The country music band Lady Antebellum is changing their name, according to a report from The Daily Beast.
“After much personal reflection, band discussion, prayer and many honest conversations with some of our closest black friends and colleagues, we have decided to drop the word ‘antebellum’ from our name and move forward as Lady A, the nickname our fans gave us almost from the start," the band said in a statement.
"Antebellum" refers to the Antebellum South, which was a period in history in the South before the Civil War, when slavery was legal.
The news garnered a fairly wide reaction on Twitter.
Urban Radio's White House correspondent April Ryan explained during an interview with CNN that the decision by Gen. Mark Milley to apologize for President Donald Trump's photo-op may not end well for him.
"Any time someone goes against this president there's an ultimate firing or a separation and just bad words and bad vibes for a while," said Ryan. "We are in a political season and if this president does decide to do anything right now he's going to distance himself from those two. He cannot afford to cut off himself from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and as well as the head of [Department of Defense]. He just cannot do that."
Capt. Gail Harris, who was the highest-ranking female African American in the U.S. Navy until her retirement in Dec. 2001, reiterated Milley's comment that it is against the rules to be at a political event of any kind. She said she was glad to see he apologize.
"I think the fact that he apologized and he mentioned he made a mistake is reaffirming his capability as a good leader," Capt. Harris went on. "He did come out and apologize and the standards are the same for all of us, flag officers to E1, as we call it in the military, the enlisted man. The policy's the same for everyone."
Military leaders indicated this week that they were open to renaming bases after people that didn't lose in the Civil War, but Trump threatened to stop any pay raises for troops if they even talked about it. As a fact-check, the budget for the DOD is decided by Congress, not the president.
"I was disappointed," Capt. Harris said about Trump's threat. "If you go back and look at history Gen. Lee himself was against monuments and things about the Civil War saying that by keeping symbols alive it keeps the division alive and he was more on healing the nation to move forward. So, my hope is that if President Trump looks into that or listens to people and the reasons for wanting to do that, that he'll change his mind."
Ryan said that Trump's position to defend the Confederate losers is part of his efforts to excite his base while they're experiencing isolation in a world on the cusp of change. She said that it's also happening at a moment when Trump himself "does not seem to have strength, showing strength or a winning picture."
"You have to remember, No. 1, the U.S. military is one of the first agencies that was integrated in this nation in 1948," she recalled. "President Truman officially integrated the military. Two, when you talk about the Confederacy, plain and simple, it is about slavery. The Civil War was fought on the issue of slavery, and the Confederacy wanted to keep slaves. That's end-of-story. So, in the midst of the racial moments, these racial upsets, unrest, outbreaks this president is showing that he is defiant about trying to heal this nation."
She noted that there are finally even people talking about reparations for the sin of slavery.
"And he is refusing to take down anything that deals with the Confederacy," she continued. "We even have NASCAR talking away the Confederate Flag and the president saying he doesn't want to deal with that moment of taking away the names from Ft. Bragg and other -- about ten other military bases that deal with Confederacy at the time when you have black and brown soldiers on those bases."
Several aircraft may have been used to spy on protesters in the highly restricted airspace above Washington, D.C., and in other cities where protests were held against police brutality.
One of those planes circled the White House 20 times on June 1, the day President Donald Trump took part in a photo op across the street in an area just cleared of peaceful protesters by chemical agents and less-lethal bullets, reported CNN.
Government watchdogs suspect the aircraft, some piloted and others unpiloted, may have been used to surveil demonstrations against the police killing of George Floyd, and nearly three dozen congressional Democrats want answers.
Lawmakers demanded an immediate end to the surveillance in a letter dated June 9 and sent to the heads of the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, Customs and Border Protection and the National Guard.
CNN has tracked the flight paths for the aircraft, which were also flown over Las Vegas and Minneapolis, and found the types used can be outfitted for thermal imaging to monitor activity night and day, or "dirtbox" equipment that can collect cell phone location data.
The flights also took place June 2 and 3, according to online records.
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A few hundred feet past this Oregon timber town, a curtain of Douglas fir trees opens to an expanse of skinny stumps.
The hillside has been clear-cut, with thousands of trees leveled at once. Around the bend is another clear-cut nearly twice its size, then another, patches of desert brown carved into the forest for miles.
Logging is booming around Falls City, a town of about 1,000 residents in the Oregon Coast Range. More trees are cut in the county today than decades ago when a sawmill hummed on Main Street and timber workers and their families filled the now-closed cafes, grocery stores and shops selling home appliances, sporting goods and feed for livestock.
But the jobs and services have dried up, and the town is going broke. The library closed two years ago. And as many as half of the families in Falls City live on weekly food deliveries from the Mountain Gospel Fellowship.
“You’re left still with these companies that have reaped these benefits, but those small cities that have supported them over the years are left in the dust,” Mac Corthell, the city manager, said.
For decades, politicians, suit-and-tie timber executives and caulk-booted tree fallers alike have blamed the federal government and urban environmental advocates for kneecapping the state’s most important industry.
Timber sales plummeted in the 1990s after the federal government dramatically reduced logging in national forests in response to protests and lawsuits to protect the northern spotted owl under the Endangered Species Act and other conservation laws. The drop left thousands of Oregonians without jobs, and counties lost hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue.
Top left: The Boondocks, a restaurant in Falls City, Oregon; top right: Frink’s General Store, a market in town; bottom: a truck carrying logs rolls through Falls City. (Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian)
But the singularly focused narrative, the only one most Oregonians know, masked another devastating shift for towns like Falls City.
Wall Street real estate trusts and investment funds began gaining control over the state’s private forestlands. They profited at the expense of rural communities by logging more aggressively with fewer environmental protections than in neighboring states, while reaping the benefits of timber tax cuts that have cost counties at least $3 billion in the past three decades, an investigation by OPB, The Oregonian/OregonLive and ProPublica found.
Half of the 18 counties in Oregon’s timber-dominant region lost more money from tax cuts on private forests than from the reduction of logging on federal lands, the investigation shows.
A tree sapling grows in an industrial forest in Oregon’s Coast Range. (Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian)
Private timber owners used to pay what was known as a severance tax, which was based on the value of the trees they logged. But the tax, which helped fund schools and local governments, was eliminated for all but the smallest timber owners, who can choose to pay it as a means to further reduce annual property taxes.
The total value of timber logged on private lands since 1991 is approximately $67 billion when adjusted for inflation, according to an analysis of data from Oregon’s Department of Forestry. If the state’s severance tax had not been phased out, companies would have paid an estimated $3 billion during the same period. Instead, cities and counties collected less than a third of that amount, or roughly $871 million.
Polk County, home to Falls City, has lost approximately $29 million in revenue from timber sales on federal land. By comparison, the elimination of the severance tax and lower property taxes for private timber companies have cost the county at least $100 million.
“You have that tension between this industry that still employs people, but we’re losing some of the benefits of that relationship,” Falls City Mayor Jeremy Gordon said. “As those jobs diminish, there’s less and less support to subsidize that industry in the community.”
“A Completely Different Business Model”
OREGON’S CONNECTION to the timber industry is so tightly knit that casinos, high school mascots and coffee roasters take their names from mills, loggers and stumps. The state Capitol is domed by a golden pioneer carrying an ax, and its House chamber carpeting is adorned with trees. The mascot of the Portland Timbers, a Major League Soccer team, is a logger who revs a chainsaw and cuts a round off a Douglas fir tree after every home goal.
While the industry today still rakes in billions of dollars annually, it’s starkly different from the one that helped build and enrich the state.
Oregon lowered taxes and maintained weaker environmental protections on private forestlands than neighboring states in exchange for jobs and economic investment from the timber industry.
Despite such concessions, the country’s top lumber-producing state has fewer forest-sector jobs per acre and collects a smaller share of logging profits than Washington or California.
If Oregon taxed timber owners the same as its neighbors, which are also top lumber producers with many of the same companies, it would generate tens of millions of dollars more for local governments.
Timber once employed 1 in every 10 working Oregonians and pumped over $120 million per year into schools and county governments through severance and property taxes. Now, it employs 1 in every 50 working residents and pays about $25 million in severance and property taxes that go directly back to communities.
Left: Henry Cross, 8, lives in Falls City and is the grandson of a former timber worker; right: photos of Cross’ grandfather from his timber days. (Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian)
The profits are concentrated with a small number of companies controlled by real estate trusts, investment funds and wealthy timber families. Small timber owners, who grow forests that are older and more biologically diverse than what corporate owners manage, have sold off hundreds of thousands of acres.
In western Oregon, at least 40% of private forestlands are now owned by investment companies that maximize profits by purchasing large swaths of forestland, cutting trees on a more rapid cycle than decades ago, exporting additional timber overseas instead of using local workers to mill them and then selling the properties after they’ve been logged.
Jerry Anderson, region manager for Hancock Forest Management, one of the largest timber investment companies in Oregon, said local leadership makes decisions about the best practices for the land despite responsibilities to investors.
“There’s nobody from outside this area that has come in and told us what to do on these individual plantations. Those are local decisions,” said Anderson, who has been managing land in Polk County under various companies for the past 40 years. The last eight years have been with Hancock. “I think our decision-making is very measured.”
In investor materials, Hancock, which belongs to the publicly traded, $25 billion Canadian Manulife Financial, says that it is well-equipped for the shift from managing natural forests to plantations of trees designed to grow as fast and as straight as possible, like arrows jutting out from the ground.
A few trees are left behind after a clear-cut in an industrial forest in the Coast Range. (Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian)
From a distance, tree plantations can be confused for natural forests. Oregon vistas still boast hundreds of thousands of acres of green treetops. But, on the ground, plantations of trees crammed together are often eerily barren, devoid of lush vegetation and wildlife.
Former Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber said that he and his advisers were alarmed by the shift toward investor-driven forestry during his last of three terms in office. By then, forest ecologists, the U.S. Forest Service and even a former chief investment officer for Hancock had published papers warning that investor-driven forestry was ecologically damaging and less capable of sustaining rural communities.
“They have a completely different business model,” Kitzhaber, a Democrat, said.
Kitzhaber, who received nearly $200,000 in contributions from timber-connected donors while in office, supported multiple industry-backed measures during his tenure. He led a plan to save Oregon’s salmon that relied on voluntary measures from timber companies instead of regulations, and he signed into law a massive tax cut for the industry that’s still felt in many counties.
“The current state isn’t working,” Kitzhaber said in an interview. It may benefit investors, he said, “but it’s not working for small mill owners. It’s not working for rural communities. They don’t have any control of their future.”
A Forest Town Surrounded by Corporate Trees
FROM HIS FAVORITE SPOT on a hill near Falls City, Ed Friedow can see what he refers to as the big picture: the Oregon coast, rolling hills, a national forest and industrial lands now managed mostly by timber investment companies.
Friedow, a logger who grew up on a farm outside of town, watched as smaller timber companies from his childhood closed in the aftermath of the spotted owl protections, leaving control of the industry with larger companies that were more equipped to scale production.
“All of a sudden, it was just like a takeover situation,” Friedow said.
At the same time the changes were happening in Oregon, the timber industry was emerging from a nationwide recession that caused widespread bankruptcies in the 1980s. Many debt-laden companies began selling off forestlands. Meanwhile, changes in the federal tax code made timber an attractive investment that wouldn’t crash with the stock market.
Under federal tax law, pension funds and other investors can acquire forestlands without paying the corporate taxes incurred by traditional timber companies that mill their own products. Those corporate taxes have reached 35%. Investors in the company instead pay a capital gains tax closer to 15%.
In the 1990s, as federal logging plummeted, timber prices skyrocketed, making those investments look even smarter, said Brooks Mendell, president of the forest investment consultancy Forisk.
“Overnight, private landowners had something that became more valuable,” Mendell said.
Federal Payments to Oregon’s Western Counties Dropped Precipitously
Investors jumped at the opportunity to own timber, and existing companies like Weyerhaeuser restructured to take advantage of the tax breaks. The longtime Seattle-based timber company converted into a real estate investment trust in 2010.
Timber investment companies, a rarity in the 1990s, now control a share of the forestland in western Oregon roughly the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined.
Weyerhaeuser, the largest of such companies, has more than doubled its size in western Oregon over the past 15 years, the investigation by the three news organizations found. The company owns more than 1.5 million of western Oregon’s 6.5 million acres of private forestland.
Oregon’s Two Largest Wall Street-Traded Timber Companies Gained Ground
Between 2006 and 2019, Weyerhaeuser (orange) and Hancock Forest Management (pink) more than doubled the amount of forestland they owned in western Oregon.
2006
2019
Lylla Younes/ProPublica; Source: Oregon county assessors’ offices
Despite its growth, Weyerhaeuser employs fewer people than it did two decades ago and has shed most of its mill operations. It has three wood products facilities in Oregon and directly employs about 950 people, fewer than a quarter of the 4,000 employees the company listed in a 2006 news release. The decrease stems from factors that include consolidation and automation of jobs in mills.
Just outside of Falls City, Weyerhaeuser owns roughly 21,000 acres. The company controls the road into the forest that leads to public lands and the land surrounding the creeks that supply the town’s drinking water. In 2006, the city temporarily shut down its water treatment plant because it was clogged with muddy runoff from logging operations.
Weyerhaeuser spokesman Karl Wirsing said the company remains a good partner to local communities. In the past five years, the company has donated nearly $1.6 million across the state, including $10,000 to the Falls City Fire Department and $16,000 to the Polk County sheriff to help fund a new position that also patrols private forestlands.
“We don’t simply do business in Oregon; our people have been living and working across the state since 1902, and we are proud of our role supporting local communities and economies,” Wirsing said in an emailed statement.
Industrial clear-cuts, where thousands of trees are leveled at once, are a common sight in Oregon’s rainy coastal mountains. (Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian)
But not all communities describe the relationship as a beneficial partnership.
Corthell, the city manager in Falls City, said it took him nearly two years of phone calls and emails before Weyerhaeuser responded to his requests for help.
The stretch of road between the forest and the town is cracked like a jigsaw puzzle.
Corthell had hoped that the timber companies that use the road every day could pitch in to help pay for the $200,000 in needed repairs. But he said he didn’t get a meeting with them until after he suggested the road might close if it weren’t repaired.
At that meeting in March, representatives for Weyerhaeuser and a few other timber companies told Corthell that they were willing to provide matching funds if the town could secure a state grant. In response to questions about Weyerhaeuser’s delay in returning Corthell’s emails and calls, Wirsing said the company had previously been willing to contribute to the road project but the town never asked for a specific dollar amount.
Corthell is now preparing the town’s grant application. If the funding doesn’t come through, he doesn’t know where he’ll find the money.
“I Fear My Father Was Right”
PENELOPE KACZMAREK, 65, spent her childhood smelling freshly cut wood at the family mill and the sulfury wafts of the distant pulp mill through her kitchen window in the coastal fishing town of Newport more than an hour southwest of Falls City.
She watched floating logs await their turn at her father’s saw blade, mesmerized as men in hickory shirts, sawn-off jeans and hard hats rolled them across the water.
Kaczmarek’s father, W. Stan Ouderkirk, was a logger, small mill owner and Republican member of the Oregon House of Representatives in the 1960s and 1970s. He represented Lincoln County, home to the Siuslaw National Forest and a vibrant commercial fishing port.
When a large, out-of-state corporation bought his mill in the mid-1970s, Ouderkirk told his daughter that a rise of corporate ownership and loss of local control would lead to worse outcomes for Oregon’s forests and the people who depended on them.
“I fear my father was right,” Kaczmarek said.
Penelope Kaczmarek (Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian)
Lincoln County lost an estimated $108 million in timber payments after the federal government restricted logging on public lands. But the sharp drop in federal forestland revenue is only partly to blame for budget cuts that have led some counties to force-release inmates from jail or reduce sheriffs patrols to the point that 911 calls for break-ins and assaults went unanswered.
Tax cuts for large timber companies that log on private lands cost the county an estimated $122 million over the same period.
Before lawmakers began chipping away at the tax through multiple measures, Lincoln County collected an average of $7.5 million a year in severance taxes. Last year, the county received just under $25,000.
Now a psychiatric social worker, Kaczmarek sees people with mental illnesses filling local jails because the county doesn’t have the money to provide adequate health services. In therapy sessions, teachers tell her about overcrowded classrooms and school programs cut to the bare minimum. County leaders blame the majority of the financial struggles on the decline in revenue from logging.
Left: Timbers, a restaurant in Toledo, Oregon; right: the Little Log Church and Museum in Yachats, Oregon. Toledo and Yachats are in Lincoln County. (Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian)
To avoid crushing cuts in services, communities that already struggle with high poverty and unemployment rates have had to raise taxes on residents and small businesses, said Jaime McGovern, an economist with the state’s Legislative Revenue Office.
“If they don’t get approved, then there’s no money there,” McGovern said. “And so, you’ve seen libraries closing, police stations closing.”
In the Marcola School District, about 15 miles northeast of Eugene, the elementary school was so dilapidated that voters in 2015 passed a bond to build a new one.
The additional funding helped, but it wasn’t enough. The new elementary school is already bursting with students.
“That hits home because I volunteer at the school district and I care about my taxes,” Helen Kennedy, a retired attorney, said. “I care about the kids.”
Helen Kennedy, who lives in Marcola, Oregon, pays nearly 100 times the tax rate of Weyerhaeuser, the largest timber investment company in Oregon. (Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian)
Kennedy, who lives on 3.5 acres in the district, saw her property taxes increase by more than 20% after she voted for the bond. Last year, Kennedy paid $1,443 in property taxes, or about $412 per acre. That’s a fraction of what she’d pay in a city like Portland, but nearly 100 times the rate of the district’s biggest landowner.
Weyerhaeuser, which owns more than 49,000 acres in the district, paid about $226,000 in property taxes last year, according to county records. That amounts to about $4.60 per acre. At the rate Kennedy’s land is taxed, the company would have had to pay an additional $20 million.
“Holy cannoli,” Kennedy, 64, said about the losses from timber tax cuts. “The old adage that ‘what is good for the timber industry is good for Oregon’ is no longer true.”
The Billion-Dollar Tax Cut Almost Nobody Remembers
HANS RADTKE knew the loss for counties was coming.
Radtke, a member of a gubernatorial task force on timber taxes, sat in a hotel conference room near the state capitol in 1999 listening to lobbyists and timber executives argue that their industry was being unfairly taxed.
In the early 1990s, as Oregon voters passed reforms to limit their property taxes, large timber companies successfully lobbied to gradually cut the severance tax in half, lowering their own bills by $30 million a year.
But now they wanted to completely eliminate the severance tax.
Timber companies argued that since they’d already cut nearly all of the existing forests on their land, and state law required them to plant new trees, they were essentially farmers. And since Oregon didn’t tax crops, it shouldn’t tax trees.
As the owner of 100 acres of forestland, Radtke could have personally benefited from the tax cut. But as an economist advising Kitzhaber, the governor at the time, he knew it would devastate rural communities.
Hans Radtke, a member of a gubernatorial task force on timber taxes, opposed the elimination of the severance tax, which would devastate rural communities. (Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian)
After several failed attempts to offer changes that would lower industry taxes but avoid eliminating the severance tax altogether, Radtke knew the cut would pass. He turned to the industry lobbyist sitting next to him and said, “You’re fucking us.”
“And he just smiled,” Radtke said.
The task force dissolved without advancing any recommendations. Months later, Lane Shetterly, a former Republican state representative whose district included Falls City, introduced a bill at the request of the timber industry to phase out the severance tax.
The bill contained an increase in forestland property taxes that many believed would lessen the impact of the cut.
The Association of Oregon Counties supported it. The school lobby didn’t fight it. The governor signed it.
Revenue From Severance Tax Payments to Oregon’s Western Counties Has All but Vanished
Lylla Younes/ProPublica; Source: Oregon Department of Revenue
Shetterly, now president of the Oregon Environmental Council, one of the state’s top environmental groups, remembers almost nothing about the bill.
“Yeah, man that’s a long time ago,” Shetterly said in a phone interview.
Kitzhaber, who vetoed an earlier version before ultimately approving the measure, also doesn’t recall his support of the tax cut.
“I don’t question that I did,” Kitzhaber said, “but I can’t remember the context.”
Two decades later, Oregonians are still picking up the tab.
If Oregon hadn’t phased out its severance tax, timber production in 2018 would have generated an estimated $130 million.
The state would have received an estimated $59 million under California’s tax system and $91 million under Washington’s system, the investigation by OPB, The Oregonian/OregonLive and ProPublica found.
Unlike Oregon, those states still tax large timber companies for the value of the trees they log.
Timber companies continue to pay state taxes that apply to all Oregon businesses, including income taxes and lowered property taxes, kept far below market value as an incentive for residents to own forestland.
The companies also pay a flat fee on the volume of logs they harvest. That fee, set in part by a board of timber company representatives, generates about $14 million annually. It funds state forestry agencies and university research instead of local governments.
Linc Cannon, former director of taxation for the Oregon Forest & Industries Council, defends the elimination of the severance tax.
In many cases, Cannon said, counties didn’t lose as much money because they simply shifted the tax burden to residents and small businesses.
Cannon said timber is a crop and should be treated like one. States that tax timber differently are simply wrong, he said.
“If you don’t believe timber is a crop, then you can tax it in other ways like Washington does,” Cannon said.
Weyerhaeuser, a major timber company, owns this land outside Falls City, Oregon.
Forests once existed here.
Douglas fir trees grew for hundreds of years.
Now, it’s a tree plantation, managed for profit.
“This Is Exploitation”
A WISP OF SMOKE from a burning pile of logging debris swirled into the fog drift above the jagged hills behind Falls City, home to some of the nation’s most productive timberlands.
At each bend in the rocky logging road, Jerry Franklin’s voice rose. Oregon has become a case study for what can happen when state leaders fail to regulate the logging style practiced by investment companies, said Franklin, who is one of the Pacific Northwest’s best-known forest scientists.
“This is not stewardship,” Franklin said, pointing to clear-cuts down to skinny stumps, sprayed over with herbicides, dessicated brown plants and streams without a single tree along the banks. “This is exploitation.”
Franklin doesn’t object to logging. He and Norm Johnson, another forest scientist with whom he works closely, have drawn the ire of environmental groups for supporting more logging on federal lands, including certain types of clear-cutting.
Forest scientists Norm Johnson, left, and Jerry Franklin stand in the Valley of the Giants, an ancient forest in the Coast Range. (Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian)
But this, Franklin said, is different.
Douglas fir trees, which can live for centuries, are cut after only about 40 years, resulting in lower-quality wood that is worth less. The shorter timetable forces cutting across more acres to produce the same volume, but fewer workers to log and process the wood.
At 83, Franklin is older than most of the Douglas firs now growing in Oregon.
“They’re wasting it,” Franklin said, his tone matching that of a Sunday preacher, as he looked at clear-cut Weyerhaeuser land. “The incredible capacity of these forests to produce incredible volumes of high-quality wood is wasted. It’s criminal.”
In reports to investors, Weyerhaeuser says the average age of a tree cut in the Pacific Northwest is 50, but the company expects a decrease. Some older trees have yet to be logged because of regulations that limit the percentage that can be cut annually, the company states in reports.
Weyerhaeuser representatives said the company’s conversion to a real estate investment trust didn’t change its management of forestlands.
“We have been practicing and continually improving on this system of sustainable forest management for generations, and we will continue to do so in Oregon — and on all our timberlands — for generations to come,” Wirsing said.
Smoke rises from clear-cut land and mixes with fog at an industrial forest in the Coast Range. (Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian)
Oregon is suffering from the side effects of short-term logging practiced by companies that don’t plan to stay around long, said Steven Kadas, who until two years ago was chief forester for the smaller, locally owned company Thompson Timber.
When trees are cut down before reaching the peak of their ability to absorb carbon, it stunts one of the state’s biggest assets in combating climate change. The use of herbicide on clear-cuts and the lack of mature trees have deteriorated habitat for native songbirds on industrial private lands. Streams for salmon, for other fish and for drinking are drying up because young forests use more water and lose more of it to evaporation.
“You’re not going to see the results of what you do,” Kadas said. “You’re not going to have to live with those.”
A New Economy Behind Locked Gates
FALLS CITY’S MAYOR stands in the empty lot that once housed the town’s mill, imagining a two-story brewpub, its rooftop seating filled with locals and tourists on a summer evening.
Just up the hill, brush and bramble have overtaken a rusted chain link fence. Dirty yellow paint peels off a “dead end” sign dangling upside down.
But Gordon envisions a waterfront park fit for Instagram, complete with a footbridge across the namesake falls on the Little Luckiamute River.
“Falls City — end of the road. Start of your adventure,” Gordon said. It’s a slogan the town adopted this year as a way to jump-start its economy.
The town is the gateway to the Valley of the Giants, a 51-acre federal forest preserve with an iconic grove of trees as big as redwoods, draped in soggy neon moss. On the way is the ghost town of Valsetz. Then, the scenic Oregon coast.
Falls City is the gateway to the Valley of the Giants, a federal forest preserve with trees draped in neon moss. (Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian)
But the roads to those destinations are often behind locked gates during peak summer tourism months because of the timber companies that own them.
The companies restricting access say they are worried about vandalism and wildfires, but $250 a year can buy you a permit to camp or collect firewood on Weyerhaeuser lands. Hancock, the other major investment company that owns property near the town, opened part of its lands for recreational access during non-wildfire months after receiving $350,000 in grants from the state. Falls City leaders are seeking more grant funding to open up the road to the Valley of the Giants.
“I just don’t think that’s something that would sit well in the stomachs of most Oregonians,” Corthell, the city manager, said. “To know that there’s a town right here that’s suffering for lack of ability to support itself in many ways and that we have this giant asset right up the road that we can’t get to because the big corporations have control over it.”
A truck hauling felled trees on the logging road leading into Falls City. (Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian)
A few times a year, Friedow, the local logger, acts as a guide for tours to the Valley of the Giants.
He stops at the concrete slabs that remain of Valsetz, telling stories of the now-defunct mill town. Then he begins the more than hourlong drive to the grove with trees older than the founding of the United States.
Friedow doesn’t get far out of town before hearing from shocked tourists.
"The Trump administration is doubling down on a xenophobic, anti-immigrant agenda while the president is fueling violence against Black and Brown people in our country with his racist, white supremacist rhetoric."
Human rights experts sharply criticized a new proposal from the Trump administration that would dramatically narrow qualifications for migrants filing for asylum.
"These proposed changes would represent the end of the asylum system as we know it," said the American Immigration Council.
The Justice Department unveiled the changes Wednesday, saying that the rule would be published in the Federal Register "in the near future."
"While a rash of recent policies has gutted the process of seeking asylum, this new rule is the Trump administration's most dramatic attempt yet to redefine who qualifies for this vital protection," Charanya Krishnaswami, advocacy director for the Americas at Amnesty International USA, said in a statement Wednesday. "Even after the current asylum ban implemented under the guise of fighting the COVID-19 pandemic is lifted, the dozens of new changes these regulations make to asylum laws, which practically write the refugee definition out of existence, will be profound and potentially long-lasting."
CNNreported on the new provisions, noting, "Under one proposed change, an individual's asylum claim could face greater scrutiny if the person traveled through at least one country while on the way to the U.S. but didn't seek refuge there." The new rule would also include living unlawfully in the U.S. for more than one year before filing for asylum a "significant adverse factor" and would change what constitutes membership of a "particular social group" that qualifies for a favorable asylum ruling, the outlet reported.
NBC Newsadded, "The new rule would allow immigration judges to throw out an asylum seeker's case if they think there are flaws in the application."
Further, as Axiosnoted, "The proposal would enable lower-level asylum officers to rule if an application was 'frivolous,' therefore denying the applicant protections in the U.S., a power that currently only resides with the DOJ's Board of Immigration Appeals and immigration judges."
The Justice Department framed the changes as allowing for "more efficient procedures"—but Amnesty's Krishnaswami says the goal is something different.
"The Trump administration's intent is clear: it is designing a regime in which the vast majority of people seeking safety—from survivors of gender-based persecution and torture to people fleeing levels of violence seen only in war zones—will never be able to access it."
"The Trump administration is doubling down on a xenophobic, anti-immigrant agenda while the president is fueling violence against Black and Brown people in our country with his racist, white supremacist rhetoric," she continued. "It's time for policies that embrace the humanity and fundamental human rights of all."
A group of young black entrepreneurs last week toured some houses in an upscale California neighborhood -- and immediately got accused by residents of being antifa "rioters."
CBS 13 Sacramento reports that entrepreneur Malachi J. Turner brought more than a dozen of his fellow entrepreneurs to the wealthy neighborhood of El Dorado Hills as part of a "motivational trip to look at estate homes."
"We are enjoying our time out there and my people are visualizing where it is they can go," Turner explains to CBS 13 Sacramento.
Shortly after they started touring the neighborhood, however, rumors started flying on local Facebook groups about the young black people being antifa "rioters" who were being "bused in" to loot local houses.
"20+ car loads of rioters are hitting the neighborhoods and businesses NOW!!!!" wrote one Facebook user who had taken a photo of the black people simply walking down the street. "This is not a joke. They are currently in my nieces neighborhood. Where are all my Second Amendment Peeps at?? May need to call on you today."
"We are armed," read another post. "They are going to attack houses with American flag that is what the neighbors on the other side of town said."
The man made the original accusation about the black people being rioters tells CBS 13 that he was justified in lobbing accusations against them because he had heard rumors about looters coming to the area elsewhere on the internet.
"With that as a backdrop that was extremely odd and we had to assume they were connected," he explained. "These were not threatening people but their presence in that same exact time slot made us believe that they were probably part of some greater plan to look at neighborhoods in the area."
Martin Gugino was finally released from the hospital Wednesday after a severe head injury from being shoved by Buffalo police during the Black Lives Matter protests in the city. Now Catholic Bishop Edward Scharfenberger is correcting the record on false news stories from the right-wing One America News Network.
Gugino is known by his community as well as organizations that help the homeless as far away as Connecticut where he would drive over six hours to volunteer with the Amistad Catholic Worker program, reported the Catholic News Agency. Friends say that he has long been an activist for peace, but in his retirement, he has worked even more to help the poor and disenfranchised.
“We stand with all who demonstrate peacefully and speak out against abuse of power and injustice of every kind,” said Bishop Scharfenberger, the apostolic administrator of the diocese of Buffalo. “We honor Mr. Gugino’s witness and service to the Catholic Worker Movement."
After seeing a report on OANN, President Donald Trump attacked Gugino, falsely calling him "an ANTIFA provocateur.” Antifa has become a pejorative from conservatives, but it stands for anti-fascism.
Bishop Scharfenberger noted in his statement that Christians must follow Gugino's example.
“As Christians it is our obligation to work towards bringing about truth, justice, and peace. We stand with all who demonstrate peacefully and speak out against abuse of power and injustice of every kind," the Bishop said.
“Our prayers are with Martin Gugino for his full recovery, and also for his family who have had to confront this terrible ordeal with him," he closed.
"Martin is shy and reserved," said Mark Colville, who runs Amistad Catholic Worker. "He likes his privacy. He doesn't make a spectacle of himself. He likes to show up and be present. He likes to be involved in these movements for justice. But he doesn't do it in a self-promoting kind of way."
Right now President Donald Trump is on his way to Texas, where he will hold a roundtable discussion on policing and race at a Dallas megachurch, nearly three weeks after the police killing of an un armed Black man, George Floyd. Not invited: Dallas' top three law enforcement officials – a police chief, sheriff and district attorney – all of whom are Black. The White House also refused to invite three U.S. Congressmen who represent the area, all of whom are Democrats and Black.
"The White House defended the snub, insisting the president will still hear a diversity of views before heading to a $10 million campaign dinner with two dozen donors who pony up at least $580,600 each for a meal and souvenir photo," The Dallas Morning News reports.
Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot told the Dallas Morning News, “of course [Trump] would not be getting the full picture of advice from law enforcement. I don’t know who he’s going to get it from. I mean, we are the people on the ground.”
The city of Dallas is the nation's ninth largest, with over 1.3 million people. It is also more diverse than the national average. About 62 percent are white, and 24 percent are Black.
Despite Dallas's demographics, Trump has chosen a predominantly white church for his discussion, which will be "hosted at Gateway Church’s campus in North Dallas on Hillcrest Road near Forest Lane, one of the city’s more affluent areas."
Dallas's mayor Eric Johnson, who is Black, was invited but cited a scheduling conflict and will not attend.
U.S. Reps. Eddie Bernice Johnson, Colin Allred of Dallas, and Marc Veasey of Fort Worth were not invited. All are Democrats, and all are Black.
While this is technically an official White House visit paid for by the taxpayers, the Trump administration is using the Trump campaign's slogan and language, calling it a "Roundtable on Transition to Greatness: Restoring, Rebuilding, and Renewing."
Trump more than any president in modern history has blurred the lines between official White House business and his campaign's business, leaving taxpayers to pick up the tab.
A New York City police officer whined that protesters forced him to abandon "every principle and value I stand for" and kneel with them in solidarity.
Lt. Robert Cattani, of the Midtown South Precinct, begged fellow officers for forgiveness in a June 3 email after a photo went viral showing him kneeling with demonstrators against police brutality, and he claimed he felt pressured into joining their protest, reported the New York Post.
“The conditions prior to the decision to take a knee were very difficult as we were put center stage with the entire crowd chanting,” Cattani wrote. “I know I made the wrong decision. We didn’t know how the protesters would have reacted if we didn’t and were attempting to reduce any extra violence.”
At least four officers kneeled along with protesters, and Cattani claims he only did so to prevent bloodshed.
“I thought maybe that one protester/rioters who saw it would later think twice about fighting or hurting a cop,” Cattani wrote. “I was wrong. At least that [sic] what I told myself when we made that bad decision. I know that it was wrong and something I will be shamed and humiliated about for the rest of my life.”
Cattani denounced former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who has been charged with second-degree murder in the killing of George Floyd, but said his own decision to kneel along with protesters had left him unable to sleep or eat -- and even made him consider quitting.
“I spent the first part of my career thriving to build a reputation of a good cop,” Cattani wrote. “I threw that all in the garbage in Sunday.”
“I could not imagine the idea of ever coming back to work and putting on the uniform I so wrongly shamed,” he added. “However, I decided that was the easy way out for me and I will continue to come to work every day being there for my personnel.”
A white teenager participating in anti-police brutality demonstrations this week got called a "n*gger lover" by a racist man who came out to show his support for police.
Twitter user @maricath12 posted a video this week that she says is of her teenage son getting verbally abused by pro-cop demonstrators at a Black Lives Matter event in Smithtown, New York.
In the video, a group of pro-police counter protesters, one of whom is waving a "Trump 2020" flag, can be seen taunting the teenager who is filming them with his phone.
At one point, a group of police officers walk over to where the teen is confronting the men and stand in between the two parties.
At this point, one of the men started yelling racist abuse at the teen.
"You should have been an abortion!" he shouted. "You're a piece of sh*t. That's it, go back and get some breast milk from your mommy, you n*gger lover!"
As protests against racism and police brutality have erupted across the United States and the world, many US companies have sought to capitalize on the moment by pledging solidarity with the protesters and speaking out against systemic racism. But some point out that firms have to go further to ensure equality within their own ranks.
Microsoft has posted powerful quotes on Twitter from black employees describing how systemic racism takes a toll on their lives. One employee, Phil Terrill, talked about the death of George Floyd, the handcuffed black man who pleaded for air and subsequently died after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed a knee against his neck for nearly nine minutes.
“It should not take the death of Black people at this magnitude to inspire everyone to be an ally,” Microsoft quoted Terrill as saying.
And yet only 4.4 percent of Microsoft's global workforce across all brands – including retail and warehouse workers – identify as black. Less than 3 percent of its US executives, directors and managers are black, according to the company’s 2019 diversity and inclusion report.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella addressed the issue in an email to employees that appeared on the company's blog on June 5, writing that Microsoft “must change first” if it wants to help change the world and pledging to invest in its talent by expanding connections with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).
"In order to be successful as a business in empowering everyone on the planet, we need to reflect the world we serve," Nadella said.
Online retail giant Amazon is prominently displaying a post entitled “Black lives matter” on its homepage, and CEO Jeff Bezos has shared on Instagram some of the emails he's received from consumers who are unhappy with the company for taking a stance.
But Amazon has its own share of inequities. An AP analysis published on Thursdayfound that more than 60 percent of Amazon warehouse and delivery workers in most cities are people of color. And Amazon’s own 2019 workforce data show that only about 8 percent of its managers in the United States are black compared to the nearly 60 percent of managers who are white.
Courtenay Brown, 29, who sorts packages at the Amazon fulfillment centre in Avenel, New Jersey, said she feels that Amazon’s messages supporting justice and equal opportunity for blacks are not entirely genuine. She noted that most of the employees she works with at the centre are people of color but that the higher-ups are white.
“As a black woman, I feel like it is empty words,” she told AP. “They don’t help our struggles. Everyone wants to join in and profit from us.”
Black people account for 12 percent of the overall US workforce, but fill only 8 percent of management jobs, according to University of Virginia professor Laura Morgan Roberts. The number of black CEOs of Fortune 500 companies peaked in 2002 with 12 whereas today there are just four.
Roberts’ research looking at the careers of Harvard Business School graduates found black alumni received fewer prime opportunities, such as global assignments, than white graduates with the same degree.
"They’re saying, 'We’ve got the qualifications but we can't get into the inner circle,'" said Roberts.
'The truth hurts'
After hitting the streets to protest racial injustice, Sharon Chuter was disillusioned by the number of corporate brands posting “glossy” messages spouting support for black lives.
The 33-year-old founder of Uoma Beauty, a cosmetics company that caters to black women, came up with a social-media challenge to test the sincerity of the companies. She launched the #pulluporshutup campaign on Instagram to push brands to reveal the racial make-up of their corporate workforce and executives.
The hashtag has since gone viral, amassing more than 95,000 Instagram followers in a little more than a week. Chuter said it's a wake-up call for many businesses who couldn’t see or didn’t take seriously the silent racism and prejudices that hold black people back.
"Reflection is painful," Chuter said. "The truth hurts and I just felt like brands didn’t want to do it."
As of Thursday, Chuter had posted 91 responses to her request for workforce data on her @pullupforchange Instagram. Most of them came from other companies manufacturing cosmetics and skincare products.
Atop the comments section of each post, Chuter cites the company's percentages of black management and senior-level employees and then writes, “Thank you for the transparency”. However, some subsequent commenters criticize the numbers as disappointing, potentially misleading or insufficiently clear.
'Get our own house in order'
Adidas, which responded to Floyd’s death and subsequent protests by displaying the capitalized word “RACISM” with a red line through it on its Instagram, acknowledged its own shortcomings after a growing group of employees called out the company for its lack of diversity.
“The events of the past two weeks have caused all of us to reflect on what we can do to confront the cultural and systemic forces that sustain racism,” said Adidas CEO Kasper Rorsted in a statement. “We have had to look inward to ourselves as individuals and our organization and reflect on systems that disadvantage and silence black individuals and communities.”
The Germany-based company didn't provide a breakdown on the race or ethnicity of its workforce.
Its commitment to increase diversity, however, prompted Chuter to mention Adidas on @pullupforchange while acknowledging that the company hadn't shared its data on diversity.
Nike has long been viewed as an “insider” brand among black consumers because of its lucrative and high-profile sponsorship deals with prominent African-American athletes.
The Portland, Oregon-area company famously took on the racial injustice issue head-on with its ad campaign featuring former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who sparked controversy in 2016 by kneeling during the US National Anthem to protest the violent treatment of black people. Last week Nike revealed a new video advert in response to the protests that bore the words: “For once, don’t do it.” The ad, a twist on its long-time “Just do it” motto, urged viewers not to “pretend there’s not a problem in America”.
Yet a look at who is leading the firm's corporate business shows a disconnect between what the brand projects and how it actually operates.
Though whites make up less than half – 43 percent – of its total US workforce, 77 percent of its high-ranking vice presidents company-wide are white, according to 2019 numbers on representation in its leadership. Meanwhile, less than 10 percent of its vice presidents are black (although that is a nearly 2 percent improvement from the previous year).
Nike CEO John Donahoe acknowledged that such progress wasn't enough, saying in a memo to employees that its “most important priority is to get our own house in order”.
A Wisconsin gym trainer has been put on leave after putting up a workout regime that many viewed as racist, TMZ reports.
The trainer at Anytime Fitness in Wauwatosa posted the workout titled, "I can't breathe" on a white board, prompting gym members to slam the sign as wrong, if not racist. Ultimately, the gym's corporate office was forced to speak out on the matter.
"Very insensitive," one member said. "There are so many other productive ways to support the Black Lives Matter cause, and so many better ways to honor George Floyd. Doing burpees and rows is not a way to help."
According to gym co-owner Jen Dunnington, the trainer was attempting to "honor" the memory of George Floyd with the sign.
Speaking to TMZ, Dunnington said the workout was meant to be "so hard that we felt what he felt," adding that she regrets the sign and apologizes "deeply." Gym members told FOX6 that she posted a tearful, five-minute video apology on Facebook that she later deleted.
Dunnington went on to say the "I can't breathe" line was meant to be a motivator.
"I apologize that it said that. The line on there should not have been on there," she said, referring to an additional message on the board that read, "Don't you dare lay down."
Fox News host Pete Hegseth suggested on Thursday that a move to rename Confederate military bases would teach children not to "love America."
While appearing on Stuart Varney's Fox Business program, Hegseth was asked about a New York Times report that the cartoon Paw Patrolcould be cancelled over it's depiction of "good cops."
Varney argued that the so-called "cancel culture" is a threat to free speech.
"It's worse than that," Hegseth opined. "This is the logical extent of the left. Unfortunately, I wrote a whole book about it called 'American Crusade' and it's happening faster than anyone thought."
"It all starts with America is an evil place," he complained. "America is a bad place, it was stolen from Native Americans and built on the black -- on the back of slaves and as a result, everything that has been done in our country is considered a sin and an evil and you must erase it all."
Hegseth admitted "America is a flawed place," but he insisted that history should be glossed over by government schools.
"What the left wants is to destroy America," Hegseth remarked. "So you go at the symbols. One of the most recent symbols of course is the police. Paw Patrol, I've watched more hours of Paw Patrol, Stuart, than I can imagine."
"Me too!" Varney chimed in.
"Even a subtle reminder that police are good people, to the left, is a residue of racism," Hegseth continued. "Therefore, it must all be undone. That's how you end up with autonomous regions in Seattle where the first thing they do, of course, is bring armed guards and build a wall and check IDs so people can come in."
"Look, when does this stop?" Varney demanded to know. "Who is going to stand up and say enough is enough. When Paw Patrol starts getting criticized, you know that this is in the land of extremism."
"We must have free speech!" he exclaimed. "Who is standing up for free speech?"
"Thank God we have President Trump right now," Hegseth said. "Where does it stop? I don't know, Stuart. It's individual citizens mustering courage to stand up against the mob, following the lead of our president."
Hegseth added: "But we're at a really, really bad spot because our corporations are captured, social media is captured, our education system. What we're teaching kids in government schools today is the sins of America. And when you do that, you get people that don't love the country that they're supposed to defend."
Before concluding, Varney tied the call to remove Confederate names from military bases to the criticism of Paw Patrol.
"The reality is erasing your history doesn't make it any better," Hegseth replied. "The only way you learn from it is from understanding what happened, why it happened, how we change in moving forward. Of course, the reason for renaming bases after Confederate generals was part of rebuilding our nation and creating solidarity after a civil war that was incredibly bloody."
Hegseth then seemed to contradict his early point in which he opposed teaching the "sins of America" in public schools.
"By teaching about the Civil War that we had, about what it took to free the slaves, we are educating the next generation about what America has had to go through to get to a place where we're the most free, most tolerant, most diverse, most prosperous country in human history."
