Zach Levitt, Yiliya Parshina-Kottas, Simon Romero, and Tim Wallace, The New York Times, The Native American Boarding School System: ‘War Against the Children.’ The Native American boarding school system–a decades-long effort to assimilate Indigenous people before they ever reached adulthood–robbed children of their culture, family bonds, and sometimes their lives. Wednesday, 20 August 2023: “The Native American boarding school system was vast and entrenched, ranging from small shacks in remote Alaskan outposts to refurbished military barracks in the Deep South to large institutions up and down both the West and East coasts. Until recently, incomplete records and scant federal attention kept even the number of schools — let alone more details about how they functioned — unknown. The 523 schools represented here constitute the most comprehensive accounting to date of institutions involved in the system. This data was compiled over the course of several years by the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, a nonprofit advocacy and research organization. It reflects the efforts of historians, researchers, activists and survivors who have filled in many of the blanks in this dark chapter of American history. The first school opened in 1801, and hundreds were eventually established or supported by federal agencies such as the Interior Department and the Defense Department. Congress enacted laws to coerce Native American parents to send their children to the schools, including authorizing Interior Department officials to withhold treaty-guaranteed food rations to families who resisted. Congress also funded schools through annual appropriations and with money from the sale of lands held by tribes. In addition, the government hired Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Episcopalian and Congregationalist associations to run schools, regardless of whether they had experience in education, paying them an amount for each student. Beyond the vast federal system, this new list also sheds light on boarding schools that operated without federal support. Religious organizations ran at least 105 schools; many were Catholic, Presbyterian or Episcopalian, but smaller congregations such as the Quakers ran schools of their own. Wherever they were located or whoever ran them, the schools largely shared the mission of assimilating Indigenous students by erasing their culture. Children’s hair was cut off; their clothes were burned; they were given new, English names and were required to attend Christian religious services; and they were forced to perform manual labor, both on school premises and on surrounding farms. Those who dared to keep speaking their ancestral languages or observing their religious practices were often beaten. While the boarding school era might seem like distant history, aging survivors, many in their 70s and 80s, are striving to ensure the harm that was done is remembered.” See also, Dana Hedgpeth and Emmanuel Martinez, The Washington Post, More schools that forced American Indian children to assimilate revealed, Wednesday, 30 August 2023: “A nonprofit group has identified 115 more Indian boarding schools than has been previously reported, offering new insight into the role of religious institutions in the long-standing federal policy to eradicate Native Americans’ culture through their children. For more than a century, generations of American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children were forced or coerced from their homes and communities and sent to live at schools where they were beaten, starved and made to abandon their Native languages and culture. The U.S. Department of the Interior announced last year that the federal government ran or supported 408 such schools in 37 states, including 21 schools in Alaska and seven in Hawaii, from 1819 to 1969. The new list released Wednesday by the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition uses a different criteria, bringing the number of known Indian boarding schools in the country to 523 in 38 states. In addition to the federally supported schools tallied by the Interior Department, the coalition identified 115 more institutions that operated beginning in 1801, most of them run by religious groups and churches.”
Archives for August 2023
The United States Is Using Up Its Groundwater Like There’s No Tomorrow
Mira Rojanasakul, Christopher Flavelle, Blacki Migliozzi, and Eli Murray, The New York Times, The United States Is Using Up Its Groundwater Like There’s No Tomorrow. Overuse is draining and damaging aquifers nationwide, a New York Times data investigation revealed. Monday, 28 August 2023: “Global warming has focused concern on land and sky as soaring temperatures intensify hurricanes, droughts and wildfires. But another climate crisis is unfolding, underfoot and out of view. Many of the aquifers that supply 90 percent of the nation’s water systems, and which have transformed vast stretches of America into some of the world’s most bountiful farmland, are being severely depleted. These declines are threatening irreversible harm to the American economy and society as a whole. The New York Times conducted a months-long examination of groundwater depletion, interviewing more than 100 experts, traveling the country and creating a comprehensive database using millions of readings from monitoring sites. The investigation reveals how America’s life-giving resource is being exhausted in much of the country, and in many cases it won’t come back. Huge industrial farms and sprawling cities are draining aquifers that could take centuries or millenniums to replenish themselves if they recover at all.”
What We Know About the Smithsonian’s Human Remains
Nicole Dungca, Claire Healy, and Andrew Ba Tran, The Washington Post, What We Know About the Smithsonian’s Human Remains. Brains and other body parts, mostly from people of color, were taken without consent. As The Washington Post investigated, the museum took action. Monday, 14 August 2023: “The Washington Post spent a year examining the Smithsonian’s collection of human remains, including 255 brains. Reporters reviewed thousands of documents, including studies, field notes and personal correspondence, and interviewed experts, Smithsonian officials, and descendants and members of communities whose remains were targeted for collection. The Post also obtained from the National Museum of Natural History an inventory of all human remains in its possession, which allowed reporters to publish the most extensive analysis of the collection to date. Read the first story now: Revealing the Smithsonian’s ‘racial brain collection.’” See also, Joy Sharon Yi, The Washington Post, The Collection: How The Washington Post Reported on the Smithsonian’s Human Remains, Thursday, 17 August 2023: “The story began in a St. Louis cemetery, where at least six Filipinos are buried. They had come from the Philippines to be put on display at the 1904 World’s Fair, living in model villages for onlookers to gawk at their customs. They never returned home. A few years ago, a Filipino American activist and artist, Janna Añonuevo Langholz, learned about their stories and went looking for them, marking their graves and leading tours of the site of the Philippine Exhibition. She also made a startling discovery: The brains of four Filipino people had been removed and sent to the Smithsonian’s U.S. National Museum, the precursor to the National Museum of Natural History. Claire Healy, a copy aide at The Washington Post and a freelance writer, learned about Langholz’s work and probed further. ‘I asked the Smithsonian, “How many brains do you have and why?” And they sent me a spreadsheet,’ she said. Healy partnered with investigative reporter Nicole Dungca to keep digging. ‘There were children in the collection,’ Dungca said. ‘There were men and women and then fetuses. Many of them were Indigenous people, other people of color. And many of them didn’t have their identities actually recorded, partly because they were looked at as specimens.’ Senior video editor Joy Sharon Yi traveled to St. Louis to interview Langholz, and filmed Healy and Dungca as they pieced together the final parts of the story.”
Aftermath of the Trump Administration, August 2023
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Tuesday, 1 August 2023:
Trump Is Indicted in His Push to Overturn the 2020 Election. The former president faces three conspiracy charges and a count of attempting to obstruct an official proceeding in his campaign to use the levers of government power to remain in office. The New York Times, Alan Feuer and Maggie Haberman, Tuesday, 1 August 2023: “Former President Donald J. Trump was indicted on Tuesday in connection with his widespread efforts to overturn the 2020 election following a sprawling federal investigation into his attempts to cling to power after losing the presidency. The indictment, filed by the special counsel Jack Smith in Federal District Court in Washington, accuses Mr. Trump of three conspiracies: one to defraud the United States; a second to obstruct an official government proceeding, the certification of the Electoral College vote; and a third to deprive people of a civil right, the right to have their votes counted. Mr. Trump was also charged with a fourth count of obstructing or attempting to obstruct an official proceeding. ‘Each of these conspiracies — which built on the widespread mistrust the defendant was creating through pervasive and destabilizing lies about election fraud — targeted a bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election,’ the indictment said. The charges signify an extraordinary moment in United States history: a former president, in the midst of a campaign to return to the White House, being charged over attempts to use the levers of government power to subvert democracy and remain in office against the will of voters. In sweeping terms, the indictment described how Mr. Trump and six co-conspirators employed a variety of means to reverse his defeat in the election almost from the moment that voting ended. It depicted how Mr. Trump promoted false claims of fraud, sought to bend the Justice Department toward supporting those claims and oversaw a scheme to create false slates of electors pledged to him in states that were actually won by Joseph R. Biden Jr. And it described how he ultimately pressured his vice president, Mike Pence, to use the fake electors to subvert the certification of the election at a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, that was cut short by the violence at the Capitol.” See also, The Trump January 6 Indictment, Annotated. The Justice Department unveiled an indictment on Tuesday charging former President Donald J. Trump with four criminal counts. They relate to Mr. Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which culminated in the January 6 attack on the Capitol by a mob of his supporters. The New York Times, Charlie Savage and Adam Goldman, Tuesday, 1 August 2023. See also, Here Are the Charges Trump Faces in the January 6 Case. The former president is charged with three conspiracy counts and the corrupt obstruction of an official proceeding. The New York Times, Charlie Savage, Tuesday, 1 August 2023. See also, Judge In Trump January 6 Trial Is Known for Tough Capitol Riot Sentences. A judge with a liberal background and significant criminal trial experience, Tanya S. Chutkan swiftly ruled against the former president in his 2021 attempt to keep White House papers secret from the congressional inquiry. The New York Times, Charlie Savage and Alan Feuer, published on Wednesday, 2 August 2023. See also, The Indictment Says Trump Had Six Co-consiprators in His Efforts to Retain Power. The New York Times, Alan Feuer, Tuesday, 1 August 2023: “The indictment of former President Donald J. Trump mentions — but does not identify by name — six co-conspirators who prosecutors say worked with him in seeking to overturn the 2020 election. It is not clear why the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, decided to seek only Mr. Trump’s indictment for now, though it is possible that some of the co-conspirators could still face charges in the weeks ahead…. Among those people central to the inquiry were Rudolph W. Giuliani, a lawyer who oversaw Mr. Trump’s attempts to claim the election was marred by widespread fraud; John Eastman, a law professor who provided the legal basis to overturn the election by manipulating the count of electors to the Electoral College; Sidney Powell, a lawyer who pushed Mr. Trump to use the military to seize voting machines and rerun the election; Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department official at the time; and Kenneth Chesebro and James Troupis, lawyers who helped flesh out the plan to use fake electors pledged to Mr. Trump in states that were won by President Biden.” See also, Four Takeaways From the Trump Indictment. The indictment of the former president for trying to subvert democracy was issued by a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia. It’s the third set of charges that he faces. The New York Times, Jonathan Swan, Tuesday, 1 August 2023: See also, Keeping Track of the Trump Investigations, The New York Times, updated Tuesday, 1 August 2023. See also, Trump indicted on 2020 election charges after January 6 investigation, The Washington Post, Perry Stein, John Wagner, Amy B Wang, Mariana Alfaro, Maegan Vazquez, Jacqueline Alemany, Amy Gardner, Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey, Devlin Barrett, Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff, Niha Masih, and Lyric Li, Tuesday, 1 August 2023: “A grand jury has indicted former president Donald Trump for multiple alleged crimes stemming from his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The four-count, 45-page indictment accuses Trump of three distinct conspiracies, and charges that he conspired to defraud the U.S., conspired to obstruct an official proceeding and conspired against people’s rights. Trump, who is seeking to return to the White House in next year’s election, denied all wrongdoing. Special counsel Jack Smith, in a brief appearance, said his office would seek a speedy trial.” See also, Trump charged in investigation of January 6 efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The indictment alleges four different crimes and describes six unnamed, uncharged co-conspirators. The Washington Post, Devlin Barrett, Spencer S. Hsu, Perry Stein, Josh Dawsey, and Jacqueline Alemany, Tuesday, 1 August 2023: “A grand jury indicted former president Donald Trump on Tuesday for a raft of alleged crimes in his brazen efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory — the latest legal and political aftershock stemming from the riot at the U.S. Capitol 2½ years ago. The four-count, 45-page indictment accuses Trump, who is again running for president, of conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, attempting to obstruct an official proceeding and conspiring against people’s civil right to have their vote counted. The maximum potential sentence on the most serious charge is 20 years in prison. ‘The attack on our nation’s Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy,’ special counsel Jack Smith told reporters after the indictment was filed. ‘It was fueled by lies, lies by the defendant.’ Smith also praised the law enforcement officers who defended the Capitol, saying that they ‘did not just defend a building or the people sheltering in it. They put their lives on the line to defend who we are as a country and as a people.'” See also, Read the full text of the 45-page Trump January 6 indictment document, The Washington Post, Washington Post Staff, Tuesday, 1 August 2023. See also, Here are the Trump co-conspirators described in the Department of Justice indictment, The Washington Post, Holly Bailey, Josh Dawsey, Jacqueline Alemany, Rachel Weiner, Amy B Wang, and Isaac Arnsdorf, Tuesday, 1 August 2023: “In criminally charging former president Donald Trump for his efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss, federal prosecutors allege that Trump enlisted six co-conspirators to ‘assist him in his criminal efforts to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election and retain power.’The co-conspirators were not charged on Tuesday and are not named in the indictment, but five of them can be identified using the detailed descriptions provided by prosecutors.” See also, Trump has been indicted before. Historians say this time is different. Scholars say the new charges of attempting to overturn the 2020 election pose a unique test for the rule of law and go to the core of the threat to democracy. The Washington Post, Kevin Sullivan, published on Wednesday, 2 August 2023: “When Donald Trump was indicted in Manhattan in March, it was the first time in U.S. history that a president or former president had faced criminal charges. On Tuesday, it happened to Trump for the third time in just over four months — and he may face even more charges before the summer is done. Historians and legal scholars say the new indictment, brought by federal special counsel Jack Smith, is fundamentally more consequential than the earlier ones, which related to hush money paid to an adult-film actress and the alleged mishandling of classified documents. While those are serious allegations, Tuesday’s indictment accuses a former president of the United States of attempting to subvert the democracy upon which the nation rests. And with Trump again running for the White House, the charges he faces pose an extraordinary test to the rule of law, experts say.” See also, 4 things that stand out from the Trump January 6 indictment, The Washington Post, Aaron Blake, published on Wednesday, 2 August 2023. See also, Judge Tanya Chutkan is a tough Trump critic and the toughest January 6 sentencer. Trump’s trial judge in D.C. is a former public defender and was one of the first U.S. judges to reject his executive privilege claims to withhold January 6 White House records. The Washington Post, Spencer S. Hsu and Tom Jackman, Tuesday, 1 August 2023: “With U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan as the trial judge overseeing his case in Washington, Donald Trump’s legal troubles in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack come near full circle. Trump’s federal criminal indictment on charges of attempting to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election was randomly assigned Tuesday to Chutkan, 61, who nearly two years ago became one of the first federal judges in D.C. to reject the former president’s efforts to use executive privilege to withhold White House communications from Jan. 6 investigators, in that instance from the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot.” See also, Trump indicted for efforts to overturn 2020 election to block transfer of power, Associated Press, Eric Tucker and Michael Kunzelman, Tuesday, 1 August 2023: “Donald Trump was indicted on felony charges Tuesday for working to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the run-up to the violent riot by his supporters at the U.S. Capitol, with the Justice Department acting to hold him accountable for an unprecedented effort to block the peaceful transfer of presidential power and threaten American democracy. The four-count indictment, the third criminal case against Trump, provided deeper insight into a dark moment that has already been the subject of exhaustive federal investigations and captivating public hearings. It chronicles a months-long campaign of lies about the election results and says that, even when those falsehoods resulted in a chaotic insurrection at the Capitol, Trump sought to exploit the violence by pointing to it as a reason to further delay the counting of votes that sealed his defeat. Even in a year of rapid-succession legal reckonings for Trump, Tuesday’s indictment, with charges including conspiring to defraud the United States government that he once led, was stunning in its allegations that a former president assaulted the ‘bedrock function’ of democracy. It’s the first time the defeated president, who is the early front-runner for next year’s Republican presidential nomination, is facing legal consequences for his frantic but ultimately failed effort to cling to power.” See also, The New Trump Indictment and the Reckoning Ahead. With the former President still far ahead of the rest of the Republican field, the American electorate is headed for a crucial test. The New Yorker, David Remnick, Tuesday, 1 August 2023: “To read the stark criminal indictment, returned by a federal grand jury on Tuesday, charging Donald Trump with conspiring to steal the 2020 Presidential election is to realize more deeply than before that the country is headed for a great reckoning—in the courts and at the ballot box. It suggests a question that cannot be escaped: Will the American electorate show itself capable of overlooking a conspiracy to undermine democratic rule and return the chief conspirator to power? The third and latest indictment against Trump sets out four charges and makes the case against him in the plainest terms. ‘Despite having lost, the defendant was determined to remain in power,’ the introduction to the forty-five-page document reads—and where have you seen a more succinct summary of criminal intent?” See also, Trump charged with 4 felony counts for attempt to overturn the 2020 election, NPR, Carrie Johnson, Ryan Lucas, Jaclyn Diaz, Tuesday, 1 August 2023: “Former President Donald Trump was indicted Tuesday by a federal grand jury on four counts related to efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, according to court documents. Trump was charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, witness tampering, conspiracy against the rights of citizens, and obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding. The charges were unsealed two weeks after the former president said he had learned he may be indicted by a federal grand jury investigating the siege of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. That’s when protesters loyal to Trump stormed the Capitol in an attempt to prevent then-Vice President Mike Pence from performing his ceremonial role of certifying the presidential election in favor of the winner, Joe Biden.” See also, 5 things to know about the latest charges against Donald Trump, NPR, Emily Olson, Jaclyn Diaz, Ximena Bustillo, published on Wednesday, 2 August 2023.
Russian Invasion of Ukraine: Moscow says drone hits skyscraper again; Kherson and Kharkiv report strikes, The Washington Post, Kelly Kasulis Cho, Ellen Francis, Natalia Abbakumova, Serhiy Morgunov, and Eve Sampson, Tuesday, 1 August 2023: “A drone hit the same Moscow skyscraper — which houses offices and ministries — for the second time in days, the city’s mayor and Russia’s Defense Ministry said early Tuesday, blaming Ukraine. Kyiv has not claimed responsibility, but Ukrainian officials have described targets in Russia as legitimate. Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak suggested early Tuesday that the drones meant that Moscow was ‘rapidly getting used to a full-fledged war.’ Ukrainian officials said Russian attacks a day earlier killed at least 10 people, including a 10-year-old girl and her mother, and injured at least 100 in the southern city of Kherson and in Kryvyi Rih, the hometown of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Russian shelling Tuesday hit a medical facility in Kherson, killing a doctor, injuring a nurse and damaging a surgical department there, the regional governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, said in a statement. International humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders confirmed that it maintains a partnership with the hospital that was attacked. Russian air defenses thwarted ‘several drones’ trying to reach Moscow, Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said Tuesday. He said the facade of the building’s 21st floor was damaged, that it was the same skyscraper hit on Sunday and that there was no information on casualties. UNESCO has verified damage to 274 locations in Ukraine, including religious sites, museums, monuments and libraries, during nearly a year and a half of war, the U.N. organization said. Russian drones struck Kharkiv and destroyed two floors of a dormitory, the mayor of the northeastern city, Ukraine’s second-largest, said overnight. Belarusian helicopters violated Polish airspace during a training exercise Tuesday, Poland’s Defense Ministry said in a statement. The Belarusian Defense Ministry refuted the claims, calling them ‘far-fetched.’ Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Błaszczak ordered more soldiers along the border, the ministry said. Britain imposed sanctions on six Russian nationals involved in the trial of British-Russian dual national Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was sentenced to 25 years in a penal colony on treason charges. Kara-Murza has publicly denounced Russia’s war on Ukraine and was sentenced on ‘bogus charges,’ British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said. The sanctioned Russian citizens include three judges, two prosecutors and an expert witness. U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan is slated to attend a Ukrainian-backed peace summit that Saudi Arabia is planning, according to a person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive planning. Ukraine’s foreign minister said he discussed the possibility of using Croatian ports to export grain during a meeting Monday with his Croatian counterpart. Russia’s withdrawal from a U.N.-backed grain deal last month has blocked the flow of Ukrainian grain exports via Black Sea routes.”
Russian Invasion of Ukraine: Drone Again Hits a Moscow Building Housing Russian Ministries. Ukrainian officials have become more open in their view that targets inside Russia are legitimate. The New York Times, Tuesday, 1 August 2023:
- Central Moscow is hit for the second time in two days in a drone attack.
- In Moscow, some residents worry after recent attacks while others move on.
- UNESCO says 274 cultural sites have been damaged in Ukraine since February last year.
- A Ukrainian doctor is killed in a shelling attack on his first full day at work, authorities say.
- Ukraine’s stepped-up attacks on Russia aim at the Kremlin’s military logistics.
- Ukraine is moving to export grain through Croatia’s ports.
- Extensive minefields impede Ukraine’s counteroffensive, military experts say.
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