Chris Hedges's Blog, page 397

Border Agent Indicted for Murder in 4 Texas Deaths

DALLAS — A U.S. Border Patrol agent who confessed to killing four sex workers told investigators he wanted to “clean up the streets” of his Texas border hometown, a prosecutor said Wednesday while announcing that a grand jury had indicted the man for capital murder.

Webb County District Attorney Isidro Alaniz said he will seek the death penalty for the September slayings and that evidence presented to the grand jury showed Juan David Ortiz killed the women “in a cold, callous and calculating way.”

“The scheme in this case, from Ortiz’s own words, was to clean up the streets of Laredo by targeting this community of individuals who he perceived to be disposable, that no one would miss and that he did not give value to,” Alaniz said at a news conference.

Alaniz said Ortiz, 35, believed law enforcement didn’t do enough to curb prostitution, so he was “doing a service” by killing the women.

A suspect can be charged with capital murder if he is suspected in more than one killing in the same scheme with an overarching motive, Alaniz said. Three of the women were shot to death, and the fourth was also shot but died of blunt force trauma.

Alaniz said the horrific nature of the killings and Ortiz’s vigilante mentality were factors in his decision to pursue the death penalty. Ortiz, who has been held on murder charges in the Webb County jail on a $2.5 million bond since his Sept. 15 arrest in Laredo, presents a clear danger to society, he said.

The Border Patrol intel supervisor and Navy veteran seemed to be living a typical suburban life with his wife and two children when the killings occurred. He was only arrested after one victim was able to escape him and asked a state trooper for help.

“By day, he was a family man. The evidence shows that he was a supervisor, that he would go about his daily activities like anybody here. He appeared normal by all accounts and circumstances,” Alaniz said. “At the nighttime, he was somebody else — hunting the streets … for this community of people and arbitrarily deciding who he was going to kill next.”

Alaniz said Ortiz knew some of the victims but he wouldn’t elaborate on what kind of relationship they had. Melissa Ramirez, 29, was slain on Sept. 3, and 42-year-old Claudine Luera was killed on Sept. 13.

On Sept. 14, he picked up another woman, Erika Pena, who told investigators that Ortiz acted oddly when she brought up Ramirez’s slaying and later pointed a gun at her while they were in his truck at a gas station, according to court documents. Pena said Ortiz grabbed her shirt as she tried to get out of the truck, but she pulled it off and ran, finding a state trooper who was refueling his vehicle.

Ortiz fled and, he later told investigators, he then picked up and killed his last two victims — 35-year-old Guiselda Alicia Cantu and 28-year-old Janelle Ortiz, a transgender woman whose birth name was Humberto Ortiz.

With Pena’s help, authorities were able to track Ortiz to a hotel parking garage where he was arrested.

“I believe that if Erika Pena would not have escaped that day that there would be more victims right now in this case,” Alaniz said.

Ortiz also was indicted Wednesday on charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and unlawful restraint in the attack on Pena, and a charge of evading arrest or detention.

Ortiz’s attorney did not immediately return a call for comment Wednesday.

The Border Patrol placed Ortiz on indefinite, unpaid suspension after his arrest. On Wednesday, the agency did not respond to a request for an update on his employment status.

Sanders and DNC Level Playing Field for 2020 Presidential Debates

The Democratic Party’s best-known outsider, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, appears to be on the verge of notching yet another inside-track score that doubtless will come in handy when he runs for president in 2020.

One of the biggest complaints by Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign was the way that the Democratic National Committee collaborated with Hillary Clinton’s campaign to schedule its televised debates. In a nutshell, Sanders was cut out of that process, as WikiLeaks documented in its release of stolen campaign emails. The Clinton campaign outlined the schedule it wanted—and got. The debates were to be minimal, held on weekends when audiences were smaller, and were announced with no input from Sanders.

In striking contrast to the last presidential season, the DNC has been giving Sanders a seat at the 2020 planning table in ways that could barely be imagined during his first presidential run. The latest concession, according to a Washington Post report about the DNC’s efforts to avoid repeating its 2016 mistakes, is a soon-to-be-released plan where the well-known and lesser-known candidates will share the presidential debate stage, at least initially.

“Chairman Tom Perez and his team have been meeting for months with 2016 campaign advisers and other stakeholders to find a way to improve the debate process, while accommodating the unusually large class of potential credible candidates, which could number more than 20 by the spring,” the Post reported. “Perez has made it clear to his staff that he would like the field to be presented in a way that initially mixes top-tier candidates with lesser-known ones.”

Twenty potential Democratic presidential candidates would be more than the crowded Republican presidential debate field had in 2016, where, for months, Donald Trump had levels of support in the teens—percentage-wise—because the GOP base was so divided. Seeking Sanders’ input on the prospective televised debate schedule is only the latest example of the DNC consulting his team as the party turns toward 2020.

“They were genuinely interested in learning what went right, which was not much, and what went wrong, which was a lot,” Jeff Weaver, Sanders 2016 campaign manager, told the Post. “I recommended starting the process earlier, so it is not right on top of the primaries and caucuses.”

Sanders, who won 45 percent of 2016’s elected national convention delegates, has not officially announced his candidacy. But that step is largely a formality. Just days ago, he convened his brain trust for a “Sanders Institute Gathering,” where there were palpable expectations surrounding 2020. Months before, Sanders won a critical DNC concession: that only elected national convention delegates could vote in 2020’s first round for the next nominee. (That reform delayed voting by 700-plus appointed “superdelegates.”)

Among the other 2020 rules that Sanders won was not replacing their controversial caucuses with primary elections—even though primaries are more professionally run and have higher voter participation rates. (In 2016, caucuses revived his campaign. From early March’s Super Tuesday until late April’s primary in New York, the 2016 race’s pendulum swung from Clinton’s recovery in the South to a Sanders surge in the Midwest and West, where he won seven consecutive primaries and caucuses.)

Without getting too speculative, it’s not hard to see how a 2020 Sanders bid would be helped by all of these reforms. There’s little doubt that both Sanders and former Vice-President Joe Biden would stand out in a crowded Democratic field. Or, at least, like Trump, be among the front-runners percentage-wise when no candidate has won anything near to the majority needed to secure a presidential nomination.

In 2016, neither Sanders nor the DNC knew what they were getting into when he sought the DNC’s approval to run as a Democrat—and then seriously challenged Clinton. Now, it is clear that Sanders knows exactly what he’s getting into; but one wonders if Perez’s team is poised to unleash its own version of the GOP’s 2016 chaotic primaries.

What seems clear enough is not just that Sanders and Biden are likely to battle well into 2020 and do what the Democrats do so well—cause lasting wounds that linger into the fall’s election—but that a chaotic 2020 season will start sooner than ever, including earlier debates.

As Sanders saw in 2016, more debates lifted his prospects. After Iowa’s caucuses, where he and Clinton virtually tied, Clinton’s campaign panicked. With the help of the DNC, an unscheduled televised debate was added before New Hampshire’s primary. That broke the schedule her campaign helped write and refused to budge on a few months before. But the extra debate didn’t help her. Instead, it raised Sanders’ stature.

This article was produced by Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

GOP Mum After Election Fraud Exposed in North Carolina

The Republican Party and President Donald Trump have spent a lot of time issuing hysterical, racist, and evidence-free warnings about the prevalence of “voter fraud” in the U.S. as a pretext to roll back voting rights, but the GOP has been conspicuously silent after what has been described as a clear case of election fraud was discovered in North Carolina’s 9th congressional district (NC-09), where a Republican candidate edged out his Democratic opponent by just over 900 votes.

Last week, the North Carolina State Board of Elections and Ethics voted unanimously against certifying Republican Mark Harris’ narrow win over Democrat Dan McCready, with one member of the board vaguely citing “unfortunate activities” that may have distorted the final results.

Reporting and witness testimony in the days since the board vote has detailed “a slew of evidence” indicating that GOP operatives carried out a large ballot-harvesting effort, in which thousands of absentee ballots may have been collected and destroyed in an attempt to swing the election in the Republican Party’s favor.

As USA Today notes, “A large majority of those unreturned ballots belonged to African-Americans and Native American voters.”

“There is now overwhelming evidence that Republicans in NC-09 paid people to collect mail-in ballots which were never sent in,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) wrote on Twitter. “Not enough people are talking about this clear case of election fraud. A new election must be held immediately.”

Reportedly led by long-time Republican operative Leslie McCrae Dowless, who worked for Harris’ campaign, the alleged election fraud operation involved paying North Carolinians to go door-to-door and collect absentee ballots and hand them over to Dowless.

One woman who says she was paid by Dowless said she wasn’t aware the operation was illegal because Dowless “has been doing it for years.” The woman said she never saw Dowless mail in the ballots.

Exclusive: A second woman, Cheryl Kinlaw, tells me she was paid $100 by McCrae Dowless to pickup absentee ballots. She said she never thought it was illegal because Dowless “has been doing it for years.” She says needed extra money for Christmas presents. #NC09 #ncpol @wsoctv pic.twitter.com/AR4AOyXROa

— Joe Bruno (@JoeBrunoWSOC9) December 4, 2018

Like the woman I interviewed yesterday, Kinlaw never mailed the ballots. She gave them to McCrae Dowless. She doesn’t know what he did with them afterward. She says she has no doubt Dowless wanted Mark Harris and Sheriff Jim McVicker to win. pic.twitter.com/8zQeZvFo4g

— Joe Bruno (@JoeBrunoWSOC9) December 4, 2018

“The Justice Department must investigate this,” declared Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “⁦In a different time, an attorney general would be speaking forcefully against recent voter suppression efforts, vowing to do everything possible to protect fair elections. The silence now is deafening.”

As state investigators have probed the numerous election fraud accusations in recent days, President Donald Trump—who warned about “voter fraud” repeatedly in the days prior to November’s midterms—has not yet said or tweeted a word about the North Carolina accusations.

Democratic congressional leaders, for their part, have vowed not to seat Harris in the new Congress until the fraud accusations are sufficiently investigated. Harris has denied any knowledge of illegal election activity.

In a statement on Wednesday, Rep. Gerry Connelly (D-Va.), a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, demanded an emergency hearing on the possibly tainted North Carolina election.

“Real election fraud is playing out right before us,” Connelly said. “Votes have been stolen by preying on senior and minority voters, and now a cloud of doubt and suspicion hangs over this election result.”

While the Republican majority is once again chasing conspiracies, real election fraud is playing out right before us in North Carolina’s 9th CD. We must have an emergency House Oversight hearing to look into this.

My full statement https://t.co/XTLzfidB11 pic.twitter.com/3ycwJm5ZTI

— Gerry Connolly (@GerryConnolly) December 5, 2018

As The Atlantic‘s David Graham wrote in a summary of the North Carolina accusations, “After years of insisting there’s rampant election fraud in North Carolina and accusing Democrats of indifference or complicity, there’s finally a case that looks like real, election-changing election fraud.”

“It just so happens that it’s alleged to have benefited a Republican,” Graham concluded. “Suddenly, the North Carolina GOP is less concerned about the effects of fraud.”

Evers to Appeal to Walker to Veto Wisconsin GOP Power Play

MADISON, Wis. — The Latest on Wisconsin Republican lawmakers moving to limit the powers of the incoming Democratic governor and attorney general (all times local):

4 p.m.

The incoming Democratic governor of Wisconsin says he will make a personal appeal to outgoing Republican Gov. Scott Walker to veto legislation that weakens the new administration’s powers.

Gov.-elect Tony Evers said Wednesday that he also wants Wisconsin residents to urge Walker not to sign the bills. If the bills are signed, Evers says, he will explore litigation or other ideas to ensure the legislation “does not get into practice.”

The Republican-controlled Legislature approved sweeping changes early Wednesday that weaken the governor’s ability to make rules that enact laws. The legislation also shields the state jobs agency from his control until September and cuts into the powers of the incoming Democratic attorney general.

Evers says the state “should be embarrassed” by the Republicans’ actions and that they have ignored the will of voters.

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10:45 a.m.

Wisconsin’s incoming Democratic governor is condemning moves by Republicans legislators to weaken his power.

Gov.-elect Tony Evers said Wednesday that Republicans have overridden the will of voters who chose Democrats in last month’s election. He says a handful of people desperately want to “cling to power.”

The Republican-controlled Legislature approved sweeping changes early Wednesday that weaken the governor’s ability to make rules that enact laws. The legislation also shields the state jobs agency from his control until September and cuts into the powers of the incoming Democratic attorney general.

Outgoing Republican Gov. Scott Walker has signaled he supports the legislation.

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8:20 a.m.

The Republican-controlled Wisconsin Legislature has approved a sweeping package of bills weakening the incoming Democratic governor and attorney general.

The state Assembly approved the lame-duck legislation Wednesday morning. The Wisconsin Senate did the same less than three hours earlier after lawmakers worked through most of the night.

The bills now go to outgoing Republican Gov. Scott Walker, who has signaled his support.

The measures would limit the governor’s ability to promulgate administrative rules, which enact laws and give lawmakers the power to control appointees to the state economic development agency’s board.

The measures would also require the attorney general to get legislative approval to withdraw from lawsuits. That move is designed to block Democratic Gov.-elect Tony Evers from allowing the incoming attorney general, Democrat Josh Kaul, to withdraw Wisconsin from a multistate lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act.

The measures also restrict early in-person voting to two weeks before an election.

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7:50 a.m.

The Wisconsin Senate has narrowly rejected a bill that would have created a state guarantee that people with pre-existing conditions can have access to health insurance.

Democrats say the measure provided inadequate coverage and would cause premiums to skyrocket.

The bill failed by one vote Wednesday during a lame-duck legislative session where Republicans are focused on measures designed to limit the powers of the incoming Democratic governor and attorney general. That measure is awaiting a final legislative vote in the state Assembly.

The pre-existing conditions measure failed after all 15 Democrats in the Senate and two Republicans voted against it. The measure had long been stalled in the Senate due to lack of GOP support.

Republican Gov. Scott Walker supported the measure, which became an issue in his failed re-election campaign. Walker lost to Democrat Tony Evers, a staunch supporter of the pre-existing coverage guarantee in the federal Affordable Care Act.

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6 a.m.

The Republican-controlled Wisconsin Senate has passed a sweeping measure taking power away from the incoming Democratic governor and attorney general, and reducing how long early voting can take place.

The measure was approved on a 17-16 vote with all Democrats and one Republican voting against it. The Assembly was expected to give final approval later Wednesday morning and send the measure to Republican Gov. Scott Walker, who has signaled his support.

The bill would limit the governor’s ability to put in place administrative rules that enact laws and give the Legislature the power to control appointees to the board that runs the state economic development agency until Sept. 1.

The legislation would also require legislative approval to withdraw from lawsuits, taking that away from the attorney general.

One provision allowing lawmakers to replace the attorney general with their own attorneys was stricken following all-night negotiations among Republicans.

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4:40 a.m.

The Wisconsin Legislature is preparing to vote on limiting the powers of the incoming Democratic governor and attorney general.

Lawmakers were expected to vote early Wednesday morning on the proposal, after spending most of the night hammering out deals in private. The action comes just weeks before Republican Gov. Scott Walker is replaced by Democrat Tony Evers.

The proposal up for a vote would weaken the governor’s power to put in place administrative rules enacting state laws. It would also allow the Legislature to sidestep the attorney general and hire private attorneys. The Legislature, not the governor, would have the majority of appointments on the state’s economic development agency that Evers has said he wants to dismantle.

The power to withdraw Wisconsin from a lawsuit challenging the federal health care law would rest with a legislative committee, rather than the attorney general.

The proposal would also restrict early voting to no more than two weeks before an election.

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12:45 a.m.

Republicans who control the Wisconsin Assembly have passed a lame-duck bill enacting a Medicaid work requirement.

The measure would prevent incoming Democratic Gov.-elect Tony Evers from withdrawing a federal waiver request to implement the work requirement for able-bodied adults younger than 50. The bill also would require new legislative oversight of waiver requests related to health care made by the governor.

The Assembly passed the bill 59-32 early Wednesday morning. The Senate passed the proposal earlier in the evening. It now goes to Gov. Scott Walker for his signature.

The bill is part of a package of Republican lame-duck legislation designed to weaken Evers and incoming Democratic Attorney General-elect Josh Kaul. Debate on the rest of the proposals was expected to stretch into early Wednesday in both houses.

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12:35 a.m.

Wisconsin Republicans are working through the night to bring together enough votes to pass a sweeping package of lame-duck proposals designed to empower the GOP-controlled Legislature and weaken the incoming Democrat replacing Republican Gov. Scott Walker.

Republicans pushed on Tuesday night into Wednesday through protests, internal disagreement and Democratic opposition. The measures are designed to weaken both incoming Democratic Gov.-elect Tony Evers and Democratic Attorney General-elect Josh Kaul.

Both Evers and Kaul urged Republicans not to do it and warned of lawsuits that would bring more gridlock to Wisconsin when the new administration, and the first divided government in 10 years, takes over.

The measures would also limit early voting to no more than two weeks before an election, a move Democrats say is illegal.

81 Migrant Children Separated From Parents Since June

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration separated 81 migrant children from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border since the June executive order that stopped the general practice amid a crackdown on illegal crossings, according to government data obtained by The Associated Press.

Despite the order and a federal judge’s later ruling, immigration officials are allowed to separate a child from a parent in certain cases — serious criminal charges against a parent, concerns over the health and welfare of a child or medical concerns. Those caveats were in place before the zero-tolerance policy that prompted the earlier separations at the border.

The government decides whether a child fits into the areas of concern, worrying advocates of the families and immigrant rights groups that are afraid parents are being falsely labeled as criminals.

From June 21, the day after President Donald Trump’s order, through Tuesday, 76 adults were separated from the children, according to the data. Of those, 51 were criminally prosecuted — 31 with criminal histories and 20 for other, unspecified reasons, according to the data. Nine were hospitalized, 10 had gang affiliations and four had extraditable warrants, according to the immigration data. Two were separated because of prior immigration violations and orders of removal, according to the data.

“The welfare of children in our custody is paramount,” said Katie Waldman, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees U.S. immigration enforcement. “As we have already said — and the numbers show: Separations are rare. While there was a brief increase during zero tolerance as more adults were prosecuted, the numbers have returned to their prior levels.”

At its height over the summer, more than 2,400 children were separated. The practice sparked global outrage from politicians, humanitarians and religious groups who called it cruel and callous. Images of weeping children and anguished, confused parents were splashed across newspapers and television.

A federal judge hearing a lawsuit brought by a mother who had been separated from her child barred further separations and ordered the government to reunite the families.

But the judge, Dana Sabraw, left the caveats in place and gave the option to challenge further separations on an individual basis. American Civil Liberties Union attorney Lee Gelernt, who sued on behalf of the mother, said he hoped the judge would order the government to alert them to any new separations, because right now the attorneys don’t know about them and therefore can’t challenge them.

“We are very concerned the government may be separating families based on vague allegations of criminal history,” Gelernt said.

According to the government data, from April 19 through Sept. 30, 170 family units were separated because they were found to not be related — that included 197 adults and 139 minors. That could include grandparents or other relatives if there was no proof of relationship. Many people fleeing poverty or violence leave their homes in a rush and don’t have birth certificates or formal documents with them.

Other separations were because the children were not minors, the data showed.

During the budget year 2017, which began in October 2016 and ended in September 2017, 1,065 family units were separated, which usually means a child and a parent — 46 due to fraud and 1,019 due to medical or security concerns, according to data.

Waldman said the data showed “unequivocally that smugglers, human traffickers, and nefarious actors are attempting to use hundreds of children to exploit our immigration laws in hopes of gaining entry to the United States.”

Thousands of migrants have come up from Central America in recent weeks as part of caravans. Trump, a Republican, used his national security powers to put in place regulations that denied asylum to anyone caught crossing illegally, but a judge has halted that change as a lawsuit progresses.

The zero-tolerance policy over the summer was meant in part to deter families from illegally crossing the border. Trump administration officials say the large increase in the number of Central American families coming between ports of entry has vastly strained the system.

But the policy — and what it would mean for parents — caught some federal agencies off guard. There was no system in place to track parents along with their children, in part because after 72 hours children are turned over to a different agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, which has been tasked with caring for them.

An October report by Homeland Security’s watchdog found immigration officials were not prepared to manage the consequences of the policy. The resulting confusion along the border led to misinformation among separated parents who did not know why they had been taken from their children or how to reach them, longer detention for children at border facilities meant for short-term stays and difficulty in identifying and reuniting families.

Backlogs at ports of entry may have pushed some into illegally crossing the U.S-Mexico border, the report found.

Honduran From Caravan Gives Birth on U.S. Side of Border

SAN DIEGO — A Honduran woman affiliated with a caravan of Central American migrants gave birth on U.S. soil shortly after entering the country illegally amid growing frustration about a bottleneck to claim asylum at official border crossings.

Border Patrol agents arrested the woman Nov. 26 after she entered the country illegally near Imperial Beach, California, across the border from Tijuana, Mexico, Customs and Border Protection said Wednesday. She was arrested with her 20-year-old husband and 2-year-old son.

The woman, who was eight months pregnant, was taken to a hospital after complaining about abdominal plan the day after her arrest, Customs and Border Protection said.

The family was released from custody on Sunday, pending the outcomes of their immigration cases.

Univision reported that the family is seeking asylum and hoped to join family in Columbus, Ohio, while their cases are pending.

Maryury Serrano Hernandez, 19, told the network giving birth in the U.S. was a “big reward” for the family’s grueling journey.

U.S. inspectors at the main border crossing in San Diego are processing up to about 100 asylum claims day, leaving thousands of migrants waiting in Tijuana. Some are crossing illegally and avoiding the wait.

President Donald Trump said in October that he could end birthright citizenship with a swipe of his pen. Most scholars on the left and right share the view that it would take a constitutional amendment to deny automatic citizenship to children born in the U.S. to parents who are in the country illegally.

Of the more than 6,100 migrants staying in a temporary shelter run by the city of Tijuana last week, 3,936 were men, 1,147 were women, and 1,068 were children.

Scores of pregnant women traveled with the caravan through Mexico before reaching the U.S. border. In Pijijiapan in the southern state of Chiapas, Dr. Jesus Miravete, who volunteered his services in the town’s plaza, said he treated a few dozen pregnant women, including 16 for dehydration after being on the road for weeks.

In October, a Guatemalan woman gave birth to the first known caravan baby at a hospital in Juchitan. Mexico’s governmental National Human Rights Commission said it had arranged for medical attention for the woman, who was 38 weeks pregnant, and the girl was healthy.

Macron Gives In to Protesters, Scraps Fuel Tax Increase

PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron scrapped a fuel tax rise Wednesday amid fears of new violence, after weeks of nationwide protests and the worst rioting in Paris in decades.

Protesters celebrated the victory, but some said Macron’s surrender came too late and is no longer enough to quell the mounting anger at the president, whom they consider out of touch with the problems of ordinary people.

Macron decided Wednesday to “get rid” of the tax planned for next year, an official in the president’s office told The Associated Press. Prime Minister Edouard Philippe told lawmakers the tax is no longer included in the 2019 budget.

The decision has ramifications beyond France, since the fuel tax rise was part of Macron’s efforts to wean France off fossil fuels in order to reduce greenhouse gases and help slow climate change. Its withdrawal is both a blow to broader efforts to fight climate change and a warning to other world leaders trying to do the same thing.

The “yellow vest” protests began Nov. 17 over the government plan to raise taxes on diesel and gasoline, but by the time Macron bowed to three weeks of violence and abandoned the new fuel tax, protesters were demanding much more. Many workers in France are angry over the combination of low wages, high taxes and high unemployment that have left many people struggling financially.

On Tuesday, the government agreed to suspend the fuel tax rise for six months. But instead of appeasing the protesters, it spurred other groups to join in, hoping for concessions of their own. The protests took on an even bigger dimension Wednesday with trade unions and farmers vowing to join the fray.

Police warned of potential violence during demonstrations in Paris on Saturday, with one small security forces union threatening a strike.

So after nightfall Wednesday, as parliament debated the 2019 budget, Macron’s government suddenly gave in.

“I have no problem with admitting that on such or such question we could have done differently, that if there is such a level of anger … it’s because we still have a lot of things to improve,” the prime minister told legislators.

Philippe said “the tax is now abandoned” in the 2019 budget, and the government is “ready for dialogue.” The budget can be renegotiated through the year, but given the scale of the recent protests, Macron is unlikely to revive the added fuel tax idea anytime soon.

Jacline Mouraud, one of the self-proclaimed spokespeople for the disparate yellow vest movement, told the AP that Macron’s concession “comes much too late, unfortunately.”

“It’s on the right path, but in my opinion it will not fundamentally change the movement,” she said.

Three weeks of protests have caused four deaths, injured hundreds and littered central Paris with burned cars and shattered windows.

The sweep of the protests and their wide support by citizens of all political stripes has shocked Macron’s government. In the last few days, Paris saw the worst anti-government riot since 1968, French students set fires outside high schools to protest a new university application system, small business owners blocked roads to protest high taxes, and retirees marched to protest the president’s perceived elitism.

Macron’s popularity has slumped to a new low since the demonstrations began. The former investment banker, who has pushed pro-business economic reforms to make France more competitive globally, is accused of being the “president of the rich” and of being estranged from the working classes.

On Wednesday, France’s largest farmers union said it will launch anti-government protests next week, after trucking unions called for a rolling strike.

Trade unions so far have not played a role in the yellow vest protest movement but are now trying to capitalize on growing public anger. A joint statement from the CGT and the FO trucking unions called for action Sunday night to protest a cut in overtime rates.

The FNSEA farmers union said it would fight to help French farmers earn a better income but would not officially be joining forces with the “yellow vests” — protesters wearing the high-visibility vests that motorists are required to keep in their cars.

French police have cleared most of the fuel depots that protesters blocked earlier in the week, but fuel shortages still hit parts of France on Wednesday, affecting hundreds of gas stations.

Demonstrators also blocked toll booths, letting drivers pass without paying, to press demands that ranged from higher incomes and pensions to the dissolution of the National Assembly, France’s parliament.

At Tolbiac University in downtown Paris, students took over a school building and classes were canceled.

“We need taxes, but they are not properly redistributed,” protester Thomas Tricottet told BFM television.

The high school students’ FIDL union called for “massive” protests Thursday and urged France’s education minister to step down.

One student was injured during protests at a high school in Saint-Jean-de-Braye in north-central France. BFM said he was shot in the head with a rubber bullet. Julien Guiller, a spokesman for the regional school administration, told the AP that the student was expected to survive.

Until he scrapped the fuel tax rise, Macron’s actions after returning from the G-20 summit in Argentina had done little to persuade protesters that he was listening to their concerns.

He has refrained from speaking publicly about the protests and has largely remained in his palace. On Tuesday night, he was jeered as he traveled to a regional government headquarters that was torched by protesters over the weekend.

One activist said Wednesday that he fears more deaths if Saturday’s yellow vest demonstration in Paris goes ahead and urged Macron to speak out and calm the nation.

“If not there will be chaos,” said Christophe Chalencon.

Chalencon, a 52-year-old blacksmith from southern France, told the AP the French public needs Macron to “admit he made a mistake, with simple words … that touch the guts and heart of the French.”

In a disparaging tweet, U.S. President Donald Trump claimed that Macron’s decision Tuesday to delay the gas tax hike showed that the French leader doesn’t believe in the 2015 Paris global climate accord.

The Trump tweet came as thousands of climate experts were meeting in Poland to work out national responsibilities in the fight to reduce emissions and slow global warming.

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Associated Press writers Elaine Ganley, Alex Turnbull and Catherine Gaschka contributed to this report.

Canada Arrests Chinese Business Executive ‘on Behalf of U.S.’

TORONTO—Canadian authorities said Wednesday that they have arrested the chief financial officer of China’s Huawei Technologies for possible extradition to the United States.

Justice Department spokesman Ian McLeod said Meng Wanzhou was detained in Vancouver, British Columbia, on Saturday.

McLeod said a publication ban had been imposed in the case and he could not provide further details. The ban was sought by Meng, who has a bail hearing Friday, he said.

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year that U.S. authorities are investigating whether Chinese tech giant Huawei violated sanctions on Iran.

Meng is also deputy chairman of the board and the daughter of company founder Ren Zhengfei.

Huawei issued a statement saying Meng was changing flights in Canada when she was detained “on behalf of the United States of America” to face “unspecified charges” in New York.

“The company has been provided very little information regarding the charges and is not aware of any wrongdoing by Ms. Meng,” the statement said.

Huawei said it complies with all laws and rules where it operates, including export controls and sanctions of the United Nations, the U.S. and European Union.

A U.S. Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.

In April, China appealed to Washington to avoid damaging business confidence following the Wall Street Journal report that U.S. authorities were investigating whether Huawei violated sanctions on Iran amid spiraling technology tensions.

A foreign ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, said then that China opposes any country imposing unilateral sanctions based on its own law.

Asked about the report that Huawei was under investigation, Hua said in April, “We hope the U.S. will refrain from taking actions that could further undermine investor confidence in the U.S. business environment and harm its domestic economy and normal, open, transparent and win-win international trade.”

That same month, Washington barred Huawei rival ZTE Corp. from exporting U.S. technology in a separate case over exports to Iran and North Korea.

Trump has threatened to raise tariffs on Chinese goods in response to complaints that Beijing improperly pressures foreign companies to hand over technology. That is widely seen as part of a broader effort by Washington to respond to intensifying competition with Chinese technology industries that Trump says benefit from improper subsidies and market barriers.

U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse, a member of the Senate Armed Services and Banking committees, said China is working to undermine U.S. national security interests.

“Sometimes Chinese aggression is explicitly state-sponsored and sometimes it’s laundered through many of Beijing’s so-called ‘private’ sector entities that are in bed with Xi’s communist party,” the Nebraska Republican said in a statement. “Americans are grateful that our Canadian partners have arrested the Chief Financial Officer of a giant Chinese telecom company for breaking U.S. sanctions against Iran.”

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio Defends Amazon Deal at Sanders Event

Days after New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio got booed at the city’s Christmas tree lighting ceremony, an audience member at the Sanders Institute Gathering in Burlington, Vt., wanted to know how the plan to allow Amazon to build a headquarters in Long Island City, Queens, in exchange for nearly $3 billion in tax breaks and subsidies fits with progressive ideals.

“How does this Amazon deal reconcile with our values?” filmmaker Josh Fox asked Saturday, the last day of a three-day event organized by the think tank founded by Jane Sanders, wife of Vermont senator and possible 2020 presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.

De Blasio—who received a round of applause from the audience for New York City’s end of stop-and-frisk and repeatedly referred to himself as a progressive—said the agreement with Amazon will create new jobs for New Yorkers and generate revenue. Among a heavyweight progressive attendee list, including former New York gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon, actor John Cusack and nurses who helped bring “Medicare for all” to the forefront of Sanders’ agenda, de Blasio appeared much more willing to compromise than other conference speakers desperate for a change of the status quo.

“Look, I want to say on Amazon, I think everyone in this room could easily mount a critique of corporate America writ large, Amazon in specific—I sure could, too,” de Blasio said.

Amazon reported New York would see 25,000 new jobs with an average wage of over $150,000 annually, but some people are skeptical at the overall outcome, given the city’s affordable housing crisis.

Watch the de Blasio discussion here: 

Amazon will receive incentives including a $1.2 billion tax cut and a $505 million grant from the state of New York. Protesters in New York City raised the issue of the company’s relationship with Immigration and Customs Enforcement; Amazon officials pitched ICE on real-time facial recognition surveillance technology. Affordable housing advocates said neighborhoods—often low-income communities of color—are being displaced and tenant harassment is more common than ever. Public housing in the city is already in a state of dire disrepair.

De Blasio said at the Sanders Institute event that the Amazon headquarters would help the city. “We have to generate the tax revenue to pay for public housing, to pay for affordable housing programs, to pay for things like pre-K and 3-K. There’s always a balance point,” he said. “We need the revenue to make progressive change, and sometimes we do see an opportunity to get that from our interaction with the private sector, not always on rules that we agree with, by the way.”

Already, about 1,500 units of affordable housing in Long Island City have been turned over to Amazon.

Ari Paul wrote at Jacobin: “The city’s working class and poor continue to suffer blow after blow as de Blasio’s administration hypes the Amazon deal—a deal with no requirements for Amazon to hire locally or become more union-friendly.”

“The fact that massive public subsidies are helping eliminate affordable housing units is just the latest reason this bad deal needs to be torn up and thrown away,” said Michael Gianaris, a state senator whose district includes Long Island City.

“I expected this mayor to be a stalwart of deeply income-targeted affordable housing,” Brooklyn Councilman Jumaane Williams told The New York Times. “Every day it’s something else. This Amazon deal took the cake for me. … You give away $3 billion? $3 billion? To the richest man in America? For a company that will most likely come here anyway?”

Later on Saturday, an audience member asked Sanders about de Blasio and the tax deal New York offered Amazon. Sanders said he has “dealt with Amazon,” in reference to his campaign to push Amazon to raise its minimum wage to $15. Then, he responded broadly: “You’ve got communities all over this country that are being blackmailed. Mayors want to do the right thing. But all over this city, all over this country, you’ve got communities that are being blackmailed by a handful of multinational corporations,” he said, but he did not mention de Blasio directly.

Urban Communities of Color Increasingly Reject Charter Schools

At a recent school board meeting in New Orleans, more than 100 parents swamped the hearing room, requiring dozens to have to stand. Many of the parents had filled out public comment cards so they would be allowed to address the board.

What most in the crowd came prepared to talk about were their concerns about recent recommendations by the superintendent to close five schools and transfer the students to other schools in the district. Their demand was for the elected board to take a more hands-on role in improving the schools instead of closing them down.

But when Ashana Bigard, a New Orleans public school parent and advocate, realized the board had altered the agenda, and limited parents’ comment time, she decided to speak out of turn.

“How is closing the schools helping our children?” she asked the board members. She pointed out that many of the children in the schools being closed are special needs students with serious, trauma-induced learning disabilities, and now these children are being uprooted and transferred to schools that lack expertise with these problems. “These children have been experimented on for too long,” she declared.

That’s when a district staff member intervened and escorted her out of the room.

A Demand for Real Democracy

Parents’ protesting a school closing is nothing new. But for parents to demand that their local board take more control of the school, and run it directly rather than closing it down, is a twist. That’s because this is New Orleans.

In the bizarre landscape of New Orleans schools, since they were taken over by the state and reorganized after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, all but two of the 79 schools are directed by charter management companies, privately owned contractors that receive taxpayer money to run the schools. The charter management firms have near-complete autonomy, and while the Orleans Parish School Board was recently given the power, by the state, to open and close charters, the day-to-day operations of the schools are still handled by the charters’ appointed boards, generally free from any demands from parents and voters.

It’s that arrangement that is at the heart of these parents’ complaints.

With the elected board’s powers being limited to decisions on opening and closing schools only, “Parents feel they have no voice in the system,” Bigard explains in a phone conversation, and charter operators have way too much power and autonomy to allow school conditions to worsen to the level that closure becomes the only option.

“We need to have our elected board hold charter schools more accountable” for their day-to-day operation, she says. That would mean having the elected board impose the demands of parents and voters on charter management companies and assert more authority on how charters are run.

A more assertive board, Bigard argues, could impose much-needed reforms on the charters rather than closing them down or handing the schools over to a different management company—that will likely do no better than the last one did.

“Parents want real voice and real democracy,” she says.

An American Tradition Undermined

What Bigard and other New Orleans parents are demanding has been the tradition in American communities, where local schools have long been governed by democratically elected boards.

But that American tradition has been undermined or overturned, especially in communities of color, where less democratic forms of governance have become widespread.

For decades, a wave of state takeovers of school districts overseeing tens of thousands of students has stripped elected school boards in these communities of their governing power and denied voters the right to local governance of their public schools. These state takeovers have been happening almost exclusively in African American and Latinx school districts—many of the same communities that have experienced decades of economic decline, high unemployment, and underinvestment in schools.

What tends to accompany these state interventions are mass closing of public schools and the imposition of various forms of privately controlled school models, such as charter schools.

All About Politics, Not Education

Since 1989, there have been more than 100 takeovers of local school districts in the United States, according to Domingo Morel, author of the book Takeover: Race, Education and American Democracy.

In nearly 85 percent of these cases, the districts have been majority African American and Latinx. Also, black communities disproportionately experience the most punitive forms of takeovers, in which elected school boards are disbanded or turned into “advisory” boards, school superintendents previously hired by elected boards have been fired, or governing authority has been handed over to state-appointed managers or private management companies.

Although the takeovers are usually justified for academic reasons, Morel points to research showing takeovers generally do not have a significant effect on school improvement. Instead, what really motivates takeovers, according to Morel, is politics—especially the political undermining of black and brown governance of schools in urban communities.

Morel traces the rising popularity of takeovers to the 1970s and early 80s, when blacks in big cities across the country gained majorities on city councils and school boards. He argues that the power of the rising black electorate created political problems for conservative leaders in state government who did not want to see governance in large urban communities fall into the hands of local lawmakers who were from the opposition.

That political dynamic was at work especially in New Jersey, where, in 1988, state lawmakers passed the first law allowing the state board of education to take control of local school district governance. Two of the state’s largest school districts, Jersey City and Newark, were the first to draw the attention of Republican governors, and those two districts were taken over by the state in 1989 and 1995, respectively.

But while state takeovers have been mostly about politics, in more recent years, another factor strongly motivates these interventions: public school privatization.

A Push for Privatization

“State takeovers and the elimination of locally elected school boards grease the rails of privatization by charter school management groups,” Jitu Brown tells me.

Brown is the national director of Journey for Justice, an alliance of grassroots community-, youth-, and parent-led organizations in 24 cities that oppose privatizing schools and advocate for community-based alternatives instead.

In 2016, Brown and 11 other public school advocates in Chicago made headlines when they staged a hunger strike to protest the closing of Dyett High School. Their demand was to reopen the school as a full-service community school focused on a green energy curriculum. After 34 days of the strike, the district administration relented and reopened Dyett in 2016, as a school for the arts, after $14.6 million in refurbishing.

Brown attributes much of the growth of charter schools to the federal government, especially during the presidential administration of Barack Obama, whose Education Secretary Arne Duncan incentivized privatization through a School Improvement Grants program. The grants required struggling schools in the most vulnerable communities to undergo turnaround efforts that often included handing control of schools over to charter management firms or closing schools and reopening them as charters.

The Obama administration and Secretary Duncan also incentivized charter school expansions through the federal government’s Race to the Top program and through its charter school grant program.

At the same time the federal government was incentivizing charter school expansions, there was a powerful and well-financed movement to eliminate traditional urban school districts and their democratically elected school boards. Funded by right-wing political advocacy groups, influential private foundations, and tech moguls from Silicon Valley, the movement decried the “chaos” of democratically elected school boards and advocated instead for an “open market” where parents take their chances on loosely regulated charter schools.

The push for privatization has been particularly consequential in urban communities of color such as Newark, New Jersey. “Since 2008, the share of students who attend charters in Newark has nearly quadrupled—from 9 percent in 2008 to about 35 percent today,” Chalkbeat reports. “By 2023, that number could swell to 44 percent, according to one estimate, as the city’s charters continue to fill seats that were preapproved by the [former Republican Governor Chris] Christie administration.” About a quarter of the district’s budget—$237 million—goes to charter schools, up from $60 million ten years ago.

But state takeovers and the ushering in of charter management “never address the structural inequity in the system,” according to Brown. Regardless of the change in governance, urban schools for black and brown students continue to be plagued with large class sizes, punitive discipline codes, rotating faculties of inexperienced teachers, and curriculums void of advanced courses in world languages, art and music, and higher-level math and science.

With undemocratic governance, the inequity often worsens, Brown argues. Communities like Newark “have had the right to self-determination snatched from them,” he says. “If they don’t have the right to govern their own schools, then people who take the schools over operate the schools based on their opinions of people in the community,” rather than on the desires of parents and voters.

Fighting Back and Winning in New Jersey

However, there are recent signs these communities are fighting back and frequently winning to gradually claw back their local, democratic governance.

In New Orleans, the community had its first victory in July 2018 when Louisiana gave a locally elected school board power to open and close charters. In Philadelphia, 16 years of governance by a state-appointed commission ended in June 2018, and governance power transferred to a local school board appointed by the mayor. And more recently in New Jersey, three districts—Paterson, Newark, and Camden—voted for democratically elected boards and the power to hold local board members accountable at the ballot box.

State takeovers had ended in Newark and Paterson earlier this year, and Camden is still under state control, but when voters in these communities had the opportunity to decide whether they wanted schools to be run by an elected board or a board appointed by the mayor, they voted overwhelmingly for elected boards.

“To have a chance to regain an elected school board in these New Jersey communities and then see voters come out and actually vote for democracy is a testament to the work of grassroots advocacy groups in these communities,” says Brown, pointing to three Journey for Justice member groups—Camden Parent and Student Union, Parents Unified for Local School Education (Newark), and Paterson Education Organizing Committee. “These groups have achieved a strong victory against inequity and privatization,” he says.

“We have to get totally out from under state control,” says Ronsha Dickerson, a leader of the Camden group. “An elected board accountable to the voters will help us unpeel the corruption in the system.”

Addressing “corruption” was supposedly the reason to impose state intervention in Camden schools years ago. But according to Dickerson, as the state’s authority gradually grew in the city, and democratic control ebbed, the conditions in the schools worsened and corruption increased. Each time democracy declined—during mayoral control, under the watch of a state-appointed monitor, then with state takeover—board members and other officials were increasingly more apt to be chosen from a “political establishment,” she says, “all in the spirit of progressive education but really to benefit the establishment.”

The “establishment” Dickerson refers to has been closely aligned with an invasion of Renaissance Schools, a form of privatization in Camden that transfers administration of a public school to a charter management group or allows a charter firm to “co-locate” a school in an existing public-school campus.

After the state takeover, she says, “no one wanted to talk about Camden schools that were doing well before the takeover—even the ‘mom and pop’ [independent] charters that were doing well. No one wanted to talk about how to roll out what was working in these schools to the rest of the community. Instead, the only focus was bringing in more Renaissance Schools.”

The introduction and expansion of Renaissance Schools has deeply divided the community and has resulted in charges that these schools serve far fewer percentages of students who have learning disabilities or who don’t speak English well.

In Newark, state takeover also led to increased corruption according to Johnnie Lattner of Parents Unified for Local School Education. Similar to Camden, he believes the state-appointed board had become accustomed to selecting members who had links to charter schools.

Although he concedes the influence of the charter industry will likely still exist under an elected board, because of the “money and manpower” behind candidates backed by charter advocates, “Elections are the only way they’ll feel the pressure of parents and voters,” he says.

Changing the Conversation About Privatization

The successful efforts to take back local control and democratic governance of schools by grassroots groups like the ones in New Jersey have “changed the conversation about privatization,” according to Brown.

Of course, no one expects democratically elected school boards alone to fully address the challenges that schools in urban black and brown communities face. Research studies on the impact school boards have on student achievement are few and far between and often find the effects have more to do with how the board behaves rather than the process that created it.

But grassroots organizers fending off privatization and fighting for elected school boards understand a democratically elected board is just the beginning in winning back more parent and citizen voice in their districts. They believe their communities have more leverage when they at least have the opportunity to vote inattentive board members out.

“Was the elected school board in New Orleans before Katrina sometimes inattentive to the needs of parents?” asks Bigard. “Sure,” she says, but under state control, the appointed board wasn’t accountable either. Schools no longer had music and art classes and advanced courses in science and math. Charter schools didn’t follow the laws, especially for how to educate students with disabilities. And parents didn’t have anyone to call to complain to.

“At least now that we have a local board with some authority,” Bigard says, “people are more engaged and invested than I’ve ever seen. And we’re ready to demand board members listen to us and step into their power, or we’ll recall any who don’t.”

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute .