Dispatches

SEX TRAFFICKING PROSECUTIONS PLUMMET UNDER TRUMP.

Despite the recent arrest of financier Jeffrey Epstein on child sex trafficking charges, federal prosecutions of child sex traffickers have fallen by more than 26% under President Trump, and former Labor Secretary Alex Acosta proposed further cuts in the program that combats human trafficking, Igor Derysh reported at Salon.com (7/18).

Federal prosecutors are on pace to file 162 child sex trafficking cases this fiscal year, marking a 26.7% drop from last year and a 32.2% drop from five years ago, according to a report from Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC).

“If the present pace of such prosecutions continues, the fiscal 2019 total will be 162, compared to 221 last year,” the report said, adding that 2019 marked the second year that such prosecutions have fallen in a “reversal of the growth trend during the Obama years.”

Despite the drop since Trump took office, the number of federal child sex trafficking prosecutions is more than 90% higher than it was a decade earlier. Such prosecutions increased threefold during Obama’s presidency.

Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, the former federal prosecutor who gave financier Jeffrey Epstein a light plea deal when he was first accused of sex-trafficking children, tried to cut the program that combats human trafficking by nearly 80%, Salon reported (7/10).

Acosta resigned as labor secretary after Epstein was charged with running a child sex trafficking ring in New York and Florida. Acosta previously served as US attorney in Miami, where his office identified 36 underage victims and issued a 53-page indictment against Epstein in 2007. Rather than face life in prison, Epstein cut the “deal of a lifetime” with Acosta, as the Miami Herald reported, allowing Epstein to plead guilty to two state prostitution charges and serve just 13 months in county jail, where he was allowed to leave to work from his office six days per week. The deal also granted the well-connected billionaire who investigators believed hosted underage sex parties for affluent men immunity for any unnamed “potential co-conspirators.” A federal judge later found the deal was illegal because Acosta did not consult the alleged victims of Epstein’s crimes before agreeing to the deal.

Rep. Katherine Clark, D-Mass., says this was not the only time Acosta turned a blind eye to child trafficking.

Acosta’s Labor Department budget proposal for fiscal year 2020 proposed slashing the budget of the International Labor Affairs Bureau (ILAB) by nearly 80%. The agency is charged with combating human trafficking, child labor and forced labor in the US and around the world.

“This is now a pattern,” Clark told The Guardian. “Like so many in this administration Mr. Acosta chooses the powerful and wealthy over the vulnerable and victims of sexual assault and it is time that he finds another line of work.”

The proposed ILAB cuts were not the only Acosta decision to come under fire from human rights advocates. Earlier this year, the Labor Department rolled back Obama-era protections for some human trafficking victims and will now deny certain visas to victims of trafficking or other workplace crimes unless they first consult with another law enforcement agency like the FBI.

While the visa rule change will be implemented by the Labor Department, Democrats are fighting back against the proposed ILAB cuts. In their own 2020 budget proposal, Democrats called for expanding ILAB funding from from $68 million to $122 million.

BUDGET DEAL OUTRAGES HAWKS. Congressional Democrats reached a spending deal with President Trump (7/22). According to news reports, it increases discretionary spending by $320 billion compared to caps set in the 2011 Budget Control Act. It would lift the debt ceiling enough to allow the government to keep borrowing for two more years, punting the next showdown past the 2020 election. Budget hawks are outraged:

“It appears that Congress and the president have just given up on their jobs,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which blasted out a statement arguing the tentative deal “may end up being the worst budget agreement in our nation’s history.”

During the first two years of the Trump administration, the debt increased by more than $2 trillion, in part because of the 10-year, $1.5 trillion tax cut and large spending increases the Republican Congress passed and Trump signed into law.

Kevin Drum noted at MotherJones.com (7/22) that discretionary spending has been declining steadily for four decades, interrupted only by the Iraq War and the Great Recession. “The new budget deal will keep it at about 6% of GDP, the same as it was in 2000 and far less than it was in 1980. This is hardly a picture of a budget that’s skyrocketing out of control.

“If the hawks want to gripe about mandatory spending—primarily Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and other social welfare programs—that’s fine. Gripe away. But today’s budget deal has nothing to do with that. It’s solely about discretionary spending levels, and there’s simply no reason to think either that discretionary spending is a big problem or that today’s deal will make it into one.”

TRUMP LAGS IN ‘BATTLEGROUND’ STATES. Donald Trump remains unpopular and apparently vulnerable in seven battleground states that he carried in the 2016 Electoral College, a Morning Consult running survey showed (7/3). In surveys conducted through June, in Iowa, Trump showed 42% approval and 55% disapproval, a net decrease of 22 points since he took office in January 2017 (and one more point of disapproval since May). In Michigan, Trump showed 40% approval and 55% disapproval, a net decrease of 23 points since he took office (down 3 points since May). In Pennsylvania, Trump showed 44% approval and 53% disapproval, a net decrease of 19 points (dropping 2 points since May). In Wisconsin, Trump showed 42% approval and 56% disapproval, a net decrease of 20 points (down 2 points since May). Trump also showed net disapproval in Ohio, where he showed 45% approval and 51% disapproval, a net decrease of 20 points. In North Carolina, Trump showed 47% approval and 50% disapproval, a net decrease of 21 points, but he gained a point since May. In Florida dropped to 47% approval vs. 50% disapproval, a net decrease of 25 points (and down 3 points since May). In Arizona, Trump showed 45% approval and 52% disapproval, a net decrease of 27 points (dropping a point since May). Trump showed a narrow net approval in Texas, with 50% approval vs. 46% disapproval, a gain of one point since May but that’s still a decrease of 16 points since he became president, which isn’t good news for a Republican.

None of the states that voted for Hillary Clinton now show a net approval of Trump.

Sen. Lindsey Graham has seen his approval rise from 41-41 in the first quarter of 2018 to 43-39 in the third quarter to 52-31 in the first quarter 2019, and settling back to 50-33 in the second quarter. In context, Trump, who had a 56% approval rate and 31% disapproval rate in South Carolina in January 2017, when he was inaugurated, had a 55% approval rate and 40% disapproval in February 2018, and his approval rate has ranged from 52% to 56% since then, settling to 52% approval and 44% disapproval in June.

MITCH McCONNELL IS ONLY SENATOR MORE UNPOPULAR THAN SUSAN COLLINS. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) has seen a sharp drop in her approval ratings in Maine in the past year. A poll in May by Critical Insights found Collins’ approval rating had dropped to 41% and her disapproval rating had risen to 42%. But it was considered a possible outlier until Morning Consult’s quarterly poll of senators’ approval ratings (7/17) agreed that Collins’ popularity is underwater, Nathaniel Rakich noted at FiveThirtyEight. The Morning Consult poll showed 45% approved of Collins, compared with 48% who disapproved. Only one senator, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, had a higher disapproval rating (50%, vs. 36% approval) than Collins now does.

Other senators lagging in approval included Thom Tillis (R-NC), 33% approval, 35% disapproval; Gary Peters (D-MI), 34% approval, 27% disapproval; Cory Gardner (R-CO), 37% approval, 37% disapproval; Doug Jones (D-AL) 39% approval, 37% disapproval; and Martha McSally (R-AZ) 40% approval, 35% disapproval.

FEDERAL AGENCIES’ PLANS TO MOVE OUT OF D.C. SLAMMED AS ‘ANTI-SCIENCE.’ Employees and Democratic lawmakers are pushing back on the Trump administration’s plans to relocate hundreds of positions within two agencies outside of Washington, D.C. — a move some see as an effort to clamp down on science, E.A. Crunden reported at ThinkProgress (7.17).

While the planned moves of both the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and parts of the Department of Agriculture (USDA) differ in their scope and rationale, resistance to both plans has shaped up similarly.

Critics are expressing concern over the motivations behind the efforts, which would lead to a mass-exodus of agency experts unwilling to relocate. This would spur a science brain drain in line with President Donald Trump’s crackdown on reports and research from within his own government.

“These decisions… are meant to displace seasoned scientists and regulators who have honorably served Republican and Democratic Administrations alike,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) in a statement to ThinkProgress responding to both the BLM and USDA relocation plans. Van Hollen sits on the Interior and Environment Appropriations subcommittee.

Responsible for administering public lands, BLM has become a battleground under the Trump administration as the White House has rolled back the boundaries of national monuments and advocated for fossil fuel drilling on US acreage.

Now, the bureau is sparking controversy again. Administration officials confirmed this week that the overwhelming majority of BLM positions in D.C. are set for relocation. Around 84% of BLM staffers will be asked to relocate by the end of next year to areas outside of the nation’s capital, mostly to western states.

That announcement comes a month after Secretary Sonny Perdue mandated that over 500 USDA employees move en masse to Kansas City — located in both Missouri and Kansas — by Sept. 30, and gave them a deadline of July 15 to respond.

As of mid-July, at least 63% of USDA employees have said they would leave the department rather than relocate — that represents approximately two-thirds of USDA’s research staff. That loss confirms the brain-drain concerns critics of the move had raised, with major implications for institutional knowledge.

TRUMP HEAT WAVE: JUST A TASTE OF WHAT’S COMING. Most of the country had a blistering heat wave for most of a week in mid-July, with dangerous combinations of high temperatures and humidity pushing the “heat index” (what the temperature “feels like”) past 100 degrees Fahrenheit from the Dakotas down to Texas and across to Maine and Florida, an area encompassing well over half of the country’s population.

But as countless studies have made clear, the kind of extreme heat waves this country, Europe, and elsewhere have been experiencing this summer and last have been made more intense and more likely thanks to human caused global warming, Joe Romm reported at ThinkProgress (7/19).

Even worse, if we fail to significantly curb emissions of carbon pollution — which is the current plan put forth by Trump’s climate policies — then these severe and deadly heatwaves will become the normal summer weather over the next few decades.

In fact, a peer-reviewed study published (7/16) warns that if we don’t reverse emissions trends quickly and sharply, we will see a rise in unprecedented heat waves that will “break” the National Weather Service’s heat index scale.

Researchers warn we will face extended scorchers more brutal than the United States has ever experienced before. In several decades, parts of Florida and Texas could experience a heat index for five or more months per year exceeding 100 degrees, “with most of these days even surpassing 105 degrees.”

The administration’s own studies confirm this. Typical five-day heat waves in the US will be 12 degrees warmer by mid-century alone, according to the US National Climate Assessment (NCA), which the White House itself reviewed and approved last November.

Other studies also show devastating heat-related impacts the nation and the world face from Trump’s policies of abandoning the Paris climate deal, undoing Obama-era climate rules, and boosting carbon pollution.

For instance, America (and much of the world) will start seeing monster “humid heat waves” — where the heat index hits a potentially fatal 131 degrees — every other year by century’s end.

ENVIRO AND HEALTH ADVOCATES SAY TRUMP’S EPA FAVORS CHEMICAL INDUSTRY OVER CHILDREN. Environmental and public health advocates slammed a decision this week by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to not ban a pesticide linked to brain damage in children, in defiance of a 2018 federal court ruling, E.A. Crunden reported at ThinkProgress (7/19).

Critics say the move continues a trend under President Donald Trump’s EPA of taking actions seen as favorable to the chemical industry. But experts also indicated that it could be a watershed moment for litigation as groups push back against the decision.

“It is a tragedy that this administration sides with corporations instead of children’s health,” Patti Goldman, an attorney for the group Earthjustice, said in a statement. “But this is only a setback.”

The EPA announced (7/18) that it would not ban chlorpyrifos, despite years of pressure to do so from a broad array of advocacy groups. The agency argued that “critical questions remained regarding the significance of the data” surrounding the pesticide’s health impacts, asserting that an Obama-era proposal to ban chlorpyrifos was based on insufficient studies.

The decision marks the latest escalation in a decades-long battle. Chlorpyrifos is an organophosphate pesticide patented by the Dow Chemical Company and used on crops like broccoli and grapes, as well as on animals and in buildings, in order to kill pests. It is in the same family of chemicals as sarin gas, and studies have linked the pesticide to premature births, respiratory problems, and cancer. The World Health Organization (WHO) considers chlorpyrifos moderately hazardous to humans and its impacts on both children and farmworkers have been documented by opponents of its use for years.

In 2015, the Obama administration moved to ban chlorpyrifos, but Trump reversed that decision after taking office. Former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt rejected his own agency’s findings about the pesticide in 2017, in what was largely seen at the time as a win for the chemical industry. Dow and others have sought to keep the government from regulating their products.

The EPA under Trump has kept close ties with groups like the American Chemistry Council (ACC), an industry trade organization of which Dow is a member. Several EPA officials under the Trump administration have come from ACC and have maintained frequent communications with the group. Lobbying records also show that ACC’s requests and EPA regulation decisions have often been in lock-step under Trump.

TRUMP WANTS TO PROFIT OFF MEETING WITH WORLD LEADERS. President Donald Trump has yet more plans to try to personally profit off his presidency. According to Axios, one of the top location choices for hosting the G7 summit next year is Trump’s Doral golf resort near Miami, Think Progress noted (7/22).

If the summit were held there, it might be the single biggest windfall of Trump’s presidency for his businesses. Though he’s hosted individual foreign leaders in the past at Mar-a-Lago — and plenty have stayed at his hotel in Washington, D.C. — the G7 summit would bring leaders and their staff from the top economic powers in the world. Equipping the facility with the proper security for such a summit would surely come at great taxpayer expense.

As a frame of reference, the United States last hosted the G7 in 2012, with President Barack Obama using Camp David as the location, which is already equipped to provide such security.

The Miami Herald notes that Doral has actually been struggling since Trump bought it in 2012 — specifically because it bears his name. Though it’s still the biggest source of revenue for the Trump Organization, its profits dropped from $116 million in 2017 to $75 million in 2018, even as nearby competitors did not see such revenue declines.

COAL TOWNS FACE FINANCIAL COLLAPSE. New research shows communities in coal country are at an increased risk of fiscal collapse. The data is the latest blow to President Donald Trump’s ongoing but faltering efforts to rescue the industry and its workers, E.A. Crunden noted at ThinkProgress (7/16).

Local governments dependent on coal are failing to account for the financial implications of the industry’s demise, according to new findings from Columbia University and the Brookings Institution. That trend is likely to worsen should the federal government take action to curb carbon emissions, which would be likely if a Democrat were to triumph in 2020.

Released Monday, the new report looks at 26 counties in 10 states, all in Appalachia or the Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming. Those areas are all classified as “coal-mining dependent,” meaning that the industry is a major employer there, with some 53,000 workers noted by the study.

Coal also serves as a major contributor to local governments in those places. Despite that dependency, however, the report finds that those areas, already hard-hit by coal’s decline, are not prepared for the implications of potential climate policies.

“If the United States undertakes actions to address the risks of climate change, the use of coal in the power sector will decline rapidly,” the report observes, while going on to note that coal-dependent governments “have yet to grapple with the implications of climate policies for their financial conditions.”

With the backdrop of the plummeting coal industry, the study broadly examines the fiscal risk posed to communities heavily reliant on that sector. Between 2007 and 2017, coal production fell by a third, a decline that is set to continue even under current policies with a pro-coal federal government. But even a “moderately stringent climate policy,” the researchers note, could lead the industry to plummet by around 75% into the 2020s.

That would likely be disastrous for unprepared communities. School districts and other systems in these areas rely on coal-dependent revenue and local economies are heavily intertwined with the industry. Historically, the study argues, “the rapid decline of a dominant industry” has led to the fiscal collapse of local governments, threatening their long-term well-being.

And despite the risk that coal’s decline poses to reliant communities, government filings fail to capture this. “[M]unicipalities are at best uneven and at worst misleading (by omission) in their characterizations of climate-related risks,” the report notes.

RURAL HOSPITAL CLOSURES AFFECT EMPLOYMENT AND WAGES. Since 2011, 74 hospitals have closed in rural counties isolated from larger towns—specifically, counties that do not have any towns with more than 10,000 people, reported Kelly Edmiston, senior economist at the Kansas City Federal Reserve. These closures have been highly concentrated in the Southeast, particularly in east Texas and southeast Oklahoma.

According to the American Hospital Association (2019), many factors contribute to hospital closures; in the end, however, hospitals close because they are not financially viable. Indeed, both Oklahoma and Texas were among the five states with the highest concentration of rural hospitals in the “at-risk pool” in a recent study of hospital finances by Morgan Stanley. Hundreds of existing rural hospitals are at high risk of eventual closure if their financial conditions do not improve. A 2019 study suggests 21% of all currently operating rural hospitals are at risk of closure.

Rural counties with hospital closures saw meaningfully lower annual growth in employment and aggregate wages three years after the closure than counties without hospital closures. Specifically, employment in counties with hospital closures fell at an annual rate of 0.5% in the three years following the closure, while aggregate wages grew at a moderate annual rate of 1.1%. Over the same period, counties without hospital closures had positive average annual employment growth of 0.7% and higher annual aggregate wage growth of 3%.

From The Progressive Populist, August 15, 2019

Populist.com