Appearing on Tucker Carlson’s show, the right-wing representative was introduced as “one of the very few” lawmakers “who didn’t follow the rules and stand up and applaud like a seal as a foreign leader in a sweatshirt lectured our country.” Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) also remained seated beside Gaetz, while Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) skipped the event altogether.
Carslon, who has made a habit of harping on the war-time leader’s attire, further set the tone for the interview by saying what Gaetz did has been viewed as a “thought-crime” — as if there haven’t been enough references to the novel 1984 lately.
“How much do you love Putin that you didn’t applaud last night,” asked the Fox News host facetiously. (Carlson himself once said that he was rooting for Russia amid its tensions with Ukraine — a comment that he later claimed was a joke.)
“I feel no compunction to go out and applaud some foreign leader from a historically corrupt country who is begging for more than the hundred billion dollars that the Congress has already set to send them,” Gaetz said. Earlier on Thursday, the Senate approved an omnibus spending bill which included nearly $50 billion in aid to the country.
“Now, when President Trump said that America would never be a socialist country, you saw Democrats sit on their hands,” Gaetz continued, referencing a line in the former president’s 2019 State of the Union address. “But when we say you shouldn’t send endless amounts of money to this place where we’re exacerbating death and conflict, it’s like we’re traitors to the movement because Lauren Boebert and I didn’t stand up in some sort of North Korea-style performance.”
Carlson picked up where Gaetz’s ‘America-first’ spiel left off, criticizing Zelenky’s requests for aid.
“This guy has nothing to do with our country. Get what he can. I get it. I’m not even mad at him,” Carlson said. “I’m mad at the people who instinctively bow before some uppity foreigner demanding money that we don’t have.”
Gaetz closed the interview with what he must have thought was a zinger, in light of Zelensky having unfurled a Ukrainian flag signed by front-line soldiers. “At least we found a flag the Democrats were willing to stand for on the floor of the United States Congress,” Gaetz said, making Carlson crack up.
Star Jan. 6 witness told committee that lawyer linked to Trump tried to silence her
Sarah D. Wire – December 22, 2022
Cassidy Hutchinson, who was a top aide to Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, testifies at a House Jan. 6 committee hearing in June. Transcripts released Thursday detail her other interviews with panel investigators. (Brandon Bell / Getty Images)
The Trump-aligned lawyer who initially represented former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson instructed her to downplay her knowledge of what happened during the Capitol insurrection, Hutchinson told the House select Jan. 6 committee in testimony made public Thursday.
“We’re going to downplay your role,” attorney Stefan Passantino told Hutchinson, according to her testimony. “You were a secretary … the less you remember, the better.”
The details of the apparent Trumpworld pressure campaign on one of the committee’s key witnesses were among a number of revelations in a handful of deposition transcripts the committee made public Thursday. The panel’s final report, the closing salvo of its 18-month-long investigation, has not yet been released.
Hutchinson parted ways with Passantino after several spring 2021 appearances before the committee in which she felt she was giving untruthful or incomplete answers, she said. After switching attorneys, she provided some of the most dramatic live testimony of the panel’s nine hearings this year.
According to Hutchinson, Passantino did not want her to tell the committee that former President Trump had lunged at his security detail when they refused to take him to the Capitol during the riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
Hutchinson felt she had no other option but to retain the Trump-aligned lawyer because she couldn’t afford to pay the high costs of other attorneys she contacted while seeking representation, she told the committee in two days of depositions in September.
Passantino would not tell her who was paying for his legal services, Hutchinson told the committee, and she soon became leery, suspecting he was more concerned about Trump and other high-ranking former White House officials than he was about her.
“‘I am completely indebted to these people,'” she recalled telling her mother. “I was like, ‘And they will ruin my life, Mom, if I do anything that they don’t want me to do.'”
Passantino encouraged her to downplay her role as one of former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows’ most trusted aides, she said, and urged her to answer questions with the phrase “I cannot recall” even when she had clear memories of what had happened.
Hutchinson said Passantino and others in Trump’s orbit, including Meadows through an intermediary, kept reminding her to be “loyal” and repeatedly spoke of finding her a well-paying job after her interviews with the committee.
“‘We just want to focus on protecting the president. We all know you’re loyal,'” Hutchinson said Passantino told her.
In a statement first reported by CNN, Passantino said he represented Hutchinson, as he had other clients, “honorably, ethically, and fully consistent with her sole interests as she communicated them to me.”
Also released Thursday were transcripts of the committee’s interviews with Chris Krebs, former director of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency; convicted Jan. 6 rioter Stephen Ayres; former Defense Secretary Mark Esper; Justice Department employee Ken Klukowski; and Sarah Matthews, a former deputy White House press secretary.
Klukowski, whose transcript shows he told the committee he could not recall the answers to most of their questions, has connections to some of the most influential players in the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
In his June 10 deposition, Klukowski confirmed that he had worked for the Trump campaign in the weeks before he joined the Justice Department on Dec. 15, 2020. While he was with the campaign, Klukowski worked with conservative California lawyer John Eastman, who was behind the theory that the vice president could reject states’ electors or send results back to the states for more consideration.
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said in a June 23 hearing that Klukowski helped Jeffrey Clark, head of the Justice Department’s civil division, draft a letter that Clark wanted agency leaders to send to lawmakers in Georgia and other states. The letter claimed, falsely, that the Justice Department believed there were problems with those states’ elections and urged them to consider overriding the certified results that showed Trump had lost to current President Joe Biden.
Trump would later attempt to make Clark acting attorney general after Justice Department leaders refused to issue the letter.
Trump and his allies needed state lawmakers to consider overturning their election results, or for Vice President Mike Pence to throw out certain state electors, in order to keep Trump in power.
Matthews’ interview focused on the pressure she said Trump had put on his White House staff to echo his election fraud theories, and on aides’ efforts to convince him to issue a statement calling off rioters on Jan. 6.
In the days after the 2020 election, Trump repeatedly pressured then-Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany to discuss bogus election claims from the White House podium, Matthews told the committee in a Feb. 8 interview. A law called the Hatch Act bars White House staff from discussing campaign-related matters.
“I know that post-election, [McEnany] did try to actively avoid the president because he wanted her to do the briefings from the podium about the campaign, and wanted her to talk about Dominion,” Matthews told committee investigators, referring to the voting machine company that conspiracy theorists falsely accused of helping to rig the election.
When it became apparent that Jan. 6 that the rioters were going to get inside the Capitol, McEnany ordered the White House press team to not talk to reporters, Matthews said.
“I think she said that Meadows, the chief of staff, did not want us to comment on it at the time,” Matthews said, adding that later in the day McEnany claimed the rioters could be leftist protesters.
“There was an acknowledgment of, ‘Well, it could be antifa, and so we don’t want to comment on this right now because we don’t know what’s happening,’” she said.
Matthews also told the committee that her colleague Chad Gilmartin — a cousin of McEnany’s husband — had suggested that Trump should not condemn the violence because it would give the media a “win.”
“I pointed at the TV and said, I guess yelled, ‘Do you think we’re winning right now?’” Matthews added.
The committee’s April 1 interview with Esper focused on Trump’s desire to use the military to respond to racial justice protests in the summer of 2020.
Esper told the committee that Trump told him on June 1, 2020, that he wanted to deploy up to 10,000 troops to the Capitol to respond to the protests. Trump told him that the protests “made him look weak,” Esper told the committee.
In the days that followed, Esper made clear, he said, that he did not think the summer 2020 protests warranted invoking the Insurrection Act, which would have allowed the president to deploy the military. Esper said Trump summoned him to the White House and “was quite upset and yelling” about the remarks.
Times reporters Arit John, Freddy Brewster and Courtney Subramanian contributed to this report.
Publix heiress Julie Fancelli was prepared to contribute as much as $3 million to a rally on Jan. 6, 2021 that organizers were calling the “Million MAGA March,” according to interview transcripts.
John Matze, a co-founder and former CEO of the alternative social media platform Parler, faced questioning by the committee on the platform’s efforts to moderate violent rhetoric before and after the Jan. 6, 2021 riot.
Nick Fuentes’ lawyer told the panel in February that Fuentes had been notified he was “a subject and possibly a target” of an investigation by the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
The latest on the report and the files:
Cassidy Hutchinson felt inspired to testify after reading book on Watergate
After transcripts of Cassidy Hutchinson’s initial testimony to the committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack, in which she answered “I don’t recall” to several of the committee’s questions, she said she felt an internal dilemma.
She ordered two copies of a book detailing the Watergate scandal and the involvement of Alexander Butterfield, deputy assistant to former President Richard Nixon. Butterfield delivered blockbuster testimony to the Senate Watergate committee at the time, revealing the White House’s taping system.
After she read the book, Hutchinson said she found inspiration in Butterfield. “And I wasn’t by no means trying to compare what I knew to what Butterfield knew at all.” Hutchinson said.
“And it was after I read this I was like, if I’m going to pass the mirror test for the rest of my life, I need to try to fix some of this,” Hutchinson told the committee.
– Ken Tran
Cassidy Hutchinson scheduled an interview with the committee without lawyer’s knowledge
After her first interview with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, Cassidy Hutchinson said she felt guilty and thought she had more information to offer to the committee, but with “Trump world” attorney Stefan Passantino serving as her lawyer, she didn’t know how to schedule another interview without him knowing.
Hutchinson sought advice from another former White House aide, Alyssa Farah Griffin. The two decided on a plan for Farah Griffin to serve as a backchannel to the committee and provide them information on what to ask Hutchinson – without Passantino’s knowledge.
“I think that I can do this as long as like the committee thinks that they can really keep this low key and low profile and not let Stefan know that I’m back channeling for this interview,” Hutchinson told Farah Griffin, to which she agreed.
The committee’s request for another interview caught Passantino off guard and he was “genuinely shocked,” Hutchinson said. During breaks in the interview, Passantino asked Hutchinson, “How do they have all of this? How do they know that you know all of this?”
– Ken Tran
‘He knows you’re loyal’: Meadows aide called Jan. 6 witness Cassidy Hutchinson ahead of testimony
The night before Cassidy Hutchinson was set to testify for a second time before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack, she received a phone call from a top aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
Ben Williamson, formerly a senior adviser to Meadows and deputy assistant to former President Donald Trump, told Hutchinson that Meadows asked him to pass along a message.
“Mark wants me to let you know that he knows you’re loyal and he knows you’ll do the right thing tomorrow and that you’re going to protect him and the boss. You know, he knows that we’re all on the same team and we’re all a family. Let me know how it goes.”
The exchange was previously reported, though the caller was unnamed.
The call “sparked an anxiety thought” that Meadows perceived her as disloyal, Hutchinson told the committee. She said that after her deposition, Williamson called her again on Signal but she did not pick up.
– Ella Lee
Cassidy Hutchinson felt ‘target on my back’ about misleading committee
Cassidy Hutchinson said her final break with “Trump world” lawyer Stefan Passantino came June 9, when she sent him an email discontinuing their relationship and switched lawyers to Bill Jordan and Jody Hunt.
Hutchinson said she felt uncomfortable through three interviews answering committee questions about Trump’s clash with the Secret Service with “I don’t recall,” when she did recall. When asked to return for another interview, Hutchinson said she “knew that there would be a target on my back with this,” she said.
“I followed his bad legal advice; I took his bad legal advice. I will own that,” Hutchinson said. “But my character and my integrity mean more to me than anything.”
– Bart Jansen
Cassidy Hutchinson said Trump tried to ‘wrap his hands around’ his Secret Service agent’s neck but she was advised not to tell the committee about it
Former White House official Cassidy Hutchinson told the Jan. 6 committee how White House security chief Anthony Ornato told her after Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021 rally on the Ellipse that Trump had “tried to wrap his hands around Bobby’s neck and strangle him because he wouldn’t take him to the Capitol.” She was referring to Trump’s main Secret Service agent, Bobby Engel, who was in the presidential limousine with him when the president was told the Secret Service thought it was too dangerous to drive him to the Capitol to accompany an angry mob he had sent there during his fiery speech that morning.
Her closed-door testimony on Sept. 14 goes beyond her bombshell public testimony weeks earlier, when she said Trump lunged at the agent and tried to redirect the steering wheel. She also testified that when she recounted this to defense lawyer Stefan Passantino, whom she later fired and accused of trying to silence her, he said, “No, no, no, no, no. We don’t want to go there. We don’t want to talk about that.”
Passantino, who has denied wrongdoing, also told her to say she didn’t recall entire incidents even if she recalled a lot of detail, Hutchinson testified – including pardons sought by Trump associates and suspicious interactions between GOP lawmakers and her former boss, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, in the run-up to the attack on the Capitol. When she expressed worry that she’d be perjuring herself if she claimed not to recall such details, Passantino told her, “‘I don’t recall’ is the best answer to any of that,” Hutchinson testified.
– Josh Meyer
Kevin McCarthy, John Ratcliffe expressed concerns over Mark Meadows as advisor to Trump
Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe and House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy both expressed concerns over White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’ advisory role to Trump in the lead up to the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack, according to former top Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson.
Ratcliffe told Hutchinson he had conversations with Trump where he went back and forth between accepting his loss and then denying the results of the election. “I’m just a little worried that Mark’s not giving him good advice,” Ratcliffe told Hutchinson.
McCarthy echoed similar sentiments in his own conversations with Hutchinson, telling her, “I talk to the president sometimes, and he admits he lost the election, but then he’ll immediately say he didn’t lose and there’s actually a way that he’s going to stay in office.”
“I can only imagine that’s coming from Mark. Mark’s lying to him, Cassidy,” McCarthy said.
– Ken Tran
Publix supermarket heiress pledged up to $3M for ‘Million MAGA March’ on Jan. 6
Publix heiress Julie Fancelli was prepared to contribute as much as $3 million to a rally on Jan. 6, 2021 that organizers were calling the “Million MAGA March,” according to interview transcripts released Wednesday by the House committee investigating the Capitol riot.
Trump fundraiser Caroline Wren sent her a proposal roughly two weeks earlier and within days, Wren texted a colleague to report that she was at Fancelli’s house and had secured the money.
“Guess what the budget is she just gave me for our bus project?” she wrote, according to texts described by investigators. “$3 million…”
The colleague, Trump aide Taylor Budowich, replied with “lol”s, and “probably could do it for that,” before remarking, “rich people are so odd.”
Fancelli did not answers investigators’ questions about the exchange or many others, pleading the Fifth Amendment. She did tell investigators she never intended to fund anything but a peaceful rally.
– Donovan Slack
Cassidy Hutchinson feared ‘Trump world’ lawyers would try to silence her about what she knew about Jan. 6
Former top Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson told the Jan. 6 committee that she was desperate to raise money for her own defense about any potential role in the alleged Trump insurrection plot because she feared she was being railroaded into accepting “Trump world” lawyers who would protect the former president’s interests at the expense of her own.
Hutchinson, who later fired her Trump-affiliated counsel Stefan Passantino and delivered bombshell live testimony at a Jan. 6 committee hearing, told committee members on Sept. 14 she interviewed dozens of independent lawyers after being subpoenaed but couldn’t afford the required legal retainers of $125,000 or more. In desperation, she testified, Hutchinson drove from Washington to New Jersey and “begged” her father for financial assistance, saying, “You have no idea what they are going to do to me if I have to get an attorney with Trump world.”
Later, Hutchinson testified, her fears intensified when former Trump associates steered her to Passantino, the former top ethics lawyer in the Trump White House, and he told her not to print out her calendars or try to remember key dates and conversations. “Look, we want to get you in, get you out,” Hutchinson quoted Passantino as saying. “We’re going to downplay your role. You were a secretary. … But the less you remember, the better.” Passantino has denied any wrongdoing and said he did his best to represent Hutchinson.
– Josh Meyer
‘The president could have tried to strangle you’: Cassidy Hutchinson recalls conversation with Anthony Ornato
A few months after she left the White House, Cassidy Hutchinson, top aide to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, said she reached out to Anthony Ornato, former White House deputy chief of operations, after having “a really hard day.”
“I remember waking up that morning and just feeling like this heaviness with everything that happened in that period,” she said according to a transcript of the testimony. “And I knew that Tony (Ornato) would be somebody that I could talk to because Tony and I did confide in each other about a lot of things working at the White House.”
After assuring each other about how they shouldn’t blame themselves about the “movements in the Capitol,” Hutchinson recalled how Ornato had ended the call with a reference about Trump trying to grab the steering wheel of his car to force the motorcade to go to the U.S. Capitol. She had previously testified that Trump had tried to “lunge” toward the chief of his security detail Robert Engel’s “clavicles.”
“It could be worse. The President could have tried to strangle you,” Hutchinson recalled Ornato as saying.“I remember just laughing and being like, “That’s true. At least he didn’t try that,” she said.
– Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy
Mark Meadows met with National Archives in December 2020 to discuss transition
Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows met with the chief U.S. archivist in December 2020 without former President Donald Trump’s knowledge to discuss Trump’s presidential library and the document-retention protocol for the administration’s end, according to a transcript of testimony from Jan. 6 committee witness Cassidy Hutchinson.
According to Hutchinson, Meadows said Trump was left in the dark on the Dec. 9, 2020 meeting because the former president didn’t want his staff to begin working on a “post-election period” yet. Asked whether he agreed with Trump’s thinking, Meadows quipped “Well, I had the meeting, didn’t I?,” Hutchinson said.
“I understood that comment to mean that Mr. Meadows knew it was the right thing to do, to begin having meetings discussing an end of the Trump administration, but also that he needed to keep also trying to balance the interests and ensure that the President wasn’t going to get angry at him,” Hutchinson told the panel. “He was sort of trying to do this a little bit more quietly.”
The FBI uncovered classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, earlier this year, which is a subject of a special counsel investigation concerning the former president.
Legislative recommendations are expected to aim at preventing another attack. The committee already endorsed an overhaul of the 1887 Electoral Count Act, which Congress will be voting on this week as part of a spending package.
Five House Republicans including Jordan released a rival report Wednesday blaming Democratic congressional leaders and law enforcement for failing to protect the Capitol.
Former Parler CEO grilled on content moderation by panel
John Matze, a co-founder and former CEO of the alternative social media platform Parler, faced questioning by the committee investigating the Capitol attack on the platform’s efforts to moderate violent rhetoric before and after the Jan. 6, 2021 riot.
In a May interview, Matze was asked when aggressive language on the platform went from protected speech to unprotected speech worthy of investigation by law enforcement. He primarily pleaded the Fifth Amendment to questions asked by the committee.
Questions asked by the committee indicated Parler employees were aware the events of Jan. 6, 2021 could turn violent. One employee sent a Parler post, not detailed in the interview, to the FBI along with the message, “More where this came from. Concerned about Wednesday.”
The committee also asked Matze questions about the presence of extremist groups like the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and Three Percenters on the social media platform, which he declined to answer.
– Ella Lee
Jan. 6 committee told DOJ to prosecute Trump
The committee on Monday recommended the Justice Department charge Trump with four crimes: inciting the insurrection, obstruction of Congress, conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to make false statements.
The committee also recommended Ethics Committee investigations of four House Republicans for defying subpoenas: Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Andy Biggs of Arizona and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania.
Jan. 6 committee witnesses sidestepped questions on fake elector scheme
Questions about a plot to use slates of fake electors in battleground states to overturn the 2020 election were sidestepped under questioning by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack.
Nevada GOP chair Michael McDonald and national committeeman Jim DeGraffenreid, in February testimony before the committee, pleaded the Fifth Amendment hundreds of times in their interviews with the panel, refusing to answer questions over whether they signed fake certificates pledging Nevada electoral votes to former President Donald Trump.
In one set of questions not answered, a committee investigator asked McDonald about a Nov. 4 text message to an individual named Steve suggesting McDonald was in direct contact with the then-president.
“Was on the phone to President, Mark Meadows, Giuliani, and they want full attack mode,” the text read, suggesting McDonald would participate in a “war room meeting” shortly after with the three.
Two Michiganders – Kathy Berden, a GOP national committeewoman, and Mayra Rodriguez – also declined to answer most substantive questions from the committee about a plot to subvert the election results.
– Ella Lee
Jeffrey Clark: Jan. 6 investigation ‘political,’ not ‘legislative’
Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department official who drafted a letter for Trump’s attorney general to send urging state officials to review their 2020 election results for fraud, refused to answer substantive questions from the committee. But that didn’t stop him from giving lawmakers a piece of his mind.
“I think that this is exclusively a political inquiry, not a legislative one,” Clark told the panel at his second deposition Feb. 2. “It also has, I think, pretenses and an underlying purpose of invading the executive sphere, in terms of law enforcement.”
His lawyer, Harry MacDougald, told the panel Clark received a call threatening to chop him into pieces in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. MacDougald said lawmakers should be embarrassed for implying Clark is guilty of crimes such as treason because he refused to testify.
“My point is that this whole process has gone off the rails,” MacDougald said. “People have lost their minds.”
– Bart Jansen
Nick Fuentes ‘subject and possibly a target’ of criminal investigation: lawyer
Nick Fuentes of Berwyn, Illinois, founder of the America First Foundation advocating American nationalism, Christianity and traditionalism, was among dozens of witnesses who declined to answer substantive questions from the committee under his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
His lawyer, Tom Durkin, told the panel at his Feb. 16 deposition that Fuentes had been notified he was “a subject and possibly a target” of an investigation by the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
Fuentes hosts a streaming show on the internet and is a white nationalist, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremists. He recently dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
Thompson expressed confidence in the special counsel, Jack Smith, to investigate who organized and financed the Capitol attack beyond the hundreds of rioters who have already been charged. But the committee interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses and is in the midst of sharing those transcripts with the department.
“There were people that we deposed that Justice had not deposed,” Thompson said. “There were electors in various states that Justice couldn’t find. We found them.”
– Bart Jansen
Jan. 6 committee posts files on 34 witnesses who were interviewed
The committee posted files Wednesday on 34 witnesses interviewed during the investigation, an initial signal of how much information the panel will be passing along to the Justice Department for its criminal investigation.
But the release was scant so far. Thirteen of the files, dealing with people such as Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis and broadcaster Alex Jones, remain sealed.
Witnesses in the rest, such as Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, Trump lawyer John Eastman and former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, refused to answer substantive questions by invoking their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
– Bart Jansen
Chapman School of Law professor John Eastman testifies on Capitol Hill in 2017. Eastman was also a former lawyer for former President Donald Trump.
Watchdog predicts more Jan. 6 ‘bombshells’
One government watchdog expects the final report – expected to run as long as 800 pages or more – will help fill in blanks that remain, even after nearly a dozen committee hearings.
Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, wrote in an NBC op-ed on Wednesday the report would included “hundreds of pages packed with evidence, witness statements and bombshells.”
But he argued nothing will be as important as the conclusion announced Monday that Trump, “as a matter of law, incited an insurrection against the authority of the U.S. government.”
Trump tried to contact a witness after a June hearing, committee members have said. Some of Trump’s fundraising proceeds went to pay lawyers for witnesses, one witness was offered a job but it was rescinded.
“The witness believed this was an effort to prevent her testimony,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., said Monday.
Still, witness tampering was not among the charges the committee recommended to prosecutors but full details remain elusive.
– Donovan Slack
Did Trump loyalist Hope Hicks incriminate the former president?
“I was becoming increasingly concerned that we were damaging his legacy,” Hicks said.
She is among more than 1,000 witnesses who cooperated with the investigation while about 30 people refused to answer questions under their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Transcripts for Hicks and other witnesses will be released after the final report and could shed more light on the investigation.
“Next to Dan Scavino, she was Trump’s most trusted aide and one of the only people he listened to,” said Stephanie Grisham, a Trump White House press secretary. “Her constant proximity to the president makes her not just valuable as a witness, but vital.”
Findings accused Democratic leaders of seeking to avoid “optics” of a large police presence at the Capitol after Black Lives Matter protests the previous year. Capitol Police lacked training and equipment to deal with a riotous mob, according to the report, which echoed findings of an earlier Senate report.
The GOP lawmakers who wrote the rebuttal are Jordan and Reps. Jim Banks of Indiana, Rodney Davis of Illinois, Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota and Troy Nehls of Texas. The five were nominated to serve on the committee, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Calif., rejected Banks and Jordan, and the others withdrew.
– Bart Jansen
Jan. 6 committee released an executive summary of the report Monday
The House panel on Monday released a 160-plus page executive summary of the report and showed video testimony of some of the approximately 1,000 witnesses it has interviewed during the course of its 18-month investigation.
And it voted to forward to the Justice Department its recommendations that former President Donald Trump be charged with four criminal violations stemming from his effort to overturn the 2020 election results and set loose a mob of his supporters on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when lawmakers were certifying the electoral results showing that Trump had lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
“I expect our final work will be filed with the clerk of the House and made public later this week,” Thompson said Monday. “Beyond that release, the select committee intends to make public the bulk of its non-sensitive records before the end of the year.”
“The transcripts and documents will allow the American people to see for themselves the body of evidence we’ve gathered and continue to explore the information that has led us to our conclusions,” Thompson said.
– Josh Meyer and Bart Jansen
Jan. 6 committee members list: Who is on the House panel?
Cassidy Hutchinson says she initially lied to the January 6 committee about a claim that Trump grabbed the steering wheel of his SUV and lunged at a Secret Service agent
Madison Hall – December 22, 2022
Cassidy Hutchinson testifies in a House Capitol-riot hearing on June 28 in Washington, DC.Brandon Bell/Getty Images
Cassidy Hutchinson said she lied in her original deposition to the House Capitol-riot committee.
She said she initially told the panel she hadn’t heard of Trump lunging at a Secret Service agent.
But soon after her deposition, she said she told her attorney, “I lied, I lied, I lied.”
Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide in the Trump administration and a key witness in the House select committee hearings on the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack, said she initially lied to the panel in a deposition about whether she’d heard that President Donald Trump lunged at a Secret Service agent in the presidential SUV on the day of the riot.
In her newly released depositions, Hutchinson said she was coerced by Stefan Passantino, her Trump-aligned attorney, to mislead it on how much information she knew.
“The committee doesn’t know what you can and can’t recall, so we want to be able to use that as much as we can unless you really, really remember something very clearly,” Hutchinson said Passantino told her.
Hutchinson said she followed the advice of her counsel. When asked about a moment on January 6 when the president is said to have lunged at a member of the Secret Service in the presidential SUV for not taking him to the Capitol alongside protesters, she said she told the panel she had “never heard anything about that.”
After the deposition, she told the committee in a separate deposition that she broke down in front of Passantino out of fear that she had just lied to the committee.
“Stefan, I’m fucked. I just lied,” Hutchinson said she told Passantino. “I lied, I lied, I lied.”
In a later deposition, Hutchinson told the committee she continued to be riddled with guilt after not being entirely truthful to the committee in her first deposition.
“Stefan, I feel really guilty and bad about not answering some questions today,” she said she told her counsel.
Hutchinson also apologized for her missteps with the committee.
“I know my history with the committee, and I am sorry that it took so long to get to this place,” she told Rep. Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the committee. “I do accept responsibility for it. I’m not pinning blame on everybody else but myself.”
Passantino denied any wrongdoing in a statement to Insider.
“As with all my clients during my 30 years of practice, I represented Ms. Hutchinson honorably, ethically, and fully consistent with her sole interests as she communicated them to me,” Passantino told Insider. “I believed Ms. Hutchinson was being truthful and cooperative with the Committee throughout the several interview sessions in which I represented her.”
Correction: December 22, 2022 — An earlier version of this story misstated the date of the Capitol riot. It took place on January 6, 2021, not January 6, 2020.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger at the Capitol in April. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)
In January 2011, the Chicago Tribune published a Q&A with Illinois’ five freshmen in the U.S. House. Among them was Republican Adam Kinzinger, who had run for Congress after three tours in Iraq. When the quintet were asked, “Whom do you admire from the other side of the aisle?” four of them offered names. Kinzinger did not. Instead, he gave an answer that, in retrospect, feels as if it were written by Sophocles: “Those who are committed to serving their country.”
This week the House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the United States Capitol published its final report and referred President Trump for prosecution. It also referred John Eastman, who devised the legal framework for the attempted coup, to the Justice Department. After more than a thousand interviews, a million documents and countless hours, this chapter of the book of Trumpism is finally closed.
For the seven Democrats on the committee, the journey has been long, but at least they can finally go home.
But for the two Republican members, who chose country over party, “home” is now a complicated word.
This is particularly true for Kinzinger, who announced in 2021 that he was not seeking reelection after his district was redrawn — although it is worth mentioning that had he run again, he would have faced the wrath of Donald Trump for voting to impeach him. During the Jan. 6 investigation, Kinzinger sold his house in his home state of Illinois and temporarily moved his family to Texas. He’s now trying to decide where “home” is — both literally and figuratively.
“There are a lot of factors for us to consider,” Kinzinger told me this week, besides housing costs and schools. “I don’t know where we’re going to settle down. We’ll see.”
Yes, we shall.
About all of it.
While the committee’s lengthy final report provides damning evidence against the former president as well as his co-conspirators, its recommendation to the Justice Department is similar to that of the Mueller report, in that evidence is all it can provide. It is up to the Justice Department to decide what to do with it, if anything.
Kinzinger said the committee’s investigation was different from the one conducted by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into Russian interference in the 2016 election, because the attorney general didn’t try to get out in front of the Jan. 6 committee’s messaging and its process was transparent. But the congressman does acknowledge he may have to live with the fact that charges won’t come.
“I always assumed everyone in politics had their version of a red line, that one thing they won’t do,” he said. “My faith in the people who become politicians has become really damaged. I now look more realistically at politics.”
I told him that sounded sad.
He said it was sad.
“It’s been a dark couple of years for me,” he shared. “This has been all-consuming. I went into this job at 32 as a Republican because I believed in the mission, and now I don’t know what the mission is. Ukraine is way more divided politically than we are. But you see what happens when their freedom is threatened. They are willing to die for it. We have what they are fighting for, and we are trying just as hard to get rid of it.”
Strong words from someone who voted for President Trump in 2020 and sided with his agenda more than 90% of the time.
And therein lies the rub with a political figure like Kinzinger. His participation in the Jan. 6 committee is appreciated by the left, but his voting record is pure right.
“Trump basically inherited a Republican agenda and went with it,” Kinzinger said of his own voting record. “I can’t think of any vote that I regret.”
Kinzinger voted against the John Lewis Voting Rights Act but supported the Respect for Marriage Act, which President Biden signed into law last week, codifying federal recognition of same-sex and interracial marriage.
Son of a third-grade teacher and the director of a Christian outreach program for the homeless, Kinzinger has out gay staffers and says he’s disappointed to see his party’s regression on the issue.
“I think to them it’s just about owning the libs,” he said. “If your neighbor is transgender, that’s not your issue. Let them be. At the end of the day, it’s America. Live your life however you want.”
As lovely as that sounds, it’s hard for me to see a congressman who so frequently sided with Trump as a “live and let live” kind of person. Nor would I characterize voting for Trump in 2020 — given everything we then knew him to be — as a “live and let live” vote. I pressed Kinzinger on that one.
“I was a big sissy,” he said. “I thought, [Trump] is not going to win Illinois anyway, so it wouldn’t matter. I didn’t vote for him in 2016 and was heavily criticized for it, so I voted for him in 2020 just to have one less thing people could come at me with.
“I’m telling you this because it’s important to tell people that there’s nobody that’s perfect in resistance or courage. Self-governance is the hardest form of government.”
Kinzinger was not aware just how far Trump’s rot had reached until Jan. 6, 2021. He was not aware how far people were willing to go to serve Trump until the investigation unearthed frightening details, like the never-issued executive order that would have seized voting machines.
Then there was the correspondence of Trump’s White House chief of staff.
“All of Mark Meadows’ text log was shocking, but the biggest personal shock was seeing how much Ginni Thomas was texting him,” he said of Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife, Virginia, a conservative activist. “Who saw that coming?”
Who saw any of this coming?
Back in 2011, when Kinzinger told the Tribune that he admired “those who are committed to serving their country,” who knew a decade later he would have this historic opportunity to prove it?
Of Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Kinzinger said: “He disappointed me because I know him. I was friends with him. I used to think he was a great politician with a moral compass. I now see he’s just a politician without a moral compass.
“The day before impeachment I thought there would be 25 [Republican] yesses.”
“People would later call and say, ‘I just can’t do it’ or ‘I want to run for Senate’ or something like that. It was such a foreign way of thinking. It was a lesson about people for me.”
Where he will apply this hard-earned lesson is a mystery.
If you ever wondered why the forefathers feared a two-party system, look no further than Kinzinger, a decorated war hero who doesn’t have a party — or even a state — to call home.
Clearly the country is indebted to both him and the other Republican on the committee, Rep. Liz Cheney, and yet both were forced out of office by the business of two-party politics. There are many issues he and I disagree on. Where two hopeful fools like us find common ground is our unrelenting belief that America will fulfill her promise.
“I truly believe in this country,” Kinzinger said. “Democracy is not defined by the bad days, but how it recovers.”
Democrat who lost to George Santos calls on him to resign following NYT report
Dylan Stableford, Senior Writer – December 20, 2022
Rep.-elect George Santos, R-N.Y., speaks at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual leadership meeting in Las Vegas on Nov. 19, 2022. (Photo by Wade Vandervort/AFP via Getty Images)
The Democrat who lost to GOP Rep.-elect George Santos in the race to represent New York’s Third Congressional District is calling on Santos to resign after the New York Times published a bombshell investigation suggesting that he fabricated key parts of his résumé during the campaign.
“The reality is Santos flat-out lied to the voters of NY-03,” Robert Zimmerman, who lost to Santos by 8 points in last month’s midterm elections, said in a statement late Monday. “He’s violated the public trust in order to win office and does not deserve to represent Long Island and Queens.
“Santos’ failure to answer any of the questions about these allegations demonstrates why he is unfit for public office and should resign,” Zimmerman added. “It demonstrates why there must be a House Ethics Committee, Federal Elections Commission, and U.S. Attorney investigation immediately.”
Democrat Robert Zimmerman concedes to Republican George Santos in Great Neck, N.Y., on Nov. 8. (William Perlman/Newsday RM via Getty Images)
The Times report published on Monday found that Santos may have misled voters about his college graduation, his criminal and employment history, his family-owned business, his animal rescue charity and his relationship with four victims of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Fla.
In a statement, Joseph Murray, an attorney for Santos, said that his client “represents the kind of progress that the Left is so threatened by — a gay, Latino, immigrant and Republican who won a Biden district in overwhelming fashion by showing everyday voters that there is a better option than the broken promises and failed policies of the Democratic Party.”
“After four years in the public eye, and on the verge of being sworn in as a member of the Republican-led 118th Congress, the New York Times launches this shotgun blast of attacks,” Murray continued. “It is no surprise that Congressman-elect Santos has enemies at the New York Times who are attempting to smear his good name with these defamatory allegations.”
The statement — which ended with a quote erroneously attributed to Winston Churchill — did not directly address the allegations that appeared in the story in the Times.
George Santos, R-N.Y., at a conference in Las Vegas last month. (Wade Vandervort/AFP via Getty Images)
If Santos were to resign, a special election would be called to fill his seat.
The revelations in the Times article also raise questions about why neither the Zimmerman campaign nor the Democratic Party, which lost control of the House of Representatives in the midterms, were unable to uncover the apparent holes in Santos’s biography before the election.
“This story is not a shock,” Zimmerman said, insisting that his campaign “worked to raise many of these issues” uncovered by the Times.
New York state Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs defended the Zimmerman campaign, telling CNN, “It’s unfair to blame the campaign for opposition research work that it did because the resources of a campaign are not as significant as a paper like the New York Times.”
“The important thing is to focus on George Santos,” Jacobs added. “He’s got a lot of explaining to do.”
McCarthy’s race for speaker risks upending House on Day One
Lisa Mascaro – December 17, 2022
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., walks to the chamber for final votes as the House wraps up its work for the week, at the Capitol in Washington, Dec. 2, 2022. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)Nancy Pelosi of California takes the gavel from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., after being elected House Speaker at the Capitol in Washington, Jan. 3, 2019. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — In his quest to rise to House speaker, Kevin McCarthy is charging straight into history — potentially becoming the first nominee in 100 years unable to win the job on a first-round floor vote.
The increasingly real prospect of a messy floor fight over the speaker’s gavel on Day One of the new Congress on Jan. 3 is worrying House Republicans, who are bracing for the spectacle. They have been meeting endlessly in private at the Capitol trying to resolve the standoff.
Taking hold of a perilously slim 222-seat Republican majority in the 435-member House and facing handful of defectors, McCarthy is working furiously to reach the 218-vote threshold typically needed to become speaker.
“The fear is, that if we stumble out of the gate,” said Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., a McCarthy ally, then the voters who sent the Republicans to Washington “will revolt over that and they will feel let down.”
Not since the disputed election of 1923 has a candidate for House speaker faced the public scrutiny of convening a new session of Congress only to have it descend into political chaos, with one vote after another, until a new speaker is chosen. At that time, it eventually took a grueling nine ballots to secure the gavel.
McCarthy, a Republican from Bakersfield, California, who was first elected in 2006 and who remains allied with Donald Trump, has signaled he is willing to go as long as it takes in a floor vote to secure the speaker’s job he has wanted for years. The former president has endorsed McCarthy, and is said to be making calls on McCarthy’s behalf. McCarthy has given no indication he would step aside, as he did in 2015 when it was clear he did not have the support.
But McCarthy also is acknowledging the holdouts won’t budge. “It’s all in jeopardy,” McCarthy said Friday in an interview with conservative Hugh Hewitt.
The dilemma reflects not just McCarthy’s uncertain stature among his peers, but also the shifting political norms in Congress as party leaders who once wielded immense power — the names of Cannon, Rayburn and now Pelosi adorn House meeting rooms and office buildings — are seeing it slip away in the 21st century.
Rank-and-file lawmakers have become political stars on their own terms, able to shape their brands on social media and raise their own money for campaigns. House members are less reliant than they once were on the party leaders to dole out favors in exchange for support.
The test for McCarthy, if he is able to shore up the votes on Jan. 3 or in the days that follow, will be whether he emerges a weakened speaker, forced to pay an enormous price for the gavel, or whether the potentially brutal power struggle emboldens his new leadership.
“Does he want to go down as the first speaker candidate in 100 years to go to the floor and have to essentially, you know, give up?” said Jeffrey A. Jenkins, a professor at the University of Southern California and co-author of “Fighting for the Speakership.”
“But if he pulls this rabbit out of the hat, you know, maybe he actually has more of the right stuff.”
Republicans met in private this past week for another lengthy session as McCarthy’s detractors, largely a handful of conservative stalwarts from the Freedom Caucus, demand changes to House rules that would diminish the power of the speaker’s office.
The Freedom Caucus members and others want assurances they will be able to help draft legislation from the ground up and have opportunities to amend bills during the floor debates. They want enforcement of the 72-hour rule that requires bills to be presented for review before voting.
Outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and the past two Republican speakers, John Boehner and Paul Ryan, faced similar challenges, but they were able to rely on the currency of their position to hand out favors, negotiate deals and otherwise win over opponents to keep them in line — for a time. Boehner and Ryan ended up retiring early.
But the central demand by McCarthy’s opponents’ could go too far: They want to reinstate a House rule that allows any single lawmaker to file a motion to “vacate the chair,” essentially allowing a floor vote to boot the speaker from office.
The early leaders of the Freedom Caucus, under Mark Meadows, the former North Carolina congressman turned Trump’s chief of staff, wielded the little-used procedure as a threat over Boehner, and later, over Ryan.
It wasn’t until Pelosi seized the gavel the second time, in 2019, that House Democrats voted to do away with the rule and require a majority vote of the caucus to mount a floor vote challenge to the speaker.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said the 200-year-old rule was good enough for Thomas Jefferson, so it’s one he would like to see in place.
“We’re still a long way from fixing this institution the way it needs to be fixed,” Roy told reporters Thursday at the Capitol.
What’s unclear for McCarthy is even if he gives in to the various demands being made by the conservatives, whether that will be enough for them drop their opposition to his leadership.
Several House Republicans said they do not believe McCarthy will ever be able to overcome the detractors.
“I don’t believe he’s going to get to 218 votes,” said Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., among the holdouts. “And so I look forward to when that recognition sets in and, for the good of the country, for the good of the Congress, he steps aside, and we can consider other candidates.”
The opposition to McCarthy has promoted a counteroffensive from other groups of House Republicans who are becoming more vocal in their support of the GOP leader — and more concerned about the fallout if the start of the new Congress descends into an internal party fight.
Rep. David Joyce, R-Ohio, who leads the Republican Governance Group, was wearing an “O.K.” button on his lapel — meaning, “Only Kevin,” he explained.
Some have suggested that the opponents to McCarthy could simply vote “present,” lowering the threshold for reaching a majority — a tactic Pelosi and Boehner both used to win with fewer than 218 votes.
While some have suggested threatening the detractors with removal from their committee assignments or other retribution, Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., a leader of another conservative governance caucus, said: “Anybody who thinks that the holdouts are going to be bullied into compliance doesn’t understand how this town works.”
Retiring Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., who recalled that then-Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia dropped out of the race in 1998 when he didn’t have the votes, cautioned McCarthy against backing down.
“My advice to Kevin is, you got to go to the finish line,” Upton said. “You can’t fold the cards. You got to make these folks vote — and vote.”
Catrin Einhorn and Lauren Leatherby – December 16, 2022
Animals Are Running Out of Places to Live
Wildlife is disappearing around the world, in the oceans and on land. The main cause on land is perhaps the most straightforward: Humans are taking over too much of the planet, erasing what was there before. Climate change and other pressures make survival harder.
This week and next, nations are meeting in Montreal to negotiate a new agreement to address staggering declines in biodiversity. The future of many species hangs in the balance.
“If the forest disappears, they will disappear,” said Walter Jetz, a professor of biodiversity science at Yale University who leads Map of Life, a platform that combines satellite imaging with ecological data to determine how species ranges are changing around the world. Map of Life shared data with The New York Times.
Biodiversity — or all the variety of life on the planet, including plants, invertebrates and ocean species — is declining at rates unprecedented in human history, according to the leading intergovernmental scientific panel on the subject. The group’s projections suggest that 1 million species are threatened with extinction, many within decades.
The meeting in Montreal is intended to chart a different path. Delayed two years because of the pandemic, delegations are working to land a new, 10-year agreement to tackle biodiversity loss under a United Nations treaty called the Convention on Biological Diversity.
“With our bottomless appetite for unchecked and unequal economic growth, humanity has become a weapon of mass extinction,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in his opening remarks last week in Montreal.
The last global biodiversity agreement failed to meet a single target at the global level, according to the Convention on Biological Diversity itself, and wildlife populations continue to plummet.
Take the Honduran white bat.
At first glance, they resemble a cluster of cotton balls stuck under a leaf. But each tiny mound of fluff possesses an even tinier yellow snout and ears. Honduran white bats work together to fashion leaves into tent homes and are known to nurse one another’s young. At night, they fly out in search of a specific species of fig, dispersing its seeds in return.
These bats offer potential benefits to people. Their cuteness makes them an ecotourism draw, and they have an ability that’s rare in mammals to store carotenoids in their skin, which could hold promise for unlocking treatment for conditions such as macular degeneration.
But in the past 20 years, Honduran white bats have lost about half their range in Central America as people clear rainforest for pasture, crops and homes. Not yet considered endangered, they are nevertheless in steep decline, one of countless examples in this worsening global crisis.
It’s not only wildlife that will suffer as a result. Biodiversity loss can trigger ecosystem collapse, scientists say, threatening humanity’s food and water supplies. Alarm is growing that the threat is comparable in significance to the climate crisis.
“Climate change presents a nearer-term threat to the future of human civilization,” said Katharine Hayhoe, a prominent climate change researcher who also focuses on biodiversity as chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy. “The biodiversity crisis presents a longer-term threat to the viability of the human species.”
Scientists emphasize that one can’t be solved without the other because they are interconnected.
What Is Driving the Loss
The human population has doubled since 1970. Although the rate of population growth is slowing, the sheer number of people continues to rise. Consumption levels in different parts of the world mean some people put more pressure on nature. In the United States, for example, each person uses the equivalent of 8 global hectares on average, according to the Global Footprint Network, a nonprofit research group. In Nigeria, it’s about 1 hectare per person.
All that is related to the causes of biodiversity loss, which scientists have ranked. First are changes in land and sea use. Then comes the direct taking of species via, for example, hunting, fishing and wildlife trafficking. Climate change is next, followed by pollution and invasive species. Unfortunately for wildlife, these pressures build on one another.
In the future, scientists expect climate change to become the main driver of biodiversity loss as changes in temperature, rainfall and other conditions continue to transform ecosystems. That shift is expected “some decades down the road,” Jetz said. “But we might already be looking at a much-reduced set of species at that point.”
For the best chance at adapting to climate change, plants and animals need robust populations and room to migrate. Instead, they are depleted and hemmed in.
Why are people taking over so much land? Mostly for agriculture. In many parts of the world, that means exports driven by booming global trade. In recent decades, for example, Southeast Asia has become a major supplier of coffee, timber, rice, palm oil, rubber and fish to the rest of the world.
“All of that economic expansion has come at the cost of biodiverse habitat,” said Pamela McElwee, an environmental anthropologist at Rutgers University who studies the region.
Some momentum is building for companies to ensure that their products are deforestation-free. Reducing meat consumption and food waste are key to freeing up land for other species, McElwee said.
In many places, poverty, powerful interests and a lack of law enforcement make habitat loss especially hard to address.
In Central America, illegal cattle ranching drives deforestation on protected state and Indigenous lands, said Jeremy Radachowsky, director for Mesoamerica and the Caribbean at the Wildlife Conservation Society. Wealthy individuals, often affiliated with drug cartels, grab land, sometimes through illegal payments. They raise beef, some of which ends up in the United States, he said.
Elsewhere in the region and beyond, desperation sometimes pushes people to find remote areas with little government presence where they can simply take land to make a living.
“They need land in order to feed their families,” said David López-Carr, a professor of geography at the University of California Santa Barbara who studies how people interact with tropical forests in Latin America.
Rainforest countries such as Brazil and Congo are known for widespread deforestation. But the species that have lost the largest portions of their habitats tend to be concentrated in places that are geographically isolated in some way, such as the isthmus of Central America and Madagascar. Because animals there often have smaller ranges to begin with, habitat loss hits them especially hard.
For example, 98% of lemurs, primates that only exist in Madagascar, are threatened. Almost one-third are on the brink of extinction. “I don’t want to lose my hope,” said Jonah Ratsimbazafy, a primatologist who leads a nonprofit group on the island that seeks to save lemurs while helping people. Madagascar is among the poorest countries in the world.
Recognition is growing that stanching biodiversity loss requires addressing the needs of local communities.
“There needs to be a way that the people that live close to the forests benefit from the intact forests, rather than clearing the forest for short term gain,” said Julia Patricia Gordon Jones, a professor of conservation science at Bangor University in Wales. “That’s the ultimate challenge of forest conservation globally.”
The High Cost of Inaction
While countries in the global south are experiencing the most dramatic biodiversity losses right now, Europe and the United States went through their own severe declines hundreds of years ago.
“We lost pretty much 100% of primary forest in most parts of Europe,” Jetz said.
Now, with negotiations underway in Montreal, countries that are poor economically but rich in biodiversity argue that they need help from wealthier countries if they’re going to take a different route.
Overall, the financial need is daunting: hundreds of billions per year to help poorer countries develop and implement national biodiversity plans, which would include actions such as creating protected areas; restoring degraded lands; reforming harmful agricultural, fishing and forestry practices; managing invasive species; and improving urban water quality.
On the other hand, failing to address biodiversity loss carries enormous financial risk. A report by the World Economic Forum found that $44 trillion of economic value generation is “moderately or highly dependent on nature and its services and is therefore exposed to nature loss.”
A vast source of funding could come from redirecting subsidies that presently support fossil fuels and harmful agricultural practices, said David Cooper, deputy executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity.
“Currently, most governments spend far more on subsidies that actually are destroying nature than they do on financing conservation,” Cooper said. “So, certainly a change in that will be critical.”
The United States is the only country besides the Holy See that isn’t a party to the convention, so although the United States will attend the meeting, it will be participating from the sidelines.
“We can play a very constructive role from the outside,” said Monica Medina, an assistant secretary of state who is also special envoy for biodiversity and water resources. But she acknowledged that being a member would be better. “I hope that someday we will be,” she said.
Of the many targets being negotiated, the one that has gotten the most attention seeks to address habitat loss head on. Known as 30×30, it’s a plan to safeguard at least 30% of the planet’s land and oceans by 2030. More than 100 countries back the proposal. Although some Indigenous groups fear it will lead to their displacement, others support the plan as a means to secure stronger land rights.
But experts emphasize that action will have to go further than lines on a map.
“You can set up a protected area, but you’ve not dealt with the fact that the whole reason you had habitat loss in the first place is because of demand for land,” McElwee said. “You have to tackle the underlying drivers. Otherwise, you’re only dealing with like half the problem.”
Methodology
All estimates on habitat loss come from Map of Life and its Species Habitat Index. Habitat loss estimates since 2001 run through 2021 and are approximations, based on models of geographic range that incorporate remote sensing and expert research. Map of Life shared data for terrestrial vertebrate species for which the group’s methods can confidently ascertain habitat loss. The researchers estimate many more species are experiencing significant habitat loss than are in the group’s data.
Common names for species used in this article come from Map of Life. Data used in the accompanying graphics showing habitat loss also comes from Map of Life.
Map of Life is led by Walter Jetz, professor of ecology at Yale University and scientific chair at the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation. Other Map of Life contributors to the research shown in this story include Kalkidan Fekadu Chefira, John Wilshire, Ajay Ranipeta, Yanina Sica and Rohan Simkin.
‘It could happen tomorrow’: Experts know disaster upon disaster looms for West Coast
Joel Shannon, USA TODAY – December 16, 2022
Brown pelicans fly in front of the San Francisco skyline Aug 17, 2018.
It’s the elevators that worry earthquake engineering expert Keith Porter the most.
Scientists say a massive quake could strike the San Francisco Bay Area at any moment. And when it does, the city can expect to be slammed with a force equal to hundreds of atomic bombs.
To escape, the survivors of the initial quake will need the help of firefighters with specialized training and tools.
But their rescuers won’t come – at least not right away. Firefighters will be battling infernos that could outnumber the region’s fire engines.
Running water will be in short supply. Cellphone service may not work at all. The aftershocks will keep coming.
And the electricity could remain off for weeks.
“That means people are dead in those elevators,” Porter said.
‘Problems on the horizon’
The situation Porter described comes from his work on the HayWired Scenario, a detailed look at the cascading calamities that will occur when a major earthquake strikes the Bay Area’s Hayward Fault, including the possibility of widespread power outages that will strand elevators.
The disaster remains theoretical for now. But the United States Geological Survey estimates a 51% chance that a quake as big as the one described in HayWired will occur in the region within three decades.
It’s one of several West Coast disasters so likely that researchers have prepared painstakingly detailed scenarios in an attempt to ready themselves.
The experts who worked on the projects are highly confident the West Coast could at any moment face disasters with the destructive power to kill hundreds or thousands of people and forever change the lives of millions more. They also say there’s more that can be done to keep individuals – and society – safer.
“We’re trying to have an earthquake without having one,” Anne Wein told USA TODAY. Wein is a USGS researcher who co-leads the HayWired earthquake scenario and has worked on several other similar projects.
Such disaster scenarios are massive undertakings that bring together experts from various fields who otherwise would have little reason to work together – seismologists, engineers, emergency responders and social scientists.
That’s important because “it’s difficult to make new relationships in a crisis,” Wein said.
Similar projects aimed at simulating a future disaster have turned out to be hauntingly accurate.
The Hurricane Pam scenario foretold many of the devastating consequences of a major hurricane striking New Orleans well before Hurricane Katrina hit the city.
More recently, in 2017, the authors of “The SPARS Pandemic” called their disaster scenario “futuristic.” But now the project now reads like a prophecy of COVID-19. Johns Hopkins University even issued a statement saying the 89-page document was not intended as a prediction of COVID-19.
“The SPARS Pandemic” imagined a future where a deadly novel coronavirus spread around the world, often without symptoms, as disinformation and vaccine hesitancy constantly confounded experts’ efforts to keep people safe.
The “SPARS scenario, which is fiction, was meant to give public health communicators a leg up … Think through problems on the horizon,” author Monica Schoch-Spana told USA TODAY.
At the time that SPARS was written, a global pandemic was thought of in much the same way experts currently describe the HayWired earthquake: an imminent catastrophe that could arrive at any time.
‘It could happen tomorrow’
Disaster scenario researchers each have their own way of describing how likely the apocalyptic futures they foresee are.
“The probability (of) this earthquake is 100%, if you give me enough time,” seismologist Lucy Jones will often say.
Earthquakes occurring along major faults are a certainty, but scientists can’t predict exactly when earthquakes will happen – the underground forces that create them are too random and chaotic. But researchers know a lot about what will happen once the earth begins to shake.
Earthquakes like HayWired are “worth planning for,” Porter said. Because “it could happen tomorrow.”
“We don’t know when,” Porter said. But “it will happen.”
Wein says we’re “overdue for preparedness.” You might say we’re also overdue for a major West Coast disaster.
The kind of earthquake described in HayWired historically occurs every 100-220 years. And it’s been more than 153 years since the last one.
Farther south in California, it’s difficult to pin down exactly how at risk Los Angeles is for The Big One – the infamous theoretical earthquake along the San Andreas fault that will devastate the city. But a massive magnitude 7.5 earthquake has about a 1 in 3 chance of striking the Los Angeles area in the next 30 years, the United States Geological Survey estimates.
Another scenario warns that a stretch of coast in Oregon and Washington state is capable of producing an earthquake much more powerful than the ones California is bracing for. Parts of coastline would suddenly drop 6 feet, shattering critical bridges, destroying undersea communication cables and producing a tsunami.
It too “could happen at any time,” the scenario says.
Earthquake scenarios often focus on major coastal cities, but West Coast residents farther inland also have yet another disaster to brace for.
“Megastorms are California’s other Big One,” the ARkStorm scenario says. It warns of a statewide flood that will cause more than a million evacuations and devastate California’s agriculture.
Massive storms that dump rain on California for weeks on end historically happen every few hundred years. The last one hit around the time of the Civil War, when weeks of rain turned portions of the state “into an inland sea.”
‘Decades to rebuild’
Whether the next disaster to strike the West Coast is a flood, an earthquake or something else, scenario experts warn that the impacts will reverberate for years or longer.
“It takes decades to rebuild,” Wein said. “You have to think about a decade at least.”
A major West Coast earthquake isn’t just damaged buildings and cracked roads.
It’s weeks or months without running water in areas with millions of people. It’s mass migrations away from ruined communities. It’s thousands of uninhabitable homes.
Depending on the scenario, thousands of people are expected to die. Hundreds of thousands more could be left without shelter. And those impacts will be a disproportionately felt.
California already has a housing and homelessness crisis, and Nnenia Campbell said the next disaster is set to magnify inequalities. Campbell is the deputy director of the William Averette Anderson Fund, which works to mitigate disasters for minority communities.
Campbell doesn’t talk about “natural disasters” because there’s nothing natural about the way a major earthquake will harm vulnerable communities more than wealthy ones.
Human decisions such as redlining have led to many of the inequities in our society, she said. But humans can make decisions that will help make the response to the next disaster more equitable.
Many of those choices need to be made by local leaders and emergency management planners. Investing in infrastructure programs that will make homes in minority communities less vulnerable to earthquakes. Understanding how important a library is to unhoused people. Making sure all schools are built to withstand a disaster. Keeping public spaces open, even during an emergency.
But individuals can make a difference as well, Campbell said. You can complete training that will prepare you to help your community in the event of an emergency. Or you can join a mutual aid network, a group where community members work together to help each other.
Community support is a common theme among disaster experts: One of the best ways to prepare is to know and care about your neighbors.
If everyone only looks out for themselves in the next disaster, “we are going to have social breakdown,” Jones said.
What you can do
Experts acknowledge you’ll want to make sure you and your family are safe before being able to help others. Fortunately, many disaster preparedness precautions are inexpensive and will help in a wide range of emergency situations.
Be prepared to have your access to electricity or water cut off for days or weeks.
For electricity, you’ll at least want a flashlight and a way to charge your phone.
While cell service will be jammed immediately after a major earthquake, communications will likely slowly come back online faster than other services, Wein said. (And when trying to use your phone, text – don’t call. In a disaster, text messages are more reliable and strain cell networks less.)
To power your phone, you can cheaply buy a combination weather radio, flashlight and hand-crank charger to keep your cell running even without power for days.
A cash reserve is good to have, too, Jones said. You’ll want to be able to buy things, even if your credit card doesn’t work for a time.
Preparing for earthquakes specifically is important along the West Coast, too, experts said. Simple things like securing bookshelves can save lives. Downloading an early warning app can give you precious moments to protect yourself in the event of a big quake. Buying earthquake insurance can protect homeowners. And taking part in a yearly drill can help remind you about other easy steps you can take to prepare.
There’s even more you could do to ready yourself for a catastrophe, but many disaster experts are hesitant to rely on individuals’ ability to prepare themselves.
Just as health experts have begged Americans to use masks and vaccines to help keep others safe during the pandemic, disaster scenario experts believe community members will need to look out for one another when the next disaster strikes.
Telling people to prepare as if “nobody is coming to help you” is a self-fulfilling prophesy, Jones said.
For now, policymakers hold the real power in how prepared society will be for the next disaster. And there are many problems to fix, according to Porter, including upgrading city plumbing, because many aging and brittle water pipes will shatter in a major earthquake, cutting off water to communities for weeks or months.
Biden mocks Trump’s ‘major announcement’ on NFT ‘trading cards’ by touting his administration’s recent wins
Nicole Gaudiano – December 15, 2022
President Joe Biden, left, and former President Donald Trump, right, in a composite image.Getty Images
Former president Donald Trump used Truth Social to tease what he called a “MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT.”
It turns out he’s selling NFT “trading cards” featuring himself for $99 each.
President Joe Biden mocked Trump by tweeting he has had some “MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENTS,” too.
President Joe Biden mocked what his predecessor billed as a “MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT!” on Thursday with one of his own, releasing a checklist of his administration’s recent accomplishments.
Shortly after Donald Trump announced that he’s selling NFT “trading cards” for $99 each, Biden tweeted, “I had some MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENTS the last couple of weeks, too…”
He listed the easing of inflation, signing the Respect for Marriage Act, bringing home WNBA star Brittney Griner from Russian custody, lower gas prices and “10,000 new high-paying jobs in Arizona.”
It’s not the first time Biden has made fun of Trump on Twitter.
Trump’s big announcement came a day after he teased it on Truth Social, leaving people to speculate about whether he would announce a 2024 running mate.
Instead, the former president released a cartoon image of himself dressed as a superhero and announced on Truth Social that his “limited edition” digital trading card NFTs “feature amazing ART of my Life & Career!” He directed customers to a new website to purchase the cards and explained that they’re “very much like a baseball card, but hopefully much more exciting.”
He introduces himself in a video on the website as “hopefully your favorite president of all time, better than Lincoln, better than Washington.” The “artwork” displayed in the video portrays his likeness on Mount Rushmore, holding a torch near the Statue of Liberty, riding an elephant or shooting laser beams from his eyes as he rips open his shirt to reveal a superhero body.
Each card comes with a chance to win prizes, such as dinner with Trump or golf at one of his “beautiful” courses. “This makes a great Christmas gift,” he says.
