposite direction.

Notably, when the Amazon Synod — held in Rome in October 2019 — voted 128-41 to allow for married priests in the Brazilian Amazon region, Francis rejected it as not being the appropriate time for such a significant change.

Archbishop Timothy Broglio, President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, expresses joy and gratitude following the election of Pope Leo XIV.https://t.co/r2GClc7hyM

— Vatican News (@VaticanNews) May 9, 2025

Past doctrines
The belief that the pope should express the faith of the people and not simply his own personal opinions is not a new insight from Francis.

The doctrine of papal infallibility, declared at the First Vatican Council in 1870, held that the pope, under certain conditions, could express the faith of the church without error.

The limitations and qualifications of this power include that the pope:

• be speaking not personally but in his official capacity as the head of the church;
• he must not be in heresy;
• he must be free of coercion and of sound mind;
• he must be addressing a matter of faith and morals; and
• he must consult relevant documents and other Catholics so that what he teaches represents not simply his own opinions but the faith of the church.

The Marian doctrines of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption offer examples of the importance of consultation. The Immaculate Conception, proclaimed by Pope Pius IX in 1854, is the teaching that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was herself preserved from original sin, a stain inherited from Adam that Catholics believe all other human beings are born with, from the moment of her conception.

The Assumption, proclaimed by Pius XII in 1950, is the doctrine that Mary was taken body and soul into heaven at the end of her earthly life.

The documents in which these doctrines were proclaimed stressed that the bishops of the church had been consulted and that the faith of the lay people was being affirmed.

Unity, above all
One of the main duties of the pope is to protect the unity of the Catholic Church. On one hand, making many changes quickly can lead to schism, an actual split in the community.

In 2022, for example, the Global Methodist Church split from the United Methodist Church over same-sex marriage and the ordination of noncelibate gay bishops. There have also been various schisms within the Anglican communion in recent years.

The Catholic Church faces similar challenges but so far has been able to avoid schisms by limiting the actual changes being made.

On the other hand, not making reasonable changes that acknowledge positive developments in the culture regarding issues such as the full inclusion of women or the dignity of gays and lesbians can result in the large-scale exit of members.

Pope Leo XIV, I argue, needs to be a spiritual leader, a person of vision, who can build upon the legacy of his immediate predecessors in such a way as to meet the challenges of the present moment.

He already stated that he wants a synodal church that is “close to the people who suffer,” signaling a great deal about the direction he will take.

If the new pope is able to update church teachings on some hot-button issues, it will be precisely because Francis set the stage for him.

Dr Dennis Doyle, is professor emeritus of religious studies, University of Dayton. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

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

This article was produced by ProPublica in partnership with The Oregonian/OregonLive. Sign up for Dispatches, to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

In Phnom Penh’s hot season, when the Cambodian capital’s sweltering, subtropical air routinely soars to 100 degrees, more workers than usual visited the infirmaries inside a factory that made baby clothes for Nike, the world’s largest athletic apparel brand.

As many as 15 people a month typically became too weak to work in May and June, according to a medical worker employed by the factory. Even at other times of year, she said, eight to 10 workers wound up in the clinic monthly because they felt weak, including one or two a month who fell unconscious and needed to go to the hospital.

Other former employees told ProPublica they sometimes saw two or three people a day taken to an on-site clinic. One described how he carried workers too weak to walk. Another said she saw thin workers being taken to the clinic, their faces pale and eyes closed.

Y&W Garment’s employees — at one time numbering around 4,500 — operated sewing machines and packaged clothing in cavernous buildings with fans but no air conditioning. The fans sometimes broke and weren’t fixed, one worker said. Another said the inside of the factory could get hotter than it was outdoors. “It’s so hot,” said Phan Oem, 53, who started working there shortly after the factory opened in 2012. “I’m sweaty. It’s too hot.”

Workers have fainted for years inside Cambodia’s garment factories, where more than 57,000 people now produce Nike goods. People at Nike’s suppliers fainted en masse in 2012, 2014, 2017, 2018 and 2019, according to news reports at the time, part of a string of events in which thousands of Cambodians got sick, vomited or collapsed on the job. (The term “fainting” in Cambodia is used for conditions that range from losing consciousness to becoming too dizzy or weak to work.)

Nike had moved into Cambodia in 2000, just two years after co-founder Phil Knight promised to end labor abuses that accompanied its push into Southeast Asia.

Nike took action after faintings made headlines. It sent executives on a fact-finding mission in 2012. It asked for international labor officials to investigate. Nike in 2017 told The Guardian, “We take the issue of fainting seriously, as it can be both a social response and an indication of issues within a factory that may require corrective action.”

Yet for all the measures Nike says it relies on to keep workers safe, which include heat standards in factories, internal and external audits, announced and unannounced visits, Y&W workers said fainting persisted during the two years Nike products were made there.

Jill Tucker, who led the U.N.-backed oversight group Better Factories Cambodia from 2011 to 2014, said she was not surprised to hear that workers regularly fainted at Y&W Garment.

The problem is “a consequence of low wages and poor working conditions that continue, even after decades of work on this issue,” Tucker said. “People work very hard for very little pay.”

Representatives of Y&W Garment and its parent company, Hong Kong-based Wing Luen Knitting Factory Ltd., did not respond to emails, text messages or calls.

It’s unclear what Nike knew about working conditions at the Phnom Penh factory. Better Factories Cambodia, whose audits Nike has said in the past it relied on to monitor suppliers, told ProPublica it did not know workers were fainting at Y&W. ProPublica previously reported on low wages at Y&W, where just 1% of workers made what Nike says is typical of workers in its supply chain.

Nike didn’t answer ProPublica’s questions, including about whether it stopped working with the Y&W factory because of any violations of its code of conduct. Y&W Garment stopped making Nike apparel in late 2023, shortly before going bankrupt, workers told ProPublica. Nike said in a statement that it is “committed to ethical and responsible manufacturing” and sets clear expectations for its suppliers through its code of conduct.

Workers said Nike garments at Y&W were produced under the auspices of Haddad Brands, a private New York company whose website says it produces Nike children’s clothing and enforces Nike’s code of conduct. Haddad did not respond to repeated emails; someone who answered its phone hung up on a reporter who called, and no one responded to a subsequent voicemail.

On its website, Haddad says it works directly with its factories “to ensure that each of our suppliers has the ability to not only manufacture our product, but to do so responsibly — for the workers, for the environment, and for our customers.”

At Y&W Garment, a set of corrugated metal buildings along both sides of a busy road in rapidly developed southern Phnom Penh, two workers said faintings were so frequent that they were no longer surprising. The medical employee interviewed by ProPublica blamed overtime hours and workers not sleeping much or eating enough.

If employees fell unconscious, they went to the hospital, the medical worker said. Otherwise, they were given calcium pills and allowed to rest on a thin mat spread on a metal cot.

Then, she said, they typically went back to work.

Y&W is not an isolated case. The Cambodian government reported more than 4,500 faintings in factories between 2017 and 2019, according to news reports, a problem it has attributed to pesticide spraying, chemicals used in manufacturing, heat, poor nutrition and inadequate ventilation. Media reports also quoted the government citing psychological factors, such as workers’ beliefs in supernatural forces.

Bill Clinton set out to alleviate harsh working conditions in Cambodia’s factories in 1999, when as president he signed a trade deal that greatly expanded Cambodian garment exports to the United States.

Cambodia’s emerging industry at the time was helping to shore up the country’s economy as it recovered from war and the 1970s Khmer Rouge genocide. A few months after the trade deal was signed, an incident illustrated why labor issues were a concern. More than two dozen exhausted workers fainted at a Phnom Penh garment factory. A union representative told a local newspaper they’d been working 14-hour days, fearful they’d be fired.

The Clinton trade agreement called for creating a labor monitor to bring Cambodia’s factories up to international standards. If the manufacturers improved their working conditions, the United States would expand its import quotas. Better Factories Cambodia, which is part of the United Nations’ International Labor Organization and has been funded by the U.S. Labor Department, began operating in 2001.

The group would ensure “American companies like Gap or Nike feel safe placing orders in Cambodia, knowing that factories comply with human rights, labor laws and good working conditions,” Van Sou Ieng, then-president of the Cambodian garment industry’s trade association, told Vogue in 2002.

Nike, which had withdrawn from the country when a BBC investigation in 2000 found children as young as 12 working for a Nike supplier, returned after Better Factories Cambodia launched. The company has repeatedly pointed to Better Factories Cambodia as an essential part of its factory oversight over the years. In 2012, Nike said that it relied on the group’s factory audits, rather than conducting its own, to ensure adequate working conditions in the country. (Nike did not respond when asked about Better Factories Cambodia’s current role in auditing.)

Unlike workplace safety regulators in the United States, Better Factories Cambodia was not given enforcement power to fine or shut down problem factories. In addition, industry and government made up two-thirds of the organization’s advisory committee. That gave them much more influence than workers, according to Tucker.

In 2012, Better Factories Cambodia took on mass faintings with something called the One Change Campaign. It followed a string of media reports that prompted a frantic search for solutions, Tucker said. The idea was to get each factory owner to do one thing to reduce fainting that the law didn’t already require. It might be free lunches, snacks or twice-daily paid exercise programs to combat fatigue and monotony — aerobics for workers who were at risk of being malnourished.

“It was just lame,” said Tucker, who was the organization’s leader at the time. She said she came to realize that the agency was taking the wrong approach, focusing on short-term initiatives instead of tackling the root causes of problems.

Better Factories Cambodia has had a mixed record since then.

It has called attention to the failure of Cambodian factories to obey labor standards. The organization in February reported that almost half of the more than 350 factories it inspected in 2023 made employees work excessive overtime hours, while two-thirds of factories were hotter than the organization’s recommended 90 degrees Fahrenheit. The report didn’t identify the factories.

Daramongkol Keo, a Better Factories Cambodia spokesperson, said the organization has seen meaningful improvements in wage compliance, gender equality, working hours and workplace safety while it has been operating. He said the group has consistently monitored and reported fainting incidents in Cambodia.

For all the issues it’s uncovered, though, labor advocates say its inspectors miss many more.

A 2024 report from the Center for Alliance of Labor and Human Rights, a Cambodian legal aid group, found that Better Factories gave perfect marks for labor union compliance even at factories where employees said union busting was pervasive.

If Better Factories’ findings don’t reflect actual working conditions, the report said, “then everyone is participating — whether willingly or not — in a large-scale whitewashing scheme.”

When asked for a response to the criticism, the leader of Better Factories Cambodia, Froukje Boele, told ProPublica, “we appreciate the report’s focus and emphasis on working conditions, freedom of association and collective bargaining.”

Cambodia’s garment industry praises Better Factories Cambodia’s work. Ken Loo, the current head of the industry’s trade group, said the program complements government and industry efforts “to ensure high levels of social and labor compliance.”

Better Factories Cambodia was unaware of the incidents at Y&W Garment that former workers described to ProPublica, according to Keo, the spokesperson. That’s despite conducting four inspections from March 2020 through July 2023.

The organization acknowledged some shortcomings of its two-day, unannounced audits in a report this year. It said problems like sexual harassment and efforts to interfere with union organizing are hard to verify.

“If fainting incidents were known but not adequately addressed at the factory level,” Keo told ProPublica, “it underscores the broader challenges of enforcement and accountability within the industry.”

Had the issue of faintings been confined to Cambodia, the shortcomings of Better Factories Cambodia might explain Nike’s failure to rid its supply chain of the problem. That wasn’t the case, according to findings of a labor monitoring group in Vietnam in 2016.

That year, the Worker Rights Consortium described numerous faintings at a Vietnamese supplier of Nike and other Western brands. Workers at Hansae Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City told the group that pressure to meet production targets in the un-air-conditioned factory was so high that they didn’t drink water to save time visiting the toilet. Hundreds of workers went on strike, twice.

The consortium called in a certified industrial hygienist, Garrett Brown, to conduct an independent investigation.

It was months before Brown was allowed to enter the 12-building factory complex that employed roughly 10,000 people. Inside, he and another colleague recorded temperatures as high as 95 degrees, he said.

“It was goddamn hot inside those plants, for sure,” Brown told ProPublica. By the end of the day, he said, he was exhausted.

“You’re sweating profusely, walking between the buildings and in the buildings as well,” he said. “And we were just doing it for eight hours — and a lot of workers were going for 10, 12, 14 hours.”

Hansae, which didn’t respond to emails from ProPublica, developed a remediation plan to fix the problems Brown and others had identified. It included installing cooling systems and shutting off the electricity in production areas to ensure that workers took lunch breaks. Nike no longer produces at the factory.

Temperatures came down far faster in 2021 when Nike was confronted with an employee complaint about dizziness and dehydration at Nike’s retail store in downtown Portland, which sits not far from the company’s suburban corporate headquarters.

Unlike in Vietnam, the complaint was about temperatures in the low 80s — “super hot,” one worker told an inspector from the Oregon Occupational Safety and Health Division — not the mid-90s that Brown measured in Ho Chi Minh City. And unlike in Vietnam, it took days, not months, for workplace safety inspectors to get inside.

According to a state report, the inspectors quickly discovered that the problem was already being addressed, at least temporarily. Nike had brought in five portable air conditioners, spending what a company official would later estimate was $40,000 to get the summer heat under control.

Keat Soriththeavy and Ouch Sony contributed reporting and translation. Kirsten Berg of ProPublica and Matthew Kish of The Oregonian/OregonLive contributed research.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Rob Davis.

Pope Francis has died on Easter Monday, aged 88, the Vatican announced. The head of the Catholic Church had recently survived being hospitalised with double pneumonia.

Cardinal Kevin Farrell’s announcement began:

“Dear brothers and sisters, with deep sorrow I must announce the death of our Holy Father Francis. At 7:35 this morning, the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the house of the Father.”

There were many unusual aspects of Pope Francis’ papacy. He was the first Jesuit pope, the first from the Americas (and the southern hemisphere), the first to choose the name “Francis” and the first to give a TED talk.

• READ MORE: Pope Francis dies one day after first post-hospital public appearance and with final plea for Gaza
• How the next pope will be elected — what goes on at the conclave
• Pope Francis updates: Leader of Roman Catholic Church dies at 88

He was also the first pope in more than 600 years to be elected following the resignation, rather than death, of his predecessor.

From the very start of his papacy, Francis seemed determined to do things differently and present the papacy in a new light. Even in thinking about his burial, he chose the unexpected: to be placed to rest not in the Vatican, but in the Basilica of St Mary Major in Rome – the first pope to be buried there in hundreds of years.

Vatican News reported the late Pope Francis had requested his funeral rites be simplified.

“The renewed rite,” said Archbishop Diego Ravelli, “seeks to emphasise even more that the funeral of the Roman Pontiff is that of a pastor and disciple of Christ and not of a powerful person of this world.”

Straddling a line between “progressive” and “conservative”, Francis experienced tension with both sides. In doing so, his papacy shone a spotlight on what it means to be Catholic today.

The Pope’s Easter Blessing    Video: AP

The day before his death, Pope Francis made a brief appearance on Easter Sunday to bless the crowds at St Peter’s Square.

Between a rock and a hard place
Francis was deemed not progressive enough by some, yet far too progressive by others.

His apostolic exhortation (an official papal teaching on a particular issue or action) Amoris Laetitia, ignited great controversy for seemingly being (more) open to the question of whether people who have divorced and remarried may receive Eucharist.

He also disappointed progressive Catholics, many of whom hoped he would make stronger changes on issues such as the roles of women, married clergy, and the broader inclusion of LGBTQIA+ Catholics.

The reception of his exhortation Querida Amazonia was one such example. In this document, Francis did not endorse marriage for priests, despite bishops’ requests for this. He also did not allow the possibility of women being ordained as deacons to address a shortage of ordained ministers. His discerning spirit saw there was too much division and no clear consensus for change.

Francis was also openly critical of Germany’s controversial “Synodal Way” – a series of conferences with bishops and lay people — that advocated for positions contrary to Church teachings. Francis expressed concern on multiple occasions that this project was a threat to the unity of the Church.

At the same time, Francis was no stranger to controversy from the conservative side of the Church, receiving “dubia” or “theological doubts” over his teaching from some of his Cardinals. In 2023, he took the unusual step of responding to some of these doubts.

Pope Francis is seen as “one of the most vocal leaders on #Gaza. He was always condemning the war on Gaza, and asking for a ceasefire and … end of this conflict.” #AsiaPacificReport #PopeFrancis #GazaGenocide @palestine @OnlinePalEng @PalestineAusNZ https://t.co/vtuTpIVYmv pic.twitter.com/6EF1wdhgYL

— David Robie (@DavidRobie) April 21, 2025

Impact on the Catholic Church
In many ways, the most striking thing about Francis was not his words or theology, but his style. He was a modest man, even foregoing the Apostolic Palace’s grand papal apartments to live in the Vatican’s simpler guest house.

He may well be remembered most for his simplicity of dress and habits, his welcoming and pastoral style and his wise spirit of discernment.

He is recognised as giving a clear witness to the life, love and joy of Jesus in the spirit of the Second Vatican Council – a point of major reform in modern Church history. This witness has translated into two major developments in Church teachings and life.

Love for our common home
The first of these relates to environmental teachings. In 2015, Francis released his ground-breaking encyclical, Laudato si’: On Care for Our Common Home. It expanded Catholic social teaching by giving a comprehensive account of how the environment reflects our God-given “common home”.

Consistent with recent popes such as Benedict XVI and John Paul II, Francis acknowledged climate change and its destructive impacts and causes. He summarised key scientific research to forcefully argue for an evidence-based approach to addressing humans’ impact on the environment.

He also made a pivotal and innovative contribution to the climate change debate by identifying the ethical and spiritual causes of environmental destruction.

Francis argued combating climate change relied on the “ecological conversion” of the human heart, so that people may recognise the God-given nature of our planet and the fundamental call to care for it. Without this conversion, pragmatic and political measures wouldn’t be able to counter the forces of consumerism, exploitation and selfishness.

Francis argued a new ethic and spirituality was needed. Specifically, he said Jesus’ way of love – for other people and all creation – is the transformative force that could bring sustainable change for the environment and cultivate fraternity among people (and especially with the poor).

Synodality: moving towards a Church that listens
Francis’s second major contribution, and one of the most significant aspects of his papacy, was his commitment to “synodality”. While there’s still confusion over what synodality actually means, and its potential for political distortion, it is above all a way of listening and discerning through openness to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

It involves hierarchy and lay people transparently and honestly discerning together, in service of the mission of the church. Synodality is as much about the process as the goal. This makes sense as Pope Francis was a Jesuit, an order focused on spreading Catholicism through spiritual formation and discernment.

Drawing on his rich Jesuit spirituality, Francis introduced a way of conversation centred on listening to the Holy Spirit and others, while seeking to cultivate friendship and wisdom.

With the conclusion of the second session of the Synod on Synodality in October 2024, it is too soon to assess its results. However, those who have been involved in synodal processes have reported back on their transformative potential.

Archbishop of Brisbane, Mark Coleridge, explained how participating in the 2015 Synod “was an extraordinary experience [and] in some ways an awakening”.

Cardinals use a centuries-old voting process to elect a new pope, complete with smoke signals to indicate the outcome. And the next papal conclave will be the most diverse in Catholic history.

Here’s what you need to know about the process:https://t.co/osfOYKagk9

— The Conversation U.S. (@ConversationUS) April 21, 2025

Catholicism in the modern age
Francis’ papacy inspired both great joy and aspirations, as well as boiling anger and rejection. He laid bare the agonising fault lines within the Catholic community and struck at key issues of Catholic identity, triggering debate over what it means to be Catholic in the world today.

He leaves behind a Church that seems more divided than ever, with arguments, uncertainty and many questions rolling in his wake. But he has also provided a way for the Church to become more converted to Jesus’ way of love, through synodality and dialogue.

Francis showed us that holding labels such as “progressive” or “conservative” won’t enable the Church to live out Jesus’ mission of love – a mission he emphasised from the very beginning of his papacy.

Dr Joel Hodge is senior lecturer, Faculty of Theology and Philosophy, Australian Catholic University and Dr Antonia Pizzey is postdoctoral researcher, Research Centre for Studies of the Second Vatican Council, Australian Catholic University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

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

Pope Francis has died on Easter Monday, aged 88, the Vatican announced. The head of the Catholic Church had recently survived being hospitalised with double pneumonia.

Cardinal Kevin Farrell’s announcement began:

“Dear brothers and sisters, with deep sorrow I must announce the death of our Holy Father Francis. At 7:35 this morning, the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the house of the Father.”

There were many unusual aspects of Pope Francis’ papacy. He was the first Jesuit pope, the first from the Americas (and the southern hemisphere), the first to choose the name “Francis” and the first to give a TED talk.

• READ MORE: Pope Francis dies one day after first post-hospital public appearance and with final plea for Gaza
• How the next pope will be elected — what goes on at the conclave
• Pope Francis updates: Leader of Roman Catholic Church dies at 88

He was also the first pope in more than 600 years to be elected following the resignation, rather than death, of his predecessor.

From the very start of his papacy, Francis seemed determined to do things differently and present the papacy in a new light. Even in thinking about his burial, he chose the unexpected: to be placed to rest not in the Vatican, but in the Basilica of St Mary Major in Rome – the first pope to be buried there in hundreds of years.

Vatican News reported the late Pope Francis had requested his funeral rites be simplified.

“The renewed rite,” said Archbishop Diego Ravelli, “seeks to emphasise even more that the funeral of the Roman Pontiff is that of a pastor and disciple of Christ and not of a powerful person of this world.”

Straddling a line between “progressive” and “conservative”, Francis experienced tension with both sides. In doing so, his papacy shone a spotlight on what it means to be Catholic today.

The Pope’s Easter Blessing    Video: AP

The day before his death, Pope Francis made a brief appearance on Easter Sunday to bless the crowds at St Peter’s Square.

Between a rock and a hard place
Francis was deemed not progressive enough by some, yet far too progressive by others.

His apostolic exhortation (an official papal teaching on a particular issue or action) Amoris Laetitia, ignited great controversy for seemingly being (more) open to the question of whether people who have divorced and remarried may receive Eucharist.

He also disappointed progressive Catholics, many of whom hoped he would make stronger changes on issues such as the roles of women, married clergy, and the broader inclusion of LGBTQIA+ Catholics.

The reception of his exhortation Querida Amazonia was one such example. In this document, Francis did not endorse marriage for priests, despite bishops’ requests for this. He also did not allow the possibility of women being ordained as deacons to address a shortage of ordained ministers. His discerning spirit saw there was too much division and no clear consensus for change.

Francis was also openly critical of Germany’s controversial “Synodal Way” – a series of conferences with bishops and lay people — that advocated for positions contrary to Church teachings. Francis expressed concern on multiple occasions that this project was a threat to the unity of the Church.

At the same time, Francis was no stranger to controversy from the conservative side of the Church, receiving “dubia” or “theological doubts” over his teaching from some of his Cardinals. In 2023, he took the unusual step of responding to some of these doubts.

Pope Francis is seen as “one of the most vocal leaders on #Gaza. He was always condemning the war on Gaza, and asking for a ceasefire and … end of this conflict.” #AsiaPacificReport #PopeFrancis #GazaGenocide @palestine @OnlinePalEng @PalestineAusNZ https://t.co/vtuTpIVYmv pic.twitter.com/6EF1wdhgYL

— David Robie (@DavidRobie) April 21, 2025

Impact on the Catholic Church
In many ways, the most striking thing about Francis was not his words or theology, but his style. He was a modest man, even foregoing the Apostolic Palace’s grand papal apartments to live in the Vatican’s simpler guest house.

He may well be remembered most for his simplicity of dress and habits, his welcoming and pastoral style and his wise spirit of discernment.

He is recognised as giving a clear witness to the life, love and joy of Jesus in the spirit of the Second Vatican Council – a point of major reform in modern Church history. This witness has translated into two major developments in Church teachings and life.

Love for our common home
The first of these relates to environmental teachings. In 2015, Francis released his ground-breaking encyclical, Laudato si’: On Care for Our Common Home. It expanded Catholic social teaching by giving a comprehensive account of how the environment reflects our God-given “common home”.

Consistent with recent popes such as Benedict XVI and John Paul II, Francis acknowledged climate change and its destructive impacts and causes. He summarised key scientific research to forcefully argue for an evidence-based approach to addressing humans’ impact on the environment.

He also made a pivotal and innovative contribution to the climate change debate by identifying the ethical and spiritual causes of environmental destruction.

Francis argued combating climate change relied on the “ecological conversion” of the human heart, so that people may recognise the God-given nature of our planet and the fundamental call to care for it. Without this conversion, pragmatic and political measures wouldn’t be able to counter the forces of consumerism, exploitation and selfishness.

Francis argued a new ethic and spirituality was needed. Specifically, he said Jesus’ way of love – for other people and all creation – is the transformative force that could bring sustainable change for the environment and cultivate fraternity among people (and especially with the poor).

Synodality: moving towards a Church that listens
Francis’s second major contribution, and one of the most significant aspects of his papacy, was his commitment to “synodality”. While there’s still confusion over what synodality actually means, and its potential for political distortion, it is above all a way of listening and discerning through openness to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

It involves hierarchy and lay people transparently and honestly discerning together, in service of the mission of the church. Synodality is as much about the process as the goal. This makes sense as Pope Francis was a Jesuit, an order focused on spreading Catholicism through spiritual formation and discernment.

Drawing on his rich Jesuit spirituality, Francis introduced a way of conversation centred on listening to the Holy Spirit and others, while seeking to cultivate friendship and wisdom.

With the conclusion of the second session of the Synod on Synodality in October 2024, it is too soon to assess its results. However, those who have been involved in synodal processes have reported back on their transformative potential.

Archbishop of Brisbane, Mark Coleridge, explained how participating in the 2015 Synod “was an extraordinary experience [and] in some ways an awakening”.

Cardinals use a centuries-old voting process to elect a new pope, complete with smoke signals to indicate the outcome. And the next papal conclave will be the most diverse in Catholic history.

Here’s what you need to know about the process:https://t.co/osfOYKagk9

— The Conversation U.S. (@ConversationUS) April 21, 2025

Catholicism in the modern age
Francis’ papacy inspired both great joy and aspirations, as well as boiling anger and rejection. He laid bare the agonising fault lines within the Catholic community and struck at key issues of Catholic identity, triggering debate over what it means to be Catholic in the world today.

He leaves behind a Church that seems more divided than ever, with arguments, uncertainty and many questions rolling in his wake. But he has also provided a way for the Church to become more converted to Jesus’ way of love, through synodality and dialogue.

Francis showed us that holding labels such as “progressive” or “conservative” won’t enable the Church to live out Jesus’ mission of love – a mission he emphasised from the very beginning of his papacy.

Dr Joel Hodge is senior lecturer, Faculty of Theology and Philosophy, Australian Catholic University and Dr Antonia Pizzey is postdoctoral researcher, Research Centre for Studies of the Second Vatican Council, Australian Catholic University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

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

The Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) troika leaders have reviewed a list of “eminent persons” with extensive knowledge on Pacific regionalism to lead discussions on regional reforms, the Cook Islands government said yesterday.

The PIF troika is a high-level regional political consultative mechanism made up of the Forum’s immediate past, present, and future chairs.

Solomon Islands is the current chair of PIF, having taken over from Tonga last year. Palau will be the next chair.

• READ MORE: Other Pacific regionalism reports

The Cook Islands Foreign Affairs Ministry said in a statement that Prime Minister Mark Brown had joined the troika leaders on Monday to address pressing regional matters and advance discussions for strengthened regionalism as envisioned in the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent.

It said the leaders reviewed the 2024 troika mission report on New Caledonia and reaffirmed the PIF’s commitment to providing constructive support for the self-determination process in New Caledonia.

They “also considered a shortlist of eminent persons with deep expertise in Pacific regionalism to spearhead consultations with leaders, relevant ministers and senior officials in a talanoa setting on regional governance reforms.

“Upon further deliberation, troika leaders will appoint one representative from each Pacific sub-region to form a gender-balanced High-Level Persons Group that will compile their findings from the consultations into a report for further consideration and endorsement by Forum members.”

Regional governance
The statement said the eminent persons initiative will contribute to the ongoing work for the Review of the Regional Architecture (RRA), which aims to ensure regional governance mechanisms are fit-for-purpose, effective, and responsive to the evolving needs of Pacific Island countries.

“Effective regional governance requires strong collective political leadership, and the troika mechanism is central to ensuring the Pacific Islands Forum remains cohesive, forward-looking, and responsive to the region’s evolving needs,” Cook Islands Foreign Secretary Tepaeru Herrmann said.

He said that as an active member of the troika, the Cook Islands remained committed to providing strategic direction that strengthened Pacific unity and reinforced our shared commitment to regional collective action.

“Through close collaboration, we are shaping regional approaches and initiatives that reflect regional priorities, uphold Pacific-led solutions, and foster deeper cooperation across the Blue Pacific,” he added.

In addition, the PIF troika leaders reaffirmed their commitment to sustaining the momentum, with a follow-up meeting scheduled for next month, as they move toward the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders’ Meeting in Honiara later this year.

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.

There has been a lot of discussion lately about the H-1B guest worker program. Elon Musk and a number of other billionaire tech company owners have argued that this federal program is vital to our economy because of the scarcity of highly skilled American engineers and other tech workers. I disagree. The main function of the H-1B visa program and other guest worker initiatives is not to hire “the best and the brightest,” but rather to replace good-paying American jobs with low-wage indentured servants from abroad. The cheaper the labor they hire, the more money the billionaires make.

In 2022 and 2023, the top 30 corporations using this program laid off at least 85,000 American workers while they hired over 34,000 new H-1B guest workers. There are estimates that as many as 33 percent of all new Information Technology jobs in America are being filled by guest workers. Further, according to Census Bureau data, there are millions of Americans with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math who are not currently employed in those professions.

If there is really a shortage of skilled tech workers in America, why did Tesla lay-off over 7,500 American workers this year – including many software developers and engineers at its factory in Austin, Texas – while being approved to employ thousands of H-1B guest workers?

Moreover, if these jobs are only going to “the best and brightest,” why has Tesla employed H-1B guest workers as associate accountants for as little as $58,000, associate mechanical engineers for as little as $70,000 a year, and associate material planners for as little as $80,000 a year? Those don’t sound like highly specialized jobs that are for the top 0.1 percent as Musk claimed this week.

If this program is really supposed to be about importing workers with highly advanced degrees in science and technology, why are H-1B guest workers being employed as dog trainers, massage therapists, cooks, and English teachers? Can we really not find English teachers in America?

Let’s be clear. To the extent that there may be labor shortages in our country in some highly specialized areas that need to be filled by employees from abroad through the H-1B program, we must utilize this program as a very short-term and temporary approach. In the long term, if the United States is going to be able to compete in a global economy, we must make sure that we have the best educated workforce in the world. And one way to help make that happen is to substantially increase the guest worker fees large corporations pay to fund scholarships, apprenticeships, and job training opportunities for American workers. This is something that I have advocated from my first days as a U.S. senator.

Further, we must also significantly raise the minimum wage for guest workers, allow them to easily switch jobs, and make sure that corporations are required to aggressively recruit American workers first before they can hire workers from overseas. The widespread corporate abuse of the H-1B program must be ended.

Bottom line. It should never be cheaper for a corporation to hire a guest worker from overseas than an American worker.

Mr. Musk, Mr. Ramaswamy, and others have argued that we need a highly skilled and well-educated workforce. They are right. But the answer, however, is not to bring in cheap labor from abroad. The answer is to hire qualified American workers first and to make certain that we have an education system that produces the kind of workforce that our country needs for the jobs of the future. And that’s not just engineering. We are in desperate need of more doctors, nurses, dentists, teachers, electricians, plumbers, and a host of other professions.

Thirty years ago, the economic elite and political establishment in both major parties told us not to worry about the loss of blue-collar manufacturing jobs that would come as a result of disastrous unfettered free trade agreements like NAFTA and Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China (PNTR). They promised that those lost jobs would be more than offset by the many good-paying, white-collar information technology jobs that would be created in the United States.

Well, that turned out to be a Big Lie. Not only have corporations exported millions of blue-collar manufacturing jobs to China, Mexico, and other low-wage countries, they are now importing hundreds of thousands of low-paid guest workers from abroad to fill the white-collar technology jobs that are available.

At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, when the richest three people in America now own more wealth than the bottom half of our country and when the CEOs of major corporations make almost 300 times more than their average workers, we need fundamental changes in our economic policies. We need an economy that works for all, not just the few. And one important way forward in that direction is to bring about major reforms in the H-1B program.

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

The South Korean National Assembly voted Saturday to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol, 10 days after his ill-fated attempt to declare martial law in the country. Yoon had falsely accused political rivals of North Korean sympathies in his declaration, invoking previous eras of military dictatorship on the Korean Peninsula in the years following its partition. For more on what to expect from the upcoming judicial vote over Yoon’s removal, we speak to Korean activist Dae-Han Song. Yoon’s waning popular support is not promising for his political future and has reignited public appetite for democratic reforms, explains Song.

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

This story was co-published with WTTW News. ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.

Sign up for Dispatches, a ProPublica newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week. WTTW News is Chicago’s PBS affiliate. Sign up for the Daily Chicagoan, a newsletter that explores the backstory of the city’s biggest issues.

In the five and a half years since the Chicago Police Department agreed to extensive oversight from a federal judge, there have been bursts of activity to address the brutality and civil rights violations that led to the agreement.

Court hearings: more than a hundred. Meetings: hundreds. Money: hundreds of millions in Chicago taxpayer dollars allocated to making the court-ordered reforms, known as a consent decree, a reality.

But the record of actual accomplishment is meager.

Chicago police haven’t crafted a system for officers to work with residents to address threats to public safety.

They haven’t completed a mandatory study of where officers are assigned throughout the city and whether changes would help thwart crime.

And they have failed to move forward with a plan to alert police brass about which officers have been accused of misconduct more than once and might need counseling, retraining or discipline.

In fact, all told, police have fully complied with just 9% of the agreement’s requirements. And while excessive force complaints from citizens have dropped, complaints about all forms of misconduct have risen.

Sheila Bedi, an attorney who represented the coalition of police reform groups that sued the city years ago, called the faltering reform effort a “tragedy.”

“It has been a waste of time and money,” said Bedi, a Northwestern University law professor. “It has been nothing more than an exercise in pushing paper.”

A review by WTTW News and ProPublica of the efforts in Chicago since 2019 shows Bedi’s bleak view is supported by a range of assessments produced for the court and is also widely held among advocates, academics and officials following the process.

The goal is to emerge from the consent decree by 2027 with a police force finally ready to move beyond a long history of civil rights violations targeting Black and Latino Chicagoans. But the city is now on a path to devote substantial resources and large amounts of money to the reform effort for years beyond that. It’s a trajectory that echoes what happened in Oakland, where the police department continues to be marred by scandal and remains under federal court oversight more than 20 years into its consent decree.

No one in a position of power or oversight has pushed forcefully or effectively to make the process move faster, WTTW News and ProPublica found. Six permanent and interim superintendents have led CPD since 2019 and the city has had three mayors, all of whom vowed to implement the consent decree but failed to make good on those promises with money and other resources.

In addition, the Chicago City Council has repeatedly failed to exercise its authority to oversee CPD’s operations and demand quicker change. The council has approved $667 million to go toward implementing the decree since 2020, but at least a quarter of the city’s annual allotment goes unspent each year, a WTTW News analysis found.

At the same time, inside the federal courtroom, the court-appointed monitoring team has never demanded sanctions for the city’s slow pace. Similarly, judges overseeing the decree have not expressed concerns about the lack of significant advances.

No major city exemplifies the stubborn problems of police misconduct more than Chicago, where a series of civil cases and wrongful convictions have led to expensive court settlements that regularly cost the city more than $80 million a year. Distrust in the community now makes attacking the city’s crime rate even harder.

Now many of the city’s reform advocates have lost faith in the process and are increasingly concerned that the opportunity for lasting reform is slipping away. Surveys of Chicagoans completed as part of the consent decree show a clear drop in confidence that there will be lasting and positive change.

The process has its defenders, including current Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, whose predecessor sued the city to force it to agree to federal court oversight. Raoul still believes the consent decree is the best way of “making these necessary reforms a reality.”

But he also appears to be losing patience. Raoul warned last week that he would seek sanctions against the city if Mayor Brandon Johnson did not reverse the planned cuts. “I must remind you that the consent decree is not optional,” Raoul wrote to the mayor. “The City of Chicago must deliver on its consent decree obligations.”

Johnson rarely speaks publicly about the need to reform the police department, instead focusing on efforts to improve officer morale and reduce crime. He declined to be interviewed for this story but has told reporters he is committed to ensuring CPD “engages in constitutional policing.”

Porscha Banks, whose brother Dexter Reed was shot and killed in a barrage of police gunfire during a March 21 traffic stop, is among those who are frustrated by Chicago’s lack of progress toward meaningful reform. Four officers fired 96 shots at Reed in 41 seconds, hitting him 13 times, shortly after he shot and wounded an officer, according to a preliminary investigation.

The Civilian Office of Police Accountability has not completed its inquiry into the shooting and has not ruled whether the officers’ actions were justified. But reform advocates immediately seized on the incident as an example of how police tactics can lead to dangerous situations for both civilians and officers.

“Unless something changes, it is going to keep happening,” Banks said. “They are failing Black people. They are failing all of us.”

At its core, the consent decree is designed to fix the shattered relationship between police and Chicago communities.

The goal is to increase communication and familiarity by having officers patrol the same geographic area of the city and report to the same supervisor on a consistent basis, instead of moving throughout the city to chase crime. As a first step, the consent decree required CPD to complete a study to determine whether officers are efficiently deployed to stop crime and respond to calls for help.

But it took more than five years to authorize the study. And now, more than five months after the Chicago City Council ordered it, the police department acknowledges it has yet to start in earnest.

“It is deeply embarrassing,” said Alderperson Matt Martin, who represents the North Side’s 47th Ward and authored the measure requiring the staffing study. He said that police leaders simply ignored the May 21 deadline set by aldermen. The contract to perform the study was not finalized until Oct. 24, according to records obtained by WTTW News.

It’s not the first time Chicago has missed an opportunity to align the department with community needs.

In 2019, former Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck took over as the city’s interim police superintendent for Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Beck’s first order of business was to reassign more than 1,100 detectives and gang intelligence and narcotics officers from citywide teams to work in Chicago’s 22 police districts.

The goal was to tie each of those officers directly to one of Chicago’s 77 community areas, a necessary change to make community policing a reality, said Beck, who led the LAPD through its own reform push that was widely hailed as lightning fast and successful.

But Beck was only an interim chief and led the CPD for less than six months before Lightfoot replaced him with former Dallas Police Chief David Brown. Brown quickly reversed those changes and reestablished teams of specialized officers that moved throughout the city to address crime hot spots.

Beck declined to comment for this article; Brown did not respond to requests for interviews.

Brown’s successor, Larry Snelling, who has been at the helm of CPD for more than a year, has not attempted to reorganize the department. While acknowledging that the reform effort is far from complete, Snelling often emphasizes that the department is making progress on most goals laid out in the consent decree.

CPD now has written policies addressing just under half the items included in the consent decree. It also has trained a majority of its officers on the new policies involving a little over a third of the items. To be in full compliance, CPD must prove to the monitoring team that officers are following the new policies over a sustained period of time. The most significant victory for the city has been providing officers with annual training on the department’s policies for use of force, the latest report from the monitoring team found.

But CPD has yet to reach full compliance on any part of the consent decree that involves community policing, unbiased policing or crisis intervention, records show.

Community trust is at the heart of another consent-decree misstep by the department, which for decades has failed to hold its officers accountable for misconduct, according to the federal probe that led to the decree. An early-warning system that would identify problematic officers and get them off the street was drawn up near the beginning of the consent-decree process but has yet to be implemented.

Police reform advocates say that Snelling is more committed to reform than his predecessor, but he rarely talks publicly about the consent decree. Snelling declined to be interviewed for this story.

As a candidate for mayor, Johnson promised to succeed where his predecessors failed and quickly implement the consent decree. But his main policing focus since taking office has been on reducing the number of people killed and shot in Chicago following a surge that coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic. Homicide rates have dropped in the last two years.

Johnson’s latest budget proposal, which closed a projected budget gap of $982 million, slashes the number of employees assigned to implementing the decree by 13%.

Questioned by WTTW News at a press conference, Johnson acknowledged Chicago’s long history of police violence against Black Chicagoans.

“Unfortunately, we’ve had a trail of destruction over the course of decades where there has been an erosion of the relationship between community and policing,” Johnson said. “What I can say is that it has gotten considerably better from where we started.”

Despite such assertions, critics of the reform push contend the mayor is ultimately responsible for the lack of progress during his time in office.

“I expected to see much more of the mayor and his administration step up and be present and be at the table,” said Craig Futterman, a professor of law at the University of Chicago who represented one of the coalition of groups that sued the city to force it to agree to judicial oversight.

“It’s been left to the police department, and that’s again like the fox guarding the henhouse.”

What frustrates observers like Futterman is not just that police have dragged their feet; it’s that the formal mechanism for oversight hasn’t led to meaningful progress.

For instance, the monitoring team — which is made up of lawyers and public safety specialists — has the power to recommend to the judge that the city and CPD be punished for failing to meet the terms of the consent decree. While it has repeatedly highlighted the slow pace of reforms in its reports, the monitoring team has never demanded sanctions, despite pleas from the coalition of reform groups.

Barry Friedman, a professor at New York University who studies police reform and has advised CPD on implementing community policing policies, said he is baffled by this.

He cited the monitors’ unique position of power and the money going to their efforts. Chicago taxpayers have paid the monitoring team more than $20.4 million from the beginning of the decree through March 31, 2024, records show.

“For that amount of money, you should have a consent decree that is working,” Friedman said. “Five years in, one is entitled to ask what the city is getting out of the consent decree.”

Members of the consent decree monitoring team and the judge overseeing the case declined to be interviewed. The spokesperson for the judge and the team said they’re prohibited from doing so under the decree.

For its part, the Chicago City Council has not called out the CPD for its failures. The council had vowed to hold hearings about the progress of police reform every three months, but the last hearing took place in February. Alderperson Brian Hopkins, chair of the Public Safety Committee, and Alderperson Chris Taliaferro, chair of the Police and Fire Committee, did not respond to a request for comment about why no hearings have taken place for nine months.

Another factor in the slow pace is the structure of the oversight itself. To amend the agreement, all relevant parties must get involved — the state attorney general, the coalition of reform groups and City Hall. They have to exhaust efforts to negotiate a solution before asking the judge to resolve any stalemate.

The delays and compromises have led to unsatisfying results, as exemplified by the aftermath of the widely criticized raid on the home of Anjanette Young. In 2019, a group of male officers handcuffed Young, a social worker, inside her home while she was naked; they had raided the wrong address.

When Young and advocates for reform sought restrictions on raids, they ran into opposition from Lightfoot. They then asked that the consent decree be expanded to impose reforms.

That launched unfruitful negotiations between CPD’s leaders, city lawyers, attorneys for the coalition and the attorney general’s office that stretched for two years. U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer resolved the dispute by rejecting almost all of the demands made by reform groups. She didn’t add any significant restrictions on police raids and didn’t bar no-knock warrants. Young was bitterly disappointed.

Porscha Banks’ quest for reforms in the aftermath of her brother’s killing has been similarly frustrating. Dexter Reed, whose car had tinted windows that made it almost impossible to see inside, was pulled over for a safety belt violation, according to the preliminary investigation.

For groups that had been sounding the alarm for years that CPD was aggressively using traffic stops to target Black and Latino drivers, Reed’s death was heartbreaking evidence that such tactics inevitably lead to volatile encounters. Banks has demanded officials ban traffic stops like the one that led to her brother's death.

CPD leaders and the monitoring team agreed just two months after Reed’s death to expand the consent decree to include traffic stops, but reform advocates and politicians pushed back. The consent decree is not capable of delivering the kind of urgent change the city needs, they told Pallmeyer; instead, the city’s new police oversight board should set the rules for traffic stops.

The request was a rejection of the consent decree process.

“I’m frustrated that despite what I have to believe is everyone’s best effort, it has not been good enough,” said Alderperson Daniel La Spata, whose ward is on the Northwest Side.

Pallmeyer has not ruled on that request yet.

Banks does not particularly care how reform is achieved. She just wants to see signs of hope.

“They just need to stop talking about it and fucking doing it,” Banks said.

Inside a room at Corliss High School on Chicago’s Far South Side, a few dozen residents assembled for a community meeting with police in a district that has long struggled with pervasive crime. These were people who care about their neighborhoods, the future of Chicago and the trajectory of policing here. And in interviews, many of them expressed skepticism.

Tony Little, who volunteers as a community liaison with CPD, said police today are more responsive to residents’ concerns than in the past, but there’s still room for improvement. “If they could just make sure officers, especially young officers, are aware of the community and get to know the neighborhood, that would build trust,” he said.

His wife, Malinda, is more pessimistic. Although the consent decree requires CPD to demonstrate that residents can trust officers to protect and serve them, those are no more than empty promises, she said. “Some of the individuals, they have an attitude that this is just a job. … They don’t care about the people.”

Such comments should come as no surprise to the police department or the monitoring team.

“By most indications, many Chicagoans are not feeling many of the changes that have been made by the city and the CPD so far,” the monitoring team wrote in its most recent assessment of the city’s progress.

The most recent survey conducted by the monitoring team, in 2022, found that 43.2% of Chicagoans were “doubtful” or “very doubtful” that police reform would have a lasting and positive effect, an increase of more than 10 percentage points since 2020.

The survey identified a similar decrease in the number of Chicagoans who said the police were doing a “good” or “very good” job in their neighborhood and citywide, while the number of Chicagoans who said the police were doing a “poor” or “very poor” job in the city as a whole grew to 42.7% in 2022, compared with 30.2% in 2020.

“Of course there’s a lack of trust in the police,” said Roxanne Smith, a West Side resident and police reform advocate who was part of the coalition that sued the city. “We’re in a new generation and some things still haven’t changed. These things need immediate attention.”

Chicago Inspector General Deborah Witzburg, whose office was the first, and so far only, city department to fully comply with its obligations under the consent decree, said the reform effort is at a tipping point, much like a bicycle ridden too slowly.

“The risk is that you tip over for a lack of forward momentum,” Witzburg said.

Anjanette Young is now among those in Chicago who feel the tipping point is past.

“The consent decree is not the answer,” Young said. “It is just oversight on paper. We need a plan B. We need to do something else.”

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Jared Rutecki of WTTW News contributed data reporting.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by .

Just a month after the Supreme Court granted former President Donald Trump broad immunity from prosecution for crimes committed in office, President Joe Biden has laid out a plan to reform the court. On Monday, Biden called for 18-year term limits, an enforceable code of ethics and an end to presidential immunity, though he stopped short of supporting court expansion. “This is a pretty big deal,” says Jennifer Ahearn, senior counsel in the Brennan Center’s Judiciary Program, though she notes that “politically, we have a ways to go before the views of the people … can actually make their way through the Washington process.” Ahearn explains the potential effects of judicial term limits, which could bring the court closer in line with “the issues of the day,” better reflecting the results of recent presidential elections than the current system of lifetime appointments does. Biden’s proposal was buoyed by Justice Elena Kagan’s public comments last week endorsing an enforceable code of ethics. This shows just “how much the conversation around Supreme Court reform has changed” as a result of the court’s current ethics scandal, adds ProPublica reporter Andy Kroll, who was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team that exposed how Justice Thomas accepted unreported gifts from conservative megadonors who had business before the court.

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

• Biden proposes Supreme Court reforms amid recent fairness and ethics concerns on the high court.
• FBI to interview former President Trump about the July 13 attempt on his life.
• Member s of bipartisan House task force on the Trump assassination attempt named.
• Opposition and international voices decry Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro’s Presidential election victory claim.
• Fresno County considering homeless encampment clearance ordinance.
• Northern California firefighters gained some ground on Park Fire, which has scorched areas of 4 counties.
• Democratic leaders warn of consequences of possible second Trump term in press call.
• Fresno introduces homeless encampment clearance ordinance.
• San Francisco Supervisors considering first in the nation ban on rent-setting software.  

The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – July 29, 2024 Biden proposes Supreme Court reforms amid recent fairness and ethics concerns on the high court. appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

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Several months ago, in a lawsuit that was in its ninth year, a federal judge blasted the medical care at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. Many inmates hoped it would be a watershed moment.

In her opinion, U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick excoriated the state for its “callous and wanton disregard” for the health of those in its custody. “Rather than receiving medical ‘care,’ the inmates are instead subjected to cruel and unusual punishment,” Dick said in her November opinion. The “human cost,” she said, is “unspeakable.”

She then ordered the appointment of three independent monitors to devise and implement a plan to reform the system.

That plan, however, may never come to fruition. Before those monitors could even be chosen, the state appealed the ruling, invoking a federal law — the Prison Litigation Reform Act — that hobbled a similar lawsuit over Angola’s health care nearly 26 years ago. The current case could suffer a similar fate.

That class-action suit is now before the conservative 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In a March hearing, two of the three judges who heard the case asked questions that appeared sympathetic to the state’s argument that Dick’s ruling violated provisions of the Prison Litigation Reform Act.

If the ruling is thrown out, it would close off the most viable path for inmates to force improvements to a medical system that Dick found to be in violation of the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment, which bans cruel and unusual punishment. And it would come as prison policy experts expect a number of new, tough-on-crime laws to increase the state’s prison population, further straining Angola’s medical system.

Because this lawsuit concerns one of the country’s largest prisons — and one with a long history of litigation over its conditions — inmate advocates are watching it closely. It is one of many class-action lawsuits across the country seeking to force state officials to improve conditions in their facilities. At some point, said Margo Schlanger, a law professor at the University of Michigan and a former trial attorney in the Department of Justice’s civil rights division, all of those suits will have to contend with the Prison Litigation Reform Act.

That’s by design. The federal law was passed to reduce the number of lawsuits filed by inmates, particularly class-action cases that resulted in sprawling, court-monitored reform efforts lasting a decade or more. Supporters of the law said it was needed to weed out frivolous suits that tied state officials up in court and invited judges to meddle in how prisons are run.

But the law “did considerable damage to the ability of courts to be a backstop for safe and constitutional prisons,” Schlanger said. Since the PLRA was passed about three decades ago, the number of lawsuits filed by inmates nationwide has dropped by nearly 40%, according to a 2021 report she wrote for the Prison Policy Initiative, a research and advocacy organization; the percentage of inmates in prisons where courts are monitoring reforms dropped as well.

Not every lawsuit is doomed to failure, said David Fathi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project. In September, Fathi’s team successfully sued to remove up to 80 minors from a former death row unit at Angola. The ACLU also won a lawsuit requiring Arizona to improve medical care in its prisons.

Still, those victories are not the norm, Fathi said. “This law is unique in the world,” he said. “There is no other country that has established a separate and inferior legal system that applies exclusively to incarcerated people.”

Some of the earliest allegations regarding Angola’s failing health care system were included in a lawsuit largely concerned with other issues. In that 1971 case, inmates alleged unchecked violence and racial discrimination within the walls of the prison. They claimed that they were crammed into overcrowded dormitories, that they were subjected to rape and that the prison was overrun with weapons that resulted in more than 270 stabbings, 20 of them fatal, in less than three years, according to court documents.

As part of that case, a federal judge determined in 1975 that prison officials had failed to provide adequate health care, which amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. The prison remained under court monitoring for more than a decade as officials addressed shortcomings.

Nearly 20 years later, that suit spurred another, focused solely on the prison’s medical care. In their 1992 complaint, inmates claimed that it was nearly impossible to obtain the bare minimum of care. They contended they were routinely disciplined for seeking treatment if medical staff determined that their complaints weren’t warranted; their lawyers contended that the fear of punishment caused them to delay seeking care. When requests for medical care were heeded, inmates were generally assessed by staff who had little or no medical training. Those staffers would decide if the complaint warranted an appointment with a doctor or nurse, which didn’t take place for weeks or even months, according to the lawsuit. The wait for surgery could be years.

The same year the suit was filed, a patient with AIDS appeared to be “in the process of dying” when staff mistakenly inserted a feeding tube into his lung instead of his stomach, according to a medical expert’s testimony for the plaintiffs and medical records introduced as evidence. The inmate’s breathing became labored and he started “coughing up large amounts of frothy liquid,” according to medical records. He was taken by ambulance to a local hospital, where he died several days later. The cause of death was AIDS, sepsis and aspiration pneumonia, which occurs when food or liquid is inhaled instead of air, according to medical experts.

The next year, another inmate was diagnosed with “persistent dislocation of the finger,” which was described in medical records as “black and red in color, with yellow drainage.” A physician at Angola warned that if the injury was left untreated, the bone could swell and require amputation. And yet, although the inmate was seen by medical staff at least 13 times, he never received the needed care, according to a plaintiffs’ court filing. Nearly a year after the inmate first sought help, his finger was amputated.

In court, the state denied that it was “deliberately indifferent” to the medical needs of the inmates — the standard under which medical care is deemed unconstitutional — and argued that Angola’s care was “constitutionally adequate.”

The state contended in a court filing that the patient whose finger was amputated was seen repeatedly by the prison’s medical staff and provided the necessary treatments, including antibiotics and wound care. The amputation wasn’t the result of a denial of care, the state argued, but was necessary to “promote complete healing” of a chronic condition. As for the AIDS patient, the state claimed that he received care that was “supportive, palliative and which attempted to prolong his life.” The state did, however, note an “unfortunate incident of a misplacement” of a feeding tube.

Verite News and ProPublica tried to contact several of the 11 named plaintiffs in that suit and reached one, Thad Tatum, who served 28 years for armed robbery and attempted murder. During a recent interview in his New Orleans home, Tatum shifted back and forth in the seat of a motorized scooter, straining to relieve the pressure in his back. He laid the blame for the loss of function in his legs and right hand on prison officials.

In 1988, Tatum was hospitalized for nearly five weeks after another inmate smashed an ice pick into his forehead and neck, damaging his spine. Shortly after the attack, doctors assured him that if his physical therapy continued at Angola, he would walk again, Tatum said. Neither happened, Tatum claimed in the lawsuit.

After he was sent back to Angola, the prison’s medical staff failed to provide him with physical therapy, Tatum alleged in court. He told Verite News and ProPublica that when he tried to work out on his own, by lifting weights or pacing the yard with the assistance of a walker, he was ordered to sit in his wheelchair and written up for disobedience and insubordination.

The lack of medical attention “is why I am still in this chair,” Tatum said. “Those people just don’t care.”

The state claimed in court that Tatum did receive physical therapy, and though he had “variable success” walking with a cane, he was never able to walk consistently. His subsequent paralysis was not caused “by lack of therapy but rather by the injury itself,” the state argued. The Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections did not respond to a request for comment on Tatum’s allegations that he was disciplined for working out on his own.

By suing the prison, Tatum said, he hoped to force change by exposing the horrors he and others endured. Initially it appeared that the strategy was working. After an evidentiary hearing in 1994, U.S. District Judge Frank Polozola instructed both sides to come to an agreement on how best to address the problems that the inmates had exposed.

But as negotiations dragged on, Congress passed the PLRA. The 1996 law came as the nation’s incarcerated population was exploding, along with the number of civil rights lawsuits filed by inmates over conditions. Both had tripled over the previous 15 years.

“Jailhouse lawyers with little else to do are tying our courts in knots with an endless flood of frivolous litigation,” Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said in 1995 when he introduced the bill. “It is past time to slam shut the revolving door on the prison gate and to put the key safely out of reach of overzealous Federal courts.”

To do so, the PLRA instituted hurdles that inmates had to face before filing suit. If they cleared them, the law required judges to consider lesser interventions before they could order court-monitored reforms, typically in response to a class-action lawsuit. With little possibility of court intervention, many plaintiffs agreed to settlements that offered little in damages or reforms, according to three legal experts who specialize in the PLRA.

That’s how it played out in Louisiana.

On Sept. 21, 1998, inmates at Angola were given an advance copy of a proposed settlement between the state and the Department of Justice, which had intervened in the case on behalf of the inmates. Prison officials had agreed to make a host of improvements to the health care system. If they fixed the problems by the following February, the case would be dismissed with no further court oversight. If they didn’t, the lawsuit would move forward to a possible trial.

In addition to those stipulations, the settlement lauded prison officials for what the state and the Justice Department agreed were significant improvements in the delivery of medical care at Angola, including updated laboratory equipment, the addition of telemedicine and training for technicians who responded to inmates’ requests for medical care.

Two days later, several inmates fired off a scathing letter to the Department of Justice in which they said the list of improvements so far read like a “FANTASY.” Health care at the prison remained abysmal, they wrote, saying the treatment of chronically ill patients was “non-existent.” Raw sewage often leaked into Angola’s hospital and its kitchen, something they had been complaining about for years. “HOW COULD THIS PROBLEM STILL EXIST AFTER ALL THIS TIME?????” they asked.

They concluded by telling the Department of Justice that it had been fooled. Before its inspectors visited Angola, prison officials had time to “cover up and steer you away from the problems here,” inmates wrote. “The hospital has NOT been straightened up as claimed.”

The settlement was finalized in court the next day.

The plaintiffs’ medical expert, Dr. Michael Puisis, shared many of the inmates’ reservations. In a January 1999 report filed in court, a month before the deadline to determine if the state had made enough progress, he said it would take another year to fix Angola’s health care system.

The state’s medical expert, Dr. George Karam, initially agreed, telling the court he found Puisis’ “analysis and interpretations to be accurate.”

But Karam reversed his position 33 days later. In a report to Polozola, he noted that his employer, the Louisiana State University Medical School, was about to sign a three-year contract to provide health care services at the prison for $43,200 per month. This, he said, “created an additional comfort zone for me and has made me confident that we can achieve everyone’s stated goal of quality medical care” at Angola.

In March 1999, after less than six months of oversight, Polozola decided the state had done enough. He freed it from any further obligations and dismissed the case. The Justice Department did not object to the judge’s ruling.

The Justice Department declined interview requests for the attorneys who had been involved with the case and didn’t respond to questions about the settlement. Puisis declined an interview request. Karam did not respond to multiple requests for comment submitted to him and his office.

Attorney Keith Nordyke, who represented inmates in the lawsuit, said he understands why they were so angry; he remains disappointed himself. By the time of the settlement, he said, his role in the case was secondary to the Justice Department, so he didn’t have much of a say. Even so, he said, “with the PLRA right there, what leverage did I have?” When the law passed, he said, it felt like “the day of prison reform was coming to a close.”

One measure in the PLRA that has proven to be a significant obstacle for inmates was a requirement that they exhaust options within their prison’s grievance system before filing suit. In order to assert they had been beaten or raped by guards, or denied vital medical care, inmates first had to seek remedies from within the same system that they contended had harmed them. “It really is a case of the fox guarding the henhouse,” Fathi said.

Some corrections officials responded by making their grievance process more onerous: Illinois reduced the time inmates had to file complaints from six months to 60 days, according to an investigation by WBEZ and ProPublica. Other states threw out complaints “for tiny technical violations, like writing in the wrong color ink,” WBEZ and ProPublica reported.

That rule has caused cases to be thrown out even when inmates allege egregious abuse or misconduct. In 2003, more than a dozen female prisoners filed a lawsuit against the state of New York, claiming they had been subjected to “forcible rape, coerced sexual activity, oral and anal sodomy, and forced pregnancies,” according to Human Rights Watch. The state argued that the women hadn’t gone through the entire grievance process first, and the case was dismissed for that reason. An appeals court partially overturned the ruling because three inmates had exhausted their grievance options. The suit was eventually settled.

Thirteen years later, a guard at the Clarence N. Stevenson Unit, a state prison near the Texas Gulf Coast, slammed an inmate into a concrete floor, according to a federal lawsuit. The man lay in a coma in a hospital for two weeks, the Houston Chronicle reported. Texas had a 15-day deadline for inmates to file a grievance; the inmate, Candelario Hernandez, failed to meet it because he was unconscious.

A federal judge granted the state’s motion to dismiss the suit because Hernandez hadn’t gone through the grievance process. But because the state said in court that it would have considered a late grievance, the judge granted Hernandez two months to file one. After the state promptly rejected those grievances, the judge reversed his order to dismiss the case. The state’s denial was proof, he wrote, that the grievance process was a “dead end.” The suit is pending.

The current lawsuit over Angola’s medical care may be the latest to fall to the PLRA, even though Dick found that there was considerable evidence of failures. In a hearing, a plaintiffs’ lawyer said medical experts had found that 26 of 28 deaths at Angola had “serious medical errors and/or were preventable.” The lawyer said those experts had concluded that Angola’s delivery of medical care was among the worst they had ever reviewed. The state, however, argued that 21 deaths couldn’t have been prevented; it said most of those inmates had serious health problems and were treated properly, some refused treatment, and others had exacerbated their health problems by smoking.

Puisis, the plaintiffs’ medical expert in the 1992 lawsuit, is serving in the same role in the current case; he has found many of the same problems he identified in the 1990s. Dick noted this when she ruled for the plaintiffs in 2021: “Given the fact that many of the complaints in this lawsuit … are the same as those ‘settled’ in 1998, the Court finds that Defendants have been aware of these deficiencies in the delivery of medical care at LSP for decades,” she wrote.

But in the hearing before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this year, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill complained that Dick has never given Angola officials credit, “at any stage,” for the improvements they have made, which she said include the addition of air conditioning in several medical dorms. (Neither her office nor the Department of Corrections responded to questions about the two lawsuits.)

Murrill also rejected Dick’s conclusion that Angola’s medical care was inadequate, saying the state “never conceded there was a violation in the first place.” She argued that the judge’s decision to appoint monitors to oversee reforms infringed on the state’s ability to operate its prisons. “And the PLRA says, ‘Don’t do that,’” Murrill added.

The 5th Circuit could uphold or reverse Dick’s ruling, or it could send it back to her to rehear the case, which could include legal arguments over whether her ruling follows the PLRA.

Circuit Judge Edith Jones, who was appointed in 1985 by President Ronald Reagan, echoed the state’s arguments in the hearing, saying that Angola prison for too long has “been under a Damocles sword imposed by the federal courts.” If inmates got their way and independent monitors were appointed to oversee the prison’s medical care, she said, the state would have to “jump at every turn and do precisely what they say.”

One of the lawyers for the inmates, Lydia Wright of the Promise of Justice Initiative, said she disagreed with that characterization of Dick’s ruling given that the state has failed to fix these problems over three decades. “We’re not talking about anything fancy, or exotic or wild,” Wright said. “We’re talking about basic medical care.”

Mariam Elba contributed research.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Richard A. Webster, Verite News.

One essential is conscious political organization motivated by principles and a genuine desire and plan for improving the lives of the disenfranchised and downtrodden, ending militarism and war, and stopping and reversing environmental devastation. But this alone won’t bring about change.

As a once-great revolutionary once said, “the masses make history.” It is only when large numbers of people identify with a movement for fundamental change and support it, verbally or actively, that we have any hope of winning political power and transforming society. In the USA that means not tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, or even millions, but tens of millions of people.

Is this possible? Yes. One big example is the 15 million votes independent socialist Bernie Sanders got in 2016. Another is the NY Times report that 16-25 million people all over the country took demonstrative action in the spring of 2021 after George Floyd was murdered.

We need to go about our organizing work in a way which doesn’t undercut either, which avoids the temptation to be so committed to being principled that one becomes purist and narrow, on the one hand, or to be so committed to being with and interacting with “the masses” that problematic positions are taken and political relationships are built that end up deflecting energies into reformist and dead-end approaches to change. We need reforms, yes, but our broader objective must be to build upon successful struggles for major reforms in a way that leads to truly revolutionary, justice-grounded, social and economic transformation.

Purism versus reformism—the twin dangers of serious efforts to bring about the kind of change that is so, so needed today.

What can be done to lessen these dangers, to increase the possibilities that more of us will keep our eyes, minds and hearts on the prize?

One is the building of independent and progressive organizations that are truly democratic in the fullest sense of the term. As difficult as the process of democracy sometimes is, it is also a way to keep the group as a whole and the individuals within it centered on the stated objectives. Democratic process, sooner or later, frustrates individual power plays on the part of any person in leadership who lets power go to his/her/their head and who becomes either purist or reformist as a result. These things have happened much too much historically, but in this third decade of the 21st century, there is a growing consciousness of this danger increasingly expressed in how more and more of us are going about our organization-building.

Another necessity is an explicit commitment to the testing out of theories and ideas in practice and a process of constant evaluation based upon input from the people the ideas are being tried out on. If an independent candidate is running for office, for example, and has what they think is a great platform but the vote totals are very low, perhaps the problem is that the issues being addressed, or the way they’re being expressed, don’t connect with peoples’ understandings. Since just about any issue can be addressed from a progressive standpoint, a much better approach is to identify what the issues are to speak about because of day-to-day listening to and communicating with working-class people and people of the global majority.

The same with forms of direct action. It may feel good and righteous to some to stand up to the police during an action, but if that is done in a way which makes it easier for the government and the corporate-dominated press to call us violent, that will not generate sympathy for our cause among the wider public. Expressing our sense of urgency and anger is a good thing, if done wisely. Expressing it without political consideration of an action’s impacts is not a good thing.

Ultimately, our ability as a movement to navigate between the dangers of purism and reformism comes down to how each of us live our lives. Do we live in such a way that, on a day to day basis, we are in touch with working class people, regular folks, those in need of change? Do those of us who are white ensure that, in some way, we have regular communication and interaction with people of color so that we are constantly reminded about racism and its pernicious effects? Do we make time for meditation, allow our conscience to make itself heard over the daily demands on our time and energies? Do we interact with others in a way which prioritizes listening and objective consideration? Do we struggle to keep from responding defensively when others make constructive, or not so constructive, criticisms of us?

In the words of the late Rev. Paul Mayer, “What history is calling for is nothing less than the creation of a new human being. We must literally reinvent ourselves through the alchemy of the Spirit or perish. We are being divinely summoned to climb another rung on the evolutionary ladder, to another level of human consciousness.”

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Ted Glick.

One essential is conscious political organization motivated by principles and a genuine desire and plan for improving the lives of the disenfranchised and downtrodden, ending militarism and war, and stopping and reversing environmental devastation. But this alone won’t bring about change.

As a once-great revolutionary once said, “the masses make history.” It is only when large numbers of people identify with a movement for fundamental change and support it, verbally or actively, that we have any hope of winning political power and transforming society. In the USA that means not tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, or even millions, but tens of millions of people.

Is this possible? Yes. One big example is the 15 million votes independent socialist Bernie Sanders got in 2016. Another is the NY Times report that 16-25 million people all over the country took demonstrative action in the spring of 2021 after George Floyd was murdered.

We need to go about our organizing work in a way which doesn’t undercut either, which avoids the temptation to be so committed to being principled that one becomes purist and narrow, on the one hand, or to be so committed to being with and interacting with “the masses” that problematic positions are taken and political relationships are built that end up deflecting energies into reformist and dead-end approaches to change. We need reforms, yes, but our broader objective must be to build upon successful struggles for major reforms in a way that leads to truly revolutionary, justice-grounded, social and economic transformation.

Purism versus reformism—the twin dangers of serious efforts to bring about the kind of change that is so, so needed today.

What can be done to lessen these dangers, to increase the possibilities that more of us will keep our eyes, minds and hearts on the prize?

One is the building of independent and progressive organizations that are truly democratic in the fullest sense of the term. As difficult as the process of democracy sometimes is, it is also a way to keep the group as a whole and the individuals within it centered on the stated objectives. Democratic process, sooner or later, frustrates individual power plays on the part of any person in leadership who lets power go to his/her/their head and who becomes either purist or reformist as a result. These things have happened much too much historically, but in this third decade of the 21st century, there is a growing consciousness of this danger increasingly expressed in how more and more of us are going about our organization-building.

Another necessity is an explicit commitment to the testing out of theories and ideas in practice and a process of constant evaluation based upon input from the people the ideas are being tried out on. If an independent candidate is running for office, for example, and has what they think is a great platform but the vote totals are very low, perhaps the problem is that the issues being addressed, or the way they’re being expressed, don’t connect with peoples’ understandings. Since just about any issue can be addressed from a progressive standpoint, a much better approach is to identify what the issues are to speak about because of day-to-day listening to and communicating with working-class people and people of the global majority.

The same with forms of direct action. It may feel good and righteous to some to stand up to the police during an action, but if that is done in a way which makes it easier for the government and the corporate-dominated press to call us violent, that will not generate sympathy for our cause among the wider public. Expressing our sense of urgency and anger is a good thing, if done wisely. Expressing it without political consideration of an action’s impacts is not a good thing.

Ultimately, our ability as a movement to navigate between the dangers of purism and reformism comes down to how each of us live our lives. Do we live in such a way that, on a day to day basis, we are in touch with working class people, regular folks, those in need of change? Do those of us who are white ensure that, in some way, we have regular communication and interaction with people of color so that we are constantly reminded about racism and its pernicious effects? Do we make time for meditation, allow our conscience to make itself heard over the daily demands on our time and energies? Do we interact with others in a way which prioritizes listening and objective consideration? Do we struggle to keep from responding defensively when others make constructive, or not so constructive, criticisms of us?

In the words of the late Rev. Paul Mayer, “What history is calling for is nothing less than the creation of a new human being. We must literally reinvent ourselves through the alchemy of the Spirit or perish. We are being divinely summoned to climb another rung on the evolutionary ladder, to another level of human consciousness.”

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Ted Glick.

Photo by Benjamin R.

“Until now, we haven’t even tried to make big-city school districts work, especially for children of color,” Jhoanna Maldonado said when Our Schools asked her to describe what Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and his supporters have in mind for the public school system of the nation’s third-largest city.

Johnson scored a surprising win in the 2023 mayoral election against Paul Vallas, a former CEO of Chicago Public Schools (CPS), and education was a key issue in the race, according to multiple newsoutlets. Maldonado is an organizer with the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), which is reported to have “bankrolled” Johnson’s mayoral campaign along with other labor groups, and Johnson is a former middle school teacher and teachers union organizer. What Johnson and his supporters are doing “is transforming our education system,” Maldonado said. There’s evidence the transformation is sorely needed.

For the past two decades, Chicago’s schools experienced a cavalcade of negative stories, including recurring fiscal crisis, financial scandals and mismanagement, a long downward slide in student enrollment, persistent underfunding from the state, the “largest mass closing [of schools] in the nation’s history,” and a seemingly endless conflict between the CPS district administration and CTU.

Yet, there are signs the district may be poised for a rebound.

After experiencing more than 10 years of enrollment declines between 2012 and 2022, losing more than 81,000 students during this period, and dropping from its status as third-largest school district in the nation to fourth in 2022, CPS reported an enrollment increase for the 2023-2024 school year. Graduation rates hit an all-time high in 2022. The number of students being suspended or arrested on school grounds has also declined significantly. And student scores on reading tests, after a sharp decline during the COVID-19 pandemic, have improved faster than most school districts across the country. Math scores have also rebounded, but are more comparable to other improving districts, according to a 2024 Chalkbeat article.

“The people of Chicago have had enormous patience as they’ve witnessed years of failed school improvement efforts,” Maldonado said. “And it has taken years for the community to realize that no one else—not charter school operators or so-called reformers—can do the transformation. We have to do it ourselves.”

“Doing it ourselves” seems to mean rejecting years of policy and governance ideas that have dominated the district, and is what Johnson and his transition committee call, “an era of school reform focused on accountability, high stakes testing, austere budgets, and zero tolerance policies,” in the report, “A Blueprint for Creating a More Just and Vibrant City for All.”

Johnson and his supporters have been slowly changing the district’s basic policy and governance structures. They are attempting to redefine the daily functions of schools and their relationships with families and their surrounding communities by expanding the number of what they refer to as “sustainable community schools.” The CPS schools that have adopted the community schools idea stand at 20 campuses as of 2024, according to CTU. Johnson and his transition committee’s Blueprint report has called for growing the number of schools using the sustainable community schools approach to 50, with the long-term goal of expanding the number of schools to 200.

The call to have more CPS schools adopt the community schools approach aligns with a national trend where several school districts, including big-city districts such as Los Angeles and New York City, are embracing the idea.

Community schools look different in different places because the needs and interests of communities vary, but the basic idea is that schools should address the fundamental causes of academic problems, including student health and well-being. The approach also requires schools to involve students and their families more deeply in school policies and programs and to tap the assets and resources available in the surrounding community to enrich the school.

In Chicago—where most students are non-white, more than 70 percent are economically disadvantaged, and large percentages need support for English language learning and learning disabilities—addressing root causes for academic problems often means bringing specialized staff and programs into the school to provide more academic and non-academic student and family services, often called wraparound supports. The rationale for this is clear.

“If a student is taken care of and feels safe and heard and has caring adults, that student is much more ready to learn,” Jennifer VanderPloeg the project manager of CPS’s Sustainable Community Schools told Our Schools. “If [a student is] carrying around a load of trauma, having a lot of unmet needs, or other things [they’re] worrying about, then [they] don’t have the brain space freed up for algebra. That’s just science,” she said.

“Also important is for students to see themselves in the curriculum and have Black and brown staff members in the school,” said Autumn Berg, director of CPS’s Community Schools Initiative. “All of that matters in determining how a student perceives their surroundings.”

“Community schools are about creating a culture and climate that is healthy, safe, and loving,” said VanderPloeg. “Sure, it would be ideal if parents would be able to attend to all the unmet needs of our students, but that’s just not the system we live in. And community schools help families access these [unmet] needs too.”

Also, according to VanderPloeg, community schools give extra support to teachers by providing them with assistance in all of the things teachers don’t have time to attend to, like helping families find access to basic services and finding grants to support after-school and extracurricular programs.

But while some Chicago educators see the community schools idea as merely a mechanism to add new programs and services to a school’s agenda, others describe it with far more expansive and sweeping language.

“Community schools are an education model rooted in self-determination and equity for Black and brown people,” Jitu Brown told Our Schools. Brown is the national director of Journey for Justice Alliance, a coalition of Black and brown-led grassroots community, youth, and parent organizations in more than 30 cities.

“In the Black community, we have historically been denied the right to engage in creating what we want for our community,” Brown said.

In Chicago, according to Brown, most of the schools serving Black and brown families are struggling because they’ve been led by people who don’t understand the needs of those families. “Class plays a big role in this too,” he said. “The people in charge of our schools have generally been taught to believe they are smarter than the people in the schools they’re leading.”

But in community schools, Brown sees the opportunity to put different voices in charge of Chicago schools.

“The community schools strategy is not just about asking students, parents, and the community for their input,” he said. “It’s about asking for their guidance and leadership.”

It Started with Saving a Neighborhood

Chicago’s journey of embracing the community schools movement has been long in the making, and Brown gets a lot of credit for bringing the idea to the attention of public school advocates in the city.

He achieved much of this notoriety in 2015 by leading a hunger strike to reopen Walter H. Dyett High School in Chicago’s predominantly African American Bronzeville community. Among the demands of the strikers—Brandon Johnson was a participant in the protest when he was a CTU organizer—was for the school to be reopened as a “hub” of what they called “a sustainable community school village,” according to Democracy Now.

The strike received prominent attention in national news outlets, including the New York Times and the Washington Post.

But Brown’s engagement with the community schools approach started before the fight for Dyett, going back almost two decades when he was a resource coordinator at the South Shore High School of Entrepreneurship, a school created in 2001 when historic South Shore International College Preparatory High School was reorganized into three smaller campuses as part of an education reform effort known as small schools.

Brown was responsible for organizing educators and community members to pool resources and involve organizations in the community to strengthen the struggling school. He could see that the school was being “set up,” in his words, for either closure or takeover by charter school operators.

“School privatization in the form of charter schools was coming to our neighborhood,” he said, “and we needed a stronger offer to engage families in rallying to the school and the surrounding community.”

Brown pushed for the adoption of an approach for transforming schools that reflected a model supported by the National Education Association of full-service community schools.

That approach was based on five pillars that included a challenging and culturally relevant curriculum, wraparound services for addressing students’ health and well-being, high-quality teaching, student-centered school climate, and community and parent engagement. A sixth pillar, calling for shared leadership in school governance, was eventually added.

After engaging in “thousands” of conversations in the surrounding historic Kenwood neighborhood, where former President Barack Obama once lived, Brown said that he came to be persuaded that organizing a school around the grassroots desires of students, parents, teachers, and community members was a powerful alternative to school privatization and other top-down reform efforts that undermine teachers and disenfranchise families.

Brown and his collaborators recognized that the community schools idea was what would turn their vision of a school into a connected system of families, educators, and community working together.

Years later, two things helped propel the community schools movement in Chicago, according to Brown. First, a national coalition of labor unions and grassroots community organizations called the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools was formed in 2013 with the dual purpose of opposing the privatization of public schools and advocating for schools and districts to adopt the community schools approach. Brown’s Journey for Justice Alliance was among the founding organizations of that alliance.

Second, in 2014, Brown saw a successful labor action by teachers in St. Paul, Minnesota, that resulted in the district capitulating to the union’s terms to avoid a strike. The rallying cry that drove the union’s organizing was “bargaining for the common good,” a rhetorical strategy that connected the union’s call for community schools with rising demands from urban neighborhoods of Black and brown families for schools that work for their children.

According to Brown, the first time the implementation of the community schools approach became part of the CTU’s formal contract negotiations was in 2016, when, under the leadership of the late Karen Lewis, former president of CTU, the union staged a one-day walkout in April and threatened a total shut down of district schools in October. In that successful labor action, CTU’s “priorities” called for creating a sustainable community schools program and instituting a cap on the number of charter schools allowed in the district, Education Week reported in October 2016.

After CPS acquiesced to most of the demands made by Brown and his fellow hunger strikers in 2016, Dyett High School reopened as a sustainable community school in a cohort of 19 other schools granted that status.

“We willed Dyett into being reopened,” Brown said. “No one had ever done that.”

But the strikers’ purpose wasn’t just to preserve a high school and its connected feeder schools, according to Brown. It was about something much bigger. It was about saving their neighborhood and other neighborhoods of Black and brown families like theirs.

In 2019, the union’s tough contract negotiations, which included a prolonged strike, resulted in a contract agreement from the district to provide at least $10 million in annual funding for sustainable community schools.

An Alternative to Market-Based Education Reform

Supporters of the community schools movement in Chicago not only see it as a strategy for empowering Black and brown families but also as an effective counter to the rapid expansion of school privatization schemes that have prevailed across the country for the past 20–30 years, particularly, the dramatic growth of charter schools in metropolitan school districts.

“Every city where charters go, there’s been a diminishment of Black people in urban spaces,” Brown said, pointing to not only Chicago, where the Black population has declined by 10 percent, according to the 2020 U.S. Census Bureau, even as the number of charter schools has grown, but also to Washington, D.C., a once-majority Black city that has seen that demographic plummet to 41 percent while the charter school industry rapidly expanded. In Oakland, California, which had a 14 percent decline in Black population, based on the 2020 census, the city has transitioned into a charter school “boomtown,” according to KQED.

“Privatization has crippled Black urban communities across the country,” said Brown, as “we increasingly live in cities where we own nothing,” including the privately run charter schools the communities send their children to. He called this explosion of charters “a form of education colonialism.”

This rapid growth in school privatization has gone hand in hand with the spread of policy ideas that educators and public school activists in Chicago and elsewhere refer to as market-based educational reforms.

That approach, as practiced in Chicago, began in the 1990s, according to an analysis by University of Illinois Chicago professor Pauline Lipman, when Illinois state lawmakers gave former Mayor Richard M. Daley sole authority over the district with the power to appoint the district administrator—who was rebranded district CEO—and members of the governing board in 1995.

“Daley and his successor, Rahm Emanuel, generally filled the board with corporate executives, bankers, and investors and appointed corporate-style managers as CEOs,” wrote Lipman. “These mayor-appointed regimes designed a top-down accountability system that applied business methods to public schools and deployed high stakes standardized tests as a metric to close schools and create a market of privately-run charter schools.”

This approach became widely known as the portfolio model, in which school leaders run school districts as if they were Wall Street managers overseeing a portfolio of investments and closely track which investments are successful and which are not and open and close schools based on their performance. Privately-run charter schools are brought into the district to provide market competition to the public schools, and funding “follows the child” to whatever form of school a family happens to choose.

Chicago’s use of the portfolio model “went national,” according to Lipman, in 2002 when, under the George W. Bush administration, Congress enacted the No Child Left Behind legislation and, then again, in 2009 when the Barack Obama administration passed Race to the Top, a program conceived and led by Obama’s Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who was district CEO of CPS from 2001–2008.

During those years, the portfolio model was picked up by school leaders in big city districts across the nation, including Los Angeles, Oakland, New York City, Denver, and Indianapolis.

But if CPS, under Mayor Johnson, is truly embarking on a new era of schooling that replaces market-based thinking with the philosophy of community schools, it will take reworking of policies and structures erected during the years of market-based reform.

In July 2023, Johnson replaced all but one of the appointed members of Chicago’s Board of Education, “bringing in his own allies to oversee the city’s public schools,” according to CBS News.

Then, the district appealed to state lawmakers to allow the local school board to transition to an elected board. Both chambers of the Illinois state legislature approved the change, and Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker signed the new policy into law in March 2024.

Under the new configuration, beginning in January 2025, district governance will change from a seven-member board of education, whose members are all appointed by the mayor, to a hybrid model of 21 members, 10 elected by voters and 11 appointed by the mayor. The first election will be held on November 5, 2024, and Jitu Brown is one of the announced candidates.

Also, the district will end student-based budgeting, a policy that allocates dollars to schools based on the number of enrolled students and assigns “weighted” funds to students who have specific needs, such as learning disabilities.

Instead, CPS aims to fund schools based on having a set number of staff members—for instance, every school would have funding for at least one school counselor. Additional monies would be added to school budgets if they serve higher needs students that may require schools to hire tutors, instructional coaches, support for English language learners, or other types of specialists.

Chicago’s use of student-based budgeting was very much a part of the district’s preference for a system based on school choice, under which education funds would “follow the child” to whatever school they happened to enroll in—public, public magnet, selected enrollment, or charter schools. But, in keeping with the abandonment of market-based policies and the movement toward community schools, Johnson’s appointed board members have announced that they intend to move away from the choice system in favor of a policy emphasizing neighborhood schools, according to reporting by WTTW in December 2023.

‘An Opportunity to Bring Forth the Schools Parents Want’

None of this is to say that Chicago’s rejection of market-based school policy and embrace of community schools will be easy.

Vestiges of the old ways of operating schools are still everywhere—CPS still has an Office of Portfolio Management, for instance.

Despite the recent upswing in enrollment, many schools are still under-enrolled, and some schools in the original cohort of 20 schools that adopted the community schools approach have been “particularly hard hit,” according to Chalkbeat.

Also, Chicago schools are still highly segregated, and a wave of migrant students swamped the district, with more than 36,000 arriving in a year-and-a-half’s time, according to WBEZ Chicago’s March 2024 article.

Funding remains a concern too, as the district is expecting a $391 million deficit for the 2024-2025 school year, and Illinois state lawmakers have fallen woefully short of appropriating the education funding levels through the landmark legislation enacted in 2017.

According to a 2024 analysis by the Chicago-based Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, 70 percent of the state’s school districts are getting less education funding from the state than what was mandated by the 2017 law. According to Chalkbeat’s reporting on that analysis, Illinois will not meet the required 2027 deadline to adequately fund the state’s schools and will likely not meet that deadline until 2034 if current funding levels continue.

State funding for CPS also gets hit when the district loses students, especially low-income students, and the value of the city’s property tax base increases, according to Chalkbeat.

Johnson also faces a number of other daunting challenges that have nothing to do with schools but could undermine his education agenda.

Nevertheless, Chicago schools may benefit from adopting the community schools approach despite these challenges.

For instance, when Brighton Park Elementary—which follows the community schools approach—suddenly experienced a large influx of migrant students, it quickly responded with a support group and additional resources to address the physical and mental health needs of the students.

“In some ways, Brighton Park is well-positioned to host this support group,” Chalkbeat reported, because, as a community school, it had an existing partnership with a nonprofit organization, the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, which created the support group and provided training “on the model that the support group is based on.”

CTU organizer Maldonado also described how the leadership culture of the district has changed for the better due, in part, to the inclusive leadership practices entailed in the community schools approach.

“Under new leadership,” she said, “the discussion is more collaborative, and the district administration is listening, which wasn’t the case in the past.”

Through its community schools approach “CPS is committed to providing voice and agency to students and families,” said CPS’s Berg. “Community schools are the mechanism to do that. [Students and families] get to participate in seeing what goes into their schools. And when parents and students have more voice in their schools and see [their voices] make a difference, you start to see families being more connected to the school.”

Also, the model ensures “there are more caring adults in the school,” she said, “not just the social worker and the counselor but [everyone] coming together with the families.”

“The city’s leadership tried to do the transformation with charters and realized that those schools are no more effective than the schools they accused of being failures,” Maldonado said. “This is an opportunity to bring forth the schools parents want to have their children in, teachers want to work in, and students need.”

Brown said, “Getting new leadership is critical to improving schools in Chicago, especially for the ones serving Black families.” With Johnson as mayor, he said, Black families now have someone in charge who has been on the right side of the education justice movement.

“Having the community schools approach in place in more schools means Black families now have a structure in place to ensure that schools will listen to them,” he said.

This article was produced by Our Schools.

The post After Years of Failed Education Reforms, Chicago Embraces Community Schools appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Jeff Bryant.

The new regulations bring much-needed balance to a system that has long favored corporate profits over public benefit. The reforms enacted by the Biden Administration include:

• Reasonable increases in bonding rates, ensuring oil and gas companies, not taxpayers, pay to clean up messes left by extractive activities;
• New leasing criteria for future lease sales that will help reduce conflicts with wildlife, cultural, and outdoor recreation resources;
• An end to “speculative leasing,” which allows oil and gas companies to tie up public lands with little to no chance of resource development;
• Permanent increases to federal fees required to lease public lands for drilling, to the same levels required by many Western states; and
• Ending noncompetitive leasing, which allowed public lands to be auctioned off for as little as $1.50 per acre.

In response, Sierra Club Lands Protection Program Director Athan Manuel, released the following statement:

“These new regulations are the kind of common-sense reforms the federal oil and gas leasing program has needed for decades. The days of oil and gas companies locking up public lands for decades for pennies on the dollar and leaving polluted lands, water, and air in their wake are over.

“Simply put, the rules governing the leasing system weren’t working for communities, taxpayers, or the environment. The only people for whom they did work were oil and gas CEOs, who could pad corporate bottom lines while leaving the public to foot the bill to clean up their messes.

“The reforms announced by the Biden Administration are long-overdue, and will ensure that taxpayers get a fair return from the use of federal public lands while limiting harmful impacts to lands, wildlife, and community health.

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

Earthjustice applauded the announcement and issued the following statement:

“This new rule should be regarded as a long overdue win for communities and the environment. For decades, taxpayers have been left to foot the bill to clean up toxic messes left behind by oil companies across the West, while some of the same companies made record profits,” said Earthjustice attorney Mike Freeman. “BLM also has tolerated rampant speculation on leases that industry only purchased to pad its books and attract investors, while preventing those lands from being protected for other uses. On top of this, oil and gas drilling on public lands accelerates the climate crisis and results in oil spills and threats to drinking water. The Biden administration’s Oil and Gas Rule is an important step toward correcting these long-standing problems and holding oil and gas companies accountable. We look forward to seeing BLM’s next steps toward tackling the climate impacts of federal oil and gas drilling.”

Background

Public lands overseen by the Bureau of Land Management are essential to fishing and hunting, wildlife and land conservation, and outdoor recreation economies. The final version of BLM’s Oil and Gas Rule implements reforms included in the Inflation Reduction Act such as increased royalty rates, a realignment of rents and minimum bids to account for decades of inflation, a prohibition on non-competitive leasing, and a new fee to ensure oil and gas operators carefully consider the lands they nominate for lease. The new rule increases minimum bonding rates for the first time since 1960, to require oil and gas companies take more responsibility for covering the costs of well clean-up, contamination, and remediation. It will also help focus leasing decisions away from areas with significant cultural and wildlife value.

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

On April 3, Ramaphosa signed the Judicial Matters Amendment Act (2023), which includes a provision repealing “the common law relating to the crime of defamation,” according to news reports and a statement by the president’s office.  The South African parliament forwarded the bill to Ramaphosa for signature after approving it in December last year.

South Africa becomes the latest country in southern Africa to decriminalize defamation, following its neighbors Zimbabwe (2016)  and Lesotho (2018). Other countries in the Southern Africa Development Community regional bloc which continue to use criminal defamation against journalists include Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to CPJ research.

“The long-awaited repeal of the crime of defamation in South Africa is an important victory for press freedom and hopefully will reverberate positively across other parts of the region, such as Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where defamation continues to be used to criminalize  journalism,” said Angela Quintal, head of CPJ’s Africa program, in New York. “South African authorities should also move swiftly to reform other laws, as well as draft legislation that threaten, or have the potential to undermine media freedom and the public’s right to information.”

South Africa’s parliament voted to abolish the common law crime of defamation, which is based on Roman Dutch Law and court precedents,  on December 6, 2023 after decades of advocacy by the press,  media lawyers, and civil society activists  who argued  that there were other remedies that did not involve prosecution or jail, such as civil defamation lawsuits for aggrieved parties who believed their reputations were impugned. 

The  2013 conviction of newspaper journalist Cecil Motsepe was the most recent case in which a South African journalist was found guilty of criminal defamation, according to a guide on South African media law by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, a philanthropic body that works to advance press freedom. The conviction was overturned on appeal in 2014, although the court  ruled that criminal defamation remained constitutional. CPJ was among a group of organizations that filed an amicus brief in support of Motsepe, arguing for the decriminalization of defamation in South Africa.

Despite the repeal of criminal defamation, several problematic laws remain, including the Cybercrimes Act, according to press freedom advocates. In a 2022 Universal Periodic Review submission, CPJ and four other partner organizations urged South African authorities to amend the Cybercrimes Act, which lacks public interest overrides for journalists and could affect the ability to publish leaked information. The organizations also called for reform of the Protected Disclosures Act in order to strengthen protection for whistleblowers and the Prevention and Combating of Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Bill, which criminalizes speech on broad terms and which commentators fear could undermine public debate. That bill is pending presidential approval.

Justice Deputy Minister John Jeffery told CPJ by phone that the lack of a public interest override was not raised during public submissions about the proposed Cybercrimes Act. The justice department was not averse to making changes to draft laws if threats to press freedom arose, and it had done so previously, even when journalists had raised concerns at the eleventh hour.

Civil society groups also raised concerns about the General Intelligence Laws Amendment Bill currently before Parliament arguing in December last year that it posed a threat to democracy. When the bill was first tabled in December last year, critics feared that  the power given to state security to vet individuals who accessed national key points, including  the public broadcaster, SABC, was a threat to journalists’ independence. Although several amendments were subsequently made, free expression groups remain concerned that SABC journalists could still be targeted on the pretext that the intelligence services were establishing their trustworthiness. The National Assembly approved the revised bill last week, and it is now before the National Council of Provinces for processing.

State Security Agency spokesperson Sipho Mbhele did not respond to CPJ’s requests by messaging PP and telephone calls for comment.

Caroline James, the AmaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism’s  advocacy coordinator, told CPJ by phone there were also other laws and draft legislation that indirectly affect media freedom, contributing to a lack of transparency and restricting access to information for journalists and the public. These include the Protection of Personal Information Act and Public Procurement Bill.

Quintal is a non-executive board member of amaBhungane.

Since the advent of democracy in 1994, South African courts have generally  acted as a  bulwark against threats to press freedom, including  striking down efforts to legally gag the media or to judicially harass journalists.

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

Senegalese are due to vote on March 24, with 19 candidates vying to lead the country, after a last-minute delay to the poll in February triggered protests. The current president, Macky Sall, has already served two terms and is not running. 

In recent years, CPJ has tracked a decline in press freedom in Senegal, characterized by repeated arrests and prosecutions of journalists, attacks by security forces on reporters covering protests, internet shutdowns, and other censorship tactics. CPJ’s 2023 prison census placed Senegal among the top five jailers of journalists in Africa.

On March 12, Senegalese authorities released five journalists jailed since last year, including Ndèye Maty Niang, also known as Maty Sarr Niang, and four journalists from the Allô Senegal media outlet who continue to face prosecution, according to Niang and Famara Faty, a lawyer for the Allô Senegal journalists, who both spoke to CPJ. 

“The release from detention of at least five Senegalese journalists jailed since 2023 is welcome news, but they should have never been arrested and their cases underscore the imperative for legal reforms to prevent such criminalization of the press in the future,” said Angela Quintal, head of CPJ’s Africa program. “All candidates seeking to become Senegal’s next president should commit to taking swift actions to ensure practicing journalism is never again treated as a crime and to drop all ongoing prosecutions against journalists in the country, including the four recently released staff of Allô Senegal.” 

Niang, a reporter with the privately owned news website Kéwoulo, had been jailed since May 2023 and was granted provisional release on March 12, meaning her prosecution would have continued.

Niang’s lawyer, Moussa Sarr, told CPJ that the journalist’s case was now nullified under the amnesty law, which was passed by the Senegalese parliament on March 6 and enforced days after her release.

The amnesty law canceled legal proceedings over alleged crimes “relating to demonstrations or having political motivations” committed in the context of the political crisis in the country from March 2021 to February 2024, according to CPJ’s review of the law.

Journalists continue to face prosecution

Jailed since November 2023, the four Allô Sénégal journalists—news presenter Ndèye Astou Bâ, columnist Papa El Hadji Omar Yally, camera operator Daouda Sow, and manager Maniane Sène Lô—were released under judicial supervision and must appear at a Dakar court every month, according to Faty, adding that their cases were not covered by the amnesty law.

Allô Sénégal reporter Mamadou Lamine Dièye and technician Moussa Diop were also arrested in November, following a complaint by Senegal’s minister of tourism and leisure, Mame Mbaye Kan Niang, about a broadcast that discussed allegations that Niang committed adultery, but they were released under judicial supervision at that time.

The Allô Sénégal journalists face various charges, including “usurping the function of a journalist,” which stems from the combined application of Senegal’s press and penal code and is punishable by up to two years in prison. Ndèye Maty Niang was also charged with “usurping the function of a journalist,” among other offenses.

In May 2023, another journalist, Serigne Saliou Gueye, editor of the Yoor-Yoor newspaper, was similarly arrested and accused of usurping the function of a journalist and contempt of court. He was freed on provisional release after nearly a month and was required to report to the prosecutor’s office each month and barred from leaving Senegal without permission.

At least four more journalists—Pape Sané, Pape Alé Niang, Pape Ndiaye, and Babacar Touré—were arrested in connection with their work in 2023. They faced accusations under the penal code, including false news and conduct likely to undermine public security, and were released under strict conditions. CPJ could not immediately confirm whether their cases had been nullified under the amnesty law, though their lawyer Sarr said they should “in principle” be included. 

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

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.

This story was produced in collaboration with Sahan Journal, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to covering Minnesota’s immigrants and communities of color. Sign up for Sahan’s free newsletter to receive stories in your inbox.

The excitement that Abdinoor Igal felt after buying a five-bedroom house in a new development in a suburb south of the Twin Cities was short-lived.

At the time, it was the realization of a long-held dream — a spacious, modern home for his wife and seven children to call their own. And Igal, a 37-year-old long-haul trucker, had saved for a house for years.

But like many practicing Muslims, he had avoided paying or profiting from interest as a matter of faith, and therefore did not want to get a traditional mortgage. So in 2022, when he heard there was a new, interest-free way to buy a house using a financial instrument called a contract for deed, he jumped at the chance.

But less than two years later, Igal’s dream collapsed. After struggling to make the nearly $5,000 payments each month, last fall he put the family’s belongings in storage and handed the keys to the house, which he had agreed to pay more than $700,000 for, back to the seller. He sent his family to live temporarily in Kenya, where he owns another home and the cost of living is much lower. Meanwhile, he sleeps in the cabin of his semitruck.

Igal said he lost everything he put into the deal, one made directly between a buyer and seller without a bank’s involvement. The total: $170,000, including a $73,000 down payment. He walked away with nothing.

“They really took a very big advantage of me and my family,” said Igal, who first shared his story with ProPublica and Sahan Journal anonymously in 2022. “They make us, like, homeless.”

This week, two Minnesota state lawmakers are introducing legislation that would overhaul contract-for-deed law in the state to try to prevent the same dramatic loss from happening to other homebuyers.

State Sen. Zaynab Mohamed and Rep. Hodan Hassan, both Democrats representing parts of south Minneapolis, are behind the legislation. Mohamed introduced her bill on Monday, while Hassan expects to introduce hers later this week. The legislation follows the introduction of a federal contract-for-deed reform law by Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., and Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., this month.

Together, the state measures would enact a raft of new requirements for “investor sellers” using contracts for deed and provide buyers more ways to recoup their losses in the case of a default or bad faith on the part of the seller. Both Mohamed and Hassan are Somali and said they had heard stories of contracts for deed going wrong for constituents and members of their community.

“It could be my mother, it could be my sister,” said Hassan. “Those people are from my community, and some of them are vulnerable because they don’t understand the system and they don’t speak the language.”

The legislation is in part a response to a 2022 Sahan Journal and ProPublica investigation about potentially predatory uses of contracts for deed in Minnesota’s Somali community. The news organizations found a rising market in Minnesota for home sales using contracts for deed and complaints from buyers that they’d agreed to unfavorable terms they didn’t understand.

In recent years, real estate investors have promoted contracts for deed as an interest-free purchase agreement by first buying houses using traditional mortgages, then reselling them to contract buyers — often for tens of thousands of dollars above market price in place of any interest.

The deals were frequently fast-tracked and conducted without the involvement of a lawyer and without an inspection or appraisal of the property. Despite being marketed as interest free, deals like the one Igal signed also ultimately included interest payments at rates higher than the market, according to the contract. If a buyer defaults on a payment, they can be evicted in as little as 60 days.

Proponents of contracts for deed say the arrangements are a way for someone who otherwise couldn’t be approved for a mortgage to become a homeowner. Mohamed agreed that, when promoted honestly, contracts for deed can be “a beautiful process,” but she emphasized that too many sellers are taking advantage of buyers in the Somali community.

“You have to make sure that they have integrity in that process and an understanding that you can’t take advantage of these communities,” Mohamed said.

The bills, if approved by the state Legislature and signed by the governor, would impose regulations on investor-sellers — people that, for at least a year, have not owned or lived in the home they are trying to sell. The bill would prohibit investor-sellers from “churning” properties, or rapidly entering and canceling contracts with multiple buyers, a tactic that unscrupulous sellers can use to collect large down payments without ever losing ownership of the property. Homeowners who bought their home through a contract for deed from someone found guilty of churning or failing to make any of the new required consumer protection disclosures can recover the payments they made, minus the “fair rental value” of the home, as well as the cost of any improvements they made.

The bill gives homebuyers 10 days after receiving all disclosures to cancel their contract. And homeowners who cancel their contract within four years of buying their home can recover a portion of their down payment. If they default, they must receive a 30-day notice from the seller and have 90 days to catch up on their payments before eviction.

Hassan said she was surprised by the balloon payments, which can amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars, that are common to contracts for deed.

“That was the shocker for me, the amount of money that goes as a down payment that people are expected to come up with, and then comes the balloon payments that are expected to be paid. I’m like, this makes no sense,” she said. “That’s setting up people for failure.”

The proposed law would require not only that the balloon payment schedule be included in the paperwork, but also that all disclosures must be written in the language that was used to negotiate the deal; if a Spanish-speaking real estate broker set up the sale, for instance, the disclosures must be written in Spanish.

The bill is expected to be first heard in the Minnesota Senate’s Housing and Homelessness Prevention Committee this month.

Igal said in an interview from the road in North Dakota that he had hoped he could get out of the contract with his seller, a company called Banken Holdings LLC, without losing everything. Chad Banken, the company owner, did not respond to a request for comment.

According to his contract, if Igal had managed to make it to the end of his five-year term, he still would have owed over $500,000 for the balloon payment. But Igal said this payment schedule had never been explained to him properly before he signed the contract.

Now, Igal said he hopes to save enough money to send for his family before the beginning of the next school year. If he can accomplish that, he said they will go back to living in a rental apartment. Even though it’s been decades since he first came to the U.S. as a refugee, Igal said he feels like he is starting over from “zero.”

Still, he said he feels good that his story may prevent other families from suffering a similar fate.

“My family already broke down. We are already separate, living in two countries,” he said. “If what I started helps families stay together, I’m happy with that.”

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Jessica Lussenhop, ProPublica, and Joey Peters, Sahan Journal.

Academic Andrew Anton Mako says the Papua New Guinea’s systemic dysfunction was plain to see in the rioting and looting throughout the country’s main cities two weeks ago.

That rioting was sparked by a protest by police after unannounced deductions from their wages.

It led to a riot causing the deaths of more than 20 people, widespread looting and hundreds of millions of dollars damage to businesses.

• READ MORE: Marape ‘can’t pass the buck’ for PNG riots, says East Sepik governor

The government, which declared a two-week long state of emergency, put the wage deductions down to a glitch in the system.

Mako, who is a visiting lecturer and project coordinator for the ANU-UPNG Partnership with the Australian National University’s Development Policy Centre, said that the rioting would not have happened if the system was working properly.

“That information could have been transmitted through the system so that not only the police officers, but other public servants would have been assured that there was a glitch in the system, and then they would return the money in the next pay,” he said.

Symptom of major problems
“I think that information could have been made available to the officers quickly and the protests should not have happened.”

He said it was not an isolated event but a symptom of major problems facing the country.

“The government and the policymakers really need to take a comprehensive approach in addressing that,” Mako said.

He said that in the administration there were entire areas where little development or reform had happened in a generation.

The last attempt to look at the government machinery was more than 20 years, under Sir Mekere Morauta, but since then “there hasn’t been any sort of reforms to improve governance, improve public safety, efficiency, and all that.”

Mako believes if the work of Sir Mekere had been continued the country would not be facing the problems it is at the moment.

What reforms are needed
Mako said the government needs to know it faces major issues that cannot be resolved quickly — they will need to think in terms of years before reforms can be bedded in.

“It’s not going to be easy, they have to really work on it for a number of years. They will have to come up with a reform agenda work on it for the next four or five years.”

Up to now, Mako said, politicians have just dealt with the symptoms, rather than addressing the underlying issues, such as unemployment.

He sees the high crime rate as being closely linked to the lack of work opportunities, along with high inflation and the failure of wages to keep pace.

“The focus has to be on the sectors that create jobs. So over the last few years, over the last decade or so, a lot of focus has really been on the resources sector, the mineral, petroleum and gas sector.

“Those sectors are really called enclave sectors and they have really limited linkage with the broader sectors of the economy,” Mako said.

“So the mineral sectors do not create a lot of jobs. A lot of the jobs [there] are done by either machines or highly skilled workers. So it is the sectors like agriculture, like fisheries, like tourism, forestry, those are the sectors really, really create jobs.”

Mako added the government should be focussing on investing in, and developing policies, in these traditional sectors, enabling many of the unemployed, especially the young, to find work.

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.

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

The nation’s biggest investment in the past decade to fix police abuses has failed. The New York Times, in collaboration with ProPublica conducted an extensive 6-month-long investigation into the use of body cameras on police officers and found that it has done little to stop police killings. Reformists ought to be shocked—however, they may be too busy concocting yet another expensive scheme to pour money into policing rather than out—but abolitionists are hoarse from saying, “We told you it wouldn’t work.”

When 18-year-old Mike Brown, newly graduated from high school, was gunned down in 2014 in cold blood by officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, his killing sparked one of the early waves of the Black Lives Matter movement. The New York Times rightly faced protest as well for referring to Brown as “no angel,” a familiar media post-mortem of Black police victims that paints them as deserving of death.

And, as Ferguson burned with rage, academics and politicians declared the staid solution to such killings: body cameras worn by police officers to capture them in the act of killing.

Well, okay, police reformists hoped that the body cameras would dissuade police officers from killing rather than merely catching them in the act of doing so. Or, if the cameras failed to restrain police, they would capture evidence to hold police accountable. But such faith in the armed enforcers of racial capitalism was naive at best. At worst, it was a measure of the ardent belief that officers are actually trying to keep people safe. Liberals have been as guilty as conservatives in their unquestioning belief in the sanctity of policing. It was a Democrat, President Barack Obama, who in 2014 asked Congress to authorize spending $263 million of taxpayer funds to outfit cops with cameras.

The price of liberal naivete was on full display in 2020 when Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin slowly and brutally choked George Floyd to death in full view of bystander Darnella Frazier’s phone camera while he knelt on Floyd’s neck. Chauvin had been outfitted with a body camera that fell off him while he killed Floyd. In 2017, Chauvin had been caught at least twice using the same tactic of kneeling on top of a person’s neck while wearing a body camera. The city paid out more than $1 million to settle with the victims, who were lucky enough to survive. Chauvin then went on to kill Floyd three years later.

When Chauvin was ultimately convicted, it was no thanks to his body camera. Massive public pressure from the largest protests in the nation’s history, and Frazier’s testimony and recording, helped to indict him for Floyd’s murder.

The fact that police departments themselves supported the use of body cameras when they were initially proposed ought to have warned us that the project was doomed to failure. What the New York Times/ProPublica investigation found is that police have used body camera footage to actually justify their killings. In the 2017 fatal shooting of a man named Miguel Richards, the New York Police Department used selective footage from officers’ cameras to absolve them, not hold them accountable. It is frequently the police themselves, depending on the city, who get to decide whether or not to release body camera footage. Body cameras did not deliver accountability; they were just new weapons to help police in the war they have been waging on the public.

Decades of police reforms have sucked up hundreds of millions of dollars, and have kicked the can of accountability down the road, maintained police dominance of city budgets, and ultimately failed to curb the killings. Even the Washington Post called it “an ongoing exercise in reform that never ends.”

The police kill at least 1,000 people a year, with 2022 being the deadliest year ever recorded. And it appears as though 2023 may surpass it. In other words, police fatalities rose after body cameras were deployed (it’s true, correlation does not necessarily mean causation). A deeper look at the data shows that Black people are the most likely to die at the hands of police and are twice as likely to be killed than whites, despite being a much smaller racial group. And, younger Black people are the most vulnerable to bloodthirsty cops.

So, what would actually keep police from killing? The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), in conjunction with GenForward at the University of Chicago, asked the group most victimized by violent police—Black Americans—what their opinions were on moving money out of policing and into the things that have been proven to foster safety (housing, health care, education, and other social services). The extensive survey, called Perspectives on Community Safety from Black America, found high levels of fear toward police among Black Americans. Younger Black people were the most fearful. This is not surprising given that they are the most targeted by police.

More importantly, the survey found broad support for an “Invest/Divest” approach to public safety. Specifically, this means, “86 [percent] of Black people support creating a new agency of first responders who specialize in de-escalating violence and providing mental-health support and other social services that would take over these responsibilities from police.” The survey also found that “78 [percent] support a process whereby city officials promote public safety by investing in solutions that do not rely on incarceration.”

Dr. Amara Enyia, M4BL’s Policy and Research Director, told me in an interview on YES! Presents: Rising Up With Sonali, “When people say reform, so often it’s this tweaking around the edges of police and policing. It’s things that we know don’t really get to the root causes of harm that come from the policing system.”

Enyia questions the reliance on policing altogether, especially in scenarios where the presence of armed officers often makes things worse. “Why should armed police be pulling people over for traffic violations?” she asks. “Or why should police be giving bicyclists tickets for riding their bike on the sidewalk, for example? Why should individuals who are having a mental health crisis, why should armed police be called to the scene?”

There are no good answers to these questions. And body cameras do nothing to discourage police from killing in such scenarios because they merely validate policing as a tool for safety. Police are enforcers of order, not safety.

Safety does not enter the equation except for those members of society who rely on the strict maintenance of the existing order: well-off white Americans for example, who enjoy the greatest economic benefits from generational wealth and, not coincidentally, experience the least harm from police. Rethinking the role of policing in society needs to go hand in hand with rethinking our economy as a whole.

M4BL asks a stark question in the report on its survey results that ought to form the basis of any changes to policing: “Can you imagine a world where policing is obsolete and everyone has what they need to thrive?”

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

The post Oh Look, Police Reforms Didn’t Work appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Sonali Kolhatkar.

Section 702 was designed to allow the government to warrantlessly surveil non-U.S. citizens abroad for foreign intelligence purposes. In recent years, however, it has morphed into a domestic surveillance tool, with FBI agents using the Section 702 databases to conduct millions of invasive searches for Americans’ communications — including those of protesters, racial justice activists, 19,000 donors to a congressional campaign, journalists, and even members of Congress.

The American Civil Liberties Union, along with dozens of other civil society organizations from across the political spectrum, recently sent a letter to congressional leadership urging them to oppose any attempt to include this authority in the NDAA or any other “must-pass” legislation.

The following is a statement from Kia Hamadanchy, senior policy counsel at ACLU:

“It’s incredibly disheartening that Congress decided to extend an easily-abused law with zero of the reforms needed to protect all of our privacy. As long as Section 702 is being used by the government to spy on Americans without a warrant, we will continue to fight this unconstitutional law and work with Congress to strengthen our Fourth Amendment protections against government surveillance.”

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

Parliament has ended for another term, shutting down ahead of the Aotearoa New Zealand election campaign with a debate where many focused on attacking their political opponents.

Labour Party leader and Prime Minister Chris Hipkins warned New Zealanders: “We can continue to move forward under Labour, or we can face a coalition of cuts, chaos, and fear: A National/ACT/New Zealand First government that would be one of the most inexperienced and untested in our history.”

Parliament typically rises at the end of a term with an adjournment debate, and Thursday’s seemed to confirm the coming election on October 14 would be full of negative campaigning.

• READ MORE: Other NZ election reports

Here is a brief summary of the political leaders’ speeches:

Chris Hipkins (Labour):

Labour’s leader and incumbent Prime Minister Chris Hipkins launched into the closing adjournment debate reflecting on the eventful past six years. He said his own tenure in the role had not broken that mould, with the Auckland floods sweeping in just two days after he was sworn in, followed by Cyclone Gabrielle.

“Ours is a government that has been forged through fire. Every challenge that has been thrown our way, we have risen to that,” he said.

He said Labour had achieved a lot, but there was more to do — and much at stake in the coming election.

“We can continue to move forward under Labour, or we can face a coalition of cuts, chaos, and fear: A National/ACT/New Zealand First government that would be one of the most inexperienced and untested in our history, a government who want to wind the clock back on all of the progress that we are making.”

He praised Finance Minister Grant Robertson’s handling of the economy, highlighting a 6 percent larger economy than before the covid-19 pandemic, record low unemployment, and wages “growing faster under our government than inflation”.

He soon returned to attacking political opponents, however.

“Now is not the time to turn back. Now is not the time to stoke the inflationary fires with unfunded tax cuts as the members opposite promised, and it is not a time to turn our backs on talent by introducing a talent tax,” he said, referring to National’s plan to increase levies on visas.

“National wants to turn the clock backwards; we want to keep moving forward.”

He finished by saying Labour had a positive vision for New Zealand, before his final parting words: “and I wave goodbye to Michael Woodhouse, too, because he’s guaranteed not to be here after the election”.

Christopher Luxon (National):

The National leader said Hipkins’ speech should be one of apology, “to the parents and the kids who actually have been let down by an education system …to all the people who have waited for endless times and hours in hospital emergency departments … to all the victims of ram raids in dairies and superettes … to all the people that are lying awake at night worried about how they’re going to make their payments and keep their house.”

He continued with the requisite thanks such speeches so often sprinkle on officials, staff, supporters and workers before thanking the man he had been criticising.

“I do want to thank, in particular, the Prime Minister Chris Hipkins for his services to the National Party, because he rode in very triumphantly in February, and he announced that he was sweeping away everything that Jacinda Ardern stood for-especially kindness. But I have to say it turned out it was all words and no action, because, as we expected, he just carried on doing more of the same: Excessive, addicted government spending.

He turned to the slew of Labour personnel problems of the past year and more, likening the government to a car with the wheels falling off; the Greens were “in this rally too, they’re on their e-bikes, and they’re pedalling along the Wellington cycle lanes,” while Te Pāti Māori were “in their waka, but, sadly, they’re not the party of collaboration that they once were”.

“Then there are the ACT folk. They’re off in their pink van, and it’s been wonderful. They’re travelling the countryside, and David’s reading Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom, which is a good read, as you well know, Mr Speaker.”

He lavished praise on his own team, singling out deputy Nicola Willis, then closed by promising National was “ready to govern, we are sorted, we are united, we have the talent, we have the energy, we have the ideas, we have the diversity to take this country forward”.

David Seymour (ACT):

ACT’s leader also honed in on his political opponents, targeting Labour’s polling.

“It’s been a long three years in this Chamber and it has been characterised by one fact that lays bare what has happened, and that is the fact that the Labour Party, in Roy Morgan, polled 26 percent. That means that half the people who voted for Labour at the last election have abandoned voting for Labour in three years. The question that they must be asking themselves is why that is.”

“I think the reason that we have so much change and support-Labour have lost half of their supporters in the last three years because, frankly, never has so much been promised to so many and yet so little actually delivered … New Zealanders overwhelmingly say this country is going in the wrong direction, and they also will tell you that their number one concern is the cost of living. That is Grant Robertson’s epitaph.”

He targeted housing, debt, inflation, victimisation, and child poverty before targeting the government for taking “a divisive approach to almost every single issue”.

“If you take the example of vaccination. Now, I’m a person who says that vaccination was safe and effective, yet by using ostracism as a tool to try and increase vaccination levels this government has eroded social cohesion and divided New Zealanders when they didn’t need to,” he said.

“New Zealand have had enough of that style of politics. They’ve had enough of Chris Hipkins going negative. They’ve had enough of the misinformation.”

He finished by saying the choice for New Zealanders now was not between swapping “Chris for Chris and red for blue”, but “we’ll actually deliver what we promise, we’ll cut waste, we’ll end racial division, and we’ll get the politics out of the classroom. Those aren’t just policies, those are values that we all share.”

James Shaw (Greens):

The Green co-leader took his own opening shot at Seymour, as “the leader of ‘New New Zealand First'”.

“Mr Seymour must be feeling quite grumpy right now, because last term he worked so hard to get rid of Winston Peters so that this term he could become Winston Peters, and now Winston Peters is calling and he wants his Horcrux back because that blackened shard of a soul can only animate the body of one populist authoritarian at once.”

He turned the hose on both major parties in one statement, saying it was odd National was proposing more new taxes than Labour while the Greens were promising bigger tax cuts than National. He criticised National over its plan to spend the funds from the Emissions Trading Scheme, before turning to climate change overall as — unusually — a source of positivity.

“Our greenhouse gas emissions in Aotearoa are falling, and that is because — and it is only because — with the Green Party in government with Labour, we have prioritised that work every single day.”

But positivity did not last long.

“Under the last National government, one in 100 new cars sold in this country was an electric vehicle. Last June, it was one in two … and National want to cancel all of that so that they can have an election year bribe.”

Rawiri Waititi (Te Pāti Māori):

The Pāti Māori leader Rawiri Waititi began with a fairy tale.

“It seems like this side of the House can find a grain of salt in a sugar factory. I just wanted to say, as I heard the story about Goldilocks — Mama Bear, Papa Bear, Baby Bear — I tell you, it’s been very difficult to sit next to a polar bear and a gummy bear, and it’s been quite hard to contain the grizzly bear in me.”

He spoke in te reo Māori before giving a speech which — unlike the other leaders — focused exclusively on his own party’s promises.

“We are the only movement that will fight for our people,” he said.

“What does an Aotearoa hou look like? It looks like how we would treat you on the marae. We will welcome you. We will feed you. We will house you. We will protect you. We will educate you. We will care you. We will love you.”

“Te Pāti Māori is a movement that leaves no one behind, whether you are tangata whenua or a tangata Tiriti, tangata hauā, takatāpui, wāhine, tāne, rangatahi, mokopuna — you are whānau.”

He spoke of the need to reduce poverty and homelessness, before making the second of two references to his suspension from Parliament this week, then said it was time to “believe in ourselves to be proud, to be magic, and to believe in your mana”.

“I am proud of you all, I am proud of our movement, and I’m proud to head into this campaign, doing what we said we would do.”

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.

A damning new investigation by journalists Maria Hinojosa and Zeba Warsi examines how immigration officials have failed to properly address complaints of sexual abuse from people held in detention centers. The report from Futuro Investigates and Latino USA details how women in jails run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, have been sexually abused, often in a medical setting when they are at their most vulnerable. It comes more than a decade after Hinojosa’s report for PBS Frontline about sexual abuse in ICE detention. But allegations of abuse have continued. “If you complain, you are going to be threatened,” says Hinojosa, who notes there is still “constant coercion” in detention, despite earlier claims of reform.

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

A damning new investigation by journalists Maria Hinojosa and Zeba Warsi examines how immigration officials have failed to properly address complaints of sexual abuse from people held in detention centers. The report from Futuro Investigates and Latino USA details how women in jails run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, have been sexually abused, often in a medical setting when they are at their most vulnerable. It comes more than a decade after Hinojosa’s report for PBS Frontline about sexual abuse in ICE detention. But allegations of abuse have continued. “If you complain, you are going to be threatened,” says Hinojosa, who notes there is still “constant coercion” in detention, despite earlier claims of reform.

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

We speak with Minneapolis City Councilmember Robin Wonsley, the first Black Democratic Socialist on the City Council, about the Justice Department’s newly released probe into the city’s police department that found systemic problems with discrimination and excessive force and concluded: “The patterns and practices we observed made what happened to George Floyd possible.” Wonsley says “none of this is new,” and demands a strong community role in public safety reforms expected to follow the report.

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

The Democratic majority in Minnesota’s state Legislature, along with Democratic Governor Tim Walz, have enacted sweeping progressive reforms this year, with many praising the ambitious agenda as a “Minnesota Miracle.” Democrats have successfully codified abortion rights; protections for transgender people; driver’s licenses for undocumented residents; new gun control rules; the restoration of voting rights for previously incarcerated people; a $1 billion investment in affordable housing that includes rent assistance; stronger protections for workers seeking to unionize; and paid family, medical and sick leave, among other measures.

Peter Callaghan, a staff writer at MinnPost, says Democrats are using their governing trifecta after years of “pent-up demand” from progressives. We also speak with Robin Wonsley, Democratic Socialist city councilmember in Minneapolis, about how Minnesota Governor Tim Walz faced backlash from labor organizers in May after he issued the first veto in his entire tenure blocking a bill that would have granted minimum wage and better worker protections for Uber and Lyft drivers. The veto came just hours after Uber threatened to pull out of Minnesota.

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

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Eric Draitser.

The New York Times (4/27/23) reported that changes to bail laws would “for the first time allow judges to set bail with public safety in mind”–in other words, allowing judges to punish people for crimes without having to go to the bother of convicting them.

In a victory for proponents of mass incarceration, Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a budget deal that would include toughening up the state’s bail laws. It would, as the New York Times (4/27/23) described in muted detail, “for the first time allow judges to set bail with public safety in mind.” It’s a major rollback of efforts to limit the long-term jailing of people who have not been convicted of crimes and who cannot afford the high price of bail.

The right-wing New York Post (4/27/23) quietly gave itself a bit of credit for this change, quoting Hochul’s statement about the change:

There’s some horrific cases—splashed on the front pages of newspapers—where defense lawyers [told judges,] “follow the least restrictive that means you have to let this person out,” and some of those cases literally shocked the conscience.

Hochul didn’t name the New York Post, but everyone knows what she’s talking about here. The Post (e.g., 4/21/21, 7/31/22, 9/27/22, 2/1/23, 3/28/23) has led a never-ending drumbeat calling for more pre-trial detention. Never mind that, as Civil Rights Corps founder Alec Karakatsanis (Twitter, 3/27/22, 8/30/22) pointed out, studies show that bail reform has increased public safety while reducing the prison population.

Demonizing criminal justice reform isn’t just a New York phenomenon, as Rupert Murdoch’s media empire has painted progressive district attorneys in Manhattan, San Francisco and Philadelphia as pro-crime lawyers who have turned these cities into war zones (FAIR.org, 1/14/22). The Murdoch machine has also pilloried the slogan “defund the police” (Fox News, 3/23/22, 7/20/22).

Favorite punching bags

Below an alarming headline, a Bloomberg article (7/29/22) pointed out that crime in New York City wasn’t so rampant after all.

And it isn’t just Murdoch. San Francisco—which, because of its importance in the hippie and gay liberation eras, is supposedly the focal point of US liberal governance—has been a favorite punching bag across corporate media as an out-of-control crime city (Atlantic, 6/8/22; BBC, 4/7/23; Newsweek, 4/11/23). Contrary to that narrative, the housing business is still booming in the Bay Area (Real Deal, 3/1/23).

Bloomberg (7/29/22) ran a story with the headline, “Fear of Rampant Crime Is Derailing New York City’s Recovery,” even as rents keep rising (CNBC, 12/8/22; CNN, 4/13/23) and job growth continues. But the Bloomberg piece offered an interesting nugget, saying that “violence is a potent political issue, and people are highly susceptible to what politicians and the media say about crime.”

That’s according to John Gramlich, a researcher of crime data for Pew Research Center, who added, “That may not be reflective of all crime or what the actual crime rate in a particular area is.” This hysteria, as Gramlich suggests, is based on feelings, not data. And that same Bloomberg piece noted that there have been “nearly 800 stories per month across all digital and print media about crime in New York City” since “tough-on-crime” Eric Adams became mayor and made policing a top priority.

It should go without saying that the hysteria around crime in these cities is, to put it mildly, overstated. City and State (4/28/23) noted that in New York City, “crime levels remain low, especially compared to the 1980s and 1990s.”

Out of the US’s 100 biggest cities, San Francisco’s homicide rate comes at No. 66, and New York City ranks 80th. Chicago, another popular subject for conservative sermons on crime, does have one of the country’s higher murder rates, but there are 13 cities with worse ones—many of which are in states with Republican governors. Deep South states like Louisiana and Mississippi have homicide rates of 21.3 and 23.7 per 100,000, respectively, while coastal New York and California’s rates are 4.8 and 6.4.

Shockingly non-shocking

People spend years behind bars without being convicted of any crime (The City, 8/17/22).

Weigh that against the things that don’t shock politicians. Consider Kalief Browder, a Bronx teenager who committed suicide after spending three years in pre-trial detention at the city’s notorious Rikers Island jail over charges of stealing a backpack (New Yorker, 9/29/14). Reuven Blau—co-author of Rikers: An Oral History—found several pretrial detainees waiting years at Rikers for a trial, with one person even waiting a decade (The City, 8/17/22).

The Urban Institute (12/14/22) noted that 19 people died in pretrial detention in New York City in 2022, while in the country as a whole, “between 2008 and 2019, 4,998 people died while in pretrial detention—and this number only includes reports from the United States’ largest jails.” In case anyone needs reminding: These people who died behind bars were presumed innocent under the nation’s legal system.

For Blau, it’s frustrating that the “tabloid hysteria” can move the political dial. (Disclosure: Blau and I worked together as reporters at New York’s Chief-Leader.) As he put it, the Post can always point to someone going in and out of city jails, saying, “Oh my God, he’s a danger.” But, Blau asked: “What are we doing to help this person, or to figure out what isn’t working?”

“It’s the selling of fear,” he said of newspaper coverage of repeat offenders. “They don’t ask, ‘How did this person get here?’ The answer to this is more Rikers Islands. They create this very black and white world, and it plays to the public.”

What gets lost in the media conversation, Blau said, is that being “tough on crime” is never about looking at the structural inequality—lack of schools, social services and housing—that allows crime to fester. “It’s not just about being tough on crime, but about helping people get the help that they need,” he said.

Crime hype consequences

Crime went down in San Francisco under DA Chesa Boudin (Washington Post, 6/14/21)–but that’s not what the local news was saying, so it’s not what voters believed.

Actual data about life and death in jails, about justice not being served, is not enough to move New York’s governor, but the sensationalism about crime is enough. That’s the news here. For example, New York Democrat Rep. Sean Maloney lost his congressional race last year, thus helping to tip control of the House of Representatives to the Republicans. Afterwards, he told the New York Times (11/10/22) that “voters in New York have been told by the News Corporation machine, principally the New York Post, that crime is the No. 1 issue.” In his race, he noted, “$10 million was spent echoing those themes.”

He added that Hochul and “the rest of us have to contend with the hysteria of the New York Post and of Fox News combined.”

Maloney’s statement is an over-simplification, as many believe that the state’s Democratic Party leadership’s lackluster campaign efforts provided an opening for Republicans (Gothamist, 11/17/22). And it certainly isn’t just the Murdoch outlets hammering the crime issue (FAIR.org, 11/10/22), although they are probably the loudest.

But combine this with Hochul’s statement about news coverage of violent crime—or, for that matter, the fact that propaganda about crime in San Francisco helped the ouster of progressive DA Chesa Boudin (Politico, 6/8/22; FAIR.org, 7/11/22). Then the problem becomes clearer.

The sensationalism around crime stories, often devoid of context and data, isn’t just annoying to read. It has very real policy consequences that will impact real human beings.

The post Media Crime Hype Helps Roll Back Reforms appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Ari Paul.

In the past couple of months, Americans have suffered disastrous consequences from deregulation initiated during the Trump administration: in transit, the East Palestine derailment threatening the lives and livelihoods of thousands; in banking, the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank that are still roiling financial markets.

The good news is that despite the overall deregulatory bent of the last administration, the Biden administration has been strengthening antitrust enforcement, plus there have been bipartisan efforts, led in the House by David Cicilline (D-RI) and Ken Buck (R-CO), to strengthen antitrust protections and curb the growing power of Big Tech.

Those bipartisan efforts were stymied thanks to intense lobbying from libertarian-leaning tech companies, think tanks, and advocates, with Big Money funding from the donor network of libertarian oil billionaire Charles Koch, whose influence over antitrust legislation goes back decades. As the new GOP-helmed Congress contemplates reforms, it’s already clear that party leaders like Jim Jordan (R-OH) and libertarian Thomas Massie (R-KY) — who are recipients of Koch cash themselves — are planning to do Big Tech’s bidding and delay or kill regulation and let the companies continue accumulating market power.

From privacy concerns around consumer data to predatory pricing locking out small businesses to the flood of disinformation on social media, Americans have become aware of how much market concentration the big four technology companies have achieved. Americans of all political parties agree that Big Tech companies like Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google have too much power and need to be reined in. President Biden has made promoting competition and ending monopolies a cornerstone of his economic agenda, but he can only do so much facing Republican obstructionism in the House. While congressional action has stalled, the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission are working to fully enforce existing antitrust laws.

The tech companies, think tanks, advocates, and Koch network continue to fight these efforts. A far-right founder of the notoriously obstructionist House Freedom Caucus, Jim Jordan is now chair of the powerful Judiciary Committee which oversees antitrust policy. In January, he named Thomas Massie as chairman of the Antitrust Subcommittee, ignoring precedent and bypassing the more senior Ken Buck, whom many had presumed would lead it. Jordan’s move was not unexpected though, as he opposed Buck’s antitrust regulatory approach in favor of a more libertarian one.

Jim Jordan’s ties to the Koch brothers date back to at least 2008, when he became the first member of Congress to sign onto the No Climate Tax pledge, an initiative of the Koch advocacy group Americans for Prosperity. Koch Industries PAC has donated $60k to Jordan since 2011 – the maximum allowed for each of the last six elections – and he has been a featured speaker for at least one of the secretive Koch donor retreats.

Thomas Massie has been a recipient of Koch cash since he assumed office in 2012. Like Charles Koch, Massie earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and also like Koch, Massie is an avowed champion of deregulation, having sponsored bills to abolish both the Department of Education and the Environmental Protection Agency.

A recent, fawning profile by the New York Times claims that “Mr. Massie’s politics are very much at odds with the interests of the Republican Party’s traditional donor class and leadership” and notes his “resistance to the influence wielded by corporations and interest groups over our policymaking” – without noting the funding from Koch (a long-time member of the traditional GOP donor class) or the high scores Massie has received for his legislative votes from Americans for Prosperity.

While Charles Koch is most commonly known for his oil interests, he also has a large stake in Silicon Valley – his son Chase runs the venture capital arm, Koch Disruptive Technologies, launched in 2017, the same year his political groups began partnering with Big Tech on public policy fights in DC.

Though Massie is hailed as an anti-establishment contrarian by The New York Times author, his voting record advances the agenda of a libertarian oil and tech billionaire whose primary concerns are juicing corporate profits and deregulating industries his companies already dominate.

But it’s easy to see why Massie would want to cultivate an anti-establishment, anti-corporate image: it’s popular with the electorate. GOP voters overwhelmingly support antitrust regulation. In a 2022 poll, 73% of Republican voters said that Big Tech companies are not regulated enough, and 85% of them agree that Big Tech companies have become too powerful, are destroying competition, and are abusing consumers through monopoly behavior.

These popular antitrust policy ideas supported by Republican voters are met with lip service from Republican leaders. Look instead at their actions. Jim Jordan’s public rebuke of Ken Buck’s antitrust work in the last Congress, and naming instead Thomas Massie to lead antitrust policy negotiations, are clear signals that Jordan intends to stall congressional reforms in the tech industry as long as the Republicans hold their House majority.

When the next big disaster unfolds due to deregulation, don’t be fooled. Republicans are deflecting blame by attacking the Biden administration as insufficiently populist, but the seeds of the East Palestine train derailment and Silicon Valley Bank bailout were sown under the Trump deregulatory regime and more broadly by the anti-government ethos of the GOP and its Big Money donors.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Mike Lux.

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The Environmental Protection Agency proposed a series of major reforms this past week to slash toxic air pollution at chemical plants and facilities that sterilize medical equipment, nearly 18 months after ProPublica reported how an estimated 74 million Americans were exposed to elevated cancer risk from these businesses.

The first set of rules place stricter limits on roughly 80 air pollutants, according to EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan. The list includes potent cancer-causing chemicals such as ethylene oxide, which is used to sterilize medical equipment, and chloroprene, an ingredient in synthetic rubber. The proposal, which would affect more than 200 manufacturers, requires routine air monitoring around these chemical plants, something local communities have long requested.

Regan announced the first wave of changes last Thursday at a press conference in St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana. The area falls within an 85-mile stretch along the Mississippi River known as “Cancer Alley” due to its concentration of industrial polluters, many of which are located near communities of color.

“For generations, our most vulnerable communities have unjustly borne the burden of breathing unsafe, polluted air,” Regan said in a statement. “Every child in this country deserves clean air to breathe, and EPA will use every available tool to make that vision a reality.”

The EPA declined to make any agency employees available for an interview.

Environmental experts said the proposal is a huge step forward. The updated rules impose stricter health standards for emissions of chloroprene and ethylene oxide to reduce the risk of cancer residents face when they breathe pollution from chemical plants. The proposal also would require facilities to fix leaks and install devices to limit emissions from smokestacks, storage tanks and other equipment. If the new rules are adopted, the number of residents near these facilities who would be exposed to unacceptable cancer risk ultimately would drop by 96%, the EPA said.

“This is a very big announcement” that targets the largest and most hazardous chemical manufacturers, said Adam Kron, an attorney at Earthjustice. The group sued the EPA years ago to force them to update these rules in a more timely manner.

Beverly Wright, executive director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, said in a statement that this was “the most significant rule I have seen in my 30 years of experience working in Cancer Alley.”

The American Chemistry Council, an industry trade group, said that it was reviewing the proposed new rules but signaled it was concerned about aspects related to ethylene oxide. “Overly conservative regulations on ethylene oxide could threaten access to products ranging from electric vehicle batteries to sterilized medical equipment,” the group wrote on its website. “We support strong, science-based regulations for our industry. But we are concerned that EPA may be rushing its work on significant rulemaking packages,” it added. “We will be engaging closely throughout the comment and review process.”

In 2021, ProPublica published a unique analysis of cumulative cancer risk from industrial air pollution nationwide. Using emissions data reported by the companies, we found that in some parts of Louisiana’s Cancer Alley, the added lifetime cancer risk from these chemicals was up to 47 times what the EPA considers acceptable. Many residents who live near multiple facilities face unacceptable cancer risks from combined emissions, yet the EPA rarely considers cumulative risk. Out of all the pollutants that the EPA regulates, ProPublica's analysis found, ethylene oxide is the most toxic, contributing to the majority of the excess cancer risk created by industrial air pollution in the United States.

Our work spurred reform, including additional air monitoring, two state cancer studies and the EPA’s rejection of a less stringent health standard for ethylene oxide. Weeks after we published our series, Regan said the agency would conduct a series of unannounced EPA inspections of major polluters. The EPA’s new proposed rules, though, go even further.

The agency’s proposal also requires many facilities to conduct air monitoring and make the resulting data publicly available. On top of limiting emissions of 80 pollutants, chemical plants for the first time would monitor for six chemicals — benzene, ethylene oxide, chloroprene, vinyl chloride, ethylene dichloride and 1,3-butadiene — at the fence line, or perimeter, of their facilities. If annual averages exceeded EPA guidelines, the companies would need to find and repair any leaks that were likely to have caused the excessive emissions.

Scott Throwe, a former EPA air pollution expert who now works as a consultant, said the EPA could have gone further by requiring direct, continuous monitoring of toxic air pollutants at the vents, smokestacks and other outlets where emissions are released.

Fence line monitoring only tells you that something is leaking, he said, and doesn’t help you identify the exact piece of equipment responsible. These facilities are so large that each plant may have thousands of potential leaky spots. “They’re not going to find it in five minutes and slap some Silly Putty on the leak and call it a day,” he said. If the EPA required direct monitoring at the source, he added, it would be much easier to pinpoint the culprit.

Despite the drawbacks, fence line monitoring could give regulators a new, straightforward tool to crack down on polluters. A neoprene manufacturer in LaPlace, Louisiana, has faced years of enforcement action from state and federal agencies, yet continues to emit high levels of chloroprene. The chemical can cause liver or lung cancer. Local emissions are so high that the EPA urged state regulators to evacuate students from the nearby Fifth Ward Elementary School last fall. The students have not been moved.

The plant, owned by Denka Performance Elastomer, already has chloroprene monitors at more than 20 locations along its perimeter. The new EPA proposal would regulate chloroprene concentrations at the fence line for the first time, using 0.3 micrograms per cubic meter as a limit. When annual concentrations exceed that, companies would need to reduce their emissions.

The data around the Denka plant from January 2022 to January 2023 shows that nearly all of the monitors exceeded this new proposed threshold. Monitors close to the school showed levels up to five times the limit. Denka didn’t respond to a request for comment. In February, the U.S. Department of Justice sued the company on behalf of the EPA to compel Denka to cut chloroprene emissions. Denka has denied many of the allegations and in a counterclaim said the EPA’s conclusions about the high cancer risks posed by chloroprene are “dead wrong.”

The new EPA rules don’t just apply to facilities that make chemicals. A second EPA proposal, announced Tuesday, would require 86 facilities across the country that use ethylene oxide for sterilizing medical supplies or fumigating spices to install equipment to reduce emissions of the cancer-causing gas. The EPA estimated the rule would reduce ethylene oxide emissions from the facilities by 80%. Both EPA proposals are open for public comment and could be finalized by next year.

Tuesday’s proposal is based on the latest EPA science on ethylene oxide. In 2016, the agency concluded the chemical was 30 times more carcinogenic to people who continuously inhale it as adults and 50 times more carcinogenic for those who are exposed since birth than the agency previously thought. Industry representatives have described the EPA’s conclusion as extreme and overly protective.

The prior regulations for sterilizing facilities were based on outdated scientific studies. The agency was supposed to review the rule for possible revision in 2014 and 2022, but missed both deadlines. A coalition of environmental groups, including the Laredo, Texas-based Rio Grande International Study Center, sued the EPA in December to speed up the timeline. The lawsuit is still pending. Laredo, a border city of 250,000, has been home to the most toxic commercial sterilizer in the country, according to the 2021 ProPublica analysis.

“Today, residents of Laredo are a step closer to breathing cleaner air,” said Laredo City Council member Vanessa Perez, who co-founded the Clean Air Laredo Coalition in 2021. “It’s the EPA’s mission to ensure our air is safe to breathe. We are relying on the EPA’s ruling to move the country in the right direction for environmental protection and justice.”

Owned by Missouri-based Midwest Sterilization Corporation, the Laredo plant released far more ethylene oxide on average than any plant of its kind in the country during the five-year period covered by ProPublica’s analysis.

In a statement, Midwest Sterilization said the company “sterilizes life-saving medical devices used in everyday medical procedures and surgeries.” The company said it “has been anticipating the proposed EPA rule and working hard to make changes ahead of its release to the public.” It added: “It’s important to note that most of the changes proposed by the EPA, have already been achieved by Midwest, or are currently being implemented.”

Environmental groups celebrated the release of the long-overdue proposal but also said it should be strengthened before it is finalized. They want the EPA to require fence line monitoring of ethylene oxide at sterilizing facilities (like the agency is proposing for chemical plants) and to expand the rule to cover emissions from off-site warehouses that also are a significant source of emissions. They also called for the EPA to phase out the use of ethylene oxide.

Last year, studies published by the Texas Department of State Health Services found that rates of three types of cancer associated with ethylene oxide exposure — breast cancer, all-age acute lymphocytic leukemia and extranodal non-Hodgkin lymphoma — were “significantly greater than expected” in Laredo given the population.

The ProPublica analysis found that the Laredo facility elevates the estimated lifetime cancer risk for nearly half of the city’s residents, including 37,000 children, to a level experts say is not sufficiently protective of public health. Among them is Yaneli Ortiz, who was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia in 2019. She had just turned 13 years old. Ethylene oxide should not be ruled out as a factor in Yaneli’s diagnosis given her proximity to the facility and its history of emissions, environmental health experts said, but it is impossible to definitively say whether exposure to the chemical caused her cancer.

After Yaneli underwent years of treatment that included a harrowing near-death experience, doctors recently told her and her parents that there are no signs of cancer in her body.

Still, Yaneli is dealing with the fallout from the side effects of her treatment, particularly from the havoc that the steroids wreaked on her hips, shoulders and knees. She underwent replacement surgery for her hip and left shoulder. Recently, her right shoulder has been hurting so much that the pain keeps her awake at night. Her mother anticipates that Yaneli will need at least two more surgeries to address the injuries. Nevertheless, she recently attended prom at Driscoll Children’s Hospital in Corpus Christi, where her cancer was treated. Now 16 years old, Yaneli spent a good part of the night dancing.

“It’s, like, a little bit of a relief,” Yaneli’s mother, Karla Ortiz, said when she heard the news about the proposed EPA rules. “It’s less risky for everyone else as well, so hopefully they won’t have to go through what we went through or other families went through.”

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Lisa Song, Kiah Collier and Maya Miller.

Twitter user @i_desi_surya shared the clip on April 1 with the caption “…Rampant R@pes, MurdE##, Abuses and security issues engulf France now .. no points guessing whom they allowed to “peacefully settle” Blame?” The phrase “peacefully settle” is a sarcastic jibe at the Muslim community. The post has garnered approximately 1000 likes and 600 retweets. (Archive)

#AnEveninginParis ..At one time, one of the most beautiful peaceful cities till they allowed immigrants to settle down alongside them.. Rampant R@pes, MurdE##, Abuses and security issues engulf France now .. no points guessing whom they allowed to “peacefully settle” Blame? pic.twitter.com/7OgoqVx9Am

— Surya Prakash (@i_desi_surya) April 1, 2023

Another user, @NagarJitendra, shared the video with the caption – ‘पेरिस में भी क्या कोई #रामनवमी का जुलूस निकला था??’ (Translation: Did any #RamNavami procession take place in Paris as well??). The post which has received over 2000 likes and 1200 retweets, refers to the clashes that took place on Ram Navami across India and alludes that Muslims were also responsible for the riot in Paris. (Archive)

पेरिस में भी क्या कोई #रामनवमी का जुलूस निकला था??
pic.twitter.com/v1gWSaeyeg

— Dr. Jitendra Nagar (@NagarJitendra) April 1, 2023

The video is also viral on Facebook.

Fact Check

We did a keyword search on Youtube about a possible riot in Paris and came across multiple reports of the incident. The video posted by The Guardian on March 24, 2023, shows the same event in question from a different angle. According to the video description, Thursday, March 23, marked the ninth day of protests across France, as a record turnout of protesters took to the streets to rally against Emmanuel Macron’s pensions reform. It also states that some masked protesters were seen vandalizing and smashing shop windows, including fast food restaurant McDonald’s. The French president used controversial executive powers to push through the bill that will raise the pension age. On March 22, Macron defended his decision to pass the bill which, in turn,  catalyzed further protests and violence.

 A comparison of screenshots from the two videos indicates that both footage are from the same incident. 

Another video of the same event was shared by Newshub. A parallel comparison of the two footage (from different angles) confirms that the footage from the viral video is of the same event. The image of the building beside the red balloon is visible in both clips. 

According to a report published by AlJazeera, demonstrators were agitating against the pension reform bill introduced by the Macron government, which raises the retirement age from 62 to 64.  The ongoing protests and strikes have been led by trade unions and labourers against the pension reform. However, there was no mention of any particular religious group participating in the demonstration or any communal motive. Hence, the communal angle of the incident is entirely false. 

To summarize, a video showing French protesters vandalizing restaurants and public properties has gone viral on social media with a false claim that the protesters were Muslims. This comes right after several incidents of communal riots were reported across West Bengal, Gujarat, and Bihar during Ram Navami on March 30. However, upon fact-checking the claim, we came to know that the French demonstrators were primarily trade union members who were protesting against the French government’s pension reform. There is no evidence of any communal motive or participation of any particular religious group in the protest.

Abira Das is an intern at Alt News.

The post Video of protests against pension reforms in Paris viral with false communal claims appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Abira Das.

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Influential Democratic lawmakers have called for immediate investigations and vowed to create stricter ethics rules following a ProPublica report that revealed Justice Clarence Thomas has, for decades, failed to disclose luxury trips he received from a real estate magnate and conservative megadonor.

Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee — influential for its role in vetting and confirming Supreme Court nominees — said his panel is calling for an “enforceable code of conduct” for justices. “The ProPublica report is a call to action, and the Senate Judiciary Committee will act,” Durbin said.

Lawmakers and advocates have long called for codified ethics rules that prohibit the type of behavior uncovered by ProPublica’s investigation.

For more than two decades, records and interviews show, Thomas has accepted luxury trips virtually every year from Dallas billionaire Harlan Crow without disclosing them. Thomas has vacationed on Crow’s superyacht around the globe, flown on Crow’s jet and typically spends about a week every summer at Crow’s private resort in the Adirondacks, the investigation found.

These trips appeared nowhere on Thomas’ financial disclosures. His failure to report the flights appears to violate a law passed after Watergate that requires justices and other federal officials to disclose most gifts, ethics law experts said. He also should have disclosed his trips on the yacht, these experts said.

A Supreme Court spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the lawmakers’ calls for investigations.

Thomas has not responded to ProPublica’s questions about his travel. Crow told ProPublica that Thomas “never asked for any of this hospitality” and that his treatment of the justice was “no different from the hospitality we have extended to our many other dear friends.”

Crow said he has never discussed a pending case with Thomas. “We have never sought to influence Justice Thomas on any legal or political issue,” he said.

While justices are required by law to disclose most gifts, there are few rules on what gifts justices can accept. That’s in contrast to the other branches of government. Members of Congress are generally prohibited from taking gifts worth $50 or more and would need pre-approval from an ethics committee to take many of the trips Thomas has accepted from Crow.

On Thursday, a growing chorus of Democratic lawmakers said Thomas’ failure to disclose the luxury vacations is an example of why public trust in the Supreme Court is faltering.

Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen said in a statement that Americans’ confidence in the Supreme Court is “tanking because of this kind of conduct.”

“We need answers,” he said. “And the Court needs a code of ethics.”

Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said in a statement that the Supreme Court has lost its ethical compass, calling for Chief Justice John Roberts to open an investigation. “It’s no wonder that the American people are losing faith in the idea that they can get a fair shake before the nation’s highest court when they see a Supreme Court justice openly flouting basic disclosure rules in order to pal around with billionaires in secret,” he said.

This year, Whitehouse and others introduced a bill that would strengthen the Supreme Court’s disclosure and recusal rules, among other reforms. In his statement, the senator called for a hearing and vote on the bill.

“The Supreme Court urgently needs an enforceable system for holding justices accountable,” he said.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren said Americans deserve a judiciary that is “accountable to the rule of law, not wealthy Republican donors.” ProPublica’s reporting, she added, “is a stark reminder that judges should be held to the highest ethical standards and free from conflicts of interest.”

So far, no current GOP lawmakers have addressed the revelations publicly. Sen. Lindsey Graham, ranking member for Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Neither did the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee.

At least two Democratic representatives have called for Thomas to be impeached or resign.

“Justice Thomas must resign immediately,” said Georgia Rep. Hank Johnson, a member of the House Judiciary Committee. Failing that, Johnson said, fellow justices should censure Thomas and the Department of Justice should investigate potential federal crimes “to determine whether Justice Thomas remains fit to retain his license to practice law.”

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said on Twitter: “This is beyond party or partisanship. This degree of corruption is shocking — almost cartoonish. Thomas must be impeached.”

Do you have any tips on the courts? Josh Kaplan can be reached by email at joshua.kaplan@propublica.org and by Signal or WhatsApp at 734-834-9383. Justin Elliott can be reached by email at justin@propublica.org or by Signal or WhatsApp at 774-826-6240.

Brett Murphy contributed reporting.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan and Alex Mierjeski.

The Biden administration announced Friday that it will allow Medicare Advantage plans to continue overbilling the federal government in the short term after the insurance industry lobbied aggressively against proposed rule changes aimed at cracking down on fraud in the privately run program.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said it is still moving ahead with the changes despite industry pressure to drop or completely overhaul them.

But instead of implementing the reforms all at once, CMS outlined a plan to phase in the changes over a three-year period, a concession to large insurers that dominate the Medicare Advantage market—which is funded by the federal government.

"How Washington really works: Medicare Advantage providers whined for months that they simply couldn't survive without being able to rip off the government, so the government said 'you can rip us off for just a little longer,'" The American Prospect's David Dayen tweeted in response to the CMS announcement.

The changes involve tweaks to the Medicare Advantage risk-adjustment model, which determines how much the federal government pays insurers to cover patient care.

Medicare Advantage plans are notorious for piling on diagnoses to make patients appear sicker than they are to reap larger payments from the federal government. CMS estimates that overpayments to Medicare Advantage totaled $11.4 billion in fiscal year 2022, a sizeable drain on the Medicare trust fund.

"Nearly every large insurer in the program has settled or is facing a federal fraud lawsuit for such conduct," The New York Timesnoted Friday. "Evidence of the overpayments has been documented by academic studies, government watchdog reports, and plan audits."

Mark Miller, the executive vice president of healthcare for the philanthropy Arnold Ventures, expressed concern that the Biden administration's decision to phase the Medicare Advantage changes in over three years will "continue to reward those insurers with the most abusive practices over the next two years."

"We are disappointed to hear that reasonable changes targeting abuse and waste in Medicare Advantage will be phased in over three years rather than fully implemented immediately," said Miller. "The coding abuses by insurers in Medicare Advantage have led the independent Medicare commission (MedPAC), which was created to advise Congress, to call for a 'major overhaul' of Medicare Advantage policies."

Medicare Advantage insurers have been fighting the Biden administration's proposed changes for months, running ads warning that the reforms would result in higher premiums and worse care for patients—claims that federal health officials adamantly rejected.

Axiosreported that the Better Medicare Alliance, a Medicare Advantage lobbying group, "has spent $13.5 million on advertising since the beginning of the year, targeting markets with competitive 2024 Senate races. Their ads painted the CMS proposal as a cut to Medicare that will eat into consumer benefits."

But Stacy Sanders, an adviser to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, told the Times last month that "we will not be deterred by industry hacks and deep-pocketed disinformation campaigns."

Becerra himself pushed back on social media, writing, "Leave it to deep-pocketed insurance companies and industry front groups to characterize this year's proposed increase in Medicare Advantage payments as a pay cut."

Biden administration officials sounded a different note on Friday. "We were really comfortable in our policies, but we always want to hear what stakeholders have to say," CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure told the Times, admitting that industry lobbying impacted the agency's decision to drag out its implementation of the changes.

CMS projected Friday that under the finalized rules, Medicare Advantage plans will see a payment increase of 3.32%—nearly $14 billion—in 2024 compared to this year.

The payment boost will come as Medicare Advantage insurers are facing growing scrutiny from progressive lawmakers over their business practices, including widespread overbilling, the use of artificial intelligence to cut off patient care, and denials of necessary care.

"Federal audits have found that taxpayers have been overpaying bad actors running Medicare Advantage plans by billions of dollars every year, threatening the stability of both Medicare Advantage and traditional Medicare," Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) said earlier this week. "This fraud has to end."

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who joined Merkley last week in criticizing the massive profits of Medicare Advantage insurers, tweeted Saturday that CMS is "making progress, but these delays are a step backward."

"For years, private Medicare insurers have been gouging taxpayers and denying care for seniors and people with disabilities," Warren wrote. "There is a lot more work to do to curb these abusive practices."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Johnson.

• Nashville Police Chief says shooter legally bought guns used in yesterday’s school massacre
• Idaho lawmakers give near final approval to bill criminalizing gender affirming care for transgender kids
• Federal Reserve bank supervisors say they warned Silicon Valley Bank in fall of 2021 against risky practices
• French police clash with protesters as hundreds of thousands demonstrate against pension changes
• Tenants shine the light on practices of corporate landlord Blackstone
• Governor Newsom signs first in the nation law aimed at halting oil company price gouging

Image from Moms Demand Action

The post Nashville shooter legally bought guns used to kill six at Christian school; Governor Newsom signs groundbreaking law aimed at stemming gasoline price gouging; Nationwide demonstrations and strikes against pension reforms in France: ; Evening News March 28 2023 appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

Decades into the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine, massive crowds flooded Israel's streets on Sunday for another round of demonstrations to "save a democracy that never existed," as one journalist recently put it.

Sunday's protests were sparked by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu firing Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who a day earlier advocated for a one-month pause to an ongoing judicial overhaul "for the sake of Israel's security," given military reservists' concerns. Saturday also saw hundreds of thousands of Israelis join nationwide rallies, the 12th straight week of mass action against the looming changes.

"The state of Israel's security has always been and will forever be my life's mission," Gallant, a member of Netanyahu's Likud party and former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) commander, declared in response to his dismissal.

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A White House National Security Council spokesperson said, "We are deeply concerned by the ongoing developments in Israel, including the potential impact on military readiness raised by Minister Gallant, which further underscores the urgent need for compromise."

The Movement for Quality Government in Israel, which is also fighting against the judicial overhaul, argued Gallant's ouster "proves once again" that Netanyahu "is not institutionally, ethically, or morally qualified" to serve as prime minister and vowed to consider legal action to stop the "scandalous and disgraceful" dismissal.

"Netanyahu's descent into authoritarian madness," as one U.S. reporter described it, leaves Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich—the Religious Zionism leader who recently said that "there's no such thing as Palestinians" and Israel should "wipe out" the Palestinian village of Hawara—as the only minister in Israel's Ministry of Defense.

Israeli Defense Ministry Director General Eyal Zamir on Sunday decided to cut short his trip to the United States. In Israel, demonstrators filled Tel Aviv's main highway. Police used water cannons on protesters who broke through barricades at Netanyahu's residence in Jerusalem. Universities announced an indefinite strike. On Monday, dozens of doctors intend to call in "sick" while 26 heads of local authorities plan to launch a hunger strike at the prime minister's office.

In what one reporter said "could be a game-changer," the head of Histadrut, the Israeli trade union federation that has so far resisted pressure to join protests against the judicial coup, scheduled a press conference for late Monday morning.

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After 18 "fulfilling and rewarding" months as the Israeli consul general in New York, Asaf Zamir resigned Sunday, saying that "following today's developments, it is now time for me to join the fight for Israel's future to ensure it remains a beacon of democracy and freedom in the world."

Meanwhile, Israeli journalist Haggai Matar, executive director of +972 Magazine and Local Call, said in a series of tweets that Gallant, who should be tried at the International Criminal Court "for his war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza," was fired "for the wrong reasons."

"Netanyahu fired him for trying to slow down Israel's transition into a fully authoritarian state toward Jews," Matar wrote. "Of course, it has been a dictatorship toward Palestinians for decades, and now that logic is expanding into Israel and Jews, while paving the way for even worse attacks on Palestinians."

Of the latest protests, he added: "This is all so inspiring—and at the same time, so dreadful to know that all these forces have been silent for so long on apartheid. Silent, or actively participating and profiting from it. And yet now they are on an all-out battle under the slogan of democracy."

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American-Israeli reporter Mairav Zonszein wrote for The Daily Beast on Wednesday that "Israelis who have bent the rule of law to suit their ideology for decades are now themselves becoming the target of a far-right that is using its newly won power to bend it even further."

"Each party in the Israeli government has specific and explicit goals that the various laws in this judicial overhaul package would serve," Zonszein explained. Ultra-Orthodox parties want to ensure "their constituency does not have to serve in the military" and the Shas Party aims to enable leader Aryeh Deri "to serve as a minister despite several recent convictions of tax fraud."

"For the religious, nationalist, racist, far-right parties—Jewish Power and Religious Zionism, both headed by settlers who are now senior ministers in government—it's about extending Israeli sovereignty over all occupied territory," she continued. The Likud party wants to keep expanding "Israel's settlement enterprise, consolidate power over media, culture, and public institutions—and for Netanyahu, it is about assuming enough control over the courts, through appointing judges, to evade conviction."

Netanyahu, who did not campaign on judicial reforms, returned to power last year—and established the most far-right government in Israel's history—despite facing various charges of corruption, which he denies.

"The act of creating new laws in order to serve its interests on the ground is precisely what Israel has been doing for 56 years as an occupying power," Zonszein stressed, adding:

While protesters—many of them among the most privileged in Israeli society—walk in the streets demanding the "rule of law" and "democracy," Israeli forces are demolishing Palestinian homes; standing alongside settlers who are terrorizing Palestinians; denying freedom of movement and assembly; holding people in prolonged detention without trial; killing unarmed protesters; carrying out torture; and deporting Palestinian activists. And within Israel, Palestinian citizens face structural discrimination and inequality under an explicit policy that prioritizes Jewish rights.

[...]

There is also a small but dedicated anti-occupation bloc that carries signs at the protests with messages like: "There is no democracy with occupation" and "Democracy for all from the river to the sea." At one of the recent protests, a gray-haired woman held up a sign that may sum it up best: "We were silent about occupation, we got a dictatorship."

U.S.-Palestinian journalist and Palestine Chronicle editor Ramzy Baroud contended in an opinion piece for Common Dreams earlier this month that "a proper engagement with the ongoing protests is to further expose how Tel Aviv utilizes the judicial system to maintain the illusion that Israel is a country of law and order, and that all the actions and violence in Palestine, however bloody and destructive, are fully justifiable according to the country's legal framework."

"Yes, Israel should be sanctioned, not because of Netanyahu's attempt at co-opting the judiciary, but because the system of apartheid and regime of military occupation constitute complete disregard and utter violation of international law," Baroud concluded. "Whether Israelis like it or not, international law is the only law that matters to an occupied and oppressed nation."

Yonah Lieberman, co-founder of the U.S. group IfNotNow, noted that earlier in the weekend, Israeli soldiers forced Palestinian worshippers out of the Al-Aqsa Mosque during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

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Responding to footage from Israeli protests Sunday night, Lieberman said: "Furious young people fighting an authoritarian for their rights. Reminds you of popular uprisings that have happened over and over again across the world. But if these were young Palestinians they would have been shot—the Jewish privilege inherent in Israel's apartheid system."

"A popular uprising to overthrow Netanyahu and his extremist government will not lead to democracy and equality for all in Israel," he added. "Only overthrowing the entire apartheid system will lead to democracy and equality for all."

This post has been updated with comment from Yonah Lieberman.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

As hundreds of thousands, throughout Israel, joined anti-government protests, questions began to arise regarding how this movement would affect, or possibly merge, into the wider struggle against the Israeli military occupation and apartheid in Palestine.

Pro-Palestine media outlets shared, with obvious excitement, news about statements made by Hollywood celebrities, the likes of Mark Ruffalo, about the need to “sanction the new hard right-wing government of (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu”.

Netanyahu, who sits at the heart of the current controversy and mass protests, struggled to find a single pilot for the flight carrying him to Rome on March 9 for a three-day visit with the Italian government. The reception for the Israeli leader in Italy was equally cold. Italian translator, Olga Dalia Padoa, reportedly refused to interpret Netanyahu’s speech, scheduled for March 9 at a Rome synagogue.

One can appreciate the need to strategically use the upheaval against Netanyahu’s far-right government to expose Israel’s fraudulent claim to true democracy, supposedly ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’. However, one has to be equally careful not to validate Israel’s inherently racist institutions that have been in existence for decades before Netanyahu arrived in power.

The Israeli Prime Minister has been embroiled in corruption cases for years. Though he remained popular, Netanyahu lost his position at the helm of Israeli politics in June 2021, following three bitterly-contested elections. Yet, he returned on December 29, 2022, this time with even more corrupt - even by Israel’s own definition - characters such as Aryeh Deri, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, the latter two currently serving as the ministers of finance and national security, respectively.

Each one of these characters had a different reason for joining the coalition. Smotrich and Ben Gvir’s agenda ranged from the annexation of illegal West Bank settlements to the deportation of Arab politicians considered ‘disloyal’ to the state.

Netanyahu, though a rightwing ideologue, is more concerned with personal ambitions: maintaining power as long as possible, while shielding himself and his family from legal problems. He simply wants to stay out of prison. To do so, he also needs to satisfy the dangerous demands of his allies, who have been given free rein to unleash army and settler violence against Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank, as has been the case in Huwwara, Nablus, Jenin and elsewhere.

But Netanyahu’s government, the most stable in years, has bigger goals than just “wiping out” Palestinian towns off the map. They want to alter the very judicial system that would allow them to transform Israeli society itself. The reform would grant the government control over judicial appointments by limiting the Israeli Supreme Court’s power to exercise judicial review.

The protests in Israel have very little to do with the Israeli occupation and apartheid, and are hardly concerned with Palestinian rights. They are led by many former Israeli leaders, the likes of former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, former minister Tzipi Livni and former prime minister and leader of the opposition, Yair Lapid. During the Naftali Bennett-Yair Lapid stint in power, between June 2021 and December 2022, hundreds of Palestinians were killed in the West Bank. 2022 was described by UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Tor Wennesland, as the “deadliest” in the West Bank since 2005. During that time, illegal Jewish settlements expanded rapidly, while Gaza was routinely bombed.

Yet, the Bennett-Lapid government faced little backlash from Israeli society for its bloody and illegal actions in Palestine. The Israeli Supreme Court, which has approved most of the government actions in Occupied Palestine, also faced little or no protests for certifying apartheid and validating the supposed legality of the Jewish colonies, all illegal under international law. The stamp of approval by the Supreme Court was also granted when Israel passed the Nation-State Law, identifying itself exclusively as a Jewish state, thus casting off the entirety of the Arab Muslim and Christian population which shares the same mass of land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Rarely did the Israeli judicial system take the side of Palestinians, and when little ‘victories’ were recorded now and then, they hardly altered the overall reality. Though one can understand the desperation of those trying to fight against Israeli injustices using the country’s own ‘justice system’, such language has contributed to the confusion regarding what Israel’s ongoing protests mean for Palestinians.

In fact, this is not the first time that Israelis have gone out on the streets in large numbers. In August 2011, Israel experienced what some referred to as Israel’s own ‘Arab Spring’. But that, too, was a class struggle within clearly defined ideological boundaries and political interests that rarely overlapped with a parallel struggle for equality, justice and human rights.

Dual socio-economic struggles exist in many societies around the world, and conflating between them is not unprecedented. In the case of Israel, however, such confusion can be dangerous because the outcome of Israel’s protests, be it a success or failure, could spur unfounded optimism or demoralize those fighting for Palestinian freedom.

Though stark violations of international law, the arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial executions and the everyday violence meted out against Palestinians, mostly take place within Israel’s legal framework. All of these acts are fully sanctioned by Israeli courts, including the country’s Supreme Court. This means that, even if Netanyahu fails to hegemonize the judicial system, Palestinian civilians will continue to be tried in military courts, which will carry out the routine of approving home demolition, illegal land seizure and the construction of settlements.

A proper engagement with the ongoing protests is to further expose how Tel Aviv utilizes the judicial system to maintain the illusion that Israel is a country of law and order, and that all the actions and violence in Palestine, however bloody and destructive, are fully justifiable according to the country’s legal framework.

Yes, Israel should be sanctioned, not because of Netanyahu’s attempt at co-opting the judiciary, but because the system of apartheid and regime of military occupation constitute complete disregard and utter violation of international law. Whether Israelis like it or not, international law is the only law that matters to an occupied and oppressed nation.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Ramzy Baroud.

When President Biden announced he would not veto Congress' override of Washington, DC's Revised Criminal Code Act (RCCA), he chose politics over public safety and DC's right to self-governance.

The RCCA is a 200+ page comprehensive modernization of DC's criminal code and the thoughtful product of 16 years of research, an expert commission, 51 public meetings, extensive public feedback, and robust negotiation.

It's a balanced bill: raising some penalties, lowering others, and correcting many legal flaws in a criminal code once ranked one of the worst in the country. That's why it was supported by prosecutors, victim advocates, public defenders, advocates, and 83% of District voters.

But opponents of criminal justice reform and home rule in Congress spread deliberate misinformation—for instance, in the words of Speaker McCarthy, that a bill that imposes a 24-year maximum sentence for carjacking somehow "decriminalizes" it—to politicize and block its passage.

President Biden should have risen above the fray and promised to veto those efforts. Instead, he did the opposite—abandoning the people of DC and his own campaign promises to oppose mandatory minimum sentences and significantly reduce the prison population.

As we mark 50 years since the onset of mass incarceration, it's time for President Biden to consider his legacy. Does he want to be remembered as someone who helped create mass incarceration or someone who helped end it?

Similar to the mistakes he made with the 1994 Crime Bill, President Biden's objections to the RCCA aren't rooted in serious discussion about sentencing policy.

During his campaign for president, he was criticized for his contributions to an American criminal justice system that prioritized prison construction and long sentences at the expense of community-based interventions that can reduce crime, like broadly accessible mental health services, drug treatment, and support for vulnerable children.

President Biden says he regrets sponsoring passage of the 1994 Crime Bill, which significantly contributed to America's explosive incarceration rate. His pledge to change his ways was applauded, but since taking office Biden has not kept his promises.

Under President Biden's watch, for the last two years, the federal prison population has begun to increase after impressive declines stemming from reforms enacted by his Democratic and Republican predecessors.

The District's new criminal code would have made DC a national leader in sentencing best practices and would have been a significant step toward racial equity by eliminating almost all mandatory minimums and providing proportionality in sentencing options.

The RCCA reflected what decades of research has shown: extreme sentences do not deter crime. They don't make us any safer, they are a massive waste of fiscal resources, and they disproportionately impact communities of color.

The RCCA didn't scale back excessive sentences to the extent that evidence would support, but it takes a step in the right direction.

We need common sense approaches that promote racial justice and prevent crime by investing in healthy, thriving communities instead of prisons and jails.

Similar to the mistakes he made with the 1994 Crime Bill, President Biden's objections to the RCCA aren't rooted in serious discussion about sentencing policy. Criminologists have long held that the severity of a punishment for any given offense, often unknown to people committing crime, is a weak deterrent of criminal behavior.

Rather, increasing the likelihood of being caught is more influential on decisions about criminal behavior.

President Biden's refusal to support DC's important update of its criminal laws ignores the overwhelming evidence that putting more and more people in prison for longer and longer periods does not make us safer. We've done that for decades and it doesn't work.

Instead, we need common sense approaches that promote racial justice and prevent crime by investing in healthy, thriving communities instead of prisons and jails. The people of DC overwhelmingly recognize that fact and that's why they support an updated criminal code based on what we know about public safety in the 21st century—not the outdated theories of a century ago.

As DC leaders revisit the RCCA, I urge President Biden to revisit the consequences of the 1994 Crime Bill and consider whether he wants the continuation of America's mass incarceration crisis to be a part of his legacy.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Amy Fettig.

Progressives on Thursday lambasted dozens of U.S. Senate Democrats for dealing "a huge blow to commonsense criminal justice reform efforts" by siding with the Republican Party on a resolution to block a criminal code passed by the Council of the District of Columbia—a move that one civil rights lawyer said was transparently made in response to GOP "fear-mongering" about crime, and not in the interest of keeping residents safe.

Thirty-one Democrats and two Independents joined the Republicans in passing a resolution—authored by Republican Sen. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee—to block the Revised Criminal Code Act (RCCA), which was enacted in January and included an elimination of nearly all mandatory minimum sentences and changes to maximum sentences for a number of crimes, making some higher and some lower.

Along with Independent Sens. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Angus King of Maine, the 31 Democrats who joined the Republicans were Sens. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Michael Bennet of Colorado, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Maria Cantwell of Washington, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Chris Coons of Delaware, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, John Hickenlooper of Colorado, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Mark Kelly of Arizona, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Bob Menendez of New Jersey, Patty Murray of Washington, Jon Ossoff of Georgia, Alex Padilla of California, Gary Peters of Michigan, Jacky Rosen of Nevada, Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Chuck Schumer of New York, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Tina Smith of Minnesota, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Jon Tester of Montana, Mark Warner of Virginia, and Ron Wyden of Oregon.

Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Cory Booker of New Jersey, and Ed Markey of Massachusetts were among those who opposed the resolution.

Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia voted "present" and Sens. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Dianne Feinstein of California, and Tom Carper of Delaware were not present for the vote.

President Joe Biden said after the bill was passed by the D.C. Council that he opposed Republican efforts to block the measure, but reversed course last week, telling Democrats that he would not veto Hagerty's resolution if it arrived at his desk.

"The victims of these political fights have been millions of people. More will now suffer."

Since the passage of the RCCA, Republicans have used the law to portray the nation's capital as crime-ridden and Democrats as weak on criminal justice, despite the fact that the updated criminal code increased sentences for gun crimes and sexual assault and created a new felony offense for shooting a firearm in public.

The issue of carjacking took center stage as the new code reduced sentences for the crime. The law would have applied a 24-year maximum sentence for carjacking, reduced from 40 years—the same amount that's applied to second-degree murder, according to the code's author, defense attorney Patrice Sulton.

Civil rights lawyer Udi Ofer demanded to know how a criminal code that still includes harsher penalties for armed carjacking than more than a dozen states qualifies as "soft on crime."

"This vote goes well beyond D.C.," said Ofer. "Mass incarceration was not a product of mass crime. It was a product of mass fear-mongering and fights between party elites on who can be 'tougher.' The victims of these political fights have been millions of people. More will now suffer."

Despite Hagerty's claim that the resolution was necessary to end "the crime spree that is happening in our major cities," carjackings in D.C. this year have been reported at roughly the same level as they were by this point last year. Violent crime is down by 8% in the district compared to March 2022.

"We know that these votes were driven by politics, not by data," said Ofer. "Democrats are terrified that Republicans will portray them as soft on crime, and the Republican Congressional Committee has already announced that it will run ads against House Democrats who voted for [the] D.C. bill."

Soon after the resolution was passed, Republicans promptly released attack ads targeting 14 Democrats who opposed it in the House.

In the U.S. House, progressives and proponents of statehood and self-determination for Washington, D.C.—which Biden has claimed to support—denounced the Senate's first vote in three decades that blocked a law passed by local lawmakers in the district.

"Supporting statehood in words is not sufficient," said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. "We need to support statehood in our governance and in our actions."

Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) said she would work to "convince President Biden that his intention to sign the disapproval resolution is incompatible with his Statement of Administration Policy."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Julia Conley.

The Papua New Guinean government has been bluntly and frankly reminded to leave mainstream media alone as a long awaited consultative workshop on the recently introduced National Media Development Policy took place in Port Moresby.

Media stakeholders stood in unity with the PNG Media Council yesterday to express their concerns on the alleged threat it would pose if the government enforced control over the media in PNG.

Transparency International-PNG chair Peter Aitsi reminded the government that a “free and independent media deters corruption and underpins justice”.

• READ MORE: PNG Post-Courier: Let’s talk first on media policy and transparency
• Papua New Guinea: Concerns raised at swift review period for media policy
• PNG government must withdraw ‘media control’ policy, says RSF
• APMN calls for ‘urgent rethink’ over PNG draft media regulation plan
• Other PNG media policy reports

“If we take some more independence away from the media, we [are] only adding more fuel to the flames of corruption,” Aitsi said.

TIPNG’s response to the policy was that licensing through a government-enforced process would be a threat to the media professionals and that there were already existing laws that the media was abiding by.

Also the draft policy did not explain why this was not sufficient to ensure accountability.

Before Aitsi spoke, PNG Media Council president Neville Choi said the purported policy was not encouraged and that the national government’s push to control narrative was not supported.

He stressed that every media house in PNG had its own complaints mechanism, own media code of ethics, code of conducts as guides and that there were laws that the media abided by. He saw no reason, based on the draft policy, for it to be progressed.

‘Lack of government support’
“We remind government, that the current level and standard of journalism performers is largely a result of lack of government support to the journalism schools and institutions in our country,” Choi said.

“And we remind government that before this policy was announced, the Media Council had already begun a reform process to address many of the concerns contained in this draft policy.

“We ask that this process be respected, and supported if there is a will to contribute to improving the work of the media.

“We call for full transparency and clarity on the purpose of this policy, and reject it in its current v2 form.

“And I say this on the record, so that this continues throughout the rest of this consultation process.

“We acknowledge that there are areas of concern from which solutions can be found in existing legislation and currently available avenues for legal redress.

‘Too much at stake’
“There is too much at stake for this to be rushed.

“There are too many media stakeholders, both within our country, the region, and internationally, who are watching closely the process of this policy formation.

“We all owe it to our future generations, to do this right.”

Prominent PNG journalist Scott Waide was also also highly critical of the government’s draft policy and warned against it going a step further.

Pacific Media Watch reports that last month Waide wrote a scathing critique of the policy on the Canberra-based DevPolicy blog at the Australian National University.

Gorethy Kenneth is a senior PNG Post-Courier journalist. Republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

Progressives expressed anger Thursday after U.S. President Joe Biden said that he would sign a Republican-authored resolution repealing criminal justice reforms recently approved by the elected leaders of the District of Columbia.

The GOP-controlled House claimed that the Revised Criminal Code Act (RCCA), enacted in January by city council members representing D.C. residents, would make it easier for people convicted of crimes to avoid punishment and contribute to higher crime rates. Last month, 31 Democrats joined 219 Republicans in passing H.J.Res. 26, which would nullify the changes to Washington's criminal laws that are set to take effect in 2025.

Biden informed Democratic senators during a private meeting on Thursday that he will not veto the resolution if it reaches his desk, The Associated Pressreported. The measure is expected to pass the Senate on a bipartisan basis as early as next week.

"In the name of democracy and common sense, the Senate must respect the District of Columbia's decision to pass the Revised Criminal Code Act."

Later on Thursday, Biden tweeted: "I support D.C. statehood and home rule—but I don't support some of the changes D.C. Council put forward over the mayor's objections—such as lowering penalties for carjackings. If the Senate votes to overturn what D.C. Council did—I'll sign it."

Local lawmakers voted to decrease the district's maximum sentence for carjacking from the current 40 years—equivalent to the penalty for second-degree murder and over twice as long as the penalty for second-degree sexual assault—to 24 years, which is still nine years longer than the harshest carjacking sentences actually handed down in D.C.

Democratic D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser had opposed the RCCA but supported a Biden veto of H.J.Res. 26 due to the implications for home rule.

Journalist Austin Ahlman called Biden's decision "disgusting." Defending "evidence-based tweaks to the D.C. criminal code" through a veto, Ahlman added, would have had little to no impact on the president during the 2024 election cycle.

Markus Batchelor, national political director at People for the American Way, also condemned Biden, juxtaposing his purported support for democracy abroad with his unwillingness to defend it "for those Americans closest to him."

Democratic U.S. Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, who represents D.C. in Congress, told reporters that Biden's position was "news to me, and I'm very disappointed in it."

Earlier this week, Holmes Norton thanked 100-plus organizations for signing a letter to Senate leadership that expresses opposition to congressional resolutions aimed at overturning legislation passed by democratically elected D.C. lawmakers.

"D.C. residents elect their own local officials to govern local affairs, like every other jurisdiction in the country," Holmes Norton said in a statement. "Congressional interference in local affairs is paternalistic, undemocratic, and violates the principle of self-governance."

Prior to Biden's announcement, the ACLU's D.C. chapter wrote on social media, "The 700,000 people who live in D.C. know our community better than anyone else and deserve self-determination."

The group linked to a recent piece written by policy director Damon King, who argued that "in the name of democracy and common sense, the Senate must respect the District of Columbia's decision to pass the Revised Criminal Code Act."

"In order to overturn our democratic will," King observed, "opponents of the RCCA have spread misinformation about the bill."

Shortly after the D.C. Council unanimously passed the RCCA and then overrode Bowser's veto of the bill by a margin of 12-1, Slate legal reporter Mark Joseph Stern wrote, "If you only read conservative and centrist pundits, you'd think the District of Columbia is about to embark upon a frightening experiment to weaken or abolish criminal penalties for violent crime."

As he explained:

Fox News has devotedfrenzied coverageto the claim that D.C. is "softening" its criminal laws. Republican politicians like Sen. Tom Cotton [R-Ark.] have seized on the story, as have conservative commentators like Erick Erickson, who cited it as evidence that Congress should abolish self-governance in the district. The Washington Post editorial board opined that a new "crime bill could make the city more dangerous," claiming it would "tie the hands of police and prosecutors while overwhelming courts."

"This coverage all repeats the same two claims: that D.C. is poised to slash prison sentences for violent offenses, and that these reforms will lead to more crime," wrote Stern. "Neither of these claims is true."

He continued:

The legislation that D.C. passed in January is not a traditional reform bill, but the result of a 16-year process to overhaul a badly outdated, confusing, and often arbitrary criminal code. The revision's goal was to modernize the law by defining elements of each crime, eliminating overlap between offenses, establishing proportionate penalties, and removing archaic or unconstitutional provisions. Every single change is justified in meticulous reports that span thousands of pages. Each one was crafted with extensive public input and support from both D.C. and federal prosecutors. Eleventh-hour criticisms of the bill rest on misunderstandings, willful or otherwise, about its purpose and effect. They malign complex, technocratic updates as radical concessions to criminals. In many cases, criticisms rest on sheer legal illiteracy about how criminal sentencing actually works.

The D.C. bill is not a liberal wish list of soft-on-crime policies. It is an exhaustive and entirely mainstream blueprint for a more coherent and consistent legal system.

The RCCA is not the only piece of D.C. legislation the House voted to rescind last month. In addition, 42 Democrats joined 218 Republicans in passing H.J.Res. 24, which would nullify the Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act.

That measure, enacted last year by the D.C. Council, would allow noncitizens who meet residency and other requirements to vote in local races.

The bill's fate in the Senate, and whether Biden would veto a resolution seeking to overturn it, remains unclear.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

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.

Colorado lawmakers are considering two bills that would reform the way family courts in the state handle cases involving allegations of domestic abuse, saying ProPublica’s reporting on the issue has catalyzed efforts to change the state’s custody evaluation system.

Rep. Mike Weissman, an Aurora Democrat and the chair of the state House Judiciary Committee, praised ProPublica’s investigation, which found that four custody evaluators on the state-approved roster last year had been charged with harassment or domestic violence. In one case, the charges were dismissed. One case — that of psychologist Mark Kilmer — led to a conviction. In the two others, it is unclear how the charges were resolved.

Rep. Meg Froelich, a Democrat representing Englewood and a co-sponsor of one of the bills, said she gave a copy of the article to every judiciary committee member before the legislative session got underway.

“We don’t usually see in-depth coverage on this kind of thing,” Weissman said.

Meanwhile, Kilmer, who was suspended from working as a custody evaluator following publication of ProPublica’s story, is being sued by six plaintiffs over his involvement in their cases.

ProPublica’s story revealed that Kilmer was appointed to evaluate custody disputes involving allegations of domestic abuse despite Kilmer himself being charged with assault in 2006, after his then-wife said he pushed her to the bathroom floor, according to police reports. He pleaded guilty to harassment in 2007. Kilmer told ProPublica that his guilty plea was a result of poor legal representation and that his ex-wife made false allegations to get him arrested.

Kilmer was quoted in the story saying he did not believe about 90% of the claims of abuse he encountered in his work — an estimate he said was based on experience, not scientific research.

The bill co-sponsored by Froelich would require experts who advise the court on custody proceedings to have expertise in domestic violence and child abuse and would restrict judges from ordering forced “reunification” treatments that cut a child off from their protective parent, meaning the parent who expressed concerns about abuse or neglect. Court-ordered reunification “camps” often prohibit contact between minors and the protective parent as part of “therapeutic” treatment.

Among those testifying on behalf of the legislation was Elina Asensio, a teenager who was featured in the ProPublica article. Elina’s father was charged with felony child abuse and pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault after dragging her up a flight of stairs. Kilmer was appointed to evaluate the case and recommended that she remain under the authority of her father. The parties ultimately resolved the custody dispute through arbitration and Elina remains partially under her father’s authority.

“The system failed me. My voice did not matter,” Elina, 17, told the committee. “My childhood has been taken for me. To this day, I still don't know what peace feels like.”

Through his lawyer, Elina’s father, Cedric Asensio, told ProPublica that while the initial charge of felony child abuse against him was “very serious,” the case’s ultimate resolution — a misdemeanor assault plea — indicated “there is much more to the story.”

The second bill, which passed the House Judiciary Committee and is pending budget approval before the Colorado General Assembly this week, would create a task force to study training requirements for judicial personnel on the topics of domestic violence and sexual assault, among other crimes.

The plaintiffssuing Kilmer, who include Elina’s mother, Karin Asensio, allege fraud and breach of contract related to his work on their cases. They accuse Kilmer, who is licensed as a psychologist in Colorado, of violating the American Psychological Association’s code of conduct by advising the court on matters related to domestic violence and child abuse despite his history of domestic violence.

The plaintiffs claim they would not have hired Kilmer had they known his personal history and views about abuse allegations, which they learned of from ProPublica’s reporting, according to the complaint.

In Colorado, the fees for parental responsibility evaluations — expert psychological assessments intended to inform judges’ custody decisions — are paid by the parties to a case. Fees are not capped and typically range between $12,000 and $30,000 for a custody evaluation, with some Colorado parents reporting that they paid over $50,000.

Kilmer didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Following his suspension last fall, Kilmer wrote to the court and criticized ProPublica’s investigation as the work of a “nonsense journalist” and apologized to his colleagues “for any inconveniences my well-intentioned interview may have caused for party/client relations past, present and future.”

“I have little experience with the print media, personally or professionally,” Kilmer told the court in an email obtained through a public records request. He said he had been willing to publicly discuss his work as a custody evaluator because “I assumed that it might help the practice here in Colorado, as it is an esoteric world that most people have little or no idea of how it works. Inadvertently, I entered into a political maelstrom that I did not understand existed.”

Since his suspension, Kilmer has continued to testify on cases to which he was previously appointed by Colorado courts. In one February hearing, Kilmer told a judge that the suspension was informal and he was continuing his state appointment.

Jaime Watman, who oversees custody evaluators for the Colorado State Court Administrator’s Office, told ProPublica that Kilmer has been removed from the rosters of custody evaluators, but the decision about whether he completes the appointments he was previously given “is at the discretion of the appointing court.”

Lauren May Woodruff, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, also testified about her experience with Kilmer at the House Judiciary Committee hearing on the bill to require courts to consider past evidence of abuse before allocating custody.

Kilmer completed his evaluation of Woodruff’s case in January, months after his suspension, according to court records. In his report, Kilmer advised the court that Woodruff should share custody and decision-making power with her daughter’s father, despite multiple mandatory reports to Colorado’s Department of Human Services — including one filed by Kilmer himself — that the father had endangered the child through reckless driving, including driving over 100 mph at night. Custody orders in the case are pending.

Woodruff’s soon-to-be-ex-husband did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In his evaluations, Kilmer routinely cites parental alienation, a disputed psychological theory in which one parent is accused of brainwashing a child to turn them against the other parent. In email correspondence between Kilmer and Jennifer J. Harman, an associate professor of psychology at Colorado State University and a parental alienation scholar, Harman sympathized with Kilmer after ProPublica’s report was published.

“I can tell the article is part of a larger strategy,” Harman wrote.

At the legislative session, a handful of individuals voiced opposition to the bills, including Katie Rubano, who runs a parental alienation support group for parents in Colorado. Rubano, citing Harman’s research on the subject, argued that “passing this bill would not solve the problem of child abuse in Colorado.”

“We need experts but we need them to be better and be trained in all forms of child abuse, including parental alienation,” she said.

Froelich’s bill would align Colorado with federal efforts to encourage family court reform. Last year, President Joe Biden signed a law that allocates additional federal funds to states that update their child custody laws to better protect at-risk children.

Weissman said he has felt momentum on family court reform gathering in Colorado over the past few years and said he “wouldn’t be surprised” if the state was one of the first to pass an equivalent to Kayden’s Law, a Pennsylvania act named for a child who was killed by her father during court-ordered unsupervised custody time, which he was granted despite his history of violence. Last March, Biden included provisions of Kayden’s Law in the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, committing federal funding to states that update family court laws to better protect children.

Colorado has frequently been a “leader in all manner of policy areas,” Weissman said, including legalizing cannabis and regulating ride-sharing companies. “We’re a place where we try new things when it becomes evident that they need to be tried.”

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Hannah Dreyfus.

Party leader Xi Jinping told a high-level political meeting in Beijing on Tuesday that the upcoming session of China's rubber-stamp parliament, the National People's Congress, would see the party strengthen "unified leadership" over scientific and technological institutions, as well as over the country's financial institutions and over "government responsibility." The announcement suggests further internal crackdowns to come within the government and party.

A draft institutional reform plan is currently under discussion that will "be more relevant, more intensive, have a broader reach and touch on deeper interests" than previous structures, state broadcaster CCTV quoted Xi as telling the meeting.

While officials have yet to make public the exact details of the restructuring, Japan-based China commentator Hong Xiangnan said the plans will likely include bringing the ministry for public security, which governs the police system, and the ministry for state security, which governs the state security apparatus and overseas intelligence operations, under the aegis of the party.

"The only way this will go is the strengthening of the party at the expense of the state," Hong said. "It will turn government departments into administrative offices, tasked with running errands and doing the gruntwork."

"They will carry out the basic administrative work, but the core of policy-making will be taken away, and go to strengthen the leadership of the party," he said. "We're not talking about a merger of party and state here."

He said the reforms will likely include the setting up of a powerful internal affairs committee under the central leadership of the Communist Party in Beijing.

Unlike other committees and commissions, it's unlikely that local governments will be called upon to set up their own local branches of the internal affairs committee, which will be run top-down from Beijing, Hong said.

"There won't be any need to have branches at different levels of government," he said.

If the reforms do implement such a plan, the internal affairs committee could look fairly similar to the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs under the former Soviet Union, which was responsible for ensuring internal revolutionary order and the security of the state, as well as the internal safeguarding of state property, the guarding of national borders, and the registration of births, deaths, marriages and divorces, according to a July 11, 1934 report in the Soviet newspaper Izvestia.

Unprecedented official control

Such a plan, if implemented, comes at a time of unprecedented official control over people's personal and political lives, with the transfer of law-enforcement powers to local neighborhood committees and the setting up of local militias to boost "stability maintenance," a system of law enforcement aimed at forestalling dissent and nipping protest in the bud.

Hong said it was significant that Xi was only now mentioning these plans, on the eve of the National People's Congress in Beijing, and that they hadn't gotten an airing at the 20th party congress in October.

"Then suddenly they hold a second plenary session of the Central Committee and announce institutional reforms, just before the parliamentary sessions," he said. 

"It shows that it hasn't been possible to implement whatever was decided at the first plenary session [in the wake of the party congress], or at least that's likely," Hong said.

The pro-China Singapore-based Lianhe Zaobao newspaper reported "rumors that there may be relevant reforms in the financial system and the political and legal system."

"In addition, the ministries of human resources and social security may integrate with the ministry of civil affairs," it said.

The paper also quoted analysts as saying that the reform "will further highlight the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and weaken the power of the government."

‘Taking China back to the 1950s’

The Chinese state is already subordinate to the political power of the ruling party, but Xi Jinping has sought to amplify that principle still further in his own brand of political ideology, a move analysts warn is already creating a personality cult around China's leader, who is now serving a third term with no formal requirement to step down.

Prior to Xi's rise to supreme power, government departments typically served as a useful drag on leaders' personal projects, ensuring at least some measure of internal checks and balances on the power of individuals within the party-state.

Veteran journalist Ma Ju said the theme of the reforms appeared to herald more aggressive party control over every aspect of people's lives, a concept that is in line with reforms that have already taken place under Xi.

Since taking power in 2012, Xi has already boosted his own personal power at the expense of other high-ranking leaders, particularly his premier, from whom he has taken back responsibility for running the economy in recent years.

As early as January 2014, Xi had taken over the task of steering the "working group" that will implement reforms from premier Li Keqiang.

"Now we're seeing that they need to sharpen their knives, for use both externally and internally," Ma said. "They'll be taking China back to the 1950s by setting up the Commissariat for Internal Affairs, or rather putting China back on a wartime footing."

"They will control everything, plan everything and order everything," Ma said. "It's more important than ever for them to have control of their own fundamentals."

Ma said the talk of efficiency is likely linked to the time lag between a top-level political decision being taken in Beijing, and its implementation on the ground.

"The ministry of public security has always been obedient to the party, but now it's going to need to cooperate with decisions passed just a couple of days earlier, as part of a military-led system engaged in the mighty struggle," he said, in a possible reference to Xi's threat to invade democratic Taiwan.

Merging party and state

The Lianhe Zaobao quoted Lu Xi, an assistant professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, as saying that the restructuring will further blur the distinction between party and state.

"It is a reform that goes in the opposite direction from the separation of party and state," the paper quoted Lu as saying. "The status of the State Council and the importance of the prime minister in the country's operation and decision-making process will be further weakened." 

This year's restructuring is being widely seen as the second wave of reforms launched by Xi at the National People Congress in March 2018, according to the Lianhe Zaobao.

The congress is likely to see Xi Jinping re-elected as President, or head of state, Li Qiang succeed Li Keqiang as premier of the State Council, and Zhao Leji succeed Li Zhanshu as Chairman of the National People's Congress, the paper said.

Wang Huning will replace Wang Yang as chairman of the national committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, while Ding Xuexiang will replace Han Zheng as executive vice premier. 

It is widely believed that Han Zheng will succeed Wang Qishan as the next vice president, the paper said.

The English-language Global Times newspaper said "timely reforms can push for more scientific party leadership of party and state institutions," citing Zhang Shuhua, director of the institute of political sciences at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

"China is gearing up for the new development era [under Xi's leadership] while facing complicated domestic and international situations," it said.

The 14th National People's Congress will open in Beijing on March 5.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie.

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

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Thomas Rowley, Kateryna Semchuk.

The Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) is now “a family reconciled” as its leaders have reaffirmed their commitment to reforms to strengthen the regional body.

Stepping back into the fold, Kiribati President Taneti Maamau inked the final signature on the Suva Agreement ending two years of uncertainty and marking the start of a new chapter for Pacific solidarity.

“In unity we will surely succeed,” Maamau told RNZ Pacific.

• READ MORE: Other Pacific Islands Forum reports

“We have a duty as a Pacific family to keep us together and to meet the challenges together,” he added.

The reforms deemed “non-negotiables” include the endorsement of Micronesian candidates for certain regional roles and the establishment of two sub-regional offices in the north Pacific.

The result is Nauru’s former president, Baron Waqa, is set to become the next PIF secretary-general starting in 2024.

Current Forum Deputy Secretary-General Filimon Manoni, a Marshall Islander, will become the Pacific Ocean Commissioner hosted in Palau, and Kiribati will be home to the PIF sub-regional office in Micronesia.

Australia and New Zealand have agreed to foot the bill and committed to “transitional funding of NZ$3 million towards the operationalisation of the Suva Agreement” over the next three years.

“The fracture is now history,” outgoing PIF Secretary-General Henry Puna said.

“We have all collectively decided to move on and today we have cemented that . . . we are not looking back at all,” Puna said.

A range of other issues were also discussed by the leaders, such as Japan’s plans to release over a million tonnes of treated nuclear wastewater into the Pacific Ocean.

“Forum leaders reaffirmed the importance of science and data to guide the political decisions on the proposed discharge,” the final communique for the 5th Forum Special Leaders Retreat stated.

They also agreed – in response to increased geopolitical tensions in the region – to establish a permanent representation at the UN and in Washington in the form of a PIF special envoy to the United States to “report back to Leaders at the 52nd Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting in the Cook Islands.”

Fiji passes baton to Cook Islands
Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka said he was “pleased to be able to contribute” towards the final outcomes of the Nadi meeting.

“As I hand over the baton, I know that we are in good hands as we paddle our drua (canoe) to achieve our collective aspirations,” said Rabuka in his final statement as outgoing Forum chair.

The chairmanship has been transferred to the Cook Islands which will host the 52nd PIF summit later this year.

Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown has promised to keep the region’s “unity intact”.

Brown said that while the main challenges in the Suva Agreement had been overcome with the allocation of offices within the region, “resourcing and financing” were issues that would need attention.

“We have to thank the governments of Australia and New Zealand for providing that support for the next three years,” he said.

“But I would expect that there will be more work done by officials to actually finalise what the financing requirements will be as negotiations will take place for costs and resources.”

The final member of the Forum Troika and next in line for chair is Tonga.

Other decisions
Other decisions set out in the communique included:

• PIF leaders pledging their support for Australia’s joint bid to host COP31 alongside Pacific countries.
• Support for a draft resolution to the UN General Assembly seeking an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on climate change and human rights.

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.

Three weeks after the lives of East Palestine, Ohio residents were upended by a fiery wreck involving a Norfolk Southern-owned train overloaded with hazardous materials, rail union leaders on Friday implored federal regulators and lawmakers to "focus on the primary reasons for the derailment and take immediate action to prevent future disasters."

In a statement, Railroad Workers United (RWU) pointed to the National Transportation Safety Board's (NTSB) newly published preliminary report on the February 3 crash and subsequent burnoff of vinyl chloride and other carcinogenic chemicals, which suggests that an overheated wheel bearing likely caused the train to derail. The inter-union alliance of rail workers also cited NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy, who said Thursday at a press conference: "This was 100% preventable. We call things accidents—there is no accident. Every single event that we investigate is preventable."

RWU, which has previously highlighted how industry-led deregulation and Wall Street-backed policies such as "precision-scheduled railroading" have made the U.S. rail system more dangerous, said Friday that "Class 1 freight rail carriers, including Norfolk Southern, have prioritized profits over safety, cutting maintenance, equipment inspections, and personnel in all crafts while increasing the average train size to three miles or more."

In the words of RWU co-chair Gabe Christenson: "Railroad workers experience firsthand every day the dangers inherent in this style of railroading. It has impacted their safety and health, state of mind, and lives on and off the job."

"Limits on train lengths and weights are necessary to prevent catastrophic derailments."

Jason Doering, general secretary of RWU, echoed Christenson's message, saying: "Every day we go to work, we have serious concerns about preventing accidents like the one that occurred in Ohio. As locomotive engineers, conductors, signal maintainers, car inspectors, track workers, dispatchers, machinists, and electricians, we experience the reality that our jobs are becoming increasingly dangerous due to insufficient staffing, inadequate maintenance, and a lack of oversight and inspection."

"We recognize," Doering added, "that limits on train lengths and weights are necessary to prevent catastrophic derailments."

One week ago, RWU made the case for nationalization, arguing that the U.S. "can no longer afford private ownership of the railroads; the general welfare demands that they be brought under public ownership."

In the absence of such sweeping transformation, which remains far-off given the current state of the beleaguered U.S. labor movement, the alliance on Friday demanded that federal agencies and Congress move quickly to "rein in" Norfolk Southern and other profit-maximizing rail corporations that have fought regulations, laid off workers, and purchased billions of dollars in stock rather than investing in employees and safety upgrades.

Specifically, RWU called on regulators and lawmakers to:

• Ensure sufficient staffing to do the job properly, efficiently, and safely, with all trains operating with a minimum of a two-person crew;
• Cap train length and weight at a reasonable level to mitigate the increased likelihood of breakdowns, train separations, and derailments;
• Implement adequate and proper maintenance and inspections of locomotives and rail cars, tracks and signals, wayside detectors, and other infrastructure; and
• Standardize ample training and time off without the harassment of draconian attendance policies.

Of these measures, only a proposed rule to require two-person crews—described by RWU as loophole-ridden—was included in the blueprint the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) unveiled Tuesday to hold rail companies accountable and protect the well-being of workers and fenceline communities.

The DOT also encouraged rail carriers to voluntarily provide sick leave. Norfolk Southern—facing intense scrutiny and backlash amid the ongoing East Palestine disaster—agreed Wednesday to provide up to a week of paid sick leave per year to roughly 3,000 track maintenance workers.

But because the Biden administration and Congress recently imposed a contract without paid sick leave on rail workers who were threatening to strike, the vast majority still lack this basic lifesaving benefit, as do millions of private sector workers in other industries who are also awaiting legislation to address the issue.

Characterizing the DOT's plan as inadequate, RWU said Tuesday that "rank-and-file railroad workers can diagnose and fix the problems" and urged U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to enact "some of our solutions."

RWU treasurer Hugh Sawyer reiterated that call on Friday.

"We demand that the railroad be run safely, efficiently, and professionally, and not as some 'cash cow' for Wall Street investors and billionaires," said Sawyer. "Much of what is wrong with the rail industry today can be fixed easily and quickly by acting on what is outlined above. We demand action NOW."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

Tens of thousands of people opposed to the far-right Israeli government's proposed judicial overhaul once again hit the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv on Monday, where they implored lawmakers to vote against the measures during the afternoon's first reading.

"On the morning of the vote, small groups of protesters sat down outside the front doors of some coalition lawmakers' homes in a bid to block them from leaving for parliament. They were removed by the police," The New York Timesreported. After blocking highways to Jerusalem, protesters gathered outside parliament, where doctors "set up a mock triage station for 'casualties of the judicial reform.'"

Despite weeks of massive demonstrations, members of the Israeli Knesset are expected to pass the legislation, which is supported by right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his close ally, Justice Minister Yariv Levin.

If that happens, the Supreme Court's ability to overrule parliament would be weakened, as a simple 61-vote majority could override the court's decisions; the Supreme Court's ability to review and strike down attempts to change Israel's 13 quasi-constitutional "Basic Laws" would be abolished; and the ruling coalition would gain control of the Judicial Appointments Commission, a panel tasked with picking new judges.

The legislation must be approved three times to become law, with Monday afternoon's vote marking the first step in the process. Israeli President Isaac Herzog, a largely ceremonial figure, and opposition leader Yair Lapid have pleaded for Netanyahu's government to delay the legislation, to no avail.

On the eve of the initial vote, Levin said, "We won't stop the legislation now, but there is more than enough time until the second and third readings to hold an earnest and real dialogue and to reach understandings."

But as the Times noted, "critics have dismissed the government's position as disingenuous, arguing that once the bills have passed a first vote, only cosmetic changes will be possible."

Organizers, for their part, said Monday that "with the passage of the dictator's bill, the protests will intensify," according toi24 News.

Opponents "say the proposed overhaul would place unchecked power in the hands of the government, remove protections afforded to individuals and minorities, and deepen divisions in an already fractured society," the Times reported. They also worry that "Netanyahu, who is standing trial on corruption charges, could use the changes to extricate himself from his legal troubles."

In addition, Al Jazeerareported, opponents fear that "Netanyahu's nationalist allies want to weaken the Supreme Court to establish more settlements on land the Palestinians seek for a state. But settlements, which are considered illegal under international laws, have continued under successive Israeli governments. Nearly 600,000-750,000 Israelis now live in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem."

Last week, Netanyahu's administration granted retroactive "legalization" to nine such settlements, and the prime minister has also intensified deadly raids, killing at least 50 Palestinians in occupied territories so far this year.

A right-wing neutering of the Supreme Court could exacerbate Israel's regime of violent dispossession and ethnic cleansing.

But the weekslong demonstrations against the proposed judicial overhaul "include very few Palestinians," Jewish Currents editorPeter Beinart observed Sunday in a Times op-ed titled "You Can't Save Democracy in a Jewish State."

"In fact, Palestinian politicians have criticized them for having, in the words of former Knesset member Sami Abu Shehadeh, 'nothing to do with the main problem in the region—justice and equality for all the people living here,'" Beinart wrote.

"The reason is that the movement against Mr. Netanyahu is not like the pro-democracy opposition movements in Turkey, India, or Brazil—or the movement against Trumpism in the United States," he added. "It's not a movement for equal rights. It's a movement to preserve the political system that existed before Mr. Netanyahu's right-wing coalition took power, which was not, for Palestinians, a genuine liberal democracy in the first place. It's a movement to save liberal democracy for Jews."

For Palestinians, Israel is not a democracy but rather an apartheid state, an assessment shared by numerous human rights groups around the world. The Israeli government has enacted discriminatory laws against Palestinians and colonized their land for decades, including under Lapid.

According to Beinart: "The principle that Mr. Netanyahu's liberal Zionist critics say he threatens—a Jewish and democratic state—is in reality a contradiction. Democracy means government by the people. Jewish statehood means government by Jews. In a country where Jews comprise only half of the people between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, the second imperative devours the first."

"Ultimately, a movement premised on ethnocracy cannot successfully defend the rule of law," he added. "Only a movement for equality can."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

Massive protests erupted in Israel on Monday as the country's far-right government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, began advancing judicial reforms that would roll back judicial oversight of parliament and give lawmakers more control over Supreme Court appointments, proposed changes that opposition leader Yair Lapid decried as an attempt to impose a "dark dictatorship."

As demonstrations raged—with participants chanting "democracy!" and "no to dictatorship!"—chaos broke out inside the Israeli Knesset after a key committee voted to move ahead with part of the legislation backed by Netanyahu and right-wing Israeli Justice Minister Yariv Levin, who are aiming to virtually eliminate the Supreme Court's ability to strike down laws.

The vote, as The New York Times reported, "set off a fracas in the committee room after opposition lawmakers, one of them in tears, chanted against the decision, and some of them clambered over tables to confront the committee chair, Simcha Rothman, a government lawmaker."

\u201cISRAEL: Shouting breaks out as the Knesset Constitution, Law & Justice Committee convenes to vote on the proposed judicial reform package \n\nOpposition lawmakers can be heard chanting \u201cSHAME,\u201d as the committee chairman refuses to heed the President\u2019s call to delay the vote\u201d

— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS English) 1676276358

Around 100,000 people took part in the Monday demonstrations against the proposed judicial overhaul, which the far-right government appears bent on ramming through despite public opposition and pleas from top officials—including Israeli President Isaac Herzog—to delay the legislation.

In a speech on Sunday, Herzog—who plays a largely ceremonial role—warned that "we are no longer in a political debate but on the brink of constitutional and social collapse."

Addressing demonstrators on Monday, Lapid expressed a similar fear, declaring, "We will not stay quiet as they destroy everything that is precious and sacred to us."

"Outwardly they grin sarcastically, saying that [the protests] won't change anything," Lapid said, "but inside they tremble, as rulers always tremble when they discover that there are people in front of them who are not willing to give up."

\u201c#BREAKING Thousands protest outside Israel's parliament against the judicial reforms\u201d

— Guy Elster (@Guy Elster) 1676274298

Monday's mass demonstrations came 24 hours after around 200,000 Israelis took to the streets to protest the policies of Israel's far-right government, which on Sunday granted retroactive "legalization" to nine settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The Times noted Monday that "many Arabs agree that the Supreme Court generally acts as a bulwark against attacks on minorities and has acted to restrain parts of Israel's settlement enterprise."

"But they also feel that Israel's democracy has for years been compromised by the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, where millions of Palestinians live under varying forms of Israeli control without voting or residency rights in Israel itself," the newspaper added.

Aida Touma-Sliman, an Arab lawmaker in Israel's parliament, told the Times that "democracy cannot exist while you're occupying other people."

Mansour Abbas, a member of the Israeli Knesset and head of the United Arab List, said his party supports the large-scale demonstrations against the judicial overhaul, which have been going on for weeks.

As Haaretz explained, the new legislation seeks to grant "the prime minister and his or her government—via the legislature they control—the power to override Supreme Court decisions."

"It also limits the court's ability to strike down legislation that infringes on human and civil rights, while giving the government complete control over judicial appointments," the outlet continued. "The battle will continue after Monday's vote. The legislation now moves to the full Knesset, where it will need to pass in three votes in the coming days or weeks. The protest movement is already preparing its next steps."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Johnson.

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More than a year has passed since Congress adopted reforms that promised to overhaul the U.S. military justice system. Lawmakers stripped military commanders of their authority to prosecute certain serious cases but allowed them to maintain control over other alleged crimes.

However, the reforms, which will not go into effect until the end of this year, may have created additional challenges, military experts said.

Commanders, who oversee service members but are not trained lawyers, still have control over various aspects of the system, including whether to confine soldiers ahead of trial for alleged crimes, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune found.

We spoke to two military legal experts, Geoffrey S. Corn and Rachel E. VanLandingham, about the reforms and what they mean for the future of the military justice system. Corn is a retired Army lieutenant colonel who is now a professor and directs Texas Tech University’s Center for Military Law and Policy. VanLandingham is a professor at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel. They are both former judge advocate generals, or military lawyers. Here are takeaways from those conversations.

The military justice system was initially formed as a way to discipline soldiers during times of war, giving commanders unfettered authority to mete out discipline and punishment. That included determining who should be prosecuted and for what crime.

VanLandingham was largely unfamiliar with that system when she enlisted at the Air Force Academy at age 18. She remembers being sexually assaulted and harassed while at the academy but said she never reported anything for fear of being ostracized or retaliated against.

She was a senior at the academy when dozens of women reported being sexually assaulted or harassed during a three-day 1991 convention of Navy and Marine Corps aviators in Las Vegas.

The incident, which became known as Tailhook after the association that put on the event, was among the first times there had ever been focus on sexual misconduct in the military or how the military treated women in the armed services. The secretary of the Navy eventually resigned in the wake of the scandal and several admirals were censured or relieved of duty. The Navy also adopted a “zero tolerance” policy to sexual harassment.

“Tailhook was the first time that I recall that it hit me that ‘Oh, there might be a bigger problem here than just this little academy world,’” VanLandingham said. “‘That was my first time thinking, ‘Huh, is the military going to take care of me?’ But at that point, I couldn’t think about it too much because I had a five-year commitment.”

Similar scandals unfolded over the next three decades, prompting additional public scrutiny of military culture and commanders’ attitudes toward sexual assault. Congress turned up the pressure in 2013 as lawmakers like Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York began to push the idea that commanders should not oversee the justice system.

But large-scale reform wouldn’t happen until 2021, one year after the disappearance and murder of Army Spc. Vanessa Guillén at Fort Hood in Central Texas. Her death, along with the deaths of several other soldiers at the post, spurred louder calls for change. Guillén was sexually harassed by a supervisor months before she was allegedly killed by another soldier. That year, an independent review committee appointed by the Secretary of the Army published a report that found evidence soldiers had underreported sexual assault and harassment at the post for fear of “ostracism, shunning and shaming, harsh treatment, and indelible damage to their career.”

“That commission actually found that there was an environment that was permissive of sexual harassment and assault, which was the first time any kind of military-related formal document actually pointed a finger at the commanders and said, ‘You allowed an environment that was conducive to this stuff,’” VanLandginham said.

In 2021, Congress made sexual harassment a separate offense in military courts, easing the path for charging soldiers. Previously, ambiguity in the law made it so that soldiers often would be charged with sexual harassment only in conjunction with other misconduct. Lawmakers also mandated that military judges, not jurors, sentence service members for all non-death penalty offenses and ordered the creation of recommended sentencing guidelines.

But the most significant change was lawmakers’ creation of a new office of military attorneys, called the Office of the Special Trial Counsel. Instead of leaving it up to military commanders to decide whether to prosecute cases related to serious offenses that include sexual assault and domestic assault, murder and involuntary manslaughter, attorneys within the new office will do that.

VanLandingham, who supports taking legal authority from commanders, believes that the new system does not go far enough because it leaves some cases in the hands of military commanders. For example, commanders continue to decide whether to prosecute offenses such as robbery, assault and distribution of controlled substances.

That disparity “makes no sense,” VanLandingham said. “It’s a product of politics versus a product of doing the right thing.”

By comparison, Corn supports maintaining commanders’ ability to decide cases in which service members are accused of crimes. He said commanders “are in those positions because they have had a career of exercising careful, thoughtful and decisive judgment.” But he said if Congress was going to take away that authority, it should have done so across the board and not only in certain cases.

“I struggle with the idea that Congress has said a nonlawyer commanding general is not competent to make decisions on whether or not an individual should be brought to trial for sexual harassment, but he is competent to make decisions on whether another defendant can be brought to trial on some other offense,” Corn said. “If I’m that other defendant, I’m saying, ‘Wait a minute, that’s fundamentally unfair.’”

Congress passed additional changes in December that VanLandingham said helped address some of what had been left unfinished in 2021.

Lawmakers moved three additional charges under the purview of military attorneys. Those are sexual harassment, causing the “death or injury of an unborn child” and “mailing obscene matter,” which means wrongfully sending explicitly sexual materials like a nude photo of a child.

The new law also requires the U.S. president to remove such powers as the ability to grant immunity to witnesses and hire witness experts from commanders in cases that the new trial counsel office is handling.

Congress also passed a measure requiring the Secretary of Defense to annually report on the outcomes of cases handled by the new Special Trial Counsel office beginning no later than 2025.

All service members will also for the first time have the ability to seek judicial review of their convictions. Previously, only service members who were sentenced to several months of confinement or received a punitive discharge were eligible to ask for such a review.

Congress directed that an existing advisory committee examine what information about a case should be shared with lawyers representing victims of crimes allegedly committed by military personnel. Victims have historically had trouble accessing evidence connected to their cases.

Corn believes the change will bring more transparency for alleged victims. “If I’m a victim’s counsel, and the prosecutor is saying, ‘We have decided not to prosecute this case,’ and my client is distraught and doesn’t understand it, my ability to have access to the file to show the victim what the problems are in the case helps me do my job,” Corn said.

VanLandingham said one of the most significant changes in December was Congress’ decision to require that courts-martial jurors — known as panel members — be selected at random, like a civilian jury. Currently, military commanders select the panel members. Those rules are not expected to go into effect until the end of 2024.

The change is “huge, at least appearance-wise,” VanLandingham said. “It’s just one more step to show that, yes, all these things that have been done for hundreds of years in the civilian sector really do and can be done” in the military.

The 2021 overhaul, which included the creation of the Office of the Special Trial Counsel, won’t go into effect until the end of this year at the earliest. That’s too long, VanLandingham said: “We can invade a country in far shorter of a time frame.”

She expects Congress and the Department of Defense to want time to see how the new system works before considering other large-scale reforms.

VanLandingham said she believes the only solution is to transfer prosecutorial authority of all felony-level offenses in the military to the Justice Department, “whose prosecutors do nothing but prosecute.” Short of that, she said, commanders should be taken out of the military justice equation entirely instead of having the two-pronged system Congress created.

“You’ve created a Frankenstein system that is doubly inefficient and, I think, still leaves in place things like gross racial disparities, gross rank disparities in the administration of military injustice. It’s hard for me to even call it military justice when you have twice as many African Americans still court-martialed to this day,” VanLandingham said.

She said commanders should not be in the business of practicing law.

Corn said future reforms should focus on creating more uniform and effective training for commanders “on the ethical guideposts that prosecutors, good prosecutors, use to decide whether or not to send the case to trial.”

Still, he expects that prosecution of almost all criminal offenses will one day fall to the special trial counsel office.

“So 10 years from now, when the captain at Fort Hood who is a brigade or division commander, if you said to him, ‘Hey, did you know that 15 years ago, if you were in this job, you would decide what cases go to trial?’” Corn said. “He’d probably say, ‘That’s crazy.’”

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Vianna Davila.

“Expanding mineral activities on federal public lands without modernizing our mining laws could threaten some of our nation’s most treasured areas,” wrote the groups. “Previous mine permitting proposals have sought to scale back protections for millions of acres of tribal sacred sites, culturally significant places, and iconic natural places. While mining is not permitted within the boundaries of National Parks, mining activities pollute the air and water that crosses the boundaries of protected lands. Insufficiently regulated mining in the name of clean energy development promotes a false choice by risking key lands that we need to conserve for our own health and wellbeing.”

Current mining operations are governed by the Hardrock Mining Law of 1872, and Congress has not updated the legislation for over 150 years.

“Mining companies have exploited the climate crisis to call for unfettered access to our public lands and expand dirty mining operations that remain governed by antiquated laws and regulations,” said Earthjustice Senior Legislative Representative Blaine Miller-McFeeley. “We can’t avoid all mining, and any mining that happens must proceed in the most sustainable way possible. Our current laws and regulations fail to meet this moment, and Congress must address this shortfall and ensure that iconic environmental treasures, Indigenous sacred sites, and the clean air and clean water of mining-impacted communities are not sacrificed in the process.”

“Necessary changes include those considered last Congress in the Clean Energy Minerals Reform Act of 2022,” the groups continued. “Converting to a leasing system for hardrock minerals—just like the one that oil and gas companies use today–would help provide certainty to the permitting process and result in more timely and socially acceptable decisions. We respectfully urge Members of the House Natural Resources Committee to oppose efforts that would exacerbate deficiencies in the existing mining law and result in an unnecessary increase in mining on federal public lands and puts at risk irreplaceable protected lands, special places, tribal sacred sites, wildlife, and culturally significant sites in the guise of a clean energy transition.”

Click here to read the letter.

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

Radio Australia’s Pacific Beat reports today on how Fiji has fared under the draconian Media Industry Development Act that has restricted media freedom over the past decade.

There are hopes that state-endorsed media censorship will stop in Fiji following last month’s change in government to the People’s Alliance-led coalition.

Reported by Fiji correspondent Lice Movono, the podcast outlines former Fiji Times editor-in-chief Netani Rika’s experiences of repression under the former FijiFirst government.

• LISTEN TO ABC PACIFIC BEAT: Media freedom under the new Fiji government
• READ MORE: Former Fiji Times editor has no regrets about resisting censorship

She also reports on Islands Business editor Samantha Magick’s view on media freedom and retired journalism professor Dr David Robie, who founded the Pacific Media Centre, expressing his “scepticism” over whether the hoped for relaxed rules will go far enough for the global RSF Media Freedom Index which ranks Fiji at just 102nd out of 180 countries.

The media item is rounded off with an interview with Attorney-General Siromi Turaga who says the repression of the past should never have happened and he assured listeners that the new government would have a “different approach”.

Interviewed:
Netani Rika, former editor of The Fiji Times
Samantha Magick, editor of Islands Business
Dr David Robie, retired journalism professor and editor of Asia Pacific Report
Siromi Turaga, Attorney-General of Fiji

In other items on today’s Pacific Beat:

• Fiji’s top cop and head of prisons are suspended pending an investigation by a special tribunal.
• A programme is launched in the Australian state of Victoria to get seasonal workers road-ready.
• Pacific women take part in Tennis Australia’s leadership programme, coinciding with the Australian Open.
• And scientists warn some sharks are on the brink of extinction.

Presenter: Prianka Srinivasan

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

The pharmaceutical industry and its Republican allies in Congress are openly signaling their plans obstruct at every turn as the Biden administration looks to begin implementing a recently passed law that will allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices for the first time in its history.

In November, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and several other Republican senators introduced legislation that would repeal the new prescription drug pricing reforms, which Congress approved earlier this year as part of the Inflation Reduction Act—a measure that Republicans unanimously opposed.

"Though chances of this repeal effort succeeding are vanishingly slim with Democrats holding the Senate and White House, conservative lawmakers and their outside allies want to impede the law's progress before its expansion becomes inevitable," Politicoreported Thursday.

Big Pharma lobbied aggressively against the Medicare drug pricing provisions, hysterically claiming the modest and extremely popular changes could send the U.S. "back into the dark ages of biomedical research."

Speaking to Politico, Rubio echoed the pharmaceutical industry's talking points.

"I want drug prices to be lower but we have to do it in a way that doesn't undermine the creation of new drugs," Rubio said. "Companies are not going to invest in developing new treatments unless they believe they have a chance to make back their money with a profit."

While the drug price reforms are far less ambitious than what progressives wanted—and the specific provision requiring Medicare to negotiate prices for a small number of drugs doesn't take full effect until 2026—the changes could still have a significant impact on costs, given that a small number of medicines make up a sizeable chunk of Medicare's prescription drug spending.

Beginning next year, the law will also require drug companies to pay Medicare a rebate if they raise their drug prices at a faster rate than inflation. Additionally, the law will limit monthly insulin cost-sharing to $35 for people with Medicare Part D starting in 2023.

Politico noted Thursday that the deep-pocketed drug industry—which boasts nearly three registered lobbyists for every member of Congress—is "gearing up to fight the law's implementation, using whatever legal and regulatory tools are available."

Sarah Ryan, a spokesperson for Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), told the outlet that the industry will "keep working to mitigate the law's harm and continue to push for real solutions that will bring financial relief for patients."'

NPRreported in September that pharma lobbyists are likely to take aim at "seemingly technical details" that "could have major implications" for the law, which advocates and Democratic lawmakers hope to build on in the coming years.

According to NPR:

One area ripe for gaming is the formula known as average manufacturer price that Medicaid uses to determine whether companies owe money for hiking prices faster than inflation. The law gives companies ample discretion in how they calculate that average, and firms have used that discretion to include or exclude certain sales to avoid triggering rebate payments. Just one loophole in that formula, which Congress closed in 2019, had cost Medicaid at least $595 million per year in lost rebates.
The Inflation Reduction Act essentially duplicates the language of Medicaid's inflation rebate law, making Medicare now vulnerable to the same loopholes.

Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), who is set to be sworn in as a senator next month, told Politico that "it's going to be really hard to reverse" the drug price reforms once they take effect and begin having a material impact.

"If [negotiation] works in Medicare, it can work in the private market," said Welch, who cautioned that the drug industry is still a strong influence that must be overcome.

“All the contributions they make and all their lobbying money gives them a lot of power," Welch said. "But I think what gives them the most power is that everybody can imagine themselves in a position where someday, somebody they really love is going to need a pharmaceutical drug and won't be able to get it. They play on the fear we all have by basically saying, 'If you make us charge reasonable prices, that'll happen.'"

Welch stressed that he views such fearmongering as "bogus."

Patient advocates have similarly decried the pharmaceutical industry's scare tactics, which are often used to shield companies' power to drive up prices as they please.

"Patients like me and those who live with hemophilia need innovative medicine. But what use is there in developing groundbreaking new drugs if we can’t afford them?" Utah-based advocate Meg Jackson-Drage wrote in a letter to Deseret News earlier this month. "The drug price provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act aren't a political 'sound bite'—they are historic legislation that allow for the innovation we need at prices we can afford."

"Patients fought hard for the reforms in the Inflation Reduction Act—and we won't let Big Pharma and its allies' fearmongering scare us," Jackson-Drage added.

Politico reported Thursday that "Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said his committee will be on the lookout for any political or corporate meddling" with regard to the drug price reforms.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is set to take charge of the Senate's Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, has vowed to use his position to challenge the "incredible greed in the pharmaceutical industry."

One Democratic pharmaceutical lobbyist lamented anonymously to The Washington Post last month that Sanders will "go after [the drug companies] at every turn, and they only have a couple friends left in the caucus anymore, so it's going to be tough."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Johnson.

A year ago I wrote that we were "in a great fight for the future of American democracy. Nothing less." As 2023 starts there is reason for hope.

2021 had begun with an insurrection. One-third of Americans rejected, without evidence, the results of the presidential election. Legislatures in several states were engaging in deliberate sabotage of future elections. Threats of violence chased election officials from their jobs and, in some cases, their homes.

Congress failed to act. Voting rights legislation passed the House and was supported by a majority in the Senate. It would have been the most important civil rights bill in years. But two senators refused to change the filibuster, and the bill failed.

If 2021 was a year American democracy stumbled, in 2022 it regained its footing.

But that was not the end of the story. In 2022, the forces of American democracy rallied.

Election officials, working with law enforcement and groups including the Brennan Center for Justice, were ready for disruption. But the midterm elections were smooth, fair, and calm—dare I say it, normal.

Election deniers were running to seize control of the machinery and set the terms of the 2024 election, running in battleground states for secretary of state or governor. Every one of them lost. Many ran behind other members of their ticket. An example: thousands of Nevadans supported the Republican candidate for governor who won but voted against the secretary of state candidate who said he would "fix" the 2024 election for Donald Trump.

In some states, voters backed innovative ballot measures. Connecticut adopted early voting. Michigan expanded early and absentee voting while improving identification requirements. Voters in Arizona by more than 70% backed curbs on dark money while rejecting a measure to impose harsher voter ID rules.

Last week, Congress voted to reform the fuzzily written 19th century Electoral Count Act with bipartisan support. The same bill included funding to upgrade election infrastructure and protect election officials. It's not enough, but it will make a difference.

And throughout the year the January 6 committee showed that Donald Trump's Big Lie was a knowing lie.

If 2021 was a year American democracy stumbled, in 2022 it regained its footing. Yes, there's a terrifying election denial movement. But there's a democracy movement, too, diverse and strong and growing.

Our democracy continues to face extraordinary pressure.

The U.S. Supreme Court is deciding whether to undermine traditional checks and balances in American elections. Moore v. Harper will say whether state legislatures can gerrymander, suppress votes, and engage in election sabotage free from the constraints of their governors, courts, and state constitutions.

Since the court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, the racial turnout gap has widened in many states. In Georgia, while white voter turnout increased between 2018 and 2022, nonwhite voter turnout went down. This year the overall gap in turnout between white and nonwhite voters was 8.6 percentage points, 50% higher than in the last two midterms. We can't say definitively why, but Georgia Senate Bill 202, which raised barriers to voting, is a prime suspect.

Big money plays a growing corrosive role. It threatens to overwhelm the encouraging rise of small donors. In the 2022 congressional races, the 100 largest donors collectively spent 60% more than every single small donor (those giving $200 or less) combined.

So, in 2023 and 2024, we have much to do.

Congress cannot relent in the drive to set national baseline standards and restore the Voting Rights Act. The measure failed last year, but it will prevail. Reformers must hold the flag high.

States can move forward with the next generation of reforms. As the New York Timesreported yesterday, there are renewed efforts for automatic voter registration—a reform first proposed by the Brennan Center—and other positive ways to bolster participation.

We can do more to take on the role of big money. A ray of hope: New York just implemented its statewide small donor public financing system, the most important response to Citizens United anywhere in the country.

And there's a growing drive for accountability of the U.S. Supreme Court itself. An 18-year term limit for justices is an idea with surprisingly wide bipartisan support. And the need for a binding ethics code for the court is more evident every day.

I'm optimistic. Voters care—especially the small but critical bloc of swing voters. An October poll showed that 70% of Americans considered the future of our democracy an important factor for their vote.

Throughout most of the country's history, candidates and causes have debated these very issues of power and voice. In the age of Trump those who want to tear down our democracy have been on the march. Now citizens of all parties who want to defend our democracy and make it work for all are on the march, too.

The fight for democracy is at the center of American politics, where it belongs. In 2023 let's keep it there.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Michael Waldman.

Despite high hopes for the Democrat-controlled Congress and White House, negotiators on Capitol Hill yet again failed to deliver even modest cannabis reforms in the 4,155-page omnibus government spending legislation released early Tuesday.

"Marijuana businesses, the hundreds of thousands of people they employ, and the millions of Americans that patronize them will continue to be at a higher risk of robbery."

Marijuana legalization advocates and members of states' legal industries had hoped that the package—which congressional leaders intend to send to President Joe Biden's desk this week—would include the Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act.

While dozens of states now allow adults to grow, sell, and use medicinal or recreational marijuana, because it remains illegal at the federal level, many cannabis companies struggle to access financial services—meaning they often operate as cash-only businesses, making them targets for theft. Sponsors of the SAFE Banking Act aimed to address this issue.

"The SAFE Banking Act seeks to harmonize federal and state law by prohibiting federal regulators from taking punitive measures against depository institutions that provide banking services to legitimate cannabis-related businesses and ancillary businesses (e.g. electricians, plumbers, landlords, etc.) that serve them," explained the office of Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.), who led the bill with Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.).

The Democrat-held House has repeatedly passed the bipartisan SAFE Banking Act, only for it to stall in the divided Senate. Following last month's midterm elections, Republicans are set to take control of the chamber in early January, quashing hopes of any marijuana reforms in the next two years.

Although the upper chamber could schedule a vote on the SAFE Banking Act as a standalone bill before the GOP seizes the House, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.)—an advocate of broader cannabis reform—so far has not done so, and did not even directly address the exclusion of the legislation in his remarks about the nearly $1.7 trillion package on Tuesday.

"The omnibus is the last thing we have to do to close out a very successful 117th Congress, and we've taken another step, a major step, towards reaching the goal line," he said. "From start to finish—from top to bottom—this omnibus is bold, generous, far-reaching, and ambitious."

"It's not everything we would've wanted, of course," Schumer acknowledged. "When you're dealing in a bipartisan, bicameral way, you have to sit down and get it done and that means each side has to concede some things, but it is something that we can be very proud of—all of us. Now we must get this done before Friday, well before that if possible."

Erik Altieri, executive director of the advocacy group NORML, said that "Democrats have promised action on cannabis consistently for the last two years, yet leadership consistently failed to prioritize and advance marijuana reform legislation, including legislation to provide clarity to banks and to provide grant funding for state-level expungements efforts, despite having several opportunities to do so. Democrats' failure and the GOP's continued resistance to any progress is out of step with voters' opinion, is bad politics, and most importantly, it is bad public policy."

"Until congressional action is taken, state-licensed marijuana businesses, the hundreds of thousands of people they employ, and the millions of Americans that patronize them will continue to be at a higher risk of robbery due to the cash-heavy nature of this industry created by outdated federal laws," Altieri added. "Furthermore, smaller entrepreneurs who seek to enter this industry will continue to struggle to compete against larger, more well-capitalized interests."

Amid reporting of the bill's death Monday, Marijuana Business Daily pointed out that it "comes at a time when capital markets have dried up and both sales and wholesale prices are dropping fast in legacy states including Colorado and California—where lax enforcement also allows rampant illicit-market competition to flourish, choking out legitimate businesses."

MarketWatch reported that "cannabis stocks ended sharply lower Monday on reports the measure would not be included" in the omnibus package.

Members and supporters of states' legal industries echoed NORML's warnings about not passing a financial services bill.

"We are deeply disappointed in leadership on both sides of the aisle and the lack of action on SAFE Banking over the past two years," said Kim Rivers, CEO of Trulieve, a vertically integrated cannabis company that operates in multiple states. "The 425,000 employees working in the legal cannabis industry will continue to face undue risk of robberies and economic harm."

Calling the banking bill's exclusion "incredibly disappointing" and "a win for the illegal market," Boris Jordan, co-founder and executive chair of the multistate operator Curaleaf Holdings, also warned that "the entire industry will suffer as a result of this failure."

Khadijah Tribble, CEO of the U.S. Cannabis Council (USCC) and a leader at Curaleaf, said that "in failing to enact the SAFE Banking Act, the Senate missed an opportunity to pass one of the rare pieces of legislation that has the support of both Republicans and Democrats, along with the majority of the American people. Not only did the Senate squander a chance to score a bipartisan victory this year, its inaction threatens public safety and undermines the progress states are making in mending the racial inequities of the War on Drugs."

"To say that we are disappointed is an understatement. But to assume the Senate's inertia around cannabis banking reform dooms the entire cannabis industry discounts all of the headway we made this year," Tribble continued. "From the Biden administration announcing that it will conduct an official regulatory review of whether cannabis should be criminalized at all to the first standalone cannabis-related bill being signed into law to fund important research—2022 will still mark the turning point in our fight to legalize cannabis."

Tribble and others pledged to continue the movement to end cannabis prohibition.

Minority Cannabis Business Association board president Kaliko Castille said Monday that "while we are disappointed that the Senate was unable to pass this critical piece of legislation before the end of this Congress, we remain hopeful that the work we have been doing with our allies on the Hill to improve the final package will pay off when Congress reconvenes in 2023."

In a Tuesday opinion piece for USA Today, Robert L. Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television and the RLJ Companies, stressed that the banking bill "would create more opportunities for small and minority-owned cannabis businesses to have a fair chance to compete."

"For years, racial and social inequities related to the criminalization of marijuana have unfairly targeted the Black community," he wrote. "Without question, the lack of access to capital and capital formation are the principal factors holding back opportunities for minority businesses and, consequently, wealth and job creation within the minority communities they serve."

Jim Hagedorn, whose Hawthorne Gardening Company is a supplier to the cannabis and indoor growing industries, noted Tuesday that "some critics have said that the SAFE Banking Act shouldn't pass because it is too small a step in the broader cannabis debate. On the contrary, it's an important step. While it won't solve every issue… it is the best opportunity to level the financial playing field for legitimate and regulated business."

Hagedorn emphasized that "small cannabis startups aspiring to compete with more established firms have no access to reasonably priced capital to expand. To stay afloat, they often are forced to sell equity stakes, pay unreasonable interest rates and fall victim to predatory lenders. SAFE Banking will help fix that."

There are some GOP members in Congress who back certain reform efforts—such as Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), the lead GOP sponsor of the SAFE Banking Act, who was outraged by the exclusion.

"The failure to pass my bipartisan 'SAFE Banking Act' means communities in Montana and across our country will remain vulnerable to crime where legal businesses are forced to operate in all-cash," he said. "This bill to promote public safety would have been well-positioned to pass had it gone through the regular committee process—as I called for more than a year ago. Our small businesses, law enforcement, and communities deserve better."

However, key Republicans—including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) as well as Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa)—are major obstacles to passing any marijuana reforms, especially a federal legalization measure that would include social justice provisions.

McConnell and others had bristled at the possible inclusion of the SAFE Banking Act and potentially other marijuana-related measures in the latest National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), and celebrated on the Senate floor after it was left out—along with a warning about the omnibus package.

"While action on SAFE Banking may no longer be possible in 2022, you better believe I'm going to keep fighting in the new Congress."

"This NDAA is not getting dragged down by unrelated liberal nonsense. Good, smart policies were kept in, and unrelated nonsense, like easier financing for illegal drugs, was kept out," McConnell said earlier this month. "Now, that same lesson must carry over into our subsequent conversations about government funding."

Still, Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) vowed Tuesday to keep up the fight. He said in a statement that "I am frustrated and disappointed that after coming so close to meaningful cannabis reform this Congress, the Republican leader and a handful of Republican senators thwarted our efforts to improve public safety. Because when you are forcing businesses to operate as cash only, it is a public safety issue."

"While action on SAFE Banking may no longer be possible in 2022, you better believe I'm going to keep fighting in the new Congress to bring common sense to the federal treatment of cannabis and begin to repair the harms done by the failed War on Drugs," added Wyden.

After the spending bill was unveiled Tuesday, Marijuana Moment highlighted that the exclusion of the banking legislation wasn't the only disappointing development.

"Adding insult to injury, the large-scale spending legislation continues the policy of preventing the District of Columbia from spending its own local tax dollars to legalize adult-use cannabis sales," the outlet noted, "despite the fact that earlier versions of spending bills that advanced in the House and Senate earlier this year did not contain the rider."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

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

Washington state education officials are proposing to expand oversight of private schools for students with disabilities, citing a Seattle Times and ProPublica investigation that revealed that the state failed to intervene despite years of complaints about these schools.

The state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction’s request for new legislation, which will likely include a budget increase, appears to be welcomed by some lawmakers frustrated with the private special education schools, called “nonpublic agencies,” which accept public school children and tax dollars.

In its monthly special education bulletin, OSPI announced last week it was working on legislation that would expand the agency’s power over the specialty schools. The OSPI bulletin said the Seattle Times and ProPublica reports “show us that more changes are needed” in the system.

The news organizations found OSPI failed to address problems at the largest chain of such schools, the Northwest School of Innovative Learning, despite complaints from parents, school district administrators and others. Allegations against the school, dating back to at least 2014, included unqualified aides struggling with a lack of curriculum, misuse of isolation rooms to manage student behavior and a staffer who repeatedly choked students.

Northwest SOIL is owned by a subsidiary of Universal Health Services, one of the nation’s largest health care corporations. The school accepts only public funds for tuition and took in more than $38 million in taxpayer funds over the five school years ending in 2021.

State Rep. Gerry Pollet, D-Seattle, said publicly funded private schools should be held to higher standards, including requirements for curriculum, certified staffing and special education teacher-to-student ratios.

“I think the reporting showed that they’re operating in their own legal black hole and that is not acceptable,” he said. “We need to have very clear requirements and consequences for nonpublic agencies.”

A representative from the school’s parent company said it had no comment in response to the state’s proposal. Previously, the company defended its program in a statement to the news organizations, writing that it takes students’ complex needs seriously. It denied that Northwest SOIL understaffed campuses and said its hiring practices ensure that “only appropriate and qualified candidates are hired.”

Public school districts across Washington outsource a small but very high-needs segment of their special education population — about 500 students a year — to Northwest SOIL and about 60 other schools. These programs promise tailored therapy and instruction and, in the case of Northwest SOIL, can receive more than $68,000 per child.

While short on specifics, the state education department’s bulletin offered a glimpse into the behind-the-scenes efforts to improve special education ahead of this legislative session, which begins Jan. 9 and lasts 105 days.

The OSPI proposal seeks to improve the agency’s complaint investigations and monitoring of the private schools. It would also create new application and renewal requirements for programs seeking to contract with school districts and instruct the schools to collect student data and report it directly to the state.

Suzie Hanson, the executive director of the Washington Federation of Independent Schools, said private school educators are open to reporting restraint and isolation data and complaints directly to state officials. But it may require collaboration among multiple state agencies, she said. Though all nonpublic agencies are approved by OSPI, some are approved as private schools by the State Board of Education. Others, such as Northwest SOIL, are run by hospitals, which report to the Department of Health.

“I think together we can come up with legislation that would strengthen the communication and care for students with disabilities,” Hanson said. (Northwest SOIL is not a member of the trade group.)

The Seattle Times and ProPublica investigation, detailed in two stories published in the past three weeks, exposed a critical gap in the state’s oversight of such schools. Currently, the system places responsibility for monitoring the private schools not on the state but on individual school districts.

But that arrangement doesn’t address systemic issues at Northwest SOIL or other schools like it. More than 40 districts at a time send students to Northwest SOIL’s three campuses, and each district only receives information about its own students, so no single school district or agency has a complete picture of what’s going on there.

“I think the nonpublic agencies should be directly supervised by the OSPI, that there should be reporting directly to the OSPI and that OSPI should have authority to shut down and close schools based on their own observations and investigations,” said Mary Griffin, a special education attorney at the Northwest Justice Project, which provides legal services to low-income families.

OSPI already has the authority to revoke a nonpublic agency’s status, but the state has been reluctant to act, saying school districts are better positioned to spot and correct problems. Griffin said any new legislation should clearly spell out that OSPI has the duty to investigate problems and force changes at nonpublic agencies.

California law, for instance, requires the state Department of Education to visit and regularly monitor its specialty schools and to investigate if it receives evidence of “a significant deficiency in the quality of educational services” or if there is “substantial reason to believe that there is an immediate danger to the health, safety, or welfare of a child.”

The Times and ProPublica also reported that, unlike some other states, Washington requires just one special education teacher per nonpublic agency school, even though they serve some of the state’s highest-needs students.

Pollet, the state representative, is also spearheading a bill that would overhaul the state’s special education funding model, which has long been a source of contention in Washington state. Currently, the state funds special education services for up to 13.5% of a school district’s student population, regardless of how many students are eligible for services. It leaves school districts to pay the remainder of those education costs — or deny services to students, Pollet said.

The request would cost about $972 million between 2023 and 2025, according to OSPI, which recommended removing the 13.5% cap.

The Times and ProPublica series coincided with efforts by OSPI and advocates to curtail the misuse of restraint and isolation in both public and private schools. The American Civil Liberties Union of Washington and Disability Rights Washington, another advocacy group, have been working on a report examining how restraint and isolation is used disproportionately on students of color, disabled students and others from marginalized communities, said Kendrick Washington, policy director at the ACLU of Washington. The groups’ report is expected early next year.

Lawmakers, educators and advocates have been exploring alternatives to isolation and considering banning the practice in the state, Washington said.

An OSPI advisory committee has also been crafting recommendations on changes to restraint and isolation policy. Its report is set to be published later this month.

Sarah Snyder, who complained to state officials after her son Christopher was restrained and isolated at Northwest SOIL in 2017, said she was “cautiously optimistic” about OSPI’s request, noting that parents deserve more transparency from the schools.

“If there’s a problem, we need to know about it,” said Snyder, of Puyallup. “It makes me super happy that they’re finally taking action, but I hope they follow through.”

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Mike Reicher and Lulu Ramadan, The Seattle Times.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Adam Ramsay.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Adam Ramsay.

The organizations called the Nov.18 decision to uphold the five-year sentences against the so-called ADHOC 5 “unjust” and a reflection of how the ruling Cambodian People’s Party uses the judicial system to persecute rights defenders. 

The court provided no reason for its decision against Ny Sokha, Lim Mony, and Yi Soksan, and former officials Nay Vanda and Ny Chakra, who is also the secretary of the National Election Committee.

The government should be encouraging rights campaigners instead of targeting them for the work they do, said Soeung Sen Karuna, an ACHOC spokesman.

“Citizens, civil society organizations and politicians have suffered because of our country's law enforcement system,” he said. “This is something we don’t want to see in Cambodian society.”

The statement was signed by ADHOC, the Independent Democratic Association of Informal Economy, CENTRAL, Equitable Cambodia, the Cambodian Youth Network and the Peace Bridge Organization, as well as other groups.

In June 2017, Lim Mony, Ny Sokha, Yi Soksan, and Nay Vanda, and Ny Chakrya were released from prison after 427 days of pre-trial detention amid a wide-ranging probe into a purported affair by the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party’s then-President Kem Sokha.

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court later convicted the former four of bribery, and Ny Chakra of accessory to bribery, for attempting to keep Kem Sokha’s alleged mistress quiet. 

In addition to condemning the ruling, Wednesday’s statement also called on Cambodia’s judiciary and relevant institutions to “strengthen the implementation of the legal system … to be fully fair and in accordance with the principles of the rule of law” enshrined in the country’s constitution and in the United Nations charter.

It urged the National Assembly, or parliament, to review the content of the laws used to convict the Adhoc 5 and amend them to ensure that rights defenders cannot be persecuted for carrying out humanitarian work.

Attempts by RFA to reach government spokesman Phay Siphan for comment on the court decision went unanswered Wednesday.

However, CPP spokesman Sok Ey San dismissed the collective statement as “useless,” saying only the court has the right to make decisions in this case.

“The court is the one who made the judgment, but the accused blame the government,” he said. “CSOs should better acquaint themselves with the law. Then they would know that the government can’t interfere in court decisions.”

Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

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

The organizations called the Nov.18 decision to uphold the five-year sentences against the so-called ADHOC 5 “unjust” and a reflection of how the ruling Cambodian People’s Party uses the judicial system to persecute rights defenders. 

The court provided no reason for its decision against Ny Sokha, Lim Mony, and Yi Soksan, and former officials Nay Vanda and Ny Chakra, who is also the secretary of the National Election Committee.

The government should be encouraging rights campaigners instead of targeting them for the work they do, said Soeung Sen Karuna, an ACHOC spokesman.

“Citizens, civil society organizations and politicians have suffered because of our country's law enforcement system,” he said. “This is something we don’t want to see in Cambodian society.”

The statement was signed by ADHOC, the Independent Democratic Association of Informal Economy, CENTRAL, Equitable Cambodia, the Cambodian Youth Network and the Peace Bridge Organization, as well as other groups.

In June 2017, Lim Mony, Ny Sokha, Yi Soksan, and Nay Vanda, and Ny Chakrya were released from prison after 427 days of pre-trial detention amid a wide-ranging probe into a purported affair by the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party’s then-President Kem Sokha.

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court later convicted the former four of bribery, and Ny Chakra of accessory to bribery, for attempting to keep Kem Sokha’s alleged mistress quiet. 

In addition to condemning the ruling, Wednesday’s statement also called on Cambodia’s judiciary and relevant institutions to “strengthen the implementation of the legal system … to be fully fair and in accordance with the principles of the rule of law” enshrined in the country’s constitution and in the United Nations charter.

It urged the National Assembly, or parliament, to review the content of the laws used to convict the Adhoc 5 and amend them to ensure that rights defenders cannot be persecuted for carrying out humanitarian work.

Attempts by RFA to reach government spokesman Phay Siphan for comment on the court decision went unanswered Wednesday.

However, CPP spokesman Sok Ey San dismissed the collective statement as “useless,” saying only the court has the right to make decisions in this case.

“The court is the one who made the judgment, but the accused blame the government,” he said. “CSOs should better acquaint themselves with the law. Then they would know that the government can’t interfere in court decisions.”

Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

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

Hakainde Hichilema
President of Zambia
Plot 1, Independence Avenue, 
Lusaka, Zambia

Sent via email

Dear President Hichilema,

We at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a global press freedom organization, and Paradigm Initiative, an African digital rights and inclusion advocacy organization, welcomed your pronouncements on August 16, 2021, as president-elect on guaranteeing press freedom, supporting independent journalism, and ensuring the safety of journalists. We urge you to act on those commitments and the following points to ensure Zambia’s press can work freely and without fear of reprisal. 

1. Zambia’s Cyber Security law

Is your government committed to repealing or reforming the Cyber Security and Cyber Crimes Act to ensure journalism is not criminalized and that the press are guaranteed the privacy they require to do their work?

In March 2021, five months before your election as president, you promised to repeal the 2021 Cyber Security and Cyber Crimes Act as a top priority for your government. In August 2022, local media reported that your government began a process to amend that legislation. The Cyber Security law, which was passed before your administration took office, contains numerous sections that may be used to criminalize the press and undermine the privacy journalists need to work. These include:

• Sections 59, 65, and 69, which each indicate prison time and/or a fine for communications considered to be corrupting morals or harassment;
• Sections 27, 28, 29, and 39, which empower authorities to conduct surveillance, mandate service providers’ cooperation with communications interception, and require service providers to collect and retain personal information of their subscribers;
• Section 15, which grants authorities power to compel people to appear or hand over information related to an “alleged cyber security threat or alleged cyber security incident.” Those who do not comply may face up to two years in jail and/or a fine;
• Section 31, which criminalizes disclosure of “intercepted communication” without ensuring protection for journalistic reporting in the public interest;
• Section 77, which provides that someone with knowledge of a computer or data protection measures “shall permit” and “assist” authorities in accessing “any computer data” even if they have not, personally, been accused of a crime.

Local and international civil society groups have raised alarm over the Cyber Security and Cyber Crimes Act. These concerns were reinforced in January 2022, when police investigated Kenmark Broadcasting Network (KBN TV) journalist Petty Chanda under Section 31 of the Act, which criminalizes the disclosure of intercepted communications. The investigation revolved around a January 18 TV broadcast of a leaked audio conversation in which Levy Ngoma, your political advisor, and Joseph Akafumba, the Permanent Secretary for Ministry of Home Affairs, allegedly plotted to ban an opposition party from participating in a local election.

On May 31, 2022, Felix Chipota Mutati, Zambia’s Minister of Technology and Science, said the government would review the Cyber Security and Cyber Crimes Act and that “the internet must be used for the transformation of the country’s economy and not as a tool for spreading fake news, harassment and circulation of obscene materials.” Since then, the government has requested recommendations for reforms from civil society groups, including Paradigm Initiative.

2. Penal code reform

Will you make the necessary legal reforms to decriminalize defamation and ensure journalists do not face the looming threat of criminal investigation or prosecution for their work?

Zambia’s penal code contains sections criminalizing defamation and sedition, which have been used to prosecute the press. In April 2016, Joan Chirwa and Mukosa Funga of The Post were charged with defamation over an article about then president Edgar Lungu, as CPJ reported at the time. Those charges have yet to be dropped.

In April 2021, columnist Sishuwa Sishuwa was accused of sedition by Zambia’s then ambassador to Ethiopia and permanent representative to the African Union, Emmanuel Mwamba, over an article that discussed the possibility of unrest in Zambia’s August 2021 general election. 

3. Investigation of journalist Humphrey Jupiter Nkonde’s death

Will you ensure your government treats the death of journalist Humphrey Jupiter Nkonde with the urgency it deserves and ensure the investigation is reopened?

In September 2019, journalist Humphrey Jupiter Nkonde disappeared and was found dead near the Chilengwa Na Lesa dam, in Zambia’s Copperbelt province, according to news reports and CPJ reporting from the time. According to an August 21, 2020, ruling, which CPJ reviewed, local magistrate Mary Goma said she was not satisfied with the previous police efforts to determine the circumstances of Nkonde’s death and ordered renewed investigation. However, CPJ has found that to date police have yet to move to investigate Nkonde’s death on claims that they have no leads on which to act.

4. Attacks by political supporters

Will you issue a direct and public call for political supporters to ensure the safety of journalists and refrain from harassing the press?

In May 2021, supporters of the then ruling Patriotic Front political party attacked two journalists—Francis Mwiinga Maingaila, a reporter at the news website Zambia 24, and Nancy Malwele, a reporter at the New Vision newspaper—as they sought to cover a clash between two factions of the party. Maingaila told CPJ that his belongings seized by the supporters had yet to be returned and he had received no update from police on their investigation into the attack. Also, Danny Mwale, the deputy spokesperson of the Zambia Police Service, told CPJ by phone that he did not know the status of the investigation and would follow up with additional information. He did not.

On July 23, 2021, just before the general elections, supporters of your United Party for National Development (UPND) attacked Victor Mwila, a reporter with the state-owned Zambia News and Information Services, for reporting on their activities in the North Western Ikelenge district. Nineteen of the suspected attackers have been arrested and charged with assault “occasioning actual bodily harm” shortly after the attack, but Mwila told CPJ that those arrested had been released and the case had stalled. Mwale declined to comment or provide details on the case.  

On December 1, 2021, UPND supporters raided Mpika FM Radio, halting an interview with an opposition politician. The matter was resolved following an apology to the outlet by the supporters, but Mpika FM Radio station manager Allan Dumingu told CPJ that he remained concerned such an attack may happen again.

5. Zambia’s Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA)

Will you ensure that the IBA Act, including Section 29, is reformed and that the changes protect against politically motivated censorship? 

In June 2021, Zambia’s Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), the national regulator, threatened to revoke the broadcasting license for private television station Muvi TV over alleged professional misconduct related to interviews with opposition politicians aired in May and April 2021. Muvi TV’s director of news and current affairs, Mabvuto Phiri, told CPJ that the regulator had yet to follow up, but the threat continued to hang over them.

Similarly, Zambia’s Independent Broadcasting Authority, the national regulator, canceled the broadcasting license of the privately owned Prime TV following a complaint by the then ruling party and after a government minister accused the broadcaster of being “unpatriotic.” To justify the closure, the regulator cited Section 29 of the IBA (Amendment) Act, which maintains broadcasting licenses may be canceled “in the interest of public safety, security, peace, welfare or good order,” or if considered “appropriate.” Prime TV reopened following your election, but the IBA Act remains unchanged. Your administration’s Minister of Information, Chushi Kasanda, on November 26, 2021, said the government intended to repeal and replace the IBA Act, but did not detail how it would change.

We look forward to a continued dialogue with your government on issues related to press freedom and journalists’ safety.

Sincerely,

Angela Quintal
Africa Program Coordinator
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)

Bulanda T. Nkhowani
Co-Team Lead, Programs
Paradigm Initiative

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

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

For more than a decade, the families of those killed by police in Vallejo, California, have pleaded for oversight of their city’s exceptionally lethal police force.

When a series of fatal shootings attracted national attention and the scrutiny of state officials in 2020, Vallejo’s leaders pledged to implement 45 reforms recommended by a private consulting group and overseen by the California Department of Justice. But officials have blown past deadlines and failed to follow through on nearly all of the promised reforms. Reporting by Open Vallejo and ProPublica has found that the city has fully implemented just two.

“We are continuously working on new and revised policies related to the remainder” of the recommendations, a city spokesperson said last week in a joint statement with the police department. “The City and the department have steadily increased the resources devoted to the task, most recently forming a dedicated task force comprised of four full-time dedicated officers.”

Later the same week, Vallejo police Chief Shawny Williams, considered a reformer by many, announced his resignation. The newsrooms reported in July how Vallejo police consistently failed to properly investigate killings by officers.

Days after being presented with our findings for that story, the department put out a proposal to begin addressing one of the key recommendations from the state DOJ: to modify how the department investigates fatal shootings and other critical incidents.

But for all its pledges, the city has little to show — and some of the efforts are being impeded by union and city officials.

“All we want is police reform,” Melissa Nold, the local civil rights attorney for two families whose loved ones were killed by Vallejo police, said in an interview. “We thought they would do the right thing, but here we are.”

Things looked like they might begin to change three years ago, after a group of Vallejo officers fired 55 rounds at 20-year-old musician and producer Willie McCoy, who had fallen asleep behind the wheel of his Mercedes, a gun allegedly in his lap.

McCoy’s death, in February 2019, garnered national media attention and sent residents to the streets in protest. That summer, amid the public outcry, the department hired a private consulting firm called OIR Group to conduct a “constructive analysis” of its practices.

Roughly a year later the city released the results of the consultants’ work: They identified “timing concerns” — specifically long delays in investigations of police killings — as well as a “lack of concrete follow-through” on the issues identified by those reviews, and an “apparent reticence when it came to finding fault.” They strongly advised the department to revise its system for investigating fatal shootings to ensure comprehensive reviews in “time-appropriate phases.” All in all, the outside firm made 45 recommendations, which also included strengthening reviews of the use of force by officers and creating an independent police oversight body.

Weeks later, in a highly unusual move, the chief fired officer Ryan McMahon for endangering a colleague when he shot at McCoy, records released by the city show. At the time of McCoy’s death, McMahon was already under investigation for killing an African American man. McMahon was the first Vallejo officer to be fired for conduct during a fatal shooting in at least 10 years. (McMahon was not criminally charged in either shooting; he did not respond to requests for comment.)

The OIR Group’s recommendations, however, were nonbinding, and the department did not immediately release plans for implementing them.

Then, less than a month after the reforms were proposed, Vallejo police Detective Jarrett Tonn fired five rounds from a rifle at 22-year-old Sean Monterrosa from the backseat of an unmarked police truck, public records show. The young Latino man was killed by a single bullet to the back of the head. It was one week after the murder of George Floyd. Tonn, a SWAT officer who participated in three nonfatal shootings since joining the department in 2014, said he mistook a hammer, later recovered in Monterrosa’s sweatshirt pocket, for a firearm. (Tonn was not charged in any of these shootings; the criminal investigation into the Monterrosa shooting is still open.)

Three days later, on June 5, concerned by the “number and nature” of police shootings in Vallejo, the California DOJ announced that it would conduct a three-year review of the department’s policies and practices — a relatively rare occurrence in California that can open the door to further scrutiny and potential civil or criminal sanctions.

The state DOJ embraced the 45 recommendations that the OIR Group had put forth and set out to evaluate Vallejo’s progress in implementing them. To do that, the DOJ hired Jensen Hughes, a global risk management firm, and defined steps for each reform that Vallejo police had to fulfill before they would deem the department compliant. Williams called the process a “massive review” and agreed to collaborate.

In less than two weeks, the Vallejo Police Department produced a draft implementation plan estimating that the steps for most reforms, including changes to the post-shooting review process, would be completed around February of 2021. But the plan itself noted that the target timelines it was setting did not take into account review by stakeholders like the union. In the end, the department missed more than a dozen deadlines, subsequent reports show.

In March 2021 the department set new goals to complete most recommendations within one year. By May of this year, however, it released a progress report revealing that the police department had achieved DOJ compliance with only one reform: a stricter requirement that officers activate their body cameras and mandated audits of some of the footage. The policy change, instituted by Williams, had been entrenched before the state DOJ’s review even began. (Despite the new policy, none of the officers present during the Monterrosa killing — which took place after this requirement was added — activated their body cameras prior to the shooting; three of the officers involved incorrectly claimed they were not required to turn them on because they were detectives rather than patrol officers.)

Since then, Vallejo has “completed and implemented” just one additional reform: an accountability program to ensure that the body camera policy would be enforced, according to the city’s statement to the news organizations.

“Implementation of new policies is a multi-step process,” the city wrote. The statement also said officials were “optimistic” that with the new task force dedicated to the reforms, moving “to full completion status will occur more rapidly.”

The California DOJ declined to answer specific questions about Vallejo’s compliance with the reform standards. “No public updates to share on our end at this point in time,” the DOJ press office wrote in response to requests for comment. “Our office remains committed to executing the terms of the agreement.”

The Vallejo Police Department also claimed in the May progress report that it had reached the implementation phase for 11 other recommendations. The report underscored changes to the hiring process to prioritize diversity and an increase in civilian staffing to support police services (for example, dispatchers or workers in the department lobby). In his statement to the news organizations the same month, Williams also noted several reform “highlights,” including changes to the department’s de-escalation policy, but did not talk specifically about compliance with the state DOJ’s measures.

As of May, the remaining 32 reforms remained untouched or in draft form, including key changes to how the department reviews fatal incidents and the implementation of an independent police oversight agency. The city did not provide updated information about its progress on the uncompleted recommendations.

The issue of independent oversight, which was recommended by the OIR Group and endorsed by the California DOJ, has become a key point of contention among officials.

City officials, and in one case the police union, have resisted establishing an independent agency with the power to hold the department accountable, sources with knowledge of the matter told the news organizations. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss processes relating to the California DOJ’s intervention in Vallejo.

In the fall of 2020, after the McCoy and Monterossa killings, the city asked a coalition of local nonprofits called Common Ground to help research permanent oversight models for Vallejo, an effort soon joined by Mike Nisperos, a retired attorney who is a member of the Vallejo Chief’s Community Advisory Board and a founding member of Oakland’s Police Commission. The city estimated that finding a model would take about six months and planned for a temporary solution in the meantime.

“Independent oversight cannot wait,” Vallejo’s then-city manager wrote in a City Council report advocating for an “interim auditor” to oversee the department. On Feb. 23, 2021, the city unanimously voted to hire OIR Group to review citizen complaints, conduct independent investigations and produce public reports while Common Ground and Nisperos researched a permanent model.

“We can’t have police police themselves,” Ashley Monterrosa, the sister of Sean Monterrosa, said at a City Council meeting where she, her sister Michelle Monterrosa and others advocated for strong police oversight.

But even the temporary oversight was never put in place. In July 2021, the Vallejo Police Officers’ Association sent Williams a cease-and-desist letter, obtained by the news organizations, demanding that the city refrain from hiring the independent auditor. The union alleged that the city violated California law by failing to consult with union officials, and it threatened to file a complaint with the state. Nisperos said he believed the pressure by the union may have caused the interim oversight proposal to falter.

The union, Williams, the city and city attorney, and the OIR Group did not comment on what happened with the interim proposal.

As the interim solution stalled, Nisperos and Common Ground continued to advocate for permanent oversight and produced a 40-page draft ordinance that would have created three branches of oversight, including a community review agency with the power to investigate fatal shootings and other incidents. Nisperos and Common Ground gathered feedback on the draft from all seven members of the Vallejo City Council, Williams, police oversight experts, residents impacted by police violence and the state DOJ.

Despite repeated requests, however, Vallejo City Attorney Veronica Nebb did not provide feedback on the draft for more than a year, Nisperos said, adding that he considers Nebb a “deliberate impediment” to reform.

The city disputed this assessment. “The City Attorney, in conjunction with the City Manager, have worked to build consensus with the community through numerous community meetings as well as meetings with Police Department leadership, the unions, and sworn and civilian staff,” the city wrote in a statement to Open Vallejo and ProPublica. The statement also said that between them, the city attorney and city manager had met with Common Ground three times since 2020, that they had reviewed the draft and that they would meet with the group again once the new ordinance was produced, this or next month. “Consensus-building efforts have always been in place and will continue.”

In August, Nebb — who plays a major role in handling the oversight reform — announced during a council meeting that the city could soon “begin to look at drafting” oversight legislation. Her 55-minute presentation did not address the draft ordinance that had been circulating among city officials for nearly 18 months.

“You have people who dedicated two years to put in research, to putting a model together for you,” Michelle Monterrosa said about the Common Ground ordinance at the meeting. “Let’s stop wasting time.”

Several elected officials at the meeting agreed. “I’m just ready to go on this, I’m ready to have something put in place,” Councilmember Mina Loera-Diaz said.

“The resistance from the city attorney’s office was resounding,” Councilmember Tina Arriola said in a September interview. “There’s just no budging.”

In presenting the city’s plan to draft its own ordinance, Nebb had raised concerns that an oversight body with the power to implement discipline or overrule the chief’s decisions could scare off potential police recruits. Advocates are concerned that she will water down the powers of the oversight agency. Nebb did not respond to specific questions about these efforts.

But barriers did not only originate from the union or city attorney’s office.

The union itself suggested in a May statement to Open Vallejo and ProPublica that the now-former police chief too has been an obstacle to change, and it claimed it had tried to set up meetings to discuss a handful of reforms but had gotten close to “zero response from the city.”

Williams, who has repeatedly expressed support for the reforms, did not respond to questions about the union’s claim.

In September, a representative for Jensen Hughes, the firm hired by the state DOJ, told Williams that it had developed “defined concerns” that a lack of involvement of top leadership was affecting the reform efforts, according to an email disclosed in response to a public records request. The email outlined several matters requiring “leadership” that instead were being left to lieutenants. A spokesperson for Jensen Hughes declined to comment for this story, and Williams did not comment on the firm’s findings.

A few weeks later, Williams unexpectedly took three weeks off and subsequently announced his resignation.

With a council election this week and less than eight months left until the end of its three-year agreement with the California DOJ, Vallejo could exit state supervision with no independent oversight, unless the state decides to extend — or escalate — its intervention in Vallejo.

“They want to continue doing what they’ve been doing for 20 years,” said Willie McCoy’s brother, Kori McCoy, about Vallejo’s handling of the reforms. McCoy’s family, who supports the Common Ground proposal, is demanding that the city implement the oversight ordinance as part of their civil rights lawsuit against the city; their attorney, Melissa Nold, said they will not accept any settlement money unless officials agree to impose outside oversight on the police.

“I don’t see how you’re going to fix the problems with the same people,” McCoy said. “​​​​Police run that city, and people are afraid.”

Help Us Investigate the Vallejo Police Department

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Laurence Du Sault, Open Vallejo.

While ostensibly about improving Aotearoa New Zealand’s water infrastructure, the government’s proposed Three Waters reforms have instead become a lightning rod for political division and distrust.

Critics cite concerns about local democracy, de facto privatisation and co-governance with Māori as reasons to oppose the Water Services Entities Bill currently before Parliament.

With the mayors of Auckland and Christchurch now proposing an alternative plan, the reforms may be far from a done deal.

• READ MORE: The UK’s water industry is broken – here’s how to fix it
• 11,000 litres of water to make one litre of milk? New questions about the freshwater impact of NZ dairy farming
• If we want to improve NZ’s freshwater quality, first we need to improve the quality of our democracy

But behind the debate lies an undeniable truth: clean water is a necessity of life. In fact, 20 years ago this month the United Nations Committee on Economic Social and Cultural Rights first affirmed that water is a human right.

The anniversary is a timely reminder of what Aotearoa’s proposed water reforms are essentially about.

Covering drinking water, wastewater and stormwater (hence the “three waters” label), the reforms would have a wider remit than the human right to water. They fold in environmental and cultural considerations alongside public health concerns.

But the human right to water, as well as lessons learned from implementing that right, have important implications for the Three Waters debate, not least around water quality and affordability.

An alternate three waters plan has been proposed by the mayors of Auckland and Christchurch, with control and ownership remaining with local councils, and the type and degree of iwi involvement decided locally.https://t.co/prVSbJuuSL

— RNZ (@radionz) October 31, 2022

A fragile right
By acknowledging it to be a human right in 2002, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights argued water is indispensable for leading a dignified life and essential for other human rights.

Since then, the human right to water has been repeatedly declared, including by the UN General Assembly and the European Union. This right is included in the constitutions and laws of numerous countries.

Despite this, 1 billion people still lack access to safe drinking water, and six out of ten people live with inadequate sanitation. More than 2 billion people live in areas of water scarcity, likely to become an even bigger issue due to climate change.

The human right to water covers five essential factors:

• access to enough water for drinking, personal sanitation, washing clothes, preparing food, personal and household hygiene
• water that is clean and won’t cause harm
• the look and smell of water should be acceptable
• water sources should be within easy reach and accessible without danger
• the cost should be low enough to ensure everyone can buy enough water to meet their needs.

Access and affordability
Internationally, there is evidence that the adoption of a human right to water has made a difference. In South Africa, where access to sufficient water is a constitutional right, the courts have repeatedly referred to the human right to water when determining government obligations around water services.

In 2014, the first European Citizens’ Initiative pushed the European Union to exclude water supply and water resources management from the rules governing the European internal market. This means EU citizens have a stronger voice in water governance decisions.

In 2016, Slovenia became the first EU country to make access to drinkable water a fundamental right in its constitution.

New Zealand’s Three Waters reforms are not unrelated to these basic issues of safety, accessibility and affordability. They aim to address significant problems with the country’s existing water services model, including ageing infrastructure, historical under-investment, the need for climate change resilience, and rising consumer demand.

These all require a serious programme of water service transformation — one the government believes is beyond what local councils (which currently administer most water assets) will be able to deliver.

The projected cost is estimated at between NZ$120 billion and $185 billion (on top of currently planned investment), rolled out over the next 30 years.

Three Waters debates need to be based on fact – Ardernhttps://t.co/mNtkdKTjpw pic.twitter.com/NxvlJgtpeR

— 1News (@1NewsNZ) July 20, 2022

Ambition and equity
One way or another, the work has to be done. Last year elevated lead levels were found in the water in east Otago. Ageing infrastructure and increasing demand are likely to increase the risk of similar incidents unless expensive upgrades are undertaken.

Without reform, the government argues, the huge cost of those upgrades will be unevenly spread across households, with a substantially higher burden on rural consumers.

To be affordable and equitable for everyone, therefore, the Three Waters plan involves creating four publicly owned, multi-regional entities. These will benefit from greater scale, expertise, operational efficiencies and financial flexibility compared to local councils.

But because councils could still contract out water services for 35 years, concerns have been raised about the potential for creeping privatisation.

Indeed, similar concerns, including failed attempts to privatise water services in other countries, were a significant catalyst for asserting the human right to water more than two decades ago.

While international acknowledgment of water as a human right doesn’t automatically create binding obligations on New Zealand’s government, it can still inform the Three Waters debate.

Over the past 20 years, many of the benefits of this right have accrued from its ability to focus attention on securing high-quality and sustainable water services for everyone. That remains an essential ambition for New Zealand in 2022 and beyond.

Dr Nathan Cooper is associate professor of law, University of Waikato. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

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

Germany-based ethnic Mongolian rights activist Xi Haiming said the fact that Xi had packed the Politburo Standing Committee with his close allies showed that he can now act as he pleases.

"This is the last madness," Xi Haiming told a recent political forum in Taiwan. "Xi has emerged, naked, as Emperor Xi, as a dictator."

"Too many people in China are lining up to be his eunuchs, kowtowing to him, waiting for the emperor to ascend to the throne."

A senior Chinese journalist who gave only the surname Geng, for fear of political reprisals, said China is now firmly back in the Mao era.

"This 20th National Congress is the beginning of the Mao era," Geng said. "People used to say it was the 9th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party that was bad, because it hailed Mao Zedong as the red sun." 

Twitter commentator Cai Shenkun said Xi will now likely take China further away from Deng's market reforms.

"The reform and opening up started by Deng Xiaoping will be totally abandoned," Cai tweeted. "The state-owned economy will replace the market economy, and we will see an erosion of the private sector in every field under [Xi's] common prosperity."

"The middle class will soon disappear altogether ... and freedom of speech will be further squeezed," Cai wrote. "Even our limited freedom to travel will be gone forever."

Overseas current affairs commentator Wen Zhigang said the old system of "collective leadership" in which power is shared among the party leader, the National People's Congress chair and the premier, is well and truly dead.

"Collective leadership no longer exists, and the leader sits, aloof ... a leader of the people who is above the party," Wen said, adding that Xi used the word "people" 17 times in his closing speech to the party congress.

"'People' is used as code for political legitimacy," he said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin sent congratulations to Xi on his re-election as Communist Pary general secretary, adding that the result confirmed Xi's high level of political authority and the unity and cohesion of the party he leads. Putin said he was willing to continue a dialogue with Xi on the development of the bilateral "comprehensive strategic partnership."

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un also congratulated Xi on the conclusion of the party congress, North Korean state news agency KCNA reported, describing his re-election as "an epoch-making milestone."

"China doesn't need North Korea but North Korea desperately needs China.  This said, North Korea is useful to China as a strategic distraction for the U.S.," saidHarry Harris, former Ambassador to the South Korea. "China has sided with North Korea, such as vetoing additional UN sanctions against North Korea and actually defying the implementation of US sanctions against North Korea."

Gary Samore, former White House Coordinator for Arms Control and Weapons of Mass Destruction, said that Xi is focused on China's competition with the United States and developing China's capabilities. "That suggests that China is likely to be less cooperative with the U.S. and the Republic of Korea in dealing with North Korea's nuclear and missile program."

Rockier Relations?

Meanwhile, Oriana Skylar Mastro of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University said the next five years will likely be even rockier for U.S.-China relations, and other countries with security concerns in the region.

"Xi Jinping has been relatively clear since he took power in 2013, where his goals were in terms of promoting territorial integrity, is trying to define that and resolving a lot of these territorial issues, enhancing their position in Asia to regain their standing as a great power," she said.

"It had already been decided that there was going to be conflict with the United States if China wanted to be number one in Asia."

Denny Roy of the East-West Center in Hawaii said China will likely continue to push for increased global influence and standing.

"This is a continuation of a reassessment reached late in the Hu Jintao era, and which Xi Jinping has both embraced and acted upon," Roy said.

"There is no hint of regret about Chinese policies that caused alarm and increased security cooperation among several countries both inside and outside the region, no recognition that Chinese hubris has damaged China’s international reputation within the economically developed world, and no sense that damage control is necessary due to adverse international reaction to what has happened in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea," he said.

"Instead, Beijing seems primed to continue to oppose important aspects of international law, to resist the U.S.-sponsored liberal order, and to extol PRC-style fascism as superior to democracy."

“Human rights crisis”

William Nee, Research and Advocacy Coordinator at China Human Rights Defenders, agreed, saying that human rights defenders will continue to be "systematically surveilled, persecuted and tortured in prison."

"China is experiencing a human rights crisis ... There are crimes against humanity underway in the Uyghur region, with millions of people being subjected to arbitrary detention, forced labor, or intrusive surveillance," Nee told RFA.

"The cultural rights of Tibetans are not respected. And now, Xi Jinping's ‘Zero-COVID’ policy is wreaking havoc on China's economy, and particularly the wellbeing of disadvantaged groups, like migrant workers and the elderly."

Meanwhile, Xi's new leadership line-up is a stark indicator of the lack of checks and balances on his power from within party ranks, analysts said.

"The era of [former leaders] Deng, Jiang, Li and Hu is over, and [Xi Jinping] reigns supreme," overseas current affairs commentator Zong Tao told RFA.

"The Chinese economy will now be experiencing the expansion of the state sector at the expense of the private sector," he said. "It's all about red genes and a red regime."

Wu Guoguang, a senior research scholar at the Center for China Economics and Institutions at Stanford University and the author of a book on party congresses, said Xi has more say over who gets to be premier -- his second-in-command Li Qiang -- even that late supreme leader Mao Zedong did.

"Xi Jinping wields greater power to appoint his preferred premier than Mao Zedong did," Wu told RFA.

"Li Qiang, as the No. 2 figure in the Communist Party, will soon be premier, which shows us that Xi Jinping wields more power from the top than Mao did," he said.

While rival factions like former president Hu Jintao's Youth League faction still exist, they no longer present much of an obstacle to Xi, Wu said.

However, new factions could yet form from among Xi's trusted bureaucrats, he said.

"Factions will naturally form within the administration, because these leaders have different experiences and come from different backgrounds, and have different networks," Wu said.

"They will keep using the people they trust, who are capable, and there are faint signs of this happening," he said.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Hsia Hsiao-hwa, Gu Ting and Wang Yun for RFA Mandarin.

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After decades of failing to reduce the incidence of one of the most common foodborne illnesses, the U.S. government may finally change the way it regulates salmonella contamination in chicken and turkey.

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that it is considering banning poultry companies from selling raw chicken and turkey contaminated with high levels of certain types of salmonella. Under current regulations, the agency allows raw poultry to be sold in supermarkets even when food safety inspectors know it’s tainted with dangerous strains of the bacteria.

In addition, the USDA said it could require poultry companies to test flocks for salmonella before they’re slaughtered and increase monitoring inside processing plants to prevent the bacteria from spreading.

Last year, ProPublica detailed how flawed federal food safety regulations had done little to stop people from getting sick from salmonella poisoning and had allowed a virulent, antibiotic-resistant strain of the bacteria, known as infantis, to spread widely through the U.S. chicken supply.

After repeated interview requests from ProPublica, the USDA announced that it was rethinking its approach to salmonella a week before the investigation was published. That announcement began a yearlong effort by the agency to gather feedback from scientists, industry and consumer advocates to come up with proposals that could improve public health. The USDA said Friday that infantis is one of the types of salmonella it is considering targeting.

The USDA’s plan, which it called a “proposed framework,” is still in its early stages and is couched with language like “may propose” and “exploring.” And some elements are likely to face stiff resistance from the poultry industry. But if implemented, it would represent the most significant change in salmonella regulation in decades.

“We know that salmonella in poultry is a complex problem with no single solution,” Sandra Eskin, USDA deputy undersecretary for food safety, said in a statement. “However, we have identified a series of strategic actions FSIS could take that are likely to drive down salmonella infections linked to poultry products consumption.” (FSIS stands for Food Safety and Inspection Service, the arm of the USDA that inspects meat and poultry plants.)

Every year, about 1.35 million people in the U.S. get sick from salmonella poisoning. While outbreaks have been linked to onions, peanut butter and pet turtles, the most common source is chicken.

But the USDA has been hampered in its ability to protect consumers. Unlike its counterparts in Europe, it’s not allowed to control salmonella on farms, where it often spreads. It has no power to order recalls and can only ask companies to voluntarily pull products from shelves after an outbreak. And even when it finds persistent contamination in a company’s poultry, the USDA can’t rely on those findings alone to shut a plant down.

As a result, the USDA has instead relied on publicly naming poultry plants that have high rates of salmonella. But food safety advocates have criticized that method for years because the agency tests only a tiny fraction of the poultry sold to consumers and doesn’t focus on the types of salmonella most likely to make people sick. Likewise, industry representatives have faulted the agency’s approach because it doesn’t account for how much bacteria is in a product. Greater contamination is more likely to make people sick.

To make the government’s data easier to use, ProPublica created an online database that lets consumers look up the salmonella records of the plants that processed their chicken and turkey.

The USDA’s proposal addresses many of the problems that consumer advocates — including Eskin, who worked on food safety for Pew Charitable Trusts before joining the Biden administration — have pointed out for years.

By testing flocks before they are brought into processing plants, the USDA said, it hopes to encourage poultry companies to target salmonella on farms by vaccinating birds and improving sanitation in chicken houses. Such an approach helped the turkey industry eradicate an outbreak of a virulent, antibiotic-resistant strain that had plagued turkey flocks and sickened thousands of people from 2017 to 2019.

Another proposal, to increase bacterial sampling inside plants, could help the agency pinpoint where salmonella is spreading as birds are stripped of feathers, dunked in decontaminating chemicals and cut or ground into breasts, wings and turkey burgers.

But the most far-reaching proposal that the USDA said it is exploring is to set a standard that would, for the first time, prevent highly contaminated raw chicken and turkey from being sold.

That approach would model one of the most successful food safety reforms in American history: the USDA outlawing the sale of meat tainted with a strain of E. coli called O157:H7 after several children died from eating hamburgers in the 1990s.

The agency has never done the same thing for salmonella in poultry, and doing so could set off a firestorm among chicken processors. Earlier this year, the industry’s trade group, the National Chicken Council, strongly criticized an agency proposal to ban low levels of salmonella in a far less popular product: frozen breaded raw stuffed chicken breasts like chicken cordon bleu and chicken Kiev.

The poultry industry has so far taken a more moderate tone toward the USDA’s overall efforts to revamp salmonella regulation. Last year, several poultry giants, including Tyson Foods, Perdue Farms and Butterball, joined with consumer groups to push the USDA to update its standards. And a Cargill official was quoted in the USDA’s news release Friday as saying that the company “supports the need to develop a public health risk-based approach” to lowering salmonella illnesses.

Still, the National Chicken Council, which has long held sway over the USDA, said it was disappointed with the agency’s framework and noted that under the current testing methods salmonella rates have declined in raw chicken.

“We support the need to develop science-based approaches that will impact public health, but this is being done backwards,” said Ashley Peterson, the trade group’s senior vice president of science and regulatory affairs. “The agency is formulating regulatory policies and drawing conclusions before gathering data, much less analyzing it. This isn’t science — it’s speculation.”

The USDA emphasized that it is being methodical in its approach, gathering scientific evidence, and plans to seek additional input from industry, consumer groups and scientists.

The changes will likely take months, if not years, to take effect and could be upended by political turnover. The agency said it plans to formally propose rules next year with the goal of finalizing them by mid-2024.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Michael Grabell.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Serhiy Guz.

Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democrat running for U.S. Senate, joined other progressive congressional candidates and members of Congress Thursday in hailing President Joe Biden's pardon for all people convicted for federal simple federal marijuana possession.

"I don't want to hear any bullshit from Dr. Oz or any Republican conflating decriminalizing marijuana with seriously harmful crime."

"This is a BFD and a massive step towards justice," Fetterman said in a statement responding to the president's pardon and directive for U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra to "initiate the process of reviewing how marijuana is scheduled under federal law."

Becerra answered Biden's request at precisely 4:20 pm, saying he "is looking forward" to answering the president's call to action.

"When I heard President Biden would be in Pittsburgh a month ago, I knew that if I had a chance to sit down with him, I would use that opportunity to talk about the need to decriminalize marijuana," said Fetterman. "And that's exactly what I did."

"People's lives should not be derailed because of minor, nonviolent marijuana-related offenses. That's common sense," Fetterman asserted, adding that "too many lives—and lives of Black and Brown Americans in particular—have been derailed by this criminalization of this plant."

Referring to Dr. Mehmet Oz, his Republican opponent in the Senate race, Fetterman said, "I don't want to hear any bullshit from Dr. Oz or any Republican conflating decriminalizing marijuana with seriously harmful crime."

Oz—who as recently as 2020 said that "we ought to completely change our policy on marijuana," which he called "one of the most underused tools in America"—on Thursday attacked Fetterman via campaign communications director Brittany Yannick, who claimed the Democrat "wants to go even further than Biden. He'd decriminalize hard drugs like fentanyl and crystal meth that are literally killing Pennsylvanians."

While Fetterman formerly favored decriminalizing possession of small amounts of all illicit drugs—as Oregonians voted to do in 2020—he has since narrowed his support for the policy.

"As mayor of Braddock, I worked to combat serious crime. I know what it looks like," he said. "And I know that marijuana just doesn't fit the bill."

"More than 350,000 Americans were arrested for marijuana-related offenses in 2020," Fetterman noted. "The resources to make those arrests should be going towards combating serious crime—and now they will. This decision will make Americans safer."

As chair of the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons, Fetterman has encouraged people with nonviolent marijuana convictions to apply for expedited pardons.

Other progressive candidates for U.S. Congress also cheered Biden's announcement, while asserting that the president's move must be just the first step toward eventual decriminalization and, ultimately, legalization of a plant whose use is legal for either recreational or medical purposes in a vast majority of states.

"Happy 4:20," tweeted Summer Lee, a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives who is the Democratic nominee to represent the commonwealth's 12th Congressional District in the U.S. House.

"This is a massive step to not only recognize the harm the War on Drugs has done to so many [Black and Brown] folks, but actually pardon so many [people] who were unjustly convicted on marijuana charges," she added. "Next, legalize it nationwide and expunge all records."

Lee tempered her praise by arguing that Biden's action "misses the mark for many Black folks impacted by drug convictions," and illustrates "why we need comprehensive drug reform."

Democrats in Congress—many of whom have long advocated pardoning nonviolent cannabis offenders—also applauded Biden's announcement, with the Congressional Progressive Caucus declaring that "the ongoing federal prohibition of marijuana is a vestige of the failed, racist War on Drugs that targeted and devastated Black and Brown communities."

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) called the president's move "a monumental decision" and "a massive step towards reducing mass incarceration."

Polling in March by Data for Progress showed that 73% of U.S. voters—including 82% of Democrats, 75% of Independents, and 62% of Republicans—support expunging nonviolent marijuana convictions. Just 22% of survey respondents opposed the policy.

The same survey found that 70% of voters backed legalizing marijuana at the federal level, with support strongest among Democrats (78%). A majority, 58%, of Republican respondents also said they favored legalization.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

Saying that even a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2020 did not solve the "humanitarian crisis" that has gone on for years in Alabama's prison system, thousands of inmate workers are refusing to work this week to demand broad criminal justice reforms and changes to the state's prison conditions.

The work stoppage began Monday after about three months of planning and organizing by inmates, with help from groups including Alabama Prison Advocacy and Incarcerated Families United.

Organizers circulated a "message from the inside" saying the roughly 25,000 incarcerated people in the state are "in the midst of a humanitarian crisis due to Eighth Amendment violations." "

This crisis has occurred as a result of antiquated sentencing laws that led to overcrowding, numerous deaths, [and] severe physical injury, as well as mental anguish to incarcerated individuals," said the inmates.

Both Sides of the Wall, an advocacy group run by Diyawn Caldwell, whose husband is incarcerated in Alabama, estimated that 80% of the state's inmates would take part in the strike, disrupting the prison system as guards and other officials take over cooking, trash collection, and other jobs done by inmates.

Alabama's prisons are notoriously overcrowded; a 2019 report by the DOJ found the facilities at 182% capacity. The state's Republican leaders plan to build two more prisons, but Caldwell told The New York Times that the state "can't build themselves out of the crisis that's going on in the prison system."

"We are not saying that we're trying to let every murderer or rapist or even serial killer out of prison," she added. "We're asking to give these people a fighting chance."

Along with the overcrowding and chronic understaffing, inmates face the use of solitary confinement as a "protection" measure, "a high level of violence" including rape, a failure by officials to separate sexually violent offenders from vulnerable inmates, and a lack of "safe and sanitary" living conditions which have reportedly included open sewage, mold, and toxic fumes in kitchen areas.

"The DOJ's intervention has done nothing to shift conditions inside Alabama prisons," said Hannah Riley of the Southern Center for Human Rights, who posted the inmates' list of demands on Twitter. "They remain incredibly unsafe, inhumane, and exploitative."

In addition to major reforms within the state's prisons, organizers are demanding:

• The repeal of the state's Habitual Felony Offender Act, which the ACLU has said "unjustly incarcerates too many people for far too long" and has contributed to overcrowding;
• The creation of a statewide conviction integrity unit to identify inmates who have been wrongfully convicted;
• The adoption of mandatory parole criteria to guarantee that all those who are eligible for parole are released from prison; and
• The elimination of life sentences without parole.

Eddie Burkhalter of the Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice tweeted about reports that officials in the prisons appear to be retaliating against people participating in the labor strike by serving far less food than inmates are usually offered.

The Times also reported that Caldwell's husband and his fellow inmates had "received two sack lunches on Monday and Tuesday, rather than the normal three meals."

On Monday, supporters of the strike assembled outside the Alabama Department of Corrections to give voice to the inmates' demands and protest the state's plan to add more prisons to the dangerous and dysfunctional system.

"A huge salute to the incarcerated folks in Alabama striking against slave labor," said the Woods Foundation, which works to end the death penalty and exonerate wrongfully convicted people. "We stand in solidarity with these brave individuals!"

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Julia Conley.

Anti-hunger groups in the U.S. on Tuesday applauded the White House's new strategy to ensure everyone in the U.S. has sufficient, healthy food by 2030—while warning that though there are more than enough resources in the wealthiest country in the world to eradicate hunger, ending the crisis by the end of the decade will require major systemic changes as well as increased assistance to low-income households.

"This strategy builds on existing programs to ensure the food and nutrition security of the millions of Americans who face challenges putting food on the table."

The Biden administration announced its National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health as it prepares to hold the White House's first national conference on the issue in more than 50 years on Wednesday.

The strategy includes five pillars of eradicating hunger and food insecurity: Improving food access and affordability; integrating nutrition and health; empowering consumers to make healthy choices; supporting physical activity; and enhancing nutrition and food security research.

The plan would eliminate eligibility barriers for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) which have historically kept formerly incarcerated people from using benefits, and would support expanded benefits for people in U.S. territories, college students, and young people who have aged out of foster care.

Food access would also be improved by ramping up funding for nutrition programs in the Older Americans Act, increasing outreach to eligible families and modernizing federal assistance programs so enrolled people can shop for food online, increasing public transportation to grocery stores, reorienting "the school meal programs from an ancillary service to an integral component of the school day," and expanding the Summer Electronic Benefits Program which in 2021 ensured more than 36 million children had school meals when school was not in session.

The strategy was unveiled weeks after the U.S. Department of Agriculture released a report showing that the expanded child tax credit, universal free lunches in many school districts, and other food assistance significantly cut down on food insecurity in the first year of the coronavirus pandemic.

In 2021, one in 10 American households struggled to access sufficient healthy food.

"This strategy builds on existing programs to ensure the food and nutrition security of the millions of Americans who face challenges putting food on the table," said Feeding America, the nation's largest hunger relief group. "By expanding access to these programs, centering equity, and focusing on ways to reduce disparities and poverty, we can help ensure everyone has access to the food and resources they say they need to thrive, regardless of their race, background, or ZIP code."

The grassroots social justice organization WhyHunger applauded the White House for setting "a high bar" for agencies throughout the federal government to enact reforms to end hunger in the U.S., but noted that food insecurity is the product of decades of destruction to the social safety net and the consolidation of corporate power.

"We know that 50 years of chronic hunger in America demonstrates that this crisis is caused by low wages, worker exploitation along the food chain, structural racism, and policies that bend to big food companies," said Noreen Springstead, executive director of WhyHunger. "Too many people go hungry because they are working and don't earn enough to afford food, let alone the nutritious food they need, especially with the strain of high inflation."

"To end hunger we need a serious effort to address poverty and its root causes," she added. "A framework that is focused on dismantling structural inequities and ensuring broad based prosperity for all is essential."

Warning that it is "hard to tell if the intention for transformational change matches the plan" unveiled by the Biden administration, Springstead said that "we at WhyHunger are joining those most impacted by the hunger crisis in pushing for even deeper, transformational change that goes beyond modifications and tweaks to our current systems."

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) offered praise for the portion of the strategy aimed at increasing access to vegetarian and plant-based foods at federal facilities including national parks, prisons, and museums.

"We applaud the Biden administration for making hunger and health an urgent priority," said Scott Faber, EWG's senior vice president for government affairs. "The Biden plan makes it a priority to improve access to healthy options, including plant-based and vegetarian options. Everyone has a role to play if we want to address diet-related disease, and the federal government should lead by example."

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), who has pushed the White House to convene a national policy conference on hunger, called on his fellow members of Congress to work with Biden to enact the proposed improvements to food access and affordability.

"The strategy announced today marks a historic moment in the fight to end hunger," said McGovern. "It's now our job to turn these plans into action."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Julia Conley.

Transparency International Papua New Guinea (TIPNG) says the country’s just-completed national election was a severely flawed process.

TIPNG deployed 340 observers during the polling period, its highest number in the last 10 years.

In its initial assessment, Transparency said there must be a genuine commitment from all stakeholders to undertake major reforms of the electoral process to avoid similar problems at the 2027 election.

• READ MORE: Other PNG election reports

It said the numerous problems experienced during 2022 should be a “wake-up call” for the country’s leaders to act.

Group chairman Peter Aitsi said there would need to be a structured intervention to restore public trust and demonstrate greater levels of competency.

He said in undertaking post-election analysis, all stakeholders should focus on structured long-term interventions that will promote transparency and integrity in PNG’s National Elections.

“There is a five-year electoral planning cycle and that must be properly supported on an annual basis,” said Aitsi.

Quick fixes no solution
“The issues of 2022 will not be resolved through quick fixes, which run the risk of further depleting limited public funding for this essential democratic process.

“In undertaking post-election analysis, all stakeholders should focus on structured long-term interventions that will promote transparency and integrity in PNG’s National Elections.”

Preliminary key issues TIPNG identified during the 2022 national general elections were:

• frequent instances of roll inaccuracy;
• lack of enforcement against election offences;
• non-compliance with Constitutional requirements;
• disturbances in the conduct of the ballot counting;
• confusion on the declaration of seats; and
• widespread election-related violence.

These issues will be further discussed in the full TIPNG 2022 Election Observation Report to be launched in November.

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.

Following House Democrats' passage of the Inflation Reduction Act on Friday, progressives applauded the most significant changes to the federal tax code since 2017, when Republicans' highly regressive and deeply unpopular Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was enthusiastically welcomed by corporations and the wealthy.

"We should use this win as an opportunity to revitalize the fight for economic justice and equality, and continue demanding more."

Morris Pearl, former managing director at the investment firm BlackRock and now chair of the Patriotic Millionaires, called the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which President Joe Biden is expected to sign next week, the "biggest win for tax fairness we've seen in decades."

The IRA's 15% minimum tax on corporations with more than $1 billion in profits, 1% excise on stock buybacks, and increased funding for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to strengthen enforcement against rampant tax evasion by rich individuals and firms—provisions that would raise more than $700 billion in new revenue over a decade—are strongly supported by voters and mark "a significant step towards achieving economic equality," said Pearl.

But "while this bill establishes desperately needed changes to our tax laws and IRS funding, it is still a far cry from the systemic changes that we need in our society to rectify the hold the rich still have on every level of our economy," Pearl continued.

"We need to take care that we don't let ourselves become complacent," he added. "This is a step forward, but only one step in a long journey. We should use this win as an opportunity to revitalize the fight for economic justice and equality, and continue demanding more."

Pearl's sentiments were shared by others.

The IRA "requires some of the nation's most profitable billionaire corporations and wealthiest citizens to begin to contribute a fairer share of taxes to reduce the costs of essentials for working families and to make critical investments to save our planet from the devastation of climate change," said Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness.

Enactment of this legislation "represents a historic rebuke of failed supply-side economics," Clemente added. "Hopefully, it signals an end to 40 years of Congress cutting taxes on the rich and corporations based on the false notion that the benefits will trickle down to working people."

Eileen Appelbaum, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), similarly described the IRA's tax provisions as "a historic turn in tax policy towards greater fairness."

"The near doubling of Internal Revenue Service staff, plus resources to upgrade IT capacity, means the agency will be able to investigate potential tax fraud in complex Wall Street firms," said Appelbaum. "IRS campaigns to crack down on private equity firm's improper use of management fee waivers for investors and monitoring agreements with portfolio companies will no longer be stymied by a lack of resources."

In other respects, however, Wall Street tycoons got off easy, thanks to right-wing Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), a top recipient of political cash from and staunch ally of the investor class.

Empowered by the indispensable nature of her vote in the evenly split Senate, Sinema made her support for the IRA contingent on the preservation of the so-called "carried interest loophole"—which benefits hedge fund managers and private equity moguls by allowing their investment income to be taxed at the long-term capital gains rate of around 20% rather than the ordinary top income rate of 37%—and the exemption of private equity-owned companies from the 15% minimum tax on billion-dollar firms.

New Federal Election Commission filings show that Sinema has received more than $500,000 in campaign donations from private equity executives during the current election cycle, and according to OpenSecrets, the securities and investment sector as a whole has contributed more than $2.2 million to Sinema since she was elected to the Senate in 2017.

According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), Sinema's carve-out for private equity-owned corporations reduced the revenue impact of the IRA by $35 billion and her move to tank her party's modest proposal to reform the carried interest loophole—by increasing the holding period for investments to qualify for preferential tax treatment from three to five years—cost $14 billion.

Regarding Wall Street's ability to secure nearly $50 billion in savings through Sinema, CEPR senior economist Dean Baker told the Associated Press on Saturday that "it's pretty rare you see this direct of a return on your investment."

Despite the last-minute changes won by Sinema on behalf of her private equity donors, Appelbaum said that "the IRA made a historic breakthrough in taxing the wealthy and encouraging good behavior."

"Top executives of publicly traded companies," for instance, "will face a 1% tax on stock buybacks when they use company profits to increase the company's share price and enrich themselves instead of investing in technology, training, and raising workers' wages," said Appelbaum.

ITEP executive director Amy Hanauer, meanwhile, said: "Our nation will use the hundreds of billions of dollars this bill will raise over the next decade to tackle climate change, speed up clean energy initiatives, boost green jobs, fund healthcare, and reduce the deficit. Everyone in this country should be proud of this enormous policy accomplishment."

Although analysts say the IRA won't raise taxes on the 98.2% of U.S. households that earn $400,000 or less per year, not a single Republican in the House or Senate voted for the legislation, which passed through the filibuster-proof reconciliation process.

Mark Weisbrot, co-director of CEPR, said that "the historic nature of this moment is also seen in the Republican Party's unanimous opposition to the bill, and their failure to even put forth any alternative."

Instead, GOP lawmakers have railed against the bill's provision of nearly $80 billion in new IRS funding—telling ludicrous lies about how money intended to help the agency crack down on wealthy tax cheats will be used to hire "87,000 new agents" to harass working people at their homes. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) on Friday went so far as to claim that Democrats are "using the power of the federal government for armed robbery!"

In response, Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) said, "I know that Ms. Boebert would like everybody to be armed, as they are in her restaurant, but that's not what IRS agents do."

As ProPublica has documented, the IRS does now audit low-income taxpayers at the same rate as the top 1%, but that is a direct result of years of budget cuts that have undermined the agency's ability to audit the rich.

The IRA's boost in IRS funding seeks to rectify this injustice. Given that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has instructed the agency not to use any new resources to increase audits of people making less than $400,000 per year, the GOP's disingenuous attack, critics say, is a thinly veiled attempt to shield their wealthy benefactors.

Public Citizen president Robert Weissman argued that Republicans "should be forced to answer the question: Why? Why did you vote against drug price relief for seniors? Why did you vote against making large companies pay at least some of their taxes? Why did you vote against health care affordability? Why did you vote against incentives—no regulations, just incentives—to spur renewable energy?"

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

A VT2 billion grant from the World Bank Group is set to reform unplanned urban settlements in Vanuatu and effectively improve the standard of living for many families.

It comes after the recent launching of the Vanuatu Affordable and Resilient Settlement (VARS) Project by the Vanuatu government and World Bank.

The project is the first of its kind in the Pacific region and the total cost is less than a VT3 billion grant. The money will cover unplanned urban settlements, particularly 23 unplanned settlements identified by Vanuatu authorities.

• READ MORE: Other Vanuatu development reports

Ministry of Lands director-general Henry Vira has welcomed the assistance from World Bank.

“Vanuatu is exposed to multiple natural hazards, rapid urban growth rates, serviced land provision is slow, costly, and limited to high income groups, and low-and middle-income earners move into unplanned settlements in high hazard risk land with limited land registration and services leading to low quality of living environments high incidences of preventable diseases, and low-quality housing stock and increasing disaster risk in the settlements,” Vira said.

In 2016, the Vanuatu government requested assistance from the World Bank Group to address the growing problem of squatters in various disaster risk prone areas of Port Vila, he said.

There were two key questions for the technical assistance to focus on under the VARS, which are the future residential land and housing needs for low-and-middle income earners, and where and how the needs can be met given constraints of affordability and natural hazard risk.

The second is how the government can lead and enable activities and resources of public and private stakeholders to meet urban expansion needs, guide future development, and contribute to national economic growth and prosperity.

Main economic hub
Vira said the capital city Port Vila was the government’s and the country’s main economic hub, accounting for an estimated 65 percent of GDP.

“The city has an estimated population of 66,000 people living within the municipal boundaries. The municipal area plus surrounding peri-urban settlements with strong economic and social connectivity to the city center is home to closer to 114,000 people, almost 40 percent of the nation’s population,” he said.

“In-migration from other islands accounts for most of the urban growth of 60 percent, with the remaining 40 percent from natural growth of the working age urban population.

“Urban-rural income differentials and rural underemployment are key drivers for people moving to Port Vila and smaller towns such as Luganville, in search of employment, better wages, health services, and education opportunities.”

Vira said the pace of urbanisation limited institutional capacity, and resource constraints have impacted the quality and resilience of urban settlements in greater Port Vila and development over the past decades had largely been unplanned and unregulated, resulting in the emergence of 23 informal settlements within the municipality and adjacent peri-urban areas of SHEFA Province.

He said people and assets were increasingly locating in marginalised and hazard-prone areas, including floodplains, steep hillsides susceptible to landslides, and coastal areas exposed to tsunamis and inundation.

“Households living in unplanned settlements with insecure tenure are reluctant to invest in resilient structures, increasing their vulnerability,” Vira said.

Two priority approaches
The VARS project embraces two priority approaches: retrofitting existing settlements through upgrading to improve services and resilience and developing new models for planned and serviced urban expansion.

Resident Representative of World Bank for Vanuatu and Solomon Islands Annette Leith said Vanuatu was one of the most highly prone and vulnerable countries in the world to natural disasters.

“The rapid pace of urbanisation and the growth of unplanned settlements adds a new dimension to this challenge,” Leith said.

“I applaud the government and the people of Vanuatu for the many steps taken to build resilience through policies, investments, strengthening of institutions and building capacity at the national, provincial and community levels.

“I am pleased that the VARS Project will provide financial and technical resource to help implement some of these policies and provide resilient investments. This is an exciting project being led by the Vanuatu government in partnership and with support from the World Bank.”

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.

The House Jan. 6 committee hearings have raised two overarching questions. The first: Will the Justice Department indict and prosecute former President Donald Trump for leading a criminal conspiracy to steal the 2020 presidential election? The second: Will Congress enact essential reforms to protect our democracy from a future presidential coup attempt or insurrectionist attack on the U.S. Capitol?

The first question can ultimately be answered only by Attorney General Merrick Garland. Congress is now considering the second.

A bipartisan group of senators led by Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., proposed two measures on Wednesday that would significantly reform flawed 19th-century laws that still govern U.S. presidential elections. Changes must be made to the Presidential Election Day Act of 1845 and the Electoral Count Act of 1887, into which the 1845 Act was incorporated.

The proposed bills open the door for the Senate to address the grave problems in these laws — problems alarmingly dramatized by Trump’s attempted presidential coup. It is increasingly clear that loopholes in the 1845 Act and problems in the Electoral Count Act were at the heart of Trump’s effort to steal the 2020 election.

The Collins-Manchin proposal needs to be carefully vetted to ensure it will prevent future presidential coup attempts. It will also need 10 Republican senators to oppose a filibuster and no opposition from Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell to get through the Senate.

In addition, the Jan. 6 panel’s vice chair, Rep. Lynn Cheney, R-Wy., and senior member Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif. issued a statement late Wednesday that the panel would be proposing its own bipartisan fix for repairing the Electoral Count Act.

Congress has the power, under Article 2, Section 1, Clause 4 of the Constitution to determine when presidential electors are chosen. The 1845 Act sets the official quadrennial presidential Election Day on which voters chose the electors. It also provides that if a state “failed to make a choice” on Election Day, then the state’s presidential electors may be chosen “in such a manner as the legislature of such State may direct.” There is no definition of what “failed to make a choice” requires.

This means a state legislature could simply decide that voters “failed to make a choice” based on allegations of widespread voter fraud — or any other grounds the legislature chooses. It could then substitute its own choice of presidential electors for those voters chose on Election Day.

Sound far-fetched?

It was — until Trump and coup strategist John Eastman tried to use that loophole to overturn Joe Biden’s win.

We heard at the House Jan. 6 committee’s June 23 session how the planning and plotting unfolded. Former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and former acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue testified about a letter that Jeffrey Clark, then acting head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, pressed them to sign.

The letter claimed — falsely — that the Justice Department had identified significant concerns about voting irregularities in multiple states, including Georgia. Once the letter was signed, Clark, working on behalf of Trump, planned to send it to Georgia’s governor, House speaker and Senate president pro tempore — all Republicans.

To solve this fabricated problem, the letter proposed that a special session of the Georgia Legislature be called. It would then “evaluate the irregularities” and “take whatever action is necessary” to ensure that the correct slate of electors is sent to Congress — that is, the Trump slate, even though Biden won the state.

The letter cited the loophole in the 1845 Act as the basis for the Georgia Legislature to override voters and choose its own presidential electors.

Most critically, the letter cited the loophole in the 1845 Act as the basis for the Georgia Legislature to override voters and choose its own presidential electors. The letter said the act “explicitly recognizes the power that State Legislatures have to appoint electors” when voters “failed to make a choice” on Election Day.

Clark’s proposed effort also involved the Justice Department sending similar letters to other battleground states with Republican-controlled legislatures.

Rosen and Donoghue flatly refused to sign the letter — and a constitutional crisis was averted.

The blueprint, however, set forth a path for future coup plotters to follow. They would not even need the Justice Department. State legislatures could do it themselves — and many in key battleground states are now controlled by Republicans.

The 1845 Act’s “failure to choose” loophole is a ticking time bomb. Reform is essential to remove it and take away state legislatures’ ability to override the voters’ choice.

A second serious problem in the 19th-century laws was illustrated by Trump’s January 2021 phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Trump spent an hour pressuring the state official to change Georgia’s presidential vote count.  “All I want to do is this,” Trump said in the call. “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.”

In other words, Trump tried to get Raffensperger to rig the vote. Raffensperger refused.

Trump’s call certainly appears to violate both federal and Georgia state law. But this case shows how a rogue secretary of state or other empowered state official could certify the wrong presidential electors or refuse to certify any electors.

A presidential nominee adversely affected by such an action must be able to effectively challenge this in the courts. Precise reform provisions in the Electoral Count Act must be clearly spelled out to avoid any vagueness that could create ambiguities — and thus create new opportunities to overturn a presidential election.

The reforms must provide a specific cause of action to challenge a wrongful certification or a failure to certify. They should also provide the right to expedited federal court review.

And the adversely affected presidential candidate must be provided with timely relief, because a new president is required to be certified on Jan. 6, only two months after Election Day. This does not leave much time for legal proceedings.

The plot to steal the 2020 presidential election was eye-opening. Congress must act now to ensure that any future attempt to steal the presidency does not succeed where this first one failed.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Fred Wertheimer.

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A Michigan task force Friday recommended a series of reforms designed to keep young people out of detention facilities and provide them with better legal representation and more community help, such as family counseling and mental health treatment.

Created after a ProPublica investigation revealed systemic flaws in Michigan’s juvenile justice system, the task force made 32 recommendations that aim to transform what happens when young people get in trouble with the law, including by keeping low-level offenses out of the courts and limiting when children can be detained. Other proposed changes would eliminate most fines and fees charged by juvenile courts and provide more oversight of residential facilities.

“The recommendations, if implemented, will be transformative to the justice system,” said Jason Smith, executive director of the Michigan Center for Youth Justice, an advocacy group. “It would expand the opportunities for alternatives to justice system involvement in the first place, increase transparency within the system with increased data and improve outcomes for young people.”

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer created the Task Force on Juvenile Justice Reform in June 2021 to analyze state and local data and gather individuals from across the state who have insight into the system. The task force’s goal was to try to understand why Michigan incarcerates so many young people for noncriminal offenses — and suggest ways to reduce the number. The task force was led by the nonprofit Council of State Governments and included the lieutenant governor, judges, court officials and families affected by the justice system.

The creation of the panel came after a series of ProPublica stories about a 15-year-old who had been incarcerated for a probation violation when she failed to do her online schoolwork at the start of the pandemic. The reporting about the teenager identified as Grace, her middle name, put a national spotlight on how Michigan children are regularly detained for probation violations and other noncriminal offenses — even as many states have moved away from that practice.

ProPublica also revealed broader flaws in Michigan’s decentralized juvenile justice system, including such poor data that the state can’t say how many juveniles it has in custody at any given time or why they have been detained.

“I feel like Grace’s situation and the story really helped us get the momentum to get this started,” Michigan Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Clement said in an interview this week. “It opened a lot of people’s eyes. … Sometimes people are unaware they have a broken system. Sometimes they know and they just are not sure what to do.”

Before Grace’s case drew national attention, Michigan leaders had been focused on reforming the adult criminal justice and child welfare systems. Juvenile justice had been less of a priority.

Many of the task force’s recommendations require changes in state law and additional funding.

Rep. Sarah Lightner, a Republican from Springport and a task force member, started that process this week when she introduced two bills intended to ensure young people have access to attorneys trained in juvenile matters. One bill would expand the Michigan Indigent Defense Commission to include the oversight and training of lawyers who represent juveniles and to ensure that young people have an attorney at every stage of their case. Another measure would expand the Michigan State Appellate Defender Office to include services for juveniles who want to appeal their cases. There are currently no state standards in place or specialized training available for lawyers representing juveniles and no state funding for juvenile defense.

“There is no question it will take an additional investment to make sure attorneys are educated and the courts are educated on juvenile issues,” Lightner said in an interview.

Michigan has long struggled to assess its juvenile justice system because it gathers limited data from its local courts, and that data is not captured in a standardized way. Data obtained by the task force from 32 counties, representing about 55% of the juvenile population, found that about 23% of cases referred to court by prosecutors were for a type of noncriminal offense that includes truancy, running away and incorrigibility. These “status offenses” are only punishable because the person is a minor. Another 26% of cases were for low-level misdemeanor offenses. Nearly 12% involved children 12 and under.

Data shared with the task force also showed that, in a sample of eight county courts, the average age of young people in secure detention — the most restrictive form of juvenile confinement — was 14 and that Black youth were detained at six times the rate of white youth. The panel recommended that the state collect and share data from the local courts, and use it to create a dashboard that tracks and measures disparities in the justice system.

The task force’s proposals aim to keep many of those young people out of the court system altogether. Except for the most serious offenses, the state’s juvenile courts would only be for children 13 and up if state law is changed; there’s currently no minimum age. Juveniles who commit status offenses and are determined to be low risk would be diverted to community programs instead of having to go through the court system.

“We want to keep kids out of detention, We want to keep them out of residential placements and we really want to keep them out of the court if we can,” Clement said. “We are hoping we see a drastic change in our numbers.”

To encourage that change, one proposal would provide more state funding for community-based services — such as family counseling, mental health support and substance abuse treatment — than for detention and residential placements. Under the current system, the state’s Child Care Fund Unit reimburses counties 50% for all services. The task force proposed increasing the reimbursement for community-based services to 75%, which would require millions of dollars a year in additional state funding.

The panel also recommended that the state create a juvenile services division to develop standardized assessments so officials can match youth with the level of supervision they need. Michigan currently does not have a recommended assessment tool, and its decentralized court system means treatment for children can vary depending on where they live.

“That has led to some good practices in Michigan and some inconsistent and uneven and not research-based practices,” said Josh Weber, who directs the juvenile justice program at the Council of State Governments and worked with the task force.

Cole Williams, a task force member who provides counseling and support to families involved in the court system in the Grand Rapids area, said he’s glad that one recommendation would establish an advisory group of young people and families so they can help guide the justice system’s decisions. He also said that onerous fines and fees are a “constant conversation and challenge,” and eliminating them would be a game changer for families.

“We have a long way to go in Michigan when it comes to how we support our children,” said Williams, who experienced the challenges of the justice system when his son was involved in it. “The recommendations proposed are a step in the right direction.”

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Jodi S. Cohen.

After the U.S. Supreme Court's deeply unpopular reactionary majority spent its latest term carrying out an assault on fundamental constitutional rights, Rep. Pramila Jayapal on Tuesday reiterated House progressives' demands to reform the nation's chief judicial body, including by adding seats.

"We do not have to simply accept the devastation of these rulings."

"Last week, the Supreme Court finished one of the most consequential and destructive terms in recent decades," Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said in a statement. "The list of precedents nullified and democratic institutions and principles this Supreme Court gutted or fully overturned this term is horrifying."

As Jayapal noted, the high court attacked the separation of church and state, legal protections in the 100-mile border zone, the rights of death row inmates, state-level concealed carry laws, Miranda rights, the authority of federal agencies to safeguard public health and the environment, and the constitutional right to abortion.

"The court denied Social Security benefits to the residents of Puerto Rico, blocked a federal vaccine-or-test requirement, denied detained immigrants bond hearings, undermined tribal sovereignty, allowed the CIA to withhold information about torture at black sites, and entrenched Louisiana's racially gerrymandered electoral maps," Jayapal continued.

"They won't stop here," she added. "The justices have already agreed to hear cases next term that could weaken our electoral process, allow discrimination against same-sex couples, and end affirmative action."

Jayapal argued that "these extreme decisions are the result of a decades-long project to stack the bench with adherents to a right-wing agenda and overrule precedent and the will of the American people."

The court's majority "has made clear it has no concern for ethics," said Jayapal. "There is evidence that a sitting justice's wife was involved in efforts to overturn a free and fair presidential election, and when legal challenges on that very issue came before the court, the justice did not recuse himself," she pointed out, referring to Clarence and Ginni Thomas.

"Congress has an obligation to respond, and do so quickly."

"Three others appear to have misled the Senate Judiciary Committee about Roe v. Wade being settled precedent," Jayapal continued, echoing Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), both of whom called for impeachment probes last week.

"The Supreme Court has overreached its authority and destroyed its legitimacy," said Jayapal, but "we do not have to simply accept the devastation of these rulings."

"The constitution created three co-equal branches of government, vesting the people's elected representatives with the broad authority to check and balance a judiciary that oversteps its mandate," she stressed. "That's why Congress has an obligation to respond, and do so quickly."

Jayapal called for the swift passage of three key pieces of legislation to prevent the Supreme Court from further "wreaking havoc on our country":

• The Judiciary Act—introduced by Reps. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), and Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.) in the House and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) in the upper chamber—would expand the number of seats on the high court from nine to 13;
• Johnson's Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency (SCERT) Act, would establish an ethics and recusal standard for members of the nation's chief judicial body and require disclosure of lobbying and dark money interests; and
• The Judicial Ethics and Anti-Corruption Act—introduced by Jayapal and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—would prohibit all federal judges from owning individual stocks, commercial real estate, trusts, and private corporations, among other measures.

"In the Judiciary Committee, we must continue our critical oversight obligations and hold additional hearings on the violations of ethics and transparency the Supreme Court has committed," Jayapal added. "We must hold these rogue justices to account."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

Manukau Urban Māori Authority (MUMA) is welcoming the government’s health reforms as an important first step to improving Māori and Pasifika health in south Auckland.

But some in the health sector say the jury is still out on what will be achieved in Counties Manukau.

Under the reforms, the country’s 20 district health boards have now been replaced by Te Whatu Ora (Health New Zealand).

• READ MORE: Other Health New Zealand reform reports

The new Crown entity will be responsible for running hospitals, primary and community health services.

The government says it will allow for more consistent delivery of health services nationwide and help stop the postcode lottery people face accessing healthcare based on where they live.

The reforms also include the establishment of Te Aka Whai Ora (the Māori Health Authority) to improve indigenous health which will work in partnership with Health NZ.

Muma chairman Bernie O’Donnell has seen the country’s district health boards work first-hand, as a member of the now-defunct Auckland DHB.

Greater responsibility for Māori
He said establishing a Māori Health Authority would give Māori greater responsibility for the delivery of their own health services.

“For too long the health system hasn’t addressed the wellbeing of Māori, or those at the bottom of the cliff,” O’Donnell said. “The reality is we couldn’t continue with what we had. Something had to be done and this is it.”

He said critics of the health reforms are defending a system which had to be replaced.

“The old way the DHBs were run didn’t work for our people. For too long it’s been non-Māori telling us what’s best for us.”

He said ongoing issues left by the Counties Manukau DHB, such as Middlemore Hospital’s under-pressure emergency department and its workforce shortages would all have to be addressed under the changes.

“But what we’re expecting is that Māori and Pasifika health in south Auckland will get better under the reforms,” O’Donnell said.

However, he admitted there’s a lot at stake.

‘Time will tell’
“If that doesn’t happen we won’t have achieved anything of significance,” he said. “But only time will tell.”

Yet not everyone is as certain as O’Donnell on what impact the changes will have.

Turuki Healthcare chief executive Te Puea Winiata said there were still a lot of unanswered questions about the reforms.

Winiata said the creation of the new authority dedicated to indigenous health is an important first step.

But she said it was vital that the new entity had the ability to make its own decisions and help support Māori self-determination.

“The resourcing of the Māori Health Authority is going to be critical to its success,” she said.

Many reform attempts
Winiata said she had worked in the health sector for the past 30 years and in that time had seen a number of attempts by the government of the day to restructure the health system.

She said it was hard to predict what impact the health reforms would have in south Auckland.

“But I think in 12 months’ time we will be able to look at what changes have been made and see what’s been achieved.”

Local Democracy Reporting is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ on Air. Asia Pacific Report is an LDR partner.

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

On May 25, Gambian authorities released a white paper on the findings and recommendations of the TRRC, which was established by the government of current President Adama Barrow in December 2017. The commission’s main objectives were “to create an impartial record of violations and abuses of human rights” that occurred during Jammeh’s 22-year administration, promote healing, and “address impunity” to “prevent the repetition of the violations.”

After being voted out of office in 2017, Jammeh fled to Equatorial Guinea and claimed political asylum, and is protected by authorities there, according to Human Rights Watch.

Authorities accepted the TRRC’s recommendations that Jammeh should be investigated and prosecuted for the murder of journalist Deyda Hydara, the disappearance of journalist Ebrima Manneh, the arson attacks on Radio 1 FM and The Independent newspaper, and the attacks on journalists working with the Freedom Newspaper news website. 

Manneh, a reporter for the Gambia-based newspaper Daily Observer, went missing on July 7, 2006, after he was arrested by National Intelligence Agency officers wearing plain clothes, as CPJ documented. His body was found by police officers 11 years later.

Gambian authorities declined TRRC’s recommendation to decriminalize sedition, writing that the law is a “necessary part of a nation’s security” if it is not “misused or abused by governments to curtail media freedom,” according to the paper, which added that the government would take steps to provide a “clearer definition” of sedition. In 2018, a ruling by the Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) directed Gambia to “repeal and /or amend” its law on sedition as well as other laws that it found violated the rights of journalists. CPJ and other rights groups submitted an amici curiae brief in that case and previously documented the prosecution of journalists under Gambia’s sedition law.

“The decision by Gambian authorities to accept most of the recommendations from the Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission is commendable but also requires immediate action to halt the decades of impunity for the killings of journalists Deyda Hydara and Ebrima Manneh, and other crimes against the press,” said Angela Quintal, CPJ’s Africa program coordinator, from Johannesburg. “The administration of President Adama Barrow should recognize how Gambia’s sedition law threatens freedom of the press and prioritize legal reforms that ensure journalism is not criminalized.” 

The Gambian government accepted TRRC’s recommendations to reform the criminal code and other laws that criminalize the press, according to the paper and Fatau M. Jawo, a lawyer and human rights advocate who spoke to CPJ by phone. Most notably is the 2013 Information and Communications (Amendment) Act, which imposes a 15-year jail term and a 3 million Dalasis (US$56,000) fine on those convicted of spreading false news or derogatory statements against government officials, as CPJ has documented. 

The paper also acknowledges the “great lengths” that Jammeh went to in order to attack the media and formally recognized several incidents, including the murder, “torture,” and arbitrary arrests and detention of journalists, most of which CPJ has documented:

• The murder of Deyda Hydara, the managing editor and co-owner of the independent newspaper The Point and a correspondent for AFP and Reporters Without Borders.
• A potential role in the disappearance of Ebrima Manneh
• The closure of privately owned Citizen FM radio
• The closure of Senegalese private radio station Sud FM
• The closure of the independent Taranga FM radio station
• Disruption of internet access
• Deportation of at least seven foreign journalists and “making conditions for foreign journalists [so] untenable that many left the country”
• The arrest of seven journalists and press leaders: Pap Saine, Alieu Badara Sowe, Bruce Asemota, Emil Tourey, Sarata Jabbi, Pa Modou Faal, and Sam Sarr.

Bafou Jeng, a senior counsel at the Gambian ministry of justice, declined CPJ’s request for comment and recommended that questions be directed to Kimbeng Tah, the ministry official responsible for handling TRRC activities. CPJ emailed Tah but did not receive a response.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Jennifer Dunham.

The House of Representatives on Wednesday approved new gun control measures, including raising the minimum age for the purchase of most semiautomatic rifles to 21 and banning high-capacity magazines. The new rules passed the House in a 223-204 vote, but are doomed in the Senate, where a bipartisan group is working on passing a much more limited set of reforms. The vote took place after a House committee heard harrowing testimony from people affected by recent gun violence, including an 11-year-old survivor of the Uvalde school massacre who watched her classmates get killed. “I grabbed a little blood, and I put it all over me’,” Miah Cerrillo told lawmakers in her testimony. “And then I grabbed my teacher’s phone and called 911.” We feature excerpts of Cerrillo’s testimony, along with the parents of 10-year-old victim Lexi Rubio and Dr. Roy Guerrero, Uvalde’s only pediatrician.

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

Labor’s win in Saturday’s election heralds real change in health policy. Although Labor had a small-target strategy, with limited big spending commitments, its victory represents a value shift to a party committed to equity and Medicare, and, potentially, a style shift to a hands-on, equity-oriented health minister.

Labor’s health spokesperson, Mark Butler, is expected to be the new health minister, subject to a reshuffle caused by two Labor shadow ministers losing their seats.

Butler is very different from his predecessor. He was Australia’s first minister for mental health and ageing in the Gillard government.

• READ MORE: Scott Morrison defeated – Labor to govern in minority or majority
• Other Australian federal election reports

He also held the equity-focused ministries of housing, homelessness, and social inclusion. He has written a book about ageing in Australia, published by Melbourne University Press.

The new minister faces two urgent policy priorities: primary care and covid.

Fixing primary care
Outgoing health minister Greg Hunt released an unfunded strategy paper on budget night. It aimed to improve primary care — a person’s first point of contact with the health system, usually their GP or practice nurses. The paper had languished on his desk for months and was the result of years of consultation and consensus-building.

One of the largest and most important Labor commitments during the campaign was almost A$1 billion over four years for primary care reform, about A$250 million in a full year.

The funding commitment is cast broadly, promising to improve patient access to GP-led multidisciplinary team care, including nursing and allied health and after-hours care; greater patient affordability; and better management of complex and chronic conditions.

Presumably, a key way this will be effected will be through voluntary patient enrolment. A patient would enrol with a practice, and the practice would get an annual payment for that enrolment. This was promised for people over 70 in the 2019–20 budget but not delivered.

This new policy is a welcome start for reform in primary care and signals the importance that a Labor government attaches to the sector.

The Strengthening Medicare Fund was only sketched out in broad terms before the election, and provides insight into the new ministerial style. The details of the policy will be thrashed out in a taskforce which will include key stakeholders.

Most importantly, the taskforce will be chaired by the minister — no hiding behind consultants; he or she will hold the hose.

Reducing covid deaths
Another crucial early challenge for the minister will be addressing the continuing covid pandemic.

Covid deaths continue: three times as many people have died this year than in the previous two. The Coalition delegitimised any form of action, including mask wearing and vaccine mandates, as part of its undermining of state public health measures, especially action by Labor states.

The prevalence of third dose vaccinations, necessary for adequate protection from omicron, sits at about two-thirds of the over-16 population, much lower in the under-16s, meaning that many in the population are not protected.

Public hospitals are bursting at the seams, with staff overwhelmed. This needs urgent attention, and the Coalition strategy of ignoring it and saying it was someone else’s problem, must be dumped.

Labor vowed to “step up the national strategy” late in the election campaign.

“The Australian people have voted for change.”

Labor leader Anthony Albanese told his supporters in Sydney on Saturday after leading his party to victory ending nearly a decade of conservative gov’t https://t.co/ufTwpZ1FXA pic.twitter.com/YdEqshEWRC

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) May 21, 2022

Aged care support
Hopefully Labor’s shadow aged care minister, Clare O’Neil, will continue in this role post-election. She proved more than a match for her hapless opponent, Richard Colbeck.

Labor made big commitments in aged care, creating a significant point of difference with the Coalition, despite the Coalition’s investments in the 2021–22 budget.

In addition to the Coalition commitments, Labor promised 24/7 registered nurse coverage in residential aged care facilities, and to support a wage rise for aged care workers. The latter is particularly important because without a wages uplift, the staff shortages in the sector will continue.

A new approach
Labor won’t engage in climate denialism or use climate policy as a political wedge.

Recognising and addressing climate change is an important issue for the health sector and, of course, the community more broadly as the teal surge and the Greens’ wins demonstrated.

Labor has committed to establishing a centre for prevention and disease control, which should provide a framework for addressing social and economic determinants of health.

Potentially as important in terms of policy style are Labor’s public service policies. The “consultocracy” which thrived under the Liberals will be shown the door, replaced by public servants doing the job the public service has always been available to do.

Obviously, a new Labor government will not be able to be meet all the community’s pent-up aspirations in a single term.

Nevertheless, it is disappointing Labor did not commit to phasing in universal dental care – the crucial missing piece of Australia’s universal health coverage.

Butler and his colleagues have a huge agenda on their plates. Starting with primary care is a good first focus, as without those foundations in place, the whole system cannot work well.

Dr Stephen Duckett is honorary enterprise professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice, The University of Melbourne. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

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

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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Mark Engler - Paul Engler.