Unfair Park from p6 Barack Obama won the presidential election in 2008, fueled by racist conspiracies that cast the country’s first Black president as a symbol the nebulous threat that immigrants and nonwhites posed to the U.S. Stewart Rhodes, an ex-Army paratrooper and 2004 Yale Law School graduate, capital- ized on that momentum and founded the Oath Keepers in 2009. His extreme tactics and anti-government ideology didn’t stop him and his members from entrenching themselves in some gov- ernment and law enforcement agencies at a remarkable rate. “Part of the way the far-right militant com- munity works is that when an organization or framework gets a negative connotation, they just rebrand to avoid any liability for what their predecessors have done,” said Michael German, a former FBI special agent and a fel- low at the Brennan Center for Justice. Rhodes, with his legal training and mili- tary background, was well-equipped to re- brand the more overtly white supremacist militias that preceded the Oath Keepers, German explained. He made them more palatable to cops and sheriffs across the U.S. Just west of Dallas in Hood County, Rhodes’ group embedded themselves within the upper echelons of local law en- forcement’s ranks long before Donald Trump took office. In 2009, then Hood County Constable Chad Jordan of Granbury, where Rhodes lived for a year and a half before he was ar- rested by the FBI last month, circulated an Oath Keepers recruitment email to officers from the Fort Worth Police Department and the Hood County Sheriff’s Department. “All should join,” Jordan wrote. Their foothold in Hood County remained strong. Current Hood County Constable John Shirley attracted a flurry of media at- tention last year when emails revealed that he’s a longtime Oath Keepers member. By 2019, Rhodes had even found his way into the VIP section at then President Trump’s reelection rallies. Among the most prominent of Rhodes po- litical allies outside Texas is former Maricopa County (Arizona) Sheriff Joe Arpaio. As sher- iff, Arpaio gained notoriety in the early 2010s for targeting Latino drivers and over-policing Latino neighborhoods in Arizona’s most pop- ulous county at such a drastic rate that the U.S. Justice Department intervened. Arpaio was eventually convicted of con- tempt of court for refusing to change his de- partment’s blatant racial profiling practices. Trump pardoned him in 2017 and later called him a “patriot.” In 2013, Rhodes and Arpaio both signed a letter to sheriffs across the U.S., urging them to resist a Democrat-proposed gun control bill they claimed was part of a larger attempt to “fundamentally change America into an- other socialistic regime.” Arpaio is part of the leadership of the 88 Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, or CSPOA. Richard Mack, the group’s founder, said in 2013 that “the great- est threat we face today is not terrorists, it’s our own federal government.” Mack is also a member of the Oath Keepers’ leadership. For an anti-government group, Rhodes and his crew grew uncomfortably cozy with some elements of the federal government: They eventually found their way into the very highest echelons of Trump’s inner circle. Roger Stone, a longtime Republican po- litical operative, was convicted in November 2019 of lying to federal investigators and at- tempting to sway witnesses in connection with the federal government’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elec- tion. He was sentenced to 40 months in fed- eral prison. Like Arpaio, Stone was pardoned by Trump. Stone, who served as an adviser on Trump’s 2016 campaign, was released in July 2020. Four years before, he coined the rallying cry “Stop The Steal,” which became a unifying slogan for Trump loyalists in both the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. The basic premise behind “Stop The Steal” was the same in 2016 as it was in 2020: if Trump doesn’t win, the only expla- nation is that someone rigged the election. He first used the phrase during the 2016 Re- publican primaries, claiming that then Trump’s opponents were colluding to steal the nomination from Trump. In the runup to the 2020 election, the phrase caught on. But after Trump lost, it caught fire. Stone started a “Stop The Steal” Facebook group the day after the election. It amassed 300,000 followers within 24 hours. Meanwhile, Stone was out of prison, at- tending rallies and court appearances. Pho- tos and video show Stone at Trump’s rally in Washington on Jan. 6, not long before the storming of the Capitol, with a gaggle of masked Oath Keepers watching over him. These photos came back to haunt Stone and the militia members that flanked him on Jan. 6. In the wake of the U.S. Capitol riot, hundreds have been indicted, including a handful of Oath Keepers. But when two Oath Keepers appeared in federal court in March 2021, U.S. prosecutors drew specifi- cally on photos of the pair guarding Stone to establish their connection to the militia. They also presented text messages showing the militia members discussing their plan to guard Stone on the day of the rally. Stone has denied any knowledge of a plan to attack the Capitol and obstruct certifica- tion of election results. fects North Texans’ daily lives. For the research project, dozens of peo- ple were interviewed about how they change their behavior during the summer, Cecale said. Everyone answered that heat al- ters their life in some way or another. A number of respondents said they stop playing sports, riding bikes and spending time outside, Cecale said. Some claimed to have quit their jobs so they could work re- motely, or so they could avoid having to drive in a certain direction during the hot- test part of the day. Others might not leave their home during the summer months or may refrain from cooking, she added. Staying indoors also leads to an increase in screen time. Cecale said when asked to describe how heat affects their mood, many participants used the same words. These included dra- matic descriptors: “depressing,” “grueling,” “suffocating,” “oppressive” and “miserable.” “My favorite of all of them was ‘Texas Jacob Vaughn Oath Keeper leader Stewart Rhodes David Levine, a professor at the Univer- sity of California Hastings College of Law, says that in the eyes of his followers in North Texas and across the U.S., federal prosecu- tors have Rhodes all wrong. “They don’t think he was overthrowing the United States. They think he was defending Amer- ica, defending the duly elected president, Donald Trump.” Rhodes has indicated that his loyalty lies more with antigovernment conspiracies than with Trump himself. “It’s just amazing that Trump let the elec- tion be stolen out from under him and to let our country be stolen like this, our govern- ment,” Rhodes told conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on InfoWars. “So we have an opportu- nity to walk the path of the Founding Fa- thers and declare your independence from that illegitimate regime.” But Rhodes’ statements don’t necessarily indicate a broader defection from Trump within the militia movement. “It’s not going to be that simple,” German said. “I think you will see some rebranding and some differen- tiation” from Trump before the election. ▼ SCIENCE IT IS THE HEAT C UNT STUDY EXPLORES EFFECTS OF EXTREME TEMPS ON NORTH TEXANS. BY SIMONE CARTER ourtney Cecale had been living in sunny, warm Los Angeles, but she still wasn’t prepared for what the heat would be like in North Texas. On the day of her move to the area in 2020, the tem- perature on her car’s dashboard soared well into the triple digits. “I had this realization that thought I was going to pass out,” said Cecale, who works as an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of North Texas. “I kept thinking to myself: ‘Gosh, I’m going to die. This is kill- ing me.’” As an environmental anthropologist, Ce- cale is interested in researching climate change. So, her personal experience with the grueling Texas summer gave her an idea: She wanted to study how extreme heat af- heat is hell on earth,’” she said. Despite climate change leading to a spike in temperatures, respondents didn’t actually use that term, Cecale continued. Instead, they might have attributed their heat intol- erance to getting older. Shifting weather patterns could eventually change outdoor work, such as food production and livestock farming, Cecale said. Another potential ef- fect is likely to strike most Texans’ hearts with fear: More extreme heat could lead to the power grid failing. “Very often there’s a cultural [idea] like ‘toughen up, it’s just a hot day,’” Cecale said. “But people do die from this, and I just think it’s very important for people to take seri- ously that heat can be very, very deadly.” The Texas Standard reported that since 2010, at least 53 workers have died in the in- tense Texas heat. Most were people of color. An increase in temperatures will hit North Texans of lower socioeconomic status hardest, said Dr. Azadeh Stark, an epidemi- ologist who teaches public health in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies at UT Dallas. Those living in certain parts of town, like South Dallas, could feel the heat more, largely because such areas are less green and have more concrete and cars, she said. Asthma among children could also get worse because of an increase in ozone days. “Kids cannot come out to play, so it would contribute to obesity, and obesity feeds back into asthma,” Stark said. “So, it becomes a cyclical effect.” Children aren’t the only ones whose health could suffer, though. Stark said rising heat levels can lead to more lethargy and a decrease in time spent outdoors. In the long term, it could aggra- vate the obesity epidemic and contribute to conditions like heat stroke. But Stark said we can do something about climate change. She’s sold her own car and relies on public transport, the latter of which she encourages others to do, too. Cit- ies can also increase their green areas. Stark urges people to reduce their waste and to be vigilant with the land’s natural re- sources. She said she’s spent time reading about how much the Navajo value the earth: “They consider nature as a gift from the heavens, so we have to respect our nature the way they respect it.” MONTH XX–MONTH XX, 2014 FEBRUARY 17–23, 2022 DALLAS OBSERVER | CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | MOVIES | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | FEATURE | SCHUTZE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS | DALLAS OBSERVER CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | CULTURE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS dallasobserver.comdallasobserver.com
