Ex-Labor Secretary Robert Reich Exposes The Republican Art Of Distraction
Lee MoranUpdated – July 26, 2023
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich in his latest video takes Republicans to task over five “totally made-up crises” he says they are using to distract Americans.
They are the conservative war on “woke,” attacks on the transgender community, freak-outs over critical race theory, slurring of welfare recipients and claims of out-of-control government spending.
All five “disguise what’s really going on,” Reich warned.
A big lie, an attack on the Capitol — and soon, another indictment
Kyle Cheney – July 26, 2023
Julio Cortez/AP Photo
In a more than two-month blitz that ended in violence, Donald Trump lied, cajoled, inveighed and inspired his supporters to challenge the results of an election he lost. Now, special counsel Jack Smith appears on the verge of indicting Trump for those efforts.
Two and a half years have passed since the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021. Yet investigators are still piecing together the breadth of Trump’s attempt to derail the transfer of power. It wasn’t a singular plan but in fact was many disparate schemes, led by distinct groups of advisers who embraced increasingly fringe strategies and were not always working in harmony.
Each arm of the effort was held together by one core lie with Trump at the center: that the election was stolen. And each tentacle has faced withering scrutiny from Smith’s investigators, who may ask a federal grand jury any day now to approve criminal charges tied to Trump’s election subversion, mere weeks after Smith charged Trump in a separate case for hoarding classified documents.
But if and when Smith brings charges related to Trump’s wide-ranging bid to cling to power, it will fall to the courts and a jury to determine whether Trump’s conduct — no matter the broad powers and immunities of the presidency — crossed the line into criminality.
The exact charges that Smith will seek are unclear, but here’s a look at the extraordinary range of conduct that will figure into them.
The disinformation campaign
Key figures: Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell
Even before votes were cast, Trump began conditioning his supporters to distrust the outcome of the 2020 election, insisting that mail-in voting — which states embraced to contend with Covid-era dangers — would be exploited by Democrats, foreign adversaries and bad actors to steal the election.
Trump rejected advice from his own allies, like campaign manager Bill Stepien and House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, to embrace mail-in voting as a way to drive turnout among his supporters. Instead, he set up mail ballots to be a scapegoat for his possible defeat.
In tandem with this effort was Trump’s plan, which he telegraphed to advisers, that he would declare victory on election night — when interim results were likely to be tilted in his favor due to delays in counting mail-in ballots — even though large shifts toward Joe Biden were anticipated as all votes were tallied in the days following the election.
Trump did just that. In the wee hours of the morning on Nov. 4, 2020, at the urging of Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani and against the advice of virtually everyone else in his inner circle, Trump declared victory and warned his supporters that Democrats would try to steal the election.
Trump followed his early claim of victory with a weekslong campaign alleging — without evidence — widespread fraud in a handful of states Biden won: Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona. He and his allies filed dozens of lawsuits aimed at overturning the results or throwing out millions of votes in areas that favored Biden. Most were summarily dismissed for lacking substance or being filed in untimely ways.
A last-ditch bid to challenge the results, filed by Texas but supported by Trump in a separate legal brief, was turned aside by the Supreme Court.
Despite being rebuffed in the courts, wild conspiracies proliferated in pro-Trump circles. Figures like Sidney Powell, an attorney who represented Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn in criminal matters, promoted the false notion that election machines made by Dominion Voting Systems had been manipulated by foreign governments to tip the election toward Biden.
In the meantime, Trump barraged the airwaves and his supporters’ inboxes with fundraising appeals and ads accusing Democrats of cheating, stuffing his campaign’s coffers even as many of his own advisers privately indicated that he had, in fact, lost the race.
Smith may be eyeing Trump’s fundraising and messaging tactics for potential crimes related to defrauding donors or the public at large.
The Electoral College, Part I: The states
Key figures: Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, Brad Raffensperger, John Eastman
As Trump’s efforts flailed in the courts, his allies began eyeing a second target: state legislatures. Although by late November election officials and governors had certified Biden’s victory, Giuliani began promoting the notion that state legislatures could simply override those decisions by citing fraud or “irregularities” that justified a different outcome.
To support this notion, Giuliani and Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis traveled to the states Trump was contesting and convened public hearings with sympathetic GOP legislators to highlight allegations of fraud. They pushed GOP-controlled legislatures to attempt to designate pro-Trump slates of presidential electors to replace or compete with Democratic electors that had been certified by election officials and governors.
Most notably, Trump leaned on Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, to simply “find” the votes that would put Trump ahead of Biden in the state. A recorded Jan. 2, 2021, phone call captured the lengthy exchange and has become fodder for Smith as well as investigators in Georgia.
Raffensperger balked. So did other state leaders, refusing to appoint their own slates of electors despite Trump’s increasing pressure.
This stage of Trump’s strategy is where John Eastman — a conservative attorney with fringe theories about the Electoral College — began gaining prominence in Trump’s orbit. He participated in Trump’s efforts to lean on state legislatures to act, appearing at public hearings convened by Republican legislators. Ultimately, Eastman would become the driving force behind Trump’s final, desperate bid to stay in power, a plan focused squarely on Jan. 6.
The Electoral College, Part II: The fake electors
Key figures: John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani
When the Electoral College met on Dec. 14, 2020, in 50 state capitals and Washington, D.C., no contested states had designated pro-Trump electors to compete with Biden’s electors. Nevertheless, in seven of those states, dozens of pro-Trump activists convened in state capitals, at the same time as Democratic electors, and cast ballots that they claimed made them legitimate presidential electors.
These “alternative” or “contingent” electors signed certificates claiming to be the states’ duly qualified electors and delivered them to the National Archives and Congress, following a process set out in federal law for actual presidential electors.
Enter Eastman. Emails released by the House select committee on Jan. 6 show that after the Electoral College ballots had been cast, he shifted his focus to legitimizing the uncertified electors.
The conservative attorney, who advised Republican legislators during the contested Bush v. Gore election of 2000, had been advising Trump and his allies since before the 2020 election, joining a working group assembled by attorney Cleta Mitchell to develop a post-election litigation strategy.
Within days of the Nov. 3 election, Mitchell asked Eastman to draw up a plan for state legislatures to appoint pro-Trump electors to supplant those certified by governors. Eastman obliged, and his plan, by late November, had made its way to the Oval Office.
Eastman, who would also author Trump’s Supreme Court brief in the Texas case, spent much of December leaning on state legislators to declare their elections invalid, citing fraud and irregularities, and use that as a pretense to appoint alternate electors. Eastman told allies at the time that without the imprimatur of a state legislature, these “contingent” electors wouldn’t have any legal force.
Mulling the seizure of voting machines
Key figures: Sidney Powell, Mike Flynn
After the Supreme Court refused to consider the Texas election challenge Dec. 11, 2020, Trump saw his options dwindle to an increasingly desperate few.
He had begun mobilizing members of Congress to formally challenge the election results Jan. 6, when the House and Senate were required to meet and count electoral votes. And he still hoped state legislatures would swoop in and send their own electors to Washington. But he also began eyeing a more extreme option.
Powell, Flynn and their allies had been in Trump’s ear about the prospect of invoking presidential authority to seize voting machines in the states he was contesting, using a combination of national security directives to justify the move. Various drafts of an executive order supporting such a move circulated in the White House (some of which were turned over to the Jan. 6 select committee).
The conversation culminated in a Dec. 18 Oval Office meeting with Trump, Flynn, Powell, Giuliani and others. At the meeting, Trump flirted with naming Powell a roving “special counsel” to pursue election-related matters, and Flynn advocated for taking the machines. But White House aides and Giuliani pushed back, and Trump ultimately opted against the move.
Hours later, in the middle of the night, Trump issued his first call to supporters to descend on Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021. “Be there,” he tweeted. “Will be wild.”
Deploying the Justice Department
Key figures: Jeff Rosen, Rich Donoghue, Jeff Clark, Pat Cipollone, Scott Perry
Trump was publicly frustrated that his own Justice Department had openly rejected his claims of widespread election fraud, and when Attorney General Bill Barr resigned in December 2020 — amid open conflict with the president — Trump eyed another mechanism to bolster his bid to remain in power.
Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA.), who espoused some fringe theories about election fraud, had begun connecting Trump with Jeff Clark, a Justice Department official who was sympathetic to his efforts. Several documented meetings or calls with Trump in late December 2020 and early January 2021 showed Clark had Trump’s ear during this crucial period.
Internally, Clark had been pressing Justice Department leaders to issue a letter to the states Trump was challenging, describing “irregularities” and recommending that their legislatures reconvene to consider whether Trump, rather than Biden, should be declared the winner.
Clark faced sharp pushback from Barr’s successor, acting attorney general Jeff Rosen, and his deputy, Rich Donoghue. But Trump briefly considered outflanking them by naming Clark acting attorney general and giving him the perch to implement the effort. But Trump backed down after a mass resignation threat by Trump Justice Department officials and top White House lawyers, including White House counsel Pat Cipollone.
Records revealed by the Jan. 6 select committee indicate that Trump may have briefly effectuated Clark’s appointment as acting attorney general before rescinding it.
The Electoral College, Part III: Pressuring Pence
Key figures: Mike Pence, John Eastman, Greg Jacob, Ken Chesebro
When all else failed, Trump turned firmly to Jan. 6, 2021, seen by his increasingly fringe group of allies as the ultimate deadline to stop the transfer of power to Biden. Though no states had endorsed alternative slates of electors, Congress was still in receipt of the unofficial slates sent in by pro-Trump activists.
The Jan. 6 session, required by the Constitution as well as an 1887 law known as the Electoral Count Act, has long been a formality, a ceremonial gathering to affirm the certified results of the states. Only a handful of times in American history have challenges been brought — and no challenge to a state’s electoral votes had ever been sustained.
But in Trump’s view, the Jan. 6 session was a last stand of sorts. And he had one final cudgel to attempt to stave off a Biden presidency: his vice president, Mike Pence.
The Constitution requires that the vice president — who doubles as the president of the Senate — preside over the counting of Electoral College ballots. So Trump spent the final weeks of his presidency pressing Pence to assert the power to simply refuse to count Biden’s electoral votes. Pence, Trump argued, could cite the competing slates of electors and declare the results to be in doubt, postponing the count and sending the matter back to the states for consideration.
His contention was backed by a coterie of fringe attorneys who had spent a frantic few weeks fleshing out what they dubbed “The president of the Senate strategy.” Emails obtained by the Jan. 6 select committee show Eastman communicating with lawyers like Giuliani and Ken Chesebro, who attempted to muscle through what they acknowledged was a constitutionally dubious plan.
But Pence resisted. He recognized that taking such steps would require violating provisions of the Electoral Count Act and would be an unprecedented assertion of single-handed authority to determine the outcome of the election.
Trump publicly and privately browbeat Pence to change course, but Pence repeatedly refused. On the morning of Jan. 6, Trump called Pence for one final, angry phone call in which he derided Pence for refusing to bend to his will. It was the last time they would speak that day.
As violence unfolded at the Capitol that afternoon, Eastman and Giuliani continued to press Trump’s allies to stop the election process. Giuliani called Republican members of Congress and asked them to mount continued challenges to the results that might buy more time, and Eastman corresponded with a Pence aide, counsel Greg Jacob, in a final effort to get Pence to delay the electoral vote count.
Jacob pushed back on Eastman, even as he fled from the first wave of rioters. He has since become a key witness in California bar discipline authorities’ bid to strip Eastman of his law license over his Jan. 6-related actions.
The rally
Key figures: Ali Alexander, Alex Jones, Steve Bannon
After Trump told his supporters to “be there” for a “wild” protest in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, a large pro-Trump faction responded. The tweet invigorated groups like Ali Alexander’s “Stop the Steal” organization, which made plans for a rally on Capitol grounds Jan. 6. Women for America First organized a rally near the White House that became Trump’s primary event that day.
The rally was the primary reason tens of thousands of Trump supporters descended on Washington. And Trump’s tweet imploring them to “be there” has figured into dozens of prosecutions stemming from the riot that followed the rally. It was the moment, prosecutors have argued, that extremists like Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes began mobilizing large contingents to descend on Washington. Both have since been convicted of seditious conspiracy.
The far-right conspiracy theorist and broadcaster Alex Jones, who attended the rally, helped lead hundreds of people from the Ellipse to the Capitol. Nearby, at the Willard Hotel, a pro-Trump “war room” was working to manage the ongoing efforts to overturn the election, featuring participation from Steve Bannon, Giuliani and other Trump allies.
Trump used the rally crowd as a means to pressure Congress, telling them that if they didn’t “fight” to stop Biden’s victory they wouldn’t “have a country anymore.” He then pointed them to the Capitol, where he urged them to march “peacefully and patriotically” to reject the election results.
But Trump’s rhetoric was overwhelmingly packed with apocalyptic imagery, which has led at least one federal judge to say he might plausibly be accused of inciting the violence that followed.
The riot
Key figures: Mark Meadows, Mike Pence, Pat Cipollone
After Trump’s rally speech, he retreated to the White House — furious that his Secret Service detail had resisted his desire to go to the Capitol, where violence had begun to break out.
Instead, he withdrew to the Oval Office dining room, where he watched the chaos at the Capitol unfold on TV. While watching, he resisted desperate pleas from allies like McCarthy and other Republicans in Congress, aides, advisers and family members to explicitly tell his supporters to go home. For hours, Trump ignored those appeals while outnumbered police officers were battered and members of Congress — and Pence — evacuated to safety.
While Pence fled, Trump tweeted an attack on his vice president, saying he lacked the courage to stop Biden’s election. That tweet appeared to inflame the crowd; the Jan. 6 committee has shown how the mob intensified in the ensuing moments and many on hand at the Capitol shared it with those around them.
Throughout the day, Trump held court with a long list of advisers, like chief of staff Mark Meadows and Cipollone. Both have become key witnesses in Smith’s probe. Pence has also testified to the special counsel.
When Trump finally did tell supporters to go home, 187 minutes after the first police line was breached, many in the crowd seemed to respond. Videos from the riot show supporters sharing the tweet with one another and heeding his call.
The damage, however, was done. Five people died during or shortly after the attack; hundreds more were injured. In the 30 months since, more than 1,000 rioters have been criminally charged for what they did Jan. 6. Now, Smith’s next moves — and the secret vote of a grand jury that has undoubtedly heard all of the evidence above — will determine whether Trump, and members of his inner circle, will stand trial, too.
11 Republicans affirmed Donald Trump won in Arizona. What to know about the fake electors
Robert Anglen, Arizona Republic – July 26, 2023
They convened at the Arizona Republican Party headquarters two weeks before Christmas in 2020 and put their names to a lie.
Eleven top party officials, lawmakers and candidates avowed they were the state’s “duly elected and qualified electors” and cast their votes for then-President Donald Trump.
Electors in Arizona are required by law to follow the will of the people. In 2020, legitimate electors designated by the Democratic Party cast their votes for Joe Biden, who had won Arizona by a 10,457-vote margin.
The 11 Republicans weren’t qualified electors for the 2020 election, Trump didn’t win Arizona, and their votes were not official. They celebrated anyway, immortalizing the moment in a Twitter video.
In all, 84 people — including elected officials, candidates, former officeholders and Republican party leaders — from groups in seven swing states falsely claimed to be alternate electors in a coordinated plot to keep Trump in office.
And the 11 Arizonans who applauded eagerly at the time are unwilling to talk about their decisions, declining interview requests, hanging up on calls and retreating from questions.
Here is what you need to know about the GOP’s slate of fake electors.
Tyler Bowyer
Bowyer, 37, is the chief operating officer at Turning Point USA, a nonprofit that advocates for conservative politics on high school, college and university campuses.
Bowyer’s biography on Turning Point’s website touts his “strong desire to combat Marxist-Leninist philosophy from entering the American political mainstream.” He describes himself as a seventh-generation Arizonan.
Republican Gov. Jan Brewer appointed Bowyer as a student regent on the Arizona Board of Regents in 2011. He has worked for the Republican National Committee and served as chairman of the Maricopa County Republican Party from 2015-2017.
In July 2015, Bowyer helped to convene a rally at the Phoenix Convention Center that served as an early national sign of the future president’s appeal.
Bowyer has declined recent interview requests about the electors. In 2022, he told The Arizona Republic he didn’t know “all the details and facts” but emphasized his role as an elector.
“I was an elector − I want to make sure we’re clear here − I was an elector for the Republican Party.”
Tyler Bowyer, COO of Turning Point USA, speaks during the Arizona GOP biennial statutory meeting at Dream City Church on Saturday, Jan. 28, 2023, in Phoenix.
Nancy Cottle
Nancy Cottle, 71, of Mesa, chaired the Arizona Trump electors.
Cottle was subpoenaed by House Select Committee investigating the riot at the U.S. Capitol for her “role and participation in the purported slate of electors casting votes for Donald Trump and, to the extent relevant, your role in the events of January 6, 2021.”
She describes herself on Twitter as a “political junkie” and an “ultra MAGA.” Her LinkedIn page lists her as a “strong consulting professional” with a background in business planning. Cottle is the owner of The Branded Image.
She has a master’s degree in operational management from the University of Phoenix and a bachelor’s in health, physical education and speech from Kent State University, according to her bio.
Cottle has not responded to multiple interview requests.
State Sen. Jake Hoffman
State Sen. Jake Hoffman, R-Queen Creek, chairs the Legislature’s conservative Freedom Caucus.
On Jan. 5, 2021, Hoffman sent a letter to Vice President Mike Pence asking him not to accept the state’s official electoral votes. Although Hoffman had not yet taken office, the letter was sent on official state letterhead and had a return address of the state Capitol.
Hoffman has proposed and supported so-called election integrity bills, including one that would trigger an automatic redo of an election in which voters had to wait in line more than 90 minutes and another to break up Maricopa County into four counties. Both of those failed.
Hoffman, 38, is the married father of five, according to online biographies. He previously served on the Higley School Board and the Queen Creek Town Council. He was a communications director with Turning Point USA and runs several conservative digital marketing companies.
In 2020, a company he operated called Rally Forge was accused of operating a troll farm for a Turning Point affiliate and was banned from Facebook and suspended from Twitter. The company paid teens to set up bogus accounts and flood social media with posts sowing distrust in mail-in ballots and downplaying COVID-19.
Another of Hoffman’s companies, 1Ten, received $2.1 million from a political action committee that used spoof donors to boost the campaign of failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake. The owners of California businesses who were listed as the source of funds said they had never heard of the PAC − or Lake.
Hoffman has avoided questions about the fake electors. In a brief interview outside the Capitol in 2022, he told The Arizona Republic electors wanted to provide Congress and Pence with “dueling opinions” before walking away.
Rep. Jake Hoffman, R-Queen Creek, speaks as the House votes on bills related to the budget at the Arizona Capitol in Phoenix on June 24, 2021.
State Sen. Anthony Kern
State Sen. Anthony Kern, R-Glendale, is an ardent Trump supporter who spoke at “Stop the Steal” rallies and was at the U.S. Capitol when it was sacked by rioters. He has given conflicting accounts about where he was that day, but photos and videos show him on the Capitol steps.
Kern, 61, predicted in speeches he gave before the riot that Jan. 6 would be a “big day,” frothing up crowds by asking if this was “a revolution.” He told The Republic in 2022 what happened at the Capitol was a partisan hoax.
Kern in 2005 was hired as a civilian code enforcement officer for The El Mirage Police Department. He was fired in 2014 for lying to a supervisor after a string of disciplinary problems. The department also put Kern on the Brady list, a database of officers accused of dishonesty.
Kern was elected to Arizona’s House of Representatives in 2015. He falsely claimed on financial disclosure forms that he was a certified law enforcement officer. In 2019, he tried to pass a law to overhaul the Brady List without acknowledging he would directly benefit by getting his name removed. He lost his seat in the 2020 election.
Only people who have done something wrong or had something to hide would need to hire a lawyer, he said.
Republican state Sen. Anthony Kern leads a protest across the street from the Washington Elementary School District office on March 9, 2023, in Glendale.
Jim Lamon
Jim Lamon ran for U.S. Senate in 2022 and lost in the Republican primary.
Lamon, 67, of Paradise Valley, is married with two children. He grew up on a farm in Alabama before joining the U.S. Army. He was stationed in Germany in the Cold War and served as an airborne officer.
Lamon earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Alabama in 1979.
He describes himself on LinkedIn as a Fortune 500 executive. Lamon is the founder of Scottsdale-based Depcom Power, a solar engineering and construction company that employed 1,600 across the nation when he sold it.
Before entering politics, Lamon was known as a reliable donor to Republican causes and candidates, including Trump. He was a behind-the-scenes player in the Arizona Senate’s “audit” and helped bankroll security.
Lamon made immigration and border security a cornerstone of his platform and sought to restore Trump-era policies that returned asylum seekers to Mexico while awaiting court hearings. He was also critical of the Biden Administration’s COVID-19 relief package.
Despite pouring millions of his own money into his campaign, Lamon lost to Republican challenger Blake Masters, who was defeated by Democrat Mark Kelly.
Lamon has not responded to interview requests about the electors. In 2022, while he was running for Senate, he appeared on KTVK-TV’s “Politics Unplugged” and claimed the electors were part of a backup plan in case Trump succeeded in his election fraud challenges.
“The Republican electors put forth a valid document that said, in the event that the election certification was overturned, there would be no excuse not to recognize those electors,” Lamon said.
The signed document, however, had no such proviso.
Jim Lamon speaks to a crowd of Republican voters at the party’s primary debate for the U.S Senate in Phoenix on June 23, 2022.
Montgomery, 72, of Hereford, pushed for hand counts of votes as committee chair and before the 2022 election told Cochise County Supervisors they should ignore warnings about it from then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs.
He told the supervisors to throw Hobbs’ letter “in the bucket somewhere” and argued a full hand-count would be “easy to do,” according to a report by Votebeat.
Montgomery said former State Rep. Mark Finchem − an election denier and conspiracy theorist − would support hand counts if he won his bid for secretary of state. Finchem lost in a landslide to his Democratic challenger.
The Cochise County Board of Supervisors in September appointed Montgomery to the Palominas Fire District board. The decision came despite protests from some Sierra Vista residents who said Montgomery’s role as a fake elector should disqualify him. They complained Montgomery should not be rewarded for trying to overturn the election.
He is also on the county’s planning and zoning commission.
Montgomery has repeatedly declined to discuss his role as a fake elector. He did not respond to messages left at his home or at the fire district in July.
He was serving as the second vice chair of the Gila County Republican Party when he signed as a Trump elector.
According to online biographies, Moorhead, 78, of Globe, is married and has four children and five grandchildren. He was born in Pennsylvania and served as a Navy corpsman for 14 years, doing multiple tours in Vietnam.
Moorhead has a bachelor’s degree in education from Edinboro State University in Pennsylvania and earned a master’s degree in special education and teaching from New Mexico State University in 1999. He is listed as a consultant on his LinkedIn page.
He taught at schools in New Mexico and Arizona. Moorhead also was a commercial driver for Werner Enterprises until his retirement in 2007.
Moorhead has not responded to calls and messages about his role as a Trump elector.
Lorraine Pellegrino
Loraine Pellegrino, 65, of Phoenix, was secretary for the Arizona Trump electors.
Pellegrino is one of four electors subpoenaed by House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
She has an extensive background in Arizona Republican politics. Pellegrino is past president of the Arizona Federation of Republican Women and is a founding member of the Ahwatukee Republican Women’s Club.
Her online biography highlights her election as a delegate to Republican National Committee conventions in 2012, 2016 and 2020. She has served three terms on the Arizona GOP Executive Committee. She lists the recruitment of Republican women to run for office as one of her personal achievements.
Pellegrino has lived in Arizona for 25 years. She was born and raised in Connecticut and has a bachelor’s degree in media studies from Sacred Heart University. She is married and has one son.
Pellegrino in a January 2022 interview said the electors met as a contingency “in case there was a change in the decision here in the state.” She couldn’t say how the plan came together but bristled at the characterization of the group as “alternate” electors.
“We were electors for Trump and we were hoping things would change,” she said. “Just in case, we signed our paperwork to be ready in the event that something was overturned.”
Pellegrino hung up when contacted in July about the attorney general’s investigation.
Greg Safsten
Greg Safsten was executive director of the Arizona Republican Party when he signed as a Trump elector.
Safsten, 35, of Gilbert, was hired as a campaign consultant in 2022 by U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters, who was defeated in the general election. He had previously worked as an adviser and director for Rep. Andy Biggs and Rep. Matt Salmon.
According to his Legistorm biography, Safsten got his start in 2012 as a field director for Salmon’s campaign and was later hired as his legislative assistant. In 2016, he went to work for the Biggs campaign and ultimately rose to the position of deputy chief of staff.
Police and court records show in 2022 he was arrested and pleaded guilty to extreme DUI.
According to a March 2022, search warrant affidavit filed in Maricopa County Superior Court, a Gilbert police officer saw Safsten speed away from a Taco Bell restaurant “losing control of his vehicle as it fishtailed” and nearly collided with another vehicle.
The officer said Safsten kept going when he initially tried to pull him over, driving at a high rate of speed and weaving between lanes until finally pulling over about a half-mile later. He failed a field sobriety test, records show.
Safsten was fined and sentenced in January to 60 months’ probation, records show.
Safsten’s LinkedIn page has no employment information after August 2022. He bills himself as a “seasoned public relations, communications, public policy & political executive.”
“I work to be the leader and teammate I’d want on my own team,” he writes on his page. “Having formed and led teams in various conditions for over a dozen years, I know what it takes to win.”
Safsten was born and raised in Mesa. He attended Mountain View High School and obtained a bachelor’s degree in international studies from Arizona State University in 2007. He also studied clinical laboratory science at Weber State University in Utah.
Safsten did not respond to an interview request.
Kelli Ward
Kelli Ward is the past chair of the Arizona GOP. She helped to organize the signing of the fake electors, sat at the head of the table during the “signing” video and boasted about the moment on Twitter.
“Oh, yes we did!” Ward wrote in a Dec. 14, 2020 post. “We are the electors who represent the legal voters of Arizona! #Trump2020#MAGA.”
Ward, 54, of Lake Havasu City, was among those subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 committee and the Department of Justice over the slate of fake electors. Her attorney said in 2022 Ward was engaging in First Amendment-protected activity.
Ward is an osteopathic physician turned politician. She was elected to the Arizona Senate in 2013. She resigned to go after John McCain’s U.S. Senate seat in 2016, losing in the Republican primary, 39% to McCain’s 51%. She tried again for U.S. Senate in 2018 and lost in the Republican primary to Martha McSally.
Ward became party chair in 2019 and after the 2020 election became one of Trump’s most ardent supporters, launching several unsuccessful lawsuits to overturn Arizona’s election.
Ward promoted various voter fraud conspiracies and championed the Arizona Senate’s “audit,” delivering frequent YouTube updates as the ballot count unfolded, which turned into a fundraising bonanza for the party’s candidates and causes.
Ward is married and has three children. She was born in West Virginia. She earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Duke University and a doctorate from West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine. She has a master’s degree in public health from A.T. Still University, according to her legislative biography.
She practiced emergency medicine in Lake Havasu City and Kingman.
Ward was replaced as party chair in 2023. She and her husband announced on YouTube they bought a 44-foot catamaran and were starting a charter business called Sail American Honey.
Ward has not responded to interview requests about the electors.
Kelli Ward speaks during the Arizona GOP biennial statutory meeting at Dream City Church on Saturday, Jan. 28, 2023, in Phoenix.
Michael Ward
Michael Ward is Kelli Ward’s husband and a GOP activist. He, too, has been subpoenaed by the Department of Justice for his role as a Trump elector.
Ward, 58, of Lake Havasu City, is an emergency physician and is the state air surgeon in the Arizona Air National Guard, according to his LinkedIn page. He formerly worked at Havasu Regional Medical Center.
Ward first enlisted in the US Air Force in 1983 and began his military medical career. He joined the reserves and was commissioned to active duty in 1992, according to a listing on America’s Mighty Warriors, a veteran’s support group.
Ward earned a doctorate in osteopathic medicine in 1995 from A.T. Still University, where he met Kelli,according to her biography. They were married in 1995. Ward served as his wife’s campaign manager from 2011-2015.
He was accused in 2019 of spitting in the eye of one of his wife’s former volunteers. Police records indicate the alleged incident happened at the Arizona Republican Party’s general election night gala in Paradise Valley.
The former volunteer said Michael Ward was angry because the volunteer was supporting Kelli Ward’s political opponent, Martha McSally, according to police reports. Michael Ward emailed the Paradise Valley police and denied the allegations. He told police his accuser was an attention seeker and known storyteller.
Michael Ward also had a reputation for confronting people on his wife’s behalf. He was accused of bullying a staffer of Sen. John McCain at a Tea Party event in 2016. The moment was captured on video.
Michael Ward did not respond to an interview request about the attorney general’s investigation into the Trump electors.
Kelli Ward gets a kiss from her husband, Dr. Michael Ward, before greeting supporters at a primary election night party at Embassy Suites Scottsdale on Aug. 28, 2018.
Arizona’s second slate of fake electors
Arizona spawned a second group of fake electors in 2020 who certified that it, too, had cast the state’s votes for Trump.
The lesser-known Trump loyalists called themselves “The Sovereign Citizens of the Great State of Arizona” and sent the National Archives in Washington, D.C., notarized documents that carried the state seal on their letterhead. The signers were:
Former RNC Chair Names The Chilling Lesson Donald Trump Has Learned For 2024
Lee Moran July 26, 2023
Donald Trump has learned a “very valuable lesson” from his failed efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, Michael Steele warned on Tuesday.
The former president likely won’t let lawyers again thwart his attempt to subvert democracy if he becomes the GOP nominee in 2024, the former Republican National Committee chair told MSNBC’s Katie Phang.
Instead, Steele said next time around they will just tell Trump: “Yes, sir, how do you need this done? When does it need to be done? And how do we corral the forces across the country to make sure it sticks?”
Michael Steele warned that Donald Trump, pictured, has learned a
Michael Steele warned that Donald Trump, pictured, has learned a “very valuable lesson” from 2020.
Steele’s prediction came during a discussion about former senior Justice Department official Richard Donoghue, who this week revealed he’d been interviewed by special counsel Jack Smith’s office as part of the investigation into Trump’s attempts to overturn the election.
Donoghue, during testimony to the House last year, said he’d rejected Trump’s efforts to flip the result. Donoghue’s stance against Trump was important “to understand just how thin that line was for us in 2020 and why that line will be obliterated should he get reelected in ’24,” said Steele.
Trump won’t face such opposition next time around, Steele suggested.
Trump has already reportedly vowed to seize presidential authority “over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House,” according to a New York Times article.
NBC News presidential historian Michael Beschloss this week warned it would mean Trump’s second term would be a “presidential dictatorship.”
Smith is reportedly close to indicting Trump, who last week said he’d received a target letter from the special counsel.
Whitmer signs bills impacting Michigan teachers and potentially bringing more to the state
Clara Hendrickson, Detroit Free Press – July 26, 2023
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed a series of bills Wednesday that expand bargaining power for teachers’ unions, make it easier for out-of-state teachers and counselors to move to Michigan and eliminate a restriction on setting teacher pay that only applies to Detroit educators.
“This legislation will build on our efforts to recruit and retain the talented educators that provide Michigan students with a phenomenal education,” Whitmer said in a statement.
The bills aren’t the only changes to education policy the governor has made recently. Earlier this month, she overhauled the state’s education department, announcing the creation of a new one that will consolidate early childhood and higher education programs currently spread across multiple state agencies. Last week, she signed an education budget that will provide free breakfast and lunch to all PreK-12 public school students and expand eligibility to enroll in Michigan’s state-funded preschool program.
Here’s a look at the other changes the bills signed by Whitmer will bring to Michigan’s classrooms.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer speaks at a bill signing ceremony in Suttons Bay on July 20, 2023 before signing the education budget.
Whitmer signed House Bill 4354, which eliminates restrictions on teacher’s unions from bargaining with public schools about performance evaluation systems and teacher placements. House Bill 4820 signed by Whitmer also changes how seniority is considered in public schools’ personnel decisions. Currently, length of service generally cannot be factored into those decisions.
Whitmer also signed House Bill 4044, which repeals a ban on public employers paying higher wages and providing more generous benefits after a collective bargaining agreement expires. And Whitmer approved House Bill 4233 which eliminates a prohibition against public school employers from using school resources to help unions collect dues or fees from public school employees. Bill sponsor state Rep. Jaime Churches, D-Wyandotte, touted the legislation for enabling teachers to automatically have their union dues withdrawn from their paychecks.
House Minority Leader Matt Hall, R-Richland Township, blasted the legislation. “As they hand out favors and power to their union boss allies, Michigan Democrats are continuing to undermine public education and put the needs of students last,” he said in a statement. With the exception of House Bill 4233 which garnered the support of one GOP lawmaker − state Sen. Ed McBroom, R-Waucedah Township − Republicans opposed the package bills.
Senate Bill 359 signed by Whitmer eliminates the requirement that compensation for Detroit teachers and administrators be determined primarily on the basis of job performance. Instead, it allows teacher and administrator pay to take into account the number of years spent on the job and advanced degrees held by Detroit Public Schools Community District employees.
The bill has its origins in a 2016 Republican effort aimed at addressing financial challenges facing Detroit’s public school system which created a different process for determining teacher and staff compensation from the rest of the state.
Bill sponsor state Sen. Stephanie Chang, D-Detroit, said in a June statement that the ban on considering longevity and advanced degrees to determine Detroit teachers’ compensation was an “unfair prohibition” that has caused teachers to leave the district.
Lure out-of-state teachers and counselors to Michigan
Finally, Whitmer signed Senate Bills 161 and 162 aimed at making it easier for school teachers and counselors to move to Michigan. The pair of bills reduce the barriers both out-of-state teachers and school counselors face to work in Michigan’s schools by easing the state’s teacher and school counselor certification requirements.
Sheryl Kennedy, the legislative liaison for the Michigan Department of Education, said about a quarter of Michigan teachers moved in from out of state and the bills could make Michigan a destination for educators. “Michigan’s kind of really becoming a place where teachers really want to go from other states,” she said during a hearing on the legislation.
A classroom sits empty at the Cesar Chavez Academy High School in Detroit last March after the pandemic hit.
Senate Bill 161 enables those with a teaching credential from a federally recognized Indian tribe or another country to apply to the state superintendent of public instruction to receive a teaching certificate without needing to take teacher certification exams in Michigan. The bill also eases the criteria for those eyeing a move from another state to Michigan to teach. For example, it allows those with a teaching certification from another state, federally recognized Indian tribe or country to be eligible for a Michigan professional education certificate if they have successfully taught for at least three years in their prior jurisdiction.
Senate Bill 162 creates similar pathways for out-of-state school counselors.
“Incandescently stupid”: Former DHS official says he had to “dumb” down classified memos for Trump
Gabriella Ferrigine – July 26, 2023
Donald Trump Mark Makela/Getty Images
Miles Taylor, who served as chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security under Donald Trump, shared how he often had to oversimply national security reports for the former president.
“This fifty-page memo that we would normally give to any other president about what his options are is something Trump literally can’t read. The man doesn’t read. We’ve gotta boil this down into a one-pager in his voice,” Taylor told podcast host Brett Meiselas on Tuesday. “And so I had to write this incandescently stupid memo called something like, ‘Afghanistan, How to Put America First and Win.’ And then bullet by bullet, I summed up this highly classified memo into Trump’s sort of bombastic language because it was the only way he was gonna understand,” Taylor added. “I mean, I literally said in there, ‘You know, if we leave Afghanistan too fast, the terrorists will call us losers. But if we wanna be seen as winners, we need to make sure the Afghan forces have the strength to push back against these criminals.’ I mean, it was that dumb and that’s how you had to talk to him.”
Excess Deaths Among Republicans Skyrocketed After Covid Vaccine Became Available, Study Finds
Nikki Main – July 26, 2023
More Republicans died than Democrats after the Covid vaccine was released
As covid vaccines started to roll out in February 2021, misinformation and conspiracy theories surrounding the shot were on the rise—as were the deaths of Republican voters.
A new study from Yale University looked at 538,159 people in Ohio and Florida starting on May 1, 2021, and focused on counties that reported lower vaccination rates. In the first year of the pandemic, the number of covid-related deaths was evenly dispersed among both Democrats and Republicans, but that quickly changed within a month after the vaccine became available to all U.S. adults.
The study found the “excess mortality was significantly higher for Republican voters than Democratic voters after COVID-19 vaccines were available to all adults, but not before,” noting that the death rate for Republican voters was 43% higher than for Democratic voters after the vaccine was widely available. However, the study notes that the data did not include whether the individual was vaccinated or if their deaths were directly linked to covid-19, but researchers looked at the divide in political party-affiliated deaths between January 2018 and December 2021 and compared the pre-pandemic death rate to deaths recorded post-Covid vaccine.
“We’re not saying that if you took someone’s political party affiliation and were to change it from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party that they would be more likely to die from covid-19,” the study’s lead researcher Jacob Wallace told The Wall Street Journal.
This study is not the first to reflect an increase in deaths following the rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine, with KFF estimating in April of last year that at least 234,000 Covid deaths recorded between June 2021 and March 2022 could have been prevented if the individuals had received the vaccine. “These findings suggest that differences in vaccination attitudes and reported uptake between Republican and Democratic voters may have been factors in the severity and trajectory of the pandemic in the US,” the study says.
The higher rate of Republican deaths has been widely attributed to misinformation and mistrust in official sources of information surrounding both the vaccine and the pandemic. Liz Hamel, the vice president of public opinion and survey research at the Kaiser Family Foundation told NPR in 2021, “An unvaccinated person is three times as likely to lean Republican as they are to lean Democrat.” The NPR analysis found that people in counties that primarily voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election were three times as likely to die from covid-19 compared with those living in counties that leaned toward President Joe Biden.
Despite Wallace and his team’s findings, Florida Governor and presidential candidate Ron DeSantis continues to claim that Florida got it right when it came to its handling of the pandemic and filed a petition to investigate vaccine makers for fraud. He filed the petition to the Florida Supreme Court in December, alleging conspiracies about the scientific evidence that the vaccine is resistant to new variants. “It is impossible to imagine that so many influential individuals came to this view on their own,” he wrote. “Rather, it is likely that individuals and companies with an incentive to do so created these perceptions for financial gain.”
The rise in misinformation about Covid vaccines is still affecting the number of people who believe it is safe, with only 49% of Republicans reporting they are “very” or “somewhat” confident in the vaccine versus 88% of Democrats, according to a March study conducted by Stephen Neely at the University of South Florida.
Speaking on the Yale study, Neely told The Post the findings were important because they shed light on how a response to the Covid vaccine has shaped how the death toll played out. “It’s one of the most telling metrics I’ve seen in how the politicization of the pandemic has played out in the real world,” he said.
Watch Moment Amazon Driver Dives Fully Clothed Into Customer’s Swimming Pool to Cool Off
Kirsty Hatcher – July 26, 2023
Watch Moment Amazon Driver Dives Fully Clothed Into Customer’s Swimming Pool to Cool Off
The moment was captured on the Californian homeowner’s CCTV amid the soaring temperatures in the U.S.
Well, that’s one way to cool off!
After making a delivery, an Amazon driver dived fully clothed into a customer’s swimming pool to beat the soaring temperatures.
The driver, who even kept his shoes and cap on, used the customer’s diving board to dive head-first into the pool of the home in Gardena, California.
The moment, which occurred on June 30, was captured on one of the home’s security cameras and has since gone viral.
According to ViralHog, the customer left a note in the delivery instructions that read, “If you want to go for a swim, you are welcome to.”
Mario Fermin via ViralHogAmazon driver dives fully-clothed into customer’s pool
In the video, the driver is seen leaving the customer’s parcel outside a door in the backyard. He then walks over to the diving board and takes a dip.
Parts of the U.S. have been experiencing a heatwave over the last few weeks. According to Reuters, Death Valley, Phoenix and Las Vegas were among some of the hottest places in the U.S. earlier this month.
And Fourth of July was reported to have been the hottest day ever recorded on Earth — and it broke the record set just one day before.
Mario Fermin via ViralHogAmazon driver dives fully-clothed into customer’s pool
On that day, the global average temperature hit 62.92 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine. It was the hottest day recorded since temperatures began to be documented in 1979 with satellite stock recording — and it’s believed to have been one of the hottest days in at least 125,000 years, according to The Washington Post.
The day before, the global temperature average was 62.62 degrees Fahrenheit, making it until then the hottest day on record. Before that, the last highest recorded temperature average was 62.46 degrees in August 2016, per the Post.
Rising temperatures amid global climate change are “a death sentence for people and ecosystems,” Friederike Otto, a senior lecturer at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment, told Bloomberg.
In a tweet, author and climate scientist Bill McGuire also wrote that the record-breaking July 4 heat was “totally unprecedented and terrifying.”
Last week, a 71-year-old man died at a trailhead in Death Valley National Park. Hours before his death, Steve Curry spoke to a reporter about braving the extreme heat.
Nearly 28,000 Iowans have been disenrolled from Medicaid. Here’s why:
Michaela Ramm, Des Moines Register – July 26, 2023
Nearly 28,000 Iowans have been disenrolled from Medicaid this year as part of Iowa’s redetermination process — a consequence of continuous coverage no longer being guaranteed.
The latest data from the state’s Health and Human Services Department shows 27,744 Iowans were disenrolled from the safety net health insurance program since April, when Iowa began “unwinding” expanded eligibility.
About 30% of those Iowans — 8,401 — were disenrolled for procedural reasons, including failing to return paperwork.
The remaining 19,343 were deemed ineligible for further coverage, state data shows.
Since April, the state has been reviewing the eligibility of 900,000 Iowans who receive Medicaid and CHIP (the Children’s Health Insurance Program) benefits to determine if they still qualify under pre-pandemic regulations.
Federal health officials and other advocates have raised alarms about the number of people disenrolled for procedural reasons, which refers to those who did not return their paperwork or otherwise failed to complete the renewal process.
They say people may not be aware they’re up for renewal or recently changed addresses and didn’t receive the paperwork.
“What we’re seeing across the country from the first two months is that whilst people have done a lot to prepare, at the same time there are a lot of people losing their coverage,” said Dan Tsai, director of the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services. “A really high number of folks are losing coverage for what we call procedural reasons.”
State officials managing the redetermination process, however, say the current rate of disenrollment, including procedural drop-offs, was expected. Iowa Medicaid Director Liz Matney said the department’s data show the majority of those kicked off the program have health insurance coverage elsewhere.
“It’s not surprising. If somebody gets renewal paperwork and they say they don’t need Medicaid anymore, why would they submit paperwork?” Matney told the Des Moines Register. “So when the team has been looking at the individuals who are disenrolled for any reason, but particularly for those who are disenrolled for not returning their paperwork, we can tell in our system who has other health insurance.”
That data has not been made publicly available on the state’s dashboard.
Still, officials with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have called on Iowa and other states to simplify the process. In addition to keeping individuals who qualify on Medicaid, states also need to connect low-income residents with other coverage options, Tsai said.
“We’re looking for states to also do everything in their power, way beyond what the federal minimums are, to try to make it easier for eligible people to keep their coverage,” Tsai told the Register. “If you’re not eligible for Medicaid, we want you on your employer-sponsored coverage. We want you on the ACA plans. We don’t want you uninsured, and that’s the bottom-line focus for us from a federal standpoint.”
Typically, Iowans on Medicaid undergo a redetermination process every year to check their eligibility to see whether they still qualify.
But as part of the federal government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic starting in March 2020, states were required to maintain coverage for individuals on Medicaid, even if they no longer qualified. In exchange, states received enhanced federal funding to manage the health insurance program.
In Iowa, more than 168,000 individuals maintained coverage during the three-year pause on Medicaid redeterminations, state data shows.
That requirement to maintain continuous coverage ended in March 2023, when federal officials ended the national public health emergency.
As a result, the state’s health and human services department is checking the eligibility of hundreds of thousands of Iowans on Medicaid and CHIP, a massive undertaking that must be completed by May of 2024. Matney said state employees are processing close to 70,000 new applications every month, a “huge increase” from the typical redetermination process pre-pandemic.
Early estimates showed about 136,000 Iowans would be disenrolled from Iowa Medicaid, the state’s $7 billion privatized program, by the end of the 12-month unwinding period.
The state agency has worked to automate as much as possible and has launched a public messaging campaign to spread the word to members to turn in their paperwork. The managed care organizations that administer Medicaid benefits also have engaged in direct outreach to members, including knocking on the doors of some members to help them fill out their application, Matney said.
How many Iowans have renewed their coverage?
As of June, 854,791 people were enrolled in Iowa Medicaid and CHIP. That’s 39,053 fewer than in April.https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/14502335/embed
In the first three months of the “unwinding” process, 105,401 enrollees renewed their coverage under the Iowa Medicaid program, according to state data.
Of those, about half — 51,940 — were renewed on an “ex parte basis” or automatically renewed based on information the state has on the enrollee. The remaining 53,461 enrollees who renewed their coverage filled out and returned the redetermination paperwork sent by the state.
Federal officials call on states to do more. What is Iowa saying?
As the redetermination process continues for the next several months, Matney said she expects the number of individuals disenrolled, including for procedural reasons, will level off.
State officials had flagged enrollees who were likely ineligible for continued coverage, and frontloaded their reviews early in the redetermination process. As a result, Matney said, the rate of procedural dropoffs from April through July will be higher than the remaining months of the unwinding process.
Matney said enrollee data shows as much as 85% of individuals disenrolled from Medicaid have insurance elsewhere, such as an employer-sponsored plan. It also shows most of those who were disenrolled are adults.
The remaining portion is likely still eligible for Medicaid, which is why the state implemented a 90-day grace period to allow members to reapply for coverage, even if they missed the deadline, Matney said.
“If they get their paperwork in within that 90 days, we’ll backdate to the date that they last covered, so there’s no gap,” Matney said.
Members will most likely find out they no longer have Medicaid coverage when they pick up prescriptions. Matney said a possible solution could come in the form of partnerships with pharmacies, allowing those providers to complete presumptive eligibility determinations and help members get back on Medicaid quickly.
However, she said many states are finding pharmacies are not signing on to help with that work.
CMS has recently taken steps to address the number of Americans kicked off Medicaid coverage during this process, even pausing redetermination efforts in some states that have violated federal regulations, according to a press briefing from last week. Federal officials did not list the states involved.
Tsai said CMS officials are continuing to call on states, especially those with higher rates of procedural dropoffs, to utilize federal waivers offered by CMS for states’ redetermination efforts. These temporary policy changes are structured to help ease the process for members and ensure the nation’s uninsured rate doesn’t spike.
Among those waivers is extending postpartum coverage for Medicaid recipients to a year, a policy that has not been adopted in Iowa. Currently, the state provides members with 60 days of postpartum coverage.
“Under that, there definitely is more room for Iowa to be able to take up more of those,” Tsai said.
Matney said at this stage in the unwinding process, she doesn’t see any need to use additional policies offered by federal health officials to ease the process.
“We’ve gone through the list and really done the analysis of what we’re already doing versus what would be more administratively complicated,” Matney said. “The juice isn’t worth the squeeze in some such situations, and so right now, we’re still in the same spot. But we’ll be evaluating that, and if we feel additional waivers are important and necessary to help ease the process for ourselves and for Medicaid members and Iowans in general, we’ll certainly pursue that.”
Michaela Ramm covers health care for the Des Moines Register.
What frightens me about the climate crisis is we don’t know how bad things really are
Roger Harrabin – July 25, 2023
As the barrage of bad news from places like Greece continues, all we can be certain of is there are many surprises lying ahead.
‘What is the use of a net zero policy if it relies in part on planting trees that may crackle in wildfire?’ Firefighters tackle wildfires on the Greek island of Rhodes, 25 July 2023. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian
Over the past few decades, climate scientists have made huge strides in understanding the future climate. But after recent weeks of extreme heat and devastating floods it’s clear that, although climate models have provided good information about overall rising temperatures, they can’t be sure what level of destruction each notch on the thermometer will bring.
Climate modelling is extremely complex, but its fundamentals rely on basic physics – X tonnes of emissions will bring Y increase in temperature, with some error bars. Supercomputers have been able to factor inshifts in land use that will change the reflectivity of the Earth’s surface. Improved temperature records helped verify their findings.
But lately,leading researchers have made a painful confession: even their most sophisticated models can’t yet foresee exactly how Earth systems will respond to those higher temperatures.
The influential Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says cranking up global temperature by half a degree will bring much more extreme weather, and it can be more often, more intense, or extended in duration – but exactly how much more, it can’t precisely say.
So, for instance, we’ve already had a global temperature rise of about 1.2C: that’s in line with IPCC projections. Yet the panel couldn’t warn us about the appalling heat dome that’s been searing North America. I can’t find heat domes mentioned in the bible of climate change, the IPCC report. This periodic report inevitably lags behind new science and – under pressure from some governments and industries, as well as a desire not to scaremonger – its pronouncements tend to be conservative.
The models also couldn’t warn us accurately about the emergence of the heat trapped deep in the ocean, which soaks up 90% of the world’s excess warmth. In the 35 years I covered the environment for the BBC, I recall speculation that the warmth could stay deep for decades, perhaps centuries – not that some of it would suddenly burst up to the surface off the coast of northern Britain.
Major uncertainties remain, too, over rainfall. Good information about the future of monsoon rain would be a godsend for farmers who rely upon it – not just in India but in southern China. Unfortunately, good information on precipitation is proving a bit tricky to find.
The macro models also failed to project the effect of current elevated temperatures on ice at both poles. The former IPCC chief, Prof Bob Watson, told me: “I am very concerned. None of the observed changes so far (with a 1.2C temperature rise) are surprising. But they are more severe than we predicted 20 years ago, and more severe than the predictions of five years ago. We probably underestimated the consequences.”
This is a massive admission. He added: “Scientists are only now starting to understand the response of large ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica – and it is very disturbing.”
Prof Jane Francis, director of the British Antarctic Survey, told me a few months ago the latest science on ice melt was “truly scary”.
‘The US has considered itself less vulnerable. But tell that to people in Phoenix trapped under that heat dome.’ Photograph: Matt York/AP
Watson said at current rates the world would almost certainly exceed the agreed maximum temperature rise of 1.5-2C. We would be lucky to get away with 2.5C, he said. More likely, we’re heading towards 3C.
That number positively frightens many climate scientists. But, as India starts stockpiling rice with a temperature rise of 1.2C, what useful advice can scientists offer for a 3C world? Just how bad will things be by then?
Should holidaymakers avoid buying homes in Greece? China is vulnerable to extremes – how should its economy adapt? The US has considered itself less vulnerable. But tell that to New Yorkers choking on wildfire smoke, or people in Phoenix trapped under that heat dome.
While immediate harm to people grabs the headlines, what’seven more destructive could be the impact of heat and humidity on food production for an expanding population. A global shift towards a plant-based diet could halve the land and water used for agriculture – and halve the carbon emissions – but politicians fear angeringvoters by recommending a dietary shift.
Facing all this gloom means we need imagineers as well as climatologists. Watson said civilization will still exist in the future, but with much worse living conditions. But what sort of a degraded civilization might that be? By then we may even have triggered some natural tipping points that could result in a massive release of trapped methane in the tundra – let’s hope not.
What we do know is that so far, the effects of heating the climate are sooner and worse than many scientists projected (in public at least). This has policy implications. The world has agreed to cut emissions to net zero by 2050, but the UN secretary general, António Guterres, says rich countries should be aiming to squeeze the timetable to 2040. But what is the use of a net zero policy if it relies in part on planting trees that may shrivel in future drought or crackle in wildfire?
To make matters worse, climate heating is one thing on a list of huge environmental problems – including pollution of the air and water, destruction of wildlife habitats, overfishing, insect population declines, loss of birds, plastic pollution, nitrates, soil loss and more.
Watson says we don’t know how these phenomena will interact with each other, but he urges politicians to err on the side of caution, as the stakes are so very high. Every 0.1C warming matters, scientists say: 1.5C is better than 1.6C. That in turn is less bad than 1.7C.
As the barrage of bad news continues, all we can be certain of is that there are many climate surprises lying ahead of us. Governments, companies and individuals need to urgently squeeze down emissions to insulate ourselves as far as possible from what we may face.
Roger Harrabin is an energy and environment analyst and a former BBC correspondent
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