Flooding could shut down a quarter of all critical infrastructure in the U.S.
Andrew Freedman October 11, 2021
About 25%, or 1 in 4 units of critical infrastructure, such as police stations, airports and hospitals, are at risk of being rendered inoperable due to flooding, a comprehensive new report finds. The report points to climate change for heightening risks.
Why it matters: The new national inventory of flood risk during the next thirty years, which takes into account climate change-driven increases in sea levels and heavy precipitation events, is the first of its kind.
The report, from the First Street Foundation, a nonprofit flood research and communications group, presents a stark warning to communities of all sizes — the U.S. simply isn’t ready for the climate of today, let alone the extreme weather and climate events that are coming in the next few decades.
Specifically, during the next 30 years as the climate continues to warm, the flood risk situation will grow more dire, the report warns.
By the numbers: Consider these aggregate statistics from the “Infrastructure on the Brink” report:
About 2 million miles of road are currently at risk of becoming “impassable” due to flooding.
Nearly a million commercial properties, 17% of all social infrastructure facilities, and 12.4 million residential properties also have “operational risk,” according to the First Street analysis.
Over the next 30 years, the typical lifetime of a home mortgage, about 1.2 million residential properties, and 2,000 pieces of critical infrastructure (airports, hospitals, fire stations, hazardous waste sites and power plants) will also be at risk of becoming inoperable due to flooding from sea level rise, heavy rainfall, and in some cases a combination of the two, the report finds.
Infrastructure at risk of becoming inundated due to flooding in today’s climate. Courtesy: First Street Foundation
Context: The report comes during a year that has already featured a record 18 separate billion-dollar weather and climate disasters in the first nine months of the year, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
According to the First Street analysis, which uses an open-access flood model that incorporates coastal and inland flooding, the most at risk county in the U.S. for flood risk is tucked into the extreme southwestern corner of Louisiana. Cameron Parish is sparsely populated, with just 5,600 people as of the 2020 Census, but it’s a hotbed of flood risks.
Of note: In Cameron Parish, the report shows that nearly 99% of residential properties, and similarly sky high counts of commercial and critical infrastructure structures, are already at risk of flooding so severe that it would knock them out of service.
Six of the seven top counties for risk are in the New Orleans area, Jeremy Porter, head of research and development at First Street, told Axios.
The communities most at risk are located in Louisiana, Florida, Kentucky and West Virginia, with 17 out of the 20 most at-risk counties in the country located in those states, the analysis concluded.
The city slated to see one of the biggest jumps in vulnerability between now and 2050 is Norfolk, Virginia, which is home to the world’s largest naval base, among other military installations.
How it works: Human-caused climate change is increasing sea levels around the world, but seas are rising especially quickly in the Mid-Atlantic region due largely to peculiarities in ocean currents.
In addition, Warming ocean and air temperatures are also translating into added water vapor in the atmosphere that can fuel stronger storms with heavier downpours.
The most recent report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found increasing evidence tying global warming to more extreme precipitation events.
What they’re saying: “Our nation’s infrastructure is not built to a standard that protects against the level of flood risk we face today, let alone how those risks will grow over the next 30 years as the climate changes,” said Matthew Eby, founder and executive director of the First Street Foundation, in a statement.
Little did the 39-year-old Atlanta Democrat know, it was the beginning of her role as one of the country’s earliest opponents of the “Big Lie,” false claims about election fraud.
Nguyen gained national notice last December at a state legislative hearing for a 12-minute takedown of then-President Donald Trump’s campaign lawyers, who sought to overturn the Peach State’s tally.
“Certainly, the alarm bells have been ringing prior to this year,” she told USA TODAY.
Trump tried a more direct approach in January, when he unsuccessfully pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger during a phone call to “find” enough votes to change the outcome.
Raffensperger has weathered a backlash from the former president and his allies, namely U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga., who spearheads a primary campaign to oust Raffensperger.
That is one reason Nguyen decided to launch her own bid for Georgia’s chief election officer.
“If we do not elect secretaries of state who are unwilling to overturn the results of elections – no matter what those results are – we are in huge trouble,” she said.
In the 2022 midterms, secretaries of state contests are emerging as just as important as who controls governors’ mansions or Congress but with more direct ramifications for overseeing elections – including the 2024 presidential race.
Georgia state Rep. Bee Nguyen speaks to a group of demonstrators gathered in Atlanta to show support for Asian and Pacific Islander communities on March 20, 2021. Demonstrations have taken place across the United States after a series of shootings at three spas, on Tuesday, in the Atlanta area left eight people dead, six of whom were Asian women.
It’s been almost a year since President Joe Biden won the White House.
Biden won the 2020 presidential race by roughly 7 million votes nationwide in the popular vote and 74 electoral votes.
Yet there remains a persistent belief among many right-leaning voters — dubbed the “Big Lie” by Democratic and Republican critics for those who believe in the conspiracy theories — that the 2020 election was “rigged” against Trump.
That, in turn, has stoked interest in secretary of state roles, which typically oversee election administration and certify the results.
In at least four swing states, GOP candidates whom Trump has either endorsed or supported are coordinating their efforts at the behest of those in the former president’s orbit.
A common thread among those candidates: They have questioned the 2020 voting process, if not outright said the outcome was stolen.
At least three Trump-approved candidates met in Dallas last week to discuss election integrity – a favorite topic among Trump and his allies when they attack, without evidence, the legitimacy of the 2020 results.
For voters, the effort among the Trump faction to corner secretary of state positions means more pressure to understand down-ballot races beyond congressional and gubernatorial races or risk voting in officials who could invalidate citizens’ ballots.
Democrats will face more pressure to hone their messaging, reinforcing the legitimacy of past results as well as ringing the alarm about what’s at stake in the future.
Many liberals contend the focus on state-level roles is part of a larger strategy to undermine or steal the 2024 presidential contest, while others fret it could lead to violent insurrections like the one at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Supporters of President Donald Trump scale the west wall of the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6.
The Big Lie persists
“I will tell you that I do not believe that Joe Biden was legitimately elected,” Boris Epshteyn, a former special assistant to Trump, said in an interview.
Polling this year has shown the belief that the 2020 election was corrupted by fraud is growing, and not just among the GOP.
In a Reuters/Ipsos poll in May, 56% of Republican respondents said they believed the 2020 presidential race was marred by illegal votes. Roughly 25% of all respondents said they held the same belief.
CNN released a survey last month that found 78% of Republicans said Biden did not “legitimately” win enough votes. It showed 36% of Americans saying he did not win.
First-time voter Alexis Gresham, 23, casts her ballot Nov. 3, 2020, at Clarke Central High School in Athens, Ga.
They also fertilized Republican primaries in next year’s midterm elections for a crop of secretary of state candidates in crucial battleground states who are wedded to Trump’s claims about the election.
At least two-thirds of the 15 declared contenders seeking to be the Republican nominee for secretary of state in five crucial battlegrounds – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin – have either said the 2020 election was stolen or cast doubt on the results, according to a Reuters investigation.
‘America First’ secretaries in 2022
In Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and Michigan, Republican secretary of state candidates are in regular communication and formed a coalition backed by Trump allies to win in 2022.
Those four states total 49 electoral votes among them and would have changed the 2020 outcome had they all gone for Trump.
“We’re trying to get America First secretaries of state elected throughout the country … we’re concentrating in the swing states,” said Jim Marchant, a Republican candidate for Nevada secretary of state.
Voters typically struggle to name who is on the ballot for secretary of state in their backyard, but the country’s debate about election integrity and voting rights has changed much of that before the midterms.
Kyle Kondik, managing editor of the Crystal Ball, a political analysis newsletter at the University of Virginia, said these races are part of the national conversation as much as elections for Congress or governor.
“Election administration in general has become a bigger topic because of Donald Trump’s frankly irresponsible claims about the integrity of the election, but also Democrats and others defending themselves against those claims,” he said.
Marchant told USA TODAY the idea for coordination came from within Trump’s circle.
“When (the Trump people) asked me to run for secretary of state, they asked me to put together this coalition,” he said. “It’s something that would help us fundraise … and then adopt certain policies that we all want to see in secretary of state offices.”
The group supports voter ID laws and “aggressive” poll watchers, he said, who can more closely monitor election counts at the local level.
Poll workers, poll watchers and voters pack the gymnasium to vote during the 2020 presidential race at Denby High School in Detroit on Nov. 3, 2020. COVID-19 did not deter voters.
Marchant declined to name which Trump allies helped herd the candidates into their coalition but indicated they were “people that are pretty, pretty influential,” including individuals who speak to the former president directly.
Common threads among Trump’s picks
Trump spokeswoman Liz Harrington did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the former president’s involvement with the coalition, but Trump’s picks have voiced skepticism about the voting process or the results.
Michigan educator Kristina Karamo is a political activist who gained popularity among right-leaning voters after she alleged she witnessed two instances of illegal voting in Detroit last year. She received the coveted Trump nod last month.
“I would say my goal is to ensure that the election results are 100% the result of legal activities and that legal votes are not nullified by illegal ballots,” she said.
In a statement, Trump promoted Karamo as one of the speakers at a rally scheduled for Tuesday outside the state Capitol, “where Patriots will demand a Forensic Audit of the 2020 Presidential Election Scam.”
Karamo declined to say when asked three times by USA TODAY whether she believes enough voter fraud existed in the 2020 election to have changed the outcome.
“The goal is citizen oversight, so whether or not the fraud that existed changed the outcome or not, that’s a secondary point,” she said. “The primary point is it shouldn’t exist at all in the state.”
In March, Marchant told The Associated Press he believed the 2020 election was “stolen” from Trump. The former Nevada assemblymen said he wouldn’t say “stolen” now, but he asserted there are “enough anomalies” to justify an audit of all 50 states.
“The way I look at it, if Joe Biden won, so be it, God bless him,” Marchant told USA TODAY. “If there’s enough doubt right now, for me anyway, to doubt the election, I don’t know why the other side will not let us do an audit. I mean, if they’re certain about their win, why are they blocking us so vehemently?”
Gathering in Dallas
Marchant, Karamo and Finchem trekked to Dallas last week as part of an election integrity summit where the candidates discussed, among other policy ideas, advocating for traceable ballots to be used in elections.
A spokeswoman in Hice’s office said the congressman did not attend.
The trio visited Authentix, a Dallas-based anti-counterfeiting company that has offices in Saudi Arabia, Ghana, Singapore and the U.K., according to its website.
In a tweet Oct. 6, Finchem and other Arizona state officials stood outside Authenix’s offices saying they were interested in “establishing a ballot audit trail and use of currency grade fraud countermeasures on all future ballots.”
Trump said he’s considering another presidential run and flirts with the idea by holding rallies in states such as Iowa. Aides have discouraged Trump from announcing another White House bid before the midterms, according to The Washington Post.
Trump and his allies understand the importance of having friendlier ears in the offices that oversee elections.
“If we have honest people like Mark Finchem and Jody Hice, who are the secretaries of state, you can rest easy and believe that they will do the right thing, they will do it by the law and will do it by the Constitution,” Epshteyn, the former Trump aide, said.
“That’s what we need in this country,” he said, “those who follow the rules and procedures and do not try to rig the election for their party, which is what Democrats have been doing for way too long.”
Dems fret 2024 steal – or worse
In 36 states, secretaries of state are elected by the voters and hold varying degrees of power. They mostly are responsible for maintaining registration rolls and statewide voter databases and certifying election results.
In Hawaii and Alaska, there is no secretary of state position. Other states appoint the positions, and some give the responsibility to the lieutenant governor or a state board of elections.
Sarah Walker, executive director of Secure Democracy, a nonprofit group that works to improve election integrity, said that is alarming in the context of 2020, when secretaries of state, including Republicans, were a bulwark against pressure from Trump and his allies.
“If (Brad Raffensperger) loses in Georgia, it could send a chilling message through the GOP that if you are to uphold democratic norms that you could be ousted by your own party,” she said.
Walker said voting rights advocates fear conspiracy theorists are in the driver’s seat among far-right groups before 2022, which could result in abuses of power.
In Arizona, a six-month election audit led by Republican legislators reaffirmed Biden won the state’s largest county by more votes than originally counted.
Contractors examine and recount ballots from the 2020 general election at Veterans Memorial Coliseum on May 1 in Phoenix. The Maricopa County ballot recount comes after two election audits found no evidence of widespread fraud.
Another proposal would allow the Arizona Legislature to revoke the secretary of state’s certification and select its own slate of presidential electors.
A heavier burden on voters
Walker said the past two years exposed critical weaknesses in U.S. election administration.
“Rather than restoring our system of checks and balances and strengthening accountability and transparency, what this is going to do is drive more disinformation and undermine voter trust,” she said.
Democrats hope to increase their fundraising reach into the 26 states holding elections for secretary of state.
The Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, the political arm for incumbents and candidates, reported raising $1.1 million in June.
Officials with the group aim to double that amount by the end of this year. The association has a $10 million goal during the entire cycle.
Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson of Michigan, who seeks reelection in 2022, said Republicans are trying to chew away at the credibility of elections by attacking administrative officials such as herself.
“Part of that strategy is the attempt at putting people in places of authority who if called upon may utilize the office and the power that comes with it to stand in the way of the voters’ voices,” Benson said.
She said Democrats must have a message that repeats the truth about the 2020 outcome and raises a “code red” about what’s at stake.
“I really welcome the additional attention on secretary of state races this year,” she said. “The big question to me, however, is what are voters going to do?”
Others running to stop Trump-aligned candidates from seizing election administration seats said there’s a bigger threat.
Federal prosecutors have charged more than 600 Americans in more than 40 states with participating in the riot, and arrests continue almost daily.
There have been reports about dozens of death threats aimed at election officials fueled largely by the “Big Lie”.
“The writing is on the wall. This is a point of inflection for our country,” said Nguyen, the Georgia Democrat, who said her life has been threatened. “The decisions that we make now, they are going to determine the future of our democracy indefinitely, and I don’t know how many chances we are going to have.”
Column: Up to 1 million gallons of water … a night? That’s par for some desert golf courses
Steve Lopez – October 9, 2021
Ecologists Robin Kobaly and Doug Thompson are concerned about the amount of water used to irrigate golf courses in the Coachella Valley. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Doug Thompson couldn’t believe what he’d just been told. His wife, a botanist, was advising a Coachella Valley country club on drought-resistant landscaping, and Thompson, who got to talking with the groundskeeper, asked how much water it takes to irrigate a golf course.
“He proudly said they had just computerized their system and they were down to 1.2 million gallons a night,” recalls Thompson, an ecologist who leads natural history expeditions. “I thought I didn’t hear him correctly, so about 30 minutes later I asked again, and he said the same thing.”
That conversation took place a few years ago. But in the midst of a prolonged drought that has prompted a first-ever federal declaration of a water shortage in the Colorado River Basin and brought calls for greater conservation throughout California, Thompson and his wife, Robin Kobaly, became more keenly aware of all the lush green golf courses set against the parched landscape of the Coachella Valley.
How many golf courses?
About 120, many of them shoulder to shoulder across the desert floor, complete with decorative ponds, fountains and streams. It’s one of the highest concentrations of golf courses in the world.
“From the homework we have done … the smaller courses use at least several hundred thousand gallons a night, but the larger courses are in the 1-million-gallon range or more,” Thompson said.
“It’s not only an outrage,” he added, “but many months of the year, it’s too hot to play golf in the desert, yet the watering continues.”
When I met with Thompson and Kobaly in the desert, they told me they’re not trying to shut down the golf industry, and I’m with them on that. There’d be no Palm Springs without golf, just as there would have been no Rat Pack without Sinatra. The industry employs several thousand people, drawing hordes of snowbirds and pumping as much as $1 billion into the local economy.
But the planet now spins on a rotisserie, roasted and toasted in ways that are transforming landscapes and forcing us to adapt. Thompson and Kobaly wonder why golf courses aren’t doing more to conserve.
“This water crisis is huge,” Thompson said. “They’ll ask us to do things like don’t leave the water running when you brush your teeth, and it’s illegal to wash your car unless you turn off the valve on the hose. That might save 10 gallons of water, and meanwhile a million gallons a night are being used on every golf course in the Coachella Valley.”
When I put these observations to Craig Kessler, director of governmental affairs for the Southern California Golf Assn., he was more than happy to respond, as well as to share his considerable knowledge of state water policy.
And he threw me a curve.
Kessler said Coachella Valley golf courses are in much better shape in terms of water supplies than golf courses in California’s wetter climates. That’s because the desert, which had less than an inch of rain in the last season, has much more water to draw from, including a vast aquifer that sits beneath the desert floor.
“It’s complicated and counterintuitive,” Kessler said, but many coastal golf courses that rely on the state’s melted snowpack and rain have been harder hit by the drought than those in the desert.
The Coachella Valley Water District (CVWD), which serves 105 of the golf courses, draws from the California Water Project, the Colorado River and the aquifer. Kessler, who heads up the Coachella Valley Golf and Water Task Force, said much of the water used to irrigate golf courses is non-potable.
And yet, those 120 golf courses do indeed use massive amounts of precious, increasingly scarce water. Kessler said the valley has less than 1% of Southern California’s population, but 28.6% of its golf courses. Golf, he said, consumes less than 1% of all water used in California, but nearly 25% of Coachella Valley water.
So what are they doing about it? A lot, Kessler said, and the conservation effort goes back several years. Golf courses have been removing turf, narrowing fairways, installing more sophisticated irrigation systems, researching less thirsty grasses and scaling back on the practice of “overseeding,” which has kept courses green in winter months, when Bermuda grass goes dormant.
Jim Schmid, director of operations at Palm Desert’s Lakes Country Club, told me he has a weather station on site to help manage and reduce irrigation. And much of the water he uses, Schmidt said, is recycled water the “district needs to get rid of because they haven’t treated it to a standard where it can be used for potable purposes.”
Josh Tanner, general manager of Ironwood Country Club in Palm Desert, said Ironwood pumps its water out of the ground and pays a fee to the water agency to replenish the aquifer with imported water. The club has reduced its water consumption by 20% in recent years, Tanner said, largely by replacing turf with native landscaping.
But it doesn’t appear that every golf course is pulling its weight. And the CVWD, as Doug Thompson told me, doesn’t provide data on water use by individual golf courses. When I asked why, Katie Evans, CVWD’s director of communications and conservation, told me the district does not share information about individual customers. In fact, the water agency was sued for release of the information, but prevailed in court.
Pro golfers walk past a water feature at the Pete Dye Stadium Course at PGA West in La Quinta in January. (Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press)
The Desert Sun reported in 2018 that the golf industry had not met its own goal — set in 2014 — of reducing water use by 10% below 2010 levels. Kessler told me that golf courses used 9% less water in 2020 than in 2013 when using a complicated calculation that takes evaporation into account, but just 5.6% less in total volume.
In the Coachella Valley, years of growth severely depleted the aquifer, just as agricultural irrigation has drained Central Valley water tables to the point where the ground is sinking. Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation in 2014 requiring communities to develop groundwater sustainability strategies, and the CVWD has touted its progress in stabilizing and increasing underground water levels.
But that’s partly because the valley is able to recharge the aquifer with water from the Colorado River and the water pumped down from Northern California. However, current allotments won’t last if drought trend lines continue and water wars escalate.
One of Thompson and Kobaly’s pet peeves is that residential water bills are based on a tiered pricing system that encourages conservation, but golf and agriculture pay flat rates.
They have an ally in Mark Johnson, former director of engineering for the CVWD and a frequent critic of the agency. The retired Johnson said residential users have conserved far more than agriculture, which uses roughly half the district’s water, and significantly more than the golf industry, which uses short of 25%.
“Absolutely, there is an inequity,” said Johnson, and that, in effect, residential users “subsidize the infrastructure used to get water to golf courses.” Johnson, a golfer, said he used to play at a La Quinta course where “they were irrigating areas that weren’t even in play,” and watering sand traps, as well.
So why not institute tiered pricing for golf and ag, same as for residential users?
The CVWD’s Evans said such pricing is prohibited by the state water code, but it might be possible to implement “a different pricing structure” in the future.
I’ll be watching to see how that goes, but it’s worth noting that three of the five members of the agency’s board of directors are in the agriculture industry. Water and oil don’t mix, but in California, water and politics always do.
“I agree that more can be done to conserve,” Evans said. “At this time, we are pushing out new conservation advertisements and continuing to offer a broad range of programs. … To be sustainable, we need to be water wise.”
Kessler, despite defending golf’s record on conservation, said that if drought and higher temperatures continue, maintaining the recent rate of conservation “won’t be enough moving 10-25 years forward.”
Unless it starts raining again like it used to, everyone in California is going to have to get by with less water in the very near future, not 10 or 25 years down the road.
Thompson and Kobaly, who aren’t golfers, have a suggestion. They’ve been looking into links-style golf courses, which are common in other countries and use far less water. You tee off on a patch of green and you putt on a patch of green, but most of the area in between is natural and not irrigated.
“I’ve got nothing against golf,” Thompson said. “But they’ve got to find a different way of doing it.”
The video shows the cargo ships that wait an average of 10 days, and as long as a month, to dock and unload at two of the largest ports in the US. While the glut of ships may appear haphazard to the untrained eye, Freight Right CEO Robert Khachatryan says in the video that the cargo ships have been laid out in a very specific formation designed to keep the shipping lanes clear for incoming and outgoing vessels, as well as prevent the massive ships from crashing into each other.
Marine traffic of Southern California. Marine Traffic of Southern California
Each vessel, whether put at drift as far as 20 miles out from the shore or parked closer at anchor, takes up numbered spots, which it is assigned based on GPS coordinates.
Khachatryan said that despite the global shortage of shipping containers, the issue is not the lack of equipment but rather the lack of capacity for the volume of ships within the ports. He said the two ports, which are typically treated as one because of their proximity to each other, can handle only about 30 ships at a time – a capacity level that would not have been an issue before COVID-19 shutdowns snarled the global supply chain.
“The port is pretty much handling all the containers it can handle given the infrastructure capacity, so adding a lot of vessels does not solve the problem,” Khachatryan says in the video. “What solves the problem is moving these containers out of the port, which, unfortunately, is not happening fast enough.”
As the ports face nearly record backlogs, the shipping companies lose more money every day. Khachatryan said the 10-day waiting period to get into the port often causes the ships to miss out on about two voyages between Asia and the US. Many of the larger container ships waiting off the shore lose upward of $500,000 to $600,000 every day, according to Khachatryan.
Outside the ships themselves, the video also shows many of the Port of Long Beach’s processes, including the automated portions of the terminals where container ships are lifted by massive cranes and moved throughout the port.
Large companies are trying to avoid these California ports altogether. Coca-Cola recently chartered three bulk-shipping vessels usually used for materials like grain and coal to charter goods to its manufacturing plants. This move was unusual for the company, which cited shortages of both cargo space and shipping containers for the decision, as well as a desire to avoid congested ports.
Pipeline developer charged over systematic contamination
Michael Rubinkam October 5, 2021
Gas Pipeline Investigation 1-9
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, at podium, speaks during a news conference at Marsh Creek State Park in Downingtown, Pa., Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2021. Shapiro filed criminal charges Tuesday against the developer of a problem-plagued pipeline that takes natural gas liquids from the Marcellus Shale gas field to an export terminal near Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
The corporate developer of a multi-billion-dollar pipeline system that takes natural gas liquids from the Marcellus Shale gas field to an export terminal near Philadelphia was charged criminally on Tuesday after a grand jury concluded that it flouted Pennsylvania environmental laws and fouled waterways and residential water supplies across hundreds of miles.
Attorney General Josh Shapiro announced the sprawling case at a news conference at Marsh Creek State Park in Downingtown, where Sunoco Pipeline LP spilled thousands of gallons of drilling fluid last year. The spill, during construction of the troubled Mariner East 2 pipeline, contaminated wetlands, a stream and part of a 535-acre lake.
Energy Transfer, Sunoco’s owner, faces 48 criminal charges, most of them for illegally releasing industrial waste at 22 sites in 11 counties across the state. A felony count accuses the operator of willfully failing to report spills to state environmental regulators.
Shapiro said Energy Transfer ruined the drinking water of at least 150 families statewide. He released a grand jury report that includes testimony from numerous residents who accused Energy Transfer of denying responsibility for the contamination and then refusing to help.
The Texas-based pipeline giant was charged for “illegal behavior that related to the construction of the Mariner East 2 pipeline that polluted our lakes, our rivers and our water wells and put Pennsylvania’s safety at risk,” said Shapiro, speaking with Marsh Creek Lake behind him.
Messages were sent to Energy Transfer seeking comment. The company has previously said it intends to defend itself.
The company faces a fine if convicted, which Shapiro said was not a sufficient punishment. He called on state lawmakers to toughen penalties on corporate violators, and said the state Department of Environmental Protection — which spent freely on outside lawyers for its own employees during the attorney general’s investigation — had failed to conduct appropriate oversight.
In a statement, DEP said it has been “consistent in enforcing the permit conditions and regulations and has held Sunoco LP accountable.” The agency said it would review the charges “and determine if any additional actions are appropriate at this time.”
Residents who live near the pipeline and some state lawmakers said Mariner East should be shut down entirely in light of the criminal charges, but the administration of Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf has long ignored such calls to pull the plug.
The August 2020 spill at Marsh Creek was among a series of mishaps that has plagued Mariner East since construction began in 2017. Early reports put the spill at 8,100 gallons, but the grand jury heard evidence the actual loss was up to 28,000 gallons. Parts of the lake are still off-limits.
“This was a major incident, but understand, it wasn’t an isolated one. This happened all across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” said Shapiro, a Democrat who plans to run for governor next year. He said that spills of drilling fluid were “frequent and damaging and largely unreported.”
The pipeline developer continued to rack up civil violations even after Mariner East became one of the most penalized projects in state history. To date, DEP said Energy Transfer has paid more than $20 million in fines for polluting waterways and drinking water wells, including a $12.6 million fine in 2018 that was one of the largest ever imposed by the agency. State regulators have periodically shut down construction.
But environmental activists and homeowners who assert their water has been fouled say that fines and shutdown orders have not forced Sunoco to clean up its act. They have been demanding revocation of Mariner East’s permits.
Carrie Gross, who has been living with the roar of Mariner East construction in her densely packed Exton neighborhood all day, six days a week, for much of the last four years, fears that criminal charges will be just as ineffectual as DEP’s civil penalties.
“I would say this is just another example of Energy Transfer paying to pollute, and that’s part of their cost of doing business. Until somebody permanently halts this project, our environment and our lives continue to be in danger,” Gross said.
The dental hygienist lives about 100 feet from the pipelines and works about 50 feet from them. She said she worries about the persistent threat of sinkholes, a catastrophic rupture or an explosion even after construction is over.
Shapiro’s news conference was originally rescheduled for Monday, but was abruptly postponed after the state environmental agency provided last-minute information to the attorney general’s office. The new information led to the filing of two additional charges, Shapiro said.
Energy Transfer acknowledged in a recent earnings report that the attorney general has been looking at “alleged criminal misconduct” involving Mariner East. The company said in the document it was cooperating but that “it intends to vigorously defend itself.”
The various criminal probes into Mariner East have also consumed DEP, which has spent about $1.57 million on outside criminal defense lawyers for its employees between 2019 and 2021, according to invoices obtained by The Associated Press.
The money was paid to five separate law firms representing dozens of DEP employees who dealt with Mariner East. Together, the firms submitted more than 130 invoices related to Mariner East investigations, performing legal work such as reviewing subpoenas and preparing clients to testify, the documents show.
“If we have a system where … the punishment, the fines, are basically seen as just a price of doing business, then we’ll continue to have violations in the commonwealth,” said David Masur, executive director of Philadelphia-based PennEnvironment.
State officials “have a huge stick they could wield,” he added. “Maybe they just have to stop hesitating and use it.”
The Mariner East pipeline system transports propane, ethane and butane from the enormous Marcellus Shale and Utica Shale gas fields in western Pennsylvania to a refinery processing center and export terminal in Marcus Hook, outside Philadelphia.
Energy Transfer also operates the Dakota Access oil pipeline, which went into service in 2017 after months of protests by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and others during its construction.
Pandora papers: biggest ever leak of offshore data exposes financial secrets of rich and powerful
Guardian investigations team October 3, 2021
The Pandora papers reveal the inner workings of what is a shadow financial world, providing a rare window into the hidden operations of a global offshore economy. Illustration: Guardian Design
Millions of documents reveal offshore deals and assets of more than 100 billionaires, 30 world leaders and 300 public officials
The secret deals and hidden assets of some of the world’s richest and most powerful people have been revealed in the biggest trove of leaked offshore data in history.
Branded the Pandora papers, the cache includes 11.9m files from companies hired by wealthy clients to create offshore structures and trusts in tax havens such as Panama, Dubai, Monaco, Switzerland and the Cayman Islands.
They expose the secret offshore affairs of 35 world leaders, including current and former presidents, prime ministers and heads of state. They also shine a light on the secret finances of more than 300 other public officials such as government ministers, judges, mayors and military generals in more than 90 countries.
The files include disclosures about major donors to the Conservative party, raising difficult questions for Boris Johnson as his party meets for its annual conference.
More than 100 billionaires feature in the leaked data, as well as celebrities, rock stars and business leaders. Many use shell companies to hold luxury items such as property and yachts, as well as incognito bank accounts. There is even art ranging from looted Cambodian antiquities to paintings by Picasso and murals by Banksy.
The Pandora papers reveal the inner workings of what is a shadow financial world, providing a rare window into the hidden operations of a global offshore economy that enables some of the world’s richest people to hide their wealth and in some cases pay little or no tax.
What are the Pandora Papers
There are emails, memos, incorporation records, share certificates, compliance reports and complex diagrams showing labyrinthine corporate structures. Often, they allow the true owners of opaque shell companies to be identified for the first time.
The files were leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in Washington. It shared access to the leaked data with select media partners including the Guardian, BBC Panorama, Le Monde and the Washington Post. More than 600 journalists have sifted through the files as part of a massive global investigation.
The Pandora papers represent the latest – and largest in terms of data volume – in a series of major leaks of financial data that have convulsed the offshore world since 2013.
Setting up or benefiting from offshore entities is not itself illegal, and in some cases people may have legitimate reasons, such as security, for doing so. But the secrecy offered by tax havens has at times proven attractive to tax evaders, fraudsters and money launderers, some of whom are exposed in the files.
Perhaps the most significant offshore leak to date was the 2016Panama papers, which consisted of 2.6 terabytes of data leaked from the law firm Mossack Fonseca.
The following year saw the release of the Paradise papers, most of which were from the offshore provider Appleby, which was founded in Bermuda. In total, that cache consisted of 1.4 terabytes of data.
Containing 2.94 terabytes, the Pandora papers is the largest of the three leaks. The files also come from a much wider array of offshore providers than previous leaks: 14 in total. Locations range from Vietnam to Belize and Singapore, and to far-flung archipelagos such as the Bahamas and the Seychelles.
Other wealthy individuals and companies stash their assets offshore to avoid paying tax elsewhere, a legal activity estimated to cost governments billions in lost revenues.
After more than 18 months analysing the data in the public interest, the Guardian and other media outlets will publish their findings over the coming days, beginning with revelations about the offshore financial affairs of some of the most powerful political leaders in the world.
They include the ruler of Jordan, King Abdullah II, who, leaked documents reveal, has amassed a secret $100m property empire spanning Malibu, Washington and London. The king declined to answer specific questions but said there would be nothing improper about him owning properties via offshore companies. Jordan appeared to have blocked the ICIJ website on Sunday, hours before the Pandora papers launched.
The Azerbaijan president, Ilham Aliyev, and his wife, Mehriban Aliyeva. The Aliyev family has traded close to £400m of UK property in recent years. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
The files also show that Azerbaijan’s ruling Aliyev family has traded close to £400m of UK property in recent years. One of their properties was sold to the Queen’s crown estate, which is now looking into how it came to pay £67m to a company that operated as a front for the family that runs a country routinely accused of corruption. The Aliyevs declined to comment.
The Pandora papers also threaten to cause political upsets for two European Union leaders. The prime minister of the Czech republic, Andrej Babis, who is up for election this week, is facing questions over why he used an offshore investment company to acquire a $22m chateau in the south of France. He too declined to comment.
The Czech prime minister, Andrej Babiš, is facing questions over why he used an offshore investment company to acquire a $22m chateau in the south of France. Photograph: Milan Kammermayer/EPA
And in Cyprus, itself a controversial offshore center, the President, Nicos Anastasiades, may be asked to explain why a law firm he founded was accused of hiding the assets of a controversial Russian billionaire behind fake company owners. The firm denies any wrongdoing, while the Cypriot president says he ceased having an active role in its affairs after becoming leader of the opposition in 1997.
Not everyone named in the Pandora papers is accused of wrongdoing. The leaked files reveals that Tony and Cherie Blair saved £312,000 in property taxes when they purchased a London building partially owned by the family of a prominent Bahraini minister.
The former prime minister and his wife bought the £6.5m office in Marylebone by acquiring a British Virgin Islands (BVI) offshore company. While the move was not illegal, and there is no evidence the Blairs proactively sought to avoid property taxes, the deal highlights a loophole that has enabled wealthy property owners not to pay a tax that is commonplace for ordinary Britons.
Tony and Cherie Blair bought a £6.5m office in Marylebone by acquiring a British Virgin Islands offshore company. Photograph: WPA Pool/Getty Images
The leaked records vividly illustrate the central coordinating role London plays in the murky offshore world. The UK capital is home to wealth managers, law firms, company formation agents and accountants. All exist to serve their ultra-rich clients. Many are foreign-born tycoons who enjoy “non-domicile” status, which means they pay no tax on their overseas assets.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is also named in the leak. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who was elected in 2019 on a pledge to clean up his country’s notoriously corrupt and oligarch-influenced economy, is also named in the leak. During the campaign, Zelenskiy transferred his 25% stake in an offshore company to a close friend who now works as the president’s top adviser, the files suggest. Zelenskiy declined to comment and it is unclear if he remains a beneficiary.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, whom the US suspects of having a secret fortune, does not appear in the files by name. But numerous close associates do, including his best friend from childhood – the late Petr Kolbin – whom critics have called a “wallet” for Putin’s own wealth, and a woman the Russian leader was allegedly once romantically involved with. None responded to invitations to comment.
The Pandora papers also place a revealing spotlight on the offshore system itself. In a development likely to prove embarrassing for the US president, Joe Biden, who has pledged tolead efforts internationally to bring transparency to the global financial system, the US emerges from the leak as a leading tax haven. The files suggest the state of South Dakota, in particular, is sheltering billions of dollars in wealth linked to individuals previously accused of serious financial crimes.
The offshore trail also stretches from Africa to Latin America to Asia, and is likely to pose difficult questions for politicians across the world. In Pakistan, Moonis Elahi, a prominent minister in prime minister Imran Khan’s government, contacted an offshore provider in Singapore about investing $33.7m.
Kenya’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta, will come under pressure to explain why he and his close relatives amassed more than $30m of offshore wealth. Photograph: Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty Images
In Kenya, the president, Uhuru Kenyatta, has portrayed himself as an enemy of corruption. In 2018, Kenyatta told the BBC: “Every public servant’s assets must be declared publicly so that people can question and ask: what is legitimate?”
He will come under pressure to explain why he and his close relatives amassed more than $30m of offshore wealth, including property in London. Kenyatta did not respond to enquiries about whether his family wealth was declared to relevant authorities in Kenya.
The Pandora papers also reveal some of the unseen repercussions of previous offshore leaks, which spurred modest reforms in some parts of the world, such as the BVI, which now keeps a record of the real owners of companies registered there. However, the newly leaked data shows money shifting around offshore destinations, as wealthy clients and their advisers adjust to new realities.
Some clients of Mossack Fonseca, the now defunct law firm at the heart of the 2016 Panama papers disclosures, simply transferred their companies to rival providers such as another global trust and corporate administrator with a major office in London, whose data is in the new trove of leaked files.
Asked why he was migrating the new company, one customer wrote bluntly: “Business decision to exit following the Panama papers.” Another agent said the industry had always “adapted” to external pressure.
Some leaked files appear to show some in the industry seeking to circumvent new privacy regulations. One Swiss lawyer refused to email the names of his high-value customers to a service provider in the BVI, following new legislation. Instead, he sent them by airmail, with strict instructions they should not be processed in any “electronic way”. The identity of another beneficial owner was shared via WhatsApp.
“The purpose of this way to proceed is to enable you to comply with BVI rules,” the lawyer wrote. Referring to Mossack Fonseca, the lawyer added: “You are obliged to keep secrecy for our clients and to not make feasible at all a second ‘Panama papers’ story that happened to one of your competitors.”
Gerard Ryle, the director of the ICIJ, said leading politicians who organized their finances in tax havens had a stake in the status quo, and were likely to be an obstacle to reform of the offshore economy. “When you have world leaders, when you have politicians, when you have public officials, all using the secrecy and all using this world, then I don’t think we’re going to see an end to it.
He expected the Pandora papers to have a greater impact than previous leaks, not least because they were arriving in the middle of a pandemic that had exacerbated inequalities and forced governments to borrow unprecedented amounts to be shouldered by ordinary taxpayers. “This is the Panama papers on steroids,” Ryle said. “It’s broader, richer and has more detail.”
At least $11.3tn in wealth is held offshore, according to a 2020 study by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). “This is money that is being lost to treasuries around the world and money that could be used to recover from Covid,” Ryle said. “We’re losing out because some people are gaining. It’s as simple as that. It’s a very simple transaction that’s going on here.”
Pandora papers reporting team: Simon Goodley, Harry Davies, Luke Harding, Juliette Garside, David Conn, David Pegg, Paul Lewis, Caelainn Barr, Rowena Mason and Pamela Duncan in London; Ben Butler and Anne Davies in Sydney; Dominic Rushe in New York; Andrew Roth in Moscow; Helena Smith in Athens; Michael Safi in Lebanon; Robert Tait in Prague.
In battle to restore power after Ida, a tent city rises
Rebecca Santana September 24, 2021
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APTOPIX Hurricane Ida Restoring Electricity
Bryan Willis, of Stilwell, Okla., an electrical worker for Ozarks Electric, looks at his phone before going to bed in a tent city for electrical workers in Amelia, La., Thursday, Sept. 16, 2021. When Hurricane Ida was brewing in the Gulf of Mexico, the grass was chest high and the warehouse empty at this lot in southeastern Louisiana. Within days, electric officials transformed it into a bustling “tent city” with enormous, air-conditioned tents for workers, a gravel parking lot for bucket trucks and a station to resupply crews restoring power to the region. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)MoreREBECCA SANTANASeptember 24, 2021
AMELIA, La. (AP) — When Hurricane Ida was brewing in the Gulf of Mexico, the grass was chest high and the warehouse empty at this lot in southeastern Louisiana. Within days, electric officials transformed it into a bustling “tent city” with enormous, air-conditioned tents for workers, a gravel parking lot for bucket trucks and a station to resupply crews restoring power to the region.
In the wake of hurricanes, one of the most common and comforting sites is the thousands of electric workers who flow into a battered region when the winds die down to restore power and a sense of normalcy. They need to sleep somewhere. They need to eat. Their trucks need fuel. They need wires, ties and poles. And occasionally they need cigarettes. Power providers build tent cities like this to meet those needs.
“There’s three things a lineman wants: good food, cold bed, hot shower. If you can get those three, you can work,” says Matthew Peters, operations manager for South Louisiana Electric Cooperative Association, which built the tent city to house a peak of about 1,100 workers helping restore power to the cooperative’s customers.- ADVERTISEMENT -https://s.yimg.com/rq/darla/4-6-0/html/r-sf-flx.html
When Ida came ashore on Aug. 29, it knocked out power to about 1.1 million customers in the state. The vast majority have seen their power restored, but in a sign of the storm’s extent, thousands are still in the dark while downed lines are righted and substations repaired.
SLECA provides electricity to about 21,000 customers, including many in the hard-hit bayou regions. Power has been restored to about 81% of their coverage area with the remaining 19% in areas with the most catastrophic damage, said Joe Ticheli, general manager of the cooperative. After initially fearing full restoration of power could take months, estimates are now that it could happen by next week, Ticheli said.
Over a few short days, SLECA and a consulting firm transformed the location that used to be a hub for oil field manufacturer McDermott International into a temporary home for workers from across the country. Ticheli even appointed a mayor to make sure things run smoothly.
In one massive white tent, hundreds of cots are spread out; experienced workers bring their own inflatable mattresses. Another tent houses a cafeteria that serves hot breakfast starting about 5 a.m., dinner and boxed lunches that can be eaten out in the field. Tons of gravel was packed down on top of a grassy field so bucket trucks and other equipment — many flying American flags — can park.
At sunset, after workers park their trucks and head in to eat, shower and sleep, gasoline trucks drive up and down the rows, fueling the vehicles so no time is lost in the morning. Special treats — like cigarettes or steak night — help ease 16-hour workdays. Out-of-state crews are teamed with a local employee dubbed a “bird dog” who helps them.
Across the street is a warehouse where supplies such as transformers and wires are available. Outside, long wooden replacement poles wait to be loaded onto trucks.
Jordy Bourg, who runs the warehouse, said that right after the storm they had some supplies but immediately had to start ordering more. But like many things in the pandemic era, it’s been a challenge after Ida to get certain supplies.
Many people coming in to help have covered other disasters: Hurricane Michael, Hurricane Laura, ice storms in Arkansas and Texas. It’s good money, but more than that, they say it’s the feeling of restoring normalcy to someone who’s had everything stripped away from them. And many point out that the next disaster could easily be in their own backyard. Last year crews from SLECA went to southwest Louisiana when another Category 4 hurricane, Laura, slammed ashore there. This year, crews from southwest Louisiana came east to help.
“We’ve had a few storms hit back home and you kind of know how it is when you’ve been out of power,” said Robbie Davis, a lineman from Georgia. So many people in southeast Louisiana have no where to go, he said: “Out here, these folks’ homes got destroyed, businesses got destroyed.”
It can be dangerous work — two men believed to be electrocuted died helping restore power in Alabama.
The Louisiana terrain presents special challenges. In some areas, lines thread through thick swamps that can be accessed only by air boat or marsh buggy, which looks like a cross between a tank and a pontoon boat. Workers don waders to climb into muddy, chest-high waters home to alligators and water moccasins.
“You only work in this kind of area when you’re in south Louisiana. I can assure you, you don’t get this anywhere else,” says Jon Hise, a Sparks Energy foreman working with a crew in Houma to reset power lines. “It’s nasty. It’s chest deep. You can’t walk because the growth.”
As SLECA staff work to restore power to their slice of southeastern Louisiana, they have also been struggling with hurricane damage themselves. The general manager wears clothes from the Salvation Army after his home was severely damaged and looted. Coworkers have helped each other tarp damaged roofs. The company is operating out of trailers in their Houma headquarters after Ida peeled off the roof. Bourg is living in a trailer with his wife and two Boston terriers — his kids are staying with his in-laws — after Ida wrecked his house.
There’s also the toll of seeing large swaths of their coverage area so utterly destroyed. For many, getting power is just the first step in a long rebuilding process. Peters gets emotional when he talks of the dedication of his staff as well as the damage he’s seen among longtime customers.
“We’ve had storms before,” he said. “But the devastation was nothing of this magnitude.”
The US owes a debt to Haiti. Experts explain why their shared history led to a migrant crisis on the US’s border.
Christine Jean-Baptiste September 26, 2021
Demonstrators outside the US Citizenship and Immigration Service office in Miami on February 20 demand that the Biden administration cease deporting Haitian immigrants. Chandan Khanna/AFP/Getty Images
The Biden administration faced backlash for dispersing Haitian migrants at the US-Mexico border.
Experts say Haiti’s history of foreign interference has shaped perspectives and stunted progress.
They estimate France and the US owe Haiti billions in reparations for colonialism and occupation.
In the past week, nearly 14,000 migrants, mostly Haitians, were found in Del Rio, Texas, seeking asylum following a destructive earthquake and the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse.
Instead of providing shelter and refuge for the migrants, the US continued to deport Haitians, who have for years been targets of imperialism and xenophobia, in what experts described as history repeating itself.
“Anything you have read about Haiti thus far will remind you of an all too common and limited narrative; the first Black Republic is ‘the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere,'” the artist Gina Athena Ulysse wrote in a 2019 essay for Tikkun.
“What almost none of them will mention is that Haiti also has one of the highest numbers of millionaires per capita in the region,” she added.
Haitian scholars spoke with Insider about how assumptions and stereotypes about the island perpetuate limited narratives that can put Haitian migrants at risk.
“Cuba, Haiti, and all others are as complex as the US, Canada, and European countries, and allowing room for these latter to have complexity while expecting uniformity from these islands or island nations are quite uninformed and essentialist,” Manoucheka Celeste, an associate professor at the University of Florida, told Insider.
Political interference in Haitian politics shapes global perspectives
Haiti and the United States share an intertwined history as the second-oldest and oldest countries in the Western Hemisphere.
But the US refused to acknowledge Haiti’s 1804 independence from France for nearly 60 years, kicking off centuries of military coups and political meddling that devastated the Caribbean nation – from a decades-long US invasion and occupation in 1915 to disastrous aid and relief efforts today.
Celeste, whose book “Race, Gender, and Citizenship in the African Diaspora: Travelling Blackness” details this shared history, added that US imperialism influenced how Haitians are received and treated abroad today.
“Haitian immigrants have been particularly stigmatized, echoing images of Haiti as poor, dangerous, sick, and this impacts how we are received in communities, schools, employment opportunities, and all aspects of everyday life,” she said.
The Caribbean island has also been misrepresented through the media, experts said.
A misconception that Nadeve Menard, an author and professor of literature at the École Normale Supérieure of Université d’État d’Haïti, has noticed is that the current political climate is somehow unique.
“What is happening here is very much part of larger global networks,” she told Insider. “Aid industries need aid recipients, for example. The sophisticated weapons that gangs here are displaying are being sold by someone.”
Ménard added that “many people, Haitians and non-Haitians alike, are benefiting from what is happening here in very concrete ways.”
Coverage of climate disasters and corruption worsens anti-Haitian bias
Haitian migrants at a shelter. Thousands of Haitian migrants recently gathered in makeshift camps at the US-Mexico border. Pedro Pardo/ARP/Getty Images
Celeste’s research suggests that even though the Caribbean is an incredibly diverse region racially, ethnically, and linguistically, it makes international or US news only when “bad” or “strange” things happen, like a hurricane or a political crisis.
For example, there was a spike in global news coverage of Haiti following the catastrophic earthquake in 2010, with outlets gaining readers and revenue from a disaster affecting the country.
Experts said it was like clockwork that the media feeds on disaster reporting when it’s convenient.
Lillian Guerra, a professor of Cuban and Caribbean history at the University of Florida, said Haiti was seen as a failure whose problems are of its own creation, not of the outside world’s, and certainly not the fault of consistently accumulated historical injustices.
“We treat Haiti as a pariah that is undeserving of respect, let alone sovereignty,”
Following the president’s assassination, a rotation of Haitian politicians have wanted to claim power. That insecurity was made worse when a magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck Haiti’s southwest – and that exacerbated the migration crisis at the US’s southern border.
Amid the political reshuffles, publications have been quick to point out Haiti’s extensive corruption. Scholars call on observers to ask themselves why that is.
“It is problematic to imply that corruption only happens in Haiti or happens here more than elsewhere,” Ménard said.
“Nations like to present themselves as paragons of virtue, but often their representatives are very much implicated in the corruption they point to in other places,” she added.
On Tuesday afternoon, as images of US Customs and Border Protection agents grabbing Haitian migrants near Del Rio circulated, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said President Joe Biden found the footage “horrific” and “horrible.”
Psaki said the administration would launch an investigation to “get to the bottom of what happened.”
Advocates say centering Haiti and its diaspora is key to progress
Scholars say the treatment of Haitians is based on racial stereotypes that existed long before this year. They challenged people moved by the recent events in Haiti to learn about Haiti from Haitians.
“The way to counter stereotypes is to go to sources where Haitians are speaking for themselves,” the Haitian American writer Edwidge Danticat told Insider in an email, encouraging people to listen to Haitian youth and elders.
“We are not a monolith. Haiti is not a monolith. We don’t always agree. We have layers. We contain multitudes,” she added.
With the dehumanizing visuals of Haitian migrants at the border this week were renewed calls to help Haiti – a common sentiment on the internet.
In 2010, after the earthquake killed hundreds of thousands of people, many celebrities could be found organizing concerts and benefits, singing songs, and centering themselves in the cause.
Edwidge Danticat
Danticat encouraged supporters to immerse themselves in Haitian-led cultural initiatives, including reading Haitian writers, listening to Haitian music, and taking in Haitian art and even social media.
Politicians and public figures have used their platforms to take a stance and remind people of the role of international communities in Haiti.
“I think the reason why we’re not seeing more help, if I’m going to be frank about it, is because they are Haitian,” Sunny Hostin, a cohost of “The View,” said on Wednesday.
Following Haiti’s traumatic year, many Haitian scholars have called out performative advocacy in the form of emojis, prayers and hashtags on social media.
Marlene Daut, a professor of African diaspora studies at the University of Virginia, described the public outcry as opportunistic and meaningless, highlighting the role of disaster capitalism on other Caribbean islands, like in Puerto Rico during Hurricane Maria.
“I think a lot of people, when they do charity, they want it to be easy,” she said. “If you really want to do good things for Haitians, then it involves the difficult work of finding out what that would be.”
With the diaspora and allies holding North America and Europe accountable, Daut said, it “could be a moment for a reckoning, if we allow it to be, and for it to not get swept under the rug again, and also to not repeat the past.”
“We need to remember that these things happened,” she said, “because there’s a dangerous moment right now in Haiti.”
‘We were them:’ Vietnamese Americans help Afghan refugees
Abdul, right, who worked as a mechanic before he left Kabul, Afghanistan with his family about a month ago, shows his family a donated tea kettle as they stand in the kitchen of a rental house, Thursday, Sept. 16, 2021, that has been provided as a place for them to stay in Seattle. The home is owned by Thuy Do, who was nine years old when her family arrived in the United States from Vietnam in the 1980s. Now Do and her husband have offered their vacant rental home to refugee resettlement groups to house newly arriving Afghans in need of a place to stay. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)
WESTMINSTER, Calif. (AP) — In the faces of Afghans desperate to leave their country after U.S. forces withdrew, Thuy Do sees her own family, decades earlier and thousands of miles away.
A 39-year-old doctor in Seattle, Washington, Do remembers hearing how her parents sought to leave Saigon after Vietnam fell to communist rule in 1975 and the American military airlifted out allies in the final hours. It took years for her family to finally get out of the country, after several failed attempts, and make their way to the United States, carrying two sets of clothes a piece and a combined $300. When they finally arrived, she was 9 years old.
These stories and early memories drove Do and her husband Jesse Robbins to reach out to assist Afghans fleeing their country now. The couple has a vacant rental home and decided to offer it up to refugee resettlement groups, which furnished it for newly arriving Afghans in need of a place to stay.
“We were them 40 years ago,” Do said. “With the fall of Saigon in 1975, this was us.”
Television images of Afghans vying for spots on U.S. military flights out of Kabul evoked memories for many Vietnamese Americans of their own attempts to escape a falling Saigon more than four decades ago. The crisis in Afghanistan has reopened painful wounds for many of the country’s 2 million Vietnamese Americans and driven some elders to open up about their harrowing departures to younger generations for the first time.
It has also spurred many Vietnamese Americans to donate money to refugee resettlement groups and raise their hands to help by providing housing, furniture and legal assistance to newly arriving Afghans. Less tangible but still essential, some also said they want to offer critical guidance they know refugees and new immigrants need: how to shop at a supermarket, enroll kids in school and drive a car in the United States.
Since the Vietnam War, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese have come to the United States, settling in communities from California to Virginia. Today, Vietnamese Americans are the sixth-largest immigrant group in the United States. Many settled in California’s Orange County after arriving initially at the nearby Camp Pendleton military base and today have a strong voice in local politics.
“We lived through this and we can’t help but feel that we are brethren in our common experience,” Andrew Do, who fled Saigon with his family a day before it fell to communism and today chairs the county’s board of supervisors, said during a recent press conference in the area known as “Little Saigon.”
The U.S. had long announced plans to withdraw from Afghanistan after a 20-year war. But the final exit was much more frantic, with more than 180 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members killed in an attack on the Kabul airport.
In the last two weeks of August, the U.S. evacuated 31,000 people from Afghanistan, three-quarters of them Afghans who supported American military efforts during the extensive operations. But many Afghan allies were left behind with no clear way out of the landlocked nation under strict Taliban control.
Similarly, many Vietnamese Americans recall how they couldn’t get out before the impending fall of Saigon to communism. They stayed behind and faced long spells in reeducation camps in retaliation for their allegiance to the Americans who had fought in their country. Once they were allowed to return to their families, many Vietnamese left and took small boats onto the seas, hoping to escape and survive.
For some families, the journey took years and many failed attempts, which is why many Vietnamese Americans view the departure of the U.S. military from Afghanistan not as the end of the crisis, but the beginning.
“We have to remember now is the time to lay a foundation for a humanitarian crisis that may last long past the moment the last U.S. help leaves the Afghan space,” said Thanh Tan, a Seattle filmmaker who started a group for Vietnamese Americans seeking to assist Afghans called Viets4Afghans. Her own family, she said, made the trip four years after the U.S. left Vietnam. “We have to be prepared because people will do whatever it takes to survive.”
Afghans arriving in the United States may have a special status for those who supported U.S. military operations, or may have been sponsored to come by relatives already here. Others are expected to arrive as refuges or seek permission to travel to the United States under a process known as humanitarian parole and apply for asylum or other legal protection once they are here.
For parole, Afghans need the support of a U.S. citizen or legal resident, and some Vietnamese Americans have signed up to sponsor people they have never met, said Tuấn ĐinhJanelle, director of field at the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center. He said a coalition of legal and community groups has secured sponsors for 2,000 Afghans seeking parole. His sister, Vy Dinh, said she’s sponsoring a family of 10 including women in danger for working in medicine and teaching. “As soon as he called, I said, ‘Yes, I am in,’” she said.
Other efforts have focused on fundraising for refugee resettlement groups. Vietnamese and Afghan American artists held a benefit concert this month in Southern California to raise money to assist Afghan refugees. The event titled “United for Love” was broadcast on Vietnamese language television and raised more than $160,000, according to Saigon Broadcasting Television Network.
It also aired on Afghan American satellite television, said Bilal Askaryar, an Afghan American advocate and spokesperson for the #WelcomeWithDignity campaign aimed at supporting asylum seekers. “They saw the need. They saw the parallels,” Askaryar said. “It’s really powerful to see that they saw that link of common humanity between the Afghan community and the Vietnamese community. We’ve been really touched and inspired.”
Thi Do, an immigration attorney in Sacramento, California, said he is also doing what he can to help. He was a boy when Saigon fell and his father, who served in the South Vietnamese army, was sent to a reeducation camp. When he returned, the family set out by boat into the ocean, hoping to reach a country that would take them.
Do remembers how the boat bumped up against dead bodies floating on the water and how his father apologized for putting him and his siblings in danger before throwing overboard his ID and keys from Vietnam. “’He said, ‘I would rather die here than go back there,’” Do said. They eventually reached Thailand and Malaysia, both countries that forced them back out to sea until they got to Indonesia and were processed at a refugee camp.
Decades later, Do said he has helped people fleeing persecution in his work as a lawyer, but until now nothing that has reminded him so much of Vietnam. He’s working with Afghan families who are filing petitions to bring their relatives here, but what happens next is complicated with no U.S. embassy in Kabul to process the papers and no guarantee the relatives will make it to a third country to get them.
“I see a lot of myself in those children who were running on the tarmac at the airport,” he said.
Biden Puts Another Former Public Defender Onto A U.S. Appeals Court
Jennifer Bendery
Veronica Rossman, a former public defender, now holds a lifetime seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. (Photo: Handout . via Reuters)
The Senate voted Monday night to confirm Veronica Rossman to a lifetime seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit ― making her the only former public defender on that court and one of just a handful within the entire U.S. appeals court system.
Rossman, who is currently senior counsel at the Office of the Federal Public Defender for the Districts of Colorado and Wyoming, was confirmed 50-42. Every Democrat present voted for her, along with two Republicans, Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Susan Collins (Maine). See the full tally here.
Rossman’s confirmation is a win for President Joe Biden on two fronts. She adds to his current record of confirming more judges than any president in the last 50 years by this point in their terms. And she is the latest example of Biden following through on a promise to bring badly needed diversity to the nation’s courts ― both in terms of demographics like race and gender but also in terms of professional backgrounds.
Rossman, 49, has spent most of her career as a public defender, representing people in court who could not afford an attorney. Public defenders are hugely underrepresented on the nation’s courts; the vast majority of federal judges are former prosecutors and corporate attorneys. Rossman brings a much different perspective to the bench, having defended more than 250 indigent clients in her more than 10 years at the Office of the Federal Public Defender for the Districts of Colorado and Wyoming.
“Her work on behalf of the indigent, defending the Constitution and the rights of those accused of crimes will bring much needed balance to a bench overwhelmed with former prosecutors and corporate lawyers,” said Chris Kang of Demand Justice, a progressive judicial advocacy group.
Expanding professional diversity on federal courts can also affect case outcomes and the development of legal precedent. Judges with backgrounds as prosecutors or corporate lawyers are significantly more likely to rule in favor of employers in workplace disputes, according to a February study conducted by Emory University law professor Joanna Shepherd. (Demand Justice provided some financial support for this study.)
Rossman is now one of just eight active judges in the entirety of the U.S. appeals court system with experience as a public defender. That’s out of a total of 174 currently active judges on U.S. appeals courts.
Put another way: Only about 4.6% of all active U.S. appeals court judges have experience as a public defender.
Biden is responsible for nominating four of those eight U.S. appeals court judges, just eight months into his presidency. The other four were nominated by President Barack Obama over the course of his eight years in the White House.
“As former public defenders, civil rights attorneys, labor organizers and more, Biden’s judicial nominees bring a wealth of professional and lived experience that will be invaluable to the federal judiciary,” said Rakim Brooks, president of the judicial advocacy group Alliance for Justice. “Our democracy works best when people have faith and trust in our courts, so it is essential that our courts are fully representative of the diversity of our nation ― not just the wealthy and the powerful.”
