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Narco-corruption, ISIS 3.0 and the terror drone attack that never happened

Wikimedia/Deptartment of Defense

This piece originally appeared on TomDispatch

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For almost 20 years, U.S. drone warfare was largely one-sided. Unlike Afghans and Yemenis, Iraqis and Somalis, Americans never had to worry about lethal robots hovering overhead and raining down missiles. Until, that is, one appeared in the skies above Florida.

But that’s a story for later. For now, let’s focus on a 2017 executive order issued by President Trump, part of his second attempt at a travel ban directed primarily at citizens of Muslim-majority nations. It begins: “It is the policy of the United States to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks.”

That sentence would be repeated in a January report from the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States.” Meant to strengthen the president’s case for the travel ban, it was panned for its methodological flaws, pilloried for its inaccuracies, and would even spur a lawsuit by the civil rights organization, Muslim Advocates, and the watchdog group, Democracy Forward Foundation. In their complaint, those groups contend that the report was “biased, misleading, and incomplete” and “manipulates information to support its anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim conclusions.”

To bolster the president’s arguments for restricting the entry of foreigners into the United States, the DOJ/DHS analysis contained a collection of case summaries. Examples included: the Sudanese national who, in 2016, “pleaded guilty to attempting to provide material support to ISIS”; the Uzbek who “posted a threat on an Uzbek-language website to kill President Obama in an act of martyrdom on behalf of ISIS”; the Syrian who, in a plea agreement, “admitted that he knew a member of ISIS and that while in Syria he participated in a battle against the Syrian regime, including shooting at others, in coordination with Al Nusrah,” an al-Qaeda offshoot.

Such cases cited in the report, hardly spectacular terror incidents, were evidently calculated to sow fears by offering a list of convicted suspects with Muslim-sounding names. But the authors of the report simply looked in the wrong places. They could have found startling summaries of truly audacious attacks against the homeland in a collection of U.S. military documents from 2016 obtained by TomDispatch via the Freedom of Information Act. Those files detail a plethora of shocking acts of terrorism across the United States including mass poisonings, the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and that “People’s Armed Liberation (PAL) attack on U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) headquarters in Tampa, Florida, [by] a drone-launched missile.”

That’s right! A drone-launched missile attack! On CENTCOM’s Florida headquarters! By a terrorist group known as PAL!

Wondering how you missed the resulting 24/7 media bonanza, the screaming front page headlines in the New York Times, the hysterics on "Fox & Friends," the president’s hurricane of tweets?

Well, there’s a simple explanation. That attack doesn’t actually happen until May 2020. Or so says the summary of the 33rd annual Joint Land, Air, and Sea Strategic Special Program (JLASS-SP), an elaborate war game carried out in 2016 by students and faculty from the U.S. military’s war colleges, the training grounds for its future generals and admirals.

PALing around with rerrorists

The 2016 edition of JLASS-SP was played out remotely for weeks before culminating in a five-day on-site exercise at the Air Force Wargaming Institute at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. It involved 148 students from the Air Force’s Air War College, the Army War College, the Marine Corps War College, the Naval War College, the Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy, the National War College, and the National Defense University’s Information Resources Management College. Those up-and-coming officers — some of whom will likely play significant roles in running America’s actual wars in the 2020s — confronted a future in which, as the script for the war game put it, “lingering jealousy and distrust of American power and national interests have made it politically and culturally difficult for the United States to act unilaterally.”

Here’s the scene as set in JLASS-SP: while the U.S. is still economically and militarily powerful into the next decade, anxieties abound about increasing constraints on the country’s ability to control, dictate, and dominate world affairs. “Even in the military realm... advances by others in science and technology, expanded adoption of irregular warfare tactics by both state and non-state actors, proliferation of nuclear weapons and long-range precision weapons, and growing use of cyber warfare attacks have increasingly constricted U.S. freedom of action,” reads the war game’s summary.

While the materials used are “not intended to be an actual prediction of events,” they are explicitly meant “to reflect a plausible depiction of major trends and influences in the world regions.” Indeed, what’s striking about the exercise is how -- though scripted before the election of Donald Trump — it anticipated many of the fears articulated in the president’s December 2017 National Security Strategy. That document, for instance, bemoans the potential dangers not only of regional powers like Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, but also of “transnational threats from jihadist terrorists and transnational criminal organizations,” undocumented immigrants, “drug traffickers, and criminal cartels [which] exploit porous borders and threaten U.S. security and public safety.”

The JLASS-SP scenario also prefigured themes from that 2018 DOJ/DHS report supporting the travel ban in the way it stoked fears of, above all, a major “foreign-born” — especially Muslim — terror threat in the United States. A 2017 Government Accountability Office report would, however, conclude that, of “the 85 violent extremist incidents that resulted in death since September 12, 2001, far right-wing violent extremist groups were responsible for 62 (73 percent) while radical Islamist violent extremists were responsible for 23 (27 percent).”

Two years after the war game was conducted, in a time of almost metronomic domestic mass killings, President Trump continues to spotlight the supposedly singular danger posed by “inadequately vetted people” in the U.S., although stovetops and ovens, hot air balloons, and burning pajamas are far more deadly to Americans. Indeed, since 9/11, terrorism has been a distinctly low-level risk to the American public — at least when compared to heart disease, cancer, car crashes, fires, or heat waves — but has had an outsized effect on the perceptions and actions of the government, not to mention its visions of tomorrow.

Tomorrow’s terror today

An examination of the threats from international and domestic terror groups, as imagined in JLASS-SP, offers unique clues to the Pentagon’s fears for the future. “Increasingly,” reads the war game’s summary, “transnational organizations, businesses, non-governmental organizations, and violent extremist organizations challenge the traditional notions of boundaries and sovereignty.”

That drone-launching terror group, PAL, for instance, is neither Islamist nor a right-wing terror group, but an organization supposedly formed in 2017 in hopes of defeating “globalism and capitalism throughout the world by rallying the proletariat to orchestrate the overthrow of capitalist governments and global conglomerates.” Its ideology, an amalgam of increasingly stale leftist social movements, belies its progressive ranks, a rainbow coalition consisting of “most of the globe’s ethnicities and cultures,” all of whom seem to be cyber-sophisticates skilled in fundraising, recruiting, as well as marketing their particular brand of radicalism.

As of 2020, the audacious drone strike on CENTCOM’s headquarters was PAL’s only terror attack in the tangible world. The rest of its actions have taken place in the digital realm, where the group is known for launching cyber-assaults and siphoning off “funds from large global corporations, banks, and capitalist governments around the world.”

Even though PAL went from a gleam in the eye of its founder, the Bond-villain-esquely named Otto Cyre, to terrorist power-player in just a few short years, the pace of its operations didn’t please its hardest core members who, the war game scenario says, broke away in late 2020 to form yet another organization devoted to even more rapidly eroding “confidence in governmental and institutional bodies by staging events that demonstrate the ‘impotency’ of the establishment.” That splinter group, United Patriots Against International Government (UPAIGO) — in this war game all terror groups have Pentagon-style acronyms — concentrates on “spectacular but deniable actions,” a scattershot campaign of often botched but sometimes lethal efforts that include:

November 2021: a cyber-attack on the Angarsk Refinery in the Russian Federation, which resulted in a two-week shutdown causing a sharp rise in the price of oil and gas just prior to the 2021-2022 winter heating season.
April 2022: a failed attempt to assassinate, by IED, the chief of U.S. Pacific Command. Two members of the commander’s security detail and the command’s political advisor were killed in the attack while others, including civilians, were injured.
January 2022: a failed plot to detonate a dirty [radioactive] bomb, employing medical waste and homemade explosives, at Philadelphia International Airport.
2023 fire season: as fires raged in the western United States, UPAIGO established relief efforts designed to compete with the U.S. government’s response, in order to "undermine confidence in government agencies."
June 2024: an attack, in coordination with members of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), on a U.S. flagged air carrier transporting U.S. military personnel at Shannon Airport in Ireland. Militants fired two surface-to-air missiles at the aircraft, which was damaged but managed to land successfully."

PAL and UPAIGO are, however, hardly the only terror threats facing the United States in the 2020s, according to JLASS-SP 2016. PAL’s fellow travelers, for example, include the fictional versions of the real Irish National Liberation Army and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). There’s also the Environmentalists Against Capitalists Organization, or EACO, “a lethal environmental anti-capitalist terrorist group with global connections.” Formed in 2010 (though not in our actual world), EACO, according to the war gamers, evolved into an increasingly violent organization in the 2020s, carrying out not just cyberattacks on corporations but also a full-scale bombing campaign “targeting executive board meetings of large corporations, particularly in industries such as oil, coal, natural gas, and logging.” The group even took to planting IEDs on logging roads and employing tainted food as a weapon. By 2025, EACO was implicated in more than 400 criminal acts in the U.S. resulting in 126 deaths and $862 million in damages.

Then there’s Anonymous. In the Pentagon’s fictional war-game, this real-world hacktivist group is characterized as a “loose organization of malicious black-hat hackers” that employs its digital prowess to “distribute bomb-making instructions, and conduct targeting for options other than planes, trains, and automobiles.” In the past created by the military’s imagineers, Anonymous was declared a terrorist organization after it conducted an August 2015 digital attack on Louisiana’s power grid with something akin to the Stuxnet worm that damaged nuclear centrifuges in Iran. That cyber-assault was meant to protest the state’s restrictions on online gambling — an affront, according to the fictional Anonymous, to Internet freedom. (In the real world, Louisiana lawmakers actually just deep-sixed online gambling without an apparent terrorist response.) Taking down that power grid “resulted in the death of 15 elderly patients trapped in a facility denied air conditioning as a result of the power outage.”

Also included among domestic terror groups is Mara Salvatrucha 13 or MS-13, the Los Angeles street gang, born of the American-fueled Central American civil wars of the 1980s, that was transplanted to El Salvador and has since returned to the United States. This violent American export — the product of deportations in the 1990s — has paradoxically become a key justification for President Trump’s crackdown on immigration. “MS-13 recruits through our broken immigration system, violating our borders. And it just comes right through — whenever they want to come through, they come through,” said Trump earlier this year during a White House roundtable focused on the gang. “We’ve really never seen anything quite like this — the level of ferocity, the level of violence, and the reforms we need from Congress to defeat it.”

In the real world, the U.S. branch of MS-13 operates in loose local cliques under a franchised name, dabbling in small-time drug dealing, gun-running, prostitution, and extortion (primarily of recent immigrants). Many of its crimes are committed against its own affiliates or members of other gangs. The president nonetheless baselessly claimed that MS-13 has “literally taken over towns and cities of the United States.” He also continues to portray the gang, which reportedly makes up less than 1% of the estimated 1.4 million gang members in the U.S., as a sophisticated international cartel.

And that’s precisely how MS-13 was also portrayed in the fantasy world of JLASS-SP. In that war game, Mara Salvatrucha has developed “the resources to wage full-scale insurgent campaigns in Central America and the capability to cause serious disruption in the United States and Canada,” while rumors swirl of contacts between its members and foreign militants. “If cooperation between foreign terrorist groups and MS-13 ever blossomed, the potential for terrorist attacks within the borders of the United States would increase significantly,” the war game scenario warns.

President Trump has been accused of conflating members of MS-13 with undocumented immigrants (and referring to both groups as “animals”). Regardless, there’s no question that he kicked off his presidential run in 2015 by disparaging Mexicans. “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people,” he infamously declared. The JLASS-SP documents reverse Trump’s formula by first noting that “most illegal immigrants crossing into the United States are just trying to make a better life for themselves,” only to suggest that the U.S.-Mexican border also “serves as an infiltration point for terrorists.”

Unlike in the real world, where such fears circulate primarily as a conspiracy theory, in the Pentagon’s future fantasy there is “substantial evidence . . . that terrorists from the Middle East and North Africa transit the Mexican-U.S. border.” Worse yet, radical Islamists even “camouflage themselves as Hispanics” to cross the border. The military’s fantasists point to “a flood of name changes from Arabic to Hispanic and the reported linking of drug cartels along the Texas border with Middle East and North Africa terrorism.”

That represents a Trumpian-style nightmare-cum-fantasy even the president hasn’t yet dreamed up — a Hispanic-surnamed, cartel-supported group of Islamist terrorists. But by the 2020s, according to the Pentagon’s futurists, such worries are well-founded. And this will occur at the same time that Mexican and South American drug gangs have grown so rich and powerful they can regularly buy protection from U.S. government officials.

“Popular opinion in the United States is beginning to believe the ‘Narco-corruption’ is affecting the ‘rule of law’ north of the border,” according to their scenario, with the cartels spending $20 billion in 2022 alone to buy off U.S. officials or get candidates of their choice elected. That same year, allegations of election tampering in mayoral races across the American South come to light and the number of corruption convictions of U.S. Border Patrol agents and law enforcement officials skyrockets. Perhaps most shocking is the discovery of a “vast irrigated grow site” (evidently a massive marijuana farm) tended by “a dozen Mexican farmers armed with AK-47’s” in — wait for it! — “remote areas of Illinois.”

Mexican farmers, El Salvadoran gang members, Islamists masquerading as Hispanics, eco-terrorists, and anti-globalization militants aren’t the only threats foreseen by the military’s futurists. Much-ballyhooed reports of the defeat of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, like the much-hyped defeat of its predecessor, al-Qaeda in Iraq, turn out to be premature. In the 2020s, the re-re-branded group, now known as the Global Islamic Caliphate, or GIC, draws “support from Sunni-majority regions in Syria and Iraq; refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey; and internally displaced persons in Syria and Iraq,” while continuing to launch attacks in the region.

Meanwhile, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has grown in reach, size, and might. By 2021, the group has 38,000 members spread across Algeria, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger with bases reportedly located in Western Sahara. On May 23, 2023, AQIM carries out the most lethal terror attack in the U.S. since 9/11, detonating massive truck-bombs at both the New York and New Jersey ends of the Lincoln Tunnel, killing 435 people and injuring another 618. The bombing prompts President McGraw -- you remember him, Karl Maxwell McGraw, the independent Arizona senator who rode his populist “America on the Move” campaign to victory in the 2020 election — to invade Mauritania and become mired in yet another American forever war that shows every indication of grinding on into the 2030s, if not beyond.

The age of terrorism

In the real world, the lifetime odds of an American dying from “walking” are one in 672. The chance of being killed by a foreign terrorist? One in 45,808. By an illegal immigrant terrorist? One in 138 million. And the odds of being killed by a “chain migration” immigrant sometime this year? One in 1.2 billion! In other words, you have a far greater chance of being killed by a dog, a shark, lightning, or the government via legal execution.

This is not to say terrorism isn’t a major threat to others around the world or that terror groups are not proliferating. Since 9/11, the number of terrorist organizations recognized by the U.S. State Department and battled by the Pentagon -- from Africa to the Middle East to Asia — has grown markedly.

“States are the principal actors on the global stage, but non-state actors also threaten the security environment with increasingly sophisticated capabilities,” reads an unclassified synopsis of the Pentagon’s 2018 National Defense Strategy. “Terrorists, trans-national criminal organizations, cyber hackers and other malicious non-state actors have transformed global affairs with increased capabilities of mass disruption.”

In the fictional future of the Pentagon’s JLASS-SP 2016, this menace only expands to include various hybrid threats and new homegrown groups with increasing capabilities for death and destruction.

While it may be “the policy of the United States to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks,” as President Trump’s 2017 executive order declares, the Pentagon envisions a future in which such policies are increasingly ineffective. In their dystopian war-game future, more than two decades of fighting “them over there so we do not have to face them in the United States of America” (as former President George W. Bush put it in 2007) proves unequivocally futile. In this sense, the Pentagon’s fantasies bear an eerie resemblance to the actual present. In the dystopian scenario used by the Pentagon to train its future leaders, today’s forever wars have proven ineffective and future threats are to be met with new, similarly ineffective, forever wars.

In his State of the Union address earlier this year, President Trump declared that we’re living in the “age of terrorism.” His solution: wielding “unmatched power,” loosening the rules of engagement, and establishing an unfettered ability to detain, question, and “annihilate” terrorists.

All of these tactics have, however, been part of the Pentagon’s playbook since 2001 and, according to the military’s best guess at the future, will lead to an increase in terror groups and terror attacks while terror networks and terrorist ideologies will grow in strength, resilience, and appeal. Almost two decades in, it seems we’re still only in the opening days of the “age of terrorism” and, if the Pentagon’s war-gamers are to be believed, far worse is yet to come.

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The Volcker Rule was designed to prevent another financial crisis. Now the Fed wants to weaken it

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Deep within the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, one of many post-recession reforms designed to prevent future financial crises, you'll find the much-vaunted "Volcker Rule," widely credited as a core reform that helps stop banks from making the kinds of risky investments that put consumers at risk. Named for Chairman of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker, nonprofit policy think tank Demos describes the rule as a means to stop banks "from taking 'proprietary' bets for their own profit, with taxpayer-backed deposit funds," as well as "ban[ning] firms from packaging risky securities for customers and then betting that they will fail," as Goldman Sachs did in the late-2000s.

Now, Federal bank regulators are trying to sap the Volcker rule of its remaining regulatory power. The move seems suspiciously like an instance of Trump-appointed regulators enacting the will of Wall Street.

On Wednesday, Federal bank regulators released a proposal to soften these measures, which would give Wall Street banks more freedom to make riskier bets. The proposal eases several parts of the the Volcker Rule.

A public comment period on the proposal is expected to ensue for the next 60 days.

“Turning now to concepts and principles, the objective behind this proposal is straightforward: simplifying and tailoring the Volcker rule in light of our experience with the rule in practice,” Vice Chairman for Supervision Randal K. Quarles wrote in the announcement. “This is a goal that is shared among all five agencies and among policymakers at those agencies with many different backgrounds.”

Quarles is an odd choice to be a bank regulator, particularly given that he has a long history as a banker. During his confirmation, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., a fierce critic of Wall Street's excesses, was deeply skeptical of his abilities and credentials. As CNBC reported on his hearing:

Quarles is founder and head of The Cynosure Group, a private investment firm, and previously was a partner at private equity firm The Carlyle Group. He also has served as undersecretary of the Treasury during George W. Bush's administration.

Citing his business experience, Warren said, "That's not a record that should give Americans as a whole a lot of confidence in you."

"We just went through a devastating financial crisis less than a decade ago because powerful people in government let powerful institutions call the shots," she later added. "We can't go down that road again."

 

Destroying the Volcker Rule has been a long-coming dream of bankers. For years, financiers have sought to weaken it as much as possible, as former Labor Secretary Robert Reich has written. "Keeping risky assets away from insured deposits had been a key principle of U.S. regulation for decades before the repeal of Glass-Steagall," Reich wrote in 2011. "The so-called “Volcker rule” was supposed to remedy that. But under pressure of Wall Street’s lobbyists, the rule – as officially proposed last week – has morphed into almost 300 pages of regulatory mumbo-jumbo, riddled with exemptions and loopholes."

Perhaps the Volcker rule's death blow has arrived.

New strategies to get kids to create media, not just consume it

lev dolgachov via Shutterstock chalk

This post originally appeared on Common Sense Media

During a typical day, kids and teens check out YouTube, watch TV, play video games, scroll through social media feeds, and listen to music. Overall, they're passive consumers of the content they love — which is fine. But with a little nudging — and the right tools — they can be using that time to build creative skills while sharing their stories, opinions, and ideas.

Kids actually love to express themselves, but sometimes they feel like they don't have much of a voice. Encouraging your kid to be more of a maker might just be a matter of pointing to someone or something they admire and giving them the technology to make their vision come alive. No matter your kids' ages and interests, there's a method and medium to encourage creativity.

If they have a story to share

As soon as kids start talking, it's great to get them to tell stories. For younger kids, encourage them to narrate their activities as they build, climb, and pretend by asking questions such as, "What are you building? Who will use it? Tell me about your adventure!" There are also apps that let kids record their stories as they play. With older kids, some will naturally put pencil to paper, but others take a bit more prodding. For those kids, digital book creation can make their writing process feel more grown-up and tangible. Having a real audience also shows kids that their writing can matter, so tweens and teens can use sites and apps where they can share creations, and they can even riff off their obsessions in the form of fan fiction. Finally, if your tween or teen has strong opinions about issues or interesting people in their lives, they can use tools to document and share those stories, too.

Storytelling tools

For younger kids: Toca Life: School, Diary Zapp, Me by Tinybop; Storybird
For older kids: Write About This, Book Creator, Scholastic Kids Press Corps, StoryCorps, We Are Here DIYdoc

If they have a directorial vision

For kids who love to watch television and movies (spoiler: Most do!), it can be exciting for them to get in on the action. When they're younger, kids love to combine their toys with storytelling, which is not unlike directing a movie. To share those stories, they can play around with animated storytelling apps that let them record a mini-movie with movable characters, props, and settings. As they get older, stop-motion animation might be more their jam, and there are apps for that, too. And if you'd prefer tweens and teens to not have their own YouTube channels but you want to encourage the fun of making videos, there are tools that let kids record, edit, and share in a more limited way.

Video-creation tools

For younger kids: Toontastic 3D, Lipa Theater: Story Maker
For older kids: Goldieblox and the Movie Machine, SKIT! Kids - Video Maker, VidMaker - 3D Moviemaker for Kids, Magisto

If they have an inner artist

When your kid is naturally artistic, it probably won't take much prompting to get them to draw or paint. But sooner or later, they'll want to expand their horizons. If your little kid loves to color, give them more inspiration with apps that introduce famous artists. Older kids who don't claim to be artists but love superheroes, comics, or manga can create their own cartoons with panels, dialogue balloons, and unique characters. Even emerging fashion designers can find a tool to help them express their inner Versace. Of course, for tweens and teens, there are more advanced digital drawing and painting products to create sophisticated designs.

Artistic tools

For younger kids: ExplorArt Klee - The Art of Paul Klee for Kids, PlayART by Tapook
For older kids: Comics Head Lite - Create Your Own Comic, Strip Designer, Art Set, Procreate

If they have an ear for music

Most kids love music right out of the womb, so transferring that love into creation isn't hard when they're little. Banging on pots and pans is a good place to start — but they can take that experience with them using apps that let them play around with sound. Little kids can start to learn about instruments and how sounds fit together into music. Whether they're budding musicians or just appreciators, older kids can use tools to compose, stay motivated, and practice regularly. And when tweens and teens want to start laying down some tracks, they can record, edit, and share their stuff.

Music tools

For younger kids: Duckie Deck Homemade Orchestra, Bandimal, Mussila
For older kids: Moana: Rhythm Run, The Orchestra, Bandblast, Coach Guitar Chords Tuner Tabs, Piano Practice with Wolfie, GarageBand

If they have the next big game idea

Learning to code may seem intimidating, but there are a ton of fun apps that teach programming basics in a way that doesn't feel like work. Young kids who learn to code get introduced to ideas such as cause and effect, thinking ahead, and how little steps add up to a final product. When they're older, they can make and share simple games using some basic block-coding tools. Tweensand teens can learn actual coding languages so they can create more complex games.

Coding tools

For younger kids: Code Karts, codeSpark Academy, TinyTap
Older kids: Scratch, ScreenPlay - program your story, Hopscotch, Swift Playgrounds, SoloLearn: Learn to Code

If they don't consider themselves to be creative

Some kids are sure they don't have a creative bone in their bodies — but they'll play "Minecraft" for hours. Others will turn their noses up at art — but will jump at the chance to design a robot. If this sounds like your kid, rest assured that — no matter their age — their bones are actually brimming with creativity. Even if kids aren't painting masterpieces, playing the trombone, or writing the next hit for Netflix, there are lots of ways for them to make things, especially using digital tools. Any app that requires kids to create a world or creature — especially those that allow them to test their designs — teaches the creative process. Even silly apps that only focus on the process and not the product can free up kids who might feel stuck.

Covert creative tools

For younger kids: Plum's Creaturizer, Dr. Panda Plus: Home Designer, The Robot Factory by Tinybop, Blox 3D World Creator
For older kids: Diary Zapp, Minecraft, The Tune Zoo, DIY App - Creative Community for Kids, Scribblenauts Remix, SoundForest, Orb



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Sessions’ recusal from the Russia investigation was fatal for Trump

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In retrospect, the fatal turning point for Trump happened with astonishing speed.

On November 18, 2016, Trump announced that Senator Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions would be his pick for Attorney General, the man who would run his Department of Justice.

On January 10, 2017, less than two months later, Sessions appeared to tell a lie at his confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee when he denied having any contacts with Russians during the campaign.

On February 9, he was sworn in as Attorney General.

Four days later, on February 13, Michael Flynn resigned from his post as Trump’s National Security Adviser, after it was revealed that he had spoken repeatedly with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

The next day, February 14, the New York Times reported on its front page that telephone intercepts and records showed that senior Trump officials and campaign aides had repeated contacts with Russian intelligence officers during the campaign.

Two weeks later, on March 1, news broke that Sessions was among those who met with Russian Ambassador Kislyak during the campaign. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said that Sessions had “lied under oath” during his confirmation hearings. Democrats called for his resignation.

The next day, March 2, fighting for his job, Sessions responded to calls for his resignation by stating, "I have not met with any Russians at any time to discuss any political campaign.” It was quickly pointed out that Sessions was never asked if he had met with Russians “to discuss any political campaign,” but rather if he had met with Russians, period, so his explanation rang hollow.

Sessions huddled with top aides at the Department of Justice, and later the same day, he announced, “I have decided to recuse myself from any existing or future investigations of any matters related in any way to the campaigns for president of the United States."

March 2 will be the day that Trump’s fate was decided, if the report on the front page of The New York Times is to be believed. The Times published yet another in a long series of reports on Trump’s dissatisfaction with his Attorney General for having recused himself from the Russia investigation. This time, the report reveals that Trump pressured Sessions to reverse his recusal decision in an early March, 2017 meeting at Mar-a-Lago. According to the Times, the Mar-a-Lago meeting is being investigated by Mueller’s team as a potential obstruction of justice. Mueller is said to have questioned Sessions himself about the conversation at Mar-a-Lago, making him a key witness in the investigation.

Mueller’s team has also questioned other White House officials about the repeated pressure Trump put on Sessions to retain his control of the Russia investigation. White House counsel Donald McGahn was questioned about a March 1, 2017 meeting with Trump, during which Trump ordered McGahn to lobby Sessions not to recuse himself.

Sessions responded to this by telling McGahn, and thus Trump, that he had to follow Justice Department regulations and recuse himself from investigations into any matters in which he had a personal connection. Since Sessions was an official on the Trump campaign, he was forbidden under Justice Department rules from having anything to do with investigations into that campaign.

Trump has repeatedly criticized Sessions for his recusal from the Russia investigation. In July of 2017, Trump told the New York Times, “Jeff Sessions takes the job, gets into the job, recuses himself, which frankly I think is very unfair to the president,” he added. “How do you take a job and then recuse yourself? If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, ‘Thanks, Jeff, but I’m not going to take you.’ It’s extremely unfair — and that’s a mild word — to the president.”

But Trump is ignoring the fact that there was no Russia investigation that anyone knew of, either in November of 2016 when Sessions was appointed, or in February when he was sworn in as Attorney General. He could hardly have told Trump that he would recuse himself from an investigation that neither he or Trump knew was underway. Sessions didn’t betray Trump. Trump is betraying Sessions by lying about what happened.

Trump appears to have suffered multiple delusions about the powers he would have as president, the way the government works in Washington under the law, and the norms that have been established between the White House and the Department of Justice over the years.

The first delusion Trump had was that as president, he would be able to call in his Attorney General and order him to do anything he wanted. Prosecuting his opponent Hillary Clinton for her “emails” comes immediately to mind. Trump seems to have believed that if he appointed Jeff Sessions as Attorney General he could depend on the bantam former Senator from Alabama to watch his back when it came to investigations into his campaign or former business dealings.

It must have come as quite a shock to Trump to realize that laws and regulations stood between Trump and his control of the levers of justice through his Attorney General.

The other thing Trump probably never knew, or dismissed out of hand, was that Washington D.C. is indeed a “small town” when it comes to the inner workings of the government, and especially when it comes to the United States Senate. The Senate has always seen itself as an exclusive club of 100 members, and they’ve always been very protective of the way they operate, and of their own members, especially within the two political parties.

With only 51 members, the Republican caucus in the Senate is especially tight-knit. The Times may have buried the lede when they reported well down in their story today that “Mr. Trump complains to friends about how much he would like to get rid of Mr. Sessions but has demurred under pressure from Senate Republicans who have indicated they would not confirm a new attorney general.”

Huh? Who knew Senate Republicans had passed the word to Trump that if he fired Sessions, they wouldn’t confirm a new attorney general? You know who that would leave as Acting Attorney General, don’t you? Rod Rosenstein, Trump’s other bete noire, the man who appointed Robert Mueller as Special Counsel and who has given Mueller authority to investigate pretty much anything he wants when it comes to Trump and Russia.

In the clubby world of the United States Senate, Jeff Sessions is still one of them. Retired Senators are afforded lifetime access to the Senate dining room and health club, not to mention being welcomed on the floor of the Senate should they want to visit. Sessions was a Senator for 21 years. If Trump thought his Republican buddies were going to walk away from him, he was not just sadly, but perhaps fatally mistaken.

There aren’t many Republican Senators who have been openly critical of Trump since he was elected. Jeff Flake has made a few passing bleats, and Bob Corker has implied that most of his colleagues see Trump as an incompetent baby, but that’s about it. And neither of them are running for re-election.

But if you go looking for Republican Senators who have given full-throated defenses of Trump since the Russia investigation began, they are few and far between. Much more typical is Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who has run what appears to be an eminently fair and bipartisan investigation of the Trump campaign and its connections to Russia alongside his Democratic counterpart, John Warner of Virginia.

The Senate committee was briefed in private about the Russia investigation under top secret security in a secure meeting room known as a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF by James Comey before he was fired as FBI Director. They also had a top secret briefing by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, after which Senator Lindsey Graham told reporters that the Russia investigation had morphed from a counterintelligence investigation into a criminal one. The chair and co-chair of the committee were also briefed by Robert Mueller about his investigation. The Senate Intelligence Committee knows a lot about the Russia investigation, and unlike the House Intelligence Committee under Trump lackey Devin Nunes, they haven’t issued a hastily slapped together exoneration of Trump.

All of which may go a long way to explaining why Republican Senators appear to be standing by their pal Sessions and are showing an unusually strong willingness to protect him. They know stuff about Trump that we don’t know, and clearly, it’s not good.

There is only one reason Trump went so far in his efforts to get Sessions to take back control of the Russia investigation. He thought he could depend on the loyalty of Sessions to protect him. Sessions was the first and only Senator to back Trump early in his campaign. He has been Trump’s soul mate when it comes to immigration policy, racial politics, and a “law and order” stand on issues of drugs, prisons, and sentencing.

But what Trump has never understood is that men like Sessions — and the rest of the Senate for that matter — spend their entire lives dreaming of being elected to the Senate and joining Washington’s clubbiest club. They want the power that comes with being a Senator, of course, but they also want the lifestyle. They relish the nights out on the town, when Senators are afforded the best tables in the hottest restaurants. They look forward to the cocktail parties, and the invitations to galas at the Kennedy Center.

Every single one of them spent a lifetime looking forward to all the pomp and circumstance of Washington, and what do they get with Trump? So far, one State Dinner (to which he failed to invite a single Democrat), and no White House reception during the Kennedy Center Honors. Where are the invitations to the White House for evenings of entertainment by the kind of famous, talented musicians who performed at the White House under Obama —  James Taylor, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Smokey Robinson, Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger? Hell, Trump hasn’t even had them over to listen to Ted Nugent.

With the likes of Trey Gowdy and Mitch McConnell refusing to join Trump’s Fox News amen chorus screaming “spygate” after the briefings by the Department of Justice and the Director of National Intelligence last week, Trump is left with the likes of Dim Bulb Nunes and the House Freedom Caucus to defend him. That’s not good.

It’s impossible to tell at this point, but it’s beginning to look like Trump would have a hard time putting the votes together to fight impeachment in the Senate. He doesn’t have a single Democrat, and Republicans aren’t exactly lining up to follow him over the cliff.

It’s looking more and more like we are approaching that famous moment during Watergate when three senior Republican Senators got in a black car at the Capitol and drove up Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House and told Richard Nixon that he wouldn’t survive an impeachment vote in the Senate. They told him if he wanted to avoid certain indictment and possible conviction for federal crimes once he left office, he had better resign and make a deal for a pardon with his Vice President, Gerald Ford, who would succeed him as president. Which is what he did.

Trump isn’t that far from facing the same decision. He has been acting like a guilty man since the day he panicked over Sessions’ recusal. A Watergate-style Saturday night massacre of his top law enforcement officers isn’t going to save him any more than it saved Richard Nixon. If Trump were to be impeached by the House and found guilty by the Senate, he would leave office with no protections at all against indictment and conviction for god-only-knows what crimes he’s committed with Russians and other thugs. His business empire would be in jeopardy. He may as well start looking forward to spending his retirement at Mar-a-Leavenworth.

The only news on the horizon for Trump is bad news. If I were him, I’d start worrying about looking out of the White House windows and seeing the headlights of that black car driving up Pennsylvania Avenue in the dark.

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A recipe for Cuba’s national dish, ropa vieja, or rags, from the new book “Cuban Flavor”

Skyhorse Publishing

Excerpted with permission from Cuban Flavor: Exploring the Island’s Unique Places, People, and Cuisine by Liza Gershman. Copyright 2018 by Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

The story of Cuban cuisine is as diverse as its traditions and cultures. Colonized by the Spanish, and later the French, and built up by slaves from Africa and Haiti, as well as a population of Chinese immigrants, Cuba has a food culture with flavors that most closely resemble those found in Puerto Rico and the neighboring Dominican Republic. However, Cuba has a history and figurative spice all of its own.

While rice and beans are staples of the Cuban diet, their cuisine is such a complex story—a tapestry of love and loss, woven so deeply into their culture going far beyond history or sustenance. To those of us more fortunate, Cuban cuisine can appear as a stroke of luck served up on a beautiful platter.

During the most difficult times in Cuba, known as the Special Period, opulent meals were served only to the elite connected to the government, while others sat by and starved. It was a time of great economic crisis in Cuba that began in 1989 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, (and their financial support of Cuba), and continued through the mid-to-late nineties. During this time, Cubans suffered greatly and endured shortages in fuel, food, and other resources. For many, a piece of bread with sugar was sustenance for the day.

When I first visited Cuba in 2003, to my great disappointment, every meal was the same. We ate plain chicken, rice, and beans. Cuba was in a difficult financial period, and tourism had yet to really take hold. Since then, the cuisine has greatly transformed. A burgeoning connection to ingredients and spices inevitably brings European, Asian, and Latin flavors to the island, and chefs now have an opportunity to experiment with flavors through an increasingly hungry tourist population, with an insatiable appetite for more.

Today, the food situation in Cuba is incredibly complex. Despite the increased access to food in this changing cultural and political landscape, most locals still rely on monthly food rations. Food excesses that we are so accustomed to in the developed world (including fine dining) continue to be a privilege of the new generation of elites—now the entrepreneurs of tourism—and to their clientele.

Paladares, or privately run restaurants, became legal in the 1990’s. Often set up as home-based restaurants when they began out of private residences (once a simple affair with one, two, or three tables set in the owner’s living room or anywhere else that they could fit), paladares enabled Cubans to earn money through private enterprise, which can be significantly greater than a salary from a government or state-run job. Now with the large demand from tourism and laws that passed in 2010, which allowed the paladares to run more like a modern restaurant rather than it resembling a meal cooked in a friend’s grandmother’s home, paladares have sprouted up around the country and are not just found in proprietor’s homes, but also function as regular restaurants as well.

For the thriving paladares, food supply is also hard to come by, and items like lobster and spices must be purchased through a black market system. Some make purchases through the Cuban version of Craigslist, Revolico.com, while others barter with friends and suppliers they have come to know. But getting caught with something that is too “special,” like dried cranberries on a salad (an item that has clearly been provided from someone coming from abroad) will raise eyebrows and put the chef in jeopardy. Every Cuban can tell you a daily tale of how they came to access the food in their kitchen. Imagine: a daily chore of searching for food, even if you had the financial wherewithal to purchase it.

Stocking a Cuban home kitchen remains one of the biggest challenges of daily life as the average Cuban lives with a startling food scarcity that one can only describe as cruel. Havana, after all, is a city of two million people before tourists even touch the ground. While tourists dine at any of the estimated 1,700 paladares on the island, food prices for locals soar. Not only is there a dearth of product (both produce and meat alike), but also the prices from competition are impossible for local families to match. Much of the existing food supply is quickly taken by the restaurants, and what little remains for locals is of poor quality at a high price. Given that an average Cuban makes the equivalent of $25 a month, and $45 for a professional job (like an engineer or a doctor), the price of dining at a paladar, where meals can cost just as much, is simply impossible. Cuba has always existed in an us-versus-them paradigm, and food is the surest proof that this continues to exist.

In a typical Cuban home kitchen, you’ll find tools from the 1950s like pressure cookers and rice cookers, broken utensils, dull knives, and mismatched china. It’s a wonder that anyone can actually cook. But the resilience of the Cuban people perfumes each savory dish, as always. Meat, when available, is most often served stewed or slow-cooked with garlic, onion, and simple spices. The island’s signature dish, the delicious Ropa Vieja, or “rags,” is shredded meat that has been simmered in a tomato-based criollo sauce. Traditional Cuban sauces nearly always contain oil, onions, red paprika, or aji cachucha (the little sweet-spicy pepper found in local produce markets). However, even these simple items can be difficult to find because of chronic problems in food supply, and occasional acute food shortages. As a result, Cubans are deeply resourceful people, not only in the search for what is available on any given day, but also in their neighborly sharing economy, which plays itself out as a deep cultural understanding and celebration of what it is to live in the moment.

Adding complication to an already difficult situation is a government, which imposes capricious, shifting regulations for every aspect of economic life. Cuba’s rules and regulations are constantly in flux, followed with extreme corruption and a prosperous black market that locals must depend on to live their daily lives. Each Cuban is given a monthly ration book by the government for food, to provide for basics like rice and sugar, beans and eggs; however, these rations do not provide for meat or produce. The ration amount is sufficient for only twenty days or less, which is most often not enough to feed a family for the entire month. Even top restaurants depend on supplies from the black market in order to provide enough food for nightly guests.

Additionally, a main contributing factor to the current food shortage is the illogical and seemingly draconian regulation prohibiting farmers from the countryside from importing their goods into the capital’s local markets. Only allowed to sell to private restaurants, farmers waste much of their produce, while the local people go without food. As with anything else in Cuba, enforcement is key to maintaining strict regulations, and there are considerable amounts of police patrolling the highways to ensure that this farm distribution cannot occur.

Markets are often empty of products, and residents may have to spend an entire day searching for something as basic and essential to their diet as chicken or pork. Government-run bakeries, grocery stores, and markets simply cannot sustain the demand with the current food production on the island that now includes an increasing tourist population to boot.

Why not fish from the bountiful sea, you ask? The gulf stream is home to marlin and the large fish called pargo (a prized local snapper). However, Cubans are forbidden from stepping foot onto any boat without express consent from the government, and those who are fortunate enough to have this luxurious privilege are very few and far between. While the Havana harbor was once an ideal spot for boats, it is now too shallow for modern shipping vessels. Additionally, the majority of fishermen that remain are elderly; there is a consistent fuel shortage; and most of the working boats on the island left for Florida a long time ago.

While food in Cuba isn’t nearly as diverse as that of more international Latin American or Caribbean cultures, the cuisine in restaurants is changing rapidly as owners and chefs are influenced by international visitors’ ideas, and the newly-found global influences on Cuban cuisine are beginning to yield interesting results.

We can only hope that this resurgence of cuisine in Havana can bless the tables of the average home, and that the people’s access to, and relationship with food, continues to grow. As additional restaurants flourish and sustain themselves through increased tourism, the demand for farming and produce will increase as well. One hopes that the overall population will in turn benefit in the bounty.

I was in Cuba during President Obama’s easing of regulations and the landing of the first commercial flights from the US in more than fifty years. I arrived only hours after Fidel Castro’s death and partook in his mesmerizing funeral, surrounded by a million grieving Cubans. I also stood arm-in-arm with my Cuban friends as the news of President Trump’s travel restrictions were announced. Cuba’s tourism is ever-changing and rapidly evolving, but also slowing. It is an enigma, an energetic whirlwind, and the future is only a guess. Growth and transition foster the seed of invention and innovation, and food is often where these shifts begin.

 

 

Ropa Vieja  or “rags”

The national dish of Cuba, “rags” or ropa vieja, is savory and delectable. When spices are few and far between, this dish’s peppers bring forward a wonderfully light flavor. Traditional ropa vieja is made with flank steak because that cut of beef is best for shredding, but a more flavorful top sirloin works just as well.

Serves 6

Ingredients:

2 lb flank steak

Salt and pepper, to taste

1 yellow onion, diced

1 tsp garlic, minced

1 can (28 oz) diced tomatoes

½ cup water

1 red bell pepper, thinly sliced

1 green bell pepper, thinly sliced

1 jalapeño, seeded and thinly sliced

½ tsp dried oregano

½ tsp cumin powder

1 bayleaf

½ cup green olives, halved

2 tsp capers (optional)

1 bsp cilantro, chopped (optional)

Serve with: Rice

Preparation:

Generously season the flank steak with salt and pepper.

Combine onion, garlic, tomatoes and their juices, water, bell peppers, jalapeño, oregano, cumin, and bay leaf in a slow cooker. Add the flank steak, cover, and cook on low for 8 hours.

Remove the meat and let it rest approximately 10 minutes. Discard the bay leaf and stir in the olives, capers (optional), and cilantro (optional).

Shred the meat into fine strips and add it back into the sauce. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Serve hot over a bed of rice.

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GOP congresswoman says porn is “the root cause” of school shootings. It’s not

AP/Getty/Salon

There have been 23 school shootings so far this year, which averages to about one every week; yet when it comes to assigning blame, those of varying political ideologies blame this very American spate of violence on very different actors. While Republicans, including President Donald Trump, have pointed to untreated mental health issues as the problem, Democrats and many young people say that stricter gun control laws are needed to restrict easy access to firearms and reduce America's mass shooting epidemic.

But, according to one Republican, pornography is the cause of the bloodshed.

During a meeting last week with local pastors, Rep. Diane Black, R-Tenn., who is running for governor of Tennessee, discussed the issue of gun violence and argued that the rising toll of school shootings is due to "pornography."

"It's available on the shelf when you walk in the grocery store. Yeah, you have to reach up to get it, but there's pornography there,” Black said. "All of this is available without parental guidance. I think that is a big part of the root cause."

Black did not expand on what it is about porn that she believes motivates gun violence, nor if she blames any specific porn category. Her congressional spokesman did not respond to a request for clarification.

In addition to X-rated media, Black said school shootings are increasing because of the "deterioration of the family," mental illness and violent movies.

On Thursday, when asked by a child in the White House briefing room what the Trump administration will do to prevent school shootings, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders became emotional, but still offered a lackluster response.

"I think that as a kid, and certainly as a parent, there is nothing that can be more terrifying for a kid to go to school and not feel safe, so I'm sorry that you feel that way," Sanders said. "This administration takes it seriously, and the School Safety Commission that the president convened is meeting this week again, an official meeting, to discuss the best ways forward and how we can do every single thing within our power to protect kids in our schools and to make them feel safe and to make their parents feel good about dropping them off."

President Trump has previously suggested arming teachers as a solution to increase school safety.

In contrast to Trump and Black's remarks, experts say poor social, cultural, and economic conditions are central causes of gun violence. Developing policies to improve those conditions for people, along with reducing access to guns, are effective measures to curb mass shootings, they say. These actions are "far more effective than all the police, doctors and hospitals combined, and intervening only after tragedies have struck," wrote professors Bandy Lee of Yale University and James Gilligan of New York University, both experts on violence.

Liara Roux, a sex worker and organizer for human rights for sex workers, criticized Black's remarks as another lackluster response to gun violence.

"Comments like the one from Representative Black show how scarily out of touch Congress is," Roux told Salon. "Aside from the widely debunked claim pornography has any link to violence, the idea that people even get their porn from a grocery store is absurdly out of date."

"It would be funny if Congress hadn't recently passed anti-sex legislation like FOSTA/SESTA that is having a tragic impact on sex workers who need the Internet for safety, as well as taking down valuable forums for non-commercial sexual expression like Craiglist's personals," Roux added. "We can't let this war on sex go unchallenged, just as we can't let gun violence go unchecked — and using gun deaths to attack freedom of expression is particularly heinous."

Another sex worker, Ginger Banks, echoed Roux's statements.

"This is what happens when a person tries to think about why school shootings happen, but refuses to consider our access to guns as one of the reasons," Banks explained. "They start coming up with things that make NO sense when you actually think about it."

Although significant social change related to sexuality has occurred over the past 30 years alongside the increased consumption of pornography, negative stigma surrounding pornography and its "cultural harm" remain, highlighting an enormous divide between perspectives on porn in our society.

Some studies suggest exposure to pornography is healthy and natural — that it can be an educational experience that can help people learn their own likes and dislikes, explore their sexual feelings, and develop healthy sexual identities. Other studies argue it can bring a couple closer together and facilitate intercourse in an exciting way, and can even help to reduce stress.

That's not to say that porn is completely harmless. Some people consume it so compulsively that it interferes with their lives. Others say porn leads to negative body image and perpetuates unrealistic expectations about sex. Increased divorce rates, sexual deviances, sex addiction and, most recently, gun violence are some issues that have been blamed on such films.

The point is, there's no study that will give the final word on porn. What is clear, however, is that America won't be able to halt it's epidemic of deadly gun violence as long as politicians continue to play the blame game and refuse to offer more than "thoughts and prayers."

Did NFL owners just admit to colluding with Trump to punish kneeling players?

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"Tell everybody, you can't win this one," President Donald Trump said to Jerry Jones, the Dallas Cowboys owner testified. "This one lifts me," Jones alleges Trump said of the NFL's new policy to punish protesting players.

Several NFL owners said in depositions that President Trump influenced the league's response to protests during the national anthem, the Wall Street Journal reported. Last week, the NFL approved a new policy that requires players on the field to stand during the anthem, and if not, the league or team can fine the player. There is an option for players to remain in the locker room for the duration of the anthem.

Owners were deposed by former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who started the anthem protests in 2016 to shed light on police brutality and racial injustice, and claims that he was blackballed from the NFL because of his politics. He alleges that 32 teams colluded to keep him unsigned in a grievance filed against the NFL last October.

Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said in a sworn deposition that Trump told him in a phone call, "This is a very winning, strong issue for me," he said, of demanding players stand for the anthem. "Tell everybody, you can’t win this one. This one lifts me."

Trump infamously ripped into NFL players who protested during the anthem at a rally in Alabama last September. He referred to a player who knelt as a "son of a bitch" and advocated for repercussions against them. Later, on Twitter, Trump specified that players should be fired for such an offense.

"Depositions given by Mr. Jones and other owners indicate that Mr. Trump’s criticism pushed the league to shift its stance," the Journal reported. "League executives publicly repeated the NFL’s aim to stay out politics. But privately, they made political calculations in response to Mr. Trump’s repeated hammering of the issue."

"I was totally supportive of [the players] until Trump made his statement," Stephen Ross, the Miami Dolphins’ owner, said in his deposition. He added that the owners' conversations with Trump were discussed in league meetings. In another deposition, Patriots owner Robert Kraft said he also brought up his conversation with Trump about the protests to fellow league owners, according to the Journal.

"I thought he changed the dialogue," Ross said of Trump.

And Trump's public stance is central to Kaepernick's grievance. He argues that Trump was an "organizing force in the collusion," citing various NFL owners' close relationship with the president and their political support of him. (Many donated to his presidential campaign.)

When asked by Fox's Brian Kilmeade about the new NFL policy penalizing players for protesting during the anthem, Trump supported it, saying "I brought it out," while adding that it didn't go far enough. He again questioned whether players who didn't "stand proudly," and opted to stay in the locker room under the new guidelines, should even be allowed to play; whether they should be allowed in America.

But at first, the NFL rejected Trump's vile comments against players who protested. Prior to his charge, only a few players were still kneeling and afterward, entire teams kneeled, or linked arms in solidarity, including team owners.

"Publicly, the NFL fought back and touted the moment as a display of unity," the Wall Street Journal said. "Commissioner Roger Goodell called Mr. Trump’s comments 'divisive.' The league’s chief spokesman, Joe Lockhart, called the president 'out of touch.'"

Yet, behind the scenes, owners reportedly worried about sliding viewership, which was on the decline prior to the protests, but according to the depositions, owners believed exacerbated the problem. They debated about how to respond to the protests for two years.

Eric Reid, a former teammate of Kaepernick's, who joined his protest and is currently unsigned, also filed a collusion grievance against the NFL. The NFL Players Association filed a grievance on behalf, saying at least one owner asked Reid if he would continue to kneel during the anthem, violating league policy.

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Superslow brain waves may play a critical role in consciousness

Shutterstock/DedMityay

This article was originally published by Scientific American

Every few seconds a wave of electrical activity travels through the brain, like a large swell moving through the ocean. Scientists first detected these ultraslow undulations decades ago in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans of people and other animals at rest — but the phenomenon was thought to be either electrical “noise” or the sum of much faster brain signals and was largely ignored.

Now a study that measured these “infraslow” (less than 0.1 hertz) brain waves in mice suggests they are a distinct type of brain activity that depends on an animal’s conscious state. But big questions remain about these waves’ origin and function.

An fMRI scan detects changes in blood flow that are assumed to be linked to neural activity. “When you put someone in a scanner, if you just look at the signal when you don’t ask the subject to do anything, it looks pretty noisy,” says Marcus Raichle, a professor of radiology and neurology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and senior author of the new study, published in April in Neuron. “All this resting-state activity brought to the forefront: What is this fMRI signal all about?”

To find out what was going on in the brain, Raichle’s team employed a combination of calcium/hemoglobin imaging, which uses fluorescent molecules to detect the activity of neurons at the cellular level, and electrophysiology, which can record signals from cells in different brain layers. They performed both measurements in awake and anesthetized mice; the awake mice were resting in tiny hammocks in a dark room.

The team found that infraslow waves traveled through the cortical layers of the awake rodents’ brains — and changed direction when the animals were anesthetized. The researchers say these waves are distinct from so-called delta waves (between 1 and 4 Hz) and other higher-frequency brain activity.

These superslow waves may be critical to how the brain functions, Raichle says. “Think of, say, waves on the water of Puget Sound. You can have very rough days where you have these big groundswells and then have whitecaps sitting on top of them,” he says. These “swells” make it easier for brain areas to become active — for “whitecaps” to form, in other words.

Other researchers praised the study’s general approach but were skeptical that it shows the infraslow waves are totally distinct from other brain activity. “I would caution against jumping to a conclusion that resting-state fMRI is measuring some other property of the brain that’s got nothing to do with the higher-frequency fluctuations between areas of the cortex,” says Elizabeth Hillman, a professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia University's Zuckerman Institute, who was not involved in the work. Hillman published a study in 2016 finding that resting-state fMRI signals represent neural activity across a range of frequencies, not just low ones.

More studies are needed to tease apart how these different types of brain signals are related. “These kinds of patterns are very new,” Hillman notes. “We haven’t got much of a clue what they are, and figuring out what they are is really, really difficult.”

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Kim Kardashian wields the power of celebrity to get Trump’s ear on prison reform

Getty/Photo montage by Salon

Kim Kardashian West is heading to the White House Wednesday afternoon to meet with Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump, and White House counsel to discuss prison reform, White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed at the daily press briefing. The reality star has been advocating for a pardon on behalf of Alice Marie Johnson, a woman serving a life sentence without parole for a first-time nonviolent drug offense. Kardashian reportedly plans to ask Trump to pardon Johnson, 62, this afternoon.

In Oct. 2017, Mic published a video story featuring Johnson, who is more than 21 years into her life sentence at a federal prison in Aliceville, Ala. Kardashian West later told the publication that she came across the video on her Twitter feed and has been involved ever since, enlisting her attorney and corresponding with the White House in the hopes that senior adviser Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, could persuade him to pardon Johnson.  in hopes of gaining a presidential pardon for Johnson.

"I’ve been in communication with the White House and trying to bring her case to the president’s desk and figure out how we can get her out," Kardashian West told Mic. Johnson is serving a life sentence for her involvement in a drug conspiracy and clemency from the president is the only way for her to be released.

Kardashian West found an ally in the White House through Kushner, whose own father was incarcerated for 14 months for corruption charges. Kushner has been key in the First Step Act bipartisan prison bill, which overwhelmingly passed in the House last week. It includes guidelines to improve prison conditions and to reduce recidivism, though some Democrats and progressives have criticized the bill for not tackling sentencing reform. But it does contain some important measures, like the much overdue prevention of shackling pregnant woman and incarcerating individuals within 500 miles of their families. The bill also encourages participation in job-placement and drug-treatment programs and would offer some nonviolent offenders the opportunity to finish out their sentences in halfway houses or home confinement. It seems stalled in the Senate, however.

Trump has said that if the bill reaches his desk, he will sign it, during a prison reform White House summit earlier this month, which even featured the liberal activist Van Jones. Kushner says the First Step Act can open the door for sentencing reform, but former U.S. attorney general Eric Holder counters that the effort will curtail the momentum for sentencing reform because of it failure to address mandatory minimums and other harsh sentences, which are still on the books from the "tough on crime" era that ballooned the prison population.

When it comes to Johnson's case and sentence, which Kardashian West is advocating to change, it seems without sentencing reform, the First Step Act would have little effect on bringing Johnson home. And Johnson's sentence is not an outlier. The ACLU reports that more than 3,200 people are serving life sentences without the possibility of parole for nonviolent drug and property crimes. Sixty-five percent of this population is black.

Will Kardashian West engage in a meaningful discussion with Trump and Kushner about this disparity? Likely not. She appears to be dialed in on Johnson's individual case. And while it is certainly noble and important to bring an individual home, single pardons don't transform a system that has a tendency to punish people for life, whether with life sentences or perpetual surveillance.

There is currently another campaign to pardon an individual inmate that is targeting the president's favorite channel, Fox News, to get his ear.

Bipartisan calls for @realDonaldTrump to commute sentence of Matthew Charles. @DanaPerino talks to fmr TN Judge @KevinHSharp about that today @ 2p, as well as the case of Alice Johnson and @KimKardashian's mtg w/ POTUS. https://t.co/nnQxoaBto9

— Jennifer Williams (@jeniontheblock) May 30, 2018

Judge Kevin Sharp on the calls for President Trump to commute the sentence of Matthew Charles: "Matthew Charles has done what we asked of him and he ought to be an example to others." #DailyBriefing @DanaPerino @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/97kg4lyJt9

— The Daily Briefing (@dailybriefing) May 30, 2018

Just last week, Trump announced his surprise posthumous pardon of African-American boxing legend Jack Johnson at the behest of Hollywood legend Sylvester Stallone.

There is validity to thinking about and fighting for short-term and long-term goals when it comes to prison reform — including entertaining the power of celebrity to influence Trump. One can recognize that the system is broken and needs to be uprooted and revamped, while also acknowledging that more immediate resolutions are imperative to improving the lives and conditions of any of the 2.2 million people in prison. But both of these mindsets require an understanding of the system as a whole. Let's hope when Kardashian West meets Trump in the West Wing today, that's what she emphasizes.

California Conservation Corps failed to heed warning signs before fatal van crash

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This piece originally appeared on FairWarning

Early on Feb. 2, 2016, a van carrying members of the California Conservation Corps paused at a stop sign on a country road near the Central Valley town of Reedley. Then the van rolled into the intersection, where it was broadsided by a 40-ton gravel truck and trailer, killing three corps members and leaving another with catastrophic brain and spinal injuries. The victims, 18 to 21 years old, all were recent recruits — two of them so new that they had yet to collect their first paycheck.

The 20-year-old crew leader driving the CCC van, who survived with moderate injuries, would be found clearly at fault. The weather was good, with visibility of about 10 miles and unobstructed views in all directions. Yet after stopping, the driver unaccountably continued on as the Peterbilt truck, traveling at least 50 mph, rumbled toward him.

It was the worst day in the 40-year history of the state agency, which puts young adults between 18 and 25 to work on conservation projects on public lands throughout the state. In news reports, grieving families and friends paid tribute to those who perished — Serena Guadarrama, 18, of Fresno, and Justin Vanmeter, 21, and Rhonda Shackelford, 20, of Clovis — and to Ronnie Cruz, 19, of Fresno, who was left unable to speak or move. The few details that emerged seemed to exonerate the CCC. The collision appeared to be a simple case of one person’s carelessness — the kind of inattentive blunder most drivers have made at one time or another, just not with fatal consequences.

Yet facts and circumstances never disclosed until now tell a more complicated story about the CCC’s own role in the fatal collision. Interviews and records obtained by FairWarning under the California Public Records Act reveal warning signs that, if heeded, could have prevented or lessened the tragedy. For example:

The van’s driver, Nathan L. Finnell, was considered an unsafe driver by some fellow corps members, prone to recklessness and clowning around behind the wheel. On the morning of the crash, his supervisors at the Fresno CCC center were made aware of concerns about his driving but let him drive the crew anyway.
Safety belts, the most basic safety feature, were not readily available in 11 of 15 seating positions of the 2001 Dodge Ram van — typically because belts and clasps had slipped through cracks in the seats and were lying behind them on the floor, a report by the California Highway Patrol later found. Two of those killed were unbelted and in seats without working restraints, records show. One of the unbelted victims, Guadarrama, was ejected from the van, landing on the side of the road along a chain-link fence.
CCC paperwork incorrectly indicated that the seat belts were in good shape. Under CCC policy, a safety checklist – called a “Driver Report of Vehicle Condition” – must be filled out to note any needed maintenance and repairs every time a vehicle is taken out. FairWarning reviewed copies of the checklistsfor the van. On 25 separate days leading up to the day of the crash, all components, including the seat belts, were marked OK.

Following the crash, two state agencies — the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health and the California Highway Patrol — opened investigations, but neither faulted the CCC for failing to maintain working seat belts. The Highway Patrol, in a 117-page report, found Finnell to blame for the accident because of his failure to yield to the truck. It also said he violated a requirement of the state vehicle code that drivers make sure passengers are wearing seat belts.

At least two lawsuits and a string of workers’ compensation cases still are pending. Citing the litigation, the CCC declined to make senior officials available for an interview or answer some specific questions via phone and email.

“We remain deeply saddened over the deaths of three of our Corpsmembers and the critical injury suffered by a fourth,” the CCC said in a statement to FairWarning. “The CCC has always been, and will always be committed to seeking ways to provide safer program working environments for our Corpsmembers and employees.”

Finnell, too, declined to be interviewed. He recently picked up a call from FairWarning while he was driving. Asked if it would be possible to speak at a better time, he said: “I don’t really feel like talking about it much — no thanks.”

The tragedy upended many lives. Some former corps members told FairWarning that they remain haunted by the loss of friends and co-workers and have experienced survivor’s guilt for not finding a way to prevent it. For some family members, time has done little to soothe their sense of loss and bitterness about the brevity of Finnell’s jail sentence — 46 days — and the CCC’s failure to acknowledge its share of the blame.

“It hasn’t gotten better”

“It doesn’t seem like it’s been two years at all,” said Ron Shackelford, whose daughter, Rhonda, was among those killed. Routine life events still bring a painful stab of memory. He recently saw a movie with scenes of a wedding and the bride dancing with her father, “and (I) broke down at that point. . . . It hasn’t gotten better,” he said.

Angela Palma’s son, Ronnie Cruz, suffered such severe brain and spinal cord injuries that he can’t take care of his basic needs.

“This is really heartbreaking because my son, he was very athletic,” she said. He was “a good young man” who helped take care of his sisters after the death of his father when he was 12.

Believing her son is being shortchanged, Palma repeatedly has antagonized doctors and caregivers over what she sees as too little effort at rehabilitation — admitting to sometimes feeling “very hostile and desperate.”

Cruz can understand things, she says. He has learned to blink twice to signal when he wants to watch TV or hear music.

“He sees childhood friends from his past and he cries,” she said.

* * *

“Hard work, low pay, miserable conditions, and more!” is the motto of the California Conservation Corps, which was inspired by the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps. It is an idealistic throwback to a time when government was widely seen as a positive force in helping people improve their lives — an idea mostly out of fashion today.

Launched in 1976 during Jerry Brown’s first stint as governor, the CCC has given more than 125,000 young people minimum-wage jobs building trails, planting trees and making water and energy efficiency improvements — along with responding to emergencies such as wildfires and floods. Many recruits are from blue-collar or low-income families, with meager job prospects and education. Corps members who aren’t high school graduates must earn their diploma by taking classes along with their work. Those who complete a year of service are guaranteed a scholarship to advance their education.

In their applications, the crash victims stressed their eagerness to join. “I can help and I need to finish high school,” said Ronnie Cruz, adding: “I’m committed, I have perseverance, I get along with others really easily.”

“I will gain experience and skills that will help me after I have finished my service with CCC,” said Rhonda Shackelford, listing her strengths as being “hard working, friendly, really energetic” and ”respectful.”

“I would like to learn more about land conservation and upkeep,” said Justin Vanmeter. “I’m a quick learner, I’m punctual and outgoing.”

Nathan Finnell joined the CCC in 2014 and flourished. “It was through the C’s that he found his calling,” his grandmother later would say during a court appearance.

He was honored as the Fresno center’s Corpsmember of the Year in his first year and was one of about two dozen members across the state to be featured in a CCC brochure. His mini-profile praised his “strong work ethic” and noted that, by earning his commercial driver’s license, he was “aiming for promotion.”

Along with a commercial license, Finnell got his “blue card” — the authorization to transport crews in the CCC’s 15-passenger vans. His promotion to conservationist I, a state civil service job, was announced at a Christmas party in December 2015.

But it turned out that his driving made some on his crew uncomfortable and even fearful. Some said they saw him texting while driving. They told how, for sport, he would suddenly brake and then accelerate to jolt awake drowsy crew members. One time, he drove onto a muddy section of a public park to slide around, almost ramming a bench, according to former crew member Angus McGunigle, who also said he saw Finnell run a stop sign.

“You should have seen what happened”

Rhonda Shackelford, who died three weeks after being hired, had come home livid a few days before the crash, her father said.

“You should have seen what happened today,” Ron Shackelford recalled her saying. ” ‘This idiot blew through a red light.’ . . . Rhonda wasn’t one to go around talking bad about people,” her father said, so “that made us listen that much more.”

Rhonda’s mother was adamant: The incident needed to be reported. And Rhonda said it had been, “but she might have fibbed because she knew we would have insisted.”

Complaints about Finnell’s driving mainly surfaced after the crash, and it’s unclear how much supervisors knew beforehand. Members of Finnell’s crew were subordinates and friends — two reasons they might have been loath to report him. However, some former corps members said management had to have known about Finnell’s driving.

“It was kind of a joke around the center about him being a bad driver,” said former corps member Candice Madel. “It’s a small, close-knit center. You know everyone pretty much knows everything.”

Corps members are supposed to keep a journal to practice their writing skills, and two weeks before the crash, former crew member Albert Wakefield wrote in his: “It’s putting it lightly to say he (Finnell) can’t drive. Very lightly. I get scared when he drives because he talks on his phone a lot during the trips. He also breaks traffic rules constantly. … His crew worries too. We probably won’t crash. But we might and it’ll be his fault.”

Although journal entries are supposed to be read by supervisors, Wakefield told FairWarning that he didn’t know if this entry ever was read.

But another incident the day before the crash put supervisors on notice.

There was a mechanical problem with the van’s sliding passenger door, making it difficult to close. On Feb. 1, 2016, crew member Daniel Marchetti was wrestling with the door and asked Finnell not to drive away. Before the door was fully closed, Finnell accelerated, jerking the door open and hurting Marchetti’s shoulder, he said.

Trying to be the funny guy

“I don’t believe it was an accident,” he said in an interview. “He was just trying to be the funny guy in the crew.”

There was already tension between Marchetti and Finnell, several corps members said, and that night, Marchetti bashed Finnell on Facebook and, he acknowledged, threatened “tit for tat.”

The next morning, supervisors called in Finnell, Marchetti and others to discuss the door incident and the Facebook post. Marchetti said a supervisor accused him of contriving the shoulder injury to get Finnell in trouble. Then Finnell met privately with supervisors. Afterward, some crew members said Finnell seemed upset.

“I never really found out what they said to Nate,” said former crew member Robert Verdin. “I could tell he was trying to hold back tears and he was trying to hide it from everybody else.”

The crew was headed to the nearby Central Valley town of Dinuba for the second day of a turf removal project. Trailing the van was a CCC pickup hauling a trailer with equipment. To ease tensions, Marchetti had switched places with Rhonda Shackelford to ride in the pickup while she rode in the van. Within an hour, she and two others would be dead.

Terrible as it was, the tragedy could have been much worse. There were only six in the van, counting Finnell – not nearly as many as on an ordinary day. One crew member had been suspended for skipping work. Another, Shayne Johnson, had called in sick, though he later admitted he wasn’t ill. Johnson told FairWarning that he “didn’t necessarily feel like there was going to be an accident,” but had a bad feeling about going to work that day.

Three other crew members were held back at the last minute. Amy Duncan, a supervisor, asked them to stay at the center for blue card driver training.

“Honestly, it really was a miracle that there were only six people” in the van, said McGunigle, one of those held back for the training.

“Nate, don’t do it”

At 8:12 a.m., the van, traveling on South Avenue near Reedley, stopped for at least a couple of seconds at the stop sign at Buttonwillow Avenue, corps member Daniel Lara, who was trailing in the pickup, told the California Highway Patrol.

Then the van entered the intersection in the path of the Peterbilt truck, which did not have a stop sign. Marchetti, riding shotgun in the pickup, told the Highway Patrol that he heard Lara say, “Nate, don’t do it, don’t do it” — then looked up to see the crash.

Lara called 911 and his supervisor, and word spread fast. The words “3 confirmed 1144” flashed on a Highway Patrol website.

“I just looked up what code 1144 means,” one CCC official emailed another. “There are 3 confirmed fatalities. This is really bad.”

Finnell and the front-seat passenger, Shaun Christman, 18, escaped with moderate injuries. Christman had dozed off and did not see the crash, and Finnell, briefly knocked unconscious, told Highway Patrol officers that he could not remember what happened. He was tested for alcohol and drugs, and results were negative.

Could Finnell have been talking or texting on his cellphone? On the initial collision report, the “cell phone not in use” box was marked with an X. The only way to know that for sure would be through an eyewitness or getting a court order for phone records — which the Highway Patrol did not do. A Highway Patrol manual directs officers to mark the not-in-use box “if cell phone use is unable to be determined.”

Within hours of the crash, former CCC Director David Muraki emailed the current director, Bruce Saito, to offer condolences and advice.

“Yes, you can be of help,” Saito replied. “How do you deal with and understand something like this?”

Capitol flags were flown at half-staff, and Gov. Jerry Brown issued a statement.

“These three individuals had just embarked on a year of service and had so much ahead of them,” he said. “Our hearts go out to their families, friends and colleagues as they mourn this tremendous loss and our thoughts are also with the others injured today.”

* * *

Three weeks later, Ron Shackelford stood in the early morning darkness outside the California Conservation Corps center in Fresno, handing out business cards. Shackelford is a tiling contractor, but he was not looking for work. He was seeking information. Enrique Rios, CCC conservation supervisor, emailed a copy of Shackelford’s card with a note to colleagues: “This Gentleman was at the … parking lot passing out his business cards to (corps members) asking them to call him with any info regarding the accident. I believe he is Rhonda’s father.”

A divisive presence

Nathan Finnell returned to work at about the same time, in late February. Agency spokesman Dana Howard told FairWarning that Finnell was not allowed to resume driving. But his presence was divisive. Some corps members did not like having him back. Others felt bad for him.

“A lot of people held . . . grudges toward him,” said Robert Verdin, one of the crew members who stayed back for driver training the day of the crash. “I felt like they were leaving a teammate out in the open for the wolves to come and tear up.”

Some corps members said they blamed Daniel Marchetti for instigating a clash that led Finnell to be upset, and possibly distracted, when he took the wheel that day.

Tempers flared in early March at a “Unity Day” retreat in the Sierra Nevada foothills town of North Fork. Finnell was wearing a CCC belt buckle; corps members Candice Madel and Paul Hovland said that when they asked him where he got it, Finnell said, “You have to kill a lot of people.”

Only a month had passed since the crash, and Madel and Hovland were shocked by the callous remark. Each summarized the exchange in written statements. Hovland wrote: “I asked Nate how he got his CCC belt buckle and he semi chuckled and replied ‘you gotta kill alot of people.’ Then went on to explain the website he had got it from etc.”

Madel said that when she voiced her disgust, supervisors said that “they didn’t know the state of mind (Finnell) was in.”

“Then why is he back at work?” she recalled asking. “I felt like they were just . . . defending him and trying to downplay it.”

A sudden chill 

Other corps members weighed in with their own statements, saying they were present but didn’t hear Finnell utter the offensive joke. Madel and Hovland, who later were fired under disputed circumstances, said they felt a chill immediately afterward.

“A lot of people after that didn’t really want to talk to us,” Hovland said.

“I kind of put a target on my back when I did complain,” Madel said. “They didn’t want us talking about the crash or anything, especially with new corps members coming in.”

Other corps members left soon after, including Tony-Ray Castellon. He complained about “several safety issues with vehicles currently in-service” at the Fresno center, CCC safety officer Summer Kincaid wrote in an email to other CCC officials. “He said he is afraid to travel to project sites and is uncertain about the qualifications of those conducting the daily Vehicle Safety Inspection.” Castellon told FairWarning that he, too, quit soon after because “I just didn’t trust anything in there anymore.”

Daniel Lara, the pickup driver who reported the crash, also left a few weeks later. “It just didn’t feel the same to me,” he said. “I guess I had a form of survivor’s guilt. . . . It was very traumatic. ”

Finnell didn’t last long, either. Following the retreat incident, Rios, the conservation supervisor, emailed colleagues: “Nathan’s comments are not helping at all on the healing process here.” Rios feared corps members “felt disrespected about the comment and I can feel the tension now and I just don’t want a major incident to happen.”

On March 8, 2016, Finnell was placed on administrative leave “pending completion of an internal investigation that you may have violated State and/or Departmental policies,” the memo said. He was terminated a month later; officials would not discuss the reasons.

The state Division of Occupational Safety and Health, known as Cal/OSHA, received a complaint from a confidential source that Fresno CCC drivers were not being trained adequately or vans maintained in a safe condition. The agency did not conduct an inspection but directed CCC officials to investigate and provide a response. The CCC sent Cal/OSHA extensive paperwork, including a copy of the agency’s driver training manual and vehicle condition forms for its Fresno vans. Included were copies of the checklists for the Dodge Ram van for the weeks leading up to the crash — with the inaccurate notations that seat belts were OK.

Boilerplate response

In an April 1 letter to the unnamed complainant, Cal/OSHA said it was closing the investigation. “California Conservation Corp (sic) has advised (Cal/OSHA) that the hazard(s) you complained about has/have either been identified and corrected and/or determined not to exist,” the letter said.

Asked to explain the boilerplate response, Cal/OSHA spokesman Lucas Brown said that in cases of work-related vehicle accidents, the agency “generally defers to the California Highway Patrol or another agency with similar jurisdiction to investigate such accidents.”

The California Highway Patrol assigned the probe to its Multidisciplinary Accident Investigation Team. Its 117-page report, issued in July 2016, calculated, among other things, that when the van pulled into the intersection, the truck was 170 feet away but would have had to have been nearly twice as far away — at least 332 feet — for the van to make it safely across. The Highway Patrol also found that safety restraints for 11 of the 15 seating positions in the van “were not readily available for use by the passengers of the vehicle. The major components of the restraints were either under or behind the passenger seats, and appeared to have been in that condition for some time.”

Under the heading “Violations of Law,” the report cited Finnell’s failure to yield the right of way and obey the state vehicle code requirement that drivers ensure that passengers are “restrained by a safety belt.”

Investigators did not look into whether Finnell might have been distracted by a cellphone.

“We have a finite amount of resources,” investigator John Kolter said, adding that it did not seem necessary to find out.

No mystery here

“There’s no doubt what happened,” he said. “There’s no mystery here. The truck was too close . . . and he pulled out in front of it.”

More than five months passed from the time of the crash to the release of the Highway Patrol report. Only then did CCC officials instruct district directors to check the condition of seat belts in all vehicles. The CCC declined to discuss what it found, citing pending litigation.

Finnell’s driver’s license was suspended in September 2016. He appealed, asking for a restricted license, but was unsuccessful. Supporting his request were two of his former supervisors, Amy Duncan and Miguel Diaz, and the pickup truck driver that day, Lara. According to the hearing record, they “testified in essence that respondent (Finnell) is a safe driver and this accident has caused respondent great distress. They testified they have ridden in the vehicle with respondent and he is a good and safe driver.”

* * *

Nathan Finnell was charged with three counts of vehicular manslaughter without gross negligence, a misdemeanor, and reached a plea agreement with Fresno County prosecutors.

His sentencing hearing Nov. 7, 2017, which was recorded, was an excruciating event, overflowing with tear-soaked recriminations against Finnell and the conservation corps.

Sherry Guadarrama wept as she described the shattering loss of her daughter, Serena, saying she had once tried to kill herself “so I could be with her again.”

Terrible nightmares

“I’ve had terrible nightmares of how Serena died, how she suffered,” she said. “It haunts me every day. … I hate to go to sleep, I have so much guilt for not being there. I’m still here and she’s not. A parent is not supposed to lose their child.”

Finnell’s mother, Noelle Finnell Spencer, also wept.

“I want to begin by telling the families and friends of the young people who were killed how sorry we are, and, yes, how sorry Nathan is,” she said. “He never meant for any of this. . . . You might say, ‘Well, yes, at least he’s still alive’ . . . but it’s a half-life, a kind of purgatory where he stays locked up in his room in his home most days. . . . Nathan won’t talk about the accident. He’s going through a rough time. . . .

“He appears that he is not sorry, but . . . I know my son. That is a protection. He protects himself that way. … He’s deathly afraid of being locked up. . . . I know he feels deep sorrow for the lives of your children. … I’ve seen the tears when he thinks no one is looking. . . . I’ve great faith that your children are in heaven and that everything will work itself in the end. . . . I pray and ask for peace for all of you. And I pray and ask for forgiveness for my son.”

Amy Duncan, the CCC supervisor, had entered the courtroom holding Finnell by the arm, as though to comfort him – infuriating the parents of the dead. When her time to speak came, Duncan began: “I want to say to families and friends and loved ones how sorry we are.”

“For what? Letting him drive?” one parent shouted. “Why did you let him get into the van and drive our kids?” another yelled. She soon was shouted down and took her seat.

Finnell mumbled a brief apology and the judge pronounced a suspended sentence of 364 days that, with credit for good behavior, worked out to 46 days in jail.

Finnell was out before Christmas, and a few days later his driving privileges were restored.

According to a DMV hearing officer’s summary, Finnell “testified that this was a horrible accident caused because of a mistake made on his part. . . . He states that the impact from the collision has affected his memory of how this collision occurred. . . . He states he was not using his GPS or looking at any device that would have caused him to take his eyes off the roadway.”

The apparent contradiction — not remembering anything yet knowing he was not on a cellphone — was not acknowledged.

Legal fallout

Other legal proceedings continue. Because injured workers, with rare exceptions, can’t sue their employers, the families have filed workers’ compensation claims rather than lawsuits against the CCC. In them, they have accused the agency of “serious and willful misconduct” for failing to provide a safe vehicle and employing a reckless driver. In response, the State Compensation Insurance Fund, which is defending the CCC, contends that the three corps members’ deaths and Ronnie Cruz’s injuries were “not due to any act or omission” by the CCC.

Ordinarily, the death of a worker with a single dependent would result in an award of $250,000. Yet, in a strange legal twist, because Serena Guadarrama, Justin Vanmeter and Rhonda Shackelford had no dependents, it’s possible that benefit awards would go into the state’s General Fund to help offset the cost of a program to pay for injuries to disabled workers.

Separately, lawyers for the families recently filed a civil lawsuit against other parties: Finnell; the driver and owner of the Peterbilt truck, on the theory that he could have braked faster; and Fresno County, for failing to make the intersection a four-way stop.

* * *

To the east of the site where the corps members died, the Sierra Nevada is visible as a gray-blue shadow through the haze. Orange groves and grapevines spread over the adjacent fields. On the side of the road is a memorial topped with three white crosses and stenciled with the words, “Heaven Be The Journey.”

There is a photo and plaque for each of the three youths, along with flowers and figurines of angels, pandas and birds. Above the plaque for Rhonda Shackelford is a bell-shaped trinket from Las Vegas, where her dad was planning to take her on her 21st birthday.

Ron Shackelford comes frequently to make sure the memorial has not been disturbed and is shipshape.

“It gives me time to spend with them and makes me feel like I’m doing something,” he said. “I wasn’t ready to say goodbye, you might say.”

Reporter Sophia Bollag contributed to this story.

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