Ecological hotspot under geopolitical fire

China's construction of man-made islands and other military facilities has devastated coral reefs and marine life in the South China Sea

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By DAN SOUTHERLAND

Despite seemingly positive negotiations with Vietnam early this year, China has been challenging its Southeast Asian neighbor through new moves in the South China Sea. These include the construction of Chinese military facilities on man-made islands in contested waters.

While the security implications of the military build-up have been widely noted, less examined has been the damage caused to the marine environment, including vital coral reefs and other features.

The Spratly Islands in particular – claimed by both China and Vietnam – are recognized as a “biodiversity hotspot”, whose coral reefs protect young fish and other maritime species from predators and help to replenish fish stocks that are a crucial source of food for millions of people.

Ecologists have estimated there are as many as 600 coral reef species and 3,000 fish species in the island chain. Because of the territorial disputes, among other factors, scientific literature on the underwater ecoregion is limited.

Studies done by John McManus, a marine ecologist at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School, show that Chinese island-building in the disputed Spratlys has resulted in the destruction of nearly 3,000 acres of coral reefs.

His research in 2016, in collaboration with others, estimates that the dredging required to create artificial islands on South China Sea atolls risks causing “irreversible damages” to “unique coral reef ecosystems.”

The academic study said the atolls serve as “safe harbor” for some of the least viable populations of highly threatened species and that the dredging threatens to push many aquatic species to “extinction.”

Other claimant nations have also destroyed coral reefs in the South China Sea. But scientists and other researchers say that the environmental destruction caused by Chinese dredging to create artificial islands is much more widespread than other claimants’ actions.

A report released in May last year on the South China Sea by the Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI), which is associated with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, concluded, among other things, that Vietnam’s island-building in the Spratly Islands was on a much smaller scale than that undertaken by China.

Its researchers estimated that the “new land” created by Vietnam came to 120 acres, a small fraction of that created by China.

The AMTI examination also said that Vietnam’s work in the Spratlys on the 10 islets and reefs that it occupies was also “far less environmentally destructive, as it has not involved large-scale dredging of the reefs on which Hanoi’s outposts sit.”

“Nevertheless,” it said, “Vietnam has ignored calls, including by US officials, to halt its island building in order to support a consensus against the practice.”

China’s recent negotiations with Vietnam have offered some hope for better maritime management. During a visit to Beijing in early January, Nguyen Phu Trong, Vietnam’s Communist Party General Secretary, signed 15 agreements dealing among other things with economic cooperation, defense relations and tourism.

Environmental cooperation was also on the agenda, but details of the discussions were not made publicly available. Anti-Chinese feelings are widespread in Vietnam, and tensions over disputed fishing grounds in the South China Sea have been a constant thorn in bilateral relations.

Murray Hiebert, a Vietnam expert and deputy director of the Southeast Asia program for CSIS, says that “everyone knows that the Vietnamese have to find a way to live next to China, but Vietnamese nationalism makes it necessary for them not to let China roll over them.”

Threatening moves 

China has tried every year since 1999 to impose a fishing ban north of the Spratly Islands, enforced maritime militia vessels back by their coast guard and apparently to preserve fish stocks and prevent illegal fishing. But Vietnam regards these bans as attempts to intrude on its sovereignty.

Bill Hayton, the author of a book on the struggle for power in the South China Sea, said “while the ban itself might make sound conservation sense, its annual unilateral imposition has prevented other countries from joining it because they fear that acquiescence could be interpreted as recognition of Chinese sovereignty.”

This has in the past contributed to clashes between Chinese vessels and Vietnamese fishing boats, most often around the Paracel Islands.

In February, China’s agriculture ministry, as expected, announced a fishing ban, including several areas claimed by the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam that would last from May 1 to August 16. The Vietnamese Foreign Ministry strongly objected to the ban, which it described as “unilateral.”

In the meantime, recent developments on China’s man-made islands in the Spratlys have threatened Sino-Vietnamese cooperation even more.The Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative issued a report on March 27 saying that China has now reached a new stage in the construction of military facilities on several of its artificial islands.

China is concluding major military construction in the Spratly Islands on what are known to some experts as the “Big 3”—Subi, Mischief, and Fiery Cross Reefs, facilities which AMTI has tracked through satellite photography for nearly two years. The construction includes runways, hangars, and radar.

Together with an air base in the Paracels, this will allow China’s combat aircraft to operate over “nearly the entire South China Sea,” according to the AMTI report.

This would appear to leave little room for cooperation between China and Vietnam on preserving the environment on and around the Spratlys—except on China’s terms.

China occupies seven atolls in the Spratlys. Other claimants to islets, reefs or cays in the group include the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan. China claims the Spratly Islands outright by historic right.

But Vietnam has the largest presence, with troops occupying more than 20 reefs or islets. Clashes appear possible, whereas an all-out war seems unlikely.

But as marine ecologist McManus says, “once substantial armed conflicts have begun, it will be very difficult to achieve the level of international cooperation…needed to halt the decline in these valuable marine resources.”

A climate of lies: Denialism goes wider, and weirder, as Trump amplifies Republican mendacity

Climate-change denialists were already terrible, but they've grown bolder and more bizarre in the age of Trump

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By AMANDA MARCOTTE

Perhaps the best way to understand the presidency of Donald Trump is to recognize that he’s building on and advancing the already advanced authoritarian tendencies of the Republican Party. Nowhere is this more obvious than when it comes to climate change denial.  Even before Trump was elected, a whopping 84 percent of the conservative Republicans polled by Pew Research refused to accept that climate change is real and caused by human activity, and even 65 percent of the moderate Republicans surveyed rejected the facts.

Make no mistake: Climate-change denial is a straight-up conspiracy theory. To reject the scientific consensus necessarily means believing that climate scientists around the world are lying to the public for some nefarious purpose. And with an avid conspiracy theorist like Trump in the White House, Republican politicians are just becoming bolder in their widespread policy of denial.

On Wednesday Rep. Lamar Smith, the climate-change denialist who chairs the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, ridiculed one of the foremost peer-reviewed scientific journals in the world, Science.

“That is not known as an objective writer or magazine,” Smith said, dismissing testimony given by climate scientist Michael Mann, who referenced a recent article by Jeffrey Mervis in the publication.

The best part? Smith wasn’t even disputing claims about climate science. He was trying to discredit reporting that quoted him directly. Here’s the exchange in full:

Michael Mann: [Smith] indicated at this conference that he, according to Science, and I am quoting from them, he sees his role in this committee as a tool to advance his political agenda rather than a forum to examine important issues facing the U.S. research community, as a scientists I find this deeply disturbing.

Rep. Lamar Smith: Who said that?

Mann: This is according to Science magazine, one of the most respected outlets when it comes to science . . .

Smith: Who are they quoting?

Mann: This is the author, Jeffrey Mervis.

Smith: That is not known as an objective writer or magazine.

Here is an excerpt from Mervis’ piece, on which Smith was trying to cast doubt:

“Next week we’re going to have a hearing on our favorite subject of climate change and also on the scientific method, which has been repeatedly ignored by the so-called self-professed climate scientists,” Smith told the Heartland Institute’s 12th annual conference on climate change in Washington, D.C. . . .

Then boos filled the ballroom of the Grand Hyatt hotel in downtown Washington, D.C., after Smith mentioned the fourth witness — Michael Mann, a climate researcher at Pennsylvania State University in State College and a frequent target of climate change doubters. “That’s why this hearing is going to be so much fun,” Smith said with a huge grin on his normally impassive face.

I’ve quoted that at length to make clear that Smith was not objecting to a scientific theory or finding but rather a description of his own behavior that was witnessed by more than one reporter and caught on tape.

But with Trump in the White House, it’s no surprise that other Republicans feel emboldened in their dishonesty, denying not just scientific data or research but even their own words. Denying something he’s been caught saying on tape is a common habit of Trump, after all.

All this suggests why conspiracy theories like climate-change denial are closely tied to authoritarianism. Yes, people of all political stripes can become caught up in conspiracy theories and hoaxes. But authoritarians are particularly prone to denying even obvious facts, because of the nature of their ideology. To the authoritarian, “truth” does not flow from empirical or verifiable reality but instead is determined by those whom the authoritarians deems to be the proper leaders. (Usually a self-appointed designation.) Reality is what Smith or Trump or whatever Republican demagogue says it is, not your videotapes or scientific evidence.

This, in turn, helps explain the fact that befuddles many journalists: Trump supporters will eagerly endorse Trump’s lies, even when they clearly know he is lying. Take, for instance, this amazing clip in which CNN’s Alisyn Camerota keeps going around and around with Trump voters about their belief that millions of people voted illegally. What quickly becomes clear is that they know that “millions” is not a reality-based statistic, but they insist on believing this anyway. “True” is whatever Dear Leader says is true and has no relationship to actual evidence.

All of which is to say we’ve only just entered this fun house of mirrors where Republicans boldly make stuff up and don’t really care if it meets your reality-based version of truth. Things are probably just going to become weirder from here.

Take, for instance, this amazing story from Pennsylvania, where state Sen. Scott Wagner — who likes to say “Donald Trump is a visionary and he’s a leader” and who is hoping to be the Republican nominee for governor — got downright trippy with the climate-change denial, according to NPR’s StateImpact:

“I haven’t been in a science class in a long time, but the earth moves closer to the sun every year – you know, the rotation of the earth,” Wagner said in an event organized for county commissioners opposed to natural gas drilling regulations. “We’re moving closer to the sun.”

That bears no relationship to reality. In fact, the Earth’s orbit (which is what Wagner probably meant by “rotation”) is literally what keeps it from plummeting toward the Sun. But that’s just centuries-old knowledge, demonstrated through mathematics and observation, so not relevant in our age of Trumpism.

“We have more people,” Wagner added, continuing his imaginative foray into science. “You know, humans have warm bodies. So is heat coming off? Things are changing, but I think we are, as a society, doing the best we can.”

The only truly surprising thing is that Wagner didn’t get even more creative, while he was just making stuff up. Blame climate change on women having too much sex! Or Barack Obama’s affection for Islam! In Trump’s America, there’s really no need to worry about sounding plausible when you spin outrageous lies.

What Happens to a Country Whose Leader Can't Say 'I'm Sorry'

He’s spent a lifetime banging his highchair and blaming the dog for his mess.

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By Marty Kaplan

“I blame myself—it was my fault, and I take full responsibility for it,” Donald Trump never said, not once in his entire life.

Here’s what else the president didn’t say about the rout and ruin of repeal and replace: “I was clueless about health care policy. Instead of reading my briefing books or even my own bill, I played golf. I bullshitted my way through every meeting and phone call. And when it was explained to me that this dumpster fire of a bill would break my promise that everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they are now, which was a huge applause line by the way, I threw my own voters under the bus.”  

In the wake of his Waterloo, instead of manning up, Trump blamed Democrats for not voting to strip health insurance from 24 million people, not voting to cut Medicaid by $880 billion in order to cut taxes by $883 billion and not voting to obliterate the signature legislative accomplishment of the Barack Obama years.

“Look,” he complained with crocodile bafflement to the New York Times, “we got no Democratic votes. We got none, zero.” Yet Trump and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan had not asked a single Democrat what it would take to get them to support a health care bill. “The good news,” Trump said, seeing the sunny side of the catastrophe he predicts is coming, is that the Democrats “now own Obamacare.” Don’t blame me—it’ll be their fault when it explodes, not mine.

Trump blamed Republicans, too. The morning of Friday, March 24, when the bill was still in play, he tweeted that if the Freedom Caucus stops his plan, they would be allowing Planned Parenthood to continue. That afternoon, amid the wreckage, Trump told the Washington Post’s Robert Costa he was just an innocent bystander. “There are years of problems, great hatred and distrust” in the Republican Party, “and, you know, I came into the middle of it.”

White House aides, bravely speaking without attribution, blamed Ryan for snookering the rookie-in-chief into tackling Obamacare before tax reform. Trump himself told Costa, “I don’t blame Paul.” He repeated it: “I don’t blame Paul.” Then again: “I don’t blame Paul at all.”

The laddie doth protest too much, methinks. By tweet time Saturday morning, clairvoyantly touting Jeanine Pirro’s Saturday night Fox News show, Trump had found a surrogate to stick the knife in Ryan without his fingerprints on it. “This is not on President Trump,” Pirro said, avowing that “no one expected a businessman,” a "complete outsider,” to understand “the complicated ins and outs of Washington.” No, it’s on Ryan, she said. Ryan must step down.

Blame precedes politics. In Western civilization’s genesis story, Adam blamed Eve for tempting him, and he blamed God for Eve. But America’s genesis story contains a noble, if apocryphal, counter-narrative: When George Washington’s father asked him who chopped down the cherry tree, the future father of his country didn’t blame someone else—he copped to it. That’s the legacy Harry Truman claimed when he put “The buck stops here” sign on his Oval Office desk.

But Trump is the consummate blame artist, a buck-passer on a sociopathic scale. He kicked off his campaign by blaming Mexico for sending us rapists and stealing our jobs. He blamed Hillary Clinton for founding the birther movement. He blamed President Obama for founding ISIS. He blamed Obama’s Labor Department for publishing a “phony” unemployment rate. He blamed 3 million illegal voters for his losing the popular vote to Clinton. He blamed the botched raid in Yemen on U.S. generals. When U.S. District Judge James Robart ruled against his Muslim travel ban, he blamed Robart for future terrorism: “If something happens, blame him and the court system.” He blamed “fake news” for treating Michael Flynn, “a wonderful man” he had fired as his national security adviser, “very, very unfairly.” He blamed Obama for wiretapping Trump Tower. He made his spokesman blame British intelligence for carrying that out. When GCHQ called that a crock, Trump played artful dodger: “All we did was quote … a very talented lawyer on Fox. And so you shouldn’t be talking to me, you should be talking to Fox.”

Obamacare is imperfect but fixable. But Trump wants to bomb it, not improve it. He wants to light the fuse and then blame Democrats for exploding it. Trump could shore up the insurance exchanges that cover 10 million Americans by marketing them when enrollment opens again in November—but I bet he won’t. He could instruct government lawyers to appeal a lawsuit halting federal subsidies for co-payments and deductibles of low-income enrollees that House Republicans won last year—but I bet he won’t. On the other hand, he has the power to narrow the essential benefits Obamacare requires insurers to provide by, say, limiting prescription drug coverage and lowering the number of visits allowed for mental health treatment or physical therapy—and I bet he will.

Will Trump get away with it? He’s spent a lifetime banging his highchair and blaming the dog for his mess. No wonder he calls the free press fake news; no wonder he calls citizen activists paid protesters. You call someone who gets away with blaming others “unaccountable.” You know what the antonym of that is? Impeachable.

Trump Appeals Hawaii Judge’s Ruling That Stopped Travel Ban

The administration will go before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in an attempt to overturn Judge Derrick Watson.

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By Rui Kaneya

The Trump administration filed a notice Thursday to appeal U.S. District Court Judge Derrick Watson’s nationwide stay against the president’s revised executive order on immigration.

The appeal follows Watson’s decision Wednesday to turn his temporary restraining order into a preliminary injunction, which indefinitely blocks key parts of the travel ban.

With the case now before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, the administration will be fighting to reinstate the revised order in two appellate courts on opposite ends of the country.

Two weeks ago, the administration appealed U.S. District Court Judge Theodore Chuang’s ruling against the travel ban to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia.

Both Watson and Chuang ruled against the revised order on the basis that it ran afoul of the First Amendment’s establishment clause, citing Trump’s campaign promises of a “Muslim ban” as proof of the ban’s “religious animus.”

Chuang’s ruling is narrower in scope, blocking only one provision in the travel ban that would temporarily halt the issuance of new visas to citizens of six Muslim-majority countries.

Watson’s ruling covers another provision in the revised order that suspends refugee resettlements.

On Thursday, the Justice Department told CNN in a statement that it “strongly disagrees” with Watson’s ruling: “The president’s executive order falls squarely within his lawful authority in seeking to protect our nation’s security, and the department will continue to defend this executive order in the courts.”

But the administration will have to try its luck again in the 9th Circuit, where a three-judge panel voted unanimously in February to uphold an injunction issued by a federal judge in Seattle against the original travel ban.

It’s unclear whether the same panel will hear the administration’s appeal this time. Under the 9th Circuit’s rules, it could — so long as the appeal “relates to a previously resolved and no longer pending appeal.”

At least one of the parties would have to request the same panel, and its judges would have to agree to take up the case.

Joshua Wisch, special assistant to Hawaii Attorney General Doug Chin, declined to comment on the appeal Thursday.

Bad Hombres? Doctors, Green Card Applicants Targeted by Trump

Neurologists and people scheduled for green card interviews are among the latest targets of Trump's deportation regime.

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President Donald Trump's war on immigrants apparently makes no distinction between documented and undocumented. If you are an immigrant, you are in his crosshairs.

On Wednesday, five people were detained as they made their way to scheduled appointments with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in Lawrence, Massachusetts, about 30 miles from Boston. According to local public radio station WBUR, at least three of those arrested were attempting to begin the process of becoming legal permanent residents.

According to ICE, two of the five entirely lacked a criminal history while the rest had a few traffic tickets — or, in the harrowing words of an ICE spokesman, “multiple traffic violations.”

ICE claims that they were responding to an “investigative tip” when they arrested the five. "All five individuals have final orders of removal issued by a federal immigration judge. All five will be held in custody pending removal from the United States."

Speaking to WBUR, American Immigration Lawyers Association New England chapter chair Susan Church said, "What this means is that people who are eligible to obtain their green card in the United States, who are following the law, who are following the rules, who are doing what the government is instructing them to do, are going to be too terrified to show up and follow through with the process," while also noting that this will simply mean that new categories of people will be forced into “the shadow of immigration land … living in fear."

The next day in Houston, Texas, authorities notified two prominent neurologists at the children's hospital, Dr. Monika Ummat and Dr. Pankaj Satija, that they had 24 hours to leave the country due to minor technical errors in their immigration paperwork. A married couple from India who legally resided in the U.S. for over a decade, the two were denied temporary permission to remain in the country while the kinks in their paperwork were ironed out.

Checking in during a routine visit to a Customs and Border Protection office, the couple were informed that new memos issued by the White House meant a temporary reprieve was impossible. "Somebody up there has decided you have to leave the country in the next 24 hours," an agent told the couple.

"I have 50 patients today and 40 patients tomorrow," Dr. Satija, a founder of the Pain and Headache Centers of Texas, told the Houston Chronicle. "I'm just concerned they'll be left in a lurch. They could land up in the emergency room."

After considering temporarily deporting or temporarily incarcerating the two in a detention facility, CBP officials extended a temporary 90-day reprieve to the couple. The case caused local outrage.

Even under the Obama administration, immigration authorities targeted immigrants who lacked criminal convictions or who were found to have broken civil immigration laws. However, legal advocates feel that these recent cases represent a clear change in enforcement tactics under President Donald Trump's right-wing nationalist administration.

Gordon Quan, a lawyer representing the Houston doctors, said that the recent cases show the tortuous nature of legal immigration procedures as well as the brutal nature of the Trump administration.

"These are not tough decisions. These are not criminals, not a threat to society … It's just the rigidity of the system,” he said. “(And) instead of trying to work with people, the new administration is just trying to force them out, no matter what."

One in eight community college students in the United States are homeless

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By Bryan Dyne

A new study by the Wisconsin HOPE Lab has revealed that about half of community college students in the United States, which make up 46 percent college students in the country, do not have consistent housing and that 13 percent are homeless. In absolute terms, this means at least one million people trying to receive postsecondary education do not have a roof over their heads.

These results confirm and expand upon previous studies that have looked at college student homelessness, including earlier work by the HOPE Lab and studies done by the College and University Food Bank Alliance.

This estimate is an order of magnitude higher than the official homeless statistic of the US, which is 0.5 percent of the population, and more than twice the rate of youth aged 10-19 which face homelessness at least once during a year, which is just under five percent. It is also more than 29 times the official student homelessness rate recorded by the Federal Application for Student Aid (FAFSA), which is the only federal body that collects data on homeless students.

In order to clarify the disparity between the official statistics and the HOPE Lab survey, the World Socialist Web Site spoke to the Wisconsin HOPE Lab founder, Sara Goldrick-Rab. She noted that “The FAFSA is notorious for undercounting homeless students. First, students have to fill out the FAFSA, which many do not. Furthermore, since a homeless student counts as being financially independent, and thus is eligible for more money, FAFSA requires that they fill out a large amount of paperwork, essentially to prove that they are homeless. Since we just asked the students themselves, we captured a much better picture of the problem.

“Even our results, however, are undercounting the problem. Since it’s a voluntary survey, we are going to miss some people. We also do not count things like couch surfing as being homeless because that’s often considered something which college students just ‘do’. As a result, we include that in our housing insecurity statistics, which includes about half of all community college students.”

The latest HOPE Lab survey is the most widespread study of homelessness amongst college students and, according to the research done by the authors, is likely the only study that looks specifically at the plight of community college students.

One of the few comparable studies was done by the California State University (CSU) system, which included more students but only looked at California schools and achieved its estimates based on interviews with CSU staff, faculty and administrators rather than asking the students directly.

In contrast, the Wisconsin HOPE Lab sent a survey to more than 750,000 students across the country with a monetary incentive to garner participation. The final survey response was 33,934 students, making it the largest national study which focuses on food and housing insecurity among college students to date. While the nature of the study does not immediately lend itself to broad generalizations, the agreement between this study and all other studies looking at hunger and homelessness on US campuses suggests that the data collected do represent trends throughout all 50 states.

One thread which supports this hypothesis is that housing insecurity, which includes the inability to regularly pay utilities or rent or the need to move frequently as well as those without a permanent place to live, is not a problem isolated to urban or high-poverty community colleges but a largely uniform problem across the areas studied. Rural and urban community college students are equally likely to be housing insecure, but homelessness is actually higher for those students living in cities (15 percent) than those living in suburbs (14 percent), rural areas (11 percent) and small towns (9 percent).

Moreover, the data collected show that housing insecurity is unrelated to things like eligibility for Pell Grants or immigration status.

Of students ineligible for Pell Grants, 12 percent were homeless, compared to 16 percent for those who did receive a Pell Grant. The difference in homeless rates between US citizens and permanent residents was less than one percent. And while students who are African American or Hispanic both were overrepresented among homeless undergraduates in the study, the largest single racial category among homeless community college students in the study is non-Hispanic white.

Even the cost of attendance, which includes tuition as well as food, room and board, books, supplies and transportation, does not greatly affect the rates of housing insecurity. The community colleges studied with the lowest cost of attendance ($11,934 per year) had a housing insecurity rate of 50 percent while the most expensive colleges ($26,563 per year) had a housing insecurity rate of 46 percent.

The one factor that the study did find that impacts the homelessness rate is whether or not a given student was a former foster youth. Almost 30 percent of community college students among this demographic who were surveyed are homeless.

Similar to the previous studies, which looked primarily at the levels of hunger amongst college students, the current research shows that working or receiving financial aid does not alleviate the stress of finding adequate housing.

More than 40 percent of homeless students have a job, and more than half of those work between 20 and 40 hours per week. One-third of homeless students are receiving student loans. And, in another indicator of the financial distress among these students, one-sixth of homeless students are getting through college through credit card loans.

There is also little federal assistance for homeless students. To quote the report, “among students experiencing housing insecurity or even homelessness, less than 13 percent received any form of assistance with housing costs, and only about six percent got assistance with utilities. Even though 28 percent of students in this study have children, and of those 63 percent were food insecure and almost 13 percent were homeless, barely five percent received any child care assistance. Instead, the most common forms of support these students received were tax refunds (likely from the Earned Income Tax Credit) and Medicaid or public health insurance (e.g., via the Affordable Care Act).”

Arkansas pushes forward with plans to execute eight inmates in eleven days

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By Brad Dixon

The state of Arkansas is pushing forward with plans to execute eight death row inmates over the course of eleven days, two executions at a time, between April 17 and 27.

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson ordered the spree of executions on February 27 after learning that one of the drugs in the three-drug cocktail used in executions, midazolam, was set to expire at the end of April.

The scheduled executions of the death row inmates, four of whom are black and four white, will proceed with Don Davis and Bruce Ward on April 17, Ledelle Lee and Stacey Johnson on April 20, Marcell Williams and Jack Jones Junior on April 24, and Jason McGehee and Kenneth Williams on April 27.

“No state has attempted to carry out so many executions in such a short period of time,” Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), told KATV, an ABC affiliate in Little Rock. “We are seeing a state create an artificially constricted execution schedule in order to carry out executions by a ‘kill-by’ date—the date the drug expires.”

On Monday, lawyers for the eight death row inmates filed federal motions in US District Court to block the executions so that the court can hear the merits of the case. If the federal court does not grant an expedited hearing before the first execution date, attorneys will ask the Supreme Court to authorize a hearing.

Among the filings is a request to block the execution of Bruce Ward, whose attorneys say he is schizophrenic and mentally incompetent. “Since learning that Defendant Hutchinson had scheduled his execution for April 17, 2017, Mr. Ward has remained steadfast in his belief that he will walk out of prison,” said the filing, according to ABC News.

Another inmate, Stacey Johnson, is asking the state’s highest court to block his execution so that evidence from his trial can be retested.

“The rushed schedule appreciably increases the risk of harm to plaintiffs, falls far outside the bounds of modern penological practice, and disrespects the plaintiffs’ fundamental dignity—defects that all run against the Eighth Amendment’s protection,” the attorneys for the inmates argued in their request for a preliminary injunction, according to the Associated Press.

“The suit challenges the execution schedule,” Federal Public Defender John Williams, who represents three of the inmates, told NBC News. “It’s an unprecedented act and we think the pace of the schedule puts our clients at unnecessary risk.”

Governor Hutchinson announced the execution dates on February 27, giving defense attorneys less than two months to prepare.

“It is impossible to represent those clients and do the kind of work that needs to be done at the end of the process,” Dale Baich, an Arizona assistant federal defender, told NBC. “We had a situation here in Arizona where we had two clients scheduled a week apart, and we had to have two separate teams working on those cases.”

The Arkansas Parole Board recommended rejecting the clemency requests of the inmates on Monday, and rejected a third clemency request on Wednesday.

The executions, which have been on hold in Arkansas due to legal challenges and difficulties acquiring lethal injection drugs, will be the first in the state since the November 2005 execution of Eric Nance.

In a voice vote earlier this month, Arkansas lawmakers in the state legislature’s House Judiciary Committee rejected bills prohibiting the execution of individuals with severe mental illnesses and limiting death penalty sentences to cases where there is no doubt of guilt.

States have found it increasingly difficult to access drugs used for lethal injections since the European Commission banned their sale for this purpose in 2011 and 2012. This was followed by a boycott among American pharmaceutical companies.

In response, states have attempted to illegally import the drugs from overseas, or have turned to other execution methods such as the gas chamber, electric chair or firing squad. In January, Arizona’s Corrections Director Charles Ryan issued a new execution protocol that invited the lawyers of death row inmates to provide the drugs to be used to kill their clients.

One of the drugs that will be used to execute the Arkansas prisoners, midazolam, an unreliable sedative and anesthetic, has been responsible for a number of botched executions. In 2014, the use of midazolam in the executions of Dennis McGuire in Ohio, Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma and Joseph Wood in Arizona resulted in grisly and drawn-out executions, lasting between 25 minutes and nearly two hours, during which the inmates kicked and struggled, gasped for air, and writhed in pain.

Despite the gruesome results from the use of midazolam, states continue to employ it in lethal injection drug cocktails. The Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that the use of midazolam did not constitute cruel and unusual punishment.

The use of midazolam and the accelerated execution schedule for the eight Arkansas inmates, which will place even greater pressure on the staff responsible for carrying out the killings, guarantees further botched executions.

“You are just asking for something to go wrong—they are putting their team in a really difficult spot,” Jennifer Moreno, a staff attorney with the Berkeley Law Death Penalty Clinic, told The Guardian .

Not surprisingly, Arkansas is having difficulties finding enough volunteers to witness the executions. State law requires six to twelve “respectable citizens,” over the age of 21 with no felony criminal history and not related to the death row inmate or victim, to witness the execution and confirm compliance with state death penalty laws.

Seeking volunteers, the state’s Department of Corrections Director Wendy Kelley recently spoke to members of the Little Rock Rotary Club 99.

“You seem to be a group that does not have felony backgrounds and are over 21,” she told the members, according to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. “So if you’re interested in serving in that area, in this serious role, just call my office.”

According to the acting president of the Club, Bill Booker, members of the audience initially thought Kelley was joking. After a few uncomfortable laughs, it soon dawned on the audience that she was speaking seriously.

“What I suspect is that some people might support the death penalty, but when it comes to witnessing something like that, it’s a different story,” Booker told the Gazette. “It may cause emotional trauma for quite a while. It would be one of the most significant things you’ll ever see in your life.”

“I can’t imagine she will get a lot of volunteers,” Rotarian Charlotte Gadberry told the Gazette. “I don’t think I could handle it. I’m not real sure how I feel about the death penalty, but it seems like there should be a better way of treating our fellow man.”

Executions take a heavy toll not only on witnesses, but the staff charged with carrying out the barbaric practice. Dr. Allen Ault, who gave the order for five executions in 1994 and 1995 as the commissioner of the department of corrections in Georgia, still has nightmares about the men he sent to death. He later discovered that members of his team also suffered psychological distress.

“What I did was much more premeditated than any of the murders committed by those I executed,” he told the Guardian in a story on the planned Arkansas executions . “You are taking a totally defenseless person, planning, premeditating, even rehearsing, then killing him—any sane person other than a psychopath would be dramatically affected by that.”

In a letter sent to Governor Hutchinson on Wednesday, nearly two dozen officials raised concerns over the multiple execution schedule, including the effects on the execution staff. These concerns were dismissed by Hutchinson, who argued that the accelerated execution schedule would be “more efficient and less stressful” for the staff.

“If the governor is so hot on this,” Ault remarked to the Guardian, “he ought to go down to the death chamber and do it himself. But he won’t, they never do. Politicians are never in the room when it happens, they never have to suffer anything.”

According to data from the DPIC, 1,148 people have been executed in the United States since 1976, when the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty. There are currently 2,905 inmates on death row. Six inmates have been executed so far in 2017 and an additional 35 prisoners, including the eight death row inmates in Arkansas, are scheduled for execution this year.

While the number of executions in such a short period of time being planned by Arkansas is unprecedented, it is not a complete aberration. No state has carried out eight executions in one month since Texas did so twice in 1997.

Two or more executions on the same day has occurred only ten times in the past 40 years, four of which took place in Arkansas, according to the DPIC. No state has ever conducted more than one double execution in the same week, and a double execution has never been successfully completed using midazolam. When Oklahoma attempted a double execution on April 29, 2014 using midazolam, it had to block the second one after botching the execution of Clayton Lockett.

Tom Price Intervened on Rule That Would Hurt Drug Profits, the Same Day He Acquired Drug Stock

While in Congress, HHS Secretary Tom Price acted to help kill a rule that would hurt drug company profits shortly after his broker bought him up to $90,000 worth of pharmaceutical stock.

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By Robert Faturechi

On the same day the stockbroker for then-Georgia Congressman Tom Price bought him up to $90,000 of stock in six pharmaceutical companies last year, Price arranged to call a top U.S. health official, seeking to scuttle a controversial rule that could have hurt the firms’ profits and driven down their share prices, records obtained by ProPublica show.

Stock trades made by Price while he served in Congress came under scrutiny at his confirmation hearings to become President Trump’s secretary of health and human services. The lawmaker, a physician, traded hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of shares in health-related companies while he voted on and sponsored legislation affecting the industry, but Price has said his broker acted on his behalf without his involvement or knowledge. ProPublica previously reported that his trading is said to have been under investigationby federal prosecutors.

On March 17, 2016, Price’s broker purchased shares worth between $1,000 and $15,000 each in Eli Lilly, Amgen, Bristol-Meyers Squibb, McKesson, Pfizer and Biogen. Previous reports have noted that, a month later, Price was among lawmakers from both parties who signed onto a bill that would have blocked a rule proposed by the Obama administration, which was intended to remove the incentive for doctors to prescribe expensive drugs that don’t necessarily improve patient outcomes.

What hasn’t been previously known is Price’s personal appeal to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services about the rule, called the Medicare Part B Drug Payment Model.

The same day as the stock trade, Price’s legislative aide, Carla DiBlasio, emailed health officials to follow up on a request she had made to set up a call with Patrick Conway, the agency’s chief medical officer. In her earlier emails, DiBlasio said the call would focus on payments for joint replacement procedures. But that day, she mentioned a new issue.

“Chairman Price may briefly bring up ... his concerns about the new Part B drug demo, as well,” she wrote. “Congressman Price really appreciates the opportunity to have an open conversation with Dr. Conway, so we really appreciate you keeping the lines of communication open.”

The call was scheduled for the following week, according to the emails.

An HHS spokesman didn’t respond to a request for comment from Price. DiBlasio and Conway didn’t respond to questions about the phone call.

The proposed rule drew wide opposition from members of both parties as well as industry lobbyists and some patient advocacy groups. It was meant to change a system under which the government reimburses doctors the average sales price for drugs administered in their offices or inside clinics, along with a 6 percent bonus. Some health analysts say that bonus encourages doctors to pad their profits by selecting more expensive treatments.

Critics argued that the rule might cause Medicare enrollees to lose access to lifesaving drugs. Lawmakers worried the federal government was potentially endangering patients and turning them into guinea pigs in a wide-scale experiment in cost savings.

However, supporters of the rule said the experiment in payments was the kind of drastic action needed to rein in soaring health costs. “We are actively reforming every other aspect of our health-care system to pay for value except pharmaceuticals,” Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., said at the time. “Drug manufacturers are the only entity that can charge Medicare anything they want.”

The six companies that Price invested in were steadfastly opposed to the rule. McKesson formally warned investors in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that such a change could hurt share prices. The firms lobbied the government to kill the plan.

And at two of the six companies Price invested in, people who used to work for the congressman were part of the lobbying effort.

Price’s former chief of staff, Matt McGinley, lobbied House members for Amgen, disclosure records show. Another former Price aide, Keagan Lenihan, lobbied on behalf of McKesson, where she was director of government relations at the time. Lenihan has since reunited with Price, returning to government to work as a senior adviser to her old boss at HHS.

Neither McGinley nor Lenihan responded to requests for comment.

Although Price said he wasn’t aware of his broker’s trades at the time they were made, he would have learned of his holdings no later than April 2016 when he signed and filed his latest financial disclosure forms. In earlier disclosures, Price signed forms listing his other health-related holdings, which included some drug stocks.

Price’s personal intervention raises more questions about the overlap between his investments and his work as a member of Congress.

According to House ethics guidelines, “contacting an executive branch agency” represents “a degree of advocacy above and beyond that involved in voting” on legislation where a financial conflict of interest may exist.

“Such actions may implicate the rules and standards ... that prohibit the use of one‘s official position for personal gain,” the guidelines state. “Whenever a Member is considering taking any such action on a matter that may affect his or her personal financial interests, the Member should first contact the Standards Committee for guidance.”

Tom Rust, chief counsel for the House Ethics Committee, declined to comment, saying any consultations with members of Congress are confidential.

In December, after Trump was elected and named Price as his choice to lead HHS, Obama administration health officials scrapped their plan to change the drug reimbursement system. “The complexity of the issues and the limited time available led to the decision not to finalize the rule at this time,” a spokesman said.