VAWA Posts:
VAWA Reauthorization Acts - Used to pass Biden administration 'red flag' laws; Paralyzing the federal 1996 Lautenberg DV Gun Ban; Denying victims rights/protections under the Lautenberg DV Gun Ban and violating 2nd amendment rights via enactment of 18 USC §§ 921(a)(32 - 33) in 2019 and intended amendments in 2021 VAWA.
VAWA - Paralyzing the federal 1996 Lautenberg DV Gun Ban; denying victims rights/protections under the Lautenberg DV Gun Ban and violating 2nd amendment rights via creation of 18 USC §§ 921(a)(32 - 33) :
The federal Lautenberg Domestic Violence Gun Ban/18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(9) was enacted in 1996.
"Senator Lautenberg intended to close a dangerous loophole in the Gun Control Act enabling domestic violence offenders to evade an additional felony conviction for gun possession by getting domestic violence felony charges reduced to misdemeanors." [Examining the Lautenberg Amendment in the Civilian and Military Contexts. Jessica A. Golden. The Fifth Annual Domestic Violence Conference. 2001]
In states, such as Michigan, the Lautenberg Amendment was ignored. Through plea bargains (specifically for law enforcement and officials) abusers convicted of any domestic violence offense (less than murder) are allowed to have their offense expunged/set aside, and their guns returned to them. Michigan has a specific Lautenberg Loophole: MCL 769.4a. Despite the danger this poses to victims, Michigan officials refuse to uphold the Lautenberg Amendment.
During the reauthorization of the VAWA of 2018 (enacted in 2019), legislators (specifically MI Congresswoman Dingell) pushed for 'red flag' laws - citing (incorrectly) that domestic violence victims were not federally protected via federal gun prohibition laws. Unfortunately, many legislators, the public and victims themselves were unaware of the 1996 Lautenberg DV Gun Ban law that was already in effect - and the VAWA reauthorization sponsors/co-sponsors took advantage of this for their own agenda. Additionally, VAWA sponsors/co-sponsors were not concerned with the protections and rights of victims which were in the Lautenberg Domestic Violence Gun Ban/18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(9) and were not placed in the VAWA DV gun ban law/ 18 USC §§ 921(a)(32 - 33).
- "The Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2019, which Leader McConnell refuses to bring to the floor for a vote, includes a number of reforms to keep firearms out of the hands of abusers...But if McConnell refuses to act, Biden will enact legislation to close the so-called “boyfriend loophole” and “stalking loophole” by prohibiting all individuals convicted of assault, battery, or stalking from purchasing or possessing firearms, regardless of their connection to the victim...Biden also supports enacting the proposal to prohibit anyone under a temporary restraining order from purchasing or possessing a firearm before their hearing." [The Biden plan to end our gun violence epidemic. Joe Biden Campaign. Gun Safety. April 25, 2019.]
- "He (Biden) indicated he was “absolutely sure” the Democrats could pass more gun control, but stressed they must do it by burying the controls in a larger bill. He suggested this approach would serve the purpose of giving Republicans cover as well, so they could cross the aisle and support Second Amendment restrictions....Biden said: The way we did it last time is we included it in a larger bill that had really good things in it like the Violence Against Women Act..." [Las Vegas Sun Publishes Radical Anti-Gun Joe Biden Interview a Year After It Took Place. Breitbart. February 08, 2021]
- "Joe went on to reveal how he intends to pass his anti-gun proposals; he wants to hide it in larger bills that legislators may feel forced to support. In other words, Biden admits that he cannot pass gun control as a standalone measure..."[LV Sun Finally Reveals Biden Interview That Exposes Depths of Anti-Gun Views to Public. NRA. February 8, 2021.]
- "President Biden is reiterating his call for Congress to pass legislation to reduce gun violence. Last month, a bipartisan coalition in the House passed two bills to close loopholes in the gun background check system. Congress should close those loopholes and go further, including by closing “boyfriend” and stalking loopholes that currently allow people found by the courts to be abusers to possess firearms, banning assault weapons and high capacity magazines, repealing gun manufacturers’ immunity from liability, and investing in evidence-based community violence interventions. Congress should also pass an appropriate national “red flag” law, as well as legislation incentivizing states to pass “red flag” laws of their own." [FACT SHEET: Biden-Harris Administration Announces Initial Actions to Address the Gun Violence Public Health Epidemic. Whitehouse Briefing Room Statements Releases. April 04, 2021.]
Via the VAWA of 2018/2019, 18 USC §§ 921(a)(32 - 33) was enacted. The law allowed for abusers to retain their guns if their conviction was set aside or expunged. The Lautenberg Amendment did not allow for domestic violence convictions to be set aside/expunged. Thus, victims were better protected under the Lautenberg Amendment - and therefore, victims lost these rights/protections with the enactment of 18 USC §§ 921(a)(32 - 33).
The "Boyfriend Loophole" that VAWA backers are currently in an uproar about with the 2021 VAWA reauthorization? In writing 18 USC §§ 921(a)(32 - 33), "boyfriend" relationship wasn't listed in the law - and they are not subject to the conditions of the law. NOTE: "boyfriends" are not excluded in the Lautenberg Amendment.
For the past 25 years, Michigan legislators (specifically Congresswoman Dingell) and the Office on Violence Against Women/OVW (which distributes the VAWA funding and addresses issues for ALL victims of domestic violence except OIDV) - have never had a concern with the safety of victims of OIDV and the state/courts not upholding the Lautenberg DV Gun Ban. Not a peep of concern for OIDV victims as law enforcement officers convicted of domestic violence pled under MCL 769.4a and were quickly returned to duty with their guns strapped to their hips - Despite their own statistics demonstrating the dangers of guns in domestic violence situations:
- The presence of a gun in a domestic violence situation increases the risk of homicide by 500%." [Risk Factors for Femicide in Abusive Relationships: Results From a Multisite Case Control Study. US National Library of Medicine. National Institutes of Health]. [National Statistics Domestic Violence Facts. National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. 2020]
- 19% of domestic violence involves a weapon." [Nonfatal Domestic Violence, 2003–2012. Department Of Justice]
- In 2019, there were 44 reported domestic violence murders in Michigan. [Domestic Violence in MICHIGAN. National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. 2020]
- Over half of domestic violence homicides in Michigan are committed with guns. [Domestic Violence in MICHIGAN. National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. 2020]
- Between 2008 and 2017, there were 903 reported domestic violence murders and non-negligent manslaughters. [Domestic Violence in MICHIGAN. National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. 2020]
- Abusers’ access to firearms increases the risk of intimate partner femicide at least five-fold. When firearms have been used in the most severe abuse incident, the risk increases 41-fold. [Domestic Violence in MICHIGAN. National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. 2020]
In fact, the only concern that Michigan officials had was with the media coverage of OIDV cases in which the Lautenberg Amendment was not being adhered. So, in 2013, Michigan legislators amended MCL 769.4a and put a permanent gag order on all court proceedings in which the Lautenberg Amendment was not upheld. In doing so, Michigan silenced the voice of OIDV victims and all other domestic violence victims whose abusers retained their guns via the Michigan Lautenberg Loophole law.
In 2019, the enactment of the VAWA reauthorization act, and 8 USC §§ 921(a)(33)(B)(ii) allowed for the setting aside of domestic violence convictions. Michigan legislators displayed no concern for the safety of OIDV/DV victims and quickly set to work amending MCL 769.4a.
In February 2020, amended MCL 769.4a was enacted. Under MCL 769.4a and in accordance with 8 USC §§ 921(a)(33)(B)(ii), any domestic violence conviction (less than murder) could be expunged/set aside/deferred, with guns returned to the convicted abuser. Furthermore, the harshest sentence a convicted abuser in the state of MI can receive under MCL 769.4a is probation.
Lawmakers in both parties to launch new push on Violence Against Women Act
The Hill
01/02/22
A bipartisan group of lawmakers will press in 2022 for a renewal of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) for the first time in nearly a decade following a rise in domestic violence cases during the pandemic.
Sen. Lisa Murkowksi (R-Ala.), who announced a bipartisan deal on a framework for the VAWA reauthorization earlier this month with Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), said lawmakers hope to introduce the legislation in the next few weeks.
“I think what we're trying to do is we want to get a solid bipartisan bill introduced in January,” Murkowkski said.
“We've got strong advocates around the country behind us that have been helping us with this. We want to build on the momentum and we want to update the law,” she added.
If passed, it would mark the first time in almost nine years that VAWA, a landmark piece of legislation then-Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) championed that was made law in 1994, was reauthorized.
VAWA, which has been reauthorized three times since it took effect, seeks to bolster domestic violence response at multiple levels of government, as well as efforts to combat dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking.
Its last authorization, which was approved by Congress in 2013, expired five years later after lawmakers failed to renew it. At the time, authorizations for appropriations for VAWA programs lapsed, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Lawmakers have continued to approve funding for the programs in annual spending bills. But until VAWA is reauthorized, advocates say the measure, which is usually updated when its authorization is renewed, will fall short of meeting the needs of the victims it is designed to protect.
“Each time we reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act ever since it was first authorized in 1994, we really build on the progress of the years before,” Terri Poore, policy director at the National Alliance to End Sexual Violence, said in an interview this week. She added that leaders learned a great deal about how to address violence in the intervening years of past authorizations.
Poore noted that when the bill was first passed, “there weren't a lot of provisions to address sexual assault specifically, and the next authorization really tried to look at those issues.”
“Each time the bill’s reauthorized, there's a chance for advocates and survivors to think about it, look at it and see what changes need to be made to really address all the needs of all survivors to be safe and have an opportunity to heal and be protected,” Poore said.
Among the proposals detailed in the framework announced by the four senators days are provisions that aim to strengthen rape prevention and protections for young survivors, as well as expand access to emergency housing support for survivors.
Advocates say the legislation would come at a critical time after data emerged showing an uptick in domestic cases in parts of the U.S. not long after much of the nation went into lockdown during the pandemic last year.
“People have been at home more with fewer resources,” Poore said. “I think domestic violence programs and sexual assault programs have been trying to transition to meet all survivors where they are. But of course, people have been at home more, so some of the pathways for getting out and getting free have been more difficult.”
The framework announcement also outlines a provision that would target what advocates and lawmakers have referred to as the so-called “boyfriend loophole” by prohibiting individuals convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence against a dating partner from possessing or purchasing firearms or ammunition.
Lawmakers said the provision would only apply to protective orders and convictions that are issued after the new VAWA reauthorization is enacted.
The move marks the latest attempt by lawmakers to go after the apparent loophole in recent years.
Earlier this year, the House voted to pass legislation reauthorizing VAWA that would prevent dating partners from purchasing or owning guns if they were convicted of domestic violence or abuse, instead of just applying the restriction to spouses or formerly married partners.
However, the legislation stalled in the Senate after opposition from the National Rifle Association (NRA), which attacked a similar provision included in another House-passed bill to reauthorize VAWA in 2019 that also hit a roadblock in the upper chamber at the time.
In a statement to the Detroit News earlier this year, the gun rights group blasted the provision, which was offered by Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), arguing the legislation would restrict people’s rights with “gun control provisions.”
Though it's unclear what the NRA’s position is on the current framework, advocates and lawmakers contend the legislation has been carefully reviewed.
The NRA did not respond to a request for comment.
Murkowski, who described herself and Ernst as “strong supporters of the Second Amendment,” said the lawmakers “worked hard to make sure that there were those protections” in their legislation.
Rachel Graber, director of public policy at the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV), also said the way the framework takes on the boyfriend loophole differs from the legislation passed by the House months ago.
“The House bill fully closes the dating partner loophole, while the Senate bill only partially closes it,” Graber said.
“The Senate bill adds dating partners to the existing domestic violence prohibitors, but only for people who are convicted of dating abuse after the bill takes effect or who are subject to protective orders issued after the date of enactment. So it's not a full fix, but it's a partial fix, and it will save lives,” she said.
Additional provisions in the framework include those to expand programs to ensure that VAWA provides access to survivors in rural areas, as well as survivors “requiring culturally specific services,” among others.
Ruth Glenn, president and CEO of NCADV, said those measures underscore the importance of understanding the different needs of survivors and supporting Black and Brown organizations, noting “sometimes that community can provide the best service based on cultural norms and cultural resources.”
Murkowski, whose state’s population is among those with the largest portion of residents identifying as American Indians or Alaska Native, added there are “significant” tribal provisions in the framework.
“We've incorporated the Native American, American Indian and tribal protections … I have been more immediately involved in this, although I was involved in 2013 and have been involved in years past because this is a significant issue in my state,” she said.
A 2016 study funded by the National Institute of Justice found that more than 80 percent of American Indian and Alaska Native women experienced violence in their lifetime, over half of which said they have experienced sexual violence or physical violence by an intimate partner.
In Alaska, where American Indian and Alaska Native residents make up almost a fifth of the state’s population, a 2020 survey from the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) Justice Center, and other partners, estimated that nearly three-fifths of Alaska women had experienced intimate partner violence, sexual violence or both in their lifetimes. The figure represents a 14.7 percent jump from a previous survey taken five years prior.
“Our domestic violence, statistics are just awful,” Mrkowski said.
Glenn, who said her organization has been in touch with lawmakers behind the framework on the plans, added she believes the measure, which lawmakers say also aims to expand access and resources to LGBT survivors, will “allow for us as a nation” to ensure trans women “are supported and receive the services.”
“We are very aware as a nation that trans women in particular have really entered violence, specific kinds of violence, that haven't always been addressed,” she said.
According to the Human Rights Campaign, this year, at least 50 transgender or gender non-conforming people have been “fatally shot or killed by other violent means.”
The data comes a year after the organization reported a record 44 fatal incidents against transgender and gender non-conforming people, many of which the group said are Black and Latinx transgender women.
"It is time that this bill be reauthorized. Constant volatile situations are dangerous and have devastating consequences."
Dingell’s measure, which she first introduced as a separate bill in 2015, would not have applied to her family's situation growing up.
It aims to close the so-called "boyfriend" loophole by amending federal law to prohibit convicted abusers of current or former dating partners from purchasing or owning firearms.
Currently, those convicted of domestic abuse can lose their weapons only if their victim is their current or former spouse, or they have a child with the victim.
Dingell's provision also would prohibit firearm ownership by people convicted of misdemeanor stalking.
Bice sticks close to GOP line in first year in Congress
Shawnee News-Star, The (OK)
January 2, 2022
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Gun rights
In her GOP primary campaign in 2020, Bice emphasized her support for gun rights. One of her television ads featured footage of her at a gun range.
Two of the bills she supported this year had gun provisions that caused controversy among conservatives and groups like the National Rifle Association.
One was the annual defense policy bill that Bice worked on in the Armed Services Committee and that was supported in the House by large Democratic and Republican majorities.
In that measure, a section on military justice included a so-called Red Flag law that would have allowed judges to prohibit gun possession by a military member who was the subject of a protective order. After the bill passed, Bice led a letter from Republicans seeking the removal of the provisions, and they were not included in the final version of the bill sent to the president.
The other bill supported by Bice and criticized by Republicans for its gun provisions was the Violence Against Women Act, which includes numerous criminal and civil provisions to protect women, along with several grant programs. The bill would bar people convicted of stalking from purchasing a firearm, if they were married to the victim, cohabitated with them or had children with them.
Bice was one of only 29 Republicans — Rep. Tom Cole, R-Moore, was another — who voted for the bill, which cleared the House in March but has bogged down in the Senate, at least partly because of the gun provisions.
She said she could not "in good conscience vote to deny domestic assault victims, or the organizations who serve them – including the YWCA of Oklahoma City, the Oklahoma Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Assault, and so many others – the funding they need in favor of partisan politics."
Taylor Swift's Music Label Gives Big to Her Political Nemesis
January 4, 2022
Daily Beast, The
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Taylor Swift has been extremely consistent about this political opinion: She hates Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN).
That much was clear in 2018, when Taylor Swift issued her first political endorsement for Blackburn's then-opponent for the Tennessee Senate seat, Democrat Phil Bredesen. And it was made even more explicit in the 2020 documentary Miss Americana, where Swift can be seen seething over Blackburn.
"If I get bad press for saying, 'Don't put a homophobic racist in office,' then I get bad press for that. I really don't care," Swift told her publicist in one scene. "I think it is so frilly and spineless of me to stand onstage and go 'Happy Pride Month, you guys,' and then not say this, when someone's literally coming for their neck."
But apparently, the megastar's own record label and publisher, Universal Music Group, feels differently—so differently, in fact, that UMG's political action committee isn't just maxing out the allowable contribution to Blackburn; it's exceeding the limits.
On Sunday, federal regulators put UMG's PAC on notice, flagging the group for giving Blackburn more than the legal limit allowed in an election.
More than just a clerical error, however, the notice shines a light on UMG's long-running financial support for the Tennessee Republican, an arch-conservative that Swift has taken on as a personal political adversary, blasting her as a "homophobic racist" and "Trump in a wig."
"Her voting record in Congress appalls and terrifies me," Swift wrote in an open letter against Blackburn's 2018 Senate bid, hitting the then-congresswoman for voting against equal pay for women and the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act.
"She believes businesses have a right to refuse service to gay couples. She also believes they should not have the right to marry," Swift wrote in the letter.
"These are not MY Tennessee values," she added, endorsing Blackburn's opponent for her first public political act.
But UMG was on the other side of that fight, bankrolling the Republican as it had for years. The label then signed Swift just weeks after Blackburn won the election.
Federal filings show that UMG's PAC has put money into Blackburn's campaigns nearly every year since 2005, shelling out a total of more than $32,000 in political support. And Blackburn has so far raised $9,500 from the UMG PAC to put towards her 2024 bid, nearly hitting its ceiling three years out from the election.
The Federal Election Commission flagged that the latest UMG donation put the PAC over the donation limit for the 2024 primary election cycle. And while the Blackburn campaign appears to have already reallocated the funds to comply with regulations, the PAC has so far failed to do so in its reports.
Blackburn, a Nashville-area denizen who sits on the Senate Subcommittee on Communications, Media, and Broadband, boasts one of the most far-right voting records in the Senate. But Blackburn has burnished a reputation as a champion for the music industry, receiving financial backing from trade and lobbying groups such as the Recording Industry Association of America.
Her voice is so valuable to Music City moguls that in 2014, the head of the Nashville Songwriters Association International told the Tennessean that if the avowed right-winger, at the time a U.S. Representative, were to leave Congress, it would hit him like a death in the family.
"I'd hang a black wreath on our office and close it for a week," he said.
Still, UMG's donations stand in sharp contrast to the PACs belonging to the two other major record labels—Sony and Warner—neither of which gave to Blackburn last year, according to FEC data.
Warner's PAC has only donated once to Blackburn in recent years, in May 2018; the Sony PAC appears to have never given her money, according to an analysis of FEC filings.
Corporate PACs are often employee-funded, but executives and lobbyists tend to make up a disproportionate amount of those donations. The UMG PAC is no different. And it has drawn significant funding from two executives especially close to Swift.
In an early 2020 press release announcing her global publishing agreement with UMG—Swift, a vocal proponent of LGBTQ and women's rights—said she was "proud" to continue working with UMG head of publishing Jody Gerson, the "first woman to run a major music publishing company."
"Jody is an advocate for women's empowerment and one of the most-respected and accomplished industry leaders," Swift said in the release.
She also praised longtime collaborator Troy Tomlinson, another UMG publishing exec, as a "passionate torchbearer for songwriters."
Gerson and Tomlinson each gave thousands of dollars to the PAC last year, in recurring donations starting in January, according to federal data.
Swift, whose publicist declined to comment for this article, has made no secret of her disdain for Blackburn. Her decision in 2018 to break her political silence and speak out against the MAGA acolyte appears to have spurred a surge in voter registration, and was featured prominently in Miss Americana.
However, the documentary did not highlight that Swift was taking on another major industry player in Blackburn.
The senator reacted to the Miss Americana documentary by praising Swift's "exceptional" musical gifts, as well as her artist advocacy—an area where the two women would appear to have common ground. Both have backed musicians' rights, with Blackburn co-sponsoring major pieces of legislation supported by artists, including the Music Modernization Act, which in 2018 passed Congress unanimously and was signed into law by then-President Trump. (Swift nemesis Kanye West got in on the signing fanfare.)
The bill made it easier to collect digital royalties and was hailed as a major step forward by musicians, labels, and publishers alike.
Swift has famously fought these battles herself, leveraging her staggering popularity to challenge industry kingpins directly. After losing the rights to the "master" recordings of her first six albums—before she came under Universal—she embarked on a project to reclaim ownership by re-recording them herself. At the same time, however, UMG was revamping its contracts to restrict their artists from profiting the same way.
But this July, Blackburn appeared to jab at Swift out of nowhere for "trying to change country music" by making it "woke," issuing an absurd warning that a "socialistic" government would make the 11-time Grammy winner its "first victim."
"Taylor Swift came after me in my 2018 campaign," she told Breitbart at the time. "But Taylor Swift would be the first victim of that because when you look at Marxist, socialistic societies, they do not allow women to dress or sing or be onstage or to entertain or the type [of] music she would have."
Asked for comment about the donations, a UMG spokesperson provided a statement praising Blackburn's work on behalf of the industry.
"Senator Blackburn represents a vital music community and has a long track record of advocating for issues supportive of creators, including her key leadership on the Music Modernization Act and her service as a Chair of the Congressional Songwriters Caucus. She has garnered broad support from across the music community—including from virtually every leading music PAC. She has received support from the UMG Employee Action Fund since 2005," the statement read.
"However, none of that excuses, or should be seen as condoning in any way, Senator Blackburn's derisive comments last summer about Taylor Swift," the spokesperson wrote.
Two months after Blackburn made those comments, UMG reported its $5,000 donation.
Letter: Make sure federal law protects male victims of domestic abuse
The Detroit News
Author: Edward E. Bartlett - Founder Coalition to End Domestic Violence
January 05, 2022
Wendy Wein, 52, of Monroe County wanted her ex-husband dead. Last year she came across a website, Rent-A-Hitman, that promised to “handle your delicate situation” in a discrete manner. So Wein filled out a form on the humor site, agreeing to pay $5,000 to kill the man.
On Nov. 12, Wein pled guilty to charges of solicitation for murder. She faces at least nine years in prison at her sentencing, scheduled for Jan. 13.
The Wein hitman case reveals a chilling trend: A rise in female-perpetrated violence against their husbands and boyfriends across the nation. Recent news reports have highlighted the spurt of homicides by women against their intimate partners and family members.
Much of the problem can be traced to a federal law, the Violence Against Women Act. Enacted at the behest of then-Sen. Joe Biden, the 1994 law has turned a blind eye to the reality of female abuse.
Consider these numbers from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: In 2015, there were 4.2 million male victims of physical domestic violence, compared to 3.5 million female victims. The disparity has been even greater for psychological abuse.
Our country’s near-obsession with violence against women has engendered other problems. The Violence Against Women Act reauthorization, which passed the House of Representatives in March, added “emotional abuse” to its definition of domestic violence, without defining what the term means. And many states have expanded definitions to include things such as “fear,” “apprehension” and “emotional distress.”
Now imagine being accused of inflicting fear, apprehension or distress on your wife, with loss of your home, children and good reputation at stake. How would you defend yourself?
Black men are especially vulnerable to false accusations.
Thankfully, the problem of female-initiated abuse is beginning to emerge from the shadows. Leading lawmakers have issued statements calling for the recognition of male victims of domestic violence.
It’s time to put a merciful end to the flawed “man-as-abuser, female-as-victim” narrative. Our domestic violence laws need to be based on science, not gender ideology.
Center for American Progress:
New Report Examines the Role of Guns in Violence Against Women and Lays a Framework to Address the Crisis
January 6, 2022
Targeted News Service (USA)
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
WASHINGTON, Jan. 6 (TNSRep) -- The Center for American Progress issued the following news release:
Following a year of record-high gun violence, a new report released today by the Center for American Progress highlights the alarming role firearms play in the context of violence against women. The report--which expands upon a 2019 CAP report, "Transforming the Culture of Power: An Examination of Gender-Based Violence in the United States"--identifies five key challenges: 1) gun violence in an intimate partner context; 2) gender-based violence by strangers and acquaintances; 3) gun-related hate crimes targeting transgender women; 4) the impact of COVID-19 on gun violence against women; and 5) the political actors and lobbyists who block gun reform.
The report also issues recommendations for policymakers to address gender-based gun violence, including:
* Disarming domestic abusers by closing legislative loopholes that allow dangerous people to access firearms* Closing the gender wage gap to better enable survivors to leave abusive relationships and provide for their families* Addressing online hate speech, which can lead to dangerous real-life situations* Reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) to enhance protections for survivors of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual violence, and stalking
"Firearms have long been used as a tool of power and control to instill fear in women, particularly women of color, disabled women, and LGBTQ people," said Marissa Edmund, senior policy analyst for Gun Violence Prevention at CAP and author of the report. "It's time for policymakers to confront this public health crisis with comprehensive, commonsense solutions that will address the root causes of gender-based gun violence."
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee is 'relentless' flagbearer in House Democrats' social justice push
Houston Chronicle: Web Edition Articles (TX)
January 17, 2022
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
WASHINGTON — When U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee first got to Congress in 1995, Democratic leadership sent her straight to the high-profile House Judiciary Committee — a show of confidence in the freshman from a Houston district long represented by fierce civil rights advocates.
Among them was Barbara Jordan, the first Black Texan elected to Congress, who rose to national prominence from a seat on the committee.
"There were few slots on that committee," Jackson Lee recalled. "They just saw me, I guess through my profile, through Barbara Jordan's work — 'This is the 18th congressional district, and this is where she's going.'
"I thought it was an honor because they assumed I was going to be the person they needed," she said.
Nearly three decades later, Jackson Lee has in many ways become just that. The 72-year-old congresswoman, one of the most senior and recognizable members of the Texas delegation, has become a go-to member for House Democrats on a slew of social justice issues, from policing reform to reparations for the descendants of slaves.
Long one of the most active members of the House, Jackson Lee has been busy as ever since Democrats took control of the chamber in 2020.
"She understands that she inherited the district that was the district of Barbara Jordan and Mickey Leland, both of whom were serious civil rights advocates," said Melanye Price, director of Prairie View A&M University's Ruth J. Simmons Center for Race and Justice. "She has risen to the occasion to become part of the senior leadership, the sort of elder statesman of Congress."
Jackson Lee works as chief deputy to Majority Whip James Clyburn and serves on the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, the House Budget Committee and the House Homeland Security Committee.
Clyburn called Jackson Lee an "effective and unrelenting lawmaker."
"She embodies what we, as a party, are trying to accomplish, which is to bring this country back toward the path of equality, equity and accessibility," the South Carolina Democrat said. "From criminal justice reform and voting rights to her work addressing the energy crisis and protecting our homeland, she is a true stalwart fighting to preserve our safety, wellbeing, and our democracy."
Republicans show Jackson Lee respect, too, even as they strongly oppose some of the policies she advocates.
"Sheila is no shrinking violet," said Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican with whom Jackson Lee has worked to advance legislation through the Senate. "She always speaks up and has a point to make."
The reparations bill has drawn particular criticism from conservatives who say it is out of step with race relations in the country.
"I believe she and some of the others are true believers in their view of the world that's rooted in the 1960s," said Carol Swain, a former Vanderbilt University professor and prominent Black Republican.
"They have not really progressed much beyond that, in terms of creative ways to address the problems of the poor.
"I think that's unfortunate, because Sheila Jackson Lee and many other Black members of Congress are certainly very talented, and they have the resources, they have the platform, they can actually be doing more for the Black community than complaining about white people."
'Further along than anyone would ever imagine'
When the House passed legislation in response to the killing of George Floyd, the bill was based largely on police reform legislation Jackson Lee had pushed for years. It would ban officers from using chokeholds to subdue people and forbid no-knock search warrants in drug cases, as well as bolstering the Justice Department's authority to crack down on misconduct and chipping away at some of officers' legal protections when they are sued in civil court.
Jackson Lee led the first rewrite of the Violence Against Women Act in nearly a decade, with new protections for Native American women and provisions that would close the so-called "boyfriend loophole" that allows those with a history of dating violence to legally purchase firearms. Federal law currently prohibits abusers from having guns, but only if they were married, lived with or have children with the victim.
She also led legislation that made Juneteenth the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established in 1986. Jackson Lee inherited the effort to commemorate the day that the last enslaved African Americans in Galveston finally learned of their freedom, which Democrats had pushed since 1996, and worked with Cornyn in the Senate to get it passed and signed into law last year.
"I couldn't for the life of me believe we would ever see this miracle come, which I really associated with in a historical reconciliation and recognition — I'm using those terms — a sense of respect and knowledge for the fact that African Americans, now the descendants of enslaved Africans, were held in bondage for 246 years, longer than the country is old," Jackson Lee said.
And she successfully shepherded the bill to create a commission to study reparations through the Judiciary committee. The committee vote was a major milestone, marking the first time the decades-long effort had received a vote in Congress. The bill now has the support of 195 members and Jackson Lee says she's talking to leadership about getting a floor vote on it as soon as possible.
"We are so much further along than anyone would ever imagine," Jackson Lee said.
Bipartisan wins on Juneteenth, Emancipation Trail
Cornyn and Jackson Lee have worked together repeatedly, most recently to get the Juneteenth bill through both chambers and to Biden's desk. The bipartisan pair also successfully pushed for a federal study for a 51-mile Emancipation Trail between Galveston and Houston, a necessary first step toward establishing a national landmark commemorating the announcement of the abolition of slavery in Galveston.
Those were important achievements, in part because of the history they acknowledge and can help teach — especially at a time of debate over how race is taught in schools, said Price at Prairie View A&M.
"We're talking about book bans, we're talking about discussions about critical race theories and what you can teach white children," Price said. "Having the federal government step up and say, 'We'll pay for some of the historical work that might be ignored in this political climate' is huge."
Jackson Lee says she works to get Republicans to buy-in.
"If you get issues that people are mutually concerned, or they agree with you or buy into your advocacy then you've got a partner," she said. "The best thing to do is, to work with those who work with you and then it will start spreading."
But the bipartisan agreement has only gone so far, even for Cornyn and Jackson Lee. Like most Senate Republicans, the Texas senator is also opposed to many of Jackson Lee's priorities. Much of the legislation she has championed in the House remains stalled in the evenly divided Senate.
Senate Republicans oppose the provision in Jackson Lee's Violence Against Women Act rewrite that would close the boyfriend loophole — a portion of the bill Jackson Lee calls "my heart." Cornyn has argued state law already prevents abusers from buying guns, though women's advocates in the state say Texas laws don't do enough.
Republicans also oppose portions of the policing bill, including measures that would end qualified immunity, which protects police officers from being individually sued over allegations they violated the constitutional rights of members of the public.
As for the reparations bill, the goal is to "bring American society to a new reckoning with how our past affects the current conditions of African Americans and to make America a better place," Jackson Lee has said.
"We're asking people to understand the pain, the violence, the brutality … of what we went through," Jackson Lee said during committee debate on the bill. "And of course we're asking for harmony, reconciliation, reason — to come together as Americans."
She says the forming of a reparations commission is not about blaming white Americans and to argue it is about money "grossly misrepresents the commission's task," which is to study the "lingering debasement" of Black Americans from a long history of slavery and government-enforced segregation that followed.
Jackson Lee in a word: 'Relentless'
Jackson Lee, however, says she doesn't want her work to be "limited to social justice issues."
Now in her 14th term in Congress, she is seemingly in two places much of the time — in D.C. and in the central Houston neighborhoods she represents.
"It's her life," said Glenn Rushing, who served as her chief of staff for 10 years and now works at the Peter Damon Group, a Washington-based lobbying firm. "She's relentless and she never stops."
Jackson Lee rarely misses votes in the House — or opportunities to speak on the floor. She has racked up the most appearances in Judiciary Committee hearings of any member on CSPAN's archives, which date back to 1974.
She has served on the Homeland Security Committee since its inception, a position she says has allowed her to be "a helper at the forefront of every hurricane we have had." Working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency through that post, she said, is "one of my greatest joys."
Rushing said he typically left the office between midnight and 1 a.m. when he worked for Jackson Lee. The congresswoman was typically only there late at night, after a full day of committee hearings, floor votes and receptions, where she would make a point to show her face and let people know she understands the issue at hand, he said.
Rushing said Jackson Lee doesn't keep a schedule so much as a packed calendar with events stacked on top of each other. She's often trying to make as many of them within the same hour as she can. And she rarely takes vacation, he said. When she does, "she's still calling staff at one in the morning."
She is also a regular presence at food distribution drives and in emergency response meetings in Houston during disasters including Hurricane Harvey and the electric grid failures during the freeze in 2021. She helped stand up federal COVID testing and vaccination sites during the pandemic and in November, she delivered a eulogy at the funeral of a 16-year-old who was killed in the Astroworld festival crowd rush.
The relentless pace has at times earned her a reputation as a difficult boss, though her supporters say that's a label often attributed to effective female politicians. Her office regularly has among the highest turnover in Congress, a place known for churn.
But it appears to pay off. The Center for Effective Lawmaking at the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University ranked her sixth most-effective in the House in 2021, a list on which she regularly lands near the top.
She also easily wins reelection every two years. In 2020, Jackson Lee faced six primary challengers and drew 77 percent of the vote. This year, she faces no primary challengers and one Republican, Carmen Maria Montiel, a Houston realtor and former TV news anchor. Montiel did not respond to a request for comment, but has called Jackson Lee a "career politician" who has "given in to the far-left socialist Democrats and their radical agenda."
Rushing said the pace is what sets her apart from other politicians, especially longtime incumbents.
"A lot of times people when they get in office, after so many years it's not that they're not working, it's just that they find their place," he said. "She continues to work as if she's a freshman and still win over the voters."
The Big Lie about domestic violence keeps getting told
WorldNetDaily (USA)
January 19, 2022
Contrary to years of alarming reports by the media focused only on domestic violence by men, women actually commit more domestic violence incidents than men. But the United Nations ran a global campaign this winter titled, "Orange the World: End Violence Against Women Now!" The description of the drive made frequent references to "violence against women and girls" but did not include any mention of "violence against men and boys."
Multiple studies of domestic violence have found that slightly more men than women reported being a victim of domestic violence within the past year, 19.8% to 18.8%. Last year, the Coalition to End Domestic Violence issued a report entitled "Thirty Years of Domestic Violence Half-Truths, Falsehoods and Lies," which revealed massive amounts of bias in this area.
Much of the perception that domestic violence is mainly perpetuated by men against women developed in the 1990s, when then-Sen. Joe Biden drafted the "Violence Against Women Act." Despite all the taxpayer money thrown at the program, there is little or no evidence that VAWA-funded programs have succeeded in reducing rates of domestic violence.
And according to commentator Christina Villegas, protecting persons from partner abuse "has never been the primary intention of VAWA." Instead, the domestic violence campaign has been a "political movement that seeks to change social norms and redistribute resources, power, and control to women, with the long-term aim of a genderless, socialist society."
Another stereotype that persists also began in the 1990s: "More women are victims of domestic violence on Super Bowl Sunday than on any other day of the year." Even the left-wing fact-checking site Snopes labeled that false. Snopes explained, "The claim that Super Bowl Sunday is 'the biggest day of the year for violence against women' is a case study of how easily an idea congruous with what people want to believe can be implanted in the public consciousness and anointed as 'fact' even when there is little or no supporting evidence behind it."
Longtime leading feminist Gloria Steinem once declared, "The most dangerous situation for a woman is … a husband or lover in the isolation of their home." This is false. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the leading causes of injury deaths for women are falls, followed by poisonings and then traffic accidents.
The left-wing dominated legal system is responsible for much of the misinformation. The website of the DOJ Office of Violence Against Women was found to contain massive misinformation. It was so bad that all of the inaccurate fact sheets were removed by 2021.
However, some false data remains on another DOJ website, the Office for Victims of Crime, in a document entitled "Facts About Domestic Violence." Based on findings from the National Crime Victimization Survey, the document incorrectly relates the same inaccurately compiled, tired old statistics.
The International Association of Chiefs of Police mostly ignores the fact that domestic violence is perpetrated against men too. The National District Attorneys Association is almost as bad. The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges issued a pamphlet entitled "Bringing the Greenbook to Life: A Resource Guide for Communities," which contains the words "battered mothers" and "battered women" 27 times, but not a single instance of "battered fathers" or "battered men."
The American Bar Association issued a two-page flyer, "10 Myths about Custody and Domestic Violence and How to Counter Them." The Coalition to End Domestic Violence found, "Overall, the great majority of assertions and conclusions in the CODV flyer were found to be unsupported, misleading, or wrong." Not surprisingly, the ABA took the paper down, but not before it was posted on the Leadership Council on Child Abuse and Interpersonal Violence website.
Perhaps the reason this myth is perpetuated is because of the outdated perception that women are helpless to defend themselves from men. Times have changed. Women can call 911, own guns, learn martial arts to defend themselves, and use the deterrent threat of shaming on social media and through the news media. Of course there are exceptions to all of that where a woman may be unable to utilize any of those – but there are also situations where a man may be unable to defend himself from a woman, such as situations where she is stronger or has a weapon and he doesn't.
The bias is a problem because it promotes harmful stereotypes of men. Instead of being the protectors of women, they are viewed as abusers and predators. It makes women unnecessarily scared to have relationships with men and puts men on eggshells dating women. It also makes men less likely to contact law enforcement for help with domestic violence – which then perpetuates the myth that there is none – a vicious cycle. The numbers of men who contact services for help are drastically lower than women – as much as 99 to 1 in areas such as legal assistance, sexual assault services and transitional living services.
Contrary to a popular stereotype, black men are more likely than black women to be victims of domestic violence. Mandatory domestic violence arrest policies likely result in disproportionate arrest rates among black men.
Women are also more likely than men to be involved in abuse of their children. They commit 53% of child abuse incidents, and mothers are responsible for 71% of child homicides committed by a parent.
Unfortunately, researchers who attempt to refute the misleading claims are targeted by activists. The late professor Suzanne Steinmetz published a book showing that men and women commit domestic violence at approximately equal rates. For pointing this out, a letter-writing campaign was launched to deny her promotion and tenure at the University of Delaware, and her daughter's wedding received a bomb threat.
Finally, during the COVID-19 lockdowns, there were wild claims that being stuck at home has increased domestic violence. But four different studies found this was not true.
What is it going to take to stop this hurtful stereotype from being perpetuated? It will take people daring to speak up and say enough, especially leaders and men who have been hurt.
Not time to stop short: Building a just future
Austin American-Statesman (TX)
Author/Byline: U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett
January 18, 2022
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
2021 began with an attempt to overthrow our government, culminating in the deadly January 6th attack on our Capitol and ending the long American tradition of peacefully transitioning power. It continued with so many families encountering adversity.
Amid the most deadly pandemic in a century, as we attempted to quickly secure essential relief, we faced unrelenting Republican opposition. Not one Republican in Congress voted for the American Rescue Plan, adopted in March, which accelerated immunizations, provided emergency support for small businesses, delivered working families $1,400 per person, increased the Child Tax Credit, expanded child care and rental assistance, and provided funding for Austin and other local governments.
Despite continued obstruction, families began receiving payments one week after passage of the American Rescue Plan. Despite Texas Workforce delays and confusion, workers got unemployment insurance and paid sick leave. Last year's impressive 5.6% economic growth rate indicates the success of this rescue plan.
Meanwhile, the House approved the Women's Health Protection Act, Justice in Policing Act, Equality Act, enhanced background checks for gun safety, American Dream and Promise Act, and reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act. Unfortunately, what the pandemic could not stop a solid wall of Republican rejectionists halted—not even permitting debate or amendments on any of these important measures.
Still pending is the House-approved Build Back Better Act, which seeks to build a more just and productive America than what we had pre-pandemic. This bill aims to patch holes in our social safety net and carve a path for Americans to plan a brighter future with more opportunity for all in a healthier climate.
As Health Subcommittee Chair, I was successful in adding multiple provisions to this legislation. My top priority: Closing the coverage gap, created by Republican governors who previously refused federal funds and offering 2 million Texans access to a family physician. Adding hearing coverage to Medicare. Additionally, I secured tax incentives for combatting the climate crisis by going electric and worked to expand educational opportunity from pre-K to post-grad, especially by increasing student financial assistance and adopting my Tax Free Pell Grants Act. These are all part of the same, broad legislation that provides child care assistance and responds to the climate crisis. Yet again, Republican Senate opposition and the refusal of two Democratic senators to prevent their blockade are denying Austin families any benefit from these initiatives.
Yes, I had disappointments along the way. I sought Medicare coverage to include vision and dental, not just hearing. Congress was unable to overcome the stranglehold of Big Pharma to prevent prescription price gouging. Much more should have been done to reverse Trump tax law giveaways and to plug tax loopholes exploited by the ultra-wealthy. But limited with only a nominal Democratic majority, we still made significant progress.
I did obtain Republican co-sponsors for some bills I have authored, such as the Telehealth Extension Act to continue access to telehealth services, which have proven so important during the pandemic, while enacting new anti-fraud provisions. But overall, the more significant the legislation, the greater the unyielding Republican opposition.
Perhaps of greatest immediate importance is stopping voter suppression. Voting rights legislation named after my dear personal friend who fought his whole life for civil rights, John Lewis, together with the Freedom to Vote Act can ease barriers to participation by more Americans—ensuring that each is free to vote and have that vote fairly counted. We must install national guardrails on democracy before it permanently goes off the rails.
I enter this new year with determination to overcome obstruction and keep delivering on our progressive priorities. Our democracy is threatened by those who lie about covid, lie about climate, and lie about the attempted coup, but our active engagement can still build a stronger America.
Doggett, a Democrat, represents Austin in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Pandemic exposes needs in domestic violence response system
KATC TV-3 (Lafayette, LA)
January 18, 2022
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The disruptions from the COVID pandemic touch nearly every part of life, especially for those in unsafe situations at home.
"It's always been at the crisis level, but because of the pandemic, it's become more of a crisis," said Victoria Grant, with the Domestic Violence and Child Advocacy Center.
Domestic violence in the COVID era is sometimes described as a "shadow pandemic" because of the added complications it's presenting in confronting it.
"We know that many individuals are in isolation with the person who's causing them harm," said Katie Ray-Jones, CEO of the National Domestic Violence Hotline.
More than 25 years after its launch, the National Domestic Violence Hotline recently received its 6 millionth contact. It came in from Ohio, through the hotline's online chatbox, a form of communication that didn't even exist when the phone hotline first started.
Since the pandemic began in 2020, contacts to the hotline are up 6%.
"What we've seen is that over 15,000 more individuals have reached out to the National Domestic Violence Hotline and stated that COVID-19 was somehow playing a part in their relationship," Ray-Jones said.
Part of the problem, she said, is that the system in place to respond to domestic violence is straining under COVID pressures.
"It has historically been under-resourced and overburdened," Ray-Jones said. "So, it's really been a place where we've had to think outside of our traditional resources about how to keep people safe and what strategies they want to employ in the midst of a pandemic."
When domestic violence shelters needed to limit capacity because of COVID, some hotels stepped in to temporarily relieve the need. However, Ray-Jones says the need goes beyond that, with more funding required for legal resources and counseling services.
"These are all critical components that survivors need to really break through—break from that relationship and live a life free from violence," she said.
Currently, there are three bills in Congress that could help.
1. The Violence Against Women Act (Reauthorization) in the U.S. House
2. Family Violence Prevention and Services Improvement Act in the U.S. House
3. Safe Connections Act in the U.S. Senate
Some of the bills would fund domestic violence programs and services, while one helps survivors disconnect from shared cell phone plans that can be used for stalking. Whether any of them manage to pass both chambers of Congress remains to be seen.
"These are critical pieces of legislation that are long overdue," Ray-Jones said.
Tracking Biden's campaign promises, one year in
Tampa Bay Times: Web Edition Articles (FL)
January 19, 2022
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
National politics right now is extraordinarily polarized by party. And much of today's political rhetoric dwells more on name-calling than on nuts-and-bolts policy differences.
But at its root, control of government is still about implementing policy. And, quaint as it may seem, we're here to track the policy agenda of President Joe Biden with our Biden Promise Tracker. He is the third president whose campaign promises PolitiFact has tracked in this fashion.
Like his two most recent predecessors, Biden has put together a mixed record in implementing his policy agenda. This is not unexpected, since he has had to rely on thinner majorities in Congress during his first year than either Barack Obama or Donald Trump did.
That said, the Biden Promise Tracker does show some victories for the 46th president, along with a somewhat larger number of agenda items that have stalled. Meanwhile, almost half of his promises are in limbo, with some progress being made but nothing final yet.
For Biden, we chose 99 promises to evaluate, and we'll continue rating them until he leaves the Oval Office.
Comparing Biden to Obama and Trump
Our rating system assesses campaign promises based on outcomes, not intentions. So, simply making an effort to pass something isn't enough for a Promise Kept rating. Only full enactment of a promise qualifies for a Promise Kept, while partial enactment merits a Compromise rating. We applied the same standard to both Obama and Trump.
In the big picture, Biden has kept 16 of the 99 promises we tracked and achieved a compromise — basically, a partial achievement — on three more.
We rate 46 of his promises as In the Works and 24 as Stalled. (We also have a Promise Broken category, but this early in a president's term we tend to place promises that haven't been followed up on yet in the Stalled category instead.)
How does this compare to Presidents Obama and Trump?
For Obama, we tracked 502 promises. During his first year in office, Obama earned a Promise Kept on about 18 percent of his promises, a Compromise on about 7 percent, either a Stalled or a Promise Broken on about 20 percent, and an In the Works on just over half.
In other words, Biden has done modestly worse than Obama in fully or partly keeping his promises, but a bit better than Obama in avoiding Stalled or Broken promises during the first 12 months in office.
Meanwhile, during Trump's first year in office, when we tracked roughly the same number of promises as we are with Biden, he earned a Promise Kept on about 9 percent of his promises, a Compromise on about 6 percent, either a Stalled or a Promise Broken on 39 percent, and an In the Works on about 46 percent.
So Biden has been somewhat more successful than Trump in keeping his promises, though not dramatically so. Biden has managed to keep modestly more promises than Trump did, and he saw fewer promises move to the Stalled or Broken categories.
"Biden has been above average in achievements during his first year, given the partisan division in Congress," said John Frendreis, an emeritus political science professor at Loyola University Chicago. "Pundits and activists like to describe the current situation as Democratic control of both the legislative and executive branches, but this is really not true. The 50-50 split in the Senate only gives the Democrats 'control' in a limited set of circumstances."
Particularly given his narrow margins in Congress, Biden overall can claim a "solid record" for a first year in office, Frendreis said.
Promises on the economy and the pandemic
As a candidate, Biden said he would make special efforts to advance his agenda in four areas: ending the coronavirus pandemic, improving the economy, promoting racial equity and tackling climate change.
Battling the pandemic and improving the economy — two goals that are closely linked — received significant attention from Biden early in his presidency.
Soon after Biden took office, Senate Democrats used the "reconciliation" process to pass the coronavirus and economic relief package, known as the American Rescue Plan, by just a simple majority, which is all that Democrats had in the chamber. No Republicans voted for the measure.
Some of Biden's kept promises on the economy have stemmed from that law, including giving small businesses a "restart package" after pandemic-related shutdowns and helping state and local governments prevent budget shortfalls.
Other economic promises have been pushed along by the bipartisan infrastructure bill that Biden signed into law. To corral enough GOP support to ensure passage, Biden and Democratic leaders in the House and Senate separated out the broadly popular "hard" infrastructure funding and removed other agenda items that Democrats generally supported but Republicans did not. (Many of the agenda items opposed by the GOP were instead put into the Build Back Better bill, which is awaiting action in the Senate.)
One key promise, to expand broadband internet, or wireless broadband via 5G, to every American, took a major step forward with passage of the bill, although we're officially rating it In the Works until we have a better sense of how successfully its provisions are being rolled out.
The infrastructure bill was the only major example of legislation for which Biden was able to secure significant bipartisan support. That was enough to earn him a Compromise on his promise to get bipartisan cooperation on the economy.
Fighting the pandemic has been more of a stop-and-start affair, due to the shifting nature of the pandemic.
The emergence of the delta variant of the coronavirus and then the omicron variant dashed the hopes of many that the pandemic would be over during Biden's first year in office. Until we see clear signs of an end to the pandemic, Biden's pledges to get COVID-19 under control and to use scientific evidence to determine COVID-19 openings and closings will not rate higher than In the Works.
However, Biden used executive orders or agency actions to achieve a Promise Kept for using the Defense Production Act to produce personal protective equipment for COVID-19 and securing 100 million COVID-19 vaccine shots for 50 million people in 100 days after taking office.
Executive actions, which don't require the approval of Congress, are a well-trod path for presidents to keep their campaign promises. Obama and Trump used their powers in this way as well.
President Joe Biden speaks about the bipartisan Infrastructure Law at the South Court Auditorium in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House Campus in Washington on Jan. 14, 2022.
Promises on racial justice and climate change
Running for president during a national reckoning on race prompted by the murder of George Floyd, Biden focused significant attention on racial justice. But he hasn't made much progress in this area.
An effort to update the Voting Rights Act passed the House, but it is stalled in the Senate, where only one Republican, Alaska's Lisa Murkowski, pledged to support the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. That's far short of the 10 needed under the chamber's current rules.
Meanwhile, Biden has taken no significant action on several criminal justice reform promises, including decriminalizing marijuana use, ending cash bail and ending mandatory minimum sentences. We have rated all three of these promises Stalled.
Andrew Sidman, chair of the political science department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said criminal justice reform has taken a back seat as the Biden administration focuses on other priorities. With an ongoing pandemic and economic challenges, "criminal justice reform is not a place where the president is going to try to spend political capital," Sidman said.
Also Stalled is Biden's promise to support the study of reparations for slavery.
"Biden is wary of giving Republicans another rallying cry like they had this summer with critical race theory," said Niambi Carter, an associate professor of political science at Howard University, referencing a broad set of ideas about systemic bias and privilege that became a flashpoint in America's state legislatures and played a key role in some pivotal 2021 elections.
Biden has managed to achieve more on climate change. He's used executive authority to score Promise Kept ratings on a few environmental efforts, including establishing new fuel economy standards and rejoining the Paris climate agreement.
Passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill should help the build-out of electric vehicle charging stations and the expansion of rail and mass transit, which are key elements of Biden's promise to put the U.S. on a course to net-zero emissions by 2050. But other key incentives to move the country away from fossil fuels will depend on passage of the Build Back Better package.
As for Biden's promise to block new fracking on federal lands while not banning all fracking, a court ruling and pressure from oil and gas states have kept that promise Stalled.
Senators Krysten Sinema, D-Arizona, and Joe Manchin, D-W.V.
Small congressional margins have stymied many promises
The Democrats' narrow congressional majorities have been particularly trying for Biden.
The biggest example is the Build Back Better bill, which has passed the House but has been subject to months of negotiation with the 49th and 50th Democratic votes in the Senate, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia.
Generally speaking, we have rated promises that are included in the Build Back Better bill as In the Works, pending either passage or a clear legislative dead end. The promises whose fate depends on what happens to the Build Back Better bill include offering tax credits for child care, repealing the law barring Medicare from negotiating lower drug prices and guaranteeing 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave.
Numerous Biden promises have made progress in the House but have failed to advance in the Senate.
Gun control policies, including requiring background checks for all gun sales and banning the manufacture and sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, are considered non-starters in the Senate. And House passage of a bill to end pay discrimination has not yet led to passage in the Senate.
Biden's proposal to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour hit a roadblock in the Senate when it was stripped from the American Rescue Plan. And a bill that would make union organizing easier for workers passed the House but has languished in the Senate.
Meanwhile, the political climate has stalled a measure that historically passed with bipartisan support: reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act.
Some promises advance using executive authority, but others don't
Biden has used executive powers to direct federal resources to help prevent violence against transgender women, to resume ties with the Palestinian Authority and to reverse family separation policies for migrants that were expanded under Trump. All three merited a Promise Kept.
Presidents also tend to have a freer hand in pursuing their foreign policy agenda. Biden has done that by rejoining the Paris climate agreement and reaching out to the Palestinians, and he undertook a messy withdrawal from Afghanistan. (The latter earned him an In the Works for his pledge to end wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East; he accomplished the part involving Afghanistan but has yet to do so for the war in Yemen.)
Biden also notched a lower-profile foreign policy victory by working with allies to develop secure private-sector-led 5G telecommunication networks. He accomplished this by continuing Trump-era policies designed to isolate Huawei, a Chinese telecom giant that national security specialists fear could leave networks open to Chinese surveillance.
However, achieving foreign policy victories can be tricky even without having to deal with Congress. Biden has earned an In the Works for his promise to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal and a Stalled for his pledge to join allies to negotiate with North Korea on denuclearization. He also took no action on his promise to restore engagement with Cuba, earning a Stalled.
Promises that fell down the White House's priority list
Just because presidents have the power to accomplish something using executive power doesn't mean that they will use it. We found many promises made by Biden that have seen little or no progress during his first year in office, presumably because they have fallen lower on the White House's priority list.
Younger Americans, who voted overwhelmingly for Biden, may be frustrated that Biden hasn't kept his promise to forgive student loan debt from public colleges and universities. While Biden has enacted a pause on student loans due to the pandemic and made some smaller efforts to forgive the debts for certain categories of borrowers, he did not push to include full or even partial forgiveness in his Build Back Better bill. Another student-related promise, to make two years of community college or a high-quality training program tuition-free, was also left out.
Meanwhile, Biden has directed the Justice Department to wind down the federal government's use of private prisons, but his order didn't cover the Department of Homeland Security, leaving his pledge to end for-profit detention centers for migrants Stalled.
And while elements of the American Rescue Plan advanced Biden's promise to improve Obamacare, he did not offer significant follow-up on a related health care pledge, to offer a public health insurance option like Medicare.
One reality, Frendreis said, is that Biden's first year could have been even worse.
"The conversation would be very different had the Democrats not won the two Georgia Senate seats to secure a majority" in January 2021, he said. "Had that not happened, Biden would be the first president in the 21st century to not have the semblance of a majority in his first two years — and virtually everything he would have tried legislatively would have been stalled."
Justice Department Seeks Info Collection:
Certification of Compliance With Statutory Eligibility Requirements of Violence Against Women Act as Amended
Targeted News Service (USA)
January 19, 2022
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
WASHINGTON, Jan. 19 -- The U.S. Department of Justice's Office on Violence Against Women has asked the Office of Management and Budget to approve an extension of information collection entitled "Certification of Compliance with the Statutory Eligibility Requirements of the Violence Against Women Act as Amended."
A Jan. 19, 2022, notice published in the Federal Register by Melody Braswell, Department Clearance Officer, PRA U.S. Department of Justice, also opens a 30-day public comment period.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
Written comments and suggestions from the public and affected agencies concerning the proposed collection of information are encouraged. Your comments should address one or more of the following four points:
(1) Evaluate whether the proposed collection of information is necessary for the proper performance of the functions of the agency, including whether the information will have practical utility;
(2) Evaluate the accuracy of the agency's estimate of the burden of the proposed collection of information, including the validity of the methodology and assumptions used;
(3) Enhance the quality, utility, and clarity of the information to be collected; and
(4) Minimize the burden of the collection of information on those who are to respond, including through the use of appropriate automated, electronic, mechanical, or other technological collection techniques or other forms of information technology, e.g., permitting electronic submission of responses.
Overview of This Information Collection
(1) Type of Information Collection: Extension of a currently approved collection.
(2) Title of the Form/Collection: Certification of Compliance with the Statutory Eligibility Requirements of the Violence Against Women Act as Amended.
(3) Agency form number, if any, and the applicable component of the Department of Justice sponsoring the collection: Form Number: 1122-0001. U.S. Department of Justice, Office on Violence Against Women.
(4) Affected public who will be asked or required to respond, as well as a brief abstract: The affected public includes STOP formula grantees (50 states, the District of Columbia and five territories (Guam, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Virgin Islands, Northern Mariana Islands). The STOP Violence Against Women Formula Grant Program was authorized through the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 and reauthorized and amended in 2000, 2005, and 2013. The purpose of the STOP Formula Grant Program is to promote a coordinated, multi-disciplinary approach to improving the criminal justice system's response to violence against women. It envisions a partnership among law enforcement, prosecution, courts, and victim advocacy organizations to enhance victim safety and hold offenders accountable for their crimes of violence against women. The Department of Justice's Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) administers the STOP Formula Grant Program funds which must be distributed by STOP state administrators according to statutory formula (as amended in 2000, 2005 and 2013).
(5) An estimate of the total number of respondents and the amount of time estimated for an average respondent to respond/reply: It is estimated that it will take the approximately 56 respondents (state administrators from the STOP Formula Grant Program) less than one hour to complete a Certification of Compliance with the Statutory Eligibility Requirements of the Violence Against Women Act, as Amended.
(6) An estimate of the total public burden (in hours) associated with the collection: The total annual hour burden to complete the Certification is less than 56 hours.
If additional information is required contact: Melody Braswell, Deputy Clearance Officer, United States Department of Justice, Justice Management Division, Policy and Planning Staff, Two Constitution Square, 145 N Street NE, 3E, 405B, Washington, DC 20530.
Dated: January 13, 2022.
Melody Braswell,
Department Clearance Officer, PRA U.S. Department of Justice.
[FR Doc. 2022-00960 Filed 1-18-22; 8:45 am]
The Big Lie about domestic violence keeps getting told
WorldNetDaily (USA)
January 19, 2022
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Contrary to years of alarming reports by the media focused only on domestic violence by men, women actually commit more domestic violence incidents than men. But the United Nations ran a global campaign this winter titled, "Orange the World: End Violence Against Women Now!" The description of the drive made frequent references to "violence against women and girls" but did not include any mention of "violence against men and boys."
Multiple studies of domestic violence have found that slightly more men than women reported being a victim of domestic violence within the past year, 19.8% to 18.8%. Last year, the Coalition to End Domestic Violence issued a report entitled "Thirty Years of Domestic Violence Half-Truths, Falsehoods and Lies," which revealed massive amounts of bias in this area.
Much of the perception that domestic violence is mainly perpetuated by men against women developed in the 1990s, when then-Sen. Joe Biden drafted the "Violence Against Women Act." Despite all the taxpayer money thrown at the program, there is little or no evidence that VAWA-funded programs have succeeded in reducing rates of domestic violence.
And according to commentator Christina Villegas, protecting persons from partner abuse "has never been the primary intention of VAWA." Instead, the domestic violence campaign has been a "political movement that seeks to change social norms and redistribute resources, power, and control to women, with the long-term aim of a genderless, socialist society."
Another stereotype that persists also began in the 1990s: "More women are victims of domestic violence on Super Bowl Sunday than on any other day of the year." Even the left-wing fact-checking site Snopes labeled that false. Snopes explained, "The claim that Super Bowl Sunday is 'the biggest day of the year for violence against women' is a case study of how easily an idea congruous with what people want to believe can be implanted in the public consciousness and anointed as 'fact' even when there is little or no supporting evidence behind it."
Longtime leading feminist Gloria Steinem once declared, "The most dangerous situation for a woman is … a husband or lover in the isolation of their home." This is false. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the leading causes of injury deaths for women are falls, followed by poisonings and then traffic accidents.
The left-wing dominated legal system is responsible for much of the misinformation. The website of the DOJ Office of Violence Against Women was found to contain massive misinformation. It was so bad that all of the inaccurate fact sheets were removed by 2021.
However, some false data remains on another DOJ website, the Office for Victims of Crime, in a document entitled "Facts About Domestic Violence." Based on findings from the National Crime Victimization Survey, the document incorrectly relates the same inaccurately compiled, tired old statistics.
The International Association of Chiefs of Police mostly ignores the fact that domestic violence is perpetrated against men too. The National District Attorneys Association is almost as bad. The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges issued a pamphlet entitled "Bringing the Greenbook to Life: A Resource Guide for Communities," which contains the words "battered mothers" and "battered women" 27 times, but not a single instance of "battered fathers" or "battered men."
The American Bar Association issued a two-page flyer, "10 Myths about Custody and Domestic Violence and How to Counter Them." The Coalition to End Domestic Violence found, "Overall, the great majority of assertions and conclusions in the CODV flyer were found to be unsupported, misleading, or wrong." Not surprisingly, the ABA took the paper down, but not before it was posted on the Leadership Council on Child Abuse and Interpersonal Violence website.
Perhaps the reason this myth is perpetuated is because of the outdated perception that women are helpless to defend themselves from men. Times have changed. Women can call 911, own guns, learn martial arts to defend themselves, and use the deterrent threat of shaming on social media and through the news media. Of course there are exceptions to all of that where a woman may be unable to utilize any of those – but there are also situations where a man may be unable to defend himself from a woman, such as situations where she is stronger or has a weapon and he doesn't.
The bias is a problem because it promotes harmful stereotypes of men. Instead of being the protectors of women, they are viewed as abusers and predators. It makes women unnecessarily scared to have relationships with men and puts men on eggshells dating women. It also makes men less likely to contact law enforcement for help with domestic violence – which then perpetuates the myth that there is none – a vicious cycle. The numbers of men who contact services for help are drastically lower than women – as much as 99 to 1 in areas such as legal assistance, sexual assault services and transitional living services.
Contrary to a popular stereotype, black men are more likely than black women to be victims of domestic violence. Mandatory domestic violence arrest policies likely result in disproportionate arrest rates among black men.
Women are also more likely than men to be involved in abuse of their children. They commit 53% of child abuse incidents, and mothers are responsible for 71% of child homicides committed by a parent.
Unfortunately, researchers who attempt to refute the misleading claims are targeted by activists. The late professor Suzanne Steinmetz published a book showing that men and women commit domestic violence at approximately equal rates. For pointing this out, a letter-writing campaign was launched to deny her promotion and tenure at the University of Delaware, and her daughter's wedding received a bomb threat.
Finally, during the COVID-19 lockdowns, there were wild claims that being stuck at home has increased domestic violence. But four different studies found this was not true.
What is it going to take to stop this hurtful stereotype from being perpetuated? It will take people daring to speak up and say enough, especially leaders and men who have been hurt.
Legal Aid Society Issues Public Comment on State Department Interim Final Rule
Targeted News Service (USA)
January 20, 2022
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
WASHINGTON, Jan. 20 -- Susan E. Welber, staff attorney for the civil law reform unit, and Hasan Shafiqullah, attorney-in-charge for the immigration law unit, at the Legal Aid Society, New York, have issued a public comment on the U.S. Department of State interim final rule entitled "Visas: Ineligibility Based on Public Charge Grounds". The comment was written on Jan. 18, 2022, and posted on Jan. 19, 2022:
* * *
The Legal Aid Society ("LAS") submits these comments in response to the U.S. Department of State's ("DOS") Notice "Visas: Ineligibility Based on Public Charge Grounds," published on November 17, 2021, which reopens the public comment period on the DOS's October 11, 2019 interim final rule ("IFR")/1 regarding the public charge ground of inadmissibility ultimately codified in the Federal Register (the "2019 DOS Public Charge Rule" or the "2019 DOS Rule")./2
This letter supplements the comments we submitted in response to the original IFR, attached as Exhibit A with additional reasons why DOS should take expeditious regulatory action to withdraw the 2019 DOS Public Charge Rule and revert to the prior public charge regulation./3
Because the 2019 DOS Public Charge Rule shares many features in common with the 2019 U.S. Department of Homeland Security ("DHS") Public Charge Rule (together with the 2019 DOS Rule, the "2019 Rules"), we also attach our comments in response to the Advance Notice of Public Rule Rulemaking with respect to the 2019 DHS Rule as Exhibit B. Finally, in addition to submitting this comment, LAS is a signatory to the Protecting Immigrant Families ("PIF") campaign comments in response to the IFR ("PIF Comment").
After providing background on LAS's work on behalf of low-income immigrants generally and on the issue of public charge specifically, these comments highlight several additional reasons why DOS should take the regulatory action needed to eliminate the 2019 DOS Public Charge Rule permanently (beyond the various court findings that the 2019 Rules are at odds with the law) including the rule's: (a) "chilling effect," whereby non-citizens and their family members unnecessarily avoid vital government benefits for which they are qualified for fear of adverse immigration consequences; (b) discriminatory impact; and (c) adverse impact on U.S. families, communities and the nation.
The Legal Aid Society and Low-Income Immigrants.
LAS was founded in 1876 to defend the individual rights of German immigrants who could not afford a lawyer as they pursued a better life in New York City. Today we stand as the nation's oldest and largest not-for-profit legal services organization. Through three major practice areas--Civil, Criminal, and Juvenile Rights--the Society's 2,000 attorneys, paralegal case handlers, social workers, support staff, and volunteers coordinated by our Pro Bono program handle approximately 300,000 cases a year in city, state, and federal courts through a network of borough, neighborhood, and courthouse-based offices in locations throughout New York City. The COVID-19 pandemic's devastating effect on New York City, including the disproportionate health and economic impacts experienced by Black, Latinx, Asian and Indigenous People of Color, has only strengthened our commitment to our mission - to provide comprehensive legal services so that no New Yorker is denied access to justice because of poverty.
Though LAS has broadened its practice over time, we have remained committed to our original mission: helping low-income immigrant communities. Our Immigration Law Unit utilizes the expertise of almost 100 attorneys, paralegals, and social workers to serve low-income immigrant New Yorkers seeking legal assistance before the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services ("USCIS") and in immigration and federal courts. We represent people threatened with removal, including some of whom are in detention; file habeas petitions seeking the release of people unlawfully detained; represent unaccompanied minors fleeing violence in Central America; assist numerous Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals ("DACA") and Temporary Protected Status ("TPS") recipients with renewing their status; and seek a wide range of immigration relief, including naturalization, adjustment of status, Violence Against Women Act ("VAWA") self-petitions, U visas, T visas, asylum, Special Immigration Juvenile Status ("SIJS"), removal of conditions and family petitions.
Through our vital Government Benefits, Health Law and Law Reform practices, LAS has also led efforts to expand and defend immigrant access to a range of government benefits. In the Aliessa case, which was filed in the wake of federal welfare reform changes that deprived many non-citizens of access to Medicaid, we ensured that all non-citizens who are Permanently Residing under Color of Law (or "PRUCOL") would have access to State-funded Medicaid./4
In M.K.B., a class action filed in federal court on behalf of class of thousands of non-citizens eligible for Cash Assistance, the Supplemental Needs Assistance Program, and Medicaid, we secured new procedures and policies designed to ensure access to these benefits for all who are eligible regardless of immigration status./5
Most recently, LAS has served on the front lines of impact litigation defending against the federal government's varied destructive and discriminatory policies towards immigrants. We served as counsel on behalf of immigration rights groups in a case to stop U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from engaging in enforcement activities in New York State courts;/6 acted as class counsel on a successful case to enjoin the application of unlawful policies with respect to SIJS children;/7 won a groundbreaking precedential decision from the Second Circuit, clarifying that individuals subject to prolonged immigration detention are entitled to custody hearings where the government bears the burden of proof to justify continued detention;/8 and represented intervenors in litigation challenging the Trump Administration's policy of separating families./9
Finally, as co-counsel for plaintiffs in two cases challenging public charge rules issued under the Trump Administration, Make the Road New York, et al. v. Cuccinelli and Make the Road New York, et al. v. Pompeo,/10 we obtained preliminary injunctions against both the 2019 DHS Rule and 2019 DOS Public Charge Rule,/11 and an injunction against President Trump's Healthcare Proclamation./12
Among the preliminary injunctions the courts issued was a decision to halt the 2019 DHS Rule based on national evidence showing how the rule undermined federal, state, and local efforts to combat the COVID-19 pandemic by causing immigrants to fear the immigration consequences of accessing basic healthcare, including testing and care to treat COVID-19./13
In addition to the litigation on public charge, we have continued to provide advice and counsel to clients, community groups, sister advocacy organizations, and state and local government actors as we collectively seek to mitigate the fear that both of the 2019 Rules have caused immigrants locally and nationally.
Based upon our combination of individual immigration representation and litigation on behalf of immigrant communities and our expertise in public benefits, LAS has developed a deep knowledge of how public charge can have a devastating impact on families and communities.
DOS Should Take Expeditious Regulatory Action to Remove the 2019 DOS Public Charge Rule from the Federal Register and Revert to the Prior Rules.
The public charge ground of inadmissibility has a fraught history in U.S. immigration law./14
For the purposes of these comments, we focus on the recent history of three main problems associated with the 2019 DOS Public Charge Rule: (a) the chilling effect; (b) the discriminatory impact; and (c) the adverse impact on U.S. families, communities, and the country. We appreciate DOS's consideration of these adverse impacts as it decides its next regulatory steps with respect to public charge.
1. The 2019 DOS Public Charge Rule Has A Chilling Effect on Immigrant Families Who Need Health Care and other Essential Benefits.
Even though neither of the Trump Administration's public charge rules are being applied at this time - neither the 2019 DOS Public Charge Rule/15 nor the 2019 DHS public charge rule/16 - the regulatory landscape is confusing and immigrant families continue to avoid seeking health care and other critical services to which they are entitled, just as they did and were predicted to do when the rules were in effect. As set forth in PIF Comment, many studies have reported a widespread chilling effect - a decrease in application, enrollment, and continuation in health, nutrition, and housing programs - as a result of the 2019 Rules./17
This impact goes beyond the specific intending immigrants who are subject to a public charge test./18
Leighton Ku, a national expert on the subject of immigrants and health, predicted that the 2019 DHS Rule would cause between 1 to 3.1 million members of immigrant families, many of whom are U.S. citizens, to disenroll from or forego Medicaid benefits each year, even though they are eligible, and believed that the 2019 DOS Rule would have a similar impact./19
Significantly, this chilling effect has persisted during the COVID-19 pandemic. In a national poll conducted in September 2021 ("September 2021 Poll"), nearly half of families with immigrants who needed assistance during the COVID-19 pandemic responded that they abstained from applying due to concerns about their immigration status./20
The 2019 DOS Public Charge Rule compounds the chilling effect caused by the 2019 DHS Rule by directly implicating benefits use by sponsors, typically U.S.-based family members, as a negative factor in determining whether the intending immigrant they seek to sponsor is a public charge. At LAS, we often counsel clients who are U.S.-based family members and who are avoiding benefits because they fear it will negatively impact a family member they hope to sponsor someday. This fear and avoidance occur even when the family member they would someday like to sponsor currently lives abroad and has no immediate plans to seek an immigrant visa. In some cases, the sponsoring family member is concerned for fear of affecting an intending immigrant family member who is still in the U.S. and has yet to fulfill the condition of leaving the U.S. to undergo consular processing abroad before obtaining an immigrant visa.
Furthermore, given the complexity of public charge policy and the significant number of families and households in which members have different immigration statuses, it is often very difficult to understand who is subject to the public charge rules./21
The September 2021 Poll found that the most effective message to encourage people to seek help is to make it clear that "the Trump policy era has ended, and using public programs will have no immigration consequences for applicants or their families."/22
In order to send this type of clear message, DOS needs to remove the 2019 DOS Rule from the Code of Federal Regulations as soon as possible.
2. The 2019 Public Charge Rule Has a Discriminatory Impact Based on Race.
The 2019 DOS Public Charge Rule discriminates against intending immigrants who are required to undergo a public charge assessment based on race, among other factors. When a similar policy to the 2019 DOS Rule was adopted in 2018 in the FAM, the number of public charge denials increased dramatically, four-fold from 3,206 in 2017 to 12,972 in 2018./23
In addition, the increase in denials was concentrated among people from Mexico./24
This increase was greater than any other nationality or other world region./25
The data from 2019 is now available, and there were 20,941 denials./26
Indeed, various challenges to the 2019 Rules have alleged that reducing immigration by low-income immigrants of color was a driving rationale for the rules./27
Both rules increased adjudicator discretion by giving officers many possible bases for making negative findings, including findings based on standard-less assessments of factors such as English language proficiency. Another study examined the likely impact of an early iteration of the 2019 DHS Rule, but focused on the impact of features that made it into the final rule, like income level, age, and English proficiency, and found that immigrants from Mexico and Central America (mostly people of color) would have a higher risk of being found a public charge than immigrants from Europe, Canada, and Australia (mostly white)./28
An expert analysis submitted in several of the court cases brought against the 2019 DHS Rule likewise found that the rule would have a disparate impact on Black and Brown intending immigrants from the Central America and the Caribbean compared to white immigrants./29
And similar findings were found with respect to the 2019 DOS Public Charge Rule. Finally, another predictive study analyzing the impact of both of the 2019 Rules found that that immigrants of color, mainly Mexican and Central American immigrants, would be at substantially higher risk of receiving an adverse public charge determination than other groups, even though their rate of public benefits use is not particularly high relative to other groups./30
3. The 2019 DOS Public Charge Rule Would Have an Adverse Impact on U.S. Families, Communities, and the Nation.
The 2019 DOS Public Charge Rule would deprive U.S. families, communities, and our nation of the invaluable contributions to be made by generations of new immigrants. As cited above, an earlier version of the DOS Rule resulted in a four-fold increase in public charge denials, even higher when incorporating 2019 data. Many of these denials represent individuals who cannot reunite with their family living in the U.S., often a parent, child, or spouse. Such family separation is at odds with the purpose of the Immigration and Nationality Act ("INA"), which was intended to "keep families together."/31
The legislative history of the INA reflects "congressional concern directed at 'the problem of keeping families of United States citizens and immigrants united.'"/32
In furtherance of this intent, in contrast to other visa categories, Congress has placed no limits on the number of immediate relatives of U.S. citizens who can immigrant to the U.S./33
Whereas family reunification benefits the economic, social, and psychological well-being of affected individuals, family separation results in harms including mental and behavioral health issues./34
Beyond the impact on families, depriving new immigrants the opportunity to reside permanently in the U.S. has a profound impact on our communities and our nation. Immigrants have always enriched the social and cultural life of the U.S., and made enormous intellectual and practical contributions to many fields. Immigrants also contribute a tremendous amount to the U.S. economy by starting businesses, contributing to the labor force, paying billions of dollars in taxes and consuming goods and services.
Intending immigrants of every race must have the opportunity to build a life in the U.S., regardless of their income and education when they seek to enter. Research demonstrates the immigrants improve their economic status over time. Analysis conducted by the Center for Health Policy Research found that immigrants have substantial economic mobility. When immigrants first arrive in the United States, they have less social capital and their job skills and experience may not align perfectly with the U.S. job market. Over time, immigrants' social capital increases and job skills and experience improve, increasing their income to eventually catch up to non-immigrants. Additionally, immigrants with low education close the immigrant-native income gap even faster, catching up with similar U.S.-born counterparts within seven years./35
Conclusion
We urge DOS to take the necessary action to remove the 2019 DOS Public Charge Rule from the Federal Register, and formally revert to the policy in effect prior to DOS's changes to the Foreign Affairs Manual ("FAM") on January 3, 2018. The agency's prior policy did not suffer from the adverse impacts associated with the 2019 Rules, including the chilling effect, discriminatory impact based on race, and limiting immigration to the U.S. to the detriment of our families, communities and nation as a whole. Furthermore, the prior policy and practice were clear and sound./36
In practice, consular officials relied on the National Visa Center (NVC) to conduct a technical review to determine whether the affidavit of support form was complete, and the consular officer then decided whether the individual was admissible - based on an adequate affidavit of support. If not, the officer could request additional evidence or an affidavit of support from a joint sponsor./37
The pre-2018 FAM also considered the five statutory factors set out in INA Sec. 212(a)(4)(B) and noted that an intending immigrant "who must have Form I-864, Affidavit of Support Under Section 213(A) of the Act, will generally not need to have extensive personal resources available unless considerations of health, age, skills, etc., suggest the likelihood of his or her ever becoming self-supporting is marginal at best."/38
Only in such cases would support needed by the intending immigrant become more important, and the FAM then identified each of the five factors (health, age, skills, etc.) and indicates when they should be considered./39
The regulatory language prior to DOS's October 2019 rule supported these consular practices./40
The regulations stated that individuals can be denied an immigrant visa if they failed to fulfill the affidavit of support requirement, failed to provide an additional affidavit of support by a joint sponsor when needed, or could not provide confirmation of written employment or post a bond to remove a public charge concern./41
For all of the reasons stated herein and in the Exhibits, we urge DOS to move expeditiously to issue rulemaking on public charge. The constantly changing public charge policies have led to confusion among immigrants and their families, contributing to the chilling effect. Restoring the public charge regulations that were in place before the 2019 DOS Public Charge Rule is the best way to limit this harm.
Sincerely,
Susan E. Welber, Staff Attorney, Civil Law Reform Unit, The Legal Aid Society, 199 Water Street, New York, NY 10038, sewelber@legal-aid.org
Hasan Shafiqullah, Attorney-in-Charge, Immigration Law Unit, The Legal Aid Society, 199 Water Street, New York, NY 10038, hhshafiqullah@legal-aid.org
72 National, Statewide, & Local Organizations Issue Public Comment on State Department Interim Final Rule
Targeted News Service (USA)
January 22, 2022
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
WASHINGTON, Jan. 22 (TNSCAPv) -- Seventy-two national, statewide, and local organizations, have issued a public comment on the U.S. Department of State interim final rule entitled "Visas: Ineligibility Based on Public Charge Grounds". The comment was written on Jan. 18, 2022, and posted on Jan. 19, 2022:
* * *
On behalf of the following 72 national, statewide, and local organizations that serve survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking, we are submitting comments in response to the Department of State's ("DOS") Notice of Reopening of public comment period on the Interim Final Rule concerning Visas: Ineligibility Based on Public Charge Grounds published at 86 Fed. Reg 64070, on November 17, 2021. The following comments intend to address the impact that DOS' October 11, 2019 Interim Final Rule/1 ("DOS rule") rule has on survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault: both survivors seeking admission as well as sponsoring family members or other household members. Our organizations urge DOS to publish a final public charge rule that addresses the needs of victims of domestic violence and sexual assault and supports their ability to obtain and maintain safety and well-being.
While many survivors seeking certain survivor-specific forms of immigration status are exempt from the public charge ground of inadmissibility, such as those who are seeking protections under the Violence Against Women Act, T visas and U visas,/2 the final DOS public charge rule should recognize that large numbers of survivors who do not seek, or who are ineligible for survivor-specific forms of status, and thus will be impacted by the rule. Even in instances where survivors already have been admitted and the DOS rule would not directly apply to them, their family members who may be seeking a visa, such as those sponsored by survivors, or those living in their households (including US Citizens), are being impacted./3
The DOS rule affects both potential applicants for immigrant visas living abroad and people currently living in the U.S, either as sponsors of future immigrants abroad, or intending immigrants themselves who must leave the U.S. and undergo consular processing. Often, survivors (including U.S. citizens or those already admitted) who are in the U.S. fear that if a family member in the U.S. uses a benefit, it will affect their ability to sponsor family members living abroad for visas. In addition, non-citizen survivors who are currently in the US but must go abroad for consular processing are forgoing benefits and services while still in the U.S. because doing so might affect a future public charge determination upon admission. Given the complexity of public charge policy and the significant number of families and households in which members have different immigration statuses, there is widespread confusion about who is subject to the rule./4
While DOS has revised the Foreign Affairs Manual (FAM)/5 to align with the Immigration and Naturalization Service's (INS's) 1999 Field Guidance ("1999 Field Guidance"),/6 and DHS operating policy, having a policy in the regulations that differs from the 2021 FAM guidelines and the 1999 Field Guidance adds to the confusion for immigrants and their families, as well as for immigration attorneys and accredited representatives, benefits granting agencies, and others who work with immigrant communities.
Over the last several years, immigrant survivors and their families have been declining, or withdrawing from, assistance programs that support their basic needs due to fear./7
Unfortunately, the promulgation of the enjoined public charge regulation in 2019 had a severe chilling impact on survivors accessing benefits, including those not subject to the rule, and for benefits that would not be considered in a public charge assessment.
For example, survivor advocates reported examples of survivors declining housing for victims, including housing specifically provided for victims, resulting in survivors becoming homeless and their children returning to live with abusers. Another advocate reported a survivor of rape declining a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner ("SANE") forensic exam and accompanying emergency medical treatment,/8 a service not considered in a public charge assessment. Results from a national poll conducted in September 2021, showed that nearly half of families with immigrants who needed assistance during the COVID-19 pandemic responded that they abstained from applying due to concerns about their immigration status./9
The result has been significant human suffering and economic costs to immigrant survivors, their families, and our communities at large. To alleviate the widespread confusion and the chilling effect, we urge DOS to remove the text of the 2019 DOS rule from the C.F.R. as soon as possible because the chilling effect of the public charge policy continues and the current DOS policy landscape confuses immigrant families, as well as discourages immigrant survivors from seeking critical services.
Prior to the 2018 public charge related changes to the FAM, DOS' public charge policy and practice was clear-cut and reasonably predictable. If an adequate affidavit of support had been submitted, the consular officer would determine if an individual was admissible based on the submitted affidavit, or request additional evidence or an additional affidavit of support from a joint sponsor. The pre-2018 FAM also considered the five statutory factors set out in INA Sec. 212(a)(4)(B) and placed significant weight on the affidavit of support. The regulatory language prior to the 2019 DOS rule was consistent with the consular practice. The regulatory language prior to the 2019 DOS rule stated that individuals can be denied an immigrant visa if they failed to fulfill the affidavit of support requirement, failed to provide an additional affidavit of support by a joint sponsor when needed, or could provide confirmation of written employment or post a bond to remove a public charge concern./10
The policy was clear and consistent, making it easier for advocates to explain to immigrant families. When DOS underwent the 2019 rulemaking, the agency failed to cite any evidence of harm caused by the prior policy. We urge DOS to issue a rule restoring the longstanding regulatory text that appeared prior to the 2019 DOS rule,/11 strengthened with language that promotes policies that support survivors in overcoming and escaping abuse.
Domestic and sexual violence are widespread in our communities - with one in three women and one in six men in the United States experiencing some form of sexual violence in a lifetime,/12 and more than 12 million men and women experiencing rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner each year in the United States./13
These figures are consistent with worldwide estimates, i.e., 1 in 3 women, or approximately 736 million women worldwide have been subjected to domestic or sexual violence./14
Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, domestic violence has increased in frequency and severity./15
Due to the prevalence of domestic and sexual violence, Congress has provided for many important protections and programs to support victims to escape and overcome abuse through various laws, including the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA),/16 the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act,/17 and the Victims of a Crime Act ("VOCA"),/18 among other enactments.
Congress has also recognized the role of access to economic supports for survivors in escaping and overcoming abuse when it enacted the federal Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program,/19 and included the Family Violence Option ("FVO")/20 to prevent welfare program rules from unfairly penalizing or putting family violence victims at further risk. Domestic and sexual abuse can result in survivors falling into poverty: either because the domestic violence itself included financial abuse or because the consequences of abuse or assault have undermined the victim's ability to work, maintain their housing, or otherwise access financial security. The FVO serves to address the experience of financial coercion and abuse that the overwhelming majority (approximately 94%) of survivors of domestic violence have experienced./21
Many abusive partners and employers, and other harm-doers try to prevent or sabotage survivors from attaining economic independence or stability by limiting their access to financial resources, interfering with employment, harming credit, and more./22
Survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault may also lose their jobs due to intense trauma, reduced productivity, harassment at work by perpetrators, and other reasons stemming from the violence./23
In addition, survivors of domestic and sexual violence may have injuries due to the harm they have experienced, or lack having health insurance for having escaped an abusive relationship. Many survivors suffer health issues as a result of abuse, including acute injuries, chronic pain, and traumatic brain injuries, and are at an increased risk for suicide, depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder, and substance abuse./24
Without sufficient economic and health resources, survivors are either compelled back into abusive or exploitative relationships, continue to experience the impacts of trauma and injury, or face destitution and homelessness./25
Access to core financial, health, nutrition, and housing assistance programs are critical for survivors in their journeys to overcome the trauma they've experienced and should be disconnected altogether from the exclusionary "public charge" provision in DOS' rule. Being able to access benefits without fear contributes to the goals of aforementioned federal, as well as state and local policies that support survivor safety and autonomy, recovery from trauma, healthy families, and violence prevention./26
DOS' public charge rule should support survivors in seeking or utilizing safety net benefits that are crucial to survivors' ability to escape or recover from abuse and trauma and work to reduce survivors' isolation from their families, which are often essential sources of support when escaping and recovering from abuse.
The DOS public charge rule must promote family reunification
Family members serve as one of the main sources of support for survivors, and the presence of a strong support system can be vital to a survivor's ability to disclose, escape, and heal from the trauma of domestic violence, sexual assault, and other gender-based abuses. Survivors stress that having family in their lives is essential to their recovery, providing survivors with the affirmation, encouragement, stability, and resources they need to grow and move forward./27
DOS' public charge rule should not work to isolate victims from their families and support system for having accessed critical economic, health, housing, and other programs to escape or heal from violence.
Conclusion
We urge DOS to move as expeditiously as possible to issue rulemaking on public charge. The constantly changing public charge policies have led to confusion among immigrants and their families, deterring immigrant survivors from accessing critical resources available to them to overcome and escape from abuse. Restoring and strengthening the public charge regulations that were in place before the 2019 rule is a critical step in addressing the ability of survivors in immigrant families to obtain and maintain safety and well-being.
Please feel free to contact Grace Huang at ghuang@api-gbv.org, or Richard Caldarone at richardc@tahirih.org with any questions or concerns. Thank you for the opportunity to submit comments on the Interim Final Rule on Visas: Ineligibility on Public Charge Grounds.
Sincerely,
Alliance for Immigrant Survivors Co-Chairs
Asian Pacific Institute on Gender-Based Violence
ASISTA
Esperanza United (Formerly Casa de Esperanza National Latin@ Network) Tahirih Justice Center
National Organizations
Al Otro Lado
Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, Inc.
BWJP
Center for Gender & Refugee Studies
Children's Defense Fund
Disciples Immigration Legal Counsel
Freedom Network USA
Futures Without Violence
GBV Consulting
Immigration Center for Women and Children
Jewish Women International
Legal Momentum, the Women's Legal Defense and Education Fund
Lovelace Consulting Services, Inc.
National Alliance to End Sexual Violence
National Asians & Pacific Islanders Ending Sexual Violence
National Center on Domestic Violence, Trauma and Mental Health
National Coalition Against Domestic Violence
National Council of Jewish Women
National Immigrant Justice Center
National Immigrant Women's Advocacy Project (NIWAP) Inc.
National Network to End Domestic Violence
National Organization for Women
The National Domestic Violence Hotline
Ujima, Inc: The National Center on Violence Against Women in the Black Community Statewide Organizations
Advocating Opportunity
Arizona Coalition to End Sexual and Domestic Violence
Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence
Asian/Pacific Islander Domestic Violence Resource Project
California Partnership to End Domestic Violence
Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault
End Domestic Abuse Wisconsin
Florida Council Against Sexual Violence
Illinois Coalition Against Domestic Violence
Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence
Jane Doe Inc.
Kansas Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence
Kentucky Coalition Against Domestic Violence
Maine Coalition Against Sexual Assault
Massachusetts Law Reform Institute (MLRI)
Monsoon Asians & Pacific Islanders in Solidarity
Montana Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence
NC Coalition Against Sexual Assault
Nebraska Coalition to End Sexual and Domestic Violence
New York State Coalition Against Domestic Violence
New York State Coalition Against Sexual Assault
Northwest Immigrant Rights Project
Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence (OAESV)
Ohio Domestic Violence Network
Progreso Latino
Sexual Violence Law Center
TAASA
Texas Council on Family Violence
Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence
Violence Free Colorado
Washington Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs
Wisconsin Coalition Against Sexual Assault
Local Organizations
New Mexico Asian Family Center
The Network: Advocating Against Domestic Violence
7000 Miles to Freedom
Apna Ghar, Inc.
Crime Victim Services
Her Justice, Inc.
Human Rights Initiative of North Texas
LA Center for Law and Justice
Shelter House, Inc.
South Asian Network, Inc
The Legal Project
YWCA Utah
* * *
View footnotes at https://downloads.regulations.gov/DOS-2021-0034-0025/attachment_1.pdf
The interim final rule can be viewed at https://www.regulations.gov/document/DOS-2021-0034-0001
Biden's Afghanistan aftermath
Help not reaching at-risk populations
Real Clear Politics
Author: Susan Crabtree
January 23, 2022
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
On a mid-January evening, an interpreter for an Afghan woman, a former civic leader now in hiding from the Taliban, described the winter of discontent, desperation and despair taking hold of the safe house they both share with a dozen others.
"Believe me, we are in a very bad condition. I am selling all my [possessions], and no one wants to buy," he told RealClearPolitics. "We don't know what to do. From one side, the weather is very cold … and now I can't go out [to try to sell them and get supplies] because everywhere [Taliban members] are standing."
The interpreter and several others who have been huddled together in lockdown since the chaotic U.S. evacuation five months ago live in constant fear of being recognized by the Taliban because they worked for the former leader, a prominent woman in their community.
Back then, the U.S. publicly championed her and many others for standing up to the Taliban and taking on roles previously held only by men – even giving more than a dozen of them International Women of Courage awards, shuttling many of these heroines to Washington for meet-and-greets with members of Congress, think tank panels and media interviews.
Now the same woman often sits alone in one of the safe house rooms, guilt-ridden and expressing regret for her high-profile role that instantly disappeared when the country fell to Taliban control – as did many freedoms Afghan women enjoyed over the last two decades.
Many of her family members and former employees, all of whom had strong ties to the U.S. and other international organizations, now live in locked-down isolation, fearing for their lives and frantically seeking U.S. assistance to evacuate – to no avail.
"She says she's so sorry for putting all of our lives in danger," the interpreter recounted, noting that members of their group have run out of resources and are now relying on private charities' donations for food, rent and firewood. He and many others in the group had spent thousands of dollars attaining college degrees for jobs they lost when the Taliban took control. They wonder if all the effort and money was worth it with their higher education credentials now spurring Taliban suspicion.
The groups keep in touch with the outside world via social media sites – and fret about reports of Taliban violence against other former women leaders. Over the last month, one former prominent leader, through her U.S. human rights lawyer, said she has been beaten by members of the new regime, as have two of her relatives. Just this past weekend, reports surfaced that a female activist was shot and killed at a Taliban checkpoint while coming home from a wedding. Several months ago, a woman who worked at a women's prison went missing.
A State Department spokeswoman said the agency is aware of the reports, deeming them "deeply concerning," though without confirming them.
(For security reasons, RealClearPolitics is withholding the women's names and many details of their identities.) An RCP report in mid-December chronicled the catch-22 U.S. government refugee process that has left these leaders and hundreds like them stranded in the country.
The refugee application process requires Afghan citizens who worked closely with the U.S. government but don't fall into priority categories qualifying them for Special Immigrant Visas, or SIVs, to travel to a third country before they can begin their application process. That process is estimated to take 18-24 months, but the U.S. does not facilitate these Afghans' departure, so many are stranded with no way to support themselves after their government jobs disappeared and the Taliban froze their bank accounts.
Last month, a State Department spokesperson told RCP that the U.S. will continue to "support Afghans in as many ways as we can by providing humanitarian assistance in partnership with the international community."
Last week the U.S. Agency for International Development announced an initial contribution of $308 million in humanitarian assistance for this year as part of an unprecedented $5 billion United Nations push to help needy Afghans in what has become the world's largest humanitarian crisis. Nearly 20 million are on the brink of famine, and by the middle of the year, 97% of Afghans citizens could face "universal poverty," living below the World Bank-designated international poverty line of $1.90 a day, according to the United Nations Development Programme.
With the new USAID pledge, the United States has provided a total of $782 million in humanitarian aid to Afghanistan and Afghan refugees in the region since October 2020.
"President Biden has been clear that humanitarian assistance will continue to flow directly to the people of Afghanistan," USAID said in a Jan. 11 statement. "… The new contribution from the United States will provide lifesaving aid for the most vulnerable Afghans, and that includes women and girls, minority populations, and people with disabilities."
Despite this broad public pledge, U.S.-directed humanitarian assistance is not reaching many of those who need it the most – former women leaders and others hiding from the Taliban in safe houses – contacts for several of these people told RCP.
One source in Afghanistan said an international organization turned him away at a food distribution center three times in recent weeks while doling out the provisions to other families with closer ties to those in charge. There are other reports that the Taliban is siphoning off the food and provisions to help feed those in their own ranks, as well as their allies.
Some of these former female leaders have P1 or P2 referrals, meaning a U.S. or international official has recommended them for a refugee program for Afghans who had worked with certain U.S. organizations but who don't qualify for SIV status. However, that process is languishing. The State Department has completed only 330 cases out of 11,000 referrals and none have entered the United States, Politico reported in early January.
Private U.S. charities and veterans groups have stepped into the void to support some of these locked-down groups over the last five months, including those in the safe house mentioned above. In addition to aiding in the evacuations of thousands of at-risk Afghans, 16 of the veterans groups have joined forces in forming the Moral Compass Federation, an umbrella organization dedicated to helping their Afghan allies and partners in the special operations community.
"Unfortunately, a lot of the international aid is going straight to families of the Taliban, ignoring at-risk civilian populations, such as the Hazara," Daniel Elkins, the CEO of the Special Operations Association of America and a founding member of the Moral Compass Federation, said in a statement to RCP. (The Hazaras are a Persian-speaking ethnic group who have faced fierce Taliban persecution.)
"While the international community argues over how to provide this critical assistance, our network of veterans and volunteers provides immediate, direct support to at-risk Afghans, many who have been forced into hiding to escape Taliban retribution. For months, we've provided our Afghan partners with life-saving food, shelter, clothing, and medical care to help them survive the brutal winter," he added.
The federation's members include: the Special Operations Association of America, Aces & Eights, CEEC.CHURCH, Flanders Fields Ltd., The Lifeline Foundation, OP620, Operation Freedom Bird, Operation Recovery, Operation Sacred Promise, Project Exodus Relief, R20, Task Force Argo, Task Force Diablo, Task Force Hawk, Task Force North Star, and Task Force Pineapple.
In a separate effort, the popular '90s rock band Pearl Jam, along with several other musicians and celebrities, united with a group of high-profile humanitarian organizations last week to urge the Biden administration to send emergency aid to Afghanistan and help the country access frozen bank accounts and other financial resources. The latter move would require the U.S. to ease harsh sanctions put in place against the Taliban since the U.S. left last year. Members of the coalition include Catholic Relief Services, World Vision, Save the Children, InterAction and several others.
After the latest USAID announcement of humanitarian aid last week, news reports indicated that the Taliban is impeding distribution of the aid. Asked about this, State Department spokesman Ned Price vigorously defended the U.S. role, arguing that the problems are decades in the making, not anything caused by last year's abrupt U.S. withdrawal.
"It is not because of anything the United States is doing or is not doing when it comes to our support of the humanitarian needs of the Afghan people," Price asserted, blaming the difficulties on the current drought, winter, and the "longer-term trends" over the course of two decades. "And the United States and our partners, we were very clear with the Taliban before … the fall of the previous government in Kabul that any attempt to overtake the country by force would only worsen what was already a humanitarian emergency," he added.
A senior adviser for the United Nations Development Programme was more pointed in describing the hurdles. Manav Sachdeva, who advises the UNDP Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery, cites a litany of frustrations he's experienced in trying to channel aid to those who need it the most: "Insensitivity, apathy, broad systemic failures, political judgment, delays in understanding the need, desires to be on the right side of history rather [than] just help out, [the] story disappearing from the headlines, complicity by the world media to keep the story away from the headlines."
"Food distribution is inherently problematic in that it faces the same problem as governance – who to partner with if not the ones in charge, as those in charge are Taliban," he told RCP in an interview.
Sachdeva stressed that he's willing to talk about the problems on the record out of concern for the millions of Afghan people suffering through a brutal winter. "It isn't always a supply problem, but a governance and fairness and safety issue," he said.
The U.S. government, Sachdeva argued, "doesn't want pressure that we are not doing enough so it comes up with a ballpark pledge and even allocation figures, but actual disbursed and distributed are different figures.
"For the U.N. also, I can say that our partners and partner organizations are basically targets of the Taliban. It's not easy to set up proper channels that will also not risk lives of those most in need. The August departure was a calamitous one – it has broken down barely functioning systems."
Trying to get food and assistance to those in safe houses is the hardest part. "The Taliban has to stop hunting them – do an actual rather than rhetorical amnesty" for prominent women and former members of the Afghan government and military, he said.
The best option for the U.S. and international partners, according to Sachdeva, is to own up to the problems and publicly highlight them so they once again make front page news. That, he argues, in turn will put pressure on the Taliban to stop targeting people.
Another recommendation: The international community needs to ratchet up pressure on all neighboring countries to provide safe passage through their borders and, ultimately, negotiate with the Taliban to allow for a food distribution process around the country from a local harvest area.
Yet, without U.S. aid workers on the ground, it's nearly impossible to assess whether the Taliban can be any type of trusted partner. The U.S. government is already finding it difficult to confirm the myriad reports of Taliban members stealing humanitarian aid and brutalizing, kidnapping or even killing women.
And there are obvious reasons the Biden administration is reluctant to call attention to the spiraling humanitarian crisis: President Biden's abysmal poll numbers on his handling of the U.S. withdrawal.
A State Department spokesperson late last week condemned any targeted violence against women human rights defenders and civil society activists in general, while continuing to stand by current U.S. policy against helping all at-risk Afghans leave the country in order to begin the refugee application process.
Since mid-December, nearly 80 U.S. citizens haven't been able to leave the country after the Taliban grounded U.S. evacuation flights. The decision stems from a conflict between the Taliban and the Qatari government, which has partnered with the U.S. on relocation efforts, over access to their flights.
"Harming and killing women and human rights activists is not the practice of a responsible actor or one that seeks legitimacy from the international community," the spokesperson said in an emailed statement. "We stand with the Afghan people, especially with women, children, journalists, human rights defenders, persons with disabilities, members of the LGBTQI+ community, and members of minority groups. We send our deepest condolences to any victims of abuse and their families and call for the perpetrators to be held accountable."
In late December, Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a virtual meeting with U.N. Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths and President of the International Committee of the Red Cross Peter Maurer about efforts to strengthen humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan and Ethiopia.
An official read-out of that meeting noted the State Department's "robust and growing engagement" on women's issues in Afghanistan at senior levels, including the recent appointment of Rina Amiri as special envoy on Afghan women, girls and human rights. On Dec. 29, Blinken announced Amiri's appointment, along with that of Stephanie Foster as the new senior adviser for women and girls issues within the department's Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts team.
The two appointees bring decades of public policy, diplomatic and advocacy experience to their new roles advancing the department's "vital work to support women, girls and human rights," Blinken said at the time. But some former senior State Department officials question whether the appointments will produce meaningful results for Afghan women if U.S. resettlement policies continue to include impossible hurdles for those who remain stranded.
"There are things the Biden administration can do TODAY to fix some of these problems & yet have refused to do for months for no apparent reason," Kelley Currie, who served as the ambassador at large for Global Women's Issues and the U.S. representative at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, tweeted in early January.
First, she argued, they should move the known Afghans who have an SIV or P1 or P2 status – meaning they worked closely with the U.S. or international partners over the last 20 years – from current third countries to U.S. "lily pads" (overseas bases) for processing.
These are "the people we were actually supposed to be helping during the evacuation" but are now stuck in "an Orwellian catch-22 refugee resettlement program from Hell that is both bureaucratically heavy and does nothing to improve screening or security, especially when we're talking about <10,000 women (inc. their households) who have been previously vetted for U.S. visas, participation in U.S. exchange programs & sundry other engagements in the U.S."
Currie added, "It is absolutely lunatic that these women & their families are sitting in Albania & other countries, facing potentially years of waiting … when they're a well-defined, known, credibly identified population that can be easily moved into the same parole processing system used to admit +75K Afghans, a vast majority of whom didn't meet those criteria."
Currie said U.S. officials should heed the call from dozens of Democratic senators to establish a special parole category for Afghan women leaders to allow their refugee applications to be processed in Afghanistan rather than making them wait until they can escape to a third country to enter the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, which she dubbed USRAP "hell realm."
"If they are being pre-approved for parole, they will be able to travel & cross a border – something that is almost impossible for them to do legally now," she tweeted.
A State Department spokesperson acknowledged "that it is extremely difficult for Afghans to get to a third country for their USRAP cases to begin processing," adding, "We continue to call for safe passage for all those who wish to leave Afghanistan."
When it comes to problems distributing humanitarian aid to those in safe houses, the State Department said it uses "robust monitoring and evaluation mechanisms for all humanitarian partners that provide assistance within Afghanistan."
The spokesperson did not address the complaints by prominent international organizations, as well as Afghan women leaders in hiding, that the assistance is not reaching some of the people most in need of it.
Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics' White House/national political correspondent.
Afghan women face increasing violence and repression under the Taliban after international spotlight fades
Conversation, The (USA)
February 4, 2022
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
The Taliban reportedly captured 40 people in Mazar-e-Sharif, a medium-sized city in Afghanistan, at the end of January 2022. Taliban members then allegedly gang-raped eight of the women.
The women who survived the gang rape were subsequently killed by their families. The fact that the women had been raped violated a societal honor code called Pashtunwalli, which prohibits women from engaging in sex outside of marriage.
Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid tweeted that some of the women they arrested “remain detained because their male relatives have not yet come to escort them.”
News of the attack is circulating among various Afghan communities and some local media, according to several Afghan women’s rights activists who are part of my academic network. These colleagues cannot be named because of security concerns.
Women’s rights activists marched in Kabul on Jan. 16, 2022, asking where the women of the Mazar-e-Sharif attack have gone.
But a careful online news search in English will not reveal details about these recent kidnappings and gang rapes – a common form of aggression by the Taliban in the 1990s. No Western media has covered the attacks.
Afghanistan made Western headlines in July and August 2021, as the U.S. withdrew the last troops from the country.
Under the Taliban’s latest rule, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in Afghanistan are facing “grave threats” of violence and death, according to new findings by the research and advocacy nonprofit organization Human Rights Watch.
Violence against women in Afghanistan also appears to again be worsening, according to local Afghan colleagues I know. But these reports are not eliciting international political concern.
During a major peace and conflict conference I attended with Alexia Cervello San Vicente, a masters student at Columbia University, in January 2022, participants shelved questions about Afghan women’s gender-based violence in favor of discussing trade agreements and foreign aid. Alexia assisted in the research and writing of this story.
As an expert on terrorism and violence against women, I find that the current situation for women and girls in Afghanistan is reminiscent of the Taliban’s last restrictive regime in the 1990s.
Women’s rights in Afghanistan then and today
When the Taliban first rose to power in 1996, it famously banned Afghan women from holding jobs, or even leaving home without a male guardian or chaperone.
Womens’ rights violations in Afghanistan were a major topic of public concern in the 1990s.
The general tenor of the public rhetoric at the time amplified the idea that Afghan women needed to be helped by Western countries.
Women’s rights did improve significantly after the Taliban’s fall in 2001, as women and girls were again allowed to attend school, participate in the workforce and hold positions of authority in government.
Violating a code of conduct
My previous research on women’s human rights and gender-based violence in places like Nigeria and Iraq shows that violence against women can follow a common trajectory.
Women are doubly victimized, first by gender-based violence and then by their communities, which fault women for violating patriarchal codes of conduct. These codes blame women for being sexually harassed or assaulted.
The fact that these codes target women discourages them from reporting gender-based violence and creates an atmosphere of impunity for men who brutalize women. This permissive environment has led to increased violence against women in Afghanistan over the last six months.
A similar incident to the gang rapes happened in 2014, before the Taliban returned to power – but the situation played out very differently: Former Afghan president Hamid Karzai signed death warrants for the men who gang-raped four women.
Legal retribution for the recent alleged gang rapes is unlikely, given that the Taliban have eliminated the women’s affairs office, which worked to secure women’s legal rights. They replaced it with the previously disbanded ministry of vice and virtue. This notorious government office imposed stringent restrictions on women and girls.
Afghanistan falling through the cracks
International media coverage of Afghanistan in August 2021, and shortly thereafter, focused on whether the country would lose two decades of human rights progress.
Global interest in Afghanistan and women’s rights appears to have since dissipated. One likely contributing factor is that most Western and Afghan journalists alike left Afghanistan as the Taliban gained control of the country.
But the reality for women in Afghanistan today remains unchanged. Some experts have described Afghanistan being set back 20 years.
The Taliban’s recent decree on women’s rights omitted previous promises it made to allow girls to attend school, for example.
Most secondary schools in Afghanistan remain shut, despite the Taliban’s early pledges to allow girls to attend.
A new law forbids women from undertaking solo, long-distance road trips.
Meanwhile, there are reports from the human rights nonprofit Amnesty International that the Taliban has closed women’s shelters and other social services for women experiencing abuse.
These new restrictions are making women virtual “ prisoners in their own homes,” according to Human Rights Watch.
A new template for improving Afghan women’s rights
Some Afghan civil society groups have tried to encourage Muslim and traditional religious authorities to advocate on behalf of women and to give sermons about preventing gender-based violence.
The likelihood of any moderation is slim under the Haqqani network, a Sunni Islamist militant organization that is part of the Taliban.
But religious authorities in other Muslim countries could provide a template for improving women’s situation in Afghanistan.
As part of Western countries’ push to normalize relations with the Taliban, they could also establish connections between receiving foreign funding and protecting women’s peace and security.
Financial incentives could help prevent women from being stigmatized or killed. There is a historical precedent for this strategy in Muslim countries.
Women were specifically targeted when Pakistan invaded Bangladesh in 1971. An estimated 200,000 to 400,000 women were raped by the Pakistani military and Razakar, a Pakistani military group, in a systematic fashion.
The newly formed Bangladeshi government then offered financial incentives for men to marry the victimized women, reducing the stigma around their assaults.
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE LEVELS REMAINED FLAT IN MICHIGAN DURING EARLY PANDEMIC, BUT ABUSE WAS WORSE
US Fed News (USA)
February 8, 2022
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
ANN ARBOR, Mich., Feb. 8 -- The University of Michigan issued the following news release:
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, media reports warned of skyrocketing domestic violence.
While the overall prevalence of domestic violence in Michigan didn't increase, survivors of intimate partner violence experienced new, more frequent or more severe violence during the early months of the pandemic, a University of Michigan study found.
U-M researchers surveyed 1,169 Michigan women and transgender/nonbinary individuals from June to August 2020 about changes in prevalence, severity and correlates to intimate partner violence.
Roughly 1 in 7 Michigan women and trans/nonbinary people experienced intimate partner violence-similar to pre-pandemic levels-but 1 in 10 experienced new, more frequent or more severe violence during that time period, said study co-author Sarah Peitzmeier, assistant professor at the U-M School of Nursing and School of Public Health.
Populations more likely to experience new, worse or more frequent intimate partner violence were those who were economically vulnerable or housing unstable; trans and nonbinary people; and those living with six or more in a household. Also, essential workers were twice as likely to experience new or worse violence, while one-third of pregnant women and one-fourth of households with toddlers experienced new or worse violence.
Also, people who tested for COVID were more likely to experience new or worse violence, and 86% of people who tested positive in the early weeks of the pandemic experienced new or more severe violence.
"There is clearly some interaction between this COVID pandemic and this pandemic of intimate partner violence," Peitzmeier said.
The findings were shared in December 2020 with several state agencies and the governor's office, as well as several universities and major hospitals across Michigan.
Peitzmeier and her research partner Lisa Fedina, assistant professor at the U-M School of Social Work, say the results appear consistent with the reports from media and domestic violence advocates.
"Maybe pre-pandemic, folks were experiencing a low level of abuse and weren't needing to reach out to a hotline or seek services, but during the pandemic they experienced an increase in severity," Peitzmeier said. "On the ground, service providers see an increased need, even if at the population level we don't see an overall increase in numbers of people experiencing abuse. At the same time, the situation is getting worse for many survivors."
If more people reported new violence, shouldn't the overall prevalence increase? Not necessarily, because someone who was experiencing violence before could be experiencing violence from a new partner, she said.
And roughly 3% of respondents started experiencing violence during the pandemic, but 3% stopped experiencing it during the same period. Researchers aren't sure why-it may be related to the cyclical nature of domestic abuse, or it may be that the abuser and victim don't live together and during lockdown the abuser did not have access to the victim.
Peitzmeier said it is difficult to explain the nuances of the research, and some academics and domestic violence advocates think the findings either overemphasized or underemphasized the effect of domestic violence in the state.
"It's important to look at these results and remember that even if the prevalence of women and trans people experiencing domestic violence did not increase, there are still 1 in 10 women and trans people who are seeing more severe or increased domestic abuse," Peitzmeier said. "We have to focus on, 'How do we help these people?'"
Peitzmeier suggested that policies such as eviction moratoria and rental and child care subsidies, partnering with prenatal and pediatric clinics and COVID testing sites to distribute information and referrals to domestic violence services could help.
Fedina said much can be done to help survivors, starting with believing and listening.
"We can donate our time, money or other resources to local organizations serving domestic violence and sexual assault survivors, recognizing that many domestic violence shelters and social service providers have faced budget cuts during the pandemic while the need for services has only increased," she said.
"(Also), we need Congress to prioritize the Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization Act of 2021 to ensure survivors have access to stable housing and other critical economic supports. Contact your senators and urge them to support this vital bill that will protect survivors and save lives."
Senators strike bipartisan deal on domestic violence bill
Associated Press News Service, The
February 9, 2022
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
WASHINGTON (AP) — A bipartisan group of U.S. senators introduced a proposal Wednesday to reauthorize the 1990s-era law that extends protections for victims of domestic and sexual violence after it lapsed in 2019 because of Republican opposition.
Sen. Dick Durbin announced a bill to renew the Violence Against Women Act alongside his Democratic and Republican colleagues who were also joined by domestic violence survivors and actress and advocate Angelina Jolie.
“For those who have given up hope on the United States Senate functioning, passing important laws, working together on a bipartisan basis, take a look behind me," Durbin, D-Ill., said.
The last time the law was reauthorized was in 2013. Republicans have since blocked the legislation from passing in the Senate over a provision that would prohibit persons previously convicted of misdemeanor stalking from possessing firearms, which generated opposition from the National Rifle Association. That provision was excluded as part of the deal.
The law, first introduced in the Senate in 1990 by President Joe Biden when he was a senator from Delaware, aims to reduce domestic and sexual violence and improve the response to it through a variety of grant programs. A subsequent version was eventually included in a sweeping crime bill that then-President Bill Clinton signed into law four years later. Congress has reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act three times since.
The bipartisan proposal announced Wednesday would not include the so-called boyfriend loophole. Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa and Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California have been working on the plan to extend the law with 60 votes since 2019 and the lawmakers believe this time they can make it happen.
“I have full confidence that this is going to pass in the Senate,” Ernst, a survivor of domestic violence, told reporters. “And I know that there were provisions that we didn’t get into the bill. And I have said all along that the point is not for it to be a political football to use as a tool during campaigns.”
She added that while Democrats are not happy without the inclusion of the provision to restrict firearms from potential abusers, what’s important now is to get something at least 60 senators can agree on “and then come back and keep working on the issues that we haven’t been able to solve yet.”
Durbin, the Democrats' chief vote-counter, said the Senate is “perilously” close to reaching that threshold of support, but that the bill will not come on to the floor before late February.
Jolie told lawmakers the stakes are high. “I repeat this is one of the most important votes you will cast this year in the Senate,” she said.
The original bill created the Office on Violence Against Women within the Justice Department, which has awarded more than $9 billion in grants to state and local governments, nonprofits and universities over the years. The grants fund crisis intervention programs, transitional housing and legal assistance to victims, among other programs. Supporters said the reauthorization would also boost spending for training law enforcement and the courts.
The dangerously fake link between the Super Bowl and human trafficking
Jefferson City News-Tribune (MO)
February 9, 2022
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
The following editorial appears in the Los Angeles Times (TNS):
One of the more entrenched Super Bowl traditions is the reminder the annual NFL championship game is linked to a spike in human trafficking. The statement is solemnly repeated by law enforcement officials, elected leaders and news outlets, although the details are left to the imagination.
The theory is thousands of men travel to the host city, which this year is Inglewood, California, and while waiting for or recovering from the big game, they go looking for sex, which is provided by women and girls who have been forced into sexual slavery by traffickers.
It’s a myth. It has been debunked many times over, including by some leading organizations that fight trafficking. Academic studies and serious news reporting have found no connection between trafficking and the game and no uptick in trafficking activity as game day approaches.
Trafficking in human beings and compelling them into sexual activity or labor, domestically and across international borders, is a very real and serious problem that requires attention and resources to combat. But trafficking is not increased by big sporting events.
So why does this falsehood persist? And why is it repeated each year by officials and news outlets who ought to know better?
Why, for example, did L.A. County Sheriff Alex Villanueva weigh in last month with a warning the game “ends up being one of the major events that draws human traffickers to the region,” and why did city and state officials hold a news conference at Los Angeles International Airport to warn of trafficking connected with the event? Why are Uber drivers and hotel staff coached to look out for signs that someone is a trafficking victim? Do they have tattoos, for example, or avoid eye contact with strangers and steer clear of police, or other conduct that is perfectly normal among non-trafficked people?
Like all urban legends that just won’t die, this one appears to confirm but compartmentalize our fears.
Yes, we can tell ourselves, there are monsters who enslave others for their own gain, but we know where and when to find, catch or avoid them. It’s like the fake but persistent Halloween story that pedophiles snatch trick-or-treaters from their porches. There are, indeed, people who sexually abuse children, but there’s no actual link between their crimes and Halloween. There are human traffickers, but they don’t make a beeline for the Super Bowl.
Some reasons for keeping these myths alive are seriously troubling. Panic about the sexual abuse of children and human trafficking is good for law enforcement business.
It gives police an opportunity to seek more resources and to remind us we need their services. And because police are authority figures, and because fear of crime is good for the news business as well, false or imagined threats uttered by law enforcement leaders and repeated uncritically by news outlets or even in TV dramas like “CSI” become part of a body of “copaganda” — statements that serve police interests and become commonly accepted despite their being demonstrably untrue.
Yes, the public should be reminded of the persistent problem of trafficking. But we should not allow people and institutions in positions of authority to either lie to us about Super Bowl trafficking or put forth fake stories about other supposed crimes and dangers.
Such falsehoods can lead us to misspend our resources and misplace our attention on costly but pointless Halloween police crackdowns on sex offenders, for example, and on operations to seek out human trafficking offenses at the Super Bowl but not during the rest of the year.
Insisting public officials make the distinction between fact and fiction is crucial when truth is under very serious attack in this country.
Lies about missing ballots and stolen elections can change the course of the nation. Lies about the coronavirus, vaccines and fake cures can kill. Lies about human trafficking at the Super Bowl can meld seamlessly into QAnon lies and other completely false and bizarre beliefs about a vast web of political and Hollywood elites snatching children to extract a youth-giving substance from their blood. We have to do better, especially now — when truth is so often threatened in public discourse.
Violence Against Women update unveiled
St. Paul Pioneer Press (MN)
February 10, 2022
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
A bipartisan group of senators unveiled the latest proposal to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act on Wednesday in a measure that would not close the so-called "boyfriend loophole," a major Democratic provision that would expand gun bans for convicted abusers.
Sens. Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, introduced the measure at a news conference alongside advocates, including actress Angelina Jolie. Ernst said the bill includes many priorities for her as a domestic violence survivor, such as more resources for rural areas and provisions addressing abuse against women in law enforcement custody.
In December, the lawmakers announced an agreement on a framework for the reauthorization but provided few details. In their bill introduction Wednesday, they said the new language removes a key provision for House Democrats: closing the "boyfriend loophole" so that dating partners, in addition to spouses, would be prohibited from owning a gun if convicted of domestic violence.
Durbin said the bill is "perilously close" to reaching the chamber's 60-vote threshold for passage and he planned to seek a floor vote after the Presidents Day recess.
"In order to get anywhere near 60 votes, that provision became controversial, and we had to measure the remainder of the bill against that provision. It's a tough choice and we made the choice we thought was right," he said, adding he would support a separate vote on the provision.
Durbin and the other lawmakers said the bill has 18 original cosponsors, nine from each party.
First passed in 1994, VAWA enshrines legal protections for victims of domestic and sexual violence. The original bill was championed by then-Sen. Joe Biden and was reauthorized and updated in 2000, 2005 and 2013. The most recent authorization lapsed in 2019.
The House passed a bill to renew the law last March in a 244-172 vote that netted the support of 29 Republicans.
How the Updated Violence Against Women Act Would Crack Down on Domestic Abusers Who Have Guns
Reveal (USA)
February 23, 2022
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
State and local prosecutors would have greatly expanded powers to pursue domestic abusers who possess firearms illegally, under a bipartisan proposal newly introduced in the U.S. Senate.
The measures, part of the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2022, come after an investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting found that domestic violence gun homicides surged 58% over the last decade and that many of those victims were killed by abusers who were prohibited from having guns.
Federal law bars felons and some people convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence from possessing firearms; offenders caught with weapons face up to 10 years in prison. But state and local law enforcement authorities – who handle most domestic violence cases – can't enforce those federal laws, and federal prosecutors haven't made them a priority, so even egregious cases frequently fall through the cracks.
Many states also forbid convicted abusers from possessing firearms, but their laws can be substantially weaker than the federal statutes. And because federal law and most state statutes don't address how to retrieve weapons from people who aren't legally permitted to have them, gun bans are largely enforced on an honor system that relies on abusers to disarm themselves.
The reauthorization bill passed by the House last year tried to address some of these issues but faced resistance in the Senate. The new bill has 11 Republican co-sponsors, a rare show of bipartisanship on firearms issues, and echoes the House version in key ways.
Domestic violence and gun policy experts credited Reveal's reporting with forcing senators to confront a burgeoning crisis that has had devastating consequences for families and communities. "After (Reveal's) investigation, there was no denying it anymore," said Marissa Edmund, senior policy analyst for gun violence prevention at the Center for American Progress. The project "100% lit a fire for members of Congress."
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Armed and Abusive
Jennifer Gollan
Reveal (USA)
October 26, 2021
Intimate partner homicides are skyrocketing, yet police, prosecutors and judges often trust offenders to disarm themselves.
The Senate bill overcomes the jurisdictional roadblocks by allowing the U.S. Department of Justice to appoint state, local, territorial and tribal prosecutors to serve as special assistant U.S. attorneys with the power to enforce federal firearms laws. This could be particularly important in at least 20 states that either don't bar people convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence from possessing guns or have laws that are weaker than the federal bans.
That, in turn, could help reduce reliance on the honor system, said Dave Keck, project director for the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence and Firearms. "This is a very important step. This is a very good start," he said.
Other new Senate language takes a similar approach regarding the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the main federal agency responsible for enforcing the nation's gun laws. Even though guns are used to commit two-thirds of intimate partner homicides, the ATF told Reveal that it doesn't have a single agent focusing exclusively on domestic violence.
"A lot of the time, firearms violations are only detected when they have resulted in violent crime," Thomas Chittum, the ATF's acting deputy director, admitted in an interview last summer.
The ATF has about the same number of employees as it did a decade ago. The Senate bill would expand the agency's reach by allowing the attorney general to deputize local and state law enforcement officers to act as ATF agents to investigate abusers who violate federal gun laws.
To determine where those special prosecutors and law enforcement officers should focus, the legislation instructs the Justice Department to identify at least 75 jurisdictions across the country where gun-related domestic violence is soaring and local authorities lack the resources to respond. The Justice Department would also establish contacts in every U.S. attorney's office and ATF field office to handle requests for assistance.
"It sends a message to local sheriffs and cops that yes, if you think someone has violated federal firearms law, that they can and should report it, and presumably now they'll have a means of doing that simply," Keck said. "It's so important because it solves the whole problem of saying, 'We can't prosecute all those cases.' Now they can."
The federal government doesn't track the number of abusers who kill their intimate partners with illegal guns. Reveal identified at least 110 people across the U.S. who were shot to death from 2017 through 2020 by abusers who shouldn't have had firearms because of their criminal histories. Most of the victims were women, but many were bystanders, police officers and children.
The pandemic has been an especially lethal period for abuse victims, an exclusive analysis of unpublished FBI data by Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox found: Gun homicides involving intimate partners rose a stunning 25% in 2020 compared with the previous year, to the highest level in almost three decades.
It was similar concerns about the sweeping toll of domestic and sexual violence that led to the passage of the original Violence Against Women Act in 1994. The landmark legislation, written by then-Sen. Joe Biden, was reauthorized three times with widespread support. But efforts to pass the latest version have been stalled since 2019, when the GOP-led Senate and the NRA balked at various provisions embraced by Democrats and gun violence groups. These included language to close the so-called "boyfriend loophole" – a major gap in the law that allows people convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence against dating partners to keep their guns. (By contrast, abusers convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence against a current or former spouse lose their gun rights under the federal law.)
Advocates are hopeful that the 2022 update will break through the logjam. Five of the Senate GOP co-sponsors, including Iowa's Joni Ernst and John Cornyn of Texas, opposed the Democrats' bill in 2019. Biden has pledged to sign the reauthorization if it comes to his desk.
But the new Senate version still has some important gaps. In a compromise that leaves many domestic violence advocates disappointed, the bill doesn't address the boyfriend loophole. Neither the Senate nor House bill specifies how convicted felons and abusers must relinquish their firearms or how police, prosecutors and courts should go about removing guns from offenders who are prohibited from having them.
And it's unclear how any reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act could solve another fundamental problem that Reveal's reporting exposed: Local law enforcement officers often don't seize weapons and punish abusers who violate gun bans even when they have the laws and authority to do so.
Still, Sen. Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, urged his congressional colleagues to take action soon.
"The Violence Against Women Act has improved the criminal justice system's ability to keep victims safe and hold perpetrators accountable," Brown said in an email to Reveal. "It has been a valuable tool for so many women and their children – and we must reauthorize it to ensure that these services remain intact."
OPINION: Congress should hear from Alaskans before reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act
No one is in favor of violence being perpetrated against women. But the bill is more complicated than that.
Anchorage Daily News (AK)
Author/Byline: Donald Mitchell
February 26, 2022
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
No one is in favor of violence being perpetrated against women. That’s why, in 1990, Sen. Joe Biden titled the bill he introduced that year, which Congress passed in 1994, the Violence Against Women Act.
Initially, the VAWA had nothing to do with the 200-plus “tribes” in Alaska that in 1993 Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs Ada Deer had purported to create by simply publishing a list of them in the Federal Register.
But in 2005, one of the staff members who wrote it decided, apparently on his or her own, to include in the bill to reauthorize the VAWA that Congress would enact that year the “Indian tribe” definition from the 1975 Indian Self-Determination Act, which included not only “Alaska Native villages” but, inexplicably, also Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act village and regional corporations in the definition.
That eventually enabled “courts” that the Tanana Chiefs Conference, the Association of Village Council Presidents, and other Native organizations encouraged VAWA “Indian tribes” in Alaska to create to issue protective orders that Alaska State Troopers would enforce to prohibit an individual, usually male, who is the subject of an order from perpetrating violence against the individual, usually female, who sought the order.
Since everyone wants to stop violence from being perpetrated against women, what is wrong with that?
Actually, two things.
First, unlike state and federal courts, tribal courts do not have to comply with the provisions in the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution. In 1968, Congress passed the Indian Civil Rights Act, which requires tribal courts to comply with some but not all of those provisions. But there is no right to an attorney, and if a tribal court ignores the ICRA provisions, there is nothing an individual who is the subject of a protective order can do about it unless and until he finds himself in jail, at which time and if he has the money to hire an attorney he can file a lawsuit in federal court that may take months to litigate.
Second, a tribal court has authority only over an individual who is a member of the tribe that created the court. And the VAWA requires the court to provide an individual who is a subject of a protective order notice and an opportunity to be heard before the order is issued. But in Alaska, when a tribal court gives a protective order to the Department of Public Safety and the order then is listed on Department’s registry of protective orders, there is no way for an Alaska State Trooper who is asked to enforce the order to know that a tribal court issued the order or whether the subject of the order is a member of the VAWA “Indian tribe” that created the court or whether that individual was provided notice and an opportunity to be heard.
In 2016, when she was asked about them, then-Attorney General Jahna Lindemuth dismissed those concerns by announcing that “the Department of Public Safety, in consultation with the Department of Law, instructs state law enforcement officers to put the safety of citizens first and enforce any tribal court protective order that appears valid on its face. Any challenge to the tribal protective order can be addressed later in a court proceeding.”
In 2011, when the VAWA again needed to be reauthorized, tribes whose members reside on reservations in the Lower 48 states began demanding that Congress grant them authority to prosecute and, if they deemed doing so appropriate, to jail non-Indians accused of committing domestic violence on the reservations.
While the action was controversial, in 2013 when it reauthorized the VAWA, Congress granted some tribes in the Lower 48 that authority.
In 2019, when the VAWA again needed to be reauthorized, the Alaska Federation of Natives and other Native organizations demanded that Congress give VAWA “Indian tribes” in Alaska the same authority to prosecute and jail non-Natives, even though there are no reservations in Alaska and most domestic violence in Native villages is perpetrated by Native men — rather than by the relatively few non-Native men who reside in those communities. When the bills to reauthorize the VAWA that Democratic and Republican senators introduced did not do that, Alaska’s U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski introduced a stand-alone bill whose enactment would have authorized the U.S. Attorney General to have given 30 VAWA “Indian tribes” in Alaska authority to prosecute and jail non-Natives.
In the Senate, which Republicans controlled, Sen. Murkowski’s bill was referred to the Committee on Indian Affairs on which she served. But Sen. Murkowski made no effort to have the committee hold a hearing on the bill. However, two weeks ago when a bipartisan group of senators introduced a new bill to reauthorize the VAWA, S. 3623, Sen. Murkowski arranged for the bill to include a revised version of the text of the stand-alone bill she had introduced in 2019.
When S. 3623 was introduced, Michelle Demmert, the law and policy director at the Alaska Native Women’s Resource Center, told Alaska public radio that the new authority the bill would give to VAWA “Indian tribes” in Alaska was needed because non-Native male “perpetrators are really smart. They know where they can get away with abuse. And they’ve taken advantage of villages forever. This is an issue from first contact, where they’ve known that they can do things with impunity.”
For more than 260 years, non-Native men who enjoy physically abusing women have moved into Native villages because they know that at those locations they can abuse Native women with impunity? Really? That is the policy rationale for why Congress needs to give VAWA “Indian tribes” in Alaska authority to prosecute and jail non-Natives?
When he was asked whether he supported Congress granting VAWA “Indian tribes” in Alaska authority to prosecute and jail non-Natives, Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy, as he usually does when he is asked what he thinks about tribal sovereignty-related matters, said he had no position because his staff still was studying the matter. But he vouched that “we’re going to make sure that everybody’s constitutional rights are protected.” So his staff apparently had not yet explained to the governor that in tribal courts, no one — Native and non-Native alike — has any constitutional rights.
Because it has strong bipartisan support, rather than being referred to one or more committees, S. 3623 has been placed directly on the Senate calendar. So Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer can bring the bill to the floor at any time.
Before Sen. Schumer does that, Sen. Murkowski, who now is the senior Republican member of the Committee on Indian Affairs, needs to arrange for the Committee to hold a hearing on S. 3623 in Alaska to enable Gov. Dunleavy to tell the Committee what his position regarding tribal court jurisdiction is and to allow witnesses such as Michelle Demmert to present evidence — rather than ideologically motivated conjecture — that demonstrates why Congress should grant VAWA “Indian tribes” in Alaska authority to prosecute and jail non-Natives.
I am not the only Alaskan who will be interested in what they and other witnesses who testify at that hearing will have to say about a subject that to date has not received the public attention its importance merits.
Donald Craig Mitchell is an Anchorage attorney and the author of a two-volume history of the Alaska Native lands claims movement and, most recently, of “Tribal Sovereignty in Alaska: How It Happened, What It Means.” He also is a former vice president and general counsel for the Alaska Federation of Natives.
Turning Point: Survivor's story moves Congressman to change legal process
Macomb Daily, The (MI)
March 3, 2022
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
It's not everyday a Congressman brings one of his constituents to the State of the Union as an advocate.
Tuesday was that day for Carmen Wargel.
Rep. Andy Levin (D-Bloomfield Hills), whose district includes most of Macomb County south of M-59, invited the chief strategy officer at Turning Point to be a virtual guest being she played such a pivotal role in the Levin Amendment to the Violence Against Women Act. In lifting up this legislative work authored and passed in the House of Representatives with the help of advocates like Wargel, Levin called on his Senate colleagues joining the address to take up the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act and other important bills awaiting action in their chamber.
As a citizen, she was thrilled.
"I'm a total political nerd," said Wargel, who attended several meetings not only with Levin's team but other congressional members prior to President Joe Biden's State of the Union address.
As an advocate for domestic violence and sexual assault prevention, she was also proud to be involved in something that will help so many of the women she sees at Turning Point.
"It's an incredible honor to be part of the process," Wargel said of the amendment that came about from Levin's initial meeting with Wargel and several women who are part of Turning Point's Survivor Speaker Bureau.
When the process began, however, it was nothing more than a chat.
At the height of the pandemic, Levin reached out to a number of social service agencies and shelters including Turning Point to learn more about what they do. Since Turning Point exists to end domestic abuse, sexual assault, and child abuse through safe shelter, advocacy, prevention, and social change Wargel invited several women from Turning Point's Survivor Speaker Bureau to attend that Zoom meeting.
"We really try to bring the story of survivors to the conversation and since this would affect them directly we felt it was important for them to be there," Wargel said. "But none of us went into the meeting thinking this was going to lead to the crafting of the Levin Amendment to the Violence Against Women Act.
It was the survivor's story, however, that set the process in motion.
"I met a sexual assault survivor at Turning Point who shared that, over the course of her legal proceedings, she'd had five different prosecutors on her case. And, not surprisingly, she felt like none of them were really representing her, rather forcing her to relive her trauma over and over in order to get a new attorney up to speed – this was just unthinkable to me," Levin said, in a news release. "Carmen helped our office to craft an amendment to fund vertical prosecution, meaning one individual prosecuting attorney remains the primary individual responsible for the case to improve convictions, reduce victim trauma, and provide more consistent, appropriate sentencing."
Wargel believes the Levin Amendment authored and passed in the House of Representatives and now awaiting action in the Senate will not only improve systems and help countless survivors in the future but has had an incredible impact on the speaker's healing process.
"She was sexually assaulted and then traumatized by the judicial system," Wargel said, of Turning Point's speaker and insisting what happened to her is not the fault of local prosecutors a national problem. "She is celebrating in her heart."
As are the advocates at Turning Point who have dedicated their life to bringing an end to domestic violence and sexual assault.
"It moves me so deeply that one of our survivors was able to engage with a politician to make change happen," Wargel said. "It's the reason I am doing this work."
Sharman Davenport concurred.
"Turning Point is proud to partner with survivors of domestic and sexual violence to take action in ending oppression and violence. Survivor-led community education engagements, a platform for survivors to vocalize their wants, and developing systems change policies centered around survivors' needs make an excellent beginning," said the president and CEO of Macomb County's only comprehensive domestic violence and sexual assault services provider. "We thank Congressman Levin for listening to survivors and supporting these actions."
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