Month: November 2022

Several programs in the United States help people with disabilities enter the workforce. VOA reporter Arzouma Kompaore has this story of how one man found a job – and a sense of self-worth. Videographer and video editor: Arzouma Kompaore
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Two-thirds of Americans want court reform in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which overturned a half-century of abortion rights that were guaranteed under the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling.

“We’re in somewhat uncharted territory here,” says Carolyn Shapiro, professor of law at ITT Chicago-Kent College of Law. “For the first time in a very long time, maybe ever, there is increasing public appetite for making changes to the court, like adding seats and/or imposing term limits.”

Public approval of the U.S. Supreme Court hit a new low last month, with disapproval of the high court hitting its highest mark since Gallup started keeping track in 2000.

The pollster found that 53% of people disapprove of the job the Supreme Court is doing. Forty percent of people polled describe the court as being “about right” ideologically, while 37% say the court is “too conservative.”

The results of the Gallup poll, conducted September 1-17, come about a year after 58% of Americans said they approved of the Supreme Court, and a couple of months after the high court struck Roe down.

Shapiro, who is also co-director of the Institute on the Supreme Court of the United States (ISCOTUS), a community of scholars who study the Supreme Court, says that in addition to the abortion decision, many Americans feel the current court, made up of six Republican appointees and three Democratic appointees, is not representative of the American people.

“That’s the case, even though the Republican presidential candidates have won the popular vote exactly once since 1988,” Shapiro says. “Donald Trump was president for four years and did not win a majority and got three nominations. President [Barack] Obama was president for eight years and had two majority popular votes and had two [Supreme Court] seats. That’s an argument in favor of term limits, because the idea of term limits is that … each president, in each term, would have the opportunity to appoint two justices.”

A Politico poll conducted in June found that 62% of respondents support term limits for justices, with 23% in opposition. Forty-five percent favor expanding the number of justices on the court, while 38% oppose the move. The Constitution gives Congress the authority to expand the Supreme Court, which lawmakers have done seven times in the past.

“Increasing the size of the court to change its policies is not unprecedented, but it hasn’t happened in more than 150 years,” says Lawrence Baum, a retired political science professor at The Ohio State University. “And there’s something to be said for leaving things as they are. But there’s also something to be said for giving the other branches the chance to address what they see as an imbalance.”

Fifty-three percent of people polled support balancing the court with equal numbers of Democrats, Republicans and independents, while 30% are against it.

“What we have is a real minority court in the sense of it not representing the vast majority of the way Americans have voted,” Shapiro says. “It is constitutional. I don’t want to suggest it’s illegitimate in that sense, but I think it’s deeply problematic for the court itself to be so disconnected from the democratic process.”

Both Shapiro and Baum support the idea of term limits for Supreme Court justices.

“It takes away this random element that causes some presidents who are luckier than others to have more opportunities to select members of the court,” Baum says. “It also reduces, somewhat, the chance that somebody will stay on the court beyond the time when they can be effective.”

Term limits could end the political gamesmanship in the U.S. Senate that prevented Obama from appointing a justice after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016, while allowing Trump to successfully nominate Justice Amy Coney Barrett after the September 2020 death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

“We won’t have strategic retirements where a nominee retires in order to get the particular president to give their particular president that nomination,” Shapiro says. “Eighteen-year term limits are the proposal I’m talking about. That would return the length of justices’ tenure to actually what it was for the first few hundred years.”

Last year, President Joe Biden appointed a panel of experts to explore possible Supreme Court reform. The commission recommended a new code of ethics and more court transparency but stopped short of endorsing term limits or expanding the court.

Even without high court reform, Baum says there are ways of reducing the impact of unpopular Supreme Court rulings.

“Supreme Court decisions often leave a lot of room for people to respond in different ways. Think about the Dobbs abortion decision. As it stands now, it gives states very broad freedoms as to what abortion policies to adopt,” Baum says.

“And so, states that are using Dobbs as a basis for basically prohibiting abortion are complying. States that decide they’re going to protect abortion even if the Supreme Court doesn’t, they’re complying also. And so states can often do a great deal that they want to do within the bounds of a Supreme Court decision.”
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A plan to search for unmarked graves at a former Native American boarding school in Kansas is on hold amid a disagreement between the Shawnee Tribe and state and city officials overseeing the site.

The Kansas Historical Society announced last year that the Kansas Geological Survey at the University of Kansas would conduct a ground-penetrating radar survey at the Shawnee Indian Mission in Fairway.

However, Fairway officials said last week the proposal was on hold indefinitely after Shawnee Tribe Chief Ben Barnes raised concerns that the tribe was not consulted about the proposal and future plans for the 4.86-hectare (12-acre) site.

The Shawnee Tribe pushed last year for a study of the site, formerly known as the Shawnee Indian Manual Labor School. It was one of hundreds of schools run by the government and religious groups in the 1800s and 1900s that removed Indigenous children from their families to assimilate them into white culture and Christianity.

Fairway City Administrator Nathan Nogelmeier said in a statement that the Kansas Historical Society (KHS), which owns the site, met with Barnes in August and offered him the opportunity to consult before the work began.

On Monday, Barnes said that as he was leaving a meeting at the historical society he was given a short paper saying the organization had begun the process of working with the university on the ground-penetrating work.

“That’s not consultation,” Barnes said. “Consultation is a well-defined term. It’s not as I’m leaving stuff a piece of paper into my hands.”

Several experts told the tribe the proposal was insufficient and didn’t follow federal law concerning consulting with tribes in such situations, Barnes said.

In his statement, Nogelmeier said the historical society and the city of Fairway expect the Shawnee Tribe to try to persuade the Kansas Legislature next year to convey the land from the state to the Shawnee Nation.

“The KHS is on record opposing such a conveyance due to its historical significance to Kansas not just while it operated as the manual labor training school but due to other events and time periods as they related to Kansas’s history,” Nogelmeier said. “Further, Chief Barnes has not made any commitments about what he and the Shawnee Nation view as the future use of the land if they become owners of the site.”

While acknowledging that the tribe is not opposed to conveyance, Barnes suggested the state and Fairway officials are trying to use the issue as a political ploy and the timing of last week’s statement raises questions about whether the tribe is welcome in the process.

“I find that insinuation troubling,” Barnes said. “We have always been clear about our vision for the site. Regardless of who owns it, it centers on protection and restoration. To say otherwise is patently false, and they know it’s patently false.”

The move to inspect the mission’s grounds came after the U.S. Department of Interior announced a nationwide initiative last year to investigate federally operated Indian boarding schools. That would not have included the Shawnee Indian Manual Labor School, which was founded in 1939 and run by Methodist minister Thomas Johnson.

At one point, it had 16 buildings on about 800 hectares (2,000 acres) and nearly 200 students a year ranging in age from 5 to 23. The current 4.86-hectare (12-acre) site holds three buildings, which are on the national and state historic registries.
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U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday called on oil and gas companies to use their record profits to lower costs for Americans and increase production, or pay a higher tax rate, as he battles high pump prices with elections coming in a week. 

In remarks at the White House, Biden criticized major oil companies who are bringing in big profits while Americans, weary of inflation, pay a tidy sum to fill up their cars. 

The oil industry “has not met its commitment to invest in America and support the American people,” he said. They’re not just making a “fair return” he said, they’re making “profits so high it is hard to believe,” Biden said. 

“Their profits are a windfall of war,” he said, of the conflict that is ravaging Ukraine, and they have a responsibility to act. 

“I think it’s outrageous,” he said. If they passed those profits on to consumers, gasoline prices would be down about 50 cents, he said. 

“If they don’t, they’re going to pay a higher tax on their excess profits, and face other restrictions,” he said. The White House will work with Congress to look at these options and others. “It’s time for these companies to stop war profiteering.” 

Biden said oil and gas companies should invest their profits in lowering costs for Americans and increasing production and that if they do not, he will urge Congress to consider requiring oil companies to pay tax penalties and face other restrictions. 

The president held the event with a week to go until Americans decide whether his Democrats will remain in control of the U.S. Congress. Republicans are favored to take command of the House of Representatives, while the Senate is viewed as a toss-up. 

Global energy giants, including Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp., posted another round of huge quarterly profits, benefiting from surging natural gas and fuel prices that have boosted inflation around the world and led to fresh calls to further tax the sector. 

Whether Democrats or Republicans take control of Congress, passing a law taxing energy companies for excess profits would likely be difficult, energy experts believe. 

The White House for months has been considering congressional proposals that could tax oil and gas producers’ profits as consumers struggle with higher energy prices. 

British lawmakers in July approved a 25% windfall tax on oil and gas producers in the British North Sea that was expected to raise $5.95 billion in one year to help people struggling with soaring energy bills. 
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The international market for Native American fashion is growing. VOA correspondent Scott Stearns caught up with Indigenous designers at a Native American fashion show in the Western U.S. state of Colorado. Videographer: Scott Stearns, Jodi Westrum
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A new global public opinion survey of people in 25 countries has revealed steep declines in support for China, although Beijing still is seen favorably by many in Africa, where it is vying for influence with Washington.

The survey by the Britain-based YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project was carried out between August and September this year, polling about 1,000 people in each country, including in three large African states: Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa. The survey asked people about their opinions on China, the United States and Taiwan.

The data showed that in the West, support for China has dropped considerably in the past four years. One reason for that could be the pandemic. When respondents were asked about where it originated, most people placed blame for the outbreak of COVID-19 squarely on China.

Asked if China had a “generally positive or negative effect on world affairs” only 17% of respondents in France said it was positive, down from 36% in the first survey in 2019. In Germany that figure was even lower, at 13%, down from 30% four years ago.

Many other Western countries mirrored this trend, but the story is slightly different in Africa, where China is the continent’s largest trading partner. Although its ranking also dropped slightly over the four-year-period in Nigeria and South Africa, across the continent, China was still widely seen as a force for good.

In South Africa 61% of respondents saw China’s influence in the world as positive, in Kenya the support for China was higher at 82% and, in Nigeria, it was highest out of the three, standing at 83%.

Still, despite Beijing’s no-strings loans and large infrastructure projects as part of President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative, African support for the U.S. remained slightly higher.

In South Africa, 69% of people interviewed saw the U.S. as a generally positive force, and in both Kenya and Nigeria that number was at 88%.

Preferred superpower

On a separate question about which country, China or the U.S., respondents would prefer to have as the global superpower, 20 of the 25 countries polled chose the U.S., including all four Africa nations by a huge margin.

Seventy-seven percent of Nigerians chose the U.S. as the preferred superpower, as did 80% of Kenyans, and to a lesser extent 59% of South Africans.

“Results from the African countries in this study stand out for how they reflect such positive views toward both America and China as actors on the world stage,” Joel Rogers de Waal, academic director at YouGov, told VOA.

“At the same time, however, they show an obvious preference for having America, rather than China, as the reigning superpower, which perhaps raises some interesting questions about the progress of Chinese soft power in these parts of Africa.”

On other, more specific questions, the U.S. fared less favorably. For example, asked which country had engaged in “bullying” behavior globally, Washington trumped Beijing in all three African nations.

Likewise on the question of which country has “given military support to one side or another in a foreign civil war, in ways that do more harm than good to the people of that country.” Africans blamed the U.S. for this more than China. And in terms of being suspected of interference in other countries’ national elections, the U.S. again fared worse than China.

And although Washington increasingly warns Africa and the world of the threat of Chinese spying and surveillance, respondents in both South Africa and Nigeria placed more blame for international cyberattacks on the U.S.

Question of Taiwan

While China was more popular among African and many other global South countries surveyed than it was in the West, that support was not unconditional.

The survey was conducted around the time Taiwan was in the news amid the controversial visit by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the contested island. Since then, Washington has warned that China could move to annex Taiwan sooner than expected.

In Beijing, at the Chinese Communist Party’s congress, President Xi Jinping said he reserved the option of taking “all measures necessary” on the issue of Taiwan.

While the vast majority of African governments do not have diplomatic relations with Taipei and back Beijing—which regards the self-governing island as part of greater China—the survey indicates ordinary Africans differ with their political leaders on the issue.

“If China used force against Taiwan … do you think other countries should provide help?” the poll asked. Some 60% of Nigerians thought help should be provided to Taiwan, while 63% of Kenyans agreed, as did 47% of South Africans.

Those numbers were higher even than in some Western countries, with only 38% of French people surveyed saying help should be provided to Taiwan, and just 52% of respondents in the U.S. agreeing.

The data indicates that global politics are not as binary as some believe, with ordinary people in Africa able to see China as a generally positive force in the world, while also expressing concerns about some of its policies. as well as support for the defense of Taiwan.
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