Tory Lysik | Vox

Senate Republicans threatened to burn a bill that would have helped veterans. Here’s why.

2022-08-02T15:29:05-04:00

Veterans and supporters of the Honoring Our PACT Act during a press conference after Republican senators stalled the bill, meant to help military veterans exposed to toxic burn pits, at the Capitol in Washington, DC, on July 28. | Nathan Posner/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

After Republicans initially blocked a bill that would expand benefits for veterans exposed to toxins while deployed, the Senate is now poised to pass the legislation in the coming days.

Last week, sudden Republican opposition to the bill, called the PACT Act, left many veterans and their supporters shocked. After days of backlash, lawmakers are set to reconsider the bill in a Senate vote this week, with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell telling NBC News that he expects it will pass.

Both chambers of Congress previously approved the bill, with the Senate voting 84-14 in June in favor, but the bill was forced into another vote after “administrative issues” were found in its text. After changes were made, it was expected to breeze through Congress and be signed into law by President Joe Biden.

Opposition from 25 Republican senators who changed their vote, citing concerns over how the measure was funded, stymied the bill last Wednesday.

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), who led opposition to the bill, expressed his desire for an amendment focused on budgetary spending.

Tonight, the Senate voted to give us the chance to fix a completely unnecessary budget gimmick in the underlying text of the PACT Act. This gimmick allows $400B in spending completely unrelated to veterans care. pic.twitter.com/TAuE12G8l0
— Pat Toomey (US Sen. ret.) (@SenToomey) July 27, 2022

“There is a mechanism created in this bill, it’s a budgetary gimmick, that has the intent of making it possible to have a huge explosion in unrelated spending — $400 billion,” Toomey claimed on the Senate floor Wednesday.

Shortly after his floor speech, Toomey told CNN he wants the funding of the bill handled through an annual appropriations process, rather than the current mandatory spending structure — basically, that he wants Congress to have to approve funding for the measure every year, rather than for it to be funded automatically.

Other Republican senators say they were convinced by this argument, and now, Schumer has said he will allow a vote on an appropriations amendment as the bill comes up for consideration again this week.

It’s not yet clear whether some Republicans will continue to fight against the bill if they don’t get the changes they want. However, given the blowback the GOP has faced following its failure in the Senate last week, the party is likely more open to finding a compromise to quickly move it forward. If it is filibustered, the bill will need 60 votes — including GOP support — in order to pass.

Republicans say they oppose the bill because of its spending. Democrats disagree.

Republicans, including McConnell, claimed their opposition to the bill has been rooted in how spending would be approved.

“As written, the legislation would not just help America’s veterans as designed. It could also allow Democrats to effectively spend the same money twice and enable hundreds of billions in new, unrelated spending on the discretionary side of the federal budget,” McConnell said on Thursday.

This opposition raised the question of why more than two dozen Republicans, many veterans themselves, voted for it earlier this summer but flipped last week.

Democrats, including, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) argued that Republicans took out on the PACT Act their anger over a separate bill. Democrats are attempting to pass the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which includes a historic $369 billion to be spent over the next 10 years to address climate change, health care, inflation, and taxes.

And they’re doing so over Republican pushback. McConnell vowed not to allow a bipartisan technology bill championed by Schumer, the CHIPS Act, to clear the Senate so long as the proposal that became the Inflation Reduction Act was on the table. Democrats announced that a deal on the social and climate spending had stalled, perhaps indefinitely, and the CHIPS bill was allowed to move forward. Hours later, the IRA was announced, much to the GOP’s chagrin.

“Republicans are mad that Democrats are on the verge of passing climate change legislation and have decided to take out their anger on vulnerable veterans,” Murphy argued. “News emerged that there is an agreement that makes it likely that a climate change bill is going to proceed on the Senate floor, and magically 30 votes flip.”

The Democratic candidate for an open Senate seat in Missouri, Lucas Kunce, echoed the sentiment in an interview with Vox. “They had voted for it the first time, they changed because they want to protest a separate bill is what I understand,” he said. Kunce served three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan as a Marine officer and was deployed in Iraq where he was stationed near a burn pit and developed a post-nasal drip due to his exposure.

Republicans’ decision to oppose the bill has been met with massive backlash; veterans activist and former television host John Stewart has made numerous appearances calling on the GOP to return to backing the bill, including on Fox News. Veterans and their allies have also protested continually in front of the Capitol. The protests and publicity are challenging the traditional narrative that the Republican Party stands by US troops. Acknowledging the public pressure, McConnell told NBC’s Ali Vitali, “Yeah, it’ll pass this week” on Monday.

What the PACT Act is, and why it matters

The Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act, otherwise known as the PACT Act, was introduced in June by Rep. Mark Takano (D-CA), who chairs the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, with the aim to address and fund health care, research, and other matters related to veterans who were exposed to toxic substances, including burn pits — large trenches dug to burn and dispose of sewage, medical waste, and other trash — during their service.

The bill contains two major components: a grace period for veterans who served near burn pits to get medical care, and a policy that tells the VA how to approach certain illnesses and cancers. Veterans would not have to prove that their illnesses are directly related to burn pit exposure to receive disability payments and assistance. Currently, more than 70 percent of disability claims related to burn pit exposure are denied by the VA due to veterans’ inability to prove their illnesses or cancers are linked to exposure to burn pits.

Cancers and other issues alleged to be related to burn pits can come years later, as happened to Sgt. Heath Robinson, whom the bill is named after. Robinson died in 2020 of a rare lung cancer he attributed to smoke exposure during his deployment in Iraq in 2006 and 2007.

Kunce said he felt that many in the armed services assumed they wouldn’t be put in such a harmful situation. “[It was] probably a dumb assumption to make, but … you gotta trust the system, first of all,” Kunce said. “Second of all, you’ve got no choice, right? I mean, you’re there, there’s nothing else you could do.”

Robinson’s wife Danielle, an advocate for burn pit exposure victims who have been denied benefits, attended Biden’s State of the Union address earlier this year. In his speech, Biden laid out his support for enhancing veterans’ benefits as part of his so-called bipartisan “unity agenda” which, among other things, focuses on the commitment to veterans by delivering on promises made regarding health care, mental health, and homelessness.

The PACT Act is part of a broader conversation that’s happening over veterans’ rights. In June, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision in favor of a veteran whose case was related to burn pit exposure in Torres v. Texas Department of Public Safety. The ruling allowed US Army veteran Le Roy Torres to sue the state of Texas after losing his job due to an injury he received while serving.

A vote on the legislation should happen this week, and, as McConnell suggested, it is expected to pass, regardless of what happens with Toomey’s amendment. If it were to fail, the GOP would again find itself at the center of protests and accusations the party would like to avoid ahead of the midterms.

Update, August 2, 12:30 pm: This story has been updated to include new information about a Senate vote on this legislation.

The attack on a prison holding Ukraine POWs, explained

2022-08-01T12:06:19-04:00

Protesters hold signs protesting the bombing of a prison in Olenivka in the Donetsk that held Ukrainian POWs during an antiwar protest in Cologne, Germany | Ying Tang/NurPhoto via Getty Images

In a week punctuated by accusations between Moscow and Kyiv, including the bombing of a jail housing Ukrainian prisoners of war, horrifying new footage surfaced of the torture and summary execution of a Ukrainian POW.

The videos, which are not linked in this article, show a Ukrainian POW being gagged, castrated, shot dead, and dragged through a street; they emerged on Russian Telegram channels, the Kyiv Post reported. While independent verification of when or where the videos were filmed has not been possible yet, Aric Toler, the director of research and training for the investigative collective Bellingcat, told the Washington Post that the “Z” symbol, used to show support for the Russian war effort, belies some claims that the video is older than the Ukrainian war.

This is hardly the first time Russian soldiers have been documented participating in abuse of Ukrainian soldiers, as well as civilians. From the early days of the war, Ukrainian authorities and international human rights organizations have cataloged a constant stream of violence. In April, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported 10 witness or victim accounts of executions, mock executions, sexual violence, and looting in Russian-occupied territories. One woman told HRW that while she was sheltering in Malaya Rohan, a village in the Kharkiv region, a Russian soldier sexually assaulted and beat her. Another witness recounted Russian soldiers making five men kneel down with their shirts pulled over their heads before they shot and killed one of them.

“Rape, murder, and other violent acts against people in the Russian forces’ custody should be investigated as war crimes,” said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, in the release.

The bombing of the jail holding POWs, some of whom were involved with the defense of Mariupol’s Azovstal Iron and Steel Works, has sparked an even more pitched conversation about the Russian treatment of Ukrainian prisoners and POWs. The attack, in a municipality called Olenivka, resulted in at least 53 prisoners’ deaths and 75 injuries, according to Russia’s defense ministry.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has released a statement requesting access to those who are injured “to determine the health and condition of all the people present on-site at the time of the attack.”

Under the Geneva Conventions, Russia is obligated to give the ICRC free access to all POWs. While the ICRC has requested access to the prison where the Ukrainian POWs died in Olenivka and offered to help evacuate those wounded in the attack on the facility, as of Sunday it has not been given permission to do so.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for an investigation, deeming the bombing of the facility holding Ukrainian POWs a war crime.

“When the defenders of Azovstal left the plant, the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross acted as guarantors of the life and health of our soldiers. The Armed Forces of Ukraine, the Security Service, the Main Intelligence Directorate and the representative of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine issued a joint statement addressing to the UN and the Red Cross as guarantors of those agreements regarding the defenders of Azovstal. I support this statement. Now the guarantors must react. They must protect the lives of hundreds of Ukrainian prisoners of war,” Zelenskyy said in a statement.

The European Union has already condemned Russia for its “unjustified war of aggression against Ukraine and its people,” noting the conflict “brings further horrific atrocities day by day,” but is now also voicing support for an investigation into the bombing specifically.

Moscow and Kyiv have accused each other of being responsible for the bombing.

Other abuses

Russia has also been implicated in other violations of international law, including forcibly removing and relocating people, including children, from occupied Ukrainian territories. Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova told Reuters in June that she is currently investigating multiple inquiries into the forcible transfer of people to Russia. “From the first days of the war, we started this case about genocide,” Venediktova told Reuters. She was unable to provide a number of exactly how many people were transferred.

The United States State Department suspects between 900,000 and 1.6 million Ukrainian citizens, including 260,000 children, have been detained and transferred to Russia, often to isolated regions.

“Moscow’s actions appear pre-meditated and draw immediate historical comparisons to Russian ‘filtration’ operations in Chechnya and other areas. President Putin’s ‘filtration’ operations are separating families, confiscating Ukrainian passports, and issuing Russian passports in an apparent effort to change the demographic makeup of parts of Ukraine,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrote in the statement. Reports also show Russia is deliberately separating children from their families and putting children up for adoption.

Meanwhile, dueling diplomacy in Africa and the Middle East

While Russia is losing face with and becoming more isolated from the West, the country is digging in on other strategic partnerships.

Russia’s Middle Eastern and African allies have been feeling the pinch from Western countries that expect them to distance themselves from Putin’s actions, creating an uncomfortable dance based on necessity from both sides. Access to Russia’s grain exports and other food goods remains a key pressure point for African and Middle Eastern countries. In east Africa, extreme drought and the Ukraine conflict are pushing countries to the brink, according to a report from the United Nations.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov was recently in Cairo as part of his geostrategic Africa trip, addressing organizations on Russia’s military operations in Ukraine. He said the West pushed Russia to invade after ignoring concerns over NATO’s expansion.

The US is making a geopolitical move itself by sending President Joe Biden’s ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, to Ghana, as well as Secretary of State Blinken to multiple African nations in the coming weeks. US Agency for International Development chief Samantha Power was also recently in Somalia and Kenya.

Hoping for the best but fearing the worst

International calls to prosecute Russia for its crimes continue to mount, with the European Union urging action to be taken in The Hague.

“The perpetrators of war crimes and other serious violations, as well as the responsible government officials and military representatives, will be held accountable,” the Union said in a statement shortly after the Donetsk prison bombings. “The European Union actively supports all measures to ensure accountability for human rights violations and violations of international humanitarian law committed during the Russian aggression in Ukraine.”

While it’s technically possible that Putin and other members of the Russian government could be tried, the chances of it happening are remote.

The International Criminal Court is known for prosecuting crimes against humanity, but is meant as a last resort if all other systems fail. Investigators from the ICC are already working to gather evidence in Ukraine, and while that country recognizes the court’s jurisdiction, Russia does not, so the ICC can only prosecute crimes committed by Russia within Ukraine’s borders.

Since Russia is not one of the 123 countries that are members of the court, any violations of international law committed within its borders cannot be prosecuted. That means Ukrainians who were tortured or harmed in Russia cannot be helped by the court.

Putin and his officials could simply evade the problem of possible prosecution by staying in power and not leaving Russian borders or those of their allies. Because the ICC cannot try defendants who are not present at The Hague for the trial itself, and it does not have a mechanism to enforce warrants, it’s entirely reliant on member countries to arrest and bring defendants to The Hague.

Ukraine has already prosecuted Russian soldiers, with one pleading guilty to killing a civilian and receiving a sentence of 15 years after an appeal. This may be Ukraine’s best course of action toward finding some sort of justice, however onerous, requiring the monumental task of tracking down Russian soldiers, arresting them, and putting them on trial.