Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito gives a middle finger to Congress: ‘No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court — period.’
Madison Hall and Azmi Haroun – July 28, 2023
U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel AlitoChip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito spoke to The Wall Street Journal about congressional oversight.
“No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court,” he said.
The statement comes after months of news reports of ethical impropriety by members of the high court.
After months of news reports documenting instances of Supreme Court justices breaking judicial ethical standards and Democratic lawmakers pushing for a code of conduct to be implemented, conservative Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito revealed in an interview that he doesn’t believe that Congress has any authority to tell the court what to do.
“Congress did not create the Supreme Court,” Alito said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “I know this is a controversial view, but I’m willing to say it. No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court — period.”
He added that while he can’t speak for the other justices, he thinks it’s “something we have all thought about.”
The comments perturbed at least two Democratic members of Congress.
Following the article’s publication, Rep. Ted Lieu took to Twitter to remind Alito that Congress does have some oversight of the Supreme Court.
“Dear Justice Alito: You’re on the Supreme Court in part because Congress expanded the Court to 9 Justices,” Lieu tweeted. “Congress can impeach Justices and can in many cases strip the Court of jurisdiction. Congress has always regulated you and will continue to do so. You are not above the law.”
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse also noted on Twitter that he believes that Alito is part of what he called a “captured court.”
One of the authors of the article who interviewed Alito, David B. Rivkin, is litigating a tax case, Moore v. US, in front of SCOTUS during the court’s next term.
SCOTUS did not immediately return Insider’s request for comment.
In April, GOP mega-donor Harlan Crow and SCOTUS Justice Clarence Thomas first faced scrutiny related to the 20 years worth of undisclosed trips Crow is accused of gifting to Thomas, per ProPublica. The outlet later reported that Crow purchased Thomas’ mother’s house and allowed her to live there without paying rent.
Crow claimed to the Dallas Morning News that the revelations about his relationship with Thomas were a “political hit job.”
In June, ProPublica unearthed that Alito had taken a luxury fishing trip with GOP billionaire Paul Singer, who later had cases before the court. Alito claimed that they never discussed cases on the trip, on which he boarded Singer’s private plane.
Congress has probed Crow’s and Thomas’s relationship, as well as Alito’s dealings, asking for a detailed disclosure of the gifts bestowed to Supreme Court justices.
Ex-Labor Secretary Robert Reich Exposes The Republican Art Of Distraction
Lee MoranUpdated – July 26, 2023
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich in his latest video takes Republicans to task over five “totally made-up crises” he says they are using to distract Americans.
They are the conservative war on “woke,” attacks on the transgender community, freak-outs over critical race theory, slurring of welfare recipients and claims of out-of-control government spending.
All five “disguise what’s really going on,” Reich warned.
11 Republicans affirmed Donald Trump won in Arizona. What to know about the fake electors
Robert Anglen, Arizona Republic – July 26, 2023
They convened at the Arizona Republican Party headquarters two weeks before Christmas in 2020 and put their names to a lie.
Eleven top party officials, lawmakers and candidates avowed they were the state’s “duly elected and qualified electors” and cast their votes for then-President Donald Trump.
Electors in Arizona are required by law to follow the will of the people. In 2020, legitimate electors designated by the Democratic Party cast their votes for Joe Biden, who had won Arizona by a 10,457-vote margin.
The 11 Republicans weren’t qualified electors for the 2020 election, Trump didn’t win Arizona, and their votes were not official. They celebrated anyway, immortalizing the moment in a Twitter video.
In all, 84 people — including elected officials, candidates, former officeholders and Republican party leaders — from groups in seven swing states falsely claimed to be alternate electors in a coordinated plot to keep Trump in office.
And the 11 Arizonans who applauded eagerly at the time are unwilling to talk about their decisions, declining interview requests, hanging up on calls and retreating from questions.
Here is what you need to know about the GOP’s slate of fake electors.
Tyler Bowyer
Bowyer, 37, is the chief operating officer at Turning Point USA, a nonprofit that advocates for conservative politics on high school, college and university campuses.
Bowyer’s biography on Turning Point’s website touts his “strong desire to combat Marxist-Leninist philosophy from entering the American political mainstream.” He describes himself as a seventh-generation Arizonan.
Republican Gov. Jan Brewer appointed Bowyer as a student regent on the Arizona Board of Regents in 2011. He has worked for the Republican National Committee and served as chairman of the Maricopa County Republican Party from 2015-2017.
In July 2015, Bowyer helped to convene a rally at the Phoenix Convention Center that served as an early national sign of the future president’s appeal.
Bowyer has declined recent interview requests about the electors. In 2022, he told The Arizona Republic he didn’t know “all the details and facts” but emphasized his role as an elector.
“I was an elector − I want to make sure we’re clear here − I was an elector for the Republican Party.”
Tyler Bowyer, COO of Turning Point USA, speaks during the Arizona GOP biennial statutory meeting at Dream City Church on Saturday, Jan. 28, 2023, in Phoenix.
Nancy Cottle
Nancy Cottle, 71, of Mesa, chaired the Arizona Trump electors.
Cottle was subpoenaed by House Select Committee investigating the riot at the U.S. Capitol for her “role and participation in the purported slate of electors casting votes for Donald Trump and, to the extent relevant, your role in the events of January 6, 2021.”
She describes herself on Twitter as a “political junkie” and an “ultra MAGA.” Her LinkedIn page lists her as a “strong consulting professional” with a background in business planning. Cottle is the owner of The Branded Image.
She has a master’s degree in operational management from the University of Phoenix and a bachelor’s in health, physical education and speech from Kent State University, according to her bio.
Cottle has not responded to multiple interview requests.
State Sen. Jake Hoffman
State Sen. Jake Hoffman, R-Queen Creek, chairs the Legislature’s conservative Freedom Caucus.
On Jan. 5, 2021, Hoffman sent a letter to Vice President Mike Pence asking him not to accept the state’s official electoral votes. Although Hoffman had not yet taken office, the letter was sent on official state letterhead and had a return address of the state Capitol.
Hoffman has proposed and supported so-called election integrity bills, including one that would trigger an automatic redo of an election in which voters had to wait in line more than 90 minutes and another to break up Maricopa County into four counties. Both of those failed.
Hoffman, 38, is the married father of five, according to online biographies. He previously served on the Higley School Board and the Queen Creek Town Council. He was a communications director with Turning Point USA and runs several conservative digital marketing companies.
In 2020, a company he operated called Rally Forge was accused of operating a troll farm for a Turning Point affiliate and was banned from Facebook and suspended from Twitter. The company paid teens to set up bogus accounts and flood social media with posts sowing distrust in mail-in ballots and downplaying COVID-19.
Another of Hoffman’s companies, 1Ten, received $2.1 million from a political action committee that used spoof donors to boost the campaign of failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake. The owners of California businesses who were listed as the source of funds said they had never heard of the PAC − or Lake.
Hoffman has avoided questions about the fake electors. In a brief interview outside the Capitol in 2022, he told The Arizona Republic electors wanted to provide Congress and Pence with “dueling opinions” before walking away.
Rep. Jake Hoffman, R-Queen Creek, speaks as the House votes on bills related to the budget at the Arizona Capitol in Phoenix on June 24, 2021.
State Sen. Anthony Kern
State Sen. Anthony Kern, R-Glendale, is an ardent Trump supporter who spoke at “Stop the Steal” rallies and was at the U.S. Capitol when it was sacked by rioters. He has given conflicting accounts about where he was that day, but photos and videos show him on the Capitol steps.
Kern, 61, predicted in speeches he gave before the riot that Jan. 6 would be a “big day,” frothing up crowds by asking if this was “a revolution.” He told The Republic in 2022 what happened at the Capitol was a partisan hoax.
Kern in 2005 was hired as a civilian code enforcement officer for The El Mirage Police Department. He was fired in 2014 for lying to a supervisor after a string of disciplinary problems. The department also put Kern on the Brady list, a database of officers accused of dishonesty.
Kern was elected to Arizona’s House of Representatives in 2015. He falsely claimed on financial disclosure forms that he was a certified law enforcement officer. In 2019, he tried to pass a law to overhaul the Brady List without acknowledging he would directly benefit by getting his name removed. He lost his seat in the 2020 election.
Only people who have done something wrong or had something to hide would need to hire a lawyer, he said.
Republican state Sen. Anthony Kern leads a protest across the street from the Washington Elementary School District office on March 9, 2023, in Glendale.
Jim Lamon
Jim Lamon ran for U.S. Senate in 2022 and lost in the Republican primary.
Lamon, 67, of Paradise Valley, is married with two children. He grew up on a farm in Alabama before joining the U.S. Army. He was stationed in Germany in the Cold War and served as an airborne officer.
Lamon earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Alabama in 1979.
He describes himself on LinkedIn as a Fortune 500 executive. Lamon is the founder of Scottsdale-based Depcom Power, a solar engineering and construction company that employed 1,600 across the nation when he sold it.
Before entering politics, Lamon was known as a reliable donor to Republican causes and candidates, including Trump. He was a behind-the-scenes player in the Arizona Senate’s “audit” and helped bankroll security.
Lamon made immigration and border security a cornerstone of his platform and sought to restore Trump-era policies that returned asylum seekers to Mexico while awaiting court hearings. He was also critical of the Biden Administration’s COVID-19 relief package.
Despite pouring millions of his own money into his campaign, Lamon lost to Republican challenger Blake Masters, who was defeated by Democrat Mark Kelly.
Lamon has not responded to interview requests about the electors. In 2022, while he was running for Senate, he appeared on KTVK-TV’s “Politics Unplugged” and claimed the electors were part of a backup plan in case Trump succeeded in his election fraud challenges.
“The Republican electors put forth a valid document that said, in the event that the election certification was overturned, there would be no excuse not to recognize those electors,” Lamon said.
The signed document, however, had no such proviso.
Jim Lamon speaks to a crowd of Republican voters at the party’s primary debate for the U.S Senate in Phoenix on June 23, 2022.
Montgomery, 72, of Hereford, pushed for hand counts of votes as committee chair and before the 2022 election told Cochise County Supervisors they should ignore warnings about it from then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs.
He told the supervisors to throw Hobbs’ letter “in the bucket somewhere” and argued a full hand-count would be “easy to do,” according to a report by Votebeat.
Montgomery said former State Rep. Mark Finchem − an election denier and conspiracy theorist − would support hand counts if he won his bid for secretary of state. Finchem lost in a landslide to his Democratic challenger.
The Cochise County Board of Supervisors in September appointed Montgomery to the Palominas Fire District board. The decision came despite protests from some Sierra Vista residents who said Montgomery’s role as a fake elector should disqualify him. They complained Montgomery should not be rewarded for trying to overturn the election.
He is also on the county’s planning and zoning commission.
Montgomery has repeatedly declined to discuss his role as a fake elector. He did not respond to messages left at his home or at the fire district in July.
He was serving as the second vice chair of the Gila County Republican Party when he signed as a Trump elector.
According to online biographies, Moorhead, 78, of Globe, is married and has four children and five grandchildren. He was born in Pennsylvania and served as a Navy corpsman for 14 years, doing multiple tours in Vietnam.
Moorhead has a bachelor’s degree in education from Edinboro State University in Pennsylvania and earned a master’s degree in special education and teaching from New Mexico State University in 1999. He is listed as a consultant on his LinkedIn page.
He taught at schools in New Mexico and Arizona. Moorhead also was a commercial driver for Werner Enterprises until his retirement in 2007.
Moorhead has not responded to calls and messages about his role as a Trump elector.
Lorraine Pellegrino
Loraine Pellegrino, 65, of Phoenix, was secretary for the Arizona Trump electors.
Pellegrino is one of four electors subpoenaed by House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
She has an extensive background in Arizona Republican politics. Pellegrino is past president of the Arizona Federation of Republican Women and is a founding member of the Ahwatukee Republican Women’s Club.
Her online biography highlights her election as a delegate to Republican National Committee conventions in 2012, 2016 and 2020. She has served three terms on the Arizona GOP Executive Committee. She lists the recruitment of Republican women to run for office as one of her personal achievements.
Pellegrino has lived in Arizona for 25 years. She was born and raised in Connecticut and has a bachelor’s degree in media studies from Sacred Heart University. She is married and has one son.
Pellegrino in a January 2022 interview said the electors met as a contingency “in case there was a change in the decision here in the state.” She couldn’t say how the plan came together but bristled at the characterization of the group as “alternate” electors.
“We were electors for Trump and we were hoping things would change,” she said. “Just in case, we signed our paperwork to be ready in the event that something was overturned.”
Pellegrino hung up when contacted in July about the attorney general’s investigation.
Greg Safsten
Greg Safsten was executive director of the Arizona Republican Party when he signed as a Trump elector.
Safsten, 35, of Gilbert, was hired as a campaign consultant in 2022 by U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters, who was defeated in the general election. He had previously worked as an adviser and director for Rep. Andy Biggs and Rep. Matt Salmon.
According to his Legistorm biography, Safsten got his start in 2012 as a field director for Salmon’s campaign and was later hired as his legislative assistant. In 2016, he went to work for the Biggs campaign and ultimately rose to the position of deputy chief of staff.
Police and court records show in 2022 he was arrested and pleaded guilty to extreme DUI.
According to a March 2022, search warrant affidavit filed in Maricopa County Superior Court, a Gilbert police officer saw Safsten speed away from a Taco Bell restaurant “losing control of his vehicle as it fishtailed” and nearly collided with another vehicle.
The officer said Safsten kept going when he initially tried to pull him over, driving at a high rate of speed and weaving between lanes until finally pulling over about a half-mile later. He failed a field sobriety test, records show.
Safsten was fined and sentenced in January to 60 months’ probation, records show.
Safsten’s LinkedIn page has no employment information after August 2022. He bills himself as a “seasoned public relations, communications, public policy & political executive.”
“I work to be the leader and teammate I’d want on my own team,” he writes on his page. “Having formed and led teams in various conditions for over a dozen years, I know what it takes to win.”
Safsten was born and raised in Mesa. He attended Mountain View High School and obtained a bachelor’s degree in international studies from Arizona State University in 2007. He also studied clinical laboratory science at Weber State University in Utah.
Safsten did not respond to an interview request.
Kelli Ward
Kelli Ward is the past chair of the Arizona GOP. She helped to organize the signing of the fake electors, sat at the head of the table during the “signing” video and boasted about the moment on Twitter.
“Oh, yes we did!” Ward wrote in a Dec. 14, 2020 post. “We are the electors who represent the legal voters of Arizona! #Trump2020#MAGA.”
Ward, 54, of Lake Havasu City, was among those subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 committee and the Department of Justice over the slate of fake electors. Her attorney said in 2022 Ward was engaging in First Amendment-protected activity.
Ward is an osteopathic physician turned politician. She was elected to the Arizona Senate in 2013. She resigned to go after John McCain’s U.S. Senate seat in 2016, losing in the Republican primary, 39% to McCain’s 51%. She tried again for U.S. Senate in 2018 and lost in the Republican primary to Martha McSally.
Ward became party chair in 2019 and after the 2020 election became one of Trump’s most ardent supporters, launching several unsuccessful lawsuits to overturn Arizona’s election.
Ward promoted various voter fraud conspiracies and championed the Arizona Senate’s “audit,” delivering frequent YouTube updates as the ballot count unfolded, which turned into a fundraising bonanza for the party’s candidates and causes.
Ward is married and has three children. She was born in West Virginia. She earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Duke University and a doctorate from West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine. She has a master’s degree in public health from A.T. Still University, according to her legislative biography.
She practiced emergency medicine in Lake Havasu City and Kingman.
Ward was replaced as party chair in 2023. She and her husband announced on YouTube they bought a 44-foot catamaran and were starting a charter business called Sail American Honey.
Ward has not responded to interview requests about the electors.
Kelli Ward speaks during the Arizona GOP biennial statutory meeting at Dream City Church on Saturday, Jan. 28, 2023, in Phoenix.
Michael Ward
Michael Ward is Kelli Ward’s husband and a GOP activist. He, too, has been subpoenaed by the Department of Justice for his role as a Trump elector.
Ward, 58, of Lake Havasu City, is an emergency physician and is the state air surgeon in the Arizona Air National Guard, according to his LinkedIn page. He formerly worked at Havasu Regional Medical Center.
Ward first enlisted in the US Air Force in 1983 and began his military medical career. He joined the reserves and was commissioned to active duty in 1992, according to a listing on America’s Mighty Warriors, a veteran’s support group.
Ward earned a doctorate in osteopathic medicine in 1995 from A.T. Still University, where he met Kelli,according to her biography. They were married in 1995. Ward served as his wife’s campaign manager from 2011-2015.
He was accused in 2019 of spitting in the eye of one of his wife’s former volunteers. Police records indicate the alleged incident happened at the Arizona Republican Party’s general election night gala in Paradise Valley.
The former volunteer said Michael Ward was angry because the volunteer was supporting Kelli Ward’s political opponent, Martha McSally, according to police reports. Michael Ward emailed the Paradise Valley police and denied the allegations. He told police his accuser was an attention seeker and known storyteller.
Michael Ward also had a reputation for confronting people on his wife’s behalf. He was accused of bullying a staffer of Sen. John McCain at a Tea Party event in 2016. The moment was captured on video.
Michael Ward did not respond to an interview request about the attorney general’s investigation into the Trump electors.
Kelli Ward gets a kiss from her husband, Dr. Michael Ward, before greeting supporters at a primary election night party at Embassy Suites Scottsdale on Aug. 28, 2018.
Arizona’s second slate of fake electors
Arizona spawned a second group of fake electors in 2020 who certified that it, too, had cast the state’s votes for Trump.
The lesser-known Trump loyalists called themselves “The Sovereign Citizens of the Great State of Arizona” and sent the National Archives in Washington, D.C., notarized documents that carried the state seal on their letterhead. The signers were:
Nearly 28,000 Iowans have been disenrolled from Medicaid. Here’s why:
Michaela Ramm, Des Moines Register – July 26, 2023
Nearly 28,000 Iowans have been disenrolled from Medicaid this year as part of Iowa’s redetermination process — a consequence of continuous coverage no longer being guaranteed.
The latest data from the state’s Health and Human Services Department shows 27,744 Iowans were disenrolled from the safety net health insurance program since April, when Iowa began “unwinding” expanded eligibility.
About 30% of those Iowans — 8,401 — were disenrolled for procedural reasons, including failing to return paperwork.
The remaining 19,343 were deemed ineligible for further coverage, state data shows.
Since April, the state has been reviewing the eligibility of 900,000 Iowans who receive Medicaid and CHIP (the Children’s Health Insurance Program) benefits to determine if they still qualify under pre-pandemic regulations.
Federal health officials and other advocates have raised alarms about the number of people disenrolled for procedural reasons, which refers to those who did not return their paperwork or otherwise failed to complete the renewal process.
They say people may not be aware they’re up for renewal or recently changed addresses and didn’t receive the paperwork.
“What we’re seeing across the country from the first two months is that whilst people have done a lot to prepare, at the same time there are a lot of people losing their coverage,” said Dan Tsai, director of the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services. “A really high number of folks are losing coverage for what we call procedural reasons.”
State officials managing the redetermination process, however, say the current rate of disenrollment, including procedural drop-offs, was expected. Iowa Medicaid Director Liz Matney said the department’s data show the majority of those kicked off the program have health insurance coverage elsewhere.
“It’s not surprising. If somebody gets renewal paperwork and they say they don’t need Medicaid anymore, why would they submit paperwork?” Matney told the Des Moines Register. “So when the team has been looking at the individuals who are disenrolled for any reason, but particularly for those who are disenrolled for not returning their paperwork, we can tell in our system who has other health insurance.”
That data has not been made publicly available on the state’s dashboard.
Still, officials with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have called on Iowa and other states to simplify the process. In addition to keeping individuals who qualify on Medicaid, states also need to connect low-income residents with other coverage options, Tsai said.
“We’re looking for states to also do everything in their power, way beyond what the federal minimums are, to try to make it easier for eligible people to keep their coverage,” Tsai told the Register. “If you’re not eligible for Medicaid, we want you on your employer-sponsored coverage. We want you on the ACA plans. We don’t want you uninsured, and that’s the bottom-line focus for us from a federal standpoint.”
Typically, Iowans on Medicaid undergo a redetermination process every year to check their eligibility to see whether they still qualify.
But as part of the federal government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic starting in March 2020, states were required to maintain coverage for individuals on Medicaid, even if they no longer qualified. In exchange, states received enhanced federal funding to manage the health insurance program.
In Iowa, more than 168,000 individuals maintained coverage during the three-year pause on Medicaid redeterminations, state data shows.
That requirement to maintain continuous coverage ended in March 2023, when federal officials ended the national public health emergency.
As a result, the state’s health and human services department is checking the eligibility of hundreds of thousands of Iowans on Medicaid and CHIP, a massive undertaking that must be completed by May of 2024. Matney said state employees are processing close to 70,000 new applications every month, a “huge increase” from the typical redetermination process pre-pandemic.
Early estimates showed about 136,000 Iowans would be disenrolled from Iowa Medicaid, the state’s $7 billion privatized program, by the end of the 12-month unwinding period.
The state agency has worked to automate as much as possible and has launched a public messaging campaign to spread the word to members to turn in their paperwork. The managed care organizations that administer Medicaid benefits also have engaged in direct outreach to members, including knocking on the doors of some members to help them fill out their application, Matney said.
How many Iowans have renewed their coverage?
As of June, 854,791 people were enrolled in Iowa Medicaid and CHIP. That’s 39,053 fewer than in April.https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/14502335/embed
In the first three months of the “unwinding” process, 105,401 enrollees renewed their coverage under the Iowa Medicaid program, according to state data.
Of those, about half — 51,940 — were renewed on an “ex parte basis” or automatically renewed based on information the state has on the enrollee. The remaining 53,461 enrollees who renewed their coverage filled out and returned the redetermination paperwork sent by the state.
Federal officials call on states to do more. What is Iowa saying?
As the redetermination process continues for the next several months, Matney said she expects the number of individuals disenrolled, including for procedural reasons, will level off.
State officials had flagged enrollees who were likely ineligible for continued coverage, and frontloaded their reviews early in the redetermination process. As a result, Matney said, the rate of procedural dropoffs from April through July will be higher than the remaining months of the unwinding process.
Matney said enrollee data shows as much as 85% of individuals disenrolled from Medicaid have insurance elsewhere, such as an employer-sponsored plan. It also shows most of those who were disenrolled are adults.
The remaining portion is likely still eligible for Medicaid, which is why the state implemented a 90-day grace period to allow members to reapply for coverage, even if they missed the deadline, Matney said.
“If they get their paperwork in within that 90 days, we’ll backdate to the date that they last covered, so there’s no gap,” Matney said.
Members will most likely find out they no longer have Medicaid coverage when they pick up prescriptions. Matney said a possible solution could come in the form of partnerships with pharmacies, allowing those providers to complete presumptive eligibility determinations and help members get back on Medicaid quickly.
However, she said many states are finding pharmacies are not signing on to help with that work.
CMS has recently taken steps to address the number of Americans kicked off Medicaid coverage during this process, even pausing redetermination efforts in some states that have violated federal regulations, according to a press briefing from last week. Federal officials did not list the states involved.
Tsai said CMS officials are continuing to call on states, especially those with higher rates of procedural dropoffs, to utilize federal waivers offered by CMS for states’ redetermination efforts. These temporary policy changes are structured to help ease the process for members and ensure the nation’s uninsured rate doesn’t spike.
Among those waivers is extending postpartum coverage for Medicaid recipients to a year, a policy that has not been adopted in Iowa. Currently, the state provides members with 60 days of postpartum coverage.
“Under that, there definitely is more room for Iowa to be able to take up more of those,” Tsai said.
Matney said at this stage in the unwinding process, she doesn’t see any need to use additional policies offered by federal health officials to ease the process.
“We’ve gone through the list and really done the analysis of what we’re already doing versus what would be more administratively complicated,” Matney said. “The juice isn’t worth the squeeze in some such situations, and so right now, we’re still in the same spot. But we’ll be evaluating that, and if we feel additional waivers are important and necessary to help ease the process for ourselves and for Medicaid members and Iowans in general, we’ll certainly pursue that.”
Michaela Ramm covers health care for the Des Moines Register.
How right-wing news powers the ‘gold IRA’ industry
Jeremy B. Merrill and Hanna Kozlowska – July 25, 2023
Dedicated viewers of Fox News are likely familiar with Lear Capital, a Los Angeles company that sells gold and silver coins. In recent years, the company’s ads have been a constant presence on Fox airwaves, warning viewers to protect their retirement savings from a looming “pension crisis” and “dollar collapse.”
One such ad caught the attention of Terry White, a disabled retiree from New York. In 2018, White invested $174,000 in the coins, according to a lawsuit by the New York attorney general – only to later learn that Lear charged a 33 percent commission.
Over several transactions, White, 70, lost nearly $80,000, putting an “enormous strain” on his finances, said his wife, Jeanne, who blames Fox for their predicament: “They’re negligent,” she said. A regretful White said he thought Fox “wouldn’t take a commercial like that unless it was legitimate.”
While the legitimacy of the gold retirement investment industry is the subject of numerous lawsuits – including allegations of fraud by federal and state regulators against Lear and other companies – its advertising has become a mainstay of right-wing media. The industry spends millions of dollars a year to reach viewers of Fox, Newsmax and other conservative outlets, according to a Washington Post analysis of ad data and financial records, as well as interviews with industry insiders. Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani have promoted the coins, while ads for Lear’s competitors have appeared on a podcast hosted by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Newsmax broadcasts of former president Donald Trump’s political rallies.
An analysis by The Post of political newsletters, social media, podcasts and a national database of television ads collected by the company AdImpact found that pitches to invest in gold coins are a daily presence in media that caters to a right-wing audience and often echo conservative talking points about looming economic and societal collapse. The Post found no similar ads for gold retirement investments in mainstream or left-wing media sources in the databases.
These so-called “gold IRA” companies are not publicly traded, so their revenue, profits and ad budgets largely cannot be determined. Court documents filed by Lear say the company has about $200 million in annual revenue; Dale Whitaker, the former chief financial officer at another company, Augusta Precious Metals, said overall industry revenue likely approaches $1 billion a year.
Over the past decade, more than 30 customers in 20 states have sued a dozen gold IRA companies, including Lear. Federal regulators have sued four companies – two in the past year alone – claiming investors were systematically charged as much as triple the coins’ value.
None of the cases have gone to trial; some are still pending. Of those that have been resolved, most have settled or been sent to arbitration, where outcomes are not made public. The companies have not admitted wrongdoing in any of the cases and say their customers have been adequately informed of the details of their purchases.
Joe Rotunda, enforcement director at the Texas State Securities Board, said the industry is extraordinarily difficult to police because selling gold, even as a retirement investment, is “extremely thinly regulated.”
Experts on commercial speech say Fox and other media outlets have no obligation to spurn advertising from gold IRA companies, despite the allegations. “Courts are very hesitant to impose liability on publishers,” said Harvard law professor Rebecca Tushnet, an expert in First Amendment and advertising law, who said the law is designed primarily to compel truthfulness by advertisers.
Tushnet added that “it might be reasonable, if you found out about the lawsuits, [to] contact the advertiser” and ask questions about the claims before running the ads. But if an advertiser blames their legal troubles on “the woke mob,” she said, “you’re often allowed to believe them.”
Fox News declined to comment. In a statement, Newsmax spokesman Bill Daddi said the network does not see allegations against the gold IRA companies as “a cause to block them from advertising.” Daddi compared them to some major financial firms that have been sued by customers or regulators, and whose ads continue to be accepted by mainstream outlets. For example, Wells Fargo paid $3 billion in 2020 to settle potential charges related to opening fake accounts in customers’ names.
In a statement, Lear Capital spokesperson Tracy Williams defended the company’s operations, saying most of Lear’s customers would have made a profit if they had sold at a recent market high. Williams said that White, the New York retiree, had acknowledged the company’s fee in a recorded call.
Last year, Lear settled New York’s 2021 lawsuit involving White without admitting wrongdoing. However, the company agreed to repay some customers and to disclose its fees more clearly. Lear now gives customers 24 hours to pull out of purchases, Williams said, putting the company at the “vanguard of disclosure … within its industry.”
Lear declined to say how much it spends to advertise on Fox News, but Williams said the network is not Lear’s primary source of customers. Nor is Lear likely to make up a significant share of Fox’s total ad revenue, which exceeds $1 billion a year, according to securities filings.
Fox is a logical place for Lear to advertise because “purchasing physical assets appeals to persons who have concerns regarding … topics often discussed on that platform,” Williams said. She added: “U.S. monetary policy is inseparable from U.S. political dynamics and themes.”
For years, gold IRA industry advertising has echoed accusations against Democratic politicians commonly found in news segments on conservative outlets. The ads tout the coins as a safe haven from economic uncertainty and social upheaval.
Most of the coins are manufactured by the Royal Canadian Mint, which says they’re bullion, a kind of coin whose value is determined by the underlying metal. As such, they meet IRS rules for retirement investments.
Unlike most bullion coins, however, the gold IRA industry’s coins are typically exclusive to the companies who sell them, usually with markups far higher than those charged by mainstream coin retailers, regulators and coin experts say. Alex Reeves, a spokesman for the Royal Canadian Mint, said the mint has no control “over sales practices further down the chain of distribution.”
“They are priced like collectibles, but collectible coins aren’t typically sold in bulk,” said Everett Millman, a precious metals specialist at coin dealer Gainesville Coins. “If a customer spent the same amount of money on products that are more standard, like [Canadian] Silver Maple Leafs, they would end up with a lot more ounces per dollar.”
With the exclusive coins, Millman said, “They’re simply torching money.”
“No one in their right mind would pay the premiums that these guys are charging,” added Ken Lewis, CEO of online coin dealer Apmex, who reviewed several customer invoices at The Post’s request.
The ads explain none of that. Instead, they focus on news events, such as a spate of recent bank failures and “everything that’s happening in the economy right now … with all the talk of inflation,” Rotunda said.
For example, an email ad for Augusta, sent to a Newsmax mailing list last July, warned that “The Biden administration’s economic policies are ‘declaring war’ on retirement savers.” In December, American Hartford Gold Group sent an email ad with the subject line: “Bill O’Reilly Warns: Retirement Funds at Risk From a Biden Recession.” The email is signed by O’Reilly, who did not respond to a request for comment.
Another ad for Hartford sent to the Newsmax mailing list in March warned of “Biden and Yellen’s Secret Plan to Steal your Hard-Earned Money and Bail Out Their Wall Street Buddies.”
Trump rallies are particularly big events for Hartford. On July 1, Newsmax aired a live broadcast of a Trump speech in Pickens, S.C., on a split screen with an ad for Hartford, which also sends “Trump Rally Special” email ads via Newsmax.
Since October 2020, email newsletters distributed by Newsmax have included more than 1,100 ads for gold IRA companies – nearly a quarter of all Newsmax email ads reviewed by The Post. At $1,000 to $5,000 each, according to Augusta financial records from 2016 reviewed by The Post, the ads likely generate more than $1 million a year in revenue.
Daddi, the Newsmax spokesman, said gold IRA companies represent “a small percentage of the total advertisers on Newsmax across all platforms.”
Some conservative figures offer explicit endorsements. Giuliani has called Hartford “the experts I trust most” on his podcast “Common Sense.” The “Verdict with Ted Cruz” podcast has featured ads for Hartford for at least a year, and a recent segment touted Augusta, urging listeners “to protect your dollars … with a gold IRA.” Neither Giuliani nor Cruz responded to requests for comment.
Two media dealmakers who have been involved in negotiations between conservative media figures and the gold IRA industry said revenue from the companies can amount to as much as 10 percent of total earnings for some personalities. The dealmakers spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their business relationships; one said the biggest personalities stand to earn millions of dollars a year.
Hartford spokesman Steven Goldberg said it runs ads “where we believe it will create the most value.” Among the company’s chosen venues: a “prophetic” evangelical Christian email newsletter, two right-wing TV channels, and more than a dozen conservative radio shows and podcasts, including Giuliani’s and Cruz’s.
One of Hartford’s ads caught the attention of Ed DeSanto, 65, a semiretired Florida medical coder and an avid right-wing radio fan. He invested a $100,000 lump-sum payout from his pension in a Hartford IRA in 2019.
DeSanto said he doesn’t remember exactly where he heard the Hartford ad, but “if you listen to those radio shows, they play those commercials all the time.” He said he believed he was being careful: He picked Hartford because it scored well in a ranking of gold IRA companies he found online. (Such rankings often include disclosures noting that the authors are paid by the gold IRA companies.)
DeSanto’s $100,000 investment netted him just $53,000 worth of gold and silver, according to a Post analysis of his invoices – meaning the coins had been marked up 92 percent over the value of the metal. DeSanto blames himself.
“I did a little bit of research, but evidently not enough,” DeSanto said. “When I found the invoice, it was a big shock.”
In 2018 and 2019, another retiree, John Mathys of Illinois, claimed a Hartford salesman persuaded him to invest his $569,000 retirement savings by “bombarding him” with calls and emails for months, according to a federal lawsuit Mathys filed against Hartford in 2020. The lawsuit was sent to arbitration. Neither Mathys nor his lawyer responded to requests for comment.
Mathys, who was 83 at the time of the lawsuit, is one of three customers who sued Hartford in the past six years accusing the company of fraud. The other two lawsuits settled.
Hartford declined to comment on any of the cases. “We are fully transparent with our clients about the pricing of the products they purchase and the potential range of markup for those products,” Goldberg said in a statement, adding that the company operates “with a steadfast commitment to doing business legally and ethically.”
“We deny the allegation that we’ve misled or otherwise acted improperly,” Goldberg said.
In February and April, DeSanto sold back some of his gold coins to Hartford. Although gold prices had climbed an average of 32 percent since his 2019 purchase, he lost money on the sales, according to a Post analysis of his invoices.
The gold IRA industry’s ties to right-wing media date to the Great Recession, when the price of gold was rising rapidly and Fox commentator Glenn Beck was one of the most popular hosts on TV. Beck recorded ads for Goldline, a gold dealer that also offered IRAs, and interviewed its CEO on his show.
“We could be facing recession, depression or collapse. Nothing left!” Beck told viewers in 2009, urging them to rely on “God, Gold and Guns.” After segments promoting gold investments, Beck’s show would sometimes cut to commercials featuring gold sellers like Goldline, according to a 2010 congressional report.
The gold companies were loyal advertisers: After Beck claimed in 2009 that President Barack Obama was “racist” and had “a deep-seated hatred for White people or the White culture,” many big advertisers dropped his show. Gold sellers were among the few who stayed on, according to reporting at the time.
Goldline soon came under scrutiny, first in congressional hearings, then by Santa Monica, Calif., prosecutors, who charged the company with misdemeanor grand theft, elder theft and conspiracy in 2011. Though Goldline defended its business practices as fully transparent and never admitted wrongdoing, the company later agreed to pay up to $4.5 million to settle the charges.
Beck faded from prominence after departing Fox News in 2011 to start his own channel. He still endorses Goldline on the company’s website. Neither Beck nor Goldline executives responded to requests for comment.
The controversy sent Goldline employees scrambling for safer harbors. Some got jobs at Merit Financial, according to interviews and public records. Merit, whose offices were just a few blocks from Goldline’s in Santa Monica, also sold coins by phone and ran ads on Fox. (Merit’s former owner declined to comment publicly.)
In 2014, Santa Monica prosecutors accused Merit of “an aggressive, nationwide fraud scheme.” The company denied the allegations but went out of business and settled as the case approached trial.
Several Goldline and Merit salesmen then struck out on their own, founding many of the companies that exist today, according to staff lists and interviews with 21 current and former industry employees.
A former Merit salesman founded Augusta Precious Metals, which has been accused of defrauding its customers by Whitaker, its former CFO. Whitaker filed a whistleblower complaint to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which has not taken public action. Augusta has denied the allegations, and CEO Isaac Nuriani said in a statement that Whitaker “never had any visibility into Augusta’s business operations.”
Other former Goldline and Merit employees founded Metals.com, the founders said in depositions. That company recruited customers on Facebook, where it faked an endorsement from Fox News host Sean Hannity, a court filing by Georgia securities regulators alleged.
Facebook data reviewed by The Post shows that many Metals.com ads targeted people 59 or older. One 87-year-old customer received daily phone calls from a Metals.com broker who eventually flew to Alabama for a weekend to meet her, regulators alleged. She ultimately invested nearly $90,000, they said – most of which was lost.
The FBI raided Metals.com in 2020. A judge ordered the company shut down after 31 states and the CFTC filed suit, alleging a $185 million commodities fraud, as well as violations of rules about investment advice. Company founders have denied the allegations, saying their company “strived for transparency” and disclosed that it charged a premium. They have also said in court filings that they are under criminal investigation. Company executives did not respond to requests for comment submitted to their lawyer.
After Metals.com closed, some salesmen went to work at Safeguard Metals, according to one of the salesmen, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. In February 2022, the Securities and Exchange Commission, CFTC and 27 states sued that company, too. Safeguard recently settled the SEC’s case without admitting liability; the CFTC’s suit is still pending. Safeguard’s lawyers did not respond to a request for comment.
Lear Capital also hired several salesmen from Goldline’s ranks and bought Merit’s database of customers, according to court records and staff lists submitted to California regulators and obtained by The Post through public records requests. Williams, the Lear spokesperson, said “Merit’s liquidation was an opportunity to acquire a customer and prospect base to service and market to in the future” and that Lear performed background checks on everyone it hired.
Lear recently exited bankruptcy reorganization after resolving investigations from dozens of states. It remains in business.
Hartford’s CEO also worked at both Goldline and Merit before starting that company. Goldberg, the Hartford spokesman, declined to comment when asked whether the company was under investigation by state or federal regulators.
DeSanto said he has complained to both the Florida attorney general and the CFTC about his experience with Hartford. He said he spoke twice with CFTC investigators in 2020, but the agency has not taken public action.
In February, DeSanto also called Hartford to try to sell back his coins. He said he was flabbergasted to learn that the salesman who handled his purchase was still employed there. And he was shocked to find O’Reilly’s photo still featured on the company’s website.
“Everything is the same there,” DeSanto marveled. Of O’Reilly, he added: “I would think, for his reputation, he’d want to get away from a company like them.”
Kozlowska is a freelance writer based in New York. The Washington Post’s Sarah Ellison and Dan Morse contributed reporting. Raz Nakhlawi contributed research.
Trump’s GOP rivals open door to cutting Social Security for younger people
Jeff Stein, The Washington Post – July 22, 2023
Vice President Mike Pence, right, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis take questions during a Florida Coronavirus Response Meeting, at the West Palm Beach International Airport, Friday, Feb. 28, 2020, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Terry Renna) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Three of Donald Trump’s rivals for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination are pushing for cuts to Social Security benefits that would only affect younger Americans, as the party’s leaders grapple with the explosive politics of the retirement program.
In comments on Sunday as well as in interviews earlier this year, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said Social Security will need to be revamped – but not for people who are near or in retirement.
Former vice president Mike Pence and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley have taken similar positions since launching their presidential campaigns. From the earliest days of his 2016 run, Trump has vowed not to touch either Social Security or Medicare – a break from GOP orthodoxy that has shifted the party’s views – and has more recently hammered DeSantis for wanting to cut the program.
“When people say that we’re going to somehow cut seniors, that is totally not true,” DeSantis said on Fox News. “Talking about making changes for people in their 30s and their 40s so the program’s viable – that’s a much different thing, and something I think there’s going to need to be discussion on.”
On Monday, Pence told Fox Business: “I’m glad to see another candidate in this primary has been willing to step up and talk about that.”
The positions the three Trump rivals are taking suggest that even the fiscally conservative candidates in the GOP presidential primary are reluctant to endorse cutting Social Security for seniors, highlighting just how much the party has shifted on the issue. Former House speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), the party’s 2012 vice-presidential candidate, had led the party in championing budget blueprints that would have entailed significant cuts to both Social Security and Medicare.
As the Republican Party becomes increasingly reliant on older voters for support and as Trump continues to exert heavy influence over the party’s beliefs, GOP policymakers have followed the former president’s lead in steering clear of proposals to cut the program, with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) ruling that out in debt ceiling negotiations earlier this year with the White House.
But concentrating potential cuts on the young, as the Trump challengers have proposed, has its downsides as well. The candidates’ posture risks alienating young voters who have already become increasingly alienated from the Republican Party. And cutting benefits for younger people leaves the bulk of the problem unresolved, experts say, given that the Social Security funding crisis is projected to arrive decades before millennials receive their first checks.
“It clearly would not address the shortfall, or the short- to medium-term problem we’re going to have in 10 years or less,” said Howard Gleckman, senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank.
Economists of both parties agree that Social Security and Medicare, the health insurance program for the elderly, face funding crises if Congress does not act to shore up their finances somehow, either by reducing benefits or raising taxes. If no reforms are enacted, Social Security benefits for an estimated 60 million people will be cut by 20 percent starting in 2033, according to the most recent report of the Boards of Trustees of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. Medicare also faces automatic benefit cuts as soon as 2031, the report says.
President Biden has proposed increasing taxes on the rich and businesses to prevent Medicare from running out of funds. But the latest White House budget does not propose a solution for extending Social Security. Numerous congressional Democrats have called for trillions in new taxes to avoid the Social Security shortfall, as well.
Policy experts have long said it will probably take a mixture of reduced spending and higher taxes to address the looming funding shortage facing Social Security and Medicare. Social Security’s old age and survivors insurance trust fund is expected to only be able to pay 77 percent of benefits in 2033, which would probably lead to automatic reductions in payments. People in their forties are still more than two decades away from receiving Social Security benefits.
The comments from DeSantis and Pence suggest that some Republicans have “not updated their talking points from the 1990s,” said Brian Riedl, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank. Thirty years ago, Riedl said, it would have been possible to argue for resolving the funding shortfall only by limiting benefits for future recipients. But given that the enormous baby boomer generation is now at retirement age, exempting them from cuts would still leave the program in crisis.
“I get the politics of not wanting to lead with, ‘We will cut seniors,'” Riedl said. “But it might be better to say nothing than to offer an unpopular approach that doesn’t even avoid a debt crisis because it would be implemented far too late.”
DeSantis’s message will probably soon be tested. Trump has released video messages tying DeSantis to House Republicans who wanted to cut Social Security and for pushing to raise the retirement age when the Florida governor served in Congress, although Trump has also expressed support in the past for raising the retirement age.
“Donald Trump ruled Social Security and other benefits out of bounds politically” for Republican politicians, said Bill Galston, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank. “But there are still Republicans, including some leading Republicans, who understand we won’t make serious progress on our fiscal problems until everything’s on the table. They’re trying to open that discussion, without it immediately being shut down.”
Florida Schools Will Teach How Slavery Brought ‘Personal Benefit’ to Black People
Allison Quinn – July 20, 2023
Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty
Middle school students in Florida will soon be taught that slavery gave Black people a “personal benefit” because they “developed skills.”
After the Florida Board of Education approved new standards for African American history on Wednesday, high school students will be taught an equally distorted message: that a deadly white mob attack against Black residents of Ocoee, Florida, in 1920 included “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans.”
Dozens of Black residents were killed in the massacre, which was perpetrated to stop them from voting.
According to members of the board, that distorted portrayal of the racist massacre is factually accurate. MaryLynn Magar, a member of the board appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, said at the board’s meeting in Orlando on Wednesday that “everything is there” in the new history standards and “the darkest parts of our history are addressed,” the Tallahassee Democrat reported.
The majority of the speakers who provided public testimony on the planned curriculum were vehemently opposed to it, warning that crucial context is omitted, atrocities are glossed over, and in some cases students will be taught to “blame the victim.”
“I am very concerned by these standards, especially some of the notion that enslaved people benefited from being enslaved,” state Rep. Anna Eskamani (D-Orlando) said, per Action News Jax.
“When I see the standards, I’m very concerned,” state Sen. Geraldine Thompson said at the board meeting. “If I were still a professor, I would do what I did very infrequently; I’d have to give this a grade of ‘I’ for incomplete. It recognizes that we have made an effort, we’ve taken a step. However, this history needs to be comprehensive. It needs to be authentic, and it needs additional work.”
“When you look at the history currently, it suggests that the [Ocoee] massacre was sparked by violence from African Americans. That’s blaming the victim,” the Democrat warned.
“Please table this rule and revise it to make sure that my history, our history, is being told factually and completely, and please do not, for the love of God, tell kids that slavery was beneficial because I guarantee you it most certainly was not,” community member Kevin Parker said.
Approval of the new standards is a win for the DeSantis administration, which has effectively sought to create a new educational agenda that shields white students from feeling any sense of guilt for wrongs perpetrated against people of color. The Florida governor signed the “Stop WOKE Act” last year to do just that, restricting how issues of race are taught in public schools and workplaces.
In keeping with the administration’s crusade against “wokeness,” Education Commissioner Manny Diaz defended the new standards against criticism, saying, “This is an in-depth, deep dive into African American history, which is clearly American history as Governor DeSantis has said, and what Florida has done is expand it,” Action News Jax reported.
Paul Burns, the Florida Department of Education’s chancellor of K-12 public schools, also insisted the new standards provide an exhaustive representation of African American history.
“Our standards are factual, objective standards that really teach the good, the bad and the ugly,” he was quoted as saying Wednesday by Florida Phoenix. He denied the new standards portray slavery as beneficial.
Although education officials say teachers are meant to expand upon the new curriculum in the classroom, critics say teachers are unlikely to do that for fear of being singled out and possibly punished for being too “woke.”
The Florida Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, called the new standards “a big step backward for a state that has required teaching African American history since 1994” in a statement after Wednesday’s vote.
Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP, also condemned the new curriculum, saying in a statement: “Our children deserve nothing less than truth, justice, and the equity our ancestors shed blood, sweat, and tears for.”
“Today’s actions by the Florida state government are an attempt to bring our country back to a 19th century America where Black life was not valued, nor our rights protected. It is imperative that we understand that the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow were a violation of human rights and represent the darkest period in American history. We refuse to go back,” he said.
Texas’ Harsh New Border Tactics Are Injuring Migrants
Edgar Sandoval, Jay Root and J. David Goodman – July 20, 2023
Texas law enforcement officers stand near concertina wire on the bank of the Rio Grande river in Eagle Pass, Texas on July 19, 2023. (Go Nakamura/The New York Times)
For more than two years, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas has pursued an increasingly aggressive approach to the border, sending thousands of National Guard troops and police officers to patrol the Rio Grande and testing the legal limits of state action on immigration.
But in recent weeks, Texas law enforcement officials have taken those tactics much further, embarking on what the state has called a “hold-the-line” operation, according to interviews with state officials and documents reviewed by The New York Times. They have fortified the riverbanks with additional concertina wire, denied water to some migrants, shouted at others to return to Mexico and, in some cases, deliberately failed to alert federal Border Patrol agents who might assist arriving groups in coming ashore and making asylum claims, the review found.
The increasingly brutal, go-it-alone approach has alarmed people inside the U.S. Border Patrol and the Texas Department of Public Safety, the agency chiefly responsible for pursuing the governor’s border policies. Several Texas officers have lodged internal complaints and voiced opposition.
The reality of those tactics in one area of the border, around the small city of Eagle Pass, was detailed in an email by one state police medic, who described exhausted migrants being cut up by razor wire, a teenager breaking his leg to escape the barriers and officers being directed to withhold water from migrants struggling in the perilous heat. The actions described in the email drew broad condemnation from Texas Democrats in Congress and from the White House after the email was reported by the Houston Chronicle.
“If they are true, it is abhorrent. It is despicable. It is dangerous,” said White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, referring to the reports. “We’re talking about the bedrock values of who we are as a country.” The Justice Department said Wednesday that it was assessing the situation.
But the objections within the Texas Department of Public Safety extended far beyond a single medic: At least three other officers working around Eagle Pass, a main arrival point for migrants who are crossing illegally, have expressed their outrage and misgivings to higher-ups about the actions they have seen, according to internal correspondence and interviews with state officials briefed on the border response.
And it was not only officers describing the harshness of the new tactics. In several interviews with the Times in Eagle Pass, about two hours southwest of San Antonio, migrants nursing wounds said they had encountered phalanxes of law enforcement officers along banks of the United States that were newly bristling with barbed wire, some of it underwater.
“They kept yelling at us, ‘Go back, go back!’” said Reyna Gloria Dominguez, 42, who arrived in Eagle Pass from Honduras in a wheelchair. “We said, ‘We can’t.’ My son told them, ‘She needs help. She’s hurt.’”
Similar scenes have been playing out elsewhere along the border, including in the Texas city of Brownsville, near the mouth of the Rio Grande, where state police officers have been standing guard at crossing points behind two layers of concertina wire.
The increasing aggressiveness has created international tension with Mexico because, in addition to placing concertina wire, Texas also deployed a 1,000-foot floating barrier of buoys into the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass this month. Mexican officials have said the barrier may have violated international treaties and could encroach on Mexican territory.
Texas officials have blamed the Biden administration for allowing a chaotic situation on the border. They said the buoy barrier and concertina wire were designed to deter people from risking a dangerous swim across the Rio Grande and direct them to safe, official border-crossing stations.
“No orders or directions have been given under Operation Lone Star that would compromise the lives of those attempting to cross the border illegally,” Abbott said in a joint statement with top officials from the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Military Department, using the name of the state operation.
The new Texas tactics have frayed relations between state and federal law enforcement agencies that have long worked together to monitor the border.
In a memo to the Texas DPS last month, Border Patrol officials in the Eagle Pass area raised concern that the concertina wire placed along the water by Texas officials was creating new hazards for migrants as well as for federal border agents.
At the same time, state police supervisors have been directed by their own superiors not to alert Border Patrol when encountering groups of migrants, but rather to handle the situation themselves, according to a departmental text message addressed to sergeants, obtained by the Times.
“Can you please push out a message to your troopers,” the text read, referring to those stationed in a city-owned park by the international bridge in Eagle Pass. “They are NOT to call BP when they see a group approaching or already on the bank.” Officers were instead directed to make arrests for criminal trespassing, an element of Operation Lone Star.
The text message, which was sent last week and has not been previously reported, also directed officers to tell migrants to “go back to Mexico” and to cross the border at one of the international bridges.
Many of the migrants who arrived in Eagle Pass after passing through the treacherous new gantlet were left shaken, and some were injured.
Gleyders Durant, 27, a migrant from Venezuela, peeled off bandages on his right foot to reveal several wounds. He said that as he crossed the river on Friday and stepped onto U.S. soil — his 3-year-old son on his shoulders and his wife following them — he felt a sharp pain. Blood gushed through one of his tennis shoes.
“That’s when I realized that I had stepped on a stretch of wire hidden under dark waters,” he said. Panicked, he extended his arms and carried his wife over it. “It was hidden, under the water.”
Nearby, in a respite center in Eagle Pass, another migrant from Venezuela, Marjorie Escobar, 32, described a harrowing encounter Saturday between her group of about 20 people, including children as young as 4, and several law enforcement agents in Texas.
As some in her group threw inflatables and blankets over the concertina wire to avoid injury, she said, the agents began yelling, “Go back to Mexico!” and “If you cross, we are going to arrest and charge you.”
Then, she said, an agent wearing a brown uniform and a cowboy hat who appeared to be a Texas state trooper roughly pulled a blanket off the barrier as people were climbing over it. The abrupt maneuver caused a young woman to hit her face on a spike, leaving a gash on her forehead, Escobar recalled. She said several of the agents stood still for several minutes, until an officer wearing what looked like a soldier’s uniform offered help to the wounded woman.
State officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the incident.
“I was still in the river, about to jump over, when I saw what that agent did and was horrified,” she said of the officer in the cowboy hat. “She was crying, saying, ‘Help me, help me.’”
Because of the increased number of migrants being taken to the lone hospital in Eagle Pass, residents have often been waiting up to eight hours to receive medical care, said Mayor Rolando Salinas Jr. “I support legal migration and orderly law enforcement,” he said in an interview Wednesday. “What I am against is the use of tactics that hurt people.”
The tactics by Texas appear to have intensified in the lead-up to the lifting in late May of Title 42, a public health policy imposed during the coronavirus pandemic that allowed federal agents to rapidly expel most arriving migrants.
The Department of Public Safety has defended its approach and said officers were providing assistance to migrants in medical distress. “There is not a directive or policy that instructs troopers to withhold water from migrants or push them back into the river,” an agency spokesperson, Travis Considine, said.
At the same time, Considine said, officers, who have been directed to keep migrants from entering and to instruct them to return to Mexico, are given some discretion in how they carry out those orders.
“If there are women and children who are asking for water, they’re getting water,” he said. “A group of 30 adult males comes, and they’re begging for water. I’m not going to say there are not troopers saying, ‘We’re not going to give you water.’” He said that if the migrants did not seem to be in distress, troopers might tell them to go get water in Mexico.
The four officers who raised concerns said there were explicit orders to deny water to migrants and to tell them to go back to Mexico. Three said they had been told by supervisors that troopers were not to inform the Border Patrol when migrants were in the water or at the Texas riverbank.
One of the officers, Trooper Nicholas Wingate, was a medic. In an email to supervisors July 3, he said numerous migrants, including a pregnant woman, had gotten tangled in the razor wire. He said the woman, 19, was “doubled over” and “in obvious pain, stuck in the casualty wire.” A 4-year-old girl who attempted to cross was “pressed back by Texas Guard soldiers due to orders given to them,” he wrote in the email.
With temperatures soaring past 100 degrees that day, the girl passed out and became “unresponsive,” Wingate wrote. She was taken away by emergency medical workers.
Wingate also described seeing a father with lacerations on his leg after extricating his child from what he called a “barrel trap,” a plastic barrel floating in the water with concertina wire surrounding it. “I believe we have stepped over the line into the inhumane,” he wrote.
Considine said the agency did not deploy “barrel traps.” But he said it was possible that a barrel that had been wrapped in concertina wire in one part of the river to hold it in place had floated away in rising waters, though he said that the agency had not confirmed that was the case.
On the question of coordinating with Border Patrol, Considine said officers did not alert Border Patrol when arresting migrants for criminal trespassing. He said the number of such arrests had increased recently in and around Eagle Pass.
But federal law entitles people who enter the United States, even unlawfully, to claim asylum by stating that they faced persecution in their home country.
It is not clear how many migrants have died while crossing the border in recent weeks.
The river is always treacherous, and four people, including an infant, drowned this month in the span of a few days. According to the sheriff’s office in Maverick County, which includes Eagle Pass, 26 migrants have drowned so far in 2023. There were 77 migrant drownings in the county in all of last year.
For some local officials, the hardened border was sending the wrong message.
“Seeing barbed wire on the bank of the river, it doesn’t look good for the USA,” said Sheriff Tom Schmerber of Maverick County. “We’re used to seeing all that in communist countries. Now we have them here in Texas.”
“It’s kind of like a black eye. And it’s not working anyway,” he added. “It’s not stopping the immigrants.”
Is America on the brink of tyranny? Trump’s plan if elected in 2024 should frighten us all.
Austin Sarat and Dennis Aftergut – July 20, 2023
The New York Times published an article Monday that’s bone-chilling for anyone who cherishes our freedom, democracy and constitutional governance. The story recounted, with full cooperation of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, his plans to eliminate executive branch constraints on his power if he is elected president in 2024.
The obstacles to be eliminated include an independent Justice Department, independent leadership in administrative agencies and an independent civil service. Richard Neustadt, one of the country’s best known students of the American presidency, has said that in a constitutional democracy the chief executive “does not obtain results by giving orders – or not. … He does not get action without argument. Presidential power is the power to persuade.”
Trump now may face federal charges for his role in fomenting the riot.
And while he was president, in addition to appointing subservient heads of executive departments, he took steps to increase his control over the regulatory authority of administrative agencies. To cite one example, in 2019, Trump forced climate change researchers in the Department of Agriculture to move from Washington, D.C., to Kansas City, Missouri, producing a huge exodus from federal employment.
In 2020, he attempted to undermine the independence of the civil service by issuing an executive order adopting “Schedule F.” It purported to vastly augment a president’s power to hire and fire federal officials by expanding the number of “political appointees” throughout government employment who were outside civil service protections.
Trump’s plan is to centralize power in Oval Office
The Times story outlined his 2025 road map to implement this command-and-control model of executive authority and centralization of power if he’s returned to the Oval Office. In effect, the article described how his team would replace our constitutional republic with an authoritarian state.
Such a state seeks to eliminate the independence of civil servants. Saying good things about bureaucracy may be unpopular, but federal employees’ competence, expert judgment and commitment to governance by law is essential to democratic government.
One definition of an authoritarian state is that it is characterized by the consolidation of power in a single leader, “a controlling regime that justifies itself as a ‘necessary evil.'” That kind of control necessarily features “strict government-imposed constraints on social freedoms such as suppression of political opponents and anti-regime activity.”
Those characteristics describe the contours of the 2025 blueprint that the Trump campaign wanted the public to see via the Times’ report. As the story notes, they are setting the stage, if Trump is elected, “to claim a mandate” for the goal of centralizing power in him.
The Times quoted John McEntee, Trump’s 2020 White House director of personnel, defending the rejection of checks and balances on a president: “Our current executive branch was conceived of by liberals for the purpose of promulgating liberal policies. … What’s necessary is a complete system overhaul.”
Founders warned about danger of too much presidential power
In fact, the executive branch, like the two other branches, was devised by the framers of our Constitution, to limit power by dividing it. Even Alexander Hamilton, who defended energy in the executive branch, suggested that the path to tyranny was marked when government officials are “obliged to take refuge in the absolute power of a single man.”
James Madison joined Hamilton in warning in The Federalist 48 that “power is of an encroaching nature.” For that reason, The Federalist 51 states, “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.”
It described the paradox facing the framers as this: One must “enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.”
Trump’s 2025 blueprint would end governmental control on a president so he can dominate and control the governed.
Along with divided power, the central constraint that our founding documents create is the overarching legal institution known as the rule of law. That is why Trump’s plan for a radical reorganization of the executive branch starts with ending “the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence from White House political control.”
Controlling the prosecutorial power allows a president to use it to favor friends, destroy enemies and intimidate ordinary citizens tempted to speak out.
That would sound the death knell of American freedom. As John Locke, the 17th century political philosopher who inspired the authors of the Declaration of Independence, wrote, “Wherever law ends, tyranny begins.” Or as Blake Smith put it in an article in Foreign Policy last year, “The bureaucratic ethos is essential to the functioning of the state and the preservation of private life as a separate, unpolitical domain of tolerated freedom.”
At the close of America’s first decade as a constitutional republic, George Washington voluntarily chose not to seek a third term as president to avoid setting the country on the road to the tyranny of lifetime rule by a president. He understood from the revolution against a king that retaining the personal power of one person is the central goal of authoritarianism.
If voters elect Trump president in 2024, he will implement the plan his campaign has purposefully leaked. The outcome is easy to foretell. A bureaucracy purged of those loyal to the Constitution rather than to Trump will send free and fair elections to history’s landfill, along with the Bill of Rights and the freedoms they were designed to protect.
Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College in Massachusetts.Dennis Aftergut, a former federal prosecutor, is counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy.
Authoritarianism Expert Warns Why It’s Critical To Listen To Trump’s Words Right Now
Lee Moran – July 20, 2023
Authoritarianism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat warned on Wednesday that when Donald Trump talks about obliterating and then politicizing the civil service, and seizing control of every aspect of government if he wins the White House in 2024, he really means it.
“Nobody is ever prepared” for an authoritarian takeover of their country, Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University and author of “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present,” told MSNBC’s Ali Velshi.
“They think they are going to be the exception. They don’t listen to the warning signs until it’s too late,” she continued.
But Trump is actually “being very clear” with what he is saying, said Ben-Ghiat.
Last week, a New York Times article said Trump would seek to expand presidential authority “over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House.”
Ben-Ghiat cautioned: “Authoritarians always tell you what they are going to do as a kind of challenge and as a warning, and people don’t listen until it’s too late.”
If Trump wins election again, he will “be finishing the job that he started, and by the way that’s not just destroying democracy internally,” she added. His other main aim was “to take America out of the realm of democratic internationalism and align it with autocracies. That will happen as well.”
