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Author: John Hanno
Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. Bogan High School. Worked in Alaska after the earthquake. Joined U.S. Army at 17. Sergeant, B Battery, 3rd Battalion, 84th Artillery, 7th Army. Member of 12 different unions, including 4 different locals of the I.B.E.W. Worked for fortune 50, 100 and 200 companies as an industrial electrician, electrical/electronic technician.
No, America is not seeing an unprecedented surge in immigration. New Census data prove it.
David Bier – October 3, 2023
The Census Bureau this month published its most robust estimate of the U.S. immigrant population, and it casts doubt on a central Republican criticism of President Joe Biden: that immigration has spiraled out of his control on his watch.
In fact, the new data – analyzed by our team at the Cato Institute – indicate that the number of immigrants is still 2 million below the Census Bureau’s 2017 predictions. The hyperbolic rhetoric should take a backseat to the verifiable data.
Take Stephen Miller, former adviser to President Donald Trump. By July 2022, he had already announced that President Biden had “eradicated his own nation’s borders.”
Of course, this is a goofy conspiracy theory. Borders divide governmental jurisdictions, which it should go without saying haven’t changed, and they have nothing to do with the number of people who cross them. But the new Census data make this claim risible for another reason: The immigrant population had only risen marginally.
If a shift of 0.3 percentage points can eradicate the United States as a country, the Trump administration must have left the United States in worse shape than anyone thought. Fortunately, it is the political rhetoric that is in worse shape, not the country.
The immigrant population did grow by nearly a million from July 2021 to July 2022. But consider the context. In 2017, the Census predicted that by last year, the immigrant population would have grown by 3.6 million. In reality, it grew 1.7 million – less than half the number the models predicted.
Just because the immigrant population isn’t shrinking like Miller wants doesn’t mean that America has ceased to exist.
On a longer timescale, it is apparent that the past decade has seen unusually slow growth in immigration. In fact, the period from 2012 to 2022 saw slower growth in the immigrant share of the population than the 2000s, 1990s, 1980s and 1970s. You have to go all the way back to the 1960s, when the immigrant population actually shrank, to find a lower growth rate.
The new Census data are much more important than other estimates of immigration. The American Community Survey collects information on a massive portion of the U.S. population, which prevents significant sampling errors, and it accounts not just for the number of immigrants coming in but also the numbers who are deported, leave on their own or die.
The new data dismantle the narrative that the United States is seeing an unprecedented surge in immigration. Moreover, as we face the lowest population growth in U.S. history, a decline largely attributed to Americans having fewer children, the immigrant share of the population should naturally have a larger impact. But even in these conditions, the immigrant share is growing at the slowest rate we’ve seen in a generation.
Of course, the number of immigrants has increased over the past year, too, but the new Census numbers show that we have plenty of room to grow.
Regardless, the broader concern isn’t just about countering inflated rhetoric but addressing the very real economic challenges the United States faces due to slowing population growth. We’re staring at a massive worker shortage, a precipitous drop in the worker-to-retiree ratio and a worrying exodus of skilled workers to nations like China.
The solution? We need people. We need workers across all skill levels to drive our economy, support our aging population and maintain our global competitive edge. Immigrants have historically played, and can continue to play, a crucial role in filling these gaps.
While it is natural to engage in debates about immigration policy and its implications, it is essential to root these discussions in fact rather than fiction. Instead of raising alarms over exaggerated claims of border erasure, our focus should be on crafting policies that align with our national interests, values and the reality reflected in the data.
After all, America thrives when it welcomes, integrates and capitalizes on the diverse skills and perspectives that immigrants bring to our shores.
David Bier is the associate director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute.
The unsung hero behind Donald Trump’s crushing fraud case: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Amanda Marcotte – October 3, 2023
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Donald Trump Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images
The main hero of the Donald Trump fraud trial that kicked off Monday is, of course, Letitia James. New York’s attorney general has worked tirelessly for years on investigating Trump’s decades of criminal and corrupt behavior, resulting in a $250 million lawsuit accusing Trump and his two grown sons of running a fraudulent business. Her case is so airtight, in fact, that New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron ruled Trump liable for fraud from the bench, rather than waste a jury’s time figuring out what was indisputable from the evidence. The ensuing trial — which drew Trump himself into the Manhattan courtroom this week — is entirely about how serious the penalities will be.
There are weeks, maybe months to go before we learn how much Trump will have to pay for defrauding investors, banks and insurance companies over several decades. So we’ll have to wait a bit for James to get her virtual ticker-tape parade for kicking the most hated man in New York real estate out of town. In the meantime, however, there’s another well-known New York City politician who is owed a debt of gratitude for bringing some accountability to Trump’s gold-painted front door: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
In our era of 24/7 media onslaught, four years can seem like like four lifetimes, so it’s easy to forget that when Ocasio-Cortez arrived in Congress in January 2019, there was a lot of curiosity and outright skepticism about her among the Beltway press. She’d gotten there in improbable fashion, winning a 2018 primary against Rep. Joe Crowley — a power broker in Queens who chaired the House Democratic caucus and was seen as a possible successor to Nancy Pelosi. Before that, Ocasio-Cortez had been working as a bartender in a Manhattan taco joint. So the media was watching eagerly to see whether she’d rise to the occasion or fall flat on her face.
Ocasio-Cortez’s first big test came in February 2019, when Trump’s former personal attorney and “fixer,” Michael Cohen, testified before the House Oversight Committee. Cohen was about to go to prison for a campaign finance crime committed at Trump’s behest, and told a genuinely moving story of crime and betrayal. But most of the Democrats on the committee whiffed this opportunity to ask questions of a guy who had been nestled within the Trump gang for years. Instead, they devoted their time to grandstanding for the cameras, rather than learning any new information about Trump’s illegal dealings.
Except, of course, for the young congresswoman from a working-class, multiracial district in Queens and the Bronx. Much to the surprise and delight of mainstream journalists, Ocasio-Cortez was all business. She showed up with a long list of questions about how much Cohen knew about Trump’s business dealings and whether the man currently in the White House had spent his previous career defrauding creditors and investors. Cohen’s answer: Trump was criming all the time. The transcript is worth re-reading and relishing:
Ocasio-Cortez: To your knowledge, did the president ever provide inflated assets to an insurance company?
Cohen: Yes.
Ocasio-Cortez: Who else knows that the president did this?
Cohen: Allen Weisselberg, Ron Lieberman and Matthew Calamari.
Ocasio-Cortez: And where would the committee find more information on this? Do you think we need to review his financial statements and his tax returns in order to compare them?
Cohen: Yes, and you would find it at the Trump Org.
That line of questioning, in which Cohen confirmed that Trump routinely manipulated numbers to evade taxes while defrauding banks and insurance companies, was the first step on the long road to Trump making a stink-face in court on Monday morning. New York state regulators started to sniff around Trump’s business. James had already been dealing with a smaller case involving Trump’s charitable foundation, but Cohen’s testimony opened the door to a much bigger investigation.
Three years later, James came out with the stunning — and largely irrefutable — accusations she’s presenting in court this week: Trump’s wealth is built on a sandcastle of lies. He doubles, triples or quadruples the valuations of his assets in order to get loans from creditors, and drastically undervalues them to evade taxes. With this shell game, the four-times-indicted ex-president lives like a rich man despite his proven inability to make much money from his business ventures. Everything Cohen said before that committee has pretty much proven true, and only AOC even thought to ask him about it.
The near-certainty that Trump’s allegedly enormous wealth is an illusion has already been documented in reporting on his tax documents showing that he is deep in debt — perhaps as much $1 billion — even though inherited nearly half a billion from his father and earned another $427 million from his reality-TV star turn on “The Apprentice.” All available evidence suggests Trump blew through that money and kept digging, creating a money pit so enormous that banks likely had given up hope of seeing any of it repaid. Yet Trump has kept up the illusion of immense wealth with his private jets and entourages, all paid for through dozens of opaque shell companies — and, as James’ evidence suggests, through massive fraud.
He might have gotten away with it, too, if not for that nosy congresswoman from the outer boroughs. I’m a little surprised that almost no one seems to remember the crucial role Ocasio-Cortez played in this. At the time of the hearing, after all, she got an avalanche of good coverage for her showing, especially from journalists who were sick of listening to politicians bloviate rather than perform their constitutional duties of legislative oversight. Her willingness to do her actual job, however, didn’t just make her look good by comparison. It got a very big ball rolling that could eventually demollish Trump’s “business” in New York.
One reason AOC’s role has been forgotten, I suspect, is that the Beltway press tends to think of “progressives” as entirely distinct from the people who really want to see Trump go to jail. Turn on MSNBC or CNN, after all, and the people talking on the Trump crime-and-punishment beat are often centrist Democrats and never-Trump Republicans, your Claire McCaskills and George Conways and the like. Progressive Democrats are usually called upon to talk about policy issues: health care, climate change, jobs programs and so on. So there’s this unspoken assumption that progressives don’t much care about corruption and accountability.
In fact, there’s substantial evidence that progressives may put an even higher value on opposing corruption than their more moderate colleagues. For instance, progressives like Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania were among the first to call for the resignation of Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., after his recent indictment on bribery and corruption charges. This isn’t just about political progressives also being people of conscience. I think they understand how intertwined corruption and authoritarian politics are, and understand you can’t fight one without fighting the other.
Authoritarians like Trump gain power by exploiting public cynicism. The more that voters believe that all politicians cheat the system, the more decent citizens will give up engaging meaningfully in politics at all. Eventually, the only people left in politics are the ones with no vision of a better world beyond a bitter desire to stick it to racial minorities, LGBTQ people and women. Getting people to believe in equal justice and functional government is a necessary prerequisite if folks like Fetterman and Ocasio-Cortez are to make any progress on the social and economic issues that matter most to them.
It makes sense that AOC opened the door for the massive lawsuit that may bring Donald Trump’s business empire crashing down. Maybe the main reason she’s not taking more credit for that is that in the here and now she’s busy trying to expose the corruption of House Republicans.
Arizona moves to end Saudi firm Fondomonte’s groundwater deals to grow, export alfalfa
Stacey Barchenger, Arizona Republic – October 2, 2023
Gov. Katie Hobbs’ administration on Monday announced two steps to stop a controversial Saudi Arabian company from using groundwater beneath state land in western Arizona to grow and export alfalfa.
Hobbs said in a statement that the Arizona State Land Department had canceled one of its leases to Fondomonte Arizona, and would not renew three others that are set to expire in February.
Those four account for all of Fondomonte’s leases in the Butler Valley near Bouse, though the company leases other state land elsewhere, according to the Governor’s Office.
The company farmed about 3,5000 acres of state land in Butler Valley to grow feed for dairy cows in Saudi Arabia and is allowed to pump groundwater for that purpose entirely unchecked and unpaid for.
The issue was brought to light last year by The Arizona Republic, which highlighted Fondomonte as an example of companies that get below-market-rate leases on Arizona’s vast stretches of state land. Fondomonte was unique in that its leases allowed it to draw water from a groundwater supply earmarked as a possible future source for Phoenix and other metro areas.
Fondomonte’s presence in western Arizona became a political lightning rod as policymakers grappled with a megadrought, a decreasing supply from the Colorado River and increasing demand for water in the form of a growing population.
“I’m not afraid to do what my predecessors refused to do — hold people accountable, maximize value for the state land trust, and protect Arizona’s water future,” Hobbs said in a statement. “It’s unacceptable that Fondomonte has continued to pump unchecked amounts of groundwater out of our state while in clear default on their lease.”
While leases of state land carry penalties for early termination, the Governor’s Office said the first Fondomonte lease was canceled because the company was in default on “numerous items,” including failing to properly store fuel and diesel exhaust fluid. Fondomonte was given notice of those issues in November 2016, and nearly seven years later, a mid-August inspection showed the company had not fixed those problems, according to Hobbs’ office.
The other leases would not be renewed because of Fondomonte’s draw on “excessive amounts of water” in the Butler Valley, one of five water transportation basins that allow water to be moved around the state and that has been earmarked as a possible future water supply for Phoenix and other metro areas.
Fondomonte said through a spokesperson it was reviewing the notifications from Hobbs and the State Land Department but that it believed “the state is mistaken that the company is in breach of its lease.”
“Fondomonte will work with the Governor’s Office to highlight these factual errors,” spokesperson Barrett Marson said. “Fondomonte is adhering to all the conditions of the lease, and thus we have done everything required of us under these conditions.
“As for the other leases the state intends to not renew, this would set a dangerous precedent for all farmers on state land leases, including being extremely costly to the state and Arizona taxpayers. Fondomonte will explore all avenues to ensure there is no discrimination or unfair treatment.”
Arizona leases vast stretches of its publicly owned land to private companies, turning a profit that funds the State Land Trust and its various beneficiaries, the largest of which is K-12 education. In 2021, the state received $4.3 million for its about 160,000 acres of leased land for agriculture, according to the department.
The Republic’s reporting highlighted other shortcomings of those leases, including agricultural rental rates that haven’t changed in more than 15 years.
Republican La Paz County Supervisor Holly Irwin has been raising concerns for eight years about such leases and their toll on the state’s water supply.
“I’m just so glad we have leadership in this current administration that listened to La Paz County’s voice,” she told The Republic. “For the first time, I feel like there’s real hope in dealing with the water issues here.”
Irwin commended Hobbs, as well as Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes and U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., for their work on the state’s water issues.
Mayes has taken aim at well drilling permits given to Fondomonte and criticized the state Department of Water Resources, which she has said is not following groundwater management laws.
Gallego, who is running for U.S. Senate next year, introduced a bill in Congress that would levy a 300% tax on the sale and export of any water-intensive crop by a foreign company or government.
“For all of our leaders to come together to take a look at this issue and realize it’s wrong, it shouldn’t matter what side of the aisle you’re on,” Irwin said. “It demonstrates how government should work.”
Mayes, however, suggested the government’s response didn’t happen fast enough or reach to systemic issues with state land leases.
“This decision to protect Arizona’s precious groundwater resources and uphold the integrity of our state land trust is a good step in the right direction for the future of Arizona,” Mayes said in a statement. She said while the announcement was “commendable, it should have been taken by state government much earlier.”
“The failure to act sooner underscores the need for greater oversight and accountability in the management of our state’s most vital resource. … The decision by the prior administration to allow foreign corporations to stick straws in the ground and pump unlimited amounts of groundwater to export alfalfa is scandalous.”
Hobbs was sworn in as governor on Jan. 2, following former Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, who served two four-year terms in office.
“Crooked as a barrel of fish hooks”: Whistleblower accuses Sarah Huckabee Sanders of ethics scandal
Gabriella Ferrigine – October 2, 2023
Sarah Huckabee Sanders Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
The lawyer for an anonymous whistleblower has renewed his client’s claim that Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders altered and withheld public records in connection to her office’s spending habits. Attorney Tom Mars, in a letter sent to state Sen. Jimmy Hickey, provided client testimony and supporting documents for a request for a legislative audit. Hickey last month asked the Legislative Joint Auditing Committee to investigate the purchase of a $19,000 lectern by Sanders’ office. He also asked the committee to scrutinize the “retroactive shielding of several government records after Sanders signed additional Freedom of Information Act exemptions into law this month after a special legislative session,” according to The Arkansas Advocate. “I have seen a copy of the letter you sent to Sen. Wallace and Rep. Gazaway, Chairpersons of the Legislative Joint Audit Committee,” Mars wrote, “requesting an audit of the following matters: (1) the purchase of a podium or lectern from Beckett Events LLC for the use of the Governor’s Office; and (2) all matters, involving the Governor or the Governor’s Office, made confidential by Section 4(a) of Act 7 of the First Extraordinary Session of 2023.”
“Does item (2) in your request encompass any documents that were: (a) altered by the Governor’s Office before being produced in response to a request for copies of public records made pursuant to the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) and (b) non-exempt documents that were knowingly withheld from production under the FOIA at the direction of the Governor’s office?” The letter adds that Mars’ client, a “witness with firsthand knowledge of these matters,” can “provide clear and convincing evidence of those occurrences to the Legislative Joint Audit Committee.”
Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison blasted Sanders and her father, Mike Huckabee — the former governor of Arkansas — over the alleged scandal. “Her daddy is Mike Huckabee,” Harrison wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “She lied every day to the press on behalf of Trump … who on this spinning blue ball called Earth is surprised that Sarah is as crooked as a barrel of fish hooks?!”
Ukraine confident of broad support as EU ministers convene in Kyiv
Olena Harmash – October 2, 2023
KYIV (Reuters) -EU foreign ministers expressed support for Ukraine during a meeting in Kyiv on Monday, their first in a non-member country, after a pro-Russian candidate won an election in Slovakia and the U.S. Congress left Ukraine war aid out of its spending bill.
Kyiv brushed off concerns that support for its war effort was fading on both sides of the Atlantic, especially in the United States where Congress excluded aid to Ukraine from an emergency bill to prevent a government shutdown.
“We don’t feel that the U.S. support has been shattered … because the United States understands that what is at stake in Ukraine is much bigger than just Ukraine,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told reporters as he greeted the EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell.
The omission of Ukraine from the U.S. spending bill sent pro-Kyiv officials scrambling to find the best way to secure approval for further assistance on top of the $113 billion in security, economic and humanitarian aid the U.S. has provided since Russia invaded in February 2022.
Leaders in the Senate, narrowly controlled by President Joe Biden’s fellow Democrats, promised to take up legislation in the coming weeks on continued support. But in the Republican-led House of Representatives, Speaker Kevin McCarthy said he wanted more information from the Biden administration.
White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre urged Congress to act quickly.
As for the election victory of pro-Russian Slovak former Prime Minister Robert Fico, Kuleba said a new leader would still have to form a coalition and it was “too early to judge” the impact on politics there.
Monday’s meeting in Kyiv was touted by Borrell as an historic first for the EU but it comes at an awkward time for the Western countries backing Kyiv.
With summer drawing to a close, Ukraine’s counteroffensive has failed to produce the victories that Kyiv’s allies had hoped to see before mud clogs the treads of donated tanks.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, quoted by his website, said he was sure “Ukraine and the entire free world are capable of winning this confrontation. But our victory depends directly on our cooperation with you.”
Borrell told a news briefing with Kuleba the EU remained united in its support for Ukraine. He had proposed an EU spending package for Kyiv of up to 5 billion euros ($5.25 billion) for 2024 which he hoped to have agreed by then.
Kuleba said it would help Ukraine and the EU to have clarity on the judicial aspects of transferring Russian assets frozen in the West to help fund Ukraine’s reconstruction.
PREPARING FOR WINTER
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock sought help to prepare Ukraine for winter, including air defence and energy supplies, after Russia bombed energy installations last year.
“Last winter, we saw the brutal way in which the Russian president is waging this war,” Baerbock said. “We must prevent this together with everything we have, as far as possible.”
Moscow touted the congressional vote in the United States as a sign of increasing division in the West, although the Kremlin said it expected Washington to continue its support for Kyiv.
The omission of aid for Ukraine was “temporary”, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.
“But we have repeatedly said before that according to our forecasts fatigue from this conflict, fatigue from the completely absurd sponsorship of the Kyiv regime, will grow in various countries, including the United States,” he said.
Support for Kyiv has been mixed in the “Global South”, prompting Kuleba to make visits to different countries, particularly in Africa.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador criticised as “irrational” U.S. military aid to Ukraine and urged Washington to devote more resources to helping Latin American countries.
“…How much have they destined for the Ukraine war? 30 to 50 billion dollars for the war,” he told reporters. “Which is the most irrational thing you can have. And damaging.”
In Western countries, elections are looming, above all next year in the United States where former President Donald Trump is leading the Republican field in his bid to return to the White House. Several right-wing Trump supporters in Congress have called for a halt to Ukraine aid.
Although most Republican lawmakers still support Kyiv, House speaker McCarthy was forced to rely on Democrats to pass the measure to keep the government open and might need them again to support any bill to fund Ukraine. Right wingers have threatened to try to remove him.
Kuleba said Ukraine had “a very in-depth discussion with both parts of the Congress – Republicans and Democrats”, and expected aid to continue.
In Europe, pro-Russian former prime minister Fico won the most votes in the Slovak election and will get a chance to form a government. His campaign had called for “not a single round” of ammunition from Slovakia’s reserves to be sent to Ukraine.
“We are not changing that we are prepared to help Ukraine in a humanitarian way,” Fico told a news conference. “We are prepared to help with the reconstruction of the state but you know our opinion on arming Ukraine.”
Fico was given two weeks to form a government. To do so, he would have to establish a coalition with at least one other party that does not publicly share his position on Ukraine.
Slovakia, a NATO state bordering Ukraine, has taken in refugees. Its outgoing government, has provided a major supply of weapons, notably being among the first to send fighter jets.
($1 = 0.9530 euros)
(Additional reporting by Benoit Van Overstraeten, Charlotte Van Campenhout, Jan Lopatka, Jason Hovet and Reuters bureaux; Writing by Peter Graff and Ron Popeski; Editing by Jon Boyle and Stephen Coates)
Republican blockade of Ukraine aid and Slovakia’s election play into Putin’s hands
Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN – October 2, 2023
Tom Brenner for The Washington Post/Getty Images
Republicans opposed to the US funding Ukraine’s lifeline against Russia scored their first major success when House Speaker Kevin McCarthy didn’t include a $6 billion request for aid in a stopgap bill that averted a government shutdown.
The result, which left President Joe Biden demanding swift action to fulfill Kyiv’s needs, made for a good weekend for Russian President Vladimir Putin. But it left Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky with plenty more to worry about after shifts elsewhere in global politics played into Moscow’s push to outlast the West in Russia’s war in Ukraine. Biden suggested he had a “deal” with McCarthy on moving assistance for Ukraine in a separate measure, but the Republican speaker’s office declined to confirm any such agreement.
Drama in the US coincided with another development this weekend that will cause concern in Ukraine. In neighboring Slovakia, former pro-Russia Prime Minister Robert Fico’s populist party won parliamentary elections. Fico anchored his campaign on his anti-US rhetoric, vows to stop sending weapons to Ukraine and a pledge to thwart Kyiv’s NATO ambitions.
Blows to Ukraine in the US and Slovakia came on top of its spat over grain exports with Poland – one of Kyiv’s earliest and most staunch allies – which led Warsaw to warn it could stop arms shipments to its neighbor.
Each of these developments stresses a rising danger for Ukraine – that the arms and aid it needs to sustain its fight against Russia’s onslaught are increasingly getting dragged into the bitter politics of national elections in the West.
Any sign of weakening resolve for arming Ukraine among Western leaders and legislatures is an added incentive for Putin to try to extend the conflict into a war of attrition in the hope that Western publics will tire of the fight and that leaders like ex-President Donald Trump might win power next year and ditch Kyiv.
The headlines are alarming for Ukraine. And while the realities of international politics suggest that time is not yet running out for the remarkable pipeline of arms and aid that fueled its heroic resistance to Russia’s onslaught, the political ground could be shifting and augur serious long-term concerns for Kyiv.
A potential propaganda coup for Putin
In Slovakia, Fico’s SMER party won Saturday’s parliamentary elections in a swing of the political pendulum back toward the populism and nationalism that delivered Trump, Brexit and gains by far-right parties in France and Germany in recent years. In the glow of victory, Fico warned, “Slovakia and people in Slovakia have bigger problems than Ukraine,” and added he would push for peace talks.
Slovakia, a member of NATO, was previously a vocal ally of Ukraine, and a turn against its neighbor would hand Putin valuable propaganda openings. Yet on its own, Slovakia has no power to push negotiations to start. In any case, there’s no sign Ukraine is ready to talk as its offensive grinds on, or that Putin has any political or strategic motivations to do so either. And Fico has to worry about his own coalition-building before he starts deciding Ukraine policy.
And a Slovakian halt to arms shipments is unlikely to tilt the battlefield toward Russia. It did send Kyiv old Soviet MiG jets and other equipment for which it was compensated by the European Union. But its contributions are dwarfed by those of larger European powers and the United States.
A threat to block Ukraine’s entry into NATO sounds alarming. But the NATO summit this year showed that there is no prospect of Kyiv joining the Western alliance soon anyhow. And even before the Slovakian election, getting all alliance members to back its eventual membership was already a struggle. Turkey, for instance, is still blocking the accession of Sweden, a far less controversial new member of the self-defense club.
Slovakia might be home to many voters sympathetic to Moscow given its decades as part of the former Czechoslovakia in the Warsaw Pact under the iron grip of the Soviet Union. But as a NATO member, it is still dependent on the group – and, ultimately, the US – for its defense. And its economy is reliant on its European Union membership. This gives the West substantial leverage in Bratislava.
Geopolitical realities may also be decisive in Poland’s dispute with Ukraine. Many analysts believe temperatures will cool after a tense election later this month. Poland’s antipathy to Russia and desire to prevent it from winning a victory in Ukraine are borne out of decades of bitter political history unlikely to be diluted by shifting political winds. And its posture is also critical to its rising importance to the United States as one of Washington’s most important European allies.
The GOP tide against Ukraine gathers strength
Zelensky’s visit to Washington to shore up Ukraine aid last month looks prescient. But after a wild week, it’s clear that future tranches of US assistance will be far harder for the Biden administration to drive through Congress.
McCarthy, whose speakership is wobbling, pushed through a stopgap spending bill to keep the government open through mid-November, without $6 billion in Ukraine funding the Senate hoped to add to the package – which in itself represented only about a quarter of Biden’s latest Ukraine aid request. The move will not immediately imperil Ukraine on the battlefield, but a longer delay could have serious consequences. And politically, it could embolden Putin and fuel doubts about US staying power in the war among allied European leaders who are standing firm but also need to manage public opinion.
Some of Ukraine’s loudest supporters in Congress were deeply disappointed. “Putin is celebrating,” Democratic Rep. Mike Quigley of Illinois told CNN. “I don’t see how the dynamics change in 45 days.” The co-chair of the Congressional Ukraine Caucus was the only House Democrat to vote against the stopgap measure.
House Republican rebels, some of whom are threatening to topple McCarthy after he used Democratic votes to temporarily keep the government open at current spending levels, are largely opposed to more aid for Ukraine. They include Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida and pro-Trump Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who wrote on social media Saturday that “Joe Biden treats Ukraine as the 51st state” after previously warning that more funds for Kyiv would be “blood money.”
Ukraine refused to panic over the interruption to its latest injection of aid in a multi-billion-dollar initiative on which its war effort largely depends, at least in its current scale. Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said his country is working with the US Congress on the issue.
“We do not feel that US support has been shattered, because the US understands that what is at stake in Ukraine is much bigger than just Ukraine. It’s about the stability and predictability of the world, and therefore I believe that we will be able to find the necessary solutions,” Kuleba said.
The danger for Zelensky is that such rhetoric solidifies into a sense among voters that American interests and Ukraine’s interests are opposite. At Republican campaign events, voters often voice antipathy to sending billions of dollars to Ukraine, and polls show rising public skepticism.
Still, for now, there is a bipartisan Washington majority in favor of Ukraine aid, although the chaos in the GOP raises questions about how it will be delivered. Biden on Sunday seemed to indicate he had a deal with McCarthy on moving the funds in a separate bill, although the speaker may be too weak to deliver on any promises. “I fully expect the speaker to keep his commitment to secure the passage and support needed to help Ukraine as they defend themselves against aggression and brutality,” the president said.
McCarthy suggested that a framework that also sends more money to secure the southern US border might open the way for Ukraine funds. “They’re not going to get some package if the border is not secure,” the speaker said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “I support being able to make sure Ukraine has the weapons that they need. But I firmly support the border first. So we’ve got to find a way that we can do this together.”
But if McCarthy is toppled and replaced by a more radical speaker, Ukraine could run out of luck.
Longer term, the US elections in November 2024 are critical. Trump, the Republican front-runner, has vowed to end the war in 24 hours if elected president, presumably on terms that would favor Putin, whom he has called a “genius” and before whom he has often genuflected.
And Ukraine’s would not be the only future on the line. A second Trump term could pose an existential threat to NATO and the entire post-World War II and Cold War concept of the West.
Putin’s Next Target: U.S. Support for Ukraine, Officials Say
Julian E. Barnes – October 2, 2023
WASHINGTON — Russia’s strategy to win the war in Ukraine is to outlast the West.
But how does President Vladimir Putin plan to do that?
U.S. officials said they are convinced that Putin intends to try to end U.S. and European support for Ukraine by using his spy agencies to push propaganda supporting pro-Russian political parties and by stoking conspiracy theories with new technologies.
The Russia disinformation aims to increase support for candidates opposing Ukraine aid with the ultimate goal of stopping international military assistance to Ukraine.
Russia has been frustrated that the United States and Europe have largely remained united on continued military and economic support for Ukraine, U.S. officials said.
That military aid has kept Ukraine in the fight, put Russia’s original goals of taking Kyiv, the capital, and Odesa out of reach and even halted its more modest objective to control all of the Donbas region, in eastern Ukraine.
But Putin believes he can influence American politics to weaken support for Ukraine and potentially restore his battlefield advantage, U.S. officials said.
Putin, the officials said, appears to be closely watching U.S. political debates over Ukraine assistance. Republican opposition to sending more money to Ukraine forced congressional leaders to pass a stopgap spending bill Saturday that did not include additional aid for the country.
Moscow is also likely to try to boost pro-Russian candidates in Europe, seeing potential fertile ground with recent results. A pro-Russian candidate won Slovakia’s parliamentary elections Sunday. In addition to national elections, Russia could seek to influence the European parliamentary vote next year, officials said.
Russia has long used its intelligence services to influence democratic politics around the world.
U.S. intelligence assessments in 2017 and 2021 concluded that Russia had tried to influence elections in favor of Donald Trump. In 2016, Russia hacked and leaked Democratic National Committee emails that hurt Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign and pushed divisive messages on social media. In 2020, Russia sought to spread information denigrating Joe Biden — but many Republicans in Congress argued Russia’s goal was to intensify political fights, not to support Trump.
For the 2024 presidential election, U.S. intelligence agencies believe the stakes for Putin are even higher.
Biden has sent billions of dollars of aid to Ukraine and pledged that the United States and its allies would support the country for “as long as it takes.” Trump, far ahead in the polls for the Republican nomination, has said supporting Ukraine is not a vital U.S. interest.
Russia, according to U.S. officials, is constantly running information operations aimed at denigrating NATO and U.S. policies and is likely to ramp up efforts in the months to come. The U.S. officials spoke on the condition their names not be reported so they could discuss sensitive intelligence.
The ultimate goal of Russia would be to help undermine candidates who support Ukraine and to change U.S. policy. Some U.S. officials doubt Russia would be able to do that.
But even if Moscow cannot influence the final election result, Russians may believe they can stir up enough debate over Ukraine aid that a future Congress could find it more difficult to pass additional support, U.S. officials said.
Beth Sanner, a former senior intelligence official, says artificial intelligence and other new technologies will change how Russia conducts influence campaigns. Russia is also likely to conduct influence laundering efforts, sending messages to the American public through allies inside nominally independent organizations, according to a recent declassified analysis.
“Russia will not give up on disinformation campaigns,” Sanner said. “But we don’t know what it is going to look like. We should assume the Russians are getting smarter.”
It is easy to overstate Russia’s ability to influence U.S. politics. Some American officials and social media executives have questioned how effective Russia’s troll farms and influence operations were in 2016, as opposed to hack and dump operations targeting Clinton’s emails.
And the media landscape has shifted dramatically since then. U.S. and European consumers are more skeptical of what they see on social media. Russian state television, a source of Kremlin narratives, has been pushed off Google’s YouTube. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has bolstered its search for disinformation and de-emphasized news on its platforms.
But for every development making life harder for Russia’s online trolls, there are trends pushing in the opposite direction. The X platform, formerly known as Twitter, has dismantled teams that were hunting for election interference efforts. And the most influential platform among young people is now TikTok, a Chinese company. China has been stepping up its own influence operations, modeled after Moscow’s operations.
U.S. intelligence agencies have warned that several countries are seeking to influence American politics. In 2020, intelligence agencies outlined an Iranian scheme to influence voting in Florida. Cuba also conducted low-level intelligence operations, and Venezuela had the intent, but not the capabilities, to influence the vote.
But Russia is better than any other country at combining state media, private troll farms and intelligence service operations to attack in the digital space, U.S. officials said.
And it has continued to refine its efforts. Many of the disinformation experts who once worked for the Internet Research Agency, the Russian troll farm active in American elections in 2016 and 2018, have migrated to new firms or joined Russian military intelligence. And the internet, one U.S. official said, is the one place Russia will never run out of ammunition.
Shifting the debate in Europe and America is so important to Putin that if those influence operations fail to gain traction, Russia could decide to escalate.
U.S. officials say that escalation could include additional financial support for pro-Russian political parties in Europe or even covert operations in Europe aimed at weakening support for the war in Ukraine.
As a result, underestimating Russia’s ability to conduct influence operations would be a mistake, U.S. officials said.
Russian disinformation that falsely claimed America had bioweapons labs in Ukraine continues to reverberate around the world, for example.
Russia used the accusations to justify its invasion of Ukraine and has repeatedly requested United Nations’ investigations of its false claims. But far-right groups, including QAnon, have picked up, expanded and amplified the Russian bioweapons accusations.
In a world divided by polarized politics, conspiracy theories and disinformation have proved more resilient than ever.
Years in the making, this rock star’s winery is a new ‘focal point’ in Arizona wine country
Richard Ruelas, Arizona Republic – October 2, 2023
For years, before Cottonwood became a destination for wine fans, the plot of land sat abandoned. It was as if no one had use for a parcel on a hill with soaring views of the Verde Valley.
When Maynard James Keenan saw it, he knew it was the perfect spot to showcase not only his wines, but that also could, quite literally, elevate the state’s wine industry as a whole.
Keenan has planted an eye-catching vineyard on the steep hillside. Two wineries on the site, one partly open-air and the other with large windows, will let spectators spy a hint of the winemaking process. And he has built a trattoria offering pastas and pizzas designed to pair with his wines, meant to be enjoyed on the expansive patio that offers sweeping views over Old Town Cottonwood and the Verde Valley.
“That’s where I stood…and said, ‘this is the view,’” Keenan said pointing to the patio during a late September tour of the facility, days before Merkin Vineyards Hilltop Winery & Trattoria’s scheduled opening.
To get to the restaurant, visitors can take a staircase. Or ride the motorized tram up the 50 feet to the top.
Keenan started planning to build on the land nearly eight years ago. In 2016, as he showed a Republic photographer and reporter the tasting room, Merkin Osteria, on Main Street in Old Town Cottonwood he was opening, he walked them up the hill to show off the vacated building where he eventually planned to build a winery.
That plan has come to fruition. Keenan expects the completed Merkin Vineyards facility to serve as gateway for the Arizona wine industry, spilling customers out onto Main Street to try the other tasting rooms that “don’t have the budget to build something insane like this.”
Keenan, who is the singer for the bands, Tool, A Perfect Circle and Puscifer, has a flair for the theatrical. And the largely open-air facility was designed to attract the eye.
“The attention is the initial foot in the door, but recognition is the goal,” Keenan said. Once someone has wandered into his funhouse, Keenan expects to seriously hook them with his wine. “Recognition has legs,” Keenan said. “That has longevity, the staying power.”
This Merkin Vineyards project converted a property that had previously been used by the Cottonwood chapter of the Freemasons. That group intentionally designed its building to be insular. Keenan, with a $1.9 million loan taken out by a company he controls, has transformed it into an open-air showpiece.
The Masonic lodge closed in 2005, consolidating with the Sedona chapter amid declining membership. The building and parcel of land would sit vacant.
At the time, Old Town Cottonwood was known for its rock shops and antique stores. There wasn’t much at night, other than a thriving methamphetamine trade that centered around a run-down motel on Main Street.
In 2010, Cottonwood started courting area wineries to open tasting rooms in the area. That effort, coupled with a methamphetamine crackdown, revived the street. It’s now dotted with restaurants, shops and nightlife. The former drug den on the north end of Main Street converted to a boutique hotel called the Iron Horse Inn.
Some businesses started looking at the site on top of Verde Heights Road, seeing if they could make a project feasible, said G. Krishan Ginige, president of Southwestern Environmental Consultants, who was hired for initial consultations. All the businesses that looked at the land were related to wine, Ginige said, and none pursued it very far.
Part of the reason was the unique topography. “It’s a huge site with a very small footprint on top,” Ginige said during a phone interview.
Making the site work economically would mean figuring out what to do with the land on the hillside, Ginige said.
Keenan was the only one who came to Ginige with the idea of planting a vineyard there, he said. And that presented its own challenges.
Ginige said his company spent about two months trying to figure out how to create a vineyard on the steep hillside that would be both practical, economical and stable. He studied other hillside vineyards, including some in Italy, but couldn’t find an exact parallel. “It’s not something you see in any other place,” he said.
One hillside vineyard was Keenan’s own Judith’s Block in Jerome, also along a steep grade. That Keenan already had a similar vineyard planted let him know it could be done and made him somewhat exasperated that the new project was taking so long to engineer.
Keenan also knew he was setting himself up with another vineyard, like Judith’s Block, that couldn’t be harvested using machines.
“It’s so hard to farm. Hand-picked, hand-sorted, hand pruned,” he said. “All those fun words.”
Keenan also wanted to build two wineries on the land on top of the hill, one for his Merkin Vineyards line and another for his higher-end Caduceus Cellars. With so little usable land on top of the hill, Ginige said, the answer came from digging the building 10 feet into the hillside and holding them up with concrete pillars set deep into the mountainside.
Doing so keeps the wineries well insulated. Keenan said it is a hedge to protect the wine in the fermenting tanks and barrel room in case of a long-term power failure.
The building that held the Masonic Lodge became the restaurant, said Reynold Radoccia of Architecture Works Green, the architect on the project. Though it had to be reconfigured. The Masons built it in 1952 with few windows, Radoccia said.
“The Masons weren’t necessarily interested in the great views of the Verde Valley,” he said. “They required more privacy in their building.”
Radoccia said he tried to honor the construction style in the new building, attempting to mimic the style to honor the history.
Then there was the tram, a conveyance on fixed track similar to what was built to transport miners in another era of the Verde Valley.
Keenan thought of a tram early on in the project. He did not want his winery to tower above Main Street. Instead, he wanted to be a part of it. So, he envisioned a tram that would take visitors from Main Street up the hill, giving the winery something of an amusement park vibe.
Cottonwood Mayor Tim Elinski said adding that tram has expanded the footprint of Old Town Cottonwood. “Before, I didn’t think about (that site) being in Old Town,” he said. “But, now it’s a focal point. He’s done a great job of punctuating it.”
The project attracted no words of protest as it went through the required zoning hearings, , a measure of the city’s support.
“Really, the entire community has wrapped its arms around the wine industry,” Elinski said.
The Merkin Winery will replace the previous one housed in an anonymous industrial building off Old Highway 279, south of the city. The Caduceus Cellars winery will add capacity to the previous “bunker” Keenan had built alongside his home near Jerome.
The restaurant will replace the Merkin Osteria that had been on Main Street. That building will be converted to a fried chicken restaurant that will pour wine from another Keenan project, Four Eight WineWorks.
A winery for connoisseurs and casual drinkers alike
Keenan said he thought the facility would appeal to people with disparate types of wine knowledge.
The casual tourists, including the ones who might not believe Arizona can grow wine grapes, will be able to see proof with a thriving vineyard on the hillside, Keenan said.
Wine aficionados, from the hilltop view, will recognize the similarities between this area and other wine regions around the country and world. It’s a similarity Keenan himself recognized when he first moved to northern Arizona.
And for those with the means and desire, Keenan will offer a $199-a-person food and wine tasting experience in an exclusive room where he hopes aficionados will note the unique characteristics of the state’s wines. The Ventura Room experience will offer the only opportunity for guests to tour the winery and taste and buy Caduceus Cellars wines with the grapes grown on the hillside vineyard.
Grapes for other Caduceus and Merkin wines come from vineyards in the Verde Valley and Willcox.
Although the price might be high by Cottonwood standards, Keenan said the omakase-style tasting experience can stand alongside tourist offerings in Sedona. And he’s not worried about shooting too high.
“Every time someone’s tried to raise the bar, it’s worked,” Keenan said.
Everything in service to the wine
On a late September afternoon, Keenan walked through his trattoria as staff were being trained. His pizza chef, an 18-year-old named Kai Miller brought out pies with blistered crusts from the wood-fired oven. Keenan looked at a margarita pizza and mocked exasperation. “What is this?” he yelled, channeling his inner Gordan Ramsey, the chef from television’s “Kitchen Nightmares.” Miller showed no reaction as he strolled back into the kitchen.
Miller, a former state wrestling champion, came to Keenan’s attention through a clinic for the team Keenan held at his Brazilian jiu-jitsu studio. Instead of ending up a trainer, Miller said he had a passion for pizza and was hired.
The menu at the trattoria mirrors the one at the former Merkin Osteria on Main Street. Vegetables and herbs will largely come from a farm Keenan has at a property near Jerome and a greenhouse on the hilltop Merkin Vineyards site.
As Keenan settled in a booth and ate and praised the pizza, one of his restaurant managers brought something new out from the kitchen — calamari, lightly breaded and fried.
Keenan said he liked the dish, but said that it didn’t fit the overall mission of the restaurant. Not unless the calamari came directly from the Verde River. “It’s not really what we do here,” he said.
Keenan said he’s not aiming to merely create an Italian restaurant, but a place that celebrates what can be grown in Arizona. And one that compliments the Arizona wine that will be served alongside it.
For Keenan, this project was intended to be a winery, first and foremost. Everything else — the food, the gelato stand, the tram, the view — is in service to the wine.
“We do wine,” Kennan said. Everything else “is literally there to support what we all know is the cornerstone of what we’re doing in Arizona, which is wine.”
Democrats tried to protect the CFPB from politics. The Supreme Court may blow up that plan.
Katy O’Donnell – October 2, 2023
Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo
Democrats who created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau a decade ago thought they could shield the agency from political pressure by funding it through the Federal Reserve instead of Congress.
That decision, which drew condemnation from GOP lawmakers and has helped make the regulator a lightning rod for attacks ever since, is facing its biggest test Tuesday when the Supreme Court hears arguments on its constitutionality.
The case is highly anticipated since it could not only result in curbing the agency’s power and throwing its rules into question but potentially affect other regulators throughout the government — including the Fed and the FDIC — that are also not funded by annual congressional spending bills.
“The CFPB has returned $17 billion directly to Americans cheated by financial institutions,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) told POLITICO. “If the Supreme Court disregards over a century of legal precedent, it risks undermining banking regulators safeguarding our economy, as well as Social Security and Medicare.”
Warren, who is credited with conceiving the agency that was created in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis before she became a senator, said the CFPB’s political independence was critical to its formation. Republicans and financial industry critics, many of whom have opposed the bureau since its inception, argue that the funding scheme allows the agency to escape accountability.
Many Democrats see the case as part of a broad-based attack on the regulatory state by Republicans eager to bring challenges before the Supreme Court, whose conservative majority has proved willing to curtail the power of agencies.
In a 2022 ruling limiting the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases, the high court’s six GOP-appointed justices invoked the so-called major questions doctrine, saying that agencies like the EPA need congressional approval before “asserting highly consequential power.” The court has also taken up a case this term challenging the constitutionality of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s in-house enforcement proceedings.
The CFPB was created by the Dodd-Frank Act, the landmark 2010 law that rewrote the rules of finance. The funding mechanism set up by Obama-era Democrats allows the bureau to request the amount of money it needs each year from the Fed, which, in turn, is funded by fees it levies on financial institutions and interest on the securities it holds. The CFPB automatically receives the requested amount, subject to a cap set by Congress.
Among the options the Supreme Court has when it makes its ruling, probably next year, is kicking the matter back to Congress to overhaul the way the bureau is financed — a move that would open the door for other reforms to the agency in an election year.
The case was brought by small-dollar lenders challenging a 2017 CFPB rule restricting their activity. An appellate court ruled last year that the current funding system violates the Constitution’s separation of powers doctrine.
The court scrapped the 2017 rule on the grounds that the CFPB was unconstitutionally funded when it adopted the regulation. The ruling held that the agency’s self-determined budget drawn from an agency that is itself not funded by appropriations marked a “double insulation from Congress’ purse strings,” a unique setup even among financial regulators.
The government maintains that Congress’s decision to authorize the Fed to fund the agency up to a fixed level amounts to “a standing, capped lump-sum appropriation,” as Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in an August brief.
Counsel for the payday lender groups, meanwhile, argued that “Congress does not possess unfettered discretion to authorize executive spending, let alone the power to cede virtually unfettered discretion to an agency to determine the size of its own purse in perpetuity,” in their brief to the high court.
If the Supreme Court does decide the funding stream is unconstitutional, the government is urging the justices to “sever” the funding provision from the rest of the law that created the agency.
“A decision invalidating the CFPB’s past actions would be deeply destabilizing” and “threaten profound disruption for consumers, regulated businesses, and the nation’s financial markets,” Prelogar said in the brief.
Housing industry representatives have also called on the high court to preserve existing CFPB regulations. They warned of “potentially catastrophic consequences that a decision drawing those rules into doubt could have on the mortgage and real-estate markets,” in an amicus brief submitted by three of the industry’s most powerful trade groups.
The Chamber of Commerce and nine other industry groups, meanwhile, urged the court to “avoid disruptions in consumer financial markets” in their own amicus brief. But the groups, which include the major banking trades, also stated that they “believe they are entitled to” the invalidation of CFPB actions they have challenged in pending lawsuits related to the agency’s funding mechanism. They also said CFPB “enforcement actions should be paused” until Congress resolves its funding.
Court watchers say wholesale invalidation of past CFPB actions is a remote possibility.
“Nobody wants a remedy where they throw every regulation out the window, and I doubt very much if they would do that,” said Alan Kaplinsky, former chair of the consumer financial services group at Ballard Spahr. “If they get to the point where they’ve got to decide the remedy, I think the conservatives and the liberals on that court would prefer to kick the ball over to Congress and let them try to deal with that.”’
The Supreme Court has already ruled that “the Dodd-Frank Act contains an express severability clause” in a 2020 decision holding that another part of the CFPB’s structure, a single director who could only be fired for cause, violated the separation of powers. While that decision eroded some of the bureau’s political insulation, separating out the removal clause from the rest of the law preserved the agency.
Both bureau backers and critics say a key question is whether a ruling against the agency could apply only to the CFPB and not to other regulators with independent funding.
“I think philosophically there are going to be five to six votes that probably would like to decide against the CFPB,” Kaplinsky said. “What they’re not going to want to do is decide the case and in doing that put a big cloud over the constitutionality of the Fed, FDIC and [the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency] — that would be a horrendous result. I don’t think any of them would want that, it would create economic chaos.”
Supreme Court Weighs Fate of Consumer Agency That Vexes Banks, Riles GOP
Greg Stohr – October 2, 2023
Thirteen years after a Democratic-controlled Congress created the CFPB to regulate mortgages and other consumer-finance products, the high court on Tuesday will weigh a novel constitutional argument that the bureau’s supporters say could leave it decimated.
The clash will shape the future of an agency that critics see as the ultimate symbol of an unaccountable and overreaching federal bureaucracy – but that backers including President Joe Biden’s administration say has provided crucial safeguards and an independent check against corporate power in the years since the 2008 financial crisis.
“The CFPB is under attack because it’s good at what it does,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat who spearheaded the bureau’s creation, said last week.
The justices, who open their new term Monday, are reviewing a ruling that said the agency’s funding system violates a constitutional provision requiring a congressional appropriation for government spending. The CFPB isn’t subject to the year-to-year congressional appropriation process and instead draws as much money as it needs – up to a cap it has never hit – from the Federal Reserve. In fiscal 2022, the agency received $641.5 million in funding, short of its $734 million cap.
“It’s not about the merits of CFPB,” said Michael Pepson, a lawyer with the conservative Americans for Prosperity Foundation. “It’s about ensuring that Congress doesn’t shirk its duties by passing off its exclusive funding authority to unelected officials.”
The case comes at a time when the CFPB under Biden-appointed Director Rohit Chopra is taking an especially aggressive tack. The agency has sought to stamp out abuses in the mortgage-lending market, scrutinize the use of artificial intelligence in credit underwriting and rein in so-called junk fees, a catch-all term that include charges for bounced checks and late credit-card payments.
The bureau last year reached a $3.7 billion settlement with Wells Fargo & Co. to resolve allegations that it mistreated its customers for years by illegally repossessing cars, bungling record-keeping on payments and improperly charging fees and interest. Beyond banks, the CFPB under Biden has sought to probe “buy-now-pay-later” firms and penalize student lending servicers and credit reporting agencies.
Since the CFPB was created in 2010, its enforcement actions have returned $20.2 billion in compensation, principal reductions, canceled debts, and other relief to consumers, agency spokesperson Samuel Gilford said.
The activity is only fueling longstanding Republican complaints that the agency is too powerful. At a hearing in June, GOP Representative Andy Ogles of Tennessee told Chopra the bureau “should die a painful death.”
Mortgage Worries
Although the high court case centers on a never-enforced payday-lending rule, the impact is potentially far broader. In urging the justices to take up the case, the bureau said the ruling from the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals cast a legal cloud over every action the agency has taken since its creation, providing an argument for re-opening even long-finalized rules and enforcement cases.
That’s a worry shared in part by the mortgage-banking industry, which filed a brief urging the court to limit any ruling against the CFPB. The bureau has issued dozens of rules affecting consumer mortgages and the industry has invested billions of dollars toward compliance, according to three trade groups led by the Mortgage Bankers Association.
A decision calling those rules into question “could set off a wave of challenges and the housing market could descend into chaos, to the detriment of all mortgage borrowers,” the groups argued.
The payday-lending trade group pressing the challenge, the Community Financial Services Association, calls those concerns overblown. Judges have a variety of tools to prevent disruption of the mortgage market, including the six-year statute of limitations that applies to CFPB rules, the group says.
“Lacking any viable legal argument, the bureau resorts to fear-mongering about significant disruption if all the CFPB’s past actions are vacated,” the trade group argued. “But the bureau grossly exaggerates the effects and implications of setting aside this rule.”
Delay Suggested
At a minimum, a decision striking down the payday-lending rule could provide a potent new argument for companies currently battling the CFPB, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Elliot Stein. Navient Corp., which is fighting a complaint over its student-loan servicing practices, could have an especially strong case because it has already raised the issue in its defense, Stein said.
Some industry groups – including the US Chamber of Commerce and the American Bankers Association – have suggested the court could take the unusual step of ruling against the agency but delaying the decision’s effective date to give Congress time to set up a different funding system.
The 5th Circuit ruling marked the first time a federal appeals court had ever used the appropriations clause to strike down part of a federal statute. The Supreme Court has never interpreted the clause as a check on Congress, so far invoking it only as a limitation on the executive branch.
The case is part of a Supreme Court term that could put new constraints on federal administrative agencies. The justices are also considering restricting the use of in-house judges to handle cases at the Securities and Exchange Commission. And the court has agreed to revisit an important 1984 ruling that gives agencies latitude in interpreting ambiguous federal statutes.
The Supreme Court in 2020 gave the president broad power to fire the CFPB’s director, striking down job protections Congress had enacted. At the same time, the court stopped short of abolishing the agency altogether, as critics had sought.
The case is Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. Community Financial Services Association, 22-448.
