Also on today’s menu:
Border Patrols Take A Toll On Soldiers
Columbia Students Take Over Hamilton Hall
Attorney-General John Formella has asked lawmakers for $60 million to increase settlement payments to victims of sexual and physical abuse while they were held as children at the former Sununu Youth Development Center. Senate President Jeb Bradley (R-Wolfeboro) sponsored Senate Bill 591 that also would expand the type of abuse covered to encourage more people to settle, rather than sue the state.
The bill, scheduled to go before the House on May 2 after having passed the Senate, would tap a $100 million settlement fund created in 2022, but would increase the amount to cover additional categories of abuse. Currently, the fund covers claims for sexual and physical assault, with caps of $1.5 million for sexual assault or a combination of sexual and physical assault, and $150,000 for physical abuse alone. The bill would allow payment for “other” abuse, such as unlawful restraint, confinement, strip searches, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The bill also would create a new category for “egregious” sexual abuse so “wanton or cruel” that it exceeds the severity of abuse experienced by other victims, and would allow payment of as much as $2,500,000 in settlement.
The original bill sought an additional $75 million to cover the expanded categories, but the Senate reduced the amount to $60 million, with a unanimous recommendation to pass from the House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee. Michal Cantor, a lawyer with Nixon Peabody, which represents nearly 1,000 victims, told lawmakers that the firm would advise clients to drop their lawsuits and settle with the state if the bill passes.
Discussion: Formella backed the bill’s passage, saying that it could save the state money by leading to fewer lawsuits where a jury could award amounts higher than the caps set by the legislation. He said his office can control what it pays in victim settlements. Until now, the victims’ lawyers have advised against a settlement, but they have recognized that Bradley’s bill provides a fair compromise that avoids a traumatic trial.
Border Patrols Take A Toll On Soldiers
New Hampshire National Guardsmen whom Governor Chris Sununu has deployed to patrol 1.5 miles of Texas’ 1,250-mile border with Mexico are not able to arrest or detain migrants — or give them water — with their orders restricting them to reporting suspicious or illegal activity to Texas authorities, directing migrants they encounter to a legal port of entry, and providing assistants to migrants in cases of danger to their “life, limb, or eyes.”
Pfc. Dennis Harris, 42, of Freedom, told reporter Annmarie Timmons, who is shadowing the 15 National Guard soldiers, “It’s more of a safety aspect both for the people that are trying to cross and for the people that are here in the States, because, yes, some people that are crossing are obviously family members, but there’s also other individuals who are crossing that we probably don’t want living next door.”
Guardsmen say that it can be frustrating to wait for a person to cut or climb over a fence before calling in Texas authorities, or to say no to someone asking for water. Some migrants say they fear for their safety at home; some appear with young children; some spend hours looking for a spot out of sight of the soldiers to cut the fence and slip under. “Last week, a woman and two men slept two nights against the fence, asking the soldiers to let them in,” Timmons writes. “[Lt. Ryan] Camp, who like the other New Hampshire soldiers does not speak Spanish, used Google Translate to communicate with them. ‘She was saying that she would rather be imprisoned here than in Mexico and that Mexico was dangerous,’ Camp, 26, of Brookfield, said.”
Discussion: Timmons also reports that soldiers from other states have seen individuals leave infants at the fence and return to Mexico, waiting to see if the authorities will take the child into the United States. If they don’t, they swim across the river again and collect the child. Witnessing such scenes takes a toll on the border patrol agents. Last year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said 14 of its agents had died by suicide in 2022. Camp said, “When you have a day off, in reality, you don’t really have a day off. You have a calmer day.”
Columbia Students Take Over Hamilton Hall
After Columbia University began suspending students who defied orders to end their two-week encampment in protest of the war in Gaza, dozens of demonstrators took over an academic building, barricading themselves inside. One student said the campus was “lawless” in its response to the pro-Palestinian rallies.
Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine called on activists to “protect the encampment” before announcing the takeover of Hamilton Hall, the focus of 1968 student protests. Columbia University Apartheid Divest said it had “reclaimed” the building in honor of Hind Rajab, a six-year-old girl killed in Gaza earlier this year. Demonstrators broke windows to enter the building before blocking the doors with furniture.
Activists across the United States are demanding that universities divest their holdings that provide financial support to Israel, while there are growing fears that antisemitism is putting Jewish students in danger. Columbia President Minouche Shafik has stated that the university will not divest from Israel and will suspend students who disrupt the campus. Suspension means those students will be ineligible to graduate, and the protesters are demanding amnesty for activists facing disciplinary action from the university.
Discussion: UN human rights chief Volker Turk has expressed concern that some of the law enforcement actions taking place on American campuses have been “disproportionate in their impacts” and that “Freedom of expression and the right to peaceful assembly are fundamental to society.” There are legitimate concerns about Israel’s overreach in responding to the Hamas attacks — leaders are seemingly unconcerned about the civilian deaths as the country attempts to crush the militant group — and protests in response to the situation in Gaza are appropriate. However, intimidation of Jewish students who have nothing to do with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s stance is never appropriate. US Representative Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) struck the wrong note when she told a reporter after visiting Columbia University, “We should not have to tolerate antisemitism for all Jewish students, whether they’re pro-genocide or anti-genocide.”
Café Chatter
On Season Of The Birds: I had never heard of a Leonberger.. I count myself as some who knows dogs. Guess not. The three breeds of this lovely dog, St. Bernard, Newfoundland, and Great Dane. Who knew? Not me. I will have to ask my German friend if she knows them. Birds. We still have a number of migrating birds happy to eat up the blocks of feed. Although, not as quickly as earlier in the season.
— Candace Skurnik