US Politics

Subterms

    More stories

    • 75 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump’s big beautiful betrayal – podcast

      by

      On 4 July – as Americans celebrated their country’s independence – Donald Trump signed into law his sweeping tax and spending bill.Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’, as he and fellow Republicans call it, is a sprawling piece of legislation covering everything from tax cuts to border walls to repealing environmental protections, the Guardian US’s chief reporter, Ed Pilkington, explains.But for a president who normally rules by executive order, the act perhaps tells us better than anything so far what he wants to achieve in office. ‘It enshrines what Trump wants to do in his second term,’ says Pilkington.Most controversially, it includes enormous tax breaks for the country’s super-wealthy, while making swingeing cuts to social welfare programmes used by its poor. More than 10 million US citizens are expected to lose access to Medicaid – despite Trump’s continued insistence since coming into office that he would not touch the service.So, asks Michael Safi, why is Trump doing it? And will it cost him the support of the millions of poorer Americans, who came out to vote for him last year? More

    • 100 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      Pregnant doctor denied Covid-19 vaccine sues Trump administration

      by

      A pregnant physician who was denied a Covid-19 vaccine is suing the Trump administration alongside a group of leading doctors associations, charging that the administration sought to “desensitize the public to anti-vaccine and anti-science rhetoric”, according to their attorney.The lawsuit specifically takes aim at health secretary Robert F Kennedy’s unilateral decision to recommend against Covid-19 vaccines for pregnant women and healthy children.Kennedy’s announcement circumvented expert scientific review panels and flouted studies showing pregnant women are at heightened risk from the virus, and made it more difficult for some to get the vaccine.“This administration is an existential threat to vaccination in America, and those in charge are only just getting started,” said Richard H Hughes IV, partner at Epstein Becker Green and lead counsel for the plaintiffs in a statement.The American Academy of Pediatrics, American College of Physicians and American Public Health Association are among a list of leading physicians associations named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit.“If left unchecked, secretary Kennedy will accomplish his goal of ridding the United States of vaccines, which would unleash a wave of preventable harm on our nation’s children,” said Hughes. “The professional associations for pediatricians, internal medicine physicians, infectious disease physicians, high-risk pregnancy physicians, and public health professionals will not stand idly by as our system of prevention is dismantled. This ends now.”In late May, Kennedy announced that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would no longer recommend Covid-19 vaccines for healthy children or pregnant women. The announcement, made on social media, contradicted a raft of evidence showing pregnant women and infants are at especially high-risk from the disease, including from the administration’s own scientific leaders.In June, Kennedy went further by firing all 17 sitting members of a key vaccine advisory panel to the CDC. The advisory panel is a key link in the vaccine distribution pipeline, helping to develop recommendations insurers use when determining which vaccines to cover.That panel met for the first time in late June. Members announced they would review both the childhood vaccine schedule and any vaccines that had not been formally reviewed in seven years. They also recommended against a long-vilified vaccine preservative, in spite of a lack of evidence of harm.The news comes amid the largest annual measles case count in 33 years, and amid reports of more parents seeking early vaccination for their children, fearing vaccines will go into shortage or no longer be covered by insurance. More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      US posts highest annual measles case tally in 33 years amid Texas outbreak

      by

      The annual tally of measles cases in the US is the highest in 33 years, as an ongoing outbreak in west Texas continues to drive cases.The latest figures mean Americans will have to look back to 1992 to find a worse year with the vaccine preventable disease. The official tally very likely undercounts the scope of the outbreak, experts told the Guardian.“When you talk to people on the ground, you get the sense that this outbreak has been severely underestimated,” said Dr Paul Offit, director of the vaccine education center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Confirmed cases appear to be the “tip of a much bigger iceberg”, he said.Measles was declared eliminated in the US in 2000. However, as the pandemic disrupted routine childhood visits to the doctors and anti-vaccine organizations saw their coffers swell during the pandemic, measles vaccination rates have fallen below a critical threshold to prevent outbreaks in some communities.As of 4 July, Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Outbreak Response Innovation counted 1,277 measles cases. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports 1,267 cases, but has not updated its data since 2 July.“The number of new cases has slowed down, but I don’t think there’s any reason to suggest this will be our last,” said Dr Peter Hotez, a vaccine expert and dean for the national school of tropical medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.He later added: “It’s a very dark epidemic that never had to happen.”The latest national tally will eclipse 2019, when unvaccinated members of New York City’s isolated orthodox Jewish community drove a large outbreak, and the nation ended the year with 1,274 confirmed measles cases.Americans will need to look back to 1992 to find a higher annual measles tally. In 1992, the CDC confirmed 2,126 cases, with the largest outbreaks in Kentucky and Texas. Texas has confirmed 753 cases in 2025, according to the state health department, opening up the possibility that Texas could exceed the 1992 annual total as well.The enormous outbreak comes as Donald Trump’s health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, who once ran an influential anti-vaccine group, has injected upheaval into US vaccine policy and spread misinformation about treatments for the disease.Measles is a viral disease characterized by a top-down rash, high fever, runny nose and red, watery eyes. The virus is one of the most infectious diseases known to medicine. There is no cure for measles. The best way to prevent measles is by getting vaccinated with the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine (MMR), which is 97% effective with two doses.Although most people recover, as many as one in five infected children require hospitalization; one in 20 get pneumonia and one in 1,000 can develop encephalitis, which can lead to lifelong disability, according to the CDC. The disease can also weaken the host’s immune system and lead to more future infections. In rare cases, measles can cause an incurable degenerative brain disorder. The US has already seen three deaths from measles this year, both in otherwise healthy children.Before a measles vaccine was licensed in 1963, an estimated 3-4 million Americans were sickened each year, 48,000 were hospitalized and an estimated 400-500 died, according to the CDC. From 1994 to 2023 in the US alone, the CDC estimates the measles vaccine saved 85,000 lives and prevented 104m illnesses.Although the vaccine has been wildly successful, it has also been the target of sustained misinformation by people who have a financial stake in reduced vaccine uptake.In 1998, a British doctor hypothesized a link between the MMR and increasing autism rates. The doctor, Andrew Wakefield, was later found to have committed fraud, failed to report conflicts of interest and lost his license. The article was retracted.Reams of science has since examined and re-examined the evidence, and found no link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Still, the debunked connection has found an afterlife as a talking point for anti-vaccine groups who have attracted a vocal minority of parents. The overwhelming majority of Americans still vaccinate children against measles.Now, alongside longtime anti-vaccine talking points about autism and “medical freedom”, Hotez said a new threat was the, “very pernicious health and wellness and influencer movement that’s got a big profit motive”.Outbreaks appear to be “occurring in the same [parts] of the US that had some of the lowest Covid vaccination rates”, said Hotez, introducing the possibility that anti-vaccine sentiment is “spilling over to childhood immunizations”.In June, Kennedy unilaterally fired all 17 expert members of a CDC advisory panel on vaccines and stacked the committee with seven ideological allies. The advisory committee is a key link in the vaccine distribution pipeline.Among those allies now serving on the committee are medical professionals with fringe beliefs and known anti-vaccines advocates. In June, the group met for the first time, and said it would form a new committee to re-evaluate the childhood vaccine schedule.“We’ve not only eliminated measles, we’ve eliminated the memory of measles,” said Offit. “People don’t remember how sick this virus can make you – or how dead it can make you.” More

    • 188 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Is the New York Times trying to wreck Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral bid? | Margaret Sullivan

      by

      A recent New York Times news story immediately drew fire from readers – and for very good reason.Headlined “Mamdani Identified as Asian and African American on College Application,” the article centered on Zohran Mamdani, the candidate for New York City mayor who drew national attention recently with his stunning win in the Democratic primary election.Its gist was that as a high school senior in New York City, Mamdani – who was born in Uganda and is of Indian descent – checked a couple of different boxes about race when applying for admission to Columbia University.So what, you might ask. Why is this even a story, you might also ask.Excellent questions.Whatever its news value, or lack thereof, the story certainly got the attention of one of Mamdani’s rivals – current New York City mayor Eric Adams, who will run in the general election as an independent candidate.Adams, who is Black, called it “deeply offensive” that Mamdani would try to “exploit” an African American identity even though he is not Black.And on Fox News, talkshow hosts used the Times story to trash Mamdani. Charlie Hurt, for one, called the mayoral candidate a racist on Fox & Friends and claimed that Mamdani despises America “and everything that we stand for”.The rightwing cable network was having a field day with Mamdani, a Muslim and social democrat, even before the Times story. President Trump has called him a communist and suggested he should be deported. Other rightwing outlets picked up the story, too, presenting it as a DEI scandal – that Mamdani lied about his race in order to take advantage of the affirmative action admission policy at Columbia. (Making the story even more absurd is the fact that Mamdani didn’t get in.)In print, the would-be scandal got some help from headline writers: “Mamdani Faces Scrutiny Over College Application.”Mamdani has explained that he was trying to communicate his complicated background. His father is Indian Ugandan and his mother is Indian American; Mamdani himself was born in Uganda and lived briefly in South Africa before moving to New York City as a child.“Most college applications don’t have a box for Indian-Ugandans so I checked multiple boxes trying to capture the fullness of my background,” he told the Times.The Times’s decision to pursue and publish the story was, at the very least, unwise.For one thing, it came to the Times due to a widespread hack into Columbia’s databases, transmitted to the paper through an intermediary who was given anonymity by the paper. That source turns out to be Jordan Lasker, who – as the Guardian has reported – is a well-known and much criticized “eugenicist”, AKA white supremacist.Traditional journalism ethics suggests that when news organizations base a story on hacked or stolen information, there should be an extra high bar of newsworthiness to justify publication. Much of Big Journalism, for example, turned their noses up at insider documents offered to them about JD Vance during last year’s presidential campaign, in part because the source was Iranian hackers; in some cases, they wrote about the hack but not the documents.The Mamdani story, however, fell far short of the newsworthiness bar.A ranking Times editor, Patrick Healy, responded to criticism of the story in a thread on X, justifying it as part of the paper’s mission “to help readers better know and understand top candidates for major offices”.Soledad O’Brien, the prominent media entrepreneur and journalist, called that explanation “a joke”. The publication of the Mamdani story is “an absolute embarrassment” for the Times, charged O’Brien, who herself is of mixed-race ancestry and identifies as Black.Plenty of others agreed, seeing Healy’s explanation not as admirable transparency but as damage control.The incident raises a larger issue: the Times’s apparent opposition to Mamdani’s candidacy.On the opinion side of the paper, there’s little question about that. Even though the Times no longer makes endorsements for mayor, they published an editorial urging voters to avoid ranking Mamdani at all on their ballots because he was so unqualified. (New York City uses ranked-choice voting, which allows voters to list several candidates in order of preference.)Remarkably, the Times stopped short of giving the same “don’t rank him” advice about disgraced governor Andrew Cuomo, who resigned his office in 2021 and then ran for mayor against Mamdani in the primary.The opinion side of the Times is entitled to its opinion, however misguided. But straight news articles, by contrast, aren’t supposed to go to bat for or against candidates. They’re supposed to be neutral and non-partisan, not cheering on one candidate or kneecapping another.In practice, of course, that’s often not the case.With this made-up scandal, combined with the pre-election editorial, the Times looks like it’s on a crusade against Mamdani.And no lofty explanation about the mission can disguise it.

      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Planned Parenthood sues Trump administration over funding cuts in big bill

      by

      Planned Parenthood sued the Trump administration on Monday over a provision in Donald Trump’s sweeping domestic policy bill that would strip funding from health centers operated by the reproductive healthcare and abortion provider.In a complaint filed in Boston federal court, Planned Parenthood said the provision was unconstitutional, and its clear purpose is to prevent its nearly 600 health centers from receiving Medicaid reimbursements.Planned Parenthood said that would have “catastrophic consequences”, given that the health centers serve more than 1 million patients annually through Medicaid, the US government’s insurance program for low-income people. More than 80 million people use Medicaid.“The true design of the Defund Provision is simply to express disapproval of, attack, and punish Planned Parenthood, which plays a particularly prominent role in the public debate over abortion,” Planned Parenthood said in its lawsuit.The lawsuit continued: “Stripping away this patient volume and reimbursements for care provided will result in the elimination of services, laying off staff and health center closures. The public health consequences for Medicaid patients and non-Medicaid patients alike will be dire and compounding.”The organization has estimated that the defunding could force roughly 200 Planned Parenthood clinics to shutter. Blue states, which are home to more people on Medicaid, would probably see a disproportionate number of closures.Since it is illegal to use Medicaid to pay for most abortions, Planned Parenthood clinics rely on the insurance program to reimburse them for providing services like birth control, STI tests and cancer screenings. But if blue-state clinics are forced to close, people will no longer be able to seek abortions at those clinics – a possibility that has led some abortion rights supporters, including Planned Parenthood, to call the Trump bill’s provision a “backdoor abortion ban”. Planned Parenthood provides an estimated 38% of US abortions.“We’re facing a reality of the impact on shutting down almost half of abortion-providing health centers,” Alexis McGill Johnson, Planned Parenthood Federation of Americas’s CEO, told the Guardian last week. “It does feel existential. Not just for Planned Parenthood, but for communities that are relying on access to this care.”Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit asks the courts to declare the Trump bill’s provision unconstitutional on numerous grounds, or to at least preserve Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood clinics that do not provide abortions. The reproductive health giant suggests in the lawsuit that Congress did not understand its structure when it passed the provision. The Planned Parenthood technically consists of a mothership group, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and nearly 50 regional affiliate groups that operate as independent entities.Medicaid is overseen by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, part of the US Department of Health and Human Services. That agency did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Planned Parenthood is being buffeted by intense financial headwinds. This spring, the Trump administration froze tens of millions of dollars earmarked for family planning providers who participate in Title X, the nation’s largest family planning program. Although several of those providers have since had their funding restored, a Planned Parenthood spokesperson said last week their affiliates had not received funding.The US supreme court also ruled in late June in favor of South Carolina in a case involving the state’s attempt to kick Planned Parenthood out of its state Medicaid reimbursement program. Red states may see that ruling as a blessing to their own efforts to defund Planned Parenthood.Even if Planned Parenthood’s Monday lawsuit succeeds, the organization will probably have to grapple with the consequences of that supreme court ruling for years to come. More

    • 188 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Floods are swallowing their village. Trump’s EPA cut a major lifeline for them and others

      by

      This story was originally published by FloodlightAcre by acre, the village of Kipnuk is falling into the river.The small Alaska tribal village sits on permafrost, which is thawing fast as global temperatures rise. That’s left the banks of the Kugkaktlik River unstable – and more likely to collapse when floods hit, as they often do. Buildings, boardwalks, wind turbines and other critical infrastructure are at risk, according to Rayna Paul, the village’s environmental director.So when the village learned late last year that it had been awarded a $20m federal grant to protect the riverbank, tribal members breathed a sigh of relief.But that relief was short-lived. On 2 May, the US Environmental Protection Agency canceled the grant. Without that help, Paul says, residents may be forced to relocate their village.“In the future, so much land will be in the river,” Paul says.Kipnuk’s grant was one of more than 600 that the EPA has canceled since Donald Trump took office, according to data obtained by Floodlight through a Freedom of Information Act (Foia) request. Through 15 May, the cuts totalled more than $2.7bn.View image in fullscreenFloodlight’s analysis of the data shows:

      Environmental justice grants took by far the biggest hit, with more than $2.4bn in funding wiped out.

      The EPA has also canceled more than $120m in grants aimed at reducing the carbon footprint of cement, concrete and other construction materials. Floodlight reported in April that the cement industry’s carbon emissions rival those of some major countries – and that efforts to decarbonize the industry have lost momentum under the Trump administration.

      Blue states bore the brunt. Those states lost nearly $1.6bn in grant money – or about 57% of the funding cuts.

      The single largest grant canceled: A $95m award to the Research Triangle Institute, a North Carolina-based scientific research organization that had planned to distribute the money to underserved communities. RTI also lost five other EPA grants, totaling more than $36m.
      The EPA plans to cut even more grants, with the Washington Post reporting in late April on a court filing that showed it had targeted 781 grants issued under Biden.The Foia shows that the majority of these have now been canceled; more cuts could follow.Lawsuit challenges grant cancellationsLast month, a coalition of non-profits, tribes and local governments sued the EPA, alleging the Trump administration broke the law by canceling environmental and climate justice grants that Congress had already funded.“Terminating these grant programs caused widespread harm and disruption to on-the-ground projects that reduce pollution, increase community climate resilience and build community capacity to tackle environmental harms,” said Hana Vizcarra, a senior attorney at Earthjustice, one of the non-profits that filed the lawsuit. “We won’t let this stand.”The EPA declined to comment on the lawsuit. But in a written response to Floodlight, the agency said this about the grant cancellations: “The Biden-Harris Administration shouldn’t have forced their radical agenda of wasteful DEI programs and ‘environmental justice’ preferencing on the EPA’s core mission. The Trump EPA will continue to work with states, tribes, and communities to support projects that advance the agency’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment.”Congress created the Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grant program in 2022 when it enacted the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Joe Biden’s landmark climate bill. The program was designed to help the disadvantaged communities that are often hit hardest by pollution and climate change.But on 20 January, Trump’s first day back in office, he signed an executive order halting funding under the IRA, including money for environmental justice. Trump also cancelled Biden-era executive orders that federal agencies prioritize tackling environmental racism, and separately in his orders on diversity, equity and inclusion called for the closures of all environmental justice offices and positions in the federal government​.Underserved communities are often the most vulnerable to climate impacts such as heatwaves and flooding because they have fewer resources to prepare or recover, according to a 2021 analysis by the EPA.Inside the agency, not everyone agrees with the new direction. In a “declaration of dissent”, more than 200 current and former EPA employees spoke out against Trump administration policies, including the decision to dismantle the agency’s environmental justice program.“Canceling environmental justice programs is not cutting waste; it is failing to serve the American people,” they wrote.On Thursday, the EPA put 139 of the employees who signed the petition on administrative leave, Inside Climate News reported.From hope to heartbreak in TexasThe people at Downwinders at Risk, a small Texas non-profit that helps communities harmed by air pollution, thought they were finally getting a break.Last year, they learned that the EPA had awarded them a $500,000 grant – enough to install nine new air quality monitors in working-class neighborhoods near asphalt shingle plants, a gas well and a fracking operation in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The data would have helped residents avoid the worst air and plan their days around pollution spikes.View image in fullscreenBut on 1 May, the group’s three employees received the news they had been dreading: Their grant had been canceled.“It was a very bitter pill to swallow,” said Caleb Roberts, the group’s executive director.He and his team had devoted more than 100 hours to the application and compliance process.The non-profit’s annual budget is just over $250,000, and the federal funding would have allowed the group to expand its reach after years of scraping by. They had even paused fundraising for six months, confident the federal money was on the way.“We feel like we’re at ground zero again,” Roberts said. “And that’s just very unfortunate.”Floodlight is a non-profit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action More

    • 175 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Chipping away at democracy’: authors fear outcome of US supreme court’s LGBTQ+ book ruling

      by

      Sarah Brannen, an illustrator and children’s book author, was riding in the car with her sister when she received an alert on her phone in late June. She was in a group chat with other authors whose books were being debated in a US supreme court case, and the messages soon poured in. Her book, Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, which highlights a same-sex marriage, was at the center of a contentious case that had widespread implications for public school education throughout the nation.As per the 27 June ruling, a group of Maryland parents now have the option to remove their public elementary school students from classes where Uncle Bobby’s Wedding and other storybooks with LGBTQ+ themes are read. The justices decided through a 6-3 vote that the Montgomery county school board violated parents’ right to freely exercise their religion by forbidding kids from opting out of instruction. The parents argued that the board impeded them from teaching their kids about gender and sexuality in a way that aligned with their belief system.“I’m terribly concerned that one of the implications of this is that LGBTQ children and children with LGBTQ families will see some children having to leave the classroom because they’re reading a book about their families,” Brannen said. “I think it is just a terrible thing to tell young children that there’s something wrong with them so that some children can’t even hear about their family.”Brannen and other authors whose books are at the center of the case fear that the ruling could lead to parents taking their children out of any lessons that they disagree with in the future, including inclusive tellings of history. Additionally, they contend that it’s important that public school education reflects the world, which consists of diverse family structures, gender and sexual identities. Teaching kids about LGBTQ+ people and diverse families can make them more empathetic and socially competent, studies have found. Along with Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, which was illustrated by Lucia Soto, the parents’ complaint included six other books, including Born Ready by Jodie Patterson, My Rainbow by US representative DeShanna Neal and Trinity Neal, and Pride Puppy! by Robin Stevenson.View image in fullscreen“When you start to chip away at what public education was created to do,” said Neal, “you are chipping away at the very foundation of what democracy, and liberty and freedom are supposed to be.”‘Critical thinkers that can move America forward’Research has shown that it is never too young to expose children to diversity, said Rachel H Farr, a University of Kentucky professor and associate chair of psychology. Her work focuses on LGBTQ+ parents and families. She has found that kids with LGBTQ+ parents report having higher social competence than their peers because they have learned to accept that it is OK for people to be different. Exposure to diverse family structures through books, she said, could also help kids with heterosexual parents better understand the world around them.“When children learn about people who may be different than they are, that can help with things like understanding … that people can have a different point of view,” Farr said. “That can help with things like perspective-taking, kindness, empathy, a sense of belonging: things that I think many of us would argue are experiences and skills that we want children and people around us to have.”In Born Ready, a transgender boy expresses his frustration with being misgendered, until he comes to a place where he feels affirmed in his gender identity. For Patterson, the recent ruling symbolizes a shift in education from a place where preconceived beliefs are challenged and individual thoughts are formed, to a space where students are taught from a narrow perspective. It is likely that students will encounter LGBTQ+ people throughout their lives, she said, and it is important that they be prepared.“It is imperative to have experiences that are beyond the belief you might hold at that moment, so that we can be a talented country with critical thinkers that can move America forward,” Patterson said. “And I do believe that all the progress that we’ve seen in America has been through collaboration through thought, through bringing opposing opinions together and finding a space that is not necessarily one or the other but a combination.”If parents can choose to opt their children out of subjects that they don’t believe in, she said, “does that also allow for people like Native Americans to opt out of a story about Christopher Columbus or Black families to opt out of what we call American history, which is often unjustly told through the eyes of white men?” Patterson sees it as dangerous for people to not be exposed to ideas that they disagree with, because it makes them singularly informed.In the dissenting opinion of the ruling, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that the decision “threatens the very essence of a public education”, adding that it “strikes at the core premise of public schools: that children may come together to learn not the teachings of a particular faith, but a range of concepts and views that reflect our entire society”.View image in fullscreenAccording to Farr’s research, schools are an important platform for children to learn how to form their opinions. Exposure to diversity, she said, has been shown to instill children with values of respect and kindness.“The flip side of not exposing kids to diversity, unfortunately, is that the opposite can happen. It might inadvertently increase bias, suggesting that there is only one right way to think or to be in the world,” Farr said, “as opposed to developing an appreciation that there’s a lot of different ways to be in the world, and to express oneself.”Stevenson, the author of Pride Puppy!, a story about a queer family attending a Pride parade, thinks that allowing students to leave the classroom will also make queer families invisible. The ruling “segregates books about queer people, books about families like mine, and treats these books differently from other books, and in so doing, it sends a terribly harmful message to all kids, but particularly to kids who are LGBTQ+ themselves, and kids from LGBTQ+ families”, Stevenson said. “It also has the potential to accelerate this epidemic of book bans that we are already in the midst of.”As the US supreme court deliberated on the case, DeShanna Neal, a Delaware representative and co-author of My Rainbow, worked with their legislative colleagues on a bill to protect book bans in the state of Delaware. In My Rainbow, Neal makes a rainbow-colored wig for their trans daughter, Trinity, to help her express her gender identity. The Freedom to Read Act passed on 30 June, which Neal sees as a sign that they and their colleagues are working to keep the state safe. After it passed, Neal received a text message from a colleague that read: “You will never have to worry about My Rainbow being banned in Delaware.” More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Ice ‘politically targeted’ farm worker activist Juarez Zeferino, colleagues say

      by

      Farm worker activist Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez Zeferino, 25, was driving his partner to her job on a tulip farm north of Seattle one March morning when they were pulled over by an unmarked car. A plainclothes agent for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) emerged and shattered Juarez Zeferino’s front window before handcuffing him, his partner said.The officer drove Juarez Zeferino to a nondescript warehouse – the same one he and other activists had years ago discovered is an unmarked Ice holding facility. After his 25 March detention, dozens gathered outside to demand his release.Instead, he was transferred to the Northwest Ice Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington, where he has been held ever since.Officially, Juarez Zeferino’s arrest was based on a deportation order. But the activist’s detention comes as the Trump administration has launched an aggressive crackdown against its perceived political enemies, including both immigrants and labor organizers.“We believe, no question, that he was a target,” said Rosalinda Guillen, veteran farm worker organizer and founder of Community to Community Development, where Juarez Zeferino volunteered.The young organizer has played an instrumental role in securing protections for Washington farm workers, including strengthened statewide heat protections for outdoor laborers mandating water breaks when temperatures top 80F, enshrined in 2023. In 2021, he and other activists also won a law guaranteeing farm workers overtime pay. And in 2019, advocacy from Juarez Zeferino and other campaigners about exploitation in the H-2A guest worker program prompted Washington to create the nation’s first-ever oversight committee for foreign workers.“He’s a very humble person, very quiet but yet very determined and willing to go to whatever extent to get victory for his people,” said Edgar Franks, political director of Familias Unidas por la Justicia, an independent farm worker union which Juarez Zeferino helped found.His successful track record has earned him renown in labor and immigrant justice circles across the country. Franks believes it also made him a “political target” for Trump.“We just have to look at the record of everybody that has been targeted by the Trump administration, from the students at Columbia to [the detention of immigration activist Jeanette Vizguerra] in Colorado,” he said. “There’s already a track of people that have been targeted to silence them and to make sure that the people that look up to them get silenced.”Reached for comment, the Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, said that allegations of Ice politically targeting Juarez Zeferino were “categorically FALSE”, calling him “an illegal alien from Mexico with a final order of removal from a judge”.“The only thing that makes someone a target of Ice is if they are in the United States illegally,” she said.She said the activist, whom she called “Juan Juarez-Ceferino,” refused to comply with Ice during his arrest, and that officers used the “minimum amount of force necessary to resolve the situation” and protect themselves.In court, a DHS attorney also said Juarez Zeferino was noncompliant during his arrest, and claimed he was a flight risk because he had previously missed a court hearing.His lawyer Larkin VanDerhoef denied that his client was a flight risk, saying he was unaware of his missed court date. In court, he noted that Juarez Zeferino had received dozens of letters, demonstrating that he is a “positive force”.He said Juarez Zeferino complied with the officers who arrested him. “Lelo had opened his window to talk to officers and was asking to see their warrant for his arrest when they smashed his window,” he said, adding that a group of officers from not only Ice, but also border patrol, homeland security investigations, and the Drug Enforcement Administration worked together to arrest him.Juarez Zeferino’s detention has sparked concern among other immigrant workers fighting for better labor conditions, and since his arrest, others have also been detained. In April armed Customs and Border Protection agents raided a Vermont dairy farm and arrested eight immigrant laborers who were involved with a labor rights campaign. Last month, Ice also arrested farm worker leaders in New York.“This is a good strategy to squelch union organizing as well as farm worker advocacy, but it is horrifying to us that some of the people who make the lowest salaries in our country are being deported even as they provide the necessary workforce to keep our country fed,” said Julie Taylor, executive director of the National Farm Worker Ministry, a faith-based organization which supports farm worker organizing.From a traffic stop to a deportation orderJuarez Zeferino was arrested on the grounds of a 2018 deportation order. It stemmed from a 2015 traffic stop by Bellingham, Washington, police officers who then turned him over to Ice.After the stop, Juarez Zeferino – then a minor – was detained for less than 24 hours. He later sued Bellingham and its police department saying that his arrest was the result of racial profiling; the city settled for $100,000.The farm worker activist’s friends and legal counsel said he was unaware of the deportation order, which was mailed to an address Juarez Zeferino provided but then bounced back to the government.“He wasn’t in hiding,” said Franks. “He was out in the open, doing media and serving on city commissions.”His lawyer VanDerhoef successfully had the order reopened in April this year – just one day before Juarez Zeferino was due to be placed on a deportation flight.But in May, an immigration court judge ruled that she had no jurisdiction to grant bond to Juarez Zeferino – a decision VanDerhoef quickly appealed.VanDerhoef said the judge’s ruling was based on an unusual legal interpretation by Tacoma judges, who routinely argue that they lack jurisdiction to issue bonds to immigrants who entered the country without a visa. He signed his client on to a class-action lawsuit focused on the issue.He also filed a motion to terminate the case against his client. In June, a court denied the motion, so the next step will probably be to apply for asylum in the US.“We’re basically weighing what other options he has, what he can apply for,” VanDerhoef said.Aaron Korthuis, an attorney at the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, who is representing Juarez Zeferino in the class-action lawsuit, said he did not doubt the activist was a political target.“A lot of what this administration is doing is attempting to send a message through its arrests [and] through its removals,” he said. “It shouldn’t shock anyone that who they are targeting for arrest is part and parcel of the larger effort to intimidate, exact retribution, and send a message.”VanDerhoef declined to comment on whether or not his client’s arrest was politically motivated, but said it was unsurprising that it had sparked concern about Trump’s immigration policies among other farm workers. “The last thing I want to do is cause any more fear or panic that is already high among immigrant communities,” he said. “But I do think this administration has shown that nothing is off the table when it comes to who they will target and also the tactics they use.”Experts say the Trump administration has violated court norms and ignored court orders in its attacks on immigrants. The president has also made life harder for immigration attorneys, including in a memorandum claiming they engage in “unscrupulous behavior”. And the sheer number of Ice raids conducted under his administration also makes it harder for such lawyers to do their jobs, said VanDerhoef.In the north-east US, Ice arrests have increased so much that officials are “running into space issues”, said VanDerhoef. The immigration prison where Juarez Zeferino is being held has so far exceeded its capacity that some people have been transferred without warning to facilities in Los Angeles and Alaska.The overcrowding also creates challenges when it comes to representation, VanDerhoef said. These days, visitation rooms are often so overbooked that he and other attorneys are facing “half a day waits” to meet with their clients.He worries that attorneys cannot keep up with the increase in Ice arrests. “There are not significantly more lawyers doing this work even though there are significantly more people being detained,” he said.‘Back to the struggle’Guillen, the veteran farm worker organizer, first met Juarez Zeferino in 2013, when he he was a 13-year-old who had recently arrived in the US from Mexico. He was so small that he looked more like he was 11, she said, but he was “a hard worker” and “fierce”.That year, Juarez Zeferino and about 200 workers on a Washington berry farm walked off the job demanding better working conditions and pay. Over the next four years, they organized work stoppages and boycotts, with Juarez Zeferino – who speaks English, Spanish and his native Mixteco – often serving as a spokesperson.In 2017, the workers were granted a union election, resulting in the formation of Familias Unidas por la Justicia, an independent farm worker union representing hundreds of Indigenous farm workers.It’s a “nightmare” organization for Trump, who doesn’t want to see immigrant laborers organized, said Guillen. “These are communities that normally are marginalized, fighting for their rights and winning,” she said.Since Juarez Zeferino’s arrest, calls for his freedom have met with an outpouring of support, Guillen said.“All the legislators know him, and there was immediate support for him in letters and calls,” she said.But she wishes Democrats would do more to fight for workers like him, including by trying to stop Ice arrests within Washington. “Democrats need to be bolder,” she said.Franks agreed, and said workers like Juarez Zeferino should obtain amnesty from Ice.“Just a couple years ago we were essential workers and the heroes but now we’re the terrorists and the criminals,” he said.Asked if she had visited Juarez Zeferino, Guillen said, “I can’t do it.” She worries about his health and wellbeing in the facility.Franks, too, said he was concerned that the “already skinny” Juarez Zeferino will become malnourished while in detention. But when he has visited the young activist, he said he was “trying to keep his spirits up”.“He’s still messing around and joking around,” he said. “And he’s like, ‘when I get out, we’re going to do this, we’re going to do that.’”Asked what is on that to-do list, Franks said Juarez Zeferino wants to be reunited with his family. “And he wants to get back to the struggle,” he said. More