On August 21, the national news agency CNN published on the internet the following news article entitled “Takeaways from the third  night of the Democratic National Convention” written by CNN staff reporter  Eric Bradner:

“Democrats are betting that within the American electorate is a deep desire to leave behind the bitterness of a decade dominated by former President Donald Trump.

And so, at the party’s convention Wednesday night in Chicago, a “joy” strategy — portraying Vice President Kamala Harris as the candidate who can move the nation forward — was on full display.

Former President Bill Clinton said Harris brings “sheer joy” to the 2024 race. Oprah Winfrey urged Americans to “choose joy.”

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg contrasted Trump’s “darkness” with the brand of politics offered by Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz — which he said “just feels better to be part of.”

The message underscored how rapidly the 2024 presidential race has evolved since last month’s exit of President Joe Biden — whose campaign had been built around dire warnings that electing Trump would jeopardize democracy itself. Harris hasn’t abandoned those warnings, but has rewrapped them in a more forward-looking message emphasizing themes of freedom and joy – and Democrats paired it with a party.

Singer John Legend and drummer Sheila E. played Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy.” Stevie Wonder performed “Higher Ground.”

And as alumni from the Mankato West High School football team, which won a state championship with Walz as an assistant coach, strode on stage in jerseys that no longer fit, a pep band blared the school’s fight song.

“Thank you for bringing the joy to this fight,” Walz told the crowd.”

[Following are the 6 major takeaways from the second night of the Democratic National Convention]:

1. TIM WALZ, THE HAPPY WARRIOR, INTRODUCES HIMSELF

 “A moment of this magnitude was new for Walz. Prior to his selection as Harris’ running mate, not only had he never delivered a high-stakes speech in front of a national audience — he’d never even used a teleprompter.

So in a convention filled with former presidents, congressional leaders, celebrities and more, Walz opted to be something else entirely.

He’s a two-term governor and a former congressman, but he leaned into earlier portions of his resume: High school teacher. Football coach. Hunter. Neighbor.Enter your email to sign up for CNN’s “What Matters” Newsletter.

He used his speech to make the case that Democrats are the party of freedom.

“In Minnesota, we respect our neighbors and the choices that they make. And even if we wouldn’t make the same choices ourselves, we’ve got a golden rule: Mind your own damn business,” Walz said.

Walz touched on Harris’ policy positions on issues such as health care, abortion rights and homeownership. And he did so in populist tones at times reminiscent of the late Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone.

“When we Democrats talk about freedom, we mean the freedom to make a better life for yourself and the people you love. Freedom to make your own health care decisions. And yeah, your kids’ freedom to go to school without worrying about being shot dead in the hall,” Walz said.

“That’s what this is all about: The responsibility that we have to our kids, to each other and to the future we’re building together in which everyone is free to build the kind of life that they want.”

And in a nod to his experience on the gridiron, Walz, urging Democrats to work hard over the 76 days remaining in the campaign, said, “We’re gonna leave it on the field.”

Still, the most memorable moment of Walz’s speech might have come when he discussed the fertility struggles he and his wife, Gwen Walz, faced.

“Hope, Gus and Gwen, you are my entire world, and I love you,” he said, naming his daughter, son and wife.

Gus Walz stood up, tears streaming down his face, and applauded his father.

Walz left the stage as Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World” blared through the United Center. Young had personally allowed the Harris campaign to use it — notable because four years earlier, he’d sued Trump’s campaign to stop it from doing so.”

2. OPRAH CONNECTS THE HISTORICAL DOTS

 “If other Democrats led a generational change Wednesday night, talk show legend Oprah Winfrey connected the historical dots — portraying Harris as emblematic of “the best of America.”

She told the story of Tessie Prevost, who died last month, and three other Black girls who faced hate and harassment when, as 6-year-old girls, they began the desegregation of New Orleans elementary schools in 1960.

Drawing the connection to Harris, the “New Orleans Four,” Winfrey said, “paved the way for another young girl who nine years later became part of the second class to integrate the public schools in Berkley, California.”

Now, she said, Harris is poised to make history.

“Soon and very soon, we’re going to be teaching our daughters and sons about how this child of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father, two idealistic and energetic immigrants — immigrants — how this child grew up to become the 47th president of the United States,” Winfrey said.

“That is the best of America,” she said, as the crowd erupted into a “U-S-A” chant.

She invoked the Republican vice presidential nominee, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, who in a 2021 interview with Tucker Carlson complained that the United States is being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives.”

“We are not so different from our neighbors, Winfrey said. “When a house is on fire, we do not ask about the homeowners’ race or religion. We don’t wonder who their partner is or how they voted. No. We just try to do the best we can to save them. And if the place happens to belong to a childless cat lady — well, we try to get that cat out, too.”

3. ‘FOR THE PEOPLE’ VS. ‘ME, MYSELF AND I’

 “Bill Clinton, who former President Barack Obama once dubbed the explainer-in-chief, framed the election as a choice between Harris being “for the people” or Trump being “about me, myself and I.”

“I know which one I like better for our country,” the former president said.

Though Clinton’s influence within the party has waned in the more than 23 years since he left office, no Democrat has been able to replicate his appeal to White working-class voters who have slipped away from the party since Clinton’s heyday — a reality that makes his once-every-four-years appearance at the convention an anticipated moment.

He touched on Harris’ positions on housing and health care policies, and he credited Democrats for job growth. But for the most part, Clinton used his speech to cast Trump as self-obsessed and Harris as a clean break from the drama that encompasses the former president.

He said Trump “mostly talks about himself.”

“So the next time you hear him, don’t count the lies. Count the I’s,” he said. “His vendettas, his vengeance, his complaints, his conspiracies.”

     4.  DON’T STOP THINKING ABOUT TOMORROW

“In the Democratic Party, it’ll soon be here.

While the main job of the party’s convention is to propel Harris into the fall with momentum, this year’s gathering in Chicago has also served as a generational hand-off.

Several of the party’s aging figures — including Biden, Clinton and his wife, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton; and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — acknowledged the twilight of their influence and the emergence of new faces.

Bill Clinton — who at 78 is keenly aware that he has lived longer than his father, grandfather and great-grandfather — told the crowd Wednesday night that he’s been to every Democratic National Convention since 1972 and has “no idea how many more of these I’ll be able to come to.”

“But here’s what I want you to know,” he said. “If you vote for this team — if you can get them elected and let them bring in this breath of fresh air — you’ll be proud of it for the rest of your life. Your children will be proud of it. Your grandchildren will be proud of it.”

Evoking memories of the 1992 convention in New York where the Hope, Arkansas, native was first nominated, he said: “Take it from the man who once had the honor in this convention to be called the man from Hope: We need Kamala Harris, the president of joy, to lead us.”

Clinton also praised Biden, saying that voluntarily relinquishing political power will enhance his legacy. He was followed on stage by Pelosi, the most powerful woman in American political history, who played a role in ushering Biden aside for Harris.

Pelosi, 84, had of course already facilitated a generational change on Capitol Hill. She stepped aside as House Democratic leader in 2022 and was replaced by New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, who is 30 years younger.”

   5.  HOSTAGE PARENTS SHARE ‘AGONY ON ALL SIDES’ OF ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR

“Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg-Polin, the parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin — an Israeli-American who was kidnapped by Hamas while attending the Nova music festival on October 7 — shared their “anguish and misery” Wednesday in one of  the night’s most poignant moments.

“Since then, we live on another planet. Anyone who is a parent or has had a parent can try to imagine the anguish and misery that Jon and I and all the hostage families are enduring,” Goldberg-Polin said.

The two said they’ve met “numerous times” at the White House with Biden and Harris.

“We are all deeply grateful to them,” Jon Polin. “We’re also profoundly thankful to you, the millions of people in the United States and all over the world, who have been sending love, support and strength to the hostage families. You’ve kept us breathing in a world without air.”

Acknowledging the deaths of civilians in Gaza, Polin also said that “there is a surplus of agony on all sides” of Israel’s war with Hamas.

Their comments came as Democrats grapple with tension over US support for Israel’s war with Hamas and the civilian casualties that have resulted. Progressives’ criticism of Biden on the issue led to campus protests and “uncommitted” votes in some states’ presidential primaries this spring.

About an hour before the family spoke, Abbas Alawieh, a co-founder of the Uncommitted Nation Network, said he welcomed the hostage parents’ speech – but pressed again for a Palestinian-American voice to be given the same time.

Hours later, Uncommitted received the news that their request for a speaking spot had been denied, and members reacted by staging a sit-in outside the United Center. They held banners that said “Arms embargo now” and “Not another bomb,” urging an end to US military supplies for Israel’s war effort. Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar briefly joined the group.”

6. CAPITOL POLICE OFFICER SAYS TRUMP ‘BETRAYED US’

“Though Harris has put her own spin on the Democratic message since replacing Biden atop the ticket, the theme that had been at the core of the president’s reelection campaign — defending democracy — remains key.

Aquilino Gonell, a former US Capitol Police sergeant, said that Trump “summoned our attackers” who rioted at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, as Congress was gathered to count electoral college votes.

Gonnell, who immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic when he was 12 and served in the Army, said that Trump “betrayed us.”

“We officers risked everything to protect innocent people. We were beaten and blinded. I was assaulted with a pole attached to an American flag.”

Democrats made the insurrection, and Trump’s broader effort to overturn the 2020 election results, a focus on Wednesday night.

Former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a Republican, and Olivia Troye, a former national security adviser to Vice President Mike Pence, also took the stage in Chicago.

“To my fellow Republicans, you aren’t voting for a Democrat; you’re voting for democracy,” Troye said. “You aren’t betraying our party; you’re standing up for our country.””

The link to review the full CNN report with photos is here:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/22/politics/takeaways-dnc-day-3/index.html

GUS WALZ CAPTURES LOVE OF FAMILY 

“Gus Walz sat in the front row for the biggest moment of his father’s life, and his pride exploded out of him. “That’s my dad!” the 17-year-old could be seen saying. He stood, tears streaming down his face, and pointed to his father, Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, who was accepting the Democratic nomination for vice president in a speech to thousands of people in a packed arena and millions more watching at home.

The teen’s exuberance captured hearts and went viral, becoming perhaps the defining image of his father’s address and further humanizing a running mate picked by Vice President Kamala Harris in no small part for his everyman appeal.  Gus wept through much of his father’s speech, and when it was over, climbed on stage with his family and wrapped his dad in a tight bear hug, burying his face in his shoulder.

Gus is a high school senior. His parents recently disclosed to People magazine he has a non-verbal learning disorder, ADHD and an anxiety disorder. But they called his condition “his secret power” and said he’s “brilliant” and poised for success. He got his driver’s license last fall.”

The link to the full quoted news source is here:

https://apnews.com/article/gus-walz-thats-my-dad-dnc-523c5add372384a810af9e8501dc07ba

COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS

Although this has been a convention filled with former presidents, congressional leaders, celebrities and award-winning entertainers for the last 3 nights, it was the images of Gus Walz who stood up, tears streaming down his face, applauding his father that will be remembered the most.  If you are one who was not moved seeing the 17-year-old Gus Walz in tears watching his dad Tim Walz Walk on stage as the Vice-Presidential nominee, then you have no real understanding of the true meaning of love of family nor the struggles families go through in this country raising and caring for a child with a disability.

Simply put, Governor Tim Walz knocked it out of the park with his speech. This coming from a politician who had to be taught how to use a tele prompter. Governor Walz is a high school teacher, football coach, family man, neighbor and who has served his country for 20 years in the military and who became an elected official to serve his community. Walz left no doubt why Vice President Kamala Harris chose him as her running mate.  He is more than qualified and will make an excellent Vice President.

On August 21, the national news agency CNN published on the internet the following news article entitled “Takeaways from the second night of the Democratic National Convention” written by CNN staff reporters  Eric Bradner and Arit John:

“Barack Obama and Michelle Obama electrified the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday, delivering back-to-back speeches that eviscerated Donald Trump and urged Americans to reject the Republican nominee once and for all.

The former first lady, in one of the most memorable speeches in convention history, called on Democrats to drop the “Goldilocks complex” and work hard to elect Vice President Kamala Harris.

EDITOR’S NOTE: You can read the transcript of Michelle Obama’s speech in the postsript below.

“We cannot indulge our anxieties about whether this country will elect someone like Kamala, instead of doing everything we can to get someone like Kamala elected,” she said.

Then, the former president — in a speech that evoked memories of his emergence into the American political consciousness and his own winning campaigns — said that the “vast majority of us do not want to live in a country that’s bitter and divided.”

“We do not need four more years of bluster and bumbling and chaos. We have seen that movie before, and we all know that the sequel is usually worse,” Obama said.

Their speeches closed a night during which Democrats had sought to introduce Harris in more personal terms to Americans who are only now learning about the vice president, just a month after she ascended to the top of the party’s 2024 ticket.

Second gentleman Doug Emhoff told the story of their relationship and why his children call the vice president “Momala.” Maryland Senate candidate Angela Alsobrooks explained how Harris came to be someone she considered a friend and mentor.

It set the stage for the two closing nights of the convention: Wednesday night, when the party’s vice presidential nominee, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, will take the stage, and Thursday, when Harris will close the gathering as the final sprint to Election Day begins.”

[Following are the 8 major takeaways from the second night of the Democratic National Convention]:

1. KIDS WITH FUNNY NAMES

“Twenty years after Barack Obama, then a state senator, burst onto the political scene with his 2004 DNC speech, he delivered its bookend.

“This convention has always been pretty good to kids with funny names who believe in a country where anything is possible,” Obama said.

The 44th president’s remarks were filled with references to his own campaigns — including familiar calls-and-responses the “Yes we can” chants once so omnipresent at Obama rallies now returning as “Yes she can.”

It’s no wonder why: Obama remains so popular with American voters that even Trump now passes on opportunities for confrontation with the former president. He told CNN’s Kristen Holmes on Tuesday that while he has differences with Obama on trade policy, “I happen to like him. I respect him, and I respect his wife.”

Obama took swings at Trump, to be sure — trying to deflate the figure that has so dominated American politics since Obama left the stage.

“Here is a 78-year-old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago. There’s the childish nicknames, the crazy conspiracy theories, this weird obsession with crowd sizes,” Obama said.

But he also urged Democrats not to direct similar rancor at regular Americans.

“If a parent or grandparent occasionally says something that makes us cringe, we don’t automatically assume they’re bad people,” he said. “We recognize that the world is moving fast — that they need time and maybe a little encouragement to catch up. Our fellow citizens deserve the same grace we hope they’ll extend to us. That’s how we can build a true Democratic majority, one that can get things done.” “

2. BARACK OBAMA’S FAMILY STORY

“The former president also put a new twist on the familiar story of his own family — comparing his grandmother, a White woman from Kansas who helped raise him, and his mother-in-law, a Black woman from the south side of Chicago who died earlier this year.

“They knew what was true. They knew what mattered,” Obama said. “Things like honesty and integrity, kindness and hard work. They weren’t impressed with braggarts or bullies. They didn’t think putting other people down lifted you up or made you strong. They didn’t spend a lot of time obsessing about what they didn’t have.”

Then, he drew the connection to Harris — pointing to her Indian mother and Jamaican father, who both immigrated to the United States.

“Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, or somewhere in between, we have all had people like that in our lives — people like Kamala’s parents, who crossed oceans because they believed in the promise of America,” he said.”

3. HOPE MAKES A COMEBACK

“Few people have as much of a hold on the hearts and minds of the Democratic base as Michelle Obama, who was greeted with one of the loudest, longest rounds of applause as she took the stage in her hometown Tuesday.

“Hope is making a comeback,” she said, echoing the theme of her husband’s 2008 presidential run.

The former first lady spoke to the optimism that Harris has created since she became the Democratic nominee and described her as the best choice to lead the nation, based on both her experience and her character.

“My girl Kamala Harris is more than ready for this moment,” Michelle Obama said. “She is one of the most qualified people ever to seek the office of the presidency, and she is one of the most dignified.”

She spoke of the middle class backgrounds and values she shared with Harris and painted a sharp contrast with Trump, noting that they would never “benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth.”

4. WARNINGS OF ‘FOOLISHNESS’

“The key role Michelle Obama played Tuesday was to urge the audience to keep their eyes on the prize. Obama told Democrats to avoid the “foolishness” of waiting to be asked to act and made a personal appeal for everyone to “do something” between now and Election Day.

“Yes, Kamala and Tim are doing great now. We’re loving it. They pack arenas across the country. Folks are energized. We are feeling good,” she said. “But remember, there are still so many people who are desperate for a different outcome.”

She laid out the stakes, and the challenges, facing Harris as a Black woman seeking higher office in starker terms than any other convention speaker to date. Obama alluded to the years Trump spent spreading the false, racist birther conspiracy theory against her husband.

“We know folks are going to do everything they can to distort her truth,” she said of Harris. “My husband and I, sadly, know a little something about this. For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us.”

She also took a jab at Trump’s June debate claim that migrants are stealing “Black jobs.”

“Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those Black jobs,” she said.”

5. EMHOFF INTRODUCES ‘MOMALA’

“Emhoff, the second gentleman, sought to show America a personal side of his wife — telling stories about how they met and how she became “Momala” to his two children.

Emhoff, an attorney who left his law firm after Harris was elected vice president, stepped into the role he’s seeking as America’s dad — one who has a group chat with boyhood friends and a fantasy football league (team name, Nirvana, “yes, after the band,” he said) with law school buddies.

He said he’d gotten her phone number and called at 8:30 a.m. He left a rambling voice mail that he instantly regretted — and Harris saved that voicemail. “She makes me listen to it on every anniversary,” he said.

Still, he said, she called back, and the two talked and laughed for an hour. “You know that laugh. I love that laugh,” he said.

Emhoff’s up-front role for Harris was a vivid contrast with the Republican National Convention. Two of Trump’s sons spoke, but they did not delve deeply into personal stories about their father. His wife, Melania Trump, did not speak at all, and has kept her involvement in his third presidential run to a minimum.

But Emhoff’s speech wasn’t purely personal anecdotes. He also described Harris as tough.

“Here’s the thing about joyful warriors: They’re still warriors. And Kamala is as tough as it comes,” he said.”

6. GOP SPEAKERS SHOW UP FOR HARRIS

“Democrats weren’t just working to appeal to their own party. Throughout the night, the DNC featured former Republicans making the case for independents and Trump critics to vote for Harris.

One of the prime-time speaking slots went to Mayor John Giles of Mesa, Arizona, a self-declared lifelong Republican who said the Biden-Harris administration had delivered results for his conservative community.

“I have an urgent message for the majority of Americans who, like me, are in the political middle: John McCain’s Republican Party is gone, and we don’t owe a damn thing to what’s been left behind,” Giles said. “So let’s turn the page. Let’s put country first.”

Giles’ speech capped off a series of appearances Tuesday by Republicans, or people who’d left the party, rallying support for Harris.

In a short video, three former Trump voters said they believed the former president didn’t respect the Constitution and criticized his felony convictions. On stage, Kyle Sweetser – a Nikki Haley supporter who plans to vote for Harris – said that he voted for Trump three times before growing concerned about his tariff policies.

“Costs for construction workers like me were starting to soar,” Sweetser said. “I realized Trump wasn’t for me.”

Stephanie Grisham, a former Trump White House press secretary and chief of staff to former First Lady Melania Trump, described herself as a “true believer” who spent her holidays at Mar-a-Lago. But she resigned on January 6, 2021, after Trump failed to immediately move to stop his supporters from attacking the US Capitol.

Grisham used her remarks to condemn Trump’s behind closed doors, telling that audience that he mocks his supporters in private and has called them “basement dwellers.”

“He has no empathy, no morals and no fidelity to the truth,” she said.”

7. ‘THIS IS NOT A RADICAL AGENDA”

“Since his 2016 presidential campaign, Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders has maintained a strong following among young and progressive voters – the same voters Harris will need in November.

Sanders used his remarks Tuesday to endorse what the Biden administration has accomplished over the past three and a half years, while also laying out a list of proposals for the next Democratic administration: campaign finance reform, protections for unions, improving health care access and lowering drug costs, and improving public education.

“Let us be clear: This is not a radical agenda,” Sanders said. “But, let me tell you what a radical agenda is. And that is Trump’s Project 2025.”

For the vice president, Sanders’ remarks weren’t just about rehashing how the administration navigated the pandemic.

Harris has spent much of her fledgling campaign trying to distance herself from the progressive campaign she ran in the 2020 Democratic primary, specifically her support for “Medicare for All” and a ban on fracking.

That pivot to the center risks angering or disappointing the left, making endorsements from Sanders – and Monday night’s remarks from New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – that much more important.”

8. ‘VP HARRIS, GOVERNOR WALZ’

 “Democrats interrupted the party’s convention Tuesday night to throw a party.

The roll call, a tradition of political conventions, was turned into an hourlong, prime-time mash-up led by DJ Cassidy of songs associated with each state, while representatives from the states delivered short speeches as they cast their delegates’ votes for the vice president.

Some of the song picks were by musicians who are synonymous with their home states, including Eminem (Michigan), Prince (Minnesota), Bruce Springsteen (New Jersey), Jay-Z and Alicia Keys (New York) and Petey Pablo (North Carolina).

A few were less obvious. (Did you know, for example, that Portugal. The Man is from Alaska?)

Harris’ home state of California got several songs — a rap mix of Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Tupac Shakur and Kendrick Lamar. Gov. Gavin Newsom cast the state’s votes for Harris to the tune of Lamar’s “Not Like Us.”

But Georgia stole the show. Lil Jon started the party by rapping “Turn Down for What.” Then, as the track to “Get Low” played, Lil Jon tweaked the words. “To the window, to the wall” became “VP Harris, Governor Walz.”

It was an hour of music and vibes with no actual consequence. Democrats conducted their roll call virtually two weeks ago; Harris was already officially the nominee. Tuesday night’s roll call was purely ceremonial.

“This roll call is unapologetic earnestness and unironic cringe without one ounce of shame. It’s perfect,” Amanda Litman, a Democratic strategist and writer, said on social media.

It ended with Democrats cutting from the roll call to a live video of Harris and Walz stepping onstage a 90-minute drive north, in Milwaukee, where they held a rally Tuesday night.

“I’ll see you in two days, Chicago,” Harris said.”

The link to the full, unedited CNN story with photos is here:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/21/politics/takeaways-dnc-day-2/index.html

GOV. MLG’S UNREMARKABLE PRIME TIME SPEECH SHORT AND SWEET

Starting at 9:58 P.M. Eastern Time, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham took to the national stage to deliver “prime time” speech to the Democratic National Convention.  The speech lasted for 4 minutes and 22 seconds.  The speech was about health care and she made only a brief reference to “reproductive rights”. You can listen to the entire speech here:

Watch: Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham full speech at DNC convention (indystar.com)

Notwithstanding the shortness of the speech, Governor Lujan Grisham gave emphatic backing of Vice President Kamala Harris’ record on health care while blasting Republicans for trying to restrict abortion access. The democratic governor said Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance would, if elected, seek to repeal the Affordable Care Act and eliminate protections for pre-existing conditions. Lujan Grisham said this:

“Either these guys don’t get it, or they don’t care.”

Lujan Grisham described access to affordable health care as a personal issue, citing her family’s struggles with the health issues of her sister, Kimberly, who was diagnosed with a brain tumor when she was 2 years old and died at age 21.

Lujan Grisham cited Vice President Harris’ past efforts as California’s attorney general to hold drug companies and hospitals accountable for rising prices.  She also touted her own efforts, as a member of Congress, to lower prescription drug costs for Medicare recipients.

The governor sought to contrast those efforts to Trump’s record on health care issues, as the former president pledged to repeal the landmark 2010 health care law and replace it with a new law. Lujan Grisham said this:

“You know what Donald Trump delivered? Junk plans, higher premiums and abortion bans. … And if you don’t think a second term would be worse, then I’ve got a bunch of Trump Steaks to sell you.”

The “Trump Steaks” remark was an attempt at politcal humor that fell flat and was a reference to Trump’s failed effort to launch a line of steaks over 15 years ago.

Most important, she did not flub her lines, got on and got off quickly as ordered and landed a couple of attacks on Trump/Vance.

https://www.abqjournal.com/news/lujan-grisham-blasts-trumps-record-on-health-care-in-prime-time-dnc-speech/article_93bfdbde-5f3d-11ef-b413-b708cb16e568.html#1

COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS

Former First Lady Michelle Obama’s convention speech will go down as one of the most eloquent convention speeches in history.  The speech even had staunch MAGA Trump news commentators pointing out the speech was indeed the highlight of the evening and marveling how it hit all the high notes. It’s no wonder that Democrats early on after President Biden withdrew whished that somehow she would become the nominee of the party.

Governor Lujan Grisham’s speech was short, sweet, it will not be remembered but she did not flub her lines, and she did not embarrass the state, and it can be deemed a success.  There is little doubt the convention speech by Governor Lujan Grisham has raised her national political profile and will contribute to speculation about a possible federal Cabinet post. After President Joe Biden withdrew from the race the governor was among 9 candidates asked to undergo vetting as Harris mulled over her running mate.

While Harris ultimately picked Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her vice-presidential nominee, the vetting of Lujan Grisham for vice president solidified the personal connection she has with Vice President Kamala Harris.  Harris also officiated Lujan Grisham’s wedding to Manny Cordova in May 2022, and the Vice President traveled to Albuquerque later that year to drum up support for the governor’s reelection campaign.

WHERE WAS MARTIN, BEN RAY AND GABE?

New Mexico Democrats Senior Senator Martin Heinrich, Senator Ben Ray Lujan and Congressman Gabe Vasquez are all designated delegates, as is Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, to the 2024 National Democratic Convention. Notwithstanding Senators Heinrich, Lujan and Congressman Vasquez are not attending the convention. However, New Mexico US Representatives Melanie Stansbury and Teresa Leger Fernandez are attending the convention and were front and center along with Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham during the roll call announcing the State’s convention delegate vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.

Political pundits have been very quick to point out the absence of Heinrich, Lujan and Vasquez from the convention. Both Heinrich and Vasquez are viewed by some as in tight reelection bids, while Lujan is not.  The national political news outlet  Roll Call offered this explanation for federal candidates distancing themselves from the national party ticket:

At a time of decreased ticket-splitting between the presidential race and congressional races, there’s a bipartisan fear of being coupled with the national party and being subsequently dragged down by the top of the ticket. So party strategists unofficially recommend candidates running in competitive districts stay home and stay away from the conventions. 

Bullish on candidates who are bearish about Chicago attendance – Roll Call

Senior Senator Martin Heinrich’s absence from the National Democratic convention is difficult accept. His failure to show more likely than not offended more than a few within the New Mexico delegation seeing as he is the state’s Senior Senator. He should have been there to lead.  Speculation is Heinrich was offended by not being given time to speak during the national convention because his reelection loss would contribute to the Democrats losing the Senate majority, yet Governor Lujan Grisham was given time, and she is now a lame duck.

Least anyone forgets, it was reported in July that Senior Senator Heinrich, who is up for reelection to a third term, became the third Democratic US Senator to publicly call on President Joe Biden to leave the presidential race. Heinrich said this at the time:

“This moment in our nation’s history calls for a focus that is bigger than any one person. The return of Donald Trump to the White House poses an existential danger to our democracy. We must defeat him in November, and we need a candidate who can do that.  While the decision to withdraw from the campaign is President Biden’s alone, I believe it is in the best interests of our country for him to step aside. … By passing the torch, he would secure his legacy as one of our nation’s greatest leaders and allow us to unite behind a candidate who can best defeat Donald Trump and safeguard the future of our democracy.

There is little doubt that Polling conducted by the National Republican Senatorial Committee and GOP nominee Nella Domenici’s campaign showing  her in a margin-of-error race with Heinrich, has made Heinrich skittish to the point he does not even want to show up to the Democratic National Convention to see the nomination of the replacement of the person he help push out of the race. Heinrich’s “call for a focus that is bigger than any one person” reeks of self-preservation.

_______________________________________________________

POSTSCRIPT

Former Fist Lady Michelle Obama’s 2024 DNC speech

“Hello, Chicago! 

Something wonderfully magical is in the air, isn’t it? Not just here in this arena, but spreading all across this country we love, a familiar feeling that’s been buried too deep for too long. You know what I’m talking about? It’s the contagious power of hope.

The anticipation, the energy, the exhilaration of once again being on the cusp of a brighter day. The chance to vanquish the demons of fear, division, and hate that have consumed us, and continue pursuing the unfinished promise of this great nation — the dream that our parents and grandparents fought and died and sacrificed for. America, hope is making a comeback.

To be honest, I’m realizing that until recently, I have mourned the dimming of that hope. 

Maybe you’ve experienced the same feelings — a deep pit in my stomach, a palpable sense of dread about the future. 

And for me, that mourning has been mixed with my own personal grief. The last time I was in Chicago was to memorialize my mother —the woman who showed me the meaning of hard work, humility, and decency, who set my moral compass high and showed me the power of my voice. 

I still feel her loss so profoundly. I wasn’t even sure I’d be steady enough to stand before you tonight.  

But my heart compelled me to be here because of the sense of duty I feel to honor her memory, and to remind us all not to squander the sacrifices our elders made to give us a better future. 

You see, my mom, in her steady, quiet way, lived out that striving sense of hope every day of her life. She believed that all children — all people — have value, that anyone can succeed if given the opportunity. 

She and my father didn’t aspire to be wealthy. In fact, they were suspicious of those who took more than they needed. They understood that it wasn’t enough for their kids to thrive if everyone else around us was drowning. So my mother volunteered at the local school, she always looked out for the other kids on our block.  

She was glad to do the thankless, unglamorous work that for generations, has strengthened the fabric of this nation. 

The belief that if you do unto others, if you love thy neighbor, if you work and scrape and sacrifice, it will pay off — if not for you, then maybe for your children or your grandchildren, those values have been passed on through family farms and factory towns, through tree-lined suburbs and crowded tenements, through prayer groups and National Guard units and social studies classrooms. 

Those were the values my mother poured into me until her very last breath.  

Kamala Harris and I built our lives on those same foundational values. Even though our mothers grew up an ocean apart, they shared the same belief in the promise of this country. 

That’s why her mother moved here from India at 19. 

It’s why she taught Kamala about justice, about our obligation to lift others up, about our responsibility to give more than we take. 

She’d often tell her daughter, “Don’t sit around and complain about things — do something!” 

So with that voice in her head, Kamala went out and worked hard in school, graduating from an HBCU, earning her law degree at a state school, and then she went on to work for the people.  

Fighting to hold lawbreakers accountable and strengthen the rule of law, fighting to get folks better wages, cheaper prescription drugs, a good education, decent health care, childcare and elder care. 

From a middle-class household, she worked her way up to become Vice President of the United States of America. 

Kamala Harris is more than ready for this moment. 

She is one of the most qualified people ever to seek the office of the presidency, and she is one of the most dignified — a tribute to her mother, to my mother, and probably to your mother too, the embodiment of the stories we tell ourselves about this country. 

Her story is your story, it’s my story, it’s the story of the vast majority of Americans trying to build a better life. 

Kamala knows, like we do, that regardless of where you come from, what you look like, who you love, how you worship, or what’s in your bank account, we all deserve the opportunity to build a decent life, all of our contributions deserve to be accepted and valued. 

Because no one has a monopoly on what it means to be an American. No one.

Kamala has shown her allegiance to this nation, not by spewing anger and bitterness, but by living a life of service and always pushing the doors of opportunity open for others.  

She understands that most of us will never be afforded the grace of failing forward, we will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth.  

If we bankrupt a business, or choke in a crisis, we don’t get a second, third, or fourth chance.  

If things don’t go our way, we don’t have the luxury of whining or cheating others to get further ahead, we don’t get to change the rules so we always win.  

If we see a mountain in front of us, we don’t expect there to be an escalator waiting to take us to the top. No, we put our heads down. We get to work. In America, we do something. 

And throughout her entire life, that’s exactly what we’ve seen from Kamala Harris: the steel of her spine, the steadiness of her upbringing, the honesty of her example, and yes, the joy of her laughter and her light. 

It couldn’t be more obvious, of the two major candidates in this race, only Kamala Harris truly understands the unseen labor and unwavering commitment that has always made America great.

Unfortunately, we know what comes next, we know folks are going to do everything they can to distort her truth. 

My husband and I, sadly, know a little something about this. 

For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us. His limited and narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hardworking, highly educated, successful people who also happened to be Black. 

Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those “Black jobs”?  

It’s his same old con: doubling down on ugly, misogynistic, racist lies as a substitute for real ideas and solutions that will actually make people’s lives better. 

You see, gutting our health care, taking away our freedom to control our bodies, the freedom to become a mother through IVF, like I did — those things are not going to improve the health outcomes of our wives, mothers, and daughters.  

Shutting down the Department of Education, banning our books —none of that will prepare our kids for the future. 

Demonizing our children for being who they are and loving who they love — that doesn’t make anybody’s life better. 

Instead, it only makes us small. And let me tell you, going small is never the answer. Going small is the opposite of what we teach our children. Going small is petty, it’s unhealthy, and quite frankly, it’s unpresidential. 

Why would we accept this from anyone seeking our highest office? 

Why would we normalize this type of backward leadership?  

Doing so only demeans and cheapens our politics, it only serves to further discourage good, big-hearted people from wanting to get involved at all. 

America, our parents taught us better than that, and we deserve so much better than that. 

That’s why we must do everything in our power to elect two of those good, big-hearted people. There is no other choice than Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.

But as we embrace this renewed sense of hope, let us not forget the despair we have felt, let us not forget what we are up against.

Yes, Kamala and Tim are doing great right now, they’re packing arenas across the country. Folks are energized, we’re feeling good.  

But there are still so many people who are desperate for a different outcome, who are ready to question and criticize every move Kamala makes, who are eager to spread those lies, who don’t want to vote for a woman, who will continue to prioritize building their wealth over ensuring everyone has enough. 

No matter how good we feel tonight or tomorrow or the next day, this is still going to be an uphill battle, so we cannot be our own worst enemies. 

No, the minute something goes wrong, the minute a lie takes hold, we cannot start wringing our hands. We cannot get a Goldilocks complex about whether everything is just right. 

We cannot indulge our anxieties about whether this country will elect someone like Kamala instead of doing everything we can to get someone like Kamala elected.

Kamala and Tim have lived amazing lives, I am confident they will lead with compassion, inclusion, and grace. 

But they are still only human. They are not perfect. And like all of us, they will make mistakes. 

But luckily, this is not just on them. No, this is up to us — all of us — to be the solution we seek, it is up to all of us to be the antidote to all the darkness and division.  

I don’t care how you identify politically, whether you’re a Democrat, Republican, independent, or none of the above, this is our time to stand up for what we know in our hearts is right. 

To stand up not just for our basic freedoms but for decency and humanity, for basic respect, dignity, and empathy, for the values at the very foundation of this democracy. 

It’s up to us to remember what Kamala’s mother told her: Don’t just sit around and complain — do something.

So if they lie about her, and they will, we’ve got to do something. 

If we see a bad poll, and we will, we’ve got to put down that phone and do something. If we start feeling tired, if we start feeling that dread creeping back in, we’ve got to pick ourselves up, throw water on our faces, and do something. 

We have only two and a half months to get this done, only 11 weeks to make sure every single person we know is registered and has a voting plan.  

So we cannot afford for anyone to sit on their hands and wait to be called upon, don’t complain if no one from the campaign has specifically reached out to ask for your support, there is simply no time for that kind of foolishness.

You know what we need to do.

 So consider this to be your official ask: Michelle Obama is asking you to do something.

Because this is going to be close. In some states, just a handful of votes in every precinct could decide the winner. 

So we need to vote in numbers that erase any doubt, we need to overwhelm any effort to suppress us. 

Our fate is in our hands. 

In 77 days, we have the power to turn our country away from the fear, division, and smallness of the past. We have the power to marry our hope with our action. We have the power to pay forward the love, sweat, and sacrifice of our mothers and fathers and all those who came before us. 

 We did it before and we sure can do it again. Let us work like our lives depend on it, 

 Let us keep moving our country forward and go higher — yes, higher — than we’ve ever gone before, 

As we elect the next president and vice president of the United States, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.

And now it is my honor to introduce somebody who knows a whole lot about hope, someone who has spent his life strengthening our democracy. Please welcome America’s 44th president and the love of my life, Barack Obama.”

https://www.today.com/news/politics/michelle-obama-dnc-speech-2024-rcna167519

The link to a related blog article is here:

Key Takeaways From The First Night Of The Democratic National Convention; Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham To Speak In Prime Time Second Night Of Convention Prompting Speculation Of Cabinet Appointment | (petedinelli.com)

On August 20, the national news agency CNN published on the internet the following news article entitled “Takeaways from the first night of the Democratic National Convention”  written by CNN staff reporters Eric Bradner and Gregory Krieg:

”Democrats opened their convention in Chicago on Monday by sending off Joe Biden. And then the president closed the night – which ran significantly behind schedule – with a hand-off to Vice President Kamala Harris.

Biden said choosing Harris as his running mate in 2020 was “the best decision I made my whole career.”

“She’ll be a president our children can look up to. She’d be a president respected by world leaders, because she already is. She’d be a president we can all be proud of. And she’d be a historic president who puts her stamp on America’s future,” Biden said.

His passing of the torch demonstrated the shift for Democrats. The party, which was deeply fractured just last month as pressure mounted on Biden to exit the race, was united Monday night behind Harris – and against her Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump.

Democrats attacked the GOP nominee over abortion rights. They highlighted the former president’s legal troubles and questioned his morality. And they argued that his policy beliefs would benefit the wealthy while Harris’ would better serve working people.

“A vote is a kind of prayer for the world we desire for ourselves and our children, and our prayers are stronger when we pray together,” said Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, who is also a pastor at the Atlanta church where Martin Luther King Jr. once preached.

The party also emphasized – in personal and historic terms – the potential for Harris to become the first woman to win the presidency.

Hillary Clinton said that though she’d fallen short eight years ago, she wanted her grandchildren and their grandchildren to know she’d been there for Harris when the “glass ceiling” finally shatters.

“This is when we break through,” she said. “The future is here.”

[Following are six major takeaways from the first night of the Democratic National Convention]:

1. BIDEN TAKES A BOW

“A month ago, they were clamoring for him to go. But on Monday night, Democrats in Chicago were singing – and chanting – a different tune. One of gratitude for his decades of public service, personal kindness and, less comfortably, for passing the baton to Harris.

Biden in his own speech, which only began after a four-minute ovation, delivered a spirited message of support for Harris and running mate Walz, before dedicating his remarks to familiar yet scathing criticism of Trump and a detailed recollection of his administration’s legislative achievements.

He began by recalling the angst that gripped the country in 2020, as he campaigned during a global pandemic and national racial reckoning.

He then began a valedictory wave, weaving in jabs at Trump and, in true Biden fashion, an assortment of aphorisms about the value of good government and the scourge of greed, guns, disease and authoritarianism.

“Because of you – and I’m not exaggerating – because of you, we’ve had one of the most extraordinary four years of progress ever, period,” Biden said. “When I say we, I mean Kamala and me.”

And when the president flagged, or stumbled over a phrase, the audience willed him through. The anxiety and gripes of the spring and early summer, in the wake of his ultimately campaign-dooming debate with Trump, were gone. Democrats once again had a chance to enjoy Joe being Joe.

“I love my job,” Biden said at one point, “but I love my country more.” It was the closest he came to explaining why he chose, in the end, to give up his own campaign.”

2. HILLARY CLINTON: “THE FUTURE IS HERE”

“Eight years after Clinton made history as the first woman to be a major party’s presidential nominee, she was back at the Democratic National Convention, urging Americans to finally break the “glass ceiling.”

She said Americans who backed her in 2016 had “voted for a future where there are no ceilings on our dreams.”

And after her loss, “we refused to give up on America. Millions marched. Many ran for office. We kept our eyes on the future,” Clinton said. “Well, my friends, the future is here.”

“I wish my mother and Kamala’s mother could see us. They would say, ‘Keep going,’” Clinton said. She invoked Shirley Chisholm, the first woman to run for the Democratic presidential nomination, and Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman nominated for vice president. “Shirley and Geri would say, ‘Keep going,’” Clinton said, as the crowd echoed her with chants of “Keep going!”

She also connected her own life – and her loss, and legacy – with Harris’ hopes in November.

Clinton said she’d put many cracks in the “highest, hardest glass ceiling,” and now Harris is “so close to breaking through once and for all.”

“When a barrier falls for one of us, it falls – it falls and clears the way for all of us,” Clinton said. “I want my grandchildren and their grandchildren to know I was here at this moment, that we were here, and that we were with Kamala Harris every step of the way. This is our time, America. This is when we stand up. This is when we break through. The future is here. It’s in our grasp. Let’s go win it.”

3. CLINTON ON TRUMP’S ATTACKS: “SOUNDS FAMILIAR”

“Though Clinton’s speech was largely an affirmative case for Harris, she seemed to revel in taking a few shots at her 2016 rival.

Referring to Trump’s convictions in New York, she said that the former president “made his own kind of history: the first person to run for president with 34 felony convictions.”

The crowd responded with chants of “Lock him up!” – Democrats’ spin on the “Lock her up” chants about Clinton that were omnipresent at Trump’s 2016 campaign rallies.

Clinton paused and smiled.

Later, she said it was “no surprise, is it, that (Trump) is lying about Kamala’s record. He’s mocking her name and her laugh.”

“Sounds familiar,” Clinton deadpanned.

“But we have him on the run now,” she said. “So no matter what the polls say, we can’t let up. We can’t get driven down crazy conspiracy rabbit holes. We have to fight for the truth. We have to fight for Kamala as she will fight for us.”

4.  A FOCUS ON ABORTION RIGHTS

 “Among the most poignant moments of the convention’s first night came as Democrats lambasted Trump for appointing conservative Supreme Court justices helped undo Roe v. Wade’s protections for abortion rights – resulting in a state-by-state patchwork of reproductive rights laws.

Amanda Żurawski, a Texas woman who underwent life-threatening pregnancy complications but couldn’t have an abortion in the deep-red state, said Americans “need to vote as if lives depend on it, because they do.”

Kaitlyn Joshua, a Louisiana woman who was denied health care after a miscarriage in another state with a near-total abortion ban, said that “no woman should experience what I endured, but too many have.”

Hadley Duvall, who was raped by her stepfather and became pregnant when she was 12, said she “can’t imagine not having a choice.”

“But today, that’s the reality for many women and girls across the country, because of Donald Trump’s abortion bans,” Duvall said.

Support for abortion rights has been Democrats’ most potent issue at the ballot box since Roe v. Wade’s reversal two years ago.

Duvall’s story was featured last year in a powerful ad by Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat who won reelection in one of the nation’s most heavily Republican states in large part by emphasizing his support for abortion rights.

“Donald Trump brags about tearing a constitutional right away from Hadley and every other woman and girl in our country,” Beshear said Monday night. “That’s why we must tear away any chance he can ever be president ever again.”

5. DEMOCRATS DOWNPLAY WAR IN GAZA

 “There are few issues that have divided Democrats – by age, by ideology, sometimes by identity – than Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza.

Not that you would have known it from watching Monday night.

Earlier in the day, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had agreed to a “bridging proposal” that could lead to a ceasefire. The next step in the negotiations, Blinken said, “is for Hamas to say yes.”

In Chicago, it was Biden who spoke at the greatest length about Israel and Gaza, striking a sympathetic chord for all involved, from Israelis killed by Hamas on October 7, 2023, to civilians in Gaza now.

“Those protesters out in the street, they have a point,” Biden said. “A lot of innocent people are being killed, on both sides.”

Biden’s remarks capped a day in which anti-war protesters filled the streets outside the convention; ceasefire advocates from the Uncommitted National Movement, so far unsuccessful in wresting a speaking slot from convention organizers, held a sanctioned panel about the issue earlier in the day; and activists in the hall unfurled a banner demanding the US government “STOP ARMING ISRAEL.”

But for most of the speakers in prime time, the conflict in Gaza barely warranted a mention. Pro-Palestinian voices were absent, as were, in large part, mentions of support for Israel or condemnations of the antisemitism that has arisen during some protests. It is, quite clearly and unsurprisingly, an issue Democrats see little electoral upside in highlighting.

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive lawmaker most likely to address the matter, largely kept on message during her remarks, only veering into talk of Gaza to cheer Harris’ work to end the fighting.

“She is working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and bringing hostages home,” Ocasio-Cortez said to loud cheers.”

6. SPOTLIGHT ON PROJECT 2025

 “Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow stepped onstage Monday night with a large prop: a book containing the conservative Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” agenda, so big that it barely fit on the podium.

The moment reflected how eager Democrats are to tie Trump to what McMorrow called “a Republican blueprint for a second Trump term.”

Though the former president has disavowed it, Democrats have framed Project 2025, a 900-page playbook for a second Trump term drafted in part by six of his former Cabinet secretaries and at least 140 people who worked in his administration, as the former president’s agenda.

“Whatever you think it might be, it’s so much worse,” said the 37-year-old McMorrow, who shot to stardom after a viral 2022 speech pushing back against anti-LGBTQ rhetoric from a Republican colleague.

She highlighted one portion of the agenda that would give the White House more control of nonpolitical government jobs. Another, she said, would allow Trump to weaponize the Justice Department and “turn the FBI into his own personal police force.”

“That is not how it works in America,” she said. “That’s how it works in dictatorships. And that’s exactly what Donald Trump and his MAGA minions have in mind: an expansion of presidential powers like no president has ever had or should ever have.”

McMorrow left the stage with a pledge that the book would return Tuesday night, with an emphasis on what the Project 2025 agenda would mean for “your pocketbook.”

The link to the unedited CNN report with accompanying photos is here:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/20/politics/takeaways-dnc-day-1/index.html

GOVERNOR MICHELLE LUJAN GRISHAM TO SPEAK IN PRIME TIME SECOND NIGHT OF CONVENTION

A spokesperson for Governor  Michelle Lujan Grisham has confirmed that she will deliver a prime-time speech focused on health care issues at the Democratic National Convention at the United Center in downtown Chicago on Tuesday evening, August 20. Governor  Lujan Grisham will join a select group of high-profile Democrats including former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama in delivering speeches.  The governor’s speech is expected to take place sometime around 6 p.m. Mountain Standard time although the exact timing is not certain.

Lujan Grisham’s remarks have initially billed as focus on health care. However, abortions rights are expected to big a big part of the speech. As governor, Lujan Grisham has staunchly advocated for abortion rights, including signing a 2021 bill that overturned a long-dormant state abortion ban. Recently, the governor’s administration has launched a campaign seeking to recruit Texas doctors and nurses to New Mexico, as the state has struggled with a chronic health care provider shortage.

Governor Lujan Grisham was among 9 candidates who were asked to undergo vetting as Vice President Kamala Harris began the process of selecting a running mate.  While Harris ultimately picked Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her vice presidential nominee, the Lujan Grisham’s vetting showed connections between Lujan Grisham and  Vice President Kamala Harris. Harris officiated Lujan Grisham’s wedding to Manny Cordova in May 2022, and she traveled to Albuquerque later that year to drum up support for the governor’s reelection campaign.

In addition to the governor’s prime-time speech, Lujan Grisham is also expected to take part in a panel discussion with actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus and the nation’s seven other female Democratic governors on Wednesday, August 21 at the DNC.

A spokeswoman for the governor said that the Governor’s political campaign committee, New Mexicans for Michelle, will pay for the travel costs of the governor and her staff.

The link to relied upon and quoted news source material is here:

https://www.abqjournal.com/news/governor-to-speak-about-health-care-issues-in-prime-time-dnc-slot/article_910e4852-5e44-11ef-ba1f-1f70de813988.html

https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/harris-vetted-lujan-grisham-for-vp-slot/article_c3e63f80-5405-11ef-82b3-b747ee07e547.html

COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS

There is little doubt that the first night of the Democratic National Convention was a success. The only glitch was the fact that President Biden’s speech occurred late in the evening. Notwithstanding, he delivered a very powerful and effective speech highlighting his accomplishments as President and successfully passing off the torch to a new and younger generation of Democrat to take this nation into the future. One notable and emotional  remark that  summarized the span of his politcal career was when he said that he began his political career he was not old enough to be sworn in as a U.S. Senator, at age29,  and he is now too old to be President at age 82.

As for Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham being given a prime-time spot to speak at the convention, it has already begun speculation that she will be tapped to serve as a cabinet secretary should Kamala Harris win the Presidency. When President Biden was elected 4 years ago, it was common knowledge that Lujan Grisham was under consideration for a cabinet position but a cabinet appointment went to Debra Haaland as Interior Secretary. Lujan Grisham is now a second term Governor and a lame duck who has a deteriorating relationship with the New Mexico Legislature. Given her close personal ties with Vice President Kamala Harris, watch the Governor say goodbye to New Mexico. If that in fact happens, Lt.  Governor Howie Morales would become Governor and serve out the remaining 2 years of Governor Lujan Grisham’s second term and he would likely run for Governor in 2026.

On Tuesday, August 13, New Mexico Supreme Court Justice Briana Zamora testified before the New Mexico Legislature’s Courts, Corrections and Justice Interim Committee on the state’s mental health competency laws as they relate to criminal defendants. The Committee is one of the most influential committees of the legislature and consists of 32 House and Senate members and meets year-round and vets proposed legislation.

Justice Zamora is the chairperson of a court-affiliated working group responsible for proposed legislation that would give judges more options in cases where criminal defendants are deemed incompetent to stand trial. The working group was created 2 years ago.  It is made up of various city officials, law enforcement officers, mental health advocates and attorneys.

Justice Zamora presented a bill drafted by the working group that could be debated by lawmakers during the 60-day legislative session that starts on January 21 and ends on March 22, 2025. The bill takes a different approach to criminal competency than the bills backed by Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham that would have required temporarily detaining of criminal defendants who are deemed to be incompetent to stand trial  in certain felony cases, so that mandatory treatment orders could be prepared. The Governor’s bills were introduced during the July 18 Special Session she called on public safety, but lawmakers refused to take up and debate any of the proposals during the special session.

The new legislation crafted by the working group would allow judges to assign non-violent criminal defendants to outpatient or residential diversion programs, where they could get treatment and counseling for mental health issues or substance abuse treatment. While few such programs exist or are being implemented, a larger-scale effort would require new programs  be established in a state already struggling to fill vacant social work and counseling positions.

One problem identified with the proposed legislation is that the changes to the state’s competency laws being proposed will not, on their own, bring about a quick fix.  Justice Zamora told the Courts, Corrections and Justice Interim Committee this:

“The statute alone will not be sufficient. …This [legislation] will lay the groundwork to create programs.”

Justice Zamora, who was appointed to the Supreme Court in 2021, acknowledged the complexity of the issue. She described the working group’s efforts as a “highlight of her career.” She also said she frequently dealt with repeat offenders with mental health issues during her time as a Metro Court Judge.  Justice Zamora said this:

“I knew their names and their faces because they were in front of me so often. … And we were doing nothing.”

Justice Zamora told the committee that most states do have provisions for outpatient and residential competency restoration in their criminal laws.

LEGISLATOR’S HARSH REACTION TO PROPOSED CHANGES

During the August 13 Courts, Corrections and Justice Interim Committee hearing, Albuquerque area Democrat State Senator, Mimi Stewart, the president pro tempore of the Senate, said lawmakers need more time to address incompetency in New Mexico’s criminal statutes.  Many consider criminal competency a major loophole in the criminal justice system allowing for the release of criminals without standing trial.  Lawmakers discussed an “off-ramp” to the governor’s proposal of requiring the temporary detention of criminal defendants who are deemed incompetent in certain felony cases, which a working group is calling “outpatient competency restoration.”

Senate President Pro Temp Mimi Stewart, D-Albuquerque, had this scathing assessment  of the idea of expanding diversion programs:

“We’re all struggling to understand this and come up with solutions. … What does an outpatient competency restoration look like, and are they really doing this in other states? … It sounds good, but I can’t imagine what it looks like. …  We don’t have a good behavioral health system already. … We don’t have enough assisted outpatient treatment, so instead we’re going to focus on an outpatient competency restoration? … It just sort of screams immediately to me that these are people who need treatment. They need treatment, they need housing, they need to pull themselves out of poverty … It just seems backwards and crazy making to think that that’s what we’re going to focus on.”

Clovis Republican State Representative Andrea Reeb, a former prosecutor, expressed concern about dangerous criminal defendants who are determined to be incompetent to stand trial. Under the current system, when a defendant is found by a court evaluator to not be competent, there are essentially two options for prosecutors: dismiss the charges or seek to have the defendant sent to the state Behavioral Health Institute in Las Vegas.

Karl Swanson, the Deputy District Attorney for the Bernalillo County District Attorney’s Office told the committee that criminal defendants are determined to be incompetent in about 5% of the total number of felony cases.  He said competency cases can sometimes take years to play out, frustrating some who are victims and frustrating even parents who call the police when one of their children is experiencing a mental health episode. Swanson said this:

“All they want is treatment for this individual.”

Lawmakers did not vote during Tuesday’s meeting of the Courts, Corrections and Justice Committee on whether to endorse the competency legislation proposed by Justice Zamora. They are expected to further study the proposal during meetings over the next several months.

Links to quoted and relied upon news sources are here:

https://www.abqjournal.com/news/lawmakers-study-possible-changes-to-states-criminal-competency-laws/article_f237dc16-59a7-11ef-aee7-df8dab293ad7.html#tncms-source=home-featured-7-block

https://www.abqjournal.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-if-excuses-solved-crime-albuquerque-would-be-the-safest-city-in-america/article_2b0a16cc-5c0e-11ef-ad47-ebdcf5565900.html

REVISITING THE GOVERNOR’S SPECIAL SESSION MEAUSRES ON PUBLIC SAFETY

There were 5 measures Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham asked the legislature to enact during the Special Session. All 5 of the measures were not given a hearing and all 5 failed. Those measures can be summarized as follows:

The first measure would have made changes to the state’s criminal competency law. This bill involved involuntary civil commitment for criminal defendants charged with a serious violent offense, a felony involving the use of a firearm, or those defendants who have been found incompetent two or more times in the prior 12 months. Judges would have been required to order district attorneys to consider filing “involuntary commitment” proceedings and giving judges the ability to detain a defendant for up to seven days for the petition to be initiated and then mandate long term mental health care. The intent was to prevent mentally incapacitated individuals from harming themselves or the public and simply being released.

Supporters say there are far too many suspects who are arrested, deemed incompetent to stand trial, and then simply released back on the streets only to commit more crimes.  It’s a bill designed to address in part the so-called “revolving door” where defendants are arrested only to be found incompetent to stand trial and then released and who never go on trial for criminal charges. The legislation was intended to strengthen a 2016 law and a program originally signed into law by former Governor Susana Martinez that allows district judges to order involuntary treatment for people with severe mental illness who have frequent brushes with law enforcement. It involves a program called the “Assisted Outpatient Treatment” (AOT).

The second measure would have broadened the definitions of danger to oneself and danger to others in New Mexico’s involuntary commitment statute that mandates involuntary treatment for people with mental illness. The bill would allow a judge to mandate out-patient treatment. It would allow individuals, whether first responders, family members or community members who work with mentally ill individuals on the streets to request involuntary out-patient treatment.

The third measure would increase the crime of felon in possession of a firearm from a fourth-degree felony to a second-degree, and would set a new mandatory minimum term of 9 years for the offense. Current law provides for a sentence of “up to three years for an offender.” Serious violent felons in possession of a firearm would face a mandatory 12 years in prison, an increase from the current nine-year term. The New Mexico legislature has already increased criminal penalties 6 times since Governor Lujan Grisham has taken office.  It is highly uncertain what impact the legislation would really have, if any, when it comes to reducing violent crime.

The fourth measure would prohibit pedestrians from occupying highway medians, on-ramps, and is ostensibly directed at prohibiting panhandling and the homeless from occupying medians and off ramps. Albuquerque already has such an ordinance and the first version of it was declared unconstitutional after the ACLU challenged it. It is more likely than not the State’s version would also be challenge as unconstitutional. The offense is classified as a nonviolent misdemeanor and the Albuquerque Police Department is under a federal court approved settlement agreement in a decades long civil rights case involving jail overcrowding where APD has agreed not to make arrests for such misdemeanors in order to prevent jail overcrowding.

The fifth measure would require law enforcement agencies to report certain monthly crime incident reports and ballistic information to the state Department of Public Safety on crime incidents and ballistics information. It is unclear what impact, if any, this legislation would have on reducing crime. It’s a measure that could just as easily be accomplished by executive orders and memorandums of understanding between law enforcement agencies.

SUBSTITUTE BILL ANNOUNCED

On June 26 a substitute proposal was presented to the Court, Corrections and Justice Interim Committee interim legislative committee that would broaden eligibility for someone who could be ordered by a judge into involuntary mental health treatment. Representative Andrea Reeb, R-Clovis, responded that a shortage of behavioral health treatment options is an underlying problem that makes any changes in the law difficult to enforce.

Reeb is a prosecutor in the 9th Judicial District.  She recently had difficulty finding in-patient treatment for a serial arsonist in her district. Reeb said this after hearing the new proposal:

“We don’t really have any facilities in our area to treat anybody except as an outpatient. … You can divert people all you want to different things, but you don’t have places to send them”.

On June 27, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham’s office announced she has scrapped the proposal to expand court-supervised outpatient treatment for people with mental illness for debate during the July 18 Special Session.  The bill the governor withdrew was intended to strengthen a 2016 law that allows district judges to order involuntary treatment for people with severe mental illness who have frequent brushes with law enforcement. It would have required each of the state’s 13 judicial districts to create a program called Assisted Outpatient Treatment overseen by a civil court judge.

Holly Agajanian, the governor’s chief general counsel, told lawmakers that the governor was responding to concerns from legislators that the AOT bill was a “big lift” for a special session.  Agajanian told members of the interim Courts, Corrections and Justice Committee this:

“What we’ve decided instead to do is condense the goals here. [The substitute measure will take] small, necessary steps to help those people who are either a true danger to themselves or an extreme danger to others”

The Governor was proposing to broaden eligibility for involuntary commitment by tweaking definitions in existing law. The existing involuntary commitment law essentially limits commitment to people who are suicidal. The proposed change would broaden the definition of “harm to self” and “harm to others” to cover more people eligible for involuntary treatment.

Under the new definition, “harm to self” would include a person unable “to exercise self-control, judgment and discretion in the conduct of the person’s daily responsibilities and social relations” or “to satisfy the person’s need for nourishment, personal or medical care,” housing and personal safety.

The proposed definition of “harm to others” would cover a person who “has inflicted, attempted to inflict or threatened to inflict serious bodily harm on another” or has taken actions that create “a substantial risk of serious bodily harm to another.” Harm to others could also apply to someone who has engaged in “extreme destruction of property” in the recent past.

https://www.abqjournal.com/news/governor-pulls-bill-to-expand-involuntary-treatment/article_bc1fa51a-34df-11ef-ae36-4f7a022267af.html

ANALYSIS OF COMPETENCY BILL

On June 26, an analysis of the number of people released back into the community after being found incompetent to stand trial was provided to the Court, Corrections and Justice Interim Committee which held all day hearings for 4 days to consider all 5 of the Governors measures. The analysis was not completed and was unavailable when the competency bill legislation failed in the 2024 legislative session.

Major findings of the analysis are as follows:

• More than 3,200 people charged with crimes since 2017 in New Mexico have been released back to the community after being found incompetent to stand trial, according to an analysis that fueled Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s call for a special session.
• More than 5,350 of the 16,045 dismissed charges were felonies, according to the analysis. The dismissals included those charged with first-degree murder, trafficking controlled substances, kidnapping, and abuse of a child, according to data of the state Administrative Office of the Courts.
• Other defendants charged with lesser crimes have been repeat offenders caught in a cycle of being charged and released only to be arrested again, charged, and let go after court-ordered evaluations showed they cannot participate in their defense and a judge ruled they were mentally incompetent to stand trial.

After seeing the analysis, Lujan Grisham called the number of criminal case dismissals “frankly, shocking.” The Governor said this:

“Some of these have been in court up to 40 times in a year. If we don’t interrupt that, the status quo that you see playing out in our communities every day will stay. … I’m trying to break that cycle [and] focus on the criminal competency loophole. … The notion that we would have 3,200-plus individuals reoffending for another year is more than I think any New Mexican should have to bear”.

HOUSE SPEAKER PUBLICLY CHASTISES GOVERNOR AND ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL

House Speaker Javier Martínez is not a member of the Courts, Corrections & Justice Committee. Notwithstanding, he has appointed many to the committee and monitors the committee deliberations.

On August 13, Speaker Martinez made a rare appearance before the committee and summed up Democrats reasons for rejecting all of the Governor’s proposed public safety measures during the July Special Session called by the Governor.  While he was at it, he blasted both Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham and the Albuquerque Journal.

Speaker Martinez told the committee this:

“This is the first opportunity I get to address some of the misconceptions and misinformation that took place post-special session. … These are complicated issues and not only are we trying our best, we are doing a damn good job of addressing these issues.”

Speaker Martínez was clearly offended or at least angered by the Albuquerque Journal’s July 21 editorial entitled “NM Dems appear to care more about criminals than their victims” to the point that the Speaker read excerpts of the Journal editorial to the Courts, Corrections & Justice Committee.  You can read the entire Albuquerque Journal unedited editorial here:

https://www.abqjournal.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-new-mexico-democrats-appear-to-care-more-about-the-criminals-than-their-victims/article_f473b12e-4612-11ef-a000-a7f62428b0f0.html

Speaker Martinez told the committee this:

“[The Journal Editorial]  goes on to say ‘How hard is it to require court-ordered behavioral health treatment for repeat offenders accused of a serious violent offense? … Clearly it is very difficult!  This is the kind of process, madame chair, that quite frankly should have been invested in, time-wise, by the executive, and it just was not. This is the kind of process that it takes to really get to a point where you can have a substantive proposal that we can all debate, and that we can all amend, and that we can all work collaboratively on to get across the finish line. This is how much work it takes, and this is just one group. There have been several processes playing out throughout the state, through a number of different agencies, working their way through whatever process gets set forth.

“It goes on to say, back to the [Journal]  editorial, ‘How hard is it to pass a law prohibiting loitering on a median no wider than 36 inches?’ … Very hard! I was in Silver City this weekend and I saw a group of kids from Silver High fund-raising, and I looked at the median … and that’s probably about 18 inches. That would have been made illegal [by one of the governor’s proposals] and I’m wondering would local police departments have been enforcing that? I seriously doubt it, because as they always tell me, they have bigger fish to fry.”

Speaker Martínez turned his ire directly at Governor Lujan Grisham and said this:

“Had we rubber-stamped those proposals during the special, first of all, I guarantee you there would be lawsuits left and right, so these things wouldn’t have actually been implemented for a while. … And even if they were implemented, the unintended consequences of depriving someone of their constitutional liberties, simply because a member of government drove past an intersection and saw somebody smoking fentanyl and their sensibilities were so impacted that they cast such a wide net is, is, would be a tragedy.”

Speaker Martínez announced he was canceling his Albuquerque Journal subscription.

ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL RESPONDS

On Sunday, August 18, not to allow House Speaker Javier Martínez remarks to go unchallenged, the Albuquerque Journal did a follow up editorial that said in pertinent part:

“Excuses, excuses, excuses.  If excuses for inaction on crime are good campaign issues, Democratic candidates for the Statehouse are poised for another landslide victory in November.

The excuses for not taking action during July’s special legislative session on any of Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s public safety proposals were flying like Frisbees at last week’s meetings of the Courts, Corrections & Justice Committee — an interim bicameral committee of 32 state lawmakers that meets between legislative sessions.

Lawmakers [said they] need more time, more research into the unintended consequences of crime proposals, more expert testimony, more discussion, more doughnuts and coffee from the nearby table that sustained them throughout the day-long hearings Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and for which they automatically receive a daily per diem of $231, plus mileage.

…

Comparing a group of students raising money in the median in Silver City for an hour or two on a weekend to the daily sight of people standing in the medians of Albuquerque shows how much the speaker and other Democratic leaders are flailing in the wake of the failed special session.

… 

…  House and Senate Democrats did not give any of the governor’s proposed bills a single committee hearing during the special session. … What is factual is that 3,217 defendants charged with 16,045 crimes since 2017 have had their cases dismissed after being found incompetent to stand trial. What is not complicated is that U.S. News & World Report ranks New Mexico the most dangerous state in America based on violent and property crime rates.

Listening to state lawmakers talk about crime can be dismaying. Progressive Democrats have become as soft on crime as the jelly-filled doughnuts that sustain them throughout their day-long jeremiad lamentations about why they can’t really do anything about crime.

Fortunately, there’s an election on the horizon and all 112 legislative seats are up for grabs, even in Albuquerque’s House District 11, where Speaker Martínez is being challenged by Republican Bart Kinney.

Voters have a clear choice in November: More excuses and the status quo with the defund-the-police special interest groups running the state, or fundamental change on public safety.

We’re rooting for fundamental change.”

The link to the full unedited editorial is here:

EDITORIAL HEADLINE: If excuses solved crime, Albuquerque would be safest city in America

https://www.abqjournal.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-if-excuses-solved-crime-albuquerque-would-be-the-safest-city-in-america/article_2b0a16cc-5c0e-11ef-ad47-ebdcf5565900.html

COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS

New Mexico Speaker of the House Javier Martinez has emerged as one of the most effective leaders in recent memory. Speaker Martinez is more than capable of dealing with complex and divisive issues. The best example of this was his work on the legalization of marijuana. Rather than publicly taking issue with the Governor and the Albuquerque Journal, Speaker Martinez should buckle down and huddle with the Senate Leadership of Senators Peter Wirth and Joe Cervantes and address the festering issue of mental health competency and sponsor legislation for the 2025 session.

The blunt truth is that way too many excuses are being given by both the Governor as well as the legislature for their failure to address the festering criminal competency problem. It’s not just an Albuquerque problem as legislators are now fond of saying.  More than enough time has elapsed to come up with viable solutions and compromise legislation, but the legislature and the stakeholders have failed to do so wanting to maintain the status quo and simply do nothing.

It was on April 17 that Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced she was calling state legislators into a Special Session on July 18 to focus on addressing public safety proposals. During the 3 months before the session, the Court, Corrections and Justice Interim Committee conducted a number of extensive day long hearings on the legislation with the Governor’s Office making presentations and stake holders offering research and analysis.  At one point the Governor actually withdrew legislation and offered substitute legislation.

Members of the Court, Corrections and Justice Interim Committee made it clear repeatedly that the changes to the mental health commitment laws were way too complicated for a Special Session and there was a need for more time and research on the proposals. The Governor rejected the arguments made and refused to listen and pushed forward.

Some of the presentations made by the Governor’s representatives, including the Governor’s general legal counsel, were woefully inadequate reflecting a misunderstanding of the civil judicial mental health commitment process and the resources that will be needed for the courts to carry out changes to the mental health commitment process.  It not surprising that the legislature rejected all of the Governor’s proposals.  What also is not surprising is the legislature itself has failed to come up with legislation itself to deal with the competency issue and instead gives excuses.

Justice Zamora’s working group of stakeholders have been working on solutions for at least 2 years. The legislature’s Courts, Corrections and Justice Interim Committee has been working on legislation since the Governor call for the Special Session on April 16, a full four months ago, and the committee will continue to work on legislation for another 5 months until January 16 when the regular 2025 session begins. In other words, almost 3 years will have been spent on coming up with viable solutions by stakeholders and there still is nothing.

None of the legislation the Governor advocated for with respect to mental health commitment provided for funding for the courts and mental health facilities. The Court, Corrections and Justice Interim Committee has also failed to come up with consensus legislation and to provide funding for the courts and mental health facilities. The only thing the committee has come up with so far are excuses that “it’s too complicated”.

The Governor, her administration and the legislative leadership must accept full responsibility for a failure of leadership and a failure to reach a consensus on any legislation that could and should be enacted.  The Governor and the Legislative leadership need to regroup, set aside their differences and stop making excuses and come up with a consensus on a viable public safety package to deal with mental health commitment hearings to enact during the 2025 legislative session.

CONCENTRATE ON WHAT REALLY MATTERS

Warehousing the mentally ill, drug addicted or the unhoused who are mentally ill or drug addicted in jails for crimes committed is not the answer and does not address treatment. The court’s must be looked to as part of the solution. Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham and the legislature should strengthen and expand the state’s mental health commitment laws coupled with full funding for mental health facilities and the courts. The District Attorney’s Office and the Public Defender’s Office need to be made a part of the solution with the expansion of the state mental health commitment laws with mandatory filing of civil mental health commitments that go beyond the 3-day, 7-day and 30-day commitments that are already allowed by state law.

The 2025 legislature should enact the Governor’s proposal for the involuntary civil commitment of criminal defendants charged with a serious violent offense, a felony involving the use of a firearm, and those defendants who have also been found incompetent to stand trial two or more times in the prior 12 months. Judges should be required to order district attorneys to file “involuntary commitment” proceedings against criminal defendants who are found incompetent to stand trial and who would be released without further criminal prosecution for crimes committed.

The 2025 legislature should also enact the Governor’s proposed bill that will broaden the definitions of danger to oneself and danger to others in New Mexico’s involuntary commitment statute that mandates involuntary treatment for people with mental illness. The bill should mandate District Attorneys to initiate involuntary civil commitments and allow judge to mandate out-patient treatment. It should allow individuals, whether first responders, family members or community members who work with mentally ill individuals on the streets to request involuntary out-patient treatment.

The legislature during the 2025 regular session should seek to create a  14^th Judicial District Court and specialty “Mental Health Treatment Court” functioning as outreach and treatment court for the drug addicted and the mentally ill in a mandatory  hospital or counseling settings and not involving jail incarceration.  The creation of a new 14^th Judicial District Court designated as a Mental Health Court should have 3 separate regional divisions: one located in Albuquerque, one in Las Cruces and one in Las Vegas, New Mexico with the creation of at least 3 District Court Judge positions with 6-year terms.

The Assisted Outpatient Treatment program should be consolidated with the Mental Health Court so as to achieve one singular court with statewide jurisdiction.  The Administrative Offices of the Courts must play a pivotal role in setting up the new court process, including locating the new Mental Health Treatment Court in existing court houses in all 3 locations.

There is a major need for the construction and staffing of a mental health facilities or hospitals to provide the services needed to the mentally ill or drug addicted. As it stands now, there exists less than adequate facilities where patients can be referred to for civil mental health commitments and treatment.

In other words, there is nowhere for people to go or be placed to get the mental health and drug treatment needed. There is glaring need for a behavioral health hospital and drug rehabilitation treatment facilities.  The Bernalillo County Behavioral Health Center and the Las Vegas Mental Health hospital could be expanded to accommodate court referrals and a new behavioral health facility could be constructed in Las Cruces to handle mental health commitments and treatment.

New Mexico is currently experiencing historical surplus revenues and this past legislative session the legislature had an astonishing $3.6 Billion in surplus revenue. Now is the time to create a statewide Mental Health Court and dedicate funding for the construction of behavioral health hospital and drug rehabilitation treatment facilities the courts can rely upon for referrals.  Creation of a new court system must include funding for District Attorneys and Public Defenders with dedicated personnel resources for the filing and defending of civil mental health commitments as prescribed by law.

A statewide mental health court with mandatory civil commitments will get treatment to those who need it the most, help get the unhoused off the streets and help families with loved ones who resist any mental health treatment.

The link to a related blog article is here:

Convening Special Session Of NM Legislator For Public Safety Must Include Expanding Existing Mental Health Court; Create New 14th Judicial District Court With 3 Regional Divisions For Mental Health Commitment Hearings; Build Regional Treatment Facilities And Hospitals For Mandatory Treatment Ordered

 

On August 12, former President Donald Trump sat down with his billionaire supporter Elon Musk for a two-hour interview which aired on Musk’s social media platform X. Trump decided to do the interview after numerous polls have shown he is now trailing Vice President Kamala Harris. The goal of the interview was an attempt to slow the Vice President’s dramatic rise in the polls.

On August 13, the national news agency CNN publish a detailed fact check written by CNN reporters Daniel Dale with contributions to the article made by CNN reporters Tami Luhby and William Montes on the Trumps interview with Elon Musk. Even by Trump standards, he lied more than ever. Following is the article with the link:  

CNN HEADLINE: “Trump made at least 20 false claims in his conversation with Elon Musk”

Former President Donald Trump delivered his usual bombardment of false claims – at least 20 in all – during [the August 12] conversation with Elon Musk. Most of the falsehoods uttered by the Republican presidential nominee were claims that have been repeatedly debunked before, some of them for years. They spanned a broad range of subjects, from immigration to the economy to foreign policy to Trump’s record in office to Vice President Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent.

Here is a fact check:

CRIME 

Trump claimed, “Our crime rate’s going through the roof.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. Both violent crime and property crime dropped significantly in 2023 and in the first quarter of 2024. 

There are limitations to the FBI-published data from local law enforcement – the numbers are preliminary, not all communities submitted data and the submitted data usually has some errors – so these statistics may not precisely capture the size of the recent declines in crime. But other data sources make it clear crime has indeed declined to some extent.

The preliminary FBI data for 2023 showed a roughly 13% decline in murder and a roughly 6% decline in overall violent crime compared to 2022, bringing both murder and violent crime levels below where they were in Trump’s last calendar year in office in 2020. The preliminary FBI data for the first quarter of 2024 showed an even steeper drop from the same quarter in 2023 – a roughly 26% decline in murder and roughly 15% decline in overall violent crime.

Crime data expert Jeff Asher, co-founder of the firm AH Datalytics, said earlier this year that if the final 2023 figures show a decline in murder of at least 10% from 2022, this would be the fastest US decline “ever recorded.” And he noted that both the preliminary FBI-published data from the first quarter of 2024 and also “crime data collected from several independent sources point to an even larger decline in property and violent crime, including a substantially larger drop in murder, so far this year compared to 2023, though there is still time left in the year for those trends to change.”

After Trump claimed in June that “crime is so much up,” Anna Harvey, a political science professor and director of the Public Safety Lab at New York University, noted to CNN that the claim is contradicted both by the data from the FBI and from the Major Cities Chiefs Association, which represents 70 large US police forces. She said: “It would be more accurate to say that crime is so much down.”

INFLATION

Trump said, “I think we have the worst inflation we’ve had in 100 years. They say it’s 48 years, I don’t believe it.”

Facts First: Trump framed this as an opinion, but it’s baseless nonetheless – wrong in two different ways. First, even when the inflation rate hit its Biden-era peak of 9.1% in June 2022, that 9.1% rate was the highest since 1981 – between 40 and 41 years prior, certainly not “100 years” and not even “48 years.” Second, inflation has declined sharply since the June 2022 peak, and the most recent available rate at the time he spoke, for July 2024, was 3.2% – a rate that, the Biden presidency aside, was exceeded as recently as 2011.

GLOBAL WARMING AND SEA LEVELS

Trump argued that the threat of the nuclear war is far more important than the threat posed by climate change. And he said: “The biggest threat? It’s not global warming, where the ocean’s gonna rise one eighth of an inch over the next 400 years … and you’ll have more oceanfront property, right?”

Facts First: Trump’s claim about the pace of sea-level rise is wildly inaccurate. The global average sea level is currently rising more per year than Trump claimed that it will rise in 400 years. 

NASA reported in March that the current global average sea-level rise in 2023 was 0.17 inches per year, more than double the rate in 1993. And a World Meteorological Organization report this year said the rate of sea level rise between 2014 and 2023 was about 0.19 inches per year.

In other words, sea level rise is already more than an eighth of an inch annually – and it is accelerating. NASA found a jump of 0.3 inches between 2022 and 2023.

Gary Griggs, a University of California, Santa Cruz professor of earth and planetary sciences who studies sea-level rise, said last year that Trump’s similar claims “can only be described as totally out of touch with reality” and that Trump “has no idea what he is talking about.”

Sea levels rise by different amounts in different locations. For the US, sea levels are expected to rise particularly fast for the east coast and Gulf of Mexico coast – and Trump’s state of Florida, which is bordered by both of those coasts, is expected to be affected more severely than many other coastal states.

In fact, Trump’s claims about sea levels are highly inaccurate for the area near Mar-a-Lago, which is on the Atlantic. Griggs noted in a June email that data from the closest National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tide gauge to Mar-a-Lago shows an increase of an eighth of an inch roughly every nine months.

Trump has also previously made the joke about rising seas creating more oceanfront property. In reality, rising sea levels are expected to have devastating consequences not only for many seafront properties but for areas further inland – rendering some communities uninhabitable and others more dangerous, increasing the frequency and reach of flooding, making hurricanes more destructive and damaging infrastructure and ecosystems.

THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE LISTENING TO THE CONVERSATION

Trump told Musk that “you got a lot of people listening” to the conversation – “like 60 million or something.” He then asked somebody what the number was, but he never corrected his initial estimate.

Facts First: Trump did express uncertainty about the number, but his “like 60 million or something” claim is false. At the time he made this remark, public data on X showed that there were 1.1 million accounts listening to the conversation. 

Trump appeared to be referring to something different: the number of views on his own X post sharing the “space” where the conversation was played. But the vast majority of the accounts that viewed the post did not actually listen to the conversation.

HARRIS AND PRISONERS

Trump claimed of Harris: “She wants to release all the prisoners that are in detention, and some of these guys are really bad. That just came out today.”

Facts First: This is false. There is no basis for the claim that Harris “wants to release all the prisoners that are in detention.” Trump appeared to be referring to news stories in conservative media that reported that Harris had said in 2019, while unsuccessfully running in the Democratic presidential primary, that she wanted to close privately-run immigration detention centers. 

Even if Harris continues to hold this position today – she has not addressed the subject since she began her presidential campaign in July – closing privately-run immigration detention centers would not result in the release of “all” prisoners in immigration detention, let alone all prisoners in regular US jails and prisons; Trump did not specify that he was talking about Harris’ past stance on certain immigration detention facilities rather than all prisons.

It’s possible Trump had been misled himself; a short clip shared by some Republicans on social media this week did not include the part of Harris’ 2019 remarks where she specified that she was referring to privately run immigration detention facilities in particular.  But articles by Fox News and The New York Post correctly noted that this was what she said.

HARRIS’ IMMIGRATION ROLE

Trump claimed of Harris: “She was the border czar, and people can’t allow them to get away with their disinformation campaign. Now, she’s saying she wasn’t really involved … she was totally in charge.”

Facts First: This is false. Harris was never made Biden’s “border czar,” a label the White House has always emphasized is inaccurate, and was never “totally in charge” of the border; Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is the official in charge of border security. In reality, Biden gave Harris a more limited immigration-related assignment in 2021, asking her to lead diplomacy with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras in an attempt to address the conditions that prompted their citizens to try to migrate to the United States.

Some Republicans have scoffed at assertions that Harris was never the “border czar,” noting on social media that news articles sometimes described Harris as such. But those articles were wrong. Various news outlets, including CNN, reported as early as the first half of 2021 that the White House emphasized that Harris had not been put in charge of border security as a whole, as “border czar” strongly suggests, and had instead been handed a diplomatic task related to Central American countries.

A White House “fact sheet” in July 2021 said: “On February 2, 2021, President Biden signed an Executive Order that called for the development of a Root Causes Strategy.
Since March, Vice President Kamala Harris has been leading the Administration’s diplomatic efforts to address the root causes of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.”

Biden’s own comments at a March 2021 event announcing the assignment were slightly more muddled, but he said he had asked Harris to lead “our diplomatic effort” to address factors causing migration in the three “Northern Triangle” countries (he also mentioned Mexico that day). Biden listed factors in these countries he thought had led to migration and said that “if you deal with the problems in-country, it benefits everyone.” And Harris’ comments that day were focused squarely on “root causes.”

Republicans can fairly say that even “root causes” work is a border-related task. But calling her “border czar” goes too far.

VENEZUELA, CRIME AND MIGRATION

Trump claimed: “Venezuela – their crime is down 72%. They’re taking their drug dealers.  They’re taking – frankly, their prisoners, they’re emptying out their prisons. They’re taking their criminals, their murderers, their rapists and they’re delivering them…”

Facts First: Trump greatly overstated the Biden-era decline in crime in Venezuela, at least according to the limited statistics that are publicly available. And while it is certain that at least some criminals have joined law-abiding Venezuelans in a mass exodus from the country amid the economic crisis of the last decade, there is no proof Venezuela has deliberately emptied prisons for migration purposes or intentionally sent ex-prisoners to the United States.

Right-wing website Breitbart published a vague 2022 article about a supposed federal intelligence report warning Border Patrol agents about freed violent prisoners from Venezuela who had then joined migrant caravans. But this supposed claim about Venezuela’s actions has never been corroborated; experts have told CNN, PolitiFact and FactCheck.org that they know of no proof of any such thing having happened.

“We have no evidence that the Venezuelan government is emptying its prisons or mental health institutions to send them outside the country, in other words, to the U.S. or any other country,” Roberto Briceño-León, founder and director of the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, an independent organization that tracks violence in the country, said in an email to CNN in June.

Venezuela’s government does not publish reliable official crime statistics, so it’s hard to get a complete picture. But Briceño-León’s group publishes annual data on violent deaths, which includes homicides, police killings and deaths still under investigation. It found a decline of roughly 26% in the number of violent deaths from 2021 to 2023.

That’s substantial, but not “72%.” Briceño-León noted in his email that you could find a decline of roughly 70% by 2023 if you compared 2018 to 2023 – but Trump was US president until early 2021.

And crime trends in any country always have a complex mix of causes; Venezuela is no exception. Briceño-León argued that while migration has been a factor in the decline, crime has dropped in large part because the economic crisis has reduced opportunities for crime.

“Bank robberies disappear because there is no money to rob; kidnappings decrease because there is no cash to pay the ransoms; robberies on public transportation stop because travelers have no money in their pockets and old cell phones [with] no value,” he said.

MIGRATION NUMBERS

While talking about illegal immigration, Trump claimed that, under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, “you have millions of people coming in a month.”

Facts First: This is false. There has not been any month under the Biden-Harris administration where even close to “millions” of people entered the country illegally. In the peak month during this administration for what the government calls border “encounters,” December 2023, there were 370,890 encounters nationwide. Even if you factor in so-called “gotaways,” people who evaded the Border Patrol to sneak into the country, there is no basis for the claim that “millions” of people are entering in a single month.

The number of nationwide encounters was 205,019 in June, the last month for which data is currently available to the public.

MIGRATION NUMBERS, PART TWO 

Trump said of migration under Biden and Harris: “I believe it’s over 20 million people came into our country, many coming from jails, from prisons, from mental institutions, or a bigger version of that is insane asylums.”

Facts First: Trump’s “20 million” figure is false, a major exaggeration. The total number of “encounters” nationwide from February 2021 through June 2024, at both legal ports of entry and in between those ports, was about 10 million – and an “encounter” does not mean a person was let into the country; some people encountered are promptly sent away. In addition, there is no basis for Trump’s claim that “many” of these migrants have come in from jails, prisons or mental health facilities.

Even if you added the estimated number of Biden-era “gotaways” (people who evaded the Border Patrol to enter illegally), which House Republicans said in May was nearly two million, “the totals would still be vastly smaller than 15, 16 or 18 million,” Michelle Mittelstadt, spokesperson for the Migration Policy Institute think tank, said in late June after Trump used those figures.

The “encounters” figures can’t be described as figures on people successfully entering the US. Some encounters involve people who are deemed inadmissible at legal ports and are refused permission to enter. Also, the same person can be “encountered” multiple times if they keep returning to the border to try again – which is what happened in many cases under Biden when the Title 42 rapid-expulsion authority invoked by Trump during the Covid-19 pandemic was in place into May 2023.

In 2023, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung cited one source for Trump’s claim about prisons being emptied for migration purposes – the Breitbart article that has not been corroborated. Even if Venezuela in particular had indeed freed prisoners to allow people to try to migrate to the US, that would be insufficient proof for Trump’s claim that some substantial number of Biden-era migrants are from prisons.

MIGRATION AND ‘THE CONGO’

Trump repeated a claim he has made before about “the Congo” and migration, again without specifying whether he was referring to the Democratic Republic of Congo or the neighboring Republic of Congo.

He said: “From Africa, from the Congo they’re coming, from the Congo. And, 22 people came in from the Congo recently and they’re murderers. And they drop ‘em. They take ‘em out of jails – which is very expensive, you know, to maintain the jails – they don’t do too much maintaining, I can tell you. But they take ‘em out of jails, prisons. They take ‘em out, and they bring them to the United States.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim is baseless. Experts on the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Congo, plus both pro-immigration and anti-immigration organizations in the US, told CNN in March, after Trump made a similar claim, that they had not seen any evidence of Congolese prisons being emptied, let alone evidence of either country somehow having brought ex-prisoners into the US. Trump’s presidential campaign and an allied super PAC did not respond to requests to provide any evidence. A CNN search of two media databases turned up no evidence. 

“Everything he is saying isn’t true,” Democratic Republic of Congo spokesperson Patrick Muyaya Katembwe told CNN in a text message in March. Asked specifically about Trump’s claims about Congolese prisons being emptied of violent criminals, he said, “Never ever, it’s not true.” And, he said, “we want him to stop” telling these stories, since “it’s very bad for the country.”

Serge Mombouli, the Republic of Congo’s ambassador to the US, said in an email to CNN in March: “There is no truth or any sign nor a single fact supporting such a claim or statement.”

There were also some Congolese migrants apprehended at the US border under Trump. You can read a more detailed fact check here.

DEPORTATIONS TO CENTRAL AMERICA

Trump repeated a story he has told on numerous previous occasions about how, during President Barack Obama’s administration, it was impossible to deport violent criminals to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

“In the case of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, some others, you couldn’t get ‘em back … under Obama, you couldn’t get ’em back,” he said. He repeated, “They wouldn’t take ’em back for Obama.”

Facts First: This claim remains false. In 2016, Obama’s last calendar year in office, none of these three countries were on the list of countries that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) considered “recalcitrant” (uncooperative) in accepting the return of their citizens from the US.

The Migration Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, noted to CNN in 2019 that in the 2016 fiscal year, ICE reported that Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador ranked second, third and fourth for the country of citizenship of people being removed from the US. The same was true in the 2017 fiscal year, which encompassed the end of Obama’s presidency and the beginning of Trump’s. ICE did not identify any widespread problems with deportations to these countries.

ICE officials said there were some exceptions to the three countries’ general cooperativeness, but Trump’s general declaration that the countries were uncooperative was never true.

THE LEGITIMACY OF THE 2020 ELECTION 

Trump repeated his usual lie about the legitimacy of the 2020 election, saying his opponents have attempted to persecute him through the courts even though he did “nothing wrong” and merely complained about a “rigged election.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim about the election remains false. The 2020 election was not rigged, Trump lost fair and square to Biden by an Electoral College margin of 306 to 232, his opponents did not cheat and there is no evidence of any fraud even close to widespread enough to have changed the outcome in any state.

We’ll leave aside Trump’s subjective claims about his legal cases.

EUROPE AND AID TO UKRAINE 

Trump again claimed that European countries are not pulling their weight with regard to aid to Ukraine. He said, “With Ukraine, so we’re in for $250 billion and they’re in for about $71 billion.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. Through June, European countries had committed and provided more aid to Ukraine than the US had during and just before the Russian invasion began in early 2022, according to data from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy think tank in Germany.

The Kiel Institute, which closely tracks aid to Ukraine, found that, from late January 2022 (just before Russia’s invasion in February 2022) through June 2024, the European Union and individual European countries had committed a total of about $205 billion to Ukraine, in military, financial and humanitarian assistance, compared to about $108 billion committed by the US. Europe also exceeded the US in aid that had actually been “allocated” to Ukraine – defined by the institute as aid either delivered or specified for delivery – at about $121 billion for Europe compared to about $82 billion for the US. 

The US led Europe on military aid that had actually been allocated, but very narrowly – about $56.42 billion to $56.35 billion.

It’s important to note that it’s possible to come up with different totals using different methodology. But Trump’s claim that the US has committed or provided far more aid than Europe is not true regardless.

TRADE WITH EUROPE

Trump claimed, “If you build a car in the United States, you can’t sell it in Europe. You just can’t sell it. It’s impossible.”

Facts First: It’s not true that it’s impossible to sell a US-made car in Europe.

According to a December 2023 report from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, the EU is the second-largest market for US vehicle exports — importing 271,476 US vehicles in 2022, valued at nearly 9 billion euro. (Some of these are vehicles made by European automakers at plants in the US.) The EU’s Eurostat statistical office says that car imports from the US hit a new peak in 2020, Trump’s last full year in office, at a value of about 11 billion euro.

IRAN AND FUNDING FOR TERROR GROUPS

Touting his record in dealing with Iran, Trump claimed, “They had no money for Hamas, they had no money for Hezbollah, they had no money for any of these instruments of terror.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim that Iran had “no money” for terror groups during his presidency is false. Iran’s funding for these groups did decline in the second half of his administration, in large part because his sanctions on Iran had a major negative impact on the Iranian economy, but the funding never stopped entirely, as four experts told CNN in June. Trump’s own administration said in 2020 that Iran was continuing to fund terror groups including Hezbollah. 

The Trump administration began imposing sanctions on Iran in late 2018, pursuing a campaign known as “maximum pressure.” But Trump-appointed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said himself in 2020 that Iran was continuing to fund terror groups.

“So you continue to have, in spite of the Iranian leadership demanding that more money be given to them, they are using the resources that they have to continue funding Hezbollah in Lebanon and threatening the state of Israel, funding Iraqi terrorist Shia groups, all the things that they have done historically – continuing to build out their capabilities even while the people inside of their own country are suffering,” Pompeo said in a May 2020 interview, according to a transcript posted on the State Department’s website.

Trump could have fairly said that his sanctions on Iran had made life more difficult for terror groups (though it’s unclear how much their operations were affected). Instead, he continued his years-old practice of exaggerating even legitimate achievements.

You can read a more detailed fact check from June here.

CHINA’S PURCHASES OF IRANIAN OIL

Trump repeated his familiar claim that he successfully pressured China into no longer buying oil from Iran.

“Iran was broke because I told China, ‘If you buy from Iran…’ Oil, it’s all about the oil, that’s where the money is. ‘…If you buy oil from Iran, you’re not going to do any business with the United States.’ And I meant it, and they said, ‘We’ll pass,’ and they didn’t buy oil.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. China’s oil imports from Iran did briefly plummet under Trump in 2019, the year the Trump administration made a concerted effort to deter such purchases, but they never stopped – and then they rose sharply again while Trump was still president. “The claim is untrue because Chinese crude imports from Iran haven’t stopped at all,” Matt Smith, lead oil analyst for the Americas at Kpler, a market intelligence firm, said in November, when Trump made a similar claim.

China’s official statistics recorded no purchases of Iranian crude in Trump’s last partial month in office, January 2021, and also none in most of Biden’s first year in office. But that doesn’t mean China’s imports actually ceased; industry experts say it is widely known that China has used a variety of tactics to mask its continued imports from Iran.

Smith said Iranian crude is often listed in Chinese data as being from Malaysia; ships may travel from Iran with their transponders switched off and then turn them on when they are near Malaysia, Smith said, or transfer the Iranian oil to other ships.

Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the International Crisis Group, said in a November email: “China significantly reduced its imports from Iran from around 800,000 barrels per day in 2018 to 100,000 in late 2019. But by the time Trump left office, they were back to upwards to 600(000)-700,000 barrels.”

TRUMP’S TAX CUTS

Trump repeated his regular claim that his signature tax cuts, in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, were “the largest tax cut” ever provided.

Facts First: Trump is wrong. Analyses have found that his tax cut law was not the largest in history, either in percentage of gross domestic product or in inflation-adjusted dollars.

The act made numerous permanent and temporary changes to the tax code, including reducing both corporate and individual income tax rates.

In a report released earlier this year, the federal government’s Congressional Budget Office looked at the size of past tax cuts enacted between 1981 and 2023. It found that two other tax cut bills were bigger – former President Ronald Reagan’s 1981 package and legislation signed by former President Barack Obama that extended earlier tax cuts enacted during former President George W. Bush’s administration.

The CBO measured the sizes of tax cuts by looking at the revenue effects of the bills as a percentage of gross domestic product – in other words, how much federal revenue a bill cut as a portion of the economy – over five years. Reagan’s 1981 tax cut and Obama’s 2012 tax cut extension were 3.5% and 1.7% of GDP, respectively. Trump’s 2017 tax cut, by contrast, was estimated to be about 1% of GDP.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a fiscal watchdog group, found in 2017 that the framework for Trump’s tax cuts would make them the fourth largest since 1940 in inflation-adjusted dollars and the eighth largest since 1918 as a percentage of gross domestic product.

MILITARY EQUIPMENT AND AFGHANISTAN

After talking about the state of US military equipment, Trump said, “We gave $85 billion of it back to Afghanistan, if you can believe it. We gave them $85 billion.”

Facts First: Trump’s $85 billion figure is false. While a significant quantity of military equipment that had been provided by the US to Afghan forces was indeed abandoned to the Taliban upon the US withdrawal, the Defense Department has estimated that this equipment had been worth about $7.1 billion – a chunk of the roughly $18.6 billion worth of equipment provided to Afghan forces between 2005 and 2021. And some of the equipment left behind was rendered inoperable before US forces withdrew.

As other fact-checkers have previously explained, the “$85 billion” is a rounded-up figure (it’s closer to $83 billion) for the total amount of money Congress appropriated during the war to a fund supporting the Afghan security forces. A minority of this funding was for equipment.

THE SITUATION BEFORE RIGHT TO TRY

Trump claimed that before he signed a “Right to Try” law in 2018 to give terminally ill patients easier access to experimental medications that haven’t yet received approval from the Food and Drug Administration, such patients would have no recourse if they did not have the money to travel abroad.

He said: “You know, people – if they had money, they’d go to Asia, they’d go to Europe. If they don’t have money, they’d go home and die. That’s what happened, they’d go home and die.”

Facts First: It is not true that terminally ill patients would simply have to go home and die without any access to experimental medications or would have to go to foreign countries seeking such treatments until Trump signed the Right to Try law. Prior to the law, patients had to ask the federal government for permission to access experimental medications – but the government almost always said yes.

Scott Gottlieb, who served as Trump’s FDA commissioner, told Congress in 2017 that the FDA had approved 99% of patient requests under its own “expanded access” program.

“Emergency requests for individual patients are usually granted immediately over the phone and non-emergency requests are generally processed within a few days,” Gottlieb testified.

THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION AND TRUMP’S LEGAL CASES

Trump repeated a claim he has made on numerous occasions during his campaign – that the Biden administration orchestrated a criminal election subversion case that was brought against him by a local district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia, a criminal fraud case that was brought against him by a local district attorney in Manhattan, and a civil fraud case that was brought against him by the attorney general of New York state.

Facts First: This is false. There is no evidence that Biden or his administration were behind any of these cases. None of these officials reports to the president or even to the federal government.

Attorney General Merrick Garland testified to Congress in early June about the Manhattan case in which Trump was found guilty: “The Manhattan district attorney has jurisdiction over cases involving New York state law, completely independent of the Justice Department, which has jurisdiction over cases involving federal law. We do not control the Manhattan district attorney. The Manhattan district attorney does not report to us. The Manhattan district attorney makes its own decisions about cases that he wants to bring under his state law.”

As he did in his conversation with Musk, Trump has repeatedly invoked a lawyer on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s team, Matthew Colangelo, while making such claims; Colangelo left the Justice Department in 2022 to join the district attorney’s office as senior counsel to Bragg. But there is no evidence that Biden had anything to do with Colangelo’s employment decision. Colangelo and Bragg were colleagues in the New York attorney general’s office before Bragg was elected Manhattan district attorney in 2021.

The link to the full CNN article with photos is here:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/13/politics/fact-check-trump-musk-20-false-claims/index.html

TRUMP BEGINS TO LAY GROUNDWORK TO CONTEST ELECTION

It becoming more and more obvious that Trump is already laying the groundwork to challenge the election results if he is not elected to a second term. In his interview with Elon Musk, Trump said Harris’ elevation was “a scam” and accused top Democrats of forcing Biden out of the 2024 race.  Trump said this:

“This was a coup of a president of the United States. He didn’t want to leave, and they said, ‘We can do it the nice way, or we can do it the hard way,’”

The week before, Trump criticized Democrats in his news conference  stating that Harris replacing  Biden “seems to me, actually, unconstitutional. Perhaps it’s not.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson similarly claimed that Harris would face legal hurdles that have not materialized. Johnson told CNN’s Jake Tapper on July 21, the day Biden dropped out, that Democrats would face “real problems” and “legal hurdles” that would be litigated in a number of states. Johnson said this:

“In some of these states, it’s a real hurdle. They have a real problem with replacing the nominee at the top of the ticket.”

Harris has in fact faced no serious opposition on her path to the Democratic nomination.  and Johnson would not specify which laws Democrats would allegedly break with Harris atop the ticket. Speaker  Johnson backtracked and said this:

“I said that we have 50 different systems in each of the states when it comes to presidential elections and choosing electors and all the rest, and in some of the states, there are impediments to just switching someone out like that. …  This is not the way the system is supposed to work. … There’s a reason it’s unprecedented. You don’t just, you know, steamroll the rules in the process because you decide that your candidate is no longer suitable. That’s what’s happened here.”

According to a CNN survey in July election authorities in at least 48 states, both Republicans and Democrats, said that there were no obstacles that would prevent Harris from getting on their ballots once she became the Democratic nominee. Election authorities in the other two states, Florida and Montana, did not respond to requests for comment, but a review of those states’ ballot access rules suggests Harris is not likely to face an issue there either.

Legal experts also told CNN that the courts would be unlikely to go along with lawsuits that sought to challenge the addition of a new name on the top of the Democratic ticket.

“As a legal matter, it is up to the convention to nominate a candidate. And all the legal precedent is on courts deferring to the party’s choice for its nominee and then giving the voters the choice,” Ben Ginsberg, a Republican campaign attorney who has served as general counsel for several previous GOP nominees, said last month.

In March of this years at one of his rally’s Trump said this:

“Now if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole — that’s gonna be the least of it. … It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country. That will be the least of it. … If this election isn’t won, I’m not sure that you’ll ever have another election in this country.”

The link to the quoted news source is here:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-bloodbath-loses-election-2024-rcna143746

 

This blog article is an in-depth report on Albuquerque’s homeless numbers, the city’s policy adopted to remove homeless encampments from public and private property and the need for the city to enforce its vagrancy laws as allowed by the United State Supreme Court.

THE POINT-IN-TIME COUNT

The Point-In-Time (PIT) count is the annual counting individuals and families experiencing sheltered and unsheltered homelessness within a community on a single night in January.  On July 31, the New Mexico Coalition to End Homelessness released the 2024 Point-In-Time (PIT) Report for the numbers of unhoused in Albuquerque. This year’s PIT count occurred on the night of January 29.  The link to review the entire 62-page 2024 PIT report is here:

 https://www.nmceh.org/_files/ugd/ad7ad8_4e2a2906787e4ca19853b9c7945a4dc9

HOUSEHOLDS COUNTED IN ALBUQUERQUE

The 2024 PIT survey reported that the total count of HOUSEHOLDS experiencing homelessness in Albuquerque on January 29, 2024 was 2,248. (Households include those with or without children or only children.)  The breakdown is as follows:

• Emergency Shelters: 1,018
• Transitional Housing: 174
• Unsheltered: 1,056

TOTAL HOUSEHOLDS: 2,248

PERSONS COUNTED IN ALBUQUERQUE

The 2024 PIT survey reported that the total count of PERSONS experiencing homelessness in Albuquerque on January 29, 2024 was 2,740 broken down in 3 categories.

• Emergency Shelters: 1,289
• Transitional Housing: 220
• Unsheltered: 1,231

TOTAL PERSONS: 2,740

UNSHELTERED BREAKDOWN

The data breakdown for the 2024 Albuquerque UNSHELTERED was reported as follows:

• 960 (78%) were considered chronically homeless.
• 727 (22%) were not considered chronically homeless.
• 106 (8.6%) had served in the military.
• 927 (75.3%) had NOT served in the military.
• 669 (56.6%) were experiencing homelessness for the first time.
• 525 (42.6%) were NOT experiencing homelessness for the first time.
• 5% of all respondents said they were homeless due to domestic violence with 49.2% of those being women..
• 4% said they were adults with a serious mental illness.
• 0% said they were adults with a substance abuse disorder.
• 8% said they were adults with another disabling condition.
• 3% were asdults with HIV/AIDS.

THOSE WHO MOVED TO NEW MEXICO FROM ELSWWHERE

For the first time, the PIT tried to gage the migration of the unhoused to New Mexico from other states.  Individuals who stated they moved to New Mexico from somewhere else were asked whether or not they were experiencing homelessness when they moved to the State. They responded as follows:

• 82 (24.8%) said they were homeless before moving to the state.
• 212 (63.8%) said they were not homeless before moving to the state.
• 77 (11.4%) refused to answer

BARRIERS TO HOUSING LISTED

Unhoused respondents were asked to list the barriers they are currently experiencing that are preventing them from obtaining housing. The response options were developed during multiple meetings with community planning groups and based on responses to a similar 2023 survey question. The responses were as follows:

• Access to services: 439 responses (42%)
• Access to communication: 263 responses 25%
• Available housing is in unsafe neighborhoods: 119 responses 11%
• Credit issues: 150 responses 14%
• Criminal record: 220 responses 21%
• Deposit/Application fees: 316 responses 30%
• Lack of vouchers (rental subsidies: 333 responses 32%
• Missing documentation: 374 responses 35%
• No housing for large households: 33 responses 3%
• Pet deposits/Pet Rent: 57 responses 5%
• Pets not allowed/Breed Restrictions: 48 responses 5%
• Rental history: 144 responses 14%
• Rental prices: 340 responses 32%
• Safety/Security: 77 responses 7%
• Substance Use Disorder: 283 responses 27%
• Lack of employment: 45 responses 4%
• Disabled: 34 responses 3%
• No mailing address: 31 3%
• Lack of income: 30 3%
• Homeless by choice: 30 responses 3%
• Ineffective service landscape: 25 responses 2%
• Lack of transportation: 14 responses 1%
• Discrimination: 8 responses 1%

ENCAMPMENT CLEANUPS AND REMOVAL

For the very first time, Albuquerque’s Unhoused were asked how many times has their encampment been decommissioned (removed) by the city over  the last year. Following are the statistics:

• 69 reported once
• 98 report twice
• 67 reported three times
• 55 reported 4 times
• 497 report 5 time or more

EDITOR’S NOTE: During the July 29 Town Hall meeting held by Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham on “Public Safety”, Mayor Tim Keller proclaimed the city of Albuquerque is cleaning up and removing upwards of 1,000 encampments a month. Keller gave no further information and his claim appears to be an embellishment when compared to the PIT survey results.

ITEMS LOST AS A RESULT OF CITY CLEAN UPS

The unhouse surveyed were asked what types of items they lost during encampment removals. Losing these items can hinder progress toward housing and cause emotional distress, especially when sentimental items are involved.  The response categories are not mutually exclusive and respondents were allowed to select more than one that applied.

• 81% said they lost their birth certificate.
• 5% said they lost a phone or tablet.
• 4% said they lost personal or sentimental items.
• 5% said they lost prescription medications.
• 9% said they lost social security cards.
• 6 said they lost a state ID or driver’s license.

NEW MEXICO STATUTES AND CITY ORDINANCES

New Mexico Statutes and City Ordinances that have been enacted to protect the general public health, safety, and welfare and to protect the public’s peaceful use and enjoyment of property rights. All the laws cited have been on the books for decades and are applicable and are enforced against all citizens and not just the unhoused. The specific statutes cited in the lawsuit are:

1. NMSA 1978, Section 30-14-1 (1995), defining criminal trespass on public and private property.
2. NMSA 1978, Section 30-14-4 (1969), defining wrongful use of property used for a public purpose and owned by the state, its subdivisions, and any religious, charitable, educational, or recreational association.
3. Albuquerque City Ordinance 12-2-3, defining criminal trespass on public and private property.
4. Albuquerque City Ordinance 8-2-7-13, prohibiting the placement of items on a sidewalk so as to restrict its free use by pedestrians.
5. Albuquerque City Ordinance 10-1-1-10, prohibiting being in a park at nighttime when it is closed to public use.
6. Albuquerque City Ordinance 12-2-7, prohibiting hindering persons passing along any street, sidewalk, or public way.
7. Albuquerque City Ordinance 5-8-6, prohibiting camping on open space lands and regional preserves.
8. Albuquerque City Ordinance 10-1-1-3, prohibiting the erection of structures in city parks.

All the above laws are classified as “non-violent crimes” and are misdemeanors.  The filing of criminal charges by law enforcement are discretionary when the crime occurs in their presence.  The City of Albuquerque and the Albuquerque Police Department has agreed that only citations will be issued and no arrests will be made for violations of the 8 statutes and city ordinance as part of a court approved settlement in  a decades old federal civil rights lawsuit dealing with jail overcrowding.

US SUPREME COURT CASE GRANTS PASS V. JOHNSON

On June 28, the United State Supreme Court announced its ruling in the case of Grants Pass v. Johnson where the court held that local laws effectively criminalizing homelessness do not violate the U.S. Constitution and do not constitute cruel and unusual punishment.

The case challenged a municipality’s ability to bar people from sleeping or camping in public areas, such as sidewalks and parks. The case is strikingly similar in facts and circumstances and laws to the case filed against the City of Albuquerque over the closure of Coronado Park.

The case came from the rural Oregon town of Grants Pass, which appealed a ruling striking down local ordinances that fined people $295 for sleeping outside after tents began crowding public parks. The homeless plaintiffs argued that Grants Pass, a town with just one 138-bed overnight shelter,  criminalized them for behavior they couldn’t avoid: sleeping outside when they have nowhere else to go.

Meanwhile, municipalities across the western United States argued that court rulings hampered their ability to quickly respond to public health and safety issues related to homeless encampments.  The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over the nine Western states, ruled in 2018 that such bans violate the Eighth Amendment in areas where there aren’t enough shelter beds.

The United States Supreme Court considered whether cities can enforce laws and take action against or punish the unhoused for sleeping outside in public spaces when shelter space is lacking. The case is the most significant case heard by the high court in decades on the rights of the unhoused and comes as a rising number of people in the United States are without a permanent place to live.

In a 6-3 decision along ideological lines, the Supreme Court  reversed a ruling by a San Francisco-based appeals court that found outdoor sleeping bans amount to “cruel and unusual punishment” under the United States Constitution. The majority found that the 8th Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment does not extend to bans on outdoor sleeping in public places such as parks and streets.  The Supreme Court ruled  that cities can enforce bans on homeless people sleeping outdoors, even in West Coast areas where shelter space is lacking.

CITY PROCESS IN PLACE TO DEAL WITH REMOVAL OF HOMELESS ENCAMPMENTS

The City of Albuquerque has adopted a written  policy for responding to encampments on public property.  The policy was first adopted in October, 2021 and then revised October, 2022. The link to review the entire 16-page policy is here:

https://www.cabq.gov/health-housing-homelessness/documents/final-fcs-encampment-policy-11-7-22.pdf

Following is a summary of the process followed by the city for the removal unhoused encampments.

BALANCING ACT OF COMPETING INTERESTS

The City’s policy on encampment removals states in part:

“There are particularly high rates of homelessness among Native Americans, Black and Hispanic populations, people with disabilities, and people with mental health or substance use disorders. People experiencing homelessness are frequently victims of crime and certain populations are especially susceptible to human trafficking, sex crimes, and other crimes of violence. The City of Albuquerque recognizes that there are no “homeless people,” but rather people who have lost their homes and deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.”

The goal of the City of Albuquerque policy on encampments is to balance multiple, and sometimes competing, priorities from a diverse group of stakeholders. The stakeholders include homeowners, business owners, public health and safety officials, and the unsheltered themselves.

The city policy on encampment removal provides in pertinent part as follows:

“In order to strike the right balance, the City must ensure that the rights of people who are unsheltered are given equal protection under the law. As cities struggle to accommodate rising numbers of unsheltered people and encampments, the courts have also weighed in on how to balance public safety and constitutional rights.

While this is a rapidly evolving area of the law, courts have recognized that there are legitimate public safety reasons for removing or cleaning up encampments, such as the safety of unsheltered people, unsanitary conditions, and public health concerns. However, courts have also identified several constitutional concerns that must be addressed [when an encampment is dispersed]  including

1. Adequate notice provisions prior to removal,
2.  Due process for retrieving personal property,
3. Assessment of individual needs such as mental or physical disability, and
4.  Whether appropriate shelter beds exist in the community as a condition prior to removal of an encampment.”

GUIDING PRINCIPLES

The City of Albuquerque has enunciated 4 major guiding principles for removal unhoused encampments. The 4 guiding principles are:

1. HARM REDUCTION: This Refers to policies, programs, and practices that aim to minimize negative health, social, and legal impacts associated with drug use, drug policies, and drug laws. Harm reduction is grounded in justice and human rights. It focuses on positive change and on people without judgement, coercion, discrimination, or requiring that they stop using drugs as a precondition of support.
2. TRAUMA-INFORMED: Trauma-informed approaches emphasize safety, trustworthiness, peer support, collaboration, empowerment, and a focus on cultural, historical and gender issues.
3. HOUSING FIRST: The Housing First principle recognizes that the primary need of people experiencing homelessness is housing. This Housing First approach is based on the premise that people are best able to address their needs, such as substance abuse and mental health treatment and employment, once they have a home.
4. PERSON-CENTERED RESPONSE: The City aims to provide person-centered, trauma-informed care that respects the dignity and ensures the safety of all individuals and families seeking assistance. Progressive engagement that is respectful of participant choice and attuned to participant safety and confidentiality needs will inform data collection efforts, level of services provided, and location/type of housing accessed.

CLEARING OF ENCAMPMENTS BY CITY

The City of Albuquerque no longer relies on the Albuquerque Police Department (APD)  as the primary or only city department for removal of unhoused encampments. There are 4 other city departments working together that are now primarily responsible for homeless encampment removals. Those 4 city departments are:

1. The Health, Housing & Homelessness Department
2. The Albuquerque Community Safety Department
3. The Planning Department Code Enforcement
4. Solid Waste Department

When an encampment is reported and a complaint is filed, it is usually first handled by the Albuquerque Community Safety Department.  The city sends outreach providers to speak to the homeless to see what services they might need or want and what services can be offered. A member of the city outreach team will visit the reported site to address the encampment and offer resources including shelter, transportation, and personal storage.

The city has an “encampment team” made up of seven people. Their job is to respond to reported encampments set up on public property, and give the people living there the written “notices to vacate.” After the assessment, written “notices to vacate” are issued.  The homeless are given a full 72 hours to clear the area of their personal property and belongings.

The camps are then cleared by the city Solid Waste.  Once the 72 hours time is up, the encampment team checks in to make sure the people have in fact moved. Once the encampment has been vacated, the city cleans up whatever is left behind at the camp which includes many times trash and needles for illicit drug use.

311 CITIZENS CONTACT CENTER FIRST STEP

The preferred method for the general public or City employees to report an encampment is through the 311 citizens contact center. Encampments within city limits can be reported by calling 311 (505-768-2000) or using the ABQ311 App.    However, members of the public and City employees can report encampments directly to other City departments.

The 311-citizen contact sends referral reports on encampments that appear to be on public property to the Family and Community Safety Department (FCS) designee. The 311-citizen contact center sends referral reports on encampments that appear to be on private property to the Code Enforcement Division of the Planning Department.

“PRIVATE PROPERTY” is defined as any property that is not owned by a governmental entity, such as an individual, business, or non-profit organization, including but not limited to business parking lots and private residences.

“PUBLIC PROPERTY” is defined as any real property owned by any governmental entity within the municipal limits of the city, including but not limited to, the public way, right-of-way, roads, streets and public alleys.

The 311 citizens contact center is required to collect information from callers or via the 311-application process to enable the Family and Community Safety designee to determine the priority level of encampments reported to 311.

RISK ASSESSMENT ANALYSIS

After the 311 citizens contact center receives a report of an encampment, the Family and Community Safety Department Designee determines whether the encampment is located upon public or private property and conducts a “Risk Assessment Analysis”.

If the FCS Designee identifies the property on which the encampment is located is on private property, it  must coordinate with the Code Enforcement Division, which will then address the encampment following their own protocol for addressing encampments on private property.

If the FCS Designee identifies the property upon which the encampment is located as public property, they must take actions in accordance with the city’s encampment removal policy.

RISK ASSESSMENT ANALYSIS & PRIORITIZATION OF RESPONSE

The FCS designee conducts a “Risk Assessment Analysis” of each encampment located on public property based on the information reported about the encampment. The Risk Assessment Analysis considers the following:

• The location of the encampment
• The risk to encampment occupants and other users of the public space in which the encampment is located
• The number of encampment occupants and
• The presence of needles and/or human waste

Based on the risk analysis, encampments are prioritized as a 1, 2, or 3 priority.  The FCS Designee responds to encampments identified as “priority 1” first, then “priority 2” and so on.  Based on the risk assessment analysis, encampments on public property are defined and prioritized as follows:

PRIORITY ENCAMPAMENTS OUTLINED

The city has defined and prioritized encampments as follows:

 PRIORITY 1 ENCAMPMENTS are those that meet the definition of immediate hazard or obstruction or are:

1. Located in a public park where children’s programming occurs.
2. Located at or adjacent to a community center, senior center, multigenerational center and early childhood development center.
3. Located adjacent to or in the median of a roadway or obstructing any street, sidewalk, bus stop, crosswalk, bicycle lane, bicycle path, foot path, areas of City-owned property within 10 feet of a street without sidewalks, or other public way.
4. On a footbridge over a roadway.
5. Where an Albuquerque Police Department (“APD”) officer observes felony possession of narcotics or other felonious activity.

“IMMEDIATE HAZARD” is defined as a situation where an encampment creates an immediate and articulable risk of serious injury or death to either the residents of the encampment or others. Immediate Hazard includes encampments within 10 feet of any public facility where children are present or children’s programming occurs. Immediate Hazard also includes encampments within the Rio Grande Valley State Park, or any public property where fire restrictions have been imposed.

“OBSTRUCTION” means people, tents, personal property, garbage, debris or other objects related to an encampment that interfere with areas that are necessary for or essential to the intended use of a public property or facility.

PRIORITY 2 ENCAMPMENTS meet one or more of the following criteria:

1. Located in an underpass near a roadway
2. Five or more encampment residents and/or structures are present
3. Human waste present
4. Significant quantities of hypodermic needles present

PRIORITY 3 ENCAMPMENTS are all encampments that do not meet the criteria above.

INITIAL ENCAMPMENT CONTACT

The Health, Housing & Homelessness Department (FCS) or the Albuquerque Community Safety Department (ACS) goes to the encampment location in person to attempt to engage the homeless encampment residents.   The first priority of the FCS or ACS Designee is to engage encampment residents, assess their basic needs, and provide any notice required by the policy to vacate the area.

The FCS or ACS Designee is required to attempt to educate encampment residents regarding resources and provide basic referral information to such resources, including but not limited to meals, showers and bathroom facilities, emergency shelter, medical services and supportive housing programs. If appropriate, the ACS Designee may transport individual(s) to shelter, provider, or location in which long term care can be provided.

When an encampment resident requests medical assistance or has an injury that poses a risk of death or serious bodily harm, the FCS or ACS Designee is required to contact the 9-1-1 emergency dispatch center.

If the FCS or ACS Designee observes any weapons at the encampment the FCS or ACS Designee is not to engage with the unhoused  encampment residents and may request APD assistance.

REMOVAL OF ENCAMPMENTS – IMMEDIATE HAZARD OR OBSTRUCTION

The City is not required to provide notice to remove an encampment constituting an immediate hazard or obstruction.  Immediate hazards are not typical encampments because an encampment that is an immediate hazard must present an imminent risk of serious injury or death. Immediate hazards are an emergency exception to the general rule that notice is required before requiring the removal of an encampment.

If unhoused are present at the encampment when the FCS Designee identifies that an encampment is an immediate hazard or obstruction, the city personnel must work collaboratively with the homeless to allow for them to collect and remove their own Personal Property, connect them to social services and shelter, identify and offer to store any Personal Property, identify where Personal Property will be stored if removed by the City, and explain how Personal Property may be claimed by its owner.

All trash or debris that are in the immediate area of the encampment may be removed and disposed of. An FCS designee will ask the persons at the encampment to assist with the clean-up.   If the resident has difficulty complying due to underlying behavioral health issues, the FCS Designee may request an ACS Behavioral Health Responder.

If persons are not present at the encampment when City staff identify the encampment as an immediate hazard or obstruction, the City shall take steps to identify and coordinate with the appropriate responsible entity to preserve Personal Property, provided that doing so does not pose a danger to the City Employees present.

All trash or debris that are in the immediate area of the encampment may be removed and disposed of immediately.

The City will not attempt to collect or store, and may instead immediately remove and dispose of, Personal Property that exceeds any storage limits established by the City.   The City will not attempt to collect or store, and may instead immediately remove and dispose of, the following items:

• Any items that are not deemed to be Personal Property.
• Any items that are deemed to be hazardous.
• Shopping carts.
• Large collections or items, including collections of bicycle parts.
• Large furniture items.
• Building materials such as wood products, metal, pallets, or rigid plastic.

72 HOUR NOTICE REQUIREMENT FOR ENCAMPMENT REMOVAL

If individuals are not present and the encampment is not an immediate hazard or obstruction, the FCS Designate will post a written notice on or near the encampment stating:

• The date and time the notice was posted.
• The date and time by which the individual is required to vacate the area, which shall be 72 hours at minimum after the date and time notice was posted.
• Contact information for outreach providers and shelter alternatives.
• That the encampment is subject to removal and cleanup.
• Where Personal Property will be stored if removed by the City; and
• How Personal Property may be claimed by its owner.

If individuals are present and the encampment is not an immediate hazard or obstruction,  the FCS Designee shall give verbal and written notice to the individuals that the encampment is subject to removal.

ENCAMPMENT OUTREACH MEASURES

At the time homeless encampment residents are informed that an encampment is an immediate hazard or obstruction, or at the time notice is posted, the FCS Designee shall engage encampment residents and assess their basic needs. The FCS Designee shall attempt to educate encampment residents regarding resources and provide basic referral information to such resources, including but not limited to meals, showers and bathroom facilities, emergency shelter, medical services and supportive housing programs.

Before the encampment is removed, the FCS or ACS Designee shall take reasonable steps to determine if there is shelter space available for the encampment resident(s).

For all encampments that are not an immediate hazard or obstruction, FCS shall refer the encampment to the ACS Designee or personnel using a shared database. The ACS Designee shall conduct outreach to the encampment residents in accordance with ACS protocol.

The FCS or ACS Designate shall assess whether removing the encampment will disrupt the encampment resident’s current connection to services. If so, the FCS or ACS Designee shall take steps to mitigate that impact.

For the removal of encampments that constitute an immediate hazard or obstruction, the FCS Designee shall contact ACS Designee to see if an outreach specialist is immediately available to conduct outreach prior to the encampment removal. If an ACS Designee is not available, FCS Designee may proceed with the removal of the encampment after providing information about resources.

To effectively communicate with those experiencing homelessness and providers who assist with long term care, ACS provides community outreach and provides updates on policy or personnel changes.  Outreach and education efforts include:

• Staff and leadership will regularly meet and work with local community organizations, providers and those experiencing homelessness.
• The Community Safety Department will also solicit input from community and its representatives through facilitations and surveys.

ENCAMPMENT REMOVAL & SITE CLEAN-UP

 Encampments that are not an immediate hazard or obstruction shall not be removed without the required notice provisions and verifying whether available emergency shelter beds exist in the community. After these steps have been completed, if the encampment is still present, the City may initiate removal of the encampment.

Except for an immediate hazard or obstruction, the FCS or ACS Designee shall take reasonable steps to confirm whether available emergency shelter beds exist prior to any enforcement action, including removal of an encampment.

The FCS or ACS Designee shall use their observations of the encampment resident(s) and information reported by the encampment resident(s) to make this determination, including to determine whether there is a shelter bed that can reasonably accommodate the individual’s mental or physical needs or disabilities.

If available emergency shelter beds do not exist, the FCS Designee may not require the removal of the encampment. If available emergency shelter beds do exist, FCS or ACS Designee shall inform the individuals where beds are available, provide contact information for facility and provide transportation to such facility if requested.

If persons are present at the encampment when FCS Designee return to the site after the period specified in the written removal notice has expired, the following protocol is to be followed:

1. FCS Designee shall work collaboratively with such persons to allow reasonable time for them to collect and remove their own Personal Property and to identify and offer to store any Personal Property.
2. The FCS Designee shall educate encampment resident regarding resources, and provide basic referral information to such resources, including but not limited to meals, showers and bathroom facilities, emergency shelter, medical services and supportive housing programs.
3. All trash or debris that are in the immediate area of the encampment, and any items that are deemed hazardous, may be removed and disposed of immediately.
4. As part of the removal of any trash and / or debris, the City shall not destroy any materials of apparent value which appear to be the Personal Property of any individual, except that the City may immediately remove and destroy any items that cannot be stored by the City. Those items that may be immediately removed include items that are deemed hazardous, any shopping carts, large collections of items including collections of bicycle  parts,  large furniture items, and building materials such as wood products, metal, pallets, or rigid plastic;
5. Personal Property and Special Personal Property must be collected and stored as provided by the policy.
6. The FCS Designee shall be responsible for identifying what is Personal Property, Special Personal Property, trash or debris, hazardous items, or items that otherwise cannot be stored by the City; and
7. If any Personal Property or Special Personal Property is stored, FCS designee shall provide written notice indicating where the property has been stored and how to retrieve the property.

“PERSONAL PROPERTY” means an item that is reasonably recognizable as belonging to a person that has apparent utility in its present condition and circumstances or is identified by an owner as personal property. Examples of personal property include but are not limited to tents, bicycles, radios and other electronic equipment, crutches, wheelchairs, and all items of Special Personal Property. Personal property does not include trash or refuse, including empty plastic or paper bags. The relevant City Employee or contracted entity shall determine whether an item is personal property, and in cases when the status of an item cannot be reasonably determined under the totality of the circumstances, the item shall be treated and handled as personal property.

“SPECIAL PERSONAL PROPERTY” means personal property that is specifically identifiable or of readily identifiable unique value and would be difficult to replace, including, but not limited to, identification documents, birth certificates, photographs, address & phone number books, paperwork including notebooks with writing, mail, and any notices from governmental agencies, eyeglasses, or prescription medication. Special personal property does not include weapons, contraband or illegal items such as illicit drugs.

“LOST OR ABANDONED PROPERTY” means property that has been physically
relinquished or affirmatively disclaimed by encampment resident, when encampment
resident is present; trash and debris left in a public area; and property deserted beyond
a reasonable period of time, when considering the totality of the circumstances, is
abandoned. Property left in someone else’s care is not abandoned.

If persons are not present at the encampment when the FCS Designee returns to the site after the period specified in the written removal notice has expired the following protocol is to be followed:

1. The City shall take reasonable steps to identify and coordinate with appropriate responsible agencies to preserve Personal Property, provided that doing so does not pose a danger to the City Employees present.
2. All trash or debris that are in the immediate area of the encampment, and any items that are deemed hazardous, may be removed and disposed of immediately.
3. As part of the removal of any trash and/or debris, the City shall not destroy any materials of apparent value which appear to be the Personal Property of any individual. There are exceptions that the city may immediately remove and destroy items that cannot be stored by the city, including items that are deemed hazardous, any shopping carts, large collections of items, including collections of bicycle parts, large furniture items, and building materials such as wood products, metal, pallets, or rigid plastic.
4. Personal Property and Special Personal Property, other than items identified that cannot be stored by the City, shall be collected and stored as provided by the policy.

The FCS Designee shall be responsible for identifying what is Personal Property, Special Personal Property, trash or debris, hazardous items, or items that otherwise cannot be stored by the City vi. If any Personal Property or Special Personal Property is stored, FCS designee shall provide written notice indicating where the property has been stored and how to retrieve the property.

The FCS Designee shall work with the appropriate City department or other entity to clean the area where the encampment was located. When the Department of Solid Waste is the appropriate City department, the FCS Designee shall notify the Department of Solid Waste in writing with the location of the encampment prior to any site cleanup as well as the time for notice.

Whenever possible, City staff shall work collaboratively with residents of an encampment to clean up the area where an encampment is located.

90 DAY STORAGE OF COLLECTED PERSONAL PROPERTY

Personal Property collected by the City must be stored for 90 days without charge, during which time the property shall be available to be reclaimed by the owner. After the expiration of 90 days, any unclaimed property will be destroyed.

Special Personal Property shall be in a designated area, in order to make it easier for encampment residents to retrieve these items.

The FCS Designee determines whether an item is Personal Property and whether it is lost or abandoned.

In the case of lost or abandoned property, the FCS designee shall attach a written notice where the encampment was located indicating that Personal Property has been stored and how to retrieve the property.

Written notice is given to the individual instructing them how to claim their property.  The Solid Waste Department shall dispose of any items that have been unclaimed for 90 days.

COORDINATION WITH APD

City Employees may request APD assistance at any point if they believe it is necessary. This may include, but is not limited to, situations in which the resident(s) of the encampment refuses to cooperate with the removal of the encampment after the appropriate notice period has passed or threatens the safety and security of the Designee.

The link to review the entire 16 page policy for responding to homeless encampments  is here:

https://www.cabq.gov/health-housing-homelessness/documents/final-fcs-encampment-policy-11-7-22.pdf

The links to relied upon news sources are here:

https://www.kob.com/albuquerque-news/city-official-answers-questions-on-homeless-encampments-in-albuquerque/6317454/

https://www.krqe.com/news/politics-government/the-process-behind-removing-homeless-camps-from-public-places/

https://www.koat.com/article/albuquerque-is-continuing-to-push-to-clean-up-city-streets-and-parks-filled-with-homeless-encampments/46136128

COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS

Being unhoused is not a crime. Government, be it federal or local, have a moral obligation to help and assist the unhoused, especially those that are mentally ill or who are drug addicted.  The city has spent or is spending upwards of $100 million a year on homeless services including for two emergency shelters, subsidized housing, food and medical care and drug counseling. The vast majority of the chronically unhoused refuse or decline city shelter, housing, services and financial help offered or simply say they are not satisfied with what is being offered by the city.

The unhoused are not above the law. They cannot be allowed to just ignore the law, illegally camp wherever they want for as long as they want and as they choose, when they totally reject any and all government housing or shelter assistance. The City has every right to enforce its laws on behalf of its citizens to preserve and protect the public health, safety and welfare of all its citizens.

Unlawful encampment squatters who refuse city services and all alternatives to living on the street, who want to camp at city parks, on city streets in alleys and trespass in open space give the city no choice but to take action and force them to move on.

Allowing the homeless to use, congregate and camp anywhere they want for as long as they want in violation of city laws and ordinances should never be considered as an option to deal with the homeless crisis given all the resources the city is dedicating the millions being spent to assist the homeless.

The homeless crisis will not be solved by the city nor by Mayor Keller, but it can and must be managed. The management of the crisis is to provide the support services, including food and lodging, and mental health care needed to allow the homeless to turn their lives around, become productive self-sufficient citizens, no longer dependent on relatives or others.

Too many elected and government officials and organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Association of New Mexico, have a hard time dealing with the fact that many homeless adults simply want to live their life as they choose, where they want to camp for as long as they can get away with it, without any government nor family interference and especially no government rules and no regulations.  No county and no municipality should ever be required to just simply ignore and to not enforce anti-camping ordinances, vagrancy laws, civil nuisance abatement laws and criminal laws designed to protect the general public’s health, safety and welfare of a community.

Squatters who have no interest in any offers of shelter, beds, motel vouchers or alternatives to living on the street really give the city no choice but to make it totally inconvenient for them to “squat” anywhere they want and force them to move on. After repeated attempts to force them to move on and citations, arrests are in order.

The link to a related blog article is here:

City Has Upwards Of 2,740 Unhoused, Balance Of State Has 1,907 Unhoused; Numbers Should Be Manageable But Only Getting Worse; Survey Includes Data On ABQ’s Efforts To Dismantle Encampments And Personal Belongings Of Unhoused; City Should Enforce Vagrancy Laws