Chris Hedges's Blog, page 618

Watchdog Group Sues for Information: Did Ivanka Work Against Equal Pay?

Although Ivanka Trump positioned herself as an advocate for women and children during her father’s presidential campaign, she’s defended President Trump’s rollback of an Obama-era rule requiring employers with over 100 employees to report data on the gendered breakdown of their employees’ wages. On Tuesday, a watchdog group sued the Trump administration over its failure to respond to a public records request on Ivanka’s role in that decision.

Newsweek reports:

The lawsuit, filed by Democracy Forward against the Office of Management and Budget, fittingly on Equal Pay Day, and obtained by Newsweek, seeks to “compel it to produce documents that would shed light on the role Ivanka Trump had in the decision to suspend implementation of a rule that would have required companies to report pay data to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.”

It concerns the office’s nonresponse to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request the Washington, D.C.-based watchdog filed in November, a couple months after Trump—who vowed to champion equal pay—made an about-face on the issue.

Democracy Forward hopes to obtain correspondence between the OMB and Ivanka Trump or her aides, as well as any records from her phone calls and meetings about the rollback. The organization filed the request Nov. 16 and was supposed to hear back from the OMB within 20 days—but says the office never responded.

“Ivanka had promised to be a voice for the working women,” Democracy Forward spokeswoman Charisma Troiano told Newsweek. “She instead appears to have been complicit … as far as her role in the administration’s rolling back of a data rule that would have helped women secure equal pay.”

“It was curious to us that someone who had been seemingly an advocate of equal pay would in such short time reverse course,” she added. “We file this FOIA lawsuit to find out exactly how complicit she was in allowing this rollback to move forward.”

Troiano was referring to comments like the one made by Ivanka at the July 2016 Republican National Convention when she asserted: “As president, my father will change the labor laws that were put into place at a time when women were not a significant portion of the workforce. He will fight for equal pay for equal work, and I will fight for this too, right alongside of him.”

The Trump administration justified the repeal of the rule by arguing that the requirements were “unnecessarily burdensome” for employers and did “not adequately address privacy and confidentiality issues.” Democracy Forward also sued the administration for the repeal back in November, claiming that the action was “arbitrary and capricious” as well as illegal because the Office of Management and Budget did not “have the authority to stay a collection of data required by agency rule.”

Hairdresser Brands Missouri Governor a Sexual Abuser

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens initiated a physically aggressive unwanted sexual encounter with his hairdresser and threatened to distribute a partially nude photo of her if she spoke about it, according to testimony from the woman released Wednesday by a House investigatory committee.

The graphic report details multiple instances in which the woman said Greitens spanked, slapped, grabbed, shoved and called her derogatory names during a series of sexual encounters as he was preparing to run for office in 2015. The testimony contradicts Greitens’ previous assertions that “there was no violence” and “no threat of violence” in what he has described as a consensual extramarital affair.

The report, signed by all seven committee members, describes the woman’s testimony as credible and notes that Greitens has so far declined to testify or provide documents to the panel. It also outlines instances where Greitens’ public comments appear to run counter to some of her allegations.

The special House investigation was initiated shortly after Greitens was indicted in February on a felony invasion-of-privacy charge for taking a nonconsensual photo of the partially nude woman and transmitting it in a way that could be accessed by a computer. The woman told the committee that Greitens took the photo after manipulating her into a compromising position during an unwanted sexual encounter and that he told her “everyone will know what a little whore you are” if she told anyone about him.

Greitens, 44, has refused to directly answer media questions about whether he took the photo but he has steadfastly denied any criminal wrongdoing. He said he expects to be proven innocent during this trial, which is scheduled for May 14.

Speaking shortly before the report was released, Greitens told reporters gathered at the Capitol that he expected it to contain “lies and falsehoods” and reaffirmed his commitment to remaining in office.

“This is a political witch hunt,” Greitens said, later adding: “This is exactly like what’s happening with the witch hunts in Washington, D.C.”

The legislative report could serve as a basis for lawmakers to initiate impeachment proceedings to try to remove Greitens from office, though it makes no recommendation about what lawmakers should do. Impeachment can occur independently of a criminal case.

House Minority Leader Gail McCann Beatty said: “For the good of the state, Eric Greitens must immediately resign” or else the House must “restore integrity” to the office. Senate Minority Leader Gina Walsh also called for the House to impeach Greitens if he doesn’t quit.

According to the report, the woman testified that she met Greitens in 2013 as a customer of her hair salon. She said she had a crush on Greitens but was shocked when he ran his hand up her leg and touched her crotch without her consent during a March 2015 hair appointment. He later invited her to his St. Louis home while his wife was out of town.

After she arrived through the back door, the report said that the woman testified Greitens searched her purse and “patted her down from head-to-toe.” He then asked if she had exercised and had her change into a white T-shirt with a slit on the top and pajama pants.

“I thought, oh, this is going to be some sort of sexy workout,” the woman testified.

But once in his basement, Greitens taped her hands to pull-up rings, blindfolded her, started kissing her, ripped open the shirt and pulled down her pants, the woman testified. She didn’t give consent to be disrobed or kissed, the report said. The woman testified that she then heard a click, like of a cellphone picture, and saw a flash.

The woman testified that Greitens told her: “Don’t even mention my name to anybody at all, because if you do, I’m going to take these pictures, and I’m going to put them everywhere I can. They are going to be everywhere, and then everyone will know what a little whore you are.”

When she remained silent, the woman said Greitens “spanked me and said, ‘Are you going to mention my name?’ And I said, I just gritted through my teeth, and I said, ‘No.’ And he’s like, ‘Good, now that’s a good girl.'”

“I was definitely fearful,” the woman testified to the legislative committee.

After telling Greitens, “I don’t want this,” the woman testified that Greitens unbound her hands. She said she started “uncontrollably crying.” She said Greitens then grabbed her in a hug and laid her down. She said he put his penis near her face and she gave him oral sex. Asked by the committee whether the oral sex was coerced, she responded: “Coerced, maybe. I felt as though that would allow me to leave.”

The woman testified she returned to Greitens’ house later that day because she had forgotten her keys. She said she confronted him about taking a photo and he responded: “You have to understand, I’m running for office, and people will get me, and I have to have some sort of thing to protect myself.” Then she said Greitens added: “I felt bad, so I erased it.”

The House committee report said it doesn’t possess any physical or electronic evidence of the photo.

The woman testified that she had several additional sexual encounters with Greitens, including one in June 2015 when “he slapped me across my face” after she acknowledged having slept with her husband. She said she didn’t think Greitens was trying to hurt her, but rather “I felt like he was trying to claim me.”

In another subsequent sexual encounter, the woman testified that Greitens “out of nowhere just, like kind of smacked me and grabbed me and shoved me down on the ground, and I instantly just started bawling.”

It “actually hurt, and I know that I actually was really scared and sad when that happened,” she testified.

The woman’s account contradicts statements Greitens made previously. Asked in a January interview with The Associated Press if he had ever slapped the woman, Greitens responded: “Absolutely not.”

Greitens, a Rhodes Scholar and former Navy SEAL officer, was considered a rising GOP star. He went so far as to reserve the web address ericgreitensforpresident.com years ago.

Greitens first acknowledged having an extramarital affair on Jan. 10, when St. Louis TV station KMOV ran a story revealing that the woman’s ex-husband had released a secret audio recording of a 2015 conversation in which she told him about the photo Greitens took at his home.

Greitens’ attorneys have asserted that prosecutors have failed to produce evidence that a photo exists. Prosecutors previously acknowledged that they don’t have the photo, though they could be trying to obtain it.

On Wednesday, Greitens referenced a recent court filing by his defense attorneys stating that the woman had testified in the criminal case that she’s unsure whether her belief that Greitens had a phone came from a dream.

Greitens’ attorneys had tried to persuade the Legislature to delay its report until after his criminal trial, arguing that it could include some information that isn’t fully accurate and could taint the jury pool.

On Wednesday, Greitens criticized the House report as “one-sided tabloid, trash gossip that was produced in a secret room.”

In addition to the legislative investigation and the criminal case, Republican Attorney General Josh Hawley is investigating The Mission Continues, the veterans charity founded by Greitens, as it relates to the state’s consumer protection and charitable registration and reporting laws. That probe came after media reports that Greitens’ campaign had obtained and used a charity donor list in 2015 as it ramped up fundraising for his gubernatorial bid.

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Associated Press reporters Blake Nelson in Jefferson City, Jim Salter in St. Louis and John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, contributed to this report.

Marine General Overseeing Sexual Assault Allegations Reportedly Calls Them ‘Fake News’

As the U.S. Marine Corps continues to address recent non-consensual nude photo-sharing, a Marine general in charge of sexual assault prevention and allegations has been suspended after he reportedly ridiculed assault allegations as “fake news.”

USA Today reports:

Brig. Gen. Kurt Stein, director of Marine and Family Programs, made the remarks April 6 before an audience estimated at hundreds of civilian employees and Marines at their base in Quantico, Va., according to three people who attended the all-hands meeting last week. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they said they feared retaliation.

The allegations that Stein disparaged, first reported by USA TODAY in February, involved two civilian employees who said a Marine officer had made several sexual overtures to them. The allegations initially were deemed unfounded, but the Marine Corps Commandant, Gen. Robert Neller, ordered a new investigation of the claims in March.

The Marine Corps confirmed that Stein had been suspended by Neller after an anonymous tip about his comments at the National Museum of the Marine Corps was phoned into the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

“We expect every Marine, uniformed and civilian—and particularly those in leadership positions—to take allegations of misconduct seriously and to promote positive command climates,” said Lt. Col. Chris Devine, a Marine Corps spokesman. “As a Corps we are committed to fully investigating and holding ourselves accountable when those allegations are shown to be true. Leaders have a responsibility to ensure that their Marines and civilian employees believe they will be taken seriously if they come forward with allegations of misconduct of any kind.”

Rep. Jackie Speier, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee’s personnel panel, added: “If these allegations are true, Gen. Stein has no business serving in the Marine Corps. Leaders must be held to the highest standard if the Corps expects the rank and file to live up to its core values of honor, courage and commitment.”

However, some sexual assault and harassment advocates say Stein’s alleged comments are indicative of a wider problem of sexual assault and harassment in the Marine Corps. “This is the leader of a sexual assault and harassment response unit and to use language calling assault fake news is very dangerous,” Erin Kirk-Cuomo, a Marine veteran who co-founded Not in My Marine Corps, an effort to fight sexual harassment and assault in the military, told Bustle. “With leaders like this it is no wonder that the Marine Corps has the highest rates of sexual assault and harassment out of any of the services.”

Sherry Yetter, now the senior coordinator for sexual assault response for Marine Corps Recruiting Command, has accused the corps of continuing to minimize complaints from 2014. USA Today continues:

An investigative report filed by the Marines in 2017 and obtained by USA TODAY found Sherry Yetter’s complaint unsubstantiated, amounting to his word against hers. …

She complained in 2014 but was discouraged from pursuing the case because her assignment was temporary, she said. She complained again in July 2017 when [Maj. David] Cheek was reassigned to the building where she works with her husband, a Marine lieutenant colonel, and the other woman who filed a complaint.

“If the Marine Corps had done what it was supposed to do in 2014, he wouldn’t have been brought back to the same building,” Yetter said. “The commanding officer was notified in 2014. They had every chance to handle this in-house. The leadership chose not to act on it. It’s still happening. I still go to work in a hostile, unsafe work environment. My perception is that the Marine Corps simply doesn’t care.”

U.S. Should Do the Opposite of What Saudis Want

Consider the irony: The United States, which bills itself as the world’s beacon of freedom, has for some 70 years allied itself with one of the last absolute monarchies on the planet. Time and again, Washington has done the bidding of Saudi Arabia in the Greater Middle East, as a catalog of presidents allowed themselves to be dragged along by despotic kings in keffiyehs. It’s downright embarrassing and a monument to American hypocrisy. So, you ask, why aren’t mainstream, so-called liberals outright appalled by all this? Well, they’re as hawkish and beholden to the military-industrial complex as the unapologetic Republicans.

Once, not too long ago, a cynic could argue that such supplication was necessary to feed a national addiction to the Saudis’ liquid gold, but no more. As domestic energy sources have swelled (dangerously, from an environmental standpoint) and renewables technology has advanced, the U.S. no longer relies on Saudi oil to run its bustling—if debt-ridden—economy of plenty. That Washington still dances to Riyadh’s tune indicates something far more disturbing: Either U.S. policymakers are criminally naive, or they actually agree with Saudi policies and priorities.

It is hard to know which is worse.

So much has happened of late in the Mideast that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep up. First, President Trump—rightfully, I think—announced that the U.S. would be leaving Syria “like, very soon.” Then, just one week later, Syrian dictator Bashar Assad allegedly gassed his own people (again), and Trump did a 180, tweeting a warning that missiles “will be coming” to Syria.

So, which is it? I guess the American people will have to (indifferently) wait and see.

What we do know is what Saudi Arabia wants. Last week, during his extended public relations tour to the U.S., the king-in-waiting, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (“MBS” for short), told Time magazine that “we believe American troops should stay in Syria for at least the mid-term, if not the long term.” How nice of him to take time out of his lipstick-on-a-pig charm offensive—which included a “60 Minutes” spot—to tell us where our troops should and shouldn’t kill and be killed thousands of miles from home. Apparently, he is quite pleased to see the U.S. military occupy one-third of Syria indefinitely and dangerously stare down nearby Russian, Assadist and Iranian forces. And remember, the U.S. military—along with its many proxy militias—is just one misstep away from catastrophic global war.

The occupation of Syria, as I’ve written in this publication, is a veritable trap, all risk and no reward. If stability in eastern Syria is so vital, why don’t well-armed, U.S.-supplied Saudi troops—brother Muslims—step into the void? Easy. The Saudi military is too busy waging a legally dubious terror war on the people of Yemen.

Besides, Saudi ground troops prefer not to get their hands dirty—unless, that is, they’re beheading helpless women on charges of “sorcery.” Even in Yemen, the Saudis tend to rely on Sudanese mercenaries to do the hard fighting against the Houthis. It’s the Saudi way, and these days the U.S. military seems to be the crown prince’s favorite toy army.

The problem is, each and every time the U.S. has followed the Saudi lead and done the king’s bidding, the results have been catastrophic. None of these ongoing operations is in the strategic interest of the United States, and too often they place U.S. troops on the wrong side of history. Here are just a few areas in which doing the Saudis’ bidding has led to—often ongoing—disasters:

In Syria, Saudi arms and cash were regularly funneled to Islamist and jihadist rebels. This includes Nusra Front, the al-Qaida affiliate in the Levant. Worse still, the Saudis have spent seven years trying to force a regime change agenda—to topple Assad—on presidents Barack Obama and Trump. Never mind that toppling Assad would risk war with nuclear-armed Russia; forget about the thorny question of what comes next, and the genuine danger of a jihadist successor state. The Saudis don’t like Assad. They want him gone. And, well, they plan to use the U.S. military to accomplish it—consequences be damned!
In Yemen, the Saudis have personally unleashed the world’s worst humanitarian crisis on the poorest country in the Arab world. In that shameful task, Washington is shockingly complicit, providing intelligence, guided bombs and in-flight refueling services to the Saudi high command. In Yemen, as in so much of the Mideast these days, America acts as little more than the Saudis’ air force and logisticians. The output of all that blockading and bombing has been outrageous: the world’s worst-ever cholera epidemic, a worsening famine and tens of thousands of civilian combat deaths. Besides smearing (again) the American reputation in the region, the terror bombing has actually reduced U.S. security by empowering the local al-Qaida affiliate, AQAP.
In Iran, the Saudis would like nothing more than a U.S. war against the Islamic Republic. Think American (and Iranian) blood for Saudi strategic gain. And, with Trump’s recent appointments of hysterical war hawks Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, war with Iran seems like a real possibility. The Saudis have been trying to scuttle any attempted American rapprochement—particularly Obama’s—with the Islamic Republic. They disapproved of the Iran nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) and are now encouraging Trump—who doesn’t need much persuading—to tear up a deal that even the administration admits the Iranians have been following. If the Saudi crown prince has his way, the U.S. will unilaterally pull out of a six-party deal, which the Europeans and Chinese have already indicated they intend to maintain. That would leave the U.S. diplomatically isolated, and, furthermore, imagine the message that scuttling the deal would send to North Korea. Why would Kim Jong Un even consider serious negotiations with Trump if the U.S. demonstrates its unreliability in adhering to existing nuclear deals?

The Saudis don’t care about U.S. safety or our best interests. They see America—especially its military—as just another tool in their regional arsenal. They want guns, money, tanks, planes and diplomatic cover—which they’ve now received for decades—from Washington. The U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia’s kings and princes is an international embarrassment and has ruined whatever is left of our reputation on the Arab street. They’ve bogged us down in stalemated wars, dragged us into probable war crimes in Yemen and all the while underwritten Wahhabi Islamist extremism throughout the region.

Why do it, then? Who benefits? Not the average American citizen, of course. Not the volunteer soldier sent to fight, die and kill in our sundry unwinnable wars. No, the only winner is the arms industry, the military-industrial behemoth, which racked up record arms deals worth hundreds of billions of dollars under both “liberal” Obama and “conservative” Trump. Profits soar and corporate bonuses skyrocket as average folks’ wages remain stagnant and some junior enlisted soldiers survive on food stamps.

So, here’s a novel idea: Let’s pressure Washington to craft U.S. foreign policy that is consistent with American interests and quit placating and supporting one of the globe’s last absolute monarchies—a kingdom trapped in the seventh century. Let us walk the walk we so deftly talk and act like the “city on a hill” our leaders seem so sure that we are.

It won’t be easy. Our crimes are many, the U.S. has much penance to do and a long way to go. Still, ditching the Saudis would be a good start.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author, expressed in an unofficial capacity, and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.

Vermont’s Republican Governor Signs New Gun Restrictions

MONTPELIER, Vt. — Vermont on Wednesday raised the age to buy firearms, banned high-capacity magazines and made it easier to take guns from people who pose a threat — the first significant gun ownership restrictions in state history, signed into law by the Republican governor.

It’s a remarkable turnaround for the largely rural state that traditionally has refused to impose restrictions on gun ownership.

Standing on the Statehouse steps before a noisy crowd of hundreds gun rights activists and supporters, Gov. Phil Scott signed the bills into law. Supporters shouted “thank you,” while opponents, many wearing hunter orange, shouted “traitor!” and booed the governor.

“This is not the time to do what’s easy, it’s time to do what’s right,” said Scott, who continued to speak despite loud chants from the two sides.

Scott, a gun owner, had urged the Legislature to pass gun restrictions in the aftermath of what police called a narrowly averted high school shooting in Fair Haven. Authorities said they learned a teen from Poultney was planning to kill as many people possible. He was arrested and charged Feb. 15, the day after a high school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 people dead.

Scott said the incident proved to him that Vermont isn’t immune from the school violence that has plagued other parts of the country.

“This is one of those moments as a state when we have the opportunity to do things differently,” Scott said.

Vermont’s new gun laws are mild by some standards. But they are part of a trend of states passing gun restrictions, prompted in part by the Florida mass shooting, said Robert Spitzer, a political science professor at the State University of New York at Cortland who has written books on gun policy.

“There has been movement in a number of states,” Spitzer said. But Vermont is significant “because Vermont is traditionally such a strong gun-rights state and has not moved in this direction in ages, if ever,” he said.

While gun control advocates have praised Vermont’s new laws, the state’s traditionally powerful gun rights advocates and members of the outdoor community feel betrayed by Scott, whom many supported during his 2016 election campaign. During debate on the legislation, many firearms owners milled around the Statehouse halls wearing hunter orange vests or hats.

“The tyranny of democracy has overwhelmed the protections of my constitutional, individual rights,” said Bill Moore, a firearms policy analyst for the Vermont Traditions Coalition who fought against the gun restrictions.

Gun rights advocates in the state generally support taking guns away from people deemed dangerous or prone to domestic violence, both covered by the new legislation. But they fiercely oppose provisions in the laws that raise the age to buy firearms from 18 to 21, restrict the size of gun magazines and require background checks for most private gun sales.

On Tuesday, a bipartisan group of Vermont lawmakers urged Scott to veto the bill that contains the provisions they find onerous.

Democratic State Sen. John Rodgers, who represents a rural area of the state known as the Northeast Kingdom and spoke fiercely against some of the gun restrictions, is considering a run for governor.

“It will affect law-abiding citizens while doing nothing to stop evil people and criminals from doing harm to others,” Rodgers said of the legislation.

But supporters of the restrictions say the time has come in Vermont.

“I think it sends a signal that the cultural shift … is huge in Vermont, and I don’t think there is anything in these bills that are going to take guns away from any law-abiding person,” said Clai Lasher-Sommers, executive director of the Gun Sense Vermont, which was formed in the aftermath of the 2012 elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., that left 26 first-graders and educators dead.

During the signing ceremony, gun rights supporter Ben Tucker, of Tunbridge, constantly yelled at the governor.

“This whole thing is wrong,” Tucker said afterward. “It’s just wrong in every sense of the word.”

Victoria Biondolillo, 20, of Barre, a University of Vermont student and Republican Party activist, said safety is paramount.

“I think it takes a lot of courage to stand up there when people are screaming at you,” Biondolillo said of Scott. “It brought tears to my eyes how proud I am of our state that we can work together on this.”

Drug Testing Plan Considered for Some Food Stamp Recipients

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is considering a plan that would allow states to require certain food stamp recipients to undergo drug testing, handing a win to conservatives who’ve long sought ways to curb the safety net program.

The proposal under review would be narrowly targeted, applying mostly to people who are able-bodied, without dependents and applying for some specialized jobs, according to an administration official briefed on the plan. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said roughly 5 percent of participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program could be affected.

The drug testing proposal is another step in the Trump administration’s push to allow states more flexibility in how they implement federal programs that serve the poor, unemployed or uninsured. It also wants to allow states to tighten work requirements for food stamp recipients and has found support among GOP governors who argue greater state control saves money and reduces dependency.

Internal emails obtained by The Associated Press indicated that Agriculture Department officials in February were awaiting word from the White House about the timing of a possible drug testing announcement.

“I think we just have to be ready because my guess is we may get an hour’s notice instead of a day’s notice,” wrote Jessica Shahin, associate administrator of SNAP.

Conservative policymakers have pushed for years to tie food assistance programs to drug testing.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, sued the USDA in 2015 for blocking the state from drug testing adults applying for food stamps.

A federal judge tossed the suit in 2016, but Walker renewed his request for permission later that year, after Donald Trump had won the presidency but before he took office.

“We turned that down,” said former USDA Food and Nutrition Service Undersecretary Kevin Concannon, who served in the position under the Obama administration from 2009 until January of last year. “It’s costly and cumbersome.”

The proposal is not expected to be included in a GOP-written farm bill expected to be released as soon as early this week, a GOP aide said.

Federal law bars states from imposing their own conditions on food stamp eligibility.

Still, some states have tried to implement some form of drug testing for the food assistance program, so far with little success.

Judges have blocked similar efforts in other states. In Florida in 2014, a federal appeals court upheld a lower court’s ruling that drug testing SNAP recipients is unconstitutional.

But at least 20 states have introduced legislation to screen safety net program participants in some capacity, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

In December, Walker began moving ahead with a workaround, drug testing participants in the state’s Employment and Training Program who also received food stamps.

USDA under Trump has not taken a public position on drug testing. But Secretary Sonny Perdue has promised to provide states with “greater control over SNAP.”

“As a former governor, I know first-hand how important it is for states to be given flexibility to achieve the desired goal of self-sufficiency for people,” he said. “We want to provide the nutrition people need, but we also want to help them transition from government programs, back to work, and into lives of independence.”

The emails obtained by the AP suggest that a plan could be forthcoming.

The plan would apply to able-bodied people who do not have dependents and are applying for certain jobs, such as operating heavy machinery, the official said.

In a February 15 email to USDA officials, Maggie Lyons, chief of staff to an acting official at the Food and Nutrition Service, said, “We need to have a conversation about timing given budget and when the (White House) wants us to release drug testing.”

If the administration moves forward, it would not be the first time drug testing was used in a safety net program.

At least 15 states have passed laws allowing them to drug-test recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, also known as welfare.

The discussion of the future of SNAP and potential changes to the program are set against the backdrop of the 2018 farm bill, slated for release as soon as this week. The bulk of the bill’s spending goes toward funding SNAP, which often proves the most contentious part of negotiations; late last month, House Agriculture Committee Ranking Member Collin Peterson, D-Minn., issued a statement on behalf of Democrats denouncing “extreme, partisan policies being advocated by the majority.”

Ed Bolen, senior policy analyst at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities think tank, said requiring drug testing for food benefits will have consequences for already vulnerable populations. What’s more, he said, implementing drug testing for SNAP recipients is legally murky.

“Are people losing their food assistance if they don’t take the test, and in that case, is that a condition of eligibility, which the states aren’t allowed to impose?” he said. “And does drug testing fall into what’s allowable under a state training and employment program, which typically lists things like job search or education or on-the-job experience? This is kind of a different bucket.”

The emails also show that USDA is weighing the possibility of scaling back a policy currently enacted in 42 states that automatically grants food stamp eligibility to households that qualify for non-cash assistance, like job training and childcare. The proposed change, which would impose income limits, could potentially affect millions.

Republicans tried to make similar changes when Congress passed the 2014 farm bill, but the cuts were rejected by Democrats and did not end up in the final bill.

Concannon, the former USDA undersecretary, said the Trump administration “is keen on weakening the programs developed to strengthen the health or fairness or access to programs and imposing populist requirements that aren’t evidence based, but often stigmatize people.”

The USDA in recent months has been under fire for its controversial plan to replace a portion of millions of food stamp recipients’ benefits with a pre-assembled package of shelf-stable goods dubbed “America’s Harvest Box.” The food box plan was tucked into the Trump administration’s proposed 2019 budget, which included cutting the SNAP program by $213 billion over the next 10 years. SNAP provides food assistance to roughly 42 million Americans.

Russian TV Crew Slammed for Sneaking Into British Hospital

LONDON—The British hospital treating poisoned spy Sergei Skripal on Wednesday accused a Russian TV crew of “appalling behavior” for sneaking into the facility overnight.

Footage posted online by British newspapers showed a reporter from the REN TV network walking along corridors at Salisbury District Hospital early Wednesday and commenting on the apparent lack of security.

The hospital said in a statement that “this footage shows appalling behavior on the part of these Russian journalists — approaching staff in the middle of the night with no warning and without asking for any permission.”

It said “any attempt to harass, intimidate or cause distress to any of our staff or patients is absolutely unacceptable and will not be tolerated.”

The Wiltshire Police force said officers “attended and spoke to two men in the reception area, who were believed to be news reporters. They were asked to leave the hospital and did so. No arrests were made.”

Britain’s National Union of Journalists said reporters “need to act responsibly and sensitively when covering stories at hospitals.” It said it would be alerting the Russian Union of Journalists about the incident.

Sergei Skripal, a former Russian intelligence agent convicted of spying for Britain, has been a patient at the Salisbury hospital since he and his daughter were found unconscious in the southwest England city on March 4.

Britain alleges they were poisoned with a Soviet-developed nerve agent, and blames Russia. Russia denies involvement in the pair’s poisoning, which triggered a diplomatic crisis between Moscow and the West.

The hospital announced Tuesday that the ex-spy’s 33-year-old daughter, Yulia Skripal, has been discharged. She has been moved to an undisclosed location.

Russia has accused Britain of refusing to share information about the case and has demanded consular access to Yulia Skripal, who is a Russian citizen. Her father was given British citizenship after coming to the U.K. in 2010 as part of a spy swap.

Britain’s Foreign Office said Wednesday that Yulia Skripal declined to speak to Russian officials.

Russia’s embassy in London said it would “demand to meet with Yulia and Sergei Skripal, whose situation ever more resembles forced captivity or deprivation of freedom.”

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Jim Heintz in Moscow contributed to this story.

Sex Trade’s Female Victims: ‘Spoiled Goods,’ Damaged Lives

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

The women in the bar huddle together, talking and smoking, looking bored but tense. It is a hot evening in Phnom Penh, and I am in one of the notorious sex bar areas, hoping to find out all I can about commercial sexual exploitation in the country. I have gone undercover because the sex trade, whether legal or illegal, is driven and populated by dangerous criminals, and the women being sold are vulnerable and in danger.

I am in Phnom Penh at the beginning of my investigation into three countries: Cambodia, South Africa and Albania. All are notorious trafficking hotspots—as sending, transit and destination countries. Although I use traditional journalistic methods to gather my information—setting up interviews with experts, visiting local brothels and red light districts and speaking with prostituted women, male sex buyers and pimps—I adopt false identities in order to observe the true picture. I have to be certain that nothing I do during the course of my investigations puts the exploited women and girls in further danger.

Trafficking is a terrible problem throughout Cambodia. It is one of the favored destinations for gangs selling female flesh. There are plenty of brothels; in every town and city and many of the villages, prostitution thrives. Sex tourism is big business, and the act of paying for sex is normalized and accepted throughout Cambodian society. However, prostituted women and girls are stigmatized and punished. Of a population of 15 million, a quarter of a million are thought to be victims of trafficking in Cambodia, and it is one of the worst countries when it comes to modern slavery. Most of the victims have been trafficked into prostitution.

Nearly half the women sold for sex in Svay Pak, a poor fishing village on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, have been trafficked into prostitution. “None of them want to be there,” says my guide, Sunit. “They are abused by police as well as the men who pay for them. They can’t escape because they don’t even have any documents to prove who they are.” The traffickers bring women and girls from Vietnam and Cambodia to work in brothels and Eastern European women to serve as nightclub escorts. There also are illicit brothels from which children are sold.

During my time in Phnom Penh, my persona—for the purpose of speaking to the women in the bars (who I have been told are desperate to migrate to the West)—is that of the mother of a profoundly disabled young man who has never experienced sex. According to my story, my son Johnny had been in a serious car accident and I am his sole caregiver. I say that Johnny is desperate for a partner and I need someone to help me with caring duties.

It is a warm evening, and busy Street 172 is lined with mechanized rickshaws known as tuk-tuks, their drivers waiting for trade. The restaurants and clubs teem with locals and tourists; the bars where women are on sale are startlingly obvious. There are older white men sitting outside, many with a young local woman on their knee. It is a desperately upsetting sight.

I enter the 69 Bar with Mr. H, my fixer and security guard. Immediately, several young women rush toward us, asking Mr. H—a local man in his 30s—if he would like company. The women are under pressure to approach any customer who might buy them a drink. What the drink actually costs goes to the bar owner; the women are given a nonalcoholic mix. One of the women, with a rigid smile on her face, asks what I am doing in the bar and whether I am looking for anything in particular.

I am wearing an audio recorder so that I can recall the conversation later. I do not want to misrepresent anything that is said, and it is important that I am able to back up my claims that these women are desperate and are being exploited.

I ask if any of the bar girls in Cambodia’s sex district would be happy to marry Johnny. I feel bad about deceiving these vulnerable young women, but I’m satisfied that it will not put them in any danger to hear my story. I am in Cambodia to look underneath the veneer of the buzzing nightlife and learn about the “beer girls” who are advertised by bar owners as offering “company for lonely tourists.”

The music pounds in my ears. I am being watched closely by one of the female managers hovering around the bar. She wants to know why a middle-aged white woman is talking to “her” girls when they should be flirting with the throng of men hanging around the pole-dancing area. Perhaps she thinks I am a lesbian looking for sex with one of the young women. It is impossible for me to attach my micro camera to my thin cotton shirt without fear that I will be spotted. However, my audio recorder is already switched on, tucked firmly in the waistband of my shorts.

“I want to meet your son,” says one of the young women, all of whom speak at least some English. “I bet he is really handsome!”

“I can make your son happy, and I will marry him and come and live with him and clean and take care of him like a wife should.”

“I bet he is really handsome. Do you have a photograph of him?” asks a woman I estimate is no older than 18. “I have always wanted to live in Europe. I had a boyfriend in Switzerland once, but he left me.”

Every woman I speak to in the bars I visit offers to marry my fictional son, despite never seeing a photograph of him, and despite being told that he is so disabled he needs 24-hour care, including support with feeding and using the bathroom.

I speak to Bopha, one of the girls listening avidly to my words. “I wash and dress him and help him go to the bathroom,” I say. “I am exhausted and I need a carer for him. Johnny needs a wife. He has never known a woman sexually.”

Before I finish speaking, Bopha excitedly tells me that she will come to Europe to take care of him, marry him and do anything required to make him happy. Other women gather around and Bopha tells them that she is going to marry “a British man.”

What is so terrible about these women’s lives that they almost beg the mother of a paraplegic son to help them escape to the West to a life of unending domestic work? Put simply: the sex trade. In Cambodia, despite the glamorous sheen applied to it by academics and pro-prostitution activists, women are not “selling love” or intimacy; they are being abused and dehumanized by sex tourists and local men. In some countries, police are corrupt and violent to the women, and despite the rewriting of prostitution as “the girlfriend experience,” the public tends to despise women caught in this hellish trade.

As I leave the bar, the manager approaches and asks me for a private conversation, nodding at Mr. H, who takes the hint and crosses the street to wait for me. “If you want one of my girls, you have to ask me and Charlie,” he growls as he grips my arm. (I assume Charlie is his business partner.) “They cost me and the bar a lot of money.”

My second cover story is that of being the joint owner of a strip club in London. I want to explore how “brokering” women works in Cambodia. I have been told by European police officers stationed in Cambodia that bar and strip joint owners literally own women, and will “lend” or “sell” them to international pimps for a good price.

The White Building—once a source of civic pride—is now a run-down dwelling where prostituted women and drug addicts live alongside families. The enormous complex built in 1963 was once the pinnacle of modern housing, but it is now crumbling and facing demolition. The building, inhabited by 2,500 tenants and squatters, sits on prime Phnom Penh real estate.

I have been told to meet Malis at the nail salon in the White Building, where prostituted women congregate to share stories of violence and degradation. Now in her 40s, Malis earns her money by pimping women, although she began her involvement in the sex trade as a dancer. She is glamorous and expensively dressed. “How can I help you?” she asks, her smile false and her eyes darting around me suspiciously. “I hear you want some girls?”

I ask how I might arrange to hire two dancers to come to London and work for me. “I rent them to you; I do not sell them,” she says. “You pay me and not them. I will look after them with money, but the money you earn from them, half of it is sent to me. You keep their passports when they get to London, because otherwise they could run off with your money.”

We chat for a little longer, but I am on edge at how unfriendly, almost confrontational, she has become. “Do you have photographs of your club?” she asks. “Who are the girls that work for you? Do you have any friends who are policemen in London? How do I know who you are?” I try to answer her questions without seeming anxious, and then tell Malis that I will be in touch and give her my cellphone number. “Each girl will cost you $10,000 per year, and you pay for their flights. Can you afford this?” The idea that I could exceed $10,000 in profits per year—and pay Malis half the girls’ earnings as well as their accommodation and food—is ridiculous. I realize she is trying to decide whether I am genuine. I tell her that this is way too much and that I will be in touch if she decides to drop her price. Malis does not look at me as I leave the salon; she is already involved in another conversation by the time I close the door.

In Svay Pak, on the outskirts of the city, most people exist in dire poverty. The shantytown, whose residents are mainly undocumented Vietnamese migrants, is one of the centers of the child trafficking trade. Most commercial child sexual abuse takes place in the adult sex trade, often in legal and licensed brothels. An anti-trafficking investigator told me that all women working in the KTVs (karaoke bars that double as brothels) in the area are trafficked.

In Cambodia, three-quarters of the population live either on or below the poverty line. According to the Asian Development Bank, women earn only 27 cents for every dollar earned by a man. The poverty, the inequality of women and girls and the desensitization to sexual violence lead some parents to sell their daughters into prostitution.

I had heard about “virgin brothels” in the outskirts of the city, populated with girls as young as 10, usually sold by their families. Wealthy, powerful Cambodian and other Asian men are frequent customers. They are protected by corrupt police officers and other officials, and “virginity selling” is so endemic to Cambodian society that the virgin brothels thrive within a context of acceptance and a “blind eye” approach.

A girl is first taken to a hospital and examined by a doctor. She is given a certificate to confirm her virginity and then sold to a pimp or directly into a brothel. I make several inquiries among my contacts in the city about pimps who run the “virginity business” and am told it is much too dangerous to attempt to infiltrate this. “Unless you are Cambodian or Vietnamese, you will have no chance of finding your way to talk to the traffickers that sell virgins,” one contact told me. “Even the nastiest European pimps would run a mile from such businesses; it is way too hot.”

There is a pernicious mythology around sex with young virgins. Some older Asian men believe that sex with a child makes them more virile and brings good health. In Cambodia, there is little concept of the rights of a child, and sex with a young girl is not considered child abuse.

Unlike child sex tourism, which is frowned upon within much of society, local men who pay for sex with children are not considered pedophiles, but are merely choosing a sexual partner they find attractive.

Many “massage parlors” are fronts for brothels—it’s called “massage boom boom.” Some offer full sexual services, some oral sex or a “hand job.” Drivers who take men to these parlors know they will receive some commission. “Massage boom boom” is all over Phnom Penh’s Toul Kork district. Both Vietnamese and Cambodian girls are found at these places.

Usually a “massage” that is, in reality, a sexual act, is booked for an hour. If a room is rented for longer than that, the owner will expect more money from “his” woman. Many rooms have a one-way mirror, through which the owner can observe the activities. If the mirror is moved, the owner will know that sexual services are being exchanged without his approval.

In the karaoke bars, men can’t pay for sex on the premises, but they can take girls to guesthouses nearby. Some karaoke bars are “upmarket,” with women from China and the Philippines available to customers with lots of money. The bar owners expect a commission of about $300, which men pay to the boss, who divides it with the girl. Some girls, after being with a customer, will give him her direct number so she can cut out the boss’ commission.

Some hotels have a range of facilities (such as a night club, karaoke bar, etc.) and will also offer rooms for different lengths of time. The really good places have air conditioning. But in addition to the room rental, the owner will always expect a commission.

One evening I travel by tuk-tuk to one of the many street prostitution zones in Toul Kork. We park behind a rickety stall that by day supplies cigarettes and Coca-Cola to the many women and their pimps who hang around waiting for a sex buyer. It is 3 a.m., and the park is teeming with women. Groups of men crouch on the ground, playing cards and drinking beer. Every now and again they glance toward the women. After an hour, I see one of the men walking toward two women standing together. He raises his voice, shouts and shakes his fist. My fixer tells me he is telling the women they had better bring him more money before daylight or he will “beat them hard.” I notice the women are wearing black masks, and I wonder if this is to protect their identity, with prostitution being both shameful and punishable by law. My fixer shakes his head: “No, this is so that the men can see they are prostitutes. It means they [the johns] don’t get into trouble if they approach a nice girl.”

Cape Town, South Africa

Today, one quarter of a million people live in modern slavery in South Africa, a shocking statistic for a country that abolished the apartheid system in 1994.

In the Milnerton suburb of Cape Town, sexual exploitation is rife. Long Street is home to some of the finest bars and clubs Cape Town has to offer, but what many people don’t know is that it is also a hotbed of drug dealers, thieves, con artists and prostitutes. On Aug. 14, 2017, I set out to interview prostitutes in Cape Town.

I meet Grizelda Grootboom at the offices of Embrace Dignity, a sex-trade abolitionist organization in Cape Town. She was just 18 when she was trafficked into prostitution, betrayed by someone she considered a friend.

Growing up in an orphanage, Grootboom’s best friend was a girl named Leah. But Leah was raped and stoned to death, an incident that traumatized Grootboom, who soon turned to drugs. On her 18th birthday, Grootboom was told she had to leave the orphanage because she was now considered old enough to take care of herself. With no one to turn to, she contacted a drug-using friend who had moved to Johannesburg to study.

“My friend said that she would get me work and help me start afresh, so I took the train to Johannesburg, and my friend met me and was full of promises,” Grootboom says. “She took me in and protected me from the gangs on the streets. She took me to a room and said that she’d get me food, but that was the last time I saw her. That very same night, I was beaten badly because I refused to have sex with one of the men that came to buy me.”

Over a period of 12 years, Grootboom was trafficked within South Africa, facing violence from police officers as well as johns. One night, she was gang-raped and became pregnant. Later, while she slept in a brothel, a pimp drugged her and attempted to abort the fetus from her womb. Grootboom was hospitalized as a result, and after her release she moved between homeless shelters.

It took awhile for Grootboom to get out of prostitution, and only when she discovered Embrace Dignity did she begin to recover from her ordeal. Nine years later, she supports other victims of trafficking; last year she was invited to speak at the United Nations about the horrors of the sex trade.

“I would have loved to have become a dancer, or a singer,” Grootboom tells me when we meet for dinner. “Everything was stolen from me: my dreams, my dignity and, in some ways, my soul. But I refused to let them destroy me, and I know now that I am strong, and that I can help some of the girls avoid the horror that I was put through.”

I ask why she thinks no one protected her during her time as a prostitute. “The men who buy and sell us tell lies,” she says. “They say we like what we do, and that we are choosing to do this. As if any woman or girl would choose to be sold. People in South Africa need to face the truth. Prostitution is slavery. Now that I am out, I will focus on my future, not the past. I want the girls to have a better future.”

From talking to Grootboom and others at Embrace Dignity, I learned quite a bit about the sex trade in Cape Town. One of the women says police routinely ignore the existence of brothels, even those with very young women who may be trafficked.

Sexual violence toward women and girls is rife across South Africa. Every eight hours, a woman is killed by a male partner somewhere in the country, and one woman in five has suffered rape or sexual assault at least once. In some provinces, more than 75 percent of women have experienced male violence. Among prostituted women, estimates of HIV rates across the country range between 39 percent and 71 percent.

At a Cape Town braai—a traditional barbeque restaurant—I am introduced to Vicky, who says that women involved in street prostitution “do good business” in the premises. I ask whether the women have pimps; she says that without them, the women would be exposed to too much danger. “Are the pimps violent?” I ask. “Yes, but at least she will know him and be used to him when some of the customers get out of control.”

In 2017, Cape Town police arrested five people on charges of human trafficking, prostitution and extortion. “Operation Madame” alleged that Shantel Bridger was the ringleader. Bridger is now awaiting trial, along with her co-defendants, facing allegations that she ensured the trafficking victims were addicted to drugs and used violence to keep them in check. At least two underage girls were found on the premises. Police believe the gang could have pocketed more than $2.5 million by blackmailing sex buyers between 2012 and 2015.

Patric Solomons, director of the Cape Town child rights group Molo Songololo, tells me that child sexual exploitation is rife in the city. “There is the system where ordinary persons, young men in their late teens or early 20s, get together on the weekends and they have sex parties. Their job is to procure girls for that weekend,” Solomons says. “So the notion of a child or a person being held or kept in a brothel and then being prostituted and then being moved to another brothel happens far and few between; rather, they are taken to the homes of men who wish to abuse them.”

I am advised by a police contact that the Milnerton Flea Market is one of the places, along with the Greenmarket Square, where traffickers broker deals. I go to Milnerton early on a Sunday morning, accompanied by a local fixer—a young man who had previously been involved in low-level criminal activity. “The Nigerian traffickers come here and put a price on the girls,” he told me. “I heard that they sometimes have auctions at night, where they can see how pretty they are and how much they sell them for.”

Albania

The main street-prostitution zone in Tirana, Albania’s capital, is at the back of the National Museum of History. I am told to meet a man known as RT outside the primary entrance. I was led to RT by a bar owner I contacted while claiming to look for “girls to persuade back to London to work in my lapdance club.”

RT looks like a stereotype of an Eastern European pimp. He is wearing a heavy, black leather jacket despite the warm evening, his long black hair is pulled into a ponytail, and he is carrying two mobile phones.

RT introduces me to Adrian, the owner of a nightclub that offers sexual services to customers. I am told that the women apply for jobs in the club via Facebook advertisements. I meet Vera, a 21-year-old woman in the notorious Blloku district, known for its lapdance clubs and massage parlors.

Vera was trafficked throughout Tirana and the towns of Durres, Vlora and Saranda. “I was sent to work in the Lizard Club in Blloku,” she tells me. “But I hate it.”

“All of the prostitutes here have pimps,” Vera says. “They usually are their boyfriends, sometimes even their older brothers. But they get more by selling us into clubs to the bar owners, and there we have to do what they tell us. We can’t really get away from the clubs, because the men who sell us to the clubs watch us at home, and the club owners watch us at work, so there is nothing we can do.”

In the Shqiponja club, notorious for prostitution, I use my cover story: I am a 55-year-old lesbian who has never dared to have a sexual encounter with another woman. “I would like to spend some time with one of your ladies,” I tell the bartender. He is a jovial man who masks his shock almost immediately. “I know it is unusual, but I am attracted to women and find it difficult to meet them otherwise.”

“There are girls available for everyone,” the bartender says. “I can get you a group if you want, or just one girl. As long as you can pay, you can have a girl.”

One of the women working at the bar walks unsteadily towards me; she appears to have been drinking. She shouts at the bartender, but I don’t know what she is saying. Another woman joins in, and an argument ensues. The atmosphere has turned toxic, and I indicate that I will be back soon and leave the club.

I travel to Vlora, a coastal town at the southern end of the Adriatic Sea, to visit the Vatra Psycho-Social Centre, an anti-trafficking nongovernmental organization that provides support to women and girls who have been trafficked into the sex trade.

I have been told by police officers and heads of charities that the war against sex trafficking is being won in Albania. But the interviews I conduct with other officials tell me something different.

Balida, I am told by my fixer, is an anti-trafficking expert based in the police station in Vlora, which has a terrible problem with trafficking and prostitution. At one stage, almost every job in the town was somehow related to the trafficking of women and girls to the coast of Albania. Whether it was in the production of speedboats, which transported women to Brindisi, Italy, the running of hotels that harbored girls and women during the trafficking process, or the provision of security or money-laundering services for criminal gangs, in many ways the economy was boosted—at least for the criminal gangs and entrepreneurs—by the buying and selling of women.

“The girls are prostitutes, and even if they are trafficked, they don’t help themselves, because they will never make statements about the pimps,” Balida says when we meet in a cafe near the police station.

“We can’t stop these cases from happening—the girls are doing it for the money. To them it is just prostitution.”

It seems incredible that a so-called trafficking expert from the police takes such a cavalier view of the women and doesn’t appear particularly interested in arresting those doing the trafficking.

Although some academics argue that for Albanian women escaping hardship and poverty, sex work is far preferable to factory work, the lives of the women trafficked out of the country are anything but improved. On their return to Albania, having been trafficked to countries such as Italy, Belgium and the U.K., many women tell horrendous stories about their experiences in brothels. Some women, such as Silvana Beqiraj, do not even live to tell the tale.

After Beqiraj, from rural Albania, was found dead in a canal in France in 2014, I traveled to her home village to investigate. Beqiraj left the impoverished village of Ndërmenas in the district of Fier in 2011, telling her parents she was going to Montpellier to work as a cleaner. Three years later, her naked body was found floating in a canal. My fixer, a local journalist, tells me that the family denies the notion that Beqiraj may have been trafficked, and that they are leery of outsiders asking questions that might suggest this.

On the way to Fier, I am told there is heavy drug use in the surrounding villages, and that some young men are pimping local women to pay for heroin and crack cocaine.

I arrive at the Beqirajs’ farm around midday, and walk past chickens pecking the dirt along the uneven track to the ramshackle house. The family is clearly poor; my fixer tells me that the father drives a taxi to supplement the meager income derived from the farm.

Beqiraj’s mother, Yllka, her eyes filling with tears, greets me at the door, wiping her hands on her apron. Without hesitation, she tells me about her daughter’s death, and how she has not slept well since. Yllka goes to an old-fashioned sideboard in the corner of the kitchen and takes out a large folder. “Here is her passport, and her death certificate, and all the other papers,” she sobs. “Can you do something to help us?”

Mehmet, Yllka’s husband, his face lined with grief, enters the kitchen. The family had phoned him while he was in his taxi to tell him about the visitors asking about his daughter. The sun is beating on the corrugated roof, and Yllka pours everyone a cold drink. Mehmet nods his head and says, without preamble, that he and his wife have been treated “very badly” by both the French and Albanian authorities, and there are “no answers” to the question as to what happened to Beqiraj.

Dritan, Beqiraj’s brother, is sitting at the kitchen table, not speaking except for the odd grunt of “yes” or “no” when I ask him questions about his sister’s case. Dritan is depressed, according to his mother. “Lots of his friends take the girls from the village and have become pimps. He knows who took Silvana,” she says. We walk to Beqiraj’s grave, on a dry patch of land above the farm. Mehmet leads the way. “It is tradition,” he tells me, “for men to go first.”

Both Yllka and Mehmet deny that Beqiraj was trafficked to France, preferring to believe that she was in prostitution “voluntarily.” Police investigations into her death, both in Albania and in France, have not uncovered any clues as to who killed her.

Other than the family, no one will speak to me about Beqiraj, but when I visit the neighboring village, all the men in a bar that serves as a kind of community center told me that it is “well-known” that Beqiraj’s village harbors a number of entrepreneurial traffickers, and that they regularly broker deals with large criminal gangs that procure girls and women and introduce them to men from the syndicates.

In rural Albania, women and girls have little or no status, and Kanun law, very similar to sharia, is practiced. Kanun is a deeply conservative viewpoint that places the “honor” of the female very high up. It is forbidden for women and girls to be alone with men who are not their immediate relative.They do not eat or socialize with male members of the family. It is common for girls to be sold into marriage—often polygamous marriages—as young as 13 or 14.

Under Kanun law, a woman is deemed to be worth half as much as a man. But on the open market, when sold into prostitution, she is worth rather more.

Back in Vlora, I meet Valmira, a nervous young woman who wrings her hands constantly and pulls imaginary threads from her clothes. When her father died, Valmira was expected to leave school just before her 13th birthday and get a job in a factory. “I did not have a very beautiful childhood,” she told me. “When my father died, my mother told me that I was not her daughter but that my father had brought me home from somewhere else.”

The tension in the house grew until her Valmira’s mother threw her out of the house. Valmira traveled to Vlora to stay with her sister and brother-in-law. “I stayed here six months, then I left because the husband of my sister started with sexual harassment. I couldn’t endure such a situation so I returned back home and began sleeping outside on the balcony. Then I made the acquaintance of a man who worked with my cousin. I was 14 and he was 23 years old.”

When Valmira brought the man home to introduce him to her mother, there was a huge argument because the man was Roma. To prevent her daughter from marrying him, her mother arranged for Valmira to marry a man she had never met. “I ran away,” Valmira says, sobbing. “I could not bear to marry this stranger, and I loved my boyfriend, but it turns out I made a huge mistake.”

The man Valmira loved turned out to be a trafficker. He took her to a rented apartment and locked her in. There was no furniture, no heating and very little food. She shouted at the window for her neighbor. Soon, somebody came to the window and told her, “You’re not the first that he brings here. You should go, because he’s deceiving you. ”The neighbor gave her information about the shelters she could go to.

Valmira escaped when the trafficker left the door unlocked. She found her way to Vatra, where she stayed for 18 months. In Vatra, Valmira made friends with a girl named Anna, whom she stayed in touch with after they both left the shelter. “When I learned that she was going to Greece, she told me that if I wanted to work I could come with her and we can both work as cleaning ladies,” Valmira says.

Anna took Valmira to Kalithair, near Athens. “Until we arrived at the house, I really did think that we were going to be cleaners,” she recalls. “Then Anna disappeared and some men came. I think they were Romanian. It was then that I realized Anna had taken my passport and given it to the men. They owned me now; they had my papers and I knew I couldn’t escape. I could not believe that this had happened to me again.”

There were several other women from Albania in the house, and Valmira realized that Anna was a recruiter for criminal gangs: “She sold me. She traded me in for money for herself. This is terrible that a woman could do this to another woman.”

Valmira was locked in a basement and allowed to come up to the sitting room only to meet johns. There were cameras in every corner of the room. The women were permitted to wear only underwear when they met the men who came to buy them. “I wanted to escape,” Valmira says, “but I could not because there were these Romanian guys outside the front door like bodyguards.”

During the month Valmira was kept at the house, she was forced to have sex with up to 10 men a day. She did not even think about trying to escape this time—she had seen how the women who had tried to get out were punished, as were those who refused sex or particular services with the johns.“The punishments the pimps gave the girls who didn’t obey them terrified me,” Valmira says. “They would batter them with fists and kick them. They used small knives on them.”

One thing Valmira witnessed, after four weeks of being held captive, will haunt her to her dying day, she says. Valmira saw pimps murder one of the women in full view of the others. “They killed the girl with small knives and left her body there, not taking her to the hospital. They took their time doing it,” Valmira says. “They made her bleed to death and tortured her. We were made to watch, and all the time the girl was screaming and the pimps laughing, telling us that the same would happen to us if ever we tried to leave.”

As far as Valmira was concerned, the pimp’s plan backfired. “I knew I had to get out of there and was prepared to risk being killed to at least try. It was beyond hell what was happening, so I took a chance.”

A local Greek woman, who was not part of the gang, was recruited to the house to translate for some of the johns and other pimps wishing to make deals. Valmira befriended the woman and, when she was sure she could be trusted, told her everything that had happened in the house. “I saw she was a good person,” Valmira says, “so eventually I told her everything. I told her about the dead girl, the beatings, the rapes and how we had our passports taken away. I described some of the men who paid for sex with us, and what they did and how it was like torture. She cried when I told her, and she promised to help me.”

Several weeks later, as the Greek woman distracted the security guards, Valmira escaped. She went straight to the police station in a nearby town and reported the murder, as well as what had happened to her and the other women in the brothel, but she was dismissed. “I returned to Vlora and to the shelter,” Valmira says, “and have asked the police so many times to investigate the murder and the trafficking gang, but they say I was lying—that I was just a voluntary prostitute.”

In Cambodia, South Africa and Albania, I found that trafficking into prostitution is a viable way for exploiters to earn a living. In all three countries, sexual violence toward women and girls, poverty and extreme male dominance has created a context in which the men who pay for sex are not stigmatized, but the women and girls sold are seen as spoiled goods.

Men from both the U.S. and the U.K. regularly travel to these countries as sex tourists and pay to have sex with the most vulnerable and marginalized women and girls. The presence in all three countries of international aid agencies, charities and nongovernmental organizations that are supposedly working toward developing democracy and better civil society infrastructures appear to do relatively little to tackle the problem of sex trafficking. Indeed, as we have heard over the last few months, organizations such as Oxfam exacerbate the problem. Until paying for sex under any circumstance is stigmatized and criminalized and women and girls are helped to escape the sex trade, trafficking will continue to flourish, and abusers will act with impunity.

The Truth About an Untethered Trump

The petulant adolescent in the White House – who has replaced most of the adults around him with raging sycophants and has demoted his chief of staff, John Kelly, to lapdog – lacks adequate supervision.

Before, he was merely petty and vindictive. He’d tweet nasty things about people he wanted to humiliate, like former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick.

Now his vindictiveness has turned cruel. After smearing FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe with unfounded allegations that he lied to investigators, the new Trump made sure McCabe was fired just days before he would have been eligible for a pension after more than twenty-one years of service.

Before, he was merely xenophobic. He’d call Mexicans murderers and rapists.

Now his xenophobia has turned belligerent. He’s sending thousands of National Guard troops to the Mexican border, even though illegal border crossings are at a record low.

And he’s starting a trade war against China.

China has been expropriating American intellectual property for years. But Trump isn’t even trying to negotiate a way out of this jam or build a coalition of other trading partners to pressure China. He’s just upping the ante – and, not incidentally, causing the stock market to go nuts.

But the most dangerous thing about the new Trump is his increased attacks on American democracy itself.

Start with a free press. Before, he just threw rhetorical bombshells at the Washington Post, CNN, and other outlets that criticized him.

Now he’s trying to penalize them financially, while bestowing benefits on outlets that praise him.

Last week he demanded that Amazon, the corporation headed by the man who owns the Washington Post, pay higher postal rates and more taxes, and that the Post should register as Amazon’s lobbyist. Amazon stock wilted under the attack.

They’re absurd charges. Amazon collects and pays state sales taxes on its products, and the Postal Service is losing money because of the decline in first-class mail, not package deliveries.

Presumably Amazon can take care of itself. Trump’s attack was intended as a warning to other companies with media connections that they’d better not mess with him

Trump is trying to hurt CNN, too. The day after the Justice Department moved to block AT&T’s purchase of Time-Warner, parent of CNN, he said the deal wasn’t “good for the country.” Few missed the connection.

Meanwhile, he’s praising Trump-adoring Sinclair Broadcasting, signaling to the FCC it should approve Sinclair’s pending $3.9 billion purchase of Tribune Media’s TV stations.

We’re entering a new and more dangerous phase of Trump’s “divide and conquer” strategy, splitting the nation into warring camps – with him as the most divisive issue.

Even Trump’s tweets have become more brazenly divisive. Last week he called his predecessor “Cheatin’ Obama.” When was the last time you heard a president of the United States disparage another president?

He’s more determined than ever to convince supporters that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is in cahoots with Democrats and the FBI to unseat him.

This might give him some protection if Trump decides to fire Mueller, or if Mueller’s investigation turns up evidence that Trump collaborated with Russia to win the election, and Congress moves to impeach him.

“Try to impeach him, just try it,” warned Roger Stone, Trump’s former campaign adviser, last summer. “You will have a spasm of violence in this country, an insurrection like you’ve never seen.”

But Trump’s strategy might just as easily extend beyond Mueller. What happens if in 2020 a rival candidate accumulates more electoral votes, but Trump accuses him or her of cheating, and refuses to step down?

“He’s now president for life,” Trump recently said of Xi Jinping, adding “maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.” Some thought Trump was joking. I’m not so sure.

Democracies require leaders who understand that their primary responsibility is to protect the institutions and processes democracy depends on. The new Trump seems intent on maintaining his power, whatever it takes.

Democracies also require enough social trust that citizens regard those they disagree with as being worthy of an equal say, so they’ll accept political outcomes they dislike. The new Trump is destroying that trust.

Trump untethered isn’t just a more petty, vindictive, and belligerent version of his former self. He’s also more willing to sacrifice American democracy to his own ends. Which makes him more dangerous than ever.

YouTube Blocks Journalists’ Views on Israeli Militarism

YouTube has blocked a video posted by “The Empire Files,” an online investigative news program, in 28 countries after receiving legal complaints, according to the program’s Twitter account.

Just notified by YouTube that @AbbyMartin’s interview with @MaxBlumenthal has been blocked from being viewed in 28 countries (including Israel) to “comply with local laws.” Actions disabled & warnings for viewers elsewhere. https://t.co/Kr2rbfXabg pic.twitter.com/vKPxABjsZ7

— The Empire Files (@EmpireFiles) April 5, 2018

The video, titled “Jewish-American on Israel’s Fascism: No Hope For Change From Within,” is still available to view in the U.S. It features “The Empire Files” host Abby Martin and fellow journalist Max Blumenthal discussing Israeli militarism and the rise in racist attitudes toward Palestinians.

In an email to RT, Blumenthal said:

YouTube has claimed that it removed my interview on Israel-Palestine with Abby Martin to comply with laws in 28 countries. However, nothing I did or said in the discussion was even remotely illegal, even in countries with the strictest hate crime laws. My comments were based entirely on my extensive journalistic experience in the region and my analysis was clinical in nature. At no point did I denigrate anyone based on their faith or ethnicity. …

The trend of censoring material that presents Israel in a less than favorable light has only intensified as establishment attacks on critical voices expands. This latest episode confirms my view that the pro-Israel lobby and its willing accomplices in Silicon Valley present one of the greatest threats to free speech in the West.

Blumenthal also said he believes that the Anti-Defamation League, an international Jewish nongovernmental organization, is behind the censoring. The group participates in YouTube’s flagging system and considers actions tied to Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (a global campaign encouraging various boycotts against Israel until it meets its “obligations under international law”) and opposition to Israeli occupation as racism.

Journalist Glenn Greenwald has reported on Facebook working with the Israeli government to engage in censorship. In another article on Facebook censorship in 2016, Greenwald wrote, “Facebook is a private company, with a legal obligation to maximize profit, and so it will interpret very slippery concepts such as ‘hate speech’ and ‘inciting violence’ to please those who wield the greatest power.”