Holiday...

 Holiday coming, taking a few days off.. See you next week.

So much for the victims.....

Bill Cosby freed from prison, his sex conviction overturned

MARYCLAIRE DALE

Pennsylvania’s highest court threw out Bill Cosby’s sexual assault conviction and released him from prison Wednesday in a stunning reversal of fortune for the comedian once known as “America’s Dad,” ruling that the prosecutor who brought the case was bound by his predecessor's agreement not to charge Cosby.

Cosby, 83, flashed the V-for-victory sign to a helicopter overhead as he trudged into his suburban Philadelphia home after serving nearly three years of a three- to 10-year sentence for drugging and violating Temple University sports administrator Andrea Constand in 2004.

The former “Cosby Show” star — the first celebrity tried and convicted in the #MeToo era — had no immediate comment.

Cosby was arrested in 2015, when a district attorney armed with newly unsealed evidence — the comic's damaging deposition in a lawsuit brought by Constand — filed charges against him just days before the 12-year statute of limitations was about to run out.

But the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said Wednesday that District Attorney Kevin Steele, who made the decision to arrest Cosby, was obligated to stand by his predecessor’s promise not to charge Cosby, though there was no evidence that agreement was ever put in writing.

Justice David Wecht, writing for a split court, said Cosby had relied on the previous district attorney's decision not to charge him when the comedian gave his potentially incriminating testimony in Constand’s civil case.

The court called Cosby's subsequent arrest “an affront to fundamental fairness, particularly when it results in a criminal prosecution that was forgone for more than a decade.” It said justice and “fair play and decency” require that the district attorney's office stand by the decision of the previous DA.

The justices said that overturning the conviction and barring any further prosecution “is the only remedy that comports with society’s reasonable expectations of its elected prosecutors and our criminal justice system.”

As Cosby was promptly set free from the state prison in suburban Montgomery County and driven home, his appeals lawyer, Jennifer Bonjean, said he should never have been charged.

"District attorneys can’t change it up simply because of their political motivation," she said, adding that Cosby remains in excellent health, apart from being legally blind.

In a statement, Steele said Cosby went free “on a procedural issue that is irrelevant to the facts of the crime.” He commended Constand for coming forward and added: “My hope is that this decision will not dampen the reporting of sexual assaults by victims.”

Constand and her lawyer did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

“FINALLY!!!! A terrible wrong is being righted — a miscarriage of justice is corrected!” the actor’s “Cosby Show” co-star Phylicia Rashad tweeted.

“I am furious to hear this news,” actor Amber Tamblyn, a founder of Time’s Up, an advocacy group for victims of sexual assault, said on Twitter. “I personally know women who this man drugged and raped while unconscious. Shame on the court and this decision.”

Four Supreme Court justices formed the majority that ruled in Cosby's favor, while three others dissented in whole or in part.

Peter Goldberger, a suburban Philadelphia lawyer with an expertise in criminal appeals, said prosecutors could ask the Pennsylvania Supreme Court for reargument or reconsideration, but it would be a very long shot.

“I can’t imagine that with such a lengthy opinion, with a thoughtful concurring opinion and a thoughtful dissenting opinion, that you could honestly say they made a simple mistake that would change their minds if they point it out to them,” Goldberger said.

Even though Cosby was charged only with the assault on Constand, the judge at his trial allowed five other accusers to testify that they, too, were similarly victimized by Cosby in the 1980s. Prosecutors called them as witnesses to establish what they said was a pattern of behavior on Cosby's part.

Cosby's lawyers had argued on appeal that the use of the five additional accusers was improper. But the Pennsylvania high court did not weigh in on the question, saying it was moot, given the finding that Cosby should not have been prosecuted in the first place.

In New York, the judge at last year’s trial of Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, whose case helped sparked the #MeToo movement in 2017, let four other accusers testify. Weinstein was convicted and sentenced to 23 years in prison.

In sentencing Cosby, the trial judge had ruled him a sexually violent predator who could not be safely allowed out in public and needed to report to authorities for the rest of his life.

In May, Cosby was denied parole after refusing to participate in sex offender programs behind bars. He said he would resist the treatment programs and refuse to acknowledge wrongdoing even if it meant serving the full 10 years.

The groundbreaking Black actor grew up in public housing in Philadelphia and made a fortune estimated at $400 million during his 50 years in the entertainment industry that included the TV shows “I Spy,” “The Cosby Show” and “Fat Albert,” along with comedy albums and a multitude of television commercials.

The suburban Philadelphia prosecutor who originally looked into Constand's allegations, Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor, considered the case flawed because Constand waited a year to come forward and stayed in contact with Cosby afterward. Castor declined to prosecute and instead encouraged Constand to sue for damages.

Questioned under oath as part of that lawsuit, Cosby said he used to offer quaaludes to women he wanted to have sex with. He eventually settled with Constand for $3.4 million.

Portions of the deposition later became public at the request of The Associated Press and spelled Cosby's downfall, opening the floodgates on accusations from other women and destroying the comic's good-guy reputation and career. More than 60 women came forward to say Cosby violated them.

The AP does not typically identify sexual assault victims without their permission, which Constand has granted.

Cosby, in the deposition, acknowledged giving quaaludes to a 19-year-old woman before having sex with her at a Las Vegas hotel in 1976. Cosby called the encounter consensual.

On Wednesday, the woman, Therese Serignese, now 64, said the court ruling “takes my breath away.”

“I just think it’s a miscarriage of justice. This is about procedure. It's not about the truth of the women,” she said. Serignese said she took solace in the fact Cosby served nearly three years behind bars: "That’s as good as it gets in America” for sex crime victims.

Wish there was a hell so he could be tortured forever....

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has died at the age of 88

Rumsfeld served as secretary of defense under both Presidents Gerald Ford and George W. Bush.

By MYAH WARD

Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense under both Gerald Ford and George W. Bush, has died. He was 88.

Rumsfeld, both the youngest and second-oldest person to have served as secretary of Defense, died surrounded by family in Taos, N.M., his family said in a statement.

“History may remember him for his extraordinary accomplishments over six decades of public service, but for those who knew him best and whose lives were forever changed as a result, we will remember his unwavering love for his wife Joyce, his family and friends, and the integrity he brought to a life dedicated to country,” the family said in the statement.

Rumsfeld graduated from Princeton University in 1954 with a degree in political science and went on to serve in the Navy for three years. The Illinois native launched a campaign for Congress in Illinois’ 13th Congressional District, winning in 1962 at the age of 30. He was a leading co-sponsor of the Freedom of Information Act.

He served under several presidents. He was appointed to the Office of Economic Opportunity by President Richard Nixon in 1969. He also headed Nixon’s Economic Stabilization Program before being appointed as ambassador to NATO.

In 1974, Rumsfeld returned to Washington to serve as President Ford’s chief of staff. When Ford later appointed him secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld recruited Dick Cheney, his young former staffer and a staunch ally, to take over his role.

Rumsfeld holds the distinction of serving two non-consecutive terms as head of the DoD, as he was later appointed again in 2001 by President George W. Bush. He was also the youngest, at 43, and the oldest, at 74, to have the title.

Charged???

WSJ: Trump Organization expected to be charged with tax crimes on Thursday

By Erica Orden and Kara Scannell

The Manhattan district attorney's office is expected to charge former President Donald Trump's namesake company and its chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, as soon as Thursday with tax crimes in connection with an array of perks and benefits awarded to employees, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Though Trump faced multiple federal and state prosecutorial inquiries during his administration, the district attorney's indictment would be the first to charge his company, the Trump Organization, with allegedly criminal conduct.

Trump himself isn't expected to be charged, his lawyer has said.

Latest Airstrikes

How are Biden’s Latest Airstrikes Not Just a War?

At the very least, they make a mockery of the war powers debate.

DAN SPINELLI

On a Friday in March, nearly 50 years ago, a young Joe Biden stood on the floor of the Senate and challenged the power of a president to unilaterally conduct a forever war. “Time and time again,” he said, “we members of Congress are repeatedly told by the press and presidents that we are incapable of making foreign policy decisions.” But Biden didn’t buy it. Two years earlier, Congress had helped push the United States toward leaving Vietnam. By his 1975 speech, the United States had begun evacuating its remaining troops. Biden hinted at a dark message: If Congress hadn’t intervened, the United States might still be fighting. 

That was the danger of a president with too much power.

On Sunday, Biden decided to launch airstrikes at Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria. If that time near the end of a Vietnam War marked a rethinking of the limits of presidential war powers, the prevailing discourse has long since shifted in another direction. The reality is this: Presidents have nearly unfettered power to initiate conflict, Congress be damned. Controversy brewed among lawmakers over Biden’s decision to launch the airstrikes. But he cited his constitutional ability to defend US troops abroad and moved on. “I have that authority under Article II—and even those up on the Hill who are reluctant to acknowledge that have acknowledged that is the case,” he said Monday.

The reality is this: Presidents have nearly unfettered power to initiate conflict, Congress be damned.

Some would argue Article II doesn’t allow an action like Biden took. But the confidence of his statement shows how ineffective national security law can be when characterizing things as seemingly obvious yet ultimately ill-defined as “self-defense” and “war.” If the White House is shameless, the United States can justify military action under any context. In other words, it can enact a war without ever declaring it. 

“It’s hard to argue, given the pace of attacks against U.S. troops and, now, the increasing frequency of our responses, this isn’t war,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Reuters. “What we always worry about is that the United States slips into war without the American public actually being able to weigh in.”

Under Article II of the Constitution, the president is empowered to defend US troops, but over time, “the Executive Branch has really expanded the scope of what it asserts that self-defense power to encompass,” Steve Pomper, a former Obama National Security Council official, told me. “Now the Executive Branch has gotten into the habit of saying, ‘Our Article II authority allows us to take strikes that send a deterrent message’ or ‘disrupt planning that could contribute to future threats.'”

It is becoming increasingly difficult to explain away this intermittent fighting as isolated acts of self-defense. Since Trump took office, the constant saber-rattling with Iran has edged closer to actual war. Last year, his decision to assassinate Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani caused Iran to fire rockets at a base in Iraq harboring US troops. Nearly three-dozen troops were diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries from the attack. 

This time around, Biden’s strikes have provoked a similar tit-for-tat response with these militias. Hashd Al-Shaabi, one of the groups targeted in the attack, said four of its members were killed and vowed Monday to “wreak vengeance on the perpetrators of this heinous crime.” That night, US troops in Syria came under “rocket fire,” the Wall Street Journal reported. US officials pinned the blame on Iranian-backed militants, furthering another round of reprisals that appear destined to extend the US presence in the Middle East indefinitely.

It’s all a self-fulfilling cycle that has its roots in the disastrous US interventions following 9/11. Congress passed an authorization for use of military force (an “AUMF”) in 2001, which applied to al-Qaeda. The following year, Congress passed another AUMF that gave Bush’s administration permission to invade Iraq. But both provisions have been stretched well past their initial context. The Obama administration strained logic to say the 2001 authorization applied to “successor” groups like the Islamic State. And while the United States ousted Saddam Hussein quickly and ended the Iraq War years ago, Barack Obama still justified his continued campaign against the Islamic State by citing the 2002 authorization for use of military force. (An irony: Iraq is now a US ally, making the 2002 authorization—which treats Iraq as an adversary—even more outdated.) 

After all this, Trump then used both authorizations for his own interventions. So in sum, the United States invaded Iraq to topple Hussein, returned to fight the Islamic State, and now continues to fight Iran-linked militias like Hashd Al-Shaabi that helped fight back against ISIS. 

A resurgent movement among Democratic lawmakers to rein in war powers is challenging these broad interpretations of presidential power. Biden’s own agenda calls for changing this, too. He has already come out in support of House Democrats’ push to repeal the 2002 AUMF, which passed the House earlier this month.

This would seem in line with Biden’s 1975 speech, if a contrast to his more recent actions. But the truth is, Biden has never really been consistent in his approach to war powers. While he noted early on as a lawmaker that Congress had become hopelessly sidelined in the intra-government fight over war powers, by 1988 he had unveiled a plan to expand presidential war powers. That year, he co-authored a Georgetown Law Journal article calling for more instances where a president can act without congressional approval, including in response “to a foreign military threat that severely and directly jeopardizes the supreme national interests of the United States.” 

The real driver in Biden’s view instead seems his feelings about the individual conflicts in question—not any overriding philosophy. “When it’s a use of force that he is in favor of, then suddenly he decides the president has all the power in the world,” Patrick Hulme, a political science Ph.D student at the University of California, San Diego, who has written about Biden’s evolving war powers views, told me. “When it’s a use of force that he’s against for whatever policy reason, then suddenly the war powers become sacrosanct again.”

While campaigning for president in 2008, Biden went as far as to say Bush had “no authority to unilaterally attack Iran” and threatened to “move to impeach him” if he did so. When Obama took office, his advisers “looked with some horror at the breadth of the claims that the Bush administration had made under Article II,” Pomper said. Still, the administration leaned on the 2001 and 2002 authorizations and disregarded Congress when it suited their needs. (Obama famously chose not to seek permission from Congress before intervening in the Libyan civil war; the Republican-led House at the time voted against authorizing it.)

After Trump’s near-conflict with Iran reignited the war powers debate in Congress, Biden faces a political environment that is more hostile to the use of decades-old congressional authorizations to justify conflict with different adversaries in the Middle East. Under Obama, “there was a real effort to try and rely on the 2001 AUMF as much as possible as a sort of wellspring of authority for [counterterrorism] operations and not to rely on Article II claims,” Pomper said. “Now there’s AUMF fatigue and they’re springing back to Article II.”

Reining in presidential war powers is a lot like playing whack-a-mole. Take out one flimsy legal justification and another is ready to take its place. “What this teaches us is the whole framework really does need to be revisited,” Pomper said. “You need root-and-branch reform.”

Pay farmers to grow carbon-capturing crops

Biden wants to pay farmers to grow carbon-capturing crops. It’s complicated.

Farmers are a crucial part of Biden's plan to address climate change, but the economics behind paying them to capture greenhouse gases are complex.

By HELENA BOTTEMILLER EVICH and RYAN MCCRIMMON

President Joe Biden’s goal of paying farmers and ranchers to help battle climate change is running into the reality of how complicated and costly it will be.

Six months into the administration, officials have yet to unveil their plan. That’s in part because it’s logistically complex and difficult to make the economics work: While corporations are eager to buy credits that pay farmers to pull carbon dioxide out of the air and into their soil, the credits aren’t yet lucrative enough to entice enough farmers to rethink how they grow crops to maximize capturing carbon.

“There’s a ton of hype and farmers are very interested in this, but if this gets screwed up it’s going to be a bad deal,” said Mitchell Hora, an Iowa farmer and founder of Continuum Ag, a soil health consulting company, who himself isn’t jumping into carbon markets yet.

Farmers are a key piece of Biden’s overall strategy to slash greenhouse gases across the U.S. economy: American agriculture contributes about 9 percent of U.S. emissions, but in theory has the potential to more than offset its own footprint. Recent interest among farmers and buy-in from powerful food and ag industry groups are giving Biden a rare opportunity to enlist agriculture in his sweeping climate agenda. But the window for action may be limited as the new president’s political capital wanes and midterm elections draw closer.

Despite talk about positioning farms to save the planet, the number of acres currently engaged in these carbon programs is minuscule, according to a POLITICO examination of existing markets. There are also numerous technical challenges to scaling up to a point where such efforts could meaningfully cut greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Those challenges haven’t stopped lawmakers from pushing for voluntary programs to involve farmers, rather than urging mandatory limits on emissions or other regulations that would be political nonstarters. The Senate last week overwhelmingly approved a bill to support these new voluntary markets — a rare bipartisan move on climate legislation.

The momentum behind agricultural carbon offsets goes beyond Capitol Hill. The CME Group, which operates major agricultural commodity trading platforms, announced it will soon launch a futures market for “nature based” offsets, including projects on farm and forest land.

Even as the Biden administration figures out how to help scale up carbon farming, officials have made clear that any participation for farmers will be strictly voluntary, which is essential for keeping the agriculture industry on board.

Environmental scientists, however, are increasingly warning against relying too heavily on carbon offsets rather than cracking down on the pollution driving global warming.

“If your bathtub is overflowing, you should probably turn off the faucet first before you look for a sponge,” said Jonathan Foley, executive director of Project Drawdown, a nonprofit focused on climate solutions. “I don’t know why we are reaching for the sponge more than we are turning off or turning down the faucet. It’s not going to work.”

The big opportunity

The push to turn American farmland into a massive carbon sponge has been steadily winning over the agriculture industry, which is eager to find new revenue and avoid future regulation. In theory, the country’s agricultural soils have the potential to sequester up to 10 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions each year, according to some estimates.

That scale can only be realized if hundreds of millions of acres of farmland are managed with more climate-friendly practices, such as drastically cutting back on tilling — or disturbing soil — a common practice across the heartland that releases carbon dioxide into the air.

Another climate-friendly practice is the planting of cover crops, which improve soil health and help draw down CO2 by keeping the ground covered between crop rotations.

In his first address before Congress in April, Biden floated the idea of paying farmers to grow cover crops as part of his big jobs and climate plan. The idea is gaining popularity, but cover crops, which can include plants like cereal rye or oats, are grown on only about 4 percent of cropland acres, according to the most recent government estimates.

The challenge for the Biden administration is figuring out how to provide tempting enough incentives to an entire industry to change how it operates — especially one that’s historically been resistant to change coming from inside the Beltway.

One problem USDA is trying to tackle right now is figuring out how to make carbon offset markets work better for farmers and ranchers who right now generate a tiny slice of the credits corporations can buy.

“These markets aren’t functioning very well for agriculture,” Bill Hohenstein, director of USDA’s Office of Energy and Environmental Policy, said in an interview.

“Ag is playing a very small role in the market,” he said, adding that there are a lot of barriers.

Administration officials are working to figure out the best way to remove those obstacles. They are currently evaluating thousands of comments they’ve received from farmers and interest groups about how they should approach climate incentives.

One issue is that it’s extremely difficult and expensive to quantify the amount of carbon being stored in soils. Relying too heavily on computer modeling, which is cheaper than soil testing, can be problematic. Soils can vary quite a lot from region to region and even farm to farm. Making sure the carbon stays sequestered in the soil is another major challenge. Reverting back to old practices, such as conventional tilling, can release the CO2 right back into the atmosphere.

Another barrier is scale. Today, a mid- to large-scale farmer who decides to start generating carbon credits might sequester a few hundred tons of carbon. One ton is equal to one credit.

But other industries that generate greenhouse gas offsets, like landfills, can potentially generate 100,000 credits in a single project. The larger scale helps defray the cost of verifying the credits, which can run into thousands of dollars.

Officials are now considering ways to help farms aggregate credits across multiple operations as a way to reduce the cost per project and make participation more economically viable.

Beyond carbon markets

Several climate advocates say the Biden administration should steer clear of promoting complex carbon markets. Instead, they recommend focusing on making existing multi-billion-dollar farm programs more climate-friendly.

Scott Faber, head of government affairs for the nonprofit Environmental Working Group, said USDA should “reboot” longstanding environmental initiatives. Farmers already regularly participate in the well-established Conservation Reserve Program, Conservation Stewardship Program and Environmental Quality Incentives Program. All of those USDA programs pay farmers to either employ greener practices or take land out of production.

“It’s much easier to make progress by resetting the alphabet soup of conservation programs than by intervening in a still-emerging marketplace where it’s hard to measure the size and scale of the widgets being produced,” Faber said.

The Biden administration has taken smaller steps to reorient existing programs toward its climate change agenda. For example, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in April rolled out an expansion of the Conservation Reserve Program to include new incentives and higher payment rates for farmers who agree to take land out of production. USDA just began offering a $5-per-acre benefit on crop insurance premiums to farmers who planted cover crops during the current year.

The department, however, has been vague about more ambitious efforts. A 20-page outline of its “climate-smart agriculture and forestry strategy” in May had little to say about specific policy plans.

Even persuading more farmers and ranchers to participate in existing conservation programs is tough when crops like corn and soybeans are currently fetching their highest prices in years.

“Bringing a lot of land out of production in prime crop areas is going to be an expensive proposition,” says Joseph Glauber, senior fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute and former USDA chief economist. “Vilsack has been very clear that he wants to see CRP grow, but he wants it to be on a voluntary basis. The question then becomes, at what cost, and how much do you have to offer producers to coax land in?”

The department could attempt to funnel new climate initiatives through the Commodity Credit Corporation — a loosely regulated pot of money that Congress funds every year.

The Trump administration used it for its trade bailout and coronavirus relief payments. But when incoming Biden officials floated the idea of using the CCC to create a “carbon bank” to help fund climate incentives, Republicans on Capitol Hill balked at the idea.

Glauber contends Biden might have to wait until 2023, when the new farm bill is written, to push through sweeping policy changes.

Even then, creating new programs might require shifting funds around from existing efforts — something that would inevitably raise the hackles of powerful farm industry groups.

“I think it’s very, very difficult to go in and initiate a big program without sufficient authority,” Glauber said. “It’s hard to see [USDA] doing a whole lot over the next couple years until a farm bill comes along.”

That timeline is far too slow for advocates who argue urgent action is needed.

Ben Lilliston, head of rural strategies and climate change at the left-leaning Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, said USDA should advocate more aggressively for Congress to expand the conservation programs in any upcoming infrastructure package.

“It’s a really unique opportunity, because very rarely do you get a chance to do that outside of the farm bill,” Lilliston said. “There would be immediate climate benefits.”

That’s also a priority for Senate Agriculture Chair Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), who said the $1 billion in Biden’s infrastructure package to help agriculture shift to net-zero emissions, spread over eight years, was “woefully inadequate.” Stabenow has been pressing to get somewhere in the neighborhood of $50 billion for climate and conservation efforts as part of a broader infrastructure or reconciliation package.

The heavy resistance to imposing new agricultural regulations also limits how big Biden can go on climate change.

“It would be so much easier if carbon was regulated,” Glauber said. “If there was a price for carbon, all of these programs would take care of themselves. There would be lower-cost ways of meeting carbon reduction goals.”

Supporters and critics of carbon markets all seem to agree that the price of carbon needs to go up. Farmers are currently being paid around $15 per ton of carbon sequestered as the market starts to get off the ground. There’s a growing consensus that the price probably needs to be more in the $30 to $50 range to draw in more farmers and pick up real momentum.

But it's not clear how much the price of carbon can go up if the market is relying primarily on demand from corporations that have made voluntary emissions reductions pledges. A similar carbon offset market collapsed more than a decade ago due to lack of demand and a lack of trust in the credits right as cap-and-trade collapsed in Congress.

There’s also a growing sense that USDA may ultimately have to buy agricultural carbon credits to boost the market, though that could be a ways off.

Sam Kass, a partner at Acre Venture Partners who was a food and agriculture policy adviser and chef to President Barack Obama, said he thinks the federal government will “absolutely” eventually buy credits, even if it’s just to offset the government’s own carbon footprint, which is substantial.

“I think Washington would be wise to put some real dollars and some real policy muscle to work, because I don’t think this opportunity will come around again,” Kass said, noting that most of the other carbon sequestration options rely on technology that’s at least a decade away from being ready.

“If we don’t figure out a solution right now to draw down a meaningful amount of carbon dioxide, it’s going to be too late,” he said.

Darkness Falls

A New Darkness Falls on the Trump Movement

A bizarre 24 hours on the trail with the former president gave hints at the earthquake ahead.

By MERIDITH MCGRAW

It was 6 a.m. in Cleveland. I had spent the night trying to sleep stretched out across three chairs in the baggage claim at the airport and was wearing the same sweaty, grass-stained sundress I’d worn at the Donald Trump rally from the night before, when a familiar face sat down next to me on the flight back to Washington, D.C.

There was Marjorie Taylor Greene sporting camo shorts and rhinestone bracelets, sipping a green Monster Energy drink. Hours earlier, the Georgia lawmaker and CrossFit devotee had delivered a stemwinder that made Trump’s own stream-of-consciousness remarks seem subdued in comparison.

“I saw you speak at the rally last night,” I said, my eyes bloodshot and my forehead leathery from baking in the June sun the day before.

“Oh?” Greene perked up, before quickly deflating when I informed her I was a reporter. “You [the media] don’t treat me very fairly.”

My days aren’t normally quite this … unusual. But it seemed oddly appropriate given the moment. Trump’s reemergence on the political scene is promising to spark a seismic disruption to America’s political system bigger than the one he caused when he came down his gilded escalator six years ago. Where once his supporters were hopeful, they now seemed aggrieved. The crowds are more frenzied, the conspiracies more fantastical, the cast of characters more outlandish.

That includes Greene, a freshman congresswoman from exurban Atlanta and self-described QAnon repentant who — just six months in office — has managed to get expelled from her committees and nearly censured for comparing mask-wearing to the Holocaust. A resume like that would, in past times, relegate her to the fringes of her party. But, on our chat home, she explained just how central she is set to become in the Trump comeback narrative.

The former president, she said, had personally invited her to the rally and, schedule permitting, she planned to attend his upcoming events across the country this summer.

Greene is an unapologetic type, which goes some way to explaining why she is appreciated by Trump — a man loath to ever admit fault or apologize. On stage, he praised her as “loved and respected, tough, smart and kind.”

During our flight home, she explained her penchant for making controversial statements as a byproduct of her northwest Georgia upbringing: that’s just how people talk back home. She said she felt the media has given her, a mom and businesswoman, an unfair shake, though the controversy that surrounds her is often of her own making — like the time she attracted headlines for agreeing with people who said the Parkland massacre was a “false-flag planned shooting.” She told me she continues to believe the 2020 election was stolen, though its validity has been proven time and again.

She never once asked to go off record as I sat there, in our row, half asleep and half awake. It had been a long 24 hours.

Earlier that day, I had traveled to the Lorain County fairgrounds in rural northeast Ohio to cover Trump’s first true post-presidential rally. The events tend to resemble a cross between a NASCAR tailgate and a traveling circus. Vendors from states far away come to sell their MAGA hats and Trump T-shirts. There are die-hard fans who camp out days before to get a prime position. Strangers give each other high-fives and honk their car horns as they pass houses flying Trump, or now, “F--- Biden” flags.

On Saturday evening, Trump had come to town to support congressional candidate Max Miller, a former White House aide who gained his endorsement partly because he was a loyal foot soldier willing to take on Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

But no one seemed to care about any of that. Few of the attendees registered any opinion on the congressional race. Two people I interviewed from the 16th District didn’t even know who Gonzalez or Miller were.

Instead, they wanted to hear from Trump; and, if not him, then the supporting cast of allies who have eagerly fed the fraud that the 2020 election was stolen, ripped from the hands of voters like them.

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, a Trump confidant and donor who has pushed conspiracy theories about the election so wild that he is now the defendant in a multimillion dollar defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems, was greeted like a veritable rock star. Wearing a suit and tie, sweat glistening off his face, he posed for selfies with fans, as they screamed out “hero!” at his mere passing by.

Lindell may have been one of the evening’s main actors, but the play itself was a fantasy about last November.

On stage, a math teacher from Cincinnati gave a bizarre PowerPoint presentation to a patient audience that squinted in the sun to see slides of squiggly lines he said amounted to evidence of widespread, coordinated election fraud. He used his fuzzy math to prove Trump actually won the election, and the audience nodded along.

When it was Greene’s turn to speak, she asked the audience, “Who is your president?” “Trump!,” they replied, even though the year is 2021 and Joe Biden occupies the White House.

Not that the crowd needed much convincing. I asked Richard Stachurski, a resident of Wellington, Ohio, if he wanted Trump to run in 2024.

“How do you run for president if you’re already president?” he replied.

When he finally took the stage, Trump attacked Biden’s policies and became animated when he pivoted to the past, talking about his negotiations with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and his plans for a border wall.

There was a familiarity to it all. The chants of “4 MORE YEARS!” and “LOCK HIM UP!” (this time, aimed at infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci instead of former campaign rival Hillary Clinton). The recitation of the sinister poem, “The Snake.”

And yet, there were signs this rally was different. During past rallies, Trump’s supporters applauded Trump as he trashed immigrants, demonized the media, and echoed his calls to lock up his opponents. But they also felt hopeful the real estate magnate was giving them a voice. There was a sense that this charismatic outsider would empower them to change Washington, and a joyfulness that came with being part of a movement. Now, they felt cheated. “WE THE PEOPLE ARE PISSED OFF,” one popular rally T-shirt read. Their champion was no longer in office, which means he had been stripped of any real power. It seemed to feed a sense of desperation, even from Trump himself.

“The subject matter is somewhat depressing,” he said of his own speech.

In all, Trump spoke for more than 95 minutes, and after the rally was over, supporters marched back to their cars. In the distance, the bright lights of the rally that read “SAVE AMERICA AGAIN” and a lit-up fairground french fries truck painted a dusky dreamscape redolent of Edward Hopper.

“Gloria,” the one-hit-wonder disco song about a woman driven to insanity because of a man, could be heard blaring from the speakers.

"Are the voices in your head calling, Gloria?”

People sang along.

It was time for us all to go home. And so I did, to the hotel I assumed I had booked. But when I arrived, the receptionist couldn’t find my reservation number. And after calling every hotel in the area, I resigned myself to the fact that a few hours in bed just wasn’t going to happen. To the airport I went.

“I think it’s because there was a Trump rally tonight,” one hotel receptionist said.

“Yes,” I replied, “Yes, there was.”

GOP climate resolve????

Northwest heat wave wilts new GOP climate resolve

House Republicans formed a new climate caucus last week, but that hasn't changed their policy positions amid the record temperatures.

By ZACK COLMAN

A week ago, three lawmakers from the Northwest joined dozens of their Republican colleagues in creating the new Conservative Climate Caucus to show they were serious about addressing the growing threats to the planet.

Then they went silent as a devastating heat wave hit the region.

The trio — Reps. Cliff Bentz of Oregon and Dan Newhouse and Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington state — have been largely invisible as the heat wave shattered temperature records, melted streetcar power cables and caused rolling blackouts, all the symptoms of a warming climate that scientists say will only become more common in the future.

For conservatives outside of government who are anxious to see some congressional action to combat climate change, it's simply a sign that Republicans haven't fully recognized the threat.

“Conservatives are learning to think differently about climate change but they don’t yet know what to think,” said Alex Flint, executive director of Alliance for Market Solutions, an organization of conservatives seeking market-friendly climate policies. “Despite this new approach, many conservatives are not yet comfortable with the scale of the policy needed to address climate change,” he added.

Much like past GOP responses to hurricanes, floods and other climate-linked calamities, the Northwest Republicans' lack of responses to the heat wave raise questions about whether even deadly consequences in their home districts can dislodge Republican lawmakers from their usual stances and talking points on global warming.

And at least one, McMorris Rodgers, is also continuing to lambaste Democrats' and President Joe Biden’s climate proposals as too expensive and grandiose in what she slammed Tuesday as the “left’s ‘rush to green’ agenda."

Democrats’ push for massive spending on wind, solar and new electric transmission would burden workers and families, she warned at a committee hearing on Tuesday, and proposals to slash greenhouse gas pollution by 2030 could "take us backwards to a time before reliable electricity and modern conveniences."

That was more than her colleagues offered when asked if they supported spending on climate measures in an infrastructure bill. Bentz declined to comment, while Newhouse's office did not reply to requests for comment.

While progressive Democrats are fuming over the lack of climate measures in the framework agreement for a bipartisan infrastructure bill announced last week, Republicans are warning against any linkage between that $1.2 trillion measure and a more climate-focused bill that would promote clean energy and electric vehicles that Democrats are expected to push on their own.

Democratic Washington Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray and Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden all called for attaching climate investments to the infrastructure package.

McMorris Rodgers' spokesperson for the Energy and Commerce Committee, Jack Heretik, said in a statement in response to a query that "she believes that in order to address climate change risks, America must embrace and unleash innovation in a wide range of energy solutions, including emission-free and low-emission energy like hydropower, nuclear and natural gas.”

But climate experts say those measures on their own won't stop the planet from warming above thresholds that will lead to catastrophic changes, including devastating storms, droughts and worsening heat waves — like the one that's driven up temperatures in Seattle to levels 35 degrees Fahrenheit over the normal June highs and notched the highest temperature ever recorded in Canada.

Flint said Republicans are stepping onto the climate politics turf while the "reality is setting in" that the limited solutions to combating the issue are daunting given the party does not want to endorse Democrats' proposals that would curb fossil fuels.

"They see the evidence, they acknowledge the reality, but they don’t want to embrace progressives’ climate policies because everything in Washington is political," Flint said.

The science notes one major truth: Reducing human-caused emissions, largely produced by burning fossil fuels, will be needed to keep the planet from overheating. Scientists say the world needs to cease emitting greenhouse gases by 2050 to avoid crossing a dangerous tipping point that would bake in the worst effects of climate changes.

Evergreen Action Executive Director Jamal Raad, who worked on Washingon Gov. Jay Inslee's climate-focused presidential campaign last year, said the Republicans' responses showed their joining the climate caucus was done out of political necessity rather than a sincere effort to solve climate change.

“Even on a curve, they get an F,” said Raad, who experienced record-setting heat on consecutive days from his Seattle home. “They are literally talking about this as the need to reach out to more voters, not as actually solving the problem, because they don't agree on this problem. And they don't actually have any interest in taking on the burning of fossil fuels, which is causing the warming. I give them no credit.”

Emergency managers have warned the heat wave will kill people in the Pacific Northwest, where only about half of households have air conditioning units. That will likely change after Seattle and Portland experienced record-setting highs of 108 degrees F and 116 degrees F on Monday — topping records set the previous day.

Human-caused emissions have already warmed the world nearly 1.2 degrees Celsius, making heat waves more intense. Scientists suggest warmer temperatures have prolonged heat waves and drought by weakening the jet stream as temperature gradients between the Arctic, which is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, and lower latitudes flatten. That has altered the flow of the jet stream and helped exacerbate events like heat waves that can stall in one place.

Current climate patterns suggests an extremely hot June is likely to occur twice every three decades in the Western U.S., said Nikos Christidis, a climate scientist with the U.K.’s Met Office, but not reaching the temperatures that were seen this week.

“Without human-induced climate change, it would have been almost impossible to hit such record-breaking mean June temperatures in the Western United States as the chances of natural occurrence is once every tens of thousands of years,” Christidis said in a statement.

Human-driven climate change has made rare heat events hotter by three to five degrees Fahrenheit compared to a scenario of no human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, according to research by Michael Wehner, a senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. And climate change will continue to make those events hotter: Temperatures during heat waves are projected to rise 1 to 3 degrees F by 2050 under a low emissions scenario or 3 to 5 degrees under a high emissions scenario.

Hospitalizations have spiked during the heat wave, with the Oregon Health Authority reporting 250 heat-related visits on Monday.

Heat waves disproportionately affect the elderly and the sick in cities, where people live in apartments that are “more or less death traps,” said Brian Vant-Hull, a research associate at City College of New York who has studied the effects of heat waves on the indoor environment. In more rural areas, outdoor workers comprise a larger share of fatalities.

“People need options to escape,” he said.

Chaos agents for Jan. 6 probe

Dems fret that GOP could tap pro-Trump chaos agents for Jan. 6 probe

The House is set to vote Wednesday to create a select committee on the Capitol attack, but Republicans might choose firebrand conservatives to undercut the effort.

By NICHOLAS WU and SARAH FERRIS

Democrats wanted a panel of outside experts to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection. Instead they might have to deal with the Trump wing of the House GOP.

The House is set to vote Wednesday to create a new committee with a weighty mandate to dig into the worst attack on the Capitol since the War of 1812. But as Democrats prepare that panel, both parties are still unsure about which Republicans, if any, will serve on its 13-member roster — a decision that will dramatically shape the direction of the investigation.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi will have the final say over the panel’s GOP members, assuming House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy appoints them at all. But many in her caucus are still anxious about the prospect of Republicans starting another bitter fight by trying to appoint members who voted against certifying President Joe Biden’s win on Jan. 6.

Even worse, in their minds, would be GOP riot investigators who some Democrats view as having abetted the attack.

“The issue is that … there are indications that some of these folks were in on it. And we can't have folks who were in on it in the investigation,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said in an interview.

“If we are to be serious about finding out the truth, it seems incongruous to appoint people to a fact-finding committee who have really leaned into the big lie,” added Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.)

Pelosi has signaled she wants one of her eight appointments to the Jan. 6 committee to be a Republican, and Democrats speculate that outspoken Trump critics like Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) could be chosen. The speaker declined to say Tuesday whether she would veto any GOP select panel members who opposed certifying Biden's victory.

Many of the other Republicans who have condemned Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 attacks, including voting to impeach the former president, have publicly said they don’t want to serve on the committee and planned to oppose its creation on the floor Wednesday.

But GOP leaders are staying tight-lipped about how much they will engage, even as far-right Trump boosters such as Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) raise their hands to be picked. Though investigations are pending, there is no evidence that they or any other GOP lawmakers were directly involved in planning the Jan. 6 attack, despite one Democrat's allegation that some Republicans led pre-riot "reconnaissance tours."

Asked about his five picks for the panel, McCarthy has repeatedly declined to comment on who he might choose. He might also decline to appoint members at all, a decision that could help the GOP leader avoid such a highly charged issue within his conference. Out of their roughly 200-member conference, two-thirds voted not to certify the president’s Electoral College win.

Few Republicans are expected to support the Democrat-led committee on the floor Wednesday, according to GOP sources. House GOP leaders aren’t formally whipping the effort, but will recommend their members vote “no” on the legislation.

Some Democrats say they privately feared McCarthy may try to appoint his most incendiary members, conservatives who are also most likely to use their committee seats to defend Trump. That group includes Greene, Gaetz and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), all of whom many House Democrats say would seek to effectively sabotage the panel’s work.

“What I wanted was an independent commission,” said Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.), who served as a prosecutor against Trump in his post-insurrection impeachment trial. “Of course there have to be Republicans on here ... They will reveal themselves, either to do their duty or not. It's up to them.”

Kinzinger shrugged at the prospect of having Republican colleagues who voted against election certification named to the panel.

“That wouldn't be cool, but who knows,” he said.

Democrats’ initial proposal to investigate the Capitol siege involved an independent commission modeled after the one that investigated the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The House ultimately voted to establishing that commission — a bill drafted by Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and John Katko (R-N.Y.) — but McCarthy and his leadership team pressured many in their party to oppose it.

Roughly three dozen Republicans backed the commission; many of them, including Katko, have said they plan to oppose the Democrat-led committee on Wednesday.

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), a co-chair of the Problem Solvers Caucus, which supported the commission, said the structure of the bipartisan panel made “sense" but questioned the partisan nature of the select committee.

“I don’t know if the public is going to have confidence when the rules of the game are skewed the way they are,” he said.

Asked if he had concerns about who McCarthy appointed, Fitzpatrick said: “That’s part of the problem with the way this plan appears to be moving forward.”

One group of Republicans, however, seemed to offer their members a surprising shred of room to vote for the Democrat-led investigation. The Republican Study Committee, the House's largest conservative caucus, released a policy memo that largely bashed the select panel as partisan, duplicative of other investigations and too focused on the events of Jan. 6 rather than broader acts of political violence.

But the RSC memo included a caveat: “Despite these concerns, some conservatives may believe it is critical to create a body, within the House, constituted specifically to review the events and failures associated with January 6 to ensure that the Capitol and its security meets the needs of our nation moving forward.”

The failed commission, which would have barred sitting members of Congress from serving on it, was blocked by Senate Republicans. Pelosi and her team ultimately decided to pursue a select committee, which includes seven members hand-picked by the speaker and five that she's permitted to choose after “consultation with the minority leader.”

“When we know that the Republicans are going to act out in the way that they do, I don't like rewarding them by saying, ‘Oh, we're gonna just not do things,’” said Rep. Andy Kim (D-N.J.), who reiterated the need for the Jan. 6 panel after Republicans blocked the commission.

Kim compared the partisan rancor over Jan. 6 to some Republicans’ refusal to accept that the coronavirus was a real threat after Democrats established a select committee on the virus last year.

“We had members on that committee that just disagreed with basic science and medicine ... But it was still important that we had the committee,” he said.

McCarthy and House GOP leaders for months sought to quell internal drama over the fallout from the insurrection, which led 10 of their members to vote to impeach Trump. They've mostly rebounded since then as the party of Trump, having cast aside Cheney from their leadership for her continued condemnation of the former president.

But the GOP leader still faces percolating extremism within his ranks, including several members who have downplayed the violence on Jan. 6. This week, for instance, McCarthy is dealing with far-right Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), who reportedly will attend a fundraiser with white nationalist Nick Fuentes, who supported the "Stop the Steal" effort that bolstered Trump's baseless election fraud claims.

Asked about the event, Gosar said Tuesday that "I’ve never heard anything like that. I have nothing on my schedule.”

Notably, not every Democrat said it would be problematic for any Republicans who voted against certifying Biden’s win on Jan. 6 to serve on the select panel.

Rep. Ann Kuster (D-N.H.) said she has spoken with several Republicans who opposed certification on the floor — because, “in the heat of the moment, [they] had planned to take that vote and took that vote” — but now publicly affirm Biden as the president.

“I would be more concerned about what their approach is now than a decision they made in a vote on Jan. 6,” Kuster said. But she added that she drew the line at Republicans who are downplaying the riot in the Capitol or continuing to question Biden’s election.

Allows eviction ban

Supreme Court allows eviction ban to remain in place

The decision is a blow for the National Association of Realtors, the powerful lobbying group that funded the challenge to the pandemic-related moratorium on behalf of two of its chapters.

By KATY O'DONNELL

The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled to keep the federal eviction moratorium to in place, in a 5-4 decision in which Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined with liberals.

The decision is a blow for the National Association of Realtors, the powerful lobbying group that funded the challenge to the pandemic-related moratorium on behalf of two of its chapters.

The association had asked the court to act on an emergency basis to vacate a stay on a lower-court decision overturning the ban, saying the “stay will prolong the severe financial burdens borne by landlords under the moratorium for the past nine months.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's moratorium is currently set to expire July 31 after the Biden administration extended it last week, with the CDC saying it intended the move as the final extension. Some six million renter households are behind on rent, according to a recent Census survey.

Kavanaugh wrote in Tuesday's decision that he agreed with the lower-court ruling that the CDC had exceeded its authority but that its pending expiration swayed his thinking.

"Because the CDC plans to end the moratorium in only a few weeks, on July 31, and because those few weeks will allow for additional and more orderly distribution of the congressionally appropriated rental assistance funds, I vote at this time to deny the application to vacate the District Court’s stay of its order," he wrote.

State and local officials are scrambling to disburse more than $46 billion in rental relief before the moratorium expires.

The CDC issued an order in September blocking evictions for the nonpayment of rent, citing a 1944 public health law that gives the agency certain powers to prevent the spread of disease across state lines. The agency said evictions would force people to either double up with friends and family or turn to homeless shelters just as health officials were encouraging social distancing to mitigate the spread of Covid-19.

“Landlords have been losing over $13 billion every month under the moratorium, and the total effect of the CDC’s overreach may reach up to $200 billion if it remains in effect for a year,” NAR said in its application for Supreme Court intervention.

Landlords — who are still on the hook for operating costs, property taxes and mortgage payments, regardless of whether tenants are paying rent — have challenged the ban in courts around the country, arguing that the CDC overstepped its authority.

A federal judge agreed in May, ordering that the moratorium be vacated. Days later, she granted the Department of Health and Human Services’ request for a stay of the decision, which an appeals court upheld as it considers the case.

Remove racist symbols

House again passes bill to remove racist symbols from Capitol

The yearslong endeavor by Democrats passed in a 285-120 vote, with 67 Republicans crossing the aisle in support of the legislation.

By MYAH WARD

The House on Tuesday evening once again overwhelmingly passed a bill that would remove the bust of former Chief Justice Roger Taney from the Capitol, as well as other figures with Confederate ties.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s bill — a yearslong endeavor from House Democrats to rid the U.S. Capitol of racist symbols — passed in a 285-120 vote, with 67 Republicans crossing the aisle in support of the legislation.

H.R. 3005, introduced alongside Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif), Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) and others, would replace the Taney bust with one of Thurgood Marshall, the first African American Supreme Court Justice. Taney wrote the majority opinion in the 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford case, in which the chief justice declared that Black Americans could not be U.S. citizens and did not deserve constitutional rights or freedoms. The decision was later widely panned.

In a speech on the House floor earlier Tuesday, Hoyer invoked the Jan. 6 insurrection as a “watershed moment — seeing such evils pervade the halls of the American Capitol.” But Hoyer said African Americans who have worked in the Capitol for decades were all too familiar with the “sense of defilement of this sacred space.”

“When they enter the solemn old Supreme Court chamber and stare into the cold, marbleized Roger Brooke Taney, they are reminded that at one time, the highest court in our land … declared that Black lives did not matter,” Hoyer said.

The legislation would also remove any other statues or busts of people who voluntarily served in the Confederacy from public display in the U.S. Capitol. It would remove former Vice President John C. Calhoun, North Carolina Gov. Charles B. Aycock and Arkansas Sen. John P. Clarke, all of whom promoted slavery and white supremacy. There are 12 Confederate statues in the Capitol collection.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy announced his decision to vote for the bill earlier Tuesday, while emphasizing that “all the statues being removed by this bill are statues of Democrats.” This led Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.) to ask whether her Republican colleagues were aware of the “whole history of the civil rights movement” and the transformation of the two political parties.

The vote comes as the House grapples with extremism within its own ranks. This week, McCarthy is dealing with a far-right Republican with reported ties to white nationalists. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) will reportedly attend a fundraiser with Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist and the organizer of the America First Political Action Conference. Gosar has denied the reports.

Similar legislation from Hoyer passed the House last summer, with more than 300 votes — 72 from Republicans. The Republican-controlled Senate did not take up the legislation.

Hoyer reintroduced the legislation in May and said “it’s never too late to do the right thing.” While it has a greater chance of passing in the upper chamber this time around, it will likely face a similar fate with the Democrats’ slim majority in the Senate.

Lawmakers again cheered the passage on Tuesday, an effort reignited last summer as protesters demanded justice and action over the police killing of George Floyd — further fueling discussions about the role of Confederate symbols in public spaces.

“I was proud to join my colleagues in voting to #RemoveHate from the Capitol today,” Hoyer tweeted after the vote. “Today’s vote was a vote to uphold the principles of equality and justice that our nation was founded on. Hate, racism, & bigotry have no place here.”

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) also praised the House‘s move late Tuesday, adding that she looked forward to working on its passage in the Senate.

“It is long overdue that we remove confederate statues from the Capitol. Our public spaces should represent our fight for liberty and justice for all — not hateful symbols of the Confederacy," Klobuchar said in a statement. "Now that this legislation has passed the House, I look forward to working toward its swift passage in the Senate.”

The placement of Confederate statues in the Capitol has been a tricky problem for Democratic lawmakers to navigate. In 1864, Congress invited states to send two statues to be featured in the National Statuary Hall collection, and the legislative body does not have the power to replace them.

Many states have voluntarily replaced statues under question, like Virginia’s move to recall a statue of Robert E. Lee and replace it with civil rights leader Barbara Johns. North Carolina has also announced plans to replace the statue of Aycock, a prominent White supremacist leader in the state, with that of the Rev. Billy Graham. If Hoyer’s bill passes the Senate, the architect of the Capitol would have the authority to remove the statues from public view.

In a speech before the House on Tuesday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi referenced another piece of legislation — the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act — that is hung up in the Senate. She asked members how they could “end the scourge of racism” — noting that police-reform legislation is one way forward — “when we allow the worst perpetrators of that racism to be lauded in the halls of Congress.”

Inflame conspiracy theories

Trump audit excitement meets with fear from election officials

The new drive is worrying state election administrators, who say the efforts will further inflame conspiracy theories and erode faith in the American democratic system.

By ZACH MONTELLARO

A monthslong examination of all the ballots from the 2020 election in Arizona’s most populous county may be winding down soon. But now the state is spreading the “audit” playbook across the country.

Supporters of former President Donald Trump — fueled by Trump’s false claim that he did not lose the 2020 election — are behind a new push to review the results in states including Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The new drive is worrying state election administrators, who say the efforts will further inflame conspiracy theories and erode faith in the American democratic system.

The burden of these reviews could fall on the shoulders of state and local election officials, further complicating a field where many are worried about a brain drain due to exhaustion and threats workers faced in the aftermath of the 2020 election.

“We’re wasting a lot of taxpayer money. We're wasting a lot of people's time,” said Jennifer Morrell, a former elections administrator and consultant who served as a nonpartisan observer for the Arizona secretary of state during the Arizona review. “We're sucking a lot of energy from the folks that need to be preparing and working on the next election.”

The efforts in Arizona began in late April, when the Republican-controlled state Senate hired private firms to review the 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County, which Biden narrowly carried en route to flipping the state.

The process in Arizona, headed by an inexperienced firm called Cyber Ninjas, has been mired in controversy. Supporters call the effort an “audit,” but it is nearly universally derided by election professionals as a ham-fisted fishing expedition that doesn’t rise to the standards of an actual, professional audit. It’s also been costly: County officials announced this week that they won’t reuse any of the voting equipment that was examined during the review, which could cost taxpayers millions of dollars.

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, and the Republican-controlled Maricopa County government have vociferously opposed the review. And Democratic election administrators, along with many nonpartisan and some Republican officials, have begun to speak out about the dangers of the approach spreading across the country and are working to stymie the drive.

“Before this audit came to Arizona, folks who were behind it were trying to find a way to get a foothold anywhere they could,” Hobbs said. “And Arizona happened to be the place that they could. And we know that they're looking for ways to do it in other states.”

Trump has publicly fixated on the effort in Arizona, regularly putting out statements praising it and insisting it will show he won an election he lost. He also praised the Arizona state senators for their efforts during his first post-presidency rally in Ohio over the weekend, eliciting a cheer from the crowd.

“They are going to issue a report at some time in the not too distant future, it will be very interesting to see,” Trump said. “A lot of states have gone to watch them, and they’ve come away with praise, real praise. So let’s see how that turns out. Arizona: It is a big deal.”

The local coliseum that has hosted the examination in Arizona has been a pilgrimage site for Republican elected officials and candidates who have promoted Trump’s fraud claims. The Arizona Republic has tracked roughly 20 Republicans from 10 states who have visited Veterans Memorial Coliseum during the review.

Now, efforts are underway to bring audits to counties and states across the country — often at the urging of the former president. Trump has publicly called for audits in numerous states and has politically threatened Republicans who have not backed those calls, especially in critical swing states that he narrowly lost in 2020.

In Michigan last week, a Republican-led state Senate committee found no evidence of fraud in the state. “Our clear finding is that citizens should be confident the results represent the true results of the ballots cast by the people of Michigan,” the report concluded.

A letter from Michigan state Sen. Edward McBroom, a Republican, that accompanied the report said he believed “another audit, a so-called forensic audit, is not justifiable,” particularly in Antrim County, a traditionally conservative county that’s been at the center of conspiracies that the election was stolen from Trump.

McBroom, who did not respond to a request for comment, did, however, write that he is “keeping a close eye on the legislatively-initiated forensic audit in Arizona and will continue to ask questions regarding other election issues I feel are not settled.” He wrote he could change his recommendation about an audit in the state based on the results in Arizona, or further investigation in Michigan. (Trump put out a statement attacking McBroom.)

The push in Michigan extends beyond Antrim County. The board of commissioners of Cheboygan County, Mich., voted 4-3 last week to request an audit of the county’s results, asking the state elections director to approve it. Trump won the country overwhelmingly.

“There is no information or gain that can be made from this audit. Things will stand as they are,” Cheboygan Commissioner Michael Newman, a Republican and one of the three commissioners who voted against requesting an audit, said in an interview.

The commissioners who voted for an audit did not respond to interview requests.

Newman, who said he believes Biden was duly elected, said there was a local pressure campaign to push for an audit, but that constituents in his district urged him to vote against it.

“They want to see us all changed so we’re not seated anymore, and they want to go after our county administrator,” Newman said of activists pushing for the audit.

And in the state legislature, freshman Republican state Rep. Steve Carra recently filed legislation calling for a “forensic audit” of the results. Carra, who said he believed there was substantial fraud during the 2020 election, is primarying Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), one of the Republicans who voted to impeach Trump. He said the election results are an animating factor among Republicans.

“I think it is the number one issue from people in my community. And I also think it’s the number one issue for all of my conservative colleagues around the state,” Carra said. “So if they vote against this, I think that’s something that people from their communities would not appreciate.”

Similar pushes have materialized elsewhere. Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano has boosted his political profile by becoming one of the vocal proponents of Trump’s lies about the election, and is considering a run for governor in the state. Mastriano, who visited the Arizona site, has pushed for an audit in his home state — and Trump has attacked Republican leaders in Pennsylvania who have not backed him, even name checking Republican state Senate leader Jake Corman.

“Other State Senators want this Forensic Audit to take place — immediately,” Trump said in a mid-June statement. “I feel certain that if Corman continues along this path of resistance, with its lack of transparency, he will be primaried and lose by big numbers.”

In Georgia, conspiracy theories about Trump’s loss persist, despite the fact the state saw its votes recounted twice in 2020. Republican State Party Chair David Shafer, who also toured the Arizona site, has praised the calls for an audit in his home state.

“The vast majority of Republicans believe that there were irregularities in the last election that have not been fully investigated,” Shafer said on the sidelines of the state party convention earlier this month.

A Georgia state judge also recently dismissed most of a lawsuit that sought to review absentee ballots in Fulton County, home to Atlanta. The suit was by plaintiffs who were trying to find fraud in the state.

And in Wisconsin, state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has hired retired police officers to investigate “potential irregularities and/or illegalities” in the election. Two Assembly Republicans who traveled to Arizona have also said they’d like to see a similar undertaking in their state, and Trump has recently attacked Vos and other Republicans in the state for “actively trying to prevent a Forensic Audit,” although backlash to Vos at the state convention was muted.

A Trump adviser recently told POLITICO that the former president remains “adamant about doing audits” and “is going to keep up pressure on Republicans to have the courage to do it.”

The particularities of the process in Arizona have also concerned election experts, who fear that activists elsewhere will try to mirror or copy a flawed approach from the state.

The so-called audit has crossed deep into conspiratorial territory. Workers had checked for bamboo fibers in ballots (a nod to a baseless theory that ballots may have been sent from Asia) and used UV lights on ballots, potentially for (non-existent) watermarks. Cyber Ninjas itself is owned by a man who has promoted the #StopTheSteal conspiracy theory, which is based in the belief that Trump actually won, and recently appeared in a conspiracy-filled film about the election.

“It was clear they had no idea how elections are administered,” Morrell, who served as an observer, said. “That’s the concern, is that we’ve suddenly left this place where we follow the rule of law, and it’s like the Wild Wild West.”

The effort, or at least its first stages, appears to be winding down. The pseudo-official Twitter account tweeted that the “paper examination and counting” of the nearly 2.1 million ballots concluded on Friday. But Ken Bennett, a former Arizona Republican secretary of state who has served as a liaison for the effort, told the Associated Press that a report is still weeks to months away.

(A request for an interview sent to Bennett and a second email address associated with the effort was acknowledged repeatedly by a staffer, but nobody was made available.)

Elections experts are already warning that any conclusion drawn from the Arizona review will be untrustworthy. A report from the nonpartisan States United Democracy Center, co-authored by former Kentucky Republican Secretary of State Trey Grayson and Barry Burden, the director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, ripped into the Arizona effort as being poorly run and not transparent.

Grayson also said fixation on 2020 will hurt Republicans in the long run. “I want to be involved in this [report] because I’m worried,” he said, noting he is an active party member and just recently attended a fundraiser for a Republican senator. “I want Republicans to see, ‘Here’s one of us who’s telling you don’t waste your time, don’t waste your money. You’re undermining confidence. It’s backfiring.’”

Trump and his supporters have also glommed on to legitimate efforts elsewhere, quickly abandoning them when they did not turn up evidence of fraud the former president wanted.

A bipartisan group of New Hampshire lawmakers authorized an audit of a state House of Representatives race after a recount showed a Republican candidate actually received hundreds more votes than initially tallied. The New Hampshire audit was extremely unusual, election experts say, because it took place well after the election, and there were no established laws for how to conduct a post-election audit in the state. The major difference between Arizona and New Hampshire? This audit was run by well-respected election professionals.

Trump initially praised the audit as part of the “incredible fight to seek out the truth on the massive Election Fraud which took place in New Hampshire and the 2020 Presidential Election.”

But the actual culprit was not a conspiracy of fraud, but instead a likely combination of tabulators that incorrectly read poorly-made folds in ballots, voters casting too many votes in certain races, and dusty machinery. Trump did not issue a public proclamation when a more innocuous explanation was laid out.

“That’s kind of why I did this crazy thing, because I felt someone had to,” said Mark Lindeman, who helped run the New Hampshire audit and is the acting co-director of Verified Voting, citing threats to election workers that have stemmed from conspiracy theorists.

“I thought either someone, if I may say this about myself, responsible would do the work,” he continued. “Or deeply irresponsible people — and, in fact, the same people who have done the work in Maricopa County — would have done it.”

Coronavirus lapse

North Korea's Kim berates officials for 'grave' coronavirus lapse

The alleged “grave incident” in North Korea’s pandemic fight was not specified.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un berated top officials for failures in coronavirus prevention that caused a “great crisis,” using strong language that raised the specter of a mass outbreak in a country that would be scarcely able to handle it.

The state media report Wednesday did not specify what “crucial” lapse had prompted Kim to call the Politburo meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party, but experts said North Korea could be wrestling with a significant setback in its pandemic fight.

So far, North Korea has claimed to have had no coronavirus infections, despite testing thousands of people and sharing a porous border with China. Experts widely doubt the claim and are concerned about any potential outbreak, given the country's poor health infrastructure.

At the Politburo meeting, Kim criticized the senior officials for supposed incompetence, irresponsibility and passiveness in planning and executing anti-virus measures amid the lengthening pandemic, the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said.

Kim said “senior officials in charge of important state affairs neglected the implementation of the important decisions of the party on taking organizational, institutional, material, scientific and technological measures as required by the prolonged state emergency epidemic prevention campaign,” according to KCNA. This “caused a crucial case of creating a great crisis in ensuring the security of the state and safety of the people and entailed grave consequences.”

The report also said the party recalled an unspecified member of the Politburo’s powerful Presidium, which consists of Kim and four other top officials.

The reference indicated Kim may replace his Cabinet Premier Kim Tok Hun, who would be held responsible for failures in the government’s anti-epidemic work, said Hong Min, a senior analyst at Seoul’s Korea Institute for National Unification.

“There is no possibility that North Korea will ever admit to an infection — even if there were mass transmissions, the North will definitely not reveal such developments and will continue to push forward an anti-virus campaign it has claimed to be the greatest,” Hong said.

“But it’s also clear that something significant happened and it was big enough to warrant a reprimanding of senior officials. This could mean mass infections or some sort of situation where a lot of people were put at direct risk of infections.”

Cheong Seong-Chang, an analyst at South Korea’s private Sejong Institute, expressed a similar view, saying North Korea is potentially dealing with huge virus-related problems in border towns near China, such as Sinuiju or Hyesan. He said the Presidium member Kim Jong Un sacked could possibly be Jo Yong Won, a secretary of the Workers’ Party’s Central Committee who had been seen as a fast-rising figure in the leadership circle.

But other experts said Kim could be responding to illicit border trade that defied his lockdown measures or setting the stage for a political shakeup or purge to solidify his grip on power as he navigates perhaps the toughest time of his nine-year rule.

South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which deals with inter-Korean affairs, said it had no immediate information to share about the North Korean report and that it wouldn’t make prejudgments about the country’s virus situation.

Wang Wenbin, spokesperson of China’s Foreign Ministry, raised the possibility of helping North Korea in the event of a major outbreak of COVID-19.

“China and the DPRK have a long tradition of helping each other when they encounter difficulties,” Wang said, referring to North Korea by its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“If necessary, China will actively consider providing assistance to the DPRK.”

From the start of the pandemic, North Korea described its anti-virus efforts as a “matter of national existence,” banned tourists, jetted out diplomats and severely curtailed cross-border traffic and trade. The lockdown has further strained an economy already battered by decades of mismanagement and crippling U.S.-led sanctions over the country’s nuclear weapons program.

Kim during a political conference earlier this month called for officials to brace for prolonged COVID-19 restrictions, indicating that the country isn’t ready to open its borders despite its economic woes.

North Korea has told the World Health Organization it has not found a single coronavirus infection after testing more than 30,000 people, including many described as having fevers or respiratory symptoms.

North Korea’s extended border controls come amid uncertainties over the country’s vaccination prospects. COVAX, the U.N.-backed program to ship COVID-19 vaccines worldwide, said in February that North Korea could receive 1.9 million doses in the first half of the year, but the plans have been delayed due to global shortages.

Going back to old cold war crap...

Putin: U.S. and Britain both behind Black Sea 'provocation'

The episode was the latest to raise tensions between Russia and the West since Russia's annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft was operating in sync with a British destroyer last week when the ship sailed through the Black Sea in what he described as a “provocation" to test Moscow's response.

Moscow said one of its warships fired warning shots and a warplane dropped bombs in the path of Britain's Defender on June 23 to force it from an area near Crimea that Moscow claims as its territorial waters. Britain insisted its ship wasn’t fired upon and said it was sailing in Ukrainian waters.

The episode was the latest to raise tensions between Russia and the West since Russia's annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, a move not recognized by most countries but one that gives it access to a long Black Sea coast.

The U.S. Defense Department had no immediate comment Wednesday on Putin's claim that one of its aircraft was with the British ship last week.

Asked if the events could have triggered World War III, Putin responded that the West wouldn't risk a full-scale conflict.

“Even if we sank that ship, it wouldn’t put the world on the brink of World War III because those who do it know that they can’t emerge as winners in that war, and it’s very important,” Putin said during his annual live call-in show when Russians ask him questions.

Russian officials have warned that if a Western warship enters the waters again, the military could fire to hit. Since it annexed Crimea, Russia has chafed at NATO warships visiting the area as destabilizing.

Britain has insisted the Defender was making a routine journey through an internationally recognized travel lane and remained in Ukrainian waters. The U.K., like most of the world, recognizes Crimea as part of Ukraine despite the peninsula’s annexation by Russia.

Putin charged that the U.S. aircraft’s apparent mission was to monitor the Russian military’s response to the British destroyer.

“It was clearly a provocation, a complex one involving not only the British but also the Americans,” he said, adding that Moscow was aware of the U.S. intentions and responded accordingly to avoid revealing sensitive data.

The Russian leader lamented that the move closely followed his summit with U.S. President Joe Biden in Geneva earlier this month. “Why would they make such provocations?” he said.

Putin insisted that Russia would firmly defend its territory.

“We are fighting for ourselves and our future on our own territory,” he said. “It's not us who traveled thousands of kilometers (miles) to come to them, it's them who have come to our borders and violated our territorial waters.”

Putin emphasized that Moscow is concerned about NATO troops coming to Ukraine for training, reaffirming that a permanent Western military presence on the Ukrainian territory would challenge Russia's vital interests and represent a red line.

He also reiterated, as he often does, that there is a close kinship between the Russian and Ukrainian peoples, but accused the Ukrainian leadership of being hostile towards Russia. Putin expressed doubt about the value of a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, describing him as a Western pawn.

“Why meet Zelenskyy if he has put his country under full foreign control and key issues for Ukraine are decided not in Kyiv but in Washington, and, to a certain extent, Paris and Berlin?” Putin asked.

Earlier this year, Russia beefed up its forces near Ukraine and warned Kyiv that it could intervene if they tried to use force to reclaim the areas in the east controlled by Russia-backed separatists since conflict there erupted in 2014. Moscow later pulled back some of its troops, but the Ukrainian authorities said that the bulk of them have remained close to the border.

The Russian president spent most of the four-hour marathon call-in show speaking about domestic issues — as is typical for the tightly choreographed annual rite that helps Putin polish the image of a strong leader caring for people's needs. It didn't feature any questions about Russia's beleaguered opposition and the most prominent of Putin's political foes, Alexei Navalny, who is in prison.

He voiced hope that the country could avoid a nationwide lockdown amid a surge of new infections. Coronavirus deaths in Russia hit a new daily record Wednesday, with the authorities reporting 669, but Putin argued that decisions by local authorities in a number of regions who made vaccination mandatory for some workers should help contain the new wave.

Russia has been registering over 20,000 new coronavirus cases and around 600 deaths every day since last Thursday.

Russian officials have blamed the surge, which started in early June, on Russians’ lax attitude toward taking necessary precautions, the growing prevalence of more infectious variants and low vaccine uptake, which experts attribute to widespread vaccine hesitancy and limited production capacity. Although Russia was among the first countries to announce and deploy a coronavirus vaccine, just over 15% of the population has received at least one shot.

Amid this hesitancy, Putin revealed that he chose the domestically developed Sputnik V for his vaccination. Putin got his first coronavirus shot in late March out of the public eye and has remained tight-lipped about which vaccine out of three developed in Russia that were available at the time he chose.

Amid the surge, about 20 Russian regions — from Moscow and St. Petersburg to the remote far-eastern region of Sakhalin — have made vaccinations mandatory this month for employees in certain sectors.

Turning to other issues, Putin said the Russian authorities have no intention of banning Western social media platforms but emphasized that the government merely wants them to abide by Russian laws, promptly remove inappropriate content and open offices in Russia.

Earlier this year, officials levied heavy fines on social platforms over their alleged failure to remove banned content such as child pornography, information about drugs and calls for protests as they sought to pressure them to heed the demands.

“We tell them: ‘You’re spreading child pornography, or instructions on (how to commit) suicide, or how to create Molotov cocktails. ... You must take it down,’ and they simply don’t listen, don’t want to listen to what we tell them,” Putin said. “But this is wrong."

Don't seem to believe it.......

Tucker Carlson claimed the NSA is spying on him. Even his own colleagues don't seem to believe it

By Oliver Darcy

Fox News host Tucker Carlson made an explosive claim on his show Monday night: That he had learned through a whistleblower that the National Security Agency is spying on him and planning to leak his communications in a bid to take him off the air.

"The Biden administration is spying on us," Carlson declared to millions of Fox's viewers. "We have confirmed that."

But Carlson's own colleagues don't appear to be buying what he is selling.

Barring an unusual circumstance, if a reputable news organization had confirmed that the NSA — or any arm of the US government — was spying on one of its top employees, it would be a story of significant consequence.

When The Washington Post, CNN, and The New York Times recently learned that the Trump Justice Department had seized the records of its reporters, the revelation led to weeks of coverage and a commitment from the Biden administration to end such practices.

Carlson not only alleged that the NSA was spying on him, but that it was conspiring to take him off of the air and engaging in the conduct for "political reasons."

But the morning after Carlson delivered his bombshell claim, none of his colleagues covered it.

A search of Fox's transcripts did not reveal any coverage on Tuesday morning. Even "Fox & Friends," the right-wing morning show on Fox News that has latched on to several of Trump's conspiracy theories, passed on the story. And the Fox News website also did not appear to carry coverage of Carlson's claim.

Fox's top executives, such as chief executive Suzanne Scott and president Jay Wallace, had also not released statements condemning the NSA's supposed behavior by Tuesday afternoon. In contrast, newsroom leaders at the New York Times, CNN and Washington Post strongly condemned the Justice Department's actions as soon as they learned that it was secretly obtaining their reporters' records.

A Fox News spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on why the network was failing to cover Carlson's claim that he had confirmed the federal government was actively conspiring to kick him off the air. The spokesperson also did not respond to questions about why Fox executives were remaining silent.

A spokesperson for the NSA declined to comment.

Carlson, Fox's highest rated host, has a history of peddling conspiracy theories as fact to his viewers. He recently claimed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation orchestrated the January 6 insurrection — a claim that has since been thoroughly fact-checked.

Economy is booming.......

America's economy is booming, but Republicans are miserable

By Matt Egan

Unemployment is shrinking. The stock market is booming. Americans are returning to the skies and even to movie theaters. And yet Republicans are deeply worried about the state of the economy.

Even though the US economy is expected to grow this year at the fastest pace in decades, consumer sentiment among self-identified Republicans is worse today than during the height of the pandemic, according to the University of Michigan.

In fact, Republicans are more pessimistic than at any point since September 2010, when the economy was just beginning to dig out of the Great Recession.

Meanwhile, consumer sentiment among self-identified Democrats is higher than at any point during the presidency of Donald Trump — even though unemployment was far lower then than it is today.

This polarization of consumer sentiment across party lines is not entirely new, but it got significantly worse during the Trump era and continues to this day.

"It didn't really matter who was elected, until Trump," said Richard Curtin, who leads the University of Michigan's closely-watched consumer sentiment surveys.

Consider what happened last fall, just before the presidential election. The University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index among Democrats stood at 72.4 in October 2020, compared with 98 for Republicans.

By the time Joe Biden was sworn in as president, sentiment among Democrats surged to 89.5, while that of Republicans plunged to 69.8. That gap widened in the months to come.

"The overall level of consumer confidence nationally didn't really change when Biden took office," Curtin said. "Democrats and Republicans just switched places."

The US economy is booming

Despite the pessimism among Republicans, there is plenty of evidence that the US economy is flourishing as the pandemic winds down and health restrictions fade away.

US stocks touched record highs on Tuesday. The housing market is on fire. Oxford Economics expects the US economy will grow at an average pace of 7.5% in 2021, the fastest growth rate since 1951.

Americans are also traveling again. The number of airline passengers hit a pandemic-era record on Sunday, according to US airport screening data from the Transportation Security Administration. On Tuesday, United Airlines announced the largest aircraft purchase in the company's history and the biggest order by any airline in about a decade.

Nearly 44 million Americans are expected to travel by car this Fourth of July weekend, according to AAA. Demand is so strong that gas stations, grappling with a shortage of tanker truck drivers, are struggling to maintain supply.

The Back-to-Normal Index, created by CNN Business and Moody's Analytics, is now at the highest level of the pandemic.

Overall consumer sentiment measured by the University of Michigan rose solidly earlier this year before plateauing in recent months.

'Corrosive' distrust in government

Of course, none of this is to say all is well with the US economy.

The United States is still down about 7.6 million jobs compared with February 2020. Many businesses are struggling to hire workers. And the pandemic made the country's already-glaring inequality problem even worse, hitting low-income families the hardest.

At the same time, the reopening of the economy has created supply chain bottlenecks and shortages, pushing up inflation to levels not seen in decades.

Investors and economists pay attention to consumer confidence because the US economy is driven in large part by consumer spending. If nervous Americans stop spending, the economy will tank. If they keep buying, it soars.

It's hard to say how much the polarization of consumer confidence impacts the broader economy, though it's clearly not a positive.

"This partisanship creates a measure of distrust in what public policy can be and how it can help the economy," Curtis said. "And this uncertainty is corrosive of economic plans by businesses and consumers alike."