Democrat News

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Rep. Daniel Goldman railed against Donald Trump’s mental state on MSNBC Wednesday evening after Trump demanded the debt ceiling be raised at the 11th hour when the HOUSE was trying to pass a funding bill to keep the government open.

This is another crackpot idea being forced on the government from Demented Don when Biden is still President.

GOLDMAN: He understands, at least he should, how these things work, and how the debt ceiling works, which is a deadline in June.

We are now up against the budget, the government shutting down on Friday, having nothing to do with the debt ceiling.

And I am really concerned that Donald Trump is so senile or off that he is not able to compute what he’s saying, because it makes absolutely no sense to have an 11th hour demand to raise the debt ceiling on another president’s watch when it doesn’t need to be raised right now.

If you’re president for four years, you understand that’s a non-starter.

And I don’t know whether this is a competency issue or this is bluster or what it is, but I am a little concerned that he would make this demand at this stage.

I’m concerned about his mental capacity.

This makes some sort of sense in Trump’s MAGA-infested brain if he wants to get the debt ceiling raised now so that it doesn’t become an issue for him during his first year in office. But the government is about to shutdown because president-elect Musk had a hissy fit and this is an impossible ask.

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Disgraced and disbarred former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani weighed into the drone conspiracy by claiming China already raped us with their spy balloon

I doubt Pete Hegseth appreciated that analogy.

Has Rudy given any of his belongings and prized possessions to the two ladies that sued the shit out of him in Georgia?

GIULIANI: We can’t be that insane, right?

So if China or Iran is flying drones over us in this kind of number, we certainly should be doing something.

One little caveat, though.

We allowed, basically we allowed China to rape us with the balloon, and we lied about that for five days.

And then they carried out about an eight-day mission in which they very carefully got to photograph, for as much time as they wanted, very sensitive military facilities.

And Kirby and all his people were telling us throughout that it wasn’t very meaningful. In fact, it was probably the worst security breach we’ve ever had.

They got all those pictures because it was unmanned, sent to China.

And then when they finished and got safely off our shore, Biden went ahead and took them down, I guess when Xi told them it was okay to do.

So that leaves me a little nervous.

MAGAts make everything into a conspiracy, so balloons and drones are no different. Poor Rudy can’t get a a pardon from Trump since his financial ruin came at the hands of the state of Georgia and a president can’t pardon a disbarment.

Real America’s Voice is the perfect outlet for these creeps.

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As David R. Lurie lays out in his excellent Public Notice column, Republicans have been dreaming of doing away with Social Security ever since FDR enacted it, even though it successfully reduced poverty among the elderly. Ditto for Medicare, enacted under LBJ.

The most infuriating part for me is they’ve managed to corral Democrats into going along with the messaging that these anti-poverty programs that people pay into are “entitlements” that “good government” types only want to “reform” and put on a “stronger” fiscal footing. It’s a nauseating way of framing deserving recipients as elite moochers and messaging the truly elite moochers as “sensible” minders of everybody else’s money.

Thank goodness Lurie called this out:

Reagan did succeed in enacting far more modest, but still substantial, cutbacks in Social Security with the support of Democrats — under the cover of a commission led by the then highly respected Alan Greenspan — based on the proposition they were “bolstering” it. This gave rise to an enduring view among many on the right that they could dupe Democrats to join them in cutting holes in the social safety net in the guise of trying to save it — a premise some “good government” types regrettably encouraged.

For those MSNBC fans who may not know, Alan Greenspan is the husband of MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell. It just shows you how deeply this bamboozling has been embedded into “mainstream” American and Democratic politics.

With Donald Trump pretending he has a mandate, with Trump and Republicans already chomping at the bit to gut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the time is now for Democrats to get ready, Lurie warns. He lays out how Trump, Musk and his GOP enablers have different motives, but arrive at the same hideous desire to impoverish others while enriching the already wealthy.

Lurie predicts that when that happens, there will be a backlash and “the massive snowball Trump and his cronies sent down the hill will run them over.” But Democrats have to be ready for the game:

It is, however, up to Democrats to carefully prepare for what comes next, and — when the opportunity presents itself — to do everything they can to maximize the backlash and ensure Republicans once again pay the highest possible price for attacking a cornerstone of post-New Deal America. This will not be a time for compromise, or for sober-minded “good government” types to express agreement with the need for “reform.”

If Democrats play their cards right, the defeat of yet another GOP assault on key elements of the safety net for older Americans could be the beginning of a broader collapse of the Trump effort to “remake government” to serve his authoritarian ambitions.

I’m less optimistic that the party that twice couldn’t manage to keep a criminal grifter out of the White House will finesse this grift but hope springs eternal. If everyone who opposes the MAGA machinations starts letting their elected officials know now – and keeps letting them know – we’re not going to stand for this flimflam, I believe there’s a real chance Lurie’s scenario could play out very nicely.

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed the first case of severe bird flu in the United States. Which is a bigger deal than ever, because of the incompetent and inexperienced boobs El Cheato has nominated to run the nation’s Department of Health and Human Services. If this mutates another step and makes the leap to human-to-human transmission, can they handle it? Via ABC News:

The federal health agency said Wednesday that the patient has been hospitalized in Louisiana. State health officials said the patient is over the age of 65 with underlying medical conditions.

The patient is experiencing severe respiratory illness related to bird flu infection and is currently in critical condition, a spokesperson from the Louisiana Department of Health told ABC News.

Genomic data showed the Louisiana patient was infected with a version of the virus recently found to be spreading in wild birds and poultry in the U.S., as well as found in some human cases in Canada and Washington state, according to the CDC.

The Louisiana patient was exposed to sick and dead birds in backyard flocks, although an investigation into the source of the illness is ongoing, the CDC said. This is the first case of human bird flu in the U.S. linked to exposure to backyard flock.

CALL YOUR SENATORS at (202) 224-3121 and tell them you don’t want to live through another pandemic, and if they vote to confirm these incompetents, you will hold them personally responsible for what comes after.

Stop with the bullshit “my senator is a Republican and my call won’t count” excuse. They count the calls and report them to leadership, which determines what happens as a caucus. Talk about complying in advance! Just call. It does matter.

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El Cheato rather abruptly rejected the bipartisan plan yesterday to prevent a government shutdown for Christmas. Instead, he ordered Mike Johnson and Republicans to renegotiate — days before a deadline when federal funding runs out. Via the Associated Press:

Trump’s sudden entrance into the debate and new demands sent Congress spiraling as lawmakers are trying to wrap up work and head home for the holidays. It leaves Johnson scrambling to engineer a new plan before Friday’s deadline to keep government open. “Republicans must GET SMART and TOUGH,” Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance said in a statement.

The president-elect made an almost unrealistic proposal that combined the some continuation of government funds along with a much more controversial provision to raise the nation’s debt limit — something his own party routinely rejects. “Anything else is a betrayal of our country,” they wrote.

Democrats decried the GOP revolt over the stopgap measure, which would have also provided some $100 billion in disaster aid to states hammered by Hurricanes Helene and Milton and other natural disasters.

But it gets interesting. Hakim Jeffries is pissed off and says he won’t bail out the Republicans:

Johnson can’t pass through rules without Jeffries and Senate Republicans are already saying no. Jeffries doesn’t want a clean continuing resolution, while Musk wants it. Unless Dems cave (I don’t think Jeffries will), we are heading toward the most glorious shit show ever.

Elon jumped in:

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Something like social studies was never controversial until America elected a raging narcissist who isn’t capable of handling even the slightest bit of criticism into power. Narcissists always have flying monkeys to do their work; in this case, it’s the Derby school district near Wichita, Kansas. There must never be a negative word about their precious leader, whose ego is fragile but massive. The school board rejected a proposed social studies curriculum for high school students because they claimed that some materials were biased against Donald.

KMUW reports:

The curriculum was recommended by Derby High School teachers, who reviewed six social studies programs over the past year.

Some board members voiced concerns about anti-racism statements on the publisher’s website, as well as the company’s statements about diversity, equity and inclusion. They also said parts of a textbook and online materials do not fairly reflect Trump’s first presidency.

“My biggest concern … involved what I would define as bias of omission,” board member Cathy Boote said.

The Derby Board of Education (clockwise from top: Jennifer Neel, Mark Boline, Tanya Jacobucci, Michael Blankenship, Melanie Turner, Robyn Pearman and Cathy Boote) rejected a proposed high school social studies curriculum because some members said it is biased against Donald Trump.

Boote listed several examples of material she said did not accurately reflect Trump’s actions during his presidency, including his stance on Cuba, trade deals with China, relationships with allies and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

“Then there was the ‘Muslim ban,'” Boote said, making air quotes with her fingers. “With no mention of the fact it wasn’t aimed at all Muslim countries, just those that have no ability to vet.

“Safety was the top priority, but they leave it sit there, with no explanation, to make you think he was xenophobic,” she said.

In January 2017, Trump signed an executive order suspending all travel and immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries. During the campaign for his first term, Trump had called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

Derby board member Michael Blankenship said he was concerned about some of the points Boote mentioned. He also opposed the new curriculum because of a statement Houghton Mifflin Harcourt made in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, who was Black, by a white police officer in 2020.

“We believe Black Lives Matter. We believe in social justice. We believe learning is a fundamental right,” the company said in a June 2020 message posted on its website. “We believe the education system needs to change, and we will continue to use our platform to make that change.”

Black lives do matter, and Trump did enact a Muslim ban. Those are facts that the fucking schoolboard in Kansas doesn’t want children to learn about. This sounds so Moms for Liberty-ish.

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WASHINGTON —  The Air Force lieutenant colonel left the Pentagon one day and returned the next — with a new name and a new gender identity.

Bree Fram remembers the atmosphere in 2020 as welcoming and supportive. Her colleagues brought cookies. When the Pentagon officially changed her gender in employment records, she felt her journey was complete.

Fram is one of thousands of transgender people working openly in government positions, including the Defense and State departments, intelligence agencies and various other federal branches. An estimated 15,000 transgender people work in the military alone. They say acceptance and support has surged in recent years.

But many are now worried that the broad advances they achieved over the last decade will be reversed under President-elect Donald Trump, who has likened gender transition to “mutilation,” vowed to roll back job protections and healthcare for trans workers and threatened to reimpose a ban against transgender people serving in the military.

“The mood among the community is apprehensive,” Fram said, noting she was speaking in her personal capacity and not on behalf of the Air Force.

Two transgender women in the State Department, who spoke openly with The Times earlier this year about their experiences, said after the election they no longer wanted to be identified out of fear for their safety and positions. One, a former Iraq combat veteran who transitioned later and landed at State, said she and friends now feared “becoming targets.”

Fram, a 21-year veteran of the Air Force and an aeronautical engineer whose job includes choosing the satellites that the U.S. launches into space, is a prominent activist in the transgender movement. Now ranked a colonel, she said transgender colleagues are stopping her in the hallways and bombarding her with questions and requests for advice.

“We have seen the campaign promises, the rhetoric being used about transgender people and what’s occurring on Capitol Hill as well,” she said. “So while none of us know exactly what will come to pass, there is still certainly that concern that it’s not going to be good for transgender people serving in the military.”

A group of Republican lawmakers is already attempting to bar incoming Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Del.), the first out transgender person elected to Congress, from using women’s restrooms. A leader in that group, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), wants to extend bathroom bans in all federal facilities nationwide.

Rep.-elect Sarah McBride (D-Del.), center, leaves a meeting of House Democrats on Capitol Hill on Nov. 19, 2024.

(Mark Schiefelbein / Associated Press)

Fears grew with Trump’s nomination of a Fox TV host, Pete Hegseth, as secretary of Defense. Hegseth has been vocal in his belief in restrictions on women in the military and the removal of transgender service members.

In 2016, President Obama lifted a ban on transgender people serving in the military. Trump reinstated it when he reached office the following year, but it was largely held up in the courts until President Biden repealed the ban. Many expect Trump to attempt to reimpose it.

Fram said she was nevertheless confident her community would persevere.

“What always amazes me about this community is despite … the many, many times we have faced adversity, it’s the resilience of this group of amazing people,” she said. “These public servants, who continue to put on their uniform every day and accomplish the mission that they’ve been given.… They are there doing the job and plan to continue doing the job for as long as they’re allowed to do so.”

Sailors kiss as they march in the Gay Pride Parade in San Diego in 2011.

(Gregory Bull / Associated Press)

No one knows exactly how far the Trump administration will go, and its efforts will again undoubtedly meet legal challenges and other resistance.

“We have seen this movie before,” said Jennifer Pizer, the L.A.-based chief legal officer at Lambda Legal, a civil rights organization that focuses on LGBTQ+ issues. “This is a group of people who are flouting the standard rules … and looking forward to spending an indefinite time in court.”

There are several options Trump might pursue, she said.

In addition to reimposing a military ban, Trump loyalists might attempt to deny “gender affirming” healthcare, forbidding federal funds or insurance plans to be used in procedures that facilitate transition, including hormone therapy and plastic surgery.

U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), center without hat, marches in 2015 with members of OutVets, a group of gay military veterans, during the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Boston.

(Steven Senne / Associated Press)

Republicans have added a rider to the must-pass defense authorization bill, forbidding such care for minors. That would have an impact on the children of service members.

And already, numerous states ban such care for minors in the civilian realm, an issue currently being reviewed by the Supreme Court.

When he first enacted the military ban, Trump said having transgender people in the armed forces was expensive. A 2016 study by Rand concluded that transgender healthcare added less than 0.1% to the health budget.

At the State Department, numerous policies, as well as union rules, are in place to protect transgender and gay diplomats and employees. But such policies could be subject to new executive orders or reversals.

In the 1950s and ’60s, the State Department pursued a hunt for gay and lesbian employees, civil servants and diplomats known as the Lavender Scare. They were routinely dismissed; many who hung on had to work in the closet. Some of the black-balling continued into the 1990s.

People attend a rally on a Transgender Day of Visibility in March 2023 in Washington.

(Jacquelyn Martin / Associated Press)

At the same time, the military and other federal agencies have often become national testing grounds in matters of inclusion and diversity.

President Truman desegregated the Army after World War II. Later, women were given broader roles, including, now, in combat.

In 1993, President Clinton took a first step toward lifting the ban on gays and lesbians in the military — a ban that was ended entirely in 2011.

Today, the State Department has teams dedicated to advocating for LGBTQ+ rights abroad, through embassies and sometimes in countries where homosexuality is criminalized.

In 2011, Robyn McCutcheon, a diplomat, trained astronomer and Russia expert, became the first person to transition while posted at a U.S. Embassy, during her tenure overseas in Romania.

“It is our collective responsibility to ensure transgender persons can live full lives, without fear of harm,” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said just last month. “The United States is committed to fighting for a world that accepts and respects transgender, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming persons.”

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, pictured in September, said last month that “it is our collective responsibility to ensure transgender persons can live full lives, without fear of harm.”

(Heather Khalifa / Associated Press)

“Until then,” he said, “we proudly advocate to end transphobic discrimination, violence and homicide.”

It is not clear these programs would continue under Trump and his nominee for secretary of State, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

Logan Ireland, a Texas-born transgender man who is an officer with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, counsels others in the transgender community who want to join the military, with an added urgency after the election.

“You’re on this mission for a reason,” he said he tells them. “Continue pressing forward with your journey to serve in uniform…. A ban is not in effect yet, and we will not know if, or how, it might take shape.”

Ireland, speaking from Hawaii where he is stationed, said the struggle thus far “has taught us how to fight, resilience, integrity. I have to remain positive.”

Rachel Levine is often described as the most senior transgender person in the U.S. government, the first Senate-confirmed official who is transgender. She is the assistant secretary of Health in the Department of Health and Human Services. She is a long-time public activist for trans rights, and served as a grand marshal in last year’s gay pride parade in Washington.

Department of Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary of Health Rachel Levine, center, speaks after having attended a roundtable on transgender health with Tatiana Williams, left, executive director of Transinclusive Group, and Arianna Inurritegui-Lint, founder of Arianna’s Center, in June 2022 in Miami.

(Wilfredo Lee / Associated Press)

Levine, 67, a former state secretary of health in Pennsylvania, had already transitioned when Biden nominated her to the HHS job. She overcame resistance from GOP senators, including Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky, who attacked her for her support for gender-affirming medical care and grilled her on whether transgender women should be allowed in women’s sports.

“There has been a lot of pushback against the broader LGBTQI+ community that has nothing to do with science and nothing to do with medicine,” she said. “And faced with that pushback, I find joy in my work. It makes me want to work more for health equity.”

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CHOWCHILLA, Calif. —  Gazing across the crowd of women, fresh from county jail in their orange prison jumpsuits, Lena Coleman wishes she could save them all.

And it’s her job to try.

In July, after 20 years in prison for attempted murder and a gun enhancement, Coleman, 47, became one of three dozen prisoners at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla to graduate from a peer support specialist program.

The program is a part of the California Model, an ambitious effort Gov. Gavin Newsom launched in March 2023 to overhaul a prison system built on fear and retribution and replace it with opportunities for more normalized social interaction. The changes are modeled after prison operations in Norway and other Scandinavian countries, where incarceration is considered a tool for rehabilitation rather than harsh punishment.

At Chowchilla, a sprawling campus set in the farm fields of Madera County, the peer support specialists have become the backbone of that transformation.

Every day, they fan out across the prison, serving as something between a therapist and life coach to the roughly 2,100 women incarcerated at the facility, one of two women’s prisons in California.

Coleman works in Building 501, a reception yard that houses new prisoners before they transfer “over the wall” into the general population.

Prisoner Markeisha Dixon is among the trained peer support specialists working to instill a stronger sense of community for women incarcerated at the Chowchilla women’s prison.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Her job is often limited in scope: helping a new arrival find prison garb that fits, or working with the healthcare services team to remind patients to take their medicine or attend an upcoming medical appointment.

Other times, the work requires more intense intervention.

Staff might call a peer support specialist to help de-escalate violence or ease a behavioral crisis. As mandated reporters, they can be the difference between someone dying of suicide or accepting mental health services.

Mostly, Coleman is there for whenever someone needs to talk — or cry — with a trusted confidant.

“I tell them that prison is going to be what you make it,” she said. And then she offers them a piece of advice: “I’m just like you. I’ve been there, done that. Only difference is I have changed my ways.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom launched the California Model reform effort in 2023 at San Quentin, with an aim of expanding job training and rehabilitation programs.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Newsom chose San Quentin in Marin County, the state’s oldest prison, to jump-start the California Model last year. At San Quentin, prison officials are focused on improving relations between officers and prisoners, two historically warring factions in a violent system unaccustomed to change.

The California Model looks a bit different at Chowchilla — and it must.

A majority of incarcerated women in the U.S. endured some combination of physical, sexual and emotional abuse before committing the crime that sent them to prison, researchers have found. Often, that abuse was inflicted by a husband or boyfriend. Most are single moms of young children who have lost custody because of their crimes.

At the same time, women’s prisons often lack the mental health services and rehabilitative programming to help address deep trauma, said Alycia Welch, associate director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.

“Prisons and jails, when they were built, were not built at all with women in mind,” Welch said.

Compared with male inmates, incarcerated women report higher rates of sexual assault in prison. In September, federal prosecutors announced a civil rights investigation into sexual abuse at both Chowchilla and the California Institution for Women in Chino, citing multiple reports of groping, inappropriate touching and rape by correctional workers.

Officer Josephine Solis opens a dorm room for a prisoner inside C Block at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Over the last two years, more than 100 formerly incarcerated women have brought lawsuits against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and current and former correctional officers, alleging graphic incidents of sexual abuse by prison staff dating back a decade.

Corrections officials have said they welcome the investigation. They said that recent reforms have made it easier for women to report misconduct and that staff are now required to wear body cameras at the two women’s prisons. Expanded training to help staff work with prisoners who have dealt with significant trauma is a key pillar of the California Model.

While Coleman appreciates the efforts by Newsom and others in Sacramento to overhaul the state’s dark prison culture, she thinks it’s important for prisoners themselves to help steer the changes. And she views her mission as a peer support specialist as central to that transformation: working to instill a sense of community inside prison walls that was often missing for these women on the outside.

“We all have untreated trauma that contributed to criminalization. So when we come in here, we share our lived experiences with each other,” Coleman said. “We’re more comfortable with each other than we would be with staff.”

Statewide, female inmates make up fewer than 5% of California’s 91,000 prisoners. Of the nearly 51,000 people serving time in state prisons who were convicted of violent crimes, fewer than 2,000 are women.

When women do commit violent offenses, researchers have found the episodes often are tied to self-defense or coercion by an abusive partner. “Sometimes women describe it as something just snapped, and they couldn’t take it anymore. And they acted out as their only means of protection,” Welch said.

Women attending a support group at the Chowchilla prison reflect on the role trauma has played in their lives — and how it helped put them behind bars.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

That makes it more crucial for women’s prisons to have the kind of robust rehabilitation and job training envisioned under the California Model, to better prepare them for release, she said.

The peer support specialists are part of that effort, said Affie Tamuno-Koko, chief nurse executive for the state prison system. In addition, providing formal training as certified peer support specialists gives the women who eventually will be released from prison a transferable job skill. The certification, combined with their on-the-job experience while incarcerated, ensures “they’re not coming out as entry level,” Tamuno-Koko said.

Beyond the employment possibilities, the role “has restored their value as people,” Tamuno-Koko said. “I think it’s a very selfless act, to not just care about yourself, but really want to spend your time genuinely helping someone.”

“You’re going to get on the train or get off,” Lt. Monique Williams says of California Model naysayers. “Because we’re moving.”

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Lt. Monique Williams, the prison’s public information officer, said the women doing peer support are making a tangible difference. The peer support specialists at Chowchilla have provided more than 10,000 one-on-one counseling sessions and 430 group sessions, according to the corrections department.

“They’re needed,” Williams said. “Women understand women.”

Lynne Acosta, a former prisoner, said she can see the transition unfolding. Acosta was incarcerated for more than 20 years for conspiracy to commit first-degree murder before her 2018 release from Chowchilla. Now she’s back inside on a regular basis running group sessions as a life coach working for the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, a nonprofit that provides reentry and support services for former prisoners.

Huddled in a circle in a drab prison classroom in the middle of June, she led a group of two dozen women who were reflecting on the role trauma had played in their lives — and how it helped put them behind bars.

The women gathered had been locked up for charges including drug and firearms possession, robbery and murder. Nearly half were serving life sentences.

“Emotionally, physically, sexually, we are retraumatized, revictimized everyday in here,” said prisoner Kandice Ortega, a peer support specialist at the Chowchilla women’s prison. “That needs to change.”

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

“How many of you in here, regardless of your sentence, it’s your first time ever in trouble?” Acosta asked. Almost everyone raised a hand.

How many were survivors of domestic violence? About half.

And how many think they might have avoided their crimes if they had received support for addiction, domestic violence, sexual assault or other traumas? Everyone.

Acosta remembers the years when such support groups were uncommon, and how badly she needed them.

“Women aren’t supposed to commit violent crimes,” was the common notion, Acosta said. Women were “demonized and dehumanized,” as though because of their gender, they should be doubly punished for ending up in prison.

Lynne Acosta, a former prisoner who is now a life coach, pushes a condemned prisoner out of her dorm unit at the Central California Women’s Facility.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Acosta now lives nearby in the Central Valley and visits the prison almost every day to lead sessions. She’s optimistic that the state’s reform efforts are creating opportunities that might make things a little better for her friends who are still inside.

They include Elizabeth Lozano.

Lozano, 49, grew up in a violent neighborhood in Long Beach, where she said she experienced sexual abuse by a family member. She was sentenced to life without parole for her involvement, at age 16, in a 1992 gang shooting that killed a 13-year-old girl. Lozano was convicted of murder, although her boyfriend said he pulled the trigger.

In prison, Lozano received her associate’s degree in behavioral and social sciences, and co-founded an organization for juvenile offenders, along with another group that brings victims, law enforcement officers and prisoners together for discussions.

This year, Lozano became a peer support specialist as another way to make amends, she said. She works with fellow prisoners on coping skills and anger management, and helps them set goals for their time in prison or look up legal cases in the law library. After losing a loved one in prison in 2016 to an apparent suicide, Lozano also counsels women experiencing mental health crises.

Recent changes to state law make it easier for offenders who were imprisoned as youths to be released. Lozano’s next parole hearing is in May.

“I can’t undo the great harm that I have caused,” Lozano said. “I feel like the only thing that I can do is give from the best part of me and help others in their recovery.”

The majority of incarcerated women endured some combination of physical, sexual and emotional abuse before committing the crime that sent them to prison, according to researchers.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Adding to the challenges of overhauling an entire correctional system are the traumas that happen within prison walls.

The allegations of widespread sexual abuse and serial rapes at the Chowchilla and Chino facilities that are the basis for the federal civil rights investigation may have come as a jolt to state corrections officials, but not to the women who came to see it as part of prison life.

“Emotionally, physically, sexually, we are retraumatized, revictimized everyday in here,” said Kandice Ortega, 38, a peer support specialist who has served 15 years for second-degree murder. “That needs to change.”

Williams, the public information officer, said she hopes — and believes — that change is underway.

Williams has worked for the corrections department for 23 years, rising through the ranks to become a lieutenant. She worked for several years in the unit that housed California’s death row for women before the state’s recent efforts to transition condemned prisoners into the general population.

Fellow staffers, as well as prisoners interviewed, said Williams embodied the spirit of the California Model before it had a name. She spends her days in a swirl of energetic motion, defying stereotypes of cold, bullying guards. She addresses prisoners with candor and kindness, stopping frequently to ask about their lives.

Williams has visited Norway twice to learn about prison practices she could bring back to Chowchilla. She’s coordinated barbecues and parties for staff and prisoners to improve relations. During a Juneteenth celebration, she took the stage and sang gospel music for the prisoners.

“You’re going to get on the train or get off,” she said of California Model naysayers. “Because we’re moving.”

Coleman, the peer support specialist, also chooses to believe that progress is possible. Either things can continue as usual, leaving incarcerated women to deteriorate in their isolation and trauma. Or they can grow and heal so they are better citizens when they leave prison — and strengthen the sense of community for those left behind.

“We have each other, we have the peer support specialist program, and we do have some staff that do care,” Coleman said. “Is this going to be make it a perfect setting? … No. Not even the world outside these gates is.”

On a Friday at the end of October, Coleman was working her way through a stack of paper with the names of dozens of women she was supposed to counsel that week. She called one woman over for a check-in.

Brandi Collins was back in prison.

For more than half her life, Collins, 43, has struggled with addiction to crystal meth and crack cocaine. Prison records show she has been incarcerated nearly a dozen times.

“I have a criminal thinking,” Collins said. “This is my home.”

But this time, she has Coleman, someone she can trust and confide in.

“I felt bad about my dang self. So maybe the first week I was here, I said, ‘Can I talk to you?’” Collins said.

“Do we judge you for returning?” Coleman asked.

“No, she didn’t judge. I know they’ve seen me on this yard a thousand times,” Collins responded.

“I want to forgive myself, and I want to change, and I don’t know what it takes,” she said. Then, turning to Coleman, she said, “I look at you and you give me hope.”

This post was originally published on this site

Did you miss it? On Tuesday, the electoral college made official what we’ve known for six weeks: Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris for the presidency.

Americans could be excused for being unaware that electors met in all 50 state capitals and the District of Columbia to cast votes. In nearly every presidential election year, the constitutionally required but largely ceremonial event passes with little notice. The tragic exception, of course, was in 2020: Loser Trump followed weeks of lies and scores of lawsuits alleging election fraud with an illegal scheme creating fake pro-Trump electors in battleground states — a prelude to the violent insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. (Unlike Trump, his accomplices in the scheme are, justly, still being prosecuted.)

It’s great that the transfer of power is proceeding peacefully, as it always has except at the onset of the Civil War, and, yes, in 2021. Yet you can thank President Biden, Vice President Harris and their fellow Democratic good losers for that, not Trump. No one can credibly doubt that, had he lost again, he’d be raising another ruckus. Or worse, that there’d be violence. Trump suggested as much, telling Time in April, “If we don’t win, you know, it depends.”

States and the federal government prepared for mayhem that never came. Gabriel Sterling, the top Georgia election officer who four years ago publicly and presciently warned Trump that “someone’s going to get killed” because of his provocations, and who endured death threats himself, said of the electors’ meeting this week, “To be honest, I forgot about it.”

As Trump declared in last month’s victory speech, “It’s time to unite.”

But as Biden said afterward in congratulating him: “You can’t love your country only when you win.”

Biden — who still hasn’t received Trump’s acknowledgment of Biden’s 2020 victory, let alone congratulations, and who, thanks to Trump, is considered illegitimate by seven of 10 Republicans — expressed hope that “we can lay to rest the question about the integrity of the American electoral system. … It can be trusted, win or lose.”

Indeed. And that’s why, in this week of the uneventful electoral college vote, Americans should take the occasion to note the damage that Trump has wrought to the citizenry’s faith in elections by his years of demagogically disparaging them — instead of joining him and his MAGA minions in memory-holing their falsehoods about election fraud.

Trump has gone silent about “rigged” elections since he won in November. And yet, up to the final hours of voting, he was crying foul. “A lot of talk about massive CHEATING in Philadelphia. Law Enforcement coming!!!” he posted on election day.

City and state officials, including Seth Bluestein, a Republican member of Philadelphia’s board of elections, reposted Trump’s lie to insist there was “absolutely no truth” to it. For that, Bluestein suffered antisemitic attacks and threats online. Countless election workers have known the feeling. Thanks, Trump.

Days earlier, Trump claimed, “Pennsylvania is cheating, and getting caught, at large scale levels rarely seen before.” He spread a false conspiracy theory of vote stealing in one county, adding, “We caught them cold.” No, he hadn’t; there were no vote thieves to catch.

After Trump won Pennsylvania — surprise! — he clammed up about Democrats’ alleged heists there and in all six other battleground states that he carried, including four states governed by Democrats. I guess as vote riggers go, Democrats are just inept?

Even before the election, Trump stifled his talk that early and mail voting are rife with fraud, but only after advisors, apoplectic that Republican candidates were being shortchanged, appealed to his “yuge” ego: “Sir, your people are so excited to vote for you that they want to as soon as they can,” one said during an April meeting at Mar-a-Lago. “You gotta tell them it’s OK.”

Trump has not, however, changed his tune about the 2020 election. The president-elect continues to lie that he won it, so routinely that reporters let it go unchecked. What’s worse, looking ahead, is that Trump reportedly is making fealty to his election lies a job requirement for appointees to high-level administration posts.

So it is that he’s tapped former Florida Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi to be U.S. attorney general. She was part of “the first wave of the Big Lie,” as former Trump White House aide Alyssa Farah Griffin put it to the House Jan. 6 investigation committee. Bondi rushed to Pennsylvania after the 2020 election to spread disinformation about dead voters and ballot dumps. She was with lead election denier Rudy Giuliani for Team Trump’s ludicrous news conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping in a Philadelphia industrial park. And she was fulminating on Fox News: “We are not going anywhere until they declare Trump won Pennsylvania.”

In 2022, former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson told the Jan. 6 committee that Bondi contacted her before she testified to press Hutchinson to remain loyal to Trump, according to the Washington Post. (Yet it’s former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the committee’s vice chair, that House Republicans now want prosecuted for witness tampering for her talks with Hutchinson.) This year, Bondi echoed Trump’s falsehoods about noncitizens voting from her platform as a leader of a pro-Trump policy institute. And she promised retribution for Trump’s indictments: “The Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted.”

No doubt Bondi as the next attorney general would carry out Trump’s calls for the Justice Department to investigate the 2020 election, to prosecute Biden and to get House Jan. 6 committee members behind bars.

“Is she going to continue … pushing out the Big Lie?” California’s new Democratic senator and Jan. 6 committee veteran Adam Schiff recently asked on MSNBC.

That was a rhetorical question, of course.

@jackiekcalmes