theintercept--2020-08-06--Progressive Prosecutor Movement Makes Major Gains in Democratic Primaries

good for Karen McDonald .
After a successful legal career that included a stint as a line prosecutor , as well as time working with foster children and in private practice , she ran to be a Michigan circuit court judge and won in 2012 .
State judges virtually never lose reelection , so it was effectively a lifetime appointment .
She easily won a second six-year term in 2018 , but something wasn ’ t right .
She had gradually come to realize that the real power in the criminal justice system rested with prosecutors .
The wealthy , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this system , but the poor , and particularly poor people of color , had little chance .
As a judge , she was bound within tight rules that constrained her discretion .
“ It ’ s a great job , but I couldn ’ t fix what I think is wrong as a judge .
You can ’ t fix that , ” she told The Intercept in an interview on Wednesday .
“ By the time a litigant comes before a judge , they ’ ve already been charged and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and what to charge them with .
And judges listen to arguments from prosecutors and they ’ re persuaded.
” So McDonald did something extraordinary in the legal world : She stepped down and challenged the incumbent Oakland County prosecutor , the hard-line Jessica Cooper .
State law required her to leave the bench a year before the filing deadline , so in April 2019 , she stepped down .
“ Candidly , the thing that changed for me was when Donald Trump was elected , ” she said .
“ We ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ don ’ t start taking risks , we ’ re going to keep electing people like Donald Trump .
You have to have people willing to put something on the line.
” Giving up her gavel , she often thought to herself , had been a crazy thing to do .
“ I ’ m still trying to process it , to be honest , ” she said .
“ There were moments I woke up the last year and thought , what have I done ?
With every day that went by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on this race .
It wasn ’ t just about me getting another job ; it was about people in our community feeling the justice system will be fair.
” McDonald said that even though the 1.3 million-person suburban county is known for its wealth , there are significant populations of people of color in urban areas , as well as significant rural swaths .
Far from encountering the types of voters Trump hopes to win with a fear-driven “ law and order ” approach , McDonald said the suburbanites she encountered were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unfair to Black and brown people and needed to be reformed , not hardened .
“ There ’ s such an awareness we ’ ve gotten it wrong , ” she said .
“ It ’ s tragic to me so many people had to die , like George Floyd.
” The movement to oust hard-line prosecutors and replace them with committed reformers first broke out in Philadelphia , with the 2017 victory of radical criminal defense attorney Larry Krasner in the race for district attorney .
Since then , the push has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ near-misses , particularly in Dallas , Texas , and Queens , New York .
On Tuesday night , the movement realized a major step forward , with reformist prosecutors , including McDonald , winning Democratic primaries in counties covering at least 3 million people in four states .
the Oakland County race , the Detroit Free Press , which had previously backed Cooper in each of her elections , editorialized : “ Times change — and Cooper , 74 , has changed little , ” going on to endorse McDonald .
“ The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ take on the challenges confronting law enforcement in 2020.
” Voters agreed and threw her out for McDonald in a landslide 2-1 margin .
“ This is not going to be easy , but the time has come , ” said McDonald , who had the backing of the Working Families Party and other elements of the progressive infrastructure , after her victory .
“ You saw the results , that ’ s a public mandate.
” She faces a Republican challenger in the general election , but is favored to win in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ perhaps uniquely well positioned to reform the Oakland County Prosecutor ’ s Office .
She worked in it as a line prosecutor for four years before leaving to do work with foster children and troubled families .
Combining that with her time on the bench , she has seen the way that the justice system fails people and families from nearly every systemic angle .
Her platform calls for an end to cash bail , pressure on prosecutors to amend and reduce charges , a commitment to revisit old convictions , an end @ @ @ @ @ @ @ array of diversionary programs .
“ Jessica Cooper was an old-school hard-ass prosecutor and out of step with what has become a fairly socially liberal suburban county , ” said Samuel Bagenstos , a prominent progressive Michigan attorney who ran an unsuccessful bid in 2018 for Michigan Supreme Court .
“ Karen McDonald will be way better .
I don ’ t expect her to be the second coming of Chesa Boudin or anything , but she ’ ll have a much more up-to-date view of the limits of the criminal justice system.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , situated between Jackson and Detroit , progressive candidate Eli Savit won the primary for district attorney with more than 50 percent of the vote in the three-way race , 41,673 of 82,557 votes cast .
The county leans further left than most others in the state — Sen. Bernie Sanders won it by more than 11 points in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary .
Washtenaw is also home to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and Eastern Michigan University .
( Sanders endorsed Savit in June . )
Savit ran on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bargaining , focusing on rehabilitation and reintegration for people who ’ ve completed criminal sentences , and moving away from a “ jail-first ” mentality by prioritizing diversion and treating mental health , trauma , and addiction outside of the criminal system .
“ Eli Savit , in my county , will be really good , ” said Bagenstos .
“ He ’ s young and ambitious and definitely wants to be in the Larry Krasner mold .
And Washtenaw County is a great place for that , as probably the most progressive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ think it gives us real mandate , ” Savit told The Intercept .
He ’ s served since 2016 as senior adviser and counsel to the City of Detroit , where he ’ s led efforts to make it easier for people to get their criminal records expunged .
Savit also lectures at the University of Michigan Law School and previously clerked for Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O ’ Connor .
“ We won precincts and areas across the county , from our cities to our more rural @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to start with the work of turning the page on the era of mass incarceration , and building a fairer and more equitable prosecutor ’ s office here in Washtenaw County , ” he said .
“ We ran very openly from the start of the campaign — that was what we were talking about.
” In Pima County , Arizona , which covers 1 million-plus residents and the city of Tucson , an old-school Democratic prosecutor , Barbara LaWall , stepped down after 24 years in office spent growing the prison population @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Republicans to battle efforts to reform the system .
Given the new political climate , the Democratic primary to replace the outgoing incumbent had a familiar feel : Three candidates ran , all of them claiming the mantle of criminal justice reform .
But candidates have records to look at and specifics matter too .
Advocates of genuine reform — including New Mexico Rep. Raúl Grijalva — got behind Lauren Conover , a former public defender and a criminal defense attorney .
That profile — moving from the defense table to the prosecutor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gold standard since Krasner ’ s pivotal victory in Philadelphia in 2017 .
( Until , perhaps , more judges like McDonald start running . )
Her main opponent , Jonathan Mosher , had a hard time earning reformist credibility since he was endorsed by LaWall and had served for years as her deputy .
For decades , that would have been enough to waltz into the seat , but this time , voters went with Conover , who is unopposed in the general election .
In Maricopa County , Arizona , progressives @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he was beaten handily Julie Gunnigle , who ran on a progressive platform and would be an improvement for criminal justice reformers over the incumbent Republican , but has work to do to win the trust of reform advocates after reports of an egregious case of over-prosecution from her past .
That county earned national notoriety under the tenure of former Sheriff Joe Arpaio , whose police department was found to be illegally racially profiling Latino motorists in 2011 .
In 2017 , Arpaio was found guilty of criminal contempt for violating a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ case and was pardoned by Trump .
This year , he ran to regain his old seat and is locked in a close contest for the GOP nomination .
Gardner ’ s office has been the subject of high-profile drama , particularly related to pushback from the St. Louis Police Officers ’ Association to her attention to addressing racism within the department , and her indictment of former Republican Missouri Gov .
Eric Greitens over allegations of campaign misconduct .
( Greitens was eventually cleared of wrongdoing after an 18-month investigation , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prosecutor who was later charged with felonies including perjury . )
In January , Gardner sued the police union and the city , saying that they engaged in a racially motivated conspiracy to block her from implementing reforms and push her out of office .
The case is still pending .
“ I think this sends a message to all the status quo tacticians who want to impede change , that enough is enough , ” Gardner told The Intercept on Wednesday .
She recognizes that advocating for justice in the criminal system @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and others in the community , but said that the broad coalition of people “ came out against a powerful status quo ” to elect her are evidence that voters support the need for change .
Sanders endorsed Gardner , along with nine other prosecutorial candidates , in June .
California Sen. Kamala Harris endorsed Gardner in May , and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren endorsed her in July .
Gardner ’ s opponent Mary Pat Carl , a former city prosecutor and homicide attorney who came in second in a four-way primary for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 15,000 votes on Tuesday .
Carl departed her post at the circuit attorney ’ s office in 2017 following Gardner ’ s election .
She campaigned on improving the office ’ s transparency and addressing gun violence against children in the city .
Gardner came under attack from prominent Republicans , including Trump and Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley , after she charged a couple that pointed guns at protesters in St. Louis last month .
Trump defended the couple and said the attempt to prosecute them was “ a disgrace.
” Hawley asked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rights probe into her office .
Gardner received increased death threats and racist attacks following the remarks , the Washington Post reported .
The couple later appeared in a Trump campaign ad .
“ When you have people who promote divisiveness , like the president of the United States , ” Gardner said , “ and then you have the senator Josh Hawley , and many others like Eric Schmidt , the attorney general , and the governor use fear and divisiveness as political rhetoric to stop the efforts of reform and police @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it.
” In Lawrence , Kansas , incumbent District Attorney Charles Branson came in third in his reelection race .
Special prosecutor and University of Kansas law professor Suzanne Valdez , who jumped into the race in late April and raised just $ 11,000 , won the Democratic primary , edging out Cooper Overstreet , who was backed by local chapters of the Sunrise Movement and the Democratic Socialists of America .

Life was looking good for Karen McDonald. After a successful legal career that included a stint as a line prosecutor, as well as time working with foster children and in private practice, she ran to be a Michigan circuit court judge and won in 2012. State judges virtually never lose reelection, so it was effectively a lifetime appointment. She easily won a second six-year term in 2018, but something wasn’t right.
She had gradually come to realize that the real power in the criminal justice system rested with prosecutors. The wealthy, she observed, did just fine in this system, but the poor, and particularly poor people of color, had little chance. As a judge, she was bound within tight rules that constrained her discretion. “It’s a great job, but I couldn’t fix what I think is wrong as a judge. You can’t fix that,” she told The Intercept in an interview on Wednesday. “By the time a litigant comes before a judge, they’ve already been charged and the prosecutor decides who’s being charged and what to charge them with. And judges listen to arguments from prosecutors and they’re persuaded.”
So McDonald did something extraordinary in the legal world: She stepped down and challenged the incumbent Oakland County prosecutor, the hard-line Jessica Cooper.
State law required her to leave the bench a year before the filing deadline, so in April 2019, she stepped down. “Candidly, the thing that changed for me was when Donald Trump was elected,” she said. “We’re in a moment where if we don’t start taking risks, we’re going to keep electing people like Donald Trump. You have to have people willing to put something on the line.”
Giving up her gavel, she often thought to herself, had been a crazy thing to do. “I’m still trying to process it, to be honest,” she said. “There were moments I woke up the last year and thought, what have I done? With every day that went by, I realized so much was counting on this race. It wasn’t just about me getting another job; it was about people in our community feeling the justice system will be fair.”
McDonald said that even though the 1.3 million-person suburban county is known for its wealth, there are significant populations of people of color in urban areas, as well as significant rural swaths. Far from encountering the types of voters Trump hopes to win with a fear-driven “law and order” approach, McDonald said the suburbanites she encountered were in agreement that the system had been unfair to Black and brown people and needed to be reformed, not hardened. “There’s such an awareness we’ve gotten it wrong,” she said. “It’s tragic to me so many people had to die, like George Floyd.”
The movement to oust hard-line prosecutors and replace them with committed reformers first broke out in Philadelphia, with the 2017 victory of radical criminal defense attorney Larry Krasner in the race for district attorney. Since then, the push has met with major successes, and several near-misses, particularly in Dallas, Texas, and Queens, New York. On Tuesday night, the movement realized a major step forward, with reformist prosecutors, including McDonald, winning Democratic primaries in counties covering at least 3 million people in four states.
Weighing in on the Oakland County race, the Detroit Free Press, which had previously backed Cooper in each of her elections, editorialized: “Times change — and Cooper, 74, has changed little,” going on to endorse McDonald. “The incumbent prosecutor is the wrong person to take on the challenges confronting law enforcement in 2020.”
Voters agreed and threw her out for McDonald in a landslide 2-1 margin. “This is not going to be easy, but the time has come,” said McDonald, who had the backing of the Working Families Party and other elements of the progressive infrastructure, after her victory. “You saw the results, that’s a public mandate.” She faces a Republican challenger in the general election, but is favored to win in the increasingly Democratic county.
McDonald is perhaps uniquely well positioned to reform the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office. She worked in it as a line prosecutor for four years before leaving to do work with foster children and troubled families. Combining that with her time on the bench, she has seen the way that the justice system fails people and families from nearly every systemic angle. Her platform calls for an end to cash bail, pressure on prosecutors to amend and reduce charges, a commitment to revisit old convictions, an end to marijuana possession prosecutions, and an array of diversionary programs.
“Jessica Cooper was an old-school hard-ass prosecutor and out of step with what has become a fairly socially liberal suburban county,” said Samuel Bagenstos, a prominent progressive Michigan attorney who ran an unsuccessful bid in 2018 for Michigan Supreme Court. “Karen McDonald will be way better. I don’t expect her to be the second coming of Chesa Boudin or anything, but she’ll have a much more up-to-date view of the limits of the criminal justice system.”
In Michigan’s Washtenaw County, situated between Jackson and Detroit, progressive candidate Eli Savit won the primary for district attorney with more than 50 percent of the vote in the three-way race, 41,673 of 82,557 votes cast. The county leans further left than most others in the state — Sen. Bernie Sanders won it by more than 11 points in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary. Washtenaw is also home to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and Eastern Michigan University. (Sanders endorsed Savit in June.) Savit ran on eliminating cash bail, ending coercive plea bargaining, focusing on rehabilitation and reintegration for people who’ve completed criminal sentences, and moving away from a “jail-first” mentality by prioritizing diversion and treating mental health, trauma, and addiction outside of the criminal system.
“Eli Savit, in my county, will be really good,” said Bagenstos. “He’s young and ambitious and definitely wants to be in the Larry Krasner mold. And Washtenaw County is a great place for that, as probably the most progressive county in the state.”
“I think it gives us real mandate,” Savit told The Intercept. He’s served since 2016 as senior adviser and counsel to the City of Detroit, where he’s led efforts to make it easier for people to get their criminal records expunged. Savit also lectures at the University of Michigan Law School and previously clerked for Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O’Connor. “We won precincts and areas across the county, from our cities to our more rural communities. … We’re excited to start with the work of turning the page on the era of mass incarceration, and building a fairer and more equitable prosecutor’s office here in Washtenaw County,” he said. “We ran very openly from the start of the campaign — that was what we were talking about.”
In Pima County, Arizona, which covers 1 million-plus residents and the city of Tucson, an old-school Democratic prosecutor, Barbara LaWall, stepped down after 24 years in office spent growing the prison population and working with the state’s Republicans to battle efforts to reform the system. Given the new political climate, the Democratic primary to replace the outgoing incumbent had a familiar feel: Three candidates ran, all of them claiming the mantle of criminal justice reform. But candidates have records to look at and specifics matter too. Advocates of genuine reform — including Arizona Rep. Raúl Grijalva — got behind Lauren Conover, a former public defender and a criminal defense attorney. That profile — moving from the defense table to the prosecutor’s office — has been the gold standard since Krasner’s pivotal victory in Philadelphia in 2017. (Until, perhaps, more judges like McDonald start running.) Her main opponent, Jonathan Mosher, had a hard time earning reformist credibility since he was endorsed by LaWall and had served for years as her deputy. For decades, that would have been enough to waltz into the seat, but this time, voters went with Conover, who is unopposed in the general election.
In Maricopa County, Arizona, progressives had rallied behind Will Knight, but he was beaten handily by Julie Gunnigle, who ran on a progressive platform and would be an improvement for criminal justice reformers over the incumbent Republican, but has work to do to win the trust of reform advocates after reports of an egregious case of over-prosecution from her past. That county earned national notoriety under the tenure of former Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose police department was found to be illegally racially profiling Latino motorists in 2011. In 2017, Arpaio was found guilty of criminal contempt for violating a court order related to the racial profiling case and was pardoned by Trump. This year, he ran to regain his old seat and is locked in a close contest for the GOP nomination.
Photo: Jeff Roberson/AP
In St. Louis, Missouri, one of many sites of massive ongoing protests against police brutality, Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner defended her first challenge as an incumbent. Gardner, who was elected in 2016 as St. Louis’s first Black circuit attorney, has come under intense backlash from the local police union and establishment politicians for her approach to criminal justice reform. She won more than 43,000 of 71,000 votes cast and will face Republican candidate Daniel Zdrodowski in November.
Gardner’s office has been the subject of high-profile drama, particularly related to pushback from the St. Louis Police Officers’ Association to her attention to addressing racism within the department, and her indictment of former Republican Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens over allegations of campaign misconduct. (Greitens was eventually cleared of wrongdoing after an 18-month investigation, and Gardner came under fire for hiring a prosecutor who was later charged with felonies including perjury.) In January, Gardner sued the police union and the city, saying that they engaged in a racially motivated conspiracy to block her from implementing reforms and push her out of office. The case is still pending.
“I think this sends a message to all the status quo tacticians who want to impede change, that enough is enough,” Gardner told The Intercept on Wednesday. She recognizes that advocating for justice in the criminal system could make her unpopular among law enforcement and others in the community, but said that the broad coalition of people “came out against a powerful status quo” to elect her are evidence that voters support the need for change. Sanders endorsed Gardner, along with nine other prosecutorial candidates, in June. California Sen. Kamala Harris endorsed Gardner in May, and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren endorsed her in July.
Gardner’s opponent Mary Pat Carl, a former city prosecutor and homicide attorney who came in second in a four-way primary for county attorney in 2016, lost by 15,000 votes on Tuesday. Carl departed her post at the circuit attorney’s office in 2017 following Gardner’s election. She campaigned on improving the office’s transparency and addressing gun violence against children in the city.
Gardner came under attack from prominent Republicans, including Trump and Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, after she charged a couple that pointed guns at protesters in St. Louis last month. Trump defended the couple and said the attempt to prosecute them was “a disgrace.” Hawley asked the Justice Department to open a civil rights probe into her office. Gardner received increased death threats and racist attacks following the remarks, the Washington Post reported. The couple later appeared in a Trump campaign ad.
“When you have people who promote divisiveness, like the president of the United States,” Gardner said, “and then you have the senator Josh Hawley, and many others like Eric Schmidt, the attorney general, and the governor use fear and divisiveness as political rhetoric to stop the efforts of reform and police accountability — the people are tired of it.”
In Lawrence, Kansas, incumbent District Attorney Charles Branson came in third in his reelection race. Special prosecutor and University of Kansas law professor Suzanne Valdez, who jumped into the race in late April and raised just $11,000, won the Democratic primary, edging out Cooper Overstreet, who was backed by local chapters of the Sunrise Movement and the Democratic Socialists of America. Elsewhere in Kansas, in Wyandotte County, District Attorney Mark Dupree, elected on a reform message in 2016 was challenged by elements of the local police and former prosecutors, angry at his new approach and his work to free a man Dupree determined had been unjustly convicted. A former prosecutor challenged him with the backing of the local establishment, but Dupree, the first Black person elected to the office, fended her off.
Correction: Aug. 6, 2020, 2:56 p.m. ET
An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to Raúl Grijalva as a representative from New Mexico. He is from Arizona.


theintercept--2020-08-06--The Filthy Hypocrisy of America’s “Clean” China-Free Internet

The State Department has a new vision for a “ clean ” internet , by which it means a China-free internet .
This new ethno-exclusive network “ is the Trump Administration ’ s comprehensive approach to guarding our citizens ’ privacy and our companies ’ most sensitive information , ” by ensuring that China won ’ t be able to do a litany of subversive and violative things with technology that the U.S. and its allies have engaged in for years .
As a policy document it ’ s nonsensical , but as a moral document , a piece of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ clear : If there ’ s going to be a world-spanning surveillance state , it better be made in the USA .
The real question , even more than how could any of this practically be accomplished by State Department diktat , is : Why should anyone in the world take the initiative seriously ?
How can any network fondled for decades by American spy agencies be considered clean ?
The absolute gall of the United States in condemning “ apps [ that ] threaten our privacy , proliferate viruses , and spread @ @ @ @ @ @ @ too stunning to be laughable .
Without exception , the United States engages in every one of these practices and violates every single one of these bullet pointed virtues of a Clean Internet .
Where do we get off ?
There ’ s very little here that could be considered “ clean , ” unless it ’ s the Awesome Cleaning Power of Dove Soap your phone is now recommending to you because it ’ s persistently tracked by Facebook , Google , and countless marketers .
Skype , one of the world @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of software , was infamously sabotaged by its American owner in order to let the NSA effectively spy on conversations it carried .
The rest of the world is surely raring to feel this kind of Clean .
We ’ re on similarly weak footing when it comes to browbeating other countries about privacy-violating apps , an industry the U.S. has proudly pioneered .
It is the rare American citizen whose daily movements , habits , tastes , and desires aren ’ t surveilled around the clock by a constellation of for-profit firms @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whose interests they will rarely share .
At a recent congressional hearing on the monopolistic practices of American tech companies at which he stated his company stood for “ American values , ” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was asked about a virtual private network the company deployed to smartphones to spy on children and adults in exchange for bribes — or , as Facebook put it , for “ market research.
” Zuckerberg denied that he had ever heard of this incident even as he told Congress , under oath , that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ track private information ( it does ) .
Pompeo ’ s denunciation of the “ PRC surveillance state ” sounds like little more than surveillance state protectionism .
The post-9/11 NSA phone surveillance program , through which major telecom carriers like AT & T and Verizon cooperated with the government to provide sensitive data for hundreds of millions of calls and texts , was only shut down last year ( and only reportedly shut down at that ) .
Though critics of the China-originated social network TikTok are quick to point to Chinese @ @ @ @ @ @ @ government , we don ’ t need to look to the other side of the world to find such opaque arrangements .
As the New York Times noted when the NSA program was terminated , “ Starting in 2006 , the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court began issuing secret orders requiring the companies to participate , based on a novel interpretation of Section 215 of the Patriot Act , which said the F.B.I .
may obtain business records ‘ relevant ’ to a terrorism investigation.
” Long-running fears that pre-tampered communications equipment manufactured by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ networks start to feel a bit morally hollow when you recall the NSA investigated these fears by breaching Huawei itself while simultaneously exporting pre-tampered network equipment from Cisco , a U.S. firm .
A psychologist might describe U.S. concerns in this area as “ projection.
” Pompeo calls for a “ Clean Cloud ” that can ’ t be “ accessible to our foreign adversaries.
” It would be interesting to hear Pompeo ’ s pitch for why other countries should instead turn to , say , Amazon ’ s AWS cloud service @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The U.S. government should think very carefully about whether it wants to tell the world that a company ’ s intelligence community adjacency and long-running collaboration should be a red flag before doing business .
Pompeo ’ s determination to “ ensure the undersea cables connecting our country to the global internet are not subverted for intelligence gathering by the PRC at hyper scale ” is maybe his most morally bankrupt initiative .
“ We will also work with foreign partners to ensure that undersea cables around the world aren ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ promises , not noting that it ’ s precisely ourselves and these “ foreign partners ” in the Five Eyes spying alliance that have for decades made sure that undersea cables are subject to compromise .
NSA programs with names like FAIRVIEW , STORMBREW , and OAKSTAR revealed by Snowden show just how invested the U.S. is in spying on the internet ’ s physical fiber optic backbone in absolute secrecy to carry out the country ’ s national security agenda .
The American “ Do as we say , not as we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ always been the case , but reached an apex with the debate over “ banning ” TikTok , a Chinese-owned video sharing app counted among the most widely used pieces of software in history .
I ’ ve found it to be an worthwhile exercise to take a random piece of the national security centrist consensus against TikTok , which framed the teen-beloved app as the data security equivalent of a comical smoking bomb from a Batman cartoon , and swap out “ TikTok ” for , say , Facebook .
The think @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dishonest tech companies that harvest as much data as possible and backchannel with spy agencies and police hold up pretty well no matter which company is slotted into the national security mad libs .
There ’ s no reason to believe TikTok vacuums up more data than Facebook or any other app , whose owners , in the absence of any meaningful regulation , can do whatever they please with that information in perpetuity .
To consider Mark Zuckerberg , Sundar Pichai , and the rest of the Silicon brass as meaningful foils @ @ @ @ @ @ @ subterfuge , as some bulwark of democratic ideals , is an insult to anyone paying attention .
The nightmare of Chinese techno-authoritarianism does not in any way absolve the Surveillance State Lite we ’ re erecting at home .
However easy it may be for the Chinese government to access data within its own borders and no matter how nefarious their intent , the average American ought to wonder whether they face a greater imminent threat from that country ’ s authorities or the U.S.-based surveillance marketing companies that actively try to preempt @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of every day , or the brutalizing police agencies that happily piggyback on these data troves .
We ’ ve known since NSA contractor Edward Snowden helped expose various surveillance programs seven years ago that information from Silicon Valley heavies like Google , Facebook , and Apple was routinely and systematically provided to the NSA , subject in many cases only to the oversight and transparency of secret courts , secret proceedings , and secret findings .
It will take a greater mind than Pompeo ’ s to argue why our opaque public-private @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and genuinely open .
Less docile firms can find themselves the recipient of a federal “ National Security Letter , ” which not only mandates that they turn over the requested data , but forbids them from even mentioning that they ’ ve been asked under penalty of imprisonment .
If we ’ re condemning the general practice of duplicity in the name of national security , rapaciousness in the name of intelligence , and constant violation of civil liberties and personal privacy online , it ’ s odd to let the Stanford @ @ @ @ @ @ @ off the hook .
There ’ s no need to attempt to draw a moral equivalence between China and the United States ; the network of totalitarian , ubiquitous surveillance and repressive policing erected in Chinese cities can only make Palo Alto executives and police union bosses green with envy for now , though we can ’ t knock them for not trying .
The horrors of Uyghur concentration camps in Xinjiang — of their brutalization , dehumanization , and worse — are without equal in this country .
China ’ s domestic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are orders of magnitude greater than our own .
But just because someone else is far worse doesn ’ t mean that we are good , or clean , worth emulating , or worth listening to at all .
The systemic surveillance and harassment of Muslim communities is either wrong , or it ’ s not .
The internment of ethnic groups in fenced-in pits and cages is either wrong , or it ’ s not .
Persistent corporate surveillance conducted by firms with close ties to the military and spy agencies is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s not .
Tapping undersea fiber optic cables , backdooring network equipment , and turning smartphones into tracking devices is either something no one should do , or it ’ s not .
Marketing apps to young people and then hoovering up their data to be subject to facial recognition or machine learning or who knows what else should either offend us or not , regardless of whether perpetuated by Zuckerberg or TikTok boss Zhang Yiming ; Silicon Valley ’ s captains of industry long ago forfeited moral superiority over their Chinese counterparts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ m not aware of Yiming ever telling his friends that people were “ dumb fucks ” for trusting him with their data .
The argument that the United States can and should be able to get away with all of this because of our democratic values , or commitment to human rights and human dignity , our fair judiciary , our principled executive , and our diligent legislative branch will convince some people itching for a fight with China — those people for whom there are simply Good Guys ( us ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but to the rest of us should leave a sour taste , particularly given the current administration .
Trumpeting America ’ s superior “ rule of law ” against Chinese-style data practices is less reassuring while unidentified federal commandos are stuffing people into the back of vans and the Department of Justice is commanded by an open crony of the White House .
You ’ ll hear and read much in the coming weeks about how Pompeo ’ s “ Clean Network ” program could mean the beginning of two fractured internets : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ American .
It will be crucial to bear in mind that while China ’ s vision of the techno-future is revolting , dangerous , and worth fighting against however possible , the American Net is anything but clean .

The State Department has a new vision for a “clean” internet, by which it means a China-free internet. This new ethno-exclusive network “is the Trump Administration’s comprehensive approach to guarding our citizens’ privacy and our companies’ most sensitive information,” by ensuring that China won’t be able to do a litany of subversive and violative things with technology that the U.S. and its allies have engaged in for years. As a policy document it’s nonsensical, but as a moral document, a piece of codified hypocrisy, it’s crystal clear: If there’s going to be a world-spanning surveillance state, it better be made in the USA.
Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AFP via Getty Images
A statement from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo includes a five-pronged plan for beating back Red China’s attempts to siphon and abuse your data: Working to keep Chinese phone carriers (presumably compromised by Beijing) out of U.S. markets, to have privacy-violating Chinese apps kicked off American app stores, to remove U.S. apps from app stores run by Chinese companies, to keep U.S. citizens’ data off of Chinese cloud servers “accessible to our foreign adversaries,” and to ensure that the undersea cables that ferry internet signals between continents aren’t secretly tapped by eavesdropping Chinese intelligence services.
The real question, even more than how could any of this practically be accomplished by State Department diktat, is: Why should anyone in the world take the initiative seriously? How can any network fondled for decades by American spy agencies be considered clean? The absolute gall of the United States in condemning “apps [that] threaten our privacy, proliferate viruses, and spread propaganda and disinformation” is just slightly too stunning to be laughable. Without exception, the United States engages in every one of these practices and violates every single one of these bullet pointed virtues of a Clean Internet. Where do we get off?
The post-9/11 NSA phone surveillance program, through which major telecom carriers like AT&T and Verizon cooperated with the government to provide sensitive data for hundreds of millions of calls and texts, was only shut down last year (and only reportedly shut down at that). Though critics of the China-originated social network TikTok are quick to point to Chinese tech firms’ data-sharing obligations to their government, we don’t need to look to the other side of the world to find such opaque arrangements. As the New York Times noted when the NSA program was terminated, “Starting in 2006, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court began issuing secret orders requiring the companies to participate, based on a novel interpretation of Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which said the F.B.I. may obtain business records ‘relevant’ to a terrorism investigation.” Long-running fears that pre-tampered communications equipment manufactured by China’s Huawei could breach American networks start to feel a bit morally hollow when you recall the NSA investigated these fears by breaching Huawei itself while simultaneously exporting pre-tampered network equipment from Cisco, a U.S. firm. A psychologist might describe U.S. concerns in this area as “projection.”
We’re on similarly weak footing when it comes to browbeating other countries about privacy-violating apps, an industry the U.S. has proudly pioneered. It is the rare American citizen whose daily movements, habits, tastes, and desires aren’t surveilled around the clock by a constellation of for-profit firms whose names they will never know and whose interests they will rarely share. At a recent congressional hearing on the monopolistic practices of American tech companies at which he stated his company stood for “American values,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was asked about a virtual private network the company deployed to smartphones to spy on children and adults in exchange for bribes — or, as Facebook put it, for “market research.” Zuckerberg denied that he had ever heard of this incident even as he told Congress, under oath, that the company doesn’t use cookies to track private information (it does). Pompeo’s denunciation of the “PRC surveillance state” sounds like little more than surveillance state protectionism.
Google’s Android phones come pre-installed with a long list of always-on, always-listening, always-tracking features that quietly surveil customers’ smartphone habits and locations: data increasingly handed over to police, and, as always, leveraged for targeted advertising by a mind-boggling range of companies.
There’s very little here that could be considered “clean,” unless it’s the Awesome Cleaning Power of Dove Soap your phone is now recommending to you because it’s persistently tracked by Facebook, Google, and countless marketers. Skype, one of the world’s most popular and trusted pieces of software, was infamously sabotaged by its American owner in order to let the NSA effectively spy on conversations it carried. The rest of the world is surely raring to feel this kind of Clean.
If we’re condemning the practice of duplicity in the name of national security, it’s odd to let Silicon Valley so entirely off the hook.
Pompeo calls for a “Clean Cloud” that can’t be “accessible to our foreign adversaries.” It would be interesting to hear Pompeo’s pitch for why other countries should instead turn to, say, Amazon’s AWS cloud service, used by the CIA and NSA. The U.S. government should think very carefully about whether it wants to tell the world that a company’s intelligence community adjacency and long-running collaboration should be a red flag before doing business.
Pompeo’s determination to “ensure the undersea cables connecting our country to the global internet are not subverted for intelligence gathering by the PRC at hyper scale” is maybe his most morally bankrupt initiative. “We will also work with foreign partners to ensure that undersea cables around the world aren’t similarly subject to compromise,” he promises, not noting that it’s precisely ourselves and these “foreign partners” in the Five Eyes spying alliance that have for decades made sure that undersea cables are subject to compromise. NSA programs with names like FAIRVIEW, STORMBREW, and OAKSTAR revealed by Snowden show just how invested the U.S. is in spying on the internet’s physical fiber optic backbone in absolute secrecy to carry out the country’s national security agenda.
The American “Do as we say, not as we do” approach to the internet has always been the case, but reached an apex with the debate over “banning” TikTok, a Chinese-owned video sharing app counted among the most widely used pieces of software in history. I’ve found it to be an worthwhile exercise to take a random piece of the national security centrist consensus against TikTok, which framed the teen-beloved app as the data security equivalent of a comical smoking bomb from a Batman cartoon, and swap out “TikTok” for, say, Facebook. The think tank arguments for a national ban against dishonest tech companies that harvest as much data as possible and backchannel with spy agencies and police hold up pretty well no matter which company is slotted into the national security mad libs. There’s no reason to believe TikTok vacuums up more data than Facebook or any other app, whose owners, in the absence of any meaningful regulation, can do whatever they please with that information in perpetuity.
To consider Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, and the rest of the Silicon brass as meaningful foils to Chinese secrecy, sabotage, and subterfuge, as some bulwark of democratic ideals, is an insult to anyone paying attention. The nightmare of Chinese techno-authoritarianism does not in any way absolve the Surveillance State Lite we’re erecting at home. However easy it may be for the Chinese government to access data within its own borders and no matter how nefarious their intent, the average American ought to wonder whether they face a greater imminent threat from that country’s authorities or the U.S.-based surveillance marketing companies that actively try to preempt and subvert their personal autonomy every minute of every day, or the brutalizing police agencies that happily piggyback on these data troves.
We’ve known since NSA contractor Edward Snowden helped expose various surveillance programs seven years ago that information from Silicon Valley heavies like Google, Facebook, and Apple was routinely and systematically provided to the NSA, subject in many cases only to the oversight and transparency of secret courts, secret proceedings, and secret findings. It will take a greater mind than Pompeo’s to argue why our opaque public-private national security data funnel is meaningfully democratic and genuinely open. Less docile firms can find themselves the recipient of a federal “National Security Letter,” which not only mandates that they turn over the requested data, but forbids them from even mentioning that they’ve been asked under penalty of imprisonment. If we’re condemning the general practice of duplicity in the name of national security, rapaciousness in the name of intelligence, and constant violation of civil liberties and personal privacy online, it’s odd to let the Stanford graduates who run Silicon Valley so completely off the hook.
There’s no need to attempt to draw a moral equivalence between China and the United States; the network of totalitarian, ubiquitous surveillance and repressive policing erected in Chinese cities can only make Palo Alto executives and police union bosses green with envy for now, though we can’t knock them for not trying. The horrors of Uyghur concentration camps in Xinjiang — of their brutalization, dehumanization, and worse — are without equal in this country. China’s domestic human rights abuses and civil liberties disintegrations are orders of magnitude greater than our own. But just because someone else is far worse doesn’t mean that we are good, or clean, worth emulating, or worth listening to at all. The systemic surveillance and harassment of Muslim communities is either wrong, or it’s not. The internment of ethnic groups in fenced-in pits and cages is either wrong, or it’s not. Persistent corporate surveillance conducted by firms with close ties to the military and spy agencies is either a problem, or it’s not. Tapping undersea fiber optic cables, backdooring network equipment, and turning smartphones into tracking devices is either something no one should do, or it’s not. Marketing apps to young people and then hoovering up their data to be subject to facial recognition or machine learning or who knows what else should either offend us or not, regardless of whether perpetuated by Zuckerberg or TikTok boss Zhang Yiming; Silicon Valley’s captains of industry long ago forfeited moral superiority over their Chinese counterparts. At the very least, I’m not aware of Yiming ever telling his friends that people were “dumb fucks” for trusting him with their data.
The argument that the United States can and should be able to get away with all of this because of our democratic values, or commitment to human rights and human dignity, our fair judiciary, our principled executive, and our diligent legislative branch will convince some people itching for a fight with China — those people for whom there are simply Good Guys (us) and Bad Guys (them) — but to the rest of us should leave a sour taste, particularly given the current administration. Trumpeting America’s superior “rule of law” against Chinese-style data practices is less reassuring while unidentified federal commandos are stuffing people into the back of vans and the Department of Justice is commanded by an open crony of the White House. You’ll hear and read much in the coming weeks about how Pompeo’s “Clean Network” program could mean the beginning of two fractured internets: one Red Chinese, and one Proudly American. It will be crucial to bear in mind that while China’s vision of the techno-future is revolting, dangerous, and worth fighting against however possible, the American Net is anything but clean.


theintercept--2020-08-06--Pentagon Nominee Questioned About Company's Reported Ties to Khashoggi Killers

nominee for a top special operations post at the Pentagon is facing questions about whether a company he helps oversee trained members of the Saudi team who killed journalist Jamal Khashoggi .
In May , President Donald Trump nominated Louis Bremer — a former Navy SEAL turned investment banker — to serve as assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict .
In that role , Bremer would be the top civilian in the Defense Department overseeing the special operations community .
Bremer is currently a managing director at Cerberus Capital Management — a private equity company whose @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ties to the Trump administration and was once considered for a high-up job in the intelligence community .
Bremer also sits on the board of directors of Tier 1 Group , an Arkansas-based special operations training company that is owned by Cerberus .
In March 2019 , the Washington Post — where Khashoggi was also a columnist — published a column by David Ignatius , which , citing “ Saudi and American sources , ” claimed that members of the Saudi rapid response team that killed Khashoggi in October 2018 had been trained @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said that the CIA had warned other government agencies “ that some of this special-operations training might have been conducted by Tier 1 Group ” under a State Department license .
A U.S. government source confirmed the account at the time to The Intercept , saying that the CIA warning was intended to stop members of the Saudi team from being granted U.S. visas again for further training as part of defense liaison programs with the U.S. ( The official asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly . )
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ email requesting comment .
At a nominations hearing on Thursday , Sen. Tim Kaine , D-Va. , asked Bremer about the allegations , and whether Tier 1 Group or Cerberus ever investigated them .
In response , Bremer said that he was unfamiliar with the article , and said neither company had investigated the allegation “ to my knowledge or recollection.
” “ I do know that we train Saudi nationals as part of our engagements with the Kingdom as an allied nation , ” Bremer said .
“ We train other nations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ knowledge of that.
” “ So until today , ” Kaine asked , “ you were not aware that an allegation had been made that a company on which you sit as a director , with a small board of directors , had potentially been involved in training Saudis who were participants in the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi ?
” Bremer said he would check his records and follow up with Kaine .
“ Having served on a number of corporate boards myself , it ’ s hard for me to believe that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a column by David Ignatius — one of the leading foreign affairs commentators in the country — would not come to your attention nor to the attention of the board , ” King said .
“ I find it incredibly hard to believe that a five-person board of this company would not have had a fire drill when this allegation arose.
” “ We have a culture of compliance at Cerberus , ” Bremer said .
“ That culture is pushed down into our portfolio companies .
So as I sit here @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , I think it ’ s probably likely that we did do some sort of investigation , I just don ’ t recall the specifics of that.
” Cerberus did not respond to a request for comment , and calls to Tier 1 Group ’ s office went unanswered .
Bremer ’ s nomination was first reported by Politico , which noted that in a now-deleted Instagram account , he described himself as a “ Harley riding , tequila-drinking Navy SEAL and White House Fellow who buys companies on occasion.
” His nomination @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his ability to reset the culture of the special operations community , which has come under fire after a number of high-profile scandals , including a Green Beret being strangled to death , sexual assault charges , drug abuse , and the war crimes trial of Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher .
“ When the President ’ s nominee to be the chief civilian Pentagon leader over U.S. special forces operations is a director of a company that may have trained those who assassinated journalist Jamal Khashoggi , it is critical that the Senate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and whether Mr. Bremer or his colleagues took any steps in response to such a shocking allegation , ” Kaine said in a statement after the hearing .

The Trump administration’s nominee for a top special operations post at the Pentagon is facing questions about whether a company he helps oversee trained members of the Saudi team who killed journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
In May, President Donald Trump nominated Louis Bremer — a former Navy SEAL turned investment banker — to serve as assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict. In that role, Bremer would be the top civilian in the Defense Department overseeing the special operations community.
Bremer is currently a managing director at Cerberus Capital Management — a private equity company whose founder, Stephen Feinberg, has close ties to the Trump administration and was once considered for a high-up job in the intelligence community. Bremer also sits on the board of directors of Tier 1 Group, an Arkansas-based special operations training company that is owned by Cerberus.
In March 2019, the Washington Post — where Khashoggi was also a columnist — published a column by David Ignatius, which, citing “Saudi and American sources,” claimed that members of the Saudi rapid response team that killed Khashoggi in October 2018 had been trained in the United States. The column said that the CIA had warned other government agencies “that some of this special-operations training might have been conducted by Tier 1 Group” under a State Department license.
A U.S. government source confirmed the account at the time to The Intercept, saying that the CIA warning was intended to stop members of the Saudi team from being granted U.S. visas again for further training as part of defense liaison programs with the U.S. (The official asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.) The CIA did not respond to an email requesting comment.
At a nominations hearing on Thursday, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., asked Bremer about the allegations, and whether Tier 1 Group or Cerberus ever investigated them. In response, Bremer said that he was unfamiliar with the article, and said neither company had investigated the allegation “to my knowledge or recollection.”
“I do know that we train Saudi nationals as part of our engagements with the Kingdom as an allied nation,” Bremer said. “We train other nations as well. But I have no knowledge of that.”
“So until today,” Kaine asked, “you were not aware that an allegation had been made that a company on which you sit as a director, with a small board of directors, had potentially been involved in training Saudis who were participants in the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi?”
“I find it incredibly hard to believe that a five-person board of this company would not have had a fire drill when this allegation arose.”
Bremer said he would check his records and follow up with Kaine.
Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, responded to Bremer’s account with skepticism.
“Having served on a number of corporate boards myself, it’s hard for me to believe that a mention of your company by name in a column by David Ignatius — one of the leading foreign affairs commentators in the country — would not come to your attention nor to the attention of the board,” King said. “I find it incredibly hard to believe that a five-person board of this company would not have had a fire drill when this allegation arose.”
“We have a culture of compliance at Cerberus,” Bremer said. “That culture is pushed down into our portfolio companies. So as I sit here and think about it in real time, I think it’s probably likely that we did do some sort of investigation, I just don’t recall the specifics of that.”
Cerberus did not respond to a request for comment, and calls to Tier 1 Group’s office went unanswered.
Bremer’s nomination was first reported by Politico, which noted that in a now-deleted Instagram account, he described himself as a “Harley riding, tequila-drinking Navy SEAL and White House Fellow who buys companies on occasion.” His nomination was criticized by former officials who questioned his ability to reset the culture of the special operations community, which has come under fire after a number of high-profile scandals, including a Green Beret being strangled to death, sexual assault charges, drug abuse, and the war crimes trial of Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher.
“When the President’s nominee to be the chief civilian Pentagon leader over U.S. special forces operations is a director of a company that may have trained those who assassinated journalist Jamal Khashoggi, it is critical that the Senate understand all the facts about the claim and whether Mr. Bremer or his colleagues took any steps in response to such a shocking allegation,” Kaine said in a statement after the hearing.


theintercept--2020-08-06--System Update: Coronavirus Strengthens Ruling Class Grip on the U.S.

the coronavirus pandemic has unraveled American society , causing unprecedented death and financial ruin for many .
Much of the @ @ @ @ @ the failures of the Trump administration , which cut back disease surveillance programs , refused @ @ @ @ @ signs , did little to secure needed medical supplies , and moved slowly to shut @ @ @ @ @ government acted swiftly and decisively to secure the economic well-being of the wealthiest business and @ @ @ @ @ response that has hastened growing inequality .
Over the course of the pandemic , Congress @ @ @ @ @ maintained a laser focus on propping up asset prices on Wall Street , a successful @ @ @ @ @ the power of a small ruling elite .

The devastation of the coronavirus pandemic has unraveled American society, causing unprecedented death and financial ruin for many. Much of the destruction can be traced to the failures of the Trump administration, which cut back disease surveillance programs, refused to act on early warning signs, did little to secure needed medical supplies, and moved slowly to shut down borders.
But the government acted swiftly and decisively to secure the economic well-being of the wealthiest business and property owners, a policy response that has hastened growing inequality. Over the course of the pandemic, Congress and the Federal Reserve has maintained a laser focus on propping up asset prices on Wall Street, a successful intervention that has largely preserved the power of a small ruling elite.
The primary lifeline to middle and working-class Americans, a federal supplement to unemployment insurance, has expired. In its place, lawmakers are now considering another wave of corporate tax cuts, defense contractor spending, and other special interest giveaways. Will enough aid reach struggling families in time to avoid a wave of foreclosures and crushing poverty?
Today’s SYSTEM UPDATE, guest hosted by The Intercept’s Lee Fang, explores all of these issues. We discuss how other governments around the world have responded to the crisis, whether a populist insurgency shaped by the crisis could lead to reform in the Democratic Party, and what can be done to clawback growing corporate monopolies and concentrated wealth. Our guests include David Dayen, executive editor of the American Prospect; Sarah Miller, the executive director of the American Economic Liberties Project; and Damon Silvers, the policy director of the AFL-CIO.


theintercept--2020-08-06--How Not to Lose the Lockdown Generation

How Not to Lose the Lockdown Generation

You live in rural Arkansas and tragedy strikes .
A family member has fallen ill with that contagious respiratory illness that has already killed so many — but you don ’ t have enough space in your small home to quarantine them in a room of their own .
Your relative ’ s case doesn ’ t appear to be life-threatening , but you are terrified that their persistent cough will spread the illness to more vulnerable family members .
You call the local public health authority to see if there is room in local hospitals , and they explain @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with emergency cases .
There are private facilities , but you can ’ t afford those .
Not to worry , you are told : A crew will be by shortly to set up a sturdy , well-ventilated , portable , tiny house in your yard .
Once installed , your family member will be free to convalesce in comfort .
You can deliver home-cooked meals to their door and communicate through open windows — and a trained nurse will be by for regular examinations .
And no , there will be no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not a dispatch from some future functional United States , one with a government capable of caring for its people in the midst of spiraling economic carnage and a public health emergency .
It ’ s a dispatch from this country ’ s past , a time eight decades ago when it similarly found itself in the two-fisted grip of an even deeper economic crisis ( the Great Depression ) , and a surging contagious respiratory illness ( tuberculosis ) .
Yet the contrast between how U.S. state and federal government met those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they are failing so murderously to meet them now , could not be starker .
Those tiny houses are just one example , but they are a revelatory one for the sheer number of problems those humble structures attempted to solve at once .
Known as “ isolation huts , ” the little clapboard houses were distributed to poor families in several states .
Small enough to fit on the back of a trailer , they had just enough space for a bed , chair , dresser , and stove , and were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to maximize the flow of fresh air and sunshine — considered essential for TB recovery .
As physical structures , the TB huts were an elegant answer to the public health challenges posed by crowded homes on the one hand and expensive private sanatoriums on the other .
If houses were unable to accommodate safe patient quarantines , then the state , with Washington ’ s help , would just bring an addition to those houses for the duration of the illness .
It ’ s worth letting that sink in , given @ @ @ @ @ @ @ today .
For months , the White House hasn ’ t been able to figure out how to roll out free Covid-19 tests at anything like the scale required , let alone contact tracing , never mind quarantine support for poor families .
Yet in the 1930s , during a much more desperate economic time for the country , state and federal agencies cooperated to deliver not just free tests but free houses .
And that is only the beginning of what makes it worth dwelling on the TB huts .
The cabins @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in their late teens and early 20s who were out of work and had signed up for the National Youth Administration .
“ The State Board of Health furnishes the materials for these cottages and NYA supplies the labor , ” explained Betty and Ernest Lindley , authors of a 1938 history of the program .
“ The total average cost of one hut is $ 146.28 , ” or about $ 2,700 in today ’ s dollars .
The TB cabins were just one of thousands upon thousands of projects taken on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ joined the NYA : a vast program started in 1935 that paired young people in economic need , who could not find jobs in the private sector , with publicly minded work that needed doing .
They gained marketable skills , while earning money that allowed many to stay , or return to , high school or college .
Other NYA projects including building some of the country ’ s most iconic urban parks , repairing thousands of dilapidated schools and outfitting them with playgrounds ; and stocking classrooms with desks , lab @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had made and painted themselves .
NYA workers built huge outdoor pools and artificial lakes , trained to be teaching and nursing aides , and even built entire youth centers and small schools from scratch , often while living together in “ resident centers.
” The NYA served as a kind of urban complement to FDR ’ s better-known youth program , the Civilian Conservation Corps , launched two years earlier .
The CCC employed some 3 million young men from poor families to work in forests and farms : planting more than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from erosion , and building the infrastructure for hundreds of state parks .
They lived together in a network of camps , sent money home to their families , and put on weight at a time when malnutrition was epidemic .
Both the NYA and the CCC served a dual purpose : directly helping the young people involved , who found themselves in desperate straights , and meeting the country ’ s most pressing needs , whether for reforested lands or more hands in hospitals .
Like all New Deal programs , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ segregation and discrimination .
And the gender roles were — let ’ s just say that the girls discovered they could sew , can , and heal ; and the boys discovered they could plant , build , and weld .
Black girls in particular were streamed into domestic work .
Yet the scale of these two programs , which together altered the lives of well over 7 million young people over the course of a decade , puts contemporary governments to shame .
Today , millions upon millions of young people are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ beneath their feet .
The service jobs so many young adults depend on for rent and to pay off student debt have vanished .
Many of the industries they had hoped to enter are firing , not hiring .
Internships and apprenticeships have been canceled via mass emails , and promised job offers have been revoked .
These economic losses , combined with the decision of many colleges and universities to close residences and move online , have abruptly severed countless young adults from their support systems , pushed many into homelessness , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Many of the homes young people now find themselves in are under severe economic strain and are not safe or welcoming , with LGBTQ youth at heightened risk .
All of this is layered on top of the pain of the virus itself , which has spread grief and loss through millions of families .
And that is now mixing with the trauma of tremendous police violence directed at crowds of mostly young Black Lives Matter demonstrators , compounding the murderous events that precipitated the protests in the first place .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the shadow of climate breakdown , not to mention the fact that when members of this generation first heard terms like “ lockdown ” and “ shelter in place ” related to the pandemic , many of their minds immediately turned to the terrorizing active shooter drills U.S. schools have had them practicing since early childhood .
It should be little wonder , then , that depression , anxiety , and addiction are ravaging young lives .
According to a survey conducted by National Center for Health Statistics and the Census Bureau last @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 18-29 reported symptoms of anxiety and/or depression .
Fifty-three percent .
That ’ s more than 13 percentage points higher than the rest of the population , which itself was off the charts compared with this time last year .
And that still may be a dramatic undercount .
Mental Health America , part of the National Health Council , released a report in June based on surveys of nearly 5 million Americans .
It found that “ younger populations including teens and young adults ( 25 < ) are being hit particularly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 90 percent “ experiencing symptoms of depression.
” Some of that suffering is finding expression in another invisible crisis of the Covid era : a dramatic increase in drug overdoses , with some parts of the country reporting increases over last year of 50 percent .
It should all be a reminder that when we talk about being in the midst of a cataclysm on par with the Great Depression , it isn ’ t only GDP and employment rates that are depressed .
Huge numbers of people are depressed as well , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of course , a global crisis .
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres recently warned that the world faces “ a generational catastrophe that could waste untold human potential , undermine decades of progress , and exacerbate entrenched inequalities.
” In a video message , he said , “ We are at a defining moment for the world ’ s children and young people .
The decisions that governments and partners take now will have lasting impact on hundreds of millions of young people , and on the development prospects of countries for decades to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this generation is already being referred to as a “ lost generation ” — but compared to the Great Depression , almost nothing is being done to find them , certainly not at the governmental level in the U.S .
There are no ambitious and creative programs being designed to offer steady income beyond expanded summer job programs , and nothing designed to arm them with useful skills for the Covid and climate change era .
All Washington has offered is a temporary break on student loan repayments , set to expire this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of course .
But it is almost exclusively to shame them for Covid partying .
Or to debate ( usually in their absence ) the question of whether or not they will be permitted to learn in-person in classrooms , or whether they will have to stay home , glued to screens .
Yet what the Depression era teaches us is that these are not the only possible futures we should be considering for people in their late teens and 20s , especially as we come to grips with the reality that Covid-19 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for a long time to come .
Young people can do more than go to school or stay home ; they can also contribute enormously to the healing of their communities .
While guest hosting Intercepted this week , I dug into what it would take to launch youth employment programs on the scale on the NYA and CCC — programs that , like their predecessors , addressed broad social needs while giving young people cash , skills training , and opportunities to work and possibly live in each other ’ s company @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the modern day equivalents of the home-delivered , NYA-built tuberculosis isolation hut ?
Delving back in the history of New Deal youth programs , I was struck by how many of its projects have direct application to today ’ s most urgent needs .
For instance , the NYA made huge and historic contributions to the country ’ s educational infrastructure , with a particular emphasis on low-income school districts , while training many young women as teaching assistants .
It also provided significant reinforcements for an ailing public health system , training @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nursing aides in public hospitals .
It ’ s easy to imagine how similar programs today could simultaneously address the youth unemployment crisis and play a significant role in battling the virus .
As just one example : We sure could use some of those nursing aides if there is a new surge of the virus this winter .
A New York Times investigation last month quoted several doctors and nurses who are convinced that significant numbers of the Covid-19 deaths that took place in New York ’ s public hospitals could have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ staffed .
In emergency rooms where the patient-to-nurse ratio should not have been higher than 4 to 1 , one public hospital was trying to get by with 23 to 1 ; others weren ’ t doing much better .
Nightmare stories have emerged of disoriented patients pulling themselves off of oxygen machines and other vital equipment , trying to get up , and with no one there to stop them , dying alone .
More nurses would have made all the difference .
Then there are the public schools , similarly understaffed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be trying to enforce social distancing this year .
If we weren ’ t in such a rush to get back to a bleak and diminished version of “ normal , ” there would be time for a NYA-style program to train thousands of young adults to help reduce class sizes and supervise kids in outdoor education programs .
And since we know that the safest place to gather is still outdoors , some college-age students could pick up the work begun by the NYA and expand the national infrastructure of trails , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , urban parks , and wilderness trails .
Thousands more could be enrolled in a rebooted CCC to restore forests and wetlands , helping draw planet-warming carbon out of the atmosphere .
Creating these kinds of programs would be complex , and costly .
But the individual and collective benefits would be immeasurable .
And as was the case during the Great Depression , many young people would be given the chance to do something they desperately want and need to do right now : Get the hell out of their childhood homes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Intercepted , I spoke about this prospect with Neil Maher , professor of history at Rutgers University–Newark and the author of a definitive history of the Civilian Conservation Corps , “ Nature ’ s New Deal.
” He told me that in his research into the CCC , he came across many participants describing their time in the program as a kind of sleepaway camp or even an outdoor university : a unique chance to live collectively , away from their families and the city , and become adults .
But unlike so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t reopen safely — given the daily commutes of faculty , staff , and many students — modern-day CCC-inspired camps could be designed as Covid “ bubbles.
” The program would have to test participants on the way in , quarantine anyone who tested positive for two weeks , and then everyone would stay at the camp until the job was done ( or at least their part of it ) .
It could be that rare triple win : Heal some of the damage done to our ravaged planet , offer an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ need , and design what might be one of the most Covid-safe workplaces around .
In the panic about this “ lost generation , ” there has been a lot of talk about how there is no work for young people .
But that is a lie .
There is no end of meaningful work that desperately needs doing — in our schools , hospitals , and on the land .
We just need to create the jobs .

Picture this: You live in rural Arkansas and tragedy strikes. A family member has fallen ill with that contagious respiratory illness that has already killed so many — but you don’t have enough space in your small home to quarantine them in a room of their own. Your relative’s case doesn’t appear to be life-threatening, but you are terrified that their persistent cough will spread the illness to more vulnerable family members. You call the local public health authority to see if there is room in local hospitals, and they explain that they are all stretched too thin with emergency cases. There are private facilities, but you can’t afford those.
Not to worry, you are told: A crew will be by shortly to set up a sturdy, well-ventilated, portable, tiny house in your yard. Once installed, your family member will be free to convalesce in comfort. You can deliver home-cooked meals to their door and communicate through open windows — and a trained nurse will be by for regular examinations. And no, there will be no charge for the house.
This is not a dispatch from some future functional United States, one with a government capable of caring for its people in the midst of spiraling economic carnage and a public health emergency. It’s a dispatch from this country’s past, a time eight decades ago when it similarly found itself in the two-fisted grip of an even deeper economic crisis (the Great Depression), and a surging contagious respiratory illness (tuberculosis).
Yet the contrast between how U.S. state and federal government met those challenges in the 1930s, and how they are failing so murderously to meet them now, could not be starker. Those tiny houses are just one example, but they are a revelatory one for the sheer number of problems those humble structures attempted to solve at once.
Known as “isolation huts,” the little clapboard houses were distributed to poor families in several states. Small enough to fit on the back of a trailer, they had just enough space for a bed, chair, dresser, and stove, and were outfitted with large screened-in windows and shutters to maximize the flow of fresh air and sunshine — considered essential for TB recovery.
As physical structures, the TB huts were an elegant answer to the public health challenges posed by crowded homes on the one hand and expensive private sanatoriums on the other. If houses were unable to accommodate safe patient quarantines, then the state, with Washington’s help, would just bring an addition to those houses for the duration of the illness.
It’s worth letting that sink in, given the learned helplessness that pervades the U.S. today. For months, the White House hasn’t been able to figure out how to roll out free Covid-19 tests at anything like the scale required, let alone contact tracing, never mind quarantine support for poor families. Yet in the 1930s, during a much more desperate economic time for the country, state and federal agencies cooperated to deliver not just free tests but free houses.
And that is only the beginning of what makes it worth dwelling on the TB huts . The cabins themselves were built by very young men in their late teens and early 20s who were out of work and had signed up for the National Youth Administration. “The State Board of Health furnishes the materials for these cottages and NYA supplies the labor,” explained Betty and Ernest Lindley, authors of a 1938 history of the program. “The total average cost of one hut is $146.28,” or about $2,700 in today’s dollars.
The TB cabins were just one of thousands upon thousands of projects taken on by the 4.5 million young people who joined the NYA: a vast program started in 1935 that paired young people in economic need, who could not find jobs in the private sector, with publicly minded work that needed doing. They gained marketable skills, while earning money that allowed many to stay, or return to, high school or college. Other NYA projects including building some of the country’s most iconic urban parks, repairing thousands of dilapidated schools and outfitting them with playgrounds; and stocking classrooms with desks, lab tables, and maps the young workers had made and painted themselves. NYA workers built huge outdoor pools and artificial lakes, trained to be teaching and nursing aides, and even built entire youth centers and small schools from scratch, often while living together in “resident centers.”
A group of men planting trees during a Civilian Conservation Corps project on the Nett Lake Reservation in Minnesota. Photo: MPI/Getty Images
The NYA served as a kind of urban complement to FDR’s better-known youth program, the Civilian Conservation Corps, launched two years earlier. The CCC employed some 3 million young men from poor families to work in forests and farms: planting more than 2 billion trees, shoring up rivers from erosion, and building the infrastructure for hundreds of state parks. They lived together in a network of camps, sent money home to their families, and put on weight at a time when malnutrition was epidemic. Both the NYA and the CCC served a dual purpose: directly helping the young people involved, who found themselves in desperate straights, and meeting the country’s most pressing needs, whether for reforested lands or more hands in hospitals.
Like all New Deal programs, the NYA and CCC were stained by racial segregation and discrimination. And the gender roles were — let’s just say that the girls discovered they could sew, can, and heal; and the boys discovered they could plant, build, and weld. Black girls in particular were streamed into domestic work.
Yet the scale of these two programs, which together altered the lives of well over 7 million young people over the course of a decade, puts contemporary governments to shame. Today, millions upon millions of young people are beginning their adulthood with the ground collapsing beneath their feet. The service jobs so many young adults depend on for rent and to pay off student debt have vanished. Many of the industries they had hoped to enter are firing, not hiring. Internships and apprenticeships have been canceled via mass emails, and promised job offers have been revoked.
These economic losses, combined with the decision of many colleges and universities to close residences and move online, have abruptly severed countless young adults from their support systems, pushed many into homelessness, and others back into their childhood bedrooms. Many of the homes young people now find themselves in are under severe economic strain and are not safe or welcoming, with LGBTQ youth at heightened risk.
All of this is layered on top of the pain of the virus itself, which has spread grief and loss through millions of families. And that is now mixing with the trauma of tremendous police violence directed at crowds of mostly young Black Lives Matter demonstrators, compounding the murderous events that precipitated the protests in the first place. In the background, as always, is the shadow of climate breakdown, not to mention the fact that when members of this generation first heard terms like “lockdown” and “shelter in place” related to the pandemic, many of their minds immediately turned to the terrorizing active shooter drills U.S. schools have had them practicing since early childhood.
It should be little wonder, then, that depression, anxiety, and addiction are ravaging young lives.
According to a survey conducted by National Center for Health Statistics and the Census Bureau last month, 53 percent of people aged 18-29 reported symptoms of anxiety and/or depression. Fifty-three percent. That’s more than 13 percentage points higher than the rest of the population, which itself was off the charts compared with this time last year.
And that still may be a dramatic undercount. Mental Health America, part of the National Health Council, released a report in June based on surveys of nearly 5 million Americans. It found that “younger populations including teens and young adults (25<) are being hit particularly hard” by the pandemic, with 90 percent “experiencing symptoms of depression.”
Some of that suffering is finding expression in another invisible crisis of the Covid era: a dramatic increase in drug overdoses, with some parts of the country reporting increases over last year of 50 percent. It should all be a reminder that when we talk about being in the midst of a cataclysm on par with the Great Depression, it isn’t only GDP and employment rates that are depressed. Huge numbers of people are depressed as well, particularly young people.
This is, of course, a global crisis. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres recently warned that the world faces “a generational catastrophe that could waste untold human potential, undermine decades of progress, and exacerbate entrenched inequalities.” In a video message, he said, “We are at a defining moment for the world’s children and young people. The decisions that governments and partners take now will have lasting impact on hundreds of millions of young people, and on the development prospects of countries for decades to come.”
As in the 1930s, this generation is already being referred to as a “lost generation” — but compared to the Great Depression, almost nothing is being done to find them, certainly not at the governmental level in the U.S. There are no ambitious and creative programs being designed to offer steady income beyond expanded summer job programs, and nothing designed to arm them with useful skills for the Covid and climate change era. All Washington has offered is a temporary break on student loan repayments, set to expire this fall.
Young people are discussed, of course. But it is almost exclusively to shame them for Covid partying. Or to debate (usually in their absence) the question of whether or not they will be permitted to learn in-person in classrooms, or whether they will have to stay home, glued to screens. Yet what the Depression era teaches us is that these are not the only possible futures we should be considering for people in their late teens and 20s, especially as we come to grips with the reality that Covid-19 is going to be reshaping our world for a long time to come. Young people can do more than go to school or stay home; they can also contribute enormously to the healing of their communities.
While guest hosting Intercepted this week, I dug into what it would take to launch youth employment programs on the scale on the NYA and CCC — programs that, like their predecessors, addressed broad social needs while giving young people cash, skills training, and opportunities to work and possibly live in each other’s company. Put another way: What are the modern day equivalents of the home-delivered, NYA-built tuberculosis isolation hut?
Delving back in the history of New Deal youth programs, I was struck by how many of its projects have direct application to today’s most urgent needs. For instance, the NYA made huge and historic contributions to the country’s educational infrastructure, with a particular emphasis on low-income school districts, while training many young women as teaching assistants. It also provided significant reinforcements for an ailing public health system, training battalions of young people to serve as nursing aides in public hospitals.
Two members of the Fire Department of New York’s Emergency Medical Team wheel in a patient with potentially fatal coronavirus to the Elmhurst Hospital Center in the Queens borough of New York City on March 30, 2020. Photo: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images
It’s easy to imagine how similar programs today could simultaneously address the youth unemployment crisis and play a significant role in battling the virus. As just one example: We sure could use some of those nursing aides if there is a new surge of the virus this winter. A New York Times investigation last month quoted several doctors and nurses who are convinced that significant numbers of the Covid-19 deaths that took place in New York’s public hospitals could have been prevented if they had been adequately staffed. In emergency rooms where the patient-to-nurse ratio should not have been higher than 4 to 1, one public hospital was trying to get by with 23 to 1; others weren’t doing much better. Nightmare stories have emerged of disoriented patients pulling themselves off of oxygen machines and other vital equipment, trying to get up, and with no one there to stop them, dying alone. More nurses would have made all the difference.
Then there are the public schools, similarly understaffed after decades of cutbacks, that will be trying to enforce social distancing this year. If we weren’t in such a rush to get back to a bleak and diminished version of “normal,” there would be time for a NYA-style program to train thousands of young adults to help reduce class sizes and supervise kids in outdoor education programs.
And since we know that the safest place to gather is still outdoors, some college-age students could pick up the work begun by the NYA and expand the national infrastructure of trails, picnic areas, outdoor pools, campsites, urban parks, and wilderness trails. Thousands more could be enrolled in a rebooted CCC to restore forests and wetlands, helping draw planet-warming carbon out of the atmosphere.
Creating these kinds of programs would be complex, and costly. But the individual and collective benefits would be immeasurable. And as was the case during the Great Depression, many young people would be given the chance to do something they desperately want and need to do right now: Get the hell out of their childhood homes and live with their peers.
On Intercepted, I spoke about this prospect with Neil Maher, professor of history at Rutgers University–Newark and the author of a definitive history of the Civilian Conservation Corps, “Nature’s New Deal.” He told me that in his research into the CCC, he came across many participants describing their time in the program as a kind of sleepaway camp or even an outdoor university: a unique chance to live collectively, away from their families and the city, and become adults. But unlike so many actual university campuses that can’t reopen safely — given the daily commutes of faculty, staff, and many students — modern-day CCC-inspired camps could be designed as Covid “bubbles.”
The program would have to test participants on the way in, quarantine anyone who tested positive for two weeks, and then everyone would stay at the camp until the job was done (or at least their part of it). It could be that rare triple win: Heal some of the damage done to our ravaged planet, offer an economic and social lifeline to people in need, and design what might be one of the most Covid-safe workplaces around.
In the panic about this “lost generation,” there has been a lot of talk about how there is no work for young people. But that is a lie. There is no end of meaningful work that desperately needs doing — in our schools, hospitals, and on the land. We just need to create the jobs.