Steve Marshall promises ‘relentless’ pursuit of human traffickers
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall isn’t holding back on Human Trafficking Awareness Day — he’s promising relentless pursuit of traffickers. On Friday, Marshall vowed to actively pursue traffickers across the Yellowhammer State. “Not only is human trafficking a global tragedy, it is heartbreakingly present in our own state of Alabama. Human trafficking is only behind drug trafficking as the second largest criminal industry in the world, with an all-time high of 27 million victims enslaved today,” explained Marshall. “It is hard for us to fathom that such a vile practice as slavery exists in our midst, but we must acknowledge it, be vigilant, and fight it. Right here in Alabama, our interstates–I-20, I-85, I-10 and I-65—are major routes for human trafficking. According to the National Human Trafficking Hotline at least 36 human trafficking cases were reported in the Yellowhammer State in 2018. They also report more than 107 victims of human trafficking in Alabama have called its hotline for help last year. Marshall continued, “Human trafficking involves victims being used for commercial sex or forced labor. Traffickers target those who are most vulnerable, using threats or torture to wear down its victims and render them powerless to seek help. Tragically, the average age of victims is reported to be 12 years old, and one-third of runaway children are victimized within the first two days of leaving home. “I want to remind human traffickers of the promise I made them last year: We are coming after you. This year, another promise: We will only become more relentless—until the day we End It. Marshall explained his office is working in conjunction with the Alabama Human Trafficking Task Force to put an end to human trafficking in the Yellowhammer State. “We ask that you be watchful of those who may be in trouble. Please do not try to intervene, but instead, immediately report any suspicions to law enforcement. Together, we can save victims, one at a time, and reduce the terrible suffering caused by the trafficking of our fellow human beings. You may call the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888,” Marshall concluded.
Martha Roby: Congress and the Administration are fighting human trafficking
In the spirit of welcoming a new year, I have recently spent time reflecting upon the many positive developments we experienced in our district, state, and country in 2018. Unemployment is historically low, our economy is booming, and hardworking Americans are getting to keep more of the money they earn thanks to our tax reform overhaul. 2018 brought many accomplishments that we should absolutely celebrate, but last year also included a devastating statistic that we cannot ignore: In the United States, more than 8,500 human trafficking cases were reported to the National Human Trafficking Hotline (NHTH) in the last 12 months alone. According to the NHTH, for the first half of 2018, there were 36 human trafficking cases reported in Alabama. There are nearly 25 million victims of human trafficking worldwide, and until this number is zero, we have work to do. This problem is out of control, and I am glad to report that President Trump has designated the month of January 2019 as National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. In recent weeks, he has signed into law four bills that demonstrate our commitment to ending human trafficking and bringing these criminals to justice. Most recently, the President signed S. 1862, the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, which tightens criteria for whether countries are meeting standards for eliminating trafficking. Last month, President Donald Trump signed into law the Abolish Human Trafficking Act, which strengthens programs supporting survivors and increases resources for combatting this modern-day form of slavery. Here in Alabama, there are several organizations that provide shelter, transitional housing, and other services to individuals who have been trafficked. You can visit www.enditalabama.org/resources to learn more about these critical resources available to survivors in our state. The President also recently signed the Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act. This legislation authorizes $430 million to fight sex and labor trafficking. Finally, President Trump signed into law S. 1312, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, to establish new prevention, prosecution, and collaboration initiatives to bring human traffickers to justice swiftly. It is imperative that we hold these criminals responsible for their heinous crimes, and I am proud of this measure to do so. Human trafficking is plaguing our country, but the underground nature of the problem often makes it difficult for authorities to estimate the full scale of its impact. Still, it happens in our communities every single day in plain sight, and it is our responsibility to tackle the issue head-on. It is especially important that we act quickly when we see these crimes occur. If at any point you have information or believe you see something questionable, immediately call the Alabama State Bureau of Investigation at 334-242-1142, or file a report online at https://app.alea.gov/SAR. The National Human Trafficking Hotline can be reached by calling 1-888-373-7888. It’s hard to grasp the severity of a problem that often goes unseen, and it is especially difficult to combat it. That’s why I am very grateful that Congress and the Trump Administration are working together to make real strides towards addressing this crisis. We must continue to make it crystal clear that this horrendous form of modern-day slavery has no place in the United States and that we are committed to fighting it every step of the way. Martha Robyrepresents Alabama’s Second Congressional District. She lives in Montgomery, Alabama, with her husband Riley and their two children.
Shutdown squeezing the Alabama city of Huntsville — built on federal spending
Once known for its cotton trade and watercress farms, Huntsville, Alabama, is now the ultimate government town: About 70 federal agencies are located at the Army’s 38,000-acre Redstone Arsenal. More than half of the area’s economy is tied to Washington spending. Empty parking lots and darkened offices at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center on Redstone have translated into vacant hotel rooms because out-of-town government workers and contractors aren’t coming. Restaurants frequented by federal workers who travel on government spending accounts are struggling, too. Transportation Security Administration employees working without pay at the city’s airport say they are spending their own money to bring in quiches and breakfast rolls as a morale booster. Moms are sharing tips online about free entertainment and buying food in bulk to save a few bucks. The largest credit union has already provided hundreds of bridge loans for struggling families. “It’s a fog with no end in sight,” said Michael Northern, an executive with a small company that runs three restaurants outside a main arsenal gate. The lunch crowd is still OK, he said, but dinner dollars have dried up, and business is off at least 35 percent. “People are just going home and nesting, trying to conserve resources,” said Northern, vice president of WJP Restaurant Group. “Imagine being in that posture and hearing Donald Trump say, ‘It could be a year.’” The closure persists because the president and congressional Democrats can’t agree on $5.7 billion in funding for a border wall, which Trump touts as vital to U.S. security and critics see as pointless and immoral. The jobs of some 800,000 workers hang in the balance. A little more than half are still working without pay, and hundreds of thousands will miss paychecks Friday. Economic statistics lag real-time events, so it’s hard to gauge the effects of a shutdown that’s been going on less than a month. But in Huntsville, a city of about 195,000 people where more than 5,000 workers are affected, frustration and worry are building. Located at the base of a mountain in the lush Tennessee Valley, Huntsville was just another Alabama city until the government decided to build rockets at Redstone Arsenal at the dawn of the space race. The influx of people and federal dollars that arrived with NASA transformed the city into a technical and engineering hub that only grew as Army missile and materiel programs expanded on the base. That heavy reliance on federal spending has Huntsville residents wondering what will come next. Jack Lyons, a lifelong space geek who thought he’d hit the jackpot when he got a job as a contractor working on massive rocket test stands for NASA, is spending the furlough on his small side business making props for marching bands. A solid Republican voter until 2016, when he couldn’t bring himself to vote for Trump, he’s frustrated and saddened by what’s going on in Washington. “They’re trying to use people as bargaining chips, and it just isn’t right,” Lyons said. Unlike civil service workers who expect to eventually get back pay, Lyons doesn’t know if he’ll ever see a dollar from the shutdown period. Just back from maternity leave following the birth of her second child, Katie Barron works at home for a private company not connected to the government, but her husband is a National Weather Service meteorologist forced to work without pay because his job is classified as essential. They’re canceling this Saturday’s date night to save a couple of hundred dollars, and the purchase of a new refrigerator is on hold. They’ve also put off home and car maintenance, but the $450-a-week bill for day care still has to be paid, as do the mortgage and utility bills. “We’re a little bit buffered, but our lives are basically based off dual incomes,” Barron said. While Barron frets over the loss of dental and optical insurance because of the shutdown, she said her family has some savings and will be fine for a while. Others are struggling. Redstone Federal Credit Union already has provided hundreds of low-interest loans of as much as $5,000 each to families affected by the shutdown, with no payments due for 60 days, and it’s also letting members skip payments on existing loans for a $35 fee, chief marketing officer Fred Trusty said. “As the days go on, we are seeing more and more traffic head to our branches,” he said. The timing of the shutdown couldn’t be worse since many families already were stretched thin by holiday spending or starting payments for upcoming summer travel, Trusty said. Jeff and Sabine Cool, who own a German-style food truck that operates in the heart of the NASA complex, say their income is down about $600 a week since the beginning of the shutdown. “It kind of hurt a little bit. We’re just rolling with the punches,” Jeff Cool said Wednesday as he set up tables outside Hildegard’s German Wurst Wagon on a bright, windy morning. “I’m glad I’m retired Army and have an additional income, but I feel for the other people.” Cool’s sympathy extends to people like Sandra Snell, a TSA officer working without pay at Huntsville International Airport. She hasn’t gotten a paycheck since December and wonders what will happen once her savings run out. The bright spots of the shutdown, she said, are the co-workers who share food and airline passengers who realize that the people checking their identification cards and staffing the X-ray machines are working for free. “They’ll say, ‘Thanks for being here.’ It helps. It’s nice when they realize your value,” she said. Republished with permission from the Associated Press.
Q&A: How the government shutdown might end
Somehow, some day, the nasty deadlock between President Donald Trump and congressional Democrats that’s shuttered federal agencies for a record-tying 21 days will end. The only real questions are when, how and who will be crowned the winner in public opinion polls and ultimately by voters. Things got bleaker this week when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told Trump at a fiery White House meeting that Democrats would not bow to his demand for $5.7 billion to start building a wall along the border with Mexico. Trump slammed his hand on the negotiating table and stormed out, Democrats said. Trump said he calmly left the room, saying, “Bye-bye.” A look at how the impasse might be resolved: Q: What’s the easiest solution? A: None is easy. Trump’s conservative base strongly backs his fight for wall money, even if it has meant a partial government shutdown. Democrats’ liberal stalwarts just as ardently oppose giving in. Trump and Democratic leaders have been so insistent on not surrendering that each would risk rebellion by supporters if they agreed to something viewed as a capitulation. Q: What’s the likeliest way out? A: Increasingly some people think that could be for Trump to declare a national emergency. By law, that could give him authority to use some money in the military’s budget for construction projects for the wall. It’s a tactic that could let each side claim a partial victory and move on. Trump could argue he did secure money for the wall, his most memorable campaign pledge, and overcame Democratic objections. Democrats could say they didn’t give in and they could file suits to block the move, claiming Trump had exceeded his authority by stretching the meaning of emergency. Trump could decide to finally sign bills reopening the government. Leaving the White House Thursday to visit the southwestern border, Trump strongly suggested he would take that route. “I have the absolute right to declare a national emergency,” he told reporters. He added: “If I have to, I will. I have no doubt about it.” Q: Why not just do it? A: Plenty of people on both sides hate the idea, and its legality in this instance is questionable. Some Republicans, including Texas Rep. Mac Thornberry, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, say strengthening border infrastructure is not the military’s job and they oppose siphoning defense dollars for that purpose. Many Republicans worry that by stretching the definition of “emergency,” Trump opens the door to a future Democratic president circumventing lawmakers in ways the GOP would oppose. Democrats would consider the move a fresh example of Trump abusing his authority as president. They say it would be a ploy to bypass Congress and that there’s no emergency on the border, where the number of illegal crossings has fallen in recent years. While the law doesn’t clearly define a national emergency, some experts say a declaration here would be unwarranted. “The idea was that the executive would have these powers on a limited basis for true emergencies,” said Andrew Boyle, who studies presidential emergency powers at the Brennan Center for Justice, which is affiliated with New York University. He said declaring a national emergency at the border would be “clearly in bad faith.” Q: Polls show the public blames Trump more than Democrats for the shutdown. Will Republicans fold? A: Some GOP lawmakers have had enough, especially in the Senate. Reflecting that, a group of GOP senators has talked to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and White House officials about forging a compromise, though that seems an uphill battle. Ultimately McConnell, a tough partisan also renowned for ending previous battles by cutting bipartisan deals, will decide the GOP’s path. It will take more than a few Republican defections for McConnell to abandon Trump. Ever since Trump reversed himself and turned down an agreement to avoid the shutdown before Christmas, McConnell has stepped aside, saying Trump and Democrats should bargain. Democrats have been trying to pressure McConnell, quoting his past ridicule of shutdowns and citing the damage the current one is inflicting on voters. With hundreds of thousands of federal workers due to miss their first paychecks Friday and constituents complaining about losing government services, pressure will only intensify. “I think public sentiment weighing in on his members” will change his mind, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a brief interview. “He’s a legislator.” “He’s watching, he’s waiting,” said retired Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss. Q: What about Democrats? A: They’ve shown no outward signs of divisions. If anything, Trump’s recent actions — leaving Wednesday’s negotiating session, seeming to blame Democrats for the recent deaths of two Guatemalan children in U.S. custody — have united them more. “Democrats’ reaction ranges from angry to enraged,” said Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va. Q: Is there a deal to be had? A: That seems increasingly unlikely. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and other Republicans have explored a compromise that might include border security money plus helping hundreds of thousands of young immigrants who arrived in the U.S. illegally as children stay in this country. But Vice President Mike Pence and Graham reported no progress after a meeting Thursday. Democrats know a deal with Trump could alienate liberals, and are loath to show Trump that they would fold during future confrontations. They also don’t trust him. Pelosi said Trump has moved the goalposts so often that “pretty soon these goal posts won’t even be in the stadium.” Republished with permission from the Associated Press.
Shutdown suspends federal cleanups at Birmingham, other Superfund sites
The government shutdown has suspended federal cleanups at Superfund sites around the nation and forced the cancellation of public hearings, deepening the mistrust and resentment of surrounding residents who feel people in power long ago abandoned them to live among the toxic residue of the country’s factories and mines. “We are already hurting, and it’s just adding more fuel to the fire,” says 40-year-old Keisha Brown, whose wood-frame home is in a community nestled among coking plants and other factories on Birmingham’s north side. The mostly African-American community has been forced to cope with high levels of arsenic, lead and other contaminants in the soil that the Environmental Protection Agency has been scraping up and carting away, house by house. As President Donald Trump and Congress battle over Trump’s demand for a wall on the southern U.S. border, the nearly 3-week-old partial government shutdown has stopped federal work on Superfund sites except for cases where the administration deems “there is an imminent threat to the safety of human life or to the protection of property.” EPA’s shutdown plans said the agency would evaluate about 800 Superfund sites to see how many could pose an immediate threat. As an example of that kind of threat, it cited an acid leak from a mine that could threaten the public water supply. That’s the hazard at Northern California’s Iron Mountain mine, where EPA workers help prevent an unending flow of lethally acidic runoff off the Superfund site from spilling into rivers downstream. Practically speaking, said Bonnie Bellow, a former EPA official who worked on Superfund public outreach at the agency, the impact of the stoppage of work at sites across the nation “wholly depends” on the length of the shutdown. “Unless there is immediate risk like a storm, a flood, a week or two of slowdowns is not going to very likely affect the cleanup at the site,” Bellow said. In north Birmingham, Brown said it’s been a couple of weeks since she’s spotted any EPA crews at people’s houses. It wasn’t clear if state workers or contractors were continuing work. But long before the shutdown began, Brown harbored doubts the cleanup was working anyway. “My main concern is the health of the people out here,” said Brown, who has asthma. “All of us are sick, and we’ve got to function on medicine every day.” In terms of time, the federal government shutdown is a chronological blip in the long history of the site — which includes ethics charges in a local bribery scandal to block federal cleanup efforts — but adds to the uncertainty in an area where residents feel forgotten and betrayed. At the EPA, the shutdown has furloughed the bulk of the agency’s roughly 14,000 employees. It also means the EPA isn’t getting most of the daily stream of environmental questions and tips from the public. Routine inspections aren’t happening. State, local and private emails to EPA officials often get automated messages back promising a response when the shutdown ends. In Montana, for instance, state officials this month found themselves fielding calls from a tribal member worried about drinking water with a funny look to it, said Kristi Ponozzo, public-policy director at that state’s Department of Environmental Quality. The EPA normally provides tribes with technical assistance on water supplies. With most EPA colleagues idled, Ponozzo said, her agency also had to call off an environmental review meeting for a mining project, potentially delaying the project. But it’s the agency’s work at Superfund sites — lessening the threat from old nuclear-weapons plants, chemical factories, mines and other entities — that gets much of the attention. Absent imminent peril, it would be up to state governments or contractors to continue any cleanup during the shutdown “up to the point that additional EPA direction or funding is needed,” the EPA said in a statement. “Sites where cleanup activities have been stopped or shut down will be secured until cleanup activities are able to commence when the federal government reopens,” the agency said. For federal Superfund sites in Michigan, the shutdown means there are no EPA colleagues to consult, said Scott Dean, a spokesman for that state’s Department of Environmental Quality. At Michigan Superfund sites, day-to-day field operations were continuing since private contractors do most of the on-the-ground work, Dean said. Bellow, the former EPA official, said the cancellation of hearings about Superfund sites posed immediate concerns. In East Chicago, Indiana, for example, the EPA called off a planned public hearing set for last Wednesday to outline how the agency planned to clean up high levels of lead and arsenic in the soil. The EPA has proposed a seven-month, $26.5 million cleanup that includes treating and removing tainted soil from the area, where a lead smelter previously was located. During a public meeting Nov. 29, some residents complained that the EPA’s approach would leave too much pollution in place. But others didn’t get a chance to speak and were hoping to do so at the meeting this week, said Debbie Chizewer, a Northwestern University environmental attorney who represents community groups in the low-income area. The EPA announced the cancellation in an online notice and gave no indication that it would be rescheduled. Leaders of the East Chicago Calumet Community Advisory Group asked for a new hearing date and an extension of a Jan. 14 public comment deadline in a letter to the EPA’s regional Superfund division. Calls by The Associated Press to the agency’s regional office in Chicago this week were not answered. Local critics fear the EPA will use the delay caused by the shutdown as justification for pushing ahead with a cleanup strategy they consider flawed, Chizewer said, even though the agency has designated the affected area as an “environmental justice community” — a low-income community of color that has been disproportionately harmed by pollution. The EPA has a “special obligation” when dealing with such communities, Chizewer said. “This would be an example of shutting them out for no good reason.”
