Neil Gorsuch must recuse himself from DACA case after political talks with Senate GOP leadership

Daily Kos

Neil Gorsuch must recuse himself from DACA case after political talks with Senate GOP leadership

By Joan McCarter      January 23, 2018

Of course Donald Trump’s first SCOTUS nominee is unethical.

So, this happened, and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) was dim enough to let the whole world know about it:

Sen. Lamar Alexander: I enjoyed having dinner tonight at the home of Senator John Cornyn and his wife Sandy with our newest Supreme Court Justice, Neil Gorsuch, Transportation Secretary Chao and a few of my other Senate colleagues to talk about important issues facing our country. Jan 22, 2018

A Supreme Court Justice was at a dinner party with Elaine Chao, the wife of the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (was he also there, Sen. Alexander?) and the number two guy in the Senate, John Cornyn to “talk about important issues facing our country.”

Let’s get some advice from long-time court reporter Nina Totenberg of NPR about that:

People often ask NPR’s Totenberg, who has known many of the justices for decades, for advice. “My experience is that people don’t really understand what they can’t talk about,” she says. “I tell them, ‘You can’t talk about a case or an issue that might come before the court. You talk about life—kids, music, movies—the things normal people talk about.'”

The issues of the day are most definitely not what a Supreme Court justice should be discussing with Republican congressional leadership. And that they had this clearly political and social get together the evening before the Supreme Court announced it will expedite considering the Trump administration’s request to overturn a judge’s ruling and allow the Trump administration to dismantle the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Only the most pressing issue of the day. Which Gorsuch should now have to recuse himself from.

Sign the petition to Neil Gorsuch: Recuse yourself from the DACA case.

This isn’t the first time, of course, that this particularly new justice has landed in deeply, deeply political water. Back in November, writing in Politico Magazine, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren wrote about Gorsuch and his keynote speech at an event at Donald Trump’s D.C. hotel. She points out that the very day Gorsuch was making that speech, the SCOTUS announced it would hear Janus v. AFSCME, “a case that will determine whether public sector unions—which represent teachers, nurses, firefighters and police in states and cities across the country—can collect fees from all employees in the workplaces they represent” and a case in which Gorsuch will almost certainly provide the deciding vote.

Not surprisingly, Gorsuch isn’t even attempting to act like principled justice who will put the rule of law and the country before his partisanship. That he was even willing to accept the nomination for this seat, which was stolen by Republicans, from Donald Trump shows that he’s got little in the way of principles. It should be noted that the Supreme Court is not bound by the Judicial Code of Ethics that guides the rest of the federal judiciary. So while Gorsuch’s activities have been exceedingly unethical, he isn’t subject to any kind of sanction from them under the code.

But he can be impeached. So when we get to the impeachment phase of this administration, the Supreme Court has to be included.

Republican senator meets with Justice Neil Gorsuch to discuss unspecified ‘important issues’

ThinkProgress:  Talk about bad optics.

Republican senator meets with Justice Neil Gorsuch to discuss unspecified ‘important issues’

Melanie Schmitz        January 23, 2018

Supreme Court Justice Neal Gorsuch speaks during an event hosted by the Fund for American Studies September 28, 2017 at Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. (Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Hours after he nearly shattered a glass elephant by tossing a “talking stick” at Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) during bipartisan spending talks on Monday (yes, that actually happened), Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) decided to buff up his image further by hastily tweeting that he was having dinner with a Supreme Court justice to discuss “important issues.”

“I enjoyed having dinner tonight at the home of Senator John Cornyn and his wife Sandy with our newest Supreme Court Justice, Neil Gorsuch, Transportation Secretary Chao and a few of my other Senate colleagues to talk about important issues facing our country,” the senior senator wrote.

Sen. Lamar Alexander: I enjoyed having dinner tonight at the home of Senator John Cornyn and his wife Sandy with our newest Supreme Court Justice, Neil Gorsuch, Transportation Secretary Chao and a few of my other Senate colleagues to talk about important issues facing our country.

Alexander’s tweet prompted a flurry of angry responses, with many concerned the event was a breach of ethics, or at best bad optics. “Is this type of dinner normal — legislators and Supreme Court justice[s]?” one Twitter user replied.

CNN analyst and former South Carolina Rep. Bakari Sellers (D) was more blunt with his criticism. “Justice Gorsuch is proving to be a cancer on our Judiciary,” he tweeted.

Objectively speaking, there’s nothing wrong with a member of Congress (or the executive branch) dining or hunting or hobnobbing with a Supreme Court justice. The late Justice Antonin Scalia, for instance, frequently went on hunting trips with his longtime friend, Vice President Dick Cheney, and famously came under fire for a particular duck-hunting trip they took three weeks after the Court agreed to hear an appeal in a case involving Cheney himself. (Scalia defended himself at the time by quacking.)

What’s troubling about Alexander’s dinner with Gorsuch, rather, is the fact that the two met to discuss unspecified “important issues facing our country” — something which Supreme Court justices are rightfully discouraged from doing, as it gives an obvious appearance of partiality and may flout certain ethics rules.

On its own, the dinner meeting might not merit more than a passing glance. The majority of judges and justices slip up occasionally, and even the most dedicated members of the Supreme Court sometimes say or do things that require damage control. (Just ask Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.) But Gorsuch has a backlog full of questionable behavior that makes his decision to hold partisan discussions with a member of Congress concerning.

The newest justice, appointed by President Trump, has long been scrutinized for his history of siding with religious liberty advocates, famously ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby in the landmark Hobby Lobby v. Sebelius case, while serving on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. He has also been criticized for having an anti-LGBTQ bias, one which bled into a recent dissent he wrote in a case involving two same-sex parents who sought to have both their names listed on their child’s birth certificate. However it’s his decision to blur the line between his life on the bench and his private activities that has many ethics groups troubled.

The Supreme Court is abandoning legitimacy for partisanship

What happens when the Supreme Court ignores the line between law and politics?

In September, Gorsuch was criticized by watchdog groups for delivering a speech to a conservative group at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. His remarks were far from the center of the controversy; many justices have chosen to speak to similarly partisan audiences before. Instead, because Trump refuses to divest himself from his interests in the property, activists argued Gorsuch was personally enriching the president, who continues to rake in its profits. When faced with those claims, a spokesperson for the Fund for American Studies, which organized the event, denied that the group had chosen the venue with Trump’s bank account in mind.

The venue choice wasn’t the only potential conflict of interest Gorsuch faced: the Fund for American Studies itself is partially funded by the Milwaukee-based Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, which has poured millions of dollars into anti-union causes. The same day Gorsuch delivered his speech, the Supreme Court also agreed to hear arguments challenging mandatory union fees in public sector jobs.

Prior to Gorsuch’s appointment, the Court had been deadlocked, 4-4.

“Setting aside the glaring conflict of interest in Gorsuch helping to enrich a Trump property just as several cases charging that the president is violating the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution are making their way through the judicial system, the group he addressed is funded by the same people funding the effort to dismantle unions that Gorsuch and his fellow justices agreed to take up,” Salon Deputy Politics Editor Sophia Tesfaye wrote that month.

It’s unclear what kinds of “important issues” were discussed during Gorsuch and Sen. Alexander’s meeting on Monday night. It’s entirely possible the “issues” Alexander was referring to were whether the Supreme Court should require justices to don funny wigs, à la British judges and barristers. Whatever the case, it was one more example of bad decision-making that Justice Gorsuch simply didn’t need on his record.

This article has been updated to correct a typo in the description of Gorsuch’s potential conflict of interest. An earlier version stated that the meeting could give the appearance of “impartiality.” It has been amended to read “partiality.”

Public records show how much House Republican will gain from the tax law he repeatedly lied about

ThinkProgress

Public records show how much House Republican will gain from the tax law he repeatedly lied about

Rep. Jeff Denham has been misrepresenting the GOP’s tax law, which could save him more than $100,000 this year.

Addy Baird      January 22, 2018

Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Calif., participates in a news conference on bipartisan legislation to address the deferred action for childhood arrivals (DACA) program and border security on Tuesday January 16, 2018. Credit: Photo by Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call

Rep. Jeff Denham (R-CA) has repeatedly lied about the effects of the GOP’s tax plan — a plan from which he stands to handsomely benefit, according to public records.

The tax plan, which was signed into law by President Trump late last year, gives owners of pass-through companies — businesses that don’t pay income taxes at the corporate level but rather allocate income across owners who then pay income taxes — their own new, lower rate. And according to public records, Denham made between $115,503 and $1,053,000 in business and rental income from LLCs (pass-through entities) in 2016.

Additionally, Denham’s salary in 2016 was a little more than $200,000. Ultimately, that means that Denham could fall into one of three new tax brackets created under his party’s new tax plan — 32 percent, 35 percent, or 37 percent — all of which would result in big savings for him personally. The congressman’s business and rental tax savings alone under GOP tax plan would, based on his public filings, range from between $8,547 an astounding $105,300.

But Denham has been lying about the effects of the bill throughout the process of crafting and passing the legislation. Last November, Denham said it was “just not true” that the GOP tax plan ultimately raises taxes on middle-class people. In an interview with KQED, Denham interrupted the host who mentioned analyses that found the tax cut for middle-income earners were merely temporary.

“Yeah, that’s just not true,” Denham cut in. “It’s very obvious.”

Expert analyses show that by 2023, 60 percent of Americans will face a tax hike or see no change in their taxes, and by 2027, a quarter of taxpayers will be paying more in taxes.

In the same interview with KQED, Denham said, “I’ve had constituents that have called in and they’ve actually run the numbers themselves, I’ve got their own testimonies. You know, when you factor in the expansion of the Child Tax Credit, ultimately it’s a very large savings here for the people in my district.”

But according to a report from The Center for American Progress (ThinkProgress is an editorially independent outlet housed in CAP), the tax law will have devastating effects on many people in Denham’s home state of California. According to the report, which analyzed the version of the bill from November that Denham was defending, more than 3.7 million people in the bottom 80 percent of the state’s income distribution would see their taxes increase by 2027.

In November, Denham also rejected the fact that eliminating the state and local income tax (SALT) deduction would hurt those he represents, according to local media.

But Denham was wrong in that front, too. In 2015, more than six million taxpayers in California claimed the SALT deduction, more than any other state. And as the California Budget and Policy Center outlined in November, eliminating the SALT deduction effectively means millions of Californians are being double taxed, a tax increase that forces Denham’s constituents and other Californians to pay for tax breaks for the wealthy and mostly benefits other states.

Some parts of the bill were changed in the final version, including capping rather than eliminating SALT, but Denham continues to misrepresent even the most basic aspects of the law.

The cherry on top is this: Denham claims it’s a lie to say that the GOP tax law is loaded with giveaways for corporations and the wealthy. After the tax bill passed, one of Denham’s Democratic challengers, a woman named Virginia Madueno, said the tax bill was “loaded with giveaways to big corporations and the wealthiest of the wealthy, while leaving table scraps for the rest of us,” Denham responded in a tweet.

Our Military Spending is Out of Control

Ro Khanna‘s post to the group: Veterans against the G.O.P

As many Republicans demand another huge increase in military spending, here is a reminder that we already spend more on defense than the next eight countries combined.

 No automatic alt text available.

 

The US Has Military Bases in 172 Countries. All of Them Must Close.

The Nation

The US Has Military Bases in 172 Countries. All of Them Must Close.

US bases are wreaking havoc to the health and well-being of communities across the world.

By Alice Slater     January 24, 2018

People protest the planned relocation of a US military base in Japan to Okinawa’s Henoko coast on April 17, 2015.(Reuters / Issei Kato)

On the weekend of Martin Luther King Day, Baltimore University fittingly hosted more than 200 activists in the peace, environment, and social-justice movements to launch a timely new initiative, the Coalition Against US Foreign Military Bases. Ajamu Baraka, Green Party vice-presidential candidate and co-founder of the Black Alliance for Peace, opened the meeting reminding us that Reverend King, in his historic anti-war speech more than 50 years ago at Riverside Church in New York, called the government of the United States “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” adding that “the war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit,” while warning that “a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” Taking on the very nature of capitalism, King further insisted that

We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

In a series of panels over two days, conference speakers from every corner of the globe proceeded to describe the extraordinary cruelty and toxic lethality of US foreign policy despite King’s warning more than 50 years ago. We learned that the United States has approximately 800 formal military bases in 172 countries, a number that could exceed 1,000 if you count troops stationed at embassies and missions and so-called “lily-pond” bases, with some 138,000 soldiers stationed around the globe. David Vine, author of Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Overseas Harm America and the World, reported that only 11 other countries have bases in foreign countries, some 70 altogether. Russia has an estimated 26 to 40 in nine countries, mostly former Soviet Republics, as well as in Syria and Vietnam; the UK, France, and Turkey have four to 10 bases each; and an estimated one to three foreign bases are occupied by India, China, Japan, South Korea, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands.

And, apart from the bases, there are other harmful US military impacts in many countries around the globe, which uproot many communities. John Lannon, of Ireland’s Shannonwatch works to end US military use of the civilian airport at Shannon, Ireland. The United States has flown more than 3 million troops and weapons through Shannon, en route to military actions despite Ireland’s decision not to join NATO and its official policy of military neutrality. James Patrick Jordan, with the Alliance for Global Justice, reported that after 9/11 the Northern Command of the US Pentagon added the training of many troops in Latin American countries in order to send them abroad to fight in US wars in other countries.

Peace and environmental activists from every region around the globe shared their experiences protesting the devastating environmental and health impacts caused by US military bases, which are wreaking havoc to health and well-being in so many communities. From Agent Orange in Vietnam, depleted uranium in Iraq, and munitions dumps and firing ranges in Vieques, Puerto Rico, to a toxic brew of poisons along the Potomac River, communities and soldiers as well as children born subsequent to exposure to these toxins are suffering a broad range of illnesses and inherited genetic damage, while the US government ducks any accountability for the harm caused by its mindless dumping and reckless burial of untreated toxic military wastes. Indeed, while some of the United States’ so-called “peer” nations, like Germany, have successfully sued for funds for clean-up of military bases after the US left them in dreadful condition, countries in Latin America, Asia, or Africa have been unable to hold the US to account, which is more evidence of the white patriarchy exercising its privilege, as we learned from Patricia Hynes, a former professor of environmental health at Boston University who won the US EPA Lifetime Achievement award and has created the Vietnam Peace Village Project to support third- and fourth-generation Agent Orange victims.

David Swanson, introducing the panel on US militarism in South America, observed:

Modern imperialism is unique to the US. US exceptionalism justifies imperial bullying and is a prominent sentiment we may have to cure. US nationalism has a religious character. Its destructive mission is imagined as sacred. Fort McHenry is not a historic site—it’s a “National Monument and Historic Shrine.” We may have to learn to value other things including the other 96 percent of humanity before the empire shuts down.

The global breadth of the participants was striking as we heard from activists in Asia, Europe, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East, all ready and willing to expand this new network and work, not just to close down US bases, but as many expressed so eloquently, to dismantle the US empire and its patriarchal, racist, colonial policies that are causing such harm around the world. At the end of the meeting we decided to reach out and expand our coalition and took the following actions:

  • Resolution on Global Day of Actions Against Guantanamo (February 23, 2018)
  • Resolution on a National Day of Anti-War Action in Spring 2018

Most importantly, we agreed to hold a larger international conference abroad, within one year of the date of this beginning to hasten the end of the empire that subjugates people and destroys the ecosphere in order to maintain its cruel economic system. To add your voice and participate, see www.noforeignbases.org.

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Alice Slater is the New York Director of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and serves on the Coordinating Committee of World Beyond War.

Air Pollution Is Killing Millions Around The Globe Each Year

HuffPost

Air Pollution Is Killing Millions Around The Globe Each Year

Erin Schumaker, HuffPost          January 23, 2018

A thick smog settled over New Delhi as winter began in India last year, forcing medical professionals to declare a public health emergency.

Residents swarmed local hospitals complaining of respiratory problems. Cricket players were forced to put on anti-pollution masks during a national match between India and Sri Lanka. And United Airlines canceled flights into the city, citing the air-quality concerns.

Air pollution isn’t among the causes of death that medical examiners list on death certificates, but the health conditions linked to air pollution exposure, such as lung cancer and emphysema, are often fatal. Air pollution was responsible for 6.1 million deaths and accounted for nearly 12 percent of the global death toll in 2016, the last year for which data was available, according the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.

Heavy smog engulfed Gurgaon, India, a city southwest of New Delhi in North India. The air quality index was at 320, which agencies consider unfit for inhalation even by healthy people and which made commuting difficult. December 2017.  (Sanjeev Verma/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)“Air pollution is one of the great killers of our age,” Philip Landrigan of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai wrote in an article published in the medical journal The Lancet.

India’s late environment minister, Anil Madhav Dave, made headlines last year for denying there was proof that air pollution was singularly responsible for death in India. Dave conceded that air pollution “could be one of the triggering factors for respiratory associated ailments and diseases,” but he blamed the negative health effects on other issues: poor diet, occupational hazards, socioeconomic status and genetics.

Dave died in May 2017 from cardiac arrest. The new environment minister, Harsh Vardhan, has also said that “to attribute any death to a cause like pollution, that may be too much.”

But there are numerous studies linking air pollution to morbidity around world.

“There is a huge amount of data linking outdoor and indoor air pollution with adverse health effects, including acute and chronic disease, exacerbations of chronic disease and death,” said Dr. Barry Levy, adjunct professor of public health at Tufts University School of Medicine.

The right to breathe is, you would think, the most fundamental right ― more than food, more than water. And that right is being seriously compromised right now. Mayur Sharma, TV personality

Of the 6.1 million air pollution death in 2016, 4.1 million are attributable to outdoor, or ambient, air pollution, according to IHME. Such pollution comes from sources like vehicles, coal-fired power plants and steel mills. Household, or indoor, air pollution is a more pressing problem in low-income countries due to the use of indoor fires for cooking and heat, and it’s linked to an estimated 2.6 million deaths per year. (In India at least, the total air pollution death rate has declined since 1990 even as the outdoor death rate went up in recent years ― due largely to a decrease in the number of deaths attributable to indoor air pollution. Scientists don’t completely understand how ambient and household air pollution deaths interact, and there’s some overlap between them, which is why the sum of ambient and household air pollution deaths exceeds total air pollution deaths.)

Developing countries bear the brunt of the world’s pollution problem

Air pollution is undoubtedly a global public health problem, but not all countries are equally affected.

As many as 1.6 million deaths were attributable to air pollution in India in 2016, according to IHME. That same year, all air pollution was linked to almost 123 out of every 100,000 deaths in the country ― among the highest in the world.

“When it comes to the number of deaths from air pollution, India is No. 1,” Landrigan told HuffPost.

Afghanistan and several African countries have higher ambient air pollution death rates than India, likely because of the extremely dusty conditions in those countries, combined with other pollution sources, like vehicle emissions and crop burning.

“With globalization, mining and manufacturing shifted to poorer countries, where environmental regulations and enforcement can be lax,” Karti Sandilya, one of the authors on the Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health, told Reuters. “People in poorer countries ― like construction workers in New Delhi ― are more exposed to air pollution and less able to protect themselves from exposure, as they walk, bike or ride the bus to workplaces that may also be polluted.”

North India’s topography makes its pollution problem worse, Vox noted in November. The region acts as a basin, trapping pollution from crop burning outside the city and mixing it with industrial pollution from within city limits. And that mix of pollution sources is most intense during the coldest months of the year.

In fact, the problem is getting so bad that some people are moving out of New Delhi altogether. Television personality Mayur Sharma is perhaps the most notable example: He left his job and moved his family out of the capital to escape the pollution.

“The right to breathe is, you would think, the most fundamental right ― more than food, more than water. And that right is being seriously compromised right now,” Sharma told NPR.

As India’s economy has expanded, the country has struggled to keep up with the environmental costs of that growth. Premature deaths from air pollution have stabilized in China, which rivals India in terms of pollution problems and population. That stabilization occurred partly because China has used fines and criminal charges to crack down on pollution. India’s government, however, seems more focused on economic growth than on protecting air quality and the environment.

King's Way in New Delhi is seen shrouded in smog on Dec. 4, 2017. (Anindito Mukherjee via Getty Images)

Air pollution ― and climate change ― link the global community in deadly ways

Because air pollution and related health problems can travel, no country can solve its air pollution problem alone.

Air pollution from Chinese consumption was linked to an estimated 3,100 premature deaths in the U.S and Western Europe in 2007, according to an article published last year in the journal Nature. At the same time, nearly 110,000 premature deaths in China were linked to pollution prompted by consumption in the U.S. and Western European.

Air pollution can travel long distances and cause health impacts in downwind regions,” Qiang Zhang, co-author of the article and a researcher at Tsinghua University in Beijing, explained to Popular Science.

“Air pollution doesn’t care about political boundaries.”  Kirk Smith, professor of global environmental health at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health.

Climate change will likely exacerbate those global concerns, according to public health experts.

They anticipate that climate change will trigger a host of public health problems, including heat- and cold-related deaths, increased disease risk and mental health problems from climate displacement and extreme weather conditions.

Climate change also contributes to air pollution trends ― hotter temperatures increase wildfire risk, and wildfires create ambient air pollution. It also increases ground-level ozone, which is a main ingredient in urban smog, and can trigger health problems like chest pain, throat irritation and lung inflammation, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

“Higher temperatures are expected to increase the rate of ozone formation,” Levy said.

This makes it even more crucial for local, national and intergovernmental organizations to join forces to address air pollution.

As Kirk Smith, a professor of global environmental health at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health, put it, “Air pollution doesn’t care about political boundaries.”

Paul Ryan Collected $500,000 In Koch Contributions Days After House Passed Tax Law

HuffPost

Paul Ryan Collected $500,000 In Koch Contributions Days After House Passed Tax Law

Mary Papenfuss, HuffPost        January 20, 2018

Just days after the House passed its version of the federal tax law slashing corporate tax rates, House Speaker Paul Ryan collected nearly $500,000 in campaign contributions from billionaire energy mogul Charles Koch and his wife, according to a recent campaign donor report.

Koch and his brother David spent millions of dollars to get the tax law passed and are spending millions more in a public relations campaign in an attempt to boost support for the law, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Koch Industries, one of the largest private corporations in the nation, operates refineries and manufactures a variety of products. The new tax law — which slices corporate tax rates from 35 percent to 21 percent, slashes estate taxes and includes a special deduction for oil and gas investors — is expected to save the Koch brothers and their businesses billions of dollars in taxes.

Just 13 days after the tax law was passed, Charles Koch and his wife, Elizabeth, donated nearly $500,000 to Ryan’s joint fundraising committee, according to a campaign finance report filed Thursday.

Five other donors, including billionaire businessmen Jeffery Hildebrand and William Parfet and William Parfet, each contributed $100,000 in the last quarter of 2017, according to the records.

“It looks like House Speaker Ryan is quickly being rewarded for passing this legislation that overwhelmingly benefits the Kochs and billionaires like them,” Adam Smith, spokesman for campaign finance reform nonprofit Every Voice, told the International Business Times, which first reported the Koch contributions.

The Koch donations were paid into Team Ryan, which raises money for the speaker, the National Republican Congressional Committee and a PAC run by Ryan. On the same day, Charles and Elizabeth Koch also each donated $237,000 to the NRCC.

The Koch brothers, worth an estimated $100 billion together, have become the gorillas of dark money contributions distorting American democracy since the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC, which opened the door to unlimited campaign contributions from corporations, unions and wealthy individuals to outside groups. The brothers are using their massive wealth to push a political agenda that’s the “most hard-line libertarian philosophy” in America, according to Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.

Ryan has indicated that he won’t run again when his term is up this year, Politico reported, though he hasn’t made an official announcement. If he doesn’t run, his contributions would be redirected.

Clarification: Language in this story has been updated to better describe the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC.

Trump Campaign Could Have Made Illegal Payments to Stormy Daniels, Watchdog Group Says

Fortune

Trump Campaign Could Have Made Illegal Payments to Stormy Daniels, Watchdog Group Says

Alana Abramson, Fortune      January 22, 2018 

2015 AVN Adult Entertainment Expo

 

A nonpartisan watchdog group has filed complaints with both the Department of Justice and Federal Election Commission alleging that the reported payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels, who said she once had an affair with President Donald Trump, arguably violates campaign finance laws and should be subject to an investigation.

The group, Common Cause, sent copies of the complaint Monday to the FEC and the DOJ, the latter of which was addressed to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and accompanied by a letter requesting an investigation into the payment.

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that in 2016, Trump’s longtime attorney Michael Cohen had arranged for a payment of $130,000 to Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, to prevent her from publicizing an alleged sexual account that had occurred a decade earlier with the then-candidate. He paid her, according to the Journal, through a bank account linked to company called Essential Consultants LLC, which he set up in Delaware a month before the presidential election.

The complaint alleges that the payment was illegal because it was designed to influence the election and, at 130,000, it exceeds the maximum amount of $2,700 per person allotted under campaign finance law. The source of the $130,000 has also not been revealed, the complaint argues, and any individual who contributes over $200 to a campaign must disclose his or her identity. Since donations from corporations to federal candidates are prohibited, the complaint urges the DOJ and FEC to investigate the source.

“These apparent violations are not simple bookkeeping errors, but seemingly a deliberate evasion of the laws on the books to ensure Americans get a full accounting of the money raised and spent by and for candidates for the presidency,” Paul S. Ryan, the vice president for policy and litigation at Common Cause who filed the complaints, explained. “These actions are just the latest examples of the president, his family, his campaign, and subsequently administration, playing fast and loose with the laws that apply to them.”

In an e-mail to Fortune, Cohen called the complaint “baseless” and denied that Trump misled the FEC. “The Common Cause complaint is baseless along with the allegation that President Trump filed a false report to the FEC,” he wrote. He did not respond to follow up questions for clarification about this statement and the payment as a whole.

The Justice Department and the White House did not immediately respond to request for comment. A representative for the FEC was out of the office due to the government shutdown.

See original article on Fortune.com

Environmentalism for conservatives:

Salon

Environmentalism for conservatives: How to make climate activists see red

Young Republicans, reformed lobbyists, and green Tea Partiers: Meet America’s “eco-right”

Zoya Teirstein, Grist     January 21, 2018

This post originally appeared on Grist.

Todd Tanner has a pretty sweet offer for his fellow Montanans: a new shotgun in exchange for science-based evidence that he’s wrong about climate change.

The conservationist uses the challenge in an attempt to raise awareness about our warming planet. A lot of people where Tanner lives in Bigfork, Montana, would probably like to take him up on his offer: The state has one of the highest rates of outdoor recreationists in the country, and Tanner is no exception. He was planning on going hunting after we finished our interview. “You wouldn’t know it,” he said over the phone, “but I’m literally walking around in a pair of wool pants.”

Tanner is sure he’ll never have to hand over that new shotgun, though he says he would love to find out that anthropogenic climate change isn’t real. “If someone shows me the error of my ways they can have their choice,” he said. “They can have any rifle, shotgun, pistol, or rod I own, and I’ll walk away feeling like I got the better end of the bargain.”

Since 2011, Tanner has harnessed his prominent position in Montana’s hunting and fishing communities to get people engaged. After wildfires incinerated forests and droughts desiccated rivers in Big Sky Country this year, agitated sportsmen and women have become easier to find. Tanner’s nonprofit, Conservation Hawks, is part of a coalition of grassroots organizations trying to pull conservatives into the conversation about rising temperatures.

And it’s starting to work. There’s a small but growing alliance of concerned conservatives who want to reclaim climate change as a nonpartisan issue. This motley crew of lobbyists, Evangelical Christians, and far-right radicals call themselves the “eco-right.”

Christine Todd Whitman, former chief of the Environmental Protection Agency under President George W. Bush, believes the eco-right has a real chance at inspiring action in Congress. With Republicans controlling both houses of Congress and the White House, and a record-breaking year of environmental disasters finally behind us, 2018 could be the year the party reverses course. “If you look at the damage from just this last summer, from the floods, the droughts, the fires, it’s pushing $300 billion out of our economy,” Whitman said.

In Montana, Tanner diligently crafts his messaging in the hopes that he can turn even a small portion of the red state’s hunters and anglers into climate activists. There’s also a broader, national effort to target American conservatives. RepublicEn, for instance, is a coalition of more than 4,000 conservatives and libertarians pushing for environmental action. The organization hopes that, generations from now, the eco-right will be remembered for leading the United States out of the climate crisis and into the clean energy revolution.

Alex Bozmoski is the director of strategy and operations at RepublicEn. It’s a job he’s well-suited for — he used to be a climate denier himself.

As an undergrad at Georgetown, Bozmoski enrolled in a climate science class as a joke, planning to heckle the professor. But when challenged to justify his skepticism, Bozmoski found he had drawn erroneous conclusions fueled by conservative radio shows and Fox News. He cast around in his network of fellow Republicans and conservatives for people he could discuss his newfound understanding of climate change with, but he kept coming up empty.

Bozmoski found that, despite a long legacy of environmental leadership in the Republican Party, most modern-day members weren’t even thinking about our overheating planet, let alone figuring out how to address the problem.

Environmental issues weren’t always this polarizing. President Nixon set a firm national precedent when he created the EPA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 1970. The Senate passed the Clean Air Act that same year, 73 votes to 0.

Fast-forward to the 2012 presidential election, when multiple Republican candidates advocated for abolishing the EPA. Two years later, just one of all the 107 Republicans running for Senate mentioned climate change.

It’s no wonder Bozmoski felt betrayed by his party and ill-equipped to apply his conservative thinking to the issue. Yet he could still understand why his fellow conservatives didn’t care.

“When you don’t trust anyone talking about climate change, when you don’t see your tribe talking about solutions that fit with your worldview, it’s really easy to cope with the problem by ignoring it or denying it,” he said. Bozmoski did neither.

He went hunting for like-minded Republicans and found Bob Inglis, a former U.S. representative from South Carolina who came out swinging against global warming in 2010 (a position that likely cost him his seat in the House). Bozmoski tracked the ousted politician down in 2012, and they started a project called the Energy and Enterprise Initiative. RepublicEn grew out of that project. They popularized the term “eco-right.”

RepublicEn hit the road in 2014, traveling across the country to persuade conservatives that their principles and values can be applied to curbing greenhouse gas emissions. Since then, RepublicEn has held 300 events across America, mostly for expressly conservative audiences. Bozmoski estimates that the organization has reached more than 26,000 Americans. He gets people to listen by reminding them that they have power.

“You are the most important environmental champions on planet Earth,” he tells them. “Republicans won’t lead without first being led by their constituents. You have an outsized influence on our ability as humanity to deal with this problem.”

RepublicEn hopes to generate conservative support for a revenue-neutral carbon tax. “It’s the only solution that’s effective enough to address climate change and fits with conservative principles,” Bozmoski said.

A carbon tax is pragmatic and relatively simple: Put a rising fee on the use of fossil fuels, forcing companies to curb their emissions. To make it revenue neutral — and more acceptable to conservatives — the money generated by that fee goes back to Americans through checks or by cutting payroll or sales taxes.

A carbon tax in any form is unlikely to make it through today’s highly partisan Congress, so, in the meantime, RepublicEn advocates for a level playing field for wind and solar energy, less leaky oil and gas infrastructure, and nuclear power.

Jessica Fernandez, a lifelong Floridian and conservative, was one of the people inspired by RepublicEn’s national eco-right tour. Her upbringing might have had something to do with it. “At my house,” she said, “we grew up with solar panels on the roof and composting.”

In 2014, she met Alex Bozmoski and Debbie Dooley, head of a subset of the Tea Party called the Green Tea Party. Fernandez, a long-time director of the Miami Young Republicans, liked their pitch that conservatives should be leaders in conserving the environment. “It’s groundbreaking, I know,” she said with a chuckle. When trying to engage other Republicans on green issues, she quickly learned that an alarmist attitude just doesn’t work.

What approach does work? A focus on money. Fernandez said that conservatives are more likely to respond positively if you say, “Hey! Fixing the climate is something that can benefit you economically.” She tells them about community solutions like solar co-ops, groups of homeowners who use their collective purchasing power to install solar on the cheap, thereby reducing monthly electric bills.

Tanner, the conservationist from Montana, approaches the issue from a different angle. He thinks talking to conservatives about climate change requires language that is hyper-specific and localized.

The fine lines between demographics are razor-sharp. Messaging that works for a hunter might not work for a fisherman, even though both face the same set of environmental consequences: a scarcity of fish and game. “It’s almost like code,” he said. “As soon as you try and talk to people who aren’t like you, all of these barriers go up.”

For that reason, Tanner says the messenger and the message have to be authentic. He spends his weeks customizing language that personally appeals to various sub-demographics of sportsmen and women. There are millions of hunters and anglers in the United States. “That’s a ton of us,” he said. “If even 20 percent or 30 percent of them got engaged, it would have a huge impact.”

James Tolbert is an unlikely environmental lobbyist. He spent 27 years helping big corporations clean up pollution. In 2013, the engineer was wrapping up work on the fallout from a million gallons of crude oil spilling from the Enbridge Pipeline into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan when he decided to switch teams. He traded in his senior position at energy infrastructure firm AECOM for a role as a lobbyist at Citizens’ Climate Lobby.

While Conservation Hawks and RepublicEn use grassroots organizing to drum up support among conservatives, lobbyists like Tolbert use a “grasstops” approach to push Republican representatives in Congress to support solutions.

We “create political space with a member of Congress by showing him that there is support from key members in his community,” Tolbert said. Citizens’ Climate Lobby calls these key community members “influencers” — business leaders, members of the chamber of commerce, even regional newspaper editorial boards. He sees them as crucial to getting anywhere with members of Congress.

When a Republican representative hesitates to accept climate change for fear of losing an upcoming reelection campaign, a well-placed opinion piece in a hometown newspaper or an endorsement from a local business leader can occasionally tip the scales.

It’s premature to say the winds of change are blowing, but we may be seeing the beginnings of a breeze. This month, more than 100 congressional lawmakers, including 11 House Republicans, wrote a letter to President Trump urging him to address climate change and the threat it poses to national security after his administration left the issue out of its national security strategy.

William Ruckelshaus, who served as EPA administrator under Nixon and President Reagan, has met with a number of eco-right organizations. He believes massive support for significant action on global warming is “going to have to include conservative groups, and virtually every discipline in society.” When Republicans do finally warm up to the idea of a conservative environmental movement, the eco-right will step out of the wings.

“They’re going to begin to get worried” about the growing impacts of a warming planet, Ruckelshaus said. “If there are organizations that they feel more comfortable with, they’re more likely to sign on.”

The eco-right hasn’t exactly received a warm embrace from the conservative movement. In 2014, the Washington, D.C.-based public relations firm Berman and Company launched the Environmental Policy Alliance — yes, EPA for short. The outfit is “devoted to uncovering the funding and hidden agendas behind environmental activist groups.” Among its targets: climate-conscious organizations like Tanner’s Conservation Hawks.

Shortly after it started, the alliance launched a website called Green Decoys,  which claims that left-wing environmental NGOs use sportsmen as a cover for their “radical environmental activist” agendas.

The site has a different informational video targeting each kind of American conservation group. In the “Montana” video, a man in camouflage carrying a rifle speaks straight into the camera. “I’m a real sportsman,” he says. “And I’m a member of organizations that support hunting and fishing.” His double appears on screen, wearing a camo neckerchief. “And I’m a phony sportsman,” the double says. “I support candidates that think we cling to our guns because we just don’t know any better.”

Tanner isn’t worried about people who question his legitimacy. “If the folks who run Green Decoys, and I’m well aware of who they are, want to get together and see who’s a better hunter or fisher, or who’s the real deal and who’s not,” he said, “we are more than happy to have that conversation.”

Bozmoski recognizes that some conservatives have gone too far down the path of denial to be receptive to RepublicEn’s message. “We aren’t big enough to go around persuading people who really believe, to their core, that this is a government conspiracy,” he said. “We don’t worry about the people on the fringe who are hobbyists in antagonism on climate change.”

Fernandez hopes the tide of support for environmental legislation will rise to the highest levels of government.

“Climate change doesn’t have a political affiliation,” she said. She believes that even President Trump might change his tune if the solution is “repackaged as something that benefits the United States of America.”

What should the eco-right do while the top dogs on Capitol Hill insist on looking the other way? Ruckelshaus, the former EPA chief, says to “keep on.” But as we descend into ever-worsening environmental chaos, the question remains: How soon can these conservatives alter the course of history?

The women who marched in 2018

Yahoo News

The women who marched in 2018

 Lisa Belkin      January 20, 2018