THE WEEKLY REVEAL
Saturday, Sept. 3, 2022
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Hello! In this issue:
- As stand your ground laws expand across the nation, so do the killings.
- How the U.S. Department of Labor is giving some companies an out from releasing their diversity reports.
- The After Ayotzinapa series goes on the road to New York and D.C.
- The latest on the discrepancy between Afghan and Ukrainian humanitarian parole applications and the Biden administration’s next steps.
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NEW
Stand Your Ground Laws Are Proliferating. And More People Are Dying.
By Jonathan Jones, Decca Muldowney, Nadia Hamdan, Farah Eltohamy and Anya Syed
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A decade ago, the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida brought a groundswell of public criticism of “stand your ground” as a legal and moral concept. But today, these kinds of laws have proliferated across the U.S., a new investigation by Reveal has found.
In February 2012, when Martin was shot, 24 states had some type of stand your ground law, a result of either legislation or court rulings. Now, 38 states have such laws, an increase of nearly 60%.
And as the laws have spread across the country, some state lawmakers have found a way to dramatically expand their power.
- In a stand your ground law passed in South Dakota in March, if a shooter claims self-defense, police and prosecutors can’t make an arrest, bring criminal charges or take a case to trial unless they can first show, with clear and convincing evidence, that the claim was false.
- Under traditional notions of self-defense, it’s up to the person making such a claim to prove it. The new law shifts the burden of proof to the state. Now police and prosecutors must prove a negative – that a shooter was not in fear for their life – to even bring a case. According to legal experts, that’s an almost impossible standard to meet, meaning that many shooters won’t face charges for crimes as serious as murder.
- South Dakota is not alone in making this change. Florida and Utah have also enacted similar laws.
The NRA and other pro-gun groups and lawmakers have argued that stand your ground laws are necessary to avoid frivolous prosecutions of people who use their guns in self-defense. We examined every major study and report on stand your ground and conducted nearly three dozen interviews with prosecutors, defense attorneys, legal experts, researchers and lawmakers across the U.S.
- Not a single person or study could point to any evidence that traditional self-defense laws weren’t working before stand your ground – or that public safety has improved as a result of its spread.
- In fact, one recent study found that stand your ground was associated with up to an 11% national increase in monthly homicide rates.
“By enacting these laws, you are encouraging the use of deadly force where it wasn’t needed,” said Michelle Degli Esposti, one of the study’s co-authors, “and in doing that, it is increasing the number of people dying by homicide.”
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📸 A mural by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh (center) memorializes Trayvon Martin, whose killing in 2012 drew public attention to the unequal application of stand your ground laws and spurred calls for repeal. Others who have been involved in such cases include (from left) Marissa Alexander, Joe McKnight, Byron Castillo and Janai Wilson.
Feature photo credits (left to right): Bob Mack/AP Photo/The Florida Times-Union, Al Pereira/New York Jets/Getty Images, mural by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh and photo by Ben Gabbe/Getty Images for Paramount Network, Laura Pellicer, Andy Barron/The Reno Gazette-Journal via AP
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Taking on powerful interests demands lots of time, a strong backbone and your support. Donate to keep us going.
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UPDATE
We Forced the Government to Share Corporate Diversity Data. It’s Giving Companies an Out Instead.
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Jenny Yang, director of the Labor Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs. Credit: U.S. Department of Justice
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For years, we battled in court to make public the diversity reports of companies that get government contracts, so that all journalists and the public can scrutinize the data.
We won, but the fight isn’t over.
Jenny Yang, director of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, published a notice Aug. 19 that federal contractors have 30 days to object to the release of their diversity reports, giving them the opportunity to block their disclosure.
Even though a federal judge struck down the department’s previous attempt to keep such records secret, Yang’s notice said the agency “has reason to believe that the information requested may be protected from disclosure” and has “not yet determined” whether it is.
The agency set up a portal to accept objections from companies. The portal also made clear who made the request for the records: It names Reveal senior reporter Will Evans and links to his bio page.
Why the reports matter: Government contractors must file diversity reports that show their overall workforce by race, gender and job category. Called EEO-1s, the reports offer a starting point for comparing diversity across similar companies and addressing inequality. Contractors, as recipients of taxpayer money to do work for the public, are required to meet a higher standard to guarantee equal opportunity and eliminate discrimination in their employment practices.
Meanwhile, corporate lawyers and consultants who represent contractors are sounding the alarm to their clientele. One firm wrote that Reveal “could use the data to call out employers who they believe have underperformed in their diversity efforts, or worse yet, engaged in discrimination.”
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THIS WEEK’S PODCAST
American Rehab: Shadow Workforce
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Picture stepping into a drug rehab. You’re looking for treatment, but instead, you get hard work for no pay. For decades, this type of rehab has quietly spread across the country.
This week on Reveal, we return back to our award-winning series American Rehab, where we uncovered how many programs like this are out there. Just how big is this shadow workforce?
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🎧 Other places to listen: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts.
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🎨 Illustration by Eren Wilson for Reveal
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In New York or Washington, D.C.?
The After Ayotzinapa series is coming your way.
🗓️ Sept. 14, New York City, Barnard College, 2:30-4 p.m. ET. Join Reveal reporter and producer Anayansi Diaz-Cortes; National Security Archive senior analyst Kate Doyle; Omar Gómez Trejo, special prosecutor of the Ayotzinapa case; and academic experts for a conversation about our After Ayotzinapa podcast series, the Ayotzinapa case and the crisis of forced disappearance in Mexico. Free and open to the public. Broadcast to be available. Register here.
🗓️ Sept. 15, Washington, D.C., Busboys and Poets, 6-8 p.m. ET. Join Diaz-Cortes and Doyle for a listening session of the series along with a conversation of what their reporting uncovered with three people impacted by the tragedy: Gómez Trejo, Cristina Bautista Salvador, mother of disappeared student Benjamin Acencio Bautista, and his sister, Laura Acencio Bautista.
The in-person event will be moderated by Maureen Meyer, vice president for programs at the Washington Office on Latin America. Free and open to the public. Register here.
In 2014, students from a rural college in Mexico came under attack by police. Six people were killed and 43 young men disappeared without a trace. Families suspected the government was hiding the truth. Our After Ayotzinapa series exposed corruption at the highest levels, and an unsettling connection to America’s war on drugs. Listen to the series here.
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When the U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan one year ago, it led an effort to airlift more than 122,000 people out of the country. For those who did not make it out, they had to find another way. One option many Afghans turned to was something called humanitarian parole, or HP, which gives temporary entry into the U.S. for humanitarian reasons.
According to data we obtained from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency received more than 66,000 humanitarian parole applications from Afghans between July 2021 and May 2022 – and had approved only 123 of the less than 8,000 applications processed. The agency collected more than $20 million in fees from those applications.
In comparison, between April and early August, USCIS approved more than 68,000 applications for a humanitarian parole program created for Ukrainians after their country was invaded by Russia, out of more than 97,000 applications received. USCIS did not request an application fee for that program.
The latest:
- This week, Reveal producer Najib Aminy was on Democracy Now! and The Brian Lehrer Show to speak about the discrepancy in HP approvals.
- The humanitarian parole data we obtained was referenced in The New Yorker.
- On Monday, in a conversation at UCLA, USCIS Director Ur M. Jaddou said the “stars have aligned” in regards to how effective the HP program had been for Ukrainians. In response, moderator Prof. Arulanantham asked Jaddou about the agency’s handling of Afghan HP applications. Watch here.
- This week, the Biden administration announced the Afghan HP program would be discontinued beginning Oct. 1. Instead, there will be a focus on “resettling certain Afghan evacuees who qualify for immigration programs that provide permanent legal status,” CBS writes.
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This issue of The Weekly Reveal was written by Kassie Navarro and edited by Andrew Donohue and Maryam Saleh. If you enjoyed this issue, forward it to a friend. Have some thoughts? Drop us a line with feedback or ideas!
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