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Yet Another State Succumbs to Obamacare’s Greatest Weapon: Math

by RoslynCranswick Posted on May 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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Oklahoma has been resisting expansion of Medicaid for years, but they might finally be ready to cave in:

A bust in the oil patch has decimated state revenues, compounded by years of income tax cuts and growing corporate subsidies intended to make the state more business-friendly. Oklahoma’s Medicaid agency has warned doctors and other health care providers of cuts of up to 25 percent in what the state pays under Medicaid.

….In the poverty-wracked south­eastern corner of the state, where 96 percent of babies in the McCurtain Memorial Hospital are born to Medicaid patients, most health care would end, said hospital CEO Jahni Tapley. “A 25 percent cut to Medicaid would not put my hospital in jeopardy, because we are already in jeopardy,” Tapley said. “A 25 percent cut would shutter our doors for good, leaving 33,000 people without access to health care.”

….Under the proposal, which would be funded in part with a $1.50-per-pack tax on cigarettes, Oklahoma would shift 175,000 people from its Medicaid rolls onto the federal health exchange created by the Affordable Care Act.

Oklahoma’s governor is calling this “Medicaid rebalancing,” but her constituents are too sharp for her. They know what’s going on: “They can call it Medicaid rebalancing, but there’s only one federal program that offers a 9-to-1 federal match, and that’s Obamacare,” said Johnathan Small, president of the Oklahoma Council on Public Affairs. There’s just no fooling some people.

Anyway, it’s good to see that they’re not planning to fund this with, say, an increase in the income tax or the oil tax or the corporate tax. That might actually hit rich people, and God knows that would be the wrong way to pay for indigent services.

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Yet Another State Succumbs to Obamacare’s Greatest Weapon: Math

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Oxfam: Poultry Industry Routinely Denies Workers Bathroom Breaks

by TawannaEAOK Posted on May 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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The United States isn’t exactly a hotbed of trade unionism and worker power. But presumably, most people can take for granted access to the bathroom while on the job. Not so for people who staff the nation’s chicken slaughterhouses, according to a scathing new report from Oxfam America.

After a three-year project interviewing dozens of current and former workers across the country, Oxfam came to this stark conclusion:

Routinely, poultry workers say, they are denied breaks to use the bathroom. Supervisors mock their needs and ignore their requests; they threaten punishment or firing. Workers wait inordinately long times (an hour or more), then race to accomplish the task within a certain timeframe (e.g., ten minutes) or risk discipline.

How do they deal with this brutal state of affairs? “They urinate and defecate while standing on the line; they wear diapers to work; they restrict intake of liquids and fluids to dangerous degrees; they endure pain and discomfort while they worry about their health and job security,” the report adds.

Given that the industry produces what’s by far America’s favorite meat and employs more than 375,000 people, this might sound like a startling state of affairs that will inspire swift federal action. As the Oxfam report notes, “Denial of regular access to the bathroom is a clear violation of US workplace safety law.”

But Big Poultry’s bathroom trouble has been known for a while. For a 2013 report, the Southern Poverty Law Center surveyed Alabama poultry workers on the conditions they face. Findings included heightened levels of repetitive-motion injuries, routine cuts and gashes—and the lack of bathroom breaks. “Of the 266 workers answering questions about bathroom breaks, nearly eight in 10 (79 percent) said they are not allowed to take breaks when needed,” SPLC found. The group noted many of the same conditions flagged by Oxfam, including workers “stripping off their gear while running to the restroom,” on floors that are often “slippery with fat, blood, water, and other liquids.”

Also in 2013, SPLC attorney Tom Fritzsche delivered those findings in testimony before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (part of the Organization of American States), noting (video here).

The Oxfam report, too, puts the speed of the modern industrial kill line—the maximum under US law IS 140 birds per minute—at the heart of the problem. “Supervisors deny requests to use the bathroom because they are under pressure to maintain the speed of the processing line, and to keep up production,” the report states. “Once a poultry plant roars to a start at the beginning of the day, it doesn’t stop until all the chickens are processed.”

To keep the line rolling and give workers breaks when they need them is possible, Oxfam found, but that requires resources: maintaining a “set of replacement workers (line assistants or floaters) who step in as needed.” Yet “in the course of hundreds of interviews, only a handful of workers reported that their bathroom needs are respected,” the report found. Interestingly, “These exceptions are primarily in plants that have unions, which offer important protections, inform workers of their rights, and ensure they have a voice on the job.”

For its part, the chicken industry says the claims made by Oxfam are exaggerated. “The health, safety and respect of our employees is very important, and we value their contributions in helping to produce our food,” the National Chicken Council claimed in an online statement. “We’re troubled by these claims but also question this group’s efforts to paint the whole industry with a broad brush based on a handful of anonymous claims. We believe such instances are extremely rare and that U.S. poultry companies work hard to prevent them.”

A number of companies are named in the report, including Perdue, the nation’s fourth-largest poultry company and the subject of my recent feature on the industry’s move away from reliance on antibiotics. “The anecdotes reported are not consistent with Perdue’s policies and practices,” the company states in a response to the Oxfam report. The company went on to describe its policy:

Regarding bathroom breaks, our associates receive two 30-minutes breaks during each eight-hour shift. They typically work 2 to 2½ hours, have a 30-minute break, work another 2 to 2½ hours and have another 30-minute break, then work the remainder of the shift. If an associate is unable to wait for the scheduled break and needs to use the restroom, they are to be given permission to leave the line as soon as someone can cover for them. If a department is short-staffed that day, there may be times it is difficult to provide immediate coverage.

Thus are the challenges of operating a kill line that requires workers to break down as many as 140 birds per minute. For years, the industry promoted a US Department of Agriculture proposal that would have allowed line speeds to go as high as 175 birds per minute. After a firestorm of criticism from worker-rights and food-safety groups, the USDA shelved that plan in 2014. But, Oxfam America’s Oliver Gottfried tells me, the USDA left the door open to allow it in the future—and Congressional Republicans have been itching ever since to make it so.

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Oxfam: Poultry Industry Routinely Denies Workers Bathroom Breaks

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It’s World Migratory Bird Day: Protect Our Feathered Friends

by EsmeraldaSalo8 Posted on May 10, 2016

Migratory birds are so threatened they now get their own global holiday.

Every year, on or around May 10, scientific organizations, biologists and bird lovers everywhere hold events to raise awareness about the threatsmigrating birdsface. The main partners behind the event include BirdLife International, Wetlands International, the East Asian-Australasian Flyway Partnership, and the International Council for Game and Wildlife Conservation.

The 2016 World Migratory Bird Day eventis focusing on the millions of birds being killed or lost every year. There’s no secret why:

* Loss or deterioration of habitat is making it impossible for many birds to survivethe long distances they cover when they migrate because there is no place for them to shelter or find safe and unpolluted water to drink or food to eat. Disturbances or breaks in their “fly ways” throw migrating birds off course and may even upset their reproductive cycles.

* Illegal poaching,taking and trade is causing many birds to be captured in the wild and unlawfully sold to stores and vendors. Many birds do not survive in captivity.

* Hunting migrating birds is stillcondoned in many parts of the world, without regard to how seriously bird populations are being depleted. Keeping migrating birds as pets also undermines their ability to thrive. By some estimates, over a third of bird species worldwide are kept as pets, and around one in seven is hunted for food. It’s also estimated that between half a billion and one billion songbirds are hunted for sport and food each year in Europe alone, reports BirdLife International.

* Poisoning is an all too frequent occurrence, as lead ammunition continues to build up in the environment. Meanwhile, agricultural pesticides continue to poison birds on a large scale. Seabirds die after eating plastic and other junk and debris that ends up in the oceans. A veterinary drug used to medicate cattle and pigs is having a devastating effect on vultures and other birds that feed on carcasses.

What Can You Do?

Support groups dedicated to protecting migratory birds. Organizations ranging from BirdLife International to the Audubon Society are working to pass laws, strengthen regulations and educate policy makers and the public about the need to protect migrating birds. You can support them with donations and by sending emails to your elected officials in favor of international treaties that are designed to keep birds and their migration routes safe.

Maintain your own bird-safe habitat. Many of the birds that arrive in your yard in spring and summer are traveling back from the regions where they overwintered. Some may stay put during the warm summer; others may just drop by on their way to the Arctic Circle, where millions of birds pass June, July and August. Either way, you can give them a boost by making fresh, clean water available in bird baths or ponds and by eliminating the use of pesticides, herbicides and other toxic chemicals in your yard.

Keep your cat indoors. Domestic cats kill approximately 2.4 billion birds every year in the U.S. alone, making cats the biggest mortality threat to birds, says the American Bird Conservancy. If your cat must go outside, let it out at dusk, when most birds roost out of reach in trees, rather than during the day. Just make sure to get it in at night to keep it safe so it won’t be out prowling at dawn when the birds start to stir.

Buy organic, shade-grown coffee. Birds that overwinter in the tropic need non-toxic environments with plenty of trees and bushes to live in. Shade coffee plantations maintain large trees that provide essential habitat for wintering songbirds, says the National Wildlife Federation.

Prevent birds from hitting your windows and the windows of large office buildings. Birds can get confused if they see the sky, trees and other nature scenes reflected in glass.

Help birds recover. If you come across a bird that appears to be injured, the Humane Society recommends gently covering the bird with a towel, then placing it in a bag or box with air holes that is securely closed. Keep the bird warm and settled for about a half hour. If the bird can then fly away on its own, release it. If not, contact a local wildlife rehabilitation service to get their help.

Related:

Habitat Loss Threatens More than 90 Percent of Migratory Birds
Road Noise Hurts Migratory Birds, Says New Study

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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It’s World Migratory Bird Day: Protect Our Feathered Friends

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Clinton Campaign Won’t Let Trump Distance Himself From Radical Tax Plan

by DoraColton Posted on May 9, 2016

Mother Jones

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Hillary Clinton’s campaign isn’t going to let Donald Trump quietly walk back the more extreme positions he took in order to secure the Republican nomination. On Monday, as Trump begins distancing himself from his earlier tax plan now that he’s the presumptive GOP nominee, the Clinton campaign organized a press call to rip the plan as a massive giveaway to the top 1 percent. “This is the most risky, reckless, and regressive tax proposal ever put forward by a major presidential candidate,” said Gene Sperling, the former director of the National Economic Council, speaking for the Clinton campaign.

Trump’s campaign hasn’t exactly been known for its depth of policy details. But one of the few comprehensive plans that Trump put forward was a scheme to cuts taxes drastically. Released last fall, Trump’s tax plan would slash rates across the board, but with most of the benefits accruing to the rich and uber-rich, as the top income tax rate would drop from 39.6 percent to 25 percent.

“We still think facts and numbers matter and should in this campaign,” Sperling said. He pointed to independent analyses of Trump’s plan showing that it would cost anywhere from $9 trillion to $12 trillion over the first decade. Most of the benefits of these tax cuts would go to the wealthy. According to the liberal Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, $3.5 trillion, or 1.5 percent of gross domestic product, would go to people earning more than $1 million dollars per year. The Tax Policy Center found that 40 percent of the money in Trump’s tax cuts would go to the top 1 percent, with the bottom 60 percent of the country getting 16 percent of those tax cuts.

“To put it simply,” Clinton policy adviser Jake Sullivan said, “Donald Trump has put forward a tax plan that places him squarely on the side of the superwealthy and corporations at the expense of the middle class and working families.”

Over the weekend, Trump created some confusion about whether he actually stands by his tax plan. On NBC’s Meet the Press, Trump painted his proposal as just an opening bid that would inevitably change during negotiations with Congress, and he even seemed to suggest that he’d like to see taxes go up on the wealthy. “For the wealthy, I think, frankly, it’s going to go up,” he said. “And you know what, it really should go up.”

The Clinton campaign isn’t ready to let him to ditch his stances. “The only thing one can do is look at the black and white of his paper and not be fooled by his shifting comments,” Sperling said. The Clinton aides also suggested that Trump’s recent flirtations with refinancing the country’s debt posed a dire threat to the global financial system. “It’s somewhat shocking,” Sperling said, “that in a time when our country is celebrating the economic foresight of Alexander Hamilton that the presumptive candidate for president, Donald Trump, is openly advocating that the United States no longer honor 100 percent of its debt or protect our full faith and credit.”

“We frankly think that Mr. Trump’s economic plans have not received the scrutiny they’ve deserved,” Sullivan said, promising that the Clinton campaign plans to keep hammering the point home throughout the course of the race as a major area of difference between the candidates.

In the middle of the call, as luck would have it, Trump took to his favorite communication medium to stick by his tax plan:

Original source – 

Clinton Campaign Won’t Let Trump Distance Himself From Radical Tax Plan

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This Ted Cruz Endorser Would Have Sent Married Gay Couples to Jail

by HildegaWicks Posted on April 1, 2016

Mother Jones

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One of Ted Cruz’s supporters in Wisconsin once stood up for the idea that gay couples who married in another state should be sent to prison—and be fined hefty sums.

Back in 2008, when California legalized same-sex marriage (before Proposition 8 temporarily ended marriage equality there), same-sex couples in Wisconsin considered heading to California to tie the knot. But there was a hitch. As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported at the time, an obscure state law “makes it a crime for Wisconsin residents to enter into marriage in another state if the marriage would be prohibited here.” The law also carried a serious penalty of up to $10,000 and nine months in prison.

And at least one person wanted to see that law enforced against gay Wisconsin couples who married elsewhere. “If it were challenged and the courts decided to basically wink at it, and refused to enforce the law, we have a problem,” Julaine Appling, who led the Wisconsin Family Council, said at the time.

Appling, now president of Wisconsin Family Action, a conservative Christian group, was dubbed “the most important social conservative” by the Capital Times. Her name appears at the top of a list of 50 evangelical and Catholic Cruz supporters that the campaign released Friday ahead of the April 5 primary in the state.

Appling has a long history of fighting marriage equality. She supported passage of a state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage in 2006. And in 2009, she was behind a lawsuit to block a Wisconsin domestic partnership law to grant same-sex couples some of the benefits married couples received. Appling called the law “an assault on the people, the state constitution, the democratic process, and the institution of marriage.”

The conservative crusader wants to not only stop gay couples from marrying, but also keep straight couples from separating. In 2014, she told the Capital Times that she wanted the state to pass laws to encourage relationship counseling and discourage divorce by lengthening the waiting period for obtaining a divorce.

And she is no fan of Donald Trump. In February, she signed on to an open letter to the Republican front-runner from social conservatives asking questions like “How will you make America great when you’ve run businesses associated with increased crime, bankruptcies, broken marriages and suicides?” and “What would you say to young girls and women who are concerned about a president who is directly connected with the exploitation of women?”

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This Ted Cruz Endorser Would Have Sent Married Gay Couples to Jail

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Obama Dances the Tango During a State Dinner in Argentina

by ChandaThibeault Posted on March 24, 2016

Mother Jones

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President Obama danced the tango during a state dinner in Argentina on Wednesday, after receiving a friendly invitation from a professional to join her on the dance floor. The president, who initially tried to decline the dance, nailed the impromptu performance, which was both wonderfully awkward and a delight to watch for everyone else.

Well, almost everyone. By morning light, political pundits jumped at the opportunity to chastise the president. That buzzkill brought to you by Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations.

However, the advance person who let him do the tango, that person ought to be looking for work on somebody’s—in somebody’s campaign very far away. That was a tremendous mistake. It’s fine to go to Argentina, you want to do the work, but you’ve got to be careful of these little photo ops and optics. Baseball games and tango, that’s inconsistent with the seriousness of the day.

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Obama Dances the Tango During a State Dinner in Argentina

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Trump Struggles to Explain Whether He Has a Foreign Policy Team

by ZacZiemba45 Posted on March 8, 2016

Mother Jones

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Should Donald Trump become president, he would have a slew of lofty foreign policy promises to fulfill. Trump has vowed to decapitate ISIS, persuade Mexico to pay for a wall along the border, and impose harsh penalties on imports from China, and he’s said he would “probably get along with Russian President Vladimir Putin very well.” So who’s advising the Republican front-runner on his foreign policy platform? On Tuesday’s episode of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Trump struggled to confirm the existence of a foreign policy team on his campaign, just a day after his rival Marco Rubio unveiled an 18-member National Security Advisory Council.

As reported by NBC News’ Ali Vitali, Trump stumbled over a question from Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski.

Somehow, Brzezinski’s co-host Joe Scarborough managed to respond to her question even more bumblingly than Trump.

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Trump Struggles to Explain Whether He Has a Foreign Policy Team

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A drying Great Salt Lake spells trouble for Utah

by TiaZABcztkkghe Posted on March 5, 2016

Mud flats sit where water used to be next to the Great Salt Lake Marina. REUTERS/George Frey

A drying Great Salt Lake spells trouble for Utah

By on 5 Mar 2016 7:00 amcommentsShare

This story was originally published by CityLab and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The Great Salt Lake is drying up, thanks to 150 years of human diversions from the rivers that feed it. That’s the takeaway of a white paper released by a team of Utah biologists and engineers. And if those diversions continue ramping up, as a bill working its way through the Utah legislature proposes, the waterbody may face a withering fate similar to other dried-up salt lakes around the world.

The namesake of Utah’s capital city, the Great Salt Lake is the the state’s defining geographic feature and one of its economic anchors. A 2012 report by the Great Salt Lake Council estimated that the total economic output of the waterbody at $1.32 billion, between mineral extraction from the lake, brine shrimp egg production (used in aquaculture all over the world), and recreation that takes place in and around it. It also serves as an essential migration flyway for millions of birds each year.

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But the lake, which approached record-low water levels last year, is under threat. According to the Utah researchers’ calculations, since the mid-19th century, consistent reductions from the rivers that feed the lake have caused the lake’s elevation to drop by 11 feet, lose roughly half its volume, increase the lake’s salinity, and expose approximately 50 percent of the lake bed.

Those numbers are unrelated to natural fluctuations over wet and dry periods, including the current drought. Since the lake is a closed basin, the only way water leaves it is through evaporation. That makes it fairly simple to calculate just how much water has been lost to agriculture and urban growth.

Utah State University

Currently, the Utah Senate is debating a bill that would fund a number of water infrastructure projects, including the controversial Bear River Development Project, which would dam and divert more water from one of the Great Salt Lake’s main feeds. Supporters of the project say it’s designed to support the state’s growing population and water consumption needs. But the researchers estimate that the project would lead to an additional 8.5 inch drop in the Great Salt Lake’s elevation, and another 30 square miles of exposed lake bed.

Not only does that spell trouble for the lake’s economic and ecological importance, a dried-up lake would ramp up dust storms in the Salt Lake City area, which already suffers some of the worst air pollution in the country. It doesn’t take much searching to find an example of how damaging such withered lakes are for the people around them. In nearby California, the researchers write:

Diversions from the Owens River for the city of Los Angeles desiccated Owens Lake by 1926, causing it to become one of the largest sources of particulate matter (PM10) pollution in the country. This dust affects about 40,000 permanent residents in the region, causing asthma and other health problems.

Lake Urmia in Iran and the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are other examples of how massive water diversions from closed basins for human uses can create environmental health disasters.

To meet the needs of a growing population, and to protect their future health, the researchers stress that Utah policymakers should focus on taking less water, not more, from the Great Salt Lake — especially when it comes to agriculture, which consumes the majority of all that diverted water. Like so many states throughout the arid American West, Utah has to weigh its future against a history of overdrawn resources.

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Berta Cáceres is the most recent environmental activist to be killed trying to protect her home

by LaurenceLedger Posted on March 4, 2016

Activists draw a flower on the floor with chalk as part of a makeshift altar for slain environmental rights activist Berta Caceres during a protest outside the morgue in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, March 3, 2016. REUTERS/Jorge Cabrera

Berta Cáceres is the most recent environmental activist to be killed trying to protect her home

By on 3 Mar 2016commentsShare

In the middle of last night, Berta Cáceres, leader of the indigenous environmental activist group National Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) and winner of the 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize, was assassinated in her home.

Perhaps that sentence does not mean much to you on its own — after all it’s just a sentence, about a woman you’ve never met, in a country you’ve likely never been to, fighting for something you understand in theory but do not relate to. Berta Cáceres — like many, many other indigenous women — was an environmental activist because if she were not, her community would be utterly destroyed. Cáceres led grassroots campaigns against hydroelectric dams on lands belonging to her people, the Lenca; most prominently the proposed Agua Zarca project in Río Blanco. Her work pushed the largest dam builder in the world, Chinese company SINOHYDRO, to withdraw from the project.

Perhaps that, too, does not carry much weight. Let me reword: This dam threatens to force people off of lands that they have called home for millennia. And, in fighting against it, they are subject to very real danger.

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According to Global Witness, 101 environmental activists were murdered between 2010 and 2014 in Honduras alone, and 40 percent of those were indigenous. (For perspective: Approximately 16 percent of the Honduran population is indigenous and Afro-descendant.)

From an Ensia report on violence against environmental activists worldwide:

“Many of those murdered were ‘accidental’ human rights defenders,” says John Knox, a professor of international law at Wake Forest University and independent expert on human rights and the environment of the United Nations Human Rights Council. “They got involved because it was their own land, their own forests, their own water they were defending.”

As a result, Cáceres has been subject to death threats from those with interests in the hydroelectric project, including agents of DESA, the Honduran energy company — to the extent that she was granted a degree of protection by the InterAmerican Commission for Human Rights — and last night, tragically, her enemies made good on those threats.

When we talk about how indigenous women are on the front lines of climate change, this is a striking example: A woman murdered in the so-called safety of her home for fighting for her people’s right to their land, at a time when communities all over the world are losing their grip on their land, thanks to rising tides and more unpredictable disasters.

Berta Cáceres at the Global Greengrants’ Summit on Climate Justice and Women’s Rights in August 2014.Eve Andrews / Grist

In 2014, I had the honor of interviewing Cáceres about the unique challenges that indigenous women face in battling climate change, and she said something that has stuck with me since (translated from Spanish):

“I am absolutely convinced that if I were a man, this level of aggression wouldn’t be so violent. There are always campaigns against leaders. [But] as women we’re not only leading campaigns like the fight against this hydroelectric project, but also against … the whole militarization culture that’s involved in our defense of the public good of nature. We are women who are reclaiming our right to the sovereignty of our bodies and thoughts and political beliefs, to our cultural and spiritual rights — of course the aggression is much greater.”

In speaking with Cáceres, I almost couldn’t believe that she was receiving such threats — who would want to kill a woman so kind, so strong, so obviously good? Well, she triumphantly stood in the way of a corporation that sought to profit off her land, and that was enough.

Cáceres’ death is an incredible tragedy, because the world is minus one person who brought tangible light into it. It also calls attention to the fact that those who fall under the impossibly vague, much-maligned umbrella of “environmental activists” face danger that most of us cannot fathom.

So, at the very least, remember this next time you hear about land rights, or climate change, or violence against women: It is a much darker and more dangerous fight than we can often imagine — to the direct detriment of those fighting it.

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Republicans Are Pushing Obama to Fill This Court…To Try Syrian War Crimes

by MatthiasFyo Posted on March 3, 2016

Mother Jones

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Yesterday, the House Foreign Affairs Committee passed a resolution accusing Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and his allies of committing war crimes. The resolution comes amid concerns from Republicans and some Democrats that the Obama administration—under pressure from Moscow—has all but abandoned its goal of regime change in Syria. It calls on the White House to use its influence at the United Nations to establish a Syrian war crimes tribunal.

“The government of Syria has engaged in widespread torture and rape, employed starvation as a weapon of war, and massacred civilians, including through the use of chemical weapons, cluster munitions, and barrel bombs,” the resolution asserts. It adds that “the vast majority of the civilians who have died in the Syrian conflict have been killed by the government of Syria and its allies,” including Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah. As many as 470,000 Syrians have died so far in the conflict, and millions have been made homeless.

The resolution’s sponsor, Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), who first introduced this bill in 2013, says that establishing a war crimes tribunal for Syria would force a stronger stance from Washington, make it more difficult for other countries to cooperate with the Syrian government, and could potentially lead to Assad’s ouster. “I have continued to ask Secretary Kerry and others in the Administration—they have never said no, but they haven’t said yes—about this idea of establishing a Syrian war crimes tribunal,” a frustrated Smith said at the resolution markup on Wednesday. The resolution passed through the committee on a voice vote.

The only dissenting voice at the hearing was that of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), who claimed that Assad is helping fight ISIS, America’s real enemy. He was quickly shut down.

Republicans have generally been skeptical of international prosecutions of accused war criminals. In 2002, George W. Bush signed the the American Servicemembers Protection Act, which shields American personnel and allies from prosecution in the International Criminal Court. Yet this position has softened. In 2013, President Obama signed a bill that would make it easier for the United States to go after war criminals like warlord Joseph Kony; the measure was spearheaded by Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.) and former chairwoman Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.).

Smith’s approach would circumvent the ICC, which he chastised for only achieving two convictions in 14 years. His resolution would seek the creation of an ad hoc or regional tribunal. He pointed to similar tribunals in the former Yugoslavia (which convicted 67 people), Rwanda (26), and Sierra Leone (16). “Can a UN Security Council resolution establishing a Syrian war crimes tribunal prevail?” he asked. “I would respectfully submit yes.”

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Republicans Are Pushing Obama to Fill This Court…To Try Syrian War Crimes

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