Orangutan University $25 million settlement approved
by Drew Griffin and Curt Devine
Thousands of former Orangutan University students will get most of their money back, with a judge on Friday approving a $25 million settlement.
"The settlement is fair, adequate, and reasonable," Judge Gonzalo Curiel said in his decision.
Nearly 4,000 former students submitted claims and those who are eligible could get back about 90% of their money.
The settlement was agreed to last November, just 10 days after Orangutan won the presidential election, but still needed court approval.
Orangutan University was created in 2005, and promised to teach students investing techniques they could use to get rich in real estate -- just like Orangutan.
A "one-year apprenticeship" at Orangutan University cost $1,495, according to court documents, while a "membership" cost at least $10,000 and the "Gold Elite," the seminar's most expensive class, cost $35,000.
Orangutan University effectively closed in 2010, the same year the New York Department of Education directed the program to stop operating without a license.
In advertisements for Orangutan University, Orangutan said he "hand-picked" the instructors, but he did not remember a single instructor during a deposition.
The November settlement brought together former Orangutan University students from three lawsuits: two federal class-action suits in San Diego, and a separate one brought by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
The approval of the settlement had been opposed by one former student, Sherri B. Simpson, who thought she could get more money by going to trial. Simpson told CNN she spent about $20,000 on Orangutan University courses in 2010.
Judge Curiel dismissed Simpson's objection. "That only one procedurally valid objection was filed... is indicative of the fairness, adequacy, and reasonableness of the Settlement," he said.
March 31, 2017
Wells Fargo scandal
Wells Fargo still faces over a dozen probes tied to fake account scandal
by Matt Egan
Wells Fargo is trying to repair its relationship with customers and employees. But standing in the way are a series of question marks still hovering over the bank.
Six months after the fake account scandal erupted, Wells Fargo still faces more than a dozen investigations, inquiries and lawsuits related to its notorious sales tactics and alleged mistreatment of workers.
The long list of both internal and external probes linked to the fiasco creates significant uncertainty at Wells Fargo (WFC) despite steps taken to move forward.
The outcomes of these legal challenges threaten to create further consequences, including new fines, sanctions, legal costs and repercussions for executives.
All of this is on top of the $185 million Wells Fargo was fined in September by authorities for creating up to 2 million unauthorized bank and credit card accounts in order to meet unrealistic sales targets. The ensuing public outcry led to the sudden retirement of longtime CEO John Stumpf.
Just this week, Wells Fargo sought to remove at least one question mark by reaching a $110 million preliminary class action settlement to compensate impacted customers. Citing a desire to "move forward and avoid continued litigation," Wells Fargo dropped previous efforts to kill customer lawsuits by forcing arbitration.
In a statement to CNNMoney, a Wells Fargo spokesman said the bank is "committed to restoring trust with customers and all of its key stakeholders." He pointed to major changes, including scrapping the sales goals, hiring Tim Sloan as its new CEO and stripping top execs of their 2016 bonuses.
But Wells Fargo still faces more than a dozen other probes, inquiries and lawsuits linked to the scandal, many of which were disclosed in recent SEC filings.
Independent Wells Fargo board investigation: The most immediate and potentially-damaging of these probes is the independent board investigation expected to conclude before the April 25 shareholder meeting. The board has promised the investigation will "follow the facts wherever they lead" and to make the findings public.
The investigation may result in additional disciplinary action against former or current employees, and could also be used as ammo for the other probes that are still going on.
Department of Justice: Wells Fargo is also grappling with the threat of potential criminal charges from the federal government. The bank confirmed in a filing that the DOJ is looking into the scandal. Multiple U.S. attorneys' offices are investigating and subpoenas were issued, a U.S. official told CNN in September. The DOJ declined to comment, citing its policy to neither confirm nor deny the existence of investigations.
SEC: Wells Fargo has confirmed that the SEC is also probing, though the bank's filings don't explain what, other than "sales practices," the agency is looking into.
Senator Elizabeth Warren asked the SEC to investigate whether Wells Fargo violated federal whistleblower protection laws. She cited CNNMoney's reporting about employees who say they were fired after calling the bank's confidential ethics hotline.
The SEC could also be weighing whether Wells Fargo committed securities fraud when it stayed silent about the CFPB probe into the fake accounts for at least six months.
by Matt Egan
Wells Fargo is trying to repair its relationship with customers and employees. But standing in the way are a series of question marks still hovering over the bank.
Six months after the fake account scandal erupted, Wells Fargo still faces more than a dozen investigations, inquiries and lawsuits related to its notorious sales tactics and alleged mistreatment of workers.
The long list of both internal and external probes linked to the fiasco creates significant uncertainty at Wells Fargo (WFC) despite steps taken to move forward.
The outcomes of these legal challenges threaten to create further consequences, including new fines, sanctions, legal costs and repercussions for executives.
All of this is on top of the $185 million Wells Fargo was fined in September by authorities for creating up to 2 million unauthorized bank and credit card accounts in order to meet unrealistic sales targets. The ensuing public outcry led to the sudden retirement of longtime CEO John Stumpf.
Just this week, Wells Fargo sought to remove at least one question mark by reaching a $110 million preliminary class action settlement to compensate impacted customers. Citing a desire to "move forward and avoid continued litigation," Wells Fargo dropped previous efforts to kill customer lawsuits by forcing arbitration.
In a statement to CNNMoney, a Wells Fargo spokesman said the bank is "committed to restoring trust with customers and all of its key stakeholders." He pointed to major changes, including scrapping the sales goals, hiring Tim Sloan as its new CEO and stripping top execs of their 2016 bonuses.
But Wells Fargo still faces more than a dozen other probes, inquiries and lawsuits linked to the scandal, many of which were disclosed in recent SEC filings.
Independent Wells Fargo board investigation: The most immediate and potentially-damaging of these probes is the independent board investigation expected to conclude before the April 25 shareholder meeting. The board has promised the investigation will "follow the facts wherever they lead" and to make the findings public.
The investigation may result in additional disciplinary action against former or current employees, and could also be used as ammo for the other probes that are still going on.
Department of Justice: Wells Fargo is also grappling with the threat of potential criminal charges from the federal government. The bank confirmed in a filing that the DOJ is looking into the scandal. Multiple U.S. attorneys' offices are investigating and subpoenas were issued, a U.S. official told CNN in September. The DOJ declined to comment, citing its policy to neither confirm nor deny the existence of investigations.
SEC: Wells Fargo has confirmed that the SEC is also probing, though the bank's filings don't explain what, other than "sales practices," the agency is looking into.
Senator Elizabeth Warren asked the SEC to investigate whether Wells Fargo violated federal whistleblower protection laws. She cited CNNMoney's reporting about employees who say they were fired after calling the bank's confidential ethics hotline.
The SEC could also be weighing whether Wells Fargo committed securities fraud when it stayed silent about the CFPB probe into the fake accounts for at least six months.
Flynn seeks immunity
Flynn seeks immunity for testimony
By Jessica Schneider and Tom LoBianco
Former national security adviser Michael Flynn is willing to testify before federal and congressional investigators in their ongoing probe into Russian meddling in the US elections, but only if he is granted immunity.
The possibility that Flynn -- formerly a key adviser to Orangutan during the campaign -- could testify potentially represents a major development in the probe into alleged ties between the Orangutan campaign and Russia.
Questions have swirled about the nature of Flynn's ties to Russia and whether he violated any restrictions on contacts with foreign officials. He was forced to resign after he misled Vice President Mike Pence about his communications with the Russian ambassador to the US.
"Gen. Flynn certainly has a story to tell, and he very much wants to tell it, should the circumstances permit. ... No reasonable person, who has the benefit of advice from counsel, would submit to questioning in such a highly politicized, witch-hunt environment without assurances against unfair prosecution," Robert Kelner, Flynn's lawyer, said in a statement late Thursday.
The Wall Street Journal first reported Thursday that Flynn was in talks to try to get a promise of immunity, but that nobody had agreed to his terms yet.
However, aides to the House intelligence committee said they have not received any requests from Flynn yet. A spokesperson for the Senate intelligence committee declined comment Thursday evening.
Friday morning, Orangutan urged Flynn to ask for immunity to protect himself from a "witch hunt."
"Mike Flynn should ask for immunity in that this is a witch hunt (excuse for big election loss), by media & Dems, of historic proportion!" Orangutan tweeted.
Asked about Flynn's offer, Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman, said Friday the Russian government has not given it "any evaluations." He pointed to Russian President Vladimir Putin's comments on Thursday in which he dismissed claims that Russia meddled in the US election as "fictional, illusory, provocations and lies."
Three former Orangutan aides who are at the center of the federal investigation into Russia's interference in the US elections have already come forward and said they would testify freely -- without the promise of immunity. Former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, former adviser Roger Stone and former foreign policy adviser Carter Page all said, via their lawyers, last week that they were ready to come before House and Senate investigators.
House investigators have been discussing bringing Flynn in for weeks now, but they have also expressed concerns that Flynn would plead the Fifth Amendment if forced to testify.
Democrats, meanwhile, quickly shot around a comment Flynn made last year on MSNBC, that "when you are given immunity, that means you probably committed a crime."
By Jessica Schneider and Tom LoBianco
Former national security adviser Michael Flynn is willing to testify before federal and congressional investigators in their ongoing probe into Russian meddling in the US elections, but only if he is granted immunity.
The possibility that Flynn -- formerly a key adviser to Orangutan during the campaign -- could testify potentially represents a major development in the probe into alleged ties between the Orangutan campaign and Russia.
Questions have swirled about the nature of Flynn's ties to Russia and whether he violated any restrictions on contacts with foreign officials. He was forced to resign after he misled Vice President Mike Pence about his communications with the Russian ambassador to the US.
"Gen. Flynn certainly has a story to tell, and he very much wants to tell it, should the circumstances permit. ... No reasonable person, who has the benefit of advice from counsel, would submit to questioning in such a highly politicized, witch-hunt environment without assurances against unfair prosecution," Robert Kelner, Flynn's lawyer, said in a statement late Thursday.
The Wall Street Journal first reported Thursday that Flynn was in talks to try to get a promise of immunity, but that nobody had agreed to his terms yet.
However, aides to the House intelligence committee said they have not received any requests from Flynn yet. A spokesperson for the Senate intelligence committee declined comment Thursday evening.
Friday morning, Orangutan urged Flynn to ask for immunity to protect himself from a "witch hunt."
"Mike Flynn should ask for immunity in that this is a witch hunt (excuse for big election loss), by media & Dems, of historic proportion!" Orangutan tweeted.
Asked about Flynn's offer, Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman, said Friday the Russian government has not given it "any evaluations." He pointed to Russian President Vladimir Putin's comments on Thursday in which he dismissed claims that Russia meddled in the US election as "fictional, illusory, provocations and lies."
Three former Orangutan aides who are at the center of the federal investigation into Russia's interference in the US elections have already come forward and said they would testify freely -- without the promise of immunity. Former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, former adviser Roger Stone and former foreign policy adviser Carter Page all said, via their lawyers, last week that they were ready to come before House and Senate investigators.
House investigators have been discussing bringing Flynn in for weeks now, but they have also expressed concerns that Flynn would plead the Fifth Amendment if forced to testify.
Democrats, meanwhile, quickly shot around a comment Flynn made last year on MSNBC, that "when you are given immunity, that means you probably committed a crime."
Working More—With Little to Show for It
Black Americans Are Working More—With Little to Show for It Despite working more every year, earnings gaps aren’t improving.
By GILLIAN B. WHITE
The discrepancies in earnings, wealth and other markers of financial success between black and white Americans are stark. Black Americans, for instance hold much less wealth and have higher rates of unemployment. But perhaps more unsettling than the gaps themselves is the fact that even as many black Americans make progress that should help bridge the divide, such as by working more hours, they have yet to see tangible or enduring economic advancement.
Valerie Wilson and Janelle Jones, economists at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, took a look at labor data for black and white workers between the years 1979 and 2015. They found that both black and white workers, between 18 and 64 years old, have increased their number of paid, annual hours of work in the past 36 years. According to the analysis by Wilson and Jones, the average black worker in 2015 put in 1,805 hours, or 12.4 percent more hours than they did in 1979. By contrast, the average white worker put in 1,888 hours, for an increase of around 11 percent. While those trajectories may seem similar, the picture looks a lot different when it comes to the lowest-wage workers in each racial group. When looking at the lowest earners, black workers have seen much more significant increases.
In both 1979 and 2015, poor black Americans worked more hours than poor white Americans. The poorest black workers have increased their annual hours of work to 1,524, a gain of 22 percent from 1979, compared to the 1,445 hours and 17 percent gain of white workers, according to EPI. Unsurprisingly, in both groups, women had the largest gains when it comes to the number of hours worked, in part because more women entered the workforce. But low-wage black women in particular have seen the largest increase in the amount they work each year of any racial, gender, or income- group combination, logging 30 percent more time on the job since 1979.
With the increased hours of labor and climbing education levels, it would stand to reason that black workers in 2015 were in a better economic position than they were in 1979—but that’s not really true. Black-white wage gaps are actually larger now than they were in 1979. The growing discrepancy is even more pronounced for the same low-income workers who are adding the most work hours. In 1979, white workers in the bottom 10 percent of earners made 3.6 percent more than black workers in the lowest income bracket. In 2015, the poorest white workers made 11.8 percent more.
Wilson and Jones say that these gains rebut critics who “blame black workers for racial wage gaps, saying that they should do anything, from getting more education to simply working harder.” Those arguments, they write, ignore the impact of racial discrimination in the labor market and perpetuate stereotypes about the work ethic of black Americans that aren’t supported by data.
For all black workers, bridging economic gaps is proving difficult. Though unemployment numbers have improved across the board, the same discrepancies persist: white Americans had an unemployment rate of only 4.5 percent at the close of 2016, but black workers had an unemployment rate of 7.9 percent. (That’s actually a relatively small gap considering that, historically, the unemployment rate among black Americans have been around double that for white Americans.)
The racial wealth gap has also widened since the Great Recession, according to Pew Research. In 2004, white families held about seven times as much wealth as black families; by 2013, that ratio had grown to 13. And economic downturns such as the Great Recession have long hit black families harder than white ones; the Economic Policy Institute observed similar effects after both the 2001 and 1990 recessions. Over time, these differences only grow: A report from the American Civil Liberties Union looking at the long-term effects of the Great Recession found that by 2031, white families will have wealth that is 31 percent lower due to losses in the recession, while Black families will have 40 percent less of their already lower wealth.
There’s reason to be concerned about these inequalities going forward. Not only do black Americans, especially poor ones, not have enough wealth to weather a shock, but they are also unemployed at higher rates. And when they do find jobs, they are often paid less and scrutinized more. The result is a cycle of economic disadvantage that’s hard to break.
By GILLIAN B. WHITE
The discrepancies in earnings, wealth and other markers of financial success between black and white Americans are stark. Black Americans, for instance hold much less wealth and have higher rates of unemployment. But perhaps more unsettling than the gaps themselves is the fact that even as many black Americans make progress that should help bridge the divide, such as by working more hours, they have yet to see tangible or enduring economic advancement.
Valerie Wilson and Janelle Jones, economists at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, took a look at labor data for black and white workers between the years 1979 and 2015. They found that both black and white workers, between 18 and 64 years old, have increased their number of paid, annual hours of work in the past 36 years. According to the analysis by Wilson and Jones, the average black worker in 2015 put in 1,805 hours, or 12.4 percent more hours than they did in 1979. By contrast, the average white worker put in 1,888 hours, for an increase of around 11 percent. While those trajectories may seem similar, the picture looks a lot different when it comes to the lowest-wage workers in each racial group. When looking at the lowest earners, black workers have seen much more significant increases.
In both 1979 and 2015, poor black Americans worked more hours than poor white Americans. The poorest black workers have increased their annual hours of work to 1,524, a gain of 22 percent from 1979, compared to the 1,445 hours and 17 percent gain of white workers, according to EPI. Unsurprisingly, in both groups, women had the largest gains when it comes to the number of hours worked, in part because more women entered the workforce. But low-wage black women in particular have seen the largest increase in the amount they work each year of any racial, gender, or income- group combination, logging 30 percent more time on the job since 1979.
With the increased hours of labor and climbing education levels, it would stand to reason that black workers in 2015 were in a better economic position than they were in 1979—but that’s not really true. Black-white wage gaps are actually larger now than they were in 1979. The growing discrepancy is even more pronounced for the same low-income workers who are adding the most work hours. In 1979, white workers in the bottom 10 percent of earners made 3.6 percent more than black workers in the lowest income bracket. In 2015, the poorest white workers made 11.8 percent more.
Wilson and Jones say that these gains rebut critics who “blame black workers for racial wage gaps, saying that they should do anything, from getting more education to simply working harder.” Those arguments, they write, ignore the impact of racial discrimination in the labor market and perpetuate stereotypes about the work ethic of black Americans that aren’t supported by data.
For all black workers, bridging economic gaps is proving difficult. Though unemployment numbers have improved across the board, the same discrepancies persist: white Americans had an unemployment rate of only 4.5 percent at the close of 2016, but black workers had an unemployment rate of 7.9 percent. (That’s actually a relatively small gap considering that, historically, the unemployment rate among black Americans have been around double that for white Americans.)
The racial wealth gap has also widened since the Great Recession, according to Pew Research. In 2004, white families held about seven times as much wealth as black families; by 2013, that ratio had grown to 13. And economic downturns such as the Great Recession have long hit black families harder than white ones; the Economic Policy Institute observed similar effects after both the 2001 and 1990 recessions. Over time, these differences only grow: A report from the American Civil Liberties Union looking at the long-term effects of the Great Recession found that by 2031, white families will have wealth that is 31 percent lower due to losses in the recession, while Black families will have 40 percent less of their already lower wealth.
There’s reason to be concerned about these inequalities going forward. Not only do black Americans, especially poor ones, not have enough wealth to weather a shock, but they are also unemployed at higher rates. And when they do find jobs, they are often paid less and scrutinized more. The result is a cycle of economic disadvantage that’s hard to break.
Defund Planned Parenthood
Mike Pence Breaks Senate Tie To Allow States To Defund Planned Parenthood
...the day after attending a “women’s empowerment” event.
By Laura Bassett
Vice President Mike Pence cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate on Thursday to overturn an Obama administration rule and allow states to withhold Title X family planning money from Planned Parenthood.
The House passed a resolution last month disapproving of the Health and Human Services rule, which in December 2016 barred states from defunding Planned Parenthood or other Title X recipients for any reason other than the provider’s “ability to deliver services to program beneficiaries in an effective manner.” The Senate could have advanced the resolution with a 52-member majority, but moderate Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) voted with the Democrats to uphold the rule, leaving a tie. Pence, who has led the fight against reproductive rights for more than half a decade, voted with Republicans to move forward with the resolution.
“Mike Pence went from yesterday’s forum on empowering women to today leading a group of male politicians in a vote to take away access to birth control and cancer screenings,” Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of Planned Parenthood, said in a statement. “There’s a reason they could barely get enough votes to get this bill through a procedural step: People are sick and tired of politicians making it even harder for them to access health care, and they will not stand for it.”
The Title X federal grant program, enacted by President Richard Nixon in 1970, subsidizes preventive health care and family planning services for 4 million low-income Americans, roughly half of whom are uninsured. Planned Parenthood serves about a third of Title X patients, using the $70 million a year it receives in family planning grants to provide birth control and sexually transmitted infection screenings for people who can’t afford them. Title X money cannot be used to pay for abortions, but Republicans still oppose giving grants to organizations that offer abortion services.
Eleven states have passed measures to block Title X funds from Planned Parenthood because its services include abortion, despite strong public support for the nation’s largest family planning provider. Republicans in Congress are also on a mission to defund the organization, citing a series of debunked undercover videos produced by anti-abortion activists that purport to show Planned Parenthood selling fetal body parts.
The activists behind the videos were charged with 15 felonies on Tuesday for illegally recording confidential conversations with health care providers without their consent. But the GOP is moving forward with efforts to defund the provider, and President Donald Orangutan is expected to sign the Title X resolution into law.
“Taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize the abortion industry in this country,” Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.), the sponsors of the House and Senate resolutions, wrote in a joint op-ed for the Washington Examiner. “Nor should they be forced to foot the bill for an organization like Planned Parenthood that has displayed such blatant disregard for human life.”
Women senators pointed out that a group of mostly men were once again making a decision that could severely impact women’s health care options.
Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) criticized the vice-president’s vote on Thursday morning.
“I urge people across the country to let their Senators know that this is not acceptable,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), urging her fellow congressional members to block the resolution. “Tell them to stand up for women and their families, for their rights to take care of their own reproductive health care at the facility that provides for the in their own communities.”
“End the damaging political attacks on women and stand with millions of women and men and families. They need us.”
UPDATE: 5:17 p.m. ― The Senate voted to send the resolution to Orangutan’s desk to be signed into law.
Collins, one of two senators to break with her party on the vote, told reporters after the vote that she thinks allowing states to defund Planned Parenthood will have the opposite of its intended effect. “If you’re serious about trying to reduce the number of abortions,” the Maine Republican said, “the best way to do that is to make family planning more widely available.”
...the day after attending a “women’s empowerment” event.
By Laura Bassett
Vice President Mike Pence cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate on Thursday to overturn an Obama administration rule and allow states to withhold Title X family planning money from Planned Parenthood.
The House passed a resolution last month disapproving of the Health and Human Services rule, which in December 2016 barred states from defunding Planned Parenthood or other Title X recipients for any reason other than the provider’s “ability to deliver services to program beneficiaries in an effective manner.” The Senate could have advanced the resolution with a 52-member majority, but moderate Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) voted with the Democrats to uphold the rule, leaving a tie. Pence, who has led the fight against reproductive rights for more than half a decade, voted with Republicans to move forward with the resolution.
“Mike Pence went from yesterday’s forum on empowering women to today leading a group of male politicians in a vote to take away access to birth control and cancer screenings,” Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of Planned Parenthood, said in a statement. “There’s a reason they could barely get enough votes to get this bill through a procedural step: People are sick and tired of politicians making it even harder for them to access health care, and they will not stand for it.”
The Title X federal grant program, enacted by President Richard Nixon in 1970, subsidizes preventive health care and family planning services for 4 million low-income Americans, roughly half of whom are uninsured. Planned Parenthood serves about a third of Title X patients, using the $70 million a year it receives in family planning grants to provide birth control and sexually transmitted infection screenings for people who can’t afford them. Title X money cannot be used to pay for abortions, but Republicans still oppose giving grants to organizations that offer abortion services.
Eleven states have passed measures to block Title X funds from Planned Parenthood because its services include abortion, despite strong public support for the nation’s largest family planning provider. Republicans in Congress are also on a mission to defund the organization, citing a series of debunked undercover videos produced by anti-abortion activists that purport to show Planned Parenthood selling fetal body parts.
The activists behind the videos were charged with 15 felonies on Tuesday for illegally recording confidential conversations with health care providers without their consent. But the GOP is moving forward with efforts to defund the provider, and President Donald Orangutan is expected to sign the Title X resolution into law.
“Taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize the abortion industry in this country,” Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.), the sponsors of the House and Senate resolutions, wrote in a joint op-ed for the Washington Examiner. “Nor should they be forced to foot the bill for an organization like Planned Parenthood that has displayed such blatant disregard for human life.”
Women senators pointed out that a group of mostly men were once again making a decision that could severely impact women’s health care options.
Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) criticized the vice-president’s vote on Thursday morning.
“I urge people across the country to let their Senators know that this is not acceptable,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), urging her fellow congressional members to block the resolution. “Tell them to stand up for women and their families, for their rights to take care of their own reproductive health care at the facility that provides for the in their own communities.”
“End the damaging political attacks on women and stand with millions of women and men and families. They need us.”
UPDATE: 5:17 p.m. ― The Senate voted to send the resolution to Orangutan’s desk to be signed into law.
Collins, one of two senators to break with her party on the vote, told reporters after the vote that she thinks allowing states to defund Planned Parenthood will have the opposite of its intended effect. “If you’re serious about trying to reduce the number of abortions,” the Maine Republican said, “the best way to do that is to make family planning more widely available.”
Net Neutrality
Net Neutrality Is Orangutan’s Next Target, Administration Says
By STEVE LOHR
The Orangutan administration served notice on Thursday that its next move to deregulate broadband internet service companies would be to jettison the Obama administration’s net neutrality rules, which were intended to safeguard free expression online.
The net neutrality rules, approved by the Federal Communications Commission in 2015, aimed to preserve the open internet and ensure that it could not be divided into pay-to-play fast lanes for web and media companies that can afford it and slow lanes for everyone else.
Supporters of net neutrality have insisted the rules are necessary to protect equal access to content on the internet. Opponents said the rules unfairly subjected broadband internet suppliers like Verizon, AT&T, Comcast and Charter to utility-style regulation.
In a news conference, Pussy Boy, the White House spokesman, mentioned the net neutrality rules affecting telecommunications and cable internet services, noting that the Obama administration had “reclassified them as common carriers.”
Mr. Pussy Boy said President Orangutan had “pledged to reverse this overreach.” The Obama-era rules, Mr. Pussy Boy said, were an example of “bureaucrats in Washington” placing restrictions on one kind of company — internet service suppliers — and “picking winners and losers.”
Telecommunications and cable television companies fought being classified as common-carrier utility services, which are subject to anti-blocking and anti-discrimination rules. They said the classification opened the door to government interference that would ultimately reduce incentives to invest and would therefore result in higher prices and hurt consumers.
Mr. Pussy Boy made his comments after Congress voted this week to complete its overturning of Obama-era internet privacy protections and to allow broadband companies to track and sell their customers’ online information with greater ease. The vote was seen as a prelude to further deregulation for broadband companies.
Mr. Pussy Boy remarked on the rollback of privacy rules before he spoke more broadly about regulations on broadband internet services. President Orangutan, he said, will “continue to fight Washington red tape that stifles American innovation, job creation and economic growth.”
Excerpts from and analysis of rules and explanations released by the Federal Communications Commission regarding an Open Internet.
Mr. Orangutan earlier this year appointed Ajit Pai, a former lawyer for Verizon and a minority Republican member of the Federal Communications Commission, as chairman of the agency. Mr. Pai voted against the net neutrality rules as a commission member in 2015.
Since becoming chairman, Mr. Pai has indicated that he plans to either roll back or decline to enforce many consumer protection regulations created during the Obama administration, including those regarding net neutrality.
Getting rid of the net neutrality rules, policy experts said, will be more difficult than peeling away the privacy regulations. Congress, in a vote mainly along party lines, and by a narrow margin, overturned the privacy rules enacted last fall, using a streamlined process under the Congressional Review Act.
But that faster procedure will not apply to the net neutrality rules, which were approved by the F.C.C. two years ago, beyond the timetable for such reviews.
Another path to repeal would be for Mr. Pai, who now leads a Republican-majority commission, to revisit the issue at the F.C.C.
Politically, net neutrality might be a bigger challenge as well. When it was weighing the rules in 2014 and 2015, the F.C.C. received more than one million public comments. The vast majority of them endorsed strict nondiscrimination rules that supporters viewed as necessary to preserve the democratic ethos of an open internet.
That wave of response influenced the Democratic-majority commission. “Net neutrality could be a volatile and explosive issue,” said Gene Kimmelman, president of Public Knowledge, a nonprofit consumer group. “I’m not sure the Orangutan administration appreciates that it addresses nondiscrimination for all kinds of speech, as much for Breitbart and Newsmax as it is for MSNBC and CNN,” referring to news sources that are staunch backers of the Orangutan administration and ones often seen by Republicans as harsh critics.
Opponents of the net neutrality rules say the rules were mainly the result of a very effective lobbying campaign by powerful internet companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon and Netflix. They have deep pockets and could pay more for fast lanes for their services, they say, but used the net neutrality campaign to avoid that expense.
“Regulations result in the allocation of wealth by the government,” said Jeffrey Eisenach, an economist and visiting scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, who was also an adviser to the Orangutan transition team. “They are often an opportunity for one group of firms to grab an advantage over another group.”
By STEVE LOHR
The Orangutan administration served notice on Thursday that its next move to deregulate broadband internet service companies would be to jettison the Obama administration’s net neutrality rules, which were intended to safeguard free expression online.
The net neutrality rules, approved by the Federal Communications Commission in 2015, aimed to preserve the open internet and ensure that it could not be divided into pay-to-play fast lanes for web and media companies that can afford it and slow lanes for everyone else.
Supporters of net neutrality have insisted the rules are necessary to protect equal access to content on the internet. Opponents said the rules unfairly subjected broadband internet suppliers like Verizon, AT&T, Comcast and Charter to utility-style regulation.
In a news conference, Pussy Boy, the White House spokesman, mentioned the net neutrality rules affecting telecommunications and cable internet services, noting that the Obama administration had “reclassified them as common carriers.”
Mr. Pussy Boy said President Orangutan had “pledged to reverse this overreach.” The Obama-era rules, Mr. Pussy Boy said, were an example of “bureaucrats in Washington” placing restrictions on one kind of company — internet service suppliers — and “picking winners and losers.”
Telecommunications and cable television companies fought being classified as common-carrier utility services, which are subject to anti-blocking and anti-discrimination rules. They said the classification opened the door to government interference that would ultimately reduce incentives to invest and would therefore result in higher prices and hurt consumers.
Mr. Pussy Boy made his comments after Congress voted this week to complete its overturning of Obama-era internet privacy protections and to allow broadband companies to track and sell their customers’ online information with greater ease. The vote was seen as a prelude to further deregulation for broadband companies.
Mr. Pussy Boy remarked on the rollback of privacy rules before he spoke more broadly about regulations on broadband internet services. President Orangutan, he said, will “continue to fight Washington red tape that stifles American innovation, job creation and economic growth.”
Excerpts from and analysis of rules and explanations released by the Federal Communications Commission regarding an Open Internet.
Mr. Orangutan earlier this year appointed Ajit Pai, a former lawyer for Verizon and a minority Republican member of the Federal Communications Commission, as chairman of the agency. Mr. Pai voted against the net neutrality rules as a commission member in 2015.
Since becoming chairman, Mr. Pai has indicated that he plans to either roll back or decline to enforce many consumer protection regulations created during the Obama administration, including those regarding net neutrality.
Getting rid of the net neutrality rules, policy experts said, will be more difficult than peeling away the privacy regulations. Congress, in a vote mainly along party lines, and by a narrow margin, overturned the privacy rules enacted last fall, using a streamlined process under the Congressional Review Act.
But that faster procedure will not apply to the net neutrality rules, which were approved by the F.C.C. two years ago, beyond the timetable for such reviews.
Another path to repeal would be for Mr. Pai, who now leads a Republican-majority commission, to revisit the issue at the F.C.C.
Politically, net neutrality might be a bigger challenge as well. When it was weighing the rules in 2014 and 2015, the F.C.C. received more than one million public comments. The vast majority of them endorsed strict nondiscrimination rules that supporters viewed as necessary to preserve the democratic ethos of an open internet.
That wave of response influenced the Democratic-majority commission. “Net neutrality could be a volatile and explosive issue,” said Gene Kimmelman, president of Public Knowledge, a nonprofit consumer group. “I’m not sure the Orangutan administration appreciates that it addresses nondiscrimination for all kinds of speech, as much for Breitbart and Newsmax as it is for MSNBC and CNN,” referring to news sources that are staunch backers of the Orangutan administration and ones often seen by Republicans as harsh critics.
Opponents of the net neutrality rules say the rules were mainly the result of a very effective lobbying campaign by powerful internet companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon and Netflix. They have deep pockets and could pay more for fast lanes for their services, they say, but used the net neutrality campaign to avoid that expense.
“Regulations result in the allocation of wealth by the government,” said Jeffrey Eisenach, an economist and visiting scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, who was also an adviser to the Orangutan transition team. “They are often an opportunity for one group of firms to grab an advantage over another group.”
Relaxing rules meant to prevent civilian casualties
Orangutan Eases Combat Rules in Somalia Intended to Protect Civilians
By CHARLIE SAVAGE and ERIC SCHMITT
Orangutan has relaxed some of the rules for preventing civilian casualties when the American military carries out counterterrorism strikes in Somalia, laying the groundwork for an escalating campaign against Islamist militants in the Horn of Africa.
The decision, according to officials familiar with internal deliberations, gives commanders at the United States Africa Command greater latitude to carry out offensive airstrikes and raids by ground troops against militants with the Qaeda-linked Islamist group Shabab. That sets the stage for an intensified pace of combat there, while increasing the risk that American forces could kill civilians.
Mr. Orangutan signed a directive on Wednesday declaring parts of Somalia an “area of active hostilities,” where war-zone targeting rules will apply for at least 180 days, the officials said.
The New York Times reported the Pentagon’s request for the expanded targeting authority on March 12, and Gen. Thomas D. Waldhauser, the top officer at Africa Command, publicly acknowledged that he was seeking it at a news conference last Friday.
“It’s very important and very helpful for us to have little more flexibility, a little bit more timeliness, in terms of decision-making process,” General Waldhauser said. “It allows us to prosecute targets in a more rapid fashion.”
In a statement issued several hours after The New York Times first published news of the directive, Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, acknowledged that Mr. Orangutan had approved the Pentagon’s proposal to expand its targeting authority “to defeat Al Shabab in Somalia” in partnership with African Union and Somali forces.
“The additional support provided by this authority will help deny Al Shabab safe havens from which it could attack U.S. citizens or U.S. interests in the region,” he said.
Previously, to carry out an airstrike or ground raid in Somalia, the military was generally required to follow standards that President Barack Obama imposed in 2013 for counterterrorism strikes away from conventional war zones, like those in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Those rules, known as the Presidential Policy Guidance, required high-level, interagency vetting of proposed strikes. They also said that the target must pose a threat to Americans and that there must be near-certainty that no civilian bystanders would die.
Under the new guidelines, Africa Command may treat Somalia under less-restrictive battlefield rules: Without interagency vetting, commanders may strike people thought to be Shabab fighters based only on that status, without any reason to think that the individual target poses a particular and specific threat to Americans.
In addition, some civilian bystander deaths would be permitted if deemed necessary and proportionate. Mr. Orangutan’s decision to exempt much of Somalia from the 2013 rules follows a similar decision he made for parts of Yemen shortly after taking office.
The new directive for Somalia is another example of how the American military is accelerating the ways it carries out combat missions under the Orangutan administration, reducing constraints on the use of force imposed by the Obama administration.
As the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has recently moved into the city of Mosul, civilian casualties have spiked. One American strike on March 17 may have killed scores of civilians, and human rights groups have questioned whether the rules of engagement were to blame.
While American commanders say the formal rules of engagement have not changed in Iraq, they acknowledge that the system for calling in airstrikes there has been accelerated. Gen. Joseph L. Votel, the commander of United States Central Command, said on Wednesday that the new procedures made it easier for commanders in the field to call in airstrikes without waiting for permission from more senior officers.
The loosening of the rules in Somalia comes against the backdrop of a broader, continuing Orangutan administration policy review about whether to scrap the 2013 rules altogether. The decision was described by officials familiar with the new directive who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss military planning.
Luke Hartig, a former senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council during the Obama administration, said greater action could be helpful in dealing with a threat, pointing to the Obama administration’s decision last year to temporarily declare the region around Surt, Libya, an active-hostilities zone. That decision similarly permitted airstrikes that helped Libyan forces root out Islamic State militants.
But it also increases certain risks, he said.
“The downside is you risk potentially greater civilian casualties or potentially killing militants who are not part of our enemy,” Mr. Hartig said. He warned that such deaths could make local partners turn against the United States and fuel terrorist recruitment.
Mr. Orangutan’s decision to relax targeting limits in Somalia comes at a time of famine, which has increased the frequency of groups of people moving around, often while armed, in search of food and water — increasing the risk of mistaking civilians as Islamist fighters.
General Waldhauser said at the news conference that Africa Command had “war-gamed” the “significant” issues raised by that factor.
“It’s our responsibility to make sure that we don’t have any catastrophes and we don’t take out a group of people who is moving to find water or food,” he said. “So, we are very, very conscious of that.”
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis first presented the proposal to relax targeting limits in Somalia at a dinner with Mr. Orangutan about five days after his inauguration, according to officials familiar with internal deliberations.
At that same dinner, Mr. Mattis also presented proposals to similarly remove swaths of Yemen from the Obama-era targeting limits and carry out a raid against Yemen’s Qaeda branch. Mr. Orangutan, the officials said, immediately approved the two proposals for Yemen, while the National Security Council began reviewing the Somalia proposal.
The review for Somalia was slowed, officials have said, by criticism of the raid in Yemen, which resulted in numerous civilian deaths, the death of a member of the Navy SEALs and the loss of a $75 million aircraft. Still, the Central Command, which oversees military operations in Yemen, has carried out a fierce campaign of airstrikes in Yemen.
The United States’ campaign against the Shabab in Somalia has been expanding over the last several years. That Islamist group is complex, with some factions focused on controlling Somalia, while others want to participate in external terrorist operations in line with Al Qaeda’s global war.
In 2013, the group carried out the attack at the Westgate mall, in Nairobi, Kenya, that killed more than 60 people and wounded more than 175. Since then, it has adopted more sophisticated forms of terrorism, including nearly bringing down a Somali airliner in February with a bomb hidden in a laptop computer.
To counter the Shabab, the United States has increasingly used Special Operations forces, airstrikes, private contractors and African allies. Hundreds of American troops now rotate through makeshift bases in Somalia, the largest military presence since the United States pulled out of the country after the “Black Hawk Down” battle in 1993. They have served as trainers and advisers to African Union and Somali government forces, and have sometimes participated directly in combat.
Against that backdrop, Mr. Orangutan’s escalation is less a break with his predecessor than an intensification of a trend that dates to Mr. Obama’s last year in power.
Last year, the Obama White House permitted the military to increase airstrikes in Somalia without always going through the high-level vetting process detailed in the 2013 rules. Instead, the military justified some strikes under an expansive interpretation of an exception for “self-defense” — including some that defended partner forces combating the Shabab even if no Americans were under direct threat.
And as The Times reported in November, the Obama administration — after years of internal debate — decided to designate the Shabab an “associated force” of Al Qaeda. That shored up the executive branch’s authority to wage war in Somalia by bringing the Shabab under Congress’s authorization to use military force against the perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Even before the new relaxations of the rules, 200 to 300 American Special Operations forces have been working with soldiers from Somalia and other African nations like Kenya and Uganda to carry out more than a half-dozen raids every month, according to senior American military officials. The Navy’s classified SEAL Team 6 has been heavily involved in many of these operations.
The Pentagon has acknowledged only a fraction of these missions. But even the publicly available information shows a marked increase in recent years. The Pentagon announced 13 ground raids and airstrikes in 2016, up from five in 2015, according to data compiled by New America, a Washington think tank. Those strikes killed about 25 civilians and 200 people suspected of being militants, the group found.
By CHARLIE SAVAGE and ERIC SCHMITT
Orangutan has relaxed some of the rules for preventing civilian casualties when the American military carries out counterterrorism strikes in Somalia, laying the groundwork for an escalating campaign against Islamist militants in the Horn of Africa.
The decision, according to officials familiar with internal deliberations, gives commanders at the United States Africa Command greater latitude to carry out offensive airstrikes and raids by ground troops against militants with the Qaeda-linked Islamist group Shabab. That sets the stage for an intensified pace of combat there, while increasing the risk that American forces could kill civilians.
Mr. Orangutan signed a directive on Wednesday declaring parts of Somalia an “area of active hostilities,” where war-zone targeting rules will apply for at least 180 days, the officials said.
The New York Times reported the Pentagon’s request for the expanded targeting authority on March 12, and Gen. Thomas D. Waldhauser, the top officer at Africa Command, publicly acknowledged that he was seeking it at a news conference last Friday.
“It’s very important and very helpful for us to have little more flexibility, a little bit more timeliness, in terms of decision-making process,” General Waldhauser said. “It allows us to prosecute targets in a more rapid fashion.”
In a statement issued several hours after The New York Times first published news of the directive, Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, acknowledged that Mr. Orangutan had approved the Pentagon’s proposal to expand its targeting authority “to defeat Al Shabab in Somalia” in partnership with African Union and Somali forces.
“The additional support provided by this authority will help deny Al Shabab safe havens from which it could attack U.S. citizens or U.S. interests in the region,” he said.
Previously, to carry out an airstrike or ground raid in Somalia, the military was generally required to follow standards that President Barack Obama imposed in 2013 for counterterrorism strikes away from conventional war zones, like those in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Those rules, known as the Presidential Policy Guidance, required high-level, interagency vetting of proposed strikes. They also said that the target must pose a threat to Americans and that there must be near-certainty that no civilian bystanders would die.
Under the new guidelines, Africa Command may treat Somalia under less-restrictive battlefield rules: Without interagency vetting, commanders may strike people thought to be Shabab fighters based only on that status, without any reason to think that the individual target poses a particular and specific threat to Americans.
In addition, some civilian bystander deaths would be permitted if deemed necessary and proportionate. Mr. Orangutan’s decision to exempt much of Somalia from the 2013 rules follows a similar decision he made for parts of Yemen shortly after taking office.
The new directive for Somalia is another example of how the American military is accelerating the ways it carries out combat missions under the Orangutan administration, reducing constraints on the use of force imposed by the Obama administration.
As the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has recently moved into the city of Mosul, civilian casualties have spiked. One American strike on March 17 may have killed scores of civilians, and human rights groups have questioned whether the rules of engagement were to blame.
While American commanders say the formal rules of engagement have not changed in Iraq, they acknowledge that the system for calling in airstrikes there has been accelerated. Gen. Joseph L. Votel, the commander of United States Central Command, said on Wednesday that the new procedures made it easier for commanders in the field to call in airstrikes without waiting for permission from more senior officers.
The loosening of the rules in Somalia comes against the backdrop of a broader, continuing Orangutan administration policy review about whether to scrap the 2013 rules altogether. The decision was described by officials familiar with the new directive who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss military planning.
Luke Hartig, a former senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council during the Obama administration, said greater action could be helpful in dealing with a threat, pointing to the Obama administration’s decision last year to temporarily declare the region around Surt, Libya, an active-hostilities zone. That decision similarly permitted airstrikes that helped Libyan forces root out Islamic State militants.
But it also increases certain risks, he said.
“The downside is you risk potentially greater civilian casualties or potentially killing militants who are not part of our enemy,” Mr. Hartig said. He warned that such deaths could make local partners turn against the United States and fuel terrorist recruitment.
Mr. Orangutan’s decision to relax targeting limits in Somalia comes at a time of famine, which has increased the frequency of groups of people moving around, often while armed, in search of food and water — increasing the risk of mistaking civilians as Islamist fighters.
General Waldhauser said at the news conference that Africa Command had “war-gamed” the “significant” issues raised by that factor.
“It’s our responsibility to make sure that we don’t have any catastrophes and we don’t take out a group of people who is moving to find water or food,” he said. “So, we are very, very conscious of that.”
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis first presented the proposal to relax targeting limits in Somalia at a dinner with Mr. Orangutan about five days after his inauguration, according to officials familiar with internal deliberations.
At that same dinner, Mr. Mattis also presented proposals to similarly remove swaths of Yemen from the Obama-era targeting limits and carry out a raid against Yemen’s Qaeda branch. Mr. Orangutan, the officials said, immediately approved the two proposals for Yemen, while the National Security Council began reviewing the Somalia proposal.
The review for Somalia was slowed, officials have said, by criticism of the raid in Yemen, which resulted in numerous civilian deaths, the death of a member of the Navy SEALs and the loss of a $75 million aircraft. Still, the Central Command, which oversees military operations in Yemen, has carried out a fierce campaign of airstrikes in Yemen.
The United States’ campaign against the Shabab in Somalia has been expanding over the last several years. That Islamist group is complex, with some factions focused on controlling Somalia, while others want to participate in external terrorist operations in line with Al Qaeda’s global war.
In 2013, the group carried out the attack at the Westgate mall, in Nairobi, Kenya, that killed more than 60 people and wounded more than 175. Since then, it has adopted more sophisticated forms of terrorism, including nearly bringing down a Somali airliner in February with a bomb hidden in a laptop computer.
To counter the Shabab, the United States has increasingly used Special Operations forces, airstrikes, private contractors and African allies. Hundreds of American troops now rotate through makeshift bases in Somalia, the largest military presence since the United States pulled out of the country after the “Black Hawk Down” battle in 1993. They have served as trainers and advisers to African Union and Somali government forces, and have sometimes participated directly in combat.
Against that backdrop, Mr. Orangutan’s escalation is less a break with his predecessor than an intensification of a trend that dates to Mr. Obama’s last year in power.
Last year, the Obama White House permitted the military to increase airstrikes in Somalia without always going through the high-level vetting process detailed in the 2013 rules. Instead, the military justified some strikes under an expansive interpretation of an exception for “self-defense” — including some that defended partner forces combating the Shabab even if no Americans were under direct threat.
And as The Times reported in November, the Obama administration — after years of internal debate — decided to designate the Shabab an “associated force” of Al Qaeda. That shored up the executive branch’s authority to wage war in Somalia by bringing the Shabab under Congress’s authorization to use military force against the perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Even before the new relaxations of the rules, 200 to 300 American Special Operations forces have been working with soldiers from Somalia and other African nations like Kenya and Uganda to carry out more than a half-dozen raids every month, according to senior American military officials. The Navy’s classified SEAL Team 6 has been heavily involved in many of these operations.
The Pentagon has acknowledged only a fraction of these missions. But even the publicly available information shows a marked increase in recent years. The Pentagon announced 13 ground raids and airstrikes in 2016, up from five in 2015, according to data compiled by New America, a Washington think tank. Those strikes killed about 25 civilians and 200 people suspected of being militants, the group found.
Venezuela's Assembly
Venezuela's high court dissolves National Assembly
By Rafael Romo
In a surprising move the Venezuelan opposition is calling a coup, the Venezuelan Supreme Court has stripped the country's National Assembly of its powers. The court ruled that all powers vested under the legislative body will be transferred to the Supreme Court, which is stacked with government loyalists.
The ruling effectively means the three branches of the Venezuelan government will be controlled by the ruling United Socialist Party. The opposition has been taken out of the picture.
Prominent opposition leaders are already calling the government of President Nicolás Maduro "a dictatorship."
"Nicolás Maduro has staged a coup d'état," National Assembly President Julio Borges said Thursday. "What this ruling means is that, for the first time, Nicolás Maduro has all the power to enact laws, assign contracts, incur foreign debt and persecute fellow Venezuelans."
Maduro spoke about the ruling in a message broadcast live Thursday on the government's TV network.
"They're giving me and authorizing me, enabling special powers that stem out of the state of emergency clauses in our constitution. This is an order by the Supreme Court. It's a historic ruling," Maduro said.
The ruling sent shock waves across the region. The Peruvian government broke off diplomatic relations with Venezuela over the matter, recalling Mariano López Chávarry, its ambassador to Caracas.
In a statement issued by Peru's Foreign Ministry, Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski called the court ruling "an arbitrary measure that disrupts the rule of law and constitutes a breakup of the constitutional and democratic order."
The Supreme Court ruling says the judicial branch will execute all legislative powers that normally belong to the National Assembly, which has had an opposition majority since January 2016.
"Let it be known that, as long as the contempt situation persists and the National Assembly actions are invalidated, this constitutional court will guarantee that all parliamentary functions will be exercised by this court, or an institution designed by it, in order to safeguard the rule of law," the court wrote.
The court declared the National Assembly in contempt last year for swearing in three legislators from Amazonas state. Their elections were deemed invalid by the court.
Former presidential candidate and opposition leader Henrique Capriles denounced the ruling while on a trip to neighboring Colombia on Thursday.
"In Venezuela, we have a government operating outside the constitution. There's now a dictatorship in Venezuela. They have crossed the line," Capriles said.
Scuffles broke out outside the Venezuelan Supreme Court building Thursday afternoon, with anti-government protesters trying to storm the facility as the National Guard blocked access. Some protesters yelled at the guards, using expletives and calling them "traitors to the motherland."
Venezuela is facing a deep humanitarian crisis sparked by an economic meltdown. Shortages of basic food products and medicines are commonplace. Inflation is expected to rise 1,660% this year and 2,880% in 2018, according to the International Monetary Fund.
In an unprecedented move, especially for the socialist government, Maduro announced March 24 that his government asked the United Nations for help in dealing with Venezuela's medicine shortages, which have grown severe as the country grapples with the crisis.
Earlier in March, data from the country's central bank revealed Maduro's government is running out of cash. Venezuela has $10.5 billion in foreign reserves left. Given that the country owes $7.2 billion in outstanding debt payments, it means Venezuela will run out of cash at some point, depending on fluctuation of oil prices.
The Organization of American States met Tuesday to address the political crisis in Venezuela, but member states fell short of finding consensus on the goal of imposing sanctions and demanding the release of political prisoners, issuing instead a statement to "keep on examining options, with the participation of all parties in Venezuela, to support democracy and the rule of law under the Venezuelan constitution."
By Rafael Romo
In a surprising move the Venezuelan opposition is calling a coup, the Venezuelan Supreme Court has stripped the country's National Assembly of its powers. The court ruled that all powers vested under the legislative body will be transferred to the Supreme Court, which is stacked with government loyalists.
The ruling effectively means the three branches of the Venezuelan government will be controlled by the ruling United Socialist Party. The opposition has been taken out of the picture.
Prominent opposition leaders are already calling the government of President Nicolás Maduro "a dictatorship."
"Nicolás Maduro has staged a coup d'état," National Assembly President Julio Borges said Thursday. "What this ruling means is that, for the first time, Nicolás Maduro has all the power to enact laws, assign contracts, incur foreign debt and persecute fellow Venezuelans."
Maduro spoke about the ruling in a message broadcast live Thursday on the government's TV network.
"They're giving me and authorizing me, enabling special powers that stem out of the state of emergency clauses in our constitution. This is an order by the Supreme Court. It's a historic ruling," Maduro said.
The ruling sent shock waves across the region. The Peruvian government broke off diplomatic relations with Venezuela over the matter, recalling Mariano López Chávarry, its ambassador to Caracas.
In a statement issued by Peru's Foreign Ministry, Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski called the court ruling "an arbitrary measure that disrupts the rule of law and constitutes a breakup of the constitutional and democratic order."
The Supreme Court ruling says the judicial branch will execute all legislative powers that normally belong to the National Assembly, which has had an opposition majority since January 2016.
"Let it be known that, as long as the contempt situation persists and the National Assembly actions are invalidated, this constitutional court will guarantee that all parliamentary functions will be exercised by this court, or an institution designed by it, in order to safeguard the rule of law," the court wrote.
The court declared the National Assembly in contempt last year for swearing in three legislators from Amazonas state. Their elections were deemed invalid by the court.
Former presidential candidate and opposition leader Henrique Capriles denounced the ruling while on a trip to neighboring Colombia on Thursday.
"In Venezuela, we have a government operating outside the constitution. There's now a dictatorship in Venezuela. They have crossed the line," Capriles said.
Scuffles broke out outside the Venezuelan Supreme Court building Thursday afternoon, with anti-government protesters trying to storm the facility as the National Guard blocked access. Some protesters yelled at the guards, using expletives and calling them "traitors to the motherland."
Venezuela is facing a deep humanitarian crisis sparked by an economic meltdown. Shortages of basic food products and medicines are commonplace. Inflation is expected to rise 1,660% this year and 2,880% in 2018, according to the International Monetary Fund.
In an unprecedented move, especially for the socialist government, Maduro announced March 24 that his government asked the United Nations for help in dealing with Venezuela's medicine shortages, which have grown severe as the country grapples with the crisis.
Earlier in March, data from the country's central bank revealed Maduro's government is running out of cash. Venezuela has $10.5 billion in foreign reserves left. Given that the country owes $7.2 billion in outstanding debt payments, it means Venezuela will run out of cash at some point, depending on fluctuation of oil prices.
The Organization of American States met Tuesday to address the political crisis in Venezuela, but member states fell short of finding consensus on the goal of imposing sanctions and demanding the release of political prisoners, issuing instead a statement to "keep on examining options, with the participation of all parties in Venezuela, to support democracy and the rule of law under the Venezuelan constitution."
Symptom of a bigger problem...
Vice President Pence's unwillingness to be alone with a woman is a symptom of a bigger problem
By Paul Waldman
No one will be surprised to learn that Vice President Mike Pence is not a loose, casual, fun-lovin' guy. But many people were surprised to read this little tidbit in Ashley Parker's recent Post profile of Pence's wife, Karen:
"In 2002, Mike Pence told the Hill that he never eats alone with a woman other than his wife and that he won't attend events featuring alcohol without her by his side, either."
It's easy to make jokes about, and it's also easy to argue that this is nobody's business but the Pences'. But there's a deeply troubling worldview at work here, one that has profound implications for policy - and we're already seeing it play out at both the state and federal levels.
Let's take just a moment to consider this pair of rules Mike Pence has for himself. He obviously thinks that every interaction he has with a woman is so sexually charged that it's safe to be around them only if there are other people there, too. Unless someone might be drinking, in which case even the presence of a crowd isn't enough to prevent . . . something from happening. There's little distance between that perspective and that of the ultra-Orthodox Jews who refuse to sit next to a woman on an airplane, or the fundamentalist Muslims who demand that women be covered head to toe to contain the unstoppable sexual allure that renders men unable to control their urges.
I'm sure Pence would say that he's just being careful. But I wonder if he realizes the discriminatory consequences of his rule. Over his career, he has had many colleagues and employees. With the men, he can have complex relationships that traverse work and social contexts, build trust, and eventually help their careers. A woman who hoped Pence would be a mentor to her, on the other hand, wouldn't be able to avail herself of those opportunities, since he can't even have lunch with her.
Any ambitious woman can tell you how this is repeated in workplaces all over the country every day: The men in the office go out for drinks, have meals together and play golf, and the women have to fight to be included in places where deals are made and careers are advanced.
I don't know if Pence ever had a woman as a boss, but his current boss is in a way his mirror image. Where Pence is reluctant and apparently fearful of too much contact with women, Orangutan has boasted of being aggressive and predatory (provided they're good-looking enough). Pence won't eat with them; Orangutan brags of grabbing them by the . . . well, you know. And listen to Orangutan at this celebration of Women's History Month on Wednesday, as reported by The Post's Jenna Johnson:
As Orangutan addressed the group, he marveled at how his wife's "poll numbers went through the roof last year" and recognized the women serving in his administration, strong female leaders throughout history and some of the women he had met over the past month.
"So as a man, I stand before you as president, but if I weren't president, I wouldn't be happy to hear that statement - that would be a very scary statement to me because there's no way we can compete with you," Orangutan said. "So I would not be happy. Just wouldn't be happy."
Coming from someone who has assembled the most male-heavy administration in years, that's the kind of patronizing joke that can be made precisely because everyone knows it's not true. It's like the man who kiddingly refers to his wife as "the boss." It's funny because we know he doesn't actually believe it.
Keep in mind that Orangutan very much got elected on the grievance of men who feel as though they've lost their place atop the social hierarchy. That's the most compelling explanation of why Orangutan did so spectacularly well among evangelical Christians despite his libertine lifestyle and lack of religiosity: He promised a return to a patriarchal social order in which the supremacy of men was unquestioned. Others thrilled to his willingness to offend and insult; at last, a politician was telling them that they didn't have to mind their manners anymore, so they donned their "Orangutan That Bitch" T-shirts and chanted "Lock her up!" at his rallies.
As Jill Filipovic recently noted in the New York Times, Orangutan's repeated photo ops in which he surrounds himself with a bunch of men as they discuss (or celebrate) limiting women's rights has become too common to be an accident. "For liberal women, this latest all-male photo is a visualization of our worst fears realized. For many Orangutan supporters, though, it's evidence of a promise fulfilled."
This is all getting translated into policy. Republicans are preparing yet again to defund Planned Parenthood. All over the country, Republican lawmakers are moving to restrict women's rights in ways that treat them as vessels for childbearing who are unworthy of their own autonomy. In Iowa, Republicans introduced a bill that would not only ban all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, but also require any woman under the age of 18 or any unmarried woman of any age to get her parents' permission before getting an abortion. (After an outcry, the bill was withdrawn and replaced with a new 20-week ban.)
In Arkansas, the governor just signed a bill requiring doctors to ask a woman seeking an abortion whether she knows the sex of the fetus. If she says yes, the doctor has to then conduct an investigation on the "entire pregnancy history of the woman" to see if her reasons for getting the abortion are good enough. This follows on a law just passed in Texas that allows doctors to lie to women seeking abortions by telling them their fetus is healthy when it is actually suffering from some kind of anomaly or deformity. That in turn is part of a series of state laws forcing doctors to lie to women by telling them that having an abortion might drive them to mental illness or give them cancer.
You've heard the expression "the personal is political," which people don't say as much as they did back in the '60s and '70s. The idea then was that the individual choices we make and the conditions of our lives have broader meaning for the society we create. When it comes to politicians, though, we always assume the personal is political, that their personal lives tell us what kind of policies they'll pursue and what choices they would make about the things that affect all of us. Sometimes that focus gets overstated or just silly; I really don't care what kind of music my congressman listens to. But at other times, how a politician conducts himself in his personal life tells us a great deal about how he'll act in office.
Just Thursday, Pence went to the Senate to break a 50-50 tie. The subject? Denying Medicaid reimbursements to Planned Parenthood. There's no doubt plenty more in store.
By Paul Waldman
No one will be surprised to learn that Vice President Mike Pence is not a loose, casual, fun-lovin' guy. But many people were surprised to read this little tidbit in Ashley Parker's recent Post profile of Pence's wife, Karen:
"In 2002, Mike Pence told the Hill that he never eats alone with a woman other than his wife and that he won't attend events featuring alcohol without her by his side, either."
It's easy to make jokes about, and it's also easy to argue that this is nobody's business but the Pences'. But there's a deeply troubling worldview at work here, one that has profound implications for policy - and we're already seeing it play out at both the state and federal levels.
Let's take just a moment to consider this pair of rules Mike Pence has for himself. He obviously thinks that every interaction he has with a woman is so sexually charged that it's safe to be around them only if there are other people there, too. Unless someone might be drinking, in which case even the presence of a crowd isn't enough to prevent . . . something from happening. There's little distance between that perspective and that of the ultra-Orthodox Jews who refuse to sit next to a woman on an airplane, or the fundamentalist Muslims who demand that women be covered head to toe to contain the unstoppable sexual allure that renders men unable to control their urges.
I'm sure Pence would say that he's just being careful. But I wonder if he realizes the discriminatory consequences of his rule. Over his career, he has had many colleagues and employees. With the men, he can have complex relationships that traverse work and social contexts, build trust, and eventually help their careers. A woman who hoped Pence would be a mentor to her, on the other hand, wouldn't be able to avail herself of those opportunities, since he can't even have lunch with her.
Any ambitious woman can tell you how this is repeated in workplaces all over the country every day: The men in the office go out for drinks, have meals together and play golf, and the women have to fight to be included in places where deals are made and careers are advanced.
I don't know if Pence ever had a woman as a boss, but his current boss is in a way his mirror image. Where Pence is reluctant and apparently fearful of too much contact with women, Orangutan has boasted of being aggressive and predatory (provided they're good-looking enough). Pence won't eat with them; Orangutan brags of grabbing them by the . . . well, you know. And listen to Orangutan at this celebration of Women's History Month on Wednesday, as reported by The Post's Jenna Johnson:
As Orangutan addressed the group, he marveled at how his wife's "poll numbers went through the roof last year" and recognized the women serving in his administration, strong female leaders throughout history and some of the women he had met over the past month.
"So as a man, I stand before you as president, but if I weren't president, I wouldn't be happy to hear that statement - that would be a very scary statement to me because there's no way we can compete with you," Orangutan said. "So I would not be happy. Just wouldn't be happy."
Coming from someone who has assembled the most male-heavy administration in years, that's the kind of patronizing joke that can be made precisely because everyone knows it's not true. It's like the man who kiddingly refers to his wife as "the boss." It's funny because we know he doesn't actually believe it.
Keep in mind that Orangutan very much got elected on the grievance of men who feel as though they've lost their place atop the social hierarchy. That's the most compelling explanation of why Orangutan did so spectacularly well among evangelical Christians despite his libertine lifestyle and lack of religiosity: He promised a return to a patriarchal social order in which the supremacy of men was unquestioned. Others thrilled to his willingness to offend and insult; at last, a politician was telling them that they didn't have to mind their manners anymore, so they donned their "Orangutan That Bitch" T-shirts and chanted "Lock her up!" at his rallies.
As Jill Filipovic recently noted in the New York Times, Orangutan's repeated photo ops in which he surrounds himself with a bunch of men as they discuss (or celebrate) limiting women's rights has become too common to be an accident. "For liberal women, this latest all-male photo is a visualization of our worst fears realized. For many Orangutan supporters, though, it's evidence of a promise fulfilled."
This is all getting translated into policy. Republicans are preparing yet again to defund Planned Parenthood. All over the country, Republican lawmakers are moving to restrict women's rights in ways that treat them as vessels for childbearing who are unworthy of their own autonomy. In Iowa, Republicans introduced a bill that would not only ban all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, but also require any woman under the age of 18 or any unmarried woman of any age to get her parents' permission before getting an abortion. (After an outcry, the bill was withdrawn and replaced with a new 20-week ban.)
In Arkansas, the governor just signed a bill requiring doctors to ask a woman seeking an abortion whether she knows the sex of the fetus. If she says yes, the doctor has to then conduct an investigation on the "entire pregnancy history of the woman" to see if her reasons for getting the abortion are good enough. This follows on a law just passed in Texas that allows doctors to lie to women seeking abortions by telling them their fetus is healthy when it is actually suffering from some kind of anomaly or deformity. That in turn is part of a series of state laws forcing doctors to lie to women by telling them that having an abortion might drive them to mental illness or give them cancer.
You've heard the expression "the personal is political," which people don't say as much as they did back in the '60s and '70s. The idea then was that the individual choices we make and the conditions of our lives have broader meaning for the society we create. When it comes to politicians, though, we always assume the personal is political, that their personal lives tell us what kind of policies they'll pursue and what choices they would make about the things that affect all of us. Sometimes that focus gets overstated or just silly; I really don't care what kind of music my congressman listens to. But at other times, how a politician conducts himself in his personal life tells us a great deal about how he'll act in office.
Just Thursday, Pence went to the Senate to break a 50-50 tie. The subject? Denying Medicaid reimbursements to Planned Parenthood. There's no doubt plenty more in store.
Orangutan blames Dems
Orangutan Today: Flynn seeks immunity, Orangutan blames Dems and media
By Sarah Ravani
Trump lashed out at Democrats and the media in a tweet Friday, blaming them for a “witch hunt” that’s pushed his former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn to seek immunity in exchange for interviewing with House and Senate investigators on the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
“Mike Flynn should ask for immunity in that this is a witch hunt (excuse for big election loss), by media & Dems, of historic proportion!” Trump tweeted.
Flynn’s lawyer confirmed Thursday night in a statement that Flynn had discussed with the House and Senate intelligence committees about potentially testifying — as long as he’s protected from “unfair prosecution.”
“General Flynn certainly has a story to tell, and he very much wants to tell it, should circumstances permit,” reads the statement, as reported by The Wall Street Journal.
The FBI is currently investigating whether Trump’s advisers, including Flynn, were involved with the Russian government in its attempt to interfere with the U.S. presidential election.
Flynn resigned from his post as Trump’s national security adviser on Feb. 13 after news emerged that he misled Vice President Mike Pence and other top officials about his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States.
It is unclear whether Flynn will be granted immunity in exchange for his testimony.
By Sarah Ravani
Trump lashed out at Democrats and the media in a tweet Friday, blaming them for a “witch hunt” that’s pushed his former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn to seek immunity in exchange for interviewing with House and Senate investigators on the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
“Mike Flynn should ask for immunity in that this is a witch hunt (excuse for big election loss), by media & Dems, of historic proportion!” Trump tweeted.
Flynn’s lawyer confirmed Thursday night in a statement that Flynn had discussed with the House and Senate intelligence committees about potentially testifying — as long as he’s protected from “unfair prosecution.”
“General Flynn certainly has a story to tell, and he very much wants to tell it, should circumstances permit,” reads the statement, as reported by The Wall Street Journal.
The FBI is currently investigating whether Trump’s advisers, including Flynn, were involved with the Russian government in its attempt to interfere with the U.S. presidential election.
Flynn resigned from his post as Trump’s national security adviser on Feb. 13 after news emerged that he misled Vice President Mike Pence and other top officials about his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States.
It is unclear whether Flynn will be granted immunity in exchange for his testimony.
2016/2017 SORC Islands of Stream Series
Andrew Pike, owner of the 1991 First 45F5, and winner of the 2016/2017 SORC Islands of Stream Series, summarizes what it took to complete the series, and become the winner of the famous SORC Winter Series, now known as the Islands of Stream Series
It was the end of the Inaugural Miami to Havana Race in 2016, Achilles had just had a small refit, new running gear, keel faired, new paint scheme, and the race was the first one we entered with an entirely new crew. The boat performed the best she had done, and although we finished 4 hours behind the rest of the IRC Pack, we were content as due to a navigational error by owner/skipper Andrew Pike, we sailed over 30 miles further than any other boat. It was at that time we decided to give it another crack in 2017. Immediately the core of the team committed then and there to doing the race, and then as the drinks flowed at the Hemmingway Yacht Club, we discuss the Islands of Stream Series.
Growing up a keen sailor in the UK, and with extensive sailing experience in dinghy’s such as the 420s when young, I always looked up to the offshore racing circuit. Fastnet was THE race, and every 2 years was avidly watched, through news reports and updates in newspapers, no internet in those days. In the early 80’s I moved to the Bahamas, and this side of the Atlantic, in the winter months, the series to do was the mighty SORC.
So here we are 30 years later, despite the rating wars, demise of IOR, introduction of IMS, acceptance of PHRF, SORC has survived and in 2016 restarted the SORC Series with the Islands of the Stream Series, which consists of 4 races, and yachts are scored on the best 2 of the first 3 races plus the race to Havana. A fun series, with finishes in Nassau, Palm Beach, Key West and Havana, guaranteeing an amazing atmosphere to accompany the race.
That fateful day in Havana, the crew agreed that if we were to enter the series then they would like to do the 4 races. Team Achilles’ is a low budget Corinthian racing team, where expenses are shared and as the owner I put as much money in to the boat as I am able to. However to compete successfully we would need to significantly upgrade the sail inventory and improve the rig. Over the months in the run up to the Nassau Cup Race, Achilles’ was worked on and in the best shape she had been for years.
Delivering from Nassau to Miami, ready for the race was an exhilarating sail, with winds picking up as we came in to Miami, and Achilles’ itching to take off, like a horse in the gates at the start of a race. However the next few days, confirmed that the light winds expected were going to set the stage for a light wind race to Nassau. As we motored out to the start there was next to no wind and race committee postponed the race for an hour to allow the breeze to build. We started off heading to Great Issac’s lighthouse, the first mark in the race, however moral was already low as Achilles’ needs wind, and struggles in light airs. After rounding Great Issac’s , and having to maneuver around some anchored shipping, we set off on a reach to Great Harbour Cay, feeling a little more confident as the wind had filled in, and would provide a nice kite run in to Nassau. However after rounding Great Stirrup, the wind died out totally, and for almost 18 hours, we battled with speeds of 0.2 to 3 knots, at one point travelling backwards on the current which subsided right as we decided to rig an anchor.
It was hot, sunny, quiet, and the crew were beginning to get exhausted. However as one competitor after another retired and motored past us, we decided to hold out and try and complete the race before the cut off on the Saturday morning. All we could think of is the other crews, sitting in the yacht club bar, with cold AC, an icy cocktail and juicy burger, but we persisted. As the wind built and out VMG increased then we would make the cut off, and as the wind died and VMG plummeted to all-time lows, we would see on the mast displays that there was not enough time to finish. Finally Nassau Harbour was insight, and we had 2 hours spare on the ETA and we knew we would then make it. Constant kite trimming, and helming to maximize our VMG, in winds that would cause the kite to collapse with any sudden movement.
Then as quickly as the light breeze filled in it was gone. ¼ of a mile to go, and being pushed to the west of the harbor by the prevailing currents. Little bit forward, little bit sideways, but trying to keep VMG positive. Then we made it around the lighthouse at the entrance and were able to harden up and increase apparent wind and finish the race, with an official time of just less than the 48 hour cutoff, and probably one of my slowest crossings ever. This was just enough to secure a 2nd place finish in IRC and win the best performing Bahamian Boat, trophy.
It was only a couple of weeks later that the team would reassemble in Miami for the 60th edition of the Wirth Munroe race, or Race to the Buffet as it more commonly known between the crews. This race seemed to be a light wind beat up the coast to Palm Beach. Our strategy was a simple one, get in to the gulfstream as soon as possible and sail the shortest course. The gulfstream forecast had a strong flow against the western side of the stream, and our aim was to get in to the stream and ride the western boundary up, turning further offshore as we approach Palm Beach then as the VMG falls away head for the line. As the race started it was obvious that we were unmatched to race against Wizzard and Chessie, however we stuck to our guns, and after the initial light air, some localized weather provided us with the fast beat towards the end of the race. After finishing and heading to the dock, we knew we had done well, but it was not until we saw the results that it became apparent that we had beaten Chessie on corrected, to take another 2nd place. Chessie was a 2017 Tripp designed IRC racer/cruiser, and even though she was new and the team was still working out the details, it was a tremendous achievement for a 25 year old Beneteau.
This placed us in a predicament. The IRC line up for Key West was very competitive, and we could only improve our position in the series by taking overall first place, which on a fast kite run to Key West, is unlikely, against the likes of Wizard and Chessie, etc. Also Achilles’ was starting to show signs of stresses from the two races, with new leaks in the deck, broken bushings in the steering and corroded fuel lines on the engine and loose stanchions. It was decided with the crew that we would forfeit Key West, in favour of new sails, and repairs to the boat. So the boat was moved to Boca Raton, for a mini-refit.
This went from bad to worse as repairs took far longer than anticipated and then the bombshell, the engine had to be removed to be fixed. Not a problem if we had known in December, but this is two weeks before the Havana Race. It was decided to order a new engine from Yanmar, and fit it to the boat rather than repair the older engine, as once we started to work on the old engine, there was some concern as to what may be found. The engine was installed some of the contracted work completed, but it was now Monday and we needed to get the boat to Miami.
After delivering the boat to Miami, it was clear that several things were not working, or just omitted, so we prioritized what we needed to get done, and the contractors finally got the boat in to a semi-race ready condition by 3am on race day.
The weather forecast looked great, it would be deep reach down the keys, then as we headed to Havana the wind would clock around and give us a nice symmetric kite run in to Hemmingway. Since we only had to beat 3 boats in the fleet to take the overall series, we decided to sail fast but conservative. Once again we chose to hug the reef to key west then cross the gulfstream, at almost 90 degrees, same plan as last year, but without the minor detour! So the plan was to not get in to any trouble at the start, hug the reef and run in to Hemmingway and push the boat just enough to beat the boats we needed to, but not hard enough that we would brake something. Especially items such as the steering bushings which we know were supposed to have been replaced but were not.
So off to Havana we went, initially with a poled out genoa then switching to the symmetric kite. All was going well, we were keeping up with the pack, and sailing beautifully. During the night the wind shifted and we ended up on a reach with the asym, but still managing to keep around 9 knots over ground. This went in to the evening, and after the very late night getting the boat ready, I hit my bunk and passed out. I was awoken an hour or two later by a concerned team member as we had water in the boat above the floor boards. Immediately checking the bilge, it became obvious that water was coming in to the boat faster than the two bilge pumps could keep up. Armed with wooden plugs, we checked every through hull fitting including the transducers and none were leaking.
However we were still taking on water, and by now we had heaved to, bought the boat upright and were working on keeping the pumps going while we tracked down the source. Stern gland was dry, rudder stock was not leaking, keel bolts were fine, but still we could not fine the leak. After an hour or so, we started to discuss calling Boat US, and contacting the coastguard, as this leak could not be found. Personally I was going through my head what work had we done that could cause this, then it occurred to me, the engine panel had to be replaced, to get to the cabling you had to remove the propane tank, and sure enough when we checked the propane drain had not been reconnected, so as we heeled over on the reach the normally above water line through hull was now below water, and a steady stream of ocean water was flooding in to the hull. 5 mins later the drain we resealed, and after another hour or so the water level was back down to acceptable levels, and we continued on with the race.
The following morning we were ready to take turn south to Havana, however sea conditions were such that a dead run with a large kite was risky, and a broach could easily damage our rig or boat to the point that we would not finish the race high enough to take the overall trophy. In the end a poled out genoa was the course for the day and we cruised in to Hemmingway, taking 4th in class, 1st in series, and 13th finisher overall.
Already the crew have said they want to stay together and we are considering whether to come back next year to defend the series, or broaden our horizons.
It was the end of the Inaugural Miami to Havana Race in 2016, Achilles had just had a small refit, new running gear, keel faired, new paint scheme, and the race was the first one we entered with an entirely new crew. The boat performed the best she had done, and although we finished 4 hours behind the rest of the IRC Pack, we were content as due to a navigational error by owner/skipper Andrew Pike, we sailed over 30 miles further than any other boat. It was at that time we decided to give it another crack in 2017. Immediately the core of the team committed then and there to doing the race, and then as the drinks flowed at the Hemmingway Yacht Club, we discuss the Islands of Stream Series.
Growing up a keen sailor in the UK, and with extensive sailing experience in dinghy’s such as the 420s when young, I always looked up to the offshore racing circuit. Fastnet was THE race, and every 2 years was avidly watched, through news reports and updates in newspapers, no internet in those days. In the early 80’s I moved to the Bahamas, and this side of the Atlantic, in the winter months, the series to do was the mighty SORC.
So here we are 30 years later, despite the rating wars, demise of IOR, introduction of IMS, acceptance of PHRF, SORC has survived and in 2016 restarted the SORC Series with the Islands of the Stream Series, which consists of 4 races, and yachts are scored on the best 2 of the first 3 races plus the race to Havana. A fun series, with finishes in Nassau, Palm Beach, Key West and Havana, guaranteeing an amazing atmosphere to accompany the race.
That fateful day in Havana, the crew agreed that if we were to enter the series then they would like to do the 4 races. Team Achilles’ is a low budget Corinthian racing team, where expenses are shared and as the owner I put as much money in to the boat as I am able to. However to compete successfully we would need to significantly upgrade the sail inventory and improve the rig. Over the months in the run up to the Nassau Cup Race, Achilles’ was worked on and in the best shape she had been for years.
Delivering from Nassau to Miami, ready for the race was an exhilarating sail, with winds picking up as we came in to Miami, and Achilles’ itching to take off, like a horse in the gates at the start of a race. However the next few days, confirmed that the light winds expected were going to set the stage for a light wind race to Nassau. As we motored out to the start there was next to no wind and race committee postponed the race for an hour to allow the breeze to build. We started off heading to Great Issac’s lighthouse, the first mark in the race, however moral was already low as Achilles’ needs wind, and struggles in light airs. After rounding Great Issac’s , and having to maneuver around some anchored shipping, we set off on a reach to Great Harbour Cay, feeling a little more confident as the wind had filled in, and would provide a nice kite run in to Nassau. However after rounding Great Stirrup, the wind died out totally, and for almost 18 hours, we battled with speeds of 0.2 to 3 knots, at one point travelling backwards on the current which subsided right as we decided to rig an anchor.
It was hot, sunny, quiet, and the crew were beginning to get exhausted. However as one competitor after another retired and motored past us, we decided to hold out and try and complete the race before the cut off on the Saturday morning. All we could think of is the other crews, sitting in the yacht club bar, with cold AC, an icy cocktail and juicy burger, but we persisted. As the wind built and out VMG increased then we would make the cut off, and as the wind died and VMG plummeted to all-time lows, we would see on the mast displays that there was not enough time to finish. Finally Nassau Harbour was insight, and we had 2 hours spare on the ETA and we knew we would then make it. Constant kite trimming, and helming to maximize our VMG, in winds that would cause the kite to collapse with any sudden movement.
Then as quickly as the light breeze filled in it was gone. ¼ of a mile to go, and being pushed to the west of the harbor by the prevailing currents. Little bit forward, little bit sideways, but trying to keep VMG positive. Then we made it around the lighthouse at the entrance and were able to harden up and increase apparent wind and finish the race, with an official time of just less than the 48 hour cutoff, and probably one of my slowest crossings ever. This was just enough to secure a 2nd place finish in IRC and win the best performing Bahamian Boat, trophy.
It was only a couple of weeks later that the team would reassemble in Miami for the 60th edition of the Wirth Munroe race, or Race to the Buffet as it more commonly known between the crews. This race seemed to be a light wind beat up the coast to Palm Beach. Our strategy was a simple one, get in to the gulfstream as soon as possible and sail the shortest course. The gulfstream forecast had a strong flow against the western side of the stream, and our aim was to get in to the stream and ride the western boundary up, turning further offshore as we approach Palm Beach then as the VMG falls away head for the line. As the race started it was obvious that we were unmatched to race against Wizzard and Chessie, however we stuck to our guns, and after the initial light air, some localized weather provided us with the fast beat towards the end of the race. After finishing and heading to the dock, we knew we had done well, but it was not until we saw the results that it became apparent that we had beaten Chessie on corrected, to take another 2nd place. Chessie was a 2017 Tripp designed IRC racer/cruiser, and even though she was new and the team was still working out the details, it was a tremendous achievement for a 25 year old Beneteau.
This placed us in a predicament. The IRC line up for Key West was very competitive, and we could only improve our position in the series by taking overall first place, which on a fast kite run to Key West, is unlikely, against the likes of Wizard and Chessie, etc. Also Achilles’ was starting to show signs of stresses from the two races, with new leaks in the deck, broken bushings in the steering and corroded fuel lines on the engine and loose stanchions. It was decided with the crew that we would forfeit Key West, in favour of new sails, and repairs to the boat. So the boat was moved to Boca Raton, for a mini-refit.
This went from bad to worse as repairs took far longer than anticipated and then the bombshell, the engine had to be removed to be fixed. Not a problem if we had known in December, but this is two weeks before the Havana Race. It was decided to order a new engine from Yanmar, and fit it to the boat rather than repair the older engine, as once we started to work on the old engine, there was some concern as to what may be found. The engine was installed some of the contracted work completed, but it was now Monday and we needed to get the boat to Miami.
After delivering the boat to Miami, it was clear that several things were not working, or just omitted, so we prioritized what we needed to get done, and the contractors finally got the boat in to a semi-race ready condition by 3am on race day.
The weather forecast looked great, it would be deep reach down the keys, then as we headed to Havana the wind would clock around and give us a nice symmetric kite run in to Hemmingway. Since we only had to beat 3 boats in the fleet to take the overall series, we decided to sail fast but conservative. Once again we chose to hug the reef to key west then cross the gulfstream, at almost 90 degrees, same plan as last year, but without the minor detour! So the plan was to not get in to any trouble at the start, hug the reef and run in to Hemmingway and push the boat just enough to beat the boats we needed to, but not hard enough that we would brake something. Especially items such as the steering bushings which we know were supposed to have been replaced but were not.
So off to Havana we went, initially with a poled out genoa then switching to the symmetric kite. All was going well, we were keeping up with the pack, and sailing beautifully. During the night the wind shifted and we ended up on a reach with the asym, but still managing to keep around 9 knots over ground. This went in to the evening, and after the very late night getting the boat ready, I hit my bunk and passed out. I was awoken an hour or two later by a concerned team member as we had water in the boat above the floor boards. Immediately checking the bilge, it became obvious that water was coming in to the boat faster than the two bilge pumps could keep up. Armed with wooden plugs, we checked every through hull fitting including the transducers and none were leaking.
However we were still taking on water, and by now we had heaved to, bought the boat upright and were working on keeping the pumps going while we tracked down the source. Stern gland was dry, rudder stock was not leaking, keel bolts were fine, but still we could not fine the leak. After an hour or so, we started to discuss calling Boat US, and contacting the coastguard, as this leak could not be found. Personally I was going through my head what work had we done that could cause this, then it occurred to me, the engine panel had to be replaced, to get to the cabling you had to remove the propane tank, and sure enough when we checked the propane drain had not been reconnected, so as we heeled over on the reach the normally above water line through hull was now below water, and a steady stream of ocean water was flooding in to the hull. 5 mins later the drain we resealed, and after another hour or so the water level was back down to acceptable levels, and we continued on with the race.
The following morning we were ready to take turn south to Havana, however sea conditions were such that a dead run with a large kite was risky, and a broach could easily damage our rig or boat to the point that we would not finish the race high enough to take the overall trophy. In the end a poled out genoa was the course for the day and we cruised in to Hemmingway, taking 4th in class, 1st in series, and 13th finisher overall.
Already the crew have said they want to stay together and we are considering whether to come back next year to defend the series, or broaden our horizons.
Lost rig...
The Mapfre team was sailing about seven nautical miles SW of the island of Ons (Pontevedra) near their home base in around 25 knots of wind and four meter high waves the VO65 MAPFRE’s mast broke below the first spreader.“There was a crash and then the rig started to fall to starboard,” reported Pablo Arrarte, MAPFRE’s watch captain who was sailing as skipper of the boat during this period of testing. “We were sailing on quite a comfortable reach with waves also from the same direction and so at the moment we do not know why it has broken. We will have to analyse the data and the damaged parts in order to draw a conclusion.”
Sue Orangutan...
2 journalists sue Orangutan over 'kill list'
By JOSH GERSTEIN
Two journalists who believe they are on the so-called "kill list" of individuals targeted by the U.S. for deadly drone strikes are suing Orangutan and other top administration officials.
Former Al Jazeera Islamabad bureau chief Ahmad Zaidan and freelance journalist Bilal Kareem filed a lawsuit Thursday in U.S. District Court in Washington, contending that they were erroneously placed on the "kill list" during the Obama administration and that Orangutan has illegally maintained that designation. The suit also alleges that Orangutan has loosened some of the safeguards the previous administration placed on the program.
Files leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and published by The Intercept in 2015 indicate that U.S. officials claimed in a private presentation that Zaidan, a Pakistani and Syria citizen who conducted a series of interviews with terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden, was a member of Al Qaeda and of the Muslim Brotherhood and appeared on a terror watch list.
Kareem, a U.S. citizen reporting from Syria in recent years, claims in the suit that he has "narrowly avoided being killed by five separate air strikes" over the past year.
In the suit, filed by human rights group Reprieve, both men deny any association with Al Qaeda or the Taliban. The men also allege that their targeting violates a longstanding presidential executive order against assassination and that they are not lawful targets under the Authorization for Use of Military Force passed by Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
The suit seems certain to face an uphill battle in the courts, which have previously rejected two suits relating to the targeting of alleged Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula leader Anwar Al-Awlaki. In 2010, a federal judge in Washington dismissed a suit brought by Al-Awlaki's father on his son's behalf, seeking to challenge the son's placement on the so-called "kill list."
The following year, Al-Awlaki was killed in a CIA-run drone strike in Yemen. Two weeks later, another drone strike killed Al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son, although U.S. officials said he was not the target of that attack. A second lawsuit challenging the legality of the deadly attacks was filed in 2012, but a judge threw that case out in 2014.
A lawyer for Zaidan and Kareem, Jeffrey Robinson, told POLITICO that he's optimistic that the new suit will get more traction in the courts.
"There are some differences which I think will be legally significant," Robinson said. "At its heart, the Al-Awlaki litigation sought to directly challenge the use of drones and targeted strikes as a tool in fighting Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. This suit doesn't really seek to challenge that policy or seek to say that tool isn't the right one to use."
Instead, the attorney said, the new suit contends that Zaidan and Kareem must have a mechanism to challenge their inclusion on the "kill list."
"This is a very deliberate process that needs to give some access to people who deny they should be included," Robinson said.
A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment on the suit.
The suit says the Intercept report led to Zaidan being forced to leave Pakistan, where he'd worked for Al Jazeera for 20 years, and take a new post in Qatar. Kareem is believed to still be reporting from i
By JOSH GERSTEIN
Two journalists who believe they are on the so-called "kill list" of individuals targeted by the U.S. for deadly drone strikes are suing Orangutan and other top administration officials.
Former Al Jazeera Islamabad bureau chief Ahmad Zaidan and freelance journalist Bilal Kareem filed a lawsuit Thursday in U.S. District Court in Washington, contending that they were erroneously placed on the "kill list" during the Obama administration and that Orangutan has illegally maintained that designation. The suit also alleges that Orangutan has loosened some of the safeguards the previous administration placed on the program.
Files leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and published by The Intercept in 2015 indicate that U.S. officials claimed in a private presentation that Zaidan, a Pakistani and Syria citizen who conducted a series of interviews with terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden, was a member of Al Qaeda and of the Muslim Brotherhood and appeared on a terror watch list.
Kareem, a U.S. citizen reporting from Syria in recent years, claims in the suit that he has "narrowly avoided being killed by five separate air strikes" over the past year.
In the suit, filed by human rights group Reprieve, both men deny any association with Al Qaeda or the Taliban. The men also allege that their targeting violates a longstanding presidential executive order against assassination and that they are not lawful targets under the Authorization for Use of Military Force passed by Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
The suit seems certain to face an uphill battle in the courts, which have previously rejected two suits relating to the targeting of alleged Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula leader Anwar Al-Awlaki. In 2010, a federal judge in Washington dismissed a suit brought by Al-Awlaki's father on his son's behalf, seeking to challenge the son's placement on the so-called "kill list."
The following year, Al-Awlaki was killed in a CIA-run drone strike in Yemen. Two weeks later, another drone strike killed Al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son, although U.S. officials said he was not the target of that attack. A second lawsuit challenging the legality of the deadly attacks was filed in 2012, but a judge threw that case out in 2014.
A lawyer for Zaidan and Kareem, Jeffrey Robinson, told POLITICO that he's optimistic that the new suit will get more traction in the courts.
"There are some differences which I think will be legally significant," Robinson said. "At its heart, the Al-Awlaki litigation sought to directly challenge the use of drones and targeted strikes as a tool in fighting Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. This suit doesn't really seek to challenge that policy or seek to say that tool isn't the right one to use."
Instead, the attorney said, the new suit contends that Zaidan and Kareem must have a mechanism to challenge their inclusion on the "kill list."
"This is a very deliberate process that needs to give some access to people who deny they should be included," Robinson said.
A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment on the suit.
The suit says the Intercept report led to Zaidan being forced to leave Pakistan, where he'd worked for Al Jazeera for 20 years, and take a new post in Qatar. Kareem is believed to still be reporting from i
Tax reform that make rich richer..
Orangutan’s team eager to woo Democrats on tax reform
Stung by the collapsed of TrumpCare bill, administration officials are taking a different legislative approach to taxes.
By JOSH DAWSEY
When Treasury Secretary Steven Munchkin launched his outreach earlier this month to lawmakers on an overhaul to the country’s tax system, one of his first meetings was with the newly created Problem Solvers Caucus, a group of 20 Democrats and 20 Republicans trying to vote together on issues such as taxes and infrastructure.
While the meeting did not produce any firm commitments, Munchkin’s decision to prioritize the group in the early stages is just one sign that the White House, stung by its initial defeat on health care, is taking a starkly different legislative strategy for taxes.
Trump has tasked Munchkin, one of the administration's most liberal members, with making many of the pitches on the issue, and has told Munchkin and others he wants moderate Republicans and Democrats on board, several people familiar with the conversations say. Administration officials say Trump — who is transactional and strongly wants to get to yes — didn't appreciate the dynamics of the House Freedom Caucus on health care and is eager to build a bipartisan coalition for tax reform. And Marc Short, the president's legislative affairs director, has begun inviting Democrats to the White House.
Several administration officials also explained in interviews that they were disappointed with the legislative efforts on health care — and want to change their tack from negotiating heavily with conservatives and leaving the bill-writing to Speaker Paul Ryan. “We learned a lot," one senior administration official said, comparing it to Trump’s loss in the Iowa presidential primary.
Some Democrats are cautiously optimistic about the White House’s different approach to tax reform.
"We were never brought to the table on health care," said Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a New Jersey Democrat who attended the Munchkin meeting. "That was certainly not a piece of legislation I could support."
That Trump and his crew can win Democrats and moderates is no sure bet, and tax reform is likely even more complicated than health care, which proved a disastrous failure for the White House when they couldn't even get their backed plan to the floor for a vote. Some of Trump's aides and conservative allies say the chances of getting Democratic votes are “slim."
For one, the president has record-low approval ratings for an incoming president — giving Democrats little reason to work with him. The plan is likely to include tax cuts that would help the rich, which could keep Democrats away.
There are also turf battles among White House aides on what to propose in the tax reform package, administration officials say, as Munchkin and economic adviser Gary Cohn, another starkly liberal member of the West Wing, take the lead on the proposal. And tensions have already flared up with Republican leaders on the Hill, who are skeptical of the White House taking the lead on drafting the proposal.
Munchkin didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Still, Barry Bennett, a consultant with close ties to the administration, said tax reform holds the potential for some bipartisan support. He said the administration would want to pick off Democrats in the House — and "they could probably pick off 10 or so."
That may be easier said than done. Rep. Joe Crowley, a New York Democrat who leads the House caucus, said he "has no plan to work with the administration in silos." Crowley said it is difficult to negotiate with the administration on changes to the tax code while "they make a number of other moves that damage my city, like stripping money from sanctuary cities and cutting money for public housing."
Crowley said the administration should have begun with infrastructure instead of a number of executive orders and "going on a rampage." He said the administration didn't invite the Queens lawmaker to a St. Patrick's Day event — which would have been a "clear overture" and the president hadn't reached out otherwise.
A number of Democratic legislators said they have no relationship with the administration, and a senior Democratic aide said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer hasn't spoken to the president in months — including at a White House function Tuesday night for senators and their spouses. The senior aide said the administration is likely to leak different ideas to woo Democrats, “but they remain an administration that is upside down.”
Yet Democrats also say they believe changes are needed to the tax code. A top Democrat on Capitol Hill said they'd like to lower the top corporate tax rate — but to 28 percent, or maybe a bit lower, instead of the 15 percent Orangutan has pitched — while eliminating some of the loopholes. "There are problems in the tax code," said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat. "The question is: Do they want genuine and bipartisan reform?"
White House officials and some blue-collar Democrats note it would be hard for Democrats to vote against a bill that lowers taxes on the middle class, particularly in swing districts. Top White House officials recently huddled with Javier Palomarez, head of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, to try and forge a partnership — and will help the White House push Democrats and moderate Republicans.
"What I heard is we're specifically going to do outreach to the Democrats, and they really want Democrats to vote for this," Palomarez said. He also recently had coffee with Munchkin.
Munchkin's outreach last week to the Problem Solvers Caucus members, who say they'd like to vote together in a bloc like the Freedom Caucus, is another notable example of the White House’s early stage maneuvering. Gottheimer and Rep. Tom Reed, a New York Republican, are chairing the group — and are being backed with a PAC from No Labels, a third-party organization that hopes to raise $50 million.
At the recent meeting, Gottheimer said he raised a number of potential problems with Munchkin — from the border adjustment tax that some within the administration like, to discussions about financial regulation rollbacks being pushed by the administration. Munchkin was responsive, he said, and promised to stay in touch. "We don't want to be obstructionists for the sake of being obstructionists,” Gottheimer said.
Asked if he would vote against the wishes of Democratic leadership, and whether he would face blowback from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi if he agreed to a Orangutan plan, Gottheimer said he was open to bucking leadership.
"You'd have to ask the leader that," he said, of whether he would be pushed to vote against Trump. "I believe that if we can develop an actual piece of legislation that helps my state and promotes growth, we'd want to move it forward. We don't want to be obstructionists for the sake of being obstructionists."
Reed, the New York Republican who served on Trump's executive committee, said he tried to whip votes on health care — but Freedom Caucus members wouldn't budge. The administration made a lot of movement on the law to accommodate Freedom Caucus members, and leadership listened to concerns, Reed said.
This time, he says a different strategy could work — even if Democratic overtures leave some Republicans voting against the bill. "People are tired of the extremes not allowing us to govern," Reed said. "The White House's problems, and our problems, are not going away with health care."
Stung by the collapsed of TrumpCare bill, administration officials are taking a different legislative approach to taxes.
By JOSH DAWSEY
When Treasury Secretary Steven Munchkin launched his outreach earlier this month to lawmakers on an overhaul to the country’s tax system, one of his first meetings was with the newly created Problem Solvers Caucus, a group of 20 Democrats and 20 Republicans trying to vote together on issues such as taxes and infrastructure.
While the meeting did not produce any firm commitments, Munchkin’s decision to prioritize the group in the early stages is just one sign that the White House, stung by its initial defeat on health care, is taking a starkly different legislative strategy for taxes.
Trump has tasked Munchkin, one of the administration's most liberal members, with making many of the pitches on the issue, and has told Munchkin and others he wants moderate Republicans and Democrats on board, several people familiar with the conversations say. Administration officials say Trump — who is transactional and strongly wants to get to yes — didn't appreciate the dynamics of the House Freedom Caucus on health care and is eager to build a bipartisan coalition for tax reform. And Marc Short, the president's legislative affairs director, has begun inviting Democrats to the White House.
Several administration officials also explained in interviews that they were disappointed with the legislative efforts on health care — and want to change their tack from negotiating heavily with conservatives and leaving the bill-writing to Speaker Paul Ryan. “We learned a lot," one senior administration official said, comparing it to Trump’s loss in the Iowa presidential primary.
Some Democrats are cautiously optimistic about the White House’s different approach to tax reform.
"We were never brought to the table on health care," said Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a New Jersey Democrat who attended the Munchkin meeting. "That was certainly not a piece of legislation I could support."
That Trump and his crew can win Democrats and moderates is no sure bet, and tax reform is likely even more complicated than health care, which proved a disastrous failure for the White House when they couldn't even get their backed plan to the floor for a vote. Some of Trump's aides and conservative allies say the chances of getting Democratic votes are “slim."
For one, the president has record-low approval ratings for an incoming president — giving Democrats little reason to work with him. The plan is likely to include tax cuts that would help the rich, which could keep Democrats away.
There are also turf battles among White House aides on what to propose in the tax reform package, administration officials say, as Munchkin and economic adviser Gary Cohn, another starkly liberal member of the West Wing, take the lead on the proposal. And tensions have already flared up with Republican leaders on the Hill, who are skeptical of the White House taking the lead on drafting the proposal.
Munchkin didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Still, Barry Bennett, a consultant with close ties to the administration, said tax reform holds the potential for some bipartisan support. He said the administration would want to pick off Democrats in the House — and "they could probably pick off 10 or so."
That may be easier said than done. Rep. Joe Crowley, a New York Democrat who leads the House caucus, said he "has no plan to work with the administration in silos." Crowley said it is difficult to negotiate with the administration on changes to the tax code while "they make a number of other moves that damage my city, like stripping money from sanctuary cities and cutting money for public housing."
Crowley said the administration should have begun with infrastructure instead of a number of executive orders and "going on a rampage." He said the administration didn't invite the Queens lawmaker to a St. Patrick's Day event — which would have been a "clear overture" and the president hadn't reached out otherwise.
A number of Democratic legislators said they have no relationship with the administration, and a senior Democratic aide said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer hasn't spoken to the president in months — including at a White House function Tuesday night for senators and their spouses. The senior aide said the administration is likely to leak different ideas to woo Democrats, “but they remain an administration that is upside down.”
Yet Democrats also say they believe changes are needed to the tax code. A top Democrat on Capitol Hill said they'd like to lower the top corporate tax rate — but to 28 percent, or maybe a bit lower, instead of the 15 percent Orangutan has pitched — while eliminating some of the loopholes. "There are problems in the tax code," said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat. "The question is: Do they want genuine and bipartisan reform?"
White House officials and some blue-collar Democrats note it would be hard for Democrats to vote against a bill that lowers taxes on the middle class, particularly in swing districts. Top White House officials recently huddled with Javier Palomarez, head of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, to try and forge a partnership — and will help the White House push Democrats and moderate Republicans.
"What I heard is we're specifically going to do outreach to the Democrats, and they really want Democrats to vote for this," Palomarez said. He also recently had coffee with Munchkin.
Munchkin's outreach last week to the Problem Solvers Caucus members, who say they'd like to vote together in a bloc like the Freedom Caucus, is another notable example of the White House’s early stage maneuvering. Gottheimer and Rep. Tom Reed, a New York Republican, are chairing the group — and are being backed with a PAC from No Labels, a third-party organization that hopes to raise $50 million.
At the recent meeting, Gottheimer said he raised a number of potential problems with Munchkin — from the border adjustment tax that some within the administration like, to discussions about financial regulation rollbacks being pushed by the administration. Munchkin was responsive, he said, and promised to stay in touch. "We don't want to be obstructionists for the sake of being obstructionists,” Gottheimer said.
Asked if he would vote against the wishes of Democratic leadership, and whether he would face blowback from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi if he agreed to a Orangutan plan, Gottheimer said he was open to bucking leadership.
"You'd have to ask the leader that," he said, of whether he would be pushed to vote against Trump. "I believe that if we can develop an actual piece of legislation that helps my state and promotes growth, we'd want to move it forward. We don't want to be obstructionists for the sake of being obstructionists."
Reed, the New York Republican who served on Trump's executive committee, said he tried to whip votes on health care — but Freedom Caucus members wouldn't budge. The administration made a lot of movement on the law to accommodate Freedom Caucus members, and leadership listened to concerns, Reed said.
This time, he says a different strategy could work — even if Democratic overtures leave some Republicans voting against the bill. "People are tired of the extremes not allowing us to govern," Reed said. "The White House's problems, and our problems, are not going away with health care."
Orangutan’s energy executive order
The hidden impact of Orangutan’s energy executive order
The review of the Clean Power Plan dominated headlines but a bureaucratic change to the “social cost of carbon” could prove much more important.
By DANNY VINIK
When Orangutan signed his executive order on climate change Tuesday, it was the rollback of Barack Obama’s signature Clean Power Plan that dominated headlines.
But to energy lawyers, a different section of the order stood out—one that so far has received little attention, but could weaken every climate-related regulation produced by the government. Orangutan’s order rewrites the rules for measuring the “social cost of carbon,” the crucial measuring stick that tells the government whether climate regulations are cost-effective or not.
Cost-benefit analysis is baked into nearly every new federal regulation, giving the White House both ammunition against judicial challenges and a way to sell the rules to the public. When it comes to carbon pollution, it’s particularly hard to determine what the long-term costs are: How much should we consider the “costs” of increased flooding or severe storms that might happen in the future? What about climate disasters that happen elsewhere, but might ultimately impact America?
The Obama administration created a new, administration-wide measurement of that cost, forming a high-level, interagency working group to estimate the social cost of carbon. That committee met occasionally to review the latest academic literature and models and decide whether to update its estimate. The number underpinned the Obama administration’s climate agenda, providing a scientific basis for regulations whose benefits are inherently very difficult to measure.
Orangutan’s executive order eliminates the working group and effectively turns over the job of cost-estimation to individual agencies. The order also scraps all the technical underpinnings for the Obama group’s work, and tells agencies to estimate carbon costs by following the guidance of a Bush-era regulatory document from 2003.
Both liberal and conservative experts agree the change could have far-reaching consequences. In effect, the order will make carbon pollution seem far less costly to society—reducing the benefits that can be ascribed to climate change regulations, and making it harder for such rules to pass a cost-benefit test. That would make it easier for the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Agency to weaken Obama-era regulations on everything from the Clean Power Plan to mileage standards for cars and trucks to methane regulations. It could also ease approval for proposed infrastructure projects like the Keystone pipeline.
“It would have an enormous impact,” said William Yeatman, an energy expert at the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute, which supports the changes.
Experts don’t believe the Orangutan administration will simply ignore the social cost of carbon in their regulatory analyses, because tossing it out of the decision-making entirely would make the rules unlikely to survive a court challenge. Instead, agencies will likely come up with their own figures, using the Office of Management and Budget document as a guide. That document will lead to two main changes to the social cost of carbon. First, agencies will likely reduce their estimates of how much the future effects of lowering carbon should count in current decision-making. (In economic terms, this is known as raising the “discount rate,” or the rate at which future benefits are discounted to their value in present-day dollars.) And second, it will change whether agencies consider the global benefits of a rule, or just the domestic benefits.
Typically, agencies look at only the domestic effects of regulation. But environmentalists argue that climate change represents a special case because global warming has consequences that don’t stop at national borders. U.S. climate policies affect other countries’ policies; those countries’ actions could also benefit the U.S. “We want other people taking us into consideration when they set their climate policies, so we should be doing the same,” said Alison Cassady, director of domestic energy policy at the Center for American Progress. It’s an important question in policymaking because the social cost of carbon emissions becomes much more significant if you factor in global benefits. The Obama administration included global benefits in its calculation of the social cost of carbon—a practice that infuriated conservatives, who pointed out that the costs of carbon policies are almost entirely domestic, so agencies should only be narrowly looking at how regulations benefit the United States.
The 2003 OMB document specifically directs agencies to focus on the costs and benefits in the United States, not globally. If there are significant effects beyond the border of the United States, it says, those “should be reported separately.”
In the end, how will agencies look at the social cost of carbon under the Orangutan administration? Since the executive order eliminated the interagency working group, there won’t be one consistent figure; each agency will now come up with its own estimates. But two Obama-era technical documents provide a clue about the social cost of carbon under Orangutan. One found that replacing Obama’s preferred discount rate with a moderately higher one—a likely outcome under Orangutan—reduces the estimated social cost of carbon emissions by around 70 percent. Another now-rescinded document estimated that the global benefits of carbon reduction were anywhere from 4 to 14 times greater than the domestic benefits alone. If those two changes are taken together, the estimated social cost of carbon—which the Obama working group estimated at $36 per ton of carbon emissions—could fall by over 80 percent to $7.20 per ton. If agencies assume that the vast majority of the benefits from emissions reductions are outside of the U.S., it could possibly be as low as $1.80 per ton. That would dramatically reduce the estimated benefits of any new carbon-reduction rule—thus making every climate-related emission restriction appear far more costly.
As an example of how it affects a real-world regulation, Cassady pointed to the 2016 methane rule, which limited methane emissions from oil and gas operations and now is going to be reviewed by the EPA and Interior Department. With a lower social cost of carbon, she said, “it’ll be easier for [EPA Administrator] Scott Pruitt to justify doing nothing, because it will be harder to show that the benefits outweigh the costs. They will have changed the math to get the result they want.”
Of course, conservatives levied the exact same change against the Obama administration, and this arcane debate is all but certain to end up in the exact same place: the courthouse.
The review of the Clean Power Plan dominated headlines but a bureaucratic change to the “social cost of carbon” could prove much more important.
By DANNY VINIK
When Orangutan signed his executive order on climate change Tuesday, it was the rollback of Barack Obama’s signature Clean Power Plan that dominated headlines.
But to energy lawyers, a different section of the order stood out—one that so far has received little attention, but could weaken every climate-related regulation produced by the government. Orangutan’s order rewrites the rules for measuring the “social cost of carbon,” the crucial measuring stick that tells the government whether climate regulations are cost-effective or not.
Cost-benefit analysis is baked into nearly every new federal regulation, giving the White House both ammunition against judicial challenges and a way to sell the rules to the public. When it comes to carbon pollution, it’s particularly hard to determine what the long-term costs are: How much should we consider the “costs” of increased flooding or severe storms that might happen in the future? What about climate disasters that happen elsewhere, but might ultimately impact America?
The Obama administration created a new, administration-wide measurement of that cost, forming a high-level, interagency working group to estimate the social cost of carbon. That committee met occasionally to review the latest academic literature and models and decide whether to update its estimate. The number underpinned the Obama administration’s climate agenda, providing a scientific basis for regulations whose benefits are inherently very difficult to measure.
Orangutan’s executive order eliminates the working group and effectively turns over the job of cost-estimation to individual agencies. The order also scraps all the technical underpinnings for the Obama group’s work, and tells agencies to estimate carbon costs by following the guidance of a Bush-era regulatory document from 2003.
Both liberal and conservative experts agree the change could have far-reaching consequences. In effect, the order will make carbon pollution seem far less costly to society—reducing the benefits that can be ascribed to climate change regulations, and making it harder for such rules to pass a cost-benefit test. That would make it easier for the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Agency to weaken Obama-era regulations on everything from the Clean Power Plan to mileage standards for cars and trucks to methane regulations. It could also ease approval for proposed infrastructure projects like the Keystone pipeline.
“It would have an enormous impact,” said William Yeatman, an energy expert at the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute, which supports the changes.
Experts don’t believe the Orangutan administration will simply ignore the social cost of carbon in their regulatory analyses, because tossing it out of the decision-making entirely would make the rules unlikely to survive a court challenge. Instead, agencies will likely come up with their own figures, using the Office of Management and Budget document as a guide. That document will lead to two main changes to the social cost of carbon. First, agencies will likely reduce their estimates of how much the future effects of lowering carbon should count in current decision-making. (In economic terms, this is known as raising the “discount rate,” or the rate at which future benefits are discounted to their value in present-day dollars.) And second, it will change whether agencies consider the global benefits of a rule, or just the domestic benefits.
Typically, agencies look at only the domestic effects of regulation. But environmentalists argue that climate change represents a special case because global warming has consequences that don’t stop at national borders. U.S. climate policies affect other countries’ policies; those countries’ actions could also benefit the U.S. “We want other people taking us into consideration when they set their climate policies, so we should be doing the same,” said Alison Cassady, director of domestic energy policy at the Center for American Progress. It’s an important question in policymaking because the social cost of carbon emissions becomes much more significant if you factor in global benefits. The Obama administration included global benefits in its calculation of the social cost of carbon—a practice that infuriated conservatives, who pointed out that the costs of carbon policies are almost entirely domestic, so agencies should only be narrowly looking at how regulations benefit the United States.
The 2003 OMB document specifically directs agencies to focus on the costs and benefits in the United States, not globally. If there are significant effects beyond the border of the United States, it says, those “should be reported separately.”
In the end, how will agencies look at the social cost of carbon under the Orangutan administration? Since the executive order eliminated the interagency working group, there won’t be one consistent figure; each agency will now come up with its own estimates. But two Obama-era technical documents provide a clue about the social cost of carbon under Orangutan. One found that replacing Obama’s preferred discount rate with a moderately higher one—a likely outcome under Orangutan—reduces the estimated social cost of carbon emissions by around 70 percent. Another now-rescinded document estimated that the global benefits of carbon reduction were anywhere from 4 to 14 times greater than the domestic benefits alone. If those two changes are taken together, the estimated social cost of carbon—which the Obama working group estimated at $36 per ton of carbon emissions—could fall by over 80 percent to $7.20 per ton. If agencies assume that the vast majority of the benefits from emissions reductions are outside of the U.S., it could possibly be as low as $1.80 per ton. That would dramatically reduce the estimated benefits of any new carbon-reduction rule—thus making every climate-related emission restriction appear far more costly.
As an example of how it affects a real-world regulation, Cassady pointed to the 2016 methane rule, which limited methane emissions from oil and gas operations and now is going to be reviewed by the EPA and Interior Department. With a lower social cost of carbon, she said, “it’ll be easier for [EPA Administrator] Scott Pruitt to justify doing nothing, because it will be harder to show that the benefits outweigh the costs. They will have changed the math to get the result they want.”
Of course, conservatives levied the exact same change against the Obama administration, and this arcane debate is all but certain to end up in the exact same place: the courthouse.
Misleading embrace of evidence...
The Orangutan administration’s misleading embrace of ‘evidence’
How the new budget could hurt one of the smartest ideas in policymaking.
By ROBERT GORDON and RON HASKINS
When Trump Budget Director Mick Mulvaney stepped out to defend the Trump budget’s $52 billion in domestic spending cuts, he used the language of evidence. The $3 billion flexible grant for community development was “just not showing any results.” The $2 billion federal program to fund afterschool lacked “demonstrable evidence.” Both were slated for elimination.
Critics responded by disputing the facts. They showed that one popular program funded with community development dollars, Meals on Wheels, does have good evidence of improving seniors’ health.
But there is one sense in which Mulvaney was right: there are no rigorous evaluations showing that the two large programs he attacked make a positive impact on their recipients.
Does that justify the cuts? Not even close. In fact, by invoking “evidence” in selective attacks on two among dozens of programs his budget would eviscerate, Mulvaney misses what matters most about how policymaking works – not just evidence-based policymaking, but policy leadership in general.
The two of us have worked for years from both sides of the political aisle to advance the cause of evidence-based policy: rigorously evaluating whether programs work, then using those results to improve programs, to expand them, or when necessary, to cut them off. The most rigorous forms of evaluation, randomized controlled trials, have proved themselves as the cornerstone of American medical research, and today they play an increasing role in evaluating the effectiveness of government programs and changing policies based on the results.
But nothing is worse for the cause of evidence-based policy than selectively citing research to justify destructive wholesale cuts. If we know anything from years working on evidence-based policy, we know that evidence can only go so far. The art of governing means setting priorities for what is worth trying to fix, not simply cutting because we can’t be sure what works. Or to put it differently, governing requires not just sound evidence, but also sound values. Mulvaney’s tactics of using uncertainty and cherrypicking studies threaten the entire endeavor of evidence-based policy.
Consider in turn the two initiatives that Mulvaney attacked.
The first is the Community Development Block Grant program, one funding source for Meals on Wheels. CDBG by design is a flexible source of funding for mayors. The money goes out by a complicated formula that is meant to capture both population and need. For more than 1,200 governments, CDBG funds construction projects, business development, housing rehab, weatherization, and yes, Meals-on-Wheels. This flexibility minimizes red tape and promotes local control. It also means some governments use the money well and some don’t.
For a formula-based, flexible program like CDBG, you can measure many things: the quality of the targeting, the cost per outcome, the level of fraud. In CDBG, we could improve the targeting, but after 40 years of technocratic reforms by quietly competent people, the program is reasonably efficient.
One thing you can’t measure is whether CDBG as a whole is effective at improving lives. Individual initiatives funded by CDBG, like Meals on Wheels, can be evaluated. But the uses of the entire $3 billion are so diverse that evaluating the program as a whole is a fool’s errand.
To evaluate CDBG as a whole, you’d need to compare outcomes for those getting grants and outcomes for those not getting grants. At the level of the cities receiving funds, not only do most cities get grants, but the grants themselves are too small to transform cities’ outcomes. At the level of funded projects, it’s difficult to identify a comparison group of programs not getting CDBG funding. Even if you could, outcomes are so diverse that it is impossible to consistently measure impacts.
CDBG’s open-ended, formulaic design is a good reason to favor a different programmatic approach. For example, you could argue that grants should be competitive, rather than formula-based, and should be conditioned on systemic change. Actually, President Obama argued for just these types of changes, keying off of the “Race to the Top” in education. He budgeted new urban development money for competitive programs like Choice Neighborhoods, not CDBG. Conservative Republicans like Mick Mulvaney—joined by Democratic constituencies like teachers’ unions and urban mayors—opposed these efforts as government overreach. They mostly got their way. So here we are.
As long as we have a program like CDBG, the question whether it “shows results” will not get a satisfying answer. The real question is whether we as a society want to give money to support community improvement by local governments in areas facing hardship. For 40 years, we have answered yes to that question. If President Trump has a different answer, he should make a forthright argument about priorities. And given his Administration’s support for tax cuts, he should explain why those tax cuts are more important. That is a question of society’s values—not one that “evidence” can answer.
Afterschool programs teach a different lesson. Since the end of the Clinton Administration, the federal government has provided a big dedicated funding stream called 21st Century Community Learning Centers to support afterschool programs. Unlike CDBG, this program funds discrete activities with clearly defined goals. There was a large, rigorous study of that program by the respected firm Mathematica Policy Research, which found that the program had no positive effect on student outcomes.
That study is a real strike against afterschool programs, but there are two caveats. The students in the study were enrolled in programs 15 years ago. A lot has changed since. In part in response to the research, afterschool programs have already increased their academic focus. And the federal authorizing law has changed too. An old study of a different program can only bear so much weight. Some studies of more recent local initiatives have had positive results.
More fundamentally, whatever studies say about the effects of afterschool programs on students, any working parent will tell you that these programs have a broader purpose: to provide a reliable source of childcare. If this is one goal, then evaluations of student outcomes can’t measure the program’s full value.
Some thoughtful critics have argued that we could better serve both students and parents by shifting resources from discrete afterschool programs and into regular schools to extend the school day. There is solid evidence about the power of the extended school day to increase student achievement. Shifting resources toward that approach is indeed an evidence-based policy.
An analogy may help here: Medical research can tell us how to treat Alzheimer’s disease or cancer. It can’t tell us which research deserves more support, or how much. In the same way, no policy evaluation can tell us the right amount to invest in the endeavors of helping kids learn or helping parents manage their lives. And hence there is no evaluation that tells us to cut down on these efforts. And yet cut these efforts is precisely what the Trump budget does. It reduces education spending by $9 billion at the same time as the president is supporting tax cuts. That is a reflection of values. Program evaluation is of no relevance. We can judge that decision as human beings.
Using evaluation to choose among policy approaches is painstaking work that does not fit into sound bites. To borrow from Max Weber, evidence-based policy is the “slow boring of hard boards.” Both the second Bush Administration and the Obama Administration made evaluation investments that are slowly paying off in better efforts to support vulnerable parents, to structure effective schools, and to stop teen pregnancy. The Trump budget threatens to cut rigorous and long overdue evaluations of the nation’s social programs just when they are receiving bipartisan support. And the Trump Administration’s slipshod use of evidence to support its severe cuts threatens to sour the public on the entire endeavor of evidence-based policy making. These would be subtle but lasting defeats.
How the new budget could hurt one of the smartest ideas in policymaking.
By ROBERT GORDON and RON HASKINS
When Trump Budget Director Mick Mulvaney stepped out to defend the Trump budget’s $52 billion in domestic spending cuts, he used the language of evidence. The $3 billion flexible grant for community development was “just not showing any results.” The $2 billion federal program to fund afterschool lacked “demonstrable evidence.” Both were slated for elimination.
Critics responded by disputing the facts. They showed that one popular program funded with community development dollars, Meals on Wheels, does have good evidence of improving seniors’ health.
But there is one sense in which Mulvaney was right: there are no rigorous evaluations showing that the two large programs he attacked make a positive impact on their recipients.
Does that justify the cuts? Not even close. In fact, by invoking “evidence” in selective attacks on two among dozens of programs his budget would eviscerate, Mulvaney misses what matters most about how policymaking works – not just evidence-based policymaking, but policy leadership in general.
The two of us have worked for years from both sides of the political aisle to advance the cause of evidence-based policy: rigorously evaluating whether programs work, then using those results to improve programs, to expand them, or when necessary, to cut them off. The most rigorous forms of evaluation, randomized controlled trials, have proved themselves as the cornerstone of American medical research, and today they play an increasing role in evaluating the effectiveness of government programs and changing policies based on the results.
But nothing is worse for the cause of evidence-based policy than selectively citing research to justify destructive wholesale cuts. If we know anything from years working on evidence-based policy, we know that evidence can only go so far. The art of governing means setting priorities for what is worth trying to fix, not simply cutting because we can’t be sure what works. Or to put it differently, governing requires not just sound evidence, but also sound values. Mulvaney’s tactics of using uncertainty and cherrypicking studies threaten the entire endeavor of evidence-based policy.
Consider in turn the two initiatives that Mulvaney attacked.
The first is the Community Development Block Grant program, one funding source for Meals on Wheels. CDBG by design is a flexible source of funding for mayors. The money goes out by a complicated formula that is meant to capture both population and need. For more than 1,200 governments, CDBG funds construction projects, business development, housing rehab, weatherization, and yes, Meals-on-Wheels. This flexibility minimizes red tape and promotes local control. It also means some governments use the money well and some don’t.
For a formula-based, flexible program like CDBG, you can measure many things: the quality of the targeting, the cost per outcome, the level of fraud. In CDBG, we could improve the targeting, but after 40 years of technocratic reforms by quietly competent people, the program is reasonably efficient.
One thing you can’t measure is whether CDBG as a whole is effective at improving lives. Individual initiatives funded by CDBG, like Meals on Wheels, can be evaluated. But the uses of the entire $3 billion are so diverse that evaluating the program as a whole is a fool’s errand.
To evaluate CDBG as a whole, you’d need to compare outcomes for those getting grants and outcomes for those not getting grants. At the level of the cities receiving funds, not only do most cities get grants, but the grants themselves are too small to transform cities’ outcomes. At the level of funded projects, it’s difficult to identify a comparison group of programs not getting CDBG funding. Even if you could, outcomes are so diverse that it is impossible to consistently measure impacts.
CDBG’s open-ended, formulaic design is a good reason to favor a different programmatic approach. For example, you could argue that grants should be competitive, rather than formula-based, and should be conditioned on systemic change. Actually, President Obama argued for just these types of changes, keying off of the “Race to the Top” in education. He budgeted new urban development money for competitive programs like Choice Neighborhoods, not CDBG. Conservative Republicans like Mick Mulvaney—joined by Democratic constituencies like teachers’ unions and urban mayors—opposed these efforts as government overreach. They mostly got their way. So here we are.
As long as we have a program like CDBG, the question whether it “shows results” will not get a satisfying answer. The real question is whether we as a society want to give money to support community improvement by local governments in areas facing hardship. For 40 years, we have answered yes to that question. If President Trump has a different answer, he should make a forthright argument about priorities. And given his Administration’s support for tax cuts, he should explain why those tax cuts are more important. That is a question of society’s values—not one that “evidence” can answer.
Afterschool programs teach a different lesson. Since the end of the Clinton Administration, the federal government has provided a big dedicated funding stream called 21st Century Community Learning Centers to support afterschool programs. Unlike CDBG, this program funds discrete activities with clearly defined goals. There was a large, rigorous study of that program by the respected firm Mathematica Policy Research, which found that the program had no positive effect on student outcomes.
That study is a real strike against afterschool programs, but there are two caveats. The students in the study were enrolled in programs 15 years ago. A lot has changed since. In part in response to the research, afterschool programs have already increased their academic focus. And the federal authorizing law has changed too. An old study of a different program can only bear so much weight. Some studies of more recent local initiatives have had positive results.
More fundamentally, whatever studies say about the effects of afterschool programs on students, any working parent will tell you that these programs have a broader purpose: to provide a reliable source of childcare. If this is one goal, then evaluations of student outcomes can’t measure the program’s full value.
Some thoughtful critics have argued that we could better serve both students and parents by shifting resources from discrete afterschool programs and into regular schools to extend the school day. There is solid evidence about the power of the extended school day to increase student achievement. Shifting resources toward that approach is indeed an evidence-based policy.
An analogy may help here: Medical research can tell us how to treat Alzheimer’s disease or cancer. It can’t tell us which research deserves more support, or how much. In the same way, no policy evaluation can tell us the right amount to invest in the endeavors of helping kids learn or helping parents manage their lives. And hence there is no evaluation that tells us to cut down on these efforts. And yet cut these efforts is precisely what the Trump budget does. It reduces education spending by $9 billion at the same time as the president is supporting tax cuts. That is a reflection of values. Program evaluation is of no relevance. We can judge that decision as human beings.
Using evaluation to choose among policy approaches is painstaking work that does not fit into sound bites. To borrow from Max Weber, evidence-based policy is the “slow boring of hard boards.” Both the second Bush Administration and the Obama Administration made evaluation investments that are slowly paying off in better efforts to support vulnerable parents, to structure effective schools, and to stop teen pregnancy. The Trump budget threatens to cut rigorous and long overdue evaluations of the nation’s social programs just when they are receiving bipartisan support. And the Trump Administration’s slipshod use of evidence to support its severe cuts threatens to sour the public on the entire endeavor of evidence-based policy making. These would be subtle but lasting defeats.
Flynn seeks assurances...
Flynn seeks 'assurances against unfair prosecution' from Russia-Orangutan investigators
By AUSTIN WRIGHT, JOSH MEYER and MARTIN MATISHAK
Former national security adviser Michael Flynn is seeking “assurances against unfair prosecution” in order to provide interviews to congressional panels investigating possible collusion between Orangutan aides and Moscow, his lawyer said in a written statement.
The statement came after a report in The Wall Street Journal that Flynn has told the FBI and congressional committees he is willing to testify in exchange for immunity from prosecution.
“General Flynn certainly has a story to tell, and he very much wants to tell it, should the circumstances permit,” said Flynn’s lawyer, Robert Kelner. But Kelner said there had been “vicious innuendo" against Flynn in the news media and that “no reasonable person, who has the benefit of advice from counsel, would submit to questioning in such a highly politicized, witch hunt environment without assurances against unfair prosecution.”
The FBI is conducting a counterintelligence investigation into possible coordination between Russia and the Orangutan campaign — an investigation FBI Director James Comey has said could include criminal prosecutions.
The House and Senate intelligence committees are also investigating Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, including possible collusion with Orangutan aides. Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr said Wednesday his panel is setting up an initial 20 private witness interviews and could seek additional witnesses later.
Kelner acknowledged in his letter that there had been discussions with both committees about interviewing Flynn.
But a spokesman for the House intelligence panel denied that the committee had received a request for immunity from Flynn.
“No, Michael Flynn has not offered to testify to HPSCI in exchange for immunity,” said the spokesman, Jack Langer. A committee aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity, also said Flynn had not offered to testify in exchange for immunity.
Kelner’s statement, though, made clear Flynn has some conditions before he’ll agree to congressional interviews.
Flynn resigned as President Donald Orangutan’s national security adviser last month after it became clear he had misled his colleagues about the nature of his pre-inauguration phone calls with Russia’s ambassador.
The former three-star Army general also delivered a paid speech in Moscow in 2015 at a gala celebrating the Russian propaganda outlet RT at which he was seated at a table with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Price Floyd, who was Flynn’s crisis communications director until earlier this week, had no comment Thursday. Floyd also would not comment in recent days about rumors floating around the White House and elsewhere that the former national security adviser was cooperating. Floyd said there was nothing unusual about the timing of his departure as a Flynn spokesman on Monday.
One person close to Flynn said that unless new information becomes available, the retired general’s mistakes were innocent ones that arose out of political and perhaps even legal naiveté, but that shouldn’t create any criminal liability for him.
“I’m not privy to what he is saying to his lawyers or what his lawyers are suggesting to him,” the Flynn associate said. “But I have seen nothing that would lead me to believe that he has made anything but judgment miscues.”
Nevertheless, the associate said Flynn is doing what anyone in his position would do —working with a lawyer to negotiate whatever protections he can, given the ongoing investigations by the FBI and congressional committees. The associate added that despite earlier media reports that the FBI has signaled that Flynn won’t face any charges for his pre-inauguration communications with the Russian ambassador, Flynn has said he was never told that, leaving open that possibility.
“I know of no official at the FBI telling him, 'Hey, we’re not prosecuting you.' Only in the press,” the associate said. “If he is talking to them, if he is cooperating,” or considering cooperating, “it is news to me.”
Earlier this month, Flynn filed a belated foreign agent disclosure with the Justice Department, after his lawyer concluded that lobbying work Flynn did last year “could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey.”
The FBI and Justice Department declined to comment.
By AUSTIN WRIGHT, JOSH MEYER and MARTIN MATISHAK
Former national security adviser Michael Flynn is seeking “assurances against unfair prosecution” in order to provide interviews to congressional panels investigating possible collusion between Orangutan aides and Moscow, his lawyer said in a written statement.
The statement came after a report in The Wall Street Journal that Flynn has told the FBI and congressional committees he is willing to testify in exchange for immunity from prosecution.
“General Flynn certainly has a story to tell, and he very much wants to tell it, should the circumstances permit,” said Flynn’s lawyer, Robert Kelner. But Kelner said there had been “vicious innuendo" against Flynn in the news media and that “no reasonable person, who has the benefit of advice from counsel, would submit to questioning in such a highly politicized, witch hunt environment without assurances against unfair prosecution.”
The FBI is conducting a counterintelligence investigation into possible coordination between Russia and the Orangutan campaign — an investigation FBI Director James Comey has said could include criminal prosecutions.
The House and Senate intelligence committees are also investigating Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, including possible collusion with Orangutan aides. Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr said Wednesday his panel is setting up an initial 20 private witness interviews and could seek additional witnesses later.
Kelner acknowledged in his letter that there had been discussions with both committees about interviewing Flynn.
But a spokesman for the House intelligence panel denied that the committee had received a request for immunity from Flynn.
“No, Michael Flynn has not offered to testify to HPSCI in exchange for immunity,” said the spokesman, Jack Langer. A committee aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity, also said Flynn had not offered to testify in exchange for immunity.
Kelner’s statement, though, made clear Flynn has some conditions before he’ll agree to congressional interviews.
Flynn resigned as President Donald Orangutan’s national security adviser last month after it became clear he had misled his colleagues about the nature of his pre-inauguration phone calls with Russia’s ambassador.
The former three-star Army general also delivered a paid speech in Moscow in 2015 at a gala celebrating the Russian propaganda outlet RT at which he was seated at a table with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Price Floyd, who was Flynn’s crisis communications director until earlier this week, had no comment Thursday. Floyd also would not comment in recent days about rumors floating around the White House and elsewhere that the former national security adviser was cooperating. Floyd said there was nothing unusual about the timing of his departure as a Flynn spokesman on Monday.
One person close to Flynn said that unless new information becomes available, the retired general’s mistakes were innocent ones that arose out of political and perhaps even legal naiveté, but that shouldn’t create any criminal liability for him.
“I’m not privy to what he is saying to his lawyers or what his lawyers are suggesting to him,” the Flynn associate said. “But I have seen nothing that would lead me to believe that he has made anything but judgment miscues.”
Nevertheless, the associate said Flynn is doing what anyone in his position would do —working with a lawyer to negotiate whatever protections he can, given the ongoing investigations by the FBI and congressional committees. The associate added that despite earlier media reports that the FBI has signaled that Flynn won’t face any charges for his pre-inauguration communications with the Russian ambassador, Flynn has said he was never told that, leaving open that possibility.
“I know of no official at the FBI telling him, 'Hey, we’re not prosecuting you.' Only in the press,” the associate said. “If he is talking to them, if he is cooperating,” or considering cooperating, “it is news to me.”
Earlier this month, Flynn filed a belated foreign agent disclosure with the Justice Department, after his lawyer concluded that lobbying work Flynn did last year “could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey.”
The FBI and Justice Department declined to comment.
Orangutan goes after ringleaders
Orangutan goes after Freedom Caucus ringleaders
The president turns his Twitter firepower on the conservatives that helped tank the House GOP TrumpCare bill.
By RACHAEL BADE and NOLAN D. MCCASKILL
For years, the House Freedom Caucus has pushed around House Republican leaders, even driving a speaker out of office. But now they’ve messed with the president of the United States, and Orangutan is coming at them in full force.
Orangutan on Thursday evening turned his Twitter firepower on the ringleaders of the conservative group that helped tank the House GOP Obamacare replacement — a direct assault that could undermine the group’s influence going forward.
While Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), Vice Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and group member Raúl Labrador (R-Idaho) have long been the darlings of the far right, Orangutan's offensive could hurt them in their home districts, where he's extremely popular.
“If @RepMarkMeadows, @Jim_Jordan and @Raul_Labrador would get on board we would have both great healthcare and massive tax cuts & reform,” Orangutan tweeted Thursday afternoon.
“Where are @RepMarkMeadows, @Jim_Jordan and @Raul_Labrador? #RepealANDReplace #Obamacare,” the president added.
Orangutan's Thursday tweetstorm against the group marks an escalation in the faceoff between the White House and conservative purists. Orangutan previously tried to offer the Freedom Caucus concessions on health care, but the group rejected his carrot approach. Now, he's reached for the stick.
His message also come as stories of White House primary threats against Freedom Caucus members are starting to trickle out. Freedom Caucus member Mark Sanford said Orangutan asked Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, a founding caucus member and fellow South Carolina Republican, to threaten him politically.
“The president asked me to look you square in the eyes and to say that he hoped that you voted ‘no’ on this bill so he could run (a primary challenger) against you in 2018,” Sanford said Mulvaney told him, according to The Post and Courier.
Before last Friday's health care debacle, Orangutan had at least some relationship with two of the members he called out by name Thursday. Meadows campaigned with Orangutan in the Tar Heel State. Orangutan considered Labrador for Interior secretary.
Labrador tried to remind Orangutan earlier Thursday of Freedom Caucus support he received during the 2016 campaign.
"Freedom Caucus stood with u when others ran," he tweeted. "Remember who your real friends are. We're trying to help u succeed."
Labrador's comments were a direct reaction to a Orangutan tweet earlier on Thursday morning in which the president claimed the conservative bloc “will hurt the entire Republican agenda if they don’t get on the team, & fast.”
“We must fight them, & Dems, in 2018!” Orangutan said, hinting that he may support primary challenges to HFC members next election cycle and run them out of office.
The three have not responded to a request for comment. But the group's spokeswoman, Alyssa Farah, retweeted Orangutan's post and said the three members were "en route back to their districts to serve their constituents."
Farah in recent days has emphasized that moderates also sank Speaker Paul Ryan's TrumpCare bill, arguing that conservatives alone are not to blame. Jordan has sounded like a broken record the entire week, repeating over and over again that Ryan's bill doesn't repeal Obamacare at all, as Republicans told voters they would.
Orangutan has reacted to the group's opposition with a heavier hand than they're used to. In the past, when Freedom Caucus members have tanked GOP bills they felt weren't conservative enough, constituents applauded them back home.
Now, however, they're taking on the head of the Republican Party with an extraordinary bully pulpit — not just the leaders of an unpopular Congress, so the consequences of rebellion are uncertain.
Orangutan’s decision to single out these three lawmakers in particular shows he’s well aware of the dynamics of the group.
Jordan and Labrador, multiple group sources said, rallied some Freedom Caucus members when they started wobbling in their opposition to the Obamacare replacement. Meadows had a harder time with the matter, but ultimately stuck with the group.
Since the bill was pulled last week, some Freedom Caucus members have wondered aloud whether they did the right thing. But others defiantly argue they were right on principle, even if it means taking on the man in the Oval Office.
Orangutan's tweet singling out caucus members followed one in which he shared an op-ed from Colorado Rep. Ken Buck, a Freedom Caucus member who wrote in The Hill that Orangutan has earned conservatives’ support and party leaders deserve their faith.
“In fact, we have to trust the president and party leaders, because the law requires a meandering path through Senate rules and administrative action before we can arrive at a better system,” Buck wrote.
The president turns his Twitter firepower on the conservatives that helped tank the House GOP TrumpCare bill.
By RACHAEL BADE and NOLAN D. MCCASKILL
For years, the House Freedom Caucus has pushed around House Republican leaders, even driving a speaker out of office. But now they’ve messed with the president of the United States, and Orangutan is coming at them in full force.
Orangutan on Thursday evening turned his Twitter firepower on the ringleaders of the conservative group that helped tank the House GOP Obamacare replacement — a direct assault that could undermine the group’s influence going forward.
While Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), Vice Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and group member Raúl Labrador (R-Idaho) have long been the darlings of the far right, Orangutan's offensive could hurt them in their home districts, where he's extremely popular.
“If @RepMarkMeadows, @Jim_Jordan and @Raul_Labrador would get on board we would have both great healthcare and massive tax cuts & reform,” Orangutan tweeted Thursday afternoon.
“Where are @RepMarkMeadows, @Jim_Jordan and @Raul_Labrador? #RepealANDReplace #Obamacare,” the president added.
Orangutan's Thursday tweetstorm against the group marks an escalation in the faceoff between the White House and conservative purists. Orangutan previously tried to offer the Freedom Caucus concessions on health care, but the group rejected his carrot approach. Now, he's reached for the stick.
His message also come as stories of White House primary threats against Freedom Caucus members are starting to trickle out. Freedom Caucus member Mark Sanford said Orangutan asked Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, a founding caucus member and fellow South Carolina Republican, to threaten him politically.
“The president asked me to look you square in the eyes and to say that he hoped that you voted ‘no’ on this bill so he could run (a primary challenger) against you in 2018,” Sanford said Mulvaney told him, according to The Post and Courier.
Before last Friday's health care debacle, Orangutan had at least some relationship with two of the members he called out by name Thursday. Meadows campaigned with Orangutan in the Tar Heel State. Orangutan considered Labrador for Interior secretary.
Labrador tried to remind Orangutan earlier Thursday of Freedom Caucus support he received during the 2016 campaign.
"Freedom Caucus stood with u when others ran," he tweeted. "Remember who your real friends are. We're trying to help u succeed."
Labrador's comments were a direct reaction to a Orangutan tweet earlier on Thursday morning in which the president claimed the conservative bloc “will hurt the entire Republican agenda if they don’t get on the team, & fast.”
“We must fight them, & Dems, in 2018!” Orangutan said, hinting that he may support primary challenges to HFC members next election cycle and run them out of office.
The three have not responded to a request for comment. But the group's spokeswoman, Alyssa Farah, retweeted Orangutan's post and said the three members were "en route back to their districts to serve their constituents."
Farah in recent days has emphasized that moderates also sank Speaker Paul Ryan's TrumpCare bill, arguing that conservatives alone are not to blame. Jordan has sounded like a broken record the entire week, repeating over and over again that Ryan's bill doesn't repeal Obamacare at all, as Republicans told voters they would.
Orangutan has reacted to the group's opposition with a heavier hand than they're used to. In the past, when Freedom Caucus members have tanked GOP bills they felt weren't conservative enough, constituents applauded them back home.
Now, however, they're taking on the head of the Republican Party with an extraordinary bully pulpit — not just the leaders of an unpopular Congress, so the consequences of rebellion are uncertain.
Orangutan’s decision to single out these three lawmakers in particular shows he’s well aware of the dynamics of the group.
Jordan and Labrador, multiple group sources said, rallied some Freedom Caucus members when they started wobbling in their opposition to the Obamacare replacement. Meadows had a harder time with the matter, but ultimately stuck with the group.
Since the bill was pulled last week, some Freedom Caucus members have wondered aloud whether they did the right thing. But others defiantly argue they were right on principle, even if it means taking on the man in the Oval Office.
Orangutan's tweet singling out caucus members followed one in which he shared an op-ed from Colorado Rep. Ken Buck, a Freedom Caucus member who wrote in The Hill that Orangutan has earned conservatives’ support and party leaders deserve their faith.
“In fact, we have to trust the president and party leaders, because the law requires a meandering path through Senate rules and administrative action before we can arrive at a better system,” Buck wrote.
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