What the Fucking Fuck?
KEVIN DRUM
From the LA Times:
Anthony Scaramucci, announced little more than a week ago as President Trump’s White House communications director, was ousted Monday before he was even officially sworn in. John Kelly, the newly appointed chief of staff, told Scaramucci he was going to be replaced around 9:30 a.m., according to a person close to the White House.
Oh come on. The only way this gets better is if they bring back Sean Spicer and promote him into Scaramucci’s position.
July 31, 2017
"Mooch" out?
Anthony Scaramucci out as White House communications director
From CNN
Anthony Scaramucci is out as White House communications director, two sources tell CNN.
It's the latest high-profile departure from the Trump White House. Chief of Staff Reince Priebus reigned at the end of last week, replaced by John Kelly, whose first day is Monday.
A White House official said Kelly wanted Scaramucci removed from his new role as the communications director because he did not think he was disciplined and had burned his credibility.
Scaramucci, a colorful and controversial figure, was brought on during the latest in a long list of White House shake ups that have rocked imbued the presidency with a sense of chaos.
Scaramucci is the third White House communications director to leave the post that had been vacant since late May, when Mike Dubke left after about three months on the job. Sean Spicer, the former White House press secretary, also assumed some of the communications director role before he resigned when Scaramucci was hired July 21.
His departure comes days after Scaramucci unleashed a vulgar tirade against two top White House officials in a conversation with a reporter.
From CNN
Anthony Scaramucci is out as White House communications director, two sources tell CNN.
It's the latest high-profile departure from the Trump White House. Chief of Staff Reince Priebus reigned at the end of last week, replaced by John Kelly, whose first day is Monday.
A White House official said Kelly wanted Scaramucci removed from his new role as the communications director because he did not think he was disciplined and had burned his credibility.
Scaramucci, a colorful and controversial figure, was brought on during the latest in a long list of White House shake ups that have rocked imbued the presidency with a sense of chaos.
Scaramucci is the third White House communications director to leave the post that had been vacant since late May, when Mike Dubke left after about three months on the job. Sean Spicer, the former White House press secretary, also assumed some of the communications director role before he resigned when Scaramucci was hired July 21.
His departure comes days after Scaramucci unleashed a vulgar tirade against two top White House officials in a conversation with a reporter.
Started in January...
Here’s The Real Reason Anthony Scaramucci Hates Reince Priebus
It all started in January.
By Vicky Ward
In the public feud between Anthony Scaramucci and Reince Priebus, what hasn’t been fully explained is why Scaramucci so dislikes the president’s now-former chief of staff — a man he alternates between calling “Reince Penis” and “Rancid Penis,” according to an adviser to the White House.
The acrimony first surfaced during the presidential transition. The two men had been cordial before then. They met six years ago, when Scaramucci was a fundraiser for presidential candidate Mitt Romney and Priebus was chair of the Republican National Committee. They interacted peaceably during Donald Trump’s campaign as Scaramucci made the rounds on television and at donor events.
After Trump’s victory, Priebus was named chief of staff, and Scaramucci, according to someone close to the transition, was assured that he was also in line for a big position within the administration. (Sources for this story requested anonymity to discuss the details of sensitive conversations.)
While preparing for his move into government, Scaramucci struck a deal — which is still under regulatory scrutiny — to sell his stake in his hedge fund, SkyBridge Capital, to Chinese conglomerate HNA Group and another company. He assumed that he’d be put in charge of the public liaison office, a job that Valerie Jarrett held in the Obama administration. He had it all mapped out, according to the White House adviser. He identified 2,500 influential business leaders across the United States and had come up with a clever name for them: Trump Team 2,500. He believed these people would help pressure Congress into supporting the president’s agenda.
But Scaramucci’s plans were foiled in early January. That’s when Priebus, according to a confidant of both Scaramucci and the president, told Trump, “He played you.”
“How’s that?” Trump asked Priebus, according to the same source, who has spoken to several people within the White House about the conversation.
Priebus then told Trump that he felt Scaramucci had been offered too much for SkyBridge by HNA Group. The deal, he implied, smelled bad — as if the Chinese might expect favors from within the administration for that inflated price. The source also said that Priebus mentioned there was email traffic between Scaramucci and the Chinese proving this.
The White House rejected this version of events and declined to make Priebus available for comment.
Ultimately, Scaramucci was not offered the job.
But he didn’t give up. He asked Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner to get him in the door. According to two people familiar with the conversation, Kushner assured him that he didn’t think Scaramucci was “shady,” adding, “But it’s not what I think that matters.” Priebus had already planted the seed of doubt in Trump’s mind.
Scaramucci then tried presidential adviser Steve Bannon, who, according to those same two people, explained that he was too busy attempting to save the job of another adviser, Stephen Miller, to spend time or capital trying to help Scaramucci.
A friend of Scaramucci’s said he complained that some in the White House assumed his finances were suspect because he’s of Italian descent. Scaramucci also took Priebus’ behavior as a sign that Priebus was feeling insecure about his own job. “I will try things the Washington way first,” Trump had told his inner circle when he first named Priebus chief of staff, according to the confidant of Scaramucci and Trump. The implication was clear: If the Washington way did not work, then the New York real estate way would take over.
Finally, Scaramucci went to Keith Schiller, the president’s longtime bodyguard. He asked Schiller to put him on the phone with Trump so that he could lodge his complaints directly. The president listened, according to their mutual friend, and said he would find a position for Scaramucci as soon as he could.
In June, Scaramucci was appointed to be senior vice president and chief strategy officer of the Export-Import Bank. But the Priebus incident lingered in his mind.
So, on July 11, when Donald Trump Jr. found himself in trouble for holding a meeting with several people close to the Russian government the previous summer, Scaramucci sensed an opportunity. According to the mutual friend, Scaramucci told everyone he spoke to that day, including the president, that he was sure the person who divulged details of the meeting was Priebus. Scaramucci made the case — not necessarily backed by evidence — that with all the leaks targeting the administration, it was odd that only a few had hit Priebus directly.
Ten days later, Scaramucci was named the new White House communications director. The announcement noted that he would be reporting directly to the president — an unusual move that leapfrogged over the chief of staff.
Priebus balked, insisting that Scaramucci report to him. But Trump overrode his chief of staff. Not only was the hedge fund manager who had known Trump for 21 years officially in charge of the press shop, but he was also set to oversee the reorganization of the White House. Scaramucci seemed to have his revenge.
At least until Thursday evening. In an interview with The New Yorker, Scaramucci called Priebus “a fucking paranoid schizophrenic” and explained how he, unlike Bannon, is “not trying to suck my own cock.” Now, Scaramucci’s future at the White House is less clear, even if Trump reportedly “loved” the outburst.
Two sources close to the president said the very traits that have so endeared Scaramucci to Trump — tenacity, frankness, limitless swagger — could end up endangering his new job if he continues to steal news cycles from the president. But those same sources said he’s safe for now.
“Mark my words: Anthony will ultimately be an exceptionally good communications director,” said Sam Nunberg, a former Trump aide who still talks to the president. “His career proves he’s a master communicator. I hope he keeps his perfect chin up.”
On Friday, the news broke that Priebus had been ousted as chief of staff.
It all started in January.
By Vicky Ward
In the public feud between Anthony Scaramucci and Reince Priebus, what hasn’t been fully explained is why Scaramucci so dislikes the president’s now-former chief of staff — a man he alternates between calling “Reince Penis” and “Rancid Penis,” according to an adviser to the White House.
The acrimony first surfaced during the presidential transition. The two men had been cordial before then. They met six years ago, when Scaramucci was a fundraiser for presidential candidate Mitt Romney and Priebus was chair of the Republican National Committee. They interacted peaceably during Donald Trump’s campaign as Scaramucci made the rounds on television and at donor events.
After Trump’s victory, Priebus was named chief of staff, and Scaramucci, according to someone close to the transition, was assured that he was also in line for a big position within the administration. (Sources for this story requested anonymity to discuss the details of sensitive conversations.)
While preparing for his move into government, Scaramucci struck a deal — which is still under regulatory scrutiny — to sell his stake in his hedge fund, SkyBridge Capital, to Chinese conglomerate HNA Group and another company. He assumed that he’d be put in charge of the public liaison office, a job that Valerie Jarrett held in the Obama administration. He had it all mapped out, according to the White House adviser. He identified 2,500 influential business leaders across the United States and had come up with a clever name for them: Trump Team 2,500. He believed these people would help pressure Congress into supporting the president’s agenda.
But Scaramucci’s plans were foiled in early January. That’s when Priebus, according to a confidant of both Scaramucci and the president, told Trump, “He played you.”
“How’s that?” Trump asked Priebus, according to the same source, who has spoken to several people within the White House about the conversation.
Priebus then told Trump that he felt Scaramucci had been offered too much for SkyBridge by HNA Group. The deal, he implied, smelled bad — as if the Chinese might expect favors from within the administration for that inflated price. The source also said that Priebus mentioned there was email traffic between Scaramucci and the Chinese proving this.
The White House rejected this version of events and declined to make Priebus available for comment.
Ultimately, Scaramucci was not offered the job.
But he didn’t give up. He asked Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner to get him in the door. According to two people familiar with the conversation, Kushner assured him that he didn’t think Scaramucci was “shady,” adding, “But it’s not what I think that matters.” Priebus had already planted the seed of doubt in Trump’s mind.
Scaramucci then tried presidential adviser Steve Bannon, who, according to those same two people, explained that he was too busy attempting to save the job of another adviser, Stephen Miller, to spend time or capital trying to help Scaramucci.
A friend of Scaramucci’s said he complained that some in the White House assumed his finances were suspect because he’s of Italian descent. Scaramucci also took Priebus’ behavior as a sign that Priebus was feeling insecure about his own job. “I will try things the Washington way first,” Trump had told his inner circle when he first named Priebus chief of staff, according to the confidant of Scaramucci and Trump. The implication was clear: If the Washington way did not work, then the New York real estate way would take over.
Finally, Scaramucci went to Keith Schiller, the president’s longtime bodyguard. He asked Schiller to put him on the phone with Trump so that he could lodge his complaints directly. The president listened, according to their mutual friend, and said he would find a position for Scaramucci as soon as he could.
In June, Scaramucci was appointed to be senior vice president and chief strategy officer of the Export-Import Bank. But the Priebus incident lingered in his mind.
So, on July 11, when Donald Trump Jr. found himself in trouble for holding a meeting with several people close to the Russian government the previous summer, Scaramucci sensed an opportunity. According to the mutual friend, Scaramucci told everyone he spoke to that day, including the president, that he was sure the person who divulged details of the meeting was Priebus. Scaramucci made the case — not necessarily backed by evidence — that with all the leaks targeting the administration, it was odd that only a few had hit Priebus directly.
Ten days later, Scaramucci was named the new White House communications director. The announcement noted that he would be reporting directly to the president — an unusual move that leapfrogged over the chief of staff.
Priebus balked, insisting that Scaramucci report to him. But Trump overrode his chief of staff. Not only was the hedge fund manager who had known Trump for 21 years officially in charge of the press shop, but he was also set to oversee the reorganization of the White House. Scaramucci seemed to have his revenge.
At least until Thursday evening. In an interview with The New Yorker, Scaramucci called Priebus “a fucking paranoid schizophrenic” and explained how he, unlike Bannon, is “not trying to suck my own cock.” Now, Scaramucci’s future at the White House is less clear, even if Trump reportedly “loved” the outburst.
Two sources close to the president said the very traits that have so endeared Scaramucci to Trump — tenacity, frankness, limitless swagger — could end up endangering his new job if he continues to steal news cycles from the president. But those same sources said he’s safe for now.
“Mark my words: Anthony will ultimately be an exceptionally good communications director,” said Sam Nunberg, a former Trump aide who still talks to the president. “His career proves he’s a master communicator. I hope he keeps his perfect chin up.”
On Friday, the news broke that Priebus had been ousted as chief of staff.
Hackers conference
Hackers breach dozens of voting machines brought to conference
BY JOE UCHILL
One of the nation’s largest cybersecurity conferences is inviting attendees to get hands-on experience hacking a slew of voting machines, demonstrating to researchers how easy the process can be.
“It took me only a few minutes to see how to hack it,” said security consultant Thomas Richards, glancing at a Premier Election Solutions machine currently in use in Georgia.
The DEF CON cybersecurity conference is held annually in Las Vegas. This year, for the first time, the conference is hosting a "Voting Machine Village," where attendees can try to hack a number of systems and help catch vulnerabilities.
The conference acquired 30 machines for hackers to toy with. Every voting machine in the village was hacked.
Though voting machines are technologically simple, they are difficult for researchers to obtain for independent research. The machine that Richards learned how to hack used beneath-the-surface software, known as firmware, designed in 2007. But a number of well-known vulnerabilities in that firmware have developed over the past decade.
“I didn’t come in knowing what to expect, but I was surprised by what I found,” he said.
He went on to list a number of actions he hoped states would take to help secure machines, including increasing testing opportunities for outside hackers and transparency in voting machine design.
Speakers and organizers said they hoped the village would raise awareness about election machine security issues within the cybersecurity community.
And they hope that the attendees, many of whom are election experts, will pressure states to do more to protect those systems.
“There’s so much misinformation about voting machines on the internet,” said Harri Hursti, cofounder of Nordic Innovation Labs, who helped organize the event.
“The Village was announced last minute. But in the forums, people were active, looking to understand the problem. The changes have to start somewhere. This year it’s in this room, next year it will be a bigger room.”
Though many activists ask for auditable voting machines that don't leave a paper trail, Hursti said there were no commercially available machines he would recommend.
There is also debate within the cybersecurity community over the extent of the threat from voting machines that haven't been secured.
Eric Hodge, director of consulting at CyberScout and a consultant for Kentucky’s Board of Elections, said that with proper security processes in place, the threat to large elections is minimal.
Taking care to properly “store machines, set them up, [and] always have someone keeping an eye on machines,” he said, can mitigate a wide array of security problems.
That is because voting machines are not connected to the internet and systems used to set them up should, in principle, not invite hackers in.
Voting machines are also bought and used county-to-county across the U.S., making it harder to tamper with a national election result.
“Unless it’s an election in Delaware or Rhode Island, it would be difficult to hack machines in every county,” Hodge said.
Hursti, though, worries that states might not follow best practices.
He also worries that in national elections likely to be close, hackers might target one or two key counties to swing a result.
But he also believes that the elections most at risk are not on a national scale.
“Follow the money,” he said. “On the other end of the ballot, that’s where the money is — banks and roads.”
DEF CON's Voting Machine Village is the first time most researchers there have had access to voting machines. But attendees had high hopes.
“The best possible outcome is that the village results in a book of vulnerabilities to share with the [Federal Election Commission], states and other firms like ours,” said Hodge.
“Once researchers know, there will be pressure for changes.”
BY JOE UCHILL
One of the nation’s largest cybersecurity conferences is inviting attendees to get hands-on experience hacking a slew of voting machines, demonstrating to researchers how easy the process can be.
“It took me only a few minutes to see how to hack it,” said security consultant Thomas Richards, glancing at a Premier Election Solutions machine currently in use in Georgia.
The DEF CON cybersecurity conference is held annually in Las Vegas. This year, for the first time, the conference is hosting a "Voting Machine Village," where attendees can try to hack a number of systems and help catch vulnerabilities.
The conference acquired 30 machines for hackers to toy with. Every voting machine in the village was hacked.
Though voting machines are technologically simple, they are difficult for researchers to obtain for independent research. The machine that Richards learned how to hack used beneath-the-surface software, known as firmware, designed in 2007. But a number of well-known vulnerabilities in that firmware have developed over the past decade.
“I didn’t come in knowing what to expect, but I was surprised by what I found,” he said.
He went on to list a number of actions he hoped states would take to help secure machines, including increasing testing opportunities for outside hackers and transparency in voting machine design.
Speakers and organizers said they hoped the village would raise awareness about election machine security issues within the cybersecurity community.
And they hope that the attendees, many of whom are election experts, will pressure states to do more to protect those systems.
“There’s so much misinformation about voting machines on the internet,” said Harri Hursti, cofounder of Nordic Innovation Labs, who helped organize the event.
“The Village was announced last minute. But in the forums, people were active, looking to understand the problem. The changes have to start somewhere. This year it’s in this room, next year it will be a bigger room.”
Though many activists ask for auditable voting machines that don't leave a paper trail, Hursti said there were no commercially available machines he would recommend.
There is also debate within the cybersecurity community over the extent of the threat from voting machines that haven't been secured.
Eric Hodge, director of consulting at CyberScout and a consultant for Kentucky’s Board of Elections, said that with proper security processes in place, the threat to large elections is minimal.
Taking care to properly “store machines, set them up, [and] always have someone keeping an eye on machines,” he said, can mitigate a wide array of security problems.
That is because voting machines are not connected to the internet and systems used to set them up should, in principle, not invite hackers in.
Voting machines are also bought and used county-to-county across the U.S., making it harder to tamper with a national election result.
“Unless it’s an election in Delaware or Rhode Island, it would be difficult to hack machines in every county,” Hodge said.
Hursti, though, worries that states might not follow best practices.
He also worries that in national elections likely to be close, hackers might target one or two key counties to swing a result.
But he also believes that the elections most at risk are not on a national scale.
“Follow the money,” he said. “On the other end of the ballot, that’s where the money is — banks and roads.”
DEF CON's Voting Machine Village is the first time most researchers there have had access to voting machines. But attendees had high hopes.
“The best possible outcome is that the village results in a book of vulnerabilities to share with the [Federal Election Commission], states and other firms like ours,” said Hodge.
“Once researchers know, there will be pressure for changes.”
Still trying...
As Trump steams, Senate Republicans consider new repeal effort
Some congressional Republicans are backing a proposal by Sen. Lindsey Graham they hope can get 50 Republican votes.
By BURGESS EVERETT, JOSH DAWSEY and RACHAEL BADE
Senate Republicans’ party-line attempts to repeal Obamacare aren’t dead just yet — at least not if President Donald Trump has anything to say about it.
Trump, increasingly impatient with the long-stalled repeal effort, met with three Senate Republicans about a new plan to roll back the health care law on Friday, signaling some lawmakers — as well as the president — are not ready to ditch their seven-year campaign promise.
The group is trying to write legislation that could get 50 Republican votes, according to multiple administration and Capitol Hill sources. The proposal from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) would block grant federal health care funding to the states and keep much of Obamacare’s tax regime. White House officials also met with House Freedom Caucus chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) to brainstorm how to make the idea palatable to conservatives, according to two sources familiar with the meeting.
The White House-health care huddle came just hours before Trump savaged Senate Republicans in a series of Saturday tweets for failing to repeal Obamacare. If the Senate doesn't pass a bill soon, Trump warned, he may halt Obamacare payments subsidizing health plans for low-income individuals — an idea adamantly opposed by Republicans and Democrats alike.
Trump also appeared to take a personal shot at lawmakers, seemingly warning that he could revoke their own health benefits on the exchanges.
"If a new HealthCare Bill is not approved quickly, BAILOUTS for Insurance Companies and BAILOUTS for Members of Congress will end very soon!" Trump tweeted Saturday afternoon.
Trump seemed optimistic about moving forward on the bill on Friday after the shocking setback this week appeared to cripple his legislative agenda, according to a White House official. Yet several senior Republican Senate aides and allies of GOP leaders cautioned against any feelings of momentum coming from the White House on Saturday, particularly after Trump again instructed Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to change the Senate rules to a simple majority and gut the legislative filibuster.
McConnell has resisted such a suggestion publicly and has been pushing back against Trump privately, according to people familiar with their interactions. One person close to McConnell said Trump has asked McConnell personally to change the rules but said no.
During his Saturday tweet-storm, Trump blamed the arcane budget reconciliation rules that make it more difficult to fully repeal and replace Obamacare on party lines.
“The very outdated filibuster rule must go. Budget reconciliation is killing R's in Senate. Mitch M, go to 51 Votes NOW and WIN. IT'S TIME!” Trump said. “Republicans in the Senate will NEVER win if they don't go to a 51 vote majority NOW. They look like fools and are just wasting time.”
Senate rules don’t appear to be the problem. From the “skinny repeal” bill to a McConnell designed replacement bill to a so-called “clean” repeal bill, all GOP efforts failed to get 50 votes in the Senate this week. After the GOP’s failure to move forward on Friday, McConnell asked Senate Democrats for their ideas on healthcare and warned against bailing out insurance companies. Some Republican senators want to move on from the partisan effort and start looking at fixes to the law's insurance exchanges with Senate Democrats.
McConnell has vowed not to change Senate rules all year and has publicly encouraged Trump to cool it on the tweeting several times. His office reiterated his previous comments.
In theory, the Senate could bring back up their party line budget “reconciliation” effort to gut Obamacare as soon as next week. Graham’s bill has not been scored by the Congressional Budget Office and did not receive a test vote this week. It currently has a small group of supporters and will likely need major work to pass the Senate, like language defunding Planned Parenthood which would likely alienate a pair of moderate senators.
Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Dean Heller of Nevada joined Graham at the White House on Friday, and each has joined Graham’s bill as the new alternative plan for Republicans. The bill’s supporters are telling administration officials and congressional aides that the bill will score far better than previous efforts, which CBO analyses project would cause millions more uninsured people and short-term spikes in premiums.
“I had a great meeting with the President and know he remains fully committed to repealing and replacing Obamacare. President Trump was optimistic about the Graham-Cassidy-Heller proposal. I will continue to work with President Trump and his team to move the idea forward.,” Graham said late Friday.
The South Carolina senator has been talking to Meadows about the bill as a possible way forward that both chambers could accept. Several GOP governors have signaled interest to Graham for the bill as a way to keep funding levels steady and give states more control. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price is also monitoring those conversations, a Republican aide said.
Meadows has shopped the Graham proposal around to other conservatives to get their take on the bill. He said Thursday that Graham’s bill would need to ease the ability of governors’ to get waivers to ignore some of Obamacare’s regulations.
“We’re going to regroup and stay focused,” Meadows said Friday. “I’m still optimistic that we will have another motion to proceed, and ultimately put something on the president’s desk.”
But the GOP would have to take another painful procedural vote to open debate, and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is expected to remain in Arizona for cancer treatment until the end of the August recess. McCain voted to open debate on the Obamacare repeal effort, but voted against the GOP’s “skinny” bill that would gut the law’s individual mandate.
He called for McConnell to hit the reset button on Friday, although his political capital may have taken a hit for squashing Republicans’ seven-year political vow to gut Obamacare with his surprising vote.
“The vote last night presents the Senate with an opportunity to start fresh. It is now time to return to regular order with input from all of our members – Republicans and Democrats,” he said on Friday.
Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska would have to reverse course on opening debate on the bill for things to move forward in August without McCain. Republican senators are angry at Trump for calling Murkowski this week to rethink her opposition to the GOP’s effort, several Republican sources said.
The moderate Alaska senator told E&E News that the conversation on Tuesday with Trump was “not a very pleasant call.” Several Republicans said privately Trump’s heavy hand derailed any chance of getting Murkowski to support the “skinny” bill, which was meant as a way to send the GOP’s repeal efforts into conference with the House.
Vice President Mike Pence spent most of Friday’s vote whipping McCain, but a number of Republican senators tried to flip Murkowski as well. She was unmoved and voted no.
Some congressional Republicans are backing a proposal by Sen. Lindsey Graham they hope can get 50 Republican votes.
By BURGESS EVERETT, JOSH DAWSEY and RACHAEL BADE
Senate Republicans’ party-line attempts to repeal Obamacare aren’t dead just yet — at least not if President Donald Trump has anything to say about it.
Trump, increasingly impatient with the long-stalled repeal effort, met with three Senate Republicans about a new plan to roll back the health care law on Friday, signaling some lawmakers — as well as the president — are not ready to ditch their seven-year campaign promise.
The group is trying to write legislation that could get 50 Republican votes, according to multiple administration and Capitol Hill sources. The proposal from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) would block grant federal health care funding to the states and keep much of Obamacare’s tax regime. White House officials also met with House Freedom Caucus chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) to brainstorm how to make the idea palatable to conservatives, according to two sources familiar with the meeting.
The White House-health care huddle came just hours before Trump savaged Senate Republicans in a series of Saturday tweets for failing to repeal Obamacare. If the Senate doesn't pass a bill soon, Trump warned, he may halt Obamacare payments subsidizing health plans for low-income individuals — an idea adamantly opposed by Republicans and Democrats alike.
Trump also appeared to take a personal shot at lawmakers, seemingly warning that he could revoke their own health benefits on the exchanges.
"If a new HealthCare Bill is not approved quickly, BAILOUTS for Insurance Companies and BAILOUTS for Members of Congress will end very soon!" Trump tweeted Saturday afternoon.
Trump seemed optimistic about moving forward on the bill on Friday after the shocking setback this week appeared to cripple his legislative agenda, according to a White House official. Yet several senior Republican Senate aides and allies of GOP leaders cautioned against any feelings of momentum coming from the White House on Saturday, particularly after Trump again instructed Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to change the Senate rules to a simple majority and gut the legislative filibuster.
McConnell has resisted such a suggestion publicly and has been pushing back against Trump privately, according to people familiar with their interactions. One person close to McConnell said Trump has asked McConnell personally to change the rules but said no.
During his Saturday tweet-storm, Trump blamed the arcane budget reconciliation rules that make it more difficult to fully repeal and replace Obamacare on party lines.
“The very outdated filibuster rule must go. Budget reconciliation is killing R's in Senate. Mitch M, go to 51 Votes NOW and WIN. IT'S TIME!” Trump said. “Republicans in the Senate will NEVER win if they don't go to a 51 vote majority NOW. They look like fools and are just wasting time.”
Senate rules don’t appear to be the problem. From the “skinny repeal” bill to a McConnell designed replacement bill to a so-called “clean” repeal bill, all GOP efforts failed to get 50 votes in the Senate this week. After the GOP’s failure to move forward on Friday, McConnell asked Senate Democrats for their ideas on healthcare and warned against bailing out insurance companies. Some Republican senators want to move on from the partisan effort and start looking at fixes to the law's insurance exchanges with Senate Democrats.
McConnell has vowed not to change Senate rules all year and has publicly encouraged Trump to cool it on the tweeting several times. His office reiterated his previous comments.
In theory, the Senate could bring back up their party line budget “reconciliation” effort to gut Obamacare as soon as next week. Graham’s bill has not been scored by the Congressional Budget Office and did not receive a test vote this week. It currently has a small group of supporters and will likely need major work to pass the Senate, like language defunding Planned Parenthood which would likely alienate a pair of moderate senators.
Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Dean Heller of Nevada joined Graham at the White House on Friday, and each has joined Graham’s bill as the new alternative plan for Republicans. The bill’s supporters are telling administration officials and congressional aides that the bill will score far better than previous efforts, which CBO analyses project would cause millions more uninsured people and short-term spikes in premiums.
“I had a great meeting with the President and know he remains fully committed to repealing and replacing Obamacare. President Trump was optimistic about the Graham-Cassidy-Heller proposal. I will continue to work with President Trump and his team to move the idea forward.,” Graham said late Friday.
The South Carolina senator has been talking to Meadows about the bill as a possible way forward that both chambers could accept. Several GOP governors have signaled interest to Graham for the bill as a way to keep funding levels steady and give states more control. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price is also monitoring those conversations, a Republican aide said.
Meadows has shopped the Graham proposal around to other conservatives to get their take on the bill. He said Thursday that Graham’s bill would need to ease the ability of governors’ to get waivers to ignore some of Obamacare’s regulations.
“We’re going to regroup and stay focused,” Meadows said Friday. “I’m still optimistic that we will have another motion to proceed, and ultimately put something on the president’s desk.”
But the GOP would have to take another painful procedural vote to open debate, and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is expected to remain in Arizona for cancer treatment until the end of the August recess. McCain voted to open debate on the Obamacare repeal effort, but voted against the GOP’s “skinny” bill that would gut the law’s individual mandate.
He called for McConnell to hit the reset button on Friday, although his political capital may have taken a hit for squashing Republicans’ seven-year political vow to gut Obamacare with his surprising vote.
“The vote last night presents the Senate with an opportunity to start fresh. It is now time to return to regular order with input from all of our members – Republicans and Democrats,” he said on Friday.
Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska would have to reverse course on opening debate on the bill for things to move forward in August without McCain. Republican senators are angry at Trump for calling Murkowski this week to rethink her opposition to the GOP’s effort, several Republican sources said.
The moderate Alaska senator told E&E News that the conversation on Tuesday with Trump was “not a very pleasant call.” Several Republicans said privately Trump’s heavy hand derailed any chance of getting Murkowski to support the “skinny” bill, which was meant as a way to send the GOP’s repeal efforts into conference with the House.
Vice President Mike Pence spent most of Friday’s vote whipping McCain, but a number of Republican senators tried to flip Murkowski as well. She was unmoved and voted no.
Higher seas...
Higher seas to flood dozens of US cities, study says; is yours one of them?
By Jennifer Gray
For the past several years, scientists have been trying to get people to wake up to the dangers that lie ahead in rising seas due to climate change. A comprehensive list now names hundreds of US cities, large and small, that may not make it through the next 20, 50 or 80 years due to sea level rise.
Featuring places like New York, Boston, San Francisco and Miami, the list paints a grim picture of what our nation could look like if sea level predictions are accurate.
If you live along the coast, your city could be one of them -- meaning you could be part of the last generation to call it home.
"This research hones in on exactly how sea level rise is hitting us first. The number of people experiencing chronic floods will grow much more quickly than sea level itself," Benjamin Strauss, vice president for Sea Level and Climate Impacts at Climate Central said in reaction to this study.
Is your city on the list?
The Union of Concerned Scientists released a study Wednesday listing the cities that will be inundated with water in the years to come, with inundation defined as a "non-wetland area is flooded at least 26 times per year or the equivalent of a flood every other week."
The study isn't a doomsday scenario, as the parameters are pretty conservative.
To put it in perspective, Miami -- which already floods on a regular basis and has spent millions of dollars on mitigation -- hasn't even reached the 10% threshold of inundation. According to the study it deems as "chronically inundated" any coastal community that experiences this frequency of flooding over 10 percent or more of its land area, excluding wetlands and areas protected by levees."
"Between 165 and 180 chronically inundated communities in just the next 15 to 20 years; between 270 and 360 in roughly 40 years, depending on the pace of sea level rise; and 490 by end of century with a moderate sea level rise scenario," co-author and senior climate analyst for UCS, Erika Spanger-Seigfried said. "With a higher sea level rise scenario, that number rises to about 670; that's about half of all of the oceanfront communities in the lower 48."
Ninety communities are considered "inundated today," mostly in Louisiana and Maryland, where seas are rising and the land is sinking.
"This study highlights something it's really important for people to understand. Sea level rise means sharp growth in coastal flooding. In fact, most coastal floods today are already driven by human-caused sea level rise," Strauss said.
The cities expected to be inundated by 2035 aren't too surprising; they include places along the Jersey Shore and in parts of North Carolina, south Louisiana and neighboring areas that have been known as vulnerable for years.
By 2060, the list grows to hundreds of coastal communities, large and small: cities like Galveston, Texas; Sanibel Island, Florida; Hilton Head, South Carolina; Ocean City, Maryland; and many cities along the Jersey Shore.
By the end of the century, the list says, more than 50 cities with populations of more than 100,000 could be affected. Cities like Boston; Fort Lauderdale, Florida; and four of the five boroughs of New York will be considered inundated. Although the West Coast seems to be spared the brunt of inundation over the next few decades, even places like San Francisco and Los Angeles will be on the list by 2100.
Is it too late to protect these coastal cities?
Residents of roughly 500 cities across the US will be faced with the same choices by the end of the century: whether to mitigate or to abandon their homes.
"In hundreds of coastal American cities and towns, decades before sea-level rise permanently puts land underwater, chronic, disruptive high tide flooding arrives and makes it impossible to carry on business as usual in impacted areas," Spanger-Siegfried said.
Many times, the cost to keep the water out is too high and provides only a temporary fix. The study suggests the urgency for cities to make decisions soon -- to help spare towns of the incredible loss of infrastructure, history and way of life down the road.
President Donald Trump's promise to withdrawal from the Paris agreement has alarmed the science community, which has a goal to hold the planet's warming to a minimum. This study also suggests the importance of the Paris Climate Agreement.
"Holding warming between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century could spare between roughly 200 and 380 US coastal communities, including nearly 50 major cities from chronic flooding," the study states.
According to Spanger-Siegfried, "we want to help people and communities see this chronic inundation problem coming. We want to give them a sense of the time they have before carrying on business as usual becomes impossible, and outline some things they can do to respond -- both to prepare for the threat and to curtail it."
She says communities and individuals can't solve this problem alone. She thinks the "federal government should be on notice that it's got a ballooning, national sea level rise problem -- one that requires stronger federal policies and more resources to deal with it, as well as a renewed seriousness about addressing climate change and hopefully slowing the pace of sea level rise."
Strauss said, "Most coastal floods today are already tipped over the balance by sea level rise. This important research shows that things could get much worse, and soon, for lots of people."
By Jennifer Gray
For the past several years, scientists have been trying to get people to wake up to the dangers that lie ahead in rising seas due to climate change. A comprehensive list now names hundreds of US cities, large and small, that may not make it through the next 20, 50 or 80 years due to sea level rise.
Featuring places like New York, Boston, San Francisco and Miami, the list paints a grim picture of what our nation could look like if sea level predictions are accurate.
If you live along the coast, your city could be one of them -- meaning you could be part of the last generation to call it home.
"This research hones in on exactly how sea level rise is hitting us first. The number of people experiencing chronic floods will grow much more quickly than sea level itself," Benjamin Strauss, vice president for Sea Level and Climate Impacts at Climate Central said in reaction to this study.
Is your city on the list?
The Union of Concerned Scientists released a study Wednesday listing the cities that will be inundated with water in the years to come, with inundation defined as a "non-wetland area is flooded at least 26 times per year or the equivalent of a flood every other week."
The study isn't a doomsday scenario, as the parameters are pretty conservative.
To put it in perspective, Miami -- which already floods on a regular basis and has spent millions of dollars on mitigation -- hasn't even reached the 10% threshold of inundation. According to the study it deems as "chronically inundated" any coastal community that experiences this frequency of flooding over 10 percent or more of its land area, excluding wetlands and areas protected by levees."
"Between 165 and 180 chronically inundated communities in just the next 15 to 20 years; between 270 and 360 in roughly 40 years, depending on the pace of sea level rise; and 490 by end of century with a moderate sea level rise scenario," co-author and senior climate analyst for UCS, Erika Spanger-Seigfried said. "With a higher sea level rise scenario, that number rises to about 670; that's about half of all of the oceanfront communities in the lower 48."
Ninety communities are considered "inundated today," mostly in Louisiana and Maryland, where seas are rising and the land is sinking.
"This study highlights something it's really important for people to understand. Sea level rise means sharp growth in coastal flooding. In fact, most coastal floods today are already driven by human-caused sea level rise," Strauss said.
The cities expected to be inundated by 2035 aren't too surprising; they include places along the Jersey Shore and in parts of North Carolina, south Louisiana and neighboring areas that have been known as vulnerable for years.
By 2060, the list grows to hundreds of coastal communities, large and small: cities like Galveston, Texas; Sanibel Island, Florida; Hilton Head, South Carolina; Ocean City, Maryland; and many cities along the Jersey Shore.
By the end of the century, the list says, more than 50 cities with populations of more than 100,000 could be affected. Cities like Boston; Fort Lauderdale, Florida; and four of the five boroughs of New York will be considered inundated. Although the West Coast seems to be spared the brunt of inundation over the next few decades, even places like San Francisco and Los Angeles will be on the list by 2100.
Is it too late to protect these coastal cities?
Residents of roughly 500 cities across the US will be faced with the same choices by the end of the century: whether to mitigate or to abandon their homes.
"In hundreds of coastal American cities and towns, decades before sea-level rise permanently puts land underwater, chronic, disruptive high tide flooding arrives and makes it impossible to carry on business as usual in impacted areas," Spanger-Siegfried said.
Many times, the cost to keep the water out is too high and provides only a temporary fix. The study suggests the urgency for cities to make decisions soon -- to help spare towns of the incredible loss of infrastructure, history and way of life down the road.
President Donald Trump's promise to withdrawal from the Paris agreement has alarmed the science community, which has a goal to hold the planet's warming to a minimum. This study also suggests the importance of the Paris Climate Agreement.
"Holding warming between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century could spare between roughly 200 and 380 US coastal communities, including nearly 50 major cities from chronic flooding," the study states.
According to Spanger-Siegfried, "we want to help people and communities see this chronic inundation problem coming. We want to give them a sense of the time they have before carrying on business as usual becomes impossible, and outline some things they can do to respond -- both to prepare for the threat and to curtail it."
She says communities and individuals can't solve this problem alone. She thinks the "federal government should be on notice that it's got a ballooning, national sea level rise problem -- one that requires stronger federal policies and more resources to deal with it, as well as a renewed seriousness about addressing climate change and hopefully slowing the pace of sea level rise."
Strauss said, "Most coastal floods today are already tipped over the balance by sea level rise. This important research shows that things could get much worse, and soon, for lots of people."
Interesting...
NASA Finds Moon of Saturn Has Chemical That Could Form ‘Membranes’
NASA scientists have definitively detected the chemical acrylonitrile in the atmosphere of Saturn’s moon Titan, a place that has long intrigued scientists investigating the chemical precursors of life.
On Earth, acrylonitrile, also known as vinyl cyanide, is useful in the manufacture of plastics. Under the harsh conditions of Saturn’s largest moon, this chemical is thought to be capable of forming stable, flexible structures similar to cell membranes. Other researchers have previously suggested that acrylonitrile is an ingredient of Titan’s atmosphere, but they did not report an unambiguous detection of the chemical in the smorgasbord of organic, or carbon-rich, molecules found there.
Now, NASA researchers have identified the chemical fingerprint of acrylonitrile in Titan data collected by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile. The team found large quantities of the chemical on Titan, most likely in the stratosphere — the hazy part of the atmosphere that gives this moon its brownish-orange color.
“We found convincing evidence that acrylonitrile is present in Titan’s atmosphere, and we think a significant supply of this raw material reaches the surface,” said Maureen Palmer, a researcher with the Goddard Center for Astrobiology at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of a July 28, 2017, paper in Science Advances.
The cells of Earth’s plants and animals would not hold up well on Titan, where surface temperatures average minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 179 degrees Celsius), and lakes brim with liquid methane.
In 2015, university scientists tackled the question of whether any organic molecules likely to be on Titan could, under such inhospitable conditions, form structures similar to the lipid bilayers of living cells on Earth. Thin and flexible, the lipid bilayer is the main component of the cell membrane, which separates the inside of a cell from the outside world. This team identified acrylonitrile as the best candidate.
Those researchers proposed that acrylonitrile molecules could come together as a sheet of material similar to a cell membrane. The sheet could form a hollow, microscopic sphere that they dubbed an “azotosome.” This sphere could serve as a tiny storage and transport container, much like the spheres that lipid bilayers can form.
“The ability to form a stable membrane to separate the internal environment from the external one is important because it provides a means to contain chemicals long enough to allow them to interact,” said Michael Mumma, director of the Goddard Center for Astrobiology, which is funded by the NASA Astrobiology Institute. “If membrane-like structures could be formed by vinyl cyanide, it would be an important step on the pathway to life on Saturn’s moon Titan.”
The Goddard team determined that acrylonitrile is plentiful in Titan’s atmosphere, present at concentrations up to 2.8 parts per billion. The chemical is probably most abundant in the stratosphere, at altitudes of at least 125 miles (200 kilometers). Eventually, acrylonitrile makes its way to the cold lower atmosphere, where it condenses and rains out onto the surface.
The researchers calculated how much material could be deposited in Ligeia Mare, Titan’s second-largest lake, which occupies roughly the same surface area as Earth’s Lake Huron and Lake Michigan together. Over the lifetime of Titan, the team estimated, Ligeia Mare could have accumulated enough acrylonitrile to form about 10 million azotosomes in every milliliter, or quarter-teaspoon, of liquid. That’s compared to roughly a million bacteria per milliliter of coastal ocean water on Earth.
The key to detecting Titan’s acrylonitrile was to combine 11 high-resolution data sets from ALMA. The team retrieved them from an archive of observations originally intended to calibrate the amount of light being received by the telescope array.
In the combined data set, Palmer and her colleagues identified three spectral lines that match the acrylonitrile fingerprint. This finding comes a decade after other researchers inferred the presence of acrylonitrile from observations made by the mass spectrometer on NASA’s Cassini spacecraft.
“The detection of this elusive, astrobiologically relevant chemical is exciting for scientists who are eager to determine if life could develop on icy worlds such as Titan,” said Goddard scientist Martin Cordiner, senior author on the paper. “This finding adds an important piece to our understanding of the chemical complexity of the solar system.”
NASA scientists have definitively detected the chemical acrylonitrile in the atmosphere of Saturn’s moon Titan, a place that has long intrigued scientists investigating the chemical precursors of life.
On Earth, acrylonitrile, also known as vinyl cyanide, is useful in the manufacture of plastics. Under the harsh conditions of Saturn’s largest moon, this chemical is thought to be capable of forming stable, flexible structures similar to cell membranes. Other researchers have previously suggested that acrylonitrile is an ingredient of Titan’s atmosphere, but they did not report an unambiguous detection of the chemical in the smorgasbord of organic, or carbon-rich, molecules found there.
Now, NASA researchers have identified the chemical fingerprint of acrylonitrile in Titan data collected by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile. The team found large quantities of the chemical on Titan, most likely in the stratosphere — the hazy part of the atmosphere that gives this moon its brownish-orange color.
“We found convincing evidence that acrylonitrile is present in Titan’s atmosphere, and we think a significant supply of this raw material reaches the surface,” said Maureen Palmer, a researcher with the Goddard Center for Astrobiology at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of a July 28, 2017, paper in Science Advances.
The cells of Earth’s plants and animals would not hold up well on Titan, where surface temperatures average minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 179 degrees Celsius), and lakes brim with liquid methane.
In 2015, university scientists tackled the question of whether any organic molecules likely to be on Titan could, under such inhospitable conditions, form structures similar to the lipid bilayers of living cells on Earth. Thin and flexible, the lipid bilayer is the main component of the cell membrane, which separates the inside of a cell from the outside world. This team identified acrylonitrile as the best candidate.
Those researchers proposed that acrylonitrile molecules could come together as a sheet of material similar to a cell membrane. The sheet could form a hollow, microscopic sphere that they dubbed an “azotosome.” This sphere could serve as a tiny storage and transport container, much like the spheres that lipid bilayers can form.
“The ability to form a stable membrane to separate the internal environment from the external one is important because it provides a means to contain chemicals long enough to allow them to interact,” said Michael Mumma, director of the Goddard Center for Astrobiology, which is funded by the NASA Astrobiology Institute. “If membrane-like structures could be formed by vinyl cyanide, it would be an important step on the pathway to life on Saturn’s moon Titan.”
The Goddard team determined that acrylonitrile is plentiful in Titan’s atmosphere, present at concentrations up to 2.8 parts per billion. The chemical is probably most abundant in the stratosphere, at altitudes of at least 125 miles (200 kilometers). Eventually, acrylonitrile makes its way to the cold lower atmosphere, where it condenses and rains out onto the surface.
The researchers calculated how much material could be deposited in Ligeia Mare, Titan’s second-largest lake, which occupies roughly the same surface area as Earth’s Lake Huron and Lake Michigan together. Over the lifetime of Titan, the team estimated, Ligeia Mare could have accumulated enough acrylonitrile to form about 10 million azotosomes in every milliliter, or quarter-teaspoon, of liquid. That’s compared to roughly a million bacteria per milliliter of coastal ocean water on Earth.
The key to detecting Titan’s acrylonitrile was to combine 11 high-resolution data sets from ALMA. The team retrieved them from an archive of observations originally intended to calibrate the amount of light being received by the telescope array.
In the combined data set, Palmer and her colleagues identified three spectral lines that match the acrylonitrile fingerprint. This finding comes a decade after other researchers inferred the presence of acrylonitrile from observations made by the mass spectrometer on NASA’s Cassini spacecraft.
“The detection of this elusive, astrobiologically relevant chemical is exciting for scientists who are eager to determine if life could develop on icy worlds such as Titan,” said Goddard scientist Martin Cordiner, senior author on the paper. “This finding adds an important piece to our understanding of the chemical complexity of the solar system.”
Raking In Record Profits
Corporations Are Raking In Record Profits, But Workers Aren’t Seeing Much of It
By KEVIN DRUM
U.S. Companies Post Profit Growth Not Seen in Six Years
America’s largest companies are on pace to post two consecutive quarters of double-digit profit growth for the first time since 2011….Earnings at S&P 500 companies are expected to rise 11% in the second quarter, according to data from Thomson Reuters, following a 15% increase in the first quarter.
That sounds great! So does that mean worker pay has also posted strong growth? Let’s take a look:
I’ve used the employment cost index, which accounts for things like health care and other benefits, not just wages. And since corporate profits were down in 2015-16, I’ve used two-year growth rates, adjusted for inflation, to get a fair reading of longer-term earnings vs. pay.
As you can see, employee compensation growth roughly matched corporate profit growth in 2016, but in the first half of 2017 corporate profits have spiked while wage growth has been meager. Basically, corporations have manufactured profits by being stingy with workers.
I’m certainly happy to see businesses doing well. But I’d be a lot happier if this meant that workers were doing well too.
By KEVIN DRUM
U.S. Companies Post Profit Growth Not Seen in Six Years
America’s largest companies are on pace to post two consecutive quarters of double-digit profit growth for the first time since 2011….Earnings at S&P 500 companies are expected to rise 11% in the second quarter, according to data from Thomson Reuters, following a 15% increase in the first quarter.
That sounds great! So does that mean worker pay has also posted strong growth? Let’s take a look:
I’ve used the employment cost index, which accounts for things like health care and other benefits, not just wages. And since corporate profits were down in 2015-16, I’ve used two-year growth rates, adjusted for inflation, to get a fair reading of longer-term earnings vs. pay.
As you can see, employee compensation growth roughly matched corporate profit growth in 2016, but in the first half of 2017 corporate profits have spiked while wage growth has been meager. Basically, corporations have manufactured profits by being stingy with workers.
I’m certainly happy to see businesses doing well. But I’d be a lot happier if this meant that workers were doing well too.
Don’t Be Too Nice....
Trump Encourages Cops to Treat Suspects Roughly: “Please Don’t Be Too Nice”
He quickly drew criticism for appearing to promote police brutality.
By BRANDON ELLINGTON PATTERSON
In a speech Friday to police officers at a community college on Long Island, President Donald Trump appeared to encourage them to treat suspects roughly and not to take steps to protect them from injury. “And when you see these towns, and when you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon—you just see them thrown in, rough,” he said. “I said, ‘Please don’t be too nice.’ Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head—the way you put the hand over, like don’t hit their head, and they’ve just killed somebody. Don’t hit their head. I said, ‘You can take the hand away, okay?'”
The moment came as Trump addressed the officers about federal law enforcement efforts to combat MS-13, the gang with ties to Central America that administration officials regularly invoke in making their case for a stronger law-and-order regime and tougher immigration policy. Long Island has seen a number of high-profile murders in recent months committed by members of the gang. Trump issued an executive order in February creating a task force on violent crime that will make recommendations to his administration about how to combat such organizations.
Trump’s speech immediately drew criticism on Twitter for appearing to encourage police brutality.
He quickly drew criticism for appearing to promote police brutality.
By BRANDON ELLINGTON PATTERSON
In a speech Friday to police officers at a community college on Long Island, President Donald Trump appeared to encourage them to treat suspects roughly and not to take steps to protect them from injury. “And when you see these towns, and when you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon—you just see them thrown in, rough,” he said. “I said, ‘Please don’t be too nice.’ Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head—the way you put the hand over, like don’t hit their head, and they’ve just killed somebody. Don’t hit their head. I said, ‘You can take the hand away, okay?'”
The moment came as Trump addressed the officers about federal law enforcement efforts to combat MS-13, the gang with ties to Central America that administration officials regularly invoke in making their case for a stronger law-and-order regime and tougher immigration policy. Long Island has seen a number of high-profile murders in recent months committed by members of the gang. Trump issued an executive order in February creating a task force on violent crime that will make recommendations to his administration about how to combat such organizations.
Trump’s speech immediately drew criticism on Twitter for appearing to encourage police brutality.
Instructed How to Talk
Internal Documents Show How the Nation’s Top Spy Is Instructed to Talk About Trump
“How can you work…for a president that undermines your work?”
MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ, PROPUBLICA
Last week, Dan Coats, the former senator from Indiana and current head of the US intelligence community, was interviewed by NBC’s Lester Holt in front of a live audience at the Aspen Security Forum, a gathering where diplomats, journalists and top US officials mingle with business executives in between livestreamed panel discussions on world affairs. (The hourlong discussion was posted on YouTube.)
ProPublica has obtained internal talking points, apparently written by one of Coats’ aides, anticipating questions that Holt was likely to ask. They offer a window into the euphemisms and evasions necessary to handle a pressing issue for Coats: how to lead the intelligence community at a time when the president has insulted it on Twitter and denigrated its work while questions about Russian influence consume ever more time and attention in Washington. Sixteen of the 26 questions addressed by the talking points concerned internal White House politics, the Russia investigation, or the president himself. One question put the challenges facing Coats this way: “How can you work as DNI for a president that undermines your work?”
DNI spokesman Brian Hale told ProPublica that the 17-page document was a small, unclassified part of “a thick binder” of preparation documents for Coats’ interview. The other pieces, according to Hale, “had substantive material on Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea.” The talking points document, he said, “was designed to address the questions we anticipated being asked because of the news cycle.”
Prepared questions and answers—talking points—have long been standard procedure in Washington for officials facing a major interview or public testimony. In this instance, the document anticipated far sterner questions than Holt posed in the actual interview and Coats, an experienced official, often departed from the script.
In the talking points, Coats was advised to say that he and the president have “a trusted relationship,” framing any disagreements as constructive ones. “We may not always agree,” the document stated. “We must maintain an open dialogue … the relationship portrayed in the media between the president and the intelligence community is a far cry from what I have personally experienced and witnessed … there is a healthy dialogue and a good back and forth discussion.”
There’s no doubt that Coats, the statutory leader of the 16-agency intelligence community, is operating in an unusual environment. Normally, American intelligence agencies do their work quietly, avoid public political disputes, and settle whatever differences they have with the White House privately.
But Trump’s willingness to openly criticize the intelligence community has altered that equation. Days before taking office, he compared America’s spies to Adolf Hitler’s Gestapo. “Intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news to ‘leak’ into the public,” Trump tweeted, referring to allegations contained in the Steele dossier, the controversial, unverified research that purportedly raised the possibility that Trump could be susceptible to Russian blackmail. “Are we living in Nazi Germany?”
The differences between the White House and the leadership of the intelligence community are severe, in the view of former CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden. “This is a bit of a true-believer administration,” he said in an interview with ProPublica at the Aspen conference. “Faith-based, faith with a small ‘f.’ They think they know all the answers. And then you’ve got people living in this fact-based, empirical, inductive world. They’re talking to people who, as an article of faith, know what the answers are. That creates great tension at the very top.” (Hayden had not seen Coats’ talking points when we spoke, and he declined to review them later.)
American spies do not like having their work dismissed by the president. Nor do they appreciate comparisons to Nazi Germany. At Aspen, former CIA Director John Brennan made it clear that the wounds inflicted by Trump’s words had not yet healed. “The person who said that should be ashamed of himself,” Brennan said, during another panel. Coats’ predecessor, Gen. James Clapper, called Trump’s comments “a terrible, insulting affront … completely inappropriate.”
As president, Trump has heaped public scorn on the US intelligence community’s conclusion that the Russian government sought to interfere in the election. “Well, I think it was Russia, and I think it could have been other people in other countries,” the president said earlier this month, when asked during a news conference to give a definitive answer on Russian involvement. The White House continues to cast doubt on Kremlin interference, despite repeated and unequivocal statements to the contrary from the intelligence community.
Trump’s opinions are out of step with the conclusions of the agencies he is supposed to be leading. At Aspen, CIA Director Mike Pompeo said he was “confident that the Russians meddled in this election, as is the entire intelligence community.”
Coats’ script echoed that view. “I stand by the IC’s Assessment,” it stated. “President Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election.”
The talking points anticipated that NBC’s Holt would ask, “Does it trouble you that President Trump has not come out strongly and said ‘yes’ Russia interfered in the election?” The proposed responses sidestepped the question: “The intelligence community has made it clear as to what our assessment is regarding Russian activity during the 2016 elections. … The president and his policymaking team … must consider intelligence information along with other inputs from other sources too. So intelligence is only one of many inputs,” read the talking points.
“What other inputs should he be listening to?” said a former official from the Obama White House who reviewed the document at ProPublica‘s request. “What Putin tells him behind closed doors? What he reads on InfoWars? This answer should be read as a slap in the face of the intelligence community.”
When asked whether Trump’s comments have hurt the community’s morale, Coats was advised to say that he is “so proud to lead the US intelligence community … extremely impressed,” and that he frequently interacts with subordinates “over brown bag lunches.” At the same time, the points emphasize Coats’ close proximity to Trump and his good relations with Pompeo. The word “community” was repeatedly emphasized. Coats was advised to describe his role as “head coach” and say “we’re all on the same team.”
At several moments during his interview (here’s the transcript) Coats appeared to draw from the script. One was his description of Trump himself, who was criticized during the transition for skipping the president-elect’s customary daily intelligence briefing. In response to the question of how Coats can work with a president who undermines him, the talking points advised that Coats describe Trump like this: “He is fully engaged and asks important and insightful questions when being briefed. He is so engaged that sometimes the briefing [sic] go longer than scheduled and we are asked to wrap it up to allow for his next scheduled meeting.”
Coats’ actual description of Trump’s approach to briefings also emphasized the president’s inquisitiveness and appetite for intelligence: “He interjects questions on a very frequent basis and we have to lot of times keep coming back to some of the central points. … What has turned out to be what was thought to be a 10-minute briefing every day is at least 30 minutes has turned into 40 minutes.”
One answer at the end of the document pointed towards substantial differences between the White House and Coats regarding climate change. The talking points characterize climate change as a potential national security risk, one that could potentially “lead to conflict” and is “likely to contribute to migrations that exacerbate social and political tensions.” Trump, meanwhile, has said he will withdraw the US from the Paris climate accord, which seeks to limit the global rise in temperature to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
When asked about morale, Coats used the script’s lines about brown bag lunches and his own pride about leading a talented workforce. “Intelligence officers don’t expect their work to be easy,” was another answer suggested by the document. Coats left that part out.
“How can you work…for a president that undermines your work?”
MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ, PROPUBLICA
Last week, Dan Coats, the former senator from Indiana and current head of the US intelligence community, was interviewed by NBC’s Lester Holt in front of a live audience at the Aspen Security Forum, a gathering where diplomats, journalists and top US officials mingle with business executives in between livestreamed panel discussions on world affairs. (The hourlong discussion was posted on YouTube.)
ProPublica has obtained internal talking points, apparently written by one of Coats’ aides, anticipating questions that Holt was likely to ask. They offer a window into the euphemisms and evasions necessary to handle a pressing issue for Coats: how to lead the intelligence community at a time when the president has insulted it on Twitter and denigrated its work while questions about Russian influence consume ever more time and attention in Washington. Sixteen of the 26 questions addressed by the talking points concerned internal White House politics, the Russia investigation, or the president himself. One question put the challenges facing Coats this way: “How can you work as DNI for a president that undermines your work?”
DNI spokesman Brian Hale told ProPublica that the 17-page document was a small, unclassified part of “a thick binder” of preparation documents for Coats’ interview. The other pieces, according to Hale, “had substantive material on Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea.” The talking points document, he said, “was designed to address the questions we anticipated being asked because of the news cycle.”
Prepared questions and answers—talking points—have long been standard procedure in Washington for officials facing a major interview or public testimony. In this instance, the document anticipated far sterner questions than Holt posed in the actual interview and Coats, an experienced official, often departed from the script.
In the talking points, Coats was advised to say that he and the president have “a trusted relationship,” framing any disagreements as constructive ones. “We may not always agree,” the document stated. “We must maintain an open dialogue … the relationship portrayed in the media between the president and the intelligence community is a far cry from what I have personally experienced and witnessed … there is a healthy dialogue and a good back and forth discussion.”
There’s no doubt that Coats, the statutory leader of the 16-agency intelligence community, is operating in an unusual environment. Normally, American intelligence agencies do their work quietly, avoid public political disputes, and settle whatever differences they have with the White House privately.
But Trump’s willingness to openly criticize the intelligence community has altered that equation. Days before taking office, he compared America’s spies to Adolf Hitler’s Gestapo. “Intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news to ‘leak’ into the public,” Trump tweeted, referring to allegations contained in the Steele dossier, the controversial, unverified research that purportedly raised the possibility that Trump could be susceptible to Russian blackmail. “Are we living in Nazi Germany?”
The differences between the White House and the leadership of the intelligence community are severe, in the view of former CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden. “This is a bit of a true-believer administration,” he said in an interview with ProPublica at the Aspen conference. “Faith-based, faith with a small ‘f.’ They think they know all the answers. And then you’ve got people living in this fact-based, empirical, inductive world. They’re talking to people who, as an article of faith, know what the answers are. That creates great tension at the very top.” (Hayden had not seen Coats’ talking points when we spoke, and he declined to review them later.)
American spies do not like having their work dismissed by the president. Nor do they appreciate comparisons to Nazi Germany. At Aspen, former CIA Director John Brennan made it clear that the wounds inflicted by Trump’s words had not yet healed. “The person who said that should be ashamed of himself,” Brennan said, during another panel. Coats’ predecessor, Gen. James Clapper, called Trump’s comments “a terrible, insulting affront … completely inappropriate.”
As president, Trump has heaped public scorn on the US intelligence community’s conclusion that the Russian government sought to interfere in the election. “Well, I think it was Russia, and I think it could have been other people in other countries,” the president said earlier this month, when asked during a news conference to give a definitive answer on Russian involvement. The White House continues to cast doubt on Kremlin interference, despite repeated and unequivocal statements to the contrary from the intelligence community.
Trump’s opinions are out of step with the conclusions of the agencies he is supposed to be leading. At Aspen, CIA Director Mike Pompeo said he was “confident that the Russians meddled in this election, as is the entire intelligence community.”
Coats’ script echoed that view. “I stand by the IC’s Assessment,” it stated. “President Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election.”
The talking points anticipated that NBC’s Holt would ask, “Does it trouble you that President Trump has not come out strongly and said ‘yes’ Russia interfered in the election?” The proposed responses sidestepped the question: “The intelligence community has made it clear as to what our assessment is regarding Russian activity during the 2016 elections. … The president and his policymaking team … must consider intelligence information along with other inputs from other sources too. So intelligence is only one of many inputs,” read the talking points.
“What other inputs should he be listening to?” said a former official from the Obama White House who reviewed the document at ProPublica‘s request. “What Putin tells him behind closed doors? What he reads on InfoWars? This answer should be read as a slap in the face of the intelligence community.”
When asked whether Trump’s comments have hurt the community’s morale, Coats was advised to say that he is “so proud to lead the US intelligence community … extremely impressed,” and that he frequently interacts with subordinates “over brown bag lunches.” At the same time, the points emphasize Coats’ close proximity to Trump and his good relations with Pompeo. The word “community” was repeatedly emphasized. Coats was advised to describe his role as “head coach” and say “we’re all on the same team.”
At several moments during his interview (here’s the transcript) Coats appeared to draw from the script. One was his description of Trump himself, who was criticized during the transition for skipping the president-elect’s customary daily intelligence briefing. In response to the question of how Coats can work with a president who undermines him, the talking points advised that Coats describe Trump like this: “He is fully engaged and asks important and insightful questions when being briefed. He is so engaged that sometimes the briefing [sic] go longer than scheduled and we are asked to wrap it up to allow for his next scheduled meeting.”
Coats’ actual description of Trump’s approach to briefings also emphasized the president’s inquisitiveness and appetite for intelligence: “He interjects questions on a very frequent basis and we have to lot of times keep coming back to some of the central points. … What has turned out to be what was thought to be a 10-minute briefing every day is at least 30 minutes has turned into 40 minutes.”
One answer at the end of the document pointed towards substantial differences between the White House and Coats regarding climate change. The talking points characterize climate change as a potential national security risk, one that could potentially “lead to conflict” and is “likely to contribute to migrations that exacerbate social and political tensions.” Trump, meanwhile, has said he will withdraw the US from the Paris climate accord, which seeks to limit the global rise in temperature to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
When asked about morale, Coats used the script’s lines about brown bag lunches and his own pride about leading a talented workforce. “Intelligence officers don’t expect their work to be easy,” was another answer suggested by the document. Coats left that part out.
Hyperloop.....
In Defense of Elon Musk’s Audacious, Insane, Brilliant, Crazy Plan for an East Coast Hyperloop
He’s already received “verbal government approval.”
By ERIC HOLTHAUS
Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk set the internets aflame last week with a vague boast that he had received “verbal government approval” (whatever that means) to build the nation’s first intercity hyperloop. The 700 mph compressed-air transit system would be constructed in an underground tunnel (which hasn’t been dug yet) between New York City and Washington, D.C.
As with so many things Musk, the tweet was both widely reported and met with a fair bit of skepticism from, well, pretty much everybody.
Musk, who is trying to simultaneously make things better here on Earth and send folks to Mars, is brand-new to the tunnel-digging business. His latest venture, The Boring Company, so far consists of not much more than a second-hand tunnel-boring machine and a website.
As Musk himself said in January: “We have no idea what we’re doing — I want to be clear about that.”
This isn’t the first time Musk has spread hyperloop mania—or overestimated its feasibility. Initial plans for above-ground hyperloop systems in the Bay Area are already running about five to 10 times more pricey, per mile, than Musk’s initial estimates back in 2013, when he first proposed the idea.
Assuming hyperloop costs of $100 million per mile, and tunneling costs of about the same, the 226-mile span between New York and D.C. might cost about $45 billion. And Musk wants to start digging as soon as possible—in months, not years.
Keep in mind that no human has yet ridden in a full-scale functioning hyperloop.
So, yeah. This is a really expensive, really ambitious idea. But just stick with me here.
Put in proper context, the hyperloop actually represents an incredible bargain. Just the proposed transit and airport improvements needed to keep New York City functioning in the coming decades would cost more than Musk’s entire project. That includes renovations to LaGuardia Airport ($4 billion), other regional airport improvements ($6.5 billion), the rest of the Second Avenue Subway line ($17 billion), improved access at Grand Central Station ($10 billion), a new Penn Station ($1.6 billion), a revamped bus station on the city’s west side ($10 billion), and repairs to the Hudson River tunnels damaged in Hurricane Sandy ($23.9 billion).
In California, construction on an eventual Bay Area to Southern California high-speed rail line approved in 2008 was initially expected to cost about $40 billion. (Its top speed would reach about 220 mph, less than one-third of the hyperloop.) A recent report found that the rail project was already about 50 percent over budget and seven years behind schedule.
There’s no reason to expect a hyperloop wouldn’t run into the same sort of cost overruns. But for the sake of argument, let’s assume for a moment that a New York to D.C. hyperloop actually happens, at whatever cost: It would utterly transform the congested East Coast transit corridor.
Musk said a trip between the two cities would take just 29 minutes — less time than an average subway trip from lower Manhattan to the Upper West Side. The ease of long-distance travel along the nation’s most populous corridor would revolutionize transportation as we know it. It would inspire urban planners around the world. And it could be one of the single most-important steps to reduce carbon emissions and curtail global warming in U.S. history.
A functioning hyperloop would cannibalize air travel. It would also be a nearly ideal way to move cargo, greatly reducing the burden on the region’s highways and rails and providing new meaning to just-in-time shipping. Because aviation and shipping are projected to be the fastest-growing sources of new carbon emissions worldwide in the coming decades, the hyperloop — which could be operated entirely on renewable energy — is exactly the kind of technology that’s needed at exactly the right time.
On its own, the East Coast hyperloop wouldn’t displace a significant fraction of global emissions. Assuming a pod leaving every minute (filled with either 20 people or a shipping container of goods), a single hyperloop line between New York and D.C. could displace half of all air traffic and half of all passenger rail traffic between those two cities, saving about 375,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year.
Sounds like a bunch, but that’s actually only the equivalent of the annual emissions of the island nation of Samoa, about 0.001 percent of the world total. (For comparison, President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, if fully enacted, would have averted about 1,000 times that much each year.)
But there’s so much freight and so many people traveling along the East Coast that the region could support far more than just a single hyperloop line. More than 110 million people travel on the region’s highways (about nine hyperloops worth) and 800 million tons of freight move within the region each year (26 hyperloops worth). If even 20 percent of that huge volume were captured by a hyperloop system, its impact would be magnified tenfold.
Admittedly, that’s still not a huge impact globally. In further tweets last week, Musk said the East Coast route would provide a testbed for the technology; his real goal is to revolutionize transportation worldwide. Further hyperloop systems are also imagined for California, Texas, and several other key places around the country. A system connecting the Nordic countries is in the planning phase, and a Dubai-to-Abu Dhabi route is already scheduled to be built.
Hyperloop’s biggest potential, then, would come not on the U.S. East Coast, but in its ability to leapfrog air travel and truck-based logistics entirely in large parts of the burgeoning developing world, like India, China, Brazil, and East Africa. If, inspired by the success of an East Coast hyperloop, the technology catches on around the world in the next decade, 20 percent of the entire world’s intercity transportation could be served by mid-century.
That, finally, would yield an enormous impact: About 1.25 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions would be averted per year by 2050 — more than double the impact of the soon-to-be-defunct Clean Power Plan.
The nerds at Wait But Why figured out that all this means the hyperloop would be the most energy-efficient form of transportation in history. (Sorry, covered wagons.) Much safer than driving. Faster than air travel. And it could cost about the same as a bus ticket.
Buses. Airplanes. Those are bold transportation ideas that skeptics would have scoffed at around the same time that Edison and Westinghouse were fighting over who invented the lightbulb. Maybe we shouldn’t be too quick to dismiss something that could help remake our world, for the better.
He’s already received “verbal government approval.”
By ERIC HOLTHAUS
Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk set the internets aflame last week with a vague boast that he had received “verbal government approval” (whatever that means) to build the nation’s first intercity hyperloop. The 700 mph compressed-air transit system would be constructed in an underground tunnel (which hasn’t been dug yet) between New York City and Washington, D.C.
As with so many things Musk, the tweet was both widely reported and met with a fair bit of skepticism from, well, pretty much everybody.
Musk, who is trying to simultaneously make things better here on Earth and send folks to Mars, is brand-new to the tunnel-digging business. His latest venture, The Boring Company, so far consists of not much more than a second-hand tunnel-boring machine and a website.
As Musk himself said in January: “We have no idea what we’re doing — I want to be clear about that.”
This isn’t the first time Musk has spread hyperloop mania—or overestimated its feasibility. Initial plans for above-ground hyperloop systems in the Bay Area are already running about five to 10 times more pricey, per mile, than Musk’s initial estimates back in 2013, when he first proposed the idea.
Assuming hyperloop costs of $100 million per mile, and tunneling costs of about the same, the 226-mile span between New York and D.C. might cost about $45 billion. And Musk wants to start digging as soon as possible—in months, not years.
Keep in mind that no human has yet ridden in a full-scale functioning hyperloop.
So, yeah. This is a really expensive, really ambitious idea. But just stick with me here.
Put in proper context, the hyperloop actually represents an incredible bargain. Just the proposed transit and airport improvements needed to keep New York City functioning in the coming decades would cost more than Musk’s entire project. That includes renovations to LaGuardia Airport ($4 billion), other regional airport improvements ($6.5 billion), the rest of the Second Avenue Subway line ($17 billion), improved access at Grand Central Station ($10 billion), a new Penn Station ($1.6 billion), a revamped bus station on the city’s west side ($10 billion), and repairs to the Hudson River tunnels damaged in Hurricane Sandy ($23.9 billion).
In California, construction on an eventual Bay Area to Southern California high-speed rail line approved in 2008 was initially expected to cost about $40 billion. (Its top speed would reach about 220 mph, less than one-third of the hyperloop.) A recent report found that the rail project was already about 50 percent over budget and seven years behind schedule.
There’s no reason to expect a hyperloop wouldn’t run into the same sort of cost overruns. But for the sake of argument, let’s assume for a moment that a New York to D.C. hyperloop actually happens, at whatever cost: It would utterly transform the congested East Coast transit corridor.
Musk said a trip between the two cities would take just 29 minutes — less time than an average subway trip from lower Manhattan to the Upper West Side. The ease of long-distance travel along the nation’s most populous corridor would revolutionize transportation as we know it. It would inspire urban planners around the world. And it could be one of the single most-important steps to reduce carbon emissions and curtail global warming in U.S. history.
A functioning hyperloop would cannibalize air travel. It would also be a nearly ideal way to move cargo, greatly reducing the burden on the region’s highways and rails and providing new meaning to just-in-time shipping. Because aviation and shipping are projected to be the fastest-growing sources of new carbon emissions worldwide in the coming decades, the hyperloop — which could be operated entirely on renewable energy — is exactly the kind of technology that’s needed at exactly the right time.
On its own, the East Coast hyperloop wouldn’t displace a significant fraction of global emissions. Assuming a pod leaving every minute (filled with either 20 people or a shipping container of goods), a single hyperloop line between New York and D.C. could displace half of all air traffic and half of all passenger rail traffic between those two cities, saving about 375,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year.
Sounds like a bunch, but that’s actually only the equivalent of the annual emissions of the island nation of Samoa, about 0.001 percent of the world total. (For comparison, President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, if fully enacted, would have averted about 1,000 times that much each year.)
But there’s so much freight and so many people traveling along the East Coast that the region could support far more than just a single hyperloop line. More than 110 million people travel on the region’s highways (about nine hyperloops worth) and 800 million tons of freight move within the region each year (26 hyperloops worth). If even 20 percent of that huge volume were captured by a hyperloop system, its impact would be magnified tenfold.
Admittedly, that’s still not a huge impact globally. In further tweets last week, Musk said the East Coast route would provide a testbed for the technology; his real goal is to revolutionize transportation worldwide. Further hyperloop systems are also imagined for California, Texas, and several other key places around the country. A system connecting the Nordic countries is in the planning phase, and a Dubai-to-Abu Dhabi route is already scheduled to be built.
Hyperloop’s biggest potential, then, would come not on the U.S. East Coast, but in its ability to leapfrog air travel and truck-based logistics entirely in large parts of the burgeoning developing world, like India, China, Brazil, and East Africa. If, inspired by the success of an East Coast hyperloop, the technology catches on around the world in the next decade, 20 percent of the entire world’s intercity transportation could be served by mid-century.
That, finally, would yield an enormous impact: About 1.25 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions would be averted per year by 2050 — more than double the impact of the soon-to-be-defunct Clean Power Plan.
The nerds at Wait But Why figured out that all this means the hyperloop would be the most energy-efficient form of transportation in history. (Sorry, covered wagons.) Much safer than driving. Faster than air travel. And it could cost about the same as a bus ticket.
Buses. Airplanes. Those are bold transportation ideas that skeptics would have scoffed at around the same time that Edison and Westinghouse were fighting over who invented the lightbulb. Maybe we shouldn’t be too quick to dismiss something that could help remake our world, for the better.
Texas Republicans Love Restricting Rights
Texas Republicans Never Get Tired of Restricting Abortion Rights
In a legislative special session, Texas has several anti-abortion bills on deck for passage.
By BECCA ANDREWS
Texas’s Republican Lt. Governor Dan Patrick forced a 30-day special session of the state Legislature starting July 17. It was, he said, to pass the state’s infamous bathroom legislation that would prohibit transgender people from using the bathroom that best aligns with their gender. But, considering it is Texas, and conservative lawmakers in the state are infamous for their efforts to curb abortion access, it’s no surprise that the special session includes multiple bills aimed at limiting women’s reproductive rights.
The state has long been an epicenter of the abortion wars—Roe v. Wade was first filed there. And the landmark Supreme Court ruling from June 2016, Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, focused on a Texas omnibus law known as HB 2 that required physicians to have admitting privileges at local hospitals and clinics to be outfitted like hospitals. The justices struck down the law in a 5-3 vote, but not before HB 2 had shuttered more than half the 40 abortion clinics in the state that were still open in 2013, the year the law was signed.
Three new abortion bills under consideration are on Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s list of must-pass legislation for the session. Senate Bill 4 would ban state agencies from signing contracts with health care groups that provide abortions; Senate Bill 8, would require a separate premium for insurance coverage for non-emergency abortions (with no exception for rape or incest survivors); Senate Bill 10 would require abortion providers to submit detailed reports on any abortion complication directly to the state within 72 hours.
Also up for discussion is Senate Bill 73, which would require providers to report to the state health commission whether a minor who underwent an abortion had parental consent or a judicial bypass. State law already requires providers to report any abortion procedure involving a minor.
House Bill 86, which would revoke the medical licenses of any doctor who performs an abortion in Texas with narrow exceptions for the life of the mother and the fetus, is also up for debate during the special session, but it is largely considered symbolic because it could not withstand a constitutional challenge.
Of those under consideration in the Senate, only SB 8 has not yet passed through the full chamber, while the other three have already passed on to the House. The bills’ opponents argue that so far, the special session is nothing more than what they’ve come to expect from Texas’s conservative Legislature.
“To be completely clear, all of these bills that are being addressed in this special session are for no other purpose than to further chip away at women’s access to reproductive health care, period,” said Dana Kusnir, a Dallas-based abortion provider and a member of Physicians for Reproductive Health.
For instance, while SB 10 author state Sen. Donna Campbell (R-New Braunfels) says the legislation “is just, literally, a medical data reporting bill,” Kusnir argues it’s much more than that and is “a ridiculous waste of time.” According to current state law, a report already must be submitted to the Department of Health 30 days after any complication from an abortion procedure occurs—never mind that complications from abortion procedures are extremely rare. In 2015, the most recent year for which data is available, only 25 complications were reported out of more than 50,000 abortions in Texas. After the low rate was brought up on the floor, Campbell responded by saying that “the percentage is so small that we are doing something wrong.”
The current law, though, simply requests basic data in the reports: the date of the abortion, the type of abortion performed, a description of the complication. The only personal information currently required is the number of live births the patient has previously had. Campbell’s bill takes the reports a step further to also require information on the patient’s race, marital status, state and county of residence, and the number of prior abortion procedures she’s undergone. The report also must be submitted by the physician personally, rather than by a member of the clinic’s medical staff. Doctors who fail to comply would be fined $500 for each day that passes the 72-hour deadline. Kusnir notes that the increased hoops the bill requires doctors to jump through are reminiscent of the vast—and illegal—regulations in HB 2.
Meanwhile, the intentions behind SB 4 are also not immediately obvious. Although Planned Parenthood is not explicitly mentioned in the bill, which seeks to ban county and city government agencies from contracting with abortion providers and their affiliates, Republican lawmakers have acknowledged that only Planned Parenthood clinics would be affected by this legislation. According to state and federal law, it is already illegal to use government dollars to fund abortion procedures, but SB 4 would also prohibit financial contracts, such as lease agreements, between government agencies and Planned Parenthood clinics. Only 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s medical services are abortion procedures, according to their most recent annual report; the rest spans contraceptive services, cancer screenings, STD testing, and general well-woman exams. A majority of Planned Parenthood patients live on or below the federal poverty line.
“Should our tax dollars…fund the culture of death that the abortion industry promotes?” state Sen. Don Huffines (R-Dallas) asked as SB 4 was being discussed.
Other Republican state senators tweeted their support during the floor discussion of SB 4 using the hashtag #GoFundYourself. This isn’t the first time an effort to financially cripple Planned Parenthood has worked its way through the Texas Legislature. In 2011, Texas lawmakers passed their 2013 budget, which banned Planned Parenthood from receiving funds through Healthy Texas Women, the state’s women’s health program. Texas also cut family planning funding by two-thirds that year, as Jia Tolentino notes in The New Yorker.
But the news for Texas women out of the special session isn’t all bad. The state has the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world, according to research from the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and last week, the Senate extended the funding for the Task Force on Maternal Mortality and Morbidity through 2023. It’s a rare bright spot for women’s health in an otherwise bleak two weeks. But then again, there are two more weeks left in the session.
In a legislative special session, Texas has several anti-abortion bills on deck for passage.
By BECCA ANDREWS
Texas’s Republican Lt. Governor Dan Patrick forced a 30-day special session of the state Legislature starting July 17. It was, he said, to pass the state’s infamous bathroom legislation that would prohibit transgender people from using the bathroom that best aligns with their gender. But, considering it is Texas, and conservative lawmakers in the state are infamous for their efforts to curb abortion access, it’s no surprise that the special session includes multiple bills aimed at limiting women’s reproductive rights.
The state has long been an epicenter of the abortion wars—Roe v. Wade was first filed there. And the landmark Supreme Court ruling from June 2016, Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, focused on a Texas omnibus law known as HB 2 that required physicians to have admitting privileges at local hospitals and clinics to be outfitted like hospitals. The justices struck down the law in a 5-3 vote, but not before HB 2 had shuttered more than half the 40 abortion clinics in the state that were still open in 2013, the year the law was signed.
Three new abortion bills under consideration are on Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s list of must-pass legislation for the session. Senate Bill 4 would ban state agencies from signing contracts with health care groups that provide abortions; Senate Bill 8, would require a separate premium for insurance coverage for non-emergency abortions (with no exception for rape or incest survivors); Senate Bill 10 would require abortion providers to submit detailed reports on any abortion complication directly to the state within 72 hours.
Also up for discussion is Senate Bill 73, which would require providers to report to the state health commission whether a minor who underwent an abortion had parental consent or a judicial bypass. State law already requires providers to report any abortion procedure involving a minor.
House Bill 86, which would revoke the medical licenses of any doctor who performs an abortion in Texas with narrow exceptions for the life of the mother and the fetus, is also up for debate during the special session, but it is largely considered symbolic because it could not withstand a constitutional challenge.
Of those under consideration in the Senate, only SB 8 has not yet passed through the full chamber, while the other three have already passed on to the House. The bills’ opponents argue that so far, the special session is nothing more than what they’ve come to expect from Texas’s conservative Legislature.
“To be completely clear, all of these bills that are being addressed in this special session are for no other purpose than to further chip away at women’s access to reproductive health care, period,” said Dana Kusnir, a Dallas-based abortion provider and a member of Physicians for Reproductive Health.
For instance, while SB 10 author state Sen. Donna Campbell (R-New Braunfels) says the legislation “is just, literally, a medical data reporting bill,” Kusnir argues it’s much more than that and is “a ridiculous waste of time.” According to current state law, a report already must be submitted to the Department of Health 30 days after any complication from an abortion procedure occurs—never mind that complications from abortion procedures are extremely rare. In 2015, the most recent year for which data is available, only 25 complications were reported out of more than 50,000 abortions in Texas. After the low rate was brought up on the floor, Campbell responded by saying that “the percentage is so small that we are doing something wrong.”
The current law, though, simply requests basic data in the reports: the date of the abortion, the type of abortion performed, a description of the complication. The only personal information currently required is the number of live births the patient has previously had. Campbell’s bill takes the reports a step further to also require information on the patient’s race, marital status, state and county of residence, and the number of prior abortion procedures she’s undergone. The report also must be submitted by the physician personally, rather than by a member of the clinic’s medical staff. Doctors who fail to comply would be fined $500 for each day that passes the 72-hour deadline. Kusnir notes that the increased hoops the bill requires doctors to jump through are reminiscent of the vast—and illegal—regulations in HB 2.
Meanwhile, the intentions behind SB 4 are also not immediately obvious. Although Planned Parenthood is not explicitly mentioned in the bill, which seeks to ban county and city government agencies from contracting with abortion providers and their affiliates, Republican lawmakers have acknowledged that only Planned Parenthood clinics would be affected by this legislation. According to state and federal law, it is already illegal to use government dollars to fund abortion procedures, but SB 4 would also prohibit financial contracts, such as lease agreements, between government agencies and Planned Parenthood clinics. Only 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s medical services are abortion procedures, according to their most recent annual report; the rest spans contraceptive services, cancer screenings, STD testing, and general well-woman exams. A majority of Planned Parenthood patients live on or below the federal poverty line.
“Should our tax dollars…fund the culture of death that the abortion industry promotes?” state Sen. Don Huffines (R-Dallas) asked as SB 4 was being discussed.
Other Republican state senators tweeted their support during the floor discussion of SB 4 using the hashtag #GoFundYourself. This isn’t the first time an effort to financially cripple Planned Parenthood has worked its way through the Texas Legislature. In 2011, Texas lawmakers passed their 2013 budget, which banned Planned Parenthood from receiving funds through Healthy Texas Women, the state’s women’s health program. Texas also cut family planning funding by two-thirds that year, as Jia Tolentino notes in The New Yorker.
But the news for Texas women out of the special session isn’t all bad. The state has the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world, according to research from the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and last week, the Senate extended the funding for the Task Force on Maternal Mortality and Morbidity through 2023. It’s a rare bright spot for women’s health in an otherwise bleak two weeks. But then again, there are two more weeks left in the session.
Big, Beautiful Wall????
Trump’s Big, Beautiful Wall Will Cut Through a Big, Beautiful Texas Wildlife Refuge
This could do some serious environmental damage.
By KIAH COLLIER, TEXAS TRIBUNE, AND T. CHRISTIAN MILLER, PROPUBLICA
US Customs and Border Protection will begin constructing the first segment of President Trump’s border wall in November through a national wildlife refuge, using money it’s already received from Congress.
That’s what a US Fish and Wildlife Service official recently told a nonprofit group that raises money to support two national wildlife refuges in South Texas, according to the group’s vice president.
“I was alarmed,” said Jim Chapman of Friends of the Wildlife Corridor. “It was not good news.”
For the past six months, CBP has been quietly preparing a site to build a nearly 3-mile border barrier through the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, according to The Texas Observer. The US Army Corps of Engineers also has reportedly begun drilling and soil testing in California and New Mexico.
But construction on the wall was not expected to begin until January because Congress has yet to approve CBP’s budget. On Thursday, the House approved a spending bill that contained $1.6 billion to build segments of the wall in Texas and California. Its fate in the Senate is uncertain.
However, CBP recently told a senior Fish and Wildlife Service official in Texas that the agency would shift funds to pay for the new segment out of its current budget. The official passed on the news to Chapman’s group this week.
The Fish and Wildlife Service official confirmed the remarks, but asked not to be identified for fear of losing his job.
Customs and Border Protection spokesman Carlos Diaz said it “would be premature to speak about specific locations.” The only South Texas projects authorized under the current budget are the installation of 35 gates at gaps the agency left in the existing border fence, he said.
The 2,088-acre Santa Ana refuge, located along the Rio Grande south of McAllen, Texas, is considered one of the nation’s top bird-watching sites, with more than 400 species of birds. The refuge is also home to two endangered wildcats—the ocelot and jaguarundi—and some of the last surviving stands of sabal palm trees in South Texas.
A wall cutting through the refuge could do serious environmental damage, Chapman said, undermining the reason Congress appropriated money to buy the land in the first place. But under a 2005 law, the Department of Homeland Security can waive any environmental regulations that would normally impede construction in a sensitive wildlife area.
Chapman said his group is now counting on Democrats to halt expansion of the project.
“The Democrats in Congress up to now have been very unified as far as not appropriating money for the wall,” Chapman said.
Trump made construction of a border wall between the US and Mexico the signature promise of his political campaign and told supporters it would be solid concrete, 30 feet high and would stretch the length of the US-Mexico border. Trump estimated it would cost perhaps $10 billion to $12 billion—and he vowed the Mexican government would pay the bill. Five days after his inauguration, he signed an executive order to begin the process.
Since then, the wall has faded from the headlines amid other controversies. But Trump has never ceased pursuing its construction, even as he has backed off the most bombastic of his demands.
In February, the CBP launched a bidding contest to build models for the new wall. Both solid concrete and alternative designs were allowed. The project is months behind schedule. CBP officials recently said the winners will be announced in November.
Earlier in July, Trump told reporters on Air Force One that the wall should be see-through. Border patrol agents needed to be able to spot threats on the other side and avoid any “large sacks of drugs” thrown over the top. He also said he favors a wall with solar panels to generate energy and reduce the building cost.
He also opined that only 700 to 900 miles of wall may be needed. About 650 miles of the 2,000-mile long border already has some type of physical barrier. The remaining miles will be guarded by topography, the president said.
“You have mountains. You have some rivers that are violent and vicious. You have some areas that are so far away that you don’t really have people crossing,” he said.
It remains far from clear, however, whether Trump will be able to achieve even his scaled-down version of the wall. The current border fence, a far more modest project built mostly under President Obama, cost between $2.8 million to $3.9 million on average per mile, according to the Government Accountability Office. CBP previously announced that the agency has $20 million on hand for the current fiscal year.
Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have balked at paying for the wall, which the Department of Homeland Security estimates would cost around $20 billion. Mexican officials have vigorously rejected any proposition of financing construction.
Trump, however, has already taken credit for beginning to fulfill his campaign promise.
“In a true sense, we’ve already started the wall,” he told the reporters.
This could do some serious environmental damage.
By KIAH COLLIER, TEXAS TRIBUNE, AND T. CHRISTIAN MILLER, PROPUBLICA
US Customs and Border Protection will begin constructing the first segment of President Trump’s border wall in November through a national wildlife refuge, using money it’s already received from Congress.
That’s what a US Fish and Wildlife Service official recently told a nonprofit group that raises money to support two national wildlife refuges in South Texas, according to the group’s vice president.
“I was alarmed,” said Jim Chapman of Friends of the Wildlife Corridor. “It was not good news.”
For the past six months, CBP has been quietly preparing a site to build a nearly 3-mile border barrier through the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, according to The Texas Observer. The US Army Corps of Engineers also has reportedly begun drilling and soil testing in California and New Mexico.
But construction on the wall was not expected to begin until January because Congress has yet to approve CBP’s budget. On Thursday, the House approved a spending bill that contained $1.6 billion to build segments of the wall in Texas and California. Its fate in the Senate is uncertain.
However, CBP recently told a senior Fish and Wildlife Service official in Texas that the agency would shift funds to pay for the new segment out of its current budget. The official passed on the news to Chapman’s group this week.
The Fish and Wildlife Service official confirmed the remarks, but asked not to be identified for fear of losing his job.
Customs and Border Protection spokesman Carlos Diaz said it “would be premature to speak about specific locations.” The only South Texas projects authorized under the current budget are the installation of 35 gates at gaps the agency left in the existing border fence, he said.
The 2,088-acre Santa Ana refuge, located along the Rio Grande south of McAllen, Texas, is considered one of the nation’s top bird-watching sites, with more than 400 species of birds. The refuge is also home to two endangered wildcats—the ocelot and jaguarundi—and some of the last surviving stands of sabal palm trees in South Texas.
A wall cutting through the refuge could do serious environmental damage, Chapman said, undermining the reason Congress appropriated money to buy the land in the first place. But under a 2005 law, the Department of Homeland Security can waive any environmental regulations that would normally impede construction in a sensitive wildlife area.
Chapman said his group is now counting on Democrats to halt expansion of the project.
“The Democrats in Congress up to now have been very unified as far as not appropriating money for the wall,” Chapman said.
Trump made construction of a border wall between the US and Mexico the signature promise of his political campaign and told supporters it would be solid concrete, 30 feet high and would stretch the length of the US-Mexico border. Trump estimated it would cost perhaps $10 billion to $12 billion—and he vowed the Mexican government would pay the bill. Five days after his inauguration, he signed an executive order to begin the process.
Since then, the wall has faded from the headlines amid other controversies. But Trump has never ceased pursuing its construction, even as he has backed off the most bombastic of his demands.
In February, the CBP launched a bidding contest to build models for the new wall. Both solid concrete and alternative designs were allowed. The project is months behind schedule. CBP officials recently said the winners will be announced in November.
Earlier in July, Trump told reporters on Air Force One that the wall should be see-through. Border patrol agents needed to be able to spot threats on the other side and avoid any “large sacks of drugs” thrown over the top. He also said he favors a wall with solar panels to generate energy and reduce the building cost.
He also opined that only 700 to 900 miles of wall may be needed. About 650 miles of the 2,000-mile long border already has some type of physical barrier. The remaining miles will be guarded by topography, the president said.
“You have mountains. You have some rivers that are violent and vicious. You have some areas that are so far away that you don’t really have people crossing,” he said.
It remains far from clear, however, whether Trump will be able to achieve even his scaled-down version of the wall. The current border fence, a far more modest project built mostly under President Obama, cost between $2.8 million to $3.9 million on average per mile, according to the Government Accountability Office. CBP previously announced that the agency has $20 million on hand for the current fiscal year.
Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have balked at paying for the wall, which the Department of Homeland Security estimates would cost around $20 billion. Mexican officials have vigorously rejected any proposition of financing construction.
Trump, however, has already taken credit for beginning to fulfill his campaign promise.
“In a true sense, we’ve already started the wall,” he told the reporters.
War on Scientists
Donald Trump’s War on Scientists Has Had One Big Side Effect
More than a dozen Democratic candidates with scientific backgrounds are running for Congress.
By TIM MURPHY
There’s something different about the crop of Democrats running for Congress in 2018. As in previous years, the party has recruited a small army of veterans in high-profile races and in Republican-held districts. There are loads of state legislators, business owners, and government officials.
But the candidates also include a volcanologist who’s worried that her favorite research spot will be opened up for development; an aerospace engineer who’s running against the climate-denying head of the House Science Committee; a pediatrician who spends part of the year treating leprosy patients in Vietnam; and a physicist who worries what budget cuts would mean to the federal research facility where she spent her career.
All told, more than a dozen Democratic candidates with science backgrounds have announced their candidacies for Congress or are expected to in the coming months. The boomlet of STEM-based candidates amounts to a minor seismic event in a community where politics and research have traditionally gone together like sodium and water. Trump has been in office just six months, but he’s already done something remarkable—he’s gotten scientists to run for office.
The surge of science-based candidates has been aided by a new political outfit called 314 Action, launched last summer by Shaughnessy Naughton, a breast cancer researcher from Pennsylvania who ran for Congress in 2014 and 2016 . The group, named for the first three digits of Pi, aims to do for candidates with scientific backgrounds what EMILY’s List has done for pro-choice women—funding, recruiting, and training candidates at every level of government. So far 6,000 scientists have reached out to the group about running for federal, state, and local offices; and 314 plans to also back candidates in three dozen school board races this fall. Washington has plenty of lawyers; maybe it’s time for a fresh experiment.
“Traditionally the attitude has been that science is above politics, and therefore scientists shouldn’t get involved in politics, and what that ignores is the fact that politicians are unashamed to meddle in science,” says Naughton. “The way we push back against that is to hold a seat at the table.”
The ranks of scientists in Congress have been thin in recent years. Rep. Bill Foster (D-Ill.) was a high-energy particle physicist at Fermi National Laboratory in the district he now represents. Until recently the dean of the bunch was Democratic Rep. Rush Holt of New Jersey, an astrophysicist who retired in 2014 and now serves as CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The only STEM field that’s well represented in Congress is medicine; there are 14 physicians between the House and the Senate, but most are Republicans who have shown more of a commitment to conservative dogma than scientific best practices. (Former Georgia Republican Rep. Paul Broun, a doctor, infamously referred to evolutionary biology as a lie “from the pit of hell.”)
One result of the dearth of scientists has been a Congress that is often ignorant of the scientific perspective, not just on obvious issues like climate change—Texas Rep. Lamar Smith, the chair of the House Science Committee has called it a myth propagated by “so-called, self-professed climate scientists” and subpoenaed emails from government-funded climatologists—but on virtually every subject that comes up.
“When the Help America Vote Act was passed after the 2000 election nobody thought that was a science issue—who thought anybody would hack election computers?” Holt says. “Right from the start, I said, ‘Hey, wait a minute, you passed a bill that encouraged jurisdictions all over the country to move to electronic voting machines that are simple, easy to use, and completely unverifiable. If you had cleared that with some computer scientists before writing the bill, you would have realized that having unauditable elections is not smart.’”
In some sense scientists were victims of their own success. The growth of government-funded science over the last half century through everything from the National Institutes of Health to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has helped thousands of researchers carve out careers. But it has also incentivized scientists to put their heads down and keep quiet, lest they jeopardize that funding.
“On average, scientists are not particularly outgoing and are psychologically not conditioned for this sort of thing,” Holt says. But just as importantly, “the entire rewards system of science doesn’t encourage social or political involvement.” Getting more scientists in the House requires knocking down their preconceptions about how people in STEM should approach public life.
One reason for the political awakening is Trump himself. Even before taking office his transition staff roiled the scientific community when it asked the Department of Energy for a list of staffers who had worked on global warming; the anticipated purge never materialized, but the Trump DOE has issued guidelines instructing employees not to use terms like “emissions reductions” and even brags on its agency Twitter account that Secretary Rick Perry is winning the “fight” with climate scientists. Environmental Protection Agency director Scott Pruitt has jettisoned dozens of members of his agency’s scientific advisory board.
Trump has defied scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change and placed unqualified friends and allies in charge of departments responsible for doling out billions in funding. His proposed travel ban would bring the hammer down on international researchers. And he has proposed steep budget cuts that would more than decimate research budgets and send scientists looking for new sources of funding or risk abandoning their projects. And all that is just six months in.
Jess Phoenix, a volcanologist seeking the Democratic nomination in the Southern California district represented by Republican Steve Knight, decided to run when she saw that the public lands where she’s done much of her research were at risk of losing their protections in the Trump era.
Phoenix has traveled around the world studying lava flows, but “it’s fair to say the Mojave is where I fell in love with science,” she says. Her first research project was in Death Valley National Park, and she runs an educational non-profit for grade-school students that’s based in the Mojave National Preserve. The newly created Mojave Desert National Monument was among several dozen sites being reviewed by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke for delisting or possible downsizing.
Like Phoenix, many of the science candidates are running in districts with a high percentage of voters with college degrees. Elaine DiMasi, a physicist who is on leave from Brookhaven National Laboratory, is preparing to run against Long Island Republican Lee Zeldin. Jason Westin, an oncologist and researcher at Houston’s MD Anderson Cancer Center, is running against Texas Republican Rep. John Culberson in part because he’s worried about what NIH cuts would mean for him and his colleagues. Stem-cell scientist Hans Keirstead is the leading challenger to take on longtime Orange County Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, whose district was carried by Hillary Clinton last fall. Joseph Kosper, an aerospace engineer and Army veteran, is one of eight Democrats running against Lamar Smith in a district that includes the University of Texas. All four of those challengers have been in talks with 314 PAC.
In June, not long after her Republican congressman, Ed Royce, voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, California pediatrician Mai-Khanh Tran switched her office hours to part-time and announced she was running for his Orange County seat.
“I felt like my heart was gripped by this overwhelming pain,” says Tran, who spends part of her year treating lepers in her native Vietnam. “But I went to work and one of the first patients I saw in the office was a patient with a very severe illness—she had a brain tumor.” The girl’s mother, who worked at a nail salon, had been able to get health insurance through a subsidy provided by the Affordable Care Act. “We were hugging each other, crying—we really thought that our lives and a lot of our patients would be affected very soon. I didn’t realize how soon.”
Trump’s election was an energizing moment for Tran not just because of her place in the health-care system, but because in addition to being a pediatrician and leprosy researcher, Tran is also a refugee.
She left Vietnam when she was nine on one of last “Orphan airlift” flights out of the country before the US evacuated Saigon. Her father had dropped Tran and two siblings off at an orphanage because it offered the best chance of survival. (They would later reunite in Oregon.) “I kept thinking ‘what on Earth is he wearing sunglasses for?” she said of their parting. “He’s such a proper man, why is he wearing sunglasses?’ And it dawned on me years later that he didn’t want us to see him cry.”
Tran’s flight was filled with orphans and handicapped children. When they finally landed she remembers being carried off the plane by a Marine; the nature of her arrival in the country was formative in her decision to get into medicine but also in her political outlook.
“When I see that picture of that little Syrian boy, I remember thinking I was just as scared as he was once,” she said, referring to the now-iconic photo of Omran Daqneesh sitting dazed and bloodied in the back of an Aleppo ambulance. “I don’t know why I was any more deserving of being in this country.”
Tran has a head of steam in Royce’s Southern California district. In July, she picked up the endorsement of EMILY’s List. But in a sign of the changing currents in her field, she isn’t even the only scientist in the Democratic primary to take on Royce. To get to the general election she first has to get past a group of challengers that includes Phil Janowicz, a former Cal State Fullerton chemistry professor who left his job at the education company McGraw-Hill the morning after the election to begin planning for his campaign. Like Tran, Janowicz has been in touch with 314; he flew to DC in April for the group’s first candidate training. His slogan: “Solutions for Congress.”
More than a dozen Democratic candidates with scientific backgrounds are running for Congress.
By TIM MURPHY
There’s something different about the crop of Democrats running for Congress in 2018. As in previous years, the party has recruited a small army of veterans in high-profile races and in Republican-held districts. There are loads of state legislators, business owners, and government officials.
But the candidates also include a volcanologist who’s worried that her favorite research spot will be opened up for development; an aerospace engineer who’s running against the climate-denying head of the House Science Committee; a pediatrician who spends part of the year treating leprosy patients in Vietnam; and a physicist who worries what budget cuts would mean to the federal research facility where she spent her career.
All told, more than a dozen Democratic candidates with science backgrounds have announced their candidacies for Congress or are expected to in the coming months. The boomlet of STEM-based candidates amounts to a minor seismic event in a community where politics and research have traditionally gone together like sodium and water. Trump has been in office just six months, but he’s already done something remarkable—he’s gotten scientists to run for office.
The surge of science-based candidates has been aided by a new political outfit called 314 Action, launched last summer by Shaughnessy Naughton, a breast cancer researcher from Pennsylvania who ran for Congress in 2014 and 2016 . The group, named for the first three digits of Pi, aims to do for candidates with scientific backgrounds what EMILY’s List has done for pro-choice women—funding, recruiting, and training candidates at every level of government. So far 6,000 scientists have reached out to the group about running for federal, state, and local offices; and 314 plans to also back candidates in three dozen school board races this fall. Washington has plenty of lawyers; maybe it’s time for a fresh experiment.
“Traditionally the attitude has been that science is above politics, and therefore scientists shouldn’t get involved in politics, and what that ignores is the fact that politicians are unashamed to meddle in science,” says Naughton. “The way we push back against that is to hold a seat at the table.”
The ranks of scientists in Congress have been thin in recent years. Rep. Bill Foster (D-Ill.) was a high-energy particle physicist at Fermi National Laboratory in the district he now represents. Until recently the dean of the bunch was Democratic Rep. Rush Holt of New Jersey, an astrophysicist who retired in 2014 and now serves as CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The only STEM field that’s well represented in Congress is medicine; there are 14 physicians between the House and the Senate, but most are Republicans who have shown more of a commitment to conservative dogma than scientific best practices. (Former Georgia Republican Rep. Paul Broun, a doctor, infamously referred to evolutionary biology as a lie “from the pit of hell.”)
One result of the dearth of scientists has been a Congress that is often ignorant of the scientific perspective, not just on obvious issues like climate change—Texas Rep. Lamar Smith, the chair of the House Science Committee has called it a myth propagated by “so-called, self-professed climate scientists” and subpoenaed emails from government-funded climatologists—but on virtually every subject that comes up.
“When the Help America Vote Act was passed after the 2000 election nobody thought that was a science issue—who thought anybody would hack election computers?” Holt says. “Right from the start, I said, ‘Hey, wait a minute, you passed a bill that encouraged jurisdictions all over the country to move to electronic voting machines that are simple, easy to use, and completely unverifiable. If you had cleared that with some computer scientists before writing the bill, you would have realized that having unauditable elections is not smart.’”
In some sense scientists were victims of their own success. The growth of government-funded science over the last half century through everything from the National Institutes of Health to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has helped thousands of researchers carve out careers. But it has also incentivized scientists to put their heads down and keep quiet, lest they jeopardize that funding.
“On average, scientists are not particularly outgoing and are psychologically not conditioned for this sort of thing,” Holt says. But just as importantly, “the entire rewards system of science doesn’t encourage social or political involvement.” Getting more scientists in the House requires knocking down their preconceptions about how people in STEM should approach public life.
One reason for the political awakening is Trump himself. Even before taking office his transition staff roiled the scientific community when it asked the Department of Energy for a list of staffers who had worked on global warming; the anticipated purge never materialized, but the Trump DOE has issued guidelines instructing employees not to use terms like “emissions reductions” and even brags on its agency Twitter account that Secretary Rick Perry is winning the “fight” with climate scientists. Environmental Protection Agency director Scott Pruitt has jettisoned dozens of members of his agency’s scientific advisory board.
Trump has defied scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change and placed unqualified friends and allies in charge of departments responsible for doling out billions in funding. His proposed travel ban would bring the hammer down on international researchers. And he has proposed steep budget cuts that would more than decimate research budgets and send scientists looking for new sources of funding or risk abandoning their projects. And all that is just six months in.
Jess Phoenix, a volcanologist seeking the Democratic nomination in the Southern California district represented by Republican Steve Knight, decided to run when she saw that the public lands where she’s done much of her research were at risk of losing their protections in the Trump era.
Phoenix has traveled around the world studying lava flows, but “it’s fair to say the Mojave is where I fell in love with science,” she says. Her first research project was in Death Valley National Park, and she runs an educational non-profit for grade-school students that’s based in the Mojave National Preserve. The newly created Mojave Desert National Monument was among several dozen sites being reviewed by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke for delisting or possible downsizing.
Like Phoenix, many of the science candidates are running in districts with a high percentage of voters with college degrees. Elaine DiMasi, a physicist who is on leave from Brookhaven National Laboratory, is preparing to run against Long Island Republican Lee Zeldin. Jason Westin, an oncologist and researcher at Houston’s MD Anderson Cancer Center, is running against Texas Republican Rep. John Culberson in part because he’s worried about what NIH cuts would mean for him and his colleagues. Stem-cell scientist Hans Keirstead is the leading challenger to take on longtime Orange County Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, whose district was carried by Hillary Clinton last fall. Joseph Kosper, an aerospace engineer and Army veteran, is one of eight Democrats running against Lamar Smith in a district that includes the University of Texas. All four of those challengers have been in talks with 314 PAC.
In June, not long after her Republican congressman, Ed Royce, voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, California pediatrician Mai-Khanh Tran switched her office hours to part-time and announced she was running for his Orange County seat.
“I felt like my heart was gripped by this overwhelming pain,” says Tran, who spends part of her year treating lepers in her native Vietnam. “But I went to work and one of the first patients I saw in the office was a patient with a very severe illness—she had a brain tumor.” The girl’s mother, who worked at a nail salon, had been able to get health insurance through a subsidy provided by the Affordable Care Act. “We were hugging each other, crying—we really thought that our lives and a lot of our patients would be affected very soon. I didn’t realize how soon.”
Trump’s election was an energizing moment for Tran not just because of her place in the health-care system, but because in addition to being a pediatrician and leprosy researcher, Tran is also a refugee.
She left Vietnam when she was nine on one of last “Orphan airlift” flights out of the country before the US evacuated Saigon. Her father had dropped Tran and two siblings off at an orphanage because it offered the best chance of survival. (They would later reunite in Oregon.) “I kept thinking ‘what on Earth is he wearing sunglasses for?” she said of their parting. “He’s such a proper man, why is he wearing sunglasses?’ And it dawned on me years later that he didn’t want us to see him cry.”
Tran’s flight was filled with orphans and handicapped children. When they finally landed she remembers being carried off the plane by a Marine; the nature of her arrival in the country was formative in her decision to get into medicine but also in her political outlook.
“When I see that picture of that little Syrian boy, I remember thinking I was just as scared as he was once,” she said, referring to the now-iconic photo of Omran Daqneesh sitting dazed and bloodied in the back of an Aleppo ambulance. “I don’t know why I was any more deserving of being in this country.”
Tran has a head of steam in Royce’s Southern California district. In July, she picked up the endorsement of EMILY’s List. But in a sign of the changing currents in her field, she isn’t even the only scientist in the Democratic primary to take on Royce. To get to the general election she first has to get past a group of challengers that includes Phil Janowicz, a former Cal State Fullerton chemistry professor who left his job at the education company McGraw-Hill the morning after the election to begin planning for his campaign. Like Tran, Janowicz has been in touch with 314; he flew to DC in April for the group’s first candidate training. His slogan: “Solutions for Congress.”
Destined to repeat history???
Why John Kelly may be destined to repeat history
By Julian Zelizer
President Donald Trump, who is always looking for a quick fix, is hoping that John Kelly, his new chief of staff, will be the magic bullet.
But it won't work. Kelly will find himself extremely frustrated, and there will be limits to the kind of "order" he will achieve. He is working for a president who will continue to act in the same destructive manner. Unless there is a wholesale purge, Trump will still be surrounded by some calculating and strong-headed figures like Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Sebastian Gorka, Jared Kushner and Anthony Scaramucci, who will not cede ground very easily.
Kelly also faces a political environment that is even more difficult than before. Republicans on Capitol Hill are angry and frustrated, while special counsel Robert Mueller is conducting an investigation that could prove damaging. The trifecta of the Russian sanctions legislation, the defeat of health care and the backlash against the idea of removing Jeff Sessions as attorney general suggests the Republican firewall on Capitol Hill is starting to weaken.
Then there is everything else that can happen in an ordinary week of the Trump presidency.
Although there are many examples where a new chief of staff brings good returns for the White House -- Howard Baker for Ronald Reagan in 1987, Leon Panetta for Bill Clinton in 1994 and Josh Bolten for George W. Bush in 2006 -- this is not likely to be one of them. The best comparison might be Gen. Alexander Haig, who became chief of staff for an embattled Richard Nixon in 1973.
Right in the middle of the Watergate investigation, Nixon turned to Haig when H.R. Haldeman resigned on August 30, 1973. The appeal was clear. The 47-year-old career military officer had worked as a senior military adviser to national security adviser Henry Kissinger and as Army vice chief of staff. Haig brought the kind of "can-do" attitude toward problems that the President hoped would help him.
"He'll be superb in the new job. He'll get decisions made, orders implemented and papers flowing into the President's office," predicted President Lyndon Johnson's aide Joseph Califano, "He'll work 20 hours a day, and he knows how to get along with people." Haig, who had shown his scrappy character by earning enough money to pay for college by delivering newspapers and working in a department store after his father died when he was only 10 years old, was a compelling figure with strong convictions and an unyielding drive.
The problem for Haig -- and Kelly might want to take note -- was that there was little he could do to turn around the dire situation he inherited. By the time he was hired, Nixon was deep into battle mode, combating the multiple investigations that were taking place into his administration. The investigators were already exposing a deeply troubled president who had abused executive power and acted in vindictive ways toward his perceived adversaries. Nixon had allowed many people to work for his administration who didn't have a strong ethical compass and who had been willing to do whatever was necessary to achieve success. And, as the "smoking gun tape" recording would reveal, Nixon had been willing to obstruct justice in 1972.
There was nothing Haig could do to make all this go away. Indeed, Haig, though not without a spine, became part of the problem. He was the person who delivered the instructions to acting Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox in the Saturday Night Massacre.
As a loyal foot soldier, he fueled some of Nixon's worst behavior. After President Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon in September 1974, there were many unproven accusations that Haig, still serving as the chief of staff, had been part of some sort of corrupt deal. Haig, of course, denied the charges.
Some of Haig's biggest supporters have argued he was essentially running the White House as everything fell apart in the final months. "He was the president toward the end," argued US Attorney General William Saxbe. Some called him the "37½ president."
Woodward and Bernstein would credit Haig for helping to convince Nixon that he needed to seriously consider resignation and for taking care of Nixon as he broke down mentally, a period when historian Joshua Zeitz reminds us that Nixon "drank heavily, slept little and struck many aides as increasingly divorced from reality."
But by that point there was nothing Haig could do to salvage a broken White House.
Haig did not bring with him a solid feel for the ways and means of Capitol Hill, a problem Kelly will face as well. While he had a decent relationship with several members of Congress, he didn't have particularly strong connections or experiences working on the Hill. As the President's standing continued to erode on Capitol Hill with Democrats and gradually Republicans, Haig was not able to do much to reverse the situation. The frustration and concern with Nixon continued to mount as the investigation intensified, and Haig didn't have much social or political capital with members of Congress to assuage their concerns.
Haig's reputation would be forever tarnished during his brief stint as secretary of state for Ronald Reagan from 1981 to 1982. Most famously, he told reporters after the assassination attempt on President Reagan, "I am in control here," which gave the impression that he was ignoring the succession of power and taking over the government. Haig resigned in June 1982 over disputes about the direction of foreign policy. (He died in 2010, having spent several decades away from politics.)
Kelly will face some of the same problems as Haig. Like Nixon, there is little chance that Trump will change in any fundamental way, and he will continue to engage in the kind of behavior that further erodes his standing. The information that keeps coming out about how Trump is handling the investigation into Russia and mishandling key public policy decisions will not vanish, just like Scaramucci's tweets.
At this point, a key difference is that we know Haig was working for a president who was clearly guilty of wrongdoing, while the investigation has only just begun into Trump and his campaign. But if Mueller or Congress produce damaging revelations, or if Trump moves forward with decisions that provide evidence he is obstructing the investigation, Kelly will be hamstrung.
With each of Trump's tweets and bombastic rally statements, Kelly will discover it is increasingly difficult to "reset" the situation. Since he is a person who, by vocation, believes in the chain of command, he probably won't be willing to stand up to his superior, the person with whom the problem lies. As Jonathan Stevenson reminds us in The New York Times, the generals who were originally supposed to tame this renegade president -- Kelly, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, and national security adviser H.R. McMaster -- have not had much luck fulfilling these expectations. This is why at the very time of his announcing this shake-up, Trump is continuing to tweet threats against his own party and North Korea. It seems clear the generals have not really restrained him.
Although there is some evidence Kelly has gotten along well with Congress in previous jobs, these relationships will be tested in new ways as his job becomes to lean on members in moments that can quickly become tense.
He also has to deal with partisan rather than military warfare, something he has found difficult. "What I never saw on the military side," he told CNN, "was the level of toxic kind of politics that are associated with what I do now." Kelly, who has already expressed his surprise with the "toxic" situation in Washington, won't bring with him any kind of expert understanding of Congress or deep-rooted relationships with legislators that will calm the current situation.
With Haig, Nixon learned military acumen doesn't always mean much in Washington warfare -- especially when the head of the political army refuses to change a failed strategy. If things continue to go poorly, Kelly might find Haig's experience is even more apt than he expected.
By Julian Zelizer
President Donald Trump, who is always looking for a quick fix, is hoping that John Kelly, his new chief of staff, will be the magic bullet.
But it won't work. Kelly will find himself extremely frustrated, and there will be limits to the kind of "order" he will achieve. He is working for a president who will continue to act in the same destructive manner. Unless there is a wholesale purge, Trump will still be surrounded by some calculating and strong-headed figures like Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Sebastian Gorka, Jared Kushner and Anthony Scaramucci, who will not cede ground very easily.
Kelly also faces a political environment that is even more difficult than before. Republicans on Capitol Hill are angry and frustrated, while special counsel Robert Mueller is conducting an investigation that could prove damaging. The trifecta of the Russian sanctions legislation, the defeat of health care and the backlash against the idea of removing Jeff Sessions as attorney general suggests the Republican firewall on Capitol Hill is starting to weaken.
Then there is everything else that can happen in an ordinary week of the Trump presidency.
Although there are many examples where a new chief of staff brings good returns for the White House -- Howard Baker for Ronald Reagan in 1987, Leon Panetta for Bill Clinton in 1994 and Josh Bolten for George W. Bush in 2006 -- this is not likely to be one of them. The best comparison might be Gen. Alexander Haig, who became chief of staff for an embattled Richard Nixon in 1973.
Right in the middle of the Watergate investigation, Nixon turned to Haig when H.R. Haldeman resigned on August 30, 1973. The appeal was clear. The 47-year-old career military officer had worked as a senior military adviser to national security adviser Henry Kissinger and as Army vice chief of staff. Haig brought the kind of "can-do" attitude toward problems that the President hoped would help him.
"He'll be superb in the new job. He'll get decisions made, orders implemented and papers flowing into the President's office," predicted President Lyndon Johnson's aide Joseph Califano, "He'll work 20 hours a day, and he knows how to get along with people." Haig, who had shown his scrappy character by earning enough money to pay for college by delivering newspapers and working in a department store after his father died when he was only 10 years old, was a compelling figure with strong convictions and an unyielding drive.
The problem for Haig -- and Kelly might want to take note -- was that there was little he could do to turn around the dire situation he inherited. By the time he was hired, Nixon was deep into battle mode, combating the multiple investigations that were taking place into his administration. The investigators were already exposing a deeply troubled president who had abused executive power and acted in vindictive ways toward his perceived adversaries. Nixon had allowed many people to work for his administration who didn't have a strong ethical compass and who had been willing to do whatever was necessary to achieve success. And, as the "smoking gun tape" recording would reveal, Nixon had been willing to obstruct justice in 1972.
There was nothing Haig could do to make all this go away. Indeed, Haig, though not without a spine, became part of the problem. He was the person who delivered the instructions to acting Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox in the Saturday Night Massacre.
As a loyal foot soldier, he fueled some of Nixon's worst behavior. After President Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon in September 1974, there were many unproven accusations that Haig, still serving as the chief of staff, had been part of some sort of corrupt deal. Haig, of course, denied the charges.
Some of Haig's biggest supporters have argued he was essentially running the White House as everything fell apart in the final months. "He was the president toward the end," argued US Attorney General William Saxbe. Some called him the "37½ president."
Woodward and Bernstein would credit Haig for helping to convince Nixon that he needed to seriously consider resignation and for taking care of Nixon as he broke down mentally, a period when historian Joshua Zeitz reminds us that Nixon "drank heavily, slept little and struck many aides as increasingly divorced from reality."
But by that point there was nothing Haig could do to salvage a broken White House.
Haig did not bring with him a solid feel for the ways and means of Capitol Hill, a problem Kelly will face as well. While he had a decent relationship with several members of Congress, he didn't have particularly strong connections or experiences working on the Hill. As the President's standing continued to erode on Capitol Hill with Democrats and gradually Republicans, Haig was not able to do much to reverse the situation. The frustration and concern with Nixon continued to mount as the investigation intensified, and Haig didn't have much social or political capital with members of Congress to assuage their concerns.
Haig's reputation would be forever tarnished during his brief stint as secretary of state for Ronald Reagan from 1981 to 1982. Most famously, he told reporters after the assassination attempt on President Reagan, "I am in control here," which gave the impression that he was ignoring the succession of power and taking over the government. Haig resigned in June 1982 over disputes about the direction of foreign policy. (He died in 2010, having spent several decades away from politics.)
Kelly will face some of the same problems as Haig. Like Nixon, there is little chance that Trump will change in any fundamental way, and he will continue to engage in the kind of behavior that further erodes his standing. The information that keeps coming out about how Trump is handling the investigation into Russia and mishandling key public policy decisions will not vanish, just like Scaramucci's tweets.
At this point, a key difference is that we know Haig was working for a president who was clearly guilty of wrongdoing, while the investigation has only just begun into Trump and his campaign. But if Mueller or Congress produce damaging revelations, or if Trump moves forward with decisions that provide evidence he is obstructing the investigation, Kelly will be hamstrung.
With each of Trump's tweets and bombastic rally statements, Kelly will discover it is increasingly difficult to "reset" the situation. Since he is a person who, by vocation, believes in the chain of command, he probably won't be willing to stand up to his superior, the person with whom the problem lies. As Jonathan Stevenson reminds us in The New York Times, the generals who were originally supposed to tame this renegade president -- Kelly, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, and national security adviser H.R. McMaster -- have not had much luck fulfilling these expectations. This is why at the very time of his announcing this shake-up, Trump is continuing to tweet threats against his own party and North Korea. It seems clear the generals have not really restrained him.
Although there is some evidence Kelly has gotten along well with Congress in previous jobs, these relationships will be tested in new ways as his job becomes to lean on members in moments that can quickly become tense.
He also has to deal with partisan rather than military warfare, something he has found difficult. "What I never saw on the military side," he told CNN, "was the level of toxic kind of politics that are associated with what I do now." Kelly, who has already expressed his surprise with the "toxic" situation in Washington, won't bring with him any kind of expert understanding of Congress or deep-rooted relationships with legislators that will calm the current situation.
With Haig, Nixon learned military acumen doesn't always mean much in Washington warfare -- especially when the head of the political army refuses to change a failed strategy. If things continue to go poorly, Kelly might find Haig's experience is even more apt than he expected.
Venezuela
What next for Venezuela? Crisis and isolation
by Patrick Gillespie, Marilia Brocchetto and Paula Newton
Venezuela has set off down a lonely path after a polarizing election that sparked deadly clashes.
President Nicolas Maduro's government held a vote Sunday that will replace the opposition-controlled National Assembly with an entirely new legislature known as the Constituent Assembly filled with his supporters.
Ten people were killed Sunday in the bloodiest day of protests since March. In all, 125 people have died.
Meanwhile, Venezuela's latest violence and political turmoil will probably deepen its economic and humanitarian crisis.
"Venezuela will become more isolated," says Francisco Monaldi, an expert on Latin American energy policy at Rice University.
Many world leaders say the vote eroded any last traces of democracy in the South American nation. The United States, Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Canada, Costa Rica and Panama condemned it. Nicaragua and Bolivia praised the vote.
Maduro and many of his supporters say the election will make for a more peaceful country and help revive Venezuela's economy, which is spiraling out of control. Sunday's violence suggested the opposite.
One of the top leaders in Maduro's administration, Diosdado Cabello, said the Constituent Assembly would take power in 72 hours, and that it would establish a "truth commission" to prosecute political opponents.
Police tactics may get heavier, too. On Sunday, police motorcycle brigades fired tear gas, and video surfaced showing law enforcement beating up an unarmed man.
U.S. sanctions loom
President Trump is considering economic sanctions on Venezuela's oil industry as soon as Monday, two administration officials told CNN. Oil is Venezuela's only source of revenue.
The U.S. sanctioned 13 Venezuelan leaders last week -- a move that was followed by Colombia, Mexico and Panama.
Venezuelans protesting Sunday noted that Trump's potential sanctions may worsen the country's severe food shortages if the government has less money to import food. Venezuela grows very little food domestically.
But it's a risk some are willing to take: deeper scarcities may propel more Venezuelans to try to push the government out.
"The sanctions that will come from the United States -- I'm not looking forward to them because that afflicts us as people," said a 33-year old protester who identified himself only as Victor. "But I want it because I know it can create enough pressure on the government."
'A downward spiral'
Venezuelans opposing the new legislative body made their feelings known on July 16 by rejecting it overwhelmingly in an unofficial referendum organized by Maduro's opponents. More than 7 million people cast ballots.
Several governments recognized the outcome, but Maduro ignored it.
"The majority demand democracy -- and we have demonstrated that with 7.6 million people," Dixson Lynch, a paramedic, said Sunday as blasts fired nearby at a protest.
Venezuela's national election committee said more than 8 million cast ballots in the vote called by Maduro. The opposition immediately disputed that number.
Experts say Venezuela's deep polarization could lead to two camps both claiming to be the legitimate government of the country -- one with international support, the other with Venezuela's military behind it.
"The opposition is going to try to set up a parallel government in a bid for international recognition. The government will likely overreact by tossing the leaders in jail. It's a downward spiral," says Eric Farnsworth, vice president at the Council of the Americas, a business association.
Food and money in short supply
Meanwhile, Venezuela's humanitarian crisis isn't abating. Soaring inflation as a result of government price controls has created mass shortages of food and medicine. Several Venezuelans told CNN this week they have lost weight this year due to food shortages, supporting findings from a national survey.
Cases of malaria, maternal deaths and infant deaths also significantly increased last year, according to government health data released in May.
With or without the new legislature, Maduro's government owes more money than it has. Venezeula's foreign reserves are a mere $9.9 billion, the lowest level since 1995.
It owes nearly $5 billion in bond payments for the rest of this year. It will have to pay billions more to bondholders in the years to come, along with money owed to China, Russia, U.S. airlines and energy service providers.
Experts say Venezuela's chances of default will rise significantly if the U.S. imposes broad sanctions soon.
by Patrick Gillespie, Marilia Brocchetto and Paula Newton
Venezuela has set off down a lonely path after a polarizing election that sparked deadly clashes.
President Nicolas Maduro's government held a vote Sunday that will replace the opposition-controlled National Assembly with an entirely new legislature known as the Constituent Assembly filled with his supporters.
Ten people were killed Sunday in the bloodiest day of protests since March. In all, 125 people have died.
Meanwhile, Venezuela's latest violence and political turmoil will probably deepen its economic and humanitarian crisis.
"Venezuela will become more isolated," says Francisco Monaldi, an expert on Latin American energy policy at Rice University.
Many world leaders say the vote eroded any last traces of democracy in the South American nation. The United States, Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Canada, Costa Rica and Panama condemned it. Nicaragua and Bolivia praised the vote.
Maduro and many of his supporters say the election will make for a more peaceful country and help revive Venezuela's economy, which is spiraling out of control. Sunday's violence suggested the opposite.
One of the top leaders in Maduro's administration, Diosdado Cabello, said the Constituent Assembly would take power in 72 hours, and that it would establish a "truth commission" to prosecute political opponents.
Police tactics may get heavier, too. On Sunday, police motorcycle brigades fired tear gas, and video surfaced showing law enforcement beating up an unarmed man.
U.S. sanctions loom
President Trump is considering economic sanctions on Venezuela's oil industry as soon as Monday, two administration officials told CNN. Oil is Venezuela's only source of revenue.
The U.S. sanctioned 13 Venezuelan leaders last week -- a move that was followed by Colombia, Mexico and Panama.
Venezuelans protesting Sunday noted that Trump's potential sanctions may worsen the country's severe food shortages if the government has less money to import food. Venezuela grows very little food domestically.
But it's a risk some are willing to take: deeper scarcities may propel more Venezuelans to try to push the government out.
"The sanctions that will come from the United States -- I'm not looking forward to them because that afflicts us as people," said a 33-year old protester who identified himself only as Victor. "But I want it because I know it can create enough pressure on the government."
'A downward spiral'
Venezuelans opposing the new legislative body made their feelings known on July 16 by rejecting it overwhelmingly in an unofficial referendum organized by Maduro's opponents. More than 7 million people cast ballots.
Several governments recognized the outcome, but Maduro ignored it.
"The majority demand democracy -- and we have demonstrated that with 7.6 million people," Dixson Lynch, a paramedic, said Sunday as blasts fired nearby at a protest.
Venezuela's national election committee said more than 8 million cast ballots in the vote called by Maduro. The opposition immediately disputed that number.
Experts say Venezuela's deep polarization could lead to two camps both claiming to be the legitimate government of the country -- one with international support, the other with Venezuela's military behind it.
"The opposition is going to try to set up a parallel government in a bid for international recognition. The government will likely overreact by tossing the leaders in jail. It's a downward spiral," says Eric Farnsworth, vice president at the Council of the Americas, a business association.
Food and money in short supply
Meanwhile, Venezuela's humanitarian crisis isn't abating. Soaring inflation as a result of government price controls has created mass shortages of food and medicine. Several Venezuelans told CNN this week they have lost weight this year due to food shortages, supporting findings from a national survey.
Cases of malaria, maternal deaths and infant deaths also significantly increased last year, according to government health data released in May.
With or without the new legislature, Maduro's government owes more money than it has. Venezeula's foreign reserves are a mere $9.9 billion, the lowest level since 1995.
It owes nearly $5 billion in bond payments for the rest of this year. It will have to pay billions more to bondholders in the years to come, along with money owed to China, Russia, U.S. airlines and energy service providers.
Experts say Venezuela's chances of default will rise significantly if the U.S. imposes broad sanctions soon.
Cabinet tensions
Cabinet tensions rise as West Wing goes through (another) shakeup
By John King
Several lingering personnel challenges facing the President, the mounting frustration of GOP congressional leaders and an August travel schedule that might make it easier for White House handymen -- it's all covered in our Inside Politics forecast.
1) Kelly is in -- but other staff and Cabinet tensions remain
Hiring a new chief of staff doesn't mean the Trump administration's personnel tensions are over.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is frustrated at what he views as White House meddling in policy decisions that should be his. Trump's national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, is not always on the same page as Tillerson -- or top White House strategist Stephen Bannon. Then there is the President's open frustration with Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Michael Bender of The Wall Street Journal also noted the question of how the new chief of staff and his disciplined military approach will mesh with the brash new communications director, Anthony Scaramucci.
"He's got to figure out if he's got to rein in Anthony Scaramucci. Is he going to stop belittling Jeff Sessions?"
"Rex Tillerson is very frustrated that the White House is running more and more of the foreign policy out of the White House -- and H.R. McMaster, he's not gelling with Tillerson, he's not gelling with Steve Bannon and has been rebuffed by the President himself on request for modest increases in troops in Afghanistan," Bender said.
2) Recess appointments advice close at hand for President
Key GOP members of Congress made clear to President Trump this week that they wanted him to back off his criticism of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and just as clear they were in no mood to consider a replacement.
One option the President has discussed with some advisers is his power to make a recess appointment when the Senate is not in session.
Republicans are warning the President against such a strategy.
Michael Warren of The Weekly Standard noted there are two experts on the issue in the Trump administration. But there's a twist:
"Two of the top lawyers in the administration are somewhat of experts on this topic. Noah Francisco, who is in the Department of Justice right now. He's the nominee to be solicitor general and James Burnham, who's one of the White House counsel lawyers, they both argued in front of the Supreme Court two years ago actually against the Obama administration and their attempt to make recess appointments," Warren said.
"Those were some people that I imagine the President is, you know, calling on for counsel on what to do if he decides to go ahead and do a recess appointment."
3) The President plans August travel -- but where?
President Trump wants to get out of Washington a fair amount in August, spending some time traveling the country as well as at his New Jersey golf resort.
Where the President goes is an open question -- as is whether we will see a different approach.
We know the President loves campaign-style ralles.
But CNN's Sara Murray notes there has been a flood of GOP criticism that Trump has not used his travels, and his bully pulpit, to advance key policy initiatives. "The thing to watch is whether the President has learned any lessons from this health care defeat," Murray remarks.
"What does he do when he is on the road? Does he try to sell specific agenda items? Does he try to sell specific elements of tax reform? Or do we get the same sort of kitchen sink, slam at the media, rants about whatever he's feeling that day and maybe do a little hat tip to tax reform along the way?"
4) Trouble at the top? Allies of the speaker and the majority leader describe mounting frustration
Relations between President Trump and the top two Republicans in Congress, never warm and fuzzy, appear to be taking a turn for the worse.
Speaker Paul Ryan and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are both described by close colleagues and allies as frustrated by presidential behavior they find unhelpful, not to mention unpredictable. Nothing new there, really, but the cumulative effect -- and the calendar -- are adding weight to the dynamic.
The White House openly and forcefully beat back a top Ryan priority in tax reform negotiations, plus Ryan ally, Reince Preibus, was just forced out as White House chief of staff.
For McConnell, the weekend included a series of presidential tweets suggesting GOP senators were fools for not passing an Obamacare repeal plan and that the leader was not making the best use of his power.
In public, the leaders tend to be polite when it comes to the President. And as they worry about his dismal approval ratings and its impact on the 2018 midterms, neither is under the illusion the President is going to change his ways. But Ryan and McConnell allies are more vocal in their criticism of the President, which is telling.
Take the weekend tweeting of John Holmes, a former McConnell chief of staff who remains loyal to the majority leader.
Responding to the President's tweets offering Senate strategy advice to McConnell, Holmes countered: "Instead of searching for the leaker, search for the idiot who keeps putting the President on irrelevant and counterproductive crusades."
5) Know a good handyman? The White House has some work coming
New Chief of Staff John Kelly can expect his first month on the job to be loud -- even if his arrival calms the West Wing infighting that has plagued the Trump White House from the beginning.
A busy schedule of summer maintenance is on tap, and getting underway just as Kelly takes his prime West Wing real estate.
Margaret Talev of Bloomberg Politics detailed some of the coming fixes that will add to Kelly's transition challenge.
"They're doing repairs to the HVAC system -- which is 27 years old so it needs to be replaced. There was a leak in the roof the other day. They've got to do paint, carpeting, wiring, so all of these offices are going to move temporarily to the EEOB (Eisenhower Executive Office Building)," Talev said.
"So on top of all the actual structural challenges, he's going to have some geographic challenges as well."
By John King
Several lingering personnel challenges facing the President, the mounting frustration of GOP congressional leaders and an August travel schedule that might make it easier for White House handymen -- it's all covered in our Inside Politics forecast.
1) Kelly is in -- but other staff and Cabinet tensions remain
Hiring a new chief of staff doesn't mean the Trump administration's personnel tensions are over.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is frustrated at what he views as White House meddling in policy decisions that should be his. Trump's national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, is not always on the same page as Tillerson -- or top White House strategist Stephen Bannon. Then there is the President's open frustration with Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Michael Bender of The Wall Street Journal also noted the question of how the new chief of staff and his disciplined military approach will mesh with the brash new communications director, Anthony Scaramucci.
"He's got to figure out if he's got to rein in Anthony Scaramucci. Is he going to stop belittling Jeff Sessions?"
"Rex Tillerson is very frustrated that the White House is running more and more of the foreign policy out of the White House -- and H.R. McMaster, he's not gelling with Tillerson, he's not gelling with Steve Bannon and has been rebuffed by the President himself on request for modest increases in troops in Afghanistan," Bender said.
2) Recess appointments advice close at hand for President
Key GOP members of Congress made clear to President Trump this week that they wanted him to back off his criticism of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and just as clear they were in no mood to consider a replacement.
One option the President has discussed with some advisers is his power to make a recess appointment when the Senate is not in session.
Republicans are warning the President against such a strategy.
Michael Warren of The Weekly Standard noted there are two experts on the issue in the Trump administration. But there's a twist:
"Two of the top lawyers in the administration are somewhat of experts on this topic. Noah Francisco, who is in the Department of Justice right now. He's the nominee to be solicitor general and James Burnham, who's one of the White House counsel lawyers, they both argued in front of the Supreme Court two years ago actually against the Obama administration and their attempt to make recess appointments," Warren said.
"Those were some people that I imagine the President is, you know, calling on for counsel on what to do if he decides to go ahead and do a recess appointment."
3) The President plans August travel -- but where?
President Trump wants to get out of Washington a fair amount in August, spending some time traveling the country as well as at his New Jersey golf resort.
Where the President goes is an open question -- as is whether we will see a different approach.
We know the President loves campaign-style ralles.
But CNN's Sara Murray notes there has been a flood of GOP criticism that Trump has not used his travels, and his bully pulpit, to advance key policy initiatives. "The thing to watch is whether the President has learned any lessons from this health care defeat," Murray remarks.
"What does he do when he is on the road? Does he try to sell specific agenda items? Does he try to sell specific elements of tax reform? Or do we get the same sort of kitchen sink, slam at the media, rants about whatever he's feeling that day and maybe do a little hat tip to tax reform along the way?"
4) Trouble at the top? Allies of the speaker and the majority leader describe mounting frustration
Relations between President Trump and the top two Republicans in Congress, never warm and fuzzy, appear to be taking a turn for the worse.
Speaker Paul Ryan and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are both described by close colleagues and allies as frustrated by presidential behavior they find unhelpful, not to mention unpredictable. Nothing new there, really, but the cumulative effect -- and the calendar -- are adding weight to the dynamic.
The White House openly and forcefully beat back a top Ryan priority in tax reform negotiations, plus Ryan ally, Reince Preibus, was just forced out as White House chief of staff.
For McConnell, the weekend included a series of presidential tweets suggesting GOP senators were fools for not passing an Obamacare repeal plan and that the leader was not making the best use of his power.
In public, the leaders tend to be polite when it comes to the President. And as they worry about his dismal approval ratings and its impact on the 2018 midterms, neither is under the illusion the President is going to change his ways. But Ryan and McConnell allies are more vocal in their criticism of the President, which is telling.
Take the weekend tweeting of John Holmes, a former McConnell chief of staff who remains loyal to the majority leader.
Responding to the President's tweets offering Senate strategy advice to McConnell, Holmes countered: "Instead of searching for the leaker, search for the idiot who keeps putting the President on irrelevant and counterproductive crusades."
5) Know a good handyman? The White House has some work coming
New Chief of Staff John Kelly can expect his first month on the job to be loud -- even if his arrival calms the West Wing infighting that has plagued the Trump White House from the beginning.
A busy schedule of summer maintenance is on tap, and getting underway just as Kelly takes his prime West Wing real estate.
Margaret Talev of Bloomberg Politics detailed some of the coming fixes that will add to Kelly's transition challenge.
"They're doing repairs to the HVAC system -- which is 27 years old so it needs to be replaced. There was a leak in the roof the other day. They've got to do paint, carpeting, wiring, so all of these offices are going to move temporarily to the EEOB (Eisenhower Executive Office Building)," Talev said.
"So on top of all the actual structural challenges, he's going to have some geographic challenges as well."
For over six decades
High Sierra Regatta
From Sailing Anarchy
For over six decades west coast sailors have made the annual pilgrimage through the July heat of central California to the cool, clear waters of Huntington Lake, to compete in Fresno Yacht Club’s High Sierra Regatta. At 7,000′ up in the Sierra Nevada range and fringed by pine trees, Huntington Lake offers one of the more scenic sailing venues in CA, plus the enviable boast of predictable winds thanks to the thermal heating effect of the Fresno Valley below. With the first weekend primarily aimed at dinghies and the second more focused on keelboats, as many as 150 boats have been known to travel to one or both of the two race weekends.
One such west coast sailor who is a staunch proponent of the HSR is English ex-pat, Nick Mockridge. Having been the driving force behind getting the Viper 640 to the event some 10 years ago, as well as competing in the Open 5.70 class, Mockridge returned to the lake this year to compete in the ‘keelboat weekend’ in his 111 year old wooden English classic Broads One Design, “Snipe”.
“After a lifetime of racing one-design performance dinghies and sportsboats, bringing a displacement boat to race PHRF is rather a departure for me. I have always believed that racing one design negated the politics and excuses found in handicap racing. But despite that, my passion for classic wooden boats guided me into a class that I have loved since childhood, and so has left me no choice but to adopt a new approach to racing”.
That childhood love is the Broads One Design (B.O.D), commissioned in 1900 by the Royal Norfolk and Suffolk Yacht Club in England and designed by Linton Hope, double gold medalist at the 1900 Paris Olympics and official yacht designer to King Leopold II, King of the Belgians. Hope’s brief was to design a craft suitable for both the inland waters of the Norfolk Broads – a series of interconnected lakes and rivers – and the ever turbulent waters of the North Sea off Lowestoft. “Snipe” was the tenth hull of his inspiration, built and launched in 1906.
“While there are numerous old designs still sailing in Europe, understandably many US sailors find it difficult to appreciate just how old this design is” says Mockridge. “In historical milestone terms, it is older than the Wright Brothers’ first powered flight (1903), Henry Ford’s Model T (1908) and the sinking of the Titanic (1912)”. She’s antique old, and this sort of old doesn’t mean fast, but it does mean characterful.
Certainly “Snipe” added an interesting contrast to the weekend, her varnished wooden hull and gaff rig jostling for position amongst such modern and sporty glass/carbon classes as the Viper 640, J70, 11 Meter, Flying Tiger, etc. “That’s the great thing about the High Sierra Regatta” Mockridge continues. “You can be as competitive or laid back as you wish, and because of the superb conditions and the camaraderie you’re still going to have a great time.
I made the HSR a family affair this year, racing with my youngest son and my sister & brother-in-law from England. But they’re also my A-team; it may be a fun regatta but most crews come here to kick posterior”. Indeed, a number of fleets demonstrated that just because the course was on a pretty lake, it didn’t mean that fighting for the best start wasn’t going to cause general recalls. And at the conclusion of the weekend, the podium places for both the Thistle and Moore fleets had to be ascertained on countback and the top three places in the Sportsboat fleet were separated by just 1 point each. Only in the PHRF A fleet was there total domination, with the Wylie Wabbits clearly reveling in the moderate breezes and flat water to take the top 4 places overall.
And how did “Snipe” fare? “Bloody awfully!” laughs Mockridge. “After years of being at the front of one-design fleets we found ourselves near the back of our PHRF fleet. Being a gaff rig we couldn’t point nearly as high as our Bermudan counterparts and so lost our lane and were spat out of the back quickly, and the inefficient full keel configuration and terribly short waterline length (just 16′ 6″ for a 24′ boat) limited our speed through the water.” But as he points out, if he wanted to compete on a fair and even playing field he should have stuck to one-design racing. “I gave PHRF SoCal the unenviable task of trying to create a rating for a boat they’d never heard of, let alone seen! They had no historical race data upon which to base their calculations, and there were no other full-keel designs or gaff-rigged designs to guide them. I think they made a jolly good effort, but based on my past results I feel that a little tweaking is in order. But then again, what PHRF boat owner doesn’t think his/her rating needs a little tweaking?!”
While the racing may be the focal point of the weekend, the High Sierra Regatta isn’t just about the competition; it’s as much about the time spent ashore. There are no hotels at the lake, so accommodation is limited to rental cabins or bring-you-own RV or tent to set up home in one of the many US Forest Service campgrounds. Sitting round a camp fire with fellow regatta members and/or family eating s’mores and telling war stories is very much part of the weekend, but for those who prefer to have their meals catered, Fresno YC also puts on a serious feast. Sore heads reigned on the Sunday morning but the racers groggily took to the water, undeterred by the over-excesses of the night before.
With another successful High Sierra Regatta in the books of the Fresno Yacht Club, most of the competing boats have scattered to the winds, returning to their home clubs elsewhere in CA, AZ, NV and OR. Snipe has returned to Santa Barbara where she sails under the burgee of the Santa Barbara Sailing Club. “She may have been designed to take on rough coastal conditions”, says Mockridge, “but that was over 100 years ago. I can’t risk losing her; she’s irreplaceable. Because of her low freeboard I prefer to sail her in relatively smooth waters and Santa Barbara, with its along-shore winds, makes for perfect sailing conditions. We’ve had her out in 20 knots, but because the Santa Barbara waves are pretty benign even in that sort of breeze, she’s had no difficulty in powering over them despite her age”.
Southern California is not a hotbed for either wooden boats or classic boats, so “Snipe” stands out as a bit of an anomaly. The first 31 Broads One Designs, built between 1900 and 1939 were initially constructed of cedar planking, but later boats were mahogany. Either way, they were designed to be wet sailed, and because “Snipe” is dry sailed and kept on her trailer in the SBSC boat yard, the warm, dry SoCal climate created an unexpected problem for Mockridge. “The first time we launched and sailed her we were surprised to discover that it was necessary for me to work the bilge pump almost constantly, while my non-sailor children gamely steered and controlled the sheets. After an hour I think there was more Pacific Ocean inside the boat than out!” This is because the cedar planks both above and below the waterline had dried out and shrunk, causing the seams to leak. “I ended up lining the bilge and cockpit interior with wet towels in order to swell the planks and close up the seams. I’m so used to sponging out and toweling dry a boat after sailing, that adding moisture and leaving the boat wet was a totally alien concept”. However, this approach was evidently successful as only brief and occasional pumping was required during the High Sierra Regatta.
The Broads One Design class may now be 117 years old, but it is still raced actively throughout the Norfolk Broads, with racing fleets approaching 30 boats being frequently seen for the big class events. And while the design hasn’t changed since its inception, construction methods have: in 1987 a fiberglass mold was created and after a build hiatus of nearly 50 years, low-maintenance glass boats, fitted out with wooden cockpit and spars, started to race alongside the original wooden boats. Over the last thirty years, 57 fiberglass boats have swelled the original 31 woodies to 88 Broads One Designs launched. “Buying a new plastic B.O.D. would have been the smart choice for SoCal sailing” says Mockridge, shaking his head ruefully, “especially as they’re almost indistinguishable from the wooden boats. But I’m a sucker for wood and for owning a piece of history. I’ve made my bed and now I have to lie in it!”
From Sailing Anarchy
For over six decades west coast sailors have made the annual pilgrimage through the July heat of central California to the cool, clear waters of Huntington Lake, to compete in Fresno Yacht Club’s High Sierra Regatta. At 7,000′ up in the Sierra Nevada range and fringed by pine trees, Huntington Lake offers one of the more scenic sailing venues in CA, plus the enviable boast of predictable winds thanks to the thermal heating effect of the Fresno Valley below. With the first weekend primarily aimed at dinghies and the second more focused on keelboats, as many as 150 boats have been known to travel to one or both of the two race weekends.One such west coast sailor who is a staunch proponent of the HSR is English ex-pat, Nick Mockridge. Having been the driving force behind getting the Viper 640 to the event some 10 years ago, as well as competing in the Open 5.70 class, Mockridge returned to the lake this year to compete in the ‘keelboat weekend’ in his 111 year old wooden English classic Broads One Design, “Snipe”.
“After a lifetime of racing one-design performance dinghies and sportsboats, bringing a displacement boat to race PHRF is rather a departure for me. I have always believed that racing one design negated the politics and excuses found in handicap racing. But despite that, my passion for classic wooden boats guided me into a class that I have loved since childhood, and so has left me no choice but to adopt a new approach to racing”.
That childhood love is the Broads One Design (B.O.D), commissioned in 1900 by the Royal Norfolk and Suffolk Yacht Club in England and designed by Linton Hope, double gold medalist at the 1900 Paris Olympics and official yacht designer to King Leopold II, King of the Belgians. Hope’s brief was to design a craft suitable for both the inland waters of the Norfolk Broads – a series of interconnected lakes and rivers – and the ever turbulent waters of the North Sea off Lowestoft. “Snipe” was the tenth hull of his inspiration, built and launched in 1906.
“While there are numerous old designs still sailing in Europe, understandably many US sailors find it difficult to appreciate just how old this design is” says Mockridge. “In historical milestone terms, it is older than the Wright Brothers’ first powered flight (1903), Henry Ford’s Model T (1908) and the sinking of the Titanic (1912)”. She’s antique old, and this sort of old doesn’t mean fast, but it does mean characterful.
Certainly “Snipe” added an interesting contrast to the weekend, her varnished wooden hull and gaff rig jostling for position amongst such modern and sporty glass/carbon classes as the Viper 640, J70, 11 Meter, Flying Tiger, etc. “That’s the great thing about the High Sierra Regatta” Mockridge continues. “You can be as competitive or laid back as you wish, and because of the superb conditions and the camaraderie you’re still going to have a great time.
I made the HSR a family affair this year, racing with my youngest son and my sister & brother-in-law from England. But they’re also my A-team; it may be a fun regatta but most crews come here to kick posterior”. Indeed, a number of fleets demonstrated that just because the course was on a pretty lake, it didn’t mean that fighting for the best start wasn’t going to cause general recalls. And at the conclusion of the weekend, the podium places for both the Thistle and Moore fleets had to be ascertained on countback and the top three places in the Sportsboat fleet were separated by just 1 point each. Only in the PHRF A fleet was there total domination, with the Wylie Wabbits clearly reveling in the moderate breezes and flat water to take the top 4 places overall.
And how did “Snipe” fare? “Bloody awfully!” laughs Mockridge. “After years of being at the front of one-design fleets we found ourselves near the back of our PHRF fleet. Being a gaff rig we couldn’t point nearly as high as our Bermudan counterparts and so lost our lane and were spat out of the back quickly, and the inefficient full keel configuration and terribly short waterline length (just 16′ 6″ for a 24′ boat) limited our speed through the water.” But as he points out, if he wanted to compete on a fair and even playing field he should have stuck to one-design racing. “I gave PHRF SoCal the unenviable task of trying to create a rating for a boat they’d never heard of, let alone seen! They had no historical race data upon which to base their calculations, and there were no other full-keel designs or gaff-rigged designs to guide them. I think they made a jolly good effort, but based on my past results I feel that a little tweaking is in order. But then again, what PHRF boat owner doesn’t think his/her rating needs a little tweaking?!”
While the racing may be the focal point of the weekend, the High Sierra Regatta isn’t just about the competition; it’s as much about the time spent ashore. There are no hotels at the lake, so accommodation is limited to rental cabins or bring-you-own RV or tent to set up home in one of the many US Forest Service campgrounds. Sitting round a camp fire with fellow regatta members and/or family eating s’mores and telling war stories is very much part of the weekend, but for those who prefer to have their meals catered, Fresno YC also puts on a serious feast. Sore heads reigned on the Sunday morning but the racers groggily took to the water, undeterred by the over-excesses of the night before.
With another successful High Sierra Regatta in the books of the Fresno Yacht Club, most of the competing boats have scattered to the winds, returning to their home clubs elsewhere in CA, AZ, NV and OR. Snipe has returned to Santa Barbara where she sails under the burgee of the Santa Barbara Sailing Club. “She may have been designed to take on rough coastal conditions”, says Mockridge, “but that was over 100 years ago. I can’t risk losing her; she’s irreplaceable. Because of her low freeboard I prefer to sail her in relatively smooth waters and Santa Barbara, with its along-shore winds, makes for perfect sailing conditions. We’ve had her out in 20 knots, but because the Santa Barbara waves are pretty benign even in that sort of breeze, she’s had no difficulty in powering over them despite her age”.
Southern California is not a hotbed for either wooden boats or classic boats, so “Snipe” stands out as a bit of an anomaly. The first 31 Broads One Designs, built between 1900 and 1939 were initially constructed of cedar planking, but later boats were mahogany. Either way, they were designed to be wet sailed, and because “Snipe” is dry sailed and kept on her trailer in the SBSC boat yard, the warm, dry SoCal climate created an unexpected problem for Mockridge. “The first time we launched and sailed her we were surprised to discover that it was necessary for me to work the bilge pump almost constantly, while my non-sailor children gamely steered and controlled the sheets. After an hour I think there was more Pacific Ocean inside the boat than out!” This is because the cedar planks both above and below the waterline had dried out and shrunk, causing the seams to leak. “I ended up lining the bilge and cockpit interior with wet towels in order to swell the planks and close up the seams. I’m so used to sponging out and toweling dry a boat after sailing, that adding moisture and leaving the boat wet was a totally alien concept”. However, this approach was evidently successful as only brief and occasional pumping was required during the High Sierra Regatta.
The Broads One Design class may now be 117 years old, but it is still raced actively throughout the Norfolk Broads, with racing fleets approaching 30 boats being frequently seen for the big class events. And while the design hasn’t changed since its inception, construction methods have: in 1987 a fiberglass mold was created and after a build hiatus of nearly 50 years, low-maintenance glass boats, fitted out with wooden cockpit and spars, started to race alongside the original wooden boats. Over the last thirty years, 57 fiberglass boats have swelled the original 31 woodies to 88 Broads One Designs launched. “Buying a new plastic B.O.D. would have been the smart choice for SoCal sailing” says Mockridge, shaking his head ruefully, “especially as they’re almost indistinguishable from the wooden boats. But I’m a sucker for wood and for owning a piece of history. I’ve made my bed and now I have to lie in it!”
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