Category: Injustice Anywhere is a Threat to Justice Everywhere, MLK jr

Stories of injustice and justice

US companies using pandemic as a tool to break unions, workers claim

The Guardian

US companies using pandemic as a tool to break unions, workers claim

Michael Sainato in Florida                        

 

<span>Photograph: Anthony Vazquez/AP</span>
Photograph: Anthony Vazquez/AP

 

Dalroy Connell has worked as a stagehand for the Portland Trailblazers since 1995 when the basketball team began playing games at the Rose Garden Arena. When the pandemic hit the US in March 2020, public events were shut down and NBA games were briefly suspended before the season moved to a “bubble” in Orlando, Florida, and the season recommenced without fans in July 2020.

Connell and his colleagues have been on unemployment ever since, but when the 2020-2021 NBA season began in December 2020, instead of bringing back several of these workers, the Portland Trailblazers replaced most of the unionized crew who work their games with non-union workers, even as their jobs running the sound and lighting equipment are required whether or not fans are in attendance.

Like many workers around the US Connell believes he has been locked out from his job by a company that has used the coronavirus pandemic as a tool to break unions.

“It’s a blatant slap in the face,” said Connell. “They’re using positions in the house, people who already work there to do things we normally do.”

The workers’ union, International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) Local 28, has filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board and held protests outside of Portland Trailblazers home games.

Connell alleged management at the Portland Trailblazers has frequently fought the union over the past several years, with the latest refusal to recall union workers an extension of this trend.

“Here we are wasting a ton of money on legal fees just to give a few guys some work. It’s a five-hour job. It’s so easy to work this out,” he added.

The Portland Trailblazers and Rip City Management did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Lockouts are work stoppages initiated by the employer in a labor dispute where the employer uses replacement workers.

Earlier in the pandemic, some employers resorted to conducting mass layoffs of workers after union organizing drives surfaced, such as at Augie’s Coffee Shop in California and Cort Furniture in New Jersey. Several workers have claimed they had been fired in retaliation due to worker organizing efforts by employers such as Amazon, Trader Joe’s and most recently Instacart. Now some employers are beginning to use lockouts as a tactic to seemingly suppress organizing efforts.

“Lockouts are an economic weapon employers use to take the initiative in collective bargaining,” said Alex Colvin, dean of the school of industrial and labor relations at Cornell University. “During the pandemic, lockouts pose a greater threat to unions due to the high unemployment rate and greater availability of replacement workers.”

According to an analysis by Bloomberg Law, no employer lockouts were conducted in 2020 during the first several months of the pandemic, but after previous economic recessions in the US, lockouts rebounded as disputes over wages and benefits became more intense.

“The intent of many lockouts is to actually try to break the workers’ unions by showing that the union’s position has led to the loss of work, and the only way to restore work is through unconditional surrender,” said Moshe Z Marvit, a labor and employment lawyer and fellow at the Century Foundation.

In Los Angeles, California, dozens of workers at Valley Fruit and Produce represented by Teamsters Local 630 went on strike in May 2020 in protest of intimidation of union members and efforts to decertify the union during new contract negotiations.

Amid negotiations to end the strike and bring back workers, Valley Fruit and Produce replaced several workers with non-union members, while the union alleges workers who did return to work were coerced into signing declarations against the union.

The union is currently pursuing unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board for the produce distribution company circumventing the union to directly negotiate with workers, in addition to several allegations of intimidation and harassment.

“Through their union buster lawyer, Valley Fruit talked to foremen to call workers on the picket line, using intimidation and scare tactics to get them back to work., When workers went back inside, they were forced to sign documents to say they didn’t want to be a part of the union any more,” said Carlos Santamaria, divisional representative for Teamsters Local 630.

The Portland Trail Blazers meet the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2020 NBA playoffs in Orlando, Florida, in August after the pandemic forced games to be relocated.
The Portland Trail Blazers meet the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2020 NBA playoffs in Orlando, Florida, in August after the pandemic forced games to be relocated. Photograph: Kim Klement/USA Today Sports

 

“I’m disappointed in what Valley has done to all the workers,” said Rene Gomez, who worked at Valley Fruit and Produce for 21 years and has been locked out of his job since last year. “My family and I are having a hard time economically because of everything going on. We’ve gone to food banks. We’ve been stressed because we don’t know how we’re going to keep paying rent at the end of the month.”

Roberto Juarez, who has worked for Valley Fruit and Produce for six years before getting locked out of his job, argued the company has attempted to “destroy the union in the workplace”, through negotiating in bad faith by pushing for reduction in benefits, wage freezes, hiring union avoidance attorneys, while receiving between $2m and $5m in paycheck protection program loans from the federal government.

“When the pandemic started and hit hard, we never stopped working and we were working a lot of hours. We were exposing ourselves, coming to work, exposing our families, and they didn’t really care,” said Juarez.

Valley Fruit and Produce did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Earlier this month in Chicago, Illinois, the Chicago public schools district began locking out dozens of teachers who are being ordered to return in-person to schools, which have been conducting virtual learning since the pandemic hit the US in March 2020.

Kirstin Roberts, a preschool teacher at Brentano elementary math and science academy in Chicago, refused to return to in-person teaching due to unsafe working conditions, even as all of her students had opted to continue remote learning.

The city of Chicago remains under a stay-at-home advisory with travel restrictions in place to try to mitigate the spread of coronavirus. Chicago public schools threatened to declare teachers ordered to work in school buildings who do not show up as “absent without leave”, and docking their pay.

Teachers across Chicago and the Chicago Teachers Union held a virtual teach-in protest of a return to in-person teaching outside of the board of education president’s home on 13 January.

Roberts attended the protest and taught on Facebook live because she was locked out of her Chicago public schools Google account, banning her access to continue teaching her students remotely and shutting her out of her work email account.

“They’ve been trying to impose conditions on the workforce without input from the union,” said Roberts. “Even though we’re in the middle of a pandemic, Chicago public schools is willing to use our students, hurt our students, and deny students things they need like access to their teachers in a game to one-up the Chicago Teachers Union and that’s ridiculous.”

According to Chicago public schools, 87 teachers and staff are currently considered absent without leave, with an attendance rate of about 76% of school district employees in attendance who were expected to return to work in-person, not including employees who had an approved accommodation.

“We are grateful to the teachers and school-based staff who have returned to their classrooms, and we are continuing to meet regularly with the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU),” said a spokesperson for Chicago public schools in an email.

Final ‘Fact-Checker’ Numbers Show Just How Nuts Trump’s Last Year Really Was

Final ‘Fact-Checker’ Numbers Show Just How Nuts Trump’s Last Year Really Was

Ed Mazza, Overnight Editor, HuffPost                 January 25, 2021

Former President Donald Trump made steady news during his presidency for the sheer and often overwhelming number of lies he told daily. But a Washington Post analysis shows just how much worse his final year in office was compared to all the others.

According to the Post, Trump made 30,573 false or misleading claims during his four years in office, with nearly half of them coming during his final year.

Glenn Kessler, who pens the newspaper’s Fact Checker column, wrote that Trump averaged six false claims a day during his first year in office, 16 a day during his second, 22 a day during his third and 39 a day during his last year.

“Put another way, it took him 27 months to reach 10,000 claims and another 14 months to reach 20,000,” Kessler wrote. “He then exceeded the 30,000 mark less than five months later.”

Some of Trump’s most infamous moments include his declaration last year that the coronavirus would disappear “like a miracle” as well as his lies about the election, culminating in the rally in which the president’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol during a deadly insurrection.

The persistent lies have taken a toll, not just on the office but on the public.

“As a result of Trump’s constant lying through the presidential megaphone, more Americans are skeptical of genuine facts than ever before,” presidential historian Michael Beschloss told the newspaper.

Read the full analysis here.

CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale wrote on Twitter that the constant lies made it almost impossible to keep a careful count:

Goodbye, gas heat? Proposals in Washington state seek to phase out fossil fuel heating in buildings

OPB – Science & Environment

Goodbye, gas heat? Proposals in Washington state seek to phase out fossil fuel heating in buildings

By Tom Banse (Northwest News Network)       January 26, 2021

 

A long goodbye to natural gas furnaces and water heating — and possibly other gas appliances — could begin with action by the Washington Legislature this winter. Separately, the Seattle City Council this week begins consideration of a similar proposal to eliminate fossil fuel-based heating in new commercial buildings.

“Buildings are one of our state’s most significant and fastest growing sources of carbon pollution. We must do better — and we can do better,” testified Michael Furze, head of the state energy office, on behalf of Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee.

Natural gas utilities and major business associations spoke against the state legislative proposal during an initial public hearing on Friday. The opponents said they want to preserve consumer choice and questioned whether the Pacific Northwest electric grid could handle a big increase in winter heating load.

In December, Inslee unveiled a package of measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including this proposal to phase out natural gas for space and water heating. As initially conceived, Washington state would have forbidden use of fossil fuels for heating and hot water in new buildings by 2030. The plan sought to convert existing buildings to electric heat by 2050.

The scope of the measure was revised earlier this month when Inslee’s allies in the state legislature introduced identical proposals in the House and Senate to amend the state energy code. The 2030 date to ban heating with fossil fuels in new construction remains. There is no mandate to convert existing buildings from gas to electric heat, but an expectation that utilities will offer incentives for conversions.

Buildings account for the second biggest share of carbon pollution in Washington, after transportation, largely due to gas furnaces and water heaters such as these.
Buildings account for the second biggest share of carbon pollution in Washington, after transportation, largely due to gas furnaces and water heaters such as these. Tom Banse / NW News Network

“If we don’t start with clean new buildings, we’re going to be bailing water out of a boat while we’re still drilling holes in the bottom of it,” said state Rep. Alex Ramel (D-Bellingham), the prime sponsor in the House. “That’s why we need to accelerate and strengthen our state’s energy code.”

The legislation is silent about use of natural gas for cooking and clothes dryers. In an interview, Ramel said lawmakers want to transition those appliances to clean energy as well. However, the details may be worked out later between natural gas utilities and regulators at the state utilities commission.

During the well-attended virtual public hearing before the state House Environment and Energy Committee, Cascade Natural Gas, Puget Sound Energy and the utility trade group Northwest Gas Association raised objections.

“[This bill] would jeopardize energy reliability, drive up costs to customers and put gas industry employees across Washington out of work,” said Alyn Spector, energy efficiency policy manager for Cascade Natural Gas. “This is not the time to eliminate good paying jobs.”

Business lobbying groups, including the influential Association of Washington Business and the home builders’ Building Industry Association of Washington, also voiced their opposition.

“As we saw this summer in California, we cannot take a healthy grid for granted and losses from even short-lived interruption of power supply can run into the billions,” said Peter Godlewski with AWB. “Shifting consumers and businesses away from natural gas to electricity puts severe pressure on the electric grid as a time when we’re retiring more generating capacity than ever.”

At this juncture it is hard to gauge the prospects for the gas heat phaseout proposal. Inslee, who made combating climate change a central plank of his brief run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, has the benefit of large, supportive Democratic majorities in both chambers of the state legislature. But the capacity of lawmakers to get much done beyond the basics of passing new state budgets and dealing with the coronavirus pandemic while conducting most business virtually remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, an assortment of West Coast cities are tackling carbon pollution from buildings independently. Around 40 climate-conscious California cities and counties have already passed laws or codes to require new buildings to be all-electric.

Later this week, the Seattle City Council begins consideration of an ordinance to ban the use of fossil fuels for heating in new commercial and large apartment buildings. The proposed policy change does not apply to single family homes and duplexes because the city’s energy code that is open for amendment pertains only to commercial buildings. The effective date of Jan. 1, 2022, is much sooner than the state legislature’s proposal in the same vein.

“In Seattle, 35 percent of carbon emissions are from the building sector and they are rising,” Seattle Office of Sustainability and Environment Director Jessica Finn Coven told state legislators in testimony Friday. “Constructing homes and buildings right the first time reduces the likelihood of costly retrofits in the future.”

The Bellingham City Council has also teed up electrification of buildings as part of a broader climate action package. In an email, Bellingham City Council member Michael Lilliquist said the pandemic had slowed down the work, but it is proceeding. He said city staff were running all of the proposed climate measures through a rigorous, multi-step evaluation process.

“We are not yet at the stage to offer specifics that can be incorporated into an ordinance or program,” Lilliquist said.

Scientists Launch ‘Four Steps for Earth’ to Protect Biodiversity

Eco Watch – Biodiversity

Scientists Launch ‘Four Steps for Earth’ to Protect Biodiversity

Olivia Rosane                                 January 25, 2021

Scientists Launch ‘Four Steps for Earth’ to Protect Biodiversity
A dugong, also called a sea cow, swims with golden pilot jacks near Marsa Alam, Egypt, Red Sea. Alexis Rosenfeld / Getty Images.

 

In 2010, world leaders agreed to 20 targets to protect Earth’s biodiversity over the next decade. By 2020, none of them had been met. Now, the question is whether the world can do any better once new targets are set during the meeting of the UN Convention on Biodiversity in Kunming, China later this year.

To help turn the tide, a group of 22 research institutions have come together to develop four steps to protect life on Earth, the Environment Journal reported.

“The upcoming Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) meeting, and adoption of the new Global Biodiversity Framework, represent an opportunity to transform humanity’s relationship with nature,” the researchers wrote in One Earth Friday. “Restoring nature while meeting human needs requires a bold vision, including mainstreaming biodiversity conservation in society.”

By mainstreaming biodiversity, the researchers mean that biodiversity should be considered by everyone who makes decisions about the use of natural resources, not just specialized conservation organizations.

To help with this goal, the researchers, led by the University of Oxford’s Interdisciplinary Centre for Conservation Science, developed a framework they are calling the “4Rs,” according to a University of Oxford press release. The point of the 4Rs is that they can be used by any group or individual, from the national to the local level, that needs to make a decision that will impact species and ecosystems.

The 4Rs are:

  1. Refrain: Avoiding negative impacts on nature.
  2. Reduce: Minimizing the harm caused by any unavoidable impacts.
  3. Restore: Acting to quickly counteract any harm caused to nature.
  4. Renew: Working to improve damaged ecosystems.

“This paper represents a real team effort, with authors from academia, business and government,” lead author and Oxford professor E.J. Milner-Gulland said of the goals in the press release. “We’re excited to launch this idea and hope that it will be useful to many different groups as they work to realise the vision of the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. It’s a huge challenge, with many different facets, and we hope that Four Steps for the Earth will provide an intuitive and flexible framework for tying all the threads together.”

In the paper, the researchers provided examples of how the framework has been used by groups ranging from the city of London to Indigenous communities. In one example, a fishery in Peru used it to reduce the accidental catching of sea turtles. Goals were set for limiting the number of different species of sea turtle accidentally caught at the local level, and this was connected to regional conservation efforts for the animals.

The researchers also explained how different institutions could use their framework to guide their actions in the future.

“This framework will, hopefully, present a turning point in the way institutions such as Oxford think about their biodiversity impact,” Oxford project coordinator Henry Grub said in the press release. “Our impacts cannot be overlooked because of the positive research we do – rather we hope the ‘4Rs’ will transform efforts to tackle the environmental impacts of the food we eat in canteens, the paper we put in printers, the land we build on, and much more.”

Trump shuns ‘ex-presidents club’ — and the feeling is mutual

NBC News

Trump shuns ‘ex-presidents club’ — and the feeling is mutual

Trump left the White House without attending Biden’s swearing-in, the first president to skip his successor’s inauguration in 152 years.
By The Associated Press                      January 23, 2021
Trump shuns 'ex-presidents club' — and the feeling is mutual
Associated Press

WASHINGTON — It’s a club Donald Trump was never really interested in joining and certainly not so soon: the cadre of former commanders in chief who revere the presidency enough to put aside often bitter political differences and even join together in common cause.

Members of the ex-presidents club pose together for pictures. They smile and pat each other on the back while milling around historic events, or sit somberly side by side at VIP funerals. They take on special projects together. They rarely criticize one another and tend to offer even fewer harsh words about their White House successors.

Like so many other presidential traditions, however, this is one Trump seems likely to flout. Now that he’s left office, it’s hard to see him embracing the stately, exclusive club of living former presidents.

“He kind of laughed at the very notion that he would be accepted in the presidents club,” said Kate Andersen Brower, who interviewed Trump in 2019 for her book “Team of Five: The Presidents’ Club in the Age of Trump.” “He was like, ‘I don’t think I’ll be accepted.’”

It’s equally clear that the club’s other members don’t much want him — at least for now.

 

“I think the fact that the three of us are standing here, talking about a peaceful transfer of power, speaks to the institutional integrity of our country,” Bush said. Obama called inaugurations “a reminder that we can have fierce disagreements and yet recognize each other’s common humanity, and that, as Americans, we have more in common than what separates us.”

Trump spent months making baseless claims that the election had been stolen from him through fraud and eventually helped incite a deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. He left the White House without attending Biden’s swearing-in, the first president to skip his successor’s inauguration in 152 years.

Obama, Bush and Clinton recorded their video after accompanying Biden to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Solider following the inauguration. They also taped a video urging Americans to get vaccinated against the coronavirus. Only 96-year-old Jimmy Carter, who has limited his public events because of the pandemic, and Trump, who had already flown to post-presidential life in Florida, weren’t there.

Jeffrey Engel, founding director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said Trump isn’t a good fit for the ex-presidents club “because he’s temperamentally different.”

“People within the club historically have been respected by ensuing presidents. Even Richard Nixon was respected by Bill Clinton and by Ronald Reagan and so on, for his foreign policy,” Engel said. “I’m not sure I see a whole lot of people calling up Trump for his strategic advice.”

Former presidents are occasionally called upon for big tasks.

George H.W. Bush and Clinton teamed up in 2005 to launch a campaign urging Americans to help the victims of the devastating Southeast Asia tsunami. When Hurricane Katrina blasted the Gulf Coast, Bush, father of the then-current president George W. Bush, called on Clinton to boost Katrina fundraising relief efforts.

When the elder Bush died in 2018, Clinton wrote, “His friendship has been one of the great gifts of my life,” high praise considering this was the man he ousted from the White House after a bruising 1992 campaign — making Bush the only one-term president of the last three decades except for Trump.

Obama tapped Clinton and the younger President Bush to boost fundraising efforts for Haiti after its devastating 2010 earthquake. George W. Bush also became good friends with former first lady Michelle Obama, and cameras caught him slipping a cough drop to her as they sat together at Arizona Sen. John McCain’s funeral.

Usually presidents extend the same respect to their predecessors while still in office, regardless of party. In 1971, three years before he resigned in disgrace, Richard Nixon went to Texas to participate in the dedication of Lyndon Baines Johnson’s presidential library. When Nixon’s library was completed in 1990, then-President George H.W. Bush attended with former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford.

Trump’s break with tradition began even before his presidency did. After his election win in November 2016, Obama hosted Trump at the White House promising to “do everything we can to help you succeed.” Trump responded, “I look forward to being with you many, many more times in the future” — but that never happened.

Instead, Trump falsely accused Obama of having wiretapped him and spent four years savaging his predecessor’s record.

Current and former presidents sometimes loathed each other, and criticizing their successors isn’t unheard of. Carter criticized the policies of the Republican administrations that followed his, Obama chided Trump while campaigning for Biden and also criticized George W. Bush’s policies — though Obama was usually careful not to name his predecessor. Theodore Roosevelt tried to unseat his successor, fellow Republican William Howard Taft, by founding his own “Bull Moose” party and running for president again against him.

Still, presidential reverence for former presidents dates back even further. The nation’s second president, John Adams, was concerned enough about tarnishing the legacy of his predecessor that he retained George Washington’s Cabinet appointments.

Trump may have time to build his relationship with his predecessors. He told Brower that he “could see himself becoming friendly with Bill Clinton again,” noting that the pair used to golf together.

But the odds of becoming the traditional president in retirement that he never was while in office remain long.

“I think Trump has taken it too far,” Brower said. “I don’t think that these former presidents will welcome him at any point.”

Trump frees former aides from ethics pledge, lobbying ban

Trump frees former aides from ethics pledge, lobbying ban

Brian Slodysko                                 January 20, 2021

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump, in one of his final acts as president, released current and former members of his administration from the terms of their ethics pledge, a move that once again laid bare his failure to fulfil his 2016 campaign promise to “drain the swamp.”

Trump won the presidency, in part, on a pledge to take on entrenched special interests in Washington, and his ethics policy was one of his first acts after assuming office.

But in practice it proved to be little more than bluster. Trump instituted a major loosening of ethics standards when compared with the administration of his predecessor, Barack Obama, as well as the rules that will govern President Joe Biden’s White House.

While Trump’s policy ostensibly included a five-year ban on former officials lobbying their former agencies, it also had large loopholes that allowed many to skirt the rules. The administration also avoided enforcing it, government watchdog groups say.

By rescinding his ethics executive order before leaving office, Trump freed former officials from lingering concern that they could face consequences for running afoul of the ethics policy as they return to the private sector. Many of them will now try to leverage their experience to secure high-paying jobs in Washington’s influence industry.

“The first rule of ethics enforcement is you need to have strong standards. Then you need to back them up with intense transparency. And you also need to reinforce the whole thing with tone from the top. Trump did the opposite on all three,” said Norm Eisen, Obama’s former ethics czar. “He made a mockery of it by having a corrupt tone at the top.”

Unlike his predecessors, Trump refused to divest from his sprawling business empire. That set the tone for his tenure, while making it easy for foreign and domestic interests to try to influence U.S. policy by patronizing his hotels, restaurants, golf courses and private clubs.

Trump signed the one-page revocation of the ethics order on Tuesday, and it was released by the White House shortly after 1 a.m. Wednesday, hours before his term ended.

The decision is not without precedent. President Bill Clinton signed a similar order with weeks left on his final term.

The Trump White House did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday morning.

Appointees who join Biden’s administration will face far more stringent ethics rules that are more in line with those of Obama’s administration — and in some ways go further.

Under an order Biden is expected to issue, officials who leave the administration will be prohibited from lobbying the White House or executive branch agencies for Biden’s duration in office. Those who depart toward the end of Biden’s tenure will be prohibited from lobbying the White House for at least two years.

One provision prohibits incoming administration officials from accepting “golden parachute” payments from their former employers for taking a government job.

Another restricts former senior level staffers not just from lobbying the administration for at least two years, but also prohibits for a period of one year working behind the scenes to materially assist others who do lobby the executive branch. That’s a practice often referred to as “shadow lobbying.” Typically such people do not have to register as lobbyists, even though they play a key role.

The ethics order was described by a Biden transition official on the condition of anonymity because the order has not yet been made public.

One key area that Biden has not addressed in detail is how his White House will address potential conflicts of interest posed by members of his family, some of whom have personally profited by leveraging the Biden name.

Biden repeatedly said on the campaign trail that during his decades in public office, he has never talked to any family members about their private business dealings. And he promised “an absolute wall” between government and his family’s financial interests.

But specifics of how his pledge will be enforced remain unclear.

A person familiar with the incoming administration’s plans said Biden’s family members will not serve as employees or as board members for foreign companies. Additionally, the person said there will be a review process to ensure the Biden family’s business dealings do not present even the appearance of a conflict of interest.

The person insisted on anonymity to discus internal deliberations.

Biden’s son, Hunter, has worked for foreign entities in the past, including serving on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma when Biden was Obama’s vice president. Hunter Biden is currently under investigation by the Justice Department, which is probing his finances, including some of his Chinese business dealings.

Biden’s son-in-law Howard Krein, who is married to his daughter, Ashley, is a high ranking executive at StartUp Health, a venture capital and health tech firm, which lobbied the government on health industry technology regulations.

And his brother James has repeatedly found lucrative work over the years by invoking the Biden name.

Family members also serve on two nonprofits, The Biden Institute at the University of Delaware, and the Beau Biden Foundation for the Protection of Children.

“The conflict of interest is there,” said Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist with good-governance watchdog Public Citizen. “As long as the Biden family is in charge of a nonprofit it provides an opportunity for special interests to make large donations to that foundation in the hopes of currying favor.”

Holman otherwise praised Biden’s ethics order as a “night and day” difference from Trump.

22-year-old Amanda Gorman becomes youngest to read poem at inauguration

22-year-old Amanda Gorman becomes youngest to read poem at inauguration

Katie Kindelan                               January 20, 2021

 

Amanda Gorman made history Wednesday as the youngest poet in recent history to read a poem at a presidential inauguration.

Gorman, 22, read her own poem at the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.

The Los Angeles native told NPR she finished writing the poem, titled “The Hill We Climb,” on the night of Jan. 6, hours after rioters took part in a siege on Capital Hill.

PHOTO: Amanda Gorman recites a poem during the inauguration of Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., Jan. 20, 2021. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

 

“I was like, ‘Well, this is something we need to talk about,'” Gorman told NPR’s Steve Inskeep ahead of the inauguration, adding it had been “really daunting to begin the poem” given how divided the country seemed after the 2020 election.

Gorman opened her poem Wednesday by saying, “We braved the belly of the beast.”

“We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace and the norms and notions of what just is, isn’t always justice. And yet the dawn is hours before we knew it, somehow we do it, somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken but simply unfinished,” she said. “We, the successors of a country and a time, where a skinny black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.”

“And yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect,” she said. “We are striving to forge our union with purpose, to compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters, and conditions of man.”

“And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us but what stands before us. We close the divide because we know to put our future first. We must first put our differences aside,” Gorman said.

Gorman, who said she was not given specific instructions on what to write in her poem, follows in the footsteps of esteemed poets like Maya Angelou and Robert Frost in reading a poem at a presidential inauguration.

She also delivered her poem at a historic inauguration that saw Harris sworn in as the country’s first woman vice president and first woman of color to serve in that position.

Gorman arrived on the presidential stage after being named the first Youth Poet Laureate of Los Angeles in 2014 and the country’s first National Youth Poet Laureate three years later.

Like Biden, who has been public about having a stutter, Gorman has had to work hard to overcome a speech impediment.

MORE: Garth Brooks on why he’s performing at Biden’s inauguration

She told NPR that because of her difficulty saying certain letters of the alphabet, she has to constantly “self-edit and self-police.”

“I would be in the bathroom scribbling five minutes before trying to figure out if I could say ‘earth’ or if I can say ‘girl’ or if I can say ‘poetry.’ And you know, doing the best with the poem I could,” she said, noting that other famous inauguration orators, like Angelou, have also overcome struggles.

PHOTO: National youth poet laureate Amanda Gorman arrives at the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol, Jan. 20, 2021, in Washington, D.C. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

 

“I think there is a real history of orators who have had to struggle, a type of imposed voicelessness, you know, having that stage at inauguration,” Gorman told NPR. “So it’s really special for me.”

Read Amanda Gorman’s inaugural poem in full:

Mr. President, Dr. Biden, Madam Vice President, Mr. Emhoff, Americans and the world, when day comes, we ask ourselves where can we find light in this never ending shade? The loss we carry, a sea we must wade. We braved the belly of the beast.

We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace and the norms and notions of what just is, isn’t always justice. And yet the dawn is hours before we knew it, somehow we do it, somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken but simply unfinished.

We, the successors of a country and a time, where a skinny black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.

And yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect. We are striving to forge our union with purpose, to compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters, and conditions of man. And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us but what stands before us. We close the divide because we know to put our future first. We must first put our differences aside.

We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another We seek harm to none and harmony for all. Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true, that even as we grieved, we grew. That even as we hurt, we hoped.

That even as we tired, we tried. That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious, not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division.

Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid.

If we’re to live up to our own time, then victory won’t lighten the blade but in all the bridges we’ve made, that is the promise to glade, the hill we climb if only we dare, it’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit. It’s the past we stepped into and how we repair it.

We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it, would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.

And this effort very nearly succeeded. But while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated. In this truth, in this faith, we trust. For while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us.

This is the era of just redemption. We feared — at its deception. We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour, but within it we found the power to author a new chapter, to offer hope and laughter to ourselves.

So, while once we asked, “how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?”, now we assert, “how could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?” We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be, a country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce and free. We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation.

Because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation. Our blunders become their burdens. But one thing is certain. If we merge mercy with might and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change, our children’s birth right.

So let us leave behind a country better than one we were left with, every breath from my bronze pounded chest, we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one. We will rise through the gold-limbed hills in the west, we will rise from the windswept northeast where our forefathers first realized revolution. We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the Midwestern states.

We will rise from the sun-baked South. We will rebuild, reconcile, and recover, in every known nook of our nation, in every corner called our country, our people diverse and beautiful, will emerge battered and beautiful.

When day comes, we step out of the shade, aflame and unafraid.

The new dawn blooms as we free it for there is always light if only we’re brave enough to see it, if only we’re brave enough to be it

Keystone XL Pipeline Canceled. Here’s What It Means for the Future Fight Against Fossil Fuels

Keystone XL Pipeline Canceled. Here’s What It Means for the Future Fight Against Fossil Fuels

By Nick Cunningham                             January 20, 2021

No KXL sign held up at a 2011 rally in front of the White House
Keystone XL protest at the white house in Washington D.C, on November 6, 2011. Credit: Emma Cassidy, via tarsandaction.

 

President Joe Biden, in one of his first actions after entering the White House, signed an executive order Wednesday canceling the permit for the Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline. The move blocks construction of the 1,200-mile pipeline, and puts an end to a saga that has persisted for more than a decade.

The cross-border pipeline would have carried 830,000 barrels per day of Canadian tar sands oil to the Gulf of Mexico, where it would be refined and exported, providing a crucial outlet for landlocked oil from Alberta. But the mundane infrastructure project became a symbol of the broader fight against climate change, sparking a sustained campaign against drilling and fossil fuel infrastructure across the continent.

“We only achieve huge wins like this by speaking out together,” Madonna Thunder Hawk of the Lakota People’s Law Project said in a statement. “Rescinding KXL’s permit is a promising early signal that the new administration is listening to our concerns and will take issues of climate and Indigenous justice seriously. We have to insist that it not stop there.”

The cancelation of Keystone XL cements a legacy of climate activism, a movement that has grown into a powerful force in American politics. The end of the pipeline is also a major victory for the many Native American tribes who have consistently been at the forefront of battles against fossil fuel infrastructure.

At the same time, many more pipelines are under construction or are on the drawing board, having eclipsed Keystone XL long ago in terms of importance to the industry.

In 2015, then-President Barack Obama denied a key permit for the project, citing the need to lead on climate, a move that at the time seemed like the final word on the matter. However, President Donald Trump immediately revived the pipeline proposal when he assumed office in 2017.

Despite the backing of the U.S. government, the pipeline project faced some legal hurdles during the Trump era that delayed construction. President Biden’s executive order issued on January 20 once again puts the project on ice. TC Energy, the pipeline’s sponsor, said it would suspend operations and “consider its options.”

“We applaud President Biden’s swift action to rescind Keystone XL’s improperly obtained permits and stop this disastrous project in its tracks yet again,” David Turnbull, Strategic Communications Director at Oil Change International, said in a statement. “Keystone XL would be a disaster for our climate, a disaster for First Nations communities at the source of the tar sands in Canada, and a disaster for communities across a broad swath of our country along its route.”

The Power of Activism

The fatal blow to Keystone XL is a major victory for a coalition of opponents who have fought the fossil fuel project for well over a decade. The fight defined a new era for the environmental movement.

In the early Obama years, national environmental groups placed a lot of faith in legislative efforts at the federal level without building power at the grassroots — a strategy then symbolized by the failed cap-and-trade bill in 2009. In the wake of that defeat, and with the legislative route cut off after Republicans swept the House of Representatives in 2010, the Obama administration turned to executive action. One of those key moves included introducing in 2014 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan to regulate climate emissions from power plants, though its implementation was eventually blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court as the plan was ensnared in legal challenges.

At that point, environmental groups took the climate fight to the grassroots level. And instead of looking at market-based solutions like cap-and-trade, they turned to a “keep it in the ground” strategy, focusing on blocking new supplies of oil, gas, and coal, as well as fossil fuel infrastructure.

And the science supports activists’ calls to keep fossil fuels in the ground. The United Nations says that governments need to wind down fossil fuel production at a rate of six percent per year over the next decade in order to have a shot at meeting a 1.5-degree Celsius warming target and avoiding catastrophic climate impacts.

This anti-fossil fuel development push, however, was not embraced universally by all environmental groups, and conflicted with President Obama’s “all of the above” mantra when it came to the types of energy actions and solutions he would pursue, but the keep-it-in-the-ground strategy became increasingly mainstream for activists in the second Obama term and into the Trump era.

Amid this rising grassroots action to stop the Keystone XL pipeline came an increasing awareness and recognition on behalf of environmental groups of the importance of Indigenous Rights and concepts related to environmental justice, broadening the narrow focus on greenhouse gases that had characterized many prior efforts.

This awareness, however, did not always come easily. “It has always been a challenge for folks to understand the strategic value of an Indigenous Rights framework when it comes to protecting land and water,” Dallas Goldtooth, an organizer with the Indigenous Environment Network, told DeSmog via email.

Indeed, Indigenous peoples have been at the forefront of pipeline resistance since the earliest days of Keystone XL. Goldtooth pointed out that the fight against Keystone XL began with First Nations Dene families in Northern Alberta who lived close to toxic tar sands operations.

And the campaign against the Dakota Access pipeline in 2016 was led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe along with other Indigenous peoples and, to a lesser extent, non-Native allies. Today, some of the largest campaigns against pipelines are also led by Indigenous peoples, including opposition to Line 3, the Trans Mountain Expansion, and the Coastal GasLink pipeline.

More Projects in the Pipeline

But while the defeat of Keystone XL is historically momentous, it raises questions about other routes for Canadian tar sands. After sitting on the drawing board for years, Canada’s oil industry has already turned to alternative pipelines, such as Enbridge’s Line 3 replacement through Minnesota and, even more importantly, the Trans Mountain Expansion from Alberta to British Columbia.

“With Line 3 and TMX [Trans Mountain Expansion], Alberta has sufficient capacity to get its oil to market,” Werner Antweiler, a business professor at the University of British Columbia, told DeSmog.

In fact, scrapping Keystone XL arguably makes these other projects more urgent. “For the federal government of Canada, which has a vested interest in the commercial success of TMX, the cancelation of the KXL project may ultimately be good news because it ensures that there is sufficient demand for TMX capacity,” Antweiler said. “This means it is more likely now that TMX will become commercially viable and can be sold back to private investors profitably after construction is complete.”

This at a time when Keystone XL proved to be an expensive gamble. In 2019, Alberta invested $1.1 billion in Keystone XL in order to add momentum to the controversial project, funding its first year of construction. Now the province may end up selling the vast quantities of pipe for scrap, while also hoping to obtain damages from the United States.

Others are less convinced that the cancelation of one project is a boon to another. Even the Trans Mountain Expansion faces uncertainties in a world of energy transition. “Looking back a century ago, as one-by-one carriage manufacturers shut down as car manufacturers expanded production, prospects for the remaining carriage manufacturers didn’t improve,” Tom Green, a Climate Solutions Policy Analyst at the David Suzuki Foundation, told DeSmog.

“Canada can take its cue from Biden: recognize the costly Trans Mountain pipeline isn’t needed or viable, it doesn’t fit with our climate commitments, and instead of throwing ever more money into a pit, government should invest those funds in the energy system of the future,” he said.

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to include a statement from Oil Change International.

U.S. and Canada underestimating climate risk from abandoned oil and gas wells: study

U.S. and Canada underestimating climate risk from abandoned oil and gas wells: study

Nichola Groom                      January 20, 2021

FILE PHOTO: An abandoned natural gas well stands on the property of Hanson Rower in Salyersville

 

(Reuters) – Methane leaking out of the more than 4 million abandoned oil and gas wells in the United States and Canada is a far greater contributor to climate change than government estimates suggest, researchers from McGill University said on Wednesday.

Canada has underestimated methane emissions from its abandoned wells by as much as 150%, while official U.S. estimates are about 20% below actual levels, the study, published in Environmental Science and Technology, found.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Environment and Climate Change Canada did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the study.

More than a century of oil and gas drilling has left behind millions of abandoned wells around the globe, posing a serious threat https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-drilling-abandoned-specialreport/special-report-millions-of-abandoned-oil-wells-are-leaking-methane-a-climate-menace-idUSKBN23N1NL to the climate that governments are only starting to understand, according to a Reuters special report last year.

Methane has more than 80 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide in its first 20 years in the atmosphere.

In 2019, methane emissions from abandoned wells were included for the first time in U.S. and Canadian greenhouse gas inventories submitted to the United Nations.

But the McGill study found there are about 500,000 wells in the United States that are undocumented along with about 60,000 in Canada. It also found that the EPA and ECCC had come up with emissions estimates that were far too low – a conclusion the researchers said was based on their own analysis of emissions levels from different types of abandoned wells in seven U.S. states and two Canadian provinces.

Emissions measurements were also not available from major oil and gas-producing states and provinces like Texas and Alberta, adding to uncertainty around the official data, the study said.

The study was co-authored by McGill professor Mary Kang, who in 2014 was the first to measure methane emissions from old drilling sites in Pennsylvania.

(Reporting by Nichola Groom; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

Legacy of lies — how Trump weaponized mistruths during his presidency

ABC News

Legacy of lies — how Trump weaponized mistruths during his presidency

Trump has riddled his presidency with false and misleading statements.

 

By Libby Cathey                            January 20, 2021
 

President Donald Trump is not a beacon of truth.

In the best light, Trump was seen as occasionally struggling with the truth. As someone who espoused “truthful hyperbole,” Trump’s supporters viewed him as a showman who sometimes exaggerated, but ultimately fulfilled his most important promises, such as filling the Supreme Court with conservative judges.

But many took a decidedly darker view. His critics and even a number of supporters say something far more sinister and pervasive was at work — Trump weaponizing misinformation, or and even lies, to achieve his goals. The president advanced falsehoods on everything from the mundane to what some called the “big lie” — that the 2020 election was stolen, a repeated assertion that ended in the Capitol Siege.

In the current political landscape he nurtured, truth seekers – whether scientists, academics, journalists or intelligence agency officials — were often attacked, or in some inspector general’s cases, fired, simply because the facts unavoidably collided with the alternate reality created in the White House — one amplified by Trump’s allies in Congress and right-wing media.

 

The Washington Post Fact Checker’s ongoing database of false or misleading claims made by Trump since assuming office stands at more than 30,500.

Dr. Bandy X. Lee, a forensic psychiatrist and author of “Profile of a Nation: Trump’s Mind, America’s Soul” told ABC News she viewed Trump’s “pattern of lying seems to consist of beginning with a conscious lie intended to deceive others — or to cover up who he really is — but as more people believe him and the adulations of crowds gratify him in irresistible ways, he comes to believe in his own lies.”

“He has adopted almost a practice of preferentially lying over telling the truth,” she added. “His grandiose sense of himself, on the other hand, does not allow for any possibility that he is wrong.”

Here are four memorable falsehoods from Trump’s presidency to show how Trump repeatedly shaded the truth on matters great and small:

TRUMP: The presidential election was ‘rigged’ and ‘stolen.’

TRUTH: Joe Biden legally won the election.

Whether Trump believed it or not, he peddled a conspiracy theory that the election was “stolen” from him and unfairly handed to President-elect Joe Biden. His constant complaint in his final weeks of campaigning was one he had made repeatedly primed his supporters for in the past: the election would be “rigged” against him.

He ramped up “the big lie” after Biden was projected to win the presidency.

Trump and his allies brought at least 60 lawsuits challenging the 2020 elections to date, ending with only a single court victory related to voter ID laws — which the Pennsylvania Supreme Court later overturned. Former Attorney General Bill Barr also said in December the Justice Department found no evidence of fraud able to overturn the election.

Despite being unable to substantiate his bold claim, Trump made it a topic for debate, and his allies in Congress helped breathe life into the claim. The election lie culminated on Jan. 6, 2021 when thousands of Trump’s supporters marched on the Capitol after his urging at a “Save America Rally” at the Ellipse, a park near the White House, demanding Vice President Mike Pence stop Congress from affirming Biden’s victory.

 

“Make no mistake, this election was stolen from me, from you, and from the country,” Trump told a crowd of thousands of angry supporters.

The subsequent siege on the Capitol left at least five people dead and burned images into history of a desecrated U.S. Capitol. But experts argue the entire event might have been stopped sooner had Trump admitted the truth to his supporters — that there was no legal way the election could be overturned in his favor.

Asked whether Trump will ever be able to admit the loss, and thus the lie, Lee, who is also currently president of the World Mental Health Coalition, said, “Probably not.”

She said people like Trump have an “apparent fragile sense of self” which makes it difficult to receive criticism or disapproval. “This makes him more likely to fall into a psychotic spiral in the situation of a major rejection, such as election defeat, rather than admit loss,” Lee said. “And this is, indeed, what has happened,” Lee said.

 

Robert Erikson, a political science professor at Columbia University, agreed that Trump “makes up the truth that he wants to be true.”

“He can never be wrong, and that’s why losing is such a blow to him. He convinces himself and everyone else that he really won the election in a landslide. He can’t fill in the blanks about how this fraud occurred — because it’s just total lunacy — but that’s what he wants people to believe,” Erikson said.

Erikson added that with Trump’s departure, the public might see Republican senators revert back to the truth, noting Republican Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell is “already done with Trump” in reportedly telling senators to vote their conscience in the upcoming impeachment trial on an article which stems from the election lie.

“If they don’t stand up for the truth, then they’re overestimating the power of this base that still wants them to falsely believe the election was stolen,” Erikson warned.

 

The most recent Gallup poll on Trump’s favorability found that he is leaving office with his lowest approval rating of his four years in office at 34%. Trump is the only president not to reach 50% approval rating during his time in office, since Gallup started polling the number in 1938.

But despite no evidence to support the view, according to a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, one out of every three Americans — and two in every three Republicans — believes that there was widespread voter fraud in the presidential election, indicating damage on the country’s democratic institutions needing repairs far beyond the Capitol’s shattered glass.

TRUMP: The coronavirus pandemic is under control.

TRUTH: The US exceeded the White House’s 2020 death estimate by 100K lives.

One of the most dangerous lies of Trump’s involved the most serious threat to his presidency: his downplaying of the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump admitted to legendary journalist Bob Woodward in a phone call on Feb. 7 he knew the virus was “deadly,” airborne, and more serious than “your strenuous flus.” Meanwhile, in public and on Twitter, he compared the virus to the seasonal flu and dismissed climbing case numbers.

 

“I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down because I don’t want to create a panic,” Trump said in a March 19 call with Woodward, according to an audio clip.

Trump, asked by ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl in September, “Why did you lie to the American people and why should we trust what you have to say now?” dismissed the question.

“That’s a terrible question and the phraseology. I didn’t lie. What I said is we have to be calm. We can’t be panicked.” Trump said, before Karl pressed again on the contradiction. “I want to show our country will be fine one way or the other whether we lose one person — we shouldn’t lose any.”

Trump also repeatedly spread misinformation about coronavirus testing, masks, unproven treatments — once claiming that injecting bleach might treat the virus before saying later he was being “sarcastic” — while attacking public health experts along the way who disputed his view that the virus wasn’t just going to “disappear.”

“I think Trump understands the facts about how bad COVID is and probably knows masks work, but he is always appealing to his base,” said Erikson. “What Trump always does — and what ordinary politicians do to not do — is always appealing to his base rather than expanding his base, and the virus didn’t fall in line with them.”

A year into the crisis, more than 400,000 Americans have died from COVID-19.

TRUMP: ‘We had the biggest audience in the history of inaugural speeches.’

TRUTH: Photos from previous inaugurations tell a different story.

The Trump administration kicked off with the lie mocked around the world when Trump used his first full day in office in 2017 to excoriate a media report that estimated the crowd size of his inauguration at 250,000 attendees as a “lie” and instead, to insist he saw at least one million people.

“We had a massive field of people, you saw that. Packed,” Trump said in a speech at the Central Intelligence Agency. “I get up this morning, I turn on one of the networks and they show … an empty field. I said, wait a minute, I made a speech! I looked out, the field was … it looked like a million, a million-and-a-half people.”

Later that day, he dispatched White House press secretary Sean Spicer, in Spicer’s first briefing room appearance, to claim “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration — period — both in person and around the globe.”

 

Spicer did not provide evidence and acknowledged the National Park Service in 1995 stopped tallying crowd size on the National Mall. He instead offered varied explanations for why photos made it appear as if the crowd was smaller than the “massive” one Trump pushed. (This was described by then-senior counselor Kellyanne Conway as providing the media with “alternative facts.”)

PolitiFact, a nonprofit project operated by the Poynter Institute, estimates Trump’s inauguration saw between 250,000 and 600,000 attendees. Nielsen, which records the U.S. live television viewing figures, said an estimated 31 million people tuned in to watch the 2017 inauguration, about 19% lower than the number who watched Obama’s 2009 inauguration.

But the lie, made apparent by photos and footage, set the tone for a White House which would come to often contradict fact.

 

In Trump’s first interview as president, presented with his priorities in his first days of office, told ABC News he “won’t allow” anyone to “demean me unfairly, because we had a massive crowd of people.”

“I looked over that sea of people, and I said to myself, ‘wow’, and I’ve seen crowds before. Big, big crowds. That was some crowd,” Trump said. “We had the biggest audience in the history of inaugural speeches.”

“They were showing pictures that were very unflattering, as unflattering — from certain angles — that were taken early and lots of other things,” he added, maintaining his position, despite having no clear-cut evidence.

TRUMP: Alabama ‘will most likely be hit’ from Hurricane Dorian.

TRUTH: Alabama was not in the storm’s line, federal officials said.

In Sept. 2019, as Hurricane Dorian barreled toward Florida and Georgia, Trump tweeted that Alabama was one of the states at great risk from the storm’s wrath, saying it “will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated.”

After Alabamians, and beyond, on Twitter went into a frenzy, the National Weather Service office in Birmingham soon tweeted that Alabama was not in the line of the storm.

But Trump, unwilling to admit the error, attempted to prove that his incorrect Alabama tweet was actually correct. After drawing widespread criticism for his inaccurate warning, Trump held up a map in an Oval Office briefing on Dorian that appeared to have a line drawn on it in black making it seem as if he had been right all along.

The event would later be known on social media as “Sharpiegate.”

The map Trump displayed had one addition not on the one disseminated by the National Hurricane Center: what appeared to be a drawn-on semicircle appended to the “cone of uncertainty” showing the hurricane’s potential projected impact — extending the cone into Alabama.

 

Hours after the Wednesday Dorian briefing, Trump denied knowing how or why the map had been altered when asked if he could explain how the change was made, saying. “No, I just know, yeah. I know that Alabama was in the original forecast.” White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley tweeted Wednesday night that the line was, in fact, from a black Sharpie, and he criticized the media for focusing on it.

Almost a week later, the National Weather Service’s parent organization, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also weighed in, disputing the earlier tweet and siding with Trump in an unsigned statement.

But many experts, including a former director of the National Hurricane Center, took the side of Birmingham forecasters on social media and called the parent statement was “so disappointing,” — illustrating how Trump’s falsehoods eroded the credibility of the institutions around him, too.

“Either NOAA Leadership truly agrees with what they posted or they were ordered to do it,” Bill Read wrote on Facebook. “If it is the former, the statement shows a lack of understanding of how to use probabilistic forecasts in conjunction with other forecast information. Embarrassing. If it is the latter, the statement shows a lack of courage on their part by not supporting the people in the field who are actually doing the work. Heartbreaking.”

As with most of Trump’s false or misleading statements, enabled by the power of the presidency and his allies, “Sharpiegate,” too, appeared to blow over.

ABC News’ Ben Gittleson, Jordyn Phelps and Meg Cunningham contributed to this report.