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Mueller reports that neither Trump nor anyone on his campaign team directly conspired with the Russians to mess with the 2016 election, although we know for sure that Russia did actively interfere on Trump's behalf. (Photo: AP/J. Scott Applewhite)
If you believe in Old Testament-style omens, please note that a plague of poisonous toads has infested the Florida town of Palm Beach Gardens, about 15 miles from Mar-a-Lago. And they're on the move.
I am not making this up.
You have to admit that killer toads are a much more dramatic and appropriate harbinger of doom than the way the conclusions of the Mueller report were first rolled out this weekend. Late Friday afternoon, word came that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had delivered his report on Donald Trump to Attorney General William Barr. Barr then sent a letter to the leaders of the House and Senate judiciary committees saying he'd let them know more as soon as he'd had time to study it. He'd also issue a summary to the public. And there would be no further indictments issued.
After all these months, that big moment seemed anticlimactic, a pop gun when we what we wanted was the cannon's roar.
On these few flimsy facts were spun hour after hour of cable news coverage over the weekend. But on Sunday afternoon came the three-and-a-half page letter to the judiciary committees from the attorney general. This time, the gun was loaded, loud and had a recoiling kick; no evidence of Trump conspiring with Russia around the 2016 elections and although Mueller did not exonerate the president on charges of obstruction of justice, Attorney General Barr and Deputy Attorney Rod Rosenstein decided there was no reason to charge him.
And so the appointment of Bill Barr to replace Jeff Sessions paid off big time for Donald J. Trump. Barr did just what the president wanted him to do and what the attorney general had intimated he would do when he wrote that unsolicited 19-page memo to the Department of Justice last year, the one stating that a sitting president can't be guilty of obstruction or interviewed about such a charge by prosecutors unless there's proof of a crime he was trying to obstruct. Which there can't be because he's president. Follow?
This Catch-22 logic was described as "bizarre" by former acting solicitor general Neal Kaytal, who writes in The New York Times, "That memo made the argument that the obstruction of justice statute does not apply to the president because the text of the statute doesn't specifically mention the president. Of course, the murder statute doesn't mention the president either, but no one thinks the president can't commit murder." (Keeping in mind that we have a chief executive who thinks he can get away with gunning down the innocent on Fifth Avenue.)
Nonetheless, Barr has gone ahead with this argument, which makes it all the more important we demand that the entire Mueller report be released, including the cases made by the special counsel both pro and con as to whether to go after the president for criminal obstruction. Don't let Barr stonewall on Trump's behalf. Further, both Mueller and Barr must be called before Congress to testify about the process by which the report was created, the findings within, why Mueller opted to punt when it came to obstruction and why Barr with Rosenstein's assist made his decision so hastily, less than 48 hours after he received Mueller's document.
There are a lot of other things I'd like to know and not just what Mueller found that merits or precludes obstruction charges. Mueller reports that neither Trump nor anyone on his campaign team directly conspired with the Russians to mess with the 2016 election, although we know for sure that Russia did actively interfere on Trump's behalf. If what we're told is in the Mueller report is true, Russia seems to have behaved under unofficial rules not unlike those meant to govern an American Super PAC - actively working on behalf of its chosen candidate but without having any interaction with that candidate's official campaign (nudge nudge, wink wink).
So why, of all the GOP presidential candidates, did Russia vector in on Trump as their guy? Why did Trump's campaign aides keep lying about contacts they had with Russians - and why did they not run to the authorities when they were approached? Why the alteration of the pro-Ukraine plank in the GOP 2016 party platform? And once the election was over, if there was no quid pro quo, why the rush to ease or prevent sanctions against Russia, why the continued coziness with Putin and why does Trump's man crush on Vlad have him constantly believing whatever the Russian leader tells him, despite contradictory evidence from our own intelligence services?
As Trump and company jubilantly proclaim victory and vindication after Sunday's announcement, however premature that might be, and as he demands retribution in his usual toad-like way, there are other things to keep in mind. Many noted, for example, that the slow trickle of indictments and guilty pleas since 2017 had in some way diminished the impact of and magnitude of what already has been accomplished, which is a lot. Just ask Paul Manafort, Mike Flynn and Michael Cohen.
Journalist Mehdi Hasan tweeted, "Imagine, just imagine, if Mueller had been silent for past 2 years, held everything back, & then on Fri evening, announced 37 (!) indictments, including of Trump's lawyer, national security adviser & campaign manager. We'd be in shock. The White House would be in chaos & crisis."
And David Kris, an ex-national security division chief at the Department of Justice told The Washington Post, ""It's so much, it's so gradual, it's so complicated, people don't have a chance to sort of pause, catch their breath and really sort of survey the whole story that [Mueller has] found. I think if you took it all in in one day, it would kill you. It's simply too much."
Further, there are several congressional investigations of the president and his courtiers that have begun, probes that go beyond Mueller's mandate, with more to come. Remember that an impeachable offense does not have to be something that goes against the literal letter of the law but which violates the spirit of the law. It can be a misuse of high office for personal gain, or abuse of the constitution and the rights guaranteed within. Or it can even relate to the discovery that the person America elected indeed has always been a thoroughgoing crook of a businessman, unfit for office.
Whether Democrats deem it impolitic to continue pursuing the possibility of impeachment and prefer to await the results of the 2020 election remains to be seen but it's worth keeping in mind the words of historian and journalist Yoni Appelbaum, who while advocating for it in the March issue of The Atlantic, writes that impeachment "is a vital protection against the dangers a president like Trump poses. And, crucially, many of its benefits -- to the political health of the country, to the stability of the constitutional system -- accrue irrespective of its ultimate result. Impeachment is a process, not an outcome, a rule-bound procedure for investigating a president, considering evidence, formulating charges, and deciding whether to continue on to trial...
"Only by authorizing a dedicated impeachment inquiry can the House begin to assemble disparate allegations into a coherent picture, forcing lawmakers to consider both whether specific charges are true and whether the president's abuses of his power justify his removal." Otherwise, it's going to be a long, long way until Inauguration Day 2021. There's so much more damage Trump can do between now and then. And he stands a good chance of reelection.
What's more, never forget there also are multiple criminal lawsuits going on in federal and state courts, many of them have spun off from evidence uncovered when the Mueller team began looking under the rocks -- from hush money payments and money laundering to violations of the Constitution's emoluments clause to possible financial flimflam at Trump's inauguration committee. And leave us not forget Roger Stone, whose trial is scheduled to begin in November.
Finally and most important, we must address the reality that Donald Trump is not only the carrier but also a symptom of the greater disease that infects the republic, one in which vast inequality and a government controlled by private and corporate wealthy interests and not the people drives us toward our certain doom both as a democracy and a planet.
If we do not confront this head on, Trump and his bullys win, Pyrrhic though their victory may be. The toxic toads will have their way.
Dear Common Dreams reader, The U.S. is on a fast track to authoritarianism like nothing I've ever seen. Meanwhile, corporate news outlets are utterly capitulating to Trump, twisting their coverage to avoid drawing his ire while lining up to stuff cash in his pockets. That's why I believe that Common Dreams is doing the best and most consequential reporting that we've ever done. Our small but mighty team is a progressive reporting powerhouse, covering the news every day that the corporate media never will. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. And to ignite change for the common good. Now here's the key piece that I want all our readers to understand: None of this would be possible without your financial support. That's not just some fundraising cliche. It's the absolute and literal truth. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. Will you donate now to help power the nonprofit, independent reporting of Common Dreams? Thank you for being a vital member of our community. Together, we can keep independent journalism alive when it’s needed most. - Craig Brown, Co-founder |
If you believe in Old Testament-style omens, please note that a plague of poisonous toads has infested the Florida town of Palm Beach Gardens, about 15 miles from Mar-a-Lago. And they're on the move.
I am not making this up.
You have to admit that killer toads are a much more dramatic and appropriate harbinger of doom than the way the conclusions of the Mueller report were first rolled out this weekend. Late Friday afternoon, word came that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had delivered his report on Donald Trump to Attorney General William Barr. Barr then sent a letter to the leaders of the House and Senate judiciary committees saying he'd let them know more as soon as he'd had time to study it. He'd also issue a summary to the public. And there would be no further indictments issued.
After all these months, that big moment seemed anticlimactic, a pop gun when we what we wanted was the cannon's roar.
On these few flimsy facts were spun hour after hour of cable news coverage over the weekend. But on Sunday afternoon came the three-and-a-half page letter to the judiciary committees from the attorney general. This time, the gun was loaded, loud and had a recoiling kick; no evidence of Trump conspiring with Russia around the 2016 elections and although Mueller did not exonerate the president on charges of obstruction of justice, Attorney General Barr and Deputy Attorney Rod Rosenstein decided there was no reason to charge him.
And so the appointment of Bill Barr to replace Jeff Sessions paid off big time for Donald J. Trump. Barr did just what the president wanted him to do and what the attorney general had intimated he would do when he wrote that unsolicited 19-page memo to the Department of Justice last year, the one stating that a sitting president can't be guilty of obstruction or interviewed about such a charge by prosecutors unless there's proof of a crime he was trying to obstruct. Which there can't be because he's president. Follow?
This Catch-22 logic was described as "bizarre" by former acting solicitor general Neal Kaytal, who writes in The New York Times, "That memo made the argument that the obstruction of justice statute does not apply to the president because the text of the statute doesn't specifically mention the president. Of course, the murder statute doesn't mention the president either, but no one thinks the president can't commit murder." (Keeping in mind that we have a chief executive who thinks he can get away with gunning down the innocent on Fifth Avenue.)
Nonetheless, Barr has gone ahead with this argument, which makes it all the more important we demand that the entire Mueller report be released, including the cases made by the special counsel both pro and con as to whether to go after the president for criminal obstruction. Don't let Barr stonewall on Trump's behalf. Further, both Mueller and Barr must be called before Congress to testify about the process by which the report was created, the findings within, why Mueller opted to punt when it came to obstruction and why Barr with Rosenstein's assist made his decision so hastily, less than 48 hours after he received Mueller's document.
There are a lot of other things I'd like to know and not just what Mueller found that merits or precludes obstruction charges. Mueller reports that neither Trump nor anyone on his campaign team directly conspired with the Russians to mess with the 2016 election, although we know for sure that Russia did actively interfere on Trump's behalf. If what we're told is in the Mueller report is true, Russia seems to have behaved under unofficial rules not unlike those meant to govern an American Super PAC - actively working on behalf of its chosen candidate but without having any interaction with that candidate's official campaign (nudge nudge, wink wink).
So why, of all the GOP presidential candidates, did Russia vector in on Trump as their guy? Why did Trump's campaign aides keep lying about contacts they had with Russians - and why did they not run to the authorities when they were approached? Why the alteration of the pro-Ukraine plank in the GOP 2016 party platform? And once the election was over, if there was no quid pro quo, why the rush to ease or prevent sanctions against Russia, why the continued coziness with Putin and why does Trump's man crush on Vlad have him constantly believing whatever the Russian leader tells him, despite contradictory evidence from our own intelligence services?
As Trump and company jubilantly proclaim victory and vindication after Sunday's announcement, however premature that might be, and as he demands retribution in his usual toad-like way, there are other things to keep in mind. Many noted, for example, that the slow trickle of indictments and guilty pleas since 2017 had in some way diminished the impact of and magnitude of what already has been accomplished, which is a lot. Just ask Paul Manafort, Mike Flynn and Michael Cohen.
Journalist Mehdi Hasan tweeted, "Imagine, just imagine, if Mueller had been silent for past 2 years, held everything back, & then on Fri evening, announced 37 (!) indictments, including of Trump's lawyer, national security adviser & campaign manager. We'd be in shock. The White House would be in chaos & crisis."
And David Kris, an ex-national security division chief at the Department of Justice told The Washington Post, ""It's so much, it's so gradual, it's so complicated, people don't have a chance to sort of pause, catch their breath and really sort of survey the whole story that [Mueller has] found. I think if you took it all in in one day, it would kill you. It's simply too much."
Further, there are several congressional investigations of the president and his courtiers that have begun, probes that go beyond Mueller's mandate, with more to come. Remember that an impeachable offense does not have to be something that goes against the literal letter of the law but which violates the spirit of the law. It can be a misuse of high office for personal gain, or abuse of the constitution and the rights guaranteed within. Or it can even relate to the discovery that the person America elected indeed has always been a thoroughgoing crook of a businessman, unfit for office.
Whether Democrats deem it impolitic to continue pursuing the possibility of impeachment and prefer to await the results of the 2020 election remains to be seen but it's worth keeping in mind the words of historian and journalist Yoni Appelbaum, who while advocating for it in the March issue of The Atlantic, writes that impeachment "is a vital protection against the dangers a president like Trump poses. And, crucially, many of its benefits -- to the political health of the country, to the stability of the constitutional system -- accrue irrespective of its ultimate result. Impeachment is a process, not an outcome, a rule-bound procedure for investigating a president, considering evidence, formulating charges, and deciding whether to continue on to trial...
"Only by authorizing a dedicated impeachment inquiry can the House begin to assemble disparate allegations into a coherent picture, forcing lawmakers to consider both whether specific charges are true and whether the president's abuses of his power justify his removal." Otherwise, it's going to be a long, long way until Inauguration Day 2021. There's so much more damage Trump can do between now and then. And he stands a good chance of reelection.
What's more, never forget there also are multiple criminal lawsuits going on in federal and state courts, many of them have spun off from evidence uncovered when the Mueller team began looking under the rocks -- from hush money payments and money laundering to violations of the Constitution's emoluments clause to possible financial flimflam at Trump's inauguration committee. And leave us not forget Roger Stone, whose trial is scheduled to begin in November.
Finally and most important, we must address the reality that Donald Trump is not only the carrier but also a symptom of the greater disease that infects the republic, one in which vast inequality and a government controlled by private and corporate wealthy interests and not the people drives us toward our certain doom both as a democracy and a planet.
If we do not confront this head on, Trump and his bullys win, Pyrrhic though their victory may be. The toxic toads will have their way.
If you believe in Old Testament-style omens, please note that a plague of poisonous toads has infested the Florida town of Palm Beach Gardens, about 15 miles from Mar-a-Lago. And they're on the move.
I am not making this up.
You have to admit that killer toads are a much more dramatic and appropriate harbinger of doom than the way the conclusions of the Mueller report were first rolled out this weekend. Late Friday afternoon, word came that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had delivered his report on Donald Trump to Attorney General William Barr. Barr then sent a letter to the leaders of the House and Senate judiciary committees saying he'd let them know more as soon as he'd had time to study it. He'd also issue a summary to the public. And there would be no further indictments issued.
After all these months, that big moment seemed anticlimactic, a pop gun when we what we wanted was the cannon's roar.
On these few flimsy facts were spun hour after hour of cable news coverage over the weekend. But on Sunday afternoon came the three-and-a-half page letter to the judiciary committees from the attorney general. This time, the gun was loaded, loud and had a recoiling kick; no evidence of Trump conspiring with Russia around the 2016 elections and although Mueller did not exonerate the president on charges of obstruction of justice, Attorney General Barr and Deputy Attorney Rod Rosenstein decided there was no reason to charge him.
And so the appointment of Bill Barr to replace Jeff Sessions paid off big time for Donald J. Trump. Barr did just what the president wanted him to do and what the attorney general had intimated he would do when he wrote that unsolicited 19-page memo to the Department of Justice last year, the one stating that a sitting president can't be guilty of obstruction or interviewed about such a charge by prosecutors unless there's proof of a crime he was trying to obstruct. Which there can't be because he's president. Follow?
This Catch-22 logic was described as "bizarre" by former acting solicitor general Neal Kaytal, who writes in The New York Times, "That memo made the argument that the obstruction of justice statute does not apply to the president because the text of the statute doesn't specifically mention the president. Of course, the murder statute doesn't mention the president either, but no one thinks the president can't commit murder." (Keeping in mind that we have a chief executive who thinks he can get away with gunning down the innocent on Fifth Avenue.)
Nonetheless, Barr has gone ahead with this argument, which makes it all the more important we demand that the entire Mueller report be released, including the cases made by the special counsel both pro and con as to whether to go after the president for criminal obstruction. Don't let Barr stonewall on Trump's behalf. Further, both Mueller and Barr must be called before Congress to testify about the process by which the report was created, the findings within, why Mueller opted to punt when it came to obstruction and why Barr with Rosenstein's assist made his decision so hastily, less than 48 hours after he received Mueller's document.
There are a lot of other things I'd like to know and not just what Mueller found that merits or precludes obstruction charges. Mueller reports that neither Trump nor anyone on his campaign team directly conspired with the Russians to mess with the 2016 election, although we know for sure that Russia did actively interfere on Trump's behalf. If what we're told is in the Mueller report is true, Russia seems to have behaved under unofficial rules not unlike those meant to govern an American Super PAC - actively working on behalf of its chosen candidate but without having any interaction with that candidate's official campaign (nudge nudge, wink wink).
So why, of all the GOP presidential candidates, did Russia vector in on Trump as their guy? Why did Trump's campaign aides keep lying about contacts they had with Russians - and why did they not run to the authorities when they were approached? Why the alteration of the pro-Ukraine plank in the GOP 2016 party platform? And once the election was over, if there was no quid pro quo, why the rush to ease or prevent sanctions against Russia, why the continued coziness with Putin and why does Trump's man crush on Vlad have him constantly believing whatever the Russian leader tells him, despite contradictory evidence from our own intelligence services?
As Trump and company jubilantly proclaim victory and vindication after Sunday's announcement, however premature that might be, and as he demands retribution in his usual toad-like way, there are other things to keep in mind. Many noted, for example, that the slow trickle of indictments and guilty pleas since 2017 had in some way diminished the impact of and magnitude of what already has been accomplished, which is a lot. Just ask Paul Manafort, Mike Flynn and Michael Cohen.
Journalist Mehdi Hasan tweeted, "Imagine, just imagine, if Mueller had been silent for past 2 years, held everything back, & then on Fri evening, announced 37 (!) indictments, including of Trump's lawyer, national security adviser & campaign manager. We'd be in shock. The White House would be in chaos & crisis."
And David Kris, an ex-national security division chief at the Department of Justice told The Washington Post, ""It's so much, it's so gradual, it's so complicated, people don't have a chance to sort of pause, catch their breath and really sort of survey the whole story that [Mueller has] found. I think if you took it all in in one day, it would kill you. It's simply too much."
Further, there are several congressional investigations of the president and his courtiers that have begun, probes that go beyond Mueller's mandate, with more to come. Remember that an impeachable offense does not have to be something that goes against the literal letter of the law but which violates the spirit of the law. It can be a misuse of high office for personal gain, or abuse of the constitution and the rights guaranteed within. Or it can even relate to the discovery that the person America elected indeed has always been a thoroughgoing crook of a businessman, unfit for office.
Whether Democrats deem it impolitic to continue pursuing the possibility of impeachment and prefer to await the results of the 2020 election remains to be seen but it's worth keeping in mind the words of historian and journalist Yoni Appelbaum, who while advocating for it in the March issue of The Atlantic, writes that impeachment "is a vital protection against the dangers a president like Trump poses. And, crucially, many of its benefits -- to the political health of the country, to the stability of the constitutional system -- accrue irrespective of its ultimate result. Impeachment is a process, not an outcome, a rule-bound procedure for investigating a president, considering evidence, formulating charges, and deciding whether to continue on to trial...
"Only by authorizing a dedicated impeachment inquiry can the House begin to assemble disparate allegations into a coherent picture, forcing lawmakers to consider both whether specific charges are true and whether the president's abuses of his power justify his removal." Otherwise, it's going to be a long, long way until Inauguration Day 2021. There's so much more damage Trump can do between now and then. And he stands a good chance of reelection.
What's more, never forget there also are multiple criminal lawsuits going on in federal and state courts, many of them have spun off from evidence uncovered when the Mueller team began looking under the rocks -- from hush money payments and money laundering to violations of the Constitution's emoluments clause to possible financial flimflam at Trump's inauguration committee. And leave us not forget Roger Stone, whose trial is scheduled to begin in November.
Finally and most important, we must address the reality that Donald Trump is not only the carrier but also a symptom of the greater disease that infects the republic, one in which vast inequality and a government controlled by private and corporate wealthy interests and not the people drives us toward our certain doom both as a democracy and a planet.
If we do not confront this head on, Trump and his bullys win, Pyrrhic though their victory may be. The toxic toads will have their way.
"They're now using the failed War on Drugs to justify their egregious violation of international law," the Minnesota progressive said of the Trump administration.
Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Delia Ramirez on Thursday strongly condemned the Trump administration's deadly attack on a boat allegedly trafficking cocaine off the coast of Venezuela as "lawless and reckless," while urging the White House to respect lawmakers' "clear constitutional authority on matters of war and peace."
"Congress has not declared war on Venezuela, or Tren de Aragua, and the mere designation of a group as a terrorist organization does not give any president carte blanche," said Omar (D-Minn.), referring to President Donald Trump's day one executive order designating drug cartels including the Venezuela-based group as foreign terrorist organizations.
Trump—who reportedly signed a secret order directing the Pentagon to use military force to combat cartels abroad—said that Tuesday's US strike in international waters killed 11 people. The attack sparked fears of renewed US aggression in a region that has endured well over 100 US interventions over the past 200 years, and against a country that has suffered US meddling since the late 19th century.
"It appears that US forces that were recently sent to the region in an escalatory and provocative manner were under no threat from the boat they attacked," Omar cotended. "There is no conceivable legal justification for this use of force. Unless compelling evidence emerges that they were acting in self-defense, that makes the strike a clear violation of international law."
Omar continued:
They're now using the failed War on Drugs to justify their egregious violation of international law. The US posture towards the eradication of drugs has caused immeasurable damage across our hemisphere. It has led to massive forced displacement, environmental devastation, violence, and human rights violations. What it has not done is any damage whatsoever to narcotrafficking or to the cartels. It has been a dramatic, profound failure at every level. In Latin America, even right-wing presidents acknowledge this is true.
The congresswoman's remarks came on the same day that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated a pair of Ecuadorean drug gangs as terrorist organizations while visiting the South American nation. This, after Rubio said that US attacks on suspected drug traffickers "will happen again."
"Trump and Rubio's apparent solution" to the failed drug war, said Omar, is "to make it even more militarized," an effort that "is doomed to fail."
"Worse, it risks spiraling into the exact type of endless, pointless conflict that Trump supposedly opposes," she added.
Echoing critics including former Human Rights Watch director Kenneth Roth, who called Tuesday's strike a "summary execution," Ramirez (D-Ill.) said Thursday on social media that "Trump and the Pentagon executed 11 people in the Caribbean, 1,500 miles away from the United States, without a legal rationale."
"From Iran to Venezuela, to DC, LA, and Chicago, Trump continues to abuse our military power, undermine the rule of law, and erode our constitutional boundaries in political spectacles," Ramirez added, referring to the president's ordering of strikes on Iran and National Guard deployments to Los Angeles, the nation's capital, and likely beyond.
"Presidents don't bomb first and ask questions later," Ramirez added. "Wannabe dictators do that."
"The fact that a facility embedded in so much pain is allowed to reopen is absolutely disheartening!" said Florida Immigrant Coalition's deputy director.
Two judges appointed to the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit by President Donald Trump issued a Thursday decision that allows a newly established but already notorious immigrant detention center in Florida, dubbed Alligator Alcatraz, to stay open.
Friends of the Everglades, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida sought "to halt the unlawful construction" of the site. Last month, Judge Kathleen Williams—appointed by former President Barack Obama to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida—ordered the closure of the facility within 60 days.
However, on Thursday, Circuit Judges Elizabeth Branch and Barbara Lagoa blocked Williams' decision, concluding that "the balance of the harms and our consideration of the public interest favor a stay of the preliminary injunction."
Judge Adalberto Jordan, an Obama appointee, issued a brief but scathing dissent. He wrote that the majority "essentially ignores the burden borne by the defendants, pays only lip service to the abuse of discretion standard, engages in its own factfinding, declines to consider the district court's determination on irreparable harm, and performs its own balancing of the equities."
The 11th Circuit's ruling was cheered by the US Department of Homeland Security, Republican Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, and Gov. Ron DeSantis, who declared in a video that "Alligator Alcatraz is, in fact, like we've always said, open for business."
Uthmeier's communications director, Jeremy Redfern, collected responses to the initial ruling by state and federal Democrats, and urged them to weigh in on social media. Florida state Sen. Shevrin "Shev" Jones (D-34) did, stressing that "cruelty is still cruelty."
In a Thursday statement, Florida Immigrant Coalition deputy director Renata Bozzetto said that "the 11th Circuit is allowing atrocities to happen by reversing the injunction that helped to paralyze something that has been functioning as an extrajudicial site in our own state! The Everglades Detention Camp isn't just an environmental threat; it is also a huge human rights crisis."
"Housing thousands of men in tents in the middle of a fragile ecosystem puts immense strain on Florida's source environment, but even more troublesome, it disregards human rights and our constitutional commitments," Bozzetto continued. "This is a place where hundreds of our neighbors were illegally held, were made invisible within government systems, and were subjected to inhumane heat and unbearable treatment. The fact that a facility embedded in so much pain is allowed to reopen is absolutely disheartening! The only just solution is to shut this facility down and ensure that no facility like this opens in our state!"
"Lastly, it is imperative that we as a nation uphold the balance of powers that this country was founded on," she added. "That is what makes this country special! Calling judges who rule against you 'activists' flies in the face of our democracy. It is a huge tell that AG Uthmeier expressed this as a 'win for President Trump's agenda,' as if the courts were to serve as political weapons. This demonstrates the clear partisan games they are playing with people's lives and with our democracy."
While Alligator Alcatraz has drawn widespread criticism for the conditions in which detainees are held, the suit is based on the government's failure to follow a law that requires an environmental review, given the facility's proximity to surrounding wetlands.
In response to the ruling, Elise Bennett, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, told The Associated Press that "this is a heartbreaking blow to America's Everglades and every living creature there, but the case isn't even close to over."
The report found that seven of America's biggest healthcare companies have collectively dodged $34 billion in taxes as a result of Trump's 2017 tax law while making patient care worse.
President Donald Trump's tax policies have allowed the healthcare industry to rake in "sick profits" by avoiding tens of billions of dollars in taxes and lowering the quality of care for patients, according to a report out Wednesday.
The report, by the advocacy groups Americans for Tax Fairness and Community Catalyst, found that "seven of America's biggest healthcare corporations have dodged over $34 billion in collective taxes since the enactment of the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law that Republicans recently succeeded in extending."
The study examined four health insurance companies—Centene, Cigna, Elevance (formerly Anthem), and Humana; two for-profit hospital chains—HCA Holdings and Universal Health Services; and the CVS Healthcare pharmacy conglomerate.
It found that these companies' average profits increased by 75%, from around $21 billion before the tax bill to about $35 billion afterward, and yet their federal tax rate was about the same.
This was primarily due to the 2017 law's slashing of the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, a change that was cheered on by the healthcare industry and continued with this year's GOP tax legislation. The legislation also loosened many tax loopholes and made it easier to move profits to offshore tax shelters.
The report found that Cigna, for instance, saved an estimated $181 million in taxes on the $2.5 billion it held in offshore accounts before the law took effect.
The law's supporters, including those in the healthcare industry, argued that lowering corporate taxes would allow companies to increase wages and provide better services to patients. But the report found that "healthcare corporations failed to use their tax savings to lower costs for customers or meaningfully boost worker pay."
Instead, they used those windfalls primarily to increase shareholder payouts through stock buybacks and dividends and to give fat bonuses to their top executives.
Stock buybacks increased by 42% after the law passed, with Centene purchasing an astonishing average of 20 times more of its own shares in the years following its enactment than in the years before. During the first seven years of the law, dividends for shareholders increased by 133% to an average of $5.6 billion.
Pay for the seven companies' half-dozen top executives increased by a combined $100 million, 42%, on average. This is compared to the $14,000 pay increase that the average employee at these companies received over the same period, which is a much more modest increase of 24%.
And contrary to claims that lower taxes would allow companies to improve coverage or patient care, the opposite has occurred.
While data is scarce, the rate of denied insurance claims is believed to have risen since the law went into effect.
The four major insurers' Medicare Advantage plans were found to frequently deny claims improperly. In the case of Centene, 93% of its denials for prior authorizations were overturned once patients appealed them, which indicates that they may have been improper. The others were not much better: 86% of Cigna's denials were overturned, along with 71% for Elevance/Anthem, and 65% for Humana.
The report said that such high rates of denials being overturned raise "questions about whether Medicare Advantage plans are complying with their coverage obligations or just reflexively saying 'no' in the hopes there will be no appeal."
Salespeople for the Cigna-owned company EviCore, which insurers hire to review claims, have even boasted that they help companies reduce their costs by increasing denials by 15%, part of a model that ProPublica has called the "denials for dollars business." Their investigation in 2024 found that insurers have used EviCore to evaluate whether to pay for coverage for over 100 million people.
And while paying tens of millions to their executives, both HCA and Universal Health Services—which each saved around $5.5 billion from Trump's tax law—have been repeatedly accused of overbilling patients while treating them in horrendous conditions.
"Congress should demand both more in tax revenue and better patient care from these highly profitable corporations," Americans for Tax Fairness said in a statement. "Healthcare corporation profitability should not come before quality of patient care. In healthcare, more than almost any other industry, the search for ever higher earnings threatens the wellbeing and lives of the American people."