Ted Cruz says he and several GOP colleagues hid out in a supply closet during the Capitol riot
Cheryl Teh – October 25, 2022
Ted Cruz says he and several GOP colleagues hid out in a supply closet during the Capitol riot Sen. Ted Cruz.Drew Angerer/Getty Images
In his new book, Ted Cruz says he hid out in a supply closet during the Capitol riot.
He says he “assembled” a coalition of Republicans in a “back room” to discuss what to do.
Cruz has on different occasions characterized the riot as a peaceful protest and a “terrorist attack.”
Sen. Ted Cruz wrote in his new book that he hid out in a supply closet with several Republican colleagues while rioters poured into the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
In “Justice Corrupted,” Cruz wrote that he and several Republicans, who he did not name, gathered to plan their next steps amid the chaos.
“While we waited for the Capitol to be secured, I assembled our coalition in a back room (really, a supply closet with stacked chairs) to discuss what we should do next,” Cruz wrote.
He added that he thought to himself that he would be “damned” if he allowed a “handful of violent rioters” to prevent him from fulfilling his constitutional responsibility.
“As we evacuated the floor, Mitt Romney turned to me and the other objectors and said with a snarl, ‘This is what you’ve gotten us!’ And the Democrats were even angrier,” Cruz wrote.
Cruz has flip-flopped on how he’s described the January 6 riot. During an appearance on Fox News in May, he called the rioters “peaceful protesters.” And in February, Cruz broke with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, calling it a “mistake” for Republicans like McConnell to describe the Capitol attack as a violent insurrection.
The Texas senator received sharp rebukes from the right after his January 2022 statement. Fox News host Tucker Carlson was one of the first to lash out at Cruz. Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz followed, taunting the Texas lawmaker during a press conference that week, saying that Cruz may “bend over” for the GOP establishment but “they’ll never love” him.
Cruz went on Carlson’s show the same week and walked back his description of the Capitol riot. Speaking with Carlson, Cruz repeatedly said he made a mistake because of “sloppy” and “frankly, dumb” phrasing.
Representatives for Cruz did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment. “Justice Corrupted” was released on October 25.
Jimmy Kimmel Has Blunt Advice For Donald Trump And Marjorie Taylor Greene
Ed Mazza – October 25, 2022
Jimmy Kimmel spotted what he thinks is a surefire way to bring down Donald Trump and the former president’s family business.
The late-night host noted that the Trump Organization’s fraud trial is getting underway in New York, with the company potentially facing up to $1.6 million in fines.
“Which doesn’t seem like much,” Kimmel said. “The irony is, if you really want to take down the Trump Organization, all you have to do is let Trump keep running it.”
Bob Woodward Was Stunned By What Trump Told Young Son Barron About Coronavirus
Lee Moran – October 25, 2022
Watergate journalist Bob Woodward on Monday recalled a comment from former President Donald Trump that led to him being “as stunned as I’ve ever been as a reporter.”
On Monday’s broadcast of “CNN Tonight,” Woodward shared audio of Trump telling him what he told his youngest son, Barron Trump, during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic. The audio was part of recorded interviews for Woodward’s 2020 book “Rage,” now released separately as “The Trump Tapes.”
Talking to Woodward on March 19, 2020, Trump said Barron, then 13, asked what was going on and he answered: “I said, it came out of China, Barron. Pure and simple. It came out of China. And it should’ve been stopped. And to be honest with you, Barron, they should’ve let it be known it was a problem two months earlier … the world wouldn’t have a problem. We could have stopped it easily.”
“CNN Tonight” host Jake Tapper acknowledged that blame did lie on the Chinese government for covering up the initial spread of COVID-19. But he reminded viewers of how Trump himself had been warned of its potential dangers ― and chose to do nothing.
At the time of that particular interview with Trump, Woodward said he had no idea of the warning the then-president had received from his own national security advisers about the virus.
When Woodward learned of the warning, he said he listened to the tape again and concluded: “My God, Trump is conning not just me but his son and he is laying out, ‘Oh this could have been fixed, the Chinese could have done something about it.’” ”
“Donald Trump could have done something about it by being honest and warning the public that he as president has constitutional and moral responsibility to do,” Woodward continued.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
Trump discussed nuclear weapon systems with Woodward
Julia Mueller – October 25, 2022
Former President Trump openly discussed nuclear weapons with veteran Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, according to newly released audio of their interviews.
“I have built a weapon system that nobody’s ever had in this country before. We have stuff that you haven’t even seen or heard about. We have stuff that Putin and Xi have never heard about before,” Trump said in a tape aired on CNN’s “Tonight.”
Woodward reportedly looked into Trump’s claims about the U.S. nuclear arsenal, and a source expressed surprise that the former president had shared details about the weapons with the journalist.
“It’s true. Xi and Putin would not know about it. But why is Trump bragging about it?” Woodward said Monday in conversation with CNN’s Jake Tapper.
“I once said to Trump, because he was kind of asking, ‘what do you think the president’s job is?’ And I said, it is to ascertain the next stage of good for a majority of people in the country, not one party or a bunch of interest groups, and then develop a comprehensive plan and execute it. And he said: ‘Oh, that’s good. That’s great.’ Never did he do this,” Woodward said.
Woodward is promoting his new audiobook, “The Trump Tapes: Bob Woodward’s Twenty Interviews with President Donald Trump.”
In some of the interviews, Trump can also be heard discussing the COVID-19 pandemic and what he described as his “good chemistry” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
“He doesn’t understand democracy,” Woodward said of Trump in the CNN interview, during which he also knocked the former president for his inaction during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The United States was one of the rare countries formed on an idea. And that idea is democracy. He doesn’t understand that the Jan. 6 committee has proven that. He does not understand that he’s got to take care of the people. He’s got to give them advice, warning. And he didn’t do this.”
Trevor Noah Exposes ‘MAGA Alien’ Kari Lake For 1 ‘Particularly S**tty’ Betrayal
Ed Mazza – October 25, 2022
Trevor Noah Exposes ‘MAGA Alien’ Kari Lake For 1 ‘Particularly S**tty’ Betrayal
“Daily Show” host Trevor Noah said Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor in Arizona, is “almost not the same person” she was just a few years ago.
“I wouldn’t be shocked if we found out that the real Kari Lake is locked up in a basement somewhere while this MAGA alien pretends to be her,” Noah said, adding:
“This is a bigger transformation than the drag queens that she suddenly hates. Which, by the way, is particularly shitty. It’s already horrible to turn on any friend, but betraying the one who taught you how to get your contouring on point? That is unforgivable!”
“The Methodist Health System Family is heartbroken at the loss of two of our beloved team members,” Methodist Hospital executives said in a statement. “Our entire organization is grieving this unimaginable tragedy. During this devastating time, we want to ensure our patients and employees that Methodist Dallas Medical Center is safe, and there is no ongoing threat. Our prayers are with our lost co-workers and their families, as well as our entire Methodist family. We appreciate the community’s support during this difficult time.”
In the aftermath, as loved ones and community members mourn the losses, nurses unions are demanding better protection for health care workers.
“It is devastating to learn about the loss of our fellow nurses’ lives in Dallas, Texas,” said R.N. Jean Ross, president of National Nurses United, the country’s largest union and professional association of registered nurses with almost 225,000 members nationwide. “Our hearts go out to the families and colleagues of the nurses who died. No one should lose their life because they went to work.”
Texas Nurses Association CEO Serena Bumpus says the state’s nursing community is overcome with “sadness, disbelief and anger.”
“We mourn for the victim’s families, but also for the staff at Dallas Methodist,” Bumpus told the Star-Telegram. “The loss of their co-workers in this senseless tragedy is difficult to understand. There were still patients who had to be cared for, babies to be delivered etc. So, many went right back work. It’s difficult to process a loss when you don’t have an opportunity to stop and reflect.”
Health care workers face increased threats
Concern about violence against health care workers has been renewed with recent incidents like the one in Dallas. Over the summer, a shooting at a Tulsa medical facility on June 1 left four people dead.
“There is an epidemic of violence against nurses and other health care workers,” Ross told the Star-Telegram.
Health care and social service workers are five times as likely to be injured from violence in their workplace than other workers, TIME magazine reported. Over the last decade, the number of such injuries has risen dramatically —from 6.4 incidents per 10,000 workers annually in 2011 to 10.3 per 10,000 in 2020.
It’s become even worse during the COVID-19 pandemic, health care workers say. In September, nearly a third of respondents to a National Nurses United survey said they’d experienced an increase in workplace violence.
“It was only a matter of time before we experienced a tragedy like this,” Bumpus says. “Nurses deal with violence from patients and their families regularly.”
Nurses are often the targets of physical assault. The violence-related injury rate for registered nurses is more than three times higher than for workers overall, according to NNU. A September Press Ganey study found that an average of two nurses were assaulted every hour at work. Nurses often experience workplace violence from patients and family members/visitors due to several reasons — illness, medications, high-trauma situations, altered states caused by memory loss, dementia, mental illness, and delays in needed care. Because there’s a nursing shortage, nurses often have no choice but to go back to work right away.
These high rates of workplace violence contribute significantly to high rates of stress, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, burnout, moral distress, and turnover among nurses.
Underreporting of workplace violence incidents is a significant issue, according to NNU, so the actual statistics may be even higher. Underreporting can be due to pressure from employers not to report, fear of retaliation or to lack of employer response when reports have been made.
“Nurses need a safe place to work so that patients have a safe place to heal. When nurses aren’t safe, patients aren’t safe,” Ross said. “Health care workplace violence can impact everyone in the vicinity—including patients and their families. Everyone is a patient at some time in their lives, so we need to make sure our hospitals are safe.”
A safer work environment
It’s the hospital’s responsibility to provide a safe work environment, NNU says.
“Management needs to protect the spaces where people come to be healed by stopping physical violence and threats from ever occurring in the first place,” Ross said. “Because many hospitals fail to implement workplace violence prevention plans, we need a national, enforceable standard to hold health care employers accountable to keeping nurses, other health care workers, and our patients safe from violence in the workplace.”
The unions want the U.S. Senate to pass the Workplace Violence for Health Care and Social Service Workers Act (HR 1195/S 4182). The bill passed the House last year and was introduced in the Senate this year. It would create national minimum requirements for health care employers to implement research-proven measures to prevent workplace violence, including safe staffing, and improve reporting and tracking.
Hospitals need to ensure that units are staffed appropriately, NNU says. Safe staffing gives more time to recognize and deescalate potentially violent behavior, and ensures that patients get the care they need when they need it.
“Health care employers could prevent workplace violence, through unit-specific prevention plans, environmental and administrative controls like safer staffing levels, hands-on training, and reporting and tracking systems, but many employers fail to put necessary measures in place,” Ross said.
Listen to the audio of Bob Woodward’s interviews with Trump that made him think of the former president as an ‘unparalleled danger’ rather than simply incompetent
Hannah Getahun – October 23, 2022
Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward and former President Donald Trump.William B. Plowman/NBC NewsWire via Getty Images and Anna Moneymaker-Pool/Getty Images
Bob Woodward said he changed his mind about Trump after re-listening to his own interviews.
Woodward previously described the former president as the “wrong man” for the presidency.
But “Trump is an unparalleled danger,” Woodward wrote on Sunday in the Washington Post.
Ahead of the release of his never-before-heard audio interviews with former President Donald Trump, Watergate journalist Bob Woodward wrote that after listening to the unreleased tapes again, he concluded that Trump was an “unparalleled danger” rather than just the “wrong man” to be president.
“The Trump Tapes: Bob Woodward’s Twenty Interviews with President Trump,” set to be released Oct. 25, is an audiobook of previously unreleased conversations between the veteran journalist and the businessman-turned-politician.
In an op-ed for the Washington Post released Sunday, which includes previously unreleased snippets of “The Trump Tapes,” Woodward wrote that he had concluded his 2020 book on Trump by calling him “the wrong man for the job.”
Woodward now says his assessment of Trump did not accurately describe the former president.
“Two years later, I realize I didn’t go far enough. Trump is an unparalleled danger,” Woodward wrote.
He continued: “When you listen to him on the range of issues from foreign policy to the virus to racial injustice, it’s clear he did not know what to do. Trump was overwhelmed by the job. He was largely disconnected from the needs and leadership expectations of the public and his absolute self-focus became the presidency.”
Woodward explains in his piece for the Post that he decided to release the tapes to capture Trump’s personality in a way that the written word couldn’t. “Trump’s voice magnifies his presence,” Woodward said.
The tapes allow listeners to hear Trump repeatedly interrupting and at times mocking Woodward as they speak about the most pressing policy issues of his presidency, including his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, which Woodward described as Trump’s “greatest failure.”
In clips of the Trump Tapes previously released by CNN, Trump can be heard talking about his admiration for strongmen leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean President Kim Jong Un. In another clip, Trump also bragged to Woodward that no other president was “tougher” than him when faced with impeachment.
A representative for Trump did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
US politics’ post-shame era: how Republicans became the party of hate
David Smith in Washington – October 23, 2022
Photograph: Jeff Swensen/Getty Images
Republicans were in trouble. Mitt Romney, their US presidential nominee, had been crushed by Barack Obama. The party commissioned an “autopsy” report that proposed a radical rethink. “If we want ethnic minority voters to support Republicans,” it said, “we have to engage them and show our sincerity.”
Ten years after Romney’s loss, Republicans are fighting their first election since the presidency of Donald Trump. But far from entering next month’s midterms as the party of tolerance, diversity and sincerity, critics say, they have shown itself to be unapologetically the party of hate.
Perhaps nothing captures the charge more eloquently than a three-word post that appeared on the official Twitter account for Republicans on the House of Representatives’ judiciary committee – ranking member Jim Jordan – on 6 October. It said, simply and strangely: “Kanye. Elon. Trump.”
The first of this unholy trinity referred to Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, who has recently drawn fierce criticism for wearing a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt at Paris fashion week and for antisemitic messages on social media, including one that said he would soon go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE”.
The second was billionaire Elon Musk, who published a pro-Russian peace plan for Ukraine and denied reports that he had been speaking to Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin.
The third was former president Donald Trump, who wrote last weekend that American Jews have offered insufficient praise of his policies toward Israel, warning that they need to “get their act together” before “it is too late!” The comment played into the antisemitic prejudice that American Jews have dual loyalties to the US and Israel.
It was condemned by the White House as “insulting” and “antisemitic”. But when historian Michael Beschloss tweeted: “Do any Republican Party leaders have any comment at all on Trump’s admonition to American Jews?”, the silence was deafening.
Jim Jordan, who recently tweeted ‘Kanye. Elon. Trump’, speaks at a rally held by Trump in Youngstown, Ohio, in September. Photograph: Gaelen Morse/Reuters
Republicans have long been accused of coded bigotry and nodding and winking to their base. There was an assumption of rules of political etiquette and taboos that could not be broken. Now, it seems, politics has entered a post-shame era where anything goes.
Jared Holt, an extremism researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue thinktank, said: “The type of things they would say in closed rooms full of donors they’re just saying out in the open now. It’s a cliche but I always remember what I heard growing up which is, when people tell you who they are, you should believe them.”
The examples are becoming increasingly difficult to downplay or ignore. Earlier this month Tommy Tuberville, a Republican senator for Alabama, told an election rally in Nevada that Democrats support reparations for the descendants of enslaved people because “they think the people that do the crime are owed that”. The remark was widely condemned for stereotyping African Americans as people committing crimes.
And Marjorie Taylor Greene, a congresswoman from Georgia, echoed the rightwing “great replacement” theory when she told a rally in Arizona: “Joe Biden’s 5 million illegal aliens are on the verge of replacing you, replacing your jobs and replacing your kids in school and, coming from all over the world, they’re also replacing your culture.”
Such comments have handed ammunition to Democrats as they battle to preserve wafer thin majorities in the House and Senate. Although the party is facing electoral headwinds from inflation, crime and border security, it has plenty of evidence that Trump remains dominant among Republicans – a huge motivator for Democratic turnout.
Indeed, Trump did more than anyone to turn the 2013 autopsy on its head. In his first run for president, he referred to Mexicans as criminals, drug dealers and rapists and pledged to build a border wall and impose a Muslim ban. Opponents suggest that he liberated Republicans to say the unsayable, rail against so-called political correctness and give supporters the thrill of transgression.
Antjuan Seawright, a senior adviser to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said: “He has been the creator of the permission slip and the validator of the permission slip. For many of them, he is their trampoline to jump even further with their right wing red meat racial rhetoric.”
Beyond Republicans’ headline-grabbing stars, the trend is also manifest at the grassroots. In schools, the party has launched a sweeping assault on what teachers can say or teach about race, gender identity, LGBTQ+ issues and American history. An analysis by the Washington Post newspaper found that 25 states have passed 64 laws reshaping what students can learn and do at school over the past three academic years.
There are examples of the new extremism all over the country. The New York Republican Club will on Monday host an event with Katie Hopkins, a British far-right political commentator who has compared migrants to cockroaches and was repeatedly retweeted by Trump before both were banned by the social media platform.
In Idaho, long a deeply conservative state, Dorothy Moon, the new chairwoman of the state Republican party, is accused of close associations with militia groups and white nationalists. Last month she appeared on Trump ally Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast to accuse the state’s Pride festival and parade of sexualising children.
A recent headline in the Idaho Capital Sun newspaper stated: “Hate makes a comeback in Idaho, this time with political support.”
Michelle Vincent, a senior adviser to Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stephen Heidt, noted the such currents have long been a problem in Idaho but said: “Trump made hate OK. He made bad behavior seem OK because of the extremes of what he was doing. They started emulating him. People were were abused here during Black Lives Matter protests. We have so much militia here and they are out of control.”
In many cases, the naked bigotry goes hand in hand with Trump’s “big lie” that the last election was stolen from him due to widespread voter fraud. A New York Times investigation found that about 70% of Republican midterm candidates running for Congress in next month’s midterm elections have either questioned or flat-out denied the results of the 2020 election.
They can now count on support from Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman and presidential candidate who in 2017 met with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and dismissed his entire opposition as “terrorists” Gabbard this week defected to the Republicans and campaigned for Kari Lake, the Republican nominee for governor of Arizona and an unabashed defender of the big lie.
Another election denier is Doug Mastriano, a political novice running for governor of Pennsylvania with the help of far-right figures. He was outside the US Capitol during the January 6 insurrection and photographed watching demonstrators attacking police before he supposedly walked away.
Mastriano has repeatedly criticised his opponent, attorney general Josh Shapiro, for attending and sending his children to what he brands a “privileged, exclusive, elite” school, suggesting that this demonstrates Shapiro’s “disdain for people like us”. It is a Jewish day school where students receive both secular and religious instruction.
After a long courtship, Trump himself has in recent months begun embracing the antisemitic conspiracy theory QAnon in earnest. In September, using his Truth Social platform, the former president reposted an image of himself wearing a Q lapel pin overlaid with the words “The Storm is Coming”. A QAnon song has been played at the end of several his campaign rallies.
Ron Klein, chair of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said: “It’s very unfortunate that the Republican party is either silent and complicit in this antisemitic language that’s being put forward by Donald Trump and others that align with him. But it’s very indicative of a Republican party that does not want to take on rightwing extremists.”
Klein, a former congressman, added: “Some members of Republican party did use dog whistles and symbolic language to make their points about minorities, including the Jewish community, and that was very troubling. But the era of Donald Trump has just lifted the rock under which these people now feel it’s OK and even helpful for them to make these kinds of statements and use these kinds of words to gain political power and political stature, which is very troubling in our American political system.”
The 2013 autopsy now looks like a blip, an outlier, in half a century of Republican politics. Richard Nixon’s 1968 “law and order” message stoked racial fear and resentment in the south. Ronald Reagan demonised “welfare queens” in 1976 and, four years later, launched his election campaign with a speech lauding “states’ rights” near the site of the “Mississippi Burning” murders – seen by many as a nod to southern states that resented the federal government enforcing civil rights.
A political action committee linked to George HW Bush’s campaign in 1988 paid for an attack advert blaming Democratic rival Michael Dukakis for the case of Willie Horton, an African American convict who committed rape during a furlough from prison. Lee Atwater, Bush’s campaign manager, bragged that he would turn Horton into “Dukakis’s running mate”.
I don’t think Donald Trump made people more racist or antisemitic; I think he gave them permission to express it
Stuart Stevens, veteran Republican campaign strategist
The Atwater playbook is being deployed again in Senate midterm races as Republicans Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Mehmet Oz of Pennsylvania run attack ads accusing their Democratic opponents, Mandela Barnes and John Fetterman, of being soft on crime, often with images of Black prison inmates.
Stuart Stevens, a veteran Republican campaign strategist who wrote a withering indictment of the party’s trajectory, It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump, said: “I don’t think Donald Trump made people more racist or antisemitic; I think he gave them permission to express it.”
Stevens, a senior adviser at the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, continued: “It’s a party of white grievance and anger and hate is an element of that.”
Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist and former Republican congressional aide, agreed: “The real consequence of Donald Trump’s presidency is it did give permission to so many people within the party who used to try to mask or hide their racism. They now feel like they can proudly wear it and they do.”
With hate crimes on the rise across America, there are fears that comments by Trump, Tuberville, Greene and others will lead to threats and violence that put lives in danger. Bardella added: “We learned after January 6 that, to the Republican party faithful, these aren’t just words, they are instructions. It’s a very dangerous development that one of the major political parties in America has made the conscious decision to wrap itself in the embrace of white nationalism.”
Kremlin Says Everyone Must Suffer So Putin Will Win
Allison Quinn – October 22, 2022
Sputnik/Gavriil Grigorov/Pool via Reuters
With dozens of newly drafted troops already dead and Russian troops laying the groundwork for a retreat from a key Ukrainian city, the Kremlin has now revealed it is hoping to give its war a second wind by making ordinary Russians feel it as much as possible.
Sergei Kirienko, the first deputy chief of staff of the presidential administration, said as much Saturday in a speech to a national conference of teachers, declaring that the war the Kremlin has until now doggedly insisted is only a “special military operation” must become a “people’s war.”
“Russia has always won any war, if that war became a people’s [war]. We will definitely win this war: both the ‘hot’ one, and the economic one, and the very psychological, information war that is being waged against us. But for that it is necessary that it is precisely a people’s war, so that every person feels his own involvement. So that every person has the opportunity to contribute to our common victory,” Kirienko said.
His comments raised eyebrows on social media, where many noted this appeared to be the first time the presidential administration had dropped its absurd “special operation” euphemism, and others pointed out that millions of Russians had already fled the country in protest.
Even as Kirienko made his comments, authorities in Belgorod on the border with Ukraine revealed they have erected concrete barriers to ostensibly keep the region safe from Ukrainians. And in Moscow, multiple media reports said local authorities had begun preparing bomb shelters in schools and hospitals—perhaps a theatrical move aimed at stoking fears of an attack in the capital.
Meanwhile, just one month after Vladimir Putin summoned tens of thousands of citizens to face death for him on the battlefield, at least 41 newly drafted troops have already been killed, according to a tally by Mediazona and the BBC. Among them were some who, by law, were not even eligible for the draft—including a Raiffeisenbank employee named Timur Izmailov, who was apparently tricked into visiting his local military recruitment office and then died six days after being tossed on to the frontline.
Bizarrely, Kirienko insisted that the “most important battle” for Russia right now is the “battle for the youth”—a strange priority to name given the thousands of youth already killed to prop up Putin’s delusional war against Ukraine.
An unnamed Russian soldier’s phone call to his mother offered perhaps the most succinct reply to Kirienko’s vision of a “people’s war.”
“Fucking scumbags! This fucking government pisses me off so much! They are so dumb, I am in shock,” he told her from the frontline in Ukraine, according to audio released by Ukrainian intelligence.
“This is how it will be: half the country will be jailed and half the country will go to war.”
After his mother tried to reassure him by predicting Russia will soon take land from Poland, her son shot back that it is Russia that should be worried about losing territory now.
“Yes, yes, yes, with this fucking government it’s already been made clear.”
‘We are going to be homeless’: How mobile homeowners are being forced out in metro Phoenix
Catherine Reagor, Juliette Rihl and Kunle Falayi, – October 22, 2022
Homeowners in mobile home parks across metro Phoenix are getting evicted.
Many own the mobile home but rent the small lot it sets on.
“This is more than just a notice to get out,” said Priscilla Salazar, whose family has lived 11 years in the Weldon Park mobile home community near 16th Street and Osborn Road. “We are going to be homeless.”
Like Valley apartments, some mobile home park owners are raising rents when leases expire and evicting tenants who can’t pay.
In other cases, owners are shutting the parks down so the land can be used for something else, including housing that mobile homeowners can’t afford. Some mobile home park buyers are clearing out tenants and flipping the infill sites for big profits.
Mobile homes have long been one of the most affordable housing options for metro Phoenix residents, but the growing number of parks closing or becoming pricier is putting many residents in a bind. New affordable parks aren’t being built, and many mobile homeowners can’t afford to live elsewhere or move their homes to other communities in the Valley, alarming housing advocates and prompting government officials to seek solutions.
In mid-September, tenants of Weldon Court received a notice that their park would be closing. It had been sold for $5.48 million to an investor from California just days before. Tenants were given six months to move out.
The Weldon Court mobile home park was recently sold, and mobile homeowners in the community were given six months to move out.
“This is our little mini Phoenix. This is our community,” said Salazar, whose children have grown up in the park. Many tenants are low-income families or seniors on fixed incomes.
Residents of Weldon Court and two other Valley mobile home parks that are evicting tenants or raising rents recently protested at the Arizona Capitol and Phoenix City Council chambers. The other two parks with residents fighting their landlords are Las Casitas — which is now called Beacon — at 19th Avenue and Buckeye Road, and Periwinkle, at 27th Avenue and Colter Street.
Mobile home park buying spree
Like with affordable Phoenix-area apartments, investors are snatching up mobile home parks in the Valley.
Since the beginning of 2021, at least 30 trailer, manufactured and mobile home parks have sold for almost $260 million, according to an Arizona Republic analysis of real estate records.
The Valley has been a hub for factory-built homes since after World War II. Many GIs returning home headed to the Southwest. Some hitched a travel trailer to their cars and put down roots and wheels in metro Phoenix.
Most of the metro Phoenix mobile home parks to sell during the past five years are prime infill sites.
The mobile home park buying and closure spree comes as Arizona is facing a shortage of 270,000 homes.
“It’s horrible for people who own their mobile home and have been living in a park for decades,” said Pamela Bridge, director of litigation and advocacy at Community Legal Services. “Investors are raising rents and our office is seeing so many more evictions in older parks.”
She said many longtime residents in Phoenix-area mobile home parks have paid off their homes and made improvements on them, but they can’t afford to move them and can’t find other parks where they can rent a space.
“These people have done nothing wrong,” she said. “We need to leave these mobile home park owners in stable situations.”
Jerry Suter, an 83-year-old veteran who has lived at the Periwinkle Mobile Home Park for 28 years, planned to live out the rest of his days there. He called the park’s closing “devastating” and “traumatic.” With an income of $1,290 in Social Security payments each month, he said he can’t afford to live anywhere else.
Grand Canyon University bought the park six years ago, decided to close it and plans to build student housing.
“They’re going to literally have to drag me out of there,” Suter said. “I’m not giving up my trailer.”
Phoenix has about 20,000 mobile homes, which represents about 3.1% of all of the area’s homes, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That’s far more than the number of mobile homes that can be found in cities with similar populations, including Houston, San Diego and Philadelphia.
But the supply of mobile homes and parks is shrinking. About 5% of Phoenix homes were in mobile home parks in 2018.
The rapid disappearance of mobile home parks is due, in part, to transactions like this: In 2018, homebuilder Taylor Morrison bought the former Scottsdale Wheel Inn Ranch RV and Mobile Home Park, where residents were evicted by another owner a few years before. Similar scenarios with investors buying the parks, evicting the tenants and then selling to a developer are happening across metro Phoenix.
The Phoenix city manager’s office recently created a task force to research potential solutions to the mobile home dilemma. The task force will present its findings to the City Council next month.
District 8 Councilmember Carlos Garcia, whose district includes Las Casitas mobile home park, said he wants to find a way to keep people in their homes or, if the evictions move forward, find new places for the residents to live.
“To me, all options are on the table,” Garcia said. “Priority is to make sure these families don’t end up on the streets.”
Sylvia Herrera (left) and Raquel Hernandez meet during an emergency meeting at the Beacon mobile home park (formerly Las Casitas mobile home park) on Sept. 20, 2022, in Phoenix. The residents were asked to sign a four-month lease and are worried about being evicted by the new owner. Hernandez recently bought her mobile home in the park.
Residents of Beacon mobile home park were given a new lease in late September. Their rent will increase by 88% over the next four years, it said.
Elvia Ramirez, who lives in the park with her children, started looking for somewhere else to move. But the single mother of four, who works as a receptionist and has lived in the park since she was a teenager, hasn’t been able to find something within her budget.
“Even the mobile homes are too expensive now,” said Ramirez, 33. If she doesn’t secure a new home, she said, she and her kids will probably have to move in with family.
The median price of a U.S. mobile home is now $61,400, according to a LendingTree study. That’s up 35% since 2016.
Many mobile homes are several decades old, and some are even trailers, the oldest type of mobile house. Some of the parks in metro Phoenix sold since early last year are more than 70 years old.
Many parks won’t rent to owners of older mobile homes because their houses may not be up to code. Also, some with additions can’t be moved without damaging them.
The typical rent for a mobile home lot in the Phoenix area was about $400 to $500 a month in 2019, according to housing advocates. Now, rents are rising above $1,000 per lot in some Valley parks.
Help available to mobile homeowners
Arizona has a fund to help, but some mobile homeowners don’t hear about it, and others cannot fully benefit from it because of the age of their residences.
For some owners, the fund isn’t enough to help them move, so they take less than $2,000 in state funds to walk away from their mobile home.
Under Arizona law, mobile home park residents who are displaced because of redevelopment are eligible to receive up to $12,500 from the state’s relocation fund.
But many of the mobile homes are so old, they cannot be moved to another park, either because they would fall apart or because they don’t meet current wind-resistance codes.
Residents who have to leave their homes in place because they can’t be moved can get only $1,875 from the fund, which is managed by the Arizona Housing Department.
Many residents and housing advocates said more help is needed.
“Now I have to abandon my home and give it to the university,” Suter said. “What am I gonna buy for $1,875?”
Patricia Dominguez said her family recently spent $4,000 on a new roof for their home — more than double what they will be reimbursed if they abandon it.
“What they’re offering is nothing compared to the love, and the blood, and the sweat and tears that we’ve all put into our unit,” said Dominguez. Her mother and sister, Salazar, live in Weldon Court.
Community organizer Sylvia Herrera, who is working with residents of all three parks to get more time and money before eviction, said the state relocation fund is “deceiving” because many people can’t move their trailers and therefore can’t access the full relocation amount.
“These are not really resources if you can’t qualify,” she said.
Tara Brunetti, assistant deputy director of the Arizona Department of Housing’s Manufactured Housing Division, said park owners must notify the agency if they plan on closing a park and give tenants 180 days’ notice.
“That gives us time to reach out to the residents” and offer them help, she said. “We are definitely seeing more applications for the fund now.”
The fund has more than $7.6 million to help mobile home park residents.
Sylvia Herrera leads an emergency meeting of residents at the Beacon mobile home park (formerly Las Casitas mobile home park) on Sept. 20, 2022, in Phoenix. The residents were asked to sign a four-month lease and are worried about being evicted by the new owner.
The state program does offer more money than it did five years ago, but it took a legislative move to get the increase.
Mobile homeowners and their advocates are hoping for a different kind of fix.
Some cities, including Portland, Oregon, and Austin, Texas, have updated their zoning laws to help prevent mobile home residents from displacement.
A 2018 Austin city ordinance zoned existing mobile home parks as a “mobile home residence district.” That means if the landowner wanted to use the land for a different purpose, they would need City Council approval to change the zoning.
In 2018, when a new owner began evicting longtime residents from the Tempe Mobile Home Park near Arizona State University, the city of Tempe stepped in and helped get rent concessions from the landlord. Tempe also set up meetings for the tenants to negotiate with the new owner and get aid from the Arizona Housing Department.
That former mobile home park is now high-end apartments.
“I believe there should be laws or community work in cities and counties that come up with long-term solutions for people in the park. These people are a vital part of our community,” said Bridge, of Community Legal Services. “We want their children to remain in schools and for the parents to be able to get to their jobs nearby.”
Then, big Wall Street-backed investment firms were behind most of the sales. Now, big and small investors are driving the trend, but almost all are out-of-state buyers.
The biggest Phoenix-area mobile home park sale since the beginning of 2021 was $84.5 million for the Royal Palm park in Phoenix at 19th and Dunlap avenues. Property records show Chicago-based Continental Communities is the new manager.
Bridge said she has come across several cases of new out-of-state mobile home park owners not giving tenants or the state enough move-out notice.
Mobile home evictions are tracked differently than other rental evictions, and the data to tally the total isn’t available in Arizona.
“Because of the housing crisis, there is no affordable housing. Trailer parks are the most affordable housing right now that you can find,” Herrera said. “People are just trying to retain that, trying to hold on to living in mobile home parks.”
Coverage of housing insecurity on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Arizona Community Foundation.
