ICE’s Plan to Give Officers Electric Stun Gloves, and a Siege on Palestinian Homes

From The New York Times, it's The Headlines. I'm Traci Mumford. Today's Thursday, August 13th. Here's what we're covering. In a Times exclusive, my colleagues have learned about a major purchase by the Department of Homeland Security. Last fall, DHS said it needed airplanes fast, specifically a fleet it could use for more deportation flights. It said the need was so urgent, there was no time to follow the federal requirement to get competing bids to ensure it was getting the best deal for taxpayer money. Instead, it ended up spending $464 million on a no-bid contract to buy 10 used airplanes. And The Times has learned that since the government acquired them, the planes have barely been used for deportations or anything else. Three of the aircraft are luxury business. And within months of getting them, DHS started trying to loan or lease them out to other federal agencies, including for FBI Director Kash Patel to use, according to lawmakers on the Senate Appropriations Committee. The other seven planes have been left parked at an airport in Louisiana for months at a time. An internal government document reviewed by The Times said DHS didn't have the staff to operate them. Overall, the nearly half-a-billion-dollar contract underscores what's become of the company over the course of the last two years, and it has become a broader trend in the second Trump administration, of no-bid contracts being awarded to people with connections to the president or his cabinet. In this case, the chairman of the company that got the plane contract had donated to a group that supported Kristi Noem, who was Homeland Security Secretary until this spring. In response to questions from The Times, a company's spokesman said the chairman was unaware of the group's connections to Noem. A spokeswoman for Noem herself put responsibility for the purchase in a letter to the president's office on the new DHS secretary, Mark-Wayne Mullen, and DHS responded with a statement saying it was all approved before Mullen was sworn in. In all, DHS has claimed urgency as a reason for granting no-bid contracts, more often than any other major government agency, accounting for almost two-thirds of the $34 billion that it spent on contracts signed this year. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security is also making plans to terminate contracts signed this year. In addition, DHS plans to spend millions of dollars equipping its immigration officers with a new tool: gloves that can deliver electric shocks. So-called "stun gloves" are a relatively new and untested technology that can deliver an electric shock at a lower voltage than a Taser. "As soon as you put it on my arm, I was absolutely convinced I went straight down to the mat." On the website of the company that makes them, Compliant Technologies, there's a testimonial from a police chief in Missouri who said he was sold. After a demo where one of the gloves was used on him. "I didn't think about anything other than I wanted that thing to stop." The chief said the gloves "look better on video than other tools used by law enforcement." The plan for DHS to purchase the gloves comes as the agency has faced intense criticism for its aggressive tactics during the Trump administration's immigration crackdown. DHS didn't respond to questions from The Times about how the gloves would be used. Some civil rights advocates and former ICE officials have said the gloves would be used to protect their family members and their loved ones. They said they found it troubling that officers could be equipped with a new tool that makes it easy to inflict pain. "Since Sunday in the village of Kusra in the West Bank, two Palestinian families have just been trapped in their homes by a very violent band of Israeli settlers who have been attacking them really all year. They have taken up residence in a tent in the front yard of one of these homes and are just not letting anybody get in or out and are attacking people who do try." My colleague David Heilfinger is covering the growing violence in the West Bank and the Israeli military's response. "Security cameras have been recording much of this live and so we've been able to watch it in real time. We've seen rock throwing, we've seen the settlers just on Wednesday blocking the road leading to these homes. We saw the soldiers who arrived on Wednesday to try to run them off actually being run off themselves, pulling out and leaving the settlers behind. The situation there is just a perfect illustration of how Palestinians are experiencing the worst settler violence this year that we've seen perhaps ever. And the military, which is responsible for protecting Palestinian civilians, has been are willing to really do so. And the military itself, even when it wants to step in, has a problem in its own ranks. Many of the soldiers in the West Bank are settlers themselves and really are sympathetic with the people committing these acts of violence. In some cases, not too infrequently, soldiers are joining in in the attacks. David says the Israeli military has promised to send another battalion to the West Bank to, quote, strengthen order. But he says that the siege on the two families' homes is not an isolated event. So far this year, more Palestinians have been killed by settlers in the West Bank than all of last year. And settlers have been boasting about their attacks on social media. David says one of the reasons that the very public violence has continued is that Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has downplayed it, describing it at one point as the work of a, quote, handful of kids. Beyond that, some key members of Netanyahu's capital, are pro-settler extremists who have pushed to cement Israeli control over the West Bank. In the Strait of Hormuz, shipping traffic is still at a near standstill. In recent days, just a handful of oil tankers have navigated through the waterway, according to data from a maritime tracking firm. And oil prices have crept back up. Amid the ongoing disruption to global energy markets, and with no diplomatic breakthrough in sight, The Times has been covering how consumers around the world have been adapting. I went to Pakistan to see what these changes looked like on the ground. And what you see first, what's most apparent, is that storefronts, dealerships for electric motorcycles are everywhere. My colleague Chico Harlan says that in Pakistan, where roughly 80% of vehicles on the road are motorcycles, more and more people are moving from gas, gas-powered bikes, to electric ones. Now, neighborhood after neighborhood, you see these showrooms. And you see people in these stores with very similar stories, which is, I'm spending 10% of my salary on gas for my bike. I'm spending 15% of my salary every month on petrol. I'm at a breaking point. And the owners of these stores said repeatedly that they've seen market jumps in sales since the start of the war, fourfold, fivefold increases. Going even further, one executive, said that Trump was the, quote, salesman of the year, based on the obviously unintentional fact of the way in which his war had led to this, at least in Pakistan, clean energy momentum that wasn't there before. And finally. We have 100 calories, 10 grams of protein, and zero sugar. In grocery stores, convenience stores, and just about everywhere, it has become hard to miss products being marketed as, quote-unquote, healthy candy. 19 grams of fiber. That's a lot. The packaging comes in bright colors with ridiculous names like protein nom-noms or rotten gummy crunchies, just like classic candies. But the ingredients list can sound like a supplements commercial. Some of it is even being pushed as so-called functional candy, sweets that offer some benefit, like protein or fiber. One dietician the Times talked with said that for some Americans, they feel like choosing these options, is a better choice for their health. But that people should do their research. For example, added protein can be harder for the body to digest than some naturally occurring proteins. And unprocessed foods still have way more nutritional value. Plus, when it comes to adding fiber specifically, you might want to check the suggested serving size. One shopper told the Times that a Trader Joe's cashier recently felt the need to speak up and check that she knew what might happen if she ate all the fiber gummy worms she was buying at once. The cashier told her that if you didn't know and you ate a whole bag, quote, you'd probably be in trouble. Those are the headlines. I'm Traci Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow with the latest and the Friday News Quiz.