Chris Hedges's Blog, page 485

State Dept. Revokes Passports, Strips Citizenship of Many Born Along U.S.-Mexico Border

Donald Trump started his presidential campaign by attacking undocumented immigrants, but by 2018 his administration was targeting almost all immigrants, documented or not. First, there was the denaturalization task force, which aims to strip citizenship from naturalized immigrants who have been charged with any crime. Then Stephen Miller, one of Trump’s most virulently anti-immigrant advisers, wrote a proposal that would make it more difficult for immigrants who have received benefits through the Affordable Care Act, or accepted other forms of public assistance, to obtain citizenship.

Now, according to a report in The Washington Post, the administration is coming for passports. “The Trump administration,” the Post writes, “is accusing hundreds, and possibly thousands, of Hispanics along the border of using fraudulent birth certificates since they were babies, and it is undertaking a widespread crackdown.”

Trump’s State Department wasn’t the first to deny passports based on these allegations; the George W. Bush and Obama administrations both did so for many people who were delivered by midwives in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley. Complicating the situation, however, is that the same midwives who forged the birth certificates also provided thousands of legitimate ones, and it became difficult to distinguish between the two.

The Obama administration backed down after an ACLU lawsuit. But under Trump, according to the Post, “the passport denials and revocations appear to be surging, becoming part of a broader interrogation into the citizenship of people who have lived, voted and worked in the United States for their entire lives.”

The State Department referred to previous policies in a statement, saying it “has not changed policy or practice regarding the adjudication of passport applications.” It added that it’s simply doing its job in “an area of the country where there has been a significant incidence of citizenship fraud.”

Juan, a man born in Texas who declined to give his last name to the Post, is in the State Department’s crosshairs. Officially, he is an American citizen: “His official American birth certificate shows he was delivered by a midwife in Brownsville, at the southern tip of Texas,” the Post reports. He has also served his country and worked for the government: “He spent his life wearing American uniforms: three years as a private in the Army, then as a cadet in the Border Patrol and now as a state prison guard.”

Juan’s citizenship was called into question only when he applied for a passport renewal. Instead of simply giving him a new one, the State Department sent Juan a terrifying letter: “the State Department said it didn’t believe he was an American citizen.”

Juan was livid. “I fought for my country,” he said.

Juan was unlucky enough to be born in the “wrong” place. The Post explains:

The government alleges that from the 1950s through the 1990s, some midwives and physicians along the Texas-Mexico border provided U.S. birth certificates to babies who were actually born in Mexico. In a series of federal court cases in the 1990s, several birth attendants admitted to providing fraudulent documents.

The State Department said in a statement that denying someone a passport doesn’t mean that they definitely will be deported, but as the Post observes, “it leaves them in a legal limbo, with one arm of the U.S. government claiming they are not an American and the prospect that immigration agents could follow up on their case.”

Some of the targeted applicants, who all have official U.S. birth certificates, “are being jailed in immigration detention centers and entered into deportation proceedings. In others, they are stuck in Mexico, their passports suddenly revoked when they tried to reenter the United States.”

Juan’s appeal for a passport renewal was rejected, and he was asked to turn over his original passport and admit he was born in Mexico. He would not and is currently in deportation proceedings. He earns only $13 an hour as a prison guard, and his legal fees will amount to thousands of dollars.

Read the full story here.

DNC Changes Up the Rules, but Millions of Democratic Primary Votes Are Still Vulnerable

On Saturday, the Democratic National Committee sanctioned its superdelegates—blocking 716 officeholders, state and local party officials, and other well-connected Democrats from casting a first-round ballot at 2020’s Democratic National Convention toward the 2,383 votes needed to nominate its next presidential candidate.

“We think it’s so important that we return power to the grassroots,” DNC Chairman Tom Perez said of the vote on Saturday, although many longtime politicos did not buy that line. They felt they had been tarred and feathered for the crime of consorting with the party for too long—evidenced by their near-unanimous support for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and not the Democrat of late, Bernie Sanders.

“The party has validated (many say incorrectly) that the perception of inherent bias is reality,” wrote Greg Pettis, the Mayor Pro Tem of Cathedral City, California, and DMO Representative to the DNC, in a last-ditch email a day before the DNC vote sanctioned fellow superdelegates. DMO stands for Democratic Municipal Official, which, even Perez might admit, qualifies as grassroots.

“Look for ways to expand the table, not reduce the number of seats,” implored Pettis, futilely arguing for a more reasonable remedy. “I’ve yet to hear a discussion of adding 250-300 at large delegates assigned by state to reduce perceived influence. I’ve only heard ‘take away.’ Or I hear ‘get rid of the old guard.’ I may be 61, but I don’t think I’m ready to be put out to pasture.”

The adopted DNC rule changes also included policies to make its presidential nominating contests more participatory and transparent. For caucuses, it urged state parties allow any eligible voter showing up to register and take part; to allow voting early by an absentee ballot or dropping one off and leaving (instead of spending hours there); and to release the state raw vote totals (not the mathematical allocation of delegates to the process’s next stage, which isn’t the same as the popular vote count). For primaries, the rule changes urge those states adopt same-day party registration and voting.

Of these moves, only the restraint of nomination power over the superdelegates has teeth. Caucuses are run by state parties and not the DNC; the state parties can do what they want. Primaries are run by state governments and regulated by legislatures; not the state parties nor the DNC. Changing those access rules means passing new voting and election laws.

Nonetheless, the Sanders sector was as exuberant as Perez, pronouncing a grassroots revolution was on America’s doorstep—or, at least, the Democratic Party’s.

It’s “a victory for the political revolution and the people of this country,” crowed Larry Cohen, Board Chair of Our Revolution, Sanders’ post-2016 national organization, in an email blast (and fundraising appeal). “The sweeping reforms made at this week’s DNC meeting in Chicago also include incentives for same-day registration and party change. That means the millions of people who are prevented every year from participating in Democratic primaries and caucuses will now have their voices heard.”

Democratizing 2020’s nominating process should be the goal, as Pettis suggested. But that’s not exactly what’s happening here. Cohen’s bluster that “millions” of Democrats will now burst through the voting barricades is tenuous.

How exactly are the new DNC rules about to unleash millions of Democrats, especially when the DNC has next to no power to push recalcitrant state legislatures to reform laws governing primaries?

When asked to comment on that point, an Our Revolution spokeswoman said the group has “long advocated” for states to change registration deadlines, for “greater ballot access within the party and [the] fight against threats to voting rights.” After naming its coalition partners—like MoveOn, Progressive Democrats of America, Demand Progress and National Nurses United, she said, “we will continue lobbying to make sure the party implements the reforms passed this weekend.”

What’s missing here is that it’s going to be hard to change state party registration rules by 2020—the gate through which most voters, including the new millions, would have to pass—unless the midterms overturn red-run legislatures (there are 33 nationally) or recalcitrant Democratic bodies become a deeper shade of blue.

Take New York State, supermajority blue and home to the country’s worst party registration deadline. In addition to having to register as a voter 25 days before any election (making it as anti-voter as many red states), residents have to register with a party six months before a primary to vote in it. That deadline is from a state party whose website boasts it is “the longest enduring political party in the world.”

With systemic intransigence like its participatory hurdles, it’s no wonder New York’s Democratic Party has lasted so long. It’s also no mystery why Sanders’ team came to loathe New York in 2016. The candidate held rallies in the borough of his birth and nearby Manhattan, attracting thousands who could not vote for him—unless they had joined the party no later than October 2015, an unlikely prospect.

There were other slights—such as bureaucratic bungling by the Kings County Board of Elections purging 120,000 legal voters, in a Bernie bastion. And that was just one corner of the Empire State. In the capital, Albany, the legislature’s levers of power are in the hands of a cadre of Democrat and Republican allies who are anything but progressive, and ruled with impunity—assisted by centrist Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

The only hope that Our Revolution has in opening up New York State’s primary process depends on unseating that power-hungry cartel. Berniecrats have endorsed progressive challengers to these stubborn state senators in the September 13 primary, hoping to dislodge them. Those upsets, should they occur, could be even more significant than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unseating U.S. Rep. Joseph Crowley this summer in New York’s federal election primary. Elected Senate progressives would force New York State’s controlling Democratic governor to deal with their agenda.

But New York is not the only blue state with obstructive primary laws. Massachusetts’ voter registration deadline is 20 days before Election Day, and for many years elected Democrats running its legislature and state elections have refused to support same-day voter registration. But it at least allows “unaffiliated” voters to participate in party primaries. New York is a closed primary state—which means no one who’s not already a party member can vote. Florida, Pennsylvania and Nevada also have closed primaries. They also have GOP-controlled legislatures, an impediment to voting reform.

This rough road to more inclusive primaries is unacknowledged in Our Revolution’s cheerleading. As Cohen’s email blast said, “They [the DNC rules] will end the tactics of voter suppression in states like New York—governed by Democrats—that set their party registration deadlines six months in advance of their primaries. Millions more people will be permitted to vote in Democratic caucuses and primaries thanks to your help.”

The dozen states that hold presidential caucuses are another category. These states are in the Plains and mountain West, where Sanders largely beat Clinton—with voters strongly backing Trump in the fall. But they are not the states that swing presidential elections, and one of the biggest, Washington, will only be holding primaries in 2020.

How will millions more get to participate in 2020’s Democratic nominating contests? That road is through reforming laws governing primaries, not caucuses. Election experts agreed, saying the impact of the new DNC rules, apart from the superdelegate issues, would most likely be on more easily managed caucuses—or would be symbolic.

“The main impact is that caucuses, which are completely controlled by the party and not the government, are going to have to have provisions for absentee voting,” said Richard Winger, editor of Ballot Access News. However, opening up Democratic caucuses in states like Nebraska is not the same as reforming New York State’s party registration deadline—which he said was “facing a lot of pressure.”

The new rules were akin to getting a plank inserted in the party platform, said Wendy Underhill, a National Conference of State Legislatures elections analyst.

“A parallel here would be when the party adopts a platform with a bunch of planks, that doesn’t make those planks come into being” as laws, she said. “It ostensibly provides a blueprint for people of that party to go forward with policy. … What you’re looking at here would be parallel to that.”

Underhill said there were many ways open up the state-run primary process without tearing it apart completely. She said the longest registration deadlines can be sizably reduced—so the public’s last-minute impulses to vote can be accommodated.

“There are ways to just make it 14 days instead of 25 days, or even 7 days,” she said, referring to New York’s voter registration deadline. “In a sense, it’s a continuum. From 30 days; that’s as far out as any state can be. So I can imagine some states adopting a closer in deadline, with the theory that they might be able to use technology (37 states have online registration) to confirm that those people are eligible voters.”

Changing New York’s closed primary rules, and cutting its six-month party registration deadline, would be another issue requiring legislative action, Underhill said.

Some Our Revolution leaders acknowledge that opening up Democratic presidential primaries is a longer-haul effort, but say it is one within their sights.

John Zogby, a DNC member for nearly three decades and an Our Revolution board member, who recently served on the DNC’s Unity Reform Commission—whose report led to the just-adopted rule changes—said the new DNC rules were “aspirational” when it came to primaries. But he also was hoping the 2018 midterm season would start to change the legislative landscape in stubborn blue states like New York.

“It is aspirational … you are limited by the policies that the state puts in place,” Zogby said, adding Our Revolution has endorsed a slate of state Senate candidates in New York’s September 13 state primary. “If you have a truly Democratic state Senate, you could get a lot done that has been blocked. If that changes, then a lot can change.”

Zogby said the DNC rule changes—on superdelegates, primaries and caucuses—and its pledge to keep debating financial transparency and budgeting policies were significant. He said Our Revolution would be pushing the state parties to open up their nominating process, especially if the GOP lost state legislative majorities after November.

“We are committed to taking these reforms, particularly on voter registration and the delegate selection rules that are in place for the convention, and lobbying for them in between now and 2020,” Zogby said. “Some people might say, ‘You’ve finished it all now. Now it’s done.’ No, I think it’s just starting.”

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

Trump Cancels Pay Raise for Civilian Federal Employees

President Donald Trump informed Congress on Thursday that he is canceling pay raises due in January for most civilian federal employees, citing budget constraints. But the workers still could see a slightly smaller boost in their pay under a proposal lawmakers are considering.

Trump said he was axing a 2.1 percent across-the-board raise for most workers as well as locality pay increases averaging 25.7 percent and costing $25 billion.

“We must maintain efforts to put our Nation on a fiscally sustainable course, and Federal agency budgets cannot sustain such increases,” said Trump. The president last year signed a package of tax cuts that is forecast to expand the deficit by about $1.5 trillion over 10 years.

Trump cited the “significant” cost of employing federal workers as justification for denying the pay increases, and called for federal worker pay to be based on performance and structured toward recruiting, retaining and rewarding “high-performing Federal employees and those with critical skill sets.”

His announcement came as the country heads into the Labor Day holiday weekend.

The Democratic Party immediately criticized the announcement, citing the tax cuts Trump signed into law last December. The law provided steep tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans, and more modest reductions for middle- and low-income individuals and families.

“Trump has delivered yet another slap in the face to American workers,” said Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez.

Under the law, the 2.1 percent raise takes effect automatically unless the president and Congress act to change it. Congress is currently debating a proposal for a slightly lower, 1.9 percent across-the-board raise to be included in a government funding bill that would require Trump’s signature to keep most government functions operating past September.

Unions representing the 2 million-member federal workforce urged Congress to pass the 1.9 percent pay raise.

“President Trump’s plan to freeze wages for these patriotic workers next year ignores the fact that they are worse off today financially than they were at the start of the decade,” said J. David Cox Sr., president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents some 700,000 federal workers.

“They have already endured years of little to no increases and their paychecks cannot stretch any further as education, health care costs, gas and other goods continue to get more expensive,” added Tim Reardon, national president of the National Treasury Employees Union.

Cox said federal worker pay and benefits have been cut by more than $200 billion since 2011, and workers are currently earning 5 percent less than they did at the start of the decade.

In July, the Trump administration sharply revised upward its deficit estimates compared to the estimates in the budget proposal it sent Congress in February. The worsening deficit reflects the impact of the $1.5 trillion, 10-year tax cut, as well as increased spending for the military and domestic programs that Congress approved earlier this year.

The administration’s July budget update projected a deficit of $890 million for the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, up from the February estimate of $873 billion. The $890 billion deficit projection represents a 34 percent increase from the $666 billion deficit the government recorded in 2017.

For 2019, the administration is projecting the deficit will once again top $1 trillion and stay at that level for the next three years.

The only other period when the federal government ran deficits above $1 trillion was the four years from 2009 through 2012, when the government used tax cuts and increased spending to combat the 2008 fiscal crisis and the worst economic downturn since the 1930s.

Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., who represents many federal workers, blamed what he said was Trump’s mismanagement of federal government.

“His tax bill exploded the deficit, and now he is trying to balance the budget on the backs of federal workers,” Connolly said.

John McCain Memorialized as Hero, Fighter and Wiseacre

PHOENIX—Sen. John McCain was eulogized as a “true American hero” — and a terrible driver with a wicked sense of humor and love of a good fight — at a crowded church service for the maverick politician Thursday that ended with the playing of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.”

Addressing an estimated 3,500 mourners, former Vice President Joe Biden recalled “the sheer joy that crossed his face when he knew he was about to take the stage of the Senate floor and start a fight.”

Biden, a Democrat who was among the fast friends the Republican senator made across the aisle, said he thought of McCain as a brother, “with a lot of family fights.”

The service for the statesman, former prisoner of war and two-time presidential candidate unfolded at North Baptist Church after a motorcade bearing McCain’s body made its way from the state Capitol past Arizonans waving American flags and campaign-style McCain signs.

Family members then watched in silence as uniformed military members removed the flag-draped casket from a black hearse and carried it into the church. McCain died last Saturday of brain cancer at 81.

At the church, a choir from the Jesuit-run Brophy College Preparatory school that two of McCain’s sons attended sang “Amazing Grace.”

McCain’s longtime chief of staff Grant Woods, a former Arizona attorney general, drew laughs with a eulogy in which he talked about McCain’s “terribly bad driving” and his sense of humor, which included calling the Leisure World retirement community “Seizure World.”

Woods also recalled the way McCain would introduce him to new staff members by saying, “You’ll have to fire half of them.”

Another friend, Tommy Espinoza, president and CEO of the Raza Development Fund, called McCain “one of the greatest American heroes in our lifetime.” The church’s senior pastor Noe Garcia pronounced McCain “a true American hero.”

Dabbing his eyes as he recalled his friend, Biden said McCain “could not stand the abuse of power wherever he saw it, in whatever form, in whatever country.” He said McCain embodied basic values including fairness, honesty and respect, and fought for civility between politicians even if they disagreed on the issues.

Biden also referred to his own son’s death from cancer, saying of the disease, “It’s brutal, it’s relentless, it’s unforgiving.” And he spoke directly to McCain’s widow, Cindy McCain, seated in the front row: “You were his ballast.”

Sinatra’s “My Way” paid tribute to a politician who became known for following his own path based on his personal principles. McCain clashed openly with President Donald Trump, who mocked McCain for getting captured during the Vietnam War.

Two White House officials said McCain’s family had asked, before the senator’s death, that Trump not attend the funeral services. Twenty-four sitting U.S. senators, four former senators and other leaders were among those expected at Thursday’s memorial.

The church service brought to a close two days of mourning for McCain in his home state.

Later in the day, a military aircraft was scheduled to take McCain’s body back east for a lying-in-state at the U.S. Capitol on Friday, a service at the Washington National Cathedral on Saturday, and burial at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

As the 11-vehicle motorcade with a 17-motorcycle police escort made its way toward the church, people along the 8-mile (13-kilometer) route held signs that read simply “McCain,” and cars on the other side of the highway stopped or slowed to a crawl in apparent tribute.

A few firefighters saluted from atop a fire engine parked on an overpass as the motorcade passed underneath on Interstate 17.

One man shouted, “We love you!”

On Wednesday, a private service was held at the Arizona Capitol for family and friends. McCain’s widow pressed her face against her husband’s coffin, and daughter Meghan McCain erupted in sobs.

An estimated 15,000 people filed past the senator’s casket to pay their final respects, and McCain sons Doug, Jack and Jimmy, daughter Sidney and daughter-in-law Renee shook hands with some of them.

On Thursday, Michael Fellars was among those awaiting the motorcade outside the church. The Marines veteran said he was also the fourth person in line Wednesday to attend the viewing at the Capitol for the Navy pilot held prisoner by the North Vietnamese for 5½ years after being shot down over Hanoi.

“He was about the only politician that I have ever known who cared for the people in his country, and he tried his level best to make it a better place in which to live,” Fellars said.

Honor guard member Valentine Costalez praised McCain for championing the military during his Senate career.

“He’s done so much for us,” said Costalez, who stood watch earlier this week while McCain’s body was at a funeral home.

___

Associated Press writers Anita Snow, Jacques Billeaud and Nicholas Riccardi in Phoenix contributed to this report.

Man Arrested in Threat to Kill Boston Globe Staff Over Anti-Trump Editorials

BOSTON—A California man upset about The Boston Globe’s coordinated editorial response to President Donald Trump’s attacks on the news media was arrested Thursday for threatening to travel to the newspaper’s offices and kill journalists, whom he called the “enemy of the people,” federal prosecutors said.

Prosecutors say 68-year-old Robert Chain’s threatening phone calls to the Globe’s newsroom started immediately after the Globe appealed to newspapers across the country to condemn what it called a “dirty war against the free press.”

The day the editorials were published, Chain, of Encino, told a Globe staffer that he was going to shoot employees in the head at 4 o’clock, according to court documents. That threat prompted a police response and increased security at the newspaper’s offices.

After the editorials ran, authorities say Chain said he would continue threatening the Globe, The New York Times and “other fake news” as long as they continue their “treasonous and seditious acts” in attacking Trump.

Several times, he called Globe employees the “enemy of the people,” a characterization of journalists that Trump has used in the past.

It was not immediately clear if Chain has an attorney. A person listed as a relative of Chain didn’t immediately return a phone message.

Prosecutors say he’s expected to appear in Los Angeles’ federal court Thursday and be transferred to Boston at a later date. He’s charged with making threatening communications in interstate commerce, which calls for up to five years in prison.

Jane Bowman, a spokeswoman for the Globe, said the newspaper is grateful for law enforcement’s efforts to protect its staffers and track down the source of the threats.

“While it was unsettling for many of our staffers to be threatened in such a way, nobody – really, nobody – let it get in the way of the important work of this institution,” she said in an email.

Federal officials pledged to continue to go after anyone who puts others in fear of their lives.

“In a time of increasing political polarization, and amid the increasing incidence of mass shootings, members of the public must police their own political rhetoric. Or we will,” said U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling.

VA Attracts Private Firms Pushing Dubious PTSD Treatments

After Wisconsin beer mogul Jake Leinenkugel was tapped by President Donald Trump in 2017 as a White House adviser on veterans’ issues, he quickly identified mental health care as a top priority, alongside privatization of services.

That combination has touched off a behind-the-scenes race by private companies, some offering questionable – or at least unproven – treatments for the signature injury of modern war: post-traumatic stress disorder.

In a small ballroom in the basement of the JW Marriott hotel in Washington, five senior VA doctors expressed some openness to private options – but with clear limits. All fiercely defended the VA’s current approach to mental health care and cautioned against widely adopting any unproven treatments. Last week, various alternative treatments were discussed at a hearing of the Creating Options for Veterans’ Expedited Recovery Commission – also known as the COVER Commission – with Leinenkugel as chairman.

The body’s charter is to study the Department of Veterans Affairs’ own model for prioritizing evidence-based therapy and assess the “potential benefits of incorporating complementary and integrative health treatments available in non-Department facilities.”

The acting assistant deputy undersecretary for health for patient care services, Dr. Marsden McGuire, warned against “quackery” and medical claims “made falsely, with ill intent.” He said he’s received complaints from VA psychiatrists who have been urged to adopt dubious treatments. He then recommended that the agency invest its limited resources in those treatments most likely to help.

“There is some concern that if we put out these things as a magic bullet, we will redirect attention from things that actually have stronger evidence, that are going to work,” McGuire said.

Alternative treatments include simple, less costly approaches such as yoga and acupuncture, as well as more expensive treatments with complicated names, such as hyperbaric oxygen therapy, in which patients are placed in pressurized tubes that deliver high levels of oxygen to the body, and magnetic resonance therapy, a “brain zapping” technique that uses magnets to influence the movement of protons in the cortex.

Private providers are offering effective and conventional mental health treatments as a triage force in what has become an urgent suicide crisis among veterans, with roughly 20 former service members taking their own lives every day.

Amid these emergency conditions, some VA officials and veterans advocates are pushing for wider adoption of experimental treatments, arguing that no veteran should be denied therapy that could potentially help treat mental illness or lessen trauma.

Yet others see these private interests as profit seekers, snake-oil salesmen or pill peddlers eager to bring veterans into a private system in which oversight is lax, PTSD expertise is thin and familiarity with military culture is limited.

While many of these organizations work outside the VA entirely, others are aggressively engaged with the agency in an attempt to peel off patients directly through a partnership or to secure research money, pilot programs or an agency stamp of approval.

Dr. Matthew Friedman, a clinical psychiatrist and one of the founders of the VA’s National Center for PTSD, said he’s recently witnessed an uptick in “self-proclaimed magicians” who are eager to partner with the agency:

The answer is: If it hasn’t been proven, it’s not something the VA should endorse. They should live by the same rules other treatments live by; they should be tested in rigorous, randomized clinical trials. That’s the coin of the realm. And if they haven’t done that … stay away, baby. Stay away.

In June 2017, Leinenkugel sent an email to VA leadership with the subject line “Big Bold Ideas.” His proposals included cutting back staff at the agency’s central office by 35 percent, merging all homelessness programs for veterans into the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and ramping up suicide prevention efforts.

In this mental health care offensive, Leinenkugel urged the VA to “invite best private care entities to fully participate.”

At the first COVER Commission meeting in late July, Leinenkugel vouched for hyperbaric treatment, saying his support came after two groups spent a year lobbying him on its benefits:

They’re gaining resonance on the Hill and also in states. So whether or not we think that treatment works or has any evidence base to it at this point in time, it is not relevant to me. I think it needs to be explored.

Despite positive anecdotal results, hyperbaric treatment for PTSD has been debunked by several studies, including one by the VA and Department of Defense that deemed it ineffective. In recent years, various interests have sought federal reimbursement for hyperbaric PTSD treatment, including the Princeton Wound Care Center, Healogics and the International Hyperbaric Medical Association.

A COVER commissioner, Tom Beeman, is the executive in residence at the Pennsylvania College of Health Sciences, affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania Health System, which boasts one of the most comprehensive hyperbaric programs in the nation.

“VA would not likely buy a lot of hyperbaric equipment, but instead send people to use it in the private sector,” said a senior congressional staffer who was not authorized to speak with the press. “The VA represents a potentially big revenue stream for private interests.”

The COVER Commission states in its charter that all members must be “of recognized standing and distinction within the medical community with a background in treating mental health.”

Yet at least four members, including Leinenkugel, don’t meet these requirements, which has alarmed some mental health advocates. Some also are concerned that Casin Spero, a former official at the Koch brothers-backed Concerned Veterans for America, recently was appointed as the commission’s chief adviser.

That organization advocates for more private options for VA patients, and organization officials helped craft the Veterans Empowerment Act, a bill that calls for the “termination of functions of the Veterans Health Administration directly related to the furnishing of hospital care, medical services, and other health care.”

Other actors, including executives from major private health care companies, are expected to offer advisory roles as the commission moves forward.

At the start of last week’s meeting, Leinenkugel stated his desire to be an “actionable committee” with the mission of influencing the VA, White House and Congress to make the “necessary and right changes” to the VA’s mental health care efforts. The VA and the White House did not respond to questions submitted by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting.

Trump Warns of Violence From the Left if Democrats Win Midterms

President Trump urged evangelical leaders this week to get out the vote ahead of the upcoming midterm elections and warned of “violence” by opponents if they fail.

Trump made the dire warning at a White House dinner Monday evening attended by dozens of conservative Christian pastors, ministers and supporters of his administration.

Trump was stressing the stakes in November when he warned that, if Democrats win, they “will overturn everything that we’ve done and they’ll do it quickly and violently,” according to attendees and audio of his closed-door remarks obtained by media outlets, including The New York Times. He specifically mentioned self-described antifa, or anti-fascist groups, describing them as “violent people.”

Asked Wednesday what he meant, Trump told reporters, “I just hope there won’t be violence.”

“If you look at what happens … there’s a lot of unnecessary violence all over the world, but also in this country. And I don’t want to see it,” Trump said.

At the dinner, Trump talked up his administration’s efforts to bolster conservative Christian causes and urged those gathered to get their “people” to vote, warning the efforts could quickly be undone.

“I just ask you to go out and make sure all of your people vote,” Trump said, according to the Times. “Because if they don’t — it’s Nov. 6 — if they don’t vote we’re going to have a miserable two years and we’re going to have, frankly, a very hard period of time because then it just gets to be one election — you’re one election away from losing everything you’ve got.”

Ohio Pastor Darrell Scott, an early Trump supporter who attended the dinner, said he interpreted the comments differently than the media has portrayed them.

“It wasn’t any kind of dire warning,” Scott said, “… except the things that we’ve been working on as a body of voters will be reversed and overturned.”

“What he was saying,” Scott continued, is that “there are some violent people … but it wasn’t that we’ve got to worry about murder on the streets and chaos and anarchy … just that the things we’ve worked for will be overturned.”

Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council and another attendee, said he, too, interpreted Trump’s message as a warning not to be complacent.

While Trump did make a reference to antifa, Perkins told CNN, “I don’t think anybody in the room suggested that there was going to be violence across the nation.”

“I did not interpret him to say that the outcome of the election is going to lead (to) violence in the streets, and violence in the churches,” he told CNN.

Bernie Sanders Ramps Up Crusade Against Jeff Bezos

After Amazon issued a rare blog post on Wednesday denouncing Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) recent criticism of the retail behemoth as “inaccurate,” Sanders quickly responded with a statement accusing Amazon of being “less than forthcoming” about how much it actually pays its workers and highlighting the fact that Amazon warehouses are considered some of the “most dangerous places to work in the United States.”

While Amazon boasted in its public response to Sanders that it provides a “climate controlled, safe workplace” for its employees, the Vermont senator highlighted the fact that the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health—a workers’ rights advocacy group—placed Amazon on its “Dirty Dozen” list of companies with unsafe working conditions earlier this year.

“I will be asking the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to investigate unsafe working conditions at Amazon fulfillment centers,” Sanders wrote in his statement, which provides a small sample of stories current and former Amazon employees have submitted to Sanders’ office in response to a request he put out on Monday.

“Amazon’s ‘Fulfillment’ Centers are not designed with human beings in mind,” wrote one anonymous former Amazon employee from Texas. “If anyone wanted to experience what a turn of the 20th century American sweat shop might have looked/sounded/felt like they could look no further than Amazon.”

In a video posted to Twitter on Wednesday, Sanders wondered why Amazon would have to pay workers to sing the company’s praises online if its working conditions are so great:

Amazon is paying some of its employees to tweet positive stories about the company. Hmm, why is that? pic.twitter.com/ucIHGN6w56

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) August 29, 2018

Sanders also reiterated a fact that he has trumpeted repeatedly over the past several weeks: According to public data, thousands of Amazon workers are forced to rely on public assistance programs like food stamps and Medicaid to survive because Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos—the richest man in the world—refuses to pay a living wage.

Bottom line: No one working for the wealthiest person on Earth should have to rely on food stamps. No one working for a man who earns $260 million a day should be forced to sleep in their car. Yet that is what’s happening at Amazon.

My full response: https://t.co/NQsi47qINt https://t.co/NkFQnSM3gl

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) August 29, 2018

In its blog post—which one journalist described as “entirely misleading“—Amazon insisted that its pay is “highly competitive” and asserted that “the average hourly wage for a full-time associate in our fulfillment centers, including cash, stock, and incentive bonuses, is over $15/hour before overtime.”

But as Gizmodo‘s Bryan Menegus noted on Wednesday, Amazon is “sneakily inflating its average hourly wage with stock options that require two years to vest and incentive bonuses individual workers have no direct control over.”

“Compared to its warehousing competitors, Amazon is the same or worse in terms of pay, with hard caps on raises, and far more punishing in terms of the productivity it extracts from its workers,” Menegus added, citing an analysis from earlier this year.

As Sanders observed in his statement, “Amazon’s median employee pay is only $28,446—nine percent less than the industry average and well below what constitutes a living wage in the United States.”

“Further, we believe that many of Amazon’s workers are employed by temporary staffing agencies and contractors and make even less than the median Amazon employee,” Sanders added. “Unfortunately, this is all the information we have because Amazon refuses to make public complete information about the wages and benefits provided by the contractors it uses to run fulfillment centers across the country.”

Undeterred by Amazon’s deceptive blog post, Sanders concluded that he still plans to introduce legislation next week that would force Amazon and other major corporations “off welfare” by imposing a 100 percent tax on the public assistance their low-paid workers receive.

“On September 5 we are going to introduce legislation to end the absurdity of middle class taxpayers having to subsidize large, profitable corporations, many of which are owned by billionaires,” Sanders wrote. “The American taxpayer should not be subsidizing the richest people in history so they can underpay their employees.”

How One Deportee Is Helping Other Exiled Immigrants in Mexico

Immigrants are the “enemy” in Donald Trump’s America. The president has made the arrest, detention and deportation of immigrants the centerpiece of his domestic policies, seeing it as an effective tool to whip up racial resentment among his base and preserve his power. Even though Trump has dramatically ratcheted up the immigration enforcement machine and racist anti-immigrant rhetoric, other U.S. presidents have engaged in the mistreatment and expulsion of immigrants for decades. Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, oversaw a record 2 million deportations during his presidency.

Among those Obama deported was a man named Israel Concha, who came with his family to the U.S. when he was only 4 years old. After living for more than 30 years in this country as an undocumented immigrant, Concha was pulled over for speeding, at which point his “nightmare,” as he calls it, began. In an interview with me, he explained that from that point onward, “It was the U.S. government versus Israel Concha.”

At the time of his arrest, Concha was offered an order he could have signed that would have allowed him to be immediately deported. But he was a business owner and had just been married—his wife was expecting their first child. So he decided to legally fight the deportation and spent two years in various detention centers in the U.S. “I still remember the first time I met my son,” he said. “It was at an immigration hearing. He was so close to me, only a few steps away, but yet so far.”

Concha’s son is now 5 years old, and father and son have yet to meet freely and be able to touch one another. As the parent of a 5-year-old boy myself, the trauma of what Concha and his child are experiencing is unimaginably heartbreaking.

When Concha inevitably lost his case, he was immediately sent back to Mexico—a country he did not consider home—and was promptly kidnapped. Because of security concerns, he felt unable to tell me the details of his kidnapping—except to say that he was tortured by his captors. Eventually, he was freed and worked for a time at a call center where his fluency in English became an asset. Two years later, he founded a nonprofit organization called New Comienzos, which translates to New Beginnings. It is designed to help newly deported people find their footing in an unfamiliar land.

Putting his own harrowing experience into a broader context, Concha told me, “My story is just one of thousands of such stories.” There have been so many immigrants deported to Mexico over the past decade or so that a growing community of people who once called the U.S. home have made a new home for themselves in a neighborhood in Mexico City called “Little L.A.,” where Concha’s organization is based. More than a thousand repatriated deportees from the U.S. live in the area, have started businesses and formed a community. Concha told me that enterprising deportees have opened tattoo parlors, nail salons and even a restaurant serving California-style burritos.

He recalled that when he was first dumped into Mexico, he had no support from either the Mexican or U.S. governments, a condition that made new deportees like him easy prey for criminals. Today he brims with pride that New Comienzos has helped more than 8,000 people since it opened two years ago.

With the Trump administration ramping up arrests of undocumented immigrants, especially in the interior of the country, Concha sees a stark difference between Obama—under whom he was deported—and Trump. “We’ve noticed there’s a lot more discrimination against our community, as undocumented immigrants or as Hispanics as well,” he said. Trump’s policy of deliberate family separation resulted in thousands of children cruelly ripped away from their parents. Today, hundreds of children are still separated because their parents have been deported while they remain in U.S. custody.

Concha told me, “We’re tired of a U.S. president that uses migrant families as a pawn in this chess game so he could get his wall.” He considers himself one of the lucky ones who was able to navigate the detention system thanks to his familiarity with American customs and his fluency in both English and Spanish. “What about other people like those from Central America that may not speak English or Spanish? It’s a humanitarian crisis,” he said.

Concha’s goal is to humanize migrants, deportees, refugees and the like. “If you know an undocumented person in America, or a deportee in Mexico, listen to their stories and you’ll see that they’re also human like you.”

Among the services Concha’s organization offers deportees is psychological assistance, legal help, food vouchers, and classes in Spanish grammar and Mexico’s culture and history. The organization even offers free certification in English fluency—which can help many newly deported people find good jobs in Mexico using skills they developed in the United States. Young Mexicans in particular who graduated from American colleges and universities have gifted the Mexican economy an American-educated work-force. In other words, the mass deportation has resulted in a “brain-drain” from the U.S.— making it our loss and Mexico’s gain.

“Many of us want to go back,” said Concha. “Like they say, ‘your home is where your heart is,’ and for many of us it’s still in the U.S.” He added, “But something funny is happening. We start falling in love with Mexico as well. Now the American Dream can also be achieved in Mexico.”

Concha himself is a perfect example of what the U.S. has lost with its policy of mass deportations. While he lived in this country, Concha obtained a college degree in business administration and went on to start a transportation company providing limos, shuttles, concierge and taxi services in his home state of Texas. His company employed about 20 U.S. citizens. All of that was lost when he was deported to Mexico.

Once he landed on his feet and started working at a call center, he earned commissions for referring people and spent two years saving enough money from the commissions to start New Comienzos. Everything in Concha’s life has led him to a place where he is now able to offer support systems for immigrants like him who were abused by the U.S. immigration system and ripped away from their homes. “This is my calling,” he said with a deep sense of conviction.

Top 7 Reasons Progressive Gillum Can Defeat DeSantis in Florida

Congressional representative and Florida gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis shocked the nation on Wednesday by warning Florida voters not to “monkey it up” by electing African-American Democratic standard-bearer Andrew Gillum, whom he incorrectly described as a “socialist.” Gillum was a Hillary Clinton delegate and voted for her, and his career as mayor of Tallahassee was not characterized by an expanded public sector or by a shrinkage of entrepreneurial opportunities. He does, however, support Medicare for all (i.e., single-payer universal health insurance), which a slight majority of Republican voters say in polling they also support. It has been alleged that DeSantis has been one of 52 administrators of an openly racist Facebook site.

DeSantis played the race card right from the beginning for a reason. Florida is a toss-up state that could go either way. DeSantis is signaling that he will attempt to scare the white business community in Florida silly at the prospect of an African-American governor who cares about the public and not just about the business elite.

Here are the reasons for which Gillum could well win:

1. Florida can go either way, Democrat or Republican and state and federal at-large elections are often very close. Any Democratic candidate can expect to come within one percentage point of winning a state-wide election there, right off the bat, which means that Gillum is very much in play. We saw this phenomenon in 2000 when whether George W. Bush or Al Gore won depended on some hanging chads and some ballot boxes apparently buried in the Everglades. That close result was no fluke. In 2008, Florida in a profound mortgage crisis went for Obama by 4,282,367 votes versus McCain’s 4,046,219, nearly a 3-point spread for the Democrats. But in 2012, Obama’s margin against Romney was much smaller, slightly less than 1 percent–though Obama did win. In 2016 Trump as Republican reversed this pattern, defeating Hillary Clinton by 1.2% of the vote. These results tell us that Florida can go either way, and this conclusion has been true since at least 2000. The same thing is true with regard to the governor’s office. In the 2014 governor’s race, Republican Rick Scott received 2,865,343 votes. Charlie Crist, a former Republican left behind by the Tea Party who ran as a Democrat, got 2,801,198 votes, thus losing by a margin of exactly 1 percent.

2. Florida’s demographic make-up is in flux. From 2010 to today, the population has grown from 18.8 million to about 21 million, an 11% increase. Immigrants into Florida tend to be Democrats (true of non-Cuban Latinos, African-Americans, and urban whites and youth). I think Florida is probably slightly bluer today than it was in 2010, despite the close results of state-wide elections mentioned above. As of August 2018, Professor Susan A. MacManus estimates that 40% of Floridians are Democrats, while only 36% are Republicans. Of course, voter suppression measures like voter i.d. requirements and anointing Democratic candidates like Crist who are literally Republicans can give the nod to the other side if they reduce the enthusiasm to come out and vote of Democrats, including minorities. Inability to attract Obama-level support from African-Americans doomed Clinton, as well. Obviously, Gillum at least has a shot at getting the Democratic base, including African-Americans, out to the ballot box.

3. Jerusalem embassy versus the Nazi factor. Five percent of Floridians are Jewish, and the vast majority of them vote Democratic. In the age of Trump and Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us,” Republicans may find it harder to win simply by playing the Israel card (a tactic that never worked against Obama in Florida presidential politics). It all depends on whether they think it is more important that Trump is moving the US embassy to Jerusalem or more important that he thinks anti-Semitic white nationalists are very fine people. DeSantis is a Trumpie, and Gillum might be able to tar him with that brush in Boca.

4. African-Americans comprise about 17% of the population of Florida, but only about 13 percent of the registered voters. (Some 20 percent cannot vote because of Florida’s Draconian law barring ex-felons from the voting booth). Gillum cannot count on their coming out to vote for him simply because he is an African-American. But if he inspires them to enthusiasm, this community could be important to his victory, as it was for Barack Obama. Initial indications are that he is inspiring African-Americans in Florida with a great deal of enthusiasm.

5. The Latino Factor: Slightly over a quarter of the population is Latino, though about a third of them are Cuban-Americans who trend Republican. That leaves 16.6% of the population as non-Cuban Latinos, including persons of Puerto Rican, Mexican, Dominican and other heritage. They mostly vote Democratic, and it would be surprising in the era of Trump if they weren’t pushed even further in the direction of that party. The third who are Cubans are much more in flux than in the past, with some younger Cuban-Americans having supported Obama. Gillum could make inroads here. Likewise, there are now 1.2 million Puerto Ricans in Florida. As American citizens, they can vote for president wherever they are. Hundreds of thousands may have left the island in the botched aftermath of Hurricane Maria. Only 7% say they are Republicans. Whether the newcomers will register and actually vote in Florida is a question mark. But remember that many statewide elections in Florida are decided by small numbers of voters.

6. Millennials trend heavily Democratic, but only 28% say they plan to vote in the midterms nationally. If the Parkland wave in Florida, which Gillum is courting by seeking sensible firearm safety regulation, turns into enthusiasm at the ballot box, it could be significant. Obama famously won the Iowa primaries in 2008 in large part because of the youth vote. Gillum has to galvanize the youth to vote if he is to win.

7. The environment. Florida is in a crisis caused by algal blooms, which are caused by industrialized agriculture and the run-off into the water of chemicals. Likewise, Florida is perhaps the state most at risk from the negative effects of climate change. Outgoing governor Rick Scott, now running for the Senate, has a horrible record on both issues. In the past, that record did not seem to matter, but close local observers are arguing that a sea change is happening even among some Florida Republicans on the environment. It is not a sure thing, but 2018 could be the year when environmental issues came to the fore in Florida politics. If so, DeSantis is toast.

One thing is for sure: the Florida gubernatorial race will be relatively close. And given that nearly half the state is neither white Protestant nor non-Hispanic Catholic, and given the big white progressive vote in Miami-Dade and other urban areas, playing the race card there could backfire big time.