2 foods Michael Pollan always buys organic to reduce his exposure to harmful chemicals
Hilary Brueck – April 15, 2024
Michael Pollan has been investigating how US farmers grow plants and raise livestock for 17 years.
As a result of what he’s seen, he has changed his diet in a few key ways.
When he shops for wheat, bread, and strawberries, he tries to find organic versions.
When Michael Pollan is shopping for his family, he tries to buy organic food.
But he knows that’s not always realistic — and that the word “organic” is not a synonym for healthy or pure. It is mired in agro-politics.
Though organically grown foods tend to be slightly more nutritious and better for the health of the planet, they aren’t always. Organic farming techniques generally also lead to lower yields, meaning farms produce less food, and it’s more expensive to buy.
Still, there are a couple of items Pollan will avoid if organic options aren’t available. That’s largely because the non-organic versions are often so laden with toxic chemicals, he told Business Insider, ahead of the release of his new documentary, “Food, Inc. 2,” which came out April 12.
“I just think it’s a good idea to keep synthetic pesticides out of your diet to the extent you can,” Pollan said. “There are practices in American agriculture that if people really knew about them, they would be outraged.”
Strawberries
Marcos del Mazo/LightRocket via Getty Images
After roughly 17 years of studying the food industry, Pollan can’t stomach non-organic strawberries anymore. They “are usually grown with some pretty nasty chemicals, soil fumigants and things like that,” he said.
Strawberries, with their delicate, permeable, soft skins have been a staple on the Environmental Working Group’s controversial “Dirty Dozen” list for years because the non-organic versions tend to have some of the highest surface pesticide levels of any fresh fruit or vegetable on the market.
As a result, demand for more organic strawberries has surged in recent years; organic strawberry acreage in California tripled between 2008 and 2019. (But nutrition experts stress there are still plenty of health benefits to eating regular strawberries, and giving a conventional berry a quick rinse in the sink can help reduce your pesticide exposure).
Organic strawberries aren’t grown that differently from conventionals — except when it comes to the fertilizers and weed killers farmers use. Typically, organic strawberries in the US are cultivated without soil fumigants or herbicides.
“In general, organic soils, they don’t get their fertility from chemicals, they get their fertility from compost and manure and things like that,” Pollan said. “Not in every case, but in many cases, they have more nutrients.”
Bread
Alain Pitton/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Pollan said he also buys organic flour and bread.
Conventional wheat hasn’t gotten the same bad reputation that strawberries have. It’s not listed on the Dirty Dozen list, in part because it’s not really considered fresh produce, and we don’t tend to eat it raw.
But studies suggest that conventional grains tend to harbor higher levels of cadmium, a toxic metal found in soil, than organic versions. Pollan worries, in particular, about the level of glyphosate that’s in conventional wheat at harvest.
“Wheat farmers have taken to spraying glyphosate on their crops to kill it — it’s a weed killer and plant killer,” he said. “We’re carrying body levels of glyphosate that are much higher than they used to be.”
Scientists are still arguing about whether this trend is worrisome, and some big grainmakers in the US are already phasing out their use of pre-harvest glyphosate, but Pollan is not waiting around.
“They’re taking this toxic pesticide, which has been linked to lymphoma and is banned in many countries, and they’re spraying it on our food right before harvest, very close to the time we’re going to eat it, he said. “It’s a very good argument for buying organic wheat and organic bread.”
Vietnam sentences real estate tycoon Truong My Lan to death in its largest-ever fraud case
Aniruddha Ghosal – April 11, 2024
HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Real estate tycoon Truong My Lan was sentenced Thursday to death by a court in Ho Chi Minh City in southern Vietnam in the country’s largest financial fraud case ever, state media Vietnam Net said.
Lan illegally controlled Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank between 2012 and 2022 and allowed 2,500 loans that resulted in losses of $27 billion to the bank, reported state media VnExpress. The court asked her to compensate the bank $26.9 million.
Despite mitigating circumstances — this was a first-time offense and Lan participated in charity activities — the court attributed its harsh sentence to the seriousness of the case, saying Lan was at the helm of an orchestrated and sophisticated criminal enterprise that had serious consequences with no possibility of the money being recovered, VnExpress said.
Her actions “not only violate the property management rights of individuals and organizations but also push SCB (Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank) into a state of special control; eroding people’s trust in the leadership of the Party and State,” VnExpress quoted the judgement as saying.
Her niece, Truong Hue Van, the chief executive of Van Thinh Phat, was sentenced to 17 years in prison for aiding her aunt.
Lan and her family established the Van Thing Phat company in 1992 after Vietnam shed its state-run economy in favor of a more market-oriented approach that was open to foreigners. She had started out helping her mother, a Chinese businesswoman, to sell cosmetics in Ho Chi Minh City’s oldest market, according to state media Tien Phong.
Van Thinh Phat would grow to become one of Vietnam’s richest real estate firms, with projects including luxury residential buildings, offices, hotels and shopping centers. This made her a key player in the country’s financial industry. She orchestrated the 2011 merger of the beleaguered SCB bank with two other lenders in coordination with Vietnam’s central bank.
The court found that she used this approach to tap SCB for cash. She indirectly owned more than 90% of the bank — a charge she denied — and approved thousands of loans to “ghost companies,” according to government documents. These loans then found their way back to her, state media VNExpress reported, citing the court’s findings.
She then bribed officials to cover her tracks, it added.
Former central bank official Do Thi Nhan was also sentenced Thursday to life in prison for accepting $5.2 million in bribes.
Lan’s arrest in October 2022 was among the most high-profile in an ongoing anti-corruption drive in Vietnam that has intensified since 2022. The so-called Blazing Furnace campaign has touched the highest echelons of Vietnamese politics. Former President Vo Van Thuong resigned in March after being implicated in the campaign.
But Lan’s trial shocked the nation. Analysts said the scale of the scam raised questions about whether other banks or businesses had similarly erred, dampening Vietnam’s economic outlook and making foreign investors jittery at a time when Vietnam has been trying to position itself as the ideal home for businesses trying to pivot their supply chains away from China.
The real estate sector in Vietnam has been hit particularly hard. An estimated 1,300 property firms withdrew from the market in 2023, developers have been offering discounts and gold as gifts to attract buyers, and despite rents for mixed-use properties known in Southeast Asia as shophouses falling by a third in Ho Chi Minh City, many in the city center are still empty, according to state media.
In November, Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, Vietnam’s top politician, said that the anti-corruption fight would “continue for the long term.”
Trump Allies Have a Plan to Hurt Biden’s Chances: Elevate Outsider Candidates
Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman, Shane Goldmacher and Rebecca Davis O’Brien – April 10, 2024
Two Skyhorse Publishing titles by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a Democrat running for president, in the office of the company’s founder, Tony Lyons, in New York, Aug. 10, 2023. (Jeenah Moon/The New York Times)
Allies of former President Donald Trump are discussing ways to elevate third-party candidates in battleground states to divert votes away from President Joe Biden, along with other covert tactics to diminish Democratic votes.
They plan to promote independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a “champion for choice” to give voters for whom abortion is a top issue — and who also don’t like Biden — another option on the ballot, according to one person who is involved in the effort and who, like several others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the plans.
Trump allies also plan to amplify the progressive environmental records of Kennedy and expected Green Party candidate Jill Stein in key states — contrasting their policies against the record-high oil production under Biden that has disappointed some climate activists.
A third parallel effort in Michigan is meant to diminish Democratic turnout in November by amplifying Muslim voters’ concerns about Biden’s support for Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip. Trump allies are discussing running ads in Dearborn, Michigan, and other parts of the state with large Muslim populations that would thank Biden for standing with Israel, according to three people familiar with the effort, which is expected to be led by an outside group unaffiliated with the Trump campaign.
Many of these third-party-boosting efforts will probably be run out of dark-money entities that are loosely supportive of Trump. Both the Trump campaign and the main super political action committee supporting the former president, MAGA Inc., are already aggressively framing Kennedy as a far-left radical to draw potential Democratic voters away from Biden.
Whatever the mechanism, the Trump team’s view is simple and is backed by public and private polling: The more candidates in the race, the better for Trump. Biden’s team agrees. And in a race that could be decided by tens of thousands of votes — as the last two presidential elections have been — even small shifts in the share of votes could change the result.
“There is no question that in a close presidential race, independent or minor party candidates can have a disproportionately large impact,” said Roger Stone, who is Trump’s longest-serving political adviser and who has worked on third-party campaigns, including advising Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party’s nominee in 2012.
Republican donors are pouring funds into Kennedy’s independent bid for the presidency. He has raised substantially more from donors who previously supported Trump than he has from those who backed Biden. Some are big names in Republican politics who have so far given relatively small amounts, including $3,300 last August from Elizabeth Uihlein, whose family is among the GOP’s biggest contributors.
Timothy Mellon, the largest single donor to Kennedy’s biggest super PAC, is also the largest backer of MAGA Inc. Mellon, a reclusive billionaire from one of America’s wealthiest families, has over the past year given the Kennedy super PAC $20 million and the Trump super PAC $15 million, as of the most recent disclosures that were filed in March. Another prominent Kennedy backer is Patrick Byrne, the former CEO of Overstock.com who worked with Trump on his effort to overturn the 2020 election.
Trump himself is intensely interested in the third-party candidates, according to aides. He is eager to know what their effect is expected to be on the race and how they are polling, although his engagement beyond asking questions of those around him is unclear.
Trump has been worried about the Libertarian Party pulling conservative voters away from him in November. But Richard Grenell, who is the former acting director of national intelligence and who is expected to play a big role in any second Trump administration, has been using his connections with Libertarian activists and donors to try to persuade them to attack Biden more than Trump, according to people familiar with his efforts.
Other Trump supporters are trying to help third-party and independent candidates with the expensive and arduous process of gathering the signatures needed to get on state ballots. Scott Presler, the conservative activist whom Lara Trump said she wanted as an early hire at the Republican National Committee, publicly reached out on social media to Stein and Cornel West, a left-wing academic who is running for president as an independent, to offer his help in collecting signatures to get them on the ballot.
Presler could not be reached for comment.
The moves by Trump allies come as the Democratic Party, alarmed by the potential for third-party candidates to swing the election, has mobilized a team of lawyers to scrutinize outsider candidates, including looking into whether they’ve followed the rules to get on state ballots.
For decades, third-party candidacies have loomed large in U.S. presidential elections. The best known in modern history is Ross Perot, whose run as a billionaire populist independent in 1992 garnered 19% of the vote and helped Bill Clinton win with only 43% of the popular vote. Ralph Nader, a Green Party candidate, siphoned votes away from Vice President Al Gore in the nail-biter 2000 presidential race against George W. Bush.
And in 2016, Stein, as the Green Party candidate, gave a meaningful — and arguably election-deciding — boost to Trump by drawing progressive voters away from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. That year, billionaire businessperson and Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus, a supporter of Trump, helped fund efforts to bolster Stein.
Polling shows that third-party candidates could play an especially large role in 2024. Most Americans are unhappy with the choice between Trump and Biden. Voters are increasingly disillusioned with the two major parties, and trust in American institutions has eroded over the past 30 years. Those trends provide an opening for candidates who style themselves as anti-establishment outsiders willing to blow up the system. Trump took advantage of similar conditions in 2016.
In a Quinnipiac University poll in late March, Biden and Trump both received less than 40% of the vote in a hypothetical five-way race, with Kennedy getting 13%, Stein receiving 4% and West capturing 3%.
In the multicandidate race, Trump led by a single percentage point; Biden led Trump by 3 percentage points in a hypothetical head-to-head race.
“The path to victory here is clearly maximizing the reach of these left-wing alternatives,” said Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist who also served as Trump’s campaign chair in 2016.
“No Republican knows that oil production under Biden is higher than ever. But Jill Stein’s people do,” Bannon added. “Stein is furious about the oil drilling. The college kids are furious about it. The more exposure these guys get, the better it is for us.”
Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for Trump, described Kennedy as a “leftist and liberal with a history of supporting an extreme environmental agenda.” He said more broadly of the Democratic push to challenge outsider candidates, “While Joe Biden and his allies claim to defend democracy, they are using financial and legal resources to prevent candidates access to the ballot.”
“President Trump believes any candidate who qualifies for the ballot should be allowed to make their case to America’s voters,” he added.
For months, the Trump team has been privately polling various iterations of third-party tickets in battleground states. It has concluded that candidates floated for the Green Party and No Labels, which recently abandoned its effort to field a presidential candidate, pulled substantially more votes from Biden than from Trump.
A person briefed on other polling by Trump allies said that while it varies by state, Kennedy also pulls more votes from Biden than from Trump. The person cited as an example the Trump team’s recent private polling of voters in Arizona. Trump loses Hispanic voters by a close margin in a head-to-head contest against Biden there, but he wins Hispanic voters on the full ballot in Arizona — an indication that third-party candidates draw more heavily from Biden’s core constituencies than from Trump’s.
Still, Kennedy is seen as more of a potential threat to Trump. He has spent the past few years appearing on conservative news media programs and talking about issues like his fierce opposition to the COVID-19 vaccine. Advisers to Trump say that many Republican voters don’t know anything about Kennedy’s liberal views on gun control and the environment, and the Trump team hopes to bring back some of those voters after framing Kennedy as a liberal Democrat.
Allies of Trump and Biden are in a tug of war to define Kennedy, who has far more support than any other third-party candidate.
Democratic lawyers and operatives, many of whom have privately said that neither Gore nor Hillary Clinton had teams that took third-party candidates seriously enough, are fighting hard to keep Kennedy off the ballot. The Democratic National Committee hired Lis Smith, a veteran communications operative, and tasked her with branding Kennedy as a pro-Trump spoiler candidate.
Kennedy’s campaign and the super PACs backing him have paid an array of lawyers and consultants to secure ballot access. One of the consultants, Rita Palma, was captured in a video detailing a strategy to encourage New York voters to support Kennedy: “The Kennedy voter and the Trump voter, our mutual enemy is Biden.” Palma outlined a hypothetical scenario in which Kennedy would win enough electoral votes to prevent either Trump or Biden from winning 270 electoral votes, pushing the decision to Congress in what is known as a contingent election.
On her account on the social platform X, Palma has expressed support over the years for both Kennedy and Trump. In posts first reported by CNN on Tuesday, she had endorsed Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen and described Sidney Powell, who has pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor counts related to Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia, as “my person of the decade.”
Stefanie Spear, a spokesperson for the Kennedy campaign, described Palma as “a ballot-access consultant” for upcoming signature collection efforts in New York. Of Palma’s remarks about the hypothetical scenario, Spear said Palma’s statements “in no way reflect the strategy of the Kennedy campaign.”
Spear did not respond to requests for comment about the Trump allies’ efforts to elevate Kennedy, or to inquiries about Palma’s support for Trump’s claims about the 2020 election.
Many conservative news media personalities and influencers recently turned against Kennedy after he decided to run as an independent instead of as a Democrat and it became apparent that he could pull votes from Trump.
Still, one complication with attacking Kennedy is that Trump has made clear that he likes him.
Trump put out a statement on Truth Social, his social media platform, that called Kennedy “a radical-left Democrat,” but he has mostly laid off him otherwise. Trump has called Kennedy a “very smart person” and has even privately floated him as a potential running mate, though his advisers view that prospect as extremely unlikely.
An outside group aligned with Trump asked a question about a Trump-Kennedy ticket in a poll several weeks ago, according to a person with knowledge of the survey. The results were not particularly striking. Trump had told an ally that he believed Kennedy could help him with voters who were upset with him for his support of the COVID-19 vaccine.
“I like Trump-Kennedy. I like the way that sounds,” Trump told another ally recently. “There’s something about that that I like.”
Trump’s Big Lie About Biden Implodes After MAGA Ally Admits Truth
Greg Sargent – April 11, 2024
Steve Bannon no doubt thought he was being deviously clever. Speaking with The New York Times this week, he elaborated on a sophisticated plan that Donald Trump’s allies have developed for boosting third-party candidates, so they siphon votes from President Biden.
A key part of this scheme, Bannon noted, entails boosting expected Green Party candidate Jill Stein by highlighting oil production under Biden to pull environmentally concerned voters away from him. As Bannon put it:
No Republican knows that oil production under Biden is higher than ever. But Jill Stein’s people do. … Stein is furious about the oil drilling. The college kids are furious about it. The more exposure these [third-party candidates] get, the better it is for us.
Whoa, that’s some serious 11-dimensional chess, Steve! Except for one thing. If you think for a second about Bannon’s quote—that “oil production under Biden is higher than ever”—it entirely undermines one of Trump’s biggest lies: the claim that Biden’s effort to transition the United States to a decarbonized economy has destroyed the nation’s “energy independence,” leaving us weak and hollow to our very core.
This saga captures something essential about how MAGA-world fights the information wars. You’ll note that Bannon is not even slightly troubled by the idea that telling the truth about Biden’s record to one set of voters—left-leaning, green-minded ones—might contradict one of Trump’s most frequent lies to countless others.
It isn’t just that for Bannon, assertions should be evaluated purely for their instrumental usefulness. It’s also that he apparently has total confidence that voters who really need to hear the truth he uttered—those in the industrial and Appalachian heartlands who are the targets of Trump’s propaganda—never, ever will, even if he admits to it right in the paper of record.
It’s hard to overstate how central Trump’s story about “energy independence” is to his campaign. His basic claim is that under his presidency, we produced record levels of oil, inherently making us strong, whereas under Biden, we’re seeing a “war on American energy” responsible for many ills: deindustrialization, vulnerability to leftist enemies within, dependence on China and other nefarious “globalist” actors, and all-around national decline.
In reality, Biden’s green policies are facilitating billions of dollars in investments in rebuilding the industrial base via green energy manufacturing, which is creating a whole lot of advanced manufacturing jobs for people without college degrees—exactly the targets of Trump’s demagoguery. Those policies are driving a manufacturing boom, ironically in red-leaning communities. Green manufacturing makes us stronger, not weaker—more prepared for a future in which climate change becomes a more pressing threat, not just to the world, but to our own national interests.
Importantly, all this is happening while the U.S., under Biden, is producing more oil and more natural gas than ever before. Incidentally, as Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler details, Trump wasn’t even that responsible for the recent oil boom anyway: It started before his presidency, thanks to new energy technologies.
“The U.S. is now producing more oil and gas than it ever has, and exporting morethan ever,” Jesse Jenkins, an energy expert at Princeton University, told me. “We’re a net exporter of all fossil fuels. So we’ve achieved that long-sought goal of physical energy security.”
Now the idea of “energy independence” is confusing to begin with. Even if we export more than ever before, oil is a global commodity, which inevitably makes us vulnerable to international shocks. But the answer to that is to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, not to drill more, as Trump wants. Regardless, by Trump’s own metric—that “energy independence” is good, that net exports of fossil fuel energy make us definitionally strong—we’ve achieved more of this under Biden. And critically, his policies are at the same time transitioning us to a post-carbon economy.
Bannon knows all this. Yet Trump and his allies keep repeating the contrary story. “They obviously know this narrative is a crock of lies,” Jenkins said.
It’s worth stressing that some progressive voters might nonetheless be reasonably upset about oil production under Biden. But the broader story remains that Biden is moving us toward a decarbonized economy by using the levers of government to boost demand and production of renewable energy sources over time.
“What’s important to note is that U.S. greenhouse gas emissions are falling,” Jenkins says. That both this and robust oil production and exports are occurring simultaneously, he notes, would probably be viewed positively by moderate voters, including in Appalachia and the industrial Midwest.
That is, if those voters hear any of this through the fog of MAGA agitprop. Trump’s attacks on Biden’s energy “weakness” are designed to tell a meta story that has little to do with policy details: Trump will protect us from an array of shadowy forces associated with green energy—leftism, China, ill will toward good ol’ American fossil fuel–guzzling SUVs—while Biden is making us vulnerable to them.
You can see how this works in Trump’s proposal for across-the-board tariffs. These would hike prices for American consumers—they would impose a tax—even as Democrats have opted for green policies that move away from the more traditional policy of a carbon tax. Yet as Brian Beutler and Matthew Yglesias explain, Trump can still present his tariffs as a form of protection and Biden’s green agenda as a form of vulnerability, because each of these policies “code” that way for many voters.
Bannon understands all this. Strikingly, he declares that “no Republican knows” that oil production is so high under Biden, which is another way of saying that no Republican voters know that Trump is lying in their faces. Bannon and other MAGA propagandists are making sure of that. They are using their influence over information flows to those voters to ensure that the truth never reaches them. And they’re absolutely confident in their ability to succeed.
US consumer prices came in hotter than expected in March, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released Wednesday morning.
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 0.4% over the previous month and 3.5% over the prior year in March, an acceleration from February’s 3.2% annual gain in prices. The data matched February’s month-over-month increase.
Both measures came in ahead of economist forecasts of a 0.3% monthly increase and a 3.4% annual increase, according to data from Bloomberg.
The hot print complicates the Federal Reserve’s next move on interest rates as the central bank works to bring inflation back down to its 2% target. Fed officials have categorized the path down to 2% as “bumpy.”
Investors now anticipate two 25 basis point cuts this year, down from the six cuts expected at the start of the year, according to updated Bloomberg data.
On a “core” basis, which strips out the more volatile costs of food and gas, prices in March climbed 0.4% over the prior month and 3.8% over last year — matching February’s data. Both measures were higher than economist expectations of a 0.3% monthly increase and a 3.7% annual gain.
Markets sank following the data’s release, with the 10-year Treasury yield (^TNX) jumping more than 14 basis points to touch above 4.5% for the first time in 2024.
“Today’s crucial CPI print has likely sealed the fate for the June FOMC meeting with a cut now very unlikely,” Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management, said in reaction to the print. “This marks the third consecutive strong reading and means that the stalled disinflationary narrative can no longer be called a blip.”
“In fact, even if inflation were to cool next month to a more comfortable reading, there is likely sufficient caution within the Fed now to mean that a July cut may also be a stretch, by which point the US election will begin to intrude with Fed decision making,” Shah added.
Ryan Sweet, chief US economist at Oxford Economics, agreed, adding the hotter data may push more policymakers “into the two-rate cut camp.”
“The Fed has a bias toward cutting interest rates this year, but the strength of the labor market and recent gains in inflation are giving the central bank the wiggle room to be patient,” Sweet said. “If the Fed does not cut interest rates in June, then the window could be closed until September because there is little data released between the June and July meetings that could alter the Fed’s calculus.”
“The odds are rising that the Fed cuts rates less than 75 basis points this year,” he predicted.
Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell speaks during a news conference the Federal Reserve in Washington, Wednesday, March 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
But Greg Daco, chief economist at EY, cautioned investors to be patient: “I think we have to be very careful with this idea that it’s a play-by-play process.”
In an interview with Yahoo Finance, he noted that “these types of readings do still point to disinflationary pressures. It’s still moving in the right direction, and it will take time.”
Following the data’s release, markets were pricing in an 80% chance the Federal Reserve holds rates steady at its June meeting, according to data from the CME FedWatch Tool. That’s up from a roughly 40% chance the day prior.
Investors are also putting the probability that the central bank won’t cut rates in July at higher than 50%, with markets now largely anticipating the first cut will come in September.
Shelter, gas prices remain sticky
Notable call-outs from the inflation print include the shelter index, which rose 5.7% on an unadjusted, annual basis and 0.4% month over month, matching February. The shelter index accounted for over 60% of the total 12-month increase in core prices.
Sticky shelter inflation is largely to blame for higher core inflation readings, according to economists.
The index for rent and owners’ equivalent rent (OER) each rose 0.4% on a monthly basis. Owners’ equivalent rent is the hypothetical rent a homeowner would pay for the same property. In February, the index for rent rose 0.5% while OER increased 0.4%.
Energy prices — largely to blame for the increase in headline inflation — continued to rise in March, buoyed by higher gas prices. The index jumped another 1.1% last month after rising 2.3% in February. On a yearly basis, the index climbed 2.1%.
The BLS noted the motor vehicle insurance index rose 2.6% in March, following a 0.9% increase in February. The index for apparel increased 0.7% over the month. Other indexes that rose in March included personal care, education, and household furnishings and operations.
The food index increased 2.2% in March over the last year, with food prices rising 0.1% from February to March. The index for food at home held steady over the month.
However, food away from home ticked up 0.3% month over month after rising 0.1% in February.
Why auto insurance costs are rising at the fastest rate in 47 years
Pras Subramanian, Senior Reporter – April 10, 2024
As car prices moderate from a pandemic-era surge, insurance has pushed the cost of car ownership to the brink for many Americans.
New data out on Wednesday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed auto insurance costs last month were 22.2% higher than they were a year ago and increased from February’s 20.6% year-over-year gain. March’s rise in insurance costs is the largest gain since December 1976, when prices rose 22.4% over the prior year.
The sticker shock hitting many American drivers is being driven by a rise in accidents, the severity of accidents, and geographical factors combining to create a perfect storm and push costs higher.
‘Severity’ and bodily injury claims on the rise
The most alarming factor driving insurance costs higher is more severe claims.
“In general, the numbers of crashes, injuries, and fatalities are up, and inflation has made the cost of repairs more expensive,” AAA spokesperson Robert Sinclair told Yahoo Finance.
Sinclair said motorists developed “bad habits” on the road during pandemic lockdowns, contributing to current behavior. For example, as the New York Times reported earlier this year, researchers in Nevada discovered that during the pandemic, motorists were speeding more (and driving through intersections), seat belt use was down, and intoxicated driving arrests were up to near-historic highs.
Sinclair also pointed to NHTSA data, which found that in 2021, at the height of the pandemic, road fatalities increased by 10.5% to their highest level since 2005, even while most Americans stayed at home. The NHTSA said it was the highest percentage increase it had ever seen. The agency found that fatalities in 2022 only decreased by 0.3% as compared to 2021.
Insurance tech firm Insurify found that auto insurance premium hikes were “largely due to the skyrocketing price of auto parts and the increasing number and severity of claims.” And while increases may moderate, analysts still believe further premium hikes are on the horizon.
“While the magnitude of rate increases is likely to ease somewhat, after several years of double-digit increases, some lingering claim cost inflation and adverse claim severity and frequency will likely lead to a ‘higher for longer’ auto rate environment,” CFRA analyst Cathy Seifert told Yahoo Finance.
Not surprisingly, severe accidents leave insurance companies with rising loss ratios, or a share of premiums collected that insurers paid out in claims.
“Broadly speaking, severity in [the] auto [business] is running mid- to high-single digits — think closer to mid in the vehicle severity, think closer to high in bodily injury — and so that’s sort of where trends are running today,” Travelers (TRV) personal insurance president Michael Klein said during the insurance giant’s latest earnings call in January.
“We’ve seen a bit of a mix shift towards more bodily injury claims, which is one of the things that has us keeping our severity trend estimates at that sort of elevated level,” Klein added.
In response, Travelers increased premiums, especially for customers renewing their policies. In the fourth quarter, its renewal premium price change was a whopping 16.7% in its auto business, contributing more than $2 billion of additional premium into the segment compared to the same quarter last year.
GEICO, the insurer owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-A, BRK-B), also felt the effects of those rising severity claims.
The second-largest auto insurer in America behind only State Farm, GEICO was hit by six consecutive quarters of underwriting losses beginning at the height of the pandemic. The company has since responded with more aggressive policy writing, trimmed marketing budgets, and higher premiums.
GEICO eventually earned $3.64 billion before taxes from underwriting in 2023, but the trend of higher severity of claims remains.
Shareholders pose for a picture with a GEICO mascot at the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder’s meeting on April 30, 2022, in Omaha, Neb. (Scott Olson/Getty Images) (Scott Olson via Getty Images)
“Average claims severities continued to rise in 2023 due to higher auto repair parts prices, labor costs, and medical inflation,” the insurer said in parent Berkshire Hathaway’s 2023 annual report, despite the frequencyof claims coming down for property and auto claims.
GEICO said, “Average claims severities in 2023 were higher for all coverages, including property damage (14-16% range), collision (4-6% range), and bodily injury (5-7% range).” GEICO also sought rate increases in numerous states in 2022 and 2023 in response to accelerating claims costs.
On the flip side, insurer Progressive (PGR) noted in its latest earnings report that the severity and frequency of claims were coming down, suggesting some relief for the insurer’s bottom line and perhaps consumer wallets.
“Severity seemed to moderate a little bit [in Q4], and so we’re hoping that it’s a little bit benign,” CEO Tricia Griffith said in Progressive’s fourth quarter earnings call. “When you look at last year, we were affected by fixing cars, and that seems to be a little bit calmer.”
Complex repairs, rising labor costs
As bodily injury and property damage costs rise, so too have the incidence of more complex repairs and the need for more expensive mechanics to get them done.
New vehicle prices have risen over 20% since 2019, leading to an increase in the cost of parts. Additionally, newer cars contain more technology, such as sensors and control modules built into bumpers and exterior panels, which makes a simple fender bender a potential several-thousand-dollar repair.
And like almost all industries since the pandemic, the cost of labor has risen dramatically as well.
“Within auto repair, most of our expenses are human beings, and as minimum wage laws come into effect, that pushes the cost of labor up,” a general manager at a major Southern California-based auto dealer told Yahoo Finance.
An auto mechanic walks under a vehicle being repaired from a lift at Gates Automotive Service on Jan. 13, 2022, in Louisville, Ky. (Jon Cherry/Getty Images) (Jon Cherry via Getty Images)
A lack of supply of technicians that handle the most complex repairs has also pushed costs higher. “To give you some perspective, I have transmission technicians and diesel technicians that make $200,000 a year,” the general manager said.
The number of workers employed in the motor vehicles and parts industry fell more than overall employment during the pandemic, dropping almost 40% from peak to trough. And while employment in this industry has since surpassed pre-pandemic levels, it took until August 2022 to recover.
Another issue for dealers and the service business is the rise of electric cars.
While the rate of service for EVs is lower, EVs have a “much higher magnitude” of costs, the general manager said, when it comes to body or structural repairs. EVs also tend to require a more advanced tech solution, requiring even more specialized technicians in an even shorter supply.
Griffith, Progressive’s CEO, for her part noted that garage labor fees were still rising, saying the company’s auto parts inflation was “nearing zero,” but that auto services inflation was still rising by “mid-single digits.”
Weather catastrophes ‘are not going away’
Where you live also plays a big factor in what you pay to insure your vehicle: Severe weather in states like Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina has drivers paying premium costs that exceed the national average.
In Louisiana, auto insurance costs are the highest in the nation on a per capita basis, with 4.7% of the median household’s income going toward car insurance, Insurify noted.
In Florida, what Insurify called “rampant” insurance fraud, along with natural disasters, pushed premiums up to nearly $3,000 a year on average.
“The average full-coverage insurance rate in Florida is $243 per month, influenced by severe weather events that strain the state’s insurers,” Insurify’s report said. “In 2022, Hurricane Ian caused $109.5 billion worth of damage in Florida, making it the costliest hurricane in the state’s history, according to NOAA.”
Insurers and policyholders did get a respite in 2023 with a relatively calm hurricane season, but there’s no expectation that a repeat will happen in the years ahead.
“While 2023 results benefited from the lack of a record-breaking catastrophe (such as Hurricane Ian), catastrophes and volatile and outsized weather patterns are not going away,” CFRA’s Seifert said.
This post was originally published on March 16, 2024, and updated to reflect new inflation data.
EPA’s New Rule Aims to Cut Toxic Emissions, But Cancer Alley Air Pollution Could Worsen
Legal challenges could delay the EPA’s ability to enact the measures, which coincide with Louisiana activists’ fight against projects poised to increase air pollution.
By Julie Dermansky – April 10, 2024
Barbara Washington with Inclusive Louisiana speaks out against the expansion of Koch Industries’ methanol plant, April 8, 2024. Credit: Julie Dermansky
Leaders in the fight for clean air from Louisiana’s Cancer Alley joined the Environmental Protection Agency’s Administrator Michael Regan on April 9 in Washington, D.C., for the announcement of a new rule governing air toxics-spewing chemical plants. The rule is intended to prevent cancer in surrounding low-income and minority communities.
The announcement represents a milestone for environmental justice in communities historically overburdened by air-toxics pollution. But a growing number of proposed industrial projects threaten to further pollute the mostly low-income Black neighborhoods along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans — already home to a large number of petrochemical plants and refineries.
Robert Taylor, leader of the Concerned Citizens of St. John the Baptist Parish, and Sharon Lavigne, head of RISE St. James, expressed gratitude to Regan for setting the new rules. They praised him for following through with his promise to help their communities, though both activists are painfully aware that the fight for environmental justice is far from over.
Robert Taylor with the Concerned Citizens of St. John the Baptist Parish in the Zion Travelers Cemetery next to the Marathon Refinery, April 6, 2024. Credit: Julie Dermansky
The EPA stressed that the regulations, which pertain to synthetic organic chemical plants and polymer- and resin-producing facilities, will dramatically reduce the risk of elevated air toxics-related cancer in communities surrounding plants that emit ethylene oxide (EtO), chloroprene, and other dangerous chemicals, officials said. Rules pertaining to EtO and chloroprene have been years in the making.
The new regulations for EtO, chloroprene, benzene, vinyl chloride, 1,3 butadiene, and ethylene dichloride emissions pertains to over 200 manufacturing facilities across the nation that emit one or more of the hazardous chemicals.
One of Evonik’s facilities in St. John the Baptist Parish, which is a source for EtO emissions, April 8, 2024. Credit: Julie DermanskyA Dow Chemical facility in Lake Charles Parish was identified by the EPA as being one of the largest emitters of Eto in the country, Jan. 12, 2024. Credit: Julie Dermansky
On April 8, RISE St. James and Inclusive Louisiana, another Cancer Alley community advocacy group in St. James, held back-to-back press conferences before meeting in court to challenge St. James Parish officials for permitting Koch Industries’ planned expansion of its looming methanol plant in St. James, which is already underway.
Gail LeBoeuf In front of Inclusive Louisiana’s new headquarters in St. James Parish, April 8, 2024. Credit: Julie DermanskyPam Spees, far right, an attorney representing the Cancer Alley plaintiffs speaks at Inclusive Louisiana’s press conference on April 8, 2024. Credit: Julie Dermansky
Community members argue that the parish council didn’t weigh the potential damage from the plant’s pollution against its economic benefits. “We have had enough of them telling us about jobs and the economy when our health is suffering,” Barbara Washington, one of the founders of Inclusive Louisiana, said before the hearing began. Gail LeBoeuf, another founding member of Inclusive Louisiana, concurred, adding that the economic gains to the community from the plant expansion are negligible.
The “parish and Koch attorneys say the groups have misread and misapplied the parish’s land-use laws and engaged in ‘hyperbole’ over the expansion’s pollution levels and its possible health impacts on its neighbors,” according to the Advocate, a Louisiana newspaper.
Koch Industries’ methanol facility in St. James, October 22, 2022. Credit: Julie DermanskyA former high school in St. James Parish is now an administrative office for Koch Industries’ methanol plant, Oct 22, 2022. Credit: Julie Dermansky
The fact that Koch Industries’ administrative office is located in a former high school, which Yuhuang Chemical Industries bought from the parish’s school board a few years ago before selling it to Koch, shows how the parish favors industry over community concerns, according to members of RISE St. James and Inclusive Louisiana. They allege that the sale of the facility, which had been renovated shortly before its sale to a chemical company, was part of the parish’s plan to depopulate the Fifth District, where Formosa Plastics plans to build its massive petrochemical complex.
Members of the Descendants Project, another Cancer Alley community group, attended the St. John the Baptist Parish’s council meeting held on April 9, to voice opposition to a vote the council held to weaken environmental protections already in place. The council voted 7 to 2 to alter its zoning rules — which in turn granted a waiver to Greenfield LA to exempt them from a 2,000-foot setback, bringing the company one step closer to building a proposed grain elevator project. The controversial facility, if realized, will subject the community to additional air pollution. The Descendants Project asserts the grain elevator will destroy its community’s way of life by further industrializing the once pastoral region. Greenfield, like Koch, contends that its project will be an asset to the community and will not harm it.
EPA Administrator Michael Regan, left, Robert Taylor, middle, the founder of the Concerned Citizens of St. John the Baptist Parish, and Lydia Gerard, far right, walk to the Fifth Ward Elementary School during Regan’s “Journey for Justice Tour,” November 16, 2021. Credit: Julie DermanskySharon Lavigne with EPA Administrator Michael Regan in St. James Parish, Nov. 16, 2021. Credit: Julie Dermansky
At the announcement of the new EPA rule, Regan reflected on his first visit to Robert Taylor’s community in November 2021 on his “Journey to Justice” tour. He said the Black students at the Fifth Ward Elementary School who were exposed to chloroprene emissions from the nearby Dupont/Denka manufacturing facility, reminded him of his son. Regan said that listening to Cancer Alley community members and others exposed to toxic chemicals across the Gulf south during that trip inspired him to use his “bully pulpit” to protect them as much as he could, and praised the Biden administration for directing him to do so.
Before the new rule was announced, Taylor, whose community has the dubious distinction of being the only one in the U.S. exposed to EtO and chloroprene, expressed concern to me that despite the new EPA regulations, the children that go to the Fifth Ward Elementary School will continue to be bombarded with toxic emissions until the rule is enacted. He is outraged that students still attend the school, and he can not understand why, even after the EPA sent a highly critical letter to the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) and the state’s Board of Health that encouraged the state regulators to direct the St. John the Baptist School Board to relocate the children.
The EPA does arguably have the power to shut down the plant, though it would not give me a yes or a no when I asked the agency if it does. When the EPA had the Department of Justice file a complaint against Denka in 2023, it cited an emergency power granted in Section 303 of the Clean Air Act that not only empowers the agency to take legal action, but also to use its authority to address risks before they cause harm. This includes the ability to stop a facility from operating for at least 60 days while other measures are being considered if the EPA deems its emissions to be an imminent and substantial endangerment to the public health or welfare of the environment.
Lavigne, who won the Goldman Environmental Prize for her efforts fighting against petrochemical plants in 2021, had to walk back her claims of victory against Formosa Plastic’s proposed multi-billion-dollar plastic manufacturing complex earlier this year. Louisiana’s First Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the LDEQ’s decision to issue air pollution permits for the project, which a lower court had revoked in 2022.
RISE St. James continues to call on the Biden administration to protect its community by directing the the U.S. Army Corps. of Engineers to deny Formosa Plastics a permit to build in designated wetlands. In November 2020, the Corp. revoked a permit it issued to the company after acknowledging errors in its original analysis.
Wilma Subra in her office in Iberia Parish, March 3, 2024. Credit: Julie Dermansky
Environmental scientist and community advocate Wilma Subra, who was part of a team of environmental justice advocates that advised the EPA on the finalized rule on chemical plants, was hesitant to hail the new regulation as a major victory. “While there is a lot to cheer about,” she told me on a call after the rule was announced, “only time will tell if they will ever be enacted.”
Subra noted that legal challenges and/or a change in who is running the White House could derail the rule from being enacted. And even if the new rule is put in place, the companies impacted by it have a grace period between 90 days and up to two years to comply with different requirements included in it. Meanwhile, Louisiana is poised to welcome more polluting facilities to Cancer Alley and to allow existing ones to expand.
Like Taylor, Subra is dismayed that students still attend the Fifth Ward Elementary School. She warned school board members in 2023 about the cumulative health impacts that exposure to nearby toxic emssions can have, especially on children.
A flare at Shell’s Norco Manufacturing Complex in St. Charles Parish, Jan. 19, 2024. Credit: Julie DermanskyExxonmobil Baton Rouge Refinery and Chemical Complex, Jan. 17, 2024. Credit: Julie Dermansky
Subra also pointed out that with more extreme weather events predicted by climate scientists due to climate change, like the cold snaps in south Louisiana this winter when temperatures dipped below freezing for a few days in a row, chemical plants often release toxic emissions well beyond their permitted levels. While the new rule could lead to a decrease in some toxic emissions when these types of pollution incidents occur, it is unclear how much impact the new rule could have during these events.
Julie Dermansky is a multimedia reporter and artist based in New Orleans. She is an affiliate scholar at Rutgers University’s Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights. Visit her website at www.jsdart.com.
PFAS is everywhere, including drinking water. A researcher pouring a water sample.
Almost half the tap water in the United States contains PFAS, a class of chemicals linked to serious health problems. On Wednesday, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that, for the first time, municipal utilities will have to detect and remove PFAS from drinking water.
Here’s what you need to know.
What are PFAS?
In 1938 a young chemist working on refrigerants for Dupont accidentally discovered a new compound that was remarkably resistant to water and grease, a finding that would lead to the creation of the Teflon brand of nonstick cookware.
Today there are nearly 15,000 per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, which collectively go by the acronym PFAS, according to a database maintained by the EPA.
The common link is that they have a special bond of carbon and fluoride atoms, making them incredibly strong and resistant to heat, water, oil and dirt. For that reason, PFAS is used for everyday items as varied as microwave popcorn bags, water-repellent clothing and stain-resistant carpets. PFAS are also in firefighting foam, cosmetics, shampoos, toys and even dental floss.
Where are PFAS?
Everywhere, including drinking water. The indestructible nature that makes PFAS useful in some products also makes them harmful. The chemicals are virtually indestructible and do not fully degrade, accumulating in the environment and the human body.
The chemicals are so ubiquitous that they can be found in the blood of almost every person in the country. One recent government study detected PFAS chemicals in nearly half the nation’s tap water. A global study of more than 45,000 water samples around the world found that about 31% of tested groundwater samples that weren’t near any obvious source of contamination had PFAS levels considered harmful to human health.
What does PFAS do to the body?
According to the EPA, exposure to PFAS can cause damage to the liver and immune system and also has been linked to low birth weight, birth defects and developmental delays as well as increased risk of some prostate, kidney and testicular cancers. New research published in the past year found links between PFAS exposure and a delay in the onset of puberty in girls, leading to a higher incidence of breast cancer, renal disease and thyroid disease; a decrease in bone density in teenagers, potentially leading to osteoporosis; and an increased risk of Type 2 diabetes in women.
Why didn’t the EPA regulate PFAS in water sooner?
Many environmental advocates argue that PFAS contamination should have been dealt with long ago.
“For generations, PFAS chemicals slid off every federal environmental law like a fried egg off a Teflon pan,” said Ken Cook, president and co-founder of the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit advocacy group.
Activists blame chemical companies, which for decades hid evidence of the dangers of PFAS, according to lawsuits and a peer-reviewed study, published in the Annals of Global Health, of previously secret industry documents.
The new EPA rule requires utilities to reduce PFAS in drinking water to near-zero levels.
How can I get rid of PFAS?
Not easily. In homes, filters attached to faucets or in pitchers generally do not remove PFAS substances. Under-sink reverse-osmosis systems have been shown to remove most but not all PFAS in studies performed by scientists at Duke University and North Carolina State University.
Municipal water systems can install one of several technologies including carbon filtration or a reverse-osmosis water filters that can reduce levels of the chemicals.
Now that limits have been set, when will PFAS disappear from tap water?
It could take years. Under the rule, a water system has three years to monitor and report its PFAS levels. Then, if the levels exceed the EPA’s new standard, the utility will have another two years to purchase and install filtration technology.
But trade groups and local governments are expected to mount legal challenges against the regulation, potentially delaying it even before a court makes a final ruling. And if former President Donald Trump were to retake the White House in November, his administration could also reverse or weaken the rule.
Trump is recreating his web of chaos at home and abroad in a preview of what a second term could look like
Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN – April 10, 2024
Marco Bello/Reuters
Some top Democrats worry that Americans have forgotten the chaos that raged every day Donald Trump was president, and that voters’ faded recall of the uproar will end up handing him a second term.
The presumptive GOP nominee is, however, doing a good job of jogging memories as he blazes a trail of disruption through Congress, immigration and national security policy, reproductive health care and the nation’s top courts.
After storming to the Republican nomination, Trump is again the epicenter of controversy. His volatile personality, loyalty tests, rampant falsehoods, thirst to serve his political self-interest and the aftershocks of his first term are compromising attempts to govern the country. And the election is still seven months away.
Many of today’s most intractable conflicts in US politics can be traced to Trump and the turmoil that is an essential ingredient of his political appeal to base voters who want Washington and its rules ripped down – no matter the consequences.
Events this week – and over the first three months of this year – illustrate how much Trump has shaped the political tumult:
— On Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson suffered another stunning defeat, further gutting his authority, after hard right GOP members blocked a bill to reauthorize a critical surveillance spying program at Trump’s behest.
— Another measure critical to America’s capacity to wield its global power and its international reputation – a $60 billion arms package for Ukraine – is still going nowhere. Trump ally Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is threatening to topple Johnson if he dares to pass it.
— Nationwide chaos is, meanwhile, spreading in the wake of the Trump-built Supreme Court conservative majority overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022. In the latest stunning twist, Arizona is about to revert to a near total Civil War-era abortion ban.
— Bipartisan efforts to solve a border crisis are in tatters after Trump’s House followers in February killed the most sweeping and conservative bill in years. The ex-president appeared to want to deprive President Joe Biden of an election-year win and to continue his searing claims that America is being invaded by undocumented migrants he calls “animals.”
— Some of the nation’s top courts are being tied in knots by Trump’s incessant, and often frivolous, appeals as he desperately tries to postpone the shame of becoming the first ex-president to go on criminal trial. His unchained social media posts may be coming perilously close to infringing a gag order ahead of his hush money trial beginning Monday.
— The Supreme Court will later this month wrestle with Trump’s claims of almost unchecked presidential power – a constitutional conundrum that no other president in two-and-a-half centuries of American history ever raised. The suit is largely a ruse to delay his federal election interference trial – and it is working.
Trump’s entanglement in some of the most intense political storms rocking Washington, and reverberating even beyond US shores, offers fresh evidence of his power – expressed through his capacity to make key elements of the Republican Party bend to his will. It highlights his mercurial personality and a political style that relies on instinct rather than long-term strategy. And it is leaving no doubt that the mayhem that burst out of the Oval Office during his administration would return at an even more intense level if he gets back there in 2025.
Trump delivers a blow to Johnson – then invites him to Mar-a-Lago
Trump dispensed his orders to his acolytes in the House with the words “Kill FISA” on his Truth Social network.
The former president was referring to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which national security officials say is critical to allowing espionage agencies to listen to communications of suspected terrorists and US adversaries. Some of those key powers need to be reauthorized by Congress by the middle of the month.
Critics of the law, including some civil liberties groups and some conservatives, argue that Section 702 of the act, which allows the surveillance of foreigners outside the US, is unconstitutional because sometimes Americans in contact with those targets get swept up in the net. But Trump is bent on vengeance against the FBI over its investigation into contacts between his 2016 campaign and Russia. He claimed in a social media post that FISA was “ILLEGALLY USED AGAINST ME, AND MANY OTHERS. THEY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN!!!”
On Wednesday, 19 Republicans – including some of Trump’s loudest backers in the House – bucked Johnson and voted with Democrats to block consideration of the bill, dealing yet another blow to the speaker’s fast-ebbing authority and provoking a potential national security crisis.
Bill Barr, Trump’s former attorney general, told CNN’s Annie Grayer on Wednesday that the actions of his former boss and allies were “a travesty and reckless.” Barr argued that the ex-president was being driven by “personal pique rather than rationality and sound policy.” He said Trump’s complaints about the investigation into his 2016 campaign had nothing to do with the FISA section that needs to be reauthorized. And in a chilling warning, Barr accused the ex-president of putting US national security at risk. “We’re faced with probably the greatest threat to the homeland from terrorist attack and our means of defending against that is FISA. And to take that tool away, I think, is going to result in successful terrorist attacks and the loss of life,” he said.
Johnson’s latest humiliation came as he’s fighting for his job on another front. He held tense crisis talks on Wednesday with Greene, who is threatening to call a vote to oust him. The speaker may be the most conservative person to ever hold his job, but the Georgia lawmaker is accusing him of becoming a Democrat in all but name. Johnson’s crime was to keep the government open by passing budget bills and his consideration of the delayed Ukraine funding, which is also opposed by the former president.
“If he funds the deep state and the warrantless spying on Americans, he’s telling Republican voters all over the country that the continued behavior will happen more, spying on President Trump and spying on hundreds of thousands of Americans,” Greene told CNN’s Manu Raju on Wednesday. She added: “The funding of Ukraine must end. We are not responsible for a war in Ukraine. We’re responsible for the war on our border, and I made that clear to Speaker Johnson.”
Trump’s role in these two issues that threaten to bring Johnson down make it all the more curious that the speaker plans to travel to Mar-a-Lago on Friday to hold a joint news conference with the Republican presumptive nominee.
Johnson badly needs Trump to wield his influence with the restive GOP majority if he is to survive. And his pilgrimage to the Florida resort will make a strong statement about who really runs the House majority. There is a clue to a potential quid pro quo in the announced topic of their press conference – “election integrity.” That’s the code in Trump’s world for false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
Johnson was a prominent purveyor of falsehoods about a stolen election and his continued willingness to buy into them might be the price for securing Trump’s support now.
Ukraine’s future may depend on the speaker sacrificing his future
Trump’s transformation of the GOP from a party that used to laud President Ronald Reagan’s victory over the Kremlin in the Cold War to one that often seems to be fulfilling Russian President Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy goals is striking.
The GOP’s blockade of more funding for Ukraine threatens America’s global authority and reputation as a nation that supports democracies and opposes tyrants like a Russian leader who is accused of war crimes. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that the war will be lost if the US arms don’t arrive. He told CNN’s Frederik Pleitgen on Wednesday that “what we have now is not sufficient. If we want to truly prevail over Putin.”
A few hours later, Gen. Christopher Cavoli, commander of US European Command, backed up Zelensky’s warnings. “If one side can shoot and the other side can’t shoot back, the side that can’t shoot back loses. So the stakes are very high,” Cavoli told the House Armed Services Committee.
Yet Trump has vowed to end the war in 24 hours if he wins a second term. That can only happen one way – by Zelensky giving territorial concessions to Putin, who launched an illegal invasion and to whom the former US president has often genuflected.
News that Johnson is heading to Mar-a-Lago is yet another reason for US supporters of Ukraine to worry.
Abortion chaos
One of Biden’s goals is trying to remind suburban, moderate and independent voters who may be alienated by Trump’s constant chaos how disorientating life could be when he was president.
That’s one reason why the Biden campaign has seized on the fallout of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade to highlight the pandemonium that can result from Trump’s leadership.
The overturning of the nationwide constitutional right to an abortion was based on the reasoning that state legislatures that are closer to the people than the judiciary are the appropriate place for such a divisive moral question. In an ideal world or a political vacuum, that might be the case. But the decision took little account of the corrosive polarization of America’s politics and the result has been a confusing patchwork of state laws and court decisions. Many patients are being deprived of vital health services – for instance after miscarriages. Some IVF fertility treatments have been stopped in Alabama, for example, and the Supreme Court has been forced to consider an attempt to halt nationwide access to a widely used abortion pill.
Anti-abortion campaigners are, meanwhile, pushing hard for total state and national bans on the procedure while abortion rights advocates are seeking to inject the issue into key election races — with significant recent success in even some red states.
Trump this week tried to defuse the growing threat to his campaign from his and the conservative Supreme Court majority’s handiwork, insisting he’d leave the issue to the states. His damage control effort didn’t even last 24 hours. The Arizona Supreme Court’s decision to reinstate a 160-year-old ban triggered a backlash that went right back to the former president.
Trump had another go on Wednesday, pledging that he wouldn’t sign a federal ban on abortion as president – as many conservatives are pushing him to. But given how many times he’s shifted his position on the issue, it’s hard to know what he really thinks.
For once, Trump could end up being the chief victim of the chaos he wreaks.
Arizona abortion ruling, which Democrats decry, splits Republicans and abortion opponents
Libby Cathey and Oren Oppenheim – April 9, 2024
The Arizona Supreme Court’s decision on Tuesday to uphold a near-total abortion ban predating Arizona’s statehood has drawn differing reactions from state Republicans who previously claimed to be “100% pro-life” while both local and national Democrats vowed to push to protect abortion access in one of the most politically important states on the 2024 map.
Vice President Kamala Harris is planning to travel to Tucson on Friday for her “Fight for Reproductive Freedoms,” where she’s expected to continue to squarely blame former President Donald Trump for appointing three of the justices who voted in 2022 to overrule Roe v. Wade’s national guarantees to abortion access.
Since then, efforts to either protect or expand abortion rights have succeeded in both red and blue states around the country when put up directly for a vote.
“Arizona just rolled back the clock to a time before women could vote – and, by his own admission, there’s one person responsible: Donald Trump,” Harris said in a statement on Tuesday.
She argued Trump would sign a federal abortion ban if elected again and “if he has the opportunity,” though Trump this week put out a new statement insisting that he wants to leave the choice to individual states — without specifying what he would do on a national ban.
President Joe Biden, in a statement through the White House, also blasted the Arizona ban, which only has exceptions to save the life of the pregnant woman. Biden called the restrictions “cruel” and the “result of the extreme agenda of Republican elected officials who are committed to ripping away women’s freedom.”
The ban is temporarily blocked pending a trial court decision. Anyone found guilty of violating the ban will face two to five years in state prison.
Republicans, meanwhile, appear to be walking a tightrope on the issue.
PHOTO: U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake, R-Ariz., takes questions at a news conference, Feb. 29, 2024, in Phoenix. (Rebecca Noble/Getty Images, FILE)
Senate candidate Kari Lake, who narrowly lost the governor’s race in 2022, said she supports Trump’s stance on abortion, that he’d leave it up to states, and claimed she would oppose both “federal funding” and “federal ban[s]” on abortion in the Senate.
“I wholeheartedly agree with President Trump — this is a very personal issue that should be determined by each individual state and her people,” Lake said in a statement Tuesday. “I oppose today’s ruling, and I am calling on [Gov.] Katie Hobbs and the State Legislature to come up with an immediate common sense solution that Arizonans can support. Ultimately, Arizona voters will make the decision on the ballot come November.”
However, Lake also regularly says she’s “100% pro-life” and supports “saving as many babies as possible.”
Asked last month how she would vote on a pro-abortion access initiative if it made it on the ballot in Arizona, Lake dismissed the question to simply say, “I’m pro-life.”
PHOTO: Rep. Juan Ciscomani, R-Ariz., questions Education Secretary Miguel Cardona on the ‘FY2024 Request for the United States Department of Education,’ in Rayburn Building on April 18, 2023. (Tom Williams/AP, FILE)
Freshman Rep. Juan Ciscomani, who represents a swing district, also called Tuesday’s ruling “a disaster for women and providers” — after having praised the U.S. Supreme Court decision against Roe two years ago and after having said he’ll support a preexisting 15-week ban in his state regarding abortion.
“In Arizona, our 15 week law protected the rights of women and new life. It respected women and the difficult decision of ending a pregnancy – one I will never personally experience and won’t pretend to understand,” Ciscomani wrote in a post on X, adding, “I oppose a national abortion ban. The territorial law is archaic. We must do better for women and I call on our state policymakers to immediately address this in a bipartisan manner.”
Former Republican Gov. Doug Ducey posted on social media that the decision was not his “preferred” outcome and urged elected leaders to find “a policy that is workable and reflective of our electorate.” However, Ducey also appointed the four justices who supported the court’s majority in the opinion.
“I signed the 15-week law as Governor because it is thoughtful policy, and an approach to this very sensitive issue that Arizonans can actually agree on,” Ducey wrote on X. “The ruling today is not the outcome I would have preferred, and I call on our elected leaders to heed the will of the people and address this issue with a policy that is workable and reflective of our electorate.”
Republican strategist Barrett Marson called the ruling “ground-shifting” for Arizona politics and argued the decision will reverberate through November’s elections, even if lawmakers do meet in the meantime for a special session to change the law amid public fallout.
“The Arizona Supreme Court ruling may be a huge victory for the pro-life movement in Arizona, it will be short term. The decision will only bring out more voters in 2024 to approve the abortion initiative and likely vote for Democratic candidates,” Marson said in a series of posts on X on Tuesday. “When [Gov. Katie] Hobbs calls a special session to open access to abortion and repeal the 1864 law, Republicans will be in a difficult spot.”
PHOTO: Arizona Supreme Court Justices from left; William G. Montgomery, John R Lopez IV, Vice Chief Justice Ann A. Scott Timmer, Chief Justice Robert M. Brutinel, Clint Bolick and James Beene listen to oral arguments on April 20, 2021, in Phoenix. (Matt York/AP, FILE)
Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, expected to face Lake in the Senate race in the fall, seized on her previously calling the pre-statehood ban a “great law” and sent a fundraising pitch to supporters reminding them that as a senator he would vote to end the filibuster rule as a means to protect abortion access nationwide, unlike Lake.
“This is not what Arizonans want, and women could die because of it,” Gallego said in a statement. “Yet again, extremist politicians like Kari Lake are forcing themselves into doctors’ offices and ripping away the right for women to make their own healthcare decisions,” adding he’s “committed to doing whatever it takes to protect abortion rights at the federal level.”
Potential ballot initiative gains momentum
Voters may have a chance to weigh in on abortion access directly in November.
Arizona for Abortion Access, which is working to get a constitutional amendment on the state’s ballot enshrining abortion access, attacked Tuesday’s ruling but said it would motivate more people to join their campaign ahead of the state’s July 3 deadline for signatures.
The proposed amendment would amend Arizona’s Constitution to prohibit the state from legislating against abortion up until fetal viability, around 24 weeks into pregnancy, and enshrines other abortion protections into law.
The group said earlier this month that they had gathered more than 500,000 signatures — surpassing the threshold to get an initiative on the Arizona general election ballot.
“This ruling will put the lives of untold Arizonans at risk and robs us of our most basic rights,” Arizona for Abortion Access campaign manager Cheryl Bruce said in a statement. “Implementing a near-total abortion ban from before women even had the right to vote only further demonstrates why we need politicians and judges out of our healthcare decisions. Now more than ever, our campaign is driven to succeed in passing this amendment and protecting access to abortion in Arizona once and for all.”
The president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, Marjorie Dannenfelser, who opposes abortion, called the decision an “enormous victory for unborn children and their mothers” and indicated abortion opponents in the state will now work to defeat the ballot initiative.
“The compassion of the pro-life movement won in court today, but we must continue to fight,” Dannenfelser said in a statement.
“Governor Hobbs and her pro-abortion allies will pour millions into deceiving the voters about the upcoming amendment that permits abortion on demand when babies can feel pain and survive outside the womb,” she said. We must defeat this extreme measure that would force Arizonans to pay for abortions and eliminate health protections for women.”
Alongside Hobbs, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, said she will not prosecute any abortion providers under the law she deemed “draconian.”
ABC News’ Olivia Osteen contributed to this report.
