US Politics

Anti-Trump Republicans agree on one thing – but that’s about allThere are different constellations in the Never Trump firmament and it’s unclear if they can unite As Joe Biden lurched from crisis to crisis with plummeting approval ratings, the Republican party seemed largely content to bury its internal differences and enjoy the show.But not for long.Earlier this month Alyssa Farah Griffin, once communications director for President Donald Trump, made clear that her loyalties have shifted to former vice-president Mike Pence and the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell. “Put me squarely in the Pence/ McConnell camp,” Farah Griffin wrote on Twitter. “Certain denunciations must be unequivocal.”This drew a sharp retort from Keith Kellogg, who served as Pence’s national security adviser. “As midterms draw close and 2024 looms large, choices will have to be made and lines will be drawn,” he tweeted. “For me – it is Trump.”The exchange was a microcosm of factional struggles once again boiling to the surface of the Republican party. Trump remains dominant but, with elections in 2022 and 2024 concentrating minds, fragments of the establishment wing are stirring and probing for signs of weakness.What is unclear, however, is how much these disparate forces have in common and whether they are willing to make sacrifices to unite.Republicans’ recent ceasefire between Trumpists and not-Trumpists ended when Pence, who served as Trump’s loyal deputy for four years, uttered four words that few imagined they would ever hear: “President Trump is wrong.” It was a reference to Trump’s false claim that his vice-president could have overturned the 2020 election.The comment was endorsed by Pence’s former chief of staff, Marc Short, who has also testified to the House of Representatives select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. Should Pence challenge Trump for the Republican nomination in 2024, he would have a ready-made entourage, including Short and Farah Griffin.McConnell has made clear that he approves of Pence’s actions on January 6 and refused to amplify Trump’s bogus claims of voter fraud, even as opinion polls suggest a huge majority of the Republican electorate wrongly believes that Biden did not legitimately win the 2020 election.The senator from Kentucky also recently condemned the Republican National Committee for censuring Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois for sitting on the January 6 committee, which is led by Democrats and has subpoenaed many in the former president’s inner circle.Such positions have earned Trump’s wrath. He declared: “Mitch McConnell does not speak for the Republican Party, and does not represent the views of the vast majority of its voters.” Like other Trump antagonists before him, McConnell, who turns 80 on Sunday, has even suffered the indignity of a Trump nickname – “Old Crow”.Senate Republicans have never entirely yielded to Trump. Seven voted to convict him at last year’s impeachment trial. Mitt Romney of Utah is a trenchant critic. Last month Mike Rounds of South Dakota rejected his false claim of widespread voter fraud, prompting Trump to lash out: “He is a weak and ineffective leader, and I hereby firmly pledge that he will never receive my endorsement again!”But House Republicans are more tightly in Trump’s grip. Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, frequently breaks with McConnell in his expressions of fealty, in part because his caucus includes “Make America great again” extremists such as Madison Cawthorn, Matt Gaetz, Ronny Jackson, Jim Jordan and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Then there are Republican state governors who, typically more pragmatic, have shown greater willingness to speak out against Trump. They include Larry Hogan of Maryland, who said on Sunday he is “certainly going to take a look” at a presidential bid in 2024. But as the centrist leader of a Democratic-leaning state, Hogan has little affinity with hardline conservatives such as Pence or Cheney.Add in vociferous groups of disaffected alumni such as the Lincoln Project and the Republican Accountability Project and it is clear there are different constellations in the Never Trump firmament. What they are against is self-evident; what they are for is more ambiguous.Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank, said: “There’s not really a Never Trump movement. There is a collection of people who aren’t for Trump’s continued domination of the Republican party. They tend to be on various sides of what we would have recognised pre-Trump as establishment Republicans.”But, notably, even Trump’s Republican critics rarely denounce his policies on border security, crime, immigration, taxes, voting rights or issues such as abortion or how race is taught in schools. Pence, for example, tempers his rare dissent with paeans to the accomplishments of the Trump administration. Olsen, author of The Working Class Republican, added: “Centrist Republicans have to ask whether or not they want to be leaders of this Republican party or of the Republican party they wish they had. The centre of the Republican party today is broadly pro-Trump policies, but preferring to move beyond Trump personally.”“A lot of these people still have problems with Trump policies. Larry Hogan is definitely not somebody who is national material for the Republican party, which is why I don’t think he’s going to run. He would have his hat handed to him because he’s not a conservative of any stripe and the Republican party is still a conservative party of some stripe or another, whether it is a Trump personality aspect or pre-Trump movement conservatism or something in between.”The challenge for any future standard bearer may be to create a coalition that links these different blocs. Olsen argues that the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, a co-founder of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, has shown an ability to adapt to the new Trumpist Republican party and is widely seen as an heir apparent.But first the party must navigate the midterm elections in November. It is expected to regain the House and possibly the Senate but Trump’s obsession with the “big lie” of a stolen election could prove a dangerous liability among votes focused on the future.McConnell is reportedly manoeuvring to recruit Republican candidates who reject the baseless assault on American democracy, with limited success so far, but is working behind the scenes rather than offering the kind of full-throated repudiation of Trump that some would like.Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, said: “If you’re trying to achieve real change inside the party, if you’re trying to take the party back or you want to move off of Trumpism, you’ve got to make it very clear. Mitch McConnell no more wants Donald Trump to be the nominee of the party in 2024 than I do. Then come out and say that.”If McConnell, McCarthy and Republican governors held a joint press conference to declare that Trump lost, denounce his lies and set out their governing principles, “then it begins to move the needle inside the party”, Steele added. Such an act seems unlikely, to put it mildly.McConnell is not a figure of mass popular appeal and his powers as a kingmaker are limited. Trump, by contrast, retains a fervent fanbase in the Republican grassroots, as evidenced by the big crowds at his campaign rallies. Next week’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida, is expected to be another show of strength, with speakers including Trump, DeSantis, Cawthorn, Gaetz, Jackson and Jordan.Tim Miller, writer-at-large for the Bulwark and former political director for Republican Voters Against Trump, said: “I think the problem is bottom up, not top down. The voters want Trump and crazy and so the politicians that are giving it to them are doing the best.”Even so, the midterms could give Trump a black eye. He has showered endorsements on dozens of candidates, some of them long shots who trail their establishment counterparts in the polls and in fundraising. Defeats for Trump’s champions in marquee races such as Georgia would revive the perennial question – asked every year since 2015 – of whether his command of the party is declining.Frank Luntz, a pollster and strategist, said: “It’s now over a year since January 6 and support for Trump has decreased a little but those who have stayed with him are even more passionate and that’s what is going to characterise the next 12 months.”An NBC News poll last month found that 56% of Republicans now define themselves more as supporters of the party than of Trump, compared with 36% who are first and foremost committed to the former president (this marked a reversal from October 2020 when 54% put Trump above party). But his favorability remains high among registered Republicans – just under 80% in an Economist-YouGov tracking poll – and he is the clear frontrunner for 2024.Michael D’Anonio, a political author and commentator, added: “He does still have a death grip on the party and I don’t see that fading. As much as people who I admire want that to happen, I don’t think it’s at hand just yet.”TopicsRepublicansDonald TrumpUS politicsUS midterm elections 2022featuresReuse this content More

What does it mean to ‘plead the fifth’ – and will Donald Trump do it?The ex-president has been ordered to testify in a New York fraud case. Will he invoke his constitutional right to remain silent? Donald Trump and his two eldest children have been ordered by a New York judge to appear for a deposition within 21 days, as part of an investigation into the Trump family finances. The development presents the former US president with a dilemma: should he invoke his right to silence by pleading the fifth?What does ‘pleading the fifth’ mean?The right of any person to decline to answer questions put to them in criminal proceedings flows from the fifth amendment of the US constitution (hence “pleading the fifth”). The amendment, dating back to 1791, protects individuals from self-incrimination. “Nor shall any person be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,” it says.Joe Biden to urge ‘deterrence and diplomacy’ in Ukraine crisis – liveRead moreTechnically, the financial investigation into the alleged fraudulent accounting of the Trump Organization is being conducted by Letitia James, the New York state attorney general, as a civil case, and as such is not covered by the right to silence. There is a complication, though – James has made clear that she is working in unison with the Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, who is also looking into Trump finances but as a criminal matter.On Thursday, hours before Judge Arthur Engoron ruled that Trump and his children Donald Jr and Ivanka had to present themselves for questioning, the former president’s lawyers protested that he was being put in an impossible bind.Alina Habba, one of Trump’s legal team, told the court: “They either disclose evidence in a civil investigation or they have to invoke the constitutional right not to testify, thereby triggering an adverse inference in the civil action. How is that fair, your honour?”Does pleading the fifth imply the witness is guilty?In law, not at all. US law could not be clearer. Invoking your right not to answer a question in a criminal case says nothing about your guilt, and no inference may be drawn from it.The supreme court has underlined that point several times. For instance, in the 2001 ruling Ohio v Reiner, the justices stated that “one of the fifth amendment’s basic functions is to protect innocent persons who might otherwise be ensnared by ambiguous circumstances”.Of course, what the law says is not the end of the calculation. Witnesses have to weigh up how a jury might respond were the case to go to civil trial, as Trump’s might. If you are a politician like Trump, there is also the vexed issue of public opinion.Could Trump family members plead the fifth when they face James in the next few weeks?Absolutely. There is a track record for this. Trump’s younger son Eric, the executive vice-president of the Trump Organization, has already been called before the James inquiry to answer questions about whether the family business misleadingly or fraudulently valued its assets to secure loans or pay lower taxes.Eric Trump pleaded the fifth no fewer than 500 times. Allen Weisselberg, the company’s chief financial officer, also invoked his right to remain silent hundreds of times.What is Trump’s take on this?To plead or not to plead the fifth is an especially fraught question for the former president. His lawyers know that he has a tendency to wander off script, which may be fine at a campaign rally surrounded by supporters but is not a good idea if you are facing a dagger-sharp inquisitor like James.Trump has invoked his fifth amendment rights in the past. The investigative reporter Wayne Barrett chronicled how in 1990 Trump declined to answer 97 questions, many about adultery, during his bitter divorce from his first wife, Ivana Trump.On the other hand, remaining silent could make him look weak and hypocritical. Trump has gone on the record several times denouncing those who invoke their fifth amendment rights.At a campaign stop in Iowa during the 2016 presidential race, he said: “The mob takes the fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the fifth amendment?”In 2014, he offered the disgraced comic Bill Cosby “some free advice” in a tweet. He said: “If you are innocent, do not remain silent. You look guilty as hell!”TopicsDonald TrumpUS politicsRepublicansanalysisReuse this content More

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Let’s Go Brandon: the Nascar driver who became a hero in an unwinnable culture war In October, Brandon Brown unwittingly became a rightwing meme. Now he is delicately treading the line between profit and politicsBrandon Brown was not an especially fearsome stock car driver, nor did he figure as the sort to crack open sport’s Pandora’s box entering last October’s Sparks 300 – a race in Nascar’s mid-tier Xfinity series. In most cases a mid-pack qualifying position would not bode well. But at Talladega Speedway, a crash-happy oval circuit where anything can happen, the best drivers are the ones who survive the carnage. And after two multi-car pile ups, Brown assumed a narrow lead with 13 laps to go. A final accident two laps later that took out seven cars sealed his first Xfinity series triumph in 114 tries. With night falling on the Alabama circuit, the 28-year-old Virginia native emerged from his Chevrolet Camaro machine in a daze for the post-race TV interview. As he breathlessly thanked his sponsors and revisited his driving tactics, some in Talladega’s packed crowd began chanting “Fuck Joe Biden” loud and clear enough to come across Brown’s microphone. Desperate to keep the interview going with her producers unable to bleep the background noise, NBC Sports reporter Kelli Stavast tried to Jedi mind trick her viewers. “You can hear the chants from the crowd – Let’s go, Brandon,” she said.Since then, Let’s Go Brandon has gone from awkward TV moment to harmless meme to conservative dog whistle on par with Maga hats and OK hand gestures – a way of insulting the president without triggering censorship. It adorns lawn signs and bumper stickers. One guy said it directly to Biden last Christmastime as the president and first lady were taking calls into Norad’s Santa tracker from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Another guy got kicked off a flight this week for having Let’s Go Brandon writ small on his facemask. As the slogan exacerbates the deepening political divide in the country, Brown has so far struggled in his attempts to ride the median.Caller tells Joe Biden ‘Let’s go Brandon’ during White House Christmas eventRead moreBrown laughed off the Let’s Go Brandon cheers initially, then went silent when it morphed into something more sinister. Finally, in a December New York Times interview, he expressed a wish to distance himself from the now politically charged slogan, not wanting to cost his family-run team hundreds of thousands in potential sponsorship support. “If they’re going to use my name,” Brown, a Republican, said of his fellow conservatives, “I’d like for it to be productive.”In a subsequent Newsweek op-ed titled My Name Is Brandon, he described himself as a driver “in the passenger seat of my own viral moment,” albeit a squarely middle-class one with a lot of thoughts about inflation affecting prices at the pump. (“I buy more gas than most,” he quipped.) Still, he was quick to assure readers that he wasn’t “going to tell anyone how to vote” or had any “interest in leading some political fight.”But then just before the new year, Brown appeared to quickly abandon those ideals for a two-season, eight-figure sponsorship pact with LGBcoin.io, a cryptocurrency that’s literally short for Let’s Go Brandon. The announcement unveiling Brandon’s red, white and blue repainted car called him “truly America’s driver.” But as with most things crypto, the wealth infusion – a lifeline for a family-run racing operation that came close to closing its doors – disappeared as quickly as it arrived.But instead of a cyber raider or a pyramid scheme it was Nascar president Steve Phelps who pumped the brakes on the deal out of a desire to unseat the sport from any politics on either side of the aisle, lest it turn off the new fans the sport urgently seeks. And then the invisible hand of the crypto market dealt the finishing blow. After achieving a peak liquidity pool value of $6.5m at the start of the year, the coin crashed and burned. It is now worth close to zero.The lost funding puts Brown back in the position of having to cobble together sponsors, an effort that will be obvious in the varying paint schemes and decals that adorn his car this year – beginning with the Saturday race that undercards Sunday’s Daytona 500. And Brown, who starts from the back of the pack yet again, will have his work cut out for himself throughout the season in the hustle for patronage. The Original Larry’s Hard Lemonade, a sponsor on Brown’s Talladega-winning car, dropped him in response to the bitcoin deal. “All money is not good money,” company founder Vic Reynolds cautioned in a farewell statement. Politically motivated sponsorship might seem toxic now, making it easier for Phelps to drop the hammer on Brown, but precedent suggests it’s only a matter of time before they have it both ways. Not only have drivers raced machines with Bush-Cheney and Trump-Pence livery in the recent past, but it wasn’t even two years ago that Bubba Wallace raced a Black Lives Matter car on the way to leading a campaign to banish displays of the confederate flag from the sport – although the organisation didn’t pay him for that exposure.Sponsorship dollars are hard enough to chase down in this economy. If anything, Brown may have unwittingly stumbled upon an untapped market: political zealots. If his efforts to exploit them continue to get struck down, don’t be surprised if this becomes the movement that emerges in response to Wallace’s progressive push on the way to Nascar becoming the next front in the raging culture wars – and here at least those zealots have a point. With everyone from the former president to mom-and-pops cashing in on the Let’s Go Brandon craze, it seems the only one who isn’t making much money off of this is the guy who inspired the whole thing –and arguably deserves to profit most. For now, though, Brown seems content not to push the issue while continuing the hustle for sponsorship. But, really, there’s no telling how soon he could find himself facing back inside a conference room with another would-be supporter with real money and right-wing ideology. At that point he’ll have to decide whether selling out is worth his soul and his sport’s, leaving the lid on Pandora’s box well in the dust.TopicsNascarMotor sportUS sportsJoe BidenUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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It’s Trump’s time to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truthLloyd GreenA New York judge has ruled Trump will have to testify in his fraud investigation, leaving Trump sweating and his investors shaking their heads Donald Trump’s bad luck continues. On Thursday afternoon, Arthur Engoron, a Manhattan judge, gave the thumbs up to subpoenas issued to Trump, favorite child Ivanka, and Donald Trump Jr, by Tish James, New York’s attorney general. The court’s ruling follows a decision by Trump’s accountants to walk away from the one-term president and disavow years of financial statements issued by his company.Much as the Trump trio tried, they could not shut down James’s investigation into the Trump Organization’s business practices, which could lead to a civil suit by James. Unlike a criminal prosecution, a civil action comes with a lower burden of proof for the government. At the same time, civil lawsuits can drag on – like right into 2024. Barring a stay, Trump and his two children have been ordered to appear at deposition within 21 days.Trump and two eldest children must testify in New York case, judge rulesRead moreIf they tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, who knows what liability may result? On the other hand, if they invoke their right to remain silent, they will probably be portrayed as criminals.“You see, the mob takes the fifth,” Trump observed on the campaign trail in 2016. “If you’re innocent, why are you taking the fifth amendment?”Time sure flies. And if the Trump family refuses to appear at deposition or simply stays mum when grilled, they risk being charged with contempt, a distinction presently held by Steve Bannon, Trump’s White House counselor and 2016 campaign guru.At this moment, Trump must be sweating while his lenders have to be shaking their collective heads. How much is Trump worth and how bad can things get are no longer hypothetical issues. In the absence of operative financial statements, restructurings and bank-called defaults have spilled into the realm of the real.As one Trump insider confided: “Hey, this might be serious. Could Donald Trump [and his business] be screwed? I don’t know, but I’m not as confident as I once was in saying, ‘No’.”Meanwhile, 2024 Republican presidential aspirants are likely stifling a collective smirk. Trump’s legal woes stand to broaden the Republican party’s presidential field, and for some it is downright personal.For Mike Pence, Trump’s hapless vice-president, these recent developments may well trigger a sense of schadenfreude. It wasn’t that long ago when Trump’s loyalists came with makeshift gallows for Pence as they stormed the Capitol, and Trump said nothing to deter the mob. Instead, he demanded loyalty from his No 2.As for Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, Trump’s troubles could not come at a better time. Trump has all but called DeSantis a coward for refusing to say whether he was vaccinated. Beyond that, Florida’s recent per capita Covid mortality rate is the seventh highest in the US, and DeSantis is having a hard time denouncing neo-Nazi violence.“So what I’m going to say is these people, these Democrats who are trying to use this as some type of political issue to try to smear me as if I had something to do with that,” the Sunshine state governor declared. “We’re not playing their game.”To be sure, Trump’s Maga base would stick with him through thick-and-thin. The party’s deep-pocketed donors are a different story. Trump may have delivered them a trove of tax cuts and ambassadorships, but he’s emotionally draining.Beyond that, his antics in the run-up to the 2020 Georgia runoff elections cost the Republicans control of the Senate. There are reasons Mitch McConnell rejects Trump’s lie that the election was stolen and is seeking to bypass the 45th president.Thursday’s ruling was scathing. At one point, the court concluded that the attorney general had uncovered “copious evidence of possible financial fraud”. Elsewhere, the judge excoriated Trump & Co for their flight to fantasy and fiction, invoking Alice in Wonderland, 1984 and Kellyanne Conway all in a single sentence.“The idea that an accounting firm’s announcement that no one should rely on a decade’s worth of financial statements that it issued based on numbers submitted by an entity somehow exonerates that entity and renders an investigation into its past practices moot is reminiscent of Lewis Carroll (‘When I use a word, Humpty Dumpty said … it means just what I chose it to mean – neither more nor less’); George Orwell (‘War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength’); and ‘alternative facts.’”In the past, Trump managed to weather storms surrounding his finances and credibility. Trump University did not stop the ex-reality show host’s political ascent. What happens next remains to be seen.Right now, Joe Biden’s poll numbers are in the low 40s, inflation is on the loose, and Nancy Pelosi is poised to lose the speaker’s gavel. Against that tableau, Trump poses a distraction from Republican ambitions, an unwelcome detour from anticipated outcome.
Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York. He was opposition research counsel to George HW Bush’s 1988 campaign and served in the Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992
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California gives people leaving prison just $200 to start over. After 50 years, that could change The ‘gate money’ the state offers is ‘insufficient to survive’, one activist says, and can contribute to recidivism A California lawmaker wants to increase the allowance that people released from prison receive to cover basic needs for the first time in nearly 50 years.Sydney Kamlager, a state senator representing Los Angeles, is introducing legislation Friday to bump up the “gate money” – funds that people released from state prisons are given – from $200 to nearly $2,600.Omicron wreaks havoc across California prison facilities as staff cases surgeRead more“This is really about making sure that when people get out, we are not perpetuating a cycle of economic violence,” said Kamlager, whose office exclusively shared with the Guardian plans to introduce the new bill. “We have got to stop legislating poverty.”This is the first major effort to increase gate money in recent memory. The roughly 600,000 people released from federal and state prisons each year are usually offered a pittance – if anything – to buy a bus ticket home, or a first meal, clothing and toiletries. California currently provides a debit card loaded with at most $200, though people serving short sentences receive even less. It already offers more than other states, an investigation by the Marshall Project found. Colorado, Texas, Florida and some other states provide $100 and Louisiana and Alabama offer just $10.California last increased the amount of gate money it offers in 1973 when $200 could cover a month’s rent. “Now that money is simply insufficient to survive,” said Samual Nathaniel Brown, the co-founder of the Anti-Violence Safety and Accountability Project.When Brown was released in December after being incarcerated for 24 years, the first thing he bought was a meal for his wife, his two daughters, his sister and his niece. It was a way to thank them for their love and support throughout his imprisonment. They got Korean barbecue, and the bill was about $140.“And there went my gate money,” he said.Brown considers himself blessed that his family picked him up from prison, and he has been able to depend on them after his release. For those without people to lean on, the $200 can be a taunt – or a sign to simply give up, he said.Re-entering society after years or decades behind bars can be rough, with scarce housing and job opportunities available for people with a criminal record. Parole requirements, obligations to family, outstanding debts and health needs stack up quickly, and can be a steep hill to climb.More and broader reforms are required, said Kamlager and the activists she is working with – including of the low wages paid for exploitative prison labor. But upping gate money is also urgently necessary, she said.People often enter prison impoverished and are being thrown into poverty upon release, Kamlager said. The system “perpetuates a fall deeper into desperation for folks who have just been released”, she added.Kamlager is proposing increasing the allowance to $2,590 after consulting with federal data on the cost of food and housing, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Living Wage Calculator, to find the average monthly expenses for a single adult with no children in 2021. Starting in 2024, the bill specifies that the allowance should also be adjusted annually to account for inflation. Kamlager pushed to introduce the bill on Friday, which is the last day to broach new bills during this legislative cycle.It costs California more than $8,800 to keep someone incarcerated each month, the senator noted – and increasing gate money allowance would cost the state less than pushing those just released back into the prison system.Kamlager said she decided to introduce the legislation after receiving a letter from an incarcerated person, asking, “How do you expect any of us to make it if we’re getting out with just $200?”. “It struck a chord,” she said“In 2022, when the price for a gallon of gas in Los Angeles is almost $5, it is unconscionable that the state of California still gives just $200 in allowance for folks who are getting out of prison,” she added.Experts view a person’s first 72 hours after release as a vulnerable, crucial time that can determine whether or not they end up back in prison, said Amika Mota, the policy director for the Sister Warriors Freedom Coalition, a group that is working with Kamlager’s office on the bill. In a criminal justice system that purports to uphold public safety, providing a pittance to people when they are released is “counterproductive public safety”, Brown added. “Not having enough money, it makes people think ‘I need to do something fast.’ And that’s the same type of thinking that led most women and men to prison to begin with.”For mothers leaving incarceration, $2,600 could offer a chance at finding secure housing and reuniting with their children, Mota said. Amid the pandemic, when re-entry after release has been especially perilous and chaotic for many, a pilot program by the nonprofit Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO) has been distributing $2,750 in cash assistance to people leaving prisons all over the US. An early evaluation found that participants were able to use the funds to buy food, pay for transportation and contribute to caring for families. Some participants said the money helped lift them out of homelessness.Meanwhile, Rasheed Stanley-Lockheart, a reentry director for the Ahimsa Collective, a restorative justice non-profit said, “I’ve seen guys come out holding that $200 in their hand, and it’s almost like they don’t know what to do with it because they’re scared.”“We need much more than that to survive,” he said.TopicsCaliforniaUS prisonsLos AngelesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More