The petition description cited Thomas’s vote to overturn Roe v. Wade as reasoning for his removal.
“Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas—who sided with the majority on overturning Roe—made it clear what’s next: to overturn high court rulings that establish gay rights and contraception rights,” the petition read.
The description also mentioned Thomas’s wife, Ginni Thomas, and her role in encouraging members of the Trump administration to continue to challenge the 2020 election results.
The Supreme Court earlier this year rejected a request by former President Trump to prevent the release of documents related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Thomas was the only justice to dissent on the matter.
“He has shown he cannot be an impartial justice and is more concerned with covering up his wife’s coup attempts than the health of the Supreme Court.”
“He must resign — or Congress must immediately investigate and impeach,” the petition concluded.
The petition garnered more than 1.1 million signatures and urges Congress to either investigate or impeach Thomas for his actions.
The MoveOn petition follows a similar one created by George Washington University students last week in an effort to remove Thomas from his teaching position with the Washington, D.C., university.
The student-led petition came after the high court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, a landmark 1973 ruling that determined a woman’s right to abortion was constitutional.
In a school-wide letter, GWU officials said they don’t have plans to remove Thomas as an adjunct instructor in their law school, stating that he did not violate the school’s policy on academic freedom.
“Just as we affirm our commitment to academic freedom, we affirm the right of all members of our community to voice their opinions and contribute to the critical discussion that is foundational to our academic mission,” school officials wrote in their letter.
Adam Kinzinger and his family are getting so many death threats over his Trump criticism that his office put together a 3-minute audio clip
Camila DeChalus – July 5, 2022
Rep. Adam Kinzinger says he’s been getting threatening calls to his office in Washington, DC.
People have also threatened to go after him and his family.
Kinzinger is a member of the House committee investigating the insurrection.
Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger on Tuesday released a three-minute audio clip of recent threatening calls his office has received, highlighting the increased harassment he and his family have faced in light of his participation in the House committee investigating the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.
“Threats of violence over politics has increased heavily in the last few years. But the darkness has reached new lows,” Kinzinger tweeted. “My new interns made this compilation of recent calls they’ve received while serving in my DC office.”
In one call, a person threatened to come to Kinzinger’s house and go after his wife and his newborn baby.
“I’m going to come to protest in front of your house this weekend,” the caller said. “We know where your family is, and we’re going to get you … We’re going to get your wife, going to get your kids.”
Another caller said, “I hope you naturally die as quickly as fucking possible.”
Some of the callers alluded to Kinzinger’s involvement in the House committee, accusing him of lying and going against former President Donald Trump during recent hearings.
Last month, Kinzinger said he and his family had received a death threat over his sitting on the committee. He shared the letter, which was addressed to his wife, Sofia, on Twitter. “That pimp you married not only broke his oath, he sold his soul,” it said, adding, “Therefore, although it might take time, he will be executed.”
Citing data from the US Capitol Police, Axios reported late last month that threats against lawmakers had significantly increased in the past five years. The report said that in the first three months of the year, the Capitol Police opened cases into more than 1,800 threats.
Kinzinger and Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming are the only two Republicans sitting on the House select committee investigating the insurrection and Trump’s involvement in attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Following the recent testimony from the former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, Kinzinger, who’s been highly critical of the former president, said Trump and his allies including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy were “scared.”
Can Phoenix, the hottest city in America, survive climate change?
David Knowles, Senior Editor – July 2, 2022
PHOENIX — On the downtown streets in America’s hottest city the temperature has hit 109 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s 1 o’clock in the afternoon in late June and the sidewalks are mostly empty, but an elderly woman carrying an umbrella passes by walking her terrier, the dog’s tiny feet fitted with leather moccasins to protect them from the scorching concrete.
Inside an air-conditioned conference room on the 11th floor of the building that houses city hall, Mayor Kate Gallego is recounting the story of her parents abandoning Chicago for the Southwest following the blizzard of 1979. “Cars buried in snow. Trying to navigate the city was a real challenge,” she told Yahoo News.
A Democrat who was appointed to her first mayoral term in 2019 at the age of 37 after her predecessor was elected to Congress, Gallego was raised in Albuquerque. Like many in her generation, she suffers from asthma, a condition made worse by the air pollution causing climate change, and which she credits for her early interest in the environment. As she grew up, temperatures across the Southwest grew noticeably hotter during her childhood, she said, until global warming was all but impossible to ignore.
Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego at City Hall on June 23. (Caitlin O’Hara for Yahoo News)
“There was a radio station whose number was 97.3, and they would give away money every time we hit 97 degrees,” she said. “It did feel like when they started the promotion it was unlikely to happen, and then it became more and more frequent.”
In Phoenix, where summer can feel a bit like living through a science experiment or a dystopian dare, the average summertime temperature has risen by 3.8 degrees since 1970, according to data compiled by Climate Central, a nonprofit composed of scientists and journalists. The city now averages 111 annual days of triple-digit heat, and experiences 12 more days above 110 degrees Fahrenheit each year than it did in 1970.
Nighttime temperatures have risen even faster, climbing 5.7 degrees since 1970. The average summertime low now stands at 84 degrees Fahrenheit, depriving those without adequate air-conditioning the chance for the body to cool down before the mercury begins rising each morning with the sun.
Downtown Phoenix in 2019. (Caitlin O’Hara)
“In about a decade, we have seen a sea change in the attitudes” among residents formerly skeptical that humans are causing climate change, said Gallego, who earned an undergraduate degree in environmental studies from Harvard University before getting a master’s degree in business administration from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Now, she adds, they “would like elected officials to do something.”
Because of the undeniable rise in temperatures, it has become a cliché to say that Phoenix’s climate change future is already here. That way of looking at the problem, however, risks downplaying what’s still to come. By the year 2100, climate models predict, summer highs are expected to rise on average by as much as 10 degrees in the city, which means daily temperature readings of 114 degrees Fahrenheit, which will almost certainly lead to more heat-related deaths.
A sign at the Pima Canyon Trailhead in Phoenix warns hikers to bring sufficient water and beware of extreme heat. (Caitlin O’Hara for Yahoo News)
Since 2014, deaths attributed to heat in Maricopa County — which includes Phoenix and adjacent cities like Mesa, Scottsdale and Tempe — have spiked by 454%, KPNX News reported. For the past two years, the county has set new heat death records, with 323 people killed in 2020 and 331 in 2021, the bulk of those occurring in Phoenix.
Yet people continue to flock to the so-called Valley of the Sun. Between 2010 and 2020, Phoenix grew faster than any other big American city, according to Census Bureau data, adding 163,000 residents.
“Across the United States we are seeing a migration toward sun,” Gallego said. “People are moving toward Sunbelt states. That means having a conversation about how we allocate resources.”
To help lead that conversation, Gallego hired Arizona State University professor David Hondula to head up the city’s newly created Office of Heat Response and Mitigation, the first of its kind in the U.S.
David Hondula, director of Phoenix’s Office of Heat Response and Mitigation. (Caitlin O’Hara for Yahoo News)
In his first eight months on the job, Hondula, who at37 bears a passing resemblance to former Phoenix Suns point guard Steve Nash, has put forth a “heat response” strategy. It focuses on reducing heat-related death and illness through measures such as opening air-conditioned cooling centers across the city where people can escape the oven-like summer conditions, launching a hotline residents can call to arrange transportation to get them to one, and sending out volunteers to pass out reusable water bottles.
It’s intuitive that climate change disproportionately impacts those who don’t have the resources to afford rent, let alone air-conditioning or private means of transportation. In his new role, Hondula has spent a lot of time confirming that fact, meeting with poor and unsheltered residents and seeing firsthand how direct intervention can help save lives.
“I might have had more education in the past eight months about the heat problem than I’ve had for eight years working on the problem from an academic standpoint,” he said. “There are folks for whom heat is an inconvenience. Folks for whom heat is a manageable problem, and folks for whom heat is a catastrophe.”
Life and death in ‘the zone’
Tents line a street in one of Phoenix’s biggest encampments for unsheltered people, known as “the zone,” where the pavement can reach 160 degrees Fahrenheit. (Caitlin O’Hara for Yahoo News)
In Phoenix, catastrophe is a fixture of daily life in “the zone,” a grim homeless encampment near downtown that spans several treeless blocks. With a by-now-familiar mixture of desperation, drug and alcohol abuse, violence and mental illness, the zone resembles similar tent outposts that have popped up in cities across the West, but the Phoenix heat adds another layer of misery. Roughly two-thirds of heat-related deaths in the city over the last two years were among the homeless, and Hondula is keenly aware that if the city continues to break heat-death records, his job may be in jeopardy.
“We better be doing something that moves those numbers in the other direction as soon as possible,” he said.
That may prove easier said than done given that Phoenix has one of the highest eviction rates in the country, apartment and home rental prices continue to soar, and homelessness has risen by 35% in Maricopa County over the last two years. Hondula is realistic about the challenges but remains optimistic that the city can address the problem, noting that heat-related calls to the Phoenix fire department are running 5% lower than the volume experienced at this time last year.
Community advocate Stacey Champion asks a worker to let an unsheltered person in to a cooling center in June. (Caitlin O’Hara for Yahoo News)
“When we showed up at Cortez Park the other day,” Hondula recounted about a recent outing, “and within a minute of pulling in the parking lot, we’re getting our water bottles set up, the homelessness case manager noticed a bunch of folks crowded around this old Suburban — a family of 10 living out of their car. By the time we had finished our outreach shift, they were on their way to a shelter that night. So, any question about if this is a good use of our time evaporates right there.”
Just a block from the zone, self-described “feisty” activist Stacey Champion stands in the shade of a tree outside Carnegie Library. Bordered by a fenced-in, football-field-size manicured lawn dotted with trees that is off limits to the public, the former library, which opened in 1898, now serves as an administrative space for the Arizona State Library, but the grounds are always vacant.
“I think this is the ultimate picture of inequity. This is public space that has the potential to save people’s lives,” said Champion, a public relations consultant who advocates on behalf of Phoenix’s unsheltered community. “We had temp guns out here, and in the zone one day it was 168 degrees. Then we came over and measured the grass, which was like 90. Just being on the grass could potentially save people’s lives.”
Shady and with lush grass, the Carnegie Library, now a City of Phoenix archives building, is locked to the public but is located just across the street from one of the city’s biggest encampments for unsheltered people. (Caitlin O’Hara for Yahoo News)
Champion has been pressuring Hondula, city council members, elected officials, state lawmakers and anyone else who will listen, to open the park to the homeless from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m., but so far, no one is budging.
“I’ve known David for years. I think David is very smart. I think David really cares,” she said of Hondula. “I think that David’s hands are going to be tied with politics and with a lot of bureaucratic red tape.”
While she has praised the heat response portions of Hondula’s plans, she also believes that the city isn’t acting quickly enough to implement them.
“Having tracked the heat deaths for all these years — these are preventable deaths,” she said. “I’m fairly certain we’re going to break the record this year.”
Champion walks into the Justa Center, a day shelter for older adults, on June 24. (Caitlin O’Hara for Yahoo News)
While saving lives is Hondula’s immediate focus this summer, his overall plan also includes “heat mitigation actions,” long-term strategies to cool the city over the coming years to make it more livable as climate change tightens its grip. The plan includes planting tree canopies to create shade corridors for pedestrians, expanding a new light-rail system, and painting roadways white so as to reduce surface temperatures and diminish the “heat island effect” that makes cities hotter than their rural surroundings.
In some ways, heat mitigation can be seen as a footrace between climate change and the many steps required to retrofit a place so that it is still worth living there in the coming decades. The decision to spend money insulating communities for the climate change future is still a relatively new phenomenon in the United States, perhaps because so many lawmakers refuse to admit what more than 99.9 percent of scientific research proves:That mankind’s burning of fossil fuels and adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere is what is causing temperatures to rise.
People’s tents line a street in the area known as the zone. (Caitlin O’Hara for Yahoo News)
But in the West, where researchers have linked the ongoing extreme drought to climate change, dwindling water from the Colorado River will soon be rationed for the 44 million people who depend on it, wildfires worsened by rising temperatures have become an all-too-common fixture of life and extreme heat waves blur into one another, inaction isn’t a viable option.
In May, the Phoenix city council voted to allocate $13 million of the $90 million it received from the American Rescue Act toward heat-related programs that Hondula’s office will help administer.
One of the local nonprofits pressing the city on how and where to spend that money is Chispa AZ, a League of Conservation Voters offshoot that seeks to mobilize Hispanic voters and politicians on environmental issues.
“We’ve been working with the city on a climate action plan,” Dulce Juarez, Chispa’s state co-director, told Yahoo News. “It’s a start. It’s not the perfect plan, but they are talking about investments in cool corridors and cooling the streets. It’s in the small ways that the city is hoping to create an impact.”
Dulce Juarez, co-director at Latinx environmental justice organization Chispa AZ. (Caitlin O’Hara for Yahoo News)
Juarez says she and her staff have impressed upon Hondula that while richer neighborhoods in Phoenix are mostly tree-lined, offering a respite from the blaring sun, poorer ones remain barren and continue to bake.
“Our team members have met with him to try and talk about what we do about trees. That’s a big issue for us,” she said. “We also have to keep in mind maintenance and water, making sure that we have long-term care for these trees.”
Like Champion, Juarez sees the state as lagging when it comes to addressing its heat problem.
“Unfortunately here in the state of Arizona, we don’t have a very progressive Legislature,” she said. “I think a lot of people don’t even believe in climate change, which is why we have a lot of the problems we do. We’re kind of behind on this issue of climate change and climate action.”
Chispa AZ planning and brainstorming notes fill a whiteboard. (Caitlin O’Hara for Yahoo News)
With the rate of climate change speeding up in recent decades as the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continues unabated, and mitigation measures slow to take shape, Juarez, like many local residents, wonders how long living in Phoenix will make sense. That question, she said, hit home in 2020 when the city recorded 53 consecutive days of 110-degree temperatures or higher.
“I love it here. The desert is a very magical and beautiful place, but when you stop and think about it, you wonder ‘Is it really the best option to live in the middle of the desert if our utility companies or our grid goes out? How are we going to survive in this heat without electricity?’” she said.
Without a trace
Located on the northeast border of Phoenix’s Sky Harbor International Airport, the unassuming Pueblo Grande Museum is set on the archeological ruins left behind by a Native American civilization known as the Hohokam. At around A.D. 300, the Hohokam became the first people to settle on the banks of the Salt and Gila rivers and lay claim to the Valley of the Sun.
A diagram of waterways used by Indigenous groups, including the Hohokam. (Caitlin O’Hara for Yahoo News)
The grounds to the three-room museum are home to a platform mound believed to have housed tribal leaders, ball courts similar to those found farther south in Mesoamerica and the remnants of an elaborate series of irrigation canals that allowed the Hohokam to thrive in the Sonoran Desert.
The precursor to the irrigation system still used today on the lower Colorado River, the network of canals and irrigation grew to become the most advanced in all of America’s precolonial history, and helped the Hohokam grow 12 different crop species in an otherwise inhospitable environment. Over the next millennium, the population swelled to a few thousand people, who made ornate pottery and erected adobe dwellings. And then, suddenly, the Hohokam civilization nose-dived.
“From 1350 to 1450 the population plunges and traces of the Hohokam disappear from the archaeological record,” the museum’s website states.
The predominant theory explaining the society’s collapse is that a Southwestern drought led to widespread crop failure, forcing the population to relocate.
A modern canal near the Pueblo Grande Museum in Phoenix. (Caitlin O’Hara for Yahoo News)
While other Native American tribes would later settle in the region, the modern city of Phoenix wasn’t founded here until 1881. By that time, the industrial revolution was underway, burning fossil fuels at an unprecedented rate.
From the ashes
When it comes to heat death, Hondula is clear-eyed that the problem may get worse before his proposed solutions can make it better.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if we are in worse shape from a heat-associated-death standpoint than we were last year because there are so many more unsheltered folks that are at 200-300 times the risk of heat-associated death,” he said.
With its negative impacts on infrastructure, weather patterns, migration and death, climate change has a knack for taking existing problems and making them worse. While scientists are tasked with demonstrating such a dynamic using data points, politicians must decide what to do about it.
Park steward Ron Cordova, pictured near the Pima Canyon Trailhead on June 25, has brought back children and adult hikers on horseback who were experiencing heat exhaustion or other injuries. (Caitlin O’Hara for Yahoo News)
Gallego may be the first U.S. mayor to hire a taxpayer-funded position to deal with the effects of heat made worse by climate change, but, like all elected officials, she must offer a hopeful spin on how her administration will make life better for residents.
“We get our name from the mythical bird that rose from ashes. Hopefully we take heat and make something that makes the world a better place,” she said. “I hope we also take challenges around climate change and are at the forefront of the solution. The people of Phoenix have a lot at stake addressing climate change and heat, so we’re motivated to find those solutions.”
After leaving city hall, a dust storm alert from the National Weather Service lands on cellphones all over Phoenix. “Infants, the elderly and those with respiratory issues urged to take precautions,” it reads, and right on cue the sky quickly turns a brownish orange, reducing visibility to a hundred yards or so.
What few residents who had ventured out into the afternoon heat head back inside. And while the dust dissipates after about an hour, it once more reveals an unforgiving sun.
World War II-Era Boat Exposed at Lake Mead as Water Levels Decline
Stephanie Wenger – July 1, 2022
LAKE MEAD NATIONAL RECREATION AREA, NEVADA – JULY 01: A sunken World War II-Era Higgins landing craft that used to be nearly 200 feet underwater is being revealed near the Lake Mead Marina as the waterline continues to lower on July 01, 2022 in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Nevada. The water level at Lake Mead is at its lowest since being filled in 1937 after the construction of the Hoover Dam as a result of a climate change-fueled megadrought coupled with increased water demands in the Southwestern United States. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
A World War II-era boat was spotted more than halfway out of the water at Nevada’s Lake Mead this week as the lake’s water levels continue to decline.
The Higgins landing craft — which was previously 185 feet below the lake’s surface — is located less than a mile from Lake Mead Marina and Hemenway Harbor, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Associated Press and KLAS.
The boat was a popular diving destination for years before it emerged, KLAS reported.
The vessel was previously used to survey the Colorado River, then was purchased by a marina, and finally sunk to become anchor, D.J. Jenner of Las Vegas Scuba told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Las Vegas Scuba did not immediately return PEOPLE’s request for comment.
Earlier this week, the boat was featured on the YouTube channel The Other Me.
LAKE MEAD NATIONAL RECREATION AREA, NEVADA – JULY 01: A sunken World War II-Era Higgins landing craft that used to be nearly 200 feet underwater is being revealed near the Lake Mead Marina as the waterline continues to lower on July 01, 2022 in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Nevada. The water level at Lake Mead is at its lowest since being filled in 1937 after the construction of the Hoover Dam as a result of a climate change-fueled megadrought coupled with increased water demands in the Southwestern United States. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
New Orleans-based Higgins Industries — which was owned by entrepreneur Andrew J. Higgins —built several thousand land crafts from 1942 to 1945, Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. The company created two versions of the boat — one was a personal landing craft and the other larger style was designed for tanks.
Higgins Industries made the landing craft that was used during the D-Day invasion in 1944, according to KLAS.
Climate change and drought have caused the lake’s water levels to drop to their lowest levels, according to the AP.
New recycling method could eliminate the climate impact of plastic
Gianna Melillo – July 1, 2022
Story at a glance
Plastic pollution is one of the more pressing issues for conservationists and environmentalists alike.
Researchers in Sweden harvested a byproduct of plastic disposal and used it to create a new sustainable plastic.
By incentivizing collection of this byproduct, experts hope to scale the process and create a more sustainable plastic recycling process.
Declining plastic recycling rates coupled with increased plastic pollution on the Earth’s surface and within its oceans spell concern for the planet’s health.
In an effort to combat these trends, researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden developed a recycling method that replaces all fossil raw materials used in new plastic production with carbon atoms from mixed waste. The technique has the potential to eliminate the climate impact of plastic and may rid the air of carbon dioxide.
“While fossil fuel use is the main cause of anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and a transition away from the use of such fuels is essential to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5 [degrees celsius], the production and use of materials such as plastics, cement and steel entail significant GHG emissions,” researchers explained in the Journal of Cleaner Production.
They hypothesized carbon atoms in plastic waste serve as an important untapped resource. These existing resources are currently incinerated or find their way to landfills. Thermochemical technologies can target this wasted carbon and use it as a raw material to produce plastics of similar quality to those created with fossil fuels.
According to investigators, enough of these atoms already exist to meet the needs of all global plastic production. The atoms can be harvested from waste with or without food residue.
“If the process is powered by renewable energy, we also get plastic products with more than 95 percent lower climate impact than those produced today, which effectively means negative emissions for the entire system,” said co-author Henrik Thunman in a press release.
To complete the process, the carbon atoms would need to be heated to 600 to 800 degrees celsius, converting the material to gas. Adding hydrogen to this gas can replace the building blocks of plastics and researchers are working to ensure the gas can be used and converted in the same factories currently used to manufacture plastic.
This process can also be powered by renewable sources like solar, wind or hydro power, making them more energy efficient than current systems in use. Experts would also be able to harvest excess heat produced in the process to offset heat production from waste incineration, thereby eliminating carbon dioxide emissions resulting from energy recovery, they explained.
Creating an economic structure to collect and use these carbon atoms can help incentivize this new form of recycling.
The process has already proven successful in one Swedish plant in collaboration with Borealis, a plastic manufacturer.
“Global application of advanced thermochemical recycling technologies has great potential: less energy than used in today’s material system may likely be required, and carbon emissions can be reduced using different energy sources, leading to near-zero carbon emissions with renewable energy,” authors concluded.
More research is needed to better understand best deployment strategies and determine their economic and energy implications.
In that last instance, Thomas didn’t write the majority opinion but he did pen an inflammatory concurrence inviting challenges to the rights to same-sex marriage and contraception, but notably not interracial marriage, something that’s obviously very dear to his heart.
Then Thomas hit us all with a “hold my beer”, squeezing a reference to the debunked conspiracy theory that Covid-19 vaccines are made of cells from aborted fetuses into his dissent in the Court’s decision to decline a challenge to New York’s vaccine mandate for medical workers.
A group of healthcare workers sued to challenge the mandate, arguing they should be allowed to continue working, unvaccinated, in medical settings, during a pandemic, under a religious exception. Lower courts kicked their challenge to the curb but they appealed to the Supreme Court, where a 6-3 majority, including three Conservative justices, agreed that the case wouldn’t be heard.
Thomas, joined by fellow conservatives Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh, went in his bag, writing that the Court should have taken the opportunity to sort out whether or not a religious exemption should have been granted. He noted that there was a “broad exception” to the mandate—that exception being that you didn’t need a vaccine if it might endanger your life—but noted that the plaintiffs’ argued there was no such consideration for their religious beliefs.
What, exactly, were those beliefs that should make them exempt from vaccination? “They object on religious grounds to all available COVID–19 vaccines because they were developed using cell lines derived from aborted children.”
Pfizer and Moderna used fetal cell lines early in their Covid vaccine development to test the efficacy of their formulas, as other vaccines have in the past. The fetal tissue used in these processes came from elective abortions that happened decades ago. But the cells have since replicated many times, so none of the original tissue is involved in the making of modern vaccines.
So it is not true that Covid vaccines are manufactured using fetal cell lines, nor do they contain any aborted cells.
The good thing is the Supreme Court’s term ended yesterday and given his history of sitting on the bench for years without saying anything, it’ll probably be awhile before we hear from Clarence Thomas again.
Hutchinson’s testimony raises fresh questions about Secret Service’s handling of Jan. 6
Lucien Bruggeman and Josh Margolin – June 30, 2022
A former White House aide’s stunning testimony before the House panel investigating the Capitol attack indicated that the U.S. Secret Service may have had advanced warning of the potential for violence at the Capitol, raising new questions about the agency’s planning ahead of the riot and actions taken by agents on Jan. 6.
Cassidy Hutchinson, a top deputy to then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, told lawmakers on Tuesday that the security team guarding then-President Donald Trump and senior White House officials were aware there was a serious threat posed by some descending on Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, when Trump was planning to address a rally to support his baseless accusations that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.
In Hutchinson’s telling, the agency famous for its teams of bodyguards, sharpshooters and hyper-skilled drivers was aware that among the throngs headed to Washington were some who were planning to carry a variety of weapons and military gear, and were seeking to target members of Congress and breach the Capitol building.
If so, the Secret Service apparently failed to coordinate effectively with law enforcement partners, the public, or congressional leaders to strengthen the security posture — and instead ferried a number of people under their protection to the Capitol complex with little more than their personal security details.
The Secret Service declined to answer questions from ABC News.
If true, the lapse in security — laid out on national television during a committee session Tuesday — represents perhaps the most glaring evidence to date that the Secret Service, responsible for guarding key political figures and their families, failed at its most basic responsibilities in how it dealt with Trump’s rally and the meetings of the House and Senate on Jan. 6, according to John Cohen, a former ranking Department of Homeland Security official who is now an ABC News contributor.
“It appears that senior officials at the White House were not only aware of plans to march on the U.S. Capitol, but also appeared to be planning for the president to join,” Cohen said, citing another of Hutchinson’s allegations. “This testimony raises highly disconcerting questions about what the Secret Service knew about this event and why more wasn’t done to prepare.”
PHOTO: A video of President Trump’s motorcade leaving the January 6th rally on the Ellipse is displayed as Cassidy Hutchinson testifies in a public hearing of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Attack on Capitol, June 28, 2022. (Pool via Reuters)
Notoriously tight-lipped about their job and how they do it, the Secret Service is under renewed focus this week after Hutchison, 26, alleged shocking new details about the president’s interactions with his security agents on Jan. 6 and how they were so concerned about possible violence at the Capitol that they refused Trump’s directive to drive him there.
“The president said something to the effect of, ‘I’m the effing president, take me up to the Capitol now’ — to which Bobby [Engel, the head of Trump’s security detail], responded, ‘Sir, we have to go back to the West Wing,'” Hutchinson testified she was told by Tony Ornato, a senior Secret Service official who was at the time White House deputy chief of staff for operations.
Trump, responding to Hutchinson’s testimony, said, “I hardly know who this person, Cassidy Hutchinson, is, other than I heard very negative things about her (a total phony and ‘leaker’).”
Hutchinson also testified that in the days leading up to Jan. 6, Meadows at one point said, “Things might get real, real bad on Jan. 6.”
And on the morning of Trump’s planned speech at the Ellipse, just south of the White House grounds, Hutchinson said, Trump was made aware of individuals with weapons seeking to attend his rally and that many of them declined to pass through security checkpoints because they would have needed to surrender their weapons. Frustrated that those requirements were suppressing the size of the crowd, Trump suggested that the metal detectors be removed, Hutchinson testified.
Cohen said that, as concerned as he was about those developments, he was most troubled by the picture Hutchinson’s testimony painted of possible failures on the part of the Secret Service, an agency Cohen has worked closely with since it was folded in to DHS after the 9/11 terror attacks.
“Hutchinson’s testimony raises serious questions regarding security planning by the Secret Service on Jan 6. that will need to be answered,” Cohen said. “Did the Service leadership have advanced notice of the planned march on the Capitol? Did they have advanced notice of the president’s intent to join the crowd?”
Hutchinson said that Ornato, whom she described as “the conduit for security protocol between White House staff and the United States Secret Service,” was aware of possible violence planned for Jan. 6 in the preceding days — and alerted Meadows and Trump on the morning of Jan. 6.
Even with this information allegedly circulating among senior White House staff, the Secret Service ferried at least three of its protectees to travel to the Capitol — Vice President Mike Pence, Second Lady Karen Pence, and incoming Vice President Kamala Harris, who was still a senator from California — without supplementing their details with additional agents or coordinating with other agencies to shore up protection.
Ornato, a longtime Secret Service employee, currently serves as a senior official in the agency’s training branch. The Jan. 6 committee has expressed interest in interviewing him, and the Secret Service has said he is available to testify under oath, but did not provide further details.
PHOTO: Cassidy Hutchinson, a top former aide to Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, testifies during the sixth hearing by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the Capitol, June 28, 2022. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
Law enforcement officials have broadly characterized Jan. 6 as an intelligence failure, claiming that Washington’s myriad of law enforcement agencies did not fully grasp the threat landscape — despite warnings that appeared on social media in the weeks leading up the rally.
Secret Service officials have also said that local officials did not ask DHS to establish a special national security designation for the Jan. 6 sessions of Congress, so their hands were tied — though Cohen said DHS and the Secret Service don’t have to wait for local officials to reach out if they are aware of active threats.
Hutchinson’s testimony indicated that the Secret Service either had advanced warning of the threats and failed to notify others and formulate an appropriate response plan — or they were misled by White House officials who had a clearer understanding of the potential for violence and neglected to alert the appropriate agencies, Cohen said.
“These security lapses may not have been a result of incompetence, but instead due to deliberate actions taken by senior White House officials,” Cohen said. “If this information was not provided to the Secret Service, or if it was and the Secret Service failed to expand security operations, that would be highly disconcerting.”
Don Mihalek, a former senior Secret Service agent who is now an ABC News contributor, said the “interplay of information” among senior White House staff and protective agents about possible threats happens regularly — but that agents cannot prevent a protectee from doing their job, except in the rare instance of a specific and credible threat.
Mihalek said he believes the breakdown in coordination between agencies handicapped the Secret Service’s planning and response as protesters marched on the Capitol building. He defended agents’ decision to allow Pence, his wife, and Harris travel freely to the Capitol, despite possibly knowing the risk in advance.
“Nobody has a crystal ball,” Mihalek said. “There’s always a threat environment, and the Secret Service’s job is to mitigate threats as much as possible — and they don’t have the authority to override a protectee’s movement, outside of citing a credible and specific threat.”
In the wake of her appearance on Capitol Hill, Hutchinson has faced a deluge of criticism from Trump associates and supporters who have questioned her credibility. Republican Rep. Liz Cheney told “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl in an exclusive interview that she has full faith and confidence in Hutchinson’s word.
“I am absolutely confident in her testimony,” Cheney told Karl in a wide-ranging interview set to air in full on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” this Sunday. “The Committee is not going to stand by and watch her character be assassinated by anonymous sources, and by men who are claiming executive privilege.”
The campaign to discredit Cassidy Hutchinson has begun
Nolan D. McCaskill, Freddy Brewster – June 29, 2022
Cassidy Hutchinson, former aide to Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, before her testimony Tuesday to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. (Mandel Ngan / AFP/Getty Images)
In the hours after Cassidy Hutchinson delivered bombshell testimony to the Jan. 6 committee Tuesday, former President Trump and his allies rushed to attack the former White House staffer.
Hutchinson, who served as an aide to then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, told the panel that Trump was aware that some of his supporters were armed when he urged them to march to the Capitol. She also testified that Anthony Ornato, then the deputy White House chief of staff, told her the president was so “irate” that the Secret Service would not drive him to the Capitol that he reached for the steering wheel and lunged at an agent.
Trump and his allies have seized on media reports of unnamed Secret Service sources rejecting those statements to paint Hutchinson’s sworn testimony as unreliable. So far, though, none of the people who have disputed Hutchinson’s story have done so under oath.
Now members of the Jan. 6 committee, Hutchinson’s lawyer and several of Hutchinson’s former Trump administration colleagues are challenging her critics to follow the 25-year-old’s lead and testify before Congress under penalty of perjury.
“The lies and fabricated stories being told to the partisan Highly Unselect Committee, not only by the phony social climber who got caught yesterday, but by many others, are a disgrace to our, in serious decline, Nation,” Trump wrote Wednesday morning on his social media platform, Truth Social.
“No cross examination, no real Republicans, no lawyers, NO NOTHING. Fake stories and an all Fake Narrative being produced, with ZERO pushback allowed. Unselects should be forced to disband. WITCH HUNT!”
An anonymous Secret Service official told CNN that Ornato denies telling Hutchinson that Trump grabbed the steering wheel or an agent.
“The agents are prepared to say under oath that the incident itself did not occur,” the official told the network. CNN’s anonymous source did not dispute that Trump was furious that he was not being driven to the Capitol.
Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesman for the Secret Service, would not confirm the CNN report to The Times, saying only that the federal law enforcement agency “has been cooperating fully with the select committee since its inception in spring of 2021 and we will continue to do so including by responding formally and on the record to the committee regarding new allegations that surfaced in [Tuesday’s] testimony.”
Trump’s backers have also spread inaccurate claims about the plausibility of the steering wheel story. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) retweeted a graphic of the “Beast,” the presidential limousine, which appeared to illustrate how passengers are separated from the driver.
“Cassidy Hutchinson lied and the @January6thCmte held a special hearing [Tuesday] to broadcast her lies,” Greene wrote. “In ’23, every single one of them need to be held accountable for what they are putting Pres Trump, his admin, & Republicans through on the people’s dime. Enough of this.”
Trump was actually transported in an SUV, not the Beast, on the morning of Jan. 6, a video played by the committee shows.
Jody Hunt, a former assistant attorney general under Trump who’s now working as Hutchinson’s legal counsel, called on others with knowledge of her testimony to come forward and testify under oath. “Ms. Hutchinson testified, under oath, and recounted what she was told,” Hunt tweeted. “Those with knowledge of the episode also should testify under oath.”
Other Trump White House officials who leaped to Hutchinson’s defense also challenged her critics to come testify under oath. Alyssa Farah Griffin, former Vice President Mike Pence’s press secretary and White House strategic communications director, described Hutchinson as a “friend.”
“To anyone who would try to impugn her character, I’d be glad to put you in touch w/ @January6thCmte to appear UNDER OATH,” she said, highlighting the fact that skeptics of Hutchinson’s testimony have been able to dispute it publicly without penalty of perjury.
“Anyone downplaying Cassidy Hutchinson’s role or her access in the West Wing either doesn’t understand how the Trump WH worked or is attempting to discredit her because they’re scared of how damning this testimony is,” added Sarah Matthews, a former deputy press secretary.
“For those complaining of ‘hearsay,’ I imagine the Jan. 6 committee would welcome any of those involved to deny these allegations under oath.”
Former acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said Meadows, Ornato and Robert Engel, the head of Trump’s Secret Service detail and the agent Trump reportedly lunged toward, should be prepared to testify as well.
“This is explosive stuff,” Mulvaney tweeted. “If Cassidy is making this up, they will need to say that. If she isn’t they will have to corroborate. I know her. I don’t think she is lying.”
Committee members also stood by Hutchinson.
“I found Cassidy Hutchinson to be a thoroughly credible witness, telling us what she saw, what she heard,” Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) told MSNBC. “She was very careful to differentiate when she was a participant in the conversation or actions were related to her by others.”
“Cassidy Hutchinson is one of the most brave and honorable people I know,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) wrote in one tweet. He added in another: “Watching the desperation of Trump world to discredit the brave Cassidy Hutchinson reminds me of…. Everything trump does when he is busted and cornered.”
Punchbowl News reported Wednesday that Hutchinson was a target of alleged witness intimidation from Trump world.
At Tuesday’s hearing, Committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) displayed two examples of what she described as attempts to influence what witnesses told the committee.
One statement said that “they have reminded me a couple of times that Trump does read transcripts and just to keep that in mind.”
In another statement, a person was told, “He knows you’re loyal, and you’re going to do the right thing when you go in for your deposition.”
Kinzinger says Hutchinson has ‘more courage than most in GOP’
Mychael Schnell – June 30, 2022
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) on Thursday said former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who testified before the House Jan. 6 select committee this week, has “more courage than most” in the Republican Party.
Hutchinson, who previously worked as a special assistant to Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, appeared before the Jan. 6 panel on Tuesday, where she answered questions under oath about what went on in the White House before, during and after the Capitol riot.
Hutchinson’s public testimony was a surprise — the committee announced the hearing 24 hours before it was slated to begin, after panel members said presentations would be put on pause until July. Before her public testimony on Tuesday, Hutchinson spoke to select committee investigators behind closed doors four times.
Kinzinger, one of the two Republican lawmakers serving on the committee, called Hutchinson, now 26, a “hero” and “a real patriot.”
“I want to again say, Cassidy Hutchinson is a hero and a real patriot (not a faux ‘patriot’ that hates America so much they would attempt a coup.),” Kinzinger wrote on Twitter Thursday.
“Of course they will try to bully and intimidate her. But she isn’t intimidated. More courage than most in GOP,” he added.
During an appearance on CBS’s “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” Wednesday night, Kinzinger, a frequent critic of his GOP colleagues and the Republican Party, said Hutchinson was “showing far more courage than her boss, and showing far more courage than 99.8 percent of Republican members of Congress, or 100.”
Among the shocking revelations Hutchinson delivered during her public hearing was that Trump allegedly knew the crowd at his Ellipse speech was armed, but did not care because they were “not here to hurt me,” the ex-aide recalled the then-president saying. Trump, knowing the crowd had weapons, still directed his supporters to march to the Capitol, she said.
Hutchinson, however, is now facing scrutiny for part of her testimony pertaining to a car ride Trump took after his speech at the Ellipse on Jan. 6. Hutchinson said she was told that Trump, angry he was not allowed to go to the Capitol with his supporters, lunged for the steering wheel of the presidential vehicle in which he was riding.
The ex-aide said Robert Engel, the head of Trump’s security detail, grabbed the president’s arm and instructed him to take his hand off the steering wheel.
“Trump then used his free hand to lunge at Bobby Engel,” Hutchinson told the committee.
Hutchinson said she learned of the incident from Tony Ornato, then deputy White House chief of staff. She also said Engel was in the room when Ornato was telling the story, and noted that the head of security did not refute any details.
Additionally, multiple outlets are now reporting that Ornato first heard of the alleged incident during the hearing, and that Engel and the driver of the vehicle are prepared to testify that Trump did not physically attack or assault them, or lunge at the steering wheel.
But Hutchinson is standing by her testimony, and lawmakers on the select committee are emphasizing her credibility.
A number of Republican figures have testified before the Jan. 6 select committee in both public and private settings, including Hutchinson, Arizona state House Speaker Rusty Bowers, former Trump White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and members of the Trump family.
Others, however, have stonewalled the committee. Former Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro and former Trump White House strategist Stephen Bannon have both been indicted for contempt of Congress after they defied subpoenas from the panel.
The committee made its latest bid for cooperation on Wednesday, when it subpoenaed former White House counsel Pat Cipollone. He previously met with committee investigators in April, but did not participate in a formal recorded deposition.
Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Cheney said they were interested in hearing from Cipollone after their investigation “revealed evidence that Mr. Cipollone repeatedly raised legal and other concerns about President Trump’s activities on Jan. 6 and in the days that preceded.”
“While the Select Committee appreciates Mr. Cipollone’s earlier informal engagement with our investigation, the committee needs to hear from him on the record, as other former White House counsels have done in other congressional investigations,” they added.
‘Biblical’ insect swarms spur Oregon push to fight pests
CLAIRE RUSH – June 26, 2022
April Aamodt holds a Mormon cricket that she found in Blalock Canyon near Arlington, Ore. on Friday, June 17, 2022, while OSU Extension Agent Jordan Maley, far right, looks at more of the insects on the road. Both are involved in local outreach for Mormon cricket surveying. (AP Photo/Claire Rush)In this photo provided by rancher Diana Fillmore, grasshoppers swarm around the dog of rancher Diana Fillmore on her land in Arock, Ore., on July 6, 2021. Growing grasshopper outbreaks in recent years have slammed ranchers and farmers across parts of southern and eastern Oregon.. Farmers in Oregon already battling extreme drought and low water supplies are bracing for another grasshopper and Mormon cricket infestation. Severe outbreaks in recent years, fueled by drier, warmer conditions, have wreaked havoc. (Diana Fillmore via AP)In this August 2021 photo provided by rancher Diana Fillmore, Grasshoppers feed on rancher Diana Fillmore’s land in Arock, Ore. Farmers in Oregon already battling extreme drought and low water supplies are bracing for another grasshopper and Mormon cricket infestation. Severe outbreaks in recent years, fueled by drier, warmer conditions, have wreaked havoc. (Diana Fillmore via AP)In this August 2021 photo provided by rancher Diana Fillmore, Grasshoppers feed on vegetation on rancher Diana Fillmore’s land in Arock, Ore. Farmers in Oregon already battling extreme drought and low water supplies are bracing for another grasshopper and Mormon cricket infestation. Severe outbreaks in recent years, fueled by drier, warmer conditions, have wreaked havoc. (Diana Fillmore via AP)In this photo provided by rancher Diana Fillmore, grasshoppers cover rabbit brush that they’ve eaten bare on rancher Diana Fillmore’s land in Arock, Ore., on July 15, 2021. Farmers in Oregon already battling extreme drought and low water supplies are bracing for another grasshopper and Mormon cricket infestation. Severe outbreaks in recent years, fueled by drier, warmer conditions, have wreaked havoc. (Diana Fillmore via AP)
ARLINGTON, Ore. (AP) — Driving down a windy canyon road in northern Oregon rangeland, Jordan Maley and April Aamodt are on the look out for Mormon crickets, giant insects that can ravage crops.
“There’s one right there,” Aamodt says.
They’re not hard to spot. The insects, which can grow larger than 2 inches (5 centimeters), blot the asphalt.
Mormon crickets are not new to Oregon. Native to western North America, their name dates back to the 1800s, when they ruined the fields of Mormon settlers in Utah. But amidst drought and warming temperatures — conditions favored by the insects — outbreaks across the West have worsened.
The Oregon Legislature last year allocated $5 million to assess the problem and set up a Mormon cricket and grasshopper “suppression” program. An additional $1.2 million for the program was approved earlier this month.
It’s part of a larger effort by state and federal authorities in the U.S. West to deal with an explosion of grasshoppers and Mormon crickets that has hit from Montana to Nevada. But some environmental groups oppose the programs, which rely on the aerial spraying of pesticides across large swaths of land.
Maley, an Oregon State University Extension Agent, and Aamodt, a resident of the small Columbia River town of Arlington, are both involved in Mormon cricket outreach and surveying efforts in the area.
Video: Mormon crickets invade Idaho village
Mormon crickets have invaded the Village of Murphy in Owyhee County
In 2017, Arlington saw its largest Mormon cricket outbreak since the 1940s. The roads were “greasy” with the squashed entrails of the huge insects, which damaged nearby wheat crops.
Rancher Skye Krebs said the outbreaks have been “truly biblical.”
“On the highways, once you get them killed, then the rest of them come,” he explained. Mormon crickets are cannibalistic and will feast on each other, dead or alive, if not satiated with protein.
The insects, which are not true crickets but shield-backed katydids, are flightless. But they can travel at least a quarter of a mile in a day, according to Maley.
Aamodt fought the 2017 outbreak with what she had on hand.
“I got the lawnmower out and I started mowing them and killing them,” she said. “I took a straight hoe and I’d stab them.”
Aamodt has organized volunteers to tackle the infestation and earned the nickname “cricket queen.”
Another infestation last year had local officials “scrambling,” Maley said.
“We had all those high-value crops and irrigation circles,” he explained. “We just had to do what we could to keep them from getting into that.”
In 2021 alone, Oregon agricultural officials estimate 10 million acres of rangeland in 18 counties were damaged by grasshoppers and Mormon crickets.
Under the new Oregon initiative, private landowners like farmers and ranchers can request the Oregon Department of Agriculture (ODA) survey their land. If ODA finds more than three Mormon crickets or eight grasshoppers per square yard it will recommend chemical treatment. In some areas near Arlington surveyed in May soon after the hatch there were 201 Mormon crickets per square yard.
State officials recommend the aerial application of diflubenzuron. The insecticide works by inhibiting development, preventing nymphs from growing into adults. Landowners can be reimbursed for up to 75% of the cost.
Diana Fillmore is a rancher participating in the new cost-sharing initiative. She says “the ground is just crawling with grasshoppers” on her property.
ODA recommended she treat her 988-acre ranch in Arock in southeastern Oregon. As the program’s protocol calls for applying insecticide to only half the proposed area, alternately targeting swaths then skipping the next one, this means nearly 500 acres of her land will actually be sprayed.
Fillmore decided to act, remembering last year’s damage.
“It was horrible,” Fillmore said. “Grasshoppers just totally wiped out some of our fields.” She was forced to spend $45,000 on hay she normally wouldn’t have to buy.
Todd Adams, an entomologist and ODA’s Eastern Oregon field office and grasshopper program coordinator, said as of mid-June ODA had received 122 survey requests and sent out 31 treatment recommendations for roughly 40,000 acres (16,187 hectares).
Landowners must act quickly if they decide to spray diflubenzuron as it is only effective against nymphs.
“Once they become adults it’s too late,” Adams said.
Oregon’s new program is geared toward private landowners. But the federal government owns more than half of Oregon’s total land, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture has its own program for outbreaks on Western public land.
The U.S. government’s grasshopper suppression program dates back to the 1930s, and USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has sprayed millions of acres with pesticides to control outbreaks since the 1980s.
APHIS National Policy Director William Wesela said the agency sprayed 807,000 acres (326,581 hectares) of rangeland across seven Western states in 2021. So far this year, it has received requests for treatment in Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Nevada and Arizona, according to Jake Bodart, its State Plant Health Director for Oregon.
In a 2019 risk assessment APHIS recognized the main insecticide used, diflubenzuron, remains “a restricted use pesticide due to its toxicity to aquatic invertebrates,” but said risks are low.
APHIS says it follows methods to reduce concerns. It instructs pesticide applicators to skip swaths and apply the insecticide at lower rates than listed on the label.
But environmental groups oppose the program. Last month, the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation and the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) sued APHIS in the U.S. District Court in Portland. In their filing, they accuse APHIS of harming rangeland ecosystems and not adequately informing the public about treatment areas.
They also allege the agency violated the National Environmental Policy Act by not assessing all the alternatives to pesticides or analyzing the cumulative effects of the program.
Federal officials declined to comment on the suit because it is pending before courts.
Environmentalists say the reduction of grasshoppers diminishes the food source of other wildlife that prey on them.
“We’re very concerned about the impact of these broad, large sprays to our grassland and rangeland ecosystems,” said Sharon Selvaggio, the Xerces Society’s Pesticide Program Specialist.
Selvaggio added the sprays can be “toxic to a wide variety of insects” beyond grasshoppers and Mormon crickets, expressing particular concern for pollinators such as bees.
The two environmental groups want the agency to adopt a more holistic approach to pest management, by exploring methods such as rotational grazing.
“We’re not trying to stop APHIS from ever using pesticides again,” said Andrew Missel, staff attorney at Advocates for the West, the nonprofit law firm that filed the suit. “The point is really to reform” the program, he added.
In Arlington, the “cricket queen” Aamodt said residents had experimented with pesticide alternatives. During 2017, some covered trees in duct tape to trap the insects. The following year, local officials brought in goats to graze hillsides.
For now, those fighting against future infestations hope the new state program will bring much-needed support.
“Keep in mind that these are people that are taking time out from their own lives to do this,” said OSU Extension Agent Maley. “The volunteers made a huge difference.”
Rush is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
