Dispatches

TRUMP SEEKS REVENGE AS RUSSIA PROBE THREAT WANES.

Less than an hour after Attorney General William Barr released his summary of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s findings, Donald Trump spoke very briefly to reporters on the tarmac of the Palm Beach International Airport. Naturally, the president claimed he was “exonerated”; he presented himself as a victim; and he condemned the investigation itself, Steve Benen noted at Rachel Maddow’s blog (3/25).

But Trump then turned his attention to “the other side.”

“Hopefully, somebody is going to look at the other side. This was an illegal takedown that failed. And hopefully, somebody is going to be looking at the other side.”

“At face value, the idea that the investigation was an attempted ‘illegal takedown’ is difficult to take seriously,” Benen noted. “There’s extensive evidence connecting the Trump campaign with its Russian benefactors, and while Mueller appears to have concluded that those connections do not meet a criminal threshold, this hardly serves as a credible condemnation of the entire inquiry.

“But it was that other part of the president’s response that stood out. After his handpicked attorney general told him what he wanted to hear, Trump’s attention quickly turned, not to talking about the economy or foreign policy, but to his desire to see additional investigations, this time of his perceived political enemies.”

He’s not alone. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) held a Capitol Hill press conference this morning at which he lashed out at the FBI, announced plans for hearings on the Justice Department and Hillary Clinton’s emails, and called for a special counsel to examine the origins of the Russia probe.

This came soon after White House presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway told Fox News, “Let’s let it all hang out. Let’s see what happened with the FISA warrants, the phony dossier, let’s see Hillary Clinton. ‘Oh, Why are we still talking about Hillary Clinton?’ Because folks, you wouldn’t let the 2016 election go…. There should be a reckoning, because our democracy bears nothing less.”

In other words, Trump World believes Barr’s summary can be weaponized. There appears to be little interest among Republicans in moving away from the drumbeat of scandal; these folks apparently want the opposite, confident that an intense focus on conspiracy theories involving “the other side” will work to the GOP’s advantage.

However, no matter what one thinks of Attorney General William Barr’s summary of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s findings, Benen noted that Trump’s legal troubles aren’t over.

The Washington Post’s Rosalind S. Helderman and David A. Fahrenthold reported (3/23):

“Yet even as one legal cloud lifts with the conclusion of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation, others loom large on the horizon – creating additional threats to the president’s standing as he seeks to shift attention toward his 2020 reelection campaign.

“Nearly every organization Trump has run over the past decade remains under investigation by state or federal authorities, and he is mired in a variety of civil litigation, with the center of gravity shifting from Mueller’s offices in Southwest Washington to Capitol Hill and state and federal courtrooms in New York, the president’s hometown and the headquarters of his company.”

To be sure, the investigation into the Russia scandal was probably the most sweeping of the Trump-era probes, but to see it as the only meaningful scandal is to take an overly myopic look at the many controversies surrounding Trump and his many enterprises, Benen noted.

There’s the hush-money scandal. And the investigation into Trump’s inaugural committee. And the investigation into Trump Foundation. And the Emoluments Clause court case(s). And the civil suit filed by one of the women who accused the president of sexual misconduct. And allegations of bank/insurance fraud.

Of course, there are also congressional lines of inquiry on everything from tax returns, security clearances, presidential abuses, and scrutiny of Russian interference in US elections.

“I can’t say with any confidence what, if anything, will come as a result of Mueller’s findings, in large part because it’s so difficult to say whether the special counsel’s report will see the light of day,” Benen wrote. “That said, to assume that Trump’s legal jeopardy is behind him is to overlook more than a few ongoing matters.”

TRUMP CAMPAIGN WARNS NETWORKS AGAINST BOOKING DEMS. President Trump’s supporters were claiming victory after Attorney General William Barr’s summary of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report did not find Trump colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 US presidential election.

Trump’s reelection campaign took it one step further, telling members of the media to question the credibility of past guests who made “false claims, without evidence, on your airwaves,” Addy Baird noted at ThinkProgress (3/25).

In a memo, Tim Murtaugh, Trump campaign communications director, warned “television producers” about booking a number of Democratic lawmakers and others who have made the collusion claims on cable news and Sunday talk shows, including: Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), House Intelligence Committee Chair Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Judiciary Committee Chair Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), DNC chair Tom Perez, and former CIA Director John Brennan.

“As you know, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report found that no one associated with President Donald J. Trump’s 2016 campaign colluded with Russia, despite repeated offers from Russia-linked operatives,” the letter stated. “The issuance of these definitive findings comes after two years of Democrat leaders and others lying to the American people by vigorously and repeatedly claiming there was evidence of collusion.”

“At a minimum, if these guests do reappear, you should replay the prior statements and challenge them to provide the evidence which prompted them to make the wild claims in the first place,” Murtaugh wrote.

Baird noted that here was reason for those high-ranking Democratic officials to believe the Trump-Russia collusion allegations, which took the special counsel two years to investigate. After all:

• Trump has ties to Russian mobsters going back three decades;

• Mueller’s team filed charges, and in some cases secured criminal convictions or guilty pleas, against six members of Trump’s inner-circle;

• Russian intelligence officers tried to sway the election in Trump’s favor;

• Trump’s son confessed to meeting with Kremlin-tied Russians knowing they wanted to offer dirt on Hillary Clinton;

• People within his inner-circle and campaign knew WikiLeaks was going to release Clinton campaign chair John Podesta’s emails, which were hacked by Russian intelligence officers;

• And Trump lied about the timeline surrounding a billion-dollar project to build a massive skyscraper in Moscow that was still ongoing through his campaign, among many other pieces of evidence.

What’s more, Trump lied throughout the entire process, refused to answer Mueller’s questions in person, and on many occasions, tried to disrupt the investigation.

This is nothing new for Trump. Since becoming president, he has made over 9,000 false or misleading statements, according to the Washington Post.

In 2016, the Trump campaign blacklisted a number of media organizations that called Trump and campaign officials out for their lies and reported the truth, revoking press credentials from the Washington Post, Gawker, HuffPost, Politico, BuzzFeed, the National Review, the New York Times, the Des Moines Register, Mother Jones, the Daily Beast, Univision, and The New Tri-State Defender.

“The only person who has been caught lying about Russia is Donald Trump,” Swalwell tweeted March 25 in response to the Trump campaign’s memo. “If he thinks I’ve made a false statement, he can sue me. And I’ll beat him in court.”

TRUMP REALLY CAN’T STAND PUERTO RICO. While we’re waiting for Robert Mueller’s report to be made public, Donald Trump continues to show us right in front of our eyes why he’s unfit to be president of the United States, Gabe Ortiz wrote at Daily Kos (3/25), noting the Washington Post reported: “[At] an Oval Office meeting on Feb. 22, Trump asked top advisers for ways to limit federal support from going to Puerto Rico, believing it is taking money that should be going to the mainland, according to senior administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details of the presidents’ private remarks.

“A senior administration official with direct knowledge of the meeting described Trump’s stance: ‘He doesn’t want another single dollar going to the island,’” the Washington Post reports. Americans suffering in Puerto Rico include HIV patients at the Casa Ismael clinic in Toa Baja, which is “short on funds in part because of cuts in food stamps that hit about 1.3 million residents of Puerto Rico this month.”

In order to save money, clinic staff says patients will now have to sit in soiled diapers for hours at a time. “We just don’t have the money right now,” said Casa Ismael administrator Myrna Izquierdo. “It’s very hard. It is so unfair. That cut is going to kill us.” More than 3.4 million Americans live in Puerto Rico — a population larger than 21 states, including Iowa, Arkansas and Nevada — “but these Americans also happen to be brown,” Ortiz noted. “In Trump’s eyes, they don’t matter.”

CLEAN ENERGY CHEAPER THAN COAL. It would be more expensive to keep the majority of US coal plants open than to replace them with new wind and solar power alternatives, according to new findings ThinkProgress reported (3/25).

Authored by the environmental firm Energy Innovation in partnership with the grid analysis company Vibrant Clean Energy, the research finds that replacing 74% of coal plants nationally with wind and solar power would immediately reduce power costs, with wind power in particular at times cutting the cost almost in half. By 2025, the analysis indicates, around 86% of coal plants could similarly be at risk of cheaper replacement by renewables.

“We’ve been closely following the cost of wind and solar in the US and globally, and the costs have come down so far that we’re now seeing unprecedented low [costs] for wind and solar,” said Mike O’Boyle, Energy Innovation’s electricity policy director, on a call with reporters.

That trend, combined with the use of natural gas as a cheaper alternative to coal, has opened up an opportunity for a dramatic shift,, one that could see coal largely replaced in many areas by energy sources that are better for both human health and the environment.

President Trump has tried to save US coal, going so far as to advocate for a financial bailout to rescue the dying industry. But data largely suggests that coal’s economic value will continue to plummet, a downturn that comes as wind and solar power are becoming increasingly cheaper and more viable options.

“America has officially entered the ‘coal cost crossover’ – where existing coal is increasingly more expensive than cleaner alternatives,” the report argues.

The analysis builds on existing research showing that the US coal industry is rapidly on the decline. In fact, more coal plants shut down during Trump’s first two years in office than during former President Barack Obama’s entire first term. US coal consumption also dropped to its lowest rate in nearly 40 years in 2018.

COAL COMPANIES VETO TRUMP NOMINEE WHO OPPOSED COAL BAILOUT. Two coal companies successfully lobbied to have a conservative nominee to the government’s energy regulator thrown out — simply because he opposed a plan to force taxpayers to bail out money-losing coal plants.

Politico reported (3/19) that Murray Energy and Alliance Resource Partners, owned by two major Republican donors and Trump allies, Bob Murray and Joe Craft, teamed up with Energy Secretary Rick Perry to pressure the White House to drop the nomination of David Hill to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Hill had served as the Energy Department’s general counsel under President George W. Bush.

Hill had previously said that Perry’s costly plan to raise consumer energy bills in order to subsidize uneconomic coal plants was “absolutely not the solution,” Joe Romm noted at ThinkProgress (3/20).

Since then, Perry and Big Coal have been working overtime to stack FERC, which oversees the US grid and regulates interstate electricity transmission, with cronies who will force Americans to buy costly coal and nuclear power. This vision would amount to a multi-billion dollar taxpayer bailout at the expense of cheaper renewable sources and natural gas.

The revelation illustrates the close relationship between the coal industry and the Trump administration. Not only has President Trump tapped Craft’s wife as the next UN ambassador but under former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt, Craft often met with the agency and he even gave Pruitt basketball tickets. Pruitt is reportedly now consulting for Craft’s coal company.

Meanwhile, Murray is well-known for his wish list of policy demands delivered during Trump’s first year in office; current EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler also used to lobby on behalf of Murray Energy.

When FERC killed Perry’s plan last year, commissioners explained it would be unduly discriminatory against cheaper renewable energy sources. As Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur explained at the time in a concurring opinion, subsidizing the electricity dinosaurs was not FERC’s job: “I believe the Commission should continue to focus its efforts not on slowing the transition from the past but on easing the transition to the future.”

But in the past year, Big Coal has already succeeded in replacing one anti-bailout FERC commissioner, Robert Powelson, with a pro-coal crony, Bernard McNamee.

Former FERC Chairman Kevin McIntyre’s untimely death in January means Perry and the coal industry will have a second pro-bailout commissioner if they can keep thwarting candidates who are more supportive of the cheap, clean energy of the future rather than the costly, dirty energy sources of the past. Those in favor of forcing taxpayers to prop up the coal industry would need only one more vote on FERC to pass Perry’s plan.

MIDWEST FLOODING WILL COST BILLIONS IN DAMAGES. Devastating floods across the Midwest are expected to cost the country at least $3 billion in damages to homes and farms, Kyla Mandel noted at ThinkProgress (3/22).

This is likely only the beginning as unprecedented flooding is expected to continue into the spring across the US, according to a new forecast by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), putting millions of Americans at risk of serious inundation.

According to NOAA, an extremely wet winter is driving the flood risk, as “several portions of the country received accumulated precipitation exceeding 200% of average to date.”

Nebraska is currently experiencing its worst flooding in half a century. At least three people have died in the aftermath of the mid-March “bomb cyclone,” which passed through the region. The rain from that weather event, coupled with record-breaking earlier snowfall that has been melting, caused rivers to crest and submerged vast areas underwater.

Several other states, including Iowa and Missouri, are also grappling with the destruction of numerous homes and large swaths of agricultural land.

Despite the historic flooding taking place in the US — as well as in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi — EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said he believes climate impacts are still “50 to 75 years out.”

The government’s own National Climate Assessment, on which Wheeler’s EPA signed off, states the exact opposite. “The impacts of climate change are already being felt in communities across the country,” the first line warns. The assessment also emphasizes that increased flooding in the Midwest is one of the expected impacts of a warming world.

Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts (R) reportedly said that while there have been disasters with greater loss of life, he didn’t think “there’s ever been a disaster this widespread in Nebraska.”

According to the Nebraska Farm Bureau, farm and ranch losses due to the flooding could total $1 billion, with more than $500 million in livestock losses alone. Estimates reported by the Washington Post put damages in Nebraska at a total $1.4 billion. Agriculture represents 20% of the state’s gross domestic product and provides a quarter of all jobs in Nebraska, according to the Associated Press.

The flood damages incurred by Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, one of the nation’s most important air bases, are expected to cost significantly more than it would have cost to prevent the damages — despite officials’ knowledge that the base was at risk from flooding.

Meanwhile, in Iowa, Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) said the floods have caused an estimated $1.6 billion in damage to the state. The cost of repairing damages to homes is expected to reach over $480 million as an estimated 1,200 residences have been destroyed or seriously damaged. Businesses will take a $300 million hit and agricultural damage in the state is expected to total $214 million.

It is also expected to cost an estimated $350 million to repair 70 miles of broken levees in Iowa that have been damaged or destroyed by the floods.

At least a dozen levees across the three states breached and flooding is expected to continue as water levees remain high along the Missouri River. However, according to the US Army Corps of Engineers, which is responsible for maintaining levees, repairs usually take about six months. With the most flood-prone time of the year beginning mid-May, this means the area is at risk of further flooding in the near future should the levees not be repaired in time.

Missouri officials have yet to release estimates for addressing flood-related impacts in the state.

While visiting the region this week, Vice President Mike Pence said the Trump administration will expedite presidential disaster declarations for Nebraska and Iowa. Pence called the flooding “extraordinary” but made no mention of climate change.

TRUMP POLICIES ARE DESTROYING THE AMERICAN FARM AND NO ONE KNOWS HOW TO STOP IT. During the government shutdown at the beginning of the year, major media outlets produced a bumper crop of examples of the trope that always seems to be in season—stories about how Trump voters still support Trump. That included farmers, who in story after story were described as expressing their support for Trump, and promising to vote for him in 2020, even as farm bankruptcies mounted to their highest level since the 1980s, Mark Sumner noted at DailyKos (3/22).

But with climate change driving record floods, commodity prices battered by Trump’s trade war, and over $7 billion dollars in bailouts failing to come close to the 37% losses in overseas sales racked up since Trump began his sanctions … the real test for farmers is at hand. With no evidence of recovery in the near future, banks have become more cautious about extending loans that many farmers need to proceed into the new season. They’ve also become stricter about foreclosing on outstanding loans. “Foreclosure sale” signs that had become all too common across the Midwest during the Farm Aid days are visible again with shocking frequency—where they’re not underwater physically as well as financially.

As Axios reports, Wisconsin dairy farms closed in 2018 at an average rate of two a day. That makes it easy to see why farmers were so engaged on issues like forcing Canada to drop import controls on US dairy products—but the small changes achieved in Trump’s follow-up to NAFTA didn’t begin to address a fundamentally broken connection between supply and demand. All of it—declining domestic commodity prices, busted demand overseas since the imposition of Trump’s tariffs, and extreme weather events as the world passes into a climate regime that humans have never experienced—is driving a long-term downward spiral that seems almost inescapable. 

As the New York Times reports, flooding may be the final nail in the coffin for farmers who were hanging on by their fingernails. The stories coming out of Nebraska—barns and homes ripped apart as flooding rivers smash through ice dams, livestock swept into icy floods—are horrendous. Republicans in the Senate, House, and White House may still be attempting to spread doubt about climate change, but this is climate change. As with the fires that ravaged California last fall, these “historic” and “unprecedented” effects are the result of policies that have not only failed to address climate change in the past, but explicitly forbid planning for its effects in the future.

The Republicans aren’t just setting America up for disaster; they are making sure that the nation walks into a changing world blindfolded and hampered by regulations that say state and federal governments cannot address the changes that are already happening, much less consider what’s to come.

Among those agencies that are supposed to react to the climate change assessment are the Department of Agriculture and programs covering everything from farm loans to flood prevention. That is not happening. And it’s not just Trump driving the disaster. Republican governors have ordered states to deliberately ignore the prospect of climate change in planning for infrastructure, zoning, and construction. Florida went so far to outlaw the use of the term as well as remove any effects of climate change from state planning. Republican legislators have even tried to make it illegal to report on rising sea levels.

In Nebraska, the farmers being hit by the floods might look to Trump for the cause of falling commodity prices, but they don’t have to look any further than Lincoln—as in Lincoln, Nebraska—for reasons why this year’s flood hit them unprepared. As Norfolk, Nebraska-based WJAG reported in February, Nebraska has suffered from a series of record floods, a major drought, and gigantic wildfires over the last ten years, but it is one of seven states in the Midwest that have completely refused to create a plan for dealing with climate change. Republicans killed the last bill introduced to create such a plan in 2017, as the party remains dedicated to ignoring the effects of climate change—even if it means literally holding its nose.

University of Wisconsin-Madison agriculture Professor Steven Deller notes that that the industry, and farmers, are used to a market that moves up and down. But the intersection of Trump’s trade war and failing to make necessary changes to address a radically different climate is creating a situation as destructive as the storms that have ravaged the center of the country. “Farmers are structured to ride these waves out, but when the waves are this long they can’t ride that out,” Deller said.

As the flooding moves downstream into Iowa and Missouri, farmers in those areas can be reassured  that their states … have also not created a plan. However, Missouri did take action on climate change: It joined a federal lawsuit challenging the Clean Power Plan to ensure that it did not have to take any steps to address the problem. Climate change is not only here, not only ripping apart cities and farms across America, but the legislation passed at both state and federal levels is directly impacting how the results of that change are felt.

Floodwaters are now rolling through farms whose cash reserves have been destroyed by the trade war, and there are no programs in place to help them recover from levels of flooding that have never been previously recorded. Banks have already tightened their requirements and are looking ahead at a year in which overseas commodity prices are likely to remain low. Farmers are left with empty pockets and nowhere to turn.

Farms filing for bankruptcy rose by 19 percent in 2018 to the highest level since the 1980s. That was before the floods. In the wake of the ebbing waters, what’s likely to be revealed is a lot fewer working farms, and a great deal more signs advertising bankruptcy sales.

DACA FLIGHT ATTENDANT RELEASED AFTER 6 WEEKS IN ICE CUSTODY. Flight attendant Selene Saavedra Roman “was uneasy” when she was scheduled to work on an international flight. While her Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status allows her to work legally, she’s not permitted to travel outside the US. She raised this concern to her supervisor, who “insisted that as a registered US flight attendant, she would be safe.” With just a month on the job at Mesa Airlines, she was afraid of causing trouble, so she agreed. But her gut was right, Gabe Ortiz noted at Daily Kos (3/25).

Still in her uniform, Saavedra Roman was detained after returning to George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston Feb. 12 and placed into Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. She would remain there for six weeks before being released March 22, following a number of news hits, a massive push from the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA union, and widespread attention on social media.

Her husband, David Watkins, got the good news first. “She was crying and she said, ‘Please come get me. They are going to release me.” She told Slate, “I cried and hugged my husband and never wanted to let go. I am thankful and grateful for the amazing people that came to fight for me, and it fills my heart. Thank you everyone that has supported. I am just so happy to have my freedom back.”

But while the 28-year-old is now free, her nightmare is nowhere close to being over. Saavedra Roman has been in the process of adjusting her legal status through Watkins, a US citizen. But, due to her arrest, she could still face deportation despite having lived in the US since she was just 3 years old. Her court date is set for April.

Many legislators, including several Democratic presidential candidates, have called on the Trump administration to reinstate a provision that allowed DACA recipients to travel internationally in some circumstances, saying that “denying DACA recipients an opportunity to travel internationally for study and work is detrimental not only to their personal and professional wellbeing.”

Harvard student Jin Park—the first DACA recipient to be awarded the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship—is being forced to contemplate leaving the US to pursue an advanced degree at the University of Oxford in the UK with knowledge he likely cannot return upon competition of his studies.

DACA protections are life-changing, but as the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA and advocates point out, what undocumented immigrant youth ultimately need are permanent protections that can’t be dismantled by any president and will allow young immigrants to live their lives in peace. Saavedra Roman’s future is uncertain even as Jonathan Ornstein, Mesa Airlines CEO, said that the company is “deeply sorry” for the “administrative error” and “misunderstanding” that resulted in her arrest.

“This event highlights the urgency of commonsense immigration reform and resolution for America’s children who are part of DACA,” said the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, which gathered thousands of signatures in support of Saavedra Roman. “Our country is strong through our diversity. We are stronger together and better together.” The new Dream and Promise Act could protect young immigrants like her. Call your member of Congress at (202) 224-3121 and ask them where they stand on this legislation.

From The Progressive Populist, April 15, 2019

Populist.com