Chris Hedges's Blog, page 99

Trump’s War on Science Rages On

The Trump EPA wants to introduce a new rule: Its scientists can only use studies that make all of their data public.

The new proposal is crafted to sound like a win for transparency, which is supposed to be a good thing. In reality, the rule will significantly harm public health — and loosen the reins on polluters.

And that, of course, is the idea.

Let me explain. I am a graduate student in sociology, a social science. I study people, which means I collect some kind of data about them. For any scientist who studies people, transparency is important — but so is confidentiality.

Any basic research ethics class includes famous cases of unethical research on people that occurred in the not too distant past. So now, our institutions carefully review each study on people to ensure they are ethical.

Ethical research requires providing participants with enough information that they can give informed consent to participate. It means not taking advantage of vulnerable populations (like prison inmates or mental health patients), minimizing any risk of harm that might come to the people you are studying as much as possible, and disclosing any risk before they agree to participate.

In my case, that means that in any study I’ve done, I’ve promised my participants confidentiality.

With their permission, I might quote them in a publication using a fake name, but only if I can do so in a way that won’t allow anyone to identify them. I don’t want anything they tell me to be used to harm them back in their communities.

In the case of the new EPA rules, the information collected in public health studies can be even more intimate. When scientists study the effects of pollution on people’s health, they may confidentially review people’s private medical records. Obviously, these records should not be made public.

When a researcher cannot promise confidentiality, the quality of their research suffers. Fewer people may be willing to participate, which might harm the reliability of the results. Those who do will be less open.

How can we trust studies in which all of the data is not made public? Often, some of the data is made public, or at least made available to others in certain circumstances (such as by request).

Additionally, science is not an individual endeavor. Communities of scientists in each field work together to advance the knowledge within that field. Any new study will be picked apart by everyone who reads it, because that’s what we do to each other. Others will try to replicate your findings — and if they can’t, your conclusions will be called into question.

It’s rough on the ego, but it’s good for science.

Dismissing any study that does not make its data public, on the other hand — particularly when that data has a good reason to remain confidential, like medical data — serves to harm science, not help it.

And when you can’t do good science, you can’t base your public health regulations — your pesticide bans, your pollution controls, your clean water rules, and whatever else — on good science.

Given the track record of the Trump administration on the environment so far, it’s far more plausible that this proposal is intended to eliminate necessary public health regulations, not to promote transparency.

The Fascism Behind the U.S. Stance on Israeli Settlements

This piece originally appeared on Informed Comment. 

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Monday that the US no longer considers Israeli squatter settlements on Palestinian land to be illegal.

A combination of US Evangelical lawlessness and white supremacy with incessant lobbying by the Zionist far right has finally put the United States in the position of supporting the policies of the Axis in World War II.

That is the historical meaning of Pompeo’s position.

In 1940, Italy’s Mussolini (the idol of Steve Bannon, Trump’s former White House chief strategist) grabbed Nice from France. Mussolini intended to permanently annex this territory, and had designs on the port city of Marseilles, as well.

Do you think that is right, that Mussolini could just march into France and gobble up part of it? What kind of world would it be if Mussolinis were constantly stealing other people’s territory?

When Mussolini was defeated (and shot to death by a leftist partisan in 1945), the non-Fascist countries created the United Nations and enacted the Geneva Conventions to try to stop Mussolini-like behavior in the future.

The United Nations Charter forbids any country to acquire the territory of others by military force. It is illegal for Italy to march into France and just take Nice for itself.

Mussolini’s imperialism did not stop at the shores of the Mediterranean. In 1911 Italy had launched a war of aggression on Libya and made it a colony. But it wasn’t enough to rule the lives of Libyans with a fascist iron fist and to steal their resources. Beginning in 1938 and continuing into WW II, Mussolini began sending Italians in to Occupied Libya.

Wikipedia notes,

” A project initiated by Libya’s governor, Italo Balbo, brought the first 20,000 settlers — the “Ventimila” – to Libya in a single convoy in October 1938. More settlers followed in 1939, and by 1940 there were approximately 110,000 Italians in Libya, constituting about 12 percent of the total population.[8]

Plans envisioned an Italian colony of 500,000 settlers by the 1960s: so, the Italians would be 2/3 of the population in coastal Libya by then. Libya’s best land was allocated to the settlers to be brought under productive cultivation, primarily in olive groves.”

After World War II, not only was aggressively annexing your neighbor’s land made illegal but so too was flooding your own population into an Occupied territory to deprive locals of the fruits of their own resources and grab them for the metropole.

The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 governs the treatment of populations in Occupied territories during wartime, and it forbids transplanting people from the Occupying Power’s population into the subjected region. Remember, the United Nations Charter envisages that at the cessation of hostilities, the Occupier would have to give back the territory. It cannot be annexed.

The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 on the treatment of populations in occupied territories contains these prohibitions:

Art. 31 Prohibition of coercion

Art. 32 Prohibition of corporal punishment, torture, etc.

Art. 33 Individual responsibility, collective penalties, pillage, reprisals

Art. 34 Hostages

Israel is in extensive violation of all of these provisions.

Article 49, Fourth Geneva Convention, says, “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population in the territory it occupies.”

So here’s the thing. There isn’t any difference in this regard between the Israeli government and Mussolini. Just as Mussolini invaded and annexed Nice and Corsica, the Israelis invaded Gaza and the West Bank in 1967, at a time when the civilian Palestinian population was not militarized and not directly involved in the Egyptian-Jordanian-Syrian war with Israel. Israel has annexed large tracts of the Palestinian West Bank.

And it has flooded some 600,000 squatters into Palestine (not to mention all the squatters around Jerusalem on annexed territory), just as Mussolini sent all those Italians into Libya. This is just naked aggression and colonialism.

Israelis like to take the 1947 UN General Assembly partition plan for British Mandate Palestine as their charter of legitimacy, even though the UNGA does not have any legal authority to decide such things. But even so, that plan did not award the West Bank and Gaza to Israel, and that denial was implicit in the 1949 Armistice among the belligerents.

Given that the whole creation of the international-law category of war crimes with the Geneva Conventions was in part intended to ensure that never again could the Jewish people be genocided, it is a supreme and ugly irony that no one has done more to undermine and destroy international law concerning occupied populations than the State of Israel.

So what Pompeo said is that the French who lost their lives fighting Mussolini’s invasion were on the wrong side of history, and that the United States now ex post facto regrets George W. Patton’s assault on Italy and US backing for Libyan independence.

The official policy of the United States is now that it is all right to annex neighbors’ land and to settle it with your own squatters.

Pompeo has become Mussolini, in the same way that Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu long since had.

Ezra Pound began his Pisan Canto LXXIV lamenting the death of “Ben” Mussolini, hung by his heels. The US military wanted to execute him for his active support of Italian Fascism. In turn, it was the aggressive militarism and severe human rights abuses of the fascist Italian state that provoked that animus.

I know what Gen. Patton and Gen. Omar Bradley and Gen. Ike Eisenhower thought of Mussolini. I know what they would think of Pompeo running up the white flag of surrender to Fascist policy.

We have met the Fascists and they are us.

 

Corporate Media’s Twisted Idea of a ‘Strong Economy’

Last month, CNBC (10/7/19) reassured us that fears of a potential recession are “overblown,” because the “hard data” shows that the “US economy remains strong.”

If you’ve been keeping track of corporate media coverage of the US economy over the past several years, you might have noticed a contradictory pattern. You’ll find that corporate media make ubiquitous references to a “strong economy,” while simultaneously providing many reports on the increasingly impoverished and precarious working class alongside the continuously rising fortunes of the rich.

Last month, a New York Times report (10/20/19) exemplified this seemingly bizarre practice when it wondered why so many workers are striking when we apparently live in such a “strong economy,” because the piece also discussed how “today’s strikes are fueled by a deeper sense of unfairness and economic anxiety.”

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Even though corporate media are now warning us not to be too complacent because of a potential imminent recession and slowing GDP growth (CNN, 8/18/19; Wall Street Journal, 10/30/19), references to a “strong economy” and an “economic recovery” from the Great Recession still abound.

Three years ago, the New York Times (12/2/16) remarked that former President Barack Obama was handing off a “strong economy” to President Donald Trump, even as it noted that “tens of millions of Americans understandably feel that the recovery has passed them by.” Two years later, Times columnist David Brooks (11/29/19) led off a column by declaring, “We’re enjoying one of the best economies of our lifetime.”

This year, the Los Angeles Times (5/3/19) pondered the two “great conundrums” of the Trump presidency: “How does his approval rating stay so bad when the economy is so good, and what might that forecast about his prospects for reelection?”

Politico (10/15/19) and Reuters (10/15/19) advise us that election models are forecasting Trump’s likely reelection based on “economic trends in key swing states” under his administration, as CNN (7/5/19) proclaimed that the “strong economy” is functioning as Trump’s “safety blanket” for his reelection chances. The Financial Times (5/8/19) declared that “there is no doubt that the US is the strongest large economy in the world,” even as it warned that “much of the growth surprise appears temporary.”

The “strong economy” narrative is so thoroughly entrenched, the Atlantic (8/5/19) observed that even Democratic presidential candidates are wary of mentioning “economic growth,” lest it sound like an implicit endorsement of the Trump administration’s policies. However, following slower GDP growth and recession forecasts, some Democratic presidential candidates, like Joe Biden, are changing their campaign strategies by claiming that Trump is “squandering” the “strong economy” inherited from the Obama administration, reversing their previous view of discussing the “strong economic data” as a “losing” electoral strategy (Reuters, 8/22/19).

To the extent that there is a “debate” over the existence of a “historic recovery” and a “strong economy,” it is largely restricted to whether the economy was better under the Obama administration or under the Trump administration, and over who “really” deserves credit for this allegedly amazing economy.

The Washington Post has run several comparative articles (6/25/18, 5/7/19, 8/20/19) arguing that Trump “inherited” the “strong economy” from Obama, even wondering if this economy is “too good to be true?” while noting that the “vital signs look solid.” CNBC (9/7/18) declared that Trump has “set economic growth on fire,” praising a “economic boom uniquely his” as a “tremendous achievement.” The Wall Street Journal (5/5/19) discussed how a poll found that “select groups of Americans” who disapprove of his job performance are still willing to credit Trump for a “bustling economy,” while USA Today (7/1/19) discussed a survey that found that the “solid economy is doing little to bolster support for President Donald Trump.” Some articles have pushed back on the idea that Trump deserves the credit for the “strong economy,” instead crediting the Federal Reserve and Congress, or a vague “broader, global trend” (New York Times, 8/8/19; Wall Street Journal, 11/8/17).

But who determines whether we live in a “strong economy,” and what metrics should we use to find out? Despite what media say, most Americans believe that the economic system is “rigged” to benefit the wealthy elite at the expense of the working class (CNN, 6/28/16; Pew Research, 10/4/18; Common Dreams, 4/29/19). Do the standard economic metrics deployed by corporate journalists accurately capture and explain the feelings and economic situation of most American workers?

When one also reads the contradictory coverage found in corporate media regarding the precarious situation facing the American working class, it’s clear they don’t. Here’s a nonexhaustive catalog of facts that make elite pundits like the New York Times’ David Brooks’ declaration that “We’re enjoying one of the best economies of our lifetime” appear fatuous and puncture this myth of a “strong economy.”

Overwhelmingly, many of these reports point to GDP growth (increased annual spending on total goods and services), a low unemployment rate (currently at 3.6%) and the number of jobs added to the US economy as evidence of a “strong economy.”

However, the standard unemployment rate in the US only includes people with no job who have been searching for work within the past four weeks; this leaves out significant portions of the population, like the underemployed and involuntary part-time workers (those who want full-time work but can’t find any), and discouraged workers who have given up searching for a job (Quartz, 6/7/18). This is why the New York Times (10/31/19) found that there are still millions of people not captured in the official unemployment rate, and people having trouble finding work in this “strong economy.” The U-6 unemployment rate, considered to be more accurate by economists because it includes discouraged workers and part-time workers seeking full-time employment, is 7%—almost double the U-3 unemployment rate usually cited by corporate media.

Another figure that complicates this picture of a “strong economy” is the labor force participation rate (the sum of all workers who are employed and actively seeking employment divided by the total working age population). The current labor force participation rate is 63.3%, 4 percentage points lower than the average of 67.3% at the beginning of the 21st century.

Although the number of involuntary part-time workers dropped this year, even people who only work one hour a week would not be considered unemployed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A 2016 study by economist Lonnie Golden found that the number of involuntary part-time workers increased almost 45% from 2007.

While there has been pushback against a widely cited 2016 study from economists Lawrence Katz and the late Alan Krueger, which found that 94% of job growth from 2005 to 2015 has been in precarious “alternative work arrangements” in the “gig economy,” there’s no shortage of studies and projections showing that freelancing, independent contracting and temp work for corporations like Uber are playing a larger role in the US economy, without much of the job security and benefits found in more traditional jobs (NBC, 8/31/17; Forbes, 2/15/19; New York Times, 8/22/19).

Critically, throughout several years of reports on this “strong economy,” there have also been numerous reports on the persistent problem of low and stagnant wages. Although there are reports indicating that workers are finally seeing slightly better wage growth after decades of stagnant wages, it’s still only a fraction of record corporate profits (Washington Post, 11/2/18).

The long-term trend of wages not keeping up with the prices of essentials hasn’t improved much, as it’s been reported that minimum-wage workers can’t afford a two-bedroom apartment anywhere in the US. (The Economic Policy Institute—7/19/18, 2/5/19—found that if the minimum wage tracked productivity growth since the 1960s, it would now be over $20 an hour.)

Almost half of US families are unable to afford the basics like rent and food, and 40% can’t afford an unexpected $400 expense, with almost 80% of US workers living paycheck to paycheck. Perhaps this is why increasing numbers of people are living in poverty, in cars and on the streets, despite having jobs (CBS, 7/31/18; New York Times, 9/11/18; Washington Post, 3/22/19). These low and stagnant wages may also be why Americans are increasingly buried in debt, as student loan debt reached $1.5 trillion last year, exceeding all other forms of consumer debt except mortgages, and auto debt is up nearly 40% from the last decade, reaching $1.3 trillion (Wall Street Journal, 8/1/19).

One of the grimmest signs that the economy is not working for many is that US life expectancy continues to drop, from a peak of 78.9 in 2014 to 78.6 in 2017. The drop is led by rising deaths from suicide, drug overdose and alcohol-related disease—known as “diseases of despair”—among men, particularly those without college degrees (Brookings Institution, 11/7/19).

Richard Wolff has been one of the few economists who have argued that the media’s false “recovery hype” is a “weapon of mass distraction” (Extra!, 12/14) and observed (in Capitalism’s Crisis Deepens) that the finance industry’s decades-long wave of spectacular growth has coincided with stagnating wages beginning in the 1970s, as more and more Americans have to rely on debt to maintain their lifestyle and keep up with the soaring costs of essentials like housing, healthcare and higher education. Historically, private debt—not public debt—is the harbinger of economic disaster, contrary to the obsessive focus of media austerity hawks (Atlantic, 9/9/14; Guardian, 11/4/13; FAIR.org, 2/22/19).

Despite corporate media’s ludicrous “factchecks” on presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ (correct) claim that “three people in this country own more wealth than the bottom half of America” (the Washington Post argued that the comparison is “not especially meaningful,” because “people in the bottom half have essentially no wealth, as debts cancel out whatever assets they might have”), journalists have consistently reported on the reality of rising prosperity of the wealthy, record stock markets and soaring corporate profits. (Of course, such stories are often presented as good news, as if higher stock prices benefited anyone other than people who own stock—Extra!, 7–8/02.)

Matt Bruenig at the People’s Policy Institute found that the top 1 percent’s net worth has increased by $21 trillion, while the bottom 50% of the population saw theirs decrease by $900 billion, from 1989 to 2018. Perhaps this is due to massive criminal tax evasion/avoidance by the wealthy and corporations in overseas tax havens (euphemistically labeled “loopholes”), coupled with unprecedented tax cuts for the rich, alongside relentless selective enforcement and increased taxes on the working class (FAIR.org, 12/6/17, 1/17/18).

Given all this, GDP growth tells us little about how wealth and income are distributed amongst the US population. It’s theoretically possible for GDP growth to be entirely accounted for by things like increased military spending for a US-driven arms race, corporations buying back stocks and paying out dividends to further inflate their stock prices—instead of giving raises to employees or hiring more of them—and the wealthy’s environmentally destructive conspicuous consumption of things like private jets and superyachts, since all of them count towards GDP. Journalists shouldn’t use GDP as an indicator of economic health without further context, because growing GDP alongside skyrocketing income and wealth inequality is not evidence of a “strong” economy, but of a parasitic economy.

What explains corporate media’s credulous reliance on uninformative economic measures, and contradictory references to a “strong economy,” alongside reports on a struggling working class? It makes little sense if one assumes corporate journalists are primarily concerned with informing the public. It makes a great deal of sense when one realizes that corporate news outlets have an inherent interest in cloaking class warfare by equating a “strong economy” with the prosperity of the investor class, even if it comes at the expense of everyone else (FAIR.org, 10/16/19).

GOP-Requested Witness Rejects Trump ‘Conspiracy Theories’

WASHINGTON — Sought by Republicans to testify, the former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine spoke up instead for Democrat Joe Biden in Tuesday’s impeachment hearings, rejecting “conspiracy theories” embraced by President Donald Trump and some of his allies.

Kurt Volker said he has known Biden as an honorable man for more than two decades, rebuffing debunked corruption allegations that Trump is said to have wanted the Ukrainians to investigate in exchange for military aid to hold off Russian aggression.

“The allegations against Vice President Biden are self-serving and non-credible,” Volker declared.

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Broader corruption in Ukraine was “plausible,” but corruption by Biden wasn’t, he said.

Volker testified alongside former White House national security official Tim Morrison in the second hearing of the day in the House’s impeachment inquiry, only the fourth in history against a U.S. president.

Morrison, also requested by GOP members on the House Intelligence Committee, said at the outset that he was not there to question the “character or integrity” of any of his colleagues, though earlier Tuesday Republican lawmakers used his prior comments to try to discredit another witness, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman. The White House even circulated a tweet that was an earlier quote by Morrison questioning Vindman’s judgment.

Democrats say there may be grounds for impeachment in Trump’s push for Ukraine’s new leadership to investigate his Democratic rival and the 2016 U.S. election as he withheld military assistance approved by Congress.

Trump says he did nothing wrong and dismissed the hearings as a “kangaroo court.”

Volker was the first person to come behind closed doors in the inquiry that started in September, resigning his position shortly before he did so.

Since then, a parade of witnesses have testified publicly and privately about what they recalled about the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukraine’s new leader, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Many of those statements cast doubt on Volker’s account that he didn’t know the Ukraine gas company Burisma was tied to Biden, and that he wasn’t aware of a possible quid pro quo offered by Trump.

A number of White House and State Department officials were listening to the call, but Volker was not.

On Tuesday, he said he opposed any hold on security assistance. And he said, “I did not understand that others believed that any investigation of the Ukrainian company, Burisma, which had a history of accusations of corruption, was tantamount to investigating Vice President Biden. I drew a distinction between the two.”

Even though, he said, he understood that Biden’s son Hunter had been a board member — and he himself had been deeply involved with Ukrainian officials on a statement, never released, that would have committed the country to investigating Burisma and the 2016 U.S. election.

Volker himself requested a meeting on July 19 with Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, at which Giuliani mentioned accusations about the Bidens as well as the discredited theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 U.S. election.

He said he believes now, thanks to hindsight and the testimony of other witnesses, that Trump was using the aid to pressure Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden and his role on the company’s board.

“In retrospect I should have seen that connection differently, and had I done so, I would have raised my own objections,” Volker testified.

Morrison, who stepped down from Trump’s National Security Council shortly before he appeared behind closed doors last month, said he was not concerned that anything illegal was discussed on Trump’s July 25 call with Ukraine’s leader, testimony that Republicans have repeatedly highlighted.

“As I stated during my deposition, I feared at the time of the call on July 25th how its disclosure would play in Washington’s political climate,” he said Tuesday. “My fears have been realized.”

He told lawmakers Tuesday that the transcript of the call was incorrectly placed in a highly secure location.

Democrats have seen ill intent in that action, but he said, “It was a mistake … an administrative error.”

Morrison has confirmed to investigators that he witnessed a key September conversation in Warsaw between Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, and a Ukrainian official. Sondland told the official that U.S. aid might be freed if the country’s top prosecutor “would go to the mike and announce that he was opening the Burisma investigation,” Morrison said in previous closed-door testimony.

Volker shifted his account of a pivotal July 10 interaction at the White House. In his closed-door interview last month, he said there was no discussion of Giuliani’s activities in Ukraine or investigations sought by the president.

But on Tuesday, he said the meeting was essentially over when Sondland made a “general” comment about investigations.

“I think all of us thought it was inappropriate; the conversation did not continue and the meeting concluded,” Volker said.

A series of text messages Volker provided to lawmakers showed conversations between him, Sondland and other leaders in which they discussed a need for Ukraine to launch investigations, including into Burisma.

Volker said meeting with Giuliani was just part of the dialogue, and he had one in-person meeting with him, in which Giuliani “raised, and I rejected, the conspiracy theory that Vice President Biden would have been influenced in his duties as vice president by money paid to his son.”

Volker also said a senior aide to Zelenskiy approached him last summer to ask to be connected to Giuliani. He said he made clear to the Zelenskiy aide, Andrey Yermak, that Giuliani was a private citizen and not a representative of the U.S. government.

He testified he wasn’t part of an irregular foreign policy channel led by Giuliani, as others have testified. He also rejected the idea that Trump dubbed him, Sondland and Energy Secretary Rick Perry the “three amigos” in charge of Ukraine policy.

“My role was not some irregular channel, but the official channel,” Volker said.

___

Associated Press Writers Mary Clare Jalonick, Matthew Daly, Alan Fram, Lisa Mascaro and Laurie Kellman contributed to this report.

Half of American Men Can’t Handle the Prospect of a Woman President

In 2019, just 49% of American men say they are comfortable with a woman president, according to a new poll on attitudes toward gender and power by consulting firm Kantar Public and Women Political Leaders, an Iceland-based nonprofit coalition of female politicians.

The poll surveyed 22,000 people ages 18 to 64 across eleven countries (Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, United Kingdom, United States), 2,000 of whom were Americans. Respondents were asked for their opinions on women and men’s suitability for leadership roles across multiple industries, as well as in politics. Countries were scored on an index of 1-100, 100 being a country with “perfect equality.” Even with just under half of U.S. men surveyed approving of a woman as head of state, the U.S. came in third, with a score of 75. Germany and France, at 77, tied for first place.

American women’s views were somewhat more favorable, with 59% saying they would approve of a woman heading a country. Unfortunately, there’s not much solace for women leaders in the other countries surveyed. Only in Canada (53%) and the U.K. (56%) did men report they were even slightly more comfortable with a woman as head of state than were the men surveyed in the other nine countries.

At least respondents are being honest. Three years after the 2016 election, where a woman came within spitting distance of the presidency (and lost), a compendium of previous polls shows that Americans continue to find creative ways to avoid admitting they feel uncomfortable with a woman in the White House.

A September poll of Americans by Leanin.org revealed that 53% of respondents said they were “very ready” or “extremely ready” for a woman to be president, but think no one else is as ready as they are; of the 29% of registered voters who claimed they were “extremely ready,” only 5% of that group believes the rest of the country agrees. Sometimes they blame this view on other peoples’ sexism.

A 2018 poll from Ipsos/Daily Beast found that just 33% of Democratic and Independent respondents believed their neighbors would vote for a woman. A headline on a FivethirtyEight review of multiple 2018 and 2019 presidential polls perhaps summed it up best: “Americans Say They Would Vote for a Woman, But …”

As FiveThirtyEight reporter Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux explained, “For months now, voters have told reporters that they want to elect a woman — but after Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016, they simply can’t imagine a woman winning against Trump.”

Kantar Public CEO Michelle Harrison, who worked on the Kantar/Women Political Leaders study, was less alarmist in her analysis. “Women in all walks of life have a harder job on the journey to leadership than men,” she told HuffPost, adding, “I don’t think it’s telling us anything specific about a particular woman. Leaders always break through.”

Also, while women didn’t score high under equality in politics, there were some interesting results in industry. Americans are much more comfortable with women in positions of power in the media, where the equality index score was 82. Fully 61% of American respondents also said they were comfortable with a female CEO, although as Marketwatch points out, women make up just 6.6% of Fortune 500 CEOs.

Perhaps there is some future hope in politics as well. Joe Biden may be ahead in most polls, but according to a few surveys, including a CBS poll and multiple polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, Elizabeth Warren is not far behind him.

Robert Reich: Medicare for All or Bust

Republicans and even some Democrats are out to scare you about Medicare for All. They say it’s going to dismantle health care as we know it and it will cost way too much.

Rubbish.

The typical American family now spends $6,000 on health insurance premiums each year. Add in the co-payments and deductibles that doctors, hospitals, and drug companies also charge you — plus typical out-of-pocket expenses for pharmaceuticals – and that typical family’s health bill is $6,800.

But that’s not all, because some of the taxes you now pay are for health insurance, too — for Medicare and Medicaid and for the Affordable Care Act. So let’s add them in, again for the typical American household. That comes to a whopping $8,975 a year. Oh, and this number is expected to rise in the coming years.

Not a pretty picture. If you’re a typical American, you’re already paying far more for health insurance than people in any other advanced country.

And you’re not getting your money’s worth. The United States ranks near the bottom for life span and infant mortality. Or maybe you’re one of the 30 million Americans who don’t have any health insurance coverage at all.

You see, a big reason we pay so much for health insurance is the administrative costs involved in private for-profit insurance. About a third of what you pay goes to the people who oversee billing and collections. And then of course there are the marketing and advertising expenses, and the profits that go to shareholders or private-equity managers.

What happens if we have Medicare for All?

Let’s first consider a limited version that keeps private insurance — as proposed by candidates including Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, and Kamala Harris. The insurance costs remain the same because it’s the same private insurers and the same co-payments and deductibles. The only difference is more of this would be paid through your taxes, rather than by you directly, because the government would reimburse the insurance companies.

This could help bring down costs by giving the government more bargaining leverage to get better prices. But we don’t know yet how much.

Now, let’s talk about a different version of Medicare for All that replaces private for-profit health insurance, as proposed by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. In this version, total costs — including a possible combination of premiums, co-payments, deductibles, or taxes — are even lower. This option is far cheaper because it doesn’t have all those administrative expenses. It’s public insurance that reimburses hospitals, doctors, and pharmaceutical companies directly and eliminates the bloat of private insurance companies.

Economists at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst say Medicare for All that replaces private for-profit insurance would reduce costs by about 10 percent, mostly from lower administrative and drug costs. The Urban Institute estimates that households and businesses would save about $21.9 trillion over ten years, and state and local governments would save $4.1 trillion.

You’d pay for it through a combination of premiums, fees, and taxes, but your overall costs would go way down. So you’d come out ahead.  And everyone would be covered.

You’d keep your same doctor or other health-care provider. And you could still buy private insurance to supplement Medicare for All, just like some people currently buy private insurance to supplement Medicare and Social Security. The only thing that’s changed is you no longer pay the private for-profit corporate insurers.

Any Medicare for All is better than our present system, but this second version is far better because — like Medicare and Social Security — it’s based on the simple and proven idea that we shouldn’t be paying private for-profit corporate insurers boatloads of money to get the insurance we need.

It’s time for true Medicare for All.

Little Kids, Locked Away

This investigation is a collaboration between ProPublica Illinois and the Chicago Tribune.

ProPublica Illinois is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to get weekly updates about our work.

THE SPACES have gentle names: The reflection room. The cool-down room. The calming room. The quiet room.

But shut inside them, in public schools across the state, children as young as 5 wail for their parents, scream in anger and beg to be let out.

The students, most of them with disabilities, scratch the windows or tear at the padded walls. They throw their bodies against locked doors. They wet their pants. Some children spend hours inside these rooms, missing class time. Through it all, adults stay outside the door, writing down what happens.

In Illinois, it’s legal for school employees to seclude students in a separate space — to put them in “isolated timeout” — if the students pose a safety threat to themselves or others. Yet every school day, workers isolate children for reasons that violate the law, an investigation by the Chicago Tribune and ProPublica Illinois has found.

Children were sent to isolation after refusing to do classwork, for swearing, for spilling milk, for throwing Legos. School employees use isolated timeout for convenience, out of frustration or as punishment, sometimes referring to it as “serving time.”

For this investigation, ProPublica Illinois and the Tribune obtained and analyzed thousands of detailed records that state law requires schools to create whenever they use seclusion. The resulting database documents more than 20,000 incidents from the 2017-18 school year and through early December 2018.

Of those, about 12,000 included enough detail to determine what prompted the timeout. In more than a third of these incidents, school workers documented no safety reason for the seclusion.

State education officials are unaware of these repeated violations because they do not monitor schools’ use of the practice. Parents, meanwhile, often are told little about what happens to their children.

The Tribune/ProPublica Illinois investigation, which also included more than 120 interviews with parents, children and school officials, provides the first in-depth examination of this practice in Illinois.

Because school employees observing the students often keep a moment-by-moment log, the records examined by reporters offer a rare view of what happens to children inside these rooms — often in their own words.

Without doubt, many of the children being secluded are challenging. Records show school employees struggling to deal with disruptive, even violent behavior, such as hitting, kicking and biting. Workers say that they have to use seclusion to keep everyone in the classroom safe and that the practice can help children learn how to calm themselves.

But disability advocates, special-education experts and administrators in school systems that have banned seclusion argue that the practice has no therapeutic or educational value, that it can traumatize children — and that there are better alternatives.

No federal law regulates the use of seclusion, and Congress has debated off and on for years whether that should change. Last fall, a bill was introduced that would prohibit seclusion in public schools that receive federal funding. A U.S. House committee held a hearing on the issue in January, but there’s been no movement since.

Nineteen states prohibit secluding children in locked rooms; four of them ban any type of seclusion. But Illinois continues to rely on the practice. The last time the U.S. Department of Education calculated state-level seclusion totals, in 2013-14, Illinois ranked No. 1.

Although state law requires schools to file a detailed report each time they use seclusion, no one is required to read these accounts.

Several school district officials said they had not reviewed seclusion reports from their schools until reporters requested them. The Illinois State Board of Education does not collect any data on schools’ use of isolated timeout and has not updated guidelines since issuing them 20 years ago.

“Having a law that allows schools to do something that is so traumatic and dangerous to students without having some sort of meaningful oversight and monitoring is really, really troubling,” said Zena Naiditch, founder and leader of Equip for Equality, a disabilities watchdog group that helped write Illinois’ rules in 1999.

Informed of the investigation’s findings, the Illinois State Board of Education said it would issue guidance clarifying that seclusion should be used only in emergencies. Officials acknowledged they don’t monitor the use of isolated timeout and said they would need legislative action to do so.

This investigation, based on records from more than 100 districts, found seclusion was used in schools across every part of the state and by a range of employees, from teachers and aides to social workers and security personnel.

Some districts declined to provide records or gave incomplete information. Others wouldn’t answer even basic questions, saying the law did not require them to. Of more than 20 districts reporters asked to visit, only three said yes.

“Is this something that we’re ashamed of? It’s not our finest,” said Christan Schrader, director of the Black Hawk Area Special Education District in East Moline, which documented about 850 seclusions in the time period examined.

Schrader said she thinks her staff generally uses seclusion appropriately but acknowledged room for improvement. She met with reporters at the district’s administration building but wouldn’t let them see the seclusion rooms in the school across the parking lot.

“Nobody wants to talk about those things because it doesn’t reflect well,” she said.

“I’m Crying Alone”

ABOUT 20 MINUTES after he was put in one of his school’s Quiet Rooms — a 5-foot-square space made of plywood and cinder block — 9-year-old Jace Gill wet his pants.

An aide, watching from the doorway, wrote that down in a log, noting it was 10:53 a.m. on Feb. 1, 2018.

School aides had already taken away Jace’s shoes and both of his shirts. Jace then stripped off his wet pants, wiped them in the urine on the floor and sat down in the corner.

“I’m naked!” Jace yelled at 10:56 a.m.

Staff did not respond, the log shows, except to close the door “for privacy.”

By 11 a.m., Jace had also defecated and was smearing feces on the wall. No adults intervened, according to the log. They watched and took notes.

“Dancing in feces. Doing the twist,” staff wrote at 11:14 a.m., noting that the boy then started pacing back and forth.

“I need more clothes,” he called out.

“We know,” an aide answered.

Jace banged on the walls and tried to pry open the door. He sat against the wall, crying for his mom.

11:42 a.m.: “Let me out of here. I’m crying alone.”

The incident began that morning when Jace ripped up a math worksheet and went into the hallway, trying to leave school.

Jace was diagnosed with autism when he was 3 and began having epileptic seizures at 5. In first grade, officials at his local school referred him to the Kansas Treatment and Learning Center, a public school in east-central Illinois for children with emotional and behavioral disabilities.

Jace’s mother, Kylee Beaven, had heard about the Quiet Rooms at Kansas and had strong reservations about the concept, even before she took a school tour and stepped inside one. She recalls being told he would never be shut inside alone.

“I remember standing there and thinking, like, if I was a kid, how would I feel if I was in this room by myself?” she said.

In the years Jace spent at the Kansas TLC, he was placed in the Quiet Rooms again and again — at least 28 times in the 2017-18 school year.

Once, he was shut in after he pushed a book off his desk, said “I hate reading,” raised his fist and tried to leave the classroom. Another day, he refused to get out of his grandmother’s car at school drop-off, so a staff member took him straight to a Quiet Room.

After he went into a Quiet Room on Feb. 1, a staff member took notes every one or two minutes. The handwritten incident report stretches nine pages on lined paper.

[image error]The log of Jace Gill’s isolated timeout on Feb. 1, 2018, documented hours spent in his school’s Quiet Rooms, with entries every one or two minutes. (Eastern Illinois Area Special Education)

Jace spent more than 80 minutes in the room before someone stepped inside to hand him a change of clothes, wipes to clean his feet and some lunch. A mental-health crisis worker arrived to talk to him, but he wouldn’t answer her questions.

He was not released until his grandmother — his “Gammy” — came to pick him up at 2:07 p.m.

Jace’s mother remembers this incident, in part because she was surprised to learn that he had defecated in the room. Hadn’t she been told he wouldn’t be alone? When reporters showed her the lengthy report, she read and reread it for at least 20 minutes, tears falling onto the pages.

“I didn’t know it was like this. I didn’t know they wrote this all down,” Beaven said. “None of it should have happened.”

In the nearly 50,000 pages of reports reporters reviewed about Illinois students in seclusion, school workers often keep watch over children who are clearly in distress. They dutifully document kids urinating and spitting in fear or anger and then being ordered to wipe the walls clean and mop the floors.

Kansas TLC is operated by the Eastern Illinois Area Special Education district, which serves students from eight counties and is based in Charleston. Illinois has about 70 regional special-education districts that teach students who can’t be accommodated in their home districts.

Eastern Illinois officials ultimately released roughly 10,000 pages of records chronicling nearly 1,100 isolated timeouts. Analysis of those records shows more than half of seclusions there were prompted by something other than a safety issue.

When students at any of the three schools have been disrespectful or disruptive, they are required to take a “head down” — to lower their heads and remain silent for a set number of minutes. If they refuse, they often are sent to a Quiet Room — sometimes for hours — until they comply.

Zayvion Johnson, 15, remembers how it felt. He used to go to the Kansas school, too, and spent time in the same rooms as Jace.

“They told us it was there to help us, but it just made everybody mad,” said Zayvion, now a sophomore at Charleston High School who plays running back and middle linebacker on the football team. “The Quiet Room, it irritates people. … You’re isolated from everybody else. You can’t talk to anybody else.”

The Eastern Illinois district’s executive director, Tony Reeley, said he had not grasped how often seclusion was being used in his schools until he read some of the documents requested by reporters.

“Looking at a stack of 8,000 pages at one time really did kind of hit home,” Reeley said when he met with reporters in the spring. He has not responded to recent requests for comment, including about specific incidents.

Reeley and assistant director Jeremy Doughty said they were surprised and concerned about how frequently staff used seclusion rooms after students were disobedient but not physically aggressive.

“When we read it, it reads punitive,” Doughty said.

Even though school districts are required to report their use of seclusion and restraint to the U.S. Department of Education, it can be difficult for parents to see the full picture.

“We have to do something to address this,” said Reeley.

In October 2018, Jace died at home in rural Paris of a seizure in his sleep. He had not returned to Kansas TLC that fall; his family had decided to home-school him, in part to keep him out of the Quiet Rooms.

In the family’s living room, Jace’s mom shared photos of him at a Wiggles concert, in a Spider-Man costume, sitting on Santa’s lap. A favorite image features the family wearing “Team Jace” T-shirts at an autism walk; Jace’s shirt reads “I’m Jace.”

“He loved his dad and loved me and he loved his Gammy,” his mother said. “He had issues, but they weren’t his fault. He couldn’t control it.”

A Boy in a Plywood Box

THE PLYWOOD BOX in the middle of Ted Meckley’s special-education classroom was 3 feet wide, 3 feet deep and 7 feet tall. The schools around Pontiac had been using boxes to seclude students for years, and Ted, a nonverbal 16-year-old with developmental disabilities, was routinely shut inside.

In 1989, Ted’s mother, Judith, started speaking out. Newspapers published stories, people got upset, and the boxes were removed.

Judith Meckley joined a state task force to examine the use of seclusion. After a brief ban on the practice, the state Board of Education issued guidance and then, a few years later, rules that carried the weight of state law.

The Illinois rules accepted the need for seclusion, a practice already used in psychiatric hospitals and other institutional settings.

After Congress enacted a 1975 law guaranteeing a free public education to children with disabilities, the colleges and universities that trained teachers sought guidance from behavioral psychologists on how to manage these potentially challenging students.

At the time, some researchers favored using cattle prods and electric shock to discourage unwanted behavior. Another method was to move the misbehaving patient into an environment with fewer stimuli — someplace calmer.

“It gave a psychological justification for seclusion,” said Scot Danforth, a professor at Chapman University in California who studies the education of children with disabilities and believes seclusion is ineffective.

[image error]A 1989 story in The Pantagraph, based in Bloomington, included a drawing of a wooden timeout box used in the Pontiac public schools. (Pantagraph, pantagraph.com)

Illinois’ rules, now 20 years old, require that school employees constantly monitor the child and that they be able to see inside the room. Locks on the doors must be active, meaning they have to be continuously held in place. That’s so a child can’t be trapped during a fire or other emergency.

But the rules also cemented the use of seclusion in Illinois’ public schools.

“Essentially the regulations legitimized practices that place students at risk of serious harm and trauma,” said Naiditch, of Equip for Equality.

The Illinois law also lists reasons children can be physically restrained, a practice sometimes used in conjunction with seclusion. But the law is less precise about seclusion than about restraint, leaving room for misinterpretation by school officials.

“It makes it even more dangerous because schools are widely using it as punishment,” Naiditch said after reading some of the incident reports obtained by ProPublica Illinois and the Tribune.

School administrators who use seclusion say they need it to deal with students whose behavior is challenging, disruptive and, at times, dangerous.

“If (students are) committed to hurting someone, that room is a way to keep them safe,” said Alicia Corrigan, director of student services for Community Consolidated School District 15, which operates a therapeutic day program in Rolling Meadows for 40 students with disabilities.

Students there were secluded about 330 times in the time period reporters examined.

But “that’s the smallest part of our day,” Corrigan said. “That is not what we do all day.”

The Belleville Area Special Services Cooperative, near St. Louis, has two timeout rooms. Scratch marks are visible in the blue padding inside and on the windows in the heavy, locking doors.

“Does it actually teach them anything or develop a skill? Absolutely not,” said Jeff Daugherty, who heads the cooperative. He allowed journalists to tour the Pathways school and see timeout rooms. “It’s never pleasant. I do believe it’s a necessary tool for our line of work with our students.”

The U.S. Department of Education warned in 2012 that secluding students can be dangerous and said that there is no evidence it’s effective in reducing problematic behaviors.

A few school districts in Illinois prohibit seclusion, including Chicago Public Schools, which banned it 11 years ago. But these districts often send students with disabilities to schools that do use it, such as those operated by most of Illinois’ special-education districts.

Danforth said seclusion goes unexamined because it largely affects students with disabilities.

To put children in timeout rooms, “you really have to believe that you’re dealing with people who are deeply defective. And that’s what the staff members tell each other. … You can do it because of who you’re doing it to.”

Ted Meckley, whose experiences in Pontiac’s timeout box as a teenager helped change the practice of seclusion, is now 45 and living in a group home. When a reporter told his mother that seclusion still is widely used, she gasped.

“No!” Meckley said. “My goodness. That is the most discouraging thing. I spent six years of my life fighting on this very issue. It’s so discouraging to think that, 25 years later, here we are. No progress.”

In fact, reporters identified several schools that have added more seclusion rooms in the past year or so. North Shore School District 112 converted two coat closets to isolation rooms. The McLean district in Normal opened two rooms in an elementary school.

And at Dirksen Elementary School in Schaumburg, two new 6-by-6 rooms are in use. They’re called “resolution rooms.”

The Revolving Door

BY 8:35 A.M. on Dec. 19, 2017, all five of the timeout “booths” at Bridges Learning Center near Centralia were already full. School had been in session for five minutes.

Each booth is about 6 by 8 feet, with a steel door. That day, one held a boy who had hung on a basketball rim and swore at staff when they told him to stop. In another, a boy who had used “raised voice tones.”

Two boys were being held because they hadn’t finished classwork. Inside the fifth room was a boy who had tried to “provoke” other students when he got off a bus. Staff told him he’d be back again “to serve 15 minutes every morning due to his irrational behavior.”

None of those reasons for seclusion is permitted under Illinois law.

Yet, over the course of that one day, the rooms stayed busy, with two turning over like tables in a restaurant, emptying and refilling four times. The other three were occupied for longer periods, as long as five hours for the boy who hung off the basketball rim. In all, Bridges staff isolated students 20 times.

Seclusion is supposed to be rare, a last resort. But at Bridges, part of the Kaskaskia Special Education District in southern Illinois, and at many other schools, it is often the default response.

Bridges used seclusion 1,288 times in the 15 months of school that reporters examined. The school has about 65 students.

According to the Tribune/ProPublica Illinois analysis of Bridges records, 72% of the seclusions were not prompted by a safety issue, as the law requires.

“There were kids there every day,” said Brandon Skibinski, who worked as a paraprofessional at Bridges for part of the 2018-19 school year. “I didn’t think that was the best practice. I don’t know what the best practices are, though.”

Cassie Clark, who heads the Kaskaskia Special Education District, did not respond to requests for comment about the district’s practices.

STUCK IN SECLUSION
In Illinois, seclusion is meant to be used for safety purposes, not to punish students. Isolated timeouts also must end no more than 30 minutes after a student’s unsafe behavior stops. But records show some schools did not release children until they apologized or performed a task; others referred to childen “serving time.”

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A girl at Bridges Learning Center near Centralia was secluded for not following directions and for cursing at staff. Workers noted that she would be let out only after she followed instructions to stay quiet. (Kaskaskia Special Education District)
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Employees with the Tri-County Special Education district set criteria for a student to leave seclusion: pick up paper she had ripped and stand in the middle of the room. She refused and was kept in the room until her bus arrived. The next day, she was made to stay in the room again for more than two hours until she met the criteria. (Tri-County Special Education)
[image error]At Central School in Springfield, employees logged the “time served” by a boy who was secluded because he had left his workspace and was “knocking over property.” The log states that the boy said “open the door” 108 times. (Sangamon Area Special Education District)

In nearly 6,000 of the incidents reporters analyzed from schools across the state, students were secluded only because they were disruptive, disrespectful, not following directions, not participating in class or a combination of those reasons.

“That is clearly not good practice,” said Kevin Rubenstein, president of the Illinois Alliance of Administrators of Special Education, which represents 1,200 public and private special-education administrators in the state. “To the extent there is bad practice going on across the state, we need to fix that.”

The Kaskaskia district’s revolving-door use of the timeout booths stands out, but some other districts seclude children nearly as frequently.

The Special Education District of Lake County used isolated timeout about 1,200 times over the 15-month period reporters examined. Northern Suburban Special Education District in Highland Park put children in seclusion more than 900 times.

Some traditional school districts also relied on seclusion. For example, Valley View School District 365U in Romeoville and Schaumburg District 54 each secluded students more than 160 times in the time period examined. Wilmette District 39 put students in isolated timeout 361 times in 2017-18 alone.

Illinois’ seclusion rules are more permissive than federal guidelines, which say seclusion should be used only in cases of “imminent danger of serious physical harm.” In Illinois, children can be secluded for physical safety concerns regardless of the threat level.

The state law also doesn’t encourage staff to try other interventions first. And while federal officials suggest that seclusion should end as soon as the problematic behavior stops, Illinois law allows a child to be secluded for up to 30 minutes more.

Even with these looser rules, the ProPublica Illinois/Tribune investigation found that Illinois schools regularly flout and misinterpret state law.

Some schools use seclusion — or the threat of it — as punishment. At the Braun Educational Center in south suburban Oak Forest, a classroom door features a sign saying: “If you walk to the door or open it you WILL earn” a visit to the “isolation and reflection” space. The school’s director said the sign is not a threat but a visual reminder that leaving is a violation of school rules.

Others won’t release children from seclusion until they apologize or sit against a wall or put their heads down. The Tri-County Special Education district in Carbondale routinely made children write sentences as a condition of release, records show. Students there often were kept in isolation long after the safety threat was over, sometimes even starting their next school day in a timeout room. Tri-County Director Jan Pearcy told reporters those practices ended this year.

Administrators in some districts have decided that putting a child in a room is not an isolated timeout if there is no door or the door is left open — even though the student is being blocked from leaving. State law does not say an isolated timeout requires a closed door.

“We only consider something isolated timeout if a student is in the room with the door shut and magnet (lock) held,” said Kristin Dunker, who heads the Vermilion Association for Special Education in Danville. “I understand this isn’t going to look good for us.”

At Bridges, records show how staff violated the state’s rules. Schools aren’t supposed to put students in seclusion for talking back or swearing, but Bridges did repeatedly. Workers also shut many students in booths for hours after the child’s challenging behavior ended.

One boy argued with Bridges workers as they tried to force him into isolation in March 2018 for being uncooperative. “I don’t want to go in a booth,” he said. “You’ll lock me in there all day.”

He was kept in the booth for nearly five hours.

Laura Myers saw Bridges’ timeout booths during school meetings and told administrators they should never be used on her 6-year-old son, Gabriel. A tiny, giggly boy with bright red hair, Gabriel has autism and is nonverbal, though he can sign a few words, including “blue,” “green” and “truck.”

“There’s a metal bench, the lock and key, the whole nine,” Myers said. “The sad part is there are parents there who don’t know it’s wrong and don’t know how their children are being treated.”

She was assured Gabriel would not be secluded. But she started to worry when he came home signing “timeout.” Now, she’s fighting for a different school placement.

Harm to Children

DARLA KNIPE COULD hear it when she walked toward the timeout room in her son’s school: a thudding sound, over and over.

She turned to a school aide and asked: “‘What is that noise?’”

It was her 7-year-old son, Isaiah. The first grader was banging his head against the concrete and plywood walls of the timeout room at Middlefork School in Danville. Knipe was shocked. He didn’t do that at home, she said.

Documents from Isaiah’s school, part of the Vermilion Association for Special Education, show that he was put in the timeout room regularly beginning in kindergarten. He started banging his head in first grade and continued through third, doing it nearly every time he was secluded.

“Isaiah states he has headache and ringing in his ears,” according to a report from Dec. 8, 2017. “Nurse filling out concussion form.”

Then, a month later: “Nurse is concerned he has been head banging several times, even slower to answer than usual, he was dizzy when he stood up, almost fell over.”

Sitting in his home last spring, Isaiah, now 10, looked down when asked why he hits his head.

“I tell the teachers why,” he said. “The timeout room … I don’t like it.”

[image error]A document from Middlefork School in Danville describes Isaiah Knipe banging his head repeatedly in a timeout room. Employees asked him to use a pillow “if he wishes to bang his head.” (Vermilion Area Special Education)

Records and interviews show how seclusion can harm children. Students ripped their fingernails or bruised their knuckles hitting the door. Their hands swelled and bled from beating the walls. In some cases, children were hurt so badly that ambulances were called.

Several parents said their children became afraid of school. Some said their children didn’t want to sleep alone. Other families said the rooms were so distressing that their children would not talk about them.

Angie Martin said her 9-year-old son now sees himself as such a bad child that he believes he belongs in seclusion. In less than three weeks at the start of this school year, he spent 731 minutes — more than 12 hours — in isolated timeout, records show.

“My concern is the damage that has been done, socially, emotionally and physically,” said Martin, whose son went to school in the Lincoln-Way Area Special Education district program in Chicago’s southwest suburbs. He now attends a private school.

The Tribune/ProPublica Illinois analysis found that the median duration of a seclusion was 22 minutes; in at least 1,300 cases the student spent more than an hour in isolated timeout.

One incident lasted 10 hours, with the student kept inside from breakfast into the evening.

Ross Greene, a clinical child psychologist and author of the book “The Explosive Child,” said repeated seclusion fuels a harmful cycle. Children who are frustrated and falling behind academically are taken out of the classroom, which makes them more frustrated and puts them even further behind.

“You end up with an alienated, disenfranchised kid who is being over-punished and lacks faith in adults,” Greene said.

Amber Patz, whose 11-year-old son Dalton was repeatedly secluded at The Center, an elementary school in East Moline for children with disabilities, said spending so much time in isolation put him behind academically and did not help him regulate his behavior.

“Putting you in this little room while you get red-faced does not work for him,” she said. “You have to think outside the box, but instead we are literally putting them in a box.”

[image error]In this picture, Dalton draws how he feels in a classroom at The Center in East Moline, left, and then in one of the school’s “reflection rooms.”

Parents often do not know the details of what happens in seclusion. Though state law requires schools to notify families in writing within 24 hours each day a child is secluded, that doesn’t always happen.

While some notices describe the incident, others are form letters with just a checked box to indicate that a child was secluded. The law requires only that parents be notified of the date of the incident, whether restraint or seclusion was used, and the name and phone number of someone to call for more information.

Some parents said they got such abbreviated notices they didn’t know what seclusion meant or how long their child had been in a room. Others said staff used euphemistic language to describe seclusion, making it hard to understand what really happened.

Crystal Lake school employees have suggested to Kayla Siegmeier that her son, Carson, who has autism, might benefit from time in a “Blue Room,” she said.

“It turns out the Blue Room is a locked, padded room,” she said.

She read Illinois’ isolated timeout law and got a doctor’s note last year that prevented the school from secluding Carson, now a second grader. “Hard stop,” she said she told the school.

Crystal Lake school officials acknowledged they could be more transparent with parents and said they use the rooms only in emergencies.

In Danville, Darla Knipe knew that her son Isaiah was frequently in seclusion, but she didn’t know the school kept detailed incident reports each time it happened until reporters showed them to her.

“I never got anything like this,” Knipe said.

When she requested the reports from the district, she said, officials told her she could have asked for them any time. “Why would I ask for an incident report I didn’t know about to begin with?” she said.

The district gave her 212 reports, and she didn’t tackle the huge pile of paper right away. Then one night she woke up at 2 a.m. and stayed up for hours reading them. She learned what set Isaiah off and how he reacted.

“If we had talked after three, five, six of these, was there something I should have been doing?” she wondered.

She said she would have shared the reports with doctors who were working to diagnose the cause of his behavioral challenges. “I think about how different that boy could have been.”

Dunker, the district director, said that although parents don’t get minute-by-minute reports, they are notified by phone and then in writing after a seclusion. “I feel like that is just fine in terms of what a parent needs,” she said.

A Better Way

THERE ARE SCHOOL districts in Illinois — and all across the country — where seclusion isn’t the response to defiant or even aggressive behavior. In fact, it’s never an option.

Jim Nelson, who took over the North DuPage Special Education Cooperative in July 2016, said he put in a maintenance request on his first day to take the door off the seclusion room at Lincoln Academy, a therapeutic day school for students with emotional and behavioral difficulties.

The year before, the school in suburban Roselle, which has an enrollment of about 30, had placed students in the room 181 times, federal data shows. The space now has a lava lamp, fuzzy pillows, a beanbag and puzzles, and students go there on their own when they need a break, Nelson said.

He said he thinks all schools could get rid of seclusion and still be able to educate students. Since ending the practice, the North DuPage district has not seen an increase in the number of students transferred to more restrictive schools, he said.

“We have outbursts every day,” Nelson said, but “you are now trying to figure out what is the root of this outburst: Is it a home issue, a bus issue, a peer issue, a relationship issue, environment or fluorescent lights? We have to problem solve.”

THROUGH THE EYES OF A CHILD
Very few Illinois public schools allowed reporters or photographers to view the spaces they use for isolated timeout. So reporters who met with the families of secluded students invited children to draw their impressions of the rooms.

[image error]
Kansas Treatment and Learning Center.
[image error]
Middlefork School in Danville.


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Middlefork School, by Isaiah Knipe.
[image error]
Interior of quiet room, Kansas TLC.

Administrators at schools that have closed their rooms say the cultural shift takes a lot of effort and training.

Eliminating seclusion generally requires two steps: first, embracing the philosophy that isolating children is unacceptable; second, teaching staff members how to identify and address the causes of challenging behavior before it reaches a crisis point.

Zac Barry, who teaches a system based at Cornell University called Therapeutic Crisis Intervention, said staff often get into a power struggle when students don’t obey, even over trivial matters.

“Don’t argue with them,” Barry said at a recent training session in Peoria for people who work with children. “If they don’t want to sit down, don’t try to make them sit down!”

Among other strategies, TCI teaches that it’s more effective to back away from an upset student, giving him space, than to move in closer. Teachers are trained how to stand in a nonthreatening way.

In Naperville School District 203, the rooms formerly used for isolated timeout are now sensory areas stocked with weighted stuffed animals and sound-blocking headphones.

Christine Igoe, who oversees special education in the 16,000-student district, said eliminating seclusion helps teachers and other staffers build relationships with students. Without seclusion as an option, she said, students and staff are less likely to be on high alert and anxious that situations will escalate.

“When you change your lens from ‘the student is making a choice’ to ‘the student is lacking a skill,’ everything changes,” Igoe said.

HOW DO YOU FEEL?
The Kansas Treatment and Learning Center is among the schools that require secluded students to participate in a debriefing with staff members. Sometimes students cannot leave until they complete a “think sheet” describing how they feel and how they will behave better next time.

[image error]
A 7-year-old girl who was secluded after she “threw a fit” indicated she was feeling sad, angry and frightened. (Eastern Illinois Area Special Education)
[image error]
A student spent about 40 minutes in seclusion after she refused to sit at a desk. She wrote sentences promising to obey next time. (Eastern Illinois Area Special Education)

Kim Sanders, executive vice president of the Grafton behavioral health network in Virginia, which includes private therapeutic day schools, said schools there overhauled their approach after employees were injured in confrontations with students so frequently that the district lost its workers’ compensation insurance.

“Our outcomes were not great,” she said. “It was horrible for our staff morale.”

Since then, Grafton has developed a behavior model called Ukeru that it now sells to other schools. It’s based on the idea that staff should attempt to comfort, not control, children. When a child becomes violent, the system suggests staff use cushioned shields to protect themselves.

“If seclusion or restraint worked,” Sanders said, “wouldn’t you have to do it once or twice and you’d never have to do it again? It’s not working.”

Little Kids, Locked Away

ILLINOIS SCHOOLS SECLUDED an 8-year-old boy who got upset when he couldn’t ride the green bike during recess, a first grade boy who didn’t want to stop playing tag and a third grader who didn’t get the prize he wanted.

Even preschool children spent time in isolated timeout, records show.

The majority of incident reports reviewed for this investigation did not specify the grade of the child. But ProPublica Illinois and the Tribune identified more than 1,700 incidents when the student being secluded was in fifth grade or younger. Hundreds of seclusions involved kids in preschool, kindergarten or first grade.

One 7-year-old boy named Eli spent 1,652 minutes — 27½ hours — in the “reflection rooms” as a first grader at a school called The Center in East Moline, school records show.

Still learning to say some of his letters, Eli calls the spaces the “flection” rooms. When his mom, Elisha, gently corrects him, he snuggles into her side. “It’s hard to really say,” he explained.

Eli was referred to The Center, which offers a program for children with behavioral and emotional disabilities, when he was in kindergarten. Records show he sometimes had trouble coping with the frustrations of elementary school — not unlike many other Illinois children who were secluded after outbursts common for their age.

When staff told him he couldn’t play with toys, he started to tip desks and chairs. Because he didn’t want to come inside from recess, he began “flopping,” refused to walk and was “being unsafe.” He “could not continue to play nice” with blocks and started to hit and tried to run out of class. Sometimes, he would kick staff or throw objects around the room.

According to records from the school district and his family, Eli was secluded more than a dozen times in kindergarten, beginning when he was 5. In first grade, it happened 49 times. His longest timeout was 115 minutes.

“There is no reason my child should be in a timeout room for two hours,” said his mother, who asked that the family’s last name not be published.

Elisha pulled her son out of The Center at the end of last school year after noticing bruises on his arm and a fingernail indentation that broke the skin. Records show Eli was physically restrained by three staff members and put in isolated timeout that day. He now attends a private school.

[image error]Eli was given ice after he injured his finger while trying to leave a seclusion room at The Center, an elementary school in East Moline. (Provided by family)

Schrader, director of the Black Hawk Area Special Education District, which operates The Center in northwestern Illinois, said staff at the school use the seclusion room “on a case-by-case basis, incident by incident” to help students learn strategies to calm themselves. She declined to comment on Eli’s case or that of any specific child.

“We use it more as a way to help the student learn to deescalate themselves and constant supervision to maintain their safety,” she said.

When a reporter asked Eli whether the calm down rooms helped him calm down, he shook his head no.

How did he feel when in the room?

“Mad,” he said quietly.

Movie Day

THE SECLUSION ROOMS inside Braun Educational Center in Oak Forest look like so many others across Illinois: blue padding along the walls, a small window where staff can look in. The red button outside that locks the door. A mirror in the upper corner to give a fuller view.

In one room, three long tear marks were visible in the padding of the door — left there, the principal said, by a student with autism.

About 150 elementary through high school students with disabilities attend programs at Braun, which is operated by the Southwest Cook County Cooperative Association for Special Education. Gineen O’Neil, the co-op’s executive director, described many as troubled and challenging; some are homeless, abuse drugs, get pregnant or struggle with mental illness, she said. Some, she said, “run the streets” at night.

“People have to realize they get educated somewhere, and this is where it is,” O’Neil said.

Over 1½ school years, staffers isolated students nearly 500 times. O’Neil said students are not secluded as punishment.

But the Tribune/ProPublica Illinois analysis found that in 46% of seclusions at Braun, staff documented no safety reason that preceded the isolation. O’Neil said some of these incidents could have involved a safety issue despite the lack of documentation, but she also described the findings as “disturbing” and ordered a review of practices.

“You are making 1,000 judgment calls a day, you know what I mean?” O’Neil said. “You don’t always call them right.”

On a recent Friday afternoon, it was quiet in the halls. Most of the children had gathered to watch a movie and eat popcorn. They had earned the reward for good behavior.

But one boy didn’t qualify — and he was mad. The principal, Kristine Jones, said that after the rest of his class left for the movie, he shouted: “This place sucks. I’m leaving.”

He didn’t actually leave. But the boy was a “runner” when upset, Jones said, and they wanted to “pre-correct” his behavior.

So they took him to an isolation room.

White House Slams ‘Illegitimate’ Hearing

WASHINGTON — The Latest on the public impeachment hearings into President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine (all times local):

2:10 p.m.

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham is slamming the first round of interviews in Tuesday’s impeachment hearings.

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The public heard Tuesday from Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who serves on the National Security Council, and Jennifer Williams, a career foreign service officer detailed to Vice President Mike Pence’s office.

Grisham is insisting the public “learned nothing new in today’s illegitimate ‘impeachment’ proceedings,” and is characterizing the witnesses’ testimony as little more than “personal opinions and conjecture.”

She’s also charging the proceedings “further” expose that Democrats are “blinded by their hatred for Donald Trump and rabid desire to overturn the outcome of a free and fair election.”

Trump has also been weighing in with a constant stream of retweets criticizing the process and attacking Vindman, who still works for the White House.

__

2 p.m.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff says President Donald Trump’s pressure on Ukraine for political investigations was “a failed effort to bribe Ukraine.”

Trump urged the investigations as the U.S. withheld military aid from the country. Closing a Tuesday morning impeachment hearing, Schiff criticized Republicans for arguing that because the aid was eventually released, “this makes it OK.”

Schiff said, “it’s no less odious because it was discovered.”

Democrats are investigating Trump’s dealings with Ukraine in their impeachment probe. Republicans say they don’t have enough evidence to prove high crimes and misdemeanors.

California Rep. Devin Nunes said in his closing statement that Democrats “poison people with nonsense.” Nunes is the top Republican on the intelligence panel.

The committee is scheduled for another hearing Tuesday afternoon.

__

1:50 p.m.

A White House aide says he knew he was “assuming a lot of risk” by reporting his concerns about a July 25 phone call between President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s new president.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman was asked during Tuesday’s impeachment hearing whether he understood he was taking on the “most important person” when he did it.

Vindman earlier in his opening statement told his father, an immigrant from Ukraine, not to worry about his coming forward, that he would be fine because in the U.S. it was OK to speak out.

Vindman and others said it was improper for Trump to ask Ukraine’s president to investigate the family of Democrat Joe Biden and a debunked theory that Ukraine had meddled in the 2016 elections.

He said he felt comfortable speaking out, because: “Here, right matters.”

The statement was met with brief applause.

___

1:20 p.m.

Ukraine’s president says his country is tired of hearing about a probe into the son of former Vice President Joe Biden.

In a phone call on July 25 that triggered the congressional impeachment inquiry, President Donald Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate Biden’s son and his involvement with Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company.

Responding to a question from a reporter Tuesday, Zelenskiy said that everybody in the country is tired of hearing about Burisma.

He said Ukraine is an independent country with its own “problems and questions.”

Earlier on Tuesday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko said the last thing the country needs is to be dragged into the U.S. political drama.

___

12:45 p.m.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman is telling Congress that the “favor” that President Donald Trump requested from the president of Ukraine on a July call was more than just a request.

Vindman testified in the House impeachment hearing Tuesday that in his military culture, a request is considered an order when a superior asks you to do something.

Republicans challenged that thinking, implying that Trump was not demanding that President Volodymyr Zelenskiy do the investigations on the phone call. Trump asked for the investigations as the U.S. withheld military aid for the country.

Republican Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah said “the two people who were speaking to each other didn’t interpret this as a demand.”

Vindman said the context of the call “made it clear that this was not simply a request.”

___

12:20 p.m.

President Donald Trump slammed the ongoing impeachment hearings as a “disgrace” and “kangaroo court,” while acknowledging he watched part of the third day of public hearings.

Trump made the comments at the start of a Cabinet meeting and as the House impeachment panel listened to testimony from National Security Council aide Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and Jennifer Williams, an aide to Vice President Mike Pence.

Trump said he caught some of Tuesday’s testimony from Vindman, a Ukraine specialist, who says Trump inappropriately pressured Ukraine’s president to open an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son’s dealings in Ukraine

The president dismissed Vindman’s testimony, and praised Republican lawmakers for “killing it.”

Trump said, “I don’t know Vindman,” “I never heard of him.”

___

12:15 p.m.

A Republican at the House impeachment hearing is using a foot-tall stack of transcripts to push back against Democrats saying President Donald Trump tried bribing Ukrainian officials.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California has said it was “bribery” when Trump withheld U.S. military aid in hopes Ukraine would agree to investigate his Democratic opponents.

At Tuesday’s impeachment hearing, Texas GOP Rep. John Ratcliffe displayed what he said was 3,500 pages of transcripts from impeachment inquiry interviews with federal officials.

He said the word “bribery” only appeared once. It was in a question one attorney asked about unfounded bribery allegations against former Vice President Joe Biden.

Tuesday’s two witnesses — White House national security advisers Alexander Vindman and Jennifer Williams — both told Ratcliffe they’ve not used “bribery” to describe Trump’s actions.

The Constitution cites “bribery” as an impeachable offense.

___

12:10 p.m.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman has rejected attacks on his judgment and credibility during the impeachment hearings by reading from a glowing performance review he received.

The review came from Fiona Hill, who was his boss on the National Security Council until this summer. She described Vindman as “brilliant” and “unflappable” and a stellar military officer with excellent judgment.

Vindman pulled out a copy of the review and read from it during questioning Tuesday from Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, who asked the Army officer why some colleagues have raised questions about his judgment.

___

12:05 p.m.

An aide to Vice President Mike Pence is responding to the president’s tweet going after her before her public testimony Tuesday in the House impeachment inquiry.

Jennifer Williams, a career State Department official detailed to Pence’s office, says Trump’s tweet accusing her of being a “Never Trumper” caught her by surprise.

She’s told the committee she “was not expecting to be called out by name.”

Trump had tweeted Williams should meet with “the other Never Trumpers, who I don’t know & mostly never even heard of, & work out a better presidential attack!”

Williams said she was confused by the attack and “would not” consider herself a “Never Trumper.”

Alexander Vindman, an Army officer at the National Security Council, was asked the same question Tuesday.

He responded: “I’d call myself never partisan.”

___

12 p.m.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman says there is no ambiguity that President Donald Trump wanted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to commit to investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden on a July phone call.

Vindman testified in a House impeachment hearing that there was no ambiguity about Trump’s use of the word “Biden” in the phone call, which is at the heart of the Democrats’ impeachment probe. Trump asked Zelenskiy to investigate the former vice president and his son, Hunter Biden, who was linked to a gas company in Ukraine.

In contrast, the hearing’s other witness said Vice President Mike Pence did not request the investigations in his own conversations with Zelenskiy.

Jennifer Williams, a State Department employee detailed to Pence’s office, said he never brought up the investigations.

___

11:45 a.m.

Ukraine’s foreign minister says his country doesn’t want to be involved in the U.S. political drama.

Commenting on the ongoing impeachment hearings, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko said Tuesday that Ukraine wants to retain the support of both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, which it “had always been proud of.”

Prystaiko said the last thing the country needs, while dealing with the war with Russia-backed separatists in the east, is to be involved in “problems at the other end of the world.”

A July 25 phone call in which President Donald Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate the son of former Vice President Joe Biden triggered the congressional impeachment inquiry.

___

11:25 a.m.

A U.S. official says the Army and local law enforcement are providing security for the Army officer who is testifying Tuesday during the House impeachment hearing.

The official says that the Army did a security assessment in order to make sure that Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and his family are secure, so the officer didn’t have to worry about that as the proceedings go on.

Vindeman is testifying about his service as a National Security Council aide and his concerns surrounding President Donald Trump’s Ukraine pressure campaign.

The official said the Army is prepared to take additional steps if needed, which could include moving Vindman and his family to a more secure location on a base.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal security issues.

— Lolita C. Baldor

___

11:20 a.m.

A key witness in the impeachment inquiry has told lawmakers that he was offered the post of Ukraine’s defense minister three times but rejected the suggestion.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the National Security Council’s director for Ukraine, said he was made the offer while attending the inauguration of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy as part of the official U.S. delegation.

Vindman says “I immediately dismissed these offers.” He says two American officials witnessed the exchange with a top adviser to Zelenskiy, and that he notified his chain of command and counterintelligence officials about the offer upon returning to the U.S.

Vindman is testifying before the House Intelligence Committee about his concerns about President Donald Trump’s decision to press Ukrainian officials to launch an investigation of his political opponents.

___

11 a.m.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman is declining to tell lawmakers who in the intelligence community he may have spoken to after he listened in to a July call between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

In response to questions from California Rep. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, Vindman testified he would not answer on the advice of his lawyer and the recommendation by the committee’s chairman, Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff.

Schiff said Nunes’ questioning was an attempt to out a whistleblower who first revealed the essence of the call and whose formal complaint triggered the impeachment probe. The whistleblower based the complaint on conversations with people who were familiar with the call.

Schiff said “these proceedings will not be used to out the whistleblower.”

___

10:50 a.m.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman says he heard envoy Gordon Sondland describe “specific investigations” as a requirement for Ukraine’s president to get a coveted White House visit.

Testifying at Tuesday’s impeachment hearing, Vindman said the conversation took place at the White House on July 10.

He says Sondland referred to “specific investigations that Ukrainians would have to deliver in order to get these meetings.” Those desired investigations were into the 2016 U.S. presidential election and also into Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son.

Vindman says he told Sondland that the request for investigations was inappropriate and had nothing to do with national security policy.

___

10:45 a.m.

Lt. Col Alexander Vindman says he doesn’t “take it as anything nefarious” that a transcript of President Donald Trump’s July call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was put on a highly secure server.

Testifying at Tuesday’s impeachment hearing, Vindman said there was a discussion among lawyers in the White House about the best way to manage the transcript because it was “viewed as a sensitive transcript.”

On the July 25 call, Trump asked Zelenskiy to do him a favor and investigate his Democratic rival Joe Biden and his son. At the time, the U.S. was holding up military aid to Ukraine.

Vindman said the rough transcript of the call was segregated to a small group to prevent leaks.

___

10:20 a.m.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council official, says his military experience shapes how he views a phone call between President Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart.

Vindman said at Tuesday’s impeachment hearing that he believed Trump was demanding that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy undertake an investigation into Trump’s Democratic rival Joe Biden even if Trump didn’t phrase it as a demand.

Vindman says that in the military, when someone senior “asks you to do something, even if it’s polite and pleasant, it’s not to be taken as a request. It’s to be taken as an order.”

Vindman wore his military dress blue uniform with medals to the hearing.

___

10:15 a.m.

An aide to Vice President Mike Pence has told the House Intelligence Committee she will submit a classified memo about a September call between Pence and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy as part of the impeachment investigation.

Asked by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff if she took notes of the call and if there was anything she wanted to share that is relevant to the impeachment probe, Jennifer Williams testified that she would follow the advice of her lawyer who advised her not to answer. The lawyer said the vice president’s office said the call was classified.

Williams told the committee behind closed doors this month that the call was “very positive” and the two men did not discuss Trump’s push for investigations of Democrats.

___

10:10 a.m.

The White House is responding to Tuesday’s House impeachment proceedings in real time, stepping up pushback after facing criticism that it wasn’t doing enough to defend the president.

The White House sent out five “rapid response” emails to reporters before the witnesses were even sworn in for questioning. And the notes continued throughout the proceedings to defend President Donald Trump and try to undermine the credibility of the witnesses appearing.

Administration officials were also participating Tuesday in an event for regional reporters.

Press secretary Stephanie Grisham tweeted that, “While the dems cry impeachment we are speaking to the country w regional media interviews focused on @POTUS balanced trade agenda.”

Trump has been silent on Twitter so far, but has a Cabinet meeting scheduled later Tuesday morning.

___

10:05 a.m.

A White House aide says that he doesn’t think the omission of the word “Burisma” from the transcript of a July 25 call between President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s new president was significant.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman says he thinks the people who do transcripts may not have caught the word. He said they put in “company” instead. Burisma is a Ukrainian gas company affiliated with the son of Joe Biden.

Vindman is testifying publicly Tuesday before a House committee in the impeachment inquiry into Trump.

He said that he tried to edit the transcript of the call to note the word “Burisma” but it didn’t make it into the rough transcript released publicly. He doesn’t know why.

Vindman said he thought President Volodymyr Zelenskiy may have been prepped for the call because he didn’t think the new leader would know about it otherwise.

___

10 a.m.

A White House aide says that he told Ukrainian officials to stay out of U.S. politics.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman is testifying publicly Tuesday before a House committee in the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.

Vindman was on a July 25 call between Trump and Ukraine’s new president where Trump pressed for investigations into the 2016 presidential election and the son of his Democratic rival.

Vindman said he knew “without hesitation” that he had to report the call to the White House counsel.

He told the committee that another official, U.S. Ambassador Gordon Sondland, later said the Ukrainians needed to provide “a deliverable” which was “specific investigations.”

Vindman later told Ukrainian officials they should steer clear of the requests.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing.

___

9:55 a.m.

The Democratic committee chairman leading the House impeachment hearing is highlighting verbal attacks that President Donald Trump and his defenders have made against two government officials who are testifying.

As Tuesday’s hearing began, California Rep. Adam Schiff mentioned Trump’s tweet in which he accused Vice President Mike Pence adviser Jennifer Williams of being a never-Trumper.

Schiff also criticized “scurrilous attacks” against Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who he noted “shed blood for America.” He said he hoped members of the House Intelligence Committee would not attack him.

The top Republican on the committee is California Rep. Devin Nunes.

He accused Democrats of hiding the whistleblower whose report triggered the impeachment investigation in their “own witness protection program.” And he says witness testimony so far has been based on second- and third-hand accounts of conversations.

___

9:45 a.m.

A White House aide says that he recognizes that what he is doing — testifying before Congress — would not be tolerated in many other countries.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman says in Russia, for example, his “act of expressing my concerns to the chain of command in an official and private channel” would have cost him his life.

Vindman, dressed in uniform, testified that he felt Trump’s request on a July 25 call to a new Ukrainian leader to investigate a political rival was “improper.”

The U.S. Army official is an immigrant from Ukraine. He said that he is grateful his father came to the United States some 40 years ago, a place “where I can live free of fear for mine and my family’s safety.”

He then addressed his father, saying “Dad, my sitting here today … is proof that you made the right decision 40 years ago to leave the Soviet Union.”

___

9:38 a.m.

A White House aide tells lawmakers that what he heard on a July phone call between President Donald Trump and the new Ukrainian president was “improper.”

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman is testifying Tuesday in a public hearing in the House impeachment inquiry into Trump’s pressure on Ukraine to investigate his Democratic political rivals as he withheld aid to the East European nation.

Vindman is a U.S. Army officer detailed to the National Security Council. He listened in on the July 25 call at the center of the impeachment inquiry. Trump asked the new Ukrainian president to look into whether Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election and wanted the country to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

Vindman said it was “improper” for Trump to demand a foreign government investigative a U.S. citizen and political opponent.

Vindman is one of several witnesses coming before the committee this week. He and the other witnesses have already testified behind closed doors.

Trump has denied doing anything wrong.

___

9:30 a.m.

The top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee is blaming the media for the impeachment drive against President Donald Trump.

Devin Nunes spent his opening statement at the third day of impeachment hearings excoriating journalists, saying “the media of course are free to act as Democratic puppets … at the direction of their puppet masters.”

Absent from Nunes opening remarks Tuesday was any significant defense of Trump as he faces the starkest test of his presidency. The Democratic-led House is investigating his pressure campaign against Ukraine to open a probe into Joe Biden and his son.

At the center of the impeachment drive is Trump’s July 25th call to Ukraine’s president, when he mentioned Biden and a discredited theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.

___

9:15 a.m.

The twin brother of a U.S. Army officer and White House aide is in the House intelligence hearing to support his appearance at the House impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman is testifying Tuesday publicly on what he heard on a July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukraine’s new leader.

Vindman told his twin brother Yevgeny about the call and his concerns about it. His brother sat behind him Tuesday in the hearing room. Yevgeny Vindman is also a U.S. Army official who is an attorney in the White House.

The House intelligence panel is holding public hearings into Trump’s pressure on Ukraine to investigate his Democratic political rivals while also withholding aid to the Eastern European nation.

__

9:05 a.m.

An adviser to Vice President Mike Pence says she found a July phone call between President Donald Trump and the Ukraine leader “unusual” since it “involved discussion of what appeared to be a domestic political matter.”

Jennifer Williams was at the witness table Tuesday as the House intelligence public hearing got underway. The House impeachment inquiry is looking into the Trump administration’s interactions with Ukraine.

She listened to the July 25 call between Trump and Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy. She says that after the call, she provided an update in the vice president’s daily briefing book indicating that the conversation had taken place.

Williams says she did not discuss the call with Pence or any of her colleagues in the office of the vice president or the National Security Council.

The House intelligence panel is holding public hearings into Trump’s pressure on Ukraine to investigate his Democratic political rivals while also withholding aid to the Eastern European nation.

__

9:05 a.m.

An adviser to Vice President Mike Pence says she was told that White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney had directed that a hold on military aid to Ukraine should remain in place.

Jennifer Williams is testifying Tuesday in the House impeachment inquiry into the Trump administration’s interactions with Ukraine.

Williams says she attended meetings earlier this year in which the hold on Ukraine security assistance was discussed.

She says representatives of the State and Defense departments advocated that the hold on the aid should be lifted, and that budget officials said that Mulvaney had directed that it remain in place.

Williams says she learned on Sept. 11 that the hold had been lifted. She says she’s never learned what prompted that decision.

The House intelligence panel is conducting public hearings into President Donald Trump’s pressure on Ukraine to investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter, while also withholding security aid to the Eastern European nation.

The Many Lies and Untruths We’re Being Told About the Bolivian Coup

To endorse the coup in Bolivia, numerous editorials in major US media outlets paint President Evo Morales as undemocratic. Exhibit A in their case is the Organization of American States’ (OAS) claims that there was fraud in the October 20 Bolivian election in which Morales was elected for a fourth term. They also argue that he should not have been allowed to run again in the first place.

The New York Times’ editorial (11/11/19) accused Morales of “brazenly abusing the power and institutions put in his care by the electorate.” The Washington Post (11/11/19) alleged that “a majority of Bolivians wanted [Morales] to leave office”—a claim for which they provided no evidence—while claiming that he had “grown increasingly autocratic” and that “his downfall was his insatiable appetite for power.” The Wall Street Journal (11/11/19) argued that Morales “is a victim of his own efforts to steal another election,” saying that Morales “has rigged the rules time and again to stay in power.”

The first basis on which the papers call Morales’ democratic legitimacy into question is by suggesting that he had no right to run in the 2019 election because he lost a 2016 referendum on whether the country should abolish term limits. But the next year, Bolivia’s constitutional court lifted limits to re-election, and its Supreme Electoral Court subsequently approved Morales’ run.  Even the head of the OAS, which would go on to play a crucial role in the coup, agreed that Morales had a right to run.

To support its assertion that Morales “had grown increasingly autocratic,” the Post linked to an AP report (Guardian, 12/17/16) that said Morales was going to run despite losing the referendum. That article was from before the two court rulings, and the Post doesn’t mention those decisions at any point. Thus readers were given the inaccurate message that the term limits story ended with the referendum.

The Times dismissed the court rulings by writing that “Morales had steadily concentrated power in his hands and planted loyalists in key institutions,” and that, following the term limits referendum, Morales “had the supreme court, by now stuffed with his loyalists, rule that limiting his time in office somehow violated his human rights.” Saying Morales “had” the court rule in a particular way implies that Morales forced it to reach that decision, but the paper provided no evidence to support that claim.

The Journal likewise described “a supreme court packed with his appointees [ruling that] he could run without term limits.” Words like “packed” and “stuffed” imply that it was unfair of Morales to do what democratically elected leaders in the United States, Canada and elsewhere have the right to do, namely appoint judges. That politicians use the power granted to them by winning an election to select judges who favor similar policies isn’t a sign of a nascent tyranny; it’s a sign of a politician working within the ordinary boundaries of representative, constitutional democracy. Besides, the country’s supreme court is elected, so it’s the Bolivian people who “packed” and “stuffed” the court with the judges that they voted for.

To suggest—as these papers do—that the Morales government’s maneuvers were indicative of a country descending into dictatorship is to overlook the ways in which the courts are consciously designed to function as checks on the popular will in liberal democratic states like the US and Canada. And if, as these paper seem to assert, the presence or absence of executive term limits is a definitive marker of democracy, then one assumes that there will soon be a deluge of editorials calling for coups in Canada and Britain, because these countries don’t have prime ministerial term limits (and the United States had no presidential term limits for most of its history).

If a sufficient number of Bolivians thought Morales’ candidacy was undemocratic, they could have voted him out in the October 20 election. There’s a paucity of evidence to believe that that’s what happened, but the editorials read as though it were a settled fact that the Morales government stole the election.

The official vote count conducted by Bolivia’s electoral authority found that Morales earned 47.08% of the vote, while Carlos Mesa finished second at 36.51%. To put Morales’ democratic legitimacy in context, Canada held a federal election the day after Bolivia in which Justin Trudeau became prime minister for a second term, even though his Liberal Party won 33.1% of the popular vote while the Conservatives got 34.4%, because of the way that Canada’s first-past-the-post electoral system distributes parliamentary seats. Bolivian law stipulates that a second round runoff is not required if the first place candidate secures at least 40% of the vote and 10 percentage points more than the second place candidate.

The editorials, however, called Morales’ victory into question by uncritically parroting OAS claims about Bolivia’s election. The Times refers to what it calls the “highly fishy vote on October 20,” linking that phrase to one of its earlier articles (10/23/19), which said:

The outcome of the vote has been in dispute since election officials released preliminary results on Sunday night that pointed to a runoff between Mr. Morales and Carlos Mesa, a former president—only to backtrack within 24 hours. On Monday night, election officials released an updated vote tally showing Mr. Morales leading by 10 percentage points, the margin required to avoid a runoff.

The October 23 article went on to write that elections observers from the OAS

issued a withering assessment of the integrity on the [electoral] process…. The mission said that the trend reversal between Sunday and Monday was at odds with independent tallies of the results and asserted that the outcome warranted a second round.

Much of the confusion—deliberate or otherwise—around the Bolivian election relates to the existence of two separate vote-counting processes: a “quick count” that is meant to be partial and provisional, and an official tally that necessarily takes longer, is comprehensive, and determines the actual results of the election.

A rigorous study conducted by the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) showed that the quick count—what the Times seems to be referring to as “preliminary results”—did not, in fact, “point…to a runoff,” and there was no “trend reversal.” CEPR pointed out:

It is a general phenomenon that later-reporting areas are often politically and demographically different from earlier ones, and it has been noted that this is relevant to interpreting the results from a parallel vote tabulation such as a quick count. In Bolivia’s elections over the last decade and a half, votes from rural and peripheral areas of the country have tended to disproportionately favor Morales and the MAS-IPSP. Because of logistical, technological and possibly other limitations, these votes end up being computed later in the counting process. This is true of both the quick and the official counts, which are both affected by the same geography and infrastructure. Rural and poorer places, which have tended to heavily favor Morales, are slower to transmit data or send tally sheets to the electoral tribunals….

The quick count, in this case, was no exception. The gap between Morales and Mesa widened steadily as the counting process advanced. It was a predictable and unsurprising phenomenon that need not have surprised the OAS mission….

In addition, and contrary to public statements from the OAS mission, an analysis of the results of the quick count up until it was suspended on election day predict an outcome that is extremely similar to the actual final results.

So the paper’s editorial endorsement of the coup because the election was supposedly “highly fishy” does not stand up to scrutiny. It’s not clear, moreover, what “independent tallies” the Times (10/23/19) thought were “at odds” with the Bolivian electoral commission’s count, or what evidence the paper thought there is for believing that the latter isn’t independent. Perhaps the paper means that the OAS should be seen as “independent”—but it hadn’t conducted a “tally” at that point and, as we’ll see, there is little reason to believe it’s “independent.”

The Post went even further than the Times’ “highly fishy,” asserting that “the electoral tribunal, which [Morales] controls, then moved to falsify the results of the October 20 vote so as to hand him a first-round victory.” To provide backup for this argument, the Post linked to an earlier article (10/24/19) that said Morales “emerged from an unexplained gap in the publication of election results in better shape than he entered it.” Here the paper was presenting the unofficial quick count, where there was a gap—one that was, in fact, perfectly explicable—as though it and the official tally are one and the same. They’re not, and it wasn’t even the official count to which the OAS objected at the time. As the CEPR report noted:

It is the official count that is legally binding, not the quick count that the OAS mission took issue with. The official count was never interrupted and was regularly updated online without any significant interruption.

The Post article (10/24/19) then noted:

The chief elections observer for the Organization of American States said Wednesday that Bolivian authorities had no valid explanation for the gap in publishing vote counts. The OAS, which met in Washington on Wednesday to discuss the election, has called the gap “surprising” and “worrying.”

Gerardo de Icaza, the OAS director of electoral observation and cooperation, said the election should go to a second round, no matter the results of the first.

But there is a “valid explanation for the gap in publishing vote counts.” As the CEPR documents:

While the TSE did suspend the verification of tally sheets in the quick count process on election night at 83.85 percent of tally sheets verified, this is consistent with what the TSE had pledged to do more than a week before the election: to publicize the result of a quick count that verified at least 80 percent of the preliminary results. The TSE thus followed through with this commitment, and its decision to stop the quick count was not in itself irregular or in violation of any prior commitment.

Furthermore, the CEPR report points out that “although the TSE suspended the verification of tally sheets for the quick count, tally sheets continued to be imaged by electoral workers and uploaded to the storage server.”

The gap between this reality and the Post’s fictional picture of Morales “falsify[ing] the results” could scarcely be wider.

 

The CEPR’s findings deserved to be taken seriously and shared with a wide audience. Its report was available well before the coup, yet, in their apologies for Morales’ overthrow, the editorials write as though the CEPR’s damning critique of the OAS’s initial post-election complaint simply didn’t exist.

Hours before the coup, the OAS claimed that it conducted a preliminary audit that found “clear manipulation” of the election and called for the results to be annulled. Though Morales denied wrongdoing, he agreed to call a new election in keeping with his earlier promise—not exactly what would one expect of an “aspiring dictator,” as the Atlantic’s Yascha Mounk (11/11/19) baselessly called him. Neither the Times nor the Post mentioned in their pro-coup editorials that prior to the coup, Morales agreed to hold another election despite the lack of evidence that one was necessary: Such a detail would have complicated their portrayal of him as an antidemocratic despot.

The Times, Post and Journal’s post-coup editorials all uncritically parrot these allegations from the OAS. In doing so, the papers present the OAS as if it is a neutral arbiter of hemispheric affairs. It isn’t. Sixty percent of its funding comes from the US, which gives Washington disproportionate leverage over the organization. This is not just a theoretical possibility: there’s ample evidence in the OAS’s history of it acting in accord with US ruling class wishes to subvert democracy in Latin American countries that elected left-leaning governments. One crucial adjunct of American foreign policy, USAID, acknowledges OAS’s function, noting that the body is a crucial tool in “promot[ing] US interests in the Western hemisphere by countering the influence of anti-US countries” like Bolivia.

As historian Greg Grandin points out, the OAS approved of the US isolating Guatemala prior to the CIA’s 1954 coup against the elected government of President Jacobo Árbenz, and Cuba before the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. The organization went on to endorse the US’s 1965 invasion of the Dominican Republic.

The OAS’s sordid history in Haiti offers another example: In 2000, the organization initially declared the country’s election a “great success” and then reversed course, helping set the stage for a coup against the democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, after which thousands were murdered and  officials of the constitutional government were jailed. In 2010, the OAS forced the reversal of the results of the first round Haiti’s election without conducting a recount or a statistical analysis.

The organization blessed Juan Orlando Hernández’s stolen election in Honduras and made no effort to stop Dilma Rousseff’s removal from power in Brazil.

Earlier this year, OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro encouraged the coup attempt in Venezuela by recognizing the unelected, self-declared “president” Juan Guaidó’s envoy as the nation’s supposed “official delegate” to the group—even though doing so violated the OAS’s own charter.

Considering OAS’s decades-long track record, and in particular considering the dubiousness of the OAS claims immediately after the election, the minimum media outlets should have done was share this information with readers, who might not have otherwise known there was reason to be skeptical of OAS claims. But that’s not what happened.

The Times’ post-coup editorial simply noted that hours before the coup, the OAS “declared that there was ‘clear manipulation’ of the voting.” The Post flatly stated that “an audit released by the Organization of American States reported massive irregularities in the vote count and called for a fresh election.”

The Journal, writing as though the OAS were irreproachable, said, “The Organization of American States (OAS), which monitored the election, said Sunday after a vote audit that it had found serious irregularities and ‘clear manipulation.’”

Asked for comment on that “preliminary audit,” CEPR senior fellow Andrés Arauz said:

The preliminary audit relies heavily on its identification of technical vulnerabilities and process concerns for both the quick and official counts, but fails to show that these were exploited for fraudulent purposes or that they may have had a significant impact on the final results of the election. While we are still in the process of examining their statistical analysis, it does not appear to show a change in the trend seen in the quick count results that can’t be accounted for by geography. This supposed change in trend was their basis for casting doubt on the integrity of the election in their first press release on October 21.

The Times, Post and Journal could have exhibited journalistic skepticism about the OAS’s statements on the day of the coup. Instead, they chose to embrace an anti-democratic, racist, US-facilitated and encouraged right-wing coup.

Police Surround Last Holdouts at Hong Kong Campus Protest

HONG KONG — A small band of anti-government protesters, their numbers diminished by surrenders and failed escape attempts, remained holed up at a Hong Kong university early Wednesday as they braced for the endgame in a police siege of the campus.

Police were waiting them out after 10 days of some of the most intense protests the city has seen in more than five months of often-violent unrest gripping the semi-autonomous Chinese city. Since the siege began Sunday, more than 1,000 people were arrested and hundreds of injured treated at hospitals, authorities said.

The government has stood firm, rejecting most of the protesters’ demands. The demonstrators shut down major roads and trains during rush hour every day last week as they turned several university campuses into fortresses and blocked a major road tunnel, which remained closed Tuesday.

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Even as the latest violence wound down, a fundamental divide suggests the protests in the former British colony are far from over.

In Beijing, the National People’s Congress criticized Hong Kong’s high court for striking down a ban on wearing face masks at the protests, in a decree that has potentially ominous implications for the city’s vaunted rule of law and independent judiciary. China’s Communist leaders have taken a tough line on the protests and said that restoring order is the highest priority.

Meanwhile, pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong was barred from going on a European speaking tour, after a court refused to change his bail conditions to let him travel outside Hong Kong.

Protesters have left all the universities except Hong Kong Polytechnic, where hundreds had barricaded themselves and fought back police barrages of tear gas and water cannons with gasoline bombs, some launched from rooftops by catapult, and bows and arrows.

Those who remained at Polytechnic were the last holdouts. Surrounded by police, they faced arrest. Several groups have tried to escape, including one that slid down hoses from a footbridge to waiting motorcycles, but police said they intercepted 37, including the drivers, who were arrested for “assisting offenders.”

They milled about in small groups and had boxes of homemade gasoline bombs, but the mood was grim in the trash-strewn plazas, in contrast to the excitement as they prepared to take on police just a few days earlier.

One protester said he had no plan and was waiting for help. Another said he wanted to leave safely but without being charged. They would not give their full names, saying they feared arrest.

“We will use whatever means to continue to persuade and arrange for these remaining protesters to leave the campus as soon as possible so that this whole operation could end in a peaceful manner,” Lam said after a weekly meeting with advisers.

By late Tuesday night, about 800 people had left the campus to surrender, including 300 minors, according to a government tally. Authorities had agreed not to immediately arrest anyone under 18 but warned they could face charges later. City leader Carrie Lam had said Tuesday morning that 100 people were left but it was wasn’t clear how many now remained.

Hong Kong’s Catholic Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Ha entered the campus to try to dial back tensions after hearing that some protesters were ready to die.

At the same time, at least a dozen protesters walked out of the campus escorted by volunteers to an ambulance station to surrender. But it appeared to be a ruse, with many of them making a run for it in a last-ditch escape attempt. They were swiftly tackled by police.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights urged authorities to de-escalate the standoff. Spokesman Rupert Colville expressed concern about increasing violence by young people “who are clearly very angry, with deep-seated grievances.”

City leaders say the violence must stop before meaningful dialogue can begin. The protesters say they need to keep escalating the violence to get the government to accept their demands.

The protests started in June over a proposed extradition bill that would have allowed suspects to be sent to mainland China for trial. Activists saw the legislation as part of a continuing erosion of rights and freedoms that Hong Kong was promised it could keep when Britain returned its former colony to China in 1997.

Lam withdrew the bill months later, but protesters now want an independent investigation into police suppression of the demonstrations and fully democratic elections, among other demands.

Throughout the day, relatives and teachers arrived sporadically to pick up the remaining protesters under 18, hugging them before walking back to a police checkpoint where officers recorded names and other information before letting them go.

An ambulance team was allowed in to treat the injured, wrapping them in emergency blankets. Some left with the team, but others stayed, saying they didn’t want to be arrested.

Other parents held a news conference and said their children dared not surrender because the government has labeled them as rioters even though some had just gotten trapped by the police siege. They wore masks and refused to give their names, a sign of the fear that has developed in what has become a highly polarized city.

China hinted it might overrule the Hong Kong high court ruling that struck down the face mask ban that was aimed at preventing protesters from hiding their identities and evading arrest.

A statement from the National People’s Congress’ Legislative Affairs Commission said the decision doesn’t conform with Hong Kong’s constitution, known as the Basic Law, or decisions by the Congress.

“We are currently studying opinions and suggestions raised by some NPC deputies,” the statement said. The announcement threatens to undercut Hong Kong’s rule of law and independent courts — major selling points for its role as an Asian financial center.

Monday’s ruling said the ban infringed on fundamental rights more than is reasonably necessary. The ban has been widely disregarded.

The Japanese government said one of its citizens was arrested near the Polytechnic campus. Japanese media identified him as Hikaru Ida, a student at Tokyo University of Agriculture. Officials did not say why he was arrested.

About 1,100 people were arrested in the past day for offenses including rioting and possession of offensive weapons, police said at a briefing. They found more than 3,900 gasoline bombs at another university campus that was the site of a violent standoff last week. At least 354 people were treated Tuesday for protest-related injuries, according to hospital authority figures.

Hong Kong also got a new police chief, Chris Tang, who said his priorities would include rebutting accusations against police that he called “fake news” and reassuring the public about the force’s mission.

“We have to maintain the law and order in Hong Kong and there is a massive scale of breaking of law in Hong Kong and there is a certain sector of the community that also condones those illegal activities,” he told journalists.

Tang, who visited officers at the Polytechnic siege after dark, replaces a retiring chief and was approved by Beijing after being nominated by Lam’s government.

Lam, asked whether she would seek help from Chinese troops based in Hong Kong, said her government was confident it can cope with the situation.

___

Associated Press journalists Alice Fung and Dake Kang contributed.