Author: Judge John Wilson (ret.)

When I was the Night Court Judge for Brooklyn, New York, I handled the first court appearance (known as an “arraignment”) for up to 100 people a night. I was responsible for using my discretion to decide whether to set bail on a defendant, or whether they could be trusted to return to court on their own (“release on own recognizance,” or “ROR”).

There were several factors I used in making my decision.  Did the defendant have a history of not returning to court (a defendant’s criminal history, or “rap sheet,” which lists the number of times a “bench warrant” was issued for a defendant’s arrest when that defendant failed to appear for a court appointment)?  Did they have open and pending cases?  Did they have “ties to the community,” that is, a stable residence and family, or a job?

Open and pending cases was always a great concern of mine.  If the majority of us had been arrested for anything, most of us would make sure we did not place ourselves in a position to be rearrested.  The fact that a person has a case pending for drug sales, robbery, or driving while under the influence, and is arrested for another offense while that first case is still open, usually points to a larger problem.  Multiple robberies and drug sales are often an indicator of gang activity; repeated DUI’s or domestic violence arrests can be caused by psychological issues.

In either instance, when a defendant was a repeat offender – a “recidivist” – and especially if that defendant had more than one open and pending cases, I was extremely likely to set bail and stop that defendant’s pattern of criminal activity.

Under the current “no bail” laws, I could no longer follow this basic analysis to its logical conclusion.  The “Bail Elimination Act of 2019”  specifically states that “(w)hen a principal, whose  future  court  attendance  at  a  criminal action  or  proceeding  is or may be required, initially comes under the control of a court, such  court…SHALL…RELEASE THE PRINCIPAL PENDING TRIAL ON THE PRINCIPAL’S  PERSONAL RECOGNIZANCE, UNLESS THE COURT FINDS ON THE RECORD THAT RELEASE ON RECOGNIZANCE WILL NOT REASONABLY ASSURE THE INDIVIDUAL’S COURT ATTENDANCE. IN SUCH INSTANCES, THE COURT WILL RELEASE THE INDIVIDUAL UNDER  NON-MONETARY  CONDITIONS,  SELECTING  THE  LEAST  RESTRICTIVE ALTERNATIVE  THAT  WILL  REASONABLY ASSURE THE PRINCIPAL’S COURT ATTENDANCE. THE COURT WILL SUPPORT ITS CHOICE OF ALTERNATIVE ON THE RECORD.  A PRINCIPAL  SHALL  NOT  BE  REQUIRED  TO  PAY FOR ANY PART OF THE COST OF RELEASE UNDER NON-MONETARY CONDITIONS.” (Caps in original.)

In other words, the Court’s of New York are required to release a defendant, and even if the Court finds a reason to hold a defendant after their arrest, the Court must still “release the individual under non-monetary conditions, selecting the least restrictive alternative” to insure the defendant’s return.

In the two years since this new system took effect, how has the Bail Elimination Act worked for New York?

“10 career criminals (have) rack(ed) up nearly 500 arrests after New York enacted its controversial bail reform law – and most of them are still out on the streets…statistics compiled by the NYPD…show that the city’s alleged ‘worst of the worst’ repeat offenders have been busted a total of 485 times since bail reform went into effect in 2020.  Two of the defendants are actually accused of embarking on lives of crime in the wake of bail reform, with one busted 33 times since 2020 and the other busted 22 times.”

Meanwhile, in June of this year,  “(a) ‘professional booster‘…notched what could be her 100th bust over the weekend – and was released without bail yet again…Michelle McKelley, 42, was arrested…for allegedly pocketing $125 worth of goods from a CVS in Lower Manhattan, and then was freed under the state’s soft-on-crime criminal justice reforms. Prosecutors said in Manhattan Criminal Court…that McKelley has failed to appear in court 27 times on her multitude of past arrests – and has five other pending cases. But the charges do not qualify for bail under the 2019 state reform, which means prosecutors could only ask that she be let go on supervised release while the case is pending.” 

Then there is the 16 year old who was arrested after a wild altercation with a police officer in a New York City subway station.  In July, just days before his fist fight with the police, the youth had been arrested for a violent robbery in which “he and three others jumped a 49-year-old man on a Midtown street, punching the victim and running off with his cellphone. Prosecutors with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office requested he be released with ‘intensive community monitoring’ at his arraignment, though they could have requested bail on the top robbery charge. A few days later…the boy was arrested for the subway incident, in which he was caught on camera violently attacking a Manhattan cop after allegedly jumping a turnstile at the 125th Street-Lexington Avenue station in East Harlem. The teen was again released without bail …” 

It is any wonder, then, that according to New York Mayor Eric Adams,   “Time and time again, our police officers make an arrest, and then the person who is arrested for assault, felonious assaults, robberies and gun possessions, they’re finding themselves back on the street within days– if not hours — after the arrest…(a)nd they go on to commit more crimes within weeks, if not days…(o)ur criminal justice system is insane.”  

Mayor Adams can expect no help from the District Attorney’s Office.  Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, elected with the help of George Soros, believes that “(r)eversing the effects of mass incarceration is an urgent moral, civil rights, and human rights issue and is one of (his) highest priorities as Manhattan District Attorney…Alvin believes that…prison sentences (are) imposed far too often…for nonviolent cases and others for which prison is not warranted.  These excess prison sentences do not make us safer.  In fact, they make us less safe because they increase the chances of recidivism.”

Would a prison sentence , or at least the threat of jail time, perhaps put an end to the criminal activity of the shoplifter on her 100th arrest, or any of the 10 defendants responsible for almost 500 arrests since 2020?  Common sense would seem to indicate this being the case.  But DA Bragg believes in “(e)xpanding Restorative Justice programming significantly and relying heavily on it…(t)he programming will be community-based and not operated by the DA office or any other law enforcement entity.”   

In other words, DA Bragg believes placing a recidivist in jail will not stop recidivism – but community based programs will.

What if the defendant does not comply with their “Restorative Justice” program? “In any case in which a person allegedly violates the terms of a non-incarceratory sentence,” the Manhattan DA will “seek an incarceratory ‘alternative’…only as a matter of last resort, after repeated opportunities are afforded for a successful completion of the mandate.  Research shows that relapses are part of the road to recovery…”

In other words, rather than place the serial shoplifter in jail, DA Bragg would have her enroll in a program, and if she fails that program, give her an undetermined number of opportunities to complete the program.  What would constitute failure?  Not attending the program – and rearrests.

The repetitive nature of the Manhattan DA’s policies are obvious.  Instead of seeking a jail sentence for a repeat offender, that offender is given another opportunity to reoffend, with the hope that after a certain undetermined number of chances, that offender will “magically” just give up (maybe from exhaustion), and return to law abiding ways.

What could go wrong?

DA Bragg, and the progressives in the New York State Legislature who established the No-bail laws of 2019, rely upon research studies that “shorter sentences would actually reduce future offending.”  However, “much of the academic research regarding the effect of length of incarceration on recidivism suffered from serious methodological flaws, including too-small study sizes and ill-advised attempts to judge the impact of minor differences in incarceration.”

Recently, the United States Sentencing Commission conducted a study to determine if longer jail sentences have an effect on recidivism.  The result was predictable to all but Alvin Bragg and his supporters.  “For defendants receiving a sentence of more than 60 months (five years), the odds of recidivism were 18 percent lower than a matched group of prisoners receiving shorter sentences. For defendants with sentences of more than 120 months (ten years), the odds of recidivism were 29 percent lower…(c)ontrary to current academic thinking, then, the length of a criminal’s sentence matters quite a bit in reducing future offending.” 

It always seemed to be a matter of common sense for me – if someone is offending repeatedly, incarcerating them stops their criminal activity.  Until the Manhattan DA and the New York Legislature learn this simple lesson, the citizens of New York can continue to be subjected to more progressive social science experiments – and more crime.

Judge John Wilson served on the bench in NYC

Illustration: Pixabay

What is the State Department highlighting this week in its media releases? The headlines coming out of Washington include: “China Could Overtake US in Space,” “Terrorism Rising in African Sahel,” “US is Participating in UN Chiefs of Police Summit,” and “The Kremlin’s Illegitimate Tribunals in Mariupol,” among others. On Saturday, the Department released a joint statement with other nations saying it met to talk about the problems in Syria. A day earlier the Department noted that it met for the ninth in a series of talks labeled the” US-Vietnam Asia-Pacific Dialogue.” One day earlier on Thursday the Department released a statement saying the “G7 Non-Proliferation Directors Group remains profoundly concerned by the serious threat over the continued control of Ukrainian nuclear facilities by Russian armed forces pose to the safety and security of these facilities.” The list goes on week after week, meeting after meeting, during a period of severe instability across the world. Diplomacy is a war of words, but it requires strong, unambiguous action backing up those statements. What is the leader of the free world doing? Why all talk and so little action out of Washington?

China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, among other states hostile to the west, are joined together in an unholy alliance that is historic in size. The population of these four states alone surpasses 1,658,478,000. They supply each other with weapons of war and buy each other’s goods that are sanctioned by the rest of the world to help keep their economies afloat. Iran builds and sells drones to Russia for use in its war in Ukraine. China buys Russian wheat and energy. They take action.

The State Department’s response to a ship getting past the Russian Navy this week said that it was “grateful” a Ukrainian wheat shipment got through the Black Sea to its African destination. “The United States welcomes the arrival in Djibouti of 23,300 metric tons of Ukrainian grain aboard the ship Brave Commander. This grain will be distributed within Ethiopia and Somalia, countries that are dangerously food insecure after four years of drought. The United States is grateful for the important role Djibouti has played facilitating the flow of humanitarian goods to the region.” 

In the past it was said that other nation-states knew US foreign policy by the actions Washington took, or the ones it deliberately did not take. The message was made clear to those who violated the rules-based international order. What is left of US foreign policy today appears muddled in broad announcements reacting to what other states are doing. Again, where is the leadership? What is our foreign policy?

The United States in 1954 signed a Mutual Defense Treaty with Taiwan. Since that time the US derecognized the country, formalized relations with China, and continues to attempt to placate both sides of the Strait. This week it came down to a retired Taiwanese tech mogul, who was weary of US inaction, pledging his millions to fund training for civilian troops to protect Taiwan. Robert Tsao says he is willing to spend $33 million to fund the training of 3 million civilians for three years. That is action. At the same time this week the Biden Administration announced the “United States will continue to advocate for a fair, practical criminal justice instrument that respects human rights and provides a modern electronic evidence framework built on consensus and informed by experts” to handle cybercrime. The US media are culpable, too. ABC News spent more time this week reporting on the “emotional support alligator” seen in Love Park in Philadelphia than on the genocide of over a million Muslim Uyghurs in western China. A year ago, the Biden Administration failed in its withdrawal from Afghanistan. Americans lost their lives. No one in the Biden Administration is taking responsibility or talking about it. This Thursday at a State Department briefing for the media, the Spokesperson responded to a reporter’s question about the impact of potential leak of radioactive material from the Russian-bombed ZNPP power plant in southern Ukraine. Vedant Patel, Principal Deputy Spokesperson in the Bureau of Global Public Affairs said: “We strongly condemn any action at ZNPP or elsewhere that impacts the health and welfare of civilians throughout the region.”

Now that the US has offered its statement of concern our European allies downwind can rest easy. 

Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.

Image: Pixabay

Anniversaries of significant historical dates and economic plans are cause for celebration in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Next month is doubly important as it marks 10 years since Xi Jinping gained power as general secretary of the CCP. China also will hold an important Party Congress where progress on Xi’s decade-long economic record will be reviewed. While Xi has attained exulted political status, it appears that the results of his economic reform plan are mixed. He “has garnered the most attention for his actions in non-economic realms (treatment of Uyghurs, Tibetans, and Hong Kong citizens; zero tolerance of COVID-19; and alignment with Russia and support for its invasion of Ukraine). But his economic record is important as well because it affects the everyday life of 1.4 billion people, with large spillovers to the rest of the world economy,” says David Dollar of China Leadership Monitor.

As an economy matures its growth rate typically slows. This is the case with China. During Hu Jintao’s decade of rule, China’s GDP growth averaged 10.6%.  Under Xi Jinping’s rule the first nine years GDP growth slowed to only 6.5%. The four-point drop is huge in economic terms, especially since it comes mostly from a decline in Total Factor Productivity (TFP) growth. The expansion of capital and labor inputs has been fairly steady, slowing only a minor amount, but the impact of these inputs has diminished sharply, according to Dollar. During Hu’s time in power the TFP averaged 3.5%. By the time Xi assumed power, it had dropped precipitously to 0.7%. The decrease indicates that technological upgrading, either through innovation or borrowing, has slowed as have improvements in the efficiency with which resources are used. The 3% difference in the TFP by 2049 is expected to result in a dramatic lowering of the Chinese standard of living.

At the same time as the TFP dropped, Xi Jinping introduced three main areas of policy reform that have, so far, brought in mixed returns for the domestic economy. First, he stepped-up industrial-policy intervention beyond what is the norm in a communist country. Xi also expanded the role of the state in broad areas of economic concern and in the allocation of capital. Dollar says Xi’s activist industrial policy is aimed at increasing China’s self-sufficiency and reducing its technology dependence on the West. In contradiction, Xi’s second major policy change has accelerated China’s foreign trade and investment liberalization, despite calls for increased domestic production to improve self-sufficiency. 

“The third important policy change under Xi has been a commitment to reduce China’s carbon emissions and to contribute to the global effort to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius,” says Dollar. Although Xi publicly committed China to a net-zero emissions by 2060 and to “strictly control” the increased use of coal over the next decade, reaching peak carbon by 2030, China is not following through on its publicly-stated commitments. China’s coal-fire power plants, among the dirtiest in the world, are expected to continue operations without cutbacks for the next forty years. That is how long Chinese estimates it has ample coal supplies. 

One China energy analyst reports that a Chinese official said that China will continue to experience rising coal use and emissions for another decade or more and that the country will suffer from related rises in the sea level, extreme heat, and water supply issues. China’s coal supply has a high sulfur content causing incomplete burning of the material that results in lower levels of energy produced. The negative impact on the Chinese economy and the country’s living standards could reverse gains made since 2000. “Xi’s industrial policy gambits are also risky, both economically, because it seems much capital is wasted without positive results, and politically.  Relations between a rising China and a relatively declining US were always likely to be difficult, but the program seeking to monopolize the advanced technologies of the future naturally makes the relationship more contentious,” says Dollar. Despite some negative indicators, Xi has managed to maintain a 6% growth rate that will, during his tenure in office, be sufficient to eliminate poverty in China. About 1/3 of China fell below the World Bank’s extreme poverty line (31.7%) in 2002. By 2012 it had dropped to 6.5%. 

Under Xi the World Bank figures indicate it declined further, to 0.1% by 2019. Xi’s aggressive push for technological advancements in support of the military comes at a cost to other parts of the economy, including land reform and social inequality. To date, Xi has accomplished little in creating a strong consumption-oriented economy. At the CCP Congress next month hardliners favoring China’s military prowess will likely give Xi good marks, while those favoring a more liberal, consumer economy may argue that little progress has been made for the country as a whole over the last 10 years and there is little to celebrate moving into the next ten year economic plan.   

Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.

NASA estimates there were over 27,000 pieces of space debris circling the planet 15 months ago. Last November Russia added another 1,500 pieces to that count when it used a missile test to destroy one of its Soviet era, non-working satellites. As the amount of debris continues to climb so does the threat to safety in space and the possibility of war from novel space weapons. Next week Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin will host a classified meeting to consider the implications of Russia and China’s pursuit of advanced space weapons. The public announcement of this discussion comes after two key events last year: the destruction of the defunct Russian satellite and the historic first with China’s testing of an advanced hypersonic glide vehicle and fractional orbital bombardment system, according to Joe Gould of Defense News. Admiral Charles Richard, chief of US Strategic Command, admitted such a test was “never before seen in the world.” “Richard, speaking at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium earlier this month, said the military must now overhaul its missile defenses and develop systems to better warn against launches aimed at the US.” 

The Secretary will meet with his Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl and the Defense Policy Board, which is comprised of former national security officials. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy John Plumb will brief the board on the Pentagon’s upcoming space strategic review. Putin’s war in Ukraine has not slowed Russia’s aggressive space policy. DOD is planning to examine potential responses to Moscow’s ground-to-space weapons program and how it could impact US defense policy. Military analysts are calling 2022 a “pivotal year” for space security, according to Gould, sue to Russia’s use of counterspace capabilities.

Russia is developing ground electronic warfare and directed energy weapons to counter western on-orbit assets, according to Courtney Albon of Defense News. She points out that the intelligence community’s 2022 Annual Threat Assessment predicts “Russia [will] continue to train its military space elements and field new antisatellite weapons to disrupt and degrade US and allied space capabilities, and it is developing, testing, and fielding an array of nondestructive and destructive counterspace weapons — including jamming and cyberspace capabilities, directed energy weapons, on-orbit capabilities, and ground-based ASAT capabilities — to target US and allied satellites,” according to this year’s assessment. To date, DOD has not release publicly evidence confirming Russia’s capabilities although senior Pentagon officials have confirmed tests took place. “Clearly the Russians and Chinese are trying to develop systems to get around the missile defense systems the U.S. has been developing,” said Kaitlyn Johnson, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. She added that “It’s hard to evaluate what that is from the public side of things, what that’s entailed. I imagine that’s what this meeting is about.”

The meeting comes as a surprise to many in the defense community because the US Government is starting to make public its assessment of the potential Russian threat. Secure World Foundation’s Brian Weeden, a former Air Force space operations officer, said he finds it “interesting, because while Russia and China have been worried about the US developing space-to-ground weapons for decades, the US has during the same time resisted any serious discussions or proposals, saying that these are not real threats.” The November 21, 2021 Russian conducted, direct-ascent hit-to-kill anti-satellite (ASAT) test served in part as a wake up call for the defense community. While Russian military leaders claim their test is to restore strategic stability, US Space Command commander Army Gen. James Dickinson at the time said that Russia is “deploying capabilities to actively deny access to and use of space by the United States and its allies.” 

He further notes that Russia’s counterspace weapons systems undermines strategic stability, in complete contradiction to the Russian claims. The Arms Control Association adds that “Russian military literature is replete with discussions about how these high-precision aerospace weapons are changing the nature of warfare. Russians argue that, in past wars, the main burden of any confrontation rested on ground forces tasked to breach the enemy’s forward defense and enter the adversary’s territory to occupy it. Future wars, they argue, will not be conducted using the massing of armed troops. Instead, their opening salvo will involve massive air missile strikes at targets throughout the adversary’s territory.”  The Pentagon appears to be considering that Putin’s war in Ukraine may be one of the last for traditional Russian ground forces.

Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.

Don’t throw the past away
You might need it some rainy day
Dreams can come true again
When everything old is new again

Lyrics by Peter Allen, 1974 

Some readers may be old enough to remember the so-called “witch hunt” of Communist party members and sympathizers during the 1950s.  In particular, Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) is best remembered for claiming in 1950 that he had “a list of known Communists still working in the Department of State…(w)hen McCarthy became chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in 1953, he launched a series of investigations into alleged subversion and espionage.”

“A special subcommittee investigated McCarthy’s charges and rejected them as ‘a fraud and a hoax.'” Further, “(i)n 1954 a confrontation with the army led to the nationally televised Army-McCarthy hearings, which tarnished McCarthy’s public image, undermined his charges, and prompted his censure by the U.S. Senate.”  

It has been dogma for many years that “McCarthyism” and the “Red Scare” of the 1950s led to the blacklisting of many innocent government workers, screenwriters and other citizens. “liberals and leftists held the high ground in the dispute over whether a communist conspiracy actually existed in the United States or was simply a by-product of ‘the paranoid style in American politics’…(t)here were rancorous divisions on the liberal-left in the 1950s over who was a spy and who was an accused innocent, who was a secret communist political operative and who was a straightforward fighter for social justice…In the upmarket universities and other places where the dominant form of polite liberalism thrived, the accusers, who had named names and had pointed out the communist spies, were scorned as despicable vermin. Among more mainstream scholars…the forces of domestic anti-communism were described largely as manifestations of social underdevelopment and popular irrationality, not legitimate concern.”  

In more recent years, it has been discovered that even a “paranoid” like Senator McCarthy had real enemies.  “In the 1940s, the (National Security Agency) NSA had a top-secret program called Venona which intercepted (and much later decoded) messages between Moscow and its American agents. The recent publication of a batch of Venona transcripts gives evidence that the Roosevelt and Truman administrations were rife with communist spies and political operatives who reported, directly or indirectly, to the Soviet government, much as their anti-communist opponents charged. The Age of McCarthyism, it turns out, was not the simple witch hunt of the innocent by the malevolent as two generations of high school and college students have been taught.” 

Communist influence and subversion must have been a concern for the Truman Administration even before Senator McCarthy and his sensational allegations.  In 1947, President Truman signed Executive Order 9835, which required “a loyalty investigation of every person entering the…employment of any department or agency of the executive branch of the Federal Government,” and that “each department or agency shall appoint one or more loyalty boards…for the purpose of hearing loyalty cases arising within such department or agency and making recommendations with respect to the removal of any officer or employee of such department or agency on grounds relating to loyalty.”  

While Executive Order 9835 did not specifically require the signing of a “loyalty oath,” “In 1950, the California State Legislature enacted the Levering Act, requiring oaths of loyalty from all its employees.  The loyalty oath was suggested by Assemblyman Harold Levering.  It required all state employees to swear that they did not belong to or support any organization which wished to overthrow the state or federal government through the use of force or violence…it was aimed specifically at members of the Communist Party.”    Not to be undone, in 1949 the University of California instituted its own “Loyalty Oath,” an employment requirement that continues to the present time. 

“The Oath was met with resistance by some faculty members, with non-signers at Berkeley organising under the leadership of Professors Edward Tolman and Frank Newman in the first half of 1950…(f)ollowing a series of standoffs, deadline deferrals, and an ultimatum…(o)n June 23rd, 1950, the Board of Regents voted to fire 157 employees, both academic and non-academic, for their refusal to sign the Oath.  This number was soon reduced to 31, as many decided to sign the Oath after the Regents made their tenacity clear…” 

In 1949, the idea that academics should be forced to sign an oath of loyalty to the Constitution, and vow not to support the overthrown of the government, was met with general outrage and derision.  The President of Yale University, Charles Seymour, said that “(a)ny suggestion that we should employ here a procedure comparable to that required by the necessities of secret government work, and investigate the loyalty of our staff is utterly repugnant to my concept of a university.”  Likewise, the President of Smith College, Herbert Davis, said “Smith College has always welcomed diversity of opinion and has never been frightened by independent thinking on the part of its faculty or students. . . . I do not fear the influence of any extreme opinions in the academic world as much as I fear the attempt to stifle them and limit freedom of debate. .”

At that time, a Senior Member of Harvard, Grenville Clark, was quoted as saying “(Harvard) believes that the members of the faculties, in their capacity as citizens, have the same rights to express themselves as other citizens, and that those rights should not be restricted by the University by trying to keep `watch’ on professors or otherwise. . .”  Then there was the Chancellor of the University of Chicago, Robert M. Hutchins, who said “(i)f we apply any other test than competence in determining the qualifications of teachers, we shall find that pressures and prejudice will determine them, and today in many places, and if not today it may happen tomorrow, anti-Catholic or anti-Jewish campaigns may mean that teachers who belong to those churches will not be able to practice their professions. . .”  

Let us fast forward 73 years to the present day.  Are the leaders of the academic community still opposed to the concept of loyalty oaths?

The University of California has become “increasingly obsessed with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), they have used diversity statement requirements in increasingly invasive ways. Diversity statements at some UC schools are the first thing a search committee reviews. These diversity statements must be evaluated by top-down rigid rubrics. And if a candidate does not achieve a sufficiently high score, then that candidate is automatically eliminated from consideration. Diversity statements for many applicants are not just an additional factor — they are the only factor. At UC Berkeley, for instance, 76 percent of applicants were eliminated without considering the rest of their application… a written assessment of a prospective hire’s contributions to diversity will become a requirement. And within the next two years, these statements will be required not just of future hires but of all current faculty when they are evaluated for potential promotion, tenure, or pay increase.” 

UC is also “the first college system to become a charter member of an American Association for the Advancement of Science initiative aimed at systemically improving diversity, equity, and inclusion in the sciences…(u)nder the STEMM Equity Achievement (SEA) Change, participants will conduct in-depth data collection and self-assessments to identify DEI barrier for students, faculty, and staff members…(p)articipants must create a plan to address any equity issues discovered after conducting a self-assessment.” 

California is not the only state with a University dedicated to enforcing diversity.  At Indiana University, “(a) primary tool is to require all new faculty to fill out a ‘diversity statement.’ Candidates for faculty positions are required to describe exactly what they have done in their careers to support the goal of ‘equity’ especially combined with the undefined words ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion.’ Administrators now carefully comb through these statements to determine if a candidate supports the goals of diversity, inclusion and equity. If they are not sufficiently supportive of, or heaven forbid, are opposed to, these goals they will not be interviewed.” 

But not all College Professors are onboard with this new emphasis on diversity.  “Abigail Thompson, chair of University of California Davis’s math department, opposes diversity statements in California because they are inevitably political. She observes that politics reflects how you believe society should be organized. Her view…is that Americans should aspire to treat every person as a unique individual, not as a representative of their gender or their ethnic group. In contrast, a diversity statement is a loyalty oath to a political view that celebrates identity politics.”  

But Professor Thompson’s view is decidedly in the minority.  In fact, “(a) new report from the American Enterprise Institute found that nearly 20 percent of university faculty job listings require a pledge of support for diversity. ‘Across all 999 jobs [reviewed by the think tank], we find that 19 percent require diversity statements, while 68 percent include the terms ‘diversity’ or ‘diverse’ in some fashion, often as a way of describing the university environment,’ the report said.”  

As described by George Leef in Forbes, “instead of having to pledge support for America in its battle against communism, the new pledge is support to the ‘diversity’ agenda in its battle against a color-blind nation where people are evaluated on their own merits rather than group membership… (t)he diversity statement has a purpose. That purpose, writes…Professor Bruce Gilley of Portland State University, is to weed out non-leftist scholars.  At many universities, he explains, there is an unspoken ideology that ’emphasizes group identity, an assumption of group victimization, and a claim for group based entitlements.’ On the other hand, ‘Classical liberal approaches that emphasize the pluralism of a free society, the universalism of human experience, and the importance of equality before the law have been regarded as invalid.'” 

Just like President Truman, President Biden has issued his own Executive Order to insure loyalty – to diversity.  On his first day in office, Joe Biden stated that “(i)t is…the policy of my Administration that the Federal Government should pursue a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all, including people of color and others who have been historically underserved, marginalized, and adversely affected by persistent poverty and inequality.  Affirmatively advancing equity, civil rights, racial justice, and equal opportunity is the responsibility of the whole of our Government.  Because advancing equity requires a systematic approach to embedding fairness in decision-making processes, executive departments and agencies (agencies) must recognize and work to redress inequities in their policies and programs that serve as barriers to equal opportunity.”  Further, much like Truman’s “loyalty boards,” Biden’s Executive Order requires “(t)he head of each agency, or designee, shall…select certain of the agency’s programs and policies for a review that will assess whether underserved communities and their members face systemic barriers in accessing benefits and opportunities available pursuant to those policies and programs.”  

In keeping with the spirit of Biden’s Executive Order, the “Task Force One Navy” “recently made diversity-related recommendations that include de-emphasizing standardized academic tests when evaluating Navy recruits and renaming ships and other assets with ‘problematic’ names.”  The Task Force also “included a pledge for its own members ‘to advocate for and acknowledge all lived experiences and intersectional identities of every Sailor in the Navy.'” The Task Force took pains to explain this was a pledge the members of the Task Force took themselves, not something they were recommending for service members.  

Nevertheless, there would appear to be very little difference in intent between the use of loyalty pledges in the 1940s and 1950s, and the Diversity “statements” employed today.  But while the “classical liberals” of more than 70 years ago were vehemently opposed to the use of loyalty oaths to fight communist infiltration of our government and universities, the “woke leftist” of today is more than happy to pledge allegiance to diversity – except, of course, for diversity of thought.

What can a University Professor or government employee do to avoid making a “Diversity Statement?”  George Leef, writing in Forbes has one potential answer:

“Perhaps diversity statements can be challenged on First Amendment grounds. In a famous rebuke to ideology intruding on education, the Supreme Court held in the 1943 case West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnettethat the state could not penalize Jehovah’s Witness students for failure to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Justice Jackson’s majority opinion speaks to the same issues as are raised by mandatory diversity statements.

He wrote, “Struggles to coerce uniformity of sentiment in support of some end thought essential to their time and country have been waged by many good, as well as evil men…. It seems trite but necessary to say that the First Amendment to our Constitution was designed to avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings…. If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.“

Judge Wilson served on the bench in NYC.

The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) ruling Chinese Communist Party, which operates concentration camps on a scale not seen since the Nazi regime, is seeking to manipulate international media to hide its crimes against humanity.

The victims are predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

The news should not be startling. For some time, China has sought to influence what people around the world see, read and hear about the totalitarian tactics of its rulers. In addition to the methods outlined in a recent American government report, it has sought to use its financial muscle to portray a false image of itself.  A Heritage report quotes Mike Gonzalez’s warning that “American audiences are being submitted to censorship, not our own censorship, but a foreign power’s censorship, and a Communist Party censorship. But, we get shown a very benign view of China, in which China is a normal country, no different from Paris, or Britain, or Germany. That is not the case obviously. If you speak against the government in Germany, nothing happens to you. If you speak against the government in China, they’ll throw you in jail.”

According to the newly released U.S. State Department study, PRC-directed and -affiliated actors lead a coordinated effort to amplify Beijing’s preferred narratives on Xinjiang, to drown out and marginalize narratives that are critical of the People’s Republic of China PRC’s repression of Uyghurs, and to harass those critical of the PRC.

In addition to spreading false information, the tactics include flooding the international information environment to limit access to content that contradicts Beijing’s official line, and by creating an artificial appearance of support for PRC policies. Messengers use sophisticated A.I. -generated images to create the appearance of authenticity of fake user profiles.  The PRC works to silence dissent by engaging in digital transnational repression, trolling, and cyberbullying. It floods conversations to drown out messages it perceives as unfavorable to its interests on search engines  and social media feeds, and to amplify Beijing’s preferred narratives on its treatment of Uyghurs.  Pro-PRC stakeholders flood information ecosystems with counternarratives, conspiracy theories, and unrelated news items to suppress narratives detailing PRC authorities’ atrocities in Xinjiang. Government social media accounts, PRC-affiliated media, private accounts, and bot clusters, likely all directed by PRC authorities, assist in this effort.

The PRC engages in a tactic decribed as “astroturfing ,” which is a coordinated campaign of inauthentic posts to create the illusion of widespread grassroots support for a policy, individual, or viewpoint, when no such widespread support exists.  Similar to flooding, the PRC uses astroturfing to inundate the information space with “positive stories ” about Xinjiang and the Uyghur population, including manufactured depictions of Uyghurs living “simple happy lives,” as well as posts emphasizing the purported economic gains that the PRC’s policies have brought to Xinjiang.  In mid-2021, more than 300 pro-PRC inauthentic accounts posted thousands of videos of Uyghurs seeming to deny abuse in the region and claiming they were “very free.” These videos claimed to show widespread disagreement throughout Xinjiang with claims in international media that Uyghurs were oppressed.  However, according to the New York Times  and ProPublica , propaganda officials in Xinjiang created most of these videos, which first appeared on PRC-based platforms and then spread to YouTube and Twitter, in order to manipulate public opinion.

The Chinese Communist Party is also engaging in false and misleading tactics against its own population. Radio Free Asia reports that Beijing is stepping up propaganda and censorship efforts ahead of its 20th national congress, “tightening control of domestic internet users and spreading its official narrative overseas. The country’s powerful Cyberspace Administration said it had recently shut down 1.34 billion social media accounts and deleted 22 million posts. Officials told a news conference they had also investigated more than five million accounts delivering paid comments, banning some 450,000 chat groups and forums.”

The US space agency has spent a long time designing, developing, building, and testing the Space Launch System rocket. When NASA created the rocket program in 2010, US legislators said the SLS booster should be ready to launch in 2016.

Of course, that launch target and many others have come and gone, in part due to budget cuts during the Obama Administration/ But now, after more than a decade and more than $20 billion in funding, NASA and its litany of contractors are very close to declaring the 111-meter tall rocket ready for its debut launch.

On June 20, NASA successfully counted the rocket down to T-29 seconds during a pre-launch fueling test. Although they did not reach T-9 seconds, as was the original goal, the agency’s engineers collected enough data to satisfy the requisite information to proceed toward a launch.

Inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, technicians continue to prepare the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft for Artemis I.  

During work to repair the source of a hydrogen leak, engineers identified a loose fitting on the inside wall of the rocket’s engine section, where the quick disconnect for the liquid hydrogen umbilical attaches. The component, called a “collet,” is a fist-sized ring that guides the quick disconnect during assembly operations. Teams will repair the collet by entering the engine section in parallel with other planned work for launch preparations. Technicians have replaced the seals on the quick disconnect of the tail service mast umbilical and will reattach the umbilical plate once the loose collet is addressed.  

AS THIS ARTICLE WENT TO PRESS THIS MORNING, NASA WAS PREPARING TO LAUNCH ARTEMIS.

Technicians continue work associated with battery activations, and plan to turn on the core stage batteries this weekend, before they are installed on the rocket. Next up, teams will start the flight termination systems operations, which include removing the core stage and booster safe and arm devices for calibration and removing and replacing the command receiver decoders with the flight units. The safe and arm devices are a manual mechanism that put the flight termination system in either a “safe” or “arm” configuration while the command receiver decoders receive and decode the command on the rocket if the system is activated. 

Meanwhile on the Orion spacecraft, teams installed a technology demonstration that will test digital assistance and video collaboration in deep space. Engineers are also conducting powered testing on the crew module and European service module heaters and sensors.  

Teams have identified placeholder dates for potential launch opportunities. They include: 

• Aug. 29 at 8:33 a.m. EDT (Two-hour launch window); Landing Oct. 10 
  • Sept. 2 at 12:48 p.m. (Two-hour launch window); Landing Oct. 11 
  • Sept. 5 at 5:12 p.m. (90-minute launch window); Landing Oct. 17 

Technicians now are testing the newly replaced seals on the quick disconnect of the tail service mast umbilical to ensure there are no additional leaks. The seals were replaced to address a hydrogen leak during the final wet dress rehearsal in June. Following testing, teams will complete closeouts to ready that section for flight.  

Engineers are also finishing installation of the flight batteries. Teams installed the batteries for the solid rocket boosters and interim cryogenic propulsion stage this week and will install the core stage batteries next week.  

On Orion, technicians installed Commander Moonikin Campos, who is one of three “passengers” flying aboard Orion to test the spacecraft’s systems.  Commander Campos’s crew mates, Helga and Zohar, will be installed in the coming weeks.  

In what is being viewed as a blatant effort to court voters ahead of the midterm elections, President Joe Biden has finally announced his long-anticipated plan to cancel student debt. 

Described in a tweet as “a plan to give working and middle class families breathing room as they prepare to resume federal student loan payments in January 2023…Pell Grant recipients can (now) qualify for up to $20,000 in debt forgiveness as part of Wednesday’s broader announcement on student loan forgiveness. Other student loan borrowers who don’t have Pell Grants will still have loans forgiven up to $10,000, as has been previously reported. Both forgiveness options are for people who earn less than $125,000 per year, or $250,000 as a household.” 

Naturally, many people (including this writer) paid off the loans we used to pay for our education by devoting a portion of our salary and other financial resources to the repayment of those loans.  For us, the words of Michael MacDowell in the News-Press resonate strongly; “Those who sacrificed to pay off their student loans are not happy with President Biden’s plan to forgive remaining student loans…all  American taxpayers will cover the cost of loan forgiveness through higher taxes. Americans will pay for this misguided policy in another way as well because loan forgiveness dollars will stimulate the economy causing further inflation…(f)orgiving student loans will only exacerbate income inequality because those college graduates are having their debts paid with the tax dollars from those who did not attend college. Senator Tom Cotton summed it up best when he asked, ‘Why should a trucker who didn’t go to college have to pay off a lawyer’s student loan debt?’” 

Beyond these practical objections is another, more basic legal question – Is Biden empowered to do this?  Does he have the authority to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars in private debt to the public with the use of his pen?

According to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), “People think that the President of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness. He does not.  He can postpone. He can delay. But he does not have that power. That has to be an act of Congress.”  But according to law professor John Brooks of Fordham University, “The president has some pretty broad authority under the Higher Education Act…the president through the secretary of education does have the power to adjust the amount of loan principle that any borrower has.”

This would not be the first time the Biden Administration exceeded its Constitutional authority and acted unlawfully.  We have detailed several instances where the US Supreme Court reversed various Presidential initiatives on the grounds that Congress did not delegate power to the President’s Secretaries to act.  For instance, in National Federation of Independent Business v. Department of Labor, “the Court found that the Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) did not have the authority to mandate that private employers with more than 100 employees must require their employees to receive the Covid-19 vaccine.” 

Then, in May of this year, a Federal District Court Judge in Florida found that the Center for Disease Control (CDC) did not have the authority to mandate masks for travelers on public transportation, including airplanes. 

Here however, the question of the authority of the Secretary of Education may be more open to interpretation.

Under Title IV of the Higher Education Act (HEA), first signed into law in 1965 as part of Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society,” “nine parts (of Title IV) authorize a broad array of programs and provisions to assist students and their families in gaining access to and financing a postsecondary education. The programs authorized under this title are the primary sources of federal aid to support postsecondary education.”  These programs include “the Federal Pell Grant program, which is the single largest source of grant aid for postsecondary education attendance funded by the federal government,” and the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFEL), which consists of “several types of federal student loans to assist individuals in financing the costs of a postsecondary education; those loans included Subsidized Stafford Loans and Unsubsidized Stafford Loans for undergraduate and graduate and professional students, PLUS Loans for graduate and professional students and the parents of dependent undergraduate students, and Consolidation Loans.”

“Under the FFEL program, loans were originated by private sector and state-based lenders and were funded with nonfederal capital. The federal government guaranteed lenders against loss due to borrower default, permanent disability, or, in limited circumstances, bankruptcy,” however, the FFEL loans program was terminated in 2010.  Instead, “Title IV (now) authorizes the Direct Loan program, which is the primary source of federal student loans…(u)nder the program, the federal government lends directly to students using federal capital. While the government owns the loans, loan origination and servicing is performed by federal contractors.” 

What happened in 2010?

“President Obama…signed into law the final piece of the health care puzzle, which mandates sweeping changes in the way the nation provides health care and makes the federal government the primary distributor of student loans… the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010…ends the current program that subsidizes banks and other financial institutions for issuing loans, instead allowing students to borrow directly from the federal government.”

The Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 was an attempt to make changes to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (more popularly known as “Obamacare“) through the use of a “reconciliation” bill – that is,  “a special legislative process…to quickly advance high-priority fiscal legislation. Created by the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, reconciliation allows for expedited consideration of certain tax, spending, and debt limit legislation. In the Senate, reconciliation bills aren’t subject to filibuster and the scope of amendments is limited, giving this process real advantages for enacting controversial budget and tax measures.” 

It is important to note that the 2010 bill had some provisions for forgiveness of loans; “As part of the expanded income-based repayment plan, new borrowers who assume loans after July 1, 2014, will be able to cap their student loan repayments at 10 percent of their discretionary income and, if they keep up with their payments over time, will have the balance forgiven after 20 years. Public service workers such as teachers, nurses, and those in military service will see any remaining debt forgiven after just 10 years.”

The law also gives the Secretary of Education very broad authority to “cover” a student borrower’s default at taxpayer expense – for instance, at 20 USC 1078, “The Secretary may enter into a guaranty agreement with any guaranty agency, whereby the Secretary shall undertake to reimburse it, under such terms and conditions as the Secretary may establish, with respect to losses (resulting from the default of the student borrower) on the unpaid balance of the principal and accrued interest of any insured loan. The guaranty agency shall be deemed to have a contractual right against the United States, during the life of such loan, to receive reimbursement according to the provisions of this subsection.” 

With this history, one would think the Biden Administration would argue that that over the course of 50 years, Congress has granted the Secretary of Education increased power over student loans, including control over loan extensions and forgiveness, and that this latest initiative is nothing new in the increasing burden the Department of Education has placed on the American taxpayer.

Instead, what argument does the Biden Administration use to justify their actions?

“The Justice Department issued a…legal opinion contending the Education Secretary had power under the 2003 HEROES Act ‘to reduce or eliminate the obligation to repay the principal balance of federal student loan debt, including on a class-wide basis in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, provided all other requirements of the statute are satisfied.’” 

The 2003 Heroes Act?

According to the memorandum, “The Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003…vests the Secretary of Education…with expansive authority to alleviate the hardship that federal student loan recipients may suffer as a result of national emergencies…(i)n 2020, the Secretary invoked this authority in response to the COVID-19 pandemic to suspend the repayment obligation and to waive interest payments on student loans for every borrower in the United States with a loan held by the federal government…(y)ou have asked whether the HEROES Act authorizes the Secretary to address the financial hardship arising out of the COVID -19 pandemic by reducing or canceling the principal balances of student loans for a broad class of borrowers. We conclude that the Act grants that authority.” 

To be fair, the memorandum does discuss the Secretary’s powers under Title IV of the Higher Education Act.  But is pretty clear that the Biden Administration intends to invoke its authority to act in an emergency as the basis for its sweeping student loan forgiveness plan.

Will this broad exercise of power be upheld by the Courts?  Let us give the final word on the issue to Jonathan Turley, Law Professor at George Washington University; “While the Biden Administration might have some early success with a lower court judge, it will face a chilly reception on the Supreme Court…President Biden has been a constitutional recidivist in executive overreach in a series of major court losses.  The authority cited is highly challengeable. To assume such a massive power to excuse as much as $500 billion, that authority should be both express and clear. It is not.”

Judge John Wilson (ret.) served on the bench in NYC.

While kinetic warfare is raging in Ukraine, China is conducting a different type of warfare from inside corridors of nondescript government office buildings in cities around the country. Beijing uses sophisticated messaging tactics to “drown out critical narratives by both flooding the international information environment to limit access to content that contradicts Beijing’s official line, and by creating an artificial appearance of support for PRC policies,” according to a State Department report released on Thursday. China is actively manipulating and attempting to dominate global discourse on sensitive issues that include the Uyghur population in Xinjiang, Taiwan independence, Russia’s war in Ukraine, and the United States, in general. One of its most egregious campaigns involves discrediting independent sources reporting on the Uyghur genocide and China’s other crimes against humanity. Beijing seeks to amplify its preferred narrative on Xinjiang by employing sophisticated AI-generated images to create the appearance of authenticity of fake user profiles. The reports notes that Beijing works to silence dissent by “engaging in digital transnational repression, trolling, and cyberbullying.” 

It floods conversations to drown out messages it perceives as unfavorable to its interests on search engines and in social media feeds. By flooding information ecosystems with counternarratives, conspiracy theories, and unrelated news items Beijing can effectively  suppress narratives detailing its atrocities in Xinjiang. It is so successful that many people don’t question Beijing’s “astroturfing,” or “inauthentic posts,” to create the false illusion of widespread grassroots support.  The State Department points to positive stories manufactured by the government about Xinjiang and the Uyghur population, claiming the people there live “simple happy lives” and have experienced economic gains due to CCP policies. It says that in mid-2021, more than 300 pro-PRC inauthentic accounts posted thousands of videos of Uyghurs appearing to deny abuse in the region and claiming they were “very free.” The NY Times says that officials in Xinjiang created pro-Beijing videos, which first appeared on PRC-based platforms and then spread to YouTube and Twitter, in order to manipulate public opinion.

Increasingly sophisticated tools create composite images that cannot be traced using a reverse image search, making it harder to determine whether the account is inauthentic, according to the report.  It adds that some of the accounts consistently denied China’s atrocities in Xinjiang and falsely asserted that the body of overwhelming and objective independent evidence of the atrocities is simply a fabrication of the United States and its allies.

Trolling campaigns aimed at the Chinese diaspora communities harass them into silence and self-censorship. Beijing poisons the information highway with bad-faith arguments. “Trolling campaigns frequently evolve into threats of death, rape, or assault; malicious cyber-attacks,” according to the State Department’s Global Engagement Center. The most aggressive PRC “messengers,” according to the report, often go on the offensive, creating “false equivalencies” with the actions of other countries to distract from international criticism of PRC behavior. China denies claims made by independent media outlets and internationally renowned think tanks. When accused of subjecting the Uyghurs to forced labor, it inundates its diplomatic accounts and CCP-affiliated media with suspected bot networks about the mechanized cotton harvesting process in Xinjiang, suggesting that the Xinjiang cotton industry has no need for forced labor.  This type of messaging allows Beijing to avoid responding to reports regarding the authorities’ transfer of an estimated 100,000 Uyghurs out of Xinjiang in what the State Department calls “coercive labor placements,” or factories, elsewhere in the PRC. Stories coming out of the government falsely refer to a multicultural society living in harmony. They  stand in contrast to the reality of Beijing’s extensive surveillance of the Uyghurs, which includes Chinese CCP officials living in Uyghur homes for at least six weeks a year despite Uyghur objections.

“Despite these efforts to distract from the situation in Xinjiang, independent media outlets, academics, and human rights activists have published multiple eyewitness accounts and verifiable data that the PRC has imprisoned  an estimated one million people and that credible evidence exists of torture, forced   sterilization, and other abuses,” the report says. China’s is waging a major AI information war. Analytics firm Miburo Solutions identified more than “200 third-country influencers  affiliated with PRC state media creating social media content in at least 38 languages, including English, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Russian with an average reach of 309,000 followers.”  It found that the Chinese government uses influencers to advance its narratives regarding Xinjiang by obscuring state media employees’ affiliations and by orchestrating pro-PRC Western influencers’ tours of Xinjiang. It also uses false fact sheets to claim that the Uyghur internment camps are vocational education and training centers that “fully guaranteed the trainees’ personal freedom and dignity.” Amnesty International has published first-hand accounts calling China’s allegation false, saying that the minority population is subject to regular interrogation, torture, and other mistreatment. 

In 2022 China is reaching out to influencers around the western world to get help in reaching young international audiences who can be more easily inculcated into China’s insidious misinformation and propaganda campaigns. The State Department report is a long-overdue step in outing the CCP’s methods of operation.

Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.

Illustration: Pixabay

Independence Day in Ukraine falls on August 24^th each year. Today marks the 31^st anniversary of when Ukraine voted to break with the former Soviet Union. It also falls exactly six months into a lethal war with Russia. The day was marred by explosions, death, and more destruction inside Ukraine as Russian forces bombed a train station killing at least 22 individuals and the day is not yet over in Ukraine. In an emotional speech deliver by President Volodymyr Zelensky, he called for Ukrainians to fight for their freedom rather than simply voting for it at the ballot box. “A new nation emerged on February 24 at 4 am. Not born, but reborn. A nation that didn’t cry, didn’t scream, didn’t get scared. Didn’t run away. Didn’t give up. Didn’t forget,” he said.

Although Putin is fighting a protracted war on the Russia’s western border area in Ukraine, all is not quiet on Russia’s eastern front. Just one day prior to Ukraine’s Independence Day Russia sailed 14 of its Navy ships through the La Perouse Strait from the Western Pacific Ocean into the Sea of Japan, according to Dzirhan Mahadzir of USNI News. The move was designed to unnerve Japan. The La Perouse Strait is an international waterway dividing Russia’s Sakhalin island from Japan’s Hokkaido island. The ships included a destroyer, fast attack craft, missile range instrumentation and  hospital ships, among others. According to Japan’s Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi, Japan asked Russia late last month not to traverse the waterway in anticipation of the Vostok-2022 strategic military exercise that runs from August 30 to September 5. Russia didn’t listen.

Back home in Moscow, Putin’s disinformation forces are hard at work creating a monkeypox narrative, in a reprise of the previous campaign to link the Covid virus to alleged US biolab operations. Foreign Policy magazine’s Ivana Stradner reports that “Russian Duma Deputy Chair Irina Yarovaya echoed the Kremlin’s latest conspiracy theory earlier this month when she called on the World Health Organization to lead an investigation into “the secrets of the US military biolaboratories.” Stradner calls it a “textbook Kremlin information operation.”

East, west, or inside the Russian Federation, Putin is not letting up or bypassing any opportunity to destabilize the global environment. What concerns several military analysts in Washington more than Russia’s flotilla off Japan or its recent disinformation campaigns is the possibility that Putin could decide to damage the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant located only four miles from the city of Nikopol in southern Ukraine. On March 4 Russian military forces captured the plant and have held it since that time. UN Secretary-General António Guterres earlier this month said: “Any attack to nuclear plants is … suicidal,” and called for the plant to be demilitarized. Of the 11,000 regularly employed at the facility, 1,100 have been taken hostage by Russian forces. Ukrainian engineers are being tortured and forced to work at gunpoint to keep the operation running according to Petro Kotin, president of Energoatom, Ukraine’s nuclear power utility. It appears that Putin intends to remove the power plant from Ukraine’s electric grid in an attempt to further destroy the country. It delivers 50% of Ukraine’s power requirements and is the largest plant in Europe. 

Secretary of State Tony Blinken says that Putin is using the plant strategically as a form of protection — shielding troops, weapons and ammunition. And, in doing this, Russia has stopped Ukraine from damaging its stock and soldiers on the assumption that an attack would cause a meltdown or nuclear disaster. “Of course the Ukrainians cannot fire back lest there be a terrible accident involving the nuclear plant,”, adding that Russia isn’t creating a “human shield,” but rather a “nuclear shield.” Earlier this week, Rafael Grossi, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is under the UN, urged Ukraine and Russia to allow experts to visit the site in an effort to prevent a nuclear accident. The IAEA reports it was told it could visit the plant “within the next few days” if the talks succeed. If the political-military situation is not stabilized and an errant shell hits the plant, it could result in a major leak of radioactive material. Once released into the atmosphere it could contaminate a wide swath of Europe, including Poland, with a population of over 38 million. In May the BBC posed the question, what does Vladimir Putin want? Today the question has morphed into what is he going to do next?

Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.