motherjones--2020-08-13--George W. Bush Couldn’t Convince Americans to Get Vaccinated. Trump May Do Even Worse.

The threat of a terrible disease loomed , and the race was on to vaccinate Americans .
Anthony Fauci , the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infection Diseases , warned that the Republican administration had to act responsibly and credibly .
“ The need to be forthcoming is of particular importance , ” he cautioned .
“ Because the population feels powerless , it must rely heavily on the deliberations and decisions of government leaders.
” The year was 2002 .
The nation was reeling from the 9/11 attacks the year before , and the Bush administration @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out the threats around the world .
Most of us remember the fruitless search for weapons of mass destruction .
Fewer recall another quixotic attempt to protect the nation against terrorism : the campaign to vaccinate Americans against smallpox , a disease that kills 30 percent of people who contract it .
Early in 2002 , the Bush administration identified a smallpox bioterror attack as a likely threat .
Congress sent scientists into overdrive to revive a 40-year-old vaccine .
The immunization was far from perfect : It could cause a fever in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people who got the shot and severe complications , like inflammation of the heart , in a much smaller number .
One or two out of a million people would die .
Public health officials knew it would be a tough sell .
Weighing the relatively small chance of a smallpox bioterror attack against the significant risks of the vaccine itself , an expert panel recommended that the president push to vaccinate only 500,000 frontline medical workers , rather than the entire American population .
But the Bush administration defied that advice and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of vaccinating the half a million medical workers first , and eventually at least 10 million Americans from the general public .
To reassure the nation about the safety of the vaccine , President George W. Bush took the first dose himself .
“ The president feels fine , ” a White House spokeswoman triumphantly announced later that day .
Administration officials believed that his example would be enough to convince Americans to get vaccinated in droves .
But as soon as the program launched , news of uncomfortable side effects began to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shot felt sick enough the next day that they had to miss work .
Others had severe arm pain .
“ I just wanted to go to bed for a day or two there , ” one 24-year-old graduate student who received the vaccine told the Washington Post .
“ I thought , ‘ Can you just chop off my arm ? '
” These reactions came as a shock , the patients said : No one had warned them this could happen .
By 2004 , just 39,213 first responders had been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s goal—along with a negligible share of the general public .
The reasons for the underwhelming turnout , a 2005 report by the Institute of Medicine found , were failures of both leadership and communication .
The president had ignored advice from the experts , and the White House never explained its recommendations .
Rather , the government ’ s messaging around the vaccine was confusing and inconsistent .
Officials never provided clear information on who was at greatest risk for severe reactions from the shot , what patients should do if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and families would be compensated if something went seriously wrong .
What ’ s more , the report found , the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , the agency tasked with implementing the vaccination plan and explaining it to the public , “ seemed constrained by unknown external influences.
” A later report elaborated that it “ became apparent that security-related constraints were placed on CDC ’ s ability to communicate with key constituencies.
” Some Americans came to believe that the vaccine program was a hasty political stunt performed by a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that he had won the war on terror .
Sometime in the next year , when a COVID-19 vaccine becomes available , the government will roll out the largest immunization campaign in history .
Public health officials fear that unless the Trump administration learns from those past mistakes , a similar scenario could unfold , but with far more dire consequences .
In July , a group of epidemiologists from the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security published a report finding that Americans already see the COVID-19 vaccine project as a rush-job—part of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ around his abysmal polling numbers before the election .
In June , prominent vaccine scientist Paul Offit and bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel wrote an op-ed in the New York Times titled “ Could Trump Turn a Vaccine Into a Campaign Stunt ?
” The answer , the authors said , was yes , and they laid out a scenario in which Trump administration officials “ badger the [ Food and Drug Administration ] to permit use of the vaccine ” before scientists are certain it ’ s safe .
“ We must be on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ corrupting the rigorous assessment of safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines in order to pull an October vaccine surprise to try to win re-election , ” they wrote .
( Just this week , Russia hastily approved a new COVID-19 vaccine without proving its safety , raising concerns that President Vladimir Putin was making exactly the sort of political calculation that public health experts fear from Trump . )
But recent months have brought increased public pressure on the FDA to uphold safety standards , giving Offit and other public health experts more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ compromised .
“ The president would have a hard time circumventing those processes , ” said Peter Hotez , a vaccinologist at Baylor College of Medicine .
“ The scientific community has a much bigger voice now than we ’ ve had in the past , especially on the cable news networks and in the media.
” Last week , Sens .
Maggie Hassan ( D-N.H. ) , Mike Braun ( R-Ind . )
, and Lisa Murkowski ( R-Alaska ) introduced legislation that it would require pharmaceutical companies and the federal government @ @ @ @ @ @ @ safety and efficacy .
Saad Omer , a Yale University epidemiologist and expert on vaccine safety , said he found the increasing calls for transparency “ reassuring.
” The American public , however , is a different story .
The damage to public trust in the COVID-19 vaccine may already be done .
A Gallup poll last week found that Americans are so worried about the safety of the coronavirus vaccine that one in three plan not to get it .
In an AP poll in May , half of respondents said they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ believes that the language the White House has used to describe the vaccine development process is partly to blame .
“ The race for a vaccine , ‘ Operation Warp Speed ’ —it does feel like it ’ s being done in a rushed manner that doesn ’ t allow you to do what you would normally do , which actually isn ’ t true , ” he said .
Hotez , who wrote a book about the damaging campaigns mounted by vaccine skeptics , said he has watched in horror as more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recent months .
He worries that the anti-vaccination movement could move from the fringe to the mainstream .
“ Rather than it going into retreat with COVID-19 , as one might expect , it ’ s actually been enabled by the lack of communication , or miscommunication , coming out of the White House , ” he said .
If public wariness of COVID-19 vaccines persists , it won ’ t matter how safe and effective the shots are—the project of vaccinating Americans could fail as miserably as the smallpox campaign did , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scale .
In order to avoid repeating those missteps , the government will have to level with Americans .
The experts I spoke to all agreed that messaging must begin before a COVID-19 vaccine is approved .
A first step , said Omer , might be for public health officials to describe exactly how vaccine developers can speed up the process without compromising safety .
Americans should know , for example , that COVID-19 vaccine candidates will go through the same , three-phase trial process as any other vaccine .
The messengers of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the message itself .
Because evidence suggests that most Americans trust their doctors , physicians will likely play a key role in disseminating vaccine information .
In its guidelines for communicating about vaccine safety , the World Health Organization recommends that doctors “ be well informed and confident in their own minds about these issues ” so they can clearly explain the risks and benefits to their patients .
A recent report on COVID-19 vaccine communication from the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security emphasized that doctors and public health officials will also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ communities they serve .
For example , while African Americans have suffered disproportionately from COVID-19 , the AP poll found that just a quarter of Black Americans would trust a vaccine .
The worst thing the White House could do , Hotez said , would be to overstate the effectiveness of the vaccine .
That ’ s because , at least at first , it probably won ’ t be a silver bullet .
“ People like [ White House trade adviser ] Peter Navarro always tend to veer towards magical thinking—we ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of it , or we ’ ll vaccinate our way out of it—and that ’ s not the way it works , ” said Hotez .
Rather , the first vaccines will be more like an additional layer of protection : We ’ ll likely still have to wear masks and avoid crowds .
Offit , who believes the first vaccines probably won ’ t be more than 75 percent effective , worries that “ people will get the vaccine and think ‘ great , I don ’ t need to wear a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do.
” Omer , who is more bullish on the prospect of life returning to normal after a vaccine , warns that even if the vaccine itself is highly effective , distribution will take months , maybe longer .
“ Even with a solid vaccine , we ’ d have to keep some measures in place during that period , ” he said .
In a 2002 commentary on the smallpox vaccination campaign in the New England Journal of Medicine , Fauci wrote , “ The general public must understand the decision-making process @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that may affect their health and their lives.
” Of all the advice that Fauci has offered the White House over the years , this 18-year-old pearl might be the most important .
Let ’ s hope that this time around , someone listens .

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The threat of a terrible disease loomed, and the race was on to vaccinate Americans. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infection Diseases, warned that the Republican administration had to act responsibly and credibly. “The need to be forthcoming is of particular importance,” he cautioned. “Because the population feels powerless, it must rely heavily on the deliberations and decisions of government leaders.”
The year was 2002. The nation was reeling from the 9/11 attacks the year before, and the Bush administration sought to prove its mettle by rooting out the threats around the world. Most of us remember the fruitless search for weapons of mass destruction. Fewer recall another quixotic attempt to protect the nation against terrorism: the campaign to vaccinate Americans against smallpox, a disease that kills 30 percent of people who contract it. Early in 2002, the Bush administration identified a smallpox bioterror attack as a likely threat. Congress sent scientists into overdrive to revive a 40-year-old vaccine. The immunization was far from perfect: It could cause a fever in as many as a third of the people who got the shot and severe complications, like inflammation of the heart, in a much smaller number. One or two out of a million people would die.
Public health officials knew it would be a tough sell. Weighing the relatively small chance of a smallpox bioterror attack against the significant risks of the vaccine itself, an expert panel recommended that the president push to vaccinate only 500,000 frontline medical workers, rather than the entire American population. But the Bush administration defied that advice and aimed bigger: It announced a goal of vaccinating the half a million medical workers first, and eventually at least 10 million Americans from the general public. To reassure the nation about the safety of the vaccine, President George W. Bush took the first dose himself. “The president feels fine,” a White House spokeswoman triumphantly announced later that day. Administration officials believed that his example would be enough to convince Americans to get vaccinated in droves.
But as soon as the program launched, news of uncomfortable side effects began to spread. Many people who got the shot felt sick enough the next day that they had to miss work. Others had severe arm pain. “I just wanted to go to bed for a day or two there,” one 24-year-old graduate student who received the vaccine told the Washington Post. “I thought, ‘Can you just chop off my arm?'” These reactions came as a shock, the patients said: No one had warned them this could happen.
By 2004, just 39,213 first responders had been vaccinated—less than 10 percent of the president’s goal—along with a negligible share of the general public. The reasons for the underwhelming turnout, a 2005 report by the Institute of Medicine found, were failures of both leadership and communication. The president had ignored advice from the experts, and the White House never explained its recommendations. Rather, the government’s messaging around the vaccine was confusing and inconsistent. Officials never provided clear information on who was at greatest risk for severe reactions from the shot, what patients should do if a reaction occurred, or how individuals and families would be compensated if something went seriously wrong.
Unless the Trump administration learns from past mistakes, a similar scenario could unfold, but with far more dire consequences.
What’s more, the report found, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the agency tasked with implementing the vaccination plan and explaining it to the public, “seemed constrained by unknown external influences.” A later report elaborated that it “became apparent that security-related constraints were placed on CDC’s ability to communicate with key constituencies.” Some Americans came to believe that the vaccine program was a hasty political stunt performed by a president obsessed with proving to the nation that he had won the war on terror.
Sometime in the next year, when a COVID-19 vaccine becomes available, the government will roll out the largest immunization campaign in history. Public health officials fear that unless the Trump administration learns from those past mistakes, a similar scenario could unfold, but with far more dire consequences.
In July, a group of epidemiologists from the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security published a report finding that Americans already see the COVID-19 vaccine project as a rush-job—part of a last-ditch effort by Trump to turn around his abysmal polling numbers before the election. In June, prominent vaccine scientist Paul Offit and bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel wrote an op-ed in the New York Times titled “Could Trump Turn a Vaccine Into a Campaign Stunt?” The answer, the authors said, was yes, and they laid out a scenario in which Trump administration officials “badger the [Food and Drug Administration] to permit use of the vaccine” before scientists are certain it’s safe. “We must be on alert to prevent [Trump] from corrupting the rigorous assessment of safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines in order to pull an October vaccine surprise to try to win re-election,” they wrote. (Just this week, Russia hastily approved a new COVID-19 vaccine without proving its safety, raising concerns that President Vladimir Putin was making exactly the sort of political calculation that public health experts fear from Trump.)
But recent months have brought increased public pressure on the FDA to uphold safety standards, giving Offit and other public health experts more confidence that vaccines won’t be compromised. “The president would have a hard time circumventing those processes,” said Peter Hotez, a vaccinologist at Baylor College of Medicine. “The scientific community has a much bigger voice now than we’ve had in the past, especially on the cable news networks and in the media.” Last week, Sens. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), Mike Braun (R-Ind.), and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) introduced legislation that it would require pharmaceutical companies and the federal government to share more data about vaccines’ safety and efficacy. Saad Omer, a Yale University epidemiologist and expert on vaccine safety, said he found the increasing calls for transparency “reassuring.”
If public wariness persists, it won’t matter how safe and effective the shots are—the project of vaccinating Americans could fail as miserably as the smallpox campaign did, only on a much grander scale.
The American public, however, is a different story. The damage to public trust in the COVID-19 vaccine may already be done. A Gallup poll last week found that Americans are so worried about the safety of the coronavirus vaccine that one in three plan not to get it. In an AP poll in May, half of respondents said they planned to forgo the shot. Offit believes that the language the White House has used to describe the vaccine development process is partly to blame. “The race for a vaccine, ‘Operation Warp Speed’—it does feel like it’s being done in a rushed manner that doesn’t allow you to do what you would normally do, which actually isn’t true,” he said. Hotez, who wrote a book about the damaging campaigns mounted by vaccine skeptics, said he has watched in horror as more Americans have expressed doubts about vaccines in recent months. He worries that the anti-vaccination movement could move from the fringe to the mainstream. “Rather than it going into retreat with COVID-19, as one might expect, it’s actually been enabled by the lack of communication, or miscommunication, coming out of the White House,” he said.
If public wariness of COVID-19 vaccines persists, it won’t matter how safe and effective the shots are—the project of vaccinating Americans could fail as miserably as the smallpox campaign did, only this time on a much grander scale. In order to avoid repeating those missteps, the government will have to level with Americans. The experts I spoke to all agreed that messaging must begin before a COVID-19 vaccine is approved. A first step, said Omer, might be for public health officials to describe exactly how vaccine developers can speed up the process without compromising safety. Americans should know, for example, that COVID-19 vaccine candidates will go through the same, three-phase trial process as any other vaccine.
The messengers of vaccine information may be as important as the message itself. Because evidence suggests that most Americans trust their doctors, physicians will likely play a key role in disseminating vaccine information. In its guidelines for communicating about vaccine safety, the World Health Organization recommends that doctors “be well informed and confident in their own minds about these issues” so they can clearly explain the risks and benefits to their patients. A recent report on COVID-19 vaccine communication from the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security emphasized that doctors and public health officials will also have to tailor their messages to the communities they serve. For example, while African Americans have suffered disproportionately from COVID-19, the AP poll found that just a quarter of Black Americans would trust a vaccine.
The worst thing the White House could do, Hotez said, would be to overstate the effectiveness of the vaccine. That’s because, at least at first, it probably won’t be a silver bullet. “People like [White House trade adviser] Peter Navarro always tend to veer towards magical thinking—we’re going to hydroxychloroquine our way out of it, or we’ll vaccinate our way out of it—and that’s not the way it works,” said Hotez. Rather, the first vaccines will be more like an additional layer of protection: We’ll likely still have to wear masks and avoid crowds. Offit, who believes the first vaccines probably won’t be more than 75 percent effective, worries that “people will get the vaccine and think ‘great, I don’t need to wear a mask,’ when they probably still do.” Omer, who is more bullish on the prospect of life returning to normal after a vaccine, warns that even if the vaccine itself is highly effective, distribution will take months, maybe longer. “Even with a solid vaccine, we’d have to keep some measures in place during that period,” he said.
In a 2002 commentary on the smallpox vaccination campaign in the New England Journal of Medicine, Fauci wrote, “The general public must understand the decision-making process as well as the rationale behind decisions that may affect their health and their lives.” Of all the advice that Fauci has offered the White House over the years, this 18-year-old pearl might be the most important. Let’s hope that this time around, someone listens.


motherjones--2020-08-13--As Biden Promises to Rein In Private Prisons, They’re Throwing Money at Republicans

The election is nearly three months away , and the private prison industry has already shelled out more on the campaign than in any other year .
Private prison PACs , employees , and their families have given more than $ 1.9 million to candidates and parties so far , according to the Center for Responsive Politics—14 percent more than they spent in 2016 .
About 92 percent of those donations went to Republicans , also a record .
This prodigious election spending makes a lot of sense .
Private prison companies have enjoyed a cozy relationship with the Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for-profit prisons to hold immigration detainees .
Last year , the two largest prison companies , the GEO Group and CoreCivic , counted on federal dollars for more than half of their revenue , according to their annual reports .
And now , Immigration and Customs Enforcement is inking long-term contracts with prison companies to detain thousands of immigrants beyond the end of Trump ’ s presidency .
In an earnings call last week , CoreCivic CEO Damon Hininger suggested that prison executives and the federal officials they work with are already anticipating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Washington , DC .
“ We ’ ve had some conversations with folks in leadership and they ’ re always obviously preparing potentially what happens in the coming days , weeks and months—with not only the pandemic but also going into 2021 and maybe some outcomes in Congress and the White House , ” Hininger told investors .
“ So they ’ re preparing .
And with that , working with us to prepare.
” Part of that preparation is in response to Joe Biden ’ s criminal justice platform , which is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ line .
The Democratic presidential candidate has promised to revive an Obama-era policy of phasing out the use of private prisons to hold people convicted of federal crimes .
( The policy barely took effect before it was reversed by Attorney General Jeff Sessions in early 2017 . )
Biden ’ s platform stops short of calling for an end to private immigration detention but says he will “ make clear that the federal government should not use private facilities for any detention , including detention of undocumented immigrants , ” as the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2016 .
And Biden promises to create a new federal grant program that will only give money to states if they do not contract with private prisons .
GEO—which has experienced three years of growth under Trump—is responsible for the bulk of prison companies ’ recent political spending .
Its corporate PAC has been giving $ 20,000 in regular installments to the Trump Victory committee since April 2019 .
But the industry , which also includes smaller prison companies is also shelling out lots of cash to Republican lawmakers .
The recipients include @ @ @ @ @ @ @ GEO and CoreCivic run networks of halfway houses and GEO is fighting a class-action lawsuit over allegations that it forced immigration detainees to work for little or no pay ; Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky ; and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia , the chair of the appropriations committee homeland security subcommittee .
One of the few Democrats is , again , Rep. Henry Cuellar , a conservative Texas Democrat and vocal defender of private prisons whose district includes both GEO and CoreCivic lockups .
It ’ s not just the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ consequences of the 2020 election .
So are ICE and the US Marshals Service , Hininger said on the earnings call .
According to Hininger , federal officials have been signing new detention center contracts even as the number of immigrants they detain has dropped precipitously during the pandemic .
Over the last two weeks , he said , ICE has finalized 10-year contracts with CoreCivic ’ s 512-person T. Don Hutto Residential Center and GEO ’ s 1,840-bed South Texas Detention Complex .
He added that CoreCivic expected to receive another 10-year @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Center in “ a day or two.
” “ ICE really wants to maintain the capacity they ’ ve got nationally for their detention system , ” he said .
Elected officials and local advocates have been fighting the contracts for these two Texas detention centers for months .
In January , two months after ICE began soliciting bids for immigration detention beds in the state , Rep. Joaquin Castro and nine other Democratic representatives from Texas sent a letter to officials at the Department of Homeland Security and Office of Acquisition Management @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deals being handed to CoreCivic and GEO without a competitive bidding process .
“ All three facilities ICE is targeting with this solicitation are notorious for a wide range of mistreatment , including various sexual assault cases and the deaths of individuals in custody , ” they wrote .
“ If ICE is able to secure these contracts in Texas , it will mean extending the harm of this administration far beyond Trump ’ s term in office , ” Bethany Carson , an organizer at the anti-private prison advocacy group Grassroots Leadership @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pulled a similar move late last year in California , locking in long-term deals for private immigrant detention centers days before the state enacted a ban on private prisons and detention centers .
A weej before the new law went into effect , ICE granted GEO 15-year contracts for nearly 4,500 beds across 5 facilities , including the notorious Adelanto Detention Center outside Los Angeles .

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The election is nearly three months away, and the private prison industry has already shelled out more on the campaign than in any other year. Private prison PACs, employees, and their families have given more than $1.9 million to candidates and parties so far, according to the Center for Responsive Politics—14 percent more than they spent in 2016. About 92 percent of those donations went to Republicans, also a record.
This prodigious election spending makes a lot of sense. Private prison companies have enjoyed a cozy relationship with the Trump administration as it has increasingly relied on for-profit prisons to hold immigration detainees. Last year, the two largest prison companies, the GEO Group and CoreCivic, counted on federal dollars for more than half of their revenue, according to their annual reports. And now, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is inking long-term contracts with prison companies to detain thousands of immigrants beyond the end of Trump’s presidency.
In an earnings call last week, CoreCivic CEO Damon Hininger suggested that prison executives and the federal officials they work with are already anticipating various election scenarios including Democratic gains in Washington, DC. “We’ve had some conversations with folks in leadership and they’re always obviously preparing potentially what happens in the coming days, weeks and months—with not only the pandemic but also going into 2021 and maybe some outcomes in Congress and the White House,” Hininger told investors. “So they’re preparing. And with that, working with us to prepare.”
Part of that preparation is in response to Joe Biden’s criminal justice platform, which is openly hostile to prison companies’ bottom line. The Democratic presidential candidate has promised to revive an Obama-era policy of phasing out the use of private prisons to hold people convicted of federal crimes. (The policy barely took effect before it was reversed by Attorney General Jeff Sessions in early 2017.) Biden’s platform stops short of calling for an end to private immigration detention but says he will “make clear that the federal government should not use private facilities for any detention, including detention of undocumented immigrants,” as the Homeland Security Advisory Council did in late 2016. And Biden promises to create a new federal grant program that will only give money to states if they do not contract with private prisons.
GEO—which has experienced three years of growth under Trump—is responsible for the bulk of prison companies’ recent political spending. Its corporate PAC has been giving $20,000 in regular installments to the Trump Victory committee since April 2019. But the industry, which also includes smaller prison companies is also shelling out lots of cash to Republican lawmakers. The recipients include Sen. Corey Gardner of Colorado, where GEO and CoreCivic run networks of halfway houses and GEO is fighting a class-action lawsuit over allegations that it forced immigration detainees to work for little or no pay; Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky; and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, the chair of the appropriations committee homeland security subcommittee. One of the few Democrats is, again, Rep. Henry Cuellar, a conservative Texas Democrat and vocal defender of private prisons whose district includes both GEO and CoreCivic lockups.
It’s not just the prison executives who are focused on the consequences of the 2020 election. So are ICE and the US Marshals Service, Hininger said on the earnings call. According to Hininger, federal officials have been signing new detention center contracts even as the number of immigrants they detain has dropped precipitously during the pandemic. Over the last two weeks, he said, ICE has finalized 10-year contracts with CoreCivic’s 512-person T. Don Hutto Residential Center and GEO’s 1,840-bed South Texas Detention Complex. He added that CoreCivic expected to receive another 10-year contract with for its 1,000-bed Houston Processing Center in “a day or two.” “ICE really wants to maintain the capacity they’ve got nationally for their detention system,” he said.
Elected officials and local advocates have been fighting the contracts for these two Texas detention centers for months. In January, two months after ICE began soliciting bids for immigration detention beds in the state, Rep. Joaquin Castro and nine other Democratic representatives from Texas sent a letter to officials at the Department of Homeland Security and Office of Acquisition Management raising alarms about the prospect of 10-year deals being handed to CoreCivic and GEO without a competitive bidding process. “All three facilities ICE is targeting with this solicitation are notorious for a wide range of mistreatment, including various sexual assault cases and the deaths of individuals in custody,” they wrote. “If ICE is able to secure these contracts in Texas, it will mean extending the harm of this administration far beyond Trump’s term in office,” Bethany Carson, an organizer at the anti-private prison advocacy group Grassroots Leadership, said at the time.
ICE pulled a similar move late last year in California, locking in long-term deals for private immigrant detention centers days before the state enacted a ban on private prisons and detention centers. A weej before the new law went into effect, ICE granted GEO 15-year contracts for nearly 4,500 beds across 5 facilities, including the notorious Adelanto Detention Center outside Los Angeles.


motherjones--2020-08-14--Sanders Delegates Caused a “Shitshow” in 2016. Here’s Why That Might Not Happen Again.

Had Democrats descended upon Milwaukee for their party ’ s convention as they ’ d originally planned , there would , without question , have been protests .
Demonstrators would have likely demanded Joe Biden adopt Bernie Sanders ’ single-payer health care proposal , or perhaps pushed the former vice president to end Democrats ’ unqualified support for Israel .
In between the speeches and pageantry , some delegates would clog up the dozens of caucus meetings to push for a Green New Deal .
And when Biden officially accepted the Democratic nomination , a sea of “ Medicare for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ high above the heads of more than 1,000 delegates attending the convention on Sanders ’ behalf .
There will , of course , be no mass gathering in Milwaukee next week .
Democrats canceled the majority of planned events , and Biden has declined to travel to Wisconsin .
The Sanders wing of the party will have little representation at the now-virtual gathering : Only Sanders and his surrogate Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ( D-N.Y. ) have been invited to speak—and Ocasio-Cortez has only been given a minute at the lectern .
The event @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” from all 57 US states and territories , according to a DNC spokesperson .
But whatever form that takes will afford little opportunity for the 27 percent of delegates amassed by Sanders to register any lingering dissatisfaction with Biden ’ s candidacy and the Democratic Party .
And that ’ s disappointing to some Sanders supporters , a dozen of whom spoke with Mother Jones about the upcoming convention .
“ It was hard enough to do anything influential at an in-person convention , ” says Mark Malouf , a Sanders delegate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ convention .
“ A lot of people feel like , with this all being online , we ’ re being told to sit down and shut up.
” The display from many Sanders backers at the 2016 convention could fairly be described—in the words of two 2016 Sanders delegates I spoke with—as a “ shitshow.
” Disappointed by Hillary Clinton ’ s nomination and enraged over a WikiLeaks email dump that showed some DNC officials had disparaged Sanders during the primary campaign , Sanders delegates interrupted nearly all of the speeches with jeers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ California delegation instigated much of the chaos .
“ It didn ’ t matter if it was the president of Planned Parenthood or John Lewis—you had people screaming at them , ” recalls Malouf , who joined his delegation in booing Clinton ’ s running mate , Tim Kaine .
“ I felt like that made us look really bad and gave what some in the media were looking for : To make us look ridiculous and then write us off as a bunch of dewy-eyed radicals.
” Before he took the stage @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a meeting with his delegates to tell them , in essence , to knock it off .
The Sanders campaign aimed to quash those antics this time around .
In May , it asked delegates to sign a code of conduct in which they promised to engage with their fellow DNC attendees “ with respect and a spirit of cooperativeness , even if I disagree with them.
” But even without the agreement , Sanders supporters told me they weren ’ t seeking an encore performance .
“ I don ’ t think @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as having done stuff to harm the efforts to defeat Donald Trump , ” says Alan Minsky , the executive director of the Progressive Democrats of America and a Sanders delegate from California .
“ I ’ m not hearing a lot of people making the claims we heard last time.
” Some would wonder whether they would even need to .
In 2016 , Sanders remained in the primary until the bitter end mainly to make a point : Delegates would be the only way for the outsider to have a say @ @ @ @ @ @ @ This cycle , Sanders opted for the inside route : He suspended his campaign as soon as his path to the nomination became impossible and sent aides to negotiate favorable terms of surrender .
That resulted in the “ unity task forces ” in which Sanders and Biden allies jointly developed policy recommendations for the former vice president and the DNC platform .
Thanks in part to those efforts , Biden is now running on the most progressive presidential platform in modern history .
The draft DNC platform , which delegates are voting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nod to Medicare for All , noting that Democrats “ welcome advocates ” who support the single-payer approach .
The DNC rules committee voted unanimously to extend a 2018 provision that limits the powers of superdelegates , a win for the Sanders allies who now serve on the DNC .
“ We ’ re in a much better position today than we were in 2016 , ” says Yasmine Taeb , a DNC member and Sanders supporter from Virginia .
“ We ’ re able to advise the Bernie supporters on the outside.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ late last month , Sanders urged them to join him in uniting behind Biden—while continuing their efforts to push the Democratic establishment to the left .
Some of his most vocal backers have gone less quietly .
Former Ohio state senator and Sanders campaign co-chair Nina Turner slammed the policy task forces for “ pretending like it ’ s kumbaya ” while leaving out Sanders ’ top priorities , such as Medicare for All .
Progressives , she told Yahoo News last month , must be prepared to not give Biden ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rest.
” And all those insider gains Sanders and his DNC-serving supporters have made haven ’ t necessarily translated into trust among his delegates broadly .
“ Many still see the DNC as being completely and totally full of loyalists to Hillary , ” Taeb says .
Norman Solomon , a Sanders California delegate and national director of Sanders-aligned RootsAction.org , says “ a lot of activists have stepped up to fill the gap ” after Sanders decided against a prolonged campaign to amass as many additional delegates as possible .
The nature @ @ @ @ @ @ @ overhauled once the convention went digital .
The focus , Solomon says , has been on Medicare for All— “ not just espousing it , but by tangibly fighting in the convention context to assert the need for it , ” he says .
Sanders supporters argue that the idea is not only popular among Democrats , but that present circumstances demand it .
“ We ’ re in the midst of a pandemic and millions of Americans have lost jobs , ” Rep. Ro Khanna ( D-Calif. ) , a national co-chair @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ There should be a moral imperative for Medicare for All.
” Biden disagrees .
He supports adding a public option to Obamacare and expanding Medicare to people as young as 60 , but he has repeatedly he criticized Sanders ’ plan as too costly and unrealistic , even as recently as July .
A petition organized by Sanders ’ Nevada delegation asks delegates to vote against the DNC platform unless it explicitly includes Medicare for All .
More than 800 delegates , including Khanna , have signed on .
Sanders delegates @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shadow convention ” to draw attention to Medicare for All , the Green New Deal , and criminal justice reforms that Biden has not yet committed to .
The agenda includes streamed speeches from progressive leaders as well as in-person events , such as a car caravan around Disneyland to demand Medicare for All and a socially distanced rally at a state prison .
Those efforts are an attempt to “ reframe ” the convention away from a message of “ it ’ s simply time to get in line , ” Solomon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ win this nomination fight , but we recognize the progressive fight is 24/7 , 365.
” But other Sanders delegates aren ’ t sure this is the right forum for that fight .
“ Would I rather have our platform speak unequivocally in support for Medicare for All or Palestine ?
Absolutely .
Will I vote against the platform because of that ?
I don ’ t think so , ” says Ray McKinnon , a DNC member and Sanders supporter from North Carolina .
McKinnon , who is Black , worries that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could be especially dangerous for Americans of color .
“ Folks who are not going to bear in their bodies the consequences of four more years of Donald Trump seem to be the loudest , ” he says .
“ We need to stop talking about the luxury of a protest vote .
”

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Had Democrats descended upon Milwaukee for their party’s convention as they’d originally planned, there would, without question, have been protests. Demonstrators would have likely demanded Joe Biden adopt Bernie Sanders’ single-payer health care proposal, or perhaps pushed the former vice president to end Democrats’ unqualified support for Israel. In between the speeches and pageantry, some delegates would clog up the dozens of caucus meetings to push for a Green New Deal. And when Biden officially accepted the Democratic nomination, a sea of “Medicare for All” signs might have been hoisted high above the heads of more than 1,000 delegates attending the convention on Sanders’ behalf.
“I don’t think too many people want to get marked as having done stuff to harm the efforts to defeat Donald Trump.”
There will, of course, be no mass gathering in Milwaukee next week. Democrats canceled the majority of planned events, and Biden has declined to travel to Wisconsin. The Sanders wing of the party will have little representation at the now-virtual gathering: Only Sanders and his surrogate Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) have been invited to speak—and Ocasio-Cortez has only been given a minute at the lectern. The event will include “live and curated content” from all 57 US states and territories, according to a DNC spokesperson. But whatever form that takes will afford little opportunity for the 27 percent of delegates amassed by Sanders to register any lingering dissatisfaction with Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party.
And that’s disappointing to some Sanders supporters, a dozen of whom spoke with Mother Jones about the upcoming convention. “It was hard enough to do anything influential at an in-person convention,” says Mark Malouf, a Sanders delegate from California who also attended the 2016 convention. “A lot of people feel like, with this all being online, we’re being told to sit down and shut up.”
The display from many Sanders backers at the 2016 convention could fairly be described—in the words of two 2016 Sanders delegates I spoke with—as a “shitshow.” Disappointed by Hillary Clinton’s nomination and enraged over a WikiLeaks email dump that showed some DNC officials had disparaged Sanders during the primary campaign, Sanders delegates interrupted nearly all of the speeches with jeers and chants.
Sanders supporters from the California delegation instigated much of the chaos. “It didn’t matter if it was the president of Planned Parenthood or John Lewis—you had people screaming at them,” recalls Malouf, who joined his delegation in booing Clinton’s running mate, Tim Kaine. “I felt like that made us look really bad and gave what some in the media were looking for: To make us look ridiculous and then write us off as a bunch of dewy-eyed radicals.” Before he took the stage to speak in 2016, Sanders convened a meeting with his delegates to tell them, in essence, to knock it off.
The Sanders campaign aimed to quash those antics this time around. In May, it asked delegates to sign a code of conduct in which they promised to engage with their fellow DNC attendees “with respect and a spirit of cooperativeness, even if I disagree with them.” But even without the agreement, Sanders supporters told me they weren’t seeking an encore performance. “I don’t think too many people want to get marked as having done stuff to harm the efforts to defeat Donald Trump,” says Alan Minsky, the executive director of the Progressive Democrats of America and a Sanders delegate from California. “I’m not hearing a lot of people making the claims we heard last time.”
Some would wonder whether they would even need to. In 2016, Sanders remained in the primary until the bitter end mainly to make a point: Delegates would be the only way for the outsider to have a say in the party’s direction. This cycle, Sanders opted for the inside route: He suspended his campaign as soon as his path to the nomination became impossible and sent aides to negotiate favorable terms of surrender. That resulted in the “unity task forces” in which Sanders and Biden allies jointly developed policy recommendations for the former vice president and the DNC platform.
“We’re in a much better position today than we were in 2016.”
Thanks in part to those efforts, Biden is now running on the most progressive presidential platform in modern history. The draft DNC platform, which delegates are voting on this week, includes its first-ever nod to Medicare for All, noting that Democrats “welcome advocates” who support the single-payer approach. The DNC rules committee voted unanimously to extend a 2018 provision that limits the powers of superdelegates, a win for the Sanders allies who now serve on the DNC. “We’re in a much better position today than we were in 2016,” says Yasmine Taeb, a DNC member and Sanders supporter from Virginia. “We’re able to advise the Bernie supporters on the outside.”
In a video call with delegates late last month, Sanders urged them to join him in uniting behind Biden—while continuing their efforts to push the Democratic establishment to the left. Some of his most vocal backers have gone less quietly. Former Ohio state senator and Sanders campaign co-chair Nina Turner slammed the policy task forces for “pretending like it’s kumbaya” while leaving out Sanders’ top priorities, such as Medicare for All. Progressives, she told Yahoo News last month, must be prepared to not give Biden’s would-be administration “a moment’s rest.” And all those insider gains Sanders and his DNC-serving supporters have made haven’t necessarily translated into trust among his delegates broadly. “Many still see the DNC as being completely and totally full of loyalists to Hillary,” Taeb says.
Norman Solomon, a Sanders California delegate and national director of Sanders-aligned RootsAction.org, says “a lot of activists have stepped up to fill the gap” after Sanders decided against a prolonged campaign to amass as many additional delegates as possible. The nature of any planned protests had to be overhauled once the convention went digital. The focus, Solomon says, has been on Medicare for All—“not just espousing it, but by tangibly fighting in the convention context to assert the need for it,” he says. Sanders supporters argue that the idea is not only popular among Democrats, but that present circumstances demand it. “We’re in the midst of a pandemic and millions of Americans have lost jobs,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), a national co-chair of Sanders’ campaign, tells me. “There should be a moral imperative for Medicare for All.”
Biden disagrees. He supports adding a public option to Obamacare and expanding Medicare to people as young as 60, but he has repeatedly he criticized Sanders’ plan as too costly and unrealistic, even as recently as July. A petition organized by Sanders’ Nevada delegation asks delegates to vote against the DNC platform unless it explicitly includes Medicare for All. More than 800 delegates, including Khanna, have signed on.
Sanders delegates from California have also organized a “shadow convention” to draw attention to Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and criminal justice reforms that Biden has not yet committed to. The agenda includes streamed speeches from progressive leaders as well as in-person events, such as a car caravan around Disneyland to demand Medicare for All and a socially distanced rally at a state prison.
Those efforts are an attempt to “reframe” the convention away from a message of “it’s simply time to get in line,” Solomon says. “Progressives didn’t win this nomination fight, but we recognize the progressive fight is 24/7, 365.”
But other Sanders delegates aren’t sure this is the right forum for that fight. “Would I rather have our platform speak unequivocally in support for Medicare for All or Palestine? Absolutely. Will I vote against the platform because of that? I don’t think so,” says Ray McKinnon, a DNC member and Sanders supporter from North Carolina.
McKinnon, who is Black, worries that too much division at this crucial moment could be especially dangerous for Americans of color. “Folks who are not going to bear in their bodies the consequences of four more years of Donald Trump seem to be the loudest,” he says. “We need to stop talking about the luxury of a protest vote.”


motherjones--2020-08-14--How Anti-Abortion Advocates Are Co-opting and Twisting Calls for Racial Justice

The argument seemed reasonable in theory : “ We are pleased that our state values life no matter an individual ’ s potential disability , gender , or race.
” Back in March 2016 , Mike Fichter , the president and chief executive of Indiana Right to Life , was talking about the law then-Gov .
Mike Pence just signed that would bar “ the knowing provision of sex- , race- , or disability-selective abortions by abortion providers.
” The bill was not nearly as innocuous as Fichter and his ideological peers in state government made it seem .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as a “ reasons ban , ” operates very much on racist and ableist assumptions—and has the power to inflict acute harm on pregnant individuals .
Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky quickly sued the state , challenging both the reasons ban and a broader package of abortion restrictions that dealt with fetal remains .
Several courts struck down the reasons ban , and last year , Box v. Planned Parenthood reached the Supreme Court .
The court ultimately declined to rule on the reasons ban portion of the case , sending it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ grounds that there was no split in the lower courts .
Justice Clarence Thomas , though , left zero ambiguity about where he stood : In a sweeping 20-page concurring opinion , he called abortion “ an act rife with the potential for eugenic manipulation ” and wrote that Indiana ’ s law furthered a “ compelling interest in preventing abortion from becoming a tool of modern-day eugenics.
” It ’ s not exactly a new argument—prominent Republican politicians such as Herman Cain , Ted Cruz , and Ben Carson have long discussed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ past few years , it ’ s gained steam among anti-abortion advocates who increasingly claim they are doing their work on behalf of racial justice .
Back in 2015 , following a series of high-profile killings of Black men and women , conservative activist Star Parker told the Washington Examiner , “ We can talk all day about ‘ black lives matter , ’ but if we exclude abortion from this discussion , we ’ ve excluded the fundamentals of this discussion.
” In late 2017 , award-winning filmmaker Yoruba Richen released a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the African-American Abortion Battle , which examines the way the anti-abortion movement has capitalized on the ( very real ) inequities Black people face as a means to bolster its argument against abortion as health care—a film she says she made after uncovering a slew of anti-abortion propaganda that claimed abortion was “ Black genocide.
” One of the characters featured in her film is the Rev .
Clenard Childress Jr. , a Black evangelical pastor and anti-abortion activist who has called the Black Lives Matter movement the best thing that has ever @ @ @ @ @ @ @ movement.
” “ This argument is one that [ has ] gone into the mainstream and deals with race in a way that reproductive justice people haven ’ t dealt with effectively .
And I think it is something that needs to be looked at and followed , because it has grown , ” Richen told Vox .
“ We ’ ve seen it in videos , and billboards , and postcards and [ from ] politicians .
It ’ s something that people should be aware of.
” Now , this revitalized @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of race is colliding with the country ’ s reckoning over racial injustice .
“ Racial justice concerns are more front of mind for everybody , and that ’ s true even for abortion opponents , ” says Mary Ziegler , a professor at the Florida State University College of Law and the author of Abortion and the Law in America .
“ Everybody wants to be on the side of the angels when it comes to racial justice.
” Still , this anti-abortion argument is deeply flawed .
The idea of banning @ @ @ @ @ @ @ according to the Guttmacher Institute , a reproductive health think tank , “ based on the idea that women of color are coerced into abortions or are complicit in a ‘ genocide ’ against their own community.
” There is no evidence to support that theory .
But it ’ s still proven to be an effective message in abortion wars at the state level : In 2019 , at least 18 bans on abortion for reasons of race and/or sex were proposed at the state and federal levels—up from six in 2018 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in 2016 , according to Rewire News ‘ Legislative Tracker .
This year , both Mississippi and Tennessee signed bans on race-selective abortion into law ; Tennessee was part of a larger omnibus package that has been placed on hold by the courts , but Mississippi ’ s was a standalone law that has yet to be challenged .
( Reasons bans also sometimes include language about gender and disability discrimination . )
Such laws have seen varied results in the courts , and currently , just three states have bans tied to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mississippi , and Missouri .
What a reasons ban looks like in practice can vary widely , in part because the very premise is purely theoretical ( and false ) .
But worst case , the law can require providers to ask invasive questions of women of color who seek abortion care , questions that rely on racist stereotypes—adding yet another hard layer to the already significant emotional stress of jumping through hoops to terminate a pregnancy .
In some places , this means the abortion provider must sign an affidavit promising that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of “ the child ’ s sex or race.
” In short , these laws put women of color in the position of having to justify their need for abortion care .
Ultimately , such bans intimate “ that abortion is like eugenics , it is the targeting of Black people , and these laws are now being framed as saving Black babies or saving babies that would otherwise be born with disabilities as a counteractive to eugenics , ” says Michele Goodwin , a law professor at the University of California , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ book Policing the Womb : Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood .
Such arguments resurfaced with vigor last month when Planned Parenthood of Greater New York announced that it would remove Margaret Sanger ’ s name from its Manhattan health clinic due to her “ harmful connections to the eugenics movement.
” The so-called pro-lifers cheered loudly .
Sanger is best known for founding Planned Parenthood , then called the American Birth Control League , in the early 1920s , but her legacy has long been marred by her interactions with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ evidence that abortion care is simply eugenics put into practice .
Sanger also gave a speech to a women ’ s auxiliary of the Ku Klux Klan in 1926 , as explained in a 2016 fact sheet published by Planned Parenthood ( which includes a note saying that in the 1920s , the KKK “ was a mainstream movement and was considered a legitimate anti-immigration organization , ” but notes that present-day Planned Parenthood “ denounces Sanger ’ s address to the Ku Klux Klan ” ) .
According to the New York @ @ @ @ @ @ @ York chapter ’ s chief equity and engagement officer , explained that the decision came out of “ a three-year effort to tackle racism internally and to improve relationships with groups led by Black women who have been wary of Planned Parenthood ’ s origins.
” Following the announcement , the National Review crowed , “ Next Up : Abortion Needs to Be Canceled.
” An op-ed in America magazine , a Jesuit publication , reads , “ It is certainly a welcome acknowledgment of historical fact that Planned Parenthood is owning the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But this does not excuse their continued perpetuation of her legacy through their insidious practice of targeting the most vulnerable , especially poor women and women of color ( both of whose populations so often intersect ) , by locating the vast majority of Planned Parenthood clinics within walking distance of nonwhite neighborhoods.
” ( Nevermind that Life Dynamics , an organization that opposes abortion , inadvertently debunked this claim in a 2011 report that showed there are only about 110 Planned Parenthood clinics , out of about 800 , in neighborhoods where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the overall population . )
A USA Today op-ed written by Kristan Hawkins , the president of Students for Life of America , also conveyed a similar sentiment , while Marjorie Dannenfelser , president of the Susan B. Anthony List , crafted a Twitter thread off the news that specifically invokes reasons bans as a solution to the ways that “ Margaret Sanger ’ s racist legacy continues today ” : Goodwin , a Black academic who has spent her career examining how the United States ’ legal system fails Black women , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ eugenics is both deeply misguided and historically inaccurate .
She explains that the US eugenics movement began as the country was coming out of its doomed reconstruction effort in the early 1900s , and , yes , during the rise of Jim Crow—but also as political and business leaders began to fear that poor white people may align themselves politically with Black people .
So while eugenics was partly a way to limit the political power that could be attained by Black people , it first targeted poor white people who were seen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The effort is to get rid of poor white people quite specifically and to make sure the poor white people can ’ t reproduce , ” Goodwin says .
A model law was developed in the early 1920s that said if a woman was determined to be socially , morally , or physically unfit , she could be sterilized against her will .
As Goodwin explains , this law was considered in the famous Buck v. Bell Supreme Court case , in which a teenager named Carrie Buck was raped by a member @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she gave birth on the basis that she was “ feeble-minded.
” Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes , Jr. , famously wrote in his opinion , which supported the doctor who wished to sterilize Buck against her will , that “ [ t ] hree generations of imbeciles are enough.
” “ [ But ] because Americans are really so uninformed about its history of eugenics in the United States , they say , ‘ Look , Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist herself , ’ but it ’ s important to know that early @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was , was about whiteness early on , ” Goodwin says .
“ Equating this with race is false , it ’ s not true .
Later the platform morphed during Jim Crow to include Black folks.
” She adds , “ Strategically it ’ s become an added cannon to the arsenal of those who are anti-abortion who are seeking to not operate on fact in these spaces , but in fact to trigger emotional responses.
” Elizabeth Nash , a researcher at the Guttmacher Institute who tracks state abortion policy , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are created to operate as “ a wedge.
” “ Some of the point of them was to split up progressives and for conservatives to try to make an argument that they were supporting racial justice or they were supporting women ’ s rights or they were supporting the disability community , ” she says , “ when in fact all they want to do is ban abortion and they ’ ll use any tool in the toolbox to do so.
” To be sure , part of what makes the anti-abortion movement @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and arguably so effective , though there is little hard data regarding its effect ) is that it highlights real failures within the abortion rights community to adequately engage with race .
Goodwin points back to the 1980s , for instance , when Black women were prosecuted for giving birth to so-called “ crack babies ” —racist rhetoric that was presented as defining an epidemic .
Broadly speaking , largely white-led abortion rights organizations have historically done a poor job of advocating for women of color and of recognizing racial disparities in reproductive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deep fissures in the broader movement—some of which still exist today .
“ It was exactly in those spaces where the reproductive rights movement was failing .
It wasn ’ t a reproductive justice movement—because they should have seen it for what it was , ” Goodwin says .
“ There has been the failure to appropriately and meaningfully engage race such that now they ’ re playing catch up on these banning abortions in cases of race and sex selection , right ?
It ’ s like the anti-abortion movement out-pivoted the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reproductive justice groups—which have primarily been led by women of color—and abortion rights groups , which have historically been more white , have come together around common goals in recent years , there still much work to be done , by white women in particular .
In the meantime , the endgame for anti-abortion groups is always to erase the right to abortion in the United States , and at its core , a reasons ban is no different .
“ It ’ s designed multiple ways from a strategy standpoint to change @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a right to abortion , ” Ziegler says .
“ If you can ban specific kinds of procedures for specific kinds of reasons , the right starts to mean less and less , which makes it easier to ask the court to overturn Roe later—because the idea that women rely on abortion when the right to abortion is increasingly narrow stops making sense .
”

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The argument seemed reasonable in theory: “We are pleased that our state values life no matter an individual’s potential disability, gender, or race.”
In reality, it wasn’t.
Back in March 2016, Mike Fichter, the president and chief executive of Indiana Right to Life, was talking about the law then-Gov. Mike Pence just signed that would bar “the knowing provision of sex-, race-, or disability-selective abortions by abortion providers.” The bill was not nearly as innocuous as Fichter and his ideological peers in state government made it seem. In fact, the legislation, colloquially known as a “reasons ban,” operates very much on racist and ableist assumptions—and has the power to inflict acute harm on pregnant individuals.
Justice Clarence Thomas called abortion “an act rife with the potential for eugenic manipulation” and wrote that Indiana’s law furthered a “compelling interest in preventing abortion from becoming a tool of modern-day eugenics.”
Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky quickly sued the state, challenging both the reasons ban and a broader package of abortion restrictions that dealt with fetal remains. Several courts struck down the reasons ban, and last year, Box v. Planned Parenthood reached the Supreme Court. The court ultimately declined to rule on the reasons ban portion of the case, sending it back to the Seventh Circuit on the grounds that there was no split in the lower courts. Justice Clarence Thomas, though, left zero ambiguity about where he stood: In a sweeping 20-page concurring opinion, he called abortion “an act rife with the potential for eugenic manipulation” and wrote that Indiana’s law furthered a “compelling interest in preventing abortion from becoming a tool of modern-day eugenics.”
It’s not exactly a new argument—prominent Republican politicians such as Herman Cain, Ted Cruz, and Ben Carson have long discussed it as well. But over the past few years, it’s gained steam among anti-abortion advocates who increasingly claim they are doing their work on behalf of racial justice.
Back in 2015, following a series of high-profile killings of Black men and women, conservative activist Star Parker told the Washington Examiner, “We can talk all day about ‘black lives matter,’ but if we exclude abortion from this discussion, we’ve excluded the fundamentals of this discussion.” In late 2017, award-winning filmmaker Yoruba Richen released a short film, Anti-Abortion Crusaders: Inside the African-American Abortion Battle, which examines the way the anti-abortion movement has capitalized on the (very real) inequities Black people face as a means to bolster its argument against abortion as health care—a film she says she made after uncovering a slew of anti-abortion propaganda that claimed abortion was “Black genocide.” One of the characters featured in her film is the Rev. Clenard Childress Jr., a Black evangelical pastor and anti-abortion activist who has called the Black Lives Matter movement the best thing that has ever happened to “an anemic black pro-life movement.”
“This argument is one that [has] gone into the mainstream and deals with race in a way that reproductive justice people haven’t dealt with effectively. And I think it is something that needs to be looked at and followed, because it has grown,” Richen told Vox. “We’ve seen it in videos, and billboards, and postcards and [from] politicians. It’s something that people should be aware of.”
Now, this revitalized emphasis on banning abortions for supposed reasons of race is colliding with the country’s reckoning over racial injustice. “Racial justice concerns are more front of mind for everybody, and that’s true even for abortion opponents,” says Mary Ziegler, a professor at the Florida State University College of Law and the author of Abortion and the Law in America. “Everybody wants to be on the side of the angels when it comes to racial justice.”
Still, this anti-abortion argument is deeply flawed. The idea of banning abortion for reasons of race is, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health think tank, “based on the idea that women of color are coerced into abortions or are complicit in a ‘genocide’ against their own community.” There is no evidence to support that theory. But it’s still proven to be an effective message in abortion wars at the state level: In 2019, at least 18 bans on abortion for reasons of race and/or sex were proposed at the state and federal levels—up from six in 2018, 11 in 2017, and eight in 2016, according to Rewire News‘ Legislative Tracker. This year, both Mississippi and Tennessee signed bans on race-selective abortion into law; Tennessee was part of a larger omnibus package that has been placed on hold by the courts, but Mississippi’s was a standalone law that has yet to be challenged. (Reasons bans also sometimes include language about gender and disability discrimination.) Such laws have seen varied results in the courts, and currently, just three states have bans tied to race selection in effect: Arizona, Mississippi, and Missouri.
“Racial justice concerns are more front of mind for everybody, and that’s true even for abortion opponents.”
What a reasons ban looks like in practice can vary widely, in part because the very premise is purely theoretical (and false). But worst case, the law can require providers to ask invasive questions of women of color who seek abortion care, questions that rely on racist stereotypes—adding yet another hard layer to the already significant emotional stress of jumping through hoops to terminate a pregnancy. In some places, this means the abortion provider must sign an affidavit promising that the abortion is not being performed because of “the child’s sex or race.” In short, these laws put women of color in the position of having to justify their need for abortion care.
Ultimately, such bans intimate “that abortion is like eugenics, it is the targeting of Black people, and these laws are now being framed as saving Black babies or saving babies that would otherwise be born with disabilities as a counteractive to eugenics,” says Michele Goodwin, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, and author of the recent book Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood.
Such arguments resurfaced with vigor last month when Planned Parenthood of Greater New York announced that it would remove Margaret Sanger’s name from its Manhattan health clinic due to her “harmful connections to the eugenics movement.” The so-called pro-lifers cheered loudly. Sanger is best known for founding Planned Parenthood, then called the American Birth Control League, in the early 1920s, but her legacy has long been marred by her interactions with the eugenics movement—which anti-abortion advocates have weaponized as evidence that abortion care is simply eugenics put into practice. Sanger also gave a speech to a women’s auxiliary of the Ku Klux Klan in 1926, as explained in a 2016 fact sheet published by Planned Parenthood (which includes a note saying that in the 1920s, the KKK “was a mainstream movement and was considered a legitimate anti-immigration organization,” but notes that present-day Planned Parenthood “denounces Sanger’s address to the Ku Klux Klan”). According to the New York Times, Merle McGee, the New York chapter’s chief equity and engagement officer, explained that the decision came out of “a three-year effort to tackle racism internally and to improve relationships with groups led by Black women who have been wary of Planned Parenthood’s origins.”
Following the announcement, the National Review crowed, “Next Up: Abortion Needs to Be Canceled.” An op-ed in America magazine, a Jesuit publication, reads, “It is certainly a welcome acknowledgment of historical fact that Planned Parenthood is owning the racist, eugenicist history of Sanger. But this does not excuse their continued perpetuation of her legacy through their insidious practice of targeting the most vulnerable, especially poor women and women of color (both of whose populations so often intersect), by locating the vast majority of Planned Parenthood clinics within walking distance of nonwhite neighborhoods.” (Nevermind that Life Dynamics, an organization that opposes abortion, inadvertently debunked this claim in a 2011 report that showed there are only about 110 Planned Parenthood clinics, out of about 800, in neighborhoods where the Black population exceeds 25 percent of the overall population.) A USA Today op-ed written by Kristan Hawkins, the president of Students for Life of America, also conveyed a similar sentiment, while Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, crafted a Twitter thread off the news that specifically invokes reasons bans as a solution to the ways that “Margaret Sanger’s racist legacy continues today”:
Today’s decision by Planned Parenthood, America’s largest abortion biz & largest pop. control org in the world, to remove Margaret Sanger’s name from their Manhattan abortion facility is the first time in their 104 yr history that they’ve acknowledged their racist roots 1/6 — MarjorieDannenfelser (@marjoriesba) July 21, 2020
Goodwin, a Black academic who has spent her career examining how the United States’ legal system fails Black women, says this obsession with abortion as racial eugenics is both deeply misguided and historically inaccurate. She explains that the US eugenics movement began as the country was coming out of its doomed reconstruction effort in the early 1900s, and, yes, during the rise of Jim Crow—but also as political and business leaders began to fear that poor white people may align themselves politically with Black people. So while eugenics was partly a way to limit the political power that could be attained by Black people, it first targeted poor white people who were seen as a burden on society. “The effort is to get rid of poor white people quite specifically and to make sure the poor white people can’t reproduce,” Goodwin says. A model law was developed in the early 1920s that said if a woman was determined to be socially, morally, or physically unfit, she could be sterilized against her will. As Goodwin explains, this law was considered in the famous Buck v. Bell Supreme Court case, in which a teenager named Carrie Buck was raped by a member of her foster family and sterilized after she gave birth on the basis that she was “feeble-minded.” Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., famously wrote in his opinion, which supported the doctor who wished to sterilize Buck against her will, that “[t]hree generations of imbeciles are enough.”
“Americans are really so uninformed about its history of eugenics in the United States, they say, ‘Look, Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist herself,’ but it’s important to know that early framing of eugenics, horrible as it was, was about whiteness early on.”
“[But] because Americans are really so uninformed about its history of eugenics in the United States, they say, ‘Look, Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist herself,’ but it’s important to know that early framing of eugenics, horrible as it was, was about whiteness early on,” Goodwin says. “Equating this with race is false, it’s not true. Later the platform morphed during Jim Crow to include Black folks.”
She adds, “Strategically it’s become an added cannon to the arsenal of those who are anti-abortion who are seeking to not operate on fact in these spaces, but in fact to trigger emotional responses.”
Elizabeth Nash, a researcher at the Guttmacher Institute who tracks state abortion policy, agrees, and thinks that reasons bans are created to operate as “a wedge.” “Some of the point of them was to split up progressives and for conservatives to try to make an argument that they were supporting racial justice or they were supporting women’s rights or they were supporting the disability community,” she says, “when in fact all they want to do is ban abortion and they’ll use any tool in the toolbox to do so.”
To be sure, part of what makes the anti-abortion movement’s race-based strategy so disturbing (and arguably so effective, though there is little hard data regarding its effect) is that it highlights real failures within the abortion rights community to adequately engage with race. Goodwin points back to the 1980s, for instance, when Black women were prosecuted for giving birth to so-called “crack babies”—racist rhetoric that was presented as defining an epidemic. Broadly speaking, largely white-led abortion rights organizations have historically done a poor job of advocating for women of color and of recognizing racial disparities in reproductive health care, which has led to deep fissures in the broader movement—some of which still exist today.
“It was exactly in those spaces where the reproductive rights movement was failing. It wasn’t a reproductive justice movement—because they should have seen it for what it was,” Goodwin says. “There has been the failure to appropriately and meaningfully engage race such that now they’re playing catch up on these banning abortions in cases of race and sex selection, right? It’s like the anti-abortion movement out-pivoted the reproductive rights movement on race.”
While reproductive justice groups—which have primarily been led by women of color—and abortion rights groups, which have historically been more white, have come together around common goals in recent years, there still much work to be done, by white women in particular. In the meantime, the endgame for anti-abortion groups is always to erase the right to abortion in the United States, and at its core, a reasons ban is no different. “It’s designed multiple ways from a strategy standpoint to change what it means that there’s a right to abortion,” Ziegler says. “If you can ban specific kinds of procedures for specific kinds of reasons, the right starts to mean less and less, which makes it easier to ask the court to overturn Roe later—because the idea that women rely on abortion when the right to abortion is increasingly narrow stops making sense.”
Images from left: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty, Sarah Silbiger/Getty, Ira L. Black/Corbis/Getty


motherjones--2020-08-14--Michigan’s Postal Workers Say the Fix is In

While President Donald Trump forthrightly acknowledged only yesterday that weakening the Post Office will help him obstruct mail balloting this fall , postal workers in the key swing state of Michigan say his mission has been clear for weeks .
Delayed mail , a consequence of battles over funding for the United States Postal Service and of the agency ’ s staffing shortages , affects many aspects of American life—the delivery of millions of prescriptions , paychecks , bills .
But recent funding cuts , overtime reductions , and other changes imposed by Louis DeJoy , the man Trump recently @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , have left postal workers warning about new multi-day delays—and that a deliberate effort to slow down the mail and interfere with the election is underway .
“ I think it ’ s absolutely true , ” said Steve Wood , a mail clerk who works at the Michigan Metroplex , a massive mail sorting center near Detroit .
He says he was convinced in recent weeks as he and his colleagues saw the removal of almost a quarter of the facility ’ s mail sorting machines , a lack of substitute employees @ @ @ @ @ @ @ COVID-19 pandemic , and a general lack of urgency to locate and send along ballots that have piled up in bins .
“ For years , every time there ’ s an election , we spend an enormous amount of time searching through [ mail containers ] to make sure that we get every ballot , ” he says .
While Michigan has held two major elections since April , he says “ it doesn ’ t appear that this year that they were real worried about that.
” Roscoe Woods , president @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the Detroit-metro area , said he didn ’ t initially think the policy changes were about the election .
But after what he ’ s seen and heard from his members , he says he ’ s now “ a firm believer that it ’ s a fundamental effort to undermine people ’ s confidence in this agency and make it harder to vote by mail…There ’ s no other explanation.
” Michael Mize , the president of the Michigan Postal Workers Union and of its Flint area local , thinks the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a vote-suppression effort , but finds the possibility too disturbing .
“ I don ’ t want to say it , to be very honest , because I don ’ t want that to happen or be any truth behind it , ” he said , adding that even the appearance of delays affecting ballots would be enough to give people “ reason to challenge whether or not things were handled appropriately.
” Reports about the slowing of mail delivery and its potential to disenfranchise voters are surfacing across the country .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Michigan , a perennial battleground state where Trump topped Hillary Clinton by roughly 10,000 votes in 2016—just barely more than a tenth of a percentage of the 4.5 million votes cast .
DeJoy , a Trump mega donor who made millions in private shipping and whose continued financial entanglements with the industry have raised concerns about conflicts of interest , was appointed by the president as postmaster general on June 15 .
He has defended his recent policy changes and decisions , including the reducing workers ’ overtime and haggling over rates charged @ @ @ @ @ @ @ being justified by bottom line concerns , citing the USPS ’ s longstanding funding and staffing issues .
On August 7 DeJoy , in his first remarks to the Postal Service Board of Governors , said the notion that he would “ ever make decisions concerning the Postal Service at the direction of the President…is wholly off-base.
” Contrary to Trump ’ s claims that the postal service “ can ’ t handle ” mail ballots in the fall , DeJoy insisted the agency “ has ample capacity to deliver all election mail @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that he ’ s working to privatize the postal service—a longstanding goal of conservatives , and a step deeply opposed by the USPS ’ s unionized workforce .
DeJoy ’ s actions have caught the attention of Congress , where Democrats see his changes as part of an obvious and open plan by Trump to hamstring mail voting and suppress votes .
On Wednesday , Rep. Carolyn Maloney ( D-N.Y. ) , chairwoman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform , introduced a bill that would block the postal service from implementing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is over .
The same day , every Democratic senator signed a letter to DeJoy demanding he answer questions about about increased postage charges for mail ballots and hand over his correspondence with local election officials on the issue .
The actions follow an earlier request from Sen. Elizabeth Warren ( D-Mass . )
and several other congressional Democrats that the US Postal Service ’ s inspector general investigate whether DeJoy ’ s actions have slowed down the mail .
The IG ’ s office declined to comment on “ any ongoing work.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Democrat , has launched his own investigation .
As the ranking member on the Senate ’ s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee , Peters has been gathering information from postal workers and others across Michigan , alongside reports from colleagues on both sides of the aisle about postal service issues in their states .
Peters ’ office has set up a website to collect complaints from Michiganders about what they ’ re seeing .
So far more than 6,000 people have sent messages about mail delivery problems , including one person who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them from taking medications on time .
While Peters says his office is used to fielding complaints about the mail , a “ surge ” of complaints started up around mid-July .
“ Something is definitely up over the last few weeks , ” Peters says .
Peters , speaking on Tuesday , said he is still gathering information and he hasn ’ t yet reached a conclusion about whether these policies are aimed at disrupting the election .
But he said he ’ s troubled by what he ’ s learned about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ procedures that limit the time automated mail sorters run , and modifications to the operations of inter-facility mail trucks .
Peters says he ’ s also concerned by conflicting answers he ’ s received from DeJoy ’ s office about the changes .
In July , the senator asked about published reports of decreased overtime and delivery standards across the nation .
The postal service responded in writing , insisting the policies were local and the media reports were incorrect .
A few weeks later , after DeJoy had a testy meeting with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , the USPS confirmed that the policies were , in fact , real , and they were national .
Peters said the USPS hasn ’ t provided any data indicating the new policies are worthwhile , and refuses to indicate if DeJoy will reverse course if it ’ s clear that the policies are leading to delayed mail .
Postal workers across the country have told Peters they already are .
“ Did you actually research whether or not these policies would lead to greater efficiency ?
” Peters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s asked DeJoy ’ s office .
“ And if not , why ?
That ’ s really disturbing that we ’ re in the middle of a pandemic and you ’ re making major changes in policies without knowing what the impact would be.
” While the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to lead to record-high rates of postal balloting across the country , Michigan was on track for a major expansion before the virus appeared .
In 2018 , the state ’ s voters approved a change to election law allowing anyone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s primary earlier this month saw roughly 65 percent of the 2.5 million ballots cast by mail .
But this month ’ s election showed that Michigan post offices , straining under existing burdens and DeJoy ’ s new mandates , can ’ t always deliver properly mailed ballots quickly enough to be counted .
In Sterling Heights , a large suburb north of Detroit , 165 mail ballots postmarked on July 30 arrived six days after the August 4 election .
Though a local race was decided by just 87 votes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ under a Michigan law requiring they arrive at local election offices or be in drop boxes by 8 pm on Election Day .
Melanie Ryska , Sterling Heights ’ city clerk , told Crain ’ s Detroit Business that a few late ballots are normal for such an election , but the number they received this month “ is very unusual , ” even after that the city advised voters to use drop-boxes in order to “ avoid the mail altogether just in case something like this happened.
” While Tracy Wimmer , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Jocelyn Benson , says the state has been collaborating with the post office and working “ to ensure that election mailings are prioritized.
” Benson has confirmed that more than 6,000 ballots cast in August ’ s primary were rejected for falling afoul of the same arrival deadline law , which she ’ s called to be changed before it can cause “ the disenfranchisement of tens of thousands ” of the roughly 2.4 million Michigan voters already set to receive mail ballots for November .
The more mail is subject to delays @ @ @ @ @ @ @ greater the risk postal voters will see properly mailed votes go uncounted due to similar laws .
The Washington Post has reported that Michigan USPS facilities have seen their ability to process mail reduced by 700,000 pieces per hour .
One recent morning Wood said he and others at working at the Metroplex counted 400 all-purpose containers holding undelivered mail due to short staffing and other recent changes .
“ That ’ s never—even during Christmas , when the postal service deals with 1.2 billion Christmas cards—we never had 400 containers of mail @ @ @ @ @ @ @ says .
The coronavirus , which has killed several postal workers in Michigan , has brought “ never-ending ” turmoil , Wood says , which has only been exacerbated by changes cutting overtime , temporary employees , and access to mail sorting machines .
“ DeJoy comes on the scene and it ’ s just feeding the chaos , ” Woods says .
“ To do this in the middle of a pandemic when we ’ re short ?
” Other postal workers in Michigan confirm they feel targeted by the administration and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the head of the Michigan Postal Workers Union , Trump ’ s comments disparaging “ mail-in voting [ like it ] would create more fraudulent votes ” are part of an “ attack to discredit us with the American people.
” As far as DeJoy ’ s policy changes , he considers that “ an attack from within , ” and “ a deliberate slowdown of the mail ” that he views “ as a crime.
” Mize says offices with workers he represents have mandated mail that used to be machine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and have changed when it happens in a way that workers say is leading to cascading , multiple day delays .
“ The fact that we would have somebody come in and internally , purposely slow that down and make us look bad to the American public , it makes me sick to my stomach , ” Mize says .
Woods , the Detroit-area worker and union official , seemed to get more upset about the situation the more he talked .
“ The idea that you would destroy a centuries-old institution that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to rig an election or make it harder for people to vote , to me , is just , it ’ s criminal man .
It ’ s criminal that you would deny people their medications , you would deny kids their birthday cards .
Millions of Americans use the mail.
” “ You ’ re watching voter suppression on a full-blown national level , ” he said .
“ It ’ s so disheartening to me .
I ’ m a veteran and I love this country .
And it happened so @ @ @

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While President Donald Trump forthrightly acknowledged only yesterday that weakening the Post Office will help him obstruct mail balloting this fall, postal workers in the key swing state of Michigan say his mission has been clear for weeks.
“It’s a fundamental effort to undermine people’s confidence in this agency and make it harder to vote by mail…There’s no other explanation.”
Delayed mail, a consequence of battles over funding for the United States Postal Service and of the agency’s staffing shortages, affects many aspects of American life—the delivery of millions of prescriptions, paychecks, bills. But recent funding cuts, overtime reductions, and other changes imposed by Louis DeJoy, the person Trump recently appointed as head of the Postal Service, have left postal workers warning about new multi-day delays—and that a deliberate effort to slow down the mail and interfere with the election is underway.
“I think it’s absolutely true,” said Steve Wood, a mail clerk who works at the Michigan Metroplex, a massive mail sorting center near Detroit. He says he was convinced in recent weeks as he and his colleagues saw the removal of almost a quarter of the facility’s mail sorting machines, a lack of substitute employees to replace workers missing due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and a general lack of urgency to locate and send along ballots that have piled up in bins.
“For years, every time there’s an election, we spend an enormous amount of time searching through [mail containers] to make sure that we get every ballot,” he says. While Michigan has held two major elections since April, he says “it doesn’t appear that this year that they were real worried about that.”
Roscoe Woods, president of American Postal Workers Union Local 480-481 in the Detroit-metro area, said he didn’t initially think the policy changes were about the election. But after what he’s seen and heard from his members, he says he’s now “a firm believer that it’s a fundamental effort to undermine people’s confidence in this agency and make it harder to vote by mail…There’s no other explanation.”
Michael Mize, the president of the Michigan Postal Workers Union and of its Flint area local, thinks the changes “absolutely” could be part of a vote-suppression effort, but finds the possibility too disturbing. “I don’t want to say it, to be very honest, because I don’t want that to happen or be any truth behind it,” he said, adding that even the appearance of delays affecting ballots would be enough to give people “reason to challenge whether or not things were handled appropriately.”
Reports about the slowing of mail delivery and its potential to disenfranchise voters are surfacing across the country. But the issue is particularly acute in Michigan, a perennial battleground state where Trump topped Hillary Clinton by roughly 10,000 votes in 2016—just barely more than a tenth of a percentage of the 4.5 million votes cast.
DeJoy, a Trump mega donor who made millions in private shipping and whose continued financial entanglements with the industry have raised concerns about conflicts of interest, was appointed by the president as postmaster general on June 15. He has defended his recent policy changes and decisions, including the reducing workers’ overtime and haggling over rates charged to governments to mail ballots, as being justified by bottom line concerns, citing the USPS’s longstanding funding and staffing issues.
On August 7 DeJoy, in his first remarks to the Postal Service Board of Governors, said the notion that he would “ever make decisions concerning the Postal Service at the direction of the President…is wholly off-base.” Contrary to Trump’s claims that the Postal Service “can’t handle” mail ballots in the fall, DeJoy insisted the agency “has ample capacity to deliver all election mail securely and on-time.” He also denied that he’s working to privatize the Postal Service—a longstanding goal of conservatives, and a step deeply opposed by the USPS’s unionized workforce.
“Something is definitely up,” warns Michigan Senator Gary Peters.
DeJoy’s actions have caught the attention of Congress, where Democrats see his changes as part of an obvious and open plan by Trump to hamstring mail voting and suppress votes. On Wednesday, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), chairwoman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, introduced a bill that would block the Postal Service from implementing any further operational changes until the pandemic is over. The same day, every Democratic senator signed a letter to DeJoy demanding he answer questions about about increased postage charges for mail ballots and hand over his correspondence with local election officials on the issue. The actions follow an earlier request from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and several other congressional Democrats that the US Postal Service’s inspector general investigate whether DeJoy’s actions have slowed down the mail. The IG’s office declined to comment on “any ongoing work.”
Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, a Democrat, has launched his own investigation. As the ranking member on the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Peters has been gathering information from postal workers and others across Michigan, alongside reports from colleagues on both sides of the aisle about Postal Service issues in their states.
Peters’ office has set up a website to collect complaints from Michiganders about what they’re seeing. So far more than 6,000 people have sent messages about mail delivery problems, including one person who told the senator that delays had kept them from taking medications on time. While Peters says his office is used to fielding complaints about the mail, a “surge” of complaints started up around mid-July. “Something is definitely up over the last few weeks,” Peters says.
Peters, speaking on Tuesday, said he is still gathering information and he hasn’t yet reached a conclusion about whether these policies are aimed at disrupting the election. But he said he’s troubled by what he’s learned about policy changes that cut overtime, new procedures that limit the time automated mail sorters run, and modifications to the operations of inter-facility mail trucks.
Peters says he’s also concerned by conflicting answers he’s received from DeJoy’s office about the changes. In July, the senator asked about published reports of decreased overtime and delivery standards across the nation. The Postal Service responded in writing, insisting the policies were local and the media reports were incorrect. A few weeks later, after DeJoy had a testy meeting with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the USPS confirmed that the policies were, in fact, real, and they were national. Peters said the USPS hasn’t provided any data indicating the new policies are worthwhile, and refuses to indicate if DeJoy will reverse course if it’s clear that the policies are leading to delayed mail. Postal workers across the country have told Peters they already are.
“Did you actually research whether or not these policies would lead to greater efficiency?” Peters said, recalling a question he’s asked DeJoy’s office. “And if not, why? That’s really disturbing that we’re in the middle of a pandemic and you’re making major changes in policies without knowing what the impact would be.”
While the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to lead to record-high rates of postal balloting across the country, Michigan was on track for a major expansion before the virus appeared. In 2018, the state’s voters approved a change to election law allowing anyone to vote by mail. The state’s primary earlier this month saw roughly 65 percent of the 2.5 million ballots cast by mail.
“It’s criminal that you would deny people their medications, you would deny kids their birthday cards.”
But this month’s election showed that Michigan post offices, straining under existing burdens and DeJoy’s new mandates, can’t always deliver properly mailed ballots quickly enough to be counted. In Sterling Heights, a large suburb north of Detroit, 165 mail ballots postmarked on July 30 arrived six days after the August 4 election. Though a local race was decided by just 87 votes, the ballots could not be counted under a Michigan law requiring they arrive at local election offices or be in drop boxes by 8 pm on Election Day.
Melanie Ryska, Sterling Heights’ city clerk, told Crain’s Detroit Business that a few late ballots are normal for such an election, but the number they received this month “is very unusual,” even after the city advised voters to use drop-boxes in order to “avoid the mail altogether just in case something like this happened.”
Tracy Wimmer, a spokesperson for Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, says the state has been collaborating with the post office and working “to ensure that election mailings are prioritized.” Benson has confirmed that more than 6,000 ballots cast in August’s primary were rejected for falling afoul of the same arrival deadline law, which she’s called to be changed before it can cause “the disenfranchisement of tens of thousands” of the roughly 2.4 million Michigan voters already set to receive mail ballots for November.
The more mail is subject to delays, in Michigan and elsewhere, the greater the risk postal voters will see properly mailed votes go uncounted due to similar laws. The Washington Post has reported that Michigan USPS facilities have seen their ability to process mail reduced by 700,000 pieces per hour. One recent morning Wood said he and others at working at the Metroplex counted 400 all-purpose containers holding undelivered mail due to short staffing and other recent changes.
“That’s never—even during Christmas, when the Postal Service deals with 1.2 billion Christmas cards—we never had 400 containers of mail on the workroom floor,” he says. The coronavirus, which has killed several postal workers in Michigan, has brought “never-ending” turmoil, Wood says, which has only been exacerbated by changes cutting overtime, temporary employees, and access to mail sorting machines.
“DeJoy comes on the scene and it’s just feeding the chaos,” Woods says. “To do this in the middle of a pandemic when we’re short?”
Other postal workers in Michigan confirm they feel targeted by the administration and the new USPS leadership. To Mize, the head of the Michigan Postal Workers Union, Trump’s comments disparaging “mail-in voting [like it] would create more fraudulent votes” are part of an “attack to discredit us with the American people.” As far as DeJoy’s policy changes, he considers that “an attack from within,” and “a deliberate slowdown of the mail” that he views “as a crime.”
Mize says offices with workers he represents have mandated mail that used to be machine sorted now be sorted by hand, and have changed when it happens in a way that workers say is leading to cascading, multiple day delays. “The fact that we would have somebody come in and internally, purposely slow that down and make us look bad to the American public, it makes me sick to my stomach,” Mize says.
Woods, the Detroit-area worker and union official, seemed to get more upset about the situation the more he talked. “The idea that you would destroy a centuries-old institution that continuously has approval ratings in the 90s to rig an election or make it harder for people to vote, to me, is just, it’s criminal man. It’s criminal that you would deny people their medications, you would deny kids their birthday cards. Millions of Americans use the mail.”
“You’re watching voter suppression on a full-blown national level,” he said. “It’s so disheartening to me. I’m a veteran and I love this country. And it happened so fast.”