Tonight:
The healthcare bill in hiding.
Uncivil war at Evergreen College:
— He can go and be racist
and be a piece of shit
wherever he wants to do that.
— And…
War over self-driving cars.
An explosion at a kindergarten in Eastern China
killed at least seven people and injured 59.
Two died immediately at the site, and five others at the hospital.
Parents were picking their kids up when the blast occurred.
The cause of the explosion was not immediately known.
Thousands of people are marching more than 250 miles, from Ankara to Istanbul,
to protest the imprisonment of a lawmaker from Turkey’s main opposition party.
A court sentenced Enis Berberoglu to 25 years in prison on spying charges.
Protesters call the sentence “lawless” and “politically motivated.”
— We are protesting against all the human rights violations in this country.
— More than 50 thousand people have been imprisoned since last year’s failed coup,
but Berberoglu is the first lawmaker from the main opposition party.
The University of Virginia student who was released from a North Korean prison this week
has suffered, quote, a “severe neurological injury.”
Pyongyang claimed that Otto Warmbier,
who has apparently been in a coma for months,
had been infected with botulism.
But doctors said his brain showed no evidence of the disease.
Warmbier’s father also spoke today:
— I’m so proud of Otto, my son,
who has been in a pariah regime for the last 18 months,
brutalized and terrorized.
— Congress went forward with its annual Republicans versus Democrats baseball game,
despite Wednesday’s shooting that left five people injured.
Majority Whip Steve Scalise and a lobbyist for Tyson Foods are still in critical condition.
After the shooting, ticket sales skyrocketed,
and organizers have raised more than $1 million for charity.
During an annual, carefully orchestrated appearance
where Russian President Vladimir Putin takes questions from the public,
he called former FBI Director James Comey’s decision to leak personal conversations with the President bizarre,
and compared Comey to Edward Snowden:
Last month, Evergreen State College in Washington went crazy—
when a professor of evolutionary biology named Brett Weinstein objected to a Day of Absence—
when white students and faculty were asked to voluntarily leave campus.
Weinstein branded it a form of racial segregation.
A group of student protesters called him a racist.
The confrontation incited further protests,
debates over free speech, and claims of systemic racism on campus.
And things haven’t calmed down.
Tomorrow, Evergreen will hold its graduation…
at an off-campus location…
40 miles away.
— This is the video, viewed by millions,
that put Evergreen State and Weinstein in the national spotlight.
— “This is not a discussion, you have lost that one.”
— Yeah, “you’ve lost that one.”
— So what are they doing here if they don’t want to talk to you?
— Well, this is part-and-parcel of their central note—
they’re just shutting down somebody that they don’t want to hear from.
— Weinstein has taught at Evergreen State for 14 years.
He describes himself as “deeply progressive,”
but has been denounced as racist tool of the alt-right by some students and faculty.
— Weinstein objected to the Day of Absence in a “formal protest” email to colleagues,
arguing that, quote, “one’s right to speak, or to be, must never be based on skin color.”
Calls for his resignation followed.
— By virtue of the way they constructed this,
you were making a statement by being on campus that you were not an ally.
And I feel like I am an ally to people of color in their attempts to gain equity.
— Do you have a sense at this point of why they want you to resign?
— Well, they think that I’m a racist.
Because if you stand up against one of these things because you think it’s ill-considered,
that you will be branded as a racist.
— We just wanted to be like,
until you’re accountable for these actions,
you don’t get to teach students at Evergreen.
You don’t get to spread this problematic rhetoric and instill it in students.
— So at this point, we would like Bret to be fired.
But that isn’t happening.
The administration is refusing to take action.
They’re choosing to protect this white cis-male professor over its students.
— Later that day,
the students held a raucous meeting at which they presented a list of demands,
including the disarming of campus police and mandatory sensitivity training for all faculty.
It’s the one point on which the protesters and Weinstein agree:
Evergreen’s embattled President, George Bridges, has mishandled the crisis.
— I think their concerns are legitimate.
They’re articulating ideas that have to do with race, ethnicity, power, privilege,
and we’re taking a look at them.
— People were criticizing you for using hand gestures.
— Absolutely. They were.
— That seems crazy to people from the outside of Evergreen.
— It may, but it’s noise.
— But the noise has been effective.
— I mean, it essentially sounded like you were being held hostage there.
— If you were gonna go to the bathroom, you have to go with two escorts.
Is that true?
— That’s what the students felt was true.
— I was going to go to the bathroom— — What do you mean, that’s what the students...?
— Well, that’s what they said, if you want to go to the bathroom—
I was going to go to the bathroom regardless,
and they wanted to escort me.
— I felt very safe there. — Why?
— Why what?
— Why did they want to escort you to the bathroom?
— I don’t know.
— Did you ask them?
— No, of course not.
— The situation on campus grew even more inflamed after Weinstein went on Fox News.
The protesters say his appearance provoked threats from the alt-right.
— Although Bret has not personally said,
you know, “Go out and attack these students, go out and threaten these students,”
that has been the result of his actions.
He has incited white supremacists and he has validated white supremacists and Nazis
in our community and in the nation.
And I don’t think that should be protected by free speech.
— We received a threat saying that
people come here and execute every single person they see on campus—
at that point… yeah, fuck free speech.
— Yes!
— When we’re dead, when people die, and you’re sitting here like,
“Well, at least they got to practice their free speech.”
I’m so sorry about it,
your free speech is not more important
than the lives of, like, black-trans-femmes and students on this campus.
— Yes!
— Exactly.
— Hate to break it to you.
— The protests have been effective,
but it’s unclear if they’re widely supported.
Many students told us that they’ve been hesitant to publicly dissent.
Kirstin, who also didn’t want us to use her last name,
is one of Weinstein’s students:
— I’m afraid of having a nuanced opinion,
because I’m afraid that my opinions and I will be stigmatized.
— It’s a rather strange sentence to hear on a university campus—
“I’m fearful of my nuanced opinion.”
— So I feel that I do not have the ability to speak,
if I have disagreements with the methods that are being used in the protests.
— There is this issue of what I can say and what I can’t say,
and who’s going to dismiss me or demean me for saying it.
And that is new in the American discourse.
— A student told me that you’re a white supremacist.
— I’m assuming the students have said lots of things about me.
I don’t believe I am.
— You don’t believe you are, but you accept that you might be.
— No.
Well—it depends on what you mean by a “white supremacist.”
What does that mean?
I’m a white person in a position of privilege.
— Okay.
I guess that’s part of the confusion for me,
is the precision of language seems to be lost in a lot of this conversation.
— It is.
— Bridges has acceded to many of the students’ demands.
But there’s a demand he hasn’t given into—
that Weinstein be fired.
Weinstein won’t rule out the possibility that he’s taught his last class at Evergreen.
But if comes back to teach next semester, he can expect the protests to continue.
— I don’t care what happens to Bret anymore.
He can go and be racist and be a piece of shit wherever he wants to do that.
Hopefully, long-term, we can just weed out people like Bret.
— At this point,
why not beat a hasty retreat and say, “There’s no point in doing this”?
— Frankly, every student in that hallway
who had chosen to make that protest has a clue about where they are going wrong.
But I think that my standing there did some good.
British Prime Minister Theresa May visited the scene of Wednesday’s devastating fire
at a West London Tower Block today.
She’s ordered a full public inquiry into the blaze that killed at least 17 people—
a number that is expected to rise significantly.
But the tragedy has already forced Britons
to confront some deeply uncomfortable questions about growing inequality in the U.K.
Milène Larsson reports.
— My phone called,
and it was my mum and she was screaming,
“There is a fire in the building,”
so I ran as fast as I could.
— Please move back, everybody!
— This is the flat that I live in and it’s completely on fire.
— Sajad and his family lived on the third floor of the tower.
By the time he arrived on the scene,
his mother had managed to escape the burning building.
Others were not so lucky.
— There was one guy,
he was on his balcony on his phone talking,
and then going around, and around, and around.
And then just above him, there was one guy,
he just… jumped.
We all saw him falling down
and it was just that moment we all panicked,
you know, we were all so scared.
— The whole building is just gone.
The whole building.
— The fire at Grenfell Tower comes less than a week
after the Prime Minister’s dismal performance in the general election,
which saw the opposition Labour Party make gains
on a platform of anti-austerity and a pledge to reverse inequality.
Critics of the government believe what happened in Kensington this week
to be a symptom of that neglect.
— If you cut local authority expenditure,
then a price is paid somewhere.
— Grenfell Tower is located in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea—
an area with the highest gross household income in the U.K.
But almost 90% of the tower was public housing,
and most of the victims of the fire are low-income tenants.
Grenfell Tower recently underwent an $11 million renovation.
Improvements included cladding, to improve energy efficiency.
What the money didn’t buy was a building-wide fire alarm,
or a sprinkler system.
We approached building management for comment.
They are yet to reply.
Residents worried about the tower’s safety.
And the BBC reports that the cladding on the building had a plastic core—
instead of a mineral one—
which some experts say is more flammable.
— And despite basic health and safety concerns,
this building was cladded on the outside—
and many people here are saying that was
so it looked attractive to the wealthy people in the surrounding areas.
So it looked nice,
rather than meeting the the urgent needs of the residents who lived in the building.
— Why do think this tower block fire is going to galvanize people?
— I think because it epitomizes the inequality, the injustice,
that people across London are facing with housing.
People are prioritizing and valuing profits over people’s lives,
— Sajad and his family spent last night in a hotel,
not far from his former home.
— What happens for you now?
— You know, it’s your memory there,
it’s everything that you carried from very childhood,
and it’s just…
the property that you love—
it’s all burnt, it’s all gone.
But at this point, I don’t really care about that,
witnessing people dying in front of me—
not only one or two, but many…
it’s just, you know,
I can’t get over that.
— Since demonstrations began in Bahrain after the Arab Spring,
more than 3,000 people have been imprisoned for dissent by the Sunni-led government.
At least 100 have been killed.
A year ago, a human rights activist named Nabeel Rajab was thrown in prison.
He faces 18 years.
His crime?
Questioning the Bahrain government.
On Twitter.
Ben Anderson first met Rajab back in 2014,
while reporting on anti-government protests.
Today, Rajab is seriously ill,
but still under lock and key in a military hospital.
— The uprising in Bahrain used to be inconvenient for the U.S.,
because it has it’s biggest regional naval base there.
Bahrain is also a large consumer of U.S. arms,
and has spent approximately $1.5 billion on American weapons and equipment since 2000.
But those sales had been frozen,
following the killing and jailing of protesters.
That all changed on May 21st,
when President Trump met and praised King Hamad bin Isa Khalifa,
promising a long-term relationship free of the “strain” caused by the Obama administration.
The following day,
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced a decision
to lift the Obama-era human rights conditions,
and allow the sale of $2.8 billion worth of American fighter jets.
The day after that,
authorities in Bahrain launched one of their deadliest crackdowns to date,
killing five demonstrators and jailing almost 300.
One of the conditions Tillerson lifted was the release of Nabeel Rajab,
who I interviewed back in 2014:
— I was in jail because of Twitter.
And there are hundreds of people in jail today because of Twitter.
— And because you said what on Twitter?
— Once I criticized the Prime Minister,
I was sentenced for three months.
And then I call people for to take part in peaceful protests
and was sentenced for two years.
— But the first time they let you go after a few hours,
the second time they let you go after—
— At first, I don’t know why,
they just take me to beat me and torture me.
But then, again, I’m there about the Twitter.
And I said something about the Minister of Interior.
They keep me in isolation for two years in a building that was made for me.
— Rajab was arrested again in 2016 for another series of tweets,
and his hearing has been postponed 25 times.
He has now been indefinitely held,
mostly in solitary confinement in a police station,
where his health is declining.
VICE News obtained an audio recording from Rajab over the weekend:
— Rajab’s family and defense team fear that sentencing is imminent.
The dictatorship in Bahrain may have been hesitant before,
but they now have a green light to go ahead and
attempt to crush the opposition movement for good.
— When the House passed its Obamacare replacement bill in May,
the President all but busted out the champagne.
— That’s the group.
Thank you.
— But the real work was just beginning:
the house bill is so unpopular that it’s become a liability—
which means it’s up to the Senate to write a new bill that can pass both chambers,
and hand the President his first real achievement.
That kind of political pressure has a noticeable effect on Capitol Hill:
the traditional legislative process goes out the window.
Shawna Thomas explains.
— You’ve seen the headlines—
“The Senate’s Healthcare Bill Remains Shrouded in Secrecy”—
and the complaints from the left that they’re totally excluded from the process:
— Will we have a hearing on the health care proposal?
— Will we? — Yes.
— Uh… I think we’ve already had one—
— No, I mean on the proposal that you’re planning
to bring to the floor of the Senate for a vote.
Will there be a hearing?
— Well, I don’t know that there will be another hearing,
but we’ve invited you to participate and give your ideas—
— No, that’s not true, Mr. Chairman.
We have no idea what’s being proposed!
There’s a group of guys in a backroom somewhere!
— But here’s the reality:
partisan bills get done in partisan ways.
This is going to be a partisan affair till the very end.
— Everybody’s participating who wants to,
and the idea is to get enough votes to pass it.
Unfortunately,
it will have to be a Republicans-only exercise.
— This should sound familiar.
Republicans made the same complaints back in 2009 and 2010
when the Democrats were in charge
and they were trying to get Obamacare passed in the first place.
Here’s how Obamacare played out back then:
In July of 2009,
then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi released a plan for overhauling health care.
Then the committees took that and started tinkering with it.
And there were hearings.
There were a lot of hearings.
What came out of all of those hearings
was legislative text that was formally introduced in the House in October of 2009.
That bill was debated.
That bill was voted on.
That bill, in the form it was passed in the House,
never became law.
So what did become law?
The Senate kind-of ended up doing their own thing.
They had hearings too,
but what ended up becoming Obamacare
didn’t go to the Senate floor until November of 2009.
That bill was passed less than a month later,
on Christmas Eve.
And this is where what happened with Obamacare
will be instructive about what’s happening now in the Senate.
So, going back to 2010—
because of changing political dynamics,
the House was forced to pass exactly the same thing the Senate did.
No conferences, no amendments.
That was the only way for the Democrats to get the Affordable Care Act done.
And that’s exactly the same thing that
Mitch McConnell will force the House of Representatives to do,
if he can get his conservative ducks in a row
to introduce a bill that makes enough Republicans happy to get it through the Senate.
— You know it’s been a bad week for your company
when a board member steps down
and your CEO takes a leave over sexist corporate culture…
and it’s not even your biggest problem.
Uber is locked in a legal battle with Google
over stolen trade secrets and the cutthroat race for the self-driving car
that both companies have set their sights on.
It’s a corporate war that could decide the future of the auto industry—
and in the middle of it is just one man.
Back in 2004,
a Berkeley graduate student named Anthony Levandowski
built a self-driving motorcycle,
which he called “Ghost Rider.”
He entered it in the DARPA Grand Challenge,
a contest testing the limits of autonomous vehicles.
Ghost Rider crashed and couldn’t finish the race.
But it was a start.
After graduating,
Levandowski cofounded a small company called 510 Systems,
where he built a program that marries images from multiple cameras with GPS data.
He moved to Google in 2007,
but continued to work at 510 on the side—
until 2011,
when he convinced Google to buy 510,
which then became the foundation of Google’s self-driving car division, Waymo.
The innovation at the heart of autonomous cars is a radar-like system called lidar,
which lets them see and navigate.
Levandowski spent years at Google working on lidar,
but in January of 2016,
he suddenly quit,
along with a handful of colleagues,
to open a company of their own:
a self-driving truck startup called Otto.
In August of that year,
Uber bought Otto,
and Levandowski,
for $680 million.
But in December,
a Google employee was accidentally copied on an email from an outside supplier,
showing a lidar circuit board
that Google says looked suspiciously like the board
Levandowski had developed for them—
and which,
under intellectual property law,
they would own.
Two months later,
Google filed a public records request in Nevada—
where Uber was testing its vehicles—
which deepened its hunch that Levandowski had
taken secrets with him when he left the company.
A few days later, Google filed suit.
Google alleges that, shortly before quitting,
Levandowski and two others downloaded 14,000 documents from the company’s servers,
and that they then used what amounts to stolen property
to develop self-driving technology for Google’s archrival.
In federal court on March 30th,
Levandowski was called to testify in Google’s civil suit against Uber.
He refused, invoking his Fifth Amendment rights.
He also refused to turn over any documents—
even though Uber urged him to.
Two weeks ago,
Uber fired Levandowski.
But that won’t stop them from having to face Google in court,
potentially curbing Uber’s self-driving dreams.
For his part,
Levandowski may possibly return to court too…
…to face criminal charges.
— It’s fire!
Oh, shit!
That was sick!
Oh—this is old, right?
I get this, like, post-Rick James era…
This is early Bruno Mars for sure.
— Bad Rabbits, just released.
— Holy shit.
It sounds so old!
The music sounds old, even the synth sounds old—
like, the synth sound itself.
But that’s coming back, right?
That whole sound’s coming back.
Pitchfork.
This would be, like, an eight out of 10 on Pitchfork for sure.
This guy sounds really wise,
like, old and wise.
Big beard, big kinda scruffy beard.
Cowboy hat.
It’s cool, though.
It’s got lots of vibes.
This might give John Mayer a run for his money,
on this one.
Guitar playing is sick and the vocals are…
dope, the way the song…
It’s definitely a white guy.
— Harry Styles.
— That’s Harry Styles?!
Wow!
This is awesome.
How have I not heard this yet?
I’m a fan.
Big fan.
Oh, shit.
This changes up right there.
This is the, uh, moshpit part.
Everyone’s just throwing windmills.
I’m happy that some of that…
…music is coming back, though.
You know, from that era.
This sounds like Weezer, “Pinkerton.”
The guitarist.
I could imagine this girl:
big guitar,
she’s got bangs,
she’s got an attitude—she just said, “Fuck off.”
She’s from Portland.
— That’s VICE News Tonight for Thursday, June 16th.
Tune in tomorrow night for the award-winning documentary series, “VICE”—
— What do you think America’s role is in fighting climate change,
compared to Russia?
— There are regions in the world where there are no potential benefits.
But Russia is not such a region.
Russia is lucky.
— Does it make you nervous that the Earth is warming at such an exponential rate?