Conservative Columnist Sums Up Donald Trump’s Strong Case For Worst President In History
Lee Moran, Reporter, HuffPost October 14, 2020
Conservative columnist Max Boot asked a damning question of Donald Trump’s supporters as he summed up in his latest editorial for The Washington Post why he believed Trump had made a “strong case” for being the worst president in the history of the United States.
Boot reeled off in his column published Tuesday a long list of reasons for why Trump should take the “worst president” title — from his mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic and trafficking in racism to his inciting of violence, xenophobia and welcoming “of Russian attacks on our elections.”
The commentator, who quit the GOP following Trump’s 2016 victory, acknowledged “there are single-issue voters to whom Trump has a strong appeal.”
But he also asked of the tens of millions of people who still support the president, given his long list of controversies and scandals, “What are they thinking?”
Donald Trump’s Tax Returns Expose ‘Lying, Cheating Felon,’ ‘Art of the Deal’ Co-Author Says
By Ana De Liz September 28, 2020
Kilmeade On Trump Tax Returns: ‘It Shows He Lost A Lot Of Money…If You Consider A BIllion Dollars A Lot Of Money.
The co-author of the business advice book The Art of The Deal said President Donald Trump has committed one of the greatest tax frauds in IRS history, after The New York Times revealed that the president paid just $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017.
Tony Schwartz doubled-sown on his criticism on Twitter, saying that the president is “a lying, cheating felon.”
“This is one of the great tax frauds in IRS history. He is running a criminal enterprise. This, no matter what the effect is on any given voters, is big, big news,” the author also told Anderson Cooper on the presenter’s CNN show.
According to The Times, the president paid $750 in taxes in 2016 and 2017.
The piece states that Trump paid no income taxes in 10 of the previous 15 years, “largely because he reported losing much more money than he made.”
Cooper also asked Schwartz about one of the report’s key sentences, which says that Trump has been “more successful in playing a business mogul than being one in real life.”
The author responded: “What you have here is the middle of Trump’s vulnerability, because he equates his personal worth, whatever amount of worth he thinks he has deep down, with his net worth. And what’s so clear here is that he is a horrible businessman, just as he’s been a terrible president.”
Speaking about the loans and debts that the president will have to pay in the upcoming four years, which the article says amount to more than $400 million, the author said that this should not be one of American’s biggest concerns.
“Relative to the harms that the president can inflict on us if he is re-elected and feels he has no more boundaries and no more barriers, whether or not he has big debts is not going to be the issue that American faces”.
Instead, Schwartz says that Americans will face the “potential of martial law” and the enlistment of law enforcement to “round up his enemies.”
The president disregarded The Times‘ news story as “totally fake” at a news conference on Sunday afternoon at the White House. “It’s totally fake news. Made up, fake,” he said, without specifying whether he had grievances with particular details in the report.
Schwartz has been a frequent critic of the president and has admitted regret over writing his book with Trump.
As trump faced impeachment in 2019, Schwartz said that the president, his daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner, and his son Donald Trump Jr “all belong in prison.”
In May of the same year Schwartz said on CNN: “If I had to rename The Art of the Deal, I would call it The Sociopath.”
“Because he has no conscience, he has no guilt. All he wants to do is make the case that he would like to be true.
“And while I do think he is probably aware that more walls are closing around him than ever before, he does not experience the world in the way an ordinary human being would.”
The White House has been contacted for comment.
Tony Schwartz addresses the Cambridge Union on October 12, 2018 in Cambridge, England. Tony Schwartz is known for being Donald Trump’s ghostwriter. He has been a frequent and outspoken critic of the president.CHRIS WILLIAMSON/GETTY IMAGES
General Electric, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of coal-fired power plants, announced Monday it would no longer build such facilities.
It’s a remarkable exit that will have far-reaching consequences on the coal industry as more and more utilities are increasingly shifting away from coal-fired generation.
“GE will continue to focus on and invest in its core renewable energy and power generation businesses, working to make electricity more affordable, reliable, accessible, and sustainable,” the company said in a release, adding that it will still service existing coal power plants.
“GE’s steam power business will work with customers on existing obligations as it pursues this exit, which may include divestitures, site closings, job impacts and appropriate considerations for publicly held subsidiaries.”
GE also produces equipment for nuclear plants as well as wind turbines.
Despite efforts from the Trump administration to bolster the coal industry, market forces have pushed utilities to cheaper, cleaner forms of electricity, with many utilities opting to retire coal-fired power plants early.
Last year coal production fell to the lowest level since 1978, according to data released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Coal production in 2019 was just 7 percent lower overall than production in 2018, part of a larger trend of coal production easing since production peaked in 2008. Production is expected to decline again this year.
Post-COVID heart damage alarms researchers: ‘There was a black hole’ in infected cells
Suzanne Smalley, Reporter September 10, 2020
Something Went Wrong
Shelby Hedgecock contracted the coronavirus in April and thought she had fought through the worst of it — the intense headaches, severe gastrointestinal distress and debilitating fatigue — but early last month she started experiencing chest pain and a pounding heartbeat. Her doctor put her on a cardiac monitor and ordered blood tests, which indicated that the previously healthy 29-year-old had sustained heart damage, likely from her bout with COVID-19.
“I never thought I would have to worry about a heart attack at 29 years old,” Hedgecock told Yahoo News in an interview. “I didn’t have any complications before COVID-19 — no preexisting conditions, no heart issues. I can deal with my taste and smell being dull, I can fight through the debilitating fatigue, but your heart has to last you a really long time.”
Hedgecock’s primary-care physician has referred her to a cardiologist she will see this week; the heart monitor revealed that Hedgecock’s pulse rate is wildly irregular, ranging from 49 to 189 beats per minute, and she has elevated inflammatory markers and platelet counts. She was told to go to the emergency room if her chest pain intensifies before she can see the specialist. A former personal trainer who is now out of breath just from walking around the room, Hedgecock is worried about what the future holds.
She is far from alone in her struggle. Dr. Ossama Samuel is a cardiologist at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, where he routinely sees coronavirus survivors who are contending with cardiac complications. Samuel said his team has treated three young and otherwise healthy coronavirus patients who have developed myocarditis — an inflammation of the heart muscle — weeks to months after recovering from the virus.
Shelby Hedgecock in a hospital bed. (Shelby Hedgecock)
Myocarditis can affect how the heart pumps blood and trigger rapid or abnormal heart rhythms. It is particularly dangerous for athletes, doctors say, because it can go undetected and can result in a heart attack during strenuous exercise. In recent weeks, some collegiate athletes have reported cardiac complications from the coronavirus, underscoring the seriousness of the condition.
Last month, former Florida State basketball center Michael Ojo died from a heart attack in Serbia; Ojo had recovered from the coronavirus before he collapsed on the basketball court. An Ohio State University cardiologist found that between 10 and 13 percent of university athletes who had recovered from COVID-19 had myocarditis. When the Big Ten athletic conference announced the cancellation of its season last month, Commissioner Kevin Warren cited the risk of heart failure in athletes. Researchers have estimated that up to 20 percent of people who get the coronavirus sustain heart damage.
Samuel said he feels an obligation to warn people, particularly since some of the patients he and Mount Sinai colleagues have seen with myocarditis had only mild cases of the coronavirus months ago.
“We are now seeing people three months after COVID who have pericarditis [inflammation of the sac around the heart] or myocarditis,” Samuel said. He said he believes a small fraction of coronavirus survivors are sustaining heart damage, “but when a disease is so widespread it is concerning that a tiny fraction is still sizable.”
Samuel said he worries particularly about athletes participating in team sports, since many live together and spend time in close quarters. Teammates may all get the coronavirus and recover together, Samuel said, but “the one who really gets that crazy myocarditis could be at risk of dying through exercise or training.”
“It’s a concern about what do you do: Should we do sports in general, should we do it in schools, should we do it in college, should we just do it for professionals who understand the risk and they’re getting paid?” Samuel asked. “I hope we don’t scare the public, but we should make people aware.”
Samuel is recommending that patients recovering from COVID-19 with myocarditis avoid workouts for three to six months.
Todd McDevitt, who runs a stem-cell lab at Gladstone Institutes, which is affiliated with the University of California at San Francisco, recently published images that show how the coronavirus can directly invade the heart muscle. McDevitt said he was so alarmed when he saw a sample of heart muscle cells in a petri dish get “diced” by the coronavirus that he had trouble sleeping for nights afterward.
Todd McDevitt. (Facebook)
McDevitt said his team’s research was spurred by their desire to understand if the coronavirus is entering heart cells and how it is affecting them. He was surprised to see the heart muscle samples he was studying react to a very small amount of the coronavirus, usually within 24 to 48 hours. He said the virus decimated the heart cells in his petri dishes.
“Cell nuclei — the hubs of all the genetic information, all of the nuclear DNA — in many of the cells were gone,” McDevitt said. “There was a black hole literally where we would normally see the nuclear DNA. That’s also pretty bizarre.”
While McDevitt’s study has not yet been peer-reviewed — it is still in pre-print — he said he felt compelled to share the findings as soon as possible. He said his team also sampled tissues from three COVID-19 patient autopsies and found similar damage in the heart muscles of those patients, none of whom had been flagged for myocarditis or heart problems while they were alive.
“This is probably not the whole story yet, but we think we have insights into the beginning of when the virus would get into some of these people and what it might be doing that is concerning enough that we should probably let people know, because clinicians need to be thinking about this,” McDevitt said in an interview. “We don’t have any means of bringing heart muscle back. … This virus is [causing] a very different type of injury, and one we haven’t seen before.”
McDevitt said the chopped-up heart muscles he and his colleagues saw are so concerning because when the microfibers in the muscle are damaged, the heart can’t properly contract.
“If heart muscle cells are damaged and they can’t regenerate themselves, then what you’re looking at is someone who could prematurely have heart failure or heart disease due to the virus,” McDevitt said. “This could be a warning sign for a potential wave of heart disease that we could see in the future, and it’s in the survivors — that’s the concern.”
McDevitt said he believes the risk of heart disease is serious and one people should consider as they assess their own risk of getting the coronavirus.
“I am more scared today of contracting the virus, by far, than I was four months ago,” he said.
In lab experiments, infection of heart muscle cells with SARS-CoV-2 caused long fibers to break apart into small pieces, shown above. (Gladstone)
The medical journal the Lancet recently reported that an 11-year-old child had died of myocarditis and heart failure after a bout of COVID-induced multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C). An autopsy showed coronavirus embedded in the child’s cardiac tissue.
A recent study from Germany found that 78 percent of patients who had recovered from the coronavirus and who had only mild to moderate symptoms while ill with the disease had indications of cardiac involvement on MRIs conducted more than two months after their initial infection. Lead investigator Eike Nagel said it is concerning to see such widespread cardiac impact; six in 10 of the patients Nagel’s team studied experienced ongoing myocardial inflammation.
“We found an astonishingly high level of cardiac involvement approximately two months after COVID infection,” Nagel said in an email. “These changes are much milder than observed in patients with severe acute myocarditis.”
The scale of the cardiac impact on relatively healthy, young patients surprised many doctors. Nagel said the findings are significant “on a population basis,” and that the impact of COVID-19 on the heart must be studied more.
Dr. Gregg Fonarow. (UCLA)
Dr. Gregg Fonarow, chief of UCLA’s Division of Cardiology and director of the Ahmanson-UCLA Cardiomyopathy Center, said the picture is evolving, but the new studies showing cardiac impact in even young people with mild cases of COVID-19 have raised troubling new questions.
“We really do need to take seriously individuals that have had the infection and are having continued symptoms, [and] not just dismiss those symptoms,” Fonarow said. “There could be, in those who had milder or even asymptomatic cases, the potential for cardiac risk.”
Fonarow said it is important to understand whether a “more proactive screening and treatment approach” is needed to better address the needs of patients who have recovered from the coronavirus and who may still have weakened heart function. Fonarow said he found McDevitt’s research to be potentially significant because it proves “from a mechanistic standpoint that there can be direct cardiac injury from the virus itself.”
“Even if it were going to impact, say, 2 percent of the people that had COVID-19, when you think of the millions that have been infected, that ends up in absolute terms being a very large number of individuals,” Fonarow said in an interview. “You don’t want people to be unduly alarmed, but on the other hand you don’t want individuals to be complacent about, ‘Oh, the mortality rate is so low with COVID-19, I don’t really care if I’m infected because the chances that it will immediately or in the next few weeks kill me is small enough, I don’t need to be concerned.’ There are other consequences.”
An 18-year-old woman drowned near a Minnesota dam after carrying several children to safety, police say
By Christina Maxouris, CNN August 22, 2020
Raina Lynn Neeland
(CNN)Minnesota police say 18-year-old Raina Lynn Neeland drowned after carrying several children to safety who were near a dam.
Police responded to a call about a drowning on Monday evening, according to the Clearwater County Sheriff’s Office. Clearwater County is about 250 miles northwest of Minneapolis.
Witnesses told officers several children had been swimming in a river near the Clearwater Dam on Clearwater Lake.
Some got caught up in rushing waters that came from the dam and according to police, “could not free themselves.”
“The water level at the dam was considerably higher due to the large amount of rain received recently,” the sheriff’s office said.
An 8-year-old girl was pulled out of the water and resuscitated. Neeland, who witnesses said had been underwater for about 10 minutes, was also pulled out but remained unresponsive despite several life-saving efforts by witnesses and medics.
Neeland pulled several of the younger children to safety before she went under water, police said.
A GoFundMe campaign shared by the sheriff’s office Facebook page says Neeland drowned while saving her younger cousins.
“Raina loved cooking with her grandma also she loved helping take care of her siblings and cousins,” the campaign says.
Would you pay a toll to enter the Keys? Money needed to fight sea level rise, leaders say
Gwen Filosa August 19, 2020
It’s one of the most spectacular scenic drives in the nation: the Overseas Highway that leads down the Florida Keys to mile marker zero on U.S. 1.
Under blue skies, you can drift down the highway, along a collection of bridges, with the ocean on one side and the Gulf of Mexico on the other.
So should it be a free ride?
No, Monroe County Commissioners said on Wednesday. Once again, they are considering a toll for visitors — not residents. Those who work in the Keys but live on the mainland are also not targeted, County Administrator Roman Gastesi said.
But don’t load up your SunPass account just yet.
Commissioners only told staff to explore ordering a feasibility study on installing a toll at the Monroe County end of the 18-mile stretch of U.S. 1 that connects the mainland to the Keys.
First, commissioners have to determine the state and federal laws and regulations they need to deal with to create a toll.
U.S. 1, which starts at mile marker 0 in Key West and runs to Maine, is part of a federal network of state-owned highways. It is a “federal-aid” highway, which could place it under U.S. rules requiring that any tolls collected be spent on new road construction or needed maintenance.
Commissioners also need to find out exactly what they can spend the toll revenue on, outside of highway maintenance and reconstruction.
One idea they have: using the money to battle the impacts of sea level rise in the Keys.
“The worst-case scenario is that any fees collected by a toll could be used by transportation and on transportation-related items,” said Monroe Mayor Heather Carruthers, of Key West.
Tolls were collected on U.S. 1 in 1927 and 1938 and have been collected on Card Sound Road since 1926.
The Lower Matecumbe toll booth on the Overseas Highway, circa 1940.
Also on Wednesday, the commission voted to raise the toll at Card Sound Road by one penny. The toll on a two-axle vehicle will be 78 cents. Three or more axles will go up to $1.03.
The Florida Department of Transportation strongly opposed efforts in 2010 to 2012 to consider a Florida Keys toll.
“Our usual response from our partners when we request this is deafening silence for extended periods of time,” said Commissioner David Rice. “I would support giving it another try and hope we can at least get a respectful response.”
On July 21, 2010, the commission unanimously directed staff to investigate and research installing a toll on the stretch to fund a wastewater mandate and address infrastructure needs related to sea level rise.
“What are you going to do about the fact we’ll probably be the only county in the United States you can only get to by toll,” said Commissioner Sylvia Murphy of Key Largo. “That question is going to come up. You need to be ready with an answer.”
County Attorney Bob Shillinger said in response that it’s hard to get to Hawaii without “paying something” to get there.
In the past, the toll idea was opposed by former U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, Shillinger said.
“He’s no longer there so that obstacle is gone,” Shillinger said.
Trump takes on 50 years of environmental regulations, one by one
Amanda Paulson, CSM January 16, 2020
It was 1970. Congress was wrestling with whether to give the right-of-way necessary to build a huge, 800-mile oil pipeline across Alaska, when a district judge blocked the project, using a brand new law requiring federal agencies to consider the environmental impact of projects.
“The Interior Department was stunned,” recalls William Reilly, a staff member in the Nixon administration at the time and later Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator. The law’s environmental impact statements, common today, were completely novel at the time. Even the authors of the statute, he says, “never anticipated it would have that effect.”
Exactly 50 years later, that law – the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) – is under attack. The Trump administration last week announced proposed reforms to the act that would significantly reduce its scope. It’s the latest move in an unprecedented effort to roll back not only recent Obama-era environmental regulations but also some of the bedrock laws that have shaped federal environment policy since the 1970’s.
“It’s not unique in being a pushback against regulation, or even in favoring the energy industry, but it’s unique in just how relentless it has been, and how many regulations they’ve tried to undo,” says Daniel Farber, a law professor at the University of California in Berkeley. There have been at least 50 significant environmental regulations President Trump has targeted, Professor Farber notes. “They’re leaving no stone unturned.”
For Mr. Trump, who as a developer has had his own battles with environmental reviews, it’s a pendulum swing that is long overdue.
“The United States will not be able to compete and prosper in the 21st century if we continue to allow a broken and outdated bureaucratic system hold us back from building what we need: the roads, the airports, the schools, everything,” he said last week in announcing proposed changes to NEPA.
Environmental consideration versus delay
Critics of the act, who often complain about lengthy environmental reviews and the impact statements required for major projects, welcomed his proposal, which would not only impose new deadlines on such studies but would also narrow the range of what could be considered.
“This is not about anti-regulation,” says Marty Durbin, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Energy Institute. “It’s about having a smart process in place and a certain process in place, so that we can get decisions that will unlock the investment necessary to get these projects built as critical infrastructure.” If there’s no certainty about when a project will be approved, it’s harder to attract investors, he adds.
But others note that NEPA has played a critical role simply by ensuring that the environment gets consideration.
“It’s something that says: ‘Consider, reflect. Is this something you want to do? Is this the best way to do it? Are there any other ways you could do it?’” says Mr. Reilly, the former EPA administrator.
In the case of the trans-Alaska pipeline, it took more than four years of wrangling, an Arab oil embargo, and a special act of Congress before the permits were approved.
But Mr. Reilly recalls the chairman of the oil company in charge telling him that the final project was more robust and sound as a result of the environmental-review process. “In the eyes of the person most closely concerned about it, it was a very constructive intervention,” he says.
A 2016 Congressional Research Service report says critics overstate the permitting process’ effect on project delays. Insufficient data, lack of funds, and state and local issues are far more likely to increase project length than environmental reviews.
Some projects languish in permit purgatory for up to a decade, but the vast majority do not. The average length of time for a full environmental impact statement takes 4.5 years, according to the Council on Environmental Quality. Furthermore, only 1% of projects within the NEPA umbrella complete an EIS, according to a 2014 Governmental Accountability Office report.
Many people want a speedier process, acknowledge Mr. Reilly and others. And if that were the administration’s sole objective, the proposed changes would be less controversial. But by narrowing the range of projects that require environmental review and no longer requiring consideration of a project’s “cumulative” effects – which, under President Barack Obama, were expanded to include long-term climate change impacts – the administration is targeting the backbone of U.S. environmental policy for 50 years.
Beyond Obama-era regulations
Early deregulation efforts from the Trump Administration targeted Obama-era rules: the “Clean Water Rule” that defined what waters are subject to federal water protection; the Clean Power Plan, designed to regulate carbon dioxide pollution; and methane rules, regulating the release of a potent greenhouse gas. One of Trump’s most controversial actions, the legality of which is still being tested in the courts, has been an attempted reduction of two National Monument designations in Utah. And there is evidence of a significant shift toward less enforcement of regulations and policies that remain on the books.
Whittling away the government’s regulatory structures has always been part of Mr. Trump’s agenda, but his dismantling of the EPA is unique, says Caitlin McCoy, a fellow in the Environmental and Energy Law Program at Harvard Law School who tracks such changes. Changing NEPA is the latest sign that the administration wants to undermine the statutory foundations of the EPA.
“They’re trying to take away the very things that the agency relies upon to do its job and to really severely damage its legal authority to function,” she says. “With other agencies, it’s similar, like, yes, we’re relaxing some of these tax rates, but it’s not like we’re trying to keep the IRS from doing audits.”
It’s not clear how successful the administration will be.
“For at least some of these regulations, the appeals will not hold up in court,” says Professor Farber. It’s not clear in the case of NEPA, for instance, whether Trump has the power to drastically reinterpret a major law enacted by Congress.
But for Trump, the payoff politically, showing his determination to undo environmental regulations that many view as overly burdensome, may be enough.
“Trump is doing overreach, and getting his comeuppance in the courts,” says Douglas Brinkley, a history professor at Rice University. “But it looks good [to his supporters] in 2020.”
