Washington Post Super Bowl message: Democracy Dies in Darkness
Story 1: Ukraine Government Officials Were Interfering in United States 2016 Election For Clinton and Democrat National Committee (DNC) And President Trump Wants This Interference Investigated by Current Ukraine General Prosecutor — Many Countries Including United States Provide Other Countries Aid (Quid) Provided They Meet Certain Conditions (Que) Such As Publicly Acknowledging There Will Be An Investigation of 2016 Election Interference and Ukraine Natural Gas Company Burisma — Videos
Iconic Quid Pro Quo
Joe Biden Brags about getting Ukranian Prosecutor Fired
What Gordon Sondland and Kurt Volker said about U.S. aid to Ukraine
Hannity: I have never talked to anyone from Ukraine
Biden sidesteps questions about son’s foreign work
Joe Biden’s son’s firm linked to Chinese government: New book
Testimony suggests “quid pro quo” relationship between Trump and Ukraine
Dems set to release new transcripts from two key impeachment figures
PBS News Hour full episode November 5, 2019
First excerpts of Gordon Sondland and Kurt Volker transcripts released
Story 2: Ukraine Natural Gas Company Burisma Lobbied State Department To Stop Being Investigated By Invoking Hunter Biden’s Name — Videos —
NEW MEMO ON UKRAINE: Hunter Biden & associates used State Department to kill Burisma investigation
Glenn Beck Lays Out the Case Against The Media
Biden’s Ukraine Scandal Explained I Glenn Beck
Big Lie Media Propaganda Exposed
Glenn Beck Presents: Democracy Does Die In Darkness
Glenn heads back to the chalkboard to explain how the media is intentionally misleading and, in some cases, blatantly lying to absolve the Democrats from what they’ve been doing in Ukraine. Glenn breaks down their case against President Trump and Rudy Giuliani, and he shows why that isn’t the real story. Glenn devastatingly dismantles the medias disinformation campaign brick by brick.
A look at Hunter Biden’s time in Ukraine
Everything You Need to Know About Hunter Biden
Biden’s son booted from Navy after a positive cocaine…
Hunter Biden’s Ukraine Gas Firm Urged Obama Admin To End Corruption Allegations, Report Says
A new report released on Monday night alleges that the Ukrainian gas company, Burisma, that employed Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, pressed the Obama administration to end the corruption allegations against them during the 2016 election year.
In February 2016, a representative from Burisma sought to meet with Undersecretary of State Catherine A. Novelli to discuss the allegations of corruption that the U.S. government was making toward the company, according to memos obtained by award-winning investigative reporter John Solomon.
“Just three weeks before Burisma’s overture to State, Ukrainian authorities raided the home of the oligarch who owned the gas firm and employed Hunter Biden, a signal the long-running corruption probe was escalating in the middle of the U.S. presidential election,” Solomon wrote. “Hunter Biden’s name, in fact, was specifically invoked by the Burisma representative as a reason the State Department should help, according to a series of email exchanges among U.S. officials trying to arrange the meeting.”
A February 24, 2016, email between State Department officials stated:
Per our conversation, Karen Tramontano of Blue Star Strategies requested a meeting to discuss with U/S Novelli USG remarks alleging Burisma (Ukrainian energy company) of corruption. She noted that two high profile U.S. citizens are affiliated with the company (including Hunter Biden as a board member). Tramontano would like to talk with U/S Novelli about getting a better understanding of how the U.S. came to the determination that the company is corrupt. According to Tramontano there is no evidence of corruption, has been no hearing or process, and evidence to the contrary has not been considered. Would appreciate any background you may be able to provide on this issue and suggested TPs for U/S Novelli’s meeting.
“Tramontano was a lawyer working for Blue Star Strategies, a Washington firm that was hired by Burisma to help end a long-running corruption investigation against the gas firm in Ukraine,” Solomon added. “Tramontano and another Blue Star official, Sally Painter, both alumni of Bill Clinton’s administration, worked with New York-based criminal defense attorney John Buretta to settle the Ukraine cases in late 2016 and 2017.”
Solomon notes that a meeting was scheduled for March 1, 2016, between Tramontano and Novelli, although it was not known whether or not the meeting actually occurred.
However, a meeting was reportedly secured between Hunter Biden’s business partner and fellow Burisma board member, Devon Archer, and Secretary of State John Kerry.
This entire ordeal surrounding the actions of former Vice President Biden and his son have cast a cloud over the Biden campaign that has undoubtedly at least partially contributed to his fall in the polls against his Democratic rivals.
Last year, Biden bragged to an audience about how he threatened Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in March 2016 that if he did not fire the prosecutor that was investigating Burisma that he would withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid from the country.
Iconic Quid Pro Quo
Joe Biden Brags about getting Ukrainian Prosecutor Fired
“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” Biden told the audience. “Well, son of a bitch, he got fired.”
President Donald Trump and his campaign have hammered Biden over his remarks, which were recorded on video, in advertisements on social media and in targeted markets.
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
This is the real corruption that the Fake News Media refuses to even acknowledge!
Former Vice President Joe Biden (L) and his son Hunter Biden at the Duke Georgetown NCAA college basketball game in Washington on Jan. 30, 2010. (Nick Wass/AP Photo)
7 CommentsNovember 5, 2019Updated: November 5, 2019
The Ukrainian gas firm that hired Hunter Biden lobbied the Department of State in early 2016, just one month before then-U.S. Vice President Joe Biden forced the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating the same company, according to documents obtained as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
On Feb. 24, 2016, a State Department official sent an email discussing an overture from a representative for Burisma, the Ukrainian gas firm, to Undersecretary of State Catherine Novelli. The Burisma representative argued that the allegations against the company were baseless, according to an email chain released as part of a lawsuit filed by investigative journalist John Solomon. The Burisma representative specifically cited Hunter Biden’s name as the reason for why the allegations should stop.
Earlier that month in 2016, Ukrainian authorities seized the property of Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma, according to Interfax Ukraine. The seizure included several of Zlochevsky’s homes and a Rolls-Royce Phantom car.
“Per our conversation, Karen Tramontano of Blue Star Strategies requested a meeting to discuss with U/S Novelli USG remarks alleging Burisma (Ukrainian energy company) of corruption,” the email between State Department officials, whose names are blacked out, stated. “She noted that two high profile U.S. citizens are affiliated with the company (including Hunter Biden as a board member).
“Tramontano would like to talk with U/S Novelli about getting a better understanding of how the U.S. came to the determination that the company is corrupt. According to Tramontano, there is no evidence of corruption, has been no hearing or process, and evidence to the contrary has not been considered.”
At the time the email was sent, Novelli was the third-highest-ranking official at the State Department. Karen Tramontano was the CEO of Bluestar Strategies, a consulting firm retained by Burisma to address the corruption charges against it in Ukraine.
The email chain shows that Tramontano was scheduled to meet Novelli on March 1, 2016. While it’s unclear if that meeting took place, on the following day, March 2, 2016, Hunter Biden’s business partner, Devon Archer, met with Secretary of State John Kerry, another email obtained by Solomon shows.
“Devon Archer coming to see S today at 3pm—need someone to meet/greet him at C Street,” an email from Kerry’s office manager states.
Archer’s meeting with Kerry is notable because Kerry’s stepson, Chris Heinz, recently told The Washington Post that he advised Archer and Biden “that working with Burisma was unacceptable.”
“The lack of judgment in this matter was a major catalyst for Mr. Heinz ending his business relationships with Mr. Archer and Mr. Biden,” Heinz spokesman Chris Bastardi told the newspaper.
Hunter Biden and Archer joined the board of Burisma in 2014. Bank records released as part of an unrelated lawsuit show that Rosemont Seneca Bohai, a firm operated by Archer, received more than $160,000 per month from Burisma starting in May 2016. Rosemont Seneca Bohai regularly sent funds to Hunter Biden, the records show.
The seizure of Zlochevsky’s assets took place on Feb. 2, 2014. At the time, top Ukrainian corruption prosecutor Viktor Shokin led the probe.
On the day of the seizure, Hunter Biden followed Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken on his Twitter account, another email obtained by Solomon shows.
Oleksandr Onyshchenko, a businessman and former member of the Ukrainian Parliament, told Reuters that Zlochevsky came up with the idea to appoint Hunter Biden to the board “to protect [the company].”
Weeks after Burisma lobbied the State Department and Archer met with Kerry, Joe Biden forced the firing of Shokin by threatening to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees; Biden bragged about the move during a videotaped speech on a panel last year.
In a sworn statement, Shokin said that he was fired under pressure from Biden because he, Shokin, refused to drop the Burisma investigation.
The allegations about Joe and Hunter Biden are in the public spotlight because of the ongoing impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. An anonymous whistleblower’s complaint that triggered the inquiry alleged that Trump may have pressured Ukraine to investigate the Bidens.
According to a transcript of the July 25 call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump referenced Shokin’s firing when asking the Ukrainian leader to investigate the younger Biden.
The whistleblower alleged that Trump’s request to Zelensky may have amounted to a campaign finance violation. The Department of Justice reviewed the complaint and determined that no further action was necessary.
In an interview with ABC News, Hunter Biden admitted that joining Burisma was a political error, but defended his work. Biden stepped down from the board of Burisma in April, according to a statement from his lawyer.
“A Department of Justice team led by U.S. Attorney John Durham is separately exploring the extent to which a number of countries, including Ukraine, played a role in the counterintelligence investigation directed at the Trump campaign during the 2016 election,” DOJ spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said Wednesday. “While the Attorney General has yet to contact Ukraine in connection with this investigation, certain Ukrainians who are not members of the government have volunteered information to Mr. Durham, which he is evaluating.”
Durham has been Barr’s right hand as the two look into the complicated and classified issues surrounding how an investigation into the Trump campaign’s alleged ties with Russia — dubbed “Crossfire Hurricane” — got its start, though the U.S. attorney from Connecticut has been virtually silent since his selection.
The DOJ’s statement comes as the White House released a transcript of the controversial July 25 phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump suggests that Ukraine should investigate Biden and his son Hunter, who was on the board of a company owned by Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky. Zlochevsky was being investigated by top prosecutor Viktor Shokin, though it is in dispute how serious that investigation was. Trump also suggested that Ukraine should look into issues surrounding the alleged involvement of some Ukrainians in interfering in the 2016 presidential election.
Biden boasted in 2018 that, as vice president, he threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees if Ukraine didn’t fire Shokin, which Trump’s allies have said was because of the investigation, but Democrats have said was part of a U.S. and European effort to oust Shokin as ineffective and a hindrance to Ukraine’s anti-corruption investigations. Ukraine removed Shokin in 2016.
DOJ also made it clear that Trump never told Barr to contact Ukraine about any investigation of Biden, nor did Barr ever discuss these issues with Ukraine or with Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani.
Trump gave Barr “ full and complete authority to declassify information” related to the origins of the Trump-Russia probe in May after Barr had infuriated Democrats when he said “spying did occur” on the Trump campaign and refused to backtrack. Republicans have alleged that foreign intelligence agencies, like those in Western Europe, may have played a role in eavesdropping on or otherwise monitoring Trump campaign associates in 2016.
Durham’s investigation is separate from the one that was just finished by DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz. The DOJ watchdog investigated allegations of abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by the DOJ and FBI, and Horowitz has spoken with Durham, who is handling any criminal referrals from Horowitz’s investigation.
Joe Biden, His Son and the Case Against a Ukrainian Oligarch
Hunter Biden at a campaign event in 2008. He sits on the board of one of Ukraine’s largest natural gas companies.Credit…Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times
WASHINGTON — When Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.traveled to Kiev, Ukraine, on Sunday for a series of meetings with the country’s leaders, one of the issues on his agenda was to encourage a more aggressive fight against Ukraine’s rampant corruption and stronger efforts to rein in the power of its oligarchs.
But the credibility of the vice president’s anticorruption message may have been undermined by the association of his son, Hunter Biden, with one of Ukraine’s largest natural gas companies, Burisma Holdings, and with its owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, who was Ukraine’s ecology minister under former President Viktor F. Yanukovych before he was forced into exile.
Hunter Biden, 45, a former Washington lobbyist, joined the Burisma board in April 2014. That month, as part of an investigation into money laundering, British officials froze London bank accounts containing $23 million that allegedly belonged to Mr. Zlochevsky.
Britain’s Serious Fraud Office, an independent government agency, specifically forbade Mr. Zlochevksy, as well as Burisma Holdings, the company’s chief legal officer and another company owned by Mr. Zlochevsky, to have any access to the accounts.
But after Ukrainian prosecutors refused to provide documents needed in the investigation, a British court in January ordered the Serious Fraud Office to unfreeze the assets. The refusal by the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office to cooperate was the target of a stinging attack by the American ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey R. Pyatt, who called out Burisma’s owner by name in a speech in September.
“In the case of former Ecology Minister Mykola Zlochevsky, the U.K. authorities had seized $23 million in illicit assets that belonged to the Ukrainian people,” Mr. Pyatt said. Officials at the prosecutor general’s office, he added, were asked by the United Kingdom “to send documents supporting the seizure. Instead they sent letters to Zlochevsky’s attorneys attesting that there was no case against him. As a result, the money was freed by the U.K. court, and shortly thereafter the money was moved to Cyprus.”
Mr. Pyatt went on to call for an investigation into “the misconduct” of the prosecutors who wrote the letters. In his speech, the ambassador did not mention Hunter Biden’s connection to Burisma.
But Edward C. Chow, who follows Ukrainian policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the involvement of the vice president’s son with Mr. Zlochevsky’s firm undermined the Obama administration’s anticorruption message in Ukraine.
“Now you look at the Hunter Biden situation, and on the one hand you can credit the father for sending the anticorruption message,” Mr. Chow said. “But I think unfortunately it sends the message that a lot of foreign countries want to believe about America, that we are hypocritical about these issues.”
Speaking during a visit to Ukraine, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. urged the country to weed corruption out of its system.CreditCredit…Mikhail Palinchak/Ukrainian Presidential Press Service
“Hunter Biden is a private citizen and a lawyer,” she said. “The vice president does not endorse any particular company and has no involvement with this company. The vice president has pushed aggressively for years, both publicly with groups like the U.S.-Ukraine Business Forum and privately in meetings with Ukrainian leaders, for Ukraine to make every effort to investigate and prosecute corruption in accordance with the rule of law. It will once again be a key focus during his trip this week.”
Ryan F. Toohey, a Burisma spokesman, said that Hunter Biden would not comment for this article.
It is not known how Mr. Biden came to the attention of the company. Announcing his appointment to the board, Alan Apter, a former Morgan Stanley investment banker who is chairman of Burisma, said, “The company’s strategy is aimed at the strongest concentration of professional staff and the introduction of best corporate practices, and we’re delighted that Mr. Biden is joining us to help us achieve these goals.”
Joining the board at the same time was one of Mr. Biden’s American business partners, Devon Archer. Both are involved with Rosemont Seneca Partners, an American investment firm with offices in Washington.
Mr. Biden is the younger of the vice president’s two sons. His brother, Beau, died of brain cancer in May. In the past, Hunter Biden attracted an unusual level of scrutiny and even controversy. In 2014, he was discharged from the Navy Reserve after testing positive for cocaine use. He received a commission as an ensign in 2013, and he served as a public affairs officer.
Before his father was vice president, Mr. Biden also briefly served as president of a hedge fund group, Paradigm Companies, in which he was involved with one of his uncles, James Biden, the vice president’s brother. That deal went sour amid lawsuits in 2007 and 2008 involving the Bidens and an erstwhile business partner. Mr. Biden, a graduate of Georgetown University and Yale Law School, also worked as a lobbyist before his father became vice president.
Burisma does not disclose the compensation of its board members because it is a privately held company, Mr. Toohey said Monday, but he added that the amount was “not out of the ordinary” for similar corporate board positions.
Asked about the British investigation, which is continuing, Mr. Toohey said, “Not only was the case dismissed and the company vindicated by the outcome, but it speaks volumes that all his legal costs were recouped.”
In response to Mr. Pyatt’s criticism of the Ukrainian handling of Mr. Zlochevsky’s case, Mr. Toohey said that “strong corporate governance and transparency are priorities shared both by the United States and the leadership of Burisma. Burisma is working to bring the energy sector into the modern era, which is critical for a free and strong Ukraine.”
Vice President Biden has played a leading role in American policy toward Ukraine as Washington seeks to counter Russian intervention in Eastern Ukraine. This week’s visit was his fifth trip to Ukraine as vice president.
Ms. Bedingfield said Hunter Biden had never traveled to Ukraine with his father. She also said that Ukrainian officials had never mentioned Hunter Biden’s role with Burisma to the vice president during any of his visits.
“I’ve got to believe that somebody in the vice president’s office has done some due diligence on this,” said Steven Pifer, who was the American ambassador to Ukraine from 1998 to 2000. “I should say that I hope that has happened. I would hope that they have done some kind of check, because I think the vice president has done a very good job of sending the anticorruption message in Ukraine, and you would hate to see something like this undercut that message.”
Burisma Holdings Limited (Ukrainian: Бурісма Холдингс; Greek: Μπουρίσμα Χόλντιγκς) is a holding company for a group of energy exploration and production companies. It is based in Kyiv, Ukraine, though registered in Limassol, Cyprus. Burisma Holdings has operated in the Ukrainian natural gas market since 2002. It is one of the largest private natural gas producers in Ukraine.[3][4] It is owned by Mykola Zlochevsky through his company Brociti Investments Limited (Ukrainian: Бросіті Інвестментс Лімітед).
Burisma’s subsidiaries include Esko-Pivnich, Pari, Persha Ukrainska Naftogazova Kompaniya, Naftogaz Garant, KUB-Gas and Astroinvest-Ukraine.[5][6][7]
History
Burisma was founded in 2002.[8][9] Consolidation of the Burisma Group took place mainly in 2006 and 2007.[1] It became a major shareholder of Sunrise Energy Resources, a Delaware Corporation, which in 2004 acquired Ukrainian companies Esko-Pivnich (Ukrainian: Еско-Північ) and Pari (Ukrainian: Парі), which owned natural gas exploration licences.[10] In 2009, shares in these companies were transferred to Millington Solutions Limited.[10] However, shortly thereafter Millington ceased to exist, and Burisma claimed ownership of those two companies. In 2012, Persha Ukrainska Naftogazova Kompaniya (First Ukrainian Oil and Gas Company, Ukrainian: Перша Українська нафтогазова компанія), Naftogaz Garant (Oil and Gas Guarantee, Ukrainian: Нафтогаз гарант), and KrymTopEnergoServis (CrimeaTopEnergoService, Ukrainian: Кримтопенергосервіс) became a part of the Burisma Group.[11][12][13]
In 2014, Burisma signed a cooperation agreement with KazMunayGas, the national oil and gas company of Kazakhstan.[14] In 2016, Burisma bought two hydraulic fracturing (fracking) fleets.[15] In 2017, it bought a 3,000-horsepower Service King Manufacturing SK 3000 drilling rig for $40 million (USD); it was the most powerful drilling rig in Eastern Europe at the time.[16]
In February 2016, Burisma acquired a 70% stake in KUB-Gas (КУБ-Газ).[5] In 2017, it bought a majority stake in Diloretio Holdings Limited, a company which owned Ukrainian gas companies SystemOilEngineering (Ukrainian: Системойлинжиниринг), Naftogazopromyslova geologiya, (Oil and Gas Industrial Geology, Ukrainian: Нафтогазпромислова геологія), and Tehnokomservis (TechnoComService, Ukrainian: Технокомсервіс).[17] Also in 2017, Burisma bought Nadragasvydobuvannya (Subsoil Gas Extraction, Ukrainian: Надрагазвидобування)[18] and GasOilInvest (Гасоілінвест).[19] In April 2019, Burisma acquired Astroinvest Ukraine (Астроінвест-Україна), a natural gas trader.[6]
Burisma’s primary operations are in Ukraine, supplemented by activities in Germany, Mexico, Italy, and Kazakhstan.[15] It holds 35 gas production licences in Ukraine in the Dnieper-Donets, Carpathian, and Azov–Kuban Basins.[5][8] Exploration and production activities are carried out at eight sites in five regions.[23] Burisma also provides natural gas well services, including hydraulic fracturing.[15] Burisma plans to build a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) plant in Kharkiv with a capacity of 50,000 tonnes per year.[7]
In 2016, Burisma was the second largest privately owned natural gas producer in Ukraine after DTEK,[4] accounting for 26% of all natural gas produced by privately owned companies and more than 5% of total gas production in Ukraine.[4][24] According to the company, it produced 1.3 billion cubic metres (4.6×1010 cubic feet) of natural gas in Ukraine in 2018.[8]
In Kazakhstan, the company has provided drilling services to KazMunayGas and its subsidiaries, including at the Urikhtau gas field.[25] In Italy, Burisma develops three geothermal power projects in partnership with Gesto Investimento e Gestão.[25]
Burisma Holdings is owned by Brociti Investments Limited, a Cyprus-based company owned by Ukrainian former politician and businessman Mykola Zlochevsky. Zlochevsky was minister of natural resources under Viktor Yanukovych, the president of Ukraine.[29] Brociti Investments acquired Burisma Holdings in 2011.[30] Before that acquisition, Mykola Zlochevsky and Mykola Lisin each owned a 50% interest in Burisma Holdings.[10][30][31] Lisin, a Ukrainian politician, died in a traffic accident in 2011.[31]
Burisma Holdings does not disclose its financial results.[8][15] It has been calculated, based on a minimal natural gas price, that the company’s revenue in 2018 may have totaled at least US$400 million.[8]
Investigations
Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine and National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) have conducted in total 15 investigations on Burisma’s owner Zlochevsky.[38] In 2016, former Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko accused Burisma subsidiaries of conspiracy and tax evasion about one billion hryvnias (US$70 million) in 2014–2015, but later during investigation subsidiaries of Burisma were not mentioned.[39] Tax audit of Esko-Pivnich by the State Fiscal Service found some violations in 2016. As a result, 50 million hryvnias (US$1.9 million) of additional taxes was paid to eliminate criminal charges.[39] In total, Burisma paid additional 180 million hryvnias (US$7.44 million) of taxes to avoid further criminal proceedings.[8][23] A criminal investigation was conducted if natural resources extraction licenses were issued to Burisma subsidiaries legally during the period Zlochevsky held government office. Although violations of the procedure were established by NABU, the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office missed procedural deadlines for a lawsuit and the case for nullifying licesenses was dismissed by the court.[39] In October 2019, Prosecutor General Ruslan Riaboshapka announced that all 15 investigation cases will be reviewed.[38]
This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in Ukrainian. (September 2019) Click [show] for important translation instructions.
In 2002, he co-founded the largest independent oil and natural gas company Burisma Holdings with Ukrainian businessman Mykola Lisin [uk].[5][6] Through his sole ownership of Cyprus-registered Burisma Holdings, he owns the Ukrainian gas and oil producers Aldea, Pari, Esko-Pivnich, and the First Ukrainian Petroleum Company and the investment group Brociti Investments.[7][8][9][10][11][12][excessive citations]
At the end of 2014, Zlochevsky fled Ukraine amid allegations of unlawful self enrichment and legalization of funds (Article 368-2, Criminal Code of Ukraine) during his tenure in public office.[13] At the end of 2016 the Central Criminal Court in London released $23 million that were blocked on accounts of Zlochevsky.[13][14] The Serious Fraud Office stated that the funds were released due to inadequate evidence.[13]
Zlochevsky returned to Ukraine in February 2018 after investigations into his Burisma Holdings had been completed in December 2017 with no charges filed against him.[10][15]
On June 15, 2018, after the Solomyansky District Court in Kyiv had annulled the ruling of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAP) to close a criminal proceeding against him in 2017, Zlochevsky was accused of having illegally issued, while he was Ecology Minister in 2010–2012, oil and gas licenses to the companies that belonged to him.[18]
As of 2019, Zlochevsky is reported to live in Monaco.[14]
In 1998, Sondland purchased and redeveloped four hotels in Seattle, Portland, and Denver including Seattle’s Alexis Hotel in partnership with Bill Kimpton. Sondland also is a principal in Seattle’s Paramount Hotel.[4][5]Through Provenance Hotels, Sondland is developing hotel projects throughout the US, including in Seattle, Hermosa Beach, CA and Los Angeles, CA. Provenance Hotels specializes in adaptations of old buildings such as with the Hotel Murano in Tacoma, WA, which used to be a conference Sheraton, but now includes glass art by 46 artists including Seattle’s Dale Chihuly.[6] Provenance is also known for designing or remodeling each hotel around themes that contain elements that relate to a location’s history, art, culture, and local businesses.[7]
In 2013, Sondland and Provenance completed a renovation of Portland’s historic Governor Hotel, renaming it Sentinel.[8] In December 2015, Sondland and Provenance announced the establishment of the company’s first real estate investment fund, Provenance Hotel Partners Fund I. The $525 million fund was created specifically for hotel real estate investment and, at the time of its announcement, was the fourth largest fund ever launched in the state of Oregon.[9]
In 2017, Provenance Hotels expanded its practice of revitalizing and rebranding hotels with locally-inspired art and design as a service to other hoteliers.[10]
United States ambassador to the European Union
Sondland at the United States–EU Energy Council meeting in Brussels on July 12, 2018
Sondland donated $1 million to the inaugural committee of Donald Trump.[11] On March 12, 2018, the Wall Street Journal reported that President Trump selected Sondland to be the next United States ambassador to the European Union.[12] On May 10, 2018, the White House announced that Sondland’s nomination had been sent to the U.S. Senate.[13] He was confirmed by the Senate on June 28, 2018.[2] On July 9, 2018, Sondland presented his credentials at the European Commission and to President of the European Council Donald Tusk.[14]
Sondland’s nomination received bipartisan support during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on June 21, 2018.[15] Both Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) testified in support of Sondland.[16] Sen. Wyden suggested that Sondland’s “family history is both fascinating and instructive as to why he has the experience and understanding to serve as the U.S. Ambassador to the E.U.,” noting how his Jewish parents fled Nazi Germany before coming to the United States.[15][17]
As ambassador, Sondland has made strengthening US-EU trade relations a top priority.[18] He has supported using a strong US-EU economic partnership to counter what Sondland has called “economic aggression and unfair trade practices” from China.[19][20] In pursuit of this end, Sondland has promoted the idea of giving European governments access to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to allow them to better screen investors.[18]
Sondland has also pledged to work with the EU to address global security threats.[21] He has been the Trump Administration’s lead in talks with EU member countries on the U.S.’s decertification and withdrawal from the Iran Nuclear Deal.[22][23] Sondland has repeatedly criticized EU member countries’ creation of a “special purpose vehicle” (SPV) to bypass reimposed U.S. sanctions on Iran, calling the SPV a “paper tiger.”[22][24][25]
Sondland has also been a vocal opponent of the construction of Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which would transport gas across the Baltic Sea to the EU.[26] He has argued that the pipeline would leave the EU dependent upon Russia for its energy needs and increase Russia’s leverage on key U.S. allies in NATO.[27] Sondland argued that “Putin uses energy as a political weapon. The EU should not rely on a bare-chested version of the Harry Potter villain Lord Voldemort as a supplier, even if his gas is a bit cheaper.”[28]
Sondland has also worked on data protection rules regarding U.S. compliance with the EU-US privacy shield.[29]
Gordon Sondland as part of the U.S. delegation at the inauguration of Volodymyr Zelensky.
On September 26, 2019, the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released the unclassified text of the whistleblower complaint regarding the interactions between US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.[30] In this document, Ambassador Sondland, along with the U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations, Ambassador Kurt Volker, were described as having “provided advice to the Ukrainian leadership about how to ‘navigate’ the demands that the President had made of Mr. Zelenskyy”.[31] After further investigation, The Washington Post concluded that Sondland had “seized control of the Ukraine portfolio to help Trump.”[32]
In the complaint released by the US Select committee on Intelligence, Sondland’s involvement in President Donald Trump’s alleged criminal activity was outlined in a text conversation with the interim US chargé d’affaires for Ukraine Bill Taylor:
[9/9/2019, 12:47:11 AM] Bill Taylor: As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.
[9/9/2019, 5:19:35 AM] Gordon Sondland: Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump’s intentions. The President has been crystal clear no quid pro quo’s of any kind. The President is trying to evaluate whether Ukraine is truly going to adopt the transparency and reforms that President Zelensky promised during his campaign I suggest we stop the back and forth by text If you still have concerns I recommend you give Lisa Kenna or S a call to discuss them directly. Thanks.[33]
It took Sondland approximately 5 hours to reply to Taylor’s text message, and it was later revealed that Sondland had called Trump prior to writing a response, in which the president repeated the phrase “no quid pro quo” several times.[34]
On November 5, the New York Times reported that Sondland had provided updated testimony stating that he did in fact view delivery of the aid package as contingent upon the Ukrainian government publicly opening the anticorruption investigation desired by the Trump administration. According to the testimony, he relayed this position to Ukrainian government officials.[42]
Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Europe and Russia on the National Security Council staff Fiona Hill viewed Sondland as a U.S. national security risk because he was so unprepared for his job, but did not accuse Sondland of acting maliciously or intentionally putting the country at risk, describing him during impeachment testimony as a Trump donor-turned-ambassador.[43]
Political involvement
Sondland was a member of the transition team for OregonDemocraticGovernorTed Kulongoski‘s administration and was appointed by Kulongoski to serve on the board of the Governor’s Office of Film & Television.[44] He was appointed the commission’s chair in 2002 and has served in that capacity until 2015.[45] During his tenure on the film board, Sondland was instrumental in bringing the production of such television series as Leverage, The Librarians and Grimm to Oregon[46] and presided over the state securing the production of feature-length films such as Wild starring Reese Witherspoon, Thumbsucker starring Tilda Swinton and The Ring Two starring Naomi Watts. At the 2015 Oregon Film Annual Governor’s Awards, Sondland received the “Achievement in Film Service Award” for his role in growing Oregon’s film industry.[47]
Sondland also served as Oregon liaison to the White House. As an advisor to Kulongoski, Sondland suggested appointing Ted Wheeler as state treasurer, which Kulongoski did in 2010.[48] In 2007 President George W. Bush appointed Sondland as a member of the Commission on White House Fellows.[49] Sondland collaborated with President Bush and Jay Leno on an annual charitable auction of an autographed vehicle, with proceeds benefitting the Fisher House Foundation and the George W. Bush Foundation’s Military Service Initiative.[50] He was a bundler for Mitt Romney’s 2012 Presidential campaign, and in 2012, Sondland was selected to serve as a member of Mitt Romney‘s presidential transition team.[1]
During the 2016 United States presidential election, Sondland initially supported Donald Trump, but cancelled a fundraiser and repudiated Trump for his attacks on Khizr and Ghazala Khan.[1] In April 2017, it was revealed that 4 companies registered to Sondland donated $1 million to the Donald Trump inaugural committee.[51][52][53]
Sondland founded the Gordon Sondland and Katherine J. Durant Foundation in 1999, which was established to “help families and boost communities”; it has given money to various non-profits including $1,000,000 to the Portland Art Museum to endow permanent access for children under the age of eighteen.[54] The Foundation helped establish a Distinguished Chair in Spine for pediatric orthopedic spine research at the Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children in 2012.[citation needed] In 2014, the Foundation gave a $1,000,000 endowment to Oregon Health & Science University to establish the Sondland-Durant Distinguished Research Conference, a cancer research summit to begin in 2016.[55] In 2017, the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Duke University was created with the support of the Foundation.[citation needed]
Personal life
Sondland was born in Seattle, Washington, the son of Frieda (Piepsch) and Gunther Sondland.[56] He is married to Katherine Durant, who is the founder and managing partner of Atlas/RTG, a holding company with a portfolio of shopping centers throughout Oregon.[citation needed] Sondland is Jewish.[15][17] Until 2016, Durant was the Chairperson of the Oregon Investment Council, the body that oversees the over $85 billion Public Employees Retirement System Fund.[57] They have two children.
Example: Memorandum of conversation of meeting led by Brent Scowcroft (1976)
Memorandum of conversation (abbrev.: MEMCON) and also memorandum of a conversation and memo to the file refers to a method of contemporaneous documentation of a conversation in the form of a memorandum used by the United States federal government.[1][2]
The Weekly Standard characterized the use of the tactic in the U.S. government as among “the most basic ways of Washington”.[2]
Method
Typically an individual will document the events of the conversation as soon as possible after the occurrence.[1] All material statements and discussed items are quoted and described as accurately as possible soon after the discussion and filed for future reference.[1] Memcons function as documentation of historical events, such as conversations between heads of state and law enforcement officials.[3] Specific developments discussed, the time of the meeting, location, and individuals in attendance are all documented in-depth within the memo.[1][2]
United States Department of Justice attorneys and Federal Bureau of Investigationspecial agents commonly make use of memoranda of conversation.[1] A majority of intermediate-rank managerial staff and bureaucrats within the U.S. federal government consistently make use of the method. The creation of a memorandum of understanding allows federal employees to memorialize and keep a record of their conversations and transactions.[2]
Memoranda to file are used in investigations in the private sector. For example, the fraud unit of a large corporation may use memoranda to file, to report individual interviews and significant telephone conversations. Generally, “the memorandum will show the name of the author, date of preparation, the case name or number, and the specific subject covered. It will also contain the detailed narrative of the event, interview, or other investigative activity described and should be written as close in time as circumstances permit to those events.”[4]
History
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
^Sennewald, Charles A.; Tsukayama, John K. (2015), The Process of Investigation: Concepts and Strategies for Investigators in the Private Sector (4th ed.), Butterworth-Heinemann, pp. 189–90, ISBN978-0128001660
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The United States has begun the process of pulling out of the landmark 2015 Paris climate agreement, it was announced Monday.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that he submitted a formal notice to the United Nations. That starts a withdrawal process that does not become official for a year. His statement touted America’s carbon pollution cuts and called the Paris deal an ‘unfair economic burden’ to the U.S. economy.
Nearly 200 nations signed the climate deal in which each country provides its own goals to curb emissions of heat-trapping gases that lead to climate change.
‘In international climate discussions, we will continue to offer a realistic and pragmatic model – backed by a record of real world results – showing innovation and open markets lead to greater prosperity, fewer emissions, and more secure sources of energy,’ Pompeo said in a statement.
The U.S. started the process with a hand-delivered letter, becoming the only country to withdraw. The United Nations will soon set out procedural details for what happens next, UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said.
Agreement rules prevented any country from pulling out in the first three years after the Nov. 4, 2016, ratification. The U.S. withdrawal doesn’t become complete until the day after the 2020 election.
President Donald Trump has been promising withdrawal for two years, but Monday was the first time he could actually do it.
Out: Donald Trump’s administration formally started the process of leaving the Paris Climate accord signed by Obama in 2015
+4
Opposed: Mike Pompeo was on the receiving end of criticism for his decision to pull the U.S. out of Paris, with one environmentalist group saying the next president will have to rejoin it
Trump’s decision was condemned as a reckless failure of leadership by environmental experts, activists and critics such as former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
‘Donald Trump is the worst president in history for our climate and our clean air and water,’ said Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club. ‘Long after Trump is out of office his decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement will be seen as a historic error.’
The agreement set goals of preventing another 0.9 degrees (0.5 degrees Celsius) to 1.8 degrees (1 degree Celsius) of warming from current levels. Even the pledges made in 2015 weren’t enough to prevent those levels of warming.
The deal calls for nations to come up with more ambitious pollution cuts every five years, starting in November 2020. Because of the expected withdrawal, the U.S. role in 2020 negotiations will be reduced, experts said.
Climate change, largely caused by the burning of coal, oil and gas, has already warmed the world by 1.8 degrees (1 degree Celsius) since the late 1800s, caused massive melting of ice globally, triggered weather extremes and changed ocean chemistry. And scientists say, depending on how much carbon dioxide is emitted, it will only get worse by the end of the century, with temperatures jumping by several degrees and oceans rising by close to 3 feet (1 meter).
Trump has been promising to pull out of the Paris deal since 2017, often mischaracterizing the terms of the agreement, which are voluntary. In October, he called it a massive wealth transfer from America to other nations and said it was one-sided.
That’s not the case, experts said.
For example, the U.S. goal – set under President Barack Obama – had been to reduce carbon dioxide emission in 2025 by 26% to 28% compared with 2005 levels. This translates to about 15% compared with 1990 levels.
The European Union’s goal was to cut carbon pollution in 2030 by 40% compared with 1990 levels, which is greater than America’s pledge, said Rob Jackson, a Stanford University professor and chairman of the Global Carbon Project. The United Kingdom has already exceeded that goal, he said.
Many critics of the Paris agreement say America is the leader in cutting carbon emissions, but that’s not true.
Since 2005, the United States isn’t in the top 10 in percentage of greenhouse gas emission reductions. The United Kingdom, France, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Hungary, Greece, the Czech Republic and other nations have done better, said Jackson, who tracks emissions.
‘The U.S. agreement is not a tax on the American people. There is no massive wealth transfer,’ said Climate Advisers CEO Nigel Purvis, who was a lead State Department climate negotiator in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. ‘In fact, the agreement obligates no country to make any financial payments.’
It will be inconvenient: Former Vice President Al Gore, who made climate change his signature issue, characterized the decision as a mistake but said there was still reason for hope. ‘No one person or party can stop our momentum to solve the climate crisis,’ he said
Pompeo said U.S. net greenhouse gas emissions dropped 13% from 2005 to 2017 ‘even as our economy grew over 19 percent.’
Then, in 2018, carbon dioxide emissions increased 2.7%, according to the Energy Information Administration, mostly due to extreme weather and the economy.
The reason for the long-term emissions drop is because the U.S. is using less coal and has tightened air quality standards, while Trump is pushing for more coal and loosening those standards, said Michael Gerrard, who heads Columbia Law School’s climate change legal center.
For the U.S. – the second biggest carbon polluter – to be in line with Paris goals greenhouse gas emissions have to drop 80%, not 13%, Gerrard said.
‘The Trump Administration’s abandonment of action on climate change gives other countries an excuse not to act either. They ask – if the richest country, the one that has contributed the most to the load of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, isn’t willing to act, why should we?’ Gerrard said. ‘If someone other than Donald Trump is elected, he or she will almost certainly rejoin Paris, and the rest of the world will welcome us back with open arms.’
Former Vice President Al Gore, who made climate change his signature issue, characterized the decision as a mistake but said there was still reason for hope.
‘No one person or party can stop our momentum to solve the climate crisis,’ Gore said. ‘But those who try will be remembered for their complacency, complicity, and mendacity in attempting to sacrifice the planet for their greed.’
The Trump administration has formally notified the United Nations that the U.S. is withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement. The withdrawal will be complete this time next year, after a one-year waiting period has elapsed.
“We will continue to work with our global partners to enhance resilience to the impacts of climate change and prepare for and respond to natural disasters,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement Monday.
Nearly 200 countries signed on to the agreement in 2015 and made national pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Each country set its own goals, and many wealthy countries, including the U.S., also agreed to help poorer countries pay for the costs associated with climate change.
The U.S. is now the only country to pull out of the pact.
“The United States is not cooperating with the rest of the world on dealing with climate change,” says Andrew Light, a former climate official in the State Department who helped develop the Paris Agreement.
The agreement was designed to be easier to join than to leave. The U.S. even helped spearhead language that would hold countries accountable for the promises they made, in part to help guard against regime changes and other global political turmoil.
Indeed, in the years since the pact was created, many key international players, including Brazil, China, Japan and India, have experienced economic or political upheaval, but none has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement as a result.
President Trump originally announced his intention to withdraw from the deal in the summer of 2017, shortly after he took office. At the time he said, “As of today, the United States will cease all implementation” of the agreement, including federal policies meant to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as well as U.S. contributions to the international climate fund for poorer nations.
“These agreements are just only as good as the commitments from each country,” Light says.
The U.S. had pledged to reduce national greenhouse gas emissions by about a quarter by 2025, compared with 2005 levels. The country is not on track to achieve that goal.
In the intervening years, the Trump administration has systematically attempted to roll back federal limits on carbon emissions, including rules about how much pollution can be emitted by power plants, cars and trucks.
“The reality is, to really deliver on our climate goals, we do need strong federal action,” says Rachel Cleetus of the Union of Concerned Scientists. “The unfortunate reality is U.S. carbon emissions actually rose last year.”
GETTING TO ZERO CARBON: THE CLIMATE CHALLENGE
Global Carbon Emissions Continue To Rise Despite Efforts To Cut Them
This isn’t the first time the U.S. has reneged on an international climate agreement. The U.S. failed to ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol despite being instrumental in its creation. In this case, the U.S. became a signatory to the agreement but almost immediately signaled that it didn’t intend to pursue its responsibilities.
In both cases, the U.S. was instrumental in developing the international strategy.
“That’s one of the ironies of all this,” Light says. When the Paris Agreement was being negotiated, the U.S. delegation pushed for more transparency and accountability to make sure the countries that signed on would actually do what they promised.
“Even though we’re the ones who have been pointing to these potential scenarios for problems with other countries, we seem to be the biggest problem,” Light says.
“If we were a tiny country with small emissions, it wouldn’t matter so much,” he says. “But we’re not. We’re a big country with a lot of power and a lot of influence around the world. And so for us to be the exception on this issue is holding the world back.”
A formal withdrawal is reversible, however, if a future administration chooses to rejoin the Paris Agreement and pick up where the U.S. left off with its emissions reduction promises.
Story 1: Understanding The November Jobs Report With Increased U-3 Unemployment Rate of 3.6% and Labor Participation Rate of 63.3% With Estimated 128,000 New Jobs Created — Videos
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Alternate Unemployment Charts
The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers.
The U-3 unemployment rate is the monthly headline number. The U-6 unemployment rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment.
Series Id: LNS11000000
Seasonally Adjusted
Series title: (Seas) Civilian Labor Force Level
Labor force status: Civilian labor force
Type of data: Number in thousands
Age: 16 years and over
Download:
Year
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
2000
142267(1)
142456
142434
142751
142388
142591
142278
142514
142518
142622
142962
143248
2001
143800
143701
143924
143569
143318
143357
143654
143284
143989
144086
144240
144305
2002
143883
144653
144481
144725
144938
144808
144803
145009
145552
145314
145041
145066
2003
145937(1)
146100
146022
146474
146500
147056
146485
146445
146530
146716
147000
146729
2004
146842(1)
146709
146944
146850
147065
147460
147692
147564
147415
147793
148162
148059
2005
148029(1)
148364
148391
148926
149261
149238
149432
149779
149954
150001
150065
150030
2006
150214(1)
150641
150813
150881
151069
151354
151377
151716
151662
152041
152406
152732
2007
153144(1)
152983
153051
152435
152670
153041
153054
152749
153414
153183
153835
153918
2008
154063(1)
153653
153908
153769
154303
154313
154469
154641
154570
154876
154639
154655
2009
154210(1)
154538
154133
154509
154747
154716
154502
154307
153827
153784
153878
153111
2010
153484(1)
153694
153954
154622
154091
153616
153691
154086
153975
153635
154125
153650
2011
153263(1)
153214
153376
153543
153479
153346
153288
153760
154131
153961
154128
153995
2012
154381(1)
154671
154749
154545
154866
155083
154948
154763
155160
155554
155338
155628
2013
155763(1)
155312
155005
155394
155536
155749
155599
155605
155687
154673
155265
155182
2014
155352(1)
155483
156028
155369
155684
155707
156007
156130
156040
156417
156494
156332
2015
157053(1)
156663
156626
157017
157616
157014
157008
157165
156745
157188
157502
158080
2016
158371(1)
158705
159079
158891
158700
158899
159150
159582
159810
159768
159629
159779
2017
159693(1)
159854
160036
160169
159910
160124
160383
160706
161190
160436
160626
160636
2018
161123(1)
161900
161646
161551
161667
162129
162209
161802
162055
162694
162821
163240
2019
163229(1)
163184
162960
162470
162646
162981
163351
163922
164039
164364
1 : Data affected by changes in population controls.
Labor Force Participation Rate
63.3%
Series Id: LNS11300000
Seasonally Adjusted
Series title: (Seas) Labor Force Participation Rate
Labor force status: Civilian labor force participation rate
Type of data: Percent or rate
Age: 16 years and over
Download:
Year
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
2000
67.3
67.3
67.3
67.3
67.1
67.1
66.9
66.9
66.9
66.8
66.9
67.0
2001
67.2
67.1
67.2
66.9
66.7
66.7
66.8
66.5
66.8
66.7
66.7
66.7
2002
66.5
66.8
66.6
66.7
66.7
66.6
66.5
66.6
66.7
66.6
66.4
66.3
2003
66.4
66.4
66.3
66.4
66.4
66.5
66.2
66.1
66.1
66.1
66.1
65.9
2004
66.1
66.0
66.0
65.9
66.0
66.1
66.1
66.0
65.8
65.9
66.0
65.9
2005
65.8
65.9
65.9
66.1
66.1
66.1
66.1
66.2
66.1
66.1
66.0
66.0
2006
66.0
66.1
66.2
66.1
66.1
66.2
66.1
66.2
66.1
66.2
66.3
66.4
2007
66.4
66.3
66.2
65.9
66.0
66.0
66.0
65.8
66.0
65.8
66.0
66.0
2008
66.2
66.0
66.1
65.9
66.1
66.1
66.1
66.1
66.0
66.0
65.9
65.8
2009
65.7
65.8
65.6
65.7
65.7
65.7
65.5
65.4
65.1
65.0
65.0
64.6
2010
64.8
64.9
64.9
65.2
64.9
64.6
64.6
64.7
64.6
64.4
64.6
64.3
2011
64.2
64.1
64.2
64.2
64.1
64.0
64.0
64.1
64.2
64.1
64.1
64.0
2012
63.7
63.8
63.8
63.7
63.7
63.8
63.7
63.5
63.6
63.8
63.6
63.7
2013
63.7
63.4
63.3
63.4
63.4
63.4
63.3
63.3
63.2
62.8
63.0
62.9
2014
62.9
62.9
63.1
62.8
62.9
62.8
62.9
62.9
62.8
62.9
62.9
62.8
2015
62.9
62.7
62.6
62.7
62.9
62.6
62.6
62.6
62.4
62.5
62.6
62.7
2016
62.7
62.8
62.9
62.8
62.7
62.7
62.8
62.9
62.9
62.8
62.7
62.7
2017
62.9
62.9
62.9
62.9
62.8
62.8
62.9
62.9
63.1
62.7
62.8
62.7
2018
62.7
63.0
62.9
62.8
62.8
62.9
62.9
62.7
62.7
62.9
62.9
63.1
2019
63.2
63.2
63.0
62.8
62.8
62.9
63.0
63.2
63.2
63.3
Employment Level
158,510,000
Series Id: LNS12000000
Seasonally Adjusted
Series title: (Seas) Employment Level
Labor force status: Employed
Type of data: Number in thousands
Age: 16 years and over
Download:
Year
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
2000
136559(1)
136598
136701
137270
136630
136940
136531
136662
136893
137088
137322
137614
2001
137778
137612
137783
137299
137092
136873
137071
136241
136846
136392
136238
136047
2002
135701
136438
136177
136126
136539
136415
136413
136705
137302
137008
136521
136426
2003
137417(1)
137482
137434
137633
137544
137790
137474
137549
137609
137984
138424
138411
2004
138472(1)
138542
138453
138680
138852
139174
139556
139573
139487
139732
140231
140125
2005
140245(1)
140385
140654
141254
141609
141714
142026
142434
142401
142548
142499
142752
2006
143150(1)
143457
143741
143761
144089
144353
144202
144625
144815
145314
145534
145970
2007
146028(1)
146057
146320
145586
145903
146063
145905
145682
146244
145946
146595
146273
2008
146378(1)
146156
146086
146132
145908
145737
145532
145203
145076
144802
144100
143369
2009
142152(1)
141640
140707
140656
140248
140009
139901
139492
138818
138432
138659
138013
2010
138438(1)
138581
138751
139297
139241
139141
139179
139438
139396
139119
139044
139301
2011
139250(1)
139394
139639
139586
139624
139384
139524
139942
140183
140368
140826
140902
2012
141584(1)
141858
142036
141899
142206
142391
142292
142291
143044
143431
143333
143330
2013
143292(1)
143362
143316
143635
143882
143999
144264
144326
144418
143537
144479
144778
2014
145150(1)
145134
145648
145667
145825
146247
146399
146530
146778
147427
147404
147615
2015
148150(1)
148053
148122
148491
148802
148765
148815
149175
148853
149270
149506
150164
2016
150622(1)
150934
151146
150963
151074
151104
151450
151766
151877
151949
152150
152276
2017
152128(1)
152417
152958
153150
152920
153176
153456
153591
154399
153847
153945
154065
2018
154482(1)
155213
155160
155216
155539
155592
155964
155604
156069
156582
156803
156945
2019
156694(1)
156949
156748
156645
156758
157005
157288
157878
158269
158510
1 : Data affected by changes in population controls.
Unemployment Level
5,855,000
Series Id: LNS13000000
Seasonally Adjusted
Series title: (Seas) Unemployment Level
Labor force status: Unemployed
Type of data: Number in thousands
Age: 16 years and over
Download:
Year
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
2000
5708
5858
5733
5481
5758
5651
5747
5853
5625
5534
5639
5634
2001
6023
6089
6141
6271
6226
6484
6583
7042
7142
7694
8003
8258
2002
8182
8215
8304
8599
8399
8393
8390
8304
8251
8307
8520
8640
2003
8520
8618
8588
8842
8957
9266
9011
8896
8921
8732
8576
8317
2004
8370
8167
8491
8170
8212
8286
8136
7990
7927
8061
7932
7934
2005
7784
7980
7737
7672
7651
7524
7406
7345
7553
7453
7566
7279
2006
7064
7184
7072
7120
6980
7001
7175
7091
6847
6727
6872
6762
2007
7116
6927
6731
6850
6766
6979
7149
7067
7170
7237
7240
7645
2008
7685
7497
7822
7637
8395
8575
8937
9438
9494
10074
10538
11286
2009
12058
12898
13426
13853
14499
14707
14601
14814
15009
15352
15219
15098
2010
15046
15113
15202
15325
14849
14474
14512
14648
14579
14516
15081
14348
2011
14013
13820
13737
13957
13855
13962
13763
13818
13948
13594
13302
13093
2012
12797
12813
12713
12646
12660
12692
12656
12471
12115
12124
12005
12298
2013
12471
11950
11689
11760
11654
11751
11335
11279
11270
11136
10787
10404
2014
10202
10349
10380
9702
9859
9460
9608
9599
9262
8990
9090
8717
2015
8903
8610
8504
8526
8814
8249
8194
7990
7892
7918
7995
7916
2016
7749
7771
7932
7928
7626
7795
7700
7817
7933
7819
7480
7503
2017
7565
7437
7078
7019
6991
6948
6927
7115
6791
6588
6682
6572
2018
6641
6687
6486
6335
6128
6537
6245
6197
5986
6112
6018
6294
2019
6535
6235
6211
5824
5888
5975
6063
6044
5769
5855
Unemployment Rate
3.6%
Series Id: LNS14000000
Seasonally Adjusted
Series title: (Seas) Unemployment Rate
Labor force status: Unemployment rate
Type of data: Percent or rate
Age: 16 years and over
Year
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
2000
4.0
4.1
4.0
3.8
4.0
4.0
4.0
4.1
3.9
3.9
3.9
3.9
2001
4.2
4.2
4.3
4.4
4.3
4.5
4.6
4.9
5.0
5.3
5.5
5.7
2002
5.7
5.7
5.7
5.9
5.8
5.8
5.8
5.7
5.7
5.7
5.9
6.0
2003
5.8
5.9
5.9
6.0
6.1
6.3
6.2
6.1
6.1
6.0
5.8
5.7
2004
5.7
5.6
5.8
5.6
5.6
5.6
5.5
5.4
5.4
5.5
5.4
5.4
2005
5.3
5.4
5.2
5.2
5.1
5.0
5.0
4.9
5.0
5.0
5.0
4.9
2006
4.7
4.8
4.7
4.7
4.6
4.6
4.7
4.7
4.5
4.4
4.5
4.4
2007
4.6
4.5
4.4
4.5
4.4
4.6
4.7
4.6
4.7
4.7
4.7
5.0
2008
5.0
4.9
5.1
5.0
5.4
5.6
5.8
6.1
6.1
6.5
6.8
7.3
2009
7.8
8.3
8.7
9.0
9.4
9.5
9.5
9.6
9.8
10.0
9.9
9.9
2010
9.8
9.8
9.9
9.9
9.6
9.4
9.4
9.5
9.5
9.4
9.8
9.3
2011
9.1
9.0
9.0
9.1
9.0
9.1
9.0
9.0
9.0
8.8
8.6
8.5
2012
8.3
8.3
8.2
8.2
8.2
8.2
8.2
8.1
7.8
7.8
7.7
7.9
2013
8.0
7.7
7.5
7.6
7.5
7.5
7.3
7.2
7.2
7.2
6.9
6.7
2014
6.6
6.7
6.7
6.2
6.3
6.1
6.2
6.1
5.9
5.7
5.8
5.6
2015
5.7
5.5
5.4
5.4
5.6
5.3
5.2
5.1
5.0
5.0
5.1
5.0
2016
4.9
4.9
5.0
5.0
4.8
4.9
4.8
4.9
5.0
4.9
4.7
4.7
2017
4.7
4.7
4.4
4.4
4.4
4.3
4.3
4.4
4.2
4.1
4.2
4.1
2018
4.1
4.1
4.0
3.9
3.8
4.0
3.9
3.8
3.7
3.8
3.7
3.9
2019
4.0
3.8
3.8
3.6
3.6
3.7
3.7
3.7
3.5
3.6
Not in Labor Force
95,481,000
Series Id: LNS15000000
Seasonally Adjusted
Series title: (Seas) Not in Labor Force
Labor force status: Not in labor force
Type of data: Number in thousands
Age: 16 years and over
Download:
Year
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
2000
69142
69120
69338
69267
69853
69876
70398
70401
70645
70782
70579
70488
2001
70088
70409
70381
70956
71414
71592
71526
72136
71676
71817
71876
72010
2002
72623
72010
72343
72281
72260
72600
72827
72856
72554
73026
73508
73675
2003
73960
74015
74295
74066
74268
73958
74767
75062
75249
75324
75280
75780
2004
75319
75648
75606
75907
75903
75735
75730
76113
76526
76399
76259
76581
2005
76808
76677
76846
76514
76409
76673
76721
76642
76739
76958
77138
77394
2006
77339
77122
77161
77318
77359
77317
77535
77451
77757
77634
77499
77376
2007
77506
77851
77982
78818
78810
78671
78904
79461
79047
79532
79105
79238
2008
78554
79156
79087
79429
79102
79314
79395
79466
79790
79736
80189
80380
2009
80529
80374
80953
80762
80705
80938
81367
81780
82495
82766
82865
83813
2010
83349
83304
83206
82707
83409
84075
84199
84014
84347
84895
84590
85240
2011
85441
85637
85623
85603
85834
86144
86383
86111
85940
86308
86312
86589
2012
87888
87765
87855
88239
88100
88073
88405
88803
88613
88429
88836
88722
2013
88900
89516
89990
89780
89827
89803
90156
90355
90481
91708
91302
91563
2014
91563
91603
91230
92070
91938
92107
92016
92099
92406
92240
92350
92695
2015
92671
93237
93454
93249
92839
93649
93868
93931
94580
94353
94245
93856
2016
94026
93872
93689
94077
94475
94498
94470
94272
94281
94553
94911
94963
2017
94389
94392
94378
94419
94857
94833
94769
94651
94372
95330
95323
95473
2018
95657
95033
95451
95721
95787
95513
95633
96264
96235
95821
95886
95649
2019
95010
95208
95577
96223
96215
96057
95874
95510
95599
95481
U-6 Unemployment Rate
7.0%
Series Id: LNS13327709
Seasonally Adjusted
Series title: (seas) Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of all civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers
Labor force status: Aggregated totals unemployed
Type of data: Percent or rate
Age: 16 years and over
Percent/rates: Unemployed and mrg attached and pt for econ reas as percent of labor force plus marg attached
Year
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
2000
7.1
7.2
7.1
6.9
7.1
7.0
7.0
7.1
7.0
6.8
7.1
6.9
2001
7.3
7.4
7.3
7.4
7.5
7.9
7.8
8.1
8.7
9.3
9.4
9.6
2002
9.5
9.5
9.4
9.7
9.5
9.5
9.6
9.6
9.6
9.6
9.7
9.8
2003
10.0
10.2
10.0
10.2
10.1
10.3
10.3
10.1
10.4
10.2
10.0
9.8
2004
9.9
9.7
10.0
9.6
9.6
9.5
9.5
9.4
9.4
9.7
9.4
9.2
2005
9.3
9.3
9.1
8.9
8.9
9.0
8.8
8.9
9.0
8.7
8.7
8.6
2006
8.4
8.4
8.2
8.1
8.2
8.4
8.5
8.4
8.0
8.2
8.1
7.9
2007
8.4
8.2
8.0
8.2
8.2
8.3
8.4
8.4
8.4
8.4
8.4
8.8
2008
9.2
9.0
9.1
9.2
9.7
10.1
10.5
10.8
11.0
11.8
12.6
13.6
2009
14.2
15.2
15.8
15.9
16.5
16.5
16.4
16.7
16.7
17.1
17.1
17.1
2010
16.7
17.0
17.1
17.1
16.6
16.4
16.4
16.5
16.8
16.6
16.9
16.6
2011
16.2
16.0
15.9
16.1
15.8
16.1
15.9
16.1
16.4
15.8
15.5
15.2
2012
15.2
15.0
14.5
14.6
14.7
14.8
14.8
14.6
14.8
14.4
14.4
14.4
2013
14.6
14.4
13.8
14.0
13.8
14.2
13.8
13.6
13.5
13.6
13.1
13.1
2014
12.7
12.6
12.6
12.3
12.2
12.0
12.1
12.0
11.7
11.5
11.4
11.2
2015
11.3
11.0
10.8
10.8
10.9
10.4
10.3
10.2
10.0
9.8
10.0
9.9
2016
9.8
9.7
9.8
9.7
9.9
9.5
9.7
9.6
9.7
9.6
9.4
9.2
2017
9.3
9.1
8.7
8.6
8.5
8.5
8.5
8.6
8.3
8.0
8.0
8.1
2018
8.2
8.2
7.9
7.8
7.7
7.8
7.5
7.4
7.5
7.5
7.6
7.6
2019
8.1
7.3
7.3
7.3
7.1
7.2
7.0
7.2
6.9
7.0
October job creation comes in at 128,000, easily topping estimates even with GM auto strike
Nonfarm payrolls rose by 128,000 in October, exceeding the estimate of 75,000 from economists surveyed by Dow Jones.
There were big revisions of past numbers as well. August’s initial 168,000 payrolls addition was revised up to 219,000, while September’s jumped from 136,000 to 180,000.
The unemployment rate ticked slightly higher to 3.6% from 3.5%, still near the lowest in 50 years.
The pace of average hourly earnings picked up a bit, rising 0.1% to a year-over-year 3% gain.
Nonfarm payrolls rose by 128,000 in October as the U.S. economy overcame the weight of the GM autoworkers’ strike and created jobs at a pace well above expectations.
Even with a decline of 42,000 in the motor vehicles and parts industry, the pace of new jobs well exceeded the estimate of 75,000 from economists surveyed by Dow Jones. The loss of jobs came due to the General Motors strike that has since been settled. That 42,000 job loss itself was less than the 50,000 or more that many economists had been anticipating.
The unemployment rate ticked higher to 3.6%, in line with estimates, but remains around the lowest in 50 years. A more encompassing measure that includes discouraged workers and those holding part-time positions for economic reasons also edged up to 7%.
The unemployment rate for African Americans nudged down to a record low 5.4%. Also, the total employment level as measured in the household survey jumped to 158.5 million, also a new high.
The pace of average hourly earnings picked up a bit, rising 0.1% to a year-over-year 3% gain, also in line with estimates. The average work week was unchanged at 34.4 hours.
“This report is yet another sign that the economy is still strong right now and adds to a list of indicators that are looking optimistic of late,” said Steve Rick, chief economist at CUNA Mutual Group. “The vigor of this labor market, along with a more positive housing market and solid Q3 GDP, should offer some welcome reassurance.”
Big revisions upward
Along with the better-than-expected performance in October, previous months’ counts were revised considerably higher. August’s initial 168,000 estimate came all the way up to 219,000 while September’s jumped from 136,000 to 180,000.
Together, the new estimates added 95,000 positions for the two-month period, bringing the three-month average to 176,000, which is well above the pace needed to keep the unemployment rate around its current level.
For the year, monthly job creation now averages 167,000 compared with 223,000 in 2018.
The report helps further quell worries that the U.S. economy is teetering toward recession and helps affirm the assessment from most Federal Reserve officials.
Central bank leaders have largely praised the state of the U.S. economy, particularly compared with its global peers. The Fed earlier this week lowered its benchmark interest rate a quarter point, the third such move this year, but Chairman Jerome Powell clearly indicated that this likely will be the last cut for some time unless conditions change significantly.
“The October jobs report is unambiguously positive for the US economic outlook,” said Citigroup economist Andrew Hollenhorst. “Above-consensus hiring in October, together with upward revisions to prior months, is consistent with our view that job growth, while clearly slower in 2019 than in 2018, will maintain a pace of 130-150K per month. Wage growth remaining at 3.0% should further support incomes and consumption-led growth.”
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At the industry level, the biggest job creation came in food services and drinking establishments, which added 48,000.While those positions are generally associated with lower wages, they also can reflect consumer demand and the willingness to spend discretionary money. The industry has seen a surge in job creation as of late, with the past three months averaging 38,000 compared with 16,000 in the first seven months of this year.
Professional and business services added 22,000 and health care rose 15,000, part of a gain of 402,000 for that industry over the past year.
Social assistance increased by 20,000 while financial activities rose by 16,000, bringing to 108,000 the total Wall Street jobs added over the past year.
Job losses came in manufacturing (-36,000) as part of the GM strike, and the federal government, which subtracted 17,000 because 20,000 workers hired for Census duties finished their work.
The total employment level in the household survey reached another record high, swelling by 241,000 to 158.5 million.
The labor force expanded by 325,000 to 164.4 million and the labor force participation rate edged higher to 63.3%. Those counted as not in the labor force declined by 118,000 to nearly 95.5 million.
After previously sitting at a record low, the unemployment rate for Asians jumped 0.4 percentage points to 2.9%.
private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees rose by 4 cents to $23.70.
(See tables B-3 and B-8.)
The average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls was unchanged
at 34.4 hours in October. In manufacturing, the average workweek decreased by
0.2 hour to 40.3 hours, while overtime was unchanged at 3.2 hours. The average
workweek of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees held at 33.6
hours. (See tables B-2 and B-7.)
The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for August was revised up by 51,000
from +168,000 to +219,000, and the change for September was revised up by 44,000
from +136,000 to +180,000. With these revisions, employment gains in August and
September combined were 95,000 more than previously reported. (Monthly revisions
result from additional reports received from businesses and government agencies
since the last published estimates and from the recalculation of seasonal factors.)
After revisions, job gains have averaged 176,000 over the last 3 months.
_____________
The Employment Situation for November is scheduled to be released on
Friday, December 6, 2019, at 8:30 a.m. (EST).
Employment Situation Summary Table A. Household data, seasonally adjusted
HOUSEHOLD DATA
Summary table A. Household data, seasonally adjusted[Numbers in thousands]
Category
Oct.
2018
Aug.
2019
Sept.
2019
Oct.
2019
Change from:
Sept.
2019-
Oct.
2019
Employment status
Civilian noninstitutional population
258,514
259,432
259,638
259,845
207
Civilian labor force
162,694
163,922
164,039
164,364
325
Participation rate
62.9
63.2
63.2
63.3
0.1
Employed
156,582
157,878
158,269
158,510
241
Employment-population ratio
60.6
60.9
61.0
61.0
0.0
Unemployed
6,112
6,044
5,769
5,855
86
Unemployment rate
3.8
3.7
3.5
3.6
0.1
Not in labor force
95,821
95,510
95,599
95,481
-118
Unemployment rates
Total, 16 years and over
3.8
3.7
3.5
3.6
0.1
Adult men (20 years and over)
3.5
3.4
3.2
3.2
0.0
Adult women (20 years and over)
3.4
3.3
3.1
3.2
0.1
Teenagers (16 to 19 years)
12.0
12.6
12.5
12.3
-0.2
White
3.3
3.4
3.2
3.2
0.0
Black or African American
6.2
5.5
5.5
5.4
-0.1
Asian
3.1
2.8
2.5
2.9
0.4
Hispanic or Latino ethnicity
4.4
4.2
3.9
4.1
0.2
Total, 25 years and over
3.1
2.9
2.8
2.9
0.1
Less than a high school diploma
5.9
5.4
4.8
5.6
0.8
High school graduates, no college
4.0
3.6
3.6
3.7
0.1
Some college or associate degree
3.0
3.1
2.9
2.9
0.0
Bachelor’s degree and higher
2.0
2.1
2.0
2.1
0.1
Reason for unemployment
Job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs
2,858
2,876
2,572
2,674
102
Job leavers
731
781
840
849
9
Reentrants
1,914
1,801
1,669
1,703
34
New entrants
605
574
677
627
-50
Duration of unemployment
Less than 5 weeks
2,062
2,207
1,868
1,968
100
5 to 14 weeks
1,845
1,757
1,781
1,749
-32
15 to 26 weeks
859
835
819
899
80
27 weeks and over
1,370
1,243
1,314
1,264
-50
Employed persons at work part time
Part time for economic reasons
4,630
4,381
4,350
4,438
88
Slack work or business conditions
2,837
2,678
2,588
2,754
166
Could only find part-time work
1,461
1,351
1,322
1,287
-35
Part time for noneconomic reasons
21,448
21,697
21,573
21,549
-24
Persons not in the labor force (not seasonally adjusted)
Marginally attached to the labor force
1,491
1,564
1,299
1,229
–
Discouraged workers
506
467
321
341
–
– Over-the-month changes are not displayed for not seasonally adjusted data.
NOTE: Persons whose ethnicity is identified as Hispanic or Latino may be of any race. Detail for the seasonally adjusted data shown in this table will not necessarily add to totals because of the independent seasonal adjustment of the various series. Updated population controls are introduced annually with the release of January data.
Footnotes
(1) Includes other industries, not shown separately.
(2) Data relate to production employees in mining and logging and manufacturing, construction employees in construction, and nonsupervisory employees in the service-providing industries.
(3) The indexes of aggregate weekly hours are calculated by dividing the current month’s estimates of aggregate hours by the corresponding annual average aggregate hours.
(4) The indexes of aggregate weekly payrolls are calculated by dividing the current month’s estimates of aggregate weekly payrolls by the corresponding annual average aggregate weekly payrolls.
(5) Figures are the percent of industries with employment increasing plus one-half of the industries with unchanged employment, where 50 percent indicates an equal balance between industries with increasing and decreasing employment.
(P) Preliminary
NOTE: Data have been revised to reflect March 2018 benchmark levels and updated seasonal adjustment factors.
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In this episode of the Keiser Report, Max and Stacy discuss the fact that the massive daily NY Fed interventions in the repo market are getting worse and worse. What was meant to be small and temporary seems now to be huge and permanent. Investors are asking, “What is the Fed hiding?” They also look at the 23% decline in the U.S. Monetary Base since 2016 and ask whether or not it signifies anything. In the second half, Max talks to David Morgan of The Morgan Report about what he sees in the turmoil in the repo markets. They also discuss China’s gold purchases and whether or not he agrees with Alasdair MacLeod’s belief that China could announce they have more than 10,000 tons of gold.
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Fed Repo Market Bank Bailout 2019 – Why Don’t Banks Trust Each Other Right Now? [Crisis Unfolds?]
Opinion: The Federal Reserve is in stealth intervention mode
Published: Oct 26, 2019 4:23 p.m. ET
What the central bank passes off as ‘funding issues’ could more accurately be described as liquidity injections to keep interest rates low
Getty Images
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell
By SVENHENRICH
The Federal Reserve has gone into full intervention mode.
Actually, accelerated intervention mode. Not just a “mid-cycle adjustment,” as Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said in July, but interventions to the tune of tens of billions of dollars every day.
What’s the crisis, you ask? After all, we live in an age of trillion-dollar market-cap companies and unemployment at 50-year lows. Yet the Fed is acting like the doomsday clock has melted as a result of a nuclear attack.
Think I’m in hyperbole mode? Far from it.
Unless you think the biggest repurchase (repo) efforts ever — surpassing the 2008 financial-crisis actions — are hyperbole:
Sven Henrich
✔@NorthmanTrader
What is the Fed not telling us?
I’m asking for a friend.
Something’s off. See, it all started as a temporary fix in September when, suddenly, the overnight target rate jumped sky high and the Fed had to intervene to keep the wheels from coming off. Short-term liquidity issues, the Fed said. Those have become rather permanent:
And liquidity injections are massive and accelerating. On Tuesday, the Fed injected $99.9 billion in temporary liquidity into the financial system and $7.5 billion in permanent reserves as part of a program to buy $60 billion a month in Treasury bills. The $99.9 billion comes from $64.9 billion in overnight repurchase agreements and $35 billion in repo operations.
But market demand for overnight repo operations has far exceeded even the $75 billion the Fed has allocated, suggesting a lot more liquidity demand. Hence, on Wednesday the Fed suddenly announced a $45 billion increase on top of the $75 billion repo facility for a daily total of $120 billion. Here’s the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the branch involved in such actions:
“Consistent with the most recent FOMC [Federal Open Market Committee] directive, to ensure that the supply of reserves remains ample even during periods of sharp increases in non-reserve liabilities, and to mitigate the risk of money market pressures that could adversely affect policy implementation, the amount offered in overnight repo operations will increase to at least $120 billion starting Thursday, Oct. 24, 2019.”
These actions are surprising. What stable financial system requires over $100 billion in overnight liquidity injections? The Fed did not see the need for these actions coming. It is reacting to a market that suddenly requires it.
“Funding issues,” Chairman Powell called it in October. The Fed was totally caught off guard when the overnight financing rate suddenly jumped to over 5%, and it’s been reacting ever since.
What started as a slow walk in policy reversion from last year’s rate-hike cycle and balance-sheet roll-off (aka quantitative tightening, or QT) on autopilot has now turned into ongoing interest-rate cuts and balance-sheet expansion:
To be clear: This is not a temporary rise in the balance sheet; this is the beginning of something big. The Fed’s balance sheet looks like it will expand to record highs once again.
I keep questioning the efficacy of all this, and I have to question the honesty of the Fed. After all, the central bank keeps chasing events, and its policy actions are turning ever more aggressive while it insists that everything is fine. The bank’s actions are saying things are not fine. Far from it. Otherwise, the Fed wouldn’t be forced into all these policy actions. But would the Fed cop to things not being fine? To do so would be to sap confidence — can’t have that.
What would markets look like without these policy interventions? One can only wonder. For one, we know the overnight financing rate would be much higher. That is, after all, why the Fed is forced to intervene: To keep the target rate low.
Many analysts now suggest there will be a year-end stock market rally, primarily driven by the Fed as earnings growth remains weak. If they print, you must buy.
It may well be that our financial markets have permanently devolved into a Fed-subsidized, wealth-inequality-generating machine benefitting the few that own stocks. But one has to wonder why the rate cutting and liquidity injections haven’t been able to produce sustained market highs.
Consider the evolution of the Fed’s “put” in 2019:
First came the hints in January. “Flexible on the balance sheet,” Powell suddenly was uttering following the fourth-quarter 2018 stock market massacre, producing a 3.5% rally in one day on that pronouncement. Then we got treated to a multi-month jawboning of Fed speakers increasingly sending dovish messages, and markets gladly jumping from Fed speech to Fed speech. Powell again rescued the market in early June after May’s market rout. “Ready to act” was the rallying cry then — and the market rallied dutifully into the July rate cut.
But then the dynamics changed. Rate cut No. 1 in July was sold. Rate cut No. 2 in September was sold. Then came the repo operations, also in September. And now, in October, the Fed launched the $60 billion-a-month Treasury-bill-buying program.
Did you note the accelerated pace of Fed actions here? The Fed went from pausing rate increases to ending the balance sheet roll-off to multiple rate cuts and, finally, aggressive daily repos and balance-sheet expansion. All of this since July. And guess what? Another rate cut is coming next week.
Why? Because markets want it. And what markets want, markets shall receive. That’s the only data point that matters, it appears.
And markets really want that third rate cut next week:
There’s a 94.6% probability of a rate cut. Think that a Fed that is intervening in markets daily by the tens of billions of dollars will chance to disappoint markets by not cutting rates? Please.
Investors have been chasing the Fed into corporate multiple expansion all year. But now that the Fed is forced to intervene ever more aggressively, it has to prove something: Efficacy.
Are we seeing an improvement in growth? No. Are we seeing an improvement in earnings? No. From the looks of it, the Fed is barely keeping it together and is forced to do ever more to prevent markets from falling as the principal bull rationale for buying stocks is the Fed.
And so one has to ponder a larger question:
Sven Henrich
✔@NorthmanTrader
I’ll go out on a limb here, but a financial system that requires over $100B of liquidity injections every day, temporary, permanent or otherwise, has major issues.
But, to be fair, so far the Fed has succeeded in compressing volatility as price discovery has degraded to overnight action over any intraday price discovery. Markets are back to tight intra-ranges void of any actions and elevating indices near record highs.
Whether the Fed can prompt a move to sustained new highs remains to be seen. All eyes will be on the Fed next week to see whether policy makers can achieve it.
If they can, investors can look for another run at the upper trend line on the S&P 500 SPX, -0.12% chart:
If they can’t, things may turn out quite differently, such as this speculative scenario:
You don’t think the Fed is all about markets? Where have you been? After all, the Fed’s stated policy objective now is to extend the business cycle by any means necessary. And policy makers can’t do that with falling stock prices.
And so they are in accelerated daily intervention mode. Because that is what it takes. The questions that investors have to ask themselves is: What if it’s not enough? And what is it policy makers aren’t telling us? Why are they are forced into these historic, unexpected measures? What happens if they lose control? We may know more next week.
Statement Regarding Repurchase and Reverse Repurchase Agreements Small Value Exercise
November 4, 2019
The New York Fed undertakes certain small value open market transactions from time to time for the purpose of testing operational readiness to implement existing and potential policy directives from the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). The FOMC authorizes the New York Fed’s Open Market Trading Desk (the Desk) to conduct these exercises to test its operational readiness in the Authorization for Domestic Open Market Operations and Authorization for Foreign Currency Operations.
In connection with these authorizations, the Desk intends to conduct one small value forward-settling repo and one small value reverse repo operation during the month of November. Each operation will begin around 9:45 AM ET and end at 10:00 AM ET. The operations will be open to Primary Dealers and/or Reverse Repo Counterparties. All counterparties will be limited to one $1 million proposition per tranche during each operation. The planned schedule, including operation details, follows below:
Repurchase Agreement Operation:
OPERATION TENOR/TYPE
ELIGIBLE COUNTERPARTIES
OPERATION DATE
SETTLEMENT DATE
MATURITY DATE
COLLATERAL TYPE
MAXIMUM VALUE OF OPERATION
Term Repo
Primary Dealers
Tues, Nov 5, 2019
Wed, Nov 6, 2019
Fri, Nov 8, 2019
Multi-tranche: Treasury, Agency, Agency MBS
$75 million
Reverse Repurchase Agreement Operation:
OPERATION TENOR/TYPE
ELIGIBLE COUNTERPARTIES
OPERATION DATE
SETTLEMENT DATE
MATURITY DATE
COLLATERAL TYPE
OFFERING RATE
MAXIMUM VALUE OF OPERATION
Term Reverse Repo
Primary Dealers and Reverse Repo Counterparties
Tues, Nov 19, 2019
Tues, Nov 19, 2019
Thu, Nov 21, 2019
Single-tranche: Agency MBS -only
ON RRP Offering Rate on Nov 19
$175 million
Announcements and results will be posted on the New York Fed’s website at the start and following the completion of each operation.
A monetary base is the total amount of a currency that is either in general circulation in the hands of the public or in the commercial bank deposits held in the central bank’s reserves. This measure of the money supply typically only includes the most liquid currencies; it is also known as the “money base.”
Breaking Down Monetary Base
The monetary base is a component of a nation’s money supply. It refers strictly to highly liquid funds including notes, coinage and current bank deposits. When the Federal Reserve creates new funds to purchase bonds from commercial banks, the banks see an increase in their holdings, which causes the monetary base to expand.
For example, country Z has 600 million currency units circulating in the public and its central bank has 10 billion currency units in reserve as part of deposits from many commercial banks. In this case, the monetary base for country Z is 10.6 billion currency units.
As of June 2016, the U.S. had a monetary base of almost $3.9 trillion.
Monetary Base and the Money Supply
The money supply expands beyond the monetary base to include other assets that may be less liquid in form. It is most commonly divided into levels, listed as M0 through M3 or M4 depending on the system, with each representing a different facet of a nation’s assets. The monetary base’s funds are generally held within the lower levels of the money supply, such as M1 or M2, which encompasses cash in circulation and specific liquid assets including, but not limited to, savings and checking accounts.
To qualify, the funds must be considered a final settlement of a transaction. For example, if a person uses cash to pay a debt, that transaction is final. Additionally, writing a check against money in a checking account, or using a debit card, can also be considered final since the transaction is backed by actual cash deposits once they have cleared.
In contrast, the use of credit to pay a debt does not qualify as part of the monetary base, as this is not the final step to the transaction. This is due to the fact the use of credit just transfers a debt owed from one party, the person or business receiving the credit-based payment and the credit issuer.
Managing Monetary Bases
Most monetary bases are controlled by one national institution, usually a country’s central bank. They can usually change the monetary base (either expanding or contracting) through open market operations or monetary policies.
For many countries, the government can maintain a measure of control over the monetary base by buying and selling government bonds in the open market.
Smaller Scale Monetary Bases and Money Supplies
At the household level, the monetary base consists of all notes and coins in the possession of the household, as well as any funds in deposit accounts. The money supply of a household may be extended to include any available credit open on credit cards, unused portions of lines of credit and other accessible funds that translate into a debt that must be repaid.
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Ukraine Court Rules Manafort Disclosure Caused ‘Meddling’ in U.S. Election
Paul Manafort, center, arriving for his arraignment hearing at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Va., in March.Credit…Al Drago for The New York Times
MOSCOW — A court in Ukraine has ruled that officials in the country violated the law by revealing, during the 2016 presidential election in the United States, details of suspected illegal payments to Paul Manafort.
In 2016, while Mr. Manafort was chairman of the Trump campaign, anti-corruption prosecutors in Ukraine disclosed that a pro-Russian political party had earmarked payments for Mr. Manafort from an illegal slush fund. Mr. Manafort resigned from the campaign a week later.
The court’s ruling that what the prosecutors did was illegal comes as the Ukrainian government, which is deeply reliant on the United States for financial and military aid, has sought to distance itself from matters related to the special counsel’s investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential race.
Some of the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has dealt with Mr. Manafort’s decade of work in Ukraine advising the country’s Russia-aligned former president, Viktor F. Yanukovych, his party and the oligarchs behind it.
After President Trump’s victory, some politicians in Ukraine criticized the public release by prosecutors of the slush fund records, saying the move would complicate Ukraine’s relations with the Trump administration.
In Ukraine, investigations into the payments marked for Mr. Manafort were halted for a time and never led to indictments. Mr. Manafort’s conviction in the United States on financial fraud charges related to his work in Ukraine was not based on any known legal assistance from Ukraine.
Two Ukrainian members of Parliament had pressed for investigations into whether the prosecutors’ revelation of the payment records, which were first published in The New York Times, had violated Ukrainian laws that, in some cases, prohibit prosecutors from revealing evidence before a trial.
Both lawmakers asserted that if the release of the slush fund information broke the law, then it should be viewed as an illegal effort to influence the United States presidential election in favor of Hillary Clinton by damaging the Trump campaign.
Artem Sytnik, the head of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, said he had revealed the information about Paul Manafort “in accordance with the law in effect at the time.”Credit…Oleksandr Stashevskyi/Associated Press
The Kiev District Administrative Court, in a statement issued Wednesday, said that Artem Sytnik, the head of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, the agency that had released information about the payments, had violated the law. The court’s statement said this violation “resulted in meddling in the electoral process of the United States in 2016 and damaged the national interests of Ukraine.”
A spokeswoman for the anti-corruption bureau said she could not comment before the court released a full text of the ruling. In an interview last June, Mr. Sytnik said he had revealed the information “in accordance with the law in effect at the time.”
The court also faulted a member of Ukraine’s Parliament, Serhiy A. Leshchenko, who had commented on Mr. Manafort’s case and publicized at a news conference materials that the anti-corruption bureau had already posted on its website.
Mr. Leshchenko said he would appeal the ruling, and that the court was not independent and was doing the bidding of the Ukrainian government as it sought to curry favor with the Trump administration.
“This decision of the court is for Poroshenko to find a way to Trump’s heart,” he said, referring to President Petro O. Poroshenko. “At the next meeting with Trump, he will say, ‘You know, an independent Ukrainian court decided investigators made an inappropriate move.’ He will find the loyalty of the Trump administration.”
Mr. Leshchenko said the prosecutors’ revelations about Mr. Manafort were legal because they were “public interest information,” even if they were also potential evidence in a criminal investigation.
Mr. Manafort has not been charged with a crime in Ukraine, and earlier this year, Ukrainian officials froze several investigations into Mr. Manafort’s payments at a time when the government was negotiating with the Trump administration to purchase sophisticated anti-tank missiles, called Javelins.
Ukraine’s prosecutor general said the delay on Mr. Manafort’s cases was unrelated to the missile negotiations. In total, the United States provides about $600 million in bilateral aid to Ukraine annually.
Earlier this month, the special counsel accused Mr. Manafort of violating a cooperation agreement by lying. Two of the five alleged lies, according to the filing, related to meetings or conversations with Konstantin V. Kilimnik, Mr. Manafort’s former office manager in Kiev, whom the special counsel’s office has identified as tied to Russian intelligence and as a key figure in the investigation into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Ukrainian law enforcement officials last year allowed Mr. Kilimnik to leave for Russia, putting him out of reach for questioning.
Let’s get real: Democrats were first to enlist Ukraine in US elections
BY JOHN SOLOMON, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 09/23/19 06:30 PM EDT 2,915
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL
Earlier this month, during a bipartisan meeting in Kiev, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) delivered a pointed message to Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
While choosing his words carefully, Murphy made clear — by his own account — that Ukraine currently enjoyed bipartisan support for its U.S. aid but that could be jeopardized if the new president acquiesced to requests by President Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani to investigate past corruption allegations involving Americans, including former Vice President Joe Biden’s family.
Murphy boasted after the meeting that he told the new Ukrainian leader that U.S. aid was his country’s “most important asset” and it would be viewed as election meddling and “disastrous for long-term U.S.-Ukraine relations” to bend to the wishes of Trump and Giuliani.
“I told Zelensky that he should not insert himself or his government into American politics. I cautioned him that complying with the demands of the President’s campaign representatives to investigate a political rival of the President would gravely damage the U.S.-Ukraine relationship. There are few things that Republicans and Democrats agree on in Washington these days, and support for Ukraine is one of them,” Murphy told me today, confirming what he told Ukraine’s leader.
The implied message did not require an interpreter for Zelensky to understand: Investigate the Ukraine dealings of Joe Biden and his son Hunter, and you jeopardize Democrats’ support for future U.S. aid to Kiev.
The Murphy anecdote is a powerful reminder that, since at least 2016, Democrats repeatedly have exerted pressure on Ukraine, a key U.S. ally for buffering Russia, to meddle in U.S. politics and elections.
And that activity long preceded Giuliani’s discussions with Ukrainian officials and Trump’s phone call to Zelensky in July, seeking to have Ukraine formally investigate whether then-Vice President Joe Biden used a threat of canceling foreign aid to shut down an investigation into $3 million routed to the U.S. firm run by Biden’s son.
As I have reported, the pressure began at least as early as January 2016, when the Obama White House unexpectedly invited Ukraine’s top prosecutors to Washington to discuss fighting corruption in the country.
The meeting, promised as training, turned out to be more of a pretext for the Obama administration to pressure Ukraine’s prosecutors to drop an investigation into the Burisma Holdings gas company that employed Hunter Biden and to look for new evidence in a then-dormant criminal case against eventual Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, a GOP lobbyist.
U.S. officials “kept talking about how important it was that all of our anti-corruption efforts be united,” said Andrii Telizhenko, the former political officer in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington who organized and attended the meetings.
Nazar Kholodnytsky, Ukraine’s chief anti-corruption prosecutor, told me that, soon after he returned from the Washington meeting, he saw evidence in Ukraine of political meddling in the U.S. election. That’s when two top Ukrainian officials released secret evidence to the American media, smearing Manafort.
The release of the evidence forced Manafort to step down as Trump’s top campaign adviser. A Ukrainian court concluded last December that the release of the evidence amounted to an unlawful intervention in the U.S. election by Kiev’s government, although that ruling has since been overturned on a technicality.
Shortly after the Ukrainian prosecutors returned from their Washington meeting, a new round of Democratic pressure was exerted on Ukraine — this time via its embassy in Washington.
Valeriy Chaly, the Ukrainian ambassador to the United States at the time, confirmed to me in a statement issued by his office that, in March 2016, a contractor for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) pressed his embassy to try to find any Russian dirt on Trump and Manafort that might reside in Ukraine’s intelligence files.
The DNC contractor also asked Chaly’s team to try to persuade Ukraine’s president at the time, Petro Poroshenko, to make a statement disparaging Manafort when the Ukrainian leader visited the United States during the 2016 election.
Chaly said his embassy rebuffed both requests because it recognized they were improper efforts to get a foreign government to try to influence the election against Trump and for Hillary Clinton.
The political pressure continued. Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in crucial U.S. aid to Kiev if Poroshenko did not fire the country’s chief prosecutor. Ukraine would have been bankrupted without the aid, so Poroshenko obliged on March 29, 2016, and fired Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.
What wasn’t known at the time, Shokin told me recently, was that Ukrainian prosecutors were preparing a request to interview Hunter Biden about his activities and the monies he was receiving from Ukraine. If such an interview became public during the middle of the 2016 election, it could have had enormous negative implications for Democrats.
Democrats continued to tap Ukraine for Trump dirt throughout the 2016 election, my reporting shows.
Nellie Ohr, the wife of senior U.S. Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, worked in 2016 as a contractor for Fusion GPS, the same Hillary Clinton–funded opposition research firm that hired Christopher Steele, the British spy who wrote the now-debunked dossier linking Trump to Russia collusion.
Nellie Ohr testified to Congress that some of the dirt she found on Trump during her 2016 election opposition research came from a Ukrainian parliament member. She also said that she eventually took the information to the FBI through her husband — another way Ukraine got inserted into the 2016 election.
Politics. Pressure. Opposition research. All were part of the Democrats’ playbook on Ukraine long before Trump ever called Zelensky this summer. And as Sen. Murphy’s foray earlier this month shows, it hasn’t stopped.
The evidence is so expansive as to strain the credulity of the Democrats’ current outrage at Trump’s behavior with Ukraine.
Which raises a question: Could it be the Ukraine tale currently being weaved by Democrats and their allies in the media is nothing more than a smoke screen designed to distract us from the forthcoming Justice Department inspector general report into abuses during the Democratic-inspired Russia collusion probe?
It’s a question worth asking.
John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work over the years has exposed U.S. and FBI intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal scientists’ misuse of foster children and veterans in drug experiments, and numerous cases of political corruption. He serves as an investigative columnist and executive vice president for video at The Hill. Follow him on Twitter @jsolomonReports.
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Donald Trump uses UN address to warn social media giants against ‘blacklisting’ conservatives and tells the world to be ‘skeptical’ of anyone who wants control over free speech
Utilizing his platform at the United Nations General Assembly, Donald Trump put social media giants on blast
He warned against ‘silencing’ and ‘blacklisting’ political opinions that are unpopular in Silicon Valley – where most social media sites are headquartered
The president has often voiced his disdain over social media platforms silencing conservative voices
He warned the global audience at UNGA that social media is threatening free speech, even in ‘free nations’
Last week, Trump met with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in the Oval Office
He has also previously met with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey
PUBLISHED: 12:27 EDT, 24 September 2019 | UPDATED: 14:04 EDT, 24 September 2019
Donald Trump put America’s social media giants on notice during a United Nationsaddress on Tuesday that the U.S. government will push back against online tech giants ‘silencing, coercing, canceling or blacklisting’ political opinions that don’t rate high in Silicon Valley.
‘A small number of social media platforms are acquiring immense power over what we can see and over what we are allowed to say,’ Trump told foreign leaders.
He said he is aggressively cracking down on the biggest platforms that play political favorites online, and encouraging other nations to follow suit.
‘A free society cannot allow social media giants to silence the voices of the people,’ he said, ‘and a free people must never, ever be enlisted in the cause of silencing, coercing, canceling or blacklisting their own neighbors.’
Trump warns against social media giants limiting free speech
Donald Trump blasted U.S. social media platforms during his remarks at the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday. ‘A free society cannot allow social media giants to silence the voices of the people,’ he asserted
He told the room full of foreign leaders and a global audience that even ‘free nations’ are experiencing challenges to liberty and free speech from social media
‘My administration has made clear to social media companies that we will uphold the right of free speech,’ he declared.
The president often complains about anti-conservative bias at Twitter, Facebook and Google.
He met last week with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. A White House official said the topic of ‘bias came up.’ Trump has also sat down for a talk with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
The president on Tuesday raised social media in the context of condemning oppressive nations that control what their population can read, see and hear, and whose technological advances have the potential to limit freedom of speech.
Trump met last week with Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg (right) in the Oval Office. A White House official said the topic of ‘bias came up’ during their meeting
‘A permanent political class is openly disdainful, dismissive and defiant of the will of the people,’ he continued. ‘A faceless bureaucracy operates in secret and weakens democratic rule. Media and academic institutions push flat-out assaults on our histories, traditions and values.’
‘Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected abroad, and from within,’ he said.
‘We must always be skeptical about those who want conformity and control. Even in free nations we see alarming signs and new challenges to liberty.’
Zuckerberg capped off a day of meetings in Washington, D.C. on Friday with a sit-down with Trump.
‘Nice meeting with Mark Zuckerberg of @facebook in the Oval Office today,’ the president wrote on Twitter, adding a picture of him with the Facebook CEO.
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WSJ: Trump repeatedly asked Ukraine president to probe Biden’s son
Joe Biden, His Son and the Case Against a Ukrainian Oligarch
Hunter Biden at a campaign event in 2008. He sits on the board of one of Ukraine’s largest natural gas companies.CreditCreditOzier Muhammad/The New York Times
When Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.traveled to Kiev, Ukraine, on Sunday for a series of meetings with the country’s leaders, one of the issues on his agenda was to encourage a more aggressive fight against Ukraine’s rampant corruption and stronger efforts to rein in the power of its oligarchs.
But the credibility of the vice president’s anticorruption message may have been undermined by the association of his son, Hunter Biden, with one of Ukraine’s largest natural gas companies, Burisma Holdings, and with its owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, who was Ukraine’s ecology minister under former President Viktor F. Yanukovych before he was forced into exile.
Hunter Biden, 45, a former Washington lobbyist, joined the Burisma board in April 2014. That month, as part of an investigation into money laundering, British officials froze London bank accounts containing $23 million that allegedly belonged to Mr. Zlochevsky.
Britain’s Serious Fraud Office, an independent government agency, specifically forbade Mr. Zlochevksy, as well as Burisma Holdings, the company’s chief legal officer and another company owned by Mr. Zlochevsky, to have any access to the accounts.
But after Ukrainian prosecutors refused to provide documents needed in the investigation, a British court in January ordered the Serious Fraud Office to unfreeze the assets. The refusal by the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office to cooperate was the target of a stinging attack by the American ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey R. Pyatt, who called out Burisma’s owner by name in a speech in September.
“In the case of former Ecology Minister Mykola Zlochevsky, the U.K. authorities had seized $23 million in illicit assets that belonged to the Ukrainian people,” Mr. Pyatt said. Officials at the prosecutor general’s office, he added, were asked by the United Kingdom “to send documents supporting the seizure. Instead they sent letters to Zlochevsky’s attorneys attesting that there was no case against him. As a result, the money was freed by the U.K. court, and shortly thereafter the money was moved to Cyprus.”
Mr. Pyatt went on to call for an investigation into “the misconduct” of the prosecutors who wrote the letters. In his speech, the ambassador did not mention Hunter Biden’s connection to Burisma.
But Edward C. Chow, who follows Ukrainian policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the involvement of the vice president’s son with Mr. Zlochevsky’s firm undermined the Obama administration’s anticorruption message in Ukraine.
“Now you look at the Hunter Biden situation, and on the one hand you can credit the father for sending the anticorruption message,” Mr. Chow said. “But I think unfortunately it sends the message that a lot of foreign countries want to believe about America, that we are hypocritical about these issues.”
Speaking during a visit to Ukraine, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. urged the country to weed corruption out of its system.CreditCreditMikhail Palinchak/Ukrainian Presidential Press Service
“Hunter Biden is a private citizen and a lawyer,” she said. “The vice president does not endorse any particular company and has no involvement with this company. The vice president has pushed aggressively for years, both publicly with groups like the U.S.-Ukraine Business Forum and privately in meetings with Ukrainian leaders, for Ukraine to make every effort to investigate and prosecute corruption in accordance with the rule of law. It will once again be a key focus during his trip this week.”
Ryan F. Toohey, a Burisma spokesman, said that Hunter Biden would not comment for this article.
It is not known how Mr. Biden came to the attention of the company. Announcing his appointment to the board, Alan Apter, a former Morgan Stanley investment banker who is chairman of Burisma, said, “The company’s strategy is aimed at the strongest concentration of professional staff and the introduction of best corporate practices, and we’re delighted that Mr. Biden is joining us to help us achieve these goals.”
Joining the board at the same time was one of Mr. Biden’s American business partners, Devon Archer. Both are involved with Rosemont Seneca Partners, an American investment firm with offices in Washington.
Mr. Biden is the younger of the vice president’s two sons. His brother, Beau, died of brain cancer in May. In the past, Hunter Biden attracted an unusual level of scrutiny and even controversy. In 2014, he was discharged from the Navy Reserve after testing positive for cocaine use. He received a commission as an ensign in 2013, and he served as a public affairs officer.
Before his father was vice president, Mr. Biden also briefly served as president of a hedge fund group, Paradigm Companies, in which he was involved with one of his uncles, James Biden, the vice president’s brother. That deal went sour amid lawsuits in 2007 and 2008 involving the Bidens and an erstwhile business partner. Mr. Biden, a graduate of Georgetown University and Yale Law School, also worked as a lobbyist before his father became vice president.
Burisma does not disclose the compensation of its board members because it is a privately held company, Mr. Toohey said Monday, but he added that the amount was “not out of the ordinary” for similar corporate board positions.
Asked about the British investigation, which is continuing, Mr. Toohey said, “Not only was the case dismissed and the company vindicated by the outcome, but it speaks volumes that all his legal costs were recouped.”
In response to Mr. Pyatt’s criticism of the Ukrainian handling of Mr. Zlochevsky’s case, Mr. Toohey said that “strong corporate governance and transparency are priorities shared both by the United States and the leadership of Burisma. Burisma is working to bring the energy sector into the modern era, which is critical for a free and strong Ukraine.”
Vice President Biden has played a leading role in American policy toward Ukraine as Washington seeks to counter Russian intervention in Eastern Ukraine. This week’s visit was his fifth trip to Ukraine as vice president.
Ms. Bedingfield said Hunter Biden had never traveled to Ukraine with his father. She also said that Ukrainian officials had never mentioned Hunter Biden’s role with Burisma to the vice president during any of his visits.
“I’ve got to believe that somebody in the vice president’s office has done some due diligence on this,” said Steven Pifer, who was the American ambassador to Ukraine from 1998 to 2000. “I should say that I hope that has happened. I would hope that they have done some kind of check, because I think the vice president has done a very good job of sending the anticorruption message in Ukraine, and you would hate to see something like this undercut that message.”
Let’s get real: Democrats were first to enlist Ukraine in US elections
BY JOHN SOLOMON, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 09/23/19 06:30 PM EDT 2,341
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL
Earlier this month, during a bipartisan meeting in Kiev, Sen. Chris Murphy(D-Conn.) delivered a pointed message to Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
While choosing his words carefully, Murphy made clear — by his own account — that Ukraine currently enjoyed bipartisan support for its U.S. aid but that could be jeopardized if the new president acquiesced to requests by President Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani to investigate past corruption allegations involving Americans, including former Vice President Joe Biden’s family.
Murphy boasted after the meeting that he told the new Ukrainian leader that U.S. aid was his country’s “most important asset” and it would be viewed as election meddling and “disastrous for long-term U.S.-Ukraine relations” to bend to the wishes of Trump and Giuliani.
“I told Zelensky that he should not insert himself or his government into American politics. I cautioned him that complying with the demands of the President’s campaign representatives to investigate a political rival of the President would gravely damage the U.S.-Ukraine relationship. There are few things that Republicans and Democrats agree on in Washington these days, and support for Ukraine is one of them,” Murphy told me today, confirming what he told Ukraine’s leader.
The implied message did not require an interpreter for Zelensky to understand: Investigate the Ukraine dealings of Joe Biden and his son Hunter, and you jeopardize Democrats’ support for future U.S. aid to Kiev.
The Murphy anecdote is a powerful reminder that, since at least 2016, Democrats repeatedly have exerted pressure on Ukraine, a key U.S. ally for buffering Russia, to meddle in U.S. politics and elections.
And that activity long preceded Giuliani’s discussions with Ukrainian officials and Trump’s phone call to Zelensky in July, seeking to have Ukraine formally investigate whether then-Vice President Joe Biden used a threat of canceling foreign aid to shut down an investigation into $3 million routed to the U.S. firm run by Biden’s son.
As I have reported, the pressure began at least as early as January 2016, when the Obama White House unexpectedly invited Ukraine’s top prosecutors to Washington to discuss fighting corruption in the country.
The meeting, promised as training, turned out to be more of a pretext for the Obama administration to pressure Ukraine’s prosecutors to drop an investigation into the Burisma Holdings gas company that employed Hunter Biden and to look for new evidence in a then-dormant criminal case against eventual Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, a GOP lobbyist.
U.S. officials “kept talking about how important it was that all of our anti-corruption efforts be united,” said Andrii Telizhenko, the former political officer in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington who organized and attended the meetings.
Nazar Kholodnytsky, Ukraine’s chief anti-corruption prosecutor, told me that, soon after he returned from the Washington meeting, he saw evidence in Ukraine of political meddling in the U.S. election. That’s when two top Ukrainian officials released secret evidence to the American media, smearing Manafort.
The release of the evidence forced Manafort to step down as Trump’s top campaign adviser. A Ukrainian court concluded last December that the release of the evidence amounted to an unlawful intervention in the U.S. election by Kiev’s government, although that ruling has since been overturned on a technicality.
Shortly after the Ukrainian prosecutors returned from their Washington meeting, a new round of Democratic pressure was exerted on Ukraine — this time via its embassy in Washington.
Valeriy Chaly, the Ukrainian ambassador to the United States at the time, confirmed to me in a statement issued by his office that, in March 2016, a contractor for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) pressed his embassy to try to find any Russian dirt on Trump and Manafort that might reside in Ukraine’s intelligence files.
The DNC contractor also asked Chaly’s team to try to persuade Ukraine’s president at the time, Petro Poroshenko, to make a statement disparaging Manafort when the Ukrainian leader visited the United States during the 2016 election.
Chaly said his embassy rebuffed both requests because it recognized they were improper efforts to get a foreign government to try to influence the election against Trump and for Hillary Clinton.
The political pressure continued. Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in crucial U.S. aid to Kiev if Poroshenko did not fire the country’s chief prosecutor. Ukraine would have been bankrupted without the aid, so Poroshenko obliged on March 29, 2016, and fired Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.
What wasn’t known at the time, Shokin told me recently, was that Ukrainian prosecutors were preparing a request to interview Hunter Biden about his activities and the monies he was receiving from Ukraine. If such an interview became public during the middle of the 2016 election, it could have had enormous negative implications for Democrats.
Democrats continued to tap Ukraine for Trump dirt throughout the 2016 election, my reporting shows.
Nellie Ohr, the wife of senior U.S. Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, worked in 2016 as a contractor for Fusion GPS, the same Hillary Clinton–funded opposition research firm that hired Christopher Steele, the British spy who wrote the now-debunked dossier linking Trump to Russia collusion.
Nellie Ohr testified to Congress that some of the dirt she found on Trump during her 2016 election opposition research came from a Ukrainian parliament member. She also said that she eventually took the information to the FBI through her husband — another way Ukraine got inserted into the 2016 election.
Politics. Pressure. Opposition research. All were part of the Democrats’ playbook on Ukraine long before Trump ever called Zelensky this summer. And as Sen. Murphy’s foray earlier this month shows, it hasn’t stopped.
The evidence is so expansive as to strain the credulity of the Democrats’ current outrage at Trump’s behavior with Ukraine.
Which raises a question: Could it be the Ukraine tale currently being weaved by Democrats and their allies in the media is nothing more than a smoke screen designed to distract us from the forthcoming Justice Department inspector general report into abuses during the Democratic-inspired Russia collusion probe?
It’s a question worth asking.
John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work over the years has exposed U.S. and FBI intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal scientists’ misuse of foster children and veterans in drug experiments, and numerous cases of political corruption. He serves as an investigative columnist and executive vice president for video at The Hill. Follow him on Twitter @jsolomonReports.
Ukrainian Embassy confirms DNC contractor solicited Trump dirt in 2016
BY JOHN SOLOMON, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 05/02/19 07:00 PM EDT 2,460
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILLThe boomerang from the Democratic Party’s failed attempt to connect Donald Trump to Russia’s 2016 election meddling is picking up speed, and its flight path crosses right through Moscow’s pesky neighbor, Ukraine. That is where there is growing evidence a foreign power was asked, and in some cases tried, to help Hillary Clinton.
In its most detailed account yet, the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington says a Democratic National Committee (DNC) insider during the 2016 election solicited dirt on Donald Trump’s campaign chairman and even tried to enlist the country’s president to help.
In written answers to questions, Ambassador Valeriy Chaly’s office says DNC contractor Alexandra Chalupa sought information from the Ukrainian government on Paul Manafort’s dealings inside the country in hopes of forcing the issue before Congress.
Chalupa later tried to arrange for Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to comment on Manafort’s Russian ties on a U.S. visit during the 2016 campaign, the ambassador said.
Chaly says that, at the time of the contacts in 2016, the embassy knew Chalupa primarily as a Ukrainian American activist and learned only later of her ties to the DNC. He says the embassy considered her requests an inappropriate solicitation of interference in the U.S. election.
“The Embassy got to know Ms. Chalupa because of her engagement with Ukrainian and other diasporas in Washington D.C., and not in her DNC capacity. We’ve learned about her DNC involvement later,” Chaly said in a statement issued by his embassy. “We were surprised to see Alexandra’s interest in Mr. Paul Manafort’s case. It was her own cause. The Embassy representatives unambiguously refused to get involved in any way, as we were convinced that this is a strictly U.S. domestic matter.”
“All ideas floated by Alexandra were related to approaching a Member of Congress with a purpose to initiate hearings on Paul Manafort or letting an investigative journalist ask President Poroshenko a question about Mr. Manafort during his public talk in Washington, D.C.,” the ambassador explained.
Reached by phone last week, Chalupa said she was too busy to talk. She did not respond to email and phone messages seeking subsequent comment.
Chaly’s written answers mark the most direct acknowledgement by Ukraine’s government that an American tied to the Democratic Party sought the country’s help in the 2016 election, and they confirm the main points of a January 2017 story by Politico on Chalupa’s efforts.
In that story, the embassy was broadly quoted as denying interference in the election and suggested Chalupa’s main reason for contacting the ambassador’s office was to organize an event celebrating female leaders.
The fresh statement comes several months after a Ukrainian court ruledthat the country’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau, closely aligned with the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, and a parliamentarian named Serhiy Leshchenko wrongly interfered in the 2016 American election by releasing documents related to Manafort.
The acknowledgement by Kiev’s embassy, plus newly released testimony, suggests the Ukrainian efforts to influence the U.S. election had some intersections in Washington as well.
Nellie Ohr, wife of senior U.S. Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, acknowledged in congressional testimony that, while working for the Clinton-hired research firm Fusion GPS, she researched Trump’s and Manafort’s ties to Russia and learned that Leshchenko, the Ukrainian lawmaker, was providing dirt to Fusion.
Fusion also paid British intelligence operative Christopher Steele, whose anti-Trump dossier the FBI used as primary evidence to support its request to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
In addition, I wrote last month that the Obama White House invited Ukrainian law enforcement officials to a meeting in January 2016 as Trump rose in the polls on his improbable path to the presidency. The meeting led to U.S. requests to the Ukrainians to help investigate Manafort, setting in motion a series of events that led to the Ukrainians leaking the documents about Manafort in May 2016.
The DNC’s embassy contacts add a new dimension, though. Chalupa discussed in the 2017 Politico article about her efforts to dig up dirt on Trump and Manafort, including at the Ukrainian Embassy.
Exactly how the Ukrainian Embassy responded to Chalupa’s inquiries remains in dispute.
Chaly’s statement says the embassy rebuffed her requests for information: “No documents related to Trump campaign or any individuals involved in the campaign have been passed to Ms. Chalupa or the DNC neither from the Embassy nor via the Embassy. No documents exchange was even discussed.”
But Andrii Telizhenko, a former political officer who worked under Chaly from December 2015 through June 2016, told me he was instructed by the ambassador and his top deputy to meet with Chalupa in March 2016 and to gather whatever dirt Ukraine had in its government files about Trump and Manafort.
Telizhenko said that when he was told by the embassy to arrange the meeting, both Chaly and the ambassador’s top deputy identified Chalupa “as someone working for the DNC and trying to get Clinton elected.”
Over lunch at a Washington restaurant, Chalupa told Telizhenko in stark terms what she hoped the Ukrainians could provide the DNC and the Clinton campaign, according to his account.
“She said the DNC wanted to collect evidence that Trump, his organization and Manafort were Russian assets, working to hurt the U.S. and working with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin against the U.S. interests. She indicated if we could find the evidence they would introduce it in Congress in September and try to build a case that Trump should be removed from the ballot, from the election,” he recalled.
After the meeting, Telizhenko said he became concerned about the legality of using his country’s assets to help an American political party win a U.S. election. But he proceeded with his assignment.
Telizhenko said that as he began his research, he discovered that Fusion GPS was nosing around Ukraine, seeking similar information, and he believed they, too, worked for the Democrats.
As a former aide inside the general prosecutor’s office in Kiev, Telizhenko used contacts with intelligence, police and prosecutors across the country to secure information connecting Russian figures to assistance on some of the Trump organization’s real estate deals overseas, including a tower in Toronto.
Telizhenko said he did not want to provide the intelligence he collected directly to Chalupa and instead handed the materials to Chaly: “I told him what we were doing was illegal, that it was unethical doing this as diplomats.” He said the ambassador told him he would handle the matter and had opened a second channel back in Ukraine to continue finding dirt on Trump.
Telizhenko said he also was instructed by his bosses to meet with an American journalist researching Manafort’s ties to Ukraine.
About a month later, he said his relationship with the ambassador soured and, by June 2016, he was ordered to return to Ukraine. There, he reported his concerns about the embassy’s contacts with the Democrats to the former prosecutor general’s office and officials in the Poroshenko administration: “Everybody already knew what was going on and told me it had been approved at the highest levels.”
Telizhenko said he never was able to confirm whether the information he collected for Chalupa was delivered to her, the DNC or the Clinton campaign.
Chalupa, meanwhile, continued to build a case that Manafort and Trump were tied to Russia.
In April 2016, she attended an international symposium where she reported back to the DNC that she had met with 68 Ukrainian investigative journalists to talk about Manafort. She also wrote that she invited American reporter Michael Isikoff to speak with her. Isikoff wrote some of the seminal stories tying Manafort to Ukraine and Trump to Russia; he later wrote a book making a case for Russian collusion.
“A lot more coming down the pipe,” Chalupa wrote a top DNC official on May 3, 2016, recounting her effort to educate Ukrainian journalists and Isikoff about Manafort.
Then she added, “More offline tomorrow since there is a big Trump component you and Lauren need to be aware of that will hit in next few weeks and something I’m working on you should be aware of.”
Less than a month later, the “black ledger” identifying payments to Manafort was announced in Ukraine, forcing Manafort to resign as Trump’s campaign chairman and eventually to face criminal prosecution for improper foreign lobbying.
DNC officials have suggested in the past that Chalupa’s efforts were personal, not officially on behalf of the DNC. But Chalupa’s May 2016 email clearly informed a senior DNC official that she was “digging into Manafort” and she suspected someone was trying to hack into her email account.
Chaly over the years has tried to portray his role as Ukraine’s ambassador in Washington as one of neutrality during the 2016 election. But in August 2016 he raised eyebrows in some diplomatic circles when he wrote an op-ed for The Hill skewering Trump for some of his comments on Russia. “Trump’s comments send wrong message to world,” Chaly’s article blared in the headline.
In his statement to me, Chaly said he wrote the op-ed because he had been solicited for his views by The Hill’s opinion team.
Chaly’s office also acknowledged that a month after the op-ed, President Poroshenko met with then-candidate Clinton during a stop in New York. The office said the ambassador requested a similar meeting with Trump but it didn’t get organized.
Though Chaly and Telizhenko disagree on what Ukraine did after it got Chalupa’s request, they confirm that a paid contractor of the DNC solicited their government’s help to find dirt on Trump that could sway the 2016 election.
For a Democratic Party that spent more than two years building the now disproven theory that Trump colluded with Russia to hijack the 2016 election, the tale of the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington feels just like a speeding political boomerang.
John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work over the years has exposed U.S. and FBI intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal scientists’ misuse of foster children and veterans in drug experiments, and numerous cases of political corruption. He serves as an investigative columnist and executive vice president for video at The Hill. Follow him on Twitter @jsolomonReports.
Religious persecution is the systematic mistreatment of an individual or group of individuals as a response to their religious beliefs or affiliations or lack thereof. The tendency of societies or groups within society to alienate or repress different subcultures is a recurrent theme in human history. Moreover, because a person’s religion often determines to a significant extent his or her morality, worldview, self-image, attitudes towards others, and overall personal identity, religious differences can be significant cultural, personal, and social factors.
Religious persecution may be triggered by religious bigotry (i.e. members of a dominant group denigrating religions other than their own) or by the state when it views a particular religious group as a threat to its interests or security. At a societal level, this dehumanisation of a particular religious group may readily turn into violence or other forms of persecution. Indeed, in many countries, religious persecution has resulted in so much violence that it is considered a human rights problem.
Contents
Definition
Religious persecution is defined as violence or discrimination against religious minorities, actions intending to deprive political rights and force minorities to assimilate, leave, or live as second-class citizen.[1] In the aspect of state policy, it may be defined as violations on freedom of thought, conscience and belief spread by systematic and active state policy and actions of harassment, intimidation and punishment that infringes or threatens the right to life, integrity or liberty.[2] The distinction with religious intolerance is that the latter in most cases is in the sentiment of the population, which may be tolerated or encouraged by the state.[2] Denial of civil rights on the basis of religion is most often described as religious discrimination, rather than religious persecution.
Examples of persecution is confiscation or destruction of property, incitement to hate, arrest, imprisonment, beatings, torture, murder, and execution. Religious persecution can be considered the opposite of freedom of religion.
Bateman has differentiated different degrees of persecution. “It must be personally costly… It must be unjust and undeserved… it must be a direct result of one’s faith.”[3]
“Religious cleansing” is a term that is sometimes used to refer to the removal of a population from a certain territory based on its religion.[4] Throughout antiquity, population cleansing was largely motivated by economic and political factors, although ethnic factors occasionally played a role.[4] During the Middle Ages, population cleansing took on a largely religious character.[4] The religious motivation lost much of its salience early in the modern era, although until the 18th century ethnic enmity in Europe remained couched in religious terms.[4]Richard Dawkins has argued that references to ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia and Iraq are euphemisms for what should more accurately be called religious cleansing.[5] According to Adrian Koopman, the widespread use of the term ethnic cleansing in such cases suggests that in many situations there is confusion between ethnicity and religion.[5]
Ethnicity
During Nazi rule, Jews were forced to wear yellow stars identifying them as such. Jews are an ethno-religious group and Nazi persecution was based on their race
Other acts of violence, such as war, torture, and ethnic cleansing not aimed at religion in particular, may nevertheless take on the qualities of religious persecution when one or more of the parties involved are characterized by religious homogeneity; an example being when conflicting populations that belong to different ethnic groups often also belong to different religions or denominations. The difference between religious and ethnic identity might sometimes be obscure (see Ethnoreligious); cases of genocide in the 20th century cannot be explained in full by citing religious differences. Still, cases such as the Greek genocide, the Armenian Genocide, and the Assyrian Genocide are sometimes seen as religious persecution and blur the lines between ethnic and religious violence.
Since the Early modern period, there were increased religious cleansing entwined with ethnic elements.[6] As religion is an important or central marker in ethnic identity, some conflicts can be described as “ethno-religious conflicts”.[7]
Naziantisemitism provides another example of the contentious divide between ethnic and religious persecution, because Nazi propaganda tended to construct its image of Jews as race, and de-emphasized Jews as being defined by their religion. The Holocaust made no distinction between secular Jews, atheistic Jews, orthodox Jews and Jews that had converted to Christianity. The Nazis also persecuted the Catholic Church in Germany and Poland.
The persecution of beliefs that are deemed schismatic is one thing; the persecution of beliefs that are deemed heretical or blasphemous is another. Although a public disagreement on secondary matters might be serious enough, it has often only led to religious discrimination. A public renunciation of the core elements of a religious doctrine under the same circumstances would, on the other hand, have put one in far greater danger. While dissenters from the official Church only faced fines and imprisonment in Protestant England, six people were executed for heresy or blasphemy during the reign of Elizabeth I, and two more were executed in 1612 under James I.[8]
The descriptive use of the term religious persecution is rather difficult. Religious persecution has occurred in different historical, geographical and social contexts since at least antiquity. Until the 18th century, some groups were nearly universally persecuted for their views about religion, such as atheists,[14] Jews[15] and Zoroastrians.[16]
Roman Empire
Saint Peter, an apostle of Jesus, was executed by the Romans
Early Christianity also came into conflict with the Roman Empire, and may have been more threatening to the established polytheistic order than had been Judaism, because of the importance of evangelism in Christianity. Under Nero, the Jewish exemption from the requirement to participate in public cults was lifted and Rome began to actively persecute monotheists. This persecution ended in 313 AD with the Edict of Milan, and Christianity was made the official religion of the empire in 380 AD. By the eighth century Christianity had attained a clear ascendancy across Europe and neighboring regions, and a period of consolidation began marked by the pursuit of heretics, heathens, Jews, Muslims, and various other religious groups.
Early modern England
One period of religious persecution which has been extensively studied is early modern England, since the rejection of religious persecution, now common in the Western world, originated there. The English ‘Call for Toleration’ was a turning point in the Christian debate on persecution and toleration, and early modern England stands out to the historians as a place and time in which literally “hundreds of books and tracts were published either for or against religious toleration.”[17]
The most ambitious chronicle of that time is W.K.Jordan‘s magnum opusThe Development of Religious Toleration in England, 1558-1660 (four volumes, published 1932-1940). Jordan wrote as the threat of fascism rose in Europe, and this work is seen as a defense of the fragile values of humanism and tolerance.[18] More recent introductions to this period are Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England, 1558–1689 (2000) by John Coffey and Charitable hatred. Tolerance and intolerance in England, 1500-1700 (2006) by Alexandra Walsham. To understand why religious persecution has occurred, historians like Coffey “pay close attention to what the persecutors said they were doing.”[17]
Ecclesiastical dissent and civil tolerance
No religion is free from internal dissent, although the degree of dissent that is tolerated within a particular religious organization can strongly vary. This degree of diversity tolerated within a particular church is described as ecclesiastical tolerance,[19] and is one form of religious toleration. However, when people nowadays speak of religious tolerance, they most often mean civil tolerance, which refers to the degree of religious diversity that is tolerated within the state.
In the absence of civil toleration, someone who finds himself in disagreement with his congregation doesn’t have the option to leave and chose a different faith – simply because there is only one recognized faith in the country (at least officially). In modern western civil lawany citizen may join and leave a religious organization at will; In western societies, this is taken for granted, but actually, this legal separation of Church and State only started to emerge a few centuries ago.
In the Christian debate on persecution and toleration, the notion of civil tolerance allowed Christian theologians to reconcile Jesus’ commandment to love one’s enemies with other parts of the New Testament that are rather strict regarding dissent within the church. Before that, theologians like Joseph Hall had reasoned from the ecclesiastical intolerance of the early Christian church in the New Testament to the civil intolerance of the Christian state.[20]
By contrast to the notion of civil tolerance, in early modern Europe the subjects were required to attend the state church; This attitude can be described as territoriality or religious uniformity, and its underlying assumption is brought to a point by a statement of the Anglican theologian Richard Hooker: “There is not any man of the Church of England but the same man is also a member of the [English] commonwealth; nor any man a member of the commonwealth, which is not also of the Church of England.”[21]
Before a vigorous debate about religious persecution took place in England (starting in the 1640s), for centuries in Europe, religion had been tied to territory. In England there had been several Acts of Uniformity; in continental Europe the Latin phrase “cuius regio, eius religio” had been coined in the 16th century and applied as a fundament for the Peace of Augsburg (1555). It was pushed to the extreme by absolutist regimes, particularly by the French kings Louis XIV and his successors. It was under their rule that Catholicism became the sole compulsory allowed religion in France and that the huguenots had to massively leave the country. Persecution meant that the state was committed to secure religious uniformity by coercive measures, as eminently obvious in a statement of Roger L’Estrange: “That which you call persecution, I translate Uniformity”.[22]
However, in the 17th century writers like Pierre Bayle, John Locke, Richard Overton and Roger William broke the link between territory and faith, which eventually resulted in a shift from territoriality to religious voluntarism.[23] It was Locke who, in his Letter Concerning Toleration, defined the state in purely secular terms:[24] “The commonwealth seems to me to be a society of men constituted only for the procuring, preserving, and advancing their own civil interests.”[25] Concerning the church, he went on: “A church, then, I take to be a voluntary society of men, joining themselves together of their own accord.”[25] With this treatise, John Locke laid one of the most important intellectual foundations of the separation of church and state, which ultimately led to the secular state.
Russia
The Bishop of Vladimir Feodor turned some people into slaves, others were locked in prison, cut their heads, burnt eyes, cut tongues or crucified on walls. Some heretics were executed by burning them alive. According to an inscription of Khan Mengual-Temir, Metropolitan Kiril was granted the right to heavily punish with death for blasphemy against the Orthodox Church or breach of ecclesiastical privileges. He advised all means of destruction to be used against heretics, but without bloodshed, in the name of ‘saving souls’. Heretics were drowned. Novgorod Bishop Gennady Gonzov turned to Tsar Ivan III requesting the death of heretics. Gennady admired the Spanish inquisitors, especially his contemporary Torquemada, who for 15 years of inquisition activity burned and punished thousands of people.[citation needed] As in Rome, persecuted fled to depopulated areas. The most terrible punishment was considered an underground pit, where rats lived. Some people had been imprisoned and tied to the wall there, and untied after their death.[26]Old Believers were persecuted and executed, the order was that even those renouncing completely their beliefs and baptized in the state Church to be lynched without mercy. The writer Lomonosov opposed the religious teachings and by his initiative a scientific book against them was published. The book was destroyed, the Russian synod insisted Lomonosov’s works to be burned and requested his punishment.[citation needed]
…were cutting heads, hanging, some by the neck, some by the foot, many of them were stabbed with sharp sticks and impaled on hooks. This included the tethering to a ponytail, drowning and freezing people alive in lakes. The winners did not spare even the sick and the elderly, taking them out of the monastery and throwing them mercilessly in icy ‘vises’. The words step back, the pen does not move, in eternal darkness the ancient Solovetsky monastery is going. Of the more than 500 people, only a few managed to avoid the terrible court.[27]
Contemporary
President Donald Trump meets with survivors of religious persecution from 17 countries in July 2019
State atheism has been defined by David Kowalewski as the official “promotion of atheism” by a government, typically by active suppression of religious freedom and practice.[33] It is a misnomer referring to a government’s anti-clericalism, which opposes religious institutional power and influence, real or alleged, in all aspects of public and political life, including the involvement of religion in the everyday life of the citizen.[34]
State atheism was first practised during a brief period in Revolutionary France[citation needed] and repeated only in Revolutionary Mexico and Communist states. The Soviet Union had a long history of state atheism,[35] in which social success largely required individuals to profess atheism, stay away from churches and even vandalize them; this attitude was especially militant during the middle Stalinist era from 1929-1939.[36][37][38] The Soviet Union attempted to suppress religion over wide areas of its influence, including places like central Asia,[39] and the post-World War IIEastern bloc. One state within that bloc, the Socialist People’s Republic of Albania under Enver Hoxha, went so far as to officially ban all religious practices.[40]
The Bahá’ís are Iran’s largest religious minority, and Iran is the location of one of the largest Bahá’í populations in the world. Bahá’ís in Iran have been subject to unwarranted arrests, false imprisonment, beatings, torture, unjustified executions, confiscation and destruction of property owned by individuals and the Bahá’í community, denial of employment, denial of government benefits, denial of civil rights and liberties, and denial of access to higher education.
More recently, in the later months of 2005, an intensive anti-Bahá’í campaign was conducted by Iranian newspapers and radio stations. The state-run and influential Kayhan newspaper, whose managing editor is appointed by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei[3], ran nearly three dozen articles defaming the Bahá’í Faith. Furthermore, a confidential letter sent on October 29, 2005 by the Chairman of the Command Headquarters of the Armed Forced in Iran states that the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei has instructed the Command Headquarters to identify people who adhere to the Bahá’í Faith and to monitor their activities and gather any and all information about the members of the Bahá’í Faith. The letter was brought to the attention of the international community by Asma Jahangir, the Special Rapporteur of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights on freedom of religion or belief, in a March 20, 2006 press release [4].
In the press release the Special Rapporteur states that she “is highly concerned by information she has received concerning the treatment of members of the Bahá’í community in Iran.” She further states that “The Special Rapporteur is concerned that this latest development indicates that the situation with regard to religious minorities in Iran is, in fact, deteriorating.” [5].
Persecution of Buddhists was a widespread phenomenon throughout the history of Buddhism lasting to this day, beginning as early as the 3rd century AD by the Zoroastrian Sassanid Empire. Anti-Buddhist sentiments in Imperial China between the 5th and 10th century led to the Four Buddhist Persecutions in China of which the Great Anti-Buddhist Persecution of 845 was probably the most severe. In the 20th century Buddhists were persecuted by Asian communist states and parties, Imperial Japan and by the Kuomintang among others.
The persecution of the Falun Gongspiritual practice began with campaigns initiated in 1999 by the Chinese Communist Party to eliminate Falun Gong in China. It is characterised by multifaceted propaganda campaign, a program of enforced ideological conversion and re-education, and a variety of extralegal coercive measures such as arbitrary arrests, forced labor, and physical torture, sometimes resulting in death.[45]
There have being reports of Organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners in China. Several researchers—most notably Canadian human rights lawyer David Matas, former parliamentarian David Kilgour, and investigative journalist Ethan Gutmann—estimate that tens of thousands of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience have been killed to supply a lucrative trade in human organs and cadavers.[46]
The Bangladesh Liberation War (1971) resulted in one of the largest genocides of the 20th century. While estimates of the number of casualties was 3,000,000, it is reasonably certain that Hindus bore a disproportionate brunt of the Pakistan Army’s onslaught against the Bengali population of what was East Pakistan. An article in Time magazine dated 2 August 1971, stated “The Hindus, who account for three-fourths of the refugees and a majority of the dead, have borne the brunt of the Muslim military hatred.”[47] Senator Edward Kennedy wrote in a report that was part of United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations testimony dated 1 November 1971, “Hardest hit have been members of the Hindu community who have been robbed of their lands and shops, systematically slaughtered, and in some places, painted with yellow patches marked “H”. All of this has been officially sanctioned, ordered and implemented under martial law from Islamabad“. In the same report, Senator Kennedy reported that 80% of the refugees in India were Hindus and according to numerous international relief agencies such as UNESCO and World Health Organization the number of East Pakistani refugees at their peak in India was close to 10 million. Given that the Hindu population in East Pakistan was around 11 million in 1971, this suggests that up to 8 million, or more than 70% of the Hindu population had fled the country.The Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Sydney Schanberg covered the start of the war and wrote extensively on the suffering of the East Bengalis, including the Hindus both during and after the conflict. In a syndicated column “The Pakistani Slaughter That Nixon Ignored”, he wrote about his return to liberated Bangladesh in 1972. “Other reminders were the yellow “H”s the Pakistanis had painted on the homes of Hindus, particular targets of the Muslim army” (by “Muslim army”, meaning the Pakistan Army, which had targeted Bengali Muslims as well), (Newsday, 29 April 1994).
Hindus constitute approximately 0.5% of the total population of the United States. Hindus in the US enjoy both de jure and de facto legal equality. However, a series of attacks were made on people Indian origin by a street gang called the “Dotbusters” in New Jersey in 1987, the dot signifying the Bindi dot sticker worn on the forehead by Indian women.[48] The lackadaisical attitude of the local police prompted the South Asian community to arrange small groups all across the state to fight back against the street gang. The perpetrators have been put to trial. On 2 January 2012, a Hindu worship center in New York City was firebombed.[49] The Dotbusters were primarily based in New York and New Jersey and committed most of their crimes in Jersey City. A number of perpetrators have been brought to trial for these assaults. Although tougher anti-hate crime laws were passed by the New Jersey legislature in 1990, the attacks continued, with 58 cases of hate crimes against Indians in New Jersey reported in 1991.[50]
In Bangladesh, on 28 February 2013, the International Crimes Tribunal sentenced Delwar Hossain Sayeedi, the Vice President of the Jamaat-e-Islami to death for the war crimes committed during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. Following the sentence, activists of Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing Islami Chhatra Shibir attacked the Hindus in different parts of the country. Hindu properties were looted, Hindu houses were burnt into ashes and Hindu temples were desecrated and set on fire.[51][52] While the government has held the Jamaat-e-Islami responsible for the attacks on the minorities, the Jamaat-e-Islami leadership has denied any involvement. The minority leaders have protested the attacks and appealed for justice. The Supreme Court of Bangladesh has directed the law enforcement to start suo motu investigation into the attacks. US Ambassador to Bangladesh express concern about attack of Jamaat on Bengali Hindu community.[53][54] The violence included the looting of Hindu properties and businesses, the burning of Hindu homes, rape of Hindu women and desecration and destruction of Hindu temples.[55] According to community leaders, more than 50 Hindu temples and 1,500 Hindu homes were destroyed in 20 districts.[56]
The Samaritan Temple at Mount Gerizim was destroyed by John Hyrcanus in about 128 BC, partly because it was attracting some northern Jews as a place of worship. In 107 BC, Hyrcanus destroyed Schechem.[58] In the seventeenth century, Muslims from Nablus forced some Samaritans to convert to Islam and forbade access to Mount Gerizim.[58]
Persecution of Muslims is the religious persecution inflicted upon followers of the Islamic faith. In the early days of Islam at Mecca, the new Muslims were often subjected to abuse and persecution by the pagan Meccans (often called Mushrikin: the unbelievers or polytheists).[59][60]
Muslims have been the target of persecution ever since the emergence of Islam, sometimes to the point of being martyred for their faith.[61]
In the 20th century, Muslims were persecuted by various governments including Myanmar, French, Italia, China, and many more.
The violence in Delhi was triggered by the assassination of Indira Gandhi, India’s prime minister, on 31 October 1984, by two of her Sikh bodyguards in response to her actions authorising the military operation. After the assassination following Operation Blue Star, many Indian National Congress workers including Jagdish Tytler, Sajjan Kumar and Kamal Nath were accused of inciting and participating in riots targeting the Sikh population of the capital. The Indian government reported 2,700 deaths in the ensuing chaos. In the aftermath of the riots, the Indian government reported 20,000 had fled the city, however the People’s Union for Civil Liberties reported “at least” 1,000 displaced persons.[76] The most affected regions were the Sikh neighbourhoods in Delhi. The Central Bureau of Investigation, the main Indian investigating agency, is of the opinion that the acts of violence were organized with the support from the then Delhi police officials and the central government headed by Indira Gandhi‘s son, Rajiv Gandhi.[77] Rajiv Gandhi was sworn in as Prime Minister after his mother’s death and, when asked about the riots, said “when a big tree falls (Mrs. Gandhi’s death), the earth shakes (occurrence of riots)” thus trying to justify communal strife.[78]
There are allegations that the Indian National Congress government at that time destroyed evidence and shielded the guilty. The Asian Age front-page story called the government actions “the Mother of all Cover-ups”[79][80] There are allegations that the violence was led and often perpetrated by Indian National Congress activists and sympathisers during the riots.[81] The government, then led by the Congress, was widely criticised for doing very little at the time, possibly acting as a conspirator. The conspiracy theory is supported by the fact that voting lists were used to identify Sikh families. Despite their communal conflict and riots record, the Indian National Congress claims to be a secular party.
The persecution of the Serer people of Senegal, the Gambia and Mauritania is multifaceted, and it includes both religious and ethnic elements. Religious and ethnic persecution of the Serer people dates back to the 11th century when King War Jabi usurped the throne of Tekrur (part of present-day Senegal) in 1030, and by 1035, introduced Sharia law and forced his subjects to submit to Islam.[82] With the assistance of his son (Leb), their Almoravid allies and other African ethnic groups who have embraced Islam, the Muslim coalition army launched jihads against the Serer people of Tekrur who refused to abandon Serer religion in favour of Islam.[68][83][84][85] The number of Serer deaths are unknown, but it triggered the exodus of the Serers of Tekrur to the south following their defeat, where they were granted asylum by the lamanes.[85] Persecution of the Serer people continued from the medieval era to the 19th century, resulting in the Battle of Fandane-Thiouthioune. From the 20th to the 21st centuries, persecution of the Serers is less obvious, nevertheless, they are the object of scorn and prejudice.[86][87]
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization tasked with maintaining international peace and security, developing friendly relations among nations, achieving international co-operation, and being a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations.[3] It was established after World War II, with the aim of preventing future wars, and succeeded the ineffective League of Nations.[4] Its headquarters, which are subject to extraterritoriality, are in Manhattan, New York City, and it has other main offices in Geneva, Nairobi, Vienna and The Hague. The organization is financed by assessed and voluntary contributions from its member states. Its objectives include maintaining international peace and security, protecting human rights, delivering humanitarian aid, promoting sustainable development, and upholding international law.[5] The UN is the largest, most familiar, most internationally represented and most powerful intergovernmental organization in the world. At its founding, the UN had 51 member states; there are now 193.
On 25 April 1945, 50 governments met in San Francisco for a conference and started drafting the UN Charter, which was adopted on 25 June 1945 in the San Francisco Opera House, and signed on 26 June 1945 in the Herbst Theatre auditorium in the Veterans War Memorial Building. This charter took effect on 24 October 1945, when the UN began operations. The organisation’s mission to preserve world peace was complicated in its early decades during the Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union and their respective allies. Its missions have consisted primarily of unarmed military observers and lightly armed troops with primarily monitoring, reporting and confidence-building roles.[6] The organization’s membership grew significantly following widespread decolonization which started in the 1960s. Since then, 80 former colonies had gained independence, including 11 trust territories, which were monitored by the Trusteeship Council.[7] By the 1970s its budget for economic and social development programmes far outstripped its spending on peacekeeping. After the end of the Cold War, the UN shifted and expanded its field operations, undertaking a wide variety of complex tasks.[8]
The organization, its officers, and its agencies have won many Nobel Peace Prizes. Other evaluations of the UN’s effectiveness have been mixed. Some commentators believe the organization to be an important force for peace and human development, while others have called the organization ineffective, biased, or corrupt.
In the century prior to the UN’s creation, several international treaty organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross was formed to ensure protection and assistance for victims of armed conflict and strife.[9]In 1914, a political assassination in Sarajevo set off a chain of events that led to the outbreak of World War I. As more and more young men were sent down into the trenches, influential voices in the United States and Britain began calling for the establishment of a permanent international body to maintain peace in the postwar world. President Woodrow Wilson became a vocal advocate of this concept, and in 1918 he included a sketch of the international body in his 14-point proposal to end the war. In November 1918, the Central Powers agreed to an armistice to halt the killing in World War I. Two months later, the Allies met with Germany and Austria-Hungary at Versailles to hammer out formal peace terms. President Wilson wanted peace, but the United Kingdom and France disagreed, forcing harsh war reparations on their former enemies. The League of Nations was approved, and in the summer of 1919 Wilson presented the Treaty of Versailles and the Covenant of the League of Nations to the US Senate for ratification. On January 10, 1920, the League of Nations formally comes into being when the Covenant of the League of Nations, ratified by 42 nations in 1919, takes effect.[10] However, at some point the League became ineffective when it failed to act against the Japanese invasion of Manchuria as in February 1933, 40 nations voted for Japan to withdraw from Manchuria but Japan voted against it and walked out of the League instead of withdrawing from Manchuria.[11] It also failed against the Second Italo-Ethiopian War despite trying to talk to Benito Mussolini as he used the time to send an army to Africa, so the League had a plan for Mussolini to just take a part of Ethiopia, but he ignored the League and invaded Ethiopia, the League tried putting sanctions on Italy, but Italy had already conquered Ethiopia and the League had failed.[12] After Italy conquered Ethiopia, Italy and other nations left the league. But all of them realised that it had failed and they began to re-arm as fast as possible. During 1938, Britain and France tried negotiating directly with Hitler but this failed in 1939 when Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia. When war broke out in 1939, the League closed down and its headquarters in Geneva remained empty throughout the war.[13] Although the United States never joined the League, the country did support its economic and social missions through the work of private philanthropies and by sending representatives to committees.
1942 “Declaration of United Nations” by the Allies of World War II
1943 sketch by Franklin Roosevelt of the UN original three branches: The Four Policemen, an executive branch, and an international assembly of forty UN member states
The earliest concrete plan for a new world organization began under the aegis of the U.S. State Department in 1939.[14] The text of the “Declaration by United Nations” was drafted at the White House on December 29, 1941, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Roosevelt aide Harry Hopkins. It incorporated Soviet suggestions, but left no role for France. “Four Policemen” was coined to refer to four major Allied countries, United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, and Republic of China, which emerged in the Declaration by United Nations.[15] Roosevelt first coined the term United Nations to describe the Allied countries.[b] “On New Year’s Day 1942, President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill, Maxim Litvinov, of the USSR, and T. V. Soong, of China, signed a short document which later came to be known as the United Nations Declaration and the next day the representatives of twenty-two other nations added their signatures.”[16] The term United Nations was first officially used when 26 governments signed this Declaration. One major change from the Atlantic Charter was the addition of a provision for religious freedom, which Stalin approved after Roosevelt insisted.[17][18] By 1 March 1945, 21 additional states had signed.[19]
A JOINT DECLARATION BY THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND, THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS, CHINA, AUSTRALIA, BELGIUM, CANADA, COSTA RICA, CUBA, CZECHOSLOVAKIA, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, EL SALVADOR, GREECE, GUATEMALA, HAITI, HONDURAS, INDIA, LUXEMBOURG, NETHERLANDS, NEW ZEALAND, NICARAGUA, NORWAY, PANAMA, POLAND, SOUTH AFRICA, YUGOSLAVIA
The Governments signatory hereto,
Having subscribed to a common program of purposes and principles embodied in the Joint Declaration of the President of the United States of America and the Prime Minister of Great Britain dated August 14, 1941, known as the Atlantic Charter,
Being convinced that complete victory over their enemies is essential to defend life, liberty, independence and religious freedom, and to preserve human rights and justice in their own lands as well as in other lands, and that they are now engaged in a common struggle against savage and brutal forces seeking to subjugate the world,
DECLARE:
Each Government pledges itself to employ its full resources, military or economic, against those members of the Tripartite Pact and its adherents with which such government is at war.
Each Government pledges itself to cooperate with the Governments signatory hereto and not to make a separate armistice or peace with the enemies.
The foregoing declaration may be adhered to by other nations which are, or which may be, rendering material assistance and contributions in the struggle for victory over Hitlerism.
During the war, “the United Nations” became the official term for the Allies. To join, countries had to sign the Declaration and declare war on the Axis.[20]
Founding
The UN in 1945: founding members in light blue, protectorates and territories of the founding members in dark blue
The UN was formulated and negotiated among the delegations from the Allied Big Four (the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and China) at the Dumbarton Oaks Conferencefrom 21 September 1944 to October 7, 1944 and they agreed on the aims, structure and functioning of the UN.[21][22][23] After months of planning, the UN Conference on International Organizationopened in San Francisco, 25 April 1945, attended by 50 governments and a number of non-governmental organizations involved in drafting the UN Charter.[24][25][26] “The heads of the delegations of the sponsoring countries took turns as chairman of the plenary meetings: Anthony Eden, of Britain, Edward Stettinius, of the United States, T. V. Soong, of China, and Vyacheslav Molotov, of the Soviet Union. At the later meetings, Lord Halifax deputized for Mister Eden, Wellington Koo for T. V. Soong, and Mister Gromyko for Mister Molotov.”[27] The UN officially came into existence 24 October 1945, upon ratification of the Charter by the five permanent members of the Security Council—France, the Republic of China, the Soviet Union, the UK and the US—and by a majority of the other 46 signatories.[28]
The first meetings of the General Assembly, with 51 nations represented,[c] and the Security Council took place in Methodist Central Hall, Westminster, London beginning on 10 January 1946.[28]The General Assembly selected New York City as the site for the headquarters of the UN, construction began on 14 September 1948 and the facility was completed on 9 October 1952. Its site—like UN headquarters buildings in Geneva, Vienna, and Nairobi—is designated as international territory.[31] The Norwegian Foreign Minister, Trygve Lie, was elected as the first UN Secretary-General.[28]
Cold War era
Dag Hammarskjöld was a particularly active Secretary-General from 1953 until his death in 1961.
Though the UN’s primary mandate was peacekeeping, the division between the US and USSR often paralysed the organization, generally allowing it to intervene only in conflicts distant from the Cold War.[32] Two notable exceptions were a Security Council resolution on 7 July 1950 authorizing a US-led coalition to repel the North Korean invasion of South Korea, passed in the absence of the USSR,[28][33] and the signing of the Korean Armistice Agreement in 27 July 1953.[34]
With the spread of decolonization in the 1960s, the organization’s membership saw an influx of newly independent nations. In 1960 alone, 17 new states joined the UN, 16 of them from Africa.[37] On 25 October 1971, with opposition from the United States, but with the support of many Third World nations, the mainland, communist People’s Republic of China was given the Chinese seat on the Security Council in place of the Republic of China that occupied Taiwan; the vote was widely seen as a sign of waning US influence in the organization.[43] Third World nations organized into the Group of 77 coalition under the leadership of Algeria, which briefly became a dominant power at the UN.[44] On 10 November 1975, a bloc comprising the USSR and Third World nations passed a resolution, over strenuous US and Israeli opposition, declaring Zionism to be racism; the resolution was repealed on 16 December 1991, shortly after the end of the Cold War.[45][46]
With an increasing Third World presence and the failure of UN mediation in conflicts in the Middle East, Vietnam, and Kashmir, the UN increasingly shifted its attention to its ostensibly secondary goals of economic development and cultural exchange.[47] By the 1970s, the UN budget for social and economic development was far greater than its peacekeeping budget.
After the Cold War, the UN saw a radical expansion in its peacekeeping duties, taking on more missions in ten years than it had in the previous four decades.[48] Between 1988 and 2000, the number of adopted Security Council resolutions more than doubled, and the peacekeeping budget increased more than tenfold.[49][50][51] The UN negotiated an end to the Salvadoran Civil War, launched a successful peacekeeping mission in Namibia, and oversaw democratic elections in post-apartheid South Africa and post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia.[52] In 1991, the UN authorized a US-led coalition that repulsed the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.[53]Brian Urquhart, Under-Secretary-General from 1971 to 1985, later described the hopes raised by these successes as a “false renaissance” for the organization, given the more troubled missions that followed.[54]
Though the UN Charter had been written primarily to prevent aggression by one nation against another, in the early 1990s the UN faced a number of simultaneous, serious crises within nations such as Somalia, Haiti, Mozambique, and the former Yugoslavia.[55] The UN mission in Somalia was widely viewed as a failure after the US withdrawal following casualties in the Battle of Mogadishu, and the UN mission to Bosnia faced “worldwide ridicule” for its indecisive and confused mission in the face of ethnic cleansing.[56] In 1994, the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda failed to intervene in the Rwandan genocide amid indecision in the Security Council.[57]
Beginning in the last decades of the Cold War, American and European critics of the UN condemned the organization for perceived mismanagement and corruption.[58] In 1984, the US President, Ronald Reagan, withdrew his nation’s funding from UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, founded 1946) over allegations of mismanagement, followed by Britain and Singapore.[59][60]Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Secretary-General from 1992 to 1996, initiated a reform of the Secretariat, reducing the size of the organization somewhat.[61][62] His successor, Kofi Annan (1997–2006), initiated further management reforms in the face of threats from the United States to withhold its UN dues.[62]
In the late 1990s and 2000s, international interventions authorized by the UN took a wider variety of forms. The UN mission in the Sierra Leone Civil War of 1991–2002 was supplemented by British Royal Marines, and the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was overseen by NATO.[63]In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq despite failing to pass a UN Security Council resolution for authorization, prompting a new round of questioning of the organization’s effectiveness.[64] Under the eighth Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, the UN has intervened with peacekeepers in crises including the War in Darfur in Sudan and the Kivu conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo and sent observers and chemical weapons inspectors to the Syrian Civil War.[65] In 2013, an internal review of UN actions in the final battles of the Sri Lankan Civil War in 2009 concluded that the organization had suffered “systemic failure”.[66] One hundred and one UN personnel died in the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the worst loss of life in the organization’s history.[67]
The Millennium Summit was held in 2000 to discuss the UN’s role in the 21st century.[68] The three day meeting was the largest gathering of world leaders in history, and culminated in the adoption by all member states of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a commitment to achieve international development in areas such as poverty reduction, gender equality, and public health. Progress towards these goals, which were to be met by 2015, was ultimately uneven. The 2005 World Summit reaffirmed the UN’s focus on promoting development, peacekeeping, human rights, and global security.[69] The Sustainable Development Goals were launched in 2015 to succeed the Millennium Development Goals.[70]
In addition to addressing global challenges, the UN has sought to improve its accountability and democratic legitimacy by engaging more with civil society and fostering a global constituency.[71] In an effort to enhance transparency, in 2016 the organization held its first public debate between candidates for Secretary-General.[72] On 1 January 2017, Portuguese diplomat António Guterres, who previously served as UN High Commissioner for Refugees, became the ninth Secretary-General. Guterres has highlighted several key goals for his administration, including an emphasis on diplomacy for preventing conflicts, more effective peacekeeping efforts, and streamlining the organization to be more responsive and versatile to global needs.[73]
Four of the five principal organs are located at the main UN Headquarters in New York City.[76] The International Court of Justice is located in The Hague, while other major agencies are based in the UN offices at Geneva,[77]Vienna,[78] and Nairobi.[79] Other UN institutions are located throughout the world. The six official languages of the UN, used in intergovernmental meetings and documents, are Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish.[80] On the basis of the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, the UN and its agencies are immune from the laws of the countries where they operate, safeguarding the UN’s impartiality with regard to the host and member countries.[81]
Below the six organs sit, in the words of the author Linda Fasulo, “an amazing collection of entities and organizations, some of which are actually older than the UN itself and operate with almost complete independence from it”.[82] These include specialized agencies, research and training institutions, programmes and funds, and other UN entities.[83]
The UN obey the Noblemaire principle, which is binding on any organization that belongs to the UN system. This principle calls for salaries that will draw and keep citizens of countries where salaries are highest, and also calls for equal pay for work of equal value independent of the employee’s nationality.[84][85] In practice, the ICSC takes reference to the highest-paying national civil service.[86] Staff salaries are subject to an internal tax that is administered by the UN organizations.[84][87]
May resolve non-compulsory recommendations to states or suggestions to the Security Council (UNSC);
Decides on the admission of new members, following proposal by the UNSC;
Adopts the budget;
Elects the non-permanent members of the UNSC; all members of ECOSOC; the UN Secretary General (following his/her proposal by the UNSC); and the fifteen judges of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Each country has one vote.
Supports the other UN bodies administratively (for example, in the organization of conferences, the writing of reports and studies and the preparation of the budget);
Its chairperson – the UN Secretary General – is elected by the General Assembly for a five-year mandate and is the UN’s foremost representative.
Decides disputes between states that recognize its jurisdiction;
Issues legal opinions;
Renders judgment by relative majority. Its fifteen judges are elected by the UN General Assembly for nine-year terms.
Mikhail Gorbachev, Soviet general secretary, addresses the UN General Assembly in December 1988.
The General Assembly is the main deliberative assembly of the UN. Composed of all UN member states, the assembly meets in regular yearly sessions, but emergency sessions can also be called.[89] The assembly is led by a president, elected from among the member states on a rotating regional basis, and 21 vice-presidents.[90] The first session convened 10 January 1946 in the Methodist Central Hall in London and included representatives of 51 nations.[28]
When the General Assembly decides on important questions such as those on peace and security, admission of new members and budgetary matters, a two-thirds majority of those present and voting is required.[91][92] All other questions are decided by a majority vote. Each member country has one vote. Apart from approval of budgetary matters, resolutions are not binding on the members. The Assembly may make recommendations on any matters within the scope of the UN, except matters of peace and security that are under consideration by the Security Council.[89]
Draft resolutions can be forwarded to the General Assembly by its six main committees:[93]
The Security Council is charged with maintaining peace and security among countries. While other organs of the UN can only make “recommendations” to member states, the Security Council has the power to make binding decisions that member states have agreed to carry out, under the terms of Charter Article 25.[94] The decisions of the Council are known as United Nations Security Council resolutions.[95]
The Security Council is made up of fifteen member states, consisting of five permanent members—China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—and ten non-permanent members elected for two-year terms by the General Assembly (with end of term date)—Belgium (term ends 2020), Côte d’Ivoire (2019), Dominican Republic (2020), Equatorial Guinea (2019), Germany (2020), Indonesia (2020), Kuwait (2019), Peru (2019), Poland (2019), and South Africa (2020).[96] The five permanent members hold veto power over UN resolutions, allowing a permanent member to block adoption of a resolution, though not debate. The ten temporary seats are held for two-year terms, with five member states per year voted in by the General Assembly on a regional basis.[97] The presidency of the Security Council rotates alphabetically each month.[98]
The UN Secretariat is headed by the secretary-general, assisted by the deputy secretary-general and a staff of international civil servants worldwide.[99] It provides studies, information, and facilities needed by UN bodies for their meetings. It also carries out tasks as directed by the Security Council, the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council, and other UN bodies.[100]
The secretary-general acts as the de facto spokesperson and leader of the UN. The position is defined in the UN Charter as the organization’s “chief administrative officer”.[101] Article 99 of the charter states that the secretary-general can bring to the Security Council’s attention “any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security”, a phrase that Secretaries-General since Trygve Lie have interpreted as giving the position broad scope for action on the world stage.[102] The office has evolved into a dual role of an administrator of the UN organization and a diplomat and mediator addressing disputes between member states and finding consensus to global issues.[103]
The secretary-general is appointed by the General Assembly, after being recommended by the Security Council, where the permanent members have veto power. There are no specific criteria for the post, but over the years it has become accepted that the post shall be held for one or two terms of five years.[104] The current Secretary-General is António Guterres, who replaced Ban Ki-moon in 2017.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), located in The Hague, in the Netherlands, is the primary judicial organ of the UN. Established in 1945 by the UN Charter, the Court began work in 1946 as the successor to the Permanent Court of International Justice. The ICJ is composed of 15 judges who serve 9-year terms and are appointed by the General Assembly; every sitting judge must be from a different nation.[106][107]
It is based in the Peace Palace in The Hague, sharing the building with the Hague Academy of International Law, a private centre for the study of international law. The ICJ’s primary purpose is to adjudicate disputes among states. The court has heard cases related to war crimes, illegal state interference, ethnic cleansing, and other issues.[108] The ICJ can also be called upon by other UN organs to provide advisory opinions.[106] It is the only organ that is not located in New York.
The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) assists the General Assembly in promoting international economic and social co-operation and development. ECOSOC has 54 members, which are elected by the General Assembly for a three-year term. The president is elected for a one-year term and chosen amongst the small or middle powers represented on ECOSOC. The council has one annual meeting in July, held in either New York or Geneva. Viewed as separate from the specialized bodies it co-ordinates, ECOSOC’s functions include information gathering, advising member nations, and making recommendations.[109][110] Owing to its broad mandate of co-ordinating many agencies, ECOSOC has at times been criticized as unfocused or irrelevant.[109][111]
The UN Charter stipulates that each primary organ of the United Nations can establish various specialized agencies to fulfil its duties.[113] Some best-known agencies are the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Food and Agriculture Organization, UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), the World Bank, and the World Health Organization (WHO). The UN performs most of its humanitarian work through these agencies. Examples include mass vaccination programmes (through WHO), the avoidance of famine and malnutrition (through the work of the WFP), and the protection of vulnerable and displaced people (for example, by UNHCR).[114]
Organizations and specialized agencies of the United Nations
Membership in the United Nations is open to all other peace-loving states that accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and, in the judgment of the Organization, are able and willing to carry out these obligations.
The admission of any such state to membership in the United Nations will be effected by a decision of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council. Chapter II, Article 4.[117]
The Group of 77 (G77) at the UN is a loose coalition of developing nations, designed to promote its members’ collective economic interests and create an enhanced joint negotiating capacity in the UN. Seventy-seven nations founded the organization, but by November 2013 the organization had since expanded to 133 member countries.[120] The group was founded 15 June 1964 by the “Joint Declaration of the Seventy-Seven Countries” issued at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). The group held its first major meeting in Algiers in 1967, where it adopted the Charter of Algiers and established the basis for permanent institutional structures.[121] With the adoption of the New International Economic Order by developing countries in the 1970s, the work of the G77 spread throughout the UN system.
Bolivian “Blue Helmet” at an exercise in Chile, 21 October 2002
The UN, after approval by the Security Council, sends peacekeepers to regions where armed conflict has recently ceased or paused to enforce the terms of peace agreements and to discourage combatants from resuming hostilities. Since the UN does not maintain its own military, peacekeeping forces are voluntarily provided by member states. These soldiers are sometimes nicknamed “Blue Helmets” for their distinctive gear.[122][123] The peacekeeping force as a whole received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1988.[124]
A study by the RAND Corporation in 2005 found the UN to be successful in two out of three peacekeeping efforts. It compared efforts at nation-building by the UN to those of the United States, and found that seven out of eight UN cases are at peace, as compared with four out of eight US cases at peace.[126] Also in 2005, the Human Security Report documented a decline in the number of wars, genocides, and human rights abuses since the end of the Cold War, and presented evidence, albeit circumstantial, that international activism—mostly spearheaded by the UN—has been the main cause of the decline in armed conflict in that period.[127] Situations in which the UN has not only acted to keep the peace but also intervened include the Korean War (1950–53) and the authorization of intervention in Iraq after the Gulf War (1990–91).[128]
The UN has also drawn criticism for perceived failures. In many cases, member states have shown reluctance to achieve or enforce Security Council resolutions. Disagreements in the Security Council about military action and intervention are seen as having failed to prevent the Bangladesh genocide in 1971,[129] the Cambodian genocide in the 1970s,[130] and the Rwandan genocide in 1994.[131] Similarly, UN inaction is blamed for failing to either prevent the Srebrenica massacre in 1995 or complete the peacekeeping operations in 1992–93 during the Somali Civil War.[132] UN peacekeepers have also been accused of child rape, soliciting prostitutes, and sexual abuse during various peacekeeping missions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,[133] Haiti,[134] Liberia,[135] Sudan and what is now South Sudan,[136] Burundi, and Ivory Coast.[137] Scientists cited UN peacekeepers from Nepal as the likely source of the 2010–13 Haiti cholera outbreak, which killed more than 8,000 Haitians following the 2010 Haiti earthquake.[138]
One of the UN’s primary purposes is “promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion”, and member states pledge to undertake “joint and separate action” to protect these rights.[113][142]
In 1948, the General Assembly adopted a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, drafted by a committee headed by American diplomat and activist Eleanor Roosevelt, and including the French lawyer René Cassin. The document proclaims basic civil, political, and economic rights common to all human beings, though its effectiveness towards achieving these ends has been disputed since its drafting.[143] The Declaration serves as a “common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations” rather than a legally binding document, but it has become the basis of two binding treaties, the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.[144] In practice, the UN is unable to take significant action against human rights abuses without a Security Council resolution, though it does substantial work in investigating and reporting abuses.[145]
Another primary purpose of the UN is “to achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character”.[142] Numerous bodies have been created to work towards this goal, primarily under the authority of the General Assembly and ECOSOC.[155] In 2000, the 192 UN member states agreed to achieve eight Millennium Development Goals by 2015.[156] The Sustainable Development Goals were launched in 2015 to succeed the Millennium Development Goals.[70] The SDGs have an associated financing framework called the Addis Ababa Action Agenda.
The UN Development Programme (UNDP), an organization for grant-based technical assistance founded in 1945, is one of the leading bodies in the field of international development. The organization also publishes the UN Human Development Index, a comparative measure ranking countries by poverty, literacy, education, life expectancy, and other factors.[157][158] The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), also founded in 1945, promotes agricultural development and food security.[159]UNICEF (the United Nations Children’s Fund) was created in 1946 to aid European children after the Second World War and expanded its mission to provide aid around the world and to uphold the Convention on the Rights of the Child.[160][161]
The World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund (IMF) are independent, specialized agencies and observers within the UN framework, according to a 1947 agreement. They were initially formed separately from the UN through the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944.[162] The World Bank provides loans for international development, while the IMF promotes international economic co-operation and gives emergency loans to indebted countries.[163]
Along with the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the UN often takes a leading role in co-ordinating emergency relief.[167] The World Food Programme (WFP), created in 1961, provides food aid in response to famine, natural disasters, and armed conflict. The organization reports that it feeds an average of 90 million people in 80 nations each year.[167][168] The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), established in 1950, works to protect the rights of refugees, asylum seekers, and stateless people.[169] UNHCR and WFP programmes are funded by voluntary contributions from governments, corporations, and individuals, though the UNHCR’s administrative costs are paid for by the UN’s primary budget.[170]
Beginning with the formation of the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) in 1972, the UN has made environmental issues a prominent part of its agenda. A lack of success in the first two decades of UN work in this area led to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which sought to give new impetus to these efforts.[173] In 1988, the UNEP and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), another UN organization, established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which assesses and reports on research on global warming.[174] The UN-sponsored Kyoto Protocol, signed in 1997, set legally binding emissions reduction targets for ratifying states.[175]
The UN is financed from assessed and voluntary contributions from member states. The General Assembly approves the regular budget and determines the assessment for each member. This is broadly based on the relative capacity of each country to pay, as measured by its gross national income (GNI), with adjustments for external debt and low per capita income.[178] The two-year budget for 2012–13 was $5.512 billion in total.[179]
The Assembly has established the principle that the UN should not be unduly dependent on any one member to finance its operations. Thus, there is a “ceiling” rate, setting the maximum amount that any member can be assessed for the regular budget. In December 2000, the Assembly revised the scale of assessments in response to pressure from the United States. As part of that revision, the regular budget ceiling was reduced from 25% to 22%.[180] For the least developed countries (LDCs), a ceiling rate of 0.01% is applied.[178] In addition to the ceiling rates, the minimum amount assessed to any member nation (or “floor” rate) is set at 0.001% of the UN budget ($55,120 for the two year budget 2013–2014).[181]
A large share of the UN’s expenditure addresses its core mission of peace and security, and this budget is assessed separately from the main organizational budget.[182] The peacekeeping budget for the 2015–16 fiscal year was $8.27 billion, supporting 82,318 troops deployed in 15 missions around the world.[125] UN peace operations are funded by assessments, using a formula derived from the regular funding scale that includes a weighted surcharge for the five permanent Security Council members, who must approve all peacekeeping operations. This surcharge serves to offset discounted peacekeeping assessment rates for less developed countries. the largest contributors for the UN peacekeeping financial operations for the period 2019–2021 are : the United States 27.89% China 15.21%, Japan 8.56%, Germany 6.09% , the United Kingdom 5.78%, France 5.61%, Italy3.30% and the Russian Federation 3.04%. [2]
Special UN programmes not included in the regular budget, such as UNICEF and the World Food Programme, are financed by voluntary contributions from member governments, corporations, and private individuals.[183][184]
A number of agencies and individuals associated with the UN have won the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of their work. Two Secretaries-General, Dag Hammarskjöld and Kofi Annan, were each awarded the prize (in 1961 and 2001, respectively), as were Ralph Bunche (1950), a UN negotiator, René Cassin (1968), a contributor to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the US Secretary of State Cordell Hull (1945), the latter for his role in the organization’s founding. Lester B. Pearson, the Canadian Secretary of State for External Affairs, was awarded the prize in 1957 for his role in organizing the UN’s first peacekeeping force to resolve the Suez Crisis. UNICEF won the prize in 1965, the International Labour Organization in 1969, the UN Peace-Keeping Forces in 1988, the International Atomic Energy Agency (which reports to the UN) in 2005, and the UN-supported Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in 2013. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees was awarded in 1954 and 1981, becoming one of only two recipients to win the prize twice. The UN as a whole was awarded the prize in 2001, sharing it with Annan.[185] In 2007, IPCC received the prize “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”[186]
To mark the UN’s 70th anniversary – Budapest, 2015
Since its founding, there have been many calls for reform of the UN but little consensus on how to do so. Some want the UN to play a greater or more effective role in world affairs, while others want its role reduced to humanitarian work. There have also been numerous calls for the UN Security Council’s membership to be increased, for different ways of electing the UN’s Secretary-General, and for a UN Parliamentary Assembly. Jacques Fomerand states the most enduring divide in views of the UN is “the North–South split” between richer Northern nations and developing Southern nations. Southern nations tend to favour a more empowered UN with a stronger General Assembly, allowing them a greater voice in world affairs, while Northern nations prefer an economically laissez-faire UN that focuses on transnational threats such as terrorism.[187]
After World War II, the French Committee of National Liberation was late to be recognized by the US as the government of France, and so the country was initially excluded from the conferences that created the new organization. The future French president Charles de Gaulle criticized the UN, famously calling it a machin (“contraption”), and was not convinced that a global security alliance would help maintain world peace, preferring direct defence treaties between countries.[188] Throughout the Cold War, both the US and USSR repeatedly accused the UN of favouring the other. In 1953, the USSR effectively forced the resignation of Trygve Lie, the Secretary-General, through its refusal to deal with him, while in the 1950s and 1960s, a popular US bumper sticker read, “You can’t spell communism without U.N.”[189] In a sometimes-misquoted statement, President George W. Bush stated in February 2003 (referring to UN uncertainty towards Iraqi provocations under the Saddam Hussein regime) that “free nations will not allow the UN to fade into history as an ineffective, irrelevant debating society.”[190][191][192] In contrast, the French President, François Hollande, stated in 2012 that “France trusts the United Nations. She knows that no state, no matter how powerful, can solve urgent problems, fight for development and bring an end to all crises … France wants the UN to be the centre of global governance.”[193] Critics such as Dore Gold, an Israeli diplomat, Robert S. Wistrich, a British scholar, Alan Dershowitz, an American legal scholar, Mark Dreyfus, an Australian politician, and the Anti-Defamation League consider UN attention to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to be excessive.[194] In September 2015, Saudi Arabia‘s Faisal bin Hassan Trad has been elected Chair of the UN Human Rights Council panel that appoints independent experts,[195] a move criticized by human rights groups.[196][197]
Since 1971, the Republic of China on Taiwan has been excluded from the UN and since then has always been rejected in new applications. Taiwanese citizens are also not allowed to enter the buildings of the United Nations with ROC passports. In this way, critics agree that the UN is failing its own development goals and guidelines. This criticism also brought pressure from the People’s Republic of China, which regards the territories administered by the ROC as their own territory.[198][199]
Critics have also accused the UN of bureaucratic inefficiency, waste, and corruption. In 1976, the General Assembly established the Joint Inspection Unit to seek out inefficiencies within the UN system. During the 1990s, the US withheld dues citing inefficiency and only started repayment on the condition that a major reforms initiative was introduced. In 1994, the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) was established by the General Assembly to serve as an efficiency watchdog.[200] In 1994, former Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the UN to SomaliaMohamed Sahnoun published “Somalia: The Missed Opportunities”,[201] a book in which he analyses the reasons for the failure of the 1992 UN intervention in Somalia, showing that, between the start of the Somali civil war in 1988 and the fall of the Siad Barre regime in January 1991, the UN missed at least three opportunities to prevent major human tragedies; when the UN tried to provide humanitarian assistance, they were totally outperformed by NGOs, whose competence and dedication sharply contrasted with the UN’s excessive caution and bureaucratic inefficiencies. If radical reform was not undertaken, warned Mohamed Sahnoun, then the UN would continue to respond to such crisis with inept improvization.[202] In 2004, the UN faced accusations that its recently ended Oil-for-Food Programme—in which Iraq had been allowed to trade oil for basic needs to relieve the pressure of sanctions—had suffered from widespread corruption, including billions of dollars of kickbacks. An independent inquiry created by the UN found that many of its officials had been involved, as well as raising “significant” questions about the role of Kojo Annan, the son of Kofi Annan.[203]
In evaluating the UN as a whole, Jacques Fomerand writes that the “accomplishments of the United Nations in the last 60 years are impressive in their own terms. Progress in human development during the 20th century has been dramatic and the UN and its agencies have certainly helped the world become a more hospitable and livable place for millions.”[204] Evaluating the first 50 years of the UN’s history, the author Stanley Meisler writes that “the United Nations never fulfilled the hopes of its founders, but it accomplished a great deal nevertheless”, citing its role in decolonization and its many successful peacekeeping efforts.[205] The British historian Paul Kennedy states that while the organization has suffered some major setbacks, “when all its aspects are considered, the UN has brought great benefits to our generation and … will bring benefits to our children’s and grandchildren’s generations as well.”[206]
^This map does not represent the view of its members or the UN concerning the legal status of any country,[1]
^Roosevelt suggested the name as an alternative to the name “Associated Powers.” The British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, accepted it, noting that the phase was used by Lord Byron in the poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (Stanza 35).
^Poland had not been represented among the fifty nations at the San Francisco conference due to the reluctance of the Western superpowers to recognize its post-war communist government. However, the Charter was later amended to list Poland as a founding member, and Poland ratified the Charter on 16 October 1945.[29][30]
FILE – In this Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2019 file photo, Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell speaks at a news conference following a two-day meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee in Washington. A peculiar thing is happening in financial markets this week _ a corner of the financial system where banks and others go for billions of dollars in short-term loans is suddenly in need of cash. To that end, the Federal Reserve has stepped in to inject about $200 billion into the market over the past three days, with plans for another $75 billion on Friday. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File) THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BY MARTIN CRUTSINGER, AP Economics Writer
The Federal Reserve will keep pumping cash into a vital but obscure corner of U.S. financial markets in coming weeks.
The New York Federal Reserve Bank, which handles the central bank’s interactions with financial markets, said Friday that it will offer daily repurchase, or “repo,” operations of at least $75 billion through Oct. 10. The aim is to maintain the Fed’s key policy rate within its target range.
For the first time since the 2008 financial crisis, the Fed this week conducted a series of major repo operations, injecting $278 billion into the market to deal with a jump in short-term interest rates.
Officials say this week’s spike in rates is not a precursor of the type of underlying troubles that preceded the 2008 market meltdown.
In addition to the daily overnight operations of $75 billion, the New York Fed said it would conduct longer 14-day repo operations of at least $30 billion on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday of next week.
The Fed said that it would be ready to conduct further operations as needed after Oct. 10 but the amount and timing of those auctions has not been determined.
In the fourth operation on Friday, banks asked for $75.55 billion in reserves, only slightly higher than the $75 billion limit set by the Fed.
The Fed began conducting these operations to calm money markets. Rates on short-term repo agreements had briefly spiked to nearly 10% earlier this week as financial firms scrambled to find short-term funding.
The Fed seeks to manage its operations to keep the repo rate near the target it has set for its key policy rate, the federal funds rate, the interest that banks charge each other for overnight borrowing.
The Fed announced on Wednesday that it was cutting the benchmark rate by a quarter-point to a new range of 1.75% to 2% as it seeks to cushion the U.S. economy from various threats, ranging from a slowing global economy to shocks from President Donald Trump’s trade war with China.
The repo market covers billions of dollars of daily operations in which one party lends out cash in exchange for a roughly equivalent value of securities, usually Treasury notes. The market allows companies that own lots of securities to get the cash they need at cheap rates.
The borrower of the cash agrees to repurchase the securities it has loaned as collateral at a later date, often as soon as the next day.
The turbulence this week has been attributed to various factors, including corporations needing to come up with cash to settle quarterly tax payments.
Analysts do not believe the rate spike this week is similar to the troubles seen as the nation was heading into the 2008 financial crisis. They believe banks are much better capitalized now due to the reforms put in place after the crisis.
Fed Mulls Lessons of Money-Market Spike After Curbing Volatility
New York Fed officials examining whether distribution of reserves contributed to cash shortages earlier this week
The New York Fed said it would continue to offer to add at least $75 billion daily to the financial system through Oct. 10.PHOTO: CLAUDIO PAPAPIETRO FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
By Daniel Kruger and Nick Timiraos
Federal Reserve officials are studying whether market plumbing issues contributed to a spike in short-term lending rates this week, after the central bank said it would extend recent operations to inject cash into money markets.
Investors this week have highlighted declines in bank deposits held at the Fed, known as reserves, as a driver of this week’s funding volatility. But New York Fed officials said Friday they were also examining whether the distribution of those reserves across the banking system—and not just the absolute level—had contributed to cash shortages earlier this week.
“That ability of the system to move money around and redistribute—it didn’t work the way we’ve seen in the past,” said New York Fed President John Williams in an interview on Friday.
The New York Fed said on Friday it would continue to offer to add at least $75 billion daily to the financial system through Oct. 10, prolonging its efforts to relieve pressure in money markets.
In addition to at least $75 billion in overnight loans, the Fed said it would also offer three separate 14-day cash loans of at least $30 billion each next week. The Fed will conduct further operations as needed after Oct. 10.
“This is, I would say, Central Banking 101,” said Mr. Williams. “This is what the Fed’s open-market operations are designed to address—directly provide liquidity into the system, which supports market functioning.”
On Monday, corporate tax payments were due to the Treasury, and Treasury debt auctions settled, leading to large transfers of cash from the banking system.
The level of reserves in the system at the beginning of the week appeared “above what we thought banks’ minimum level of reserves was,” said Lorie Logan, the New York Fed executive who is interim manager of the portfolio.
But those reserves can be concentrated in a few institutions, and officials weren’t sure “what the distribution process would look like as different shocks like this take place and how those reserves would then redistribute to other entities that needed liquidity,” she said.
One of the lessons this week was that this distribution process “was definitely stickier than we expected,” and repo markets experienced greater dysfunction than anticipated as a result, she said.
The Fed is adding money to the financial system through the market for repurchase agreements, or repo. In those transactions, banks offer collateral such as government bonds in exchange for short-term loans, for periods as brief as overnight. The market is a major way that banks and financial firms raise capital to fund their businesses.
The Fed should have been more alert to the potential risks in the repo market, said Seth Carpenter, chief U.S. economist at UBS and a former Fed staffer. He said the firm’s traders had first picked up signs markets could face stress as repo rates began ticking higher late last week.
But the Fed restored confidence, particularly through its decision Friday to offer two-week cash loans. “Everybody saw that as their bazooka,” Mr. Carpenter said.
The newly scheduled operations give financial markets an assurance that the Fed will continue adding liquidity through the end of the coming quarter. Banks tend to hold on to cash at the ends of quarters because that is when regulators typically examine their balance sheets to ensure they are following rules that safeguard the banking system.
“It doesn’t take a lot of cash to right the system,” said Glenn Havlicek, the chief executive at GLMX, which provides technology to repo trading desks, and who formerly oversaw the repo desk at JPMorgan Chase & Co.
The timing is also important because there have been periods in the past year when demand for cash has exceeded the ability or willingness of investors to provide it, leading to spikes in the rates investors charge banks in repo.
That happened at the end of last year when the repo rate traded as high as 6%, pushing the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.’s GCF Repo Index to a then-record 5.14%. Repo rates also notably rose in April when people withdrew cash from the banking system to pay federal income taxes.
Separately, the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee lowered its benchmark federal-funds rate by a quarter percentage point on Wednesday to a range between 1.75% and 2%.
As a result of volatility in the repo market, the fed-funds rate spiked to trade outside of its range on Tuesday, but by Thursday was again trading firmly within the target band.
Mr. Williams said the central bank had effectively diagnosed and deployed its tools to take “forceful, decisive action that addressed the problem,” he said. “We are consistently and constructively supporting stability in these markets, and supporting the FOMC’s desired interest rate.”
On Friday, banks asked for $75.55 billion in reserves, $550 million more than the amount offered by the Fed, offering collateral in the form of Treasury and mortgage securities.
The Fed’s operation was the fourth time this week it has intervened to calm roiled money markets. Rates on short-term repos briefly rose to nearly 10% earlier this week as financial firms looked for overnight funding. The actions marked the first time since the financial crisis that the Fed had taken such measures.
The New York Fed hasn’t had to intervene in money markets since 2008 because during and after the financial crisis, the Fed flooded the financial system with reserves. It did this by buying hundreds of billions of dollars of long-term securities to spur growth after cutting interest rates to nearly zero.
Reserves over the last five years have been declining, especially over the last two years, when the Fed began shrinking securities holdings. Reserves fell to less than $1.4 trillion this week from a peak of $2.8 trillion in 2014.
The Fed stopped shrinking its asset holdings last month. But because other Fed liabilities such as currency in circulation and the Treasury’s general financing account are rising, reserves are likely to grind lower in the weeks and months ahead.
Repurchase agreements (also known as repos) are conducted only with primary dealers; reverse repurchase agreements (also known as reverse repos) are conducted with both primary dealers and with an expanded set of reverse repo counterparties that includes banks, government-sponsored enterprises, and money market funds.
Repo and reverse repo operations were used prior to the financial crisis to adjust the supply of reserve balances and keep the federal funds ratearound the target level established by the FOMC. At that time, repo operations were typically conducted daily to fine-tune the supply of reserves in the system.
In a repo transaction, the Desk purchases Treasury, agency debt, or agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) from a counterparty subject to an agreement to resell the securities at a later date. It is economically similar to a loan collateralized by securities having a value higher than the loan to protect the Desk against market and credit risk. Repo transactions temporarily increase the quantity of reserve balances in the banking system.
In a reverse repo transaction, the opposite occurs: the Desk sells securities to a counterparty subject to an agreement to repurchase the securities at a later date at a higher repurchase price. Reverse repo transactions temporarily reduce the quantity of reserve balances in the banking system.
Overnight Reverse Repo Operations
Currently, the Desk conducts overnight reverse repo operations daily as a means to help keep the federal funds rate in the target range set by the FOMC. The overnight reverse repo program (ON RRP) is used to supplement the Federal Reserve’s primary monetary policy tool, interest on excess reserves (IOER) for depository institutions, to help control short-term interest rates. ON RRP operations support interest rate control by setting a floor on wholesale short-term interest rates, beneath which financial institutions with access to these facilities should be unwilling to lend funds. ON RRP operations are conducted at a pre-announced offering rate, against Treasury securities collateral, and are open to a wide range of financial firms, including some that are not eligible to earn interest on balances at the Federal Reserve.
Story 3: Alarmist Adult Abuses of Climate Change Children — Hysterical Greta Thunberg — A Very Ignorant and Abused Child — Brainwashed Indoctrination of Children By Parents and Schools –Seek Professional Help — Weather and Climate Have Always Been Changing — Adapt and and Live With It — Get Your Priorities and Solutions in Order — Videos —
School strike for climate – save the world by changing the rules | Greta Thunberg | TEDxStockholm
Greta Thunberg Rips World Leaders at the U.N. Over Climate Change
Bjorn Lomborg: Global priorities bigger than climate change
Greta Thunberg
Adolescent climate change protester Greta Thunberg has stage parents, literally. Her mother sang opera internationally until the teenager convinced her to quit due to greenhouse gas emissions from flying, and her father and grandfather both gained fame through acting and directing.
Now, they’ve pivoted into the parental act of every stage parent looking to secure the next generation of fame. Apparently, the Swedish version of a Teri Shields is pimping her kid out, not to Penthouse, but to the cause of climate apocalypse.
For all that, conservatives have rightly griped at the performative pointlessness of Thunberg’s schtick, and for all that, liberals have rightly griped that a waning but still significant segment of conservatives deny the reality of anthropogenic climate change; the biggest travesty lost in the hype about the Swedish activist who recently sailed to American shores is that her parents, the media, and the climate alarmist Left are basically engaging in child abuse.
Cases of kids entering public discourse out of sheer discourse, such as Parkland survivors Cameron Kasky and Kyle Kashuv, are sometimes inevitable and sometimes valuable. Some political causes require spokesmen with lived experiences. But even as we saw in the aftermath of Parkland, putting children in the public spotlight is more likely to backfire on them than not.
The case of Thunberg is even more egregious. She began suffering from depression as a child, by her own admission, in part because she learned about climate change at age 8. She was later diagnosed with autism and obsessive compulsive disorder and gradually became despondent as she obsessed over her fear of climate change. She developed mutism and an eating disorder so severe that she once went two months without food, and she stopped going to school. Her only sibling, a sister named Beata, also suffers from Asperger’s and OCD, as well as ADHD.
Now tell me, does it seem healthy to place a child with this many mental illnesses under the spotlight of public scrutiny, with a sole focus on the very phenomenon and associated alarmism that triggered her in the first place?
If you’re a fading opera starlet married into a family of fame, and your only two children are having exceptional trouble even attending school, then I suppose you can secure a bit more fame by milking your child’s clinically diagnosed obsession. But given that Greta’s mental struggles and triggers actually led her to the brink of death, the whole thing smacks of child abuse.
Conservatives shouldn’t mock her. They should worry for her. Social media has made it too easy to prop up children as moral authorities — even children especially predisposed to crack under the pressure.
Greta Thunberg[a]FRSGS; (born 3 January 2003[1]) is a Swedish environmental activist focused on the risks posed by global warming.
In August 2018, when she was 15, Thunberg took time off school to demonstrate outside the Swedish parliament, holding up a sign calling for stronger climate action. Soon, other students engaged in similar protests in their own communities. Together they organized a school climate strike movement under the name Fridays for Future. After Thunberg addressed the 2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference, student strikes took place every week somewhere in the world. In 2019, there were at least two coordinated multi-city protests involving over one million pupils each.[2][3]
Thunberg is known for her blunt,[4] matter-of-fact speaking manner,[5] both in public and to political leaders and assemblies, in which she urges immediate action to address what she describes as the climate crisis. At home, Thunberg convinced her parents to adopt several lifestyle choices to reduce their own carbon footprint, including giving up air travel and not eating meat.
In May 2019, Thunberg was featured on the cover of Time magazine, which named her a “next generation leader” and noted that many see her as a role model.[6] Thunberg and the school strike movement were also featured in a 30-minute Vice documentary titled Make the World Greta Again. Some media have described her impact on the world stage as the “Greta Thunberg effect”.[7]
Thunberg says she first heard about climate change in 2011, when she was 8 years old, and could not understand why so little was being done about it.[12] Three years later she became depressed and lethargic, stopped talking and eating, and was eventually diagnosed with Asperger syndrome,[13]obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD),[13] and selective mutism.[13][14] While acknowledging that her diagnosis “has limited me before”, she does not view her Asperger’s as an illness and has instead called it her “superpower”.[14]
For about two years, Thunberg challenged her parents to lower the family’s carbon footprint by becoming vegan and giving up flying, which in part meant her mother had to give up her international career as an opera singer.[10][15] Thunberg credits her parents’ eventual response and lifestyle changes with giving her hope and belief that she could make a difference.[10] The family story is recounted in the 2018 book Scenes from the Heart.[16]
In late 2018, Thunberg began the school climate strikes and public speeches by which she has become an internationally recognized climate activist. Her father does not like her missing school,but said: “[We] respect that she wants to make a stand. She can either sit at home and be really unhappy, or protest, and be happy”.[15] Thunberg says her teachers are divided in their views about her missing class to make her point. She says: “As people they think what I am doing is good, but as teachers they say I should stop.”[15]
Thunberg published a collection of her climate action speeches, No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference, in May 2019[17] with the earnings being donated to charity.[18] In one of her first speeches demanding climate action, Thunberg described the selective mutism aspect of her condition as meaning she “only speaks when necessary”.[12] In 2019, Thunberg also contributed a voiceover for a release of “The 1975”, the theme song of an English band by the same name. Thunberg finishes by urging: “So, everyone out there, it is now time for civil disobedience. It is time to rebel.” Proceeds will go to Extinction Rebellion at Thunberg’s request.[19]
In August 2019, Thunberg sailed across the Atlantic Ocean from Plymouth, UK, to New York, US, in a 60 ft racing yacht equipped with solar panels and underwater turbines. The trip was announced as a carbon-neutral transatlantic crossing serving as a demonstration of Thunberg’s declared beliefs of the importance of reducing emissions.
Thunberg in front of the Swedish parliament, holding a “Skolstrejk för klimatet” (transl. School strike for the climate) sign, Stockholm, August 2018
Bicycle in Stockholm with references to Thunberg: “The climate crisis must be treated as a crisis! The climate is the most important election issue!” (11 September 2018)
In May 2018, Thunberg won a climate change essay competition held by Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet. In part, she wrote that “I want to feel safe. How can I feel safe when I know we are in the greatest crisis in human history?”[24] The paper published her article after which she was contacted by Bo Thorén from Fossil Free Dalsland, a group interested in doing something about climate change. Thunberg attended a few of their meetings, and at one of them, Thoren also suggested that school children could strike for climate change.[25] Thunberg tried to persuade other young people to get involved but “no one was really interested” so eventually, she decided to go ahead with the strike by herself.[10]
Beginning
On 20 August 2018, Thunberg, who had just started ninth grade, decided to not attend school until the 2018 Swedish general election on 9 September after the heat waves and wildfires during Sweden’s hottest summer in at least 262 years.[15] Her demands were that the Swedish government reduce carbon emissions in accordance with the Paris Agreement, and she protested by sitting outside the Riksdag every day for three weeks during school hours with the sign Skolstrejk för klimatet (school strike for the climate).[26] She also handed out leaflets that stated: “I am doing this because you adults are shitting on my future.”[15]
Role of social media
Thunberg posted her original strike photo on Instagram and Twitter and other social media accounts quickly took up her cause.[27] According to Ingmar Rentzhog, founder of a Swedish climate-focused social media company, We Don’t Have Time (WDHT), her strike began attracting public attention after he turned up with a freelance photographer and then posted Thunberg’s photograph on his Facebook page and Instagram account. He also made a video in English that he posted on the company’s YouTube channel that had almost 88,000 views.[28] A representative of the Finnish bank, Nordea, quoted one of Thunberg’s tweets to more than 200,000 followers. Thunberg’s social media profile attracted local reporters whose stories earned international coverage in little more than a week.[27]
After the general elections, Thunberg continued to strike only on Fridays. She inspired school students across the globe to take part in student strikes.[29] As of December 2018, more than 20,000 students had held strikes in at least 270 cities.[29]
After October 2018, Thunberg’s activism evolved from solitary protesting to taking part in demonstrations throughout Europe; making several high-profile public speeches, and mobilising her growing number of followers on social media platforms. By March 2019, she was still staging her regular protests outside the Swedish parliament every Friday, where other students now occasionally join her. Her activism has not interfered with her schoolwork, but she has had less spare time.[13]
Support
In February 2019, 224 academics signed an open letter of support stating they were inspired by the actions of Thunberg and the striking school children in making their voices heard.[30]United Nations Secretary-GeneralAntónio Guterres also endorsed the school strikes initiated by Thunberg, admitting that “My generation has failed to respond properly to the dramatic challenge of climate change. This is deeply felt by young people. No wonder they are angry.”[31]
In June 2019, Thunberg spoke by video link with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who had submitted the Green New Deal to the U.S. House of Representatives in February 2019, which calls for the United States to achieve “net-zero” greenhouse gases within a decade. They discussed how it feels when their views are not taken seriously because they are young, and what tactics really work.[32]
Speaking at an event in New Zealand in May 2019, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said his generation was “not winning the battle against climate change” and that it’s up to youth to “rescue the planet”.[33]
When Thunberg began her protest outside the Swedish Parliament in 2018 at age 15, she had two simple messages: a sign which said “school strike for the climate” and leaflets she handed out which said: “I am doing this because you adults are shitting on my future.”[34] As her protest gained momentum, she was invited to give speeches at a variety of forums which enabled her to expand on her concerns. So far, she has espoused four interwoven themes. Thunberg argues that the crisis caused by global warming is so serious that humanity is facing an existential crisis,[35] “that will most likely lead to the end of our civilization as we know it,” and that she holds the current generation of adults responsible, with statements such as “You are stealing our future”.[36][37] She is especially concerned about the impact the climate crisis will have on young people like her. Speaking at Parliament in London she said: “You lied to us. You gave us false hope. You told us that the future was something to look forward to.” Thunberg also states that we need to wake up and change[38] because very little is being done to solve the problem.[39] She says the situation is so dire, we should all panic.[40] She feels that that politicians and decision-makers need to listen to the scientists,[41] pointing out in 2019 that “according to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), we are less than 12 years away from not being able to undo our mistakes.”[42]
Thunberg uses graphic analogies to highlight her concerns and speaks bluntly to business and political leaders, often scolding them for their lack of action. For instance, she told a panel of prominent business and political leaders at Davos: “Some people, some companies, some decision-makers, in particular, have known exactly what priceless values they have been sacrificing to continue making unimaginable amounts of money. I think many of you here today belong to that group of people.”[43] She went on to say: “I want you to act as if the house was on fire—because it is”.[40] In London in October 2018, she said: “We’re facing an immediate unprecedented crisis that has never been treated as a crisis and our leaders are all acting like children.”[44]
Thunberg points out that the strategies adopted by various governments to limit global warming to 1.5 °C as part of the Paris Agreement are insufficient and that the greenhouse gas emissions curve needs to start declining steeply no later than 2020.[45] In January 2019, she told the UK parliament that Britain needs to stop talking in terms of “lowering” emissions and start thinking in terms of eliminating them.[46] In February 2019, at a conference of the European Economic and Social Committee, she said that the EU must reduce their CO
2 emissions by 80% by 2030, double the 40% goal set in Paris.[47][48]
Thunberg’s main theme is everyone needs to unite behind the science. She says if everyone listened to the scientists and acknowledged the facts, “then we (students) could all go back to school”.[49] On Thunberg’s trip across the Atlantic Ocean (en route to New York City) she travelled via a carbon-neutral yacht. Emblazoned on the yacht’s sail in capital letters were the words “UNITE BEHIND THE SCIENCE”.[50] In one of her first statements after arriving in New York, she had a similar message for Donald Trump, admonishing him to “listen to the science”.[51]
Impact
“Greta Thunberg effect”
Thunberg has inspired a number of her school-aged peers in what has been described as the “Greta Thunberg effect”.[52] In response to her outspoken stance, various politicians have also acknowledged the need to focus on climate change. Britain’s secretary for the environment, Michael Gove, said: “When I listened to you, I felt great admiration, but also responsibility and guilt. I am of your parents’ generation, and I recognise that we haven’t done nearly enough to address climate change and the broader environmental crisis that we helped to create.” Labour politician Ed Miliband, who was responsible for introducing the Climate Change Act 2008, said: “You have woken us up. We thank you. All the young people who have gone on strike have held up a mirror to our society … you have taught us all a really important lesson. You have stood out from the crowd.”[7] In June 2019, a YouGov poll in Britain found that public concern about the environment had soared to record levels in the UK since Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion had “pierced the bubble of denial”.[53]
In August 2019, a doubling in the number of children’s books being published which address the climate crisis was reported, with a similar increase in the sales of such books—all aimed at empowering young people to save the planet. Publishers attribute this to the “Greta Thunberg effect”.[54]
Inspired by Thunberg, wealthy philanthropists and investors from the United States have donated almost half a million pounds to support Extinction Rebellion and school strike groups to establish the Climate Emergency Fund.[55]Trevor Neilson, one of the philanthropists, said the three founders would be contacting friends among the global mega-rich to donate “a hundred times” more in the weeks and months ahead.[56]
In February 2019, Thunberg shared a stage with the then President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, where he outlined “In the next financial period from 2021 to 2027, every fourth euro spent within the EU budget will go towards action to mitigate climate change”.[57] Climate issues also played a significant role in European elections in May 2019[58] as Green parties nearly doubled their vote to finish second on 21%,[59] boosting their MEP numbers to a projected 71.[60] Many of the gains came from northern European countries where young people have taken to the streets inspired by Thunberg.[59] The result gives the Greens a chance of becoming ‘kingmakers’ in the new European parliament.[60]
In June 2019, Swedish Railways (SJ) reported that the number of Swedes taking the train for domestic journeys had risen by 8% from the previous year, reflecting growing public concern about the impact of flying on CO
2 emissions that is highlighted by Thunberg’s refusal to fly to international conferences. Being embarrassed or ashamed to take a plane because of its environmental impact has been described on social media as ‘Flygskam’ or “Shame of flying”, along with the hashtag #jagstannarpåmarken, which translates as #istayontheground.[61][62]
Criticism and response
Criticism of Thunberg and her campaign
In an opinion column, Christopher Caldwell has claimed that Thunberg’s simplistic, straightforward approach to climate change will bring climate protesters into conflict with the complexities of decision-making in Western democracies.[63][64] The French philosopher Raphaël Enthoven claims that many people “buy virtue” with their support for Thunberg but do not actually do anything to help.[65]
In July 2019, Agence France-Presse reported that OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) secretary-general Mohammed Barkindo “complained of what he called ‘unscientific’ attacks on the oil industry by climate change campaigners, calling them ‘perhaps the greatest threat to our industry going forward'”, and said he was apparently referring “to the recent wave of school strikes inspired by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg’s ‘Fridays for Future’ movement”.[66] Thunberg and other climate activists responded by calling his remarks a badge of honour.[67][68]
In the United States, opinion writer Tiana Lowe, of the Washington Examiner, stated that Thunberg’s “fame-seeking”, “stage-parents”, particularly her “fading opera starlet mother” who performed internationally, were “pimp(ing) her out” without regard for Thunberg’s alleged mental problems, which included Lowe’s long list of disabilities, by which Greta and her sister were claimed to be handicapped. By so doing, Lowe wrote, they were subjecting her to “child abuse.”[69]
Swedish opinion writer Paulina Neuding invoked mental health issues to question the idea that Thunberg should be leading climate change activism.[70] Thunberg has also been criticised by the Australian climate-change denier Andrew Bolt[71] after Thunberg announced she would travel to the United States in a carbon-zero yacht. Bolt said she had a cult following, calling her “freakishly influential”[72] for a “girl so young and with so many mental disorders”.[73]
Following Thunberg’s filing of a lawsuit against France, Germany and other countries for not being on track to meet the emission reduction targets they committed to in their Paris Agreement pledges, French president Emmanuel Macron criticized her, saying that “such radical positions (as held by Thunberg) antagonize our societies”. He added that “she should focus on those that are blocking, those that are the furthest”, and that “he doesn’t feel like either the French or the German governments are trying to block”. French secretary of state for the Ecological and Inclusive Transition Brune Poirson also criticized her, saying that “she doesn’t know what solutions she is putting forward”, adding that “you can’t mobilize with despair, even hate”.[74]
Criticism of attacks on Thunberg
By August 2019, Scientific American was reporting that Thunberg’s detractors have “launched personal attacks”, “bash (her) autism”, and “increasingly rely on ad hominem attacks to blunt her influence.”[75]
Banks’ comments outraged a number of MPs (Member of Parliament), celebrities and academics. Tanja Bueltmann, founder of EU Citizens’ Champion, said Banks had “invoked the drowning of a child” for his own amusement, and noted that most of those attacking Thunberg “are white middle-aged men from the right of the political spectrum”.[79] Writing in The Guardian, Gaby Hinsliff, said Thunberg has become “the new front in the Brexit culture war” arguing that the outrage generated by personal attacks on Thunberg by Brexiteers “gives them the welcome oxygen of publicity”.[80] British philosopher Julian Baggini said ‘thuggish’ personal criticisms of Thunberg are indicative of “a moral and intellectual bankruptcy”.[65]
Essayist Steve Silberman, writing in Vox, points out that being on the autism spectrum enables Thunberg to be fearless in her rhetoric.[81] In an interview with Suyin Haynes in Time magazine, she addressed the criticism she has received online saying: “It’s quite hilarious when the only thing people can do is mock you, or talk about your appearance or personality, as it means they have no argument or nothing else to say.”[82]
Misuse of her name
In late 2018, Ingmar Rentzhog, who claims to be one of the first to publicize Thunberg’s climate strike, asked her to become an unpaid youth advisor to his climate startup company. He then used her name and image without her knowledge or permission to raise millions for a WDHT for-profit subsidiary, We Don’t Have Time AB, of which Rentzhog is the chief executive officer.[83] Thunberg received no money from the company.[28] She terminated her volunteer advisor role with WDHT once she realised they were making money from her name, stating “[I am] not part of any organization… am absolutely independent… [and] do what I do completely for free.”[84]
List of speeches
Extinction Rebellion
In London in October 2018, she addressed the ‘Declaration of Rebellion’ organized by Extinction Rebellion opposite the Houses of Parliament. She said: “We’re facing an immediate unprecedented crisis that has never been treated as a crisis and our leaders are all acting like children. We need to wake up and change everything”.[44][85]
TEDxStockholm
On 24 November 2018, she spoke at TEDxStockholm.[12][86] She spoke about realizing, when she was eight years old, that climate change existed and wondering why it was not headline news on every channel, as if there was a world war going on. She said she did not go to school to become a climate scientist, as some suggested, because the science was done and only denial, ignorance, and inaction remained. Speculating that her children and grandchildren would ask her why they had not taken action in 2018 when there was still time, she concluded with “we can’t change the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.”[87]
COP24 summit
Thunberg addressed the COP24 United Nations climate change summit on 4 December 2018,[29] and also spoke before the plenary assembly on 12 December 2018.[88][89] During the summit, she also participated in a panel talk together with representatives of the We Don’t Have Time foundation, in which she talked about how the school strike began.[90]
Davos
On 23 January 2019, Thunberg arrived in Davos after a 32-hour train journey,[91] in contrast to the many delegates who arrived by up to 1,500 individual private jet flights,[92] to continue her climate campaign at the World Economic Forum.[93][94] She told a Davos panel “Some people, some companies, some decision makers in particular have known exactly what priceless values they have been sacrificing to continue making unimaginable amounts of money. I think many of you here today belong to that group of people.”[43]
Later in the week, she warned the global leaders that “I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if the house was on fire—because it is”.[40] She wrote in an article for The Guardian in January 2019: “According to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), we are less than 12 years away from not being able to undo our mistakes. In that time, unprecedented changes in all aspects of society need to have taken place, including a reduction of our CO
2 emissions by at least 50%”.[42]
European Economic and Social Committee
On 21 February 2019, she spoke at a conference of the European Economic and Social Committee and to European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker, where she said that to limit global warming to less than the two degrees C goal established at the Paris Agreement, the EU must reduce their CO
2 emissions by 80% by 2030, double the 40% goal set in Paris. “If we fail to do so” she said, “all that will remain of our political leaders’ legacy will be the greatest failure of human history.” Later, she joined 7,500 Belgian students in a climate protest in Brussels.[47][95]
Berlin
Thunberg speaking in front of the Brandenburg Gate on 29 March 2019
In the weekend 29–31 March 2019, Thunberg visited Berlin. She spoke in front of some 25,000 people near the Brandenburg Gate on 29 March, where she argued that “We live in a strange world where children must sacrifice their own education in order to protest against the destruction of their future. Where the people who have contributed the least to this crisis are the ones who are going to be affected the most.”[96] After the speech, Thunberg and fellow climate activist Luisa Neubauer visited the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and met with scientists there. On 30 March, Thunberg received the ‘Golden Camera‘ Special Award on Germany’s annual film and television award show. In her acceptance speech at the gala, Thunberg urged celebrities everywhere to use their influence and do their fair share of climate activism to help her.[97][98][99]
EU leaders
At an April 2019 meeting at the European Parliament in Strasbourg with MEPs and EU officials, Thunberg chided those present “for three emergency Brexit summits and no emergency summit regarding the breakdown of the climate and the environment”. Climate change discussions have not been dominant at EU summits because other issues have taken precedence.[100] She said the world is facing its “sixth mass extinction” and said: “We have not treated this crisis as a crisis; we see it as another problem that needs to be fixed. But it is so much more than that. It’s an existential crisis, more important than anything else.”[100][35]
Austrian World Summit R20
In May 2019, Thunberg met with Arnold Schwarzenegger, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, and Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen at the launch of a conference organised by Schwarzenegger to speed up progress toward the Paris Agreement.[101] Quoting the most recent IPCC report she said: “If we haven’t made the changes required by approximately the year 2030, we will probably set off an irreversible chain reaction beyond human control. Then we will pass a point of no return which will be catastrophic.” 17,000 people attended the event from 30 different countries.[102]
Prix Liberté Normandy: 2019 Freedom Prize
On 21 July 2019, Thunberg received the Normandy’s Freedom Prize. In her speech she said: “Yesterday I spent the day with the D-day veteran Charles Norman Shay at Omaha beach. It was a day I will never forget. Not only because of the unimaginable bravery and sacrifices made by those who gave their lives to defend the freedom and democracy of the world. But also because they managed to do the seemingly impossible possible. I think the least we can do to honour them is to stop destroying that same world that Charles, Léon and their friends and colleagues fought so hard to save for us.”[103]
U.S. Congress on climate change
On 18 September 2019, Thunberg appeared before the United States House of Representatives Select Committee on the Climate Crisis: “Voices Leading the Next Generation on the Global Climate Crisis” and delivered an eight sentence statement instead of offering testimony. She said: “My name is Greta Thunberg. I have not come to offer prepared remarks at this hearing. I am instead attaching my testimony. It is the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C [SR1.5] which was released on October 8, 2018. I am submitting this report as my testimony because I don’t want you to listen to me. I want you to listen to the scientists. And I want you to unite behind the science. And then I want you to take action.”[104]
New York City: 2019 Global Climate Strike
On 20 September 2019, Thunberg spoke to New York City’s contingent of the Global Climate Strike. The demonstration in New York City was one of hundreds around the world with millions of people taking part. Young people were joined by adults for the first time since the strikes began. Thunberg drew laughter when she described how the politicians that she met asked her for selfies and “tell us they really, really admire what we do yet have done nothing to address the climate crisis.” [105][106]
United Nations: Climate Action Summit 2019
On 23 September 2019, Thunberg addressed the assembled world leaders at the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit held in New York City. Accusing world leaders of stealing her dreams and her childhood by their inaction on climate change, she opened her speech to the General Assembly with an impassioned introduction, which was widely covered by the media.
“This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be standing here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to me for hope? How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”[107]
US President Donald Trump, who had attended the meeting for 10 minutes and then left, tweeted a video of her opening remarks and commented: “She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!”[108] Thunberg did not directly comment on Trump’s tweet but she did make a change to her Twitter bio wherein she described herself as “A very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future.”
Legal actions
Thunberg, et al, v. Argentina, et al
On 23 September 2019, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) hosted a press conference where Thunberg joined 15 other children (Ayakha Melithafa, Alexandria Villaseñor, Catarina Lorenzo, Carl Smith, et al) and together the group announced they had filed a lawsuit against five nations that are not on track to meet the emission reduction targets they committed to in their Paris Agreement pledges: Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, and Turkey.[109][110] The lawsuit is challenging the nations under the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child (specifically the right to life, health, and peace). If the complaint is successful, the countries will be asked to respond, but any suggestions are not legally binding.[111][112]
Honours and awards
Svenska Dagbladet: writing competition: Before starting her climate strike, Thunberg was one of the winners of Svenska Dagbladet‘s debate article writing competition on the climate for young people in May 2018.[24]
Children’s Climate Prize: In November 2018, about three months into her school climate strike, Thunberg was nominated for the Children’s Climate Prize, which is awarded by the Swedish electricity company Telge Energi. However, Thunberg declined to accept the award because many of the finalists would have to fly to Stockholm for the ceremony and a required meeting with one another.[113][114]
Fryshuset Scholarship: 2018 Young Role Model of the Year: Thunberg was awarded the Fryshuset scholarship of the Young Role Model of the Year.[115]
TimeMagazine: 2018 World’s 25 Most Influential Teenagers:Time magazine named Thunberg one of the world’s 25 most influential teenagers of 2018.[116]
Nobel Peace Prize Nominee: On 13 March 2019, two deputies of the Swedish parliament and three deputies of the Norwegian parliament nominated Thunberg as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. The nominating politicians explained their decision by arguing that global warming will be the cause of “wars, conflict and refugees” if nothing is done to halt it. Thunberg responded that she was “honoured and very grateful” for the nomination.[118] If Thunberg receives the Prize later this year, she will become the youngest person ever to receive it.[119]
Golden Kamera 2019: On 31 March 2019, Thunberg received the German Goldene Kamera Special Climate Protection award.[120]
Prix Liberté Normandy: 2019 Freedom Prize: On 1 April 2019, the Prix Liberté from France’s region Normandy was awarded to Thunberg, which she received in Caen on 21 July that year.[121] Thunberg is the first recipient of this new award, which was designed to honour a young person engaged in a fight for peace and freedom.[122] Thunberg said she would donate the $25,000 Euro prize money to four organisations working for climate justice and helping areas already affected by climate change.[103]
Fritt Ords Prize: On 12 April 2019, Thunberg shared the Norwegian Fritt Ords Prize, which celebrates freedom of speech, with the Nature and Youth organization. The conferring organization, Fritt Ord noted their determined committed activism even in the face of pervasive online and media harassment. Thunberg donated her share of the prize money to a lawsuit which seeks to halt Norwegian oil exploration in the Arctic.[123]
TimeMagazine: 100 Most Influential People of 2019: In April 2019, Time magazine named Thunberg as one of the 100 most influential people of 2019.[124] In the same month, the Chilean-based organization, Fundación Milarepa para el Diálogo con Asia, headed by Mario Aguilar of the University of St Andrews, announced that Thunberg had been selected as the recipient of the organization’s Laudato Si’ Prize.[125]
Doctor Honoris Causa: On 16 May 2019, the University of Mons announced it had awarded a doctor honoris causa (honorary degree) to Thunberg. The doctoral diploma and insignia will be bestowed at the official opening of the university’s 2019-2020 academic year on 10 October 2019.[126]
Thunberg mural: In May 2019, artist Jody Thomas painted a 50-foot-high (15 m) mural of Thunberg on a wall in Bristol. It portrays the bottom half of her face as if under rising sea water.[127]
Time Magazine: In May 2019, Thunberg was featured on the cover of Time magazine where she was described as a role model,[82] and one of the “next generation leaders”.[6]
Vice Documentary: In May 2019, Vice released a 30-minute documentary, Make the World Greta Again. It features interviews with a number of youth protest leaders in Europe.[128][129]
Amnesty International: Ambassador of Conscience Award: On 7 June 2019, Amnesty International announced that it will give Thunberg their most prestigious award, the Ambassador of Conscience Award, to Thunberg for her leadership in the climate movement. Thunberg then said the prize equally belongs to everyone who has taken part in the Fridays for Future Movement in school strike for climate.[130]On 17 September 2019, Thunberg received the award during a ceremony that took place in Washington D.C. The activist said the award is “for all those millions of people, young people, around the world who together make up the movement called Friday’s for Future.”[131][132]
Royal Scottish Geographical Society: Geddes Environment Medal: On 12 July 2019, Thunberg was awarded the Geddes Environment Medal by the Royal Scottish Geographical Society,[133] which automatically granted her its Honorary Fellowship.[134]
British Vogue: The September 2019 issue of British Vogue magazine’s cover featured Thunberg (along with fifteen women); the cover was created by guest editor Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.[135]
Right Livelihood Award: On 25 September 2019, Thunberg was named as one of four winners of the 2019 Right Livelihood Award, known as Sweden’s alternative Nobel Prize. Thunberg won the award “for inspiring and amplifying political demands for urgent climate action reflecting scientific facts,” the Right Livelihood Foundation said in a statement.[136]
Juliana v. United States, a lawsuit by 21 youths against the United States for significantly harming their right to life and liberty, and seeks to force the government to adopt methods for reducing greenhouse gas emissions
Severn Cullis-Suzuki – as a minor was also a notable environmental activist in 1992
Bjørn Lomborg (Danish: [pjɶɐ̯n ˈlɒmpɒːˀʊ̯]; born 6 January 1965) is a Danish author and President of his think tank, Copenhagen Consensus Center. He is former director of the Danish government’s Environmental Assessment Institute (EAI) in Copenhagen. He became internationally known for his best-selling and controversial book, The Skeptical Environmentalist (2001), in which he argues that many of the costly measures and actions adopted by scientists and policy makers to meet the challenges of global warming will ultimately have minimal impact on the world’s rising temperature.[1]
In 2002, Lomborg and the Environmental Assessment Institute founded the Copenhagen Consensus, a project-based conference where prominent economists sought to establish priorities for advancing global welfare using methods based on the theory of welfare economics.
In 2009, Business Insider cited Lomborg as one of “The 10 Most-Respected Global Warming Skeptics”.[2] While Lomborg campaigned against the Kyoto Protocol and other measures to cut carbon emissions in the short-term, he argued for adaptation to short-term temperature rises, and for spending money on research and development for longer-term environmental solutions. His issue is not with the reality of climate change, but rather with the economic and political approaches being taken (or not taken) to meet the challenges of that climate change. He is a strong advocate for focusing attention and resources on what he perceives as far more pressing world problems, such as AIDS, malaria and malnutrition.[3][4] In his critique of the 2012 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, Lomborg stated: “Global warming is by no means our main environmental threat.”[5]
Lomborg lectured in statistics in the Department of Political Science at the University of Aarhus as an assistant professor (1994–1996) and associate professor (1997–2005). He left the university in February 2005 and in May of that year became an adjunct professor in Policy-making, Scientific Knowledge and the Role of Experts at the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School.[6]
Later, Lomborg’s interests shifted to the use of statistics in the environmental arena. In 1998, Lomborg published four essays about the state of the environment in the leading Danish newspaper Politiken, which according to him “resulted in a firestorm debate spanning over 400 articles in major metropolitan newspapers.”[8] This led to the Skeptical Environmentalist, whose English translation was published as a work in environmental economics by Cambridge University Press in 2001. He later edited Global Crises, Global Solutions, which presented the first conclusions of the Copenhagen Consensus, published in 2004 by the Cambridge University Press. In 2007, he authored a book entitled Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming.
In March 2002, the newly elected center-rightprime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, appointed Lomborg to run Denmark’s new Environmental Assessment Institute (EAI). On 22 June 2004, Lomborg announced his decision to resign from this post to go back to the University of Aarhus,[9] saying his work at the Institute was done and that he could better serve the public debate from the academic sector.
Lomborg has created several short videos for the educational website Prager University, a US-based conservative think tank founded by talk show host Dennis Prager. His videos focus on environmental science.[10]
Lomborg and the Environmental Assessment Institute founded the Copenhagen Consensus in 2002, which seeks to establish priorities for advancing global welfare using methodologies based on the theory of welfare economics. A panel of prominent economists was assembled to evaluate and rank a series of problems every four years. The project was funded largely by the Danish government and was co-sponsored by The Economist. A book summarizing the conclusions of the economists’ first assessment, Global Crises, Global Solutions, edited by Lomborg, was published in October 2004 by Cambridge University Press.
In 2006, Lomborg became director of the newly established Copenhagen Consensus Center, a Danish government-funded institute intended to build on the mandate of the EAI, and expand on the original Copenhagen Consensus conference.[11] Denmark withdrew its funding in 2012 and the Center faced imminent closure.[12][13] Lomborg left the country and reconstituted the Center as a non-profit organization in the United States.[14][15] The Center was based out of a “Neighborhood Parcel Shipping Center” in Lowell, Massachusetts, though Lomborg himself was based in Prague in the Czech Republic.[16] In 2015, Lomborg described the Center’s funding as “a little more than $1m a year…from private donations”,[13] of which Lomborg himself was paid $775,000 in 2012.[16]
In April 2015, it was announced that an alliance between the Copenhagen Consensus Center and the University of Western Australia would see the establishment of the Australian Consensus Centre, a new policy research center at the UWA Business School. The University described the Center’s goals as a “focus on applying an economic lens to proposals to achieve good for Australia, the region and the world, prioritizing those initiatives which produce the most social value per dollar spent.”.[17] This appointment came under intense scrutiny, particularly when leaked documents revealed that the Australian government had approached UWA and offered to fund the Consensus Centre, information subsequently confirmed by a senior UWA lecturer.[18] Reports indicated that Prime Minister Tony Abbott‘s office was directly responsible for Lomborg’s elevation.[19] $4 million of the total funding for the Center was to be provided by the Australian federal government,[13] with UWA not contributing any funding for the centre.[20]
On 8 May 2015, UWA cancelled the contract for hosting the Australian Consensus Centre as “the proposed centre was untenable and lacked academic support”.[21][22] The Australian federal education minister, Christopher Pyne, said that he would find another university to host the ACC.
In July 2015, Flinders University senior management began quietly canvassing its staff about a plan to host the renamed Lomborg Consensus Centre at the University, likely in the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences. A week later the story was broken on Twitter by the NTEU (National Tertiary Education Union)[23] and Scott Ludlam.[24] The story appeared the next day in The Australian,[25] but described as “academic conversations” with no mention of Bjorn Lomborg’s involvement and portrayed as a grassroots desire for the Centre by the University.[26] The following week, a story appeared in The Guardian quoting two Flinders University academics and an internal document demonstrating staff’s withering rejection of the idea.[27] Flinders staff and students vowed to fight against the establishment of any Centre or any partnership with Lomborg,[28] citing his lack of scientific credibility, his lack of academic legitimacy and the political nature of the process of establishing the Centre with the Abbott federal government. The Australian Youth Climate Coalition and 350.orglaunched a national campaign to support staff and students in their rejection of Lomborg.[29]
On 21 October 2015, education minister Simon Birmingham told a senate committee the offered funding had been withdrawn.[30] It was subsequently unclear whether the Australian Government would honour its original commitment and transfer the funds directly to the Centre to cover the costs incurred, in particular given Lomborg’s unique expertise and contribution.
Several of Bjørn Lomborg’s articles in newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal and The Telegraph have been checked by Climate Feedback, a worldwide network of scientists who collectively assess the credibility of influential climate change media coverage. The Climate Feedback reviewers assessed that the scientific credibility ranged between “low” and “very low”. The Climate Feedback reviewers come to the conclusion that in one case Lomborg “practices cherry-picking”,[31] in a second case he “had reached his conclusions through cherry-picking from a small subset of the evidence, misrepresenting the results of existing studies, and relying on flawed reasoning”,[32] in a third case “[his] article [is in] blatant disagreement with available scientific evidence, while the author does not offer adequate evidence to support his statements”,[33] and, in a fourth case, “The author, Bjorn Lomborg, cherry-picks this specific piece of research and uses it in support of a broad argument against the value of climate policy. He also misrepresents the Paris Agreement to downplay its potential to curb future climate change.”[34]
In 2001, he attained significant attention by publishing The Skeptical Environmentalist, a controversial book whose main thesis is that many of the most-publicized claims and predictions on environmental issues are wrong.
In the chapter on climate change in The Skeptical Environmentalist, he states: “This chapter accepts the reality of man-made global warming but questions the way in which future scenarios have been arrived at and finds that forecasts of climate change of 6 degrees by the end of the century are not plausible”.[35]Cost–benefit analyses, calculated by the Copenhagen Consensus, ranked climate mitigation initiatives lowest on a list of international development initiatives when first done in 2004.[36] In a 2010 interview with the New Statesman, Lomborg summarized his position on climate change: “Global warming is real – it is man-made and it is an important problem. But it is not the end of the world.”[37]
Formal accusations of scientific dishonesty
After the publication of The Skeptical Environmentalist, Lomborg was formally accused of scientific dishonesty by a group of environmental scientists, who brought a total of three complaints against him to the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD), a body under Denmark’s Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MSTI). Lomborg was asked whether he regarded the book as a “debate” publication, and thereby not under the purview of the DCSD, or as a scientific work; he chose the latter, clearing the way for the inquiry that followed.[38] The charges claimed that The Skeptical Environmentalist contained deliberately misleading data and flawed conclusions. Due to the similarity of the complaints, the DCSD decided to proceed on the three cases under one investigation.
In January 2003, the DCSD released a ruling that sent a mixed message, finding the book to be scientifically dishonest through misrepresentation of scientific facts, but Lomborg himself not guilty due to his lack of expertise in the fields in question.[39] That February, Lomborg filed a complaint against the decision with the MSTI, which had oversight over the DCSD. In December, 2003, the Ministry annulled the DCSD decision, citing procedural errors, including lack of documentation of errors in the book, and asked the DCSD to re-examine the case. In March 2004, the DCSD formally decided not to act further on the complaints, reasoning that renewed scrutiny would, in all likelihood, result in the same conclusion.[38][40]
Response of the academic community
The original DCSD decision about Lomborg provoked a petition[41] signed by 287 Danish academics, primarily social scientists, who criticised the DCSD for evaluating the book as a work of science, whereas the petitioners considered it clearly an opinion piece by a non-scientist.[42][43] The Danish Minister of Science, Technology, and Innovation then asked the Danish Research Agency (DRA) to form an independent working group to review DCSD practices.[44] In response to this, another group of Danish scientists collected over 600 signatures, primarily from the medical and natural sciences community, to support the continued existence of the DCSD and presented their petition to the DRA.[42]
The rulings of the Danish authorities in 2003–2004 left Lomborg’s critics frustrated. Lomborg claimed vindication as a result of MSTI’s decision to set aside the original finding of DCSD.
The Lomborg Deception, a book by Howard Friel, claims to offer a “careful analysis” of the ways in which Lomborg has “selectively used (and sometimes distorted) the available evidence”,[46] and that the sources Lomborg provides in the footnotes do not support—and in some cases are in direct contradiction to—Lomborg’s assertions in the text of the book;[47] Lomborg has denied these claims in a 27-page argument-by-argument response.[48] Friel has written a reply to this response, in which he admits two errors, but otherwise in general rejects Lomborg’s arguments.[49]
Arthur Rörsch, Thomas Frello, Ray Soper and Adriaan De Lange published an article in 2005 in the Journal of Information Ethics,[50] in which they concluded that most criticism against Lomborg was unjustified, and that the scientific community misused its authority to suppress Lomborg.
The claim that the accusations against Lomborg were unjustified was challenged in the next issue of Journal of Information Ethics[51] by Kåre Fog, one of the original plaintiffs. Fog reasserted his contention that, despite the ministry’s decision, most of the accusations against Lomborg were valid. He also rejected what he called “the Galileo hypothesis”, which he describes as the conception that Lomborg is just a brave young man confronting old-fashioned opposition. Fog and other scientists have continued to criticize Lomborg for what one called “a history of misrepresenting” climate science.[52][53]
In 2014, the government of Australia offered the University of Western Australia $4 million to establish a “consensus centre” with Lomborg as director. The university accepted the offer, setting off a firestorm of opposition from its faculty and students and from climate scientists around the world. In April 2015 the university reversed the decision and rejected the offer. The government continued to seek a sponsor for the proposed institution.[54] On 21 October 2015 the offered funding was withdrawn.[30] (For further details see the “Copenhagen Consensus” sub-section of the “Career” section, above.)
Lomborg’s approach evolved in directions more compatible with action to restrain climate change. In April 2015 he gained further attention when he issued a call for all subsidies to be removed from fossil fuels on the basis that “a disproportionate share of the subsidies goes to the middle class and the rich”…making fossil fuel so “inexpensive that consumption increases, thus exacerbating global warming”.[55] In publications such as the Wall Street Journal he argued that the most productive use of resources would be a massive increase in funding for research to make renewable energy economically competitive with fossil fuels.[56]
Personal life
Lomborg is gay and a vegetarian.[57] As a public figure he has been a participant in information campaigns in Denmark about homosexuality, and states that “Being a public gay is to my view a civic responsibility. It’s important to show that the width of the gay world cannot be described by a tired stereotype, but goes from leather gays on parade-wagons to suit-and-tie yuppies on the direction floor, as well as everything in between”.[58]
The Stars of Europe (category: Agenda Setters) – BusinessWeek (17 June 2002): “No matter what they think of his views, nobody denies that Bjorn Lomborg has shaken the environmental movement to its core.”[60]
The 2004 TIME 100 (in Scientists & Thinkers) – TIME (26 April 2004): “Our list of the most influential people in the world today: He just might be the Martin Luther of the environmental movement.”[61]
After the release of The Skeptical Environmentalist in 2001, Lomborg was subjected to intense scrutiny and criticism in the media, where his scientific qualifications and integrity were both attacked and defended. The verdict of the Danish Committees for Scientific Dishonesty fueled this debate and brought it into the spotlight of international mass media. By the end of 2003 Lomborg had become an international celebrity, with frequent appearances on radio, television and print media around the world. He is also a regular contributor to Project Syndicate since 2005.
Scientific American published strong criticism of Lomborg’s book. Lomborg responded on his own website, quoting the article at such length that Scientific American threatened to sue for copyright infringement. Lomborg eventually removed the rebuttal from his website; it was later published in PDF format on Scientific American‘s site.[67] The magazine also printed a response to the rebuttal.[68]
The Economist defended Lomborg, claiming the panel of experts that had criticised Lomborg in Scientific American was both biased and did not actually counter Lomborg’s book. The Economist argued that the panel’s opinion had come under no scrutiny at all, and that Lomborg’s responses had not been reported.[69]
Penn & Teller: Bullshit! — the U.S. Showtime television programme featured an episode entitled “Environmental Hysteria” in which Lomborg criticised what he claimed was environmentalists’ refusal to accept a cost-benefit analysis of environmental questions, and stressed the need to prioritise some issues above others.[70]
Rolling Stone stated, “Lomborg pulls off the remarkable feat of welding the techno-optimism of the Internet age with a lefty’s concern for the fate of the planet.”[71]
Lomborg, Bjørn (ed.), How to Spend $50 Billion to Make the World a Better Place, Cambridge University Press, 2006. ISBN978-0-521-68571-9
Lomborg, Bjørn (ed.), Solutions for the World’s Biggest Problems – Costs and Benefits, Cambridge University Press, 2007. ISBN978-0-521-71597-3, offers an “… overview of twenty-three of the world’s biggest problems relating to the environment, governance, economics, and health and population. Leading economists provide a short survey of the state-of-the-art analysis and sketch out some policy solutions for which they provide cost-benefit ratios.”
Lomborg, Bjørn, Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming, 2007, argues against taking immediate and “drastic” action to curb greenhouse gases while simultaneously stating that “Global warming is happening. It’s a serious and important problem …”. He argues that “… the cost and benefits of the proposed measures against global warming. … is the worst way to spend our money. Climate change is a 100-year problem — we should not try to fix it in 10 years.”
Lomborg, Bjørn, Smart Solutions to Climate Change, Comparing Costs and Benefits, Cambridge University Press, November 2010, ISBN978-0-521-76342-4.[73][74]
Lomborg, Bjørn, The Nobel Laureates Guide to the Smartest Targets for the World 2016–2030, Copenhagen Consensus Center, April 2015. ISBN978-1940003115
Lomborg, Bjørn (editor), Prioritizing Development: A Cost Benefit Analysis of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals Cambridge University Press 2018 ISBN1108415458
Bjørn Lomborg released a documentary feature film, Cool It, on 12 November 2010 in the US.[75][76] The film in part explicitly challenged Al Gore‘s 2006 Oscar-winning environmental awareness documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, and was frequently presented by the media in that light, as in the Wall Street Journal headline, “Controversial ‘Cool It’ Documentary Takes on ‘An Inconvenient Truth’.”[77][78] The film received a media critic collective rating of 51% from Rotten Tomatoes[79] and 61% from Metacritic.[80]The Atlantic review by Clive Crook, who describes himself in the article as a “friend” of Lomborg’s and having taken “his side in the controversy that followed the publication of the Skeptical Environmentalist–a terrific book,” called it “An urgent, intelligent, and entertaining account of the climate policy debate, with a strong focus on cost-effective solutions.”[81]
Story 4: WeWork Initial Public Offer Postponed Over Big Losses — Pushing For CEO Adam Neumann Removal — Videos
Kara Swisher: WeWork has gotten out of control
Some WeWork board members discuss replacing CEO Adam Neumann
WeWork’s business model depends on raising more money: WSJ reporter
SoftBank has been throwing money around: WSJ reporter Liz Hoffman
SoftBank CEO: We’ve invested around $65-$70 billion
Masa Son on SoftBank’s WeWork Investment
WeWork’s board is responsible for CEO Neumann’s conflicts, says Charles Elson
Adam Neumann, the sometimes over the top chief executive of the company that owns WeWork, is facing a possible coup by investors unhappy with the shared office space startup’s widening losses and his grip over the firm.
Japan‘s SoftBank, the biggest investor in WeWork’s parent, We Co, is exploring how to replace Neumann, four people familiar with the matter said on Sunday.
The plan to ouster Neuman would have support from some on the We company board of directors, the sources said. The exact number of directors opposed to Neumann is not clear, reports the Wall Street Journal.
One option that SoftBank is considering is asking Neumann to serve as interim chief executive officer while a headhunting firm finds an outside replacement, one of the sources said.
A WeWork location (pictured above) in Manhattan’s financial district
No challenge to Neumann has yet been tabled, the sources said. A We board meeting will be held this week, and the issue of his leadership could be raised then, according to the sources.
The possible ouster comes after We put off its initial public offering last week, with investors unhappy over losses, as well as Neumann, who was alleged to have smoked marijuana with friends on a private jet flight from New York to Israel, reports the Journal.
The plane’s operator, after discovering pot concealed in a cereal box for the return flight, was so upset that Neumann was ditched and had to find another flight back, the Journal reports.
Neumann has not only been a standout for co-founding WeWork with with Miguel McKelvey nine years ago, he’s also been known for his energetic style and penchant for excess.
Combined with his entrepreneurial skill and and a willingness to take risks, Neumann helped WeWork rake in more than $2 billion in annual revenue to become the country’s most valuable startups.
His style, however, has come under fire for mounting problems at WeWork. Investor concerns include special voting shares that Neumann holds, allowing him to dismiss dissident board directors and shoot down challenges to his authority.
It was a bad sign for relations between SoftBank and WeWork when Neumann last week passed on a meeting of executives backed by the bank and organized by its CEO Masayoshi Son (pictured above)
In a sign of souring relations between SoftBank and WeWork, Neumann did not participate in a meeting of executives of companies backed by SoftBank that took place in Pasadena, California, last week.
The gathering was organized by SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, according to two people familiar with the matter.
SoftBank had been hoping boost profits to woo investors for its second $108 billion ‘Vision Fund.’ But the postponement of We’s IPO last week derailed that plan.
The bank already was sore that it had invested in We at a $47 billion valuation in January, only to see it drop to as low as $10 billion this month, due to stock market investor skepticism, Reuters reported.
Venture capital firm Benchmark Capital, another big investor in We, would also like him to step aside, one of the sources said.
Benchmark, SoftBank and Chinese private equity firm Hony Capital each have one representative on We Company’s seven-member board, that includes Neumann.
And then there’s retired Goldman Sachs investment banker Mark Schwartz, an unaffiliated member of We’s board, previously sat on SoftBank’s board.
Hony Capital’s position on whether Neumann should remain CEO could not be immediately determined.
The sources asked not to be identified because the matter is confidential.
We and SoftBank declined to comment, while Neumann, Schwartz, Benchmark Capital and Hony Capital could not be immediately reached for comment.
Were a board challenge against Neumann to prove successful, it could end up follwoing what happened to Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick, who resigned as CEO of the ride-hailing start-up in 2017 after facing a rebellion from his board over a string of scandals, including allegations of enabling a chauvinistic and toxic work culture.
Uber replaced Kalanick with an outsider, former Expedia Group Inc CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, and completed its IPO last May.
Were a board challenge against Neumann to prove successful, it could follow what ended up happening to Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick (pictured above), who resigned as CEO of the ride-hailing start-up in 2017
Uber replaced Kalanick with an outsider, former Expedia Group Inc CEO Dara Khosrowshahi (picture above), and completed its IPO last May
It is not uncommon for founders of fast-growing start-ups to be eccentric and control their companies tightly, even as they seek to attract stock market investors.
Neumann, however, has been criticized by investors and corporate governance experts for arrangements that went beyond the typical practice of having majority voting control through special categories of shares.
These included giving his estate a major say in his replacement as CEO, and tying the voting power of shares to how much he donates to charitable causes.
Neumann pictured above with his wife Rebekah, who at one time was part of a plan to help pick his successor. The pan was scrapped following criticism by potential investors
Neumann also entered into several transactions with We over the years, making the company a tenant in some of his properties and charging it rent. He has also secured a $500 million credit line from banks using company stock as collateral.
Following criticism by potential investors, Neumann agreed to some concessions without relinquishing majority control. He agreed to give We Company any profit he receives from real estate deals he has entered in to with the New York-based start-up.
No member of Neumann’s family will be on the company´s board and any successor will be selected by the board, scrapping a plan for his wife and co-founder, Rebekah Neumann, to help pick the successor.
WeWork coup: Investors plan to force the startup’s chief Adam Neumann out after its IPO was postponed amid big losses and anger over his tight grip on the company and news that he smoked pot on a private plane
Japan’s SoftBank, the biggest investor in WeWork’s owner, We Co, is exploring ways to replace the firm’s head, Adam Neumann
Softbank’s move to ouster Neumann comes after We cancelled its IPO last week, following pushback from investors over widening losses
It’s also revealed that Neumann smoked marijuana with friends on a private jet to Israel that ditched him on the return after discovering cannabis on the plane
Investors aren’t happy either with Neumann’s control over the startup. He can dismiss dissident board members and shoot down challenges to his authority
Frictions were noticeable when Neumann passed on a meeting of executives of companies backed by SoftBank that took place in Pasadena, California, last week
We’s last potential valuation was $10 billion, down from $47 billion in January, under pressure from investor skeptism
PUBLISHED: 10:45 EDT, 23 September 2019 | UPDATED: 12:08 EDT, 23 September 2019
Adam Neumann, the sometimes over the top chief executive of the company that owns WeWork, is facing a possible coup by investors unhappy with the shared office space startup’s widening losses and his grip over the firm.
Japan‘s SoftBank, the biggest investor in WeWork’s parent, We Co, is exploring how to replace Neumann, four people familiar with the matter said on Sunday.
The plan to ouster Neuman would have support from some on the We company board of directors, the sources said. The exact number of directors opposed to Neumann is not clear, reports the Wall Street Journal.
One option that SoftBank is considering is asking Neumann to serve as interim chief executive officer while a headhunting firm finds an outside replacement, one of the sources said.
+6
A WeWork location (pictured above) in Manhattan’s financial district
WeWork slashes IPO valuation to under $20 billion
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No challenge to Neumann has yet been tabled, the sources said. A We board meeting will be held this week, and the issue of his leadership could be raised then, according to the sources.
The possible ouster comes after We put off its initial public offering last week, with investors unhappy over losses, as well as Neumann, who was alleged to have smoked marijuana with friends on a private jet flight from New York to Israel, reports the Journal.
The plane’s operator, after discovering pot concealed in a cereal box for the return flight, was so upset that Neumann was ditched and had to find another flight back, the Journal reports.
Neumann has not only been a standout for co-founding WeWork with with Miguel McKelvey nine years ago, he’s also been known for his energetic style and penchant for excess.
Combined with his entrepreneurial skill and and a willingness to take risks, Neumann helped WeWork rake in more than $2 billion in annual revenue to become the country’s most valuable startups.
His style, however, has come under fire for mounting problems at WeWork. Investor concerns include special voting shares that Neumann holds, allowing him to dismiss dissident board directors and shoot down challenges to his authority.
+6
It was a bad sign for relations between SoftBank and WeWork when Neumann last week passed on a meeting of executives backed by the bank and organized by its CEO Masayoshi Son (pictured above)
In a sign of souring relations between SoftBank and WeWork, Neumann did not participate in a meeting of executives of companies backed by SoftBank that took place in Pasadena, California, last week.
The gathering was organized by SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, according to two people familiar with the matter.
SoftBank had been hoping boost profits to woo investors for its second $108 billion ‘Vision Fund.’ But the postponement of We’s IPO last week derailed that plan.
The bank already was sore that it had invested in We at a $47 billion valuation in January, only to see it drop to as low as $10 billion this month, due to stock market investor skepticism, Reuters reported.
Venture capital firm Benchmark Capital, another big investor in We, would also like him to step aside, one of the sources said.
Benchmark, SoftBank and Chinese private equity firm Hony Capital each have one representative on We Company’s seven-member board, that includes Neumann.
And then there’s retired Goldman Sachs investment banker Mark Schwartz, an unaffiliated member of We’s board, previously sat on SoftBank’s board.
Hony Capital’s position on whether Neumann should remain CEO could not be immediately determined.
The sources asked not to be identified because the matter is confidential.
We and SoftBank declined to comment, while Neumann, Schwartz, Benchmark Capital and Hony Capital could not be immediately reached for comment.
Were a board challenge against Neumann to prove successful, it could end up follwoing what happened to Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick, who resigned as CEO of the ride-hailing start-up in 2017 after facing a rebellion from his board over a string of scandals, including allegations of enabling a chauvinistic and toxic work culture.
Uber replaced Kalanick with an outsider, former Expedia Group Inc CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, and completed its IPO last May.
Uber CEO Kalanick resigned over harassment scandal in 2017
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Were a board challenge against Neumann to prove successful, it could follow what ended up happening to Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick (pictured above), who resigned as CEO of the ride-hailing start-up in 2017
+6
Uber replaced Kalanick with an outsider, former Expedia Group Inc CEO Dara Khosrowshahi (picture above), and completed its IPO last May
It is not uncommon for founders of fast-growing start-ups to be eccentric and control their companies tightly, even as they seek to attract stock market investors.
Neumann, however, has been criticized by investors and corporate governance experts for arrangements that went beyond the typical practice of having majority voting control through special categories of shares.
These included giving his estate a major say in his replacement as CEO, and tying the voting power of shares to how much he donates to charitable causes.
+6
Neumann pictured above with his wife Rebekah, who at one time was part of a plan to help pick his successor. The pan was scrapped following criticism by potential investors
Neumann also entered into several transactions with We over the years, making the company a tenant in some of his properties and charging it rent. He has also secured a $500 million credit line from banks using company stock as collateral.
Following criticism by potential investors, Neumann agreed to some concessions without relinquishing majority control. He agreed to give We Company any profit he receives from real estate deals he has entered in to with the New York-based start-up.
No member of Neumann’s family will be on the company´s board and any successor will be selected by the board, scrapping a plan for his wife and co-founder, Rebekah Neumann, to help pick the successor.
Story 1: President Trump Approved Sending U.S. Troops To Bolster Saudi Arabia’s Air and Missile Defenses — Videos
Pentagon announces troop deployment to Saudi Arabia
US deploys troops to Saudi Arabia
PBS NewsHour full episode September 20, 2019
Pentagon briefs Trump on military options against Iran
POLL: Just 13% Support Trump’s War For Saudi Arabia
Iran Attack on Saudi Arabia Oil Not Slowing Aramco IPO
Saudi Arabia unveils new strategic drone program ‘Saqr 1’
Did Satellites Spot a Secret Drone Hangar in Saudi Arabia?
United States sending troops to bolster Saudi defenses after attack
by Reuters
Friday, 20 September 2019 23:57 GMT
By Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali
U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday approved sending American troops to bolster Saudi Arabia’s air and missile defenses after the largest-ever attack on the kingdom’s oil facilities, which Washington has squarely blamed on Iran.
The Pentagon said the deployment would involve a moderate number of troops – not numbering thousands – and would be primarily defensive in nature. It also detailed plans to expedite delivery of military equipment to both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Reuters has previously reported that the Pentagon was considering sending anti-missile batteries, drones and more fighter jets. The United States is also considering keeping an aircraft carrier in the region indefinitely.
“In response to the kingdom’s request, the president has approved the deployment of U.S. forces, which will be defensive in nature and primarily focused on air and missile defense,” U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said at a news briefing.
“We will also work to accelerate the delivery of military equipment to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the UAE to enhance their ability to defend themselves.”
The Pentagon’s late Friday announcement appeared to close the door to any imminent decision to wage retaliatory strikes against Iran following the attack, which rattled global markets and exposed major gaps in Saudi Arabia’s air defenses.
Trump said earlier on Friday that he believed his military restraint so far showed “strength,” as he instead imposed another round of economic sanctions on Tehran.
“Because the easiest thing I could do, ‘Okay, go ahead. Knock out 15 different major things in Iran.’ … But I’m not looking to do that if I can,” Trump told reporters at the White House.
But the deployment could further aggravate Iran, which has responded to previous U.S. troop deployments this year with apprehension. It denies responsibility for the attack on Saudi Arabia.
Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi movement, which has been battling a Saudi-led military coalition that includes the UAE, has claimed responsibility for the strikes.
ATTACK LAUNCHED FROM IRAN?
Relations between the United States and Iran have deteriorated sharply since Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear accord last year and reimposed sanctions on its oil exports.
For months, Iranian officials issued veiled threats, saying that if Tehran were blocked from exporting oil, other countries would not be able to do so either.
However, Iran has denied any role in a series of attacks in recent months, including bombings of tankers in the Gulf and strikes claimed by the Houthis.
U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, have fingered southwest Iran as the staging ground for the attack, an assessment based at least in part on still-classified imagery showing Iran appearing to prepare an aerial strike.
They have dismissed Houthi claims that the attacks originated in Yemen.
One of the officials told Reuters the strike may have been authorized by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The United States is wary of getting dragged into another conflict in the Middle East. It has troops positioned in Syria and Iraq, two countries where Iranian influence is strong and Iran-backed forces operate openly.
U.S. officials fear Iran’s proxies might attempt to strike American troops there, something that could easily trigger a broader regional conflict.
Saudi Arabia has said it was attacked by a total of 25 drones and missiles, including Iranian Delta Wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and “Ya Ali” cruise missiles.
U.S. Marine General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said officials were still hammering out the best array of capabilities to defend Saudi Arabia, noting the difficulty combating a swarm of drones.
“No single system is going to be able to defend against a threat like that, but a layered system of defensive capabilities would mitigate the risk of swarms of drones or other attacks that may come from Iran,” Dunford said. (Reporting by Phil Stewart, Idrees Ali, Eric Beech and Mohammad Zargham Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Cynthia Osterman)
A whistleblower complaint about President Trump made by an intelligence official centers on Ukraine, according to two people familiar with the matter, which has set off a struggle between Congress and the executive branch.
The complaint involved communications with a foreign leader and a “promise” that Trump made, which was so alarming that a U.S. intelligence official who had worked at the White House went to the inspector general of the intelligence community, two former U.S. officials said.
Two and a half weeks before the complaint was filed, Trump spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a comedian and political newcomer who was elected in a landslide in May.
The Democrats’ investigation was launched earlier this month, before revelations that an intelligence official had lodged a complaint with the inspector general. The Washington Post first reported on Wednesday that the complaint had to do with a “promise” that Trump made when communicating with a foreign leader.
Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) on Sept. 19 said a whistleblower complaint to the intelligence community met the threshold requiring notification of Congress. (JM Rieger/The Washington Post)
On Thursday, the inspector general testified behind closed doors to members of the House Intelligence Committee about the whistleblower’s complaint.
Over the course of three hours, Michael Atkinson repeatedly declined to discuss with members the content of the complaint, saying he was not authorized to do so.
He and the members spent much of their time discussing the process Atkinson followed, the statute governing his investigation of the complaint and the nature of an “urgent concern” that he believed it represented, according to a person familiar with the briefing, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity.
“He was being excruciatingly careful about the language he used,” the person said.
What is a whistleblower: How to be a journalist
Whistleblowers such as Daniel Ellsberg take personal risks to expose wrongdoing. (The Washington Post)
Atkinson made clear that he disagreed with a lawyer for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, who had contradicted the inspector general and found that the whistleblower complaint did not meet the statutory definition of an urgent concern because it involved a matter not under the DNI’s jurisdiction.
Atkinson told lawmakers that he disagreed with that analysis — meaning he felt the matter was under the DNI’s purview — and also that it was urgent “in the common understanding of the word,” the person said.
Atkinson told the committee that the complaint did not stem from just one conversation, according to two people familiar with his testimony.
Following the meeting, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), the chairman of the committee, warned of legal action if intelligence officials did not share the whistleblower complaint.
Schiff described acting director of national intelligence Joseph Maguire’s refusal to share the complaint with Congress as “unprecedented” and said he understood the Justice Department was involved in that decision.
“We cannot get an answer to the question about whether the White House is also involved in preventing this information from coming to Congress,” Schiff said, adding: “We’re determined to do everything we can to determine what this urgent concern is to make sure that the national security is protected.”
Someone, Schiff said, “is trying to manipulate the system to keep information about an urgent matter from the Congress … There certainly are a lot of indications that it was someone at a higher pay grade than the director of national intelligence.”
Trump has denied doing anything improper. In a tweet Thursday morning, the president wrote, “Virtually anytime I speak on the phone to a foreign leader, I understand that there may be many people listening from various U.S. agencies, not to mention those from the other country itself.
“Knowing all of this, is anybody dumb enough to believe that I would say something inappropriate with a foreign leader while on such a potentially ‘heavily populated’ call,” Trump wrote.
In a Sept. 17 letter to intelligence committee leaders, Atkinson wrote that he and Maguire “are at an impasse” over how the whistleblower could contact the congressional committees. Ordinarily, a matter of urgent concern that the inspector general deems credible is supposed to be forwarded to the intelligence oversight panels in the House and Senate.
But Maguire prevented Atkinson from doing so, according to correspondence that has been made public. Atkinson wrote that he had requested permission from Maguire to inform the congressional intelligence committees about the general subject matter of the complaint, but was denied.
Maguire, Atkinson wrote, had consulted with the Justice Department, which determined that the law didn’t require disclosing the complaint to the committee because it didn’t involve a member of the intelligence community or “an intelligence activity under the DNI’s supervision.”
Atkinson faulted the Justice Department’s conclusion “particularly … and the Acting DNI’s apparent agreement with the conclusion, that the disclosure in this case does not concern an intelligence activity within the DNI’s authority.”
Maguire is scheduled to testify before the Intelligence Committee in a public session next Thursday.
In letters to the White House and State Department, top Democrats earlier this month demanded records related to what they say are Trump and Giuliani’s efforts “to coerce the Ukrainian government into pursuing two politically-motivated investigations under the guise of anti-corruption activity” — one to help Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who is in prison for illegal lobbying and financial fraud, and a second to target the son of former vice president Joe Biden, who is seeking the Democratic nomination to challenge Trump.
“As the 2020 election draws closer, President Trump and his personal attorney appear to have increased pressure on the Ukrainian government and its justice system in service of President Trump’s reelection campaign, and the White House and the State Department may be abetting this scheme,” the chairmen of the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight committees wrote, citing media reports that Trump had threatened to withhold $250 million in aid to help Ukraine in its ongoing struggle against Russian-backed separatists.
Lawmakers also became aware in August that the Trump administration may be trying to stop the aid from reaching Ukraine, according to a congressional official.
Giuliani dismissed the reports of the whistle blower and Trump’s “promise” to a foreign leader.
“I’m not even aware of the fact that he had such a phone call,” Giuliani said Thursday. “If I’m not worried about it, he’s not worried about it.”
House Democrats are looking into whether Giuliani traveled to Ukraine to pressure that government outside of formal diplomatic channels to effectively help the Trump reelection effort by investigating Hunter Biden about his time on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company.
The filing of the whistleblower complaint has led to what veterans of U.S. spy agencies described as an unprecedented situation with potentially grave consequences for the already troubled relationship between the president and the nation’s powerful intelligence community.
It remains unclear how the whistleblower gained access to details of the president’s calls — whether through “readouts” generated by White House aides or through other means.
Memos that serve as transcripts of such calls are created routinely. But if that is the source in this instance, it would appear to mean that White House aides made a formal record of comments by the president later deemed deeply troubling by the intelligence community’s chief watchdog.
John Wagner, Karoun Demirjian, Robert Costa and Josh Dawsey contributed reporting.
The New York Fed — which handles the levers that control the flow of money in the system — has for the past four days had to pump billions into money markets after bank demand for cash pushed interest rates above the Fed’s target (AFP Photo/Delil SOULEIMAN)
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New York (AFP) – The New York Federal Reserve Bank said Friday it will inject billions into the US financial plumbing on a daily basis for the next three weeks in an effort to prevent a spike in short-term interest rates.
The Fed will offer up to $75 billion a day in repurchase agreements — exchanging secure assets for cash for very short periods — through October 10, it said in a statement.
In addition, it will offer three 14-day “repo” operations of at least $30 billion each.
Banks have struggled in recent days to find the cash needed to meet reserve requirements which has pushed up short-term borrowing rates, prompting the New York Fed to pump billions into US money markets with repo operations over the past four days.
However, in a sign a cash crunch could be easing, demand for liquidity on Friday did not significantly exceed the amount offered, as it had on two prior days.
After October 10, the New York Fed will “conduct operations as necessary to help maintain the federal funds rate in the target range, the amounts and timing of which have not yet been determined.”
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell this week downplayed concerns about the money market’s cash crunch, saying it was not a sign of problems in the wider economy or a concern for monetary policy.
Economists say an array of conditions converged to dry up liquidity in the banking system — including quarterly corporate tax payments and a surge in government debt sold to investors, which drained cash out of banks.
Banks borrow regularly in markets for very short periods, usually overnight, to make sure their daily cash reserves do not fall below the required level. But interest rates increase with demand.
The New York Fed adds or removes liquidity to keep interest rates in line with the desired target, but the cash shortage in recent days prompted it to pump funds into the short-term repo market as rates soared and threatened to break out of the Fed’s target range.
The central bank cut benchmark lending rates interest rate on Wednesday, and also made some technical adjustments to try to keep the market rates from breaking out of the range, including cutting the interest it offers on bank reserves held at the Fed that are in excess of the minimum required level.
Dr. Patrick Michaels, director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute, provides insight into the debate over climate change and the political games played to create policy.
Why I Left Greenpeace
The Truth about CO2
Princeton physicist: There’s a ‘cult’ building around climate scientists
Climate field ‘craziness’ too much for climatologist
Climate Change: What Do Scientists Say?
Why climate change has run its course
Do 97% of Climate Scientists Really Agree?
97% of Climate Scientists Really Do Agree
Global warming: why you should not worry
Can Climate Models Predict Climate Change?
Climate Change: What’s So Alarming?
Freeman Dyson: Climate Change Predictions Are “Absurd”
Can We Rely on Wind and Solar Energy?
The True Cost of Wind | Ryan M. Yonk
What They Haven’t Told You about Climate Change
Economics of climate change innovation | Bjørn Lomborg
2018 Annual GWPF Lecture – Prof Richard Lindzen – Global Warming For The Two Culture
DEMYSTIFIED: What’s the difference between weather and climate? | Encyclopaedia Britannica
Is an Ice Age Coming? | Space Time | PBS Digital Studios
Tucker Carlson Tonight 9/20/19 | Tucker Carlson Tonight Fox News September 20 , 2019
Watch: Climate Change Marches Across The Globe | NBC News Now
IS GLOBAL WARMING THE BIGGEST FRAUD IN HISTORY? – Dan Pena
First Global Climate Strike arrests in London as teachers encourage pupils to take to the streets and join mass protest inspired by eco-activist Greta Thunberg
The Metropolitan Police said two people had been arrested in the Strand as activists gathered across London
Schoolchildren joined the protests in Britain after they were urged to walk out of classes and lectures today
State schools urged pupils not to attend, while some private schools urged them to make their own decision
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and mayor Sadiq Khan have been among those to praise young demonstrators
Do you know any of the protesters taking part in today’s climate action? You can email tips@dailymail.co.uk
PUBLISHED: 06:12 EDT, 20 September 2019 | UPDATED: 11:38 EDT, 20 September 2019
Police have moved in and made their first arrests as the largest worldwide climate protest in history arrived in London today with hundreds of thousands of Brits taking part in demonstrations across the country.
Activists, many of whom carried Extinction Rebellion flags and banners, have descended on the capital as the Global Strike 4 Climate Change movement kicked off in the UK to coincide with protests all over the planet.
The Metropolitan Police said two people had been arrested in the Strand for breaching conditions imposed on the protesters which dictate they must gather in a specific place in Westminster, central London.
Schoolchildren, many of them dressed in their uniforms, joined in on more than 200 different climate events in Britain after they were urged to walk out of classes and lectures today.
Politicians have been split on whether or not pupils should be skipping lessons to attend the climate protests, with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and mayor Sadiq Khan among those to commend young demonstrators.
Mr Corbyn addressed a rally of climate strikers outside Parliament and praised those who had missed lessons to attend, adding: ‘Thank you for being here to teach me and everyone else a lesson about the environment.’
State school leaders have urged youngsters not to take part, saying they understand the strength of feeling around the issue, but have concerns about pupil welfare.
But Suzie Longstaff, headmistress of the £18,900-a-year private Putney High School in south-west London, said that young people should be able to make their own decisions about whether to take part in today’s action.
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A protester is arrested by police officers stationed outside outside King’s College London as mass demonstrations hit the UK this morning
A protester is led away by police in handcuffs this morning (shown left), while an Extinction Rebellion activist is shown waving a XR flag outside King’s College London
Two protesters are placed in handcuffs outside King’s College London near the Strand as mass demonstrations kicked off in the capital today
Schoolchildren protest with banners outside parliament in London after youngsters were urged to skip lessons in order to take part in demonstrations
Youngsters take part in today’s climate change demonstrations after thousands skipped lessons and lectures this morning
Thousands of protesters gather near the Houses of Parliament for today’s climate change demonstration, where Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will speak later this afternoon
Police officers carry a protester away in the Strand after issuing section 14 notices amid mass-scale demonstrations in London today
An aerial shot from Central London shows thousands of protesters gathering during one of more 200 events across the UK this afternoon
Scottish comedian Billy Connolly was among those to lend his support to protesters marching in Glasgow this afternoon
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn tweeted an image from the protest in London and is due to address a rally of climate strikers outside Parliament, while dozens of other mass-scale events are being held up and down the country
Students carrying Extinction Rebellion banners and flags are shown marching through the streets outsude the Houses of Parliament
Police officers form a cordon outside Parliament Square, as demonstrators were asked to protest in specified areas
A young child looks out at the masses of people who gathered in central London today for the what is expected to be the world’s largest ever join climate change demonstration
Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger was among those to give their support to those taking part in the Global Climate Strike
The Global Strike For Climate in London is being held only days ahead of the scheduled United Nations Climate Change Summit in New York
Hundreds of protesters hold a ‘die-in’ at the UK Student Climate Network’s Global Climate Strike in Cambridge this afternoon
But Ms Longstaff said: ‘Every day we are educating the young people of the future to speak out and make their own decisions.
‘We are trying to provide a modern and relevant education which includes connecting to topics that they feel passionate about. We can’t pick and choose what those are.
‘I’m proud that Putney students have both a social and environmental conscience and I applaud them. Those who feel strongly about protesting will be there.’
Sylvie Craig, 11, and her friend Eva De Pear, 12, both of Shepherds Bush in west London, took the day off school and brought their mothers to the demonstration.
Sylvie said: ‘Climate change is really important. We can’t just talk about it, we have to do something about it ‘
Her mother Bay Garnett, a fashion director, said: ‘I am here for my children and all children. I think every mother feels the same. They need a healthy planet to live on.’
Eva skipped her biology lesson on Friday, saying that going to it made ‘no sense’ because ‘the planet is in real big trouble’. She said: ‘I am here to teach people a lesson instead of learning a lesson.’
Her mother Leila Amanpour said: ‘I feel that unless we come out into the streets, especially the children, the Government is not going to do anything about climate change.’
Thousands of protesters, including hundreds of children, many wearing school uniform, gathered in Birmingham’s Victoria Square before marching through nearby streets.
Meanwhile, West Mercia Police advised drivers to find alternatives routes after around 40 Extinction Rebellion members intermittently blocked traffic in Worcester.
Tweeting a photo from a climate strike in London, Mr Corbyn said: ‘Young people here and across the world are making it impossible to ignore the environment and climate emergency.
‘This is the wonderful youth Climate Strike in my constituency; now I’m on my way to the main London demonstration.’
Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson tweeted: ‘Great to see so many people the Glasgow Youth Climate March, all raising awareness of the climate crisis.
‘We demand immediate, strong action to stop irreversible damage. We must protect both our planet and future generations.’
Protesters gather ahead of the UK Student Climate Network’s Global Climate Strike at Millbank in London today
Young climate strikers across the country (pictured here in Millbank, London this morning) are taking to the streets as part of a global protest to demand urgent action to tackle climate change
Protesters hold banners as they attend the Global Climate Strike taking place outside the Houses of Parliament this morning
A sign posted on the outside of the Ben and Jerry’s store in Wardour Street, London, shows the firm’s support of the climate strikes today
London joins in global Climate change strikes call for action
Workers joined thousands of schoolchildren in taking part in the mass-scale demonstrations in London today (pictured in Westminster)
Medical professionals were shown marching near Westminster holding up banners and homemade signs declaring their support of climate intervention
State school leaders have urged youngsters not to take part, saying they understand the strength of feeling around the issue, but have concerns about pupil welfare
Students hold placards as they attend a climate change demonstration in London this morning (pictured on the lawns outside the Houses of Parliament)
Hundreds demonstrate in Bristol in global climate change strike
London Mayor Mr Khan called on the Government to ‘step up’ action on climate change, adding: ‘I am standing in solidarity with all those who are taking part in the Global Climate Strike.
‘Here in London, City Hall staff have also been encouraged to observe the strike by taking time out of their day to send a message to the world that London demands more ambitious climate actions from governments.’
However business, energy and clean growth minister Kwasi Kwarteng said he could not endorse children leaving school to take part in the protests, which have been inspired by teenage eco-activist Greta Thunberg.
He told BBC Breakfast on Friday that he supports the ‘energy and creativity’ of students, but said time spent in school is ‘incredibly important’.
Jessica Ahmed, 16, who is studying for an International Baccalaureate had emailed her school to warn that she would be walking out on Friday.
Speaking at a protest in Westminster, Miss Ahmed of Barnet, north London, said: ‘There are no excuses in this. School is important but so is my future.
‘If politicians were taking the appropriate action we need and had been taking this action a long time ago when it was recognised the world was changing in a negative way, then I would not have to be skipping school.
‘I would be doing the maths exam I have studied for.
She called on the Government to acknowledge the severity of the climate crisis and for youth to be included in policy-making, adding ‘With so many people striking, surely Government have got to take notice?’
Slogans such as ‘if you breath air you should care’, ‘us snowflakes are melting’, ‘learn to change or learn to swim’, and ‘don’t be a fossil fool’, were among the homemade banners held aloft in the crowd.
Politicians have been split on whether or not children should be skipping lessons to attend the climate protests, with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and mayor Sadiq Khan among those to praise young demonstrators
Students carrying Extinction Rebellion banners and flags are shown marching through Parliament Square in central London this afternoon
The protests in central London today are part of a snowballing movement sparked by teenage activist Greta Thunberg’s school strikes outside the Swedish parliament
Politicians have been split on whether or not students should be skipping lectures to attend the climate protests, with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and mayor Sadiq Khan among those to praise young demonstrators
As protests got under way across the UK, the Metropolitan Police said two adults had been arrested on The Strand in central London – where XR Universities, an Extinction Rebellion group are holding a protest (pictured)
In Belfast, hundreds of young people took over the Corn Market area of the city centre, where they staged a colourful protest, with speeches and chants, before lying on the ground to participate in a mass ‘die-in’.
John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, said the school strikers have shown that people power could move governments.
He said: ‘The rest of us now need to step up and stand with the children demanding radical, systemic change, before it’s too late.’
Metropolitan Police announced it had made a couple of arrests relating to protests this morning, adding in a tweet: ‘Two adults have been arrested in the Strand for breach of the S14 conditions.
‘We would ask everyone attending #ClimateStrike please attend Millbank, where in conjunction with the organisers we have created a safe space for protest.’
Missing a day of school for climate protest will hit your child’s exam chances, says UK’s schools minister
British schools minister Nick Gibb said the Government ‘shares young people’s passion’ for tackling climate change, but said children should not miss school to protest.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said schools need to record the absences.
He said: ‘We share the passion, as a Government, of young people for tackling climate change, and that is why this Government and this country is committed to reaching net zero greenhouse gasses by 2050.’
He added: ‘We don’t think it should be at the expense of a child’s education because what we want is for the next generation to be as well educated as possible to tackle these kinds of problems, and you don’t do that by missing out on an education.’
He said even missing out on one day of school can affect GCSE results.
The ‘Global Strike 4 Climate Change‘ rally started in Sydney this morning where Thor star Chris Hemsworth and his young daughter India joined 50,000 in a rally that saw some violent clashes between police and protesters.
Throughout the day the movement is spreading west across the world to most of the planet’s biggest cities including Hong Kong, Bangkok, Delhi, London and New York.
But in China – the world’s most polluting nation – President Xi’s government has banned the movement from protesting in its cities.
In New York, the city’s Department of Education says all its 1.1million schoolchildren can skip class to participate in the strike if they had parental consent – without any fear of punishment.
Miss Thunberg, who has been nominated for a Nobel prize for her climate activism, will spearhead a rally at the United Nations headquarters in the city later.
As the sea of people made their way through the city, some school students on scooters could be seen heading in the opposite direction, while there was some fighting between protesters and police.
Others could be seen scribbling their signs on old pieces of cardboard on the footpath as they waited for the event to begin.’.
Britons joining the climate strikes can expect a day of unseasonably warm weather on Friday as they call on businesses and politicians to cut emissions.
Children and young people are preparing to walk out of lessons and lectures, with hundreds of thousands of workers expected to join them.
The protests are part of a snowballing movement sparked by teenage activist Greta Thunberg’s school strikes outside the Swedish parliament.
It comes ahead of a climate action summit in New York convened by UN secretary general Antonio Guterres to urge countries to up their climate efforts.
Much steeper measures are needed across the globe to prevent temperature rises of more than 1.5C (2.7F) or 2C (3.6F) to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
Sydney: A protester clashes with police during the climate rally in the Australian city on Friday before he was arrested and removed from the area
Sydney: Children chanting for change march through Australia’s largest city today as the ‘Global Strike 4 Climate Change’ began
Climate demonstrators shut down Sydney streets
Sydney: In Australia today 300,000 people have taken part including more than 50,000 people in Sydney with Thor star Chris Hemsworth and his young daughter India among those who flooded the streets
Canberra: A baby takes part in the The Global Strike 4 Climate rally with his parents displaying a warning about the extinction of animals in his car seat
Marovo Island, Solomon Islands: Students in traditional dress gathered on the South Pacific Ocean took part in a march along the beach
Bangkok: Marchers in Thailand decided to block the roads outside the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment as they demanded action
Hong Kong: Protesters carrying coffins and placards accusing governments of ‘ecocide’ march through Hong Kong’s famous harbour
Indonesia: Youths walk with signs through the main road during a Global Climate Strike rally as smog covers the city due to the forest fires in Palangka Raya, Central Kalimantan province
As if to underline the urgency of the issues, the mercury is set to hit 26C (78.8F) this weekend – 8C(46.4F) above average for the time of year.
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said: ‘It is unbelievable that we should need global strike action for the future of our planet to be taken seriously.
‘The stark reality is that our climate is changing rapidly and we are running out of time to address it.’
He promised strikers his full support, adding that City Hall had been invited to observe the strike themselves.
‘I hope governments around the world who are failing to take action hear the voices of millions of people, young and old, unified in their call for action to save our planet. Our future depends on it,’ he said.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is due to address a rally of climate strikers outside Parliament on Friday, while other events are being held up and down the country.
The UK Student Climate Network (UKSCN) says more than 200 events are taking place across the UK, with – for the first time – adults being encouraged to join the youngsters as they strike.
UKSCN is calling on politicians to bring in a ‘Green New Deal’ to cut the UK’s emissions to zero and improve lives, changes to education to equip youngsters to deal with the climate crisis and votes at 16 to give them a voice.
Bali: People display placards during a rally as part of a global climate change campaign at Sanur beach on Indonesia’s resort island
Dhaka: Bangladeshi students join the protest and claim world leaders are ‘acting like children’ over climate change
Berlin: Activists chose to cycle to block traffic at Ernst-Reuter-Platz square as they take part in the Global Climate Strike
Brisbane: Millions of people from across the globe are expected to walk out of work and school as part of ‘Strike 4 Climate Action’ which will be held in 150 countries on September 20
Sydney: Two young girls climb a pole as thousands gathered in the centre of the city as part of global mass day of action
Sydney: A man clashes with police during the climate rally in Sydney on Friday. He was arrested and removed from the area
Sydney: Parents took their children out of school to take part in the protest. However, acting Prime Minister Michael McCormack said students should be in school as it was ‘just a disruption’
Among the many trade unions throwing their weight behind the strikes are the TUC Congress, the University and College Union and Unite.
Some businesses are actively supporting their workers to take action, with outdoor clothing company Patagonia closing stores and offices globally, and taking out adverts to support the strikers.
The Co-operative Bank has also teamed up with Unite to support its workforce to take part in the climate strikes around the country.
Worldwide, there are more than 4,600 events in 139 countries taking place as part of the Fridays for Future movement between Friday September 20 and 27, and campaign group 350.org says more than 70 unions, 500 organisations and 1,000 companies have come out in support of the strikes.
Muna Suleiman, Friends of the Earth campaigner, said most people wanted to fix the climate crisis but politicians needed to act.
She said: ‘Right when we need our leaders to step up, they continue to let us down.
‘From filling the skies with more planes, to backing fracking in the UK and funding oil and gas projects abroad.
‘That’s why we’re standing shoulder to shoulder with young people to call on our politicians to deliver emergency climate action now. And we’re asking everyone to join us.’
Sydney: The Global Strike 4 Climate will on Friday take place in 110 towns and cities across Australia, with organisers demanding government and business commit to a target of net zero carbon emissions by 2030
Sydney: More than 50,000 people flooded Sydney’s streets as they made their way to the Domain to take part in the demonstration calling for governments and businesses to commit to a target of net zero carbon emissions by 2030
‘Can’t eat money, can’t drink money’: Protesters take to the streets in Sydney as part of the rally which happened across the globe on Friday
Brisbane (left) and Melbourne (right): More than 300,000 Australians have chosen to take part in the Global Strike 4 Climate
In Australia there were hundreds of young people proving their dedication to the cause as they carried artistic placards they had made the night before, which read: ‘Time is almost up’ and ‘There is no Planet B’
Sydney: A young girl sits on a man’s shoulders during the Sydney protest on Friday. She held a sign which read: ‘There is no planet B’
Sydney: Children allowed out of school chant and throw their arms in the air during the world’s biggest planned climate protests
Sydney: Thousands of protesters turned out for the climate strike on Friday. This woman wore green and wrapped a vine around her neck for the cause
Bangkok: Thai people protest in front of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment
Bangkok: Children with megaphones demand their politicians make changes to protect the future of the planet
Nolte: Climate ‘Experts’ Are 0-41 with Their Doomsday Predictions
For more than 50 years Climate Alarmists in the scientific community and environmental movement have not gotten even one prediction correct, but they do have a perfect record of getting 41 predictions wrong.
In other words, on at least 41 occasions, these so-called experts have predicted some terrible environmental catastrophe was imminent … and it never happened.
And not once — not even once! — have these alarmists had one of their predictions come true.
Think about that… the so-called experts are 0-41 with their predictions, but those of us who are skeptical of “expert” prediction number 42, the one that says that if we don’t immediately convert to socialism and allow Alexandria Ocasio-Crazy to control and organize our lives, the planet will become uninhabitable.
Why would any sane person listen to someone with a 0-41 record?
Why would we completely restructure our economy and sacrifice our personal freedom for “experts” who are 0-41, who have never once gotten it right?
If you had an investment counselor who steered you wrong 41times, would you hang in there for number 42?
Of course not. You’d fire him after failed prediction two or three.
And if that’s not crazy enough, the latest ploy is to trot out a 16-year-old girt to spread prediction number 42, because it is so much more credible that way.
Sometimes you just have to sit back and laugh.
Anyway, I want you to have the data, so go ahead and print this out in advance of Thanksgiving dinner with your obnoxious Millennial nephew.
LIST OF DOOMSDAY PREDICTIONS CLIMATE ALARMIST GOT RIGHT
NONE.
ZIP.
ZERO.
NADA.
BLANK
DONUT HOLE
NIL.
NOTHING.
VOID.
ZILCH.
LIST OF DOOMSDAY PREDICTIONS THE CLIMATE ALARMIST GOT WRONG
Here is the source for numbers 1-27. As you will see, the individual sources are not crackpots, but scientific studies and media reports on “expert” predictions. The sources for numbers 28-41 are linked individually.
1967: Dire Famine Forecast By 1975
1969: Everyone Will Disappear In a Cloud Of Blue Steam By 1989 (1969)
1970: Ice Age By 2000
1970: America Subject to Water Rationing By 1974 and Food Rationing By 1980
1971: New Ice Age Coming By 2020 or 2030
1972: New Ice Age By 2070
1974: Space Satellites Show New Ice Age Coming Fast
Sorry, Experts… Sorry, Scientific Consensus… Only a fool comes running for the 42nd cry of wolf.
Don’t litter, be kind to animals, recycling’s for suckers (it’s all going to end up in the ground eventually), so stop feeling guilty… Go out there and embrace all the bounty that comes with being a 21st century American — you know, like Obama, who says he believes in Global Warming with his mouth but proves he doesn’t with the $15 million he just spent on oceanfront that we’re told is doomed to flooding
(Bloomberg) — It’s time to stop crediting corporate sustainability efforts as acts of altruism. For big business, protecting the environment often means padding the bottom line.
Nike Inc. has come up with a way to weave more efficiently, reducing the raw material and labor time needed to make each shoe. That has kept more than 3.5 million pounds of waste from reaching landfills since 2012. But the good news doesn’t stop with the environmental impact. The company is spending less on transportation, materials and waste disposal.
The shoemaker’s “more environmentally conscious product has been a source of cost savings,” said James Duffy, an analyst at Stifel.
Those flimsy plastic water bottles sold by Nestle SA? The ultra-thin design has a smaller impact on the environment while pushing down costs associated with packaging and shipping. Amazon.com Inc. and Walmart Inc. have poured tens of millions of dollars into a fund that builds out recycling infrastructure, reducing landfill tipping fees and recovering material that could be sold as new products.
Tech giants have spent billions of dollars on solar and wind power, cutting greenhouse-gas emissions and energy expenditures at the same time. Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Amazon and Facebook Inc. are now some of the largest buyers of green power in America.
Turns out it’s not just easy being green—it’s also profitable.
“We’ve moved past this concept that business versus the environment is a tradeoff,” said Tom Murray, who advises companies on reducing emissions at Environmental Defense Fund, including Walmart, McDonald’s Corp. and Procter & Gamble Co. “The business benefits were always there, but more and more companies are going after them.”
The business case for going green has never been stronger as companies find ways to make more from less. Here’s a look at the ways corporate sustainability is making environmentalism pay.
Lightweight Flights Cost Less
United Airlines Holdings Inc. has been making its planes lighter, driving down fuel use and costs. Airlines account for almost 2% global carbon emissions. Not even the in-flight magazine has been spared in the search for unnecessary heft: changing to a lighter paper stock saved almost $300,000 per year on fuel. United redesigned airplane bathrooms, switched out beverage carts and ended duty-free sales. The company was also working on reducing its cabin waste to zero.
What it pays: United has saved more than $2 billion on fuel so far.
Hanging Hotel Towels Saves More Than Water
It turns out that simply asking guests to hang up towels to dry and forego daily sheet changes can save hotel operators 25% off annual energy costs. “To some surprise within the hotel industry, this option was quickly embraced by hotel guests as a small way to engage in energy conservation,” according to a report by the Urban Land Institute. Clarion Partners LLC does that at all of its hotels and went a step further by reducing flows through toilets, faucets and showerheads.
What it pays: Cutting water use saves Clarion hotels about $17,250 per year.
Idle Trucks, Real Money
Walmart runs one of the biggest trucking fleets in the U.S. That means scores of semis standing in traffic at any given time. At that scale, the introduction of technology that reduces energy use when trucks or idling and software that creates more efficient routes can improve fuel efficiency by 90%, reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
What it pays: Diesel averages almost $3 a gallon in the U.S.
Tech’s Green Power Payoff
Google, Facebook and Amazon are among the largest energy consumers in the U.S., and a lot of that power is now emission-free. Each company committed to getting 100% of their power for their data centers from renewable resources such as wind and solar. Exxon Mobil signed up to energize its operations in Texas with solar and wind energy starting next year, which would place the oil producer among the top 10 buyers.
What it pays: With renewables now cheaper than fossil fuels, these green energy commitments shave an estimated 10% off tech giants’ gargantuan utility bills.
Paperless Bathrooms Are Cheaper
Restaurants, movie theaters and others have been making the switch from paper towels to hand dryers in their restrooms for years. Dryers have become the norm because of the savings on the cost of paper towels and the expense of sending garbage to the landfill. Soldier Field, home of the Chicago Bears, made the switch and cut carbon emissions by 76% per use.
Patrick J. (“Pat“) Michaels (born February 15, 1950) is an American climatologist. Michaels was a senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute until Spring 2019. Until 2007 he was research professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, where he had worked from 1980.[2][3][4]
A self-described skeptic on the issue of global warming, he is a past president of the American Association of State Climatologists. He has written a number of books and papers on climate change, including Sound and Fury: The Science and Politics of Global Warming (1992), The Satanic Gases (2000), and Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media (2004). He’s also the co-author of Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know (2009).[2] Michaels’ viewpoint, as argued in a 2002 article in the journal Climate Research, is that the planet will see “a warming range of 1.3–3.0°C, with a central value of 1.9°C” for the 1990 to 2100 period (a value far smaller than the IPCC’s average predictions).[5]
Contents
Education
Patrick Michaels obtained an A.B. in biological science in 1971 and an S.M. in biology in 1975 from the University of Chicago, and in 1979 obtained his Ph.D. in ecological climatology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.[6] His doctoral thesis was titled Atmospheric anomalies and crop yields in North America.[7]
Views on climate change
Michaels has said that he does not contest the basic scientific principles behind greenhouse warming and acknowledges that the global mean temperature has increased in recent decades.[8] He is quoted as being skeptical of global warming,[citation needed][9] and is described by Michael E. Mann as a “prominent climate change contrarian.”[10] He contends that the changes will be minor, not catastrophic, and may even be beneficial.[11]
He has written extensive editorials on this topic for the mass media, and for think tanks and their publications such as Regulation. He stated in 2000:[11]
[S]cientists know quite precisely how much the planet will warm in the foreseeable future, a modest three-quarters of a degree (C) [in 50 years]
All this has to do with basic physics, which isn’t real hard to understand. It has been known since 1872 that as we emit more and more carbon dioxide into our atmosphere, each increment results in less and less warming. In other words, the first changes produce the most warming, and subsequent ones produce a bit less, and so on. But we also assume carbon dioxide continues to go into the atmosphere at an ever-increasing rate. In other words, the increase from year-to-year isn’t constant, but itself is increasing. The effect of increasing the rate of carbon dioxide emissions, coupled with the fact that more and more carbon dioxide produces less and less warming compels our climate projections for the future warming to be pretty much a straight line. Translation: Once human beings start to warm the climate, they do so at a constant rate.[12]
Michaels has stated in the Wall Street Journal:
Why is the news on global warming always bad? Perhaps because there’s little incentive to look at things the other way. If you do, you’re liable to be pilloried by your colleagues. If global warming isn’t such a threat, who needs all that funding?[13]
A 2002 article published in the journal Climate Research by Michaels and three other scholars has predicted “a warming range of 1.3–3.0°C, with a central value of 1.9°C” over the 1990 to 2100 period, although he remarked that the “temperature range and central values determined in our study may be too great.” He made the argument that the climate feedback system involving current warming trends was weaker than generally asserted, coming to a conclusion that set his views apart from that of the IPCC’s estimates.[5]
In 2009, Michaels authored a Cato report arguing that “Congress should pass no legislation restricting emissions of carbon dioxide, repeal current ethanol mandates, and inform the public about how little climate change would be prevented by proposed legislation.” [14]
In 2018, Michaels asserted on Fox News, “probably about half, maybe half of that nine-tenths of the degree [of total warming] might be caused by greenhouse gases.” Climate Feedback, a fact-checking website for media coverage on climate change, wrote of Michaels’ assertion, “no evidence or research is provided to support this claim, which contradicts the published scientific literature.”[15]
Advocacy
Expert witness for Western Fuels Association
In May 1994 Richard Lindzen, Michaels, and Robert Balling served as expert witnesses on behalf of Western Fuels Association in St. Paul, Minnesota to determine the environmental cost of coal burning by state power plants.[16] Western Fuels Association is a consortium of coal producers that uses collective advocacy to represent industry interests.[17]
1998: Michaels and Balling complaint against Star Tribune upheld
In May 1997 Ross Gelbspan made a presentation in Minneapolis discussing his concerns, documented in his 1997 book The Heat is On, that some climatologists were involved in a “disinformation campaign” to counter the scientific consensus on global warming. The Minnesota Star Tribune ran an editorial praising this as a public service exposing undue credit given to the “unsubsantiated opinions” of a handful of contrarian scientists, and naming Michaels and his colleague Robert Balling as skeptics whose views had been examined and dismissed by numerous other scientists. Michaels and Balling took a complaint against the Star Tribune to the Minnesota News Council, and at a hearing in April 1998 by a 9–4 decision the council “voted to sustain the complaint that the Star Tribune editorial unfairly characterized the scientific reputations of Patrick Michaels and Robert Balling.”[18]
World Climate Report, Greening Earth Society, and Western Fuels Association
The World Climate Report, a newsletter edited by Michaels was first published by the Greening Earth Society. The society was a public relations organization associated with the Western Fuels Association (WFA), an association of coal-burning utility companies.[19][20][21]It has been called a “front group created by the coal industry”[22] and an “industry front”.[23] Fred Palmer, a society staffer, is a registered lobbyist for Peabody Energy, a coal company.[24] WFA founded the group in 1997, according to an archived version of its website, “as a vehicle for advocacy on climate change, the environmental impact of CO2, and fossil fuel use.”[25]
2003 John Holdren
Office of Science and Technology Policy director, John Holdren,[26] told the U.S. SenateRepublican Policy Committee in June 2003, “Michaels is another of the handful of U.S. climate-change contrarians … He has published little if anything of distinction in the professional literature, being noted rather for his shrill op-ed pieces and indiscriminate denunciations of virtually every finding of mainstream climate science.”[27] In 2009 Michaels responded in a Washington Examiner Op-Ed, saying that the IPCC had subverted the peer review process, and adding the IPCC had “left out plenty of peer-reviewed science that it found inconveniently disagreeable.”[28]
International Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group in 2007
Michaels was one of hundreds of US reviewers composing the International Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group in 2007.
Although the Greening Earth Society was generally skeptical of the impact of climate change, it acknowledged some degree of global warming as real: “Fact #1. The rate of global warming during the past several decades has been about 0.18°C per decade”.[29] Note that the actual increase in the global surface temperature during the 100 years ending in 2005 was 0.74 ± 0.18 °C.[30]
Climate scientist Tom Wigley,[31] a lead author of parts of the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has stated that “Michaels’ statements on the subject of computer models are a catalog of misrepresentation and misinterpretation … Many of the supposedly factual statements made in Michaels’ testimony are either inaccurate or are seriously misleading.”[32]
Climate of Extremes
Michaels received praise for his book, Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know (2009) from University of Alabama-Huntsville Principal Research ScientistRoy Spencer, who wrote, “Michaels and [Co-Author Robert] Balling have provided a treasure trove of the latest global warming science.”[33]Will Happer, Professor of Physics and Former Chairman of the University Research Board at Princeton University, also praised the book and wrote it “…provides important and honest information about climate change that is hard to find elsewhere.”[34]
Funding from energy or fossil fuel companies
On July 27, 2006 ABC News reported that a Colorado energy cooperative, the Intermountain Rural Electric Association, had given Michaels $100,000.[35] An Associated Press report said that the donations had been made after Michaels had “told Western business leaders … that he was running out of money for his analyses of other scientists’ global warming research” and noted that the cooperative had a vested interest in opposing mandatory carbon dioxide caps, a situation that raised conflict of interest concerns.[36]
Michaels said on CNN that 40 per cent of his funding came from the oil industry.[37] According to Fred Pearce, fossil fuel companies have helped fund Michaels’ projects, including his World Climate Report, published every year since 1994, and his “advocacy science consulting firm”, New Hope Environmental Services.[38]
A 2005 article published by the Seattle Times reported that Michaels had received more than $165,000 in fuel-industry funding, including money from the coal industry to publish his own climate journal.[9]
Selected publications
Michaels is the author of several books including: Sound and Fury: The Science and Politics of Global Warming (1992), Satanic Gases (2002; as coauthor), Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians and the Media (2004), published by the Cato Institute, and Shattered Consensus: The True State of Global Warming (2005; as editor and coauthor).
Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media. Cato Institute. October 25, 2005. p. 280. ISBN1-930865-79-1.
If something is going to shake up the race before the Iowa caucuses, it’s likely to be a debate. So we partnered with Ipsos to once again track how Thursday’s debate, hosted by ABC News, affected likely primary voters’ feelings about the candidates. The FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll, conducted using Ipsos’s KnowledgePanel, interviewed the same group of voters twice to capture both the “before” and “after” picture of the debate.
POST-DEBATE REACTIONS
The over- (and under-) performers
How favorably all likely primary voters felt about each candidate before the debate vs. how well respondents who watched the debate thought each candidate did
To better understand which candidates did well or poorly Thursday night, we plotted how favorably respondents rated the candidates before the debate vs. how debate-watchers rated their performance. Warren was one of the better-liked candidates going into the debate, but her performance was still rated higher than we’d expect based on her favorability alone. The same was true of Booker, Buttigieg and (especially) O’Rourke. Interestingly, Klobuchar didn’t get a great debate rating, but it’s not bad considering her pre-debate favorability, which was pretty neutral. Biden and Sanders are very popular with Democrats but failed to get correspondingly high scores on their debate performance, while Castro stands out for getting the worst debate grade — even considering his relatively lukewarm favorability rating going in.
The numbers behind the chart
CANDIDATE
PRE-DEBATE FAVORABILITY
DEBATE PERFORMANCE
Elizabeth Warren
70.2%
3.3
Pete Buttigieg
65.7
3.1
Beto O’Rourke
58.9
3.1
Cory Booker
59.8
3.0
Bernie Sanders
66.3
3.0
Joe Biden
67.6
3.0
Kamala Harris
61.8
2.9
Amy Klobuchar
52.8
2.8
Andrew Yang
56.3
2.7
Julián Castro
58.0
2.5
In terms of raw debate grades — respondents graded on a four-point scale (higher scores are better) — Warren, Buttigieg and O’Rourke did best. Booker, Sanders, Biden and Harris did fine.
Who gained (and lost) support
Share of respondents who are considering voting for each candidate
The field may be shrinking, but many voters are still considering multiple candidates. Overall, we didn’t see huge shifts in the wake of the third debate, but there was some movement. Warren got the biggest increase — 2.4 percentage points — in the share of likely Democratic primary voters who are considering supporting her. Buttigieg and Klobuchar each gained a little over a point in potential support — 1.5 points for him and 1.3 points for her. Harris, meanwhile, saw the biggest drop in potential supporters, declining 2.5 points. Biden’s support barely budged; neither did O’Rourke’s, even though the former representative got positive marks for his performance.
Who voters think can beat Trump
Respondents’ estimates of the likelihood, from 0 percent (impossible) to 100 percent (certain), that each candidate would beat Trump
Joe Biden
20400%100%Absolutely certainto lose to TrumpAbsolutely certainto beat TrumpOutline showspre-debate results
Bernie Sanders
20400%100%
Elizabeth Warren
20400%100%
Kamala Harris
20400%100%
Beto O’Rourke
20400%100%
Pete Buttigieg
20400%100%
Cory Booker
20400%100%
Julián Castro
20400%100%
Amy Klobuchar
20400%100%
Andrew Yang
20400%100%
We also asked respondents to estimate each Democrat’s chances of defeating President Trump — from 0 percent to 100 percent. Polls show Democratic primary voters are prioritizing “electability,” but who do they think is electable? As you can see in the chart above, Klobuchar, who had one of the lower average scores going into the debate, saw fewer respondents say she had zero chance of defeating Trump. Buttigieg likewise had fewer people rate him as having no chance. Biden and Sanders, meanwhile, saw a small drop in the share of respondents who said they were certain those candidates would beat Trump.
Respondents’ average rating of candidates’ chances vs. Trump
CANDIDATE
PRE-DEBATE AVERAGE
POST-DEBATE AVERAGE
DIFF
Joe Biden
68.3
67.4
-0.9
Bernie Sanders
55.7
55.0
-0.7
Elizabeth Warren
51.4
53.0
+1.6
Kamala Harris
40.2
40.4
+0.2
Beto O’Rourke
33.6
34.9
+1.3
Pete Buttigieg
33.4
34.3
+0.8
Cory Booker
32.0
33.2
+1.2
Julián Castro
25.4
26.1
+0.8
Amy Klobuchar
23.3
25.3
+2.1
Andrew Yang
23.1
24.5
+1.4
There wasn’t much movement in respondents’ average estimates of how likely each candidate would be to defeat Trump in the general election. Most candidates saw their average likelihood increase, but only marginally. Klobuchar saw the largest bump, 2.1 percentage points, followed by Warren and Yang.
The popularity contest
Candidates’ favorable and unfavorable ratings among likely primary voters
Unfavorable
Favorable
Before debate
After debate
Joe Biden
69.1%
23.4%
70.7%
23.6%
Bernie Sanders
68.0%
24.0%
69.0%
24.7%
Elizabeth Warren
63.8%
15.3%
68.5%
15.6%
Kamala Harris
51.8%
20.4%
55.1%
22.6%
Pete Buttigieg
43.9%
11.7%
49.4%
13.6%
Beto O’Rourke
43.2%
19.3%
49.8%
18.6%
Cory Booker
42.7%
16.0%
48.2%
18.8%
Julián Castro
32.2%
12.4%
33.0%
23.4%
Andrew Yang
28.4%
13.6%
34.9%
20.4%
Amy Klobuchar
25.1%
17.0%
32.4%
20.6%
We asked likely Democratic primary voters how favorably they felt about each candidate both before and after the debate. As you can see, among the polling front-runners, Biden and Sanders’s favorability ratings remained relatively unchanged, while Warren’s net favorability (favorable rating minus unfavorable rating) jumped by a little over 4 points. In fact, only O’Rourke fared better than Warren; his net favorability rating increased a little over 7 points. But not all candidates made a positive impression. Castro’s net favorability, for instance, dropped by 10 points this time, after getting a big boost in the first debate.
Story 1: Tropical Storm Dorian Headed For Puerto Rico Could Hit All of Florida and Bahama Islands As Category 3 or 4 Hurricane — Trump Tweets Puerto Rico Most Corrupt — Storm Dorain Upgraded to Category 1 Hurricane — Videos
UPDATED Tuesday, Setember 3, 2019
The 2 PM Advisory on Hurricane Dorian has been released
Meteorologist Angie Lassman breaks down various Hurricane Dorian scenarios as the storm continues to churn toward the state. (Note: This video was recorded at 1 p.m. on Friday, August 30th and references the 11 a.m. Hurricane Dorian advisory. For real-time updates on Hurricane Dorian, go here: http://on.nbc6.com/b2IaPO5)
Trump and San Juan mayor trade blows ahead of Dorian
Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz takes issue with Trump’s claim that Congress approved $92 billion for Puerto Rico; chief White House correspondent John Roberts reports. #SpecialReport#FoxNews
‘I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to Puerto Rico!’ Trump says
Carmen Yulín Cruz, mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, speaks with CNN’s Erin Burnett after President Donald Trump called her “crazed and incompetent” on Twitter. #CNN#News
Trump says Puerto Rican leaders are ’totally unable’ to handle disaster
On Sept. 29, President Trump said that “the government of Puerto Rico will have to work with us to determine how this massive rebuilding effort…will be funded and organized and what we will do with the tremendous amount of existing debt already on the island.” Subscribe to The Washington
Tracking Hurricane Dorian: What Makes The Storm’s Path So Unusual? | NBC 6
Hurricane Dorian could become a Category 4 storm before it makes landfall in Florida. NBC 6 meteorologist Steve MacLaughlin with the latest.
Tropical Storm Dorian to hit Puerto Rico, on track to hit Florida
Puerto Rico Braces for Tropical Storm as Trump Attacks Island on Twitter
The news comes as Puerto Rico is bracing for Tropical Storm Dorian, which could make a direct hit on the island and strengthen into a hurricane later today. Governor Wanda Vázquez has declared a state of emergency for the island. On Tuesday, Trump used the impending storm to take a jab at Puerto Rico, tweeting, “Wow! Yet another big storm heading to Puerto Rico. Will it ever end? Congress approved 92 Billion Dollars for Puerto Rico last year, an all time record of its kind for ‘anywhere.’” San Juan mayor and vocal Trump critic Carmen Yulín Cruz responded by saying in a CNN interview, “[Trump’s] behavior, his lack of understanding … is ludicrous. Three thousand Puerto Ricans did not open their eyes this morning because this racist man did not have it within him to do his job. So, get out of the way, President Trump, and let the people who can do the job get the job done.” The 3,000 people is referring to the death toll from 2017’s devastating Hurricane Maria.
UPDATED Thursday, August 29, 2019
NASA releases ISS footage of Hurricane Dorian churning over the Atlantic as forecasters warn the storm is set to strengthen to a monster Category 4 and batter Florida with 130MPH winds on Labor Day
Incredible footage from the International Space Station shows Hurricane Dorian swirling in the Atlantic
The footage shows Dorian strengthening at 1.05pm EDT on Thursday north of Puerto Rico
Hurricane Dorian, a Category 1 storm, is set to escalate into a Category 4 as it crosses warm Atlantic waters
The hurricane is expected to make landfall on Florida’s eastern coast by Labor Day Monday
As of 11am EDT Thursday, Dorian is in open waters blowing at 85mph, 220 miles northwest of San Juan
Hurricane Dorian made landfall on the Virgin Islands Wednesday at 2pm EDT, causing power outages
The National Hurricane Center predicts Dorian could hit Florida as soon as late Sunday or early Monday
Gov Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency and urged residents to prepare for a Labor Day strike
Dorian caused some flooding and damage across the Caribbean earlier this week
It was expected to hit Puerto Rico on Wednesday but passed to the east of the territory, leaving it unscathed
Donald Trump shared a warning to Floridians Thursday morning saying: ‘It will be a very big Hurricane’
Thursday afternoon he cancelled his trip to Poland in light of the hurricane
Florida is not currently under any watches or warnings and no evacuations have been ordered yet
PUBLISHED: 00:08 EDT, 29 August 2019 | UPDATED: 21:54 EDT, 29 August 2019
Stunning footage from outer space shows Hurricane Dorian in all its might, swirling towards Florida, where it’s forecast to make landfall on Labor Day Monday as a monster Category 4 storm.
The footage was taken by a NASA camera outside the International Space Station and shows Dorian at 1.05pm EDT strengthening as it menacingly churns in the Atlantic ocean just north of Puerto Rico, headed towards the northern Bahamas and Florida’s eastern coast.
It is expected to intensify into a Category 3 storm by Friday and could strengthen into a Category 4 with vicious 130mph winds in the following days.
On Wednesday Dorian was upgraded from a tropical storm to a hurricane and briefly made landfall in the Virgin Islands and impacted small Puerto Rican islands, causing power outages and minor flooding.
Once Dorian escalated into a hurricane, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency on Wednesday urging residents to stock up on a week’s worth of supplies, leading Floridians to clean out grocery stores, stock up on gasoline, and protect their homes with aluminum panels.
An update from the National Hurricane Center at 8am EST on Thursday warned that tropical force winds from Dorian, which is currently a Category 1 storm, could start to hit parts of Florida as early as Saturday evening and the hurricane could make landfall by late Sunday or early Monday.
Stunning footage from outer space shows Hurricane Dorian in all its might, swirling towards Florida, where it’s forecast to make landfall on Labor Day Monday as a monster Category 4 storm. This was shot from the International Space Station Thursday afternoon
Hurricane Dorian is pictured Thursday in this satellite image as it barrels past Puerto Rico, sparing the island, and heads towards the northern Bahamas and Florida’s east coast, leading Florida to declare a state of emergency
On Thursday morning Governor Ron DeSantis urged locals to stock up on seven days worth of food, water and medicine
Preparing for the storm: Florida residents in Casselberry started to fill sand bags in preparation for Hurricane Dorian’s blow
The storm is predicted to escalate to a Category 4 hurricane by the time it makes landfall in Florida’s eastern coast
Stocking up: Locals flocked to groceries store to heed officials warnings and buy enough food and water for the week
Florida residents in Orlando stocked up on propane gas in anticipation of the potentially Category 4 hurricane
This updated graphic released Thursday at 11 EST shows the predicted trajectory of the hurricane which is expected to make landfall either late Sunday or early Monday
On Thursday President Donald Trump canceled his upcoming trip to Poland, meant to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of the country, to deal with the hurricane.
‘This could be the strongest hurricane to hit Central Florida in over 30 years,’ Fox 35 Orlando meteorologist Glenn Richards said. ‘Hurricane force sustained winds would be carried across the entire width of the state if the current forecast holds.’
President Donald Trump tweeted on Thursday morning: ‘Puerto Rico is in great shape with Hurricane Dorian taking a largely different route than anticipated. Thank you to FEMA, first responders, and all, for working so hard & being so well prepared. A great result! The bad news, Florida get ready! Storm is building and will be BIG!
‘Hurricane Dorian looks like it will be hitting Florida late Sunday night. Be prepared and please follow State and Federal instructions, it will be a very big Hurricane, perhaps one of the biggest!’
Thursday afternoon he cancelled his trip to Poland in light of the hurricane and announced he’ll send Vice President Mike Pence in his place.
‘It’s something very important for me to be here,’ he said. ‘The storm looks like it could be a very big one indeed.’
Florida is not currently under any watches or warnings and no evacuations have been ordered yet.
There’s an ‘increasing likelihood of life-threatening storm surge along portions of the Florida east coast and devastating hurricane-force winds,’ NHC warned Thursday.
As of 11AM EDT on Thursday morning, Dorian was located in the open Atlantic blowing at maximum sustained winds of 85mph, some 220 miles northwest of San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Wednesday evening the storm clocked 80mph winds moving northwest at about 13mph and passed Puerto Rico, sparing the island from another disaster as it still reels from 2017’s Hurricane Maria.
President Donald Trump tweeted on Thursday morning: ‘Puerto Rico is in great shape with Hurricane Dorian taking a largely different route than anticipated. Thank you to FEMA, first responders, and all, for working so hard & being so well prepared. A great result! The bad news, Florida get ready! Storm is building and will be BIG! Hurricane Dorian looks like it will be hitting Florida late Sunday night. Be prepared and please follow State and Federal instructions, it will be a very big Hurricane, perhaps one of the biggest!’
Cleaned out: Floridians listened to official orders to prepare for the worst and stock up on water, food and medicine that would last for seven days
Pictures from Port Orange, Florida show an emptied out produce department at a local Walmart as locals prepare to face the possible Category 4 hurricane
This store in David, Florida actually ran out of water when hordes of locals stocked up on bottled water for the hurricane
Shoppers pictured above waiting to see if this Davie, Florida Costco will restock on water bottles
Preparing for the worst: This man in Indian Harbor, Florida is seen putting aluminum panels on his house in Melbourne Florida on Thursday to brace for Hurricane Dorian’s impact
Bracing for impact: These two Florida residents are seen putting aluminum panels on a hose in Melbourne, Florida on Thursday after Governor DeSantis declared a state of emergency on Wednesday
Dozens of residents headed to this local gas station on Thursday in Miami to stock up on gas before the hurricane hits
This man in Hialeah, Florida filled multiple containers with gasoline in anticipation of the storm
Rolling Stones forced to change tour date as Florida braces for Hurricane Dorian
The Rolling Stones have been forced to rescheduled their Miami Gardens performance as Florida braces for Hurricane Dorian.
The concert, originally scheduled for Saturday, August 31 at the Hard Rock Stadium, has been moved up a day to Friday, August 30.
On Thursday, lead singer Jagger was spotted with his wife, Melanie Hamrick, son Deveraux and bandmates Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood on their Miami hotel balcony looking out at the gloomy day.
Mick Jagger was spotted at a Miami hotel on Thursday after his band the Rolling Stones announced they were rescheduling their Saturday concert because of the threat of Hurricane Dorian
Family plans: He was joined by wife Melanie Hamrick, 32, and son Deveraux, 2
Keith Richards, 75, (left) was seen wearing a pair of leopard print boxers and a T-shirt that said ‘Do not x-ray’. Ronnie Wood, 72, is seen right
The concert, originally scheduled for Saturday, August 31 at the Hard Rock Stadium, has been moved up a day to Friday, August 30
Due to the last minute change, Latin rock star Juanes will not be able to be there to perform, meaning the band will have no opening act.
The announcement was posted to their official Instagram page on Thursday.
‘Due to the weather forecast, the Rolling Stones show scheduled for Saturday, August 31 at the Hard Rock Stadium has been moved to tomorrow night, Friday, August 30. All tickets will be honored for the new date. There will be no opening act – doors will open at 6:00PM ET, and Stones will go on at 8:30PM ET,’ the announcement read.
‘Ticket holders will be receiving an email from Ticketmaster with more information. #stonesnofilter #therollingstones #Miami,’ they added.
The official NHC forecast predicts the storm will grow into a Category 4 storm and will hit the coast late Sunday or early Monday.
‘Dorian’s small size makes it susceptible to rapid intensification. This could occur when it moves past Puerto Rico and frees itself from dry air. These quick bursts of rapid intensification are difficult to forecast,’ according to weather.com.
‘All indications are that by this Labor Day weekend, a powerful hurricane will be near or over the Florida peninsula,’ the NHC in Miami said in an advisory.
NHC also warned early Thursday that heavy rain from Dorian could cause ‘life-threatening flash floods’ in parts of the Bahamas and southeastern U.S. coast.
The 500-mile cone of uncertainty indicates that it could be anywhere from coastal southern Georgia to the Florida keys.
On Wednesday Dorian was upgraded from a tropical storm to a Category 1 hurricane and made landfall in the Virgin Islands. The flooded city of Tortola in the Virgin Islands pictured above
A washed up boat lies on the shore after Dorian slammed St. Thomas of the Virgin Islands on Wednesday
Dorian was expected to hit Puerto Rico on Wednesday but passed to the east of the territory, leaving it unscathed. Locals are seen waiting for the storm to arrive in San Juan
Safe: Puerto Rico was hit with just a bit of rain as Dorian approached its northeast region but didn’t make landfall. A flooded road in Canovanas on the island pictured above
In Central Florida, residents are taking official advice and preparing for a Labor Day strike.
Governor Ron DeSantis spoke at the National Hurricane Center on Thursday to urge locals to prepare saying: ‘Be prepared for a lot of water. You should have seven days of food, medicine and water as a part of your plan.’
Also on Thursday he declared a state of emergency for all 67 Florida counties – up from the 26 counties announced yesterday.
Some grocery stores reported that their stock of bottle water and other supplies has already taken a hit, according to the Orlando Sentinel. The U.S. Coast Guard has also warned all pleasure boats at the Port of Key West to seek safe harbor.
The Florida Department of Emergency Management tweeted a lengthy checklist of supplies to have on hand on Wednesday.
The University of Central Florida, where fall semester classes just started Monday, has urged students living on campus to prepare to move to safer off-campus locations if the storm continues on its projected track.
In East Orange County, officials handed out shovels and bags on Wednesday for residents to make their own sandbags. By late afternoon nearly 7,000 bags had been filled, the Sentinel reported.
In this latest National Hurricane Center update the Bahamas and Florida east coast are predicted to be hit by the hurricane. Dorian will bring along with it heavy rains to the southeastern US later this week into next week
This graphic shows the tropical-storm-force winds that whip through Florida, hitting early Saturday ahead of the hurricane’s landfall
Tropical Storm Dorian was upgraded to a hurricane on Wednesday as winds reached a peak of 75mph
Only a few hurricanes have made landfall in Florida on its East Coast. This map shows some of those rare storms. An unnamed hurricane struck Palm Beach County in 1949, in 1992 the notorious Hurricane Andrew made landfall in Miami-Dade County, in 2004 Hurricane Jeanne hit Martin County and in 2005 Hurricane Katrina broke land in Broward County
Cruise lines operating out of Port Canaveral are adjusting schedules to keep boat traffic to a minimum.
Martin County schools canceled all school-related activities through Monday.
Weekend Breakdown of Hurricane Dorian
Through Friday: The eye of Dorian is expected to hit the east and north of Turks and Caicos and the southeastern Bahamas
Saturday: Dorian will potentially impact the northwest Bahamas. Tropical winds will hit Florida
Sunday – Monday: Dorian with make landfall the Southeast U.S., most likely in Florida
Source: Weather.com
Governor Ron DeSantis spoke at the National Hurricane Center on Thursday to urge locals to prepare saying: ‘Be prepared for a lot of water. You should have seven days of food, medicine and water as a part of your plan.’
Now on the Space Coast, companies like NASA, SpaceX and ULA are working to secure their launch pads and million-dollar equipment as they brace for Dorian’s wrath.
Teams at the Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station are working to move a $650million mobile launcher, which attaches to a rocket and prepares it for launch. It’s going to be used to launch NASA’s upcoming rocket the Space Launch System and astronaut capsule Orion for upcoming moon missions, according to the Orlando Sentinel.
Elon Musk’s Space X also started to move its fleet of rocket recovery vehicles away from the Space coast.
When Dorian barrels the coast, the space center facilities would be hit first. Space companies have already suffered devastating damage from Hurricane Matthew in 2016 and Hurricane Frances in 2004, which toppled a rocket.
This map shows that Hurricane Dorian is predicted to hit Miami at 125mph in the early hours of Monday and will move inwards towards Melbourne and Fort Myers Tuesday morning at reduced 85mph speeds
As of Thursday 11am EDT Hurricane Dorian was located 220 miles northwest of San Juan, Puerto Rico travelling at 13mph with 85mph winds
This map shows the rain forecast with the hurricane, that’ll bring up to three inches of rain to Florida through Sunday
The Florida Department of Emergency Management tweeted a lengthy checklist of supplies to have on hand on Wednesday
Some meteorologists expressed concern that as Dorian moves into the warm waters of the Gulf Stream and gains momentum it could actually reach a Category 4 storm, echoing the last-minute intensification of Hurricane Andrew in August 1992 that escalated into a Category 5 status just prior to making landfall in South Florida.
On Wednesday lightening was detected int he eye of the hurricane – a sign of rapid strengthening.
Dorian left some damage in its wake as it carved its way across the Caribbean as a tropical storm.
On Wednesday Dorian at 2pm EDT Dorian made landfall on Saint Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands as a Category 1 hurricane with 75mph winds, causing power outages and minor flooding.
At that time Saint Thomas was in the developing northern eyewall of Dorian, according to WUnderground.
President Donald Trump issued an emergency declaration Wednesday night for the U.S. Virgin Islands, ordering federal assistance with disaster relief for the U.S. territory. He also offered a similar declaration for Puerto Rico, offering federal assistance for local authorities.
Power outages and flooding were reported across the US Virgin Islands, the British Virgin Islands and the Puerto Rican islands of Vieques and Culebra after Dorian hit St Thomas as a Category 1 storm.
‘We’re happy because there are no damages to report,’ Culebra Mayor William Solís told The Associated Press, noting that only one community lost power.
Meanwhile, Dorian caused an island-wide blackout in St Thomas and St John in the US Virgin Islands, and scattered power outages in St Croix, government spokesman Richard Motta told AP.
In addition, the storm downed trees and at least one electric post in St Thomas, he said, adding that there were no reports of major flooding.
‘We are grateful that it wasn’t a stronger storm,’ he said.
There were no immediate reports of damage in the British Virgin Islands, where Gov Augustus Jaspert said crews were already clearing roads and inspecting infrastructure by late Wednesday afternoon.
Dorian battered the island of St Thomas on Wednesday, causing widespread power outages and leveling trees
Dorian appears to have largely spared Puerto Rico, passing over the top of the US territory that is still recovering from a powerful storm two years ago.
The National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami said the hurricane watch and tropical storm warning for the island had been lifted, and that ‘Dorian continues to move away from Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.’
‘The threat has already passed,’ Puerto Rico’s new governor, Wanda Vazquez, told a news conference.
Vazquez announced that schools would reopen and people should return to work from Thursday. She said the storm had given the island a chance to evaluate its hurricane response.
‘These days have been a real exercise where we have been able to re-evaluate and make adjustments in all our responses to protect the people of Puerto Rico,’ she said.
Now meteorologists say severe weather could batter the southeast Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands on Friday.
On Wednesday President Donald Trump was blasted for transferring disaster-relief funds to border control efforts.
On Wednesday as Trump announced FEMA relief for Puerto Rico, he refueled his feud with San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz. He said: ‘FEMA and all others are ready, and will do a great job. When they do, let them know it, and give them a big Thank You – Not like last time. That includes from the incompetent Mayor of San Juan!’
The Trump administration announced in July in a notification to Congress that it will move $155 million from FEMA’s disaster-relief fund to pay for border enforcement efforts.
On Wednesday Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried – Florida’s only statewide elected Democrat – berated Trump for moving the funds as Hurricane Dorian barrels towards Florida.
‘The President must be out of his mind if he thinks it’s a good idea to shift funds out of @FEMA for immigrant detention at the border while a potential Category 3 Hurricane #Dorian bears down on the United States,’ she wrote.
‘We don’t need those funds diverted to fuel a xenophobic agenda,’ she added.
On Wednesday as Trump announced FEMA relief for Puerto Rico, he refueled his feud with San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz saying FEMA and all others are ready, and will do a great job. When they do, let them know it, and give them a big Thank You – Not like last time. That includes from the incompetent Mayor of San Juan!’
‘The threat has already passed,’ Puerto Rico’s new governor, Wanda Vazquez (center), told a news conference in the evening
The storm was expected to pass over or near Puerto Rico on Wednesday. People are seen gathered at the coast of Patillas
Residents of Yabucoa, Puerto Rico, are seen boarding up their windows to protect against potentially disastrous winds
Florida’s most destructive hurricanes
Hurricane Andrew: This powerful Category 5 Atlantic hurricane battered the Bahamas, Florida and Louisiana in August 1992.
At the time it was the most destructive hurricane to ever hit Florida where it made landfall with wind speeds as high as 165mph, killing 65 people and causing $27.3billion in damage.
Homestead Florida residents picking through the debris left in the wake of the deadly Hurricane Andrew on August 24, 1992
Hurricane Irma: Irma was the strongest observed hurricane in the Atlantic causing at least 134 deaths in September 2017.
This Category 5 hurricane hit the Leeward Islands, the northeastern Caribbean and the Florida Keys.
Trees pictured bent in Hurricane Irma on Sept 10 2017 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Hurricane Michael: This category 5 hurricane was the first to strike the contiguous United States since Andrew in 1992.
The October 2018 storm killed 74 – including 59 in the U.S. and 15 in Central America.
It reached peak winds of 160mph before it made landfall near Mexico Beach, Florida
A damaged home in Mexico Beach, Florida pictured above in the wake of Hurricane Michael
From August 26–28, the storm affected Caribbean nations and territories devastated by hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017. Extensive precautionary measures were taken to mitigate damage, especially in Puerto Rico, where one person died. Damaging winds primarily affected the Virgin Islands where gusts reached 111 mph (179 km/h). Elsewhere in the Lesser Antilles, impacts from the storm were relatively minor. After moving over the Bahamas the storm, the storm strengthened to a Category 5 storm and slowed its forward motion considerably, remaining essentially stationary over the Abaco Islands and Grand Bahama Island from September 1 to September 3. Wind speeds reached record levels of 185 mph (298 km/h) sustained winds, and gusts over 200 mph (320 km/h). Due to the prolonged and intense storm conditions, including heavy rainfall, high winds, and storm surge, damage in the Bahamas was extensive, with thousands of homes destroyed and at least five deaths recorded. The storm began to move slowly towards the north-northwest during the morning of September 3. By the afternoon of September 3, the storm had weakened to a Category 2 hurricane.
Map plotting the track and the intensity of the storm, according to the Saffir–Simpson scale
On August 19, 2019, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) identified a tropical wave—an elongated trough of low air pressure—within a monsoon trough over Guinea and Senegal in western Africa. Convective activity associated with the wave was limited by an abundance of Saharan dust in the region.[1] Propagating west over the tropical Atlantic Ocean, the system remained disorganized for several days.[2] On August 23, a defined area of low pressure consolidated at the surface and thunderstorm activity increased.[3] The system acquired sufficient organized convection to be classified as Tropical Depression Five at 15:00 UTC on August 24. At this time the system was situated 805 mi (1,300 km) east-southeast of Barbados. A deep ridge imparted continued westward movement of the depression, steering it toward the Lesser Antilles.[4] A small cyclone, it soon developed a defined inner-core with a 12 mi (18 km) wide eye-like feature. This marked the system’s intensification into a tropical storm, at which time it was assigned the nameDorian by the NHC.[5] Thereafter, moderate wind shear and surrounding dry air limited further organization.[6]Rainbands gradually wrapped more around Dorian on August 25–26, though convection remained inconsistent.[7][8]
Dorian continued moving west and came extremely close to Barbados, bringing tropical storm-force winds and heavy rain.[9] It then started moving northwestward toward St. Lucia and entering the Caribbean Sea. The storm underwent a center relocation further north, to the west of Martinique, causing the island to experience tropical storm-force winds as well.[10] Dorian had been predicted to travel northwest and pass over or near the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico,[11] possibly allowing their mountainous terrain to weaken the tropical storm. At that time, dry air and wind shear were expected to prevent Dorian from attaining hurricane status—although just barely.[12] However, Dorian took a more northerly track than expected, causing it to pass to the east of Puerto Rico and hit the US Virgin Islands.
On August 28, Dorian intensified into a Category 1 hurricane as it approached St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands, where hurricane-force winds were recorded; at 18:00 UTC that day, Dorian made landfall on St. Thomas at Category 1 intensity.[15][16] However, the hurricane’s small size prevented mainland Puerto Rico from experiencing hurricane- or tropical storm-force winds, although this was not the case for the Spanish Virgin Islands.[17]
Hurricane Dorian making landfall on Abaco Island as a strong Category 5 hurricane, on September 1, 2019
Once the system moved north past the Virgin islands, the storm entered a more favorable environment. However, dry air was still in the system from its journey through the Caribbean sea and the lesser Antilles, and this gave the storm an erratic look and was lopsided. There was no more dry air afterwards, so the storm began to mix out the dry air, and on the next day, the system started to rapidly intensify, reaching Category 2 status early on August 30.[18] Rapid intensification continued, and the storm eventually reached major hurricane status several hours later, on the same day.[19] This strengthening trend came to a halt for the remainder of the day, but soon resumed.[20] The system continued strengthening, and on August 31, Dorian attained Category 4 major hurricane status.[21] Dorian reached Category 5 intensity on the following day.[22] On the morning of September 1, a dropsonde deployed by a NOAA aircraft measured a wind gust of 176 knots (326 km/h; 203 mph) at the surface. With one-minute sustained winds of 180 mph (290 km/h) and a minimum pressure of 913 mbar (27.0 inHg), the NHC noted that Dorian was the strongest hurricane in modern records to affect the northwestern Bahamas.[23] At 16:40 UTC on September 1, Hurricane Dorian made landfall on Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas, with one-minute sustained winds of 185 mph (298 km/h) wind gusts over 220 mph (355 km/h), and a central barometric pressure of 911 millibars (26.9 inHg).[24][25] The storm’s central pressure bottomed out at 910 millibars (26.87 inHg) within a few hours, as Dorian reached its peak intensity during landfall.[26] Hurricane Dorian’s forward speed decreased around this time, slowing to a westward crawl of 5 mph (8.0 km/h).[26] At 02:00 UTC on September 2, Dorian made landfall on Grand Bahama near the same intensity, with the same sustained wind speed.[27] The storm continued moving very slowly, at some points at only 1 knot (1.2 mph; 1.9 km/h) over Grand Bahama. This effectively had Dorian stall over Grand Bahama. Later on that day, the storm began to undergo an eyewall replacement cycle over Grand Bahama.[28] Dorian weakened to a Category 4 hurricane due to upwelling and the eyewall replacement cycle. In the absence of significant steering currents, Dorian had remained stationary. The storm further weakened to Category 2 intensity at 15:00 UTC September 3, but resumed its slow trek northwest, skirting the U.S. state of Florida.
Current storm information
As of 2:00 p.m. EDT (18:00 UTC) September 3, Hurricane Dorian is located within 15 nautical miles of 27.5°N 78.7°W, about 65 mi (105 km) north of Freeport, Bahamas and about 105 mi (170 km) east of Fort Pierce, Florida. Maximum sustained winds are 95 kn (110 mph; 175 km/h), with gusts to 115 kn (130 mph; 215 km/h). The minimum barometric pressure is 959 mbar (28.32 inHg), and the system is moving northwest at 4 kn (5 mph; 7 km/h). Hurricane-force winds extend up to 60 miles (95 km) from the center of Dorian, and tropical storm-force winds up to 175 miles (280 km) from the center.
At 09:00 UTC on August 25, a tropical storm watch was issued for the island of Barbados.[29] Later that day, more watches and warnings were issued for more of the islands. A hurricane watch was also issued at 15:00 UTC August 26 for Saint Lucia.[30][31][32] Late on August 26, a tropical storm watch was issued for Puerto Rico.[33]
In Barbados, Prime Minister Mia Mottley ordered the closure of all schools and advised the nation’s residents to remain indoors for the duration of the storm. Infra worked to clear public drains island-wide.[34] Thirty-eight shelters opened island-wide, with 103 residents seeking refuge in them. All public services were suspended for the duration of the storm.[35][36] Homeless persons were transported to shelter by emergency personnel.[37] On August 26, St. Lucia prime minister Allen Chastanet announced that the nation would “shut down” for the duration of Dorian and all residents were mandated to stay home.[38] Numerous people ignored this warning, however, and the police detained several people who refused to return home.[39]LIAT cancelled multiple flights across the Lesser Antilles due to the storm.[40] The Department of Infrastructure, Ports and Energy placed all heavy machinery and equipment owners on standby to assist in cleanup and relief efforts.[41] In Dominica, Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit ordered all public sector workers to remain home and prepare for the storm.[42] The devastation from Hurricane Maria in 2017 brought greater vigilance from the public, and Skerrit assured residents that the nation was “better place now” than after Maria and there would be “no shutting of the country” for Dorian. The Ministry of Public Works mobilized heavy machinery and the police were placed on high alert to more effectively respond to emergency calls.[43]Small craft advisories and flash flood watches were issued for the island.[44]
The Puerto Rico National Guard was activated for potential relief efforts ahead of the hurricane
With Puerto Rico also recovering from Hurricane Maria in 2017, Governor Wanda Vázquez Garced declared a state of emergency for the territory on August 27.[16][45] The following day, the Puerto Rico National Guard was activated to support any relief operations related to the storm. Hundreds of vehicles, generators, and water trucks were fueled and filled to be ready for deployment.[46] Fears centered around the still-unstable power grid which was largely destroyed by Maria. In some areas, power lines remained affixed to palm trees.[34] Hundreds of utility workers were deployed to quickly fix any power outages.[47] Top government officials reported adequate supplies ahead of the storm; however, some local governors indicated a lack of generators and proper public shelters.[34] An estimated 30,000 homes still had damaged roofs from the 2017 hurricane.[48] Residents boarded up windows with plywood and stocked up on bottled water and generators.[34] All government offices and schools closed for the duration of the hurricane. Territory-wide, 360 shelters with a collective capacity of 48,500 persons opened; 24,000 cots were distributed to these shelters.[16] Private organizations worked quickly in Vieques to ensure the safety of residents. Fearing isolation from mainland Puerto Rico. ViequesLove established a radio network to keep residents informed of the hurricane. Volunteers supplied the island’s local shelter with a generator.[47]
Similar to Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands were still recovering from hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017.[49] A state of emergency was declared for the United States Virgin Islands on August 28,[16] and a curfew was enacted for the duration of the hurricane. All airports and seaports suspended operations.[50] The Government of the British Virgin Islands opened seven shelters territory-wide. A mandatory curfew was put in place from 2:00 p.m. on August 28 to 6:00 a.m. on August 29.[51]Auguste George Airport, Virgin Gorda Airport, and Terrance B. Lettsome International Airport closed for the duration of the storm.[52] The majority of the British Virgin Islands’ clinics and hospitals suspended operations during the hurricane; however, a few remained open.[53]
Bahamas
A warning to take immediate cover was issued on the NHC twitter account, at 11 a.m. EDT on September 1, 2019, as Dorian made landfall in Elbow Cay, Bahamas, at 16:40 UTC as a Category 5 hurricane.[54][55] Samuel Butler, the assistant commissioner for the Royal Bahamas Police Force told residents “if you do not to heed to the warning […] we know that the end could be be fatal” and Don Cornish, the administrator with the City of Freeport told others seeking shelter at Old Bahama Bay Hotel “that is not a good idea […] reconsider that decision”.[56]
Kay Ivey, Governor of Alabama, announced that the Alabama National Guard will be sending up to fifty support personnel to Florida to aide in recovery efforts.[64][65] On September 1, Governor DeSantis stated that 4,500 members of the United States National Guard have been activated to help aide those affected by Dorian, saying that the hurricane is “way too close for comfort.”[66]
Uber started offering free roundtrip rides to and from shelters for up to $20. Comcast started offering free Wifi to everyone in Florida, Verizon is providing unlimited calling, data, and texting for customers, and AT&T is waiving data overage charges for residents.[72]
Georgia
On August 28, Georgia governor Brian Kemp declared a state of emergency for coastal counties of Georgia that are in the forecast path of the hurricane, including Brantley, Bryan, Camden, Charlton, Chatham, Effingham, Glynn, Liberty, Long, McIntosh, Pierce and Wayne counties.[73]Atlanta Motor Speedway opened their campgrounds free of charge to evacuees of Hurricane Dorian.[74] The College of Coastal Georgia announced campus closures for both Tuesday and Wednesday following Labor Day. Savannah State University also cancelled classes Tuesday.
On August 31, South Carolina governor Henry McMaster declared a state of emergency for the entire state after the path of Dorian shifted to affect South Carolina as a strong hurricane.[75]
On September 1, during a news conference, Governor McMaster announced that mandatory evacuations for Jasper, Beaufort, Colleton, Charleston, Berkeley, Dorchester, Georgetown, and Horry counties will go into effect on Monday, September 2, at noon. State government offices and schools in the counties previously mentioned will be closed until further notice, starting Tuesday.[76] Due to the evacuations, many colleges including College of Charleston and Coastal Carolina University were closed from Tuesday until further notice.
North Carolina
On August 30, North Carolina governor Roy Cooper declared a state of emergency for the entire state, due to the hurricane.[77]Charlotte Motor Speedway opened their campgrounds free of charge to evacuees of Hurricane Dorian.[78] The University of North Carolina at Wilmington cancelled classes for the week of September 3 and issued a mandatory evacuation of the campus.[79] Over the Labor Day weekend, several school districts announced plans to close ahead of expected evacuations. New Hanover County, Pender County and Brunswick County, all in the Cape Fear region, cancelled public schools on September 4-5, as did several private schools and community colleges.[80] Further north, along the Outer Banks in Dare County a mandatory evacuation order was given on September 2, 2019. Visitors and tourists were required to evacuate by noon on September 3, while residents were required to evacuate by 6:00 AM on September 4.[81]
Virginia
On September 2, Virginia governor Ralph Northam declared a state of emergency ahead of Dorian’s anticipated impact on coastal Virginia on Thursday, saying, “Hurricane Dorian is a serious storm, and current predictions indicate that it may affect parts of Virginia. I am declaring a state of emergency to ensure that localities and communities have the appropriate level of assistance, and to coordinate the Commonwealth’s response to any potential impacts from Hurricane Dorian. I encourage Virginians to take all necessary precautions to make sure they are prepared as well.”[82][83]
Elsewhere
On September 1, President Donald Trump tweeted that Alabama “will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated.”[84] The Birmingham office of the National Weather Service corrected the record several hours later, saying that Alabama “will NOT see any impacts from Dorian.”[85]
On August 26, winds began to pick up in the Lesser Antilles and water levels along the coast began to rise (storm surge).[34] Wind gusts in Barbados reached 55 mph (89 km/h),[45] downing trees and power lines.[36] Some residences in southern Barbados lost power and water service.[36][88] Overall, Dorian caused little damage in Barbados,[35] with only one home suffering damage in Saint Peter.[36] Isolated interruptions to power occurred on St. Lucia; no damage occurred otherwise in the nation.[89][90] In Martinique, heavy rains—peaking at 102 mm (4.0 in) in Rivière-Pilote—and winds up to 61 mph (98 km/h) caused some damage. Approximately 4,000 homes lost power and many streets became impassable due to flooding; one road was washed out.[91][92] Flooding affected some homes and businesses in Rivière-Pilote; however, overall damage was negligible.[92] Heavy showers in Dominica left multiple communities without power and water; however, effects were otherwise limited.[93] Rainfall extended north to Guadeloupe were accumulations reached 121 mm (4.8 in) in Matouba.[94]
Striking the Virgin Islands as an intensifying hurricane, Dorian brought strong winds and heavy rains to the region.[16]Buck Island, just south of Saint Thomas, experienced sustained winds of 82 mph (132 km/h) and a peak gust of 111 mph (179 km/h).[95] Wind gusts on Saint Thomas reached 75 mph (121 km/h).[45] Island-wide blackouts occurred on Saint Thomas and Saint John, while 25,000 customers lost power on Saint Croix.[16][45] The high winds downed trees across the islands.[16] Along the coast, multiple boats broke from their moorings and washed ashore.[96] One person died on Saint John during the hurricane; however, the cause of death is pending investigation and believed to be from natural causes.[50] Some flooding occurred on Tortola in the British Virgin Islands.[51] Significant flooding and some structural damage occurred along the outskirts of Road Town, including a mall that had its roof partially removed by storm-force gusts.[97][98] Downed trees knocked out power to some residences on Virgin Gorda.[99]
Owing to the hurricane’s moving farther northeast than initially anticipated, its effects in Puerto Rico were relatively limited.[16] Wind gusts in Culebra reached 62 mph (100 km/h) and 35 mph (56 km/h) in San Juan. Approximately 23,000 households lost power across the territory.[16][45] No major damage was reported in Culebra.[16] A man in Bayamón died when he fell off his roof trying to clean drains in advance of the storm.[45]
Hurricane Dorian on September 1 making landfall on the Abaco Islands near peak intensity
Bahamas
Increased tides were experienced in the Bahamas ahead of the storm, with rip currents occurring as well. On September 1, 2019, hurricane conditions arrived in some of the Abaco Islands. A few hours later, destructive conditions arrived, with Hurricane Dorian making landfall as a Category 5 hurricane at 16:40 UTC, becoming the strongest hurricane in modern records to strike the northwestern Bahamas.[100] Around 12:30 PM AST, Category 5 winds arrived at the Bahamas with the eyewall. Gusts of over 200 mph (320 km/h) also occurred.[101] At 7:00 (UTC) on September 2, 2019, Grand Bahama International Airport was underwater.[102] Minister of Agriculture Michael Pintard reported an estimated storm tide of 20 to 25 ft (6.1 to 7.6 m) at his home on Grand Bahama.[103] The Bahamas prime minister, Hubert Minnis, said “This is a deadly […] monster storm”.[104]
Marsh Harbour received “catastrophic damage”, according to an ABC News team.[105] There was significant flooding on streets and beaches, and damage to trees and homes, with some roofs ripped off entirely.[106] The scene was described by an ABC reporter as “pure hell”.[105] An eight-year-old boy drowned in the storm surge, while the boy’s sister was also reported to be missing.[107][108] Four other people, along with the eight-year-old boy, were confirmed dead on the Abaco Islands, the prime minister told reporters on Monday.[87][109]
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) reported that as many as 13,000 homes were damaged or destroyed on Abaco Island. Extensive flooding is also believed to have caused water wells to be contaminated with seawater, creating an urgent need for clean water.[110]
Around 11:24 (UTC) September 2, 2019, total power was lost on the island of New Providence,[111] the following day at 1:50 (UTC) 40% of power had been restored.[112]
Tropical storm conditions continued into Monday. At 2 p.m. EDT, a sustained wind of 56 mph (90 km/h) and a gust of 69 mph (110 km/h) at a NOAA Coastal Marine observing site at Settlement Point on the west end of Grand Bahama Island.[113]
Mainland United States
Florida
On September 2, Florida began experiencing tropical storm-force winds. At 18:00 UTC (2 p.m. EDT), the pier in Juno Beach recorded a wind gust of 48 mph (75 km/h).[114] One death occurred in Indiatlantic when a man fell three stories while boarding up his home.[115]
Records
Most intense landfalling Atlantic hurricanes
Intensity is measured solely by central pressure
With sustained winds of 185 mph (295 km/h), Dorian is the strongest hurricane on record to strike the Bahamas since records began in 1851.[117][100] Dorian is tied with the 1935 Labor Day hurricane for the highest sustained winds at landfall in an Atlantic hurricane;[118] by the same metric, it is also the strongest Atlantic hurricane since Wilma in 2005. Dorian is one of only two Category 5 hurricanes to make landfall on the Abaco Islands, the other having occurred in 1932,[119] and is the only such storm on record to have impacted Grand Bahama.[120] Additionally, Dorian featured the highest sustained winds in an Atlantic hurricane recorded as far north as its latitude.[121]
To be classified as a hurricane, a tropical cyclone must have one-minute maximum sustained winds of at least 74 mph (33 m/s; 64 kn; 119 km/h) (Category 1). The highest classification in the scale, Category 5, consists of storms with sustained winds over 156 mph (70 m/s; 136 kn; 251 km/h). The classifications can provide some indication of the potential damage and flooding a hurricane will cause upon landfall.
Other areas use different scales to label these storms, which are called cyclones or typhoons, depending on the area. These areas (except the JTWC) use three-minute or ten-minute averaged winds to determine the maximum sustained winds—which is an important difference and makes direct comparison with storms scaled with the Saffir–Simpson method difficult.
There is some criticism of the SSHWS for not accounting for rain, storm surge, and other important factors, but SSHWS defenders say that part of the goal of SSHWS is to be straightforward and simple to understand.
The initial scale was developed by Herbert Saffir, a structural engineer, who in 1969 went on commission for the United Nations to study low-cost housing in hurricane-prone areas.[4] While conducting the study, Saffir realized there was no simple scale for describing the likely effects of a hurricane. Mirroring the utility of the Richter magnitude scale for describing earthquakes, he devised a 1–5 scale based on wind speed that showed expected damage to structures. Saffir gave the scale to the NHC, and Simpson added the effects of storm surge and flooding.
In 2009, the NHC made moves to eliminate pressure and storm surge ranges from the categories, transforming it into a pure wind scale, called the Saffir–Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale (Experimental) [SSHWS].[5] The new scale became operational on May 15, 2010.[6] The scale excludes flood ranges, storm surge estimations, rainfall, and location, which means a Category 2 hurricane that hits a major city will likely do far more cumulative damage than a Category 5 hurricane that hits a rural area.[7] The agency cited various hurricanes as reasons for removing the “scientifically inaccurate” information, including Hurricane Katrina (2005) and Hurricane Ike (2008), which both had stronger than estimated storm surges, and Hurricane Charley (2004), which had weaker than estimated storm surge.[8] Since being removed from the Saffir–Simpson hurricane wind scale, storm surge predicting and modeling is now handled with the use of computer numerical models such as ADCIRC and SLOSH.
In 2012, the NHC expanded the windspeed range for Category 4 by 1 mph in both directions, to 130–156 mph, with corresponding changes in the other units (113–136 kn, 209–251 km/h), instead of 131–155 mph (114–135 kn, 210–249 km/h). The NHC and the Central Pacific Hurricane Center assign tropical cyclone intensities in 5 knot increments, and then convert to mph and km/h with a similar rounding for other reports. So an intensity of 115 kn is rated Category 4, but the conversion to miles per hour (132.3 mph) would round down to 130 mph, making it appear to be a Category 3 storm. Likewise, an intensity of 135 kn (~155 mph, and thus Category 4) is 250.02 km/h, which, according to the definition used before the change would be Category 5. To resolve these issues, the NHC had been obliged to incorrectly report storms with wind speeds of 115 kn as 135 mph, and 135 kn as 245 km/h. The change in definition allows storms of 115 kn to be correctly rounded down to 130 mph, and storms of 135 kn to be correctly reported as 250 km/h, and still qualify as Category 4. Since the NHC had previously rounded incorrectly to keep storms in Category 4 in each unit of measure, the change does not affect the classification of storms from previous years.[5] The new scale became operational on May 15, 2012.[9]
Categories
The scale separates hurricanes into five different categories based on wind. The U.S. National Hurricane Center classifies hurricanes of Category 3 and above as major hurricanes, and the Joint Typhoon Warning Center classifies typhoons of 150 mph or greater (strong Category 4 and Category 5) as super typhoons (although all tropical cyclones can be very dangerous). Most weather agencies use the definition for sustained winds recommended by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which specifies measuring winds at a height of 33 ft (10.1 m) for 10 minutes, and then taking the average. By contrast, the U.S. National Weather Service, Central Pacific Hurricane Center and the Joint Typhoon Warning Center define sustained winds as average winds over a period of one minute, measured at the same 33 ft (10.1 m) height,[10][11] and that is the definition used for this scale. Intensity of example hurricanes is from both the time of landfall and the maximum intensity.
The scale is roughly logarithmic in wind speed, and the top wind speed for Category “c” (c = 1 … 4; there is no upper limit for category 5) can be expressed as 83×10(c⁄15) miles per hour rounded to the nearest multiple of 5 – except that after the change mentioned above, Category 4 is now widened by 1 mph in each direction and that the calculated value for Category 2 (c = 2) is rounded down from 112.8 mph to 110 mph.
The five categories are described in the following subsections, in order of increasing intensity.[12]
Category 1 storms usually cause no significant structural damage to most well-constructed permanent structures; however, they can topple unanchored mobile homes, as well as uproot or snap weak trees. Poorly attached roof shingles or tiles can blow off. Coastal flooding and pier damage are often associated with Category 1 storms. Power outages are typically widespread to extensive, sometimes lasting several days. Even though it is the least intense type of hurricane, they can still produce widespread damage and can be life-threatening storms.[5]
Extremely dangerous winds will cause extensive damage
Storms of Category 2 intensity often damage roofing material (sometimes exposing the roof) and inflict damage upon poorly constructed doors and windows. Poorly constructed signs and piers can receive considerable damage and many trees are uprooted or snapped. Mobile homes, whether anchored or not, are typically damaged and sometimes destroyed, and many manufactured homes also suffer structural damage. Small craft in unprotected anchorages may break their moorings. Extensive to near-total power outages and scattered loss of potable water are likely, possibly lasting many days.[5]
Tropical cyclones of Category 3 and higher are described as major hurricanes in the Atlantic or Eastern Pacific basins. These storms can cause some structural damage to small residences and utility buildings, particularly those of wood frame or manufactured materials with minor curtain wall failures. Buildings that lack a solid foundation, such as mobile homes, are usually destroyed, and gable-end roofs are peeled off. Manufactured homes usually sustain severe and irreparable damage. Flooding near the coast destroys smaller structures, while larger structures are struck by floating debris. A large number of trees are uprooted or snapped, isolating many areas. Additionally, terrain may be flooded well inland. Near-total to total power loss is likely for up to several weeks and water will likely also be lost or contaminated.[5]
Category 4 hurricanes tend to produce more extensive curtainwall failures, with some complete structural failure on small residences. Heavy, irreparable damage and near complete destruction of gas station canopies and other wide span overhang type structures are common. Mobile and manufactured homes are often flattened. Most trees, except for the heartiest, are uprooted or snapped, isolating many areas. These storms cause extensive beach erosion, while terrain may be flooded far inland. Total and long-lived electrical and water losses are to be expected, possibly for many weeks.[5]
The 1900 Galveston hurricane, the deadliest natural disaster to hit the United States, peaked at an intensity that corresponds to a modern-day Category 4 storm. Other examples of storms that peaked at Category 4 intensity and made landfall at that intensity include: Hazel (1954), Gracie (1959), Donna (1960), Flora (1963), Cleo (1964), Betsy (1965), Carmen (1974), Frederic (1979), Joan (1988), Iniki (1992), Luis (1995), Iris (2001), Charley (2004), Dennis (2005), Gustav (2008), Ike (2008), Joaquin (2015), and Harvey (2017).
Category 5 is the highest category of the Saffir–Simpson scale. These storms cause complete roof failure on many residences and industrial buildings, and some complete building failures with small utility buildings blown over or away. Collapse of many wide-span roofs and walls, especially those with no interior supports, is common. Very heavy and irreparable damage to many wood frame structures and total destruction to mobile/manufactured homes is prevalent. Only a few types of structures are capable of surviving intact, and only if located at least 3 to 5 miles (5 to 8 km) inland. They include office, condominium and apartment buildings and hotels that are of solid concrete or steel frame construction, multi-story concrete parking garages, and residences that are made of either reinforced brick or concrete/cement block and have hipped roofs with slopes of no less than 35 degrees from horizontal and no overhangs of any kind, and if the windows are either made of hurricane-resistant safety glass or covered with shutters. Unless all of these requirements are met, the absolute destruction of a structure is certain.[5]
The storm’s flooding causes major damage to the lower floors of all structures near the shoreline, and many coastal structures can be completely flattened or washed away by the storm surge. Virtually all trees are uprooted or snapped and some may be debarked, isolating most affected communities. Massive evacuation of residential areas may be required if the hurricane threatens populated areas. Total and extremely long-lived power outages and water losses are to be expected, possibly for up to several months.[5]
Some scientists, including Kerry Emanuel and Lakshmi Kantha, have criticized the scale as being simplistic, indicating that the scale takes into account neither the physical size of a storm nor the amount of precipitation it produces.[7] Additionally, they and others point out that the Saffir–Simpson scale, unlike the Richter scale used to measure earthquakes, is not continuous, and is quantized into a small number of categories. Proposed replacement classifications include the Hurricane Intensity Index, which is based on the dynamic pressure caused by a storm’s winds, and the Hurricane Hazard Index, which is based on surface wind speeds, the radius of maximum winds of the storm, and its translational velocity.[16][17] Both of these scales are continuous, akin to the Richter scale;[18] however, neither of these scales have been used by officials.
“Categories 6 and 7”
After the series of powerful storm systems of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, as well as after Hurricane Patricia, a few newspaper columnists and scientists brought up the suggestion of introducing Category 6, and they have suggested pegging Category 6 to storms with winds greater than 174 or 180 mph (78 or 80 m/s; 151 or 156 kn; 280 or 290 km/h).[7][19] Fresh calls were made for consideration of the issue after Hurricane Irma in 2017,[20] which was the subject of a number of seemingly credible false news reports as a “Category 6” storm,[21] partly in consequence of so many local politicians using the term. Only a few storms of this intensity have been recorded. Of the 35 hurricanes currently considered to have attained Category 5 status in the Atlantic, 19 had wind speeds at 175 mph (78 m/s; 152 kn; 282 km/h) or greater and only eight had wind speeds at 180 mph (80 m/s; 160 kn; 290 km/h) or greater (the 1935 Labor Day hurricane, Allen, Gilbert, Mitch, Rita, Wilma, Irma, and Dorian). Of the 18 hurricanes currently considered to have attained Category 5 status in the eastern Pacific, only five had wind speeds at 175 mph (78 m/s; 152 kn; 282 km/h) or greater (Patsy, John, Linda, Rick, and Patricia), and only three had wind speeds at 180 mph (80 m/s; 160 kn; 290 km/h) or greater (Linda, Rick, and Patricia). Most storms which would be eligible for this category were typhoons in the western Pacific, most notably Typhoon Tip in 1979, with sustained winds of 190 mph (310 km/h),[22] and typhoons Haiyan and Meranti in 2013 and 2016, respectively, each with sustained winds of 195 mph (314 km/h). Occasionally, suggestions of using even higher wind speeds as the cutoff have been made. In a newspaper article published in November 2018, NOAA research scientist Jim Kossin said that the potential for more intense hurricanes was increasing as the climate warmed, and suggested that Category 6 would begin at 195 mph (87 m/s; 169 kn; 314 km/h), with a further hypothetical Category 7 beginning at 230 mph (100 m/s; 200 kn; 370 km/h).[23]
According to Robert Simpson, there are no reasons for a Category 6 on the Saffir–Simpson Scale because it is designed to measure the potential damage of a hurricane to human-made structures. Simpson stated that “… when you get up into winds in excess of 155 mph (249 km/h) you have enough damage if that extreme wind sustains itself for as much as six seconds on a building it’s going to cause rupturing damages that are serious no matter how well it’s engineered.”[3] Nonetheless, the counties of Broward and Miami-Dade in Florida have building codes that require that critical infrastructure buildings be able to withstand Category 5 winds.[24][dead link]
Beaufort scale – Relates wind speed to observable conditions at sea and on land
Enhanced Fujita scale – For tornado intensity with damage correlated to wind speeds. The system was also intended for applicability in hurricanes, and is utilized by engineers in hurricane damage assessment.
Story 2: Trump Administration Tightens Citizenship Rules of U.S. Military and Government Employees For Their Children Adopted Abroad — Less Than 20-30 Children Are Impacted — Conform USCIS Policy to State Department — No Citizenship Denied! — Media Fake News Story Exposed — Videos
U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services policy update causes confusion – EWTN News Nightly
New immigration rule restricts US citizenship for certain children
NEW POLICY: Children of Service Members Overseas will NOT get Automatic Citizenship
Will Goodwin on CNN: Trump’s new military citizenship policy affects all military families
Trump Ends Automatic Citizenship For Some Military Kids Overseas | Velshi & Ruhle | MSNBC
Trump administration changing citizenship rules for some children of US service members
Citizenship for children born to service members oversees
Children born to US service members overseas will no longer be granted automatic citizenship
Children of US Troops Born Overseas No Longer Eligible for Automatic Citizenship
U.S. Department of Homeland Security
U.S. Citizenship
and Immigration
Services http://www.uscis.gov
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
Office of the Director (MS 2000)
Washington, DC 20529-2000
August 28, 2019 PA-2019-05
Policy Alert SUBJECT: Defining “Residence” in Statutory Provisions Related to Citizenship
Purpose
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is issuing policy guidance in the USCIS
Policy Manual to address requirements for “residence” in statutory provisions related to
citizenship, and to rescind previous guidance regarding children of U.S. government employees
and members of the U.S. armed forces employed or stationed outside the United States. Background
Numerous statutory provisions related to citizenship1
require applicants or their U.S. citizen
parents to “reside” or to have had a “residence” in a particular location. USCIS is updating the Policy Manual to better define residence and clarify the distinction between U.S. residence and physical presence. In addition, USCIS is updating its policy regarding children of U.S. government employees and U.S. armed forces members employed or stationed outside the United States to explain that they are not considered to be “residing in the United States” for purposes of acquiring citizenship under INA 320.
This guidance, contained in Volume 12 of the Policy Manual, is effective as of October 29, 2019
(see attached) and applies prospectively to applications filed on or after that date.2
Policy Highlights
• Clarifies that temporary visits to the United States do not establish U.S. residence and
explains the distinction between residence and physical presence in the United States.
• Explains that USCIS no longer considers children of U.S. government employees and U.S. armed forces members residing outside the United States as “residing in the United States” for purposes of acquiring citizenship under INA 320.3
Citation: Volume 12: Citizenship and Naturalization, Part H, Children of U.S. Citizens [12
USCIS-PM H]; Part I, Military Members and their Families [12 USCIS-PM I].
1 See, for example, INA 301(c), INA 320(a)(3), and INA 322(a)(4). 2 Children who have already been recognized through the issuance of a Certificate of Citizenship as having acquired
U.S. citizenship under INA 320 will not be affected by this policy change. 3 Instead, the U.S. citizen parent of such a child may apply for naturalization on the child’s behalf under INA 322.
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Policy Alert 2019-05: Defining “Residence” in Statutory Provisions Related to Citizenship
Page 2 This policy is effective on October 29, 2019 and will be incorporated into the Policy Manual accordingly.
USCIS Policy Manual, Volume 12: Citizenship & Naturalization
Part H – Children of U.S. Citizens
Chapter 2. Definition of Child and Residence for Citizenship and Naturalization
* * *
F. Definition of U.S. Residence The term residence is defined in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) as the person’s principal actual dwelling place in fact, without regard to intent.1 A person is not required to live in a particular place for a specific period of time in order for that place to be considered his or her “residence.” However, the longer a stay in a particular place, the more likely it is that a person can establish that place is his or her residence.
1. Difference between Residence and Physical Presence
The term residence should not be confused with physical presence, which refers to the actual
time a person is in the United States, regardless of whether he or she has a residence in the
United States.2 Although some provisions related to naturalization and citizenship require specific
time periods of physical presence, residence, or both,3 in contrast, there is no specific time period
of residence required for purposes of acquiring citizenship where a child is born outside the
United States of two U.S. citizen parents.4
For example, a person who spent time travelling in the United States for a year living in different
hotel rooms in different cities or towns every week and who did not own or rent any property or
have another principal dwelling place in the United States, would likely be able to establish 1 year
of physical presence. However, without additional evidence of a principal actual dwelling place in
the United States, that person could not establish residence in the United States. The table below
provides a few examples on how travel would affect the physical presence and the residence
requirements. However, the examples are not dispositive and individual cases will be determined
based on the individual merits and evidence presented.
1 See INA 101(a)(33). See Savorgnan v. U.S., 338 U.S. 491, 506 (1950). 2 Examples of documentary evidence showing physical presence may include: academic transcripts, military records,
official vaccination records, medical records, employment records, and lease agreements. 3 See INA 301. See INA 309. For more information on physical presence, see Part D, General Naturalization
Requirements, Chapter 4, Physical Presence [12 USCIS-PM D.4]. 4 See INA 301(c).
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Page 3
Examples Illustrating Physical Presence and Residence in the United States
Scenarios Physical
Presence Residence
U.S. citizen parent owns a home and works in a foreign
country. Parent travels to the United States and:
• Stays 2 weeks with a cousin in New York,
• Stays 2 weeks in New York with his or her parents,
and
• Travels to Florida on vacation for 2 weeks.
6 weeks
No U.S. residence
(Residence is
outside the
United States)
Parent is a U.S. citizen born in a foreign country, who
never lived in or visited the United States. His child moved
to the United States as an adult and claimed U.S.
citizenship.
No physical
presence5 No U.S. residence
As a child, U.S. citizen parent came to the United States for
3 consecutive summers to attend a 2-month long camp.
The parent lived and went to school in a foreign country
for the rest of the year.
6 months
No U.S. residence
(Residence is
outside the
United States)
U.S. citizen parent worked in the United States for 9
months in a year for 8 years out of a 9-year period. (Parent
returned to Mexico to spend the remaining 3 months of
each year with family, who never visited the United
States.)
9 months in a
year for 8
years
U.S. residence
established6
2. Special Considerations
Various circumstances may affect whether USCIS considers a person to be residing in the United
States, and therefore whether a U.S. citizen may transmit citizenship to his or her children.
U.S. Citizens who were Born, But Did Not Reside, in the United States
A U.S. citizen may have automatically acquired U.S. citizenship based on birth in the United
States,7 but never actually resided in the United States. This U.S. citizen will not have established
5 See Madar v. USCIS, 918 F.3d 120 (3rd Cir. 2019). In that case, the appellant argued that he was “constructively
resident” in the United States because his U.S. citizen father lived during the relevant time in what was then
Communist Czechoslovakia and was not free to leave the country. The court rejected that claim noting that physical
presence requirements can be constructively satisfied only in extraordinary circumstances, such as, for example,
when a U.S. government error causes citizenship to lapse, preventing the foreign-born parent from complying with
the physical presence requirements.
6 See Alcarez-Garcia v. Ashcroft, 293 F.3rd 1155 (9th Cir. 2002). 7 See U.S. Const. amend XIV. See INA 301(a).
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Policy Alert 2019-05: Defining “Residence” in Statutory Provisions Related to Citizenship
Page 4
residence in the United States, and may be unable to transmit U.S. citizenship to his or her own
children. For example, if the U.S. citizen, still having never resided in the United States, subsequently marries another U.S. citizen who never resided in the United States, and they give birth to a child outside the United States, the child will not acquire citizenship at birth under INA 301(c) because neither U.S. citizen parent can show the requisite residence in the United States. However, if the U.S. citizen parent had returned to the United States after his or her birth and established residence before giving birth to the child outside the United States, then he or she may be able to meet the residence requirement based on that period of residence and transmit U.S. citizenship to his or her children.
Commuters and Temporary Visits to the United States
Residence is more than a temporary presence or a visit to the United States. Therefore,
temporary presences and visits are insufficient to establish residence for the purposes of
transmitting citizenship. For example, someone who resides along the border in Mexico or
Canada, but works each day in the United States, cannot use his or her workplace to establish a
residence.
Vacations or brief stays in the United States do not qualify as residence in the United States.
However, attendance at school, college, or university in the United States for an extended period
of time may be considered as residence in the United States depending upon the totality of the
circumstances.8
Owning or Renting Property
A person does not need to own or rent property in the United States in order to establish
residence. In addition, owning or renting property outside of the United States does not
automatically establish lack of residence in the United States. Owning and renting property in the
United States may help to establish residence in the United States if the person also establishes
that he or she actually lived in that property, for example. A person who owns property but
never lived in the property would not be able to establish residence based on owning that
property.
3. Evidence
A U.S. citizen who was born in the United States generally meets the residence requirement as
long as he or she can present evidence to demonstrate that his or her mother was not merely
8 See Matter of M–, 4 I&N Dec. 418 (BIA 1951) (continuous stay in the United States as a college student for almost 3
years held to have residence in the United States for purposes of Section 201(g) of the Nationality Act of 1940, Pub.
L. 76-853, 54 Stat. 1137, 1139 (October 14, 1940)).
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Page 5
transiting through or visiting the United States at the time of his or her birth.9 For example, a long
form birth certificate is sufficient evidence if it shows a U.S. address listed as the mother’s
residence at the time of the U.S. citizen’s birth.
If a U.S. citizen’s birth certificate indicates that his or her mother’s address was outside of the
United States at the time of the birth, USCIS may find that the U.S. citizen does not meet the
residence requirement unless the U.S. citizen can prove U.S. residence.
Documents that can help demonstrate residence include, but are not limited to, the following:
• U.S. marriage certificate indicating the address of the bride and groom;
• Property rental leases, property tax records, and payment receipts;
• Deeds;
• Utility bills;
• Automobile registrations;
• Professional licenses;
• Employment records or information;
• Income tax records and income records, including W-2 salary forms;
• School transcripts;
• Military records; and
• Vaccination and medical records.
Chapter 3. U.S. Citizens at Birth (INA 301 and 309)
* * * * *
Chapter 4. Automatic Acquisition of Citizenship after Birth (INA 320)
9 For more information on how the rules may vary depending on whether the U.S. citizen is the mother or father of a
child seeking to acquire citizenship, see Chapter 3, U.S. Citizens at Birth (INA 301 and 309), Section A, General
Requirements for Acquisition of Citizenship at Birth [12 USCIS-PM H.4(A)] through Section C, Child Born Out of
Wedlock [12 USCIS-PM H.4(C)].
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Policy Alert 2019-05: Defining “Residence” in Statutory Provisions Related to Citizenship
Page 6 A. General Requirements: Genetic, Legitimated, or Adopted Child Automatically Acquiring Citizenship after Birth1 A child born outside of the United States automatically becomes a U.S. citizen when all of the following conditions have been met on or after February 27, 2001:2 • The child has at least one parent, including an adoptive parent3 who is a U.S. citizen by birth or through naturalization; • The child is under 18 years of age; • The child is a lawful permanent resident (LPR);4 and • The child is residing5 in the United States in the legal and physical custody of the U.S. citizen parent.6 A child born abroad through Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) to a U.S. citizen gestational mother who is not also the genetic mother may acquire U.S. citizenship under INA 320 if: • The child’s gestational mother is recognized by the relevant jurisdiction as the child’s legal parent at the time of the child’s birth; and
1 See INA 320. See Nationality Chart 3. 2 These provisions were created by the Child Citizenship Act of 2000 (CCA), Pub. L. 106-395 (October 30, 2000), which
amended earlier provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) regarding acquisition of citizenship after
birth for foreign-born children who have U.S. citizen parent(s). These CCA amendments became effective on
February 27, 2001.
3 As long as the child meets the requirements to be considered an adopted child for immigration purposes, as
outlined in INA 101(b)(1)(E), INA 101(b)(1)(F), or INA 101(b)(1)(G). 4 A person is generally considered to be an LPR once USCIS approves his or her adjustment application or once he or
she enters the United States with an immigrant visa. See INA 245(b). For certain classifications, however, the
effective date of becoming an LPR is a date that is earlier than the actual approval of the status (commonly referred
to as a “rollback” date). See Part D, General Naturalization Requirements, Chapter 2, Lawful Permanent Resident
(LPR) Admission for Naturalization, Section A, Lawful Permanent Resident (LPR) at Time of Filing and Naturalization
[12 USCIS-PM D.2(A)]. In addition, a person who is born a U.S. national and is the child of a U.S. citizen may establish
eligibility for a Certificate of Citizenship without having to establish LPR status. 5 For the definition of residence, see Chapter 2, Definition of Child and Residence for Citizenship and Naturalization,
Section F, Definition of Residence [12 USCIS-PM H.2(F)].
6 See INA 320. See 8 CFR 320.2. Children of U.S. government employees, including members of the armed forces,
who live with parents who are stationed outside the United States are not considered to be “residing in” the United
States for purposes of acquisition of citizenship under INA 320. For a more thorough discussion, see Chapter 5, Child
Residing Outside of the United States (INA 322), Section E, Application for Citizenship and Issuance of Certificate
under Section 322 (Form N-600K) [12 USCIS-PM H.6(E)].
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Page 7
• The child meets all other requirements under INA 320, including that the child is residing
in the United States in the legal and physical custody of the U.S. citizen parent.7
A stepchild who has not been adopted does not qualify for citizenship under this provision.
* * * * *
Chapter 5. Child Residing Outside of the United States (INA 322)
* * *
D. Temporary Presence by Lawful Admission and Status in United States
* * *
E. Children of U.S. Government Employees and Members of the Armed Forces Employed or
Stationed Abroad
Effective October 29, 2019, children residing abroad with their U.S. citizen parents who are U.S.
government employees or members of the U.S. armed forces stationed abroad are not
considered to be residing in the United States for acquisition of citizenship. Similarly, leave taken
in the United States while stationed abroad is not considered residing in the United States even if
the person is staying in property he or she owns.
Therefore, U.S. citizen parents who are residing outside the United States with children who are
not U.S. citizens should apply for U.S. citizenship on behalf of their children under INA 3228, and
must complete the process before the child’s 18th birthday.9 The child of a member of the U.S.
armed forces accompanying his or her parent abroad on official orders may be eligible to
complete all aspects of the naturalization proceedings abroad. This includes interviews, filings,
oaths, ceremonies, or other proceedings relating to naturalization.10
Applications filed on or after October 29, 2019 are subject to this policy. The policy in place
before October 29, 2019 applies to applications filed before that date. Children who have already
been recognized through the issuance of a Certificate of Citizenship as having acquired U.S.
citizenship under INA 320 are not affected by this policy change.
Background
Children born outside the United States who did not acquire U.S. citizenship at birth have two
7 For a more thorough discussion, see Chapter 2, Definition of Child for Citizenship and Naturalization, Section E,
Child Born Abroad through Assisted Reproductive Technology [12 USCIS-PM H.2(E)]. 8 See Chapter 9, Spouses, Children, and Surviving Family Benefits, Section C, Children of Military Members [12 USCISPM I.9(C)]. 9 See INA 322(a)(3). 10 See INA 322(d).
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Policy Alert 2019-05: Defining “Residence” in Statutory Provisions Related to Citizenship
Page 8
methods by which they could become U.S. citizens. The first method permits children to
automatically become U.S. citizens under INA 320. Among other eligibility criteria, the statute
requires the child to be “residing in the United States in the legal and physical custody of the
citizen parent pursuant to a lawful admission for permanent residence.”11
The second method is for the U.S. citizen parent of a child “who has not acquired citizenship
automatically under section 320” to apply for U.S. citizenship on the child’s behalf under INA 322.
To be eligible for citizenship under INA 322, the statute requires the child to be “residing outside
of the United States in the legal and physical custody of the applicant (or, if the citizen parent is
deceased, an individual who does not object to the application).”12
USCIS policy previously provided that children of U.S. government employees and members of
the U.S. armed forces who were employed or stationed outside of the United States should be
considered to be both “residing in the United States” for purposes of INA 320 and “residing
outside of the United States” for purposes of INA 322.13 Their parents were permitted to file an
Application for Certificate of Citizenship (Form N-600) on their behalf and obtain a Certificate of
Citizenship showing that they had acquired citizenship automatically, or their parents were
permitted to file an Application for Citizenship and Issuance of Certificate Under Section 322
(Form N-600K) in order to apply for naturalization on the child’s behalf.
USCIS previously arrived at the interpretation that children of members of the U.S. armed forces
could be considered as “residing in the United States” when stationed abroad by comparison to
naturalization under INA 316.
For purposes of naturalization under INA 316, eligibility requirements include continuous
residence in the United States for at least 5 years after being lawfully admitted for permanent
residence.14 An absence from the United States for a continuous period of 1 year of more during
the period for which continuous residence is required, breaks the continuity of such residence,
except in certain cases when the absence is related to qualifying employment, including an
absence by a U.S. government employee who establishes that he or she is absent from the United
States on behalf of the U.S. government.15 The spouse and dependent unmarried sons and
daughters of such an employee are also entitled to this exception excusing the absence from the
United States during which they are residing outside of the United States as dependent members
of the U.S. government employee’s household.
11 See INA 320(a)(3). 12 See INA 322(a)(4). 13 See Policy Manual Technical Update, Child Citizenship Act and Children of U.S. Government Employees Residing
Abroad (July 20, 2015); and USCIS Policy Memorandum, No. 103, Acquisition of Citizenship by Children of U.S. Military
and Government Employees Stationed Abroad under Section 320 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), issued
May 6, 2004.
14 See INA 316(a). See Part D, General Naturalization Requirements, Chapter 3, Continuous Residence [12 USCIS-PM
D.3]. 15 See INA 316(b).
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Based on this treatment of U.S. government employees and their children in the context of
naturalization under INA 316, USCIS determined that “residing in the United States” for purposes
of naturalization under INA 320 should likewise be interpreted to include children of U.S. military
and government employees stationed outside of the United States who are residing outside of
the United States with their parents.
However, as of October 29, 2019, USCIS is no longer committed to this reasoning because the
prior USCIS policy guidance is in conflict with several provisions of the Immigration and
Nationality Act (INA), especially with changes to the acquisition of citizenship statutes that
occurred in 2008, after the initial policy determination in 2004.
First, permitting a child to be eligible simultaneously for a Certificate of Citizenship under INA 320
and for naturalization under INA 322 conflicts with the language of INA 322(a), which states that
a parent “may apply for naturalization on behalf of a child born outside of the United States who
has not acquired citizenship automatically under INA 320.”
Second, considering children who are living outside of the United States to be “residing in the
United States” conflicts with the definition of “residence” at INA 101(a)(33), which defines
“residence” as a person’s “principal, actual dwelling place in fact.”
Third, considering these children to be “residing in the United States” is at odds with INA 322(d),
which was enacted in 2008,16 4 years after USCIS issued policy guidance on the topic. When
Congress enacted INA 322(d), it provided for special procedures in cases involving the
naturalization of “a child of a member of the Armed Forces of the United States who is authorized
to accompany such member and reside abroad with the member pursuant to the member’s
official orders, and is so accompanying and residing with the member.” Congress placed this
provision under INA 322, which applies only to children “residing outside of the United States.” It
did not provide similar language for such children to acquire citizenship under INA 320.
Furthermore, in the same legislation, Congress also explicitly provided that spouses of U.S. armed
forces members who reside outside of the United States due to the member’s official orders are
considered to be residing in the United States for naturalization purposes.17 The fact that no
similar provision was included for children of U.S. armed forces members in the acquisition of
citizenship context is significant.18
Finally, the prior USCIS policy produced confusion in several respects. First, it may have resulted
in inconsistent adjudications by USCIS officers adjudicating applications for certificates of
citizenship, and U.S. Department of State (DOS) consular officers adjudicating passport
applications. DOS has interpreted INA 320 to apply solely to children who are physically in the
16 See National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, Pub. L. 110-181, 122 Stat 3 (January 28, 2008). 17 See INA 319(e). 18 See, for example, Keene Corp. v. United States, 508 U.S. 200, 208 (1993) (quoting Russello v. United States, 464 U.S.
16, 23 (1983)) (“[W]here Congress includes particular language in one section of a statute but omits it in another …, it
is generally presumed that Congress acts intentionally and purposely in the disparate inclusion or exclusion.”).
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United States and does not recognize an exception by policy for children of U.S. military and U.S.
government employees stationed outside of the United States.19
In addition, the policy resulted in confusion as to the date a child acquired U.S. citizenship,
depending on what form the parent (a U.S. government employee or U.S. armed forces member
employed or stationed outside of the United States) used: Form N-600K would result in
naturalization proceedings under INA 322, while Form N-600 would result in automatic
acquisition of citizenship under INA 320. Children who acquire U.S. citizenship automatically are
citizens as of the date on which they meet all eligibility criteria under INA 320, but children who
seek naturalization under INA 322 become citizens upon taking and subscribing to the oath of
allegiance (or upon approval of the application if the oath is waived).
Under USCIS’ prior policy guidance, a child of a U.S. government employee or U.S. armed forces
member who was employed or stationed outside of the United States could meet all of the
eligibility criteria for acquiring citizenship under INA 320 while residing outside of the United
States, but still seek to naturalize under INA 322. In such a case, the date on which the child
became a citizen would have been unclear.
For all these reasons, USCIS rescinded the prior USCIS policy permitting children of U.S.
government employees and U.S. armed forces members stationed outside of the United States to
be considered “residing in” the United States.
F. Application for Citizenship and Issuance of Certificate under Section 322 (Form N-600K)
* * *
G. Documentation and Evidence
* * *
H. Citizenship Interview and Waiver
* * *
I. Decision and Oath of Allegiance
* * * * *
USCIS Policy Manual, Volume 12: Citizenship & Naturalization
Part I – Military Members and their Families
19 See 8 FAM 301.10-2(A), Evidence of Citizenship for Children Born Abroad to U.S. Citizen Parent(s) Under INA 320 as
amended by the Child Citizenship Act of 2000.
http://www.uscis.gov
Policy Alert 2019-05: Defining “Residence” in Statutory Provisions Related to Citizenship
Page 11
Chapter 9. Spouses, Children, and Surviving Family Benefits
* * *
C. Children of Military Members20
The table below serves as a quick reference guide to certain residence, physical presence, and
overseas naturalization provisions for children of service members. The paragraphs that follow
the table provide further guidance on each provision.
Residence, Lawful Admission, and Overseas Naturalization
for Children of Members of the U.S. Armed Forces
INA
Section21
Place of
Residence
Lawful
Admission
Treatment of
Time Residing
Abroad
Automatic Citizenship or
Overseas Naturalization
320 United
States Must be LPR
Must reside with
U.S. citizen
parent in the
United States
May acquire automatic
citizenship (must take oath in
the United States)
322
Outside the
United
States
No lawful
admission
required
Must reside with
U.S. citizen
parent serving
abroad
Must apply, but may complete
entire naturalization process
from outside the United States
(must take oath before 18th
birthday)
1. Children of Service Members Residing in the United States (INA 320)
* * * * *
20 This section describes certain benefits on residence, lawful admission, and overseas naturalization for children of
service members. See Part H, Children of U.S. Citizens [12 USCIS-PM H], for guidance on the general naturalization,
residence and acquisition of citizenship provisions. 21 See 8 CFR 320.2 and 8 CFR 322.2.
Children born to U.S. citizens stationed abroad as government employees or members of the U.S. military will no longer qualify for automatic American citizenship under a policy change unveiled on Wednesday by the Trump administration.
Effective Oct. 29, parents serving overseas in the U.S. armed forces or other agencies of the federal government would need to go through a formal application process seeking U.S. citizenship on their children’s behalf, the policy states.
Currently, children born to U.S. citizens stationed by their government in a foreign country are legally considered to be “residing in the United States,” allowing their parents to simply obtain a certificate showing the children acquired citizenship automatically.
But an 11-page “policy alert” issued by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) said the agency found the prevailing policy to be at odds with other parts of federal immigration law. Beyond that, the rationale for the policy change remained unclear.
“USCIS is updating its policy regarding children of U.S. government employees and U.S. armed forces members employed or stationed outside the United States to explain that they are not considered to be ‘residing in the United States’ for purposes of acquiring citizenship,” the memorandum said.
The number of government and military personnel affected by the change was not immediately known, but the revised policy sparked immediate consternation on the part of some organizations representing members of the armed forces.
“Military members already have enough to deal with, and the last thing that they should have to do when stationed overseas is go through hoops to ensure their children are U.S. citizens,” said Andy Blevins, executive director of the Modern Military Association of America.
He urged Congress to take action to address the situation to “ensure our military families don’t suffer the consequences of a reckless administration.” (Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; editing by Bill Tarrant and Leslie Adler)
Story 1: President Trump Goes On Offense Against America and Trump Haters — Radical Extremist Democrat Socialist (REDS) Squad — Fresh Fascist Faces — Women of Color — RED — Videos —
Pelosi under fire for urging Dems to stand against ICE
Trump: If You’re Not Happy Here, You Can Leave
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Trump Tells Democratic Congresswomen To “Go Back” Where They Came From
Trumps tweets ARE NOT racist
Dr. Qanta Ahmed: Rep. Omar is a disgrace to Islam
Ilhan Omar faces more anti-semitic controversy over Israel
‘These Are Her Beliefs’: Scalise Says Omar Must Be Removed From Committee Over Anti-Semitic Comments
Ilhan Omar’s Disgusting Attack: ‘This is Un-American’
Pelosi condemns ‘anti-Semitic’ comments by Rep. Omar
Tucker: Radical Democrats turn on Nancy Pelosi
‘The agenda of white nationalists’: AOC, other congresswomen respond to Trump’s attacks
The foursome of minority lawmakers were responding to the president’s “openly racist comments attacking the duly elected members of Congress,” they said in a statement.
By Dareh Gregorian and Adam Edelman
The four progressive congresswomen of color attacked by President Donald Trump responded on Monday afternoon at a joint news conference, saying his “blatantly racist” assault on them is nothing more than an effort to distract from his corrupt administration and inhumane policies.
The Democratic lawmakers, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, portrayed Trump as lawless and condemned his treatment of migrants on the border and deportations.
“This is the agenda of white nationalists, whether it is happening in chat rooms or happening in national TV. And now it’s reached the White House garden,” Omar said of what she called Trump’s “blatantly racist attack.”
Ocasio-Cortez said, “I am not surprised” by the president’s actions, given the actions she said he’s taken against immigrants and to hurt the average American. She called Trump’s comments about the four lawmakers a “distraction.”
“This president operates in complete bad faith,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “He does not know how to defend his policies, so instead he attacks us personally. That’s what this is all about”
She added that she and her colleagues aren’t going anywhere.
“We don’t leave the things we love,” Ocasio-Cortez said, and “we love all people in this country.”
Omar called it a “pivotal moment in our country,” with Trump “openly violating the oath he took” with “human rights abuses” involving the conditions in which migrants are being detained at the border. She called for his impeachment and accused him of “colluding with a foreign government” in the 2016 presidential election, a charge he’s repeatedly denied.
The congresswoman said she would not respond to Trump’s “ridiculous” claims earlier Monday that she supports al Qaeda.
“It’s beyond time to ask Muslims to condemn terrorists,” she said.
Omar also ripped Trump as a hypocrite for saying that she should leave the country if she’s not happy with the government, noting his campaign was all about what terrible shape the United States was in.
“He talked about everything that was wrong in this country and how he was going to make it right,” Omar said.
Pressley urged Americans to not “take the bait” from the “occupant” in the White House.
“This is a disruptive distraction from the issues of care, concern and consequence to the American people” they were sent to Washington to work on, she said.
Tlaib again called for her colleagues to begin impeachment proceedings.
“Sadly, this is not the first, nor will it be the last time that we hear disgusting, bigoted language from the president. We know this is who he is,” she said.
Trump started tweeting about the four again shortly after their press conference was scheduled to start.
“IF YOU ARE NOT HAPPY HERE, YOU CAN LEAVE!” he wrote in the first of three tweets, which were posted before the four took to the podium.
Trump first went after the quartet over the weekend, tweeting that they should “go back” to the countries they “originally came from” — even though three of them are from the United States — and has repeatedly doubled down since.
Trump steps up attacks on Democratic congresswomen: “They hate our country”
BY KATHRYN WATSON
/ CBS NEWS
A White House event quickly spiraled into chaos on Monday as President Trump launched into a defiant defense of his earlier racist tweets suggesting Democratic congresswomen of color should “go back” to their countries.
As reporters shouted questions at an event that was ostensibly meant to showcase American-made products, Mr. Trump soon allowed the focus to turn to his explosive comments, at one point saying he is unconcerned by white nationalists championing his words.
A reporter asked, “Does it concern you that many people saw that tweet as racist and that white nationalist groups are finding common cause with you on that point?”
The president responded, “It doesn’t concern me because many people agree with me. And all I’m saying, they want to leave, they can leave.”
On Sunday, the president sparked a firestorm with a series of tweets seemingly targeting freshmen Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley and Ilhan Omar that were immediately and widely condemned as racist. He wrote that the representatives — three of whom were born in the U.S., and all American citizens — should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”
At Monday’s event, the president repeatedly insisted that people who don’t love America should leave, as reporters — positioned far from the president during the event — continued to lob questions.
“If you’re not happy in the U.S., if you’re complaining all the time, very simply, you can leave. You can leave right now. Come back if you want, don’t come back, it’s OK too. But if you’re not happy, you can leave,” he said. The audience applauded many of the president’s remarks.
When a reporter pointed out that many of the congresswomen the president appears to be criticizing were born in America and all are citizens, Mr. Trump responded that, “All they do is complain.”
Mr. Trump’s tweets on Sunday prompted intense criticism from Democrats but very little criticism from Republicans. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the House will vote on a resolution to condemn the president’s statement about her colleagues.
But Mr. Trump tweeted Monday morning that the people he offended should apologize to him, not the other way around.
“When will the Radical Left Congresswomen apologize to our Country, the people of Israel and even to the Office of the President, for the foul language they have used, and the terrible things they have said. So many people are angry at them & their horrible & disgusting actions!” Mr. Trump tweeted Monday morning.
The president’s remarks at the event come the same morning his administration has announced it’s moving to end asylum protections for migrants coming from Central American countries, a step that’s all but certain to face challenges in the courts. The American Civil Liberties Union has already announced its intention to sue.
During Monday’s “Made in America” event, the president insisted the U.S. has to defend its borders, and will do so and build a wall, despite any legal challenges.
“The philosophy of my administration is simple if we can build it grow it or make it in the United States, we will,” the president said.
The executive order the president signed towards the end of the event, increasing requirements for the government’s purchase of products made in the U.S., was overshadowed.
Trump digs in on racist tweets: ‘Many people agree with me’
By ZEKE MILLER, JILL COLVIN, and JONATHAN LEMIRE11 minutes ago
1 of 10
President Donald Trump speaks during a Made in America showcase event on the South Lawn of the White House, Monday, July 15, 2019, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Defiant in the face of widespread criticism, President Donald Trump renewed his belligerent call on Monday for four Democratic congresswomen of color to get out of the U.S. “right now,” cementing his position as the most willing U.S. leader in generations to stoke the discord that helped send him to the White House.
Content to gamble that a sizeable chunk of the electorate embraces his tweets that have been widely denounced as racist, the president made clear that he has no qualms about exploiting racial divisions once again.
“It doesn’t concern me because many people agree with me,” Trump said at the White House. “A lot of people love it, by the way.”
The episode served notice that Trump is willing to again rely on incendiary rhetoric on issues of race and immigration to preserve his political base in the leadup to the 2020 election.
There was near unanimous condemnation from Democrats for Trump’s comments and a rumble of discontent from a subset of Republicans — but notably not from the party’s congressional leaders.
Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, the GOP White House nominee in 2012 and now one of the president’s most vocal GOP critics, said Trump’s comments were “destructive, demeaning, and disunifying.”
Far from backing down, Trump on Monday dug in on comments he had initially made a day earlier on Twitter that if lawmakers “hate our country,” they can go back to their “broken and crime-infested” countries. His remarks were directed at four congresswomen: Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. All are American citizens and three of the four were born in the U.S.
“If you’re not happy in the U.S., if you’re complaining all the time, you can leave, you can leave right now,” he said.
The president’s words, which evoked the trope of telling black people to go back to Africa, may have been partly meant to widen the divides within the House Democratic caucus, which has been riven by internal debate over how best to oppose his policies. And while Trump’s attacks brought Democrats together in defense of their colleagues, his allies noted he was also having some success in making the controversial progressive lawmakers the face of their party.
The president questioned whether Democrats should “want to wrap” themselves around this group of four people as he recited a list of the quartet’s most controversial statements.
The four themselves fired back late Monday, condemning what they called “xenophobic bigoted remarks” from the president and renewing calls for their party to begin impeachment proceedings.
Trump “does not know how to defend his policies and so what he does is attack us personally,” said Ocasio-Cortez.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who said Trump’s campaign slogan truly means he wants to “make America white again,” announced Monday that the House would vote on a resolution condemning his new comments. The Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer of New York, said his party would also try to force a vote in the GOP-controlled chamber.
Trump, who won the presidency in 2016 in part by energizing disaffected voters with inflammatory racial rhetoric, made clear he has no intention of backing away from that strategy in 2020.
“The Dems were trying to distance themselves from the four ‘progressives,’ but now they are forced to embrace them,” he tweeted Monday afternoon. “That means they are endorsing Socialism, hate of Israel and the USA! Not good for the Democrats!”
Trump has faced few consequences for such attacks in the past. They typically earn him cycles of wall-to-wall media attention. He is wagering that his most steadfast supporters will be energized by the controversy as much, or if not more so, than the opposition.
“It’s possible I’m wrong,” Trump allowed Monday. “The voters will decide.”
The president has told aides that he was giving voice what many of his supporters believe — that they are tired of people, including immigrants, disrespecting their country, according to three Republicans close to the White House who were not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations.
Trump on Monday singled out Omar, in particular, accusing her of having “hatred” for Israel, and expressing “love” for “enemies like al-Qaida.”
“These are people that, in my opinion, hate our country,” he said.
Omar, in an interview, once laughed about how a college professor had spoken of al-Qaida with an intensity she said was not used to describe “America,” ″England” or “The Army.”
She addressed herself directly to Trump in a tweet, writing: “You are stoking white nationalism (because) you are angry that people like us are serving in Congress and fighting against your hate-filled agenda.”
Republicans, for their part, largely trod carefully with their responses.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, a close ally of the president who golfed with him over the weekend, advised him to “aim higher” during an appearance on “Fox and Friends,” even as he accused the four Democrats of being “anti-Semitic” and “anti-American.”
Marc Short, chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, said “I don’t think that the president’s intent in any way is racist,” pointing to Trump’s decision to choose Elaine Chao, who was born outside the country, as his transportation secretary.
Chao is one of the few minorities among the largely white and male aides in high-profile roles in Trump’s administration. She is the wife of Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who declined comment on Trump’s attacks on Monday.
The latest provocation came just two days after Trump inserted himself further into a rift between Pelosi and Ocasio-Cortez, offering an unsolicited defense of the Democratic speaker. Pelosi has been seeking to minimize Ocasio-Cortez’s influence in the House Democratic caucus in recent days, prompting the freshman lawmaker to accuse Pelosi of trying to marginalize women of color.
Trump told advisers later that he was pleased with his meddling, believing that dividing Democrats would be helpful to him, as would elevating any self-proclaimed socialists as a way to frighten voters to steer clear of their liberal politics, the Republicans said.
Among the few GOP lawmakers commenting on Monday, Rep. Pete Olson of Texas said Trump’s tweets were “not reflective of the values of the 1,000,000+ people” in his district. “We are proud to be the most diverse Congressional district in America. I urge our President immediately disavow his comments,” he wrote.
Several other Republicans went out of their way to say they were not condoning the views of the Democrats, while encouraging Trump to retract his comments.
Maine Sen. Susan Collins, who is up for re-election next year, said Trump’s tweet was “way over the line and he should take that down.”
Sen. Patrick Toomey of Pennsylvania said of the Democrats: “We should defeat their ideas on the merits, not on the basis of their ancestry.”
In an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll from February 2017, half of Americans said the mixing of culture and values from around the world is an important part of America’s identity as a nation. Fewer — about a third — said the same of a culture established by early European immigrants.
But partisans in that poll were divided over these aspects of America’s identity. About two-thirds of Democrats but only about a third of Republicans thought the mixing of world cultures was important to the country’s identity. By comparison, nearly half of Republicans but just about a quarter of Democrats saw the culture of early European immigrants as important to the nation.
___
AP writer Hannah Fingerhut contributed from Washington.
US President Donald Trump stepped up his attack on four Democratic lawmakers, saying if they are not happy in the United States, “they can leave”
More
US President Donald Trump came under fire from Democrats and even some members of his own Republican Party on Monday after launching an extraordinary xenophobic attack on four progressive Democratic congresswomen.
“All they do is complain,” Trump told reporters at a White House event featuring products “Made in America.”
“These are people that hate our country,” he said of the four Democratic lawmakers. “If you’re not happy here, you can leave.”
Trump also accused the four first-term Democratic congresswomen — who are of Hispanic, Arab, Somali and African-American origin — of having “love” for US “enemies like Al-Qaeda.”
Asked by a reporter whether he was concerned that many people saw his comments as racist, Trump said: “It doesn’t concern me because many people agree with me.”
Several hours after his remarks, the four — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who is of Puerto Rico origin, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who is of Somali origin, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, the first Palestinian-American woman elected to Congress, and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, who is African-American — hit back at a news conference.
Pressley condemned Trump’s “xenophobic and bigoted” comments and said “we will not be silenced.”
Omar said Trump made a “blatantly racist attack” on four lawmakers “of color.” “This is the agenda of white nationalists,” she said.
Omar and Tlaib repeated calls for Trump to be impeached.
– ‘Destructive’ –
The president first attacked the lawmakers with a series of tweets on Sunday, saying they should “go back” to their countries of origin if they didn’t like the United States.
His comments prompted outrage from Democrats — and, initially, silence from Republicans.
On Monday, several of his party faithful began to speak up.
“My view is that what was said and what was tweeted was destructive, was demeaning, was disunifying, and frankly it was very wrong,” said Senator Mitt Romney, a Republican from Utah.
“There is no excuse for the president’s spiteful comments -– they were absolutely unacceptable and this needs to stop,” said Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska. “We must demand a higher standard of decorum and decency.”
Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine said she disagreed with the policies espoused by the “far-left” Democratic lawmakers but Trump was “way over the line.”
For Republican Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, “the citizenship of all four is as valid as mine.” “They are entitled to their opinions, however misguided they may be,” he said.
Texan Will Hurd, the only black Republican in the House of Representatives, told CNN that Trump’s behavior was “unbecoming of the leader of the free world.”
And Senator Tim Scott, a black Republican from South Carolina, criticized the president for using “unacceptable personal attacks and racially offensive language.”
– ‘Cold, hard strategy’ –
Trump’s comments appear to be aimed at galvanizing his mostly white electoral base ahead of the 2020 presidential vote — while also stoking racial tensions and divisions among his political opponents.
“With his deliberate, racist outburst, @realDonaldTrump wants to raise the profile of his targets, drive Dems to defend them and make them emblematic of the entire party,” said David Axelrod, who served as chief strategist for Barack Obama’s two White House campaigns.
“It’s a cold, hard strategy,” Axelrod said on Twitter. “Fasten your seatbelts, it will only get worse as the election approaches.”
“The voters will decide,” Trump told reporters.
“If (the Democrats) want to gear their wagons around these four people, I think they’re going to have a very tough election, because I don’t think the people of the United States will stand for it.”
In his initial Twitter attack on Sunday, Trump — who before becoming president pushed the racist “birther” conspiracy theory that Obama was not born on US soil — said the congresswomen came from corrupt, poorly managed countries to which they should return.
Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib and Pressley were all born in the United States while Omar arrived from war-torn Somalia when she was a child.
Former vice president Joe Biden, who is seeking the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, denounced Trump as the most “openly racist and divisive” president in US history.
The eldest of 14 children, Rashida Tlaib (née Harbi) was born on July 24, 1976, to working-class Palestinian immigrants in Detroit. Her mother was born in Beit Ur El Foka, near the West Bank city of Ramallah. Her father was born in Beit Hanina, a neighborhood in East Jerusalem. He moved first to Nicaragua, then to Detroit. He worked on an assembly line in a Ford Motor Company plant. As the eldest, Tlaib played a role in raising her siblings while her parents worked, but the family sometimes had to rely on welfare for support.[10]
Tlaib began her political career in 2004 when she interned with State Representative Steve Tobocman. When Tobocman became Majority Floor Leader in 2007, he hired Tlaib to his staff.[12][13]
Michigan House of Representatives
In 2008 Tobocman encouraged Tlaib to run for his seat, which he was vacating due to term limits. The urban district is 40% Hispanic, 25% African-American, 30% non-Hispanic white, and 2% Arab American. Tlaib faced a crowded primary that included several Latinos, including former State Representative Belda Garza. She emerged victorious, carrying 44% of the vote in the eight-way Democratic primary and winning the general election with over 90% of the vote.[14]
In 2010 Tlaib faced a primary election challenge from Jim Czachorowski in his first bid for office.[15] Tlaib picked up 85% of the vote to Czachorowski’s 15%, and won the general election with 92% of the vote against Republican challenger Darrin Daigle.
In 2012 Tlaib won reelection again to the Michigan House in the newly redrawn 6th District against fellow incumbent Maureen Stapleton. She could not run for the Michigan House a fourth time in 2014 because of term limits and ran for the Michigan Senate, losing to incumbent Senator Virgil Smith Jr. in the Democratic primary in August 2014.
During her tenure as a legislator, Tlaib was one of ten Muslims serving in state legislatures across the United States. She is the second Muslim to serve in the Michigan State House of Representatives, after James Karoub. Tlaib is the second Muslim woman to serve in a state legislature nationwide, after Jamilah Nasheed of Missouri.[16] She and Justin Amash, a Republican who was also elected in 2008, were the first two Palestinian-American members of the Michigan legislature.
After leaving the state legislature, Tlaib worked at Sugar Law Center, a Detroit nonprofit that provides free legal representation for workers.[17]
U.S. House of Representatives
Rashida Tlaib at her campaign headquarters in 2018
In 2018 Tlaib announced her intention to run for John Conyers‘s seat in Congress. She filed in both the Democratic primary in the special election for the balance of Conyers’s 27th term, and in the general election for a full two-year term. Both elections were to be held the same day. No Republican qualified for either primary, but the 13th is so heavily Democratic that any Republican would have faced nearly impossible odds. With a Cook Partisan Voting Indexof D+33, the 13th is the most Democratic district in Michigan and tied for the 20th-most Democratic district in the nation. Conyers held the seat without serious difficulty from 1965 until his resignation in 2017 (it was numbered as the 1st from 1965 to 1993 and as the 14th from 1993 to 2013), and never won with less than 77 percent of the vote.
As of July 16, 2018, Tlaib had raised $893,030 in funds, more than her five opponents in the August 7 Democratic primary.[18]
In the Democratic primary for the special election, Tlaib finished second to Detroit City Council president Brenda Jones, who received 32,727 votes (37.7% of the total) to Tlaib’s 31,084 (35.9%). Bill Wild, mayor of Westland, received 13,152 votes (15.2%) and Ian Conyers, the great-nephew of former Congressman Conyers, took fourth with 9,740 (11.2%).[19] Jones faced no major-party opposition in the special election.
In the Democratic primary for the general election, Tlaib defeated Jones and Wild, among others.[20] She received 27,803 votes, or 31.2%. She faced no major-party opposition in November 2018, though Jones mounted an eleventh-hour independent bid.
Tlaib became the first Palestinian-American woman in Congress and simultaneously one of the first two Muslim women in Congress, along with fellow Democrat Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.[5] She took the congressional oath of office on January 3, 2019, swearing in on an English-language translation of the Quran.[21][22] She wore a thawb (thobe), a traditional embroidered Palestinian dress, to the swearing-in ceremony. This inspired a number of Palestinian and Palestinian-American women to share pictures on social media with the hashtag #TweetYourThobe.[23]
Tlaib has said she opposed providing aid to a “Netanyahu Israel” and supported the Palestinian right of return and a one-state solution.[24][25][26][27] Tlaib is one of the few members of Congress who openly support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. In January 2019, she criticized anti-BDS legislation proposed by Senators Marco Rubio and Jim Risch. Tlaib argued that boycotting is a right and said that Rubio and Risch “forgot what country they represent”. Tlaib’s comments were criticized by several Jewish groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, which said, “Though the legislation discussed is sponsored by four non-Jewish Senators, any charge of dual loyalty has special sensitivity and resonance for Jews, particularly in an environment of rising anti-Semitism.”[28][29][30][31][32] In response Tlaib said that her comments were directed at Rubio and Risch.[33]
Tlaib supports efforts to impeach President Trump. In August 2016 she protested a speech Trump gave at Cobo Center and was ejected from the venue.[36] On her first day in Congress, January 3, 2019, she called for the impeachment of Trump in an op-ed article co-authored with John Bonifaz for the Detroit Free Press.[37] In the op-ed Tlaib differs from top Democratic leaders on how to move forward with impeachment: “Those who say we must wait for Special CounselMueller to complete his criminal investigation before Congress can start any impeachment proceedings ignore this crucial distinction [referring to Congressional powers of impeachment].”[37]
Later that day Tlaib attended a reception for the MoveOn campaign and spoke on stage. She ended the speech recounting a conversation she had with her son, him saying: “Look, mama, you won. Bullies don’t win.” Tlaib replied to him, she recounted, “Baby, they don’t, because we’re gonna go in there and impeach the motherfucker.”[38] The next day at a White House press conference, Trump said, “Well, you can’t impeach somebody that’s doing a great job…I think she dishonored herself and I think she dishonored her family. I thought it was highly disrespectful to the United States of America.”[39][40]
In a radio interview with Mehdi Hasan of The Intercept, Tlaib reiterated her frequent call for Trump’s impeachment, saying, “Look, it’s not a waste of time to hold the president of the United States accountable … We need to understand our duties as members of Congress and I believe looking at even Nixon’s impeachment, or his—literally, his resignation, it was Republicans and Democrats coming together and putting country first, coming together and putting our values first. You’re seeing it now more and more. Even now, they’re standing up to Steve King.”[41]
Domestic policy: She supports domestic reforms, including “Medicare For All” (single-payer healthcare) and a $15 hourly minimum wage.[44]
Immigration: Tlaib was an early supporter of the movement to abolish the Immigration Customs Enforcement agency.[42] In June 2019 she was one of four Democratic representatives to vote against the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for Humanitarian Assistance and Security at the Southern Border Act, a $4.5 billion border funding bill that required Customs and Border Protection enact health standards for individuals in custody such as forming standards for individuals for “medical emergencies; nutrition, hygiene, and facilities; and personnel training.”[45][46]
Personal life
In 1998, at the age of 22, Tlaib married Fayez Tlaib. They have two sons, Adam and Yousif. The couple have since divorced. In 2018 a campaign spokesperson called Tlaib a single mother.[47]
In September 2018 The New York Times reported that Tlaib walked into her family’s mosque to express her gratitude for the opportunity to run for Congress by saying “Today I was being thankful, embracing how incredibly blessed I am to grow up here, to have this tremendous opportunity…Sometimes I say ‘Thank her’ because my Allah is She.”[48] The Detroit Free Press reported that, although she recognizes that some in her faith community consider her not “Muslim enough”,[49] she believes that “Allah [. . .] understands”[49] and “knows that I am [. . .] giving back and doing things that I think are reflective of Islam”.[49]
Electoral history
2008 campaign for State House
Rashida Tlaib (D), 90%
Darrin Daigle (R), 10%
2008 campaign for State House, Democratic Primary
Rashida Tlaib (D), 44%
Carl Ramsey (D), 26%
Belda Garza (D), 9%
Daniel Solano (D), 7%
Lisa Randon (D), 7%
Denise Hearn (D), 5%
Rochelle Smith (D), 1%
Nellie Saenz (D), 1%
2010 campaign for State House, Democratic Primary
Rashida Tlaib (D), 85%
Jim Czachorowski (D), 15%
2010 campaign for State House
Rashida Tlaib (D), 92%
Darrin Daigle (R), 8%
2014 campaign for State Senate, Democratic Primary
Omar was born in Mogadishu on October 4, 1982,[5][6] and spent her early years in Baidoa, Somalia.[7][8] She was the youngest of seven siblings, including Sahra Noor. Her father Nur Omar Mohamed, an ethnic Somali, worked as a teacher trainer,[9] and her mother, Fadhuma Abukar Haji Hussein, a Benadiri (a community of partial Yemeni descent), died when Ilhan was two.[10][11][12][13] She was raised by her father and grandfather thereafter.[14] Her grandfather Abukar was the director of Somalia’s National Marine Transport and some of Omar’s uncles and aunts also worked as civil servants and educators.[9] She and her family fled Somalia to escape the war and spent four years in a Dadaabrefugee camp in Garissa County, Kenya, near the Somali border.[15][16][17]
After first arriving in New York in 1992,[18] Omar’s family finally secured asylum in the U.S. in 1995 and lived for a time in Arlington, Virginia,[12] before moving to and settling in Minneapolis,[12] where her father worked first as a taxi driver and later for the post office.[12] Her father and grandfather emphasized the importance of democracy during her upbringing, and at age 14 she accompanied her grandfather to caucus meetings, serving as his interpreter.[14][19] Omar became a U.S. citizen in 2000 when she was 17 years old.[20][12] She has spoken about being bullied for wearing a hijab during her time in Virginia, recalling classmates sticking gum on it, pushing her down stairs, and jumping her when changing for gym class.[12] Omar remembers her father’s reaction to these incidents: “They are doing something to you because they feel threatened in some way by your existence.”[12]
In 2013, Omar managed Andrew Johnson‘s campaign for Minneapolis City Council. After Johnson was elected, she served as his Senior Policy Aide from 2013 to 2015.[23] During a contentious precinct caucus that turned violent in February 2014, she was attacked by five people and was injured.[9] According to MinnPost, the day before the caucus, Minneapolis city councilmember Abdi Warsame had told Johnson to warn Omar not to attend the meeting.[25]
As of September 2015 Omar was the Director of Policy Initiatives of the Women Organizing Women Network, advocating for women from East Africa to take on civic and political leadership roles.[23] In September 2018, Jeff Cirillo of Roll Call called her a “progressive rising star.”[26]
Minnesota House of Representatives
Elections
Omar, then a candidate for the Minnesota House of Representatives, speaks at a Hillary for Minnesota event at the University of Minnesota in October 2016
In 2016 Omar ran on the Democratic–Farmer–Labor (DFL) ticket for the Minnesota House of Representatives in District 60B, which includes part of northeast Minneapolis. On August 9 Omar defeated Mohamud Noor and incumbent Phyllis Kahn in the DFL primary.[27] Her chief opponent in the general election was Republican nominee Abdimalik Askar, another activist in the Somali American community. In late August, Askar announced his withdrawal from the campaign.[28] In November 2016 Omar won the general election, becoming the first Somali American legislator in the United States.[29] Her term began on January 3, 2017.[30]
Tenure and activity
During her tenure as state Representative for District 60B, Omar was an Assistant Minority Leader for the DFL caucus.[31][32] She authored or co-authored at least 266 bills during the 2017–2018 legislative session.[33][non-primary source needed]
Committee assignments
Civil Law & Data Practices Policy
Higher Education & Career Readiness Policy & Finance
In 2018 Republican state representative Steve Drazkowski publicly accused Omar of campaign finance violations,[6] claiming that she used campaign funds to pay a divorce lawyer, and that her acceptance of speaking fees from public colleges violated Minnesota House rules. Omar responded that the attorney’s fees were not personal but campaign-related; she offered to return the speaking fees.[35][36] Drazkowski later accused Omar of improperly using campaign funds for personal travel to Estonia and locations in the U.S.[6][37][20]
Omar’s campaign dismissed the accusations as politically motivated and accused Drazkowski of using public funds to harass a Muslim candidate.[20][38] In response to an editorial in the Minneapolis Star Tribune arguing that Omar should be more transparent about her use of campaign funds, she said: “these people are part of systems that have historically been disturbingly motivated to silence, discredit and dehumanize influencers who threaten the establishment.”[20]
In June 2019, Minnesota campaign finance officials ruled that Omar had to pay back $3,500 that she had spent on out-of-state travel and tax filing in violation of state law. She was also ordered to pay a $500 fine.[39]
On June 5, 2018, Omar filed to run for the United States House of Representatives from Minnesota’s 5th congressional district after six-term incumbent Keith Ellison announced he would not seek reelection to that office.[40] On June 17 she was endorsed by the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party after two rounds of voting.[41] Omar won the August 14 primary with 48.2% of the vote.[42] The 5th district is the most Democratic district in Minnesota and the Upper Midwest, (it has a Cook Partisan Voting Index of D+26) and the DFL has held it without interruption since 1963. She faced health care worker and conservative activist Jennifer Zielinski in the November 6 general election[43] and won with 78.0% of the vote, becoming the first Somali American elected to the U.S. Congress, the first woman of color to serve as a U.S. Representative from Minnesota,[3] and (alongside former Michigan state representative Rashida Tlaib) one of the first Muslim women elected to the Congress.[44][45][46]
Omar received the largest percentage of the vote of any female candidate for U.S. House in state history,[47] as well as the largest percentage of the vote for a non-incumbent candidate for U.S. House (excluding those running against only non-major-party candidates) in state history.[47] She was sworn in on a copy of the Quran owned by her grandfather.[48][49]
After her election, the ban on head coverings in the U.S. House was modified, and Omar became the first woman to wear a hijab on the House floor.[12]
Omar is a member of the informal group known as “The Squad“, whose members form a unified front to push for progressive changes such as the Green New Deal and Medicare-for-all. The other members of “The Squad” are Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) [50].
Omar speaking at worker protest against Amazon, December 2018
Education
Omar supports broader access to student loan forgiveness programs as well as free tuition for college students whose family income is below $125,000.[57] Omar supports Bernie Sanders‘s plan to eliminate all $1.6 trillion in outstanding student debt, funded by an 0.5% tax on stock transactions and an 0.1% tax on bond transactions.[58] She will introduce a companion bill in the House of Representatives.[59] In June 2019 Omar and Senator Tina Smith(D-MN) introduced the bill No Shame at School to end marking of and punishments for students with school meal debts.[60]
Omar has said she is in favor of the abolition of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.[62] She supports prosecuting federal officials who have been accused of physical and sexual assault of people in their detention.[63] She supports the protection of sanctuary cities and a path to permanent status for DREAMers and their families.[62] She opposes efforts to seal the border, calling Donald Trump‘s border wall plan “racist and sinful.”[64] In March 2019 Politico reported that Omar criticized Barack Obama‘s “caging of kids” along the Mexican border.[65][66] Omar accused Politico of distorting her comments and said that she had been “saying how [President] Trump is different from Obama, and why we should focus on policy not politics,” adding, “One is human, the other is really not.”[67]
In June 2019 Omar was one of four Democratic representatives to vote against the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for Humanitarian Assistance and Security at the Southern Border Act, a $4.5 billion border funding bill that required Customs and Border Protection to enact health standards for individuals in custody such as standards for “medical emergencies; nutrition, hygiene, and facilities; and personnel training.” “Throwing more money at the very organizations committing human rights abuses—and the very Administration directing these human rights abuses—is not a solution. This is a humanitarian crisis … inflicted by our own leadership,” she said.[68][69]
Military policy
Omar has been critical of U.S. foreign policy, and has called for reduced funding for “perpetual war and military aggression,”[70] saying, “knowing my tax dollars pay for bombs killing children in Yemen makes my heart break,” with “everyone in Washington saying we don’t have enough money in the budget for universal health care, we don’t have enough money in the budget to guarantee college education for everyone.”[70] She has also said, “By principle, I’m anti-war because I survived a war. I’m also anti-intervention. I don’t think it ever makes sense for any country to intervene in a war zone with the fallacy of saving lives when we know they are going to cause more deaths. I also don’t believe in forced regime change. Change needs to come from within.”[71] Omar has criticized the U.S. government’s drone assassination program, citing the Obama administration’s policy of “droning of countries around the world.”[65][66] She has said, “we don’t need nearly 800 military bases outside the United States to keep our country safe.”[72]
In 2019 Omar signed a letter led by Representative Ro Khanna and Senator Rand Paul to President Trump asserting that it is “long past time to rein in the use of force that goes beyond congressional authorization” and that they hoped this would “serve as a model for ending hostilities in the future—in particular, as you and your administration seek a political solution to our involvement in Afghanistan.”[73][74]
Human rights
Omar has criticized Saudi Arabia‘s human rights abuses and the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen.[75][76] In October 2018 she tweeted: “The Saudi government might have been strategic at covering up the daily atrocities carried out against minorities, women, activists and even the #YemenGenocide, but the murder of #JamalKhashoggi should be the last evil act they are allowed to commit.”[76] She also called for a boycott of Saudi Arabia’s regime, tweeting: “#BDSSaudi.”[77] The Saudi Arabian government responded by having dozens of anonymous Twitter troll accounts it controlled post tweets critical of Omar.[75]
Omar condemned China‘s treatment of its Muslim ethnic Uyghur people.[78] In a Washington Post op-ed, Omar wrote, “Our criticisms of oppression and regional instability caused by Iran are not legitimate if we do not hold Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to the same standards. And we cannot continue to turn a blind eye to repression in Saudi Arabia—a country that is consistently ranked among the worst of the worst human rights offenders.”[72] She also condemned the Assad regime in Syria.[79]
Omar condemned the 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings, tweeting, “No person, of any faith, should be fearful in their house of worship.”[80]
Israeli–Palestinian conflict
Criticism of the Israeli government
While she was in the Minnesota legislature, Omar was critical of the Israeli government and opposed a law intended to restrict the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.[81] She compared the movement to people who “engage[d] in boycotts” of apartheid in South Africa.[77] During her House campaign she said she did not support the BDS movement, describing it as counterproductive to peace.[82][83] After the election her position changed, as her campaign office told Muslim Girl that she supports the BDS movement despite “reservations on the effectiveness of the movement in accomplishing a lasting solution.”[84][85][82] Omar has voiced support for a two-state solution to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.[77][72] She criticized Israel’s settlement building in the occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank.[86]
In 2018 Omar came under criticism for statements she made about Israel before she was in the Minnesota legislature.[81][83] In a 2012 tweet she wrote, “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.”[81][87] The comment, particularly the notion that Israel had “hypnotized the world,” was criticized as drawing on anti-Semitic tropes.[81]The New York Times columnist Bari Weiss wrote that Omar’s statement tied into a millennia-old “conspiracy theory of the Jew as the hypnotic conspirator.”[88] When asked in an interview how she would respond to American Jews who found the remark offensive, Omar replied, “I don’t know how my comments would be offensive to Jewish Americans. My comments precisely are addressing what was happening during the Gaza War and I’m clearly speaking about the way the Israeli regime was conducting itself in that war.”[87] After reading Weiss’s commentary, Omar apologized for not “disavowing the anti-Semitic trope I unknowingly used.”[89]
Remarks on AIPAC and American support for Israel
In an exchange with the journalist Glenn Greenwald in February 2019, Omar tweeted, “It’s all about the Benjamins baby” in reference to American politicians’ support for Israel and invoked the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). A number of Democratic leaders—including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and Majority Whip Jim Clyburn—condemned the tweet, which was interpreted as implying that money was fueling American politicians’ support of Israel.[90] The Democratic House leadership released a statement accusing Omar of “engaging in ‘deeply offensive’ anti-Semitic tropes.”[91] The Jewish Democratic Council of America (JDCA) also denounced her statements.[92] Omar issued an apology the next day, saying, “I am grateful for Jewish allies and colleagues who are educating me on the painful history of anti-Semitic tropes,” and adding, “I reaffirm the problematic role of lobbyists in our politics, whether it be AIPAC, the NRA or the fossil fuel industry.”[91]
On February 27, 2019, Omar spoke at a bookstore and said of her critics: “I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is OK for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country.” The statements were quickly criticized as allegedly drawing on anti-Semitic tropes of dual loyalty. House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Eliot Engel said it was “deeply offensive to call into question the loyalty of fellow American citizens” and asked Omar to retract her statement.[93] House Appropriations Committee chairwoman Nita Lowey also called for an apology and criticized the statements in a March 3 tweet, which led to an online exchange between the two. In response, Omar reaffirmed her remarks, insisting that she “should not be expected to have allegiance/pledge support to a foreign country in order to serve my country in Congress or serve on committee.”[94][95] Omar said she was simply criticizing Israel, drawing a distinction between criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu and being anti-Semitic.[96][97] Omar’s spokesman, Jeremy Slevin, said Omar was speaking out about “the undue influence of lobbying groups for foreign interests.”[98]
Reaction among Democratic presidential candidates was mixed. Senators Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Bernie Sanders defended Omar.[99] Senators Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio regarded her statements as disturbing.[100][101] According to The Guardian, election records archived by OpenSecrets “suggest a correlation between pro-Israel lobby campaign contributions and Democratic presidential candidates’ position on the controversy.”[102] Some members of the Black Caucus believed Omar was unfairly targeted because she is a black Muslim, noting that “the Democratic leadership did not draft a resolution condemning Donald Trump or other white male Republicans over their antisemitic remarks.”[102] The second round of remarks prompted the Democratic leadership to introduce a resolution condemning antisemitism but without naming Omar. Following objections from a number of congressional progressive Democrats, the resolution was amended to include Islamophobia, racism, and homophobia,[103] and on March 7 the House passed the amended resolution. Omar called the resolution “historic on many fronts,” and said, “We are tremendously proud to be part of a body that has put forth a condemnation of all forms of bigotry including anti-Semitism, racism, and white supremacy.”[104] Some Minnesota Jewish and Muslim community leaders subsequently expressed continued concern over Omar’s rhetoric and language and indicated that the issue remained divisive with Omar’s district.[105]
On May 20, 2019, protesters gathered in Times Square in New York City to call for Omar’s removal from the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “In my lifetime, I cannot think of any other politician who presents a bigger threat to the alliance between the US and Israel and to America’s Jews,” “Ilhan Must Go” founder and rally organizer Joe Diamond told The Jerusalem Post ahead of the protest.[106] Across the street, a smaller group of counter-protesters organized by progressive Jewish organization IfNotNow supported Omar; “I’m just sick and tired of seeing this one part of the Jewish community try to silence those who criticize Israel,” one said.[107]
In March 2019 Omar addressed a rally in support of a Minnesota bill that would ban gay conversion therapy in the state. She co-sponsored a similar bill when she was a member of the Minnesota House.[109] In May 2019 Omar introduced legislation that would sanction Brunei over a recently introduced law that would make homosexual sex and adultery punishable by death.[110]
In January 2019, amid the 2019 Venezuelan presidential crisis, Omar joined Democrats Ro Khanna and Tulsi Gabbard in denouncing the Trump administration’s decision to recognize Juan Guaidó, the president of the Venezuelan National Assembly, as Venezuela’s interim president.[112] She described Trump’s action as a “U.S. backed coup” to “install a far right opposition”. Omar added that the U.S. should not “hand pick” foreign leaders[113] and should support “Mexico, Uruguay & the Vatican’s efforts to facilitate a peaceful dialogue.”[112]
In February 2019 Omar questioned whether Elliott Abrams, whom Trump appointed as Special Representative for Venezuela in January 2019, was the correct choice given his past support of right-wing authoritarian regimes in El Salvador and Guatemala, his initial doubts about the number of reported deaths in the El Mozote massacre in 1982, and his two 1991 misdemeanor convictions for withholding information from Congress about the Iran–Contra affair, for which he was later pardoned by George H. W. Bush.[114][115]
On March 1, 2019, the West Virginia Republican Party held “WV GOP Day,” an event to celebrate the Republican Party, at the West Virginia Capitol. An exhibitor, not associated with the GOP, displayed a poster at the event falsely connecting Omar to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, along with Islamophobic flyers. State delegate Mike Pushkin, in attendance at the event, said that no Republican delegates condemned the poster. The poster was condemned the following day by the WV GOP party, which said, “The West Virginia Republican Party does not approve, condone, or support hate speech.” Omar pointed to the poster as an example of why she is targeted with violence, also citing white nationalist domestic terrorist Christopher Hasson placing her on his hit list and “Assassinate Ilhan Omar” being written in a Minnesota gas station.[120][121][122][123][124][120]
Jeanine Pirro’s hijab comments
On March 9, 2019, Fox News host Jeanine Pirro made what were widely condemned as prejudiced[125] and Islamophobic comments on her show when she questioned Omar’s loyalty to the United States because she wears a hijab.[126][127][128] Fox also condemned the remarks and Pirro’s show was not aired the following week.[127][129][130]
On April 7, 2019, Patrick Carlineo Jr., an ardent supporter of President Trump, was arrested for threatening to assault and violently murder Omar. The threats were made in a phone call to Omar’s office.[132][133] In May 2019 Carlineo was released from custody and placed on house arrest.[134]
9/11 comments and World Trade Center cover
On April 11, 2019, the front page of The New York Post carried an image of the World Trade Center burning following the September 11 terrorist attacks and a quotation from a speech Omar gave the previous month. The headline read, “REP. ILHAN OMAR: 9/11 WAS ‘SOME PEOPLE DID SOMETHING'”, and a caption underneath added, “Here’s your something … 2,977 people dead by terrorism.”[135] The Post was quoting a speech Omar had given at a recent Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR) meeting. In the speech Omar said, “CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us [Muslims in the U.S.] were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.”[136][137][138][139] (In fact CAIR was founded in 1994, but many new members joined after the 9/11 attacks in 2001.)[139][140]
On April 12, President Donald Trump retweeted an altered video that selectively edited Omar’s remarks to remove context, showing her saying, “Some people did something.”[141][142][143] Her remarks were first criticized by fellow representative Dan Crenshaw of Texas.[144] Some Democratic representatives condemned Trump’s retweet, predicting that it would incite violence and hatred. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on Trump to “take down his disrespectful and dangerous video” and asked the U.S. Capitol Police to increase its protection of Omar.[145][140]
On April 30, 100 black women activists held a demonstration in support of Omar in Washington in response to Trump’s comments, urging Democratic leaders to formally censure the president.[146] Speaking at the event, Omar blamed Trump and his allies for inciting Americans against both Jews and Muslims.[147]
Awards and honors
In 2014 Omar was named a rising star in the Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party’s Women’s Hall of Fame.[148]
She received the 2015 Community Leadership Award from Mshale, an African immigrant media outlet based in Minneapolis. The prize is awarded annually on a readership basis.[149]
In 2017 Time magazine named Omar among its “Firsts: Women who are changing the world,” a special report on 46 women who broke barriers in their respective disciplines, and featured her on the cover of its September 18 issue.[150] Her family was named one of the “five families who are changing the world as we know it” by Vogue in their February 2018 issue featuring photographs by Annie Leibovitz.[151]
In 2002 she became engaged to Ahmed Abdisalan Hirsi (né Aden). The couple applied for a marriage license, but the application was not finalized. They did, however, have a faith-based marriage.[1] The couple had two children together before separating in 2008. The next year Omar married Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, a British citizen.[1] In 2011 she and Elmi had a faith-based divorce,[154] and that year she reconciled with Hirsi, with whom she had a third child in 2012. In 2017 Elmi and Omar were legally divorced,[36] and in 2018 Omar and Hirsi were legally married.[20] They and their three children live in Minneapolis.[23] Her daughter, Isra Hirsi, is one of the three principal organizers of the school strike for climate.[155]
Story 2: Democrat Controlled House of Representatives Condemns Trump’s Tweets As Racist — Human Racist? — 240 (Democrats Plus 4 Republicans) vs. 187(Republicans) — Love America or Leave America — Videos —
WATCH: Pelosi calls Trump’s tweets about congresswomen ‘racist’ in House speech
US house condemns Trump over racist comments
House’s condemnation of Trump may just be the beginning
Now the debate is over push by some Democrats for impeachment
Speaker Nancy Pelosi and senior aide Wendell Primus leave the House floor on Tuesday as turmoil gripped the chamber. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)
Although Tuesday’s long day of heated debate ended with the House voting to condemn President Donald Trump for racist tweets, the chamber’s brawl over the president’s behavior may be just beginning.
The House voted, 240-187, to approve a nonbinding resolution that says the chamber “strongly condemns” Trump’s “racist comments that have legitimized and increased fear and hatred of new Americans and people of color.”
Getting there was an extraordinary journey stretching more than six hours. Lawmakers spent much of the afternoon in emotional upheaval, with members on both sides of the aisle seeking to strike their colleagues’ words from the record, including those of Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Members who are immigrants affirmed their love of the USA in stark terms. And then an eight-term lawmaker, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II of Missouri, abruptly dropped the gavel and left the presiding officer’s post — a move that members and longtime chamber observers said was unlike anything they had ever seen before.
The House’s majority Democratic leadership went forward with the resolution after Trump’s comments from Sunday, when he tweeted that Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” (Only Omar, a refugee from Somalia, was born outside the United States.)
“I am a proud naturalized citizen born in India, a proud patriot, a proud person who belongs in this country. And it’s not the first time I’ve heard, ‘Go back to your own country.’ But it is the first time I have heard it coming from the White House,” Washington Democrat Pramila Jayapal said shortly before the vote on the resolution.
The hours before the vote, though, were tumultuous.
During the debate, with Cleaver presiding, Jayapal made a request that comments from Wisconsin Republican Sean P. Duffy calling some fellow members of Congress “un-American” be taken down.
Cleaver ruled that her request was out of order. And then Pelosi came to the well to deliver remarks.
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“Every member of this institution, Democratic and Republican, should join us to condemn the president’s racist tweets,” the California Democrat said.
Georgia Republican Doug Collins interjected unsuccessfully, but once Pelosi was finished speaking, he made the Californian an offer.
“I was just going to give the gentle speaker of the House, if she would like to rephrase that comment?” he asked.
Pelosi responded that she cleared her remarks with the parliamentarian before she read them on the floor.
Collins then took the procedural step to “take down” the comments by Pelosi, saying they violated rules of decorum for the House, which forbid accusing the president of racism.
That led to a lengthy standoff on the floor and widespread confusion as to what was going on.
Stalemate on the floor
Finally, after a staffer could be heard saying to Cleaver that it was time to make his ruling and read a prepared statement, the onetime minister instead said he would make a statement of his own, casting aside the printed remarks handed to him.
“I came in here to try to do this in a fair way. I kept warning both sides let’s not do this, hoping we could get through,” the Missouri Democrat said.
“We don’t ever, ever, want to pass up an opportunity, it seems, to escalate. And that’s what this is,” Cleaver said. “I dare anybody to look at any of the footage and see if there was any unfairness, but unfairness is not enough, because we want to just fight.”
Adding a bit of dramatic flair, Cleaver dropped the gavel and declared simply, “I abandon the chair.” Then he walked off the rostrum.
“I’ve not seen it before,” said House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer before taking the gavel himself to resume proceedings at Pelosi’s request.
The Maryland Democrat announced the parliamentarian’s ruling against the speaker that “the words should not be used in debate,” according to a precedent from May 15, 1984.
Collins then moved to strike Pelosi’s words from the record, leading to a series of votes on the matter before finally getting to the resolution itself. In the end, four Republicans — Susan W. Brooks of Indiana, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Will Hurd of Texas and Fred Upton of Michigan — and independent Justin Amash of Michigan voted with all 235 Democrats in favor of the resolution.
Far enough?
For all the drama over condemnation, at least a few dozen Democrats think that censuring or impeaching the president would be a more appropriate response to what they describe as a pattern of racist and xenophobic rhetoric.
“This sends a very, very clear message,” New Jersey Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. said of the condemnation resolution. “But a censure … is more forceful.”
Tennessee Rep. Steve Cohen on Monday introduced a resolution to censure Trump with nine co-sponsors, including the four progressive Democrats who were the targets of the president’s attacks. He said seven or eight other Democrats told him Tuesday they want to sign on to the resolution, but it’s been hard to rally support for it because Pelosi is opposed.
Some Democrats want to go even further and impeach the president or at least open an impeachment inquiry. Omar and Tlaib both reiterated their calls for impeachment during a press conference Monday evening.
Texas Rep. Al Green told reporters on Wednesday morning a vote on articles of impeachment he introduced would come in the afternoon. Several other members, however, said they expected leadership to move to refer the measure to the Judiciary Committee or to table it, standard procedure to dispense with such measures.
On Tuesday, Green did just that, right after the vote on the condemnation resolution, reading his privileged articles of impeachment on the floor. The move, called giving notice, triggers a two-day clock in which leadership must consider or dispense with the resolution by tabling it or referring it to the Judiciary Committee.
“It just seems to me that these things are in tandem with each other,” Green said. “I believe that condemnation is appropriate. But I also believe that it won’t be enough to deter or to put guardrails up for this president, who seems to have little respect for the courts, little respect for committees that are performing proper oversight. At some point, we have to develop the wherewithal to say to this president, enough is enough. I think this is an enough is enough resolution.”
Twice in the last Congress, Green brought privileged articles of impeachment to the floor, but Republican leaders — then in the majority— successfully moved to table them.
Green had long decided that he would force a third vote on impeaching Trump sometime this year, but it was the president’s Sunday tweet telling members of color to go back to their countries that pushed him to bring it up now.
“I’m 71. And I remember the ‘go back to Africa language’ that was commonplace in this country,” he said. “I’m a son of the segregated South. I had to go to back doors, drink out of colored water fountains, sit in the back of the movie, back of the bus. And that was all a part of it.”
“When I hark back and I hear that language, I remember all of these things. This was not a good time in the history of the country for persons of African ancestry,” he continued. “So I, at that point, I really felt that it was necessary to send to this president the message that there are some of us who believe that you are so unfit that you should be removed from office. And he is unfit, because he’s tried to infuse his bigotry into policy.”
Green offered the articles of impeachment a week before former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is scheduled to testify before two House panels — a point that several members have said they wanted to get to before deciding whether it was appropriate to open an impeachment inquiry.
“The Mueller testimony will have no impact on this, and this will have no impact on the Mueller testimony,” Green said. “They’re totally separate issues. … They’re both about impeachment, but they’re for different reasons.”
Green said the articles of impeachment focus more on Trump’s “bigotry” than obstruction of justice, even though he thinks Trump is guilty of that.
Democratic leaders have yet to decide how to handle Green’s resolution, Hoyer told CQ Roll Call Tuesday evening after he left the floor after listening to Green introduce his measure.
Earlier in the day, Hoyer told reporters he would not try to talk Green out of offering it.
“He has to do what he thinks is right,” the majority leader said.
And with Trump unlikely to temper his language any time soon, the debate about what to do about that will continue, regardless of votes to condemn his language or how Democratic leaders eventually deal with actions by members like Green.
Story 3: ANTIFA (Anti-facist) 69-Year Old Man With Rifle Who Threw Incendiary Device at Northwest Detention Center Shot Dead By Tacoma Police — Videos
Tucker: Antifa has the support of the ‘respectable’ left
Man shot and killed after attacking ICE facility
AOC, Ilhan Omar repeatedly REFUSE to condemn Antifa attack on ICE! | Keean Bexte
Man throwing ‘incendiary devices’ fatally shot by police at Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma
ANTIFA DOMESTIC TERRORIST ATTACK!
Far Left Publishes Praise Of Antifa Terrorist Who Attacked ICE, Possible Motivations Revealed
Man shot and killed in police confrontation outside Tacoma ICE detention facility
Anarchist Who Firebombed A Detention Center is Being Called a Hero
The Firebomber’s Manifesto: Inside the Mind of Willem Van Spronsen
Antifa lauds ‘martyr’ who attacked ICE detention center as manifesto circulates
By Victor Morton– The Washington Times – Monday, July 15, 2019
The rifle-wielding attacker who tried to burn an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Washington over the weekend wrote a self-justifying manifesto repeating many standard Democratic talking points about the border crisis and other issues.
In a three-page document posted on Seattle TV station KIRO’s website, Willem Van Spronsen cited popular left-wing historian Howard Zinn, said that “i am antifa,” criticized the Electoral College and accused the U.S. of running “concentration camps” on the border.
Willem Van Spronsen, 69, declares early on in his manifesto that “evil says concentration camps for folks deemed lesser are necessary. the handmaid of evil says the concentration camps should be more humane,” using a term usually reserved for Nazi Germany’s death camps, but introduced in the border-security debate last month by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.
He also mocked people criticizing Ms. Ocasio-Cortez for intellectual sloppiness, referring to “these days of highly profitable detention/concentration camps and a battle over the semantics.”
Van Spronsen, armed with an AR-15 assault weapon that his manifesto encouraged others to acquire to bring about a revolution, attacked the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma around 4 a.m. Saturday. He threw “incendiary devices” and set vehicles before officers shot him to death as he was trying to ignite a propane tank.
In his manifesto, he called the detention facility “an abomination” and that he was “not standing by” as it operated.
“i really shouldn’t have to say any more than this. i set aside my broken heart and i heal the only way i know how- by being useful. i efficiently compartmentalize my pain… and i joyfully go about this work,” he wrote.
He indicated that he intended the attack as a suicide mission, writing that “i regret that i will miss the rest of the revolution. thank you for the honor of having me in your midst. giving me space to be useful.”
Antifa activists declared him useful, too.
Seattle Antifascist Action called him“our good friend and comrade Willem Van Spronsen” and said he “became a martyr who gave his life to the struggle against fascism.”
The group went on to call for more such attacks in memory of Van Spronsen.
“We cannot let his death go unanswered … May his death serve as a call to protest and direct action,” the group wrote on its Facebook page.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez was asked Monday by the Daily Wire whether she would denounce antifa and whether she was to any degree responsible for the attack, since Van Spronsen repeatedly used her “concentration camp” language.
She ignored the reporter.
BREAKING: Ocasio-Cortez refuses to condemn the far-left terrorist attack on the ICE facility in Tacoma, Washington
PUBLISHED: 12:59 EDT, 13 July 2019 | UPDATED: 08:43 EDT, 14 July 2019
A man armed with a rifle threw incendiary devices at a Washington state immigration jail early Saturday morning, then was found dead after four police officers arrived and opened fire, authorities said.
The Tacoma Police Department said the officers responded at about 4am to the privately run Tacoma Northwest Detention Center, in Tacoma, Washington, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security detention facility that holds migrants pending deportation proceedings.
The detention center has also held immigration-seeking parents separated from their children under President Donald Trump’s ‘zero tolerance’ policy, an effort meant to deter illegal immigration.
Roads leading to Washington’s Tacoma Northwest Detention Center were closed Saturday after police shot at a man carrying a rifle, who also threw incendiary devices at the center
The shooting took place about six hours after a peaceful rally in front of the detention center, police spokesman Loretta Cool said. She said another rally was planned for later Saturday, but it would have to be held in a different area because of the investigation into the police shooting.
Police said the man caused a vehicle to catch fire and that he attempted to ignite a large propane tank and set buildings on fire. Police said that besides the rifle, he had a satchel and flares.
Police said officers called out to the man, and shots were fired.
Cool said all four officers fired their weapons, but she didn’t have specific details of what took place. She said the officers weren’t wearing body cameras, but the area is covered by surveillance cameras from the detention center. She said she didn’t know if the man fired at the officers.
Four police officers were said to have opened fire at the man, who was later found dead. Authorities shut down the streets and the center was then put on a 24-hour lock down
The incident occurred six hours after a peaceful demonstration outside the detention center. A protest sign is pictured here posted at the detention in 2017
The center said baseless accusations about how detainees are treated at its facilities (pictured in 2017) ‘have led to misplaced aggression and a dangerous environment for our employees’
After the gunfire, officers took cover, contained the area and set up medical aid a short distance away, police said.
Officers then located the man and determined he had been shot and was dead at the scene. His name hasn’t been released.
Authorities say investigators are processing the scene and police are continuing to investigate. No law enforcement officers were injured.
The four Tacoma police officers who fired their weapons have been placed on paid administrative leave as is standard in officer-involved shootings.
A motive for the man’s actions hasn’t been determined, Cool said.
The incident occurred just one day prior to ICE’s planned national raids in 10 cities, targeting hundreds of immigrants who were given deportation orders. Nearby Seattle, however, is not one of those cities on the list.
Activist group La Resistencia — also known as NWDC Resistance, after Northwest Detention Center — has postponed its planned Saturday afternoon protest of the facility after reporting road closures and the facility’s 24-hour lock down following the incident.
A scene from the peaceful protest outside the detention center on Friday, just hours before the shooting incident occurred
Protesters are seen here at Friday’s Lights for Liberty protest outside the detention center
La Resistancia activist Maru Mora-Villalpando told the Seattle Times that they were notified about what occurred, but that the detainees inside the facility had no idea about the incident.
‘They were not told that visits would not happen, were not told that the accident happened in the early morning. People in detention always are the last ones to know what’s happening outside,’ Mora-Villalpando told the newspaper.
She added that the organization handled three cases of medical neglect recently, including one that resulted in deportation and then death.
GEO Group, which runs the 1,575-bed Northwest Detention Center, in an email to The Associated Press said baseless accusations about how detainees are treated at its facilities ‘have led to misplaced aggression and a dangerous environment for our employees, whose safety is our top priority. Violence of any kind against our employees and property will not be tolerated. We are thankful for the quick and brave action by the Tacoma Police Department, which prevented innocent lives from being endangered.’
GEO Group said the detention center in Tacoma has modern amenities with air conditioning, recreational activities, a bed for every individual and medical care available at all hours.
Last year, a federal judge ruled that Washington state could pursue its lawsuit seeking to force GEO Group to pay minimum wage for work done by detainees at the detention center.
In November, a Russian asylum-seeker who conducted a hunger strike to protest the conditions at the detention center died by suicide, the Pierce County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled.
Mergensana Amar, 40, was taken off life support after attempting to kill himself while in voluntary protective custody at the detention center on November 15, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said.
The antifa (/ænˈtiːfə, ˈæntiˌfɑː/)[1] movement is a conglomeration of left-wing autonomous, militantanti-fascist[7] groups in the United States.[11] The principal feature of antifa groups is their use of direct action,[12] with conflicts occurring both online and in real life.[13] They engage in varied protest tactics, which include digital activism, property damage, physical violence, and harassment against those whom they identify as fascist, racist, or on the far-right.[18]
Logo of Antifaschistische Aktion, the militant anti-fascist network in 1930s Germany that inspired the Antifa movement
The logo as it appears on a flag held by an antifa member in Cologne, Germany in 2008
When Italian dictator Benito Mussolini consolidated power under his National Fascist Party in the mid-1920s, an oppositional anti-fascist movement surfaced both in Italy and countries such as the United States. Many anti-fascist leaders in the United States were syndicalist, anarchist, and socialist émigrés from Italy with experience in labor organizing and militancy.[26]
After World War II, but prior to the development of the modern antifa movement, violent confrontations with fascist elements continued sporadically.[29]
Modern antifa politics can be traced to opposition to the infiltration of Britain’s punk scene by white power skinheads in the 1970s and 1980s, and the emergence of neo-Nazism in Germany following the fall of the Berlin Wall.[24] In Germany, young leftists, including anarchists and punk fans, renewed the practice of street-level anti-fascism.[24] Columnist Peter Beinart writes that “in the late ’80s, left-wing punk fans in the United States began following suit, though they initially called their groups Anti-Racist Action (ARA) on the theory that Americans would be more familiar with fighting racism than they would be with fighting fascism.”[24]
Dartmouth College historian Mark Bray, author of Antifa:The Anti-Fascist Handbook, credits ARA as the precursor of the modern US antifa groups in the United States and Canada.[30] In the late 1980s and 1990s, ARA activists toured with popular punk rock and skinhead bands in order to prevent Klansmen, neo-Nazis and other assorted white supremacists from recruiting.[24][31][32] Their motto was “We go where they go” by which they meant that they would confront far-right activists in concerts and actively remove their materials from public places.[33] In 2002, the ARA disrupted a speech in Pennsylvania by Matthew F. Hale, the head of the white supremacist group World Church of the Creator, resulting in a fight and twenty-five arrests.[24] One of the earliest Antifa groups in the U.S. was Rose City Antifa, which was formed in Portland, Oregon in 2007.[34]
Other antifa groups in the U.S. have other genealogies, for example in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where a group called the Baldies was formed in 1987 with the intent to fight neo-Nazi groups directly.[19]
Terminology
Although various antifascist movements have existed in the United States since the beginning of fascism, the word antifa, adopted from German usage,[27][35][36] only came into prominence as an umbrella term in English in 2017.[37][38]The ADL makes a point that the label “antifa” should be limited to “those who proactively seek physical confrontations with their perceived fascist adversaries,” and not be misapplied to include all counter-protesters.[13]
Ideology and activities
Antifa is not an interconnected or unified organization, but rather a movement without a leadership structure, comprising multiple autonomous groups and individuals.[13][21][33] Since it is composed of autonomous groups, and thus has no formal organization or membership,[24][39] it is impossible to know how many groups are active. Activists typically organize protests via social media and through websites and email lists.[24][39] Some activists have built peer-to-peer networks, or use encrypted-texting services like Signal.[40] According to Salon, it is an organizing strategy, not a group of people.[41] While its numbers cannot be estimated accurately, the movement has grown since the 2016 presidential election and approximately 200 groups currently exist in the US, of varying sizes and levels of engagement.[27] The activists involved subscribe to a range of ideologies, typically on the left and they include anarchists, socialists and communists along with some liberals and social democrats.[20][22]
According to Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at the California State University, San Bernardino, antifa activists participate in violent actions because “they believe that elites are controlling the government and the media. So they need to make a statement head-on against the people who they regard as racist”.[8] According to Mark Bray, the adherents “reject turning to the police or the state to halt the advance of white supremacy. Instead they advocate popular opposition to fascism as we witnessed in Charlottesville”.[21]
The idea of direct action is central to the antifa movement. Antifa organizer Scott Crow told an interviewer:
“The idea in Antifa is that we go where they [right-wingers] go. That hate speech is not free speech. That if you are endangering people with what you say and the actions that are behind them, then you do not have the right to do that. And so we go to cause conflict, to shut them down where they are, because we don’t believe that Nazis or fascists of any stripe should have a mouthpiece.”[8]
A manual posted on It’s Going Down, an anarchist website, warns against accepting “people who just want to fight”. It furthermore notes that “physically confronting and defending against fascists is a necessary part of anti-fascist work, but is not the only or even necessarily the most important part”.[42]
According to Beinart, antifa activists “try to publicly identify white supremacists and get them fired from their jobs and evicted from their apartments”, in addition to “disrupt(ing) [sic] white-supremacist rallies, including by force”.[43]According to a Washington Post book review, antifa tactics include “no platforming“, i.e. denying their targets platforms from which to speak; obstructing their events and defacing their propaganda; and when antifa activists deem it necessary, deploying violence to deter them.[22] According to National Public Radio, “people who speak for the Antifa movement acknowledge they sometimes carry clubs and sticks” and their “approach is confrontational”.[44]CNNdescribes antifa as “known for causing damage to property during protests”.[8] Scott Crow, described by CNN as “a longtime Antifa organizer”, argues that destroying property is not a form of violence.[8] The groups have been associated with physical violence in public against police[45] and against people whose political views its activists deem repugnant.[46] Antifa activists used clubs and dyed liquids against the white supremacists in Charlottesville[47]and caused property damage.[8] In one incident, an apparent antifa supporter punched white supremacist Richard Spencer in the face as he was giving an impromptu street interview,[48][49] and on another occasion, some threw Molotov cocktails in Berkeley, California.[8]
Apart from the other activities, antifa activists engage in mutual aid, such as disaster response in the case of Hurricane Harvey.[50][51][52] According to Natasha Lennard in The Nation, as of January 2017 antifa groups were working with interfaith groups and churches “to create a New Sanctuary Movement, continuing and expanding a 40-year-old practice of providing spaces for refugees and immigrants”.[53] Antifa activists also do research to monitor and track the “methods and movements of far-right leaders”, hold conferences and workshops on anti-fascist activism, and advocate ways of “fostering sustainable, peaceful communities”, such as “tending neighborhood gardens and setting up booths at book fairs and film festivals” where they provide printed materials.[54]
In June 2017, the antifa movement was linked to “anarchist extremism” by the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness.[55] In September 2017 Politico obtained confidential documents and interviews indicating that in April 2016, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation believed that “anarchist extremists” were the primary instigators of violence at public rallies against a range of targets. Politicointerviewed law enforcement officials who noted a rise in activity since the beginning of the Trump administration, particularly a rise in recruitment (and on the part of the far right as well) since the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally. One internal assessment acknowledged an inability to penetrate the groups’ “diffuse and decentralized organizational structure”. By 2017, the FBI and DHS reported that they were monitoring suspicious Antifa activity in relation to terrorism.[56] In August 2017 a petition was lodged with the White House petitioning system “We the People” calling upon the government to formally classify “AntiFa” as terrorist. The White House responded in 2018 that federal law does not have a mechanism for formally designating domestic terrorist organizations.[57][58][59] The writer of the petition later said he had created it to “bring our broken right side together,” and to “prop up antifa as a punching bag.”[60]
Antifa activists often use the black bloc tactic, in which people dress all in black and cover their faces, in order to thwart surveillance, and create a sense of equality and solidarity among participants.[62] Antifa activists wear masks to hide their “…identity from protestors on the other side (who might dox people they disagree with) or from police and cameras” and for philosophical reasons, such as the beliefs that “hierarchies are bad and that remaining anonymous helps keep one’s ego in check.”[63]
In April 2017, two groups described as “anti-fascist/anarchist”, including the socialist/environmentalist Direct Action Alliance, threatened to disrupt the 82nd Avenue of Roses Parade after hearing the Multnomah County Republican Party would participate. The parade organizers also received an anonymous email, saying: “You have seen how much power we have downtown and that the police cannot stop us from shutting down roads so please consider your decision wisely”. The two groups denied having anything to do with the email. The parade was ultimately canceled by the organizers due to safety concerns.[68][69]
On June 15, 2017, some antifa groups joined protestors at Evergreen State College to oppose the far-right group Patriot Prayer‘s event. Patriot Prayer was supporting biology professor Bret Weinstein who became the central figure in a controversy after he criticized changes to one of the college’s events. In addition to peaceful antifa activists who held up a “community love” sign, USA Today reported that one slashed the tires of far-right activist Joey Gibson and another was wrestled to the ground by Patriot Prayer activists after being seen with a knife.[70]
Antifa counter-protesters at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017 “certainly used clubs and dyed liquids against the white supremacists”.[47] Journalist Adele Stan interviewed an antifa protester at the rally who said the sticks carried by the protesters are a justifiable countermeasure to the fact that “the right has a goon squad”.[71] Some antifa participants at the Charlottesville rally chanted that counter-protesters should “punch a Nazi in the mouth”.[44] Antifa participants also protected Cornel West and various clergy from attack by white supremacists, with West stating he felt that antifa had “saved his life”.[72][73] Antifa activists also defended the First United Methodist Church, where the Charlottesville Clergy Collective provided refreshments, music and training to the counter-protesters and, according to a local rabbi, “chased [the white supremacists] off with sticks”.[72][74]
Antifa protesters during a Trump rally in Phoenix, Arizona, August 22, 2017
Groups that had been preparing to protest the Boston Free Speech Rally saw their plans become viral following the violence in Charlottesville. The event drew a largely peaceful crowd of 40,000 counter-protestors. In The Atlantic, McKay Coppins stated that the 33 people arrested for violent incidents were “mostly egged on by the minority of ‘Antifa’ agitators in the crowd”.[75] President Trump described the protestors outside his August 2017 rally in Phoenix, Arizona as “Antifa”.[76]
During a Berkeley protest on August 27, 2017, an estimated one hundred antifa protesters joined a crowd of 2,000–4,000 counter-protesters to confront alt-right demonstrators and Trump supporters who showed up for a “Say No to Marxism” rally that had been cancelled by organizers due to security concerns.[67][77] Protestors threatened to smash the cameras of anyone who filmed them.[78]Jesse Arreguin, the mayor of Berkeley, suggested classifying the city’s antifa as a gang.[79] The far-right group Patriot Prayer cancelled an event in San Francisco the same day following counter protests. Joey Gibson, the founder of Patriot Prayer, blamed antifa, along with By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), for breaking up the event.[80]
In November 2018, police investigated the antifa group Smash Racism D.C. following a protest outside the home of The Daily Caller founder Tucker Carlson.[81] Activists of the group said through a bullhorn that Carlson was promoting hate and chanted, “We will fight, we know where you sleep at night!” and defaced the driveway of Carlsons’ property by spray-painting an anarchist symbol onto it[82] Twitter suspended the group’s account for violation of Twitter rules by posting Carlson’s home addresses. The group also posted addresses of Carlson’s brother and a friend who co-founded The Daily Caller.[83][84][85][86][87][88]
In February 2019, anti-fascist activists marched in celebration through Stone Mountain, Georgia as a white supremacist, neo-confederate rally planned to be held at the adjacent Stone Mountain Park was cancelled due to infighting and fear of personal safety. White supremacist groups originally sought to attract attention by marching at the Stone Mountain, a Confederate landmark carving, during the Super Bowl weekend. The groups ignored the park’s denial of permit due to “clear and present danger to the public health or safety”, but was thwarted when Facebook and Twitter terminated their organizing accounts and pages, and one group leader’s retreat due to “fears of violence from counter-protesters”. In their absence, more than 100 antifa activists marched peacefully through the adjacent village, burned a Klansman effigy and chanted slogans such as “Good night, alt right” and “Death to the Klan”, before joining another civil rights rally at Piedmont Park held by the NAACP and the SPLC.[89][90][91]
Response
Antifa actions have been subject to criticism from Republicans, Democrats and political commentators in the U.S. media.[92][93][94]House Minority LeaderNancy Pelosi condemned the violence of antifa activists in Berkeley on August 29, 2017.[95] Conservative talk show host and Fox News contributor Laura Ingraham suggested labeling antifa as a terrorist organization.[96]Noam Chomsky described them as “a major gift to the right”.[97] Other “anti-anti-fascists” on the left have argued that antifa attack a symptom of liberal democracyrather than combating structural racism itself, and in doing so distance themselves from revolutionary politics.[98]Dissent editor Michael Kazin stated “Non-leftists often see the left as a disruptive, lawless force. Violence tends to confirm that view.”[99] The historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat said in July 2019 that “Throwing a milkshake is not equivalent to killing someone, but because the people in power are allied with the right, any provocation, any dissent against right-wing violence, backfires”, with the effect that “[m]ilitancy on the left” can “become a justification for those in power and allies on the right to crack down” on the left.[34]
On the other hand, historian and political organizer Mark Bray has said “Given the historical and current threat that white supremacist and fascist groups pose, it’s clear to me that organized, collective self-defense is not only a legitimate response, but lamentably an all-too-necessary response to this threat on too many occasions.”[100] Alexander Reid Ross, a lecturer in geography and an author on the contemporary right, has said that antifa groups represented “one of the best models for channeling the popular reflexes and spontaneous movements towards confronting fascism in organized and focused ways.”[101] Eleanor Penny, an author on fascism and the far-right, argues against Chomsky that “physical resistance has time and again protected local populations from racist violence, and prevented a gathering caucus of fascists from making further inroads into mainstream politics.”[97]Cornel West, who attended a counter-protest to the Unite the Right rally, said in an interview, “we would have been crushed like cockroaches if it were not for the anarchists and the anti-fascists,” describing a situation where a group of 20 counter-protesters were surrounded by marchers who he described as, “neofascists.”[102]
The Anti-Defamation League stated that “All forms of antifa violence are problematic. Images of these ‘free speech’ protesters being beaten by black-clad and bandana-masked antifa provide right wing extremists with a powerful propaganda tool” but goes on to state “that said, it is important to reject attempts to claim equivalence between the antifa and the white supremacist groups they oppose.” They also mention that “most established civil rights organizations criticize antifa tactics as dangerous and counterproductive.”[13]
Hoaxes
There have been multiple efforts to discredit antifa groups via hoaxes on social media, many of them false flag attacks originating from members of the alt-right and 4chan posing as members of antifa groups on Twitter. Some of these hoaxes have been picked up and reported as fact by right-leaning media.[103]
These include an August 2017 “#PunchWhiteWomen” photo hoax campaign spread by fake antifa twitter accounts.[104] In one such instance, Bellingcat researcher Eliot Higgins discovered an image of British actress Anna Friel portraying a battered woman in a 2007 Women’s Aid anti-domestic violence campaign that had been re-purposed using fake antifa Twitter accounts organized by way of 4chan. The image is captioned “53% of white women voted for Trump, 53% of white women should look like this” and includes an antifa flag. Another image featuring an injured woman is captioned “She chose to be a Nazi. Choices have consequences” and includes the hashtag #PunchANazi. Higgins remarked to the BBC that “[t]his was a transparent and quite pathetic attempt, but I wouldn’t be surprised if white nationalist groups try to mount more sophisticated attacks in the future”.[105] A similar fake image circulated on social media after the Unite the Right rally; the doctored image, actually from a 2009 riot in Athens, was altered to make it look like someone wearing an antifa symbol attacking a member of the police with a flag.[106] After the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, similar hoaxes falsely claimed that the shooter was an antifa “member”; another such hoax involved a fake antifa twitter account praising the shooting.[107][108] Another high-profile fake antifa account was banned from Twitter after it posted with a geotag originating in Russia.[109] Such fake antifa accounts have been repeatedly reported on as real by right-leaning media outlets.[103]
Some of the opposition to antifa activism has also been artificial in nature; Nafeesa Syeed of Bloomberg reported that “[t]he most-tweeted link in the Russian-linked network followed by the researchers was a petition to declare Antifa a terrorist group”.[110]
See also
Redneck Revolt, an anti-capitalist, anti-fascist and anti-racist group
Story 4: Establishment Democrats Support Creepy Sleepy Dopey Joey Biden — Videos
Biden support slips below 30 percent in new poll
Former Vice President Joe Biden‘s support in the latest Hill-HarrisX poll of Democratic voters has fallen below 30 percent, his lowest mark in the survey so far.
The poll, released on Monday, found that 29 percent of likely Democratic primary voters support Biden as their first choice for president, while 16 percent back Sen. Bernie Sanders(I-Vt.).
This marks a 4-point drop for Biden from an identical poll conducted two weeks ago and immediately following the first 2020 Democratic debates. It also represents a 17-point drop from when same poll was first conducted in May, a month after Biden formally launched his campaign bid.
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) retained their spots, with Harris getting 11 percent and Warren trailing close behind at 9 percent.
South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who ranked as high as third place at one earlier poll, slipped to sixth place, garnering just 1 percent of support.
Former Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke, who has been lagging in national polls over the last few months, notched up 2 points to 3 percent.
A large number of respondents, 17 percent, were undecided.
The poll can be viewed as another setback for Biden, whose campaign has been grappling with attacks on his civil rights record in recent weeks.
Harris and Biden went head-to-head last month on the second night of the first Democratic presidential debates, where she confronted him on his past comments about working with segregationists senators and his past opposition to school busing.
The California senator saw a bump in a number of polls — including the Hill’s own Hill-HarrisX survey — following the confrontation.
Yet the poll continues to show Biden with a double digit lead over Sanders, and he has more than twice the support of Harris and more than three times the support of Warren to this point.
The Hill-HarrisX poll surveyed 1,003 voters between July 12 and July 13. The sampling margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
Former Vice President Joe Biden repeated one of his old boss’s most infamous pledges on Monday, saying under his proposal, “if you like your health care plan … you can keep it.”
The 2020 Democratic frontrunner released a health care plan Monday that would seek to build upon the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, which included subsidies to lower prices on the exchanges and also allowing for a “public option” his campaign called similar to Medicare.
“I give people the option. If you like your health care plan, your employer-based plan, you can keep it,” Biden told an audience at an AARP-sponsored forum. “If in fact you have private insurance, you can keep it.”
Some of his 2020 rivals, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), and Sen. Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) are pushing for some form of a single-payer “Medicare for All” program. Some versions would completely eliminate private health insurance. Biden warned the crowd of that possible outcome if they liked the plans they have and said the transition would be difficult.
With his, Biden said, “you get a choice.”
“You get full coverage, and you can stay with your plan if you like it,” Biden said. “You can stay with your employer-based plan, or you can move on. I think it’s the quickest, most reasonable, rational and best way to get to universal coverage.”
His use of the phrase “you can keep it” created a stir, given how much it hurt President Barack Obama politically.
Obama pledged dozens of times during and after the passage of the Affordable Care Act that Americans who liked their current health care policies would be able to keep them, even punctuating his promise at times with an emphatic “period.” However, millions of cancellation notices went out upon the law’s implementation for not meeting Obamacare standards, leading him to get hit by PolitiFact with the 2013 “Lie of the Year.”
Biden has criticized his rivals for wanting to scrap Obamacare, one of the Obama administration’s main domestic accomplishments.
“Medicare goes away as you know it,” he said of his rivals’ proposals. “But the transition of dropping 300 million people on a new plan is, I think, kind of a little risky at this point.”
David Rutz is managing editor of the Washington Free Beacon. He was previously a sports reporter for two years in Atlanta and has done freelance sports reporting for the Washington Post. He graduated from Vanderbilt University in 2010 and lives in Roswell, Ga. His Twitter handle is @DavidRutz.
PUBLISHED: 08:10 EDT, 15 July 2019 | UPDATED: 10:01 EDT, 15 July 2019
The EU’s Galileo satellite navigation system has been knocked offline for four days following a ground-based technical incident.
Most of the satellites in the Galileo constellation have suffered a service outage since Friday as the official status of all its crafts as currently ‘Not Usable’.
Two of the 26 are said to be ‘testing’ while two others have long been out of service due to unrelated issues.
It is believed the ability to locate and help people in distress situations is unaffected.
Experts are working to restore operations of the multibillion euro programme, the European Global Navigation Satellite Systems Agency (GSA) said.
The system is provided for free and is used by private firms, government agencies, academics and the tech sector.
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The EU’s Galileo satellite navigation system has been down for four days as a result of a technical incident on the ground. The majority of satellites in the Galileo constellation have suffered a service outage (stock)
Issues have persisted the duration of the weekend and it means satellites cannot currently give locations or times to smartphones or other devices.
The majority of popular handsets in use around Europe are reliant on Galileo – including all iPhones released since 2017.
It is still in its earl stages as a project and is therefore not trusted with vital systems, with crucial services using other means.
It operates independently of the US system as well as not relying on Russia’s GLONASS or China’s Beidou networks.
Galileo began testing in December 2016 as an alternative to the US-made Global Positioning System (GPS), designed to provide an exact location to commercial and government customers, with a full deployment expected in 2020.
Experts are working to restore operations of the multibillion euro programme, the European Global Navigation Satellite Systems Agency (GSA) said on Sunday. The system is provided under both free and commercial ventures and is used by both private firms, government agencies, academics and the tech sector
The cause of the technical incident is identified and recovery actions are implemented to ensure that the nominal service is resumed as soon as possible while safeguarding quality of the services,’ the GSA said.
In November, Britain gave up on efforts to gain access to the EU’s Galileo satellite navigation system for defence and critical national infrastructure purposes, after being frozen out by Brussels because of Brexit.
It is unclear whether the UK will get back the £1.2 billion it sank into Galileo.
Instead, it is aiming to build its own Global Navigation Satellite System, at a cost estimated by independent experts at £3 billion to £5 billion.
WHAT IS THE GALILEO SATELLITE CONSTELLATION?
An artist’s impression of one of the satellites in the Galileo constellation
Galileo is a global navigation satellite system created by the European Union which was brought online in 2016.
The project was built to provide a high-precision global positioning system for the use of European nations that was independent of the US’ GPS and Russia’s GLONASS systems.
The setup can provide horizontal and vertical position measurements to a precision of within 1 metre.
It also provides a better service for users in higher latitudes than alternative systems.
Galileo’s low-precision services are free to use and open to everyone, while paying commercial customers can access the system’s higher-precision capabilities.
The first test satellite for the project was launched in December 2005, while the first working satellite was put into orbit in October 2011.
The constellation is comprised of 26 satellites — two of which are being tested and 2 of which are non-functional. Another four are planned for launch by 2020, after which new satellites will be launched to replace older ones.
The whole project is estimated to have cost around €10 billion (£9 billion / $11.3 billion)
Galileo, the EU’s global navigation satellite system, has been down for four days, since July 11, following a mysterious outage. All Galileo satellites are still non-operational, at the time of writing.
According to a service status page, 24 of the 26 Galileo satellites are listed as “not usable,” while the other two are listing a status of “testing,” which also means they’re not ready for real-world usage.
The European GNSS Agency (GSA), the organization in charge of Galileo, has not published any information in regards to the root of the outage, which began four days ago, on Thursday, July 11.
On that day, the GSA published an advisory on its website alerting companies and government agencies employing the Galileo system that satellite signals have degraded and they “may not be available nor meet the minimum performance levels.”
The agency warned that the Galileo system “should be employed at users’ own risk.”
The GSA published a more dire warning on Saturday, July 13, when it said that Galileo was experiencing a full-service outage and that “signals are not to be used.”
At the time of writing, the service is nearing 100 hours of downtime.
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The system going down forced the Galileo’s userbase (government agencies and private companies) to switch to alternatives.
The Galileo satellite system was launched in 2016 and was funded by the EU as an alternative to the US Air Force’s Global Position System (GPS) and the Russian government’s GLONASS.
It is provided under both free and commercial offerings and is widely used by governments agencies and private companies for navigation and search and rescue operations.
Because it’s provided for free, it is also widely used by the private tech sector and by most of the world’s academia.
Updated on July 15, 5:30am ET:In a statement published after this article’s publication, the GSA blamed the Galileo outage on “a technical incident related to its ground infrastructure.” The agency said that the search and rescue (SAR) feature — used for locating and helping people in distress situations for example at sea or mountains — remained operational during the outage, which impacted only navigational and satellite-based timing services.
Story 6: Manhattan Lights Go Out with Electrical Outage — Celebrating 42th Anniversary of Great Blackout — Videos
Power outage strikes Manhattan on the same day of the 1977 NYC blackout
Breaking “Massive BLACKOUT Cripples New York City (Manhattan)
Parts of New York City go dark after power cut – BBC News
Documentary | What Happened When The Lights Went Out on July 13, 1977
Blackout, Chapter 1
NYC Blackout: What It Was Like When the City Lost Power in 1977 | NBC New York
Preliminary report shows faulty relay protection system caused NYC power outage
By Rob Frehse and Taylor Romine, CNN
Updated 6:19 PM ET, Mon July 15, 2019
People wait in a Manhattan diner during a massive power outage that hit parts of New York City on July 13, 2019.
(CNN)Con Edison blamed their relay protection system Monday for the weekend power outage in New York City, saying the system didn’t operate as designed, according to preliminary findings from the company.
“That system detects electrical faults and directs circuit breakers to isolate and de-energize those faults,” the company said in a statement. “The relay protection system is designed with redundancies to provide high levels of reliability. In this case, primary and backup relay systems did not isolate a faulted 13,000-volt distribution cable at West 64th Street and West End Avenue.”
“Our analysis of data and testing of the relay protection equipment is continuing, and will provide more insight into why the system, and its multiple redundancies, did not operate as designed,” the company added.
Both New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio called for a full investigation.
“This could have been much worse,” said Governor Cuomo early Sunday morning. “When you’re talking about a city like New York, with a significant piece of the city basically suffering a blackout, that could be a very chaotic situation. We saw the exact opposite, actually. We saw New Yorkers at their best.”
It could take months to investigate why the outage happened, Con Edison President Timothy Cawley told reporters Sunday.
The outage started Saturday at 6:47 p.m., and the lights were back on shortly after midnight, officials said. It mostly affected midtown Manhattan and parts of the Upper West Side. No injuries or hospitalizations were reported.
At the height of the outage, 72,000 customers were in the dark, utility company Con Edison said. It had given a preliminary number of 73,000 — but lowered it early Sunday.
Infrastructure is everything you don’t think about. The roads you drive on. The rigs and refineries that turn fossil fuel into the gas that makes your car go. The electricity that powers the streetlights and lamps that guide your way. All these technologies vanish into the oblivion of normalcy.
Until they break. Then everyone notices.
That’s what happened Saturday night in New York City when a power outage struck Midtown Manhattan, from Hell’s Kitchen north to Lincoln Center and from Fifth Avenue west to the Hudson River. The blackout darkened the huge, electric billboards of Times Square, forced Broadway shows to cancel performances, and even disabled some subway lines.
According to reports, the outage was caused by a transformer fire within the affected region. Power was fully restored by early the following morning. It was not the first or the most severe blackout to hit the Big Apple—another took out the whole city on the same date in 1977, and yet another struck in the summer of 2003. The causes vary—a series of lightning strikes instigated the 1977 event, and a remote software error caused the one in 2003. But deferred maintenance, increased demand, climate-change-driven weather calamities, and even the threat of cyberattack put infrastructure at greater risk.
A quick primer on how electricity works: First, power plants create it, mostly by burning fuel (or smashing atoms) that heats water to make steam that spins a turbine. (Hydroelectric generators harness the flow of water to spin turbines directly.) Those turbines move a generator, which produces electricity from the resulting kinetic energy. Plants then use transformers to step up the voltage of generated electricity and send it down high-voltage lines, which lose less energy in transit. Once it reaches its destination, other transformers step the voltage down to deliver it to substations, and eventually directly to customers.Saturday’s blackout was most likely caused by a disabled transformer at an area substation. There are at least 50 of those in New York City, which are fed in turn by at least 24, higher-voltage transmission substations. When it comes to power, New York is unusual because of the city’s age and the density of its population, both residential and commercial. That produces different risks and consequences.
In Atlanta, where I live, storms often down trees, which take out aboveground power lines. In the West, where wildfires are becoming more common, flames frequently dismantle power infrastructure (sometimes the power lines themselves cause the fires). But across the whole of New York City—not just Manhattan—more than 80 percent of both customers and the electrical load are serviced by underground distribution from area substations. That makes smaller problems less frequent, but bigger issues more severe.
When a transformer goes down in a populous place like Manhattan, it has a greater impact than it would on Long Island, say, or in Westchester County, where density is lower. The amount of power that central Manhattan uses on a regular basis also contributes to that impact. Times Square, the theater district, hundreds of skyscrapers—it’s a substantial load. In New York’s case, supplying that load is not usually the problem. Generating facilities can be located near or far away from where their power is used, and New York City draws power from a couple dozen plants. Some of it is imported from upstate.
But much of New York’s power is still generated locally, in large part at plants along the waterfront of Queens. Those plants are older, and more susceptible to disruption from local calamities, especially severe weather. When peak demand surges—most common during heat waves, such as the ones that struck the region in 2006 and 2011—the older, less efficient generating stations have a harder time keeping up, and brownouts or blackouts become more likely.
Superstorms can also disrupt Manhattan’s delivery infrastructure, despite the fact that it’s underground. In 2011, Hurricane Irene threatened to flood traffic and subway tunnels, also putting underground delivery at risk. The next year, Hurricane Sandy disrupted a third of the city’s electrical capacity. Flooding shut down five transmission substations. Other infrastructure was affected too, including natural gas and steam services (the latter provide heat and hot water, crucial during winter and for emergency facilities such as hospitals).
Sandy inundated the subway tunnels, which rely on pumps to bilge out the water. Electrical failures can disrupt the cleanup process as much as flooding can. And once a subway station gets incapacitated, the impact cascades throughout the system. On Saturday night, when the Midtown blackout occurred, the MTA was forced to cut service on some lines affected by signal or station outages.Failure, fire, and flood aren’t the only dangers that can befall transformer substations. Power infrastructure can be an appealing target for terrorism because the sites are poorly protected and the economic impact of a successful attack can be high—particularly in a city like New York. Cyberattacks are also possible. This March, a denial of service attack affected electrical systems in Los Angeles and Salt Lake City, two major population centers. Intelligence suggests that the risk of similar foreign attacks is currently elevated. A House Energy and Commerce subcommittee discussed those risks in a hearing the day before the Midtown Manhattan blackout.
One way to mitigate these dangers is to make utility infrastructure less susceptible to single points of failure. Underground distribution tends to make it easier to reach electrical customers via multiple paths. Regulatory agencies such as the New York State Reliability Council also impose requirements on utility service. Con Edison, which powers almost all of New York City, is expected to design its network to operate even if some of its components fail or are lost to disaster. But new risks associated with climate change, cyberwarfare, and other factors haven’t necessarily been accounted for in the design and operation of utility infrastructure.
The perils build on one another. Climate change amplifies the frequency of heat waves, which increases electrical load, which puts greater pressure on infrastructure. At the same time, it increases the likelihood of superstorms that can cause flooding, fire, and other disasters that might disrupt nodes in the network. When utility operators designed their equipment years or decades ago, they made assumptions about load, storm surge, and other factors. Those estimates might no longer apply.
Worse, planning and implementing updates to those systems is often stymied by paltry funding, strained political will, or other accidents. The utility industries are pushing for transformation, as it were, in infrastructure design, including efforts to make the “edges” of the grid more resilient and redundant. But those plans are similarly snared in the traps of outdated investment and regulation. Worse still, the same climatological, economic, and political instabilities that help increase the likelihood of electrical-grid collapse might also increase the risk of deliberate attacks to the grid, or reduce the agility of emergency response when accidents like this weekend’s Manhattan transformer fire occur.
None of these factors wafted up to street level Saturday night, as New Yorkers muddled through the inconvenience of a few hours without power. If anything, the scenes aboveground seemed inspiring, delightful even. Broadway-musical casts and Carnegie concert musicians hosted impromptu sidewalk performances for disappointed theatergoers. Citizens took it upon themselves to direct traffic in chaotic intersections. As New Yorkers are wont to do, city dwellers celebrated these and similar acts as telltale signs of the city’s vibrancy and resilience. When the power came back on, the horde of shadows cheered in unison as electric lamps fueled by burning coal miles away restored them to the technicolor of modern, artificial light. No injuries were reported during the blackout.
But such a generous response is only possible because power disruptions are still rare, especially absent the forewarning that accompanies a major hurricane or a serious thunderstorm. The chaos caused by similar, more frequent events would quickly snuff out the surprise and delight of unelectrified life. The theater performers would sneak home out the back, wondering whether the union would consider yet another disrupted performance complete. The citizen constables would spare their bodies, out of fear or boredom. The cheers would turn to groans, as the uncertainty and nuisance of the city’s physical caprices would wear thin.
Worsening political and economic circumstances would only fuel this fire. The July 13, 1977, blackout came amid a widespread economic crisis, the Son of Sam serial killings, a heat wave, and other social stressors. The looting and vandalism that accompanied that blackout 42 years ago were surely underwritten by the increased crime of the age and the totality of the blackout, which wiped out power to the whole city for two days. But those and worse effects are still possible. If you didn’t notice, things aren’t so great in 2019, either.
The blackout is a warning that infrastructure doesn’t only exist when it breaks. That’s true not just for New Yorkers, but for most of the U.S. population, which is scattered across regions with lower density, reduced wealth, and a more fickle public-service response. Whether it sleeps or not, a city is like an iceberg: You only see the smallest bit of it aboveground, but all of it is melting.
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.
IAN BOGOST is a contributing editor at The Atlantic and the Ivan Allen College Distinguished Chair in Media Studies at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His latest book is Play Anything.
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I’ll win this on my own! Joe Biden says he asked Obama NOT to endorse him as he finally throws himself into 2020 race by taking fight to Trump for ‘the soul of this nation’ – who hits back by saying: ‘Welcome to the race Sleepy Joe!’
Former Vice President Joe Biden formally announced his presidential bid
‘We are in the battle for the soul of this nation,’ he said in his announcement
He said he asked former President Obama not to endorse his campaign
‘Whoever wins the nomination should win it on their own merits,’ he told reporters in the Wilmington, Delaware, Amtrak train station
Obama put out a statement Thursday praising Biden but not endorsing him
Biden struck directly at President Donald Trump in his announcement video
‘If we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation,’ he said
Trump wasted no time hitting back and gave Biden the moniker ‘Sleepy Joe’
Biden faces a crowded field of 20 contenders for the Democratic nomination
A poll released Wednesday had Biden eight points ahead of President Trump
The poll has the 76-year-old leading a crowded field of Democrat candidates
Republicans are already attacking the former vice president hard
PUBLISHED: 06:06 EDT, 25 April 2019 | UPDATED: 14:43 EDT, 25 April 2019
Joe Biden said Thursday he asked former President Barack Obama not to endorse his presidential campaign, saying whoever won the Democratic nomination should do so ‘on their own merits.’
‘I asked President Obama not to endorse. Whoever wins the nomination should win it on their own merits,’ the former vice president told reporters in the Wilmington, Delaware, Amtrak train station.
Obama released a statement Thursday that praised Biden but stopped short of endorsing his presidential bid, raising questions about how much the former president would be willing to do to help his former running mate win the Democratic nomination.
Former Vice President Joe Biden said he asked former President Obama not to endorse his campaign
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Biden was spotted hugging a cop
Biden stopped at Gianni’s pizza in Wilmington
Biden also declined to answer a question on why he’s the best choice for Democrats in 2020, saying: ‘That will be for the Democrats to decide.’
He had a brief exchange with reporters in the Amtrak station in Wilmington, Delaware, that bears his name: The Joseph R. Biden Jr. Railroad Station.
He was also spotted hugging a cop in the station and he stopped by his favorite pizza place – Gianni’s pizza – for lunch.
Biden was casually dressed in a blue-button down shirt and made small talk with people in the pizza parlor.
‘America is coming back to like we used to be, ethical, straight, telling the truth, supporting our allies, all those good things,’ he told reporters outside the restaurant.
The first images – in his home town where he’s very popular – show the former vice president glad handling, posing for pictures and being a regular Joe. He called people by name and asked about their families as he left the pizza place. He got a pizza and soda to go, signature aviator sunglasses on as he departed.
The former vice president ended months of speculation Thursday when he formally entered the race for the Democratic presidential nomination in an announcement that struck directly at President Donald Trump and laid out the former vice president’s vision to led the nation.
‘We are in the battle for the soul of this nation,’ Biden declared in his announcement video. ‘The core values are standing in the world. Everything that has made America America is at stake. That’s why today I’m announcing my candidacy for president of the United States.’
Joe Biden greets people during a stop at Gianni’s Pizza in Wilmington, Del.
Former Vice President Joe Biden formally announced his presidential bid in a video
Trump wasted no time hitting back and dubbed Biden with the moniker ‘Sleepy Joe,’ mocking him with a nickname as he has done with other political rivals in the past.
‘Welcome to the race Sleepy Joe. I only hope you have the intelligence, long in doubt, to wage a successful primary campaign. It will be nasty – you will be dealing with people who truly have some very sick & demented ideas. But if you make it, I will see you at the Starting Gate!,’ Trump wrote on Twitter Thursday morning.
Biden, 76, will share the primary field with at least 20 other candidates, a record for a major U.S. political party.
His entry comes as new poll shows he would defeat President Trump if the general election were held today.
Biden struck hard and direct at Trump in his three-and-a-half minute announcement video.
‘If we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation. Who we are. And I cannot stand by and watch that happen,’ he said.
The former vice president cited the white supremacist march through Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, and President Trump’s response to it as the reason behind his decision to make a third bid for the White House.
‘I knew the threat to this nation was unlike any I had seen in my lifetime,’ he noted.
He particularly pointed to Trump’s line that there are ‘very fine people on both sides.’
‘Some very fine people on both sides, very fine people on both sides? With those words, the president of the United States assigned a moral equivalency between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it. And in that moment I knew the threat to this nation was unlike any I had ever seen in my lifetime,’ Biden said.
Democrat Joe Biden leads President Donald Trump by eight points in a hypothetical 2020 matchup, according to a new poll
The poll of 1,992 registered voters was conducted between April 19 and 21
Trump, notably, has not struck out at Biden for being a socialist or liberal.
The former vice president has a long, strong legislative record as a moderate but he will face more progressive rivals in the battle for the nomination.
And that is the internecine battle Democrats are facing among themselves: the more moderate, blue-collar voters (who swung to Trump in 2016 and put him in the White House) versus the younger, more progressive and diverse generation.
Biden Campaign Staff
Greg Schultz, Campaign Manager
Kate Bedingfield, Deputy Campaign Manager and Communications Director
Pete Kavanaugh, Deputy Campaign Manager
Anthony Bernal, Deputy Campaign Manager and Chief of Staff to Dr. Jill Biden
Symone Sanders, Senior Advisor
Cristobal Alex, Senior Advisor
Brandon English, Senior Advisor
Daniel McCarthy, Chief Operations Officer and Chief Financial Officer
Dana Remus, General Counsel
Erin Wilson, National Political Director
Vanessa Cardenas, National Coalitions Director
Michelle Kwan, Surrogates Director
Kurt Bagley, National Organizing Director
Katie Petrelius, National Finance Director
PJ Alampi, Director of Digital Content
Becca Siegel, Chief Analytics Officer
Ashley Williams, Trip Director
Kate Berner, Deputy Communications Director for Messaging
Meghan Hays, Deputy Communications Director for Strategic Planning
Bill Russo, Deputy Communications Director for Press
Jamal Brown, National Press Secretary
TJ Ducklo, National Press Secretary
Remi Yamamoto, Traveling National Press Secretary
Sherice Perry, Communications Director for Dr. Jill Biden
Andrew Bates, Director of Rapid Response
Kamau Marshall, Director of Strategic Communications
The president labeled those liberal left candidates as people with ‘some very sick & demented ideas,’ in his tweet Thursday.
A prominent liberal group has already disavowed the former vice president.
Justice Democrats, the group that helped progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez take office, slammed Biden in a statement Thursday.
‘The old guard of the Democratic Party failed to stop Trump, and they can’t be counted on to lead the fight against his divide-and-conquer politics today. The party needs new leadership with a bold vision capable of energizing voters in the Democratic base who stayed home in 2016,’ the group said.
Biden’s entry into the race Thursday follows a shock poll released on Wednesday, which put him eight points ahead of Trump and had the 76-year-old leading a packed Democrat primary field.
The Morning Consult/Politico poll shows Biden leading Trump 42 per cent to 34 per cent in a general election matchup.
The poll of 1,992 registered voters was conducted between April 19 and 21.
It showed Biden with a strong lead over Trump among women, whom he led by 17 points, millennials with a 22-point lead and independents, up 10 points.
The former vice president also announced his campaign staff on Thursday including campaign manager Greg Schultz, who ran Biden’s PAC American Possibilities and served as his political director in the White House; Symone Sanders, a prominent African American political strategist who served as Bernie Sanders press secretary for his 2016 campaign, as a senior adviser; and Michelle Kwan, a two-Olympic medal winning figure skater, as his surrogates director.
Biden’s announcement video also touched on issues important to Democrats – striking at the moral character of President Trump while highlighting the racial issues that have caused concern.
‘I don’t see how you could do anything that goes more directly at some of the constituencies of the Democratic Party than putting Charlottesville front and center,’ former Obama campaign manager David Axelrod said on CNN Thursday.
The former vice president enters the race as the pejorative front runner.
Even before he pulled the trigger on his campaign, his strong national name recognition has made him the odds-on favorite to square off against PresidentTrump next year.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the only declared candidate who is older than Biden, is running in second place with 23 per cent average backing. No other potential Democratic nominee is polling in double digits.
Biden’s task will be to grow his natural base faster than his competitors can catch up to him and to dispel the party’s fear that a series of sexual harassment allegations have saddled him with a ceiling that no amount of joshing and grinning can break through.
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Biden, seen here with wife Jill at the 2013 inaugural ball, will appear with her on ABC’s ‘Good Morning America’ next week
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Former President Barack Obama praised Biden in a statement Thursday but did not formally endorse his presidential bid
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Biden waves to the crowd after he stopped for pizza on Thursday
He will position himself as a level headed statesman and highlight his roots as a blue-collar man from Scranton, Pennsylvania, who never lost touch with his hardscrabble beginnings.
It’s those middle class roots and appeal to Midwest voters in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan that are said to worry Republicans as those are the states that helped put Trump in the White House.
Pennsylvania is getting a heavy focus from Biden from the start. He’ll hold rally with Teamsters in Pittsburgh on Monday and then, on May 18, he’ll hold a rally in Philadelphia.
Trump won the state in 2018, the first time in over 20 years a Republican captured it, helping hand him the Oval Office.
Biden’s first high-profile endorsements on Thursday came from Democratic U.S. senators who hail from his native Pennsylvania and his childhood state of Delaware.
Chris Coons, who holds the Delaware seat Biden once occupied, called the former vice president ‘better prepared than anyone to lead America on the world stage at a time when our commitments to our allies and our values are being questioned like never before.’
‘Joe knows what it means to strengthen our alliances, stare down our adversaries, and represent the best of America abroad,’ Coons said in a statement.
Biden Campaign Schedule
April 26: Appears on ABC’s ‘The View’
April 29: Speech to union members in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
April 30: Biden and Jill Biden appear on ABC’s ‘Good Morning America’
May 18: Rally in Philadelphia
Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania said America is at a ‘make-or-break moment for the middle class, our children and our workers,’ and that ‘America needs Vice President Joe Biden to be its next President.’
Former President Barack Obama did not leap up to support his two-time running-mate.
A person familiar with Obama’s thinking said Thursday that the 44th president is ‘excited by the extraordinary and diverse talent exhibited in the growing lineup of Democratic primary candidates.’
But ‘it’s unlikely that he will throw his support behind a specific candidate this early in the primary process — preferring instead to let the candidates make their cases directly to the voters,’ the source said.
In public, Obama spokeswoman Katie Hill told reporters: ‘President Obama has long said that selecting Joe Biden as his running mate in 2008 was one of the best decisions he ever made.’
‘He relied on the Vice President’s knowledge, insight, and judgment throughout both campaigns and the entire presidency,’ said Hill. ‘The two forged a special bond over the last 10 years and remain close today.’
The former Vice President said in the video: ‘We are in the battle for the soul of this nation’
Biden talks with officials after speaking at a rally in support of striking Stop & Shop workers in Boston on April 18
The Republican National Committee leaped to mock Biden for failing to lock his former boss into a Day One endorsement.
‘Joe Biden has been running for president and losing since the ‘80s. 2020 won’t be any different. Biden’s fingerprints are all over foreign policy blunders and the weakest economic recovery since World War II,’ said RNC Communications Director Michael Ahrens.
‘We don’t need eight more years of Biden. Just ask President Obama, who isn’t even endorsing his right-hand man.’
And RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel tweeted Thursday morning: ‘If Joe Biden wants to keep score: In 8 years, Biden & Obama had a net loss of 193,000 manufacturing jobs. In just over 2 years, @realDonaldTrump has created 453,000 manufacturing jobs. Don’t let Biden take us backwards!’
Meanwhile, Biden’s team worries about his fundraising ability and his tendency to commit gaffes.
Money is said to be one of the campaign’s biggest worries.
Although Biden has long standing ties to the party’s elders and a long list of wealthy supporters he can call at a moment’s notice, he’ll face questions if he can harness the social media and small donor power that Beto O’Rourke and Bernie Sanders have used to fuel their candidacy.
Highlighting his campaign’s concern about cash, his first post-presidential stop will be a fundraiser.
On Thursday, a group of Philadelphia-based Democratic insiders with ties to Obama and Hillary Clinton are planning a fundraiser at the home of David L. Cohen, executive senior vice president of Comcast. The former vice president will attend, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported, and is aiming to raise $500,000 at the event.
On Friday, Biden will appear on ABC’s ‘The View,’ followed by a rally in Pittsburgh on Monday. He and wife Jill will sit down with ABC’s Robin Roberts for Tuesday’s ‘Good Morning America.’
Sandwiched in between and throughout the next few weeks will be visits to the early voting states in the Democratic primary process.
Four years Trump’s senior, Biden would be the oldest person ever elected president should he win.
He is expected to campaign as an ‘Obama-Biden Democrat,’ who is as pragmatic as he is progressive, in a move to appeal to those nostalgic for the former president.
He’ll also have to balance the working-class voters who are his strength with the younger, more diverse crowd who came out for Obama in historic numbers but stayed home for Hillary Clinton.
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Biden speaks at the IBEW Construction and Maintenance Conference in Washington earlier this month
Former Vice President Joe Biden speaks at the Biden Courage Awards in New York last month
With a public record that stretches back a half a century, Biden’s challenges are easy to find.
First and foremost were the recent allegations stemmed from years of Biden’s hugs and kisses to women, some of whom said the touching was inappropriate and unwelcome.
Biden is known for demonstrating affection in public. It was often the subject of jokes while others labeled him ‘Creepy Uncle Joe.’
The recent scandal, however, found the former vice president staring down a wave of allegations from women, whose fury against Trump’s election and leadership in the #MeToo movement have made them a force in the 2020 contest.
It’s also left the Democratic Party in the awkward position of watching one of its favorite sons try to calm a storm that has engulfed other politicians.
Biden, trying to stem the tide ahead of his expected announcement, broke his silence on the scandal in early April, saying he ‘tried to make a human connection’ with his actions but ‘will be more mindful and respectful of people’s personal space’ in the future.
‘I always try to be in my career, always tried to make a human connection. That’s my responsibility, I think. I shake hands, I hug people. I grab men and women by the shoulders and say you can do this, whether they’re women, men, young, old. It’s the way I’ve always been and tried to show that I care about them and I’m listening,’ he said in a video posted to his Twitter account.
The scandal began when former Nevada politician Lucy Flores accused him of making her uncomfortable during a 2014 campaign appearance when he kissed the back of her head.
Since she spoke, three additional women have come forward.
But other women defended the former vice president, saying they found comfort in his hugs.
The scandal will likely be one of the first items he’ll have to address in his upcoming set of interviews on ABC.
Biden’s first White House bid in 1988 ended after a plagiarism scandal.
In 2008, he dropped out after less than 1 per cent of the vote in the Iowa caucuses, a fact Trump has mocked him for.
‘He ran two or three times, he never got about one percent. And then [Barack] Obama came along and took him off the trash heap, and he became a vice president, and now he’s leading,’ Trump told Fox News in January.
Later in 2008, Obama named Biden his running mate, in part to use Biden’s elder statesman experience to balance out his lack of time on the national political scene.
Additionally, Biden’s willingness to work with Republicans has caused him political headaches.
He was forced to walk back a comment last month that Vice President Mike Pence is ‘a decent guy’ after intense blowback from liberal activists upset with Pence’s opposition to gay rights.
Biden was also a close friend of the late Sen. John McCain and spoke at one of of his memorial services.
Biden’s first accuser, former Nevada politician Lucy Flores, said she was ‘mortified’ when Biden planted a ‘big, slow kiss’ on the back of her head as she waited to take the stage at a campaign rally five years ago
Biden speaks at a rally in support of striking Stop & Shop workers in Boston last week
First elected to the Senate in 1972, Biden has a long record in Congress that he will have to defend.
The most prominent has been the 1991 confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Clarance Thomas. As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden allowed Anita Hill, who had accused Thomas of sexual harassment, to face harsh questions form an all-male panel. Thomas was later confirmed to the court.
Biden has since apologized for his role in the hearing.
His deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield said on CNN Thursday that Biden and Hill have spoken but she declined to give any details on the timing or nature of the conversation.
‘I’m not going to get into their private discussions, but they have spoken,’ Bedingfield said.
But in the #MeToo era, particularly after the contentious confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, his apology may not be enough to silence the issue.
The former vice president also has a compelling personal story to back up his professional experience.
A a son of Scranton, Pa., his wife Neilia and daughter Naomi were killed in a car crash in December 1972, shortly after he was first elected to the Senate.
Sons Beau and Hunter survived. Biden went on to marry Jill Jacobs in 1977 and have another daughter.
But Beau died in May 2015 of brain cancer. Biden opted not to run in 2016, in part because of Beau’s death, despite his dying son asking him go for it.
Biden reflected on that in a book he wrote about his conversations with Beau.
‘He was worried that what I’d worked on my whole life, the things that mattered to me the most since I was a kid, that I’d walk away,’ Biden said.
WHO ARE THE 20 DEMOCRATS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT IN 2020?
JOE BIDEN
Age on Inauguration Day 2021: 78
Entered race: April 25, 2019
Career: No current role. A University of Delaware and Syracuse Law graduate, he was first elected to Newcastle City Council in 1969, then won upset election to Senate in 1972, aged 29. Was talked out of quitting before being sworn in when his wife and daughter died in a car crash and served total of six terms. Chaired Judiciary Committee’s notorious Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings. Ran for president in 1988, pulled out after plagiarism scandal, ran again in 2008, withdrew after placing fifth in the Iowa Caucuses. Tapped by Obama as his running mate and served two terms as vice president. Contemplated third run in 2016 but decided against it after his son died of brain cancer.
Family: Eldest of four siblings born to Joe Biden Sr. and Catherine Finnegan. First wife Neilia Hunter and their one-year-old daughter Naomi died in car crash which their two sons, Joseph ‘Beau’ and Robert Hunter survived. Married Jill Jacobs in 1976, with whom he has daughter Ashley. Beau died of brain cancer in 2015. Hunter’s marriage to Kathleen Buhle, with whom he has three children, ended in 2016 when it emerged Hunter was in a relationship with Beau’s widow Hallie, mother of their two children. Hunter admitted cocaine use; his estranged wife accused him of blowing their savings on drugs and prostitutes
Religion: Catholic
Views on key issues: Ultra-moderate who will emphasize bipartisan record. Will come under fire over record, having voted: to stop desegregation bussing in 1975; to overturn Roe v Wade in 1981; for now controversial 1994 Violent Crime Act; for 2003 Iraq War; and for banking deregulation. Says he is ‘most progressive’ Democrat. New positions include free college, tax reform, $15 minimum wage. No public position yet on Green New Deal and healthcare. Pro-gun control. Has already apologized to women who say he touched them inappropriately
Would make history as: Oldest person elected president
Slogan: To be announced
CORY BOOKER
Age on Inauguration Day: 51
Entered race: February 1, 2019
Career: Currently New Jersey senator. High school football star who went to Stanford or undergraduate and masters degrees before studying in Oxford as a Rhodes scholar and Yale Law School. Worked for advocacy and youth projects and successfully ran for Newark, New Jersey, city council in 1998. Narrowly lost mayoral election in 2002 facing claims he was ‘suburban’ and ‘not black enough.’ Ran again in 2006 and won landslide on radical reform platform for troubled city, including being tough on crime, cutting budget deficit, increasing affordable housing and tackling failing schools – controversially taking a huge donation from Mark Zuckerberg for the city. Ran for New Jersey senate seat in 2013 special election and won; won full term in 2014
Family: Unmarried but dating actress Rosario Dawson. Parents Cary and Carolyn were among IBM’s first black executives. Brother Cary Jr. is education adviser to New Jersey’s Democratic governor
Religion: Baptist
Views on key issues: Self-proclaimed liberal. Endorses abortion rights; affirmative action; single-payer health care; criminal justice reform; path to citizenship for ‘dreamers; federal marijuana decriminalization; $15 minimum wage; but has also spoken against tech regulation and for long-term deficit reduction
Would make history as: First unmarried president since Grover Cleveland in 1886
Slogan: Together, America, We Will Rise
PETE BUTTIGIEG
Age on Inauguration Day: 39
Entered race: Announced formation of exploratory committee January 23, 2019. Formally entered race April 14, 2019
Career: Currently mayor of Sound Bend, Indiana. Harvard grad and Rhodes scholar who got a second degree from Oxford before working as a McKinsey management consultant and being commissioned as a Navy Reserve intelligence officer. Elected South Bend mayor in 2011 and served in combat in 2013, won re-election in 2015
Family: Came out as gay during second mayoral run and married husband Chasten Glezman, a middle school teacher in 2018. Parents were University of Notre Dame academics. Surname is pronounced BOOT-edge-edge. Would be first combat veteran since George H.W. Bush
Religion: Raised as a Catholic, now Episcopalian
Views on key issues: Has said Democratic party needs a ‘fresh start’; wrote an essay in praise of Bernie Sanders aged 17; backed paid parental leave for city employees; other policies unknown
Would make history as: First openly gay and youngest-ever president
Slogan: To be announced
JULIAN CASTRO
Age on Inauguration Day: 46
Entered race: January 12, 2018, at rally in his native San Antonio, TX. Had formed exploratory committee two months previously
Career: No current job. Stanford and Harvard graduate who was a San Antonio, Texas, councilman at 26 and became mayor of the city in 2009. Was Obama’s Housing and Urban Development secretary from 2014 to 2016
Family: Married with nine-year-old daughter, Carina, and four-year-old son, Cristian. His identical twin Joaquin, who is a minute younger, is Democratic congressman. Mother Maria del Rosario Castro was part of ‘radical’ third party for Mexican-Americans; father left his wife and five children for her but they never married. Would be first Hispanic-American president – announced his run in English and Spanish – and first-ever U.S. president with a twin
Religion: Catholic
Views on key issues: Wants medicare for all; universal pre-K; action on affordable housing; will not take money from political action committees (PACs) tied to corporations or unions. Other views still to be announced
Would make history as: First Hispanic president, first to be a twin
Slogan: One Nation, One Destiny
JOHN DELANEY
Age on Inauguration Day: 57
Entered race: Filed papers July 28, 2017
Career: No current job. Three-time Maryland congressman, first winning election in 2012. Previously set up publicly-traded companies lending capital to healthcare and mid-size businesses and was youngest CEO at the time of a New York Stock Exchange-listed firm
Family: Married father of four; wife April works for children’s issues nonprofit
Religion: Catholic
Views on key issues: Social liberal in favor of legalized pot and gun control but not single-payer healthcare; fiscally conservative
Would make history as: First president from Marlyand
Slogan: Focus on the Future
TULSI GABBARD
Age on Inauguration Day: 39
Entered race: Still to formally file any papers but said she would run on January 11 2019
Career: Currently Hawaii congresswoman. Born on American Samoa, a territory, and therefore may be subject to questions over whether she is natural-born. Raised largely in Hawaii, she co-founded an environmental non-profit with her father as a teenager and was elected to the State Legislature aged 21, its youngest member in history. Enlisted in the National Guard and served two tours, one in Iraq 2004-2006, then as an officer in Kuwait in 2009. Ran for Honolulu City Council in 2011, and House of Representatives in 2012
Family: Married to her second husband, Abraham Williams, a cinematographer since 2015. First marriage to childhood sweetheart Eduardo Tamayo in 2002 ended in 2006. Father Mike Gabbard is a Democratic Hawaii state senator, mother Carol Porter runs a non-profit.
Religion: Hindu
Views on key issues: Has apologized for anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage views; wants marijuana federally legalized; opposed to most U.S. foreign interventions; backs $15 minimum wage and universal health care; was the second elected Democrat to meet Trump after his 2016 victory
Would make history as: First female, Hindu and Samoan-American president; youngest president ever
Slogan: Lead with Love
KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND
Age on Inauguration Day: 54
Entered race: Announced exploratory committee on Stephen Colbert’s CBS show on January 16, 2019. Formal launch in front of Trump International Hotel and Tower, New York, March 24, 2019
Career: Currently New York senator. Dartmouth and UCLA law grad who was a high-flying Manhattan attorney representing big businesses. Says she was inspired to enter politics by hearing Hillary Clinton speak, although she is also scion of a prominent New York Democratic political family. Won New York’s 20th district, centered on Albany in 2004; appointed to Hillary Clinton’s senate seat in 2008 and won it in 2010 special election 63-35; won first full term 2012 and re-elected 67-33 in 2018
Family: Married to British venture capitalist Jonathan Gillibrand with two sons, Theodore, 15, and Henry, ten. Father Douglas Lutnik was Democratic lobbyist; grandmother Polly Noonan was at center of Albany Democratic politics
Religion: Catholic
Views on key issues: Initially pro-gun as Congresswoman, has since reversed herself to be pro-gun control and also pro-immigration; said Bill Clinton should have resigned over Monica Lewinsky and helped force Al Franken out of Senate over groping allegations; in favor of single-payer healthcare and Medicare for all
Would make history as: First female president
Slogan: Brave wins
KAMALA HARRIS
Age on Inauguration Day: 56
Entered race: Announced she was running January 21, 2018 – Martin Luther King Jr. Day – on Good Morning America. Formally entered race January 27
Career: Currently California senator. Howard and U.C. Hunter law school grad who worked as assistant district attorney in Alameda County, CA, then in San Francisco’s DA’s office before being elected San Francisco DA in 2003 and used it as springboard to run successfully for California attorney general in 2010. Won again in 2014 and was at center of U.S. attorney general and Supreme Court speculation but also endured a series of controversies, including over police brutality allegations. Ran for Senate in 2016 and established herself on liberal wing of party
Family: Born in Berkeley, CA, to immigrant Indian Tamil mother and Jamaican father who were both academics and brought up from seven to 18 in Montreal, Canada. Dated married San Francisco mayor Willie Brown, when he was 60 and she was 29. Married attorney Douglas Emhoff in 2014 and has two stepchildren; Cole, an aspiring actor, and Ella, an art and design student. Sister Maya was a Hillary Clinton adviser and brother-in-law Tony West is Uber’s chief legal counsel
Views on key issues: Social ultra-liberal who has rejected criticisms of ‘identity politics’ and is running without a political action committee, which will make her reliant on small donors. Has shifted left on criminal justice reform; supports Medicare for all; pro-gun control and anti-death penalty; says illegal immigration is a civil not a criminal offense
Religion: Has said she was brought up in both Baptist and Hindu tradition
Would make history as: First female and first Indian-American president
Slogan: For The People
JOHN HICKENLOOPER
Age on Inauguration Day: 68
Entered race: March 4, 2019 with Good Morning America interview
Career: No current job. Wesleyan University-educated geologist who moved to Colorado to work in petroleum industry but was laid off and started Wynkoop Brewing Company, the first craft brewpub in 1988 in Denver’s LoDo (lower downtown) area. Ran for mayor of Denver as an outsider in 2003 and won, then won a second term in 2007. Ran for Colorado governor in 2010 and won 51 per cent of the vote; his nearest rival took 36.5 per cent. Won re-election 49.3 to 46 in 2014, but was term limited and ended his second term in January 2019
Family: Married to second wife Robin Pringle, 40, a vice president at LibertyMedia Corp., owners of Sirius XM. Divorced first wife Helen Thorpe in 2012 after 10 years of marriage; ex-couple have son Teddy, a high school student. Born and brought up in Narbeth, in the Main Line of Philadelphia, his father’s ancestors include Civil War Union general Andrew Hickenlooper
Religion: Quaker
Views on key issues: Voiced support for Green New Deal but has also been in favor of fracking; has not embraced single-payer healthcare but expanded Medicaid in Colorado; long record of being pro-gun control; pro-choice but has gone out of his way to talk about reducing unplanned teenage pregnancies ; opposed to the death penalty; advocated for gay marriage
Would make history as: First Colorado president
Slogan: To be announced
JAY INSLEE
Age on Inauguration Day: 69
Entered race: March 1, 2019
Career: Currently Washington governor. Stanford drop-out who graduated from University of Washington and Williamette University School of Law before working as a city prosecutor in Selah, WA. First elected to Washington House of Representatives in 1989 and again in 1990; won Congressional seat in 1992 elections but lost in 1994 and then had failed 1996 gubernatorial run. Returned to Congress in 1998 elections and stayed until 2012 to run for governor. Won first term 51.5 to 48.5; re-elected in 2016 by 54.4 to 45.6
Family: Born in Seattle to late parents Frank, a Navy veteran and high school teacher and coach, and Adele, a Sears sales clerk. Married high school and college sweetheart Trudi since 1972. Three adult sons Jack, a radio producer in Washington D.C.; Connor, director of a Washington state non-profit for the disabled; and Joe, who works for King County, WA’s department of natural resources and parks. Grandfather of three
Religion: Non-denominational Protestant
Views on key issues: Running to combat climate change with praise for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal – his record in Washington D.C. including aspiring to ‘zero emissions’ buildings and largely eliminate fossil fuel use; vocal gun control advocate; fought Trump’s ban on entry to people from seven Muslim-majority countries; called moratorium on death penalty in Washington; supported marijuana legalization in Washington and expected to do so federally; will not take money from political action committees; healthcare position still unclear
Would make history as: First Washington state president
Slogan: Our moment
AMY KLOBUCHAR
Age on Inauguration Day: 60
Entered race: Announced candidacy February 10, 2019 at snow-drenched rally in her native Minneapolis
Career: Currently Minnesota senator. Yale and University of Chicago law graduate who became a corporate lawyer. First ran unsuccessfully for office in 1994 as Hennepin, MI, county attorney, and won same race in 1998, then in 2002, without opposition. Ran for Senate in 2006 and won 58-38; re-elected in 2012 and 2018
Family: Married to John Bessler, law professor at University of Baltimore and expert on capital punishment. Daughter Abigail Bessler, 23, works fora Democratic member of New York City council. Father Jim, 90, was a veteran newspaper columnist who has written a memoir of how his alcoholism hurt his family; mom Rose is a retired grade school teacher
Religion: Congregationalist (United Church of Christ)
Views on key issues: Seen as a mainstream liberal: says she wants ‘universal health care’ but has not spelled out how; pro-gun control; pro-choice; backs $15 minimum wage; no public statements on federal marijuana legalization; has backed pro-Israel law banning the ‘boycott, divestment and sanctions’ movement; spoke out against abolishing ICE
Would make history as: First female president
Slogan: To be announced
WAYNE MESSAM
Age on Inauguration day: 46
Entered race: Announced March 28, 2019, formal launch March 30, 2019
Career: Currently mayor of Miramar, Florida. Florida State University football star who played starting wide receiver, and graduated in 1997. Worked in construction industry as contractor and started his own company in 2007. Ran for City of Miramar Commission in 2011 and mayor in 2015, defeating 16-year Democratic incumbent and becoming first black mayor of the city. Won second term March 2019, days before announcing presidential bid
Family: Married to college sweetheart Angela Sands, 44, who is also his business partner. Three college-age children: son Wayne Jr. and twin daughters Kayla and Kyla. Fourth child and first American-born child of Jamaican immigrants Hubert , a sugar-cane cutter, and his wife Delsey, who are both deceased. Was president of the National Black Caucus of Local Elected Officials in 2018
Religion: Worships at the Fountain of New Life Church in Miami Gardens where he is a deacon
Views on key issues: Says he is staunch advocate of gun control. Wants action on climate change and is opposed to off-shore oil drilling. Opposes Trump immigration policies and proposed forcing immigration officials to get a warrant before entering city property. Yet to state position on health care and foreign policy
Would make history as: First Jamaican-American and first Florida president
Slogan: Your Champion
SETH MOULTON
Age on Inauguration Day: 42
Entered race: April 22, 2019
Career: Currently Massachusetts Congressman. Educated at elite Phillips Academy Andover – like both Bush presidents – and Harvard, he joined the Marines early in 2001. Was commissioned in 2002, then saw combat in invasion of Iraq and four total tours of duty, rising to captain and winning a Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal and a Bronze Star. Attended graduate school, worked for a high-speed rail project in Texas and ran against incumbent Democrat and then Republican in 2014 to take his hometown district of Marblehead, which he has held since. Would be only second sitting congressman elected president – first was James Garfield in 1880
Family: Married wife Liz Moulton, a divorcee, in 2017. Couple had a daughter, Emmy, in October 2018. Parents Tom and Lynn, a real estate attorney and a secretary, campaigned against Vietnam as students
Religion: United Church of Christ
Views on key issues: Democratic moderate who campaigned on opposition to Iraq War which he served in. Wants a Pacific NATO and radical change to military, with concentration on new technology. Pro-gun control. Healthcare views unclear. Announced support for Green New Deal. Has compared Trump’s rise to Hitler’s
Would make history as: Youngest ever president, beating Theodore Roosevelt by 234 days
Slogan: To be announced
BETO O’ROURKE
Age on Inauguration Day: 47
Entered race: March 14, 2019
Career: No current job. Born Robert Francis O’Rourke. Boarding-school educated Columbia grad who lived in a New York loft, playing in a punk band and doing desultory jobs and setting up an internet firm. Ran for El Paso city council in 2005, winning re-election and serving until 2012. Ran for Congress in 2012, defeating eight-term Democratic incumbent in primary. Gave up seat to run for Senate against Ted Cruz in 2018, losing 51-48
Family: Married to wife Amy Sanders, nine years his junior, with sons Ulysses and Henry, and daughter Molly. Father Pat was long-time El Paso politician who switched from Democrat to Republican; mom Melissa ran family-owned store in city until selling it after IRS probe. Melissa’s stepfather Fred Korth was one of JFK’s secretaries of the Navy. Father-in-law William Saunders is real estate developer estimated to be worth $500 million
Religion: Catholic
Views on key issues: Wants comprehensive immigration reform to give citizenship to ‘dreamers’ and a path to it for their parents, and vehemently opposes Trump’s wall. Supports federal marijuana legalization. Pro-gun control including an assault rifle ban and universal background checks. Supports single-payer health care but with co-pays and has backed Medicaid expansion. Strongly pro-choice. Has hinted at backing breaking up tech giants. Said he would have voted for impeachment in Congress if he had had the chance
Would make history as: No clear claims
Slogan: To be announced
TIM RYAN
Age on Inauguration Day: 46
Entered race: April 4, 2019
Career: Currently Ohio congressman. High school football star who got a scholarship to Youngstown State, Ohio, but transferred to nearby Bowling Green University when his career ended in injury. Became a congressional aide, picked up a law degree, then served in the Ohio Senate and when his former House boss Jim Traficant went to prison for fraud ran for his seat in 2002 and won. Has held district – first Ohio 13th then the 17th when Youngstown was redistricted – since with little opposition since. Released book on meditation in 2012 and considered running against Nancy Pelosi for minority leader
Family: Married first grade schoolteacher Andrea Zetts in 2013. Couple had a son, Brady, the following year. Zetts has a daughter, Bella, and a son, Mason, from her first marriage who Ryan says he ‘loves like his own.’ Ryan’s first marriage ended in divorce. He was brought up by his mom Rochelle after she and his father Allen divorced when he was seven
Religion: Catholic
Views on key issues: Moderate who backs Medicare for all. Flipped from anti-abortion to pro-choice in dramatic fashion in 2015. Does not appear to back the Green New Deal but suggests a carbon tax. Spoken up for capitalism but is also pro-union. Advocated for mindfulness teaching in classrooms. Also flipped on gun control from A rating by NRA to strong support of anti-gun measures
Would make history as: Only second sitting congressman elected president – first was James Garfield, also from Ohio, in 1880
Slogan: To be announced
BERNIE SANDERS
Age on Inauguration Day: 79
Entered race: Sources said on January 25, 2019, that he would form exploratory committee. Officially announced February 19
Career: Currently Vermont senator. Student civil rights and anti-Vietnam activist who moved to Vermont and worked as a carpenter and radical film-maker. Serial failed political candidate in the 1970s, he ran as a socialist for mayor of Burlington in 1980 and served two terms ending in 1989, and win a seat in Congress as an independent in 1990. Ran for Senate in 2006 elections as an independent with Democratic endorsement and won third term in 2018. Challenged Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination in 2016 but lost. Campaign has since been hit by allegations of sexual harassment – for which he has apologized – and criticized for its ‘Bernie bro’ culture
Family: Born to a Jewish immigrant father and the daughter of Jewish immigrant parents in Brooklyn, New York. First marriage to college sweetheart Deboarah Shiling Messing in 1964 ended in divorce in 1966; had son Levi in 1969 with then girlfriend Susan Cambell Mott. Married Jone O’Meara in 1988 and considers her three children, all adults, his own. The couple have seven grandchildren. His older brother Larry is a former Green Party councilor in Oxfordshire, England. Would be first Jewish president
Religion: Secular Jewish
Views on key issues: Openly socialist and standard bearer for the Democratic party’s left-turn. Wants federal $15 minimum wage; banks broken up; union membership encouraged; free college tuition; universal health care; re-distributive taxation; he opposed Iraq War and also U.S. leading the fight against ISIS and wants troops largely out of Afghanistan and the Middle East
Would make history as: Oldest person elected president
Slogan: Not me. Us.
ERIC SWALWELL
Age on Inauguration Day: 39
Entered race: Announced on the Stephen Colbert Show, April 8, 2019
Career: College soccer scholar whose sporting career was ended by injury who was a Capitol Hill intern in the building on 9/11. University of Maryland law graduate, served as a prosecutor in Alameda County, CA – where Kamala Harris worked in earlier years. He was elected to Dublin City Council, CA, in 2010 and ran for Congress in California’s 15th District the following year, unseating 20-seat Democrat incumbent through California’s ‘top-two’ system. Number 6 on The Hill’s 50 Most Beautiful List in 2014. Won fourth term 73-27 in 2018. Would be only second sitting congressman elected president – first was James Garfield in 1880
Family: Married second wife Brittany Ann Watts, a Ritz-Carlton sales director in 2016, and has a son Nelson and daughter Kathryn. First marriage to Melissa Maranda ended in divorce. Born in Iowa where his father was a police chief who was fired for being too hardline, and brought up in California where the family moved in search of work
Religion: Christian
Views on key issues: Socially-ultra liberal. Has called for mandatory buyback of ‘military-style semi-automatic assault weapons’ and other gun control measures. Supportive of the green new deal but with new jobs guarantee for fossil fuel workers. Wants ‘health-care guarantee’ rather than Medicare for all. Aggressive voice for investigation of Trump
Would make history as: Youngest president ever
Slogan: Go big. Be bold. Do good.
ELIZABETH WARREN
Age on Inauguration Day: 71
Entered race: Set up exploratory committee December 31, 2018
Career: Currently Massachusetts senator. Law lecturer and academic who became an expert on bankruptcy law and tenured Harvard professor. Ran for Senate and won in 2012, defeating sitting Republican Scott Brown, held it in 2018 60% to 36%. Was short-listed to be Hillary’s running mate and campaigned hard for her in 2016
Family: Twice-married mother of two and grandmother of three. First husband and father of her children was her high-school sweetheart. Second husband Bruce Mann is Harvard law professor. Daughter Amelia Tyagi and son Alex Warren have both been involved in her campaigns. Has controversially claimed Native American roots; DNA test suggested she is as little as 1,064th Native American
Religion: Raised Methodist, now described as Christian with no fixed church
Views on key issues: Was a registered Republican who voted for the party but registered as a Democrat in 1996. Pro: higher taxes on rich; banking regulation; Dream Act path to citizenship for ‘dreamers’; abortion and gay rights; campaign finance restrictions; and expansion of public provision of healthcare – although still to spell out exactly how that would happen. Against: U.S. presence in Afghanistan and Syria; liberalization of gambling
Would make history as: First female president
Slogan: To be announced
MARIANNE WILLIAMSON
Age on Inauguration Day: 68
Entered race: Announced exploratory committee November 15, 2018. Formally entered January 28, 2019
Career: Currently an author, Dropped out of Pomona College, California, became part of the counter culture and anti-war movement and ran a ‘metaphysical bookstore’ before publishing spiritual guide A Return to Love and being praised by Oprah, sending it to number one. Published series of follow-ups and founded AIDS charity and subsequently more non-profits including a peace movement. Ran for Congress in 2014 and lost
Family: Born to immigration attorney father Sam and housewife mother Sophie in Houston, Texas. Married for ‘a minute and a half’ to unnamed man; daughter India was born in 1990 but Williamson declines to name her father
Religion: Jewish
Views on key issues: Wants vast expansion of physical and mental healthcare; and nutrition and lifestyle reforms including ban on marketing processed and sugary foods to children; universal pre-K; much of the Green New Deal’s proposals including a de-carbonized economy, electric cars and rebuilding mass transit; gun control through licensing; wants more vacation time; pro decriminalizing all drugs
Would make history as: First female president
Slogan: Join the Evolution
ANDREW YANG
Age on Inauguration Day: 46
Entered race: Filed papers November 6, 2018
Career: No current job. Started a dotcom flop then become healthcare and education tech executive who set up nonprofit Venture for America
Family: Married father of two. His parents were both immigrants from Taiwan who met at the University of California, Berkeley, as grad students
Religion: Reformed Church
Views on key issues: Warns of rise of robots and artificial intelligence, wants $1,000 a month universal basic income and social media regulated. Spoke out against male circumcision. Wants a state monitor to crack down on ‘fake news.’
Would make history as: First Asian-American president
Slogan: Humanity First
AND THOSE WHO’VE ALREADY WITHDRAWN
RICHARD OJEDA. West Virginia ex- state senator and paratrooper veteran
Entered race: November 12, 2018. Quit: January 25, 2019
The band self-produced two EPs that drew attention on the underground circuit before signing to Vanguard Records in 1966. Their debut album, Electric Music for the Mind and Body, followed in 1967. It contained their only nationally charting single, “Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine”, and their most experimental arrangements. Their second album, I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die, was released in late 1967; its title track, with its dark humor and satire, became their signature tune and is among the era’s most recognizable protest songs. Further success followed, including McDonald’s appearance at Woodstock, but the group’s lineup underwent changes until its disbandment in 1970. Members of the band continue in the music industry as solo recording artists and sporadically reconvene.
History
Formation (1965)
The first lineup of Country Joe and the Fish formed in mid-1965, when Country Joe McDonald (vocals, acoustic guitar) and Barry “The Fish” Melton (lead guitar, vocals) came together as a duo.[1] The two musicians had a background rooted in folk music, were enamored with the recordings of Woody Guthrie, and worked on the local acoustic coffeehouse circuit in the early 1960s.[1] Melton honed his political protest prowess as a guitarist in Los Angeles, at venues such as the Ash Grove, before relocating to Berkeley, California, where he was a regular at the Jabberwock cafe.[2] Prior to the group, McDonald set up two folk and jug bands, the Berkeley String Quartet and the Instant Jug Band, both of which served as outlets for his original material, and with the latter group including Melton.[3] In addition, McDonald was a publisher of the left-wingunderground magazine Et Tu Brute, which later became Rag Baby, containing poetry, drawings, and political messages.[4] By early 1965, McDonald had become involved in the burgeoning folk scene in Berkeley, and the Free Speech Movement that was organizing demonstrations in University of California, Berkeley, which opposed the war in Vietnam. Not long afterwards, McDonald was inspired to record a “talking issue” of his magazine, and organized Country Joe and the Fish with Melton and fellow musicians Carl Schrager (washboard, kazoo), Bill Steele (bass guitar), and Mike Beardslee (vocals), out of both necessity of a recording alias and political device, to self-produce an extended play.[5][6]
ED Denson, the co-publisher of Rag Baby, introduced McDonald to Chris Strachwitz, who owned Arhoolie Recording Studios, to self-produce the EP.[7] Sensing the band’s potential, Denson assumed management control, and was responsible for coining the group’s name—a reference to Josef Stalin and to Mao Zedong‘s description of revolutionaries as “the fish who swim in the sea of the people”.[2] McDonald, who had recording experience, began utilizing Arhoolie Recording Studios to record four songs split equally between the band and a local folk musician, Peter Krug. It was during this time at Arhoolie Records that Country Joe and the Fish’s folk sound and political protest prowess—an amalgam of their own Guthrie-influenced material and their folk music roots—began to emerge. The band’s side of the EP featured two originals by McDonald, an acoustic version of “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag“, and “Superbird”.[5][8] According to McDonald, “The Fish Cheer” was written in 30 minutes, with a purpose of expressing satiric and dark commentary on the US’s involvement in the Vietnam War.[9] In October 1965, 100 copies of the EP, titled Rag Baby Talking Issue No. 1, were distributed on McDonald’s independent label at a Teach-in in UC Berkeley and underground shops selling Rag Baby magazine.[10]
For a brief period, McDonald and Melton performed together as a duo at college campuses in the Northwest on behalf of Students for a Democratic Society before returning as regulars at the Jabberwock cafe.[11] The two were joined by local jug band musicians, including Melton’s roommates, bass playerBruce Barthol and guitarist Paul Armstrong, and bluegrass guitarist David Bennett Cohen, with whom Melton played in another jug band. The addition of drummer John Francis-Gunning rounded out the six-piece ensemble.[12] It was during their residency at the Jabberwock that Country Joe and the Fish learned to play as a group and expand their repertoire. Within months, based on McDonald and Melton’s interest in the live performances of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, the recordings on Bob Dylan‘s album, Highway 61 Revisited, and their use of the mind-altering drug LSD, the group began equipping themselves with electric instruments and delving more into psychedelia.[13] As a result, Cohen was moved over to the organ. Cohen’s experience with keyboardswas limited to having played piano at a semiprofessional capacity at the Jabberwock, but, nonetheless, he quickly adapted to the qualities of the instrument.[14] Melton describes the change of the group: “Once we hit into the electric medium and into the rock medium, we were pandering to the public taste. We became extraordinarily popular. The little folk club where we used to play once every two weeks, we played every single night for a month, or something like that, and filled it. And after a while we filled two shows every single night”.[13]
Electric music (1966–68)
As Country Joe and the Fish’s popularity grew, the band relocated to San Francisco in early 1966 and became popular fixtures at the Avalon and the Filmore Auditorium. On June 6, 1966, the band recorded a second self-produced EP, which was packaged separately from the Rag Baby magazine and, upon its release, debuted the new psychedelic rock incarnation of the group.[15] The EP fulfilled the band’s ambitions to incorporate electric instruments into their music, effectively melding the instrumentals and pioneering an early template for the musical subgenre of acid rock. It included McDonald’s compositions “(Thing Called) Love” and “Bass Strings” on the A-side and the six-minute “Section 43” on the B-side.[16] Music historian Richie Unterberger praised “Section 43”, saying its “Asiatic guitar, tribal maracas, devious organ, floating harmonica, and ethereal mid-sections of delicate koto-like guitar picking rivaled the Paul Butterfield Blues Band’s East West as the finest psychedelic instrumental ever”.[13] Within three months, airplay of the EP spread across the new so-called progressive radio stations, reaching as far as New York City, and establishing Country Joe and the Fish as a nationally relevant musical act.[17]
In February 1967, Country Joe and the Fish entered Sierra Sound Laboratories to record their debut album, Electric Music for the Mind and Body, with Charters and Denson overseeing the process. Prior to their studio work, Armstrong left the group and began a two-year alternative assignment as a conscientious objector, driving a truck for Goodwill Industries.[12] Francis-Gunning was involved in the beginnings of the album’s development but left when the rest of the band complained about his drumming technique. He was replaced by Gary “Chicken” Hirsh. The next recording session was postponed for three days as the most recognizable lineup of Country Joe and the Fish rehearsed with their new drummer at the Barn, in Santa Cruz.[19] Hirsh’s abilities were immediately distinguishable on the album, as he demonstrated an acute and articulate drum beat that music critic Bruce Eder praised as “some of the best drumming on a psychedelic record this side of the late Spencer Dryden“.[20]
Electric Music for the Mind and Body was released on May 11, 1967. Much of the album’s material continued to expand upon the band’s new psychedelic medium, with it embracing all facets of the members’ influences, which ranged from their folk roots, blues, raga rockand hard rock.[21] The album also saw Cohen coming forward in a larger role with inventive distorted-organ melodies.[22] In addition, McDonald’s lyrical content, which brazenly pronounced topics of political protest, recreational drug use, and love, augmented by satirical humor, clearly introduced the band’s orientation and message. The compositional structures followed discrete movement patterns emulating the style of John Fahey, whom McDonald admired.[21] Though Electric Music for the Mind and Body was among the most complex works to date, it possessed the quality that several other San Francisco acts shared of being recorded mostly live, with only the vocals being overdubbed after the instrumentals were completed.[23]
Electric Music for the Mind and Body was a success upon release, charting at number 39 on the Billboard 200, and remains one of the most enduring psychedelic works of the counterculture era. A single, “Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine”, was distributed a month prior to the release of the album and became the only Country Joe and the Fish single to chart, peaking at number 98 on the Billboard Hot 100, in large part a culmination of its airplay on FM broadcasting and college stations.[24] A reworked version of “The Fish Cheer” was intended to be released as a track on the album. However, Charters vetoed the decision to see whether the controversial song “Superbird” would face a radio ban.[25] Nonetheless, the band was considered a forerunner in the emerging music scene in San Francisco, exhibiting one of the more polished debuts, just as its contemporaries were still refining their own sound.[21][26] Melton attributes the album’s success, particularly in San Francisco, to the band’s appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967. Subsequently, the group toured the East Coast with an elaborate psychedelic light show.[27]
The band returned to the studio, this time at Vanguard Studios in New York City, between July and September 1967. When “Superbird”, a tune mocking PresidentLyndon Johnson, was not banned from radio promotion, the band was given the go-ahead to record “The Fish Cheer”, which saw the group moving away from the original folk composition toward electric instrumentals more synthesized toward psychedelia. The song became the title track of the band’s second album, I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die, released in November 1967. The album was not as successful as its predecessor, but still charted at number 67.[28] The composition represented growing anti-war sentiment expressed by those opposing the Vietnam War, and is often considered one of the most recognized and celebrated protest songs of the era.[29][30] “The Fish Cheer” was also pivotal in communicating the attitude against the war, but was set apart from other anti-war songs for its use of sarcastic humor and satire on the controversial conflict.[31] Writer Lee Andresen reflects on the song’s meaning, saying, “the happy beat and insouciance of the vocalist are in odd juxtaposition to the lyrics that reinforce the sad fact that the American public was being forced into realizing that Vietnam was no longer a remote place on the other side of the world, and the damage it was doing to the country could no longer be considered collateral, involving someone else.”[32]
The song met unprecedented exposure among the band’s young audience after a performance at the Schaefer Music Festival in New York City, in the summer of 1968.[20] Hirsh suggested that instead of the opening chorus spelling “fish”, it would spell “fuck“, giving birth to the infamous “Fuck Cheer”.[20] The crowd of young teenagers and college students applauded the act; however executives from The Ed Sullivan Show barred Country Joe and the Fish from their scheduled appearance on the program, and any other possible events.[25]Hirsh has never explained why he recommended the change in lyrics, but the act is seen as a social and political statement advocating free speech.[29] The recorded version of “The Fish Cheer” received airplay, even on mainstream radio stations, which contributed to the success of the band’s third album, Together, its most commercially successful. The album, released in August 1968, featured songwriting by all of the band members and charted at number 23 nationally.[33]
Lineup changes and Woodstock (1969–70)
In September 1968, Barthol left the band, just prior to their fourth album. His departure was due to the rest of the band’s unwillingness to partake in the Festival for Life, an event established by the Youth International Party in Chicago that was intended to have the participation of several well-known musicians attract thousands of spectators for the 1968 Democratic National Convention.[12] However, the city refused to issue any permits, and the band members, by majority vote, decided to withdraw out of fear that their equipment would be damaged.[34] After the festival resulted in riots and violent clashes between demonstrators and the police, Barthol’s conviction that Country Joe and the Fish should have held a larger role precipitated his departure from the group and move to England.[12]
Between January 9 and 11, 1969, the band performed at the Fillmore West as a farewell to the group’s most famous lineup, with Jack Casady of Jefferson Airplane standing in as the bass player. The band was joined by Jerry Garcia, Jorma Kaukonen, Steve Miller, and Mickey Hart for the 38-minute finale, “Donavan’s Reef Jam”. Recordings from the concerts were later assembled on the live albumLive! Fillmore West 1969, released on March 12, 1996.[35] Hirsh and Cohen left soon after recording the group’s next album, Here We Are Again, and a new lineup was configured with Casady and David Getz, who formerly played drums with Big Brother and the Holding Company. The group released Here We Are Again in July 1969. It charted at number 48, and saw Country Joe and the Fish moving to a pop-oriented approach. Country Joe and the Fish’s personnel remained relatively stable for the next six months, though Peter S. Albin, also an alumnus of Big Brother and the Holding Company, replaced Casady at bass.[2]
However, when McDonald reassembled the band for a last-minute scheduling at the Woodstock Festival, another personnel change resulted in the group’s final lineup, which included recruits Mark Kapner on keyboards, Doug Metzner on bass, and Greg Dewey on drums. Among the festival’s most memorable moments was McDonald’s unexpected solo performance on August 16, 1969, which included “The Fuck Cheer” as a finale.[36] The audience receptively responded by chanting along with McDonald. McDonald’s rendition of “The Fuck Cheer” propelled the song into the mainstream culture in the U.S., and was featured on the Woodstock film, which was released on March 26, 1970. Radio stations regularly played both versions of the cheer, though the opposition to “The Fuck Cheer” limited its exposure to underground stations.[37] In December 1969, McDonald began his own career outside the band, releasing cover versions of Guthrie-penned songs on Thinking of Woody Guthrie, and country standards on Tonight I’m Singing Just For You.[38] All the while, the group looked to capitalize on the momentum from Woodstock and their appearance in the film, Zachariah, by releasing their fifth album, CJ Fish, in May 1970. The album was a moderate success, reaching number 111 nationally. However the band members lacked the motivation for touring and recording, which led to their disbandment in mid-1970.[17]
Aftermath and reunions
McDonald pursued his solo recording career, which spans over 30 albums, and remains an active anti-war campaigner. He has also appeared in every Woodstock reunion festival since 1979.[39] Melton performed solo as well, under the moniker “The Fish”, and later became a member of the Bay Areasupergroup, the Dinosaurs, in the 1980s. Since 1982, Melton was able to practice law in California and became a Public Defender of Yolo County, California until his retirement in June 2009.[40] Country Joe and the Fish members sporadically reconvene, most notably when the classic 1967 lineup recorded Reunion in 1977.[41] The lineup, except Melton, came together again as the Country Joe Band in 2004. In the same year, the group resumed touring, released the Barthol-penned single, “Cakewalk to Baghdad”, and the live album Live in Berkeley. Though the Country Joe Band disbanded in 2006, some of the members still occasionally tour together.[42]
Discography
Singles
“Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine” b/w “Masked Marauder” (1967) (#98 Billboard Hot 100)
“Janis” b/w “Janis” (instrumental) (1967)
“Who Am I?” b/w “Thursday” (1968)
“Rock and Soul Music Part 1” b/w “Rock and Soul Music Part 2” (1968)
“Here I Go Again” b/w “Baby You’re Driving Me Crazy” (1969)
Story 2: Crazy Communist Bernie Sanders Trying To Turn Texas Radical Extremist Democratic Socialists (REDS) — Socialist Justice Junkie Unite — Going All The Way — Videos —
Sen. Bernie Sanders holds rally in Ft. Worth
Bernie Sanders Rallies Supporters in Fort Worth | NowThis
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders Holding Fort Worth Rally
Town Hall with Bernie Sanders | Part 1
Town Hall with Bernie Sanders | Part 2
Story 3: A Very Crowded Democratic Party Candidates for President — Followers Yes — Leaders No — Videos
Story 4: The Winner Is? — That Guy With The Tinted Hair! — Meant to Be — I’m Gonna Show You Crazy — I’m A Mess — Last Hurrah — Videos
Bebe Rexha – Meant to Be (feat. Florida Georgia Line) [Official Music Video]
Bebe Rexha – I’m Gonna Show You Crazy (Official Music Video)
I’m Gonna Show You Crazy – Bebe Rexha (Lyric Video) *Explicit
Rexha was born on August 30, 1989, in Brooklyn, New York,[8] to ethnic Albanian parents.[9] Her father, Flamur Rexha, is an Albanian born in Debar when it was part of Yugoslavia. He immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 21, and her mother, Bukurije Rexha, was born in the U.S. to an Albanian family with roots in Gostivar (which, like Debar, is now part of North Macedonia).[10][11] In the Albanian language, bletë means “bee“; and she explained “My parents are Albanian, and people started calling me ‘Bebe’ for short.”[1] Bleta and her family moved to nearby Staten Island when she was six.[9]
As a teenager, Rexha submitted a song to be performed at the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences‘ annual “Grammy Day” event. Rexha earned the “Best Teen Songwriter” award, beating around 700 other entrants.[9][19][20] As a result, she signed a contract with talent scout Samantha Cox, who encouraged Rexha to enroll in songwriting classes in Manhattan.[12][21]
Career
2010–2012: Career beginnings with Black Cards
Rexha with Pete Wentz on September 1, 2011, at the Rumsey Playfield
In 2010, Rexha met Fall Out Boy‘s bassist Pete Wentz with whom she began working at a recording studio in New York City.[13][22] She became a member and a lead vocalist of Wentz’s new experimental project of a band, called Black Cards. The band played a variety of live shows and released several singles and remixes. However, in January 2012, Wentz announced that Rexha had left the band to pursue other endeavors.[23] Bebe Rexha was awarded the Able Olman Scholarship for her contributions as a songwriter later that year.[24]
In December 2014, Rexha released two more singles, “I’m Gonna Show You Crazy” and “Gone“.[30][31] On May 12, 2015, she released her debut EP, I Don’t Wanna Grow Up, through Warner Bros. Records.[32] She also co-wrote and was featured on David Guetta’s single “Hey Mama“, alongside Nicki Minaj and Afrojack.[3] The song peaked at number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 and received 1.1 million downloads as of June 2015. The song did not originally credit Rexha, despite the fact that she sings the chorus and is featured on background vocals. Eventually, in June 2015, she was given a credit for her work.[32][33]
2015–2017: Collaborations and All Your Fault series
In January 2015, Rexha co-wrote and was featured on G-Eazy’s “Me, Myself & I”. The song peaked at number seven on the Billboard Hot 100[34] and at number one on Billboard Pop Songs.[35] The song was originally titled “I Don’t Need Anything” and was intended as a song for Rexha herself. Instead, she brought the song idea to G-Eazy and was featured during the chorus.[36]
Rexha met Nicki Minaj’s manager, Gee Roberson, and asked if Minaj would contribute to a new song. In March 2016, Rexha released her single, called “No Broken Hearts” featuring Nicki Minaj.[37][21] In April 2016, the music video was released, directed by Dave Meyer.[38] The video accumulated over 240 million views on YouTube.[39]
On July 29, 2016, Rexha and Dutch DJ and record producer Martin Garrix released their single, “In the Name of Love“. It peaked at number 24 on the US Billboard Hot 100, at number four on US Hot Dance/Electronic Songs and entered the top 10 in several countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Italy, and New Zealand. The music video was released on August 23, 2016, on Martin Garrix’s YouTube channel.[40]
On November 6, 2016, Rexha hosted the 2016 MTV Europe Music Awards, at Rotterdam, Netherlands and performed multiple songs throughout the night, such as her single, “I Got You“.[41]
On October 28, 2016, Rexha released “I Got You“. Both “No Broken Hearts” and “I Got You” were originally intended for the All Your Fault album.[42] The latter peaked at number 17 on US Billboard Pop Songs[43] and at number 43 on US Billboard Hot 100.[44] The music video was released on January 6, 2017 and reached over 50 million views in four weeks, and accumulated 250 million views on YouTube. Direction changed from a full studio album to a multi EP project and “No Broken Hearts” was scrapped, making “I Got You” the first and only single from All Your Fault: Pt. 1, released on February 17, 2017. The EP peaked at number 51 on the Billboard 200.[45] In March 2017 in Dallas, Rexha began her first solo headlining tour, promoting the EP across North America and Europe, named the All Your Fault Tour, with a total of 29 dates.[46]
Rexha performing in London, 2017.
In May 2017, Bebe Rexha: The Ride aired on MTV—a documentary which explores the moments which changed Rexha’s life and journey to stardom.[47]
“The Way I Are (Dance with Somebody)” featuring Lil Wayne was released as the first single from All Your Fault: Pt. 2 on May 19, 2017.[48] On June 12, Rexha performed the song at the Ubisoft E3 press conference, before announcing Just Dance 2018, on which the song appears.[49] The second EP as part of the project was released on August 11, 2017. In support of the EP and American singer and songwriter Marc E. Bassy‘s debut album, Rexha planned to go on a co-headlining tour across the United States: the Bebe & Bassy Tour, in October 2017. The tour was short-lived due to an infection putting Rexha on strict vocal rest, with Marc E. Bassy eventually going on a solo US tour in March 2018.[50][51]
On October 24, 2017, “Meant to Be” was released as the second single from Pt. 2, with the music video premiering a day earlier.[52][53] The song peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100[54] and as of November 17, 2018, has spent 50 weeks at number one on the Hot Country Songs chart,[55] breaking the record for most weeks atop the chart previously held by “Body Like a Back Road” by Sam Hunt.
In September 2017, Rexha began teasing new songs for a third installment in the All Your Fault series, with her manager going on record about its release.[56] However, it appeared plans had changed, as Bebe revealed through a tweet in November 2017 that her next project would be called Expectations.[57] Rexha revealed the cover art for this debut studio album on April 8, 2018, and the album was released on June 22, 2018.[6] Previous singles from All Your Fault, “I Got You” and “Meant to Be” appear on Expectations as well.
On April 13, 2018, “Ferrari” and “2 Souls on Fire”, the latter of which features Quavo of Migos, were released as promotional singles along with the pre-order.[58]
On June 15, 2018, “I’m a Mess” was released as the first single from the album.[59]
On November 20, 2018, “Say My Name” was released which featured David Guetta and J Bavin.[citation needed]
Rexha is a vocal supporter of the LGBTQ+ community,[65] and has described her own sexuality as “fluid”.[66] On April 15, 2019 Rexha revealed she is bipolar on Twitter in a personal note to her fans.[67]
Adam Schiff has suggested that Trump’s interest as a private citizen in building a tower in Moscow led him to curry favor with Vladimir Putin.
Photograph by David Butow / Redux
Representative Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, has hired a veteran prosecutor with experience fighting Russian organized crime to lead his investigation of the Trump Administration. Last month, according to a committee source, Daniel Goldman, who served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York from 2007 to 2017, joined the committee’s staff as a senior adviser and the director of investigations.
The hiring of Goldman, who will be joined by two other former federal prosecutors on Schiff’s staff, underlines Schiff’s decision to conduct an aggressive investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia during the 2016 Presidential campaign. In the rough division of labor among the various committees in the House of Representatives, Schiff’s panel is tackling the most provocative and, so far, most elusive subject related to the President: whether so-called collusion occurred between the Trump campaign and Moscow. In public comments, Schiff has suggested that Trump’s interest as a private citizen in building a tower in Moscow led him to curry favor with Vladimir Putin, the Russian President. American intelligence agencies long ago concluded that the Russian government made significant efforts, through the hacking of e-mails and use of social media, to help elect Trump over Hillary Clinton. The question of whether the Trump campaign facilitated, assisted, or knew about these efforts has been at the heart of the investigation by the special counsel, Robert Mueller—and will also be central to Schiff’s inquiry.
Goldman seems well suited to lead this effort. As deputy chief of the organized-crime section of the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office, Goldman supervised the prosecution of more than thirty defendants accused of racketeering, gambling, and money laundering. During his decade in the office, Goldman convicted individuals associated with Russian organized crime of securities fraud and health-care fraud, and convicted leading figures in the Genovese crime family of racketeering and murder.
One of Schiff’s previous committee hires drew a critical comment from the President. Last month, Schiff hired Abigail C. Grace, who served as an Asia-policy staffer on the National Security Council during the early part of the Trump Administration. In response, President Trump tweeted that the Democrats were going “nuts” and that Schiff was “stealing people who work at the White House.” In response, Schiff pointed out that congressional committees often employ individuals with experience in the executive branch.
The conflict between Trump and Schiff dates back to well before the Democrat took over as the chair of the Intelligence Committee, after the midterm elections. In a tweet, Trump once rendered Schiff’s name as “Schitt,” and, in his recent speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the President bestowed the congressman with the nickname Shifty Schiff.
Goldman’s hiring comes amid a flurry of investigative activity by Democrats on Capitol Hill. Schiff and Representative Maxine Waters, the chair of the House Financial Services Committee, have agreed to coördinate an investigation of Trump’s long-standing ties to Deutsche Bank, which has paid multimillion-dollar penalties for facilitating the work of Russian money launderers. On Monday, the House Judiciary Committee, led by Representative Jerrold Nadler, revealed that it had demanded testimony and documents from eighty-one people and entities close to Trump relating to the issues of obstruction of justice and abuse of power. And, of course, Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney, gave damning testimony to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform last week. All of these investigations appear to be much closer to the beginnings of their efforts than their ends.
A CNN focus group comprised of Democratic voters has rejected former Vice President Joe Biden as their presidential nominee.
The focus group’s dismissal of Biden is notable since the former vice president, who is expected to join the Democratic primary soon, has been leading a number of public opinion polls and is seen as the potential front-runner.
The Democrats gathered by CNN, however, said they weren’t interested in Biden. Some said they wanted a candidate who was further to the left.
“I think we need a bold, strong leadership, and you’ll find that in the progressives,” Democratic voter Carol Evans said.
“We had the standard-bearer for the kind of pragmatic centrist candidate in Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Donald Trump is now president. He is not your average political candidate, so we really need to try to think outside the box because, you know, it seems like the dude is made of rubber. Anything you throw at him just bounces off, there’s nothing that sticks,” said focus group member Michael Milisits.
The focus group was moderated by “New Day” co-anchor Alisyn Camerota at CNN’s New York City bureau.
When she asked if any of the focus group members would like Biden to enter the race, none of the six people raised their hands.
“His time is done,” Evans said.
“I will be honest. He was riding the Obama wave and I thought he was a person that would unite the party, but to be honest, Sen. Biden really comes from kind of the good old boy politics of the past,” Democrat Russel Banks said.
“I don’t think Joe Biden represents that new thing that we need. We need a new economy, we need new politics and we need someone different,” Democrat Owen Evans added.
Biden currently leads most early polls over the other 13 declared candidates in the field, with political pollsters citing name recognition as the primary reason due to his long tenure in the Senate and eight years as President Obama’s vice president.
CNN has made the 2020 campaign one of its top priorities and has already featured several candidates in prime-time town hall events, including Sens. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Sanders, as well as former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, who is considering an independent run for president.
The network is set to host a town hall this Sunday night with three more Democratic presidential hopefuls — former Rep. John Delaney (Md.), Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii) and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg — at the South by Southwest conference in Texas.
The event will be moderated by “The Lead” host Jake Tapper and CNN chief political correspondent Dana Bash in Austin, Texas.
Michelle Obama talks 2020 Trump challengers, gives update on Malia and Sasha
Jayme Deerwester, USA TODAYPublished 8:41 a.m. ET Nov. 13, 2018 | Updated 3:00 p.m. ET Nov. 13, 2018
On Tuesday, former first lady Michelle Obama officially became a published author with the release of her memoir “Becoming.”But one thing she has no interest in becoming is a presidential candidate.
Roberts acknowledged that the Princeton and Harvard Law grad has no interest in “returning to public service like that,” but she did want to know whether Obama thinks Hillary Clinton should run again and if not, who she believes is capable of challenging the Trump.
“I think, at this point, everybody’s qualified and everyone should run,” the former first lady said to peals of laughter. “I might even tap (her younger daughter) Sasha!”
Good Morning America
✔@GMA
.@MichelleObama on whether Hillary Clinton should run for president in 2020: “I think at this point everybody is qualified and everybody should run. I might even tap Sasha!” http://gma.abc/2Tc7FMi
Turning a bit more serious, Obama explained, “Where I’m at right now is that we should see anybody who feels the passion to get in this race, we need them in there. I think the process will play itself out. I haven’t really been paying attention and looking at the candidates. I think there’s just a lot of noise and talk, but it’s still pretty early. Let’s see who wants to roll up their sleeves and get in the race. That’s what the primary process is for.”
Obama’s bottom line? “I think this (Democratic nomination) is open to any and everybody who has the courage to step up and serve.”
She also provided an update on daughters Malia, a sophomore at Harvard, and Sasha, who will graduate from high school this spring.
“They are thriving,” Obama told Roberts. “I am so proud of those little girls. They have managed the situation with poise and grace. They are normal, kind, smart, friendly and open. Gosh, and it could have gone so wrong.”
Good Morning America
✔@GMA
.@MichelleObama on Sasha and Malia: “They had support from a lot of the other first kids – Jenna and Barbara and Chelsea. I love those girls. I will love them forever for what kind of support they provided to my daughters. They always had their back.” https://gma.abc/2PShoZC
She extended her enduring gratitude to former first daughters Jenna and Barbara Bush and Chelsea Clinton for having her daughters’ backs throughout their time in the White House.
“I love those girls,” Obama gushed. “I will love them forever for the kind of support they provided to my daughters … If someone went after them in the press, Jenna would get in there and say something and Chelsea would send a tweet out. That made a big, big difference.”
Sitting next to her older brother, New York Knicks executive Craig Robinson, Obama also dished on her mom Marian, who lived with the family in the White House but is still very much a Chicagoan at heart.
“My mom is a South Side mother,” she said, noting she is still a bit stuck in her ways. “It was like, ‘Mom, you want to go to China with us?’ She’d be like, ‘Why do I want to go to China?’ Then she’d go to China and be like, ‘China’s great!’ But you have to push. These black mothers on the South Side, you gotta push ’em to try some new stuff!”
PUBLISHED: 14:36 EST, 5 March 2019 | UPDATED: 14:56 EST, 5 March 2019
Rep. Alexanadria Ocasio-Cortez is denying any violation in campaign finance law after a conservative watchdog group filed a complaint charging that her top aide funneled $1 million in contributions from a PAC he controlled to his own companies.
‘There is no violation,’ the first-term lawmaker told Fox News as she arrived in Washington, D.C. for a day when votes in the House are scheduled.
She also denied that the Federal Election complaint, filed against her and her chief of staff, connected her to ‘dark money’ in her campaign. ‘No, no,’ she responded.
Ocasio-Cortez responded after the National Legal and Policy Center’s Government Integrity Project filed an FEC complaint saying her top aide shifted the funds in what it argued could have been a bid to avoid disclosure.
The aide, chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti, set up the Brand New Congress PAC as a way to collect contributions to boost new members of Congress.
Rep. Alexanadria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti set up the Brand New Congress PAC as a way to collect contributions to boost new members of Congress
PACs face disclosure requirements beyond what a company would be required to reveal about how funds get spent.
Chakrabarti tweeted about the unusual arrangement in response to media reports Monday. ‘We were doing something totally new, which meant a new setup. So, we were transparent about it from the start,’ he said.
Conservative watchdog group National Legal and Policy Center, which previously had researchers investigating longtime New York Rep. Charles Rangel – a senior lawmaker like the one Ocasio-Cortez knocked off in a primary in her Queens district – named both Ocasio-Cortez and her top aide in the complaint.
+4
A watchdog group claims in a new Federal Elections Commission complaint that the top aide to AOC funneled $1 million in contributions from a PAC he controlled to his own companies
Chakrabarti’s campaigns raised $3.3 million and diverted more than $1 million to his companies, the Washington Examiner reported.
He helped found both Brand New Congress PAC and Justice Democrats, with the goal of bringing new and progressive members like Ocasio-Cortez, a self-described Democratic socialist, to Congress.
After starting Brand New Congress, he formed a Delaware-based LLC, Brand New Campaign LLC. Shifting the funds avoided detailed disclosure requirements of itemized expenses.
‘None of that makes any sense,’ former FEC lawyer Adav Noti of the Campaign Legal Center told the publication. ‘I can’t even begin to disentangle that. They’re either confused or they’re trying to conceal something.’
Chakrabarti’s campaigns raised $3.3 million and diverted more than $1 million to his companies, the Washington Examiner reported
Brand New Congress congratulated AOC after she was elected to in November 2018
Ocasio-Cortez responded to the Washington Times Monday saying: ‘He’s not on my payroll. They were not working for me and they are two separate entities here.’ She added: ‘This is the difference between an LLC and a PAC.’
Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign also paid the LLC for ‘strategic consulting.’
Justice Democrats responded to questions about the arrangement in a May 2018 post titled: ‘When I look at the FEC report for Justice Democrats in 2017, why are there so many expenditures to ‘Brand New Congress’?
The statement says organizers, including Chakrabarti, concluded ‘this PAC would be necessary to do the work of policy development and candidate recruiting. So we created Brand New Congress as a PAC. But actually running the campaigns — meaning doing direct work for campaigns — is not something a PAC can do for a candidate for free.’
For that reason, they set up an LLC that served as the vehicle to pay staff and bill campaigns for services. The goal was ‘to essentially run the full campaigns’ and act as a vendor.
Chakrabarti, 33, is a Harvard-educated tech millionaire.
The complaint argues that the arrangement was illegal and skirted a $5,000 PAC contribution requirement.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff is accused of ‘skirting campaign finance laws’ by running PAC that provided $41,108 in services to her election
Report on Saturday in the New York Post questioned AOC’s chief of staff
Saikat Chakrabarti, 33, ran PAC Justice Democrats prior to joining her staff
Campaign paid PAC $41,108.59 for services and consulting in 2017 and 2018
But PACs are different from vendors and can only give $5,000 per campaign
PUBLISHED: 19:18 EST, 3 March 2019 | UPDATED: 20:20 EST, 3 March 2019
Watchdog groups have questioned whether congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff skirted campaign finance laws.
Saikat Chakrabarti, 33, founded and ran the Tennessee-based PAC Justice Democrats, which spearheaded Ocasio-Cortez’s run, prior to joining the freshman New York Democrat’s Congressional staff.
According to Federal Election Commission filings, Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign paid Justice Democrats a total of $41,108.59 for ‘campaign services’ and ‘strategic consulting’ in 2017 and 2018.
Now a report in the New York Post questions whether a PAC can also be a vendor, and points out that PACs can only give $5,000 in services to a campaign.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti (with her above) founded and ran the Tennessee-based PAC Justice Democrats, which her campaign paid $41,108.59
Ocasio-Cortez spokesman Corbin Trent told Post that both the campaign and the PAC followed FEC rules and that they sought advice from an elections lawyer.
‘It was payment for services,’ Trent said of the campaign’s payments to Justice Democrats.
Some watchdogs are questioning the legality of the arrangement, however.
‘They believe their cause is so great that they don’t have to play by the rules,’ Tom Anderson, who heads up the Government Integrity Project at the National Legal and Policy Center in Virginia, a conservative watchdog group, told the Post.
‘They believe that they are above campaign finance law,’ he added.
Another PAC that Chakrabarti founded to support leftist candidates, Brand New Congress, has already come under scrutiny for paying Ocasio-Cortez’s boyfriend Riley Roberts in an alleged cash-funneling scheme.
In the fall of 2017, Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign paid $6,191.32 to Brand New Congress, which turned around and hired Roberts as a marketing consultant, making two payments to him totaling $6,000 in August and September of 2017.
Lawyers for the Coolidge Reagan Foundation asked the FEC to review the matter on Wednesday.
Cortez’s team paid Brand New Congress LLC $6,191.32 in 2017 around the same time the group paid a total of $6,000 to her boyfriend, Riley Roberts (pictured), for marketing consulting
Chakrabarti founded a Silicon Valley app-building company called Some Character LLC before taking an active role in left-wing politics.
He previously directed social-media for Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign.
Last June, Chakrabarti purchased a $1.6 million home in Montgomery County, Maryland, according to real estate records.
Ocasio-Cortez has imposed a salary cap of $80,000 on her staff however, meaning that Chakrabarti will be paid far less than that the $145,000 average that congressional chiefs of staff make.
The congresswoman says that the salary cap ensures that her junior staffers can make a ‘living wage’ of at least $52,000.
However, questions have been raised about whether the salary cap is a means to skirt reporting requirements, which mandate that Capitol Hill staff making more than $126,00 report their assets and other income.
New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez denied violating campaign finance laws Tuesday in response to a Federal Election Commission (FEC) complaint alleging she and her chief of staff set up a million-dollar private slush fund.
“There is no violation,” Ocasio-Cortez told Fox News.
The National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC), a conservative government watchdog, accused Ocasio-Cortez and Saikat Chakrabarti, her chief of staff, of illegally funneling money between political action committees (PACs) and private companies that were both controlled by Chakrabarti.
The NLPC claims that the transfers from the PACs to the LLCs were part of an “extensive” plan to avoid reporting campaign expenditures to the FEC.
Fox also asked Ocasio-Cortez if she is connected to “dark money,” to which she replied, “No, no.”
U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) speaks during a news conference at the East Front of the U.S. Capitol February 7, 2019 in Washington, DC … (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Ocasio-Cortez and Chakrabarti obtained majority control over the Justice Democrats PAC in December 2017, despite the fact that the PAC was credited with being the central force behind Ocasio-Cortez’s primary victory against incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley.
Ocasio-Cortez never disclosed her control over the PAC while it was supporting her primary campaign, an arrangement that could open the Democrat up to massive campaign finance violations. The pair could face prison time if it is found that they intentionally withheld the ties between the campaign and the PAC from the FEC.
“If the facts as alleged are true, and a candidate had control over a PAC that was working to get that candidate elected, then that candidate is potentially in very big trouble and may have engaged in multiple violations of federal campaign finance law, including receiving excessive contributions,” former Republican FEC commissioner Hans von Spakovsky told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
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The Pronk Pops Show 1352, November 5. 2019, Story 1: Ukraine Was Interfering in United States 2016 Election For DNC and Clinton and President Trump Wants This Interference Investigated by New Ukraine Government — Videos — Story 2: Ukraine Natural Gas Company Burisma Lobbied State Department To Stop Being Investigated By Invoking Hunter Biden’s Name — Videos — Story 3: United States Withdrawing From Paris Climate Accord Agreement — Videos– Story 4: Trump’s New Stump Speech — Why Trump is President? — One of Life’s Mysteries, Sir — Videos —
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Washington Post Super Bowl message: Democracy Dies in Darkness
Story 1: Ukraine Government Officials Were Interfering in United States 2016 Election For Clinton and Democrat National Committee (DNC) And President Trump Wants This Interference Investigated by Current Ukraine General Prosecutor — Many Countries Including United States Provide Other Countries Aid (Quid) Provided They Meet Certain Conditions (Que) Such As Publicly Acknowledging There Will Be An Investigation of 2016 Election Interference and Ukraine Natural Gas Company Burisma — Videos
Iconic Quid Pro Quo
Joe Biden Brags about getting Ukranian Prosecutor Fired
What Gordon Sondland and Kurt Volker said about U.S. aid to Ukraine
Hannity: I have never talked to anyone from Ukraine
Biden sidesteps questions about son’s foreign work
Joe Biden’s son’s firm linked to Chinese government: New book
Testimony suggests “quid pro quo” relationship between Trump and Ukraine
Dems set to release new transcripts from two key impeachment figures
PBS News Hour full episode November 5, 2019
First excerpts of Gordon Sondland and Kurt Volker transcripts released
Story 2: Ukraine Natural Gas Company Burisma Lobbied State Department To Stop Being Investigated By Invoking Hunter Biden’s Name — Videos —
NEW MEMO ON UKRAINE: Hunter Biden & associates used State Department to kill Burisma investigation
Glenn Beck Lays Out the Case Against The Media
Biden’s Ukraine Scandal Explained I Glenn Beck
Big Lie Media Propaganda Exposed
Glenn Beck Presents: Democracy Does Die In Darkness
Glenn heads back to the chalkboard to explain how the media is intentionally misleading and, in some cases, blatantly lying to absolve the Democrats from what they’ve been doing in Ukraine. Glenn breaks down their case against President Trump and Rudy Giuliani, and he shows why that isn’t the real story. Glenn devastatingly dismantles the medias disinformation campaign brick by brick.
A look at Hunter Biden’s time in Ukraine
Everything You Need to Know About Hunter Biden
Biden’s son booted from Navy after a positive cocaine…
Hunter Biden’s Ukraine Gas Firm Urged Obama Admin To End Corruption Allegations, Report Says
In February 2016, a representative from Burisma sought to meet with Undersecretary of State Catherine A. Novelli to discuss the allegations of corruption that the U.S. government was making toward the company, according to memos obtained by award-winning investigative reporter John Solomon.
A February 24, 2016, email between State Department officials stated:
“Tramontano was a lawyer working for Blue Star Strategies, a Washington firm that was hired by Burisma to help end a long-running corruption investigation against the gas firm in Ukraine,” Solomon added. “Tramontano and another Blue Star official, Sally Painter, both alumni of Bill Clinton’s administration, worked with New York-based criminal defense attorney John Buretta to settle the Ukraine cases in late 2016 and 2017.”
Solomon notes that a meeting was scheduled for March 1, 2016, between Tramontano and Novelli, although it was not known whether or not the meeting actually occurred.
However, a meeting was reportedly secured between Hunter Biden’s business partner and fellow Burisma board member, Devon Archer, and Secretary of State John Kerry.
This entire ordeal surrounding the actions of former Vice President Biden and his son have cast a cloud over the Biden campaign that has undoubtedly at least partially contributed to his fall in the polls against his Democratic rivals.
Last year, Biden bragged to an audience about how he threatened Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in March 2016 that if he did not fire the prosecutor that was investigating Burisma that he would withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid from the country.
Iconic Quid Pro Quo
Joe Biden Brags about getting Ukrainian Prosecutor Fired
“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” Biden told the audience. “Well, son of a bitch, he got fired.”
President Donald Trump and his campaign have hammered Biden over his remarks, which were recorded on video, in advertisements on social media and in targeted markets.
Ukraine Gas Firm Tied to Biden Lobbied State Department to End Corruption Allegations, Emails Show
The Ukrainian gas firm that hired Hunter Biden lobbied the Department of State in early 2016, just one month before then-U.S. Vice President Joe Biden forced the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating the same company, according to documents obtained as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
On Feb. 24, 2016, a State Department official sent an email discussing an overture from a representative for Burisma, the Ukrainian gas firm, to Undersecretary of State Catherine Novelli. The Burisma representative argued that the allegations against the company were baseless, according to an email chain released as part of a lawsuit filed by investigative journalist John Solomon. The Burisma representative specifically cited Hunter Biden’s name as the reason for why the allegations should stop.
Earlier that month in 2016, Ukrainian authorities seized the property of Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma, according to Interfax Ukraine. The seizure included several of Zlochevsky’s homes and a Rolls-Royce Phantom car.
“Per our conversation, Karen Tramontano of Blue Star Strategies requested a meeting to discuss with U/S Novelli USG remarks alleging Burisma (Ukrainian energy company) of corruption,” the email between State Department officials, whose names are blacked out, stated. “She noted that two high profile U.S. citizens are affiliated with the company (including Hunter Biden as a board member).
“Tramontano would like to talk with U/S Novelli about getting a better understanding of how the U.S. came to the determination that the company is corrupt. According to Tramontano, there is no evidence of corruption, has been no hearing or process, and evidence to the contrary has not been considered.”
At the time the email was sent, Novelli was the third-highest-ranking official at the State Department. Karen Tramontano was the CEO of Bluestar Strategies, a consulting firm retained by Burisma to address the corruption charges against it in Ukraine.
The email chain shows that Tramontano was scheduled to meet Novelli on March 1, 2016. While it’s unclear if that meeting took place, on the following day, March 2, 2016, Hunter Biden’s business partner, Devon Archer, met with Secretary of State John Kerry, another email obtained by Solomon shows.
“Devon Archer coming to see S today at 3pm—need someone to meet/greet him at C Street,” an email from Kerry’s office manager states.
Archer’s meeting with Kerry is notable because Kerry’s stepson, Chris Heinz, recently told The Washington Post that he advised Archer and Biden “that working with Burisma was unacceptable.”
“The lack of judgment in this matter was a major catalyst for Mr. Heinz ending his business relationships with Mr. Archer and Mr. Biden,” Heinz spokesman Chris Bastardi told the newspaper.
Hunter Biden and Archer joined the board of Burisma in 2014. Bank records released as part of an unrelated lawsuit show that Rosemont Seneca Bohai, a firm operated by Archer, received more than $160,000 per month from Burisma starting in May 2016. Rosemont Seneca Bohai regularly sent funds to Hunter Biden, the records show.
The seizure of Zlochevsky’s assets took place on Feb. 2, 2014. At the time, top Ukrainian corruption prosecutor Viktor Shokin led the probe.
Oleksandr Onyshchenko, a businessman and former member of the Ukrainian Parliament, told Reuters that Zlochevsky came up with the idea to appoint Hunter Biden to the board “to protect [the company].”
Weeks after Burisma lobbied the State Department and Archer met with Kerry, Joe Biden forced the firing of Shokin by threatening to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees; Biden bragged about the move during a videotaped speech on a panel last year.
In a sworn statement, Shokin said that he was fired under pressure from Biden because he, Shokin, refused to drop the Burisma investigation.
The allegations about Joe and Hunter Biden are in the public spotlight because of the ongoing impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. An anonymous whistleblower’s complaint that triggered the inquiry alleged that Trump may have pressured Ukraine to investigate the Bidens.
According to a transcript of the July 25 call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump referenced Shokin’s firing when asking the Ukrainian leader to investigate the younger Biden.
The whistleblower alleged that Trump’s request to Zelensky may have amounted to a campaign finance violation. The Department of Justice reviewed the complaint and determined that no further action was necessary.
In an interview with ABC News, Hunter Biden admitted that joining Burisma was a political error, but defended his work. Biden stepped down from the board of Burisma in April, according to a statement from his lawyer.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/hunter-bidens-ukraine-gas-firm-lobbied-state-department-to-end-corruption-allegations-emails-show_3137480.html
US Attorney John Durham looking into Ukrainian involvement in 2016 election
“A Department of Justice team led by U.S. Attorney John Durham is separately exploring the extent to which a number of countries, including Ukraine, played a role in the counterintelligence investigation directed at the Trump campaign during the 2016 election,” DOJ spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said Wednesday. “While the Attorney General has yet to contact Ukraine in connection with this investigation, certain Ukrainians who are not members of the government have volunteered information to Mr. Durham, which he is evaluating.”
Durham has been Barr’s right hand as the two look into the complicated and classified issues surrounding how an investigation into the Trump campaign’s alleged ties with Russia — dubbed “Crossfire Hurricane” — got its start, though the U.S. attorney from Connecticut has been virtually silent since his selection.
The DOJ’s statement comes as the White House released a transcript of the controversial July 25 phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump suggests that Ukraine should investigate Biden and his son Hunter, who was on the board of a company owned by Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky. Zlochevsky was being investigated by top prosecutor Viktor Shokin, though it is in dispute how serious that investigation was. Trump also suggested that Ukraine should look into issues surrounding the alleged involvement of some Ukrainians in interfering in the 2016 presidential election.
Biden boasted in 2018 that, as vice president, he threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees if Ukraine didn’t fire Shokin, which Trump’s allies have said was because of the investigation, but Democrats have said was part of a U.S. and European effort to oust Shokin as ineffective and a hindrance to Ukraine’s anti-corruption investigations. Ukraine removed Shokin in 2016.
DOJ also made it clear that Trump never told Barr to contact Ukraine about any investigation of Biden, nor did Barr ever discuss these issues with Ukraine or with Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani.
Trump gave Barr “ full and complete authority to declassify information” related to the origins of the Trump-Russia probe in May after Barr had infuriated Democrats when he said “spying did occur” on the Trump campaign and refused to backtrack. Republicans have alleged that foreign intelligence agencies, like those in Western Europe, may have played a role in eavesdropping on or otherwise monitoring Trump campaign associates in 2016.
Durham’s investigation is separate from the one that was just finished by DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz. The DOJ watchdog investigated allegations of abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by the DOJ and FBI, and Horowitz has spoken with Durham, who is handling any criminal referrals from Horowitz’s investigation.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/u-s-attorney-john-durham-looking-into-ukrainian-involvement-in-2016-election
Joe Biden, His Son and the Case Against a Ukrainian Oligarch
By James Risen
WASHINGTON — When Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.traveled to Kiev , Ukraine, on Sunday for a series of meetings with the country’s leaders, one of the issues on his agenda was to encourage a more aggressive fight against Ukraine’s rampant corruption and stronger efforts to rein in the power of its oligarchs.
But the credibility of the vice president’s anticorruption message may have been undermined by the association of his son, Hunter Biden, with one of Ukraine’s largest natural gas companies, Burisma Holdings, and with its owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, who was Ukraine’s ecology minister under former President Viktor F. Yanukovych before he was forced into exile.
Hunter Biden, 45, a former Washington lobbyist, joined the Burisma board in April 2014. That month, as part of an investigation into money laundering, British officials froze London bank accounts containing $23 million that allegedly belonged to Mr. Zlochevsky.
Britain’s Serious Fraud Office, an independent government agency, specifically forbade Mr. Zlochevksy, as well as Burisma Holdings, the company’s chief legal officer and another company owned by Mr. Zlochevsky, to have any access to the accounts.
But after Ukrainian prosecutors refused to provide documents needed in the investigation, a British court in January ordered the Serious Fraud Office to unfreeze the assets. The refusal by the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office to cooperate was the target of a stinging attack by the American ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey R. Pyatt, who called out Burisma’s owner by name in a speech in September.
“In the case of former Ecology Minister Mykola Zlochevsky, the U.K. authorities had seized $23 million in illicit assets that belonged to the Ukrainian people,” Mr. Pyatt said. Officials at the prosecutor general’s office, he added, were asked by the United Kingdom “to send documents supporting the seizure. Instead they sent letters to Zlochevsky’s attorneys attesting that there was no case against him. As a result, the money was freed by the U.K. court, and shortly thereafter the money was moved to Cyprus.”
But Edward C. Chow, who follows Ukrainian policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the involvement of the vice president’s son with Mr. Zlochevsky’s firm undermined the Obama administration’s anticorruption message in Ukraine.
“Now you look at the Hunter Biden situation, and on the one hand you can credit the father for sending the anticorruption message,” Mr. Chow said. “But I think unfortunately it sends the message that a lot of foreign countries want to believe about America, that we are hypocritical about these issues.”
“Hunter Biden is a private citizen and a lawyer,” she said. “The vice president does not endorse any particular company and has no involvement with this company. The vice president has pushed aggressively for years, both publicly with groups like the U.S.-Ukraine Business Forum and privately in meetings with Ukrainian leaders, for Ukraine to make every effort to investigate and prosecute corruption in accordance with the rule of law. It will once again be a key focus during his trip this week.”
Ryan F. Toohey, a Burisma spokesman, said that Hunter Biden would not comment for this article.
It is not known how Mr. Biden came to the attention of the company. Announcing his appointment to the board, Alan Apter, a former Morgan Stanley investment banker who is chairman of Burisma, said, “The company’s strategy is aimed at the strongest concentration of professional staff and the introduction of best corporate practices, and we’re delighted that Mr. Biden is joining us to help us achieve these goals.”
Joining the board at the same time was one of Mr. Biden’s American business partners, Devon Archer. Both are involved with Rosemont Seneca Partners, an American investment firm with offices in Washington.
Mr. Biden is the younger of the vice president’s two sons. His brother, Beau, died of brain cancer in May. In the past, Hunter Biden attracted an unusual level of scrutiny and even controversy. In 2014, he was discharged from the Navy Reserve after testing positive for cocaine use. He received a commission as an ensign in 2013, and he served as a public affairs officer.
Before his father was vice president, Mr. Biden also briefly served as president of a hedge fund group, Paradigm Companies, in which he was involved with one of his uncles, James Biden, the vice president’s brother. That deal went sour amid lawsuits in 2007 and 2008 involving the Bidens and an erstwhile business partner. Mr. Biden, a graduate of Georgetown University and Yale Law School, also worked as a lobbyist before his father became vice president.
Asked about the British investigation, which is continuing, Mr. Toohey said, “Not only was the case dismissed and the company vindicated by the outcome, but it speaks volumes that all his legal costs were recouped.”
In response to Mr. Pyatt’s criticism of the Ukrainian handling of Mr. Zlochevsky’s case, Mr. Toohey said that “strong corporate governance and transparency are priorities shared both by the United States and the leadership of Burisma. Burisma is working to bring the energy sector into the modern era, which is critical for a free and strong Ukraine.”
Vice President Biden has played a leading role in American policy toward Ukraine as Washington seeks to counter Russian intervention in Eastern Ukraine. This week’s visit was his fifth trip to Ukraine as vice president.
Ms. Bedingfield said Hunter Biden had never traveled to Ukraine with his father. She also said that Ukrainian officials had never mentioned Hunter Biden’s role with Burisma to the vice president during any of his visits.
“I’ve got to believe that somebody in the vice president’s office has done some due diligence on this,” said Steven Pifer, who was the American ambassador to Ukraine from 1998 to 2000. “I should say that I hope that has happened. I would hope that they have done some kind of check, because I think the vice president has done a very good job of sending the anticorruption message in Ukraine, and you would hate to see something like this undercut that message.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/09/world/europe/corruption-ukraine-joe-biden-son-hunter-biden-ties.html
Burisma Holdings
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,
Taras Burdeinyi (CEO)[1]
Alan Apter (Chairman)[2]
Aldea
Esko-Pivnich
Persha Ukrainska Naftogazova Kompaniya
GasOilInvest
KUB-Gas
Naftogaz Garant
Naftogazopromyslova geologiya
Pari
Nadragas
Nadragasvydobuvannya
SystemOilEngineering
Tehnokomservis
Burisma Holdings Limited (Ukrainian: Бурісма Холдингс; Greek: Μπουρίσμα Χόλντιγκς) is a holding company for a group of energy exploration and production companies. It is based in Kyiv, Ukraine, though registered in Limassol, Cyprus. Burisma Holdings has operated in the Ukrainian natural gas market since 2002. It is one of the largest private natural gas producers in Ukraine.[3][4] It is owned by Mykola Zlochevsky through his company Brociti Investments Limited (Ukrainian: Бросіті Інвестментс Лімітед).
Burisma’s subsidiaries include Esko-Pivnich, Pari, Persha Ukrainska Naftogazova Kompaniya, Naftogaz Garant, KUB-Gas and Astroinvest-Ukraine.[5][6][7]
History
Burisma was founded in 2002.[8][9] Consolidation of the Burisma Group took place mainly in 2006 and 2007.[1] It became a major shareholder of Sunrise Energy Resources, a Delaware Corporation, which in 2004 acquired Ukrainian companies Esko-Pivnich (Ukrainian: Еско-Північ) and Pari (Ukrainian: Парі), which owned natural gas exploration licences.[10] In 2009, shares in these companies were transferred to Millington Solutions Limited.[10] However, shortly thereafter Millington ceased to exist, and Burisma claimed ownership of those two companies. In 2012, Persha Ukrainska Naftogazova Kompaniya (First Ukrainian Oil and Gas Company, Ukrainian: Перша Українська нафтогазова компанія), Naftogaz Garant (Oil and Gas Guarantee, Ukrainian: Нафтогаз гарант), and KrymTopEnergoServis (CrimeaTopEnergoService, Ukrainian: Кримтопенергосервіс) became a part of the Burisma Group.[11][12][13]
In 2014, Burisma signed a cooperation agreement with KazMunayGas, the national oil and gas company of Kazakhstan.[14] In 2016, Burisma bought two hydraulic fracturing (fracking) fleets.[15] In 2017, it bought a 3,000-horsepower Service King Manufacturing SK 3000 drilling rig for $40 million (USD); it was the most powerful drilling rig in Eastern Europe at the time.[16]
In February 2016, Burisma acquired a 70% stake in KUB-Gas (КУБ-Газ).[5] In 2017, it bought a majority stake in Diloretio Holdings Limited, a company which owned Ukrainian gas companies SystemOilEngineering (Ukrainian: Системойлинжиниринг), Naftogazopromyslova geologiya, (Oil and Gas Industrial Geology, Ukrainian: Нафтогазпромислова геологія), and Tehnokomservis (TechnoComService, Ukrainian: Технокомсервіс).[17] Also in 2017, Burisma bought Nadragasvydobuvannya (Subsoil Gas Extraction, Ukrainian: Надрагазвидобування)[18] and GasOilInvest (Гасоілінвест).[19] In April 2019, Burisma acquired Astroinvest Ukraine (Астроінвест-Україна), a natural gas trader.[6]
In 2015, Burisma was one of the founders of the International Forum on Energy Security for the Future and partnered the Electric Marathon.[20] In 2017, it signed a partnership agreement with the Atlantic Council to promote anti-corruption measures.[21][22]
Operations
Burisma’s primary operations are in Ukraine, supplemented by activities in Germany, Mexico, Italy, and Kazakhstan.[15] It holds 35 gas production licences in Ukraine in the Dnieper-Donets, Carpathian, and Azov–Kuban Basins.[5][8] Exploration and production activities are carried out at eight sites in five regions.[23] Burisma also provides natural gas well services, including hydraulic fracturing.[15] Burisma plans to build a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) plant in Kharkiv with a capacity of 50,000 tonnes per year.[7]
In 2016, Burisma was the second largest privately owned natural gas producer in Ukraine after DTEK,[4] accounting for 26% of all natural gas produced by privately owned companies and more than 5% of total gas production in Ukraine.[4][24] According to the company, it produced 1.3 billion cubic metres (4.6×1010 cubic feet) of natural gas in Ukraine in 2018.[8]
In Kazakhstan, the company has provided drilling services to KazMunayGas and its subsidiaries, including at the Urikhtau gas field.[25] In Italy, Burisma develops three geothermal power projects in partnership with Gesto Investimento e Gestão.[25]
Burisma’s subsidiary Esko-Pivnich operates in the Kharkiv Oblast, and Pari operates in Western Ukraine (Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Chernivtsi oblasts).[26] KUB-Gas operates in Luhansk Oblast,[5] GasOilInvest in Poltava Oblast,[19] and Nadragasvydobuvannya in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.[27] Burisma also owned KrymTopEnergoServis, a company which leased three gas deposits in Crimea.[13][26][28] However, after annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, KrymTopEnergoServis ceased operation as Burisma subsidiary.[28]
Corporate matters
Ownership
Burisma Holdings is owned by Brociti Investments Limited, a Cyprus-based company owned by Ukrainian former politician and businessman Mykola Zlochevsky. Zlochevsky was minister of natural resources under Viktor Yanukovych, the president of Ukraine.[29] Brociti Investments acquired Burisma Holdings in 2011.[30] Before that acquisition, Mykola Zlochevsky and Mykola Lisin each owned a 50% interest in Burisma Holdings.[10][30][31] Lisin, a Ukrainian politician, died in a traffic accident in 2011.[31]
Management
Aleksander Kwaśniewski, former President of the Republic of Poland, was appointed to the board in January 2014.[32][33]
Taras Burdeinyi is the chief executive officer of Burisma Holdings,[1] and Alan Apter is chairman of the board of directors.[2] As of 14 October 2019, the members of the board of directors, in order of seniority, are Alan Apter, Aleksander Kwaśniewski, Joseph Cofer Black , Karina Zlochevska, Christina Sofocleous, Riginos Charalampous, and Marina Pericleous.[2][34] Aleksander Kwaśniewski, former president of Poland, joined the board in January 2014.[32][33] In February 2016, Joseph Cofer Black, former director of the Counterterrorism Center of the Central Intelligence Agency (1999–2002) in the George W. Bush administration and former Ambassador-at-Large for counter-terrorism (2002–2004), was appointed to the board.[35] Karina Zlochevska, daughter of Mykola Zlochevskiy, was also appointed in February 2016.[2]
In April 2014, Devon Archer, a former senior adviser to the John Kerry 2004 presidential campaign, and Hunter Biden, an attorney and the son of then-US vice president Joe Biden, joined the board.[32][36] Archer left the company in 2018[37] and Biden left in April 2019, when his term as a director expired.[8]
Financial results
Burisma Holdings does not disclose its financial results.[8][15] It has been calculated, based on a minimal natural gas price, that the company’s revenue in 2018 may have totaled at least US$400 million.[8]
Investigations
Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine and National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) have conducted in total 15 investigations on Burisma’s owner Zlochevsky.[38] In 2016, former Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko accused Burisma subsidiaries of conspiracy and tax evasion about one billion hryvnias (US$70 million) in 2014–2015, but later during investigation subsidiaries of Burisma were not mentioned.[39] Tax audit of Esko-Pivnich by the State Fiscal Service found some violations in 2016. As a result, 50 million hryvnias (US$1.9 million) of additional taxes was paid to eliminate criminal charges.[39] In total, Burisma paid additional 180 million hryvnias (US$7.44 million) of taxes to avoid further criminal proceedings.[8][23] A criminal investigation was conducted if natural resources extraction licenses were issued to Burisma subsidiaries legally during the period Zlochevsky held government office. Although violations of the procedure were established by NABU, the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office missed procedural deadlines for a lawsuit and the case for nullifying licesenses was dismissed by the court.[39] In October 2019, Prosecutor General Ruslan Riaboshapka announced that all 15 investigation cases will be reviewed.[38]
See also
References …
External links
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burisma_Holdings
Mykola Zlochevsky
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Микола Злочевський
July 2, 2010 – April 20, 2012
April 20, 2012 – February 26, 2014
June 14, 1966 (age 53)
Kiev, Ukrainian SSR
Odessa Law Academy – Law Faculty
Mykola Vladislavovich Zlochevsky (Ukrainian: Микола Владиславович Злочевський; born June 14, 1966 in Kiev) is a Ukrainian oligarch[1] businessman and politician who was Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources from July 2010 till April 2012 and was the deputy secretary for Economic and Social Security on the National Security and Defense Council from April 2012 until February 2014 when Euromaidan occurred.[2][3][4]
Biography
Business
In 2002, he co-founded the largest independent oil and natural gas company Burisma Holdings with Ukrainian businessman Mykola Lisin [uk].[5][6] Through his sole ownership of Cyprus-registered Burisma Holdings, he owns the Ukrainian gas and oil producers Aldea, Pari, Esko-Pivnich, and the First Ukrainian Petroleum Company and the investment group Brociti Investments.[7][8][9][10][11][12][excessive citations]
Governmental posts
Zlochevsky served as Ecology and Natural Resources Minister during the most of the first cabinet of Mykola Azarov,[3] and during both the later part of Azarov’s first government and all of Azarov’s second government, he served as deputy secretary on National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) of the President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych.[2]
Investigations
At the end of 2014, Zlochevsky fled Ukraine amid allegations of unlawful self enrichment and legalization of funds (Article 368-2, Criminal Code of Ukraine) during his tenure in public office.[13] At the end of 2016 the Central Criminal Court in London released $23 million that were blocked on accounts of Zlochevsky.[13][14] The Serious Fraud Office stated that the funds were released due to inadequate evidence.[13]
Zlochevsky returned to Ukraine in February 2018 after investigations into his Burisma Holdings had been completed in December 2017 with no charges filed against him.[10][15]
On April 18, 2018, recordings of conversations between President of UkrainePetro Poroshenko and Zlochevsky were released which implicated him in graft.[4][16][17]
On June 15, 2018, after the Solomyansky District Court in Kyiv had annulled the ruling of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAP) to close a criminal proceeding against him in 2017, Zlochevsky was accused of having illegally issued, while he was Ecology Minister in 2010–2012, oil and gas licenses to the companies that belonged to him.[18]
As of 2019, Zlochevsky is reported to live in Monaco.[14]
References
External links
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mykola_Zlochevsky
Gordon Sondland
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July 9, 2018
1957 (age 61–62)
Seattle, Washington, U.S.
Gordon D. Sondland (born 1957)[1] is the United States Ambassador to the European Union.[2] He is also the founder and chairman of Provenance Hotels and co-founder of the merchant bank Aspen Capital. He was a major donor to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, and testified to Congress in the Trump–Ukraine scandal.
Career
Provenance Hotels
Sondland’s company, Provenance Hotels, owns and manages hotels throughout the United States, including the Hotel Max and Hotel Theodore in Seattle, Washington; Hotel Murano in Tacoma, Washington; Hotel deLuxe, Hotel Lucia, Sentinel, Dossier, and Heathman Hotel in Portland, Oregon; The Hotel Preston in Nashville, Tennessee; and Old No. 77 Hotel and Chandlery in New Orleans, Louisiana.[3]
In 1998, Sondland purchased and redeveloped four hotels in Seattle, Portland, and Denver including Seattle’s Alexis Hotel in partnership with Bill Kimpton. Sondland also is a principal in Seattle’s Paramount Hotel.[4][5]Through Provenance Hotels, Sondland is developing hotel projects throughout the US, including in Seattle, Hermosa Beach, CA and Los Angeles, CA. Provenance Hotels specializes in adaptations of old buildings such as with the Hotel Murano in Tacoma, WA, which used to be a conference Sheraton, but now includes glass art by 46 artists including Seattle’s Dale Chihuly.[6] Provenance is also known for designing or remodeling each hotel around themes that contain elements that relate to a location’s history, art, culture, and local businesses.[7]
In 2013, Sondland and Provenance completed a renovation of Portland’s historic Governor Hotel, renaming it Sentinel.[8] In December 2015, Sondland and Provenance announced the establishment of the company’s first real estate investment fund, Provenance Hotel Partners Fund I. The $525 million fund was created specifically for hotel real estate investment and, at the time of its announcement, was the fourth largest fund ever launched in the state of Oregon.[9]
In 2017, Provenance Hotels expanded its practice of revitalizing and rebranding hotels with locally-inspired art and design as a service to other hoteliers.[10]
United States ambassador to the European Union
Sondland at the United States–EU Energy Council meeting in Brussels on July 12, 2018
Sondland donated $1 million to the inaugural committee of Donald Trump.[11] On March 12, 2018, the Wall Street Journal reported that President Trump selected Sondland to be the next United States ambassador to the European Union.[12] On May 10, 2018, the White House announced that Sondland’s nomination had been sent to the U.S. Senate.[13] He was confirmed by the Senate on June 28, 2018.[2] On July 9, 2018, Sondland presented his credentials at the European Commission and to President of the European Council Donald Tusk.[14]
Sondland’s nomination received bipartisan support during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on June 21, 2018.[15] Both Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) testified in support of Sondland.[16] Sen. Wyden suggested that Sondland’s “family history is both fascinating and instructive as to why he has the experience and understanding to serve as the U.S. Ambassador to the E.U.,” noting how his Jewish parents fled Nazi Germany before coming to the United States.[15][17]
As ambassador, Sondland has made strengthening US-EU trade relations a top priority.[18] He has supported using a strong US-EU economic partnership to counter what Sondland has called “economic aggression and unfair trade practices” from China.[19][20] In pursuit of this end, Sondland has promoted the idea of giving European governments access to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to allow them to better screen investors.[18]
Sondland has also pledged to work with the EU to address global security threats.[21] He has been the Trump Administration’s lead in talks with EU member countries on the U.S.’s decertification and withdrawal from the Iran Nuclear Deal.[22][23] Sondland has repeatedly criticized EU member countries’ creation of a “special purpose vehicle” (SPV) to bypass reimposed U.S. sanctions on Iran, calling the SPV a “paper tiger.”[22][24][25]
Sondland has also been a vocal opponent of the construction of Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which would transport gas across the Baltic Sea to the EU.[26] He has argued that the pipeline would leave the EU dependent upon Russia for its energy needs and increase Russia’s leverage on key U.S. allies in NATO.[27] Sondland argued that “Putin uses energy as a political weapon. The EU should not rely on a bare-chested version of the Harry Potter villain Lord Voldemort as a supplier, even if his gas is a bit cheaper.”[28]
Sondland has also worked on data protection rules regarding U.S. compliance with the EU-US privacy shield.[29]
Trump–Ukraine scandal
Gordon Sondland as part of the U.S. delegation at the inauguration of Volodymyr Zelensky.
On September 26, 2019, the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released the unclassified text of the whistleblower complaint regarding the interactions between US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.[30] In this document, Ambassador Sondland, along with the U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations, Ambassador Kurt Volker, were described as having “provided advice to the Ukrainian leadership about how to ‘navigate’ the demands that the President had made of Mr. Zelenskyy”.[31] After further investigation, The Washington Post concluded that Sondland had “seized control of the Ukraine portfolio to help Trump.”[32]
In the complaint released by the US Select committee on Intelligence, Sondland’s involvement in President Donald Trump’s alleged criminal activity was outlined in a text conversation with the interim US chargé d’affaires for Ukraine Bill Taylor:
It took Sondland approximately 5 hours to reply to Taylor’s text message, and it was later revealed that Sondland had called Trump prior to writing a response, in which the president repeated the phrase “no quid pro quo” several times.[34]
On October 8, the Trump administration attempted to block Sondland from testifying in the impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump.[35] Sondland testified October 17, 2019.[36][37][38][39][40][41]
On November 5, the New York Times reported that Sondland had provided updated testimony stating that he did in fact view delivery of the aid package as contingent upon the Ukrainian government publicly opening the anticorruption investigation desired by the Trump administration. According to the testimony, he relayed this position to Ukrainian government officials.[42]
Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Europe and Russia on the National Security Council staff Fiona Hill viewed Sondland as a U.S. national security risk because he was so unprepared for his job, but did not accuse Sondland of acting maliciously or intentionally putting the country at risk, describing him during impeachment testimony as a Trump donor-turned-ambassador.[43]
Political involvement
Sondland was a member of the transition team for Oregon Democratic Governor Ted Kulongoski‘s administration and was appointed by Kulongoski to serve on the board of the Governor’s Office of Film & Television.[44] He was appointed the commission’s chair in 2002 and has served in that capacity until 2015.[45] During his tenure on the film board, Sondland was instrumental in bringing the production of such television series as Leverage, The Librarians and Grimm to Oregon[46] and presided over the state securing the production of feature-length films such as Wild starring Reese Witherspoon, Thumbsucker starring Tilda Swinton and The Ring Two starring Naomi Watts. At the 2015 Oregon Film Annual Governor’s Awards, Sondland received the “Achievement in Film Service Award” for his role in growing Oregon’s film industry.[47]
Sondland also served as Oregon liaison to the White House. As an advisor to Kulongoski, Sondland suggested appointing Ted Wheeler as state treasurer, which Kulongoski did in 2010.[48] In 2007 President George W. Bush appointed Sondland as a member of the Commission on White House Fellows.[49] Sondland collaborated with President Bush and Jay Leno on an annual charitable auction of an autographed vehicle, with proceeds benefitting the Fisher House Foundation and the George W. Bush Foundation’s Military Service Initiative.[50] He was a bundler for Mitt Romney’s 2012 Presidential campaign, and in 2012, Sondland was selected to serve as a member of Mitt Romney‘s presidential transition team.[1]
During the 2016 United States presidential election, Sondland initially supported Donald Trump, but cancelled a fundraiser and repudiated Trump for his attacks on Khizr and Ghazala Khan.[1] In April 2017, it was revealed that 4 companies registered to Sondland donated $1 million to the Donald Trump inaugural committee.[51][52][53]
Philanthropy
Sondland is a former member of the board of trustees at the Oregon Health & Science University foundation.[44]
Sondland founded the Gordon Sondland and Katherine J. Durant Foundation in 1999, which was established to “help families and boost communities”; it has given money to various non-profits including $1,000,000 to the Portland Art Museum to endow permanent access for children under the age of eighteen.[54] The Foundation helped establish a Distinguished Chair in Spine for pediatric orthopedic spine research at the Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children in 2012.[citation needed] In 2014, the Foundation gave a $1,000,000 endowment to Oregon Health & Science University to establish the Sondland-Durant Distinguished Research Conference, a cancer research summit to begin in 2016.[55] In 2017, the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Duke University was created with the support of the Foundation.[citation needed]
Personal life
Sondland was born in Seattle, Washington, the son of Frieda (Piepsch) and Gunther Sondland.[56] He is married to Katherine Durant, who is the founder and managing partner of Atlas/RTG, a holding company with a portfolio of shopping centers throughout Oregon.[citation needed] Sondland is Jewish.[15][17] Until 2016, Durant was the Chairperson of the Oregon Investment Council, the body that oversees the over $85 billion Public Employees Retirement System Fund.[57] They have two children.
See also
References…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Sondland
Memorandum of conversation
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Example: Memorandum of conversation of meeting led by Brent Scowcroft (1976)
Memorandum of conversation (abbrev.: MEMCON) and also memorandum of a conversation and memo to the file refers to a method of contemporaneous documentation of a conversation in the form of a memorandum used by the United States federal government.[1][2]
The Weekly Standard characterized the use of the tactic in the U.S. government as among “the most basic ways of Washington”.[2]
Method
Typically an individual will document the events of the conversation as soon as possible after the occurrence.[1] All material statements and discussed items are quoted and described as accurately as possible soon after the discussion and filed for future reference.[1] Memcons function as documentation of historical events, such as conversations between heads of state and law enforcement officials.[3] Specific developments discussed, the time of the meeting, location, and individuals in attendance are all documented in-depth within the memo.[1][2]
United States Department of Justice attorneys and Federal Bureau of Investigation special agents commonly make use of memoranda of conversation.[1] A majority of intermediate-rank managerial staff and bureaucrats within the U.S. federal government consistently make use of the method. The creation of a memorandum of understanding allows federal employees to memorialize and keep a record of their conversations and transactions.[2]
Memoranda to file are used in investigations in the private sector. For example, the fraud unit of a large corporation may use memoranda to file, to report individual interviews and significant telephone conversations. Generally, “the memorandum will show the name of the author, date of preparation, the case name or number, and the specific subject covered. It will also contain the detailed narrative of the event, interview, or other investigative activity described and should be written as close in time as circumstances permit to those events.”[4]
History
Former Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and subsequently Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, Brent Scowcroft, who served as such in the U.S. presidential administration of Gerald R. Ford, kept copious documentation of his meetings in the form of memorandum of conversation.[3] He would take handwritten notes, and immediately have them transcribed in typewritten format with the assistance of his staff from the United States National Security Council.[3] The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum contains over 1,000 such memorandum of conversation documents relating to the Presidency of Richard Nixon and Presidency of Gerald Ford, mainly related to national security of the United States.[3]
See also
References
External links
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorandum_of_conversation
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Mike Pompeo formally starts process of leaving the Paris climate change treaty – with U.S. due out the day AFTER the 2020 election
By ASSOCIATED PRESS and REUTERS
PUBLISHED: | UPDATED:
The United States has begun the process of pulling out of the landmark 2015 Paris climate agreement, it was announced Monday.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that he submitted a formal notice to the United Nations. That starts a withdrawal process that does not become official for a year. His statement touted America’s carbon pollution cuts and called the Paris deal an ‘unfair economic burden’ to the U.S. economy.
Nearly 200 nations signed the climate deal in which each country provides its own goals to curb emissions of heat-trapping gases that lead to climate change.
‘In international climate discussions, we will continue to offer a realistic and pragmatic model – backed by a record of real world results – showing innovation and open markets lead to greater prosperity, fewer emissions, and more secure sources of energy,’ Pompeo said in a statement.
The U.S. started the process with a hand-delivered letter, becoming the only country to withdraw. The United Nations will soon set out procedural details for what happens next, UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said.
Agreement rules prevented any country from pulling out in the first three years after the Nov. 4, 2016, ratification. The U.S. withdrawal doesn’t become complete until the day after the 2020 election.
President Donald Trump has been promising withdrawal for two years, but Monday was the first time he could actually do it.
Out: Donald Trump’s administration formally started the process of leaving the Paris Climate accord signed by Obama in 2015
Opposed: Mike Pompeo was on the receiving end of criticism for his decision to pull the U.S. out of Paris, with one environmentalist group saying the next president will have to rejoin it
Trump’s decision was condemned as a reckless failure of leadership by environmental experts, activists and critics such as former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
‘Donald Trump is the worst president in history for our climate and our clean air and water,’ said Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club. ‘Long after Trump is out of office his decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement will be seen as a historic error.’
The agreement set goals of preventing another 0.9 degrees (0.5 degrees Celsius) to 1.8 degrees (1 degree Celsius) of warming from current levels. Even the pledges made in 2015 weren’t enough to prevent those levels of warming.
The deal calls for nations to come up with more ambitious pollution cuts every five years, starting in November 2020. Because of the expected withdrawal, the U.S. role in 2020 negotiations will be reduced, experts said.
Climate change, largely caused by the burning of coal, oil and gas, has already warmed the world by 1.8 degrees (1 degree Celsius) since the late 1800s, caused massive melting of ice globally, triggered weather extremes and changed ocean chemistry. And scientists say, depending on how much carbon dioxide is emitted, it will only get worse by the end of the century, with temperatures jumping by several degrees and oceans rising by close to 3 feet (1 meter).
Trump has been promising to pull out of the Paris deal since 2017, often mischaracterizing the terms of the agreement, which are voluntary. In October, he called it a massive wealth transfer from America to other nations and said it was one-sided.
That’s not the case, experts said.
The European Union’s goal was to cut carbon pollution in 2030 by 40% compared with 1990 levels, which is greater than America’s pledge, said Rob Jackson, a Stanford University professor and chairman of the Global Carbon Project. The United Kingdom has already exceeded that goal, he said.
Many critics of the Paris agreement say America is the leader in cutting carbon emissions, but that’s not true.
Since 2005, the United States isn’t in the top 10 in percentage of greenhouse gas emission reductions. The United Kingdom, France, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Hungary, Greece, the Czech Republic and other nations have done better, said Jackson, who tracks emissions.
‘The U.S. agreement is not a tax on the American people. There is no massive wealth transfer,’ said Climate Advisers CEO Nigel Purvis, who was a lead State Department climate negotiator in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. ‘In fact, the agreement obligates no country to make any financial payments.’
It will be inconvenient: Former Vice President Al Gore, who made climate change his signature issue, characterized the decision as a mistake but said there was still reason for hope. ‘No one person or party can stop our momentum to solve the climate crisis,’ he said
Pompeo said U.S. net greenhouse gas emissions dropped 13% from 2005 to 2017 ‘even as our economy grew over 19 percent.’
Then, in 2018, carbon dioxide emissions increased 2.7%, according to the Energy Information Administration, mostly due to extreme weather and the economy.
The reason for the long-term emissions drop is because the U.S. is using less coal and has tightened air quality standards, while Trump is pushing for more coal and loosening those standards, said Michael Gerrard, who heads Columbia Law School’s climate change legal center.
For the U.S. – the second biggest carbon polluter – to be in line with Paris goals greenhouse gas emissions have to drop 80%, not 13%, Gerrard said.
‘The Trump Administration’s abandonment of action on climate change gives other countries an excuse not to act either. They ask – if the richest country, the one that has contributed the most to the load of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, isn’t willing to act, why should we?’ Gerrard said. ‘If someone other than Donald Trump is elected, he or she will almost certainly rejoin Paris, and the rest of the world will welcome us back with open arms.’
Former Vice President Al Gore, who made climate change his signature issue, characterized the decision as a mistake but said there was still reason for hope.
‘No one person or party can stop our momentum to solve the climate crisis,’ Gore said. ‘But those who try will be remembered for their complacency, complicity, and mendacity in attempting to sacrifice the planet for their greed.’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7649093/US-tells-UN-bidding-adieu-Paris-climate-deal.html
U.S. Formally Begins To Leave The Paris Climate Agreement
November 4, 20193:46 PM ET
REBECCA HERSHER
The Trump administration has formally notified the United Nations that the U.S. is withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement. The withdrawal will be complete this time next year, after a one-year waiting period has elapsed.
“We will continue to work with our global partners to enhance resilience to the impacts of climate change and prepare for and respond to natural disasters,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement Monday.
Nearly 200 countries signed on to the agreement in 2015 and made national pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Each country set its own goals, and many wealthy countries, including the U.S., also agreed to help poorer countries pay for the costs associated with climate change.
The U.S. is now the only country to pull out of the pact.
“The United States is not cooperating with the rest of the world on dealing with climate change,” says Andrew Light, a former climate official in the State Department who helped develop the Paris Agreement.
The agreement was designed to be easier to join than to leave. The U.S. even helped spearhead language that would hold countries accountable for the promises they made, in part to help guard against regime changes and other global political turmoil.
Indeed, in the years since the pact was created, many key international players, including Brazil, China, Japan and India, have experienced economic or political upheaval, but none has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement as a result.
President Trump originally announced his intention to withdraw from the deal in the summer of 2017, shortly after he took office. At the time he said, “As of today, the United States will cease all implementation” of the agreement, including federal policies meant to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as well as U.S. contributions to the international climate fund for poorer nations.
“These agreements are just only as good as the commitments from each country,” Light says.
The U.S. had pledged to reduce national greenhouse gas emissions by about a quarter by 2025, compared with 2005 levels. The country is not on track to achieve that goal.
In the intervening years, the Trump administration has systematically attempted to roll back federal limits on carbon emissions, including rules about how much pollution can be emitted by power plants, cars and trucks.
“The reality is, to really deliver on our climate goals, we do need strong federal action,” says Rachel Cleetus of the Union of Concerned Scientists. “The unfortunate reality is U.S. carbon emissions actually rose last year.”
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This isn’t the first time the U.S. has reneged on an international climate agreement. The U.S. failed to ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol despite being instrumental in its creation. In this case, the U.S. became a signatory to the agreement but almost immediately signaled that it didn’t intend to pursue its responsibilities.
In both cases, the U.S. was instrumental in developing the international strategy.
“That’s one of the ironies of all this,” Light says. When the Paris Agreement was being negotiated, the U.S. delegation pushed for more transparency and accountability to make sure the countries that signed on would actually do what they promised.
“Even though we’re the ones who have been pointing to these potential scenarios for problems with other countries, we seem to be the biggest problem,” Light says.
“If we were a tiny country with small emissions, it wouldn’t matter so much,” he says. “But we’re not. We’re a big country with a lot of power and a lot of influence around the world. And so for us to be the exception on this issue is holding the world back.”
A formal withdrawal is reversible, however, if a future administration chooses to rejoin the Paris Agreement and pick up where the U.S. left off with its emissions reduction promises.
https://www.npr.org/2019/11/04/773474657/u-s-formally-begins-to-leave-the-paris-climate-agreement
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