The United States will block shipments of palm oil from a major Malaysian producer that feeds into the supply chains of iconic U.S. food and cosmetic brands. It found indicators of forced labor, including concerns about child workers, along with other abuses such as physical and sexual violence.
The order against FGV Holdings Berhad, one of Malaysia’s largest palm oil companies and a joint-venture partner with American consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble, went into effect Wednesday, said Brenda Smith, executive assistant commissioner at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Trade.
The action, announced a week after The Associated Press exposed major labor abuses in Malaysia’s palm oil industry, was triggered by a petition filed last year by nonprofit organizations.
“We would urge the U.S. importing community again to do their due diligence,” Smith said, adding companies should look at their palm oil supply chains. “We would also encourage U.S. consumers to ask questions about where their products come from.”
Malaysia is the world’s second largest producer of palm oil. Together with Indonesia, the two countries dominate the global market, producing 85 percent of the $65 billion supply.
Palm oil and its derivatives from FGV, and closely connected Malaysian state-owned Felda, make their way into the supply chains of major multinationals. They include Nestle, L’Oreal, and Unilever, according to the companies’ most recently published supplier and palm oil mill lists. Several huge Western banks and financial institutions not only pour money directly or indirectly into the palm oil industry, but they hold shares in FGV.
Smith said the agency carried out its own year-long probe and combed through reports from nonprofits and the media, including the AP’s investigation.
AP reporters interviewed more than 130 former and current workers from eight countries at two dozen palm oil companies — including Felda, which owns about a third of the shares in FGV. They found everything from unpaid wages to outright slavery and allegations of rape, sometimes involving minors. They also found stateless Rohingya Muslims, one of the world’s most persecuted minorities, had been trafficked onto Malaysian plantations and forced to work.
Many of the problems detailed by Smith mirrored those found by The AP. She said the Customs agency found indicators of restriction of movement on plantations, isolation, physical and sexual violence, intimidation and threats, retention of identity documents, withholding of wages, debt bondage, abusive working and living conditions, excessive overtime, and concerns about potential forced child labor.
After the U.S. ban, Malaysian palm oil producer FGV Holdings Berhad vowed to “clear its name.” FGV said all the issues raised “have been the subject of public discourse since 2015 and FGV has taken several steps to correct the situation.”
“FGV is disappointed that such decision has been made when FGV has been taking concrete steps over the past several years in demonstrating its commitment to respect human rights and to uphold labor standards,” it said in a statement.
FGV said it wasn’t involved in any recruitment or employment of refugees and doesn’t hire contract workers. Migrant workers are recruited through legal channels, and it said it ensured they are not charged fees.
As of August, FGV’s 11,286 Indonesian workers and 4,683 Indian workers formed the majority of its plantation workforce.
FGV said it is introducing the use of electronic wallet cashless payroll system for its workers. It doesn’t retain workers’ passports and has safety boxes throughout all its 68 housing complexes for them to keep their passports.
It said it had invested 350 million ringgit ($84 million) over the past three years to upgrade housing facilities, and provides medical benefits. It said it has a code of conduct that its suppliers and vendors are required to comply with, adding that any allegation of physical or sexual violence as well as intimidation or threats will be acted upon.
FGV said it has submitted evidence of compliance of labor standards to the U.S. CBP office since last year.
Felda and the Malaysian government did not respond to questions from AP about the findings of its investigation.
FGV Holdings has been under fire for labor abuses in the past and was sanctioned by the global Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil certification group two years ago. The association promotes ethical production — including the treatment of workers — with members that include growers, buyers, traders, and environmental watchdogs.
Though Asian banks are by far the most robust financiers of the plantations, Western lenders and investment companies have poured billions of dollars into the industry in recent years, allowing for the razing and replanting of ever-expanding tracts of land. Some hold shares in FGV itself — including Vanguard Group, BlackRock, Charles Schwab, State Street Global Advisors, HSBC, and even the California Public Employees’ Retirement System — according to the financial data analysis firm, Eikon.
The AP did not receive comment from any of those financial institutions on Wednesday, but when asked more broadly about their ties to the palm oil industry last week, most responded by noting their policies vowing to support sustainability practices, with many also incorporating human rights into their guidelines.
Multinational food and cosmetic companies responded in a similar way last week, saying they do not tolerate labor and human rights abuses and will immediately investigate complaints they receive and take action, including suspension of a supplier, if necessary.
This is the first time Customs has issued an order related to palm oil, though shipments from other sectors have been detained after similar investigations into forced labor were conducted. They include seafood, cotton and human hair pieces believed to have been made by persecuted Uighur Muslims inside Chinese labor camps.
Under Wednesday’s order, palm oil products or derivatives traceable to FGV will be detained at U.S. ports. If the company is unable to prove that the goods were not produced with forced labor, it can be exported.
“For all these years these companies have refused to pay for remediation or publicly cut ties with FGV, so now the U.S. government has acted for them,” said Robin Averbeck of the San Francisco-based Rainforest Action Network, which was among a group of nonprofits that filed one of two petitions against FGV last year. “Procter & Gamble and other brands must stop paying lip service to human rights and address forced labor and other labor abuses once and for all.”
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump has signed a bill to fund the government through Dec. 11, averting the possibility of a government shutdown when the new fiscal year starts Thursday.
Trump signed the bill, which was approved by sweeping bipartisan agreement Wednesday, into law early Thursday morning shortly after returning from campaigning in Minnesota.
The temporary extension will set the stage for a lame-duck session of Congress later this year, where the agenda will be largely determined by the outcome of the presidential election.
The measure would keep the government running through Dec. 11 and passed by a 84-10 vote. The House passed the bill last week.
The stopgap spending bill is required because the GOP-controlled Senate has not acted on any of the 12 annual spending bills that fund the 30% of the government’s budget that is passed by Congress each year. If Democratic nominee Joe Biden wins the White House in November, it’s likely that another stopgap measure would fund the government into next year and that the next administration and Congress would deal with the leftover business.
The measure is the bare minimum accomplishment for Capitol Hill’s powerful Appropriations committees, who pride themselves on their deal-making abilities despite gridlock in other corners of Congress.
The legislation — called a continuing resolution, or CR, in Washington-speak — would keep every federal agency running at current funding levels through Dec. 11, which will keep the government afloat past an election that could reshuffle Washington’s balance of power.
The measure also extends many programs whose funding or authorizations lapse on Sept. 30, including the federal flood insurance program, highway and transit programs, and a long set of extensions of various health programs, such as a provision to prevent Medicaid cuts to hospitals that serve many poor people.
It also finances the possible transition to a new administration if Biden wins the White House and would stave off an unwelcome COVID-caused increase in Medicare Part B premiums for outpatient doctor visits.
Farm interests won language that would permit Trump’s farm bailout to continue without fear of interruption. In exchange, House Democrats won $8 billion in food aid for the poor.
Like most people, Jess spent a lot of time online during weeks of lockdown earlier this year. But the 36-year-old Australian wasn’t focused so much on playing Animal Crossing or watching Netflix. Instead, she found herself diving ever deeper into the Internet for information about QAnon.
Jess, who asked for her last name not to be used because her employer doesn’t allow her to share views on social media, says she became interested in the complex conspiracy theory in part because it claims to offer answers amid the turbulence of 2020.
She says she’s not always sure she believes everything she reads about QAnon online. But she has become active in the QAnon community on Twitter, tweeting out a mix of claims about secret pedophilia rings, anti-Joe Biden articles and pro-Trump content several times a day. “It seems to have really started picking up here. I think, because things are picking up so much over there in America,” Jess tells TIME from her Sydney home. “A lot of the stuff I read and see is shared by people in the U.S.”
TwitterJess, a mother from Sydney, Australia, says she became interested in QAnon during weeks of lockdown. She now tweets claims about secret pedophilia rings, anti-Joe Biden articles and pro-Trump content multiple times a day.
For a conspiracy theory with origins in American politics, QAnon is proving remarkably malleable for export outside the U.S., fueled by growing frustration over COVID-19 restrictions around the world. In Australia and New Zealand, especially, it has taken on a life of its own—with followers adapting QAnon to incorporate local politicians and causes.
As in the United States, QAnon in Australia and New Zealand has mixed with other global conspiracy theories, including false beliefs that 5G towers are spreading coronavirus, unfounded claims that COVID-19 was either pre-planned or is a hoax and baseless theories about public vaccination programs. That turgid brew of misinformation is increasingly moving offline and spilling over into the streets in the form of protests or sometimes aggressive refusals to follow social distancing restrictions.
“We have seen the emergence of transnational, amorphous conspiracy-theory based movements,” says Joshua Roose, a senior research fellow at Deakin University in Australia. “All share a strong distrust in government and state institutions.”
QAnon began in 2017 as a uniquely American conspiracy theory. Followers of the movement, which has moved from far-right Internet forums onto mainstream social media sites, believe that President Donald Trump is fighting against a shadowy secret society that runs the world. Supporters claim this elite cabal is comprised of Democratic politicians, Satan-worshipping pedophiles and Hollywood celebrities who run a global child sex-trafficking ring, harvesting the blood of children for life-sustaining chemicals. None of this has any basis in fact.
The local strain of QAnon appears to be spurred by anger at COVID-19 restrictions: A resurgence of COVID in July forced the Australian state of Victoria—where Melbourne is located—into one of the most restrictive lockdowns in the world for weeks. In New Zealand, a small coronavirus outbreak in August also forced the government to reimpose restrictions in Auckland, the largest city.
Lockdown measures have eased in both countries, but supporters of QAnon continue to spread their conspiracy theories online—and, increasingly, offline. QAnon signs cropped up at “Freedom Day” anti-lockdown protests across Australia on Sept. 5, as well as at similar protests in Auckland.
Speed Media/Icon Sportswire/Getty ImagesA protester holds a sign up during the Freedom Day Rally in Sydney on Sept. 5, 2020.
At checkpoints set up to ensure citizens are following COVID-19 movement restrictions in the state of Victoria in August, police were forced to smash several peoples’ car windows and drag them out for refusing to provide personal details because they claimed to be “sovereign citizens”.
The fringe movement started in the United States in the 1970s, with followers believing that ultimate power is vested in individuals, who are therefore not obligated to obey government rules they disagree with, whether that be motor vehicle regulations, answering to the police or paying taxes. Videos of the Victoria arrests have been widely shared on social media accounts that also spread QAnon theories—further fueling anger over COVID-19 restrictions.
QAnon may center around an American conspiracy theory, but that hasn’t stopped supporters in Australia and New Zealand from adding their own local flavors.
One twist involves the hundred miles of storm drain tunnels running beneath Melbourne. Some Australian QAnon posts claim that Melbourne’s coronavirus lockdown was meant to keep the streets clear for an operation to rescue child sex-trafficking victims in the tunnels. (There is no evidence of this.)
The conspiracy theory also predicts the arrest of high-level officials for sex trafficking crimes. Again, resourceful Australian QAnon followers have adapted that narrative for their home turf. One Facebook post seen by TIME (falsely) alleged that Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been under house arrest since January. The evidence? Blurry, close-up photos of Morrison wearing long pants, which appear to have either bunched up or been folded at the ankle and supposedly prove the Australian leader is wearing an ankle monitor.
Similar (false) rumors have also circulated using pictures that show Victoria Premier Dan Andrews walking down the street. Andrews, who has faced heavy criticism from the right for weeks-long coronavirus lockdowns this summer, features heavily in posts on QAnon-affiliated pages.
At a rally in New Zealand in early September, protesters referenced multiple COVID-19 conspiracy theories, according to local reports. But demonstrators have also woven in local causes. Some protesters were seen holding signs calling to “ban 1080,” a reference to the government’s use of poison to control populations of invasive rodents (the cause has been supported by some mainstream groups in recent years, but has been fodder for conspiracy theorists.) At least one protester was spotted with a sign that depicted Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern as Adolf Hitler.
At the anti-lockdown rally in Aotea Square today the organiser told the crowd he found it "exhausting to go along with tyranny and to forgo my freedom of speech and my freedom to associate". There was also this. pic.twitter.com/jaStobR4Gc
One social media post in May claimed that Bill Gates was in New Zealand and asserted that the country of 5 million is a “perfect” nation “to test and trial” a vaccine for the coronavirus. (A spokesperson for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said Gates had not been in New Zealand.)
And combining QAnon’s American roots with local feelings often meshes in inconsistent ways. For example, many Australian QAnon-affiliated accounts are highly critical of Australian police, who have used tough responses to enforce COVID-19 restrictions. Those posts are often shared alongside rightwing U.S. media articles praising American officers.
Despite its presence at protests, QAnon really thrives online, and it gained a substantial foothold in Australia and New Zealand during COVID-19 lockdowns. One Facebook group started in Australia, comprising a mix of people denying the existence of the coronavirus, anti-vaxxers, so-called sovereign citizens and QAnon supporters, had more than 65,000 members before it was removed by the social media giant.
“You put marginalized people under pressure and fear and they look for non-mainstream and unorthodox theories to regain their sense of control and agency,” says Michael Grimshaw, of the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.
The conspiracy theories—and opposition to coronavirus restrictions in general—remain at the fringes in both nations. A recent Pew poll shows that 94% of Australians think the country did a good job handling the pandemic (the same poll reported that only 47% of Americans felt the same way). An August poll found that public confidence in health officials in New Zealand was above 80%.
But misinformation is increasingly bleeding over into the mainstream. Australian television chef Pete Evans—who has 275,000 Instagram followers—has posted QAnon-related content on Instagram in recent months. In New Zealand, a lifestyle influencer with more than 60,000 followers posted in support of QAnon claims in her Instagram story. “There’s soooooo much I want and need to address on here. But I’m going to start slowly and it will start with Hollywood, Cabal and Human Trafficking,” she said in one Instagram story. “People may think why? That’s America it has nothing to do with us. In the big scheme of things it has EVERYTHING to do with us. All you need to do is research Jacinda Ardern and her ties with Bill Gates…”
Both Facebook and Twitter say they’re taking action against QAnon-related content. Twitter announced in late July a stronger approach to dealing with QAnon, including permanently suspending accounts that violate its policies, banning URLs associated with QAnon from being shared on the site, limiting content from its trends and recommendations and not highlighting it in searches.
Facebook said in August it had removed 790 groups, 100 pages and 1,500 ads tied to QAnon and other groups it said support violence and blocked more than 300 hashtags across Facebook and Instagram worldwide. The company says that QAnon pages, groups and accounts will be removed when they violate Facebook’s community standards, including inciting violence. The company also said it will limit some content from recommendations and the ranking of this content will be lower in News Feed.
Despite their efforts to reduce the accessibility of QAnon content, a quick search shows Australia and New Zealand-specific QAnon conspiracy theories are widely available on both platforms. TIME found at least three separate Twitter accounts, with thousands of followers each, that used Australian QAnon hashtags in their profiles. TIME also found public Facebook groups specific to Australia and New Zealand that hosted QAnon posts, each with hundreds of members.
Three Facebook groups with QAnon-related posts that TIME asked the company about remain public. Facebook said that one post alleging the Australian Prime Minister is under house arrest would be removed when TIME inquired about it. But days later the post was still available on the platform. Facebook said this was due to a technical glitch on their end. However, at least one other post on the group also made the same false allegation about the Prime Minister.
One Australia-focused QAnon account with more than 4,000 followers was removed by Twitter for “multiple account violations” after TIME inquired about it.
Entering the mainstream
Increasingly, ordinary Internet users are spreading QAnon-related memes and theories. Lydia Khalil, a research fellow at the Sydney-based think-tank the Lowy Institute, says some conspiracy theories have spread via mommy blogs, and fitness and wellness influencers, who have latched on to the child-sex trafficking and anti-vaccine elements of these theories.
“Not all of the people spreading this stuff are hard-core conspiracy theorists or extremists, they’re picking up on hashtags or more nebulous elements of this and then pushing it out without really understanding who’s behind it and where it’s coming from,” she says.
But leaders in Australia and New Zealand have been forced to publicly address some of the conspiracy theories because they became so prevalent. Australian officials have been forced to publicly refute the link between 5G and coronavirus, and on a television program on Aug. 5, Prime Minister Scott Morrison told people identifying as “sovereign citizens” and anti-maskers intentionally defying coronavirus restrictions to “get real.”
New Zealand’s health minister asked the public at a Sept. 10 COVID-19 briefing to “think twice before sharing information that can’t be verified.”
Speed Media/Icon Sportswire/Getty ImagesMany protesters blame 5G technology for the Coronavirus during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Anti-Lockdown Protest at Parliament House in Melbourne on May 10, 2020.
Matthew Schlapfer, a business consultant who lives in the Australian city of Perth, says he’s unfriended or been unfriended by about 10 people in recent months as he got fed up with seeing conspiracy theories filling his Facebook feed.
“I started getting really annoyed and reaching out and saying ‘where are you getting your information from?'” he says. “I would ask ‘what’s the source for this?'” and they couldn’t tell me.
Schalpfer, who is in his mid-forties, says many of the posts that started the disagreements were related to QAnon. Others argued against the use of vaccines, or falsely proclaimed that COVID is a hoax. Some of his former friends—including two ex-girlfriends, three former colleagues and several high school acquaintances—have posted messages supporting Trump.
“They have fully bought into this Trump saving us from the deep state and this global child pedophilia ring run by the liberal elites thing,” Schlapfer says.
As Tuesday’s chaotic Presidential debate shifted to a discussion about the U.S. economy, President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden seemed, yet again, to be operating in different stratospheres. As Trump boasted—without corroborating evidence—that “our country is coming back incredibly well” from the economic shutdown precipitated by the coronavirus pandemic, Biden countered that the recovery hasn’t been so simple.
Though some measures indicate revival, he argued, the growth has primarily been concentrated in the stock market, where gains are made by people who have funds to invest. “Millionaires and billionaires like him in the middle of the COVID crisis have done very well,” Biden said. “But you folks at home, you folks living in Scranton and Claymont and all the small towns and working class towns in America, how well are you doing?”
This exchange was largely drowned out by other arguments in the turbulent conversation. But Biden’s rhetoric hit on a theme that economists have been warning about for months: that America’s economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic has been “K-shaped,” or mainly benefitting the affluent. American billionaires saw their wealth skyrocket by $282 billion between mid-March and mid-April, according to an analysis by the Institute for Policy Studies. Interest rates are down, allowing people who own their homes to refinance their mortgages. Those with jobs that provide 401Ks have seen their account balances rise to near pre-pandemic levels. Even pandemic-fueled price changes have tended to reduce the prices of goods and services that mostly benefit people who have money to burn; new cars, travel, and food delivery services have gotten cheaper.
Then there’s what’s happening to millions of less fortunate Americans. During the same March to April time period that saw billionaires’ gains spike, more than 22 million Americans lost their jobs. Those numbers have recovered somewhat, but the unemployment rate was still 8.4% in August—more than double the 3.5% before the pandemic hit. Eight million more people are unemployed today than were jobless in February. The same price shifts that made luxuries like food delivery cheaper have caused the inexpensive grocery store items that poor households rely on to become pricier.
The pain shows little sign of abating for this unlucky group; in many ways, it’s just getting worse. This week alone, Disney laid off 28,000 workers, and hundreds of thousands of airline workers could face a similar fate if Washington does not renew a federal assistance program that has been keeping the embattled industry afloat. Congress is still struggling to come to an agreement on the next coronavirus relief deal, even as several of the key programs serving as an economic lifeline have expired. One of the food assistance programs that was quickly rolled out to help children hit by the coronavirus-induced economic crisis is slated to end in several states this week. Evictions, which have been temporarily paused for most people who have been financially affected by the virus, will kick off again in the dead of winter.
This inequitable economic recovery can partially be blamed on Congressional inaction. Rare bipartisan camaraderie behind emergency relief efforts ended soon after Congress overwhelmingly passed a $2.2 trillion relief package in March. House Democrats subsequently passed a $3 trillion package in May, which would have extended many of these programs, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to vote on it, dismissing it as a “liberal wish list.”
The White House began negotiating with Democrats in July, but have been unable to reach an agreement on another round of relief since. As frustration has mounted within the Democratic caucus and the pandemic continued to rage across the country, Democratic leadership unveiled a pared down proposal and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi continues to confer with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. But there is no guarantee an agreement that pleases all parties involved will come to fruition this time, either. Mnuchin said Wednesday evening that the total cost was still too high. House Democrats had expected to vote on the bill Wednesday evening, but postponed a vote until Thursday to allow more room for further discussion, according to a Democratic aide. And any bill will need support from at least thirteen Republican Senators and the White House’s approval to actually become law.
As negotiations lurched along this summer, programs that provided critical assistance have vanished, with more expiration dates on the way. The Payroll Support Program, which has been providing airlines with financial assistance to keep workers on payroll, ends October 1. Airline executives have been warning for weeks that if no deal appears likely, hundreds of thousands of workers—which includes baggage handlers who earn a median income of $28,000 per year—will be furloughed. Two months ago, the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation program stopped sending a weekly allotment of $600 to supplement state unemployment benefits. And the Paycheck Protection Program, which administered millions of potentially forgivable loans to small businesses, closed on August 8.
Lobbyists on both sides of the aisle, particularly those advocating for industries hit hardest in the pandemic, are astounded their calls for help have fallen on mostly deaf ears. “Congressional inaction is occurring when restaurants are literally at the weakest point they’ve been in six months,” says Sean Kennedy, executive Vice President at the National Restaurant Association. With the weather getting colder in much of the country, he argued, restaurants need extra reinforcements at the federal level that will enable them to stay open and adhere to safety standards, or otherwise risk permanent closure. “It’s amazing that restaurants suffering this much can’t galvanize or secure relief when every time a member of Congress goes home to their district they’re shocked to learn another restaurant [or] favorite hangout has closed their doors for good.”
Michele Evermore, a senior policy analyst at the National Employment Law project, thinks the inability to reach an agreement in Washington stems partially from the fact that the recovery has disproportionately benefited the wealthiest Americans—including those who serve in Congress and the people in their social circles. “I think people see numbers improving and they actually don’t know anybody who’s struggling,” Evermore says. “The kind of people who serve in Congress don’t tend to have a lot of broke friends.”
Time is also running out on pandemic relief benefits that have kept children in low-income families from going hungry. Pandemic-EBT is a Department of Agriculture program that launched when schools closed to support to families whose children would normally qualify for free and reduced-price school meals by loading funds onto a prepaid card otherwise used for food stamp benefits. It ends September 30, despite the fact somewhere around half of the nation’s public school students are still fully remote. (A few states have recently been authorized to continue the program on a more limited basis.) The Summer Food Service Program, also funded by the USDA, enabled kids in families of all income brackets to obtain free meals distributed by schools throughout their closures. It will lose funding in January.
Health care practitioners have already been seeing the impact of families’ scrambling to make ends meet on children’s health. “What I see every single day from the pandemic is really amazingly increased numbers of severely underweight children coming to our clinic, and parents really panicked about how they are going to find enough food,” Dr. Megan Sandel, co-director of the Grow Clinic for Children at Boston Medical Center and a lead investigator of Children’s HealthWatch, said on a recent press call.
Housing experts also fear what is to come in January, when a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eviction moratorium ends. At that point, renters who have so far avoided evictions because of eviction protections will owe months’ worth of back-rent, in addition to any late fees their leases stipulated. It is not yet known how many people may suddenly lose their homes during one of the coldest months of the year—but unless some form of rent relief or direct payment is passed, the figure will surely be staggering.
With all of this unraveling under his watch, Trump still claimed during Tuesday’s debate that he had built the “greatest economy in history” before the pandemic struck. If only examining the gains made by people who share Trump’s billionaire status, that might be right. But even before COVID-19 sent the economy into a tailspin, many low-income Americans probably would have disagreed. In 2018, nearly 40% of Americans couldn’t cover an unplanned $400 expense without going into debt, carrying a balance on their credit card, or borrowing the funds, according to a report from the Federal Reserve. Around the same time, three men in the U.S. collectively held more wealth than the poorest half of Americans, according to an Institute for Policy Studies report.
For some, the looming loss of housing and food protections—in addition to the lack of a second stimulus check and the standstill in Congress over extending protections for payroll relief—is only going to make things harder. Worse, says Evermore, is that few in power seem to care. “Goodwill toward people who lost work through no fault of their own has dissipated faster during this recession,” she says, “than at any time in history.”
The chaotic inaugural presidential debate between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden culminated in one of the most contentious exchanges of the night, with Trump doubling down on his intent to sow doubt in the integrity of the election system.
After Biden committed to accepting the results of the election – regardless of the outcome – and stressed the security of mail-in ballots, Trump insisted, without any evidence, that “this is going to be a fraud like you’ve never seen.”
“These ballots are going to be all over,” he said. “Its a fraud and it’s a shame.”
Trump, who, as Biden noted, votes by mail himself, has uttered many of these sentiments before. But the optics of relaying them during a debate expected to draw over 100 million viewers still baffled and infuriated legal experts. “The President’s answer about fraudulent ballots was nonsense,” says Mark Gaber, director of trial litigation at the bipartisan Campaign Legal Center. “All validly cast ballots — including mail-in-ballots like those cast by the President in Florida — will be counted and the winner in each state will be determined by counting the ballots.”
Rick Hasen, a law professor at University of California, Irvine and an election law expert, wrote on Twitter that questioning the elections process will cause voters to question the system as a whole when issues inevitably arise. “Let’s admit this now: We are not going to have a perfect election in November. There will be reports of ballots sent to voters that end up in the trash or in a ditch,” he wrote. “This doesn’t mean we won’t have a fair election overall, and we should not allow cynical political operatives to parlay small-bore errors into a full-scale attack on the integrity of the November vote.”
Trump’s rhetoric on the validity of the elections process was both lacking evidence and in stark contrast to how the issue is being judged in courtrooms across the country. The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee have filed a series of lawsuits in states that have expanded mail-in-voting — many as a result of the coronavirus pandemic — alleging that these new regulations are a blueprint for fraud and will undermine the integrity of the election system. This has largely been a losing battle. In crucial swing states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the courts have ruled in favor of expanded access to mail-in voting.
Just hours before the debate was slated to begin, Marc Elias, chair of Perkins Cole’s Political Law Group who is leading litigation efforts across the country for Democrats, wrote on Twitter that a federal judge in Wisconsin had denied Republicans’ request to overturn the decision that allows voters’ mail-in ballots to be counted through November 9th. “We are not tired of winning!” he tweeted.
The Trump campaign and its associates are pushing back, though. In Pennsylvania, the state Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that the state could receive absentee ballots through November 6, providing that they were postmarked on or before Election Day, and that ballot drop-boxes were permissible. On Monday, lawyers for the top Republican lawmakers in the state filed an emergency petition with the U.S. Supreme Court to try and overturn the ruling. Some legal experts doubt the Supreme Court will ultimately take the case, arguing that they would eschew the politics involved. But Trump said during the debate he was relying on the Supreme Court “for the ballots,” generating further alarm among legal experts and Democrats.
This anxiety was evident on Tuesday, as Biden used his platform on to try and urge the American people that that the best remedy to counteract such uncertainty is to vote. “This is all about trying to dissuade people from voting because he’s trying to scare people into thinking it’s not going to be legitimate,” Biden said. “If we get the votes, it’s going to be all over. He can’t stay in power.”
If Americans were hoping to get some reassurance, clarity, or even hope from this year’s presidential candidates about how the U.S. will make it through the coronavirus pandemic, then Tuesday night’s first debate fell woefully short.
During the 15-minute segment dedicated to COVID-19—which is still killing hundreds of Americans each day, and stands to worsen once again—neither President Donald Trump nor Former Vice President Joe Biden provided any substantive plans for what health experts say will be a critical next few months, and possibly years, in the fight against the coronavirus. Instead of thoughtful plans for addressing the deadliest and most disruptive public health crisis the world has faced in a century, viewers got a mud-slinging brawl between two candidates who were mostly more interested in landing jabs than in providing any reassurance to an already edgy public reeling from lost loved ones, lost jobs and disrupted lives.
“Get out of the bunker, get out of the sand trap and get to the Oval Office and fund what needs to be done now to save lives,” Biden told Trump. “He does not have a plan,” Biden added, characterizing the White House’s oft-criticized response to the pandemic. He noted that while the U.S. accounts for only 4% of the world’s population, it has weathered 200,000 deaths from COVID-19—about 20% of the global total. “He’s been totally irresponsible in the way in which he handled social distancing and people wearing masks; basically encouraging them not to,” Biden said. “He’s a fool on masks.”
The Vice President went on to highlight revelations that Trump admitted to being aware of COVID-19’s danger in February, but downplayed the disease anyway—which the President said he did to avoid causing a panic. “He knew it was a deadly disease. What did he do? He’s on tape saying he didn’t want to panic the American people. You didn’t panic, he panicked,” Biden said.
Trump maintained that his decision to close travel from China into the U.S. at the beginning of the year saved lives. “If we had listened to you and left the country wide open, millions would have died,” he told Biden. “You could never have done the job we did; you don’t have it in your blood.”
The personal attacks and repeated interruptions from the candidates overshadowed any opportunity for voters to form a firm picture of how either Trump or Biden plan to navigate the remainder of this pandemic—not to mention the upcoming flu season, when the dangers of respiratory diseases like COVID-19 and flu circulate together. The next few months will also see critical results from the first potential coronavirus vaccines, but instead of explaining how we can ensure everyone who needs a shot receives one, Trump and Biden tussled over the Trump Administration’s constant conflict with scientists and public health experts and their differing views on how to safely reopen society. Trump also said he “disagreed” with his own experts who warn that any vaccine or vaccines won’t be widely available to the public until next year, and claimed that the vaccine makers can “go faster” but the process is “political.“
“Do you believe for a moment what he’s telling you in light of all the lies he’s told you on the whole issue relating to COVID?” Biden responded.
It’s hard to say what to make of the sparring that often devolved into name calling and accusations during a discussion that instead could have provided some glimmer of hope for a public desperate to know how, and when, this pandemic will finally end. For now, the victory—if there is even one to declare—goes to the virus itself, which thrives on exactly the kind of confusion and conflict Tuesday’s debate provided in spades.
During the first general election Presidential debate on Tuesday night, President Donald Trump was asked to explain his Administration’s directive to all federal agencies to stop anti-bias trainings that rely on critical race theory or address white privilege.
“I ended it because it’s racist. I ended it because a lot of people were complaining that they were asked to do things that were absolutely insane, that it was a radical revolution that was taking place in our military, in our schools, all over the place,” Trump said, though he did not directly answer moderator Chris Wallace’s question about whether he believes that systemic racism exists in the U.S. “We were paying people hundreds of thousands of dollars to teach very bad ideas and frankly, very sick ideas. And really, they were teaching people to hate our country, and I’m not going to allow that to happen.”
The directive to federal agencies wasn’t the only time Trump has taken aim at critical race theory. While speaking at the National Archives Museum for Constitution Day this month, President Trump denounced it as “toxic propaganda” that will “destroy our country.”
But what exactly is critical race theory? And why has it become a point of contention for the Trump Administration?
Priscilla Ocen, professor at the Loyola Law School, who spoke to TIME before the debate, says that Trump’s condemnation of critical race theory (CRT) is part of his larger approach of using racial division as a way to maintain power, but she believes he’s probably unaware of its scope as a framework and in scholarship.
“Critical race theory ultimately is calling for a society that is egalitarian, a society that is just, and a society that is inclusive, and in order to get there, we have to name the barriers to achieving a society that is inclusive,” Ocen says. “Our government at the moment is essentially afraid of addressing our history of inequality and if we can’t address it, then we can’t change it.”
What is critical race theory?
Critical race theory offers a way of seeing the world that helps people recognize the effects of historical racism in modern American life. The intellectual movement behind the idea was started by legal scholars as a way to examine how laws and systems uphold and perpetuate inequality for traditionally marginalized groups. In Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic’s book Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, they define the critical race theory movement as “a collection of activists and scholars interested in studying and transforming the relationship among race, racism, and power.”
“It’s an approach to grappling with a history of white supremacy that rejects the belief that what’s in the past is in the past, and that the laws and systems that grow from that past are detached from it,” Crenshaw told TIME in an email.
While critical race theory was initially conceived as a framework specifically for understanding the relationship between race and American law, it’s also provided a way to consider how other marginalized identities—such as gender, sexuality, sexual orientation, class, and disability—are overlooked.
“What critical race theory has done is lift up the racial gaze of America,” says John Powell, the director of the Othering & Belonging Institute at the UC Berkeley. “It doesn’t stay within law, it basically says ‘look critically at any text or perspective and try to understand different perspectives that are sometimes drowned out.'”
Who came up with the idea?
The critical race theory movement officially came into being at a 1989 workshop led by Crenshaw, Neil Gotanda and Stephanie Phillips at the St. Benedict Center in Madison, Wis.—but the ideas behind the movement had been brewing for years by that point.
In the 1970s, a group of legal scholars and activists developed the theory, building on the work of movements like critical legal theory and radical feminism. Civil rights lawyer Derrick Bell, who was the first tenured Black professor at Harvard Law School, is often credited as the “father of critical race theory”; his 1980 Harvard Law Review article “Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest-Convergence Dilemma,” is often cited as an integral piece in starting conversations about the critical race theory movement. Other founding scholars of CRT include Richard Delgado, Allan Freeman, Patricia Williams, Mari Matsuda and Crenshaw, who also coined the term intersectionality, which explains how different facets of identity like race and gender can “intersect” with one another.
“[Early] CRT theorists identified the significant role that law played not only in facilitating civil rights reforms, but also in establishing the very practices of exclusion and disadvantage that the civil rights movement was designed to dismantle,” Crenshaw explains. “Racial discrimination, segregation, [anti-miscegenation rules] and many more practices were lawful practices right up until the day they weren’t, creating disadvantages and privileges that continue to live throughout our society right up to the present day.”
Here’s a specific current example: consider the fact that a disproportionate amount of people from Black and Latinx communities are being impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the CDC, Black and Latinx people are twice as likely die from the virus as white people. A person considering that stat in a vacuum might assume that genetic or biological factors are to blame—a false conclusion that insinuates that there is something inherently wrong with Black and Latinx bodies. However, a person applying a critical race theory framework to this issue would also ask how historical racism—which manifests today in everything from access to clean air to treatment by medical professionals—might be influencing this statistic, and would thus arrive at a much more complete and nuanced explanation.
Why is the Trump Administration denouncing critical race theory?
In his speech at the National Archives Museum, the President posited that using critical race theory as a framework to consider the history of the U.S., including its use of slave labor, encourages “deceptions, falsehoods and lies” by the “left-wing cultural revolution.”
“Students in our universities are inundated with critical race theory,” he said. “This is a Marxist doctrine holding that America is a wicked and racist nation, that even young children are complicit in oppression, and that our entire society must be radically transformed. Critical race theory is being forced into our children’s schools, it’s being imposed into workplace trainings, and it’s being deployed to rip apart friends, neighbors, and families.”
Scholars who work with CRT, however, say it has become an indispensable and widely accepted tool for properly understanding the state of the nation—but they’re not surprised by Trump’s attitude toward it.
“I think this is another part of the general approach that Donald Trump is taking to campaign to try and separate and divide folks along racial lines and to try to create division instead of really addressing what our core issues are in our nation,” says Ocen, who also notes that President Barack Obama’s relationship with Derrick Bell was weaponized in previous campaigns against Obama.
What has the reaction been to Trump’s comments?
Following the memo from the Office of Management and Budget, American Association of University Professors president Irene Mulvey released a statement that called on faculty and administrators to “condemn this ban” on critical race theory.
“Critical race theory represents an important body of such expertise and President Trump’s recent attack on it is a naked attempt to politicize our national reckoning with racism and a new escalation in the assault on expert knowledge,” Mulvey wrote.
Meanwhile, many scholars have taken to their social media accounts to voice their concerns and opinions over Trump’s attempt to censure critical race theory.
Many of us in the academy are drawn to CRT because it provides a grounding, validating view on things we already know to be true – racism is real. Objectivity is not. Our work should contribute to our liberation. Our grandparents' stories count.
— wikipedia brown demands #MoreThanDiversity (@eveewing) September 18, 2020
Minister and activist Bernice King, a daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., also weighed in with her thoughts on Trump’s attempt to stop the application of critical race theory.
There is no teaching on the horrors and myriad of monstrous manifestations of white supremacy and racism that will be palatable to white supremacists and racists.
The influence of CRT on academic thought in the last few decades has been so thorough, many say, that it would be effectively impossible to stop its use, even if the words “critical race theory” don’t come up. But, Crenshaw argues, that doesn’t mean Trump’s attempt to shut it down isn’t worth thinking about.
“The question now with Trump’s efforts to censor anti-racism is, what story will we as a society be permitted to tell about what 2020 has revealed about our country?” she says. “What we are allowed to officially see and tell will shape what is within our societal reach to address.”
NEW YORK — President Donald Trump reportedly must pay back more than $300 million in loans over the next four years, raising the possibility his lenders could face an unprecedented situation should he win a second term and not be able to raise the money: foreclosing on the leader of the free world.
But financial experts say the notion of Trump going broke anytime soon is farfetched.
Even with a total debt load across his entire business empire estimated at more than $1 billion, they note he still has plenty of assets he could cash in, starting with a portfolio that includes office and condo towers, golf courses and branding deals that have been valued at $2.5 billion.
Based on Forbes magazine estimates of the value of his buildings, for instance, selling his partial interests in just two properties— an office complex in San Francisco and a Las Vegas tower that houses a hotel and condos — could bring in $500 million alone.
And even if he doesn’t sell, that kind of valuation backing up the loans could make them easier for him to refinance.
“He’s going to be able to roll these loans over. They have collateral backing them up. They’re not that risky to the lenders,” said Phillip Braun, a finance professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Business.
Trump’s true financial picture has gotten renewed scrutiny in the wake of a New York Times report this week that he declared hundreds of millions in losses in recent years, allowing him to pay just $750 in taxes the year he won the presidency, and nothing for 10 of 15 years before that.
But the Times report was quick to note that tax filings alone can’t help determine someone’s net worth. And several experts told The Associated Press that, while the true state of Trump’s financial situation is unclear because of a lack of public information, he is probably not scrambling for money.
At issue is the often wide difference between what businesses report as profits and losses to the IRS and what they actually receive in profits they put in their pockets.
Plenty of real estate investors report big losses under tax accounting rules and pay little in federal taxes. That is because the tax code allows them to reduce their tax bills with myriad legal loopholes and breaks, including sometimes generous depreciation charges that reflect expected wear and tear on buildings.
Northwestern’s Braun said Trump’s minuscule tax payments don’t surprise him, nor do the losses claimed. “His accountants work really to make sure he doesn’t pay any taxes,” he said.
A better idea of how Trump is faring, Braun said, comes from Trump’s operating profits.
Forbes, which has been valuing Trump properties for decades for its annual billionaire issue, says Trump’s 40 Wall Street office tower generated $18 million in operating profits in 2019, Trump Tower $13 million, and Trump’s share in San Francisco’s 555 California Street tower $26 million.
According to Forbes’ latest valuation, even pandemic-reduced prices leave Trump with $2.5 billion worth of properties and other assets, and that is after subtracting his $1.2 billion in debt.
The Times said Trump’s real estate company has $421 million in loans he has personally guaranteed, with $300 million of that coming due over four years.
The Trump Organization did not immediately respond to an email and phone call requesting comment. Trump dismissed the Times story Monday as “fake news” and said he is “extremely underleveraged.”
“I have very little debt compared to the value of assets,” he wrote.
Among his lenders listed in his personal financial disclosure are New York-based commercial lender Ladder Capital, which is owed at least $110 million, and Bryn Mawr Trust Co. a suburban Philadelphia bank, which held Trump debt worth between $5 million and $25 million for Seven Springs, a New York estate owned by the Trump Organization.
Trump’s biggest lender on his disclosure is Deutsche Bank, his chief financier stretching back two decades. It helped him buy and fix up several buildings in New York and Chicago and his Doral golf club in Miami. It is owed at least $125 million, with loans coming due in 2023 and 2024.
One option for Trump is to get his lenders to refinance his debt or to take out a new loan. Deutsche Bank is an obvious candidate to help him with either because it has been so forgiving to him over the years.
Trump defaulted on bonds that the bank helped sell to investors to finance his casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and a bank loan for his Chicago hotel and condo tower, and yet the bank has continued to lend to him.
Mike Offit, a former executive at Deutsche Bank who lent to Trump in the late ’90s, said that if a property backing a loan was still throwing off good cash, and all else was well, the easiest solution for a bank with a Trump loan not likely to be paid back would be to just push out the due date.
“If I was sitting at my old job and a Trump loan was coming due next year and he’s the president, I would just say let’s extend the maturity,” he said.
But several other real estate experts aren’t so sure Deutsche Bank may be willing to help Trump much any more.
The bank has been subject to money laundering and tax evasion investigations in Germany and the U.S., and last year settled with the U.S. stock market regulators for allegedly violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by hiring relatives of government officials in Asia and Russia to drum up business for its investment banking division. In addition, its U.S. division had failed a few annual “stress tests” administered by the Federal Reserve in recent years, hampering its ability to lend for a while.
Deutsche Bank declined to comment.
Another problem: Not all Trump’s lenders are banks and other institutions that he can negotiate with across a table.
Nancy Wallace, a real estate professor at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, said that hundreds of millions of Trump’s bank loans have been packaged into bonds and sold to investors, and the banks are no longer in charge. If a borrower looks like it is in trouble, there could be less room to cut it a break.
Office buildings and hotels have also been hit especially hard by the lockdowns and travel restrictions. So lenders may not be eager to lend to Trump now, and selling off parts of his sprawling empire to raise cash won’t be so easy either, and is not likely to get him full value,
Still, “the real estate lending market is difficult at the moment, but for buildings throwing off cash? That shouldn’t be a problem,” said Bernard Kent, chairman at Schechter Investment Advisors in Detroit. “For something like Trump Tower, the future cash flow wouldn’t be tremendously affected by COVID-19 or people moving out of New York. Top-flight properties there tend to hold value.”
If all is lost, and Trump is really in trouble, some experts say there is another way he could raise money to pay off his lender: copy rocker David Bowie, who sold bonds that allow investors to make money off his music royalties.
“Trump Bonds” would enable investors to share in his future earnings from selling his name to, say, condo builders or purveyors of steaks or colognes or neckties.
After preying heavily on the elderly in the spring, the coronavirus is increasingly infecting American children and teens in a trend authorities say appears fueled by school reopenings and the resumption of sports, playdates and other activities.
Children of all ages now make up 10% of all U.S cases, up from 2% in April, the American Academy of Pediatrics reported Tuesday. And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday that the incidence of COVID-19 in school-age children began rising in early September as many youngsters returned to their classrooms.
About two times more teens were infected than younger children, the CDC report said. Most infected children have mild cases; hospitalizations and death rates are much lower than in adults.
Dr. Sally Goza, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said the rising numbers are a big concern and underscore the importance of masks, hand-washing, social distancing and other precautions.
“While children generally don’t get as sick with the coronavirus as adults, they are not immune and there is much to learn about how easily they can transmit it to others,’’ she said in a statement.
The CDC report did not indicate where or how the children became infected.
Public health experts say the uptick probably reflects increasing spread of the virus in the larger community. While many districts require masks and other precautions, some spread in schools is thought to be occurring, too. But experts also say many school-age children who are getting sick may not be getting infected in classrooms.
Just as cases in college students have been linked to partying and bars, school children may be contracting the virus at playdates, sleepovers, sports and other activities where precautions aren’t being taken, said Dr. Leana Wen, a public health specialist at George Washington University.
“Understandably, there is quarantine fatigue,’’ Wen said. Many people have a sense that if schools are reopening, then other activities can resume too, “but actually the opposite is true.”
Global school studies suggest in-person learning can be safe when transmission rates in the larger community are low, the CDC report said.
Mississippi is among states where several outbreaks among students and teachers have been reported since in-person classes resumed in July and August.
Kathy Willard said she had mixed feelings when her grandson’s fourth grade class in Oxford was sent home for two weeks after several teachers and one student tested positive for the virus. The family doesn’t have internet access at home, making remote learning a challenge.
“It was a hardship. There’s always a worry about him falling behind or not getting access to what he needs for school,” Willard said. “But at the same time, I’m glad the school is doing what they can to protect our kids.”
Students in her district are required to wear masks and receive temperature checks, and students and teachers who come into contact with the virus are quarantined.
In Alcorn County, Mississippi, where hundreds of community cases have been reported, including dozens among teachers, staff and students, parent Kimberly Kilpatrick-Kelley is keeping her 15- and 17-olds home for virtual learning.
The Corinth mother said the family always wears masks when they leave home and practice social distancing, and she worries about her kids getting sick and infecting her parents.
“I personally don’t want to take the risk” she said.
Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, head of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ infectious-diseases committee, said the big question is what will happen as schools that have started out with online learning go back to in-person classes.
“It really will depend on how well can you mask and distance in a school setting,” she said.
New York City, the nation’s largest school district, with over 1 million students, resumed classroom learning Tuesday for elementary school children. Higher grades will resume on Thursday.
The CDC report said more than 277,000 children ages 5 to 17 were confirmed infected between March and Sept. 19, with an increase in September after a peak and a decline over the summer.
The agency acknowledged that may be an underestimate, in part because testing is most often done on people with symptoms, and children with the coronavirus often have none.
The CDC reported 51 deaths in school-age kids, most in them ages 12 to 17. Less than 2% of infected children were hospitalized, and youngsters who are Black, Hispanic or have underlying conditions fared worse than white children.
The findings add to other data showing the pandemic is increasingly affecting younger age groups after initially hitting older Americans hard.
In a separate report Tuesday, the CDC said weekly COVID-19 cases among people ages 18 to 22 increased 55% nationally. The increases were greatest in the Northeast and Midwest and were not solely attributable to increased testing, the CDC said. About one-third of U.S. cases are in adults 50 and older, while one-quarter are in 18-to-29-year-olds.
The AAP research is based on reports from public health departments in 49 states, New York City, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and Guam. New York state doesn’t provide data by age. Most states count children’s cases up to age 19, though a few use different age ranges.
As of Sept. 24, the AAP counted nearly 625,000 youth cases, up to age 20, a 14% increase over the previous two weeks. Deaths totaled 109, well under 1% of all COVID-19 fatalities in the U.S.
As of Monday, the CDC counted over 435,000 cases in children from age zero through 17 and 93 deaths. The groups’ totals differ because they include different ages and time periods.
Overall, 7 million Americans have been confirmed infected and 205,000 have died.
YEREVAN, Armenia — Leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia brushed off the suggestion of peace talks Tuesday, accusing each other of obstructing negotiations over the separatist territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, with dozens killed and injured in three days of heavy fighting.
In the latest incident, Armenia said one of its warplanes was shot down by a fighter jet from Azerbaijan’s ally Turkey, killing the pilot, in what would be a major escalation of the violence. Both Turkey and Azerbaijan denied it.
The international community is calling for talks to end the decades-old conflict between the two former Soviet republics in the Caucasus Mountains region following a flareup of violence this week. It centers on Nagorno-Karabakh, a region that lies within Azerbaijan but has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by the Armenian government since 1994 at the end of a separatist war.
The U.N. Security Council called on Armenia and Azerbaijan Tuesday evening to immediately halt the fighting and urgently resume talks without preconditions. The U.N.’s most powerful body strongly condemned the use of force and backed Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ earlier call to stop the fighting, deescalate tensions, and resume talks “without delay.”
Azerbaijani President Ilkham Aliyev told Russian state TV channel Rossia 1 that Baku is committed to negotiating a resolution but that Armenia is obstructing the process.
“The Armenian prime minister publicly declares that Karabakh is (part of) Armenia, period. In this case, what kind of negotiating process can we talk about?” Aliev said. He added that according to principles brokered by the Minsk group, which was set up in 1992 by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to resolve the conflict, “territories around the former Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous region should be transferred to Azerbaijan.”
Aliev noted that if Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan says “that Karabakh is Armenia and that we should negotiate with the so-called puppet regime of Nagorno-Karabakh, (he is) trying to break the format of negotiations that has existed for 20 years.”
Pashinyan, in turn, told the broadcaster that “it is very hard to talk about negotiations … when specific military operations are underway.” He said there is no military solution to the conflict and called for a compromise.
But first, Azerbaijan must “immediately end (its) aggression towards Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia,” Pashinyan said. “We all perceive this as an existential threat to our nation, we basically perceive it as a war that was declared to the Armenian people, and our people are now simply forced to use the right for self-defense.”
Since Sunday, the Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Ministry reported 84 servicemen were killed. Aliyev said 11 civilians were killed on its side, although he didn’t detail the country’s military casualties.
Both countries accused each other of firing into their territory outside of the Nagorno-Karabakh area on Tuesday.
The separatist region of about 4,400 square kilometers (1,700 square miles), or about the size of the U.S. state of Delaware, is 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the Armenian border. Soldiers backed by Armenia also occupy some Azerbaijani territory outside the region.
Armenia also alleged that Turkey, which supports Azerbaijan, was involved. “Turkey, according to our information, looks for an excuse for a broader involvement in this conflict,” Pashinyan said.
The Armenian military said an SU-25 from its air force was shot down in Armenian airspace by a Turkish F-16 fighter jet that took off from Azerbaijan, and the pilot was killed.
The allegation of downing the jet was “absolutely untrue,” said Fahrettin Altun, communications director for Turkey’s president. Azerbaijani officials called it “another fantasy of the Armenian military propaganda machine.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged Armenia to withdraw immediately from the separatist region, and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Turkey is “by Azerbaijan’s side on the field and at the (negotiating) table.”
Armenian officials said that Turkey, a NATO member, is supplying Azerbaijan with fighters from Syria and weapons, including F-16 fighter jets. Both Azerbaijan and Turkey deny it.
Earlier in the day, Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry said Armenian forces shelled the Dashkesan region in Azerbaijan. Armenian officials said Azerbaijani forces opened fire on a military unit in the Armenian town of Vardenis, setting a bus on fire and killing one civilian.
Armenia’s Foreign Ministry denied shelling the region and said the reports were laying the groundwork for Azerbaijan “expanding the geography of hostilities, including the aggression against the Republic of Armenia.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has pushed for “an immediate cease-fire and a return to the negotiating table” in phone calls with the leaders of both countries, her office said.
She told them the OSCE offers an appropriate forum for talks and that the two countries’ neighbors “should contribute to the peaceful solution,” said her spokesman, Steffen Seibert.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said during a visit to Greece that “both sides must stop the violence” and work “to return to substantive negotiations as quickly as possible.”
Russia, which along with France and the United States co-chairs the Minsk group, urged every country to help facilitate a peaceful resolution of the conflict.
“We call on all countries, especially our partners such as Turkey, to do everything to convince the opposing parties to cease fire and return to peacefully resolving the conflict by politico-diplomatic means,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday.
Putin spoke to Pashinyan on Tuesday for the second time in three days, urging de-escalation and, like the other leaders, an immediate cease-fire.
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Associated Press writers Daria Litvinova in Moscow, Geir Moulson in Berlin, Suzan Fraser in Ankara and Elena Becatoros in Athens contributed.
