Florida’s outdoor workers could lose billions as climate change makes it too hot to work
Alex Harris
Climate change, if left unchecked, could make outdoor work in notoriously hot Florida even more unbearable and unhealthy, and a new report shows it could also make that work less profitable.
Under scenarios where the world doesn’t quickly cut fossil fuel emissions, there could be a full month of the year where it’s too hot to safely work a normal day outside in Florida. Right now, Florida experiences an average of five days like that a year.
“Between now and mid-century, outdoor workers’ exposure to extreme heat would quadruple,” said Kristina Dahl, senior climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists and co-author of the report. “That could put them in the position to increasingly choose between their health and their paychecks.”
Florida, the third-most populous state, has the third-largest population of outdoor workers. Those 2 million workers account for nearly a quarter of the state’s workforce and earn $56 billion a year.
Those earnings could be at risk in a future with more days where it’s too hot to work outside.
By the Union of Concerned Scientists’ calculations, Florida outdoor workers could lose up to $8.4 billion of those earnings by mid-century if no action is done to slow climate change. If the world acts slowly to lower fossil fuel emissions by that time, workers could lose less, around $6 billion.
The numbers grow more dire by century’s end. With continued slow action, workers could lose around $7.5 billion a year, versus double that amount with no action.
The only state with more potential earnings at risk is Texas.
As heat and humidity rise, the CDC recommends that employers provide more work breaks to avoid heat-related illness. However, reductions in work time would translate into losses in workdays (top map) and put workers’ earnings at risk (bottom). Florida, especially South Florida, ranks highly on both maps.
Per Florida worker, that breaks down to losing $3,743 a year in wages by mid-century if nothing is done to switch away from fossil fuels and $2,648 a year if slow action is taken.
Miami-Dade, Florida’s most populous county, has the most outdoor workers in the state — over 300,000.
Miami-Dade’s first Chief Heat Officer, Jane Gilbert, said she’s planning to host focus groups with outdoor workers and their employers to hear more about what conditions are like and how the county could possibly protect outdoor workers. So far, no one is talking about regulations for heat exposure for outdoor workers.
“Having something on the books that you cannot enforce doesn’t make sense,” she said. “I’d rather focus our resources on raising awareness, making employers aware of what their costs are and broader responsibilities to their workforce.”
She’s also talked with the National Weather Service about sending out more alerts for dealing with heat. This summer, cities from Seattle to Boston have issued heat advisories, but there have been none in Florida, despite record-breaking temperatures.
That’s because heat, like time, is relative.
The threshold for a heat advisory in Florida is a heat index (meaning temperature plus humidity, or “feels like”) of 108 degrees Fahrenheit for at least two hours. An “excessive” heat warning requires temperatures of 113 degrees.
“You can have pretty dangerous conditions over 100 heat index and they’re not even getting into advisories until 108,” she said.
Dr. Ankush Bansal, co-chair of the Florida Clinicians for Climate Action and a doctor of internal medicine in a Palm Beach County hospital, said extreme heat can take a toll on the body. It affects the lungs, the heart and especially the kidneys.
In extreme cases, heat illness can lead to red or brown urine, the result of muscles in the body breaking down into pieces and clogging up the kidneys.
“What happens is, and I’ve seen this, people that work outside … even athletes … are coming into the hospital with heat exhaustion or even heat stroke, which if untreated can lead to death,” he said. “If you have heart disease or a history of heart failure, it can throw you over the edge. It can cause a heart attack.”
The military treats extreme heat as a matter of national security. It has strict rules and a flag-based system for warning soldiers how much strenuous activity they can safely do outside in order to keep military personnel safe and healthy.
The Union of Concerned Scientists report calculated the potential lost wages by using similar standards, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations for worker safety on days when the heat index is at or over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The center suggests workers take a break for 15 minutes every hour in shade and drink water.
As the heat index rises, the recommended amount of outdoor work drops. At 104 degrees Fahrenheit, the CDC says workers should work 30 minutes and rest 30 minutes. When the heat index crosses 108 degrees Fahrenheit (the standard for a heat advisory in Florida), the CDC recommends no one work outside at all.
The report assumed those breaks were unpaid.
“It’s an assumption but it also reflects to some extent that some outdoor workers are paid annually, some are paid hourly and others are paid piece rate,” Dahl said.
Tree trimmers work along Southwest 13th Street in Fort Lauderdale to remove limbs damaged during Hurricane Irma, Sept. 18, 2017.
Piece rate workers can be paid per pound of fruit or vegetable they pick, per lawn they mow or other per task goal, and would potentially have the most to lose economically in a future where it’s physically unsafe to work outside sometimes.
That’s a present reality in Saudi Arabia, where outdoor work is banned from noon to 3 p.m. from June to September to protect workers from dangerous heat.
In hot places like Arizona or Florida, outdoor workers already adjust their schedules to survive the summer. Construction workers get going at dawn and take breaks when the noonday sun is hottest. Some contractors, like AC repair workers, avoid sending employees into sweltering attics for jobs that can be put off til the cooler months.
Those adjustments may become more common in the U.S. as the world warms, but for now, they’re solely at the discretion of the employer.
There is no nationwide protective standard for outdoor workers, although the National Institute for Occupational Safety & Health developed standards in 2016 for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to take up, which it never did. OSHA’s general duty clause requires employers to provide a safe working environment, and it has some recommendations for working in extreme heat, but it’s tough to enforce a recommendation.
Veronica Custodio, 37, picks through spinach at her father’s farm in Homestead on May 27, 2020. The farm belongs to Juventino Custodio, 53, who was forced to let his spinach rot after the coronavirus pandemic caused a disruption in his supply chain process.
A survey of hundreds of nursery workers in Homestead by the organization WeCount! found that more than half said they weren’t allowed to rest in the shade, 15% said they weren’t provided water and 69% had experienced symptoms of heat illness.
Farmworkers told the WeCount! organizers they try not to drink water so they can avoid bathroom breaks and possibly missing production quotas.
Another study of farmworkers in Central and South Florida measured core body temperatures, heat rate and hydration levels. Half started the day dehydrated, and three-quarters finished that way. One in three of the workers had acute kidney injury at some point in the study.
So far, California and Washington have passed state-level heat protection laws for outdoor workers, but they have different standards, leading to unequal protections during this summer’s heat wave.
“If we leave it up to states to do individually, we’re going to end up with a real patchwork of protections for outdoor workers,” Dahl said.
Reducing workload and shifting outdoor work to cooler parts of the day can help, she said. “But since there are limits to those, we found our first line of defense has to be reducing emissions.”
If Florida and the rest of the world stop burning fossil fuels, the worst effects of climate change and extreme heat can be avoided.
Bansal said there’s a common analogy in the medical world when discussing treating symptoms versus cause that applies to climate change too. If a bathtub is overflowing and you’re only putting towels on the floor but never turning off the water, the problem will never be fixed.
“And that’s what we need to do, shut off the faucet,” he said.
Miami Herald intern Ariana Aspuru contributed to this story.
What does a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan actually mean?
Gabrielle Debinski August 16, 2021
It happened faster than most people expected, but the US-backed Afghan government has now fallen. The Taliban have taken over the capital, Kabul, and installed themselves in the presidential palace. Thousands of Afghans are scrambling to leave amid uncertainty of what comes next for the war-torn country. Chaos reigns.
What are some of the implications for Afghans and other countries with a stake in the region?
Islamic law will be front and center. Recent developments, and Taliban leaders’ statements, make it clear that when it comes to ideology, ambition and creed, the Taliban of 2021 is the same radical group that was toppled in 2001.
Essentially, Taliban members believe in a fundamentalist Quranic philosophy, which is underscored by stringent prohibitions. As the group has swept the country, there have been reports of summary executions, abuse of women, and closing of schools that teach non-religious curricula. (The Taliban espouse that girls and women should be confined to their homes.) Western influence is sacrilegious, and the Taliban have reportedly been searching homes for alcohol and other contraband.
Politically, they want the Islamic Emirate reinstalled. Under the Taliban, electoral politics in Afghanistan are a thing of the past, and civil society has no role in the decision-making process, which they say, will be left solely to emirs (religious chiefs) and a council of mullahs.
An influx of refugees. As the Taliban stormed dozens of provincial capitals, thousands of Afghans descended on the international airport in Kabul in hopes of fleeing the country. Scenes of anguished people clinging to a US military plane will forever be a symbol of Afghans’ desperation and struggle to escape Taliban terror. But there are no flights to carry these people out.
While the US has been accused of abandoning thousands of Afghans who aided the US-led mission over the past two decades, Canada has said that it will take in about 20,000 vulnerable Afghans, including women leaders and human rights activists. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Many analysts say that the burgeoning refugee crisis will soon land on Europe’s doorstep, drawing comparisons to 2015-2016, when more than 1 million refugees, mostly from Syria, arrived in Europe, fueling one of the biggest political crises in the bloc’s history.
Since then, the European Union has beefed up its immigration protocols and border control: surveillance drones are used to monitor migrant flows, and border fences have been constructed bloc-wide. Just days ago, several EU states signed a letter saying that despite the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, deportations of failed asylum-seekers will continue: accepting refugees “would lead more people trying to leave and come to the European Union.” (However, Germany, the Netherlands, and France have since said they would hold off on deportations — for now.)
Tellingly, EU member states, like Greece — which bore the brunt of the migrant crisis in 2015 — say that they simply don’t have the state capacity to absorb the huge number of people trying to flee Afghanistan. Even German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a staunch refugee advocate, recently said: “we cannot solve all of these problems by taking everyone in.”
But “the risk to the EU is not from a short-term surge in Afghan refugees — the numbers will remain manageable,” Mujtaba Rahman, who leads Eurasia Group’s Europe desk, told GZERO Media. Rather, problems could arise “from the fractious internal debate it will sponsor, distracting from priorities elsewhere.”
The power of international recognition. The last time the Taliban were in power, they turned Afghanistan into an international pariah. While the group maintained relations with Pakistan, as well as with the UAE and Saudi Arabia, it was mostly isolated from the rest of the world.
But 2021 is very different to 2001. With the US more interested in leaving than dealing with the mess it’ll leave behind, in recent weeks senior Taliban leaders have embarked on a whirlwind diplomatic mission, trying to court Western rivals in Moscow and Beijing.
When the Taliban last ruled Afghanistan, Beijing had already suspended ties with Kabul after civil war erupted in 1993. But a pragmatic and increasingly ambitious China has made clear that it may be willing to recognize the Taliban’s rule in Afghanistan if it gives China carte blanche to expand its Belt and Road infrastructure development projects to Afghanistan.
Similarly, some analysts say that the Kremlin is also toying with the idea of recognizing the Taliban, and could use it as leverage to ensure Russian interests are safeguarded across Central Asia.
Meanwhile, the seemingly botched withdrawal is becoming a massive political crisis for the Biden administration both at home and abroad. Domestically, he’s being criticized on the left and right for the hasty pullout. With foreign allies, it’s further undercutting Washington’s global standing, which plummeted mostly under his predecessor. Even though Biden said in an address Monday that he “stands squarely behind” his own decision-making, the optics are very bad for a president who has made “America is Back” the rallying cry of his administration.
Rough road ahead. The situation is still in flux, and much could change in the upcoming days and weeks. For now, the Taliban is certainly in the driver’s seat, both domestically and internationally.
Op-Ed: Afghanistan’s rapid fall shows Biden was right to pull out
By Charles A. Kupchan August 16, 2021
A Taliban fighter in Ghazni, an Afghan provincial capital, last week.
(Gulabuddin Amiri / Associated Press)
It has been excruciating to watch the Taliban roll across Afghanistan, undoing in a matter of months two decades of efforts by the Afghan people and the international community to build a decent, secure and functioning state.
The Taliban’s virtually uncontested takeover raises obvious questions about the wisdom of President Biden’s decision to withdraw U.S. and coalition forces from the country. However, the rapidity and ease of the Taliban’s advance provides a clear answer: that Biden made the right decision — and that he should not reverse course.
Biden doubted that U.S.-led efforts to prop up the government in Kabul would ever enable it to stand on its own. The international community took down Al Qaeda; beat back the Taliban; supported, advised, trained and equipped the Afghan military; bolstered governing institutions; and invested in the country’s civil society. None of that created Afghan institutions capable of holding their own.
That is because the mission was fatally flawed from the outset. It was a fool’s errand to try to turn Afghanistan into a centralized, unitary state. The country’s difficult topography, ethnic complexity, and tribal and local loyalties produce enduring political fragmentation. Its troubled neighborhoods and hostility to outside interference make foreign intervention perilous.
Biden made the tough and correct choice to withdraw and end a losing effort in search of an unattainable goal.
The case for withdrawal is also buttressed by the reality that even if the U.S. has fallen short on the nation-building front, it has achieved its primary strategic goal: preventing future attacks on America or its allies from Afghan territory. The U.S. and its coalition partners have decimated Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The same goes for the Afghan branch of the Islamic State, which has demonstrated no ability to carry out transnational attacks from Afghanistan.
In the meantime, the U.S. has built a global network of partners with which to fight terrorism worldwide, share relevant intelligence and jointly boost domestic defenses against terrorist attacks. The U.S. and its allies are today much harder targets than they were on Sept. 11, 2001. Al Qaeda has not been able to carry out a major overseas attack since the bombings in London in 2005.
There is, of course, no guarantee that the Taliban won’t again provide safe harbor to Al Qaeda or similar groups. But that outcome is highly unlikely. The Taliban has been doing just fine on its own and has little reason to revive its partnership with the likes of Al Qaeda. The Taliban will also want to maintain a measure of international legitimacy and support, likely quashing any temptation to host groups seeking to organize terrorist attacks against foreign powers. Moreover, those groups have little incentive to seek to regroup in Afghanistan when they can do so more easily elsewhere.
Finally, Biden is right to stand by his decision to end the military mission in Afghanistan, because doing so is consistent with the will of the electorate. Most Americans, Democrats and Republicans alike, have lost patience with the “forever wars” in the Middle East. The illiberal populism that led to Donald Trump’s election (and near reelection) emerged in part as a response to perceived American overreach in the broader Middle East. Against a backdrop of decades of economic discontent among U.S. workers, recently exacerbated by the devastation of the pandemic, voters want their tax dollars to go to Kansas, not Kandahar.
The success of Biden’s effort to repair American democracy depends principally on delivering domestic investment; the infrastructure and social policy bills now moving through Congress are critical steps in the right direction. But foreign policy also matters. When Biden pledges to pursue a “foreign policy for the middle class,” he needs to deliver by pursuing a brand of statecraft that enjoys the backing of the American public.
Afghanistan deserves the support of the international community for the foreseeable future. But the U.S.-led military mission has run its course. Sadly, the best the international community can do for now is help alleviate humanitarian suffering and press Afghans to look to diplomacy, compromise and restraint as their country searches for a peaceful and stable political equilibrium.
Joe Biden’s Surrender Is an Ugly, Needless Disaster
Matt Lewis
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With the Taliban retaking Afghanistan amid a frenzied U.S. exit, I am reminded that Robert Gates, Barack Obama’s defense secretary, famously said that Joe Biden has “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” That isn’t an exaggeration.
Biden opposed the Persian Gulf War (later, reversing his decision and saying George H.W. Bush should have gone all the way to Baghdad) and supported the Iraq War, before opposing the surge in Iraq (not to mention famously wanting to partition Iraq into three countries). As vice president, he opposed the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
This brings us to Afghanistan. As recently as a month ago, Biden denied a Taliban takeover was inevitable. Everyone knew that was wrong. Everyone except Biden, I suppose. Based on his horrible track record, we can assume he was being sincere. If he wasn’t, he would have demanded a more responsible exit plan before proceeding.
Biden inherited an Afghanistan where Americans were suffering few casualties, and where a small residual force was seemingly maintaining some semblance of order (not to mention preventing the country from once again being used as a staging ground for international terrorists to launch attacks against the U.S.). With his what-could-go-wrong withdrawal, he has managed to turn it into the tragic debacle that is happening now in front of our eyes.
To be sure, Biden didn’t do it alone. His predecessor, Donald Trump, deserves much of the blame. Biden claims that, by withdrawing forces, he’s honoring his predecessor’s commitment. But he has reversed lots of other Trump policies, didn’t adhere to Trump’s May 1 deadline for withdrawal, and could have easily cited examples of the Taliban not living up to their side of the agreement as reason enough to scuttle the deal.
The point is that Biden was not locked in to following through with Trump’s unwise “America First” policy. As much as Trump deserves blame for this situation (and so much more), the fall of Afghanistan is happening on Biden’s watch. This is his rodeo. This is, if not his Vietnam, his fall of Saigon.
Now, Biden is rushing troops back into Afghanistan to try and end or at least mitigate the optics of a desperate evacuation that leaves translators and other allies and Afghans who’d depended on us behind. But it’s already terribly late, as the civilians waiting for flights that may never come can vouch.
Some people believe that Biden’s real problem was his execution. For example, why would he refuse to leave a residual force behind, and why would he time his withdrawal for the summer fighting season? With more prudent logistics and better timing, Biden might have bought a cushion of time between the U.S. withdrawal and the Taliban takeover. That would have resulted in better PR for Biden, but the fundamental problem was the decision to withdraw U.S. troops without leaving a residual force behind—not the hamfisted way he did it.
It could have been even worse. Biden originally had this insane idea of linking the Afghanistan withdrawal to September 11, and that may be why he couldn’t wait for the fighting season to end before giving in. In his mind, he somehow thought that ending a 20-year war on this particular date would be romantic and symbolic. And it would. For the Taliban!
In this pathetic departure, with American arms again ending up with our enemies as they did in Iraq, Biden is reinforcing the notion that our enemies can simply outlast us. Likewise, he is demonstrating (as Trump before him did with the Kurds) that putting your neck on the line for this nation is a fool’s errand. These decisions will make any future military interventions that more difficult.
This naivete is on full display with the anemic threats the U.S. is now issuing. Their behavior could lead to “international isolation.” Executions, our embassy warns, show a lack of “human rights.” It’s not a perfect analogy, but I am reminded of Die Hard, when John McClane tries to use a police radio to report a terrorist attack and is threatened with an FCC violation: “Fine, report me. Come the fuck down here and arrest me!” The Taliban are pillaging, executing and pressing 15-year-old girls into “service” as Taliban brides while we are threatening to, what, ruin their reputation in the international community?
In short, it’s a shit show. If you had told me 10 ten years ago that Biden would be elected president to clean up after Trump, I would have worried about precisely this kind of mess. Trump was so chaotic and dangerous that Biden, who (aside from his track record of bad foreign policy calls) had been a handsy gaffe machine, looked like Abe Lincoln by comparison. Today, however, we are witnessing the one-two punch of the Trump-Biden era. The scene unfolding in Afghanistan is exactly what you might expect from a policy that both men endorsed.
US Veterans View Afghan Collapse With Anguish, Rage and Relief
Dave Philipps
Ginger Wallace, right, a retired Air Force colonel, with her wife, Janet Holliday, a retired Army colonel, in Louisville, Ky., on Monday, August 16, 2021. (Andrew Cenci/The New York Times)
On Javier Mackey’s second deployment to Afghanistan, one of his friends was shot in an ambush and bled to death in his arms. He saw high-ranking Afghan officers selling off equipment for personal gain and Afghan troops running away during firefights. And he started wondering what the United States could really achieve by sending thousands of troops to a distant land that seemed to have never known peace. That was in 2008.
Mackey, an Army Special Forces soldier, deployed there five more times, was shot twice, and, he said, grew more cynical on each trip, until he decided the only sensible thing for the U.S. to do was cut its losses and leave.
Even so, seeing the swift and chaotic collapse of the Afghan government in recent days hit him with the intensity of a bomb blast.
“It’s pain — pain I thought I had gotten used to,” said Mackey, who retired as a sergeant first class in 2018 and now lives in Florida. “I sacrificed a lot, I saw death every year. And the guys I served with, we knew it would probably come to an end like this. But to see it end in chaos, it makes us angry. After everything we gave, I just wish there had been a way to leave with honor.”
In the 20 years that the U.S. military was in Afghanistan, more than 775,000 U.S. troops deployed there, to citylike air bases and sandbag outposts on lonely mountaintops. As the Taliban swept into Kabul on Sunday, wiping away any gains made, veterans said in interviews that they watched with a roiling mix of sadness, rage and relief. Some were thankful that America’s involvement in the country seemed to have ended, but were also dismayed that hard-won progress was squandered. Others were fearful for Afghan friends left behind.
In interviews, text messages and on Facebook, men and women who collectively spent decades in Afghanistan said they were angry that despite a drawdown that has spanned years, the United States could not manage to exit the country with more dignity.
The anguish can be especially raw because veterans often worked side by side with Afghans during the years of attempts at nation-building, and now in that nation’s collapse they see the individual faces of friends who have been enveloped by the anarchy.
“My heart breaks for the Afghan people,” said Ginger Wallace, a retired Air Force colonel who in 2012 oversaw a program that retrained low-level Taliban fighters to clear land mines and work in other jobs that offered an alternative to combat.
At the time, she thought that efforts to stabilize Afghanistan were succeeding, and that U.S. troops would one day leave the country a better place. But her optimism slowly wore down as the Taliban gained ground.
“It’s heartbreaking, absolutely. I hate to see it end like this, but you don’t know what else we could have done,” she said from her home in Louisville, Kentucky. “Do we have an expectation that U.S. service members should stay and fight the Taliban when the Afghan army won’t?”
Wallace met her wife, Janet Holliday, while deployed in Afghanistan. The two normally watch the news each morning, but Monday, as scenes of mayhem unfolded at the airport in Kabul, Holliday, a retired Army colonel, switched to the Food Channel.
“It was too hard to watch,” Holliday said, excusing herself as she became upset. “I just can’t help thinking about what a waste it is. I can’t allow myself to think about how after all that blood and treasure, it ends like this.”
More than with other wars in the nation’s history, Americans have been mostly insulated from the fighting in Afghanistan. There was no draft or mass mobilization. Less than 1% of the nation served and a disproportionate number of troops came from rural counties in the South and West, far from the seats of power.
But veterans have said in interviews over the years that they were cleareyed about the challenges posed by the war, perhaps more so than the rest of the nation. They saw firsthand the deeply ingrained traditional cultures, tribal allegiances and endemic corruption that continually hobbled U.S. efforts.
Mackey agreed with President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw, but thought the way it was done was slapdash and unprofessional.
“We train to have contingencies. The way it was handled was just irresponsible,” Mackey said. “We didn’t want to have another Vietnam, we wanted to do better.”
Jake Wood was a 25-year-old Marine sniper deployed to a forgotten corner of Afghanistan in 2008 when he started to see how much daylight there was between the optimistic pronouncements of top U.S. leaders and the reality of serving with Afghans on the ground.
Villagers in the district center of Sangin, where he manned an outpost, seemed to have little allegiance to the Afghan government in Kabul or the U.S. vision of democracy.
“We had no idea what our mission was, even back then,” said Wood, who now runs the nationwide veteran volunteering network Team Rubicon. “Were we trying to defeat the Taliban? Were we nation-building? I don’t think we knew.”
The Afghans he served with seemed to accept the uncertainty with a weary fatalism foreign to young Marines. At one point over small cups of tea, he said, he spoke with a young Afghan he served with who said Afghanistan only knows war, and when the U.S. war ended, another would come.
“He told me that maybe the Americans would come back,” Wood said. Then he recalled the Afghan saying, “But if you do, I can’t tell you if we’ll be friends or enemies.”
Wood said the veterans he has been in touch with feel a mix of sadness and fury watching the fall of Kabul: sadness that the folly that seemed so obvious in the ranks took years and thousands of lives for top leaders to accept; fury that the result of that ignorance and hubris was playing out on cable television in a way that would tarnish the reputation of the nation and the hundreds of thousands of troops who fought.
“We already knew we were losing the war,” he said. “But now we are losing it live on TV in front of the rest of the world. That’s what’s so hard.”
“The climate is f’d. Even worse than it seems.” That’s from the opening page of a 12-page letter sent by venture capitalist Chris Sacca to potential investors in Lowercarbon Capital, the climate-focused firm he launched last year after a brief retirement.
What’s new: Lowercarbon, which initially funded more than 50 startups via money from Sacca and his wife Crystal, last week announced that it raised $800 million in outside capital.
The $800 million is split among four funds, two early-stage and two later-stage. Each strategy includes a small fund that contains a slice of existing Lowercarbon portfolio companies, so that LP and GP interests are more aligned (plus, it was a marketing sweetener).
Why it matters: Both institutional and individual investors have gotten over ROI PTSD from the initial green-tech investing boom, with Sacca telling me that the funds were more than 2x oversubscribed in just a matter of days.
“Carbon is an expensive, inefficient thing,” Sacca argues. “Anywhere we can remove it from the process, it’s cheaper. That means customers. We’re not running a nonprofit here.”
“One big difference between now and years ago is that current tech makes it so much faster for startups to get to the binary point of understanding if something works or not. Biotech’s binary moment usually comes much later, and even web/app stuff can take a couple years to build something that you don’t actually know if it will catch on.”
Big picture: There is still a relative dearth of early-stage firms investing in green tech, despite an emerging consensus that climate change is an existential threat and that it can’t be stemmed (let alone reversed) via policy change alone.
Sacca believes we’ll know the money is matching the opportunity when we see more VC firms hire climate scientists like Lowercarbon’s Clea Kolster.
“I’m seeing more traditional VCs who do care and want to be proud of what they do. But we’re still not seeing too much competition, because most of these firms are clustering around lower-impact, consumer-facing technologies like basic reuse and recycling because they don’t yet have the skill set for deeper tech.”
Also: Lowercarbon had planned to offer some fund allocations to Historically Black Colleges and Universities on a no-fee/no-carry basis. But it hasn’t happened yet, as Sacca says it’s proven surprisingly difficult to find “decision-makers” at schools that haven’t traditionally had access to top VC funds.
“Our goal now is to donate a few million of each fund to HBCUs, while setting up direct relationships with the schools so they can get similar deals with other big VC funds. It’s kind of an open invitation because we have a chunk of these funds waiting for them. Maybe this interview will help get the word out.”
The bottom line: If we’re going to innovate our way out of global climate catastrophe, venture capital must play a key role. Right now.
Coronavirus: Hundreds Test Positive In First Week Of School Across Tampa Bay
Kerry Sheridan, WUSF Public Media – WUSF 89.7 August 16, 2021
Coronavirus
News about coronavirus in Florida and around the world is constantly emerging. It’s hard to stay on top of it all but Health News Florida and WUSF can help. Our responsibility at WUSF News is to keep you informed, and to help discern what’s important for your family as you make what could be life-saving decisions.
Pasco County Schools
Actual case counts are almost four times higher than the district’s COVID dashboard shows, according to Sarasota school board chair Shirley Brown.
Even though classes just started last week, schools in the greater Tampa Bay region have already seen hundreds of students and staff test positive for coronavirus, and thousands of people are isolating due to exposure or illness.
The numbers were generally between 10 times to 20 higher than the cases that were counted in the first week of school last year, and in Sarasota, school board chair Shirley Brown said the numbers reflected on district dashboards are far below the actual case count.
“It’s actually worse than what our dashboard shows because we are having trouble keeping up with data entry,” Brown said in an email to WUSF Sunday night.
By Sunday, 261 students in Sarasota County schools had tested positive in the first week. According to the school district’s COVID dashboard, 194 students were in isolation on Sunday.
A case count of 261 is already more than 20 times higher than last year, in a district that contains about 45,000 students. The Sarasota Herald Tribune reported there were just 10 cases of COVID in the county’s schools the first two weeks last year. But Brown said that’s not even the full picture.
“We (have) 818 names on a report but I don’t know if (they are) staff or student or charter school student,” Brown added. “We may actually come close to last year’s numbers before the end of August.”
Brown said she has asked staff to “put a priority on data entry” so that the updated numbers are available before a school board workshop to discuss safety protocols on Tuesday.
Elsewhere, in the nation’s eighth largest school district, Hillsborough County reported 435 students — up from 41 in the first week of school last year — and 228 staff had tested positive for coronavirus.
About 2,900 were in quarantine as of Thursday, with no way to remotely access their classes, school board member Karen Perez said at a meeting that evening.
“How are these 2,000 — almost 3,000 — students receiving their lessons? How are they being contacted to get their reading, their math, their lessons completed?” she asked.
By the weekend, those numbers were higher: nearly 4,500 students were in quarantine, or 2 percent of Hillsborough’s 193,000 students, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
Last year, school officials said 10 to 15 percent would have to be out to consider closing a school, superintendent Addison Davis said Thursday.
Bus drivers, who are already in short supply, were also seeing staffing shortages due to sickness.
“We have 18 drivers that are in quarantine. And that’s without any absenteeism. I mean, that’s about more than double what we’re normally at this point of the year,” operations chief Chris Farkas said Thursday.
Pinellas reported 152 cases among students, and 79 among staff.
Manatee County reported 182 students tested positive last week, and announced random temperature checks for students.
Masks remain optional across the region, due to an executive order by Gov. Ron DeSantis that bars schools districts from issuing mandatory mask policies without parental exemptions.
Hillsborough County requires parents to complete an opt-out form so that their children don’t have to wear a face covering. District officials said about 14 percent of students had turned in an opt-out form.
The Manatee County School Board is scheduled to hold an emergency meeting at 9 a.m. Monday to discuss implementing a mask mandate with an opt-out for students.
The Florida Education Association is tracking cases statewide, and said 4,148 Florida Pre-K-12 students and staff have tested positive for coronavirus since Aug. 1.
Three children in Florida and 15 educations have died from COVID-19 since July, according to the Southeast’s largest labor union.
Kerry Sheridan is a reporter and co-host of All Things Considered at WUSF Public Media.
Y-Foundation housing projects in Helsinki, Finland. Y-FOUNDATION
What if homelessness was simply not an option?
That’s the approach that Finland took when it decided to address their homelessness problem, beginning with a comprehensive strategy to provide immediate, permanent housing for those who most needed it.
As a result, Finland has become the leading example of how to drastically reduce homelessness.
Juha Kaakinen is chief executive officer of Finland’s non-profit Y-Foundation, which develops housing and purchases existing housing, and then leases it out to people who’d otherwise be homeless. Mr. Kaakinen, who was at the forefront of Finland’s radical housing transformation, took part in a recent panel discussion on whether Canadian cities were using useless stopgap measures to solve the affordable housing crisis.
The Canadian Urban Institute held the virtual nine-speaker Aug. 4 event. In particular, the panel looked at homeless encampments that had become a feature of the pandemic in the past year, including large tent cities in Toronto, Vancouver and Victoria.
“I have always thought that there were a lot of similarities between Canada and Finland, but this seems to be an issue where we also have great differences, because I really can’t recall that we have had any homeless encampments in this century,” Mr. Kaakinen told the panel.
Juha Kaakinen is chief executive officer of Y-Foundation, which develops housing and purchases existing housing, and then leases it out to people who’d otherwise be homeless. KIRSI TUURA
That’s not to say Finland, a small country of around 5 million, has not had its problems. In 1987, Finland had a homeless population of about 20,000 and it became clear that temporary shelters weren’t a solution. They overhauled the system. Since then, Finland’s rate has plummeted to 4,300 single homeless people and an estimated 200 couples or families that are homeless. Most are temporarily living with friends or relatives, Mr. Kaakinen explained in an e-mail.
By comparison, Canada’s homelessness rate is conservatively estimated at around 235,000.
In an interview, Mr. Kaakinen expressed his dismay at the visible reality of Canada’s housing crisis, having seen pictures of people struggling on the streets and in parks.
“I’m not surprised to see pictures like these from the U.S.A., but Canada? These pictures remind me most of some pictures of Finland in the 1960s. For me, there is only one [criterion] for a civilized society: it takes care of all its members, including people experiencing homelessness. “There seems to be countries that regard themselves as highly developed, rich, world-leading countries, but utterly fail in securing basic human rights like housing.”
Vancouver’s homelessness crisis became a bleak reality during the pandemic, when an encampment set up in Oppenheimer Park and then Strathcona Park. The City of Vancouver conducted its last annual homeless count just before the pandemic broke, in early March, 2020. The count found that 2,095 residents in Vancouver identified as homeless. Of those, 547 people lived on the street and 1,548 people were living in shelters, including detox centers, safe houses and hospitals, with no fixed address, according to information provided by the city in an e-mail. Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps told the panel that her city saw an increase of people living in the rough go from about 35 at the onset of the pandemic to an estimated 465 people a month later.
Shelters are not an acceptable form of housing, and large encampments have never been a form of shelter in Finland, Mr. Kaakinen told the panel. He saw some homeless people grouped together near Helsinki in the 1980s, but even then there were many shelters and hostel beds.
Homeless advocate Chrissy Brett at a homeless encampment at Strathcona Park, in Vancouver, on Dec. 4, 2020. DARRYL DYCK/THE GLOBE AND MAIL
In 2008, the country adopted a national policy based on “Housing First” philosophy, whose advocates say that providing permanent housing is the first priority in solving the crisis. As a result, shelters were converted into comfortable permanent homes, with staff on hand to support those with addictions, or in need of life skills and training and work placement.
Housing First advocates say that research has shown stable housing for all people has proven to be the most effective remedy, both for improving lives and saving money.
One such study from 2009, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, saw costs to Seattle’s public-health system drop by 60 per cent after the first six months, when chronically homeless people with severe alcoholism obtained stable homes.
In Finland, residents have their own apartments with rental contracts, and if necessary, they receive a housing benefit. Former homeless people are involved at the national level in the planning of social housing at the city level, Mr. Kaakinen said.
“The message from homeless people about homelessness has always been that it has to be a permanent housing, a safe place – not a shelter or a hostel. And so, since 2008, our policy has been based on this principle of providing permanent housing on rental contract, and support if that’s needed. … It’s been a partnership between the states, the government, local authorities and NGOs [non-governmental organizations] working at the national and local level.
“Of course, in practice, the greatest responsibility is on the cities … and we have homeless people represented in the national programs, in the steering groups. They are taking part in planning the services in the cities. I think that it has been a very pragmatic and successful way to work.”
The Y-Foundation started to buy private apartments throughout Finland in 1985, with grants obtained from the government-run Finland Slot Machine Association, he says. The grant covered 50 per cent of the price of an apartment, and today they also purchase apartments without grant money.
About 80 per cent of the apartments are subleased to municipalities and NGOs, who rent them out and provide support services, if needed. Revenues cover operating costs. NGOs and municipalities also develop new affordable housing. In Finland’s large urban centers, 25 per cent of all new housing must be for social housing. There’s no visible difference between private and public housing.
“It makes the idea of a more equal society a reality,” says Mr. Kaakinen. “It has obvious social benefits, and it has also a huge psychological importance [because] everybody can have the feeling that they belong to this society.”
Victoria resident Tina Dawson, 52, told the panel about her experience as a first-time homeless person in the past year, moving between shelters and encampments. People in her position need to be empowered and maintain their dignity, she said.
“Being newly homeless, I am gob-smacked at the way things are out of sight, out-of-mind, and the machine that is in place to keep people homeless. How on earth am I going to get out of this position? I’ve managed my entire life. I’ve raised three children. And I have no address. The problem is [putting together] the damage deposit. I’m on permanent disability. That’s hand to mouth.”
Panel member Leilani Farha, lawyer and global director of Ottawa-based affordable housing initiative The Shift, later said in an interview that part of the success of Finland is the national mindset around homelessness. It’s simply not an option.
“People have a right to housing as part of their constitution. They have embraced it. It’s a different culture,” said Ms. Farha, who travelled the world for six years visiting homeless encampments when she worked as the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing.
Finland is a smaller country and highly regulated, so it’s more difficult for rents to escalate as they have in Canada, she adds. Helsinki, for example, owns the majority of land within the city limits, and operates an in-house construction company. But Canada, says Ms. Farha, could learn to think boldly and creatively, like the Finns. Why, for example, hasn’t Canada embraced a Housing First approach, she asks.
“I think people are beginning to realize that housing is just completely unaffordable, and we don’t have much social housing in this country – we have very little actually. So I think people are cottoning onto the idea that the average family person working at a minimum wage job could easily end up homeless. I think that’s changing, but I don’t know that we’re there yet.
“What I see in governments around Canada is a timidity around bold creative moves that are value based, and I think now is the time.
“We need some bold creativity, come on. I’m seeing all these things happening in other countries. Where is it in Canada?”
Everything You’ll Want to Know About Donald Trump’s Legal Woes
By Alison Greene
The Disgraced Former Guy Is In Over His Head in Court Cases and Investigations; Here’s Your Definitive Catalogue
Bookmark this article. It’s your scorecard to the trials and tribulations of Donald J. Trump.
DCReport has compiled a list of 21 legal cases, investigations and related matters engulfing Trump, his family and their four-generation criminal enterprise, the Trump Organization.
The items range from the widely reported grand jury investigation by the Manhattan district attorney to an obscure $1 million dispute regarding a Chicago property tax refund; from the congressional inquiry into the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection to two defamation cases brought by women who claim Trump assaulted them.
Principals of the Trump crime family
What you read here is based on our own reporting as well as the ongoing Trump Litigation Tracker maintained by the online forum Just Security at New York University School of Law. We also relied on the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, which created a central database of court records related to the events of the Jan. 6. Capitol insurrection.
We believe our list is complete, but we invite anyone with knowledge of other pending or ongoing legal matters to alert us.
Our takeaway? In reviewing his legal battles, we noticed two common themes: money and lies. Trump’s penchant for lying, particularly his pattern of lying about his finances and the election, is coming back to bite him legally.
Throughout Trump’s presidency the phrase, “No one is above the law,” was heard frequently. But other than his record-setting two impeachments, Trump has effectively evaded legal consequence. That’s changing. Now that Trump is a private citizen, these lawsuits and investigations will determine whether he will be held accountable for his illegal conduct and sedition.
The Money
New York District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. (Ben Fractenberg / THE CITY)
1. Manhattan D.A.’s Criminal Investigations into Trump’s Finances
Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. has been investigating Trump, the Trump Organization and its officers since at least 2018. Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen and the former daughter-in-law of Trump’s chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg are both known to be cooperating with the D.A.’s office, and a grand jury is well under way. Court filings and witnesses have indicated that one of the main components of the investigation is whether the former president and his company falsely inflated the value of their properties for banks and insurers and then undervalued the properties to skimp on taxes. Both the grand jury and Cy Vance’s tenure are set to expire in November so we expect announcements, not to mention indictments, before then.
Where’s the Justice Department?
Attorney General Merrick Garland
While Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Justice Department is on the periphery of many of these cases and investigations, the department is notably absent from any primary cases directed at Trump himself.
Indeed, in some cases such as the E. Jean Carroll defamation suit, Garland and the department actually supported Trump against his accusers. In other matters directly involving the politicization of the department, Garland chose to let its inspector general take the point.
“Sometimes we have to make decisions about the law that we would never have made and that we strongly disagree with as a matter of policy,” he told a Senate committee in June.
In July, the department cleared the way for government officials to testify in the congressional election interference investigation. The department said that it “would not be appropriate to assert executive privilege with respect to communications with former President Trump and his advisers and staff on matters related to the committee’s proposed interviews.”
2. New York Attorney General’s Civil and Criminal Investigations
In a similar vein to the Manhattan D.A.’s office, New York Attorney General Letitia James is investigating Trump for altering property values to avoid taxes. Although the case started in civil court, James announced in May that the probe expanded to a criminal investigation.
3. D.C. Civil Suit over Misuse of 2017 Inauguration Funds
For the 2017 inauguration, Trump raised a staggering and record-setting $107 million. The civil suit alleges that Trump used various schemes to siphon money from that inauguration fund and to direct it to the Trump businesses. In one example Trump’s inaugural committee allegedly paid $175,000 for event space at Trump’s own Washington hotel. That same day that same space was rented to a nonprofit for $5,000—in line with the hotel’s standard pricing guidelines. The suit alleges that the Trump nonprofit was used to enrich Trump’s personal businesses.
4. Mary Trump Fraud Litigation
Mary Trump
Michael Cohen once told Congress that in his experience, “Trump inflated his total assets when it served his purposes.” In niece Mary Trump’s case, however, the daughter of his dead brother Fred Trump Jr. alleges that Trump devalued the family assets to defraud her out of 10s of millions of her grandfather’s inheritance. Mary Trump—a psychologist and author of the bestselling Too Much and Never Enough—alleges that her aunt and uncles presented her with fraudulent valuations to hide the real value of the estate, ty keeping 10s of millions for themselves.
5.Panama Hotel Fraud and Tax Litigation
Ithaca Capital, a real estate holding company, alleges that it purchased a majority share of the Trump Hotel in Panama based on false and misleading information. Ithaca claims that Trump’s company misrepresented the hotel as profitable and artificially deflated the expenses. The company alleges that the Trump Organization failed to report or fully pay Social Security withholding for hotel employees or pay income taxes to the Panama government. Additionally, Trump’s management company paid itself more than what was listed on the financial statements all while the hotel sat virtually empty and went uncleaned for years.
6. Doe vs. The Trump Corporation Class Action
In a class-action suit filed in 2018 by the New York law firm of Kaplan, Hecker & Fink, the plaintiffs allege that from 2005 to 2015 Donald, Ivanka, Don Jr. and Eric Trump used the Trump brand to promote and endorse various “Secrets of His Success”-style seminars, business opportunities and training programs through companies Trump claimed were independent of him. The suit alleges that the family allowed these companies to use Trump’s brand name and endorsements to defraud thousands of struggling Americans who invested in a range of exorbitantly priced offerings from these companies, knowing that the purchasers’ likelihood of success was minuscule. The family was paid millions by the companies, the suit claims.
The former Trump tower in Chicago (Trump Organization)
7. Chicago State’s Attorney Blocks a $1 Million Tax Refund
The Cook County State’s Attorney Kimberly Foxx has filed a suit to block a $1 million property tax refund awarded in June by the Illinois Property Tax Appeal Board. The board found that the Cook County Board of Review overestimated the value of Trump’s Chicago skyscraper and overcharged his firm in 2011. The refund has been controversial after an initial investigation was undertaken in 2020 due to allegations that a Republican state official who was the executive director of the Property Tax Appeal Board pressured his staff to reduce the value of the tax bill to try and obtain the $1 million refund for Trump. That state official was let go in October 2020 and the vote was delayed until after Trump left office, but it still passed unanimously in favor of Trump.
The Lies
8. Atlanta Criminal Election Influence Investigation
On Feb. 10, 2021, the Fulton County district attorney’s office opened an investigation into attempted election interference, based on the widely reported recording of a phone call between Trump and Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Trump was heard pressing the Georgian to overturn the election results saying, “I just want to find 11,780 votes.” The case looked to be stalled until last month when the county provided additional funds to the D.A.’s office to help handle a severe backlog of cases.
Shortly after the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, D.C.’s Attorney General Karl Racine said, “I know that I’m looking at a charge under the D.C. code of inciting violence, and that would apply where there is a clear recognition that one’s incitement could lead to foreseeable violence.” Inciting a riot in Washington is a misdemeanor with a very high bar to be able to prove, but related lawsuits and the congressional Jan 6 investigation could help Racine with his case.
10. Incitement Suit for Jan 6 Capitol Attack
Ten Democratic members of Congress are suing Trump, Rudy Giuliani the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the Warboys and the head of the Warboys, Enrique Tarrio. The suit says that Trump violated the Ku Klux Klan Act by inciting the rioters with the intent to prevent the members from discharging their official duty of approving the Electoral College vote. The 1871 act allows members of Congress to sue individuals who conspire to violently “molest, interrupt, hinder, or impede” the discharge of a public official’s duties. The suit was originally filed in February by Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who later withdrew his name when he was appointed to lead the House select committee investigating the riot.
11. Eric Swalwell Incitement Suit for Jan. 6 Riots
On March 5, 2021, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) brought a suit against Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Representative Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) and then-lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Like the suit brought by other members of Congress, Swalwell claims Trump violated the Ku Klux Klan Act and that Trump and the other defendants incited the violence in the Capitol. Swalwell’s suit additionally claims that the defendants should be held civilly liable for negligence because they committed criminal incitement under D.C.’s local code. Swalwell’s suit may lay the groundwork for the criminal charges that the D.C. attorney general announced he was pursuing.
12. Capitol Police Suit for Jan. 6 Riots
Two Capitol Police officers who were injured in the Jan. 6 riot have sued Trump, arguing that he was responsible for their physical and emotional injuries. They claim that Trump “inflamed, encouraged, incited, directed, and aided and abetted” the “insurrectionist mob” to force its way “over and past the plaintiffs and their fellow officers, pursuing and attacking them inside and outside the United States Capitol.”
13. NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund Voting Rights Case
The Michigan Welfare Rights Organization and three Michigan voters in November sued Trump and his campaign alleging that Trump falsely spread stories of widespread fraud and pressured election officials to disenfranchise Black voters in Detroit and other cities with large Black populations, including Philadelphia, Milwaukee and Atlanta. The complaint was amended a month later to include the NAACP as a plaintiff and the Republican National Committee as a defendant.
Trump addressed supporters near the White House on Jan. 6. (Washington Post photo)
14. 572 Federal Cases Against Capitol Insurrectionists
While Trump has not been charged for his role in the Jan. 6 violence at the Capitol, individual rioters have been. We are including the Capitol cases here because Trump’s role in the insurrection is at the very center of events. Many rioters have claimed that they went to Washington and marched on the Capitol because Trump told them to—and he may well end up being charged for his incitement of the riot.
Congressional Investigations
15. House Ways and Means Committee
On July 30, the Department of Justice reversed a Bill Barr-era decision, saying that Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.) had made valid arguments and the IRS must hand over to the committee Trump’s elusive tax returns, two years after Neal’s initial request.
16. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee
A federal judge this week ruled that Trump’s accountants must turn over two years’ worth of his tax and financial records to the committee investigating whether Trump and his businesses profited from his service in the White House. U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta approved a subpoena for Trump’s records covering 2017 and 2018 but turned down most of the panel’s request for similar information dating back to 2011. The decision is likely to be appealed by Trump’s lawyers and could also be challenged by the House panel.
17. House Financial Services and Intelligence Committees
The House Financial Services Committee and the House Intelligence Committee subpoenaed Deutsche Bank in 2019 seeking years of the president’s personal and business records. In a filing on May 17, the parties said they were “continuing to engage in negotiations intended to narrow or resolve their disputes and believe they are close to an agreement.”
18. House Select Committee on the Jan. 6 Attack
Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.)
Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi established the committee after efforts to form a bipartisan commission were rebuffed by Republicans. She appointed seven Democrats and two Republicans: Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, both of whom had voted to impeach Trump in January. Cheney has said the committee must focus on Trump’s role in the insurrection: “We must know what happened here at the Capitol. We must also know what happened every minute of that day in the White House—every phone call, every conversation, every meeting leading up to, during, and after the attack.” The committee, led by Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, held its first public testimony on July 27.
19. Senate Judiciary Committee
Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) is focusing on the Trump-era politicization of the Department of Justice, starting with the department’s acquisition of metadata related to some members of the House of Representatives—including Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who was the chief prosecutor in Trump’s first impeachment. The committee has since expanded its areas of interest to include the department’s role in the obstruction of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller’s investigation and its role in regard to Trump’s lies about the 2020 presidential election. The committee has taken testimony from former Acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen and Byung J. Pak, the U.S. attorney in Atlanta who abruptly resigned rather than say there was widespread voter fraud in Georgia.
Sexual Assaults
20. E. Jean Carroll Defamation Case
In 2019, journalist E. Jean Carroll wrote about her experience more than 20 years ago; she says Trump shoved her against the wall of a Bergdorf Goodman fitting room, forced himself on her and raped her. Trump accused Carroll of lying saying he didn’t even know her. Carroll disputed his claim with evidence in the form of a picture showing them together and by filing a defamation suit. Carroll’s civil defamation suit became complicated when William P. Barr’s Justice Department stepped in arguing that Trump was protected from being prosecuted for lying under the Federal Tort Claims Act which provides blanket immunity to federal employees who commit certain torts–including defamation–arising out of their official duties. The Justice Department also argued the case should be moved to federal court as it was a federal case as opposed to a state civil suit. In June, Merrick Garland’s Justice Department filed a reply continuing Barr’s arguments that the president is an employee under the act and that elected officials act within the scope of their employment when they respond to media inquiries.
21. Summer Zervos Defamation Suit
Before and after the 2016 presidential campaign, more than 25 women accused Trump of unwanted sexual conduct. Summer Zervos was one of Trump’s accusers. After Trump claimed she was lying, Zervos responded by filing a suit for defamation which was filed on January 17, 2017, three days before Trump took office. The case faced various delays during Trump’s presidency but on March 30, the New York Court of Appeals denied Trump’s ongoing argument that a state court could not hear a suit against a sitting president. In a one-sentence order, the court stated that the issue of Trump’s presidency was moot, and the case can now go forward.
Alison Greene is a political investigative journalist with a focus on election integrity and national intelligence issues. Follow her on Twitter @GrassrootsSpeak. Send tips to alisoniazoe@yahoo.com.
DeSantis’ Collateral Damage? Floridians and Conservatism.
Matt Lewis
Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty
Just as the GOP abandoned years of conservative dogma to become the party of porn, Putin, and protectionism, so too has its respect for local authority—once understood to be a foundational principle—become situational.
Take Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ order banning local mask requirements and threatening to withhold the salaries of superintendents and school board members following the CDC’s new Delta variant guidance.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has similarly banned local mask mandates, which may be a lot of things but is not conservative.
For a proper explanation of how this flies in the face of conservatism, you only have to go back a few years ago, when then-Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan explained that “the [Catholic] principle of subsidiarity, which is really federalism” says the “government closest to the people governs best.” Ryan went on to say that this is how we can “advance the common good”—a term which has since been co-opted by the illiberal right to make the exact opposite argument—“by not having big government crowd out civic society, but by having enough space in our communities so that we can interact with each other, and take care of people who are down and out in our communities.”
Of course Ryan (who was then being heralded by the likes of Sarah Palin and Laura Ingraham) was merely advocating preexisting conservative concepts.
First, there is the “knowledge problem” that economist F.A. Hayek warned about. Central planners, he argued, can’t possibly know everything, and the arrogant assumption that they do is a “fatal conceit.” What is more, by imposing one-size-fits-all solutions, central planners deprive us of diversity and experimentation.
There is an argument that a real free market would simply let individuals decide for themselves whether to wear a mask. But that argument doesn’t translate well when you add in a contagious virus that impacts other individuals, including children—the “live and let live” formulation we apply to other circumstances doesn’t fit when “live and let die” may be the closer analogy.
Let’s be honest, the stakes are high. While it is clear that children are less susceptible to COVID than adults, we are seeing numerous reports of kids getting sick and even dying from it. According to The Atlantic, “as the hypertransmissible Delta variant hammers the United States, the greatest hardships are being taken on by the unvaccinated, a population that includes some 50 million children younger than age 12.” It’s too soon to know whether the Delta variant is making kids sicker than other variants, but it’s understandable why some communities want to err on the side of caution.
What we are left with is a prudential public policy decision: what level of government should be making that call?
Second, humans inherently trust their friends and neighbors more than distant bureaucrats. “To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections,” wrote Edmund Burke, who many consider to be the founder of conservatism. “It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country, and to mankind.”
If members of this first link believe wearing masks is the right thing to do to keep their children safe and alive, then who is DeSantis to tell them otherwise? Can someone 500 miles away in Tallahassee realistically decide what’s best for kids and parents in Miami? Why not allow diverse community leaders who live in the community to exercise autonomy and err on the side of safety?
To be sure, automatic deference to local rule runs into problems when that local government is discriminatory, reactionary, xenophobic, oppressive or corrupt. But requiring masks isn’t the same as Jim Crow, no matter what Marjorie Taylor Greene might say. Although there is much hand-wringing about the physical and psychological toll of wearing masks, the potential downside of allowing local authorities to mandate wearing them is discomfort; the potential downside of DeSantis’ order is sickness, an overloaded medical system and needless deaths.
As Republicans abandon conservative principles—that private businesses can make their own decisions and that a deference to local control is generally prudent—the question may be what lines are left to be crossed. In eschewing localism and conservatism, DeSantis is embracing populism.
DeSantis is a smart politician who’s transparently doing this to advance his own political career. He knows which way the wind is blowing in the GOP and he recognizes that masks have become a culture-war symbol—thus his attempt to double down on his anti-mask, tough-guy image. The only danger is that his bullying nature leaves conservatism, and Floridians, as collateral damage.
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20. E. Jean Carroll Defamation Case