WASHINGTON – U.S. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, alongside U.S. Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI) and U.S. Representatives Norma Torres (D-CA-35), Hank Johnson (D-GA-04), and Jerry Nadler (D-NY-12), released a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report addressing the judiciary’s policies and practices to prevent and respond to workplace misconduct.
The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (AO) failed to fully cooperate with the GAO audit, a process that relies heavily on transparency. Over the two-year study, the judiciary only permitted the GAO to interview one current judiciary employee and one former employee to gain an “employee perspective,” severely limiting the GAO’s ability to assess the practical implementation of the judiciary’s policies. The tactics used to delay and restrict the GAO auditors’ access to information and court personnel are deeply concerning.
“Every employee should be entitled to a workplace free of sexual harassment—period. That includes employees of our judicial system. The lack of urgency by the federal courts’ administrative office to root out sexual harassment is shameful, and the unjustifiable defiance by the office to assist with this important study is in keeping with the AO’s reticence to embracing meaningful transparency. Additional steps must be taken to ensure the judiciary protects its employees from misconduct with robust policies and procedures,” said Durbin.
The GAO report concluded that the judiciary “does not have performance measures in place for its workplace conduct efforts and has not evaluated the effectiveness of its efforts.” Overall, GAO found that judicial systems aligned with only 65% of federal standards evaluated. Deficient areas include methods to ensure written policy is implemented correctly and employee rights are substantive in practice; processes to prevent, identify, and end retaliation; training, where training materials met only 23.5% of the federal standards evaluated; and data collection, where the judiciary does not collect adequate data on complaints including complaints involving judges and complaints using the most common form of dispute resolution, among other areas. GAO noted that the lack of data collection “may limit” the judiciary’s ability to understand and fully address workplace misconduct within its organization.
“Everyone deserves to be safe and respected in the workplace,” said Hirono. “But this report makes clear that years after its workplace misconduct problems came to light, the federal judiciary will not prevent workplace misconduct, leaving employees vulnerable to abuse without any recourse. The AO’s refusal to fully cooperate with this report underscores its unwillingness to even understand this issue, let alone address it. If the federal judiciary won’t take even basic action to protect its employees, Congress will. I look forward to introducing strengthened legislation with my colleagues in the weeks ahead to protect judiciary employees and stamp out the workplace misconduct that persists in our courts.”
“No American should suffer sexual misconduct, abuse, or harassment while on the job and the federal Judiciary must be held to the highest standards of integrity and ethical conduct. The era of judges abusing their power and taking comfort in an environment that rewards silence and fear ends now,” said Torres. “If the Judiciary can or will not address these issues adequately, then Congress will do it for them. I urge the Judiciary to rapidly establish adequate and transparent systems to handle sexual harassment claims that meet the standard all other government entities adhere to. This report is a testament that the current system is failing to protect the over 30,000 employees throughout the federal Judiciary and that reliance on the good character and conduct of individuals alone has been grossly insufficient. The delays and restrictions placed on GAO auditors' access to information and court employees is unacceptable. The attention to this severe lack of transparency has captured the attention of the public and members of the House and Senate. The time for change is now.”
“All workers deserve basic workplace rights that protect them from harassment, discrimination and other forms of misconduct,” said Johnson. “While it’s encouraging to see that the federal judiciary is making strides on behalf of its more than 30,00 employees, this report reinforces the fact that more work still needs to be done. The fact that federal judiciary employees are denied basic civil rights protections – rights that the rest of the federal government and most private sector employees enjoy – is just flat wrong and must be remedied. The Constitution and the American people have entrusted the judiciary as the guardian of the rule of law and yet it doesn’t even provide its own employees the full protection of it. The fix here is not revolutionary and should not be partisan. I look forward to continuing the fight to protect workers and providing the judiciary with the legislative tools to help us make this a reality.”
“The Federal Judiciary has an obligation to ensure a workplace free of abuse and harassment, which is why this report is so jarring,” said Nadler. “I’m proud to join my colleagues in this bicameral effort to help strengthen the judiciary’s policies and procedures to ensure that the thousands of judicial employees who dedicate themselves to seeking justice for others are no longer vulnerable to misconduct, harassment, and discrimination in their own workplace. This GAO report demonstrates that while the judiciary has put into place some measures to address these issues, there is still a long way to go as the judiciary has failed to take effective steps that numerous other government institutions, including Congress, have already taken. This report provides us with a blueprint on what is left to be done and I look forward to working with my colleagues to protect the integrity of the judicial branch and providing the thousands of judiciary employees the same workplace protections that other federal government and private sector employees already enjoy.”
According to judiciary officials, a survey was conducted from January 12 through February 17, 2023, and they received responses from approximately 14,000 out of the 28,000 employees surveyed. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) requested access to the survey data but was denied. Similarly, Congress also requested access to the data and was denied. As of now, the circuit courts themselves have not had access to the data.
The full GAO report is available here. A summary report is available here.
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That should scare the hell out of all of us. Talk about unchecked immunity.
"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Kamala Harris has gained strong support as the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate. Putting Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro on the ticket would likely fracture that support.
The most divisive issue among Democrats is the U.S.-enabled Israeli war against the civilian population of Gaza. To unify the party and defeat Trump’s MAGA forces, Harris needs to distance herself in a meaningful way from Joe Biden’s Gaza policy. If she does so, she can win back the votes and energy of young activists, progressives, racial justice organizers, Arab Americans and Muslims—many of whom devoted weeks or months of their lives in 2020 to defeating Trump on behalf of the Biden-Harris ticket.
But a Harris-Shapiro ticket would jeopardize all that.
Overall, Josh Shapiro is liberal and sometimes progressive on domestic issues (though notably not on fracking or tax subsidies for private schools). But on the contentious issue of Israel’s relentless war against Palestinian civilians in Gaza, Shapiro sounds much less bothered by the lethal violence than by U.S. ceasefire activists, many of whom he has demonized. Here’s a bit of the history:
In 2021, after Ben & Jerry’s (a company founded and led by Jewish Americans) refused to sell its products in Israel’s illegal settlements, then-Attorney General Josh Shapiro threatened the company by urging Pennsylvania state agencies to enforce a constitutionally suspect law targeting advocates of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel over its discriminatory policies. Shapiro smeared such advocates by claiming that “BDS is rooted in antisemitism” – although the effort has wide support globally, including from many Jews, as a thoroughly nonviolent tactic in advancing Palestinian rights.
After the horrific Hamas attack of October 7, several dozen Pennsylvania-based Muslim groups wrote a letter protesting Governor Shapiro’s one-sided comments: “Not only did you fail to recognize the structural root causes of the conflict, you chose to intentionally ignore the civilian loss of life in Gaza.” Responding to the letter after Israeli bombs and missiles had killed more civilians in Gaza than had been killed by Hamas in Israel on October 7, the governor’s spokesman said: “We all must speak with moral clarity and support Israel’s right to defend itself.”
Last December, after he amplified the Capitol Hill demagoguery of MAGA Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, Gov. Shapiro contributed to the firing of the University of Pennsylvania president. Referring to UPenn’s president, Shapiro said: “I thought her comments were absolutely shameful. It should not be hard to condemn genocide.” By then, after two months of Israeli bombing, more than 17,000 Gazans had been killed, mostly women and children—and later that month, Israel was charged with violations of the Genocide Convention in South Africa’s filing at the International Court of Justice.
In early April, after Democratic governors in other states had called for a ceasefire in Gaza, Muslim leaders in Philadelphia criticized Shapiro for his refusal to do so.
Beginning in late April, Gov. Shapiro and his office repeatedly prodded campuses to “restore order” and take action against student encampments, including the University of Pennsylvania Gaza Solidarity Encampment which called on the college administration to provide greater transparency on university investments, divest from Israel, and reinstate the banned student group Penn Students Against the Occupation.
On May 9, Shapiro invoked student “safety” in demanding the encampment be shut down. Police shut it down the next day, arresting 33. In two different interviews, Shapiro seemed to compare campus ceasefire activists, many of whom are Jewish or students of color, to “white supremacists camped out and yelling racial slurs” and “people dressed up in KKK outfits or KKK regalia making comments about people who’re African American.”
In May, as activism continued to grow over Israel’s lethal violence against civilians in Gaza, Gov. Shapiro issued an order aimed at Israel’s critics that revised his administration’s code of conduct to bar state employees from “scandalous or disgraceful” conduct—a vague and subjective directive criticized by the legal director of Pennsylvania’s ACLU as a possible violation of free speech protections.
In a July 23 post on X, progressive leader and former Ohio State Senator Nina Turner wrote: “Choosing Governor Josh Shapiro for Vice President would be a mistake. Governor Shapiro compared pro-peace protesters to the KKK. That’s simply unacceptable & would stifle the momentum VP Harris has. Hopefully she is looking to build a broad coalition to beat Trump.”
Evacuation orders issued by the Israeli military have impacted Nuseirat and Bureij refugee camps, forcing families to relocate “again and again, knowing that safety is non-existent in the Gaza Strip”, said the UN agency assisting Palestine refugees, UNRWA, in a post on X.
“Quite often, people have just a few hours to pack whatever they can and start all over again, mostly on foot or on a crowded donkey cart for those who can afford it,” he said. “Almost everyone in Gaza has been impacted by these orders. Many were forced to flee on average once a month since the war began nine months ago.”
Water plant destroyed
In a related development, the UN agency condemned the reported destruction of a water plant in Rafah in southern Gaza, a focus of Israeli military action since early May.
“Any time, something happens - like what appears to happen in Rafah over the weekend, with a water plant destroyed - it impacts the ability we have to generate water,” said Scott Anderson, UN Deputy Humanitarian Coordinator and Director of UNRWA Affairs in Gaza. The UN agency has been unable to independently assess the situation, he noted.
Uprooted – again
Echoing the testimonies of forcibly displaced people who are among those assisted by UNRWA, Mr. Anderson recounted how one woman with twins explained the chaos of the upheaval: “She said, yeah, basically, that was one child for each arm and a little backpack, you know, and off they go to try to find safety.”
According to UNRWA, evacuation orders are now issued “every other day”, while UN aid coordination office, OCHA, reported on Friday that humanitarian partners estimated that more than 190,000 Palestinians had been displaced last week in Khan Younis and Deir al Balah, since an evacuation order issued seven days ago.
The UN coordinator in Gaza on Monday said there should be compliance with international law after Israel’s bombing of a drinking water reservoir in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip.
"International humanitarian law was very clear what it asks of parties to the conflict, so I don't think you need an additional commentary from me," Sigrid Kaag, senior humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, told Anadolu.
"In the meantime, what we do need, regardless, also in compliance and alignment with international law, is for safe access, safety and security to deliver, and we need to obviously ramp up all facilities that provide water, that we have clean water for the population, that we can provide for sanitation," she added.
The Israeli army has admitted its soldiers were responsible for the bombing of the water reservoir in Tal al-Sultan, and is said to have initiated an investigation.
The incident has raised alarm about the worsening water crisis in the area.
A video circulating online shows an Israeli soldier planting an explosive device at the main water reservoir, which was then detonated.
One of the soldiers posted a video of the explosion on social media with the caption "Destruction of the Tel Sultan water reservoir in honor of Shabbat."
Local institutions and municipalities in Gaza have repeatedly accused the Israeli military of deliberately destroying water networks, wells, and desalination plants, exacerbating the drinking water crisis.
As of June 30, there were over 65,000 cases of skin rashes in Gaza, and over 100,000 cases of scabies and lice, according to the World Health Organization.
Impetigo, the infection that Dr. Al-Farra is treating at Nasser, is common and mainly affects children and infants. It starts with a blister and, after about a week, spreads to the rest of the body, and is highly contagious. The reddish sores, often found around the nose, mouth, arms and legs, eventually burst and develop a crust. It's typically treated with antibiotics.
But Nasser Hospital has been overwhelmed by patient demand after being sieged in February by Israeli troops. At the time, an Israeli spokesperson described that raid as "precise and limited," and said the IDF had credible information of Hamas members hiding in Nasser, which Hamas called "lies." The raid displaced some 2,000 people to Rafah and Deir al-Balah.
Nour Odeh, Palestinian political analyst and former spokesperson for the Palestinian Authority, noted that the sheer proportion of Gaza that is being evacuated and attacked confirms that Israel’s siege of Gaza is an ethnic cleansing campaign.
“These are not ‘evacuation’ orders. They’re ethnic cleansing tactics,” Odeh wrote on social media.
It has been reported for months that there is nowhere safe to go for Palestinians in Gaza, with danger from Israel’s bombardments and famine and disease campaign lurking around every corner. This danger has only intensified as Israel has shrunk the area of Gaza that is not subject to evacuation, while escalating its horrific humanitarian aid blockade and destruction of the medical system.
One of the only places left that isn’t under evacuation, the “safe zone” in al-Mawasi, is now completely full, the Palestine Red Crescent Society reported last week. Before being designated as a “safe zone,” al-Mawasi was already deemed unlivable, with the stretch of desert lacking basically any infrastructure. Indeed, conditions in al-Mawasi are worse than elsewhere, with access to water and toilets severely limited, even when compared to the extremely low access available to Palestinians elsewhere in Gaza.
“In the so-called ‘humanitarian area’ in Al-Mawasi, there is no space even for a single tent due to the overwhelming number of people desperate for safety,” said the Red Crescent.
Gaza remains under assault. Day 298 of the assault in the wave that began in October. Binoy Kampmark (DISSIDENT VOICE) points out, "Bloodletting as form; murder as fashion. The ongoing campaign in Gaza by Israel’s Defence Forces continues without stalling and restriction. But the burgeoning number of corpses is starting to become a challenge for the propaganda outlets: How to justify it? Fortunately for Israel, the United States, its unqualified defender, is happy to provide cover for murder covered in the sheath of self-defence." CNN has explained, "The Gaza Strip is 'the most dangerous place' in the world to be a child, according to the executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund." ABC NEWS quotes UNICEF's December 9th statement, ""The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. Scores of children are reportedly being killed and injured on a daily basis. Entire neighborhoods, where children used to play and go to school have been turned into stacks of rubble, with no life in them." NBC NEWS notes, "Strong majorities of all voters in the U.S. disapprove of President Joe Biden’s handling of foreign policy and the Israel-Hamas war, according to the latest national NBC News poll. The erosion is most pronounced among Democrats, a majority of whom believe Israel has gone too far in its military action in Gaza." The slaughter continues. It has displaced over 1 million people per the US Congressional Research Service. Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) points out, "Academics and legal experts around the world, including Holocaust scholars, have condemned the six-week Israeli assault of Gaza as genocide." The death toll of Palestinians in Gaza is grows higher and higher. United Nations Women noted, "More than 1.9 million people -- 85 per cent of the total population of Gaza -- have been displaced, including what UN Women estimates to be nearly 1 million women and girls. The entire population of Gaza -- roughly 2.2 million people -- are in crisis levels of acute food insecurity or worse." THE NATIONAL notes, "Gaza death toll rises to 39,400 killed with 90,996 wounded." Months ago, AP noted, "About 4,000 people are reported missing." February 7th, Jeremy Scahill explained on DEMOCRACY NOW! that "there’s an estimated 7,000 or 8,000 Palestinians missing, many of them in graves that are the rubble of their former home." February 5th, the United Nations' Phillipe Lazzarini Tweeted:
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to Renee Bracey Sherman. She’s a reproductive justice activist. And she wrote a very interesting piece in Teen Vogue. And it’s called — the piece is called “JD Vance Doesn’t Want All Women to Be Trad Wives, Just White Women.” Explain, Renee.
RENEE BRACEY SHERMAN: Well, hi, Amy. Thanks for having me. And I should just let your audience know that — full disclosure — I am a childless cat lady. I am fine with that, and my life is amazing.
But what I think is really important is, people have maybe seen this trad wife phenomena on TikTok, where usually white women are making these videos about how amazing it is to make everything from scratch, and this idyllic, like, 1950s home life, and how great it is just to be home and opt out of the working society, right? And these are videos that are basically propaganda for the world that people like JD Vance want.
But what we have to think about is, if you actually look at history, women of color have never been part of that idyllic society, right? Women of color always had to work, whether they were wet nurses and enslaved women and being abused by white women on plantations during slavery, to when they were working in the 1950s. They were still in the homes — right? — because of mass incarceration, family separation, all of these things. They did not get the choice to decide: “Well, do I stay home, or do I work?” With low wages, without access to social safety net supports because of racist barriers, they’ve always had to work.
And so, when JD Vance talks about what this future looks like, where he wants women at home, he’s picturing white women. He is very sure that he wants white women to be at home procreating, while the rest of us are laboring under capitalism, so he and his donors can keep making more and more money off of our backs and off of our low wages.
AMY GOODMAN: So, can you talk more about the issue of Vance’s views on gender, sex and marriage, and what it means, why he is attacking people who don’t have children, and being very focused on the nuclear family? It can’t even be, as in the case of Kamala Harris, stepchildren.
RENEE BRACEY SHERMAN: I mean, the short answer is he’s a weirdo. The longer answer is he’s a white supremacist, and he’s a white nationalist. He believes that the only children are ones that are physically born through natural birth conception. Those are the ones that are legitimate, right? Which is wild, because he promotes adoption as an alternative to abortion, which it is not, but then attacks Pete Buttigieg for adopting children, right? Again, he has this view that certain families are valuable. And that is families that are white, that have natural children, that have, you know, single — or, heterosexual parents.
He does not recognize that this world, we make our families in lots of different ways. Divorce, stepparents, adoption, abortion, all of these ways that we make our families, that is the reproductive future that we’re all building together. He cannot stand that. He cannot stand that fighting for abortion access, fighting for reproductive justice, all of this, ensures that we are able to decide if, when and how to grow our family. It terrifies him.
AMY GOODMAN: In other news about JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee has written the foreword to the forthcoming book by Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, head of Project 2025. Trump’s campaign has disavowed any connection to Project 2025, a radical, almost thousand-page Republican blueprint to overhaul U.S. policy on everything from immigration to reproductive rights to the climate. Can you talk about the MAGA right’s views on reproductive rights in particular, what you think a Trump-Vance White House would mean for reproductive rights?
RENEE BRACEY SHERMAN: I mean, a Trump-Vance White House, for reproductive rights and abortion access, is terrifying. If you care about abortion, if you care about IVF, if you care about sex, if you like having sex, if you like having sex with whoever you want, if you like sex toys, all of those things could be gone, right? This is the modern-day Comstock. Anthony Comstock, in the mid-1800s, used the mail service to try to ban contraceptions, pornography, sex toys, all of these things, right? Project 2025 is just the updated version of that. And Vance is just the updated version of Anthony Comstock.
So, anything that you love about your sex life, your family, the freedoms that you get to have to build the families that you care about, that you love, build your life, that is under threat with this Project 2025. And I really hope that people pay attention to that, in a way that they didn’t necessarily hear us when we said that Roe could and would be overturned. Please listen to us right now, that they are very serious about this. This is not a pipe dream. They wrote it down. It is their goal. And they will stop at nothing to achieve it.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about how Vance’s personal background and professional history cast doubts on his public stance on gender roles in family life, married to a very high-powered, successful working woman, quit her law firm the week of the Republican convention? On Friday, Vance was asked about his wife in an interview with Megyn Kelly.
SEN. JD VANCE: Look, I love my wife so much. I love her because she’s who she is. Obviously, she’s not a white person. And we’ve been attacked by some white supremacists over that. But I just — I love Usha. She’s such a good mom.
AMY GOODMAN: Your response, Renee?
RENEE BRACEY SHERMAN: I mean, he’s a weirdo. Like, it is wild to me that you are married to a woman of color, and you can’t see her as anything other than not a white person and a mom, right? But that’s who he is. He has such a worldview in which — that whiteness is the default — that is the thing that we focus on — that women’s role in society is to have children. And I think it’s terrifying that he can’t see us for anything else, that he — as I wrote in the piece, you know, he enjoyed them being a power couple, until he needed to achieve the higher echelons of power, and then she had to give up hers. I think he believes that women are there to be subservient to men like him. And it is a really terrifying future in which we don’t get to decide what our futures are, particularly that women of color need to serve white men like him.
AMY GOODMAN: Renee Bracey Sherman, I want to thank you for being with us, reproductive justice activist and writer, founder and co-executive director of We Testify. We’ll link to your piece in Teen Vogue, “JD Vance Doesn’t Want All Women to Be Trad Wives, Just White Women.” Her forthcoming book is titled Liberating Abortion: Claiming Our History, Sharing Our Stories, and Building the Reproductive Future We Deserve.
Next up, we speak with Politico reporter Ian Ward about “The Seven Thinkers and Groups That Have Shaped JD Vance’s Unusual Worldview.” Back in a minute.
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