May, 25 2023, 10:59am EDT
Advocates Condemn House of Representatives for Passing Dangerous Bill to Ramp up Drug War Punishment
The Overdose Crisis Needs a Public Health Response. Yet, House Doubles Down on Failed Drug War Policies for Fentanyl
Today, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Halt All Lethal Trafficking of Fentanyl (HALT) Act (H.R. 467) in a 289-133 vote. This legislation would ramp up mandatory minimum sentencing for fentanyl analogues. It would also permanently schedule all fentanyl-related substances as Schedule I without first testing them for benefits or harm.
By putting fentanyl-related substances on Schedule I, they are criminalized the most harshly. Under this legislation, fentanyl-related substances are assumed harmful, and people will be criminalized regardless of the science. Of the few fentanyl-related substances tested on a limited basis by the FDA, at least one showed properties similar to the overdose-reversing medication naloxone. Others were found to be completely harmless and should never have been classified as Schedule I.
This bill also expands mandatory minimums for fentanyl analogue cases, hearkening back to failed drug war strategies of the past. Criminalization has led to a stronger, more potent illicit drug supply. Yet, members of Congress continue to double down on the disproven, failed approach of drug prohibition at the expense of people’s lives.
In response, the following non-partisan civil rights, public health, drug policy, faith, law enforcement, criminal legal reform, and public policy research organizations released the below statements:
Maritza Perez Medina, Director of the Office of Federal Affairs at the Drug Policy Alliance:
“Our communities deserve real health solutions to the overdose crisis, not political grandstanding that is going to cost us more lives. Yet, sadly, in passing the HALT Fentanyl Act, the House seems intent on doubling down on the same failed strategies that got us here to begin with. While it may seem politically expedient to crack down on fentanyl and its analogues, history has shown us time and again, this only creates further harm. Increasing criminal penalties and expanding the use of mandatory minimums, as this bill does, has never reduced the supply or demand of illicit drugs. Instead, it only exacerbates racial disparities in the criminal legal system and creates the conditions for an even more unknown, and more potent, drug supply to flourish. We call on the Senate to reject these dangerous efforts and act quickly to implement the health solutions we urgently need to save lives.”
Laura Pitter, Deputy Director of the US Program at Human Rights Watch:
“It’s sad to see lawmakers revert to over-criminalization once again when we have 50 years of evidence that the war on drugs has been an abject failure. A vote for this bill was a vote against evidence and science. We know that harsher criminal penalties have done nothing to address the overdose crisis, which has only gotten exponentially worse since Congress put the temporary class-wide scheduling policy into place. This now makes that policy permanent and not only entrenches mandatory minimums but expands them. It will also undermine efforts by scientists to find solutions for problematic substance use and discourage people who drugs who want help from seeking it because they will face harsh penalties.”
Lt. Diane Goldstein (Ret.), Executive Director of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership:
“I lost my brother to an overdose, so I understand the pain that so many families in our country are feeling during this crisis. As a retired police professional, I know that increasing penalties for fentanyl will cost us more lives because people will be even more afraid to call 911 if they see someone succumbing to overdose for fear of a long prison sentence. Mandatory minimums punish low-level drug offenders rather than providing the treatment they so often need. We should be focusing all of our efforts on making public health interventions accessible to save lives, not doubling down on the strategy that brought us to where we are today."
Marta Nelson, Director of Government Strategy, Advocacy and Partnerships, at the Vera Institute of Justice:
"Fentanyl and other deadly drugs pose a real threat to the health and safety of our communities, but Congress must invest in public health solutions rather than the ineffective harsh sentences and mandatory minimums we have relied on in the past. By permanently scheduling fentanyl-related substances as Schedule 1, the HALT Fentanyl Act relies on that old mandatory minimum playbook, which contributes to mass incarceration and does not prevent substance use. We must reject so-called tough sentencing policies and instead lift up solutions-based policymaking that addresses the root causes of substance use and saves lives.”
Jesselyn McCurdy, Executive Vice President for Government Affairs at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights:
“We know what keeps us safe: living in communities where all of us can provide for our families and build the future we want. The classwide scheduling that this bill imposes will exacerbate pretrial detention, mass incarceration, and racial disparities in the prison system, doubling down on a fear-based, enforcement-first response to a public health challenge. Classwide scheduling and mandatory minimums merely repeat the mistakes of the past by magnifying our incarceration problem.”
Liz Komar, Sentencing Reform Counsel, The Sentencing Project:
“Fifty years after the beginning of mass incarceration, the evidence is clear: the War on Drugs has harmed communities. Harsh punishments don’t save lives or make us safer. We urge Congress to remember the lessons of the 1980’s and 1990’s – mandatory minimums are not the answer to the overdose crisis.”
Drew Gibson, Director of Advocacy, AIDS United:
“Any hope that we have of ending the overdose, HIV, and viral hepatitis epidemics in the United States lies in an embrace of evidence-based best practices and a rejection of the punitive and racially inequitable policies that have destroyed millions of lives over the last half century. Passage of the HALT Fentanyl Act and the draconian expansion of mandatory minimum sentencing for fentanyl related substances contained in it would be a reckless repetition of the costly mistakes of the war on drugs that disproportionately impacts Black and Brown communities and creates the conditions for even more harmful illicit substances to enter the drug supply.”
Miriam Aroni Krinsky, Executive Director of Fair and Just Prosecution and a former federal prosecutor:
“Our country has spent half a century trying to treat drug-related harms with fear and punishment. The dismal results are clear: these draconian policies ballooned our prison population even as the number of annual drug-related deaths grew exponentially. Recent, tragic increases in fentanyl-related deaths have underscored the urgent need to adopt evidence-based, effective drug policies. Yet the enactment of the HALT Fentanyl Act would signal to the world that our government has learned nothing from the catastrophic failures of the War on Drugs, stymie harm reduction efforts that save lives, and funnel more people into what is among the largest prison systems in the world.”
Last week, a coalition (which includes the aforementioned organizations) of advocacy groups sent a letter to House leadership urging them to reject this proposal and instead support public health approaches like the Support, Treatment, and Overdose Prevention of Fentanyl (STOP Fentanyl) Act of 2021 (H.R. 2366) and the Test Act. The STOP Fentanyl Act proposes increased access to harm reduction services and substance use disorder treatment, improved data collection, and other evidence-based methods to reduce overdose. The TEST Act would require the federal government to test all fentanyl-related substances that are currently classified as Schedule I substances and remove those that are proven medically beneficial or otherwise unharmful. It would also require the attorney general to notify any person who has been wrongly convicted, or sentenced, of the change.
For more information on fentanyl and why we need a public health approach to address the overdose crisis, visitdrugpolicy.org/fentanylfentanyl.
The Drug Policy Alliance is the nation's leading organization promoting drug policies grounded in science, compassion, health and human rights.
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Ignore the Cosplay. Trump's Record Shows He 'Does Not Give a Damn About Working-Class People'
"Donald Trump left workers behind when he was president," said United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain.
Nov 04, 2024
The final stretch of the 2024 U.S. presidential race has seen Donald Trump, the billionaire Republican nominee, perform a staged shift at a Pennsylvania McDonald's and dress as a garbage truck driver in a clear effort to appeal to working-class voters who are set to play a decisive role in Tuesday's election.
But a detailed examination of Trump's first four-year term in the White House shows that despite his recent cosplaying, the GOP nominee was no ally of the working class when he was in a position to influence and enact policy.
"When Donald Trump was president, he repeatedly tried to raise the rent on at least 4 million of the poorest people in this country, many of them elderly or disabled," the investigative outlet ProPublicareported over the weekend. "He proposed to cut the federal disability benefits of a quarter-million low-income children, on the grounds that someone else in their family was already receiving benefits. He attempted to put in place a requirement that poor parents cooperate with child support enforcement, including by having single mothers disclose their sexual histories, before they and their children could receive food assistance."
Additionally, the outlet noted, Trump "tried to enact a rule allowing employers to pocket workers' tips" and succeeded in enacting "a rule denying overtime pay to millions of low-wage workers if they made more than $35,568 a year"—all of which casts serious doubt on the Republican candidate's pledge to prioritize the economic interests of U.S. workers in a second term.
ProPublica also analyzed Trump's proposed federal budgets from 2018 to 2021 and found that the former president "advanced an agenda across his administration that was designed to cut healthcare, food, and housing programs and labor protections for poor and working-class Americans."
Meanwhile, Trump worked with his Republican allies in Congress to ram through a massive tax cut for the rich and large corporations—a measure he wants to double down on if he defeats Democratic nominee Kamala Harris on Tuesday.
Trump's 2024 campaign has featured some policy proposals aimed at boosting the working class, such as eliminating taxes on tips and overtime pay.
But economists and progressive organizers have argued that the benefits of such policy changes would be marginal compared to broader proposals that Trump has not backed, such as raising the federal minimum wage and eliminating subminimum wages for tipped workers. A recent Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy analysis found that Trump's economic plans overall would cut taxes for the richest 5% of U.S. households while raising them for the bottom 95%.
During his McDonald's stunt last month, Trump ignored a question about whether he supports raising the federal minimum wage, which has been stuck at $7.25 an hour for over 15 years. Harris, by contrast, has expressed support for lifting the federal wage floor to at least $15 an hour.
"He does not give a damn about working-class people," United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain said of Trump during an appearance on MSNBC alongside Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) late last week. "Donald Trump left workers behind when he was president. He did nothing to stop manufacturing plants leaving this country."
"With the Harris and Biden administration, we have seen a bigger investment in this country and manufacturing than I have ever seen in my lifetime. They walk the walk," Fain added. "Trump is all talk."
In a video message to the country ahead of Election Day, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) similarly criticized Trump as an opponent of union rights and argued Harris is the "clear" choice for those who want to improve the lives of working-class Americans.
"While some of us may have differences of opinion and disagree with Kamala Harris on this or that issue, I hope very much we will not sit out this election. We cannot sit it out," said Sanders. "So let's get involved. Let's do everything we can. Let's come out and vote on Election Day, and let's make sure that Donald Trump is defeated and that Kamala Harris is our next president."
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'The Big Lie Is Back' as Trump's GOP Reboots Felony-Facing Fake Electors
"The election deniers are back at it, laying the groundwork to run the Big Lie playbook once again," warned one swing-state campaigner.
Nov 04, 2024
At least 1 in 5 potential battleground state electors for former U.S. President Donald Trump are linked to the Republican nominee's attempt to subvert the 2020 election, according to an analysis published Monday.
Politico reported that "of the 93 Republicans designated as prospective presidential electors for Trump from the seven battleground states, eight are facing felony charges for signing false Electoral College certificates in 2020."
Five additional possible electors signed similar documents in 2020 but were not criminally charged, according to the reporting, while at least half a dozen others "played notable roles in challenging the results of the 2020 election or promoting election conspiracy theories."
"These people continued to peddle and push not misinformation, which is accidental, but disinformation, which is intentional."
With numerous Trump aides and GOP officials facing criminal charges for their alleged roles in the former president's bogus "Stop the Steal" scheme, experts say it is somewhat less likely that the Republican nominee or his allies would attempt another such plot. However, Trump and his boosters have recycled similar claims of election fraud in what critics say is a bid to spread misinformation and sow doubt about the outcome of Tuesday's contest if the 2020 loser is defeated by Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
"It does show a lack of regard for the criminal and ethical problems with doing this," Mary McCord, a Georgetown law professor and executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, told Politico.
As Politico notes:
Six of the returning fake electors hail from Michigan. John Haggard, Hank Choate, Timothy King, Meshawn Maddock, Amy Facchinello, and Marian Sheridan were among the group of Michiganders who signed a document in 2020 purporting to be official electoral certificates claiming the state’s electoral votes went to Donald Trump, despite Biden winning Michigan by more than 150,000 votes. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, brought felony charges against them, including forgery-related crimes punishable by up to 14 years. Those cases are ongoing and all have pleaded not guilty.
In the battleground state of Wisconsin—where President Joe Biden defeated Trump by less than 21,000 votes, or 0.63%, in 2020—"election deniers are back at it, laying the groundwork to run the Big Lie playbook once again through actions designed to attack the electoral process, sow seeds of chaos set to bloom post-election, and further undermine confidence in our democracy," warned Wisconsin Democracy Campaign executive director Nick Ramos in a Sunday opinion piece in the Cap Times.
"That is exactly what their antics wrought after the 2020 election—chaos resulting in the January 6 insurrection and years of baseless conspiracy theories that did not, and will not, succeed in changing a single election result but did succeed in undermining the confidence of millions of Americans in our democracy," he continued.
"The bullies are back again, continuing their strategy to interfere in Wisconsin's elections," Ramos added.
While some observers claim that would-be election subversives are likely to tread gingerly in light of the potential criminal consequences for alleged Big Lie conspirators, McCord said that "it would appear that the party leadership in the states where there are fraudulent electors serving as electors again are not taking seriously things like the criminal charges that have been brought against these fraudulent electors."
Amy Tarkanian, a former chair of the Nevada Republican Party, told Politico that "these people continued to peddle and push not misinformation, which is accidental, but disinformation, which is intentional."
"It's definitely disappointing," she lamented.
In Arizona—where former state GOP chief Kelli Ward and 11 other Republican officials have been criminally charged in connection with the alleged fake electors scheme—current Republican Party Chair Gina Swoboda has been pushing spurious election fraud claims. This, even as Loraine Pellegrino, a past president of a right-wing women's group who falsely attested that Trump won Arizona in 2020, earlier this year became the first person convicted in the state's fake electors case.
Democracy defenders have sounded the alarm on the potential for violence fueled by baseless claims of election fraud.
The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism said last week that it is "seeing the same warning signs of political violence based on election denialism combined with violent language across fringe platforms that we saw in the weeks before the 2020 election and before the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol."
According to a YouGov poll published Saturday, just over two-thirds of respondents—including more than 80% of surveyed Democrats and 55% of Republicans— believe it is either "somewhat" or "very likely" that Trump will refuse to concede if he loses to Harris.
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New Reporting Details 'Large Scale' Use of Human Shields by Israel in Gaza
"The earliest testimony we have on it is from a soldier who was aware of it just a few weeks after the ground invasion began," one human rights expert said. "The latest testimony we have on this is from the summer."
Nov 04, 2024
The Israel Defense Forces routinely use detained Palestinians as human shields in Gaza, according to testimony from four Palestinians and one IDF soldier shared withThe Washington Post.
Their stories, published on Sunday, build on other accounts from Haaretz, Al Jazeera, the international press, and Defense for Children International to reveal a pattern of Israeli soldiers forcing Palestinians—including children—to enter buildings or tunnels ahead of them to check for militants or explosives, in clear violation of international law.
"This wasn't something that happened just here and there but rather on a large scale throughout a number of different units, at different times, throughout the war and in different places," Joel Carmel, advocacy director of Breaking the Silence, told The Washington Post.
"My hospital was turning into rubble, and they were asking me to demolish it with my own hands."
The incidents recounted to the Post occurred between January and August. One man, 20-year-old Mohammed Saad, said he was detained by the IDF in June and interrogated for several days. Then, a new pattern began. Every day, he and two other Palestinian men were blindfolded and taken to a different location. They were made to wear IDF uniforms, given cameras, and told to enter buildings ahead of the Israeli soldiers to film and check for explosives. On the second day, an explosion went off after Saad had made his forced investigation.
"They tied my hands and threw me on the sand," he recalled. "They took turns beating me. I still don't know where the explosion came from."
Another time, the captain of the unit he was detained by showed him an image of his family home destroyed by bombing.
"If you do not cooperate with us, we will kill all your family members like this," the captain said.
On the 15th day of Saab's ordeal, he was given civilian clothes and told to walk. As he did so, he felt a pain and realized he had been shot in the back.
The other three Palestinians interviewed by the Post were detained during the IDF's raid on al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City in March. One was a surgeon at the hospital, while the other two were taken from their homes nearby. They were made to enter the hospital building ahead of IDF troops, remove any barriers, and take pictures of each room they entered.
"I was telling them that my hands are precious for my work; I am the only vascular surgeon here," the surgeon, Omar al-Jadba recalled to the Post. "My hospital was turning into rubble, and they were asking me to demolish it with my own hands."
The IDF soldier, who spoke anonymously, said that two Palestinian detainees were placed with his unit to make sure that buildings were safe to enter. One of them was only a teenager. His commander said the two men were terrorists, but then later said they could be released after the mission was over.
"At this point we understood that if we could release them, then they were not terrorists," the soldier, a reservist, told the Post. "The officer just lied to us."
"Every one of their accusations is a confession."
Another group of soldiers questioned the use of human shields, telling a higher-level commander that it was against international law.
"He told us that international law is not important and the only thing that simple soldiers need to think about is the ethical code of the IDF," the soldier told the Post.
However, the IDF said in a statement that its orders prohibit the use of human shields.
Breaking the Silence, a group that records testimonies from Israeli soldiers in the occupied Palestinian territories, said the reservist's account was in line with others they had received.
"The earliest testimony we have on it is from a soldier who was aware of it just a few weeks after the ground invasion began," Carmel said. "The latest testimony we have on this is from the summer."
The
Post reporting came the same day as a major Associated Press investigation into Israeli raids on three hospitals in northern Gaza at the end of 2023. Israel has often justified its hospital raids with the claim that Hamas operates from the inside, turning all the patients and doctors into human shields. However, the AP concluded that
"Israel has presented little or even no evidence of a significant Hamas presence at the three" hospitals it considered: the al-Awda, Indonesian, and Kamal Adwan hospitals.
"What do [former U.S. President Donald] Trump and [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu have in common?" asked journalist Mehdi Hasan in response to the Post's reporting. "Many things but especially... projection. Every one of their accusations is a confession."
Other commenters responded to the clear violations of international law and questioned why the U.S. continues to provide weapons and funding to the IDF while it engages in war crimes.
The Austin for Palestine coalition shared a quote from the article, noting that what it described was "paid for by our tax dollars."
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