By Michael Martina and David Brunnstrom
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Tuesday named former senior diplomat Joseph Yun to lead languishing talks with three tiny but strategically important Pacific Island countries, a signal that countering China remains a U.S. priority despite Russia's war in Ukraine.
The State Department confirmed the appointment of Yun, who served as U.S. special envoy for North Korea under former U.S. Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, in response to queries from Reuters.
"In light of the critical nature of these complex negotiations, President Biden is appointing Ambassador Joseph Yun as Special Presidential Envoy for Compact Negotiations," a statement from the department said.
President Joe Biden's administration has said it plans to finalize negotiations for renewed Compacts of Free Association governing U.S. economic assistance for the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, and Palau, but has given no timeframe.
Talks with the so-called Freely Associated States on the compacts – set to expire in 2023 for the first two and in 2024 for Palau – began during the Trump administration, but sources familiar with the process say there have been no substantive engagements with U.S. officials since December 2020.
China, meanwhile, has made economic overtures to the Pacific Islands countries focusing on tourism and trade and appears keen to establish a military foothold in the region.
(Reporting by Michael Martina and David Brunnstrom; Editing by Alistair Bell)
A Georgetown University history professor is shedding light on the real reason why far-right Republicans still believe the unfounded claim that President Joe Biden's presidential win was illegitimate.
While its no secret that election conspiracy theories and false claims of widespread voter fraud have run rampant since former President Donald Trump lost his bid for re-election, there is a reason why Republicans "are convinced the outcome of the election was illegitimate regardless of whether or not there were specific procedural irregularities."
In an analysis published via The Guardian, Thomas Zimmer, a Georgetown University history professor with a concentration on the United States' democracy, referenced a controversial essay written from the perspective of a far-right conservative.
The essay, titled “ ‘Conservatism’ is No Longer Enough,” was penned by conservative writer Glenn Ellmers for The Claremont Institute's right-wing publication, American Mind. Zimmer notes:
"It is notable that Ellmers makes no claim that the 2020 election was 'stolen' – he doesn’t allege manipulation, voter fraud, or conspiracy, and in fact explicitly acknowledges that more people voted for Biden than for Trump. He does not peddle conspiracy theories. Yet Ellmers maintains that the outcome of the 2020 election is illegitimate and must not be accepted."
Zimmer then highlighted another key takeaway from Ellmer's piece:
"Ellmers is outraged precisely because he accepts the fact that a majority voted for Biden, that 'authentic Americans' have become the minority in a country which they are supposedly entitled to dominate. Here we have a striking glimpse of the depth of despair underlying the pervasive siege mentality on the right. What’s scandalous about the 2020 election, in this interpretation, is not that it was “stolen”, but that “un-American” forces straightforwardly won."
Zimmer's analysis also delved into the disturbing ideology behind the majority of Republican voters' thinking in regard to Biden being an illegitimate president.
"What is most alarming is the underlying ideology that leads so many on the right to consider Democratic victories invalid – even if they concede there was nothing technically wrong with how the election was conducted," Zimmer wrote. "It has become a core tenet of the Republican worldview to consider the Democratic party as not simply a political opponent, but an enemy pursuing an 'un-American' project of turning what is supposed to be a white Christian patriarchal nation into a land of godless multiracial pluralism."
Zimmer added, "Conversely, Republicans see themselves as the sole proponents of 'real' America, defending the country from the forces of radical leftism, liberalism, and wokeism."
He went on to explain Republicans' beliefs of the Democratic Party. "Even if they don’t subscribe to the more outlandish conspiracies propagated by Trumpists, many Republicans agree that the Democratic party is a fundamentally illegitimate political faction — and that any election outcome that would lead to Democratic governance must be rejected as illegitimate as well."
During Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's confirmation hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT) responded to Republicans' complaints about how Brett Kavanaugh was treated during his own confirmation hearing.
"I was going to respond to something the junior senator from Texas said yesterday," said Leahy. "He suggested Democrats exacted a political agenda by opposing the nominations in Judge [Neil] Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. I kind of chuckle at that because along with others, others repeatedly and clearly stated substantive concerns with Justice Gorsuch's nomination."
"There's no political agenda. I contrast that with Republicans' treatment of Judge Merrick Garland. We're still waiting for the substantive concerns with Merrick Garland. They blocked him for over a year and wouldn't even allow a vote on his nomination. apparently because of a politically driven agenda."
READ: 'Pathetic' Eric Trump faces mockery after lashing out at Joe Biden for riding a bicycle
Kavanaugh had been accused of sexual assault by a woman who knew him during their childhood. There was never a full FBI background check on Kavanaugh. To date, there are still questions about a substantial amount of debt that mysteriously disappeared.
"Kavanaugh has reported credit card debts that exceeded $15,000 for six of his 12 years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. At the end of 2016, those debts ranged between $45,000 to $150,000 and were spread among three credit cards," explained the Chicago Tribune. "The same year he accumulated the highest debts of his judicial tenure, Kavanaugh also joined the Chevy Chase Club - an elite country club that counts Chief Justice John Roberts among its members and, as of 2017, required a $92,000 initiation fee and annual dues of more than $9,000."
See the exchange below:
Republicans complain about mean Democrats -- but at least their nominees got a hearing and a vote www.youtube.com
NOW WATCH: Ketanji Brown Jackson refutes Josh Hawley's accusations about letting child porn offenders ‘off the hook’
Ketanji Brown Jackson refutes Josh Hawley's accusations about child porn offenders www.youtube.com
Eric Trump is facing an online backlash after attacking 79-year-old President Joe Biden for riding a bike during a recent appearance on Fox News.
Over the weekend while staying at their Delaware beach home, the president and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden went for a spin around their neighborhood. It was all documented, of course, by TV news crews.
Appearing last night on Sean Hannity's show, Trump tried his best to gin up outrage about Biden getting some exercise. "Here you have Biden on this beach cruiser with this big ridiculous reflector on the front of it. It might as well have had a little horn on it as well," Trump observed.
He went on to complain about Biden biking "in the middle of the day" while Russia's war in Ukraine rages on. “My father would be giving speeches in front of F-35s, talking about how he’s building the greatest military the world has ever seen,” Trump said. “Believe me, that was sending a true message of strength.”
“This is the commander in chief of the United States of America,” he said. “What message does that send the world that is literally in the middle of, just, some horribleness?”
It didn't take the Twitter-verse long to remind Trump that his father was documented playing golf no fewer than 300 times during his presidency and didn't let crises such as the coronavirus pandemic keep him off the tee box.
On Tuesday, writing for The Bulwark, conservative writer Charlie Sykes tore into former President Donald Trump for his "reckless and ignorant" interview with Fox Business host Stuart Varney, in which he appeared to claim he'd end the Ukraine invasion by threatening Russia with nuclear weapons.
Trump critics have repeatedly accused him of being too close to Vladimir Putin and he was impeached after he was accused of shaking down Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for dirt on Joe Biden's family as a condition of providing security aid. But, noted Sykes, Trump took a 180-degree swerve in his interview, arguing for a massive military escalation against Russia that he didn't even seem to fully comprehend himself.
"At one point, Trump suggested that as president he would threaten Russia with nuclear submarines," wrote Sykes. "'You should say: 'Look, you mention that word one more time and we’re gonna send [submarines] over and we’ll be coasting back and forth, up and down your coast'.' That, of course, would be both recklessly escalatory and quite unnecessary, since the submarines do not need to be on Russia’s 'coast' to pose a threat."
"At this point, it’s worth remembering that this is a man who, as a candidate, had no idea what the nuclear triad was ('I think — I think, for me, nuclear is just the power, the devastation is very important to me'); suggested using nukes on hurricanes, and reportedly often asked his aides about the possibility of using nuclear weapons," wrote Sykes. "Yes, by all means, let’s give him back the nuclear codes. What could possibly go wrong?"
You can read more here.
NOW WATCH: Ketanji Brown Jackson refutes Josh Hawley's accusations about letting child porn offenders ‘off the hook’
Ketanji Brown Jackson refutes Josh Hawley's accusations about child porn offenders www.youtube.com
On Tuesday, Mother Jones reported that a new bill introduced in Congress would block a controversial contract moving forward under Postmaster General Louis DeJoy that seeks to purchase a new fleet of mainly gas-powered vehicles rather than switch to an electrified fleet.
"This month, Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) introduced a bill that would prohibit the United States Postal Service from moving forward with a contract for a new fleet of mail trucks unless 75 percent of those trucks are electric," reported Abigail Weinberg. "'Weaning ourselves off of fossil fuel dependence is a major part of trying to cope with greenhouse gas emissions,' Connolly said. 'Replenishing [the postal fleet] with vehicles that are electric and hybrid would go a long way towards helping to change the nature of fuel in US vehicles on the roads.'"
"Because the USPS contract with Wisconsin-based Oshkosh Defense is already finalized, legislators will need to move 'with all deliberate speed' in their last-ditch effort to secure a green postal fleet, Connolly told me," continued the report. "The USPS, with its generally short routes and designated nightly parking spots, ought to be a perfect use case for electric vehicles, but it’s been hampered by bureaucracy, billions of dollars of made-up debt, and a postmaster general seemingly averse to spending and risk."
Defenders of DeJoy's plan have contended that the USPS fleet makes some long-haul deliveries into rural areas that aren't practically serviced by electric vehicles. But, Connolly notes, these deliveries account for only 5 percent of deliveries, and could be managed with a fleet with 25 percent gas-powered vehicles, as he proposes.
READ: Jim Jordan’s own troubling history resurfaces after his 'don't forget' tweet about Brett Kavanaugh
DeJoy, a former executive of private shipping company XPO Logistics, has been focused on cost-cutting at the agency. He has supported some broadly bipartisan plans to do so, like the recently-passed postal reform bill that would eliminate the widely hated pension prepaying requirements and allow the agency to update their technology.
But he has also pushed forward more controversial changes including a sweeping ten-year plan that raises postage prices and slows delivery on some routes. He also oversaw drastic slowdowns and dismantling of sorting machines while mail-in ballots went out in 2020, although he denied having anything to do with those decisions.
Progressive groups have repeatedly called for DeJoy's ouster. President Joe Biden cannot remove him directly, but has been adding new members to the USPS board, replacing some of the members who confirmed him in the first place.
Following the first day of Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, conservative columnist Matt Lewis brought down the hammer on Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) for his attempted smears of the judge -- going so far as to label the Missouri Republican as "scummy."
Prior to disclosing that his wife previously worked as a fundraiser for Hawley, Lewis made the case that the Republican senator's attempts to make the respected judge look like a friend of pedophiles was "beyond the pale."
According to Lewis, there are reasons that conservatives can use to oppose the judge's nomination, but Hawley's attack was not only appalling but also dishonest coming from a former attorney general.
After writing, "It’s no surprise that the ambitious Mr. Hawley—the first Republican senator to announce he would object to certifying Joe Biden’s election, and who infamously gave a clenched-fist salute to Capitol protesters on Jan. 6 and then tried to monetize it—would make such a disrespectful allegation," the conservative columnist cited a scathing appraisal of Hawley by National Review's Andrew McCarthy -- a former prosecutor himself.
RELATED: Josh Hawley's attempt to smear Ketanji Brown Jackson is blowing up in his face: columnist
McCarthy wrote, "the implication that [Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson] has a soft spot for ‘sex offenders’ who ‘prey on children’ because she argued against a severe mandatory-minimum prison sentence for the receipt and distribution of pornographic images is a smear," which led Lewis to add, "It’s worth noting that such dishonest political attacks are, sadly, not uncommon."
Rehashing a history of conservative judges who faced grilling by Democrats, Lewis wrote, the Republicans should resist "the temptation to criticize her tenure as a public defender—where it was literally her job to defend people with no other means to defend themselves."
Adding that he personally would not vote for her over policy differences, he added, "I don’t see anything outrageous about Judge Jackson—so far."
Turning back to Hawley, he wrote, "Perhaps Hawley’s decision to smear Judge Jackson as being soft on child porn was a depraved attempt to destroy this nominee while steering clear of anything remotely close to the race issue. But the abuse and exploitation of children is especially heinous, and to unfairly accuse someone of enabling it could destroy their reputation," before adding, "Republicans can vote against Judge Jackson with their heads held high. Doing so would be completely legitimate. What’s not acceptable is misrepresenting her record and attempting to assassinate her character. Hawley, the Big Lie proponent, might not be better than that. But his fellow GOP senators should be. The 'loyal opposition' should not be the 'dishonest opposition.'"
You can read more here.
By Andrew Zhang, The Texas Tribune
March 22, 2022
"What is harm reduction, the drug-treatment program that Sen. Ted Cruz has criticized?" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Texans seeking help for substance use can call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s free help line at 800-662-4357. They can also access services available in their region through the Texas Health and Human Services website.
Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz criticized President Joe Biden last month for supposedly funding the distribution of free crack pipes — an assertion federal officials denied and called misleading.
Cruz was referring to the Biden administration’s $30 million grant program that aims to mitigate the fallout from the country’s opioid crisis and increased fentanyl overdoses. The program relies on what are called harm-reduction policies, which call for minimizing the detrimental health and economic impacts of drug abuse until users can get treatment rather than criminalizing addiction.
The senator’s comments focused on safe smoking kits, which typically contain alcohol swabs, lip balm and other protective materials meant to protect users from possible burns, blisters and transmittable infections such as HIV and hepatitis C. Some harm-reduction organizations include glass stems that can function as pipes in their safe smoking kits. But White House press secretary Jen Psaki denied that the federal program would fund the inclusion of pipes and said the federal government does not support direct or indirect funding for such items.
As conversations continue about alleviating the damage from opioids and fentanyl, here’s what you should know about Cruz’ claims and harm-reduction practices in Texas.
In early February, Cruz sparked controversy when he tweeted “Biden crime policy: Crack pipes for all” and then later went on his podcast, “Verdict”, to further amplify the statement, which fact-checkers have said is false.
Cruz’s comments responded to a news article from a conservative publication that claimed the program providing funding for harm-reduction policies under the Biden administration would distribute crack pipes as part of safe smoking kits.
His statements that Biden was giving out crack pipes — in conjunction with messaging from other Republican senators — reverberated in conservative and right-wing information circles.
The fallout was significant enough that U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, a moderate Democrat from West Virginia, joined Republican U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida to introduce legislation prohibiting federal funds for purchasing paraphernalia like pipes and needles.
But federal officials denied claims the program would fund pipes. In a joint statement, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and National Drug Control Policy Director Rahul Gupta said their agencies are focused on “using our resources smartly” to reduce the harm and fatalities caused by drug use.
“Accordingly, no federal funding will be used directly or through subsequent reimbursement of grantees to put pipes in safe smoking kits,” they said.
A spokesperson for Cruz did not respond to requests for comment.
Harm reduction offers a science-based alternative of recognizing addiction as a disease, as opposed to traditional and nonscientific approaches that have criminalized drug usage.
For the most part, harm reduction does not look to cure the addictions of the people served. Instead, it works to ensure people on drugs stay alive and as healthy as possible until they can receive proper treatment.
Advocates understand that drug use entails significant risks, but also believe that people — especially those dealing with addiction — need love and support.
“There are going to be people that use drugs,” said Claire Zagorski, a harm-reduction and drug policy researcher at the University of Texas at Austin’s College of Pharmacy. “I want to meet those people wherever they are.”
Zagorski said harm reduction is economically smart — people who overdose or injure themselves while using can end up with a hospital bill that they cannot pay.
Marcia Ory, a public health professor at Texas A&M University and chair of the school’s opioid task force, said the harm-reduction approach accompanies a shift in perception about addiction. Evidence shows that people who get addicted to drugs don’t have a lack of willpower but instead undergo bodily changes that entice them to want more drugs.
Ory, whose task force provides training on harm reduction and naloxone administration, said if criminalization were successful, fewer people would have addiction and fewer lives and families would be ruined.
“I would hope that harm-reduction strategies would become the norm, that they would be prevalent, that the view of addiction would be away from a criminal perspective toward a medical perspective,” said Ory. “These strategies have been around for some time, and the issue is being able to utilize them to the fullest, because that’s what’s going to save people’s lives, families, communities.”
Programs can distribute an array of products that all aim to reduce harm from drug use. That can include safe injection kits with clean syringes and fentanyl testing strips, which are a relatively cheap way to check for the presence of the deadly narcotic that is increasingly a contaminant in other drugs.
“Because fentanyl is becoming more prevalent — it’s deadly — it’s all the more reason why some of those harm-reduction strategies are so important,” Ory said. “The assumption is that if you have drug paraphernalia freely available, that that’s going to encourage drug abuse, that is not a scientific fact.”
Distributed items can also include naloxone, often known as Narcan, a medicine that can treat opioid overdose. Additionally, many programs also give out products for non-drug-related use, like safe sex kits and general hygiene kits with soap and toothbrushes.
As the state grapples with the ongoing opioid epidemic and a rise in fentanyl deaths, public health experts say that harm-reduction strategies can both help people with their drug addictions and curb fallout from the crisis.
Narcan is one product many harm-reduction groups in Texas distribute that the state has also embraced using. Recent settlements between the state and pharmaceutical companies implicated in the opioid epidemic provide millions of dollars’ worth of Narcan for the state.
But other strategies face a roadblock in Texas: State law criminalizes the possession and distribution of drug paraphernalia, which includes fentanyl testing strips. Clean syringes and clean pipes can also be considered paraphernalia.
During last year’s legislative session, a bill sponsored by state Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas, aimed to remove criminal penalties for possessing paraphernalia. The bill passed out of committee but never came up for a vote by the Texas House.
Crockett, who is up for a congressional seat in south Dallas, agrees that a harm-reduction approach is the future for helping combat drug problems, in contrast to criminalizing drugs.
“You lock someone up who has an addiction, you don’t help them at all,” Crockett said. “You just put them away, and then you let them back out. Guess what? They still have an addiction. And they’ve not been given the tools and resources. And sadly enough, they’ve not been treated with the dignity that really they should be afforded.”
Those barriers prompted many advocates for harm-reduction policies to criticize Cruz for politicizing their work.
“It’s outrageous that somebody like Ted Cruz is even commenting on harm-reduction tools when a lot of the evidence-based tools that we need in the first place are illegal in the state,” said Paulette Soltani, director of organizing for the Texas Harm Reduction Alliance, which protested outside Cruz’s Austin office in March. “It’s a political issue at the expense of the lives of Texans.”
Disclosure: Texas A&M University and the University of Texas at Austin have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2022/03/22/harm-reduction-drug-treatment-cruz-biden/.
The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.
US President Joe Biden said Monday that it’s "clear" Russia is considering the use of chemical and biological weapons in Ukraine and warned of a "severe" Western response if it chose to do so.
"His back is against the wall," said Biden of Russian President Vladimir Putin, noting that Russia has recently accused the United States of holding chemical and biological weapons in Europe.
"Simply not true. I guarantee you," he told a gathering of US business leaders in Washington.
"They are also suggesting that Ukraine has biological and chemical weapons in Ukraine. That's a clear sign he's considering using both of those," he said.
His warning echoed statements made by his administration earlier this month as well as other Western nations, after Russian officials accused Ukraine of seeking to hide an alleged US-backed chemical weapons program.
"Now that Russia has made these false claims... we should all be on the lookout for Russia to possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, or to create a false flag operation using them," tweeted White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki.
Biden on Monday also reiterated that such an action would prompt a "severe" but so far undefined response from Western allies.
Putin "knows there'll be severe consequences because of the united NATO front," he said, without specifying what actions the alliance would take.
© 2022 AFP
On Monday, POLITICO's Burgess Everett reported that Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), the rightmost member of the Democratic caucus and an essential person for Republicans to peel off if they want to block President Joe Biden's Supreme Court nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson, is unimpressed with the attacks by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) on her sentencing record.
"You sure it was Hawley, right?" Manchin was quoted as saying. "Take that for what it's worth."
READ MORE: Sarah Palin teases congressional run to fill Don Young's 'big shoes'
Hawley's claims that Jackson is soft on child pornography offenders, or ruled they merited less harsh sentencing, has been widely debunked by fact-checkers, noting that she simply was part of a committee that advised Congress to study whether mandatory minimums for these offenses were effective. Andrew McCarthy of the right-wing National Review called the senator's claim an "outright smear."
Some observers have also noted Hawley's attacks recall the QAnon conspiracy theory movement, which holds that the government is protecting a secret society of Satanic child traffickers who consume human flesh to achieve immortality.
All of this comes after reports that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has privately urged the GOP caucus not to do too much mudslinging over the nomination of Jackson, the first Black woman to be considered for the Supreme Court.
NOW WATCH: Yale historian predicts what will change the invasion and end Putin's war
Yale historian predicts what will change the invasion and end Putin's war www.youtube.com
Douglas Frank entertained a church crowd in Topeka with bogus conspiracies about hacked voting rolls, fake ballots, machines secretly connected to cellphone towers and a plot by technocrats to predetermine the outcome of elections.
The March 15 performance followed a presentation hours earlier before the House Elections Committee, where the Republican chairman admonished Frank for denigrating and promoting violence against government officials.
Frank, backed by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, travels the country propping up the Big Lie with talk of “a sixth order polynomial,” Frank’s discredited algorithm for finding irregularities in voting data. In his appearances before state legislatures, Frank describes himself as a math teacher from Ohio. Community Church in Topeka billed Frank as “a world-renowned physicist” for a “special event” that would answer the question: “Are elections in Kansas safe?” Four Republican members of the House were among an estimated 50 people in attendance.
“Your secretary of state knew before the election that your books are completely hackable, that your poll books, when you sign in when you go to the polls, are completely hackable,” Frank said in audio obtained by Kansas Reflector. “They knew it. And they were hacked big time. Because we have recordings of that. By the way, those recordings have usernames and passwords. I have the usernames and passwords for all your county clerks in your state. That’s how secure they are.”
Secretary of State Scott Schwab said his office reviews voter rolls and computer logs regularly and hasn’t seen any evidence of compromise.
“These types of unfounded allegations,” Schwab said, “are harmful to our republic.”
Frank doesn’t let facts get in the way.
President Joe Biden’s legitimate victory in the 2020 election is the culmination of a scheme that began in the 1990s, Frank said, to gradually pad voter registration rolls so that fake advanced ballots could be generated to sway elections. Nationally, he pegged the fraud at 30 million ballots. In Kansas, he said without evidence, there were 45,000 phantom voters.
“If you want to stay red, you have to fix this problem,” Frank said, without offering a solution.
Joining Frank in the presentation of flawed and fake analysis were retired Air Force Lt. Col. Gregory Shuey, who came equipped with a QAnon explanation for how the election was stolen from Donald Trump, and Dakota Davis, a data scientist from the Kansas Voter Research Project. Kansas Reflector couldn’t readily find an online record of the organization.
Rep. Tatum Lee, R-Ness City; Rep. Randy Garber, R-Sabetha; and Rep. Cheryl Helmer, R-Mulvane, addressed the crowd. Rep. Clarke Sanders, R-Salina, also was there, speakers said.
“The Democrats aren’t our problem up here in Topeka,” Lee said. “And let me just tell you, Topeka is worse than we thought. It’s terrible. It’s absolutely terrible. But it’s not the Democrats. We know where they stand. We know they’ll stab us in the back, because we know what we know, right? It’s those that come to your Republican events, and they tell you how conservative they are. It’s the RINOs.”
Frank warmed up the church crowd with a charming story about how he has been married to his high school sweetheart for 40 years.
The couple has three children. The youngest, a son, is 19.
“He says there are no conservative girls left in the world,” Frank said. “So what I do is, when I come home from my trips and I find these really beautiful 19-year-old girls, I take selfies with them, and I get their information. So every time I come home for two or three days, I say, ‘Here are some more, son.’ It’s pretty fun.”
Frank received a warmer welcome at the church than he did for his performance earlier in the day in the House.
Garber had invited Frank to testify at a hearing in February, and Frank returned for an encore after Garber helped secure a meeting between Frank and Nemaha County election officials. This time, Rep. Emil Bergquist, a Park City Republican who chairs the Elections Committee, began the hearing by raising concerns about one of Frank’s messages on the Telegram social media platform.
Using his “Follow the Data with Dr. Frank” account, Frank on Dec. 18, 2021, posted an image of a mob carrying pitchforks and sickles. Taking inspiration from a passage of “Deuteronomy,” Frank wrote: “Imagine if someone has a gutless and corrupt official who does not respect the constitution nor the will of their constituents, the citizens shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. They shall say to the elders, ‘This official of ours is gutless and corrupt. He ignores the will of the people. He is tyrannical and evil.’ Then all the men of his town are to stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All communities will hear of it and be afraid.”
“Oh, wait,” Frank added. “That’s what a tar and feathering is … torches and pitchforks. We already have that. We don’t need more laws. We need accountability. And it’s up to the citizens to make it happen.”
Bergquist told Frank there is no room in civil government for threats, mob burnings or lynching.
“We are blessed with a process that few others in the world see. Freedom of speech and civil discourse. That is all we need here,” Bergquist said. “And that’s what we came here for. Without these, we lose this gift of liberty that God has blessed us with.”
Frank proceeded to describe how easily an election can be stolen, using Nemaha County as an example.
Bloated voter registration rolls are central to Frank’s argument. People often move without updating their voter registration, and election officials have to be careful about whom they delete from records.
The idea is “they” — when pressed by legislators on the panel, Frank identified Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and George Soros as likely culprits — decide the outcome of an election in advance, then print ballots that correspond to excess registrations and have them delivered to drop boxes en masse.
If that isn’t enough, they can hack into voting machines that secretly connect to cellphone towers while monitoring results on election night.
“Before all the elections, they get together?” said Rep. John Toplikar, R-Olathe. “The ‘they’ people get together and decide what they’re going to do?”
“Somebody does,” Frank said.
Rep. Vic Miller, D-Topeka, joked that he has “hard evidence” of voter fraud within his district.
“I only got 70% of the vote,” Miller said. “When people I talked to, every one of them said they voted for me.”
Frank’s conspiracy theory quickly falls apart under scrutiny.
Advance ballots contain a unique barcode and must be matched to a voter’s signature. Even if those security measurers could be thwarted, Rep. Ken Collins, R-Mulberry, pointed out, the scheme would require a lot of manpower, and it would be difficult to keep everybody quiet.
The best evidence Frank could offer was reference to a video showing a lot of ballots being transported in another state. The obvious explanation: It was a Post Office driver.
Frank, who referenced his appearances in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Arizona and Georgia, said he plans to canvass Kansas voters to find evidence of fraud.
Rep. Pat Proctor, R-Leavenworth, wondered why someone would go to such trouble to rig an election on behalf of Democrats and still give Republicans a supermajority in both the House and Senate in Kansas.
“What did they accomplish?” Proctor said. “Because there’s a huge risk to engaging in felonies to sway an election. What’s the point?”
Maybe the goal wasn’t to win in 2020, Frank said. Maybe they are looking at a longer-term strategy.
Bergquist reminded Frank of a conversation the two had the night before the hearing, in which the chairman told him not to denigrate anyone. And yet, Bergquist said, Frank had made hurtful remarks about county officials who weren’t present to defend themselves.
“Forget about a political year — talk about individuals and their lives,” Bergquist said.
The 105 counties in the state are filled with people who “do their very best to present a good election for their people,” Bergquist said.
The people of Kansans “would love to have a nation that they can depend on for the next 100 years,” Bergquist said, and few people are intentionally trying to destroy it.
“There’s going to be a lot of comments come back from counties all over the state, saying, ‘Do we even have an election? Is there any reason for us to hold an election? From what you’ve told us today, there’s probably no way we can fix it in a short time. So why even vote?’ ” Bergquist said.
Bergquist also directed his attention toward Lee, the panel member who would join Frank at the church later that evening. Lee apologized to Frank for the rudeness of committee members.
“You don’t need to apologize for anybody but yourself,” Bergquist said.
Schwab said Frank wasn’t being honest during the hearing when he claimed the secretary of state had refused to meet with him to review evidence of voter fraud. Schwab said his office provided several opportunities for a meeting and didn’t get a response.
“I hope future presenters who claim fraud in Kansas review our election laws prior to presenting to at least know Kansas has voter ID and signature verification,” Schwab said.
At Community Church, Lee told the crowd that legislators were getting tired with the end of the session.
“We’re a little bit grumpy. Holy Spirit help us,” Lee said. “I was praying in tongues today in the Elections Committee. I was like, ‘I don’t know if you’re Pentecostal, Dr. Frank, but I’m praying for you.’ ”
Lee directed her frustration at Republican leadership in the House who initially resisted calls for a special session last fall to address federal mandates regarding COVID-19 vaccines. Only 19 of the 165 legislators “care about your liberty,” Lee said.
“This is not a popular message with my colleagues, by the way, in the Capitol, because nobody wants to talk about these things, because we don’t want to tell on our own party,” Lee said. “But I’m telling you, we’ve been hijacked.”
Lee encouraged everybody in attendance to figure out who represents them in the Statehouse and start holding them accountable.
“And you let them know, ‘We will fire you,’ ” Lee said. “And then you tell your neighbors and then you tell your coffee group. And you know what? We can’t play anymore, you all. We’re done playing. I am done sitting in sweet little meetings in churches like this.”
She continued: “If you’re not doing your job, you don’t know what to say to your state rep or senator when they come back to your district and tell you how wonderful they are, and they love guns and Jesus. There’s more to liberty than guns and Jesus. But if you’re not holding them accountable, we deserve what we get.”
Shuey, the retired lieutenant colonel, told the church crowd he flew 350 solo combat missions in Vietnam.
“I don’t like Marxists in my government,” Shuey said. “I tried to shoot as many of them as I could.”
Shuey engaged the crowd with a QAnon theory known as Italygate and fueled by dark money interests.
His story begins like the start of a bad joke: An Italian general, a CIA operative and State Department official walk into the second floor of the U.S. embassy in Rome.
At 11 p.m. on election night, when Trump held a small lead, there was a coordinated effort to halt ballot counting in five states where the results were close, Shuey says without explaining who or how such a thing could be coordinated. Back in Rome, the aforementioned operatives compel an IT worker to hijack voting machines using an encrypted satellite signal and change the outcome. Voting resumed at 3 a.m., and by 6 a.m. Biden was ahead of Trump.
In reality, officials were busy counting a record number of advanced ballots and those cast in densely populated urban centers, both of which favored Biden.
The way Shuey sees it, the 2020 election “was the greatest crime in American history because it stole our country.”
He said “cheating has been going on forever,” and pointed to 1860 as an example of a “fraudulent election.”
Davis, who said she has a master’s degree in biostatistics from the University of Kansas Medical Center and a PhD in epidemiology, told the church crowd that voter registration lists are “dirty and not properly maintained.”
“If the things we are feeding into our electoral process and into our elections is dirty and smells a little bit like the garbage we take out every week, then why do we expect the outcomes from the elections to somehow be this nice, clean-smelling house?” Davis said.
Her big revelation: Seven Kansans with a documented age of 219 years old participated in the 2020 election.
“Tell me how that happens,” Davis said.
Davis Hammett, president of Loud Light, which advocates for voting rights, said the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002 required counties to digitize voter registrations, and some counties didn’t previously record birthdays. The software filled in the blanks with a birthdate of Jan. 1, 1800. The seven Kansans referenced by Davis would be legal, eligible voters who haven’t moved in the past 20 years.
“It’s really easy to just make up bullsh*t, and if you have a receptive audience, you can just make it up super fast,” Hammet said. “It’s very time consuming to actually understand how they make that falsehood and then start to debunk why it’s not true.”
Helmer, one of the four legislators in attendance, said these are desperate times.
People in the Statehouse “think I’m half looney,” Helmer said, and “won’t talk to me.”
“We are here tonight because of President Trump,” Helmer said. “I see it. I hear it. We’re all very concerned. And so what I heard tonight was something that hurt me very bad.”
She was referring to anger being directed at Republicans.
“I’m a Republican,” Helmer said. “I’m about as conservative as you can get. I am a real conservative. I want your vote.”
Helmer said Republicans have “some harsh leaders” who “try to keep us in line.”
“So if you have to,” Helmer said, “blame it on the leaders.”
“Please, dear God, pray for freedom. Pray for conservatism. And don’t leave tonight mad at Republicans,” Helmer said.
Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on Facebook and Twitter.
By Lomi Kriel and Perla Trevizo, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, and Andrew Rodriguez Calderón and Keri Blakinger, The Marshall Project
ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
Thomas King-Randall had been waiting for two hours to drop his daughters off at his ex-girlfriend’s apartment in Midland, Texas. It was 10:30 on a school night in August and it was her turn to care for the two girls.
The ex-girlfriend showed up drunk and was arguing with her new boyfriend in his truck, police later wrote in a report. King-Randall, who is Black, said in an interview that the woman’s Latino boyfriend called him a racial slur, which led to a fight.
By the end of the encounter, the woman’s boyfriend had a bloody nose and swollen eyes. King-Randall was gone, and local police issued an arrest warrant for the 26-year-old California native. A month later, Texas Department of Public Safety officers arrested King-Randall when he tried to renew his driver’s license.
King-Randall’s arrest was one of thousands used to bolster claims of success for Operation Lone Star. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott launched the initiative last March, citing an urgent need to stop the flow of drugs and undocumented immigrants into the state through Mexico.
But the alleged assault had nothing to do with the border. King-Randall, a U.S. citizen, was arrested more than 250 miles from the border with Mexico. Neither DPS nor the Texas Military Department, the state agencies carrying out Operation Lone Star, played a role in the investigation. And the family violence assault charge King-Randall faced wasn’t linked to border-related crime or illegal immigration.
Operation Lone Star has helped increase the state’s budget for border security to more than $3 billion through 2023 by deploying thousands of DPS troopers and National Guard members and allocating funding to build border barriers. As part of the operation, troopers are also arresting some immigrant men crossing into the U.S. on state criminal trespassing charges.
Abbott and DPS have repeatedly boasted in news conferences, on social media and during interviews on Fox News that the border operation has disrupted drug and human smuggling networks. A year into the operation, officials touted more than 11,000 criminal arrests, drug seizures that amount to millions of “lethal doses” and the referrals of tens of thousands of unauthorized immigrants to the federal government for deportation as signs that the program is effective.
But the state’s claim of success has been based on shifting metrics that included crimes with no connection to the border, work conducted by troopers stationed in targeted counties prior to the operation, and arrest and drug seizure efforts that do not clearly distinguish DPS’s role from that of other agencies, an investigation by ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and The Marshall Project found.
King-Randall’s charges were among more than 2,000, including some for cockfighting, sexual assault and stalking, that the agency stopped counting toward Operation Lone Star more than nine months into the exercise, after the news organizations began raising questions about the ties between the arrests and border security. Of those, about 270 charges were for violent crimes, which are defined by the FBI as murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery and aggravated assault.
King-Randall said in an interview that he was fighting the allegations. The case is pending, according to the Midland County district attorney’s office.
Claiming such arrests is “inherently flawed” and misrepresents the accomplishments of the operation, said Patrick O’Burke, a law enforcement consultant and a former DPS commander who retired in 2008.
“The problem could be simply related to crimes in those communities,” O’Burke said. “It’s not battling cross-border crime.”
Asked by the news organizations why such charges were not excluded from the operation’s metrics at the start, DPS officials said they are continuously improving how they collect and report the data “to better reflect the mission” of securing the border. The governor’s office maintained that “dangerous individuals, deadly drugs, and other illegal contraband have been taken off our streets or prevented from entering the State of Texas altogether thanks to the men and women of Operation Lone Star.”
But DPS and Abbott have provided little proof to substantiate such statements. A year into the initiative, Abbott, DPS and the Texas Military Department have fought two dozen public records requests from the news organizations that would provide a clearer picture of the operation’s accomplishments.
DPS, the only agency to release some records related to Operation Lone Star’s results, has made several significant revisions to the arrest data, including removing charges. The agency did not provide details that would help determine how the cases that remained are connected to the initiative’s goal of deterring border-related crime. The agency also failed to identify arrests and drug seizures that could have occurred without the additional personnel made available through the operation.
The absence of clear metrics for measuring its accomplishments points to a larger problem with the border operation and more than a dozen others launched by the state’s two governors during the past 17 years. Lawmakers have repeatedly increased state funding for border security while providing minimal oversight of the operations launched by Abbott and his predecessor, Gov. Rick Perry.
Over the years, some legislators have balked at state agencies’ calls for more accountability from border security efforts.
“It’s almost offensive to say, ‘What are the results?’” former state Rep. Dan Flynn, a Republican from East Texas, said during a hearing in 2018. At that hearing, the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission, which determines whether there’s a continuing need for state agencies and programs, raised concerns that DPS was not providing “sufficient information to the public and policymakers about the return on investment for border security.”
Texas, which shares a 1,200-mile border with Mexico, spends more money on border security than any other state. And at a cost to taxpayers of more than $2.5 million a week, Operation Lone Star is by far the most expensive of the state’s border operations, and the one with the broadest mandate and scope.
In South Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, which was at the center of last year’s immigrant influx, Hidalgo County Judge Richard Cortez said he doesn’t know what Operation Lone Star has accomplished beyond “arresting people and making them criminals.”
Cortez said the problem is not criminal activity, but the sheer number of immigrants seeking better opportunities who sometimes attempt to cross into his community at once, straining resources and overwhelming Border Patrol. The solution, he said, is a comprehensive approach to address the reasons people are trying to come to the U.S. and provide more legal avenues to do so.
“We’re spending millions and billions of dollars in trying to manage something,” Cortez said about Operation Lone Star. “But instead of getting me the plumber to stop the leak, they’re sending me people to mop up the floor.”
With DPS SUVs lined up behind him as if forming a wall, Abbott promoted his new initiative during a March 2021 news conference in Mission, a city in the Rio Grande Valley where more immigrants were crossing the border.
While federal officials started apprehending a greater number of immigrants during Donald Trump’s presidency, Abbott blamed newly inaugurated President Joe Biden for not doing enough to stem record levels of arrivals at the border.
During his first two months at the helm, Biden temporarily halted a policy that required people seeking asylum to wait in Mexico until their cases could be heard by U.S. immigration judges. A federal judge in Texas later ordered the administration to reinstate part of the policy. Under a Trump administration pandemic health order that Biden kept in place, more than three-fourths of immigrants apprehended at the border during that period were immediately turned away.
“If you were president in 2024, which some of us hope that you are, what’s the first thing that you would do to enact something down here?” asked a man in the crowd whom Abbott’s staff singled out for the final question.
“Secure the border. Period,” Abbott said.
With the presidential election in the distance, Abbott has made border security a cornerstone of his gubernatorial reelection campaign, playing offense against his primary opponents, attacking Biden and using the issue as a way to distinguish himself from his general election challenger, former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat from the border city of El Paso.
The governor handily won the Republican primary early this month with Trump’s support. The former president’s success rallying the Republican base by pushing hard-line policies and promoting the construction of a border wall has become a model for Texas GOP candidates, who saw Trump make inroads with Latino voters in border counties in 2020.
The results emboldened Republicans, who doubled down on Trump’s rhetoric, pushing some of his more restrictive border measures, said James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.
“It’s almost as if he gave permission for more straightforwardly nativist rhetoric, but he didn’t do that in a vacuum, certainly at least not here,” Henson said, pointing to anti-immigrant sentiment among Republican voters prior to Trump’s election.
In launching Operation Lone Star, Abbott went further than any other governor in recent history, attempting to curtail immigration by using state trespassing charges to directly target those who cross the border on private property.
The federal government has sole authority to enforce immigration laws, but Abbott increased trespassing penalties under a declaration that gave him more power akin to what he would have after a natural disaster.
In June, the governor shifted the operation’s emphasis from the Rio Grande Valley, where political leaders opposed some of his efforts, to a vast rural region of mostly private ranches around Val Verde County, about 170 miles west of San Antonio. Trump won the county by a 10-point margin in 2020. Until this year, Val Verde and Kinney were the only two counties prosecuting people crossing into the country through private property for trespassing.
The misdemeanor charge, punishable by up to a year in jail, makes up about 40% of the operation’s arrests from mid-July to Jan. 27, an analysis by ProPublica, the Tribune and the Marshall Project found.
The governor’s office said the operation is based on facts, not politics, and is geared to provide “maximum assistance to the counties greatest affected.” But federal statistics show some of the counties in the Rio Grande Valley that DPS shifted additional resources away from were among those experiencing the greatest influx of immigrants and drugs.
Command Sgt. Maj. Jason Featherston, a Texas Army National Guard veteran who helped oversee the guard’s deployment under the operation until his retirement in November, said he and his colleagues believed politics was the main driver for the mushrooming initiative. He said he recalls commanders saying things like, “We’re going back to the border, the governor is trying to get reelected.”
Federal and state Democratic lawmakers have urged investigations into the constitutionality of the trespassing arrests and the poor working conditions, pay delays and suicides among National Guard members assigned to Operation Lone Star, problems reported by the Tribune and the Army Times. And some state Democrats, led by the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, announced a task force early this month to investigate “many layers of grave concerns” about the operation, including alleged human rights violations and a lack of accountability. Abbott’s office has said the arrests and prosecutions under the operation “are fully constitutional.”
But the broader operation’s goals and results have received little scrutiny.
In July, DPS began counting toward Operation Lone Star a number of arrests and drug seizures from a 63-county region almost the size of Oregon that officials dubbed the area of interest. The area included counties that did not receive additional resources from the operation, and some of the newly credited actions included work already conducted by troopers stationed there before the governor’s initiative began.
Before then, DPS had been counting arrests and drug seizures from what the agency called the “more focused” area of operation, a smaller group of counties closer to the border.
The governor and DPS declined to answer questions about who ordered the change and whether all the counties in the larger area of interest received extra resources from the operation. DPS officials said the area of operation is fluid as the department is continuously monitoring the border and adjusting its use of resources as needed.
Abbott pointed to some of those arrests last year as he sought additional funding for border security efforts, bringing lawmakers back for a special legislative session. Abbott’s office received $1.3 billion of the $3 billion total, marking the first time that the governor’s allocation for border security was larger than that given to DPS.
The growing share of border security funding managed by the governor’s office raises questions about transparency, said Eva DeLuna Castro, a budget analyst for the progressive think tank Every Texan. She said such spending is harder to track because the governor’s office doesn’t report its expenditures with the same level of detail as DPS.
While the governor’s office argues that the agencies it funds have to report spending, DeLuna Castro said some are not subject to such rules.
In January, after increasing the number of National Guard members at the border to 10,000, the governor and a handful of the state’s Republican leaders moved nearly half a billion dollars from DPS, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission to help cover the increased costs.
“He’s just running up a tab that the Legislature, and taxpayers, will have to cover,” DeLuna Castro said.
Fentanyl seizures have become shorthand for Operation Lone Star’s success.
Abbott repeatedly highlights them in press conferences and on social media, boasting that the state is helping to stop Biden’s “open border policies.” He has used seizures of the synthetic opioid, which is 100 times stronger than morphine, as a way to attack O’Rourke, who is challenging him in the November gubernatorial election.
At a February event in Austin before the primary election, Abbott’s campaign handed out pill bottles with a fake label that read “Beto Biden open border” and pointed to 1,334 Texas fentanyl deaths in 2021.
Inside was a mock warning label that credited the seizure of 887 pounds of fentanyl, or what he called more than 201 million deadly doses, to Operation Lone Star. Days later, Abbott repeated similar claims in a press release from the governor’s office.
The figure reflects seizures across the state and contradicts the number DPS has given for what is attributable to Operation Lone Star. About 160 pounds of fentanyl were seized from March 2021 to January 2022 in the regions that DPS uses when reporting metrics from the operation.
Abbott’s office defended using statewide seizure numbers, saying they are directly tied to Operation Lone Star because the drug generally enters from Mexico.
“DPS can’t always seize fentanyl right at the border; but they will not stop until they find it, even if it is in North Texas,” Nan Tolson, Abbott’s spokesperson, wrote in an email.
Including statewide seizures is “just disingenuous,” said O’Burke, the former DPS commander.
“Chicago has a border nexus. Are we going to count drugs that were seized in Chicago? That’s just not transparent,” he said. “It’s just not a measure of success. It’s just conflating these statistics because it makes the general public feel safer.”
Instead, O’Burke said, Operation Lone Star’s results should only count actions in which its added resources were used.
That number comes with its own caveats. All but 12 of the 160 pounds of fentanyl were captured in El Paso County, which was not one of the ones listed by DPS officials in November as receiving additional troopers and National Guard members from the operation. The county was one of several that declined to sign on to the governor’s border disaster declaration.
Fentanyl seizure claims are not the only example of the difficulty of measuring the return on investment for taxpayers.
DPS has a history of taking credit for work, such as drug seizures, carried out by other agencies. As part of the operation, DPS and Texas Military Department officials reported apprehending more than 200,000 migrants in the past year and referring them to the federal government for deportation. That included eight migrants who were caught rafting across the Rio Grande by DPS troopers, National Guard members and Border Patrol agents in November. But while DPS counted the immigrants it referred to Border Patrol as part of its reporting for Operation Lone Star, that same group may also have been included in the National Guard’s tally, meaning both agencies could be getting credit for the same arrests. The Texas Military Department did not answer questions about the case.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection declined multiple interview requests. Officials did say that the federal agency “does not have a role or partner in any way” with DPS on the operation and that they don’t track the state’s referrals.
DPS officials acknowledged in an interview that more than one agency could be taking credit for some of the same detentions because the Texas Military Department does not share with DPS the details of immigrants it refers to the federal government, and such data is not publicly available.
Featherston, the retired Texas Army National Guard senior enlisted adviser, said he believes immigrant apprehensions are “double counted.”
In another case, DPS posted on its Facebook page in September that it encountered more than 700 gang members as part of the operation. But officials declined requests to provide records detailing such arrests, saying gang affiliation “was not a metric the Department is tracking.”
And despite removing more than 2,000 charges from the arrest data credited to Operation Lone Star, DPS still includes other charges without explaining how they align with the operation’s goal of capturing dangerous criminals. (DPS disputed this characterization of the removed charges; a full explanation of our rebuttal is described in the methods section at the end of this piece.) In May, for example, troopers arrested a 20-year-old woman in Coke County, about 200 miles from the border in West Texas.
The woman was driving 9 mph over the speed limit in a no-passing zone on a rural highway. After troopers stopped her for speeding, they discovered a Ziploc bag with “loose leaf marijuana in the glovebox,” according to the arrest report.
The woman, who could not be reached for comment, does not appear to have a prior criminal record. The arrest report doesn’t note her immigration status. She was charged with possession of less than 2 ounces of marijuana.
“The whole reason for all this, you know, playing with statistics, is for optics so that the governor could get reelected. And so from that perspective, has it worked? Yes. It's worked for him,” said Gary Hale, a former chief of intelligence in Houston for the Drug Enforcement Administration who is now at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. “But what’s the net gain? I don’t think there’s any. Zero. We really haven’t had any significant impact on migrant smuggling or drug trafficking.”
A year after Operation Lone Star launched, a panel of three Texas senators sought to better understand how to gauge the costly initiative’s accomplishments.
“What metrics are you using to measure success in terms of defining the arrests for which you’re responsible for, to make sure we’re using our DPS officers in an effective way?” state Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, a Democrat from the border city of McAllen, asked DPS’ chief, Col. Steve McCraw, at a hearing on March 8.
Success could not be measured through arrest and seizure numbers alone, McCraw responded.
For the first time since the operation began, he offered a different metric: securing the border by stopping the flow of drugs and unauthorized immigrants in Texas’ 103 Border Patrol zones, one at a time. That is accomplished when each area has enough barriers, technology and law enforcement resources to “prevent transnational criminal activity,” according to DPS, which said it has met that goal in four zones that make up some parts of Hidalgo and Starr counties.
During the hearing, McCraw didn’t say how the agency knows it has secured a region. He also did not explain how DPS would be able to continue committing the resources needed to sustain that level of security. The senators didn’t ask.
“The challenge we have is when trying to decide what success looks like, is that if the numbers go up, do we claim success because we’re more efficient?” McCraw asked, adding that arrest and drug seizure statistics fluctuate. “You can’t have it both ways, you can’t be successful when the numbers go up and when the numbers go down.”
Since the start of the operation, DPS and Abbott have repeatedly touted success using arrests and drug seizure numbers. While continuing to cite the statistics, McCraw sought to minimize their significance, saying that what matters most is “not how much crime you’re enforcing. It’s the absence of it.”
By the end of that Senate hearing, lawmakers remained uncertain about the return on their multibillion-dollar investment.
“How do we know whether the amount of money was appropriate for what was needed?” state Sen. Bob Hall, a Republican from Rockwall, northeast of Dallas, asked the state’s financial analysts. “And how do we know when we’ve accomplished what we set out to do, so that we can figure out what to do next, other than just appropriate more money and then wonder what to do next?”
The question has plagued lawmakers since the first border security operation launched nearly two decades ago.
Beginning in June 2021, reporters from The Marshall Project, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune began making records requests to the Texas Department of Public Safety for data on arrests and charges associated with Operation Lone Star. The department was responsive to those requests and provided information over the course of several months, though the format and contents of the files they sent changed over time in notable ways.
DPS sent us two data releases, one in July and another in August 2021, with records of arrests and charges associated with Operation Lone Star. Those releases came as separate files from three branches of DPS. However, in November, agency officials said that these records were incomplete, only capturing one of two broad border regions. In December, they then said they had retroactively started removing charges that did not “reflect the mission” of Operation Lone Star.
From November 2021 to January 2022, DPS sent three data snapshots, each of which the department said represented the totality of its records of Operation Lone Star charges and arrests at the time the files were created. This data was organized with each charge on its own row. An arrest can include multiple charges.
DPS emphasized that it is continuously improving how it collects and reports data for Operation Lone Star. As such, we used the latest data snapshot, from January 2022, when describing the criminal charges that the agency attributes to the operation, including how many charges were related to trespassing and how the charges were distributed geographically.
We also examined the evolving nature of the department’s record-keeping by looking at changes between the data snapshots provided to us. In comparing the first and second complete data snapshots (one provided in November 2021, the other in December 2021), we found more than 2,000 charges that had been removed from the data.
DPS said that our approach did not account for the fact that “each spreadsheet represents an extract from a live database, and information is subject to change.” The agency stated that our analysis “assumes that any row that does not appear exactly the same in each spreadsheet can be described as either ‘added’ or ‘removed.’”
We did not require rows to match exactly when identifying charges preserved or removed. Rows were matched using arrest IDs and charge descriptions, and we looked only at charges from dates covered in both files. For about half of the more than 2,000 charges we identified as being removed from the data, the arrest IDs for these charges were not included in the later data snapshots — for example, Thomas King-Randall’s arrest only appears in the first snapshot. For the other half, the arrest ID did appear in later data snapshots, but with fewer charges associated with it. Additionally, looking only at the number of charges in each dataset, we observed that for arrests that occured in the same time period, there were fewer charges in later data snapshots than there had been in the earlier snapshot. DPS declined to answer questions about why particular cases were removed and declined to answer many of our specific questions about the dataset.
The constantly changing nature of the database is not unique to Operation Lone Star. Methods for comparing datasets are commonly used and actively studied. It is valid to analyze changes in such databases (with the appropriate caveats) and to describe them as additions or removals. DPS itself told reporters the department “identified offenses that should be removed” in a December 2021 email about changes to Operation Lone Star data collection.
Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley’s campaign will continue selling merchandise featuring a photo of him pumping his fist in support of protesters the day a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol to overturn the outcome of the presidential election.
The photo in question was taken by a photographer for an energy and environment trade publication owned by Politico. Hawley’s campaign began last month selling coffee mugs and other items featuring an illustrated version of the photo.
Last week, Politico sent a cease and desist letter asking the campaign to stop selling items featuring the copyrighted image.
“We do not authorize its use by the Hawley campaign for the purpose of political fundraising, which the campaign has been put on notice of by legal counsel,” Politico spokesperson Brad Dayspring said.
In response, Hawley’s campaign sent out a press release Friday saying the image fell under “fair use” laws.
“The image used on the mug is a protected fair use and the Hawley campaign’s speech is further protected by the First Amendment,” wrote Jessica Furst Johnson, Hawley’s campaign counsel, in a letter sent to the media. “Neither the campaign nor Sen. Hawley will engage in self-censorship to placate the legally baseless demands of your client.”
Taken as Hawley was entering the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the photo shows him raising his fist in support of demonstrators who had gathered to protest the certification of Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory.
Hawley had a few weeks earlier announced he would object to the certification when Congress convened to ratify the results of the 2020 election. When the day finally arrived, he was greeted as a hero by protesters.
Later in the day, however, the protests turned violent, with a pro-Trump mob forcing its way into the Capitol and on to the floor of the House and Senate, endangering lawmakers, staffers and reporters who were evacuated to an undisclosed location.
Congress was able to eventually reconvene and certify Biden’s victory, though even after the day’s violence Hawley continued to argue Pennsylvania’s electoral votes should be disqualified because he believes a 2019 law approved by the state’s Republican legislature and sustained by the state’s supreme court violates the Pennsylvania constitution.
Hawley faced accusations that his rhetoric and actions in the days leading up to the certification vote contributed to the violence.
Among the loudest critics is his political mentor — former U.S. Sen. John Danforth — who said working to get Hawley elected to the Senate in 2018 “was the worst mistake I ever made in my life.” State Rep. Shamed Dogan, a Republican from Ballwin running for St. Louis County executive, tweeted that he regretted voting for Hawley in 2018.
For his part, however, Hawley has always defended his actions on Jan. 6, telling the Washington Post that the demonstrators he encountered when he was captured raising his fist were peaceful.
“Some of them were calling, so I gestured toward them,” he said. “They had every right to be there… When I walked by that particular group of folks were standing there peacefully behind police barricades.”
In the year since the Jan. 6 insurrection, the stolen election lie has continued to grow in power within the GOP base, fueled by the former president and his supporters working to cast doubt on the outcome of the 2020 campaign.
Many Republicans have also begun to downplay the significance of the Jan 6 violence that resulted in five deaths. The Republican National Committee voted to censure GOP members of Congress who participate in an inquiry Jan. 6, saying the probe amounted to persecution for “legitimate political discourse.”
Missouri Independent is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com. Follow Missouri Independent on Facebook and Twitter.
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