“Dead Skunk in The Middle of The Road” – Page 2

Shouts of ‘Shame! Shame!’ erupt in Arizona House as fight over abortion ban engulfs lawmakers

Associated Press

Shouts of ‘Shame! Shame!’ erupt in Arizona House as fight over abortion ban engulfs lawmakers

Anita Snow and Morgan Lee – April 10, 2024

Arizona State Rep. Matt Gress, R, speaks to reporters on the House floor at the Capitol, Wednesday, April 10, 2024, in Phoenix. The Arizona Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the state can enforce its long-dormant law criminalizing all abortions except when a mother's life is at stake. (AP Photo/Matt York) — Arizona State Rep. Matt Gress, R, speaks to reporters on the House floor at the Capitol, Wednesday, April 10, 2024, in Phoenix. The Arizona Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the state can enforce its long-dormant law criminalizing all abortions except when a mother’s life is at stake. (AP Photo/Matt York)

Volunteer signature gatherers Judy Robbins, left, and Lara Cerri, center, watch outside a bookstore as voter Grace Harders prepares to sign a petition that aims to enshrine the right to abortion in Arizona, Wednesday, April 10, 2024, in Phoenix. The Arizona Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the state can enforce its long-dormant law criminalizing all abortions except when a mother's life is at stake. (AP Photo/Anita Snow) — Volunteer signature gatherers Judy Robbins, left, and Lara Cerri, center, watch outside a bookstore as voter Grace Harders prepares to sign a petition that aims to enshrine the right to abortion in Arizona, Wednesday, April 10, 2024, in Phoenix. The Arizona Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the state can enforce its long-dormant law criminalizing all abortions except when a mother’s life is at stake. (AP Photo/Anita Snow)

Democratic lawmakers record Arizona State Rep. Teresa Martinez, R, as she speaks from the House floor at the Capitol, Wednesday, April 10, 2024, in Phoenix. The Arizona Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the state can enforce its long-dormant law criminalizing all abortions except when a mother's life is at stake. (AP Photo/Matt York) — Democratic lawmakers record Arizona State Rep. Teresa Martinez, R, as she speaks from the House floor at the Capitol, Wednesday, April 10, 2024, in Phoenix. The Arizona Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the state can enforce its long-dormant law criminalizing all abortions except when a mother’s life is at stake. (AP Photo/Matt York)

Arizona State Rep. Stephanie Stahl Hamliton, D, speaks on floor at the Capitol, Wednesday, April 10, 2024, in Phoenix. The Arizona Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the state can enforce its long-dormant law criminalizing all abortions except when a mother's life is at stake. (AP Photo/Matt York) — Arizona State Rep. Stephanie Stahl Hamliton, D, speaks on floor at the Capitol, Wednesday, April 10, 2024, in Phoenix. The Arizona Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the state can enforce its long-dormant law criminalizing all abortions except when a mother’s life is at stake. (AP Photo/Matt York)

Arizona State Speaker of the House Ben Toma, R, speaks to reporters from the House floor at the Capitol, Wednesday, April 10, 2024, in Phoenix. The Arizona Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the state can enforce its long-dormant law criminalizing all abortions except when a mother's life is at stake. (AP Photo/Matt York) — Arizona State Speaker of the House Ben Toma, R, speaks to reporters from the House floor at the Capitol, Wednesday, April 10, 2024, in Phoenix. The Arizona Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the state can enforce its long-dormant law criminalizing all abortions except when a mother’s life is at stake. (AP Photo/Matt York)

PHOENIX (AP) — The Arizona Legislature devolved into shouts of “Shame! Shame!” on Wednesday as Republican lawmakers quickly shut down discussion on a proposed repeal of the state’s newly revived 1864 law that criminalizes abortion throughout pregnancy unless a woman’s life is at risk.

The state Supreme Court cleared the way on Tuesday for enforcement of the pre-statehood law. Arizona abortion providers vowed Wednesday to continue service until they’re forced to stop, possibly within weeks.

State legislators convened as pressure mounted from Democrats and some Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, for them to intervene.

House Democrats and at least one Republican tried to open discussion on a repeal of the 1864 abortion ban, which holds no exceptions for rape or incest. GOP leaders, who command the majority, cut it off twice and quickly adjourned for the week. Outraged Democrats erupted in finger-waving chants of “Shame! Shame!”

Republican state Rep. Teresa Martinez, of Casa Grande, said there was no reason to rush the debate. She accused Democrats of “screaming at us and engaging in extremist and insurrectionist behavior on the House floor.” The GOP-led Senate briefly convened without debate on abortion.

“We are navigating an extremely complex, emotional and important area of law and policy,” said Martinez, the GOP House whip. “In my opinion, removing healthy babies from healthy mothers is not health care nor reproductive care. Pregnancy is not an illness. It should be celebrated. It is an abortion that terminates life.”

Democratic legislators seized on national interest in the state’s abortion ban.

“We’ve got the eyes of the world watching Arizona right now,” said Democratic state Rep. Stephanie Stahl Hamilton, of Tucson. “We know that the Supreme Court decision yesterday is extreme. And we know that should the 1864 ban on abortion remain a law in Arizona, people will die.”

Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs called inaction on the proposed repeal unconscionable.

“Radical legislators protected a Civil War-era total abortion ban that jails doctors, strips women of our bodily autonomy and puts our lives at risk,” she said.

Three Republican legislators openly oppose the ban, including state Rep. Matt Gress, of Phoenix, who made a motion Wednesday to repeal the law. In a statement, he said the near-total ban “is not reflective of the values of the vast majority of our electorate, regardless of political affiliation. … This issue transcends all.”

According to AP VoteCast, 6 out of 10 Arizona voters in the 2022 midterm elections said they would favor guaranteeing legal abortion nationwide. The state recorded 11,530 abortions in 2022, the last data available, according to Arizona’s Department of Health Services.

At Camelback Family Planning in Phoenix, where about one-fourth of Arizona abortions are performed, registered nurse Ashleigh Feiring said abortion services were still available and that staff hope emergency legislation will avoid interruptions or closure.

“Our plan is to stay open as long as possible,” Feiring said. “Our clinic has been shut down twice in the last four years, but we’ve always resumed service.”

At the same time, anti-abortion groups including SBA Pro-Life America urged Arizona residents to oppose a proposed ballot initiative aimed at placing abortion rights in Arizona’s state constitution.

“They would wipe away all pro-life laws put in place by the Legislature, reflective of the will of the people,” SBA President Marjorie Dannenfelser said in a statement.

Hobbs, however, predicted that outrage will motivate voters to enshrine abortion rights directly in state law.

“The fight is not over, for sure” she said.

Grace Harders drove around metro Phoenix on Wednesday looking for an opportunity to sign an abortion rights petition. She said she wouldn’t know what to do if she had an unplanned pregnancy but knew she’d be scared.

“I’m a pro-choice person, and I want to ensure the right for all women,” Harders said.

Abortion rights advocates said they’ve gathered more than 500,000 signatures for the petition from the Arizona for Abortion Access campaign — far above what they need to add a ballot question asking voters to approve a constitutional amendment protecting the right to abortion until viability, when a fetus could survive outside the womb.

Arriving for a campaign fundraiser in Atlanta, Trump said the Arizona court decision went too far and called on state lawmakers to change it even as he defended the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling overturning of Roe v. Wade.

“It’s all about states’ rights,” the former president told supporters and journalists. “It’ll be straightened out.”

Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, most Republican-controlled states have started enforcing new bans or restrictions, and most Democratic-dominated ones have sought to protect abortion access.

Meanwhile, voters have sided with abortion rights supporters on statewide ballot measures in California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, Ohio and Vermont.

The Arizona ruling suggests doctors can be prosecuted for performing the procedure. The 1864 law carries a sentence of two to five years in prison for doctors or anyone else who assists in an abortion.

“Physicians are now on notice that all abortions, except those necessary to save a woman’s life, are illegal,” the Arizona Supreme Court said in its decision, adding that additional criminal and regulatory sanctions may apply to abortions performed after 15 weeks, the state’s previous time limit for the procedure.

Beyond that, the court ruling also ignited concern that enforcement might interfere with handling miscarriages.

Enforcing the 1864 law won’t begin for at least two weeks. However, plaintiffs in the case — including Planned Parenthood — said the delay could last up to two months, based on an agreement reached in a related case.

Planned Parenthood has said it will offer abortion services up to 15 weeks of pregnancy for at least two more months, in line with an agreement in the related case.

Doctors and clinic leaders are anticipating a scramble across the Southwest region to accommodate Arizona residents as they travel out of state for abortion care.

___

Associated Press writers Jacques Billeaud in Phoenix and Scott Sonner in Reno, Nevada, contributed to this report.

Trump’s $175 Million Bond Is Even Shadier Than It Looks

Daily Beast

Trump’s $175 Million Bond Is Even Shadier Than It Looks

Jose Pagliery – April 8, 2024

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty

The little-known insurance company that rescued Donald Trump by providing a last-minute $175 million bank fraud bond isn’t just unlicensed in New York; it hasn’t even been vetted by a voluntary state entity that would verify it meets minimum “eligibility standards” to prove financial stability.

Perhaps even more troubling, the legal document from Knight Specialty Insurance Company doesn’t actually promise it will pay the money if the former president loses his $464 million bank fraud case on appeal. Instead, it says Trump will pay, negating the whole point of an insurance company guarantee, according to three legal and bond experts who reviewed the contract for The Daily Beast.

“This is not common… the only reason this would be done is to limit the liability to the surety,” said N. Alex Hanley, an expert in how companies appeal enormous judgments.

New York AG Questions if $175 Million Bond Insurer Can Save Trump

These two points, noted here for the first time, validate the New York attorney general’s concerns that Trump is trying to avoid a financial punishment that could be catastrophic to his riches and reputation.

“There are many questions here, and that short piece of paper gives very little comfort,” said Maria T. Vullo, who was formerly New York’s top financial regulator.

“I believe this paper isn’t worth much and there are more shenanigans behind it,” said one former regulator, who’s intimately familiar with industry norms but spoke only on condition of anonymity.

After a three-month trial ended with a state judge concluding that Trump committed bank fraud for a decade by lying about his wealth and property values, the real estate tycoon and his top executives were ordered to pay $464 million—a massive sum that increases every day with interest that dates back years. But unable to find a large and trusted surety company to provide the half-billion-dollar bond that would legally halt AG Letitia James from seizing his properties, Trump convinced an appellate court to lower that sum to $175 million.

He then opted for an insurance company in California that’s tied to Don Hankey Jr., a billionaire MAGA supporter who’s built a nasty reputation by dealing in subprime auto loans that have resulted in numerous complaints about predatory business practices—like illegally repossessing the cars of American soldiers.

On Thursday, The Daily Beast noted how the Knight Specialty Insurance Company isn’t licensed by New York’s Department of Financial Services, a detail that has caught the attention of bond experts. What’s more, the firm’s financial statements show that it doesn’t have the “surplus” to meet the capital requirements for posting the bond.

Just like federal regulators require financial institutions to have sufficient reserves in case of a run on the banks, New York law limits how much money state-regulated surety companies can post on a single bond to 10 percent of a firm’s total “capital and surplus.” However, a court filing by the company on Thursday showed that Knight Specialty only has $138 million in “surplus,” vastly exceeding the government-set cap because the Trump bond alone makes up 127 percent of the company’s reserves.

“Based on the financial statement provided, Knight Specialty is providing a bond that is one-third of its total assets and greater than its surplus, which is incomprehensible for a carrier to underwrite,” said Vullo, who was previously the superintendent of New York’s DFS.

In subsequent court filings, the AG’s office immediately questioned whether Knight Specialty was even good for the money. The law enforcement agency said it “takes exception to the sufficiency of the surety,” noting that Knight Specialty is trying to operate “without a certificate of qualification.”

Former president Donald Trump looks on at the 18th green during day three of the LIV Golf Invitational - Miami at Trump National Doral Miami — Former president Donald Trump looks on at the 18th green during day three of the LIV Golf Invitational – Miami at Trump National Doral Miami.Megan Briggs/Getty Images

In normal circumstances, defendants like Trump would tap a surety company overseen by state regulators at DFS, which verifies that an insurer is “solvent, responsible and otherwise qualified to make policies or contracts of the kind required.” But Knight Specialty appears to be helping Trump with an alternate option: operating through what’s called the “excess and surplus lines insurance” market.

In the industry, this secondary exchange is typically reserved for high-risk business ventures, or those that have a severe loss history that makes them untouchable in the primary market, forcing them to find a willing insurer that isn’t licensed in their home state.

Indeed, the insurance company’s president, Amit Shah, made that very point when defending his firm’s ability to strike this deal, telling CBS that Knight “is not a New York domestic insurer, and New York surplus lines insurance laws do not regulate the solvency of non-New York excess lines insurers.”

That’s why Knight Specialty’s recent finances—which showed that its “capital and surplus” were even smaller in recent years—were registered with the Surplus Lines Stamping Office of Texas, a government-created nonprofit that tracks these types of figures.

New York has a nonprofit like that too, called the Excess Line Association of New York. ELANY states that its role is to “facilitate compliance,” by verifying that these secondary-market insurers “meet eligibility standards in order to underwrite risks presented by excess line brokers.” The group’s communications manager, John Rosenblatt, explained that ELANY “conducts a thorough financial examination of every foreign insurer listed.”

It’s a voluntary process, but one that’s meant to actually prove that a company is trustworthy and stable.

“The ELANY list is composed of insurers that request to be listed and are approved by ELANY following a thorough analysis of the insurer’s financial security,” Rosenblatt told The Daily Beast.

Trump’s Bond Backer Repo’d Soldier Cars

But that raises another issue.

“Knight Specialty Insurance Company is not on the ELANY voluntary list,” Rosenblatt said.

While any company filing these types of transactions to the New York quasi-governmental private sector regulator must use a licensed broker within 45 days, ELANY said it has “no knowledge of the specific transaction at this time.”

Furthering the point of just how anomalous this Trump deal is, ELANY recorded $76 million and $74 million in “surety and fidelity” transactions in 2022 and 2023, respectively. That means Trump’s bond alone would represent double what ELANY typically monitors over hundreds of transactions in a given year—and that includes premiums that aren’t only tied to court judgments like this one.

In his interview with CBS last week, Knight Specialty’s president asserted that the company has more than $1 billion in “equity.” The bond it posted on Thursday also included a financial snapshot of a second corporate entity, the similarly named Knight Insurance Company LTD, which lists $1 billion in “surplus to policy holders.”

The document seems to suggest that the smaller company is somehow strengthened by the existence of the larger one. But only the smaller company is actually listed on the bond agreement.

In reality, though, a strict reading of “Bond No. 350588” shows that even the smaller company isn’t technically on the hook for paying out the $175 million if higher courts ultimately cement his loss to the AG.

Buried in the typical legalese of the contract is the phrase: “Knight Specialty Insurance Company… does hereby… undertake that if the judgment… is dismissed… Donald J. Trump… shall pay… the sum directed.”

In other words: If Trump loses the case, Trump will pay. But that’s no different than Trump’s obligation before the bond was issued.

“Getting into the weeds, the company undertakes that Trump will pay,” said one bond industry source who declined to be publicly identified for this story.

This is Trump’s second big-figure bond in recent weeks, making the earlier bond apt for comparison. In that other case, Trump is appealing an $83 million federal jury verdict for defaming the journalist E. Jean Carroll by denying that he raped her. He managed to score a deal with a subsidiary of the insurance megagiant Chubb that would force it to pay $92 million if the cash-strapped politician couldn’t cough up the money.

Trump Gets a Massive Lifeline on Half-Billion-Dollar Bond

Unlike the bank fraud bond, the Carroll bond agreement specifically states “such payment shall be made” “by the surety to the obligee” if Trump fails to pay. Hanley said a proper contract would name Trump and the insurance company “jointly and severally,” which would mean they’re both on the hook for the total.

This wouldn’t be the first time that Trump has been caught trying to slip questionable clauses in a bond contract. In the Carroll case, Trump almost got away with an underhanded 60-day delay to pay her—that is, until her lawyers brought it to the judge’s attention.

As if that’s not enough, there’s a third gem buried in this contract that has industry experts and lawyers scratching their heads. The standard practice would be to promise that the loser would pay the judgment, “plus interests and costs.” However, Trump’s bank fraud bond doesn’t list that either.

Instead, it says “the liability of this bond shall not exceed the sum” of $175 million.

Clifford Robert, the lawyer who filed the bond with the court and also represents Trump’s sons Don Jr. and Eric in this case, did not respond to questions. Neither did Knight Speciality Insurance Company.

Hanley, the bond expert, said the lawyers who drew up this latest Trump bond could try to assert that Knight Specialty doesn’t owe anybody anything—without much success. But it bears all the hallmarks of Trump’s overarching legal strategy: pushing off the inevitable as long as possible.

“That could be set up for that argument, but this would fall under a common-law statute. My best guess is that this is all set up to delay again,” he said.

The Shady Company Backing Trump’s Bond Somehow Just Got Even Shadier

The New Republic – Opinion

The Shady Company Backing Trump’s Bond Somehow Just Got Even Shadier

Ben Metzner – April 8, 2024

It’s conventional wisdom that the right wing is dominated, defined, even, by “grifters all the way down.” No big surprise, then, that the insurance company footing the bill for Donald Trump’s fraud case bond is itself unscrupulous.

An investigation by The Daily Beast revealed that Knight Specialty Insurance, the company backing Trump’s $175 million civil fraud penalty payment, is not licensed as a solvent surety firm by the New York Department of Financial Services, and has not been vetted by the state’s Excess Line Association, a board of insurers that provides voluntary audits of other insurer’s finances. The reason for that: The California-based Knight does not appear to have enough money in its coffers to post Trump’s bonds.

According to the Beast, Trump’s bond accounts for a third of the company’s assets and more than its total surplus funds. Maria T. Vullo, a former New York financial regulator, has called the move to post Trump’s bond “incomprehensible for a carrier to underwrite.”

The company, for its part, seems aware of its predicament: The Beast reports that Knight has not legally promised to pay Trump’s penalty if the former president’s appeal is unsuccessful. Instead, the document Knight produced indicates, Trump would still be responsible for paying.

Knight Specialty Insurance is owned by the “king of the subprime car loan,” right-wing billionaire Don Hankey. Hankey appeared to come to Trump’s rescue after the former president loudly struggled to post in his real estate fraud case.

But now, what appeared to be a stroke of luck for Trump may actually be a case of two grifters looking to get one over on one another. If Hankey’s company in fact has not legally agreed to pay the penalty, Trump may ultimately be forced to forfeit assets if he cannot cover the disgorgement himself. New York Attorney General Letitia James has promised to seize Trump properties if he cannot pay.

In dealing with a shady businessman like Hankey, Trump, whose Department of Justice sued Hankey for illegally repossessing the cars of military veterans, might have heeded the words of one of his favorite poems: “You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.”

Trump’s $175 million bond makes no sense

Salon

“Incomprehensible”: Experts say Trump’s $175 million bond makes no sense

Charles R. Davis – April 8, 2024

Former President Donald Trump’s effort to challenge his massive civil fraud conviction itself appears to rely on deception, The Daily Beast reported Monday.

Last week, Trump posted a $175 million bond to appeal his $454 million fraud conviction in New York — this, after his lawyers claimed he was unable to find anyone willing to guarantee he would actually pay the full amount. In order to post that bond, the former president turned to Knight Speciality Insurance Company, led by billionaire Don Hankey, described by MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin as the “king of subprime car loans.”

But according to former regulators and other legal experts, the bond is highly irregular. Per a legal filing, it amounts to little more than a promise that Trump himself could pay the full cost of the bond if he ultimately loses his appeal, The Daily Beast reported, noting that such an arrangement effectively negates “the whole point of an insurance company guarantee.”

It does not appear that Knight Specialty Insurance Co. could even cover the bond if it wanted: according to a court filing, the company has financial reserves of just $138 million. And while a related corporate entity claims a financial surplus of $1 billion, the court filing does not explicitly state that it would be liable.

“Based on the financial statement provided, Knight Specialty is providing a bond that is one-third of its total assets and greater than its surplus, which is incomprehensible for a carrier to underwrite,” Maria T. Vullo, a law professor at Fordham University who previously served as New York’s top financial regulator, told the publication.

Indeed, experts who reviewed the bond filing said it appears to state that it is “Donald J. Trump” who “shall pay” any bond, an arrangement that is far from normal.

“This is not common,” N. Alex Hanley, CEO of the civil bond company Jurisco, told the outlet.

New York Attorney General Letitia James also has questions about the bond and its issuer’s ability to pay it, stating in a legal filing last week that she “takes exception to the sufficiency of the surety to the undertaking.” A hearing on Trump’s bond and the potential issues with it is scheduled for April 22.

Hankey, for his part, in a recent interview with Reuters insisted that he had accepted collateral for the $175 million bond. But he added that he was not sure exactly what the source of it was.

“I don’t know if it came from Donald Trump or from Donald Trump and supporters,” he said, adding that he now regrets only charging a Trump a “low fee” for his services.

Businessman behind Trump’s NY bond says he charged him a ‘low fee’

Reuters

Businessman behind Trump’s NY bond says he charged him a ‘low fee’

Koh Gui Qing – April 5, 2024

FILE PHOTO: New York Attorney General Letitia James holds a press conference following a ruling against former U.S. President Donald Trump, in New York City — New York Attorney General Letitia James holds a press conference following a ruling against former U.S. President Donald Trump, in New York City

FILE PHOTO: Former U.S. President Trump holds presser after criminal case hearing on porn star hush money charges in New York — Former U.S. President Trump holds presser after criminal case hearing on porn star hush money charges in New York

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Don Hankey, the billionaire businessman whose company Knight Specialty Insurance provided the $175 million bond that Donald Trump posted in his New York civil fraud case, told Reuters that the fee his firm charged the former U.S. President was low.

Hankey, who backed Trump as a presidential candidate in 2016 and has said he supports his re-election, has maintained that providing the bond was a business decision. He declined to disclose the fee, but said it was low because Knight did not think there was much risk involved.

Lawyers say surety companies typically charge a fee of between 1% and 2% of the face value of the bond.

Hankey said he now feels Knight did not charge Trump enough because of New York Attorney General Letitia James‘ subsequent scrutiny of the bond, as well as the media attention around it.

“We thought it would be an easy procedure that wouldn’t involve other legal problems and it’s not turning out that way. We probably didn’t charge enough,” Hankey said in an interview.

“We have been getting a lot of emails, a lot of phone calls. Maybe that’s part of the reason he had trouble with other insurance companies,” Hankey said, adding that despite the issues, he did not regret providing the bond.

Trump posted the $175 million bond on April 1, as he appeals a $454 million fraud judgement against him for overstating his net worth and the value of his real estate to dupe banks and insurers, in a case brought by James.

On Thursday, James’ office questioned the $175 million bond, asking that Knight provide proof that it has enough assets to pay if Trump’s appeal fails. A New York judge will hold a hearing on the matter on April 22.

Hankey, whose net worth is pegged by Forbes at $7.4 billion, said he was taken aback by James’ questioning the bond. “I’m surprised they’re coming down harder on our bond or looking for reasons to cause issues with our instrument,” he said.

Hankey, who runs a group of businesses including a provider of subprime automotive loans that has been reprimanded by regulators for predatory behaviour involving customers, said Trump offered collateral for the $175 million in cash.

He said the cash is held at a brokerage firm and pledged to Knight, and that Knight can access it if needed.

“I don’t know if it came from Donald Trump or from Donald Trump and supporters,” Hankey said of the cash Trump provided for collateral.

Hankey said he first approached Trump’s representatives to discuss how he could help Trump with the bond, before the former president managed to get it reduced on appeal from $454 million to $175 million. Trump would have had to “come up with a lot of collateral or somebody else would,” Hankey said.

Hankey said he understood from Trump’s representatives that Trump did not have $454 million in cash.

Trump last month said in a post on his social media platform Truth Social that he had “almost five hundred million dollars in cash.” In an April 2023 deposition with James, he said he had “substantially in excess of $400 million in cash.”

A spokesperson for Trump did not respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Koh Gui Qing in New York; Editing by Greg Roumeliotis and Bill Berkrot)

Acquisition of Budapest Airport may conclude within days, says PM Orban

Reuters

Acquisition of Budapest Airport may conclude within days, says PM Orban

Reuters – April 8, 2024

European leaders and EU’s Michel meet in Bucharest

BUDAPEST (Reuters) – The acquisition of Budapest Airport could conclude “within days”, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said in parliament on Monday, signalling an end to months of negotiations with majority owner AviAlliance.

Since Orban took power in 2010, his government has boosted Hungarian ownership in energy, banking, telecoms and the media, and has been planning to buy the airport for years.

“We hope that within days, the airport… will be owned in majority by the state”, he said. Hungary’s government submitted its binding offer in September 2023.

In 2021, Orban’s government submitted a non-binding offer to buy the airport, but the process was later halted amid high inflation and volatility in global financial markets.

Economy minister Marton Nagy said earlier in 2023 the financing of the package could include budget funds and development bank money. He did not say which assets the government might sell.

(Reporting by Boldizsar Gyori; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)

I Listened to Trump’s Rambling, Unhinged, Vituperative Georgia Rally—and So Should You

The New Yorker – Letter from Biden’s Washington

I Listened to Trump’s Rambling, Unhinged, Vituperative Georgia Rally—and So Should You

The ex-President is building a whole new edifice of lies for 2024.

By Susan B. Glasser – March 14, 2024

Former U.S. President Donald Trump gives a speech in Rome Georgia in March 2024. Trump is photographed from above and is...

I’m sure you had better things to do on Saturday evening than watch Donald Trump rant for nearly two hours to an audience of cheering fans in Rome, Georgia. His speech was rambling, unhinged, vituperative, and oh-so-revealing. In his first rally since effectively clinching the Republican Presidential nomination, Trump made what amounted to his response to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address. It’s hard to imagine a better or more pointed contrast with the vision that, two days earlier, the President had laid out for America.

And yet, like so much about Trump’s 2024 campaign, this insane oration was largely overlooked and under-covered, the flood of lies and B.S. seen as old news from a candidate whose greatest political success has been to acclimate a large swath of the population to his ever more dangerous alternate reality. No wonder Biden, trapped in a real world of real problems that defy easy solutions, is struggling to defeat him.

This is partly a category error. Though we persist in treating the 2024 election as a race between an incumbent and a challenger, it is not that so much as a contest between two incumbents: Biden, the actual President, and Trump, the forever-President of Red America’s fever dreams. But Trump, while he presents himself as the country’s rightful leader, gets nothing like the intense scrutiny for his speeches that is now focussed on the current occupant of the Oval Office. The norms and traditions that Trump is intent on smashing are, once again, benefitting him.

Consider the enormous buildup before, and wall-to-wall coverage of, Biden’s annual address to Congress. It was big news when the President called out his opponent in unusually scathing terms, referring thirteen times in his prepared text to “my predecessor” in what was, understandably, seen as a break with tradition. Republican commentators grumbled about the sharply partisan tone of the President’s remarks and the loud decibel in which he delivered them; Democrats essentially celebrated those same qualities.

Imagine if, instead, the two speeches had been covered side by side. Biden’s barbed references to Trump were all about the former President’s offenses to American democracy. He called out Trump’s 2024 campaign of “resentment, revenge, and retribution” and the “chaos” unleashed by the Trump-majority Supreme Court when it threw out the decades-old precedent of Roe v. Wade. In reference to a recent quote from the former President, in which Trump suggested that Americans should just “get over it” when it comes to gun violence, Biden retorted, “I say: Stop it, stop it, stop it!” His sharpest words for Trump came in response to the ex-President’s public invitation to Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to nato countries that don’t spend what Trump wants them to on defense—a line that Biden condemned as “outrageous,” “dangerous,” and “unacceptable.”

Trump’s speech made little effort to draw substantive contrasts with Biden. Instead, the Washington Post counted nearly five dozen references to Biden in the course of the Georgia rally, almost all of them epithets drawn from the Trump marketing playbook for how to rip down an opponent—words like “angry,” “corrupt,” “crooked,” “flailing,” “incompetent,” “stupid,” and “weak.” Trump is, always and forever, a puerile bully, stuck perpetually on the fifth-grade playground. But the politics of personal insult has worked so well for Trump that he is, naturally, doubling down on it in 2024. In fact, one of the clips from Trump’s speech on Saturday which got the most coverage was his mockery of Biden’s stutter: a churlish—and, no doubt, premeditated—slur.

And yet there was the G.O.P. strategist Karl Rove, writing this week in the Wall Street Journal that it was Biden who had “lowered himself with shortsighted and counterproductive blows” in his State of the Union speech. Trump’s entire campaign is a study in grotesque slander, but Rove did not even mention Trump’s Georgia rally while sanctimoniously tut-tutting about Biden. And I don’t mean to single out Rove; it was hard to find any right-leaning commentators who did otherwise. This many years into the Trump phenomenon, they’ve figured out that the best way to deal with Trump’s excesses is simply to pretend they do not exist.

Hanging over both speeches was the increasingly burning question of performance, as the country is now forced to choose between two aging leaders aspiring to remain in the White House well into their eighties. Trump has arguably lowered the bar for Biden, with his constant insults aimed at the President’s age and capacity, and Biden managed to clear it, turning his State of the Union into an affirmation—for fretting Democratic partisans, at least—that he has the vigor and fight to keep going in the job.

Trump’s appearance in Georgia, by contrast, reflected a man not rooted in any kind of reality, one who struggled to remember his words and who was, by any definition, incoherent, disconnected, and frequently malicious. (This video compilation, circulating on social media, nails it.) In one lengthy detour, he complained about Biden once being photographed on a beach in his bathing suit. Which led him to Cary Grant, which led him to Michael Jackson, which led him back to the point that even Cary Grant wouldn’t have looked good in a bathing suit at age eighty-one. In another aside, he bragged about how much “women love me,” citing as proof the “suburban housewives from North Carolina” who travel to his rallies around the country. He concluded that portion of his speech by saying:

But it was an amazing phenomenon and I do protect women. Look, they talk about suburban housewives. I believe I’m doing well—you know, the polls are all rigged. Of course lately they haven’t been rigged because I’m winning by so much, so I don’t want to say it. Disregard that statement. I love the polls very much.

Makes perfect sense, right?

It was no surprise, of course, that Trump began his speech by panning Biden’s: “the worst President in history, making the worst State of the Union speech in history,” an “angry, dark, hate-filled rant” that was “the most divisive, partisan, radical, and extreme” such address ever given. As always, what really stuns is Trump’s lack of self-awareness. Remember his “American carnage” address? Well, never mind. Get past the unintended irony, though, and what’s striking is how much of Trump’s 2024 campaign platform is being built on an edifice of lies, and not just the old, familiar lies about the “rigged election” which have figured prominently in every speech Trump has made since his defeat four years ago.

Trump’s over-the-top distortions of his record as President—“the greatest economy in history”; “the biggest tax cut in history”; “I did more for Black people than any President other than Abraham Lincoln”—are now joined by an equally flamboyant new set of untruths about Biden’s Presidency, which Trump portrayed in Saturday’s speech as a hellish time of almost fifty-per-cent inflation and an economy “collapsing into a cesspool of ruin,” with rampaging migrants being let loose from prisons around the world and allowed into the United States, on Biden’s orders, to murder and pillage and steal jobs from “native-born Americans.” Biden, in Trump’s current telling, is both a drooling incompetent being controlled by “fascists” and a corrupt criminal mastermind, “weaponizing” the U.S. government and its criminal-justice system to come after his opponent. His campaign slogan for 2024 might be summed up by one of the rally’s pithier lines: “Everything Joe Biden touches turns to shit. Everything.”

Indeed, Trump’s efforts this year to blame Biden for literally everything have taken on a baroque quality even by the modern-day standards of the party that introduced Willie Horton and Swift-boating into the political lexicon. Consider their latest cause célèbre, the tragic recent death of a young woman, Laken Riley, in which the accused is an undocumented migrant. Trump explicitly blamed Biden and his “crime-against-humanity” border policies for her death. “Laken Riley would be alive today,” he said, “if Joe Biden had not willfully and maliciously eviscerated the borders of the United States and set loose thousands and thousands of dangerous criminals into our country.” Against such treachery, Trump offers a simple, apocalyptic choice: doomsday if Biden is reëlected, or liberation from “these tyrants and villains once and for all.” Wars will be ended at the mere thought of Trump retaking power; crime will cease; arrests will be made; dissenters will be silenced.

I recognize that a speech such as the one that Trump delivered the other night is hard to distill into the essence required of a news story. His detours on Saturday included complaints about Jeff Zucker, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Martha Stewart, Megyn Kelly, “the big plagiarizer from Harvard,” Ron “DeSanctimonious,” the Washington Post, “Trump-deranged judge” Lewis Kaplan, “the fascist and racist attorney general of New York State,” “corrupt Fani Willis,” Merrick Garland, and the F.B.I., which, Trump claimed, “offers one million dollars to a writer of fiction about Donald Trump to lie and say it was fact where Hunter Biden’s laptop from hell was Russian disinformation.” What was he talking about? I don’t know. The man has so many grievances and so many enemies that it is, understandably, hard to keep them straight.

But whether or not it’s news in the conventional sense, it’s easiest to understand the threat that Trump poses to American democracy most clearly when you see it for yourself. Small clips of his craziness can be too easily dismissed as the background noise of our times. The condemnation of his critics, up to and including the current President, can sound shrill or simply partisan. The fact checks, while appalling, never stop the demagogue for whom the “bottomless Pinocchio” was invented.

On Tuesday, days after this performance, Trump and Biden each locked up their respective parties’ nominations. The general election has now begun, and Trump, as of this writing, is the favorite. In the next few months, the Biden campaign and its allies plan to spend close to a billion dollars attempting to persuade Americans not to make the historic mistake of electing Trump twice. My thought is a simpler and definitely cheaper one: watch his speeches. Share them widely. Don’t look away. ♦

Trump Is Losing It

The New York Times – Opinion

Trump Is Losing It

By Jamelle Bouie, Opinion Columnist – February 13, 2024

A group of Trump supporters in Nevada, many wearing red MAGA hats and taking photos, crowds around the former president, who has his right fist raised. — Credit…Patrick T. Fallon/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

It is unclear whether Donald Trump has forgotten the precise nature of NATO or whether he ever fully grasped it in the first place.

What is clear, however, is that Trump — who ostensibly spent four years as president of the United States — has little clue about what NATO is or what NATO does. And when he spoke on the subject at a rally in South Carolina over the weekend, what he said was less a cogent discussion of foreign policy than it was gibberish — the kind of outrageous nonsense that flows without interruption from an empty and unreflective mind.

“One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, ‘Well, sir, if we don’t pay, and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?’” Trump said, recalling an implausible conversation with an unnamed, presumably European head of state. “‘You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent?’” Trump recounted responding. “‘No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You gotta pay. You gotta pay your bills.’”

The former president’s message was clear: If NATO members do not pay up, then he will leave them to the mercy of a continental aggressor who has already plunged one European country into death, destruction and devastation.

Except NATO isn’t a mafia protection racket. NATO, in case anyone needs to be reminded, is a mutual defense organization, formed by treaty in 1949 as tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union hardened into conflict. “The parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all,” states Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty.Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.

According to the terms of an agreement reached last year, member states will work to spend at least 2 percent of national G.D.P. on military investment.

But let’s set this bit of fact-checking aside for a moment and look at the big picture.

It is not just that Trump is ignorant on this and other vital questions; it is that he is incoherent.

Consider his remarks at a recent gathering of the National Rifle Association in Harrisburg, Pa. “We have to win in November, or we’re not going to have Pennsylvania. They’ll change the name. They’re going to change the name of Pennsylvania,” Trump said.

Who, exactly, is going to change the name of Pennsylvania? And to what? I don’t know. I doubt Trump does either.

Or consider the time, last November, when Trump confused China and North Korea, telling an audience of supporters in Florida that “Kim Jong Un leads 1.4 billion people, and there is no doubt about who the boss is. And they want me to say he’s not an intelligent man.”

There was also the time that Trump mistook Nikki Haley, his former ambassador to the United Nations, for Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House.

“Nikki Haley, you know they, do you know they destroyed all of the information, all of the evidence, everything, deleted and destroyed all of it. All of it, because of lots of things like Nikki Haley is in charge of security. We offered her 10,000 people, soldiers, National Guard, whatever they want. They turned it down. They don’t want to talk about that. These are very dishonest people,” Trump said, repeating his false claim that Pelosi was responsible for the failure of Capitol security on Jan. 6.

If you would like, you can also try to make sense of the former president’s recent attempt to describe a missile defense system:

“I will build an Iron Dome over our country, a state-of-the-art missile defense shield made in the U.S.A.,” Trump said, before taking an unusual detour. “These are not muscle guys here, they’re muscle guys up here, right,” he continued, gesturing to his arms and his head to emphasize, I guess, that the people responsible for building such systems are capable and intelligent.

“And they calmly walk to us, and ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. They’ve only got 17 seconds to figure this whole thing out. Boom. OK. Missile launch. Whoosh. Boom,” he added.

I assume Trump is describing the pressure of actually manning a missile defense system. Even so, one would think that a former president — currently vying to be the next president — would at least try to be a little more articulate.

But this gets to one of the oddest things about this election cycle so far. There is no shortage of coverage of President Biden’s age, even if there’s no evidence that his age has been an obstacle to his ability to perform his duties. Indeed, it is plainly true that Biden has been an unusually successful president in areas, like legislative negotiations, that require skill and mental acuity.

Coverage of Biden’s age, in other words, has more to do with the vibes of an “elderly” president — he isn’t as outwardly vigorous and robust as we would like — than it does with any particular issue with his performance.

In contrast to the obsessive coverage of Biden’s age, there is comparatively little coverage of Trump’s obvious deficiencies in that department. If we are going to use public comments as the measure of mental fitness, then the former president is clearly at a disadvantage.

Unfortunately for Biden, Trump benefits from something akin to the soft bigotry of low expectations. Because no one expected Trump, in the 2016 election, to speak and behave like a normal candidate, he was held to a lower effective standard than his rivals in both parties. Because no one expected him, during his presidency, to be orderly and responsible, his endless scandals were framed as business as usual. And because no one now expects him to be a responsible political figure with a coherent vision for the country, it’s as if no one blinks an eye when he rants and raves on the campaign trail.

It’s not that there aren’t legitimate reasons to be concerned about Biden’s age. He is already the oldest person to serve in the Oval Office. The issue here is one of proportion and consequence. Biden may be unable to do the job at some point in the future; Trump, it seems to me, already is.

One of those is a lot more concerning than the other.

Supreme Court slow to resolve potentially election-altering cases as justices inch toward final arguments

CNN

Supreme Court slow to resolve potentially election-altering cases as justices inch toward final arguments

John Fritze, CNN – April 6, 2024

As the Supreme Court turns toward a series of politically charged disputes in its final arguments later this month, it is wrestling with a backlog of controversies on guns, elections and transgender rights that will thrust its conservative majority into the middle of another turbulent presidential contest.

Up ahead are arguments over whether former President Donald Trump may claim immunity from criminal prosecution on election subversion charges and a roiling fight between President Joe Biden and Idaho over whether hospitals must perform an abortion when the health of a pregnant woman is threatened – the second of two blockbuster abortion cases the court must decide this year.

But as the high court moves toward a busy and fraught final sitting this term, it is also once again slipping behind its past pace, issuing fewer opinions than it did at this same point in its nine-month work period just a few years ago. The court has handed down 11 opinions so far this term – most in relatively obscure matters that were decided unanimously.

The Supreme Court has issued opinions in just 22% of its argued cases this year, compared with 34% through mid-April two years ago and 46% in 2021, according to data compiled by Adam Feldman, founder of Empirical SCOTUS. The share of resolved cases is up slightly over last year – a historic low.

The comparison would improve if new rulings land next week.

Taken together, the numbers point to a term in which the court’s decisions could be scrunched into a shorter time fame – potentially giving the court’s 6-3 conservative supermajority an opportunity to reshape the political debate around culture war issues just as Americans begin tuning into the Biden-Trump rematch for president.

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California Berkeley School of Law, said it had become a “clear trend” in recent years that the court is “very slow” releasing decisions. Though there are many theories about why that may be, the court’s opaque-by-design practice of negotiation and opinion crafting makes it difficult to say with certainty.

A large share of the court’s docket touches on “enormously significant and difficult issues,” Chemerinsky told CNN. “It also is a court that has deep divisions. I assume that all of this leads to delays in releasing decisions.”

Writing a majority opinion is only part of the behind-the-scenes process: Sometimes delays are caused by the concurrences and dissents other justices write. More fractured decisions, in other words, can generate separate opinions and take longer.

The slower pace could prove particularly meaningful this year because of Trump’s assertion of immunity from special counsel Jack Smith’s election subversion charges. Trump asked the justices to block a lower court ruling that flatly rejected those immunity claims. The high court agreed to hear the case in late February, but did not set arguments until the end of this month.

The case has put the Supreme Court on the clock and opened it up to criticism that delay will play into Trump’s broader legal strategy of pushing off his pending criminal trials until after the November election. Unless the court speeds up its work, it’s difficult to see how the Trump immunity decision would arrive before the end of June.

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor stand on the House floor ahead of the annual State of the Union address by U.S. President Joe Biden. - Shawn Thew/Pool/Getty Images — U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor stand on the House floor ahead of the annual State of the Union address by U.S. President Joe Biden. – Shawn Thew/Pool/Getty Images

Trump redefines Supreme Court’s docket

The court heard oral arguments in mid-October over South Carolina’s new congressional map, which a lower court found was a racial gerrymander that violated the Constitution. Both the GOP state lawmakers defending the map and the parties challenging it had asked the Supreme Court to rule by January.

Nearly six months after the court signaled during arguments that it was prepared to uphold the map, it has issued no opinion.

Noting that deadlines for this year’s election were nearing, the state lawmakers filed an emergency appeal last month, asking for permission to use the disputed map while the justices continued their deliberations. Ultimately, a lower court stepped in to allow the state to use the map for now, lamenting that “the ideal must bend to the practical.”

In early November, the court heard arguments over a federal law that bars people who are the subject of domestic violence restraining orders from possessing guns. Days earlier it heard a First Amendment appeal from a political activist who wants to trademark the suggestive phrase “Trump Too Small” for use on T-shirts.

On the court’s emergency docket, meanwhile, where cases are decided more quickly and without oral argument, the justices have been sitting for weeks on a request from Idaho officials to enforce a strict statewide ban on gender-affirming care for minors. Initially filed in mid-February, the request has been fully briefed since early March.

The go-slow approach is not a new phenomena this year. The pace of opinions fell sharply last year, according to Feldman’s data, which led to speculation that the shocking leak of the court’s draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade months earlier gummed up the court’s internal works.

Several justices indicated the leak damaged trust, including Justice Clarence Thomas, who described the unprecedented breach as “kind of an infidelity.”

Last year, Justice Brett Kavanaugh downplayed the slower pace by noting many of the court’s biggest cases – which usually are not settled until June – were heard at the start of the term. For instance, the court heard arguments early on that year in a major challenge to the consideration of race in admissions at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. The Supreme Court ultimately barred consideration of race in June.

This year, some of the biggest cases have been more spread out. On the other hand, the court has been pummeled by a series of divisive emergency appeals. It also has agreed to take on several high-profile matters involving Trump.

In one, the court ruled that Trump would remain on Colorado’s presidential ballot despite claims he violated the 14th Amendment’s “insurrectionist ban” because of his actions leading up to the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. The court was unanimous on the bottom line conclusion but splintered over its reasoning.

In another, the justices agreed to hear arguments April 25 about Trump’s immunity claims.

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Tuesday, April 2. - Paul Sancya/AP — Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Tuesday, April 2. – Paul Sancya/AP

The Supreme Court will also hear arguments later this month over a federal law the Biden administration says requires hospitals to provide an abortion if the health of the mother is in danger, even in states such as Idaho that have approved strict abortion bans. The rise of state abortion restrictions following the court’s overturning of Roe has become an election-year cudgel for Biden and congressional Democrats.

Also this month, the court will take up the question of whether a federal obstruction law can be used to prosecute some of the rioters involved in the Capitol attack. The decision could also affect Trump, who has also been charged with that crime.

‘Something has to give’ on Supreme Court docket

The court also dealt with a divisive and ongoing dispute over a Texas immigration law that allowed law enforcement in the state to arrest and detain people it suspects entered the country illegally. Over a public dissent from the three liberal justices, the court cleared the way for Texas to enforce that law last month.

The 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily blocked the enforcement hours later and the appeals court heard arguments over the law Wednesday.

The emergency cases, which have drawn increased criticism in recent years, take time away from consideration of the court’s regular docket.

“The court only has so many resources,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law. “Something has to give, and the court really ought to be thinking through ways to avoid putting itself in this position every year.”

In an aerial view, Texas National Guard soldiers load excess concertina wire onto a trailer at Shelby Park on January 26, 2024 in Eagle Pass, Texas. - Michael Gonzalez/Getty Images — In an aerial view, Texas National Guard soldiers load excess concertina wire onto a trailer at Shelby Park on January 26, 2024 in Eagle Pass, Texas. – Michael Gonzalez/Getty Images

At the same time, the Supreme Court has always moved at its own pace and the justices have little incentive to worry about timing. By its own standards, the court moved unusually quickly to resolve the Trump ballot dispute this year – handing down a decision two months after the former president filed his appeal.

That kind of speed is the exception.

“If you look systematically over time, they’re becoming slower and they’re taking fewer cases,” Feldman said.

But other than stirring speculation among court watchers, he said, the pace of opinions doesn’t have much practical impact. Taking an extra few weeks to finish an opinion, Feldman said, simply means the justices get more time to write.

“It makes sense to me from their perspective that they might want to be slower,” Feldman said. “For efficiency, it probably makes sense to hold off as much as they can until the end of the term.”

Trump’s Second-Term Blueprint Would Take A Wrecking Ball To Public Lands

HuffPost

Trump’s Second-Term Blueprint Would Take A Wrecking Ball To Public Lands

Chris D’Angelo – April 6, 2024

When it was time to outline their vision for managing America’s federal lands under a future Republican presidency, pro-Donald Trump conservatives turned to a man who has spent his career advocating for those very lands to be pawned off to states and private interests.

William Perry Pendley, who served illegally as Trump’s acting director of the Bureau of Land Management for more than a year, authored the Interior Department chapter of Project 2025, a sweeping policy blueprint that the Heritage Foundation and dozens of other right-wing organizations compiled to guide Trump and his team should he win in November.

The 920-page, pro-Trump manifesto, titled “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise,” aims to dismantle the federal government, ridding it of tens of thousands of public servants and replacing them with “an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One” of a Republican administration.

Pendley’s dream for the more than 500 million acres of federal land that the Interior Department manages is to effectively turn them into a playground for extractive industries — the same interests he’s spent most of his career representing in court.

In fact, when it came to the chapter’s section on energy production across the federal estate, Pendley simply let Kathleen Sgamma ― the president of the Western Energy Alliance, an oil and gas trade association ― and two industry allies write it for him.

Poll after poll confirms that public support for protecting America’s public lands is broad and bipartisan. Still, the most recent Republican Party platform, adopted in 2016, calls for transferring control of federal lands to the states. In recent years, Republicans have largely abandoned brazen public calls for the outright sale and transfer of federal lands, instead focusing on gutting environmental protections and finding savvier ways to give states more of a say in how public lands are managed.

That shift is reflected in Project 2025. Rather than calling for pawning off federal lands, as he has done throughout his career, Pendley writes that “states are better resource managers than the federal government,” and argues that a new administration should “draw on the enormous expertise of state agency personnel” and “look for opportunities to broaden state-federal and tribal-federal cooperative agreements.”

“It says a lot about the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, that they chose someone as far outside of the mainstream as William Perry Pendley to lead the recommendations for our public lands,” said Dan Hartinger, senior director of policy advocacy at the Wilderness Society Action Fund. “And it says a lot about Mr. Pendley’s view of public lands that the first thing he did was hand the pen to the oil and gas industry to write those recommendations.”

William Perry Pendley, the Trump-era acting director of the Bureau of Land Management, speaks during an event in Idaho in 2020. Keith Ridler via Associated Press

In his 22-page contribution to the project, Pendley writes of an Interior Department that he says has lost its way and grown beholden to “radical” environmentalists, and that is now “abusing” U.S. laws to “advance a radical climate agenda.”

He condemns what he describes as the Biden administration’s “war” on fossil fuels, ignoring the fact that U.S. production of crude oil and exports of natural gas have continued to soar during Biden’s tenure. And he calls for the restoration of so-called Trump-era “energy dominance” — a catchphrase that is rooted in myth — and the annihilation of numerous environmental safeguards.

“No other initiative is as important for the DOI under a conservative President than the restoration of the department’s historic role managing the nation’s vast storehouse of hydrocarbons,” Pendley writes.

Pendley’s blueprint for Trump, if he should win in November, includes holding robust oil and gas lease sales on- and offshore, boosting drilling across northern Alaska, slashing the royalties that fossil fuel companies pay to drill on federal lands, expediting oil and gas permitting, and rescinding Biden-era rules aimed at protecting endangered species and limiting methane pollution from oil and gas operations.

“Biden’s DOI is hoarding supplies of energy and keeping them from Americans whose lives could be improved with cheaper and more abundant energy while making the economy stronger and providing job opportunities for Americans,” reads a section titled ”Restoring American Energy Dominance.” “DOI is a bad manager of the public trust and has operated lawlessly in defiance of congressional statute and federal court orders.”

If that reads like a fossil fuel industry wish list, it’s because it is. Rather than personally calling for the keys to America’s public lands to be turned over to America’s fossil fuel sector, Pendley let the head of a powerful industry group do it for him. An author’s note at the end of his policy directive discloses that the entire energy section was authored by Sgamma, as well as Dan Kish, senior vice president of policy at the American Energy Alliance, and Katie Tubb, a former senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation.

Sgamma’s trade and lobbying organization, Western Energy Alliance, represents 200 oil and gas companies. The American Energy Alliance and the Heritage Foundation both have deep ties to the fossil fuel industry.

“I guess it’s refreshing that they are being so transparent that the oil and gas industry is literally writing the transition playbook for them,” said Aaron Weiss, deputy director at the Colorado-based conservation group Center for Western Priorities. “Saying the quiet part out loud — thank you for that.”

Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, an oil and gas industry trade and lobbying group, is a fierce critic of President Joe Biden's energy and environmental policies. — Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, an oil and gas industry trade and lobbying group, is a fierce critic of President Joe Biden’s energy and environmental policies. Mariam Zuhaib via Associated Press

In his author’s note, Pendley also writes that he “received thoughtful, knowledgeable, and swift assistance” from several other Trump-era Interior officials. Those include Aurelia Giacometto, the Trump-era director of the Fish and Wildlife Service and a former Monsanto executive; Casey Hammond, who served as Interior’s principal deputy assistant secretary for land and minerals; and Tara Sweeney, the former assistant secretary of Indian Affairs who now works for oil giant ConocoPhillips.

Other contributors to Project 2025 include Utah state Rep. Ken Ivory (R), a leader of the pro-land transfer movement, and Margaret Byfield, executive director of American Stewards of Liberty, a fringe, right-wing organization that championed a disinformation campaign against Biden’s conservation goals. The American Legislative Exchange Council and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, two corporate-backed think tanks that advocate handing over control of federal lands to states, are members of the Project 2025 advisory board.

“Beyond posing an existential threat to democracy, Project 2025 puts special interests over everyday Americans,” said Tony Carrk, executive director of Accountable.US, a progressive watchdog group that shared its research on Project 2025 with HuffPost. “The dangerous initiative has handed off its policy proposals to the same industry players who have dumped millions into the project — and who will massively benefit from its industry-friendly policies.”

Accountable found that the Koch network, led by billionaire oil tycoon Charles Koch, funneled over $4.4 million to organizations on Project 2025’s advisory board in 2022.

The Heritage Foundation and Pendley did not respond to HuffPost’s requests for comment.

Pendley’s contribution to Project 2025 is his latest act in a five-decade crusade against the federal government and environmental protections. His first stint at the Interior Department was under James Watt, President Ronald Reagan’s Interior chief, who is widely considered one of the most anti-environment Cabinet appointees in U.S. history. The Washington Post once described Pendley as “Watt’s ideological twin.”

Pendley calls himself a “sagebrush rebel,” a reference to the Sagebrush Rebellion movement of the 1970s and ’80s that sought to remove lands from federal control. For decades, he led the Mountain States Legal Foundation, a right-wing nonprofit that has pushed for the government to sell off millions of federal acres. In a 2016 op-ed published by National Review, Pendley wrote that the “Founding Fathers intended all lands owned by the federal government to be sold.”

Pendley has compared environmentalists to communists and Nazis, immigrants to “cancer,” and the climate crisis to a “unicorn.” He has said the Endangered Species Act has been used as a tool to “drive people off the land” and into cities where they can be “controlled,” and seemingly voiced support for killing imperiled species discovered on private land. Some of his most extreme anti-environmental screeds were published in 21st Century Science & Technology, a fringe magazine of the late cult leader, convicted fraudster and conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche, as HuffPost previously reported.

Asked about some of his radical views during a conference in 2019, Pendley said that his “personal opinions are irrelevant” to the job of overseeing 245 million acres of public land as the head of the BLM.

But those views are no doubt the reason he was tapped to write the Interior playbook for a future Republican president, particularly one that falsely casts Biden as the enemy of the fossil fuel industry.

“At the end of the day, they know that the land disposal position is deeply unpopular and a nonstarter across any Western state, no matter how conservative,” Weiss said. “That just leaves them with this false narrative about Biden’s war on oil and gas. That’s also a lie, of course, but it’s one they have to keep telling because otherwise there is no way to justify what is in this Project 2025 agenda.”

President Donald Trump signs the hat of Bruce Adams, chairman of the San Juan County Commission, on Dec. 4, 2017, after signing a proclamation to shrink the size of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante national monuments at the Utah state Capitol in Salt Lake City. President Joe Biden has since restored the boundaries of the monuments. Rick Bowmer via Associated PressMore

Along with a series of actions to boost drilling and mining across the federal estate, Pendley calls for a future Republican administration to not only dismantle existing protected landscapes but limit presidents’ ability to protect others in the future. He advocates for vacating Biden’s executive order establishing a goal of conserving 30% of federal lands and waters by 2030; rescinding the Biden administration’s drilling and mining moratoriums in Colorado, New Mexico and Minnesota; reviewing all Biden-era resource management plans, which cover millions of acres of federal lands; and repealing the Antiquities Act, the landmark 1906 law that 18 presidents have used to designate 161 national monuments.

“Donald Trump is an unapologetic climate denier who called climate change a ‘hoax’ and slashed environmental protections while he was in office,” Biden campaign senior spokesperson Sarafina Chitika told HuffPost in a statement. “Now, Trump and his extreme allies are campaigning to go even further if he wins a second term by gutting the Inflation Reduction Act and clean energy programs, shredding regulations for greenhouse gas pollution, and serving the fossil fuel industry at the expense of our families and our future.”

The Trump administration positioned itself as an opponent of selling or transferring federal lands, but on several occasions, it proposed public land sell-offs, hosted anti-federal land zealots and installed fierce critics of federal land management in powerful government positions. It also weakened protections for millions of acres of federal land and famously shrank the size of two sweeping national monuments in Utah — the largest rollback of national monuments in U.S. history.

Pendley argues Trump didn’t go far enough with his attack on national monuments, and that protected sites in Maine and Oregon should have also been on the chopping block.

“The new Administration’s review will permit a fresh look at past monument decrees and new ones by President Biden,” he writes in Project 2025.

Weiss views Pendley’s antipathy for the Antiquities Act as an acknowledgement of how successful the law has been in protecting public lands. And he says it speaks volumes that Project 2025 organizers tapped Pendley for the job of crafting the Interior blueprint.

“They could have found any number of mainstream conservatives to write their agenda for them. They didn’t,” Weiss said. “They picked the notorious anti-public lands extremist, because that is at the end of the day what they want. They don’t want someone who is going to come in and follow the last 50 years of legal precedent.”