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Opinion: Americans are facing a herculean but righteous task in fighting hate

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Nicole Hemmer is an associate research scholar at Columbia University with the Obama Presidency Oral History Project and the author of ” Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics ” and the forthcoming ” Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s. ” She co-hosts the history podcasts ” Past Present ” and ” This Day in Esoteric Political History .” The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author. View more opinion on CNN.

(CNN) In the aftermath of the Buffalo massacre, a note of despair has begun creeping into interviews with some experts on domestic extremism. Michael Edison Hayden, a senior investigative reporter with the Southern Poverty Law Center, told ABC News this week, “We’ve had too many wake-up calls at this point for me to feel confident that we’re going to suddenly change the current path that we are on.” Ben Collins, who covers extremism and disinformation for NBC News, explained to MSNBC host Rachel Maddow how right-wing media figures and politicians help mainstream extremist views, but also admitted, “I don’t know how to make people stop doing that.”

Nicole Hemmer

Nicole Hemmer

Despite years of exposés that show how extremists operate, piles of research that document how radicalization occurs, countless hearings and reports on the dangers posed by right-wing extremism, the threat has continued to grow. Right-wing extremist attacks make up the majority of terrorist attacks and plots in the US since 1994, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and it is an escalating threat: 2020 and 2021 saw the highest number of plots and attacks on record, a CSIS official recently told ABC News.

In the wake of a horrific event like the Buffalo massacre, people understandably hope and search for a panacea, a prescriptive solution they can advocate for to prevent it from happening again. But the problem of radicalization and right-wing violence is a deeply entrenched and difficult one, one with complexities that require a society-wide approach across political and social institutions to address.

Why is it so hard to make progress when it comes to right-wing domestic terror? It’s not that experts haven’t developed ideas or suggestions. They’ve mapped out the networks, identified vulnerable communities, made policy recommendations for government and media companies and created resources for deradicalization, including guides for parents worried about their children encountering extremist networks online. But what they haven’t done — what they likely cannot do — is disincentivize the wide range of actors who are invested in thwarting anti-extremism efforts.
There are obvious contributing factors suggested by the murderous violence in Buffalo: racist and eliminationist conspiracy theories, easy access to semiautomatic rifles, online radicalization, potential mental illness and isolation. The cumulative effect of these suggests the need for a multilevel approach to prevent future violence, one that ranges from better content regulation on social media and robust educational resources to gun reform and investment in a range of community services to help connect people to aid and to one another.
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But as we’ve seen time and again, politics have become a major barrier to efforts like these. Even identifying right-wing extremism has been a challenge. In 2009, when the Department of Homeland Security issued a report on the rising danger of right-wing extremism, it triggered such a powerful backlash from right-wing media and Republican lawmakers that the report was withdrawn and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano apologized after its release.

In more recent years, Republicans have played down acts of right-wing violence, from former President Donald Trump’s soft-pedaled comments about the riot in Charlottesville, Virginia, to the current insistence that the people involved in the insurrection were engaged in “legitimate political discourse” and they are now ” political prisoners .” Congress is currently considering the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2022 to expand government resources for studying far-right extremism. But while the bill passed with bipartisan support in the House — it has three Republican co-sponsors — it faces an uphill battle in the Senate.
On gun regulation, the Republican opposition is so solid, despite public support , that the subject barely makes the news cycle, even after a horrific attack like the one in Buffalo. Though many conservatives insist that the real issue is mental illness, not easy access to guns, they have also opposed regulations that would make it harder for people dealing with mental illness from acquiring weapons.
A number of conservatives also resist any argument that implicates part of their mainstream ecosystem, whether Republican lawmakers or right-wing media stars, for the spread of racist conspiracy theories that emerge from (or embrace) violent ideologies. But the connections are real: the Great Replacement conspiracy theory has gained traction on the mainstream right, which gives it a kind of legitimacy and visibility that makes radicalization easier.
Beyond politics, there are other barriers to the kind of public understanding necessary to grapple with right-wing domestic terrorism. In her book, ” Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America ,” Kathleen Belew carefully details the difficulty Americans have had in understanding this kind of violence as part of a broader social movement, rather than a series of actions undertaken by unrelated lone-wolf actors.
Experts such as Belew and others have done considerable work to expose the connections between far-right organizations and the growing number of right-wing massacres in the US, but the lone-wolf mythology still has power in the public discourse over these bouts of violence.
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The other challenge comes from a broader development in the US: increasing failure by government to invest in services that help sustain more resilient communities. Social and economic dislocation contributes to radicalization, as extremist groups manipulate feelings of loneliness and fear to draw people into their movement. In a country that has been wracked by multiple compounding crises, from the 2008 financial collapse to the Covid-19 pandemic to the January 6 insurrection, investment in community services is more necessary than ever. But we also live in an era where funding for state and local programs is constantly being slashed and social services are being privatized , making it more difficult for people to access the care and support they need.
That endeavor is made more difficult by staunch conservative opposition to necessary reforms. Which doesn’t mean it will be impossible to defang right-wing radicalism, but rather that Americans will have to enact systemic changes over the long-term to bring that violence under control. That will require significant action from government to curb the availability of weapons of war and fund struggling communities, from media companies to make it more difficult to be pulled into a web of radicalization, and from communities to create spaces of connection and support. It is not an easy project, but it is a vital one.

Opinion: In the world’s largest democracy, ‘looking Muslim’ could cost your life

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Akanksha Singh is a Mumbai-based journalist covering politics and social justice and has written for the BBC, The Independent and South China Morning Post, among others. Roshan Abbas is a Delhi-based documentary photographer and a student at Jamia Millia Islamia. The views expressed in this commentary are their own. View more opinion on CNN.

(CNN) When, as journalists, we prepare for a job, we think carefully about our questions, locations and equipment. But for one of us, documentary photographer Roshan Abbas, there is an added consideration — how much of his true identity to reveal.

Abbas, co-author of this article, is a Muslim man in India. A country where, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s watch, Muslims are being vilified and evicted from their homes, their freedom of religious expression stifled.
It’s oppression Abbas has experienced firsthand, choosing not to wear a kurta — a loose, collarless shirt — that might point to his identity as a Muslim, when traveling the country for work.

The decision is cautionary. In public spaces, there looms a sense of uneasiness. Mob lynchings of Muslims who look visibly Muslim have arisen in the past.

Likewise, Muslim women wearing hijab can face backlash and discrimination, even though there’s no national ban on religious garments in public spaces.
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Abbas also takes care not to disclose that he attends Jamia Millia Islamia — a Muslim university associated with student-led protests against the government. The campus has been closed on-and-off since 2019 amid a tumultuous relationship with the government.
Just one example of the targeted persecution of Muslims is a controversial citizenship law granting Indian citizenship to non-Muslim immigrants, introduced by the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2019.

Prime Minister Modi has previously suggested that people protesting against the law can be “identified by their clothes” — a clear reference to Muslim protesters. Little wonder then, that Indian Muslims feel they have had to change how they dress, eat and speak in public.
Tensions between Indian Hindus and Muslims have been flashpoints for decades, even before the British left in 1947 and the country gained independence. But since Modi’s government came to power in 2014, crimes against the Muslim minority have steadily increased.
Until recently , members of the BJP hadn’t outwardly acknowledged their goal of making India a Hindu nation. Othering Muslims, the country’s second largest religion, has proven to be an effective strategy in the BJP’s majoritarian politics.
Now, India’s roughly 200 million Muslims — just over 14% of the population — are defending their right to live.
Last month, local authorities and bulldozers razed shops and homes in Jahangirpuri — a low-income, predominantly Muslim neighbourhood in Delhi. The demolition followed communal clashes between Hindus and Muslims in the area. It mirrored the manner in which authorities responded to similar outbreaks of violence in other parts of the country — with bulldozers.
What we are seeing in India is more than the systemic oppression of Muslims and other minorities. Prior to 2014, Muslims already accounted for only 14% of the population, but almost 20% of inmates in India’s jails.
But with authorities having abandoned their fundamental duty to safeguard the constitutional rights of minorities, India’s Muslim population is being rendered insignificant by the day.
What’s more, open calls for violence against Muslims have become increasingly frequent. Following the southern state of Karnataka’s controversial ban on headscarves in classrooms earlier this year, a member of a Hindu nationalist youth group called for those who wore hijabs to be “cut… into pieces.”
And in December last year, a Hindu leader at an event in the northern state of Uttarakhand called for “Hindus to take up weapons” to ensure a “Muslim didn’t become the prime minister in 2029.”
Yet world leaders seem unbothered by the state of affairs on the ground in India. There are no sanctions or wide condemnations of the Modi government. What little international media coverage there is of the situation — in our experience as journalists — been pushed aside to cover the war in Ukraine. And while that news needs due coverage, so does this.
There have been some international breakout moments. On his recent visit to Gujarat, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited a JCB plant and posed for photos on a bulldozer — the same brand of bulldozers used to demolish Muslim-owned shops and homes.
This caused outrage both in India and the UK, with members of the opposition in the UK even going so far as to question whether Johnson’s trip to India ” helped legitmize the actions of Modi’s far-right government.”
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson waves from a digger at a JCB factory in Gujarat, during his trip to India in April.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson waves from a digger at a JCB factory in Gujarat, during his trip to India in April.

It is perhaps unsurprising that Modi has yet to condemn the recent spurts of communal violence across the country. Despite India being the world’s largest democracy, and constitutionally secular, the BJP has repeatedly stoked the flames of communalism, othering Muslims, branding them dangerous and violent.
In recent years, several BJP-governed states passed a “love jihad” (or “anti-conversion”) law. The law aims to prevent women from converting when they marry outside their faith, particularly, as the nickname suggests, keeping Hindu women from marrying Muslim men. It’s been likened to the 1935 Nuremberg laws banning marriages between Jews and those of “pure” German blood in Nazi Germany.
This year, we find ourselves inching further toward a propaganda nation-state. A controversial film about a fictional university student who finds out Islamist militants murdered his Kashmiri Hindu parents was openly praised by Modi.
The film enjoyed a “tax free” status in several states to make it more accessible to a wider audience. However, this too was accompanied by anti-Muslim sloganeering and its screening in “mixed population areas” of Delhi was accompanied by increased police presence.
Islamophobia has permeated every aspect of Indian society. Our cities are being renamed to erase traces of Muslim history , while Muslims in metropolitan areas face ghettoization on account of structural biases.
And while beef and meat bans intimidate economically deprived marginalized groups including Muslims, the gross double standards of beef exports from India continue. (Cows, for those unfamiliar, are sometimes considered sacred in Hinduism.)
Indian Muslims are forced to navigate social spaces with an eye of caution, amid a so-called “anti-terror” law to arrest and incarcerate for years without trial. For many activists and journalists jailed under the law, their only fault is their Muslim identity. But any unjust incarceration does more than silence the brave; it instills a sense of fear in the young minds of the Muslim community.
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Indeed, in March the international alliance, Genocide Watch, put out a genocide warning — Muslims in India are under threat. India on the Brink, a genocide prevention summit, also declared that the country was on the brink of genocide.
How Abbas dresses for work is just the tip of the iceberg; Muslim women continue to face the brunt of Hindu nationalism. What’s happening to India’s Muslim population is a humanitarian issue we should all be paying attention to.

Opinion: How Australia’s ‘mate-ocracy’ created a toxic Parliament

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Susan Harris Rimmer is the Director of the Griffith University Policy Innovation Hub and a human rights lawyer in Brisbane, Australia. She is a co-convenor of the Griffith Gender Equality Research Network, a Fulbright Scholar and a Top Innovator with the World Economic Forum Uplink Climate Justice Challenge. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. Read more opinion at CNN.

(CNN) When I travel abroad, the only reference point most people have for Australian politics is the now-legendary misogyny speech by the first and only female Prime Minister Julia Gillard in 2012.

In her blistering 15-minute takedown of then-opposition leader Tony Abbott, Gillard raised her outstretched hand towards the grinning Abbott and said, “I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. I will not … Not now, not ever.”
The 10th anniversary of this speech will be commemorated in October this year and has turned up in popular culture everywhere from contemporary dance to tea towels and TikTok routines .

Watch Julia Gillard's famous speech on misogyny.

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Watch Julia Gillard’s famous speech on misogyny. 02:19

But has anything improved for Australian women in that decade, or even since the last election in 2019?

Australians will go to the polls Saturday in the shadow of sexual harassment scandals that have rocked Parliament, barely any visibility of female leaders from either major party, and seemingly not much concern to woo the female vote.
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The two lead candidates — Prime Minister Scott Morrison of the center-right Liberals and Anthony Albanese of the center-left Labor — are both Sydney men in their 50s, fairly blokey types, though with markedly different worldviews and class backgrounds.
Both men are vying for the top job at a moment when scrutiny of Australia’s macho political environment has never been stronger. But the second Leaders Debate last week, where the two men shouted over each other and ignored the younger female moderator, felt like a step backward to the 1950s.

Lead candidates Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Labor leader Anthony Albanese are similiar in age and appearance.

Lead candidates Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Labor leader Anthony Albanese are similiar in age and appearance.

Australia’s Parliament has long struggled with a reputation as a boozy boys club. And last year’s revelation of the alleged rape of staffer Brittany Higgins by a colleague inside Parliament House itself in 2019, including an inadequate response from her employers, seemed to bear that out. The man accused of raping Higgins is pleading not guilty to the charge, and will stand trial in June.
The incident inspired mass marches by women across Australia, which Prime Minister Morrison refused to attend, and began a shift in women’s voting intentions away from his ruling Liberal-National coalition as captured by polls.
Later that year, a review conducted by Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins found that one in three staff parliamentary staffers had experienced sexual harassment.
The tumult of 2021 was reflected in Australia’s sliding global ranking on gender equality. In the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index, Australia fell from 15th place in 2006, to 50th in 2021.
Unlike other Western nations, Australia has no Equality Act like the one in the UK (and no charter of rights), no Standing Committee on the Status of Women like Canada, no White House Gender Policy Council.
The extremely informal nature of Australian democracy, both in discourse and the types of structures in Parliament, creates a kind of “mate-ocracy.” Australia has an elite upper class of powerful men that presents itself as egalitarian in style — but not in substance.
The mining sector, big banks, Murdoch press, military and parliamentary power brokers together promote a facade of informal inclusion — that in fact keeps masculine privilege unchallenged.
Indeed, gender politics researcher Sonya Palmieri has identified the narrow reliance in federal politics on two dominant political leadership styles — the ” larrikin ” and the “aggressor” — both reserved for hypermasculine leaders.
This kind of “win at all costs” culture fueled the experiences of female parliamentarians and staffers describing animal noises when they rise to speak, groping, exclusion and bullying in the Jenkins review, along with threats of violence. Speaking about the Women’s March, the Prime Minister shocked many by saying it was a “triumph of democracy” that the marchers were not “met with bullets.”
Others, like political scientist Anne Tiernan, situate this sexism as part of a broader threat to democracy from incivility and dwindling habits of collaboration, that we also saw in former President Donald Trump’s America and now in Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s UK.
But this election also brings a new phenomenon in Australian politics — “teal” independents , so-called after their unique shade of Liberal blue and environmentalist Greens, crowdfunded by Climate 200 .
The rise of these professional women running on a gender, climate and integrity platform against more progressive Liberals in inner-city seats, is turning a spotlight on gender equality on the conservative side of politics.
This will be the first election where voters have the chance to judge Morrison’s handling of parliamentary scandals, and the first since strict Covid-19 lockdowns underlined the burden on women in the home.
Morrison is the son of a policeman, born in 1968 in Bronte, a wealthy eastern beach suburb of Sydney. He is a dedicated Pentecostal Christian, who regularly cites his wife, Jenny.
He worships at an American-style mega-church that has close ties to the global Pentecostal Hillsong community movement. The very tough former immigration minister and treasurer was a surprise candidate for prime minister in 2018 and won the 2019 “miracle” election.
His primary campaigning style is focused on “tradies” (electricians, plumbers, builders and carpenters), visiting infrastructure projects wearing hi-vis vests and an avuncular manner.
As Prime Minister, Morrison’s gender record has faced criticism as he chose to protect colleagues Alan Tudge and Christian Porter from serious allegations, and took a very long time to respond to the Higgins case. Both Tudge and Porter deny the allegations.
Morrison was also accused of bullying former CEO of Australia Post Christina Holgate and Liberal colleague Julia Banks, who wrote a book about her treatment. Morrison rejected the claims.
In policy terms too, federal budgets and tax reforms have favored wealthy men and ignored most women.
Facing Morrison is Labor opposition leader Albanese — a former deputy prime minister in the Gillard government with a starkly different background.
Albanese was born in Western Sydney to a single mother and grew up on welfare and in public housing before going to university and getting into student politics.
Although best known for infrastructure policy, he has been a longtime supporter of the gay community and progressive gender policies, particularly closing the gender pay gap and support pay rises for workers in low paid industries dominated by women.
When it comes to female representation in the major parties, Labor introduced an affirmative action quota in 1994 and is now close to 50% representation. In contrast, the Liberal-National coalition, which has been in government for nine years, has only 25% women, and these numbers are behind Australia’s falling diversity rankings.
Meanwhile, both major parties are still running most of their female candidates in unwinnable seats. Of the female candidates running for the coalition, 20% are contesting seats considered to be safe in the hands of the opposition, compared with the 46% of men who are set to be elected. For the Labor Party, the numbers are slightly better, with 24% of female candidates contesting safe seats, compared with 33% of male candidates.
Looking more closely at their policies, neither has a gender equality platform as detailed as the Greens , who are led by Adam Bandt, a former labor lawyer comfortable with conflict, albeit with a more genteel style.
Minor parties are expected to do well in this election with a record share of the primary vote and an influence on preference flows that could decide several seats in the cities.
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So, with everything to play for this week, where is the pitch to Australia’s female voters? For too long, the Australian Parliament has been run like private gentleman’s clubs of yesteryear with a culture that prioritizes protection for the powerful over professionalism for all.
This election might be the final straw for that culture.

Opinion: Why North Korea’s Covid-19 outbreak could shock the world

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Dr. Kee B. Park (@keepark) is director of the Korea Health Policy Project at Harvard Medical School. He has worked alongside North Korean doctors during more than 20 visits to North Korea and is a member of the National Committee on North Korea, which facilitates principled engagement between the US and North Korea. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more opinion on CNN.

(CNN) If I learned one thing after performing countless operations alongside surgeons in Pyongyang over the past 15 years, it’s North Koreans do not throw anything away.

I have used scalpels dulled from reuse to make incisions. One time I watched an anesthesiologist use his hands to squeeze a bag every three to four seconds to ventilate a patient for several hours during an operation.
It was business as usual in a place where medical equipment like mechanical ventilators are scarce. And I have always admired their ability to work with limited resources.

But now I fear for the safety of the doctors and nurses, as well as their ability to care for the surge of Covid-19 patients in the hospitals.

Last week, North Korea announced the first confirmed case of Covid-19 inside the country. Since then, we have learned of at least 1.72 million “fever cases,” with about half in quarantine and dozens of deaths so far. The Omicron BA.2 variant was found in at least one of the deaths.
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With symptomatic cases accounting for roughly 7% of the population of 25 million, the outbreak is a disaster for North Korea.
We need to help North Korea immediately. Given the entire population has yet to be vaccinated, the death toll could be unprecedented.

North Korea, like China, has adopted a zero-Covid strategy for managing the virus. To its credit, this strategy of prioritizing the prevention of the virus from entering its borders seemed highly effective, with apparently no confirmed cases for over two years.
But the highly transmissible Omicron variants changed everything. China had successfully thwarted the virus until recently, succumbing to drastic lockdowns in several cities, including Shanghai.
Now, the virus has breached North Korea’s defenses. And the relatively weak ability of North Korea to respond to the massive outbreak is alarming.
First, they lack medical countermeasures. The capacity to treat large numbers of patients with severe respiratory illness is limited. They need oxygen, IV fluids, ventilators, personal protective equipment (especially for the health care workers) and antibiotics.
But the most valuable items right now are the newly developed antivirals against Covid-19. Paxlovid appears to be effective against the Omicron BA.2 variant, can be taken by mouth and does not require any special storage and transportation methods. We should send these medical countermeasures as soon as possible. People are dying now, and we can and should help.
Secondly, their testing capacity is woefully inadequate. According to the WHO South-East Asia Region office situation reports , North Korea has been testing about 1,500 people each week for Covid-19.
If this is their maximum capacity, it would be impossible to test the current number of symptomatic patients — 1.72 million and counting — let alone their contacts. They also need Covid-19 tests to confirm diagnosis before initiating Paxlovid. We should send diagnostics in sufficient quantities now; they are flying blind.
Third, the country is food insecure . Lockdowns are hard on the people, especially the poorest. Even stricter isolation measures are expected now that the virus has entered the country.
Immediate food aid is needed to mitigate hunger for those who lack the supplies to weather the lockdowns.
North Korea has not vaccinated its population. They have rejected offers of vaccines, presumably believing they could ride out the pandemic in isolation until it goes away.
The risk of the virus entering via cargo and possibly foreigners was not worth the benefit the vaccines provided. They were overreliant on their ability to keep the virus out and therefore unprepared for the outbreak.
The breach and the ensuing outbreak require a new strategy that can increase the protection of the population from further outbreaks. mRNA vaccines are effective against Omicron BA.2. Sufficient quantities of vaccines and deployment supplies should be offered to North Korea quickly. Our research has shown North Korea can deploy mRNA vaccines using the existing network of refrigerators.
The first group of people to be vaccinated should be the frontline health workers as they are facing an onslaught of Covid-19 patients each day.
When delivering assistance to North Korea, the “who” and “how” are as important as the “what.” A nationwide crisis requires all actors to work together.
The United Nations is in the best position to coordinate the different agencies, such as the World Health Organization, UNICEF, World Food Programme and nongovernmental organizations; to manage the complex regulations and logistics; and to help implement them alongside the North Korean government.
The monitoring and evaluation requirements should not be a sticking point right now — people’s lives are at stake. We should also take a solidarity approach and not demand North Korea ask for help first. Our hands should go out first; their need is clear.
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North Korea needs to become more flexible as well. They should not try to manage the crisis by patching together isolated aid packages from individual organizations. We need a clear focal point of communication to coordinate with the international community. The obvious counterpart to the United Nations is the DPRK Mission in New York.

To be sure, aid to North Korea is controversial. On the same day the outbreak was announced, North Korea fired three short-range ballistic missiles. Perhaps we can have a moratorium on any military activity on the Korean Peninsula until the outbreak is contained. Such activity diverts precious resources and attention away from the urgent needs of the people.
All sides need to have their eyes on containing the pandemic. It’s in everyone’s interest to help North Korea contain this outbreak — and prevent future ones.

Opinion: Standing up for immigrants is part of America’s foundation

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Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat who represents Washington’s 7th congressional district in the US House of Representatives, came to the US at 16 alone and went on to start an immigrant rights organization in Washington state. Deepak Bhargava is a distinguished lecturer at CUNY’s School of Labor and Urban Studies and a longtime organizer and immigrant rights movement leader. They are contributors to ” Immigration Matters: Movements, Visions and Strategies for a Progressive Future .” The views expressed in this commentary belong to the authors. View more opinion at CNN.

(CNN) Immigrants are a bedrock of our country. For years, the US has benefited in immeasurable ways from the energy, the ingenuity and the passion that immigrants bring to our country. We’ve seen these contributions firsthand as immigrants ourselves.

Pramila Jayapal

Pramila Jayapal

Deepak Bhargava

Deepak Bhargava

We’ve also organized for immigrant rights for over two decades. We’ve protested, lobbied, marched and even gotten arrested to advance the immigrant cause. We do this work because we understand that in a country where, according to data compiled by the American Immigration Council, one in every seven US residents is an immigrant, and one in every eight is a native-born US citizen with at least one immigrant parent, immigrants are an undeniable part of who we are. They deserve dignity, opportunity and respect.

We know from experience that America succeeds more by embracing immigrants, and as Democrats, we can affirm that by embracing immigrants instead of vilifying them. It’s especially crucial to remember that now, when Republicans, and even some Democrats , wrongly criticize the Biden administration’s overdue action to end Title 42, a xenophobic policy masquerading as a public health measure that has blocked people from seeking asylum in the United States since March 2020.

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Since its implementation, Title 42 has been criticized by leading epidemiologists and public health experts, who have pointed out that the order only applies to asylum-seekers coming from the southern border, not permanent residents, US citizens or tourists coming back into the country at the same time. Public health experts have many times said that there is no public health rationale for an asylum ban.
Last month, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced the order would be terminated on May 23. But a federal judge in Louisiana temporarily blocked the end of Title 42 and heard arguments last Friday, saying he would issue a ruling before May 23. Meanwhile, a number of US senators have also introduced a new bill to prevent the Biden administration from lifting the policy. Although we’ve seen polling that suggests many Americans support the extension of Title 42, we believe it comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of what the policy actually does than a support of the policy itself.
To understand today’s polarized debate, we must rewind the tape to review the damage done by the previous administration. Former President Donald Trump may have targeted undocumented immigrants in his public statements, but his administration often focused on closing pathways for legal migration. His administration reduced the number of refugees allowed to enter the US to a trickle and made it harder for people to get visas and become US citizens.

But Trump didn’t stop there — he complicated asylum-seeking efforts too. Asylum must be understood as a critical part of the legal immigration system in America. Under both domestic and international law , people fearing persecution because of their membership in a marginalized group have a right to seek protection and residence in the United States. Those who are coming to the southern border at designated checkpoints are exercising that right — and should be afforded fair treatment and have their cases heard.
Trump used Title 42 to block that process on the grounds that people seeking asylum might pose a public health threat due to Covid-19. It was wrong when it was first implemented, and it is wrong now. Public health experts agreed that the policy failed to further public health and that the CDC failed to consider alternative measures that would protect public health without circumventing our legal obligation to asylum-seekers.
Anticipating the end of Title 42, the Department of Homeland Security released a memo about surging resources at the border to ensure that people can seek asylum as they are entitled to do by law. Until Congress agrees to tackle a comprehensive overhaul of our broken and backlogged immigration system, this plan will implement a more humane approach to helping people who flee violence, famine and persecution to come to the United States.
Under this plan, DHS will increase resources to support border operations, including transportation, medical support and operational facilities. They will also bolster the capacity of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to receive migrants after they’ve been processed. DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas laid out DHS’s plan to handle the expected influx of refugees at the border in a recent House Judiciary Committee hearing — and we are eager for people to hear more about this plan.
Though we wish the administration had acted sooner, we commend President Joe Biden for lifting Title 42 more than two years after the policy was first implemented. It’s not surprising that Biden has been attacked by Republicans for doing so — and that many Republican-led states have sought to fight this in court. But we are disturbed to see that some Democrats have also opposed the move to lift Title 42. This is wrong on moral and humanitarian grounds.
Immigration continues to be an issue that dominates headlines. And we must not hesitate to communicate with voters our vision for how we can fix our broken immigration system with compassionate, people-centered solutions.
After four years of the Trump administration, the so-called Muslim ban and harsh policies that saw thousands of kids separated from their families at the border, Americans are choosing to open their arms and hearts instead. According to Gallup, as of July of 2021, 75% of Americans thought immigration was a good thing for our country. And a majority supported creating more pathways to citizenship for DACA recipients and immigrants with temporary status in the US.
If the overwhelmingly positive reception for Ukrainian refugees and Afghan refugees is indicative of US sentiment, in many cases Americans are willing to not only accept greater levels of immigration, but also to sponsor refugees and immigrants and welcome them into their communities and their homes.
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Even as the rhetoric around immigrants and immigration gets more divisive , we must remember that there are real people behind this issue. We cannot take our compassion and our empathy out of the process. We cannot allow hatred and fear of political retaliation to prevent us from doing the right thing. Immigration policy is not just about immigrants — it defines our character and identity as a multiracial, inclusive democracy.

It is clear now more than ever that Democrats need to stop running away from immigration at the slightest hint of pressure. Instead, we must use this moment to lean in and offer an alternative to Republican xenophobia by unapologetically embracing our vibrant immigrant communities. By taking a stand, we will stop many of today’s prominent Republicans from using immigrants as political footballs and show the community that rallied behind us that we proudly support them.
We are now at a defining crossroad in our country when it comes to immigration, and Democrats have a unique opportunity to finally deliver on immigration reform. The stakes couldn’t be higher, or more important. Standing behind immigrants, their families and their friends isn’t just the right and moral thing to do — it is at the very foundation of who we are as a country.