Supreme Court Victory!



[WEEKLY UPDATE]

Supreme Court Victory for Voters on Trump Ballot Issue

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The United States Supreme Court’s ruling allowing Donald
Trump’s name to appear on the 2024 Colorado primary ballot made a
powerful and unified statement against the brazen, unconstitutional
coup by leftists against the constitutional rights of tens of millions
of Americans.

And, thankfully, a Supreme Court majority seems prepared to stop any
shady Biden administration, judicial and leftist congressional efforts
to overturn a Trump victory based upon false allegations of
insurrection.

In January, we filed an _amici curiae_ (friend of the court) brief
[[link removed]]
along with
the Allied Educational Foundation (AEF) in support of former President
Donald Trump in his challenge to the Colorado Supreme Court’s
unprecedented decision to remove him from the state’s 2024
presidential primary ballot (_Donald J. Trump v. Norma Anderson et
al._
[[link removed]]
(No. 23-719)).

We and AEF argued
[[link removed]]
that, if the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling was allowed to stand,
presidential and other federal elections would be thrown into chaos:

> In a basically standardless legal discussion, charges of
> insurrection can be leveled by imaginative partisans on the basis of
> many different kinds of inflammatory political actions or speech.
> Consider:

* Vice President Kamala Harris promoted a bail fund that
helped to free “those protesting on the ground in Minnesota” in
the wake of the murder of George Floyd. The protests in 20 states
following that murder were among the costliest in U.S. history,
persisting in some cities for months, and resulting in at least 25
deaths. Protesters attacked federal property and set fire to a federal
courthouse. Protests also caused President Trump to evacuate the White
House to a secure underground location, as rioters assaulted police
officers outside the White House gates.

* Discussing an anticipated abortion ruling, Senate
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told a rally on the steps of the U.S.
Supreme Court on March 5, 2020, “I want to tell you Gorsuch. I want
to tell you Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind and you will
pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with
these awful decisions.” His comments were reproved by the Chief
Justice of this Court as “dangerous.” Two years later a man was
arrested for threatening behavior directed at Justice Kavanaugh.

* Recently a number of Republican officials have proposed
retaliating for the instant lawsuit by seeking to remove President
Biden from their state ballots for abetting an “invasion of eight
million” at the southern border of the United States.

* On June 10, 2017, Sen. Bernie Sanders called President
Trump “the worst and most dangerous president in the history of our
country.” Four days later, one of his supporters opened fire on
congressional Republicans at a baseball practice, wounding four,
including Rep. Steve Scalise.

> All of these facts are fodder for interested partisans seeking to
> disqualify opposing candidates. If the nation does go “down that
> path,” presidential elections in the United States will become a
> more ugly business. Legal maneuvers to remove President Trump from
> the ballots of various states, and the retaliatory maneuvers they
> provoke, will create a new, anti-democratic front in the partisan
> wars. To be blunt, “blue states” will apply Section 3 to harass
> “red” candidates, while “red states” will apply that
> provision to harass “blue” candidates.

***

> The losers in this process, as here, will be the voters.

> The Court should foreclose this kind of warfare now. Amici
> respectfully submit that the Court should refuse to ratify these
> maneuvers, and should instead adopt as its policy the observation
> that “[t]he cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.”
This was a tremendous victory but the battle for free and fair
elections continues, and _your Judicial Watch_ will always be on the
front lines.

JUDICIAL WATCH SUES ILLINOIS TO FORCE CLEAN UP OF VOTING ROLLS

Judicial Watch just filed a major federal lawsuit against
[[link removed]]
the Illinois State Board of Elections and its Executive Director,
Bernadette Matthews, over their failure to clean Illinois’ voter
rolls and to produce election-related records as required by federal
law, the National Voter Registration Act
[[link removed]]
of 1993 (NVRA) (_Judicial Watch Inc. et al. v. Illinois State Board of
Elections et al._
[[link removed].
1:24-cv-01867)).

The lawsuit requests the court to require Illinois to “develop and
implement a general program that makes a reasonable effort to remove
the registrations of ineligible registrants from the voter rolls.”

Our legal pressure ultimately led to the removal of up to four million
ineligible voters
[[link removed]]
from voter rolls in New York, California, Pennsylvania, Colorado,
North Carolina, Kentucky, Ohio, and elsewhere.

The current lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for
the Northern District of Illinois on behalf of Judicial Watch and the
nonprofit organizations Illinois Family Action
[[link removed]]
and Breakthrough Ideas
[[link removed]],
and Carol J. Davis, who is a
lawfully registered voter in Illinois.

The NVRA requires states to “conduct a general program that makes a
reasonable effort to remove” from the official voter rolls “the
names of ineligible voters” who have died or changed residence.
The law requires registrations to be canceled when voters fail to
respond to address confirmation notices and then fail to vote in the
next two general federal elections. In 2018, the Supreme Court
confirmed that such removals are mandatory (_Husted v. A. Philip
Randolph Inst.,_
[[link removed]]
138 S.
Ct. 1833, 1841-42 (2018)). In July 2023, Judicial Watch successfully
sued
[[link removed]]
Illinois for failing to provide access voting list data to a citizens
group as federal law requires.

Our new lawsuit details 23 Illinois counties, with a combined
registration list of 980,089 voters, reported removing a combined
total of only 100 registrations_ _in the last two-year reporting
period under a crucial provision of the NVRA. The lawsuit alleges that
this is an “absurdly small” number and contends that there “is
no possible way these counties can be conducting a general program
that makes reasonable effort to cancel registrations of voters who
have become ineligible because of a change of residence while removing
so few registrations.”

The lawsuit also alleges:

* Illinois’ own reported data show that more than one
fifth of its counties removed few or no registrations under a crucial
NVRA provision concerning voters who have moved.
* Illinois informed the federal Election Assistance
Commission (EAC) that 34 counties simply failed to report any data
about removals under that key NVRA provision.
* Nineteen of these counties also failed to report any
data regarding registrations removed because of the death of the
voter.
* Dozens of other counties failed to report other kinds
of important NVRA data to the EAC.

We note that counties typically do not ignore their reporting
obligations to the EAC where the data is favorable to them. Rather,
this failure suggests non-compliance with the NVRA. In all, 66 of
Illinois’ 108 jurisdictions – or 60% of them – either reported
fewer unusually low NVRA removals or failed to report a crucial data
category to the EAC. These jurisdictions contain a total of 5.8
million registered voters, or about two thirds of Illinois’ 8.8
million registered voters.

In our complaint, we reference a Notice Letter sent in November 2023
to Matthews before filing suit. This letter recounted these failures,
and also observed that recent census estimates of citizens over the
age of eighteen “suggests that 15 Illinois jurisdictions have more
voter registrations than citizens of voting age.” Illinois’ voting
rolls are a mess. Dirty voter rolls can mean dirty elections.
Illinois should take immediate steps to clean its rolls to both
prevent fraud and increase voter confidence in the elections.

Judicial Watch is a national leader in voting integrity and voting
rights. As part of its work, Judicial Watch assembled a team of highly
experienced voting rights attorneys who stopped discriminatory
elections in Hawaii, and cleaned up voter rolls across the country,
among other achievements
[[link removed]].

Robert Popper, a Judicial Watch senior attorney, leads our election
law program. Popper was previously in the Voting Section of the Civil
Rights Division of the Justice Department, where he managed voting
rights investigations, litigations, consent decrees, and settlements
in dozens of states.

In February 2024 we filed a civil rights lawsuit
[[link removed]]
on
behalf of the Libertarian Party of Mississippi, challenging a
Mississippi election law permitting absentee ballots to be received as
long as five business days after Election Day.

In December 2023, we sent notice letters
[[link removed]]
to election officials in the District of Columbia, California, and
Illinois, notifying them of evident violations of the NVRA, based on
their failure to remove inactive voters from their registration rolls.
The letters point out that these jurisdictions publicly reported
removing few or no ineligible voter registrations under a key
provision of the NVRA. The letters threaten federal lawsuits unless
the violations are corrected in a timely fashion. In response to our
inquiries, Washington, DC, officials admitted that they had not
complied with the NVRA, promptly removed 65,544 outdated names from
the voting rolls, promised to remove 37,962 more, and designated
another 73,522 registrations as “inactive.”

In July 2023, we filed
[[link removed]]
an
_amicus curiae_ (friend of the court) brief
[[link removed]],
supporting the decision
[[link removed]]
of
the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine, which struck down
Maine’s policy restricting the use and distribution of the state’s
voter registration list (_Public Interest Legal Foundation v. Shenna
Bellows_
[[link removed]]
(No.
23-1361). According to a national study
[[link removed]]
conducted by Judicial Watch in 2020, Maine’s statewide registration
rate was 101% of eligible voters.

In a separate lawsuit, in July 2023 we settled
[[link removed]]
a
federal election integrity lawsuit on behalf of the Illinois
Conservative Union against the state of Illinois, the Illinois State
Board of Elections, and its director, which grants access to the
current centralized statewide list of registered voters for the state
for the past 15 elections.

In April 2023, Pennsylvania settled
[[link removed]]
with us and admitted in court filings that it removed 178,258
ineligible registrations in response to communications from Judicial
Watch. The settlement commits Pennsylvania and five of its counties to
public reporting of statistics regarding their ongoing voter roll
clean-up efforts for the next five years.

In March 2023, Colorado agreed
[[link removed]]
to settle our NVRA lawsuit alleging that Colorado failed to remove
ineligible voters from its rolls. The settlement agreement requires
Colorado to provide Judicial Watch with the most recent voter roll
data for each Colorado county each year for six years.

In February 2023, Los Angeles County confirmed
[[link removed]]
the removal of 1,207,613 ineligible voters from its rolls since last
year, under the terms of a settlement agreement
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in a federal lawsuit
[[link removed]]
Judicial Watch filed in 2017.

We settled
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a federal election integrity lawsuit against New York City after the
city removed 441,083 ineligible names from the voter rolls and
promised to take reasonable steps going forward to clean its voter
registration lists.

Kentucky
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also removed hundreds of thousands of old registrations after it
entered into a consent decree to end another Judicial Watch lawsuit.

In February 2022, we settled
[[link removed]]
a
voter roll clean-up lawsuit against North Carolina and two of its
counties after North Carolina removed over 430,000 inactive
registrations from its voter rolls.
In March 2022, a Maryland court ruled in favor
[[link removed]]
of our challenge to the Democratic state legislature’s “extreme”
congressional-districts gerrymander.

Illinois Family Action
[[link removed]],
the
non-profit and tax-exempt legislative action arm of Illinois Family
Institute
[[link removed]],
was founded in 2010 to
promote the common good and general welfare, primarily by means of
education, including direct and grassroots lobbying. IFA works to
advance public policies to protect the sanctity of human life,
Christian marriage and the natural family, and other initiatives which
are consistent with principles of good government.

Breakthrough Ideas
[[link removed]]
is a
policy advocacy and education network that advances the causes of
peace, prosperity, and freedom by highlighting the virtue of
taxpayer-centric and liberty-focused policies and how they benefit all
community members.

JUDICIAL WATCH FILES COMPLAINT AGAINST FEDERAL JUDGES FOR WOKE
DISCRIMINATORY PREFERENCES

As our name implies, we are in a position to closely observe the
courts, and when we see malfeasance, we speak up. Here is a good
example.

We filed a judicial misconduct complaint
[[link removed]]
against three federal judges in the U.S. District Court for the
Southern District of Illinois for standing orders that grant special
preferences to lawyers who appear before them based on the lawyers’
race, ethnicity, or gender/sex.

The complaint names Chief Judge Nancy J. Rosenstengel, Judge Staci M.
Yandle, and Judge David W. Dugan for orders we state are
discriminatory and unconstitutional and constitute “conduct
prejudicial to the effective and expeditious administration of the
business of the courts.”

On January 7, 2020, Judge Yandle entered a standing order that
provides, in pertinent part:

> Recognizing the importance of the development of future generations
> of practitioners through courtroom opportunities, the undersigned
> encourages the participation of newer, female, and minority
> attorneys in proceedings in my courtroom, particularly with respect
> to oral argument ... To that end, the Court adopts the following
> procedures regarding oral arguments as to pending motions:

* After a motion is fully briefed, as part of a Motion Requesting
Oral Argument, a party may alert the Court that, if oral argument is
granted, it intends to have a newer, female, or minority attorney
argue the motion (or a portion of the motion).
* If such a request is made, the Court will:

* Grant the request for oral argument on the motion it if
is at all practicable to do so.
* Strongly consider allocating additional time for oral
argument beyond what the Court may otherwise have allocated were a
newer, female, or minority attorney not arguing the motion.
* Permit other more experienced counsel of record the
ability to provide some assistance to the newer, female, or minority
attorney who is arguing the motion, where appropriate during oral
argument.

***

> Chief Judge Rosenstengel entered a nearly identical standing order
> on January 17, 2020, followed by Judge David W. Dugan doing the same
> on October 6, 2020.

Our complaint states:

> The orders are patently discriminatory and unconstitutional as well
> as patronizing and deeply offensive. They also plainly imply that
> female and minority attorneys are less competent, less skilled, and
> less qualified than male and non-minority attorneys and require
> additional time and assistance to represent their clients. Moreover,
> they send a clear message to clients that, if they hire female or
> minority attorneys, they will be afforded advantages that they will
> not be afforded if they hire male or non-minority attorneys. They
> also erode litigants' and the public's trust and confidence in the
> justice system.
The complaint alleges the orders violate Rule 4(a)(3). They also
violate Judicial Canon 2(A) and the equal protection guarantee of the
Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.” We explain:

* Rule 4(a) of the Rules for Judicial-Conduct and
Judicial-Disability Proceedings.

> Misconduct is defined as “conduct prejudicial to the effective and
> expeditious administration of the business of the courts" and
> includes "intentional discrimination on the basis of race, color,
> sex, gender, gender identity, pregnancy, sexual orientation,
> religion, national origin, age, or disability.”

* Judicial Cannon 2(A).

> Judicial Canon 2(A) requires judges to “comply with the law and
> should act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence
> in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.”
The orders “are unconstitutional because they equate to
government-imposed, race-, ethnicity-, and sex/gender-based
discrimination that violates the equal protection guarantee of the
Fifth Amendment.”

We conclude:

> Courtroom time is a finite resource, and allowing oral argument,
> additional time, or the assistance of additional counsel based on
> immutable characteristics like race, ethnicity, and sex/gender is
> the antithesis of justice and fairness. It also does a substantial
> disservice to the very persons the orders purport to assist,
> implying that female and minority lawyers lack the competence,
> skills, and qualifications of male and non-minority lawyers….
> Judicial Watch respectfully requests that swift, corrective action
> be taken to remediate this ongoing misconduct in the U.S. District
> Court for the Southern District of Illinois.
This woke discrimination has no place in America’s courtrooms.
Frankly it is shocking that any federal judge would think it
appropriate to engage in flagrant race and sex discrimination in this
day and age.

Our lawsuits and FOIA requests on Critical Race Theory and other
leftist extremism are extensive:

In January 2024, we sued
[[link removed]]
the
Oakland Unified School District in California for records on a
racially segregated “playdate” held on August 26, 2023, by one of
the district’s elementary schools. The Judicial Watch lawsuit seeks
records on the planning and authorization of the “playdate” held
by Chabot Elementary School titled “Playdate Social for Black, Brown
& API [Asian/Pacific Islander] Families.”
In July 2023, we exposed
[[link removed]]
records from the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA), a component
of the United States Department of Defense, which included
instructional materials and emails that address topics such as
Critical Race Theory, “white privilege,” and Black Lives Matter.

In March 2023, records
[[link removed]]
from
the U.S. Department of Defense showed the U.S. Air Force Academy
(USAFA) has made race and gender instruction a top priority in the
training of cadets.

In July 2022, we sued
[[link removed]]
the Department of Defense for records related to the United States
Naval Academy (USNA) implementing Critical Race Theory (CRT) in the
training of naval recruits

In August 2022, our client David Flynn, who was removed from his
position as head football coach after exercising his right as a
parent-citizen to raise concerns about Critical Race Theory and Black
Lives Matter propaganda in his daughter’s seventh-grade history
class, settled
[[link removed]]
his civil rights lawsuit against his former employers at Dedham Public
Schools. As part of the settlement, the Superintendent of Dedham
Public Schools, Michael Welch, acknowledged “the important and valid
issues” raised by Flynn and specific changes in school policies
because of Flynn’s complaint, including banning teachers from
promoting Black Lives Matter to students online.

In June, we received records revealing Critical Race Theory
instruction at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
[[link removed]]
One
training slide contains a graphic titled “MODERN-DAY SLAVERY IN THE
USA.” [Emphasis in original]

JUDICIAL WATCH FILES SENATE ETHICS COMPLAINT AGAINST SEN. SHELDON
WHITEHOUSE

It seems that Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) was quite busy in
Washington pushing bills that benefit his wife in Rhode Island.
We’re calling foul.

We hand-delivered an ethics complaint
[[link removed]]
to Chairman Christopher A. Coons (D-CT) and Vice Chairman James
Lankford (R-OK) of the Senate Select Committee on Ethics calling for a
full investigation into potential ethics violations tied to Senator
Sheldon Whitehouse abusing his office to benefit himself and his wife.

There is strong evidence that Senator Sheldon Whitehouse may have
violated Senate ethics conflicts of interest rules. The Senate Ethics
Committee should immediately investigate this serious issue. Senator
Whitehouse seems to have stepped over the line of standard
environmental legislative advocacy and used his Senate office to
advance his and his wife’s personal and financial interests.”

We argue in support of an investigation:

> The publicly available facts suggest that Senator Whitehouse’s
> legislative activity, particularly his sponsorship of environmental
> legislation funding his wife’s clients and her specific area of
> expertise (marine spatial planning), creates a reasonable appearance
> of a conflict of interest. Given this, further investigation
> regarding Mrs. Whitehouse’s consulting activities, aided by the
> Committee’s subpoena power, is warranted.
Senator Whitehouse’s wife, Sandra Thornton Whitehouse, is the
president of Ocean Wonks, LLC, a for-profit limited liability
environmental consulting company that was chartered (in 2017) and has
its principal place of business in Rhode Island. Shortly after her
husband’s election to the Senate in 2009, Mrs. Whitehouse (and later
her company Ocean Wonks) became a consultant to at least two known
501(c)(3) nonprofit corporations focused on environmental issues -
Ocean Conservancy (OC) and AltaSea.

Influence Watch found
[[link removed]]
Mrs.
Whitehouse’s made slightly over $2.6 million in total compensation
from OC over the twelve-year period since FY 2009. Her present level
of compensation would make Mrs. Whitehouse the eighth highest earner
among OC employees, higher than several OC Vice Presidents.

According to a May 2023 report
[[link removed]]
by _The Daily Caller,_ since his election to the Senate, “Whitehouse
has introduced at least 24 ocean-related bills and co-founded the
Senate Oceans Caucus in 2011.”
The letter provides a partial list of ten pieces of legislation
sponsored or cosponsored by Senator Whitehouse. The five pieces of
legislation listed below, which have been enacted into law, likely
would (or did) benefit his wife and her environmental clients:

(1) Save Our Seas (“SOS”) Act (ENACTED)

* Signed into law by President Trump in 2018
* Allows NOAA Administrator to declare severe marine
debris events and authorize funds to assist with cleanup and response;
reauthorizes NOAA Marine Debris Program through FY2022, which supports
research on sources of marine debris provides funds to prevent and
clean up marine debris at a level of $10 million annually
* Strongly supported by Ocean Conservancy
* Benefitted Ocean Conservancy, which operates extensive
ocean debris cleanup operations. For example, Ocean Conservancy, in
“partnership” with leftwing environmental private equity firm
Circulate Capital, obtained a $35 million, 50% loan portfolio
guarantee from USAID to incentivize business development and
infrastructure in the “recycling value chain” in South and
Southeast Asia. Senator Whitehouse made remarks at the formal launch
event for the OC-Circulate Capital partnership at the Wilson Center in
D.C.
* OC’s “partner” in this endeavor, Circulate
Capital, lists OC’s CEO, Janis Searles Jones, as one of its
“Advisors” on its website

(2) Save Our Seas 2.0 Act (“SOS 2.0”) (ENACTED)

* Signed into law by President Trump in 2020
* Established a Marine Debris Response Trust Fund to
provide money/resources to respond to marine events; authorized a
Genius Prize to support advancements in marine cleanup, packaging,
detection, and other designs; created a Marine Debris Foundation to
support marine debris efforts globally; conduct new studies to create
or expand programs addressing marine debris
* Provided $103 million in FY21 and FY22 funding to
support 14 new country and regional programs strongly supported by
Ocean Conservancy
* Benefitted Ocean Conservancy, which operates extensive
international ocean debris cleanup operations. For example, OC
received the largest NOAA Marine Debris Program grant awarded in 2021,
totaling $631,770 for work to reduce abandoned, lost, and discarded
fishing gear. In 2022, OC again received the highest NOAA Marine
Debris Program grant awarded, totaling $361,395, to work with
restaurants and convenience stores in Miami-Dade County, Florida, to
reduce marine debris.

(3) Offshore Wind Incentives for New Development (WIND) Act (ENACTED)

* Became law as part of the Inflation Reduction Act
(“IRA”) of 2022
* The Act “extend[s] the 30 percent Investment Tax
Credit for offshore wind through 2025”
* The Act’s passage benefitted Deepwater Wind’s Block
Island wind farm

(4) National Ocean Exploration Act (ENACTED)

* Enacted into law as part of the FY23 National Defense
Authorization Act (NDAA)
* The law requires NOAA to undertake comprehensive ocean
mapping, formally authorize and improve the existing National Ocean
Mapping, Exploration and Characterization Council, and authorizes
additional appropriation of $1.4 billion for NOAA’s existing Ocean
Exploration and Research Program, its Ocean and Coastal Mapping
Program, and its Hydrographic Surveying Program.
* Supported by Ocean Conservancy and directly benefits
OC’s marine spatial program headed by Mrs. Whitehouse

(5) National Oceans & Coastal Security Act (ENACTED)

* Enacted into law as part of the 2015 budget bill
* Established the National Oceans and Coastal Security
Fund (now known as the National Coastal Resilience Fund), operated by
NOAA, to provide grants for programs and activities designed to
protect, conserve, and restore ocean and coastal resources and coastal
infrastructure
* The National Coastal Resilience Fund has provided over
$466 million in grants since its inception
* Strongly supported by OC, which has “partnered”
with NOAA “since the inception of NOAA’s marine debris program
(MDP) in 2006, including partnership on OC’s International Coastal
Cleanup and its Talking Trash & Taking Action education program

The ethics complaint details the Senate Ethics Rule at issue in the
Whitehouse matter:

> Paragraph one of Senate Ethics Rule 37 states, “A Member . . .
> shall not receive any compensation, nor shall he permit any
> compensation to accrue to his beneficial interest from any source,
> the receipt or accrual of which would occur by virtue of influence
> improperly exerted from his position as a Member, Officer, or
> employee.” Paragraph four of Rule 37 further declares that a
> Senator shall not “knowingly use his official position to
> introduce or aid the progress or passage of legislation, a principal
> purpose of which is to further only his pecuniary interest, only the
> pecuniary interest of his immediate family, or only the pecuniary
> interest of a limited class of persons or enterprises, when he, or
> his immediate family, or enterprises controlled by them, are members
> of the affected class.

> Rule 37’s prohibition on conflicts of interest are designed to be
> broad and robust. The Nelson Report accompanying passage of the
> ethics rules states that the prohibitions on conflicts of interest
> are “specifically designed to prevent conflict of interest, or the
> appearance of such conflict of interest, which is equally damaging
> to public confidence.” Rule 37 thus “prohibits a member . . .
> from working for legislation, a principal purpose of which is to
> enhance his financial interest or the interest of his family.”

> Paragraph one was intended “as a broad prohibition against members
> . . . deriving financial benefit, directly or indirectly, from the
> use of their official position.” It is broader than quid pro quo
> bribery, “For example. If a Senator . . . intervened with an
> executive agency for the purpose of influencing a decision which
> would result in measurable personal financial gain to him, the
> provisions of this paragraph would be violated.” Thus, if a
> Senator uses his official position in a manner that benefits him
> “indirectly” through his spouse, such spousal compensation would
> “accrue to his beneficial interest” and violate Paragraph one.

The letter finally asks for robust investigation of Senator
Whitehouse’s apparent conflict of interest:

> Given Senator Whitehouse’s longstanding practice of sponsoring or
> cosponsoring legislation that directly benefits his wife and/or her
> clients, we urge the Senate Ethics Committee to conduct a
> preliminary investigation to disinter the full extent of Mrs.
> Whitehouse’s consulting activities, with both for-profit and
> nonprofit entities, that may create a reasonable appearance of a
> conflict of interest with Senator Whitehouse’s official duties.

U.S. INVESTS $558,942 TO APPLY CRT IN ‘OPIOID USE DISORDER’
TREATMENT

Give them enough time, Biden’s bureaucrats could make even a ham
sandwich go woke. Our _Corruption Chronicles_ blog reports
[[link removed]]
on their
latest effort.

> The Biden administration is giving researchers at a public
> university more than half a million dollars to help them apply
> controversial critical race theory in the treatment of “opioid use
> disorder,” which the U.S. government says disproportionately
> impacts minorities. The study will be guided by a “public health
> critical race praxis
>
[[link removed]
> that assumes racial/ethnic disparities in healthcare access are
> produced by structural racism and discrimination (SRD). A University
> of Washington (UW) health professor identified as an addictions
> health services and disparities researcher
>
[[link removed]],
> will lead the project which, among other things, seeks to evaluate
> how disparities in access to medications for opioid use disorder
> (MOUD) may have changed in response to COVID-19.
>
> MOUD is an effective approach to the treatment of opioid addiction
> with medications approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
> First-line treatments that reduce overdose risk include methadone
> and buprenorphine, but black and “Hispanic/Latinx” patients are
> less likely to receive buprenorphine compared to non-Hispanic white
> patients, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) writes in its
> grant announcement. “This raises equity concerns, as buprenorphine
> may be safer, easier to access and less stigmatizing than methadone
> for many patients,” the document states. Unequal access to
> buprenorphine is a significant problem nationwide, the agency
> claims, adding that unspecified “studies” estimate that black
> opioid abusers are 50-60% less likely to access the treatment
> compared to white patients with similar disparities observed among
> Hispanic/Latinx patients.
>
> The taxpayer-funded study will use data from the nation’s largest
> provider of substance use care as well as quantitative and
> qualitative methods to examine the impact on racialized disparities
> for black, Hispanic and Latinx patients to inform future policy and
> create interventions that can improve equitable care for opioid
> addiction. Researchers will examine how changes in receipt of MOUD
> and retention following COVID-19 MOUD policies differ between black
> and Hispanic/Latinx compared to non-Hispanic white patients with
> opioid use disorder. They will also consider how “community-level
> sequelae of structural racism” influence pre and post COVID-19
> changes in treatment for the minority opioid abusers and the
> academics will probe addicts’ experiences while receiving care and
> perceptions of implementation of policies related to COVID-19 among
> blacks, Hispanics and Latinx opioid abusers. It is essential that
> the impact of disparities and mechanisms underlying disparities be
> understood to optimize policy changes regarding equity, the NIH
> writes in the grant document.
>
> In a press release
>
[[link removed]]
explaining
> that critical race theory is at the center of its study on unequal
> access to treatment for opioid overdoses, UW writes that the
> government also plays a direct role in the discrimination. As an
> example, the university writes that President Richard Nixon’s 1971
> war on drugs differently impacted minority communities, including in
> ways that serve as barriers to adequate substance use treatment.
> “One of the key variables we are looking at is differential police
> presence in communities as one of the things that might modify
> community members’ ability to access buprenorphine versus
> methadone,” one of the UW researchers says in the press release.
> “The more that any specific behavior is criminalized, the more
> that we expect that people will go through the court system and a
> treatment pathway that involves a lot of monitoring, as methadone
> does. Then of course that treatment itself becomes more disruptive
> of the person’s life, which then has impacts for family, as well
> as economic and occupational opportunities.” The UW health
> professor leading the study, Emily Williams, says the situation
> provides an excellent opportunity to begin applying critical race
> theory. “A lot of research focuses on what is happening for
> minoritized groups relative to white people and then figuring out
> those mechanisms,” she said. “But when we center the margins,
> we’re caring specifically about what’s happening to these
> minoritized groups that are not getting what they need.”

Until Next Week…





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