Desde a sua criação no começo do século XX, a Patrulha de Fronteira dos EUA vem operando de forma praticamente impune. Pode-se dizer que se trata do órgão mais politizado e abusivo da área de segurança pública em âmbito federal – mais até do que o FBI sob a direção de J. Edgar Hoover.
A Lei de Imigração de 1924 alcançou um nível de xenofobia que tem raízes profundas na história dos EUA. A lei efetivamente acabou com a imigração da Ásia, e reduziu drasticamente a entrada de imigrantes das regiões Sul e Leste da Europa. A maior parte dos países passou a ter um sistema de cotas, sendo que os maiores números eram concedidos à Europa ocidental. Em decorrência disso, quem chegava aos EUA eram principalmente protestantes brancos. Os “nativistas” (que defendiam o direito à terra para os descendentes dos primeiros colonos europeus nos EUA) ficaram quase satisfeitos com esse arranjo de coisas, exceto pelo fato de que o México permaneceu fora do sistema de cotas, por influência dos interesses de empresas americanas que queriam preservar seu acesso à mão-de-obra de baixo custo. “O Texas precisa dos imigrantes mexicanos”, declarou a Câmara de Comércio do estado.
Os supremacistas brancos, uma vez perdido o debate nacional quanto às restrições sobre a entrada dos mexicanos, e temendo que a política de fronteira aberta com o México acelerasse a “mestiçagem” dos Estados Unidos, tomaram o controle da Patrulha de Fronteira, também criada em 1924, e a transformaram num instrumento da linha de frente da vigilância racial. Como mostrou a historiadora Kelly Lytle Hernández, os primeiros recrutas da patrulha eram homens brancos que já estavam afastados da vida rural havia uma ou duas gerações. Alguns deles tinham experiência como militares ou xerifes de distrito, outros foram transferidos de departamentos de polícia nas cidades de fronteira ou da divisão especial Texas Rangers — todos, órgãos com sua própria tradição de violência sem responsabilização. Seus interesses políticos se opunham aos dos grandes agricultores e pecuaristas da região de fronteira. Eles não achavam que o Texas precisava dos imigrantes mexicanos. Nem o Arizona, o Novo México ou a Califórnia.
Algum tempo antes, em meados do século XIX, a Guerra Mexicano-Americana havia desencadeado um racismo generalizado contra os mexicanos em todo o país. Esse racismo foi aos poucos se concentrando cada vez mais ao longo de uma linha estreita: a fronteira. Embora a legislação imigratória de 1924 não tivesse atribuído ao México uma cota, diversas leis secundárias (inclusive uma que tornava crime entrar no país fora das portas de entrada oficiais) davam aos agentes alfandegários e de fronteira poder para decidir caso a caso quem poderia entrar legalmente no país. Eles passaram a ter o poder de transformar a travessia da fronteira para chegar ao trabalho, que era até então apenas um evento da rotina diária ou sazonal, em um ritual de abusos. Inspeções higiênicas se tornaram mais comuns e gradativamente mais humilhantes. Os patrulheiros raspavam as cabeças dos imigrantes e os submetiam a um conjunto de exigências cada vez mais arbitrário, que incluía testes de alfabetização e tarifas de entrada.
A Patrulha não era, inicialmente, uma agência de grande porte. Nos primeiros anos, eram poucas centenas de agentes, e seu alcance na linha de fronteira de mais de 3 mil quilômetros era limitado. Ao longo dos anos, porém, aumentaram os relatos de violência, à medida que crescia o número de agentes empregados. Os agentes de fronteira regularmente espancavam os imigrantes, atiravam contra eles e os enforcavam. Dois patrulheiros, ex-agentes dos Texas Rangers, amarraram os pés de um imigrante e o arrastaram para dentro e para fora de um rio, até que ele confessasse ter entrado ilegalmente no país. Outros patrulheiros eram membros da Ku Klux Klan, que retornava à atividade nas cidades de fronteira do Texas à Califórnia. “Praticamente metade dos membros” da Guarda Nacional de El Paso “fazia parte da Klan”, recorda-se um oficial militar, e muitos deles tinham ingressado na Patrulha de Fronteira logo depois de sua criação.
A Patrulha de Fronteira operou por mais de uma década sob a autoridade do Ministério do Trabalho, que foi um importante motor das deportações nos primeiros anos da Grande Depressão, antes da eleição de Franklin D. Roosevelt e da nomeação de Frances Perkins como secretária do Trabalho. Perkins, antes mesmo de entrar para a equipe de FDR, já criticava a violência da Patrulha de Fronteira. Depois de assumir o cargo, ela tentou ao máximo limitar os abusos dos agentes de imigração. Limitou as prisões sem mandado, permitiu aos imigrantes detidos dar telefonemas, e atuou para estender aos trabalhadores migrantes as proteções que o New Deal oferecia aos cidadãos norte-americanos, procurando inclusive tornar mais justos seus abusivos contratos de trabalho.
Suas reformas duraram pouco. A Casa Branca, cedendo à pressão dos ruralistas, colocou a Patrulha de Fronteira, bem como as políticas migratórias de forma geral, sob a autoridade do Departamento de Justiça. Outras leis que criminalizavam ainda mais a imigração reforçaram o poder da Patrulha. O fim do Programa Bracero de trabalhadores-convidados, por exemplo, juntamente com a promulgação do Hart-Celler Act de 1965, que pela primeira vez impôs cotas para o México e outros países do hemisfério ocidental, fez com que milhares de trabalhadores sazonais mexicanos passassem a ser considerados oficialmente “ilegais”.
Exportação de Policiamento ParamilitarAo mesmo tempo, a experiência obtida na interdição de migrantes começou a ser exportada internacionalmente. Mesmo aqueles que criticam a violência da Patrulha de Fronteira costumam pensar nela como uma agência federal modorrenta, distante das linhas de frente ideológicas da Guerra Fria. A Patrulha, no entanto, teve um importante papel na expansão do raio de atuação da doutrina de segurança nacional de Washington – educando as forças de segurança aliadas sobre as táticas de contra-insurgência – e no aumento do ritmo da ação paramilitar.
John P. Longan, à esquerda, e Owen S. Juvrud, ambos experientes inspetores patrulheiros baseados em El Paso, Texas, fotografados em Denver, em 11 de maio de 1955, numa viagem de recrutamento em nome da Patrulha de Fronteira dos EUA.
Foto: Dean Conger/The Denver Post via Getty Images
A carreira de John P. Longan, que atuou como xerife em Oklahoma antes de se juntar à Patrulha de Fronteira, é bastante ilustrativa. Depois de períodos no Novo México e no Texas, Longan foi designado para auxiliar na condução da Operação “Wetback” [termo pejorativo para os imigrantes ilegais, em especial os mexicanos], um esforço de deportação em massa concentrado principalmente na Califórnia que, nas palavras do Los Angeles Times, transformou a patrulha em um “exército” envolvido em uma “guerra plena para arremessar dezenas de milhares de ‘wetbacks’ mexicanos de volta para o México”. Exércitos modernos precisam de um serviço de inteligência moderno, e Longan, agindo de um local não rastreado em uma antiga instalação da Marinha em Alameda, atualizou a capacidade da Patrulha de coletar e analisar informações, inclusive as obtidas em interrogatórios, e de agir rapidamente com base nessas informações. Alguns anos mais tarde, Longan foi transferido para o Programa de Segurança Pública do Departamento de Estado, e passou a excursionar por diversos pontos nevrálgicos do terceiro mundo, incluindo Venezuela, Tailândia, República Dominicana e Guatemala. Segundo Stuart Schrader, em sua obra ainda inédita “Badges Without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing” [“Distintivos Sem Fronteiras: Como a Contra-Insurgência Global Transformou o Policiamento Americano”], Longan foi um dentre vários agentes da Patrulha de Fronteira recrutados, pela probabilidade de falarem espanhol, para treinar polícias estrangeiras por meio de programas de “segurança pública” ligados à CIA. Por já terem trabalhado na região da fronteira sul, esses patrulheiros transformados em operadores disfarçados tinham familiaridade com sociedades estruturadas em torno de relações de trabalho análogas à escravidão. Eles automaticamente estenderam a esses países mais pobres e governados por oligarquias, como a Guatemala, o mesmo tipo de imunidade de ação que possuíam nos EUA.
Na Guatemala, Longan usou técnicas de inteligência semelhantes às que havia desenvolvido na Operação Wetback para treinar policiais e soldados locais, criando uma “unidade de ação” que poderia coletar informações e agir com base nelas de forma rápida. A maior parte dessas informações também provinha de interrogatórios, muitos deles envolvendo tortura. Ao longo dos três primeiros meses de 1966, a “Operación Limpieza”, ou Operação Limpeza, como Longan batizou o projeto, conduziu mais de 80 incursões e dezenas de execuções extrajudiciais, incluindo o assassinato, durante um período de quatro dias no começo de março, de mais de 30 ativistas políticos (eu descrevo em detalhes o período de Longan na Guatemala aqui). Da mesma forma, no começo dos anos 1970, os EUA treinaram forças de segurança latino-americanas, em sua maior parte de países governados por militares, na Academia da Patrulha de Fronteira em Los Fresnos, no Texas, onde, segundo o Los Angeles Times, “instrutores da CIA” deram treinamento “sobre planejamento, construção e potencial uso de bombas e artefatos incendiários”.
Inspetores da Patrulha de Fronteira dos EUA, do quartel-general do setor de El Centro, revistam dois mexicanos, logo depois de os dois homens cruzarem ilegalmente a fronteira com o México em 11 de agosto de 1951.
Foto: Associated Press
A partir dos anos 1970, o jornalismo investigativo começou a denunciar os abusos da Patrulha de Fronteira. Essas revelações foram condenatórias, mas em grande parte ignoradas. John Crewdson, por exemplo, ganhou um prêmio Pulitzer em 1980 por uma série de reportagens publicadas no New York Times, uma delas intitulada “Border Sweeps of Illegal Aliens Leave Scores of Children in Jails” [“Varreduras de Estrangeiros Ilegais na Fronteira Deixam Dezenas de Crianças em Prisões”]. Porém, seu livro baseado na série, “The Tarnished Door” [A Porta Manchada], publicado em 1983, encontra-se esgotado na editora. A investigação de Crewdson sobre a Patrulha de Fronteira e o sistema de imigração merece ser revisitada, por oferecer um importante contexto histórico para os horrores que hoje estamos presenciando.
Ele relatou que os patrulheiros se envolviam regularmente em espancamentos, assassinatos, tortura e estupro, incluindo até mesmo o estupro de meninas de 12 anos. Alguns patrulheiros comandavam seus próprios grupos de justiceiros “fora da lei”. Outros mantinham vínculos com grupos como a Klan. Agentes da Patrulha de Fronteira também usavam os filhos dos migrantes como isca ou como estratégia de pressão para forçar confissões. Ao se deparar com uma família, os agentes normalmente tentavam capturar primeiro o membro mais jovem, com a ideia de que seus familiares se entregariam para não serem separados. “Pode parecer cruel”, disse um patrulheiro, mas costumava funcionar.
Separar famílias de migrantes não era uma política oficial do governo durante os anos em que Crewdson relatou os abusos. No entanto, uma vez deixados por conta própria, os agentes da Patrulha de Fronteira regularmente tomavam as crianças de seus pais, ameaçando-os de permanecerem separados “para sempre” a não ser que algum deles confessasse ter entrado ilegalmente no país. Um agente disse que as mães, principalmente, “sempre cediam”. Uma vez extraída a confissão, as crianças poderiam ser entregues em guarda temporária ou deixadas em prisões federais para definhar. Outras eram libertadas sozinhas no México, longe de casa – forçadas a sobreviver, segundo os defensores públicos, “revirando latas de lixo, vivendo sobre telhados, ou qualquer outra coisa”. Sylvia Alvarado, de dez anos, foi separada de sua avó enquanto atravessavam para o Texas, e mantida em uma cela de blocos de concreto por mais de três meses. Na Califórnia, Julia Pérez, de 13 anos, ameaçada de prisão e privada de comida, finalmente cedeu e disse ao seu interrogador que era mexicana, muito embora fosse uma cidadã dos EUA. A Patrulha de Fronteira libertou Pérez no México sem dinheiro, nem meios para entrar com contato com sua família americana. Tais crueldades não eram casos isolados, mas faziam parte de um padrão encorajado e praticado pelos agentes até o topo cadeia de comando. A violência era ao mesmo tempo gratuita e sistêmica, e incluía técnicas de “estresse” que posteriormente foram associadas à guerra do Iraque.
Por exemplo, a prática recentemente denunciada de colocar imigrantes em salas extremamente frias – chamadas de hieleras ou “caixas térmicas” – remonta a décadas, pelo menos no começo dos anos 1980, quando Crewdson escreveu que se tratava de uma prática comum. Os agentes lembravam sempre que os prisioneiros estavam submetidos à sua vontade: “aqui vocês não têm direitos”.
Alguns imigrantes, ao serem mandados de volta para o México, eram algemados a carros e obrigados a correr ao lado deles até a fronteira. Os patrulheiros empurravam “imigrantes ilegais de despenhadeiros”, contou a Crewdson um agente da patrulha, “para que parecesse um acidente”. Funcionários da agência que supervisiona a patrulha, o Serviço de Imigração e Naturalização, trocavam jovens mexicanas que capturavam na fronteira por ingressos da temporada do time de futebol americano Los Angeles Rams, e forneciam prostitutas mexicanas a congressistas e juízes americanos, pagas com os recursos que o serviço utilizava para remunerar informantes. Os agentes também estabeleciam parcerias com os ruralistas do Texas, levando trabalhadores para suas fazendas (inclusive uma de propriedade de Lyndon B. Johnson enquanto ocupava a Casa Branca), para então fazer operações logo antes do dia do pagamento e deportar os imigrantes. “Os fazendeiros conseguiam gente para fazer a colheita de graça, o pessoal da agência conseguia privilégios de caça e pesca nas fazendas, e os mexicanos não conseguiam nada”, relatou Crewdson.
Investigações posteriores confirmam que a violência documentada por Crewdson continuou ao longo dos anos, essencialmente inalterada. Boa parte da região da fronteira é remota e seu terreno é inóspito; o trabalho dos patrulheiros se equilibra na tênue linha entre o poder doméstico e o internacional; muitos dos patrulheiros eram veteranos de guerras no estrangeiro (ou oriundos de regiões de grande tensão racial, incluindo as próprias regiões de fronteira). Tudo isso contribuía para a “mentalidade de fortaleza”, como definiu um agente. Os patrulheiros com facilidade imaginavam suas subestações isoladas como fortes de fronteira em território hostil, contendo os bárbaros. Eles detinham enorme poder sobre pessoas desesperadas e sem recursos efetivos. Com base em informações fornecidas por grupos locais de defesa de direitos dos migrantes, a organização Human Rights Watch escreveu, em 1993, que em uma dessas subestações, em Harlingen, no Texas, “os abusos físicos são normalmente combinados com violações ao devido processo legal, com o objetivo de aterrorizar as vítimas da violência”. A maior parte dos migrantes capturados, espancados ou ameaçados de espancamento, assinavam “acordos de saída voluntária”, e eram “rapidamente repatriados”.
Foto: Dave Gatley/Mai/Mai/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images
Entre 1982 e 1990, a Cidade do México enviou pelo menos 24 protestos ao Departamento de Estado dos EUA em nome de mexicanos feridos ou assassinados por agentes da Patrulha de Fronteira. Como os soldados que usam epítetos raciais para as pessoas contra quem lutam em países estrangeiros, os agentes da Patrulha de Fronteira têm um nome para seus oponentes: “tonks”. É “o som”, um patrulheiro contou a um jornalista, “que uma lanterna faz quando você bate na cabeça de alguém com ela”. Em bairros repletos de residentes sem documentos, a Patrulha operava com a atitude de um exército ocupante. “Cuide da porra da sua vida, senhora, e volte para dentro de casa”, um patrulheiro ordenou a uma residente de Stockton, na Califórnia, que saiu na varanda para vê-lo “chutar um homem mexicano que estava algemado e deitado de bruços no chão”.
Não era apenas a Patrulha de Fronteira federal que agia com tanto sadismo, mas também as forças locais de segurança. Em 1980, um advogado do Texas afiliado aos United Farm Workers [“Trabalhadores Rurais Unidos”, um sindicato da categoria] obteve vídeos de 72 interrogatórios de migrantes realizados nos sete anos anteriores, gravados pelo departamento de polícia de McAllen, no Texas. As imagens eram perturbadoras: policiais se revezavam para espancar um mexicano algemado, batiam sua cabeça no piso de concreto, socavam, chutavam e xingavam enquanto ele pedia clemência. As gravações foram feitas por diversão, uma espécie de ritual de confraternização que posteriormente viria a ser associado aos abusos praticados contra os prisioneiros iraquianos em Abu Ghraib: quando os agentes se reuniam “várias noites seguidas”, eles bebiam cerveja e assistiam “exibições” de suas sessões de interrogatório. Segundo um dos homens envolvidos, era uma forma de iniciar os recrutas no culto à violência da fronteira.
Existem decisões judiciais conflitantes, mas historicamente o poder dos agentes não vem sendo limitado por qualquer dispositivo constitucional. Há poucos lugares que os patrulheiros não possam revistar, e nenhum bem de propriedade dos migrantes que eles não possam confiscar. E não há quase ninguém que eles não possam matar, desde que as vítimas sejam migrantes pobres do México ou da América Central. Entre 1985 e 1990, agentes federais atiraram contra 40 migrantes apenas no entorno de San Diego, dos quais 22 morreram. Em 18 de abril de 1986, por exemplo, o patrulheiro Edward Cole estava espancando Eduardo Carrillo Estrada, um jovem de 14 anos, no lado americano da cerca de arame farpado da fronteira. Ele se voltou e atirou nas costas do irmão mais novo de Eduardo, Humberto, que estava parado do outro lado da cerca, em solo mexicano. A justiça decidiu que Cole, que já tinha um histórico de atirar em mexicanos através da cerca, tinha motivo para temer por sua vida em relação a Humberto, e fez um uso justificado de força.
Esse tipo de abuso continuou ao longo dos anos 1990 e 2000. Em 1993, o Subcomitê da Câmara sobre Direito Internacional, Imigração e Refugiados conduziu audiências sobre os abusos da Patrulha de Fronteira, e a transcrição das falas é um catálogo de horrores. Tony Hefner, ex-guarda no centro de detenção do INS em Port Isabel, no Texas, relatou que “uma jovem salvadorenha” foi forçada a “praticar favores pessoais, como dançar lambada, para agentes do INS”. (Em 2011, Hefner publicou um livro de memórias com mais acusações de abuso sexual, segundo ele, pelo “alto escalão” do INS.) Roberto Martinez, que trabalhou no Programa da Fronteira EUA-México pela organização American Friends Service Committee [Comitê Americano de Serviço dos Amigos – “amigo” é como se denominam os praticantes da religião quaker], com sede em San Diego, depôs que “as violações a direitos humanos e civis” pela Patrulha de Fronteira “abrangem todo o espectro de abusos imagináveis” – de estupro a homicídio. Os agentes regularmente confiscavam “certidões de nascimento originais e green cards” de cidadãos latinos, “deixando para as vítimas todo o ônus financeiro de se submeter ao longo processo de obtenção de um novo documento”. “Estupros e abusos sexuais nos centros de detenção do INS em todo o país”, disse Martinez, “parecem estar aumentando ao longo da região de fronteira”.
A violência continuou à medida que Washington intensificava a militarização da fronteira e da política de imigração, de forma mais ampla – primeiro, depois da assinatura do Tratado Norte Americano de Livre Comércio, o NAFTA, em 1993, e alguns anos depois, com a criação do Serviço de Imigração e Controle Aduaneiro (ICE) e a constituição do Departamento de Segurança Interna, na esteira dos ataques de 11 de setembro. Desde 2003, agentes da Patrulha de Fronteira mataram pelo menos 97 pessoas, incluindo seis crianças. Poucos agentes foram processados. No ano passado, uma guatemalteca do povo Maia, Claudia Patricia Gómez González, foi morta com um tiro na cabeça por um agente ainda não identificado da Patrulha de Fronteira do Texas, logo depois de ingressar nos Estados Unidos. De acordo com um recente relatório da União Americana pelas Liberdades Civis (ACLU), mulheres jovens detidas pela Patrulha vêm sofrendo abusos físicos e ameaça de estupro, enquanto crianças desacompanhadas sofrem “abuso físico e psicológico, condições de vida insalubres e desumanas, isolamento de familiares, períodos extensos de detenção, e vedação ao acesso a serviços médicos legalmente previstos”.
A perversidade que estamos presenciando atualmente na fronteira, dirigida a crianças e adultos, tem um longo histórico. Isso não mitiga de forma alguma a extraordinária crueldade de Donald Trump, mas sugere que, se os EUA pretendem sair do abismo moral em que caíram, é preciso pensar além da maldade de Trump. É necessário fazer um acerto de contas histórico com a verdadeira causa da crise na fronteira: a longa e violenta história da própria vigilância de fronteira.
Tradução: Deborah Leão
The post A patrulha de fronteira dos EUA: um culto à violência desde 1924 appeared first on The Intercept.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi speaks at a news conference on the decision to add a new citizenship question on the 2020 Census in Washington D.C., on May 8, 2018.
Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP
In a closed-door meeting Friday morning, the Supreme Court voted to fast-track review a lower court ruling that would have prevented the Trump administration from asking about citizenship on the 2020 census. Arguments in the case, the outcome of which could affect the balance of political and economic power in this country for years to come, are scheduled for the week of April 22. The last time the high court granted such a petition for expedited review, which bypasses the appeals court, was in 2004.
“Granting cert before judgment here shouldn’t be seen as any reflection of how the Court is likely to rule on the merits,” said Steve Vladeck, a law professor at University of Texas. “It’s just a sign that the Justices all understand the need to decide the matter, one way or the other, by June.” The census questionnaire must be finalized by June 30, census officials say, in order to start printing paper forms on time.
Democrats have an opportunity, and a moral responsibility, to push for answers on why the Trump administration is so keen to include the question.The legal showdown over the census has been brewing since March 2018, when Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced that the decennial enumeration of adult and child in America would — for the first time in 70 years — ask about immigration status. The move was quickly condemned by census experts and advocates as a politically motivated effort to undermine the accuracy of the count by discouraging immigrants and their families from participating. Led by New York, 18 states, several cities, and civil rights groups sued the Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau, to block the question.
Now, as the legal proceedings move forward, Democrats, with their oversight power in the House of Representatives, have an opportunity, and a moral responsibility, to push for answers on why the Trump administration is so keen to include it.
As it stands, the 2020 questionnaire either will or will not ask every person in America whether they are U.S. citizens. In the balance between those two outcomes hang billions of dollars in desperately needed federal aid for poor, urban, and minority communities; a legislative map that could be drawn to favor white, conservative districts; and the question of whether America will continue its descent toward white minority rule.
“Final census preparations and grassroots ‘get out the count’ efforts are unfolding amidst great uncertainty,” Terri Ann Lowenthal, who was staff director of the House census oversight subcommittee from 1987 to 1994, told The Intercept, “making it hard to reassure fearful communities that it is safe to answer the census.”
Former Census Bureau Director Ken Prewitt concurred. “The census arrives in less than a year, when Alaska is enumerated and media campaign launched. And its schedule is relentless,” said Prewitt, who is now a professor at Columbia University. “The citizenship question hangs there, and distract from many other things that need attention. One way or the other, [the Supreme Court] needs to erase this uncertainty.”
If Democrats want to prevent this manmade catastrophe, they don’t have to wait and see what the Supreme Court decides.
Through hearings in the House, Democrats can work to further expose the Trump administration’s nefarious intentions. Ross, who evaded giving testimony in the New York case, will appear before the House Oversight Committee on March 14. Chair Elijah Cummings, a Maryland Democrat, has said that investigating the administration’s reasoning for adding the citizenship question would be an oversight priority. “To be frank with you, we have been told some untruths,” Cummings said in November.
Meanwhile, the chair of the subcommittee overseeing the Census Bureau, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, told Bethesda Beat, “We would like to put the nail in the coffin for the ill-fated citizenship question.”
Another route is through legislation. There are now two stand-alone bills in the House and Senate that would effectively prohibit a citizenship question on next year’s census. The 2020 Census IDEA Act, sponsored by Rep. Carolyn Maloney and Sen. Brian Schatz, prohibits changes to census design that have not been “researched, studied, and tested” for at least three years before the count. The Every Person Counts Act, sponsored by Sens. Bob Menendez and Catherine Cortez Masto, specifically prohibits census questions “eliciting any information regarding U.S citizenship or immigration status.”
Fifty-two House Democrats have co-sponsored the Census IDEA Act and 20 senators have sponsored the Every Person Counts Act. If House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rallies her caucus, it is possible that the 2020 Census IDEA Act could pass in the House, but passage in the Senate — and the president’s signature — is unlikely.
Another option would be to attach a census measure to a must-pass bill, like raising the debt ceiling, supplemental appropriations, or disaster relief. In November, House Democrats, led by New York Rep. José Serrano, sought to use the government funding showdown to block the citizenship question. House Democrats could add language to future appropriations bills blocking funding for a census questionnaire that includes the question.
Even if the chances of passage are low, a symbolic effort by Democrats would still be meaningful. “An undercount would result in leaving communities without vital resources, health care, and fair representation,” said Beth Lynk, Census Counts campaign director at the Leadership Conference Education Fund. “Congress must now step in to remove the citizenship question from the 2020 Census and ensure the Census Bureau gets sufficient resources, so that all communities are accurately and fairly counted.”
Census stakeholders were reassured last month when Judge Jesse Furman, who sits on the federal bench in New York, ruled that Ross’s decision to include the question constituted an “arbitrary and capricious” violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs federal agency decision-making processes. In the decision that prompted the Trump administration’s appeal to the Supreme Court, Furman wrote that “hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of people will go uncounted in the census if the citizenship question is included.”
Furman’s decision “revealed how the Census has been manipulated to undermine this cornerstone of our democracy,” said Arturo Vargas, CEO of the NALEO Educational Fund, which works to get Latinos involved in the political process. “We hope the Supreme Court will be able to approach this matter with a keen sense of objectivity and respect for the Constitution’s requirement for a complete count of all persons.”
Prewitt, the former Census Bureau director, said he’s hopeful that the Supreme Court will affirm Furman’s ruling, likely on “narrow, technical” grounds. But even if that happens, he said, considerable damage has already been done. “The lost trust in the census will be hard to walk back,” Prewitt said.
Meanwhile, the Census Bureau is going ahead with an unorthodox, last-minute test run of the citizenship question. In June, 480,000 U.S. households will receive one of two forms: one with the citizenship question, another without. “This test is not to determine whether or not we’re including the citizenship question on the 2020 census,” Victoria Velkoff, an associate director in the Census Bureau told a meeting of census stakeholders. Rather, the bureau explained, the purpose is to determine how to maximize responses and “inform staffing, training, and planning decisions.”
The highly unusual 11th-hour test, Lowenthal said, confirms what stakeholders have been asserting for over a year: The Census Bureau added the citizenship question without having comprehensively tested its effect on response rates. The latest test won’t solve that problem, Lowenthal said. “It’s not broad enough to assess the full impact.” For example, the test will not capture any data about noncooperation during the door-to-door phase — when Census workers will come knocking.
Though the extent of the potential damage is unknown, experts agree that the outlook is not good. In a January 26 letter to Ross, the commerce secretary, six former Census Bureau directors, from both Republican and Democratic administrations, warned, “We believe that adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census will considerably increase the risks to the 2020 enumeration.”
In a January 2018 memo to Ross, the Census Bureau’s own top scientist cautioned that adding the question would “harm the quality of the census count,” and would result in “substantially less accurate citizenship status data than are available from administrative sources.”
Beyond the politics, a citizenship question would cause real, material harm to young people, Latinos, Asians, and city-dwellers. These communities are more likely to be undercounted (even more so than they already tend to be) because they are more likely to live in households with noncitizens.
“An undercount would result in leaving communities without vital resources, health care, and fair representation.”A more severe census undercount in these communities will impact have a devastating impact on federal aid. Congress allocates $675 billion in annual federal funds on the basis of census data. Medicaid distributes $312 billion; the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as the Food Stamp Program, distributes $69.5 billion; Medicare Part B distributes $64.2 billion; and Section 8 housing distributes $38.3 billion. By undercounting undocumented immigrants and sewing fear in their families, the Trump administration will redirect federal funding away from the neediest. And because the census is used to apportion congressional seats and statehouse districts, undercounted populations will be further disenfranchised and left more unable to rectify these harms.
Punishing poor and brown communities in this way is not an unintended side effect of the administration’s approach to the decennial count; it’s the purpose.
Furman, in his ruling, declined to decide whether the citizenship question was designed to discriminate against noncitizens, but documents revealed during the trial suggest a deliberate plot by nativist Trump officials to sabotage the count.
Ross claimed that the decision to add a citizenship question was prompted by a December 2017 request from the Justice Department, which claimed to want better data for enforcing the Voting Rights Act. But emails reveal that months before the Justice Department request, Ross discussed the citizenship question with former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach — who briefly helmed a controversial “voter fraud” commission — and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon months before the DOJ request. In his ruling, Furman said the Commerce Department used DOJ to “launder” and “obtain cover for a decision they had already made.”
The absence of a citizenship question on the census “leads to the problem that aliens who do not actually ‘reside’ in the United States are still counted for congressional apportionment purposes,” Kobach wrote in a July 2017 email to Ross. The Justice Department later admitted that the conversation between Kobach and Ross was arranged by Bannon.
Justin Levitt, a former Justice Department civil rights overseer, told me last year that there is no valid voting rights reason for including a citizenship question on the census.
Levitt said, “These emails suggest that the Commerce Department’s rationale was, to use a technical term, horseshit.”
The post The Supreme Court Will Decide if Census Citizenship Question Is Legal. Democrats Should Also Work to Block It. appeared first on The Intercept.
People opposed to Amazon’s plan to locate a headquarters in New York City hold a protest in Court House Square on Nov. 26, 2018 in the Long Island City neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York City.
Photo: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images
When Amazon, the monopsonistic retailer and ICE collaborator, announced last November that it would open its “second headquarters” in New York City, local resistance arose immediately. The day following the announcement, over 100 community activists, union leaders, and local politicians rallied in the Queens, New York, neighborhood of Long Island City — where Amazon planned to build – in opposition to the deal, which included $3 billion worth of government kickbacks.
Yet while resistance to Amazon’s HQ2 was swift and formidable, the task of stopping the deal appeared Sisyphean. So when Amazon announced on Thursday that it was canceling plans for the New York corporate campus, the news was met with delight and surprise. Amazon’s owner, Jeff Bezos, is the richest man in history; Gov. Andrew Cuomo promised the company that he’d change his name to “Amazon Cuomo” were the deal to go through. It is rare to win against a corporate-government power nexus of this magnitude.
The plan’s thwarting offers a lesson in the possibility of forceful collective struggle against seemingly unbeatable Goliaths. It also proves the need for left-wing politicians and organizers to challenge and replace conservative, capitalist Democrats if we are to wrest control of neighborhoods, cities, and public resources away from corporate interests and towards the good of existing communities.
In its statement announcing the plan’s cancellation, Amazon was explicit that its decision was in response to strong opposition from certain lawmakers. “A number of state and local politicians have made it clear that they oppose our presence and will not work with us to build the type of relationships that are required to go forward,’’ the company stated.
New York legislatures of old showed no sensitivity to anti-gentrification and anti-corporate sentiment.It’s true that these politicians played a crucial role. Yet without consistent pressure and door-to-door canvassing from activist and community groups — including immigrant and worker advocate organizations Make the Road NY and Desis Rising Up and Moving, alongside Teamsters and Queens residents — many elected officials would not have taken up a stance against Amazon. New York legislatures of old showed no such sensitivity to anti-gentrification and anti-corporate sentiment.
“Let’s be clear who deserves the credit for this victory against Amazon — the working people of NYC who refused to let another company reap billions in corporate welfare at the expense of the City’s social welfare,” wrote New York City Council Member Carlos Menchaca, a longtime opponent to the Amazon deal, on Twitter. Citing his opposition to the retail giant’s anti-union policies and partnership with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Menchaca added, “New York City cannot claim to be a sanctuary city if it gives taxpayer money to fund systems that spy, threaten, and deport our immigrant neighbors.”
Menchaca’s praise for working people is apt: Political pressure from local organizers, activists, and community groups informed those lawmakers and, indeed, helped elect the new cadre of left-wing Democrats willing to take such a stance.
Some of the most vocal New York legislators who opposed HQ2 were newly elected through grassroots campaigns on democratic socialist platforms. House Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and state Sen. Julia Salazar are perhaps the most famous among them. As the New York Times reported earlier this week, last year’s elections also “paved the way for the nomination of [state] Senator Michael Gianaris — now a prominent Amazon opponent — to a state board with veto power over the deal.” The nomination reportedly spooked the corporate leviathan.
The victory against Amazon — and its dealmaker allies in New York’s leadership — shows the immediate material effects of upsetting the state and city’s historically centrist and corporate-friendly order, as represented by the governor and the mayor. Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, “Anything is possible: today was the day a group of dedicated, everyday New Yorkers & their neighbors defeated Amazon’s corporate greed, its worker exploitation, and the power of the richest man in the world.”
Amazon and its defenders are attempting to frame the deal’s cancellation as a coup by politicians acting against the will of New Yorkers. “Polls show that 70 percent of New Yorkers support our plans and investment,” the company statement read.
The idea that those non-unionized, predominantly six-figure jobs would have gone to local working-class people is laughable.It is true that recent polls showed support for the project, especially among African-American and Latinx residents. But such polls do not account for the fact that Amazon’s promises to bring 25,000-plus “good” jobs and vast investment are poison pills. If Amazon’s original HQ in Seattle is anything to go by, the idea that those non-unionized, predominantly six-figure jobs would go to local working-class people is laughable. Meanwhile, HQ2 threatened to drive up already soaring property and retail prices in the area. And, as Ocasio-Cortez noted in response to criticism, “we were subsidizing those jobs” — with the $3 billion in tax breaks and other kickbacks for Amazon, a company that will pay nothing in federal taxes on $11.2 billion of profits made last year.
It hardly speaks to the democratic will of the people when polls frame corporate sweetheart deals and inequality generators as simple job creators. In this sense, Amazon’s claim to local popularity is about as legitimate as the misleading Brexit campaign’s claim to represent the general will among Britons.
Matt Stoller, an economist with the Open Markets Institute and critic of Amazon’s market control, noted how disingenuous it was for the company to claim such popularity. “If the question were framed differently the deal would be a lot less popular,” he wrote on Twitter. “For instance, ‘Would you personally pay $375 for each member of your family to Jeff Bezos so he would bring Amazon jobs to New York City?’” — referring to the fact that $3 billion of public money amounts to approximately $375 per New York City resident. Stoller added that while, of course, tax incentives don’t work that way, his alternative framing is no more misleading that the polling Amazon touted as proof of popularity: “Saying ‘would you accept great jobs in return for vague-sounding state and city incentives of up to $3 billion’ is going to get a high approval. ‘would you pay $375 to a billionaire for traffic jams and higher rent’ is not. This was not a popular deal.”
It is to the great credit of longtime community organizers — all too familiar with the empty, unfulfilled promises New York real estate developers — that an informed anti-gentrification politics won the day.
While the cancellation of HQ2 is a huge victory in and of itself, it also signals a welcome shift in political power away from the conservative Democrat status quo, and gives hope for further challenges to the corporate stranglehold on city development and resource allotment. The attorney and former candidate for attorney general, Zephyr Teachout, tweeted Thursday, “Oh, we are just beginning! Now let’s get a Congressional hearing on Amazon, labor, ICE, monopsony, how and why to break up Amazon.”
Checks on corporate hegemony and obscene inequality do not happen without pushing the Democratic Party to the left. When the Amazon deal was announced last year, Mayor Bill de Blasio remarked, “One of the biggest companies on earth next to the largest public housing unit in the country — the synergy is going to be extraordinary.” It is a welcome and overdue moment when a politician who utters such tone deaf, neoliberal paeans can no longer pass as progressive.
The post Amazon Pullout Shows What Anti-Capitalist Organizing and Leftist Politicians Can Do appeared first on The Intercept.
Last year, thousands of young Afghans marched across the country, demanding an end to fighting that has destroyed millions of lives since the Soviet invasion in 1979.
The grassroots peace movement led to a number of local ceasefires throughout the country between Taliban militants and Afghan government soldiers. Young men who had recently been trying to kill one another instead shared food and posed for photographs in the streets of Afghan cities. The scenes broadcast around the world were reminiscent of the famous World War I “Christmas Truce” between German, British, and French soldiers.
That tentative peace effort, a poignant expression of Afghans’ desire to end the violence that has scarred so many families, did not hold. But in recent weeks, there have been increasing signs that another peace deal may be coming together, negotiated from conference tables in Doha and Moscow. The Taliban and a group of former Afghan officials, including former President Hamid Karzai, met in Moscow last week to discuss the future of the country. These talks, along with separate negotiations between the U.S. and the Taliban in Doha, seem to hold out the possibility of ending the violence that has ravaged the country over four decades.
But the talks also offer a serious reality check about the outcome of 18 years of U.S. military presence in Afghanistan. For many observers, the negotiations register as a defeat — recognition that the Taliban has not only survived, but is likely to play an integral role in Afghanistan’s future. It is also clear that there will be a new set of winners and losers in Afghan society, and that Afghans who pegged their hopes to the U.S.-backed government now risk losing limited gains in living standards and civil rights.
Conspicuously absent from the current talks is the Afghan government led by President Ashraf Ghani, which has been denounced as illegitimate by the Taliban and faces an uncertain future following a U.S. departure. U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad announced last month that the Doha talks had succeeded in producing a “draft framework” for ending the war. The full details are still unknown, but comments from Khalilzad and Taliban officials suggest that the agreement will include the withdrawal of U.S. troops, as well as a commitment from the Taliban that Afghanistan will never again be used as a base for international terrorist groups like Al Qaeda.
This compromise could come at a serious cost to Afghans. After 40 years of nonstop war, most crave any respite from violence. But the Trump administration’s approach to the talks so far, as well as the speed with which an agreement seems to be materializing, have stoked fears that the United States is simply looking for a quick exit, even if it means leaving Afghan civilians exposed to armed rivalry between political factions and militant groups.
The goal of transforming Afghanistan into a liberal democracy has proven quixotic, but that doesn’t mean that nothing significant has changed since the Taliban era.The goal of transforming Afghanistan into a liberal democracy has proven quixotic. That does not mean, however, that nothing significant has changed since the Taliban were deposed. Afghan society has made small but important advances in education, civil liberties, and women’s rights over the past 18 years, despite endemic poverty, government corruption, and violence. A young, urban generation of Afghans has grown up accustomed to having at least some basic freedoms and opportunities that were not possible under the Taliban regime.
It’s unclear what would happen to this new Afghan generation under a government that includes the Taliban, particularly to women, who found themselves totally excluded from public life the last time the Taliban was in power. There are some signs that the movement has evolved and perhaps even moderated some of its tenets over time. But the Taliban is far from a united organization, and it does not have a clear vision for the future of the country. Many of its younger cadres have spent their entire lives at war, with no experience governing a diverse society during peacetime.
“The Taliban who are in contact with the U.S. are mainly moderate Taliban. Even if they reach an agreement with the U.S. to end their support for international terrorists, the key challenge that will remain will be the radical Taliban factions that enjoy safe havens in Pakistan,” says Masoud Andarabi, a former Afghan intelligence official who was recently appointed acting interior minister.
Photo: Noorullah Shirzada/AFP/Getty Images
Last year was one of the deadliest for Afghan civilians since with the war began, with thousands killed and maimed by all sides in the fighting. Afghan security forces have also suffered devastating losses; more than 45,000 have been killed since 2014, according to Ghani in a recent statement, a staggering death toll that calls into question whether the Afghan government could even survive without American support.
Decades of war have trapped Afghans in a cycle of violence and revenge. Public sentiment about the U.S. military is divided. Afghans who have flourished under the post-Taliban order see Western forces as protectors of their freedoms, while others say that the American presence has driven countless young recruits into the Taliban’s arms.
A Taliban commander from the Saydabad District, south of Kabul, told The Intercept that he joined the movement after a neighbor gave false information that led to a humiliating U.S. military raid on his family home. Detained by U.S. troops, he spent two years in prison; he was released “without an apology or explanation.” The experience bred lasting anger toward the U.S. and its local Afghan allies, underlining the difficulty of reconciliation even if a peace deal is signed.
“I will not put down my gun until we have kicked out the puppets in Kabul.”“I won’t put down my gun until every American and every invader is kicked out, so no other Afghan is humiliated and their homes raided. I will not put down my gun until we have kicked out the puppets in Kabul,” the Taliban commander told The Intercept. “There are soldiers and members of the government that are in touch with us; we know they are honest ones that have not harmed anyone and were forced to pick up a gun. But we will not spare the corrupt ones. Those puppets and servants of the West have ruined so many lives. I will fight until my last drop of blood. We are not scared of the drones, the special forces, or helicopters. “
A popular song being shared lately by Taliban fighters extolls the looming victory of the “rural Taliban” over the United States: “The famous America became ready to negotiate,” the song goes. “The disgraced America, the out-of-momentum America. In the beloved country Afghanistan, her red-faced children died.”
A sense of triumphalism among Taliban cadres following a U.S. withdrawal could influence how they govern the country. The previous Taliban regime was notorious for its draconian treatment of women and ethnic minorities. For people in urban centers like Kabul who have come of age in the post-Taliban era, the prospect of returning to life under a militant movement that harshly enforces religious law is unthinkable.
“I was born during the civil war in Kabul. I don’t remember much of the war, but I remember the last years of Taliban regime,” says Fereshtay Khawaray, a 27-year-old schoolteacher in Kabul. “I was not able to come out and play with my friends. We couldn’t go to school, so I was educated secretly. When Kabul fell and the Taliban were gone, it was as if I had a second life. I had freedom.”
Kharaway finished high school and married the man of her choice, a rarity in a place where most unions are arranged. In addition to being an educated woman, she is a member of the Hazara minority, which was persecuted particularly harshly by the Taliban during its reign, and the mother of two young children. She views the prospects of full-scale civil war or unreconstructed Taliban rule as equally untenable.
“I have fears that the war of the 1990s might return, God forbid,” Khawaray said. “The world, Afghan leaders, and the Taliban must provide guarantees. We must make sure that the freedoms and the gains that people like me have benefited from are not lost.”
In recent weeks, Taliban officials have given mixed signals about their vision for the country’s future. Some have floated the possibility of disbanding the Afghan army following a peace deal, as well as scrapping and rewriting the Afghan Constitution. Disbanding the army, in particular would be deeply contentious, with Ghani pointedly denouncing the idea in a recent speech.
There are also fears that the civil rights of Afghan women could end up bargained away at the negotiating table in the name of political expediency. While the Taliban has claimed that it will respect women’s rights in a future government, such promises have been viewed with skepticism.
“The peace process will, if successful, substantially reduce violence and bloodshed, saving thousands of lives every year,” says Shaharzad Akbar, an Afghan women’s rights activist and director of the civil society organization Open Society Afghanistan. “If the process is not inclusive, however, and all concerns are not addressed — the focus just being on an ‘honorable exit’ for Americans and ‘dignified return’ for Taliban — it may create new incentives for conflict, lead to an oppressive and noninclusive government, and, subsequently, disappointment, fragmentation, and migration.”
After nearly two decades, the international community, as well as the U.S. public, has grown bored with the war and exhausted by the work of trying to rebuild Afghanistan. U.S. President Donald Trump successfully campaigned on a promise to end long-running U.S. military engagements at any cost, though this was less as a gesture of peace than a sign of his isolationist “America First” ethos.
For ordinary Afghans, who are also tired of their country’s troubles, the current talks will determine whether their future is marked by continued violence or will afford space for gradual healing and reconciliation. The Taliban has announced that it will meet with U.S. officials in Pakistan later this month to continue the negotiations.
Mariam Bibi is one of millions of Afghans whose lives have been distorted by Afghanistan’s long-running national tragedy. Her son Jawid, a plumber, was killed in a 2017 bombing in Kabul that targeted the city’s Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood. The blast struck a busy intersection in a diplomatic quarter of the city, killing more than 150 people in one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in Kabul since the war began. The blast was so powerful that Bibi was not even able to retrieve her son’s remains for burial. Her loss is in many ways a microcosm of Afghanistan’s larger national tragedy.
“He was my world, he was my life. He would go every day and work in the city. He would leave by his bicycle and I would kiss him,” 53-year-old Bibi told The Intercept. “I think every mother wants peace. We don’t want more bloodshed, I have lived my life in war, my children too. Today I don’t even have a grave to grieve or cry at. I cry and I pray. What else can a poor mother like me do? May God finally bring peace to the next generation.”
The post After 18 Years of War, the Taliban Has the Upper Hand in Afghanistan Peace Talks appeared first on The Intercept.
President Donald Trump did end up calling for a national emergency, in order to get the funds to build his border wall. It’s a consequential announcement, but one that was temporarily dulled by the president’s rambling, chaotic speech. He ad-libbed on the threat posed by gangs and criminal cartels—and even undermined his own case for the move by saying that he made the call out of political expediency, not necessity. The controversial decision now faces a dicey legal challenge ahead, but David Frum argues that’s only one of the potential roadblocks the president faces.
At a speech in Warsaw this week, Vice President Mike Pence took an unusual approach: blasting America’s allies. Top officials from Germany and France neglected to show up to the conference, which featured representatives from more than 60 countries, because its aim was to criticize Iran and support America’s reimposition of nuclear-related sanctions on the country. That comes after the Trump administration’s decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal, a repudiation of Trump’s predecessor’s policies. Under Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the administration has doubled down on the Obama-era move to disengage militarily from the Middle East.
Twitter may be the president’s social-media platform of choice, but for users, it’s dizzying to follow. That was made acutely clear in a high-profile, 90-minute chat on the site between Jack Dorsey, the company’s enigmatic CEO, and the tech journalist Kara Swisher: The discussion was clunky and difficult to parse, degrading Twitter’s goal of connecting people and letting them follow conversations. That’s not the only flack Twitter has gotten of late—it has a festering harassment and abuse problem that it’s been exceedingly slow to address.
Evening Read
(Wenjia Tang / The Atlantic)
Selasi Gbormittah and Val Stones, two former contestants on the beloved show The Great British Bake Off, forged an unpredictable intergenerational friendship, which they’ve maintained since that season of the show stopped filming in 2016. In The Friendship Files, a newly launched weekly Q&A featuring a pair of unusual friends, Julie Beck talks with both of them about the relationship:
Beck: Do you remember your first impressions of each other?
Selasi: I was very late, so they're all thinking, Who's this guy who is late? He's gonna be a problem. I turned up really late on my motorbike. I was soaking wet and I just smiled. I don't think I even apologized. I just said, “Hey, I'm here for the baking show.” And everyone looked at me like, Who the hell is this?
Val: You walked in in your gear and I remember thinking, Ah, it's that young man that I saw. And I realized, Gosh, he's gonna be real trouble, that one. But I was so pleased to see you.
Thad Roberts was arrested in 2002 for stealing more than $20 million worth of moon rocks, and before that, as a college student, he showed a preternatural ability to get others to join him in occasionally risky pursuits:
“The professor boasted that the university’s own rising star, Thad Roberts, had just been accepted to NASA’s internship program. At 23, Roberts was a triple major in physics, geology, and geophysics, as well as the founder of the Utah Astronomical Society. He was determined to be the first person on Mars. He was also about to change the trajectory of my life.”
Our Critic’s Picks
(Fox)
Read: A tender and at times inspiring account of the year since the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, following a small group of student survivors turned activists.
Watch: Alita: Battle Angel. Indulge in the postapocalyptic action drama, if you can acclimate to the giant manga-style eyes computerized onto the lead actor Rosa Salazar’s face.
Listen: Accepting his Best Rap Song Grammy award for “God’s Plan,” Drake worked into his speech a sideways jab at the Recording Academy’s failures in acknowledging the work of female musicians and artists of color.
Poem of the Week
Here is an excerpt from “Pursuit,” by Sylvia Plath:
There is a panther stalks me down:
One day I'll have my death of him;
His greed has set the woods aflame,
He prowls more lordly than the sun.
→ Read the rest, from The Atlantic’s January 1957 issue.
Renewal Awards
The Renewal Awards, a national competition now in its fourth year, recognizes local organizations and individuals who are driving change in their communities—and helps them make an even bigger impact.
This year’s voting is now open. You can support the efforts of these nonprofits by voting for one of the 15 finalists, here. Five winners, including the Allstate Youth Empowerment Award winner, will receive $20,000 in funding from Allstate.
Concerns, comments, questions, typos? Email Shan Wang at swang@theatlantic.com
Did you get this newsletter from a friend? Sign yourself up.
Today we’re kicking off a project I’ve been working on for months now: The Friendship Files. We so often tell stories of parents, children, or significant others—but friendships are our most formative relationships. These relationships, while not defined by blood or law, shape and anchor our lives.
Every week, I’ll talk to two or more friends about how they met, how they’ve grown together, their inside jokes and antics. I interview the friends at the same time, to capture their unique dynamic together.
Two high-school friends reunited by a sweater after spending decades apart; contestants from The Great British Bake Off who bonded over motorcycles and baked goods, despite the generation gap between them; two women who moved to a new city and found each other on a dating app; and four students who remain close with their favorite high-school teacher after graduation—these stories reflect the warmth and generosity, as well as the hardships and challenges that friendships bring to our lives.
If you or someone you know would like to be a part of the series, send a nomination to friendshipfiles@theatlantic.com.
— Julie Beck, senior editor
***
A Friendship Baked in the Great British Bake Off Tent
Selasi Gbormittah (left) and Val Stones (right). Courtesy of Val Stones.
Beck: Do you remember how you two, specifically, became friends?
Selasi: During downtime or when we were at the hotel I used to talk to Val a lot, and in the green room. I think our common interests came into play, because I found out that Val loved motorbikes.
Val: I had a motorbike license before Selasi.
Selasi: I think that's when the friendship really began. Also because I love whiskey—Val brought me two tiny bottles of whiskey from a distillery onto the set for me, which I still haven't drank. They're still at home.
Val: I've got some more samples for you, but you're gonna have to come over here to drink them ...
Selasi: My favorite OAP.
Beck: What is OAP?
Selasi: Old-age pensioner.
Val: A person who is past 60 and getting retirement pension. I'm his favorite OAP. And I've always said that Selasi is my favorite adopted son ... He watches his swearing with me, just like he would his grandma.
HighlightsMoney can’t buy you love, but it can buy you a fairy-tale wedding. The Atlantic fellow Natalie Escobar visited a wedding expo, which featured a range of businesses from bakeries and dress shops to barbecue-sauce stands and dance lessons. The expo’s consumerist bonanza shows the wedding industry’s choke hold on middle-class couples tying the knot: Most couples will spend $15,000 to $35,000 on a wedding, often adding to existing debt from student loans or mortgages.
Ahead of the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, The Atlantic’s Ashley Fetters follows a mother-daughter team that’s been showing dogs together for nearly a decade. Eighteen-year-old Becca Flood and her mother, Mara, breed collies, spending hours on end to breed them, train them, and groom them for the show. Now that Becca is off at college three hours away from home, she and her mother are getting used to a new routine—for Becca, a life without pets for the first time, and for her mother, attending shows without her daughter and most trusted partner. And of course, there are many, many photos of the Floods and their dogs, including Cherry (whose full name is SugarNSpice Cherry On Top) and Poe (Travler SugarNSpice Witches Do Come Blue).
Dear Therapist
(Illustration: Bianca Bagnarelli)
Every Monday, the psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb answers readers’ questions about life’s trials and tribulations, big or small, in The Atlantic’s “Dear Therapist” column.
This week, a father writes in asking for advice on reconnecting with his estranged daughter. They haven’t talked in 25 years, since he got remarried, and no amount of Christmas cards or letters seem to help.
Lori’s advice: Try to understand and acknowledge your daughter’s feelings next time you reach out, and don’t demand forgiveness from her. You might feel hurt that she hasn’t reached out, but she’s likely holding on to years of pain and hurt as well.
You can start with a sincere apology. A sincere apology is heartfelt and empathic and entirely about the person receiving it. A letter in this spirit might go something like this: “I owe you an apology, and I wish I’d offered it much sooner. I know that I’ve hurt you deeply, and I’m truly sorry for that. I would like to know more about your experience, because I’ve come to realize that I failed to see earlier that I put you through a lot of pain.”
Send Lori your questions at dear.therapist@theatlantic.com.
It’s Friday, February 15. President Donald Trump signed a spending deal to avert a government shutdown.
But Wait, There’s More: During his free-associative remarks from the Rose Garden, Trump said that he is officially declaring a national emergency in order to access funds to build his border wall. He also plans to reallocate approximately $8 billion in agency funds. Many Republicans have expressed misgivings about the move, and Trump’s decision serves as a test of their willingness to oppose the president. In response, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said they’ll take action “in the Congress, in the Courts, and in the public.”
Trump, in his speech, seemed to undermine his own case for the national emergency: “I can do the wall over a longer period of time. I didn’t need to do this,” the president said. And as promised, California Governor Gavin Newsom said on Friday that he is preparing a lawsuit. “President Trump is manufacturing a crisis and declaring a made-up ‘national emergency’ in order to seize power and subvert the constitution,” Newsom said.
Are You a Citizen?: The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether a question about citizenship status can be added to the 2020 census. The Trump administration is locked in a legal battle against several states and advocacy groups who worry that the question will depress census participation.
A Challenge From Within: Former Massachusetts Governor William Weld announced that he plans to form an exploratory committee to challenge Trump for the 2020 GOP presidential nomination. “I think our country is in grave peril and I cannot sit any longer quietly on the sidelines,” the Republican said.
A Reckoning in the Russia Investigation: The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee claimed that the former British spy Christopher Steele was unwilling to engage with the probe, when in reality, Steele submitted written answers to the panel’s questions in August, reports Natasha Bertrand. Meanwhile, the House Intelligence Committee has approximately 24 staffers working on the Russia probe, while the Senate committee has only nine.
Programming Note: We won’t be sending a newsletter on Monday, due to the Presidents’ Day holiday. See you Tuesday!
Snapshot
Marla Wolff, whose husband, the FBI agent Carlos Wolff, was killed in a traffic accident involving an undocumented immigrant, displays a family photograph as President Trump declared a national emergency in the Rose Garden of the White House. (Jim Young / Reuters)
Ideas From The AtlanticTrump’s National Emergency Will Face Four Hurdles (David Frum)
“Every additional dollar he devotes to the border is a dollar taken from another project already approved by Congress. Every one of those projects has patrons and sponsors. And because most military contracting goes to red states, most of the reshuffled dollars will be removed from red states.” → Read on.
Gavin Newsom’s Big Idea (Reihan Salam)
“Not long ago ... the governor of California was dismissed as a showboating opportunist who cared more about climbing the political ladder than he did about the finer details of public policy. But his decision to abandon the dream of a high-speed train that would ferry passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco, at least for now, suggests that he’s made of sterner stuff. ” → Read on.
Stop Alleging Anti-Semitism to Score Political Points (Jeremy Ben-Ami)
“Being afforded the space for criticism brings with it an obligation on the part of ... critics to think about the impact of their words—and tweets. And critics of the critics should be called to task when their rhetoric crosses the line to Islamophobia and racism.” → Read on.
Trump Crosses the Rubicon (Noah Rothman)
“Let’s not mince words: backing Trump in this moment is not the prerogative of an institutionalist, which the majority leader claims to be. It is the prerogative of a partisan operator motivated, above all, by deference to a fleeting political imperative: avoiding another government shutdown.” → Read on.
I Will Never Forget El Mozote. Elliott Abrams Shouldn’t Be Allowed to Either. (Raymond Bonner)
“At the Roman Catholic church in El Mozote, soldiers separated men from their families, took them away, and shot them. They herded mothers and children into the convent. Putting their American-supplied M-16 rifles on automatic, the soldiers opened fire. Then they burned the convent. Some 140 children were killed, including toddlers. Average age: 6.” → Read on.
◆ The Most Important Woman in Congress Is Not Who You Think (Michael Kruse, Politico Magazine)
◆ Bill Weld Launches GOP Presidential Exploratory Committee (Joe Battenfeld, Boston Herald)
◆ Sherrod Brown Is Not an Idiot (Rich Lowry, National Review)
◆ What Amazon Got Wrong About New York City (Casey Newton, The Verge)
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