News You May Have Missed: July 18, 2021

“Wildfire in the Pacific Northwest” by BLM Oregon & Washington is licensed under CC BY 2.0

In light of the devastating fires all over North America, devastating drought in Western US and Canada, the heatwave that cooked a billion marine animals in their shells and fruit on the trees, the flooding in Europe which has left at least 125 people dead and many more homeless, this past week feels like a tipping point in terms of both the climate and our awareness of it. In her column for the Guardian, Rebecca Solnit illuminates the dimensions of this issue, and in the New Yorker, Bill McKibben argues that the Biden administration needs to invest itself unreservedly in the “whole of government” approach to which Biden committed himself.

DOMESTIC NEWS

1. “Dreamers” once again at risk

Hundreds of thousands of young people who were brought to the US as children–known as Dreamers–have been shielded from deportation vis the DACA program. But on July 16, a federal judge declared the program illegal and while he did not threaten the status of Dreamers already in the program, he said that no more could apply, according to the New York Times. Immigration advocates point out that this decision illustrates the vulnerability of DACA, highlighting the urgency of legislation to stabilize the program, the LA Times noted. The House passed legislation in March that would provide a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers but it is stuck in the Senate. Many Dreamers are by now parents themselves, the LA Times pointed out, citing figures from the  Center for American Progress saying that “roughly 254,000 children have at least one parent relying on DACA,” RLS


You can call on Congress to pass the American Dream and Promise Act (HR6). Text GO DREAM to Resistbo at 50409. Only Congress can ensure a permanent solution by granting a path to citizenship for Dreamers that will provide the certainty and stability that these young people need and deserve. Moms Rising also has a letter you can sign and send to your member of Congress.

2. More mass shootings–see our gun legislation database

Last week we described the spike in gun violence during the pandemic.  20,000 people were killed by guns in 2020, one of the deadliest years on record, according to the Washington Post. 24,000 additional people committed suicide with a gun in 2020, Forbes notes, pointing out that 12,342 have died by suicide with a gun so far in 2021. According to the Gun Violence Archive, as of July 19, 11,117 people have been killed by guns so far in 20201; 171 of these were children under 11. Three people were wounded outside Nationals Park this weekend, according to CNN; the Gun Violence Archive lists all the deaths and injuries by guns for the past 72 hours. As we pointed out last week, 38 pieces of gun legislation have passed the House but are stuck in Senate committees; see our comprehensive database for a summary of pending gun legislation. RLS/S-HP

For your voice to be heard, urge committees with gun legislation to take action on this legislation and insist that your Congressmembers call for gun legislation to be moved beyond committee and that they support this legislation when it comes to a full vote of the House or Senate. Addresses are here.

3. Tennessee stops outreach on the COVID-19 shot–and all vaccines

Cases of COVID-19 in Tennessee have increased by 608.5% over the last two weeks, according to NPR, which drew on data from Johns Hopkins University. Only 38% of people in the state have been vaccinated. Despite this grim picture, Tennessee’s top vaccine official, Dr. Michelle Fiscus, was fired without explanation July 12. According to the Tennessean, Dr. Fiscus has claimed she was fired to appease Republican state lawmakers who objected to what she called “routine vaccine outreach.”

The Tennessee Department of Health has also halted all vaccination outreach efforts, not only for COVID-19, but for all other vaccine-preventable illnesses as well; in a Monday email, the Tennessean reported, agency Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Tim Jones told staff they should conduct “no proactive outreach regarding routine vaccines” and “no outreach whatsoever regarding the HPV vaccine,” the vaccine that prevents the virus that causes cervical cancer.

The battle over Dr. Fiscus’s outreach to teenagers began on May 12, when she issued a memo clarifying the state’s “mature minor doctrine,” which states that under legal precedents, children age 14 and older are able to make medical decisions for themselves if necessary. The memo clarifies that this doctrine extends to administration of the COVID-19 vaccine. After Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccination was given emergency use authorization for minors between the ages of 12 and 15, the state department of health began producing ads which appeared in print and on social media that featured images of minors who appeared to have received their vaccinations with messages that those ages 12 and above were eligible to be vaccinated. The state Department of Health, which manages 90 of 95 county Health Departments in Tennessee, also hosted vaccination events for teens in schools. 

In June, the state legislature questioned Dr. Lisa Piercey, the state’s health commissioner about ads that they claimed targeted teens for vaccination, threatening to defund public health in the state. Although there was evidence that only 8 minors had been vaccinated without their parent’s consent (including Dr. Piercey’s 3 children when she was away at work), Republican legislators– some of whom are skeptical of the COVID vaccine– also shared anecdotes that students were getting pressure to be vaccinated from teachers at school. Senator Kerry Roberts (R-Springfield) claimed “A football coach or a band director or a drama teacher or whoever it is, ought not be to be telling kids, ‘Hey, just come and get done so you don’t have to sit out.’ We’re getting to the point we’re getting proactive, we’re meddling,” MSN reported. (All claims of pressure from school officials are to date anecdotal and unconfirmed.)

Dr. Piercey denied that the state Department of Health was trying to pressure teens or infringe on parent’s rights while also stating that COVID-19 vaccination is safe and effective and saying the mature minors doctrine was largely for teens whose parents could or would not be involved in their medical decisions. The Government Operations Committee nonetheless called her to appear before them in July, when they would discuss dissolving the department and its funding if the message was not toned down. 

In addition to the partisan pressure on Dr. Fiscus, several news outlets have connected Dr. Fiscus’s sacking with Dr. Piercey’s statements to the Tennessean in May that she has ambitions to run for public office in the future. Historian Heather Cox Richardson addressed the question professor Asha Rangappa and others have asked: Why is the GOP apparently willing to kill and disable its own voters by undermining the vaccine? Cox Richardson says that the most insightful response on Twitter “was that the Republican’s best hope for winning in 2022—aside from voter suppression—is to keep the culture wars hot, even if it means causing illness and death.” 

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has refused to comment on Dr. Fiscus’s firing. Representative John Ray Clemmons (D-Nashville) has called on the Governor and Health Commissioner to explain Dr. Fiscus’s firing, and fears that the circumstances of her dismissal will make hiring a qualified replacement difficult. JM-L

4. Critical Race Theory hysteria funded by an obscure foundation

You won’t have missed that the Right has seized on Critical Race Theory (CRT), a basic approach to analyzing the way race is not biologically based but is constructed by society, and how racism is structural. But CRT is being made to mean whatever right-wing Republicans want to mean and then attacked. For example, Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, writing in the New York Post, alleged that schools”are pushing toxic racial theories onto children, teaching them that they should be judged on the basis of race and must atone for historical crimes committed by members of their racial group.” Senator Ted Cruz claimed that “Critical race theory says every white person is a racist,” as professor Ibram X. Kendi, writing in the Atlantic explained; he went on to point out that on Fox, Critical Race Theory was referred to “314 times in April, 589 times in May, and 737 times in just the first three weeks of June.” Kendi went on to quote Education Week as saying that “As of June 29, 26 states had introduced legislation or other state-level actions to “restrict teaching critical race theory or limit how teachers can discuss racism and sexism.” As with other multi-state legislative initiatives, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has hosted webinars and drafted legislation in an effort to build the conservative landslide of opinion on CRT. It is clear how redefining CRT would suit the interests of conservatives who want to shut down any discussion of race and racism altogether; however, the sudden emergence of anti-CRT vitriol left many scholars bemused.

But the anti-CRT panic did not emerge on its own. As Popular Info points out, it was a concerted effort funded by a nearly invisible foundation, the Thomas W. Smith Foundation, which paid James Piereson, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, $283,333 to work part-time. The Foundation, says Popular Info, “has donated more than $12.7 million to 21 organizations attacking Critical Race Theory”; a list of some of them is in their article. In a tweet, Rufo acknowledged what the strategy was: “We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans.” Clearly, the agenda is to stop the discussion of race and racism that has called white conservatives’ positions of power into question and to keep the historical analysis of racism out of public schools and universities. As Popular Info put it, “The foundation funding much of the anti-CRT effort is run by a person who opposes all efforts to increase diversity at powerful institutions and laments the introduction of curriculum about the historical treatment of Black people. ” RLS

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

5. Mainstream media misrepresent Cuban protests, ignore effects of blockade

As FAIR points out, media outlets became quite excited about the protests in and about Cuba, most articles celebrated Cubans’ complaints against their government and ignored or understated the effects of the U.S. blockade against Cuba. The shortages of food and medicine are a direct consequences of the blockade, as well as of the pandemic that has kept tourists away, along with their contributions to the economy.  The Trump administration intensified the blockade, prohibiting Cuban-Americans from sending remittances back to their families.

The protests may have been part of a coordinated effort, according to the Progressive, which notes that the US funds dissident groups in Cuban and that a hashtag #SOSCuba  was circulating in Florida just days before the protests. Many news articles went so far as to describe pictures of pro-government supporters as anti-government protestors, an error which the Guardian, at least, acknowledged. As the Progressive points out, the embargo has for the last sixty years intended to cause suffering to the Cuban people; the Progressive quotes Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Lester Mallory in 1960, who advocatd “denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.” RLS

If you want to be heard on this issue, you could join the eighty House Democrats who have asked President Biden to rescind the ban on travel and remittances (Reuters has details). Tweet @Potus or find your Representative here.

6. Canada denied twice as many immigrants the right to stay during the pandemic

Immigrants inside Canada who have fallen out of status–workers or visitors whose permits have expired or refugees whose claims were denied–can request to stay on humanitarian and compassionate grounds if they can show that they are established in Canada or that it would be a hardship for them to leave. However, the refusal rate of humanitarian and compassionate applications doubled over the course of the pandemic, from 35 per cent in 2019 to 70 per cent during the period January-March of 2021, according to the Toronto Star. It is not clear why more immigrants’ applications were refused, but the costs are clear: immigrants at risk of deportation are more vulnerable to exploitation in their workplaces, which already tend to be under-regulated (as in domestic or farm work). And those who are deported may return to unsafe or unsustainable conditions. Syed Hussan of the Migrant Rights Network calls for the status of immigrants already in the country to be regularized through permanent residency: “It is not a gift or a privilege,” Hussan said. “It is the only existing mechanism for migrants to access the same rights as other residents of the country.” RLS

SCIENCE, HEALTH, TECHNOLOGY & THE ENVIRONMENT

7. Anti-vaccination mythology originated with just 12 people

Have you heard that the COVID-19 vaccine makes women infertile? That it has killed more people than the virus itself? Two-thirds of this disinformation can be attributed to just 12 people who originated it, according to a report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) called “The Disinformation Dozen.” Low vaccination rates in parts of the US–which have led to a surge in COVID-19 cases and deaths–have resulted in part from this siege of false information.

The Center analyzed 812,000 posts to social media between February and March to identify the patterns in how these falsehoods were distributed. McGill University in Canada points out who the 12 people are, among them Joseph Mercola, an osteopathic doctor who has 3.6 million followers on social media, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Two of these 12 are particularly troubling; Rizza Islam and Kevin Jenkins have convinced many members of the Black community–who are already especially vulnerable to COVID–that the vaccine is equivalent to the Tuskegee experiment, in which Black people were allowed to die of untreated syphilis. While Islam and two others have been removed from social media, the other nine have been allowed to post unimpeded. The CCDH notes that social media platforms decline to act 95% of the reports of false information.

Likely as a result of disinformation, “There seemingly are two Americas: the better vaccinated states and those states less well-vaccinated,” as Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert from Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, explained. The highest number of cases are in states with the lowest vaccination rates, according to CNN and Rolling Stone. The number of deaths from COVID and the number of new cases both went up by 44 per cent this last week, according to Healthline, while the number of daily vaccinations went down. RLS

RESOURCES

Moms Demand Action recommends a variety of actions you can take against gun violence. Moms Rising also has a gun safety campaign, focusing on confirming David Chipman as the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, establishing universal background checks, banning military-type assault records, and various other points.Moms Demand Action recommends a variety of actions you can take against gun violence. Moms Rising also has a gun safety campaign, focusing on confirming David Chipman as the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, establishing universal background checks, banning military-type assault records, and various other points.

Mom’s Rising also has a summer postcarding campaign that may interest you, along with a five simple, clear actions you can take each week.

Data on refugees in the US: Pew Research Center. Refugee statistics worldwide: UNHCR.

No More Deaths/No Más Muertes‘ three-part report, Left to Die, details how asylum-seekers in the desert are abandoned by the Border Patrol. Though 911 calls are routed to them, they did not respond in 63% of cases. Lee Sandusky’s piece of literary journalism, “Scenes from an Emergency Clinic in the Sonoran Desert,” eloquently describes the work No More Deaths/No Más Muertes does.

The National Lawyers Guild has a series of webinars on issues from the global repression of voting, the local suppression of voting and the detention of immigrants.

trans hotline with both Canadian and US numbers–and with operators who speak Spanish–provides services by and for trans people. You don’t need to be in crisis to call, and if you are a friend or a family member of a trans person, you can also call to find out how to support them. If you would like to know more about the organization, see their staff bios here.

Moms Rising has actions you can take to celebrate Juneteenth–specific ways to work against inequality.

The Americans of Conscience checklist has new actions every other week that will enable you to make your voice heard quickly and clearly. In addition, they have a good news section that will help you keep going.

Among the organizations that supports kids and their families at the border is RAICES, which provides legal support. The need for their services has never been greater. You can support them here.

Al Otro Lado provides legal and humanitarian services to people in both the US and Tijuana. You can find out more about their work here.

The Minority Humanitarian Foundation supports asylum-seekers who have been released by ICE with no means of transportation or ways to contact sponsors. You can donate frequent-flyer miles to make their efforts possible.

The group Angry Tias and Abuelas provides legal advice and services to asylum-seekers at the border. You can follow their work on Facebook and see the list of volunteer opportunities they have posted.

News You May Have Missed: July 11, 2021

“Day One hundred and thirty-one: BANG BANG!” by Insulinde is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Gun ownership rose over the last year, from 32 percent of Americans owning guns to 39 percent, the Washington Post just reported, drawing on University of Chicago survey data. New gun owners represented 40 percent of gun sales.

An article in the journal Nature illuminates the stark reality of gun ownership. While people in general own guns because they are afraid, historically the people most likely to own a gun are those least likely to have reason to be afraid: white men in rural areas with incomes above $100,000 per year. It is worth considering who they are afraid of. Gun ownership correlates with racism; as one study cited in Nature put it, “for each 1 point increase in symbolic racism, there was a 50% greater odds of having a gun in the home and a 28% increase in the odds of supporting permits to carry concealed handguns.” However, owning a gun does not seem to reduce the fear, which is why gun owners buy multiples.

The Post article, however, suggests that new gun owners are increasingly likely to be women and people of color, who feel unsafe on many levels–they no longer trust the police to protect them and they feel endangered by others of all kinds, from police to protesters to right-wingers to irrational people on the street.

A suicide or homicide (against a family member, not a stranger) is three times as likely in homes with guns, according to a study by Johns Hopkins. Guns are the second leading cause of death of children aged 1-17, second only to automobile accidents, the journal Pediatrics reports. In 2019, 211 people died in mass shootings in the US, according to the AP. All together, in the US, 14,400 people died from gun violence in 2019, the BBC reports. In Canada, where guns are much more carefully regulated, a total of 263 people in 2019 died from being shot.(Canada’s population is about 11% of the US, but it has 1.8% of the number of gun deaths.) The Gun Violence Archive is a good source of information about the consequences of guns in the US; see our comprehensive database for a summary of pending gun legislation.

DOMESTIC NEWS

1. Gun legislation of all kinds stalled in committees

Thus far in the 117th Congress, no gun legislation has made it through both houses of Congress. One piece of legislation, H.R.8, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act, has made it through the House. There are, however, at least 38 pieces of gun legislation that have been sitting in committee since they were introduced. Please see our database of this legislation; it includes:

Gun Access (including limits on access for stalkers, domestic abusers, and those convicted of hate crimes): H.R.137, H.R.545, H.R.882, H.R.1441, H.R.1494, H.R.1923, H.R.3929, S.527.

Background Checks (including timelines and sales requiring background checks): H.R.135, H.R.1446, S.529, S.591

Tracing and Ghost Guns: H.R.1454, H.R.3088, S.1558.

Liability Insurance for Gun Owners: H.R.1004.

Records (including types of records to be maintained and time limits on records retention): H.R.2282, H.R.3536, S.974, S.1801.

Sales, Transfers, and Distribution (including gun show rules, private transfers of fire arms, and trafficking regulations): H.R.30, H.R.125, H.R.167, H.R.225, H.R.647, H.R.1006, H.R.1007, H.R.2280.

Storage (including Consumer Product Safety Commission guidelines on storage equipment and residential storage): H.R.130, H.R.478, H.R.3509, S.190, S.1825.

Research (including guns and public health and which federal offices can fund/conduct research): H.R.825, H.R.881, H.R.1576, S.281.

The vast majority of these pieces of legislation in committee are with the Judiciary Committees of both houses of Congress. Other Committees that have been assigned gun legislation include House Energy and Commerce, House Transportation and Infrastructure, House Space, Science, and Technology, Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. S-HP

For your voice to be heard, urge committees with gun legislation to take action on this legislation and insist that your Congressmembers call for gun legislation to be moved beyond committee and that they support this legislation when it comes to a full vote of the House or Senate. Addresses are here.

Moms Demand Action recommends a variety of actions you can take against gun violence. Moms Rising also has a gun safety campaign, focusing on confirming David Chipman as the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, establishing universal background checks, banning military-type assault records, and various other points.

2. Union organizers blocked from farms by the Supreme Court

Union organizers will no longer be able to go onto growers’ property to meet with farmworkers, according to a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court, which cited property rights in its 6-3 decision. Since 1975, the Agricultural Labor Relations Act has permitted organizers to go on farmland during lunch hours and at breaks, a right fought for and won by Cesar Chavez and other leaders of the United Farm Workers, according to Cal Matters; it is difficult otherwise for them to speak with workers, who often live in housing provided by the employer and travel to work in the employer’s buses, the Monterey Herald pointed out. Growers argued that allowing organizers on their property amounted to “government taking of private property without compensation,” according to the New York Times. Justices said that in the age of smart phones, these provisions were no longer necessary, but the United Farm Workers, the union that represents farm workers, noted that some farmworkers lack phones. What’s more, these days many farmworkers are Indigenous and do not speak either Spanish or English, so organizers who speak Indigenous languages need to be there in person. Writing in the Nation, journalist David Bacon explains the stakes of this decision–that it deprives workers of access to the people who represent them. RLS

With this doorway closed to assist farmworkers, you could consider writing your Senators and urging them to get the Farm Work Modernization Act, H.R. 1603, off the ground; it has passed the House. The bill would provide a pathway to citizenship for farmworkers. You could also ask your Senators and your Representative to support legislation which would provide a national heat stress standard monitored by OSHA; it would protect farmworkers from extreme heat by requiring growers to provide breaks in shade, water, and emergency procedures.

3. Children in detention are still dealing with deplorable conditions

In order to keep children from being held by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) for long periods, the Biden administration opened emergency intake and influx sites which were supposed to keep children safe while they were reunited with family or friends in the U.S. However, conditions in these places quickly deteriorated; Ft. Bliss, which holds some 5,000 children, is particularly notorious, according to the El Paso Times. The contractor running the facility has no experience with youth care, and inside sources told the newspaper that there were “soccer field-sized tents where up to 1,000 children were sleeping in bunks lined up 62 rows deep, eight rows across, three feet apart.” Whistleblowers said that medical care was inadequate, few activities were provided for children and that the children were frantic about their situation. Many staff members spoke neither Spanish nor Indigenous languages so could not respond to the children’s needs, the whistleblowers–staff members who had worked in the facility–said. Children later released said that the food was spoiled, water was scarce, and that some children wanted to harm themselves because of the anxiety and stress, according to Reuters.There are 15 sites like Ft. Bliss, Democracy Now reports. RLS

SCIENCE, HEALTH, TECHNOLOGY & THE ENVIRONMENT

4. Deaths from heat and fires

In terms of the climate crisis, we seem suddenly to be living in the world we predicted and feared. On June 30, most of the homes and the entire downtown of Lytton, British Columbia, were burnt to the ground in a wildfire. Residents had only minutes to flee their homes, according to the CBC. 300 fires are now burning in the province. The temperature in Lytton just before the fire was over 49 degrees Celsius (120 Fahrenheit). In the U.S., the west and northwest have been besieged by extreme heat and fires; Death Valley reached 130 degrees over the weekend, a milestone which was bizarrely celebrated by “heat tourists,” according to the Washington Post.

In the Northwest, the huge Bootleg fire in Southern Oregon was burning nearly 144,000 acres as of July 11, the Salem Statesman reported. Drought and high temperatures are making it difficult to contain the fire. The Statesman quoted fire incident commander Al Lawson as saying that “The fire behavior we are seeing on the Bootleg Fire is among the most extreme you can find and firefighters are seeing conditions they have never seen before.”

The Bootleg fire is threatening California’s electrical grid as it moves closer to power lines, KQED reported. In California itself, the Beckwourth Complex  fire, north of Lake Tahoe, has burned some 86 square miles as of July 10,  according to the Press Democrat. Mercifully, the Lava fire, which has burned some 27,000 acres near Mt. Shasta, is 70% contained, but four other fires are burning in Siskiyou County.

Hundreds of people in the Pacific Northwest have died from the heat, particularly those who work outside and older people who live alone without air conditioning, according to the New York Times. And KQED noted that heat-related deaths could equal those of infectious diseases, reminding us of the 70,000 people who died in the European heat wave of 2003 and noting that the European Environmental Agency says that episodes of extreme heat in Europe are increasing. Researchers from HealthDay say that the climate crisis has already led to five million extra deaths annually, worldwide.

In a new report, climate researchers said that the heat wave in the Pacific Northwest “was virtually impossible without human-caused climate change,” according to a study cited by Axios. Some of the people affected by the extreme weather are already climate refugees, having fled flooding in the Marshall Islands, CNN reports. One such refugee told reporters that “the most vulnerable to climate change will always be the most vulnerable, no matter if they can migrate or not,” he said. “When a storm flattens your island and you have to take a job farming in Oregon, you are not any less vulnerable, since climate change is inescapable.” RLS

RESOURCES

Mom’s Rising has a summer postcarding campaign that may interest you, along with a five simple, clear actions you can take each week.

Data on refugees in the US: Pew Research Center. Refugee statistics worldwide: UNHCR.

No More Deaths/No Más Muertes‘ three-part report, Left to Die, details how asylum-seekers in the desert are abandoned by the Border Patrol. Though 911 calls are routed to them, they did not respond in 63% of cases. Lee Sandusky’s piece of literary journalism, “Scenes from an Emergency Clinic in the Sonoran Desert,” eloquently describes the work No More Deaths/No Más Muertes does.

The National Lawyers Guild has a series of webinars on issues from the global repression of voting, the local suppression of voting and the detention of immigrants.

trans hotline with both Canadian and US numbers–and with operators who speak Spanish–provides services by and for trans people. You don’t need to be in crisis to call, and if you are a friend or a family member of a trans person, you can also call to find out how to support them. If you would like to know more about the organization, see their staff bios here.

Moms Rising has actions you can take to celebrate Juneteenth–specific ways to work against inequality.

The Americans of Conscience checklist has new actions every other week that will enable you to make your voice heard quickly and clearly. In addition, they have a good news section that will help you keep going.

Among the organizations that supports kids and their families at the border is RAICES, which provides legal support. The need for their services has never been greater. You can support them here.

Al Otro Lado provides legal and humanitarian services to people in both the US and Tijuana. You can find out more about their work here.

The Minority Humanitarian Foundation supports asylum-seekers who have been released by ICE with no means of transportation or ways to contact sponsors. You can donate frequent-flyer miles to make their efforts possible.

The group Angry Tias and Abuelas provides legal advice and services to asylum-seekers at the border. You can follow their work on Facebook and see the list of volunteer opportunities they have posted.

News You May Have Missed: July 4, 2021

“Western Hemisphere with California Fires” by sjrankin is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

If you’re ambivalent about celebrating Independence Day, you might celebrate Interdependence Day instead, as a friend of News You May Have Missed suggests. All the news reminds us of how we are connected, from the climate-crisis related issues such as the 171 fires in Western Canada and the five big fires in Northern California, to the condo collapse in Florida, where rising sea levels may have weakened the foundation and will certainly threaten many such buildings in the years to come. One way or another, we are in this together.

Independence Day is good day to review the extraordinary video compilation that the New York Times put together of the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol. As Haley Willis, one of the producers, explained, “Our Visual Investigations team synchronized and mapped thousands of videos of the U.S. Capitol riot to provide the most complete picture to date of what happened on Jan. 6 — and why. This was a massive team effort over six months, involving resources from across the Times newsroom. We went to court to unseal police body camera footage, scoured law enforcement radio communications and interviewed witnesses.”

DOMESTIC NEWS

1. Members of the Saudi team that murdered Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi were trained in the U.S.

Foreign military and security access to U.S. arms and military-style training, often provided by private firms, requires a license that must be issued by the State Department. The State Department, reports the New York Times, issues tens of thousands such licenses each year. Among those admitted to the U.S. for training in 2014-15 and 2017 were members of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s personal security team, the Rapid Intervention Force (RIF). Two of the RIF members receiving training during 2017 and another two who received training in both 2014-15 and 2017 were members of the team that murdered and dismembered journalist and U.S.-resident Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. In fact, one of the factors confirming that bin Salman’s directed the Khashoggi murder was the participation of the RIF. A U.S. intelligence report on the murder noted that “Members of the RIF would not have participated” without bin Salman’s consent because the RIF “exists to defend the Crown Prince [and] answers only to him.”

  Note that this training occurred during both the Obama and the Trump administrations, illustrating the willingness of national leaders of both of the U.S.’s main political parties to allow repressive, authoritarian regimes to strengthen themselves using U.S.-based training. There are, of course, the arguments about Saudi Arabia being a vital U.S. ally in the Middle East, limiting Iranian aggression and acknowledging the existence of the state of Israel. And those political benefits are accompanied by significant profits for U.S. weapons manufacturers and security training companies. Those were the reasons then-President Trump cited for not sanctioning Saudis after Khashoggi’s murder. The Biden administration has instituted sanctions on some of those involved, but those being sanctioned do not include bin Salman. S-HP

You can share your disgust at the role played by our government and U.S. businesses in supporting authoritarian regimes through the process of State Department licensing and call for limits on State Department licensing to confirm that regimes whose representatives receive training in the U.S. have a clean human rights record. President Joe Biden, the White House, 1600 Pennsylvania NW,Washington DC 20500, (202) 456-1111, @POTUS, and Antony J. Blinken, Secretary of State, Department of State, 2201 St. NW, Washington DC 20520, (202) 647-4000. @ABlinken. Find your Senators here and find your Representative here.

2. Immigration news–some of it good

The Biden administration has been a disappointment for many who oppose immigrant detention and would like to see a more humane approach to those entering the country without documentation. However, some of the administration’s moves have been positive and might be starting places from which to push for additional changes.

◉ICE urged to drop cases: At a time when the U.S. has a backlog of 1.3 million deportation cases to address, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) attorneys have been issued new guidelines encouraging them to use their discretion “at the earliest point possible” to drop deportation cases—a contrast from the Trump administration’s determination to maximize deportations. According to the Hill, ICE attorneys are encouraged to take into consideration an individual’s time in the U.S., ties to community, and humanitarian concerns—which certainly could apply to Dreamers. Unfortunately, this policy will primarily benefit those who can afford immigration attorneys, who should know of the policy shift and be able to negotiate a better outcome for clients. Unrepresented individuals will have a much more difficult time arguing that their cases be dropped. The policy also specifically excludes anyone who entered the country after November 1, 2020. Greg Chen, of the American Immigration Lawyers Associations suggests a broader move that could easily be made using database information in order drop proceedings against two groups: those who have subsequently begun the process of applying for citizenship through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and those whose cases have been backlogged for five or more years. Doing this could reduce the backlog by half.

◉Biden promoting naturalization:The Hill reports that Biden administration is promoting a goal that Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas described as “promoting naturalization to all who are eligible.” The administration has suggested immigration judges to inform eligible individuals about naturalization procedures. Government-issued U.S. Citizenship test prep materials will be offered in a great range of languages. One step the Biden administration has not taken is cutting increases in the cost of applying for citizenship. Under Obama, the cost to apply was $640; under Trump that cost was raised to $1,100 or more.

 ◉Biden bringing back deported veterans: One of the many disturbing aspects of the Trump administration immigration policy was its willingness to deport U.S. military veterans. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has announced a new effort to halt and undo the damage caused by those deportations, reports the Washington Post. A new DHS “Military Resource Center” will be available online and via telephone to assist current and former members of the military and their families with immigration applications. Deportation of veterans and their families preceded Trump’s time as president, but his administration pursued this policy with particular aggressiveness. The government did not screen veterans before deportation, so there is no specific data available on the number of individuals affected, but the Washington Post cites estimates that hundreds of veterans and thousands of their family members have likely been deported. In addition to offering eligible veterans and family members pathways to citizenship, DHS and the Department of Veterans Affairs have announced that they will work together to ensure that all veterans are receiving the healthcare they have a right to under their terms of service.

◉Those fleeing gang or domestic violence allowed to seek asylum: As we noted earlier, Attorney General Merrick Garland ended the Trump administration’s refusal to accept asylum-seekers who were fleeing domestic or gang violence, as NPR reported in June. However, new rules have yet to be drafted, and advocates for immigrants are concerned that asylum-seekers will be deported until new rules are in place. Still, as the Southern Poverty Law Center points out, this is an important first step: “We look forward to further action by Attorney General Garland to undo the enormous damage wrought by the Trump administration and finally protect the rights afforded to individuals seeking asylum,” the Center said in a statement.

Biden possibly ending Title 42–but not soon enough: The Biden Administration is also considering ending its use of Title 42 to unilaterally expel those entering the U.S. without documentation. Title 42 was activated purportedly as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The fact that the Biden administration points to its success against COVID-19 adds pressure to end Title 42. Axios reports that the administration may end use of Title 42 as early as July 31, but unless and until that happens, summary expulsions will continue. In the last four months, according to Axios, more than 350,000 adults have been expelled under Title 42. S-HP/RLS

You can thank the administration for these positive steps, and urge that they be taken further by not deporting asylum-seekers fleeing gang or domestic violence, dropping significant numbers of backlogged deportation cases, including those of Dreamers, and returning citizenship application fees to their pre-Trump cost. You can urge the administration to stop deportations under Title 42 as well. Addresses are here.

GOOD NEWS

3. Finally! Good news on Bears Ears, other monuments

We’ve had some heartening news in the past few weeks that offer us opportunities to thank those responsible.

◉Interior Secretary Deb Haaland has recommended that full protections be restored to national monuments that were reduced during the Trump administration, including Bears Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante, and Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monuments, according to a story first reported by the Washington Post. Under the Trump administration, the acreage protected at Bears Ears was reduced by 85% and the acreage at Grand Staircase-Escalante by 50%. Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument was opened to commercial fishing, essentially ending its protections.

◉The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will be reconstituting an advisory panel that was disbanded by Trump-era EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler. The Hill reports that the EPA’s science advisory board will soon issue a call for nominations to the Particulate Matter Review Panel. The panel is charged with advising the EPA on safe levels for particulate matter, which comes from sources like power plant, industry, and automobiles and which has been linked to heart attacks, asthma attacks, and premature death. The EPA desperately needs good advice–see our story below.

CNN was the first to report an announcement by Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough that Veterans Affair health coverage will be expanded to cover gender confirmation surgery for transgendered veterans, along with its existing provision of mental health services and hormone therapy. According to the Center for Transgender Equity, there are some 134,000 transgender U.S. veterans. In making his announcement, McDonough explained the decision to add gender confirmation surgery was based on the “recommendation of our clinicians, so this is a health care decision that has very real physical health care impacts as well as significant mental health impacts.” S-HP

You can find addresses for appropriate people to thank at this link and you can urge President Biden to follow through on Secretary Haaland’s recommendations: @POTUS.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

4. What we can do to help protect Uyghur Muslims in China

According to NPR, Uyghur Muslims in China have been subjected to various kinds of persecution, ranging from torture to imprisonment; women in particular have endured sexual abuse and rape, according to the BBC. A recent Amnesty International report details the suffering of the Uyghurs. An earlier report noted that families are being separated and children put into orphanages. There are two very different ways in which we can act in opposition to Chinese genocide of Uyghur Muslims.

– On the legislative front, we can urge our Senators to support S.65, the Uyghur Forced Labor Act, which has made it through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and can now move on to a vote of the full Senate. S.65 imposes importation limits on goods produced using forced labor in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China and imposes and expands sanctions related to such forced labor.

– In the private sector, we can join the Congress on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in opposing construction of a Hilton Hotel as part of a development being built on the site of a bulldozed Uyghur mosque. As CAIR points out, “The United States government formally recognizes that the government of China is committing ‘genocide and crimes against humanity’ against Uyghur Muslim and other Turkic minorities in the Xinjiang region…. Hilton has a unique opportunity to take a clear stance against China’s ongoing genocide of Uyghur Muslims and set an example for other prominent corporations…. by announcing it will cancel this project and cease any operations in the Uyghur region of China until its government ends its persecution of millions of innocent people.” S-HP

If you want to take action on this issue, ask your Senators to support S.65 and join calls for Hilton to cancel plans to build a luxury hotel in the site of a razed Uyghur mosque. Addresses are here.

SCIENCE, HEALTH, TECHNOLOGY & THE ENVIRONMENT

5. Scientists at the EPA said their assessments of toxic chemicals were rewritten to favor industry

Four scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency were repeatedly pressured to modify their risk assessments of various chemicals—including carcinogens—in favor of industry, according to a story in the Intercept. When they refused, three of them were transferred out of the office. One who was transferred says that her assessments continue to be rewritten so that they understate the risks to human health and fetal development. Another who was transferred described the changes to his assessments this way: “So it went from being over 15,000 times over the safe dose to you just need to wear a dust mask and you’ll be fine.” One scientist is still there, but says that the pressure to change assessments continues—well post-Trump. The four sent a statement to Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER, is supporting the whistleblowers and has filed a complaint with the EPA Inspector General, and Michal Freedhoff, assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. RLS

If you are concerned about the impact of the EPA’s manipulation of environmental assessments, you could urge a prompt investigation of these allegations of political pressures and misleading rewrites at the EPA. Addresses are here.

6. Danger of the Delta Variant

If you’ve had just one shot, you should be quite concerned about the Delta variant of COVID. 15 million people in the US have missed their second dose, according to the Washington Post, and only 37% of Canadians have had both shots, according to CTV. One shot is only 33% effect against the variant (50% against the primary version), and the variant is sweeping multiple countries leading to surges of COVID in areas that previously appeared to have it under control, according to an article in Nature, which explains that in the UK, where it accounts for 99% of cases, people with Delta are twice as likely to be hospitalized. The biggest risk is to African countries, which still have not received adequate supplies of the vaccine. Delta is the most transmissible of the variants. Follow Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding’s Twitter thread for more on this story. Feigl-Ding is a senior scientist with the Federation of American Scientists. RLS

7. Women’s access to health care could improve in pending legislation

A number of pieces of legislation protecting women’s access—globally and within the U.S.—to reproductive healthcare, including abortion, are currently with the House and Senate.

◉The EACH (Equal Access to Abortion Coverage in Health Insurance; H.R.2234) Act’s official summary explains that “This bill requires federal health care programs to provide coverage for abortion services and requires federal facilities to provide access to those services. The bill also permits qualified health plans to use funds attributable to premium tax credits and reduced cost sharing assistance to pay for abortion services.” This legislation is currently with eight House committees: Energy and Commerce; Ways and Means; Natural Resources; Armed Services; Veterans’ Affairs; Judiciary; Oversight and Reform; and Foreign Affairs.

S.1975 and H.R.3755, the Women’s Health Protections Act, would “prohibit laws that impose burdensome requirements on access to reproductive health services such as requiring doctors to perform tests and procedures that doctors have deemed unnecessary or preventing doctors from prescribing and dispensing medication as is medically appropriate. Other examples of laws that make it more difficult for a woman to access an abortion include: restrictions on medical training for future abortion providers, requirements concerning the physical layout of clinics where abortions are performed, and forced waiting periods for patients,” as explained in a press release announcing the introduction of this legislation. Text is available online for S.1975. Text is not yet available online for H.R.3755, but should be identical to the text of S.1975. S.1975 is with the Senate Judiciary Committee. H.R.3755 is with the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

◉H.R.1670, Abortion Is Healthcare Everywhere, “authorizes the use of certain foreign assistance funds to provide comprehensive reproductive health care services in developing countries, including abortion services, training, and equipment,” ending what has been called the “global gag rule,” which prohibits the use of foreign aid funds to support any organization that provides or offers information on abortions. H.R.1670 is currently with the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

◉The official summary for H.R.556, the Global Health, Empowerment, and Rights Act, explains that it “establishes that a foreign nongovernmental organization shall not be disqualified from receiving certain U.S. international development assistance solely because the organization provides medical services using non-U.S. government funds if the medical services are legal in both the United States and the country in which they are being provided.” Although the summary does not explicitly identify abortion as one of these medical services that is, in fact, one of the legal services it is written to protect. H.R.556 is currently with the House Foreign Affairs Committee. S-HP

If you want to help nudge this legislation forward, addresses for appropriate people to write–including your Senators and Representative–are listed here.

RESOURCES

You can see here how vulnerable rebar is to corroding and failing if it isn’t properly surrounded by cement. Condos in Florida tend to mix cement with beach sand because it is cheaper, but of course it is also salty, corroding the rebar supporting the building.

Data on refugees in the US: Pew Research Center. Refugee statistics worldwide: UNHCR.

No More Deaths/No Más Muertes‘ three-part report, Left to Die, details how asylum-seekers in the desert are abandoned by the Border Patrol. Though 911 calls are routed to them, they did not respond in 63% of cases. Lee Sandusky’s piece of literary journalism, “Scenes from an Emergency Clinic in the Sonoran Desert,” eloquently describes the work No More Deaths/No Más Muertes does.

The National Lawyers Guild has a series of webinars on issues from the global repression of voting, the local suppression of voting and the detention of immigrants.

trans hotline with both Canadian and US numbers–and with operators who speak Spanish–provides services by and for trans people. You don’t need to be in crisis to call, and if you are a friend or a family member of a trans person, you can also call to find out how to support them. If you would like to know more about the organization, see their staff bios here.

Moms Rising has actions you can take to celebrate Juneteenth–specific ways to work against inequality.

The Americans of Conscience checklist has new actions every other week that will enable you to make your voice heard quickly and clearly. In addition, they have a good news section that will help you keep going.

Among the organizations that supports kids and their families at the border is RAICES, which provides legal support. The need for their services has never been greater. You can support them here.

Al Otro Lado provides legal and humanitarian services to people in both the US and Tijuana. You can find out more about their work here.

The Minority Humanitarian Foundation supports asylum-seekers who have been released by ICE with no means of transportation or ways to contact sponsors. You can donate frequent-flyer miles to make their efforts possible.

The group Angry Tias and Abuelas provides legal advice and services to asylum-seekers at the border. You can follow their work on Facebook and see the list of volunteer opportunities they have posted.

News You May Have Missed: June 27, 2021

“Gay Pride Flag” by sigmaration is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

DOMESTIC NEWS

1. Congress could support LGBTWI+ people abroad through diplomacy

In six countries (Brunei, Iran, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and in the northern states in Nigeria), participating in sexual activity with someone of the same gender is punishable by death, the BBC reports. Engaging in activities defined as “gay” is illegal in 71 countries, according to Forbes. (Equaldex lists the countries where it is illegal to be queer and what that means.) Legislation currently before Congress could improve the ways LGBTQI+ rights are supported diplomatically and increase diversity within the Department of State.

The International Human Rights Defense Act (H.R.1201 in the House; S.424 in the Senate) would create a permanent State Department Special Envoy for the Human Rights of LGBTQI+ Peoples, who would advise the State Department regarding human rights for LGBTQI+ people, represent the United States in diplomatic matters relevant to the human rights of LGBTQI+ people, and provide Congress with a U.S. global strategy to prevent and respond to criminalization, discrimination, and violence against LGBTQI people. The Act would also require that the State Department issue annual country reports on human rights practices that include information on criminalization, discrimination, and violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity. H.R.1201 is with the House Foreign Affairs Committee; S.424 is with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. 

The Represent America Abroad Act, H.R.1096, would establish the Represent America Mid-Career Foreign Service Entry Program to increase diversity in the Foreign Service by recruiting mid-career professionals who are from minority groups by establishing and publishing eligibility criteria for participation; carrying out recruitment efforts to attract highly qualified, mid-career professionals from minority groups; and providing appropriate mentorship and other career development opportunities for program participants. The goal of this legislation is to develop a State Department and diplomatic corps that reflects the diversity of the U.S. H.R.1096 is currently with the House Foreign Affairs Committee. RLS/S-HP

You can urge swift, positive action on H.R.1201 and H.R.1096 by the House Foreign Affairs Committee and on S.424 by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Addresses are here.

2. At last–a chance to repeal provisions that cut teachers’ Social Security

If you are a K-12 teacher in one of 15 states, the Social Security benefits you earned in non-teaching work will be cut by half of your teacher’s pension–even when you paid into Social Security! In addition, you lose access to all spousal or survivor benefits as well. The provisions that created this inequity–the Windfall Elimination Program (WEP) and the Government Pension Offset (GPO)–also apply to city, county and state workers in 26 states and all federal workers who receive CSRS pensions, according to Social Security Fairness. As the organization explains, “If you earn even part of a public pension from a government job that doesn’t pay into Social Security (FICA), you can lose all or part of your earned Social Security retirement benefits.” RLS

The House Ways and Means Committee is putting together a bill which would at long last rectify this inequity–which hits women, people who started their careers as teachers or government workers later in life, and lower-income earners the hardest, as they are the least likely to have significant pensions to offset the loss of Social Security benefits. To do this, the Committee wants to hear your story. Guidelines are here. The catch? You need to write by Tuesday the 29th.

In April, U.S. Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Susan Collins (R-ME) introduced a bill in the Senate which would also address this issue. You can check here to see whether your Senators co-sponsored the bill, S. 1302. If they did not, you can nudge them to support it. Find your Senators here

3. Child labor increasing along with economic disruptions, school closures

Among the many other disasters that beset 2020, child labor also increased. The Guardian reports that at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic nearly 10% of the world’s children were engaged in child labor. Most of them are doing agricultural work, but 79 million of them are doing even more hazardous work, such as mining or operating heavy machinery. In the United States, a report from the American Federation of Teachers estimates that there are 500,000 children working as farmworkers, some as young as eight; many work 72 hours per week. The AFT cites a report by the Government Accountability Office which suggests that “100,000 child farmworkers are injured on the job every year and that children account for 20 percent of farming fatalities.” Farmworkers are exempt from the The United States’ Fair Labor Standards Act. Americans–and Canadians–consume food and purchase goods daily produced by children, according to a World Vision report cited by CTV.

A report jointly issued by the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and the International Labor Organization cites an increase of 8.4 million children engaged in child labor over the four years from 2016 to 2020. Globally, over half of those children are between 5 and 11 years old. The report says that another 9 million children are at risk of being added to child labor numbers by the end of 2022. Many things are behind these increases–more severe family poverty, fewer social supports, school closures due to COVID, austerity measures.

To stop this growth, the report advocates adequate social protection for all, including universal child benefits; increased spending globally on; improved work for adults, so that children aren’t forced to contribute to family incomes; an end to gender norms that support the continuance of child labor; and investment in child protection systems, agricultural development, and rural public services. S-HP, RLS

2021 is the International Year for the Elimination of Child Labor—a good time to redouble our efforts to address the world’s child labor crisis. You can ask your Congressmembers to commit themselves to authoring and supporting legislation that can reduce child labor, both in the U.S. and abroad. Find your Senators here and your representative here.

4. Evidence obtained through torture can be used in Guantanamo trials

Detentions and trials continue for foreign nationals held at the U.S. military base in Guantánamo, Cuba—and for what appears to be the first time ever, a military judge, Colonel Lanny J. Acosta Jr., has ruled that information obtained during torture by CIA interrogators may be used as part of pre-trial proceedings. The defendant in this case, Abd al-Rahin al-Nashiri, is accused of orchestrating the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in 2000, which killed 17 sailors, and a 2002 attack on an oil tanker that killed one.

The New York Times explains that prosecutors have requested that information collected via torture be considered in the judge’s determination of whether defense attorneys may pursue a line of questioning regarding U.S. killings of or attacks on Abd al-Rahin al-Nashiri’s higher ups in Al Queda.

Given the severity of the charges against the defendant and the fact that information gathered under torture would be heard under initial proceedings and only by a judge, not the full jury Abd al-Rahin al-Nashiri will ultimately face, some might argue that this is a minor point of law. However, as Abd al-Rahin al-Nashiri’s defense attorneys have argued in a challenge to the ruling, “No [U.S.] court has ever sanctioned the use of torture in this way…. No court has ever approved the government’s use of torture as a tool in discovery litigation [or as] a legitimate means of facilitating a court’s interlocutory fact-finding.”  Torture is a notoriously unreliable method of gathering factual information. And the use of information obtained via torture calls into question the rights of any accused to receive a fair trial. S-HP

If this troubles you, you can voice your concerns about the use of information gathered via torture and the negative impact it will have on the U.S. justice system: President Joe Biden, (202) 456-1111. @POTUS. Lloyd J. Austin III, Secretary of Defense, @SecDef. Find your Senators here and your representative here.

5. New provisions would end lower penalties for those convicted of marital rape

In California–as in many other states–a conviction for marital rape can carry a lesser sentence than rape by another perpetrator. As explained by Vice, marital rape can be punished by probation, rather than imprisonment, and those convicted of marital rape are able to avoid registering as sex offenders. AB-1171, Rape of a Spouse, would close this loophole. This legislation was passed without any opposing votes by the California Assembly, but is facing opposition in the California Senate. According to Action Network, “Senate Public Safety Chair Steven Bradford [where AB-1171 will receive initial consideration] refuses to commit that he will support the bill… or even respond to any of our phone calls or emails.” As a result, Action Network is urging Senate President Pro Tempore Toni Atkins to ensure passage of AB-1171. S-HP

You can join Action Network in calling on the California Senate President Pro Tempore (@SenToniAtkins) and the Public Safety Committee Chair (@SteveBradford) to support AB-1171. Addresses are here.

6. Cash bail means that the poor pay more

While the U.S. justice system purports that we all have equal rights under the law, it’s understood that an individual with money is almost certainly going to have “more equal” rights than an individual with limited economic resources. This inequity plays out in the quality of legal representation different defendants have, on the pressure defendants may face to accept a plea bargain that may include admitting to a crime they didn’t commit, on the kind of apparel a defendant is able to wear while on trial. The reality of some individuals being “more equal than others” can also be seen within the cash-based bail system used in most states. Wealthy individuals are more likely to be able to post bail out-of-pocket than many others. Of course, an individual can borrow bail money from a bondsman, but most bondsmen charge 10% of the full cost of bail—so if bail is set at $50,000 and an individual cannot pay out of pocket, that individual is most likely going to have to work with a bondsman and will wind up with a debt of $5,000, regardless of the verdict in their case, and may well wind up repaying that debt at a significant rate of interest.

  In 2019, the Prison Policy Initiative estimated that approximately 460,000 people were being held pretrial (meaning they were still presumed innocent) on any given day—and approximately half of those individuals were parents of minor children. The Equal Justice Initiative points out that during the current COVID-19 pandemic, Americans in prison were five times more likely to contract the disease than those on the outside. Individuals held pretrial are significantly more at risk of violence than are those on the outside. 

Some states, including California, are developing alternatives to cash bail for low-income individuals accused of non-violent offenses. Now Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) is proposing something similar on the national level. H.R.2152, the Pretrial Integrity and Safety Act, would provide grants to states, localities, and Tribes to develop alternatives to cash bail that would allow those accused of a crime, but not convicted of one, to remain free until the time of their trial. Currently, this legislation has just one cosponsor, Representative Jerrold Nadler (D-NY). It has been assigned to the House Judiciary Committee.

To help move this legislation forward, you can urge your Representative (unless that’s Lieu or Nadler) to cosponsor H.R.2152 to avoid unfairly penalizing—monetarily and in many other ways—individuals who have been charged with but not convicted of a crime. Find your Representative here.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

7. 751 additional unmarked graves found near a residential school in Canada; the American Secretary of the Interior launches an investigation of US schools as well

More unmarked graves have been discovered near a residential school that First Nations children were required to attend. 751 graves were identified near Marieval Indian Residential School, which operated from 1899 to 1997 in Saskatchewan, according to the CBC. The Cowessess First Nation had taken over the cemetery near the school from the Catholic Church, which is said to have removed the grave markers in the 1960s. Since 215 graves were discovered at a residential school in British Columbia, other First Nations communities have begun to look for graves; First Nations families have long known that some children never returned from the schools they were force to attend.

The Catholic Church, which operated schools in BC and Saskatchewan, finally agreed on Friday to open its records so that those buried on those sites could be identified. Previously, neither the Church nor the government of Canada would make their records available, the CBC noted, and in 2017 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that accounts of residential school survivors could be destroyed in order to preserve their privacy, as another CBC article pointed out. Survivors’ stories were collected as part of the Truth and Reconciliation process.

In light of this news about residential schools in Canada, American Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, an enrolled member of the Laguna Pueblo, has ordered an investigation into American residential schools, Indian Country Today reported. In an opinion piece for the Washington Post, Haaland said that her grandparents were among those forced to attend residential schools; by 1926, she wrote, “nearly 83 percent of Native American school-age children were in the system.” RLS

Alexis Shotwell, a professor in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at Carleton University has written a wide-ranging piece in the Conversation, suggesting how non-Indigenous people might function in solidarity with First Nations communities. In addition, the Truth and Reconciliation Report has 94 calls to action.

SCIENCE, HEALTH, TECHNOLOGY & THE ENVIRONMENT

8. Legislation would improve healthcare options for marginalized communities

The U.S. House currently has a number of opportunities to ensure healthcare opportunities for several marginalized communities. All four are currently with the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

H.R.2178, the Minority Diabetes Initiative Act, would provide grants for diabetes treatment programs in minority communities. Diabetes disproportionally affects communities of color, and this problem is exacerbated by inequities in healthcare for communities of color. H.R.2178 would help launch programs to provide much-needed diabetes care.

H.R.2035, the Improving Access to Mental Health Act, would increase the Medicare reimbursement rate for mental health services, making these services more easily accessible for individuals with limited incomes. This legislation is also with the House Ways and Means Committee.

H.R.1795, the Expanded Coverage for Former Foster Youth Act, would broaden the availability of Medicaid to former foster youth. Currently, Medicaid is available for a period of eight years for foster youth who age out of the foster care system when they turn eighteen. However, a loophole does not provide similar coverage for those who are emancipated before the age of eighteen or who are placed in a legal guardianship with a kinship caregiver—H.R.1795 would allow those youth to receive Medicaid for the same period od of time. H.R.1795 repeals the provision that requires former foster youth to have been enrolled in a state Medicaid program while in foster care in order to qualify for Medicaid coverage until the age of 26 and requires states to establish a Medicaid outreach program for foster youth and those who have left the foster care system.

H.R.1795, the Alzheimer’s Caregiver Support Act, would provide grants for training and support services for families and unpaid caregivers of people living with Alzheimer’s disease or a related dementia.

You can call for swift, positive action on all four of these pieces of legislation by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Chair @FrankPallone. Similarly, you can call on the House Ways and Means Committee to act quickly on H.R.2035. Chair @RepRichardNeal. Full address information is here.

RESOURCES

This Week in Virology (TWIV) has Laurie Garrett as a guest–she explains what the patterns are in government responses to challenges from infectious diseases.

UNICEF data on child labor worldwide is available at this site.

Data on refugees in the US: Pew Research Center. Refugee statistics worldwide: UNHCR.

No More Deaths/No Más Muertes‘ three-part report, Left to Die, details how asylum-seekers in the desert are abandoned by the Border Patrol. Though 911 calls are routed to them, they did not respond in 63% of cases. Lee Sandusky’s piece of literary journalism, “Scenes from an Emergency Clinic in the Sonoran Desert,” eloquently describes the work No More Deaths/No Más Muertes does.

The National Lawyers Guild has a series of webinars on issues from the global repression of voting, the local suppression of voting and the detention of immigrants.

trans hotline with both Canadian and US numbers–and with operators who speak Spanish–provides services by and for trans people. You don’t need to be in crisis to call, and if you are a friend or a family member of a trans person, you can also call to find out how to support them. If you would like to know more about the organization, see their staff bios here.

Moms Rising has actions you can take to celebrate Juneteenth–specific ways to work against inequality.

The Americans of Conscience checklist has new actions every other week that will enable you to make your voice heard quickly and clearly. In addition, they have a good news section that will help you keep going.

Among the organizations that supports kids and their families at the border is RAICES, which provides legal support. The need for their services has never been greater. You can support them here.

Al Otro Lado provides legal and humanitarian services to people in both the US and Tijuana. You can find out more about their work here.

The Minority Humanitarian Foundation supports asylum-seekers who have been released by ICE with no means of transportation or ways to contact sponsors. You can donate frequent-flyer miles to make their efforts possible.

The group Angry Tias and Abuelas provides legal advice and services to asylum-seekers at the border. You can follow their work on Facebook and see the list of volunteer opportunities they have posted.

News You May Have Missed: June 20, 2021

“No more deaths” by benketaro is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Father’s Day this year is also World Refugee Day–and both are in the middle of a climate-crisis driven heat wave. As we write, it is 115 degrees in Phoenix. Increasing militarization on the border drives asylum-seekers to try more obscure desert routes, which can be lethal in the heat, Newsweek points out. And while volunteers from No More Deaths/No Más Muertes try to find and assist people lost in the desert, the Border Patrol undermines them at every turn, from slashing water bottles to refusing 911 calls. While we often write about asylum-seeking children, refugee organizations are suggesting we remember fathers as well. See the Resources section if you want to do so concretely, and see the environment and international sections for more on the heat waves, the drought in the Western US, and refugees.

DOMESTIC NEWS

1. Asylum seekers no longer barred for fleeing domestic or gang violence

There is some good—and potentially good—news to report on the immigration/asylum front, even if a great deal of work remains to be done. First, Attorney General Merrick Garland has reversed a Trump policy that barred asylum claims based on credible fears of domestic abuse or gang violence. As the New York Times explains, this decision may provide hope for thousands of asylum seekers.

 Second, the House has the opportunity to consider legislation that would establish standards for immigration detention facilities. The Dignity for Detained Immigrants Act, H.R.2222, establishes detailed standards for all facilities, both federal and private, at which the Department of Homeland Security detains immigrants/asylum seekers and requires an end to the use of private facilities within 3 years. These standards would be based on the American Bar Association’s Civil Immigration Detention Standards. H.R.2222 requires biannual reporting on all detention facilities, along with annual, unannounced Inspector General inspections of all detention facilities, with consequences (transfer of all detainees, fines, and the possibility of civil actions) for any facility not in compliance. H.R.2222 requires updating of the online detainee database within 12 hours of the detention/release/transfer/ or removal of any detainee. Congress must be notified within 24 hours of any deaths in detention regardless of their cause. This legislation is currently with the House Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees; it has 78 cosponsors, all Democrats. S-HP

You can thank the Attorney General for returning to a broader set of credible fear criteria and urge swift, positive committee action on H.R.2222. Addresses are here. You can also check to see if your Representative is a cosponsor of H.R.2222 and thank or nudge as appropriate. Find your representative here.

2. Legislative assaults on transgender people

Pride month calls for an update on civil rights and treatment of LGBTQI+ persons in the U.S. with an emphasis on the T. The Guardian offers a map-based listing of this year’s anti-trans laws enacted through June 9.

In a recent New York Times opinion piece, Alphonso David of the Human Rights Campaign noted “unprecedented legislative assaults aimed at trans people that have swept state houses this year, officially making 2021 the worst year for anti-L.G.B.T.Q. legislation in recent history.” By early June of this year, 20 state laws had been passed taking aim at transgender individuals—more than double the number passed in the period from 2018 through 2020. David warns us that “L.G.B.T.Q. Americans—and particularly transgender and nonbinary people—are not simply living in a state of emergency; we are living in many states of imminent danger. The usual calls to action aren’t enough against these threats; we are now firmly in the territory of needing those in positions of authority to actively defy these laws—especially those enforcement agencies and leaders tasked with carrying out the unconstitutional and un-American assaults on the civil rights of millions of L.G.B.T.Q. people.”

As an example of such defiance, David points to Nashville’s District Attorney General Glenn Funk who is refusing to enforce a new state law requiring businesses and government facilities open to the public to post a sign if they let transgender people use multi-person bathrooms, locker rooms or changing rooms associated with their gender identity. Nashville Mayor John Cooper has also spoken out against the law on both civil rights and economic grounds, predicting that the state will lose tourist and business dollars as a result of hate-based legislation.

 A piece in the magazine of Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU), Church & State, observes that “a huge number of these [anti-transgender] laws–and arguably the most damaging–seek to prohibit and/or criminalize gender-affirming health care for youth. Transgender, nonbinary and intersex youth make up a small fraction of the population, and receiving gender-affirming care is not just beneficial, but often life-saving for them from a psychological standpoint.” Gender-affirming healthcare eases gender dysphoria—the sense that one’s physical body and gender identity conflict. Given that, such legislation represents a deliberate to further isolate already-vulnerable transgender youth. AU cites materials from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), the body that sets widely accepted standards of care for gender-affirming health care: “The preponderance of scientific evidence indicates that gender-affirming health care can greatly help transgender people … these laws will prevent young people from receiving beneficial, often life-saving services that have strong evidence of success and are supported by mainstream healthcare professional associations.”

One piece of hopeful news is that the Department of Education has affirmed that Title IX gender protections extend to transgender students, a reversal of Trump administration policy that actively opposed such protections. The New York Times quotes Education Secretary Miguel A. Cardona, who says “Students cannot be discriminated against because of their sexual orientation or their gender identity” and goes on to add that schools should “not wait for complaints to come to address these issues…. We need to make sure we are supporting all students in our schools.”

 H.R.5, The Equality Act, which has been passed by the House would prohibit discrimination based on “sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity in areas including public accommodations and facilities, education, federal funding, employment, housing, credit, and the jury system.” This legislation is now with the Senate Judiciary Committee. S-HP

You can point out to your Congressmembers that these state-by-state infringements on the rights of transexual individuals demonstrate the critical need for federal-level protections barring any kind of gender-based discrimination. Urge your Senators in particular to support H.R.5: find them here. Find your representative here.

And urge swift, positive action on H.R.5 by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), Chair, Senate Judiciary Committee, 224 Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington DC 20510, (202) 224-7703. @SenatorDurbin.

3. Citizenship provisions for international adoptees

Currently, children adopted internationally by a U.S. citizen have a right to automatic citizenship, but that wasn’t the case before the passage of the Child Citizenship Act of 2000. And while the Child Citizenship Act was written to include many adoptees in the U.S. at the time of its passage, it did not include international adoptees who reached the age of 18 prior to February 27, 2001. As is the case with “Dreamers,” those brought to the U.S. as young children without documentation, this group of pre-2001 adoptees are in a position of unexpectedly discovering they don’t have citizenship in the nation they have always considered home. The Adoptee Citizenship Act of 2021 (H.R.1593 in the House; S.967 in the Senate) would close this gap, granting citizenship to international adoptees who came of age before February 27, 2001. H.R.1593 is currently with the House Judiciary Committee’s Immigration and Citizenship Subcommittee. S.967 is with the Senate Judiciary Committee. Both pieces of legislation have bipartisan co-sponsorship. S-HP

To get this important legislation through, you can urge quick, positive action on H.R.1953 by the House Judiciary Committee and its Immigration and Citizenship Subcommittee and on on S.967 by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Addresses are here. You could also encourage your Representative to vocally support H.R.1953 and your Senators to vocally support S.967.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

4. Refugee numbers soaring. Few arrive in North America.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic and restrictions on movement, in 2020 nearly 3 million people left their homelands to become refugees, reports the Associated Press. This is the ninth consecutive year to see an increase in the number of forcibly displaced people. The causes of this increase include war, human rights violations, famine, ethnic “cleansing,” and climate disasters. The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) documents the steady growth in displacement around the globe. Globally, there are currently more than 82 million forcibly displaced people. Between 2018 and 2020, an estimated 1 million children were born as refugees. Over two-thirds of refugees come from just five countries, according to the UNHCR: Syria, Venezuela, Afghanistan, South Sudan, and Myanmar. And 40% are hosted in five countries: Turkey (which hosts 3.7 million refugees), Colombia, Pakistan, Uganda, and Germany. Canada accepted only about 50,000 refugees in 2019, 40% of whom were privately sponsored, according to Statistics Canada. The US capped refugee admissions at 30,000 in fiscal 2019, according to the Pew Research Center. S-HP/RLS

A Canadian professor has established the Refugee Story Bank of Canada, where refugees in Canada can submit their stories. Another site of refugee stories, 1000 Dreams, was just launched by Witness Change.

Miles4Migrants, which arranges transportation for people released from ICE detention–often with no money and no ability to get to family members–suggests that you might want to contribute your frequent flyer miles to help them enable refugees to reach home.

SCIENCE, HEALTH, TECHNOLOGY & THE ENVIRONMENT

5. Heat, drought, and heat illnesses in workers

A few days before the start of summer, the West Coast and Southwest–already in a mega-drought–are seeing record-breaking temperatures. According to the New York Times, a number of cities—including Palm Springs, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, and Billings, Montana—are experiencing triple-digit temperatures and some 50 million Americans face heat-related warnings. Some scientists believe that drought in the Southwest–and all that follows–is here to stay, according to the Guardian. NPR reports that, as of June 17, there were 33 active large fires across the West. The largest of these, east of Phoenix, involves more than 175,000 acres and is 73% contained. A 24,000-acre fire is burning northeast of Yellowstone National Park. Another major fire is burning outside of Helena, Montana.  Still another, the Willow Fire, is burning in California near Tassajara, and the Backbone Fire, near Payson, Arizona, has just grown to 17,126 acres.

These conditions drive home the importance of the Asuncion Valdivia Heat Illness and Fatality Prevention Act, H.R.2193, which requires the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to set safety standards to prevent exposure to excessive heat, both indoors and outdoors. H.R.2193 defines excessive heat as “levels that exceed the capacities of the body to maintain normal body functions and may cause heat-related injury, illness, or fatality.” The text of this legislation explains that “Asuncion Valdivia was a California farmworker who died of heat stroke in 2004 after picking grapes for 10 straight hours in 105-degree temperatures. Instead of calling an ambulance, his employer told his son to drive Mr. Valdivia home. On his way home, he started foaming at the mouth and died.” H.R.2193 is currently with the House Education and Labor Committee; it has 14 cosponsors. RLS/S-HP

To address this issue, urge quick, positive—and life-saving—action on H.R.2193 by the House Education and Labor Committee: Representative Bobby Scott (D-VA), Chair, House Education and Labor Committee, 2176 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington DC 20515, (202) 225-3725. @BobbyScott. You can check whether your Representative is a cosponsor of H.R.2193 and thank or nudge as appropriate. Find your representative here.

RESOURCES

Data on refugees in the US: Pew Research Center. Refugee statistics worldwide: UNHCR.

No More Deaths/No Más Muertes‘ three-part report, Left to Die, details how asylum-seekers in the desert are abandoned by the Border Patrol. Though 911 calls are routed to them, they did not respond in 63% of cases. Lee Sandusky’s piece of literary journalism, “Scenes from an Emergency Clinic in the Sonoran Desert,” eloquently describes the work No More Deaths/No Más Muertes does.

The National Lawyers Guild has a series of webinars on issues from the global repression of voting, the local suppression of voting and the detention of immigrants.

trans hotline with both Canadian and US numbers–and with operators who speak Spanish–provides services by and for trans people. You don’t need to be in crisis to call, and if you are a friend or a family member of a trans person, you can also call to find out how to support them. If you would like to know more about the organization, see their staff bios here.

Moms Rising has actions you can take to celebrate Juneteenth–specific ways to work against inequality.

The Americans of Conscience checklist has new actions every other week that will enable you to make your voice heard quickly and clearly. In addition, they have a good news section that will help you keep going.

Among the organizations that supports kids and their families at the border is RAICES, which provides legal support. The need for their services has never been greater. You can support them here.

Al Otro Lado provides legal and humanitarian services to people in both the US and Tijuana. You can find out more about their work here.

The Minority Humanitarian Foundation supports asylum-seekers who have been released by ICE with no means of transportation or ways to contact sponsors. You can donate frequent-flyer miles to make their efforts possible.

The group Angry Tias and Abuelas provides legal advice and services to asylum-seekers at the border. You can follow their work on Facebook and see the list of volunteer opportunities they have posted.

News You May Have Missed: June 6, 2021

“grassy narrows” by howlmontreal is licensed under CC BY 2.0

DOMESTIC NEWS

1. Legislation would address sexual assault in the military

Every year the U.S. military releases a report on sexual assaults in the armed services; every two years, that report is accompanied by an anonymous survey of service members asking whether they have experienced sexual assault in the armed services, reporting by the Associated Press explains. In 2018, the last year for which both a report and survey data are available, over 20,000 service members reported being sexually assaulted (a 37% increase over the 2016 survey), but only one-third of them filed a formal report. Men who have been assaulted are even less likely to report than women, according to the Military Times. A likely explanation for this discrepancy between the number of assaults and the number reported is armed services members’ lack of faith in the efficacy of current procedures for investigating and adjudicating allegations of sexual assault. Currently, such allegations fall under the purview of military commanders, a practice that would change if a proposed bill becomes law, according to NPR

 For years, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and other members of Congress have fought to have sexual assault allegations adjudicated by independent judge advocates, rather than commanding officers. Senator Gillibrand and others are concerned that in order to maintain unit cohesion, commanding officers often are reluctant to pursue charges, reduce charges, or overrule recommendations for courts martial in response to allegations of sexual assault, reporting in The Hill makes clear. In response, Congress has regularly considered legislation that would change the process by which allegations of sexual assault in the military are investigated and prosecuted, but this legislation has never passed.

 At last, however, GIllibrand’s proposed legislation has new support in the Senate, NPR notes, in part because of Iowa Republican senator Joni Ernst, who is a combat veteran. An advisory panel appointed by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin shortly after he was confirmed has recommended an approach similar to that advocated for by Gillibrand and others. The Hill now reports that Austin is days away from making a decision on whether to follow these recommendations. At the same time, legislation recently introduced in Congress could mandate that changes such as those recommended by the panel be initiated. In addition to sexual assault, crimes such as murder, manslaughter, child endangerment, child pornography and negligent homicide would be addressed by military prosecutors, not commanding officers. 

S.1520, the Military Justice Improvement and Increasing Prevention Act, has 64 cosponsors: 20 Republicans, 2 Independents, and 42 Democrats. H.R.3224, To Improve the Responses of the Department of Defense to Sex-Related Offenses, is supported by 185 cosponsors, all of the Democrats. Text is not yet available for this legislation, but it is likely to be similar to that of last year’s I Am Vanessa Guillén Act (S.4600 in the Senate; H.R.8270 in the House), which was introduced, but never made it out of committee in either house of Congress. This legislation had three main provisions:

◉ A listing of sexual harassment as a crime under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (currently rape and sexual assault are listed, but not sexual harassment);

◉ A requirement that the Secretary of Defense establish a process that allows service members to confidentially lodge complaints of sex-related offenses;

◉ A reassignment of such cases away from the chain of command to an Office of the Special Prosecutor in each service branch (if a branch does not have such an office, one would be established). S-HP

In the Canadian military, there were 581 incidents of sexual assault and 221 of sexual harrasment over the five year period in which there were supposed to be concerted efforts to address the problem, according to the CBC. Activists trying to address the problem note that sexual assault is drastically under-reported, since those assaulted have to report first to their commanding officer–who may have been their assailant–and since perpetrators can easily “plead down” to get only administrative sanctions. RLS/S-HP

To have a voice on this issue, you can urge not only the Secretary of Defense, the Armed Services Committees of both houses of Congress, and your Congressmembers to act now to create an independent system to address sex-related offenses in the military. Addresses are here. In addition, you can ask your Senators to vote for S.1520 when it comes to them.

2. American democracy at risk

“Is America heading to a place where it can no longer call itself a democracy?” This is the unnerving question that opened a recent piece in the Guardian. The writer references what has become, unfortunately, the “usual” round of concerns: legislation limiting voting, moves making it easier to replace the results of an election with an outcome chosen by a few officials, continuing false claims of election fraud, Senate Republican’s refusal to allow a bipartisan investigation of the events of January 6, and ill-informed, ill-run recounts of balloting in the 2020 presidential election. One hundred political theorists signed a letter arguing that “Collectively, these initiatives are transforming several states into political systems that no longer meet the minimum conditions for free and fair elections. Hence, our entire democracy is now at risk.”

The effects that changes to voting laws will have are clear in a piece in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about the disparate impact of legislation in Georgia. Their findings include the following:

◉ Over 272,000 registered voters in the state don’t have a driver’s license or other ID or, if they have ID, they do not have it on file with election officials, which means they will either have to provide such ID in advance of the state’s next election or find themselves disenfranchised.

◉ Those who registered to vote before 2016, when Georgia began automatic voter registration at driver’s license offices, may be erroneously listed as not having ID, and this may continue to be the case with voters who register via mail, rather than through driver licensing

◉More than 55% of those without ID meeting the new requirements are Black, although just 30% of all voters in the state are Black.

◉The majority of the voters at risk of becoming disenfranchised live in urban areas, where Democratic voters predominate.

Recent changes to voting laws vary by state, but will have similar impacts for voters within those states.

Here is what’s desperately needed: A federal guarantee of voting-rights, more accessible and expanded voting opportunities, reasonable ID requirements, nonpartisan districting, limits on campaign contributions, and much stronger protection against international interference in elections. As we explained last week, the For the People Act would enact all of these—at least for federal elections, which would make it more difficult for states to justify limiting voting opportunities and fairness in smaller electoral contests. Unfortunately, with a 50-50 Senate and a 60-vote requirement for overturning a filibuster, the chances of the For the People Act becoming law are slim–especially since Senator Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) wrote in an op/ed on Sunday that he would not support it. And Manchin, along with Kyrsten Sinema (D-Arizona) is unwilling to consider eliminating the filibuster–meaning that, as the New York Times puts it, “the scale of the catastrophe bearing down on us and the blithe refusal of Manchin and Sinema to help is enough to leave one frozen with despair.” S-HP

You can urge the Senate Majority Leader to continue to bring voting rights legislation before Senate, forcing Republicans, and certain Democrats, to publicly cast votes opposing basic electoral protections. You might also remind Manchin and Sinema that a “democracy’ without full voting rights is not a democracy and insist that allowing the Republican party to disenfranchise low income, urban, and Black voters, and other voters of color, is not the kind of bipartisanship they should be supporting. Addresses are here.

3. Policing: Failure to protect

“Bias in criminal justice takes another form besides excessive force: failure to protect,” as Jane Manning, the Director of the Women’s Equal Justice Project, observes in a Washington Post op-ed. As the Justice Department begins its investigations of police departments accused of racially motivated violence—as with Minneapolis and Louisville, for example—Manning also calls for the investigation of “how departments respond to sexual assault and other gender-based crimes, whose survivors encounter rampant misogyny, homophobia and neglect from law enforcement agencies throughout the country.” Manning cites investigative reporting revealing that both Minneapolis and Louisville have poor records of working with victims of sexual assault: botched investigations, failure to retain evidence and to interview witnesses, and demeaning treatment of victims. Over-policing is a problem; so is selective under-policing. S-HP

To address this issue, urge the Attorney General to be sure that investigations of police violence also examine the handling of sexual assault cases to identify disparate treatment based on gender and or ethnicity. Merrick Garland, Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice, 950 Pennsylvania Ave.NW, Washington DC 20530-0001, (202) 514-2000.

4. Refugee assistance organizations to vet refugee admissions

A group of six refugee organizations have been selected to choose the refugees to be admitted to the US. While they have not been publicly named, sources say they are the International Rescue Committee, along with the London-based Save the Children; two U.S.-based organizations, HIAS and Kids in Need of Defense; and two Mexico-based organizations, Asylum Access and the Institute for Women in Migration, according to NBC News. Operating out of Nogales, Arizona, the IRC is prioritizing those who have been in “Mexico a long time, are in need of acute medical attention or who have disabilities, are members of the LGBTQ community or are non-Spanish speakers.” This effort, which is scheduled to continue only until the end of July, is intended to be a transition from the deeply problematic use of Title 42, under which asylum seekers are summarily deported under the guise of COVID precautions. The number of refugees who can be admitted to the US this fiscal year (which ends in October) was finally raised to 62,500 in May, after the Biden administration received fierce criticism for trying to hold it to 15,000, the Guardian explained. 


 We now have a way to avoid the kinds of draconian cuts to refugee admissions used by the Trump administration and temporarily continued under President Biden. The Lady Liberty Act, H.R.977, would require the U.S. to admit a minimum of 125,000 refugees each fiscal year. This legislation is currently with the House Judiciary Committee’s Immigration and Citizenship Subcommittee. It currently has 58 cosponsors. RLS/S-HP

To increase the number of refugees admitted, urge swift, positive action on H.R.977 by the House Judiciary Committee and its Immigration and Citizenship Subcommittee. Addresses are here.

SCIENCE, HEALTH, TECHNOLOGY & THE ENVIRONMENT

5. Finally, legislation takes on environmental racism

Since the 1970s, researchers and residents have known that communities of color are more likely to have toxic waste dumps situated near them, so that they bear the health consequences of PCBs and other industrial wastes leaching into their water and air. Indigenous communities have been devastated by nuclear and mining waste deposited on their lands. Fracking sites, toxins in water, and air pollution are more likely to affect. communities of color. And, as that radical rag National Geographic reports, communities of color that are also low-income are especially hard-hit. All of this results in more premature babies, lower birth weight babies, higher rates of lung cancer, and more heart disease–exacerbated by lack of access to nutritious food and good medical care. These health vulnerabilities contributed to the higher rates of COVID in communities of colour, as the journal Nature reported last year. Indigenous and Latinx people were 2.4 and 2.3 times as likely to die from COVID as white people, while Black people were nearly twice as likely to die from the disease, the CDC noted last week.

At last, this situation will begin to be addressed legislatively. The Environmental Justice for All Act is a ground-breaking and sweeping piece of legislation intended to address the historical inequity in negative health and environmental effects in communities of color and low-income communities. This legislation has been introduced in both houses of Congress: in the Senate by Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), where it is listed as S.872, and in the House by Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), where it is listed as H.R.2021

The Environmental Justice for All Act would:

◉Prohibit disparate health and environmental impacts of federal laws and programs on the basis of race, color, national origin—and protect communities of color, low-income communities, and tribal or indigenous communities;

◉Give those affected by disparate health and environmental impacts to seek legal remedies;

◉Add environmental justice impact reports for major projects;

◉Expand the current requirements for ingredient listing and warning labeling on a range of products;

◉Establish grants for identifying alternatives to chemicals currently in use in consumer, cleaning, toy, and baby products;

◉Fund programs to increase parks and recreational opportunities in urban areas;

◉Create a White House Environmental Justice Interagency Council responsible for creating environmental justice strategies and guidelines.

The Natural Resources Committee has a veritable library of resources on the bill and on environmental justice issues at their site. And Science Direct has a bibliography of solid information.

S.872 currently has 12 cosponsors—all Democrats— and is with the Environment and Public Works Committee. H.R.2021 currently has 55 cosponsors—again, all Democrats—and is with five committees: Energy and Commerce; Natural Resources; Transportation and Infrastructure; Agriculture; and Education and Labor. RLS/SHP

To bring about real change for communities of color, urge quick, positive action on S.872 by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and on H.R.2021 by the appropriate House Committees. Addresses are here. Also at this link you can see whether your Senators and Representative are co-sponsors of these bills, and thank or nudge as appropriate.

6. Meanwhile, in Canada…


The impact of environmental injustice is also finally being addressed by the Canadian government, as the Toronto Star reported yesterday. Bill C-230 in the House of Commons would launch a national strategy to address environmental racism, including the documentation of environmental hazards in communities of colour and the enforcement of environmental laws. Many Indigenous communities do not have clean drinking water due to toxic waste such as mercury in the Grassy Narrows First Nations community, a contaminant which has led to three generations of people with neurological difficulties, the CBC reports. This is a pattern all over Canada, according to “Clean Water, Broken Promises, an investigative report from Concordia University that was published this year; the research team also publishes a series of blogs and scientific articles about specific instances. RLS

RESOURCES

Among the causes of forced migration is gender-based migration. A webinar from the Bay Area Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild on June 8 will detail these issues.

trans hotline with both Canadian and US numbers–and with operators who speak Spanish–provides services by and for trans people. You don’t need to be in crisis to call, and if you are a friend or a family member of a trans person, you can also call to find out how to support them. If you would like to know more about the organization, see their staff bios here.

Moms Rising has actions you can take to preserve paid leave, unemployment, and access to child care..

The Americans of Conscience checklist has new actions every other week that will enable you to make your voice heard quickly and clearly. In addition, they have a good news section that will help you keep going.

Among the organizations that supports kids and their families at the border is RAICES, which provides legal support. The need for their services has never been greater. You can support them here.

Al Otro Lado provides legal and humanitarian services to people in both the US and Tijuana. You can find out more about their work here.

The Minority Humanitarian Foundation supports asylum-seekers who have been released by ICE with no means of transportation or ways to contact sponsors. You can donate frequent-flyer miles to make their efforts possible.

The group Angry Tias and Abuelas provides legal advice and services to asylum-seekers at the border. You can follow their work on Facebook and see the list of volunteer opportunities they have posted.

News You May Have Missed: May 30, 2021

“Canadian Website Truth and Reconciliation” by Neeta Lind is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Canada celebrates Remembrance Day in November, not Memorial Day–except this year. Flags are at half-mast in Canada, the CBC reports, until further notice “in memory of the thousands of children who were sent to residential schools, for those who never returned and in honour of the families whose lives were forever changed.” Just last week, the graves of 215 children were discovered at Kamloops Indian Residential School by ground-penetrating radar, an effort launched by the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation. Some of the children were as young as 3. In Canada, 150,000 children were required to attend residential schools from 1830-1996. The children suffered terribly and thousands never returned home. Indigenous leaders have said that there are likely many more unmarked grave sites which need to be found. Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, said “Today we honour the lives of those children, and hold prayers that they, and their families, may finally be at peace.”

DOMESTIC NEWS

1. A hundred years after the Tulsa massacre

May 30 was the hundred-year anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre, in which at least 300 people were killed, 10,000 lost their homes, and a thriving Black community was destroyed–burned as well as bombed. Some of the dead were thrown in the river, while others were buried in a mass grave–so efforts to locate the graves of the dead have been halting. As the Washington Post describes it, a well-liked young Black man was accused of assaulting a white girl in an elevator. Though the girl herself did not accuse him, a newspaper headline did–and that was enough for the white mob.

As 107 year old Viola Fletcher, the oldest living survivor of the massacre, told the House Judiciary Subcommittee, ” “I still see Black men being shot; Black bodies lying in the streets,” she said. “I still smell smoke and see fire. I still see Black businesses being burned. I still hear airplanes flying overhead. I hear the screams. I have lived through the massacre every day.”

The massacre was covered up until an undergraduate, Scott Ellsworth, did his senior thesis on it, ultimately publishing a book in 1982, Death in a Promised Land. As the Guardian notes, the white media ignored the story until the Tulsa Race Riot Commission began an investigation the year after the 75th anniversary. Ellsworth’s new book on the massacre and subsequent coming to terms, The Ground Breaking: An American City and Its Search for Justice, was just published. The LA Times details the pathways of others who attempted to uncover the story and keep it alive.

Proposed bans on the teaching of critical race theory may attempt suppress the story of the massacre once again, the Center for Public Integrity notes. But a great deal of documentary work should preserve the memory. The testimony of witnesses and others–including Viola Fletcher–is available on the House Judiciary Committee website. The New York Times has reconstructed photographs of what the Greenwood neighborhood that was destroyed looked like before and after. The first episode of the Watchman series reconstructed the events. And “Dreamland: The Burning of Black Wall Street” premieres on CNN May 31.

2. For the people

It’s a good day to reread the Gettysburg Address: “…that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” It’s also a good day to urge the Senate to pass the For the People Act.

The House has passed H.R.1, its version of the For the People Act; now it’s time for the Senate to pass its version of this legislation, S.1. The For the People Act would defend against the voter-suppression measures being passed in many state legislatures, including Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Montana, Utah and Wyoming. These measures vary from state to state, but have the general effect of making voting more burdensome, particularly for low-income, urban communities and for people of color. The measures include limits on access to absentee ballots (and, in at least one state, a requirement that absentee ballots arrive by the Friday before election day), shortening of early voting periods, and new voter ID laws.

The For the People Act would prevent these kinds of voter suppression measures by expanding registration and voting access in federal elections, and placing limits on the removal of voters from voting rolls. The For the People Act also addresses partisan gerrymandering, election security measures, and campaign finance laws.  Unfortunately, the fate of the For the People Act in the Senate is uncertain. The For the People Act was assigned to the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, where it was not “favorably reported,” significantly increasing the difficulty of bringing this legislation to a floor vote in the Senate. Its situation is also precarious given Republican opposition and the requirement that a supermajority will be needed for its passage. S-HP

The Southern Poverty Law Center is putting on a webinar June 2 on voting rights in the south. You can urge your Senator to support voting rights by working to end the filibuster and to see to it the S.1 reaches the Senate floor and become law. Find your Senators here.

3. Deaths in police custody described as “medical emergencies”

When George Floyd was killed by police last year, the press release was headlined
“Man Dies After Medical Incident During Police Interaction.” As the Guardian reports, this misrepresentation of deaths in police custody as resulting from medical emergencies– ”without disclosing that officers had caused the emergencies through their use of force–” is common. Police have even used the sickle cell trait to account for deaths in police custody, according to exhaustive research by the New York Times–even though sickle cell would hardly account for the brain swelling and leg fracture one Black man experienced, or the blood on officers’ clothing. It was even used early on to account for the death of George Floyd. Sickle cell anemia, according to the Mayo Clinic, can cause fatigue, episodes of pain, chronic pain, and vision changes. Sickle cell trait, cited in some of the reports, is a genetic mutation that usually does not cause symptoms itself but can result in sickle cell disease in children if both parents have it.

The Eric Garner Excessive Use of Force Prevention Act of 2021, HR 1347, would establish that the“application of any pressure to a person’s throat or windpipe, the use of maneuvers that restrict blood or oxygen flow to the brain, or carotid artery restraints that prevent or hinder breathing or reduce intake of air (e.g., a chokehold) constitute a punishment, pain, or penalty” and would prohibit its use based on a person’s immigration status, color, or race. Eric Garner, who was arrested for selling single cigarettes, died when police used a prohibited chokehold. See Ross Gay’s poem about Garner to get a sense of the person who was lost when he was killed. RLS/S-HP

You can share your concerns about misrepresentation and falsehoods in police records and the continuing use of chokeholds: urge swift positive action by the House Judiciary Committee on  H.R.1347. You can also urge your Senators and Representatives to act, along with Attorney General Merrick Garland. Addresses are here.

4. Sexual assault in police custody

As of 2020, it was legal in 34 states for officers to have sex with those they have arrested, if they claimed it was consensual, according to USA Today. Although federal law prohibits sex between officers and inmates–given that inmates are not free to refuse, that prohibition does not cover those who have not been convicted. Sexual assault of people arrested happens all too often; between 2005-2015, an officer was accused of sexual assault every five days, according to an investigation by the Buffalo News. Those assaulted are often afraid to report–or are dissuaded by other officers from doing so, so the numbers are likely significantly higher. As Andrea Ritchie, a researcher with the Barnard Center for Research on Women, told The Crime Report, “Survivors of sexual assault by police are the only survivors of sexual assault who have to report the assault to the people that committed it.  That’s a huge reason they’re not reported.” As Ms. Magazine points out, the victims are often teenagers, or are otherwise vulnerable, particularly women of color. 

A bill now launched in the House would prohibit sex between officers and those they have arrested. As Jackie Speier (D-California) who co-authored the bill said, “There is no consent when one person is exercising the power of law enforcement and the other is handcuffed or in custody.” H.R.2172, the Closing the Law Enforcement Loophole Act, has bipartisan support and would, as the title suggests, close the loophole that allows “consensual” sexual activity between law enforcement officers and those in their custody. This legislation is currently with the House Judiciary. H.R.2172 currently has 24 cosponsors, but could certainly use more. RLS/S-HP

You can urge swift, positive action on H.R.2172 by the House Judiciary Committee. Representative Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Chair, House Judiciary Committee, 2141 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington DC 20515, (202) 225-3951. @RepJerryNadler. You can also check to see whether your Representative is a cosponsor of H.R.2172 and thank or nudge as appropriate. Find your Representative here.

5. Corporations pressured to donate to legislators who voted to overturn the election

Of the 252 House Republicans, 139 voted to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Eight Senators did as well. When polled in February by Reuters, only a few legislators (Gosar, Greene, Gohmert, Jackson) would state publicly that they believed Trump lost the election due to voter fraud. Others hedged and quibbled, as you can see on the Reuters site. Almost all Senate Republicans also voted against the formation of an independent commission to investigate the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol, CNBC reported.

As a result, various corporations suspended political donations to the Republicans who voted to overturn the election, among them Walmart, Amazon, and Morgan Stanley. AT&T pledged not to donate to these candidates, but according to the Dallas Morning News, the company donated to Political Action Committees (PACS) that supported them–an end-run likely to be used often. A third of Republicans who voted to overturn the election results have gotten more political donations since then than they did in the same period of 2019, the Washington Post reports, thanks to small donors. Indeed, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R–Georgia) has raised next to the highest amount of funds among House Republicans.

Now the National Association of Business PACs (NABPAC), the trade association for corporate PACs, is pressuring businesses to restart donations, suggesting that they should “move beyond” the storming of the Capitol, according to MSN News. S-HP/RLS


You may want to tell these business leaders that we haven’t forgotten the insurrection on January 6, the deaths, the injuries, and the 147 Republicans who voted to overturn the election and demand that they hold to their promise to deny those politicians funding—which means no work-arounds involving giving money to multicandidate PACs that fund any of the 147. Addresses are here.

6. Legislation would address the deaths of women in childbirth

In 2018, 17.4 American women died per 100,000 live births, according to the CDC. This puts the US 55th among those countries for which the WHO has data, VOX reported last year. By comparison, over the last 10 years in Canada, the maternal death rate has ranged between 4.5 and 8.7 deaths per 100,000 live births, according to Stats Canada. It doesn’t stop there: “For every maternal death, there are 75 to 100 more (American) women who suffer a life-threatening complication during pregnancy or childbirth,” the Woodrow Wilson Center noted. The most common medical causes are blood clots in the lungs, high blood pressure, and hemorrhage. Black American women are three times as likely to die in childbirth as white women, due to lack of access to medical care and racism in medical care, the CDC said last month.

Two important pieces of maternal health legislation have been ordered reported by the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee. S.1675, the Maternal Health Quality Improvement Act, would fund collection and dissemination of best practices in medical care for pregnant women and new mothers. It would provide grants for states, tribes, or public health officials to implement programs based on these best practices. The legislation would then require a report every two years (the first in 2024) assessing the impact changes in practice have had on preventable maternal health problems and on maternal deaths. S.1675 would require the Department of Health and Human Services to develop guidelines for medical, nursing, and similar training programs “to improve the provision of prenatal care, labor care, birthing, and postpartum care for racial and ethnic minority populations, including with respect to perceptions and biases that may affect the approach to, and provision of, care.” S.1675 was introduced by Senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA) and has bipartisan support with 4 Republican and 2 Democrat cosponsors.

  S.1658, the PUMP for Nursing Mothers Act, which also has bipartisan support, would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to expand access to breastfeeding accommodations in the workplace. S.1658 also has bipartisan support. S-HP

If you want to lower the rate of women’s deaths due to childbirth, tell the Senate Majority Leader that you want to see S.1675 and S.1658 brought to the Senate floor and approved, the sooner, the better. Senator Charles E. Schumer (D-NY), Senate Majority Leader, 322 Hart Senate Office Building, Washington DC 20510, (202) 224-6542. @SenSchumer. You can also urge your Senators, Republican or Democrat, to advocate strongly for these bills that bipartisan support. Find your Senators here.

7. Family Detention: steps forward, steps back

The family detention center in Georgia where women endured forced hysterectomies and other gynecological procedures is being closed, according to the Intercept.  Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to shut that center and another one under the same management in Massachusetts. Last fall, a whistleblower, a nurse working at the Georgia center, came forward to describe these abuses, along with inadequate responses to medical needs. Organizers in the area say that these practices had gone on for more than a decade; some of the women who complained about their treatment there were subsequently deported.

Two south Texas detention centers will also be turned into short-term “reception centers,” Mother Jones reported in February. The Karnes City facility had held families who were going to be deported without being permitted to make asylum claims and the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley held families appealing deportation orders, some of them for over a year.

Meanwhile, after reports of neglect and abuse of Black mothers and children in immigration prisons, particularly at Karnes, RAICES (The Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services), the Cameroon American Council, the Haitian Bridge Alliance, and the UndocuBlack Network filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) demanding an investigation. That was two months ago. DHS has not taken action in response to this claim, so the organizations are now encouraging those concerned with abuse in immigration facilities to write to Secretary of DHS Alejandro Mayorkas to add to their calls for investigation—and to demand the immediate release of mothers and children in immigration detention. RLS/S-HP

You can sign the RAICES petition here. You can also join the call for investigation, release of mothers and children, and an end to the abuse of Black mothers and children in detention. Alejandro Mayorkas, Secretary of Homeland Security, 3801 Nebraska Ave. NW, Washington DC 20016, (202) 282-8000. @AliMayorkas

8. Student loans and medical debt would be eased by Maxine Waters’ bill

In her statement about H.R.2547, the Comprehensive Debt Collection Improvement Act, Maxine Waters described the kinds of predatory lending and loan collection practices Americans cope with and talked about the need for protections that “will help the most vulnerable consumers, including servicemembers, student borrowers, people of color, and those struggling under the weight of medical debt during this unprecedented pandemic.” H.R.2547 applies the same protections for federally-backed student loans to private student loans; prohibits a consumer reporting agency from adding any information related to a debt arising from a medically necessary procedure to a consumer credit; and applies certain consumer protections regarding debt collection to debts owed to federal agencies, states, debt buyers, and businesses engaged in nonjudicial foreclosures. In simple terms, this legislation is intended to “level the playing field” for consumers with various types of debt. This legislation now moves on to the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee.

A little nod to Canada: the government has suspended the accumulation of interest on student loans till March 31, 2022 and proposed to extend it till March 31, 2023. S-HP

You can urge swift, positive action on H.R.2547 by the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee: Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Chair, Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, 503 Hart Senate Office Building, Washington DC 20510, (202) 225-2315. @SenSherrodBrown

9. Asylum-seekers deported under Title 42 assaulted, kidnapped

Although the Biden administration brought in 6,000 asylum-seekers who had been forced to wait for many months in rudimentary camps on the other side of the border, and although the administration has stopped deporting children–except those from Mexico, it continues to rely onTitle 42, which uses disease (in this case the COVID-19 pandemic) to justify summary expulsion of potential asylum applicants. The consequences are devastating: A human rights report last month found that of 1310 asylum-seekers who were interviewed and surveyed, 492 had been attacked or kidnapped. Black asylum-seekers were particularly targeted; 60% of them had experienced violence, according to the Intercept. The methods of deportation have been especially cruel; asylum-seekers were told they were being flown to another US city and then were flown to Mexico, where they may very well know no one and immediately become targets of violence, the Intercept reports. They have been dropped in border towns in the middle of the night, which agreements between Mexico and the US have prohibited.

The practice is particularly harmful for Central American asylum seekers who are fleeing multiple forms of violence and climate crisis-induced devastation. This policy disregards our U.S. obligations to asylum seekers under international law and the Constitution’s guarantee of due process. The ACLU has filed suit to end this practice; as of May 26, their lawyers had not reached an agreement with the government, but negotiations will continue until June 8, Newsweek reports. Meanwhile, the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project has been able to get 75 families in through humanitarian exception, and is continuing to apply for these exceptions for families in the most need. RLS/S-HP

You can write, call or tweet Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and President Biden and ask that they end the use of Title 42 to exclude Central American asylum seekers. President Joe Biden, the White House, 1600 Pennsylvania NW, Washington DC 20500, (202) 456-1111. @POTUS. Alejandro Mayorkas, 202-282-8000. @AliMayorkas.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

10. Hundreds of thousands of Afghans who worked with US troops risk death

Here’s a math problem with life-or-death consequences. As the U.S. prepares to withdraw from Afghanistan, Afghans who cooperated with the U.S. are worried that without visas allowing them to travel to the U.S., they will quickly become targets of the Taliban, which is already seizing areas previously held by U.S./Afghani coalition forces. According to Noah Coburn, a political anthropologist whose research focuses on Afghanistan and who is cited in AP reporting, there may be up to 300,000 Afghans who worked as translators and in other positions for U.S. forces. These individuals may be eligible for Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) as a result of their services, but the SIV application process currently takes approximately three years. Add to that the fact that, according to the AP, the U.S. has only 26,500 SIVs available for Afghans—and their family members—who worked with them. Almost half of those visas have already been allotted to applicants. The U.S. also has 18,000 visa applications currently being processed.

  So, here’s the math:

– A total of 25,500 visas minus the 12,000 already assigned (an estimate, but a lowish one in line with AP-provided data), leaves 13,500 visas still available.

– Subtract the 18,000 incompletely processed visas, and those the U.S. is offering, results in a shortage of 4,500 visas (assuming applicants are qualified)

– Given the number of Afghans who worked for the U.S. forces—the estimate the AP cited for the population of this group was 300,000, but let’s reduce it by a third to 200,000 to be conservative, then add in the 4,500 from above—as many as 204,500 Afghans who served the U.S. face the likelihood of being forced to remain in Afghanistan, where the Taliban has made it clear that it intends to kill those who served the U.S.

 The figure of 204,500 may well be high. Some Afghans who worked with the U.S. will choose to remain in Afghanistan, but it’s clear that the current SIV allocations are inadequate, particularly when one considers the fact that those applying for these visas will also be including family members in their applications. The Biden administration has promised to review the SIV application process, but that review and any changes it might result in almost certainly won’t be completed before the announced U.S. withdrawal date of September 11.

 This situation could be slightly mitigated with the passage of H.R.3513, which would add an additional 4,000 visas to this group. Unfortunately, 4,000 isn’t nearly enough. S-HP

If you feel strongly about preserving the lives of Afghans who worked for the US government, urge the Biden administration to speed up the review of its SIV program and any subsequent changes so that these can benefit Afghans who worked with U.S. forces and call for an increase in the number of SIVs while that review is underway. Addresses are here.

SCIENCE, HEALTH, TECHNOLOGY & THE ENVIRONMENT

11. Damage due to mining, jobs in other sectors for miners, addressed by legislation.

A set of three pieces of legislation that would address the ecological damage done by surface mining and help communities and individuals dependent on mining develop new economic possibilities have all been “ordered reported” by the committee considering them, which means they can now be brought to a vote of the full House.

H.R.1146, the Community Reclamation Partnerships Act, authorizes state-community partnerships to address the environmental damage done by abandoned mines.

H.R.1733, the RECLAIM Act, expands eligible uses for the Abandoned Mine Reclamation Fund.- H.R.1734, Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act Amendments, would allow the Secretary of the Interior to delegate emergency reclamation activities to States and Tribes, expanding the possibilities for reclamation. S-HP

You can urge your Representative to support all three pieces of legislation—H.R.1146, H.R.1733, H.R.1734—both to heal the ecological damage done by mining and to help communities develop new economic alternatives. Find your Representative here.

RESOURCES

Among the causes of forced migration is gender-based migration. A webinar from the Bay Area Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild on June 8 will detail these issues.

trans hotline with both Canadian and US numbers–and with operators who speak Spanish–provides services by and for trans people. You don’t need to be in crisis to call, and if you are a friend or a family member of a trans person, you can also call to find out how to support them. If you would like to know more about the organization, see their staff bios here.

Moms Rising has actions you can take to preserve reproductive rights and trans rights.

The Americans of Conscience checklist has new actions every other week that will enable you to make your voice heard quickly and clearly. In addition, they have a good news section that will help you keep going.

Among the organizations that supports kids and their families at the border is RAICES, which provides legal support. The need for their services has never been greater. You can support them here.

Al Otro Lado provides legal and humanitarian services to people in both the US and Tijuana. You can find out more about their work here.

The Minority Humanitarian Foundation supports asylum-seekers who have been released by ICE with no means of transportation or ways to contact sponsors. You can donate frequent-flyer miles to make their efforts possible.

The group Angry Tias and Abuelas provides legal advice and services to asylum-seekers at the border. You can follow their work on Facebook and see the list of volunteer opportunities they have posted.

News You May Have Missed: May 23, 2021

“COVID-19 Virus” by Trinity Care Foundation is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

DOMESTIC NEWS

1. Scandalous dereliction of duty by OSHA around COVID

15 months after the beginning of the pandemic in the US, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) finally sent draft workplace standards to the Office of Management and Budget for review. The standards should cover ways to prevent transmission of COVID in the workplace, but it is not known what they will include, Medscape reports. Under the Trump administration, OSHA refused to offer guidance to employers, even in high-risk industries such as meat packing and health care–to date, an estimated 3,758 health care workers have died of COVID, according to the Center for Public Integrity. 50,000 meat-packing workers in the US have been infected, according to ProPublica, and at least 250 have died. The day after he was inaugurated, President Biden told OSHA to decide by March 15 whether it was going to issue an emergency standard mandating mask-wearing and other measures, but the agency allowed the deadline to pass without doing so. Under Trump, OSHA had been virtually dismantled; it is not clear to what degree it has been restored, as badly needed as its work is. National Nurses United supports the emergency standard, saying that 81 per cent of their members surveyed were being required to re-use PPE–still. The AFL-CIO’s director of occupational safety and health said that Americans have a false sense of security, as if the pandemic were nearly over. “We’re now in a fourth surge,” she told the Center for Public Integrity. “We have variants wreaking havoc in some cities, and we know we’re not out of the woods.” RLS

2. Children suffering in detention centers

Over 35,000 children and teenagers who arrived at the border have been deported since the beginning of 2021, according to TracImmigration, which has interactive graphs revealing the status of juveniles at the border in various categories. Over 25,000 of these young people were not represented by anyone in hearings. Those who have been able to stay have been packed in Health and Human Services shelters–then reunited with sponsors in the United States. 40 per cent have been reunited with parents, another 40 per cent with other family members or friends, according to Vice. On May 2nd, there were some 22,000 children in HHS custody. Conditions in the shelters are sometimes dreadful, with bad food, few opportunities to bathe, and no clean clothes, according to the New York Times. A BBC report today describes kids wet from sleeping under leaking pipes, freezing at night with only one emergency blanket, suffering from lice, catching COVID, becoming ill on bad food. A number suffer from depression and told volunteers they are considering suicide.

It takes an average of 30 days to place a child or teenager with an appropriate sponsor–family member or friend, according to Vice–well over the legal limit of 72 hours. Still, according to HHS staff, it is time-consuming to vet sponsors, making sure that the sponsor is safe and that the child is not being trafficked. But parents describe the process of retrieving their children as arduous, and the children themselves have years of immigration proceedings ahead of them–after which they can still be deported. 

Earlier in May, at least nine busloads of children were kept overnight on busses, some for several days. They were supposed to be en route to reunite with their families, but the company relocating them could not account for why they were held for so long, according to NBC News. 

The Dallas Morning News quoted Dr. Amy Cohen, a psychiatrist who founded the nonprofit Every.Last.One, who said that the time it takes for children to reconnect to their families is damaging to them: “There is an enormous amount of clinical data to show that if you withhold from traumatized children the capacity to be in touch with their own family members, with their own parents, that you are absolutely damaging them,” she said. RLS

You can contribute to or volunteer for one of the organizations supporting children at the border, among them Every.Last.One. See the Resources, below. You can also speak up about conditions in detention centers and about the time it is taking to connect children to sponsors. Addresses are here.

3. Haitians granted temporary protected status

Haitians in the U.S. by May 21 will be granted temporary protected status by the Biden administration, according to Buzzfeed. With political instability in Haiti, residents have been fleeing gang violence and kidnappings, but have been rapidly deported from the US. Now, the 100,000 Haitians already here will be able to work, safe from deportation, but the TPS status will not cover new arrivals or anyone who was already deported. RLS

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

4. Deaths of protesters in Colombia due to live fire from police

Last week, we described the protests by millions of people in Colombia, which originated in a flawed and punitive tax reform initiative (since withdrawn) but which were fueled by acute inequality and poverty–the poverty rate increased from 36 percent in 2019 to 42.5 percent in 2020. At least 42 people have been killed by police and 134 are missing. Protests are also responding to police violence; a 17 year old girl killed herself last week after being sexually assaulted by police officers, according to Democracy Now. Videos of the deaths of four of those protesters have been analyzed by the Washington Post, which has posted clips of the shooting on its site; they clearly show that three of them were killed by live fire, which police are only supposed to use if they are under “imminent threat of death or serious injury, or to prevent a particularly serious crime that involves a serious threat to life.” Charges have just been brought against the police officer who killed one of the protesters, according to CNN. RLS

Rep. Gregory Meeks, the head of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, along with other House members,  has called for the application of the Leahy Law to freeze U.S. assistance to Colombian security forces. You can use the link from the Colombia Scholars Network to ask your representative to invoke the Leahy Law in response to the situation in Colombia.

5. Thousands in Israel march for peace

As of Sunday, the ceasefire in Gaza has held, according to Reuters, and mediators are trying to persuade all sides to keep the peace. On Saturday, thousands of Israelis marched in Tel Aviv calling for peace, according to the Jerusalem Post. Hundreds also protested outside the residence of Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, calling on him to resign and accusing him of prolonging the fighting to advance his own interests.

Hospitals in Gaza are over-run by people injured in the fighting and by a surge in COVID cases, which was spread in crowded shelters, according to the Washington Post. Only 2 per cent of people in Gaza have received the vaccine, while 60 per cent of Israelis are vaccinated. Meanwhile, Gaza’s health-care system, which had already been fragile, has been further threatened by the destruction of a company that produces three-D printed medical products, the CBC reports. Under the blockade imposed by Egypt and Israel, medical supplies are impossible to import. The company was producing, among other things, face shields and ventilators. RLS

SCIENCE, HEALTH, TECHNOLOGY & THE ENVIRONMENT

6. The WHO and the CDC finally acknowledge airborne transmission of the coronavirus

A new book on COVID’s Cassandras, The Premonition: A Pandemic Story, by Michael Lewis, on how all the systems failed to preserve the US from the pandemic, says essentially that while Trump was a problem, the bigger problem was “The bureaucratic disease of under-reaction [which] runs deep in America’s fragmented, underfunded health system.” As one of Lewis’s sources puts it, “Trump was a comorbidity,” but the CDC was a particular culprit. Reviewed in the New York Times, the book describes how various scientists and public health experts who raised the alarm about COVID-19 were silenced, unable to prevent the catastrophe that happened. 

A particularly disastrous failure, as Wired points out, is that the WHO refused to listen to 36 scientists who pointed out that COVID-19 was likely spread through aerosol transmission–that is, particles hung in the air where they could be inhaled by someone else. The difference between airborne and droplet transmission is crucial, as Wired put it: “To combat droplets, a leading precaution is to wash hands frequently with soap and water. To fight infectious aerosols, the air itself is the enemy.” 

Like unpacking a mystery novel, the Wired story explains how an error in scientific calculation from the 1930s became gospel in medical thinking over the decades. The error–how small a droplet had to be before it could hang in the air–led to the WHO’s assertion that a 3-6 foot distance between people would prevent transmission, because the viral droplets would fall to the ground. Not until the winter of 2020 did the WHO begin to talk about airborne transmission, and even then not very clearly. On April 30, 2021 the New York Times pointed out, the WHO changed its website to read that particles that float could transmit COVID-19. The CDC followed suit.

The stakes here are massive. If it had been widely understood–if it were widely understood now–that crowded, unventilated spaces were the biggest issue, not surfaces, then the emphasis would have been on ventilation and on masks–better fitting masks much earlier. Many fewer people would be dead.  RLS

7. Millions of barrels of DDT decaying off the coast of Southern California

As many as half a million corroding barrels of DDT off the coast of Southern California are an environmental disaster in process, which is already leading to cancer cases in marine mammals, according to a recent story by CBS News. One in four sea lions have cancer, according to Frontiers in Marine Science, likely due to pesticide contaminants and a herpes virus. Humans are also at risk, as DDT moves up the food chain, ending up in ocean fish we eat. Largely due to the work of pioneering biologist, Rachel Carson, DDT–a pesticide used to kill mosquitos–was declared a “probable carcinogen” by the FDA in 1972.  As CBS reports, the dumped barrels were first identified in the 80s by a California Regional Water Quality Control Board scientist but then somehow forgotten. Then, last October, the LA TImes did a piece on David Valentine, a U.C. Santa Barbara scientist, who sent a deep-sea robot down and saw the leaking barrels. There is no clean-up strategy, the Times says–the EPA has one in progress but it is not expected to be completed for another four years. Women exposed to DDT as children are five times as likely to develop breast cancer as women who were not; a new study shows that the granddaughters of women exposed to DDT are more likely to develop obesity and to get their periods early, both risk factors for breast cancer, according to Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. RLS

You might want to tell the California State Environmental and Toxic Materials (ESTM) Committee that four years is too long for action on leaking barrels of DDT.

RESOURCES

Read Heather Cox Richardson’s column to keep up with how the formation of a bipartisan commission to investigate the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol is being blocked and how efforts to suppress the 2020 vote continue. And actually, read her every day to see how today’s events live in yesterday’s context.

trans hotline with both Canadian and US numbers–and with operators who speak Spanish–provides services by and for trans people. You don’t need to be in crisis to call, and if you are a friend or a family member of a trans person, you can also call to find out how to support them. If you would like to know more about the organization, see their staff bios here.

Moms Rising has actions you can take to preserve reproductive rights and trans rights.

The Americans of Conscience checklist has new actions every other week that will enable you to make your voice heard quickly and clearly. In addition, they have a good news section that will help you keep going.

Among the organizations that supports kids and their families at the border is RAICES, which provides legal support. The need for their services has never been greater. You can support them here.

Al Otro Lado provides legal and humanitarian services to people in both the US and Tijuana. You can find out more about their work here.

The Minority Humanitarian Foundation supports asylum-seekers who have been released by ICE with no means of transportation or ways to contact sponsors. You can donate frequent-flyer miles to make their efforts possible.

The group Angry Tias and Abuelas provides legal advice and services to asylum-seekers at the border. You can follow their work on Facebook and see the list of volunteer opportunities they have posted.

News You May Have Missed: May 16, 2021

A woman reacts while standing near the rubble of a building that was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike on Saturday that housed The Associated Press, broadcaster Al-Jazeera and other media outlets, in Gaza City, Sunday, May 16, 2021. (AP Photo/Adel Hana). Used by permission.

According to the Toronto Star, by Monday, May 17 over 200 Palestinians, including 59 children, had been killed by Israeli attacks. Rockets from Gaza had killed eight people in Israel, including a 5-year-old boy. Journalist Shaun King reported that in a single hour late Sunday night, Israel dropped 100 bombs. Gaza’s power station is almost out of fuel, the Star reported, and there is no clean drinking water. Governments in the region are urgently trying to broker a ceasefire, but U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters on Monday that the U.S. would not pressure the two sides for an immediate ceasefire, the AP reported. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has called for both sides to stand down, and one of Canada’s opposition parties, the NDP, has demanded that Canada stop arming one side in the conflict. On May 5, the Biden administration approved the sale of $735 million in precision-guided weapons to Israel, according to the Washington Post.

On May 15, Israeli forces bombed the building that housed the AP, Al-Jazeera and other media organizations, saying that Hamas was using the space for military intelligence, but the U. S. Secretary of State said he had seen no evidence of this, the AP reported. Reporters Without Borders has called for the International Criminal Court to investigate the attack on 23 media outlets in the Gaza Strip as a war crime.

If you think the Secretary of State should press for a ceasefire, you can contact him at @ABlinken or via Amnesty International’s petition. J Street, which describes itself as pro-Israel and pro-peace, has a petition you can click to ask Biden to call for a ceasefire in order to protect both Israelis and Palestinians. If you want to tell Justin Trudeau to stop arms sales to Israel, you can reach him here or at @JustinTrudeau. A UK organization, Medical Aid for Palestinians, is collecting funds for medical supplies for Gaza.

DOMESTIC NEWS

1. Teenagers held in indefinite ICE detention

An unknown number of teenagers have been held in ICE detention facilities for as long as several years, even though the Flores law forbids it, except in cases where the young person has committed a “chargeable offense.”  Recent revelations indicate that some of those being held have not committed such an offense, and ICE is not explaining why they are being held, according to the Nation. They are far from their families in the U.S. and they had not had legal representation until an attorney at the University of Washington’s Center for Human Rights noticed teenagers otherwise unaccounted for were appearing on rosters and in hearings. A psychiatrist who was finally permitted to see them indicated that they were depressed, on medication that they didn’t know the name of, and were not receiving education to speak of. Small scuffles with other teenagers were used as evidence to keep them incarcerated, the Nation explains. Even with representation, involvement by the ACLU, and assistance from the immigration organization Every.Last.One., one young man was transferred to an adult facility anyway–and so he requested to be deported to Guatemala instead, having lost two years of his life to detention.

Teennagers are also at risk in a detention center in a Dallas emergency shelter, according to the Dallas Morning News, which reported that 2300 boys 13-17 at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center “suffer from a lack of fresh air and sunlight, depression and limited access to phones to call their families.” While staff say the goal is to reunite them with family members within 7-10 days, the Dallas Morning News reported on one case where the teenager had been there for five weeks. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told the Morning News that the teenagers stay there an average of 30 days before they are reunified with family. These emergency shelters were set up by Health and Human Services as a result of the influx of unaccompanied children and teenagers, as many as 19,000 seeking asylum without an adult family member in March. Still, the shelters are unlicensed, FBI checks have been waived, and the conditions there are distressing, with kids only allowed one ten-minute call a week to their parents. Some are hungry, imploring volunteers for food, according to the Daily Beast. Wendy Young, the lawyer who is president of the D.C.-based legal nonprofit KIND which is contracted to provide legal representation to  the teenagers, is concerned about their mental health: “These are kids who have obviously been traumatized in their own country, traumatized on the journey here and traumatized when they are taken into custody,” she said. RLS

You can write to appropriate officials–and to your senators and representatives–to ask them what they are doing about the teenagers who are being kept illegally, inexplicably, and secretly in long-term detention. You can also raise the issue of the conditions under which teenagers are being held before being released. Addresses are here. If you want to support KIND, you can do so at their site.

2. Biden picks Trump-era immigration judges

One of the things the Trump administration was quite effective at was the appointment of judges. His three Supreme Court appointments got plenty of media coverage, as did several appointments to the federal bench. What got very little coverage at the time was Trump’s effectiveness in placing conservative appointees in positions as immigration court judges.  Earlier this month, President Biden submitted his first slate of appointees to immigration judgeships, 17 individuals, all originally selected for those positions during the Trump administration, according to the Hill. The Hill characterizes the members of this group as “former prosecutors and counselors for Immigration and Customs Customs Enforcement (ICE) as well as a few picks with little immigration experience,” noting that “Almost none have made their career representing migrants in court.” The Hill quotes Georgetown Law School Professor Paul Schmidt —who worked for 21 years as an immigration judge before moving to academia—expressing concern that, “No one on that list [of 17 nominees] is among the top 100 asylum authorities in the country, and that’s the kind of people they should be hiring—not prosecutorial re-treads.”

Immigration Impact notes that most of the 17 have backgrounds as either prosecutors or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) employees. And the only two who have experience working as defense attorneys have also worked for ICE. S-HP

If you want to make sure that Trump’s immigration policies are not enshrined into law, insist that the President and the Justice Department follow up on their promises to make our immigration system more fair and humane and emphasize that one way they can do that is by nominating individuals with backgrounds in immigration law who have worked previously defending immigrants, not those who were originally selected by the Trump administration. President Joe Biden, the White House, 1600 Pennsylvania NW,Washington DC 20500, (202) 456-1111. @POTUS. Merrick Garland, Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice, 950 Pennsylvania Ave.NW, Washington DC 20530-0001, (202) 514-2000. @TheJusticeDept.

3. Preserving global family planning

In 1984 the Reagan administration issued the “Mexico City Policy,” which stipulated that all foreign nongovernmental agencies getting U.S. family planning assistance certify that they neither perform abortion nor provide counselling about abortion procedures. When Trump was in office, his administration expanded that ban to apply to pretty much all global health aid—HIV, malaria, and mother and child health—not just family planning.

 In late January, not long after taking office, President Biden rescinded the Mexico City Policy and took additional steps to expand global family planning access, including access to abortion. Associated Press reporting on Biden’s moves cites a memorandum Biden sent to his cabinet: “These excessive conditions on foreign and development assistance undermine the United States’ efforts to advance gender equality globally by restricting our ability to support women’s health and programs that prevent and respond to gender-based violence…. The expansion of the policy has also affected all other areas of global health assistance, limiting the United States’ ability to work with local partners around the world…. Such restrictions on global health assistance are particularly harmful in light of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic.” President Biden has also restored funding to the United Nations Population Fund, which was eliminated under Trump. Biden also withdrew the U.S. from the Geneva Consensus, signed while Trump was in office, which committed the U.S. “pro-family,” anti-abortion policies—the other 33 signatory governments were almost exclusively authoritarian or autocratic.  As long as U.S. policies on global health policy are being directed by the White House, they may swing wildly from one administration to the next, meaning Biden’s successor could reverse Biden’s policies as Biden did with Trump’s. The Abortion is Health Care Everywhere Act, H.R.1670, would establish that U.S. global health policy—and the money provided for it—include comprehensive reproductive health care, including abortion. H.R.1670 is currently with the House Foreign Affairs Committee. S-HP

To act on this issue, urge swift, positive action on H.R.1670 by the House Foreign Affairs Committee and tell your Representative that you want to see active, vocal support for H.R.1670. Representative Gregory Meeks (D-NY), Chair, House Foreign Affairs Committee. 2170 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington DC 20515, (202) 225-5021. @RepGregoryMeeks. Find your Representative here.

4. Health care protections for transgender people restored

The Biden administration has revived health care protections for transgender people that were eliminated under Trump. These protections involve interpreting the word “sex” in anti-discrimination protections to include protections for LGBTQ+ individuals, so that gender identity (or the lack thereof) and affectional orientation cannot be used as pretexts for denying medical services. The Washington Post describes this move as “the latest step Biden officials are taking to reorient the federal government’s posture on health care, the environment and other policy areas away from the conservative cast of the Trump era, replacing it with a more liberal stance.” S-HP

You can thank President Biden and the Secretary of Health and Human Services for return to fairness and respect for all. President Joe Biden, @POTUS. Xavier Becerra, Secretary of Health and Human Services, @SecBecerra. Rachel Levine, Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services, @HHS_ASH. Full addresses and phone numbers are here.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

5. Protesters arrested, killed, disappeared in Colombia

In response to a draconian tax “reform,” which went into effect April 28 and which imposed a 19 per cent sales tax on essential products such as cereal, milk, and sugar, Colombians have been protesting in the streets. Protesters filled Cali, Bogota, Medellin, Pereira, and other cities. While President Duque rescinded these measures in the first week of May,  protests continued to rage, in part due to outrage over the government’s handling of the pandemic; fewer than 8 per cent of the population has received even one dose of the vaccine. The percentage of people living in poverty went up to 42.5 in 2020, seven per cent higher than in 2019. Even more inflammatory has been the police response, according to CounterPunch; police have used American-made weapons to terrorize protestors; The UN mission in the city of Cali was attacked as well. At least 24 people are dead and 168 are missing, according to the Toronto Star.  As a young nurse in Bogotá told the NY Times, “I am in pain for Colombia. I am in pain for my country,” she said. “All that we can do to make ourselves heard is to protest, and for that they are killing us.” RLS

Rep. Gregory Meeks, the head of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, along with other House members,  has called for the application of the Leahy Law to freeze U.S. assistance to Colombian security forces. You can use the link from the Colombia Scholars Network to ask your representative to invoke the Leahy Law in response to the situation in Colombia.

6. Legislation to protect Uyghurs in China

Chinese oppression of its Uyghur Muslim population, which begun in 2014 and expanded in 2017, continues. According to the Center for Foreign Relations, an estimated 800,000 to 2 million Chinese Uyghurs have been sent to detention camps during that period, most of them without any specific charges and with no means to challenge their detention. Another 11 million Chinese Uyghurs not under detention suffer under decades-long anti-Uyghur policies which can include surveillance, religious restrictions, forced labor, and forced sterilizations. The New Yorker had a remarkable article in April detailing these. The United States has labeled Chinese treatment of its Uyghur population genocide and crimes against humanity. Two pieces of legislation now being considered by the House would respond to Chinese abuses and attempt to provide protections for Uyghur Muslims.

1) The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, H.R.1115, would bar imports into the U.S. of goods produced in the area of China where Uyghurs are being detained unless Customs and Border protection (CBP) can certify that the goods were produced without the use of convict labor, forced labor, or penal labor. H.R.1115 would also require the President to regularly report to Congress on the foreign entities and individuals facilitating the forced labor of Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and members of other Muslim minority groups and to impose sanctions of these entities and individuals. H.R.1115 is currently with four House committees: Foreign Affairs, Ways and Means, Judiciary, and Financial Services.

2) The Uyghur Human Rights Protection Act. H.R.1630 identifies Chinese Uyghur Muslims as “refugees of special concern,” prioritized for admission to the U.S. It would also require regular reports to Congress by the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security regarding the number of Chinese Uyghur Muslim refugee applicants, the length of time spent processing these applications, and the number of applications rejected, along with the reasons for those rejections. H.R.1630 is currently with the House Judiciary and Foreign Affairs Committees. S-HP

The most helpful thing you can do at this point is to urge swift, positive action on H.R.1115 and H.R.1630 by the House Judiciary and Foreign Affairs Committees. Addresses are here.

7. Legislation to protect Saudi dissidents

As we noted then, on February 26, the U.S. published an intelligence report asserting that Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, had approved the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was a legal resident of the U.S. At the time of this publication, the U.S. also denied visas to 76 Saudis it identified as connected to the murder, but did not place any sanctions directly against Mohammed bin Salman.

The Guardian reports that as a result, sentences given to Saudi political prisoners have increased in number and severity over the past few months; it cites findings by the UK-based human rights group Grant Liberty connecting that increase to the Saudi government’s perception of the limited sanctions as “weak.” According to Grant Liberty, the number of sentences that were imposed on prisoners of conscience in Saudi Arabia in April was more than double the total number of sentences for January, February, and March of this year. The Guardian quotes Lucy Rae of Grant Liberty as observing, “The international community must demonstrate that the only way the kingdom can improve its standing is through genuine reform. That means we need the tough action [presidential] candidate Biden talked about, not the weakness President Biden has so far shown.”

 If the U.S. is being perceived as weak, Congress could signal its opposition to Saudi human rights abuses through the passage of H.R.1392, the Protection of Saudi Dissidents Act. This legislation would strictly curb U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia for three years. To have these curbs lifted, the President would be required to provide proof that the Saudis have not forcibly repatriated, intimidated, or killed Saudi dissidents in other countries, unjustly imprisoned U.S. citizens or legal residents, or tortured detainees. H.R.1392 was passed by the House last month and is now with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. S-HP

If you want to engage with this issue, point out the increasing number and severity of sentences being imposed on Saudi prisoners of conscience, tell the President and State Department that more needs to be done to sanction Mohammed bin Salman himself, and urge the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and your own Senators to support quick passage of H.R.1392. Addresses are here.

SCIENCE, HEALTH, TECHNOLOGY & THE ENVIRONMENT

8. New legislation to protect mental health

In the last week, the House has passed eight pieces of mental health legislation, which now move to the Senate, where all have been assigned to the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee. This legislation addresses topics including youth/student mental health, law enforcement mental health, intimate partner violence, addiction, emergency services, and suicide awareness and prevention.

1) Pursuing Mental Health Equity, H.R.1475, would fund pilot programs and research directed at improving equity in mental health care for youth, particularly among youth of color.

2) The HERO (Helping Emergency Responders Overcome) Act, H.R.1480, is intended to “require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to improve the detection, prevention, and treatment of mental health issues among public safety officers,” as explained in the Act’s opening.

3) Effective Suicide Screening and Assessment in the Emergency Department, H.R.1324, “requires the Department of Health and Human Services to award grants to hospitals to improve their capacity to identify patients in emergency departments who are at risk of suicide and connect those patients with mental health treatments and services,” according to the official summary.

4) The Bipartisan Solution to Cyclical Violence Act, H.R.1260, would provide grants to trauma centers and nonprofits addressing violent trauma, particularly intimate partner violence.

5) Improving Mental Health Access from the Emergency Department, H.R.1205, would provide grants to increase mental health follow-up treatment for individuals for individuals entering hospitals through the emergency department.

6) Mental Health Services for Students, H.R.721, would support school-based mental health services.

7) The Suicide Training and Awareness Nationally Delivered for Universal Prevention (STAND UP) Act, H.R.586, would provide a range of mental health grants to states, tribes, and educational agencies in order to establish and implement best practices for suicide awareness and prevention.8) Family Support Services for Addiction, H.R.433, would provide grants to “family community organizations that provide support for individuals struggling with substance use disorder and their families,” as explained in the legislation’s introduction. S-HP

If you want to support these initiatives, urge swift positive action on this body of legislation (H.R.1475, 1480, 1324, 1260, 1205, 721, 586, and 433 by the Senate HELP Committee: Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Chair, Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, 428 Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington DC20510, (202) 224-5375. @PattyMurray. You can also urge your Senators to support this legislation when it reaches the Senate floor. Find them here.

RESOURCES

Read Heather Cox Richardson’s column for May 13 on how the Heritage Foundation is writing voter suppression laws. And actually, read her every day to see how today’s events live in yesterday’s context.

trans hotline with both Canadian and US numbers–and with operators who speak Spanish–provides services by and for trans people. You don’t need to be in crisis to call, and if you are a friend or a family member of a trans person, you can also call to find out how to support them. If you would like to know more about the organization, see their staff bios here.

The Moms Rising site reminds you to file your taxes in order to take advantage of your child tax credit.

The Americans of Conscience checklist has new actions every other week that will enable you to make your voice heard quickly and clearly. This week’s list will advise you how to help protect the mid-term elections in a few quick actions.

Among the organizations that supports kids and their families at the border is RAICES, which provides legal support. The need for their services has never been greater. You can support them here.

Al Otro Lado provides legal and humanitarian services to people in both the US and Tijuana. You can find out more about their work here.

The Minority Humanitarian Foundation supports asylum-seekers who have been released by ICE with no means of transportation or ways to contact sponsors. You can donate frequent-flyer miles to make their efforts possible.

The group Angry Tias and Abuelas provides legal advice and services to asylum-seekers at the border. You can follow their work on Facebook and see the list of volunteer opportunities they have posted.

News You May Have Missed: May 9, 2021

“Mother o’ Mine .. Happy Mothers Day” by Nick Kenrick.. is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Writing in the Guardian, Rebecca Solnit has some bracing words for those who find Mother’s Day difficult, noting how many people and elements of the natural world can be our “mothers”: “May you locate the 10,000 mothers that brought you into being and keep you going, no matter who and where you are. May you be the mother of uncounted possibilities and loves.”

Mother’s Day reminds us of the many sorrows surrounding mothers as well. The press is starting to cover the reunions of those families who were separated at the border; the New Yorker has a strong piece on the reunion of one of the first families separated–in 2017. The New York Times sketches the story of a mother who had to leave her daughter behind–for seven years. The Washington Post reports that 20,000 children and teenagers are being held in Health and Human Services shelters and 2,200 are being detained in border facilities until there is room in shelters for them. 40% have a parent already in the United States, while others have other relatives waiting for them–but it takes the border services a month to release them.

To help the more than 10,000 mothers stranded along the Mexico border with their children and the thousands of children waiting in detention to reunite with their mothers, you can donate to Al Otro Lado, which provides legal and social services to families on both sides of the border. Every.Last.One also does advocacy work for detained children and families, as well as for children who have been deported.

DOMESTIC NEWS

1. Demanding action on murdered and missing Indigenous women

Indigenous communities in Canada held grieving ceremonies May 5 for the over 4,000 Indigenous women who have been murdered or have gone missing in Canada over the last 30 years, a phenomenon called genocide in a comprehensive report. May 5 is Red Dress day, which commemorates those losses and calls for action. Despite the release of the report a year and a half ago, no national action plan has been launched by the Trudeau government; its 231 recommendations have been somehow stalled by COVID considerations, according to the National Indigenous Times.

In the US, family members of missing Indigenous women are cautiously hopeful with the steps Secretary of the Interior Debra Haaland is taking. She has stated that the creation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ recently-announced Missing and Murdered Unit demonstrated that the federal government is finally addressing the crisis of missing and murdered Native American women and girls. At least 1500 Native American people are currently missing in the U.S., and thousands of homicides have been reported to a national database, the Guardian reports. In a press call reported on by The Hill, Haaland explained that “For too long this issue has been swept under the rug…. [however] I believe we are at an inflection point. We have a president who has promised to prioritize this issue and ensure that Native American leaders have a seat at the table…. for too long, Indian issues were relegated to tribal offices within federal agencies. Every federal agency is taking our commitment to strengthening tribal agency and self-government seriously. We’ll keep working until our people stop going missing without a trace.” S-HP/RLS

In the U.S, you can share your concern that this issue of missing and murdered Native American women and girls remain in the spotlight and that all branches of government be active in resolving this ongoing crisis. Canadians can find more information on this issue at the University of British Columbia library’s website, as well as a phone number for support; they can also let Prime Minister Justin Trudeau know that COVID should not stall the implementation of an action plan. @JustinTrudeau.

2. Protecting incarcerated and detained people against COVID

Incarcerated individuals were infected by COVID-19 at more than three times the national rate, and an estimated 27,000+ individuals in prisons, jails, and detention centers have been killed by COVID-19. Now, reporting by the New York Times estimates that among those numbers were dozens of individuals who had either been approved for parole or who had not yet been convicted of any crime. While some states—including California and New Jersey—sent selected inmates home early to avoid unnecessary infections and deaths, most states chose not to free inmates and also resisted calls to speed up parole processes.

One case discussed by the Times was that of a 62-year-old man who was paroled in 2019, but required to complete a six-month drug treatment program available only in prison. He would have finished that program in June or July of last year, but instead died as a result of COVID-19 on June 2. Another case involved a 76-year-old man, a diabetic with diabetes-associated amputations. According to his cellmate, he waited months to receive his insulin supplies, by which time he had lost so much weight and was so weakened, he could not administer injections to himself. He had planned to contest the charges against him on the grounds that a search of his auto was unlawful. He couldn’t afford bail, and because he requested materials like police body-cam footage, his trial date kept being pushed back. He died of COVID-19 complications on September 2.

Other federal prisoners who were released–those who were at high risk for COVID, low-risk for re-offending, and for the most part elderly–might have to return to prison under a policy established by the Trump administration, according to the Washington Post, which profiled a 75 year old woman serving a 24 year sentence for selling a kilogram of heroin. Those released–approximately 4,500 people–are closely supervised, some with ankle monitors.

 Congress is considering some legislation that could address the problem of prisoner and detainee COVID-19 deaths and the lack of accurate data regarding the numbers of these individuals, as well as possible future epidemic threats within the prison system:

1) The COVID-19 Immigration Detention Data Transparency Act—S.681 in the Senate; H.R.1861 in the House—would require immigration detention facilities and local correctional facilities that contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to provide COVID-related data to the federal government. The Senate version of this legislation is with the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. The House version of this legislation is with three committees: Judiciary, Homeland Security, and Ways and Means.

2) The COVID-19 in Corrections Data Transparency Act—S.324 in the Senate; H.R.1072 in the House—would require the Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. Marshal Service, and state and local correctional facilities to publish COVID-19-related data, including numbers of cas vaccinations, and outcomes, on their websites, as well as reporting them to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Senate version of this legislation is with the Judiciary Committee. The House version of this legislation is with the Judiciary and the Energy and Commerce Committees.

3) H.R.831, the Health STATISTICS Act, would “encourage the rapid development of certain public health data standards, authorize epidemiological surveillance grants, and authorize a data linkage demonstration project.” This legislation is currently with the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Health. S-HP

If you want to address these inequities, you can call for expedited parole releases, for release of those awaiting trial for non-violent offenses during the current pandemic and for the reversal of the Trump-era policy which would require those released during the pandemic to return to prison. You can also urge the relevant Senate and House committee members to act on pending legislation. Addresses are here.

3. Should the history curriculum focus on diversity and critical literacy?

The Department of Education’s (DoE) Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, has invited public comments on priorities for the teaching of American History and Civics. The DoE’s first proposed priority is projects that incorporate racially, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse perspectives into teaching and learning and that “reflect the diversity, identities, histories, contributions, and experiences of all students [in order to] create inclusive, supportive, and identity-safe learning environments.” The second proposed priority is promoting information literacy skills, including standards of proof, individual biases, synthesis of information for communication, and “understanding how inaccurate information may be used to manipulate individuals, and developing strategies to recognize accurate and inaccurate information.”  Conservatives, including Mitch McConnell have been weighing in on the priorities. A letter to the DoE—on which Senator McConnell is the first signatory and which is cosigned by 38 additional Republican Congressmembers—warns that including materials like the New York Times’ 1619 Project (which looks at the history of this nation from the arrival of the first slave ship to the American colonies) that put “ill-informed advocacy ahead of historical accuracy” to create a “a politicized and divisive agenda.” S-HP

You can comment on the content of U.S. history and civics education, particularly on the ways in which students’ many cultures have contributed to this nation’s history and identity and discuss what topics and approaches you feel would best serve our diverse student population [note that all comments must be received by Wednesday, May 19, and should include Docket ID Number ED-2021-OESE-0033]. Write to Mia Howerton, U.S. Department of Education, 400 Maryland Ave. SW, Room 3C152, Washington DC 20202 or use online comment submission button

4. An X-gender option for passports

While running for President, Joe Biden issued an LGBTQ+ policy document that included a proposal to add an X gender designation to passports, which would mean non-binary individuals would not have to declare themselves specifically male or female. Since President Biden took office, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has been urging Biden to make that proposal a reality. According to the ACLU, many states already allow individuals to select an X gender identification and the ACLU has filed six cases on behalf of transgender individuals who want to see themselves accurately represented on IDs. Currently, 68% of transgender people report that none of their IDs accurately present both their name and their gender. As a result of this, they can find themselves, harassed, denied services, or attacked—by law enforcement as well as individuals and businesses. Life is also more complex for these individuals because of discrepancies among medical, financial, and personal records. President Biden has the power to issue an executive order adding an X designation to passports; the ACLU is asking for support in convincing Biden to take this action soon. S-HP

You can join the ACLU in asking President Biden to issue an executive order creating an X gender designation on passports. President Joe Biden, the White House, 1600 Pennsylvania NW, Washington DC 20500, (202) 456-1111. @POTUS. In addition, you can sign the ACLU’s petition: https://action.aclu.org/petition/they-people-access-accurate-ids-now.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

5. Making it safe for Hondurans to stay home

Aid to Honduras has been seen as essential to enable Hondurans to stay home rather than fleeing the effects of climate change, along with gang and police violence, and arriving at the US/Mexico border. However, the Berta Cáceres Human Rights Act, would halt U.S. aid to Honduras “until such time as human rights violations by Honduran security forces cease and their perpetrators are brought to justice,” as explained in the legislation’s opening. The legislation is named to honor Honduran indigenous rights and environmental activist Berta Cáceres, who cofounded the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras. Cáceres led campaigns in response to illegal logging, the plantation system, and the presence of U.S. military bases on indigenous land. After years of receiving death threats, Cáceres was assassinated in her own home. Those who killed her were linked to US-backed forces, according to the Guardian.

 Under H.R.1574, conditions for resuming aid to Honduras would include trial and conviction of Cáceres’ killers, the killers of over 100 activist small farmers, those responsible for post-election killings and arrests in Honduras. It would also require the withdrawal of the military from domestic policing in Honduras; protection of trade unionists, journalists, human rights defenders, indigenous and Afro-indigenous Hondurans, LGBTI activists, and government critics; and the establishment of a justice system capable of investigating, prosecuting, and bringing to justice members of the police and military who have committed human rights violations. S-HP

If you support this move, you can urge swift, positive action on H.R.1574 by the appropriate committees. You can also insist to your Congressmembers and to Vice-President Harris, who has been charged with leading U.S. Central American policy, that justice in Central America must be a key component of U.S. policy in the region, particularly if we want to end pressure on individuals from the region to flee their home countries because of violence and lack of justice. Addresses are here.

6. Disappearing the opposition in Myanmar.

Thousands of people, primarily boys and young men, are being disappeared in Myanmar as the now three-month-long military coup there continues, the Associated Press (AP) reports. The AP reports at least 3,500 arrests—most without documentation, so that family members cannot be certain who has been taken, what charges they face, or where they are being held. According to UNICEF, there have been at least 1000 arbitrary detentions of children and young people. The AP quotes Matthew Smith, a cofounder of Fortify Rights, a human rights group, as saying that his organization has been gathering evidence of detainees being killed in custody: “We’ve definitely moved into a situation of mass enforced disappearances. We’re documenting and seeing widespread and systematic arbitrary arrests.” The military has been conducting sweeps both during night and also in daylight, often beating detainees in front of witnesses. The military is also using its own television channel to broadcast “photos of young people detained by security forces…. their faces bloodied, with clear markings of beatings and possible torture,” indicating that this is a campaign of deliberate intimidation. S-HP

If you want to intervene in this situation, you can insist that the Biden administration and Congress continue to pursue meaningful, effective responses to this violence—and not just resolutions that have little real-world impact. President Joe Biden, the White House, 1600 Pennsylvania NW, Washington DC 20500, (202) 456-1111. @POTUS. Antony J. Blinken, Secretary of State, Department of State, 2201 C St. NW, Washington DC 20520, (202) 647-4000. @SecBlinken. Find your senators here and your representatives here.

SCIENCE, HEALTH, TECHNOLOGY & THE ENVIRONMENT

7. Preventing drilling in the Arctic, reversing Trump’s environmental policies

The Hill reports on a decision by the Department of the Interior to withdraw Trump administration proposals that would have made it easier to drill for oil and gas in the Arctic. The Obama administration had placed a permanent prohibition on offshore Arctic Ocean oil and gas drilling, which the Trump administration sought to undo. In another significant move, the Environmental Protection Agency has asked that the Justice Department (DoJ) end any remaining cases in supporting Trump-era environmental rules. The Hill separately reported that Lawrence Starfield, the EPA’s Acting Assistant Administrator for Enforcement and Compliance Assistance, has ordered his staff to step up enforcement of environmental regulations in communities particularly hard hit by pollution—communities that are disproportionally low income and inhabited by people of color. S-HP

If you want to thank the Secretary of the Interior for protecting the Arctic,
thank the EPA Director for asking for an end to Department of Justice defense of Trump-era changes to environmental protections, tell the Attorney General that you’re looking forward to an end to DoJ defense of remaining Trump-era environmental rollbacks and thank Lawrence Starfield for defending the rights and health of communities threatened by pollution, addresses are here.

RESOURCES

If you want to understand what is going on with the Republican attack on Liz Cheney and why Republicans continue to assert that Trump won the election, Heather Cox Richardson’s column for May 7 will explain. You’ll find it quite chilling, the way she adds it all up.

trans hotline with both Canadian and US numbers–and with operators who speak Spanish–provides services by and for trans people. You don’t need to be in crisis to call, and if you are a friend or a family member of a trans person, you can also call to find out how to support them. If you would like to know more about the organization, see their staff bios here.

The Moms Rising site this week focuses on the rights and needs of mothers. See their list of quick actions you can take.

The Americans of Conscience checklist has new actions every other week that will enable you to make your voice heard quickly and clearly. This week’s list will advise you how to help protect the mid-term elections in a few quick actions.

Among the organizations that supports kids and their families at the border is RAICES, which provides legal support. The need for their services has never been greater. You can support them here.

Al Otro Lado provides legal and humanitarian services to people in both the US and Tijuana. You can find out more about their work here.

The Minority Humanitarian Foundation supports asylum-seekers who have been released by ICE with no means of transportation or ways to contact sponsors. You can donate frequent-flyer miles to make their efforts possible.

The group Angry Tias and Abuelas provides legal advice and services to asylum-seekers at the border. You can follow their work on Facebook and see the list of volunteer opportunities they have posted.