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      ‘I don’t recall’: Ivanka Trump testifies in father’s New York fraud trial

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      “I don’t recall,” Ivanka Trump repeatedly told a New York court on Wednesday as she took the witness stand at her father’s $250m fraud trial and was quizzed about deals prosecutors claim prove the Trump Organization knowingly misled lenders.Trump’s eldest daughter gave an orderly, calm performance after the often chaotic testimony of her father and brothers. She pointed out that she had not worked for the family firm since 2017 and said she did not recall many specific conversations but added: “I have no reason to doubt it.”But like her father and brothers, she consistently said she did not recall details about specific transactions or conversations. “There were many emails, many conversations,” she said.The trial is just one of a series that the Republican presidential frontrunner faces. Trump has been charged with 91 felony counts across criminal cases in New York, Florida, Washington and Georgia.New York’s attorney general is trying to prove that the Trump family and other executives knowingly inflated Trump’s wealth in order to secure favorable loans.In one exchange Ivanka Trump was shown a series of emails and other documents relating to a loan from Deutsche Bank’s private wealth management division. The loan was contingent on Trump maintaining a value in excess of $3bn. Ivanka Trump negotiated to get the net worth covenant reduced to $2.5bn after a Trump lawyer expressed some concerns.“It doesn’t get better than this,” Ivanka Trump said of the terms in 2011. “Let’s discuss asap.” That year Donald Trump would go on to claim he was worth $4.2bn. The prosecution alleges that Trump was not worth $2bn at the time.“I don’t recall,” she said, when asked about multiple documents and emails that showed she played a key role in deals to obtain financing for the Trump Organization.Asked about whether she understood that the financial statements at the center of the case were used to guarantee a loan to purchase the Old Post Office building in Washington DC, which became the now defunct Trump International hotel, Trump said: “I generally understand that there was a personal guarantee condition of the loan and a series of requirements that were fulfilled by the team in accordance to the terms.”Trump’s lawyers made the case that Deutsche Bank was delighted to do business with the family and favorable loans were part of their attempts to woo them. Ivanka Trump said one of its top bankers had “expressed tremendous excitement to have our account”. Deutsche Bank severed ties with Trump in 2021 after the deadly January 6 US Capitol attack.Last month, Ivanka Trump asked the court to remove her from the prosecution’s witness list, but the request was denied. Ivanka Trump tried to argue that appearing in court would cause her “undue hardship” if she was to testify during the school week. The attorney general’s office had wanted Trump’s eldest daughter to testify in court before the former president himself took the stand, but ultimately rescheduled her appearance because of her appeal.Ivanka Trump was once listed as a co-defendant on the case, along with her father and two adult brothers, but an appeals court tossed out the claims against her last summer, saying that her involvement with the Trump Organization had passed the statute of limitations.Before the trial started, Judge Arthur Engoron found Trump guilty of inflating the value of his assets on state financial statements that were used to broker deals and obtain loans. Though Trump’s team is appealing the decision, he stands to lose his state business licenses if the appellate court sides with Engoron. The actual trial is over the fine Trump will have to pay. Prosecutors are asking for at least $250m.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIvanka Trump had served as a top executive at the Trump Organization, alongside brothers Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump, until 2017, when she stepped down to assist her father at the White House. Like her siblings, she helped her father broker deals with lenders to develop properties for the company.Brothers Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump testified last week, distancing themselves from the financial statements at the center of the case despite multiple documents showing they affirmed the statements’ financial representations and were, at times, consulted for the statements.Trump has not been present in the court for any of his children’s testimony. Ahead of his daughter’s appearance he once again lambasted the judge and the New York attorney general, Letitia James, who brought the case against him, calling James, who is Black, “Corrupt and Racist,” on Truth Social, his social media site.Ivanka Trump has moved to distance herself from the family business since Trump’s election defeat. In April, she engaged her own lawyers in the New York case.Trump’s eldest daughter has also broken from the family’s line in previous testimony. In 2022 she told investigators looking into the January 6 Capitol insurrection that she did not believe the election was stolen, contrary to her father’s furious insistence. More

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      Trump family on trial: five takeaways from a week in the New York fraud case

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      The fifth week of the New York fraud trial of Donald Trump ended smack in the middle of a family affair and with another gag order for the combative Trump team.Trump’s elder sons, Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump, took the witness stand in New York this week and testified they had little knowledge about the financial statements at the center of the case. Next week, Donald Trump is expected to take the stand on Monday, followed by daughter Ivanka Trump on Wednesday.The New York attorney general’s office has been building its case that Trump, his adult sons and executives at the Trump Organization knowingly inflated the value of assets to boost the former president’s net worth when brokering deals. Judge Arthur Engoron ruled before the trial started that documents prove the family had fudged financial statements to do this. The trial has been about whether Trump will have to pay a fine of at least $250m for committing fraud.It’s getting closer to the end. The attorney general’s office plans to rest its case against Trump after the family finishes testifying.Here are five things we learned from the trial’s fraught fifth week.The Trump family’s strategy: blame gameOver the three days that Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump testified on the witness stand, both brothers pointed to the company’s accountants and lawyers as responsible for handling the financial statements at the center of the case.This is despite multiple emails and signed documents that show the brothers, who serve as top executives of their father’s company, were consulted by employees preparing the statements and brokered deals in which the statements were used to confirm Trump’s net worth.Trump Jr said that they relied on the accountants Mazars to include accurate information in the statements, as they were “intimately involved” with the company’s finances.“Mazars for 30 years was involved in every transaction, every LLC. They would have been a key point in anything that was related to accounting,” Trump Jr said.It’s worth noting that Mazars USA dropped the Trump Organization as a client in 2022, and a representative from the firm, Donald Bender, who had worked closely with the Trump Organization, said earlier in the trial that he relied on the Trump Organization to give him accurate information.Later that day, when Eric Trump took the stand, he similarly insisted that the company’s accountants and lawyers were in charge of the financial statements.“I never had anything to do with the statements of financial condition,” Eric Trump said.Prosecutors questioned Eric Trump about an appraisal for the Trump Organization by the real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield for a conservation easement, or a type of tax break. Eric Trump said he had no recollection of the appraisal, though emails shown in court showed multiple meetings and emails he had had with the appraiser at the time in 2014.“I really hadn’t been involved in the appraisal of the property,” Eric Trump said on the stand, appearing to grow frustrated. “You pointed out four interactions … I don’t recall McArdle [the appraiser] at all. I don’t think I was the main person involved.“I don’t focus on appraisals, that’s not the focus of my day,” Eric Trump followed up, speaking quickly, saying that he was focused on construction and physical development of properties.Trump’s elder sons signed multiple documents saying the company was giving fair and accurate information in its financial statementsBoth of Trump’s adult sons denied ever working on the statements of financial condition. Eric Trump went so far as to imply that he only ever learned about the statement when the attorney general opened the case against the family. But multiple documents show both brothers signed off on deals that involved the use of the financial statements to confirm their father’s net worth.Trump gave his sons power of attorney, meaning they could sign documents on his behalf, including bank certifications affirming the use of statements of financial conditions to verify Trump’s net worth and assets.Responding to these certifications, Trump Jr said that he would have “signed a dozen of them during his time at the company”. When asked whether he signed the certifications with the intention that the banks would rely on the financial statements, Trump Jr said that he could not speak to the intent of the banks.“I know a lot of bankers that do their own due diligence,” he said.The next day, when a similar bank certification was pulled up for Eric Trump, he responded: “I don’t choose what the bank relies on” but said that he believed the statements were “absolutely accurate”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe paper trail is thicker for Eric Trump, but …Eric Trump got the brunt of questioning when it came to his knowledge of financial statements in the company. Multiple email correspondences suggested he had been consulted for the statement over the years.Multiple emails came from the former Trump Organization controller Jeff McConney, who wrote two separate emails to Eric Trump, one in 2013 and another in 2017, that started with: “Hi Eric, I’m working on your dad’s financial statement … ”.McConney would go on to note in a spreadsheet of supporting data for the financial statement that he had talked to Eric Trump over the phone to discuss the figures for the Seven Springs estate in Westchester, New York.“Having reviewed the emails we’ve been discussing over the course of the last hour, will you now concede that you were very familiar with [the financial statements]?” prosecutor Andrew Amer asked Eric Trump.“No, I was not very familiar with my father’s financial statement,” Eric Trump said.In another exchange with the prosecutor on correspondence over a North Carolina golf club, where Eric was consulted to affirm the family’s net worth for the deal, he said: “I do not recall ever working on my father’s statement of financial condition.”“People in the company have conversations with you all the time, and you provide them with answers when you can,” he said.Donald Trump Jr was also presented with emails from accountants that cited multiple discussions with Trump trustees, including Trump Jr, over the years that accountants used to confirm no changes to Trump’s net worth. Trump Jr replied that he had “no recollection” of the meetings.Trump Organization lenders lost out on an estimated $168m because of fudged financial statementsThe attorney general’s office brought in an expert witness, Michiel McCarty, the chief executive of an investment bank, to testify about the losses lenders unwittingly accrued when making deals with the Trump Organization because it had inflated the value of its assets.McCarty explained that if lenders had been given accurate valuations for the assets, they could have charged the Trump Organization higher interest rates. McCarty calculated the lost interest for loans given for four properties in the case at $168,040,168.Patience is wearing thin in the courtroomIn the middle of Eric Trump’s testimony, as prosecutors were pointing out that Trump invoked the fifth amendment against self-incrimination 500 times during his deposition for the case in 2022, Trump lawyers stood up to object. The objection soon boiled into a heated argument between Trump lawyer Christopher Kise and the judge, Arthur Engoron, over bias in the case. Kise made a passing comment about Engoron’s law clerk, whom Trump has attacked on social media, for her role in the trial, specifically that she passes notes to him during the proceedings.“I have an absolute right to get advice from my principal law clerk,” Engoron said, at one point pounding his fist on the bench. Engoron said that the continued references to his law clerk could be taken as stemming from misogyny. A defensive Kise said that they were “not misogynistic. I have a 17-year-old daughter.”The next day, when the issue was brought up again, Kise gave a speech on “perception of bias in the case” for “the record”. At some point, prosecutor Kevin Wallace stepped in to say that the defense team had been making similar claims for “weeks” and that they should file a motion instead of “continuing to interrupt the trial”. Engoron would ultimately expand a gag order, originally for just Trump, to his entire defense team prohibiting them from referring to “confidential communications” between him and his clerk.He also revealed his chambers had been “inundated with hundreds of harassing and threatening phone calls, voicemails, emails, letters and packages” since the trial began. More

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      Trump Jr distances himself from documents at center of fraud trial: ‘I don’t recall’

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      Donald Trump Jr took the stand in the ongoing fraud trial against his father and the family business on Wednesday and tried to distance himself from the financial statements at the center of the case.Trump’s eldest son, 45, is the first family member to testify in the civil trial brought by the New York attorney general Letitia James. His younger brother Eric is expected to testify Thursday, with Trump and his daughter Ivanka expected in court next week.In court, Trump Jr was polite and courteous after his testimony was delayed as Trump’s lawyers quizzed earlier witnesses. “I should have worn makeup,” he joked as photographers took his picture ahead of his testimony.When asked to slow down, the fast-talking Trump Jr said: “I apologize, your honor. I moved to Florida but I kept the New York pace.”Trump Jr was asked a series of questions about the roles he, his father and Trump’s former chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, had as trustees of the Donald J Trump Revocable Trust, which holds assets for the “exclusive benefit” of the former president.When asked whether his father is still a trustee of the trust, Trump Jr said: “I don’t recall.”He said he did not recall much, including why there was a brief period in 2021 when he had resigned and then been restored to the trust. Trump Jr said there was “autonomy to do what I wanted” but that he consulted with Weisselberg and others. Pressed on his role in creating the financial statements at the heart of the case, Trump Jr said: “The accountants worked on it. That’s why we pay them.”Trump Jr was much more combative earlier in the week. In an interview with rightwing cable TV channel Newsmax on Monday, he claimed the “mainstream media, the people in [Washington] DC … want to throw Trump in jail for a thousand years and/or the death penalty. Truly sick stuff, but this is why we fight”.James has accused Trump, his eldest sons and other Trump executives of fraudulently inflating the former president’s wealth to secure better loans from banks.In one example, James said Trump claimed his Trump Tower triplex apartment was 30,000 sq feet, rather than its actual square footage of 10,996.Judge Arthur Engoron has already ruled that the Trumps committed fraud. He is holding the trial to determine the penalty that should be meted out. James has asked for $250m and the cancellation of Trump’s business licenses in New York – a move that would end the Trumps’ ability to run businesses in the state.Earlier in the day, one of the attorney general’s witnesses testified about the losses he believes banks suffered as a result of Trump’s alleged fraud. Michiel McCarty, the chair and CEO of investment bank MM Dillon & Co, said the inflation of Trump’s wealth allowed the Trump organization to secure better rates for loans. He calculated the banks lost more than $168m in interest payments as a result.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump’s lawyers asserted that the banks had not been misled.“They are not ill-gotten gains if the bank does not testify it would have done it differently,” Trump’s lawyer Christopher Kise said.“I decided these were ill-gotten,” Engoron replied.Donald Trump has denied all wrongdoing and the former US president was not in court on Wednesday but once again blasted the trial on social media. “Leave my children alone, Engoron. You are a disgrace to the legal profession!” he wrote on social media on Wednesday morning.Trump attacked Engoron as a “political hack” in a post that ended with the line: “WITCH HUNT!!! ELECTION INTERFERENCE!!!” More

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      ‘Expect the unexpected’: Trump fraud trial becomes family affair

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      Donald Trump’s fraud trial becomes a family affair this week as three of his children, and the former president himself, prepare to be called to the witness stand in New York.Trump’s appearances in court so far have been controversial, to say the least. The former president has railed against the prosecution, calling it a “witch-hunt”, and has been threatened with jail for attacking one of the court’s clerks on social media.Donald and Eric Trump invoked their fifth amendment right against self-incrimination hundreds of times in their pre-trial depositions. If any of the Trump family were to do the same on the witness stand, the judge would be entitled to draw an adverse inference. The upcoming days could stretch both Trump’s and the court’s patience to the breaking point.First up on the witness stand on Wednesday will be Donald Trump Jr, followed by Eric Trump on Thursday. The two sons are also listed as defendants in the case against the Trump company, other executives and their father, who is expected to take the stand on 6 November.Meanwhile, Ivanka Trump is waiting for an appeals court to rule on whether she has to testify in the trial. Trump’s eldest daughter was removed as a defendant in the case over the summer because the claims brought against her were too old. If the court rules Ivanka Trump has to testify, she will take the stand on 8 November.On current standing, the trial looks like an uphill battle for the family. Judge Arthur Engoron has already found Trump and his adult sons guilty of financial fraud for inflating the value of their assets on state financial documents to boost their net worth. If an appellate court upholds the ruling, Trump will essentially lose all ability to operate his real estate business in New York.Even though Trump does not face prison time for the issues in the case, Engoron has already threatened to send Trump to jail for violating his gag order. Trump has had to pay $15,000 in fines for failing to remove a social media post about Engoron’s principal law clerk – the post that had earned him the gag order in the first place – along with making inflammatory comments outside the courtroom. The judge interpreted the comments to be about his clerk and briefly put Trump on the witness stand to explain himself.At times, two trials appear to be taking place in Manhattan’s supreme court, one inside the courtroom and another in the court of opinion. Trump has used his appearances almost as mini campaign stops – attacking the prosecution and the Biden administration.It is unclear how Trump or his adult sons, who are also known for making incendiary comments on behalf of their father, will operate on the witness stand. While the former president has – generally – behaved in court, Trump has continued to blast Engoron on social media and outside the courtroom.“I truly believe he is CRAZY, but certainly, at minimum, CRAZED in his hatred of me,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on 28 October, calling Engoron a “Trump Hating, Unhinged Judge, who ruled me guilty before this Witch Hunt Trial even started”.Eric Trump, the only one of Trump’s children to make an appearance in court so far, went on Fox News earlier in October to say that “these monsters want to have my father in a courthouse.”“Look at the portfolio of properties, they’re incredible,” he said. “No one has done more for the New York City skyline than Donald Trump.”As easy as it is to make those claims to Fox News, much of the case relies on thousands of pages of documents that have been submitted as evidence.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“There’s enough evidence in this case to fill this courtroom,” Engoron said, when Trump’s lawyers tried to dismiss the case based on Michael Cohen’s testimony last week.So even if the Trump family remains evasive on the stand – perhaps saying “I don’t recall” to many of the questions – they will probably have to face the facts and figures shown in the documents, said Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University. It’s the reason prosecutors put witnesses on the stand in the first place, even if they may not cooperate much.“Some of the family members may take the bait and make explanations” for what is shown in the documents, she added. “With witnesses, even when you try to prepare them, expect the unexpected.”The trial, now in its fifth week, has had at least 19 witnesses take the stand so far. Engoron is using the actual trial to decide the fine Trump will have to pay. The attorney general’s office is asking for at least $250m in disgorgement. It is a bench trial, meaning there is no jury, and Engoron is the sole decider of the case.So far, witnesses ranging from former Trump Organization executives and Trump accountants to real estate executives have testified about the Trump family’s involvement in obtaining various loans using inflated financial figures.Trump and his team have maintained throughout the trial that the New York attorney general’s case is politically motivated and that Trump actually deflated the value of the assets on the financial documents.That Trump is scheduled to testify after his two sons means the former president will get the brunt of their unanswered questions, said Levenson. The attorney general’s office has indicated it will rest its case after the Trump family, including Ivanka Trump, finish testifying.“It’s going to box Trump in a bit,” Levenson said. “Will his children let him take the fall for it?” More

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      ‘Trump show is over,’ says New York attorney general as third day of fraud trial ends

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      The New York attorney general, Letitia James, told reporters on Wednesday that “the Trump show is over” as the third day of the former US president’s civil fraud trial wrapped up in Manhattan.James and Trump both returned to the trial a day after Trump ran afoul of the judge by denigrating a key court staffer in a social media post.Outside court, James called Trump’s appearance at the civil trial – which he is not required to attend – a “political stunt” and a “fundraising stop”.Trump has spent the first three days of the trial attacking James and Judge Arthur Engoron in press gatherings outside court. He is expected to return to Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday.“I will not be bullied,” James said. “Justice will be served.”The former US president and Republican frontrunner in the 2024 presidential race is voluntarily taking time out from the campaign trail to attend the trial. James’s lawsuit accuses Trump and his business of deceiving banks, insurers and others by providing financial statements that greatly exaggerated his wealth.Trump formally appealed a judge’s refusal to dismiss James’s civil fraud lawsuit against him and his family business on Wednesday. The appeal was filed as Trump sat in a the courtroom, watching an accountant who used to work for him testify as the state’s first witness.Engoron already has ruled that Trump committed fraud by inflating the values of prized assets including his Trump Tower penthouse. The ruling could, if upheld on appeal, cost Trump control of his signature skyscraper and some other properties.Trump denies any wrongdoing. With familiar rhetoric, on his way into court on Wednesday, he called James “incompetent”, portrayed her as part of a broader Democratic effort to weaken his 2024 prospects and termed the trial “a disgrace”.Trump has frequently vented in the courthouse hallway and on social media about the trial, James and Judge Engoron, also a Democrat.But after he assailed Engoron’s principal law clerk on social media on Tuesday, the judge imposed a limited gag order, commanding all participants in the trial not to hurl personal attacks at court staffers. The judge told Trump to delete the “disparaging, untrue and personally identifying post”, and the former president took it down.The non-jury trial concerns six claims that remained in the lawsuit after Engoron’s pretrial ruling, and the trial is to determine how much Trump might owe in penalties. James is seeking $250m and a ban on Trump doing business in New York.On Wednesday, an accountant who prepared Trump’s financial statements for years was to continue testifying as a witness for the state. James’s lawyers are trying to show that Trump and others at his company had full control over the preparation of the statements.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe accountant, Donald Bender, told the court on Tuesday that the Trump Organization didn’t always supply all the documents needed to produce the statements, despite attesting in letters to the accounting firm that the company had provided all financial records and hadn’t “knowingly withheld” relevant data.During cross-examination, Bender acknowledged he missed a change in information about the size of the Trump Tower apartment.The defense lawyer Jesus Suarez seized on that, telling Bender that Trump’s company and employees were “going through hell” because “you missed it”.Bender responded: “We didn’t screw it up. The Trump Organization made a mistake, and we didn’t catch it.”Trump plans to testify later in the trial.Agencies contributed to this article More

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      Prosecutors accuse Trump of new effort to delay classified documents trial

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      Special counsel prosecutors accused Donald Trump of trying to delay the classified documents case to within three months of the 2024 election in a court filing late on Wednesday, suggesting his lawyers had attempted to weaponize the complex government secrecy rules to upend the trial schedule.The alleged delay effort from Trump – whose overarching legal strategy is to push back his criminal cases, potentially until after the election because he could have them dropped were he to win – centers on a proposal from his legal team to extend pre-trial deadlines.The Department of Justice prosecutors said in their filing that they were prepared to accept a short extension in the case after the presiding US district judge, Aileen Cannon, allowed Trump to ask for more time to prepare his next legal briefs following earlier delays in the pre-trial process.But they sharply objected to a proposal from Trump to delay not just one deadline but the entire pre-trial schedule, saying it amounted to a veiled attempt to re-litigate the trial date set for May 2023.“The Court invited the defendants to file a ‘motion to extend deadlines’,” the 15-page filing said. “Instead, defendant Donald J. Trump, joined by his co-defendants, filed a motion that threatens to upend the entire schedule established by the Court.”At issue is the complex nature of the US government’s own rules for using classified documents at trial, known as Cipa, short for the Classified Information Procedures Act that governs how the materials can be introduced in national security cases.Trump was charged with retaining national defense information – including US nuclear secrets and plans for US military retaliation in the event of an attack – and obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them, which is why the case is being governed by Cipa rules.The complaint from prosecutors in the office of Jack Smith, the special counsel, is that Trump’s lawyers are attempting to weaponize Cipa section 4, where the judge has to decide whether to allow the government to redact the classified documents that need to be turned over in discovery.Trump’s lawyers know the judge has to rule on the proposed redactions or substitutions before those classified documents can be turned over to them, prosecutors contended, and appeared to be trying to delay that entire process in order to push back the trial date further.The complaint sets up another significant early test for Cannon, a Trump appointee who came under widespread criticism last year during the criminal investigation after she issued a series of favorable decisions to the former president before her rulings were struck down on appeal.A spokesperson for the special counsel declined to comment. A Trump spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.At its core, prosecutors objected to Trump lawyers’ claim they could not start Cipa section 4 before they had reviewed all of the discovery, and their attempt to create a new Cipa section 4 process that involved sequential court filings from both sides instead of doing it simultaneously.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The defendants provide no examples of where a Court has handled Section 4 briefing on a responsive briefing schedule as defendants propose – and the Government is aware of none,” the filing said of the proposal.Prosecutors argued that Trump only had a number of potential defenses to the charge that he retained national defense information, and his lawyers did not need to go through all of the discovery to come up with their broad defense arguments for the purpose of filing a section 4 brief.The defenses would come down to a handful of options, prosecutors argued: Trump was authorized to posses those documents, the documents did not contain national security information, the documents were not “closely held”, or that Trump did not wilfully retain them.“The nature of the material the Government will propose substituting and the limited redactions it will propose are unlikely to require finely detailed defense theories in order for the Court to determine the helpfulness of the material or the adequacy of a substitution,” the filing said.Prosecutors added that even if Trump did need to review more discovery than usual, most of the unclassified discovery had already been produced, including more than 200 witness interview transcripts as well as all of the surveillance footage at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club.The production of the classified discovery was also almost complete, the prosecutors said, and the only materials not turned over were five classified documents that were so highly sensitive that they could not be stored with the rest of the materials in a secure facility in Florida. More

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      A meat processer killed a 16-year-old. Yet US lawmakers want more child labor | Akin Olla

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      This July the body of 16-year-old Duvan Tomas Perez “became entangled” in meat processing machinery in Mississippi, according to a statement from Mar-Jac Poultry, the company where the boy was working. Perez was too young to be working there, according to Mar-Jac, which blamed an outside staffing company for failing to verify Perez’s age and identity. Perez was not the first worker to die at the plant in recent years, and he was not the first 16-year-old to die at work in the US this summer.American legislators should be working to crack down on child labor, here and abroad, but instead, politicians – including Democrats – in at least 11 states have introduced or passed bills that weaken child labor laws. At a time when adult workers are demanding a fairer slice of the increasingly behemoth pie of corporate profits, child labor is a capitalist work-around to increase the labor pool and lower the wages of all those who have to work for a living.I’m embarrassed to be writing an anti-child labor article in the year 2023, as if this is some Charles Dickens novel leaking gruel and cruel men. It is not as if child labor had ever disappeared, of course; children around the world toil in fast-fashion sweatshops and among the mountains of garbage in other countries but produced by Silicon Valley. This is unfortunately where capitalism is heading, and has always been heading: children competing with their parents for jobs amid the ruins of societies we sacrificed for profit. But for awhile it seemed like child labor might have escaped the empire to live primarily in its colonial subjects.Child labor was once as rampant in the US as it is in the countries of the developing world. In 1900, one out of five American children – including children as young as 10 – were employed. A quarter of textile workers in the American south were under the age of 16. In the north, factories relied on child labor so heavily that some areas suffered from “boy shortages” that led to corporate agents traveling the country in search of orphaned children to put to work.It is difficult to calculate the total number of legal and illegal child workers in the US today. In the agricultural industry alone, there are likely hundreds of thousands of children, largely from Central America. A New York Times investigation earlier this year found that many US brands directly or indirectly use child labor, including Lucky Charms, Nature Valley, Ford and J Crew. While some of that work is legal, the federal government, at least, has been cracking down on illegal child labor. The number of minors in child labor violations has increased by 283% since 2015, according to the Economic Policy Institute. According to the US Department of Labor, over 800 companies illegally employed children in the past fiscal year, and one meatpacking company was fined for employing children across 13 different plants.Legal child labor may seem like an odd turn of phrase but child labor isn’t at all banned in the US. The 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act created a federal minimum wage and banned children under 16 from “hazardous” work, but left agricultural workers out of many of its reforms. This is why so many children are “legally” employed, and why many agricultural workers in the US do not have a right to a minimum wage.These policies allowed the US to maintain its long history of relying on slavery and near slavery for its agricultural wealth and give companies the ability to replace adult workers with children when adult workers demand decent pay – an increasingly common occurrence since Covid reminded workers of how important they are, and how little they are valued.The pandemic killed over a million Americans, many of them workers or potential workers, and brought on a wave of retirements that left an even larger hole in the labor market. Holes like this can increase the value of individual workers and allow them to negotiate for higher wages, a trend that followed the bubonic plague in Europe. The meat-processing company where Duvan was working alluded to the underlying conditions that landed the company with child workers: “Due to an unprecedentedly tight labor market, Mar-Jac MS relies on staffing companies to fill positions at its facility,” a statement the company issued in July said.While some companies are turning towards automation, others are turning towards taking our teens from schools and into factories. Instead of cutting CEOs’ record salaries, corporate leaders – and their political allies – are fighting to maintain low wages by any means necessary.Iowa has moved to allow children as young as 14 to work in industrial laundries and meat coolers, as well as created a special license to allow some 14-year-olds to drive up to 50 miles for work between 5am and 10pm. Nebraska has moved to join other states in allowing employers to pay people under 20 less than minimum wage – as low as $4.25 an hour. These laws are being pushed by groups such as Americans for Prosperity, various chambers of commerce, and restaurant associations aiming to hire younger bartenders.Some legislators characterize the work that killed Duvan as potential sources of revenue for struggling immigrant families. But this is a macabre policy solution birthed by a sanguinary system. Instead of putting children to work, we ought to ask ourselves if a system that cannot rid itself of child labor is worth keeping.
      Akin Olla is a contributing opinion writer at the Guardian US More

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      US prison labor is cruel and pointless legalized slavery. I know first-hand | Dyjuan Tatro

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      Almost immediately after I was sent to prison, I was assigned to a “program”, the term American prison officials use for a job. I was to sweep the prison hallways, alongside roughly 30 other men. Together we pushed brooms across gray corridors hour after hour, day after day.No matter how many hours I worked, I couldn’t afford toilet paper, soap or toothpaste. We had to pay for basic hygiene products at exploitative markups, way more than they cost in free society, and I was paid 10 cents an hour. To survive in prison, even with a full-time job, I was forced to rely on family, who struggled to support me financially.There’s a misleading narrative pushed by officials about prison labor, one that falsely frames prison jobs as rehabilitative. Nothing could be further from the truth.In prison, my work was meaningless and dehumanizing. It conveyed no new skills, taught me no life lessons and earned me next to nothing. It did not build my résumé, prepare me to navigate workplace relationships or teach me how to budget. It served only to devalue my labor and person. Prisons are about punishment, not rehabilitation.I had no choice in whether I went to work or not – and there were no sick days. If I didn’t go, I would be locked in my cell for 23 hours a day. And as little as it was, I needed the pay.About halfway through my sentence, I had the chance to apply to the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI), one of the most renowned and rigorous college-in-prison programs in the US. The opportunity changed the trajectory of my life. Graduating from Bard College with my bachelor’s degree gave me something that no one could take away: an education. It was a hard-won prize, especially given the system’s intent to let me languish.Sitting in those classrooms better prepared me for work outside. Engaging with other students prepared me to later engage with co-workers; interacting with professors prepared me to deal with supervisors. Alongside classes in philosophy, political economy and differential equations, I was learning valuable social and professional skills that were radically at odds with the reality of prison.It costs New York around $70,000 a year in taxpayer money to imprison someone. It costs the BPI about $10,000 a year to educate an incarcerated student. New York’s recidivism rate is 40%, while graduates of the BPI and similar programs recidivate at only 4%, a tenfold decrease. Yet, despite its clear positive record, only 300 of New York’s 30,000 incarcerated people are enrolled at the BPI in any given semester. I was one of a lucky few.Prisons are designed to warehouse, traumatize and exploit people, then send them back home in worse shape than when they entered the system. Despite having worked every day, the vast majority of people are released with no job experience, no references and no hope. Some would take this to mean that the system is failing. And it is with regard to public safety, rehabilitation and justice, but it’s horrifyingly successful at two things: guaranteeing jobs for some and perpetuating slavery for others.Over the years, I learned that prison officials were not interested in giving us fruitful educational and job opportunities that allowed us to go home and stay home. The reality is much more sinister. Prisons are a job program for officers that requires us to keep coming back.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionYou may be familiar with company towns and coal towns; in the US, we have prison towns, too. In New York, all state prisons were built upstate as economic stimuli in rural districts and failing farm communities. The facilities imprison predominantly Black and brown inner-city residents who toil under a class of white overseers. I remember a guard bending over to shackle me one day and saying, “I just want to thank you for being here because I’m too old to be digging ditches.” My body and my labor made him an easy living. The parallels to slavery are stark and visceral.Prison officials ignore these critiques and justify their practices by pointing to the exception in the 13th amendment of the US constitution – negotiated as a concession to slave states – that allows slavery “as a punishment for crime”. This exception enables states like Texas to force incarcerated people, mostly Black men, to pick cotton – even at a net loss to the state, because cruelty is the point.Thankfully, a new abolition movement is working to end this exception, and I hope for its success. Over the past few years, seven states – from Tennessee and Alabama to Oregon and Vermont – have voted to end the exception in their state constitutions. And earlier this year, just ahead of Juneteenth, Senators Jeff Merkley and Cory Booker and Congresswoman Nikema Williams introduced the abolition amendment in Congress to end the exception in the US constitution and outlaw the enslavement of incarcerated people. Today it has bipartisan support.After 12 years, I was released with $40 and a bus ticket. The state did not even give me an ID. But I was one of the lucky ones who went home with a college degree. Without it, I would probably be back in prison today. I understand the value of giving incarcerated people real opportunities. Enslaving people is diametrically opposed to it. Nothing good can come from it.
      Dyjuan Tatro is the senior government affairs officer at the Bard Prison Initiative, where he focuses on expanding college access for incarcerated people, and an #EndTheException ambassador More