Chris Hedges's Blog, page 558

Rights Group: Israeli Lethal Force in Gaza May Be War Crime

JERUSALEM — Human Rights Watch said Wednesday that Israel’s use of lethal force against Palestinian demonstrators in the Gaza Strip in recent weeks may constitute war crimes.

The statement was issued Wednesday ahead of an emergency U.N. General Assembly meeting to vote on a resolution condemning Israel’s “excessive use of force.” A similar Security Council resolution was vetoed earlier this month by the United States for being “fundamentally imbalanced” and “grossly one-sided,” U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley said.

Palestinians have held near-weekly protests since March 30, calling for a “right of return” to ancestral homes now in Israel. At least 120 Palestinians have been killed and more than 3,800 wounded by Israeli fire in protests along the border. The overwhelming majority of the dead and wounded have been unarmed, according to Gaza health officials.

The Israeli military has said its soldiers adhere to the rules of engagement to defend Israeli civilians and security infrastructure from attacks cloaked by the protests.

Human Rights Watch contended in its statement that the mostly unarmed protesters didn’t pose an imminent threat to Israeli troops or civilians, and therefore the use of live fire suggests a violation of international law. The organization said eyewitnesses recounted Palestinians were shot from a great distance from the fence, and others who “had not thrown stones or otherwise tried to harm Israeli soldiers” were shot from a closer range.

Israel has been accused of committing war crimes in its three wars in the Gaza Strip in the last decade. Last month the Palestinians urged the International Criminal Court in The Hague to launch an investigation into Israeli policies and actions in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza Strip, accusing Israel of systemic crimes.

Israel has called the Palestinian move “legally invalid.” Israel is not a member of the ICC and argues the court does not have jurisdiction.

The ICC has conducted a preliminary investigation since 2015 into alleged crimes in the Palestinian territories, including West Bank settlement construction and war crimes by Israel and Hamas in the 2014 war in Gaza.

Human Rights Watch’s Mideast director called on the international community to “impose real costs for such blatant disregard for Palestinian lives.”

“The U.N. Human Rights Council inquiry should identify and call for sanctions against officials implicated in ongoing serious human rights violations,” Sarah Leah Whitson said.

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Voters Reject GOP’s Rep. Sanford After Trump Points to 2009 Love Scandal

Rep. Mark Sanford, a vocal critic of President Donald Trump, lost his South Carolina congressional seat Tuesday hours after the president injected himself into the bitter Republican primary by stoking memories of the incumbent’s public extramarital affair [in 2009].

In the most dramatic result in primaries across five states, Sanford was the second incumbent House Republican to lose a primary this year — the latest victim of intense divisions among the GOP in the Trump era. Though he has a generally conservative voting record, his criticism of Trump as unworthy and culturally intolerant made him a target of the president’s most dedicated supporters, who often elevate loyalty over policy.

Sanford was defeated by state Rep. Katie Arrington, who spent her campaign blasting Sanford as a “Never Trumper.” And hours before polls closed, Trump posted a startlingly personal attack on Twitter, calling Sanford “very unhelpful.”

“He’s MIA and nothing but trouble,” Trump continued. “He is better off in Argentina.”

The swipe was a reference to Sanford’s unexplained disappearance from the state in 2009, which he later said was part of an affair he was carrying on with a woman in Argentina.

Even for a political figure with no shortage of confidence wading into his own party’s decision-making, Trump’s attack on Sanford was a bold case of going after a sitting member of Congress. It’s almost certain to make other Republicans even more reluctant to take him on, even as Trump has stirs division on trade, foreign policy and the Russia investigation.

In his remarks Tuesday night, Sanford was unbowed, saying, “I stand by every one of those decisions to disagree with the president.”

Sanford had never lost a political race in South Carolina and his defeat Tuesday was an abrupt end to a roller-coaster political career that included a resignation as South Carolina’s governor following his admission of the affair.

After declaring victory Tuesday, Arrington asked Republicans to come together. And she reminded them who she thinks leads them: “We are the party of President Donald J. Trump.”

Four other states voted Tuesday, including several races that will be key to determining which party controls the House of Representatives next year.

In other races:

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IN SOUTH CAROLINA, INCUMBENT GOVERNOR FACES RUN-OFF

Sanford was not the only establishment Republican to face a challenge Tuesday. South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, a close ally of Trump, was forced into a runoff after failing to muster the required 50 percent vote to win outright.

McMaster, an early supporter of the president’s 2016 campaign, had Trump’s full endorsement, marked by a weekend tweet.

But while Trump remains very popular in the state, McMaster has been shadowed by a corruption probe involving a longtime political consultant. McMaster received the most votes of the four Republicans running, but will face Greenville businessman John Warren in a second contest June 26.

McMaster, the former lieutenant governor, assumed the governorship last year after Nikki Haley resigned to become U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

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GOP’S ‘VICIOUS’ VIRGINIA VICTOR

In a big Virginia race , Republican Corey Stewart — known for his ardent defense of Confederate symbolism — won the Republican primary to face Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine.

Stewart surprised many by nearly winning last year’s Republican nomination for governor.

He was the top aide to Trump’s presidential campaign in Virginia in 2016, but was fired for staging an unauthorized protest of the Republican National Committee. Stewart had accused the party of inadequately defending the candidate after the release of a tape where Trump bragged about groping women.

As a candidate for governor in 2017, Stewart spoke out against removing Confederate monuments, including the Robert E. Lee statue that prompted a deadly protest in Charlottesville last year. Stewart called efforts to remove the monuments “an attempt to destroy traditional America.”

He said Tuesday he planned to wage a “vicious” campaign against Kaine.

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A HOUSE BELLWETHER IN VIRGINIA

Democratic State Sen. Jennifer Wexton was the clear winner in a six-way primary in a northern Virginia district considered key to the House battleground map this fall, and will challenge Republican Rep. Barbara Comstock.

Democrats in two other districts they hope to retake nominated women: Abigail Spanberger in central Virginia and Elaine Luria in the district that includes Virginia Beach.

In Comstock’s district, Wexton was the best-known in the field, and was viewed as the Democratic Party’s establishment choice. She had the endorsement of Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam.

Comstock, a moderate Republican who easily beat back a challenge from conservative Shak Hill, is one of the Democrats’ top targets in November. The second-term House member’s district leans Republican, though Democrat Hillary Clinton received more votes there than Trump did in 2016.

Though Wexton favors a ban on the sale of assault weapons, she defied what has been the tendency in some swing districts to nominate Democrats with liberal profiles on other key issues. She has not called for a single-payer, government-run health insurance system, as some Democratic House primary winners in California, Nebraska and Pennsylvania have.

Democrats need to gain 23 seats to win the majority in the House.

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TURNING THE LePAGE

Maine voters are deciding on a successor to term-limited, conservative Republican Gov. Paul LePage. But first they had to wrestle with a new balloting system. Maine on Tuesday debuted its statewide ranked-choice voting , which allows voters to rank candidates first to last on their ballot.

The system ensured that counting was slow and winners difficult to call. But businessman Shawn Moody won the GOP nomination after midnight. He maintained a wide lead through the night, but risked not winning the race outright under the new rules.

The Associated Press did not call the Democratic primary as none of the seven candidates was close to the majority needed to be declared the outright winner, so more tabulations are required next week under ranked-choice voting. Last-place candidates will be eliminated and votes reallocated until there is a winner, a process that may take more than a week.

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NEVADA, NORTH DAKOTA: SEE YOU IN NOVEMBER

Nevada and North Dakota are home to two of the most pivotal Senate races this year. What they didn’t have were competitive Senate primaries.

Nevada Sen. Dean Heller, the only Republican seeking re-election in a state that Hillary Clinton carried in 2016, and Democratic Rep. Jacky Rosen sailed through their primaries, and already have begun focusing their criticism on each other in what is expected to be among the most competitive Senate races this year.

There was also the return of Sharron Angle , the conservative who once ominously threatened to “take out” then-Sen. Harry Reid. Angle, who lost to Reid in her 2010 bid for Senate, lost her primary challenge to Rep. Mark Amodei on Tuesday.

Centrist Steve Sisolak won a bruising battle between Clark County commissioners vying to be Nevada’s first Democratic governor in two decades. Fellow board member Chris Giunchigliani ran as a progressive, knocking Sisolak for his positive rating from the National Rifle Association in light of the mass shooting in Las Vegas in October. Republican Attorney General Adam Laxalt easily cleared the GOP field.

In North Dakota, GOP Rep. Kevin Cramer will face moderate Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp . She is seeking re-election in a state Trump carried by 36 percentage points in 2016.

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Associated Press writers Meg Kinnard and Christina Myers in Columbia, S.C.; Marine Villeneuve in Augusta, Maine; Patrick Whittle in Portland, Maine; Alan Suderman in Richmond, Va.; Matthew Barakat in McLean, Va.; Scott Sonner in Reno, Nev.; Michelle Price in Las Vegas; and James MacPherson in Bismarck, N.D., contributed to this report.

The Devastating Cost of Fossil Fuel Investment

European and Chinese scientists have identified a simple new way to become poor: fossil fuel investment. Not only could it leave you without a penny to your name. It could perhaps precipitate a global financial crash within one generation.

Coal, oil and natural gas are already huge investments. The International Energy Agency foresees price rises until 2040, and investor confidence is high. But researchers from the Netherlands, the UK and Macao don’t see it that way.

They warn in the journal Nature Climate Change that, whatever the markets think, and whatever governments do, change is on the way.

Other forces are now driving global power and transportation in directions that suggest a dramatic decline in demand for fossil reserves. These will become what the money markets call “stranded assets”, and their value will slump some time before 2035.

And this bursting of what researchers call “the carbon bubble” – a reference to a three-centuries old financial disaster known to historians as the South Sea Bubble – could wipe between one and four trillion US dollars off the global economy. The financial crash of 2008  was triggered by a loss of a mere $0.25 trillion.

The scientists base their conclusion on a computer simulation known by the migraine-inducing acronym E3ME-FTT-GENIE, which is short for Energy-Environment-Economy Macroeconomic-Future Technology Transformations Grid Enabled Integrated Earth. They say it is the only such model that looks at the big picture: the macroeconomy, energy, the environment and global energy and transport systems according to both sector and geography.

Their argument is that the world is heading towards greater fuel efficiencies, renewable energy and low carbon technologies, whatever governments and the money markets may think.

In 2015, in Paris, 195 nations vowed to contain global warming – driven by greenhouse gases emitted from fossil fuel combustion – to “well below” 2°C above the historic levels. Economists and climate scientists have repeatedly warnedthat fossil fuels would be a bad bet. There has been evidence since the Paris Agreement that national and international action so far taken is not enough: the world could be heading for at least a 3°C rise this century.

The implication of the latest study is that, unless the world faces this reality, and switches to low-carbon investments, the global economy could suddenly collapse.

“Our analysis suggests that, contrary to investor expectations, the stranding of fossil fuel assets may happen even without new climate policies. This suggests a carbon bubble is forming and is likely to burst,” said Jorge Viñuales, of the University of Cambridge, and one of the authors.

“Individual nations cannot avoid the situation by ignoring the Paris Agreement or burying their heads in coal and tar sands. For too long, global climate policy has been seen as a prisoner’s dilemma game, where some nations can do nothing and get a free ride on the efforts of others. Our results show this is no longer the case.”

$4 trillion time-bomb

There is a catch: suppose nations become aware of the danger. A sudden push to fulfil the 2°C promise, combined with declines in fossil fuel demand but continued high output of fossil fuels, could trigger a collapse that would wipe $4 trillion off the global balance sheets.

Canada, Russia and the US would see their fossil fuel industries collapse. Fuel-importing nations such Japan, China and most EU countries might gain, especially if they had invested in low-carbon technologies to create jobs and boost gross domestic product.

“If we are to defuse this time-bomb in the global economy, we need to move promptly but cautiously. The carbon bubble must be deflated before it becomes too big, but progress must also be carefully managed,” said Hector Pollitt, of the University of Cambridge, and another of the authors.

“If countries keep investing in equipment to search for, extract, process and transport fossil fuels, even though their demand declines, they will end up losing money on these investments on top of their losses due to limited exports,” said Jean-François Mercure of Radboud University at Nijmegen in the Netherlands, and of Cambridge, who led the study. “Divestment from fossil fuels is both a prudent and necessary thing to do.”

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The Insidious Republican Plot to Hijack the Census

In a 5-4 decision along party lines, the Supreme Court ruled Monday that Ohio can purge thousands of voters from its rolls, freeing fellow red states to follow suit ahead of the 2018 and 2020 elections. Critics have rightly observed that Husted v. Philip Randolph will disenfranchise innumerable minorities and low-income earners, and yet its potential harm to American democracy would probably pale in comparison with the Trump administration’s efforts to rig the 2020 census.

Last December, at the Justice Department’s behest, the Census Bureau was instructed to add a question to its decennial survey about its respondents’ citizenship status. When the move was announced in March, officials justified the decision as one necessary to “fully enforce” the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But as a new NPR release reveals, their true agenda was decidedly more insidious.

According to more than 1,300 pages of documents published last week as part of a multistate lawsuit filed against the Trump administration, erstwhile White House adviser Steve Bannon and Kris Kobach, former vice chair of President Trump’s now-defunct Election Integrity Commission, aggressively lobbied Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross for the question to be added.

“[Kobach] told Ross that he was writing ‘at the direction of Steve Bannon’ and said it was ‘essential’ that the citizenship be added to the census,” notes Mother Jones’ Ari Berman. “Kobach wrote that the absence of a citizenship question ‘leads to the problem that aliens who do not actually ‘reside’ in the United States are still counted for congressional appointment purposes.’ ”

Along with Stephen Miller and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Bannon and Kobach have been two of the most virulent xenophobes in the Trump administration. Bannon previously served as executive chairman of Breitbart News, an open sewer of racist and Islamophobic propaganda, while Kobach is an established nativist and the mastermind behind former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s “self-deportation” plan in 2012. (Kansas’ secretary of state, Kobach was last seen driving through the city of Shawnee in a Jeep with a fake machine gun mounted on its roof as part of an annual parade.)

It’s no mystery why the pair might stump for a citizenship question on the census. The survey’s data not only determine where nearly $700 billion in federal aid is distributed across the country, but how many representatives a state will have, based on actual enumeration, or the total population in a given district. By systematically undercounting immigrant communities whose noncitizens might be reluctant to participate for fear of deportation and whose naturalized members tend to vote Democratic, the GOP can further tilt an already gerrymandered electoral map in its favor. (A recent report from the Brennan Center for Justice found that Democrats could win the popular vote by as much as 10 percentage points this November and still fail to recapture the House.)

Ultimately, this gambit is but a single component of a larger Republican project to consolidate minority rule. The only question that remains is how much the judiciary will enable the president’s party.

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Frustrated AMA Adopts Sweeping Proposals to Cut Gun Violence

CHICAGO — With frustration mounting over lawmakers’ inaction on gun control, the American Medical Association on Tuesday pressed for a ban on assault weapons and came out against arming teachers as a way to fight what it calls a public health crisis.

At its annual policymaking meeting, the nation’s largest physicians group bowed to unprecedented demands from doctor-members to take a stronger stand on gun violence — a problem the organizations says is as menacing as a lethal infectious disease.

The action comes against a backdrop of recurrent school shootings, everyday street violence in the nation’s inner cities, and rising U.S. suicide rates.

“We as physicians are the witnesses to the human toll of this disease,” Dr. Megan Ranney, an emergency-medicine specialist at Brown University, said at the meeting.

AMA delegates voted to adopt several of nearly a dozen gun-related proposals presented by doctor groups that are part of the AMA’s membership. They agreed to:

— Support any bans on the purchase or possession of guns and ammunition by people under 21.

— Back laws that would require licensing and safety courses for gun owners and registration of all firearms.

— Press for legislation that would allow relatives of suicidal people or those who have threatened imminent violence to seek court-ordered removal of guns from the home.

— Encourage better training for physicians in how to recognize patients at risk for suicide.

— Push to eliminate loopholes in laws preventing the purchase or possession of guns by people found guilty of domestic violence, including expanding such measures to cover convicted stalkers.

Many AMA members are gun owners or supporters, including a doctor from Montana who told delegates of learning to shoot at a firing range in the basement of her middle school as part of gym class. But support for banning assault weapons was overwhelming, with the measure adopted in a 446-99 vote.

“There’s a place to start and this should be it,” Dr. Jim Hinsdale, a San Jose, California, trauma surgeon, said before the vote.

Gun violence is not a new issue for the AMA; it has supported past efforts to ban assault weapons; declared gun violence a public health crisis; backed background checks, waiting periods and better funding for mental health services; and pressed for more research on gun violence prevention.

But Dr. David Barbe, whose one-year term as AMA president ended Tuesday, called the number of related measures on this year’s agenda extraordinary and said recent violence, including the Parkland, Florida, school shooting and the Las Vegas massacre, “spurred a new sense of urgency … while Congress fails to act.”

“It has been frustrating that we have seen so little action from either state or federal legislators,” he said. “The most important audience for our message right now is our legislators, and second most important is the public, because sometimes it requires public pressure on the legislators.”

While it is no longer viewed as the unified voice of American medicine, the AMA has more clout with politicians and the public than other doctor groups. It counted more than 243,000 members in 2017, up slightly for the seventh straight year. But it represents less than one-quarter of the nation’s million-plus physicians.

The National Rifle Association didn’t immediately respond to email and phone requests for comment on the doctors’ votes.

AMA members cited U.S. government data showing almost 40,000 deaths by gun in 2016, including suicides, and nearly 111,000 gun injuries. Both have been rising in recent years.

By comparison, U.S. deaths from diabetes in 2016 totaled almost 80,000; Alzheimer’s, 111,000; and lung disease, 155,000. The leaders are heart disease, with 634,000 deaths in 2016, and cancer, about 600,000.

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Sexual Harassment Rampant in Science, Report Reveals

A new report from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) reveals that half of women studying and working in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) positions at American universities have been subjected to sexual harassment. And, as STAT, an online journal of biotech, pharma and life sciences, reports, “there’s no evidence that current policies are significantly helping to stem the issue.”

Researchers spent two years surveying female students and faculty who were the targets of sexual harassment, compiling data from women at the University of Texas and Pennsylvania State University school systems, representing 10,000 undergraduates, graduate students and female faculty.

As The Washington Post observed, “Between 20 percent and 50 percent of female students in science, engineering and medicine, and more than 50 percent of faculty, said they had experienced harassment.”

Researchers also found that such harassment was more common for engineering and medical students than it was for students in non-science-oriented fields.

STAT notes how the results of this treatment impacted respondents’ personal and professional lives:

Victims interviewed for the report said they had skipped professional meetings and social situations, dropped out of research projects, and left jobs, just to avoid harassment. They described being mortified, devastated, and outraged in some cases. Many didn’t formally report their harassment, often for fear of retaliation. And some who did said the drawn-out proceedings drained them of precious time and energy to do their work.

Some scientists welcomed the reports’ findings. Heidi Lockwood, a professor of philosophy at Southern Connecticut State University, told the Post that the 300-page report is “a spectacular and encyclopedic piece of research and writing, and will no doubt serve as the touchstone for research, policy and advocacy in this area for years to come.”

Others, while grateful for quantitative data to back up their lived experience, questioned whether NASEM was willing to reckon with its own history of harassment accusations. Inder Verma, formerly a cancer biologist at the Salk Institute and editor in chief of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, resigned from both positions in the last few weeks following sexual harassment allegations.

Geoff Marcy, another NASEM member, resigned from his position at the University of California at Berkeley following a 2015 Buzzfeed article that revealed the university investigated student claims of harassment and found that Marcy had violated the school’s conduct policies.

But NASEM has not revoked Verma or Marcy’s memberships. As BethAnn McLaughlin, an assistant professor of neurology at Vanderbilt University, told the Post, the lack of action “certainly undermines the credibility of the National Academy to implement meaningful change.”

Still, the report offers recommendations for moving forward. They include hiring more women and people of color, especially in leadership positions; creating stronger anti-sexual harassment policies and being more transparent about them; providing more support services to victims of sexual harassment; and offering stricter enforcement of federal anti-discrimination policies such as Title VII.

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Federal Judge Approves AT&T-Time Warner Merger

WASHINGTON — A federal judge approved the $85 billion mega-merger of AT&T and Time Warner on Tuesday, a move that could usher in a wave of media consolidation while shaping how much consumers pay for streaming TV and movies.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon green-lit the merger without adding major conditions to the deal. The Trump Justice Department had sued to block the $85 billion merger, arguing that it would hurt competition in cable and satellite TV and jack up costs to consumers for streaming TV and movies.

Now, the phone and pay-TV giant will be allowed to absorb the owner of CNN, HBO, the Warner Bros. movie studio, “Game of Thrones,” coveted sports programming and other “must-see” shows. The Justice Department could decide to appeal the ruling, however.

“The impact from this decision will have wide reaching ramifications across the telecommunications, media, and tech industry for decades to come,” said GBH Insights analyst Dan Ives. “For AT&T and Time Warner, this is a major victory lap.”

The mega-merger was a high-stakes bet by AT&T Inc. on combining a company that produces news and entertainment with one that funnels it to consumers. The merged company, executives said, would be better able to compete in an era in which people spend more time watching video on phones and tablets and less time on traditional live TV on a big screen.

Leon said the government failed to prove that the merger would lead to higher prices and other ham to consumers.

“The government here has taken its best shot to oppose this merger,” Leon said, speaking to a packed courtroom in an unusual session weeks after the trial ended. But, he added, “the government’s evidence is too thin a reed for this court to rely on.”

Leon rejected the notion of temporarily suspending the merger for a possible appeal by the government. The “drop dead” deadline for completing the merger is June 21. If it’s not wrapped up by then, either company could walk away, and AT&T would have to pay a $500 million breakup fee.

The ruling is a stinging defeat for the Justice Department. The proposed merger was so big and consequential that it forced federal antitrust lawyers to reconsider legal doctrine that permitted mergers of companies that don’t directly compete. First floated in October 2016, the deal also brought fire from then-candidate Donald Trump, who promised to kill it “because it’s too much concentration of power in the hands of too few.”

Dallas-based AT&T is a wireless, broadband and satellite behemoth that also became the country’s biggest pay-TV provider with its purchase of DirecTV. It claims about 25 million of the 90 million or so U.S. households that are pay-TV customers.

Leon’s ruling could shape the government’s future competition policy. The ruling could open the floodgates to deal making in the fast-changing entertainment and video-content worlds. Major cable, satellite and phone companies are bulking up with purchases of entertainment conglomerates to compete against rivals born on the internet, like Amazon and Google.

Waiting in the wings are potential big-billions deals involving 21st Century Fox and Disney, Verizon and CBS, T-Mobile and Sprint. Comcast and Verizon are also jockeying for position in the new landscape.

As president, Trump has called the merger “not good for the country” and said he believed it would push pay-TV prices higher. Looming in the background of the deal has been Trump’s long-running feud with Time Warner’s CNN, which he has often derided as “failing” and a purveyor of “fake news.”

The six-week trial featured a parade of expert witnesses as attorneys for the opposing sides took Leon on a journey through the twisty dynamics of the media and entertainment landscape. The companies’ CEOs, AT&T’s Randall Stephenson and Jeffrey Bewkes of Time Warner Inc., testified in support of the deal.

The government argued that AT&T would gain outsize market power, jacking up the prices it charges cable providers to carry networks in the Time Warner stable. Post-merger, AT&T rivals like Charter Communications and Cox, which currently pay Time Warner for its channels, would suddenly also become AT&T’s customers. The government’s star witness was Carl Shapiro, an economist at the University of California, who used an economic model to predict that consumer cable bills could rise by $500 million annually in aggregate by 2021.

The companies’ main economist, Dennis Carlton from the University of Chicago, refuted Shapiro’s model as overly complicated and rejected his conclusions. The government failed to prove that the merger would dampen competition and innovation and raise prices for pay TV, said Daniel Petrocelli, the companies’ lead attorney in defending the merger. In fact, he suggested, consumers could end up paying less after a merger — maybe even $500 million less annually.

AT&T has said it needs to buy Time Warner to compete with the likes of Amazon, Netflix and Google in the shape-shifting streaming-TV environment. The combination would push technology forward and give consumers more choices, AT&T has promised.

“We are pleased that, after conducting a full and fair trial on the merits, the Court has categorically rejected the government’s lawsuit to block our merger with Time Warner,” said David McAtee, AT&T General Counsel. He said AT&T plans to close the deal on or before June 20.

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Former Georgia Prison Officer Who Raped Inmates Gets 4 Years

ATLANTA — A former high-ranking prison officer who raped at least three female inmates at a Georgia prison and then intimidated them to keep them from reporting the assaults has been sentenced to serve more than four years in federal prison.

U.S. District Judge William Moore on Monday sentenced Edgar Daniel Johnson, 51, to serve four years and three months followed by three years of supervised release, according to online court records. Johnson will also have to register as a sex offender.

He had pleaded guilty in October to three counts of willfully depriving the inmates of their Eighth Amendment rights under color of law, three counts of obstruction for coercing the inmates into covering up the assaults and one count of maliciously conveying false information about explosive materials.

He admitted that between Nov. 1, 2012, and Sept. 30, 2013, he had non-consensual sex multiple times with three female inmates at Emanuel Women’s Facility in Swainsboro, where he worked as a guard, according to a plea agreement.

Johnson also admitted calling Southside Fire Department in Chatham County to report a false bomb threat on Elba Island near the Port of Savannah in May 2017.

The women Johnson sexually assaulted are identified in court filings only by their initials, and The Associated Press generally does not name alleged victims of sexual crimes.

A woman who said she is the one identified in court filings as “S.A.” said in a phone interview Tuesday that she was relieved Johnson was sentenced to prison and will have to register as a sex offender.

“It makes me feel real good because he cannot go out and hurt anyone else,” she said. “His name will forever be out there.”

Her assigned work detail from spring 2012 through August 2013 included cleaning Johnson’s office. One day he stood behind her, put his arms around her and put his hands down into the front of her pants, she said. She grabbed his hands and asked why he was touching her, and he told her he liked her and that she was very pretty, she said.

She asked him not to touch her like that, but he frequently groped her when she was in his office and raped her twice, she said. Once she was out of prison, he harassed her by phone, she said.

The women in this case said Johnson forced them to have sex. But even consensual sex between an inmate and a prison employee is illegal.

Because inmates are vulnerable to sexual assault both by prison staff and other inmates, Congress in 2003 passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act, which calls for corrections systems to have a zero-tolerance policy on prison rape.

Investigators with the Georgia Department of Corrections began to look into allegations against Johnson after numerous inmates filed complaints, describing specific scenarios with similarities and details no one else would know, investigator Clay Nix told the AP in 2015. He said at the time that his office had identified more than a dozen women who said Johnson had assaulted them.

Johnson was fired in April 2015 and was arrested the following month on multiple state-level charges related to the investigation.

The status of the state case was not immediately clear. The plea agreement says the Emanuel County district attorney’s office had said it would dismiss all pending state charges if Johnson successfully entered a plea to the federal charges.

District Attorney Hayward Altman was not in the office Tuesday and did not immediately respond to an email. Johnson’s lawyer in the state case also did not immediately respond to an email and phone message.

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If You’re a Protester in Chicago, Big Brother Is Watching You

Even before thousands of demonstrators gathered in downtown Chicago to speak out against President Donald Trump’s inauguration last year, city police were watching.

Recently released police and city records show that officers combed through social media posts and opened a formal information-gathering investigation into the protesters.

Then, throughout that day—Jan. 20, 2017—police and top aides to Mayor Rahm Emanuel closely tracked the movements of protesters, from when they boarded trains and buses in their neighborhoods and continuing through hours of rallies and marches in the Loop.

It was another example of how the Emanuel administration routinely tracks protesters and activist groups, according to records I’ve acquired over the last several years through the Freedom of Information Act.

Now the mayor and police department may soon be able to use drones to monitor demonstrations and other public events.

This spring, mayoral allies in the Illinois General Assembly helped pass a measure that would allow law enforcement agencies statewide to use drones for “legitimate public safety purposes” at public gatherings, including to keep tabs on crowd movements. Each department would have to submit an annual report to the state on its drone usage, but otherwise would largely be able to create its own policies. The bill hasn’t been sent to Gov. Bruce Rauner yet.

Chicago’s police and political leaders have a long, troubled history of snooping on groups exercising their First Amendment rights. Police investigated demonstrators and activists under Emanuel’s predecessor, Richard M. Daley. And for decades before that, including the 20-year reign of Daley’s father, Richard J. Daley, the department’s Red Squad infiltrated dissident groups, civil rights organizations, and others seen as opponents of City Hall. The unit was dismantled in the 1970s and the department adopted new rules that were supposed to safeguard civil rights.

Still, the police department has opened investigations to monitor, infiltrate or conduct surveillance on protest groups at least five times since Emanuel became mayor in 2011, records show. Its previous targets included Occupy Chicago protesters, opponents of the 2012 NATO summit, Black Lives Matter activists, and Southsiders Organized for Unity and Liberation, a network of churches and neighborhood groups.

As events on Inauguration Day show, the Chicago Police Department and other city agencies already maintain an extensive camera, data-collection and communications network to keep tabs on protests and other public gatherings.

In late 2016, two activists created a Facebook page to announce plans for an Inauguration Day protest outside Trump International Hotel and Tower in downtown Chicago. Eventually 23,000 people indicated they were interested. Hundreds commented on the event’s Facebook page.

From the beginning, organizers stressed that they wanted the event to be peaceful and focused on speaking out against hate. But dozens of the comments on the Facebook page came from Trump supporters who mocked supporters of Hillary Clinton and other “liberals,” often with crude language.

On Jan. 19, 2017, a suburban man named Jeffrey Jacobs weighed in.

“Good place for a bomb downstairs Wacker,” Jacobs wrote, referring to the lower level of Wacker Drive, below the spot where protesters planned to gather across the river from Trump Tower. “In one of those homeless persons tents [sic].”

Even a cursory look at Jacobs showed he wasn’t an anti-Trump protester. On Facebook he had “liked” pages such as the Tea Party Patriots, “Ban liberals not guns,” “Not voting for Monica Lewinsky’s ex boyfriend’s wife,” and Occupy Democrats. His post about bombing Lower Wacker also prompted reprimands from other commenters.

When I reached Jacobs by phone recently, he volunteered that he voted for Trump. He also told me his Facebook comment was meant to be “sarcastic”—his way of saying that demonstrations can be dangerous when they take over the streets.

“I consider that a riot when they come down and protest,” Jacobs said.

Police analysts highlighted the comment last year as they were conducting “reviews” of social media about the planned protests, according to department records. The next morning, police Commander Leo Panepinto cited it in paperwork requesting approval to open an investigation. He also wrote that other commenters, including some he described as “Black Bloc” members, discussed “civil disobedience.”

That, he said, raised the possibility of violence. He didn’t name these commenters.

Panepinto is the commanding officer at the department’s Crime Prevention and Information Center, or CPIC, where police analyze information on crimes and public events alongside officials from the FBI and the federal Department of Homeland Security.

“To allow for lawful demonstrations to take place and to investigate the threat and possible criminal acts that are associated with these postings,” he wrote, “analysts will review the main sites that call for gatherings and then drill down on individuals that are associated with the threats.”

That seemed to indicate that, as part of the investigation, police would look into the Facebook post about violence.

Panepinto then asked for legal approval to “monitor” the protest event page and other social media—even though his analysts had already been doing so, as he wrote in his investigation request.

Under the department’s rules, Chicago police are allowed to monitor, infiltrate or conduct surveillance on protesters and political groups—in what they call “Investigations Directed at First Amendment-Related Information”—if they can establish a “reasonable law enforcement purpose” for doing so. But the approval doesn’t come from anyone on the outside; the department’s lawyers make the call.

In this case, the lawyers signed off on the investigation, and police continued to go through protesters’ social media.

Meanwhile, both the department and the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications tracked protesters in real time. The information was then shared with top mayoral aides.

Shortly after 11 a.m. on Inauguration Day, for example, Anthony Pascente, the city’s deputy chief operating officer, emailed a protest update to then-Deputy Mayor Andrea Zopp, chief of staff Joe Deal, mayoral spokesman Adam Collins and other city officials. Pascente informed the group that students from Juarez High School in Pilsen were planning to attend a protest in the Loop that afternoon. He and police officials also sent updates about groups headed downtown from Pilsen and the Near North Side.

Two hours later, a dispatch from CPIC informed Emanuel aides and other police officials that the Juarez students were on their way.

Just before 3 p.m., CPIC issued another bulletin noting that students and other protesters had assembled in the Loop, and more were coming: “Approximately 35 people have boarded the Red Line and are heading to Daley Plaza.”

Over the next eight hours, police and other city officials kept tabs on crowds that grew to thousands of protesters as they took trains and buses downtown, gathered near Trump Tower and eventually split off into several marches. One group shut down sections of Lake Shore Drive.

Along the way, police arrested 16 people for misdemeanor offenses such as waving flares, obstructing traffic and running into police officers on bikes. None resulted in a conviction, though one case is pending.

Early the next morning, Panepinto filled out paperwork to close his inquiry into the protests. He noted the arrests but offered no additional details of what investigators had done.

But Jacobs — whose bomb comment was used as a reason for the investigation — told me he was never contacted by the police or any other law enforcement agency.

That’s because police concluded the comment wasn’t “credible,” department spokesman Anthony Guglielmi wrote me in an email. Guglielmi said police received a tip about Jacobs’ post and then opened their investigation—which is a different account than the one Panepinto offered in his paperwork.

“The Department reviewed the tip and vetted the information,” Guglielmi wrote. “It was determined that it was not credible and there was no further need to question the poster.”

Both Guglielmi and a statement from the mayor’s office said city departments team up to ensure public safety while protecting citizens’ First Amendment rights.

Drones would simply enhance those efforts, they said, by adding to their camera network while costing less than using helicopters, which police are already able to do.

“The proposed changes to the Drone Act strengthen the transparency requirements set forth under current law,” Guglielmi wrote, pointing to its annual reporting mandate.

But many questions remain.

Officials in Chicago and beyond are expanding their abilities to watch people in the name of public safety, but the public has little ability to watch them back.

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DOJ Backs Claim of Free-Speech Violations at University of Michigan

The Trump administration has decided that anti-bullying policies on college campuses are a threat to free speech rights and is using the resources of the Justice Department to go after them, most recently at the University of Michigan.

The New York Times reported Tuesday that the department filed a statement of interest in a federal court brief in Michigan’s Eastern District, supporting a student group called Speech First that alleged that its members were discriminated against for wearing “Make America Great Again” hats and supporting President Trump.

“Instead of protecting free speech, the university imposes a system of arbitrary censorship of, and punishment for, constitutionally protected speech,” John M. Gore, an acting assistant attorney general, wrote in a brief.

The Times reports that the suit takes aim at “a series of events at Michigan, including an incident in which Charles Murray, a conservative speaker invited to campus by Young Americans for Freedom, was [according to the lawsuit] ‘met with chants, music, intentionally annoying cellphone sounds, an overhead projector displaying an arrow pointing to him along with the words white supremacist.’ ”

Speech First was formed in February and sued the University of Michigan in May.

The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that “the Justice Department also challenged the constitutionality of the university’s Bias Response Team, which the department said ‘consists of university administrators and law enforcement officers’ and, the department says, ‘has the authority to subject students to discipline and sanction.’ ”

In response, a University of Michigan spokesman told the The Detroit News that “[c]ontrary to the department’s statement, the university’s Bias Response Team does not ‘ha[ve] the authority to subject students to discipline and sanction.’ Rather, it provides support to students on a voluntary basis.”

As Michigan grapples with a Trump administration challenge, colleges across the country are watching for signs that coming events might cause trouble on their campuses, according to the Times. The implications of on-campus free speech debates have spread far beyond students and faculty, to op-ed pages, Twitter feeds and even dinner tables across America.

Protests last year against right-wing, former Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos and conservative commentator Ben Shapiro’s appearances at UC Berkeley dominated headlines for weeks. New York Times op-ed writer Bari Weiss made a name for herself in March by telling liberals that they are the real bigots for protesting feminist contrarian Christina Hoff Sommers’ talk at Lewis and Clark Law School.

Michigan is the fourth school to be the target of a statement of interest by the Justice Department in a free speech case. The others include Georgia Gwinnett College, Los Angeles Pierce College and the University of California at Berkeley.

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