theintercept--2020-01-30--John Hickenlooper, Establishment Pick for Colorado Senate Seat, Has an Increasingly Stale Record

John Hickenlooper leads the sprawling field of candidates seeking to flip a key Senate seat in Colorado this year .
Hickenlooper entered the race in August and , within two days , had won the endorsement of Senate Democrats ’ campaign arm .
Several Democrats who had been running competitive campaigns immediately dropped out of the primary , frustrating local activists and other candidates who felt they ’ d been unfairly sidelined by the party .
Washington Democrats , who had been struggling with 2020 Senate recruitment , had been trying for months to recruit Hickenlooper .
Colorado is one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have a chance to flip as they try to take back a Senate majority for the first time since 2013 .
Their decision to back Hickenlooper in a crowded field that included at least one viable progressive candidate is a hallmark of the party strategy : tipping the scales in a way that sidelines progressives , rather than giving voters a chance to decide on the type of candidate — and policies — they want .
On paper , the former governor has what it should take to beat incumbent Sen. Cory Gardner @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Republicans running for re-election in 2020 : name recognition , deep pockets , and the blessing of Washington Democrats .
But a closer look at his time as governor suggests that Hickenlooper ’ s business-friendly record , work in expanding fracking activity across the state , and overall opposition to progressive policy priorities , like the repeal of the death penalty and civil rights remedies , put him at odds with a party — and a state — that has pushed increasingly to the left on the issues of money in politics and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more solidly Democratic , although most voters continue to identify as independent and remain split on a number of issues like fracking and raising taxes to fund education .
Democrats took control of the state legislature and the governor ’ s mansion in 2018 , creating a trifecta for the first time since 2013 .
Denver , the largest city in the state , elected a democratic socialist to its city council last year , who led the council ’ s decision to end a number of the city ’ s contracts with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his wife , Robin , are jointly worth somewhere between $ 9 million and $ 27 million , according to his disclosures to the Federal Election Commission .
They have tapped into their personal wealth to support his Senate campaign and , before that , a short-lived bid for the presidency .
He gave $ 5,600 to his own campaign in September .
On August 22 , the day Hickenlooper entered the Senate race , Robin made two contributions to her husband ’ s Senate campaign committee , each for $ 2,800 .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to both his presidential and Senate campaign committees since March .
His Senate campaign announced raising $ 2.8 million in the fourth quarter , in addition to holding $ 3.2 million in cash on hand .
He is trailed by former Democratic state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff , who has raised $ 1.5 million so far .
Romanoff ’ s campaign was thriving before Hickenlooper entered the race , having raised $ 503,000 by July .
A July poll from Next Senate PAC , a Colorado political action committee backing Democrats , found @ @ @ @ @ @ @ support .
Another poll later that month from Colorado Democrats ’ Public Policy Polling Survey found Hickenlooper with 44 percent support before he even entered the race .
Romanoff was next at 12 percent , with the other six candidates included at the time polling under 4 percent .
His progressive platform , of which the climate emergency is a centerpiece , made him well positioned to unseat Gardner , who has one of the lowest approval ratings of any senator .
In November , the Sunrise Movement , a leading youth-led climate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a one-term incumbent , broke with his party last January when he was one of just a handful of Republicans who called on President Donald Trump to end the government shutdown without securing funding for a border wall .
But Gardner , who the Denver Post once described as a “ never-Trumper , ” has moved closer to the president in recent months , switching his position on the president ’ s border wall in March .
He sided with Trump on declaring an emergency at the southern border in order to secure @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other Republicans opposed .
That prompted the Denver Post to publish a March editorial saying that its 2014 endorsement of Gardner “ was a mistake.
” career in the 1980s as a petroleum geologist for Buckhorn Petroleum , an oil and gas producer .
After being laid off from his first job , he opened Denver ’ s first craft brewery pub , which made him rich .
Hickenlooper was elected mayor of Denver in 2003 and served in that capacity until January 2011 .
He brought the Democratic National Convention to Denver @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the governor ’ s race by a landslide , replacing a Democrat who had decided not to run for reelection .
That year , he ran an ad in which he showered in his clothes to make the point that seeing negative campaign ads made him feel dirty .
He has described himself as a centrist , a moderate , and “ apartisan.
” But despite the media ’ s portrayal of Hickenlooper as the “ man in the middle , ” his politics have always been more focused on appeasing the right @ @ @ @ @ @ @ joining a “ unity ticket ” with former Republican presidential candidate and Ohio Gov .
John Kasich . )
As governor , Hickenlooper threatened to sue any town or city that banned fracking , opposed a ballot measure that would have curbed fracking , and remained an outspoken defender of the oil and gas industries , all of which earned him the nickname “ Frackenlooper.
” ( He once drank fracking fluid to try to prove that fracking isn ’ t all that bad . )
In 2018 , he opposed an anti-fracking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be placed farther away from vulnerable locations like homes , schools , and water sources , and was ultimately voted down — after oil and gas companies spent $ 41 million to defeat it .
( Hickenlooper ’ s successor , Democratic Gov .
Jared Polis , also opposed the ballot initiative . )
An overwhelming majority of Coloradans , however , want to see state and federal governments act to confront the threat of climate change — in fact , 79 percent of Coloradans want to move the state to 100 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ current climate platform calls for rejoining the Paris climate accord , implementing a carbon tax , and investing in renewable energy projects .
The death penalty is another issue on which Hickenlooper has taken a relatively conservative posture .
During his 2010 gubernatorial campaign , Hickenlooper expressed support for the death penalty .
In 2013 , he granted a “ temporary reprieve ” to halt the execution of 19-year-old Nathan Dunlap and the following year , he announced that he had reversed his position .
In 2013 , he pressured Democrats to vote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ penalty when they were close to passing it .
The bill , which was sponsored by Senate Democratic Leader Lucía Guzmán , got through the upper chamber and then had to get through the House Judiciary Committee .
Former Democratic state Rep. Joe Salazar , a member of the Judiciary Committee at the time , told The Intercept that Hickenlooper crashed a caucus lunch an hour before they were scheduled to hear the death penalty repeal bill and asked them to vote it down , threatening to veto if it got to his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that he did personally oppose the death penalty but believed that there was another way to go about it .
Local outlets reported at the time that he had signaled he may veto it , with his office saying he had “ conflicting feelings ” about the death penalty that were “ unresolved.
” The bill was controversial and support didn ’ t fall neatly along party lines , with Democratic state Rep. Rhonda Fields going against her own party with fierce opposition to the legislation .
She offered an alternative bill that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the voters , which she admitted was a “ strategic counter ” to the repeal bill , the Denver Post reported .
For Fields , who ’ s now a state senator and continues to support capital punishment , her position on the issue is personal .
Two of the three men on Colorado ’ s death row were responsible for the 2005 murder of her son .
After Hickenlooper ’ s speech at the lunch , Salazar said , some Democrats began to express uncertainty over how they were going to vote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Pettersen , who campaigned on repealing the death penalty , and Lois Court joined four Republicans in killing the bill .
Though only one person has been sentenced to death in the state since 1967 , the three men sitting on death row are all black and from the same high school .
“ It was such compromised politics , ” Salazar said of Hickenlooper tanking the repeal bill .
“ To literally have the executive branch come in , meet with us during a legislative get-together , and basically threaten us with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ get his way .
… He just didn ’ t want that controversial bill on his desk.
” In another instance , Salazar said , communities of color had to out-organize Hickenlooper .
Also in 2013 , Hickenlooper opposed the Job Protection and Civil Rights Employment Act of 2013 , a civil rights remedies bill to broaden damage awards available to Colorado employees who sue over discrimination in the workplace .
At the time , Colorado was one of eight states that didn ’ t have an anti-discrimination measure like this one .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ been introduced around 20 years prior , because they claimed that it was anti-business and would have devastating effects on small businesses with 14 or fewer employees .
Salazar , one of the co-sponsors of the bill , said the state legislature , which was under Democratic control at the time , passed it despite the governor ’ s private opposition to it .
But when they sat down in his office to talk about why he didn ’ t support the bill , Hickenlooper cited the business community ’ s concerns .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Salazar said , Democrats had “ more influential , more affluent ” members of the Latino community call him and threaten to pull support from his reelection campaign unless he signed the bill .
Another Democratic lawmaker involved in the effort described a last-minute “ PR blitz ” to try to force the governor to sign the bill , adding that lawmakers and lobbyists also reached out to progressive small business owners in their attempt to get through to Hickenlooper .
Hickenlooper ’ s campaign did not respond to questions about his involvement @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rights remedies bills .
office last January after completing his second term , near the end of his tenure oversaw a process that allowed cash-flush cities to become part of state opportunity zones designed to benefit economically distressed areas .
The opportunity zone program was created under President Donald Trump ’ s 2017 tax bill and marketed as a way to revitalize low-income , struggling areas through federal tax incentives .
In Colorado and elsewhere , though , elected officials have designated areas with booming development , drawing criticisms that the program ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ over low-income residents .
Hickenlooper strongly criticized the tax cut bill before its passage in December 2017 .
During his presidential run , he said he would want to repeal parts of the bill but has praised the opportunity zone program .
City council members in Boulder and Denver , some of the state ’ s fastest-growing real estate markets , have criticized opportunity zones in their cities as a giveaway to business interests at the expense of struggling communities .
Last year , along with the state ’ s Office of Economic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the nomination and approval of 126 opportunity zones , including at least 12 in Boulder , Denver , and Avon .
The goal , according to the state , was to address “ uneven economic recovery and persistent lack of growth.
” The process drew criticism from community members and local officials .
They argued that the opportunity zones don ’ t include mechanisms to ensure any benefits for the low-income communities they ’ re advertised as being designed to help and that there hadn ’ t been adequate community involvement in some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and council members still have concerns that incentives for luxury developers could lead to further displacement of low-income people .
“ There ’ s plenty of economic opportunity in this city , ” Denver City Council member Candi CdeBaca told The Intercept .
“ That ’ s not translating to livability.
” Historically , opportunity zones haven ’ t always delivered on the kind of economic revitalization they promise .
Advocates for equitable development say successful opportunity zones should include strict requirements for affordable housing and public services , in addition to attracting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shopping centers .
But in Denver , that ’ s not the case , CdeBaca said .
“ There ’ s no metrics that would suggest that these incentives are designed for the communities.
” Developer Kyle Zeppelin said “ it ’ s a joke ” that half of Boulder is an opportunity zone .
“ Boulder ’ s probably the hottest housing market in the state , maybe besides Aspen , followed closely by different parts of Denver in a state that ’ s like , you know , the most valuable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Zeppelin , whose firm works in the Denver area .
“ So it definitely wasn ’ t screaming out for investment .
Rural areas are what ’ s struggling in Colorado , like most places.
” Jana Persky , the office ’ s opportunity zone program director , told The Intercept that the office could not say how many of the zones have affordable housing but that many of the zones were designated due to a need for more housing .
Perksy said the council thought that the zones could stimulate housing development @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ avoided areas that had substantial development unless there were specific community asks to designate certain areas.
” Hickenlooper ’ s campaign did not respond to questions about the opportunity zones , instead pointing The Intercept to a 2018 Denver Business Journal article , in which he OEDIT says the zones were selected based on “ income , need and opportunity.
” In the piece , Hickenlooper touts the program as something that will “ attract investment in businesses , workforce , housing and infrastructure where it is needed most.
” Hickenlooper ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the planet extended beyond his term as governor and into his presidential run .
In March , he wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post denouncing the Green New Deal put forward by Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez , saying that he supported the concept but that the plan as written “ limits our prospects for success ” by setting “ unachievable goals.
” Hickenlooper said the proposal sets a potential Green New Deal up for failure by “ shifting away from private decision-making and toward the public @ @ @ @ @ @ @ issues in which Coloradans are split , like fracking , politicians should be in favor of “ rescuing the planet even if it ’ s not popular.
” “ Unlike Donald Trump , Coloradans know the climate crisis isn ’ t a hoax — it ’ s a real emergency , ” Romanoff said in a statement to The Intercept .
“ We deserve leaders who understand that too .
Colorado ’ s next senator should champion the Green New Deal , challenge the fossil-fuel industry , and chart our course toward a @ @ @ @

Former Gov. John Hickenlooper leads the sprawling field of candidates seeking to flip a key Senate seat in Colorado this year. Hickenlooper entered the race in August and, within two days, had won the endorsement of Senate Democrats’ campaign arm. Several Democrats who had been running competitive campaigns immediately dropped out of the primary, frustrating local activists and other candidates who felt they’d been unfairly sidelined by the party.
Washington Democrats, who had been struggling with 2020 Senate recruitment, had been trying for months to recruit Hickenlooper. Colorado is one of at least eight seats that Democrats have a chance to flip as they try to take back a Senate majority for the first time since 2013. Their decision to back Hickenlooper in a crowded field that included at least one viable progressive candidate is a hallmark of the party strategy: tipping the scales in a way that sidelines progressives, rather than giving voters a chance to decide on the type of candidate — and policies — they want.
On paper, the former governor has what it should take to beat incumbent Sen. Cory Gardner, one of the most vulnerable Senate Republicans running for re-election in 2020: name recognition, deep pockets, and the blessing of Washington Democrats. But a closer look at his time as governor suggests that Hickenlooper’s business-friendly record, work in expanding fracking activity across the state, and overall opposition to progressive policy priorities, like the repeal of the death penalty and civil rights remedies, put him at odds with a party — and a state — that has pushed increasingly to the left on the issues of money in politics and environmental degradation.
Colorado itself is becoming more solidly Democratic, although most voters continue to identify as independent and remain split on a number of issues like fracking and raising taxes to fund education. Democrats took control of the state legislature and the governor’s mansion in 2018, creating a trifecta for the first time since 2013. Denver, the largest city in the state, elected a democratic socialist to its city council last year, who led the council’s decision to end a number of the city’s contracts with a private prison company.
Hickenlooper and his wife, Robin, are jointly worth somewhere between $9 million and $27 million, according to his disclosures to the Federal Election Commission. They have tapped into their personal wealth to support his Senate campaign and, before that, a short-lived bid for the presidency. He gave $5,600 to his own campaign in September. On August 22, the day Hickenlooper entered the Senate race, Robin made two contributions to her husband’s Senate campaign committee, each for $2,800. Overall, she has contributed $14,000 to both his presidential and Senate campaign committees since March.
His Senate campaign announced raising $2.8 million in the fourth quarter, in addition to holding $3.2 million in cash on hand. He is trailed by former Democratic state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, who has raised $1.5 million so far. Romanoff’s campaign was thriving before Hickenlooper entered the race, having raised $503,000 by July. A July poll from Next Senate PAC, a Colorado political action committee backing Democrats, found Romanoff leading the field with 23 percent support. Another poll later that month from Colorado Democrats’ Public Policy Polling Survey found Hickenlooper with 44 percent support before he even entered the race. Romanoff was next at 12 percent, with the other six candidates included at the time polling under 4 percent. His progressive platform, of which the climate emergency is a centerpiece, made him well positioned to unseat Gardner, who has one of the lowest approval ratings of any senator. In November, the Sunrise Movement, a leading youth-led climate group, endorsed Romanoff.
Gardner, a one-term incumbent, broke with his party last January when he was one of just a handful of Republicans who called on President Donald Trump to end the government shutdown without securing funding for a border wall. But Gardner, who the Denver Post once described as a “never-Trumper,” has moved closer to the president in recent months, switching his position on the president’s border wall in March. He sided with Trump on declaring an emergency at the southern border in order to secure the funding — a move which 12 other Republicans opposed. That prompted the Denver Post to publish a March editorial saying that its 2014 endorsement of Gardner “was a mistake.”
Hickenlooper is interviewed during his campaign for mayor of Denver in February 2002, after rolling out his water policy in the midst of a devastating drought that year. Photo: Brian Brainerd/The Denver Post via Getty Images
Hickenlooper began his career in the 1980s as a petroleum geologist for Buckhorn Petroleum, an oil and gas producer. After being laid off from his first job, he opened Denver’s first craft brewery pub, which made him rich.
Hickenlooper was elected mayor of Denver in 2003 and served in that capacity until January 2011. He brought the Democratic National Convention to Denver in 2008 and in 2010, won the governor’s race by a landslide, replacing a Democrat who had decided not to run for reelection. That year, he ran an ad in which he showered in his clothes to make the point that seeing negative campaign ads made him feel dirty. He has described himself as a centrist, a moderate, and “apartisan.” But despite the media’s portrayal of Hickenlooper as the “man in the middle,” his politics have always been more focused on appeasing the right. (In 2017, Hickenlooper considered joining a “unity ticket” with former Republican presidential candidate and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.)
As governor, Hickenlooper threatened to sue any town or city that banned fracking, opposed a ballot measure that would have curbed fracking, and remained an outspoken defender of the oil and gas industries, all of which earned him the nickname “Frackenlooper.” (He once drank fracking fluid to try to prove that fracking isn’t all that bad.) In 2018, he opposed an anti-fracking measure that would have required drilling operations to be placed farther away from vulnerable locations like homes, schools, and water sources, and was ultimately voted down — after oil and gas companies spent $41 million to defeat it. (Hickenlooper’s successor, Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, also opposed the ballot initiative.) An overwhelming majority of Coloradans, however, want to see state and federal governments act to confront the threat of climate change — in fact, 79 percent of Coloradans want to move the state to 100 percent clean electricity by 2045. His current climate platform calls for rejoining the Paris climate accord, implementing a carbon tax, and investing in renewable energy projects.
Hickenlooper once drank fracking fluid to try to prove that fracking isn’t all that bad.
The death penalty is another issue on which Hickenlooper has taken a relatively conservative posture. During his 2010 gubernatorial campaign, Hickenlooper expressed support for the death penalty. In 2013, he granted a “temporary reprieve” to halt the execution of 19-year-old Nathan Dunlap and the following year, he announced that he had reversed his position. In 2013, he pressured Democrats to vote against a proposal to repeal the death penalty when they were close to passing it. The bill, which was sponsored by Senate Democratic Leader Lucía Guzmán, got through the upper chamber and then had to get through the House Judiciary Committee. Former Democratic state Rep. Joe Salazar, a member of the Judiciary Committee at the time, told The Intercept that Hickenlooper crashed a caucus lunch an hour before they were scheduled to hear the death penalty repeal bill and asked them to vote it down, threatening to veto if it got to his desk. Hickenlooper privately assured the lawmakers that he did personally oppose the death penalty but believed that there was another way to go about it. Local outlets reported at the time that he had signaled he may veto it, with his office saying he had “conflicting feelings” about the death penalty that were “unresolved.” The bill was controversial and support didn’t fall neatly along party lines, with Democratic state Rep. Rhonda Fields going against her own party with fierce opposition to the legislation. She offered an alternative bill that would have left the issue up to the voters, which she admitted was a “strategic counter” to the repeal bill, the Denver Post reported. For Fields, who’s now a state senator and continues to support capital punishment, her position on the issue is personal. Two of the three men on Colorado’s death row were responsible for the 2005 murder of her son.
After Hickenlooper’s speech at the lunch, Salazar said, some Democrats began to express uncertainty over how they were going to vote on the issue. State Reps. Brittany Pettersen, who campaigned on repealing the death penalty, and Lois Court joined four Republicans in killing the bill. Though only one person has been sentenced to death in the state since 1967, the three men sitting on death row are all black and from the same high school.
“It was such compromised politics,” Salazar said of Hickenlooper tanking the repeal bill. “To literally have the executive branch come in, meet with us during a legislative get-together, and basically threaten us with a veto if he didn’t get his way. … He just didn’t want that controversial bill on his desk.”
In another instance, Salazar said, communities of color had to out-organize Hickenlooper. Also in 2013, Hickenlooper opposed the Job Protection and Civil Rights Employment Act of 2013, a civil rights remedies bill to broaden damage awards available to Colorado employees who sue over discrimination in the workplace. At the time, Colorado was one of eight states that didn’t have an anti-discrimination measure like this one. Republicans opposed the bill, which had been introduced around 20 years prior, because they claimed that it was anti-business and would have devastating effects on small businesses with 14 or fewer employees. Salazar, one of the co-sponsors of the bill, said the state legislature, which was under Democratic control at the time, passed it despite the governor’s private opposition to it. But when they sat down in his office to talk about why he didn’t support the bill, Hickenlooper cited the business community’s concerns. When Hickenlooper threatened to veto it, Salazar said, Democrats had “more influential, more affluent” members of the Latino community call him and threaten to pull support from his reelection campaign unless he signed the bill. Another Democratic lawmaker involved in the effort described a last-minute “PR blitz” to try to force the governor to sign the bill, adding that lawmakers and lobbyists also reached out to progressive small business owners in their attempt to get through to Hickenlooper.
Hickenlooper’s campaign did not respond to questions about his involvement with the death penalty repeal and civil rights remedies bills.
Construction of an apartment building near Denver’s River North neighborhood, a designated opportunity zone, on Feb. 8, 2018. Photo: AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post via Getty Images
Hickenlooper, who left office last January after completing his second term, near the end of his tenure oversaw a process that allowed cash-flush cities to become part of state opportunity zones designed to benefit economically distressed areas. The opportunity zone program was created under President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax bill and marketed as a way to revitalize low-income, struggling areas through federal tax incentives. In Colorado and elsewhere, though, elected officials have designated areas with booming development, drawing criticisms that the program’s trickle-down economics design favors luxury developers over low-income residents. Hickenlooper strongly criticized the tax cut bill before its passage in December 2017. During his presidential run, he said he would want to repeal parts of the bill but has praised the opportunity zone program. City council members in Boulder and Denver, some of the state’s fastest-growing real estate markets, have criticized opportunity zones in their cities as a giveaway to business interests at the expense of struggling communities.
Last year, along with the state’s Office of Economic Development and International Trade, Hickenlooper oversaw the nomination and approval of 126 opportunity zones, including at least 12 in Boulder, Denver, and Avon. The goal, according to the state, was to address “uneven economic recovery and persistent lack of growth.”
The process drew criticism from community members and local officials. They argued that the opportunity zones don’t include mechanisms to ensure any benefits for the low-income communities they’re advertised as being designed to help and that there hadn’t been adequate community involvement in some of the designation processes. Some advocates and council members still have concerns that incentives for luxury developers could lead to further displacement of low-income people.
“There’s plenty of economic opportunity in this city,” Denver City Council member Candi CdeBaca told The Intercept. “That’s not translating to livability.”
Historically, opportunity zones haven’t always delivered on the kind of economic revitalization they promise. Advocates for equitable development say successful opportunity zones should include strict requirements for affordable housing and public services, in addition to attracting development for commercial businesses like hotels and shopping centers. But in Denver, that’s not the case, CdeBaca said. “There’s no metrics that would suggest that these incentives are designed for the communities.”
Developer Kyle Zeppelin said “it’s a joke” that half of Boulder is an opportunity zone. “Boulder’s probably the hottest housing market in the state, maybe besides Aspen, followed closely by different parts of Denver in a state that’s like, you know, the most valuable market between the coasts,” said Zeppelin, whose firm works in the Denver area. “So it definitely wasn’t screaming out for investment. Rural areas are what’s struggling in Colorado, like most places.”
Jana Persky, the office’s opportunity zone program director, told The Intercept that the office could not say how many of the zones have affordable housing but that many of the zones were designated due to a need for more housing. Perksy said the council thought that the zones could stimulate housing development and, for the most part, “avoided areas that had substantial development unless there were specific community asks to designate certain areas.” Hickenlooper’s campaign did not respond to questions about the opportunity zones, instead pointing The Intercept to a 2018 Denver Business Journal article, in which he OEDIT says the zones were selected based on “income, need and opportunity.” In the piece, Hickenlooper touts the program as something that will “attract investment in businesses, workforce, housing and infrastructure where it is needed most.”
Hickenlooper’s apparent indifference to the future of the planet extended beyond his term as governor and into his presidential run. In March, he wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post denouncing the Green New Deal put forward by Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, saying that he supported the concept but that the plan as written “limits our prospects for success” by setting “unachievable goals.” Hickenlooper said the proposal sets a potential Green New Deal up for failure by “shifting away from private decision-making and toward the public sector.”
Romanoff said that even on issues in which Coloradans are split, like fracking, politicians should be in favor of “rescuing the planet even if it’s not popular.”
“Unlike Donald Trump, Coloradans know the climate crisis isn’t a hoax — it’s a real emergency,” Romanoff said in a statement to The Intercept. “We deserve leaders who understand that too. Colorado’s next senator should champion the Green New Deal, challenge the fossil-fuel industry, and chart our course toward a clean-energy future.”


theintercept--2020-01-30--Does Joe Biden Have a Corruption Problem?

The Guardian published an op-ed by New York attorney and law professor Zephyr Teachout entitled “ ‘ Middle Class ’ Joe Biden has a corruption problem – it makes him a weak candidate ” .
In it , Teachout argues that Biden ’ s history of taking big donations from the credit card , healthcare , and fossil fuel industries and then voting on their behalf makes him a poor choice against Trump in the Fall .
“ A lot of the voters we need , ” she writes , “ independents and people who might stay home – will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : ‘ They ’ re all dirty.
’ ” Teachout is a public supporter of Bernie Sanders and when the Biden camp took umbrage at the piece , Sanders apologized for it .
“ It is absolutely not my view that Joe is corrupt in any way , ” said the Vermont Senator .
“ And I ’ m sorry that that op-ed appeared.
” But was that really the right reply from a candidate who has made the fight against big money in politics one of the cornerstones of his campaign ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Joe Biden and the culture of corruption in Washington .

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On January 20, The Guardian published an op-ed by New York attorney and law professor Zephyr Teachout titled “‘Middle Class’ Joe Biden has a corruption problem — it makes him a weak candidate.” In it, Teachout argues that Biden’s history of taking big donations from the credit card, health care, and fossil fuel industries and then voting on their behalf makes him a poor choice against Donald Trump in the fall. “A lot of the voters we need,” she writes, “independents and people who might stay home — will look at Biden and Trump and say: ‘They’re all dirty.’”
Teachout is a public supporter of Bernie Sanders and when the Biden camp took umbrage at the piece, Sanders apologized for it. “It is absolutely not my view that Joe is corrupt in any way,” said the Vermont senator. “And I’m sorry that that op-ed appeared.” But was that really the right reply from a candidate who has made the fight against big money in politics one of the cornerstones of his campaign? Zephyr Teachout joins Mehdi Hasan to discuss Joe Biden and the culture of corruption in Washington.
Zephyr Teachout: Joe Biden has a long history of taking money from big donors and doing them favors as senator.
[Music interlude.]
Mehdi Hasan: Welcome to Deconstructed. I’m Mehdi Hasan. On the show today, does Joe Biden, long-standing friend of Wall Street, one-time surrogate for the credit card industry, and a favorite of big donors in this Democratic presidential campaign, does he have a corruption problem? And if so, is Biden a symptom of a broader corrupt culture in Washington DC, dominated as it is by big money and big business?
ZT: We absolutely need to change the way campaigns are funded. We need to make it so that when somebody is running for Congress the first question that is asked is not how many of the richest people in the world do you know and can you call them all up?
MH: That’s my guest today, the academic, activist and corruption expert Zephyr Teachout, who caused controversy last week when she wrote a piece slamming Joe Biden as a “weak candidate” to take on Donald Trump because of his own “big corruption problem.” So, is she right?
Let’s be clear, Donald Trump is the most corrupt president in modern American history. He was impeached, and is now on trial, for abuse of power and for obstruction of Congress but as you’ve heard me say on this show for the past year, he should have been impeached for much, much more.
Newscaster: More than 110 officials from nearly 60 foreign governments have been spotted at Trump hotels, golf courses and other properties since 2017.
Pundit: This is about as direct and profound a violation of the Emoluments Clause as one could create.
Newscaster: Jared Kushner’s appointment as a senior adviser to the president is also drawing controversy.
Newscaster: Ivanka, Jared and the nepotism problem that is blossoming in Trump’s White House.
Newscaster: Trump backing down from a controversial that next year’s G-7 summit of world leaders would take place at Trump’s property in Doral, Florida.
Donald J. Trump: It would’ve been great.
Newscaster: Ethics advocates warn, foreign leaders could be booking stays at Trump properties to curry favor with the president, something which violates the constitution.
Pundit: It’s the casual corruption of the Trump administration.
MH: This week, thanks to the New York Times, we learned that he not only grants perks and favors to his friends, family members and donors, but also, according to John Bolton’s forthcoming book, the leaders of China and Turkey, too. So, when confronted with the brazen and shameless corruption of Trump and his inner circle of grifters, conmen, and sycophants, a lot of Democrats have concluded that getting rid of Trump is all that matters. It doesn’t matter who he’s replaced with, only that he’s replaced.
Newscaster: Most Democrats still say electability is the most important quality.
Newscaster: The Biden argument has been electability. I can beat Donald Trump.
Newscaster: Biden knows that his name of the game is electability. And why do people who like Biden like him? Because they think he can beat Trump.
MH: So you get this situation where former Vice President Joe Biden has been the frontrunner in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination for the past year, even though he has an awful, awful record — including on the issue of corruption and on family members making money off of his name.
To be clear: no one’s saying Biden’s broken any laws. Nor is anyone saying Biden is as corrupt as Trump. Of course not, that would be ridiculous. No one could be as corrupt as Trump, even if they tried. But the “Well, he’s not as bad as Trump” bar is a pretty low bar, I would argue. Especially for Democrats who claim to occupy the moral high ground.
Take Hunter Biden. The Republicans are wrong to say that Joe Biden, as vice president, tried to have the Ukranian chief prosecutor fired to prevent him investigating his son’s role at the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma in 2015 and 2016. There’s zero evidence for that. None. The Republicans and Trump are lying.
But it is fair to ask the question: what on earth was Hunter Biden doing getting paid 50k a month to sit on Burisma’s board of directors? He had no knowledge of Ukraine, no experience in the energy industry. He was there because of his last name, because his father was the vice president of the United States, and it was totally inappropriate. Let’s just be clear about that.
The fact is that Hunter Biden, and Joe Biden’s brothers James and Frank, have a long history of cashing in on the family name. Frank is on record telling people his name was a “tremendous asset” when it came to getting business deals with the federal government. And, as my Intercept colleague Ryan Grim reported back in October, citing an investigation by Politico magazine among others, Biden’s late son Beau, who tragically died of cancer in 2015, Beau was roped into an investment meeting in 2006 led by his uncle James and his brother Hunter, at which James allegedly told executives they’d have no problem bringing in people looking for access to Joe Biden, who was a U.S. senator at the time. “We’ve got people all around the world who want to invest in Joe Biden,” James Biden said afterwards and Beau, reportedly, turned red in the face, and told his uncle, “This can never leave this room, and if you ever say it again, I will have nothing to do with this.”
For me the story that stands out even more than this and that’s had so little coverage involves Beau’s brother Hunter but it has nothing to do with Ukraine and everything to do with Delaware. That’s the state Joe Biden represented in the Senate from 1973 to 2009, a state that’s long been home to the credit card industry.
Back in the late 1990s, the credit card industry and the financial services industry more broadly started lobbying for new rules to make it harder for people to declare bankruptcy. MBNA, the credit card giant headquartered in Delaware, was at the forefront of those lobbying efforts and completely coincidentally had the support of Joe Biden for what became known as the bankruptcy bill. MBNA was Biden’s single biggest donor, with executives and employees of MBNA giving $200,000 to Biden’s campaigns between 1989 and 2010, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Biden even became known as “the Senator from MBNA.” Yeah, the Senator from MBNA. And, to top it all off, as Jacobin magazine pointed out, “MBNA hired Biden’s son, Hunter, as a lobbyist straight out of law school, and later hired him as a consultant from 2001 to 2005 — the same years Biden was helping to pass the bill.” The same years.
By the way, back then, Biden was was called out, to his face, for his support for that bankruptcy bill, and his undermining of the middle class voters he’d always claimed to champion, by a certain law professor from Harvard University, a certain Elizabeth Warren:
Joe Biden: Your problem with the credit card companies is usury rates from your position. It’s not about the bankruptcy bill.
Elizabeth Warren: But Senator if you’re not going to fix that problem, you can’t take away the last shred of protection from these families.
JB: I got it. You’re very good, professor.
MH: Most Democratic senators at the time, including Barack Obama, voted against that odious bill. But not Biden, not the Senator from MBNA. And the bill passed in 2005. The New York Times called it a “a big victory for [President] Bush, who supported the measure, and a sharp setback for civil rights organizations and consumer groups. They say the new law will be a huge giveaway to special interests at the expense of many middle and lower income families.” Thanks Joe. Thanks a lot.
To me, it’s astonishing and frustrating that Biden support for the bankruptcy bill, at a time when his son was working for the credit card industry and when he was getting massive donations from the credit card industry. It’s frustrating that that story hasn’t had much attention, neither from his Democratic rivals, nor from the debate moderators on TV. He’s been given a pass on this from too many people in politics and the media, who don’t take special interests, big money, or corruption seriously enough — despite poll after poll, showing a majority of American consider corruption to be a major, if not the major problem with American politics.
So my question today is: how corrupt is Joe Biden? And how corrupt is the U.S. political establishment?
[Music interlude.]
MH: My guest today is Zephyr Teachout, attorney and associate professor of law at Fordham University. She ran for the Democratic nomination for New York State attorney general in 2018, and she is a campaign surrogate for Bernie Sanders.
She’s author of the book “Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United.” And she’s also the author of a recent and much-discussed Guardian op-ed headlined: “Middle Class’ Joe Biden has a corruption problem – it makes him a weak candidate.” An op-ed that caused so much outrage in some Democratic party circles and offended the Biden campaign so much that Bernie Sanders actually came out and apologized for it and disowned it.
Zephyr Teachout, thanks for joining me on Deconstructed.
ZT: Oh, I’m really thrilled to be here. Thanks for having me on.
MH: Zephyr, before we get to Joe Biden, I want to ask you, you’re one of this country’s top experts on corruption. You’ve written books about this stuff. Two big important questions I wanted you to answer for me, for our listeners to set the scene for this discussion: number one, how corrupt is the U.S. political system compared to say, other Western democracies? And number two, how corrupt is Donald Trump compared to U.S. presidents who have come before him?
ZT: Well, I will answer your question, but I actually do want to step back because corrupt and corruption is one of these words that we use regularly but it’s actually a word that means really different things to different people. For a couple hundred years, everybody accepted that corruption was the use of public power whether power gained through elections or appointment for private, selfish ends and the Supreme Court not just in Citizens United, but in a whole series of cases since 1976, has basically shifted to a really different definition of corruption which is where it’s basically when you’re breaking criminal bribery statutes.
So, to answer your second question, Donald Trump is the most corrupt president we’ve had in American history under any definition. And his sort of grotesque use of the power that, you know, it’s a really sacred power that he’s been given by the public, for really personal selfish ends is pretty obvious. And, you know, we may get into this some more but one of the things I think we don’t talk about enough is the way in which he violates some key provisions of the U.S. Constitution taking foreign money and also governmental money from the U.S. government through his businesses for his own private enrichment.
MH: The Emoluments Clause which supposedly forbids that.
ZT: Exactly, and Trump has been violating that since the beginning of his presidency, and arguably has really shaped foreign policy in really dangerous ways. To go to your first question about the U.S. political system as a comparative matter, I’ll be honest, I focused more — I’m a true Americanist. I’m less of a comparativist and what I can say is that really in the last 30 or 40 years, the problems of systemic corruption have gotten a lot worse. I place a lot of the shift in the 90s. When we moved from an era where people would fundraise. They’d raise money from big donors, but it was a couple weeks a year, and now we’ve moved to something that is, oh, sort of gross where the main job of many congress members is actually sitting with a sheaf of papers with the wealthiest people in world history, their names, their hobbies, where they went to school and calling them up one by one and asking them to contribute. It turns our elected officers into sycophants, beggars.
MH: You ran for office in 2013 for the New York Attorney General, how much of that campaign involved you having to ask people for money?
ZT: So I was lucky, and honestly, in part because of Bernie Sanders’ support of a prior campaign, but I recognize my luck because I was able to primarily rely on small dollar donations, and my average contribution was around $18 or $19. Having said that, I did also get a window into the high dollar fundraising and make some phone calls and you can see how it would affect people. I found the whole process really disturbing, but we have to recognize that’s the way our systems are built right now.
MH: Let’s talk Joe Biden, former vice president, you wrote what some people thought was a very controversial Guardian article last week in which you said Joe Biden has, “a big corruption problem.” What is it, Zephyr? What specifically were you referring to?
ZT: Well, Joe Biden has a long history of taking money from big donors, and in particular from people in the credit card field, the financial industry, and I’ll talk about that a little bit more, and doing them favors as a senator. There’s that example. There’s a few others that I talked about. He has over 200 bundlers which he released. These are people who are raising at least $25,000 for his current campaign. There’s a lot of people from the financial sector among those bundlers and also a lot of people in real estate. And so that raises a question, a sort of common sense question about is that influencing his policies? He’s one of the, I think the only remaining candidate who doesn’t have a comprehensive housing policy. The day he announced he had a major fundraiser with a Comcast executive he has — Since we have a little time, I think it’s actually worth going back on Biden’s history.
MH: Just before we do and just to be clear and fair because you mentioned definitions at the start. When you say he has a corruption problem, you’re not saying he’s broken any laws, are you?
ZT: Oh, no, no, no. And what I was really talking about was there is this real problem for when we’re going up against the most corrupt president in American history to have as a potential candidate somebody who has that close connection with big donors and with the transactional politics that so many Americans are so sick of. When we have an option to have a candidate like Bernie Sanders who just to be clear, I’ve endorsed, who really represents the opposite of that, whose entire campaign and whose entire history has been based on low dollar contributions. So actually, the heart of the piece was about my real fear that we are handing the Trump campaign a ‘whataboutism’ playbook. And this is what corrupt regimes always do. If you say, “Hey, you are stealing from the American people”, he’s going to turn around and say “Yeah, but look at the —
MH: I mean, Trump is a master of projection, shameless projection.
ZT: Exactly. Yeah.
MH: And you said in your piece that nominating a candidate like Biden will make it far more difficult to defeat Trump. And I agree with you. I think that Trump, I think Democrats are mad if they think that you know, Biden’s long record won’t be thrown at him just because they’re choosing not to talk about it in this race. Why do you think it is, Zephyr, that the bankruptcy bill, for example, that Biden played a huge role in passing through the Senate, got passed into law under George W. Bush, why does it get so little coverage today not just from the media, but even from Bernie Sanders, from Elizabeth Warren, who both opposed it at the time, they both know Biden has an awful record on this, but they haven’t really hammered him for it on the debate stage, for example? Last time, they were too busy hammering each other.
ZT: Yeah, I think the bankruptcy bill needs a lot more attention, by the way, as cynical and dishonest and unfair as it will be, it will come up in a general election if Biden is the nominee. And if you doubt me, go back to the late 90s when a Republican was calling Joe Biden, the Senator from MBNA, a major credit card company.
MH: And Trump did this in 2016. He attacked Hillary from the left many times.
ZT: Yeah. So, just to go back to basics, Joe Biden took hundreds of thousands of dollars from MBNA. This major credit card company, became very close to the CEO. I believe he gave a speech at their corporate conference one year in the late 90s. And pushed a bankruptcy bill really splitting with Democrats, pushing a bankruptcy bill that makes it much harder for people to really get a clean slate. To go into the weeds for just a second, there’s basically two kinds of bankruptcy. One, it’s called chapter seven. Let’s say you get into terrible debt because of a health care emergency which happens all the time. Hundreds of thousands of people go bankrupt because of not being able to pay medical bills. So, chapter seven allows people to sell off what assets they can to pay creditors and discharge the rest of their debts quickly. Then there’s another bankruptcy system called chapter thirteen, which puts the debtor on a long term payment plan, so they’re forever carrying the weight of those debts. And Biden was pushing to make chapter seven harder making student debt basically impossible to discharge. So it’s really hard to understand Biden’s persistent efforts on this bill outside of the context of his closeness to the credit card industry.
MH: And people around him don’t even deny it. I mean, he has former aides who have told reporters, you know, that was what he had to do. He was a senator from Delaware. He had a better record as vice president because he didn’t have to worry about Delaware. I mean, they’re pretty open about it.
ZT: But what his constituents need, and the people who’ve been hurt by this 2005 bankruptcy bill, by the way, this bill goes through right before the financial crisis. So, the human impact of this bill has been enormous. And I am surprised and angry that this has not —
MH: Yeah, me too.
ZT: — That this has not been a more central part of the campaign. This is not a throwaway line by Joe Biden where he said something —
MH: This was years and years. He pushed with this over several years.
ZT: And one of the moments that really made me the most angry, I guess, is there was a New York Times interview of Joe Biden for their endorsement process which I recommend everybody read, I think it’s a truly disastrous and embarrassing interview. But there’s a moment in it where one of the people on the editorial board says, a couple of times, you’ve had trouble answering positions you held decades ago which I think it’s ridiculous that that’s an issue. But those questions aren’t going to go away. So it was somebody on the — And there were other really good questions on the ed board. So it’s not universal, but there was a way in which the press was covering for him for his own past that just didn’t make any sense. And bankruptcy didn’t come up in the interview. It wasn’t there.
MH: It’s also okay, I wouldn’t even kind of get the whole 1970s busing. But 2005 is very recent. It was the Bush administration. Barack Obama was in the Senate voting against that bill. And Joe Biden was pushing it and now champions his record with the middle class and working class voters, even though they were the ones most hurt by it.
ZT: Well, I completely agree with you on the second part. And I think what is the most troubling to many of us about even the much longer ago history is an unwillingness to directly confront it, take responsibility, and explain why he has changed his mind.
MH: And why won’t Sanders and Warren speak up more about this and his record? Why are they all so nice to each other?
ZT: Well, I do think that at this moment, people are — There’s a couple of worlds. There’s a world of people who are deeply involved in politics and political news. And there’s another world of people who just feel really shut out, don’t feel like they have a voice, may not be following the news that closely. And especially right now, I really understand why it’s important to get across like how exciting it would be to have a president who is pushing to expand social security. Like really getting back to some basics about what Sanders is, the vision that Sanders has, what the Green New Deal would mean in terms of good union jobs, what Medicare for All would mean. So I’m not, I’m less interested in second guessing campaigns. The Intercept has done a great job on Biden and bankruptcy. I will say that I think reporters on bankruptcy, that we should see a lot more of that in the mainstream news. They do not talk about a much more pocketbook issue. It absolutely affects millions of people’s lives. And it is central to who Biden has been as a senator. This is like at the heart of who he is.
And, actually, just to go back to my meta story at the beginning about the 90s and the shift. I can’t say when because interestingly, and you guys have actually done some good reporting on this. Interestingly, Biden was actually really good on money in politics in the 70s when he was a new Senator. He said this was the top priority. And in the 80s, he would be really pushing for it. And I can’t point to a precise moment but starting in the late 90s, he starts to get really cozy with financial services.
MH: So, let me ask you this. You mentioned, you know, people got hurt by the bankruptcy laws. There’s also the issue, the American public is concerned about corruption. All the polls show that voters across the board whether you’re Republican, Democrat, neither, you think corruption in DC and corruption at federal, state level is a big issue. All of the polls show that. So when you have a candidate going up against the most corrupt president, and they’ve got, even if not, you know, the perception of corruption. That’s important. With Hillary Clinton, you know, there was a whole issue about Clinton Foundation, most people didn’t actually dig into the Clinton Foundation. But there was a perception of pay to play or whatever phrases you want to use.
With Biden it’s not just his record with the bankruptcy bill and with the credit card industry and with Wall Street, his closeness to Wall Street, and telling billionaires that you know, their lives aren’t going to change much under a Biden presidency. But also, there’s the Biden family. And when the Ukraine story broke, and Democrats rightly rushed to Joe Biden’s defense pointing out that he hadn’t done anything wrong in terms of the prosecutor. He wasn’t protecting his son from an investigation. There wasn’t an investigation. All of those nonsensical Trump lines that they’re still pushing in the Senate right now, GOP talking points. When that happened, I did think to myself, in the short term at least, this is good for Biden, because now that Trump has launched this totally illegitimate attack on the Bidens, on Hunter, especially, Biden’s democratic rivals aren’t going to dare raise any of the legitimate critiques of the Biden family, including, for example, Hunter’s ridiculous $50,000 a month Burisma salary for a job he totally wasn’t qualified for.
ZT: And I just want to be clear that the attacks are just wildly illegitimate. And the defense, I haven’t actually got a chance to watch all of it, but the little that I saw of the impeachment defense was really nihilistic both in that it jumps all over the place. It suggests Trump did nothing wrong but if he did, then that’s also not wrong.
MH: But the problem is we seem unable, Zephyr to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. We can say that Trump’s attacks on Hunter Biden are completely illegitimate and false but we could also say Hunter Biden’s record of making money out of his dad’s name was not good.
ZT: Well, I think this goes to one thing that you see with corrupt regimes is that they will try to destroy the word corruption and make it sort of, just take it out of the lexicon because they abuse it so terribly. We cannot let Trump define the terms of the debate and instead have to, you know, look hard at all the candidates on their own terms. And what you see with Biden is he may check the boxes on his website in terms of, you know, overturn Citizens United and public financing both of which are really important but he has not communicated in any way, communicated with his heart, the depths of the problems of the current system. And just a small thing, I did note that he was taking big, you know, speaking fees after he left the vice presidency. If you’re going to run for president, don’t take big speaking fees.
MH: Yeah, I think Hillary Clinton could give you some free advice on that subject. Now, I mean, Biden, of course, said last summer, at a fundraiser famously to a group of very rich people, no one’s standard of living needs to change if he’s elected.
ZT: Yeah, that their lives aren’t going to change.
MH: Nothing would fundamentally change I believe was his phrase. Which is a real campaign slogan for 2020. “Vote for me. Nothing will fundamentally change.”
ZT: And that kind of way of talking to donors just shuts out people who really desperately need change, and they know that they may not win every fight, but they want somebody who’s going to be there fighting on their side. We know what we need to do. We need to not only overturn Citizens United and especially speaking to your global audience, you’ll hear a lot of candidates say they want to overturn Citizens United, which, by the way, of course, I want to do I was cited extensively in the dissent, in Steven’s dissent in Citizens United, it’s something we must do. But sometimes that can be a way of not taking responsibility for the things that we can do right now because overturn Citizens United requires either a change in the court or an amendment and there’s a lot we can do right now.
MH: I want to come back. I do want to ask you that before we finish, but before we get there, would we both agree that Biden has a corruption problem in terms of what Trump is going to use against him, in terms of his history with the bankruptcy bill and Wall Street?
ZT: Yes.
MH: How did you feel then when Bernie Sanders apologized to Joe Biden after your piece appeared and said, “It is absolutely not my view that Joe is corrupt in any way and I’m sorry that op-ed appeared?”
ZT: Look, I think what’s important is that Sanders and I agree deeply and very fundamentally, and I’ve known him for a long time, on the need for a transformational change in the way that we fund elections, in the way that poor and working class people’s voices are heard, in the way that billionaires have way too much power and in the way that too many elites have just accepted the status quo. So, I think the key point is that I am a, as I mentioned earlier, I’ve endorsed Sanders. I’m a full supporter of not just Sanders’ policy views, but —
MH: But were you surprised is what I’m asking, that he apologize in that way when clearly there is a case against Joe that he himself has made on the debate stage occasionally?
ZT: You know, the real key thing that people care about is where we’re going and our points of agreement are pretty great.
MH: Okay, you’re not gonna answer that question. I get it. I’ll say for you that I was very sad to see him apologize. There was no need to apologize. Your op-ed was excellent and reasonable. Just to be clear, the Sanders campaign had no idea you were going to write that?
ZT: I’m an academic and writing on my own.
MH: I wish Bernie Sanders had written that, to be honest. Not only do I wish he had written it, I’m amazed he apologized for it. Just on Sanders, why Sanders over Warren especially when your big issue is fighting corruption and Elizabeth Warren says her main issue is fighting corruption and has been for a long time not just during this presidential campaign but back when she was a private citizen and a law professor? For a lot of progressives listening at home who are still torn between the two, why’d you go Bernie Sanders over Elizabeth Warren on fighting corruption?
ZT: You know, I really love Elizabeth Warren and I deeply respect her. And I wrote a Nation piece about why I have chosen to support Bernie Sanders. I’ve known Bernie Sanders for a long time. I’ve watched him in politics for a long time, but maybe this is one way to describe why I’m so excited about this campaign is I think, in some ways this campaign started in 2016. Sanders laid out an alternate vision, not just of policy, but of how politics could work. And at first, he was sort of standing alone on a lawn in Washington with a crumpled piece of paper saying “We can actually do the whole system differently. But I can’t do it on my own.” And I see the 2020 campaign as an extension of that 2016 beginning. And he has built extraordinary depth of trust across class, across race. And we’re going to need that in what will be a brutal general election where truth is out the window, and the four, five-year campaign that he has built really matters.
MH: That’s a good point.
ZT: And we’re also going to need it when he’s president because we all know that we need public financing of elections. We know we need to move away from private corporate funding of elections that’s so grotesque. And so the question is how do you get there? And I believe you get there by mobilizing engaged people who are ready to go talk to their lawmaker and say this is a real priority. So, I really believe that this, it’s a rare creation of a movement and it’s a deeply moral movement that has really, really touched so many people and when I imagine a Bernie Sanders presidency, it’s you bringing the not me, us into the White House saying —
MH: Let me jump in there before we finish with one last question right there: “You bring not me, us into the White House.” You have Bernie there. You have his people organizing, mobilizing. Bernie Sanders calls you up and says Zephyr, I’m in the Oval Office. I’ve got my mandate. I’ve got people outside ready to mobilize and campaign. What is the one policy I need to go with as a priority to turn around the corrupt culture in Washington DC, to fight back against political corruption?
ZT: We absolutely need to change the way campaigns are funded. We need to do it. We need to make it so that when somebody is running for Congress, the first question that is asked, is not how many of the richest people in the world do you know and can you call them all up? But what do you care about? And what skills, what passion do you bring? Who are you going to fight for? And right now it’s been upside down for too long and and we can change that. We’ve public financing systems in New York City and in Seattle, the Seattle system fought back an effort by Amazon to really buy the elections. There’s a lot of pieces to a program, but to me, the heart of it is public financing of elections.
MH: Zephyr Teachout, thanks for joining me on Deconstructed.
ZT: Wonderful to talk to you.
[Music interlude.]
MH: That was Zephyr Teachout, attorney, academic, activist, Bernie Sanders supporter.
A quick announcement before we go: if you’re in LA on Monday, February 10th, we’re recording a special live episode of Deconstructed on the massive issue of criminal justice reform and mass incarceration in front of an audience, and with special, oh very special guests John Legend, yes that John Legend, and Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors. Go to the Intercept website or to my Twitter feed for details on how to buy tickets.
That’s our show! Deconstructed is a production of First Look Media and The Intercept. Our producer is Zach Young. The show was mixed by Bryan Pugh. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw. Betsy Reed is The Intercept’s editor in chief.
And I’m Mehdi Hasan. You can follow me on Twitter @mehdirhasan. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to the show so you can hear it every week. Go to theintercept.com/deconstructed to subscribe from your podcast platform of choice, iPhone, Android, whatever. If you’re subscribed already, please do leave us a rating or review – it helps new people find the show. And if you want to give us feedback, email us at Podcasts@theintercept.com. Thanks so much!
See you next week.


theintercept--2020-01-30--India’s Citizenship Law, in Tandem With National Registry, Could Make BJP’s Discriminatory Targeting

India’s Citizenship Law, in Tandem With National Registry, Could Make BJP’s Discriminatory Targeting of Muslims Easier

For more than a month , India has been awash with protests .
Triggered by the December 12 passage of the highly contentious Citizenship Amendment Act , hundreds of thousands of people , many of them students , have taken to the streets in defiance of the latest in a string of anti-Muslim policies rolled out by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party , or BJP .
The CAA fast-tracks Indian citizenship for Hindus , Sikhs , Buddhist , Christians , Parsis , and Jains who arrived in India before December 31 , 2014 , from its Muslim-majority neighbors , namely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ By smoothing the path for all non-Muslim immigrants from adjoining countries to attain citizenship , the law paves the way for practitioners of Islam to be unfairly disadvantaged when seeking to immigrate to India .
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has framed the CAA as a noble effort to welcome Hindus who are oppressed in neighboring Muslim-majority countries .
During a recent rally in India ’ s capital , Modi said , “ We passed this bill to help the persecuted.
” The anti-CAA protests are an unprecedented show of resistance against Modi @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the heels of several moves by the Indian government in recent months that seem designed to punish Muslims .
In early August , the BJP amended the constitution to strip Kashmir , an embattled Muslim-majority region , of its autonomy .
Then , in November , the Indian Supreme Court issued a ruling enabling the construction of a Hindu temple on the site of a 16th-century mosque desecrated more than two decades ago by Hindu nationalists in the city of Ayodhya .
In 2008 , Indian authorities built a detention center in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ period of tension and violence over the presence of unauthorized immigrants in the state .
There are currently six detention centers , which hold predominantly Bengali-speaking people .
One larger detention center especially designated for that purpose is currently being built .
The conditions at detention centers in Assam — where families are separated , and people are held virtually indefinitely without being fed properly or given proper medical attention — appear to violate international law , according to Harsh Mander , a former special monitor for India ’ s National Human Rights @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
He resigned in protest when the commission failed to act on the recommendations in his report .
Top BJP officials , including Modi and India ’ s Home Minister Amit Shah , have long promised to implement a nationwide registry similar to that in Assam .
Should that happen , Mander told me , it will likely mean that those who fail to establish their Indian lineage will be “ allowed ” to remain in the country but without any citizenship rights .
They will be “ stripped of the right to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and the right to have any kind of social security , ” Mander said , “ but also like a marked people , who will be continuously vulnerable to violence and discrimination.
” Plans for expanding the citizenship test have also appeared in the BJP ’ s electoral manifestos .
But the recent wave of protests may have given Modi pause .
At a rally in New Delhi in December , he claimed that there are no plans for a nationwide registry .
He also said there are no detention centers in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for more than a decade , with much larger ones currently being built in Assam and elsewhere in the country .
In December , the BJP took another step toward creating a nationwide NRC : The Indian cabinet approved funding for a National Population Register to be carried out in 2020 .
Government officials have said the NPR is linked to the census and has nothing to do with the NRC , but it will include a question about parents ’ birthplaces , drawing critics to believe that it will be used to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will then bear the burden of establishing their Indian lineage .
As the Modi government continues to contradict itself on its citizenship policies , a closer look at the registry in Assam helps illustrate what its expansion could mean for India ’ s minorities — and how the seemingly separate policies of the Citizenship Amendment Act and the registry could intersect to penalize Muslims .
immigration in Assam goes back many years but came to a crescendo after 1971 , when Bangladesh became an independent country amid a war between India and Pakistan @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hindu — began crossing the border into Assam , which has a diverse population comprised of hundreds of Indigenous tribes belonging to several religions .
This migration gave rise to the so-called Assam Movement , which demanded the expulsion of those migrants .
A citizenship registry became one of the movement ’ s key demands , as a way to identify people for deportation .
In 2015 , under orders from the Supreme Court , authorities in Assam proactively began using the registry to identify unauthorized immigrants .
Modi had been elected prime @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the BJP ’ s Hindu nationalist vision ascendant in India , the largely ethno-linguistic conflict moved in a religious and sectarian direction , morphing into a tool to weed out Muslim immigrants .
Himanta Biswa Sarma , Assam ’ s finance minister , led the BJP ’ s state election campaign there in 2016 , bringing the party to victory on a promise to bar Muslims of Bangladeshi origin from voting .
At a recent press conference , Sarma said that detention camps in Assam would no longer hold Hindus , Buddhists , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the other population , ” he said , referring to Muslims , “ it is for the court to take a call.
” “ The Assam Movement before the BJP came in [ was ] a subnationalist movement , which was also on occasion violent , but it was not an anti-Muslim movement , ” said Mander .
“ The BJP , on the other hand , is only opposed to the Muslim community.
” Assam is among India ’ s poorest states , and many residents do not have identification papers .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ s authorized residents , which was compiled by state authorities , was released on August 31 , approximately 2 million people who had been unable to produce such papers , many of them Muslim , were left off India ’ s citizenship rolls , exposing them to the “ risk of arbitrary detention and statelessness , ” according to human rights monitors .
Due to multiple minor bureaucratic mistakes , like misspelled names , many Indian citizens were wrongfully excluded from the registry .
The anxiety caused by the process pushed dozens to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can argue their cases before Foreigners Tribunals , fast-track , quasi-judicial bodies that put the burden of proof on the accused .
Those who fail this test will be sent to one the Assam ’ s detention centers or be deported .
Meanwhile , some BJP leaders claim that many of those excluded from the registry are actually Hindus .
Disenfranchising them would be political suicide for Modi ’ s Hindu nationalist government , which has said it would use the CAA to give citizenship to Bengali-speaking Hindus left off the citizenship rolls @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a BJP lawmaker , put it , “ Our BJP ’ s stand is that Hindus can never be foreigners.
” The activists who spearheaded the Assam Movement , however , object to any Bangladeshi immigrants — Hindu or Muslim — being allowed to obtain citizenship .
“ Now , through the Citizenship Amendment Bill , the BJP government is trying to protect their illegal Hindu Bangladeshi vote bank , ” said Samujjal Bhattacharya , an adviser to the All Assam Students ’ Union , one of the central anti-immigrant organizations that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will never allow this.
” Historically , the Indian government has threatened mass deportations in Assam , but they never materialized .
In the last six years , out of 129,000 Assam residents declared foreigners by the government , only four were deported to Bangladesh .
More often , people accused of being in India illegally spend years in detention centers .
Even though the registry had the potential to leave millions in Assam stateless , it was zealously supported by many of the state ’ s residents , including many Muslim organizations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ establish their Indian lineage and be included in the registry , the generational harassment and accusations that they are “ infiltrators ” would come to an end .
“ There was this huge bogey in Assam that Bangladeshis have come in and they were taking over our demography , ” said Teesta Setalvard , one of India ’ s most prominent human rights activists who works on citizenship issues in Assam through her human rights group Citizens for Justice and Peace .
“ And let ’ s not forget that post-Partition , there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ undercurrent in all of this .
So people in Assam , particularly the ethnic and linguistic minorities , were keen that this NRC process could once and for all settle this bogey.
” , police officers came to the one-room hut in Assam ’ s Chirang District where Madhubala Mandal , an 80-year-old Assamese woman , lived .
They asked if she was Madhubala Das , a woman who used to live in the same village .
She said no , she was Madhubala Mandal .
“ They waved some papers in my @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you are Madhubala Das , ’ ” Mandal told me when I met her at her home in August .
The officers told her that they were taking her in for questioning regarding her citizenship status and that she would return home the same evening .
Frail and barely able to speak , she followed them .
The police took Mandal to a detention camp in Kokrajhar District , one of the six in Assam meant to hold “ illegal immigrants.
” It turned out that the authorities were convinced that she was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a few years earlier .
The authorities suspected that Das had been a Bangladeshi Muslim who had entered India without authorization .
For three years , Mandal , who is Hindu , fought in court to prove her identity .
She was finally released from detention last June .
In Assam ’ s Goalpara District , which neighbors Kokrajhar and where a new detention center is being built , I met Noor Mohammad , a poor , 61-year-old Muslim paddy farmer who lives in a modest hut made of mud and straw .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2012 after being deemed a “ doubtful voter ” — an arbitrary state government designation for people it suspects are not genuine citizens .
For seven years , Mohammad fought in court to establish his family ’ s lineage .
I met him at his neighbors ’ home , where he and his neighbors laid out his family ’ s land documents dating from 1951 and 1966 , as well as voter rolls that include names of his family members .
According to Mohammad ’ s neighbors , his family settled in Assam @ @ @ @ @ @ @ last August , seven years and six months after his arrest and a few weeks before the final citizenship registry came out .
He described his time in the camp as “ hellish.
” He wasn ’ t allowed to speak to other prisoners and spent his days lying down “ senselessly ” in a corner .
Officials routinely called him “ Bangladeshi , ” a slur used to demonize Muslims and characterize them as outsiders .
“ I ’ m an Indian , with all my documents , [ and ] this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said , his face forlorn , as though he were resigned to his fate .
The day before the citizenship registry was released , I asked him if he had hopes for the future .
He stared at me with consternation , put his head in his hand , and wept like a child , beating his chest and muttering , “ Never again , I hope never again.
” In between his sobs , he said : “ I hope what has happened to me does not happen to anyone else .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ His case is ongoing ; he was freed after posting bail , which people suspected of being unauthorized immigrants are eligible for after three years of detention .
Mandal ’ s and Mohammad ’ s stories highlight the interplay between the citizenship registry and the CAA .
If a Hindu like Mandal were to fail to prove her Indian lineage , she would be removed from the citizenship rolls — but deemed Indian under the CAA .
For Muslims like Mohammad , though , exclusion from the registry would be the end of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the only home he ’ s ever known .
Over the last several weeks , the Indian government has responded to the anti-CAA protests , which have taken place in every state in the country , by invoking Section 144 , a law barring public assembly , detaining and arresting thousands of protesters across the country .
The government has also shut down the internet across the country , most notably in the populous state of Uttar Pradesh , which is known to have the largest concentration of Muslims in India .
At @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Jharkhand in December , Modi singled out Muslim protesters for ridicule , saying , “ The miscreants can be identified by their clothes.
” Students at Jamia Milia Islamia — a central university in Delhi with a sizable Muslim student body – were key to the resistance .
The Delhi police force responded to the protesters with disproportionate force , brutalizing some students and sparking a series of marathon protests in the capital that were suppressed with batons , water cannons , mass detentions , tear gas canisters , and shelling .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s student affiliate , Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad , were involved in a violent attack at Jawaharlal Nehru University , another university in New Delhi .
Meanwhile , the state of Uttar Pradesh , where 20 percent of the population of 200 million is Muslim , has borne the brunt of the crackdown .
The state government , led by Yogi Adityanath — a Hindu-nationalist monk known for his violent , Islamophobic statements — has threatened to charge around 250 protesters under the National Security Act , which empowers the state to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ time for posing a national security threat .
Other Muslim protesters have been arrested on charges of attempted murder , even as video evidence has shown police officers firing live rounds , barging into homes , destroying property , beating up children , and detaining people in Muslim-majority neighborhoods .
The Indian Civil Liberties Union , a group of activists working on the ground in Uttar Pradesh , estimates that more than 5,000 people have been detained and more than 1,400 arrested in the state .
Of the 28 people killed nationwide since @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , including an 8-year-old child , were killed in Uttar Pradesh by Adityanath ’ s police force .
Protesters across India have made opposition to the national citizenship registry part of their resistance to the Modi regime .
At multiple protest sites in New Delhi , I saw protestors holding banners that read , “ Hum Kagaz Nahi Dikhayenge , ” or “ We will not show our papers , ” a phrase from a protest song penned in anticipation of a nationwide registry .

For more than a month, India has been awash with protests. Triggered by the December 12 passage of the highly contentious Citizenship Amendment Act, hundreds of thousands of people, many of them students, have taken to the streets in defiance of the latest in a string of anti-Muslim policies rolled out by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP.
The CAA fast-tracks Indian citizenship for Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhist, Christians, Parsis, and Jains who arrived in India before December 31, 2014, from its Muslim-majority neighbors, namely Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan. By smoothing the path for all non-Muslim immigrants from adjoining countries to attain citizenship, the law paves the way for practitioners of Islam to be unfairly disadvantaged when seeking to immigrate to India.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has framed the CAA as a noble effort to welcome Hindus who are oppressed in neighboring Muslim-majority countries. During a recent rally in India’s capital, Modi said, “We passed this bill to help the persecuted.”
The anti-CAA protests are an unprecedented show of resistance against Modi’s BJP, and they come on the heels of several moves by the Indian government in recent months that seem designed to punish Muslims. In early August, the BJP amended the constitution to strip Kashmir, an embattled Muslim-majority region, of its autonomy. Then, in November, the Indian Supreme Court issued a ruling enabling the construction of a Hindu temple on the site of a 16th-century mosque desecrated more than two decades ago by Hindu nationalists in the city of Ayodhya.
The anti-CAA protests began in the state of Assam, where the BJP had supported the implementation of a National Registry of Citizens under orders from the Supreme Court in 2015. The NRC, which grew out of a decadeslong ethno-linguistic dispute between Indigenous Assamese people and Muslim and Hindu immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh, was billed as a way to identify unauthorized immigrants, forcing residents of Assam to establish their Indian lineage or be stripped of their citizenship. But the BJP turned the registry into a predominantly anti-Muslim exercise: Ultimately, a major portion of the 2 million residents of Assam who were excluded from the list were Muslim.
Left/Top: Indian police and Assam commandos beat a woman near Silphukuri during clashes on Dec. 12, 2019, in Guwahati, Assam in India, as thousands of people defied curfew and marched toward the heart of the city. Right/Bottom: Indian police officials remove a burning barricade on a street in Guwahati on Dec. 12, 2019. Protestors were dispersed with tear gas and stun guns. Photos: Ahmer Khan
A university student shouts anti-government slogans during a protest organized by Cotton University against India’s new citizenship law on Dec. 6, 2019, in Guwahati. Photo: Ahmer Khan
In 2008, Indian authorities built a detention center in Assam, under court orders amid a period of tension and violence over the presence of unauthorized immigrants in the state. There are currently six detention centers, which hold predominantly Bengali-speaking people. One larger detention center especially designated for that purpose is currently being built.
The conditions at detention centers in Assam — where families are separated, and people are held virtually indefinitely without being fed properly or given proper medical attention — appear to violate international law, according to Harsh Mander, a former special monitor for India’s National Human Rights Commission, who visited the detention centers. He resigned in protest when the commission failed to act on the recommendations in his report.
Top BJP officials, including Modi and India’s Home Minister Amit Shah, have long promised to implement a nationwide registry similar to that in Assam. Should that happen, Mander told me, it will likely mean that those who fail to establish their Indian lineage will be “allowed” to remain in the country but without any citizenship rights. They will be “stripped of the right to vote, the right to own property, and the right to have any kind of social security,” Mander said, “but also like a marked people, who will be continuously vulnerable to violence and discrimination.”
Plans for expanding the citizenship test have also appeared in the BJP’s electoral manifestos. But the recent wave of protests may have given Modi pause. At a rally in New Delhi in December, he claimed that there are no plans for a nationwide registry. He also said there are no detention centers in India, even though they have existed for more than a decade, with much larger ones currently being built in Assam and elsewhere in the country.
In December, the BJP took another step toward creating a nationwide NRC: The Indian cabinet approved funding for a National Population Register to be carried out in 2020. Government officials have said the NPR is linked to the census and has nothing to do with the NRC, but it will include a question about parents’ birthplaces, drawing critics to believe that it will be used to identify “doubtful citizens,” who will then bear the burden of establishing their Indian lineage.
As the Modi government continues to contradict itself on its citizenship policies, a closer look at the registry in Assam helps illustrate what its expansion could mean for India’s minorities — and how the seemingly separate policies of the Citizenship Amendment Act and the registry could intersect to penalize Muslims.
Family members console the mother of Sam Stafford, second from right, as they mourn during the funeral for the 18-year-old who was killed by police in Guwahati. Four civilians were killed in police fire during massive anti-citizenship law protests in Assam. Photos: Ahmer Khan
The debate over immigration in Assam goes back many years but came to a crescendo after 1971, when Bangladesh became an independent country amid a war between India and Pakistan. Bengali-speaking migrants — both Muslim and Hindu — began crossing the border into Assam, which has a diverse population comprised of hundreds of Indigenous tribes belonging to several religions.
This migration gave rise to the so-called Assam Movement, which demanded the expulsion of those migrants. A citizenship registry became one of the movement’s key demands, as a way to identify people for deportation. In 2015, under orders from the Supreme Court, authorities in Assam proactively began using the registry to identify unauthorized immigrants. Modi had been elected prime minister a year earlier, and with the BJP’s Hindu nationalist vision ascendant in India, the largely ethno-linguistic conflict moved in a religious and sectarian direction, morphing into a tool to weed out Muslim immigrants.
Himanta Biswa Sarma, Assam’s finance minister, led the BJP’s state election campaign there in 2016, bringing the party to victory on a promise to bar Muslims of Bangladeshi origin from voting. At a recent press conference, Sarma said that detention camps in Assam would no longer hold Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, or Christians. “Regarding the other population,” he said, referring to Muslims, “it is for the court to take a call.”
“The Assam Movement before the BJP came in [was] a subnationalist movement, which was also on occasion violent, but it was not an anti-Muslim movement,” said Mander. “The BJP, on the other hand, is only opposed to the Muslim community.”
Assam is among India’s poorest states, and many residents do not have identification papers. When the NRC list of Assam’s authorized residents, which was compiled by state authorities, was released on August 31, approximately 2 million people who had been unable to produce such papers, many of them Muslim, were left off India’s citizenship rolls, exposing them to the “risk of arbitrary detention and statelessness,” according to human rights monitors. Due to multiple minor bureaucratic mistakes, like misspelled names, many Indian citizens were wrongfully excluded from the registry. The anxiety caused by the process pushed dozens to suicide.
Those excluded from the rolls can argue their cases before Foreigners Tribunals, fast-track, quasi-judicial bodies that put the burden of proof on the accused. Those who fail this test will be sent to one the Assam’s detention centers or be deported.
Meanwhile, some BJP leaders claim that many of those excluded from the registry are actually Hindus. Disenfranchising them would be political suicide for Modi’s Hindu nationalist government, which has said it would use the CAA to give citizenship to Bengali-speaking Hindus left off the citizenship rolls in Assam. As Dilip Kumar Paul, a BJP lawmaker, put it, “Our BJP’s stand is that Hindus can never be foreigners.”
The activists who spearheaded the Assam Movement, however, object to any Bangladeshi immigrants — Hindu or Muslim — being allowed to obtain citizenship. “Now, through the Citizenship Amendment Bill, the BJP government is trying to protect their illegal Hindu Bangladeshi vote bank,” said Samujjal Bhattacharya, an adviser to the All Assam Students’ Union, one of the central anti-immigrant organizations that spearheaded the Assam Movement. “We will never allow this.”
Historically, the Indian government has threatened mass deportations in Assam, but they never materialized. In the last six years, out of 129,000 Assam residents declared foreigners by the government, only four were deported to Bangladesh. More often, people accused of being in India illegally spend years in detention centers.
Even though the registry had the potential to leave millions in Assam stateless, it was zealously supported by many of the state’s residents, including many Muslim organizations. They felt that if they could establish their Indian lineage and be included in the registry, the generational harassment and accusations that they are “infiltrators” would come to an end.
“There was this huge bogey in Assam that Bangladeshis have come in and they were taking over our demography,” said Teesta Setalvard, one of India’s most prominent human rights activists who works on citizenship issues in Assam through her human rights group Citizens for Justice and Peace. “And let’s not forget that post-Partition, there is a very strong and sharp anti-Muslim undercurrent in all of this. So people in Assam, particularly the ethnic and linguistic minorities, were keen that this NRC process could once and for all settle this bogey.”
Madhubala Mandal, right, stands with her daughter outside her hut in Chirang District, Assam, India, on Aug. 29, 2019. Photo: Soumya Shankar for The Intercept
In April 2016 , police officers came to the one-room hut in Assam’s Chirang District where Madhubala Mandal, a 60-year-old Assamese woman, lived. They asked if she was Madhubala Das, a woman who used to live in the same village. She said no, she was Madhubala Mandal. “They waved some papers in my face, said, ‘No, you are Madhubala Das,’” Mandal told me when I met her at her home in August. The officers told her that they were taking her in for questioning regarding her citizenship status and that she would return home the same evening. Frail and barely able to speak, she followed them.
The police took Mandal to a detention camp in Kokrajhar District, one of the six in Assam meant to hold “illegal immigrants.” It turned out that the authorities were convinced that she was actually Madhubala Das, who had died a few years earlier. The authorities suspected that Das had been a Bangladeshi Muslim who had entered India without authorization. For three years, Mandal, who is Hindu, fought in court to prove her identity. She was finally released from detention last June.
In Assam’s Goalpara District, which neighbors Kokrajhar and where a new detention center is being built, I met Noor Mohammad, a poor, 61-year-old Muslim paddy farmer who lives in a modest hut made of mud and straw. He was detained from his home in 2012 after being deemed a “doubtful voter” — an arbitrary state government designation for people it suspects are not genuine citizens.
For seven years, Mohammad fought in court to establish his family’s lineage. I met him at his neighbors’ home, where he and his neighbors laid out his family’s land documents dating from 1951 and 1966, as well as voter rolls that include names of his family members. According to Mohammad’s neighbors, his family settled in Assam around 1931.
Mohammed was finally released last August, seven years and six months after his arrest and a few weeks before the final citizenship registry came out. He described his time in the camp as “hellish.” He wasn’t allowed to speak to other prisoners and spent his days lying down “senselessly” in a corner. Officials routinely called him “Bangladeshi,” a slur used to demonize Muslims and characterize them as outsiders. “I’m an Indian, with all my documents, [and] this is happening to me,” he said, his face forlorn, as though he were resigned to his fate.
The day before the citizenship registry was released, I asked him if he had hopes for the future. He stared at me with consternation, put his head in his hand, and wept like a child, beating his chest and muttering, “Never again, I hope never again.” In between his sobs, he said: “I hope what has happened to me does not happen to anyone else. What sin did I commit?” His case is ongoing; he was freed after posting bail, which people suspected of being unauthorized immigrants are eligible for after three years of detention.
Mandal’s and Mohammad’s stories highlight the interplay between the citizenship registry and the CAA. If a Hindu like Mandal were to fail to prove her Indian lineage, she would be removed from the citizenship rolls — but deemed Indian under the CAA. For Muslims like Mohammad, though, exclusion from the registry would be the end of the road, even though India is the only home he’s ever known.
Left/Top: Police beat protesters with sticks during a demonstration against India's new citizenship law in Lucknow on Dec. 19, 2019. Right/Bottom: An Aligarh Muslim University student, who was injured in police crackdown after a protest on Dec. 15, 2019, is admitted to the Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College on Dec. 19, 2019, in Aligarh, India. Photos: AFP via Getty Images; Burhaan Kinu/Hindustan Times via Getty Images
Over the last several weeks, the Indian government has responded to the anti-CAA protests, which have taken place in every state in the country, by invoking Section 144, a law barring public assembly, detaining and arresting thousands of protesters across the country. The government has also shut down the internet across the country, most notably in the populous state of Uttar Pradesh, which is known to have the largest concentration of Muslims in India. At an election rally in the state of Jharkhand in December, Modi singled out Muslim protesters for ridicule, saying, “The miscreants can be identified by their clothes.”
Students at Jamia Milia Islamia — a central university in Delhi with a sizable Muslim student body – were key to the resistance. The Delhi police force responded to the protesters with disproportionate force, brutalizing some students and sparking a series of marathon protests in the capital that were suppressed with batons, water cannons, mass detentions, tear gas canisters, and shelling. In early January, members of the BJP’s student affiliate, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, were involved in a violent attack at Jawaharlal Nehru University, another university in New Delhi.
Meanwhile, the state of Uttar Pradesh, where 20 percent of the population of 200 million is Muslim, has borne the brunt of the crackdown. The state government, led by Yogi Adityanath — a Hindu-nationalist monk known for his violent, Islamophobic statements — has threatened to charge around 250 protesters under the National Security Act, which empowers the state to detain anybody for an unlimited amount of time for posing a national security threat.
Other Muslim protesters have been arrested on charges of attempted murder, even as video evidence has shown police officers firing live rounds, barging into homes, destroying property, beating up children, and detaining people in Muslim-majority neighborhoods. The Indian Civil Liberties Union, a group of activists working on the ground in Uttar Pradesh, estimates that more than 5,000 people have been detained and more than 1,400 arrested in the state. Of the 28 people killed nationwide since the start of the protests, 20, including an 8-year-old child, were killed in Uttar Pradesh by Adityanath’s police force.
Protesters across India have made opposition to the national citizenship registry part of their resistance to the Modi regime. At multiple protest sites in New Delhi, I saw protestors holding banners that read, “Hum Kagaz Nahi Dikhayenge,” or “We will not show our papers,” a phrase from a protest song penned in anticipation of a nationwide registry.
This story was produced as part of a reporting fellowship with the GroundTruthProject, with support from the MacArthur Foundation and Henry Luce Foundation.