Story 1: Senator Mitch McConnell on Unfair Behind Closed Doors Single Party Impeachment Inquiry and Syria — Videos —
Senator Mitch McConnell: Democrats Are ‘Throwing Fairness And Precedent To The Wind’ | NBC News
Senate Needs to Make a Strong, Strategic Statement on Syria
Trump was ‘absolutely right’ to take troops out of Syria: Rand Paul
Democrats, Republicans unite on Trump’s decision on Syria
Senate Needs to Make a Strong, Strategic Statement on Syria
McConnell splits with Trump on Syria pullout
Mitch McConnell rebukes Donald Trump over Turkish invasion of Kurdish-held Syria, saying troop pullout gives Iran a chance to reach Israel’s doorstep and contending worthwhile intervention does NOT make the U.S. world’s policeman
McConnell once again expressed his ‘grave concern’ about the situation in Syria
Said the door is ‘wide open’ for resurgence of ISIS
Said policy could put Iran on Israel’s ‘door-step’
Said standing up for U.S. interests does not make nation the ‘evil empire’
Trump has repeatedly complained the nation should not be world’s policeman
At the same time, he blasted House Democrats on impeachment
PUBLISHED: 17:14 EDT, 15 October 2019 | UPDATED: 17:14 EDT, 15 October 2019
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell directly confronted President Trump‘s complaint that U.S. troop deployment’s make it the ‘world’s policeman’ and expressed his ‘grave concern’ about Trump’s policy moves in Syria.
McConnell issued the rebuke without directly blaming President Trump for the latest calamity in the region – although he said Trump’s policy threatens to put Iran on Israel’s door-step and fuel a ‘humanitarian catastrophe.’
Following Turkey’s incursion into Syria in territory that had been controlled by U.S.-allied members of the Kurdish minority, McConnell warned that the ‘door is wide open for resurgence of the Islamic State.’
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell took on President Trump’s contention that having forces remain in Syria was akin to being the ‘world’s policeman’
In a Senate floor speech, McConnell said the situation created a power vacuum that could fuel the meddling influence of Russia, and ‘leaving northeastern Syria wide open Iran to extend reach unimpeded all the way from tehran to the door step of our friends in Israel.
He also confronted the view, espoused directly by President Trump, that the U.S. should pull out of the region rather serving as the ‘world’s policeman.’
‘I want to make something clear, the United States has taken the fight to Syria and Afghanistan because that is where our enemies are, that’s why we’re there. Fighting terrorists, exercising leadership and troubled regions and advancing U.S. interests around the world does not make us an evil empire or the world’s policeman,’ McConnell said.
This picture taken on October 15, 2019 shows a missile fired by Turkish forces towards the Syrian town of Ras al-Ain, from the Turkish side of the border at Ceylanpinar district in Sanliurfa on the first week of Turkey’s military operation against Kurdish forces
McConnell shared his ‘grave concern’ about the situation in Syria
‘When it looked like President Trump would withdraw from Syria at beginning of the year, 70 senators joined in warning of the risk of precipitously withdrawing from Syria or Afghanistan,’ McConnell noted in his floor speech
McConnell had also warned of his ‘grave concern’ in a written statement Monday that did not mention Trump by name. But in his floor speech Tuesday, he included such a reference.
‘When it looked like President Trump would withdraw from Syria at beginning of the year, 70 senators joined in warning of the risk of precipitously withdrawing from Syria or Afghanistan,’ McConnell noted.
But even as he challenged the president on a policy that has resulted in the release of ISIS prisoners, led to attacks against key regional allies, and even led to shelling by Turkish forces toward a U.S. troop-held position, he defended the president on impeachment by attacking Democrats.
‘House Democrats are finally indulging in their impeachment obsession. Full steam ahead,’ McConnell warned. ‘I don’t think many of us were expecting to witness a clinic in terms of fairness or due process. But even by their own partisan standards, House Democrats have already found new ways to lower the bar,’ he complained.
McConnell has said he was required by Senate rules to hold a trial should the House impeach Trump.
He resorts to sanctions as the harm from withdrawal builds.
By The Editorial Board
Syrians fleeing Turskih advance arrive to the town of Tal Tamr in north Syria, Oct. 14.PHOTO: BADERKHAN AHMAD/ASSOCIATED PRESS
What a fiasco. Foreign-policy blunders often take months or years to reveal their damaging consequences, but the harm from President Trump’s abrupt withdrawal of U.S. forces from northern Syria is playing out almost in real time.
Critics said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would invade northern Syria despite Mr. Trump’s public warnings, and the Turkish strongman did. Critics said our Kurdish allies would strike a deal with Syria’s Bashar Assad to defend themselves, and the Kurds have. Critics said Islamic State prisoners held by the Kurds would be released and scatter to wage jihad again, and they are.
The mess compounded Monday when Mr. Trump authorized sanctions against several Turkish officials and agencies who are “contributing to Turkey’s destabilizing actions in northeast Syria.” The sanctions include financial measures and barring entry to the U.S. Mr. Trump also said he’s ending trade talks with Turkey and raising steel tariffs to 50%.
Mr. Trump now finds himself back in an economic and diplomatic brawl with Turkey that he said he wanted to avoid. Wouldn’t it have been easier simply to tell Mr. Erdogan, on that famous phone call two Sundays ago, that the U.S. wouldn’t tolerate a Turkish invasion against the Kurds and would use air power to stop it? Mr. Erdogan would have had to back down and continue negotiating a Syrian safe zone with the Kurds and the U.S.
Mr. Trump is also making matters worse with his unserious justifications. “After defeating 100% of the ISIS Caliphate, I largely moved our troops out of Syria. Let Syria and Assad protect the Kurds and fight Turkey for their own land,” he tweeted Monday. “Anyone who wants to assist Syria in protecting the Kurds is good with me, whether it is Russia, China, or Napoleon Bonaparte. I hope they all do great, we are 7,000 miles away!”
We suppose the Napoleon line was a joke, but the world is laughing at an American President. Mr. Trump was able to project an image of strength in his early days as he prosecuted the war against ISIS and used force to impose a cost on Mr. Assad for using chemical weapons. But that image has faded as he has indulged his inner Rand Paul and claims at every opportunity that the main goal of his foreign policy is to put an end to “endless wars.”
This is simple-minded isolationism, and it’s a message to the world’s rogues that a U.S. President has little interest in engaging on behalf of American allies or interests. Friends like Israel and Saudi Arabia are quietly dismayed, while Iran, Russia and Hezbollah can’t believe Mr. Trump has so glibly abandoned U.S. commitments and military partners.
By now it’s not unreasonable to conclude that Mr. Trump’s foreign policy can be distilled into two tactics—sanctions and tariffs. Mr. Trump wields them willy-nilly against friend and foe alike as substitutes for diplomacy and the credible threat of military force.
Mr. Trump won’t like to hear it, but the Syrian mess is hurting him at home too. Republicans who have stood by him through the Russia fight and more are questioning his judgment as Commander in Chief in an increasingly dangerous world. With impeachment looming, he can’t afford to alienate more friends.
Opinion: Trump’s Foreign Policy Needs to Change Course
As Turkey advances into Syria, foreign powers will increasingly act on the belief that the American executive is both politically weak and intellectually unfocused. Image: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Imageshttps://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-syria-mess-11571095091
TRUMP’S CHAOTIC SYRIA EXIT PUTS ANTI-WAR 2020 DEMOCRATS IN A DELICATE SPOT
THE PENTAGONannounced on Monday that the U.S. was pulling all of its troops out of northeastern Syria at President Donald Trump’s direction, completing a withdrawal he had started by Twitter declaration a week earlier. The move further clears the way for a full-on invasion by Turkey, whose soldiers have already been accused of executing noncombatants. In the chaos, hundreds of Islamic State detainees have reportedly escaped.
Trump defended his decision in a series of early-morning tweets on Monday. “The same people who got us into the Middle East mess are the people who most want to stay there!” he wrote. “Never ending wars will end!”
Trump’s abandonment of eastern Syria and the U.S. military’s Kurdish allies has put progressive Democrats — many of whom also favor withdrawing from overseas military operations — in a delicate spot. Over the past week, they have been trying to thread the needle between condemning Trump for recklessly abandoning an ally and emphasizing that withdrawing U.S. troops should be an eventual policy goal.
Trump’s decision has showcased what a worst-case scenario for expedited military withdrawal could look like, making it harder for progressive Democratic presidential candidates like Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren to press their cases against “endless wars” on the campaign trail. The question of how progressives can go about drawing down U.S. military commitments without repeating Trump’s calamitous actions would be an obvious pick for Tuesday night’s Democratic debate.
So far, the Democratic candidates have been critical of Trump but light on specifics about what they would do differently. Last week, Sanders condemned Trump’s withdrawal from Syria, telling reporters that “as somebody who does not want to see American troops bogged down in countries all over the world — you don’t turn your back on allies who have fought and died alongside American troops. You just don’t do that.” But when George Stephanopoulos asked Sunday morning on ABC for Sanders to explain the difference between his and Trump’s approaches, Sanders responded simply that Trump “lies. I don’t.”
Warren’s response was similarly vague. She tweeted that “Trump recklessly betrayed our Kurdish partners” and that “we should bring our troops home, but we need to do so in a way that respects our security.”
Trump Turned His Back on Syrian Kurds. Here’s How They View Their New Precarious Position.
Ro Khanna, a Democratic representative from California and co-chair of Sanders’s 2020 campaign, told The Intercept that progressives urgently need to make the case for a “doctrine of responsible withdrawal.”
“I don’t believe that withdrawal from a progressive perspective means a moral indifference to the lives of the places that we leave,” Khanna said in a phone interview. “It’s not an ‘America First’ approach that says our interests and our American lives are the only things that have moral worth. Rather, our withdrawal is based on an understanding of the limitations of American power to shape and restructure societies. It emphasizes the need for effective diplomacy and understands our moral obligations in these places.”
The U.S. should not have withdrawn troops without negotiating a deal that would have kept Turkey from invading Syria, backed by a threat to withhold future arms sales and economic assistance, Khanna told The Intercept. “We could have used all those points of leverage to get their commitment that they wouldn’t slaughter the Kurds.”
Another key difference between Trump’s approach and that of progressives is their level of trust for civil service expertise, Khanna said. “What this shows is that it’s not enough to have a president with certain instincts. Foreign policy requires great expertise. You need a progressive president who understands the importance of military restraint, but who also has the ability to put together an extraordinary foreign policy team to implement the goals that they may have.”
Far from admiring Trump’s approach to Syria, many anti-interventionists and foreign policy experts in D.C. view it as a blueprint for how not to withdraw from a conflict, according to Adam Wunische, a researcher with the Quincy Institute, a new pro-diplomacy, noninterventionist, and nonpartisan think tank.
“What we should have been doing from the very beginning is once we achieved the limited objective of destroying ISIS territory, they should have immediately begun contemplating what kind of peace or settlement could come afterwards,” Wunische told The Intercept. “To my knowledge, the U.S. is one of the only actors that can effectively talk to both the Turks and the Kurds. So they should have been trying to find an acceptable political arrangement for all the parties involved that doesn’t involve an endless, ill-defined military presence for the U.S.”
The Quincy Institute is working on a report outlining a possible plan for U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan that would avoid the type of disorder on display in northeastern Syria, Wunische said, though the timing of the report remains unclear.
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Throughout the 2020 Democratic primary campaign, a number of candidates have railed against “endless wars.” But in a conversation that has been defined by intricate domestic policy proposals and detailed outlines of how to structure a wealth tax, candidates have said little about the rest of the world and even less about how they would wind down overseas conflicts.
Sanders, for example, has called for a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan “as expeditiously as possible.” Warren has said “it’s long past time to bring our troops home, and I would begin to do so immediately.” Joe Biden has said he would bring “American combat troops in Afghanistan home during my first term,” but left the door open for a “residual U.S. military presence” that would be “focused on counterterrorism operations.” When asked during a July debate whether he would withdraw from Afghanistan during the first year of his presidency, Pete Buttigieg, the South Bend mayor and Navy Reserve veteran who spent seven months in Afghanistan, answered emphatically in the affirmative.
But aside from seeking a diplomatic solution, candidates have said very little about their policies for ending the war. And as in Syria, stakes for U.S. allies in Afghanistan are high.
A January study by the Rand Corporation found that a “precipitous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan” would have far-reaching consequences. The legitimacy for the U.S.-backed Kabul government would plummet, the report argued, and the Taliban would extend its control and influence. People all across the country would turn to regional militias and rival warlords for basic security.
“I don’t think that anyone, whether they promise it or not, is going to get out of Afghanistan in a week,” said Wuinsche. “What we need to focus on is, what is the political solution that we think is possible, and how do we get there? That requires marshaling all of these different tools of foreign policy, not just the military.”
Kate Kizer, policy director for the D.C.-based advocacy group Win Without War, stressed that one of the most revealing differences between progressives and Trump is how they would treat a conflict’s refugees. Under Trump, the U.S. has accepted historically low numbers of refugees and closed the door on future Syrian immigrants applying for Temporary Protected Status.
“One of the cruelest parts of Trump’s policy is the fact that, in addition to fueling more bloodshed with this decision, he’s also banning any types of civilians who would be fleeing from the conflict,” Kizer said. “In a situation like Syria and even Afghanistan, there’s a way to responsibly withdraw and then there’s a way to cut and run, which is what Trump has shown he has a predilection for. But I’m not sitting here saying that any type of military withdraw will necessarily be bloodless.”
Story 2: The Search of Leakers in Trump Administration — Videos
RUST NO ONE
Trump Suspects a Spiteful John Bolton Is Behind Some of the Ukraine Leaks
Trump fears the leaks are now coming from the people he chose to serve him—and that only increases the paranoia currently infecting the West Wing.
Asawin Suebsaeng
White House Reporter
Sam Stein
Politics Editor
Photo Illustration by Lyne Lucien/The Daily Beast/Getty
At a critical juncture in his presidency, facing a rapidly unfolding impeachment inquiry by House Democrats, Donald Trump is feeling besieged by snitches.
In recent weeks, numerous leaks have appeared in the pages of The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and other major papers and news outlets detailing the president’s attempts to enlist foreign leaders to help dig up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden and also aid Trump’s quest to discredit Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s concluded investigation. And as is his MO, the media-obsessed president has been fixated on not just the identity of the whistleblower behind the internal complaint that brought this scandal to the fore, but also on who, exactly, has been namelessly feeding intel to the press.
In the course of casual conversations with advisers and friends, President Trump has privately raised suspicions that a spiteful John Bolton, his notoriously hawkish former national security adviser, could be one of the sources behind the flood of leaks against him, three people familiar with the comments said. At one point, one of those sources recalled, Trump guessed that Bolton was behind one of the anonymous accounts that listed the former national security adviser as one of the top officials most disturbed by the Ukraine-related efforts of Trump and Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney who remains at the center of activities that spurred the impeachment inquiry.
“[Trump] was clearly implying [it, saying] something to the effect of, ‘Oh, gee, I wonder who the source on that could be,’” this source said, referring to the president’s speculation. Bolton, for his part, told The Daily Beast last month that allegations that he was a leaker in Trump’s midst are “flatly incorrect.”
The former national security adviser—who departed the administration last month on awful, mutually bitter terms—is working on a book about his time serving Trump, and has “a lot to dish,” one knowledgeable source noted.
Neither Bolton nor White House spokespeople provided comment for this story. Matt Schlapp, an influential conservative activist with close ties to the White House, said his assumption was that the leaks were coming from “career folks inside who hate Trump” and that the president and his campaign had “14 months of this” to come. As for Bolton, Schlapp said, “He’s smarter than that, although he does aggressively defend himself.”
Indeed, Bolton’s name surfaced Monday before House impeachment inquiry committees, when Hill reportedly testified that he told her to alert the chief lawyer for the National Security Council that Giuliani was working with Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, on an operation with legal implications, the Times reported late Monday. “I am not part of whatever drug deal Rudy and Mulvaney are cooking up,” Bolton told Hill to tell White House lawyers, according to sources familiar with the testimony.
“I have not spoken to John about [his comments, as conveyed by Hill],” Giuliani told The Daily Beast on Tuesday morning. “John is a longtime friend. I have no idea why John is doing this. My best guess is that he’s confused and bought into a false media narrative without bothering to call me about it.”
Regarding Bolton’s reported comment about Mulvaney being involved in this figurative Ukraine “drug deal,” the former New York City mayor insisted that “Mick wasn’t involved in this. I don’t recall having any lengthy conversation with him about this subject… I don’t recall ever having a lengthy conversation [about Ukraine] with John, either.”
Trump has felt under siege from within before, including at various flashpoints of his presidency. For instance, near the end of the Mueller probe, the president became so distrustful and resentful toward Don McGahn, his own White House counsel at the time, he started asking those close to him, “Is [Don] wearing a wire?”
But the current sense that he has been undermined by people whom he brought into his orbit has come at a critical juncture and colored some of the decisions he has made since the whistleblower complaint became public. The president has openly declared that the whistleblower committed an act of treason. He has attempted to stop prominent advisers—including Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, a man who donated $1 million to the Trump inauguration—from testifying to Congress, only to apparently fail. On Monday, Fiona Hill, Trump’s former top adviser on Russia and Europe, was on Capitol Hill, where she reportedly told lawmakers that Sondland and Giuliani circumventedthe standard national-security process on high-profile Ukraine matters. The president has struggled to add to his current legal team, and appeared to begin putting some distance between himself and Giuliani last week.
And when outside allies began to talk about constructing a war room to help with impeachment, Trump shot down the concept, in part out of a sense that he couldn’t rely on them to get the message out right. One top White House aide subsequently labeled the idea an exercise by “outside peeps trying to self-aggrandize.”
The impression left on Republicans is one of a president increasingly driven by paranoia and a desire for insularity—and not, necessarily, to his own benefit.
“There is a certain level of frustration that all the sudden the president says something, then Rudy does, and it is not always consistent. There is a frustration that not everybody knows what they should be doing. It is not that they can’t defend the president it is a frustration that they don’t know exactly how they are supposed to defend the president,” said John Brabender, a longtime GOP consultant. “From the president’s perspective, this whole thing is a witch hunt and is outrageous and, therefore, it shouldn’t even need explanation…But with that said, you can’t just be angry. You need a unified communications team.”
According to those who’ve known the president, the sense that a good chunk of the government has never fully accepted his presidency and has actively worked to undermine it has animated much of his activity over the past few weeks. And though they believe he has a point, they also wonder if it is making him functionally incapable of taking the advice of some advisers: to simply ignore impeachment and apply his attention to other facets of governance.
Trump, they add, is preternaturally incapable of ignoring press about him and lingers particularly on leaks that depict atmospherics of his inner sanctum, the West Wing, and his internal well-being.
“In my experience, what he despises is somebody writing that Donald Trump feels under siege and his emotions are this and his thinking is this,” said Sam Nunberg, a former Trump campaign aide. “He hates people saying what he is thinking… And one of his most frequent tricks in terms of talking about himself on background [as an anonymous source] is him having the reporter say [he is] someone ‘familiar with the president’s thinking.’”
Nunberg said he had yet to see a blind quote in any recent report that would lead him to believe that Trump is cold-calling reporters. But the president is certainly working the fourth estate. Democratic aides were left shaking their heads last week when they received an email from the White House with the subject line, “Article from President Trump” and a PDF attachment of a Kimberly Strassel Wall Street Journal column.
“He’s apparently so anxious about GOP support in the Senate, he’s taken to sending WSJ columns against the House inquiry,” said a Senate source.
Still, for all of Trump’s grousing and preoccupation with who is and isn’t stabbing him in the back, loyalty has always been a one-way street for this president. Last week, after the news broke that Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two Soviet-born businessmen tied to Giuliani, were arrested on charges of violating campaign-finance law, a reporter at the White House asked Trump if the former New York mayor was still his personal attorney. The president responded that he didn’t know.
Though the president would later tweet out his support for Giuliani over the weekend, Trump has a long track record for being loyal to and supportive of a longtime associate, friend, or staffer—up until the moment he’s not. Perhaps the quintessential example of this is that of one of the president’s former attorneys, Michael Cohen, who famously turned on Trump after becoming convinced that the president had abandoned him while he was in the crosshairs of federal prosecutors.
Asked by The Daily Beast last week if the president told him that he still had his lawyer’s back—an attorney who further earned the president’s trust by defending Trump during the Mueller investigation—Giuliani let out a big belly-laugh and responded, “There’s nothing, [no knife], in my back.”
“My back feels very comfortable right now,” he added.
Story 1: President Trump’s Search For New York Time Anonymous Opinion- Editorial Writer — Round Up The Usual Suspects — Political Elitist Establishment Trump Haters vs. American People and Trump — Resister Resignations Required — Gutless Best People Elitists –Videos
‘Many in Our Political Class Are Disloyal to Voters’: Tucker, Dobbs on Anonymous NYT Op-Ed
Growing number of senior Trump officials deny writing anonymous NYT op-ed
Conway reacts to anonymous ‘resistance’ NYT op-ed
Hannity: Anonymous op-ed writer needs to come forward
Schlapp: Op-ed writer obviously doesn’t know Trump well
Trump responds to ‘treason’ from within
Lawrence’s Guess: Who’s The Trump Official Behind The Anonymous Op-Ed? | The Last Word | MSNBC
Search continues to identity author of anonymous New York Times opinion
Trump calls author of NYT op-ed “gutless” after piece details resistance effort
Trump responds to NYT op-ed: ‘Gutless editorial’
Scathing: Senior Trump Admin. Official Reveals Secret Resistance | The Beat With Ari Melber | MSNBC
TREASON?’ President Donald Trump Blasts Anonymous New York Times Op-Ed | Hardball | MSNBC
Gorka on anonymous op-ed: They must be rooted out, fired
Sanders’ Finally Loses It, Calls For Resignation
Tucker Carlson vs. New York Times’ public editor
President Donald Trump Reacts To Anonymous New York Times Op-Ed | NBC News
Mitch McConnell on ‘resistance’ op-ed, Kavanaugh hearings
Brit Hume: Op-ed may be disloyal, but is in no way treason
Graham defends Trump: In my world, most don’t listen to the NYT
Senior administration official blasts Trump in op-ed
Trump’s own officials see him as ‘detrimental,’ explosive but anonymous essay claims
Anonymous Trump official claims to be part of ‘resistance’
Trump wants Attorney General Jeff Sessions to investigate writer of anonymous NYT op-ed
President Donald Trump wants Attorney General Jeff Sessions to investigate the identity of the author of an anonymous New York Times op-ed.
The op-ed, by a senior Trump administration official, described a secret effort to subvert the president’s agenda from inside the highest levels of his government.
Trump also said he was looking into potentially taking legal action against The New York Times.
Trump wants AG Jeff Sessions to investigate writer of anonymous NYT op-ed
President Donald Trump on Friday said he wants Attorney General Jeff Sessions to investigate the identity of the author of an anonymous op-ed that was published in The New York Times on Wednesday.
Asked by a journalist whether Sessions should investigate the source of the critical column, Trump said, “I think so. Because I think it’s national security — I would say Jeff should be investigating who the author of that piece was because I really believe it’s national security.”
Trump was speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One en route to North Dakota for a campaign stop.
“We’re going to take a look at what he had, what he gave, what he’s talking about, also where he is right now,” Trump said of the unnamed individual, who has not been identified as either a man or a woman. If that person has a high-level security clearance, Trump said, “I don’t want him in meetings” on sensitive national security issues.
Reached for comment, a Justice Department spokesperson told CNBC that the department “does not confirm or deny the existence or nonexistence of investigations.”
Getty Images
President Donald Trump (L) and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Trump also said he was looking into potentially taking legal action against The New York Times, citing the vague national security concerns he mentioned beforehand.
The president said it was a “disgrace” for the newspaper to have published the op-ed from a senior administration official. “For somebody to do this is very low, and I think, journalistically and from many different standpoints, and maybe even from the standpoint of national security, we’ll find out about that,” he said. The New York Times’ stock dipped slightly following Trump’s comments, but quickly recovered.
In a statement Friday afternoon, the Times said it was, “confident the Department of Justice understands that the First Amendment protects all American citizens and that it would not participate in such a blatant abuse of government power.”
This is not the first time Trump has mentioned that he thinks there could be a national security angle attached to the publication of the op-ed, which described a secret effort underway inside the administration to “frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.”
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
Does the so-called “Senior Administration Official” really exist, or is it just the Failing New York Times with another phony source? If the GUTLESS anonymous person does indeed exist, the Times must, for National Security purposes, turn him/her over to government at once!
Trump also marveled at the bipartisan nature of the criticism directed at the author of the op-ed in the past day. “So many people that never said a good thing about me are now saying that [resistance from inside the government] should never happen, [and] have actually got to my side,” he said.
Indeed, at precisely the same moment that Trump was talking to reporters on Air Force One, a few hundred miles east in Illinois, former President Barack Obama was speaking at a campaign event, where he agreed with the president. “That’s not how our democracy is supposed to work,” Obama said, with “people inside who secretly aren’t following the president’s orders. That is not a check.”
Obama continued: “These people aren’t elected. They’re not accountable. They’re not doing us a service by actively promoting 90 percent of the crazy stuff that’s coming out of this White House and saying, ‘Don’t worry, we’re preventing the other 10 percent.’ That’s not how things are supposed to work.”
The op-ed also described “early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis,” the author wrote. “So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.”
In the 24 hours following the op-ed’s publication on Wednesday, more than 20 top Trump administration officials, including nearly every member of the president’s Cabinet, issued formal statements denying authorship of the column.
— CNBC’s Kevin Breuninger contributed to this story.
Gaslighting is a manipulation tactic used to gain power. And it works too well.
Posted Jan 22, 2017
Stephanie A. Sarkis Ph.D.
Gaslighting is a tactic in which a person or entity, in order to gain more power, makes a victim question their reality. It works much better than you may think. Anyone is susceptible to gaslighting, and it is a common technique of abusers, dictators, narcissists, and cult leaders. It is done slowly, so the victim doesn’t realize how much they’ve been brainwashed. For example, in the movie Gaslight(1944), a man manipulates his wife to the point where she thinks she is losing her mind.
People who gaslight typically use the following techniques:
1. They tell blatant lies.
You know it’s an outright lie. Yet they are telling you this lie with a straight face. Why are they so blatant? Because they’re setting up a precedent. Once they tell you a huge lie, you’re not sure if anything they say is true. Keeping you unsteady and off-kilter is the goal.
2. They deny they ever said something, even though you have proof.
You know they said they would do something; you know you heard it. But they out and out deny it. It makes you start questioning your reality—maybe they never said that thing. And the more they do this, the more you question your reality and start accepting theirs.
3. They use what is near and dear to you as ammunition.
They know how important your kids are to you, and they know how important your identity is to you. So those may be one of the first things they attack. If you have kids, they tell you that you should not have had those children. They will tell you’d be a worthy person if only you didn’t have a long list of negative traits. They attack the foundation of your being.
4. They wear you down over time.
This is one of the insidious things about gaslighting—it is done gradually, over time. A lie here, a lie there, a snide comment every so often…and then it starts ramping up. Even the brightest, most self-aware people can be sucked into gaslighting—it is that effective. It’s the “frog in the frying pan” analogy: The heat is turned up slowly, so the frog never realizes what’s happening to it.
5. Their actions do not match their words.
When dealing with a person or entity that gaslights, look at what they are doing rather than what they are saying. What they are saying means nothing; it is just talk. What they are doing is the issue.
6. They throw in positive reinforcement to confuse you.
This person or entity that is cutting you down, telling you that you don’t have value, is now praising you for something you did. This adds an additional sense of uneasiness. You think, “Well maybe they aren’t so bad.” Yes, they are. This is a calculated attempt to keep you off-kilter—and again, to question your reality. Also look at what you were praised for; it is probably something that served the gaslighter.
7. They know confusion weakens people.
Gaslighters know that people like having a sense of stability and normalcy. Their goal is to uproot this and make you constantly question everything. And humans’ natural tendency is to look to the person or entity that will help you feel more stable—and that happens to be the gaslighter.
8. They project.
They are a drug user or a cheater, yet they are constantly accusing you of that. This is done so often that you start trying to defend yourself, and are distracted from the gaslighter’s own behavior.
9. They try to align people against you.
Gaslighters are masters at manipulating and finding the people they know will stand by them no matter what—and they use these people against you. They will make comments such as, “This person knows that you’re not right,” or “This person knows you’re useless too.” Keep in mind it does not mean that these people actually said these things. A gaslighter is a constant liar. When the gaslighter uses this tactic it makes you feel like you don’t know who to trust or turn to—and that leads you right back to the gaslighter. And that’s exactly what they want: Isolation gives them more control.
10. They tell you or others that you are crazy.
This is one of the most effective tools of the gaslighter, because it’s dismissive. The gaslighter knows if they question your sanity, people will not believe you when you tell them the gaslighter is abusive or out-of-control. It’s a master technique.
11. They tell you everyone else is a liar.
By telling you that everyone else (your family, the media) is a liar, it again makes you question your reality. You’ve never known someone with the audacity to do this, so they must be telling the truth, right? No. It’s a manipulation technique. It makes people turn to the gaslighter for the “correct” information—which isn’t correct information at all.
The more you are aware of these techniques, the quicker you can identify them and avoid falling into the gaslighter’s trap.
Do gaslighters know they’re manipulative, or do they do it without realizing it?
Posted Jan 30, 2017
Stephanie A. Sarkis Ph.D.
Since posting my article Gaslighting: Know It to Identify It and Protect Yourself, I’ve received emails asking whether people who gaslight actually know that they are doing it. To review: Gaslighting is a pattern of manipulation tactics used by abusers, narcissists, dictators, and cult leaders to gain control over a person or people. The goal is to make the victim or victims question their own reality and depend on the gaslighter. So, do gaslighters know they’re doing it?
It depends on the gaslighter.
Some people or entities that gaslight do, in fact, realize they are doing it: It is a strategy they have studied—and their sources may surprise you. Cult leader Charles Manson read How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie (2010) to learn how to manipulate his followers (Guinn, 2014). Guinn writes that Manson particularly focused on Chapter 7, which included this advice: “Let the other fellow feel that the idea is his.” And herein lies one difference between people who pathologically gaslight and the general population—the vast majority of the thousands who have read Carnegie’s book have not led lives of violence, abuse, and destruction.
One way to protect yourself from being gaslighted, therefore, is to educate yourself about gaslighters’ behaviors. The book 48 Laws of Power(Greene, 2000) details the characteristics and tactics some historical figures have practiced, including steps they have taken to manipulate others. And Robert Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (2006) explains through research how easily people can be manipulated.
Some gaslighters may have learned it from others—in many cases, their own parents. If a parent lives with addiction or other mental health issues, gaslighting may be used to manipulate a child into keeping quiet about abuse and/or addiction. Gaslighting may be used by a parent in order to alienate the child from the other parent. For example, in parental alienation, one parent may depict the other as a “deadbeat” and tell a child about the other parent’s “transgressions” in order for the child to align with the “reporting” parent and see him or her as the hero. But in order to look like the hero, the gaslighter must create a distinct enemy. This doesn’t mean that people who are children of gaslighters will adopt gaslighting behavior—for many, in fact, such an upbringing teaches them exactly what not to do when raising their own children.
Others gaslight in order to feel some sense of control in their own lives by making others depend on them. Gaslighting can also be part of an authoritarian personality. A person with an authoritarian personality tends to think in absolutes: Things are 100 percent right or 100 percent wrong. When a gaslighter thinks that they are not the problem and everyone else is, this is called having an ego-syntonic personality. It can be very difficult to get ego-syntonic gaslighters into treatment; they believe nothing is wrong with them. A gaslighting spouse or partner may either refuse to go to therapy, or if they do attend with you, they may tell the therapist that you are the problem. If the therapist recommends that the gaslighter changes a behavior, the gaslighter will label the therapist as incompetent. Even in therapy, a gaslighter may not truly be aware of, or may refuse to acknowledge that their behavior is the problem.
Even if a person is practicing gaslighting behavior without being consciously aware of it, they may get a “payoff” when their victim becomes more dependent on them. And then the cycle continues. The gaslighter also gets a “boost” when there are no checks and balances in place—no one holding them accountable for their behavior. For example, a cult leader may exile or kill anyone who tells others that the leader is not treating followers fairly. Subsequently, further followers may not speak out for fear of their lives. Keep in mind that dependency is one of the goals of gaslighters.
If a gaslighter is not aware of their manipulative behavior, that does not make it acceptable—it is still pathological, and it is still their responsibility. For gaslighters who have read up on this behavior or were taught it, of course, the same rule applies.
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not represent the views of Townhall.com.
President Trump should probably call off the hunt for the “senior official in the…administration” who the New York Times is claiming wrote a damning op-ed for the newspaper.
Apparently the “senior official” claims to be part of a group of White House staff trying to thwart the president’s agenda from within. He also claims they seriously considered trying to depose the president using the 25th amendment of the Constitution.
Serious stuff. But President Trump should relax and remember it is the New York Times after all. The paper has a scandalous history of lying about the seniority of officials it quotes anonymously – especially when that source parrots their agenda.
A few years back they were caught red-handed deceiving their readers in such a way.
In a lengthy anti-fracking article they claimed that senior industry experts and insiders believed the industry to be little more than a “Ponzi scheme” … “set up for failure”.
They even had the emails from a series of senior insiders where these doubts were expressed.
According to the New York Times, one “energy analyst” wrote, “Am I just totally crazy, or does it seem like everyone and their mothers are endorsing shale gas without getting a really good understanding of the economics at the business level?”
Another “federal analyst” said in an industry email, “It seems that science is pointing in one direction and industry PR is pointing in another.”
Well unfortunately for the New York Times, the emails were from the Energy Information Agency – a government organization – so this meant Senate investigators were able to find the original emails and work out the identity of all these different senior experts. It turns out the federal analyst, the energy analyst and the officer turned out to be the same person who was actually an intern when he wrote the first email and in an entry level position when he wrote the other comments. Yes, that’s right, the “Paper of Record” misrepresented an intern/junior employee as a senior official to push an agenda.
Was the New York Times embarrassed when their deception was uncovered? The Senate investigation did attract the attention of the New York Times Public Editor Arthur S Brisbane. “Can an intern be an “official”? It doesn’t sound right to me,” he stated.
Well it sounded fine to the New York Times editorial board. They stood by their mislabelling of the intern/low level employees as a senior official. They later decided they didn’t want their stories to be second guessed in their own newspaper so they ended the role of public editor in the newspaper. And the reporter who misrepresented the intern, well, he was promoted. Ian Urbina is now a New York Times “investigative reporter based in Washington.” Maybe part of that investigation involved finding someone to write anti-Trump anonymous op/eds posing as a “senior official in the Trump administration.” President Trump is probably wondering who the anonymous official is. Perhaps given the New York Times’s history of dissembling in this regard he should take his eyes off the cabinet table and wander down to whatever part of the White House holds the interns.
Phelim McAleer is a journalist and film maker. He produced the movie Gosnell – The Trial of America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer which opens nationwide on October 12th. www.GosnellMovie.com
I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration
I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.
The Times today is taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay. We have done so at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers. We invite you to submit a question about the essay or our vetting process here.
President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.
It’s not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump’s leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.
The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.
I would know. I am one of them.
To be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.
But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.
That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.
The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.
Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright.
In addition to his mass-marketing of the notion that the press is the “enemy of the people,” President Trump’s impulses are generally anti-trade and anti-democratic.
Don’t get me wrong. There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.
But these successes have come despite — not because of — the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.
From the White House to executive branch departments and agencies, senior officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief’s comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from his whims.
Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.
“There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next,” a top official complained to me recently, exasperated by an Oval Office meeting at which the president flip-flopped on a major policy decision he’d made only a week earlier.
The erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren’t for unsung heroes in and around the White House. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing, though they are clearly not always successful.
It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.
The result is a two-track presidency.
Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations.
Astute observers have noted, though, that the rest of the administration is operating on another track, one where countries like Russia are called out for meddling and punished accordingly, and where allies around the world are engaged as peers rather than ridiculed as rivals.
On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin’s spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better — such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.
This isn’t the work of the so-called deep state. It’s the work of the steady state.
Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.
The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.
Senator John McCain put it best in his farewell letter. All Americans should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation.
We may no longer have Senator McCain. But we will always have his example — a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue. Mr. Trump may fear such honorable men, but we should revere them.
There is a quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first. But the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one: Americans.
The writer is a senior official in the Trump administration.
Trump blasts critical op-ed from anonymous senior official
By The Associated PressSeptember 5, 2018 6:59 pm
President Donald Trump listens to Emir of Kuwait Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House, Wednesday, Sept. 5, 2018, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
WASHINGTON (AP) — In a striking anonymous broadside, a senior Trump administration official wrote an opinion piece in The New York Times on Wednesday claiming to be part of a group of people “working diligently from within” to impede President Donald Trump’s “worst inclinations” and ill-conceived parts of his agenda.
Trump said it was a “gutless editorial” and “really a disgrace,” and his press secretary called on the official to resign.
Later, Trump tweeted: “TREASON?”
The writer, claiming to be part of the “resistance” to Trump but not from the left, said, “Many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.” The newspaper described the author of the column only as a senior official in the Trump administration.
“It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room,” the author continued. “We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.”
A defiant Trump, appearing at an unrelated event at the White House, lashed out at the Times for publishing the op-ed.
“They don’t like Donald Trump and I don’t like them,” he said of the newspaper. The op-ed pages of the newspaper are managed separately from its news department.
The essay immediately triggered a wild guessing game as to the author’s identity on social media, in newsrooms and inside the West Wing, where officials were blindsided by its publication.
And in a blistering statement, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders accused the author of choosing to “deceive” the president by remaining in the administration.
“He is not putting country first, but putting himself and his ego ahead of the will of the American people,” she said. “The coward should do the right thing and resign.”
Sanders also called on the Times to “issue an apology” for publishing the piece, calling it a “pathetic, reckless, and selfish op-ed.”
A “House of Cards”-style plot twist in an already over-the-top administration, Trump allies and political insiders scrambled late Wednesday to unmask the writer.
The text was pulled apart for clues: The writer is identified as an “administration official”; does that mean a person who works outside the White House? The references to Russia and the late Sen. John McCain — do they suggest someone working in national security? Does the writing style sound like someone who worked at a think tank? In a tweet, the Times used the pronoun “he” to refer to the writer; does that rule out all women?
The newspaper later said the tweet referring to “he” had been “drafted by someone who is not aware of the author’s identity, including the gender, so the use of ‘he’ was an error.”
Hotly debated on Twitter was the author’s use of the word “lodestar,” which pops up frequently in speeches by Vice President Mike Pence. Could the anonymous figure be someone in Pence’s orbit? Others argued that the word “lodestar” could have been included to throw people off.
Showing her trademark ability to attract attention, former administration official Omarosa Manigault Newman tweeted that clues about the writer’s identity were in her recently released tell-all book, offering a page number: 330. The reality star writes on that page: “many in this silent army are in his party, his administration, and even in his own family.”
The anonymous author wrote in the Times that where Trump has had successes, they have come “despite — not because of — the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.”
The assertions in the column were largely in line with complaints about Trump’s behavior that have repeatedly been raised by various administration officials, often speaking on condition of anonymity. And they were published a day after the release of details from an explosive new book by longtime journalist Bob Woodward that laid bare concerns among the highest echelon of Trump aides about the president’s judgment.
The writer of the Times op-ed said Trump aides are aware of the president’s faults and “many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations. I would know. I am one of them.”
The writer also alleged “there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment” because of the “instability” witnessed in the president. The 25th Amendment allows the vice president to take over if the commander in chief is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” It requires that the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet back relieving the president.
The writer added: “This isn’t the work of the so-called deep state. It’s the work of the steady state.”
he self-styled Saviors of the Country need to step forward, identify themselves, and speak plainly, honestly, and loudly about the menace in the White House.
Instead, they continue to hide in the shadows, chirping from the darkness that they’ve got our backs.
As but the latest example: On Wednesday afternoon, The New York Timesmade the highly unorthodox decision of publishing an anonymous essay from “a senior official in the Trump administration,” titling the piece “I am part of the resistance inside the Trump administration.”
[Trump’s] erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren’t for unsung heroes in and around the White House. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing, though they are clearly not always successful.
It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t. [The New York Times]
Cold comfort indeed. This just isn’t good enough. Resister, reveal yourself.
This same dynamic is at play in the debate over veteran journalist Bob Woodward’s explosive forthcoming book Fear: Trump in the White House. In his surreal conversation with Woodward, the president asked the author if he was “naming names” or “just saying sources” or “people have said.” Woodward replied, “I say, at 2:00 on this day, the following happened, and everyone who’s there, including yourself, is quoted.”
Bob Woodward’s reporting — in terms of raw documentation if not interpretive sophistication — is about as unassailable a product as you’re likely to find in 21st-century media. There is no reason to doubt that current and former senior aides to President Trump have belittled the man’s intelligence, character, and fitness for office.
Additionally, it’s reasonable to believe that everyone quoted in Fear, along with this anonymous op-ed author, came forward with the expectation that their account would be accepted one day as the part of the settled historical record of the Trump presidency. These unidentified officials are speaking to the Bleachers of History, pleading for their good names and reputations, even as they presently assure the mad emperor that he is fully clothed.
Be it through anonymous op-eds, “deep background” interviews, or well-intentioned whispering in journalists’ ears, these resisters within the Trump administration seem intent on delivering a message to the public: Don’t worry. We won’t let President Trump ruin everything. And hopefully history will remember our quiet heroism.
But this isn’t heroism. It’s the sort of cowardly behavior that has produced a cottage industry of Washington sages who declare that it’s a “good thing” that Trump is surrounded by advisers who restrain “his most reckless impulses.”
The following scenario captured by Woodward gives the lie to this self-serving tripe:
[Trump lawyer John] Dowd then explained to [Special Counsel Robert] Mueller and [Mueller deputy attorney James] Quarles why he was trying to keep the president from testifying: “I’m not going to sit there and let him look like an idiot. And you publish that transcript, because everything leaks in Washington, and the guys overseas are going to say, ‘I told you he was an idiot. I told you he was a goddamn dumbbell. What are we dealing with this idiot for?'” [Fear, via The Washington Post]
As Vanity Fair‘s Tina Nguyen notes, “Dowd is practically pleading with Mueller to think of the greater good: If foreign leaders read Trump’s testimony, he suggests, it would be impossible for them not to conclude that he is unfit for office.” If we did not live in a democratic republic; if our constitutional system did not include safety valves for unfit executives; if, indeed, Trump were a Mad King, Dowd’s concerns would be understandable. But we do not. The only plausible explanation for concealing the truth about Trump from the public is that it would cause embarrassment to the president himself and the Republican Party.
America, full stop, would continue along just fine.
If America is indeed being led by a “goddamn dumbbell” who, left to his own devices, would start World War III, then we should hear about it — directly from the mouths of those who uttered the words and believe them to be true. At the very least, if they’re not going to resign on principle from this chaotic joke of an administration, men like John Kelly, James Mattis, and John Dowd should loudly acknowledge the truth that’s in front of everyone’s noses.
To do otherwise is not to “save” the country. It is to save the reputation of Donald J. Trump.
The country does not require the discretion of James Mattis or John Kelly in order to survive.
Trump does.
History will damn them for refusing to recognize the difference.
Story 2: President Trump Says The Government Will Shut-down After The Election If There Is No Congressional Funding For The Border Wall — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Disagrees — How Many Miles of New Border Wall Built? Less Than 40 Miles and Waiting For Fiscal Year 2019 Funding — Need $25 Billion in Funding To Build New 2,000 Mile Wall on U.S./ Mexican Border — Videos
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Published on Sep 20, 2017
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Breaking and Developing Story 1: Category 4 Hurricane Irma Over 500 Miles Wide Bigger Than Texas with 150 MPH Sustained Winds Slows Down Turns Toward West and Tracks Directly Over All of South Florida — Evacuate Now — Hurricane Hit Landfall Sunday Morning With Storm Surge Up To 12 Feet and Rain Fall 10-18 Inches — Over Florida For 24 Hours — All Day Sunday — Mass Mandatory Evacuation For South Florida — Videos
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Hurricane Irma shifts away from Miami, taking aim at Tampa
Last Updated Sep 9, 2017 5:24 PM EDT
MIAMI — Hurricane Irma hurtled toward Florida with 125 mph winds Saturday on a new projected track that could put the Tampa area — not Miami — in the crosshairs. The Tampa area has not taken a direct hit from a major hurricane in nearly a century.
“You need to leave — not tonight, not in an hour, right now,” Gov. Rick Scott warned residents in the evacuation zones ahead of the storm’s predicted arrival on Sunday morning.
As of 5 p.m. ET, the powerful Category 3 storm was located about 115 miles southeast of Key West.
For days, the forecast had made it look as if the Miami metropolitan area of 6 million people on Florida’s Atlantic coast could get hit head-on with the catastrophic and long-dreaded Big One.
The westward swing in the hurricane’s projected path overnight caught many on Florida’s Gulf coast off guard. By late morning, few businesses in St. Petersburg and its barrier islands had put plywood or hurricane shutters on their windows, and some locals groused about the change in the forecast.
Donna Tubbs, who lives in a mobile home park in Lakeland, says she’s packed her bags but she’s not leaving home. “All the families around here are planning to stay,” Tubbs told CBS affiliate WTSP-TV in Tampa. She said many in the area are retired nurses who intend on helping with recovery efforts.
Tampa has not been struck by a major hurricane since 1921, when its population was about 10,000, National Hurricane Center spokesman Dennis Feltgen said. Now the area has around 3 million people.
The new course threatened everything from Tampa Bay’s bustling twin cities of Tampa and St. Petersburg to Naples’ mansion- and yacht-lined canals, Sun City Center’s sprawling compound of modest retirement homes, and Sanibel Island’s shell-filled beaches.
Forecasters warned of storm surge as high as 15 feet along a swath of southwest Florida and beyond.
“This is going to sneak up on people,” said Jamie Rhome, head of the hurricane center’s storm surge unit.
With the new forecast, Pinellas County, home to St. Petersburg, ordered 260,000 people to leave, while Georgia scaled back evacuation orders for some coastal residents.
Irma has left more than 20 people dead in its wake across the Caribbean, ravaging such resort islands as St. Martin, St. Barts, St. Thomas, Barbuda and Antigua.
The storm weakened slightly in the morning but was expected to pick up strength again before hitting the Sunshine State.
Meteorologists predicted its center would blow ashore Sunday in the perilously low-lying Florida Keys, then hit southwestern Florida and move north, plowing into the Tampa Bay area. Though the center is expected to miss Miami, the metro area will still get pounded with life-threatening hurricane winds, Feltgen said.
On Saturday morning, the state was already beginning to feel Irma’s muscle. Nearly 30,000 people had lost power, mostly in and around Miami and Fort Lauderdale, as the wind began gusting.
In Key West, 60-year-old Carol Walterson Stroud sought refuge in a senior center with her husband, granddaughter and dog. The streets were nearly empty, shops were boarded up and the wind started to blow.
“Tonight, I’m sweating,” she said. “Tonight, I’m scared to death.”
In one of the biggest evacuations ever ordered in the U.S., about 6.4 million people in Florida – more than one-quarter of the state’s population – were warned to leave. Gas shortages and gridlock plagued the evacuations. Parts of interstates 75 and 95 north were bumper-to-bumper.
Some 54,000 people crowded 320 shelters across Florida. At Germain Arena not far from Fort Myers, on Florida’s southwestern corner, thousands waited in a snaking line for hours to gain a spot in the hockey venue-turned-shelter.
“We’ll never get in,” Jamilla Bartley lamented as she stood in the parking lot.
The governor activated all 7,000 members of the Florida National Guard, and 30,000 guardsmen from elsewhere were on standby.
Major tourist attractions, including Walt Disney World, Universal Studios and SeaWorld, all prepared to close Saturday. The Miami and Fort Lauderdale airports shut down, and those in Orlando and Tampa planned to do the same later in the day.
With winds that peaked at 185 mph, Irma was once the most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the open Atlantic. Given its mammoth size and strength and its projected course, it could still prove one of the most devastating hurricanes ever to hit Florida and inflict damage on a scale not seen here in 25 years.
It could also test the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s ability to handle two crises at the same time. FEMA is still dealing with aftermath of catastrophic Hurricane Harvey in the Houston area.
Ray Scarborough and girlfriend Leah Etmanczyk left their home in Big Pine Key and fled north with her parents and three big dogs to stay with relatives in Orlando. Scarborough was 12 when Hurricane Andrew hit in 1992 and remembers lying on the floor in a hall as the storm nearly ripped the roof off his house.
“They said this one is going to be bigger than Andrew. When they told me that, that’s all I needed to hear,” said Scarborough, now a 37-year-old boat captain. “That one tore everything apart.”
Andrew razed Miami’s suburbs with winds topping 165 mph, damaging or blowing apart over 125,000 homes. The damage in Florida totaled $26 billion, and at least 40 people died.
Forecasters say Irma’s prime target is now Tampa, not Miami
MIAMI (AP) — With the window closing fast for anyone wanting to escape, Irma hurtled toward Florida with 125 mph winds Saturday on a new projected track that could put the Tampa area — not Miami — in the crosshairs.
The Tampa area has not taken a direct hit from a major hurricane in nearly a century.
“You need to leave — not tonight, not in an hour, right now,” Gov. Rick Scott warned residents in the evacuation zones ahead of the storm’s predicted arrival on Sunday morning.
For days, the forecast had made it look as if the Miami metropolitan area of 6 million people on Florida’s Atlantic coast could get hit head-on with the catastrophic and long-dreaded Big One.
The westward swing in the hurricane’s projected path overnight caught many on Florida’s Gulf coast off guard. By late morning, few businesses in St. Petersburg and its barrier islands had put plywood or hurricane shutters on their windows, and some locals groused about the change in the forecast.
“For five days, we were told it was going to be on the east coast, and then 24 hours before it hits, we’re now told it’s coming up the west coast,” said Jeff Beerbohm, a 52-year-old entrepreneur in St. Petersburg. “As usual, the weatherman, I don’t know why they’re paid.”
Tampa has not been struck by a major hurricane since 1921, when its population was about 10,000, National Hurricane Center spokesman Dennis Feltgen said. Now the area has around 3 million people.
The new course threatened everything from Tampa Bay’s bustling twin cities of Tampa and St. Petersburg to Naples’ mansion- and yacht-lined canals, Sun City Center’s sprawling compound of modest retirement homes, and Sanibel Island’s shell-filled beaches.
Forecasters warned of storm surge as high as 15 feet along a swath of southwest Florida and beyond.
“This is going to sneak up on people,” said Jamie Rhome, head of the hurricane center’s storm surge unit.
With the new forecast, Pinellas County, home to St. Petersburg, ordered 260,000 people to leave, while Georgia scaled back evacuation orders for some coastal residents.
Irma has left more than 20 people dead in its wake across the Caribbean, ravaging such resort islands as St. Martin, St. Barts, St. Thomas, Barbuda and Antigua.
The storm weakened slightly in the morning but was expected to pick up strength again before hitting the Sunshine State.
Meteorologists predicted its center would blow ashore Sunday in the perilously low-lying Florida Keys, then hit southwestern Florida and move north, plowing into the Tampa Bay area. Though the center is expected to miss Miami, the metro area will still get pounded with life-threatening hurricane winds, Feltgen said.
On Saturday morning, the state was already beginning to feel Irma’s muscle. Nearly 30,000 people had lost power, mostly in and around Miami and Fort Lauderdale, as the wind began gusting.
In Key West, 60-year-old Carol Walterson Stroud sought refuge in a senior center with her husband, granddaughter and dog. The streets were nearly empty, shops were boarded up and the wind started to blow.
“Tonight, I’m sweating,” she said. “Tonight, I’m scared to death.”
In one of the biggest evacuations ever ordered in the U.S., about 6.4 million people in Florida — more than one-quarter of the state’s population — were warned to leave. Gas shortages and gridlock plagued the evacuations. Parts of interstates 75 and 95 north were bumper-to-bumper.
Some 54,000 people crowded 320 shelters across Florida. At Germain Arena not far from Fort Myers, on Florida’s southwestern corner, thousands waited in a snaking line for hours to gain a spot in the hockey venue-turned-shelter.
“We’ll never get in,” Jamilla Bartley lamented as she stood in the parking lot.
The governor activated all 7,000 members of the Florida National Guard, and 30,000 guardsmen from elsewhere were on standby.
Major tourist attractions, including Walt Disney World, Universal Studios and Sea World, all prepared to close Saturday. The Miami and Fort Lauderdale airports shut down, and those in Orlando and Tampa planned to do the same later in the day.
With winds that peaked at 185 mph (300 kph), Irma was once the most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the open Atlantic. Given its mammoth size and strength and its projected course, it could still prove one of the most devastating hurricanes ever to hit Florida and inflict damage on a scale not seen here in 25 years.
It could also test the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s ability to handle two crises at the same time. FEMA is still dealing with aftermath of catastrophic Hurricane Harvey in the Houston area.
Ray Scarborough and girlfriend Leah Etmanczyk left their home in Big Pine Key and fled north with her parents and three big dogs to stay with relatives in Orlando. Scarborough was 12 when Hurricane Andrew hit in 1992 and remembers lying on the floor in a hall as the storm nearly ripped the roof off his house.
“They said this one is going to be bigger than Andrew. When they told me that, that’s all I needed to hear,” said Scarborough, now a 37-year-old boat captain. “That one tore everything apart.”
Andrew razed Miami’s suburbs with winds topping 165 mph (265 kph), damaging or blowing apart over 125,000 homes. The damage in Florida totaled $26 billion, and at least 40 people died.
___
Galofaro reported from Orlando. Associated Press writers Seth Borenstein in Washington; Terry Spencer in Palm Beach County; Gary Fineout in Tallahassee; Terrance Harris in Orlando; Jay Reeves in Estero; and Jason Dearen, Jennifer Kay and David Fischer in Miami contributed to this report.___
South Florida’s shelters overflow, evacuation has chaotic start
BY DOUGLAS HANKS, JULIE BROWN AND MONIQUE O. MADAN
SEPTEMBER 08, 2017 10:59 AM
By now, South Florida residents should be finished with preparations to ride out Hurricane Irma in place — or else be ready to evacuate immediately, local officials warned late Friday.
But even as officials urged residents on barrier islands and along the coast to leave, local shelters were filling up fast while the county scrambled to open more safe spaces after a chaotic beginning to the biggest evacuation effort in Miami-Dade history.
“This is an unprecedented event,” Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez said early Friday as fleeing residents encountered closed shelters. “We are now rewriting the book as we go.”
RIVERA BEACH (CBSMiami) – Florida Power & Light expecting 4.1 million customers to be affected by power outages during Hurricane Irma. That’s about 9 million people.
“That would be unprecedented for us and probably any utility,” said FPL CEO Eric Silagy Friday.
Silagy held a news conference to update its customers that they are working non-stop ahead of, during, and after the storm.
“I want to reassure our customers that we are prepared for Hurricane Irma.”
FPL is the third-largest electric utility in the U.S. and serves nearly 10 million people in the southern half of Florida. Silagy says they are ready.
“We currently have an army, frankly, of 13,500 restoration workers, both FPL crews and outside crews ready to respond as soon as it’s safe to do so. Many of the linemen are coming from across the country including from as far away as California. We have prepositioned equipment and people getting ready to fight the aftermath of Irma.”
But he added, they won’t put any workers in jeopardy.
“Unfortunately, there will be a period of time where we will have to hunker down and wait. We have to wait until the winds subside to 40 mph to get on the road, 35 mph to get buckets in the air.”
While FPL will be working around the clock, this is likely to be a multi-week restoration.
“With these kinds of winds, we are not looking at restoration but actually rebuilding. These kinds of winds can bend metal poles. We are going to see a lot of damage. We are going to see a lot of debris that will unfortunately impact the system and we are going to have to do a lot of cleanup.”
The restoration “will start as soon as we can get out safely on the roads.” He added, “We will not stop until the lights are back on for every single customer.”
Silagy believes thousands of miles of power lines will be impacted. And while 40-percent of power lines are now underground, those underground lines can be impacted by storm surge and flooding.
FPL spokeswoman Marie Bertot addressed rumors going around that they were going to be shutting power down before the storm arrives.
“FPL has one of the smartest, strongest grids in the country. We’re going to keep operating that grid before the storm and during the storm. So it’s not true,” she said. “We’re going to continue operating until the storm no longer allows us to do so and then we are going to restore power.”
They do plan to shutdown Florida’s two nuclear power plants, Turkey Point near Homestead and St. Lucie nuclear power plant before the storm.
“We will shut those plants down 24 hours before the onset of winds reaching category 1 and only restart after the winds have passed and the storm has passed,” said Silagy.
He’s confident in Turkey Point’s structural integrity.
“Turkey Point actually had a direct impact hit by Hurricane Andrew, a category 5, and suffered no damage to its nuclear facilities,” Silagy stated.
Bertot said in addition to Turkey Point they have several natural gas plants that supply South Florida with power.
“We don’t turn those off. We continue to generate power during the storm. Now if we have any damage to a plant it’s prioritized. It’s the first thing that we fix,” she said.
Andrew did, however, cause $90 million in damage to surrounding buildings. The storm left the power plant on backup generators and officials had to cool down the nuclear reactors after shutting the plant down completely. Nuclear reactors must be cooled after they are shut down, otherwise a meltdown can occur, which can lead to hydrogen-air explosions and the escape of radioactive material.
Turkey Point’s reactors are protected by six feet of steel-reinforced concrete and sit 20 feet about sea level. Turkey Point has backup generators and extra fuel. The St. Lucie plant is equally protected.
“We will not take any chances and those plants will be secured,” said Silagy.
Once the nuclear plants are shutdown, other non-nuclear plants, fossil and natural gas, are expected to generate enough to power to make up for losses unless they are severely damaged by the storm.
FP&L said it invested about $3 billion to fortify its electrical grid in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana.
‘Nowhere in the Keys will be safe’: Irma will strengthen to a Category 5 storm when it hits the US mainland as 1.4m terrified Floridians and Georgia are ordered to abandon their homes
Hurricane Irma is expected to make landfall in southern Florida by early Sunday morning
Miami is expected to bear the brunt of Irma, a Category 5 storm clocking 150mph winds
An estimated 1.4 million people are under evacuation in Florida and Georgia
Florida Gov. Rick Scott said residents under evacuation in southern coastal areas need to leave by midnight
Since evacuation orders were issued, there’s been heavy traffic on all northbound highways
The storm has the potential to do $125billion worth of damage when it strikes Miami – and possibly much more
Irma has caused devastation in the Caribbean, killing at least 24 and leveling entire islands
Extensive damage has been reported on Barbuda and St Martin, with over 90 per cent of buildings wrecked
The storm is currently battering the northern coast of Cuba
By Ashley Collman For Dailymail.com and Regina F. Graham For Dailymail.com and Associated Press
PUBLISHED: 20:57 EDT, 7 September 2017 | UPDATED: 20:14 EDT, 8 September 2017
Hurricane Irma is once again forecast to hit the Florida Keys as a Category 5 storm, as more than a million people have fled its path and abandoned their homes.
Meteorologists expect the powerful hurricane to hit the Sunshine State between 5am and 7am ET on Sunday.
‘Obviously Hurricane Irma continues to be a threat that is going to devastate the United States,’ Brock Long, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), said at a press conference Friday morning. ‘We’re going to have a couple rough days.’
The storm was first downgraded from a Category 5 to a Category 4 earlier on Friday morning, but as of 5pm ET on Friday, it is predicted to hit the U.S. as a Category 5. This will only be the fourth time ever a Category 5 has hit US mainland.
As of 6.30pm ET Friday, the hurricane is moving west at 12 mph and located 345 miles southeast of Miami.
Government officials along with the National Hurricane Center have cautioned that Irma is ‘extremely dangerous’ with maximum sustained winds of 155 mph. That’s strong enough to bring down power poles, uproot trees and rip the roofs off of homes.
In preparation for what is predicted to be the most powerful hurricane to hit the United States in years, an estimated 1.4million people have been given mandatory evacuation orders in both Florida and Georgia.
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The above map shows Hurricane Irma’s current projected track towards the U.S. and up the state of Florida this weekend
Boarded up buildings are seen in preparation of Hurricane Irma during a mandatory evacuation in Miami Beach, Florida on Friday
People use their cellphones near boarded up stores in preparation of Hurricane Irma in Miami Beach, Florida on Friday
Hundreds of people gather in an emergency shelter at the Miami-Dade County Fair Expo Center in Miami, Florida on Friday
A message to Hurricane Irma is written on the facade of a boarded restaurant on Friday in Miami Beach, Florida
An empty beach is seen before the arrival of hurricane Irma in Miami, Florida on Friday
Traffic along Interstate 75 north, rear, crawls toward Atlanta as drivers flee Hurricane Irma on Friday in Griffin, Georgia
The Worth Avenue shopping district is shown after a mandatory evacuation order went into effect on the barrier island of Palm Beach, Florida on Friday
In this geocolor image GOES-16 satellite image taken on Friday, Hurricane Irma, center, approaches Cuba and Florida, with Hurricane Katia, left, in the Gulf of Mexico, and Hurricane Jose, right, in the Atlantic Ocean
Hurricane Irma is driving toward Florida passing the eastern end of Cuba as Hurricane Katia (L) is also seen in this NASA GOES satellite image taken at 1pm ET
Apocalyptic scenes are playing out across the Sunshine State, as more than a million people flee Hurricane Irma’s wrath.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott is telling residents in the southern coastal evacuation areas to leave by midnight.
‘If you are planning to leave and do not leave tonight, you will have to ride out this extremely dangerous storm at your own risk,’ Scott said at a Friday press conference.
He also urged residents on the Gulf Coast to take evacuation orders seriously since Irma’s path has moved slightly west.
‘You are not going to survive this if it happens,’ Scott said. ‘Now is the time to evacuate.’
The forecasts show that dangerous storm surges could begin as early as Saturday night before the storm even hits Florida.
It’s then expected to track directly up the state, crossing the state line into Georgia early next week.
Hurricane Irma killed at least 24 people in the Caribbean and left thousands homeless as it devastated small islands in its path. And it’s already proved deadly in the U.S. A man installing hurricane shutters on his Florida home fell off a ladder and died on Thursday.
The National Hurricane Center issued hurricane warnings for the Keys and parts of South Florida and Lake Okeechobee. It added a storm surge warning and extended watch areas wrapping around much of the peninsula.
For Irma, forecasters predicted a storm surge of 6 to 12 feet above ground level along Florida’s southwest coast and in the Keys. As much as a foot of rain could fall across the state, with isolated spots receiving 20 inches.
Scott has been pleading with his citizens all week to evacuate if they are ordered to, and to prepare – no matter the direction of the storm.
CURRENT EVACUATION ORDERS FOR THE U.S.
FLORIDA
Mandatory evacuations
Monroe County: This mandatory order stands for the entire Florida Keys. About 31,000 people were evacuated as of 6pm Wednesday
Miami-Dade County: Mandatory evacuations for all of Zone A, all of Zone B, and portions of Zone C.
Broward County: Voluntary evacuations of mobile homes and low-lying areas; mandatory evacuation of all areas east of U.S. 1 including barrier islands beginning Thursday
Brevard County: Mandatory evacuations for Zone A, Merritt Island, barrier islands, and some low-lying mainland areas along Indian River Lagoon beginning Friday
Lake Okeechobee: Florida officials want residents to evacuate the area directly south of Lake Okeechobee. A voluntary evacuation was issued for the cities of South Bay, Lake Harbor, Pahokee, Moore Haven, Clewiston, Belle Glade and Canal Point. Mandatory evacuations for these cities will be put into effect Saturday morning.
Collier County: Mandatory evacuations for Goodland, Everglades City, Chokoloskee, and all mobile homes beginning on Friday
Glades County: Residents in zone A must evacuate by noon Friday. Everyone living in an RV park, mobile home or a building constructed before 1992 must also evacuate.
Flagler County: Mandatory evacuations for nursing homes, all varieties of assisted living facilities, and community residential group homes within coastal and Intracoastal areas and voluntary evacuation for zones A, B, C, F beginning on Thursday; mandatory for Zones A,B,C,F, and substandard housing beginning on Saturday
Lee County: Mandatory evacuations for barrier islands – Bonita Beach, Fort Myers Beach, Sanibel, Captiva, and Pine Island beginning Friday morning
Martin County: Mandatory for barrier islands, manufactured homes, and low-lying areas beginning Saturday
Palm Beach County: Mandatory evacuations for Zone A and B, voluntary for Zone C
Pinellas County: Mandatory evacuations all mobile homes and Zone A
Indian River County: Mandatory evacuations for low lying areas go into effect on Saturday
St. Johns County: Mandatory evacuation go into effect Saturday morning for Zones A and B
Duval County: Residents in Zones A and B and those living in mobile homes and low-lying homes are instructed to evacuate immediately
Nassau County: Mandatory evacations go into effect at 6pm Friday for people who live in zones A, C and F
Citrus County: Mandatory evacuation for residents west of U.S. Highway 19, those living one and a half miles east of U.S. 19, Crystal River residents, residents living in low-lying areas, and residents living in mobile homes, manufactured homes and all unsafe structures.
Hernando County: Mandatory evacuation for coastal zones A and B and mobile homes countywide.
Hendry County: Mandatory evaciation for Clewiston, Hookers Point, Harlem, Flaghole, Montura Ranch Estates, and communities within the Mid-County MSBU which incudes Ladeca, Pioneer Plantation and Leon-Dennis Subdivision. resiednts in no-slab build homes, mobile homes trailers and RVs are under voluntary evacuation.
Sarasota County: People living in evacuation Zone A are to leave between 2pm Friday and 8pm Saturday.
Pasco County: Mandatory evacuation for residents who live west of U.S. 19, north of Fox Hollow, west of Little Rd and special needs residents throughout the county.
Voluntary evacuations:
St. Lucie County: Voluntary evacuations
DeSoto County: Voluntary evacuation for people in low-lying/flood prine areas and residents living in mobile homes and RV parks
Charlotte County: Voluntary evacuations on Don Pedro Island, Knight Island, Little Gasparilla Island, Gasparilla Island, Manasota Key and those living in mobile homes
Okeechobee County: Voluntary evacuations of low-lying areas prone to flooding
Volusia County: Voluntary evacuations of residents in beachside, low-lying areas and in RV, mobile or manufactured homes.
Polk County: Voluntary evacuation for residents in manufactured homes and flood-prone areas
Hillsborough County: Voluntary evacuations for residents in Zone A who are registered for special needs shelters staring 8am Friday.
Manatee County: Voluntary evacuations for Zone A
Highlands county: Voluntary evacuation for residents who live in low-lying areas and manufactured mobile homes.
GEORGIA
Georgia ordered the evacuation of the state’s coastal areas. It applies to all areas east of Interstate 95, including the city of Savannah.
The above map shows the counties in Florida that currently have mandatory or voluntary evacuations. Note that evacuations may only pertain to certain residents or areas within the county
Towns to the south of Lake Okeechobee are under evacuation over fears that the dam could overflow
The governor of Georgia has also ordered the evacuations of the state’s coastal areas, including the city of Savannah
The latest forecasts show Hurricane Irma hitting Miami Sunday morning and then travelling directly up the state to Georgia
As of Friday, Irma was battering the northeast coast of Cuba, on a northwestern track that will see it pass the Bahamas as well
The hurricane as of 12:15pm on Friday, as seen from radar satellite. The hurricane weakened to a Category 4 storm overnight
Both Florida and Georgia were seeing traffic jams of people trying to flee the hurricane Friday afternoon
At a Friday morning press conference, his message grew even more dire.
‘We’re running out of time. The storm is almost here. If you are in an evacuation storm you need to go now,’ he said.
He added: ‘This is a catastrophic storm that our state has never seen. We can rebuild your home but we can’t rebuild your life. Protecting life is our absolute top priority. Our number one priority is protecting everyone’s life. Everyone’s life is important. No resource or expense will be spared to protect families.’
While current projects show the storm hitting Miami and then going up the state’s east coast towards Florida, Scott said that all Floridians needed to prepare because the storm’s so large and powerful that it will cause serious winds and storm surge on both coasts.
‘It is wider than our entire state and could cause major and life-threatening impacts from coast to coast. Regardless of which coast you live on, be prepared to evacuate,’ Scott said.
He ordered all state offices, schools, colleges and universities to close from Friday until Monday to free up space for evacuation shelters and staging. Most school districts and universities had already voluntarily agreed to close due to the looming arrival of Hurricane Irma over the weekend – but many school districts and colleges in north central and northwest Florida had remained open.
Boarded up stores are seen in preparation of Hurricane Irma during a mandatory evacuation in Miami Beach, Florida, on Friday
Business owners left less-than-polite messages for the incoming storm
A strip club is boarded up in preparation of Hurricane Irma during a mandatory evacuation in Miami Beach, Florida on Friday
Tourists wait with their luggage as they prepare to leave in advance of Hurricane Irma during a mandatory evacuation in Miami Beach, Florida on Friday
A popular tourist area of South Beach is deserted during a mandatory evacuation in advance of Hurricane Irma in Miami Beach, Florida on Friday
Hundreds of people gather in an emergency shelter at the Miami-Dade County Fair Expo Center in Miami, Florida on Friday
‘Floridians are strong and resilient. In times like this we band together and help each other. We will continue working around the clock to help you prepare and after the storm we’ll be here to lift each other up and recover. We will make it through this together. Florida is an amazing melting pot of loving people,’ Scott said.
Gas shortages and gridlock plagued the evacuations, turning normally simple trips into tests of will. Interstates 75 and 95 north were bumper-to-bumper, while very few cars and tractor-trailers drove on the south lanes.
Floridians fleeing Hurricane Irma have turned Atlanta’s freeways into a ribbon of red neon brake lights, with traffic in some spots barely moving.
Thousands of the evacuees have been funneled to the city, since so many them are heading north on Interstate 75 straight to Atlanta.
Some ended up at Atlanta Motor Speedway, which opened its vast camp grounds to anyone trying to escape Irma.
It took 21 hours for Suzanne Pallot of Miami to reach Atlanta Thursday, in an SUV packed with four other people, their luggage and two cats.
After a night at a relative’s house, she heard weather forecasts predicting tropical storm force winds for Atlanta on Monday. So the group decided Friday to keep moving, this time to Memphis, Tennessee.
Manny Zuniga left his home in Miami at midnight Thursday, planning to drive through the night to avoid the traffic gridlock that he’d seen on television. It still took him 12 hours to get 230 miles to Orlando – a trip that normally takes four hours. Zuniga is headed for a relative’s house in Arkansas with his wife, two children, two dogs and a ferret.
‘We’re getting out of this state,’ he said, filling up the gas tank of his tightly-packed SUV in Orlando. ‘Irma is going to take all of Florida.’
Mari and Neal Michaud loaded their two children and dog into their small sport-utility vehicle and left their home near Cocoa Beach about 10am, bound for an impromptu vacation in Washington, D.C.
Using a phone app and calls to search for fuel along the way, they finally arrived at a convenience store that had gasoline nearly five hours later. They said the 60-mile trip up Interstate 95 should have taken an hour.
‘There was no gas and it’s gridlock. People are stranded on the sides of the highway,’ Mari said. ‘It’s 92 degrees out and little kids are out on the grass on the side of the road. No one can help them.’
Florida Governor Rick Scott warned that all of the state’s 20 million inhabitants should be prepared to evacuate as Hurricane Irma bears down for a direct hit on the southern US state
Dogs sit inside their cages as hundreds of people gather in a pet-friendly emergency shelter at the Miami-Dade County Fair Expo Center in Miami, Florida, September 8, 2017, ahead of Hurricane Irma
Christina Grimann, of Germany, was hoping to go on a cruise out of Miami, but now she is headed to Atlanta, GA to escape Hurricane Irma. At Miami International Airport, the last flights will be this afternoon with the airport closing tonight at 6pm. Most travelers are taking flights to anywhere they can find
U.S. President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago mansion is shown with shutters on the windows after a mandatory evacuation order went into effect on the barrier island of Palm Beach on Friday
The historic Mar-a-Lago is sandwiched on a narrow strip of land between the Atlantic Ocean and an intercoastal waterway
Traffic rolls at a crawl on the northbound lanes of Florida’s Turnpike near the intersection of I-75 in Wildwood on Friday
A traveler looks at a monitor listing canceled flights at Miami International Airport on Friday
A worker trims branches from trees near power lines in a downtown neighborhood in Orlando, Florida in preparation for Irma on Friday
Mang Don Man, of Miami, attends to her seven-month-old baby Vung Vaang Nuam as they eat lunch at a Red Cross shelter set up at North Miami Beach Senior High School on Friday
People at a Red Cross shelter set up at North Miami Beach Senior High School eat lunch on Friday
Noel Marsden said he, his girlfriend, her son and their dog left Pembroke Pines north of Miami with plans to ride out Irma in Savannah, only to find the city was also shutting down because of Irma. Marsden isn’t sure where they’ll all end up.
‘I’ve got a buddy in Atlanta and a buddy in Charlotte. We’ll wind up one of those two places because there are not hotels, I can tell you that,’ he said.
The governor said people fleeing could drive slowly in the shoulder lane on highways. He hasn’t reversed the southbound lanes because he said they were needed to deliver gas and supplies.
The Homeland Security Department is temporarily waiving federal restrictions on foreign ships’ transportation of cargo in order to help distribute fuel to states and territories affected by hurricanes Harvey and Irma.
In a statement Friday, acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke said, ‘This is a precautionary measure to ensure we have enough fuel to support lifesaving efforts, respond to the storm, and restore critical services and critical infrastructure.’ The seven-day waiver specifically affects shipments of refined products, such as gasoline, in hurricane-affected areas.
The Jones Act prohibits such shipments between U.S. points aboard foreign vessels. The last such waiver was in December 2012, for petroleum products delivered after Hurricane Sandy.
FEMA spokesman says Hurricane Irma will be devastating
Above, some of Key West’s famous roosters being evacuated during the storm
A person stands on a lifeguard stand at an empty South Beach on Friday in Miami Beach, Florida
St Johns County, Florida residents wait for the arrival of sandbags at Mills Field early Friday morning in Jacksonville, Florida
Customers buy supplies and wood to secure their property in preparation of Hurricane Irma early Friday in Miami, Florida
Florida residents flee Hurricane Irma as traffic backs up on I-75 at its intersection with the Florida Turnpike on Thursday
Boarded up buildings on normally bustling South Beach are shown on Friday, in Miami Beach, Florida
Heavy traffic traveling north bound on Interstate 75 moves slowly, as a major evacuation has begun in preparation for Hurricane Irma, Friday, Sept. 8, 2017, in Forrest Park, south of Atlanta
Luis Garcia, right, packs a car that he and five other members of his extended family will use to evacuate north from their home in Miami Beach, Fla, Friday, Sept. 8, 2017
A business owner boards up windows of a restaurant ahead of the expected arrival of Hurricane Irma in downtown Miami, Florida, USA, 08 September 2017
Orlando city employees and volunteers fill sandbags for residents as they prepare for Hurricane Irma on Friday
The above graphic shows Hurricane Irma compared to 1992’s devastating Hurricane Andrew, the costliest hurricane in Florida’s history
Combined satellite images show Hurricane Andrew and Irma
Airline seats out of Florida were in short supply as well but American, United and Delta all said Thursday that they were adding extra flights in the next couple days.
CURRENT HURRICANE WARNINGS IN PLACE:
Jupiter Inlet southward around the Florida peninsula to Bonita Beach
Florida Keys
Lake Okeechobee
Florida Bay
Southeastern Bahamas
Cuban provinces of Camaguey, Ciego de Avila, Sancti Spiritus, and Villa Clara
Central Bahamas
Northwestern Bahama
An armed man caused extra panic and delays at Miami airport on Thursday night after he was shot by police – prompting the evacuation of an entire terminal.
Officials across Florida, meanwhile, opened shelters for people who chose not to leave town. Florida’s emergency management division says nearly 6,000 people are already huddling in shelters ahead of Hurricane Irma. Most of the evacuees are gathered in shelters in Broward and Miami-Dade counties, where catastrophic Category 4 winds are expected to hit this weekend.
Miami- Dade County planned to open 43 shelters with room for more than 100,000 people by Friday night.
That includes the homeless. The Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust says more than 1,000 people live on the streets in Miami, and only 300 have been evacuated so far. Many are willingly moving to shelters, but some have to be detained using the ‘Baker Act’, a law which allows officers to hospitalize people with mental illness against their will.
The Associated Press was there as Miami police handcuffed one man to evacuate a waterfront park. Another man resisted until police threatened to hospitalize him instead.
Ron Book with the homeless trust says anybody who stays on the streets during this storm is ‘going to die.’
Evacuation orders are multiplying by the hour in Florida. Currently the entire southern tip of Florida is under evacuation, and those orders continue county by county almost all the way up the east coast.
Several small communities around Lake Okeechobee in the south-central part of Florida were added to the evacuation list because the lake may overflow, the governor said – but he added that engineers expect the protective dike around the lake to hold up.
Some residents in downtown Miami were also advised to leave, if they leave near one of the city’s two dozen construction cranes.
Construction sites across Irma’s potential path in Florida are being locked down to prevent building materials, tools and debris from becoming flying missiles in hurricane winds. The horizontal arms of the tall tower cranes, however, will remain loose despite the potential danger of collapse. City officials say they cannot be tied down or moved. Miami officials say it would take two weeks to move the cranes.
On Thursday, the governor of Georgia also ordered the evacuation of the state’s coastal areas, including the large city of Savannah – about 540,000 people. However, just where the storm will enter Georgia is to be determined. Forecasts show it could enter the state Monday anywhere from the Atlantic coast to the Alabama state line. The last time Georgia was struck by a hurricane of force Category 3 or higher happened in 1898.
A man bikes past a restaurant boarded up in preparation for hurricane Irma in Miami, Florida on Friday
People line up to refill propane during preparations for hurricane Irma in Miami, Florida on Friday
People line up to get gas during preparations for hurricane Irma in Miami, Florida on Friday
Cars line up in long lines waiting to get sandbags in preparation for Hurricane Irma on Friday
Supplies are loaded into a truck at the Sea Esta mobil home park during preparations for Hurricane Irma in Hallandale, Florida on Friday
People load up a car with supplies at the Sea Esta mobil home park during preparations for Hurricane Irma in Hallandale, Florida on Friday
A house is boarded up at the Sea Esta mobil home park during preparations for Hurricane Irma in Hallandale, Florida on Friday
Customers buy plywood sheets to protect their homes at a Home Depot in Florida City, Fla., Friday, Sept. 8, 2017
Traffic rolls at a crawl along the northbound lanes of Florida’s Turnpike near the intersection of Interstate 75 in Wildwood, Florida on Friday
Ryan Kaye loads sandbags into his truck at a makeshift filling station provided by the county as protection ahead of Hurricane Irma on Friday in Palm Coast, Florida
As additional evacuations continue to be announced, Irma could potentially create one of the largest mass exoduses in the country’s history.
Forecasters warn the storm could hit anywhere from Florida to North Carolina over the next few days. The most severe impacts will be felt on the eastern side of Florida, including Miami, West Palm Beach, Melbourne, Daytona Beach and Jacksonville.
AccuWeather founder, Dr Joel N Myers, said there was no way the U.S. was going to avoid another catastrophic weather event.
‘There will be massive damage in Florida. (It will be) the worst single hurricane to hit Florida since Hurricane Andrew in 1992,’ he said said. ‘It’s a monster hurricane out there – it’s bringing along with it something to be feared.
According to Credit Suisse, the storm has the potential to do $125billion worth of damage.
NASA has secured Kennedy Space Center and SpaceX launched an unmanned rocket for an experimental flight. Kennedy closed its doors to all nonessential staff and a crew of about 120 people will ride out the storm on site.
Most of the critical buildings at Kennedy are designed to withstand gusts of up to 135 mph. Irma’s wind could exceed that if it reaches Cape Canaveral.
Irma poses a bigger menace to power supplies in Florida than Hurricane Harvey did in Texas because Irma is packing near 200 mile-per-hour winds that could down power lines, close nuclear plants and threats to leave millions of homes and businesses in the dark for weeks.
A business owner boards up windows of a restaurant ahead of the expected arrival of Hurricane Irma in downtown Miami on Friday
A boarded up building on normally bustling South Beach is shown on Friday in Miami Beach, Florida
Customers at a Home Depot buy wood to secure their property in anticipation of Hurricane Irma early Friday in Miami, Florida
Customers at a Home Depot in South Miami Dade buy building materials to secure their property in anticipation of Hurricane Irma early Friday, Sept. 8, 2017 in Miami, Florida
Hanz Paez, left, and Cirous Amiri, right buy wood at a Home Depot in South Miami Dade to secure their property in anticipation of Hurricane Irma early Friday, Sept. 8, 2017 in Miami, Florida
Amy Nacollari, left, greets her friend Mandy Varna at a bus stop in Miami Beach, Florida, Friday, September 8, 2017
Leonel Geronimo, stuffs food into his suitcase as he and others wait for a bus in anticipation of Hurricane Irma in Miami Beach, Florida, Friday, September 8, 2017
Liz Hankins and James Kiernan, of North Lauderdale, fill trash bags with sand on Pompano Beach, Florida in preparation for Hurricane Irma on Friday
Gretchen, left, and Ron Levine of ‘A Paw Above’ in Hollywood, Florida, take care of 20 dogs and 21 cats as they have been inundated with pet care requests by people fleeing Hurricane Irma on Friday
And another concern is two nuclear power plants in the storm’s track.
Florida Power & Light’s Turkey Point and St. Lucie plants, which can supply power to almost two million homes, are under threat.
Spokesman Peter Robbins said: ‘Based on the current track, we would expect severe weather in Florida starting Saturday, meaning we would potentially shut down before that point.’
The company, a subsidiary of NextEra Energy Inc, is watching the weather and would adjust any plans as necessary.
It can take more than 24 hours to shut down a reactor, so the decision will have to be made well in advance.
DEVASTATION CAUSED BY HURRICANE ANDREW IN 1992
Hurricane Andrew was a Category Five hurricane that struck the Bahamas and Florida in mid-August 1992.
It was the most destructive hurricane to ever hit Florida, and the costliest to the United States until Katrina in 2005.
The storm sustained wind speeds as high as 165 mph and passed directly through Miami-Dade County.
It stripped many homes of all but their foundations, and destroyed more than 63,500 homes.
The storm cost a total of $26.5 billion in damages and left 65 people dead.
Hurricane Andrew was a Category Five hurricane that struck the Bahamas and Florida in mid-August 1992. Pictured is the devastation it left
But bosses are confident the power plants can weather the 185mph storm, as they both have a track record of surviving hurricanes.
The National Hurricane Center predicted Irma would remain at category 4 for the next day or two as it passes between Cuba and the Bahamas.
The last major hurricane – a storm with winds of at least 111 mph – to hit Florida was Wilma in 2005. Its eye cut through the state’s southern third as it packed winds of 120 mph. Five people died. Andrew slammed into Florida as a Category 5 storm in 1992 and at the time was the costliest hurricane in U.S. history with damages of $26.5 billion.
With winds that peaked at 185 mph, Irma was the most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic.
Irma’s weakening comes at a cost. When that happened, its hurricane-force wind field expanded greatly, to about 110 miles wide, said Jeff Masters, meteorology director at the private service Weather Underground.
‘It’s a big storm,’ Masters said. ‘It’s not as big as Katrina, but it is definitely a large hurricane now.’
FEMA chief Brock Long said people in Florida and other states must heed evacuation orders as the Category 4 hurricane surges towards the US after causing death and destruction in the Caribbean.
‘Bottom line is the majority of people along the coast have never experienced a major hurricane like this. It will be truly devastating,’ he told CNN.
‘The entire southeastern United States better wake up and pay attention.’
President Donald Trump says Hurricane Irma ‘is a storm of absolutely historic destructive potential.’
In a video posted to Facebook, the president urges those in Irma’s path to be vigilant and heed the recommendations of all government officials.
Trump says his administration is doing all it can to help with disaster preparations, and the U.S. ‘stands united’ to address the storm.
He says, ‘We will endure and come back stronger than ever before.’
Trump also spoke briefly to reporters Friday before boarding Marine One to travel to Camp David for the weekend. He told reporters, ‘Hopefully everything will go well.’
After struggling to hear the shouted questions from reporters, he says that while the storm is ‘a really bad one,’ the U.S. is prepared for the dangerous major hurricane heading toward Florida.
Trump’s exclusive Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach – the unofficial Southern White House – sits in the path of the storm.
US Air Force Reserve weather officer Maj. Jeremy DeHart flew through the eye of Irma at 10,000 feet Wednesday and through Hurricane Harvey just before it hit Texas last month.
Above, destruction seen in Puerto Rico after the storm passed north of the island on Thursday
Three people died in Puerto Rico after the storm scratched the island. Above, a scene of Puerto Rico after the storm
Palm trees blow in the gale-force winds as Hurricane Irma hit Haiti on Thursday
Fronds are blown off palm trees and streets are flooded with storm surge in the Dominican Republic on Thursday
Marine firefighters from the French city of Marseille board a plane to help the storm ravaged French Caribbean
In this undated photo provided by the British Ministry of Defence on Friday taken from a Royal Navy helicopter, a RLC Mexeflote approaches Sandy Bay Village beach, in the British oversees territory of Anguilla loaded with the 2 JCBs, 1 flatbed lorry, fork lift truck, BV 206 multi terrain vehicle, a Land Rover and a mobile generator
Hurricane Irma destroyed 90 percent of the tiny island of Barbuda (above) when it made landfall early on Wednesday. The Caribbean island was reduced to rubble, according to its Prime Minister Gaston Browne
Destruction: Dozens of cars were thrown around the hotel car park by the 185mph winds which tore through St Martin
his Wednesday photo shows storm damage in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma in St. Martin
He said Irma’s intensity set it apart from other storms.
‘Spectacular is the word that keeps coming to mind. Pictures don’t do it justice. Satellite images can’t do it justice,’ DeHart said.
The five living former U.S. presidents said Thursday they would team up to create the ‘One America Appeal’ to raise money for storm recovery as Texas and Louisiana seek to regroup from Harvey and Florida and the Atlantic coast brace for Hurricane Irma.
The hurricane recovery effort was announced by former presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter.
Online donations can be made at OneAmericaAppeal.org.
President Trump tweeted his support of the plan: ‘We will confront ANY challenge, no matter how strong the winds or high the water. I’m proud to stand with Presidents for #OneAmericaAppeal.’
As people along the Atlantic coast anxiously watched the behemoth, Irma battered the northern Caribbean, killing at least 24 people and leaving thousands homeless after destroying buildings and uprooting trees.
Hurricane Irma battered the Turks and Caicos Islands early Friday and Cuba evacuated tourists from beachside resorts as the fearsome storm continued a rampage through the Caribbean that has killed at least 24 people, with Florida in its sights.
Nine deaths were reported in the French Caribbean (St Martin and St Barthelemy), three in Puerto Rico, four in the U.S. Virgin Islands, four in the British Virgin Islands, two on the Dutch side of St. Maarten, one on Barbuda and one on Anguilla.
Waves as high as 20 feet were expected in the Turks and Caicos. Communications went down as the storm slammed into the islands, and the extent of the devastation was unclear.
Irma rolled past the Dominican Republic and Haiti on Thursday and spun along the northern coast of Cuba on Friday morning. Thousands of tourists were evacuated from low-lying keys off the Cuban coast Thursday in anticipation of 20-foot storm surges. Buses loaded with tourists began streaming out of Santa Maria, Cayo Coco, Cayo Guillermo and other keys dotted with all-inclusive resorts.
The Maersk Line container ship Sealand Illinois heads out to sea after leaving the Port of Miami on Friday. The ship is headed to Portugal, according to a marine traffic website
A lone cyclist rides by The Carlyle Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida on Friday
British tourists wait for a ride as they leave ahead of the expected arrival of Hurricane Irma in Miami, Florida on Friday
A customer watches news reports at a French restaurant ahead of the expected arrival of Hurricane Irma in Miami, Florida, on Friday
Residents in Jacksonville County, Florida shovel bags of sand on Friday, ahead of Hurricane Irma
All residents of the area were under mandatory evacuation orders from the Cuban government, which was moving tens of thousands of people from vulnerable coastline.
French, British and Dutch military authorities rushed aid to a devastated string of Caribbean islands where at least 11 people were dead and thousands homeless. Warships and planes were sent with food, water and troops after the hurricane smashed homes, schools and roads, laying waste to some of the world’s most beautiful and exclusive tourist destinations.
The first islands hit by the storm were scenes of terrible destruction.
The cafes and clothing shops of the picturesque seaside village of Marigot were submerged in brown floodwaters. The toll could rise because rescue teams had yet to get a complete look at the damage.
Looting was reported in St. Martin. Annick Girardin, minister for France’s overseas territories, described on BFM television Friday ‘scenes of pillaging’ of televisions as well as food and water. She lamented ‘how people can take advantage of the distress of others’ and said it’s essential for police to restore order and ensure urgent care for victims.
The U.S. Consulate General in Curacao said it believes about 6,000 Americans are stranded on St. Martin. It said it was working with the U.S. and other governments to try to figure out how to get the Americans off the island either by air or boat. Frantic Americans were calling home to relatives to try to get them off the island ahead of Hurricane Jose.
The hospital on St. Thomas was destroyed and dozens of patients were being evacuated to St. Croix and Puerto Rico by the U.S. Coast Guard. Local official said a U.S. Navy hospital ship was arriving as early as Friday to care for unknown numbers of injured and two Air Force C-130s transport planes were bringing in food and water.
Power lines and towers were toppled, leaves were stripped off plants and trees, a water and sewage treatment plants was heavily damaged and the harbor was in ruins, along with hundreds of homes and dozens of businesses. Gov. Kenneth Mapp imposed a 6 p.m. curfew.
The primary focus for now is ‘making sure people have meals, water and shelter,’ Mapp said. ‘An event of this magnitude is very chilling.’
Irma also slammed the French island of St. Barts, tearing off roofs and knocking out electricity in the high-end tourist destination.
French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said 100,000 food rations were sent to St. Barts and St. Martin, the equivalent of four days of supplies.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said the storm ’caused wide-scale destruction of infrastructure, houses and businesses.’
‘There is no power, no gasoline, no running water. Houses are under water, cars are floating through the streets, inhabitants are sitting in the dark in ruined houses and are cut off from the outside world,’ he said.
Residents line up in Dania Beach, Florida on Thursday to fill up sandbags in preparation for Hurricane Irma
People walk past empty shelves where bread is normally sold in a Walmart store ahead of Hurricane Irma’s expected arrival in North Miami Beach
Miami Beach was deserted on Thursday after a mandatory evacuation was ordered ahead of Irma
An armed man caused extra panic and delays at Miami airport on Thursday night after he was shot by police – prompting the evacuation (above) of an entire terminal
Traffic was banked up in Pasco County, Florida late on Thursday night as residents evacuated the state
Big waves smashed a dozen homes into rubble in the Dominican fishing community of Nagua, but work crews said all the residents had left before the storm. Officials said 11,200 people in all had evacuated vulnerable areas, while 55,000 soldiers had been deployed to help the cleanup.
In Haiti, two people were injured by a falling tree, a national roadway was blocked by debris and roofs were torn from houses along the northern coast but there were no immediate reports of deaths. Officials warned that could change as Irma continued to lash Haiti, where deforested hillsides are prone to devastating mudslides that have wiped out entire neighborhoods of precariously built homes in flood zones.
‘We are vulnerable. We don’t have any equipment to help the population,’ Josue Alusma, mayor of the northern city of Port de Paix, said on Radio Zenith FM.
French President Emmanuel Macron’s office said he would go to the islands as soon as the weather permits it.
On Barbuda, nearly every building was damaged when the hurricane’s core crossed almost directly over the island early Wednesday. About 60 percent of its roughly 1,400 residents were left homeless, Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne said.
Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami, said Irma could easily prove to be the costliest storm in U.S. history.
‘Take it seriously, because this is the real deal,’ said Maj. Jeremy DeHart, a U.S. Air Force Reserve weather officer who flew through the eye of Irma at 10,000 feet.
Farther out in the Atlantic, Hurricane Jose, a Category 3 storm with 125 mph winds, posed a potential threat for Saturday to some of the same islands ravaged by Irma.
The Breaking and Developing Story 1: Mandatory Evacuation Ordered For South Florida — Floridians Flee Monster “Nuclear” Category 5 Hurricane Irma With Wind Speeds Exceeding 185 MPH That Could Hit Either Coast and Miami/Dade County By Saturday — High Rise Buildings With Glass Windows Near Construction Cranes A Major Concern — Gas Shortage A Serious Major Problem For Those Evacuating — Get Out If You Can Now! — When Will Irma Turn North? — Videos —
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Above: Radar image of Irma from the Puerto Rico radar at 9 pm EDT September 6, 2017.
After clobbering the Lesser Antilles islands of Barbuda, Saint Barthelemy, Anguilla, and Saint Martin/Sint Maarten early Wednesday morning, Hurricane Irma carried its march of destruction into the British Virgin Islands on Wednesday afternoon, still packing top winds of 185 mph. As of 5 pm EDT Wednesday, Irma had spent a remarkable 1.5 days as a Category 5 hurricane, which is the 7th longest stretch on record in the Atlantic, according to Dr. Phil Klotzbach.
Figure 1. MODIS image of Irma on Wednesday afternoon, September 6, 2017. The eye of the storm was over the British Virgin Islands. Image credit: NASA.
Longer-range outlook for Irma: Cuba, The Bahamas, and Southeast U.S.
The 12Z Wednesday runs of our top four track models—the European, GFS, HWRF, and UKMET models—were in strikingly close agreement that Irma will continue on a west-northwest track till Saturday, then arc sharply to the north-northwest. All four model runs placed the center of Irma within roughly 50 miles of Miami on Sunday morning; the latest 18Z GFS was also there. The average track error in a 4-day forecast is 175 miles, but this remarkable agreement among the models lends additional confidence to the NHC forecast track, which brings Irma over or very near southeast Florida on Sunday. All four models move Irma northward along or near Florida’s east coast, with landfall in Georgia or South Carolina on Monday.
Bahamas: From late Thursday into Friday, Irma will be moving through or just south of the Southeast Bahamas, which are under a Hurricane Warning along with the Central Bahamas. Irma has the potential to be a devastating storm for The Bahamas, especially its southern islands, and residents should rush any needed preparations to completion.
Cuba: From Friday into Saturday, Irma will be paralleling the north coast of Cuba, and it is possible Irma’s center will move just inland along the coast for some period of time. Parts of central Cuba are within the “cone of uncertainty” in the official NHC forecast. Residents of Cuba will need to pay very close attention to Irma’s track. The eastern two-thirds of Cuba was under a Hurricane Watch as of Wednesday afternoon. Irma is not expected to cross Cuba and move into the Caribbean.
Florida: Where and when Irma makes its right-hand turn will largely determine its track with respect to the Florida peninsula. Based on recent ensemble models (in which a large number of parallel runs are carried out to simulate uncertainty in the atmosphere), it is still possible that Irma could take a south-to-north inland track across the Florida peninsula, or a track that stays just east of Florida’s East Coast. However, it appears most likely that Irma will hug the state’s East Coast from south to north, potentially moving inland over some sections. This type of track is far different from those of Hurricane Andrew (1992) and Katrina (2005), which moved from east to west across the Miami metro area. A south-to-north track would affect a much larger part of this elongated metroplex. In an interview published in Capital Weather Gang in August, Bryan Norcross touches on the many issues that a hurricane like Irma could bring to South Florida, which has not experienced a storm this strong in 25 years.
Depending on Irma’s track, hurricane conditions could extend well inland, as well as northward along the length of the peninsula. The entire Florida peninsula is within the five-day cone of uncertainty in the official NHC forecast, and all residents of these areas should pay close attention to the progress of Irma, especially along Florida’s East Coast. NHC may issue Hurricane Watches for parts of South Florida and the Keys on Thursday.
Irma’s intensity will likely undergo fluctuations over the next couple of days, but intensity models show only gradual weakening, and NHC maintains Irma as a Cat 5 storm through Friday. Wind shear is predicted to remain low to moderate along Irma’s path until Saturday, and Irma will be passing over waters that are as warm or slightly warmer than its current environment (see discussion in our Tuesday PM post). Land interaction with Cuba could weaken Irma somewhat, but we must assume that Irma will be at least a Category 4 as it nears South Florida on Sunday, as predicted by NHC.
Georgia/South Carolina/North Carolina: The GFS, European, and UKMET models from 12Z Wednesday track Irma from just off the northeast Florida coast inland near the Georgia/South Carolina border on Monday. The official NHC forecast places Irma near the Georgia coast on Monday afternoon at Category 3 strength. Even if Irma’s winds weaken and its Saffir-Simpson category drops, Irma could still be capable of extreme storm surge, depending on its track and the geography of its landfall location(s). Storm surge expert Dr. Hal Needham noted in a blog postWednesday: “The region from northeast Florida (St. Augustine) through all of the Georgia coast and southwest South Carolina is particularly vulnerable to storm surge, whether or not Irma makes a direct landfall in that region.”
Figure 2. The 20 track forecasts for Irma from the 12Z Wednesday, September 6, 2017 GFS model ensemble forecast. Image credit: CFAN.
Figure 3. The 12Z September 6, 2017, track forecast by the operational European model for Irma (red line, adjusted by CFAN using a proprietary technique that accounts for storm movement since 12Z Wednesday), along with the track of the average of the 50 members of the European model ensemble (heavy black line), and the 50 track forecasts from the 12Z Wednesday European model ensemble forecast (grey lines). Image credit: CFAN.
Figure 4. The 12Z September 6, 2017, track forecast by the operational European model for Irma (red line, adjusted by CFAN using a proprietary technique that accounts for storm movement since 12Z Wednesday), along with the track of the average of the 50 members of the European model ensemble (heavy black line), and the track forecasts from the “high probability cluster” (grey lines)—the four European model ensemble members that have performed best with Irma thus far. Image credit: CFAN.
Irma’s storm surge
Irma is a medium-large hurricane, and is expected to grow in size as it progresses west-northwest over the next four days. As of 5 pm EDT Wednesday, the diameter of hurricane-force winds surrounding Irma was up to 105 miles wide, and the diameter of tropical storm-force winds was up to 310 miles. The official NHC forecast predicted that these diameters would grow to 115 miles and 345 miles, respectively, by Friday, when Irma will be pounding the central Bahamas. This increase in size will be due to eyewall replacement cycles, which spread out the wind field over a larger area, and due to the fact that storms moving towards the pole get more spin from the Earth’s spin.
Irma’s large wind field is putting in motion a vast amount of water, which is spiraling into the center of Irma and creating a large mound. In the open ocean, that water is forced downward, pushing deeper water outward, and the sea surface is not elevated more than a few feet. However, once the hurricane drives that mound of water into a shallow area near land, the water cannot flow downwards, and instead piles up and is forced on land, creating a storm surge. In the Turks and Caicos Island and in the southeastern and central Bahamas, a highly destructive storm surge of 15 – 20 feet above ground is expected near the coast to the right of where the eyewall hits.
A potentially catastrophic storm surge for Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina
If Irma makes a trek up the East Coast from Miami to southern South Carolina as a Category 3 or 4 hurricane, as the models currently suggest, the portions of the coast that the eyewall touches will potentially see a massive and catastrophic storm surge, breaking all-time storm surge records and causing many billions of dollars in damage. Even areas up to a hundred miles to the north of where the center makes landfall could potentially see record storm surges. The area of most concern is the northern coast of Florida, the coast of Georgia, and the southern coast of South Carolina, due to the concave shape of the coast, which will act to funnel and concentrate the storm surge to ridiculous heights. If we look at wunderground’s storm surge maps for the U.S. East Coast, we see that in a worst-case Category 3 hurricane hitting at high tide, the storm tide (the combined effect of the storm surge and the tide) ranges from 17 – 20’ above ground along the northern coast of Florida, and 18 – 23 feet above ground along the Georgia coast. If Irma is a Cat 4, these numbers increase to 22 – 28 feet for the coast of Georgia. This is a Katrina-level storm surge, the kind that causes incredible destruction and mass casualties among those foolish enough to refuse to evacuate.
Figure 5. Maximum of the “Maximum Envelope of Waters” (MOM) storm tide image for a composite maximum surge for a large suite of possible mid-strength Category 3 hurricanes (sustained winds of 120 mph) hitting at high tide (a tide level of 3.5’) along the coast of Georgia. What’s plotted here is the storm tide–the height above ground of the storm surge, plus an additional rise in case the storm hits at high tide. Empty brownish grid cells with no coloration show where no inundation is computed to occur. Inundation of 19 – 23’ will occur in a worst-case scenario along most of the coast. Note that not all sections of the coast will experience this surge level simultaneously.
The image was created using the National Hurricane Center’s Sea, Lake, and Overland Surge from Hurricanes (SLOSH) model. This model divides the U.S. coast up into 20 or so separate grids (called basins) that storm surge simulations are performed for. If one takes the maximum the water reaches at any point in time at every grid cell in a SLOSH basin, a composite “Maximum Envelope of Water” (MEOW) plot can be made. MEOW plots are created for every category of storm moving in a particular direction, usually stratified by forward speed and tide elevation. Simulations are run using a variety of storm sizes. If one takes the maximum storm surge height for all the MEOW plots at every grid cell, one can generate a worst-case storm surge for the coast for each Saffir-Simpson hurricane category: 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. These so-called “Maximum Of the MEOWs”, or “MOMs” are what are plotted in the SLOSH storm surge images on wunderground, and are the composite worst-case scenario storm surges from about 15,000 different hypothetical hurricanes for each SLOSH basin. All of the MOM images we provide are for high tide, and were performed using the 2009 version of the SLOSH Display Package provided to wunderground by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Interstate highways are the thick grey-green lines, and smaller highways are shown as dark green and light green lines. If a road is inundated by storm surge, it will not appear. County boundaries are shown in red.
Figure 6. Maximum of the “Maximum Envelope of Waters” (MOM) water depth image for a composite maximum surge for a large suite of possible mid-strength Category 3 hurricanes (sustained winds of 120 mph) hitting at high tide (a tide level of 2.5’) along the coast of South Carolina near Charleston. If Irma is a Cat 3 in South Carolina, a worst-case 17 – 21’ storm tide can occur. Not all sections of the coast will experience this surge level simultaneously.
Figure 7. South Florida is not at as great of a risk of a high storm surge, since there is deep water offshore, and the mound of water the hurricane piles up can flow downward into the deep ocean instead of getting piled up on land. The worst-case storm tide from a Category 4 hurricane for the coast from Miami Beach to West Palm Beach is 7 – 9 feet. However, that deep water allows much larger waves to build up, and Irma will create big waves that will pound the coast and cause heavy damage. There is a region of the coast from downtown Miami southwards, including Biscayne Bay, where the water is shallow, and the storm tide can be up to 15 feet in a Category 4 hurricane. The Great Miami Hurricane of 1926, a Category 4 storm, brought a 10 – 15’ storm surge to the coast of Miami along Biscayne Bay.
Shown here is the Maximum of the “Maximum Envelope of Waters” (MOM) storm tide image for a composite maximum surge for a large suite of possible mid-strength Category 4 hurricanes (sustained winds of 140 mph) hitting at high tide (a tide level of 2.0’) along the coast of South Florida. Not all sections of the coast will experience this surge level simultaneously.
Figure 8. The Atlantic (Florida Straits) side of the Florida Keys also has deep water offshore, limiting the maximum storm surge in a Cat 4 to 8 – 10 feet. The risk is higher on the west (Florida Bay) side of the Keys, where the water is shallower; a worst-case storm tide of 12 – 15 feet can occur there. Any storm tide over six feet is extremely dangerous in the Florida Keys, due to the low elevation of the land. The greatest risk in the Keys, if the current NHC forecast verifies, would be on the Florida Bay (west) side of the Upper Keys, after the center of Irma moves just to the north. The counter-clockwise flow of air around the hurricane will then bring winds out of the southwest that will drive a large storm surge into the west side of the Upper Keys.
Shown here is the Maximum of the “Maximum Envelope of Waters” (MOM) storm tide image for a composite maximum surge for a large suite of possible mid-strength Category 4 hurricanes (sustained winds of 140 mph) hitting at high tide (a tide level of 2.0’) affecting the Florida Keys. Not all sections of the coast will experience this surge level simultaneously.
Two more hurricanes: Jose and Katia
Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center have their hands full with two new hurricanes joining Irma on Wednesday afternoon. Not since 2010 has the Atlantic had three hurricanes at once, as noted by David Roth (NOAA/NWS) on Twitter. The Atlantic record for simultaneous hurricanes is four, set in 1893 and 1998. The 2017 hurricane season to date is more than twice as active as usual—we’ve had a season’s worth of named storms, hurricanes, and intense hurricanes before even getting to the climatological halfway point of the season (September 10). Phil Klotzbach noted on Twitterthat only one other Atlantic season, 1893, has seen this many hurricanes (six) forming between Aug. 7 and Sept. 6.
Rapidly strengthening Hurricane Jose was located about 1040 miles east of the Lesser Antilles at 5 pm EDT Wednesday, with top sustained winds at 75 mph. Jose is headed at 16 mph on a steady west to west-northwest track, steered by the same ridge that is helping to direct Irma. Jose is just far enough east of Irma for the two storms to coexist without one impeding the other. Jose is traveling over warm SSTs of 28-29°C (82-84°F) in a moist atmosphere (mid-level relative humidity around 65%), and wind shear is predicted to remain around 10 knots for the next day or so. This should allow Jose to strengthen at a rapid clip, and NHC predicts Jose will be a major Category 3 hurricane by Friday. Increasing wind shear from that point on should tamp down the rapid intensification and may weaken Jose over time. On its current track, Jose would reach the northern Leeward Islands by Saturday, but the ridge is predicted to weaken enough by Saturday to allow Jose to arc just northeast of the islands.
Only a tropical depression early Wednesday, Hurricane Katia has also intensified quickly, with estimated top winds of 75 mph as of 5 pm EDT. Located in the Bay of Campeche about 185 miles north-northeast of Veracruz, Mexico, Katia is embedded in a very moist environment with numerous showers and thunderstorms along and south of a frontal zone. Wind shear will decrease to 5-10 knots by Thursday, and with help from the bay’s very warm waters (30-31°C or 86-88°F), Katia could continue to strengthen dramatically. The SHIPS model’s rapid intensification index indicates a near-even chance that Katia’s top sustained winds will increase by 45 mph by late Thursday, although the official NHC forecast at 5 pm EDT Wednesday brings Katia only to top-end Cat 1 intensity. Our top track models are unanimous in drifting Katia for a couple of days before driving it southwestward into the Mexican coast this weekend. Extremely heavy rains of 10 – 20” are possible along and near parts of the northeast Mexican coast, especially in the state of Veracruz, as Katia approaches and moves inland.
Figure 9. Triple trouble: three simultaneous hurricanes in the Atlantic for the first time in 7 years.
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South Asia floods kill 1,200 and shut 1.8 million children out of school
Hundreds dead in India, Nepal and Bangladesh, while millions have been forced from their homes and 18,000 schools shut down across the region
Heavy monsoon rains have brought Mumbai to a halt for a second day as the worst floods to strike south Asia in years continued to exact a deadly toll.
More than 1,200 people have died across India, Bangladesh and Nepal as a result of flooding, with 40 million affected by the devastation. At least six people, including two toddlers, were among the victims in and around India’s financial capital.
The devastating floods have also destroyed or damaged 18,000 schools, meaning that about 1.8 million children cannot go to classes, Save the Children warned on Thursday.
The charity said that hundreds of thousands of children could fall permanently out of the school system if education was not prioritised in relief efforts.
“We haven’t seen flooding on this scale in years and it’s putting the long-term education of an enormous number of children at great risk. From our experience, the importance of education is often under-valued in humanitarian crises and we simply cannot let this happen again. We cannot go backwards,” said Rafay Hussain, Save the Children’s general manager in Bihar state.
“We know that the longer children are out of school following a disaster like this the less likely it is that they’ll ever return. That’s why it’s so important that education is properly funded in this response, to get children back to the classroom as soon as it’s safe to do so and to safeguard their futures.”
On Wednesday, police said a 45-year-old woman and a one-year-old child, members of the same family, had died after their home in the north-eastern suburb of Vikhroli crumbled late on Tuesday, and a two-year-old girl had died in a wall collapse.
They said another three people had died after being swept away in the neighbouring city of Thane.
The rains have led to flooding in a broad arc stretching across the Himalayan foothills in Bangladesh, Nepal and India, causing landslides, damaging roads and electric towers and washing away tens of thousands of homes and vast swaths of farmland.
The International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) says the fourth significant floods this year have affected more than 7.4 million people in Bangladesh, damaging or destroying more than 697,000 houses.
They have killed 514 in India’s eastern state of Bihar, where 17.1 million have been affected, disaster management officials have been quoted as saying. In the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, about 2.5 million have been affected and the death toll stood at 109 on Tuesday, according to the Straits Times. The IFRC said landslides in Nepal had killed more than 100 people.
The IFRC – working with the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society and the Nepal Red Cross – has launched appeals to support almost 200,000 vulnerable people with immediate relief and long-term help with water and sanitation, health and shelter.
A passenger bus moves through a waterlogged road in Mumbai. Photograph: Shailesh Andrade
Streets in Mumbai have turned into rivers and people waded through waist-deep waters. On Tuesday, the city received about 12.7cm (5ins) of rain, paralysing public transport and leaving thousands of commuters stranded in their offices overnight.
Poor visibility and flooding also forced airport authorities to divert some flights while most were delayed by up to an hour.
The National Disaster Response Force has launched a rescue mission with police to evacuate people from low-lying areas but operations were thwarted by the continuous rain.
“The heavy rains, flooding, are delaying our rescue work. Even we are stranded,” said Amitesh Kumar, the joint police commissioner in Mumbai.
Images and video posted on social media showed the extent of the flooding.
Rainwater swamped the King Edward Memorial hospital in central Mumbai, forcing doctors to vacate the paediatric ward.
“We are worried about infections … the rain water is circulating rubbish that is now entering parts of the emergency ward,” said Ashutosh Desai, a doctor in the 1,800-bed hospital.
Although Mumbai is trying to build itself into a global financial hub, parts of the city struggle to cope during annual monsoon rains.
Floods in 2005 killed more than 500 people in the city. The majority of deaths occurred in shanty town slums, home to more than half of Mumbai’s population.
The meteorological department warned that the rains would continue for the next 24 hours.
Unabated construction on flood plains and coastal areas, as well as storm-water drains and waterways clogged by plastic garbage, have made the city increasingly vulnerable to storms.
Snehal Tagade, a senior official in Mumbai’s disaster management unit, said 150 teams were being deployed to help the population in low-lying residential areas.
Low-lying parts of the city with a population of more than 20 million people experience flooding almost every year but large-scale flooding of this magnitude has not been seen in recent years.
“We are mapping all the flooding zones to launch a project to build emergency shelters to make evacuation easy,” said Tagade.
Many businesses asked employees to leave early in expectation of worsening traffic jams. Rains and a high tide in the western coastal city threaten to overload an ageing drainage system.
People walk along a flooded street in Mumbai. Photograph: Punit Paranjpe/AFP/Getty Images
Several companies have arranged for food and resting facilities for employees stuck in offices. Temples and other Ganesh pandals have been offering food and water to people stranded on streets.
People on social media have been offering help to strangers who have been stuck at various locations.
The education minister has asked all schools and colleges in the city to remain shut on Wednesday.
The flooding led to some power outages in parts of the city and the municipal corporation warned of more such cuts if water levels continued to rise.
A spokeswoman for Mumbai international airport said flights in and out of the airport, India’s second busiest, were delayed while some had had to be diverted.
South Asia floods: Mumbai building collapses as monsoon rains wreak havoc
Flooding across India, Nepal and Bangladesh leaves parts of cities underwater as storm moves on to Pakistan
At least 21 people are dead and more than a dozen others trapped after monsoon downpours caused a building to collapse in Mumbai.
The four-storey residential building gave way on Thursday morning in the densely populated area of Bhendi Bazaar, after roads were turned into rivers in India’s financial capital. The city has been struggling to cope with some of the heaviest rainfall in more than 15 years.
Rescue workers, police and residents helped pull 13 people out of the rubble and were looking for those buried beneath. Authorities have advised people living in an adjacent building to evacuate after it developed cracks following the collapse.
The death toll could have been much worse, officials said, because the building, which houses a nursery school, collapsed half an hour before children were due to arrive at 9am.
Thousands more buildings that are more than 100 years old are at risk of collapse due in part to foundations being weakened by flood waters.
Vast swaths of land are underwater in the eastern part of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, where more than 100 people have reportedly died, 3,097 villages are submerged and almost 3 million villagers have been affected by flooding, according to officials. Army personnel have joined rescuers to evacuate people from the area.
The storm reached Pakistan on Thursday, lashing the port city of Karachi, where at least 14 people have died, and streets have been submerged by water. The country’s meteorological department forecast that the rains would continue for three days in various parts of Sindh province, where authorities closed schools as a precaution.
People make their way through flooded streets after a heavy downpour in Karachi on Thursday. Photograph: Rehan Khan/EPA
Up to 97mm (3.8in) of rain has been recorded in some areas of Karachi, filling the streets with muddy water, sewage and rubbish.
Among the dead was an eight-year-old boy who was crushed when a building belonging to the Federal Investigation Agency collapsed. Most of the dead were electrocuted, leading the city’s energy provider, K-Electric, to cut power to certain areas.
“Some feeders have been switched off in view of safety concerns in areas with waterlogging, and restoration work will be expedited in affected areas as soon as standing water is wiped out,” Sadia Dada, the director of marketing and communication for K-Electric, told Dawn newspaper.
About 6,000 villagers are threatened with flooding after the rains breached the Thado dam on the Malir river. The army has been called in to help with evacuation, and has also provided Karachi’s city administration with water extraction pumps.
Windstorms and rain are also expected in the Balochistan and Punjab provinces. The meteorological department said rains were also expected in the capital, Islamabad, and in Pakistan’s portion of Kashmir.
One third of Bangladesh was believed to be underwater and the UN described the situation in Nepal, where 150 people have died, as the worst flooding in a decade.
The floods have also destroyed or damaged 18,000 schools in the south Asia region, meaning that about 1.8 million children cannot go to classes, Save the Children said on Thursday.
The charity said hundreds of thousands of children could fall permanently out of the school system if education was not prioritised in relief efforts.
“We haven’t seen flooding on this scale in years and it’s putting the long-term education of an enormous number of children at great risk. From our experience, the importance of education is often undervalued in humanitarian crises and we simply cannot let this happen again. We cannot go backwards,” said Rafay Hussain, Save the Children’s general manager in the eastern Indian state of Bihar.
“We know that the longer children are out of school following a disaster like this the less likely it is that they’ll ever return. That’s why it’s so important that education is properly funded in this response, to get children back to the classroom as soon as it’s safe to do so and to safeguard their futures.”
Floods have caused devastation in many parts of India. Unprecedented rainfall in Assam in the north-east has killed more than 150 people. About 600 villages are still underwater even though the torrential rain began earlier this month.
Rhinos in Assam’s Kaziranga nature reserve had to flee to higher ground. “We get flooding every year but I have never seen anything quite like this in my life,” Ashok Baruah, a farmer, told journalists.
In Bihar, the death toll has reached 514, with people still living in makeshift huts days after the flooding started. However, the flood waters, which turned fields into lakes, appear to be receding.
In Mumbai, the rain forced nurses and doctors at the busiest hospital in the city to wade through wards knee-high in filthy water to move patients to the first floor. Outside the King Edward memorial hospital, a man going to visit his wife who was due to have a caesarean had to wade through flooded streets to reach her. Children swam or paddled down the streets lying on planks of wood.
Flood victims in the city included a doctor who fell down a manhole and another who died after being trapped in his car while waiting for the water to recede. Others living in the low-lying areas most affected by the flooding were swept away into the sea or died when walls collapsed.
As train services ground to a halt, hundreds of thousands of commuters were stranded, unable to go home.
TV commentators voiced the anger of those caught in the chaos. The TV personality Suhel Seth lashed out at the “scoundrels, rogues, villains, rascals, incompetents and useless fools” in the municipal authority for not being better prepared for the annual monsoon flooding.
The deluge brought back memories of the 2005 floods that killed more than 500 people in the city.
“Why does nothing change? Why are we left to fend for ourselves when they had weather forecasts warning them of extremely heavy rainfall?” asked the author and columnist Shobhaa De.
PUBLISHED: 03:30 EDT, 24 August 2017 | UPDATED: 07:45 EDT, 24 August 2017
The death toll from floods sweeping South Asia has climbed above 1,000, officials said Thursday, as rescue teams try to reach millions stranded by the region’s worst monsoon disaster in recent years.
The death toll from floods sweeping South Asia has climbed above 1,000, officials said Thursday, as rescue teams try to reach millions stranded by the region’s worst monsoon disaster in recent years.
Thousands of soldiers and emergency personnel have been deployed across India, Bangladesh and Nepal, where authorities say a total of 1,013 bodies have been recovered since August 10 when intense rainfall started falling.
All three countries suffer frequent flooding during the monsoon rains, but the Red Cross has termed the latest disaster the worst in decades in some parts of South Asia.
It says entire communities have been cut off and many are short of food and clean water.
“It has been a difficult year,” said Anil Shekhawat, spokesman for India’s national disaster response force.
“In the last few months there have been floods in western, eastern and northern parts of the country,” Shekhawat told AFP.
Twenty-six bodies were found Wednesday in Bihar, a hard-hit state in India’s east, taking the death toll there to 367, said Anirudh Kumar, a top state disaster management official.
“We still have nearly 11 million people affected in 19 districts of the state,” he told AFP, adding nearly 450,000 flood evacuees had taken shelter in government refuges.
In neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, floods have swamped nearly half the vast state of 220 million, India’s most populous.
Thousands of soldiers and emergency personnel have been deployed across India, Bangladesh and Nepal, where authorities say a total of 1,009 bodies have been recovered since August 10 when intense rainfall started falling.
Disaster management agency spokesman T.P. Gupta said 86 people had died and more than two million were affected by the disaster there.
The state borders Nepal, where 146 people have died and 80,000 homes destroyed in what the United Nations is calling the worst flooding in 15 years.
Nepal’s home ministry warned the death toll could rise as relief teams reach more remote parts of the impoverished country.
– Widespread destruction –
In India’s northwest, landslides caused by heavy rain have claimed 54 lives, the vast majority in one huge avalanche of mud that swept two buses off a mountainside.
The situation was slowly easing in West Bengal and Assam, two states in India’s east and northeast where 223 people have died.
Floods in Assam — the second wave to hit the state in less than four months — have wrought widespread destruction, killing 71 people and forcing animals in a local wildlife sanctuary to seek higher ground.
One Bengal tiger and 15 rare one-horned rhinos were found dead and conservationists feared there could be further loss of life as poachers sought to capitalise on the exodus.
In the low-lying state of West Bengal, where 152 people have died, hundreds of thousands have escaped submerged villages by boats and makeshift rafts to reach government aid stations.
Across the border in Bangladesh, water levels were slowly returning to normal in the main Brahmaputra and Ganges rivers.
The government’s disaster response body said Thursday the death toll stood at 137, with more than 7.5 million affected since flooding hit the riverine nation.
Every year hundreds die in landslides and floods during the monsoon season that hits India’s southern tip in early June and sweeps across the South Asia region for four months.
Last year nearly 1,500 people died and half a million homes were destroyed in floods across the country, according to India’s home ministry.
PUBLISHED: 03:46 EDT, 14 August 2017 | UPDATED: 03:52 EDT, 14 August 2017
GAUHATI, India (AP) – Heavy monsoon rains have unleashed landslides and floods that have killed at least 160 people and displaced millions of others across northern India, southern Nepal and Bangladesh.
Officials said Monday they were still trying to determine the scale of the disaster, with casualties and damage reported in multiple locations across the Himalayan foothills of South Asia.
The seasonal floodwaters damaged bridges, toppled power lines and washed away thousands of homes in the northeastern Indian state of Assam. Officials say people have been killed by drowning or being caught inside collapsing houses or beneath falling trees.
A Nepalese man looses his balance while crossing a flooded street in Birgunj, Nepal, Sunday, Aug. 13, 2017. An official said torrential rain, landslides and flooding have killed dozens of people in Nepal over the past three days, washing away hundreds of homes and damaging roads and bridges across the Himalayan country. (AP Photo/Manish Paudel)
In neighboring Nepal, police spokesman Pushkar Karki were searching for 85 people reported missing after rivers burst their banks and killed at least 75. Another 20 people died over the last few days in Bangladesh.
A Nepalese man sits on the wall of his house in a partially submerged village in Birgunj, Nepal, Sunday, Aug. 13, 2017. An official said torrential rain, landslides and flooding have killed dozens of people in Nepal over the past three days, washing away hundreds of homes and damaging roads and bridges across the Himalayan country. (AP Photo/Manish Paudel)
Army soldiers and rescue workers recover bodies of landslide victims even as they try to pull out two buses that were covered in mud after a landslide triggered by heavy monsoon rain in Urla village, Himachal Pradesh state, India, Sunday, Aug. 13, 2017. The landslide that occurred early Sunday buried part of a highway, trapping two buses and at least three cars. (AP Photo/Shailesh Bhatnagar)
People watch army soldiers and rescue workers recover bodies of landslide victims even as they try to pull out two buses that were covered in mud after a landslide triggered by heavy monsoon rain in Urla village, Himachal Pradesh state, India, Sunday, Aug. 13, 2017. The landslide that occurred early Sunday buried part of a highway, trapping two buses and at least three cars. (AP Photo/Shailesh Bhatnagar)
Nepalese villagers wade through flood waters in Ramgadhwa area in Birgunj, Nepal, Sunday, Aug. 13, 2017. An official said torrential rain, landslides and flooding have killed dozens of people in Nepal over the past three days, washing away hundreds of homes and damaging roads and bridges across the Himalayan country. (AP Photo/Manish Paudel)
Nepalese men carry children on their shoulders as they wade through flood waters in village Ramgadhwa in Birgunj, Nepal, Sunday, Aug. 13, 2017. An official said torrential rain, landslides and flooding have killed dozens of people in Nepal over the past three days, washing away hundreds of homes and damaging roads and bridges across the Himalayan country. (AP Photo/Manish Paudel)
People watch army soldiers and rescue workers recover bodies of landslide victims even as they try to pull out two buses that were covered in mud after a landslide triggered by heavy monsoon rain in Urla village, Himachal Pradesh state, India, Sunday, Aug. 13, 2017. The landslide that occurred early Sunday buried part of a highway, trapping two buses and at least three cars. (AP Photo/Shailesh Bhatnagar)
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Galveston Storm of 1900
Galveston: Home of America’s Deadliest Natural Disaster
Published on Sep 28, 2011
On Sept. 8, 1900, an unnamed hurricane slammed into the unprotected barrier island of Galveston, Texas, killing between 6,000 and 8,000 people. More than 111 years later, the natural disaster stands as the worst in the history of the United States. Watch the NewsHour Health Unit’s report on long-term recovery efforts after Hurricane Ike, Galveston’s most recent disaster: http://to.pbs.org/oFWSso.
1935 Labor Day Hurricane-Graphic Death & Destruction!
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Earth’s Biggest Typhoon Superstorms (720p)
Published on Sep 1, 2014
This educational HD video explains the phenomena known as a typhoon or cyclone the the people survived. Typhoons originate mostly in Asia with six conditions required for formation: warm sea surface temperatures, atmospheric instability, high humidity in the lower to middle levels of the troposphere, enough Coriolis force to develop a low pressure center, a pre-existing low level focus or disturbance, and low vertical wind shear.
58–70 m/s, 113–136 knots
130–156 mph, 209–251 km/h
Three
50–58 m/s, 96–112 knots
111–129 mph, 178–208 km/h
Two
43–49 m/s, 83–95 knots
96–110 mph, 154–177 km/h
One
33–42 m/s, 64–82 knots
74–95 mph, 119–153 km/h
Related classifications
Tropical
storm
18–32 m/s, 34–63 knots
39–73 mph, 63–118 km/h
Tropical
depression
≤17 m/s, ≤33 knots
≤38 mph, ≤62 km/h
The Saffir–Simpson hurricane wind scale (SSHWS), formerly the Saffir–Simpson hurricane scale (SSHS), classifies hurricanes – Western Hemispheretropical cyclones that exceed the intensities of tropical depressions, and tropical storms – into five categories distinguished by the intensities of their sustained winds. To be classified as a hurricane, a tropical cyclone must have 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, is reserved for storms with winds exceeding 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.
There is some criticism of the SSHS for not taking rain, storm surge, and other important factors into consideration, but SSHS defenders say that part of the goal of SSHS is to be straightforward and simple to understand.
History
In 1967 Robert Simpson became the director of the National Hurricane Center and started to look at the problem of communicating the forecasts to the public better. During 1968 Robert spoke to Herbert Saffir about work that he had just completed for the United Nations, about damage to structures that was expected by winds of different strengths.
The initial scale was developed by 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 performing 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 in 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 surgeand 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 which 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 removed from the Saffir–Simpson hurricane wind scale, storm surge predicting and modeling is now handled with the use of a computerized numerical model developed by the National Weather Service called “Sea, Lake, and Overland Surge from Hurricanes” (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 knots 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 knots (~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 to 4, as 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.
The five categories are, in order of increasing intensity:
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, the storm can still produce widespread damage and can be a life-threatening storm.[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), Flora (1963), Cleo (1964), Madeline (1976), Frederic (1979), Joan (1988), Iniki (1992), Luis (1995), Iris (2001), Charley (2004), Dennis (2005), Gustav (2008), Ike (2008) and Joaquin (2015).
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, public 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 communities impacted. 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]
Historical examples of storms that made landfall at Category 5 status include: Janet (1955), Camille (1969), Edith (1971), Anita (1977), David (1979), Gilbert (1988), Andrew (1992),Katrina (2005), Dean (2007), and Felix (2007). No Category 5 hurricane is known to have made landfall as such in the eastern Pacific basin.
Criticism
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 bases itself on surface wind speeds, the radius of maximum winds of the storm, and its translational velocity.[12][13] Both of these scales are continuous, akin to the Richter scale;[14] however, neither of these scales have been used by officials.
Should a ‘Category 6’ be introduced?
After the series of powerful storm systems of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, 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][15] Only a few storms of this intensity have been recorded. Of the 31 hurricanes currently considered to have attained Category 5 status in the Atlantic, only 16 had wind speeds at 175 mph (78 m/s; 152 kn; 282 km/h) or greater and only 6 had wind speeds at 180 mph (80 m/s; 160 kn; 290 km/h) or greater. Of the 15 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). However, 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) and typhoons Haiyan and Meranti in 2013 and 2016, respectively, with sustained winds of 195 mph (314 km/h).[16]
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 man-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]
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.
Continental United States hurricane strikes 1950-2007
The list of United States hurricanes includes all tropical cyclones officially recorded to have produced sustained winds of greater than 74 mph (118 km/h) in the United States, which is the minimum threshold for hurricane intensity. The list, which is sorted by U.S. state, begins in 1851 with the start of the official Atlantic hurricane database (HURDAT), as provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration‘s Hurricane Research Division; the data from 1951 to 1979 is subject to change, due to the lack of official wind speed estimates during the time period. Since 1851, a total of 291 North Atlantic hurricanes produced hurricane-force winds in 19 states along the Atlantic coast. Some of these storms may not have made a direct landfall (i.e. remained just offshore) while producing hurricane-force winds on land; some of them may have weakened to a tropical storm or became extratropical before landfall but produced hurricane conditions on land while still a hurricane and some of them made landfall in an adjacent state but produced hurricane conditions over multiple states. This list does not include storms that only produced tropical storm conditions on land in the United States.
Map of the United States; click on individual states to be directed to its article,
or click on some coastal states to be directed to a list of tropical cyclones in those locations
A total of 291 Atlantic tropical cyclones have produced hurricane-force winds in every state along the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, as well as Pennsylvania. Florida was affected by 118 hurricanes, which is more than any other state; Texas ranked second. Hurricane Donna affected a total of eight states—more than any other hurricane.[1]
The earliest time in the year for a hurricane to strike the nation was June 9, which was set by Hurricane Alma in 1966. The earliest major hurricane to strike the nation occurred in 1934, when an unnamed tropical cyclone made landfall on June 16. The latest in the year for a hurricane to strike the nation was on November 24 with Hurricane Iwa in Hawaii; for the Atlantic basin the latest was on November 22, which was set by Hurricane Kate in 1985. The latest in the year for a major hurricane to strike the nation was from the 1921 Tampa Bay hurricane, which moved ashore on October 25.[1]
The 1880s were the most active decade for the United States, with a total of 25 hurricanes affecting the nation. By contrast, the least active decade was the 1970s, with a total of only 12 hurricanes affecting the American coastline. A total of 33 seasons on record passed without an Atlantic hurricane affecting the country—the most recent of which was the 2015 season. Seven Atlantic hurricanes affected the country in the 1886 season, which was the year with the most United States hurricanes.[1]
Impact
The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 was the most intense hurricane to make landfall on the country, having struck the Florida Keys with a pressure of 892 mbar. It was one of only three hurricanes to move ashore as a Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale; the others were Hurricane Camille in 1969 and Hurricane Andrew in 1992, which had a landfalling pressure of 900 mbar and 922 mbar, respectively. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was the third most intense hurricane to strike the country with a pressure of 920 mbar, though its winds were not as strong as Andrew.[2]
The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 was the deadliest hurricane in the history of the United States, killing at least 8,000 people. The 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane caused at least 2,500 casualties, and in 2005, Hurricane Katrina killed about 1,500 people. In the 1893 season, two hurricanes each caused over 1,000 deaths.[2]
Accounting for inflation, nine Atlantic hurricanes caused a damage total of over $10 billion (2006 USD), including three from the 2005 season. The costliest was Hurricane Katrina, with damage amounting to $84.6 billion, though in normalized dollars it may only be second to the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926. Of the thirty costliest United States hurricanes, ten were after the year 2000.[2]
A 2010 study published in Natural Hazards Review, a journal of the American Society of Civil Engineers, “Normalized Hurricane Damage in the United State: 1900-2005” (PDF), analyzed storm-related property damage figures from 1900 through 2005 adjusted (“normalized”) for inflation, wealth and population factors over time. The study found that: 1) Using normalized figures, hurricane-related damages steadily increased from 1900 to 2005; 2) Based on the adjusted data, Hurricane Katrina is the second-most destructive storm in U.S. history. The top-ranking storm in terms of property damage is the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926, with losses between $140–157 billion in 2005 dollars; 3) While 1996–2005 was the second-most costly period for storm-related damages, the preceding periods of 1976–1985 and 1986–1995 were “anomalously benign,” accounting for only 10% of all storm damage reported since 1900; 4) Approximately 85% of all storm-related damages occur in the months of August (35%) and September (50%).[3]
States bordering the Atlantic Ocean
The category listed for each state indicates the maximum category of sustained winds that was recorded or analyzed to have occurred in that state. It is not necessarily the category of the storm at the time of landfall or closest approach (if the strongest winds were occurring elsewhere or only over water at the time).
Source: Chronological List of All Hurricanes which Affected the Continental United States: 1851-2012[1]
Documentation of Atlantic Tropical Cyclones Changes in HURDAT[4]
Source: Chronological List of All Hurricanes which Affected the Continental United States: 1851-2012[1]
Documentation of Atlantic Tropical Cyclones Changes in HURDAT[4]
Source: Chronological List of All Hurricanes which Affected the Continental United States: 1851-2012[1]
Documentation of Atlantic Tropical Cyclones Changes in HURDAT[4]
Although Hurricane Sandy struck the state in October 2012 and produced hurricane-force winds, it became an extratropical cyclone before landfall or producing any hurricane-strength winds.[5]
Source: Chronological List of All Hurricanes which Affected the Continental United States: 1851-2012[1]
Documentation of Atlantic Tropical Cyclones Changes in HURDAT[4]
Though not directly bordering the Atlantic Ocean, the Gale of 1878 produced hurricane-force winds in the state, the only tropical cyclone on record to do so.[1] Furthermore, Hurricane Agnes (1972) had a severe impact on the state. Although it had been only a Category 1 storm, and had weakened to a tropical depression by the time it reached Pennsylvania, Hurricane Agnes nevertheless caused severe flooding, as well as enormous economic damage.
The 1858 San Diego Hurricane is the only Pacific tropical cyclone known to have produced hurricane-force winds in California; it affected San Diego on October 2, 1858, though its center remained just offshore. In the 20th century, only four tropical cyclones produced tropical storm force winds in the southwestern United States: a tropical storm in September 1939 in California, Hurricane Joanne in October 1972 in Arizona, Hurricane Kathleen in September 1976 in Arizona and California, and Hurricane Nora in September 1997 in Arizona.[6]
A natural disaster is a sudden event that causes widespread destruction, lots of collateral damage or loss of life, brought about by forces other than the acts of human beings. A natural disaster might be caused by earthquakes, flooding, volcanic eruption, landslide, hurricanes etc. In order to be classified as a disaster, it will have profound environmental effect and/or human loss and frequently incurs financial loss.
* Estimate by Nova’s sources are close to 4 million and yet Encarta’s sources report as few as 1 million. Expert estimates report wide variance.
The list does not include several volcanic eruptions with uncertain death tolls resulting from collateral effects (crop failures, etc.), though these may have numbered in the millions; see List of volcanic eruptions by death toll.
The list does not include the man-made 1938 Yellow River flood, caused entirely by a deliberate man-made act (an act of war, destroying dikes).
An alternative listing is given by Peter Hough in his 2008 book Global Security.[8]
Note: Although there have been no scientifically verified cases of astronomical objects resulting in human fatalities, there have been several reported occurrences throughout human history. Consequently, the casualty figures for all events listed are considered unofficial.
The list does not include the man-made 1938 Yellow River flood caused entirely by a deliberate man-made act (an act of war, destroying dikes).
Ten deadliest heat waves
Measuring the number of deaths caused by a heat wave requires complicated statistical analysis, since heat waves tend to cause large numbers of deaths among people weakened by other conditions. As a result, the number of deaths is only known with any accuracy for heat waves in the modern era in countries with developed healthcare systems.
5,000,000~[67][better source needed] about 1 million in France,[68]
many in the rest of northern Europe and in Egypt,
9,350 people in Iceland, about 25% of the island’s population.[67]
Part 2 — Story 1: Trump’s Economic Growth Plan Revealed — Much Better Than Hillary Clinton’s Tax Raising Recession Inducing Plan — But Not Bold — Rather Timid Congressional Republican Tax Reform Plan — It Is Time To Fire Up Our Economic Engine and Grow A Peace and Prosperity Economy With A Economic Boom Caused By Passing Fair Tax Less! — Videos
General Election: Trump vs. Clinton vs. Johnson vs. Stein
Watch Donald Trump’s full speech on economic policy
Detroit highly populated with protesters… interrupting Donald Trump – Detroit Economic Club
Donald Trump: I will simplify tax code
Trump: No business to pay more than 15% of income in taxes
Donald Trump Attacks Hillary Clinton During Economic Address at Detroit Economic Club – 8/8/16
YIKES! Detroit Economic Club Apologizes to Donald Trump & Audience for Protesters
WSJ’s Henninger: Trump’s economic speech was ‘excellent’
Donald Trump Wants More Money In YOUR POCKET! Lower Taxes for EVERYONE!
Trump campaign adviser: New tax plan includes major cuts
Newsmax Prime | John Gizzi brings us the latest from Cleveland and the RNC convention
Chairman Brady on Need for Pro-Growth Tax Reform, Free Trade on CNBC
Speaker Paul Ryan And Chairman Kevin Brady Produce A Tax Blueprint To Make America Great Again
Chairman Kevin Brady Talks Tax Reform with CNBC’s John Harwood
Inside the GOP candidates’ tax reform plans
Art Laffer: You can’t tax an economy into prosperity
FairTax: Fire Up Our Economic Engine (Official HD)
Freedom from the IRS! – FairTax Explained in Detail
The FairTax: It’s Time
What is the FairTax legislation?
How does the “prebate” work?
Q&A on the FAIRTAX pt.1
The FairTax for Dummies – Simple to Understand
FAIRtax-What is It? Replaces income tax and payroll tax with sales tax
What is the Prebate?
Pence on the Fair Tax
G Edward Griffin “The Dangerous Servant – A Discourse on Government”
G. Edward Griffin: The Collectivist Conspiracy
People Who Control America ? Mind Blowing Documentary HQ
– AUGUST 08, 2016 –
AN AMERICA FIRST ECONOMIC PLAN: WINNING THE GLOBAL COMPETITION
Please read the transcript from Mr. Trump’s speech at the Detroit Economic Club.
Thank you for the invitation to speak to you today. It’s wonderful to be in Detroit.
We now begin a great national conversation about economic renewal for America. It’s a conversation about how to Make American Great Again for everyone, and especially those who have the very least.
The City of Detroit Is Where Our Story Begins
Detroit was once the economic envy of the world. The people of Detroit helped power America to its position of global dominance in the 20th century.
When we were governed by an America First policy, Detroit was booming. Engineers, builders, laborers, shippers and countless others went to work each day, provided for their families, and lived out the American Dream.
But for many living in this city, that dream has long ago vanished.
When we abandoned the policy of America First, we started rebuilding other countries instead of our own. The skyscrapers went up in Beijing, and in many other cities around the world, while the factories and neighborhoods crumbled in Detroit. Our roads and bridges fell into disrepair, yet we found the money to resettle millions of refugees at taxpayer expense.
Today, Detroit has a per capita income of under $15,000 dollars, about half of the national average. 40 percent of the city’s residents live in poverty, over two-and-half times the national average. The unemployment rate is more than twice the national average. Half of all Detroit residents do not work.
Detroit tops the list of Most Dangerous Cities in terms of violent crime – these are the silenced victims whose stories are never told by Hillary Clinton, but victims whose suffering is no less real or permanent.
In short, the city of Detroit is the living, breathing example of my opponent’s failed economic agenda. Every policy that has failed this city, and so many others, is a policy supported by Hillary Clinton.
She supports the high taxes and radical regulation that forced jobs out of your community…and the crime policies that have made you less safe…and the immigration policies that have strained local budgets…and the trade deals like NAFTA, signed by her husband, that have shipped your jobs to Mexico and other countries… and she supports the education policies that deny your students choice, freedom and opportunity.
She is the candidate of the past.
Ours is the campaign of the future.
This is a city controlled by Democratic politicians at every level, and unless we change policies, we will not change results.
Today, I will outline my economic vision. In the coming weeks, we will be offering more detail on all of these policies, and the ones we have already rolled out can be viewed on my campaign website.
Our opposition, on the other hand, has long ago run out of ideas. All Hillary Clinton has to offer is more of the same: more taxes, more regulations, more bureaucrats, more restrictions on American energy and American production.
If you were a foreign power looking to weaken America, you couldn’t do better than Hillary Clinton’s economic agenda.
Nothing would make our foreign adversaries happier than for our country to tax and regulate our companies and our jobs out of existence.
The one common feature of every Hillary Clinton idea is that it punishes you for working and doing business in the United States. Every policy she has tilts the playing field towards other countries at our expense.
That’s why she tries to distract us with tired political rhetoric that seeks to label us, divide us, and pull us apart.
My campaign is about reaching out to everyone as Americans, and returning to a government that puts the American people first.
Here is what an America First economic plan looks like.
First, let’s talk tax reform.
Taxes are one of the biggest differences in this race.
Hillary Clinton – who has spent her career voting for tax increases – plans another massive job-killing $1.3 trillion-dollar tax increase. Her plan would tax many small businesses by almost fifty percent.
Recently, at a campaign event, Hillary Clinton short-circuited again – to use a now famous term – when she accidentally told the truth and said she wanted to raise taxes on the middle class.
I am proposing an across-the-board income tax reduction, especially for middle-income Americans. This will lead to millions of new good-paying jobs.
The rich will pay their fair share, but no one will pay so much that it destroys jobs, or undermines our ability to compete.
As part of this reform, we will eliminate the Carried Interest Deduction and other special interest loopholes that have been so good for Wall Street investors, and people like me, but unfair to American workers.
Tax simplification will be a major feature of the plan.
Our current tax code is so burdensome and complex that we waste 9 billion hours a year in tax code compliance.
My plan will reduce the current number of brackets from 7 to 3, and dramatically streamline the process. We will work with House Republicans on this plan, using the same brackets they have proposed: 12, 25 and 33 percent. For many American workers, their tax rate will be zero.
While we will develop our own set of assumptions and policies, agreeing in some areas but not in others, we will be focused on the same shared goals and guided by the same shared principles: jobs, growth and opportunity.
These reforms will offer the biggest tax revolution since the Reagan Tax Reform, which unleashed years of continued economic growth and job creation.
We will Make America Grow Again.
In the days ahead, we will provide more details on this plan and how it will help you and your family. It will present a night-and-day contrast to the job-killing, tax-raising, poverty-inducing Obama-Clinton agenda.
The State of New York has already lived through Hillary Clinton’s failed leadership. The Washington Post just published a devastating article on Hillary Clinton’s broken promises. She pledged 200,000 jobs for upstate New York as Senator. But what happened? The Washington Post writes, and I quote: “upstate job growth stagnated overall during her tenure, with manufacturing jobs plunging nearly 25 percent…the former first lady was unable to pass big ticket legislation… Many promised jobs never materialized and others migrated to other states as she turned to her first presidential run…data shows that upstate actually lost jobs during Clinton’s first term.”
Compare that to my record. In a recent New York Post article by Steve Cuozzo, “How Donald Trump Helped Save New York City,” the paper writes that I – and this is a direct quote – “waded into a landscape of empty Fifth Avenue storefronts, the dust-bowl mugging ground that was Central Park and a Wall Street area seemingly on its last legs as companies moved out…almost by force of will — [he] rode to the rescue. Expressing rare faith in the future, he was instrumental in kick-starting the regeneration of neighborhoods and landmarks almost given up for dead.”
This is what I want to do for our country – I want to jumpstart America.
Now let’s look at what the Obama-Clinton policies have done nationally.
Their policies produced 1.2% growth, the weakest so-called recovery since the Great Depression, and a doubling of the national debt.
There are now 94.3 million Americans outside the labor force. It was 80.5 million when President Obama took office, an increase of nearly 14 million people.
The Obama-Clinton agenda of tax, spend and regulate has created a silent nation of jobless Americans.
Home ownership is at its lowest rate in 51 years.
Nearly 12 million have been added to the food stamp rolls since President Obama took office. Another nearly 7 million Americans were added to the ranks of those in poverty.
We have the lowest labor force participation rates in four decades.
58 percent of African-American youth are either outside the labor force or not employed.
1 in 5 American households do not have a single member in the labor force. These are the real unemployment numbers – the five percent figure is one of the biggest hoaxes in modern politics.
Meanwhile, American households are earning more than $4,000 less today than they were sixteen years ago.
The average worker today pays 31.5 percent of their wages to income and payroll taxes. On top of that, state and local taxes consume another 10 percent.
The United States also has the highest business tax rate among the major industrialized nations of the world, at 35 percent. It’s almost 40 percent when you add in taxes at the state level.
In other words, we punish companies for making products in America – but let them ship products into the U.S. tax-free if they move overseas.
This is backwards. All of our policies should be geared towards keeping jobs and wealth inside the United States.
Under my plan, no American company will pay more than 15% of their business income in taxes. Small businesses will benefit the most from this plan. Hillary Clinton’s plan will require small business to pay as much as three times more in taxes than what I am proposing, and her onerous regulations will put them totally out of business. I am going to cut regulations massively.
Our lower business tax will also end job-killing corporate inversions, and cause trillions in new dollars and wealth to come pouring into our country – and into cities like Detroit. To help unleash this new job creation, we will allow businesses to immediately expense new business investments.
No one will gain more from these proposals than low-and-middle income Americans.
My plan will also help reduce the cost of childcare by allowing parents to fully deduct the average cost of childcare spending from their taxes.
We are also going to bring back trillions of dollars from American businesses that is now parked overseas. Our plan will bring that cash home, applying a 10 percent tax. This money will be re-invested in states like Michigan.
Finally, no family will have to pay the death tax. American workers have paid taxes their whole lives, and they should not be taxed again at death – it’s just plain wrong. We will repeal it.
Next comes regulatory reform
As with taxes, I will have one overriding goal when it comes to regulation: I want to keep jobs and wealth in America.
Motor vehicle manufacturing is one of the most heavily regulated industries in the country. The U.S. economy today is twenty-five percent smaller than it would have been without the surge of regulations since 1980.
It is estimated that current overregulation is costing our economy as much as $2 trillion dollars a year – that’s money taken straight out of cities like yours.
The federal register is now over 80,000 pages long. As the Wall Street Journal noted, President Obama has issued close to four hundred new major regulations since taking office, each with a cost to the American economy of $100 million or more.
In 2015 alone, the Obama Administration unilaterally issued more than 2,000 new regulations – each a hidden tax on American consumers, and a massive lead weight on the American economy.
It is time to remove the anchor dragging us down.
Upon taking office, I will issue a temporary moratorium on new agency regulations. My running mate, Mike Pence, signed a similar order when he became governor of Indiana. This will give our American companies the certainty they need to reinvest in our community, get cash off of the sidelines, start hiring for new jobs, and expanding businesses.
I will also immediately cancel all illegal and overreaching executive orders.
Next, I will ask each and every federal agency to prepare a list of all of the regulations they impose on Americans which are not necessary, do not improve public safety, and which needlessly kill jobs. Those regulations will be eliminated.
We are in a competition with the world, and I want America to win. When I am president, we will.
One of the most important reforms of all is trade reform
As Bernie Sanders has said, Hillary Clinton has bad judgment. We’ve seen this bad judgment overseas, in Libya, Iraq, and Syria. We’ve seen it in Iran. We’ve seen it from President Obama, when he gives $150 billion to Iran, the number one terror state, and even gives them $400 million in money-laundered cash as a ransom payment.
But we’ve also seen the terrible Obama-Clinton judgment right here in Detroit.
Hillary Clinton has supported the trade deals stripping this city, and this country, of its jobs and wealth.
She supported Bill Clinton’s NAFTA, she supported China’s entrance into the World Trade Organization, she supported the job-killing trade deal with South Korea, and she supports the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Let’s talk about South Korea for a moment, because it so perfectly illustrates the broken promises that have hurt so many American workers.
President Obama, and the usual so-called experts who’ve been wrong about every trade deal for decades, predicted that the trade deal with South Korea would increase our exports to South Korea by more than $10 billion – resulting in some 70,000 jobs.
Like Hillary Clinton’s broken promises to New York, these pledges all turned out to be false. Instead of creating 70,000 jobs, it has killed nearly 100,000, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Our exports to South Korea haven’t increased at all, but their imports to us have surged more than $15 billion – more than doubling our trade deficit with that country.
The next betrayal will be the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Hillary Clinton’s closest friend, Terry McAuliffe, confirmed what I have said on this from the beginning: if sent to the Oval Office, Hillary Clinton will enact the TPP. Guaranteed. Her donors will make sure of it.
A vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote for TPP – and it’s also a vote for NAFTA.
Our annual trade deficit in goods with Mexico has risen from close to zero in 1993 to almost $60 billion. Our total trade deficit in goods hit nearly $800 billion last year.
This is a strike at the heart of Michigan, and our nation as a whole.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, before NAFTA went into effect, there were 285,000 auto workers in Michigan. Today, that number is only 160,000.
Detroit is still waiting for Hillary Clinton’s apology. I expect Detroit will get that apology right around the same time Hillary Clinton turns over the 33,000 emails she deleted.
Hillary Clinton’s Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) will be an even bigger disaster for the auto industry. In fact, Ford Motor Company has announced its opposition to the deal.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, the U.S. trade deficit with the proposed TPP member countries cost over 1 million manufacturing jobs in 2015.
By far the biggest losses occurred in motor vehicles and parts, which lost nearly 740,000 manufacturing jobs.
Michigan ranks first for jobs lost as a share of state workforce due to the trade deficit with TPP members.
Just imagine how many more automobile jobs will be lost if the TPP is actually approved. That is why I have announced we will withdraw from the deal before that can ever happen. Hillary Clinton will never withdraw from the TPP. She is bought, controlled and paid-for by her donors and special interests.
Because my only interest is the American people, I have previously laid out a detailed 7-point plan for trade reform, available on my website. It includes strong protections against currency manipulation, tariffs against any countries that cheat by unfairly subsidizing their goods, and it includes a renegotiation of NAFTA. If we don’t get a better deal, we will walk away.
At the center of my plan is trade enforcement with China. This alone could return millions of jobs into our economy.
China is responsible for nearly half of our entire trade deficit. They break the rules in every way imaginable. China engages in illegal export subsidies, prohibited currency manipulation, and rampant theft of intellectual property. They also have no real environmental or labor protections, further undercutting American workers.
Just enforcing intellectual property rules alone could save millions of American jobs. According to the U.S. International Trade Commission, improved protection of America’s intellectual property in China would produce more than 2 million more jobs right here in the United States.
Add to that the saved jobs from cracking down on currency cheating and product dumping, and we will bring trillions of dollars in new wealth and wages back to the United States.
Trade has big benefits, and I am in favor of trade. But I want great trade deals for our country that create more jobs and higher wages for American workers. Isolation is not an option, only great and well-crafted trade deals are.
Also critical to our economic renewal will be energy reform
The Obama-Clinton Administration has blocked and destroyed millions of jobs through their anti-energy regulations, while raising the price of electricity for both families and businesses.
As a result of recent Obama EPA actions coal-fired power plants across Michigan have either shut down entirely or undergone expensive conversions. The Obama-Clinton war on coal has cost Michigan over 50,000 jobs. Hillary Clinton says her plan will “put a lot of coal companies and coal miners out of business.”
We will put our coal miners and steel workers back to work.
Clinton not only embraces President Obama’s job-killing energy restrictions but wants to expand them, including going after oil and natural gas production that employs some 10 million Americans.
According to the Heritage Foundation, by 2030, the Obama-Clinton energy restrictions will eliminate another half a million manufacturing jobs, reduce economic output by $2.5 trillion dollars, and reduce incomes by $7,000 dollars per person.
A Trump Administration will end this war on the American worker, and unleash an energy revolution that will bring vast new wealth to our country.
According to the Institute for Energy Research, lifting the restrictions on all sources of American energy will:
Increase GDP by more than $100 billion dollars annually, add over 500,000 new jobs annually, and increase annual wages by more than $30 billion dollars over the next 7 years;
Increase federal, state, and local tax revenues by almost $6 trillion dollars over 4 decades;
Increase totaleconomic activity by more than $20 trillion dollars over the next 40 years.
The reforms I have outlined today are only the beginning
When we reform our tax, trade, energy and regulatory policies, we will open a new chapter in American Prosperity.
We can use this new wealth to rebuild our military and our infrastructure.
As part of this new future, we will also be rolling out proposals to increase choice and reduce cost in childcare, offering much-needed relief to American families. I will unveil my plan on this in the coming weeks that I have been working on with my daughter Ivanka and an incredible team of experts.
Likewise, our education reforms will help parents send their kids to a school of their choice.
We will also give our police and law enforcement the funds and support they need to restore law and order to this country. Without security, there can be no prosperity. We must have law and order.
In the coming days, we will be rolling out plans on all of these items. One of my first acts as President will be to repeal and replace disastrous Obamacare, saving another 2 million American jobs.
We will also rebuild our military, and get our allies to pay their fair share for the protection we provide – saving us countless more billions to invest in our own country.
We also have a plan, on our website, for a complete reform of the Veterans Health Administration. This is something so desperately needed to make sure our vets are fully supported and get the care they deserve.
Detroit – the Motor City – will come roaring back. We will offer a new future, not the same old failed policies of the past.
Our party has chosen to make new history by selecting a nominee from outside the rigged and corrupt system.
The other party has reached backwards into the past to choose a nominee from yesterday – who offers only the rhetoric of yesterday, and the policies of yesterday.
There will be no change under Hillary Clinton – only four more years of Obama.
But we are going to look boldly into the future.
We will build the next generation of roads, bridges, railways, tunnels, sea ports and airports that our country deserves.
American cars will travel the roads, American planes will connect our cities, and American ships will patrol the seas.
American steel will send new skyscrapers soaring.
We will put new American metal into the spine of this nation.
It will be American hands that rebuild this country, and it will be American energy – mined from American sources – that powers this country.
It will be American workers who are hired to do the job.
Americanism, not globalism, will be our new credo.
Our country will reach amazing new heights.
All we have to do is stop relying on the tired voices of the past.
We can’t fix a rigged system by relying on the people who rigged it in the first place.
We can’t solve our problems by relying on the politicians who created them.
Only by changing to new leadership, and new solutions, will we get new results.
We need to stop believing in politicians, and start believing in America.
Before everything great that has ever happened, the doubters have always said it couldn’t be done.
America is ready to prove the doubters wrong.
They want you to think small. I am asking you to think big.
We are ready to dream great things for our country once again.
We are ready to show the world that America is Back – Bigger, and Better and Stronger Than Ever Before.
Trump to Propose Moratorium on New Financial Regulations
In a speech Monday in Detroit, the Republican presidential nominee will also call for a repeal of the estate tax.
By Kevin Cirilli kevcirilli and Jennifer Jacobs
Donald Trump will propose a temporary moratorium on new financial regulations in an economic speech Monday in Detroit in an effort to draw a stark contrast with the domestic policies of Hillary Clinton, who he says “punishes” the American economy.
The Republican presidential nominee’s speech will focus on providing regulatory relief for small businesses, according to senior campaign aides familiar with its contents. More broadly, Trump will say he will not propose any new financial regulations until the economy shows “significant growth,” the aides said. Trump has previously said he would repeal and replace the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act.
Trump will also propose a repeal of the estate tax, sometimes called the “death tax.” Under current law, the 40 percent tax applies only to estates larger than $5.45 million for individuals and $10.9 million for couples.
For U.S. businesses, Trump will propose a tax rate of 15 percent and suggest strengthening intellectual-property protections. He’s expected to call for three income-tax brackets, down from the current seven. He’ll call for the elimination of special tax treatment for carried-interest income at private-equity firms and other investment firms—the latter of which is a proposal his Democratic rival also supports.
Carried interest, which is a portion of investment gains paid to certain investment managers, is currently taxed like capital gains—at rates that can be as low as 23.8 percent. Trump proposes to tax them as ordinary income, but for members of partnerships, that could actually mean a rate cut to 15 percent.
Trump will continue to stress his opposition to the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement backed by the Obama administration and many prominent Republicans in Congress, and he will reinforce his commitment to the coal industry, saying a federal moratorium on some coal-mining permits would be the focus of a targeted review in his administration.
Other items on his energy agenda, he is expected to reiterate in the speech, include asking TransCanada to renew its Keystone pipeline permit application; rescinding the Climate Action Plan and “waters of the U.S.” rule; opening offshore drilling; and killing the Paris climate agreement.
He will portray President Barack Obama’s regulatory policies as having crushed middle- and lower-class Americans and will propose making all child care tax deductible. Clinton, in contrast, has proposed a cap on child-care costs at 10 percent of a family’s income.
Targeting the federal bureaucracy, Trump is expected to say that civil servants whose focus is job-killing regulation should be replaced with experts who would help create jobs.
Trump will take direct aim at the Clintons and Obama, pointing to Detroit as an example of their failed economic policies. He will argue that their “record-breaking pace of new regulations, tax increases, restrictions on private-energy production and one-sided trade deals” have hurt Detroit and other cities, according to excerpts of his remarks shared with Bloomberg Politics.
He will call Obama’s Clinton-backed regulations a “lead-weight on the economy, an anchor dragging us down.” And he will say that Americans “need to hit the pause buttons on these regulations so our businesses can reinvest in the economy.”
“She’s the candidate of the past and ours is the campaign of the future,” Trump plans to say. “Every policy that has failed Detroit has been fully supported by Hillary Clinton. The one common feature of every Hillary Clinton idea is that it punishes you from working and doing business in the United States.”
His campaign aides said this is one of several economic speeches Trump will deliver this summer. One will include the unveiling of an infrastructure spending plan, while another will focus on financial regulations such as Dodd-Frank, the aides said.
Crunch Time
For Trump, the challenge at this stage in the race is two-fold. His campaign is coming off one of its worst weeks following a series of self-inflicted gaffes that led to a sharp dip in national and swing-state polls, and economic indicators suggest that the economy is improving.
The nation’s unemployment rate in July was 4.9 percent—a sharp decline from a post-recession peak of 10 percent in October 2009, according to federal statistics.
Clinton, who was set to campaign in Florida on Monday, has spent the days following the Democratic National Convention attacking Trump on the economy. The Republican is pushing an agenda “that experts across the political spectrum say would lead to a recession and cost millions of American jobs,” the Clinton campaign said in a statement Monday.
Independent voters—particularly small-business owners and their respective trade groups—have argued for years that Obama’s regulatory proposals have stifled the economy. Trump’s proposal to issue a moratorium on regulations could help him win support from workers at mid-sized banks as well as small-business owners who say it’s unfair for them to comply with Dodd-Frank regulations written for big banks.Trump enlisted conservative economists Peter Navarro, Larry Kudlow, and Stephen Moore; former Nucor CEO Dan DiMicco; and others to help with his speech.
Donors Watching
Republican donors and Trump supporters said they have high expectations for the speech.
Texas investor Doug Deason, who backed Ted Cruz for president in the primary, said he’d like to see Trump “lay out a plan to lower corporate taxes, eliminate federal bureaucracy costs by 10 percent or more, end all corporate welfare programs, convert welfare programs to work programs and dramatically reduce all of the silly federal rules the current administration has put in place.”
Deason, who helped Donald Trump Jr. raise money for his father in Dallas and Houston last month, added that he’d also like to see Trump name three or four agencies or departments he could eliminate.
Several donors said they’re craving specifics on how to repatriate profits trapped overseas, what exactly Trump would do with infrastructure, and how he’d pay for it, and how he’d encourage capital investments in plants and equipment.
“I would hope that he would cover the full range of economic targets from corporate and personal income tax to trade policy to regulatory reform and energy strategy,” said Wilbur Ross, chief strategy officer at WL Ross & Co., which has invested more than $11 billion in distressed companies, including Bethlehem Steel, since its founding in 2000.
Story 1: Obama Proposed New Cyber security Law — Unsecured Government Computers and Sites Are The Real Problem — Videos
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The State of Cyber Security 2011 – Presented by Sophos and the National Cyber Security Alliance
Uploaded on Nov 14, 2011
The latest trends in cyber crime, what you can do to protect yourself, and how the government can work with the private sector to help share information. Speakers include Michael Kaiser of NCSA, Chester Wisniewski of Sophos Inc and Rob Strayer of the Bipartisan Policy Center.
SECURING CYBERSPACE – President Obama Announces New Cybersecurity Legislative Proposal and Other Cybersecurity Efforts
“In this interconnected, digital world, there are going to be opportunities for hackers to engage in cyber assaults both in the private sector and the public sector. Now, our first order of business is making sure that we do everything to harden sites and prevent those kinds of attacks from taking place…But even as we get better, the hackers are going to get better, too. Some of them are going to be state actors; some of them are going to be non-state actors. All of them are going to be sophisticated and many of them can do some damage.
This is part of the reason why it’s going to be so important for Congress to work with us and get an actual bill passed that allows for the kind of information-sharing we need. Because if we don’t put in place the kind of architecture that can prevent these attacks from taking place, this is not just going to be affecting movies, this is going to be affecting our entire economy in ways that are extraordinarily significant.”
– President Obama, December 19, 2014.
Since the start of his Administration, when he issued the Cyberspace Policy Review — the first top-to-bottom, Administration-wide review of cybersecurity — President Obama has led efforts to better prepare our government, our economy, and our nation as a whole for the growing cyber threats we face.
That’s why in 2011 he issued his Cybersecurity Legislative Proposal, calling on Congress to take urgent action to give the private sector and government the tools they need to combat cyber threats at home and abroad. It’s why he issued the International Strategy for Cyberspace to make clear to nations abroad the foreign policy priority cybersecurity issues have become. And when Congress failed to pass comprehensive cybersecurity legislation, the Administration pressed forward, issuing an Executive Order to protect critical infrastructure by establishing baseline cybersecurity standards that we developed collaboratively with industry.
Today, at a time when public and private networks are facing an unprecedented threat from rogue hackers as well as organized crime and even state actors, the President is unveiling the next steps in his plan to defend the nation’s systems. These include a new legislative proposal, building on important work in Congress, to solve the challenges of information sharing that can cripple response to a cyberattack. They also include revisions to those provisions of our 2011 legislative proposal on which Congress has yet to take action, and along with them, the President is extending an invitation to work in a bipartisan, bicameral manner to advance this urgent priority for the American people.
Specifically, today’s announcements include:
Cybersecurity Legislative Proposal
Enabling Cybersecurity Information Sharing: The Administration’s updated proposal promotes better cybersecurity information sharing between the private sector and government, and it enhances collaboration and information sharing amongst the private sector. Specifically, the proposal encourages the private sector to share appropriate cyber threat information with the Department of Homeland Security’s National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC), which will then share it in as close to real-time as practicable with relevant federal agencies and with private sector-developed and operated Information Sharing and Analysis Organizations (ISAOs) by providing targeted liability protection for companies that share information with these entities.
The legislation also encourages the formation of these private-sector led Information Sharing and Analysis Organizations. The Administration’s proposal would also safeguard Americans’ personal privacy by requiring private entities to comply with certain privacy restrictions such as removing unnecessary personal information and taking measures to protect any personal information that must be shared in order to qualify for liability protection. The proposal further requires the Department of Homeland Security and the Attorney General, in consultation with the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board and others, to develop receipt, retention, use, and disclosure guidelines for the federal government. Finally, the Administration intends this proposal to complement and not to limit existing effective relationships between government and the private sector. These existing relationships between law enforcement and other federal agencies are critical to the cybersecurity mission.
Modernizing Law Enforcement Authorities to Combat Cyber Crime: Law enforcement must have appropriate tools to investigate, disrupt and prosecute cyber crime. The Administration’s proposal contains provisions that would allow for the prosecution of the sale of botnets, would criminalize the overseas sale of stolen U.S. financial information like credit card and bank account numbers, would expand federal law enforcement authority to deter the sale of spyware used to stalk or commit ID theft, and would give courts the authority to shut down botnets engaged in distributed denial of service attacks and other criminal activity. It also reaffirms important components of 2011 proposals to update the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), a key piece of law used to prosecute organized crime, so that it applies to cybercrimes, clarifies the penalties for computer crimes, and makes sure these penalties are in line with other similar non-cyber crimes. Finally, the proposal modernizes the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by ensuring that insignificant conduct does not fall within the scope of the statute, while making clear that it can be used to prosecute insiders who abuse their ability to access information to use it for their own purposes.
National Data Breach Reporting: As announced yesterday, the Administration has also updated its proposal on security breach reporting. State laws have helped consumers protect themselves against identity theft while also encouraging business to improve cybersecurity, helping to stem the tide of identity theft. These laws require businesses that have suffered an intrusion to notify consumers if consumers’ personal information has been compromised. The Administration’s updated proposal helps business and consumers by simplifying and standardizing the existing patchwork of 46 state laws (plus the District of Columbia and several territories) that contain these requirements into one federal statute, and puts in place a single clear and timely notice requirement to ensure that companies notify their employees and customers about security breaches.
White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection
On February 13, 2015, the White House will host a Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection at Stanford University, to help shape public and private sector efforts to protect American consumers and companies from growing threats to consumers and commercial networks.
The Summit will bring together major stakeholders on cybersecurity and consumer financial protection issues – including senior leaders from the White House and across the federal government; CEOs from a wide range of industries including the financial services industry, technology and communications companies; computer security companies and the retail industry; as well as law enforcement officials, consumer advocates, technical experts, and students. Topics at the Summit will include increasing public-private partnerships and cybersecurity information sharing, creating and promoting improved cybersecurity practices and technologies, and improving adoption and use of more secure payment technologies.
The Summit is also the next step in the President’s BuySecure Initiative, which was launched in November 2014, and will help advance national efforts the government has led over the last two years with executive orders on consumer financial protection and critical infrastructure cybersecurity. Through keynote speeches, panel discussions, and small group workshops, participants will build on efforts in the public and private sectors to further improve cybersecurity practices at a wide range of companies.
Grants to Historically Black Colleges for Cybersecurity Education
As the President stated in Executive Order 13532, “Promoting Excellence, Innovation, and Sustainability at Historically Black Colleges and Universities” in February 2010, historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have made historic and ongoing contributions to the general welfare and prosperity of our country. Established by visionary leaders, America’s HBCUs, for over 150 years, have produced many of the Nation’s leaders in business, government, academia, and the military, and have provided generations of American men and women with hope and educational opportunity. Recognizing that HBCUs serve as engines of opportunity, innovation, and economic growth, Vice President Biden will travel to Norfolk, VA on Thursday to announce that the Department of Energy will provide $25 million in grants over the next five years to support a cybersecurity education consortium consisting of 13 HBCUs and two national labs.
This program, part of the President’s jobs-driven training initiative, will help to fill the growing demand for skilled cybersecurity professionals in the U.S. job market at the same time that it helps to grow the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) curricula for HBCUs. The participating schools include two-year colleges, four-year colleges, and research institutions in seven states, plus the Virgin Islands.
President Barack Obama said Tuesday the cyber attacks against Sony and the Pentagon’s Central Command highlight the need for toughened laws on cybersecurity.
Obama made the comment as the White House unveiled a proposal to revive cybersecurity legislation stalled over the past few years.
“With the Sony attack that took place, with the Twitter account that was hacked by Islamist jihadist sympathizers yesterday, it just goes to show how much more work we need to do — both public and private sector — to strengthen our cybersecurity,” the president said at a meeting with congressional leaders.
Obama said he had spoken to the Republican leaders of the House and Senate and “I think we agreed that this is an area where we can work hard together, get some legislation done and make sure that we are much more effective in protecting the American people from these kinds of cyberattacks.”
The proposal unveiled Tuesday would allow increased sharing of information on cyber threats from the private sector with protection from liability. The measure also would criminalize the sale of stolen financial data, and require companies to notify consumers about data breaches.
A White House statement said the updated proposal “promotes better cybersecurity information sharing between the private sector and government, and it enhances collaboration and information sharing amongst the private sector.”
View gallery
The entrance to Sony Pictures Entertainment is seen in Los Angeles, California, on December 4, 2014 …
The plan also “would allow for the prosecution of the sale of botnets, would criminalize the overseas sale of stolen US financial information like credit card and bank account numbers, would expand federal law enforcement authority to deter the sale of spyware used to stalk or commit ID theft, and would give courts the authority to shut down botnets engaged in distributed denial of service attacks and other criminal activity,” the statement said.
The proposal would shield companies from liability if they share information about cyber threats with the Department of Homeland Security, which has been setting up special units for threat analysis and sharing.
Obama was expected to make comments on the initiative later Tuesday at the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center.
Obama has pressed for cybersecurity legislation to allow the private sector to share data on threats without fear of liability for any adverse consequences from the disclosures.
Earlier efforts on cybersecurity legislation have stalled amid opposition from civil libertarians who feared it could allow too much government snooping and conservatives who argued it would create a new bureaucracy.
However, concerns have been heightened by the hacking of Sony Pictures and massive data breaches affecting retailers including Target and Home Depot.
On Monday, the US Central Command suspended its Twitter page after a group declaring sympathy for Islamic State jihadists hacked its social media accounts and posted internal documents.
White House releases FY2015 budget readout — $2.7 trillion off from CBO projections
BY ED MORRISSEY
The first question to ask is, why bother? Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Budget Committee chair Patty Murray have already decided not to produce a budget for FY2015, an announcement that got a bit lost in the Russian invasion of Crimea at the end of last week. Consider this an example of listbox-checking at the White House, and little more. OMB rolled out its eight-page brief this morning of the budget proposal called “Opportunity for All,” which will end up being just as stillborn as Barack Obama’s last four budget proposals.
A Roadmap for Growth, Opportunity, and Fiscal Responsibility: The President’s Budget provides a roadmap for accelerating economic growth, expanding opportunity for all Americans, and ensuring fiscal responsibility. It invests in infrastructure, job training, preschool, and pro-work tax cuts, while reducing deficits through health, tax, and immigration reform.
Builds on Bipartisan Progress: The Budget adheres to the 2015 spending levels agreed to in the Bipartisan Budget Act and shows the choices the President would make at those levels. But it also shows how to build on this progress to realize the nation’s full potential with a fully paid for $56 billion Opportunity, Growth, and Security Initiative, split evenly between defense and non-defense priorities.
If this truly built on “bipartisan progress,” then Reid would rush it through the Senate to put pressure on House Republicans. Murray’s demurral tells us all we need to know about the White House’s “bipartisan” approach on budgeting. The tear sheet is basically a regurgitation of Obama’s continuing demands for “infrastructure” spending as “investments,” which the White House claims will reduce deficits, both in real terms and as a share of the GDP.
Pay attention to the lead set of bullet items, especially transportation:
Stronger Growth and Job Creation:
o Advanced manufacturing – Invests in American innovation and strengthens our manufacturing base, including a national network of 45 manufacturing institutes.
o Research and innovation – Supports ground-breaking research to fight disease, protect the environment, and develop new technologies, and makes permanent the R&D Tax Credit.
o Pro-growth infrastructure – Lays out an ambitious, four-year $302 billion surface transportation reauthorization proposal paid for with transition revenue from pro-growth business tax reform.
o Government reform – Promotes government management that delivers improved services that are more effective, efficient, and supportive of economic growth.
“Transition revenue from pro-growth business tax reform”? That would require the Senate to actually produce a business-tax reform, a possibility that the White House closed by making outgoing Senator Max Baucus the ambassador to China, even though he knew little about his assignment. Until then, he and Orrin Hatch had been working on the Finance Committee to produce an overhaul of the tax code for both businesses and individuals that would have made the US more competitive and tax planning more straightforward. His replacement, Ron Wyden, will have other priorities.
His colleague Barbara Boxer certainly does. The revenue for transportation spending will come from new or higher refinery taxes, Boxer told the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, since higher gas taxes are not politically possible and new mileage taxes are still a ways off. No matter what, though, Boxer pledged to get more funding, because Democrats won’t even consider looking for ways to spend less:
“I don’t see support for raising the gas tax and there is absolutely no way we’re going to cut spending, so it’s going to have to be a creative way to fund this in reality,” Boxer said.
“The administration, you are going to be hearing from them today, is that right? I think you’ll be excited at what they have done on this whole area of transportation,” Boxer told the annual AASHTO Washington Briefing. “They’re looking at tax reform which is certainly one way to make sure we have the funding for six years.”
The Federal Highway Administration has projected that the Highway Trust Fund, supplied by gasoline and diesel fuel taxes, will have to soon alter reimbursements to states for work due to a shortfall. The Congressional Budget Office predicts the Highway Trust Fund could run out of money by August.
Boxer says she’s supportive of new taxes for additional funding.
“Either we’re going to replace the gas tax with another way of funding which I love, which is the fee at the refinery level, I think I may be the only one that likes that idea, so I haven’t seen a groundswell of support for that idea.”
Note too the promise that government “reform” will generate more funds for Obama administration priorities. As far back as 2009, the White House has claimed that they couldn’t find any more spending to cut through reform. When did that change?
Readers probably didn’t need the Washington Post to tell them that Obama’s foreign policy comes from a rich fantasy life — and they won’t need the Post to tell them the same about his economic projections:
President Obama is just out with his newest budget request — which forecasts a dramatic reduction in deficits over the coming decade. The request paints a much rosier debt scenario than a report released by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office a month ago. In his budget request, Obama projects public debt as a percentage of gross domestic project falling to 69 percent by 2024, while the CBO has it rising to 79 percent — a difference of 10 percentage points, or roughly $2.7 trillion.
This is largely because Obama assumes the passage of legislation that the CBO doesn’t, and he assumes those laws will generate far more revenue over the next decade. In 2024, the spending/revenue gap (i.e., the annual deficit) in Obama’s budget amounts to 1.6 percent of GDP. CBO’s projected deficit is more than twice that, at 4 percent of GDP.
A $2.7 trillion difference? That’s like an entire year of federal spending … or at least it was during the Bush administration and Republican control of Congress.
Obama budget seeks new spending, new taxes to boost economy, tame debt
President Obama unveiled an ambitious $3.9 trillion budget blueprint Tuesday that seeks billions of dollars in fresh spending to boost economic growth but also pledges to tame the national debt by raising taxes on the wealthy, slashing payments to health providers and overhauling the nation’s immigration laws.
The request sent to Congress for the 2015 fiscal year offers a smorgasbord of liberal policy ideas at a time when riling up the Democratic base and drawing a vivid contrast with Republicans are critical to Obama’s hopes of preserving his party’s imperiled majority in the Senate.
His blueprint includes some targeted spending cuts, but relies primarily on more than $1 trillion in new taxes to slow borrowing over the next decade – with much of the burden falling on major businesses and the wealthy. While some of the proceeds would go toward deficit reduction, Obama also calls for more than $55 billion in new spending on defense, roads and bridges, universal preschool education and expanded tax credits for the poor.
To achieve Obama’s agenda, however, Congress would have to approve his ideas — an unlikely prospect in an election year. While the budget opens the door to a few potential areas of bipartisan agreement – including an overhaul of business taxes that would generate cash for infrastructure – it retreats from other compromises.
For example, Obama does not propose using a less-generous measure of inflation to calculate Social Security benefits, a move that would significantly slow spending growth in the program. Obama included the proposal, known as the chained consumer price index, in last year’s budget in a failed bid to strike a grand bargain on the debt with Republicans.
“Our budget is about choices, it’s about our values,” Obama said during an appearance at Powell Elementary School in the District. “As a country we’ve got to make a decision if we’re going to protect tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans or if we’re going to make smart investments necessary to create jobs and grow our economy, and expand opportunity for every American.”
Republicans quickly rejected the president’s choices, however, complaining that his request would bust the caps on agency budgets that he and congressional Democrats had agreed to set in a compromise enacted barely three months ago.
House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) derided the request as “a clear sign this president has given up on any efforts to address our serious fiscal challenges that are undermining the future of our kids and grandkids.”
“After years of fiscal and economic mismanagement, the president has offered perhaps his most irresponsible budget yet,” Boehner said in a statement. “Despite signing last year’s bipartisan budget deal – and touting it as an accomplishment – the president now proposes violating that agreement with a spending surge. What’s more, he proposes raising even more taxes – not to reduce the deficit but to spend more taxpayer money.”
Added House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.): “This budget isn’t a serious document; it’s a campaign brochure.”
In his message to Congress, Obama argues that his policies have the deficit well in hand — and would improve the nation’s fiscal outlook in the years to come. His request proposes to reduce borrowing by an additional $1.4 trillion by 2024, building on $4 trillion in deficit-reduction enacted by Congress since the budget wars began three years ago.
As a result, the White House projects a deficit of $564 billion in 2015, or 3.1 percent of the economy, down from $649 billion this year and 3.1 percent of GDP. By 2024, Obama projects a deficit of just $434 billion, or 1.6 percent of the overall economy, the smallest deficit since 2007, before the Great Recession dealt a terrible blow to government finances.
A shrinking deficit would reduce borrowing, thereby allowing the overall debt to grow more slowly. The White House estimates that the debt would shrink to 69 percent of the economy by 2024, compared to 74.4 percent today.
Those projections are far rosier than those made recently by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. Under current law, the CBO forecasts that the deficit will rise to 4 percent of GDP in 2024 and that the debt will grow to 79 percent of GDP.
The Obama budget would build on a spending deal reached late last year between Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the chairs of their respective chamber’s budget committees. Under the deal, which largely replaces the deep domestic and defense cuts known as sequestration for two years, agency spending levels are set through September 2015.
In his budget, Obama argues that the deal provides insufficient spending; he proposes $56 billion in additional funding to agencies, offset by $28 billion in alternative spending cuts and tax hikes.
The new spending, known as an Opportunity, Growth and Security Initiative, will pump money into preschool programs, the National Institutes of Health, manufacturing institutes, climate research, job training and a new parental leave proposal, among other benefits for the middle class. Obama would also expand a tax credit for poor, working-class Americans valued at $60 billion over 10 years.
To pay for those initiatives, the president takes aim at a variety of tax breaks that benefit the wealthy – limiting the value of retirement savings accounts, a loophole known as “carried interest” that allows many private equity and hedge fund managers to reduce their tax burden, among others.
Reprising one tax proposal from last year that also hits middle class and lower income Americans, Obama proposes a new tax on tobacco to pay for the early-childhood initiative.
After 2015, Obama proposes to replace the remainder of sequestration with a combination of tax hikes as well as cuts in other mandatory spending programs, such as Medicare. Obama would seek, for example, to raise premiums for wealthy seniors and force drug companies to offer larger discounts on prescription drugs.
Like the CBO, the Obama administration does not paint an overly optimistic picture of economic growth over the next decade, with an average inflation-adjusted growth rate of just 2.6 percent per year over the next 10 years.
Rather, the president sees a rosier budget picture due primarily to his proposal to increase tax revenue. In 2024, Obama projects collecting about $500 billion more in taxes than would be the case under current law.
Breaking down spending in Obama’s budget proposal
President Obama released his budget proposal Tuesday morning. The circles show the amount requested and the color reflects the changes from last year’s discretionary funding levels for each department. This page will be updated with new information throughout the day. Read related article.
Defense
$495.6 billion in discretionary funds (0.1% less than last year)
The Pentagon’s budget for 2015 represents a major turning point for the military, which is moving from more than a decade of massive growth to a significantly smaller force that will be more dependent on technology. The Obama administration plans to spend $495.6 billion on defense in 2015 or about $113 billion less than had been expected in last year’s budget. The biggest savings will come from cuts to personnel, particularly in the Army, which will be gradually pared back to its smallest size in 74 years. The Pentagon also plans to rein in healthcare costs and cut some of its older weapons systems.
Health & Human Services
$73.7 billion in discretionary funds (7.6% less than last year)
The Obama administration on Tuesday proposed an $80.1 billion budget for the Health and Human Services department, representing a $3.9 billion increase over 2012 levels. The budget includes new funding for AIDS prevention, doctor training, family planning programs, food safety, Head Start and mental health services for young adults and families. It also includes money for new initiatives targeting antibiotic resistance.
But it does not include a major increase in funding for the National Institutes of Health, despite warnings from the agency’s director that it needs a significant infusion to remain on the cutting edge of research. And some of the increases are offset by cuts to block grant programs. In particular, the department saves $80 million by eliminating the Preventive Health and Health Services Block Grant program, which provides money to states to deal with leading causes of death and disability in those areas.The administration is seeking $4.7 billion for the Food and Drug Administration, which includes new spending to implement laws passed last year to improve food safety and the safety of custom-mixed drugs made by large specialty pharmacies.
The budget also continues to fund the president’s signature health-care law, which saw many of its key provisions implemented this year. It includes money to continue operating the state and federal health insurance marketplaces, as well as to provide subsidies to help low- and middle-income people pay for health insurance. Most Americans must carry health insurance starting this year, or they face a fine.
Education
$68.6 billion in discretionary funds (1.9% more than last year)
The White House budget proposal shows that the president wants to increase discretionary spending for the Department of Education by $1.3 billion to $68.6 billion. That’s in addition to $14.4 billion the federal government gives to states to help educate poor children and another $11.5 billion it provides for disabled students who require special education.
Obama is again seeking funding for his “Preschool for All” plan to expand early childhood education to most low and middle-income four-year-olds across the country – a 10-year, $76 billion program that would be funded with an increase in the federal tobacco tax.
Veterans Affairs
$65.3 billion in discretionary funds (3.0% more than last year)
The 2015 White House budget would provide $65.3 billion in discretionary funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs. The enacted 2014 federal budget gave $63.4 billion to the agency, which provides benefits to veterans and their families. The VA has accumulated a massive backlog of claims waiting to be processed, which they trimmed from 600,000 to 400,000 from March to November 2013. Obama announced that “slashing that backlog” was a White House priority in his 2014 State of the Union address, and his proposed 2015 budget includes a $138.7 million investment in the Veterans Claims Intake Program in an effort to reform and speed up the process.
The White House’s budget also proposes a $1.6 billion investment in helping homeless and at-risk veterans, including $500 million for homelessness prevention and rapid re-housing, $321 million for a supportive housing program for veterans and $75 million for 10,000 new housing vouchers through the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
2015 Opportunity, Growth, and Security Initiative
$55.4 billion in discretionary funds
The budget plan includes funds for investments in early-childhood education, more teachers in elementary school, clean-energy research, advanced manufacturing, federal employee training, government customer service.
State and Other International Programs
$42.6 billion in discretionary funds (0.2% less than last year)
The Obama administration is seeking $46.2 billion for the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, just $1.6 billion less than it requested for fiscal 2014. The figure includes $5.9 billion for “overseas contingency operations,” which serves as the base budget for operations in Afghanistan. Under the budget proposal, $1.5 billion would be dedicated to address the humanitarian crisis in war-torn Syria and to “support transitions and reforms” in the Middle East and North Africa, regions still being reshaped more than three years after the start of the Arab Spring. The fiscal blueprint would invest $4.6 billion to secure diplomatic facilities overseas and would support additional security construction – efforts that were largely driven by the fallout from the 2012 attacks on the U.S. compounds in the Libyan city of Benghazi.
Homeland Security
$38.2 billion in discretionary funds (2.8% less than last year)
The department would receive $38.2 billion in non-disaster funding under President Obama’s budget proposal, which would reduce spending for the organization by nearly 3 percent compared to the 2014 enacted level but roughly the same as it was in 2013.
Obama’s fiscal plan calls for 4,000 additional Customs and Border Protection officers, as well as $549 million to protect federal computer networks from cybersecurity threats, $1 billion in assistance to state and local governments for firefighters and emergency-management personnel and $10 million to help immigrants on the path to citizenship.
Housing and Urban Development
$32.6 billion in discretionary funds (3.3% less than last year)
The president’s proposed budget includes $46.7 billion for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, about $1.2 billion more than what Congress approved for fiscal 2014.
The administration proposed about $20 billion for the Housing Choice Voucher program. Those funds would restore cuts imposed on assisted housing units by the 2013 sequestration, and support all existing vouchers. Another $9.7 billion would go toward the Project-Based Rental Assistance Program, slightly less than the previously enacted level.
The president also requested $6.5 billion for preserving affordable public housing and $2.4 billion for Homeless Assistance Grants, slightly more than the levels approved in fiscal 2014 in both cases.
Energy
$27.9 billion in discretionary funds (2.6% more than last year)
President Obama’s proposed budget asks for $27.9 billion in discretionary spending, a 2.6 percent increase, for the Energy Department, featuring boosts in spending on basic research and costs associated with maintaining the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile.
The administration is asking for $627 million in additional funds, a third more than the current fiscal year, for managing the nuclear stockpile. Overall the proposed budget includes $11.7 billion for nuclear security, a 4 percent increase over the 2014 enacted level.
Justice
$27.4 billion in discretionary funds (0.7% more than last year)
The Justice Department’s proposed $27.4 billion budget reflects Attorney General Eric H. Holder’s priority of criminal justice and prison reform. Holder’s budget–$122 million above the 2014 enacted level–includes $173 million in targeted investments for criminal justice reform efforts.
The DOJ budget requests funding for Holder’s “Smart on Crime” initiative to reduce the number of low-level drug offenders in prison and reduce recidivism rates by expanding drug treatment programs. It requests $15 million for U.S. Attorneys, including prevention and reentry work and promoting alternatives to incarceration such as the establishment of drug courts and veteran courts. Another $15 million would go towards expanding the federal Residential Drug Abuse program and $14 million would assist inmates with reentering society and reducing the population of individuals who return to prison after being released. An additional $14 million would expand the Residential Substance Abuse Treatment program at the state and local levels. The DOJ budget also requests $115 million for the Second Chance Act Grant program to reduce recidivism and help ex-offenders return to productive lives.
Agriculture
$22.2 billion in discretionary funds (7.9% less than last year)
The department would lose roughly $938 million this year under the president’s proposal, receiving $23.7 billion in discretionary funding. The administration is pressing for reduced crop insurance subsidies for farmers and insurance companies “to more reasonable levels,” changes that would save the government $14 billion over 10 years, the budget says.
Other Agencies
$19.2 billion in discretionary funds (2.7% more than last year)
National Aeronautics & Space Administration
$17.5 billion in discretionary funds (0.6% less than last year)
The administration is asking $17.5 billion for NASA, another tight budget for an agency that peaked at $18.7 billion in 2010. The 2015 request is down $185 million from the enacted 2013 budget. NASA can also tap $900 million in the administration’s Opportunity initiative if Congress provides the funding. NASA officials view this as a “continuity-driven” budget that will make almost all major programs go forward as planned.
Transportation
$14 billion in discretionary funds (2.2% more than last year)
The hub of the president’s budget proposal for transportation is a $302-billion, four-year surface transportation reauthorization. It emphasizes a fix-it-first approach that would give funding priority to salvaging existing roads, bridges and transit systems rather than expanding their network.
The administration wants to invest $1.25 billion a year in the popular TIGER grant program to states and cities. It would create a new $10-billion, four-year program to address freight transportation bottlenecks that experts say impede U.S. competition in the global economy. The White House plan would almost double funding — from $12.3 billion to $22.3 billion — for transit systems and intercity passenger rail.
Treasury
$12.4 billion in discretionary funds (1.6% less than last year)
The White House’s proposed 2015 budget would provide $13.8 billion to the Treasury Department, representing a downgrade of about 1.6 percent compared to the spending level for this year. Most of the funding, $12 billion, would go toward the Internal Revenue Service, boosting the agency’s budget by 6.3 percent compared to 2014. The proposals include $165 million for an initiative that partly aims to help IRS call centers boost their response rates from 60 to 80 percent, as well as $480 million to support additional tax enforcement and compliance functions.
The budget blueprint also calls for $1.5 billion to help spur lending for small businesses, $225 million for a fund to encourage job growth and healthier communities in underserved areas and plans for assessing the production and use of coins, including the penny.
Labor
$11.8 billion in discretionary funds (1.7% less than last year)
The administration’s proposed budget for the Department of Labor includes one of President Obama’s top priorities this year, a boost in the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour from $7.25, where it has been since 2009. The president recently raised the minimum wage for federal contractors by executive order; House Republicans oppose a broader increase.
The White House is seeking $11.8 billion in discretionary funding for the agency. The money would support new efforts to reach unemployed workers and recently separated veterans with in-person “reemployment” services; assist states in launching new paid leave programs for employees who need to take time off from work to care for a child or family member; and boost efforts to enforce laws that workers from being denied wages and overtime pay.
Interior
$11.5 billion in discretionary funds (unchanged from last year)
The Interior Department would get a 4 percent budget increase to $11.7 billion in fiscal 2015, its first full year under Secretary Sally Jewell, under the Obama administration’s budget proposal.
Some of that increase provides more money for ecological sustainability of waterways such as the Chesapeake Bay and the Everglades National Park, while there is no major increase for forest fire protection
Social Security Administration
$9.1 billion in discretionary funds (2.2% more than last year)
The White House budget increases spending to improve customer service through modernized online and in-person operations.
Commerce
$8.8 billion in discretionary funds (6.0% more than last year)
The White House is requesting a discretionary budget of $8.8 billion for the Department of Commerce, the federal agency charged with promoting economic growth, conducting the Census and issuing patents, among other responsibilities. The 2014 budget gave the department $8.3 billion for discretionary spending. The Obama administration’s budget would give $210 million to the Economic Development Administration, and $25 million to the Regional Innovation Strategies Program, both initiatives geared toward helping regional and small businesses – a group the president often gets slammed for ignoring.
Environmental Protection Agency
$7.9 billion in discretionary funds (3.7% less than last year)
President Obama on Thursday proposed a $7.9 billion fiscal 2015 budget for the Environmental Protection Agency, a spending plan that focuses on reducing carbon output from vehicles and power plants and preparing the country “for the unavoidable impacts of climate change.”
The proposal is a $300 million reduction from the EPA’s 2014 budget of $8.2 billion, though the plan would increase the agency’s funding in coming years. One major cut is $581 million from a fund that helps states build wastewater and drinking water projects.
National Science Foundation
$7.3 billion in discretionary funds (1.4% more than last year)
The plan includes a small increase in funding aimed at research to improve economic growth through advanced manufacturing and clean energy.
Corps of Engineers
$4.5 billion in discretionary funds (18.2% less than last year)
The budget blueprint would cut spending for the Army Corps of Engineers and focus on projects with an environmental return. It also proposes increased fees for use of inland waterways, and streamlined procedures so that state and local governments can do more waterway maintenance.
Corporation for National & Community Service
$1.1 billion in discretionary funds (unchanged from last year)
The proposal maintains funding for 114,000 AmeriCorps volunteers across the country and other projects.
Small Business Administration
$0.7 billion in discretionary funds (22.2% less than last year)
General Services Administration
$0.2 billion in discretionary funds (88.9% less than last year)
US Rep. Boehner, Rep. Ryan Heap Scorn On Obama’s FY2015 Budget
By John Shaw
–House Speaker Boehner, House Budget Chief Ryan Rip Into Obama Budget
–Rep. Boehner: President Offers His ‘Most Irresponsible Budget Yet’
–Rep. Ryan: Obama Offers ‘Campaign Brochure’ Not ‘Serious Document
WASHINGTON (MNI) – House Speaker John Boehner and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan unleashed verbal haymakers at President Barack Obama’s fiscal year 2015 budget, with both GOP leaders calling the plan a failure of fiscal stewardship.
In separate statements, both Boehner and Ryan had little good to say about the president’s budget.
“After years of fiscal and economic mismanagement, the president has offered perhaps his most irresponsible budget yet,” Boehner jabbed.
“American families looking for jobs and opportunity will find only more government in this plan. Spending too much, borrowing too much, and taxing too much, it would hurt our economy and cost jobs. And it offers no solutions to save the safety net and retirement security programs that are critical to millions of Americans but are also driving our fiscal imbalance,” the Speaker said.
He said that Obama’s budget never comes close to achieving balance. “In the president’s vision for our future, America’s budget never balances – ever. After dramatically expanding entitlement programs, the president now believes our entirely predictable long-term debt crisis is the next president’s problem,” he said.
Boehner also accuses Obama of violating the December budget agreement by pretending to accept the FY2015 discretionary spending limits, but then proposing an additional $56 billion in spending.
“This budget is a clear sign this president has given up on any efforts to address our serious fiscal challenges that are undermining the future of our kids and grandkids. In the coming weeks, Republicans will produce a responsible budget that balances, promotes opportunity, reforms our tax code, saves our critical safety net programs, and places a priority on creating jobs, not more government,” Boehner said.
Ryan also found few merits in Obama’s fiscal plan.
“This budget isn’t a serious document; it’s a campaign brochure. In divided government, we need leadership and collaboration. And in this budget, we have neither,” Ryan said.
He called Obama’s budget “yet another disappointment – because it reinforces the status quo,” adding it would “demand that families pay more so Washington can spend more. It would hollow out our defense capabilities. And it would do nothing to preserve or strengthen our entitlements. The President has just three years left in his administration, and yet he seems determined to do nothing about our fiscal challenges.”
Story 1: Christie Ordered and Knew About Lane Closing of George Washington Bridge — Videos
New Accusation Says Christie Is Lying And Closed Bridge
Gov. Christie accused of lying
Report: Christie Knew About Lane Closures On Bridge
Christie, Ex-official Clash Over When Governor Learned Of George Washington Bridge Lane Closings
Gov. Christie ‘Bridgegate’ scandal flares up
Breaking News Report: Chris Christie Knew About Lane Closures
BREAKING: Chris Christie knew about the George Washington Bridge lane closures while they were closed according to former Port Authority official David Wildstein…
Lane Closures at the George Washington Bridge and Chris Christie’s Apology
The Beginning of the End for Chris Christie
Ex-Port Authority Official Says ‘Evidence Exists’ Christie Knew About Lane Closings
The former Port Authority official who personally oversaw the lane closings at the George Washington Bridge, central to the scandal now swirling around Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, said on Friday that “evidence exists” the governor knew about the lane closings when they were happening.
In a letter released by his lawyer, the former official, David Wildstein, a high school friend of Mr. Christie’s who was appointed with the governor’s blessing at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which controls the bridge, described the order to close the lanes as “the Christie administration’s order” and said “evidence exists as well tying Mr. Christie to having knowledge of the lane closures, during the period when the lanes were closed, contrary to what the governor stated publicly in a two-hour press conference” three weeks ago.
“Mr. Wildstein’s lawyer confirms what the governor has said all along: He had absolutely no prior knowledge of the lane closures before they happened and whatever Mr. Wildstein’s motivations were for closing them to begin with. As the governor said in a December 13th press conference, he only first learned lanes were closed when it was reported by the press and, as he said in his January 9th press conference, had no indication that this was anything other than a traffic study until he read otherwise the morning of January 8th.
“The governor denies Mr. Wildstein’s lawyer’s other assertions.”
The bridge scandal erupted in early January, when documents emerged revealing that a deputy chief of staff to the governor, Bridget Anne Kelly, had sent an email to Mr. Wildstein saying, “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” the town at the New Jersey end of the bridge, where Mr. Christie’s aides had pursued but failed to receive an endorsement from the mayor, who is a Democrat. The letter does not delve into the motives behind the lane closings.
A spokesman for Mr. Christie did not immediately return a call seeking comment on Friday.
Video: Christie News Conference on Bridge Flap JAN. 9, 2014
During his news conference, Mr. Christie specifically said he had no knowledge that traffic lanes leading to the bridge had been closed until after they were reopened. “I had no knowledge of this — of the planning, the execution or anything about it — and that I first found out about it after it was over,” he said. “And even then, what I was told was that it was a traffic study.”
Chris Christie responds to new bridge scandal allegations
By Brent Johnson
Gov. Chris Christie’s office has released a statement responding to allegations made today that the governor knew about the controversial lane closures at the George Washington Bridge when they happened last year.
The statement said Christie stands by his position that he “first learned lanes were closed when it was reported by the press.”
“Mr. Wildstein’s lawyer confirms what the governor has said all along — he had absolutely no prior knowledge of the lane closures before they happened and whatever Mr. Wildstein’s motivations were for closing them to begin with,” the statement said.
“As the governor said in a Dec. 13 press conference, he only first learned lanes were closed when it was reported by the press and as he said in his Jan. 9 press conference, had no indication that this was anything other than a traffic study until he read otherwise the morning of Jan. 8. The governor denies Mr. Wildstein’s lawyer’s other assertions.”
The attorney for former Port Authority official David Wildstein said in a letter today that Christie knew of the lane closures when they occurred last September.”Evidence exists as well tying Mr. Christie to having knowledge of the lane closures, during the period when the lanes were closed, contrary to what the governor stated publicly in a two-hour press conference” last month, attorney Alan Zegas said in the letter.
As the scandal has emerged and grown, New Jersey Gov Chris Christie has repeatedly denied any connection between his office and the decision by two aides he appointed to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to close two local access lanes to the George Washington Bridge in early September 2013. A compilation of his statements throughout the month of December 2013. (Video by compilation by Brian Donohue/The-Star-Ledger)
Zegas added that Wildstein “contests the accuracy of various statements that the governor made about him and he can prove the inaccuracy of some.”
Wildstein, a longtime Christie ally who oversaw the closures, resigned from his Port Authority post last month.
Democrats have accused Christie’s administration of closing the lanes as political retribution because Fort Lee’s Democratic mayor refused to endorse the Republican governor for re-election.
On Jan. 8, emails surfaced showing Bridget Ann Kelly, Christie’s deputy chief of staff, appeared to have advance knowledge of the closures. “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” one email read.
The next day, Christie fired Kelly and repeatedly apologized for the matter at a news conference, but the governor said he had no advance knowledge of the closures himself.
He has said on several occasions that he learned about the closures, which took place from Sept. 9-13, from media accounts published after they happened.
Bridget Anne Kelly, the deputy chief of staff to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R), sent an eight-word email on August 13, 2013 toDavid Wildstein, the governor’s appointee to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee”.[1][2] Wildstein responded to Kelly’s e-mail: “Got it.”[3]
Beginning on September 9, 2013, the dedicated toll lanes for a Fort Lee, New Jersey entrance to the upper level of the George Washington Bridge were reduced from three to one until early morning on September 13, on orders from David Wildstein (who was hired by New Jersey governor Chris Christie appointee Bill Baroni) without notification to Fort Lee government and police officials. It caused additional hours each day of even more significant traffic congestion than normal and major delays for school transportation and police and emergency response within Fort Lee during and after the peak hours of travel.[4] The reduction in these toll lanes occurred due to a purported “traffic study”, but raised speculation that they were retribution directed towards Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich for not endorsing Christie’s re-election campaign.[5][6]
Investigation
On October 2, John Wisniewski, Deputy Speaker of the New Jersey General Assembly, indicated that he would open an investigation to determine whether or not the lane closures were politically motivated. The Port Authority announced it would conduct an internal review on October 16.[7]
On December 13, 2013, Christie announced he had accepted the immediate resignations of Baroni and Wildstein.[8] Asked whether the lane closures had been ordered as political retribution, Christie answered “absolutely, unequivocally not.”[9] Christie added: “I’ve made it very clear to everybody on my senior staff that if anyone had any knowledge about this, they needed to come forward to me and tell me about it. And they’ve all assured me that they don’t.”[10]The New York Times published emails and text messages on January 8, 2014 tying Christie’s deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly, to the closure. The content of the released communications suggests not only that the lane closures were ordered with the knowledge that they would cause a massive traffic jam, but also that this was the intended effect.[11][12] Christie released a statement later that day denying knowledge of the scandal, rebuking Bridget Anne Kelly for her role in the lane closure event, and vowing that “people will be held responsible for their actions”.[13] These lane closures may have caused slower response time for emergency vehicles and may have contributed to the death of at least one woman.[14]
The following day, Christie apologized for the lane closure and said that he was “embarrassed and humiliated” by the behavior of his staff. The governor summarily fired Bridget Anne Kelly, whom he called “stupid” and “deceitful.” for lying to him.[15] Christie further admonished his two-time campaign manager Bill Stepien by asking him to withdraw his name from the State Party Chairman race, and to cease his consulting role for the Republican Governors Association.[16] Later that day, Wildstein refused to testify before the Assembly Transportation committee, invoking the constitutional protection from self incrimination.[17]
Repercussions
As of January 9, 2014, there is a wide range of opinion about the impact of this scandal on a potential Christie presidential bid.[18]
Christie Views Lane Closings on George Washington Bridge as Overblown
It began with a few orange traffic cones in September, when local access lanes to the George Washington Bridge abruptly closed for four days, gridlocking Fort Lee, N.J.
But after legislative hearings, the resignations of two of his confidants and demands for more answers, the allegation that drivers were made to suffer for the sake of petty political payback has grown into a major irritation for Gov. Chris Christie.
Facing reporters on Friday to announce the resignation of a second close associate in a week, Mr. Christie said the fuss about the two men’s having ordered that lanes leading to the George Washington Bridge be shut — and whether they had done it to punish Fort Lee’s mayor for failing to endorse Mr. Christie — had been “sensationalized.”
It was merely a mistake, he said, or rather, “a mistake got made.” The article that said he had called Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York to complain that the controversy was getting too much attention? “The story was wrong.” The resignation yesterday, by the man at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which controls the bridge? “This was a change I was going to make anyway,” Mr. Christie said.
But to explain that it was not such a big deal, the governor spent more than an hour of his time. And he said he had watched “most of” the hearing this week that laid out the details of the closings — a hearing that had stretched for more than six hours.
Even if the lane closings were not retribution, even if Mr. Christie did not know about them, the accusation of nasty politics goes to the heart of one of the governor’s vulnerabilities as he prepares to run for president. In how many other states, after all, do pollsters routinely ask voters whether they agree that their governor is a bully?
So Mr. Christie, among the deftest of politicians, took pains to put any tone of bullying aside. His normally combative self, the wagging finger and borderline contempt for reporters, was gone, replaced by a charmer, widening his eyes and offering extensive explanation.
The “culture of fear” that workers described at the Port Authority? “The first I’ve heard of it,” he said, and shrugged.
Punishing the mayor of Fort Lee? “I don’t have any recollection of having met the mayor of Fort Lee,” he said. (Twitter then exploded with copies of a photo of the governor with the mayor, Mark Sokolich, a Democrat.)
Is there a bottom of this story to get to? “I don’t think so,” Mr. Christie said, shrugging again. He added, “We’re going to turn the page now.”
Mr. Christie understands the stakes: Because he is a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination, Democrats and the news media will watch his every move. (“Get used to the new world,” he told one reporter on Friday, smiling.)
He was not quite taking responsibility: more like putting distance. The lanes had been closed, he said twice, “at the request of Mr. Wildstein” — David Wildstein, an old friend of Mr. Christie’s, who resigned from his $150,000-a-year job at the Port Authority a week ago.
Asked about Bill Baroni, another close friend and the governor’s chief appointee at the Port Authority until he resigned on Friday, Mr. Christie said he had not spoken to him “in the last period of time.”
By the end of the hour, the governor tried to turn the situation to his advantage, offering that he wished more people in public life would own up to their mistakes. His office followed up by emailing a video clip from the news conference headlined, “I Take Responsibility for Things That Happen on My Watch.” It opened with him saying, “I wouldn’t characterize myself as angry.”
National Democratic groups had jumped on the controversy after details of the moves by Mr. Baroni and Mr. Wildstein came out at a legislative hearing here Monday, and Democrats in the State Legislature said their investigations would continue. Assemblyman John Wisniewski, who led the hearing Monday, said he expected more hearings to follow up on seven subpoenas he sent on Thursday, including for email correspondence between the governor’s office and the Port Authority. That agency’s inspector general is also investigating.
“We still don’t have a full accounting of what happened, why it was allowed to occur, everyone who was involved and what their motivations were,” said State Senator Loretta Weinberg, the Democratic majority leader, who has attended Port Authority meetings in recent months to seek answers. She called the resignations “an admission of guilt.”
Mr. Baroni, who earned $291,100 at the Port Authority in 2011, is a former Republican state senator who was appointed by Mr. Christie in the face of a primary challenge for his legislative seat. At the Port Authority, he created a new job for Mr. Wildstein, who was a high school friend of the governor and who later became mayor of their hometown, Livingston, and started an anonymous political blog that was noted for scoops from the United States attorney’s office when Mr. Christie led it.
Port Authority workers testified on Monday that the lane closings had caused emergency vehicles to be delayed, commutes to stretch to four hours and children to be late to the first day of school. It cost the agency toll revenue and overtime pay.
Mr. Wildstein, the workers said, told them not to tell anyone about the closings, and had not followed procedure for such significant changes to traffic patterns — 75,000 cars use those lanes each day. The Port Authority workers said they had gone along with the plan despite warning it would “not end well”; they said they had feared for their jobs, because Mr. Wildstein worked for Mr. Baroni, and Mr. Baroni worked for the governor.
If there was a traffic study, the workers testified, it had not resulted in any report that they knew of.
Mr. Christie said, “I’ve heard more about this than I ever wanted to,” and said he had better ways of spending Friday mornings than talking for an hour about traffic studies and road closings. Still, at the end of the news conference, in which he named a former prosecutor and close aide of his, Deborah Gramiccioni, to Mr. Baroni’s post, Mr. Christie suggested it might be worth examining why Fort Lee should have local access lanes.
But he added that he was not about to call for it right away: “Everybody needs some time to calm down.”
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Story 1: Senator Mitch McConnell on Unfair Behind Closed Doors Single Party Impeachment Inquiry and Syria — Videos —
Senator Mitch McConnell: Democrats Are ‘Throwing Fairness And Precedent To The Wind’ | NBC News
Senate Needs to Make a Strong, Strategic Statement on Syria
Trump was ‘absolutely right’ to take troops out of Syria: Rand Paul
Democrats, Republicans unite on Trump’s decision on Syria
Senate Needs to Make a Strong, Strategic Statement on Syria
McConnell splits with Trump on Syria pullout
Mitch McConnell rebukes Donald Trump over Turkish invasion of Kurdish-held Syria, saying troop pullout gives Iran a chance to reach Israel’s doorstep and contending worthwhile intervention does NOT make the U.S. world’s policeman
By GEOFF EARLE, DEPUTY U.S. POLITICAL EDITOR FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 17:14 EDT, 15 October 2019 | UPDATED: 17:14 EDT, 15 October 2019
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell directly confronted President Trump‘s complaint that U.S. troop deployment’s make it the ‘world’s policeman’ and expressed his ‘grave concern’ about Trump’s policy moves in Syria.
McConnell issued the rebuke without directly blaming President Trump for the latest calamity in the region – although he said Trump’s policy threatens to put Iran on Israel’s door-step and fuel a ‘humanitarian catastrophe.’
Following Turkey’s incursion into Syria in territory that had been controlled by U.S.-allied members of the Kurdish minority, McConnell warned that the ‘door is wide open for resurgence of the Islamic State.’
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell took on President Trump’s contention that having forces remain in Syria was akin to being the ‘world’s policeman’
In a Senate floor speech, McConnell said the situation created a power vacuum that could fuel the meddling influence of Russia, and ‘leaving northeastern Syria wide open Iran to extend reach unimpeded all the way from tehran to the door step of our friends in Israel.
‘I want to make something clear, the United States has taken the fight to Syria and Afghanistan because that is where our enemies are, that’s why we’re there. Fighting terrorists, exercising leadership and troubled regions and advancing U.S. interests around the world does not make us an evil empire or the world’s policeman,’ McConnell said.
This picture taken on October 15, 2019 shows a missile fired by Turkish forces towards the Syrian town of Ras al-Ain, from the Turkish side of the border at Ceylanpinar district in Sanliurfa on the first week of Turkey’s military operation against Kurdish forces
McConnell shared his ‘grave concern’ about the situation in Syria
‘When it looked like President Trump would withdraw from Syria at beginning of the year, 70 senators joined in warning of the risk of precipitously withdrawing from Syria or Afghanistan,’ McConnell noted in his floor speech
McConnell had also warned of his ‘grave concern’ in a written statement Monday that did not mention Trump by name. But in his floor speech Tuesday, he included such a reference.
‘When it looked like President Trump would withdraw from Syria at beginning of the year, 70 senators joined in warning of the risk of precipitously withdrawing from Syria or Afghanistan,’ McConnell noted.
But even as he challenged the president on a policy that has resulted in the release of ISIS prisoners, led to attacks against key regional allies, and even led to shelling by Turkish forces toward a U.S. troop-held position, he defended the president on impeachment by attacking Democrats.
‘House Democrats are finally indulging in their impeachment obsession. Full steam ahead,’ McConnell warned. ‘I don’t think many of us were expecting to witness a clinic in terms of fairness or due process. But even by their own partisan standards, House Democrats have already found new ways to lower the bar,’ he complained.
McConnell has said he was required by Senate rules to hold a trial should the House impeach Trump.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7577029/Mitch-McConnell-rebukes-Donald-Trump-Turkish-invasion-Kurdish-held-Syria.html
Trump’s Syria Mess
He resorts to sanctions as the harm from withdrawal builds.
What a fiasco. Foreign-policy blunders often take months or years to reveal their damaging consequences, but the harm from President Trump’s abrupt withdrawal of U.S. forces from northern Syria is playing out almost in real time.
Critics said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would invade northern Syria despite Mr. Trump’s public warnings, and the Turkish strongman did. Critics said our Kurdish allies would strike a deal with Syria’s Bashar Assad to defend themselves, and the Kurds have. Critics said Islamic State prisoners held by the Kurds would be released and scatter to wage jihad again, and they are.
Mr. Trump now finds himself back in an economic and diplomatic brawl with Turkey that he said he wanted to avoid. Wouldn’t it have been easier simply to tell Mr. Erdogan, on that famous phone call two Sundays ago, that the U.S. wouldn’t tolerate a Turkish invasion against the Kurds and would use air power to stop it? Mr. Erdogan would have had to back down and continue negotiating a Syrian safe zone with the Kurds and the U.S.
Mr. Trump is also making matters worse with his unserious justifications. “After defeating 100% of the ISIS Caliphate, I largely moved our troops out of Syria. Let Syria and Assad protect the Kurds and fight Turkey for their own land,” he tweeted Monday. “Anyone who wants to assist Syria in protecting the Kurds is good with me, whether it is Russia, China, or Napoleon Bonaparte. I hope they all do great, we are 7,000 miles away!”
We suppose the Napoleon line was a joke, but the world is laughing at an American President. Mr. Trump was able to project an image of strength in his early days as he prosecuted the war against ISIS and used force to impose a cost on Mr. Assad for using chemical weapons. But that image has faded as he has indulged his inner Rand Paul and claims at every opportunity that the main goal of his foreign policy is to put an end to “endless wars.”
This is simple-minded isolationism, and it’s a message to the world’s rogues that a U.S. President has little interest in engaging on behalf of American allies or interests. Friends like Israel and Saudi Arabia are quietly dismayed, while Iran, Russia and Hezbollah can’t believe Mr. Trump has so glibly abandoned U.S. commitments and military partners.
By now it’s not unreasonable to conclude that Mr. Trump’s foreign policy can be distilled into two tactics—sanctions and tariffs. Mr. Trump wields them willy-nilly against friend and foe alike as substitutes for diplomacy and the credible threat of military force.
Mr. Trump won’t like to hear it, but the Syrian mess is hurting him at home too. Republicans who have stood by him through the Russia fight and more are questioning his judgment as Commander in Chief in an increasingly dangerous world. With impeachment looming, he can’t afford to alienate more friends.
TRUMP’S CHAOTIC SYRIA EXIT PUTS ANTI-WAR 2020 DEMOCRATS IN A DELICATE SPOT
October 15 2019, 2:31 p.m.
THE PENTAGON announced on Monday that the U.S. was pulling all of its troops out of northeastern Syria at President Donald Trump’s direction, completing a withdrawal he had started by Twitter declaration a week earlier. The move further clears the way for a full-on invasion by Turkey, whose soldiers have already been accused of executing noncombatants. In the chaos, hundreds of Islamic State detainees have reportedly escaped.
Trump defended his decision in a series of early-morning tweets on Monday. “The same people who got us into the Middle East mess are the people who most want to stay there!” he wrote. “Never ending wars will end!”
Trump’s abandonment of eastern Syria and the U.S. military’s Kurdish allies has put progressive Democrats — many of whom also favor withdrawing from overseas military operations — in a delicate spot. Over the past week, they have been trying to thread the needle between condemning Trump for recklessly abandoning an ally and emphasizing that withdrawing U.S. troops should be an eventual policy goal.
Trump’s decision has showcased what a worst-case scenario for expedited military withdrawal could look like, making it harder for progressive Democratic presidential candidates like Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren to press their cases against “endless wars” on the campaign trail. The question of how progressives can go about drawing down U.S. military commitments without repeating Trump’s calamitous actions would be an obvious pick for Tuesday night’s Democratic debate.
So far, the Democratic candidates have been critical of Trump but light on specifics about what they would do differently. Last week, Sanders condemned Trump’s withdrawal from Syria, telling reporters that “as somebody who does not want to see American troops bogged down in countries all over the world — you don’t turn your back on allies who have fought and died alongside American troops. You just don’t do that.” But when George Stephanopoulos asked Sunday morning on ABC for Sanders to explain the difference between his and Trump’s approaches, Sanders responded simply that Trump “lies. I don’t.”
Warren’s response was similarly vague. She tweeted that “Trump recklessly betrayed our Kurdish partners” and that “we should bring our troops home, but we need to do so in a way that respects our security.”
Trump Turned His Back on Syrian Kurds. Here’s How They View Their New Precarious Position.
Ro Khanna, a Democratic representative from California and co-chair of Sanders’s 2020 campaign, told The Intercept that progressives urgently need to make the case for a “doctrine of responsible withdrawal.”
“I don’t believe that withdrawal from a progressive perspective means a moral indifference to the lives of the places that we leave,” Khanna said in a phone interview. “It’s not an ‘America First’ approach that says our interests and our American lives are the only things that have moral worth. Rather, our withdrawal is based on an understanding of the limitations of American power to shape and restructure societies. It emphasizes the need for effective diplomacy and understands our moral obligations in these places.”
The U.S. should not have withdrawn troops without negotiating a deal that would have kept Turkey from invading Syria, backed by a threat to withhold future arms sales and economic assistance, Khanna told The Intercept. “We could have used all those points of leverage to get their commitment that they wouldn’t slaughter the Kurds.”
Another key difference between Trump’s approach and that of progressives is their level of trust for civil service expertise, Khanna said. “What this shows is that it’s not enough to have a president with certain instincts. Foreign policy requires great expertise. You need a progressive president who understands the importance of military restraint, but who also has the ability to put together an extraordinary foreign policy team to implement the goals that they may have.”
Far from admiring Trump’s approach to Syria, many anti-interventionists and foreign policy experts in D.C. view it as a blueprint for how not to withdraw from a conflict, according to Adam Wunische, a researcher with the Quincy Institute, a new pro-diplomacy, noninterventionist, and nonpartisan think tank.
“What we should have been doing from the very beginning is once we achieved the limited objective of destroying ISIS territory, they should have immediately begun contemplating what kind of peace or settlement could come afterwards,” Wunische told The Intercept. “To my knowledge, the U.S. is one of the only actors that can effectively talk to both the Turks and the Kurds. So they should have been trying to find an acceptable political arrangement for all the parties involved that doesn’t involve an endless, ill-defined military presence for the U.S.”
The Quincy Institute is working on a report outlining a possible plan for U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan that would avoid the type of disorder on display in northeastern Syria, Wunische said, though the timing of the report remains unclear.
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Throughout the 2020 Democratic primary campaign, a number of candidates have railed against “endless wars.” But in a conversation that has been defined by intricate domestic policy proposals and detailed outlines of how to structure a wealth tax, candidates have said little about the rest of the world and even less about how they would wind down overseas conflicts.
Sanders, for example, has called for a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan “as expeditiously as possible.” Warren has said “it’s long past time to bring our troops home, and I would begin to do so immediately.” Joe Biden has said he would bring “American combat troops in Afghanistan home during my first term,” but left the door open for a “residual U.S. military presence” that would be “focused on counterterrorism operations.” When asked during a July debate whether he would withdraw from Afghanistan during the first year of his presidency, Pete Buttigieg, the South Bend mayor and Navy Reserve veteran who spent seven months in Afghanistan, answered emphatically in the affirmative.
But aside from seeking a diplomatic solution, candidates have said very little about their policies for ending the war. And as in Syria, stakes for U.S. allies in Afghanistan are high.
A January study by the Rand Corporation found that a “precipitous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan” would have far-reaching consequences. The legitimacy for the U.S.-backed Kabul government would plummet, the report argued, and the Taliban would extend its control and influence. People all across the country would turn to regional militias and rival warlords for basic security.
“I don’t think that anyone, whether they promise it or not, is going to get out of Afghanistan in a week,” said Wuinsche. “What we need to focus on is, what is the political solution that we think is possible, and how do we get there? That requires marshaling all of these different tools of foreign policy, not just the military.”
Kate Kizer, policy director for the D.C.-based advocacy group Win Without War, stressed that one of the most revealing differences between progressives and Trump is how they would treat a conflict’s refugees. Under Trump, the U.S. has accepted historically low numbers of refugees and closed the door on future Syrian immigrants applying for Temporary Protected Status.
“One of the cruelest parts of Trump’s policy is the fact that, in addition to fueling more bloodshed with this decision, he’s also banning any types of civilians who would be fleeing from the conflict,” Kizer said. “In a situation like Syria and even Afghanistan, there’s a way to responsibly withdraw and then there’s a way to cut and run, which is what Trump has shown he has a predilection for. But I’m not sitting here saying that any type of military withdraw will necessarily be bloodless.”
https://theintercept.com/2019/10/15/syria-troop-withdrawal-trump-democrats/
Story 2: The Search of Leakers in Trump Administration — Videos
RUST NO ONE
Trump Suspects a Spiteful John Bolton Is Behind Some of the Ukraine Leaks
Trump fears the leaks are now coming from the people he chose to serve him—and that only increases the paranoia currently infecting the West Wing.
Asawin Suebsaeng
White House Reporter
Sam Stein
Politics Editor
Photo Illustration by Lyne Lucien/The Daily Beast/Getty
At a critical juncture in his presidency, facing a rapidly unfolding impeachment inquiry by House Democrats, Donald Trump is feeling besieged by snitches.
In recent weeks, numerous leaks have appeared in the pages of The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and other major papers and news outlets detailing the president’s attempts to enlist foreign leaders to help dig up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden and also aid Trump’s quest to discredit Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s concluded investigation. And as is his MO, the media-obsessed president has been fixated on not just the identity of the whistleblower behind the internal complaint that brought this scandal to the fore, but also on who, exactly, has been namelessly feeding intel to the press.
In the course of casual conversations with advisers and friends, President Trump has privately raised suspicions that a spiteful John Bolton, his notoriously hawkish former national security adviser, could be one of the sources behind the flood of leaks against him, three people familiar with the comments said. At one point, one of those sources recalled, Trump guessed that Bolton was behind one of the anonymous accounts that listed the former national security adviser as one of the top officials most disturbed by the Ukraine-related efforts of Trump and Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney who remains at the center of activities that spurred the impeachment inquiry.
“[Trump] was clearly implying [it, saying] something to the effect of, ‘Oh, gee, I wonder who the source on that could be,’” this source said, referring to the president’s speculation. Bolton, for his part, told The Daily Beast last month that allegations that he was a leaker in Trump’s midst are “flatly incorrect.”
The former national security adviser—who departed the administration last month on awful, mutually bitter terms—is working on a book about his time serving Trump, and has “a lot to dish,” one knowledgeable source noted.
Neither Bolton nor White House spokespeople provided comment for this story. Matt Schlapp, an influential conservative activist with close ties to the White House, said his assumption was that the leaks were coming from “career folks inside who hate Trump” and that the president and his campaign had “14 months of this” to come. As for Bolton, Schlapp said, “He’s smarter than that, although he does aggressively defend himself.”
Indeed, Bolton’s name surfaced Monday before House impeachment inquiry committees, when Hill reportedly testified that he told her to alert the chief lawyer for the National Security Council that Giuliani was working with Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, on an operation with legal implications, the Times reported late Monday. “I am not part of whatever drug deal Rudy and Mulvaney are cooking up,” Bolton told Hill to tell White House lawyers, according to sources familiar with the testimony.
“I have not spoken to John about [his comments, as conveyed by Hill],” Giuliani told The Daily Beast on Tuesday morning. “John is a longtime friend. I have no idea why John is doing this. My best guess is that he’s confused and bought into a false media narrative without bothering to call me about it.”
Trump has felt under siege from within before, including at various flashpoints of his presidency. For instance, near the end of the Mueller probe, the president became so distrustful and resentful toward Don McGahn, his own White House counsel at the time, he started asking those close to him, “Is [Don] wearing a wire?”
But the current sense that he has been undermined by people whom he brought into his orbit has come at a critical juncture and colored some of the decisions he has made since the whistleblower complaint became public. The president has openly declared that the whistleblower committed an act of treason. He has attempted to stop prominent advisers—including Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, a man who donated $1 million to the Trump inauguration—from testifying to Congress, only to apparently fail. On Monday, Fiona Hill, Trump’s former top adviser on Russia and Europe, was on Capitol Hill, where she reportedly told lawmakers that Sondland and Giuliani circumventedthe standard national-security process on high-profile Ukraine matters. The president has struggled to add to his current legal team, and appeared to begin putting some distance between himself and Giuliani last week.
And when outside allies began to talk about constructing a war room to help with impeachment, Trump shot down the concept, in part out of a sense that he couldn’t rely on them to get the message out right. One top White House aide subsequently labeled the idea an exercise by “outside peeps trying to self-aggrandize.”
The impression left on Republicans is one of a president increasingly driven by paranoia and a desire for insularity—and not, necessarily, to his own benefit.
“There is a certain level of frustration that all the sudden the president says something, then Rudy does, and it is not always consistent. There is a frustration that not everybody knows what they should be doing. It is not that they can’t defend the president it is a frustration that they don’t know exactly how they are supposed to defend the president,” said John Brabender, a longtime GOP consultant. “From the president’s perspective, this whole thing is a witch hunt and is outrageous and, therefore, it shouldn’t even need explanation…But with that said, you can’t just be angry. You need a unified communications team.”
According to those who’ve known the president, the sense that a good chunk of the government has never fully accepted his presidency and has actively worked to undermine it has animated much of his activity over the past few weeks. And though they believe he has a point, they also wonder if it is making him functionally incapable of taking the advice of some advisers: to simply ignore impeachment and apply his attention to other facets of governance.
Trump, they add, is preternaturally incapable of ignoring press about him and lingers particularly on leaks that depict atmospherics of his inner sanctum, the West Wing, and his internal well-being.
“In my experience, what he despises is somebody writing that Donald Trump feels under siege and his emotions are this and his thinking is this,” said Sam Nunberg, a former Trump campaign aide. “He hates people saying what he is thinking… And one of his most frequent tricks in terms of talking about himself on background [as an anonymous source] is him having the reporter say [he is] someone ‘familiar with the president’s thinking.’”
Nunberg said he had yet to see a blind quote in any recent report that would lead him to believe that Trump is cold-calling reporters. But the president is certainly working the fourth estate. Democratic aides were left shaking their heads last week when they received an email from the White House with the subject line, “Article from President Trump” and a PDF attachment of a Kimberly Strassel Wall Street Journal column.
“He’s apparently so anxious about GOP support in the Senate, he’s taken to sending WSJ columns against the House inquiry,” said a Senate source.
Still, for all of Trump’s grousing and preoccupation with who is and isn’t stabbing him in the back, loyalty has always been a one-way street for this president. Last week, after the news broke that Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two Soviet-born businessmen tied to Giuliani, were arrested on charges of violating campaign-finance law, a reporter at the White House asked Trump if the former New York mayor was still his personal attorney. The president responded that he didn’t know.
Though the president would later tweet out his support for Giuliani over the weekend, Trump has a long track record for being loyal to and supportive of a longtime associate, friend, or staffer—up until the moment he’s not. Perhaps the quintessential example of this is that of one of the president’s former attorneys, Michael Cohen, who famously turned on Trump after becoming convinced that the president had abandoned him while he was in the crosshairs of federal prosecutors.
Asked by The Daily Beast last week if the president told him that he still had his lawyer’s back—an attorney who further earned the president’s trust by defending Trump during the Mueller investigation—Giuliani let out a big belly-laugh and responded, “There’s nothing, [no knife], in my back.”
“My back feels very comfortable right now,” he added.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-suspects-a-spiteful-john-bolton-is-behind-ukraine-leaks
Story 3: Democrats Goal of Replacing Your Employer Provided Health Care Cover With Higher Taxes for Medicare For All — Socialized Medicine — Videos —
Medicare For All: What Does it Actually Mean?
DEBUNKED: Medicare for All MYTHS! | Louder With Crowder
Story 4: President Trump Congratulates The St.Louis Blues For Winning The Stanley Cup — Videos —
Trump welcomes the Stanley Cup Champions to WH
President Trump Welcomes the St. Louis Blues Stanley Cup Champions
Trump welcomes 2019 Stanley Cup champions to White House
Trump welcomes the St. Louis Blues to the White House
WATCH: Trump hosts NHL champions St. Louis Blues at the White House
St. Louis Blues visit the White House after Stanley Cup win
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