News & Commentary

In 1998, at the age of 21, I was sentenced to life without parole plus 320 years for drug-related offenses that were committed mostly in my teens. In 1998, 16 years into my sentence, I received clemency from President Obama after writing a letter to him asking for forgiveness, asking for mercy, asking for understanding that I wasn’t a bad kid, just a kid who made a bad decision. That I wasn’t that person who roamed those streets long ago or the same person who stood in front of the judge and received a life sentence, and as a result I shouldn’t die in prison.   President Obama agreed.   I was extremely fortunate. Those who sought a commutation of their sentence before Obama’s presidency, when George W. Bush was in office, had a 1 in 1,000 chance of success. While conducting research as I prepared my own clemency application, I learned that only one other person serving life without parole for a drug offense had ever been granted clemency. Because of this, I have always compared my clemency to hitting the lottery. But instead of winning millions of dollars, I won my freedom.   Unfortunately, I am just one of the thousands upon thousands of people who after years or even decades in prison, have matured and changed their way of thinking. But because of mandatory minimums and truth in sentencing laws(another supposedly “tough on crime” sentencing scheme that is really just tough on people), and the inaccessibility or unreliability of parole, there are no judicial remedies to acknowledge the transformations of these individuals.   However, there is an extraordinary executive power that allows a show of mercy to be made: clemency.   Clemency has historically been relied upon in America as an olive branch extended to those unduly harmed by our system of mass punishment. It has been used as a tool to heal people, communities, and our very nation, and in doing so, has engendered reconciliation among its citizens. Clemency is a corrective measure that counteracts some of the effects of a flawed system. But the degree to which it can do so is mirrored by the degree to which it is used. Though it may often be overlooked today, clemency has been a key facet of our republic since its founding.   Alexander Hamilton, who played a pivotal role in ratifying the Constitution, saw the value of investing in the office of the presidency the ability to grant clemency to groups during periods of national crisis. Hamilton outlined this in the Federalist Papers: “In seasons of insurrection or rebellion, there are often critical moments, when a well-timed offer of pardon to the insurgents or rebels may restore the tranquility of the commonwealth; and which, if suffered to pass unimproved, it may never be possible afterwards to recall.”   Not long after this statement, President George Washington would use his pardon power after the suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794. The President pardoned two people who were considered leaders of the rebellion and had been sentenced to death. Washington’s legacy was later echoed in President Lincoln’s choice to issue 64 pardons for war-related offenses. They were part of his Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, his blueprint for the reintegration of the South into Union.   In the century that followed, between 1918 and 1920, more than 2,000 people were convicted of sedition and other violations of the Espionage Act for speaking out against the American involvement in World War I. In 1921, President Warren Harding reacted by issuing blanket pardons to all those convicted under the Espionage Act. Still decades later, attempting to bring a close to the era of American conflict in Vietnam, President Jimmy Carter offered a blanket pardon to any American who had dodged the draft during the war. These are all examples of how Presidents exercised their clemency power during and after periods of war to bring the nation together so that it might move forward in unity. That legacy must be resurrected again today to combat the legacy of another war: the war on drugs and related “tough on crime” policies that have actually been a war on Black and Brown communities.   These pervasive modern wars have left about 80 million people in this country with arrest records, 8 million with felony convictions, and more than 2 million people currently in our jails and prisons. With statistics like these, and decades of harsh crime policies in place, we can debate which policies should have been implemented and which shouldn’t have. But one thing is clear: America’s “tough on crime” movement was misguided, ill-advised, and has hurt the communities it intended to help.   From former President George Bush to current President Donald Trump, and from Govs. Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania to Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma, elected officials have exercised their clemency power to give individuals back their freedom, many of whom have been in prison for years or decades under “tough on crime” laws enacted in the 1980s.   I was one of those fortunate souls, and my release granted me more than freedom. It was a chance at redemption.   Clemency is not and should not be viewed as a tool used by officials who are “soft on crime.” Instead, it is a tool whose use signals an official’s wisdom about our nation and the nature of our mass punishment system, whose roots lie in slavery but whose functions are present in the lives of too many people today. These punishments that may have appeared necessary and just at one time, but their lie has been exposed: Putting too many people in prison for too long does not keep people safe, and it certainly does harm to the loved ones of those who are incarcerated.   In a 2003 speech, former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy referred to pardon power as a necessity to ensure justice is administered and adjusted over time:   “A people confident in its laws and institutions should not be ashamed of mercy. The greatest of poets remind us that mercy is ‘mightiest in the mightiest. It becomes the throned monarch better than his crown.’ I hope more lawyers say to chief executives, ‘Mr. President,’ or ‘Your Excellency, the Governor, this young man has not served his full sentence, but he has served long enough. Give him what only you can give him. Give him another chance. Give him a priceless gift. Give him Liberty.’”   I know personally that when the gift of clemency is given to a person, it reverberates throughout our souls that we are not only a nation of opportunity, but also of second chances, of mercy and hope — even for those who may have done wrong — even for those in prison. For as Justice Kennedy said in his closing remarks on clemency, “[S]till, the prisoner is a person. Still he or she is part of the family of humankind.”

The Trump administration is advocating for a new hierarchy of rights that would elevate religion and property over basic human rights. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is leading this dangerous endeavor through his Commission on Unalienable Rights, which published a 60-page draft report and initiated a two week public comment period following the proposal. Sec. Pompeo then delivered a preposterous speech to support the ideological initiative. The commission and its glossy report are designed to lend a veneer of legitimacy to an endeavor that is both dangerous and a waste of taxpayer money — at a time when the government should be focusing on responding to the public health and economic crisis. This commission isn’t fooling anyone. Its main purpose is to weaken international human rights protections and propose a new, politically-charged framework of rights that elevates a specific vision of religious freedom and ignores well-established, globally accepted norms. This was already evident last year, when we warned that the commission would diminish the progress made to advance the universal rights of women and LGBTQ people, as well as socioeconomic rights, especially of vulnerable and historically marginalized populations.  The report asserts that the United States should “vigorously champion human rights in its foreign policy,” and that “America can only be an effective advocate for human rights abroad if she demonstrates her commitment to those same rights at home.” Yet the report is stunningly silent about the racist policies and xenophobic rhetoric of the Trump administration, which have been widely condemned by international human rights bodies. It also fails to account for the Christian stated, “There is an obligation to adapt fundamental principles of liberty and equality to the needs of an evolving social culture.” It seems that the 11 members of the commission have missed the fact that our constitutional rights are evolving, not static.  Sec. Pompeo’s commission ignores the bedrock principle that all human rights have equal status, and they are not hierarchical. The consistent refrain in the report, and from Sec. Pompeo, is that “[f]oremost among the unalienable rights that government is established to secure … are property rights and religious liberty.” This is in fact a new and novel hierarchy of rights, designating religious freedom and property rights as the most important. This is a political and ideological decision that contravenes international law, and ignores lived experiences and structural inequities. It’s also counterproductive to democratic participation and fundamental freedoms because it excludes certain types of people from all human rights, including people living at or near the poverty line, such as low-wage workers.    We must reject any proposal that prioritizes religious liberty over equal rights and human dignity. All too often, religion has been invoked to sanction violence and discrimination against people of color, including those of African descent and Indigenous peoples, women and girls, and LGBTQ people. A recent report by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion and belief documents how this dynamic has taken place in all regions of the world. The Special Rapporteur concluded that “[i]nternational law is clear that the manifestation of religion or belief may be limited by States in situations where doing so is necessary to protect the fundamental rights of others, including the right to non-discrimination and equality, a principle upon which all human rights, including the right to freedom of religion or belief depends.”  While religious freedom must be protected and faith organizations are entitled to autonomy, such deference should be extended within a holistic conception of rights grounded in the universality, indivisibility, and interdependence of the full range of human rights.  The right to property has long been wielded as a justification for atrocities committed against people of African descent and Indigenous peoples in the U.S. The report attempts to wash over most historical rights violations, though it curtly acknowledges slavery as a wrong. In an effort to further rationalize its rights hierarchy, the authors link property rights to freedom from slavery: “…only by becoming property owning citizens could former slaves exercise economic independence and so fully enjoy their unalienable rights.”  While the report acknowledges that historically states’ rights have been invoked to prevent freedom and justice for enslaved people, it fails to mention that this has also been true for Indigenous peoples. This practice continues to this day, despite the latest U.S. Supreme Court decision in Mcgirt v. Oklahoma regarding tribal lands in Oklahoma. The commission’s report asserts that economic and social rights are best compatible with America’s founding principles when they serve as “minimums that enable citizens to exercise their unalienable rights, discharge their responsibilities, and engage in self-government.” The commission bizarrely concludes that guaranteeing a basic social safety net and fundamental human rights such as the right to health, education, and housing, would “curtail freedom — from the rights of property and religious liberty to those of individuals to form and maintain families and communities.”  Additionally, the report sets up the premise that social and economic rights create a “clash of claims” with other rights like religious liberty. If anything, the correct interpretation is that social and economic rights are complementary and enabling rights. People cannot exercise freedom — political or otherwise — if their social and economic rights are in jeopardy.    While the report rightly considers the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) as a foundational document for the modern international human rights framework, it fails to mention that the U.S. has continuously undermined the UDHR by ignoring and selectively enforcing basic universal rights. Different groups throughout American history, including Indigenous peoples, enslaved African people, and women, among others, have all suffered from America’s double-standard and failure to practice what it preaches.  Notably, the U.S. is one of a handful of nations that has not yet ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and is the only country in the world that has yet to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child. More importantly, the report glosses over the government’s failure to uphold its legal obligations under ratified treaties including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Ongoing poverty, and racial disparities in health and economics, are some of the clearest indicators of the impact of failing to prioritize rights on equal footing.  Last week, the ACLU joined 230 human rights organizations, faith-based groups, activists, academics, former senior U.S. government officials, and others to object to the commission’s mandate as well as the fundamentally flawed analysis and recommendations contained in the report. As the coalition letter concludes, the report “undermines American commitments to human rights and provides cover for those who wish to narrow certain categories of rights protections, resulting in a weakening of the international human rights system and its protections in the process.”  At a time when the Trump administration is resorting to authoritarian measures to suppress Black Lives Matter protests, and failing to protect our basic human rights during the COVID-19 crisis, we must fight any attempt to shake the foundations of our global humanity. Pompeo’s ideologically motivated initiative aims to quash equal protection of human rights and dignity, and we must reject it.

In the midst of nationwide protests against police brutality, local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies have reacted with brutal force and widespread surveillance. Not only are many agencies suppressing protest and intimidating protestors with batons and tear gas on the ground — they are also circling overhead. The government is using a deeply invasive, coordinated aerial surveillance campaign to monitor Black Lives Matter protests, gather information, and surveil people exercising their First Amendment rights.   Today, we submitted Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to the Federal Aviation Administration, Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Justice calling for more information on the use of aerial surveillance on protesters.   The government has deployed helicopters, airplanes, and border drones over American cities to systematically monitor peaceful protests . An investigative report by the New York Times found that the Department of Homeland Security alone had logged at least 270 hours of surveillance footage on these racial justice protests this spring and summer. The collected footage was ultimately channeled into a digital network — accessible by federal and local law enforcement agencies for use in future investigations — with the ominous name “the Big Pipe.” Other law enforcement and military agencies, including the FBI, National Guard, and local police departments also requested deployment of private or government-owned aircraft for the purpose of surveilling protests. This widespread surveillance has been carried out across the country — from the big-city protests in NYC, Portland, Chicago and LA, to 20-person protests in small towns across the country.   This surveillance has also been carried out with an

After a rebuke from the Supreme Court, President Trump is again trying to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program — a program that protects over 700,000 people from deportation and allows them to work and attend school in the United States, their home. The White House is replacing the full DACA program with a skeleton program that will accept no new applicants and renew protection for only one year, instead of two.  I served in the Obama administration at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the government agency responsible for creating and launching DACA. It was the result of over a decade of brave advocacy by undocumented youth, who rallied the country’s support by sharing their stories and demanding that the United States see them as the Americans that they are. While we were proud of the program, we knew that DACA was not the end goal for this movement. While critically important, it would only temporarily protect Dreamers for two years at a time. Without permanent, legislative protections, the fate of Dreamers and their families would continue to be at risk.  When President Trump took office, our fears came true. In the first year, his administration threw the lives of DACA recipients into limbo and attempted to end the program, leaving Dreamers unable to plan for their futures, living under a constant threat of potential deportation. As the country waited for a DACA decision from the Supreme Court, ICE promised to start deporting DACA recipients if given the opportunity.  But on June 18, 2020, DACA recipients — and America — won. The Supreme Court sided with the lower courts and the American people by declaring the Trump administration’s process of rescinding DACA illegal, “arbitrary, and capricious.” The Trump administration was ordered to accept DACA renewals and new DACA applications, and restore the DACA program to its original state. Instead, the White House is hell-bent on ripping the rug out from underneath 700,000 Americans in waiting, even though he knows that the American people, including most Trump supporters, support Dreamers. Trump’s recent changes to DACA shut hundreds and thousands of immigrant youth out of the program’s protections, leaving them at continued risk of deportation. We know and fear that his next step is a complete end to DACA.   Our immigration system remains unjust, inhumane, and irrevocably broken, and the ACLU will continue to fight in Congress for permanent legislative protections for all undocumented youth. We will also keep fighting for automatic extensions of DACA and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) work permits during the pandemic. The Senate must act now to take up and pass the American Dream of Promise Act, which would provide protection from deportation and a fair path to citizenship for Dreamers and immigrants eligible for TPS and Deferred Enforced Departure (DED). While the ACLU remains troubled by provisions in the bill that run counter to basic due process principles, it would nonetheless benefit more than two million people and represent a crucial step toward fundamental reform of an unjust system.  And as Black and Brown communities fight for historic, overdue reforms to state and local law enforcement, it is critical not to forget that ICE and Customs and Border Protection sow fear and uncertainty in communities of color every day. Congress must divest funding from the federal police forces within these agencies that threaten DACA recipients, their families, and our communities writ large. We will also be fighting for so much more. States must take steps to vastly improve the wellbeing of undocumented youth and protect them from the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant crusade. States should remove barriers that prevent Dreamers from pursuing their education and careers by allowing access to in-state tuition, financial aid, and professional licenses for all, regardless of immigration status. They must also reject the administration’s promise to deport Dreamers and refuse to do ICE and CBP’s bidding. Governors should take steps to restrict their states from spending any resources to collaborate with immigration enforcement agencies.  As long as Congress refuses to provide a path to citizenship for undocumented youth, we will advocate for broad administrative relief that expands the number of people eligible for protection. DACA was designed narrowly, and forces recipients to spend enormous resources — $495 for the application, plus legal fees —  to renew their status originally every two years, and now every year. We will advocate for DACA to provide longer periods of protection between renewals and for application fees to be truly affordable. And finally, we will keep fighting for a fair, humane, and affordable path to citizenship in Congress so that DACA recipients, their undocumented family members, and all immigrant communities can access full citizenship.  While Dreamers won in the Supreme Court, Trump continues his anti-immigrant crusade. The fight for permanent protections and a humane immigration system continues.

Despite their intended role as peacekeepers, private university officers are often responsible for violence against students and local residents alike. In July 2015, a University of Cincinnati police officer fatally shot unarmed 37-year-old Sam DuBose. Tyrone West, a 44-year-old Black man, was killed by Morgan State University police in 2013 during a traffic stop. And in 2018, a University of Chicago police officer shot fourth-year student Charles Thomas.  Sam DuBrose, Tyrone West, and Charles Thomas are just three names on an ever-growing list of people who have been injured or lost their lives at the hands of private police officers. Student dollars go toward the upkeep of these oppressive institutions, which are responsible for the violence and mutilation of bodies. The presence of these forces on and off campus is not welcome — not by students, and not by the communities at large.  More than one third of four-year colleges across the country are equipped with their own well-funded, private, and armed police forces that make arrests every day. Yet despite functioning as full-fledged law enforcement, these departments are able to evade public record laws, allowing countless cases of police abuse and force to go unseen and unpunished. In most states, public record laws apply to private organizations that employ government authority to perform a governmental function. There is no question that campus police fall into this category. But universities continue to argue their private status makes them exempt from such records requests, protecting themselves and displaying a flagrant disregard for accountability.  The Clery Act, signed in 1990, aimed to create accountability for campus police forces. But the law does not go nearly far enough. For example, while it requires the maintenance of a daily crime log, campus forces often provide little detail and are easily able to withhold information. This statute is the sole measure in place to ensure the accountability of armed campus police officers.  The majority of these private forces are not just policing their respective campuses, but also have jurisdiction deep in local cities. For example, the University of Chicago is home to one of the largest private police forces in the world. The student body numbers under 15,000, but the UC Police Department puts boots down in surrounding neighborhoods, placing 65,000 city residents under the watch of a force with virtually no accountability.  This arrangement is not unique to Chicago. In cities like Detroit, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and South Bend, Indiana, campus police departments also patrol in the city, often in predominantly Black neighborhoods which already suffer from devastating structural inequalities. People of color, especially Black folks, feel afraid of the people meant to make them feel safe. Educational institutions and the spaces around them can be emancipatory; yet, people of color find themselves in chains. Young people have started to take notice, and have called for the end to private police on campus. Last year, students at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore demanded the university reverse its decision to create its own police department. Coalitions of students, faculty members, and neighbors at Harvard University, University of Virginia, Columbia University, and Ohio State University have also called for the removal of private police forces.  But let’s be clear: Universities without private police forces are not spared from the horrors of police brutality. Partnerships with local police are also bringing unwanted publicly funded officers onto campuses.  While these forces may not run into the same issues with open-record laws, they come with their own array of atrocities. Public police departments with known patterns of corruption, excessive use of force, and racial profiling are welcomed onto campuses with open arms by university administrators.  Following demands organized by students, the University of Minnesota recently agreed to cut ties with the Minneapolis Police Department. Northwestern University, Columbia University, and New York University students are also calling on their administrators to cut ties with local police. Administrators should follow the lead of student activists and institutions like the University of Minnesota and cut ties with local police departments. Universities are responsible for the safety of their students and the surrounding community  — and police have proven time and time again to pose a threat to safety, rather than promote it. As calls to defund the police grow, it is imperative that private police forces with no accountability are prioritized. Heavily armed police forces with no transparency are inexcusable, and university administrations must move to defund them. On college campuses, our nation’s playgrounds for research and discovery, we must protect our young minds and the precious communities that surround them at all costs. Any other choice is a blatant denial of safety and justice to people across the country 一 those who pay to attend these institutions, and those who live in the communities intruded upon by them. CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that all three students were killed by university police. Charles Thomas was injured, not killed. We regret this error.

As the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to become a death sentence for people trapped in prisons and jails across the U.S., the actions — or inaction — of prosecutors to decarcerate have had a tangible life or death impact. We examined the responses from prosecutors in the 20 biggest cities in this country. This is the third post in the series — you can also read the second. 11. Austin, Texas   Austin’s Margaret Moore understood the need to respond to the pandemic’s threat to people living and working in local jails. She played a significant role in bringing judges to the table to proactively work to save lives during COVID-19. The judges decided to grant no-cost bonds whenever practical to clear jail space, resulting in a dip in the jail population. As of May 12, Travis County’s adult jail system held about 1,600 people and had no positive test results. But test accessibility is distressingly low — only about 1 percent of the county’s average jail population was tested during the pandemic. Unfortunately, Moore otherwise had an unclear role in Travis County’s pandemic decarceration efforts — unlike prosecutors across the country declining to prosecute various offenses, identifying people to be released from jail, and fighting back against short-sighted restrictions by the Texas governor’s executive order limiting pretrial releases. By mid-March, her re-election opponent, Jose Garza, publicly called upon her and other city officials to do more to decarcerate jails and prisons, thereby removing hotbeds for the spread of the disease. In mid-July, voters weighed in on her limited action, choosing Garza as the Democratic candidate for November’s prosecutor election.  12. Jacksonville, Florida  Jacksonville’s Melissa Nelson took early, swift action to save lives facing the pandemic in local jails. By late March, she made a temporary plan to release a significant number of people, directing her office to offer plea deals that avoid jail time, release some people pre-trial, not filing charges in non-violent “marginal” cases, and determining whether a time-served and/or probationary sentence is appropriate in any nonviolent case where the state is currently offering one year of jail time or less.  The result of these policies: By late April, the number of people held in the Duval County jails fell by 21 percent. These are positive outcomes, but Nelson’s policies still fall short of helping everyone potentially vulnerable to the virus by unilaterally choosing not to consider those accused or convicted of violent or sexual offenses, rather than reviewing their circumstances before making a decision. 13. Fort Worth, Texas  Fort Worth’s Sharen Wilson has been extraordinarily silent as the pandemic sweeps across the country, despite the deathly threat it poses to those trapped in jails and prisons. But Tarrant County judges and sheriffs picked up her slack, holding court proceedings to grant bonds or shorten sentence lengths so people could get released sooner.  Unfortunately, Wilson seems to have continued business as usual — including seeking enhancements against people for low-level offenses, such as trespassing, failing to acknowledge that forcing people to spend more time behind bars during a pandemic could have fatal consequences.   14. Columbus, Ohio  In Columbus, Ohio, two prosecutors share responsibility for the city’s criminal system — Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien handles felony cases, while Columbus City Prosecutor Zach Klein has jurisdiction over misdemeanors. Both made small steps towards helping people behind bars as the coronavirus spread throughout the country, but fell short of making the deep changes necessary to save lives. In late March, Klein announced that his office was already working on criminal justice reform that would “jail only those that need to be locked up,” without providing any details on who that would include. He also expressed concern about crafting blanket policies for release. Instead, jail drops between the start of the pandemic and March 24 largely flowed from sheriffs using alternatives to arrest more often to avoid bringing people to jail. O’Brien has taken a few steps in the right direction, including limited court proceedings and only pursuing new, serious felonies. However, he did not proactively review cases involving people serving their sentences. Moreover, O’Brien expressed concern about not being more involved in court decisions to release eight youths from a juvenile detention center where the outbreak struck nearly half of the incarcerated youth and about a quarter of the staff.  These small gestures toward release simply do not go far enough. 15. Charlotte, North Carolina  Charlotte’s Spencer Merriweather quickly worked to change his pretrial policies in response to COVID-19. At the beginning of the pandemic, his office released a statement saying they have and will continue to work diligently to ensure that the only people in pretrial custody during this crisis are the people he believes pose a risk to public safety. Merriweather claims the initiatives launched by his office to limit pretrial custody of people accused of nonviolent offenses have reduced incarceration by 14 percent since the start of the pandemic.  Although he has shown flexibility on pretrial policies, Merriweather has not focused at all on those already serving sentences, even as nearby prosecutors do. Decarcerate Mecklenburg, a coalition of community activists, attorneys, and religious leaders, held rolling protests in vehicles circling Mecklenburg County Detention Center, the District Attorney’s Office, and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police headquarters, demanding in part that Merriweather release people held on bond along with those with six months or less on their sentence, pregnant women, and everyone over 50 years of age.  Without action for those vulnerable but already serving time, Merriweather is leaving hundreds if not thousands of people behind bars to face a deadly virus. In fact, in late July, more than 40 people at the Mecklenburg County Detention Center have tested positive for Coronavirus.

As the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to become a death sentence for people trapped in prisons and jails across the U.S., the actions — or inaction — of prosecutors to decarcerate have had a tangible life or death impact. We examined the responses from prosecutors in the 20 biggest cities in this country. This is the second post in the series. You can read the first

Police do not need an 18th Century infantry sword to “protect and serve” communities. Nor do they need Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles (MRAPs), grenade launchers, or other weapons of war. Despite the dangerous nature of these weapons, local police departments continue to have access to them, free of charge, through the Department of Defense 1033 program. As we face a past due reckoning over our nation’s policing practices, it is time our leaders take the steps necessary to prevent these weapons of war from being used on the nation’s people, protestors, and Black and Brown communities.   Last week, the Senate decided to limit reforms to the 1033 program to just bayonets, tanks, weaponized drones, and some grenades. “Modest” would be a charitable way to describe the amendment to the defense authorization bill offered by Senate Armed Services Chairman Sen. Jim Inhofe. Weaponized vehicles and armed drones were never transferred under 1033, and most grenades can still be secured through the program, so that leaves bayonets as the most significant reform in this package.   The House could have taken up amendments to end or rein in 1033 last week with proposals from Reps. Nydia Velázquez and Hank Johnson. Instead they skipped the opportunity for real reform by passing on those amendments. The Senate voted down a more meaningful 1033 amendment from Sen. Brian Schatz. Despite passing Rep. Johnson’s Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act last month with the Justice in Policing Act, it seems Congress caved to pressure from the law enforcement lobby to leave 1033 reforms out of the must-pass defense bill.   With the administration maintaining militarized federal agents in Southern border, and to advance the failed drug war. The program instigates the “surge” of various federal law enforcement that have been deputized to “lay down the law” in Portland and cities throughout the country. It is beyond time to end the 1033 program and the wave of brutality, racialized policing, and curtailing of civil liberties that it leaves in its wake.

From the outset of the COVID-19 crisis, it was clear that the impact on people living and working in jails and prisons was potentially catastrophic. Advocates, including the