Independent News
Sen. Cory Booker is all of us when he blasts GOP over Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson hearings
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On Monday, Sen. Cory Booker told the GOP members of the Senate what most of us—and Black women particularly—were thinking during the Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. Booker blasted Republican senators in his remarks on April 4 for being hypocrites and for turning the process into a political battlefield, taking no prisoners, and defying reason.
Booker called out the GOP senators for saying things he called “ridiculous,” “painful,” and “hurtful.”
RELATED STORY: What I see as a Black woman watching Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings
Booker focused much of his ire on accusations from lawmakers such as Sen. Josh Hawley, who during the hearings implied that Judge Jackson was soft on defendants in child pornography cases and did not follow federal sentencing guidelines, highlighting one specific case in which Judge Jackson sentenced the defendant to only three months in prison.
During the hearing, Judge Jackson explained to Hawley her decision on sentencing by explaining how such determinations are made. “[T]he evidence that you are pointing to, discussing, addressing in this context is evidence that I have seen in my role as a judge and it is heinous. It is egregious,” she said of the 2013 case Hawley referred to. But it’s not that simple, she continued patiently; ultimately a judge must decide “how to sentence defendants proportionately consistent” with the current law as outlined by Congress.
But none of what Jackson said mattered. Hawley took all of his nonsense to Twitter to accuse her of having “a pattern of letting child porn offenders off the hook for their appalling crimes, both as a judge and as a policymaker.”
At Monday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Booker ripped into Hawley’s allegations, calling them “meritless and on the verge of demagoguery.” Sen. Booker continued:
“You could try to create a straw man here, but it does not hold. And it’s just frustrating to me to listen to people trying to create a caricature of a human being whose family is law enforcement, who is a parent, and who is well within the norm in these cases.”
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He added that numerous victims’ rights activists and law enforcement groups have vouched for Jackson on the issue of sentencing. But in the end, Booker pointed to what he called the blatant “disrespect” Jackson faced during the hearings.
“I’m hearing from people, not just Black women, but particularly Black women, who have been relating to me their stories of having to come into a room where you’re more qualified than the people who are sitting in judgment of you, and having to endure the absurdities of disrespect that we saw Judge Jackson endure.”
Booker tried to take a more measured tone, agreeing that it’s normal to have “political substantive disagreements” but added that the questioning he heard “triggered a hurt in so many people.”
“How can they disrespect someone who’s done everything right in her life and in her journey,” he asked. He demanded that the GOP explain: “How qualified do you have to be?”
Jackson is the first Black woman nominee in the 230-year history of the Supreme Court.
Jackson, 51, graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University, then attended Harvard Law School, where she graduated magna cum laude and was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. She served as a law clerk for three federal judges: Judge Patti B. Saris, then at the U.S. Court of Appeals, and for First Circuit Judge Bruce M. Selya. She then clerked for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer from 1999 until 2000.
Booker closed by citing the poet Maya Angelou and her famed work, “And Still I Rise.”
“Today is the birthday of a great poet, Maya Angelou. Why does this poem strike a chord with so many Americans? Because they feel it to their bones,” Booker said.
“You may try to write me down in history with your bitter twisted lies, you may trod me in the very dirt. But still, like dust, I rise. Rise, sister Jackson. Rise, Judge Jackson, to the highest court in the land. And when we have that final vote, I will rejoice, ancestors will rejoice, and we will say, ‘Lord, this is a day you have made.’”
BOOKER’S FULL COMMENTS HERE:
Ukraine update: Meanwhile, in Kherson …
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Since Russia collected what was left of their forces in northern Ukraine and made a run for the Belarus border, almost all of the attention has focused on the Donbas region. Which isn’t surprising, since Russia already announced that it was going to redirect its attention there.
The absolutely best outcome for Russia at this point would seem to be capturing more territory in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, and completing the capture of Mariupol. Then they could form a continuous slice of land from the Russian border to the Crimea and have it all “volunteer” to join Russia. Just the way that all those people herded onto busses in occupied Ukrainian towns are “volunteering” to move to prison camps somewhere in Russia.
Many of the analysts projecting Russia’s next move would also include “and capture Odessa,” cutting Ukraine off from the Black Sea. But that suggestion seems to forget this: Russia is about to lose big, right down there next to the Black Sea coast.
That’s because, at the same time that Ukraine forces went on the offensive near Kyiv, capturing one nearby village and suburb after another, they were doing the same thing southeast of the city of Mykolaiv. Multiple attempts to capture the city were repelled by Ukrainian forces and then, over a series of days within the last two weeks, Ukrainian forces broke out of Mykolaiv, pushing to the southeast. They recaptured villages and towns like Kotlyareve, Shevchenkove, and Luch in just two days of fast movement. Russian forces attempted to shift into a move on Kryvyi Rih, but that also failed.
The result was that by the end of the month Ukrainian forces were situated just outside Kherson, Russian helicopters and UAVs had been forced to flee from the local airport, and it looked like just a matter of time before Ukraine forces gathered their strength and pushed in to take back the only large city Russia has completely taken since the invasion began.
Kherson (pop. 284,000) was the scene of fierce fighting during the first three days of the war, with Russia first capturing, then losing, then recapturing, the re-losing, the key bridge across the Dnieper River on the northeast edge of the city. Even at the time, there were many analysts wondering why no one blew up that bridge to prevent the Russian advance into the city. The answer seems to be: because traitors.
Local officials in Kherson were among those who received bribes to roll over to the Russian invasion and it seems like, in this case at least, those bribes stuck. Less than a week after the invasion began, Ukrainian forces moved off toward Mykolaiv and Kherson was handed over to the Russians with relatively little fighting, bridge intact.
Then the Ukrainians pushed back from Mykolaiv, marched right to the outskirts of Kherson, and that’s where things remained even as Russia was strategically running away like a scalded cat in the north.
For the Ukrainian forces, Kherson does represent something of a challenge. After all, Russia may specifically target hospitals and shelters labeled “Children Inside,” but Ukrainian forces can’t be too keen to start lobbing artillery toward Russians camped inside their own city. However, it seems like Russia may be about to solve that problem for them.
If Russian forces retreat across the Dnieper, it’s a good bet that they will pull down that bridge behind them when they go. That is definitely something that Russian forces currently scattered along the west bank of the river from Beryslav to Ivanivka might want to consider. Otherwise, they’re likely to be on the mop-end of some “mopping up,” and that’s never a good place to be.
If Russia pulls back across the Dnieper, it represents a natural defensive position that will be hard for Ukrainian forces to break through at Kherson. However, Ukraine has control of multiple bridges farther up the river, which they can utilize to come down on Russian-occupied Melitopol from the north.
If Russia leaves Kherson and retreats to the east, it’s also pretty much saying farewell to prospects of capturing Odessa. Russia’s only option would be to stage an amphibious assault, which are difficult maneuvers in the best of times, requiring a combination of coordination, competence, and surprise to pull off successfully. So far in this war, Russia is zero for all three of those.
And the people of Kherson may be about to have one helluva celebration.
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Starbucks CEO whines that companies are being 'assaulted … by the threat of unionization'
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Starbucks is continuing its union-busting campaign with a vengeance in the wake of a tenth store voting to unionize. Workers at the New York City Roastery—one of just three flagship “Roastery” locations in the country—voted 46-36 in favor of unionizing, with the vote counted on April 1, the same that New York Amazon workers won their union vote.
That was Friday. On Monday, Starbucks fired Phoenix, Arizona, worker-activist Laila Dalton after months of harassment and retaliation for her union leadership. In fact, Starbucks fired Dalton for having recorded the abuse the faced from managers. That’s one of a string of firings of union leaders at Starbucks, but, Noam Scheiber notes, the first to have been fired after the National Labor Relations Board had already issued a complaint against Starbucks for retaliating against her for her protected activism. Pretty damn brazen.
RELATED STORY: Starbucks’ union-busting campaign can’t slow organizing momentum as Arizona store votes yes
Here’s what that campaign of harassment has looked like:
Also on Monday, Howard Schultz made his triumphant return to public speaking as, once again, the CEO of Starbucks. In that speech, he cast unions as a major threat to Starbucks and other companies.
“Now here’s where it gets a little sensitive—because I’ve been coached a little bit—but I do want to talk about something pretty serious,” Schultz said. “We can’t ignore what is happening in the country as it relates to companies throughout the country being assaulted in many ways, by the threat of unionization.”
Assaulted by the threat. That threat is the workers of his company. People like Laila Dalton, a teenager repeatedly berated and harassed by managers.
Schultz added, “There’s two ways I can approach this. I can say I’m anti-union, and [that] I don’t want to see that at Starbucks. But I’m not an anti-union person. I am a pro-Starbucks [person]. Pro-partner, pro-Starbucks culture, pro-heritage, the history of our company. … We didn’t get here by having a union.”
Heritage, huh. Is that like when people say their embrace of the Confederate flag is “heritage, not hate”?
Schultz’s “I’m not an anti-union person … BUT” schtick is obvious nonsense. If he’s terrified about his company being assaulted by a threat, he can’t plausibly deny being anti-that-threat.
In the same speech, Schultz announced, “We are going to be in the NFT business,” just to drive home how laser-focused he is on the stuff that matters. He’s pro-Starbucks culture, pro-heritage, all about “the partners” (Starbucksian for “workers”) and the history of the company—oh, and he’s jumping on board with the hot new scam. It seems that, to Schultz, NFTs are more in the Starbucks tradition than listening to workers. What a surprise.
As the latest union win shows, though, the momentum is with the workers despite big-money union-busting campaign and the retaliation and firings and poor-pitiful-me speeches from the CEO. Long may it continue.
RELATED STORIES:
Clean sweep: Votes counted at three more Starbucks stores lead to three more unionized Starbucks
Starbucks’ vicious anti-union campaign isn’t stopping workers from organizing at dozens of stores
In USPS electric vehicles hearing, Republicans suddenly care about mining and the planet
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The House Committee on Oversight and Reform held a lengthy hearing on Tuesday titled “It’s Electric: Developing the Postal Service Fleet of the Future” in order to “examine the benefits, opportunities, and challenges of electrifying the Postal Service fleet through the acquisition of the Next Generation Delivery Vehicle (NGDV),” according to the committee. The NGDV program offered a chance for the Postal Service to align its vision of replacing old, emissions-heavy vehicles with the Biden administration’s emission reductions goals. That chance has so far been squandered: Just 10,019 of the 50,000 vehicles ordered by the agency will be electric. Naturally, lawmakers wanted answers from the USPS for this discrepancy.
… except for Republicans, many of whom brought up conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden and missed the point about mineral mining operations, battery capacities, and charging stations. Reps. Andy Biggs and James Comer entered various articles into the record about the president’s son, with Comer promoting an anti-Hunter Biden letter he’d penned and Biggs asking to subpoena him. Regardless of whether Hunter Biden has a vested interest in cobalt mining (and it’s unclear if he does), bringing up the issue of ethical mining is rich coming from Republicans who have clearly benefitted from far more damaging mining practices. In Comer’s represented state of Kentucky, coal mining has devastated the landscape and plagued Comer’s constituents with major health problems. Yet Comer has raked in more than $70,000 from the coal mining industry since 2011.
While it’s true that mineral mining for EV batteries has plenty of downsides, there may be more ethical options emerging. Companies and government agencies are looking into the environmental impact of drilling for lithium in California’s Salton Sea and recent research suggests that it’s extremely likely that environmental concerns will decrease as technology develops in this sector. And with Biden invoking the Defense Production Act to incentivize additional mineral mining, Republicans worried about unethical labor practices within the mining sector as well as its damage to the planet may not have to worry for long.
If anything, workers should be concerned about the anti-union U.S. lawmakers that sit on the Oversight and Reform Committee, such as South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman, who praised his state’s right-to-work status and took his opportunity to speak during Tuesday’s hearing to promote anti-union sentiments. “I think it’s interesting that we have politicians who are saying that union workers, I guess, are more qualified than those who choose not to be in the union. I will remind my friends across the aisle that it’s the employees who have the choice to go union or not union,” Norman said, adding that Oshkosh Defense will base its NGDV production for the Postal Service in South Carolina. Committee members have long worried that Oshkosh chose Spartanburg, South Carolina, in order to avoid using union labor because of the state’s explicit hostility toward organized labor.
If Republicans were truly concerned about ethical labor in the transition away from gas-powered cars, they would join their Democratic counterparts in calling on the USPS to reconsider its current plan in favor of building an entirely EV fleet that meets the needs of this critical moment in climate change mitigation while also using union labor in an effort to manufacture these vehicles fairly. According to a press release, lawmakers like Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney and activists in the labor and environmental movements will deliver thousands of petitions tomorrow to USPS headquarters. Even a recent Inspector General report shows that EVs would be a more sound investment for the USPS in the long run.
What Fox News won't say: Murder rates are higher in Republican states than Democratic ones
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A new study again confirms it: Republican-led states have higher murder rates than Democratic ones. While your Tucker Carlson-watching uncle may be utterly convinced that Portland, Oregon, has been burned to the ground, or regaling his email lists with any number of tales he heard directly from Donald Trump’s inflamed appendix, the truth of the matter is that the states with high violent crime rates tend to be led by conservative Republican politicians.
So then, which causes which? That’s not clear, but the Yahoo! News writeup of the study provides a nice, terse summary of what we know does predict violent crime rates. They “are found in areas that have low average education levels, high rates of poverty and relatively modest access to government assistance,” which not coincidentally describes much of the deep-conservative South. It may be that fear of violent crime makes Americans more conservative; certainly, anyone with a passing familiarity with Fox News knows that America’s top conservative news source got that way with hosts that scream in bug-eyed terror over all the ways that you, personally, are in imminent danger of being murdered by immigrants, or bilingual people, or the Socialisms, or anyone who thinks American police are straight-up murdering too many of the people they come in contact with these days.
It’s also the precise fear that made the National Rifle Association what it is today. ‘Violent crime is coming for you; you’d better buy 10 guns and stuff your closet with ammo so that you can heroically save the day by being violent at everybody else first!’ That’s been the steady refrain in every magazine and speech and podcast, all of it sponsored by the murder—ahem, “safety”—industry.
But the reality remains: If you want to reduce violent crime, you fix up the schools to raise education levels, you institute programs to lift people out of poverty, and you provide government assistance to make sure people are at least getting food and a roof over their heads. Since all of these are things that Republicanism is absolutely bug-eyed dead-set against in any form, in any venue, we’re hardly going out on a limb by saying A leads to B leads to C.
Republican governance leads to lower education and higher poverty rates; lower education and higher poverty leads to violent crime; therefore voting for Republicans causes higher murder rates. There ya go, there’s your bumper sticker pitch. Stop voting for Republicanism if you want to not be murdered, America.
Hmm. And yet, that’s not something you really hear on not-conservative television shows. You don’t see CNN shows with liberal hosts screaming that Republican lawmakers are coming to your town, to your street, and with them comes MURDER. It may be that non-conservative Americans are simply less motivated by such paranoias, at a gut level, and so the Fox News approach to creating an endless wave of enemies won’t work on anyone not predisposed to such panic.
Anyhoo, this study is not likely to convince any of the people that need convincing; conservatives have long insisted that we need to gut social programs, including our schools, because regardless of the actual outcomes of doing that it is simply not “fair” for Americans to pay taxes for those things. It is better, in conservatism, to increase poverty and cause higher rates of violence than it is to decrease poverty through government action; the resulting high crime rates can then be dealt with by convincing Americans to buy guns to protect themselves from the new criminals. Then when those Americans commit violent crimes themselves, as they attempt to police their towns, a new set of Americans must be recruited who are willing to buy more and better weapons than the previous group.
Repeat this process for a few decades and eventually you end up with police departments decked out in military gear so as to best fight against all the “good” Americans who spend a lot more on their guns than schools are given for textbooks. Or, as the Republicans call it, a conservative utopia.
Still, though, while researchers are not willing to hypothesize whether high rates of violent crime cause Republicans to get elected or if Republicans getting elected causes crime rates to rise, I think we can be a little more gutsy than that. Currently, Republicanism is actively encouraging the sort of paranoias and hoax-premised outrage that goads Americans into becoming violent. Fox News has a laundry list of named American enemies, from abortion providers to immigrants to think tanks, and violence against the targets of the day is now a semi-regular occurrence. Conservative pundits promote all manner of hoaxes, and the advertisements that appear next to each are conspicuously heavy with promotions for guns and other weapons.
Oh, and the near-entirety of the Republican Party continues to back a sedition-premised hoax intended to overthrow the U.S. government, one that led to multiple deaths at the U.S. Capitol when the Republican base actually believed the lies and were successfully goaded by a Republican White House into taking violent action to make it happen. So, yeah. Yeah, we can pretty definitely say that Republicanism is at this point an intrinsically pro-violence movement, something that it shares with all previous forms of fascism and one that will certainly be inspiring future murderous acts as the party works mostly successfully to make damn sure anyone who helped spur such violence remains unpunished and powerful enough to attempt it again.
As a side note, those of you who click on the links to the study will immediately see that it is sponsored by, ahem, “Third Way,” the faux-centrist organization that saw the rise of Republican fascism and Democratic opposition to that new extremism, and came up with the grotesquely lobbyist-friendly idea that what America really needs is a “Third Way” that will oppose some fascist dismantling of our modern society while chastising the people who fight against it more vigorously as being narrow-minded and a bit rude. Now that that thinking has helped to produce the first attempted coup since the Civil War days, they may or may not be rethinking their approach. But the study is sound and basic stuff, so we can trust that part of it. Yeah, the conservative agenda has for a long while focused on things that increase violent crime; that’s why generationally conservative states and regions continue to Suck Big Time in pretty much every societal measure.
It’s only going to get worse as places like Texas get it into their heads that they can privatize laws by putting them into the hands of “bounty” hunters, or private citizens willing to go farther than the Constitution-bound government is allowed to. It takes no great expertise to imagine how Americans both given guns and told to hunt down lawbreakers will react to these new powers, and in the wake of Jan. 6 and after many years of Fox News painting targets on American backs, it seems vanishingly unlikely that the conservative writers of the law don’t “intend” for those escalations to take place.
White House to extend pause on federal student loan payments through August
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According to Bloomberg, the Biden administration intends to pause federal student loan payments (and keep interest rates at 0%) through Aug. 31, 2022, as an extension of the existing moratorium on payments. Donald Trump technically first put a pause on federal student loan payments in place early in the COVID-19 pandemic, and President Joe Biden has continued renewing it. The latest pause was set to expire on May 1, but it seems the White House is willing to give borrowers a few more months to prepare.
An extension of the pause is a win for borrowers who are struggling to get by in general, and especially because the pandemic is far from over. It’s difficult to celebrate, however, because Biden has not yet acted on his campaign promise to forgive $10,000 in federal student loan debt per borrower. Many of his progressive peers, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer, have continued to push Biden to act via an executive order to forgive a more significant amount of student debt, to the tune of $50,000 per borrower. And of course, some progressives still want to see all of the debt erased.
RELATED STORY: Is it finally time to talk about a strike on student debt repayment?
What will the White House actually do? It’s honestly unclear. Though reporters have continued to ask White House press secretary Jen Psaki when Biden will forgive the debt, her responses have been vague at best. It seems the Biden administration is looking to toss accountability to Congress and say that Biden will sign legislation when it lands on his desk, but as countless debt relief advocates have pointed out, this isn’t the only option. Biden can forgive debt by executive order.
Debt relief is truly needed. Though folks against federal student loan forgiveness argue it is unfair to offer relief to people now when others have had to pay theirs off, spite is not a good basis for governing. We don’t ignore cures to diseases, for example, because others have perished before findings or treatments were made available, right? There’s no real reason people should be burdened by outrageous student debt—including outrageous interest rates they (often) signed on to when they weren’t yet old enough to buy alcohol.
We also know forgiveness is a race equality issue. Borrowers of color, for example, report holding more student debt than white borrowers. This trend is especially true when we look at women of color, and in particular, Black women. Couple higher loan balances with lower wages and systemic barriers to education and employment, and it’s clear that forgiving debt would give marginalized borrowers a better chance at actually saving and investing the money instead of tossing it out the window.
Forgiving debt is also a win for borrowers who did not actually finish a degree for whatever reason. This could be particularly helpful for people who were first-generation college students, for example, or folks who attended school while raising children, living with medical issues, or were non-traditional enrollees for any number of reasons.
We tell people education will help them get ahead in life; there’s no fairness in punishing people for pursuing a degree they can’t pay for upfront, especially considering, again, that even the cost of an education from a public college or university is astronomical. (I have a degree from a state university I attended with in-state tuition and scholarships, and grants, and still have debt, for example.)
As of now, it’s unclear whether this will be the last extension of the pause or not. If payments resume as of Sept. 1, it’s extremely worrisome when we consider midterm elections. But if the pause is extended until the end of the year, that would be a considerable relief both in terms of voter turnout and people’s financial survival.
But if Biden really wants to secure some midterm wins, he can always, you know, deliver on his promise and cancel some debt.
Will you sign the petition and ask President Biden to cancel student loans?
Trump's Big Lie has Republicans promoting 'Vote Amish' policies
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Determined to undermine democracy in the U.S., Republicans are not relying on just one tactic. Instead, their plans range from sophisticated legal strategies to Big Lie-fueled absurdities. And all the while, Donald Trump is laying the groundwork for more and worse, campaigning for state-level candidates whose only qualifications are their embrace of his lies and conspiracy theories about the 2020 elections.
At the Big Lie-fueled absurdity end, there’s a movement to require hand-counting of ballots, an idea that would massively slow down the vote-counting process while introducing human error and opening up opportunities for partisan sabotage. Republicans have proposed bills to require hand-counting in at least six states, The Washington Post reports, though the idea is gaining the most traction in smaller towns and counties.
Currently, just 0.2% of ballots in the U.S. are counted by hand. Most votes are cast in ways that allow for machine counting while leaving a paper trail to ensure that recounts are possible, and many areas double-check the machine counting with hand counts of batches of ballots. None of this is good enough for the conspiracy theorists who believe that voting machines stole the election from Trump, even after the Arizona fraudit which counted Maricopa County ballots by hand and found nothing significant to report. The conspiracy theories embraced by Trump supporters include ballots being counted overseas, the involvement of long-dead Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, that the paper ballots were printed on might contain bamboo, showing that it came from Asia, and more. They’re saying the answer is to “Vote Amish,” on paper ballots with no machine involvement.
“The extreme right’s call for a hand count across the nation is political theater,” Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, told the Post. “It does not increase security. It actually decreases security. What will come of it in the big jurisdictions is a big slowdown in being able to certify elections, less-reliable results, and opportunities for extremists to spread misinformation and mistrust.”
Remember how in Nov. 2020, the fact that some large jurisdictions didn’t finish counting immediately after voting ended became fodder for conspiracy theories about votes being changed or fake ballots being brought in? Slowing down the count everywhere will lead to so much more of that. And hand-counting will slow things down to an almost unimaginable extent. In one county with about 3,500 votes, the county clerk warned that at current levels of staffing it would take 30 days to tally the votes by hand. The county commission is nonetheless ending its contract with Dominion Voting Systems and planning a move to hand counting.
But, as previously noted, this is just one strategy among many. In Texas, lawmakers are using redistricting lawsuits as a pathway to further gutting the Voting Rights Act. The gerrymandered maps produced by Texas Republicans are predictably being challenged in court. And in its responses to those lawsuits, “First, the Texas attorney general’s office is arguing that private individuals — like the average voters and civil rights groups now suing the state—don’t have standing to bring lawsuits under Section 2. That would leave only the U.S. Department of Justice to pursue alleged violations of the act, putting enforcement in the hands of the political party in power,” The Texas Tribune reports. “Second, the state argues that Section 2 does not apply to redistricting issues at all.”
And, as we know, the Republicans of the Supreme Court really, really hate voting rights and support partisan gerrymandering, so these arguments have a good chance.
Trump’s coup attempt failed in 2020 and 2021, but Republicans are not giving up. Their goal is to go into the 2022 and 2024 elections and beyond with the playing field set up firmly in their own favor, and unfortunately, their determination is not matched by the Democratic determination to protect voting rights.
Man who attacked at least 7 Asian women in New York City indicted on felony hate charges
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As hate crimes against the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community continue nationwide, individuals committing these crimes are slowly being held accountable. Most recently, a suspect connected to a series of attacks on Asian women in New York City has been indicted. Steven Zajonc, 28, now faces six felony counts of third-degree assault as a hate crime and seven counts of second-degree aggravated harassment after attacking at least seven Asian women, prosecutors said Monday.
According to police officials, the attacks occurred in February. Zajonc allegedly punched and hurt his victims without provocation within a three-hour frame. The victims were between the ages of 19 and 57. Zajonc was arrested on March 2 after he was identified in NYPD video surveillance footage of the attacks by an employee of a New York public library.
“These attacks on seven New York women, each fueled by anti-Asian hate, are yet another sobering reminder of the demonstrable fears AAPI communities, particularly AAPI women, in our city continue to face,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement.
At least six of the women suffered injuries including cuts and bruises to the face, and one was even treated at the hospital for a concussion after being knocked unconscious when attacked.
According to police, Zajonc’s first attack on Feb. 27 took place around 6:30 PM. Within 10 minutes, he “approached a 25-year-old female Asian victim and struck her in the face and the back of her arm with a closed fist,” police said.
“As alleged, within just three hours, Steven Zajonc selectively ambushed seven Asian women in separate assaults, some of which he struck from behind — for no other reason than their perceived race,” Bragg said.
Arrested in March, Zajonc is due back in court on July 18.
At this time the district attorney has 27 open cases related to anti-Asian hate crimes.
The New York State governor’s office said the number of hate crimes targeting the Asian American community in the state rose by 150% from 2020 to 2021. The state data follows federal data also indicating a rise in hate crimes against the AAPI community nationwide. According to a report released by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, anti-Asian hate crimes rose by 339% in 2021 compared with 2020. The report echoes other data, including a national survey from Stop AAPI Hate, which found that more than 10,000 incidents were reported at the start of the pandemic.
According to The New York Times, race was the most common reason for a discriminatory incident to occur, listed as a reason in 91.5% of the 10,905 reports.
The AAPI community needs our support now more than ever, whether it be checking in on our family and friends, spreading awareness of COVID-19 misconceptions, or contacting members of Congress to do more to fight anti-Asian hate. Check out this guide on resources and ways to support the AAPI community and our Asian friends. Hate is the real virus, and we must end it.
Ukraine update: Russia's real losses may be greater than even Ukraine believes
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As of Tuesday morning, Oryx had cataloged more than 2,400 major piece of military equipment lost by the Russian armed forces, including some 400 tanks and 52 aircraft. These are confirmed losses verified by videos and photos that show distinct features—such as tail numbers on aircraft—that make sure each vehicle counted is unique.
However, that’s a long way from what the Ukrainian military says Russia has lost since the beginning of the invasion. They record over 200 more tanks, and nearly ten times as many aircraft in total (planes, helicopters, and UAVs).
The Defense Ministry also keeps a running total on something that Oryx and other sites cataloging lost hardware don’t touch: casualties. Russia, in the few occasions that it has given any count at all, has reported numbers that range from a fraction of those reported by Ukraine, to a ludicrously small fraction. Intelligence agencies in the U.S. and U.K. have also issued some sporadic casualty figures, with numbers that seem closer to—but still significantly lower—than those posted by Ukraine.
So who’s right? It’s quite likely that Russia doesn’t have an accurate count of their losses, even if they had any incentive to give it. It’s also generally assumed that the number from Ukraine overstates the results to make Russia look weaker and their own military more successful.
However, professor and author Phillips O’Brien suggests that Ukraine’s numbers, though they seem inflated, might be the most accurate of all those floating around. That’s because we have something in this war that hasn’t been available in other conflicts—open-source intelligence in the form of all those photos, videos, and messages captured by phones. While those images are the basis of the numbers reported by OSInt and Oryx, O’Brien points out that these numbers represent the absolute minimum for Russian losses. And the evidence of the last few days shows us just how badly these values can undershoot the truth.
“There would be a large number of Russian losses not recorded,” writes O’Brien. That would include any losses that took place inside territory that’s nominally under Russian control. A Russian jet that limps back to Belarus, or tumbles to the ground in Russian-controlled areas of Donetsk, is not going immediately get cataloged by social media. A tank that’s dead, but still in a Russian-occupied village, isn’t going to make it on OSInt.
It might seem that Russian losses behind Russian lines would be relatively minor compared to the vehicles left smoking along the roadside. But that’s only true when we can see those roads. War reporter Oz Katerji recorded more than 50 damaged or destroyed vehicles on a single walk up the highway along which Russian forces retreated from Kyiv. None of them were known before the last three days.
O’Brien has one word to describe the number of losses that are going unseen: Huge.
“For those behind Russian lines, we can now assume [losses] to be a very large number. Since the Russians pulled back from Kyiv, the database has been updated with approximately 50 new entries. Yet the Kyiv front only contained approximately 30% of Russian forces.”
Most of the vehicles being noted after Russia left Kyiv aren’t losses they suffered during retreat. Many are vehicles lost during the initial advance, or in days of exchanging fire with Ukrainian forces. They’re only new in the sense that, like the awful scenes of carnage in Bucha, they couldn’t be clearly noted until Russian forces left the area.
If Russian losses in other areas are any any way equivalent to those around Kyiv, then the numbers from the Ukrainian ministry of defense might actually be conservative.
GOP states waste no time suing over Biden admin's termination of anti-asylum Title 42 policy
This post was originally published on this site
The ink was barely dry when a host of GOP states filed a lawsuit over the Biden administration’s decision to end use of Stephen Miller’s anti-asylum order by May 23. The administration announced Title 42’s upcoming end on Friday. By Monday, the Republican attorneys general of Arizona, along with noted border states Louisiana and Missouri, had sued.
Missouri’s Eric Schmitt in a statement defending the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention order’s continued use, claiming that “Title 42 is a crucial tool for controlling the influx of illegal aliens at our Southern border.” But wasn’t the order always supposed to be about public health?
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The lawsuit was expected, though it’s surprising that Texas is not among the bunch. Not yet, at least. All three states have previously taken action against the Biden administration over immigration-related policies, and what they’re hoping is that the GOP’s anti-immigrant judicial pipeline again bears fruit.
That anti-immigrant judicial pipeline has previously blocked the Biden administration’s 100-day halt on deportations, blocked new deportation enforcement guidelines, and ordered the reinstatement of the inhumane Remain in Mexico policy. Republicans not only believe that Democrats shouldn’t be able to win elections, they believe Democrats shouldn’t be able to govern when they do.
As noted by The American Independent’s Oliver Willis, Republican states are fighting to keep this public health order in place even as they’ve steadily fought against other pandemic mandates.
“For instance, in February, Schmitt complained of ‘COVID tyrants’ who support policies like mask mandates,” Willis wrote. The previous administration invoked Title 42 nearly two years ago, against the advice of public health experts, in order to use the pandemic as a cover to block U.S. asylum law. “Prior to invoking Title 42, Trump’s immigration advisers—led by senior White House adviser Stephen Miller—had been searching for a way to use public health laws and policy to restrict immigration to the United States,” he continued.
Republicans will use Title 42’s rollback “to fearmonger in an election year, using nativist talking points based on falsehoods,” The Boston Globe columnist Marcela García writes. “An invasion is coming! Expect chaos at the border! Yet those sound bites ignore the fact that Title 42 utterly failed even as a border management mechanism: Data show that migrant encounters surged to a record high during the policy.”
“For Biden and the Democrats, the end of this disastrous policy should not be framed as a political headache, but as an opportunity to demonstrate that it is possible and suitable to process asylum applications in an orderly, legal, and humane way at the US-Mexico border,” she continued, noting new policy intended to speed up asylum processing, and a plan “that includes directing more resources and personnel to the southern border.”
García is right. For as long as we can successfully keep this policy from continued use, it should be framed as a huge step forward for U.S. asylum law and a victory for vulnerable people who have been blocked from their U.S. asylum rights for more than two years. Isn’t restoring asylum law, especially in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, undoubtedly a good thing? And why shouldn’t it be a win for the president, too, comporting to his pledge for a more humane immigration system?
Or we can just let Stephen Miller and racist border agents keep controlling the narrative, with his lies that restoring U.S. asylum rights “will mean armageddon,” and the agents’ union claiming supposed “mass chaos.”
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