PARIS Mayor Anne Hidalgo has given the green light for the city’s iconic Champs-Élysées to be transformed into an urban garden.
Traffic congestion has seen the famous boulevard lose its grandeur over recent decades, and many local Parisians have abandoned it in favour of more pedestrian-friendly avenues.
Hidalgo hopes to bring the road back to its people by removing its outer lanes, widening pedestrian areas, planting more trees and greenery, and creating dedicated bicycle lanes.
Plans were first proposed in 2019 by local community leaders who begged the government to restore the road to its former glory.
The mayor then made it a cornerstone of her February 2020 reelection campaign.
Above : The Champs-Élysées will be “returned to the French people” with wider pavements, bicycle lanes and more green spaces. Images courtesy of PCA Architecture.
The massive overhaul is part of a £225M project to regenerate Paris’ streets and make the city greener and more people-friendly.
Throughout Paris, 140,000 on-street car parking bays will be removed and replaced with vegetable allotments, food composting, playgrounds, bicycle lock-ups and more trees.
Local residents have been consulted on what they’d prefer the spaces to be used for.
“We can no longer use 50% of the capital for cars when they represent only 13% of people’s journeys,” deputy mayor David Belliard told The Times.
“We have to plant greenery in the city to adapt to the acceleration of climate change. We want to make the air more breathable and give public space to Parisians who often live in cramped flats.”
While plans for the rejuvenation of Paris pre-date COVID-19, the pandemic has expedited the entire process.
City-wide lockdowns have shifted the perspective of many Parisians – and others around the world.
There is a newfound emphasis on public transport, green spaces, parks and community.
Hidalgo has become a major proponent of the “fifteen minute city”, where all residents will be able to reach necessary amenities such as shops, parks and offices within a fifteen minute walk or bike ride.
This concept is starting to become popularized across the world with many cities using their lockdowns to implement car-free infrastructure.
Prostate scan breakthrough could prevent thousands of cancer deaths every year, landmark study finds
Phoebe Southworth February 11, 2021
A man having an MRI scan
A prostate scan breakthrough could save thousands of men from dying of cancer every year, a landmark study has found.
Scientists at Imperial College London have developed a 15-minute MRI scan, known as a Prostagram, which can detect the disease early – much like a female mammogram.
It is far less invasive than current examination methods, such as a rectal examination, and could lead to an extra 40,000 cases of prostate cancer being identified every year.
This is the first time that any scan has been accurate enough to be considered for use as a prostate cancer screening test.
The landmark trial involved 408 men in the UK having the short, non-invasive scan using innovative resonance imaging (MRI).
The technique is modelled on breast cancer screening, which invites women to have a mammogram scan every three years as part of a national programme.
It was found to pick up twice as many prostate cancers compared with the standard prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood test, which is a common method of diagnosis currently used.
At the moment, men who are suspected of having prostate cancer may also be asked to provide a urine sample and have a digital rectal examination by their doctor.
If the patient is found to have a raised PSA level, they may be referred for an MRI scan, which takes around 40 minutes, potentially followed by a biopsy.
Researchers hope this less intrusive MRI scan method will encourage men to come forward if they have potential symptoms of prostate cancer. These include the need to urinate more frequently, feeling the bladder has not fully emptied, and blood in urine or semen.
Prof Hashim Ahmed, chair of urology at Imperial College London, said: “Prostagram has the potential to form the basis of a fast, mobile national screening programme for prostate cancer and could be a game-changer.
“Prostagram also has the potential to detect more aggressive cancers earlier and pass over the many cancers which don’t need to be diagnosed. By finding these aggressive cancers at the earliest opportunity, men have the opportunity to be offered less invasive treatments with fewer side effects.”
Some 12,000 men die from prostate cancer every year, with the figure overtaking breast cancer deaths (11,000) during the last decade.
The worrying increase means men should also have access to a national screening programme, the researchers said.
Black men are at an increased risk of prostate cancer and almost a third of the trial participants were black.
Dr David Eldred-Evans, who helped develop the Prostagram, said: “The encouraging results of this research study bring a mass screening programme for prostate cancer, equivalent to mammogram testing for women, a step closer.
“A major achievement for the trial was the recruitment of ethnic minority and lower socio-economic participants broadly equivalent to their proportion within the community, which could be replicated in future general population screening trials.
“Plans for a more extensive trial covering 20,000 men are well advanced and will proceed in the coming months subject to funding. If results from this study are similar or better than those revealed today, there is then a clear pathway to the widespread implementation of Prostagram into the general population.”
The findings were published in the journal Jama Oncology.
Exclusive: Dozens of former Republican officials in talks to form anti-Trump third party
By Tim Reid February 10, 2021
U.S. President Donald Trump waves as he arrives at Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., January 20, 2021. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
(Reuters) – Dozens of former Republican officials, who view the party as unwilling to stand up to former President Donald Trump and his attempts to undermine U.S. democracy, are in talks to form a center-right breakaway party, four people involved in the discussions told Reuters.
The early stage discussions include former elected Republicans, former officials in the Republican administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Trump, ex-Republican ambassadors and Republican strategists, the people involved say.
More than 120 of them held a Zoom call last Friday to discuss the breakaway group, which would run on a platform of “principled conservatism,” including adherence to the Constitution and the rule of law – ideas those involved say have been trashed by Trump.
The plan would be to run candidates in some races but also to endorse center-right candidates in others, be they Republicans, independents or Democrats, the people say.
Evan McMullin, who was chief policy director for the House Republican Conference and ran as an independent in the 2016 presidential election, told Reuters that he co-hosted the Zoom call with former officials concerned about Trump’s grip on Republicans and the nativist turn the party has taken.
Three other people confirmed to Reuters the call and the discussions for a potential splinter party, but asked not to be identified.
Among the call participants were John Mitnick, general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security under Trump; former Republican congressman Charlie Dent; Elizabeth Neumann, deputy chief of staff in the Homeland Security Department under Trump; and Miles Taylor, another former Trump homeland security official.
The talks highlight the wide intraparty rift over Trump’s false claims of election fraud and the deadly Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol. Most Republicans remain fiercely loyal to the former president, but others seek a new direction for the party.
The House of Representatives impeached Trump on Jan. 13 on a charge of inciting an insurrection by exhorting thousands of supporters to march on the Capitol on the day Congress was gathered to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s election victory.
Call participants said they were particularly dismayed by the fact that more than half of the Republicans in Congress – eight senators and 139 House representatives – voted to block certification of Biden’s election victory just hours after the Capitol siege.
Most Republican senators have also indicated they will not support the conviction of Trump in this week’s Senate impeachment trial.
“Large portions of the Republican Party are radicalizing and threatening American democracy,” McMullin told Reuters. “The party needs to recommit to truth, reason and founding ideals or there clearly needs to be something new.”
‘THESE LOSERS’
Asked about the discussions for a third party, Jason Miller, a Trump spokesman, said: “These losers left the Republican Party when they voted for Joe Biden.”
A representative for the Republican National Committee referred to a recent statement from Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel.
“If we continue to attack each other and focus on attacking on fellow Republicans, if we have disagreements within our party, then we are losing sight of 2022 (elections),” McDaniel said on Fox News last month.
“The only way we’re going to win is if we come together,” she said.
The Biden White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
McMullin said just over 40% of those on last week’s Zoom call backed the idea of a breakaway, national third party. Another option under discussion is to form a “faction” that would operate either inside the current Republican Party or outside it.
Names under consideration for a new party include the Integrity Party and the Center Right Party. If it is decided instead to form a faction, one name under discussion is the Center Right Republicans.
Members are aware that the U.S. political landscape is littered with the remains of previous failed attempts at national third parties.
“But there is a far greater hunger for a new political party out there than I have ever experienced in my lifetime,” one participant said.
Reporting by Tim Reid; Additional reporting by Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by Soyoung Kim and Peter Cooney
We were so happy to see all the love our version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” has been getting on YouTube that we wanted to share it again here as well! We look forward to the day when we can all perform together in-person again.
(This video was recorded in 2019.)
YPC’s core mission and values are reflected in the voices in this video — children who represent the richness of diversity in our city.
“Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen
Arranged by Jonathan Miller
Conducted by YPC’s founder and artistic director Francisco J. Núñez
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump made up to $640 million while working in White House, report finds
Alex Woodward
(AP)
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump reported as much as $640 million in outside income while working in the White House as advisers to Donald Trump, according to an analysis from a government watchdog group.
The couple – the son-in-law and daughter of the former president – made between $172 million and $640 million, according to financial disclosures analyzed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
While they did not take a public income while working in the administration, and they reportedly stepped away from daily operations at their companies, their extraordinary incomes have alarmed lawmakers and ethics groups chronicling concerns over the family’s allegedly rampant self-dealing and enrichment while Mr. Trump was in office.
Ivanka Trump’s ownership stake in Washington DC’s Trump Hotel – what CREW called a “locus of influence peddling in the Trump administration” – earned her more than $13 million since 2017, according to the report.
She also made up to $1 million from her namesake brand a year after she filed a disclosure with the government that its operations ceased in 2018, the report found.
The report also outlines how her applications for foreign trademarks “may have been her biggest accomplishment” while her father was in office.
Russia renewed two trademarks for Ms Trump’s business a month after her father was elected in 2016. She won preliminary approval for three Chinese trademarks after dining with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in 2017, the first of more than two dozen approvals for trademark registrations with foreign governments while her father was in office.
In October 2018, three months after she announced that her brand had shut down, she received 16 trademarks from the Chinese government, including for voting machines.
Mr Kushner did not divest from his stake in real estate investment platform Cadre, co-owned by his brother Joshua, despite his wife’s role in the administration’s Opportunity Zones program from which Cadre benefitted.
At the beginning of the Trump administration, Mr. Kushner’s stake in Cade was initially valued between $5 million and $25 million, according to CREW.
The couple made at least $24 million during the final year of the administration, according to recent disclosures. A list of future interests for the couple include golf courses in Bali and Dubai and hotel construction in New York City.
Mr. Kushner opened Kushner Companies BVI Limited, an off-shore holding company in the British Virgin Islands. Among its assets is New York’s Puck Building, valued at more than $25 million.
The Independent has requested comment from a representative for Mr Kushner.
Invasive Asian carp is getting a new name and a public makeover to draw more eaters
Keith Matheny, Detroit Free Press February 8, 2021
DETROIT – Care for a plate of slimehead? How about some orange roughy?
It’s the same fish, but one sounds much more palatable than the other. The U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service gave the slimehead a rebranding in the late 1970s in an effort to make the underused fish more marketable.
Now, Illinois officials and their partners want to give the invasive Asian carp threatening the Great Lakes a similar makeover. The goal: To grow the fish’s image as a healthy, delicious, organic, sustainable food source — which will, in turn, get more fishermen removing more tons of the fish from Illinois rivers just outside of Lake Michigan.
Markets such as pet food, bait and fertilizer have expanded the use of invasive Asian carp in recent years. But “it’s been hard to get the human consumption part of this because of the four-letter word: carp,” said Kevin Irons, assistant chief of fisheries for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.
A full-on media blitz is coming later this year to change that. The proposed new name for the fish is being kept tightly under wraps for a big rollout in June, prior to the Boston Seafood Show in mid-July. But other aspects of the “The Perfect Catch” campaign will point out that the invasive Asian carp species — silver, bighead, grass and black carp — are flaky, tasty, organic, sustainable, low in mercury and rich in protein and omega-3 fatty acids.
“To us in America, we think of carp as a bottom-feeding, muddy-tasting fish, which it is sometimes,” said Dirk Fucik, owner of Dirk’s Fish and Gourmet Shop in Chicago, who has had success with occasional serving of Asian carp to customers and is participating in the rebranding effort.
“But Asian carp is a plankton-feeder. It’s a different type of flesh — much cleaner, sweeter-tasting meat.”
Fucik called the upcoming national marketing campaign “the biggest push that we’ve seen so far with these fish.”
Asian carp were introduced in the southern U.S. in the 1960s and ’70s to control algae blooms in aquaculture facilities, farm ponds and sewage lagoons. Floods and human mismanagement helped the carp escape into the Mississippi River system, where their spread exploded.
Clint Carter (not in the photo) pulls up a fishing net that caught carps on the Illinois River in Chillicothe, Ill., Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2021.
A 2019 study looking at 20 years of fish population data on the upper Mississippi River confirmed bighead, silver, grass and black carp out-compete sport fish, causing population declines for prized species such as yellow perch, bluegill, and black and white crappie.
Should Asian carp make it into the Great Lakes, many scientists believe they would cause a huge disruption to the aquatic food chain and damage, perhaps irreparably, a $7 billion annual Great Lakes fishery.
Plans are in the works for a $778 million Asian carp barrier at the Brandon Road Lock and Dam on the Des Plaines River about 27 miles southwest of Chicago in Joliet, Illinois. The barrier will include electricity, unappealing sounds for fish and gates of bubbles as deterrents.
But old-fashioned fishing of pools of carp in the river systems between the Mississippi and Lake Michigan is also proving effective in holding back the potential Great Lakes invaders.
Shawn Price, a commercial fisherman based in Fulton, Illinois, has fished the rivers for Asian carp on contract with the Illinois DNR since 2010. Then, they caught boatloads of carp, almost all 20 to 50 pounds, he said, with some up to 70 pounds or more. Now, the fish are typically 3 to 12 pounds, or even smaller, he said.
Clint Carter, center, pulls up fishing net that caught carps as Dave Buchanan takes them off the net on the Illinois River in Chillicothe, Ill., Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2021.
“We almost never catch a fish over 30 pounds anymore,” he said. “That mass that was there when we started, when they said they have to do something to save the lake, we have drastically cut it to shreds.”
Back when the program started, bighead carp made up about three-quarters of the catch. Now, they are less than 10%. The difference? Fishermen catch the bighead carp more easily, so they’ve caught them in far greater numbers over the years. “The bigheads don’t jump, the silvers do,” Price said.
It’s silver carp that provide the iconic images of fish jumping out of the water en masse, potentially endangering boaters. Fishermen can have silver carp trapped in six rows of netting “and they will jump over all six of them,” he said.
‘A huge opportunity for this market to expand’
State-contracted fishermen like Price drop their loads off at the dock, with state officials setting up markets for the carp.
“A lot of the fish are used for organic fertilizer, pet treats,” he said. “They sell a fair amount for … lobster bait, crawfish bait.”
Roy Sorce’s family ran a food service distributorship in Illinois for 49 years. Last year, he converted the business to Sorce Freshwater, seeing a future in Asian carp.
“We take the fish from the fishermen and we find markets to sell them,” he said — bait and fertilizer companies, as well as pet food and for human consumption.
Roy Sorce, owner and president of Sorce Enterprise poses for a photo in his office in Peoria, Ill., Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2021.
What started as 30,000 to 40,000 pounds of fish a week is now up to 80,000 pounds, with plenty of room to grow, he said. He hopes to add on-site processing of the fish in coming months.
“There’s a huge opportunity for this market to expand,” Sorce said. “We’ve already made inroads … it all has to do with education and marketing. Because of COVID, everyone is so tied up with other issues and priorities. They don’t want to deal with something new, or try something new, yet.”
In Kentucky, Asian carp have moved from the Mississippi and Ohio rivers into tributaries and in two of the state’s biggest reservoirs, Kentucky and Barkley lakes. Peoria, Illinois-based Colgan Carp Solutions has worked with fishermen there to take Asian carp for use as lobster bait in New England.
“The fishermen liked it — they said it fishes well. It’s an oily fish,” founder Brian Colgan said.
COVID-19’s impacts on tourism and restaurants have hit the lobster market hard as well, so demand dried up over 2020, he said.
“The good news is the fishermen started calling again in September and October,” he said.
In Canada, Montreal-based Wilder Harrier last year introduced an Asian carp-based dog food.
Quebec-based Wilder Harrier pet food company is now distributing a dog food using invasive Asian carp as its primary protein source.
“We want to tackle the unsustainability of our food system at large … the heavy use of animal protein in a growing human population of 10 billion people that we just cannot sustain,” company co-founder and CEO Phillippe Poirer said. “We decided to start with our pets.”
Among the company’s products are pet treats made from protein from crickets and a species of fly. Learning of the Asian carp problem just outside the Great Lakes, it seemed a fit, Poirer said.
“Trying to reduce the environmental impact of our food system includes protein sources from species that are damaging our ecosystem, such as invasive species,” he said. “Asian carp has a lot of small bones and really is not ideal as a fillet fish for human consumption. But once ground up, it’s perfect for cats and dogs. It has a great nutritional profile, and it’s very appetizing for them.”
Ah, them bones. Asian carp have many tiny pin bones throughout their fillets. They’re actually so small as to be edible, but they are a hurdle for an American market, Fucik said.
“American people do not like bones,” he said. “Chinese people will eat a fish right off its bones, but in America, people want a 4-ounce salmon fillet, skinless, boneless, that grows on a tree.”
Some higher-order filleting and meat-grinding, however, can overcome the pin bone issue, Fucik said.
The upcoming Asian carp — or whatever the fish will soon be called — marketing push will seek to connect with grocery stores, restaurants, and institutional places such as universities and food pantries. “Anybody who needs to eat proteins,” Irons said. The message: “If you try it, it’s going to be delicious.”
Product analyst Daniel Webber, center, left, and operation processor Zach McGinnis take carps off a boat and throw them in tote boxes based the species at Sorce Enterprise in Peoria, Ill., Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2021.
And it’s all for a vital environmental cause. Sorce noted that the Brandon Road Lock and Dam Asian carp barrier proposed for Peoria is still about seven years or more away.
“We are a last line of defense,” he said. “If we can harvest these fish out of the Peoria pool, we can minimize the pressure going north.”
His Biz Is Shunned, She Resigned, and Everyone Is Being Sued: What Became of Trump’s Election Dead-Enders
Asawin Suebsaeng, Will Sommer February 8, 2021
Getty
A month after the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol, Donald Trump is living comfortably at his private club in Florida. He’s been gearing up for his latest impeachment trial, he’s been deprived of many of his toys and privileges that came with the presidency, and he’s suffering from boredom. But he’s also been basking in the comfort of knowing that the Republican Party will—even today—continue to bend over backwards to please him.
But some of his most hardcore associates and advisers, who egged Trump on and helped fuel his most dangerous or destructive attempts to subvert American democracy, aren’t doing so well. In the three months since the election was called for Joe Biden, most of the lawyers and MAGA enthusiasts who decided to play a consequential role in the ex-president’s efforts to overturn the Democratic nominee’s 2020 win (efforts that led directly to the Jan. 6 mob violence), have had their jobs or businesses shredded, their personal lives shaken, or their reputations irrevocably tarnished—all while Trump’s been relaxing and playing his rounds of golf in the Sunshine State.
The ones who helped spearhead the most extreme chapters in the broader crusade to nullify the election outcome are now besieged by their own legal battles. Several of them have complained that friends aren’t talking to them anymore, or have huffed and fumed over Twitter banning them for life for spreading dangerous misinformation. Several of the Trump-allied attorneys are just trying to hold onto their law licenses, under calls for disbarment for their participation on the Team Trump efforts. Only two of these people responded to requests for comment on this story.
Much of their current ruin came as a direct result of their decisions to become major players in Trump’s failed authoritarian endeavor to cling to power. All of them have refused to admit that Trump, in fact, lost fair and square. Of this band of MAGA allies (which most prominently included people like Rudy Giuliani, Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell, Lin Wood, Jenna Ellis, Cleta Mitchell, John Eastman, and Peter Navarro), arguably none of them has lost more in the time since the election than Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO and personal friend of the ex-president’s.
When Trump was in power, Lindell served as Trump 2020’s Minnesota co-chair and as a big financial backer of several efforts to overturn Biden’s win. He was welcomed by Trump into the Oval Office in the very last days of the term to brief the then-leader of the free world on a stack of documents purporting to show evidence that China and other foreign nations somehow tipped the election to Biden. (One of the papers in that packet included a suggestion for declaring martial law to bar the Democratic president-elect from office.)
Today, as many of his former compatriots have already given up the fight, Lindell has continued to be the truest of believers in the cause, refusing to move on despite losing business left and right. Last week, Lindell texted The Daily Beast that Mattress Firm, which he described as a “big bedding company… if not the biggest,” had “quit selling MyPillow, too,” following a trend of companies swearing off the pillow mogul’s products after his post-election activity. Last month, the MyPillow creator said he’d already gotten phone calls or notices from Bed Bath & Beyond, Wayfair, and Kohl’s that they’d decided to ditch his product line and halt their business relationship with the MAGA super-fan’s company.
This month, Lindell and his pillow company also suffered a similar fate to the 45th president of the United States: Twitter had taken action against their accounts for spreading pro-Trump conspiracy theories baselessly claiming a rigged election. “They took down MyPillow’s Twitter now! Attacks keep coming,” Lindell lamented to The Daily Beast.
Lindell is still facing a possible lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems, the election tech company that has sent warnings to various people in the Trump orbit and in conservative media, demanding retractions and public apologies for making widespread allegations that Dominion helped steal the 2020 election. Other Trump stalwarts who’ve been sent demand letters have backed off, immediately gone quiet, or sheepishly issued on-air correctives.
But not Lindell.
Instead, the pillow entrepreneur claims to have gone into hiding, surrounding himself with ex-Special Forces soldiers. On Friday, Lindell released “Absolute Proof,” a three-hour video premiering on the Trump-aligned One America News Network that he claims will prove the election was stolen from Trump. Lindell cast the video’s release in apocalyptic terms, claiming on a North Dakota radio show shortly before the Friday release that the “end times” await if his video doesn’t catch on with “all the marbles on the line,” and that “I’m serious, this is biblical. This is Revelations. This is Mark of the Beast stuff. This is that vaccine and all that garbage.”
Down in Georgia, Lin Wood isn’t doing that much better. During the tumultuous Trump-Biden presidential transition, Lindell financially supported Wood’s legal work as he made a name for himself with his especially groundless, violence-endorsing assertions about the election. The then-president would repeatedly phone Wood in late 2020 to get updates on his latest moves in Georgia. But Wood’s operation, working in tandem with Powell, caused rampant anxiety among conservatives on Capitol Hill, inside the Trump administration, and in the campaign. Many Republican operatives and lawmakers still, in part, blame Wood for helping to blow the GOP’s chances in this year’s Georgia runoff, costing the party control of the U.S. Senate at the dawn of the Biden era.
But in the time since he seemingly struck up a rapport with Trump, the now-former president has privately bad-mouthed Wood as a crank to close associates, according to two people who’ve heard Trump’s criticisms. Today, Wood’s Twitter account, too, has been taken away from him, and it’s not clear whether Wood will even get to remain a lawyer for much longer.
Nick Sandmann, the former Covington Catholic student whose lawsuits against media outlets had turned Wood into a star with Trump supporters, dropped Wood as his attorney. Wood recently doxxed his own son, publishing his estranged adult son’s email address online and urging his fans to contact him about the “persecution” the elder Wood faced. The Georgia state bar wants Wood to undergo a mental evaluation if he’s going to retain his license to practice law, according to Wood’s posts on social networking app Telegram, and a private lawyers club in Atlanta warned Wood he could face expulsion if he doesn’t resign his membership. Now Wood, one of the most outspoken promoters of the claim that Democrats committed voter fraud in 2020, is reportedly under investigation himself for voting in Georgia after sending an email that suggested he has another residency in South Carolina.
Among this Trumpian collective of would-be election-destroyers, Wood isn’t even the only one whose license to practice law is now under attack or scrutiny.
Powell, Wood’s partner-in-mischief, was slammed last month by Detroit officials who said they want her stripped of her Michigan law license. “This lawsuit, and the lawsuits filed in the other states, are not just damaging to our democratic experiment, they are also deeply corrosive to the judicial process itself,” attorneys for the Motor City wrote to U.S. District Judge Linda Parker.
Following the Jan. 6 riot in Washington—the day Giuliani spoke at the D.C. rally and called for “trial by combat”—the New York State Bar Association moved to expel the once-celebrated New York City mayor, and laid some of the blame for the mob violence at his door. Giuliani, who was the ringleader of Trump’s official election-challenging legal “strike force,” decried the move as a “political act.”
Around the same time, Brad Hoylman, the Democratic chairman of the New York state Senate Judiciary Committee, delivered a formal request to have Trump’s personal lawyer’s license to practice law revoked due to his “participation and role in fomenting a violent insurrectionist attack.”
And like so many in the former president’s good graces who promulgated the pro-Trump lies about the 2020 election, Powell and Giuliani are facing aggressive legal threats from voting tech companies. On Thursday, Smartmatic filed a $2.7 billion suit against several Fox stars, Giuliani, and Powell. “We have no choice,” Antonio Mugica, Smartmatic’s founder, told CNN. “The disinformation campaign that was launched against us is an obliterating one. For us, this is existential, and we have to take action.”
But after Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration, Giuliani at least continued to have the ear of his client, still the Republican Party’s most popular figure, by far. According to two people familiar with the matter, Giuliani kept informally advising Trump on impeachment-trial strategy, even after it was made clear to the attorney that he wouldn’t be officially serving on the ex-president’s new legal defense for the February Senate proceedings.
Other lawyers who worked for Trump during the disastrous presidential transition weren’t so lucky, having been used and discarded by the former president’s political operation, and today left without their other jobs.
Early last month, The Washington Post first revealed that Cleta Mitchell was intimately involved with Trump’s scandalous pressure campaign to overturn Biden’s victory in Georgia. She had, mostly under the radar, risen to become Team Trump’s point person in the state, and was on the now-infamous conference call between the Republican president and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
Over many years, Mitchell had earned a reputation as one of the conservative legal universe’s heaviest hitters, and a top-tier campaign finance attorney for right-leaning activists and political candidates. She was a true star in the field. But when her involvement in Trump’s efforts were revealed in January, her high-powered law firm, Foley & Lardner LLP, released a statement claiming it was unaware of the extent of Mitchell’s pro-Trump activity, and said the firm was “concerned” and probing the matter. Shortly thereafter, Mitchell was out of the job.
In December, John Eastman represented Trump before the U.S. Supreme Court when few others—even longtime Trump attorneys—would do so. On the then-president’s behalf, Eastman—a Chapman University law professor who became an outrage-magnet during the 2020 election for openly questioning Sen. Kamala Harris’s citizenship and therefore eligibility to serve as Biden’s running mate—asked the Supreme Court to allow Trump to intervene in a Texas suit that sought to cancel Biden’s victory in four key states.
This legal maneuver, predictably, went nowhere fast. For his time and service, Eastman was rewarded by Trump by having his name floated as a possible member of his legal team for the second Senate trial. Eastman also got a prime speaking slot at the D.C. rally that preceded the bloody riot on Capitol Hill. However, Eastman and Giuliani were soon barred from working on the team, with several top Trump advisers fearing the pair wasn’t serious enough and that they carried too much riot-related baggage with them.
The week after the rioting, Eastman was forced to resign from Chapman, following mounting pressure on the university’s leadership. The separation was acrimonious enough that both Eastman and the university had to pledge not to sue one another. “Chapman and Dr. Eastman have agreed not to engage in legal actions of any kind, including any claim of defamation that may currently exist, as both parties move forward,” Chapman president Daniele Struppa said in a statement at the time.
As for the rest, Jenna Ellis, one of the most gung-ho of Trump’s senior legal advisers, is no longer representing the former president. Starting in early December, she and other Trumpist lawyers suffered a sharp plunge in the frequency of appearances on Fox News and Fox Business, following legal threats made by the voting-tech companies. But at least she still has her job as special counsel for the socially conservative Thomas More Society, and hasn’t lost her Twitter account of nearly 800,000 followers. Nowadays, she can be found tweeting her continued support of the former president, broadsides against the Biden administration, and her thoughts on issues such as why conservative women are definitely “hotter.”
Peter Navarro, President Trump’s top trade adviser in the White House who spent Trump’s final weeks in office compiling and promoting documents that falsely portrayed massive election fraud, is still trying to talk to his former boss—through the TV, at least. On Friday, Navarro appeared on Newsmax TV to urge Trump to once again upturn his legal team. “You get somebody like Matt Gaetz as your lead attorney instead of that stiff [Bruce Castor] you had on,” Navarro recommended… before touting his own research. “Then you use the ‘Navarro Report’ and other reports that have been put out as your exhibits A, B, C, and D.”
With the Trump presidency in his rearview mirror, multiple close associates of Navarro say they aren’t sure what his next career move will be, as he’s so inextricably tied himself to his onetime boss.
As for Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser, he never got his reinstatement or re-elevation in the Trump administration that he and the ex-president had once so desired. In late November, he did, however, finally get his pardon from Trump for his role in the Robert Mueller saga. But in return, Flynn failed to deliver on the authoritarian push to keep Biden out of power, and (thankfully) didn’t have enough powerful takers for his pitch for Trump to proclaim martial law or use the U.S. military to “re-run” the election in electorally crucial states. With his professional reputation in Washington and elsewhere dramatically diminished, he now has to settle for being a folk hero to QAnon kooks.
Down in Palm Beach, Florida, where the twice-impeached 45th president of the United States is prepping with his team for the Senate trial, he’s sometimes letting his boredom with retirement show, even as he tries to project a state of contentment to the public and to his aides. Late last week, Trump’s lawyers and advisers rejected an invitation from House impeachment managers for the former commander in chief to testify. “The president will not testify in an unconstitutional proceeding,” senior Trump adviser Jason Miller flatly told The Daily Beast.
When Trump hasn’t been focusing on his upcoming trial, he’s been golfing. He’s still binging his right-wing media and cable-TV favorites, though even there he’s starting to lose close friends due to the election aftermath. On Friday, the staunchly Trumpy Fox Business announced it had canceled the show of its star, Lou Dobbs, a fervent supporter of the former president who for years also doubled as a key informal adviser to Trump. (Dobbs had been mentioned in Smartmatic’s $2.7 billion lawsuit the day prior.) After the news broke, Trump voiced his support for Dobbs in an official statement, but by Saturday, Dobbs was keeping mostly tight-lipped about the ouster, texting The Daily Beast, “Sorry. No comment at this time.”
When Trump is not watching television or monitoring line-up developments, he still hasn’t bothered devoting an ounce of introspection on the massive body counts and the ravaged nation he left for others to clean up. “He doesn’t have regrets about it, none that I’ve heard,” said one Trump confidant. He’s been scribbling down potential disses and harangues at his political foes, insults that he now cannot tweet himself to the broader public. He’s dictated petulant remarks sent to the Hollywood elites at the Screen Actors Guild who don’t want him anymore.
In recent days, Trump has been phoning close associates regularly about the next impeachment trial—as well as to gossip about Biden, media, the future, and other members of the GOP. His office has also been messaging friends and high-profile allies on his behalf, inviting them to visit him at Mar-a-Lago, according to two knowledgeable sources and written communications reviewed by The Daily Beast.
Some individuals close to the ex-president say he’s started getting lonely and bored with his existence out of power, and misses being constantly surrounded by powerful sycophants and being the center of attention for the news media, U.S. politicos, and leaders abroad. But the ex-president is still living in luxury, and has been recently very confident about his continued standing and influence in the Republican Party and conservative movement.
And he’s not the only veteran of the sprawling, anti-democratic effort to be sitting pretty in early 2021.
Overstock.com founder Patrick Byrne became one of the strangest characters of the last days of the Trump administration, visiting the White House in December, dressed in jeans and a hoodie, scarfing down meatballs, and bickering with Trump’s legal team and administration officials, as he, Flynn, and Powell together pitched the then-president on their democracy-thwarting schemes. But now, with Trump’s dream of overturning the 2020 election in tatters, Byrne appears to be doing comparatively okay—and is blaming just about everyone else for President Biden’s win, turning his blog into the digital burn book of the Trump post-campaign. “Almost every evening, and many early afternoons, Rudy was shit-faced,” Byrne blogged recently. “That, and his podcasts, were the only guarantees in Rudy’s life.” (Byrne declined to comment on this story, saying he wanted to finish his blog series first.)
However thoroughly Byrne was dragging Giuliani and others for their alleged behavior, the Trump attorney didn’t seem to care too much. Asked on Saturday what he thought about Byrne bashing him, Giuliani simply replied to The Daily Beast, “So have you,” without further explaining how this news outlet had “trashed” him lately.
Ex-GOP congressman suggests many Republicans are discussing whether to form a new anti-Trump party
Chris Riotta February 6, 2021
Trucks and cars with Trump flags have abounded on US streets and highways this election season. (Getty Images)
Former Rep. Charlie Dent (R—PA) revealed he and other Republicans have begun discussing whether to form a “new party or a new faction” in the wake of “ugly populism that we’ve witnessed the last four years under President Trump” in a new interview.
Speaking with CNN on Saturday, the former GOP lawmaker and longtime critic of former President Donald Trump shared how he had recently participated in a summit in which the idea of conservatives “united around core principles like democracy” forming their own party had been discussed.
“A new faction within the party or one that operates independently of the party,” he said. “That’s the conversation that many Republicans are having.”
Asked whether he was concerned about Republicans like him “surrendering the party to a fringe element” of extremists and conspiracy theorists, the former congressman said: “Well, I think that’s a real fear.”
Reports in recent weeks have indicated tens of thousands of former GOP members officially removed themselves from the party following the deadly riots at the US Capitol. Mr. Trump was impeached by the House for a second time for fomenting the insurrection, which left at least five people dead, including United States Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick.
While the majority of Senate Republicans have already voted against conducting the impeachment trial scheduled to begin on Monday, many conservative figures and prominent GOP critics of the former president have called on the party to disassociate from Mr. Trump and his allies.
Most recently, the Republican Party has been mired in controversy over freshman Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene (R—GA) and incendiary statements she’s made, some in support of QAnon, the debunked conspiracy theory described by the FBI as a domestic terror threat.
Referencing the recent vote the House took to strip Ms. Greene of her committee assignments, Mr. Dent said: “Let’s be perfectly honest: Democrats now have a recorded vote of 199 Republicans basically defending her right to serve on a committee.”
He added: “Republicans … should have never put themselves in a position where the Democrats did what Republicans should have done themselves, which was remove her from the committees and also, frankly, disinvite her from the Republican conference.”
$1 Trillion in Oil and Gas Pipelines Worldwide Could Become Stranded Assets, New Report Warns
By Sharon Kelly February 4, 2021
Pipeline, April 22, 2010. Credit: Ripperda, CC BY 2.0
On January 7, 2021, Energy Transfer was notified by its insurer, Westchester Fire Insurance Co. of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, that it had lost a $250,000 surety bond for the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) — a bond that Iowa, one of the four states it passes through, required the pipeline to maintain.
That loss of insurance coverage comes as the Biden administration and a federal court each must confront a decision about whether to order DAPL to shut down, after a federal appeals court last week upheld a lower court’s finding that the oil pipeline still lacks a completed environmental review. Financial observers have been watching DAPL closely — and a new report warns that DAPL is hardly alone in the oil and gas pipeline industry in facing major financial risks linked to projects’ environmental impacts.
“Dakota Access Pipeline has no federal easement. It’s now losing insurance coverage on the state-level which is a requirement for Iowa’s state permit,” the Indigenous Environmental Network said in a January 29 statement. “It’s time to end this saga and do what’s right.”
Environmentalists predicted that the lost insurance coverage could be difficult for Energy Transfer to replace, particularly given DAPL’s incomplete federal review. “It will be difficult because the bond holder will require the pipeline to comply with all legal requirements,” attorney Carolyn Raffensperger, director of the Science and Health Network, told DeSmog. “If it is operating without a permit, any spill would be a big, big legal problem.”
But as consequential as the DAPL fight — which has raged for roughly a half-decade — might be, Dakota Access is just one of hundreds of pipelines worldwide that a new report finds are at risk of early abandonment because they’re “on a collision course” with climate agreements.
The report, titled “Pipeline Bubble 2021” and published by the climate data nonprofit Global Energy Monitor, warns that pipeline construction projects worldwide have put $1 trillion worth of pipeline investment at risk of being rendered obsolete by the energy transition away from fossil fuels.
The risky projects include over 131,000 miles of pipe, both oil pipelines like DAPL and — to an even higher degree — new natural gas pipelines. “18 of the 20 longest pipelines in development and 82.7% of all pipelines in development globally will carry gas,” the report finds, “reflecting the fossil fuel industry’s success in perpetuating the myth that gas can be a ‘bridge fuel’ to a clean energy future.”
Permian ‘Carbon Bomb’
When it comes to the U.S. oil and gas industry, Global Energy Monitor’s report zeroes in on the productive Permian Basin straddling Texas and New Mexico, an oil and gas play which it calls a potential “carbon bomb,” adding that by 2050, Permian gas “would consume ten percent of the world’s allowable carbon budget if we are to have a 50/50 chance of limiting global warming to 1.5°C.”
The report adds that there are over 100 institutions providing financial support for the industry in the U.S. Permian Basin alone, including major backers based in Japan, France, the Netherlands, Canada, and the UK, as well as U.S. banks like Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley. The authors tallied $102.3 billion in debt financing for the Permian Basin’s pipelines and gas export facilities alone since 2014.
“The ability of the oil and gas industry to overcome near-term challenges to its Permian Basin expansion plans, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the collapse of prices, will depend in part on the appetite of banks and governments to continue funding midstream infrastructure,” they wrote. “Should they decide to do so, it will be in spite of the industry’s long-term decline and growing concerns over the global climate emergency.”
The investment risks are compounded by fossil fuel divestment pressure from investors and financial institutions, which are increasingly wary of projects that fail to take climate risks into account — a wariness the report predicts may grow beyond coal, Arctic drilling, and tar sands projects.
Just four major financial institutions (BNP Paribas, Rabobank, UniCredit, and US Bancorp) have restricted pipeline finance, the report finds — so far. “For the first time, exclusions affecting the entire spectrum of oil and gas extraction activities appeared in 2020, announced by Suncorp Group and Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG),” Pipeline Bubble 2021 said. “But examination of the policies of other institutions suggests that the scope is likely soon to widen to include pipelines and other infrastructure.”
In January, the world’s largest investment fund manager, BlackRock, warned corporate executives that it would ditch investments in companies that fail to disclose plans to reach “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050 — though The Guardian reported that announcement only covers BlackRock’s “actively managed” investments, representing about $616 billion of the firm’s $8.7 trillion under management, allowing the firm to retain major oil, gas and coal investments.
Toll Booth on a Closing Highway
The U.S. pipeline industry, often referred to as the “midstream” oil and gas industry, was once marketed to investors as a safe bet, like running the “toll booth” on the shale rush’s highway. This past year, it’s been temporarily rocked by the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to pipeline construction deferrals and delayed start-ups.
“During 2020, developers completed 3,600 km [2,236 miles] of oil pipelines and 9,619 km [5,977 miles] of gas pipelines, or an overall average of 1,102 km [684 miles] per month for oil and gas pipelines combined,” the report found. “The decline in pipeline completions parallels a general financial decline in private-sector oil company balance sheets and market value” since 2008.
The pandemic has also forced U.S. drillers to slow their activities. “The rig count is less than half of what it was,” RBN analyst Jason Ferguson told trade publication Natural Gas Intelligence in January. “Producers are not out spending, and the historical relationship of how many wells will be drilled at this price has changed.”
The pandemic’s impacts, Global Energy Monitor said, are expected to be temporary and may create little long-lasting deterrence to pipeline construction. “Overall, however, the expansion curve has been bent rather than broken, with pipelines continuing to enjoy both policy support and financial support by governments and major financial institutions,” the Pipeline Bubble 2021 report said.
But the pipeline industry has also faced a political backlash that has created upheaval for the industry. “Intense opposition from landowners, [I]ndigenous groups, and climate activists is causing the cancellation or delay of high-profile pipelines, and is changing perceptions of pipelines as a ‘safe’ investment,” Global Energy Monitor found. But worldwide, the report adds, many pipelines are owned by state-owned enterprises, the report adds, leading them to be “somewhat insulated” from market forces, at least in the short run.
And the looming energy transition should reduce overall demand for the products carried by pipelines, the report warns. “For oil, the main threat in the coming decade is the prospect of vehicle electrification, as more governments announce transitions away from internal combustion sales and manufacturers respond by shifting investments toward electric vehicles,” Global Energy Monitor wrote. “For gas, change is arriving most rapidly in the power sector, where combinations of renewables, batteries, and demand management now offer equivalent reliability at lower cost than gas-fired power plants.
It adds that worldwide, “gas supply chains are lengthening, which means larger investments in infrastructure and greater stranded assets if and when projects stall or are prematurely retired.”
Boom And Bust And …
Some energy analysts have been warning for years that the pipeline industry, especially in the Permian Basin, was on track to over-build.
“If we don’t overbuild this time, it will be the first time in the history of the industry,” Wouter van Kempen, Chairman, President, and CEO of DCP Midstream, said at an April 2018 pipeline indusry conference, as DeSmog has previously reported. “There’s absolutely, we will overbuild, there’s no doubt about it.”
That excessive building is already creating financial difficulties, East Daley Capital Advisors reported this year. Those difficulties aren’t primarily from the sprawling network of small “gathering” pipelines that connect individual oil and gas wells to the large interstate pipes that form the backbone of the oil and gas transportation network, RBN Energy analyst Housley Carr said as he summarized a January 2021 East Daley report, instead “it’s volume and rate declines on large-diameter, long-haul crude oil and natural gas pipelines owned by midstream giants that present the main challenge to sustainable cash flow health in aggregate.”
Other forecasters predict that 2021 could bring higher oil prices and a turnaround for the financially struggling U.S. oil and gas industry — which in turn could revitalize interest in new pipeline projects in the short term. For its part, the U.S. Energy Information Administration predicts that U.S. oil production in 2021 will be 11.1 million barrels a day in 2021, down from 11.3 million per day in 2020, with an average 2021 West Texas Intermediate spot price of $49.70 a barrel — roughly $10 a barrel higher than the 2020 average.
But while oil and gas prices might fluctuate in the short run, over the long run, the pipeline industry faces growing questions about whether it’s wise to build a massive network of pipelines that could become obsolete well within their projected 50-year-plus lifespans.
The report’s authors called on the Biden administration to carefully consider the ways that the U.S. energy industry has changed since Obama was in office, particularly with regards to natural gas, which is predominantly made up of the powerful greenhouse gas methane.
“The policy landscape facing the new administration in 2021 is radically different from the one that Biden left in 2017,” James Browning, lead author of the report, said. “Fossil gas is now recognized as a climate buster, not a climate solution. That means Biden faces the tough decision to rein in gas infrastructure, which is the most effective way to limit emissions.”
A Former Trump Adviser May Have Revealed What The Fossil Fuel Bonanza Was Really About
Alexander C. Kaufman, Senior Reporter, HuffPost –
Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council under former President Donald Trump, is seen here in 2018. He’s remained a fixture on the increasingly political Fox Business Network since leaving office. (Photo: Alex Wong via Getty Images)
Ramping up fossil fuel production and shredding pollution rules, as the Trump administration did for four years, largely defies economic and scientific logic in an era of costly climate disasters. But Larry Kudlow, who was director of the National Economic Council for part of that time, may have indicated Wednesday that the administration saw its policies on fossil fuels through another lens: culture.
During an interview with Fox Business star Maria Bartiromo, Kudlow dismissed President Joe Biden as an ideologue whose approach to climate change threatens to “wreck the whole energy sector.”
“It turns out President Biden may be the most left-wing president we’ve ever seen,” Kudlow said. “His actions on spending and taxing and regulating, on immigration and fossil fuels and other cultural issues… he may be the most left-wing.”
It was only a split second, possibly even an unintentional slip of the tongue. But the idea of defining fossil fuels as a “cultural issue” gets at something that typically goes unacknowledged in policy debates over how to deal with the industry most responsible for destabilizing the planet’s ecosystems. For conservatives, fossil fuel fights are just another front in the U.S. culture war that’s been waged for decades over issues like same-sex marriage and abortion.
On the other hand, the economic logic of pumping and burning more oil, gas and coal is difficult to square.
Already, the planet has warmed 1.2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial averages, yielding biblically terrifying and astronomically expensive results in the form of deadly floods and fires, prolonged droughts and ravenous locust swarms. Last year, the United States alone suffered a record-breaking 22 warming-fueled disasters that each topped $1 billion in damages.
An aerial view shows pumpjacks in the South Belridge Oil Field near McKittrick, California. Oil prices have cratered with the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. (Photo: David McNew via Getty Images)
And that only accounts for fossil fuels’ effect on global temperatures. Tiny particles from fossil fuels that pollute the air kill as many as 4.5 million people worldwide each year, and result in global economic costs totaling roughly $8 billion per day, a study published last year by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air found.
Then there’s the reality that fossil fuel producers rely heavily on debt and generous government subsidies to turn profits. About 50% of new oil drilling in the U.S. would be unprofitable without subsidies, according to a 2017 study in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Energy.
Over the past decade, cheap loans from Wall Street investors boosted the popularity of hydraulic fracturing, the drilling technique known as fracking ― thereby flooding the market with supply and reducing the price of oil and gas. The sector’s success was its own undoing: Between 2012 and 2017, the 30 largest shale producers lost more than $50 billion, according to a Wall Street Journal estimate. From 2015 to 2016, an eyebrow-raising 91% of all corporate debt defaults in the United States were in the oil and gas sector, the financial research firm Moody’s calculated in 2019.
Now that policymakers are starting to heed scientists’ calls to rapidly transition the global economy away from fossil fuels, even the mightiest companies are showing signs of financial atrophy. Exxon Mobil Corp., the Western world’s largest oil explorer, lost its place in the Dow Jones Industrial Average stock index last August as its debt, and its obstinate refusal to plan for a low-carbon future, repelled investors. This week, the company reported its first annual loss in at least 40 years.
If the adoption of renewable power and electric vehicles proves as swift as leaders in the U.S., Europe and East Asia now say they want it to be, new drilling projects ― which can take decades to pay off ― could become what financial experts call “stranded assets,” virtually worthless money pits that will never make a profit but may instead be costly to clean up.
What, then, explains the political power of fossil fuels? Hefty political donations and the long-term need for some supply of the fuels, albeit paired with some kind of technology to capture emissions, only tell part of the story. The industry, especially in the U.S., also serves as an avatar for a certain kind of cultural worldview, one that resonates with tough-guy masculinity and patriarchal families.
The concept of petro-masculinity suggests that fossil fuels mean more than profit; fossil fuels also contribute to making identities, which poses risks for post-carbon energy politics. Virginia Tech political scientist Cara Daggett
In 2011, a study in the peer-reviewed journal Global Environmental Change found that white males were overrepresented among people who denied the reality of climate change. Researchers attributed the phenomenon to a desire to “protect their cultural identity.”
“Perhaps white males see less risk in the world because they create, manage, control, and benefit from so much of it,” the study’s authors wrote. “Perhaps women and nonwhite men see the world as more dangerous because in many ways they are more vulnerable, because they benefit less from many of its technologies and institutions, and because they have less power and control.”
In 2014, researchers in Sweden found that climate denial was “intertwined with a masculinity of industrial modernity that is on decline.” Those who defended the industries destabilizing the planet were trying “to save an industrial society” that men like them had built and dominated, argued the researchers, whose work appeared in Norma: International Journal for Masculinity Studies.
In 2018, Virginia Tech political scientist Cara Daggett gave the concept a name: petro-masculinity.
“The concept of petro-masculinity suggests that fossil fuels mean more than profit,” Daggett wrote in the international studies journal Millennium. “Fossil fuels also contribute to making identities, which poses risks for post-carbon energy politics.”
Reflecting on this growing body of social research, the climate writer Emily Atkin asked in a recent edition of her Heated newsletter: “Do you ever wonder what the planet might look like if men didn’t control the world?”
“I’m not talking about all cisgender men, or the entirety of the male gender,” she wrote. “Really, I’m just talking about people who believe that because they have penises, they are required to act in a traditionally, almost performatively masculine way ― like ‘being strong’ and ‘never showing weakness’ and ’ not ordering sauvignon blanc.”
