vox--2020-02-20--The Nevada caucuses’ importance, and potential chaos, explained

The Nevada caucuses are the typically glossed-over third contest in the presidential nominating process .
But with the disaster of the Iowa caucuses in the rearview and Sen. Bernie Sanders ( I-VT ) on the rise , the western state has more influence — and potential drama — than ever .
Nevada caucuses take place on Saturday , February 22 ; voters will head to caucus sites at 10 am PT/1 pm ET and will start voting around 12 pm PT/3pm ET .
We ’ re no longer in extremely white Iowa and New Hampshire ; Nevada is the most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ must appeal to Latino , African-American , and American Pacific Islander voters , many of whom are also union members .
Importantly , a good deal of ranked-choice early voting has already happened — nearly 75,000 caucus total early ballots cast as of Wednesday .
“ It ’ s a really interesting and diverse state .
If you want to look at Super Tuesday and how a candidate is going to do , look at Nevada , ” said Rebecca Katz , a progressive strategist and former staffer for Senate Majority Leader Harry @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Nevada has been an afterthought , sandwiched in the middle of Iowa , New Hampshire , and South Carolina .
But Iowa and New Hampshire didn ’ t do much to winnow the Democratic field ; just three Democratic candidates dropped out after New Hampshire — Sen. Michael Bennett ( D-CO ) , entrepreneur Andrew Yang , and former Massachusetts Gov .
Deval Patrick .
“ Nevada is the only state that is representative of our country : 30 percent Hispanic , 9 percent African American , ” former Senate Majority Leader Harry @ @ @ @ @ @ @ May .
“ Our balance is so interesting .
We have a heavy Filipino population here .
So the caucuses are just remarkably good for the country.
” Nevada could also be a harbinger for the general election ; while the state increasingly leans Democratic , Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by just 2 points there in 2016 .
Even though much of the national press is focusing on East Coast and Midwestern states , a number of political experts say Democrats ’ political future lies in the West , and Nevada is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ want to do well in the West , you have to come to Nevada , ” Reid told me .
But first , the caucuses have to actually go well — especially after the Iowa disaster .
Reid and state Democrats are laser focused on ensuring a smooth process to protect Nevada ’ s early state status .
Despite the Nevada Democratic party rolling out a live “ caucus calculator tool ” to tally the votes , Democrats in the state are still nervous about the impact human error could have the night @ @ @ @ @ @ @ caucuses will work The Nevada caucuses will partially follow Iowa ’ s caucus framework , but there will be some differences as Democrats here try to avoid a similar catastrophic outcome .
First , the similarities .
As Vox ’ s Andrew Prokop has written , Nevada Democrats will also report three sets of results on caucus day : the initial vote total , a final vote total taken after realignment and the elimination of candidates who didn ’ t get to 15 percent of the vote , and lastly , a delegate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ difference between Iowa and Nevada is there will be no third-party app ; both state parties were initially using the same app by Shadow Inc. , but Nevada Democrats quickly dropped it after multiple precinct chairs in Iowa couldn ’ t log on , or complained of crashing ( which led to further problems like jammed phone lines for those trying to call in their results ) .
Instead , Democrats have debuted something they ’ re calling an “ iPad-based calculator tool , ” which local outlet the Nevada Independent reports is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a Google Sheets spreadsheet .
The idea is precinct chairs can input their precinct ’ s caucus preferences into the form , and they will then get sorted and tallied in the spreadsheet .
The New York Times reported Google has sent staff to Nevada to monitor the caucuses for any issues .
Still , human error was one of the biggest flaws in Iowa ’ s process .
Besides making sure precinct chairs are trained and ready , there ’ s not a lot Nevada Democrats can do to ward off that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ party is a well-oiled machine , but as Iowa demonstrated — anything can happen .
There ’ s also a new layer to the caucuses in the form of early voting .
Democrats established early voting locations around the state to encourage more voting , and so far we ’ ve seen tens of thousands of people take advantage of it .
These voters were asked to rank rank up to five candidates depending on their preferences .
As Prokop writes , come caucus day , these ballots will be sorted by precinct @ @ @ @ @ @ @ realignment .
Nevada Democrats are projecting confidence they can avoid Iowa ’ s mistakes , but there are a lot of additional elements to deal with .
We ’ ll see how they handle them on Saturday .
Who needs to win in Nevada Polls and political insiders alike predict Sanders as the favorite to win the Nevada caucuses — but a lot could change between now and then .
First of all , there are still a ton of candidates still in the game ; the great winnowing that was supposed to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ really happened .
There are still eight Democratic candidates , including the top five of Sanders , former Vice President Joe Biden , former South Bend , Ind .
Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sens .
Elizabeth Warren ( D-MA ) and Amy Klobuchar ( D-MN ) .
Sanders ’ momentum out of New Hampshire helping boost a large , months long campaign operation in Nevada .
His campaign has been organizing there for 10 months ; they ’ re up to around 250 dedicated staff and 11 field offices .
State and national @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Latino voters ; a February Morning Consult national poll showed his support among these voters growing as Biden ’ s fell .
“ We canvass all day long ... we canvass , text and call at all hours because we know people are home at different hours , ” Sanders Nevada state director Sarah Michelsen told me .
“ I ’ m very confident in our program .
We ’ re not taking anything for granted and we ’ re not leaving anything on the field.
” But Sanders could hit some pitfalls @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an anti-endorsement from Nevada ’ s powerful Culinary Union , which is afraid of what Sanders ’ Medicare-for-all plan could do to their union insurance .
Medicare-for-all was just the start of a nasty fight between Culinary and a contingent of Sanders ’ online supporters .
The Culinary Union has made it very clear they don ’ t like Sanders , but they also aren ’ t endorsing anyone .
That ’ s not good news for moderate candidates who were hoping to receive a bump from the group .
Biden and Warren @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from a poor performance in Nevada ; after lackluster performances in earlier states , both are banking on a show of strength here to propel them forward .
A loss here could be especially damaging for Biden , who came in fourth place in Iowa and fifth place in New Hampshire .
Biden ’ s big argument is he ’ s strong with nonwhite voters , so a loss here could hurt him in South Carolina — where his campaign has been banking on a win .
He has little room for error @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about the place we ’ re in and good about our operation , ” a Biden campaign aide in Nevada told Vox .
Warren is also looking for a second wind after placing a decent third in Iowa and disappointing fourth in New Hampshire .
The addition of former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg at Wednesday night ’ s Nevada debate gave Warren an opening to be far more fiery than we ’ ve seen in previous debates .
She came out swinging at Bloomberg , Buttigieg , and Biden ( among others @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as the night wore on .
Her campaign reported raising $ 425,000 in 30 minutes during the debate , a good indication of newfound momentum .
Warren ’ s campaign has already laid out their strategy to stay in the race until Super Tuesday and beyond , but she needs a good night in one of the early states .
Even the candidates who are riding momentum out of New Hampshire could hit a snag here in Nevada .
Klobuchar saw a surprise bump with her close third-place finish in the New Hampshire @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to size up a small campaign in the state .
Even with large crowds , polls show Klobuchar falling behind with nonwhite voters .
“ The uphill battle is introducing her to people who weren ’ t familiar with her , ” a Klobuchar staffer told Vox .
“ We ’ re trying to be as aggressive as we can.
” Buttigieg , who has a much larger campaign staff here , faces fundamentally the same problem with nonwhite voters .
A recent Data for Progress Nevada poll showed Buttigieg ’ s unfavorables @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , 48-32 , with 20 percent saying they hadn ’ t heard enough yet to say .
A recent national poll by Univision showed just 5 of Latinos said they intended to vote for him , with 21 percent saying they hadn ’ t heard enough about him .
Buttigieg is trying to make as many of those introductions as he can .
He has barnstormed the state with a dozen events in the last week , and his campaign said they ’ re getting more people signing up to volunteer or work @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ We were a little bit late to the game here relative to other candidates , ” a Buttigieg staffer told Vox .
“ We definitely feel the momentum here on the ground.
” Nevada is the most diverse early voting state — and it ’ s heavily working-class Reid was instrumental in getting Nevada into the roster of early states in 2006 .
Simply put , he thought Iowa and New Hampshire were too white to have such an outsized role picking the next president .
“ You go to New Hampshire @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Nobody lives there , ” Reid told the Washington Post in 2015 .
“ You go to Iowa .
There are a few people there , but again it ’ s a place that does not demonstrate what America is all about , for a lot of different reasons.
” Reid believed diverse states in the mix would force presidential candidates to think about issues impacting nonwhite voters .
He rankled party leaders in the other early states , but he also had a point — New Hampshire and Iowa are both @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a population that ’ s 30 percent Hispanic/Latino , 10 percent African American , and 10 percent Asian or Pacific Islander , Nevada is more representative of America as a whole .
“ You ’ re going to get a lot of folks who have ideas of what America should look like from their perspective , instead of just the folks in Iowa or New Hampshire , ” Erika Washington , executive director of nonpartisan group Make It Work Nevada told me in an interview last year .
Nevada is also heavily working-class @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s population works in the service industry : cooking , cleaning , and bartending for the hotels and casinos that are Nevada ’ s economic juggernauts .
“ It is very blue-collar , partially because we ’ re a hospitality state , ” Washington said .
“ Everyone comes here to forget their problems and cause some ruckus ... but who is cleaning up after you ?
Who is making sure you are safe ?
These are all blue-collar , hardworking folks who are doing it in very hot weather and who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to campaigns trying to reach voters , especially ones working various shifts at hotels , restaurants and casinos .
Helping organize that community takes a machine , which is why unions are such formidable players in Nevada state politics .
There are none more powerful than the Culinary Workers Union — the same group that organized a 1991 workers strike at the Frontier Hotel that lasted more than six years .
The union is highly sought after during election years .
If it backs a candidate , it turns into a veritable political @ @ @ @ @ @ @ doors in Las Vegas suburbs for months .
“ [ It ] is not just a great turnout machine for workers , but it ’ s essentially the Hispanic turnout machine , ” said Jon Ralston , editor of the Nevada Independent and the state ’ s political dean .
“ If you can get the Culinary Union to go out for you and go out for you hard , that can be a game changer.
” No campaign is getting the benefit of the Culinary Union ’ s turnout machine in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the coveted endorsement of Harry Reid .
Harry Reid is also sitting on the sidelines — for now As the race in Nevada heats up , all eyes are on Reid , the powerful former Senate majority leader , party boss , and arguably the catalyst for the creation of the caucuses .
But Reid is keeping things close to the vest for now .
He recently showed up to an early voting location to cast an “ uncommitted ” caucus card .
Reid told me in an interview last year he won @ @ @ @ @ @ @ caucuses are over .
He readily admitted he encouraged Warren ( whom he “ thinks the world of ” ) to run for president , and still considers Biden a “ friend.
” When Sanders had a heart attack in Las Vegas in October , Reid visited him in the hospital .
“ [ Warren ] knows I can ’ t endorse her , I can ’ t endorse Joe or anybody else , ” Reid told me last year .
“ But that doesn ’ t mean I can ’ t tell @ @ @ @ @ @ @ person close to Reid told me he is staying on the sidelines when it comes to the candidates , and is instead focused on making sure these caucuses run smoothly .
Still , Reid ’ s influence is being felt in many other ways .
A number of top staffers in multiple campaigns got their start in his Senate office , and candidates including Sanders are attempting to replicate his playbook for winning elections in Nevada : organize heavily and turn out Latino voters en masse .
“ Harry Reid unlocked this system @ @ @ @ @ @ @ population , you have a population that is integrated into labor unions , and Reid uses particularly labor unions to get Latinos out to vote , ” Stephen Nuño-Perez , a senior analyst for the Latino polling firm Latino Decisions told me in a recent interview .
“ This is the playbook , and it ’ s a natural fit for Sanders ’ s style of how he envisions politics.
” Reid ’ s endorsement will be key to whoever wins the 2020 nomination .
But that person needs to win over the @ @ @ @ @ @

Next up, Nevada.
The Nevada caucuses are the typically glossed-over third contest in the presidential nominating process. But with the disaster of the Iowa caucuses in the rearview and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on the rise, the western state has more influence — and potential drama — than ever.
Nevada caucuses take place on Saturday, February 22; voters will head to caucus sites at 10 am PT/1 pm ET and will start voting around 12 pm PT/3pm ET. We’re no longer in extremely white Iowa and New Hampshire; Nevada is the most diverse of the early states and candidates must appeal to Latino, African American, and Asian American and Pacific Islander voters, many of whom are also union members. Importantly, a good deal of ranked-choice early voting has already happened — nearly 75,000 caucus total early ballots cast as of Wednesday.
“It’s a really interesting and diverse state. If you want to look at Super Tuesday and how a candidate is going to do, look at Nevada,” said Rebecca Katz, a progressive strategist and former staffer for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
In past presidential cycles, Nevada has been an afterthought, sandwiched in the middle of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. But Iowa and New Hampshire didn’t do much to winnow the Democratic field; just three Democratic candidates dropped out after New Hampshire — Sen. Michael Bennett (D-CO), entrepreneur Andrew Yang, and former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.
“Nevada is the only state that is representative of our country: 30 percent Hispanic, 9 percent African American,” former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told me in an interview last May. “Our balance is so interesting. We have a heavy Filipino population here. So the caucuses are just remarkably good for the country.”
Nevada could also be a harbinger for the general election; while the state increasingly leans Democratic, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by just 2 points there in 2016. Even though much of the national press is focusing on East Coast and Midwestern states, a number of political experts say Democrats’ political future lies in the West, and Nevada is the regional bellwether.
“If you want to do well in the West, you have to come to Nevada,” Reid told me.
But first, the caucuses have to actually go well — especially after the Iowa disaster. Reid and state Democrats are laser focused on ensuring a smooth process to protect Nevada’s early state status. Despite the Nevada Democratic party rolling out a live “caucus calculator tool” to tally the votes, Democrats in the state are still nervous about the impact human error could have the night of the vote.
How the Nevada caucuses will work
The Nevada caucuses will partially follow Iowa’s caucus framework, but there will be some differences as Democrats here try to avoid a similar catastrophic outcome.
First, the similarities. As Vox’s Andrew Prokop has written, Nevada Democrats will also report three sets of results on caucus day: the initial vote total, a final vote total taken after realignment and the elimination of candidates who didn’t get to 15 percent of the vote, and lastly, a delegate number. Prokop writes:
Those three sets of numbers added complexity to the tallying in Iowa — and provided many more opportunities for human error to become evident. The New York Times estimated that there were “inconsistencies in the reported data” for at least one in six Iowa precincts. And the same could well prove true in Nevada.
The big difference between Iowa and Nevada is there will be no third-party app; both state parties were initially using the same app by Shadow Inc., but Nevada Democrats quickly dropped it after multiple precinct chairs in Iowa couldn’t log on, or complained of crashing (which led to further problems like jammed phone lines for those trying to call in their results).
The Nevada Democratic Party decided it’s also going to rely on phones to report caucus results. In doing so, the state party is ditching an “iPad-based calculator tool,” which local outlet the Nevada Independent reported was essentially a Google Form page linked to a Google spreadsheet.
Still, human error was one of the biggest flaws in Iowa’s process. Besides making sure precinct chairs are trained and ready to report three sets of results, there’s not a lot Nevada Democrats can do to ward off that element of uncertainty. Reid’s party is a well-oiled machine, but as Iowa demonstrated — anything can happen.
There’s also a new layer to the caucuses in the form of early voting. Democrats established early voting locations around the state to encourage more voting, and so far we’ve seen tens of thousands of people take advantage of it. These voters were asked to rank rank up to five candidates depending on their preferences.
As Prokop writes, come caucus day, these ballots will be sorted by precinct and incorporated into the in-person caucus before realignment.
As in Iowa, any supporters of candidates with more than 15 percent support in the precinct (including both in-person and early votes) get locked in. Supporters of candidates below that threshold, though, get to realign. They can back a viable candidate, combine forces to make a nonviable candidate viable, or refuse to support anyone. Once this in-person realignment is done, then the early votes who backed nonviable candidates as their first preference get realigned. They are allotted to their highest-ranking choice who is now viable in the room.
Nevada Democrats are projecting confidence they can avoid Iowa’s mistakes, but there are a lot of additional elements to deal with. We’ll see how they handle them on Saturday.
Who needs to win in Nevada
Polls and political insiders alike predict Sanders as the favorite to win the Nevada caucuses — but a lot could change between now and then.
First of all, there are still a ton of candidates still in the game; the great winnowing that was supposed to occur in Iowa and New Hampshire never really happened. There are still eight Democratic candidates, including the top five of Sanders, former Vice President Joe Biden, former South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN).
Sanders’s momentum out of New Hampshire helped boost a large, months-long campaign operation in Nevada. His campaign has been organizing there for 10 months; they’re up to around 250 dedicated staff and 11 field offices. State and national polls show Sanders doing very well among Latino voters; a February Morning Consult national poll showed his support among these voters growing as Biden’s fell.
“We canvass all day long ... we canvass, text and call at all hours because we know people are home at different hours,” Sanders Nevada state director Sarah Michelsen told me. “I’m very confident in our program. We’re not taking anything for granted and we’re not leaving anything on the field.”
But Sanders could hit some pitfalls; he’s received something of an anti-endorsement from Nevada’s powerful Culinary Union, which is afraid of what his Medicare-for-all plan could do to their union insurance. Medicare-for-all was just the start of a nasty fight between Culinary and a contingent of Sanders’s online supporters.
The Culinary Union has made it very clear they don’t like Sanders, but they also aren’t endorsing anyone. That’s not good news for moderate candidates who were hoping to receive a bump from the group.
Biden and Warren ultimately could have the most to lose from a poor performance in Nevada; after lackluster performances in earlier states, both are banking on a show of strength here to propel them forward. A loss here could be especially damaging for Biden, who came in fourth place in Iowa and fifth place in New Hampshire. Biden’s big argument is he’s strong with nonwhite voters, so a loss here could hurt him in South Carolina — where his campaign has been banking on a win. He has little room for error in Nevada.
“We feel competitive about the place we’re in and good about our operation,” a Biden campaign aide in Nevada told Vox.
Warren is also looking for a second wind after placing a decent third in Iowa and disappointing fourth in New Hampshire. The addition of former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg at Wednesday night’s Nevada debate gave Warren an opening to be far more fiery than we’ve seen in previous debates. She came out swinging at Bloomberg, Buttigieg, and Biden (among others) — and didn’t stop as the night wore on. Her campaign reported raising $425,000 in 30 minutes during the debate, a good indication of newfound momentum.
Warren’s campaign has already laid out their strategy to stay in the race until Super Tuesday and beyond, but she needs a good night in one of the early states.
Even the candidates who are riding momentum out of New Hampshire could hit a snag here in Nevada. Klobuchar saw a surprise bump with her close third-place finish in the New Hampshire primary, but she’s scrambling to size up a small campaign in the state. Even with large crowds, polls show Klobuchar falling behind with nonwhite voters.
“The uphill battle is introducing her to people who weren’t familiar with her,” a Klobuchar staffer told Vox. “We’re trying to be as aggressive as we can.”
Buttigieg, who has a much larger campaign staff here, faces fundamentally the same problem with nonwhite voters. A recent Data for Progress Nevada poll showed Buttigieg’s unfavorables were higher than his favorables among Latinos, 48-32, with 20 percent saying they hadn’t heard enough yet to say. A recent national poll by Univision showed just 5 of Latinos said they intended to vote for him, with 21 percent saying they hadn’t heard enough about him.
Buttigieg is trying to make as many of those introductions as he can. He has barnstormed the state with a dozen events in the last week, and his campaign said they’re getting more people signing up to volunteer or work as precinct captains on their behalf.
“We were a little bit late to the game here relative to other candidates,” a Buttigieg staffer told Vox. “We definitely feel the momentum here on the ground.”
Nevada is the most diverse early voting state — and it’s heavily working-class
Reid was instrumental in getting Nevada into the roster of early states in 2006. Simply put, he thought Iowa and New Hampshire were too white to have such an outsized role picking the next president.
“You go to New Hampshire. There are not any minorities there. Nobody lives there,” Reid told the Washington Post in 2015. “You go to Iowa. There are a few people there, but again it’s a place that does not demonstrate what America is all about, for a lot of different reasons.”
Reid believed diverse states in the mix would force presidential candidates to think about issues impacting nonwhite voters. He rankled party leaders in the other early states, but he also had a point — New Hampshire and Iowa are both more than 90 percent white. With a population that’s 30 percent Hispanic/Latino, 10 percent African American, and 10 percent Asian or Pacific Islander, Nevada is more representative of America as a whole.
“You’re going to get a lot of folks who have ideas of what America should look like from their perspective, instead of just the folks in Iowa or New Hampshire,” Erika Washington, executive director of nonpartisan group Make It Work Nevada told me in an interview last year.
Nevada is also heavily working-class. A huge chunk of the state’s population works in the service industry: cooking, cleaning, and bartending for the hotels and casinos that are Nevada’s economic juggernauts.
“It is very blue-collar, partially because we’re a hospitality state,” Washington said. “Everyone comes here to forget their problems and cause some ruckus ... but who is cleaning up after you? Who is making sure you are safe? These are all blue-collar, hardworking folks who are doing it in very hot weather and who have families.”
That presents unique challenges to campaigns trying to reach voters, especially ones working various shifts at hotels, restaurants and casinos. Helping organize that community takes a machine, which is why unions are such formidable players in Nevada state politics.
There are none more powerful than the Culinary Workers Union — the same group that organized a 1991 workers strike at the Frontier Hotel that lasted more than six years. The union is highly sought after during election years. If it backs a candidate, it turns into a veritable political army, working the phones and knocking doors in Las Vegas suburbs for months.
“[It] is not just a great turnout machine for workers, but it’s essentially the Hispanic turnout machine,” said Jon Ralston, editor of the Nevada Independent and the state’s political dean. “If you can get the Culinary Union to go out for you and go out for you hard, that can be a game changer.”
No campaign is getting the benefit of the Culinary Union’s turnout machine in the 2020 primary; nor is anyone getting the coveted endorsement of Harry Reid.
Harry Reid is also sitting on the sidelines — for now
As the race in Nevada heats up, all eyes are on Reid, the powerful former Senate majority leader, party boss, and arguably the catalyst for the creation of the caucuses.
But Reid is keeping things close to the vest for now. He recently showed up to an early voting location to cast an “uncommitted” caucus card. Reid told me in an interview last year he won’t make an endorsement until the caucuses are over. He readily admitted he encouraged Warren (whom he “thinks the world of”) to run for president, and still considers Biden a “friend.” When Sanders had a heart attack in Las Vegas in October, Reid visited him in the hospital.
“[Warren] knows I can’t endorse her, I can’t endorse Joe or anybody else,” Reid told me last year. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t tell everybody how good they are.”
A person close to Reid told me he is staying on the sidelines when it comes to the candidates, and is instead focused on making sure these caucuses run smoothly.
Still, Reid’s influence is being felt in many other ways. A number of top staffers in multiple campaigns got their start in his Senate office, and candidates including Sanders are attempting to replicate his playbook for winning elections in Nevada: organize heavily and turn out Latino voters en masse.
“Harry Reid unlocked this system in Nevada where you have a young population, you have a population that is integrated into labor unions, and Reid uses particularly labor unions to get Latinos out to vote,” Stephen Nuño-Perez, a senior analyst for the Latino polling firm Latino Decisions told me in a recent interview. “This is the playbook, and it’s a natural fit for Sanders’s style of how he envisions politics.”
Reid’s endorsement will be key to whoever wins the 2020 nomination. But that person needs to win over the rest of Nevada Democrats first.


vox--2020-02-20--How a white evangelical family could dismantle adoption protections for Native children

In June 2016 , a 10-month-old Navajo and Cherokee boy was placed in the home of a white , evangelical couple in Fort Worth , Texas .
The baby had been taken from his Navajo mother , who ’ d left the reservation and was living in Texas , because of her drug use .
The foster couple — Jennifer and Chad Brackeen , an anesthesiologist and a former civil engineer — were “ self-conscious about their material success , ” the New York Times reported , and told the paper that fostering a child was a way to “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the Brackeens were temporarily held back in their plans to adopt the boy , when , under the provisions of the Indian Child Welfare Act , the Navajo tribe located a Native family unrelated to the boy to take him in .
So the Brackeens filed a federal lawsuit .
“ He had already been taken from his first home , and now it would happen again ?
And the only explanation is that we don ’ t have the right color of skin ?
How do we explain that to our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nothing but sign up to do good , ” Jennifer Brackeen told the Times .
Since the suit was filed , plans to send the boy to another tribe fell through and the Brackeens have been allowed to formally adopt him .
Last year , the Brackeens fought to obtain custody of the boy ’ s sister , whose Navajo extended family wanted to take her in .
At the hearing deciding the girl ’ s fate , Chad Brackeen left out any self-consciousness about his large home with a pool on an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the Times .
He told the judge that he worried for the baby girl , “ not as an infant living in a room with a great-aunt but maybe as an adolescent in smaller , confined homes.
” “ I don ’ t know what that looks like , ” he continued , “ if she needs space , if she needs privacy .
I ’ m a little bit concerned with the limited financial resources possibly to care for this child , should an emergency come up.
” This cultural difference @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is determined by its wealth , and that those concerns should outweigh a child ’ s connection to their family and heritage — is essentially why the Indian Child Welfare Act was created in 1978 .
The law recognizes the history of federal policy aimed at breaking up Native families and mandates that , whenever possible , Native families should remain together .
Sarah Kastelic , the executive director of the National Indian Child Welfare Association , said that ICWA acknowledges important familial and tribal bonds that have long been disregarded , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ families living under the same roof — have often been used to show unfitness in child welfare proceedings .
“ No matter the picket fences and swimming pools and things , most of the time , kids want to be with their families , ” she said .
With their lawsuit , in which they ’ re joined by the State of Texas , the Brackeens have become the public face of the case that could dismantle ICWA .
The couple — and the Goldwater Institute , the conservative think tank who backed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2018 when a federal district court ruled that ICWA was unconstitutional .
Last year , a Fifth Circuit panel of three judges partially reversed the decision .
Then , last month , the case was taken up by all 17 judges on the Fifth Circuit in an “ en banc ” hearing ; Native advocates say it ’ s likely that whatever the ruling , the decision will be appealed to the Supreme Court .
If overturned , the repeal of ICWA could upend a law in place for more than 40 years @ @ @ @ @ @ @ broader implications than just child welfare — it cuts at the heart of tribal sovereignty in this country .
The 573 federally recognized tribes could be left open to legal challenges on many fronts if the basis of ICWA is found unconstitutional .
“ The core of their argument is that it ’ s an unfair racial preference and that we should have a colorblind system , ” Chuck Hoskin Jr. , the principal chief of the Cherokee Nation , told Vox .
“ What that misses is what ’ s a bedrock @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which is that tribes are sovereign , not distinguished as a race but as a special political designation .
That ’ s a critical underpinning of not just ICWA , but many laws that relate to housing and healthcare and education and employment .
For that to be eroded by a successful attack on ICWA — that would have broad implications on all of these.
” Kastelic said that ICWA has long been subject to lawsuits from two groups — those with the ultimate goal of eroding tribal sovereignty , and those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lengthier process that must be undertaken to adopt a Native child .
“ We ’ ve seen the rise of think tanks — Goldwater Institute , Heritage Foundation , Cato — that have a broader agenda about state rights and subverting or dismantling tribal sovereignty as part of their agenda , ” Kastelic said .
“ And then there ’ s a religious agenda , a number of Christian organizations wanting access to Native children still with the premise of ‘ saving Indians ’ — that because of high rates of poverty or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that that still warrants them to take our children .
They feel entitled to them.
” The US ’ s long , disgraceful history of breaking up of Native families Forced removals of Native Americans from their homelands by the federal government in the 1800s caused the deaths of thousands of Native American people , especially children and the elderly .
In 1879 , the federal government undertook a mass assimilation effort of Native children , creating Indian Boarding Schools , in which Native children were forced to drop their language and customs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Many in the boarding schools suffered abuse — 180 graves of children can be found on the grounds of the single most famous school of that era , the Carlisle Indian Industrial School .
When the boarding schools began to die out in the 1950s and 1960s , a new effort took its place .
From 1958 to 1967 , the federal government enacted a program called the Indian Adoption Project , with the goal of white Americans adopting Native children .
A 1966 Bureau of Indian Affairs press release described it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ two little , three little Indians — and 206 more — are brightening the homes and lives of 172 American families , mostly non-Indians , who have taken the Indian waifs as their own.
” It was in this context that Bert Hirsch , an attorney with the Association on American Indian Affairs , first came to Devils Lake , North Dakota , in 1967 , to help a Native grandmother who ’ d lost custody of her 6-year-old grandson .
A member of what ’ s now the Spirit Lake tribe , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of abuse or neglect , Hirsch told Vox .
“ The only allegation was that she was too old — at 62 years old , ” he said .
Hirsch and the Spirit Lake tribe fought that case successfully , but it got them thinking : How many other families were going through something similar ?
Hirsch led an effort to gather data , first from the child placing agencies in North Dakota , and then in all 50 states , trying to glean the scope of the problem .
Prior to this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they were fighting and losing to the child welfare system were unique to each of them .
But Hirsch ’ s numbers were a wakeup call , not just to the tribes , but to national and international news outlets : The data showed that 25 to 35 percent of Native children around the country were being taken from their homes , and that 85 to 95 percent of those kids ended up in non-Native homes or institutions .
“ As we pointed out to Congress over the years , it was way @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to what was happening to any other demographic , ” Hirsch said .
Hirsch worked as an attorney for these types of cases for four decades , and in that time , “ I ’ ve seen a lot that makes my stomach turn , it ’ s just sickening , ” he said .
In the days before ICWA , a law that Hirsch helped to write and pass , judges “ had no trouble just taking tribal kids away from their families and putting them in foster care , because they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ didn ’ t like their way of life .
Ostensibly , they were removed for neglect , but really it was all about poverty , ” Hirsch said .
“ If you ’ re poor and you ’ re Indian , you lose your kid.
” Although Native Americans are still overrepresented in the foster care system , ICWA stemmed the tide of removals that were severing children ’ s bonds to their heritage at such a widespread and alarming scale .
The provisions call for a Native child ’ s tribe to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ proceedings commence , and for the child ’ s tribe to be a party to the case in the courtroom , if they wish .
Preference must be given for the child ’ s family — whether the family is Native or non-Native — and then to the child ’ s tribe , and finally , to other Native American tribes .
“ ICWA guides in preferences — none of them are ironclad mandates that a child be placed with an Indian family , ” Hoskin , the Cherokee principal chief , said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rights of tribes to help decide what happens to their children .
“ It ’ s just as much about the right of the tribal government to be in that courtroom as it is for that child to have their government in the courtroom , ” Hoskin said .
“ Their culture is at stake and the future of their people is at stake.
” While the creation of ICWA was a good first step toward keeping families together , there has been no federal agency designated to oversee its implementation and ensure @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Because of this , no federal data has been compiled on what has resulted from the law ’ s passage .
Also , the continued overrepresentation of Native children in the child welfare system around the country calls states ’ compliance into question .
In 2016 , the ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of two South Dakota tribes challenging the state ’ s lack of compliance — statistics showed that Native children were 11 times more likely to end up in foster care than white children in South Dakota .
A federal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ violating the stipulations of ICWA .
Hirsch said the law has been successful in reducing removals of Native children when it is followed , but that its success is based on compliance that is nowhere near universal .
“ The law was designed to , one , keep Indian kids from being removed from their families .
That should be a goal everyone should support if you believe Indian families should continue to exist .
And two , to recognize the legitimacy of Indian tribal existence , ” Hirsch said .
“ If @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seeking to achieve and how it seeks to achieve it , then you can get some pretty decent compliance .
But if you start from a premise that rejects all of that , it ’ s a different story.
” The stakes are high for Native children What sometimes gets lost in the conversation about ICWA is that the principles it sets forth — including trying to keep family units intact if at all possible — are widely considered to be best practice in the child welfare field today .
In 2013 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prominent child welfare organizations , including Casey Family Programs , the Child Welfare League of America and the Children ’ s Defense Fund , filed an amicus brief in support of ICWA in another case challenging the law .
“ In the Indian Child Welfare Act , Congress adopted the gold standard for child welfare policies and practices that should be afforded to all children , ” the organizations wrote in the brief .
“ ICWA works very well and , in fact , is a model for child welfare and placement decision-making @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” “ Whereas ICWA seemed like anomaly in the late ’ 70s when it was passed , the whole body of child welfare law has moved more and more in alignment with ICWA since , ” said Kastelic , whose team at NICWA helps train child welfare workers around the country on how to implement ICWA .
“ Prioritizing family placements , keeping sibling groups together — ICWA was doing that in the late ’ 70s.
” The media ’ s coverage of these issues often focuses on specific cases , like those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the needed context of how much our failing systems contribute to the problem .
Eighteen states around the country have been targets of class action lawsuits filed by nonprofit Children ’ s Rights over their poor treatment of kids in care .
The suits outline a familiar pattern : Chronic underfunding has led to low-paid and overworked caseworkers who don ’ t have the time they need to truly care for children ’ s best interests .
Because of this , many kids around the country slip through the cracks , and are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the care of the state — sometimes worse than the conditions that led to them being in care in the first place .
With ICWA , Native kids who are disproportionately represented in the child welfare system have an added line of defense against spending long periods of time in a system that we know harms children .
But the focus on individual stories over systemic problems leaves many well-meaning Americans unaware of the true scope of the problem .
“ In part because of the historical underpinnings of our child welfare @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thinking ‘ deserving ’ and ‘ undeserving.
’ And most parents , who have no ability to address the structural problems they are facing ... we ’ re still thinking about it at just a personal level , ” Kastelic said .
There ’ s another voice missing from many of these conversations : that of the adoptee .
Sandy White Hawk , a Sicangu Lakota adoptee from the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota , is the founder of the First Nations Repatriation Institute , which researches Native adoptees and helps to reunite @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ When we grow up in a white home in a white community , that ’ s all we see and know .
We don ’ t know anything about being Native , and most white people don ’ t know anything about who we are , ” White Hawk said .
“ You don ’ t have your image mirrored back to you in any way .
That ’ s a distortion as you develop your identity.
” White Hawk , who experienced abuse in her adoptive home , said it ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ aren ’ t happy endings .
A 2008 University of Minnesota study has shown adoptees have greater odds of an ADHD or ODD diagnosis than those who have not been separated from their families , and that adoptees are more likely to have contact with mental health professionals .
In 2017 , White Hawk and several others published a study of hundreds of adoptees that showed Native American adoptees were more likely to report mental health problems — including substance use disorder and recovery , eating disorders , self-harm , and suicidal ideation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s nothing in our societal messages — everything about adoption is a forever happy home , and while there are happy children and there are kind and loving parents , this other reality is there , period , ” White Hawk said .
“ And that doesn ’ t mean a bash of adoption .
But we ’ re so invested in this forever-happy-saving-children thing that anything that critiques it — there ’ s no willingness to hear that.
” White Hawk helps organize an annual “ gathering for our children and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Native adoptees back into their tribes .
“ I knew how painful and how hard it was to take your place in the circle once you ’ ve been gone .
There was no roadmap , no one could help , ” White Hawk said .
“ For those that may not have even met their family or have been home for a long time , it ’ s the first time it ’ s been acknowledged that they ’ ve suffered grief and loss.
” The Indian Child Welfare Act case has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t the first to bring a case against ICWA .
They ’ re not even the first family the Goldwater Institute has backed in such a suit .
The think tank , whose funders include top Trump donors and an organization linked to the Koch brothers , has fought to dismantle union power and to “ vindicate the constitutional rights of businesses ” to contribute to political campaigns .
The institute has challenged ICWA a dozen times since 2014 .
“ The only basis for forcing these kids to be sent to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ racially connected , ” Timothy Sandefur , Goldwater ’ s vice president of litigation , told the Nation in 2017 .
“ It ’ s like saying that children of Japanese descent need to be adjudicated by the court of Japan.
” When asked for comment , the Goldwater Institute referred Vox to a blog post written by Sandefur , in which he says that Indian children “ must be abused worse and for longer than children of other races before the government can rescue them from abusive households.
” As of now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deliberating on the fate of ICWA ; it ’ s likely that whatever the ruling , there will be an appeal to the Supreme Court , although it ’ s unclear whether the highest court will take up the case .
If the Supreme Court were to agree with the plaintiffs ’ assertions that ICWA is unfairly based on race , the consequences could undermine the entire concept of tribal sovereignty — and some critics of Goldwater and other conservative organizations like it say that this , and not the children ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ I think there are critics that are specifically critical of ICWA and don ’ t have a broader agenda , but some do have a broader agenda .
And the attacks on ICWA have very big implications , ” Hoskin said .
“ A very basic act of sovereignty is the tribe ’ s ability under law to protect their children.
” In the Atlantic , two Michigan law professors argue that by seeking to dismantle ICWA , the plaintiffs “ risk undoing a set of doctrines that has facilitated tribes ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who victimize Native people.
” “ In Brackeen , Texas has mounted nothing less than a frontal attack on the entire corpus of federal law that governs Indian affairs today , ” the professors write .
Another group vocally opposed to ICWA is the adoption industry , including the huge number of Evangelical Christians who want to adopt children .
Around the turn of the century , celebrity pastors with huge followings began framing adoption as a moral imperative .
The result was a boom in the adoption industry both domestically and abroad @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Christians are more than twice as likely to adopt than non-Christians and that American adoptions make up nearly half of all adoptions worldwide .
“ The regulation of adoption from state to state varies widely — and there ’ s a confluence of factors that mean that with quick-and-easy adoptions , there ’ s lots of money involved , ” Kastelic said .
With the future of ICWA uncertain , tribes around the country worry about what might happen if Native children lose their special protections .
“ The fear is without these @ @ @ @ @ @ @ system continues to be biased .
Bias is baked into the policies and safety assessments and you name it , ” Kastelic said .
“ Our fear is that we are going to go back to the pre-ICWA days — the mass removal of children .
”

In June 2016, a 10-month-old Navajo and Cherokee boy was placed in the home of a white, evangelical couple in Fort Worth, Texas.
The baby had been taken from his Navajo mother, who’d left the reservation and was living in Texas, because of her drug use. The foster couple — Jennifer and Chad Brackeen, an anesthesiologist and a former civil engineer — were “self-conscious about their material success,” the New York Times reported, and told the paper that fostering a child was a way to “rectify their blessings.”
The next year, the Brackeens were temporarily held back in their plans to adopt the boy, when, under the provisions of the Indian Child Welfare Act, the Navajo tribe located a Native family unrelated to the boy to take him in. So the Brackeens filed a federal lawsuit. “He had already been taken from his first home, and now it would happen again? And the only explanation is that we don’t have the right color of skin? How do we explain that to our own children? We’d done nothing but sign up to do good,” Jennifer Brackeen told the Times.
Since the suit was filed, plans to send the boy to another tribe fell through and the Brackeens have been allowed to formally adopt him. Last year, the Brackeens fought to obtain custody of the boy’s sister, whose Navajo extended family wanted to take her in. At the hearing deciding the girl’s fate, Chad Brackeen left out any self-consciousness about his large home with a pool on an acre of land that he had expressed to the Times. He told the judge that he worried for the baby girl, “not as an infant living in a room with a great-aunt but maybe as an adolescent in smaller, confined homes.”
“I don’t know what that looks like,” he continued, “if she needs space, if she needs privacy. I’m a little bit concerned with the limited financial resources possibly to care for this child, should an emergency come up.”
This cultural difference — that a family’s fitness is determined by its wealth, and that those concerns should outweigh a child’s connection to their family and heritage — is essentially why the Indian Child Welfare Act was created in 1978. The law recognizes the history of federal policy aimed at breaking up Native families and mandates that, whenever possible, Native families should remain together.
Sarah Kastelic, the executive director of the National Indian Child Welfare Association, said that ICWA acknowledges important familial and tribal bonds that have long been disregarded, and that Native ways — such as extended families living under the same roof — have often been used to show unfitness in child welfare proceedings. “No matter the picket fences and swimming pools and things, most of the time, kids want to be with their families,” she said.
With their lawsuit, in which they’re joined by the State of Texas, the Brackeens have become the public face of the case that could dismantle ICWA. The couple — and the Goldwater Institute, the conservative think tank who backed the lawsuit — scored a win in 2018 when a federal district court ruled that ICWA was unconstitutional. Last year, a Fifth Circuit panel of three judges partially reversed the decision. Then, last month, the case was taken up by all 17 judges on the Fifth Circuit in an “en banc” hearing; Native advocates say it’s likely that whatever the ruling, the decision will be appealed to the Supreme Court.
If overturned, the repeal of ICWA could upend a law in place for more than 40 years. And the legal case has much broader implications than just child welfare — it cuts at the heart of tribal sovereignty in this country. The 573 federally recognized tribes could be left open to legal challenges on many fronts if the basis of ICWA is found unconstitutional.
“The core of their argument is that it’s an unfair racial preference and that we should have a colorblind system,” Chuck Hoskin Jr., the principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, told Vox. “What that misses is what’s a bedrock of federal Indian law in this country, which is that tribes are sovereign, not distinguished as a race but as a special political designation. That’s a critical underpinning of not just ICWA, but many laws that relate to housing and healthcare and education and employment. For that to be eroded by a successful attack on ICWA — that would have broad implications on all of these.”
Kastelic said that ICWA has long been subject to lawsuits from two groups — those with the ultimate goal of eroding tribal sovereignty, and those in the adoption community who disdain the lengthier process that must be undertaken to adopt a Native child.
“We’ve seen the rise of think tanks — Goldwater Institute, Heritage Foundation, Cato — that have a broader agenda about state rights and subverting or dismantling tribal sovereignty as part of their agenda,” Kastelic said. “And then there’s a religious agenda, a number of Christian organizations wanting access to Native children still with the premise of ‘saving Indians’ — that because of high rates of poverty or substance abuse or mental health challenges, that that still warrants them to take our children. They feel entitled to them.”
The US’s long, disgraceful history of breaking up of Native families
Forced removals of Native Americans from their homelands by the federal government in the 1800s caused the deaths of thousands of Native American people, especially children and the elderly. In 1879, the federal government undertook a mass assimilation effort of Native children, creating Indian Boarding Schools, in which Native children were forced to drop their language and customs and were indoctrinated in white American ways. Many in the boarding schools suffered abuse — 180 graves of children can be found on the grounds of the single most famous school of that era, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.
When the boarding schools began to die out in the 1950s and 1960s, a new effort took its place. From 1958 to 1967, the federal government enacted a program called the Indian Adoption Project, with the goal of white Americans adopting Native children. A 1966 Bureau of Indian Affairs press release described it like this: “One little, two little, three little Indians — and 206 more — are brightening the homes and lives of 172 American families, mostly non-Indians, who have taken the Indian waifs as their own.”
It was in this context that Bert Hirsch, an attorney with the Association on American Indian Affairs, first came to Devils Lake, North Dakota, in 1967, to help a Native grandmother who’d lost custody of her 6-year-old grandson. A member of what’s now the Spirit Lake tribe, this grandmother hadn’t been accused of abuse or neglect, Hirsch told Vox. “The only allegation was that she was too old — at 62 years old,” he said.
Hirsch and the Spirit Lake tribe fought that case successfully, but it got them thinking: How many other families were going through something similar? Hirsch led an effort to gather data, first from the child placing agencies in North Dakota, and then in all 50 states, trying to glean the scope of the problem.
Prior to this, individual tribes had thought the battles they were fighting and losing to the child welfare system were unique to each of them. But Hirsch’s numbers were a wakeup call, not just to the tribes, but to national and international news outlets: The data showed that 25 to 35 percent of Native children around the country were being taken from their homes, and that 85 to 95 percent of those kids ended up in non-Native homes or institutions.
“As we pointed out to Congress over the years, it was way, way, way out of proportion to what was happening to any other demographic,” Hirsch said.
Hirsch worked as an attorney for these types of cases for four decades, and in that time, “I’ve seen a lot that makes my stomach turn, it’s just sickening,” he said. In the days before ICWA, a law that Hirsch helped to write and pass, judges “had no trouble just taking tribal kids away from their families and putting them in foster care, because they didn’t like Indians and they didn’t like their way of life. Ostensibly, they were removed for neglect, but really it was all about poverty,” Hirsch said. “If you’re poor and you’re Indian, you lose your kid.”
Although Native Americans are still overrepresented in the foster care system, ICWA stemmed the tide of removals that were severing children’s bonds to their heritage at such a widespread and alarming scale. The provisions call for a Native child’s tribe to be notified as soon as child welfare proceedings commence, and for the child’s tribe to be a party to the case in the courtroom, if they wish. Preference must be given for the child’s family — whether the family is Native or non-Native — and then to the child’s tribe, and finally, to other Native American tribes. “ICWA guides in preferences — none of them are ironclad mandates that a child be placed with an Indian family,” Hoskin, the Cherokee principal chief, said.
Hoskin said ICWA rightly respects the rights of tribes to help decide what happens to their children. “It’s just as much about the right of the tribal government to be in that courtroom as it is for that child to have their government in the courtroom,” Hoskin said. “Their culture is at stake and the future of their people is at stake.”
While the creation of ICWA was a good first step toward keeping families together, there has been no federal agency designated to oversee its implementation and ensure that states comply with the law. Because of this, no federal data has been compiled on what has resulted from the law’s passage. Also, the continued overrepresentation of Native children in the child welfare system around the country calls states’ compliance into question. In 2016, the ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of two South Dakota tribes challenging the state’s lack of compliance — statistics showed that Native children were 11 times more likely to end up in foster care than white children in South Dakota. A federal judge ruled the South Dakota courts were violating the stipulations of ICWA.
Hirsch said the law has been successful in reducing removals of Native children when it is followed, but that its success is based on compliance that is nowhere near universal. “The law was designed to, one, keep Indian kids from being removed from their families. That should be a goal everyone should support if you believe Indian families should continue to exist. And two, to recognize the legitimacy of Indian tribal existence,” Hirsch said. “If you believe in what this law is seeking to achieve and how it seeks to achieve it, then you can get some pretty decent compliance. But if you start from a premise that rejects all of that, it’s a different story.”
The stakes are high for Native children
What sometimes gets lost in the conversation about ICWA is that the principles it sets forth — including trying to keep family units intact if at all possible — are widely considered to be best practice in the child welfare field today. In 2013, 18 of the nation’s most prominent child welfare organizations, including Casey Family Programs, the Child Welfare League of America and the Children’s Defense Fund, filed an amicus brief in support of ICWA in another case challenging the law.
“In the Indian Child Welfare Act, Congress adopted the gold standard for child welfare policies and practices that should be afforded to all children,” the organizations wrote in the brief. “ICWA works very well and, in fact, is a model for child welfare and placement decision-making that should be extended to all children.”
“Whereas ICWA seemed like anomaly in the late ’70s when it was passed, the whole body of child welfare law has moved more and more in alignment with ICWA since,” said Kastelic, whose team at NICWA helps train child welfare workers around the country on how to implement ICWA. “Prioritizing family placements, keeping sibling groups together — ICWA was doing that in the late ’70s.”
The media’s coverage of these issues often focuses on specific cases, like those of the Brackeens, without much of the needed context of how much our failing systems contribute to the problem. Eighteen states around the country have been targets of class action lawsuits filed by nonprofit Children’s Rights over their poor treatment of kids in care.
The suits outline a familiar pattern: Chronic underfunding has led to low-paid and overworked caseworkers who don’t have the time they need to truly care for children’s best interests. Because of this, many kids around the country slip through the cracks, and are subject to all types of abuse while in the care of the state — sometimes worse than the conditions that led to them being in care in the first place.
With ICWA, Native kids who are disproportionately represented in the child welfare system have an added line of defense against spending long periods of time in a system that we know harms children. But the focus on individual stories over systemic problems leaves many well-meaning Americans unaware of the true scope of the problem.
“In part because of the historical underpinnings of our child welfare system, most people come at this thinking ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving.’ And most parents, who have no ability to address the structural problems they are facing ... we’re still thinking about it at just a personal level,” Kastelic said.
There’s another voice missing from many of these conversations: that of the adoptee. Sandy White Hawk, a Sicangu Lakota adoptee from the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, is the founder of the First Nations Repatriation Institute, which researches Native adoptees and helps to reunite them with their tribes and families.
“When we grow up in a white home in a white community, that’s all we see and know. We don’t know anything about being Native, and most white people don’t know anything about who we are,” White Hawk said. “You don’t have your image mirrored back to you in any way. That’s a distortion as you develop your identity.”
White Hawk, who experienced abuse in her adoptive home, said it’s important to recognize that all adoptions aren’t happy endings. A 2008 University of Minnesota study has shown adoptees have greater odds of an ADHD or ODD diagnosis than those who have not been separated from their families, and that adoptees are more likely to have contact with mental health professionals. In 2017, White Hawk and several others published a study of hundreds of adoptees that showed Native American adoptees were more likely to report mental health problems — including substance use disorder and recovery, eating disorders, self-harm, and suicidal ideation — than white adoptees.
“There’s nothing in our societal messages — everything about adoption is a forever happy home, and while there are happy children and there are kind and loving parents, this other reality is there, period,” White Hawk said. “And that doesn’t mean a bash of adoption. But we’re so invested in this forever-happy-saving-children thing that anything that critiques it — there’s no willingness to hear that.”
White Hawk helps organize an annual “gathering for our children and returning adoptees” powwow to help welcome Native adoptees back into their tribes. “I knew how painful and how hard it was to take your place in the circle once you’ve been gone. There was no roadmap, no one could help,” White Hawk said. “For those that may not have even met their family or have been home for a long time, it’s the first time it’s been acknowledged that they’ve suffered grief and loss.”
The Indian Child Welfare Act case has broader implications for sovereignty
The Brackeens aren’t the first to bring a case against ICWA. They’re not even the first family the Goldwater Institute has backed in such a suit. The think tank, whose funders include top Trump donors and an organization linked to the Koch brothers, has fought to dismantle union power and to “vindicate the constitutional rights of businesses” to contribute to political campaigns.
The institute has challenged ICWA a dozen times since 2014. “The only basis for forcing these kids to be sent to tribal courts is because they’re racially connected,” Timothy Sandefur, Goldwater’s vice president of litigation, told the Nation in 2017. “It’s like saying that children of Japanese descent need to be adjudicated by the court of Japan.”
When asked for comment, the Goldwater Institute referred Vox to a blog post written by Sandefur, in which he says that Indian children “must be abused worse and for longer than children of other races before the government can rescue them from abusive households.”
As of now, the 17 Fifth Circuit judges are deliberating on the fate of ICWA; it’s likely that whatever the ruling, there will be an appeal to the Supreme Court, although it’s unclear whether the highest court will take up the case. If the Supreme Court were to agree with the plaintiffs’ assertions that ICWA is unfairly based on race, the consequences could undermine the entire concept of tribal sovereignty — and some critics of Goldwater and other conservative organizations like it say that this, and not the children’s best interests, is the point.
“I think there are critics that are specifically critical of ICWA and don’t have a broader agenda, but some do have a broader agenda. And the attacks on ICWA have very big implications,” Hoskin said. “A very basic act of sovereignty is the tribe’s ability under law to protect their children.”
In the Atlantic, two Michigan law professors argue that by seeking to dismantle ICWA, the plaintiffs “risk undoing a set of doctrines that has facilitated tribes’ ability to govern themselves and prosecute individuals who victimize Native people.”
“In Brackeen, Texas has mounted nothing less than a frontal attack on the entire corpus of federal law that governs Indian affairs today,” the professors write.
Another group vocally opposed to ICWA is the adoption industry, including the huge number of Evangelical Christians who want to adopt children. Around the turn of the century, celebrity pastors with huge followings began framing adoption as a moral imperative.
The result was a boom in the adoption industry both domestically and abroad — a 2013 survey found that practicing Christians are more than twice as likely to adopt than non-Christians and that American adoptions make up nearly half of all adoptions worldwide. “The regulation of adoption from state to state varies widely — and there’s a confluence of factors that mean that with quick-and-easy adoptions, there’s lots of money involved,” Kastelic said.
With the future of ICWA uncertain, tribes around the country worry about what might happen if Native children lose their special protections. “The fear is without these protections in place, we know the system continues to be biased. Bias is baked into the policies and safety assessments and you name it,” Kastelic said. “Our fear is that we are going to go back to the pre-ICWA days — the mass removal of children.”


vox--2020-02-20--Twitter is considering warning users when politicians post misleading tweets

Twitter is experimenting with putting bright orange and red labels underneath false statements and misinformation posted by politicians and public figures .
According to a new report , the company included tweets from Sen. Bernie Sanders and Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy in its design mockups .
If implemented , the designs would be a significant expansion of the company ’ s policies for moderating specific kinds of misinformation , such as around anti-vaccination conspiracies and false information about voting — and more recently , deceptively edited videos .
Twitter is considering adding the warning labels , which appear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , as one component of a bigger set of policies around combating misinformation on the platform .
In a mockup of the feature , which NBC News obtained and first reported , “ harmfully misleading ” misinformation would be fact-checked directly underneath the tweet by fact-checkers , journalists , and potentially other users participating in a points-based community moderation system similar to Wikipedia .
It ’ s unclear how Twitter would determine which posts to flag as misleading or exactly how the points-based system for community moderators would work .
A spokesperson for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ NBC reported on are just one example of several ideas in the early research stage , and they have not been approved for rollout .
“ We ’ re exploring a number of ways to address misinformation and provide more context for Tweets on Twitter .
This is a design mockup for one option that would involve community feedback .
Misinformation is a critical issue and we will be testing many different ways to address it.
” Regardless of whether or not Twitter ends up implementing these warning labels , the mockups are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ companies are trying to combat a torrent of online misinformation , particularly leading up to the 2020 US presidential election .
Facebook already labels some content as false using third-party fact-checkers .
And beginning March 5 , Twitter is planning to start removing or labeling some “ manipulated media , ” which would include deceptively edited videos like the one that went viral last summer that had been tweaked to make House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appear intoxicated .
On Thursday , Twitter confirmed that a widely circulated video of former New York City @ @ @ @ @ @ @ democratic presidential debates that was deceptively edited would be labeled as manipulated media under those new rules .
While NBC News reported that these design mockups were a “ possible iteration ” of the previously announced manipulated media rules , a Twitter spokesperson disputed that these designs are tied to the March 5 rollout .
“ The mockups that you see are completely early-stage research , and it ’ s just one of a variety of options , ” a spokesperson for Twitter told Recode .
“ There ’ s no timeline .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to get ahead of what we ’ re seeing and not leave any stone unturned.
” The leaked designs give some examples of cases where Twitter might apply the label , including one attached to a claim Bernie Sanders tweeted about how 40 percent of guns in the US are sold without background checks ( that percentage is from an outdated study ; more recent estimates say it ’ s closer to 22 percent ) .
Another debunks the false conspiracy theory that the novel coronavirus was a man-made virus .
( While @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are unknown , the Centers for Disease Control says it seems to have emerged from an animal source . )
And the third is a tweet by House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy claiming that the US intelligence community secretly removed whistleblower rules prior to the Trump Ukraine whistleblower coming forward ( there is no known evidence to support that ) .
Joan Donovan , who studies online media disinformation at the Harvard Kennedy School ’ s Shorenstein Center , said she found the new plans interesting , but that they also raised questions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ system could be exploited by “ highly motivated and coordinated groups ” who could “ get another battleground ” with the misleading label feature .
Donovan also questioned whether Twitter would actually enforce the fact-check policy in practice , particularly against prominent people , and asked how many times a prominent figure would be able to tweet a misleading statement before being banned .
“ The problem all along has been a failure to moderate elite influencers and politicians.
” A spokesperson for Twitter declined to answer questions about how Twitter planned to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ misleading posts it would take to get banned , saying that the mockups were tentative .
Although Twitter says it ’ s far from the possibility of introducing the labels on its platform , the leaked plans today are a fascinating insight into how one of the world ’ s most powerful platforms for sharing political speech is thinking about how to better monitor the half-truths and all-out lies that so frequently spread on its service .

Twitter is experimenting with putting bright orange and red labels underneath false statements and misinformation posted by politicians and public figures. According to a new report, the company included tweets from Sen. Bernie Sanders and Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy in its design mockups.
If implemented, the designs would be a significant expansion of the company’s policies for moderating specific kinds of misinformation, such as around anti-vaccination conspiracies and false information about voting — and more recently, deceptively edited videos.
Twitter is considering adding the warning labels, which appear roughly as big as a tweet itself, as one component of a bigger set of policies around combating misinformation on the platform. In a mockup of the feature, which NBC News obtained and first reported, “harmfully misleading” misinformation would be fact-checked directly underneath the tweet by fact-checkers, journalists, and potentially other users participating in a points-based community moderation system similar to Wikipedia. It’s unclear how Twitter would determine which posts to flag as misleading or exactly how the points-based system for community moderators would work.
A spokesperson for Twitter told Recode that the specific mockups NBC reported on are just one example of several ideas in the early research stage, and they have not been approved for rollout.
“We’re exploring a number of ways to address misinformation and provide more context for Tweets on Twitter. This is a design mockup for one option that would involve community feedback. Misinformation is a critical issue and we will be testing many different ways to address it.”
Regardless of whether or not Twitter ends up implementing these warning labels, the mockups are the latest example of how social media companies are trying to combat a torrent of online misinformation, particularly leading up to the 2020 US presidential election. Facebook already labels some content as false using third-party fact-checkers. And beginning March 5, Twitter is planning to start removing or labeling some “manipulated media,” which would include deceptively edited videos like the one that went viral last summer that had been tweaked to make House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appear intoxicated.
On Thursday, Twitter confirmed that a widely circulated video of former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg onstage at the recent democratic presidential debates that was deceptively edited would be labeled as manipulated media under those new rules.
While NBC News reported that these design mockups were a “possible iteration” of the previously announced manipulated media rules, a Twitter spokesperson disputed that these designs are tied to the March 5 rollout.
“The mockups that you see are completely early-stage research, and it’s just one of a variety of options,” a spokesperson for Twitter told Recode. “There’s no timeline. But we’re obviously always trying to get ahead of what we’re seeing and not leave any stone unturned.”
The leaked designs give some examples of cases where Twitter might apply the label, including one attached to a claim Bernie Sanders tweeted about how 40 percent of guns in the US are sold without background checks (that percentage is from an outdated study; more recent estimates say it’s closer to 22 percent).
Another debunks the false conspiracy theory that the novel coronavirus was a man-made virus. (While the exact origins of the novel coronavirus are unknown, the Centers for Disease Control says it seems to have emerged from an animal source.)
And the third is a tweet by House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy claiming that the US intelligence community secretly removed whistleblower rules prior to the Trump Ukraine whistleblower coming forward (there is no known evidence to support that).
Joan Donovan, who studies online media disinformation at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center, said she found the new plans interesting, but that they also raised questions. Donovan cautioned that a community moderation system could be exploited by “highly motivated and coordinated groups” who could “get another battleground” with the misleading label feature.
Donovan also questioned whether Twitter would actually enforce the fact-check policy in practice, particularly against prominent people, and asked how many times a prominent figure would be able to tweet a misleading statement before being banned. “The problem all along has been a failure to moderate elite influencers and politicians.”
A spokesperson for Twitter declined to answer questions about how Twitter planned to enforce such a policy and how many misleading posts it would take to get banned, saying that the mockups were tentative.
Although Twitter says it’s far from the possibility of introducing the labels on its platform, the leaked plans today are a fascinating insight into how one of the world’s most powerful platforms for sharing political speech is thinking about how to better monitor the half-truths and all-out lies that so frequently spread on its service.