October 2023 – Page 15 – The Tarbabys Blog

Putin’s Next Target: U.S. Support for Ukraine, Officials Say

The New York Times

Putin’s Next Target: U.S. Support for Ukraine, Officials Say

Julian E. Barnes – October 2, 2023

Marines of the Ukrainian Armed Forces during training exercises in Donetsk Region, Ukraine on Aug. 28, 2023. (Tyler Hicks/The New York Times)

WASHINGTON — Russia’s strategy to win the war in Ukraine is to outlast the West.

But how does President Vladimir Putin plan to do that?

U.S. officials said they are convinced that Putin intends to try to end U.S. and European support for Ukraine by using his spy agencies to push propaganda supporting pro-Russian political parties and by stoking conspiracy theories with new technologies.

The Russia disinformation aims to increase support for candidates opposing Ukraine aid with the ultimate goal of stopping international military assistance to Ukraine.

Russia has been frustrated that the United States and Europe have largely remained united on continued military and economic support for Ukraine, U.S. officials said.

That military aid has kept Ukraine in the fight, put Russia’s original goals of taking Kyiv, the capital, and Odesa out of reach and even halted its more modest objective to control all of the Donbas region, in eastern Ukraine.

But Putin believes he can influence American politics to weaken support for Ukraine and potentially restore his battlefield advantage, U.S. officials said.

Putin, the officials said, appears to be closely watching U.S. political debates over Ukraine assistance. Republican opposition to sending more money to Ukraine forced congressional leaders to pass a stopgap spending bill Saturday that did not include additional aid for the country.

Moscow is also likely to try to boost pro-Russian candidates in Europe, seeing potential fertile ground with recent results. A pro-Russian candidate won Slovakia’s parliamentary elections Sunday. In addition to national elections, Russia could seek to influence the European parliamentary vote next year, officials said.

Russia has long used its intelligence services to influence democratic politics around the world.

U.S. intelligence assessments in 2017 and 2021 concluded that Russia had tried to influence elections in favor of Donald Trump. In 2016, Russia hacked and leaked Democratic National Committee emails that hurt Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign and pushed divisive messages on social media. In 2020, Russia sought to spread information denigrating Joe Biden — but many Republicans in Congress argued Russia’s goal was to intensify political fights, not to support Trump.

For the 2024 presidential election, U.S. intelligence agencies believe the stakes for Putin are even higher.

Biden has sent billions of dollars of aid to Ukraine and pledged that the United States and its allies would support the country for “as long as it takes.” Trump, far ahead in the polls for the Republican nomination, has said supporting Ukraine is not a vital U.S. interest.

Russia, according to U.S. officials, is constantly running information operations aimed at denigrating NATO and U.S. policies and is likely to ramp up efforts in the months to come. The U.S. officials spoke on the condition their names not be reported so they could discuss sensitive intelligence.

The ultimate goal of Russia would be to help undermine candidates who support Ukraine and to change U.S. policy. Some U.S. officials doubt Russia would be able to do that.

But even if Moscow cannot influence the final election result, Russians may believe they can stir up enough debate over Ukraine aid that a future Congress could find it more difficult to pass additional support, U.S. officials said.

Beth Sanner, a former senior intelligence official, says artificial intelligence and other new technologies will change how Russia conducts influence campaigns. Russia is also likely to conduct influence laundering efforts, sending messages to the American public through allies inside nominally independent organizations, according to a recent declassified analysis.

“Russia will not give up on disinformation campaigns,” Sanner said. “But we don’t know what it is going to look like. We should assume the Russians are getting smarter.”

It is easy to overstate Russia’s ability to influence U.S. politics. Some American officials and social media executives have questioned how effective Russia’s troll farms and influence operations were in 2016, as opposed to hack and dump operations targeting Clinton’s emails.

And the media landscape has shifted dramatically since then. U.S. and European consumers are more skeptical of what they see on social media. Russian state television, a source of Kremlin narratives, has been pushed off Google’s YouTube. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has bolstered its search for disinformation and de-emphasized news on its platforms.

But for every development making life harder for Russia’s online trolls, there are trends pushing in the opposite direction. The X platform, formerly known as Twitter, has dismantled teams that were hunting for election interference efforts. And the most influential platform among young people is now TikTok, a Chinese company. China has been stepping up its own influence operations, modeled after Moscow’s operations.

U.S. intelligence agencies have warned that several countries are seeking to influence American politics. In 2020, intelligence agencies outlined an Iranian scheme to influence voting in Florida. Cuba also conducted low-level intelligence operations, and Venezuela had the intent, but not the capabilities, to influence the vote.

But Russia is better than any other country at combining state media, private troll farms and intelligence service operations to attack in the digital space, U.S. officials said.

And it has continued to refine its efforts. Many of the disinformation experts who once worked for the Internet Research Agency, the Russian troll farm active in American elections in 2016 and 2018, have migrated to new firms or joined Russian military intelligence. And the internet, one U.S. official said, is the one place Russia will never run out of ammunition.

Shifting the debate in Europe and America is so important to Putin that if those influence operations fail to gain traction, Russia could decide to escalate.

U.S. officials say that escalation could include additional financial support for pro-Russian political parties in Europe or even covert operations in Europe aimed at weakening support for the war in Ukraine.

As a result, underestimating Russia’s ability to conduct influence operations would be a mistake, U.S. officials said.

Russian disinformation that falsely claimed America had bioweapons labs in Ukraine continues to reverberate around the world, for example.

Russia used the accusations to justify its invasion of Ukraine and has repeatedly requested United Nations’ investigations of its false claims. But far-right groups, including QAnon, have picked up, expanded and amplified the Russian bioweapons accusations.

In a world divided by polarized politics, conspiracy theories and disinformation have proved more resilient than ever.

Years in the making, this rock star’s winery is a new ‘focal point’ in Arizona wine country

AZ Central – The Arizona Republic

Years in the making, this rock star’s winery is a new ‘focal point’ in Arizona wine country

Richard Ruelas, Arizona Republic – October 2, 2023

For years, before Cottonwood became a destination for wine fans, the plot of land sat abandoned. It was as if no one had use for a parcel on a hill with soaring views of the Verde Valley.

When Maynard James Keenan saw it, he knew it was the perfect spot to showcase not only his wines, but that also could, quite literally, elevate the state’s wine industry as a whole.

Keenan has planted an eye-catching vineyard on the steep hillside. Two wineries on the site, one partly open-air and the other with large windows, will let spectators spy a hint of the winemaking process. And he has built a trattoria offering pastas and pizzas designed to pair with his wines, meant to be enjoyed on the expansive patio that offers sweeping views over Old Town Cottonwood and the Verde Valley.

“That’s where I stood…and said, ‘this is the view,’” Keenan said pointing to the patio during a late September tour of the facility, days before Merkin Vineyards Hilltop Winery & Trattoria’s scheduled opening.

To get to the restaurant, visitors can take a staircase. Or ride the motorized tram up the 50 feet to the top.

Keenan started planning to build on the land nearly eight years ago. In 2016, as he showed a Republic photographer and reporter the tasting room, Merkin Osteria, on Main Street in Old Town Cottonwood he was opening, he walked them up the hill to show off the vacated building where he eventually planned to build a winery.

That plan has come to fruition. Keenan expects the completed Merkin Vineyards facility to serve as gateway for the Arizona wine industry, spilling customers out onto Main Street to try the other tasting rooms that “don’t have the budget to build something insane like this.”

Keenan, who is the singer for the bands, Tool, A Perfect Circle and Puscifer, has a flair for the theatrical. And the largely open-air facility was designed to attract the eye.

“The attention is the initial foot in the door, but recognition is the goal,” Keenan said. Once someone has wandered into his funhouse, Keenan expects to seriously hook them with his wine. “Recognition has legs,” Keenan said. “That has longevity, the staying power.”

How to visit: Everything to know before you go to Maynard James Keenan’s new Arizona winery and trattoria

A town revitalized by innovative winemakers

This Merkin Vineyards project converted a property that had previously been used by the Cottonwood chapter of the Freemasons. That group intentionally designed its building to be insular. Keenan, with a $1.9 million loan taken out by a company he controls, has transformed it into an open-air showpiece.

The Masonic lodge closed in 2005, consolidating with the Sedona chapter amid declining membership. The building and parcel of land would sit vacant.

At the time, Old Town Cottonwood was known for its rock shops and antique stores. There wasn’t much at night, other than a thriving methamphetamine trade that centered around a run-down motel on Main Street.

In 2010, Cottonwood started courting area wineries to open tasting rooms in the area. That effort, coupled with a methamphetamine crackdown, revived the street. It’s now dotted with restaurants, shops and nightlife. The former drug den on the north end of Main Street converted to a boutique hotel called the Iron Horse Inn.

Some businesses started looking at the site on top of Verde Heights Road, seeing if they could make a project feasible, said G. Krishan Ginige, president of Southwestern Environmental Consultants, who was hired for initial consultations. All the businesses that looked at the land were related to wine, Ginige said, and none pursued it very far.

Part of the reason was the unique topography. “It’s a huge site with a very small footprint on top,” Ginige said during a phone interview.

Making the site work economically would mean figuring out what to do with the land on the hillside, Ginige said.

Keenan was the only one who came to Ginige with the idea of planting a vineyard there, he said. And that presented its own challenges.

Ginige said his company spent about two months trying to figure out how to create a vineyard on the steep hillside that would be both practical, economical and stable. He studied other hillside vineyards, including some in Italy, but couldn’t find an exact parallel. “It’s not something you see in any other place,” he said.

One hillside vineyard was Keenan’s own Judith’s Block in Jerome, also along a steep grade. That Keenan already had a similar vineyard planted let him know it could be done and made him somewhat exasperated that the new project was taking so long to engineer.

Keenan also knew he was setting himself up with another vineyard, like Judith’s Block, that couldn’t be harvested using machines.

“It’s so hard to farm. Hand-picked, hand-sorted, hand pruned,” he said. “All those fun words.”

Merkin Vineyards wine bottles available for purchase at the Merkin Vineyards Hilltop Trattoria on Sept. 25, 2023, in Cottonwood.

Keenan also wanted to build two wineries on the land on top of the hill, one for his Merkin Vineyards line and another for his higher-end Caduceus Cellars. With so little usable land on top of the hill, Ginige said, the answer came from digging the building 10 feet into the hillside and holding them up with concrete pillars set deep into the mountainside.

Doing so keeps the wineries well insulated. Keenan said it is a hedge to protect the wine in the fermenting tanks and barrel room in case of a long-term power failure.

The building that held the Masonic Lodge became the restaurant, said Reynold Radoccia of Architecture Works Green, the architect on the project. Though it had to be reconfigured. The Masons built it in 1952 with few windows, Radoccia said.

“The Masons weren’t necessarily interested in the great views of the Verde Valley,” he said. “They required more privacy in their building.”

Radoccia said he tried to honor the construction style in the new building, attempting to mimic the style to honor the history.

Then there was the tram, a conveyance on fixed track similar to what was built to transport miners in another era of the Verde Valley.

Keenan thought of a tram early on in the project. He did not want his winery to tower above Main Street. Instead, he wanted to be a part of it. So, he envisioned a tram that would take visitors from Main Street up the hill, giving the winery something of an amusement park vibe.

Cottonwood Mayor Tim Elinski said adding that tram has expanded the footprint of Old Town Cottonwood. “Before, I didn’t think about (that site) being in Old Town,” he said. “But, now it’s a focal point. He’s done a great job of punctuating it.”

The project attracted no words of protest as it went through the required zoning hearings, , a measure of the city’s support.

“Really, the entire community has wrapped its arms around the wine industry,” Elinski said.

The Merkin Winery will replace the previous one housed in an anonymous industrial building off Old Highway 279, south of the city. The Caduceus Cellars winery will add capacity to the previous “bunker” Keenan had built alongside his home near Jerome.

The restaurant will replace the Merkin Osteria that had been on Main Street. That building will be converted to a fried chicken restaurant that will pour wine from another Keenan project, Four Eight WineWorks.

Grapes are grown on terraces on a hill in Old Town Cottonwood at Merkin Vineyards on Sept. 25, 2023, in Cottonwood.

A winery for connoisseurs and casual drinkers alike

Keenan said he thought the facility would appeal to people with disparate types of wine knowledge.

The casual tourists, including the ones who might not believe Arizona can grow wine grapes, will be able to see proof with a thriving vineyard on the hillside, Keenan said.

Wine aficionados, from the hilltop view, will recognize the similarities between this area and other wine regions around the country and world. It’s a similarity Keenan himself recognized when he first moved to northern Arizona.

And for those with the means and desire, Keenan will offer a $199-a-person food and wine tasting experience in an exclusive room where he hopes aficionados will note the unique characteristics of the state’s wines. The Ventura Room experience will offer the only opportunity for guests to tour the winery and taste and buy Caduceus Cellars wines with the grapes grown on the hillside vineyard.

Grapes for other Caduceus and Merkin wines come from vineyards in the Verde Valley and Willcox.

Although the price might be high by Cottonwood standards, Keenan said the omakase-style tasting experience can stand alongside tourist offerings in Sedona. And he’s not worried about shooting too high.

“Every time someone’s tried to raise the bar, it’s worked,” Keenan said.

Everything in service to the wine

On a late September afternoon, Keenan walked through his trattoria as staff were being trained. His pizza chef, an 18-year-old named Kai Miller brought out pies with blistered crusts from the wood-fired oven. Keenan looked at a margarita pizza and mocked exasperation. “What is this?” he yelled, channeling his inner Gordan Ramsey, the chef from television’s “Kitchen Nightmares.” Miller showed no reaction as he strolled back into the kitchen.

Miller, a former state wrestling champion, came to Keenan’s attention through a clinic for the team Keenan held at his Brazilian jiu-jitsu studio. Instead of ending up a trainer, Miller said he had a passion for pizza and was hired.

Merkin Vineyards owner and winemaker Maynard James Keenan (left) poses for a photo with 18-year-old chef Kai Miller at the Merkin Vineyards Trattoria on Sept. 25, 2023, in Cottonwood.

The menu at the trattoria mirrors the one at the former Merkin Osteria on Main Street. Vegetables and herbs will largely come from a farm Keenan has at a property near Jerome and a greenhouse on the hilltop Merkin Vineyards site.

As Keenan settled in a booth and ate and praised the pizza, one of his restaurant managers brought something new out from the kitchen — calamari, lightly breaded and fried.

Keenan said he liked the dish, but said that it didn’t fit the overall mission of the restaurant. Not unless the calamari came directly from the Verde River. “It’s not really what we do here,” he said.

Keenan said he’s not aiming to merely create an Italian restaurant, but a place that celebrates what can be grown in Arizona. And one that compliments the Arizona wine that will be served alongside it.

For Keenan, this project was intended to be a winery, first and foremost. Everything else — the food, the gelato stand, the tram, the view — is in service to the wine.

“We do wine,” Kennan said. Everything else “is literally there to support what we all know is the cornerstone of what we’re doing in Arizona, which is wine.”

Details: Merkin Vineyards Hilltop Winery & Trattoria, 770 N. Verde Heights Drive, Cottonwood. 928-639-1001, merkinvineyards.org.

Democrats tried to protect the CFPB from politics. The Supreme Court may blow up that plan.

Politico

Democrats tried to protect the CFPB from politics. The Supreme Court may blow up that plan.

Katy O’Donnell – October 2, 2023

Democrats who created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau a decade ago thought they could shield the agency from political pressure by funding it through the Federal Reserve instead of Congress.

That decision, which drew condemnation from GOP lawmakers and has helped make the regulator a lightning rod for attacks ever since, is facing its biggest test Tuesday when the Supreme Court hears arguments on its constitutionality.

The case is highly anticipated since it could not only result in curbing the agency’s power and throwing its rules into question but potentially affect other regulators throughout the government — including the Fed and the FDIC — that are also not funded by annual congressional spending bills.

“The CFPB has returned $17 billion directly to Americans cheated by financial institutions,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) told POLITICO. “If the Supreme Court disregards over a century of legal precedent, it risks undermining banking regulators safeguarding our economy, as well as Social Security and Medicare.”

Warren, who is credited with conceiving the agency that was created in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis before she became a senator, said the CFPB’s political independence was critical to its formation. Republicans and financial industry critics, many of whom have opposed the bureau since its inception, argue that the funding scheme allows the agency to escape accountability.

Many Democrats see the case as part of a broad-based attack on the regulatory state by Republicans eager to bring challenges before the Supreme Court, whose conservative majority has proved willing to curtail the power of agencies.

In a 2022 ruling limiting the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases, the high court’s six GOP-appointed justices invoked the so-called major questions doctrine, saying that agencies like the EPA need congressional approval before “asserting highly consequential power.” The court has also taken up a case this term challenging the constitutionality of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s in-house enforcement proceedings.

The CFPB was created by the Dodd-Frank Act, the landmark 2010 law that rewrote the rules of finance. The funding mechanism set up by Obama-era Democrats allows the bureau to request the amount of money it needs each year from the Fed, which, in turn, is funded by fees it levies on financial institutions and interest on the securities it holds. The CFPB automatically receives the requested amount, subject to a cap set by Congress.

Among the options the Supreme Court has when it makes its ruling, probably next year, is kicking the matter back to Congress to overhaul the way the bureau is financed — a move that would open the door for other reforms to the agency in an election year.

The case was brought by small-dollar lenders challenging a 2017 CFPB rule restricting their activity. An appellate court ruled last year that the current funding system violates the Constitution’s separation of powers doctrine.

The court scrapped the 2017 rule on the grounds that the CFPB was unconstitutionally funded when it adopted the regulation. The ruling held that the agency’s self-determined budget drawn from an agency that is itself not funded by appropriations marked a “double insulation from Congress’ purse strings,” a unique setup even among financial regulators.

The government maintains that Congress’s decision to authorize the Fed to fund the agency up to a fixed level amounts to “a standing, capped lump-sum appropriation,” as Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in an August brief.

Counsel for the payday lender groups, meanwhile, argued that “Congress does not possess unfettered discretion to authorize executive spending, let alone the power to cede virtually unfettered discretion to an agency to determine the size of its own purse in perpetuity,” in their brief to the high court.

If the Supreme Court does decide the funding stream is unconstitutional, the government is urging the justices to “sever” the funding provision from the rest of the law that created the agency.

“A decision invalidating the CFPB’s past actions would be deeply destabilizing” and “threaten profound disruption for consumers, regulated businesses, and the nation’s financial markets,” Prelogar said in the brief.

Housing industry representatives have also called on the high court to preserve existing CFPB regulations. They warned of “potentially catastrophic consequences that a decision drawing those rules into doubt could have on the mortgage and real-estate markets,” in an amicus brief submitted by three of the industry’s most powerful trade groups.

The Chamber of Commerce and nine other industry groups, meanwhile, urged the court to “avoid disruptions in consumer financial markets” in their own amicus brief. But the groups, which include the major banking trades, also stated that they “believe they are entitled to” the invalidation of CFPB actions they have challenged in pending lawsuits related to the agency’s funding mechanism. They also said CFPB “enforcement actions should be paused” until Congress resolves its funding.

Court watchers say wholesale invalidation of past CFPB actions is a remote possibility.

“Nobody wants a remedy where they throw every regulation out the window, and I doubt very much if they would do that,” said Alan Kaplinsky, former chair of the consumer financial services group at Ballard Spahr. “If they get to the point where they’ve got to decide the remedy, I think the conservatives and the liberals on that court would prefer to kick the ball over to Congress and let them try to deal with that.”’

The Supreme Court has already ruled that “the Dodd-Frank Act contains an express severability clause” in a 2020 decision holding that another part of the CFPB’s structure, a single director who could only be fired for cause, violated the separation of powers. While that decision eroded some of the bureau’s political insulation, separating out the removal clause from the rest of the law preserved the agency.

Both bureau backers and critics say a key question is whether a ruling against the agency could apply only to the CFPB and not to other regulators with independent funding.

“I think philosophically there are going to be five to six votes that probably would like to decide against the CFPB,” Kaplinsky said. “What they’re not going to want to do is decide the case and in doing that put a big cloud over the constitutionality of the Fed, FDIC and [the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency] — that would be a horrendous result. I don’t think any of them would want that, it would create economic chaos.”

Supreme Court Weighs Fate of Consumer Agency That Vexes Banks, Riles GOP

Bloomberg

Supreme Court Weighs Fate of Consumer Agency That Vexes Banks, Riles GOP

Greg Stohr – October 2, 2023

Thirteen years after a Democratic-controlled Congress created the CFPB to regulate mortgages and other consumer-finance products, the high court on Tuesday will weigh a novel constitutional argument that the bureau’s supporters say could leave it decimated.

The clash will shape the future of an agency that critics see as the ultimate symbol of an unaccountable and overreaching federal bureaucracy – but that backers including President Joe Biden’s administration say has provided crucial safeguards and an independent check against corporate power in the years since the 2008 financial crisis.

“The CFPB is under attack because it’s good at what it does,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat who spearheaded the bureau’s creation, said last week.

The justices, who open their new term Monday, are reviewing a ruling that said the agency’s funding system violates a constitutional provision requiring a congressional appropriation for government spending. The CFPB isn’t subject to the year-to-year congressional appropriation process and instead draws as much money as it needs – up to a cap it has never hit – from the Federal Reserve. In fiscal 2022, the agency received $641.5 million in funding, short of its $734 million cap.

“It’s not about the merits of CFPB,” said Michael Pepson, a lawyer with the conservative Americans for Prosperity Foundation. “It’s about ensuring that Congress doesn’t shirk its duties by passing off its exclusive funding authority to unelected officials.”

The case comes at a time when the CFPB under Biden-appointed Director Rohit Chopra is taking an especially aggressive tack. The agency has sought to stamp out abuses in the mortgage-lending market, scrutinize the use of artificial intelligence in credit underwriting and rein in so-called junk fees, a catch-all term that include charges for bounced checks and late credit-card payments.

The bureau last year reached a $3.7 billion settlement with Wells Fargo & Co. to resolve allegations that it mistreated its customers for years by illegally repossessing cars, bungling record-keeping on payments and improperly charging fees and interest. Beyond banks, the CFPB under Biden has sought to probe “buy-now-pay-later” firms and penalize student lending servicers and credit reporting agencies.

Since the CFPB was created in 2010, its enforcement actions have returned $20.2 billion in compensation, principal reductions, canceled debts, and other relief to consumers, agency spokesperson Samuel Gilford said.

The activity is only fueling longstanding Republican complaints that the agency is too powerful. At a hearing in June, GOP Representative Andy Ogles of Tennessee told Chopra the bureau “should die a painful death.”

Mortgage Worries

Although the high court case centers on a never-enforced payday-lending rule, the impact is potentially far broader. In urging the justices to take up the case, the bureau said the ruling from the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals cast a legal cloud over every action the agency has taken since its creation, providing an argument for re-opening even long-finalized rules and enforcement cases.

That’s a worry shared in part by the mortgage-banking industry, which filed a brief urging the court to limit any ruling against the CFPB. The bureau has issued dozens of rules affecting consumer mortgages and the industry has invested billions of dollars toward compliance, according to three trade groups led by the Mortgage Bankers Association.

A decision calling those rules into question “could set off a wave of challenges and the housing market could descend into chaos, to the detriment of all mortgage borrowers,” the groups argued.

The payday-lending trade group pressing the challenge, the Community Financial Services Association, calls those concerns overblown. Judges have a variety of tools to prevent disruption of the mortgage market, including the six-year statute of limitations that applies to CFPB rules, the group says.

“Lacking any viable legal argument, the bureau resorts to fear-mongering about significant disruption if all the CFPB’s past actions are vacated,” the trade group argued. “But the bureau grossly exaggerates the effects and implications of setting aside this rule.”

Delay Suggested

At a minimum, a decision striking down the payday-lending rule could provide a potent new argument for companies currently battling the CFPB, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Elliot Stein. Navient Corp., which is fighting a complaint over its student-loan servicing practices, could have an especially strong case because it has already raised the issue in its defense, Stein said.

Some industry groups – including the US Chamber of Commerce and the American Bankers Association – have suggested the court could take the unusual step of ruling against the agency but delaying the decision’s effective date to give Congress time to set up a different funding system.

The 5th Circuit ruling marked the first time a federal appeals court had ever used the appropriations clause to strike down part of a federal statute. The Supreme Court has never interpreted the clause as a check on Congress, so far invoking it only as a limitation on the executive branch.

The case is part of a Supreme Court term that could put new constraints on federal administrative agencies. The justices are also considering restricting the use of in-house judges to handle cases at the Securities and Exchange Commission. And the court has agreed to revisit an important 1984 ruling that gives agencies latitude in interpreting ambiguous federal statutes.

The Supreme Court in 2020 gave the president broad power to fire the CFPB’s director, striking down job protections Congress had enacted. At the same time, the court stopped short of abolishing the agency altogether, as critics had sought.

The case is Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. Community Financial Services Association, 22-448.

With assistance from Katanga Johnson.

France set to destroy enough wine to fill over 100 Olympic-sized swimming pools: ‘It’s going to cost the nation about $216 million’

The Cool Down

France set to destroy enough wine to fill over 100 Olympic-sized swimming pools: ‘It’s going to cost the nation about $216 million’

Sara Klimek – October 2, 2023

Wine lovers might hate to see millions of gallons of wine destroyed without so much as a taste, but that’s the reality for many vineyards in France amid the changing climate and low demand.

What’s happening?

The French are currently set to dump 100 Olympic-sized swimming pools worth of wine, estimated to cost the government nearly $216 million, according to The Washington Post.

The European Union gave the country $172 million to destroy 80 million gallons of wine in June 2023, and the French recently announced they had scraped together the remainder of the money needed.

Though it might seem like a waste, this wine is not going down the drain. Producers are expected to use the funds to distill the wine into pure alcohol to be used for other cleaning products and perfumes.

Why is it important?

France is experiencing a wine crisis. Consumption of the beverage has plummeted significantly in the country since its peak in 1926, when the average Frenchperson consumed about 36 gallons every year. Now, that amount hovers around 10.5 gallons. Experts trace the drop in consumption to individuals having more drink options.

A dramatically changing climate also plays a big role in the French wine industry. The above-average temperatures in its wine-growing regions, like Bordeaux, paired with more frequent droughts and storms, are changing how fast the grapes ripen.

Merlot, which encompasses 60% of the vineyard production in Bordeaux, is expected to be one of the first species to succumb to the changing climate entirely.

The adaptions needed to grow wine grapes are becoming more costly for vineyards, which, when paired with the lower demand, is causing it to be cheaper to convert the wine into other products than to grow and sell it.

What’s being done to stop it?

Experimental laboratories in France are looking for more drought-tolerant grape species that can keep the cost of production low for vineyards and stay alive as the climate continues to change.

Meanwhile, experts hope the wine buy-back will hold space and time to consider alternative solutions. “We need to think in terms of … long-run adaptation to these changing conditions,” said food and wine researcher Olivier Gergaud.

“We need to help this market to transition to a better future, maybe with more wines that would respect the environment. Adaptation to climate change is a real challenge.”

What Wines to Pair With Different Foods

She Knows

What Wines to Pair With Different Foods

Kenzie Mastroe – October 2, 2023

Choosing a wine to pair with your meal is an intimidating task. Selecting a wine whose flavors complement your dish can heighten your entire dining experience or ruin it if you choose a poor pairing. So how are you supposed to know how to choose the best wine for different types of dishes? Well, the good news is, there is no right or wrong answer. If it tastes good to you, then you chose a good pairing, but if you want to have some baseline knowledge in your back pocket for the next time you’re out having a fancy dinner, then we’ve got all of the info you need.

We recently spoke to Martha Cisneros, a sommelier, wine educator, and founder of Wine Divaa, to put together a handy guide to choosing the perfect wine. Growing up in Mexico, wine wasn’t as common as beer or tequila at the dinner table, but when Cisneros studied abroad in Madrid, she fell in love with wine and has now dedicated her career to sharing the joy of wine with her audience and showcasing the talented and brilliant winemakers in the Hispanic community.

More from SheKnows

The 5 Most Underrated Mexican Wines You’re Not Drinking, But Should

“If I am in a French restaurant, and I am going to be having French dish, I’m going to want a French wine,” Cisneros told SheKnows. “My rule of thumb is if they grow together, they go together.” Cisneros added, “I am also very into adventurous pairings. I like to try, for instance, French food with Mexican wine or the other way around. But that’s better for when you’re a little more comfortable.”

Cisneros’ main rule of “if it grows together, it goes together,” is simple enough to remember but if you want to take things a step further, we asked Cisneros for her top wine recommendations for different types of dishes so you can maximize the flavor potential of your meal and impress everyone else at the dinner table.

Carb-heavy meals

Click here to read the full article.

First up, we asked Cisneros about the best wines to pair with dishes like pasta, rice, bread, or potatoes as a base. “You know, it really depends more on the type of sauce or flavors added to your pasta or rice or risotto,” Cisneros explains. For acidic or tomato-based dishes, Cisneros suggests going with a chianti. “Or even for something like pizza, I would always go with something Italian, maybe even a Brunello.”

If your dish is more on the creamy side, Cisneros recommends a Côtes-du-Rhône white.

Steak

The best wine to pair with steak is going to depend on how the steak is prepared and what it is served with. “For something simple like a grilled steak, I would go with something like a zinfandel from Lodi, California or a Primitivo from Sicily. The zinfandel is going to enhance the smokiness and create a wonderful experience,” Cisneros says. “If the steak has a chimichurri sauce or something similar, a Malbec would be a great choice.”

White meat

As a general rule of thumb, white meat usually pairs nicely with white wines. “For something like a roast chicken or grilled chicken, I would go with a Sauvignon Blanc,” Cisneros says.

Seafood

“I am a pescatarian,” Cisneros reveals. “That’s what I eat every day so this is my favorite one and I love to pair seafood with Greek wines.” Specifically, Cisneros prefers Assyrtiko. “It’s a grape that comes from Greece and has the perfect medium body and crispness and the perfect acidity to bring out the flavors of the seafood.” If you can’t find a Greek Assyrtiko, Cisneros has another suggestion, “Vinho Verde from Portugal is another great option because it offers a liveliness and crispness that pairs perfectly with seafood.”

Cheese

Wine and cheese are a classic pairing but the type of cheese you’re eating makes all the difference. “For something buttery and creamy like brie, champagne is the obvious choice,” Cisneros explains. “For harder, salty cheeses like parmesan, prosecco is the perfect pairing.”

Sweets

Last but certainly not least, when you want to finish your meal with a little something sweet, Cisneros recommends a Zinfandel for chocolatey treats but adds that “as a general rule of thumb, you just want to match the level of sweetness.”

Exclusive: John Kelly goes on the record to confirm several disturbing stories about Trump

CNN

Exclusive: John Kelly goes on the record to confirm several disturbing stories about Trump

Jake Tapper, Anchor and Chief Wash. Cors. – October 2, 2023

John Kelly, the longest-serving White House chief of staff for Donald Trump, offered his harshest criticism yet of the former president in an exclusive statement to CNN.

Kelly set the record straight with on-the-record confirmation of a number of damning stories about statements Trump made behind closed doors attacking US service members and veterans, listing a number of objectionable comments Kelly witnessed Trump make firsthand.

“What can I add that has not already been said?” Kelly said, when asked if he wanted to weigh in on his former boss in light of recent comments made by other former Trump officials. “A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’ A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family – for all Gold Star families – on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.

“A person who is not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women,” Kelly continued. “A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason – in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.

“There is nothing more that can be said,” Kelly concluded. “God help us.”

In the statement, Kelly is confirming, on the record, a number of details in a 2020 story in The Atlantic by editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, including Trump turning to Kelly on Memorial Day 2017, as they stood among those killed in Afghanistan and Iraq in Section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery, and saying, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”

Those details also include Trump’s inability to understand why the American public respects former prisoners of war and those shot down in combat. Then-candidate Trump of course said in front of a crowd in 2015 that former Vietnam POW Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, was “not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” But behind closed doors, sources told Goldberg, this lack of understanding went on to cause Trump to repeatedly call McCain a “loser” and to refer to former President George H. W. Bush, who was also shot down as a Navy pilot in World War II, as a “loser.”

CNN reached out to the Trump campaign Monday afternoon, telling officials there that a former administration official had confirmed, on the record, a number of details about the 2020 Atlantic story, without naming Kelly, and seeking comment. The Trump campaign responded by insulting the character and credibility of retired Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley, who had nothing to do with this story.

The Atlantic article also described Trump’s 2018 visit to France for the centennial anniversary of the end of World War I, where, according to several senior staff members, Trump said he did not want to visit the graves of American soldiers buried in the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris because, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” During that same trip to France, the article reported, Trump said the 1,800 US Marines killed in the Belleau Wood were “suckers” for getting killed.

And Kelly’s statement adds context to a story in the book “The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021,” by Susan Glasser and Peter Baker, in which Trump, after a separate trip to France in 2017, tells Kelly he wants no wounded veterans in a military parade he’s trying to have planned in his honor. Inspired by the Bastille Day parade, except for the section of the parade featuring wounded French veterans in wheelchairs, Trump tells Kelly, “Look, I don’t want any wounded guys in the parade.”

“Those are the heroes,” Kelly said. “In our society, there’s only one group of people who are more heroic than they are – and they are buried over in Arlington.”

“I don’t want them,” Trump said. “It doesn’t look good for me.”

The story squares with another recent story from Goldberg in The Atlantic, a profile of retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, in which Trump does not react well to seeing severely wounded Army Captain Luis Avila singing “God Bless America” at a welcome event for the new chairman. “Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded.”

Kelly’s statement also refers to a remark Trump made in response to that same article, which describes Milley, in the closing days of the Trump presidency in 2020, receiving intelligence that the Chinese military feared Trump was about to order a military strike on it. Milley, in a call authorized by Trump administration officials, reassured his Chinese counterparts that such a strike was not going to happen.

That call was first reported in 2021 in the book “Peril” by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, but Trump said this past week on his social media site that the call was “an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH.”

Asked for reaction to the suggestion that he deserves execution, Milley told Norah O’Donnell of “60 Minutes” that he wouldn’t “comment directly on those, those things. But I can tell you that this military, this soldier, me, will never turn our back on that Constitution.”

Kelly’s statement to CNN comes days after former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson sat down with CNN in an interview promoting her new book, “Enough,” and warned the public that “Donald Trump is the most grave threat we will face to our democracy in our lifetime, and potentially in American history.”

“Enough,” interestingly, contains a scene in which Hutchinson and then-White House communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin push back against Goldberg’s 2020 story. Griffin issued a statement to The Atlantic after that story posted denying the report.

Reached for comment over the weekend, Griffin said, “Despite publicly praising the military and claiming to be the most pro-military president, there’s a demonstrable record of Trump bashing the most decorated service members in our country, from Gen. Mattis to Kelly to Milley, to criticizing the wounded or deceased like John McCain. Donald Trump will fundamentally never understand service the way those who have actually served in uniform will, and it’s one of the countless reasons he’s unfit to be commander in chief.”

No other presidential candidate in history has had so many detractors from his inner circle. His former secretary of defense, Mark Esper, told CNN in November 2022, “I think he’s unfit for office. … He puts himself before country. His actions are all about him and not about the country. And then, of course, I believe he has integrity and character issues as well.”

Trump’s former attorney general, Bill Barr, told CBS in June that “he is a consummate narcissist. And he constantly engages in reckless conduct. … He will always put his own interests, and gratifying his own ego, ahead of everything else, including the country’s interests. Our country can’t, you know, can’t be a therapy session for you know, a troubled man like this.”

CNN’s Kristen Holmes contributed to this story.

Biden says there’s ‘not much time’ to keep aid flowing to Ukraine and Congress must ‘stop the games’

Associated Press

Biden says there’s ‘not much time’ to keep aid flowing to Ukraine and Congress must ‘stop the games’

Kevin Freking and Colleen Long – October 1, 2023

President Joe Biden speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Sunday, Oct. 1, 2023, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden said Sunday that American aid to Ukraine will keep flowing for now as he sought to reassure allies of continued U.S. financial support for the war effort. But time is running out, the president said in a warning to Congress.

“We cannot under any circumstances allow America’s support for Ukraine to be interrupted,” Biden said in remarks from the Roosevelt Room after Congress averted a government shutdown by passing a short-term funding package late Saturday that dropped assistance for Ukraine in the battle against Russia.

“We have time, not much time, and there’s an overwhelming sense of urgency,” he said, noting that the funding bill lasts only until mid-November. Biden urged Congress to negotiate an aid package as soon as possible.

“The vast majority of both parties — Democrats and Republicans, Senate and House — support helping Ukraine and the brutal aggression that is being thrust upon them by Russia,” Biden said. “Stop playing games, get this done.’’

But many lawmakers acknowledge that winning approval for Ukraine assistance in Congress is growing more difficult as the war grinds on. Republican resistance to the aid has been gaining momentum and the next steps are ahead, given the resistance from the hard-right flank.

While Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has begun a process to potentially consider legislation providing additional Ukraine aid, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., faces a more difficult task in keeping the commitment he made over the objections of nearly half of his GOP majority.

He told CBS’ “Face on the Nation” that he supported “being able to make sure Ukraine has the weapons that they need,” but that his priority was security at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“I firmly support the border first,” he said. “So we’ve got to find a way that we can do this together.”

By omitting additional Ukraine aid from the measure to keep the government running, McCarthy closed the door on a Senate package that would have funneled $6 billion to Ukraine, roughly one-third of what has been requested by the White House. Both the House and Senate overwhelmingly approved the stopgap measure, with members of both parties abandoning the increased aid in favor of avoiding a costly government shutdown.

Now Biden is working to reassure U.S. allies that more money will be there for Ukraine.

“Look at me,” he said turning his face to the cameras at the White House. “We’re going to get it done. I can’t believe those who voted for supporting Ukraine — overwhelming majority in the House and Senate, Democrat and Republican — will for pure political reasons let more people die needlessly in Ukraine.”

Foreign allies, though, were concerned. European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Sunday from Kyiv that he believed it wouldn’t be the last word, but he noted the EU’s continued substantial financial support for Ukraine and a new proposal on the table.

“I have a hope that this will not be definitive decision and Ukraine will continue having the support of the U.S.,” he said.

The latest actions in Congress signal a gradual shift in the unwavering support that the United States has so far pledged Ukraine in its fight against Russia, and it is one of the clearest examples yet of the Republican Party’s movement toward a more isolationist stance. The exclusion of the money for Ukraine came little more than a week after lawmakers met in the Capitol with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He sought to assure them that his military was winning the war, but stressed that additional assistance would be crucial.

After that visit, Schumer said that one sentence summed up Zelenskyy’s message in his meeting with the Senate: “‘If we don’t get the aid, we will lose the war,” Schumer said.

McCarthy, pressured by his right flank, has gone from saying “no blank checks” for Ukraine, with the focus being on accountability, to describing the Senate’s approach as putting “Ukraine in front of America.”

The next funding deadline, which comes during the U.S.-hosted meeting in San Francisco of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders, is likely to become a debate over border funding in exchange for additional Ukraine aid.

This was the scenario that Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader who has championed Ukraine aid, was trying to avoid back in summer when he urged the White House team not to tangle the issue in the government shutdown debate, according to people familiar with his previously undisclosed conversations with the administration who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private talks. Now, all sides are blaming the other for the failure, straining to devise a path forward.

Voting in the House this past week pointed to the potential trouble ahead. Nearly half of House Republicans voted to strip $300 million from a defense spending bill to train Ukrainian soldiers and purchase weapons. The money later was approved separately, but opponents of Ukraine support celebrated their growing numbers.

The U.S. has approved four rounds of aid to Ukraine in response to Russia’s invasion, totaling about $113 billion, with some of that money going toward replenishment of U.S. military equipment that was sent to the front lines. In August, Biden called on Congress to provide for an additional $24 billion.

AP Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro and Associated Press writers Stephen Groves and Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington and Susie Blann in London contributed to this report.