Month: October 2022

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected Turkey’s bid to shut down lawsuits in U.S. courts stemming from a violent brawl outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence in Washington more than five years ago that left anti-government protesters badly beaten.

The justices did not comment in turning away Turkey’s arguments that American law shields foreign countries from most lawsuits. Lower courts ruled that those protections did not extend to the events of May 16, 2017, when during a visit by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, “Turkish security forces violently clashed with a crowd of protesters,” as one judge described the situation.

The Supreme Court’s action allows the lawsuits to proceed. In the lawsuits, protesters claim they were brutally punched and kicked, cursed at and greeted with slurs and throat-slashing gestures. One woman slipped in and out of consciousness and has suffered seizures, and others reported post-traumatic stress, depression, concussions and nightmares, according to the complaints.

The high court had put off a decision about whether to intervene for months, asking for the Biden administration’s views on the legal issues presented.

Turkey can be sued in these circumstances, the Justice Department said in its high court filing, concluding that lower courts were correct in finding that the U.S. ally does not have legal immunity.

Lawyers for the Turkish government had told the court that Erdogan’s security detail had discretion to use physical force because it was protecting its head of state in a potentially dangerous situation.

They described some protesters as “supporters of a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization that poses a genuine national security threat to Turkey.”

The altercation was caught on camera and led to criminal charges against some of Erdogan’s security officers and civilian supporters, two of whom pleaded guilty. Most other charges were dropped. The violence occurred as Erdogan was returning to the ambassador’s residence after a White House visit, where he and then-President Donald Trump pledged cooperation in fighting the Islamic State group.

Erdogan remained in his car after it arrived at the ambassador’s residence while an initial skirmish took place. The lawsuits claim that he ordered a second, more violent attack. Turkey says he did no such thing.
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In November, Nathen Avelar of Merced, California, will have his first opportunity to vote in a federal election, and the 18-year-old musician and youth organizer says that he plans to seize it, casting a ballot that, he hopes, will help move both his community and his country toward the kind of future he wants for both.

The election, in which millions of voters like Avelar will be able to cast a ballot for the first time, will determine the control of both houses of the United States Congress, as well as state legislatures, governorships, and other state level offices.

Voters will also decide on a variety of state-level referenda, such as a proposed amendment to the state constitution in California that would guarantee women the right to abort a pregnancy. The proposal is a direct response to the decision by the Supreme Court earlier this year to strip away legal protections for abortion rights at the federal level — an issue very much on the minds of many Americans headed to the polls in November.

Starting locally

Avelar, who recently graduated from high school, became active in local politics during a successful effort to persuade the Merced City Council to adopt a new affordable housing policy. Now, affiliated with the activist group Power California, he is helping to register other young voters and to persuade them to go to the polls on November 8.

Young voters, Avelar told VOA, are concerned about a variety of issues, but one thing that drives many, he said, is the desire to see more diversity among elected officials. Generation Z, the cohort of Americans born roughly between 1990 and the early 2010s, are the most diverse generation in U.S. history, and right now, they do not see that reflected in the makeup of political leadership, at either the local or federal level.

“Not being able to see people in the spaces that we want to see ourselves in, specifically our city council, or just in general in seats of power, that’s definitely been a huge driver for me,” he said. “And other people that I’ve worked with are very passionate about that as well.”

He also said that the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn its previous ruling in Roe v. Wade, the case that guaranteed abortion rights, has been a major motivator.

“The attack on our general rights, just as people, from the Supreme Court has been really concerning to me, specifically around reproductive rights … that is really what’s been driving me,” he said.

Conservative viewpoint

While many young voters like Avelar have policy positions that generally bring them in line with the Democratic Party, Generation Z is no monolith. Research by Tufts University’s Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) finds that about one in three voters between 18 and 29 is motivated by conservative convictions that place them more in line with the Republican Party.

That’s the case for Zach Bauder, a junior at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan. The president of his school’s chapter of Young Americans for Freedom, a national conservative organization, Bauder told VOA in an email exchange that he and his fellow conservatives have a long list of issues driving them to the polls.

For example, he said, the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling has been a major motivating factor among conservatives, many of whom support restricting or banning the procedure. Other issues animating young conservatives include the pace of migration to the United States and efforts to accommodate transgender Americans.

‘Doubling down’ on Roe

“What motivates me to vote is what motivates most young conservatives,” Bauder wrote. “We care about doubling down on the end of Roe and enacting pro-life legislation. We want to close the border, ensure election integrity, end COVID-related mandates, and oppose the gender dysphoria ideology promulgated in America’s education system.”

“Gender dysphoria” is a diagnosed psychological disorder describing the distress or discomfort experienced by a person who feels that the gender they were assigned at birth does not reflect the gender they experience or express. Many conservatives in the U.S. object to accommodations made for individuals who assert a different gender than the one they were assigned at birth, particularly in schools.

Bauder said his fellow young conservatives also want to see an end to “endless wars that have nothing to do with America’s security” and to push back against what they see as “the cultural degradation of our country over the past several decades.”

Bauder said that he is seeing more interest in this midterm election among his cohort than he did in 2018. Partly, he said, it is a factor of major changes happening in the country right now, but he believes it is also due to young conservative voters waking up to their own power to influence the direction of the conservative movement.

“My generation, I believe, is beginning to see it can make a difference in the conversation happening on the right,” he said.

Turnout questions

The presence of highly energized young voters in this election cycle is undeniable, but just how deeply that enthusiasm runs is an open question. Typically younger voters do not vote as reliably as older generations, particularly in years like 2022, when there is no presidential election to focus peoples’ attention.

“The hard fact is that turnout for young people, if you just take ages 18 to 24, is much lower than older age groups, particularly 65-plus,” Mindy Romero, director of the University of Southern California’s Center for Inclusive Democracy, told VOA. “Depending on the type of election it can be 20, 30, 40 percentage points lower.”

The problem is not that young Americans are disengaged, Romero said, but that they often don’t see much utility in voting.

“It’s not that they’re apathetic; they care very much,” she said. “It’s that they often don’t see why voting is an actionable step on issues that they care about. So there may be young people that are galvanized by the issue of abortion, for instance. Some of those will take some action steps. They’ll protest, they’ll organize people’s opinions on social media, that sort of thing. But it doesn’t always translate into voting.”

Higher participation possible

Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, director of Tufts University’s CIRCLE program, agreed that voting among young people will continue to lag behind older generations in 2022, but she did point to some factors that might increase it somewhat.

She noted that in Kansas, which had a primary election in August in which a statewide abortion ban was on the ballot, a surge in new voter registration was followed by a much larger turnout than in previous primaries.

“Usually young people have a really low participation rate, as far as we can estimate, in primaries,” she told VOA. “But a record number of young people came out and the ratio of new registrants … was overwhelmingly young women.”

If the abortion issue continues to drive young voters to the polls, she said, their participation might also be increased by the fact that a number of states have, in recent years, passed rules simplifying the process of registering to vote or simply automatically registering eligible voters.

“That’s a big win, because voter registration is, of course, a necessary step to voting, and it’s actually the harder step, a lot of times, because you need to provide some documentation that young people may not have [at] their fingertips.”

Many young people, she pointed out, don’t yet have official forms of identification. “If you don’t have a driver’s license already, which a lot of young people don’t, that’s quite a barrier,” she said.

Having a plan

Aurora Castellanos, director for statewide campaigns with Power California, said that in working with young people, her group tries to stress the importance of having a plan to vote. Especially for first time voters, the process can feel complicated, she said, so it is important to thinking it through in advance.

“In most cases, folks don’t even have a voting plan,” she told VOA. “They don’t know how they’re going to be returning their ballot, or what the process is like to be able to do that.”

Castellanos added, “We start prompting them to actually put together a voting plan—that’s part of the engagement that we do. We go from, ‘What is the time when you’re going to be turning it?’ to ‘How are you going to be getting to your polling location, so that you have a plan on how you’re going to be making that happen?’ And we think that really makes a difference.”
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“Our building is definitely haunted,” said Dwayne Sanburn, owner and creative director of The 13th Gate in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, one of the top-rated Halloween haunted house attractions in the United States.

Located in a warehouse that began as a brick foundry 150 years ago, the house comprises 13 nightmarish realms where your worst fears may come true, and anything can happen.

That includes riding an elevator with one of the characters, played by an actor, who suddenly disappears and is replaced by another character actor.

But there also could be real paranormal activity.

“I have heard voices, doors slam, and a ghostly figure on our security cameras,” Sanburn told VOA. It was particularly unnerving to hear a woman crying and realize no one was there.”

“One time, when I heard banging on a wall, I told myself, ‘I can’t be scared of my own haunted house,’ ” he said and laughed.

Sanburn said he always looks forward to Halloween on October 31 and was drawn to haunted houses the first time he visited one as a teenager.

The 13th Gate is among the 13 best Halloween haunts recognized this year by Hauntworld Magazine, the world’s largest directory of haunted houses and horror attractions in the United States.

Others on the list include Pennhurst Haunted Asylum, located in a former asylum in Pennsylvania, and Fear Factory in Salt Lake City, Utah, which used to be a cement factory.

Besides being scary, the attractions are frightening artistic masterpieces.

“At 13th Gate, our level of detail can equal Hollywood movies, including the sets, lighting, costumes and makeup,” said Sanburn.

Tony Wohlgemuth, president of Kersey Valley Spooky Woods in Archdale, North Carolina, said this year’s theme focuses on a town taken over by ghastly spirits.

He said haunted house attractions have incredible visual and audio effects, in part due to the latest technology.

“At Spooky Woods we use effects to create lightning and thunder that feel real,” Wohlgemuth said, “and computer-controlled lighting with different colors and flickering effects.”

“The effects are used as a distraction,” he added, “but it’s really the actors that scare people. It’s the unknown and sudden scare you didn’t see coming.”

Alan Bennett, owner of Bennett’s Curse near Baltimore, Maryland, said animatronics (the technique of making and operating lifelike robots for film and other entertainment) and other scary effects, triggered by a motion detector, are used.

Bennett said the Halloween attraction is known for its large animated monsters like demons and giant pumpkins.

“There’s a haunted castle with creatures from the underworld, and an asylum with skeletons and evil pumpkins,” he said.

Jacob Preston, 15, from Alexandria, Virginia, came with his parents. He said that even though the castle was really scary, it was also fun. “I like horror movies and this kind of felt like I was in one,” he said.

“People get scared and then they are laughing,” said Michael Jubie, owner of the Headless Horseman Haunted Attractions in Ulster Park, New York. “Part of the appeal is that they want to be scared but also feel they are in a safe place.”

Jubie is a former undercover detective who used to wear disguises.

“We have the headless horseman on a live horse,” he said.

“One of our haunted houses has an underground tomb,” he added. “Another has a medical center with real operating room equipment from an old, abandoned hospital, including items from the morgue.”

These top-rated attractions draw thousands of visitors during the Halloween season in September and October.

“We’ll get about 70,000 this year,” Wohlgemuth said. “For some families it is an annual tradition.”

“We have parents who came when they were younger and are now taking their older children,” said Jubie.
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Pivotal 2022 midterm elections in the United States are just over a week away. The November 8 elections will determine if Democrats maintain their majorities or if Republicans seize power in the House of Representatives and Senate. Several domestic issues — including the future of reproductive rights — are on the minds of many voters as VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports.
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A congressional race in California between two immigrants, one from Pakistan and the other from South Korea, reflects the changing demographics of the American electorate. Mike O’Sullivan reports that abortion and the economy are at the heart of rival messages in the November 8th midterm election.
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The Powerball jackpot keeps getting larger because players keep losing.

It happened again Saturday night as no one matched all six numbers and won the estimated $825 million grand prize. That means the next drawing Monday night will be for a massive $1 billion, according to a statement by Powerball.

The winning numbers Saturday night were: white balls 19, 31, 40, 46, 57 and the red power ball 23.

The increased jackpot will be the second largest in U.S. history. The biggest prize was a $1.586 billion Powerball jackpot won by three ticketholders in 2016.

Although the advertised top prize will be an estimated $1 billion, that is for winners who receive their winnings through an annuity paid over 29 years. Winners almost always opt for cash, which for Monday’s drawing will be an estimated $497.3 million.

The $825 million jackpot for Saturday’s draw increased from $800 million on Friday as a result of strong ticket sales, Powerball said.

Players who missed out on the latest grand prize in the 30-year-old lottery shouldn’t immediately toss away their receipts.

A Florida ticket holder matched all five white balls in Saturday’s drawing and increased the prize to $2 million by including the game’s “Power Play” feature. Six tickets won a $1 million prize by matching five white balls, including two in California, two in Michigan, one in Maryland and one in Texas.

Another 17 tickets won a $150,000 prize while there were 80 winners of $50,000 each. More than 3.8 million tickets won cash prizes totaling above $38 million, Powerball said.

It has been nearly three months since anyone hit all six numbers and took the lottery’s top prize, with a $206.9 million jackpot win in Pennsylvania on Aug. 3. Thanks to Powerball’s long odds of one in 292.2 million, there have now been 37 consecutive draws without a jackpot winner.

Powerball is played in 45 states, as well as Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

 
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Fishing regulators and the seafood industry are grappling with the possibility that some once-profitable species that have declined with climate change might not come back.

Several marketable species harvested by U.S. fishermen are the subject of quota cuts, seasonal closures and other restrictions as populations have fallen and waters have warmed. In some instances, such as the groundfishing industry for species like flounder in the Northeast, the changing environment has made it harder for fish to recover from years of overfishing that already taxed the population.

Officials in Alaska have canceled the fall Bristol Bay red king crab harvest and winter snow crab harvest, dealing a blow to the Bering Sea crab industry that is sometimes worth more than $200 million a year, as populations have declined in the face of warming waters. The Atlantic cod fishery, once the lifeblood industry of New England, is now essentially shuttered. But even with depleted populations imperiled by climate change, it’s rare for regulators to completely shut down a fishery, as they’re considering doing for New England shrimp.

The Northern shrimp, once a seafood delicacy, has been subject to a fishing moratorium since 2014. Scientists believe warming waters are wiping out their populations and they won’t be coming back. So the regulatory Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is now considering making that moratorium permanent, essentially ending the centuries-old harvest of the shrimp.

It’s a stark siren for several species caught by U.S. fishermen that regulators say are on the brink. Others include softshell clams, winter flounder, Alaskan snow crabs and Chinook salmon.

Exactly how many fisheries are threatened principally by warming waters is difficult to say, but additional cutbacks and closures are likely in the future as climate change intensifies, said Malin Pinsky, director of the graduate program in ecology and evolution at Rutgers University.

“This pattern of climate change and how it ripples throughout communities and coastal economies is something we need to get used to,” Pinsky said. “Many years are pushing us outside of what we have experienced historically, and we are going to continue to observe these further novel conditions as years go by.”

While it’s unclear whether climate change has ever been the dominant factor in permanently shutting down a U.S. fishery, global warming is a key reason several once-robust fisheries are in increasingly poor shape and subject to more aggressive regulation in recent years. Warming temperatures introduce new predators, cause species to shift their center of population northward, or make it harder for them to grow to maturity, scientists said.

In the case of the Northern shrimp, scientists and regulators said at a meeting in August that the population has not rebounded after nearly a decade of no commercial fishing. Regulators will revisit the possibility of a permanent moratorium this winter, said Dustin Colson Leaning, a fishery management plan coordinator with the Atlantic States commission. Another approach could be for the commission to relinquish control of the fishery, he said.

The shrimp prefer cold temperatures, yet the Gulf of Maine is warming faster than most of the world’s oceans. Scientists say warming waters have also moved new predators into the gulf.

But in Maine, where the cold-water shrimp fishery is based, fishermen have tried to make the case that abundance of the shrimp is cyclical and any move to shutter the fishery for good is premature.

“I want to look into the future of this. It’s not unprecedented to have a loss of shrimp. We went through it in the ’50s, we went through it in the ’70s, we had a tough time in the ’90s,” said Vincent Balzano, a shrimp fisherman from Portland. “They came back.”

Another jeopardized species is winter flounder, once highly sought by southern New England fishermen. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has described the fish as “significantly below target population levels” on Georges Bank, a key fishing ground. Scientists with University of Rhode Island and Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management wrote that the fish have struggled to reach maturity “due to increased predation related to warming winters” in a report last year.

On the West Coast, Chinook salmon face an extinction risk due to climate change, NOAA has reported. Drought has worsened the fish’s prospects in California, at the southern end of its range, scientists have said.

Fishermen on the East Coast, from Virginia to Maine, have dug softshell clams from tidal mud for centuries, and they’re a staple of seafood restaurants. They’re used for chowder and fried clam dishes and are sometimes called “steamers.”

But the clam harvest fell from about 3.5 million pounds (1.6 million kilograms) in 2010 to 2.1 million pounds (950,000 kilograms) in 2020 as the industry has contended with an aging workforce and increasing competition from predators such as crabs and worms. Scientists have linked the growing predator threat to warming waters.

The 2020 haul in Maine, which harvests the most clams, was the smallest in more than 90 years. And the 2021 catch still lagged behind typical hauls from the 2000s, which were consistently close to 2 million pounds (907,000 kilograms) or more.

Predicting what the clam harvest will look like in 2022 is difficult, but the industry remains threatened by the growing presence of invasive green crabs, said Brian Beal a professor of marine ecology at the University of Maine at Machias. The crabs, which eat clams, are native to Europe and arrived in the U.S. about 200 years ago and have grown in population as waters have warmed.

“There seem to have been, relative to 2020, a ton more green crabs that settled,” Beal said. “That’s not a good omen.”

One challenge of managing fisheries that are declining due to warming waters is that regulators rely on historical data to set quotas and other regulations, said Lisa Kerr, a senior research scientist with the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland, Maine. Scientists and regulators are learning that some fish stocks just aren’t capable of returning to the productivity level of 40 years ago, she said.

Back then, U.S. fishermen typically caught more than 100 million pounds (45.4 million kilograms) of Atlantic cod per year. Now, they usually catch less than 2 million pounds (907,000 kilograms), as overfishing and environmental changes have prevented the population from returning to historical levels.

The future of managing species that are in such bad shape might require accepting the possibility that fully rebuilding them is impossible, Kerr said.

“It’s really a resetting of the expectations,” she said. “We’re starting to see targets that are more in line, but under a lower overall target.”
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For Cambodian American residents of Lowell, Massachusetts, the upcoming midterm vote is chance to voice concerns on a list of local concerns familiar throughout the U.S. — potholes, schools and housing costs.

Sreang Heng, the Cambodia-born owner of Heng Heng Auto Repair near Lowell’s Koumantzelis Park-Roberto Clemente Baseball Field, said potholes are taking a toll on his customers’ vehicles, which come to him with damaged tires and tie rods. While this means more work for auto repair shops like his, he’d rather not have it because of the social cost, especially to those who cannot afford to make all the repairs needed at one time.

“Most of them complain the spare parts are expensive because taxes are already included, so they bargain for the reduction of service charges,” said the 46-year-old who arrived in the U.S. in 2016.

Located on the Merrimack River, Lowell is 50 kilometers north of Boston. An early center of America’s once-thriving textile industry, Lowell has attracted European and Latin American immigrants since the 19th century. In the 1980s, Cambodian refugees fleeing civil war and the murderous regime of the Khmer Rouge began arriving. Today, the city of about 115,000 residents is nearly 25% Asian, home to the nation’s second-largest Cambodian community in America after Long Beach, California.

But in a city where minorities are close to the majority, according to U.S. Census data, white residents held most of elected positions until recently.

The change came when a coalition of Latino and Asian American residents filed a civil rights suit in 2017. Their attorney, Oren Sellstrom, argued Lowell violated his clients’ voting rights by electing officials on a citywide basis. The plaintiffs and the city settled in 2019, agreeing to establish districts that better represented the city’s diverse neighborhoods.

The changes in Lowell mirror those rippling through the U.S., which the Census has projected will have a population with a majority of minorities within decades. And the evolution of the Cambodian community as one that has progressed from nominal representation to exerting political power in the city and state is a path to assimilation well-worn by earlier immigrant groups.

Lowell now has eight districts, two of them with a majority of non-white voters. The city elected a Cambodian-born mayor, Sokhary Chau, in 2021. He took office in January along with two Cambodian American council members who were also born in Cambodia.

Mony Var, 56, is the first Cambodian to work for the Lowell Election Commission. In the 1990s, the city had 30,000 Cambodian residents, but only 123 Cambodians were registered to vote. Now, about 2,000 Cambodians are registered to vote. He said midterm and primary elections are as important for the community as the general election.

Mony Var, who arrived in the U.S. in 1980, said while voters may be disinterested in the midterms, “All elections are important. We must take the opportunity and fulfill the duty to vote in every election. Don’t only come to vote on the presidential election.”

The midterm focus of the Cambodian community on issues like potholes and schools suggests the validity of the oft-repeated maxim of U.S. life, “All politics is local.”

Sovann Khorn, who arrived in the U.S. from Cambodia via the Khao-i-Dang refugee camp in Thailand, runs a party-service business that also provides video and still photography for weddings, and dress rentals. The 57-year-old wants Lowell schools to crack down on students’ misbehavior and limit their video-gaming time.

Rodney Elliott, a former Lowell mayor and city council member, is a Democrat running to be state representative for the 16th Middlesex District against Republican Karla Miller. The district is home to many Cambodians.

Elliott, who is not Cambodian but who has visited Cambodia twice, said when he was mayor in 2014 he raised $300,000 for victims of a fatal fire, some of whom were Cambodians. He also commissioned a statue of Cambodian refugees for City Hall’s front yard.

Miller, a first-time office seeker, said there are few Cambodians in Chelmsford, her home base.

“I would love to reach out to the Cambodian community. … This is my first rodeo, so I don’t know a lot of people in different communities,” she said.

State representative for the 17th Middlesex District, Vanna Howard, 52, arrived from Cambodia in 1980.

In 2020, she was the first Cambodian woman elected to be a state representative in the U.S., motivated by “the need to give back to a place which has been so good to me,” according to her website.

Howard is running unopposed for reelection this year. She told VOA Khmer that voters ask her for help with a variety of issues, including unemployment, and improving schools, roads and bridges.

“And another one is housing,” said the Democrat. Lowell faces a housing shortage and the available options are expensive, she said, adding, “They want [my] help to keep prices on housing from going up too much, [to find] funds for housing.”

Insurance company owner Mony Var, 56, arrived in the U.S. in 1981 and now lives in the 18th Middlesex House District. He said local representatives “should listen to businessmen in the area to write high-standard business law that help local business[es] prosper and to bring in other businessmen to our area.”

Veteran state representative Rady Mom, 54, who arrived in 1982, is a Democrat and running unopposed after defeating two Cambodian-born challengers for the 18th Middlesex House District in the September 6 primary. According to U.S. Census data, the district population is about 41% white, 32% Asian, 17% Hispanic and 7% Black. Thirty-one percent of the residents are foreign-born.

John Cluverius, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, told the Boston public radio station WGBH before the primary that the race among three Cambodian-born candidates showed how the community was moving beyond just seeking representation.

“It’s not that this coalition and this community is fighting for its political existence anymore or its simple representation,” Cluverius told WGBH. “But, instead, you see a community that looks like any other community with political power, which is that the divisions within start emerging more, and so you start seeing challenges within that community to incumbent representatives in that community.”

Or as Rady Mom, who in 2014 became the first Cambodian American state lawmaker in the U.S., put it, “My role is listening to people, convey their messages. If I don’t work for them, every two years, voters can vote me out and pick my challenger. That is democracy.”
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For web: Descendants of the Alabama steamship owner responsible for illegally bringing 110 African captives to America aboard the last U.S. slave ship have ended generations of public silence, calling his actions more than 160 years ago “evil and unforgivable.”

In a statement released to NBC News, members of Timothy Meaher’s family — which is still prominent around Mobile, Alabama — said that what Meaher did on the eve of the Civil War “had consequences that have impacted generations of people.”

“Our family has been silent for too long on this matter. However, we are hopeful that we — the current generation of the Meaher family — can start a new chapter,” said the statement. Two members of the Meaher family didn’t respond to messages seeking additional comment Friday.

The statement came amid the release of “Descendant,” a new documentary about the people who were brought to the United States aboard the slave ship Clotilda and their families. The film was acquired by Netflix and Higher Ground, the production company of Barack and Michelle Obama.

The Meaher family has started meeting with leaders of the community in and around Africatown, the community begun by the Africans in north Mobile after they were released from slavery at the end of the Civil War in 1865, the statement said.

Darron Patterson, a descendant of Clotilda captive Pollee Allen, said he met twice last month with a Meaher family member who contacted him through an intermediary. The discussions were cordial but didn’t delve deeply into details of their shared history, he said.

“Our conversations were just about who we are as people,” he said. “I think it’s important that we begin there.”

Patterson was president of the Clotilda Descendants Association at the time. The current president, Jeremy Ellis, said the organization had been in contact with the Meaher family by email since the NBC story aired on Sunday Today, and members hoped for face-to-face talks.

“I am interested in learning and seeking answers from the Meaher family about historical documents, artifacts and oral histories that can bring clarity to descendants,” Ellis said.

The Clotilda, a wooden schooner, was the last ship known to bring captives to the American South from Africa for enslavement. Decades after Congress outlawed the international slave trade, the Clotilda sailed from Mobile on a trip funded by Timothy Meaher, whose descendants still own millions of dollars’ worth of real estate around the city. A state park in Mobile Bay bears the family’s name.

The Clotilda’s captain took his human cargo off the ship in Mobile and set fire to the vessel to hide evidence of the journey. The people, all from West Africa, were enslaved.

Remains of the ship were discovered mostly intact on the muddy river bottom about four years ago, and researchers are still trying to determine the best way to preserve what’s left of the wreck, which many in Africatown hope will become part of a resurgence of their community.

The statement said Meaher family members “believe that the story of Africatown is an important part of history that needs to be told.”

“Our goal is to listen and learn, and our hope is that these conversations can help guide the actions our family takes as we work to be better partners in the community,” it said.

The statement “falls short” because it fails to mention two other Meaher brothers who conspired with Timothy Meaher and the family’s decision to lease land to paper companies responsible for pollution around Africatown, Ellis said.

While some members of the Africatown community have advocated for reparations for Clotilda descendants, the family’s statement made no mention of that topic. The fact that the family has started a conversation with slave descendants could be a lesson to other families whose ancestors were involved in the slave trade, Patterson said.

“I hope that what the Meaher family is showing here rubs off on the families of other enslavers,” he said.
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It’s something that goes along with being a member of Congress, no matter your party or your status: constant threats to your life, and the unshakeable feeling that they’re only getting worse.

In the almost two years since the Capitol insurrection, in which supporters of former President Donald Trump broke into the Capitol and hunted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and members of Congress, threats to lawmakers and their families have increased sharply. Early Friday, an assailant looking for Pelosi broke into her San Francisco home and used a hammer to attack her husband Paul, who suffered blunt-force injuries and was hospitalized.

It is, in fact, getting worse: The U.S. Capitol Police investigated almost 10,000 threats to members last year, more than twice the number from four years earlier.

“We are 100%, completely vulnerable and the risks are increasing,” says Illinois Rep. Mike Quigley, a Chicago-area Democrat. “If someone wants to harm you, they know where you live, they know where you work.”

Lawmakers have pressured congressional leaders and the Capitol Police for better security, especially for their families and their homes outside of Washington. They have made some progress, with security officials promising to pay for upgrades to certain security systems and an increased Capitol Police presence outside Washington. But the vast majority of members are mostly on their own as they figure out how to keep themselves and their families safe in a country where political violence has become alarmingly frequent.

The attack on Paul Pelosi happened when Nancy Pelosi was out of town, which meant there was less of a security presence in their home.

“It’s attacks like this that make all of us stand back and wonder what we can do better,” says Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Ill., who was at a baseball practice four years ago in Alexandria, Virginia, when a gunman wounded Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., and four other people.

Davis, who was defeated for reelection in his Republican primary earlier this year, says security needs to be improved for members and their families, and “we also have to work to tone down some of the violent rhetoric that inspires some of these individuals to do what they do.”

As have many of their colleagues, Davis and Quigley both say they have improved security at their homes in recent years. Two years after the baseball shooting, an Illinois man was arrested for threatening to shoot Davis in the head. Randall Tarr pleaded guilty to federal charges and was sentenced to probation.

Davis has since urged his colleagues to report all threats to the police and work with local prosecutors to make sure people are charged. “You’ve got to take that threat seriously,” he says.

Incidents like that are disturbingly common. On Friday, just hours after the assault on Pelosi, the Justice Department announced that a man pleaded guilty to making threatening telephone calls to an unidentified California congressman’s office and saying he had “a lot of AR-15s” and wanted to kill the congressman and members of his staff.

In July, a man accosted New York Rep. Lee Zeldin, a Republican who is running for governor of New York, as he spoke at a campaign event and told Zeldin, “You’re done.” Zeldin wrestled the man to the ground and escaped with only a minor scrape.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., revealed earlier this year that a man came to her house with a gun, screaming obscenities. After the incident, she wrote congressional leaders a letter and asked them to do more to keep members safe.

Lawmakers have received some upgraded security since the Jan. 6 insurrection. In July, the House Sergeant at Arms sent a letter to all House offices saying that members could have up to $10,000 reimbursed for security upgrades in their homes, including intrusion detection systems, cameras, locks and lighting. But in reality, sophisticated security can cost much more.

And some members do get added security, if there are serious threats. Nancy Pelosi and other congressional leaders have Capitol Police security with them at all times, as do members who are deemed to be most vulnerable at any given time. That security apparatus doesn’t always extend to families when the member isn’t at home, however, making spouses like Paul Pelosi more vulnerable.

Members of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection also have round-the-clock protection. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the chair of the committee, issued a statement Friday urging “federal agencies and law enforcement to redouble their efforts to protect officials, our elections, and our democracy in the days ahead.”

Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on that committee, recently released menacing voicemails he had received threatening his wife and baby. Kinzinger tweeted Friday after Paul Pelosi’s assault that “every GOP candidate and elected official must speak out, and now.”

Republican Rep. Davis also urged his colleagues, Democrat and Republican, to condemn the attack.

“The attack on Paul Pelosi is not only an attack on Nancy Pelosi and her family,” Davis said. “It’s an attack on all of us.”
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U.S. President Joe Biden will travel to Egypt to participate in the COP27 U.N. climate change summit on November 11, where he will call on the world to act “in this decisive decade,” the White House said Friday.

Biden will then be in Cambodia November 12-13 to participate in the annual U.S.-ASEAN summit and the East Asia Summit, the White House said in a statement. After that, Biden will visit Indonesia November 13-16 to participate in a summit of leaders from the Group of 20 major economies, it added.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog first disclosed Biden’s visit to Egypt during a meeting with the U.S. president in the Oval Office on Wednesday.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden would use COP27 to “build on the significant work the United States has undertaken to advance the global climate fight and help the most vulnerable build resilience to climate impacts.”

In Cambodia, Biden will reaffirm the United States’ enduring commitment to Southeast Asia, while underscoring the importance of U.S.-ASEAN cooperation in ensuring security and prosperity in the region, Jean-Pierre said.

In Bali, Indonesia, Biden will work with G-20 partners to address key challenges such as climate change; the global impact of Russia’s war on Ukraine, including on energy and food security and affordability; and a range of other priorities important to the global economic recovery, the White House said.

Vice President Kamala Harris will also travel to Asia and North Africa, following the president’s visit, the White House said.

Harris will travel to Bangkok to attend the November 18-19 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders meeting, underscoring Washington’s commitment to economic cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region.

She will also travel to Manila, where she will meet with government leaders and civil society representatives, the White House said. 
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U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials under then-President Donald Trump compiled intelligence dossiers on people who were arrested at Black Lives Matter protests in Portland, Oregon, according to an internal review.

Surveillance of Portland protesters in 2020 “included lists of friends, family and social media associates for people who posed no threat to homeland security,” the office of U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, who obtained the report, told reporters.

The dossiers, known by agents as baseball cards, were previously normally compiled on non-U.S. citizens or only on Americans with “a demonstrated terrorism nexus,” according to the 76-page report.

Ben Wizner, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union’s free speech, privacy and technology project, said the report indicates leaders of the Department of Homeland Security wanted to inflate the risk caused by protesters in Portland. The city became an epicenter of sometimes violent demonstrations in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, by a Minneapolis police officer. But many protesters, including women belonging to a “Wall of Moms” ad hoc group and military veterans, were peaceful.

“We have a dark history of intelligence agencies collecting dossiers on protesters,” Wizner said over the phone from New York, referring to domestic spying in the 1960s and 70s against civil rights activists, Vietnam War protesters and others.

“We need to be especially careful if agencies that are tasked with intelligence gathering are going to step in to look at protest activity and where Americans are exercising their First Amendment rights,” Wizner said.

Protesters who break the law aren’t immune from being investigated, Wizner said, but intelligence agencies should be careful not to create “a chilling environment” for Americans to legally exercise their right to dissent.

The report reveals actions carried out by the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis in June and July 2020, when militarized federal agents were deployed to Portland.

When the dossiers, officially known as Operational Background Reports, were being compiled, some DHS analysts voiced concerns over the legality of collecting intelligence “on protestors arrested for trivial criminal infractions having little to no connection to domestic terrorism,” the report said. Some of the employees even refused to participate.

Wyden, a member of the Senate select committee on intelligence, criticized DHS leaders in the Trump administration for actions revealed in the report.

“Political DHS officials spied on Oregonians for exercising their First Amendment right to protest and justified it with baseless conspiracy theories,” Wyden said.

Brian Murphy, who was then the acting undersecretary of DHS’ intelligence unit, insisted on calling violent protesters “Violent Antifa Anarchists Inspired,” even though “overwhelming intelligence regarding the motivations or affiliations of the violent protesters did not exist,” according to the report.

Top DHS leaders even wanted the department’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis to create dossiers on everyone participating in the Portland protests, but Murphy advised that the unit could only look at people who were arrested.

Surveillance was broadly used in other cities as well during the 2020 protests, with federal agencies sending unmanned drones and military aircraft to assist local law enforcement. But it’s not clear exactly how that surveillance was used: The ACLU filed a federal lawsuit against several government agencies seeking that information late last year, but the case is still underway in the Southern District of New York.

Still, some agencies have acknowledged the surveillance was problematic. An investigation by the Inspector General Department of the Air Force, completed in August 2020, found that Air National Guard aircraft was used to monitor protests in Minnesota, Arizona, California and Washington, D.C. without clear approval from military leaders.

The surveillance in Phoenix, Arizona was “particularly concerning,” the Inspector General’s investigation found, because documentation associated with the flight suggested it was being used to allow law enforcement agencies to rapidly deploy to locations where they hoped to deter protest or looting.

“There is no scenario in which it is acceptable or permissible to use DoD (Department of Defense) assets to deter demonstrations and protests, assuming they remain lawful,” the report said.

The DHS’ internal review on Portland was previously released last year but had more redactions.

The less-redacted version, which Wyden’s office provided to journalists Thursday, also shows the baseball cards — which were usually one-page summaries — included any past criminal history, travel history, “derogatory information from DHS or Intelligence Community holdings,” and publicly available social media. Draft dossiers included friends and family of protesters as well.

Wyden credited current Undersecretary for Intelligence and Analysis Kenneth Wainstein for reviewing the Trump administration’s “unnecessary redactions” and releasing the unredacted report.
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Despite recent changes in the Biden administration’s immigration policy and its tightening of border restrictions, Venezuelan migrants who cross into the U.S. illegally continue to turn themselves in to U.S. Border Patrol agents. VOA News reporter Jorge Agobian spoke with some of those migrants.
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The Biden administration has revised a program that protected from deportation hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children, in hopes of satisfying one of the arguments made by Republican-led states in federal courts that the program was not created properly.

Biden officials issued the new version of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, also known as DACA, in late August, and it takes effect Monday. It went through a period of public comments as part of a formal rulemaking process to increase its odds of surviving an ongoing legal battle.

Those supporting the program say the new rule does not change anything from the 2012 memo issued under the Obama administration that created DACA. The program’s future still lies in the hands of the courts after Monday, when DACA officially becomes a federal regulation.

“Through the codifying of DACA, the government tried to really resolve all that, [but] it doesn’t take care of the issue of the other arguments that the states are making, which is that they’re losing money,” Felix Villalobos, affirmative services unit director at RAICES, a nonprofit immigrant-rights group, told VOA.

In 2018, Texas and other Republican-led states sued the federal government, arguing that DACA had harmed states financially because they were spending resources on education, health care and other services on undocumented immigrants, who were allowed to remain in the country illegally.

They also argued that only Congress has the authority to grant immigration benefits.

Yet, on October 20, a coalition of dozens of influential corporations, including Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft, sent a letter to Republicans and Democrats in Congress urging a bipartisan solution for the almost 600,000 immigrants who are enrolled in DACA.

They said ending the program or not having a permanent solution for DACA recipients would harm communities and businesses that would lose people who have become productive members of the U.S. economy.

“When the last DACA recipient’s work permit expires, the U.S. will have lost more than 500,000 jobs, and the U.S. economy will lose as much as $11.7 billion annually — or roughly $1 billion monthly — in wages from previously employed DACA recipients. (To put this into perspective, in Texas alone, 400 health care workers and 300 teachers will be forced out of their jobs each month),” the letter says.

Analysis from the Washington-based independent think tank Migration Policy Institute found that DACA holders contribute nearly $42 billion to the U.S. gross domestic product each year and add $3.4 billion to the federal balance sheet.

According to immigration experts, the average DACA recipient has lived in the U.S. for more than 20 years. To meet the DACA program’s requirement, an applicant must be enrolled in high school, have a high school diploma or its equivalent, or have served in the U.S. military.

Those with criminal histories — a felony, a serious misdemeanor or three misdemeanors — are not eligible for DACA. They also must have been younger than 31 on June 15, 2012, have moved to the U.S. before they turned 16, and have lived continuously in the U.S. since June 15, 2007.

Current DACA recipients are still protected from deportation, are allowed to work and can renew their DACA requests every two years as U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) continues to process requests for those who meet the original requirements and have not left the country since their last renewal.

Because of the current court order, USCIS is not accepting new applications.

Legal challenge

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ordered on October 5 that the lower court review Biden’s revisions to DACA.

The three judges upheld Texas-based U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen’s initial finding that DACA was illegal and agreed the program had not undergone public notice and comment periods required under the federal Administrative Procedures Act. Hanen left the program in place for those already benefiting from it, pending the appeal.

“A district court is in the best position to review the administrative record in the rulemaking proceeding,” according to the opinion of 5th Circuit Chief Judge Priscilla Richman.

Hanen has the case back to look at the new version and make another decision. A new hearing has not been announced.

“And so, the case still remains alive,” Villalobos of RAICES said.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose office filed the 2018 lawsuit, said in a statement that “this lawsuit was about the rule of law — not the reasoning behind any immigration policy. … The district court recognized that only Congress has the authority to write immigration laws, and the president is not free to disregard those duly enacted laws as he sees fit.”

Since 2001, about 11 versions of the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act have been introduced in Congress. The measure provides a pathway to legal status for undocumented people who came to the U.S. as minors.

Despite bipartisan support, every time the bill has been introduced, it has failed to become law.

“What everybody expects to happen is that this will continue to go until the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has ruled very narrowly in the past and has been able to establish that the program should continue,” Erendira Rendon, from the Chicago-based Resurrection Project, told VOA. “And so, it is possible that DACA does end up being canceled altogether, including for people that already have DACA.”
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