Trump Allies Plan to Reinterpret Civil Rights Laws to Protect White People: Report
Nikki McCann Ramirez – April 1, 2024
Allies of Donald Trump and powerful conservative organizations are preparing to launch an offensive against “anti-white racism” should the former president retake the White House in November. According to a report from Axios, those in Trump’s orbit are gearing up for a widespread re-interpretation of civil rights laws to combat what they perceive as reverse racism against white Americans.
According to the report, this would include a mass gutting of government programs and diversity initiatives. “As President Trump has said, all staff, offices, and initiatives connected to Biden’s un-American policy will be immediately terminated,” Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, told Axios.
The initiative is already being spearheaded by former Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who founded the right-wing judicial activist outfit America First Legal after leaving the White House. Miller has leveraged Civil Rights-era laws intended to protect minorities from discrimination to challenge “woke” corporate policies of inclusion. America First Legal has sued Nike, Disney, United Airlines, the National Football League, and CBS Entertainment — among others— for allegedly discriminating against white men. Several of the lawsuits cite the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
Miller and his organization are not acting alone. America First Legal was consulted by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, in the drafting of its “Project 2025” policy handbook. The handbook contains language calling for an end to “affirmative discrimination,” and calls for an incoming conservative administration to “reorganize and refocus the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division to serve as the vanguard for this return to lawfulness.”
Trump himself has repeatedly claimed to be the target of anti-white discrimination. As previously reported by Rolling Stone, the former president has directed his advisers to look into ways he might compel the Justice Department to investigate New York Attorney General Letitia James, who successfully sued the former president for fraud last year. Trump regularly refers to James as “racist” in his social media posts and public statements.
Last week, National Review contributing editor Deroy Murdock suggested on Fox Business that Trump has grounds to sue James on the basis of discrimination.
“I think what President Trump should do is sue her on the basis of the 1964 Civil Rights Act,” Murdock said. When asked if he had suggested this directly to the former president, Murdock responded that he “will,” and that the message will get to Trump “sooner or later.”
Feds Want to Seize This $7 Million Condo in a Luxe Trump Building
Justin Rohrlich – April 1, 2024
UCG
U.S. authorities have targeted an apartment in a Donald Trump-branded luxury Manhattan tower, where they are looking to seize a $7 million unit prosecutors say was illicitly obtained by one of Congolese President Denis Sassou-Nguesso’s children.
A forfeiture complaint filed Friday in Manhattan federal court and obtained by The Daily Beast says the action “concerns the misappropriation, theft, or embezzlement of hundreds of millions of dollars from the Congolese treasury, some of which was used for the purchase of a luxury apartment in the Southern District of New York for the use of President Nguesso’s daughter.”
“That property is Unit 32G in the Trump International Hotel & Tower at 1 Central Park West, New York, NY 10023,” the complaint states.
The United States is seeking to repossess the property “because the funds used to acquire it are traceable to violations of specified unlawful activities and U.S. law,” according to the complaint.
Sassou-Nguesso, who has been described as a breathtakingly corrupt kleptocrat, has held power in Congo, almost uninterrupted, since 1979.
Congolese President Denis Sassou-Nguesso with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the 2023 Navy Day parade in Saint Petersburg, Russia.Sputnik/Alexander Kazakov/Kremlin via Reuters
A past listing for the apartment says it is a corner space “overlooking Central Park and the Hudson River [and] captures the essence of the most sought after Columbus Circle neighborhood. Special features include: floor to-ceiling windows, 10′ ceilings, a gracious entrance gallery, living/dining room, a windowed eat-in-kitchen with washer/dryer, two bedrooms with spectacular views and luxurious baths ensuite, plus a powder room, capacious closets and a separate bar, ideal for entertaining. Sorry no pets allowed.”
Ownership of the Trump International Hotel & Tower is complicated, with the Trump Organization managing the building and owning some units and hundreds of individual owners holding the rest. On Monday, a Trump Org spokeswoman, Kimberly Benza, told The Daily Beast, “If this sale did occur, it would be by a 3rd party unit owner unrelated to our Organization.”
The apartment was procured via a byzantine array of shell companies and intermediaries who routed funds stolen from Congo’s public coffers through entities in Portugal, Cyprus, the British Virgin Islands, and Brazil, the forfeiture complaint states. The money finally ended up in the U.S., where Sassou-Nguesso and her enablers hired law firm K&L Gates to purchase apartment 32G “for the benefit of Sassou-Nguesso, using a portion of the laundered funds and embezzlement proceeds,” according to the complaint.
Claudia Sassou-Nguesso, daughter of Congolese President Denis Sassou-Nguesso, during a national assembly meeting in 2012.Guy Gervais/KITINA/AFP via Getty Images
The complaint says Sassou-Nguesso was aware she could be rejected by Trump International as “a politically-exposed person,” and considered listing her cousin as the unit’s beneficial owner to avoid trouble. However, Trump International officials told Sassou-Nguesso’s team that “it was ‘not a problem’ and that the information was ‘only for the condominium building,’” the complaint goes on. On June 24, 2014, a Portuguese businessman representing Sassou-Nguesso in the deal wired a $710,000 deposit to the condo’s seller, sending the $6,525,000 balance a month later, according to the complaint.
“In sum, the money used to purchase the Defendant Asset was a portion of the approximately USD 19.5 million of Congolese state funds embezzled through… sham contracts… and these embezzled funds were used to purchase the Defendant Asset for Sassou Nguesso’s apparent personal enrichment,” the complaint states.
After the Global Witness report was released in 2019, the Trump Organization said that monthly common charges paid by condo owners did not go directly to Trump himself “for profit.”
According to the forfeiture complaint, Sassou-Nguesso paid some $250,000 in common charges between 2018 and 2022. It says they were paid “out of bank accounts in Luxembourg, Portugal, and the United Arab Emirates” in the name of another Portuguese national fronting for Sassou-Nguesso.
Although the apartment has apparently remained unoccupied since it was purchased, prosecutors say they have reviewed emails from Sassou-Nguesso about interior design work to be conducted at the property, transferring, via her worldwide network, more than $400,000 to a Portuguese firm to carry out the job.
The apartment, according to the forfeiture complaint, “is traceable to… a conspiracy to launder the proceeds of specified unlawful activities.”
“The Court, for the reasons set forth herein, adjudge and decree that the Defendant Asset be forfeited to the United States of America and disposed of in accordance with existing laws, together with costs, and for such other relief as this Court deems proper and just,” the complaint states.
The Trump International Hotel & Tower at 1 Central Park West in Manhattan.Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images
Trump’s properties, as The New York Times once said, “have a long history of serving as home to people with checkered pasts.”
Former federal prosecutor Kenneth McCallion, a onetime member of an organized crime strike force that investigated potential criminal activities during the construction of Trump Tower, told The Daily Beast that dirty money has long been attracted to Trump buildings.
“They’d pay cash for condos, held them for a few years, sold them, and the proceeds of the sale would then be clean money,” McCallion said.
Haitian dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier owned a unit in Trump Tower on Manhattan’s 5th Avenue; alleged Russian gangster David Bogatin—one of at least 13 Russian organized crime figures who have resided in the building—owned five.
A Trump development in Panama was “riddled with brokers, customers and investors who have been linked to drug trafficking and international crime,” according to a 2017 NBC News investigation.
What is “pink cocaine” or “tuci,” the drug Diddy allegedly had smuggled on a jet?
Manisha Krishnan – March 30, 2024
Sean Diddy Combs Paras Griffin/Getty Images
Among the many drugs Sean “Diddy” Combs allegedly consumed — and had his staff procure for him — was tuci, an obscure street drug concoction nicknamed “pink cocaine,” according to a lawsuit filed by his former producer Rodney Jones.
Jones, who alleged Combs sexually assaulted him while he was producing Comb’s “The Love Album,” filed the $30 million lawsuit in Federal District Court in Manhattan in February, amending it with additional allegations earlier this week.
Jones saId Combs’ chief of staff Kristina Khorram “required all employees, from the butler to the chef to the housekeepers, to walk around with a black Prada pouch or fanny pack filled with cocaine, GHB [a depressant drug], ecstasy [sometimes sold as MDMA], marijuana gummies (100 – 250 mg’s each), and tuci (a pink drug that is a combination of ecstasy and cocaine).”
“Khorram wanted Mr. Combs’ drug of choice immediately ready when he asked for it,” the lawsuit alleges.
Last April, Combs and Jones were rehearsing for the Something in the Water music festival in Virginia, when Jones alleged Combs did some cocaine in his dressing room and wanted tuci. However, Brendan Paul, Combs’ alleged drug mule who is facing felony drug possession charges, forgot to bring tuci, so Khorram had rapper Yung Miami fly the drug from Miami on Combs’ jet, according to the lawsuit.
Through his lawyer Shawn Holley, Combs denied the claims outlined in the initial lawsuit, describing them as “pure fiction.”
Tussi; Pink Cocaine
But what is tuci in the first place – and why is it popping off as a party drug in some circles?
The little-known drug has cropped up in the Latin American street drug supply over the last few years, typically sold as a neon pink powder, according to a 2022 report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. While the name, also spelled tusi and tucci may be a shortened version of 2C-B — a stimulant and psychedelic first synthesized in the 1970s — tested samples of tuci typically don’t contain 2C-B, but rather a mix of ketamine, MDMA and caffeine. Despite being nicknamed “pink cocaine,” it rarely contains cocaine, though it is typically snorted.
While it’s hard to quantify how much tuci is entering the North American drug supply, it has been detected in Vancouver, New York, Miami and in several European countries. Services in Europe and Canada that test street drugs have issued alerts about tuci, warning people that it’s very difficult to predict its true contents.
“It can contain any drug. Every batch is different,” said U.K-based drug checking service the Loop, in a tuci warning to drug users in August 2022. “Be extra cautious if mixing drugs because you might not know how you will react to that mixture.”
In a text blast viewed by Salon, a New York-based dealer recently advised customers he was selling “something new” called “ducey,” which he described as “pink euphoric snow.” (Snow is a nickname for cocaine.)
Get Your Drugs Tested, a Vancouver-based harm reduction service, said a sample of tuci they tested last weekend came back positive for MDMA, ketamine and multiple benzodiazepines (sedative drugs like Xanax.)
A Toronto-based journalist, who requested anonymity, told Salon she frequently encountered people using tuci while backpacking in Medellin, Colombia in December.
“It was like a combination of stuff that dealers had leftover that wasn’t enough to make up a gram but they would combine it and dye it pink and make it marketable and then sell it,” she said.
At a party one night in late December, she said several people were on tuci and seemed “really happy.”
“It looked like an intense MDMA high, they were super sweaty, dancing,” she said.
However, one man in the group had a bad reaction to the drug, and was unable to stand or sit up straight for hours.
“His eyes were rolling to the back of his head,” she said. “He kept trying to throw up but he couldn’t throw up, couldn’t really get words out … That’s what kind of scared me.”
A 2023 VICE documentary on tuci in Medellin found sales of the drug was so lucrative there, it has spawned a new wave of traffickers dubbed neo-narcos, selling grams for $10 to $16 each. Matt Shea, the host of the documentary, uncovered how dyeing this random mixture of drugs pink is little more than marketing strategy concocted by cartels and described the substance as a “frankenstein drug.”
Jones’ lawsuit didn’t detail how often Combs consumed tuci, but said Khorram ordered her assistants to keep Combs “high” off gummies and pills. Jones also accused Combs and his associates, described by the lawsuit as “the Combs Rico Enterprise,” of procuring, transporting and distributing ecstasy, cocaine, GHB, ketamine, marijuana, mushrooms and tuci in and around the U.S.
While Paul has been arrested, and federal agents have raided two of Combs’ homes, Combs has not yet been charged with any crimes.
Adam Gopnik’s latest essay for The New Yorker explores how Adolf Hitler was able to rise to power in Nazi Germany—which happened largely because people believed they would be able to control him.
Gopnik tells The New Abnormal co-host Danielle Moodie that the same could be said for Donald Trump leading into the 2024 election.
“You had this character who was regarded as a chaotic clown by everyone around him. The conservative minister of defense called him a psychopath,” he said. “Yet all of those people, the media moguls, the respectable conservatives, ended up aiding and abetting him in every way in his search for power and they did it in a way that is, yes, disconcertingly familiar to us.”
“They all thought they could manage him. They all thought they could control him. They all thought that they could take advantage of his movement for their own ends. And that on the day when it all blew up, because it had to blow up because he was a psychopath and clearly not capable of exercising power, they would be there to inherit,” he said.
Gopnik says that those who propped up Hitler believed they could “control the beast” and that they would “end up the ultimate victors.” However, as history shows, that wasn’t the case.
“Those patterns are frightening to see emerging again and again throughout history.”
In this article, we are going to discuss the top 20 tobacco growing countries in the world. You can skip our detailed analysis of the global tobacco market, the heavy investments in marketing by tobacco companies, and the rising popularity of flavored tobacco, and go directly to the Top 5 Tobacco Growing Countries in the World.
Tobacco was first used by the people of pre-Columbian Americas. Archeological studies suggest that the Maya people of Central America started using tobacco leaves as far back as the 1st century BC, mainly for smoking in sacred and religious ceremonies. By the time Columbus arrived in the New World in 1492, the Native Americans were already cultivating and smoking tobacco in pipes, cigars, and snuff. Although Cristopher Columbus brought with him a few tobacco leaves and seeds back to Europe, most Europeans didn’t get their first taste of the plant until the mid-16th century, when adventurers and diplomats like France’s Jean Nicot – for whom nicotine is named – began to popularize its use. Tobacco was introduced to France in 1556, Portugal in 1558, Spain in 1559, and finally England in 1565. By the early 17th century, smoking was common in all of Europe’s maritime nations, and their colonial empires soon carried tobacco all over the world.
Global Tobacco Market:
As we mentioned in our article – Top 20 Most Valuable Tobacco Companies in the World – the global tobacco market is expected to reach $1.049 trillion by 2030, with a CAGR of 2.1% during the forecast period. The market is fuelled by a growing demand from developing nations, coupled with the rising proliferation of next-generation products (NGPs) across the globe. The high marketing expenditure and discounting of products undertaken by major tobacco companies is also adding to the growth of the industry.
While tobacco consumption is leveling off and even decreasing in some countries, the number of people smoking is still increasing globally, and smokers are smoking more than before. An estimated 1.3 billion people worldwide use tobacco products, 80% of whom are in low- and middle-income countries.
Heavy Investments in Marketing:
The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) has led to widespread restrictions on tobacco advertising, promotion, and sponsorship around the world. This, coupled with the evidence of the causal role of marketing in the tobacco epidemic, has inspired more than half the countries worldwide to ban some forms of tobacco marketing.
Yet, tobacco companies have found creative ways to maneuver their way around these barriers, using a variety of marketing strategies to create demand for cigarettes and other tobacco products by urging the youth to experiment, reducing smokers’ motivation to quit, and encouraging former smokers to take it up again. According to the Federal Trade Commission, in 2020 alone, the American tobacco industry spent over $8.4 billion on marketing for cigarettes and smokeless tobacco, spending more at the point-of-sale than anywhere else. They spent nearly $66 million on advertisements at the point of sale alone.
However, this hasn’t been without consequences. In September 2023, the e-cigarette company Juul, which at the height of its success dominated the market with its sweet flavors, agreed to pay $438.5 million in a settlement with 33 states and one territory over marketing its product to teens. The case ends major litigation over claims about the marketing of e-cigarettes to adolescents, resolving thousands of lawsuits and amounting to billions of dollars in payouts to states, cities, and people.
Sales of Juul products were sky high a few years ago and the company was even eyeing a market valuation of around $38 billion. However, it was discovered that Juul use among teens and young adults spiked heavily from 2018 to 2019. An estimated 27.5% of high schoolers reported using e-cigarettes during the period, with more than half naming Juul as their brand of choice. To add to the company’s woes, the FDA banned Juul products on U.S. shelves last summer, citing a lack of evidence demonstrating their overall safety. The regulator also noted Juul’s ‘disproportionate role in the rise in youth vaping.’
The Rising Popularity of Flavored Tobacco:
Flavors improve the taste and mask the harshness of tobacco, making flavored tobacco products more appealing and easier to smoke for beginners, who are often young. In 2022, cigars were the second most commonly used tobacco product among U.S. middle and high school students. The availability of flavors in cigars that are prohibited in cigarettes (such as cherry), and the fact that they are commonly sold as a single stick, has raised concerns that these products may be especially appealing to youth. According to a 2021 survey by the CDC, among middle and high school students who smoked cigars in the previous 30 days, 44.4% reported using a flavored cigar during that time.
A popular name among the machine made, flavored cigars is Middleton’s Black and Mild. Designed for the occasional smoker, these pipe tobacco cigars boast a smoke smooth enough to satisfy an aficionado in a pinch. Owned by Altria Group, Inc. (NYSE:MO), Black & Mild cigars are available in a variety of flavors like apple, cherry, cream, and more.
The John Middleton Co., a famous name in the pipe tobacco and machine cigars industry, was acquired by the Richmond-based Altria Group, Inc. (NYSE:MO) in 2007 in a deal worth $2.9 billion, thus enabling the tobacco giant to break into the growing American cigar business as it tried to expand beyond the shrinking U.S. cigarette market. The net cost of the acquisition of Middleton, maker of Black & Mild cigars, from the privately held Bradford Holdings was $2.2 billion, after deducting $700 million in tax benefits arising from the deal.
With that said, here are the Largest Tobacco Growing Countries in the World.
Top 20 Tobacco Growing Countries in the World
Methodology:
To collect data for this article, we have referred to FAOSTAT, looking for the Countries that Grow the Most Tobacco. The following countries have been ranked by their respective land areas dedicated to tobacco production (measured in hectares) in 2021.
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20. Ivory Coast
Total Area Dedicated to Tobacco Production: 15,979 ha
Ivory Coast is a significant producer and consumer of tobacco in Africa, with an estimated 9.4% of the adult population classified as smokers. However, the West African nation has taken significant steps to reduce the smoking rate among its people. In fact, Côte d’Ivoire became the first country in Africa to require plain packaging on tobacco products in 2022.
19. North Macedonia
Total Area Dedicated to Tobacco Production: 16,617 ha
North Macedonia has a long tradition of cultivating and exporting oriental tobacco, mainly of the types Prilep, Jaka, and Basma. Due to the large number of families working in tobacco agriculture, it also receives the largest share of crop subsidies, comprising on average a quarter of total agricultural subsidies for the period 2008 – 2019.
18. Cuba
Total Area Dedicated to Tobacco Production: 16,682 ha
Cuban cigars have long been a symbol of luxury and prestige, and the country produces some of the Most Expensive Cigars in the World. Due to consistently warm temperatures, high humidity, and regular rainfall, Cuba has excellent conditions for growing tobacco and it has been a mainstay crop for thousands of years.
Total Area Dedicated to Tobacco Production: 21,059 ha
Tobacco leaves are produced in 20 provinces in the North and Northeast of Thailand and last year, around 50% of Thai tobacco farmers grew burley, while 26% grew turkish leaf, and 24% grew virginia leaf. Most of this produce supplies the local market, monopolized by the Tobacco Authority of Thailand under government supervision for setting quotas and producing cigarettes.
Thailand is included among the Top Producers of Tobacco in Asia.
16. Uganda
Total Area Dedicated to Tobacco Production: 21,998 ha
Tobacco growing and manufacturing in Uganda was introduced in the 1920s by British American Tobacco, and around 75,000 of the nation’s farmers are now involved in tobacco agriculture, based mainly in the northwest and southwest of the country.
15. Philippines
Total Area Dedicated to Tobacco Production: 28,380 ha
First introduced in the 1950’s, tobacco is widely grown in various provinces in the Philippines, with the industry supporting over 2 million jobs nationwide. The country exported 53% of its total tobacco produced in 2022, while 47% was supplied to local tobacco manufacturers.
14. Pakistan
Total Area Dedicated to Tobacco Production: 47,332 ha
Although tobacco is grown on only about 0.23% of total irrigated land of Pakistan, the crop plays an important role in the country’s economy by generating income and employment for over 50,000 farmers in all four provinces. However, the total land area under tobacco cultivation has been rapidly decreasing over the last decade, mainly due to climate change and negligence by the government authorities.
13. Bangladesh
Total Area Dedicated to Tobacco Production: 47,523 ha
The cultivation of tobacco is increasing alarmingly in Bangladesh, with the crop now being grown in every part of the country. Farmers are encouraged to continue and expand tobacco cultivation with various incentives, including loans and buyback guarantees.
12. Argentina
Total Area Dedicated to Tobacco Production: 53,840 ha
Argentina stands among the Largest Tobacco Producers in South America, with the country producing 95.6 thousand tons in 2022, representing approximately 1.7% of the global production of tobacco of 5.8 million tons. Most of the tobacco cultivation happens in the north, with the provinces of Jujuy, Salta, and Misiones taking the lead.
11. North Korea
Total Area Dedicated to Tobacco Production: 56,995 ha
The tobacco industry plays a significant role in the North Korean economy, with around 2.3% of the country’s total arable land dedicated to cultivating the cash crop. North Korea’s counterfeit cigarette production capacity is estimated to exceed two billion packs a year, and is a major source of income for the regime.
10. Tanzania
Total Area Dedicated to Tobacco Production: 80,678 ha
Tobacco has been grown in Tanzania since the 1950s and is an important source of foreign exchange for the country. Tanzania produced 125 million kg of tobacco in 2023 and for the first
time, more than 50% of this produce was bought and sold abroad by local companies.
9. Turkey
Total Area Dedicated to Tobacco Production: 83,166 ha
Tobacco was introduced to the Ottomans by the Spanish in the 17th century, and the country is now the world’s largest producer of aromatic oriental tobacco – a small-leafed variety which is sun-cured. Around 400,000 Turks are dependent on the tobacco industry for their livelihood.
8. Mozambique
Total Area Dedicated to Tobacco Production: 91,469 ha
Tobacco cultivation has been considered a mainstay of Mozambique’s economy and the country exported $49.4 million of it in the first nine months of 2023, a quarter less than in the previous year. Most of this tobacco is grown in the regions of Tete and Niassa, representing over 89% of the country’s total production.
7. United States of America
Total Area Dedicated to Tobacco Production: 95,730 ha
Although America has significantly decreased cultivating tobacco since the 1980s, it still ranks among the largest producers of the crop. North Carolina and Kentucky are the States that Grow the Most Tobacco in America.
Total Area Dedicated to Tobacco Production: 100,962 ha
Tobacco is the backbone of the Malawian economy, historically generating about 70% of the country’s export revenue and now accounting for over 50%. In 2015, tobacco farming took up more than 5% of all of Malawi’s farming land – the highest percentage anywhere in the world at that time.
Malawi ranks among the Largest Producers of Burley Tobacco in the World.
Conservative Judges Sound Alarm: Trump Will Shred Our Justice System
Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling – March 29, 2024
Donald Trump’s attacks on the judges and court staff overseeing his criminal trials have much deeper legal implications than petty fines. Instead, the attacks—and the responding “passivity, acquiescence, and submissiveness by the nation”—are actively undermining the entire judicial system, prominent conservative judges are warning.
In a CNN interview Thursday evening, Republican-appointed federal District Judge Reggie B. Walton felt compelled to announce that Trump’s continued attacks could result in “tyranny.” Just hours later, former Appeals Court Judge J. Michael Luttig, also a conservative, issued his own warning cry, declaring that Trump is responsible for the “dismantling” of the nation’s “system of justice.”
“The Nation is witnessing the determined delegitimization of both its Federal and State judiciaries and the systematic dismantling of its system of justice and Rule of Law by a single man—the former President of the United States,” started Luttig in a multipart thread on X.
“In the months ahead, the former president can only be expected to ramp up his unprecedented efforts to delegitimize the courts of the United States, the nation’s state courts, and America’s system of justice, through his vicious, disgraceful, and unforgivable attacks and threats on the Federal and State Judiciaries and the individual Judges of these courts.”
“Never in American history has any person, let alone a President of the United States, leveled such threatening attacks against the federal and state courts and federal and state judicial officers of the kind the former president has leveled continually now for years.”
Luttig also warned that Trump isn’t accomplishing the task alone. It’s the complicit Supreme Court—and the American people—that are letting Trump get away with it.
“It is the responsibility of the Supreme Court of the United States in the first instance to protect the federal courts, the federal judges, and all participants in the justice system from the reprehensible spectacle of the former president’s inexcusable, threatening attacks, just as it is the responsibility of the respective State Supreme Courts in the first instance to protect their courts and their state judges from the same,” he added. “Ultimately, however, it is the responsibility of the entire nation to protect its courts and judges, its Constitution, its Rule of Law, and America’s Democracy from vicious attack, threat, undermine, and deliberate delegitimization at the hands of anyone so determined.”
Here was Walton’s own dire warning:
Senior Judge Reggie Walton: “We do these jobs because we’re committed to the rule of law & we believe in the rule of law & the rule of law can only function effectively when we have judges who are prepared to carry out their duties without the threat of potential physical harm.” pic.twitter.com/V1GC7LVD2g
‘Humbling, and a bit worrying’: Scientists fail to fully explain record global heat
Hayley Smith – March 27, 2024
The sun sets over Huntington Beach at the end of a hot December day in 2023. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
Deadly heat in the Southwest. Hot-tub temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean. Sweltering conditions in Europe, Asia and South America.
That 2023 was Earth’s hottest year on record was in some ways no surprise. For decades, scientists have been sounding the alarm about rapidly rising temperatures driven by humanity’s relentless burning of fossil fuels.
But last year’s sudden spike in global temperatures blew far beyond what statistical climate models had predicted, leading one noted climate scientist to warn that the world may be entering “uncharted territory.”
“It’s humbling, and a bit worrying, to admit that no year has confounded climate scientists’ predictive capabilities more than 2023 has,” wrote Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in a recent article in the journal Nature.
Now, he and other researchers are scrambling to explain why 2023 was so anomalously hot. Many theories have been proposed, but “as yet, no combination of them has been able to reconcile our theories with what has happened,” Schmidt wrote.
Misters spray water on a young boy at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, Mo., as as temperatures approached 100 degrees in June 2023. (Charlie Riedel / Associated Press)
Last year’s global average temperature of 58.96 degrees Fahrenheit was about a third of a degree warmer than the previous hottest year in 2016, and about 2.67 degrees warmer than the late 1800s pre-industrial period against which global warming is measured.
While human-caused climate change and El Niño can account for much of that warming, Schmidt and other experts say the extra three or four tenths of a degree is harder to account for.
Theories for the increase include a 2020 change in aerosol shipping regulations designed to help improve air quality around ports and coastal areas, which may have had the unintended consequence of enabling more sunlight to reach the planet.
The 2022 eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha‘apai volcano also shot millions of tons of water vapor into the stratosphere, which scientists say helped to trap some heat. What’s more, a recent uptick in the 11-year solar cycle may have contributed about a tenth of a degree of additional warning.
But these factors alone cannot explain what’s happening, Schmidt said.
“Even after taking all plausible explanations into account, the divergence between expected and observed annual mean temperatures in 2023 remains about 0.2 °C — roughly the gap between the previous and current annual record,” he wrote in his report.
Heat ripples from hot asphalt in downtown Phoenix in July 2023. (Matt York / Associated Press)
Reached by phone, Schmidt said he thinks one of three things could be going on.
It’s possible that 2023 was a “blip” — a perfect storm of natural variables and Earth cycles lining up to create one freakishly hot year. Should that prove to be the case, “it won’t have huge implications for what we’re going to see in the future, because it would have been just such a rare and unlikely thing that is not going to happen again anytime soon,” he said.
However, he indicated that’s unlikely, as those elements “have never lined up to give us a blip this large.”
Another possibility is that scientists have misunderstood the driving forces of climate change. While greenhouse gases, volcanic eruptions and aerosols are known to affect global temperatures, perhaps the full extent of their effects have been underestimated or miscalibrated. Should that be the case, he said, research and data sets will hopefully catch up soon.
The last explanation he offered is that the system itself is changing — and changing in ways that are faster and less predictable than previously understood.
“That would be worrying because science is really all about taking information from the past, looking at what’s going on, and making predictions about the future,” Schmidt said. “If we can’t really trust the past, then we have no idea what’s going to happen.”
Not everyone agrees with his assessment, however. Michael Mann, a professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania, said the premise that 2023’s warmth cannot be explained — or that it is inconsistent with model simulations — is “simply wrong.”
“The situation is extremely similar to what we saw during the 2014-2016 period as we transitioned from several years of La Niña conditions to a major El Niño event, and then back to La Niña,” Mann said in an email.
In fact, he said some recent modeling shows the global temperature spike in 2016 was even more of an outlier than that of 2023.
“The plot shows that the surface warming of the planet is proceeding almost precisely as predicted,” Mann said. “And the models show that the warming will continue apace as long as we continue to burn fossil fuels and generate carbon pollution.”
When asked about this interpretation, Schmidt said it’s true that the 2014 to 2016 period was similarly anomalous. But there is a key difference between then and now, he said.
The 2016 temperature spike came on the heels of an El Niño event, with the biggest anomalies in February, March and April of the year following its peak, he said. He noted that similar patterns occurred after previous El Niños in 1998 and 1942.
Conversely, last year’s spike arrived in August, September, October and November — before the peak of El Niño — “and that has never happened before,” Schmidt said. “It never happened in the temperature record that we have. It doesn’t happen in the climate models.”
Alex Hall, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at UCLA, said he largely agrees with Schmidt’s assessment that the hypothesized factors alone can’t account for the large temperature anomaly experienced in 2023 and early 2024. He likened it to the emergence of megafires, or extreme wildfires, in the last decade, which wasn’t entirely foreseen.
“What we’ve learned is that there’s an aspect of this that isn’t fully predictable — that we don’t fully understand — and that we are tempting fate here a little bit by continuing to interfere with the climate system,” Hall said. “It’s going to do things that we don’t understand, that we don’t anticipate, and those are going to have potentially big impacts.”
Hall said the rapid transition from a persistent La Niña to a strong El Niño last summer likely played a role, as did the change in aerosol regulations.
He also posited that the rapid loss of Antarctic sea ice in 2023 — itself an outcome of the warmer planet and oceans — could have created a kind of feedback loop that contributed to more warming. Ice and snow are reflective, so when they melt, it can result in a darker ocean that absorbs more heat and sunlight. (Antarctic sea ice coverage dropped to a record low in 2023, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.)
“It’s sort of a planetary emergency for us to figure out what’s going on when we see these types of changes,” Hall said. “There should be large teams of people working on it to try to understand it, and we don’t really have those kinds of efforts, so I think there’s lessons, too, for the need for focus on this particular topic.”
Tourists seek shade and water while visiting the Acropolis of Athens during a heat wave in July 2023. (Petros Giannakouris / Associated Press)
While he and other scientists may not agree on just how extraordinary 2023 was — or what was behind its exceptional warmth — they all acknowledged the clear signs of a planet being pushed to its limits.
“I think it’s unfortunate that so much has been made of the El Niño-spiked 2023 global temperatures, where in my view there is nothing surprising, or inconsistent with model predictions, there,” said Mann. “There are much better, scientifically-sound reasons to be concerned about the unfolding climate crisis — particularly the onslaught of devastating weather extremes, heat waves, wildfires, floods, drought, which by some measures are indeed exceeding model predictions.”
Last year was marked by extreme weather events, with more billion-dollar disasters in the United States than any other year, according to NOAA. Among them were the Lahaina wildfire in Hawaii in August; Hurricane Idalia in Florida that same month; and severe flooding in New York in September.
Already this year, January and February have continued the global hot streak, marking nine consecutive months of a record-breaking temperatures.
In his Nature article, Schmidt said the inexplicable elements of the recent warming have revealed an “unprecedented knowledge gap” in today’s climate monitoring, which drives home the need for more nimble data collection that can keep up with the pace of change.
He noted it may take researchers months or even years to unpack all the factors that could have played a part in the sizzling conditions.
“We need answers for why 2023 turned out to be the warmest year in possibly the past 100,000 years,” he wrote. “And we need them quickly.”
Though El Niño is expected to wane this summer, there is still a 45% chance that this year will be warmer than 2023, according to NOAA.
It is a near certainty however that 2024 will rank among the five hottest years on record — so far.
The surprising reasons why Big Oil may not want a second Trump term
Maxine Joselow, The Washington Post – March 26, 2024
Active pump jacks increase pressure to draw oil toward the surface at the South Belridge Oil Field on February 26, 2022, in unincorporated Kern County, California, approximately 141 miles (227 km) northwest of Los Angeles, California. – From rural areas of the eastern states where modern oil production began to cities in southern California where pumpjacks loom not far from homes, lax regulations and the petroleum industrys boom and busts cycles have left the US pockmarked with perhaps hundreds of thousands of oil wells that are unsealed and haven’t produced in decades. In a first, Washington is making a concerted effort to plug these wells by allocating $4.7 billion in federal infrastructure dollars to plug the wells in an effort to lessen the negative health and environmental impact of the disused wells. (Photo by Robyn BECK / AFP) (Photo by ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images) (ROBYN BECK via Getty Images)More
HOUSTON – As president, Donald Trump vowed to unleash American “energy dominance,” while on the campaign trail, he has summarized his energy policies with the slogan “drill, baby, drill.”
Yet a possible Trump victory in the 2024 election is not delighting oil and gas executives as much as one might expect, according to interviews with several industry leaders at a recent energy conference in Houston.
Fossil fuel firms have found a lot to like in President Biden’s signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, which Trump has vowed to unravel. The law offers lucrative tax credits for companies to capture and store carbon dioxide – subsidies that several oil giants are eager to exploit, even as they pump record amounts of crude oil and post near-record profits.
In addition, Trump has championed an “America First” approach to trade policy that prioritizes steep tariffs on imported goods. The approach could hike the costs of building new pipelines and other energy infrastructure, and it could heighten anxieties about a global trade war.
Still, fossil fuel executives have slammed Biden’s decision to pause approvals of new liquefied natural gas exports. And during the GOP presidential primary, oil barons filled Trump’s campaign coffers far more than those of his competitors.
If a poll were conducted among energy executives about the 2024 election, the results “would be a little more balanced than people might expect,” Alan Armstrong, president and CEO of the gas pipeline company Williams, said in an interview at CERAWeek by S&P Global.
Armstrong said many fossil fuel executives feel the Biden administration has unfairly demonized their industry because of its role in causing climate change. But that’s a personal sentiment, not a professional one, he said.
“If you’re asking people personally, they’re probably tired of being told they’re bad people by the current administration,” Armstrong said. “But from a business objective standpoint, it would be a much more balanced perspective.”
Trump plans to gut the Inflation Reduction Act, including its generous tax credits for clean energy and electric vehicles, should he return to the White House, according to senior campaign officials and advisers to the former president.
Yet several oil industry executives have praised the Inflation Reduction Act – the IRA for short – for helping their companies pursue still-unproven green technologies such as carbon capture and clean hydrogen. The subsidy for carbon capture has especially benefited ExxonMobil, CEO Darren Woods acknowledged at CERAWeek.
“I was very supportive of the IRA – I am very supportive of the IRA – because as legislated the IRA focuses on carbon intensity and in theory is technology-agnostic,” Woods said. “They’re not trying to pick a particular technology.”
Vijay Swarup, Exxon’s senior director of climate strategy and technology, added that the IRA is “getting projects to advance.” Exxon has signed contracts to store the carbon captured from an ammonia plant and a steel plant in Louisiana, as well as a yet-to-be-built hydrogen plant in Texas, Swarup said in an interview.
Of course, Trump could not unilaterally repeal the IRA subsidies. He would need Congress to pass legislation, meaning Republicans would need to maintain control of the House and retake the Senate, in addition to clinching the White House.
In that scenario, Mike Sommers, president and chief executive of the American Petroleum Institute, said the trade group would aggressively lobby against any proposals to scrap green subsidies that have helped the industry.
“I suspect that when there is an attempt to repeal the IRA – and there will be – it will end up looking more like a scalpel-like approach rather than a butcher knife,” Sommers said. “And we’ll advocate for the provisions that we support.”
While in the White House, Trump proclaimed himself a “Tariff Man” – and he has no intention of abandoning that self-appointed title if reelected.
Publicly, Trump has floated the idea of imposing a 10 percent tariff on every good coming into the United States. Privately, he has discussed with advisers the possibility of imposing a flat 60 percent tariff on all Chinese imports, The Washington Post previously reported.
At a rally in Ohio this month, Trump also pledged to slap a 100 percent tariff on Chinese vehicle imports – part of a broader tirade in which he warned of a “bloodbath” for the U.S. auto industry if he is not reelected.
Sommers said such proposals, which are widely viewed as likely to spark a global trade war, carry “risks” for his sector.
“Particularly for the products that are produced here in the United States, we need free trade for these goods to flow,” he said. “I think we are concerned about kind of a retrenchment to a more nationalistic approach on trade policy. So that’s one example of an area where we’re not going to be aligned with a potential President Trump.”
But Dan Eberhart, chief executive of the oil-field services company Canary and a Trump supporter, said he isn’t worried about the former president’s trade policies. He said any adverse impact of tariffs would be canceled out by other pro-fossil-fuel policies, such as more offshore oil and gas lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico.
“In general, I don’t like protectionist policy,” Eberhart said. “But I really think that the Trump administration will be more pro-oil and gas than the Biden administration.”
The Trump campaign did not respond to specific questions for this story. In an emailed statement, spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said that “on day one, President Trump will unleash American Energy to lower inflation for all Americans, pay down debt, strengthen national security, and establish the United States as the manufacturing superpower of the world.”
The Biden campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Just three weapons will turn the Ukraine war back around. And the USA is back in the fight
David Axe – March 27, 2024
A Ukrainian artillery piece fires on Russian positions. Artillery, and supplies of artillery shells, have been crucial factors in the Ukrainian fighting – Bulent Kilic/AFP via Getty
Six months after blocking US president Joe Biden’s proposal to spend another $61 billion on aid to Ukraine, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson – who alone can schedule votes in the narrowly Republican-controlled legislative body – seems to have reversed his opposition to Ukraine’s war effort.
With retirements and special elections having reduced his majority to just two votes out of 438, and with a small contingent of far-right Republican extremists refusing to vote on any bill that has bipartisan support, Johnson increasingly relies on Democrats to enact budgets and other legislation.
And that means he answers more to the Democratic agenda than the Republican one. And strong support for Ukraine is a Democratic priority. The US House is on vacation until the first week of April. But once it reconvenes, Johnson will call a vote on fresh aid to Ukraine, according to some of his House colleagues.
With tens of billions of dollars in fresh funding, the US Defence Department could send a lot of weapons to Ukraine – and soon. Some could come straight from existing US stocks, with the new funding paying for newly-built weapons to replenish these stocks. Others could come from new commercial contracts brokered by the Pentagon.
It’s obvious what the priorities should be.
First and foremost, Ukraine needs artillery shells. For the first 18 months of Russia’s wider war on Ukraine, the United States was the main supplier of artillery ammo to Ukrainian batteries. In total, the Americans donated around two million shells. Half came straight from American magazine stockpiles. The other half, America quietly bought from South Korea.
These shells, along with additional ammo from other sources, kept Ukrainian guns blasting away at a rate of around 10,000 rounds a day for much of the war’s first year and a half. That was enough to match Russian batteries once the Russians burned through much of their ammo stockpile in the wider war’s first few weeks.
The Republican funding blockade, and the subsequent run down of US supplied munitions through the end of last year, cut by two-thirds the Ukrainians’ daily allotment of shells. In some of the darkest days of the war in February, as a pair of Russian field armies closed in on the Ukrainian stronghold in the eastern city of Avdiivka, Russian guns were firing five times as many rounds as Ukrainian guns were – and demolishing Ukrainian defence s without fear of return fire.
The US Army has been building a new shell factory in Texas to complement its existing factory in Pennsylvania. Soon, the Army should be capable of producing around 70,000 shells a month – a sixfold increase over its 2022 production rate.
There’s no reason most of the shells can’t go to Ukraine, once there’s funding to pay for each $5,000 round. Combined with shells from the European Union as well as a separate Czech initiative, urgent shipments of shells from the United States could give Ukraine an enduring artillery advantage for the first time in the wider war.
Once the shells are shipping, the Americans can address Ukraine’s second-greatest need: Patriot air-defence batteries and missiles for these batteries. The US-made Patriot is Ukraine’s best air-defence system. Its 90-mile-range missiles can reliably shoot down all but the fastest Russian missiles – and swat down Russian warplanes like flies.
When the Ukrainian air force shot down 13 Russian fighter-bombers in 13 days last month, it was apparently a mobile Patriot battery that did most of the shooting.
But Ukraine has just three Patriot batteries with around three dozen launchers – and lost a pair of those launchers in a devastating rocket ambush in early March. The batteries are spread thin. One normally protects Kyiv. Another protects Odesa, Ukraine’s strategic port on the Black Sea. The third battery apparently travels the front line in order to engage Russian jets.
Ideally, Ukraine would place a $1-billion Patriot battery in each of its half-dozen biggest cities and also assign one each to the eastern and southern fronts. And these batteries should be free to fire away at their fastest rate – meaning they’ll need a steady supply of missiles, each of which costs around $3 million.
Doubling or tripling Ukraine’s Patriot force could help the Ukrainians wrest back control of the air over the front line – and also reverse the disturbing trend toward bigger and bloodier Russian missile-strikes on Ukrainian cities.
Having replenished Ukraine’s artillery and air-defences, the United States should rescue one of the Ukrainian army’s best brigades. The 47th Mechanized Brigade is the main operator of American-made armoured vehicles, including M-1 Abrams tanks and M-2 Bradley fighting vehicles.
The 69-ton M-1 and 42-ton M-2 – thickly armoured and armed with a 120-millimetre cannon and a 25-millimetre autocannon, respectively – are some of the best armoured vehicles in the world, and the 47th Brigade has put them to good use. Counterattacking Russian assault groups west of Avdiivka, the M-1 and M-2s have blunted Russia’s winter offensive – and minimized Ukraine’s territorial losses as its artillery supplies bottomed out.
But the Americans shipped just 31 M-1s and around 200 M-2s before Republicans cut off aid. Four of the M-1s and more than 30 of the M-2s have been destroyed and others damaged. The 47th Brigade is running out of vehicles.
The US Army has thousands of older M-1s and M-2s in storage. They’d need overhaul before going to war in Ukraine, but a billion dollars should be enough to pay for the work as well as expedited shipping.
Once Speaker of the House Johnson bends to Americans’ overwhelming support for a free Ukraine and finally brings aid to a vote, the Pentagon could speed hundreds of tanks and fighting vehicles to the Ukrainian army.
Here’s who could be responsible for paying for the Baltimore bridge disaster
Erin Snodgrass – March 26, 2024
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The Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore collapsed after a container ship collided with it.
Several entities will likely be on the hook to foot the bill in the aftermath of the disaster.
The maritime insurance industry will be saddled with the highest costs.
The Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore collapsed on Tuesday after a large container ship ran into it, leading to six presumed deaths and millions of dollars in possible damage.
It’s still too early to estimate the total economic impact of the disaster, but between the cost of rebuilding the decades-old bridge, compensating the victims’ families, and paying out damages for disruptions to the supply chain, the eventual cost of the disaster is expected to be significant.
Who will pay to rebuild the bridge?
President Joe Biden said on Tuesday the federal government should be responsible for paying to reconstruct the damaged Francis Scott Key Bridge.
“It is my intention that the federal government will pay for the entire cost of reconstructing that bridge, and I expect Congress to support my effort,” Biden said.
The bridge was built in the 1970s for about $60 million, but the cost of rebuilding it could be 10 times its original price tag, an engineering expert told Sky News.
The Francis Scott Key Bridge, named for Francis Scott Key, the author of the Star Spangled Banner.WilliamSherman via Getty Images
Baltimore is among the busiest ports in the nation, seeing more than a million shipping containers pass through each year. The collapse — which closed the port to all maritime and most road traffic until further notice — is already beginning to wreak havoc on the supply chain.
The cost of building the bridge back fast enough to offset diversions as much as possible could saddle the government with a more than $600 million bill, David MacKenzie, chair of engineering and architecture consultancy COWIfonden, told Sky News.
Who will pay for damages to the ship and its cargo?
The container ship, the Dali, is owned by a Singapore-based firm. The ship’s charterer, Maersk, confirmed to Business Insider that vessel company Synergy Group operates the ship.
However, the companies with cargo aboard the Dali will ultimately be responsible for the ship’s damages and cargo costs.
The Dali was carrying 330 containers, which now must be re-routed, according to Ryan Petersen, CEO of supply chain logistics company Flexport, which had two containers on the ship.
An ancient maritime law known as “general average” dictates that companies with even a single container aboard a ship have to split the damages pro rata based on the number of containers, ensuring all the stakeholders benefiting from the voyage are splitting the risk, Petersen said.
Drone footage shows aftermath of the Dali container ship’s collision into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland, on March 26, 2024.Anadolu Agency via Reuters
The principle dates back hundreds of years and was originally meant to ensure sailors on board a ship weren’t worried about specific cargo if a disaster required them to start throwing containers overboard, according to Petersen.
Who will pay for everything else?
The majority of the financial fallout is likely to lay primarily with the insurance industry, according to media reports.
Industry experts told FT that insurers could pay out losses for bridge damage, port disruption, and any loss of life.
The collapse could drive “one of the largest claims ever to hit the marine (re)insurance market,” John Miklus, president of the American Institute of Marine Underwriters, told Insurance Business.
He told the outlet that the loss of revenue from tolls while the bridge is being rebuilt will be expensive, as will any liability claims from deaths or injuries.
The Dali is covered by the Britannia Steam Ship Insurance Association Ltd., known as Britannia P&I Club, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.
Britannia did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider but told FT it was “working closely with the ship manager and relevant authorities to establish the facts and to help ensure that this situation is dealt with quickly and professionally.”
Britannia is one of 12 mutual insurers included in the International Group of P&I Clubs, which maintains more than $3 billion of reinsurance cover, sources familiar with the matter told Insurance Business.
Britannia itself is liable for the first $10 million in damages, both FT and Insurance Business reported. Whatever remains is dealt with by the wider mutual insurance group and Lloyd’s of London, a reinsurance market in the UK, according to FT.
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