Wisconsin Republicans Abruptly Decide To Oust Top State Elections And Ethics Officials

HuffPost

Sam Levine, HuffPost January 25, 2018

Republicans in Wisconsin voted not to confirm the heads of the state's election and ethics commission on Tuesday. (Getty Images)

Wisconsin Republicans voted Tuesday to remove the state’s top election and ethics officials, despite looming state and federal elections.

Led by Republicans in a vote along party lines, the state Senate voted to oust Ethics Administrator Brian Bell and Elections Administrator Michael Haas from their respective roles by denying to confirm them on a permanent basis. Both men did not get a customary public hearing before the vote.

Haas and Bell previously worked for the state’s Government Accountability Board when it was probing whether the campaign of Gov. Scott Walker (R) illegally coordinated with outside conservative groups. The probe was shut down by the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2015, but The Guardian obtained information from the investigation and published an article on its contents. Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel (R) conducted an investigation into the leak and recommended charges against nine people who worked on the probe, but not Bell and Haas. Despite that, House Speaker Robin Vos (R) and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R) both called on Haas and Bell to resign.

The Government Accountability Board was disbanded in 2015 and replaced with the state ethics commission and election commission.

In 2016, the members of the elections commission, which is bipartisan, unanimously picked Haas to lead it. The six-member body is charged with overseeing and implementing Wisconsin’s election laws.

Haas’ removal comes just weeks before a Feb. 20 primary in the state and a little under three months before the first day when candidates can begin circulating petitions for the 2018 fall election. As Wisconsin’s chief election official, Haas is responsible for administering those elections, ensuring compliance with federal law and overseeing investigation and enforcement of the state’s election code. He is also charged with overseeing the state’s election equipment, a role with increased importance this year because Wisconsin was one of 21 states targeted by Russian hackers ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

Mark Thomsen, a Democrat and the election commission’s chairman, noted during a meeting Wednesday that Haas was the only person in the agency with the required clearance to work with the Department of Homeland Security to secure the state’s election system.

Haas only had a peripheral role in the Walker probe, where he was responsible for legal documents, but not the core part of the investigation into the governor’s campaign, according to the Wisconsin State Journal.

Meanwhile, the members of the state’s ethics commission unanimously picked Bell to serve as their administrator in 2016. The six-member panel is charged with overseeing the state’s campaign finance, lobbying and ethics laws. An investigation by the ethics commission into Bell found there was “not a scintilla of evidence” he was partisan in his duties at the Government Accountability Board. Earlier this month, Bell said he left the board because it was too partisan.

Fitzgerald, the Republican Senate leader, said Tuesday the fact that neither men had been linked to wrongdoing didn’t really matter to him.

“I can’t have confidence in an agency that still is employing some of the individuals that were there [the Government Accountability Board],” he told the Wisconsin State Journal on Tuesday.

Chris Ott, the executive director of the Wisconsin ACLU, said the timing of Haas’ dismissal was suspicious and said the sudden push to oust the officials was out of the blue.

“The Wisconsin Senate’s vote yesterday along party lines to try ousting the head of our Elections Commission looks like political interference in a nonpartisan agency that helps and protects Wisconsin voters, just a few weeks before important statewide elections start,” he said in a statement.

Jay Heck, the executive director of Common Cause in Wisconsin, called the vote not to confirm Haas and Bell “one of the most grotesque abuses of power that has occurred in Wisconsin in its history.”

“No evidence, no charges, no specific examples of misconduct, nothing. Just secret agreement among the members of the majority party in the State Senate to get rid of them both, right before important elections, and replace them, presumably, with sycophants and pawns that the Republicans will dictate what they decide and what the result of their work on elections and ethics will be,” Heck said in a statement.

Wisconsin law says both the election and ethics commissions ”shall be under the direction and supervision of an administrator, who shall be appointed by a majority of the members of the commission, with the advice and consent of the senate” to a four-year term. While the law says the administrator will only serve on an interim basis until approved by the state Senate, it also says the administrator can only be removed “by the affirmative vote of a majority of all members of the commission voting at a meeting of the commission called for that purpose.”

The Walker administration said Wednesday it does not believe the commission can legally appoint Haas to lead it. “Because the Senate voted against confirmation of the potential Administrator who was serving as the interim, there was no way for the statutory requirement of ‘consent of the Senate’ to be met and thus the appointment had to end. This is not a removal of an administrator because the administrator serves as interim until consented to,” Steven Michels, a spokesman for the Wisconsin Department of Administration, said in an email to HuffPost.

A legal fight is expected over Haas’ future at the election commission.

Thomsen, the commission’s chairman, believes only the commissioners can vote to fire Haas despite the Senate vote. The panel met Wednesday afternoon and split along party lines about keeping Haas, with Republicans saying they believed the law made the administrator position vacant after the Senate vote on Tuesday. The election panel eventually voted 4-2 to keep Haas as administrator through April 30 to oversee some of the state’s elections.

Fitzgerald told reporters Tuesday he hoped the Republicans on the commission would decline to support Haas. He said he also wants lawmakers to get rid of the positions of two civil servant lawyers at the ethics and elections commission who worked at the Government Accountability Board.

“It’s just hard to develop any type of cooperative relationship or establish credibility as long as some of those people are over there,” he said, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Why It’s So Exhausting to Defend Trump

Bloomberg View

Why It’s So Exhausting to Defend Trump

Every time the president’s backers respond to one scandal, another one pops up.

By Albert R. Hunt January 24, 2018

Source: Getty Images

President Donald Trump’s apologists in Congress are learning that defending him is like playing whack-a-mole; every time they think they’ve knocked down some embarrassing revelation related to the Justice Department probe of Russian election meddling, something new seems to pop up.

Republican allies of the president are straining to paint the Federal Bureau of Investigation and special counsel Robert Mueller, who is leading the probe, as anti-Trump partisans. It’s feeble stuff.

The latest allegation involves five months of missing text messages between two FBI agents on the Mueller team who were involved in an investigation of Hillary Clinton. Trump and his supporters have dropped dark hints that the missing messages indicate the likelihood of a conspiracy against the president. The more plausible explanation comes from the FBI: a technical glitch resulted in improper storage of these and thousands of other text messages between December 2016 and May 2017. Mueller promptly fired the agent involved when other messages bad-mouthing Trump were discovered.

As Republicans struggled to keep that weak conspiracy theory afloat, a bigger story emerged: The fiancee of a former Trump foreign policy adviser who is now cooperating with Muller predicted that the adviser would emerge as a key figure in the inquiry. She compared him to John Dean, the White House counsel in President Richard Nixon’s White House who pleaded guilty to aiding the Watergate coverup and then became a key witness against other officials.

New scandals keep surfacing. Last week, McClatchy reported that the FBI is investigating whether a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer funneled money through the National Rifle Association to help the 2016 Trump campaign (it’s illegal to use foreign money to finance federal elections). Then came news from the Wall Street Journal that Trump’s lawyer commissioned a secret payoff to a porn star to keep her quiet about a 2006 sexual liaison with Trump.

The latest stab at distraction from the issue at the heart of the investigation — whether the Trump campaign was involved in Russia’s meddling with the presidential election — comes from House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes, a California Republican. He’s pushing for the release of classified material that he claims will show illicit activities by intelligence agencies to hurt Trump.

For most of a year, Trump and congressional defenders have also tried to undermine the credibility of Christopher Steele, the former British spy and Russia expert who authored an explosive dossier on Trump’s ties with Russia. Republicans charged that the report was full of errors, was paid for by Clinton and was a political hit job that led to Mueller’s investigation. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley and South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham called on the Justice Department to investigate Steele, a British citizen.

So far they’ve done nothing to dent the credibility of Steele, whose expertise has been praised by top U.S. intelligence officials. Steele has acknowledged that his leaked dossier was like a raw intelligence report that included unverified information. The Clinton campaign did secretly pay for much of the work without Steele’s knowledge, but it was initiated by a conservative news website funded by a big Republican donor.

The central Republican charge that the Steele dossier was the catalyst for the entire Russia inquiry also has fallen flat. It actually started in the summer of 2016, when Australian officials informed their American counterparts that George Papadopoulos, the Trump foreign policy adviser who has since pleaded guilty of lying to the FBI, had bragged to an Australian diplomat that Russia “had dirt” on Clinton. Papadopoulos is cooperating with Mueller. His fiancée, Simona Mangiante, told the Washington Post this week that he’s revealing more to the special counsel and that there’s “a lot to come.”

Grassley and others have also attacked the integrity of Glenn Simpson, the former Wall Street Journal reporter turned private investigator who hired Steele. Simpson spent a full day testifying in private session before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Grassley initially refused Simpson’s request to make a transcript public. When the Democrats forced its release later, Grassley’s motives became clear: It was the Trump defenders, not Simpson, who looked bad.

Other Trump backers on Capitol Hill, notably Representative Jim Jordan, a Freedom Caucus leader, have tried to impugn the FBI as politically motivated in the Trump probe. Representative Francis Rooney of Florida went so far as to call for a “purge” of the bureau.

The evidence so far is that the public is unconvinced. In last week’s NBC News/Wall Street Journal national poll, respondents gave the bureau positive marks by a margin of almost three to one.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:
Albert R. Hunt at ahunt1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Jonathan Landman at jlandman4@bloomberg.net

Neil Gorsuch must recuse himself from DACA case after political talks with Senate GOP leadership

Daily Kos

Neil Gorsuch must recuse himself from DACA case after political talks with Senate GOP leadership

By Joan McCarter January 23, 2018

Of course Donald Trump’s first SCOTUS nominee is unethical.

So, this happened, and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) was dim enough to let the whole world know about it:

Sen. Lamar Alexander: I enjoyed having dinner tonight at the home of Senator John Cornyn and his wife Sandy with our newest Supreme Court Justice, Neil Gorsuch, Transportation Secretary Chao and a few of my other Senate colleagues to talk about important issues facing our country. Jan 22, 2018

A Supreme Court Justice was at a dinner party with Elaine Chao, the wife of the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (was he also there, Sen. Alexander?) and the number two guy in the Senate, John Cornyn to “talk about important issues facing our country.”

Let’s get some advice from long-time court reporter Nina Totenberg of NPR about that:

People often ask NPR’s Totenberg, who has known many of the justices for decades, for advice. “My experience is that people don’t really understand what they can’t talk about,” she says. “I tell them, ‘You can’t talk about a case or an issue that might come before the court. You talk about life—kids, music, movies—the things normal people talk about.'”

The issues of the day are most definitely not what a Supreme Court justice should be discussing with Republican congressional leadership. And that they had this clearly political and social get together the evening before the Supreme Court announced it will expedite considering the Trump administration’s request to overturn a judge’s ruling and allow the Trump administration to dismantle the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Only the most pressing issue of the day. Which Gorsuch should now have to recuse himself from.

Sign the petition to Neil Gorsuch: Recuse yourself from the DACA case.

This isn’t the first time, of course, that this particularly new justice has landed in deeply, deeply political water. Back in November, writing in Politico Magazine, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren wrote about Gorsuch and his keynote speech at an event at Donald Trump’s D.C. hotel. She points out that the very day Gorsuch was making that speech, the SCOTUS announced it would hear Janus v. AFSCME, “a case that will determine whether public sector unions—which represent teachers, nurses, firefighters and police in states and cities across the country—can collect fees from all employees in the workplaces they represent” and a case in which Gorsuch will almost certainly provide the deciding vote.

Not surprisingly, Gorsuch isn’t even attempting to act like principled justice who will put the rule of law and the country before his partisanship. That he was even willing to accept the nomination for this seat, which was stolen by Republicans, from Donald Trump shows that he’s got little in the way of principles. It should be noted that the Supreme Court is not bound by the Judicial Code of Ethics that guides the rest of the federal judiciary. So while Gorsuch’s activities have been exceedingly unethical, he isn’t subject to any kind of sanction from them under the code.

But he can be impeached. So when we get to the impeachment phase of this administration, the Supreme Court has to be included.

Republican senator meets with Justice Neil Gorsuch to discuss unspecified ‘important issues’

ThinkProgress: Talk about bad optics.

Republican senator meets with Justice Neil Gorsuch to discuss unspecified ‘important issues’

Melanie Schmitz January 23, 2018

Supreme Court Justice Neal Gorsuch speaks during an event hosted by the Fund for American Studies September 28, 2017 at Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. (Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Hours after he nearly shattered a glass elephant by tossing a “talking stick” at Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) during bipartisan spending talks on Monday (yes, that actually happened), Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) decided to buff up his image further by hastily tweeting that he was having dinner with a Supreme Court justice to discuss “important issues.”

“I enjoyed having dinner tonight at the home of Senator John Cornyn and his wife Sandy with our newest Supreme Court Justice, Neil Gorsuch, Transportation Secretary Chao and a few of my other Senate colleagues to talk about important issues facing our country,” the senior senator wrote.

Alexander’s tweet prompted a flurry of angry responses, with many concerned the event was a breach of ethics, or at best bad optics. “Is this type of dinner normal — legislators and Supreme Court justice[s]?” one Twitter user replied.

CNN analyst and former South Carolina Rep. Bakari Sellers (D) was more blunt with his criticism. “Justice Gorsuch is proving to be a cancer on our Judiciary,” he tweeted.

Objectively speaking, there’s nothing wrong with a member of Congress (or the executive branch) dining or hunting or hobnobbing with a Supreme Court justice. The late Justice Antonin Scalia, for instance, frequently went on hunting trips with his longtime friend, Vice President Dick Cheney, and famously came under fire for a particular duck-hunting trip they took three weeks after the Court agreed to hear an appeal in a case involving Cheney himself. (Scalia defended himself at the time by quacking.)

What’s troubling about Alexander’s dinner with Gorsuch, rather, is the fact that the two met to discuss unspecified “important issues facing our country” — something which Supreme Court justices are rightfully discouraged from doing, as it gives an obvious appearance of partiality and may flout certain ethics rules.

On its own, the dinner meeting might not merit more than a passing glance. The majority of judges and justices slip up occasionally, and even the most dedicated members of the Supreme Court sometimes say or do things that require damage control. (Just ask Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.) But Gorsuch has a backlog full of questionable behavior that makes his decision to hold partisan discussions with a member of Congress concerning.

The newest justice, appointed by President Trump, has long been scrutinized for his history of siding with religious liberty advocates, famously ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby in the landmark Hobby Lobby v. Sebelius case, while serving on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. He has also been criticized for having an anti-LGBTQ bias, one which bled into a recent dissent he wrote in a case involving two same-sex parents who sought to have both their names listed on their child’s birth certificate. However it’s his decision to blur the line between his life on the bench and his private activities that has many ethics groups troubled.

The Supreme Court is abandoning legitimacy for partisanship

What happens when the Supreme Court ignores the line between law and politics?

In September, Gorsuch was criticized by watchdog groups for delivering a speech to a conservative group at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. His remarks were far from the center of the controversy; many justices have chosen to speak to similarly partisan audiences before. Instead, because Trump refuses to divest himself from his interests in the property, activists argued Gorsuch was personally enriching the president, who continues to rake in its profits. When faced with those claims, a spokesperson for the Fund for American Studies, which organized the event, denied that the group had chosen the venue with Trump’s bank account in mind.

The venue choice wasn’t the only potential conflict of interest Gorsuch faced: the Fund for American Studies itself is partially funded by the Milwaukee-based Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, which has poured millions of dollars into anti-union causes. The same day Gorsuch delivered his speech, the Supreme Court also agreed to hear arguments challenging mandatory union fees in public sector jobs.

Prior to Gorsuch’s appointment, the Court had been deadlocked, 4-4.

“Setting aside the glaring conflict of interest in Gorsuch helping to enrich a Trump property just as several cases charging that the president is violating the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution are making their way through the judicial system, the group he addressed is funded by the same people funding the effort to dismantle unions that Gorsuch and his fellow justices agreed to take up,” Salon Deputy Politics Editor Sophia Tesfaye wrote that month.

It’s unclear what kinds of “important issues” were discussed during Gorsuch and Sen. Alexander’s meeting on Monday night. It’s entirely possible the “issues” Alexander was referring to were whether the Supreme Court should require justices to don funny wigs, à la British judges and barristers. Whatever the case, it was one more example of bad decision-making that Justice Gorsuch simply didn’t need on his record.

This article has been updated to correct a typo in the description of Gorsuch’s potential conflict of interest. An earlier version stated that the meeting could give the appearance of “impartiality.” It has been amended to read “partiality.”

Public records show how much House Republican will gain from the tax law he repeatedly lied about

ThinkProgress

Public records show how much House Republican will gain from the tax law he repeatedly lied about

Rep. Jeff Denham has been misrepresenting the GOP’s tax law, which could save him more than $100,000 this year.

Addy Baird January 22, 2018

Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Calif., participates in a news conference on bipartisan legislation to address the deferred action for childhood arrivals (DACA) program and border security on Tuesday January 16, 2018. Credit: Photo by Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call

Rep. Jeff Denham (R-CA) has repeatedly lied about the effects of the GOP’s tax plan — a plan from which he stands to handsomely benefit, according to public records.

The tax plan, which was signed into law by President Trump late last year, gives owners of pass-through companies — businesses that don’t pay income taxes at the corporate level but rather allocate income across owners who then pay income taxes — their own new, lower rate. And according to public records, Denham made between $115,503 and $1,053,000 in business and rental income from LLCs (pass-through entities) in 2016.

Additionally, Denham’s salary in 2016 was a little more than $200,000. Ultimately, that means that Denham could fall into one of three new tax brackets created under his party’s new tax plan — 32 percent, 35 percent, or 37 percent — all of which would result in big savings for him personally. The congressman’s business and rental tax savings alone under GOP tax plan would, based on his public filings, range from between $8,547 an astounding $105,300.

But Denham has been lying about the effects of the bill throughout the process of crafting and passing the legislation. Last November, Denham said it was “just not true” that the GOP tax plan ultimately raises taxes on middle-class people. In an interview with KQED, Denham interrupted the host who mentioned analyses that found the tax cut for middle-income earners were merely temporary.

“Yeah, that’s just not true,” Denham cut in. “It’s very obvious.”

Expert analyses show that by 2023, 60 percent of Americans will face a tax hike or see no change in their taxes, and by 2027, a quarter of taxpayers will be paying more in taxes.

In the same interview with KQED, Denham said, “I’ve had constituents that have called in and they’ve actually run the numbers themselves, I’ve got their own testimonies. You know, when you factor in the expansion of the Child Tax Credit, ultimately it’s a very large savings here for the people in my district.”

But according to a report from The Center for American Progress (ThinkProgress is an editorially independent outlet housed in CAP), the tax law will have devastating effects on many people in Denham’s home state of California. According to the report, which analyzed the version of the bill from November that Denham was defending, more than 3.7 million people in the bottom 80 percent of the state’s income distribution would see their taxes increase by 2027.

In November, Denham also rejected the fact that eliminating the state and local income tax (SALT) deduction would hurt those he represents, according to local media.

But Denham was wrong in that front, too. In 2015, more than six million taxpayers in California claimed the SALT deduction, more than any other state. And as the California Budget and Policy Center outlined in November, eliminating the SALT deduction effectively means millions of Californians are being double taxed, a tax increase that forces Denham’s constituents and other Californians to pay for tax breaks for the wealthy and mostly benefits other states.

Some parts of the bill were changed in the final version, including capping rather than eliminating SALT, but Denham continues to misrepresent even the most basic aspects of the law.

The cherry on top is this: Denham claims it’s a lie to say that the GOP tax law is loaded with giveaways for corporations and the wealthy. After the tax bill passed, one of Denham’s Democratic challengers, a woman named Virginia Madueno, said the tax bill was “loaded with giveaways to big corporations and the wealthiest of the wealthy, while leaving table scraps for the rest of us,” Denham responded in a tweet.

The American Republiban

John Hanno January 20, 2018

The American Republiban

The self imposed burden Republi-cons are saddled with, their mis-educated and anti-fact base of supporters they fawn over and rely on to remain relevant, is shrinking and becoming ever more extreme. Almost 60,000 of these elderly voters die every month. They proclaim to represent an alternative to the Grand Old Party – the Eisenhower / Rockefeller Republicans, an alternative “Alt Right” doctrine. What they really expound, is an ultimate “Ult Right” ideology. This new, poorly educated Republiban, immune to critical thinking, is much older and almost exclusively white and Christian. They profess racial purity, nativism, intolerance to humanism or secularism or other religions, exhibit a reckless aversion to history and science and exalt a single minded worship of wealth and exclusivity. Their moral compass has flipped true North.

Having drifted so far from traditional conservative principles, they’ve clearly forfeited any traditional fiscal argument, and with it, the cudgel routinely used to browbeat Democrats trying to help the poor or bolster America’s crumbling middle-class social and monetary infrastructures.

To embellish millionaires and billionaires and thriving multi-national corporations and their investors, who’ve all prospered like never before, with generous tax cuts that balloon the national debt, is not fiscally conservative. To prescribe their tax cut scam as a stimulus to an already thriving economy is not fiscally conservative and might achieve just the opposite. To work day and night for years, to cripple the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which finally slowed escalating insurance premiums and our national healthcare burden, is not fiscally conservative.

To wontonly repeal bipartisan regulations, implemented after decades of debate and evaluation, to guard against the monumental and costly remedies required to correct catastrophic environmental and fiscal disasters, is not fiscally conservative. These Republibaners disregard sound climate science and years of bipartisan environmental legislation culminating in Republican president Nixon signing the bill establishing the Environmental Protection Agency on December 2, 1970.

They disregard milestones of American environmental calamity and redemption, including Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring, exposing widespread pesticide poisoning of man and nature; and Congress passing the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), charging the government to “become the protector of earth, air, land and water.” The law declared Congress’s intentions to “create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony, and “assure for all Americans safe, healthful, productive, aesthetically and culturally pleasing surroundings.

New York City before EPA

New York Harbor 1970

The law also compelled all federal agencies to submit reports (Environmental Impact Statements, EIS’s) for all projects bearing on the environment, and also directed the President to prepare annual Environmental Quality Reports for Congress. When President Nixon signed the bill on New Years Day 1970, he said: “he had become further convinced that the 1970’s absolutely must be the years when America pays its debt to the past by reclaiming the purity of it’s air, it’s waters and our living environment.” “It is literally now or never.”

In short, America’s environment had become a giant shit-hole.

Highlighting this new focus in his State of the Union a few weeks later, Nixon “proclaimed the new decade a period of environmental transformation.” Nixon’s first Environmental Quality Report to Congress on February 10th, contained 37-points. Included in this report, he requested $4 billion for improvements to water treatment facilities. He asked for national air quality standards, a program to lower motor vehicle emissions and federally funded research on reducing automobile pollution. He also ordered a clean-up of federal facilities that contributed to the pollution of the air and water. He sought legislation to end the dumping of wastes into the Great Lakes. He proposed a tax on lead in gasoline. He sent congress a plan on strengthening safeguards on the transportation of oil over the seas. He instituted a National Contingency Plan for remediation of oil spills.

First Earth Day 1970

Public protest and demonstrations on Earth Day 1970 and the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1970 were the turning points in America’s environmental consciousness – the realization that air and water pollution must be a national priority; and also the impetus for the creation of the EPA and Nixon’s confirming signature on December 2, 1970. And the scores of toxic super-fund sites discovered throughout the 1980’s, supercharged efforts to begin healing our environment.

The Cuyahoga River Ignites. Cleavland, Ohio – 1969.

But every one of these environmental programs and more, are under siege, face elimination or reductions by our current, non-conservative and toxic, fossil fuel pandering Republi-con president, the Republi-con controlled congress and Environmental Protection Agency destroyer in charge, Scott Pruitt.

Los Angeles Air Pollution

They’ve quickly rolled back the latest automobile CAFE standards implemented by the Obama administration. This administrations relentless attacks on environmental regulations, began during their first few days in power, with trump reversing President Obama’s rejection of the Dakota Access Pipeline completion, without waiting for the Congressionally mandated Environmental Impact Statement. trump also quickly reversed President Obama by approving the Keystone XL pipeline without a full and comprehensive environmental impact study.

Scott Pruitt, who’s vigorously tried to dismantle environmental regulations and downsize the agency, has also attempted to undermine environmental enforcement actions by the Justice Department. He removed critical climate change and global warming information on the agencies website and ordered employees to not use those words or speak on those issues. Coupled with the attacks on President Obama’s Clean Water Act, the opening of America’s oceans and wilderness areas to oil exploration, and the trump administrations plans to hand over America’s public lands and National Monuments and Parks to fossil fuel and mining interests, these anti-conservatives will single-handedly attempt to reverse much of the progress made since the early days of the environmental movement.

No National Park or Monument or section of public land, set aside over the centuries by past presidents, is safe from these evildoers. Many of the regulations and protections proposed and passed for our environment and public lands were both Republican and conservative bipartisan initiatives. But this administration is not interested in protecting Americans, their environment or their National treasures, only in paying back their omnipotent campaign donors like the Koch brothers.

How far has this Ult Right, alternative reality, alternative fact collection of anti-conservatives, drifted from the Grand Old Party? The 1956 Republican Party Platform is but a distant memory.

Americans overwhelmingly believe in entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, believe health care is a right, not a privilege, believe in the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and Medicaid for those who need it, believe in protecting our environment – our air and water, believe in sensible regulations, want work place protections for workers, believe Dreamers should be protected and offered a path to citizenship, want our National Parks and Monuments preserved, not exploited for private corporate gain and believe in a fair tax system, not one heavily favoring the rich and politically connected.

These Ult Right, flag waving Republi-con pseudo Constitutional purists don’t believe in responsible governance or, for that matter, in government at all, don’t believe in entitlement programs or welfare, don’t believe in fair play or a level playing field, couldn’t care less about America’s ballooning income inequality, don’t really believe in Democratic principles and honestly believe political compromise in any form is just total capitulation.

This Ult Right only lauds our founding fathers, their Democratic blueprints – our Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, if it suits their political agenda. They tout States Rights when the Federal Government finds it necessary to step into the fray to protect American’s rights, as they did during the Civil Rights movement in the South. But then extol Federal supremacy, when Progressive States find it necessary to protect their citizens from Federal malfeasance like the trump administrations attacks on environmental and workplace regulations and policies; or when cities or States attempt any sensible gun regulations.

Their latest vitriol is directed at the First Amendment. Republican Senator Jeff Flake took to the floor of the U.S. Senate this week to call out trump for constantly referring to the media as “enemies of the people,” and to defend the U.S. Constitution.

Sen. Flake opened with the Declaration of Independence, by saying Thomas Jefferson wrote, “We Hold These Truths to Be Self Evident”. He said trump infamously uses words spoken by Josef Stalin to describe his enemies. He said: “it bears noting that so fraught with malice, the phrase “enemy of the people,” that even Nikita Khrushchev forbade its use, telling the Soviet Communist Party, that the phrase was introduced by Stalin for the purpose of “annihilating such individuals who disagreed with the supreme leader.”

He also quoted a John F. Kennedy speech for the 20th anniversary of The Voice Of America. “We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let it’s people judge the truth and falsehoods in an open market, is a nation afraid of its people. He said a free press is not the enemy of the people. Despotism is the enemy of the people and a free press is the despots enemy. He referred to George Orwell’s book 1984 and said Orwell warned: “The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.”

Based on the number of lies trump has told (over 2,000 since entering the White House) and the fairy tales that his cabinet, the Republican controlled congress and his supporters have applauded, excused and disregarded, the GOP is in for a whole bunch of hate, especially from the trump voters who were hoodwinked and who may come to their senses before the 2018 mid-term elections.

The Republi-con “family values platform”, arguably always a false identity, has been blown apart. To support a president who’s so far removed from Christian doctrine and the virtues and teachings of Jesus Christ, is not family values. And wayward Evangelicals have cast their lot with a devilish messiah who may deliver them unto oblivion. The latest blasphemy exhibited by prominent Evangelical leaders was exposed by the Wall Street Journal this week. To excuse and justify the $130,000 payment to a porn star to cover up a year long affair while trump was married to Melania and just after she gave birth to their son is the height of hypocrisy. These same religious popinjays spent years preachifying about Bill Clinton’s indiscretions.

trump’s attempts at reimaging, this pandering political party of the rich and powerful and multi-national, connected corporations, with a phony populist agenda, is laughable, if it weren’t so destructive. Supporting the Koch Brothers anti-labor ALEC legislative agenda breaks every promise he made to desperate rust belt workers during the election. And for con-man-in-chief trump to offer false hope to out of work steel workers and coal miners shackled to a dying industry is beyond cruel.

trump has no core set of beliefs, no modicum of integrity; he cares for no one but himself. His egocentric self obsession is boundless. He only admires people who’ve amassed fortunes, no matter how they attained that wealth, and dismisses and devalues anyone who labors for a paycheck.

Nothing is normal, or traditional or conservative about this president, his Ult Right administration or the Republi-con controlled congress. Those who’ve attempted to normalize trump’s un-presidential antics, his immoral character flaws, his obsession with undermining everything President Obama accomplished, his unfailing allegiance to Vladimir Putin and the Russians, his infatuation with autocratic despots and anti-democratic fiat, and his self dealing and conflicted and criminal business ethics – will regret, like the dozens of folks already expelled from his administration, any association with this trump travesty.

America will survive trump but the GOP and the Christian Right may not.

Paul Ryan Collected $500,000 In Koch Contributions Days After House Passed Tax Law

HuffPost

Paul Ryan Collected $500,000 In Koch Contributions Days After House Passed Tax Law

Mary Papenfuss, HuffPost January 20, 2018

Just days after the House passed its version of the federal tax law slashing corporate tax rates, House Speaker Paul Ryan collected nearly $500,000 in campaign contributions from billionaire energy mogul Charles Koch and his wife, according to a recent campaign donor report.

Koch and his brother David spent millions of dollars to get the tax law passed and are spending millions more in a public relations campaign in an attempt to boost support for the law, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Koch Industries, one of the largest private corporations in the nation, operates refineries and manufactures a variety of products. The new tax law — which slices corporate tax rates from 35 percent to 21 percent, slashes estate taxes and includes a special deduction for oil and gas investors — is expected to save the Koch brothers and their businesses billions of dollars in taxes.

Just 13 days after the tax law was passed, Charles Koch and his wife, Elizabeth, donated nearly $500,000 to Ryan’s joint fundraising committee, according to a campaign finance report filed Thursday.

Five other donors, including billionaire businessmen Jeffery Hildebrand and William Parfet and William Parfet, each contributed $100,000 in the last quarter of 2017, according to the records.

“It looks like House Speaker Ryan is quickly being rewarded for passing this legislation that overwhelmingly benefits the Kochs and billionaires like them,” Adam Smith, spokesman for campaign finance reform nonprofit Every Voice, told the International Business Times, which first reported the Koch contributions.

The Koch donations were paid into Team Ryan, which raises money for the speaker, the National Republican Congressional Committee and a PAC run by Ryan. On the same day, Charles and Elizabeth Koch also each donated $237,000 to the NRCC.

The Koch brothers, worth an estimated $100 billion together, have become the gorillas of dark money contributions distorting American democracy since the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC, which opened the door to unlimited campaign contributions from corporations, unions and wealthy individuals to outside groups. The brothers are using their massive wealth to push a political agenda that’s the “most hard-line libertarian philosophy” in America, according to Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.

Ryan has indicated that he won’t run again when his term is up this year, Politico reported, though he hasn’t made an official announcement. If he doesn’t run, his contributions would be redirected.

Clarification: Language in this story has been updated to better describe the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC.

Fracking Waste Lawsuit Highlights Dangerous Trend of Corporations Targeting Community Rights Defenders

EcoWatch

DeSmogBlog

Fracking Waste Lawsuit Highlights Dangerous Trend of Corporations Targeting Community Rights Defenders

Marcellus Shale rig and gas well operation on Ridge Road in Jackson Township operated by Rex Energy. WCN 24/7 / Flickr

By Simon Davis-Cohen January 18, 2018

In early January, a federal judge ordered the nonprofit law firm Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) to pay $52,000 to an oil and gas exploration company for defending a rural Pennsylvania township’s ban on underground injections of fracking waste.

This sanction comes at the request of Pennsylvania General Energy Company (PGE) and the Pennsylvania Independent Oil & Gas Association, but is part of a growing trend to prevent municipalities across the nation from pushing back against state and federal attempts to overrule them.

Starting in 2012, PGE proposed an injection well which, according to Grant Township’s Board of Supervisors, “would receive 30,000 barrels [1.26 million gallons] of frack wastewater per month for 10 years.” The board of supervisors for this small community near Pittsburgh warned that the injection well “threatens to subject every resident of Grant Township to a slow poisoning, and threatens thousands more who depend on Grant Township’s watershed for clean water.”

The community’s law, they added, bans the injection well “as a violation of our basic civil rights.” PGE operates multiple gas-extraction wells in the township.

Rights of Nature, Local Governance

CELDF, which has defended Grant’s efforts to prevent waste injection wells for over three years, has worked with some 200 municipalities in the U.S. to defend local laws challenging similar corporate projects. The group aims to drive state constitutional change to bolster the rights of local residents and ecosystems against what it calls regressive state preemption and corporate personhood.

Grant Township, for example, is elevating a “right of self-government,” rights “to clean air, water, and soil” and “ecosystem rights” above corporations’ “rights” to inject waste from oil and gas extraction in the township.

These types of local laws often face substantial legal pushback from private corporations and states which claim authority over issues such as fossil fuel production. Along with the sanctions against CELDF, PGE is suing Grant Township itself, population 741, for damages that would likely be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Among its claims: The injection well ban violates the corporation’s rights as a “person” under the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments; the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; and the Contract Clause and Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Grant Township is the fourth local government CELDF has defended in federal court.

‘Frivolous’ Legal Arguments

At the heart of the court’s decision awarding PGE sanctions against the legal nonprofit (the company originally asked for $500,000) is an argument that the sanctions are justified because CELDF’s legal arguments are contrary to “settled” law and therefore “frivolous.” This reasoning asserts that corporate personhood and Pennsylvania’s authority over municipalities on issues affecting drinking water and fossil fuel development is settled, and therefore CELDF’s defense of Grant’s claim to the contrary is “clearly unreasonable.”

Grant Township, the court wrote, “seeks to disavow constitutional rights afforded corporations so as to prevent PGE from the lawful exercise of its right to pursue gas extraction related activities within its borders.” On top of all this, Grant’s law recognized legal rights for a local ecosystem. CELDF’s attempt to represent that ecosystem in court, the judge ruled, violates the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, a set of rules that govern how legal proceedings take place in U.S. district courts.

Local Governments Sanctioned Across U.S.

CELDF is not alone in facing sanctions for challenging so-called settled law on similar issues. Defend Local Solutions is a campaign led by Tallahassee’s Mayor Andrew Gillum which is aimed at expanding the powers of municipalities in Florida. The campaign said at least seven states have “super preemption” bills on the books that sanction local officials who dare challenge specific state preemption bills that rescind powers from municipalities.

In Florida, for example, Gillum personally faced the threat of sanctions after he refused to repeal a local law that banned fire arms in public parks (even though the ordinance wasn’t being enforced).

New bills, such as Texas’s highly controversial “show me your papers” and sanctuary city preemption bill (SB4), also include punitive language for municipalities pushing back against state and federal authority.

Texas’s bill would fine local officials and employees $25,000 per day or even remove them from office if they defy the law, according to the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. Parts of this section of the law, however, are hung up in court. However, the court ruled that local officials can be sanctioned if they outright ban police from asking for people’s immigration papers, and other sections of the bill are in effect, including a section that threatens punishment for local jail officers. The concept of economic retribution for noncompliance is spreading.

Georgia’s 2017 bill, HB37, removes funding from any private college that “prohibits or restricts officials or employees … from communicating or cooperating with federal officials or law enforcement officers with regard to reporting [immigration] status information.” And in 2016 Arizona passed a bill which withholds state funds from localities that enact policy that challenges the state’s claimed supremacy.

In CELDF’s sanction case, the court acknowledges that sanctions can have the effect of “chilling novel legal or factual arguments.”

Thomas Linzey, CELDF’s director and one of the two attorneys being personally sanctioned, said “that’s exactly the point. For years, the oil and gas corporations believed that they could stop the community rights movement by suing municipalities to overturn their local laws; but having failed to do so, they’re now coming after the lawyers who are helping those communities to stop drilling. In many ways, the industry’s filing for sanctions against us is just proof of how strong the community rights movement is becoming.”

In court records, CELDF pointed to Brown v. Board of Education (which overturned “separate but equal” schools for Black and White students, 1954), courts striking down bans on gay marriage, and other novel legal arguments as evidence that sanctions against lawyers who challenge “settled” law could set a dangerous precedent.

“We understand that the real problem isn’t the injection well, but the system of law that keeps trying to shut us down,” the Grant Township Board of Supervisors said in a statement. “We’re not going anywhere.”

Reposted with permission from our media associate DeSmogBlog.

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Oil and Gas Industry’s 2017 Suing Spree Could Set Speech-Chilling Precedents

Dimock, Pennsylvania resident Ray Kemble

By Sharon Kelly January 2, 2018

In 2017, while the Trump administration absorbed media attention with its cries of “fake news,” the oil and gas industry was busy launching private legal actions across the U.S., attacking critics who presented information and opinions to the public.

Those lesser-noticed legal maneuvers, if successful in 2018, could create chilling new precedents, keeping important facts away from the public eye and making it more expensive and risky to talk about the fossil fuel industry’s real and potential impacts on human health and the air, land, and water.

The past year brought some of the most aggressive lawsuits by the oil and gas industry against environmentalists in recent decades. They included legal moves aimed at preventing researchers from discussing their findings, motions painting political movements as for-profit conspiracies, and even a $5 million dollar lawsuit brought against a cancer patient whose tap water, state investigators determined years ago, was contaminated by gas drilling — by the company that is now suing him.

That lawsuit, filed by a shale gas drilling company, claims that a Pennsylvania landowner violated a non-disclosure agreement by talking to the press about his fouled drinking water, his home’s plummeting property value, the impacts of truck traffic on his community, the poor air quality around his home since drilling and fracking began in the area, or other problems he believes the company itself caused.

These oil and gas industry cases — involving novel uses of conspiracy, defamation, and even wire fraud laws — represent new and concerted efforts by large corporations to make individuals and groups pay for presenting information and opinions to the public.

Cancer Patient Gagged

Dimock, Pennsylvania, landowner Ray Kemble, who was diagnosed with bladder cancer in March 2017, was sued in August by Cabot Oil and Gas, which drilled a series of Marcellus shale wells in Kemble’s hometown.

Back in 2010 state environmental regulators concluded that Cabot Oil and Gas’s drilling operations had contaminated the area’s groundwater and ordered the company to cough up $4.6 million. In May 2016, federal health officials concluded that the drinking water in Dimock was indeed unsafe, and in December 2016, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) long-awaited national study warned that hydraulic fracturing (fracking) has contaminated drinking water supplies across the U.S. (without directly commenting on Kemble’s situation).

Cabot signed settlements with virtually all of the families drawing water from the contaminated Pennsylvania aquifer, though the precise terms of those agreements remain secret. A separate federal lawsuit, brought by two families down the road from Kemble, the Elys and the Huberts, was settled in September for an undisclosed amount, a sign that the Ely and Hubert settlement also includes a non-disclosure clause.

Cabot’s new lawsuit argues that a 2012 settlement bars Kemble from “disparaging” the company by discussing any harm he believes the company caused him — or even talking about things the company did after the settlement was reached.

But good luck finding out what exactly a settlement agreement between Kemble and the company might have said: In December, Cabot argued in court that it didn’t need to provide the document at the heart of the case to the attorneys representing Kemble’s co-defendents, nevermind the public.

Non-disparagement and non-disclosure agreements have been in the public spotlight lately amid the #MeToo scandals, after it came to light that powerful sexual harassers and assaulters frequently used the clauses to prevent those they assaulted from talking publicly.

Critics argue that non-disclosure and non-disparagement agreements (NDAs) should also not be used in cases where the public health could be at risk, warning that NDAs could, for example, keep someone sickened after drinking bad water from warning their neighbors about the danger.

Legal experts have questioned whether courts would ever actually enforce such an order — so the case brought by Cabot against Kemble could set a significant precedent.

Cabot also sued Kemble’s attorneys and the law firms where they work for representing Kemble in his earlier lawsuit against Cabot, which Kemble withdrew a few months after his cancer diagnosis (Kemble’s attorneys have cited unspecified “new information” in explaining the decision to drop the case). Kemble’s supporters say they fear that by including Kemble’s attorneys in the lawsuit, Cabot is trying to make it harder for those harmed by powerful companies to find representation.

On December 21, 2017, Susquehanna County Judge Jason J. Legg allowed Cabot’s claims against the attorneys to go forward, while admonishing Cabot for breaking Pennsylvania’s Rules of Civil Procedure by claiming $5 million in damages, even though the rules forbade Cabot to name a specific figure higher than $50,000 in their complaint. The judge noted that the claiming damages of $5 million “may have been designed to attract media attention” and “likely” served no legitimate legal purpose.

To Kemble, the lesson is clear. “This is just a way to shut the people up of the county and of the state, and I just don’t think it’s right,” Kemble said, according to NPR’s State Impact. “We the people have the right to talk.”

Stop Citing Working Paper, Gas Supplier Demands

In a December 11, 2017 letter, natural gas supplier Eversource Energy demanded that environmental advocacy group Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) stop citing a study that found evidence that Eversource and another utility legally manipulated natural gas pipeline markets in ways that caused astronomical gas price spikes during cold snaps from mid-2013 to mid-2016.

That analysis found that Eversource and Avangrid booked pipeline capacity and then left it unused, driving down New England’s natural gas supplies while demand was high, costing New England’s power customers over $3.6 billion. This working paper, prepared by a group of researchers including an EDF economist, emphasized that researchers hadn’t found that anything the company’s did was illegal, but suggested that the laws might need reform.

Those price spikes have been heavily touted by pipeline builders, who say they prove that New England needs to build more pipelines to carry fracked natural gas to the northern states in winter. The new study calls into question whether gas shortages were caused by a lack of pipelines or a failure to fully use the ones already built.

“Limited pipeline capacity is indeed partly responsible for these extreme prices,” the researchers wrote. “But we also find strong evidence that two firms that held significant shares of the contracts to flow gas on the Algonquin Gas Transmission Pipeline — one of the two major pipelines serving New England — regularly restricted capacity to the region by scheduling deliveries without actually flowing gas.”

The cease and desist letter warns EDF that Eversource could sue the environmental group if it continues to cite claims the company describes as “unsupported by fact.”

EDF told DeSmog that the study has been presented for peer review, the method the scientific and academic communities use to ensure research is rigorous. “The Working Paper is going through the process for academic publication in a peer-review journal,” EDF spokesperson Jon Coifman told DeSmog. “Versions have been presented at several academic conferences and workshops.”

Cease and desist letters are often sought in defamation cases, which allow people and companies to sue when someone harms their reputation by deliberately spreading false factual claims — which means it’s unusual to see a cease and desist letter sent over scientific analysis.

The study was authored by Levi Marks, PhD candidate at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Charles Mason, Chair in Petroleum and Natural Gas Economics at the University of Wyoming, along with EDF researcher Kristina Mohlin, and Matthew Zaragoza-Watkins, Assistant Professor of Economics at Vanderbilt.

In November, Eversource and Avangrid were hit with a class action lawsuit over the same general allegations made in the study. The class action argues that the companies violated consumer protection and anti-trust laws, and unjustly enriched themselves by driving up power prices by 20 percent.

EDF has rebuffed the cease and desist demand. “We stand by the analysis and reject this obvious attempt to intimidate and chill legitimate public inquiry,” Coifman told UtilityDive shortly after receiving Eversource’s letter.

Suing the Grassroots

In August, Dakota Access pipeline builder Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) filed a major lawsuit alleging racketeering and conspiracy by the grassroots environmental movement Earth First!, along with environmental groups Greenpeace and Banktrack.

The lawsuit accuses the non-profits of seeking to profit through environmental activism. “Maximizing donations, not saving the environment, is Greenpeace’s true objective,” ETP’s complaint alleges, while accusing pipeline opponents of violating anti-racketeering laws (meant to protect against mafia-style organized crime) and characterizing emails and tweets sent by Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) critics as wire fraud.

The lawsuit claims that ETP suffered nearly a billion dollars in damages and seeks to legally bar defendants from engaging in political protests. But civil rights advocates have taken issue with the coporation’s approach.

“Defendants employed time-honored, lawful means to advance their views, protected by core constitutional rights of free speech and association,” the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) wrote in a friend-of-the-court brief objecting to ETP’s claims of racketeering, defamation, and conspiracy. “Under ETP’s theories, ordinary political speech that runs counter to a corporation’s business interests could expose the speaker to enormous, unwarranted liability.”

In December, attorneys for Earth First Journal, a publication whose name echoes the name of the activist group Earth First!, arrived in federal court to argue that Earth First! is a social movement based on a shared set of ideas, and not a legal entity like a corporation, and therefore isn’t a thing that you can sue.

Earth First!, the journal’s attorney said, lacks the sorts of characteristics you’d find at something like a corporation, like a leadership structure, employees, or even members.

Even if the oil industry’s 2017 lawsuits don’t make it very far, the specter of defending multi-million dollar legal claims could make non-profits and social movements nervous about publicly criticizing powerful corporations.

And that, opponents say, is exactly the point.

“Defending major lawsuits like these against deep-pocketed corporations is extremely expensive, time consuming, and stressful, particularly for cash strapped non-profits,” ACLU staff attorney Brian Hauss wrote in a December 6, 2017 post about ETP’s 231-page lawsuit. “If the courts have any sense, this case won’t get to trial. But ETP doesn’t need to win in court to do major damage.”

Two kids kill half-a-million bees and wipe out a honey business, police say

Miami Herald

Two kids kill half-a-million bees and wipe out a honey business, police say

A bee flies back to a swarm in an oak tree in Salina, Kan., in this file photo. In Iowa, a honey farm owner says the killing of a half million bees last month was a “senseless” act. AP file photo

By Max Londberg January 18, 2018

Two juveniles have been charged with killing more than a half million bees at a honey business last month in Iowa.

The juveniles allegedly destroyed 50 hives at the Wild Hill Honey business in Sioux City, exposing the hundreds of thousands of bees to bitter cold.

“All of the beehives on the honey farm were destroyed and approximately 500,000 bees perished in the frigid temperatures,” Sioux City police said in a release.

The names of the juveniles have not been released, but they are 12 and 13 years old, the Sioux City Journal reported. They’re charged with criminal mischief, agricultural animal facilities offenses and burglary.

Justin and Tori Englehardt, the owners of Wild Hill, were despondent by the “senseless” act.

“They knocked over every single hive, killing all the bees. They wiped us out completely,” Justin Engelhardt told the Journal. “They broke into our shed, they took all our equipment out and threw it out in the snow, smashed what they could. Doesn’t look like anything was stolen, everything was just vandalized or destroyed.”

Even so, the owners vowed to rebuild the business, which is estimated to cost about $60,000. The damage was not covered by the owners’ insurance, but fundraising campaigns have raised thousands of dollars for the recovery.

The owners thanked donors in a post on a GoFundMe page.

“Because of you, we will be able to continue our business in the spring. We are deeply moved by your compassion. Between the contributions and the equipment we were able to salvage, our needs have been met.”

Video: Bees found to have buzzworthy brain power

Researchers at the Queen Mary University of London taught the bees to roll a ball towards a hole in return for food, challenging many preconceived notions about how intelligent insects can be.

O.J. Loukola et al., Science (2017); edited by Cristina Rayas/McClatchy

Englehardt told the Journal that he believed the story resonated with so many because of the declining population of bees due to habitat loss.

Last year, some species of bees were identified as endangered for the first time ever.

A mysterious phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder, in which worker bees abandon their queen, has contributed to declining bee numbers.

“Bees are critical, and people are conscious of the fact that bees are having a hard time right now and facing some real challenges,” Englehardt said.

Video: Virtual beekeepers help save the honeybees

Concern about colony collapse among the honeybees spurred Bryan and Barbara Ritter of Garland, Kan., to leave leave their jobs in the Kansas City area and move to a farm about 100 miles south and become virtual beekeepers. Essentially we keep bees for others,” Barbara Ritter explained.

Tammy Ljungblad The Kansas City Star

FBI investigating whether Russian money went to NRA to help Trump

McClatchy – D.C. Bureau

FBI investigating whether Russian money went to NRA to help Trump

President Trump addressed the National Rifle Association (NRA) convention on April 28, 2017. He’s the first president to do so in more than 30 years. “The eight-year assault on your second amendment freedoms has come to a crashing end,” Trump said. The White House

By Peter Stone and Greg Gordon January 18, 2018

Washington. The FBI is investigating whether a top Russian banker with ties to the Kremlin illegally funneled money to the National Rifle Association to help Donald Trump win the presidency, two sources familiar with the matter have told McClatchy.

FBI counterintelligence investigators have focused on the activities of Alexander Torshin, the deputy governor of Russia’s central bank who is known for his close relationships with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and the NRA, the sources said.

It is illegal to use foreign money to influence federal elections.

It’s unclear how long the Torshin inquiry has been ongoing, but the news comes as Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s sweeping investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, including whether the Kremlin colluded with Trump’s campaign, has been heating up.

All of the sources spoke on condition of anonymity because Mueller’s investigation is confidential and mostly involves classified information.

A spokesman for Mueller’s office declined comment.

Disclosure of the Torshin investigation signals a new dimension in the 18-month-old FBI probe of Russia’s interference. McClatchy reported a year ago that a multi-agency U.S. law enforcement and counterintelligence investigation into Russia’s intervention, begun even before the start of the 2016 general election campaign, initially included a focus on whether the Kremlin secretly helped fund efforts to boost Trump, but little has been said about that possibility in recent months.

The extent to which the FBI has evidence of money flowing from Torshin to the NRA, or of the NRA’s participation in the transfer of funds, could not be learned.

However, the NRA reported spending a record $55 million on the 2016 elections, including $30 million to support Trump – triple what the group devoted to backing Republican Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential race. Most of that was money was spent by an arm of the NRA that is not required to disclose its donors.

Two people with close connections to the powerful gun lobby said its total election spending actually approached or exceeded $70 million. The reporting gap could be explained by the fact that independent groups are not required to reveal how much they spend on Internet ads or field operations, including get-out-the-vote efforts.

During the campaign, Trump was an outspoken advocate of the Second Amendment right to bear arms, at one point drawing a hail of criticism by suggesting that, if Clinton were elected, gun rights advocates could stop her from winning confirmation of liberal Supreme Court justices who support gun control laws.

“If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do folks,” Trump said at a rally in August 2016. “Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”

Spanish authorities tag Torshin for money laundering

Torshin, a leading figure in Putin’s party, has been implicated in money laundering by judicial authorities in Spain, as Bloomberg News first revealed in 2016. Spanish investigators alleged in an almost 500-page internal report that Torshin, who was then a senator, capitalized on his government role to assist mobsters laundering funds through Spanish properties and banks, Bloomberg reported

A summary obtained by McClatchy of the still-secret report links Torshin to Russian money laundering and describes him as a godfather in a major Russian criminal organization called Taganskaya.

Investigators for three congressional committees probing Russia’s 2016 operations also have shown interest in Torshin, a lifetime NRA member who has attended several of its annual conventions. At the group’s meeting in Kentucky in May 2016, Torshin spoke to Donald Trump Jr. during a gala event at the group’s national gathering in Kentucky in May 2016, when his father won an earlier-than-usual NRA presidential endorsement.

An FBI spokesman declined to comment on the investigation.

The NRA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Torshin could not be reached for comment, and emails to the Russian central bank seeking comment from Torshin and the bank elicited no response.

Mueller’s investigation has been edging closer to Trump’s inner circle. This week, The New York Times reported that Mueller had negotiated an agreement under which Steve Bannon, who was recently ousted from his post as a senior White House adviser, would fully respond to questions about the Trump campaign. Bannon headed the campaign over its final weeks.

Since taking over the investigation last May, Mueller has secured guilty pleas from two former Trump aides, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and former campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, both of whom agreed to cooperate with prosecutors; and criminal charges against two other top campaign figures, former campaign Chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates.

A year ago, three U.S. intelligence agencies signed off on a joint assessment that was the basis for the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats and other sanctions against the Kremlin. The intelligence agencies concluded that what began as a sophisticated Russian operation to undermine Americans’ faith in democracy morphed into a drive to help Trump win.

Torshin is among a phalanx of Putin proxies to draw the close attention of U.S. investigators, who also have tracked the activities of several Russian billionaires and pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarchs that have come in contact with Trump or his surrogates.

Torshin was a senior member of the Russian Senate and in recent years helped set up a Moscow gun rights group called Right to Bear Arms. He not only spoke with Trump Jr. at the NRA convention, but he also tried unsuccessfully to broker a meeting between Putin and the presidential candidate in 2016, according to the Times. He further sought to meet privately with the candidate himself near the 2016 NRA convention.

Torshin’s ties with the NRA have flourished in recent years. In late 2015, he hosted two dinners for a high-level NRA delegation during its week-long visit to Moscow that included meetings with influential Russian government and business figures.

In their internal report, Spanish prosecutors revealed a web of covert financial and money-laundering dealings between Torshin and Alexander Romanov, a Russian who pleaded guilty to money-laundering charges in 2016 and was sentenced to nearly four years in prison.

The prosecutors’ evidence included 33 audio recordings of phone conversations from mid-2012 to mid-2013 between Torshin and Romanov, who allegedly laundered funds to buy a hotel on the ritzy island of Mallorca. Torshin had an 80 percent stake in the venture, the Spanish report said.

In the phone conversations, Romanov referred to Torshin as the “godfather” or “boss.” Torshin has denied any links to organized crime and said his dealings with Romanov were purely “social.”

The Madrid-based newspaper El Pais last year reported that Spanish police were on the verge of arresting Torshin in the summer of 2013, when he had planned to attend a birthday party for Romanov, but a Russian prosecutor tipped the banker to plans to nab him if he set foot in Spain, and Torshin canceled his trip.

Congress looking at Torshin, too

The House and Senate Intelligence Committees and Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee also have taken an interest in Torshin as part of their parallel inquiries into Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections.

In questioning Donald Trump Jr. at a closed-door hearing in mid-December, investigators for the Senate Intelligence Committee asked about his encounter with Torshin at the NRA convention, according to a source familiar with the hearing.

Alan Futerfas, a lawyer for Trump Jr., said his client and Torshin talked only briefly when they were introduced during a meal.

“It was all gun-related small talk,” Futerfas told McClatchy.

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent letters in November to two senior Trump foreign policy aides, J.D. Gordon and Sam Clovis, seeking copies of any communications they had with or related to Torshin; the NRA; veteran conservative operative Paul Erickson; Maria Butina, a Torshin protege who ran the Russian pro-gun group he helped launch, and others linked to Torshin.

Erickson has raised funds for the NRA and is a friend of Butina’s. Shortly before the NRA’s May 2016 convention, he emailed Trump campaign aide Rick Dearborn about the possibility of setting up a meeting between Putin and Trump during the campaign, according to the Times.

Erickson’s email to Dearborn bore the subject line “Kremlin Connection.” In it, Erickson solicited advice from Dearborn and his boss, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a top foreign policy adviser to Trump’s campaign, about the best way to connect Putin and Trump.

Both Dearborn and Butina, who has been enrolled as a graduate student at American University since mid 2016, have been asked to appear before the Judiciary Committee, but so far Erickson has not, sources familiar with the matter said.

Bridges LLC, a company that Erickson and Butina established in February 2016 in Erickson’s home state of South Dakota, also is expected to draw scrutiny. Public records don’t reveal any financial transactions involving Bridges. In a phone interview last year, Erickson said the firm was established in case Butina needed any monetary assistance for her graduate studies — an unusual way to use an LLC.

Erickson said he met Butina and Torshin when he and David Keene, a former NRA president, attended a meeting of Right to Bear Arms a few years ago in Moscow. Erickson described the links between Right to Bear Arms and the NRA as a “moral support operation both ways.”

Torshin’s contacts with the NRA and the Trump campaign last year also came to the attention of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and key adviser. When Torshin tried to arrange a personal meeting with Trump near the NRA convention site last May, Kushner scotched the idea, according to emails forwarded to Kushner.

On top of Torshin’s efforts to cozy up to the Trump campaign, the Moscow banker has forged ties with powerful conservatives, including Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, the Californian whom some have deemed Putin’s best friend in Washington. In a phone interview in 2016, Rohrabacher recalled meeting Torshin in Moscow a few years earlier and described him as “a mover and shaker.”

Last February when Torshin visited Washington, Rockefeller heir and conservative patron George O’Neill Jr. hosted a fancy four-hour dinner for the banker on Capitol Hill, an event that drew Rohrabacher, Erickson and other big names on the right. Rohrabacher has labeled Torshin as “conservatives’ favorite Russian,” Torshin was in Washington at the time to lead his country’s delegation to the National Prayer Breakfast, where Trump spoke. The banker also was slated to see the presidentat a meet-and-greet event prior to a White House breakfast, but Torshin’s invitation was canceled after the White House learned of his alleged mob connections, Yahoo News reported.

Torshin’s involvement with the NRA may have begun in 2013 when he attended the group’s convention in Houston. Keene, the ex-NRA leader and an avid hunter, was instrumental in building a relationship with the Russian, according to multiple conservative sources.

Keene also helped lead a high-level NRA delegation to Moscow in December 2015 for a week of lavish meals and meetings with Russian business and political leaders. The week’s festivities included a visit to a Russian gun company and a meeting with a senior Kremlin official and wealthy Russians, according to a member of the delegation, Arnold Goldschlager, a California doctor who has been active in NRA programs to raise large donations.

Others on the trip included Joe Gregory, who runs the NRA’s Ring of Freedom program for elite donors who chip in checks of $1 million and upwards, Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke and Pete Brownell, a chief executive of a gun company and longtime NRA board member.

In a phone interview, Goldschlager described the trip as a “people-to-people mission,” and said he was impressed with Torshin — who, he noted, hosted both a “welcoming” dinner for the NRA contingent and another one.

“They were killing us with vodka and the best Russian food,” Goldschlager said. “The trip exceeded my expectations by logarithmic levels.”

Peter Stone is a McClatchy special correspondent

Alexander Torshin (far left), Russia’s secretary of state and deputy chairman of the Bank of Russia, attended a cabinet meeting in suburban Moscow on February 11, 2016. Ekaterina Shtukina Sputnik via AP

Deputy Governor Alexander Torshin of the Bank of Russia, shown here at the at the InvestRos international conference at the Four Seasons Hotel in Moscow in April, 2016. Vitaliy Belousov Sputnik via AP