tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53315461335269773882024-03-18T14:27:40.675-05:00Capital City Free PressJoseph O. Pattonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04830099575387185293noreply@blogger.comBlogger4799125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331546133526977388.post-45848098895794303362024-03-18T12:00:00.058-05:002024-03-18T12:00:00.132-05:00Free speech or free rein? How Murthy v. Missouri became a soapbox for misinformation advocacy<p><span style="font-size: large;"> Today the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/murthy-v-missouri-3/" target="_blank">Murthy v. Missouri</a>, originally filed as Missouri v. Biden. This case is emblematic of broader debates over the role of government in regulating online platforms and the protections afforded by the First Amendment in the context of speech online. In this case, the plaintiffs—the states of Missouri and Louisiana, as well as five social media users—<a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/court-cases/murthy-v-missouri-formerly-missouri-v-biden" target="_blank">alleged</a> that governmental communication with social media platforms regarding concerns about COVID-19 misinformation and election interference amounted to coercion, violating the First Amendment.<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The First Amendment safeguards free speech by prohibiting government censorship and undue influence on individuals and private sector entities, including social media. Concerns arise when government actions, such as threats or pressure, coercively sway social media companies to remove or censor content. However, far from being coerced into censorship, social media companies have actively sought collaborations with government entities and have organized themselves to share critical information in<a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-journal-of-international-law/article/roadmap-for-fighting-election-interference/7CFA77628A1FACF9DA3393942A34BEAD" target="_blank"> combating foreign interference in U.S. elections</a> and addressing misinformation. This proactive stance by social media platforms signals a clear demand for information sharing and underscores a collaborative effort to navigate the complexities of moderating content that could harm public welfare.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Murthy v. Missouri makes its way to the Supreme Court after an extreme <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/2023-08/MO%20v.%20Biden%20dct%20memorandum%20opinion.pdf" target="_blank">decision</a> by Judge Terry Doughty in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana. His ruling initially barred a wide range of federal government entities from engaging in any form of communication with social media platforms, particularly targeting issues such as the COVID-19 pandemic, election misinformation, and foreign malign influence threats—any action taken by or at the direction of foreign actors or their proxies. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit affirmed in part Doughty’s injunction on government communication with the platforms, narrowing its application to the White House, the FBI, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Office of the Surgeon General, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). The Supreme Court has paused the injunction until justices can hear arguments on the matter.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The underlying case was filed before Doughty, a Trump appointee who was assigned 90 percent of the cases in his division and has been <a href="https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/social-media-court-ruling-shows-power-of-judge-shopping" target="_blank">a favorite jurist of extreme right-wing interest</a>s seeking to strike down progressive policies such as <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/3653808-federal-judge-strikes-down-biden-administrations-head-start-vaccine-mask-mandate/" target="_blank">COVID-19 mandates</a> for Head Start child care workers and the Biden administration’s pause on oil and gas leases on federal land; the latter was reversed by the 5th Circuit. In Murthy, the plaintiffs <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/court-cases/murthy-v-missouri-formerly-missouri-v-biden" target="_blank">alleged</a> that governmental communication with social media platforms regarding COVID-19 misinformation and election interference violated the First Amendment. Though the government did not threaten any official action, Doughty blocked all communication and information sharing between the platforms and federal agencies, labeling the government efforts to stem mis- and disinformation an <a href="https://plus.thebulwark.com/p/orwellian-doesnt-mean-what-you-think" target="_blank">“Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth’.”</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Though the injunction is on hold, it has already created confusion on both the government’s and companies’ sides regarding content moderation collaboration. For example, the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/07/05/missouri-biden-judge-censorship-ruling-analysis/" target="_blank">U.S. Department of State canceled its monthly meeting</a> with Facebook officials to discuss 2024 election preparations and hacking threats, citing the need for further guidance. The chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), highlighted a number of dangers this injunction could pose from a national security standpoint in the <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/23/23-411/294259/20231226144150391_2023.12.26%20FOR%20PRINTER%20Senator%20Warner%20Amicus%20Brief%20-%20Murthy%20v%20Missouri.pdf" target="_blank">amicus brief</a> he filed with the Supreme Court and in his <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/events/sen-mark-warner-discusses-the-potential-impacts-of-the-murthy-v-missouri-case/" target="_blank">recent interview</a> with the Center for American Progress. Specifically, Warner cautioned that government-platform collaboration is a key tool in combating foreign malign influence operations—whether related to elections or other issues—that would be compromised if the court upholds the bar on communication. This is especially concerning as the swift rise of artificial intelligence is posing an <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/misinformation/disinformation-unprecedented-threat-2024-election-rcna134290" target="_blank">“unprecedented threat”</a> of mis- and disinformation to American democracy in this presidential election year.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>The who, what, and how of Murthy v. Missouri</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><u>Who:</u></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The state attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana and five social media users filed the lawsuit. Two of the plaintiffs are notable for their seemingly broader roles in disseminating mis- and disinformation through social media. Jim Hoft is the founder of the <a href="https://www.newsguardtech.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/The-Gateway-Pundit-NewsGuard-Nutrition-Label.pdf" target="_blank">Gateway Pundit</a>—a far-right website known for spreading debunked conspiracy theories—which was noted by Facebook in 2019 as a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/facebooks-struggle-with-gateway-pundit-highlights-challenge-containing-2021-12-03/" target="_blank">“common misinfo offender”</a> at the center of multiple lawsuits for <a href="https://missouriindependent.com/2023/04/28/missouri-lawsuit-isnt-the-only-defamation-case-against-far-right-site-gateway-pundit/" target="_blank">allegedly engaging in</a> “the deliberate spread of dangerous and inflammatory political disinformation designed to sow distrust in democratic institutions.” Another plaintiff, Jill Hines, is an<a href="https://www.healthfreedomla.org/about-health-freedom-louisiana/" target="_blank"> anti-vaccine</a> <a href="https://standforhealthfreedom.com/about-us/" target="_blank">advocate</a> who was featured in the debunked film “Vaxxed” and is part of the movement to oppose vaccines, a campaign that social media platforms have been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/feb/12/facebook-anti-vaxxer-vaccination-groups-pressure-misinformation" target="_blank">combating for years</a>. Notably, Hoft and Hines have <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/23/23-411/294255/20231226143930837_Murthy%20v.%20Missouri%20--%20SCOTUS%20Amicus%20FINAL.pdf" target="_blank">filed a separate lawsuit</a> against Stanford University and internet researchers to prevent them from communicating with the government and social media companies about misinformation on the internet.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><u>What:</u></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> As noted above, the <a href="https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/23/23-30445-CV0.pdf" target="_blank">5th Circuit revised</a> the <a href="https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/injunction-in-missouri-et-al-v/7ba314723d052bc4/full.pdf" target="_blank">U.S. District Court injunction</a> but kept in place significant prohibitions on communication between social media companies and the White House, the Office of the Surgeon General, the CDC, CISA, and the FBI. Specifically, the injunction prevented the federal agencies from engaging in two key actions in broad and undefined terms:</span></p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-size: large;">They may not “coerce” or “significantly encourage” social media platforms to make content moderation decisions.</span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;">They may not “meaningfully control” social media platforms’ content moderation processes.</span></li></ol><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> By imposing such restrictions, the 5th Circuit’s decision could hamper the government’s ability to collaborate with platforms in identifying and mitigating harmful content that poses a threat to public safety and democracy.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><u>How:</u></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> If the Supreme Court upholds this broad and ill-defined injunction, it could create confusion on both the government’s and companies’ sides regarding content moderation collaboration. This confusion might deter the necessary dialogue to identify and mitigate harmful content, affecting how social media platforms manage content; this may be especially true for disinformation from foreign malign influences who seek to sow division in American society and undermine U.S. democracy, as exemplified in Warner’s <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/23/23-411/294259/20231226144150391_2023.12.26%20FOR%20PRINTER%20Senator%20Warner%20Amicus%20Brief%20-%20Murthy%20v%20Missouri.pdf" target="_blank">amicus brief</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> For example, the injunction could lead to a scenario where federal agencies cannot share critical information with platforms regarding national security threats and election integrity. The injunction’s failure to clearly define what constitutes permissible and impermissible government communications with social media platforms only exacerbates this problem. This ambiguity leaves both government officials and platforms uncertain of the legal boundaries for their interactions.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><u>Conclusion</u></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Without concrete guidelines, the risk of unintentionally crossing the boundary from lawful information sharing or persuasion to unlawful coercion or encouragement becomes a tangible concern for government officials. This lack of clarity may lead to an overly cautious approach, where government agencies refrain from engaging in any communication that could potentially be misconstrued as coercive or overly influential—even when such communication is intended to serve the public interest—increasing vulnerability to mis- and disinformation and national security threats. Furthermore, if the injunction is upheld, it would set a precedent that may prompt similar constraints on the government’s voluntary interactions with private entities in other sectors, such as financial institutions or critical infrastructure such as utilities.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>About the authors:</i> Nicole Alvarez is a senior policy analyst for technology policy at the <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/" target="_blank">Center for American Progress</a>. Devon Ombres is the senior director for courts and legal policy at American Progress.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>This article was published by the Center for American Progress.</i></span></p>Joseph O. Pattonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04830099575387185293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331546133526977388.post-70760418203071406602024-03-17T12:00:00.041-05:002024-03-17T12:00:00.144-05:00The truth about St. Patrick’s Day<p><span style="font-size: large;"> In 1997, my students and I traveled to Croagh Patrick, a mountain in County Mayo, as part of a study abroad program course on Irish literature I was teaching for the University of Dayton. I wanted my students to visit the place where, each July, thousands of pilgrims pay homage to St. Patrick, who, according to lore, fasted and prayed on the summit for 40 days.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> While there, our tour guide relayed the story of how St. Patrick, as he lay on his death bed on March 17 in A.D. 461, supposedly asked those gathered around him to toast his heavenly journey with a “wee drop of whiskey” to ease their pain.<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The mention of whiskey left me wondering if St. Patrick may have unintentionally influenced the way most of the world celebrates the holiday today: by drinking.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> It wasn’t always this way. The Festival of St. Patrick <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/On_the_Erudition_of_the_Historical_St_Pa.html?id=4nwuAAAACAAJ&source=kp_book_description" target="_blank">began in the 17th century</a> as a religious and cultural commemoration of the bishop who brought Christianity to Ireland. In Ireland, there’s still an important religious and cultural component to the holiday, even as it has simply become an excuse to wear green and heavily drink in the rest of the world.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>The legend of St. Patrick</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Because historical details about St. Patrick’s life remain shrouded in speculation, scholars are often stymied in <a href="https://theconversation.com/10-things-to-know-about-the-real-st-patrick-92253" target="_blank">their attempts to separate fact from legend.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> In his spiritual memoir, <a href="https://www.confessio.ie/#" target="_blank">“Confessio,”</a> St. Patrick describes how he was brought to Ireland as a slave. He eventually escaped, rejoining his family in Britain, probably Scotland. But while there, he had a recurring dream in which the “Voice of the Irish” called to him to return to Ireland in order to baptize and minister to them. So he did.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The Irish revere the account of this dream described in the “Confessio”; they accept the simplicity and fervor of his words and feel a debt of gratitude for his unselfish commitment to their spiritual well-being.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> St. Patrick’s efforts to convert the Irish to Catholicism were never easy. Viewing him as a challenge to their power and authority, <a href="https://www.libraryireland.com/JoyceHistory/Kings.php" target="_blank">the high kings of Ireland</a> and the pagan high priests, called <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Druid" target="_blank">Druids</a>, resisted his efforts to make inroads with the population.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> But through his missionary zeal, he was able to fuse Irish culture into Christianity, whether it was through the introduction of the Celtic Cross or <a href="https://www.discoveringireland.com/saint-patrick-patron-saint-of-ireland/" target="_blank">the use of bonfires</a> to celebrate feasts like Easter.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Again, many of these stories could amount to no more than myth. Nonetheless, centuries after his death, the Irish continue to show their gratitude for their patron saint by wearing a spray of shamrocks on March 17. They start the day with mass, followed by a daylong feast, and prayer and reflection at night.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>St. Paddy’s Day goes global</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> From 1820 to 1860, <a href="https://www.datesandevents.org/us-immigration-timelines/irish-immigration-america-timeline.htm" target="_blank">almost 2 million people left Ireland</a>, many due to the potato famine in the 1840s and 1850s. More followed in the 20th century to reunite with relatives and escape poverty and joblessness back home.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Once settled, they found new ways to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day and their Irish identity in their new homes.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Irish-Americans, especially, were quick to transform March 17 into a commercial enterprise. The mandatory “wearin’ of the green” in all its garishness is a far cry from the original tradition of wearing a spray of shamrocks to honor St. Patrick’s death and celebrate Irish solidarity. Parades famously sprung up – especially in New York and Boston – revelry ensued and, sure enough, even the beer became green.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Children of Irish-Americans in the United States have absorbed Irish culture at a distance. Many probably know that St. Patrick is Ireland’s patron saint. But they might not fully appreciate his mythic stature for kids growing up on the emerald isle.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Ask children of any age in Ireland what they know about St. Patrick, and they will regale you with stories of his magical abilities, from his power to drive the snakes out of Ireland to his use of the three leaves and one stem of the shamrock to demystify <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/trinity/trinity-history.html" target="_blank">the Trinity doctrine of the Catholic Church.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> They see St. Patrick as a miracle worker, and as adults, they keep the legends alive in their own ways. <a href="https://www.ireland.com/en-us/magazine/walking/pilgrimage-walks-in-ireland/" target="_blank">Some follow St. Patrick’s footsteps</a> all around Ireland – from well to hill to altar to chapel – seeking his blessing and bounty wherever their journeys take them.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Raising a glass</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Of course, in America, the holy day is really a party, above all else.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> In 2019, Americans spent US$6.16 billion celebrating, with 13 million pints of Guinness consumed. Some parts of the country plan a pre-celebration on Sept. 17 – or, as they call it, <a href="https://halfwaytostpatricksday.net/" target="_blank">“Halfway to St. Patrick’s Day.”</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Where all of this leads is anyone’s guess. But beginning in the 1990s, Ireland seemed to grasp the earning potential of the Americanized version. Today, March 17 remains a holy day for the natives and a holiday for tourists from around the world, with pubs raking in the euros on St. Patrick’s Day.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> But I’ve always wondered: What if St. Patrick had requested a silent prayer instead of “a wee drop of whiskey” to toast his passing? Would his celebration have stayed more sacred than profane?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEideM_A6ZYLn4jvTT9dX-4G6hbYmI2-40fKmnwFztj_WUEQw0GnWO5PFlAyYxKKFulAuKZ4XikqHaFfiKiIzf-M86Vr4N5fx1okXSUVCfTO5rAe6nCX0_-i3FUeEFsDY-cf94E5S-Xk6rnET9CCWdp9oeovv_QVz7mknSwjZY5twnpqsTqORZKliWWkIEgG/s170/James%20Farrelly.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="170" data-original-width="170" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEideM_A6ZYLn4jvTT9dX-4G6hbYmI2-40fKmnwFztj_WUEQw0GnWO5PFlAyYxKKFulAuKZ4XikqHaFfiKiIzf-M86Vr4N5fx1okXSUVCfTO5rAe6nCX0_-i3FUeEFsDY-cf94E5S-Xk6rnET9CCWdp9oeovv_QVz7mknSwjZY5twnpqsTqORZKliWWkIEgG/w200-h200/James%20Farrelly.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>About the author:</i> James Farrelly is a Professor of English at the <a href="https://udayton.edu/" target="_blank">University of Dayton</a>.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>This article was published by <a href="https://theconversation.com/us" target="_blank">The Conversation</a> and first appeared in the Capital City Free Press on March 17, 2021.</i></span></p>Joseph O. Pattonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04830099575387185293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331546133526977388.post-9217100997433341032024-03-16T12:00:00.000-05:002024-03-16T12:00:00.124-05:00Warped terminology on open borders<p><span style="font-size: large;"> Seeing the large number of immigrants illegally entering the United States, proponents of immigration controls decry what they label the “open border” between the United States and Mexico.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> I live in Virginia. I sometimes enter Maryland by crossing the bridge that spans the Potomac River, which forms part of the border between the two states. There is no border-control station at which Maryland officials require me to stop and be subjected to questions and have my vehicle searched. There are also no border patrol agents patrolling the border to ensure that no one is entering Maryland illegally. <span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> That’s what “open borders” means. No border checkpoints. No border guards. No stopping vehicles to examine people’s papers or search their vehicles. Simply unrestricted movements of people across a border.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Having lived more than 3 decades in a border town along the Texas-Mexican border, I can attest that that is definitely not the situation when one crosses the border from Mexico to the United States. When one crosses one of the bridges that spans the Rio Grande, one encounters a massive border-control station, where border guards stop vehicles, demand to see proper papers, and subject both people and vehicles to intensive and intrusive searches.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> That’s not all. Since migrants are determined to circumvent those border-control stations, tens of thousands of Border Patrol agents patrol the borderlands to catch, arrest, prosecute, and deport them. These agents have been vested with the power to enter on to private farms and ranches, including those located many miles from the border, without search warrants to search for illegal immigrants.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> There are also fixed highway checkpoints that require vehicles that have never entered Mexico to stop, respond to questions, produce papers, and be subjected to a warrantless search.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> There are also roving Border Patrol stops and searches, where vehicles are stopped at random and subjected to questioning and search.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> There is also a Berlin Wall along the border.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The latest addition is concertina wire strategically placed in the Rio Grande to cut up immigrants or even kill them, in order to deter others from illegally entering the United States.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> All this is what is called an immigration police state, which is the exact opposite of an open border. A police state is also the exact opposite of a free society. A police state is what Cuba and North Korea are. Those two communist countries also have highway checkpoints, warrantless searches, and other police-state measures. The only difference is that Americans have been indoctrinated into believing that their immigration police state is “freedom.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> What do we call it then when large numbers of migrants are circumventing a massive immigration police state and illegally entering the United States?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> We call it an immigration police state that isn’t working. That is, no matter how much the statists crack down with their immigration police state, their efforts do not succeed in attaining their goal, which is to totally shut down the entry of illegal immigrants into the United States.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> What if U.S. officials decide to enforce their immigration police state in a more lax manner, which thereby enables more migrants to illegally enter the United States than what would be the case if the police state was more harshly enforced? You still don’t have open borders. Instead, you have a police state that is simply not being enforced as harshly as before.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> What proponents of immigration controls cannot bring themselves to confront and accept is that their immigration-control system and their immigration police state simply don’t work. They’ve never worked. And they will never work in the future. That’s because their system is based on the socialist principle of central planning, which is inherently incapable of working.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> But holding up the term “personal responsibility” to an immigration-control advocate is like holding up a crucifix to a vampire. Agghhh! It is their inability to confront and accept the failure of their own statist system that causes proponents of immigration controls to instead blame “open borders” for the immigration chaos that they lament and that their own socialist system of immigration controls has caused.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy2_IcwsqVnd9cgsHUljWExUraOFH3vqbQoO-e6PHXjq7phvB4tovcFJyK7VGOXYSpZDdYez38MfxGLO8d5Z_DheZx7R6sns7XxRiDlTGccRw9Oz-5pvsrUAesKV7inG2wGyB-PYTKLdWoklNrDom3OejW0aww1afBowjLleFncucMf7VMnyd1jcdSdWYX/s400/hornberger.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="400" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy2_IcwsqVnd9cgsHUljWExUraOFH3vqbQoO-e6PHXjq7phvB4tovcFJyK7VGOXYSpZDdYez38MfxGLO8d5Z_DheZx7R6sns7XxRiDlTGccRw9Oz-5pvsrUAesKV7inG2wGyB-PYTKLdWoklNrDom3OejW0aww1afBowjLleFncucMf7VMnyd1jcdSdWYX/w200-h200/hornberger.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>About the author:</i> Jacob G. Hornberger is the founder and president of <a href="https://www.fff.org/" target="_blank">The Future of Freedom Foundation</a>.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>This article was published by The Future of Freedom Foundation. </i></span></p>Joseph O. Pattonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04830099575387185293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331546133526977388.post-20278316866770019052024-03-15T12:00:00.048-05:002024-03-15T12:00:00.135-05:00The Russia-Ukraine War has caused a staggering amount of cultural destruction – both seen and unseen<p><span style="font-size: large;"> War doesn’t just destroy lives. It also tears at the fabric of culture.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> And in the case of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, now about to enter its third year, the remarkable destruction of Ukrainian history and heritage since 2022 hasn’t been a matter of collateral damage. Rather, the Russian military has deliberately targeted museums, churches, and libraries that are important to the Ukrainian people.<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> It’s impossible to document the full extent of the destruction, particularly in the active military zones in eastern and southern Ukraine. However, as archaeologists and filmmakers, we wanted to do what we could. This meant traveling to liberated villages, museums, and churches in northern and eastern Ukraine adjacent to regions with ongoing fighting.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Working closely with Ukrainian colleagues, we ended up making two nine-day trips – one in March 2023 and another in October 2023.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Here is some of what we found:</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Sifting through the ruins</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> In liberated parts of Ukraine, the bodies of the dead have long been carried away and, for the most part, buried in local cemeteries. But enter any formerly occupied city or town, and you’ll immediately notice that the scars from battles that took place from March 2022 to July 2022 remain starkly visible.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Driving around Chernihiv, a city in northern Ukraine, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/19/russian-strike-on-chernihiv-ukraine" target="_blank">we witnessed hundreds of burned-out buildings</a> and many more that are riddled with bullet holes and damaged by shrapnel.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> As we wound through small farming villages, we were struck by the ferocity and randomness of modern military firepower: One part of a village could be completely flattened, while a block down the road, the houses were untouched.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> During a wet day in the middle of October 2023, we drove through small tree-lined roads to see the remains of the Church of the Ascension in Lukashivka, a small village about 8 miles from Chernihiv.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Previously home to about 300 people, Lukashivka was occupied by the Russians in March 2022 and later recaptured by the Ukrainian military.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Built in 1913 with a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belfry_(architecture)" target="_blank">two-tiered belfry</a> that can be seen for miles, this large white-brick church is now a shell of what it once was: Its wood flooring has been scorched and its brick roof blown open. In a few sections of the wall, the original plaster and paintings are still preserved.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Inside the place of worship, we traversed the detritus of war, hearing the crunch of spent cartridges, rocket cases, broken bottles, and heaps of burned cans.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> We’ll never really know how many soldiers and civilians died fighting over Lukashivka and the church.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> We do know, however, that cultural heritage has few friends during war.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The partially preserved church at Lukashivka is one of hundreds of cultural and religious buildings that have been damaged or destroyed over the last two years. This includes <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/russian-air-strike-damages-transfiguration-cathedral-odesa-180982616/" target="_blank">the Cathedral of the Transfiguration in Odesa</a>, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-mariupol-theater-c321a196fbd568899841b506afcac7a1" target="_blank">the Mariupol Drama Theater</a>, and the <a href="https://chytomo.com/en/the-bombing-of-kharkiv-damaged-one-of-europe-s-largest-libraries/" target="_blank">Korolenko Kharkiv State Scientific Library</a>, one of the largest libraries in Europe.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>More than meets the eye</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> If traveling in Ukraine has taught us one important lesson, it’s that the digging of trenches can erase history.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> While the destruction of churches, libraries, and museums viscerally evokes a sense of loss, there’s an entire unseen world below the ground surface – filled with untold numbers of artifacts, bones, and buried buildings – that are exposed when trenches are created.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> In fact, it’s likely that this war has destroyed more history and archaeology buried below the ground than above it.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> As armies did during <a href="https://www.theworldwar.org/learn/about-wwi/trench-warfare" target="_blank">World War I</a>, the Ukrainian military built deep trenches and bunkers along rivers and high ground in the early months of the war. Two years later, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2023/nov/07/21st-century-trench-warfare-ukrainian-frontline-in-pictures" target="_blank">these defensive trench systems are a central element of the ground war</a> and demarcate the front lines.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> In many cases, the trenches were dug into the remains of buried archaeological sites, most of which were previously unknown and untouched.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> In March 2023, for example, we visited sites around Iripin and Bucha, two villages on the northern edge of Kyiv, to document how medieval and Bronze Age sites buried below the surface had been destroyed by trenches or, in other cases, were now blanketed by minefields to stop Russian military units.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> We also went to <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/tools-of-war-conflict-and-the-destruction-of-ukrainian-cultural-heritage/49CD4A3FA298780A79C025541C78CF5A" target="_blank">the 11th century archaeology site of Oster</a>. Perched on a small hill southeast of Chernihiv, Oster was an important regional center in the medieval period. It had a brick-and-stone church and a large settlement nearby. As part of the siege of Chernihiv in March 2022, Ukrainian troops built deep trenches and bunkers around the edges of Oster since the site overlooks rivers and crossing points.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/tools-of-war-conflict-and-the-destruction-of-ukrainian-cultural-heritage/49CD4A3FA298780A79C025541C78CF5A" target="_blank">When we visited Oster a year after the invasion</a>, we noticed that the trench system around the church was dug into a large, 11th century settlement and burial ground. Laying exposed on the dirt piles along the trenches we found medieval human skeletal remains. The more we studied the system of trenches and bunkers, which encircles an area of about 650 feet (198 meters), the more human bones we saw.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> A crew of archaeologists has returned to photograph the destruction of these burial grounds. But given the ongoing war, it isn’t possible to fully document the destruction, let alone fill in the trenches, which still may be needed by soldiers.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The previously unknown burial ground at Oster is one of hundreds, if not thousands, of similar sites that have been damaged or destroyed in central and northeastern Ukraine.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>War and the fabric of culture</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Even after the fighting ends, large areas of Ukraine will remain inaccessible for years, given the widespread <a href="https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2023/11/30/23979758/ukraine-war-russia-land-mines-artillery-humantarian-crisis" target="_blank">use of mines</a> and <a href="https://occup-med.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12995-023-00398-y" target="_blank">environmental contaminants</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Surviving collections and museum exhibits <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_museums_in_Ukraine" target="_blank">inside and outside of Ukraine</a> have assumed greater importance: They may represent the sole evidence of ancient cultures originating from these damaged territories.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> We can confidently say that Europe has not experienced destruction of this magnitude, let alone this quickly, since World War II.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The bombings of churches, libraries, and residences have destroyed major areas of Ukraine. As with the Nazis’ pilfering of paintings, bronze sculptures, and art <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/story/world-war-ii-looted-art-turning-history-into-justice-u-s-national-archives/PQXxtIcpKuJmJw?hl=en" target="_blank">in the last few years of World War II</a>, in the first months after the invasion, <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/catastrophic-putin-war-wiping-out-ukraine-recent-history-1771314" target="_blank">the Russian army looted museums, stole art, and destroyed churches </a>with missiles and tank shells.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Make no mistake: At its core, the Russian full-scale invasion is a military attempt to erase Ukraine’s history, culture, and heritage.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Seemingly entrenched in a 1950s geopolitical framework, President Vladimir Putin and other representatives of the Russian state dispute that Ukraine is a sovereign nation. Ukraine’s churches, museums, and libraries are a threat to Russia, for they are the material and symbolic fabric that holds together Ukrainian identity and resistance.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> That’s why this war is as much about culture as it is about land.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>About the authors:</i> Ian Kuijt is a professor of anthropology at the <a href="https://www.nd.edu/" target="_blank">University of Notre Dame</a>. Pavlo Shydlovskyi is an associate professor of archaeology at the <a href="https://knu.ua/en/" target="_blank">Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv</a>. William Donaruma is a professor of the practice in filmmaking at the University of Notre Dame.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>This article was published by <a href="https://theconversation.com/us" target="_blank">The Conversation</a>.</i> </span></p>Joseph O. Pattonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04830099575387185293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331546133526977388.post-17395277589942245822024-03-14T12:00:00.000-05:002024-03-14T12:00:00.137-05:00Back in the day, being woke meant being smart<p><span style="font-size: large;"> If Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had his way, the word “woke” would be banished from public use and memory.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> As <a href="https://time.com/6285681/woke-rhetoric-republicans-desantis-trump/" target="_blank">he promised</a> in Iowa in December 2023 during his failed presidential campaign, “We will fight the woke in education, we will fight the woke in the corporations, we will fight the woke in the halls of Congress. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob.”<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <a href="https://theconversation.com/florida-gov-desantis-leads-the-gops-national-charge-against-public-education-that-includes-lessons-on-race-and-sexual-orientation-196369" target="_blank">DeSantis’ war</a> on “woke ideology” has resulted in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/19/ron-desantis-bans-african-american-studies-florida-schools" target="_blank">the banning</a> of an advanced placement class in African American studies and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/02/ron-desantis-block-dei-program-state-colleges-florida" target="_blank">the elimination</a> of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in Florida’s universities and colleges.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Given <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/21437879/stay-woke-wokeness-history-origin-evolution-controversy" target="_blank">the origins</a> of the use of the word as a code among Black people, DeSantis has a nearly impossible task, despite his tireless efforts.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> For Black people, the <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/woke-meaning-word-history-b1790787.html" target="_blank">modern-day meaning</a> of the word has little to do with school curriculum or political jargon and goes back to the days of Jim Crow and legal, often violent, racial segregation. Back then, the word was <a href="https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2023/jan/08/heres-where-woke-comes-from/" target="_blank">used as a warning</a> to be aware of racial injustices in general and Southern white folks in particular.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> In my view as a b<a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=lfBeq78AAAAJ&hl=en" target="_blank">ehavioral scientist who studies race</a>, being woke was part of the unwritten vocabulary that Black people established to talk with each other in a way that outsiders could not understand.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>The early days of wokeness</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> It’s unclear when exactly “woke” <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/07/19/1188543449/what-does-the-word-woke-really-mean-and-where-does-it-come-from" target="_blank">became a word</a> of Black consciousness. Examples of its use – in various forms of the word “awake” – date back to before the Civil War in <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/freedom-s-journal-1827-1829/" target="_blank">Freedom’s Journal</a>, the nation’s first Black-owned newspaper.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> In their introductory editorial on April 21, 1827, the editors <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150209163534/http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/pdfs/la/FreedomsJournal/v1n01.pdf" target="_blank">wrote that their mission</a> was to “plead our own cause.” Part of that mission was offering analysis on the state of educating enslaved Black people who were prohibited from learning how to read and write.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Because education and literacy were “of the highest importance,” the editors wrote, it was “surely time that we should awake from this lethargy of years” during enslavement.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> By the turn of the 20th century, the use of versions of the word “woke” by other Black newspaper editors expanded to include the fight for Black voting rights. In a 1904 editorial in the <a href="https://afro.com/" target="_blank">Baltimore Afro-American</a>, for instance, the editors urged Black people to “Wake up, wake up!” and demand full-citizenship rights.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> By 1919, Black nationalist <a href="https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/twenty/tkeyinfo/garvey.htm" target="_blank">Marcus Garvey</a> frequently used a version of the word in his speeches and newspaper, <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/sn84037003/" target="_blank">The Negro World</a>, as a clarion call to Black people to become more socially and politically conscious: “Wake up Ethiopia! Wake up Africa!”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> At around the same time, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-12-31/-woke-culture-has-been-fighting-injustice-since-early-1900s" target="_blank">blues singers</a> were using the word to hide protest messages in the language of love songs. On the surface, <a href="https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/mastertalent/detail/352507/Thomas_Willard" target="_blank">Willard “Ramblin’” Thomas</a> laments a lost love in “Sawmill Moan”:</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>If I don’t go crazy, I’m sure gonna lose my mind ‘Cause I can’t sleep for dreamin’, sure can’t stay woke for cryin’.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> But instead of a love song, <a href="https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2023/jan/08/heres-where-woke-comes-from/" target="_blank">some historians</a> have suggested that the lyrics were a veiled protest against the atrocious conditions faced by Black workers in Southern sawmills.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The song given the most credit by historians for the use of the word woke was written and performed in 1938 by Huddie Leadbetter, known as <a href="https://www.songhall.org/profile/Huddie_Ledbetter" target="_blank">Lead Belly</a>. He <a href="https://www.snopes.com/articles/464795/origins-term-stay-woke/" target="_blank">advises his listeners</a> to “stay woke” lest they run afoul of white authority.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> In an <a href="https://folkways.si.edu/lead-belly/scottsboro-boys/track/music/smithsonian" target="_blank">archived interview</a> about the song “Scottsboro Boys,” Lead Belly explained how tough it was at the time for Black people in Alabama.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> “It’s a hard world down there in Alabama,” <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/21437879/stay-woke-wokeness-history-origin-evolution-controversy" target="_blank">Lead Belly said</a>. “I made this little song about down there. … I advise everybody, be a little careful when they go along through there — best stay woke, keep their eyes open.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> And that’s the message that came out in <a href="https://genius.com/Lead-belly-scottsboro-boys-lyrics" target="_blank">the song lyrics</a>:</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>“Go to Alabama and ya better watch out The landlord’ll get ya, gonna jump and shout Scottsboro Scottsboro Scottsboro boys Tell ya what it all about.”</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>A miscarriage of justice</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> On March 25, 1931, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, two white women, <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/who-were-scottsboro-nine-180977193/" target="_blank">Victoria Price and Ruby Bates</a>, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2013/11/21/justice/alabama-scottsboro-pardons/index.html" target="_blank">falsely accused</a> a group of <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/who-were-scottsboro-nine-180977193/" target="_blank">several Black young men</a> of rape.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Based on their words, the nine Black men – <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/scottsboro-boys-who-were-the-boys/" target="_blank">ages 12 to 19 years old</a> – were immediately arrested and in less than two weeks, all were tried, convicted, and with one exception, sentenced to death.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> All the cases were appealed and eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court. In its 1932 <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1900-1940/287us45" target="_blank">Powell v. Alabama</a> decision, the court <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/287/45/" target="_blank">overturned the verdicts</a> in part because prosecutors excluded potential Black jurors from serving during the trial. But instead of freedom, the cases were retried – and each of the “Scottsboro Boys” was found guilty again.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> There were four more trials, seven retrials, and in 1935, two landmark Supreme Court decisions – one requiring that defendants be tried by <a href="http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scottsboro/SB_norus.html" target="_blank">juries of their peers</a> and the other requiring that indigent defendants receive <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1900-1940/287us45" target="_blank">competent counsel</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/scottsboro-boys-who-were-the-boys/" target="_blank">nine young men</a> spent a combined total of 130 years in prison. The last was released in 1950. By 2013, all were <a href="https://www.aclu.org/news/racial-justice/scottsboro-boys-exonerated-troubling-legacy-remains" target="_blank">exonerated</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>How woke became a four-letter word</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Over the years, the memory of the Scottsboro Boys has remained a part of Black consciousness and of <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/07/19/1188543449/what-does-the-word-woke-really-mean-and-where-does-it-come-from" target="_blank">staying woke</a>. During the height of the Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King Jr. used a version of woke during his commencement address at Oberlin College in 1965.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> “The great challenge facing every individual graduating today is to remain awake through this social revolution,” <a href="https://www2.oberlin.edu/external/EOG/BlackHistoryMonth/MLK/CommAddress.html" target="_blank">he said</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> In recent times, the use of the word has ebbed and flowed throughout Black culture but became popular again in 2014 during the protest marches organized by Black Lives Matter in the wake of the shooting death of <a href="https://apnews.com/article/police-donald-trump-us-news-ap-top-news-darren-wilson-dd31d221489e40989f61908a59c685bf" target="_blank">Michael Brown</a> by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Two years later, a documentary on the group was called <a href="https://tv.apple.com/us/show/stay-woke-the-black-lives-matter-movement/umc.cmc.1nh2deranlyif6yjxa57esu5k" target="_blank">“Stay Woke: The Black Lives Matter Movement.”</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> But f<a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/woke-conservatives/story?id=93051138" target="_blank">or GOP lawmakers and conservative talk show pundits</a>, such as DeSantis, “woke” is a pejorative word used to describe those who believe that systemic racism exists in America and remains at the heart of the nation’s racial shortcomings.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> When asked to define the term in June 2023, <a href="https://time.com/6285681/woke-rhetoric-republicans-desantis-trump/" target="_blank">DeSantis explained</a>: “It’s a form of cultural Marxism. It’s about putting merit and achievement behind identity politics, and it’s basically a war on the truth.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> DeSantis couldn’t be more wrong. The truth is that being aware of America’s racist past cannot be dictated by conservative politicians. Civic literacy requires an understanding of the social causes and consequences of human behavior – the very essence of being woke.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkfUQNYWjiPJkXU6bXooiWsx0t4EgSFrRGrXBT8wCfITM6oDyISAOx797Df-b3MQJNipHgjxNlF-TL1_5JCclTIJbTzeI3XYyac2IAwA7zrEkH2EYzez4kwQLfmUKGnQlYGpyzO1eaeXSnExHBh9ZxWLF9RTvmRX5kiZI7vbaXX6MZXGnLi2pdHgZJT1I3/s238/Ronald%20E.%20Hall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="238" data-original-width="238" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkfUQNYWjiPJkXU6bXooiWsx0t4EgSFrRGrXBT8wCfITM6oDyISAOx797Df-b3MQJNipHgjxNlF-TL1_5JCclTIJbTzeI3XYyac2IAwA7zrEkH2EYzez4kwQLfmUKGnQlYGpyzO1eaeXSnExHBh9ZxWLF9RTvmRX5kiZI7vbaXX6MZXGnLi2pdHgZJT1I3/w200-h200/Ronald%20E.%20Hall.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>About the author:</i> Ronald E. Hall is a professor of social work at <a href="https://msu.edu/" target="_blank">Michigan State University</a>.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>This article was published by <a href="https://theconversation.com/us" target="_blank">The Conversation</a>.</i> </span></p>Joseph O. Pattonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04830099575387185293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331546133526977388.post-49846778734870879552024-03-13T12:00:00.058-05:002024-03-13T12:00:00.135-05:00I’m a political scientist, and the Alabama Supreme Court’s IVF ruling turned me into a reproductive-rights refugee<p><span style="font-size: large;"> The day before the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that <a href="https://apnews.com/article/alabama-supreme-court-from-embryos-161390f0758b04a7638e2ddea20df7ca" target="_blank">frozen embryos created and used for in vitro fertilization</a> are children, my wife, Gabby, and I were greenlighted by our doctors to begin the IVF process. We live in Alabama.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> That Friday evening, Feb. 16, 2024, unaware of the ruling, Gabby started taking her stimulation medications, worth roughly US$4,000 in total. We didn’t hear about the decision until Sunday morning, Feb. 18. By then, she had taken four injections – or two doses – of each of the stimulation medications.<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> For those who don’t know, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-ivf-a-nurse-explains-the-evolving-science-and-legality-of-in-vitro-fertilization-224476" target="_blank">IVF process is a winding journey</a> full of tests, bloodwork, and bills. An IVF patient takes hormones for eight to 14 days to stimulate their ovaries to produce many mature eggs. The mature eggs are then retrieved via a minor surgical procedure and fertilized with sperm in a lab. The newly created embryos are monitored, sometimes biopsied and frozen for genetic testing, and then implanted, usually one at a time, in the uterus. From injection to implantation, one round of IVF takes four to eight weeks.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> IVF can be as stressful as it is exciting. However, the potential of having a successful pregnancy and our own child at the end of the process, we hoped, would make it all worth it. The decision by the Alabama Supreme Court threw our dreams up in the air.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> I <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ow6DhIQAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao" target="_blank">study politics</a> – I don’t practice it. I’m not involved in state or local government. I’m a scholar, not an activist or an advocate. But now one of the most intimate, personal events of our lives had been turned into a political event by the state’s highest court. As a result, I became something else, too, which I had not been before: an activist.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Making sense of the ruling</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Throughout the process of creating, growing, and testing embryos in a lab, as many as <a href="https://www.illumefertility.com/fertility-blog/ivf-attrition-rate" target="_blank">50% to 70%</a> of embryos <a href="https://theconversation.com/most-human-embryos-naturally-die-after-conception-restrictive-abortion-laws-fail-to-take-this-embryo-loss-into-account-187904" target="_blank">can be lost</a>. Similarly, in the preimplantation stage of natural pregnancies, <a href="https://f1000research.com/articles/9-702/v1" target="_blank">many embryos don’t survive.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> If embryos are children, as the court ruled, then fertility clinics and patients would be exposed to an immense amount of potential legal liability. Under this new framework, patients would be able to bring wrongful death suits against doctors for the normal failures of embryos in the testing or implantation phase. Doctors would either have to charge more for an already expensive procedure to cover massive legal-insurance costs or avoid IVF altogether.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The decision and its implication – that IVF could not continue in the state of Alabama – felt like a personal affront to us. We were infuriated to have this uncertainty injected into the process three days into injecting IVF medication.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> While the decision clearly imperiled the future of IVF in Alabama, it was not clear to us whether we would be allowed to continue the process we had begun. We were left completely in the dark for the next four days. Gabby and I had no choice but to continue daily life and IVF as though nothing was happening.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> For me, that meant teaching my <a href="https://bulletin.auburn.edu/coursesofinstruction/poli/" target="_blank">political participation course at Auburn University.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Teaching politics when it gets personal</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> I’ll never forget walking into class on Monday, Feb. 19, and telling the students about the court’s ruling and how it – maybe? – was going to jeopardize Gabby’s and my IVF process.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Before starting IVF, Gabby and I had gone through three miscarriages together.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> IVF doesn’t always work. Approximately <a href="https://nccd.cdc.gov/drh_art/rdPage.aspx?rdReport=DRH_ART.ClinicInfo&rdRequestForward=True&ClinicId=9999&ShowNational=1" target="_blank">55% of IVF patients</a> under the age of 35 – Gabby is 26 – have a successful pregnancy after one egg retrieval. We couldn’t imagine the pain of telling friends and family that our attempt at having a child had once again failed. So we had agreed we were going to tell as few people as possible about starting IVF.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Yet, here I was now, telling my entire class what we were going through and how the Alabama Supreme Court ruling could affect us.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> I wasn’t alone in sharing our story. The night before my Monday morning class, Gabby published an <a href="https://www.al.com/opinion/2024/02/guest-opinion-alabama-supreme-court-embryo-ruling-may-make-it-difficult-for-us-to-have-children.html" target="_blank">opinion column</a> on our local news site about the ruling and our resulting fears and anxieties, which really resonated with people.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> I was, that day and throughout the next few weeks, fixated on the conceptual gulf between the court’s ruling and public opinion. I wondered aloud, “Who’s against IVF? Surely, only 5% to 10% of the public agrees with this ruling.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The actual numbers aren’t far off my in-class guess. <a href="https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/econTabReport_XLG2Z6p.pdf" target="_blank">Only 8% of Americans</a> say that IVF is immoral or should be illegal. But the story is more nuanced than that. Approximately <a href="https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2024-02/Axios%20Ipsos%20Alabama%20IVF%20Topline%20PDF%202.28.24.pdf" target="_blank">31% of Americans and 49% of Republicans</a> support “considering frozen embryos as people and holding those who destroy them legally responsible.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> In an attempt to tie our personal political experience into the class topic, I remarked that this court decision was a surefire way to get people involved in politics. I had no clue at the time how prophetic my comment would be.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Fleeing to Texas for reproductive rights?</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> On Wednesday, Feb. 21, the <a href="https://www.al.com/news/2024/02/uab-pauses-in-vitro-fertilization-due-to-fear-of-prosecution-officials-say.html" target="_blank">University of Alabama Birmingham’s fertility clinic</a> paused IVF treatments. That wasn’t our clinic, but the move sent us into a total panic. Our clinic’s closure seemed inevitable – and within 24 hours <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/university-alabama-pauses-ivf-services-court-rules-embryos-are-childre-rcna139846" target="_blank">it had paused IVF treatments as well.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> We didn’t know what we were going to do, but we knew we were likely leaving the state to continue IVF. I needed to tell my department chair what was going on.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> I was walking out of my department chair’s office when my phone rang. Gabby told me, “We got in, we’re going to Temple.” I ran back into my department chair’s office, told her we were going to Temple, Texas, and then rushed home.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/22/us/alabama-embryos-ruling-ivf-treatment-leaving-state/index.html" target="_blank">A reporter from CNN</a> beat me there. It was one of several <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/ivf-doctors-patients-fearful-alabama-court-rules-embryos-are-children-rcna139636" target="_blank">interviews</a> with <a href="https://apnews.com/video/alabama-assisted-reproductive-technology-courts-legislation-gabby-goidel-8990ee5efaab450b940da1e6a39bf8d1" target="_blank">major</a> <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/katy-tur/watch/-thoughtless-ivf-patients-speak-out-on-alabama-embryo-decision-204655173631" target="_blank">media</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/22/alabama-fertility-pause-ivf-embryo-ruling" target="_blank">outlets</a> Gabby did in the wake of her opinion column. After the interview, we threw clothes in a suitcase, dropped our dogs off at the vet, and drove to the Atlanta airport. We flew to Texas that night.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The thought of not completing the egg retrieval never seriously entered our minds. We were confident that we could get in with another IVF clinic somewhere, anywhere. But we’re affluent. We’re privileged. What if we weren’t so well off? We wouldn’t have wanted to give up, but we wouldn’t have been able to afford the fight.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> We spent exactly one week at my parents’ house in Texas. Thankfully, my parents live an hour and a half away from the Temple clinic. We met our new doctor, <a href="https://www.bswhealth.com/physician/gordon-bates" target="_blank">Dr. Gordon Wright Bates</a>, and were immediately reassured. His cool expertise and confidence were calming to a stressed-out couple. The Alabama Supreme Court may have upended our lives, but we felt weirdly lucky to be in such a comfortable place.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The egg retrieval was Wednesday morning, Feb. 28. By all indications, it went well. IVF, however, is full of uncertainties. Now we are waiting on the results from preimplantation genetic testing. After that, there’s implantation and hoping the embryo continues to grow. We’re not in the clear: IVF is a stressful process even without a state court getting in the way. But today we are in a situation more like an average couple going through IVF than we have been in the past few weeks.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Late Wednesday night, March 6, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed into law a bill providing legal protection to IVF clinics in the state. Gabby and I rejoiced at the news. Hopefully, we’re the last Alabamian couple to flee the state for IVF.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>A mobilizing moment</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> When state politics directly interferes with your life, it feels like a gut punch, as if the community that you love is saying you’re not loved back. It’s easy to see how such an experience could either discourage or motivate you. Research shows that traumatic events, for the most part, depress voter turnout in the following presidential election. By contrast, families and friends of 9/11 victims <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1315043110" target="_blank">became and remained more politically engaged</a> than their peers.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> In this case, the Alabama Supreme Court ruling mobilized Gabby and other women going through the IVF process. For better or worse, the women, couples, and families mobilized by this decision will likely always be more engaged because of it.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> “Oh, God,” I remarked to my dad, “we’re going to be activists now, aren’t we?”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> “So?” he asked.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> “No one likes activists,” I responded in jest. But if we’re going to have and raise the family we want, this is just the first of many decisions we’re going to make that someone’s not going to like.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqp6-aEsj7fTkUsnZ0aZiMKjDRUmCmICI05Vqcoe45XNHVkqRehyphenhyphen5sG1XrSuuxjTFgIjbtmDwuuOGC36kXMJpaGvoBzSrawjOXvp2hqISvue8bRYI3F1KODsNY-2no-N8qnurTiBrrxFl3kwbqAwEDsgD4-q5bMm9tVdyL_VK78GR0ywI-U9p2InjQumhn/s170/Spencer%20Goidel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="170" data-original-width="170" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqp6-aEsj7fTkUsnZ0aZiMKjDRUmCmICI05Vqcoe45XNHVkqRehyphenhyphen5sG1XrSuuxjTFgIjbtmDwuuOGC36kXMJpaGvoBzSrawjOXvp2hqISvue8bRYI3F1KODsNY-2no-N8qnurTiBrrxFl3kwbqAwEDsgD4-q5bMm9tVdyL_VK78GR0ywI-U9p2InjQumhn/w200-h200/Spencer%20Goidel.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>About the author:</i> Spencer Goidel is an assistant professor of political science at <a href="https://www.auburn.edu/" target="_blank">Auburn University</a>.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>This article was published by <a href="https://theconversation.com/us" target="_blank">The Conversation</a>.</i> </span></p>Joseph O. Pattonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04830099575387185293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331546133526977388.post-85765603614702611212024-03-12T12:00:00.052-05:002024-03-12T12:00:00.138-05:00Katie Britt and the unreality of Alabama immigration rhetoric<p><span style="font-size: large;"> Imagine if Alabama politicians started treating geothermal energy as a crisis.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> And not just criticizing particular practices or businesses. We’re talking about a heat pump apocalypse.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Introducing legislation to criminalize steam. Storming library board meetings and demanding the removal of any book with the phrase “hot springs.” Using Hot Springs, Arkansas as a snickering shorthand for everything wrong with the country. Putting on flak jackets and filming television ads <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/newsroom/trending-topics/turkey-sector-background-statistics/" target="_blank">outside Iceland’s geysers</a>, vowing that Alabama will not become Reykjavík.<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Watching these convulsions over evaporated water, you might ask yourself: <i>Is this an Alabama thing?</i> And: <i>Is this an Alabama problem?</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> It’s not, and it’s not. Alabama’s geothermal industry is, in effect, <a href="https://www.eia.gov/renewable/state/Alabama/" target="_blank">non-existent</a>. But whatever problems may come with it, having a more diverse energy sector would, on balance, benefit us.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> And yet, this is how state Republicans talk about immigration.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> It’s certainly how U.S. Sen. Katie Britt has talked about it. She filmed an ad for her 2022 campaign <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-Wxqf9MATM&ab_channel=KatieBrittforALSenate" target="_blank">on the U.S.-Mexico border</a>. She boasted about all the immigration measures she introduced <a href="https://www.britt.senate.gov/press-releases/elementor-6282/" target="_blank">in her first three months in office.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> On Thursday night, during her widely-gaped-at response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech, she told a disturbing story about Karla Jacinto Romero, a woman who, as a 12-year-old girl, had been trafficked and sexually assaulted for four years. Britt left the impression that this was a result of Biden’s immigration policies.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> “We wouldn’t be OK with this happening in a third-world country,” Britt said. “This is the United States of America, and it’s past time we start acting like it.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Journalist Jonathan Katz <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@katzonearth/video/7344090454985624862" target="_blank">investigated the claims</a>. Romero experienced horrors at the hands of human traffickers. But they took place from 2004 to 2008, during George W. Bush’s term in office. And not in the United States or on the U.S.-Mexico border, but in Mexico.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> A Britt spokesman <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/09/fact-check-katie-britt-sex-trafficking/?pwapi_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJyZWFzb24iOiJnaWZ0IiwibmJmIjoxNzA5OTYwNDAwLCJpc3MiOiJzdWJzY3JpcHRpb25zIiwiZXhwIjoxNzExMzM5MTk5LCJpYXQiOjE3MDk5NjA0MDAsImp0aSI6ImJmYzBkZGQ2LTM2MjUtNDY5My1hMWQyLThjNmE3M2M0YmJhZiIsInVybCI6Imh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbS9wb2xpdGljcy8yMDI0LzAzLzA5L2ZhY3QtY2hlY2sta2F0aWUtYnJpdHQtc2V4LXRyYWZmaWNraW5nLyJ9.NvUBHlilyk9BYMOX4pHmnRrJFuiAm3ijW2q6lS3DTXo" target="_blank">later confirmed to the Washington Post</a> that she was referring to Romero.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Going on Fox News on Sunday morning to restore, restart, or quit, Britt repeated her talking points, claiming she was trying to illustrate what was happening while making a semantic argument about what she meant. (The senator also said Biden’s policies were acting as a “magnet” for immigrants, which doesn’t sound like someone who wants to help people fleeing violence of the kind she described.)</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> But this attitude isn’t unique to Britt. It reflects the stern unreality of how Alabama Republicans talk about immigration.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Gov. Kay Ivey deploys the National Guard <a href="https://www.wsfa.com/2023/10/05/southern-border-receive-275-alabama-national-guardsmen/" target="_blank">to the border</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHt403Z83vw&ab_channel=WVTM13News" target="_blank">expresses terror of learning Spanish</a> if “Joe Biden keeps shipping illegal immigrants into our states.” Parts of a vicious 2011 state law attacking immigrants <a href="https://alabamareflector.com/2024/02/26/house-bill-would-allow-some-undocumented-students-to-attend-public-higher-education/" target="_blank">are still on the books</a>. Conservative media pumps up any terrible thing involving an immigrant. Britt and other members of the delegation demand action on the border over anything else.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Listening to all this, you’d think Alabama is a border state struggling to handle a high rate of immigration.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> It’s not.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> One, Mexico <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Montgomery,+Alabama/Matamoros,+Tamaulipas,+Mexico/@29.0921021,-97.3771354,6z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x888e8194b0d481f9:0x8e1b511d354285ff!2m2!1d-86.3077368!2d32.3792233!1m5!1m1!1s0x866f94c793d10087:0x732178703913ca5e!2m2!1d-97.5027376!2d25.8690294!3e0?entry=ttu" target="_blank">is about 1,000 miles</a> from Montgomery. Canada <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=windsor+ontario+to+montgomery+alabama&client=firefox-b-1-d&sca_esv=25d4fcab23a30d49&ei=4ZjsZfWlFI7Cp84PtYGg0AM&ved=0ahUKEwi1mpH-1ueEAxUO4ckDHbUACDoQ4dUDCBA&uact=5&oq=windsor+ontario+to+montgomery+alabama&gs_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAiJXdpbmRzb3Igb250YXJpbyB0byBtb250Z29tZXJ5IGFsYWJhbWEyDhAAGIAEGIoFGIYDGLADMg4QABiABBiKBRiGAxiwAzIOEAAYgAQYigUYhgMYsANIwAZQ4gJY4gJwAXgAkAEAmAFboAFbqgEBMbgBA8gBAPgBAZgCAqACYpgDAIgGAZAGA5IHATKgB8wD&sclient=gws-wiz-serp" target="_blank">is about 1,300 miles away</a>. Unless there was an annexation I’m not aware of, Alabama is not on either boundary.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Two, crime rates among undocumented immigrants are far lower <a href="https://www.cato.org/blog/new-research-illegal-immigration-crime-0" target="_blank">than those of native-born Americans</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Three, immigrants by and large skip Alabama. There are growing immigrant communities in the state, particularly in north Alabama. But it’s nowhere near what we see in other parts of the country. Fewer than <a href="https://data.census.gov/profile/Alabama?g=040XX00US01#race-and-ethnicity" target="_blank">4% of the state’s population</a> is foreign-born, compared to 14% nationwide. Fewer than 6% of Alabamians speak a language other than English in their home. It’s 22% in the country as a whole.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Now, we need more immigration to Alabama. The state’s population <a href="https://data.census.gov/table?q=median%20age%20in%20Alabama%20and%20United%20States" target="_blank">is aging</a>; the Black Belt is in the throes <a href="https://alabamareflector.com/2024/01/16/the-long-decline-depopulation-hurting-economy-education-and-health-in-alabamas-rural-counties/" target="_blank">of a decades-long population collapse</a>, and <a href="https://alabamareflector.com/2023/10/31/experts-training-transportation-and-child-care-shortages-straining-alabama-workforce/" target="_blank">the state’s workforce participation rate is pretty bad</a>. It would be great to grow like Florida (<a href="https://data.census.gov/profile/Florida?g=040XX00US12" target="_blank">22% foreign born</a>) or Georgia (<a href="https://data.census.gov/profile/Georgia?g=040XX00US13" target="_blank">11% foreign born</a>) and having more immigrants would do that.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> But by and large, it’s not happening.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The standard Republican response to these facts is “the border is everywhere.” That’s true in the sense that it’s in the head of every GOP official from Wyoming to South Carolina. They nod vigorously at whatever Donald Trump says about immigrants at any millisecond in time.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Yet given the chance to address the border issues they work themselves into tears over, Britt and her colleagues refused because Trump <a href="https://alabamareflector.com/2024/03/01/presidential-campaign-moves-to-the-border-as-biden-urges-trump-to-back-immigration-deal/" target="_blank">told them to walk away.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> They’re serious about obeying the former president. Not immigration.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> But they keep talking about it.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Maybe because it’s easier to rail against something happening 1,000 miles away than to face actual problems in Alabama.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Like <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/firearm_mortality/firearm.htm" target="_blank">gun violence</a>, aided and abetted by public policies <a href="https://alabamareflector.com/2023/05/30/why-does-alabama-have-more-gun-deaths-than-new-york/" target="_blank">enacted by the Alabama Legislature</a>. Like <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/infant_mortality_rates/infant_mortality.htm" target="_blank">appalling rates of infant mortality</a>. And <a href="https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/maternal-deaths-and-mortality-rates-per-100000-live-births/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Maternal%20Mortality%20Rate%20per%20100,000%20live%20Births%22,%22sort%22:%22desc%22%7D" target="_blank">maternal mortality</a>. Or our <a href="https://data.ers.usda.gov/reports.aspx?ID=17826#Pa20a93d6d74d4ed5addd012135cc1975_3_229iT3" target="_blank">high poverty rate</a>, which gets still higher when you look at children.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> You hope it’s not because our leaders think undocumented immigrants are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/17/trump-denounced-anti-immigrant-comment" target="_blank">“poisoning the blood of our country,”</a> like Trump does. Alabama carries the wounds from 200 years of that kind of rhetoric.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> But whatever the reason, Alabama’s Republican leaders aren’t responding to something that’s affecting the state. They’re attacking Fox News headlines. Doing Trump’s bidding. Distorting reality to create fear.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Katie Britt may be misleading people on immigration. But she’s one of many Alabama Republicans blind to the realities of the issue.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-CONCrbfeah16_0MI8eWevipN5Ts0BTEe3RXMEDYEn3lKrku09ZYZ7i5kbQ25oFXqkVu2jYDjrvIjOf4h5q-H_s-N6McEszSQEb3ZvAh21qDtxcZRMjPoEl4zLScDbxv2DDyM7wudjMPQPUJH5qvuHco4MXk050qi-yNlk4NlpILgUNlEseWXwoe62XXw/s300/Brian%20Lyman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="300" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-CONCrbfeah16_0MI8eWevipN5Ts0BTEe3RXMEDYEn3lKrku09ZYZ7i5kbQ25oFXqkVu2jYDjrvIjOf4h5q-H_s-N6McEszSQEb3ZvAh21qDtxcZRMjPoEl4zLScDbxv2DDyM7wudjMPQPUJH5qvuHco4MXk050qi-yNlk4NlpILgUNlEseWXwoe62XXw/w200-h200/Brian%20Lyman.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>About the author:</i> Brian Lyman is the editor of Alabama Reflector. He has covered Alabama politics since 2006 and worked at the Montgomery Advertiser, the Press-Register, and The Anniston Star. His work has won awards from the Associated Press Managing Editors, the Alabama Press Association, and the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>This article was published by <a href="https://alabamareflector.com/" target="_blank">Alabama Reflector</a>.</i> </span></p>Joseph O. Pattonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04830099575387185293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331546133526977388.post-16620455090830200442024-03-11T12:00:00.071-05:002024-03-11T12:00:00.142-05:00How media coverage of presidential primaries fails voters and has helped Trump<p><span style="font-size: large;"> It’s common to hear Americans complain about the media throughout presidential elections. Partisans tend to believe the press is biased against their side. These perceptions may lead people to believe the media can affect how people vote.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Political scientists have found some evidence that media bias can push people to <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250002761/leftturn" target="_blank">vote for Democrats</a> and <a href="https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/122/3/1187/1879517?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=true" target="_blank">Republicans</a> in presidential contests. But we theorize that media influence is actually stronger in primary elections.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Why?<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> In a general election, most people plan to vote for their party’s candidate, meaning a <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691163635/the-gamble" target="_blank">large portion of the outcome is predetermined</a> and there is less room for media influence. Moreover, in a general election, both major party candidates are inherently newsworthy. There may be <a href="https://shorensteincenter.org/news-coverage-2016-general-election/" target="_blank">some discrepancies</a> in how much coverage each person gets, but the media cannot simply ignore one of them.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Primaries are different.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> When candidates are from the same party, voters cannot rely on their partisanship to make a choice. Instead, they must sift through candidates within one party and learn about them. Since media have more leeway to focus on some people over others in this context, they help choose which candidates voters hear about in the first place.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> And those choices are potentially meaningful.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Patterns of primary coverage</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> I am a political scientist who researches and teaches about patterns in political media, including how the press has decided which Republican primary candidates to focus on from 2012 until now.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> A widely discussed pattern in primary coverage is called <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691163635/the-gamble" target="_blank">“discovery, scrutiny, decline.”</a> When a candidate says something novel, they are “discovered” and receive a burst of coverage. This attention brings momentum, making them subject to “scrutiny,” which then pushes their polling numbers back down and they “decline.” This trend is likely due to the media’s appetite for novelty.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The pattern does not hold for all primaries but explains some on both the Republican and Democratic side. Additional research also confirms that the media leads the public in this dynamic rather than vice versa.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Here are the recent presidential primaries that demonstrate changes in the discovery, scrutiny, decline pattern and the media’s process of focusing on some Republican candidates over others.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><u>2012 – the ‘Bubble Primary’</u></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The GOP presidential primary in 2012 provides the clearest example of discovery, scrutiny, decline. Though Mitt Romney <a href="https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/republican-primary/2012/national" target="_blank">dominated the polls on average</a>, other candidates – such as Herman Cain and Rick Santorum – would occasionally say something noteworthy, get bursts of coverage, then face scrutiny and decline. Reporter Matthew Jaffe called this the <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/11/the-bubble-primary-republicans-keep-finding-a-new-flavor-of-the-week/" target="_blank">“Bubble Primary,”</a> in which a new candidate would float to the top of the pack like a bubble, pop, and then sink.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><u>2016 – Trump dominates</u></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> There were muted levels of discovery, scrutiny, decline with some candidates in the 2016 GOP primary. For example, Ben Carson, a political outsider with a unique backstory, received a burst of media attention before <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/qpoll-ben-carson-republicans-donald-trump-216321" target="_blank">the scrutiny process kicked</a> in and he then declined in popularity. This pattern was not the central story of this cycle though.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Ultimately, <a href="https://shorensteincenter.org/news-coverage-2016-presidential-primaries/" target="_blank">Donald Trump got the majority of Republican news coverage</a>. His constant provocative statements meant the media kept “rediscovering” him, thereby thwarting the “decline” stage. By the end of the general election, The New York Times estimated that Trump dwarfed every other candidate and received <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/upshot/measuring-donald-trumps-mammoth-advantage-in-free-media.html" target="_blank">nearly US$2 billion in “free media,”</a> an estimated amount a campaign would need to pay in ads rates to get comparable coverage.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> If the magnitude of his coverage was unique, so was the effect. Whereas media attention drove sustained public curiosity for other Republican candidates – which is different from support – researchers have found that Trump’s level of coverage actually <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/media-coverage-public-interest-and-support-in-the-2016-republican-invisible-primary/9C563F2DA9240DF845AC6EA327370D32" target="_blank">increased his poll numbers</a>, which do indicate support. Trump then <a href="https://www.axios.com/2017/12/15/the-insane-news-cycle-of-trumps-presidency-in-1-chart-1513305658" target="_blank">dominated the news cycle into his presidency</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><u>2020</u></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/06/republicans-cancel-primaries-trump-challengers-1483126" target="_blank">The Republican Party canceled some of its primaries in 2020</a>, allowing Trump to run virtually uncontested.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><u>2024</u></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Most of the past discovery, scrutiny, decline patterns have taken place while candidates debated and campaigned in the early primary or caucus states. The 2024 GOP primary has been different.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Eight Republican candidates participated in debates while Trump sat them out and focused his campaign efforts elsewhere. Though these debates generated small moments and poll bumps for some candidates – <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/12/vivek-ramaswamy-polls-rise-00110937" target="_blank">such as Vivek Ramaswamy</a> in August 2023 – this time period did not produce a series of clear and obvious flavors of the week.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Instead, prominent outlets seemed to have fixated on a – potential – Republican nominee literally years before debate season: Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, who did not declare he was running <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/ron-desantis-2024-president-election-run-announcement-twitter-rcna82291" target="_blank">until May 24, 2023</a>. Even though coverage of Trump became more prominent as the primary season picked up in 2023, this early selection of DeSantis is the more unusual story of American media behavior.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>‘Choosing’ DeSantis</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> In the months after the 2020 election, <a href="https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2021/08/13/inside-fox-news-desantis-is-the-future-of-the-party-and-hes-taking-advantage/" target="_blank">Fox News asked DeSantis to appear on the network almost every day.</a> New York Times journalists suggested the network was “promoting” his inevitable campaign.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> But the New York Times itself published a slew of articles that increasingly sounded like DeSantis was the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/13/magazine/ron-desantis.html" target="_blank">inevitable nominee</a>, culminating in the 2022 article “Did Ron DeSantis Just Become the 2024 Republican Front Runner?”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The New York Post in late 2022 f<a href="https://nypost.com/cover/november-9-2022/" target="_blank">eatured him on their front page</a> with the title “DeFUTURE.” Though some reporters hedged their language about DeSantis’ prospects, headlines like these are nonetheless signals to the public about a politician’s viability, which voters use to make decisions.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The abnormally early focus on DeSantis could have been because he was genuinely newsworthy <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/18/politics/desantis-florida-covid-mandates/index.html" target="_blank">given his controversial COVID-19 policies</a>, he increased viewership or because, as one Fox producer said in an email, he is <a href="https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2021/08/13/inside-fox-news-desantis-is-the-future-of-the-party-and-hes-taking-advantage/" target="_blank">“the future of the party.”</a> Ultimately, the hype was premature; DeSantis <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/ron-desantis-planning-drop-presidential-bid-sunday-rcna134953" target="_blank">dropped out and endorsed Trump</a> before the New Hampshire primary.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Trump throws a wrench</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> What can be made of all this?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The media is influential in telling the public who to consider. In 2012, coverage moved in distinct cycles, leading the public to focus on certain Republicans over others. In 2016, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/media-coverage-public-interest-and-support-in-the-2016-republican-invisible-primary/9C563F2DA9240DF845AC6EA327370D32" target="_blank">Trump benefited from this attention in ways others did not</a>, allowing him to monopolize the spotlight for years and bond with his base.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Trump’s dominance – <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/media-coverage-public-interest-and-support-in-the-2016-republican-invisible-primary/9C563F2DA9240DF845AC6EA327370D32" target="_blank">partially a creation of the American press</a> – may have thrown a wrench into somewhat normal patterns of primary coverage, as some outlets then seemed to “discover” a new Republican candidate the moment Trump left the Oval Office.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Regardless of why major outlets selected DeSantis early, Trump has shown that when he is actively campaigning, he comes out on top and <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-primary-r/2024/national/" target="_blank">other Republicans mostly fade into the background.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeMF7jCTIEOcxoWIkEfW3ECIIRge5JYuOZBeD3r_0CRDqMJ_Uif3JEKgVa1ZI2XUU_Asc9922ichsAU0kedTlK-KV0hHDWQUeO9kcloIiu7HJspHR5jo4BgcBO8HRYltXCSMR13y4Yh8bfcrNCbuPu805UNiT3FZbdOhLUoCK0QTElAXC3uveERUuzJ2Id/s170/Karyn%20Amira.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="170" data-original-width="170" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeMF7jCTIEOcxoWIkEfW3ECIIRge5JYuOZBeD3r_0CRDqMJ_Uif3JEKgVa1ZI2XUU_Asc9922ichsAU0kedTlK-KV0hHDWQUeO9kcloIiu7HJspHR5jo4BgcBO8HRYltXCSMR13y4Yh8bfcrNCbuPu805UNiT3FZbdOhLUoCK0QTElAXC3uveERUuzJ2Id/w200-h200/Karyn%20Amira.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>About the author:</i> Karyn Amira is an associate professor of political science at the <a href="https://charleston.edu/" target="_blank">College of Charleston</a>.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>This article was published by <a href="https://theconversation.com/us" target="_blank">The Conversation</a>.</i> </span></p>Joseph O. Pattonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04830099575387185293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331546133526977388.post-21794159284458373272024-03-10T12:00:00.053-05:002024-03-10T12:00:00.135-05:00Atlantic Ocean is headed for a tipping point − once melting glaciers shut down the Gulf Stream, we would see extreme climate change within decades, study shows<p><span style="font-size: large;"> Superstorms, abrupt climate shifts, and New York City frozen in ice. That’s how the blockbuster Hollywood movie <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0319262/" target="_blank">“The Day After Tomorrow”</a> depicted an abrupt shutdown of the Atlantic Ocean’s circulation and the catastrophic consequences.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> While Hollywood’s vision was over the top, the 2004 movie raised a serious question: If global warming shuts down the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, which is crucial for carrying heat from the tropics to the northern latitudes, how abrupt and severe would the climate changes be?<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Twenty years after the movie’s release, we know a lot more about the Atlantic Ocean’s circulation. Instruments deployed in the ocean starting in 2004 show that the Atlantic Ocean circulation has <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc/chapter/summary-for-policymakers/" target="_blank">observably slowed</a> over the past two decades, possibly to its weakest state in almost a millennium. Studies also suggest that the circulation has reached a <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abn7950" target="_blank">dangerous tipping point</a> in the past that sent it into a precipitous, unstoppable decline and that it <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-39810-w" target="_blank">could hit that tipping point again</a> as the planet warms and glaciers and ice sheets melt.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> In a new study using the latest generation of Earth’s climate models, we simulated the flow of fresh water until the ocean circulation reached that tipping point.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The results showed that the circulation could <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adk1189" target="_blank">fully shut down within a century</a> of hitting the tipping point and that it’s headed in that direction. If that happened, average temperatures would drop by several degrees in North America, parts of Asia, and Europe, and people would see severe and cascading consequences around the world.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> We also discovered a physics-based early warning signal that can alert the world when the Atlantic Ocean circulation is nearing its tipping point.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>The ocean’s conveyor belt</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Ocean currents are driven by winds, tides, and water density differences.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> In the Atlantic Ocean circulation, the relatively warm and salty surface water near the equator flows toward Greenland. During its journey, it crosses the Caribbean Sea, loops up into the Gulf of Mexico, and then flows along the U.S. East Coast before crossing the Atlantic.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> This current, also known as the Gulf Stream, brings heat to Europe. As it flows northward and cools, the water mass becomes heavier. By the time it reaches Greenland, it starts to sink and flow southward. The sinking of water near Greenland pulls water from elsewhere in the Atlantic Ocean and the cycle repeats, like a <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015RG000493" target="_blank">conveyor belt</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abn7950" target="_blank">Too much fresh water</a> from melting glaciers and the Greenland ice sheet can dilute the saltiness of the water, preventing it from sinking, and weaken this <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015RG000493" target="_blank">ocean conveyor belt</a>. <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.97.4.1347" target="_blank">A weaker conveyor belt</a> transports less heat northward and also enables less heavy water to reach Greenland, which <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.97.4.1347" target="_blank">further weakens</a> the conveyor belt’s strength. Once it reaches the <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.0705414105" target="_blank">tipping point</a>, it shuts down quickly.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>What happens to the climate at the tipping point?</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The existence of a tipping point was first noticed in an overly simplified model of the Atlantic Ocean circulation in the early 1960s. Today’s more <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/cmip6-the-next-generation-of-climate-models-explained/" target="_blank">detailed climate models</a> indicate a continued <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2019GL086075" target="_blank">slowing of the conveyor belt’s strength</a> under climate change. However, an abrupt shutdown of the Atlantic Ocean circulation appeared to be absent in these climate models.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> This is where our study comes in. We performed an experiment with a detailed climate model to find the tipping point for an abrupt shutdown by slowly increasing the input of fresh water.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> We found that once it reaches the tipping point, the conveyor belt shuts down within 100 years. The heat transport toward the north is strongly reduced, leading to abrupt climate shifts.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>The result: Dangerous cold in the North</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Regions that are influenced by the Gulf Stream receive substantially less heat when the circulation stops. This cools the North American and European continents by a few degrees.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The European climate is much more influenced by the Gulf Stream than other regions. In our experiment, that meant parts of the continent changed at more than 5 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius) per decade – far faster than today’s global warming of about 0.36 F (0.2 C) per decade. We found that parts of Norway would experience temperature drops of more than 36 F (20 C). On the other hand, regions in the Southern Hemisphere would warm by a few degrees.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> These temperature changes develop over about 100 years. That might seem like a long time, but on typical climate time scales, it is abrupt.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The conveyor belt shutting down would also affect sea level and precipitation patterns, which can push other ecosystems closer to their tipping points. For example, the Amazon rainforest is vulnerable to <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2120777119" target="_blank">declining precipitation</a>. If its forest ecosystem turned to grassland, the transition would release carbon to the atmosphere and result in the loss of a valuable carbon sink, further accelerating climate change.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The Atlantic circulation has slowed significantly in the distant past. During <a href="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-marine-010816-060415" target="_blank">glacial periods</a> when ice sheets that covered large parts of the planet were melting, the influx of fresh water slowed the Atlantic circulation, triggering huge climate fluctuations.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>So, when will we see this tipping point?</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The big question – when will the Atlantic circulation reach a tipping point – remains unanswered. Observations don’t go back far enough to provide a clear result. While a recent study suggested that the conveyor belt is rapidly <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-39810-w" target="_blank">approaching its tipping point</a>, possibly within a few years, these statistical analyses made several assumptions that give rise to uncertainty.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Instead, we were able to develop a physics-based and observable early warning signal involving the salinity transport at the southern boundary of the Atlantic Ocean. Once a threshold is reached, the tipping point is likely to follow in one to four decades.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The climate impacts from our study underline the severity of such an abrupt conveyor belt collapse. The temperature, sea level, and precipitation changes will severely affect society, and the <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2023GL106088" target="_blank">climate shifts are unstoppable</a> on human time scales.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> It might seem counterintuitive to worry about extreme cold as the planet warms, but if the main Atlantic Ocean circulation shuts down from too much meltwater pouring in, that’s the risk ahead.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>About the authors:</i> René van Westen is a postdoctoral researcher in climate physics at <a href="https://www.uu.nl/en/home-en" target="_blank">Utrecht University</a>. Henk A. Dijkstra is a professor of physics at Utrecht University. Michael Kliphuis is a climate model specialist at Utrecht University.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>This article was published by <a href="https://theconversation.com/us" target="_blank">The Conversation</a>.</i></span></p>Joseph O. Pattonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04830099575387185293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331546133526977388.post-35251110159389825432024-03-09T12:00:00.083-06:002024-03-09T12:00:00.148-06:00Mounting research shows that COVID-19 leaves its mark on the brain, including with significant drops in IQ scores<p><span style="font-size: large;"> From the very early days of the pandemic, <a href="https://www.everydayhealth.com/emotional-health/brain-fog/guide/" target="_blank">brain fog</a> <a href="https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/what-is-covid-19-brain-fog-and-how-can-you-clear-it-2021030822076" target="_blank">emerged as a significant health condition</a> that many experience after COVID-19.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Brain fog is a colloquial term that describes a state of mental sluggishness or lack of clarity and haziness that makes it difficult to concentrate, remember things, and think clearly.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Fast-forward four years and there is now abundant evidence that being infected with SARS-CoV-2 – the virus that causes COVID-19 – <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-02001-z" target="_blank">can affect brain health in many ways.</a><span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> In addition to brain fog, COVID-19 can lead to <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02521-2" target="_blank">an array of problems</a>, including headaches, seizure disorders, strokes, sleep problems, and tingling and paralysis of the nerves, as well as <a href="https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj-2021-068993" target="_blank">several mental health disorders</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> A large and growing body of evidence amassed throughout the pandemic details the many ways that <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl0867" target="_blank">COVID-19 leaves an indelible mark</a> on the brain. But the specific pathways by which the virus does so are still being elucidated, and curative treatments are nonexistent.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Now, two new studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine shed further light on the <a href="https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMe2400189" target="_blank">profound toll of COVID-19 on cognitive health.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> I am a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=DtuRVcUAAAAJ" target="_blank">physician scientist</a>, and I have been devoted to studying <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/index.html" target="_blank">long COVID</a> since early patient reports about this condition – even before the term “long COVID” was coined. I have testified before the U.S. Senate as <a href="https://www.help.senate.gov/hearings/addressing-long-covid-advancing-research-and-improving-patient-care" target="_blank">an expert witness on long COVID</a> and have <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=search_authors&hl=en&mauthors=label:long_covid" target="_blank">published extensively</a> on this topic.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>How COVID-19 leaves its mark on the brain</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Here are some of the most important studies to date documenting how COVID-19 affects brain health:</span></p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-size: large;">Large epidemiological analyses showed that people who had COVID-19 were at an <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-02001-z" target="_blank">increased risk of cognitive deficits</a>, such as memory problems.</span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;">Imaging studies done on people before and after their COVID-19 infections show <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04569-5" target="_blank">shrinkage of brain volume</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/even-mild-cases-of-covid-19-can-leave-a-mark-on-the-brain-such-as-reductions-in-gray-matter-a-neuroscientist-explains-emerging-research-178499" target="_blank">altered brain structure after infection.</a></span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;">A study of people with mild to moderate COVID-19 showed significant prolonged inflammation of the brain and <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2217232120" target="_blank">changes that are commensurate with seven years of brain aging.</a></span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;">Severe COVID-19 that requires hospitalization or intensive care may result in cognitive deficits and other brain damage that are <a href="https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-3818580/v1" target="_blank">equivalent to 20 years of aging.</a></span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;">Laboratory experiments in human and mouse brain <a href="https://hsci.harvard.edu/organoids" target="_blank">organoids</a> designed to emulate changes in the human brain showed that SARS-CoV-2 infection triggers the <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adg2248" target="_blank">fusion of brain cells</a>. This effectively short-circuits brain electrical activity and compromises function.</span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;">Autopsy studies of people who had severe COVID-19 but died months later from other causes showed that <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05542-y" target="_blank">the virus was still present in brain tissue</a>. This provides evidence that contrary to its name, SARS-CoV-2 is not only a respiratory virus, but it can also enter the brain in some individuals. But whether the persistence of the virus in brain tissue is driving some of the brain problems seen in people who have had COVID-19 is not yet clear.</span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;">Studies show that even when the virus is mild and exclusively confined to the lungs, it can still provoke inflammation in the brain and <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867422007139?via%3Dihub" target="_blank">impair brain cells’ ability to regenerate.</a></span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;">COVID-19 can also <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-024-01576-9" target="_blank">disrupt the blood brain barrier</a>, the shield that protects the nervous system – which is the control and command center of our bodies – making it “leaky.” Studies using imaging to assess the brains of people hospitalized with COVID-19 showed disrupted or leaky blood brain barriers in those who experienced brain fog.</span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;">A large preliminary analysis pooling together data from 11 studies encompassing almost 1 million people with COVID-19 and more than 6 million uninfected individuals showed that COVID-19 <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4716751" target="_blank">increased the risk of development of new-onset dementia</a> in people older than 60 years of age.</span></li></ul><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Drops in IQ</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Most recently, a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine <a href="https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa2311330" target="_blank">assessed cognitive abilities</a> such as memory, planning, and spatial reasoning in nearly 113,000 people who had previously had COVID-19. The researchers found that those who had been infected had significant deficits in memory and executive task performance.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> This decline was evident among those infected in the early phase of the pandemic and <a href="https://theconversation.com/delta-variant-makes-it-even-more-important-to-get-a-covid-19-vaccine-even-if-youve-already-had-the-coronavirus-164203" target="_blank">those infected when the delta</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/will-omicron-the-new-coronavirus-variant-of-concern-be-more-contagious-than-delta-a-virus-evolution-expert-explains-what-researchers-know-and-what-they-dont-169020" target="_blank">omicron variants</a> were dominant. These findings show that the risk of cognitive decline did not abate as the pandemic virus evolved from the ancestral strain to omicron.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> In the same study, those who had mild and resolved COVID-19 showed cognitive decline equivalent to a three-point loss of IQ. In comparison, those with unresolved persistent symptoms, such as people with persistent shortness of breath or fatigue, had a six-point loss in IQ. Those who had been admitted to the intensive care unit for COVID-19 had a nine-point loss in IQ. Reinfection with the virus contributed an additional two-point loss in IQ, as compared with no reinfection.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Generally the average IQ is about 100. An IQ above 130 indicates a highly gifted individual, while an IQ below 70 generally indicates a level of intellectual disability that may require significant societal support.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> To put the finding of the New England Journal of Medicine study into perspective, I estimate that a three-point downward shift in IQ would increase the number of U.S. adults with an IQ less than 70 from 4.7 million to 7.5 million – an increase of 2.8 million adults with a level of cognitive impairment that requires significant societal support.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Another study in the same issue of the New England Journal of Medicine involved more than 100,000 Norwegians between March 2020 and April 2023. It <a href="https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMc2311200" target="_blank">documented worse memory function</a> at several time points up to 36 months following a positive SARS-CoV-2 test.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Parsing the implications</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Taken together, these studies show that COVID-19 poses a serious risk to brain health, even in mild cases, and the effects are now being revealed at the population level.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> A recent analysis of the <a href="https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps.html" target="_blank">U.S. Current Population Survey</a> showed that after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, an additional 1 million working-age Americans reported having “serious difficulty” remembering, concentrating or making decisions than at any time in the preceding 15 years. Most disconcertingly, this was mostly driven by younger adults between the ages of 18 to 44.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Data from the European Union shows a similar trend – in 2022, 15% of people in the EU reported memory and concentration issues.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Looking ahead, it will be critical to identify who is most at risk. A better understanding is also needed of how these trends might affect the educational attainment of children and young adults and the economic productivity of working-age adults. And the extent to which these shifts will influence the epidemiology of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease is also not clear.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The growing body of research now confirms that COVID-19 should be considered a virus with a significant impact on the brain. The implications are far-reaching, from individuals experiencing cognitive struggles to the potential impact on populations and the economy.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Lifting the fog on the true causes behind these cognitive impairments, including brain fog, will require years if not decades of concerted efforts by researchers across the globe. And unfortunately, nearly everyone is a test case in this unprecedented global undertaking.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtRhoudIazM3NCFovGP8M9iRyZfBmpfUiBsxmLR1ivp6wAeyMNDRnodGalruM9iQMQCv_fhJiIhksK8mzT81YJ3GO8WWI_TQLwpT-b0BDI4ocHOWkrLHhrhqk5Vn3MdMf29Dq9fDvUvsRyLAWNQe5MNukfzyFr6Z72Qml660rnW0zs6TFDXGB6l6HGlKE0/s170/Ziyad%20Al-Aly.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="170" data-original-width="170" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtRhoudIazM3NCFovGP8M9iRyZfBmpfUiBsxmLR1ivp6wAeyMNDRnodGalruM9iQMQCv_fhJiIhksK8mzT81YJ3GO8WWI_TQLwpT-b0BDI4ocHOWkrLHhrhqk5Vn3MdMf29Dq9fDvUvsRyLAWNQe5MNukfzyFr6Z72Qml660rnW0zs6TFDXGB6l6HGlKE0/w200-h200/Ziyad%20Al-Aly.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>About the author:</i> Ziyad Al-Aly is the chief of research and development at the <a href="https://www.va.gov/st-louis-health-care/" target="_blank">VA St. Louis Health Care System</a> and is a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>This article was published by <a href="https://wustl.edu/" target="_blank">The Conversation</a>.</i> </span></p>Joseph O. Pattonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04830099575387185293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331546133526977388.post-85383888083682970852024-03-08T12:00:00.071-06:002024-03-08T12:00:00.351-06:00Bias hiding in plain sight: Decades of analyses suggest US media skews anti-Palestinian<p><span style="font-size: large;"> News organizations are often <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/01/09/newspapers-israel-palestine-bias-new-york-times/" target="_blank">accused of lacking impartiality when covering the Israeli-Palestinian</a> conflict. In November 2023, over 750 journalists signed an open letter alleging bias in U.S. newsrooms against Palestinians in the reporting of the ongoing fighting in the Gaza strip.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> More recently, two articles in respected U.S. newspapers highlight the debate over bias.<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> A Feb. 2, 2024, op-ed in The Wall Street Journal described a Michigan city, where many Arab immigrants live, as a center of antisemitic terrorism sympathizers. On the same day, another op-ed in The New York Times depicted the U.S. as a lion engaged in combat with Iran – characterized as a “parasitoid wasp” – and Hamas – portrayed as a “trap-door spider,” executing rapid, predatory maneuvers. The pieces were attacked by critics as <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/detroit/news/dearborn-community-says-wsj-article-is-a-distraction/" target="_blank">being Islamaphobic</a> and falling <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/thomas-friedman-animal-kingdom-nyt-rcna137283" target="_blank">back on racist tropes.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Broadcast media is similarly being scrutinized for bias. According to the Guardian, CNN has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/feb/04/cnn-staff-pro-israel-bias" target="_blank">faced scrutiny for its alleged pro-Israel bias</a>, with claims that Israeli official statements receive expedited clearance and trustful on-air portrayal. Conversely, statements from Palestinians, including those not affiliated with Hamas, are frequently delayed or remain unreported. A notable instance cited by the Guardian involved former Israeli intelligence official Rami Igra asserting on CNN that the entire Palestinian population of Gaza could be considered combatants, a statement allowed to go unchallenged.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> From the other side, Jonathan Greenbatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, has accused U.S. media of a bias that <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/politics-news/anti-defamation-league-director-msnbc-coverage-israel-1235612659/" target="_blank">dehumanizes Israelis while sanitizing Hamas</a>. During an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” in October 2023, he raised concerns over the network's framing of Hamas, asking, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BXsC-7WSqI&ab_channel=Anti-DefamationLeague" target="_blank">“Who’s writing the scripts?”</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The issue of bias isn’t confined to the U.S. In the U.K., the state-funded BBC has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/oct/16/bbc-gets-1500-complaints-over-israel-hamas-coverage-split-50-50-on-each-side" target="_blank">received complaints on its Gaza coverage</a> from both sides as well.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> With accusations of bias being levied by both sides in the conflict, what does academic research say about newsroom prejudice?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Support for the assertion of anti-Israeli bias in media occasionally emerges in research. A 2016 study uncovered anti-Israeli bias in German and British newspapers, although results for U.S. publications were mixed. However, when scholars look at media coverage data as a whole, rather than pick and choose, they demonstrate that leading U.S. outlets tend to be more sympathetic toward the Israeli perspective than that of Palestinians.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> As a <a href="https://iac.gatech.edu/people/person/natalie-khazaal" target="_blank">scholar of media bias and the Arab world</a>, in my own research, I have found that anti-Palestinian bias in the U.S. and other countries’ media is often subtle, albeit in plain view.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Measuring bias</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Typically, scholars examine this form of media bias using both quantitative and qualitative measures of the <a href="https://libguides.lehman.edu/c.php?g=733610&p=5241445" target="_blank">framing, selection, and portrayal of news.</a> Content analyses of<a href="https://www.rochester.edu/newscenter/study-of-headlines-shows-media-bias-growing-563502/" target="_blank"> news articles, headlines, and images</a> are common methodologies, seeking patterns that may favor one perspective over the other.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Additionally, scholars examine the sources cited and the prominence given to different voices. Historical context, the overall tone and language, how often the media talks about suffering on one side compared with the other – all are indicators used to analyze media bias.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Historical bias in language and reporting</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/universitypress/subjects/politics-international-relations/comparative-politics/media-and-political-conflict-news-middle-east?format=PB" target="_blank">Several</a> <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Reporting-the-Israeli-Arab-Conflict-How-Hegemony-Works/Liebes/p/book/9781138864580" target="_blank">studies</a> scrutinizing U.S. media coverage during the first Palestinian uprising, or intifada, spanning from 1987 to 1993, consistently revealed pronounced biases.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The analyses indicated a propensity to emphasize Israeli deaths despite higher Palestinian casualties. The media’s reliance on Israeli sources shaped the narrative, omitting crucial context such as the illegality of Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian lands under peace agreements. Overlooking this fact obscured the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41858380" target="_blank">correlation between increasing settlements and a rise in Palestinian attacks</a>, thus compromising a comprehensive understanding.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Throughout the second intifada from 2000 to 2005, the prevalence of bias in media coverage persisted.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> A <a href="https://fair.org/home/the-illusion-of-balance/?fbclid=IwAR02QPzY5_l3cg7NwKcZTKyr4ISHxt1PrWJiiWoumHT1nqlb1nAFlcU88rc" target="_blank">study conducted by the independent media watchdog FAIR</a> highlighted a notable instance concerning NPR’s reporting during the initial six months of 2001. While NPR initially presented similar figures of Israeli and Palestinian deaths — 62 versus 51 — FAIR’s comprehensive analysis revealed a stark disparity. When considering the total six-month death toll of 77 versus 148, NPR reported on eight out of 10 Israeli deaths but only three out of 10 Palestinian deaths, creating a skewed impression of balance.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> NPR’s ombudsman, Jeffrey Dvorkin, <a href="https://fair.org/home/the-illusion-of-balance/?fbclid=IwAR02QPzY5_l3cg7NwKcZTKyr4ISHxt1PrWJiiWoumHT1nqlb1nAFlcU88rc" target="_blank">responded</a> to this assessment saying that numerical equivalence doesn’t always equate to journalistic fairness.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Selective coverage</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Selective coverage has the potential to align with Israeli claims of self-defense, as scholars <a href="https://libcat.colorado.edu/Author/Home?author=Friel%2C+Howard%2C+1955-" target="_blank">Howard Friel</a> and <a href="https://politics.princeton.edu/people/richard-falk" target="_blank">Richard Falk</a> highlighted in their 2007 analysis of the <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/products/1998-israel-palestine-on-record" target="_blank">New York Times’ coverage of the second intifada</a>. The framing of attacks in Palestinian territories appeared to reflect a narrative that supported Israel’s stance.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The portrayal of Palestinian suffering, encompassing deaths, home destruction, and daily humiliation, tends to be downplayed both in the language used in coverage and by its reduced frequency compared with Israeli experiences. Media law scholar <a href="https://english.wsu.edu/susan-ross/" target="_blank">Susan Dente Ross</a> underscored in her 2003 study how the U.S. media often labeled Palestinians as aggressors rather than victims, thereby normalizing their losses and suffering.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Echoing this perspective, media studies scholar <a href="https://scholar.google.ae/citations?user=iRAw1rUAAAAJ&hl=en" target="_blank">Mohamad Elmasry</a> argued in 2009 that the U.S. media rationalizes Israeli violence as a <a href="https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Death-in-the-Middle-East%3A-An-Analysis-of-How-the-in-Elmasry/686de091177e68331f80427b604c0ce030c32ce6" target="_blank">reluctantly understandable aspect of war</a>, framing Israel’s actions as <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-palestine-war-west-press-context-sacrosanct-palestinians" target="_blank">“retaliatory and legitimate”</a> while depicting Palestinian violence as <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-palestine-war-west-press-context-sacrosanct-palestinians" target="_blank">“barbaric and senseless.”</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/birth-of-the-palestinian-refugee-problem-revisited/8AE72A6813CEA7DDDE8F9386313F0D97" target="_blank">displacement</a> of around 750,000 <a href="https://theconversation.com/gaza-bombing-adds-to-the-generations-of-palestinians-displaced-from-their-homes-216142" target="_blank">Palestinians in 1948</a> remains a top Palestinian concern because it turned about 80% of Palestinians into <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/palestinian-refugees-dispossession" target="_blank">stateless refugees</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> “Rarely, however, is the history of how these people became refugees incorporated into the reporting,” and neither is the body of international law and consensus on their rights, states journalism scholar <a href="https://www.qatar.northwestern.edu/directory/profiles/dunsky-marda.html" target="_blank">Marda Dunsky</a>, who conducted the analysis. An analysis of 30 major <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/pens-and-swords/9780231133487" target="_blank">U.S. print and broadcast outlets</a> over four years – from 2000 to 2004 – found that the coverage lacked this important context during the second intifada.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The issue of sources is also contentious. Three in every four major U.S. outlets consistently favor Israeli sources over Palestinian and accord Israeli officials more positive media coverage, according to a 2006 study by scholars <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kuang-Kuo-Chang" target="_blank">Kuang-Kuo Chang</a> and <a href="https://comartsci.msu.edu/our-people/geri-alumit-zeldes" target="_blank">Geri Alumit Zeldes</a>. For the most part, U.S. outlets avoid quoting Palestinian officials, the study noted.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>AI confirms anti-Palestinian bias</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Recently, experts have started to study big data on the media portrayals of the conflict with the help of artificial intelligence. For example, in 2023, MIT’s Holly Jackson conducted a study of 33,000 news articles from 1987-1993 and 2000-2005 – that cover the two intifadas – with the help of state-of-the-art AI technology that provides large-scale historical data.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Jackson confirmed that there was anti-Palestinian bias that persisted during the first and second intifadas. The discernible bias was manifested in the level of objectivity and the tone of language employed by outlets such as The New York Times. The bias was further underscored by the manner in which media outlets attributed sentiments of violence to either side involved in the conflict.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> For instance, an article highlighted that “They [Jews] threw rocks at hotels housing Arabs, who hurled objects from their windows in return.” Notably, the article employs the more neutral verb “throw” to portray Israeli violence and the less neutral verb “hurl” to describe Palestinian violence. Journalists sometimes use synonyms; however, the cumulative effect of repeatedly using more negative synonyms for Palestinians and more positive ones for Israelis implies the existence of bias, Jackson noted.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Jackson’s findings revealed a significant disparity, with more than 90% of articles focusing on Israelis compared with less than 50% covering Palestinians. Additionally, the articles used negative language and the passive voice to refer to Palestinians twice as often as Israelis. For example, she reveals that the passive construction “killed” is used in “Palestinian killed as clashes erupt with troops” to avoid specifying the perpetrators of the violence, contrasting with the active “slay” in “Palestinians slay 2 Israeli hikers,” used to emphasize the perpetrators.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The anti-Palestinian sentiment increased from the first intifada to the second, the same study showed. As an illustration, <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781627798556/thehundredyearswaronpalestine" target="_blank">Palestinian deaths surged from 1,422 to 4,916</a>, a stark increase of three and a half times. They were also four and a half times greater than the 1,100 Israeli casualties. Yet, their reporting failed to correspond proportionately to the heightened occurrences.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> How the media reports on events can greatly influence <a href="https://catalog.lib.uchicago.edu/vufind/Record/8530692" target="_blank">public perceptions</a> of what is really going on. Reporting can prime audiences to see a Palestinian fighter in a mask as either an icon of <a href="https://www.plutobooks.com/9781783710751/more-bad-news-from-israel/" target="_blank">terrorism or a hero</a> resisting occupation, depending on how the news is presented.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVxv6DA7XWHnq-12FdNqHAxVra6HMq0Mge3bGw5Uyg6R5eJCg9Fh4_7s53k8FxSXgS0RJW1cquHm87UVLLW7CHBSjINlpyrkUArpvdzLmc34u0ySglZnmCFi507MukHM_JAyS1r1d-9TB46IcdQXDpIGby-bjQHUBjZsQocYPt-_Hi71Hzek05iyQi_YhY/s170/Natalie%20Khazaal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="170" data-original-width="170" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVxv6DA7XWHnq-12FdNqHAxVra6HMq0Mge3bGw5Uyg6R5eJCg9Fh4_7s53k8FxSXgS0RJW1cquHm87UVLLW7CHBSjINlpyrkUArpvdzLmc34u0ySglZnmCFi507MukHM_JAyS1r1d-9TB46IcdQXDpIGby-bjQHUBjZsQocYPt-_Hi71Hzek05iyQi_YhY/w200-h200/Natalie%20Khazaal.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>About the author:</i> Natalie Khazaal is an associate professor of Arabic and Arab culture at the <a href="https://www.gatech.edu/" target="_blank">Georgia Institute of Technology</a>.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>This article was published by <a href="https://theconversation.com/us" target="_blank">The Conversation</a>.</i> </span></p>Joseph O. Pattonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04830099575387185293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331546133526977388.post-72378928595614980832024-03-07T12:00:00.046-06:002024-03-07T12:00:00.137-06:00Annual Selma Bridge Crossing Jubilee highlights progress and continuing battles<p><span style="font-size: large;"> It was a good day to be in Selma, even if the misting rain kept people away until the afternoon sun broke through.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> But while the gray clouds threatened before they were vanquished, the smell of barbecue competed with the low throb of bass powering old R&B classics along Water Avenue to draw people out for the 59th Anniversary Selma Bridge Crossing Jubilee. The weeklong event, commemorating the March 7, 1965 attack on 600 voting rights marchers, culminated March 3 with a speech from Vice President Kamala Harris before she led thousands on a march across the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Edmund-Pettus-Bridge" target="_blank">Edmund Pettus Bridge</a> over the Alabama River.<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Harris broke some news on the international front, calling for a temporary cease-fire in Gaza and more delivery of aid to the war-stricken territory.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> “What we are seeing every day in Gaza is devastating,” she said. “We have seen reports of families eating leaves or animal feed. Women giving birth to malnourished babies with little or no medical care, and children dying from malnutrition and dehydration.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The focus of the speech, however, remained solidly on the continuing struggle for fair and equal elections, the same cause that drove the march from Selma to Montgomery almost six decades ago.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> “We know our fight for freedom is not over because, in this moment, we are witnessing a full-on attack on hard-fought, hard-won freedoms, starting with the freedom that unlocks all others: the freedom to vote,” Harris said. “The sacred freedom to vote.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Southern Poverty Law Center President and CEO Margaret Huang, who led the SPLC’s delegation at the bridge crossing, said that remembering the history is important while remaining soberly aware that the threats to voting rights are with us still.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> “Today, we mark the 59th anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery March,” Huang said. “A march that brought much progress, but sadly a journey that is not finished. Unfortunately, we are seeing once again a rise in voter suppression, which seeks to discourage communities of color from participating in our great democracy.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The march across the bridge and the surrounding events honored the past but acknowledged the very real, current threats to voter rights. Nonviolence training sessions began last week, but alongside the presentations on voter registration and voter mobilization were groups focused on helping families rebuild their community after years of economic decline that has dogged the largely rural Black Belt region.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Economic struggles</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> This year’s events preceded the 59th anniversary of <a href="https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/eyewitness/html.php?section=2" target="_blank">Bloody Sunday</a>, when marchers were brutally beaten by white state troopers and sheriff’s deputies, some on horseback, as they tried to cross the bridge on a march to the state Capitol in Montgomery to demand voting rights for Black people.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The violence on Bloody Sunday, rather than silencing the movement, poured gasoline on the sparks of change. Thousands of activists poured into Selma to join the campaign, culminating in a 54-mile march to the steps of the Alabama Capitol 18 days later and the enactment of the Voting Rights Act the following August.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Now, almost seven decades later, the grandchildren of those foot soldiers who powered that movement are seeing the rights their grandparents won rolled back not only in the Deep South but on a national level, as state lawmakers enact strict voting regulations and implement gerrymandered election district maps.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> But for many in Selma today, the struggle is not only for voting rights but day-to-day survival. On March 2, the SPLC’s Alabama State Office staff presented a discussion on growing the economy in Selma, especially in the wake of the tornado that tore through the town last year.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> “Economic revitalization is the catalyst for helping small rural towns like Selma recover after natural disasters,” said Tafeni English-Relf, director of the SPLC’s Alabama state office. “However, it takes public and private investments. The Alabama Avenue project, which is the focus of Saturday’s workshop, is the first block in a phased project over the next seven to 10 years. We are coming together to spur business development, repair public works infrastructure and develop plans to create new businesses and jobs to revitalize Selma.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The program – titled “Restoring Hope: Igniting Selma’s Economic Development One Block at a Time” – featured panelists from the SPLC and Torin Brazzle, who founded <a href="https://www.igniteal.org/" target="_blank">Ignite Alabama</a>, a nonprofit dedicated to enhancing economic opportunities for minority communities. The program focused on a planned, street-by-street approach to redeveloping Selma’s infrastructure and economy.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> “Unfortunately, economic disparities exist, and poverty is still one of the greatest obstacles afflicting communities of color,” said Huang. “That is why our session was focused on economic development. We need policies that eliminate poverty in the Deep South now. We can’t wait. Everyone must have a future which provides opportunities, so that all in our society can thrive.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Still a ‘long journey’</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> By Sunday, March 3, the traditional trappings of the annual commemoration were firmly in place. The commemorative breakfast honoring Martin Luther King Jr. kicked off the morning before participants split up to attend various church services across the city. They reconvened after lunch at <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=brown+chapel+ame+church&form=ANNH01&refig=868b12801aab493f891a20e280d4eea1&pc=U531&sp=21&lq=0&qs=EP&pq=brown+chapel+.&sc=10-14&cvid=868b12801aab493f891a20e280d4eea1" target="_blank">Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church</a> for a rally in preparation for the bridge crossing. The church was the starting point for the march on Bloody Sunday and a refuge for injured people after the attack on the bridge.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> As the crowd in Selma moved from the rally to the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge at Water Avenue, it merged with the large gathering already in place on Broad Street at the foot of the bridge, awaiting remarks from the vice president.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> In her remarks prefacing Harris’ speech, U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell echoed the need for economic renewal across the Black Belt and thanked federal officials for their post-storm efforts in Selma. She also noted that the strength and fortitude of the city’s residents have been demonstrated time and time again.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> “It was the people of this district who dared to make this nation live up to its highest ideals of equality and justice for all,” Sewell said. “It was the sacrifice of the people of this district, this hometown of mine, that brought us the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Harris said the fight to reestablish the rights granted under the original Voting Rights Act is continuing with the reintroduction of the <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/john-lewis-voting-rights-advancement-act" target="_blank">John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act</a>, which was introduced in the U.S. Senate last week.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> “Today, in states across our nation, extremists pass laws to ban drop boxes, limit early voting, and restrict absentee ballots,” Harris said. “In Georgia, extremists passed a law to even make it illegal to give people food and water for standing in line to exercise their civic duty and right to vote. I ask the friends here: Whatever happened to ‘love thy neighbor’? The hypocrisy abounds.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> She also touched on the paradox that Alabama’s conservative Supreme Court entered the in vitro fertilization (IVF) debate last week in a ruling that resulted in the suspension of fertility treatments in the state.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> “Here in Alabama, they attack the freedom to use IVF treatment,” Harris said. “Women and couples denied the ability to fulfill their dream of having a child. And consider the irony. On the one hand, these extremists tell women they do not have the freedom to end an unwanted pregnancy. And on the other hand, these extremists tell women they do not have the freedom to start a family. Let us agree: One does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government should not be telling her what to do with her body.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> As the vice president completed her speech and prepared to lead the gathered marchers across the bridge, the crowd along Broad Street began organizing into groups, each marching unit representing a different church, civil rights group, or family. Along with Harris at the head of the procession were several surviving foot soldiers from the original march, leading the way across the bridge once again.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> “That is why we are here today again, on this bridge, to march, to remind us that we still have a long journey to travel,” said Huang. “One that requires us to demand that our democracy be preserved, for now and future generations, and that everyone’s right to vote is secure.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>This article was published by the <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/" target="_blank">Southern Poverty Law Center</a>, an Alabama-based civil rights organization.</i></span></p>Joseph O. Pattonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04830099575387185293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331546133526977388.post-29404485834387362952024-03-06T12:00:00.000-06:002024-03-06T12:00:00.239-06:00Don’t let ‘FDA-approved’ or ‘patented’ in ads give you a false sense of security<p><span style="font-size: large;"> If you’ve ever reached for a bottle of moisturizer labeled “patented” or “FDA approved,” you might want to think twice. In a <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4366900" target="_blank">recent study</a> of hundreds of advertisements, I found that supplements and beauty products often misleadingly use these terms to suggest safety or efficacy.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> As a <a href="https://law.indiana.edu/about/people/details/mattioli-michael.html" target="_blank">law professor</a>, I suspect this is confusing for consumers, maybe even dangerous. Having a patent means only that you can stop others from making, using, selling, or importing your invention. It doesn’t mean the invention works or that it won’t blow up in your face.<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> “FDA approved,” meanwhile, means <a href="https://www.fda.gov/drugs/development-approval-process-drugs" target="_blank">a product’s benefits have been found to outweigh its risks</a> for a specific purpose – not that it’s of high quality or low risk in general.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Led astray by the label</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> I wanted to know whether companies exploit these sorts of misunderstandings, so I analyzed hundreds of ads from print, television, and social media that mention patents or FDA approval. I found that advertisers throw these terms around in confusing ways.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> For example, I found an ad for a probiotic supplement stating, “The proof is in the patent”; an ad for an earwax removal product stating its “patented formula is safe, effective, and clinically proven”; and an ad for a headache remedy that made the words “FDA approved” a bold visual focal point.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Here’s the concerning part: I looked at all kinds of products and found that these terms appear most often in ads for things you eat or rub onto your skin, such as supplements, insecticides, toothpaste, and lotions.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> That’s probably no coincidence. Products like this aren’t tightly regulated, yet consumers want to know they’re safe. It seems likely that advertisers are name-dropping the government to make people think just that.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Risks to consumers − and to innovation</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> One danger is clear: Ads with vague references to government authorities could dupe consumers into thinking products are safer or more effective than they actually are. In fact, there’s some evidence <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/1105910" target="_blank">this is already happening.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Another risk is that this creates perverse incentives for business. Companies could choose to forgo actual innovation, focusing instead on securing dubious patents or regulatory nods to <a href="https://www.voguebusiness.com/beauty/how-patents-became-the-beauty-industrys-secret-weapon" target="_blank">keep up in the advertising race.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> These practices could distort competition, burden government agencies with frivolous patent applications, and deter new entrants from competing in markets where they can’t employ similar advertising tactics.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Questions remain</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Even though my study has shed light on how often these tricky advertising methods are used, it leaves some big questions unanswered. What exactly makes consumers respond so favorably to terms like “patented” or “FDA approved”? And who is most likely to be confused by these tactics?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> As a next step, I plan to conduct comprehensive surveys of consumers, along with in-depth interviews, to explore how these labels resonate emotionally. I hope to coordinate with researchers from psychology and media studies. Research along these lines could offer policymakers the robust evidence they need to make changes to the law.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> What might those changes look like? For one thing, the law could make it easier for groups of consumers to sue in federal courts over misleading ads. The Federal Trade Commission could also place more of a burden on companies to prove their ads are honest. These changes could make a big difference in ensuring companies persuade shoppers without confusing them.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> At a time when ads are everywhere and Americans are losing trust in institutions – and each other – the stakes for truthful product claims are high.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3oZhE3bfwgFDQyOfIpIX6oqdBYH6PBHpPTjhTMOpivzvBtlTRzKjER_5tYS761o06DEcmxgyAjebDfgu9Uzzv4cgTikTAOgjpw22a9u4tTr5cKLSfGXpZr6NehdYBqBx1_RS9MjqrhS9EpOGX-05pn_UtoWBdemdI-j7bzFAu7JljrI4Qwf9WtZC_I20X/s238/Michael%20Mattioli.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="238" data-original-width="238" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3oZhE3bfwgFDQyOfIpIX6oqdBYH6PBHpPTjhTMOpivzvBtlTRzKjER_5tYS761o06DEcmxgyAjebDfgu9Uzzv4cgTikTAOgjpw22a9u4tTr5cKLSfGXpZr6NehdYBqBx1_RS9MjqrhS9EpOGX-05pn_UtoWBdemdI-j7bzFAu7JljrI4Qwf9WtZC_I20X/w200-h200/Michael%20Mattioli.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>About the author:</i> Michael Mattioli is a professor of law and the Louis F. Niezer Faculty Fellow at <a href="https://www.iu.edu/index.html" target="_blank">Indiana University</a>.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> This article was published by <a href="https://theconversation.com/us" target="_blank">The Conversation</a>.</span></p>Joseph O. Pattonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04830099575387185293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331546133526977388.post-28207309403630346112024-03-05T12:00:00.046-06:002024-03-05T12:00:00.254-06:00The great Goat Hill stampede of 2024<p><span style="font-size: large;"> The Alabama Legislature crammed 40% of this year’s session into February.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> That’s light speed for the body. At this rate, lawmakers could finish the session in mid- to late April, over a month before the state Constitution would require them to depart.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> You might approve. The less time the legislature sits, the less time they have to pass bad laws. In recent years, the Republican supermajority has turned legislative sessions into bonfires of <a href="https://alabamareflector.com/2023/05/30/gov-kay-ivey-signs-ban-on-transgender-college-athletes/" target="_blank">civil rights</a> and <a href="https://alabamareflector.com/2024/02/14/alabama-senate-approves-harsher-penalties-for-some-absentee-ballot-assistance/" target="_blank">voting access</a>. If it could stop our lawmakers from throwing other freedoms into the flames, I’d end the sacrificial ritual early.<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> But stampeding through the session means lawmakers are pushing through major bills in a frenzy. And with little reflection about the impact or long-term consequences.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Even as we’re seeing the fruits of another short-term decision.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The Alabama Supreme Court’s decision to effectively end IVF treatments in the state depended on a 2018 constitutional amendment, approved by the legislature the previous year, declaring that the “public policy” of the state was protecting unborn life.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Ahead of the election on the amendment, supporters <a href="https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/politics/2018/10/25/anti-abortion-amendment-alabama-election-ballot-amendment-2-meaning/1448690002/" target="_blank">downplayed its impact</a>, claiming it was just a statement of values, even as abortion rights groups warned that the measure would have dire consequences should Roe v. Wade fall.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The following year, the Alabama Legislature passed what would become an effective abortion ban in the state, restrained only by Roe v. Wade. Then, in 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> And in 2024, the far-right justices on the Alabama Supreme Court — citing both the 2018 amendment and Dobbs — decided <a href="https://alabamareflector.com/2024/02/19/alabama-supreme-court-ruling-could-end-ivf-treatments-in-state/" target="_blank">to close off a method of conception</a> for childless people.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> That’s a deeply unpopular decision. So Republicans are trying to <a href="https://www.legislature.state.al.us/pdf/SearchableInstruments/2024RS/HB237-int.pdf" target="_blank">fix it</a>. Their approach is to extend civil and criminal immunity to IVF providers. Rep. Terri Collins (R-Decatur) who sponsored the 2019 abortion ban, is carrying the House version.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> But Collins and other supporters acknowledged it will only be a temporary fix. And it does not address the court’s central conclusion that frozen embryos are children, a pretty steep legal barrier to any revival plan.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> “My mom always said, ‘If you do it right the first time, you won’t have to worry about it on the back end,’” Rep. Barbara Drummond (D-Mobile) said during the House debate on the measure Thursday. “And Alabama did not do it right on the front end. And that’s why we are paying for what we’re faced with right now.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> But that’s not stopping legislators from racing some other dangerous bills through the process.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <a href="https://www.legislature.state.al.us/pdf/SearchableInstruments/2024RS/SB1-eng.pdf" target="_blank">SB 1</a>, sponsored by Sen. Garlan Gudger (R-Cullman) has passed the Senate and is in position for a vote in the House. It would criminalize certain forms of absentee voting assistance, allegedly because of what supporters call “ballot harvesting.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Voter fraud is not an issue in Alabama. <a href="https://www.al.com/news/2024/02/absentee-ballot-harvesting-bill-advances-in-house-amid-questions-about-proof.html" target="_blank">As al.com reported</a>, the evidence that it includes a handful of majority-Black counties voting absentee more than the state (not evidence of a problem, let alone a crime) and a 24-year-old voting fraud conviction (which suggests existing laws can catch actual malfeasance).</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> That’s a shaky foundation for a brand-new punishment regime. At a minimum, lawmakers would make it harder for people with disabilities to vote. And they could subject people making good faith efforts to help those people vote to criminal punishment.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> There are other bills. <a href="https://www.legislature.state.al.us/pdf/SearchableInstruments/2024RS/SB92-int.pdf" target="_blank">SB 92</a>, sponsored by Sen. April Weaver (R-Brierfield) and <a href="https://www.legislature.state.al.us/pdf/SearchableInstruments/2024RS/HB111-int.pdf" target="_blank">HB 111</a>, from Rep. Susan DuBose (R-Hoover) would define men and women by the presence of or potential for particular reproductive cells.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> As <a href="https://alabamareflector.com/2024/02/28/alabama-house-committee-passes-bill-putting-definitions-of-sex-into-law/" target="_blank">LGBTQ+ activists note</a>, this could lead transgender people in our violent prisons to get thrown into populations that don’t reflect their gender identity or <a href="https://alabamareflector.com/2024/02/20/alabama-senate-committee-approves-defining-manhood-womanhood-on-reproductive-cells/" target="_blank">spark harassment</a> of any woman who doesn’t conform to traditional gender presentations. And Rep. Chris England (D-Tuscaloosa) noted it might also run afoul of a 2020 U.S. Supreme Court ruling.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Or how about <a href="https://www.legislature.state.al.us/pdf/SearchableInstruments/2024RS/SB129-int.pdf" target="_blank">SB 129</a>, sponsored by Sen. Will Barfoot (R-Pike Road) that would subject a public employee who teaches a ‘divisive concept’ or runs a program encouraging people to get along with people of different backgrounds to discipline or termination. There’s a lot of potential to make a teacher’s life hell if a student finds something disagreeable in the day’s lesson plan.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> All these bills progressed through the legislature in the last three weeks. All have the potential to make Alabamians’ lives miserable or dangerous.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> And the breakneck pace of the 2024 session makes it more likely that those bills will do those things.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> I asked House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter about this on Thursday. Ledbetter said the GOP caucus “wanted to get things out there and get them moving pretty quickly.” Leaders had planned to slow down this week, he said, until the Alabama Supreme Court’s IVF decision came down.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Were they worried about unintended consequences? “Well, every time we pass a bill there’s unintended consequences,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if we’re meeting three days a week or five days a week. I mean, that’s just part of the process. Substantially, we can correct those issues if they come to be a problem.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Ledbetter’s right: the legislature can fix mistakes. But why not be cautious the first time around?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Would slowing the process to a jog lead to better bills? Maybe not. But it would give time for legislators to think things through and alter the bills. Senate Democrats managed to get <a href="https://alabamareflector.com/2024/02/23/divisive-concepts-anti-dei-bill-passes-alabama-senate/" target="_blank">a series of amendments</a> on SB 129 earlier this month that struck out language that could have inhibited the teaching of slavery in schools and discussions related to DEI topics.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Not great. But not as bad.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Yet lawmakers are moving at a pace that makes “less bad” untenable for most legislation. It cuts off real consideration of what a new law can do. And it creates the potential for another IVF-style crisis in the state — caused by lawmakers not thinking through the consequences of their actions.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> So the great 2024 legislative stampede continues. It’s as sudden and perilous as any similar panic. And Alabamians face a real risk of getting trampled.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqiQoY_J6PNMU-q2kOekW3BccWsoDd08BkO15sJUs21SZ1Z2zHzCWBBJhHlJWkfOr5AYs2A4le3_qcJx3VewWEs1_Pw_gmahrWDD4Mo-Y0omxEBL-u0IqR9KaFwyr7mM16IooYZmtJWjJ4SVsSBwwKVVldWit8Cx9VPnZjglJViprXBX22xVh-5e1Uqv4s/s300/Brian%20Lyman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="300" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqiQoY_J6PNMU-q2kOekW3BccWsoDd08BkO15sJUs21SZ1Z2zHzCWBBJhHlJWkfOr5AYs2A4le3_qcJx3VewWEs1_Pw_gmahrWDD4Mo-Y0omxEBL-u0IqR9KaFwyr7mM16IooYZmtJWjJ4SVsSBwwKVVldWit8Cx9VPnZjglJViprXBX22xVh-5e1Uqv4s/w200-h200/Brian%20Lyman.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>About the author:</i> Brian Lyman is the editor of Alabama Reflector. He has covered Alabama politics since 2006 and worked at the Montgomery Advertiser, the Press-Register, and The Anniston Star. His work has won awards from the Associated Press Managing Editors, the Alabama Press Association, and the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>This article was published by <a href="https://alabamareflector.com/" target="_blank">Alabama Reflector</a>.</i> </span></p>Joseph O. Pattonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04830099575387185293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331546133526977388.post-26513652784770925672024-03-04T12:00:00.000-06:002024-03-04T12:00:00.255-06:00Why the United States needs NATO – 3 things to know<p><span style="font-size: large;"> Former President Donald Trump has <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/13/politics/fact-check-trump-nato/index.html" target="_blank">long made it clear that he deeply resents</a> NATO, a 75-year-old military alliance that is composed of the United States and 30 other countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/10/politics/trump-russia-nato/index.html" target="_blank">Trump escalated his criticism</a> of NATO on Feb. 10, 2024, when he said that, if he is elected president again in November 2024, the U.S. would not defend any member country that had not “paid up.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Trump also said that he would encourage Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, “to do whatever the hell they want” with a NATO member who was “delinquent” in paying for its defense.<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> NATO is the Western world’s foremost defense organization. It is headquartered in Brussels. The central idea behind NATO’s existence, as explained in <a href="https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_110496.htm#:%7E:text=Article%205%20provides%20that%20if,to%20assist%20the%20Ally%20attacked." target="_blank">Article 5</a> of NATO’s 1949 treaty, is that all NATO countries agree to defend any other NATO country in case of an attack.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> NATO has no standing army and relies on member countries to volunteer their military forces to carry out any operation. So all NATO countries agree to <a href="https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_67655.htm#:%7E:text=In%202006%2C%20NATO%20Defence%20Ministers,ensure%20the%20Alliance%27s%20military%20readiness." target="_blank">spend 2% of their annual gross domestic product</a> on military defense in order to support NATO.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Some countries, like the U.S., the U.K., Poland, Finland, Greece, and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, devote more than 2% of their GDP to military defense. About half of NATO’s members, including Germany, France, Norway, Spain, and Turkey, <a href="https://www.forces.net/news/world/nato-which-countries-pay-their-share-defence#:%7E:text=Ukraine%20war&text=Poland%20is%20the%20alliance%27s%20biggest,3.01%25%20the%20next%20closest." target="_blank">spend less</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> NATO leader Jens Stoltenberg said in a written statement on Feb. 11 that <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/trump-nato-russia-attack-white-house-appalling-unhinged/32814229.html#" target="_blank">Trump’s suggestion</a> “undermines all of our security, including that of the U.S., and puts American and European soldiers at increased risk.” Other political leaders also criticized Trump’s comments as highly dangerous.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=bs9WVS0AAAAJ&hl=en" target="_blank">scholar of history and international affairs</a>, it is clear to me that Trump does not seem to understand the many advantages the U.S. gets from being part of NATO. Here are three major benefits for the U.S. that come with NATO membership:</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>1) NATO gives the US reliable allies</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Militarily and economically, the U.S. is a hugely formidable power. It has the <a href="https://www.defense.gov/Multimedia/Experience/Americas-Nuclear-Triad/" target="_blank">largest nuclear arsenal</a> on earth and continues to be the largest economy in the world.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Yet, without its allies in Asia, and above all without those in Europe, the U.S would be a much-diminished superpower.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> NATO provides the U.S. with a leadership position in one of the strongest military alliance networks in the world. This leadership goes well beyond the security realm – it has profound and very positive political and economic ripple effects. For instance, most Western countries <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/03/14/global-arms-sales-us-dominates-russia#" target="_blank">purchase their arms and military</a> equipment from the U.S.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Russia counts controversial regimes known for human rights violations such as Iran, North Korea, and to some extent, China, among its most important allies. The U.S. considers economically strong countries like Canada, Germany, France, Italy, and many other established democracies as its friends and allies.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> NATO has invoked <a href="https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_110496.htm" target="_blank">Article 5</a> only once – immediately after the U.S. <a href="https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_77646.htm#:%7E:text=12%20September%202001&text=Later%20that%20day%2C%20the%20Allies,abroad%20against%20the%20United%20States." target="_blank">was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001</a>. America’s NATO allies were ready to come to the aid of the U.S. – and, for good or for bad, many subsequently participated in the United States’ war in Afghanistan.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>2) NATO provides peace and stability</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> NATO provides a blanket of protection and mutual security for all its members, helping explain why the vast majority of countries in central and eastern Europe clamored to join NATO after the <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1989-1992/collapse-soviet-union" target="_blank">fall of the Soviet Union</a> in 1991.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Today, Ukraine continues to <a href="https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3455199/leaders-agree-to-expedite-ukraines-nato-membership/" target="_blank">push for NATO membership</a> – though its application to join appears unlikely to be granted anytime soon, given the military commitment this would create for the alliance.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Russia fought short wars in recent <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/91277" target="_blank">years with Moldova</a>, <a href="https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/the-2008-russo-georgian-war-putins-green-light/" target="_blank">Georgia</a>, and also with <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/crimea-six-years-after-illegal-annexation/" target="_blank">Ukraine prior</a> to 2022, but Putin has not invaded neighboring countries that are NATO members. Invading a NATO country would bring the entire alliance into a war with Russia, which would be a risky gamble for Moscow.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Despite international concern that Russia’s war in Ukraine could spill over into neighboring NATO countries, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/29/poland-says-russian-missile-briefly-entered-its-airspace#:%7E:text=%22Everything%20indicates%20that%20a%20Russian,from%20%5BNATO%5D%20allies.%22" target="_blank">like Poland</a> and the three Baltic nations, it has not yet happened.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>3) NATO has helped the US get stronger</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The Soviet Union’s <a href="https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/declassified_138294.htm" target="_blank">military alliance, called the Warsaw Pact</a>, required the USSR and its satellite states in central and eastern Europe, including East Germany, Poland, and Hungary, to join. NATO, on the other hand, is a voluntary military alliance, and countries must go through a demanding application process before they are accepted.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The United States’ current presence in Europe – and Asia – has not been imposed by force. Instead, U.S. troops and influence in Europe are generally welcomed by its allies.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> By joining NATO and accepting the military leadership of Washington, the other NATO countries give the U.S. unprecedented influence and power. Norwegian scholar Geir Lundestad called this an “empire by invitation.” This informal empire has deeply anchored the U.S. and its influence in Europe.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><u>A split in opinion</u></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> President Joe Biden has repeatedly said that under his leadership, the U.S. would <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-calls-trumps-nato-remarks-un-american-rcna138670#:%7E:text=%22As%20long%20as%20I%27m,a%20rally%20in%20South%20Carolina." target="_blank">“defend every inch</a> of NATO territory,” speaking primarily in the context of Russia’s war on Ukraine.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Biden has <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/30/biden-warns-putin-on-nato-threat-as-russia-annexes-ukraine-regions.html" target="_blank">repeatedly warned Putin</a> that he would face the consequences if Russia attacks a NATO member.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> For Trump, however, transatlantic solidarity and mutual defense appear to count for nothing. For him, it seems to be all about the money and whether or not NATO countries spend 2% of their GDP on defense. And despite Putin having begun a terrible war of aggression against Ukraine in February 2022, Trump has continued to voice his <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/23/trump-putin-ukraine-invasion-00010923" target="_blank">admiration of the Russian leader</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Trump does not view Putin’s Russia as an existential threat to the U.S.-led global order. And thus, he does not seem to realize that the U.S. and its European allies need protection from Putin’s Russia, the kind of protection offered by NATO. NATO’s existence gives the U.S. strong and reliable allies, provides Washington with great influence in Europe, and makes sure that most of Europe remains stable and peaceful.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZrs1cxKeJaHHvrTEnlARXzC23p9QflS7mpRCKj5XY8fjjhAZ04jVn_T21V49XbiTrWoAPFVphH7_Db1i4IX9ebeG_fJWZELU-AFTo1T2z1wU1u7sVoaAEjGy74e5Gj2BhgDGFiJJ0o1hg7nDaupTGM3btwQzA6CFUbFBUWji3hkR4Xa1X86oUwMqt7gyR/s238/Klaus%20W.%20Larres.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="238" data-original-width="238" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZrs1cxKeJaHHvrTEnlARXzC23p9QflS7mpRCKj5XY8fjjhAZ04jVn_T21V49XbiTrWoAPFVphH7_Db1i4IX9ebeG_fJWZELU-AFTo1T2z1wU1u7sVoaAEjGy74e5Gj2BhgDGFiJJ0o1hg7nDaupTGM3btwQzA6CFUbFBUWji3hkR4Xa1X86oUwMqt7gyR/w200-h200/Klaus%20W.%20Larres.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>About the author:</i> Klaus W. Larres is a professor of history and international affairs at the <a href="https://www.unc.edu/" target="_blank">University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill</a>.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>This article was published by <a href="https://theconversation.com/us" target="_blank">The Conversation</a>.</i> </span></p>Joseph O. Pattonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04830099575387185293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331546133526977388.post-89405038087594963032024-03-03T12:00:00.054-06:002024-03-03T12:00:00.143-06:0011 things you can do to adjust to losing that hour of sleep when daylight saving time starts<p><span style="font-size: large;"> As clocks march ahead and daylight saving time begins, there can be anxiety around losing an hour of sleep and how to adjust to this change.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Usually an hour seems like an insignificant amount of time, but even this <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0953620519300135?via%3Dihub" target="_blank">minimal loss can cause problems.</a> There can be <a href="https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007927" target="_blank">significant health repercussions</a> of this forcible shift in the body clock.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Springing forward is usually harder than falling backward. Why?<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The natural internal body clock rhythm in people tends to be slightly longer than 24 hours, which means that every day we tend to delay our sleep schedules. Thus, “springing forward” goes against the body’s natural rhythm. It is similar to a mild case of jet lag caused by traveling east – in which you lose time and have trouble falling asleep at an earlier hour that night.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Even though it’s technically just one hour lost due to the time change, the amount of sleep deprivation due to disrupted sleep rhythm lasts for many days and often throws people off schedule, leading to cumulative sleep loss.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <a href="https://www.pediatrics.pitt.edu/people/deepa-burman-md-faasm" target="_blank">We</a> <a href="https://www.pediatrics.pitt.edu/people/hiren-muzumdar-md" target="_blank">lead</a> a sleep evaluation center at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and regularly see <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9032/7/1/1" target="_blank">patients who are dealing with</a> sleep loss and internal clocks that are not synchronized with external time. Our experience has shown us that it’s important to prepare, as much as possible, for the time shift that occurs every spring.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Consequences of sleep loss vary</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Many studies have demonstrated that there is an increased risk of <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1389945720303701?via%3Dihub" target="_blank">heart attack, stroke, and high blood pressure</a> associated with sleep deprivation. <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK19958/" target="_blank">Workplace injuries</a> increase and so do <a href="https://academic.oup.com/sleep/article/41/10/zsy144/5067408?login=true" target="_blank">automobile accidents</a>. Adolescents often find it harder to wake up in time to get to school and may have difficulties with <a href="https://jcsm.aasm.org/doi/10.5664/jcsm.4938" target="_blank">attention and school performance</a> or <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1389945703001011?via%3Dihub" target="_blank">worsening of mental health problems.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Is there something to be done to help deal with this loss of sleep and change in body clock timing?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Of course. The first step is increasing awareness and using the power of knowledge to combat this issue. Here are some quick tips to prepare yourself for the upcoming weekend.</span></p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-size: large;">1) Do not start with a “sleep debt.” Ensure that you and, if you’re a parent, your child get adequate sleep on a regular basis leading up to the time change each year. Most adults need anywhere from <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352721815000157?via%3Dihub" target="_blank">seven to nine hours of sleep</a> daily to perform adequately. Children have varying requirements for sleep depending on their age.</span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;">2) Prepare for the time change. Going to bed – and for parents, putting your kids to bed – 15 to 20 minutes earlier each night in the week preceding the time change is ideal. Having an earlier wake time can help you get to sleep earlier. Try to wake up an hour earlier than is customary on Saturday, the day before the time change. If you have not been able to make any changes to your sleep schedule in advance, then keep a very consistent wake time on weekdays as well as weekends to adjust to the time change more easily.</span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;">3) Use light to your advantage. <a href="https://physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1113/JP275501" target="_blank">Light is the strongest cue</a> for adjusting the internal body clock. Expose yourself to bright light upon waking as you start getting up earlier in the week before daylight saving time. If you live in a place where natural light is limited in the morning after clocks change, use bright artificial light to signal your body clock to wake up earlier. As the season progresses, this will be less of an issue as the sun rises earlier in the day.</span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;">4) At night, minimize exposure to bright light and especially the blue light emitted by the screens of electronic media. This light can <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1389945721003257?via%3Dihub" target="_blank">shift your body rhythm</a> and signal your internal clock to wake up later the next day. If your devices permit, set their screens to dim and emit less blue light in the evening.</span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;">5) In some geographic locations, it might be helpful to have room-darkening curtains at bedtime depending on how much sunlight your room gets at bedtime. Be sure to open the curtains in the morning to allow the natural morning light to set your sleep-wake cycle.</span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;">6) Carefully plan your day and evening activities. The night before the time change, set yourself up for a good night’s sleep by incorporating relaxing activities that can help you wind down, such as reading a book or meditating.</span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;">7) Incorporate exercise in the morning or early in the day. Take a walk, even if it is just around the house or your office during the day.</span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;">8) Consider starting with a protein-heavy breakfast, since <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002916523239167?via%3Dihub" target="_blank">sleep deprivation can increase</a> appetite and <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0195666317312345?via%3Dihub" target="_blank">craving for high-carbohydrate foods and sugars.</a></span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;">9) <a href="https://jcsm.aasm.org/doi/10.5664/jcsm.9736" target="_blank">Stop using caffeine after noon</a>. The use of caffeine too late in the day can lead to trouble falling asleep and <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691521005822?via%3Dihub" target="_blank">even disrupted sleep.</a></span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;">10) Adults, decline that wine at bedtime. Wine and other kinds of alcohol <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666149722000032?via%3Dihub" target="_blank">can also disturb sleep.</a></span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;">11) If you’re a parent or caregiver, try to be patient with your kids as they adjust to the new times. Sleep deprivation affects the entire family, and some kids have a harder time adjusting to the time change than others. You may notice more frequent <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1876285917300475?via%3Dihub" target="_blank">meltdowns, irritability, and loss of attention and focus.</a> Set aside more quiet, electronic media-free time in the evening. Consider a brief 20-minute nap in the early afternoon for younger children who are having a difficult time dealing with this change.</span></li></ul><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Prioritizing sleep pays off in the short term and over the years. A good night’s sleep is a necessary ingredient for a productive and fulfilling day all year long.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>About the authors:</i> Deepa Burman is the co-director of the Pediatric Sleep Evaluation Center and an associate professor of pediatrics at the <a href="https://www.pitt.edu/" target="_blank">University of Pittsburgh</a>. Hiren Muzumdar is the director of the Pediatric Sleep Evaluation Center at the UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>This article was published by <a href="https://theconversation.com/us" target="_blank">The Conversation</a>.</i> </span></p>Joseph O. Pattonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04830099575387185293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331546133526977388.post-68129001681983737102024-03-02T12:00:00.078-06:002024-03-02T12:00:00.152-06:00How you can tell propaganda from journalism − let’s look at Tucker Carlson’s visit to Russia<p><span style="font-size: large;"> Tucker Carlson, the conservative former cable TV news pundit, recently <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68223148" target="_blank">traveled to Moscow to interview</a> Russian dictator Vladimir Putin for his Tucker Carlson Network, known as TCN.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The two-hour interview itself proved dull. Even Putin found Carlson’s<a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-tucker-carlson-soft-interview/" target="_blank"> soft questioning “disappointing.”</a> Very little from the interview was newsworthy.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Other videos Carlson produced while in Russia, however, seemed to spark far more <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/16/business/media/tucker-carlson-putin-navalny.html" target="_blank">significant commentary</a>. Carlson marveled at the beauty of <a href="https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1757901280830505037" target="_blank">the Moscow subway</a> and seemed awed by the cheap prices in a Russian supermarket. He found the faux McDonald’s – rebranded “Tasty-period” – cheeseburgers delicious.<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> As a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08821127.2007.10678081" target="_blank">scholar of broadcast propaganda</a>, I believe Carlson’s work provides an opportunity for public education in distinguishing between propaganda and journalism. Some Americans, primarily Carlson’s fans, will view the videos as accurate reportage. Others, primarily Carlson’s detractors, will reject them as mendacious propaganda.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> But closely considering these categories, and evaluating Carlson’s work in context, might deepen public understanding of the distinction between journalism and propaganda in the American context.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Promoting authoritarians</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Carlson’s ability to secure the Putin interview was commendable. Interviewing dictators – even the most murderous ones, such as Cambodia’s Pol Pot – can represent a significant journalistic achievement.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Yet, Carlson’s listless approach to the Russian dictator, who <a href="https://www.miragenews.com/full-text-transcript-of-tucker-carlson-putin-1171489" target="_blank">droned on endlessly</a>, proved a wasted opportunity. Despite Carlson’s passivity, the interview did, in fact, reveal aspects of Putin’s intentions likely unknown to many Americans. For example, <a href="https://www.wnyc.org/story/navalny-putin-russia-ukraine/" target="_blank">Putin blamed Poland for provoking Hitler’s attack on the country in 1939</a>, which sparked World War II – a statement at odds with the facts. He also seemed to signal his desire to <a href="https://www.wnyc.org/story/navalny-putin-russia-ukraine/" target="_blank">attack Poland, or another neighbor,</a> in the near future. Had Carlson’s trip concluded with the interview, it might have been judged journalistically worthwhile.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Yet, that’s not what Carlson did.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Producing a travelogue, Carlson toured Moscow and made videos extolling the glories of Russian society, culture, and governance. The Moscow subway impressed him, while the low prices in a Russian supermarket “radicalized” him “against our American leaders.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>‘Classic case of propaganda’</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> There are numerous ways to evaluate the truthfulness of Carlson’s reports.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> For example, if things are as copacetic in Russia as Carlson claims, then emigration out of the country should be minimal, or at least normal. Yet, since the 2022 Ukraine war mobilization, Russians have <a href="https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/sanctions-and-russias-war-limiting-putins-capabilities" target="_blank">fled their country in historically high numbers.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Even those cheap supermarket prices Carlson loved are a mirage. They exist only through subsidies, and with Russia’s <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/90753" target="_blank">continued devaluation of the ruble in</a> 2024, combined with a planned huge increase in military spending, Russia’s government <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/90753" target="_blank">continues to make every Russian poorer</a> to fund its war.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> In other words, what’s cheap to Carlson is expensive and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/putin-russian-inflation-could-near-8-this-year-2023-12-14/" target="_blank">getting more expensive for almost all Russians</a>. This trend will continue in 2024, as Putin recently <a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/putin-russian-inflation-could-near-8-this-year-2023-12-14/" target="_blank">projected Russia’s inflation rate to be 8%</a> in 2024 – more than double the projection for the United States. In fact, a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/putin-russian-inflation-could-near-8-this-year-2023-12-14/" target="_blank">Russian citizen complained</a> directly to Putin in December 2023 about the price of eggs, and Putin <a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/putin-russian-inflation-could-near-8-this-year-2023-12-14/" target="_blank">uncharacteristically apologized.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> But research shows that fact-checking Carlson’s claims <a href="https://theconversation.com/fact-checking-may-be-important-but-it-wont-help-americans-learn-to-disagree-better-174034" target="_blank">is not likely to change</a> many people’s opinions. We know most people don’t appreciate being told their preferred information is inaccurate, and when untruthful reports accord with their perception of reality, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9548403/" target="_blank">they’ll believe them.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Instead of categorizing Carlson’s Russia videos as “reporting,” “journalism,” “information,” or “fake news,” we could define it instead as a classic case of propaganda.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>‘Emotionally potent oversimplifications’</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Propaganda is communication designed to bypass critical and rational examination in order to provoke intended emotional, attitudinal, or behavioral responses from an audience.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Public understanding of propaganda usually links it to lying, but that’s not quite correct. While some propaganda is mendacious, the most effective propaganda will interlace carefully selected verifiable facts with emotional appeals.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> For an average American, those Russian supermarket prices really were cheap. But that’s a selected truth presented without context essential for understanding.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once described propaganda in a democracy as “<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/984945-rationality-belongs-to-the-cool-observer-but-because-of-the" target="_blank">emotionally potent oversimplifications</a>” peddled to the masses, and that’s precisely what Carlson’s videos seem to provide.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> That Carlson has evolved into a propagandist is not surprising. In 2022, The New York Times analyzed his Fox News broadcasts between 2016 and 2021. The paper concluded that Carlson’s program became <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/30/us/tucker-carlson-tonight.html" target="_blank">far less interested in rational dialogue and critical exchange</a> – by interviewing people who disagreed with him – as it evolved into <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/30/us/tucker-carlson-tonight.html" target="_blank">a monologue-driven format</a> in which Carlson preached often <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/30/us/tucker-carlson-tonight.html" target="_blank">factually dubious</a> assertions to his audience.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> At one time, early in his career, Carlson <a href="https://www.cjr.org/the_profile/tucker-carlson.php" target="_blank">demonstrated significant journalistic talent</a>, especially in magazine feature writing. But his dedication to accuracy – and even basic truth-telling – was exposed as a sham <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/05/all-the-texts-fox-news-didnt-want-you-to-read.html" target="_blank">when his texts</a> from the Dominion voting machine lawsuit were revealed and illustrated <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/05/all-the-texts-fox-news-didnt-want-you-to-read.html" target="_blank">his mendacity</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Distinguishing between Gershkovich and Carlson</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Carlson is not <a href="https://theconversation.com/normalizing-fascists-69613" target="_blank">the first American reporter</a> to travel to a foreign dictatorship and <a href="https://theconversation.com/hitler-at-home-how-the-nazi-pr-machine-remade-the-fuhrers-domestic-image-and-duped-the-world-47077" target="_blank">produce propaganda in the guise of journalism.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The New York Times’ Walter Duranty <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/05/08/1097097620/new-york-times-pulitzer-ukraine-walter-duranty" target="_blank">infamously ignored</a> the Stalin dictatorship’s horrific starvation of millions of Ukrainians in the 1930s. The Times’ Berlin correspondent Guido Enderis specialized in <a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/history/articles/new-york-times-nazi-correspondent" target="_blank">“puffy profiles of leading Nazis”</a> while whitewashing the regime’s <a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/history/articles/new-york-times-nazi-correspondent" target="_blank">more evil aspects</a> in the mid-1930s.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> More recently, correspondent Peter Arnett was <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/media-jan-june03-arnett_03-31" target="_blank">fired from NBC News</a> for appearing on state-controlled Iraqi TV in 2003 and praising the success of “Iraqi resistance” at the outset of the U.S.-Iraq war. Although Arnett’s comments did not originally appear on NBC, they were rebroadcast widely.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> But what makes Carlson’s actions particularly galling to some was that his propaganda appeared while Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich remains imprisoned by Putin’s regime for alleged spying, but which was really accurate reporting from Russia. When Carlson questioned Putin about Gershkovich, the dictator replied that <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-says-swap-deal-free-wsj-reporter-gershkovich-might-be-possible-2024-02-09/" target="_blank">a prisoner exchange might be negotiated.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Ultimately, the distinction between journalism and propaganda is the difference between Gershkovich and Carlson.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Gershkovich sits in a Russian prison for investigating the truth about Putin’s Russia in service to the American public and his employer. Carlson flies around the world <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/02/01/tucker-carlson-hungary-orban-00004149" target="_blank">praising authoritarian leaders</a> such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban, while “rooting” for dictators like Vladimir Putin when they attack their neighbors. <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/11/26/20983778/tucker-carlson-rooting-for-russia-ukraine-invasion-america-first" target="_blank">“Why shouldn’t I root for Russia? Which I am,”</a> he said in 2019 about the Ukraine-Russian conflict.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> To expose abusive governmental power and hold it accountable <a href="https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript" target="_blank">“to the opinions of mankind”</a> is literally written in America’s Declaration of Independence. To travel abroad praising dictatorships for their subways and cheeseburgers while ignoring their murderousness, and to return “radicalized … against our leaders” because foreign supermarket prices are low, is certainly not journalism. It is propaganda.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Carlson’s videos may have one beneficial result: If enough Americans learn from them how to detect propaganda and distinguish it from ethical and professional reporting, then perhaps Carlson unintentionally provided a valuable media literacy service to the nation.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYKnxho3busNoqgLcN8hBtil63faS4zCBKM-fP81eb0G4nNxLMp1PZIGfpgbOzTp5yFBRpQK94DPJMoc42iZoyPOPd0zhcMwceRFzMPkfS1FjM5NooLk9NpFLBRN9y9WUsV94vsLE_8ZNgatnWe7eq0dhWcA0fxYdmlvu4ZJt82x2jWIMTytyXrBatYknH/s238/Michael%20J.%20Socolow.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="238" data-original-width="238" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYKnxho3busNoqgLcN8hBtil63faS4zCBKM-fP81eb0G4nNxLMp1PZIGfpgbOzTp5yFBRpQK94DPJMoc42iZoyPOPd0zhcMwceRFzMPkfS1FjM5NooLk9NpFLBRN9y9WUsV94vsLE_8ZNgatnWe7eq0dhWcA0fxYdmlvu4ZJt82x2jWIMTytyXrBatYknH/w200-h200/Michael%20J.%20Socolow.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>About the author:</i> Michael J. Socolow is a professor of communication and journalism at the <a href="https://umaine.edu/" target="_blank">University of Maine</a>.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>This article was published by <a href="https://theconversation.com/us" target="_blank">The Conversation</a>.</i></span></p>Joseph O. Pattonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04830099575387185293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331546133526977388.post-49938395853353287832024-03-01T12:00:00.056-06:002024-03-01T12:00:00.148-06:00I went to CPAC as an anthropologist to understand Trump’s base − they believe, more than ever, he is a savior<p><span style="font-size: large;"> What is happening in the hearts of former President Donald Trump’s supporters?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> As an <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Alexander-Hinton-2" target="_blank">anthropologist who studies peace and conflict</a>, I went to the annual meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, to find out. I wanted to better understand the Make America Great Again faithful – and their die-hard support for Trump.<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/22/politics/cpac-trump-republican-president-election/index.html" target="_blank">The event</a> began on Feb. 21, 2024 in National Harbor, Maryland, with Steve Bannon’s <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/07/politics/bannon-podcast-war-room-election-lies/index.html" target="_blank">routine, untrue banter</a> about how President Joe Biden stole the 2020 election, and it peaked with an angry speech from Trump three days later. In between, I sat among the MAGA masses listening to speaker after speaker express outrage about American decline – and their hope for Trump’s reelection.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Everywhere I turned, people wore MAGA regalia – hats, pins, logos, and patches, many with Trump’s likeness. I spent breaks in the exhibition hall, which featured a Jan. 6 insurrection-themed pinball machine featuring “Stop the Steal,” “Political Prisoners,” and “Babbitt Murder” rally modes and a bus emblazoned with Trump’s face. Admirers scribbled messages on the bus such as, “We have your back” and “You are anointed and appointed by God to be the President.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Those on the left who dismiss the CPAC as a gathering of MAGA crazies and racists who support a wannabe dictator do not understand that, from this far-right perspective, there are compelling and even urgent reasons to support Trump. Indeed, they believe, as conservative politician Tulsi Gabbard stated in her CPAC speech on Feb. 22, that the left’s claims about Trump’s authoritarianism are “laughable.” This is because CPAC attendees falsely perceive President Joe Biden as the one who is attacking democracy.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Here are my top three takeaways from CPAC about Trump supporters’ current priorities and thinking.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>1) There’s a Reagan dinner – but CPAC is Trump’s party</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Former President Ronald Reagan runs in CPAC’s DNA. Reagan spoke at the <a href="https://www.deseret.com/indepth/2021/2/26/22303493/ronald-reagan-spoke-at-the-inaugural-cpac-in-1974-here-is-what-he-said-washington-dc" target="_blank">inaugural CPAC in 1974</a> and went on to speak there a dozen more times.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> In 2019, the conservative advocacy group the American Political Union, which hosts CPAC, published a <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43252648-reagan-at-cpac" target="_blank">book of Reagan’s speeches</a> with commentary by conservative luminaries. In the preface, Matt Schlapp, the head of the American Political Union, says he often asks himself, “What would Reagan do?”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> CPAC’s pomp gala, held Friday, is still called the “Ronald Reagan Dinner.” But Reagan is otherwise hardly mentioned at the conference.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Reagan’s ideas of American exceptionalism have been supplanted by Trump’s populist story of apocalyptic decline. Reagan’s folksy tone, relative moderation, and clear quips are long gone, replaced by fury, grievance, and mean-spirited barbs.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>2) There’s a method to the madness</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Many commentators and critics, including groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center, <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/02/26/racists-roam-halls-cpac-and-conservative-conference-ends-controversy-over-racist-comments" target="_blank">view CPAC as a frightening</a> or bizarre gathering of <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/02/26/racists-roam-halls-cpac-and-conservative-conference-ends-controversy-over-racist-comments" target="_blank">white nationalists</a> who have a nativist agenda.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> In 2021, commentators said the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/01/cpac-2021-stage-design-nazi-sign-odal-othala-rune-hyatt-hotels-hate-symbol-abhorrent" target="_blank">CPAC stage was shaped like a famous Nazi design</a> called the Othala Rune, which is <a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/hate-symbol/othala-rune" target="_blank">a hate symbol</a>. Schlapp denied this claim and said that CPAC supports the Jewish community, but <a href="https://twitter.com/Oren_Jacobson/status/1365412904749699075" target="_blank">various commentators</a> took note of the uncanny resemblance.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> This year, CPAC refused to give press credentials to various <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/media/4482821-cpac-denying-press-passes-journalists-2024/" target="_blank">media outlets, including The Washington Post</a>, despite the organization’s emphasis on free speech.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Some speakers, including Trump, have been known to regularly voice support for white nationalism and right-wing extremism, including speakers who promote the false idea that there is a plot to <a href="https://americasvoice.org/blog/cpac-to-display-the-conspiratorial-white-nationalism-rotting-the-gop-from-the-inside-out/" target="_blank">replace the white population</a>. I discuss this idea in my 2021 book, <a href="https://nyupress.org/9781479808014/it-can-happen-here/" target="_blank">“It Can Happen Here: White Power and the Rising Threat of Genocide in the US.”</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Indeed, the U.S.-Mexico border was a constant topic at this year’s CPAC, which included controversial anti-immigrant speakers such as the head of Spain’s far-right Vox party and a representative of Hungary, whose leader stated at the 2022 CPAC that Europeans should not become “mixed-race.” Hungary will also host a CPAC meeting in April 2024.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Many of the sessions have alarming titles like, “Burning Down the House,” “Does Government Even Matter,” and “Going Full Hungarian.” There are right-wing, populist speakers like Bannon and U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Overall, the program is informed by a conservative logic that largely boils down to God, family, tradition, law and order, defense, and freedom.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Of these, God looms largest. As a result, CPAC’s hardcore conservative Christian orientation is anti-abortion rights, homophobic, and oriented toward traditional family structure and what it considers morality.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Schlapp <a href="https://tanbooks.com/contemporary-issues/social-issues/the-desecrators-defeating-the-cancel-culture-mob-and-reclaiming-one-nation-under-god/" target="_blank">co-wrote a book in 2022</a> that warns of the dangers of “evil forces” – what he considers to be progressives, the radical left, and American Marxists. Schlapp’s book title even dubs these forces “the desecrators.” Such inflammatory language is frequently used at CPAC, including by Trump during his Saturday speech.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>3) Trump believers think he is their savior</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> CPAC’s love of Trump is shocking to many on the left. But at CPAC, Trump is viewed as America’s savior.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> According to his base, Trump delivered on abortion by appointing Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. They believe that, despite evidence of mixed results, Trump had wide successes at <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/mexico/putting-us-mexico-border-crisis-narrative-context" target="_blank">securing the border</a> and <a href="https://www.factcheck.org/2021/10/trumps-final-numbers/" target="_blank">creating jobs</a>. For example, during Trump’s time as president, the U.S. economy lost nearly 3 million jobs, and <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/03/02/how-border-apprehensions-ice-arrests-and-deportations-have-changed-under-trump/" target="_blank">apprehensions of undocumented migrants</a> at the border rose.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Trump’s CPAC speech, like his <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?533460-1/president-trump-campaigns-conway-south-carolina" target="_blank">campaign speeches</a>, harped on such supposed achievements – as well as Biden’s alleged “destruction” of the country.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Conservatives roll their eyes at liberal fears of Trump the despot. Like all of us, they acknowledge, Trump has flaws. They say that some of his <a href="https://theweek.com/donald-trump/655770/61-things-donald-trump-has-said-about-women" target="_blank">comments about women</a> and minorities are cringeworthy but not evidence of an underlying misogyny and hatefulness, as many critics contend.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Ultimately, CPAC conservatives believe Trump is their best bet to defeat the radical-left “desecrators” who seek to thwart him at every turn – including, as they constantly complained at CPAC, <a href="https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4163942-court-limits-trump-social-media-use/" target="_blank">social media bans</a>, “fake news” takedowns, rigged voting, bogus lawsuits, unfair justice, and lies about what they call the <a href="https://www.justsecurity.org/91904/dissecting-trumps-peacefully-and-patriotically-defense-of-the-january-6th-attack/" target="_blank">Jan. 6, 2021, “protest”.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Despite these hurdles, Trump battles on toward the Republican nomination for president – the hero who CPAC conservatives view as the last and best hope to save the USA.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0iRlO-xVry_U4_Jo7-xFs6Z05zTq7iwegGUH_0i_KquXWSp4cF8Y73wbR3kpI2FQoboEm0l4HcjpMjFI_No9YQ7ywt3Pp3QiQEUav3CAc1suJ25bEWMkZBQ5e2mROq0tPp0Z_6drkv3MsQExF6tne2Fbs2UIYEaZeYLV2_MYhn_OVl6EY-Jetnw5twcma/s238/Alexander%20Hinton.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="238" data-original-width="238" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0iRlO-xVry_U4_Jo7-xFs6Z05zTq7iwegGUH_0i_KquXWSp4cF8Y73wbR3kpI2FQoboEm0l4HcjpMjFI_No9YQ7ywt3Pp3QiQEUav3CAc1suJ25bEWMkZBQ5e2mROq0tPp0Z_6drkv3MsQExF6tne2Fbs2UIYEaZeYLV2_MYhn_OVl6EY-Jetnw5twcma/w200-h200/Alexander%20Hinton.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>About the author:</i> Alexander Hinton is a distinguished professor of anthropology and the director of the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at <a href="https://www.newark.rutgers.edu/" target="_blank">Rutgers University - Newark</a>.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>This article was published by <a href="https://theconversation.com/us" target="_blank">The Conversation</a>. </i></span></p>Joseph O. Pattonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04830099575387185293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331546133526977388.post-81493372816186170942024-02-29T12:00:00.072-06:002024-02-29T12:00:00.143-06:00As war in Ukraine enters third year, 3 issues could decide its outcome: Supplies, information and politics<p><span style="font-size: large;"> In retrospect, there was perhaps nothing surprising about Russia’s decision to <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230214-february-24-2022-the-day-russia-invaded-ukraine" target="_blank">invade Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Vladimir Putin’s intentions were, after all, hiding in plain sight and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-says-western-military-backing-ukraine-threatens-russia-2021-10-21/" target="_blank">signaled in the months running u</a>p to the incursion.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> What could not be foreseen, however, is where the conflict finds itself now. Heading into its third year, the war has become bogged down: Neither is it a stalemate; nor does it look like either side could make dramatic advances any time soon.<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Russia appears to be on the ascendancy, having secured the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68322527" target="_blank">latest major battlefield victory</a>, but Ukrainian fighters have exceeded military expectations with their doggedness in the past and may do so again.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> But as a <a href="https://facultyprofiles.tufts.edu/tara-sonenshine" target="_blank">foreign policy expert</a> and former journalist who spent many years covering Russia, I share the view of those who argue that the conflict is potentially at a pivotal point: If Washington does not continue to fully support President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his military, then Ukraine’s very survival could be at risk. I believe it would also jeopardize America’s leadership in the world and global security.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> How the conflict develops during the rest of 2024 will depend on many factors, but three may be key: supplies, information, and political will.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>The supplies race</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Russia and Ukraine are locked in a race to resupply its war resources – not just in terms of soldiers, but also ammunition and missiles. Both sides are desperately trying to shore up the number of soldiers it can deploy.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> In December 2023, Putin<a href="https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-putin-army-expansion-a2bf0b035aabab20c8b120a1c86c9e38" target="_blank"> ordered his generals to increase troop numbers</a> by nearly 170,000, taking the total number of soldiers to 1.32 million. Meanwhile, Ukraine is said to be looking at plans to <a href="https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-russia-war-draft-b2ca1d0ecd72019be2217a653989fbc2" target="_blank">increase its military by 500,000 troops.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Of course, here, Russia has the advantage of being able to draw on a population more than three times that of Ukraine. Also, whereas Putin can simply order up more troops, Zelenskyy must get measures approved through parliament.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Aside from personnel, there is also the need for a steady supply of weapons and ammunition – and there have been reports that both sides are <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68364924" target="_blank">struggling to maintain</a> <a href="https://www.wbaltv.com/article/after-2-years-of-war-questions-abound-on-whether-kyiv-can-sustain-the-fight-against-russia/46940958" target="_blank">sufficient levels</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Russia appears particularly eager to boost its number of ballistic missiles, as they are better equipped for countering Ukraine's air defense systems despite being slower than cruise missiles.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Increasingly, Moscow appears to be looking to North Korea and Iran as suppliers. After Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader, visited Russia in 2023, the U.S. <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67888793" target="_blank">accused Pyongyang of supplying Russia</a> with ballistic missiles. Iran, meanwhile, has <a href="https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/arsenal-of-autocracy-north-korea-and-iran-are-arming-russia-in-ukraine/" target="_blank">delivered to Russia</a> a large number of powerful surface-to-surface ballistic missiles and drones.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Ukraine, meanwhile, is <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220610-ukraine-dependent-on-arms-from-allies-after-exhausting-soviet-era-weaponry" target="_blank">dependent on foreign military equipment.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Supplies were stronger at the beginning of the war, but since then, Ukraine’s military has suffered from the slow, bureaucratic nature of NATO and U.S. deliveries. It wasn’t, for example, until the summer of 2023 that the <a href="https://www.cfr.org/europe-and-eurasia/ukraine" target="_blank">U.S. approved Europe’s request</a> to provide F-16s to Ukraine.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Ukraine needs more of everything, including air defense munitions, artillery shells, tanks, and missile systems. It is also <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-ukraine-war-medical-care-frontlines/#:%7E:text=In%20an%20open%20letter%20recently,stabilization%20posts%20with%20supplies%20and" target="_blank">running short of medical supplies</a> and has seen hospital shortages of drugs at a time when <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/4371240-the-invisible-enemy-in-ukraine-superbugs/" target="_blank">rampant infections are proving resistant</a> to antibiotics.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Perhaps the biggest factor that remains in Russia’s favor when it comes to supplies is the onerous restrictions placed on Ukraine from the West, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-shouldnt-use-us-arms-inside-russia-us-general-says-2023-05-25/" target="_blank">limiting its ability</a> to attack Russian territory with U.S. or NATO equipment to avoid a wider war. For example, the Ukrainian military had a High Mobility Artillery Rocket System with a 50-mile range that could hit targets inside Russia, but it modified the range to keep the U.S. military satisfied that it would not cross a Russian red line.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> If this policy could be relaxed, that might be a game changer for Ukraine, although it would raise the stakes for the U.S.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>The information war</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The Ukraine conflict is also a war of messaging.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> To this end, Putin uses propaganda to bolster support for the campaign at home, while undermining support for Ukraine elsewhere – for example, by planting stories in Europe that cause disenchantment with the war. One outrageous claim in the early weeks of the war was that <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/19/politics/pro-russia-disinformation-report/index.html" target="_blank">Zelenskyy had taken his own life</a>. The rumor came from pro-Russia online operatives as part of an aggressive effort to harm Ukrainian morale, according to <a href="https://www.mandiant.com/resources/blog/information-operations-surrounding-ukraine" target="_blank">cybersecurity firm Mandiant</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> More recently, in France, stories appeared that questioned the value of assistance to Ukraine and reminded the public of the negative impact of Russian sanctions on the French. Stirring dissent in this way is a classic Putin play to raise doubts.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> And investigative reporting points toward a disinformation network being run out of the Kremlin, which includes social media bots deployed on Ukrainian sites spreading stories of Zelenskyy’s team being corrupt and warning that the war would go badly.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Given that Putin controls the Russian media and is quick to crack down on dissent, it is hard to really know what Russians think. But one reputable polling agency recently reported <a href="https://www.norc.org/research/projects/russian-public-opinion-wartime.html" target="_blank">strong support in Russia</a> for both Putin and the war in Ukraine.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Ukrainians, too, still <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/512258/ukrainians-stand-behind-war-effort-despite-fatigue.aspx" target="_blank">support the fight against Russia</a>, polling shows. But some war fatigue has no doubt lowered morale.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> There are other signs of domestic strain in Ukraine. At the end of 2023, tensions grew between Zelenskyy and his top military commander, General Valery Zaluzhny who had complained about weaponry. Zelenskyy ended up firing the military chief, risking political backlash and underscoring that not all is well in the top chain of command.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Should disunity and war fatigue continue into the war’s third year, it could seriously impair Ukraine’s ability to fight back against a resurgent Russian offensive.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>The politics of conflict</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> But it isn’t just domestic politics in Ukraine and Russia that will decide the outcome of the war.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> U.S. politics and European unity could be a factor in 2024 in determining the future of this conflict.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> In the U.S., Ukraine aid has become politicized – with aid to Ukraine <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/12/08/about-half-of-republicans-now-say-the-us-is-providing-too-much-aid-to-ukraine/" target="_blank">becoming an increasingly partisan issue.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> In early February, the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/12/politics/senate-foreign-aid-bill-ukraine/index.html" target="_blank">Senate finally passed an emergency aid bill</a> for Ukraine and Israel that would see US$60.1 billion go to Kyiv. But the bill’s fate in the House is unknown.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> And the looming 2024 presidential elections could complicate matters further. Former president Donald Trump has made no secret of his aversion to aid packages over loans, calling them “stupid,” and has long argued that Americans shouldn’t be footing the bill for the conflict. Recently, he has made bombastic statements about NATO and <a href="https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2024/02/13/how-donald-trumps-re-election-would-threaten-natos-article-5" target="_blank">threatened not to adhere</a> to the alliance’s commitment to protect members if they were attacked by Russia.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> And uncertainty about American assistance could leave Europe carrying more of the financial load.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> European Union members have had to absorb the majority of the <a href="https://www.cfr.org/expert/max-boot?utm_source=twtw&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=TWTW2024Feb23&utm_term=TWTW%20and%20All%20Staff%20as%20of%207-9-20" target="_blank">6.3 million Ukrainians who have fled the country</a> since the beginning of the conflict. And that puts a strain on resources. European oil needs also suffer from the sanctions against Russian companies.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Whether these potential war determinants – supplies, information, and politics – mean that the Ukraine war will not be entering a fourth year in 12 month's time, however, is far from certain. In fact, one thing that does appear clear is that the war that some predicted would be over in weeks looks set to continue for some time still.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9u_-R3LsNap8oEhl4EyZMucQL0h973Wlgl4FYps0Av7EZV9Ii6iii2_8juYd98__m-XLjJZWk-o_QULs5Q1VYafbufdM5jMXfDAw8hMeN56gsysCVqO5il5g-habepu6JcrkzZAEgcen5LgzDP54SDRYEGFjHtJpp3SW2QEt0p0mPp0EfsAp1hK4uiiJb/s238/Tara%20Sonenshine.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="238" data-original-width="238" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9u_-R3LsNap8oEhl4EyZMucQL0h973Wlgl4FYps0Av7EZV9Ii6iii2_8juYd98__m-XLjJZWk-o_QULs5Q1VYafbufdM5jMXfDAw8hMeN56gsysCVqO5il5g-habepu6JcrkzZAEgcen5LgzDP54SDRYEGFjHtJpp3SW2QEt0p0mPp0EfsAp1hK4uiiJb/w200-h200/Tara%20Sonenshine.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>About the author:</i> Tara Sonenshine is the Edward R. Murrow Professor of Practice in Public Diplomacy at <a href="https://www.tufts.edu/" target="_blank">Tufts University</a>.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>This article was published by <a href="https://theconversation.com/us" target="_blank">The Conversation</a>.</i> </span></p>Joseph O. Pattonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04830099575387185293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331546133526977388.post-4179921547810528422024-02-28T12:00:00.045-06:002024-02-28T12:00:00.134-06:00Immigrants do work that might not otherwise get done – bolstering the US economy<p><span style="font-size: large;"> Although Congress is failing to pass laws to restrict the number of migrants arriving in the U.S., a majority of Americans – about 6 in 10 – <a href="https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3889" target="_blank">believe there’s an immigration crisis</a> along the Mexico-U.S. border. Politicians who want fewer people to move here often cast those arriving without prior authorization as a <a href="https://kstp.com/kstp-news/top-news/lawmakers-push-north-star-act-in-effort-to-make-minnesota-sanctuary-state-republicans-warn-of-economic-burden/" target="_blank">burden on the economy</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> As an <a href="https://stockton.academia.edu/RamyaVIjaya" target="_blank">economist who has researched immigration and employment</a>, I’m <a href="https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2024-02/59710-Outlook-2024.pdf" target="_blank">confident that economic trends</a> and research findings contradict those arguments.<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The U.S. is <a href="https://www.uschamber.com/workforce/understanding-americas-labor-shortage" target="_blank">experiencing a labor market shortage</a> that is likely to last well into the future as the U.S.-born population gets older overall, <a href="https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2023/article/labor-force-and-macroeconomic-projections.htm" target="_blank">slowing growth in the number of workers.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Rather than a drain on the economy, an uptick in immigration presents an opportunity to alleviate this shortage. Data from <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13545701.2020.1759815" target="_blank">my own research</a> and studies conducted by other scholars show that immigrant workers in the U.S. are more likely to be active in the labor market – either employed or looking for work – and tend to <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-immigrant-workforce-supports-millions-of-u-s-jobs/" target="_blank">work in professions with</a> the most unmet demand.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Help really wanted</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The U.S. had <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/jolts.pdf" target="_blank">9 million job openings</a> in December 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The government agency also found that there were <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm" target="_blank">6.1 million unemployed people</a> actively seeking paid work.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Economists generally compare the two numbers to calculate the labor shortage. It currently stands at nearly 3 million workers, and the bureau expects this gap to grow as <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ecopro.pdf" target="_blank">the population ages and people have fewer children</a> over the next decade.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> In other words, the U.S. faces a long-term shortage of people looking for employment.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> That shortfall would be much bigger without foreign-born workers, who accounted for a <a href="https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2023/foreign-born-workers-were-a-record-high-18-1-percent-of-the-u-s-civilian-labor-force-in-2022.htm" target="_blank">record high of 18.1%</a> of the U.S. civilian labor force in 2022, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>More likely to be active in the workforce</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Another reason why immigrants can help fill that big hole in the U.S. labor market is that so many of them tend to be employed or are looking for work.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> About <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/forbrn.pdf" target="_blank">65.9% of all people who were born elsewhere</a> were either employed or actively looking for work as of 2022, in comparison to 61.5% of people born in the U.S.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> This difference has been <a href="https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2022/11/the-foreign-born-labor-force-of-the-united-states" target="_blank">consistent since 2007</a>, according to research by the Peterson Foundation, a think tank that focuses on long-term budget problems.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> In a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13545701.2020.1759815" target="_blank">study I conducted a few years ago</a>, I found that immigrants who arrive in the United States as refugees fleeing violence and persecution in their home countries are eventually more likely to be employed or looking for work than people who are born in the U.S.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>More home health aides and janitors</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Some of the labor market’s biggest shortages are especially acute in professions that tend to attract immigrants, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-daunting-economics-of-elder-care-are-about-to-get-much-worse-83123" target="_blank">such as home health aides</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The health care and social services sector as a whole has about <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.a.htm" target="_blank">1.8 million</a> open jobs, the largest number of job openings currently available.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> This is followed by professional and business services with 1.7 million open jobs. This <a href="https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag60.htm" target="_blank">category encompasses everything from legal services to janitorial work</a>, including cleaning and grounds maintenance.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Currently, about <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/forbrn.pdf" target="_blank">22% of employed immigrants work</a> in one of those two high-demand categories or another service occupation.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Making it easier to age in place</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> A team of economists has found that the<a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/roie.12607" target="_blank"> cost of home health care and support services is lower</a> than average in places with large numbers of immigrant service workers. This in turn makes it more likely that older adults can avoid institutionalization and stay in their own homes.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> But, to be sure, immigrant workers providing these vital community support services often <a href="https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/wage-theft-and-worker-exploitation-health-care/2022-09" target="_blank">endure exploitative</a> working conditions.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The labor market data not only makes it clear that the U.S. economy can absorb large numbers of immigrants, but it also shows that these newcomers could be a much-needed solution to a labor supply crisis.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> And yet people arriving in the U.S. as political asylum applicants are enduring backlogs and facing hurdles in securing employment authorization, which is delaying their entry into the workforce.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Wouldn’t it make more sense for Congress to expand pathways for legal employment access for migrants? From an economic perspective, that seems to be the most prudent course of action.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFvh8B9e8nGV_bpAU_9D4Mo8i62CJZHyA2_4SbG0iT3oAIxfUzCz0qzCytmr1uxuPwdytTz4FR9aFuSc216n-d6Iapf-1E2ihRhK4QCbiVvngiHqIOPtSJcxuXvJ4-4x-sGnN-IR2Ud5y4mDIjVCgv1cF_qFkf4BNigKCtpfvwcFRPpmXF_VBfq5WmzTUm/s170/Ramya%20Vijaya.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="170" data-original-width="170" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFvh8B9e8nGV_bpAU_9D4Mo8i62CJZHyA2_4SbG0iT3oAIxfUzCz0qzCytmr1uxuPwdytTz4FR9aFuSc216n-d6Iapf-1E2ihRhK4QCbiVvngiHqIOPtSJcxuXvJ4-4x-sGnN-IR2Ud5y4mDIjVCgv1cF_qFkf4BNigKCtpfvwcFRPpmXF_VBfq5WmzTUm/w200-h200/Ramya%20Vijaya.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>About the author:</i> Ramya Vijaya is a professor of economics at <a href="https://stockton.edu/" target="_blank">Stockton University</a>.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>This article was published by <a href="https://theconversation.com/us" target="_blank">The Conversation</a>.</i> </span></p>Joseph O. Pattonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04830099575387185293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331546133526977388.post-28406640772323444842024-02-27T12:00:00.048-06:002024-02-27T12:00:00.367-06:00The Alabama Legislature helped Tom Parker realize his medieval dreams<p><span style="font-size: large;"> When Alabama Chief Justice Tom Parker wrote a cheerleading concurrence in his colleagues’ decision <a href="https://alabamareflector.com/2024/02/19/alabama-supreme-court-ruling-could-end-ivf-treatments-in-state/" target="_blank">to effectively end in vitro fertilization in the state</a>, he cited Thomas Aquinas.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Aquinas, as I learned in Father Koterski’s philosophy class, was a Dominican theologian who spent most of his life trying to synthesize Catholic Church teachings with the philosophy of Aristotle. Koterski’s class focused on Aquinas’ thoughts about existence, in particular the idea of being as an act.<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> But Parker wasn’t writing about essence and existence. He was looking at Aquinas through Parker’s belief (as stated in his opinion) that “human beings bear God’s image from the moment of conception.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Parker wrote that Aquinas “distinguished human life from other things God made, including nonhuman life, on the ground that man was made in God’s image.” The chief justice also noted Aquinas’ highly original view that <a href="https://isidore.co/aquinas/english/summa/SS/SS064.html#SSQ64A6THEP1" target="_blank">murder is bad</a>. All of this factored into Parker’s conclusion that “human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God, who views the destruction of His image as an affront to Himself.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> But the modern Thomas seems to have a more conservative view of what a fertilized human egg is than the medieval one. The theologian, <a href="https://isidore.co/aquinas/english/ContraGentiles2.htm#88" target="_blank">citing Aristotle</a>, wrote that “the fetus is an animal before becoming a man.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> In fact, Aquinas wrote at length in “Summa Contra Gentiles” about how a man couldn’t, uh, <a href="https://isidore.co/aquinas/english/ContraGentiles2.htm#86" target="_blank">transmit</a> a soul during conception.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> “The human body, so far as it is in potentiality to the soul, as not yet having one, precedes the soul in time; it is, then, not actually human, but only potentially human,” <a href="https://isidore.co/aquinas/english/ContraGentiles2.htm#89" target="_blank">he wrote</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Conservative Catholics, noting the church does not condone in vitro fertilization, might argue that a friar from the 1200s would not look kindly on abortion. That’s fair, considering that Aquinas, in his “oracular celibacy” (as the historian Barbara Tuchman put it), would not look kindly on a modern woman doing literally anything. (Even Victorian women would be on notice.)</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> But we’re not talking about abortion. We’re talking about helping childless people have babies.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> And whether or not Aquinas would approve of IVF, I wouldn’t use his “Summa Theologica” to understand modern fertility treatments any more than I would use Dante Alighieri <a href="http://www.worldofdante.org/purgatory1.html" target="_blank">to pass a geography quiz on the southern hemisphere.</a> And yet Alabama’s chief justice cites a 750-year-old theology text to dictate health care to the rest of us.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> That Parker would take this approach isn’t surprising. The chief justice wants to impose reactionary Christianity on American democracy. Media Matters <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/alabama-supreme-court-chief-justice-spreads-christian-nationalist-rhetoric" target="_blank">uncovered a video</a> of an interview with Parker uploaded earlier this month where he told an interviewer that “God created government.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> “The fact we have let it go to the possession of others is heartbreaking for those of us who understand, and we know it is for Him,” he said.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The chief justice would build Zion <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/this-alabama-judge-has-figured-out-how-to-dismantle-roe-v-wade" target="_blank">by destroying reproductive rights</a>. So you might wonder why Parker attacked a procedure that, through 2019, led to the birth <a href="https://www.rbmojournal.com/article/S1472-6483(18)30598-4/pdf" target="_blank">of 8 million children</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> It’s because Parker’s project isn’t about life. It’s about control. Over women. And over the lawmaking process.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Parker’s colleagues on the court seemed to understand the pain they were about to inflict. Justice Greg Cook, the only dissenter in the ruling, urged the legislature “to promptly consider these issues to provide certainty to these Alabama parents-to-be and to the medical professionals who are attempting to provide services to them.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> And <a href="https://alabamareflector.com/2024/02/22/alabama-senator-planning-to-file-bill-that-could-protect-in-vitro-fertilization/" target="_blank">legislators are trying</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The problem is that Republican lawmakers in 2017 gave the state’s high court a veto over their efforts.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> That year, the legislature <a href="https://arc-sos.state.al.us/cgi/actdetail.mbr/detail?page=act&year=2017&act=188" target="_blank">passed a constitutional amendment</a> saying that “it is the public policy of this state to ensure the protection of the rights of the unborn child in all manners and measures lawful and appropriate.” Voters approved the measure the following year.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> It makes loosening any of Alabama’s <a href="https://law.justia.com/codes/alabama/2013/title-26/chapter-22/section-26-22-3/" target="_blank">draconian reproductive laws</a> very difficult.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Parker knows this. He wrote that the amendment “circumscribes the legislature’s discretion to determine public policy with regard to unborn life.” The chief justice added that any law “that contravenes the sanctity of unborn life is potentially subject to a constitutional challenge under the Alabama Constitution.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Sure sounds like the chief justice is inviting another anti-IVF lawsuit, doesn’t it?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Parker also strongly suggested that the court could only accept a law that imposed extremely tight restrictions on IVF, something no <a href="https://www.legislature.state.al.us/pdf/SearchableInstruments/2024RS/HB225-int.pdf" target="_blank">pending bill on the procedure</a> has in mind.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> To be sure, the chief justice won’t be on the bench for the next IVF battle. At 72, Parker is two years past Alabama’s mandatory retirement age for judges and not seeking re-election this year.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> But it’s hard to see how the all-Republican state Supreme Court gets past his reasoning. Justice Jay Mitchell’s majority opinion invited legislative action but also said the 2018 amendment “directly aimed at stopping courts from excluding ‘unborn life’ from legal protection.” Even without Parker, the court still has five justices (including Sarah Stewart, running to become the next chief justice) who fully agree with Mitchell. (Justices Brad Mendheim and William Sellers gave him qualified approval.)</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> This is the new Thomism. Aquinas saw an ordered world following God through the guidance of the Catholic Church. Parker sees the Alabama Supreme Court taking that role, with the chief justice as the interpreter of divine will.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Your views don’t matter. The pain of those wanting children is irrelevant. It’s all about eight judges making the world conform to their tendentious readings of the law.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Even Aquinas might have found this extreme.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> “The last end of human life is bliss or happiness,” <a href="https://isidore.co/aquinas/english/summa/FS/FS090.html#FSQ90A2THEP1" target="_blank">he wrote</a>. “Consequently the law must needs regard principally the relationship to happiness.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> To the Alabama Supreme Court, that’s a dangerously modern thought.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZhIN9xmqy76UpVK0zDomRL5ALhPDXTDembVf_pTgObMr5tdvsljFS2Gu74HvMMA2WuBmy-Dn3kgp11YY__m3Axa_jKrYgNMgDT5qzC2ClHNGDL-OBRzqVgYiZPSvbAp6l1RL8JTQ3WZGln_oHHqRoV5EY_BRcAGifvi_eVDaFwac_0wOyYXE1d1bF7FKD/s300/Brian%20Lyman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="300" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZhIN9xmqy76UpVK0zDomRL5ALhPDXTDembVf_pTgObMr5tdvsljFS2Gu74HvMMA2WuBmy-Dn3kgp11YY__m3Axa_jKrYgNMgDT5qzC2ClHNGDL-OBRzqVgYiZPSvbAp6l1RL8JTQ3WZGln_oHHqRoV5EY_BRcAGifvi_eVDaFwac_0wOyYXE1d1bF7FKD/w200-h200/Brian%20Lyman.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>About the author:</i> Brian Lyman is the editor of Alabama Reflector. He has covered Alabama politics since 2006 and worked at the Montgomery Advertiser, the Press-Register, and The Anniston Star. His work has won awards from the Associated Press Managing Editors, the Alabama Press Association, and the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>This article was published by <a href="https://alabamareflector.com/" target="_blank">Alabama Reflector</a>.</i></span></p>Joseph O. Pattonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04830099575387185293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331546133526977388.post-24994262023241319392024-02-26T12:00:00.046-06:002024-02-26T12:00:00.139-06:00IVF patient vows to fight for access to treatment in Alabama following court ruling<p><span style="font-size: large;"> Birmingham resident Hannah Miles has been trying to have a baby for more than three years, fighting obstacles like endometriosis, diminished ovarian reserve, and cancer treatment that affected her husband’s sperm. The couple is already nearly $40,000 into the in vitro fertilization process after one failed transfer into her uterus in January. Their last embryo is scheduled to be transferred on March 19.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> She messaged her IVF nurse through tears earlier this week, asking if she should continue the medication injections that cost $800 per vial out of pocket to keep her endometriosis from flaring up.<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Her clinic, Alabama Fertility, indicated her transfer can move forward, she said, but it has paused any new treatments or transfers because of the Feb. 16 ruling from the Alabama Supreme Court declaring that <a href="https://www.newsfromthestates.com/article/alabama-supreme-court-ruling-could-end-ivf-treatments-state" target="_blank">frozen embryos are equivalent to human children.</a> The clinic made a post on its <a href="https://www.facebook.com/alabamafertility/posts/pfbid023dsoBiETH5kXhT2TMCZ6mT681x6ah5s71QxT9fWom4LNPYd3x4KHSASkFhR2mDPzl" target="_blank">Facebook page</a> Thursday addressed to patients.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> That means Miles won’t have another shot at egg retrieval for the foreseeable future in Alabama if this one doesn’t work.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> IVF requires the collection of as many eggs as possible that are then fertilized. Some that would not make it after implantation in the uterus because of abnormalities or other health factors are destroyed. That could leave clinics open to prosecution as a result of the new ruling.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> “It’s heartbreaking, and it’s something you don’t think you’ll ever have to face,” Miles, 29, said. “Now we’re here, and we’re paying $20,000 a cycle in the hopes that maybe one day we’ll get a baby, and now we’re facing not even being able to pay exorbitant amounts of money to be able to have a baby.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The 8-1 decision, authored by Justice Jay Mitchell, has already led more clinics in Alabama to pause IVF treatments, including the state’s largest hospital, <a href="https://www.newsfromthestates.com/article/university-alabama-birmingham-pauses-ivf-treatments-after-court-ruling" target="_blank">the University of Alabama Birmingham</a>, for fear of prosecution. Companies have also decided to stop shipping frozen embryos to and from Alabama, according to <a href="https://resolve.org/statement-from-resolve-on-halt-of-embryo-shipping-services-in-alabama/" target="_blank">RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The ruling came as a shock to many Americans, but experts say it is the culmination of more than 40 years of efforts to grant “personhood” status to embryos and fetuses.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Sen. Tim Melson, chairman of the Alabama Senate Healthcare Committee, plans to introduce a bill that would protect IVF by saying an embryo should be considered a potential life but not a human life unless and until it is implanted in the uterus and a viable pregnancy can be detected. As of Friday, Feb. 23, Melson’s legislation <a href="https://alabamareflector.com/2024/02/22/alabama-senator-planning-to-file-bill-that-could-protect-in-vitro-fertilization/" target="_blank">hadn’t been introduced yet</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Miles and a few friends are hoping to make it to the Alabama Capitol on Feb. 28 for an advocacy day and to testify at a public hearing on a similar bill introduced by Democrats, <a href="https://www.legislature.state.al.us/pdf/SearchableInstruments/2024RS/HB225-int.pdf" target="_blank">House Bill 225</a>, if it’s being heard.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> “We have to do something about it,” Miles said. “It feels like there’s not much we can do, but we have to do something.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Previous ‘personhood’ efforts failed</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> It’s unclear whether the bill will conflict with the concurring opinion authored by Chief Justice Tom Parker, who wrote, “… any legislative (or executive) act that contravenes the sanctity of unborn life is potentially subject to a constitutional challenge under the Alabama Constitution.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Parker has long been active in the anti-abortion rights space, and his opinion quoted extensively from the Bible, using religious reasoning for the decision — something he has often done during his time on the court, according to <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/this-alabama-judge-has-figured-out-how-to-dismantle-roe-v-wade" target="_blank">ProPublica reporting</a> from 2014. He worked at former chief justice Roy Moore’s think tank, the Foundation for Moral Law, which promotes the idea that the Bible should be the basis of the law in America and championed the “personhood” movement in Alabama. Parker also served as Moore’s spokesperson during the controversy over a Ten Commandments monument that ultimately got Moore ousted from his position as a judge in 2003.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Margaret Marsh, historian and professor at Rutgers University, said many anti-abortion groups have opposed the fertility treatment since the world’s first IVF baby was born in 1978, calling it a “morally abhorrent” technology and successfully lobbying against federal funding for research using human embryos.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> “Their goal was to try to make sure that the American people would think of embryos as people,” Marsh said.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> In 1983, the U.S. Senate held a vote on the passage of a constitutional amendment to declare that human life begins at conception, but the measure was defeated. In the following years, at least 38 states passed “fetal homicide” laws that allowed prosecution for the death of a fetus as a result of domestic violence or other assault, and some included the option to prosecute a pregnant person for using drugs that caused the death of a fetus.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> But attempts to go further at the state level largely haven’t been successful, Marsh pointed out. In 2011, an initiative on the ballot in Mississippi that would have granted full personhood status to fertilized eggs failed by a vote of 57% to 42% after doctors and abortion rights groups raised concerns about the consequences it could have for birth control, IVF, and other reproductive care. A similar measure in North Dakota failed in 2014 by an even wider margin, 64% to 35%.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> “If these things are put to a vote, for the most part, the voters have turned them down, and I think it is likely because they are thinking of either themselves needing infertility treatment, or their friends, or their sisters,” Marsh said. “So they may be anti-abortion, but I don’t think they see assisted reproductive technology in the same way they see being pregnant and having an abortion.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Legislation weighed in other statehouses</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Several state legislatures have considered bills this year that relate to “fetal personhood” laws, including Kansas, Florida, and Idaho. A bill in Idaho to change the words “embryo” and “fetus” in state law to “preborn children” was <a href="https://idahocapitalsun.com/2024/01/22/bill-seeking-to-change-fetus-to-preborn-child-in-idaho-state-law-held-in-committee/" target="_blank">pulled back</a> earlier in the session when a doctor from a local IVF clinic raised concerns about its implications for fertility treatments.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <a href="https://kansasreflector.com/2024/02/12/new-legislation-would-redefine-fetuses-as-kansas-children/" target="_blank">Kansas’ bill</a> specifies that the embryo must be “in utero,” but it would allow pregnant people to seek child support at any stage of gestation. Representatives for Planned Parenthood in Kansas said it’s a tactic to open the door for anti-abortion laws, two years after voters soundly rejected an attempt to amend the constitution to ban abortion in the state.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> In Florida, the legislature is considering <a href="https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2024/476/?Tab=BillHistory" target="_blank">a bill</a> that would add a fetus to those who could be counted in a wrongful death lawsuit. An amendment would establish that the fetus is a person from conception, according to <a href="https://floridaphoenix.com/2024/02/15/abortion-rights-advocates-slam-bill-establishing-personhood-at-conception-in-wrongful-death-suits/" target="_blank">Florida Phoenix</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The state with one of the most successful personhood laws is Georgia, where abortion is banned after six weeks, and any embryo or fetus with detectable cardiac activity can be claimed as a dependent on a resident’s tax returns.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Shana Gadarian, a political scientist professor at Syracuse University who studies public opinion, said despite the support at the legislative level for such laws, she’s not sure this latest development out of Alabama will be politically popular with the majority of the country.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> “IVF is a pretty common procedure now, and if someone directly hasn’t gone through it, it is relatively common among groups that are more likely to be conservative,” Gadarian said. “These are procedures people think of as important in their own lives and are probably separable from abortion.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Polling from the <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/09/14/a-growing-share-of-americans-say-theyve-had-fertility-treatments-or-know-someone-who-has/" target="_blank">Pew Research Center</a> in 2023 found that 42% of adults in the U.S. say they or someone they know has used fertility treatments, and a majority of Democrats and Republicans surveyed thought insurance should cover the treatments. Less than half of the country has mandated insurance coverage for IVF, according to <a href="https://stateline.org/2023/07/28/fertility-health-coverage-is-still-hard-to-come-by-in-many-states/" target="_blank">Stateline</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Whatever happens next, Miles said she’s ready to contact her representatives at the local, state, and federal levels to change the laws, including helping to elect Democrat Greg Griffin, who’s running to replace Parker as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> “Until IVF is protected at the federal level, we are all at risk of having something like this happen,” Miles said. “There is no one angrier at the world than someone going through IVF. They’ve pissed off the wrong people.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxjBndCliNk3VH1FG6S8IVg6ph2K7mgUfewIMiQ74LVK24PNscpSUH2JC5wQHVc-NBvpQde29IpUhRuaz1yRAOmpWuiPLZHGgLfjQaETw_Y70VXakq3GI9rhyphenhyphenTBT6yNRIDepmCeU7efTRtTYiB0Ceukhu4YZ7mdJYhN-eYuhlrrj1MpdlNP3BAx3hC5Zxd/s242/Kelcie%20Moseley-Morris.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="242" data-original-width="242" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxjBndCliNk3VH1FG6S8IVg6ph2K7mgUfewIMiQ74LVK24PNscpSUH2JC5wQHVc-NBvpQde29IpUhRuaz1yRAOmpWuiPLZHGgLfjQaETw_Y70VXakq3GI9rhyphenhyphenTBT6yNRIDepmCeU7efTRtTYiB0Ceukhu4YZ7mdJYhN-eYuhlrrj1MpdlNP3BAx3hC5Zxd/w200-h200/Kelcie%20Moseley-Morris.png" width="200" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>About the author:</i> Kelcie Moseley-Morris is an award-winning journalist who has covered many topics since 2011. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Idaho and a master’s degree in public administration from Boise State University. Moseley-Morris started her journalism career at the Moscow-Pullman Daily News, followed by the Lewiston Tribune and the Idaho Press. She covers reproductive rights for States Newsroom.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>This article was published by <a href="https://statesnewsroom.com/" target="_blank">States Newsroom</a>.</i></span></p>Joseph O. Pattonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04830099575387185293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331546133526977388.post-13562545159724074142024-02-25T12:00:00.082-06:002024-02-25T12:00:00.138-06:00The NetChoice cases: Will the Supreme Court turn First Amendment law on its head?<p><span style="font-size: large;"> On February 26, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in two cases—NetChoice v. Paxton and Moody v. NetChoice—that address whether Florida and Texas can enact laws prohibiting social media platforms from moderating content posted by their users.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The Florida <a href="https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2021/7072/BillText/er/HTML" target="_blank">law</a> predominantly limits social media platforms’ ability to “censor”—demonetize, remove, or otherwise restrict—political candidates and certain journalistic outlets. It would also prevent the platforms from moderating harmful mis- and disinformation from several sources, even prohibiting them from attaching labels that guide users to verified information. The Texas <a href="https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/872/billtext/html/HB00020F.HTM" target="_blank">law</a> is far broader, preventing most widely used websites, from Facebook and X, formerly known as Twitter, to Etsy and Yelp, from enforcing community standards by prohibiting the removal of nearly any content that’s based on viewpoint. This includes preventing the removal of heinous and objectionable material—Nazi propaganda, deepfakes, socially damaging conspiracy theories, etc.—from any platform unless it falls under specific narrow exceptions, particularly within the narrowly and technically legal definition of being “unlawful.”<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> These laws, especially the Texas bill, would effectively allow extreme content to thrive on mainstream websites and platforms, while allowing platforms catering to the fringes to remove content at will.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>The lower courts’ conflicting rulings</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The Supreme Court has <a href="https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/encyclopedia/case/corporations-first-amendment-rights/" target="_blank">long held</a> that corporations, being made up of people, have free speech rights under the First Amendment. Any effort by the government to require or prohibit a private actor to speak must survive <a href="https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/IF11072.pdf" target="_blank">strict scrutiny</a> by the courts, which very rarely occurs. These cases involve laws that both compel and prohibit private actors from engaging in speech, as noted above. However, the lower courts split on whether the states’ mandates to social media platforms are permitted.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit struck down portions of the Florida law, <a href="https://casetext.com/case/netchoice-llc-v-attorney-gen" target="_blank">finding</a> that the law violated the First Amendment’s prohibition on government actors restricting private parties’ speech. The court wrote, “Put simply, with minor exceptions, the government can’t tell a private person or entity what to say or how to say it.” Conversely, the <a href="https://www.democracydocket.com/analysis/how-the-5th-circuit-is-dismantling-democracy/" target="_blank">increasingly extreme</a> <a href="https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a42709368/5th-circuit-court-conservatives/" target="_blank">U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit</a> issued a <a href="https://casetext.com/case/netchoice-llc-v-paxton-2" target="_blank">62-page opinion</a> turning this basic concept on its head. That court upheld the Texas law, allowing the state to prohibit private entities from enforcing their online community standards, including the removal of hate speech, misinformation, oblique calls to violence, and other posts that the private companies deemed inappropriate to platform.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> While there are legitimate concerns with the concentration of expression online in a handful of social media platforms and with the desire for states to respond with regulation, that does not justify brazen political attempts to toss out hundreds of years of First Amendment jurisprudence. Further, these cases are coming before the Supreme Court against the backdrop of the Senate’s <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/31/tech/big-tech-executives-senate-hearing-teens/index.html" target="_blank">bipartisan hearings</a> to address the societal damage taking place across the United States due to near-universal under–moderation by social media platforms.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>The who, what, and why of the NetChoice cases</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><u>Who:</u></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The NetChoice litigants, along with the Computer and Communications Industry Association, represent the broader computing and online industry, not just the social media platforms that are the immediate target of the Texas and Florida laws. The states passed these laws within a broader political landscape in which conservatives have decried social media’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/09/trump-twitter-republicans-democrats" target="_blank">supposed censorship</a> of their voices, despite studies showing <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/26/censorship-conservatives-social-media-432643" target="_blank">conservative posts dominating progressive posts</a> on the platforms in terms of engagement by an almost 10-to-1 margin. As the 11th Circuit <a href="https://casetext.com/case/netchoice-llc-v-attorney-gen" target="_blank">noted</a>, the intent of the Florida statute was to coerce and prohibit the speech of social media platforms to, as Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R-FL) signing statement reads, “combat the ‘biased silencing’ of ‘our freedom of speech as conservatives … by the ‘big tech’ oligarchs in Silicon Valley.” Even some Republican state legislators <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2021/09/02/texas-social-media-censorship-legislature/" target="_blank">recognized the First Amendment violations</a> built into these statutes; state Rep. Giovanni Capriglione (TX), for example, <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2021/09/02/texas-social-media-censorship-legislature/" target="_blank">asked</a>, “How will a government not use this slippery slope to mandate how other companies and what they can or cannot allow their customers to say or to do, conducting private transactions.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><u>What:</u></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The Florida law, <a href="https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2021/7072/BillText/er/HTML" target="_blank">S.B. 7072</a>, prohibits platforms from deplatforming posts by or about political candidates for office and from censoring or limiting user visibility. These provisions apply not just to social media sites, but also to search engines and even comment sections of websites if they have enough users. The law would prohibit most major websites from being able to police their community standards when those standards apply to candidates as broadly defined by the Florida law. Due to the difficulty of determining which Florida users might be candidates, this statute could have the practical effect of broadly stopping or reducing the removal of hateful, inciting, and nongermane posts. Platforms would also be prohibited from changing their terms of service more than once every 30 days, severely limiting their flexibility to deal with rapidly developing conditions.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The Texas law, <a href="https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/872/billtext/pdf/HB00020F.pdf#navpanes=0" target="_blank">H.B. 20</a>, is more expansive, applying to posts by and about users who reside, conduct business, or share or receive content in Texas, not just political candidates for office; it also has a lower threshold for the minimum number of users on websites to which it applies. It prohibits websites and platforms from “censoring” any content except “unlawful expression,” which is an <a href="https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/unprotected-speech-synopsis" target="_blank">incredibly narrow definition</a> that effectively only includes incitement to violence, true threats, and sometimes obscenity and defamation. Websites will not be able to remove or limit the scope of spam, scams, hate speech, misinformation, harassment, and a host of other harmful communications. The broad ban on content moderation could also prevent social media sites from using their algorithms to provide users with their preferred content because failing to keep all posts on an equal footing could be considered censorship.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> These laws, if upheld, will affect the ability of platforms and websites to respond to emerging threats and challenges in the digital space. Some examples include countering misinformation from foreign sources during crucial events such as <a href="https://www.usip.org/publications/2024/01/disinformation-casts-shadow-over-global-elections" target="_blank">elections</a> or crisis events such as the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/01/christchurch-victims-were-left-alone-in-mosque-for-10-minutes-amid-chaos-of-attack-inquest-hears" target="_blank">Christchurch shooting</a> in New Zealand, where a man radicalized online livestreamed his white supremacist attack and massacre of 50 people at two mosques. The Texas law would require content originating from the United States that is not illegal—even if awful and grotesque—to remain on social media platforms, comment and review pages, and any other forum where public posting is permitted. Under the <a href="https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2021/7072/BillText/er/HTML" target="_blank">Florida law</a>, platforms could not deprioritize hateful or grotesque posts without providing the user notice and potentially being subject to significant penalties.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The Florida and Texas laws could also significantly erode safety tools that social media platforms and websites use to keep users, especially minors, safe from distressing material and sensitive content that is still lawful. For instance, YouTube Kids, which is designed for children, could be prohibited from removing offensive content that is nonetheless legal or be required to host political content if it reaches the user thresholds set by the states.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Indeed, the <a href="https://slate.com/technology/2022/05/texas-internet-censorship-social-media-first-amendment-fifth-circuit.html" target="_blank">implementation of these laws may be impossible</a> for large existing platforms to operationalize in practice, leaving the possibility that companies may need to resort to more extreme measures. <a href="https://transparency.fb.com/reports/content-restrictions/" target="_blank">Some</a> <a href="https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/post-withheld-by-country" target="_blank">companies</a> have implemented the ability to block certain content in certain geographic areas due to restrictions from local law; however, the Florida and Texas laws demand the opposite, that content be left unrestricted. If compliance with these laws is nearly impossible or too high risk, companies might be forced to consider more extreme measures such as blocking access to their sites in those states, a practice normally exercised in the reverse by repressive <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/04/russia-completely-blocks-access-to-facebook-and-twitter" target="_blank">governments</a> seeking to block access, <a href="https://www.protocol.com/policy/hb-20-fifth-circuit-questions" target="_blank">though the Texas law attempts to prevent that.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><u>Why:</u></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> These laws are part of a larger push by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/28/section-230-congress-hearings-facebook-google-twitter-trump-republicans" target="_blank">right-wing</a> interests <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/legal-right-to-post-free-speech-social-media/672406/" target="_blank">to prohibit social media platforms</a> and other websites from <a href="https://oversight.house.gov/release/the-cover-up-big-tech-the-swamp-and-mainstream-media-coordinated-to-censor-americans-free-speech-%EF%BF%BC/" target="_blank">engaging in content moderation</a> that will allow societally harmful mis- and disinformation—such as <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9359307/" target="_blank">anti-vaccine</a>, <a href="https://www.jmir.org/2022/2/e35552" target="_blank">COVID-19 hoaxes</a>, <a href="https://www.techpolicy.press/confronting-the-threat-of-deepfakes-in-politics/" target="_blank">deepfakes</a>, and <a href="https://www.brandeis.edu/jewish-experience/social-justice/2022/may/antisemitism-social-media.html" target="_blank">antisemitic</a> and <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/the-us-is-exporting-anti-lgbtq-hate-online/" target="_blank">anti-LBGTQ propaganda</a>—to prosper. In congressional hearings, Republican members have been critical of social media platforms for allegedly “censoring” right-wing speech and deplatforming former President Donald Trump in the wake of the January 6 insurrection. As the 11th Circuit <a href="https://casetext.com/case/netchoice-llc-v-attorney-gen" target="_blank">noted</a> in its opinion, these state laws were explicit that their intent in compelling the platforms to host speech was based on political motives, not good policy. These laws come at a time when not only are <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/08/18/more-americans-now-say-government-should-take-steps-to-restrict-false-information-online-than-in-2018/" target="_blank">more Americans</a> asking that online mis- and disinformation be more restricted, but the threat from <a href="https://www.newamerica.org/political-reform/reports/why-americans-crave-fake-news/the-problem-of-misinformation-in-a-democracy/" target="_blank">mis-</a> and <a href="https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/fr/node/1503/printable/pdf" target="_blank">disinformation</a> to <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/misinformation-is-eroding-the-publics-confidence-in-democracy/" target="_blank">democracy</a> is growing.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Conclusion</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Paradoxically, this effort to enforce “free expression” would lead to a landscape where extremist and defamatory content flourishes and mainstream content is pushed to the fringes.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> For example, under the Texas law, Facebook and X would be required to host the white nationalist and antisemitic posts that the Tree of Life synagogue shooter shared on their sites from the extreme, far-right social media platform Gab, so long as those posts do not constitute a “true threat” of violence. However, an individual refuting antisemitism or pushing progressive ideals on <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/17/tech/what-is-gab-explainer/index.html" target="_blank">Gab</a>, or even <a href="https://www.searchlogistics.com/learn/statistics/truth-social-statistics/" target="_blank">Truth Social</a>, could legally have their posts removed because the platforms do not meet the threshold user base to apply the Texas law.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Beyond creating this paradox, a Supreme Court ruling upholding these state laws would be earth-shattering in its defiance of the U.S. Constitution. Not only would it reverse centuries of First Amendment jurisprudence, but it also could result in vast economic and social harm. The internet is a huge driver of the economy, and upholding these laws would subject platforms to a difficult, if not impossible, patchwork of state laws to comply with and open them up to innumerable lawsuits. As to societal damage, the provision in the Florida law prohibiting changes to terms of service to once every 30 days would eliminate <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-277/291860/20231130111448519_2023-11-30%20Final%20NetChoice%20merits%20brief.pdf" target="_blank">the agility platforms and websites need to react</a> to unique challenges and rapidly changing threat landscapes to prevent the spread of dangerous content and misinformation. It could also significantly <a href="https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/2023-12/Moody-v-NetChoice-and-NetChoice-v-Paxton.pdf" target="_blank">limit the use of safety tools by platforms</a>, such as blurring harmful or sensitive content based on age restrictions; flagging content as sensitive; or adding notes to posts attaching warnings or resources for topics such as eating disorders or self-injury. More concerningly, if the Texas law were permitted to stand, it could effectively establish the entire internet as a haven for extremism—rather than keeping it relegated to niche traffic and the darker corners of the internet.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>About the authors:</i> Devon Ombres is the senior director for courts and legal policy at the <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/" target="_blank">Center for American Progress</a>. Nicole Alvarez is a senior policy analyst for technology policy at the Center for American Progress. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>This article was published by the Center for American Progress.</i></span></p>Joseph O. Pattonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04830099575387185293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331546133526977388.post-91349040388234387182024-02-24T12:00:00.049-06:002024-02-24T12:00:00.140-06:00Alabama can’t look away from difficult history<p><span style="font-size: large;"> Rep. Ed Oliver (R-Dadeville) <a href="https://www.alreporter.com/2024/01/09/state-rep-oliver-confident-in-passage-of-divisive-concepts-bill/" target="_blank">predicted</a> in January that a “divisive concepts” bill — which presumes exposure to hard or unflattering history will melt children into gelatin — would pass in the first or second week of the legislative session.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> And happy Black History Month to you, too. The good news is that the 2024 Alabama Legislature finished its second week last Thursday without the bill — sponsored by Oliver over the last several years — rearing its rage-choked head in the Statehouse.<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> However, the legislative session is only 20% complete. Maybe we’ll see it filed in March for Women’s History Month.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Then advocates can claim to be mad about — oh, I don’t know. Let’s go with telling school kids that Alabama excluded women <a href="https://www.alabamapioneers.com/women-were-not-considered-full-citizens-in-alabama-in-1965/" target="_blank">from state juries</a> until 1966.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> I’m always struck by the presumption that Americans are too brittle to have a clear view of history. Most of us can acknowledge that our country has done terrible things and not spontaneously combust. I want my kids to learn this so they can learn from the people who called us to be better.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> For decades, the broader culture denied us these stories.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Read old newspapers and old history books — anything published before, say, 1970 — and you won’t find a lot about Black Americans.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> What turns up is often ugly and vindictive. But the absences are just as striking.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Growing up, I had Volume 12 of the Golden Book Encyclopedia, published in 1959. It included an entry on Robert Peary’s (now discredited) discovery of the North Pole. Matthew Henson, who mastered Inuit languages; who was responsible for getting the party as far as it went and who happened to be Black, was referred <a href="https://archive.org/details/goldenbookencycl12park/page/1070/mode/2up" target="_blank">to like this</a>:</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>“At last Peary had with him only one Negro, four Eskimos and 38 dogs. With them he reached the North Pole.”</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> No names for Henson or his Inuit companions. No testimony to Henson’s skills.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> In many cases, exclusion was deliberate. As Kyle Whitmire <a href="https://www.al.com/news/2022/02/how-a-confederate-daughter-rewrote-alabama-history-for-white-supremacy.html" target="_blank">has written</a>, Marie Bankhead Owen, the guiding force of the Alabama Department of Archives and History from 1920 to 1955, ignored or neglected Black history and helped write textbooks that shoved Black Alabamians out of the narrative.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> This neglect is apparent in much of the material in the Archives. Enslaved people show up as items for sale and afterthoughts in family records. There’s a file from 1901 on <a href="https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/2018/04/24/murder-robin-white-george-howard-eji-montgomery-lynching-memorial-legacy-museum-peace-montgomery/499623002/" target="_blank">the lynching of Robert White</a>, a Black man from Elmore County. White is barely mentioned and his murderers are treated as the salt of the Earth. (Archives leadership today is doing all it can to undo the damage. That makes the legislature’s <a href="https://alabamareflector.com/2024/02/15/alabama-senate-approves-bills-subjecting-archives-trustees-library-board-members-to-dismissal/" target="_blank">attack on its independence</a> even more troubling.)</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>‘Inspiration to achieve as well as they did’</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The historian Carter Woodson’s goal in 1926 when he launched the predecessor to Black History Month, known as Negro History Week, was the restoration of this past. Woodson saw honest history as a means of liberation and a rebuke to racial prejudice. As he wrote, without history, Black Americans would become “a negligible factor in the thought of the world.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> It’s easy to see how excluding Black history made it easier to justify segregation and voter suppression. Putting a boot on a person’s neck is much easier if you don’t see them as part of your community.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> And it’s hard not to connect the Alabama Legislature’s attempts to restrict Black history to other efforts apparently aimed at shoving Black Alabamians off the political stage.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> After a court order, state lawmakers to draw a new congressional district where Black voters could have a chance to elect a new member of Congress, legislators defied the federal judiciary and forced the court <a href="https://alabamareflector.com/2023/10/05/federal-court-selects-new-alabama-congressional-map/" target="_blank">to draw the district itself</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> The Senate last week <a href="https://alabamareflector.com/2024/02/14/alabama-senate-approves-harsher-penalties-for-some-absentee-ballot-assistance/" target="_blank">approved a bill</a> attacking absentee ballot assistance in the name of fighting voter fraud. The measure drew a lengthy filibuster from Democrats, who noted that it would hurt the ability of older rural voters, many of them Black, to cast ballots.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> History tells us this has happened before.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> White politicians launched the Jim Crow era by slashing public school funding and pushing Black voters into voting districts where <a href="https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/in-depth/news/2020/02/26/jeremiah-haralson-lost-congressman-alabama/2823015001/" target="_blank">white racists could threaten them</a>. Voter fraud, nearly always unproven, was the varnish they applied to a thoroughly racist project.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Not that the architects of Jim Crow were above cheating. A 1901 constitutional convention was called through fraud. The state constitution that emerged, and took the vote away from Black Alabamians, only won approval because white planters in the Black Belt stuffed ballot boxes.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> We know — or at least we ought to know — the fruits of paranoia about Black Alabamians exercising basic constitutional rights: <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/16thstreetbaptist.htm" target="_blank">church bombings</a> and <a href="https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/mar/07" target="_blank">mob violence</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> A state that claims to have left those terrible scenes in the past would acknowledge that history and the brave men and women <a href="https://alabamareflector.com/2024/02/14/equal-justice-initiative-unveils-statue-of-rosa-parks/" target="_blank">who fought back</a>. It could build a government that treats its authoritarian past as a challenge to make a better future.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> If our leaders love America, they can face our shame. Acknowledging the wounds does not mean abandoning the patient.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> That was Woodson’s vision of Black history. At its very base, he wanted us to see that Black Americans had shaped and directed the nation. Those stories, he believed, would make the United States a better place.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> “We must go back to the achievements of these Black men, then, and looking into these Black faces of heroes and heroines, get inspiration to achieve as well as they did,” <a href="https://archive.org/details/carter-woodson-sacrifice/page/81/mode/2up" target="_blank">he wrote in 1932</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> But the supporters of “divisive concepts” bills look at those heroes and heroines and can’t see past the shame. Or they see those men and women, who knew the hell of terror and disenfranchisement, staring back at them.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> They can’t handle the eyes of history. And they want us all to look away.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxb2NJn11w55jGWa928BfubP-YBend0KWWWdvSNoMnqD-s1MPDtAJoIUuIS4bqU1FFqNaEvvcYpetfX2xOe8ZZAGv9aS7fcL6NKnF3B3aragYKnlWsOdhhNCunnfOTam9VA06_ynQzNR65nAw0jTqv4x-_qMiTjBjiXKvzWtpoyrmqUngVUPzLnmRHyYtG/s300/Brian%20Lyman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="300" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxb2NJn11w55jGWa928BfubP-YBend0KWWWdvSNoMnqD-s1MPDtAJoIUuIS4bqU1FFqNaEvvcYpetfX2xOe8ZZAGv9aS7fcL6NKnF3B3aragYKnlWsOdhhNCunnfOTam9VA06_ynQzNR65nAw0jTqv4x-_qMiTjBjiXKvzWtpoyrmqUngVUPzLnmRHyYtG/w200-h200/Brian%20Lyman.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>About the author:</i> Brian Lyman is the editor of Alabama Reflector. He has covered Alabama politics since 2006 and worked at the Montgomery Advertiser, the Press-Register, and The Anniston Star. His work has won awards from the Associated Press Managing Editors, the Alabama Press Association, and the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>This article was published by <a href="https://alabamareflector.com/" target="_blank">Alabama Reflector</a>.</i></span></p>Joseph O. Pattonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04830099575387185293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331546133526977388.post-17175575652170827522024-02-23T12:00:00.000-06:002024-02-23T12:00:00.139-06:00Voters don’t always have final say – state legislatures and governors are increasingly undermining ballot measures that win<p><span style="font-size: large;"> <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2023/11/14/confidence-in-scientists-medical-scientists-and-other-groups-and-institutions-in-society/" target="_blank">Less than half of Americans</a> trust elected officials to act in the public’s interest.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> When voters want something done on an issue and their elected officials fail to act, they may turn to citizen initiatives to pursue their goals instead. The citizen initiative process varies by state, but in general, citizens collect signatures to have an issue put directly on the ballot for the voters to voice their preferences. Nearly half the states, 24 of them, <a href="https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/initiative-and-referendum-processes" target="_blank">allow citizen initiatives</a>.<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> These measures, also called “ballot initiatives,” often focus on the controversial issues of the day. Citizen initiatives <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Marriage_and_family_on_the_ballot" target="_blank">on same-sex marriage</a> and <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0955395922000056" target="_blank">marijuana legalization</a> have been on many state ballots through the years. Abortion rights have repeatedly <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/abortion-rights-won-every-election-roe-v-wade-overturned-rcna99031" target="_blank">been on the ballot since 2022</a>, after the Supreme Court <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2021/19-1392" target="_blank">overturned the constitutional protection for abortion</a>, and more voters can expect to <a href="https://apnews.com/article/abortion-ballot-measure-2024-state-vote-e7d635835dc3a440789ad87787553ec1" target="_blank">vote on the issue in 2024</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> I am an <a href="https://annewhitesell.com/research-2/" target="_blank">American politics scholar</a> who studies the connection between representation and public policy. In American democracy, the people expect to have a voice, whether that comes through electing representatives or directly voting on issues.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Yet it is <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-12/where-the-people-s-vote-can-be-negated-by-legislators" target="_blank">becoming increasingly common</a> for lawmakers across the country to not only ignore the will of the people, but also actively work against it. From 2010 to 2015, about 21% of citizen initiatives were <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Legislative_alterations_of_ballot_initiatives" target="_blank">altered by lawmakers</a> after they passed. From 2016 to 2018, lawmakers altered nearly 36% of passed citizen initiatives.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Invalidate, weaken, repeal</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Here’s what some of those cases look like, from successful to unsuccessful efforts to alter the will of the people:</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">• In November 2023, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/ohio-abortion-amendment-election-2023-fe3e06747b616507d8ca21ea26485270" target="_blank">Ohio voters passed an amendment to their state’s constitution</a> protecting the right to abortion. Within a week, a group of Ohio Republican lawmakers <a href="https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2023/11/13/some-ohio-gop-lawmakers-attempting-to-undermine-democratic-process-after-voters-protect-abortion/" target="_blank">declared the amendment to be invalid</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/17/ohio-abortion-rights-republicans-overturn" target="_blank">introduced legislation</a> that would strip state courts from having authority to rule on the issue of abortion. Ohio House Speaker, Republican Jason Stephens, <a href="https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2023/11/15/pumping-the-brakes-ohio-house-speaker-dismisses-effort-to-limit-court-jurisdiction-on-issue-1/" target="_blank">rejected the proposed legislation.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">• In July 2018, Washington, D.C., voters approved an increase in the minimum wage for tipped workers. Three months later, the D.C. City Council <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Washington,_D.C.,_Initiative_77,_Minimum_Wage_Increase_for_Tipped_Workers_(June_2018)" target="_blank">repealed the initiative.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">• In 2016, voters in South Dakota <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/results/south-dakota-ballot-measure-22-campaign-finance-overhaul" target="_blank">supported an initiative</a> to revise campaign finance and lobbying laws and create an ethics commission. Gov. Dennis Daugaard <a href="https://www.argusleader.com/story/news/politics/2017/02/02/daugaard-signs-bill-eliminating-voter-approved-ethics-law/97399274/" target="_blank">signed a law</a> repealing the initiative in February 2017. Another citizen initiative to create an ethics commission was <a href="https://www.governing.com/archive/gov-campaign-finance-ethics-ballot-measures-2018.html" target="_blank">on the ballot in 2018</a>, but did not pass.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Revise and amend</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Often lawmakers rewrite laws passed through initiative. Some revisions change key components of the initiatives, while others amend technical details.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">• <a href="https://boltsmag.org/ohio-voters-issue-2-legalized-marijuana-equity-provisions-expungement/" target="_blank">Ohioans voted in favor of legalizing marijuana</a> in November 2023. In that initiative, part of the tax revenue from marijuana sales would go to a financial assistance program for those who show “social and economic disadvantage.” The Ohio Senate <a href="https://www.cleveland19.com/2023/12/09/breaking-down-bud-ohio-senate-passes-bill-that-nixes-social-equity-fund-put-place-under-issue-2/" target="_blank">passed a bill</a> the following month that would instead use the tax revenue to fund jails and law enforcement.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">• Massachusetts voters <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Massachusetts_Marijuana_Legalization,_Question_4_(2016)#:%7E:text=The%20law%20implemented%20the%20following,retailer%20operating%20within%20the%20locality." target="_blank">passed recreational marijuana legalization</a> in 2016. In 2017, the legislature passed a bill to <a href="https://apnews.com/general-news-3cbe8b27c83144f391713d6d1fb31978" target="_blank">increase the excise tax</a> on marijuana from the 3.75% set in the citizens’ initiative to 10.75%.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">• In 2018, Utah voters made adults with income up to 138% of the federal poverty level eligible for Medicaid – a federal-state health insurance program for low-income individuals and those with disabilities. The state legislature applied to the federal government for waivers to <a href="https://www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2019/one-step-forward-two-steps-back-utahs-medicaid-expansion" target="_blank">lower the income limit to 100% of the federal poverty level</a>, which curtailed the expansion voters approved.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">• Arizona voters <a href="https://apnews.com/general-news-971374029a2af7d8f67b8366bdd89c3b" target="_blank">approved a tax increase</a> on the wealthy to fund the state’s schools in 2020. In 2021, the legislature responded by <a href="https://apps.azleg.gov/BillStatus/BillOverview/75928" target="_blank">exempting business earnings from the tax</a>. There was an attempt by citizen initiative later that year to <a href="https://apnews.com/article/business-arizona-phoenix-doug-ducey-arizona-supreme-court-b8adfe654d0a5aa12b5054170e0f7df4" target="_blank">repeal the legislature’s law exempting business earnings</a>, but it did not gather enough signatures from citizens to make it to the ballot.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Governors object</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> In some cases, it is not the legislature that opposes the will of the voters, but the governor. In recent years, several Republican governors have refused to implement Medicaid expansions passed by voter initiatives.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">• Maine’s former governor, Paul LePage, said he would go to jail before he would <a href="https://www.pressherald.com/2018/07/12/paul-lepage-says-hed-go-to-jail-before-he-expands-medicaid/" target="_blank">implement Medicaid expansion</a> after it passed by voter initiative in 2017. Medicaid was not expanded until <a href="https://www.pressherald.com/2019/01/03/mills-signs-executive-order-to-implement-medicaid-expansion/" target="_blank">Democrat Janet Mills took office</a> in 2019.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">• <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/missouri-governor-won-t-fund-medicaid-expansion-flouting-state-constitution-n1267265" target="_blank">Missouri Governor Mike Parson</a> said he would not move forward with the 2020 voter-passed Medicaid expansion because it would not pay for itself. In 2021, the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/courts-michael-brown-medicaid-3690befde29aa1b27406a3472fb566aa" target="_blank">Missouri Supreme Court</a> ruled the initiative valid and Medicaid expansion moved forward.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Why they do it</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Lawmakers who rewrite or overturn ballot initiatives sometimes argue that voters do not understand what they are supporting. Lawmakers, unlike citizens, have to balance state budgets every year, and they often raise questions about how to pay for the policies or programs passed by initiative.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Lawmakers also argue that outside groups play an outsized role in passing ballot initiatives. While <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11109-014-9282-4" target="_blank">political science research</a> provides some support for this claim, outside groups also have influence in the regular legislative process. And they often work to defeat initiatives as well.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Citizen initiatives became popular <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/History_of_initiative_and_referendum_in_the_U.S." target="_blank">during the Progressive Era</a> of the early 20th century as a way to give power back to citizens. Then, as now, citizens felt political power was too concentrated in the hands of the wealthy. Initiatives were one way for everyday people to get more involved in their government.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> That only half of states permit citizen initiatives suggests that political elites are not always supportive of a process that limits their own power. Historically, though, legislators have respected the results. Some lawmakers, including Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, state they will continue to <a href="https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2023/11/11/ohio-gov-dewine-accepts-will-of-the-people-on-abortion-marijuana-but-hold-on/" target="_blank">“accept” the will of the people</a>. To do otherwise undermines democracy.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnups-mz3nSRuE-_v11BVSJGf23EzsF6asVESZLcr_aAnYBC29CeyKjXLn0mdR7QPqtszryy2j_DzSa6m5_P6-_vJTfEBiiwE5wRBElysnXlR2ybaVCZNVflcLYeeyaoknnsaB46sdvCzQYWt3KtYcnZFE8jf9qQtUjWHsAo8d9uzkj4Xp49hAx_8MZjOR/s238/Anne%20Whitesell.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="238" data-original-width="238" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnups-mz3nSRuE-_v11BVSJGf23EzsF6asVESZLcr_aAnYBC29CeyKjXLn0mdR7QPqtszryy2j_DzSa6m5_P6-_vJTfEBiiwE5wRBElysnXlR2ybaVCZNVflcLYeeyaoknnsaB46sdvCzQYWt3KtYcnZFE8jf9qQtUjWHsAo8d9uzkj4Xp49hAx_8MZjOR/w200-h200/Anne%20Whitesell.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>About the author:</i> Anne Whitesell is an assistant professor of political science at <a href="https://miamioh.edu/index.html" target="_blank">Miami University</a>.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>This article was published by <a href="https://theconversation.com/us" target="_blank">The Conversation</a>.</i> </span></p>Joseph O. Pattonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04830099575387185293noreply@blogger.com0