Let me flag something to your attention. For the better part of two weeks the national press was consumed by House Republican claims that there was a cover-up in the investigation of the President’s son Hunter Biden and that the investigation had essentially been shut down by DOJ political appointees. According to a purported IRS whistleblower, U.S. Attorney David Weiss had been turned down when he requested special counsel status. His efforts to bring additional and more serious charges against the younger Biden were thwarted. Just as it seemed that the whole saga had come to a conclusion, suddenly it was ramping back up again, despite very little evidence that any of the claims were true.
Continue reading “Same Old Same Old”DOJ Immediately Tries Again After Trump Judge Denies Request To Pause His Social Media Contact Ban
A Trump-appointed district court judge denied the administration’s request to pause his sweeping ruling preventing many government entities from flagging social media misinformation to the platforms Monday, claiming that those being “censored” suffered far a greater injury than the government.
Continue reading “DOJ Immediately Tries Again After Trump Judge Denies Request To Pause His Social Media Contact Ban”Meatball Ron, His Rubber Stamp House and a Gay Fondling Cover-Up
Ordinarily this would not be a surprising or especially newsworthy story, at least not at the national level. A controversy-tangled freshman Republican member of the Florida state House of Representatives, Fabian Basabe, has been accused of sexual harassment and some mix of unwanted touching and assault by two members of his staff. Basabe, 45, is billed as a former New York City socialite who appeared on a couple reality shows. He’s married Martina Borgomanero, the heiress to a lingerie fortune. (A very South Florida story, as you can tell — he represents Miami Beach and environs.) He was already in some hot water in his socially tolerant, gay-friendly district for voting in lockstep with state Republicans pushing Ron DeSantis’s anti-“woke”/LGBTQ agenda. The accusers are one staffer, Nicholas Frevola, 25, and one former intern, Jacob Cutbirth, 24.
As I said, not unremarkable, but bordering on a news story cliche: An apparently closeted, if in this case perhaps lightly closeted, Republican rep accused of harassing and fondling male staffers. He denies it; news at 11.
Where it gets interesting though is that the investigation by The Miami Herald and CBS News Miami strongly suggests a cover-up by the Republican leadership of the state House, specifically House Speaker Paul Renner, a key DeSantis ally.
Continue reading “Meatball Ron, His Rubber Stamp House and a Gay Fondling Cover-Up”Clarence Thomas Has A History Of Snagging Free Stuff
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
Must Read
Building on the recent ground-breaking work by ProPublica, the NYT added to the picture of the most senior justice on the Supreme Court with a Sunday piece titled: “Where Clarence Thomas Entered an Elite Circle and Opened a Door to the Court.”
The revelations in the latest piece may not be has glaringly problematic as ProPublica’s recent batch of Clarence Thomas stories, but in a way it paints a darker picture. Thomas has been accepting free stuff since well before he was confirmed to the Supreme Court:
- Bahama vacation: “A former girlfriend said in an interview that ‘a buddy’ of Justice Thomas had paid for their vacation in the Bahamas in the mid-1980s, when he was chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. … In the mid-1980s, divorced and with custody of his son, Justice Thomas dated a woman named Lillian McEwen. In an interview, she remembered the Bahamas vacation, at a house with a caretaker and a car. She never knew the identity of the ‘buddy’ footing the bill but understood it to be a professional contact because that was how the justice referred to such people, she said.”
- Wedding reception: “A longtime friend said he had paid for the justice’s 1987 wedding reception. … Not long after Ms. McEwen and Justice Thomas broke up, he met Virginia Lamp, known as Ginni. They married in 1987; Armstrong Williams, a close friend from Justice Thomas’s earliest days in Washington who is now a conservative commentator, said in an interview that he paid for their wedding reception.”
The bulk of the NYT piece is focused on Thomas’ affiliation with something called the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, which offered mutual access between Thomas and “extraordinarily wealthy, largely conservative members who lionized him and all that he had achieved.” That led to additional freebies of the kind ProPublica has previously documented. But again, Thomas’ willingness to accept such largesse appears to well pre-date his ascension to the high court.
Always Read Linda Greenhouse
The former NYT Supreme Court reporter: Look at What John Roberts and His Court Have Wrought Over 18 Years
House GOP Targets Chris Wray This Week
FBI Director Christopher Wray is scheduled to appear Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee, where the House GOP’s assault on the rule of law and on an independent Justice Department will continue.
The committee itself says it will use the Wray hearing to “examine the politicization of the nation’s preeminent law enforcement agency under the direction of FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland.”
To give you a flavor of the right-wing attack plan here, check out the conservative Washington Examiner’s “Seven unanswered questions ahead of FBI Director Wray’s testimony”:
- Why did the FBI withhold the FD-1023 from Congress?
- Why did the FBI’s Washington field office conduct the raid of Mar-a-Lago, in a break from standard practice?
- Why did the FBI limit the number of witnesses who IRS investigators could contact during the Hunter Biden investigation?
- What has the FBI done to investigate attacks on anti-abortion centers and churches?
- Are agents who worked on the Russia investigation still at the FBI?
- How closely has the FBI worked with social media companies to censor speech?
- Has Merrick Garland ever asked you to stand down on an investigative step?
Alright, we’re back from that dip into wingnut-o-sphere. You okay? We’ve got one more …
My Head Hurts
The REAL Weaponization
NYT:
John F. Kelly, who served as former President Donald J. Trump’s second White House chief of staff, said in a sworn statement that Mr. Trump had discussed having the Internal Revenue Service and other federal agencies investigate two F.B.I. officials involved in the investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia. …
“President Trump questioned whether investigations by the Internal Revenue Service or other federal agencies should be undertaken into Mr. Strzok and/or Ms. Page,” Mr. Kelly said in the statement. “I do not know of President Trump ordering such an investigation. It appeared, however, that he wanted to see Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page investigated.”
This Week In Trump Prosecutions …
Today: Trump is due to respond to the government’s request to continue the Mar-a-Lago until January 2024. This will be Trump’s first bite at trying to delay the trial until after the 2024 election.
Friday: A hearing is scheduled before U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in the Mar-a-Lago case to address pre-trial matters related to the use of classified information. This hearing may provide an early indication of how quickly – or not – Cannon will move the case along.
Lemme Fetch The World’s Tiniest Violin
Lin Wood, who just surrendered his law license rather than be disbarred, calls himself the “second-most persecuted person in America” after Donald Trump.
It’s Bad, Y’all
WaPo:
A July 4 injunction that places extraordinary limits on the government’s communications with tech companies undermines initiatives to harden social media companies against election interference, civil rights groups, academics and tech industry insiders say.
After companies and the federal government spent years expanding efforts to combat online falsehoods in the wake of Russian interference on the platforms during the 2016 election, the ruling is just the latest sign of the pendulum swinging in the other direction. Tech companies are gutting their content moderation staffs, researchers are pulling back from studying disinformation and key government communications with Silicon Valley are on pause amid unprecedented political scrutiny.
It Gets Weirder
Wagner boss Prigozhin met with Vladimir Putin after the failed mutiny last month, the Kremlin says.
For Your General Awareness …
- President Biden is in the UK Monday for meetings with the king and the prime minister ahead of a two-day NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. He’ll end the trip with a visit to Finland, NATO’s newest member.
- Congress is back for its final push before the long August break.
2024 Ephemera
- NV-Sen: Republican Sam Brown will seek the GOP nomination to challenge Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV). Brown, badly injured by an IED while serving in Afghanistan, lost in the GOP Senate primary last year. This time, the NRSC is already throwing its support to Brown, trying to avert another general election disaster where the party nominates an extremist. Big Lie aficionado Jim Marchant, who lost the secretary of state race last year, is the candidate the NRSC wants to pre-empt making it to the general election.
- Win it Back, a group with ties to the Club For Growth, is beginning a $3.6 million anti-Trump TV ad blitz in the early GOP primary states of Iowa and South Carolina.
- The New Yorker’s David Remnick interviews Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Sole Suspect In 1982 Tylenol Murders Has Died
James Lewis, the lone suspect in the 1982 Tylenol murders, was found dead Sunday at his home in suburban Boston, multiple law-enforcement sources confirmed to the Tribune.
His death comes after 40 years of intense scrutiny from law enforcement, in which Lewis played a cat-and-mouse game with investigators. Local authorities questioned him as recently as September as part of a renewed effort to bring charges in the case.
With the investigation’s only suspect dead, it now seems unlikely that charges will ever be brought in poisonings that killed seven people and caused a worldwide panic.
The Gelded Age?
I leave you this morning with Elon self-fiddling while the world burns:
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Santos Compares Himself To Rosa Parks, Saying He Refuses To ‘Sit In The Back’
Embattled Rep. George Santos (R-NY) compared himself to civil rights icon Rosa Parks during a podcast interview last week, saying as “a Latino gay man” he will not “sit in the back.”
Continue reading “Santos Compares Himself To Rosa Parks, Saying He Refuses To ‘Sit In The Back’”Kakhovka Dam Breach In Ukraine Caused Economic, Agricultural And Ecological Devastation That Will Last For Years
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
When an explosion breached the Kakhovka Dam in Ukraine on June 6, 2023, much analysis focused on near-term impacts, including the flooding of the city of Kherson, threats to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and consequences for Ukrainian military forces’ expected spring offensive against Russian troops.
But the most severe long-term effects will fall on Southeast Ukraine’s farmers.
Villages there were flooded. Roads, train tracks and irrigation canals were washed away. Crops in fields and orchards in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia region were inundated, then left to shrivel after the water drained.
The long-term ecological disaster will unfold over decades to come. Crimea, once a region known for its sunny beaches and rice fields, could dry up without irrigation.
We are a U.S. political scientist with research expertise on the post-Soviet region and a Ukrainian economist who studies agriculture. While the long-term effects of the dam break are difficult to calculate, we believe that it will have a lasting impact on the climate of southern Ukraine.
Farmland that is no longer irrigated and cultivated because canals are destroyed and the reservoir drained will dry up, becoming more vulnerable to soil erosion and dust storms. Agricultural production could be reduced for years to come, with impacts that ripple through supply chains and affect food security around the world.
As we see it, the dam explosion has all the hallmarks of a scorched-earth strategy, intended to destroy anything that might be useful to the enemy. It is hard to imagine any country inflicting damage this sweeping on its own soil.
A fertile farming region
Like other Soviet hydroelectric projects, the Kakhovka Dam and power plant were hailed as harbingers of progress and a bright socialist future when they were built in 1956 on the Dnieper River. The North Crimean and Dnieper-Kryvyi Rih canals, constructed in the 1960s and 1970s, transported water from the Kakhovka reservoir to Crimea in the south and the Kryvvi Rih iron ore basin and Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in the north.
Local villages and towns came to depend on water and electricity from the dam and its reservoir. Some 545,000 acres (220,000 hectares) of arable land in these two regions are irrigated, including over 20% of Kherson’s farmland.
Kherson’s farms grow watermelons and tomatoes. The region’s cherry, apricot, peach, apple and plum orchards produce Ukraine’s sweetest fruits. Southeast Ukraine also grows vast quantities of soy and sunflower seeds, mostly destined for global markets.
Flooded fields, toxic water
The dam breach inundated fields along the Dnieper’s banks. By July 1, the Dnieper River near the Kherson post had returned to its natural level, although a number of settlements in the territory temporarily occupied by Russian forces remained submerged.
Based on conditions that have been reported so far, we expect that this year’s crops in the flooded zone will be waterlogged, and much of the harvest will be destroyed. Valuable perennial crops that relied on irrigation infrastructure fed by the reservoir will be flooded and then parched. Rich and productive topsoil may be washed away. https://www.youtube.com/embed/64NsrW3AVB8?wmode=transparent&start=0 A news report a week after the dam breach shows the scale of the initial flooding.
Farther downstream, the lower Dnieper, Southern Bug and Inhulets river basins have been polluted, imperiling agriculture and drinking water for southern Ukraine. During the dam breach, 150 tons of oil leaked out, and at least 17 gas stations have been flooded. There is widespread concern about impacts on the region’s wildlife, including many types of nesting and migratory birds.
After the flood, water shortages
Flooding from the reservoir also imperiled infrastructure that is critical for Ukraine’s agricultural exports, including irrigation canals, hydraulic pumping stations, river ports and grain terminals.
Most importantly, without water from the reservoir, the fields of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Crimea will dry out. Coastal towns on the Sea of Azov, most importantly Berdyansk, have lost their main source of drinking water.
Crimea is particularly dependent on irrigation. Before Russia annexed it in 2014, Crimea’s farms planted rice and corn. After the annexation Ukraine blocked water from flowing to Crimea. When Russia captured Kherson in March 2022, it reopened the North Crimean Canal and allowed the peninsula’s reservoirs to fill.
Without the Kakhovka Reservoir, however, Crimea is unlikely to receive irrigation water for at least a decade. Effectively, the peninsula will turn into a desert with a naval base.
Fewer exports, higher prices
Beyond Ukraine, the dam breach will critically affect global food supplies. Southern Ukraine’s sunflower seeds, soy and cereals are major ingredients for industrially processed foods and livestock feed. They provide the proteins and lipids that are the building blocks of the 21st-century diet.
After these commodities are harvested, they have to be dried, transported domestically, stored and then shipped internationally. Many facilities along the Dnieper and its tributaries are key nodes in the supply chains that connect Ukrainian farms with world markets.
Storage elevators and loading terminals at the port of Kozatske, located just downstream of the dam, were inundated within hours of the breach. The upstream ports of Kamianets-Dniprovska, Nikopol and Enerhodar are closed and likely will be inoperable for years to come.
Global food commodity prices shot up hours after the dam broke, as global grain traders anticipated food commodity shortages. U.N. aid chief Martin Griffiths told the BBC that the impact on food security could be significant.
“… That whole area going down towards the Black Sea and Crimea is a breadbasket not only for Ukraine but also for the world,” Griffiths told the BBC. “It is almost inevitable that we are going to see huge, huge problems in harvesting and sowing for the next harvest. And so what we are going to see is a huge impact on global food security.”
An uncertain future
Loss of the Kakhovka Dam is the latest blow to a region that has suffered heavily during the war. Most fields along the lower Dnieper are littered with mines. NASA satellite images show crops planted in 2022 that were never harvested.
Before the dam breach, the area under cultivation in 2023 in Ukraine had already contracted by 45%, and overall yields had fallen by as much as 60% compared with 2021 before the war. With the loss of the dam and reservoir, harvests are likely to shrink further.
Many residents of the area’s 80 inundated villages are farmers. If and when they are able to return to their land, the fields and orchards may not be able to produce and earn enough to sustain their families, who have already suffered grievously during heavy fighting in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
In 1941, Joseph Stalin ordered Soviet troops to destroy the predecessor of the Kakhovka Dam to slow the advancing German army. It was not rebuilt until 1956. Even if postwar relief efforts can replace the Kakhovka Dam more quickly, we expect that droughts between now and then will virtually destroy rural life in southeastern Ukraine as it existed before June 6.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Science Activism Is Surging—Demonstrating A Culture Shift Among Scientists
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
Hundreds of scientists protested government efforts to restrict educational access to Western science theories, including Darwin’s theory of evolution, in June 2023 in India. Similarly, scientists in Mexico participated in a research strike in May 2023 to protest a national law they claimed would threaten the conditions for basic research. And during the same month in Norway, three scientists were arrested for protesting the nation’s slow-moving climate policy.
As these among many other actions show, scientists today are speaking out on a variety of political and social issues related to their own research fields and in solidarity with other social movements.
We are social scientists who study the relationship between science and society. Through our work, we’ve noticed more scientists seem empowered to advocate for a wide range of policy issues. We’re interested in how the surge in science activism may be changing the norms of scientific research.
With colleagues, we recently reviewed and summarized a growing body of studies examining how scientists are mobilizing for social activism and political protest. We also surveyed 2,208 members of the Union of Concerned Scientists Science Network to learn more about scientists’ political engagement. Here is what we have found so far.
A new wave of science activism
Science activism has long been considered taboo, as many in the field fear that politicizing science undermines its objectivity. Even so, scientist-activists have still managed to shape the U.S. political landscape throughout history. Over the past century, for example, scientists have protested the atomic bomb, pesticides, wars in Southeast Asia, genetic engineering and the federal response to the AIDS epidemic.
More recently, the election of Donald Trump in 2016 triggered a wave of political mobilization not seen in the United States since the Vietnam War era. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change activism, Black Lives Matter and the #MeToo movement, scientists have also mobilized, and science advocacy organizations are playing important roles.
Some groups, like March for Science and Scientist Rebellion, are new and claim dozens of chapters and thousands of members around the world. In addition, older organizations like the Union of Concerned Scientists are growing, while once-defunct organizations like Science for the People have reemerged.
Science organizing also happens within universities, graduate student unions and professional associations. These groups use their connections to local communities and larger networks of science professionals to mobilize others in the scientific community.
Many science advocacy groups borrow protest tactics from previous eras, like mass marches and teach-ins. Others are more innovative, including “die-ins” at medical schools to protest police racial violence and data-rescue “hackathons” to protect public access to government data.
Some efforts mirror conventional forms of politics, like 314 Action, an organization that supports political candidates with STEM backgrounds. Others are more confrontational, such as Scientist Rebellion, some members of which blocked roads and bridges to demand action on the climate emergency.
Or, science advocacy can look indistinguishable from typical academic practices, like teaching. A new course taught by an MIT physics professor titled “Scientist Activism: Gender, Race and Power” helps raise student awareness about the political nature of science.
Professional norms may be shifting
We’ll need more research to determine how the resurgence of scientist activism is influencing politics and policy. But we can already point to some effects – the growth of science advocacy organizations, increased media attention to scientist activism, climate-friendly changes in investment policies at some universities, and more STEM-trained politicians. However, we also expect that impending crises, like climate change, may be driving acceptance of activism within the scientific community.
For example, when we asked scientists how often they should be politically active, 95% of our surveyed scientists answered “sometimes,” “most of the time,” or “always.” Our surveyed population is, by definition, politically engaged. But this near-uniform level of support for political action suggests that the professional norms that have long sanctioned scientist activism may be shifting.
Other findings from the survey strengthen this interpretation. Scientist activism often entails some level of personal or professional risk. But 75% of respondents told us their science-based advocacy had the support of their employers. Most surprisingly for us, respondents were twice as likely to report that activism helped to advance their careers – 22% – rather than damage them – 11%.
Our survey did find, however, that nonwhite scientists are more vulnerable to the risks of engaging in science advocacy. Seventeen percent of nonwhite scientists report negative career repercussions from their science advocacy, compared with less than 10% among white scientists. Yet compared with white respondents, nonwhite respondents are also more likely to engage in science advocacy.
While nonwhite respondents report higher rates of negative career impacts, the percentage reporting higher rates of career advancement from advocacy – 31% – was nearly double that for white respondents – 18%. This difference suggests that science advocacy has deeper career consequences – both good and bad – among nonwhite scientists. Although they are more likely to be rewarded for this activity, they are exposed to greater risk for doing so.
Emerging lessons
Two lessons emerge from our research thus far. First, our findings indicate that science activism may be gaining legitimacy within the scientific community. In this context, social media is helping mobilize and raise visibility among younger researchers. These researchers’ political experiences are informed by the climate justice, Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements. As this newer generation of science activists moves into the profession, they will continue to shift the cultural norms of science.
Second, because race unevenly structures scientists’ experiences with activism, science activists can build on their current momentum by embracing intersectional solidarity. This means taking actions to center and engage marginalized groups within science. Intersectional solidarity can deepen activist engagement, enhance and diversify recruitment efforts, and increase its impact on social and ecological change.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
One Step Closer: DC Bar Panel Recommends Giuliani Be Disbarred
Rudy Giuliani should be disbarred for bringing “frivolous” and “destructive” cases alleging voter fraud in the 2020 election, a committee of the D.C. bar said on Friday.
Continue reading “One Step Closer: DC Bar Panel Recommends Giuliani Be Disbarred”Feedback
From TPM Reader DH …
I was reading your column about reaching your fundraising goals, and your explanation of the curious attachment many of your readers have formed with respect to TPM. I’m a retired journalist, and somehow, even though I read the NYT, WaPo, Politico, and other sites daily, I don’t feel the same sense of connectivity with these other journalism sites. Something about TPM has always felt more like writers speaking to a community of readers rather than just firing off the day’s shotgun blast of news with clickbait headlines. I don’t really know what the secret is, but watching you guys raise a half a million dollars is uplifting and inspiring.
Officials In California And Texas Call On DOJ To Investigate Florida Over Migrant Flights
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), California State Attorney General Rob Bonta and Texas Sheriff Javier Salazar sent a letter to the Department of Justice on Thursday calling for an investigation into the Florida program responsible for transporting migrants to several Democratic-led cities.
Continue reading “Officials In California And Texas Call On DOJ To Investigate Florida Over Migrant Flights”