Unlike a lot of reporting on the Chinese balloon, this piece in the Post contains new and interesting information. The Pentagon believes the flight is part of a fairly extensive global effort that has been going on for about five years: Low-tech balloons, married to high-tech communications tools. Notably, according to the Post, the U.S. military doesn’t believe the flight across North America is an accident, as I’d speculated. But they also don’t believe it was a provocation. On the contrary, the Chinese were surprised that it was detected and chagrined that it led to the cancelation of Tony Blinken’s scheduled trip to Beijing.
Even based on this article, it still seems to me to be something of a mystery just how valuable the intelligence collected by these balloons really is. Experts seem divided on this point. Part of the answer may simply be that they’re vastly cheaper than launching satellites. So dollar-for-dollar they may still provide some value. Countries around the world now appear to be matching the balloon flights to what were past instances of unidentified objects in their airspace.
The Florida High School Athletic Association recently ruled that on the standard form to play high school sports in Florida there will now be a mandatory question about whether a student athlete menstruates: Date of first period, days between periods, most recent period. The strong suspicion is that this was a way to ferret out trans athletes, since it’s not clear why the coaching staff or the schools (where the records would be stored) would have any medical need for this information. Others feared it would be used to find proof of illicit abortions. These forms aren’t protected by anything like HIPAA. Coaches, staff or whoever else can just pull them out of the bank box and see what they say.
A publishing company based in Chicago is offering free e-books on Black history in response to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ (R) rejection of an AP African American Studies course in Florida schools.
Federal law enforcement officers say they seized 11 guns, a silencer, more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition, body armor plates and several pounds of a binary explosive from a Springfield man with ties to the Boogaloo extremist anti-government group.
I subscribe to a bunch of regional papers, mainly in swing states or states that tend to be politically kinetic. It comes in handy at election time and it keeps me up to speed on things outside the national news generally. One of those papers is The Miami Herald. In the DeSantis Era that turns out to be quite a trip. Almost every day I get an email about some new gambit of his, each of which seems aimed generally at paving the way for his 2024 presidential campaign and specifically at owning the libs. That’s his program, essentially.
This article was first published by ProPublica and the Mississippi Free Press.ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
JACKSON, Miss. — The freeze of early 2021 wasn’t the origin of Jackson, Mississippi’s water system collapse. But the winter storm introduced the country to Jackson’s aging and improperly maintained pipes and water plants, which failed and left residents without clean water for over a month.
The crisis surged back in the summer of 2022, leaving residents without clean water for two months and drawing comparisons to Flint, Michigan’s lead-poisoning scandal, another banner example of America’s ruinous infrastructure systems. Here, as in Flint, the federal government stepped in: In November, the Department of Justice appointed a federal manager to take control of the beleaguered utility, and less than a month later, Congress approved $600 million exclusively for the city’s water system.
But the rescue effort is already running up against the realities of local politics, reflecting historic tensions between Jackson and the rest of the state. For decades, state and city leaders have clashed over who should control local spending, services and infrastructure. Now, both the federal manager and the city’s mayor are warning that state politicians are attempting to take over Jackson’s water system, along with hundreds of millions in federal funds meant for repairing it.
At the heart of the feud is Senate Bill 2889, introduced in mid-January by a lawmaker who says his only goal is to ensure the Mississippi capital’s water system is restored.
The legislation would create a new regional water-authority board to oversee the system’s water, sewer and drainage systems. The governor and lieutenant governor would appoint a majority of the board. Over the years, state leaders including the current governor, Tate Reeves, have expressed skepticism about whether Jackson is capable of managing its own affairs. Federal agencies, including the Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, have also questioned the city’s management of its water and wastewater systems.
The latest move in the Legislature worries the manager, Ted Henifin, who says a regional authority could allow improvements and debt relief to flow out of Jackson and into suburban utilities that join the entity. “I believe the $600+ million in federal funding has created a monster in the Mississippi Legislature,” Henifin told the Mississippi Free Press and ProPublica in a written statement last week. A federal judge appointed Henifin to the position of interim third-party manager in late November.
Jackson Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba built on Henifin’s critique Monday. “It is a colonial power taking over our city. It is plantation politics. I have not been shy in the ways that I have referenced this,” he said.
The mayor highlighted a litany of other proposed legislation that together would give Mississippi authority over segments of Jackson’s police and court systems. He called the legislative proposals a “unified attack” against the city’s autonomy.
“It reminds me of apartheid,” he said. “They dictate our leadership, put a military force over us and we’re just supposed to pay taxes to the king.”
The bill’s sponsor, state Sen. David Parker, R-Olive Branch, and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, whose office helped design the measure, strongly denied that attempts to divert federal funds were behind the legislation. After the news organizations asked Parker about some critics’ concerns, he and Hosemann agreed that the state should recoup none of the federal funds, and Parker pledged to introduce an amendment that would explicitly prohibit the use of the funds outside Jackson’s city limits.
Henifin was unmoved, saying he was concerned that amendments could be overwritten later, and that a regional utility was the wrong solution for Jackson in any case.
JACKSON MS – SEPTEMBER 3 : Trees are seen in the foreground of the Mississippi Capitol building on September 3, 2022 in Jackson, Mississippi. (Photo by Joshua Lott/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
“We Need an Arbitrator”
If the Senate bill becomes law, the Mississippi Capitol Region Utility Act would effectively give the state authority over Jackson’s water system once the federal manager’s authority lapses.
That’s because it would grant the governor power to appoint three of the nine members, and the lieutenant governor two, giving statewide leaders, who are white, majority control over water, wastewater and stormwater utilities in Jackson, whose population is 82% Black. The mayor would get four appointments, including one that he would have to select in “consultation” with the mayor of nearby Byram, majority Black, and another chosen with the mayor of Ridgeland, a demographically mixed suburb. The board would then elect a president to formally lead the new regional utility.
In an interview, Henifin said he believes Jackson’s system requires judicial and federal oversight to prevent the mismanagement of critical infrastructure funds, which he estimates would take years to properly spend.
“I think at the end of the day we need an arbitrator, and I think that’s a federal judge in this case.” He said he believes this oversight should be extended to protect the federal dollars, estimating that five years of some form of oversight should be sufficient to lock in the necessary contracts and investments.
He later said that legislative interference might threaten efforts to procure a contract to address the water system’s crucial staffing shortages because the prospect of a change in the water utility’s leadership while a long-term contract is still being executed could scare off large corporations.
Although Parker and Hosemann were complimentary of Henifin in interviews with the Mississippi Free Press, Henifin says neither of the parties involved has ever consulted him. Indeed, he said that Hosemann’s office rebuffed his attempt to set up a meeting. Hosemann acknowledged that he had not spoken with Henifin yet but said he intended to “shortly.”
“I Wanted to Be Very Sympathetic”
Parker said that although he lives 200 miles from Jackson, he did experience the city’s water crisis firsthand.
“I have a daughter that I live with during the legislative session,” he said. “I’ve spent numerous times walking down to the swimming pool and dipping water into a cooler, taking it back up to the toilet to flush. We live in an apartment complex that’s had to put portable facilities on the ground floor to allow people to go to the bathroom.”
“I wanted to be very sympathetic and compassionate to the feelings of the mayor and other people who have spent a long time trying to seek answers to this problem,” Parker said. “So in setting up a board that would be overseeing the water and sewer system, my idea was to give the mayor four appointments on a nine-member board.”
He said he believed the governor and lieutenant governor should appoint a majority of the board’s members because Mississippi’s failure to “provide the basic needs and services that our people deserve is reflected 100% back on the governor and the people in this building.”
Parker said he initially believed that residents in Ridgeland drew water from Jackson’s treatment plant. Though the facility itself is located in Ridgeland, reporters told Parker that Ridgeland does not currently receive water from Jackson’s water system; they also told him that parts of Ridgeland may use Jackson’s greater sewage system. He then suggested the bill may have included that city’s mayor in light of that fact.
He expressed surprise over Henifin’s comments and strongly denied any intent to divert money away from Jackson.
“There is no intent on my part to stack a board in any way, shape or form that would give preferential treatment to the fringe areas of the water authority,” he said. “My hope would be that if the majority of the water authority is within the city of Jackson, I would hope that the governor, lieutenant governor and mayor would put people on the board from those geographic areas.”
Parker said he intends to speak with Henifin as his bill makes its way through the Senate.
“Crafting something like this is an extreme challenge.”
The bill gives the surrounding municipalities a path to join the new capital water authority, transferring their assets and debts to it, a common feature of regional utilities.
The news organizations asked Parker if any part of SB 2889 prevented that regionalization from allowing federal funds to be dispersed to utilities outside Jackson. Parker said he would look into that question. A day later, Hosemann said he had agreed with Parker that they should address any gaps that might allow money to be spent outside of the authority itself.
“It Is Plantation Politics”
Lumumba said the feud over spending the federal funds highlights the friction between the state’s majority-white leaders and the majority-Black capital city.
“It is plantation politics,” Lumumba said. “It’s consistent with this paternalistic relationship that the state of Mississippi believes that it maintains with the city of Jackson.”
Lumumba compared it to the 1% Sales Tax Commission, a system the Legislature designed to assert control over spending derived from a special sales tax Jackson maintains to fund infrastructure projects.
In a response to additional inquiries, Hosemann’s Deputy Chief of Staff Leah Rupp Smith said they defer to Parker on the legislation but “share a desire with all parties to find a long-term solution,” and she said that a regional utility authority “has been viable in other parts of our state.” They said they planned to meet with Henifin the week after next.
Parker said his conversations with the mayor have been “productive and congenial.” He added that they “share an interest in ensuring all people served by the systems have access to safe and reliable water and wastewater services at a fair and reasonable cost.”
In recent years, Lumumba has clashed repeatedly with Hosemann over Jackson’s autonomy. “The last time I met with him, he said that I needed to look at a possible relationship with the state of Mississippi, because ‘what did I think, that Biden was gonna write me a check?’”
“I recently told him I do, and he did,” the mayor said of Biden.
Like all upstanding Americans I’m eagerly awaiting the first hearing of the House GOP’s new “weaponization of the federal government” investigations committee. That first hearing will feature former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Sens. Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley and what is being presented as an FBI whistleblower of sorts, a former FBI agent named Nicole Parker who says she left the FBI three months ago in the face of growing politicization and unprofessionalism from the FBI brass. She’s now a regular on Fox News. So she’s the one who will reveal how the FBI has become a haven of wokeness during her 12-year tenure.
I looked her up and saw this opinion piece she wrote for Fox News. And in addition to a lot of verbiage about wokeness and how the Bureau changed during her time there, her one example of politicization was fairly revealing. Parker was offended that during the George Floyd protests in D.C. on June 4 a group of FBI agents in tactical gear kneeled before protestors in what they apparently saw as a deescalation effort.
Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) said on Sunday if Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) chooses to retire before finishing her term, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) should keep his promise to choose a Black woman to take the longtime senator’s seat. It’s the latest subtle hint that House Democrats might know more about Feinstein’s political future than her office has made public.
President and Dems should be repeating over and over and over: “we will debate next year’s budget (with our proposals and yours on the table) but not until you stop threatening America’s payment for bills already here from the Trump admin and last year. Who would believe Congress, anyway, if you default on previous promises?”
They can also say over and over that China will win if the GOP forces this crisis.
They need to get out of their DC bubble and do a much better job of repeating stuff to get some control of the public portrayals. Most Americans do not understand this debt limit nonsense.
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
White House Rejects GOP Ploy On Medicare and Social Security
Wrapped up in Republicans’ debt ceiling hostage-taking is also their long-running con to break Social Security. Despite Speaker Kevin McCarthy repeatedly assuring public audiences that Social Security and Medicare are “off the table” in debt ceiling negotiations, Republicans continue to float various ways to undermine the social safety net.
Just last week, former Vice President Mike Pence trotted out the old GOP standby for Social Security: private accounts.
To its credit, the White House on Monday strongly rejected a GOP ploy to create a commission to consider “reforms” to Social Security and Medicare.
This will serve as your regular reminder that the use of the word “reform” in the context of Social Security and Medicare is highly misleading and tendentious.
Republicans for decades now have opposed these popular programs on ideological grounds, but have attempted (often successfully due to unsophisticated media coverage) to mask their efforts to undermine and redefine them out of existence. Or, as the LA Times’ Michael Hiltzik called it: the “Republican and conservative habit of employing plausible-sounding jargon and economists’ gibberish to conceal their intention to hobble the program.”
Hiltzik serves as a great example of sophisticated coverage of the GOP sophistry on Social Security:
But make no mistake: Diverting any significant portion of Social Security taxes into private accounts would make the program unworkable, funnel untold wealth into the hands of Wall Street promoters and leave millions of families destitute.
A founding member of the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen and his girlfriend were hit with federal charges of conspiring to attack the power grid around Baltimore. A third person they were allegedly conspiring with turned out to be an informant for the government who recorded many of their conversations.
Marines Charged In Capitol Riot Got Intel Jobs AFTER Jan. 6
We knew that the active duty Marines recently arrested for allegedly participating in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol worked in military intelligence roles, but what we didn’t know is that they were assigned those highly sensitive posts after Jan. 6, according to the latest reporting from James Risen at The Intercept.
DeSantis Seeks New Powers To Go After ‘Voter Fraud’
Stymied by local Democratic prosecutors that refuse to play ball, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) has had limited success in winning prosecutions based on the work of his bogus voter fraud police.
The reason? The statewide prosector that he wanted to handle the cases is limited by statute to prosecuting crimes that happen in multiple counties. So if someone allegedly voted illegally in only Miami-Dade County, the statewide prosecutor has no jurisdiction. And if the local DA doesn’t want to do DeSantis’ bidding, then he’s out of luck.
Not to worry though! The GOP-controlled Florida legislature is considering a bill to broaden the jurisdiction of the statewide prosecutor and do an end run around Democratic DAs who want no part of DeSantis’ scheming.
Why it matters: DeSantis’ bogus voter fraud police has, not surprisingly, focused its attention on predominately Democratic counties, and most of those voters arrested have been Black. So to sum up, Florida Republicans are trying to change the law as a way of doubling down on their effort to target Black voters, ginning up more attention about bogus voter fraud, and in the process stirring up fear to dampen the Black vote. Admirable work, all the way around.
Former President Trump and his lawyer Alina Habba and her law firm are planning to appeal the ruling awarding nearly $1 million in sanctions against them by a federal judge in Florida for filing frivolous and vexatious litigation.
Great Read
The recent eruption of Mauna Loa disrupted for the first time the decades-long project set up on the mountain to record atmospheric CO2. The data from Mauna Loa (collected separately by NOAA and Scripps) feeds into the long-running Keeling Curve, based on observations that Scripps scientist Charles David Keeling began recording in the 1950s. The New York Times has a great piece on the temporary observatory set up on the nearby Mauna Kea volcano to continue the crucial scientific work.
Death Toll In Turkey Quake Climbs Past 5,000
A Syrian woman walks past a half collapsed house in the town of Azaz on the border with Turkey on February 7, 2023, following a deadly earthquake. The 7.8-magnitude quake early the previous day, which has also killed thousands in neighbouring Turkey, led to widespread destruction in both regime-controlled and rebel-held parts of Syria. (Photo by Bakr ALKASEM / AFP) (Photo by BAKR ALKASEM/AFP via Getty Images)
The 7.8-magnitude quake and its 7.5-magnitude aftershock laid waste to vast areas of Southern Turkey and Syria, with an early death toll of more than 5,000 people.
