Latest news with #DepartmentsofJustice
Yahoo
24-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
MMIW report a casualty of federal purge of government data
Nancy Marie SpearsThe Imprint An oversight group launched five years ago outlined myriad ways Congress could better protect Indigenous people from going missing, getting killed or falling prey to human traffickers, with particular focus on tackling gender-based violence. Among the recommendations of the Not Invisible Act Commission were specific protections for foster youth, who end up lost at higher rates than their peers. The commission titled its report Not One More and detailed calls to action for multiple federal agencies — including the Departments of Justice and the Interior, Health and Human Services and the Administration for Children and Families. This year, legislators and policymakers were supposed to establish ways to better track the missing, and step up efforts to find them. But on Feb. 18, the 212-page, comprehensive set of findings and recommendations that 41 commissioners worked on for three years suddenly vanished from the U.S. Department of Justice website. 'I don't know who's going to carry the recommendations out,' said Kristin Welch, a Menominee Nation descendant and Not Invisible Act commissioner. Welch, founder and executive director of the Wisconsin-based Waking Women Healing Institute, reflected the doubts among many that life-saving measures may now be suspended. 'The report being removed doesn't inspire hope under this administration that the work is going to continue and be meaningful,' she said. The Not Invisible Act Commission report is one of countless previously public documents that have suddenly been taken down from federal websites since the Jan. 20 inauguration of President Donald Trump. In his first month in office alone, thousands of government web pages were removed, a New York Times analysis found — including vital information related to many aspects of American life, from health and safety to veterans affairs, taxes and scientific findings. The Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment about why the Not Invisible report had been taken down, or whether the agency would move forward with the recommendations relevant to the department. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Indigenous youth are more likely than non-Native American kids to go missing from foster care. In a report examining a recent decade of data, the center documented nearly 3,000 such cases, 99% of which were ultimately resolved. But while the kids were off the radar, they were identified as 'endangered' — more likely to be engaging in risky behavior, struggling with mental illness and turning to drugs and alcohol. Trump signed the Not Invisible Act in October 2020, during his first term. In 2024, under President Joe Biden, top officials praised the intent of the act they said would 'resolve this longstanding crisis and support healing from the generational traumas that Indigenous peoples have endured in the United States.' Then-Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland underscored the issue. 'Addressing violent crimes against Indigenous peoples has long been underfunded and ignored, as a cause of intergenerational trauma that has affected our communities since colonization,' Haaland said in a press statement. 'Through historic efforts like the Not Invisible Act Commission, we're identifying recommendations created by Indian Country, for Indian Country. This will ensure that epidemics like the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples Crisis and Human Trafficking are addressed with the resources they demand.' In its report, the commission called for the Department of Health and Human Services to conduct a study of American Indian and Alaska Native children missing from foster care and determine whether law enforcement is doing everything possible to find them. The department also 'must mandate that any foster care agencies receiving federal funding report immediately any missing Tribal juvenile to their corresponding Tribe,' it reported. It also recommended that the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), a division of Health and Human Services, 'develop and disseminate culturally appropriate, trauma-informed prevention programming' to keep runaways from becoming victims of trafficking, violence or the criminal justice system. Further, it stated Congress 'must appropriate funding to the ACF, which must integrate training on human trafficking, survival sex work, and intergenerational trauma.' 'Human traffickers prey on the vulnerable, often people who are young, homeless or in foster care,' the commissioners wrote. 'There must be outreach and help to interrupt this pattern.' The Biden administration's plan brought together tribes, federal agencies, law enforcement, social service providers, survivors and the relatives of Native people who've been trafficked, gone missing or were murdered — and plotted better coordination and support. Now, some tribal members who contributed to the report say the Trump administration is working to devalue Indigenous people and making already-difficult work even harder. Others said tribes would continue the search for missing loved ones no matter what — ensuring the feedback the commission received from won't be forgotten. 'I think about all those survivors and family members, and everything they had to go through to testify at these hearings in hopes those recommendations will be launched into action,' Welch said. 'It's a really big slap in the face to our relatives. We've seen it so many times by the federal government: this constant erasure, with no respect for our relatives, their pain and their trauma.' Another commissioner is Ruth Buffalo, a citizen of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, composed of three affiliated tribes. She serves as the CEO of the Minnesota Indian Women's Resource Center, which focuses on the search for missing and murdered Native Americans in her state, and preventing tribal children from entering the foster care system. Buffalo said she and others across Indian Country remain steadfast in their commitment to ensuring the Not Invisible recommendations are met. 'The community continues to lead these efforts, and the work doesn't stop because there's a different president in office,' Buffalo said. 'That just means we continue to push even harder to hold the elected officials accountable.' These concerns about missing and murdered Indigenous people are compounded by a new political landscape marked by mass firings of federal employees and efforts to deeply cut spending on social services. Many of the commission's recommendations would require additional federal funding. Tribal organizations including the National Congress of American Indians supported the recommendations produced by the Not Invisible commission. Last year, the Departments of Justice and the Interior, as well as the Health and Human Services department, released their response to the recommendations. The agencies committed to policy updates for additional law enforcement and investigative resources; improved funding for tribal, state and federal law enforcement; enhanced data collection; and better services to help victims and their families heal, among other goals. Some recommendations tackled inadequate internet access, particularly in Alaska, so tribes and villages can act quickly to search for a missing person. Others focus on relatives met with indifference by law enforcement who showed little interest and failed to follow up on their cases. 'I went … to the DA's office … to demand that I see some progress in my son's case. They couldn't even find my son's case,' a Northern California parent stated in the report. 'It was heartbreaking. The fact that they didn't know his name says that I'm not good enough.'
New York Times
07-03-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
The Trump administration cancels $400 million in grants and contracts to Columbia University.
The Trump administration announced on Friday that it had canceled $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University because of what it described as the school's failure to protect Jewish students from harassment. The announcement escalated the administration's targeting of Columbia, where protests last year over the war in Gaza set off a nationwide debate over free speech, campus policing and antisemitism, and led to similar demonstrations at schools nationwide. On Monday, Linda McMahon, the secretary of education, warned that Columbia would face the loss of federal funding if it did not take additional action to combat antisemitism on campus. A statement issued by four federal agencies on Friday announcing the funding cuts referred to ongoing protests and antisemitic harassment at Columbia, though to what extent pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus can be considered antisemitic remains in dispute. The Departments of Justice, Education, and Health and Human Services, along with the General Services Administration, issued the statement. While the statement did not indicate what grants would be terminated, it said that the Health and Human Services and Education Departments would assist in issuing stop-work orders to immediately freeze the university's access to some funds. The statement said that the cancellations represented the 'first round of action' and that additional cancellations were expected to follow. Columbia currently holds more than $5 billion in federal grant commitments, the statement said. The school also faces three federal investigations into allegations of antisemitism on campus that have been announced over the past several weeks. 'Universities must comply with all federal anti-discrimination laws if they are going to receive federal funding' Ms. McMahon said. 'For too long, Columbia has abandoned that obligation to Jewish students studying on its campus. Today, we demonstrate to Columbia and other universities that we will not tolerate their appalling inaction any longer.' A Columbia spokeswoman said the university was reviewing the announcement and that it pledged to work with the federal government to restore the funding. 'We take Columbia's legal obligations seriously and understand how serious this announcement is and are committed to combating antisemitism and ensuring the safety and well-being of our students, faculty and staff,' the spokeswoman said. This is a developing story and will be updated.
Yahoo
05-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Opinion: President Trump leading on antisemitism response
If there's one takeaway from the 1-month-old Trump administration, it's this: President Donald Trump and his team are determined to move fast and hard on a range of issues they view as Biden administration failures. It took Trump's administration less than three weeks to meet the exploding antisemitism crisis with the kind of high-profile, all-of-government response it deserves. In a sign of his top priorities, Trump issued a Jan. 29 executive order expanding his first-term order, declaring the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism as executive branch policy in all cabinet agencies. He also directed the Departments of Justice, Education and Homeland Security to report back in 60 days what new steps they can take to fight Jew-hatred. In the subsequent weeks, the Department of Education launched antisemitism investigations into five universities, the Department of Health and Human Services opened investigations at four medical schools and the Department of Justice stood up a new multi-agency task force to ready more action. It is striking that the new university investigations were not opened in response to students filing complaints — as the Biden team did — but were launched proactively by the new administration. That alone sends a strong message to university leaders that there's a new sheriff in town and a new era of enforcement in the White House. Universities seem to be getting the message. Anti-Israel extremists on campus are now facing disciplinary action from schools. Six months ago, these same universities responded to antisemitic vandalism and intimidation with cowardly statements or a free pass. American Jews across the board welcome this level of energy and attention to our ongoing crisis. While former President Joe Biden and his team took important steps to combat antisemitism, including developing the first-ever National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism, he never responded with the appropriate urgency to the cascade of crises that followed the terrible events of Oct. 7, 2023. I and other Jewish community leaders met with Biden's attorney general, education secretary and others many times and asked them to meet the unprecedented crisis with an unprecedented response. They never really did. In contrast, that appears to be precisely what Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi, senior leaders at the Department of Education and others are determined to do. But there is more action we petitioned the Biden administration to take last year, and that we now hope this new direction by Trump will make real. First, the fight against antisemitism must extend beyond the campuses. The Justice Department should use the full force of the law to prosecute raucous 'protesters' in residential Jewish neighborhoods. These protests are designed to intimidate Jews as they attend synagogue and interfere with citizens' right to enjoy basic constitutional rights. They are criminal and should be treated as much. Second, antisemitic activists and their enablers hide behind invocations of 'free speech rights' as they act. But the First Amendment does not protect threats of violence and intimidation. The DOJ's Civil Rights Division should issue clear guidance and educate the public about what is and is not protected free speech. Third, the Department of Homeland Security, DOJ and Treasury should investigate and take action against the flood of foreign funding fomenting antisemitism across America. From expensive encampment tents to pro-terrorist student groups like Students for Justice in Palestine, there is little transparency over the web of money behind these pro-Hamas efforts. A new poll conducted by the American Jewish Committee shows American Jews — a longstanding pillar of the Democratic Party — have more confidence in how Republicans are responding to the antisemitism crisis. We certainly don't want antisemitism to become a political football. But our community is entitled to judge politicians by how they deliver on our needs. It's still early, but Trump and his team are moving with the right level of energy and action in the fight against antisemitism.
Yahoo
12-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Opinion - Government must confront the civil rights challenges of facial recognition
Artificial intelligence, while present in virtually every aspect of our daily lives, is far from perfect. That matters especially when its application impacts civil rights. Take, for example, facial recognition technology, a type of AI that can scan massive datasets of facial images to determine whether two images belong to the same person. The U.S. government, realizing this enormous power, has adopted, deployed and facilitated the proliferation of facial recognition across law enforcement, homeland security and even public housing. Facial recognition shows us that when complex and evolving technology such as AI is deployed in the real world, as opposed to in a laboratory, technological flaws that might otherwise be interesting data points in a simulation can undermine the basic freedoms of the American people. At my request, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights conducted a monthslong investigation into the federal government's use of facial recognition within the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security and Housing and Urban Development. Then we published a bipartisan report last fall acknowledging the technology's utility in solving crimes, combating terror threats and locating missing children. However, the report also highlights the grave risks that facial recognition poses to the civil rights of all Americans. The report is significant not just for its contributions to an under-studied field, but also for the rare consensus it garnered at an agency evenly divided among Democratic and Republican appointees. This shows that the civil rights concerns about AI are not partisan. Facial recognition technology is a system of interdependent components trained largely on images of white people, resulting in models that are worse at accurately recognizing non-white people in real-world settings. The facial recognition system can still interpret data from underrepresented groups, but with higher error rates. The camera technology that facial recognition algorithms rely upon may capture drastically different images of the same person's skin tone depending on the camera quality, camera positioning and the environment's lighting. A facial recognition technology algorithm may then return a false positive match, meaning the system thinks two different people are the same, or a false negative hit, meaning the system thinks the same person is actually two different individuals. In other words, facial recognition has flaws that are biased against and disproportionately harm people of color. This is also true for women and seniors. It is critical to fully understand how these flaws in technology translate to real-world consequences. If law enforcement agencies rely on facial recognition that is not properly tested, and if they do not train agents in the proper use of facial recognition and disclose the use of facial recognition to defendants in criminal cases, a false positive match can ruin an innocent person's life. Michigan citizen Robert Williams experienced this firsthand when he was wrongfully arrested in front of his family for the robbery of a Shinola store in Detroit after two blurry surveillance photos became the basis for a mismatched facial recognition result. His case involved omissions of facial recognition use in the arrest warrant and an unreliable photo lineup procedure. It led to an unprecedented settlement by the Detroit Police Department requiring training on the risks of facial recognition, especially when used on people of color, and a significant rollback of the department's reliance on the technology. But imagine the direct and collateral consequences for Williams and his loved ones if this exculpatory evidence had never emerged and he had been convicted and sentenced — or, more realistically, coerced under the weight of the criminal legal system to plead guilty. A recent investigation by the Washington Post revealed that police departments across America frequently disregard their own internal policies intended to prevent these inaccurate identifications. This is particularly alarming given the testimony of Assistant Police Chief Armondo Aguilar, who told the commission last spring that the ubiquitous Clearview AI software used by the Miami Police Department is only accurate 40 percent of the time prior to the human-level fact-check required by departmental guidelines. Even then, human reviewers can fall victim to 'automation bias,' the tendency to favor suggestions from automated systems and avoid contradictory information. Facial recognition technology isn't just problematic in law enforcement. If public housing authorities use facial recognition to surveil their tenants, whose incomes afford them no meaningful alternative to such housing, those tenants must choose between housing and privacy, along with the risk of unfair consequences like eviction and the denial of entry due to false positive and false negative results. Issues like these were central to a 2023 Washington Post investigation into the use of surveillance systems by public housing authorities, many equipped with facial recognition capabilities. Facial recognition technology testing, training and deployment guardrails, as they exist today, are neither holistic nor standardized enough to account for the complex, real-world scenarios in which governments at the federal and local levels are deploying facial recognition. To summarize, when the federal government deploys and heavily relies upon facial recognition technology in real-world scenarios without proper testing and oversight, such as in the form of a 'human-in-the-loop' to independently review search results, it can become the basis for false arrests, wrongful convictions and unfair housing practices, to say nothing of the privacy risks inherent in mass surveillance. As AI proliferates due to its usefulness, we must be mindful of its ever-growing risks to civil rights and civil liberties. Several key recommendations to the federal government contained in the commission's report offer a framework for how governments at the federal and local levels, and even private actors, can guard against such harms. First, facial recognition testing and training should be mandatory, standardized and involve real-world scenarios. Second, public transparency in the use of facial recognition by a department or agency should be prioritized, such as posting use policies on their websites and informing criminal defendants when facial recognition has been used against them. Third, individuals harmed by the misuse or abuse of facial recognition technology should have a statutory mechanism for redress of any harm suffered. This moment in history presents a crucial opportunity for the U.S. government to meet this moment of immense technological potential with due consideration and protection for the civil rights and civil liberties of every American. Mondaire Jones is a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and formerly a Democratic U.S. representative for New York's 17th Congressional District serving on the House Judiciary and Ethics committees. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
12-02-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
Government must confront the civil rights challenges of facial recognition
Artificial intelligence, while present in virtually every aspect of our daily lives, is far from perfect. That matters especially when its application impacts civil rights. Take, for example, facial recognition technology, a type of AI that can scan massive datasets of facial images to determine whether two images belong to the same person. The U.S. government, realizing this enormous power, has adopted, deployed and facilitated the proliferation of facial recognition across law enforcement, homeland security and even public housing. Facial recognition shows us that when complex and evolving technology such as AI is deployed in the real world, as opposed to in a laboratory, technological flaws that might otherwise be interesting data points in a simulation can undermine the basic freedoms of the American people. At my request, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights conducted a monthslong investigation into the federal government's use of facial recognition within the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security and Housing and Urban Development. Then we published a bipartisan report last fall acknowledging the technology's utility in solving crimes, combating terror threats and locating missing children. However, the report also highlights the grave risks that facial recognition poses to the civil rights of all Americans. The report is significant not just for its contributions to an under-studied field, but also for the rare consensus it garnered at an agency evenly divided among Democratic and Republican appointees. This shows that the civil rights concerns about AI are not partisan. Facial recognition technology is a system of interdependent components trained largely on images of white people, resulting in models that are worse at accurately recognizing non-white people in real-world settings. The facial recognition system can still interpret data from underrepresented groups, but with higher error rates. The camera technology that facial recognition algorithms rely upon may capture drastically different images of the same person's skin tone depending on the camera quality, camera positioning and the environment's lighting. A facial recognition technology algorithm may then return a false positive match, meaning the system thinks two different people are the same, or a false negative hit, meaning the system thinks the same person is actually two different individuals. In other words, facial recognition has flaws that are biased against and disproportionately harm people of color. This is also true for women and seniors. It is critical to fully understand how these flaws in technology translate to real-world consequences. If law enforcement agencies rely on facial recognition that is not properly tested, and if they do not train agents in the proper use of facial recognition and disclose the use of facial recognition to defendants in criminal cases, a false positive match can ruin an innocent person's life. Michigan citizen Robert Williams experienced this firsthand when he was wrongfully arrested in front of his family for the robbery of a Shinola store in Detroit after two blurry surveillance photos became the basis for a mismatched facial recognition result. His case involved omissions of facial recognition use in the arrest warrant and an unreliable photo lineup procedure. It led to an unprecedented settlement by the Detroit Police Department requiring training on the risks of facial recognition, especially when used on people of color, and a significant rollback of the department's reliance on the technology. But imagine the direct and collateral consequences for Williams and his loved ones if this exculpatory evidence had never emerged and he had been convicted and sentenced — or, more realistically, coerced under the weight of the criminal legal system to plead guilty. A recent investigation by the Washington Post revealed that police departments across America frequently disregard their own internal policies intended to prevent these inaccurate identifications. This is particularly alarming given the testimony of Assistant Police Chief Armondo Aguilar, who told the commission last spring that the ubiquitous Clearview AI software used by the Miami Police Department is only accurate 40 percent of the time prior to the human-level fact-check required by departmental guidelines. Even then, human reviewers can fall victim to 'automation bias,' the tendency to favor suggestions from automated systems and avoid contradictory information. Facial recognition technology isn't just problematic in law enforcement. If public housing authorities use facial recognition to surveil their tenants, whose incomes afford them no meaningful alternative to such housing, those tenants must choose between housing and privacy, along with the risk of unfair consequences like eviction and the denial of entry due to false positive and false negative results. Issues like these were central to a 2023 Washington Post investigation into the use of surveillance systems by public housing authorities, many equipped with facial recognition capabilities. Facial recognition technology testing, training and deployment guardrails, as they exist today, are neither holistic nor standardized enough to account for the complex, real-world scenarios in which governments at the federal and local levels are deploying facial recognition. To summarize, when the federal government deploys and heavily relies upon facial recognition technology in real-world scenarios without proper testing and oversight, such as in the form of a 'human-in-the-loop' to independently review search results, it can become the basis for false arrests, wrongful convictions and unfair housing practices, to say nothing of the privacy risks inherent in mass surveillance. As AI proliferates due to its usefulness, we must be mindful of its ever-growing risks to civil rights and civil liberties. Several key recommendations to the federal government contained in the commission's report offer a framework for how governments at the federal and local levels, and even private actors, can guard against such harms. First, facial recognition testing and training should be mandatory, standardized and involve real-world scenarios. Second, public transparency in the use of facial recognition by a department or agency should be prioritized, such as posting use policies on their websites and informing criminal defendants when facial recognition has been used against them. Third, individuals harmed by the misuse or abuse of facial recognition technology should have a statutory mechanism for redress of any harm suffered. This moment in history presents a crucial opportunity for the U.S. government to meet this moment of immense technological potential with due consideration and protection for the civil rights and civil liberties of every American.
