In the 1970s, the construction of a dam in Nueva Ecija province, Philippines, submerged the town of Pantabangan. In recent weeks drought conditions have depleted water levels in the dammed reservoir, revealing the submerged town and drawing visitors who battle the heat to see the ruins. This marks the sixth time the nearly 300-year-old town has made an appearance since its disappearance in the 1970s.
Arial view of sunken town
An aerial view of the old sunken town of Pantabangan on April 28, 2024 in Nueva Ecija province, Philippines. Due to a severe drought in the Philippines, a centuries-old settlement submerged since the 1970s has reemerged, attracting tourists despite the extreme heat. This event marks the sixth appearance of the nearly 300-year-old ruins of old Pantabangan town, including parts of a church and tombstones, since the construction of a dam for irrigation and hydro-power. The reservoir’s water level has dropped nearly 50 meters below normal as the country faces extreme heat exacerbated by El Niño conditions, leading to official drought declarations in about half of the country’s provinces. (Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)
Ruins revealed as Pantabangan dries out
An aerial view of the old sunken town of Pantabangan on April 28, 2024 in Nueva Ecija province, Philippines. (Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)
Clear outlines of structures revealed by receding water
An aerial view of the old sunken town of Pantabangan on April 28, 2024 in Nueva Ecija province, Philippines. (Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)
Arial view of the cemetery of Pantabangan
An aerial view of the cemetery of the old sunken town of Pantabangan on April 28, 2024 in Nueva Ecija province, Philippines. (Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)
Arial view of church ruins
An aerial view of the old sunken town of Pantabangan on April 28, 2024 in Nueva Ecija province, Philippines. (Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)
Tombstones from the cemetery in sunken town
Tombstones in the cemetery of the old sunken town of Pantabangan are seen on April 28, 2024 in Nueva Ecija province, Philippines. (Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)
Arial view of cemetery
An aerial view of the cemetery of the old sunken town of Pantabangan on April 28, 2024 in Nueva Ecija province, Philippines. (Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)
Tourists are drawn to the ruins
An aerial view of the old sunken town of Pantabangan on April 28, 2024 in Nueva Ecija province, Philippines. (Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)
Remnanats of Pantabangan’s church
An aerial view of the old sunken town of Pantabangan on April 28, 2024 in Nueva Ecija province, Philippines. (Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)
The cross from the ruins of the church still stands
Remnants of the old sunken town of Pantabangan are seen on April 28, 2024 in Nueva Ecija province, Philippines. (Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)
Ruins largely hidden since the 1970s dry out in drought
A dead fish is seen amid remnants of the old sunken town of Pantabangan on April 28, 2024 in Nueva Ecija province, Philippines. (Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)
People visit the ruins despite extreme heat
People visit the remnants of the old sunken town of Pantabangan on April 28, 2024 in Nueva Ecija province, Philippines. (Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)
Some structures are still partially standing in the submerged town
Remnants of the old sunken town of Pantabangan are seen on April 28, 2024 in Nueva Ecija province, Philippines. (Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)
Tombstones revealed by receding waters
Tombstones in the cemetery of the old sunken town of Pantabangan are seen on April 28, 2024 in Nueva Ecija province, Philippines. (Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)
Tourists explore the remains of the old town of Pantabangan
People visit the remnants of the old sunken town of Pantabangan on April 28, 2024 in Nueva Ecija province, Philippines. (Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)
Collapsed structures in old sunken town appear for the sixth time since the 1970s
Remnants of the old sunken town of Pantabangan are seen on April 28, 2024 in Nueva Ecija province, Philippines. (Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)
Ruins of Pantabangan, submerged since the 1970s, reemerges during Philipines drought
People visit the remnants of the old sunken town of Pantabangan on April 28, 2024 in Nueva Ecija province, Philippines. (Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)
Tourists explore the remains of the old town of Pantabangan
People visit the remnants of the old sunken town of Pantabangan on April 28, 2024 in Nueva Ecija province, Philippines. (Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)
Visitors take photos of the rarely seen town of Pantabangan
People visit the remnants of the old sunken town of Pantabangan on April 28, 2024 in Nueva Ecija province, Philippines. (Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)
I wanted to share a few thoughts on the ongoing crisis and mess in Israel-Palestine and also on America’s elite college campuses.
First, a thought on the campus situation and this question of whether these protests are tainted by anti-Semitism. I know most about the situation at Columbia, which certainly isn’t to say I’m an expert on it. To me it seems clear that non-students operating on the periphery of the campus have been responsible for the most egregious comments or incidents that almost no one would deny are anti-Semitic. There’s been some of that from students on campus, usually in heated instances when visibly Jewish students are in the proximity of protesters.
I promised to circle back on some of the notable news last week that was drowned out by the major stories of the day. This is an effort to sweep up some of those loose ends.
Judge Puts Trump On Full Blast
With all the other news last week, you may have missed the withering treatment Donald Trump received from the federal judge in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan rejected Trump’s motion for a new trial and upheld the $83 million damages award in Carroll’s favor. In doing so, the judge raked Trump over the coals for his ongoing defamation of Carroll, his repeated instances of defamation, and his demeanor during the trial.
The judge rejected Trump’s use of comparable cases to argue that the compensatory damages awarded Carroll were excessive: “None of these prior examples involved publication of defamations as widespread and destructive as Mr. Trump’s defamation of Ms. Carroll, and none involved a publisher of defamation who was a president of the United States or anyone nearly as high-profile.”
But it was Trump’ conduct in court that drew the most ire from the judge. In finding that the punitive damages awarded Carroll were appropriate, the judge wrote:
But beyond his out-of-court statements disparaging Ms. Carroll during trial — many of which were introduced in evidence — the jury could have found that Mr. Trump’s demeanor and conduct in the courtroom itself put his hatred and disdain on full display. Mr. Trump could be heard repeatedly complaining to his counsel about the proceedings, so much so that plaintiff’s counsel twice requested that the Court instruct him to stop. In particular, during Ms. Carroll’s testimony, the jury could have found, Mr. Trump could be heard making audible comments that Ms. Carroll’s testimony was false, that the proceedings were a “witch hunt” and a “con job,” and most notably, that his earlier statements disparaging Ms. Carroll were “true.” And, most dramatically, mere minutes after plaintiff’s counsel began her closing argument, Mr. Trump conspicuously stood and walked out of the courtroom for no apparent reason save to evidence his disapproval, though he was present again when Court resumed later that morning and remained for his own counsel’s entire summation.
This case will be wending its way through appeals for a while, so don’t expect Carroll to begin collecting on her judgment any time soon.
CNN: “Arizona state Sen. Jake Hoffman, one of the so-called fake electors charged in the Arizona 2020 election subversion case, announced Saturday that he’s been elected as a Republican National Committee national committeeman for the state.”
Trump II Takes Aim At The Fed, Too
WSJ: “Donald Trump’s allies are quietly drafting proposals that would attempt to erode the Federal Reserve’s independence if the former president wins a second term, in the midst of a deepening divide among his advisers over how aggressively to challenge the central bank’s authority.”
What Being A Target Of Trump Looks Like
Lisa Page, the former FBI attorney whose affair with Peter Strzok became endless fodder for Donald Trump delegitimization of the Mueller investigation, was in court last week trying to convince a judge to do more to protect her from a stalker about whom the FBI had allegedly failed to warn her:
In mid-December, Mr. Perez showed up at least four times at Ms. Page’s house in Washington, making a bizarre claim that she had been witness to his childhood sexual abuse, even though the two had never met, according to a warrant from the Metropolitan Police Department. During one visit, he interacted with Ms. Page’s 11-year-old son.
The man pleaded guilty to misdemeanor stalking and was barred from the DC area for six months and ordered to attend six therapy sessions.
ICYMI …
Mother Jones: “In a little-noticed court filing earlier this month, federal prosecutors described Steve Bannon as a “co-conspirator” in a massive criminal fraud and racketeering case against a flamboyant, far-right Chinese fugitive, compounding the legal headaches of the former Donald Trump adviser.”
‘Turning The Oval Office Into The Seat Of Criminal Activity’
Still reeling over that insane Supreme Court argument on presidential immunity Thursday. Two moments standout as especially jarring, for totally opposite reasons.
The first is Justice Samuel Alito going to the unthinkable place that without immunity presidents may just never leave the Oval Office:
Alito asks if closely contested elections will lead to a cycle where former presidents fear they will be "prosecuted by a bitter political" that "destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy" pic.twitter.com/gmkVvhxkcJ
The second is Ketanji Brown Jackson fully appreciating the real impact of Alito’s ahistorical line of thinking:
Jackson: The most powerful person in the world could go into office knowing that there would be no potential penalty for committing crimes … I'm trying to understanding what the disincentive is from turning the Oval Office into the seat of criminal activity in this country pic.twitter.com/jC2yihYc54
Others also still sifting through the rubble of that oral argument:
Steve Vladeck: “I’m worried because there appear to be five or more justices who think that they have an obligation to do more than is required in the instant case—apparently without regard for the very real institutional and political costs such a move could (and, I fear, would) incur.”
Marty Lederman: A few preliminary reactions to the oral argument in Trump v. United States
An Especially Chilling Death Penalty Case
Chris Geidner reports on an unusual case where the Republican attorney general of Oklahoma can’t convince a state court to throw out a death row inmate’s conviction, despite admitted prosecutorial misconduct, so is now seeking relief from the Supreme Court.
2024 Ephemera
WaPo: “Former president Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis met privately Sunday morning in Miami, according to people familiar with the matter, breaking a years-long chill between the presumptive Republican nominee and his onetime chief primary rival.
MI-Sen: Former Rep. Peter Meijer (R-MI) has dropped out of the GOP primary for U.S. Senate.
Notable moment in today’s @atlpressclub debate in the GOP race for Georgia’s open 3rd District: All five Republican candidates raise their hand when @russfox5 asks if they believe Trump was the “rightful” winner of Georgia’s 2020 race, which he lost to President Biden. #gapolpic.twitter.com/mBOg7ynvWv
President Biden’s message to the press: The defeated former president has made no secret of his attack on our democracy. He said he wants to be a dictator on day one, promised a ‘bloodbath’ when he loses again, and so much more. Eight years ago, you could have written it off as… pic.twitter.com/hcqoYa5ARM
This article was originally published at Stateline.
This month, Wisconsin joined 27 other states that have banned or restricted local governments’ use of private donations to run cash-strapped election offices, buy voting equipment or hire poll workers for Election Day.
All of the state laws came in the past four years, pushed by conservative lawmakers and activists who claim that Democratic voters disproportionately benefited from hundreds of millions of dollars in grants primarily funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, during the 2020 presidential election.
Courts and federal regulators have rejected those claims, but the debate over the role of outside money reveals a broader worry among election experts, who say there are significant shortcomings in local government funding of election offices. That includes not just Election Day duties and vote counting, but also the year-round administrative work of maintaining voter rolls and taking care of and updating voting equipment.
This isn’t a situation where we can just overcome it with pure grit and buck up and get it done. We need the tools to get it done.
– Dusty Farmer, election clerk of Oshtemo Township, Mich.
Local municipal budgets are tight, and they vary depending on the tax base. It can be hard to justify a new ballot-counting machine when there are potholes to fix or schools to fund.
The ongoing funding uncertainty is untenable, said Tammy Patrick, the chief executive officer for programs at the National Association of Election Officials. Election officials need to have consistent funding to know they can replace outdated equipment and provide a secure and efficient voting experience, she said.
“Ultimately and ideally, we wouldn’t need to run such a critical function of our democracy relying on volunteers or donations,” said Patrick, who is leading a national initiative to promote election funding. “Everyone wants our elections to be secure, accessible, legitimate. And in order to have that, we have to support our election administrators.”
Funding democracy
Counting ballots at 2:30 a.m. on election night in 2020, Dusty Farmer, the election clerk of Oshtemo Township, Michigan, realized she should have chosen a high-speed ballot tabulator.
When Michigan voters amended the state constitution in 2018 to allow for voting absentee without having to provide an excuse to officials, the number of mail-in ballots shot up and townships had to find a way to process those new ballots. Farmer opted for the less expensive, slower ballot processors.
After two years of lobbying her local board, she was able to secure the $40,000 high-speed counting machines last year — a “big investment” ahead of the 2024 election, she said.
“This isn’t a situation where we can just overcome it with pure grit and buck up and get it done,” Farmer said. “We need the tools to get it done.”
Money from Congress has been limited. This year, congressional leaders agreed to provide $55 million in election grant funding for states to distribute locally. That is around as much as Los Angeles County alone spent conducting a gubernatorial recall election in 2021.
State and local election officials could breathe easier about some of the cybersecurity challenges if they had more funding from Congress, Arizona Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said to a room of fellow secretaries of state at a Washington, D.C., meeting in February.
“This is an unfunded federal mandate, the only part of our critical infrastructure that does not have sustained federal funding,” he said.
State money for elections varies widely. Lawmakers in some states do not allocate any of their budget to local election officials. In many cases, states just distribute federal grants for improving election security or as reimbursement for new equipment. Often, however, states hold onto federal grants dollars because they are unsure when the next installment from Congress might come.
Other states do allocate some local election funding in their budgets, but often not at a level that would allow for major equipment replacement, said Matthew Weil, executive director of the Democracy Program at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a D.C.-based think tank.
States such as Alabama, Colorado, Hawaii and Louisiana also reimburse localities for a portion of elections where statewide candidates are on the ballot, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Alaska and Delaware pay for all expenses of state and federal elections, while other states will pay for statewide special elections or presidential primary elections.
Funding elections mostly at the local level is not the model that is going to work for the future, Weil said.
But asking state governments to use their limited budgets on election equipment is politically tough, he added; it’s hard to cut a ribbon on a new $100 million voting system. Local governments spend as much on elections as they do to maintain parking facilities, according to a report by the MIT Election Data and Science Lab to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission in 2021.
“I don’t necessarily disagree with banning private funding in elections,” Weil said. “But that does require that counties, states and the federal government step up and fund elections at the levels they need to provide the services that voters have come to expect.”
Banning private money in elections
Four years ago, as thousands of Americans died every day during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, local election officials hurriedly prepared for the 2020 presidential election, not knowing whether they had the money needed to allow voters to safely cast a ballot and for their staff to safely count those votes.
Foreseeing a democratic disaster, the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a Chicago-based nonprofit, used $350 million from Zuckerberg and Chan to hand out grants to nearly 2,500 local election offices across 49 states.
Local clerks, like Robin Cleveland of Williamstown Township, Michigan, used that money to buy personal protective equipment, pay and train temporary election workers, and run voter education campaigns.
The $5,000 private grant was essential for getting “desperately needed” supplies for her small community east of Lansing, Cleveland said. Though she feels supported by her township board, she has not been able to pay election workers more competitive wages nor replace “ancient” equipment — except in 2018, when she got a federal grant for new ballot tabulators.
“Basically, the money has to come from somewhere if we’re going to have safe, secure and accurate elections,” she wrote to Stateline in an email about private grants.
In Wisconsin, more than 200 communities received a collective $10 million in private grants. Green Bay, Kenosha, Madison, Milwaukee and Racine — the state’s most populous cities — received 86% of that money, according to a report by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, a conservative litigation group that supported the ballot question to ban private donations for election administration. Those five cities accounted for nearly 18% of the state’s total registered voters.
It was important to prevent outside groups from potentially dictating terms for grants or giving the impression that the money is helping a certain political party, said Rick Esenberg, president of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty.
“It creates an appearance of impropriety, and it undermines confidence in the outcome of the election,” he said. “Elections are a public function that have to be undertaken with scrupulous neutrality.”
Esenberg doesn’t think elections are underfunded. If local election officials feel like they need more money, he said, they should go to their state legislature.
Voters approved the state’s new constitutional amendment by more than 54%.
Of the 28 states that have now enacted bans, only Pennsylvania supplemented its measure with more election funding. In 2022, then-Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf signed into law the compromise measure, which invested $45 million in local elections.
‘A total lifeline’
Before Wisconsin’s ban went into effect, Cities Forward, a nonprofit based in the state, awarded an $800,000 grant to Milwaukee for new ballot tabulators, text messaging services to reach voters and polling place upgrades. Madison was also able to spend $1.5 million from Center for Tech and Civic Life and U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence grants before the ban went into place.
The need hasn’t dissipated, said Tiana Epps-Johnson, founder and executive director of the Center for Tech and Civic Life, the nonprofit that drew conservative ire. Election officials need equipment, such as fast-counting ballot processing machines, to prevent delays in results that can fuel misinformation, she said.
“We hear from election officials in every corner of the country who are severely underfunded,” she said. “Right now, election officials run the risk of having equipment that is not up to the task of the demand that they’re going to see from voters this fall.”
Although the Center for Tech and Civic Life is not issuing grants this election cycle, it is a founding partner of the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, which has been distributing money to local offices in states that allow it in the years since the last presidential election.
Macoupin County, Illinois, a downstate farming community halfway between St. Louis and Springfield, recently received a $500,000 grant to create a new early voting center — an amount equivalent to two years of the county’s election budget.
The voting center, which opened in January, is in a building that used to house an insurance agency and law office. It sits across the street from the courthouse, where early voters used to have to cast ballots in cramped hallways, next to people waiting for their court dates. Election equipment was stored under staircases in a hallway or in the boiler room.
“It was a total lifeline that otherwise never would have happened,” said Pete Duncan, the county clerk. “While we would love for it to have been federal or state funding that came in to help get this accomplished, that’s just not something that the feds or states are interested in doing.”
This article was originally published at Stateline. Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.
NEW YORK — It’s often said that Donald Trump gets what he wants by wearing people down: through obfuscation, delay, bluster, muddying the waters — whatever tires people out.
There were so many things that happened yesterday in the Supreme Court’s hearing on presidential immunity that it’s hard to know where to start. But one part that captured it for me was Sam Alito’s line of argument that presidential immunity might be necessary to make it possible for presidents to leave office voluntarily, or that not having some broad grant of immunity would make refusal to leave office more likely. Here’s one of the quotes: “If an incumbent who loses a very close, hotly contested election knows that a real possibility after leaving office is not that the president is gonna be able to go off to a peaceful retirement, but that the president may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy? And we can look around the world and find countries where we have seen this process, where the loser gets thrown in jail.”
Josh Kovensky is back at the courthouse in Lower Manhattan this morning and, while we likely won’t have a liveblog today, you can expect some longer dispatches from him as the proceedings move forward, identifying big themes in the trial as well as bringing us breaking news.
The liveblog will be back periodically throughout, during important moments when things are moving particularly quickly.
For long moments during yesterday’s Supreme Court oral argument on presidential immunity in Trump v. United States, the clock stopped and the outside world ceased to be and all I was left with was the blood rushing in my ears and a sinking feeling in my stomach.
When Justice Samuel Alito, the most villainous political figure in my lifetime, asserted without any irony that prosecuting a president for refusing to relinquish power after losing an election might encourage future presidents to hold on even more firmly to their office, any remaining optimism I could muster about American democracy and its institutional ability to defend itself against tyranny drained away.
I don’t say that lightly or for effect, and I don’t want to make my personal feelings the point here. But when I woke up this morning and saw the news coverage writ large, it didn’t reflect what happened yesterday. We slid over the edge of a cliff, and we won’t stop now until we hit bottom.
For the second time this year, the Supreme Court encountered a Jan. 6 case and barely talked about Jan. 6, which would be amazing under any circumstance but is astounding considering the court’s own proximity to the riot. The auto-coup attempt happened right across the street from the Supreme Court building. As TPM first reported and was later confirmed by an IG report, the planners of the Jan. 6 Ellipse rally had also planned a second culminating rally for that afternoon on the steps of the Supreme Court itself. The only reason it didn’t happen was that the growing riot at the Capitol blocked access to the Supreme Court. As long as the guillotine falls on another’s neck, I suppose?
As I’ve said here many times, the legal system can’t seem to appreciate the existential threat to itself that Trump and the MAGA movement represent. The hypotheticals batted around yesterday only confirmed that. Whether it was bribery or political assassinations or even another coup, Trump argued that he would be immune from criminal prosecution unless and until he was impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate.
But those and other hypotheticals presupposed for no obvious reason that there would still be a Congress around to impeach him and a court system to try him. Why would he tolerate an insolent Congress and a meddlesome Supreme Court in the first place? And if he had been so short-sighted as to leave the other two branches intact, why would a lawless president immune from criminal prosecution for official acts leave the White House after an impeachment conviction? Who’s gonna make him leave? Who’s gonna stop him? Certainly not this Supreme Court, we learned yesterday.
While the ultimate ruling in this case may soften some of the worst of what the justices said yesterday, even a “compromise” decision that allows the Jan. 6 trial of Trump to go forward is likely to lead to considerable delay – setting up the preposterous scenario in which the president who engaged in sedition against the United States gets to run for the office again before he is ever prosecuted for his first coup.
The conservative justices had an opportunity to rally to the defense of democracy, to gird the system against further attack, to righteously defend the rule of law, and to protect its own prerogatives and powers against a wannabe tyrant who is counting on them to be his supplicants. They could have drawn a sharp line. They could have summoned indignation and outrage. They could have overlooked their partisan priors in favor of principle – or more cravenly in favor of self-preservation. With the possible and limited exception of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, they did none of that.
They failed in the worst possible way at the most crucial time.
For three long years, Supreme Court watchers mollified themselves (and others) with vague promises that when the rubber hit the road, even the ultraconservative Federalist Society justices of the Roberts court would put democracy before party whenever they were finally confronted with the legal effort to hold Donald Trump accountable for Jan. 6. …
On Thursday, during oral arguments in Trump v. United States, the Republican-appointed justices shattered those illusions. This was the case we had been waiting for, and all was made clear—brutally so. These justices donned the attitude of cynical partisans, repeatedly lending legitimacy to the former president’s outrageous claims of immunity from criminal prosecution. To at least five of the conservatives, the real threat to democracy wasn’t Trump’s attempt to overturn the election—but the Justice Department’s efforts to prosecute him for the act
The Irrepressible Ketanji Brown Jackson
So smart, so confident, and so direct. I came out of my seat when she asked Trump’s attorney: “What was up with the pardon for President Nixon? If everybody thought that presidents couldn’t be prosecuted, then what was that about?” What was up indeed.
Quote Of The Day
In the end, if it fails completely, it’s because we destroyed our democracy on our own, isn’t it?
Quick story: When my first child was born, I had a 100-pound German Shepherd who I was super concerned about bringing a baby home to. So I read all the things about how to socialize a GSD to the new member of the pack: let him smell her a lot, put one of her spit-up rags in his crate, give him time to adjust.
That first week I was pretty on edge, but then my mom came to visit her first grandchild. When she arrived, I was in my study with the baby asleep on my chest. My mom made a beeline for the baby – but when she got to the doorway, the GSD blocked her path.
She tried to sidestep him. He countered. She tried to push by him. He wouldn’t budge. He wasn’t mean about it, but he wasn’t nice either. And then I realized: HE WAS NOT GOING TO LET HER ANYWHERE NEAR THAT BABY. I called him off, and he reluctantly let my mom through.
In that moment, the baby was confirmed as part of the pack (and to my mother’s chagrin she was not). From then on, I relaxed about the dog and the baby, and we never had a problem.
