NPR – Climate

Could the world become too warm to hold Winter Olympics?

Jaclyn Diaz, Michael Levitt January 21, 2022

Rosie Brennan of the United States competes in a Tour de Ski, women’s 10-kilometer freestyle, interval start cross-country ski event, in Dobbiaco (Toblach), Italy, on Jan. 5, 2021. She is planning to compete at the Beijing Winter Olympics next month.Alessandro Trovati/AP

Without drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, climate change threatens future Winter Olympic Games because their locations would be too warm to host the events, a new study has found.

If the world’s high emissions continue on their trajectory, by the 2080s all but one of the 21 cities that previously hosted the Winter Games — Sapporo, Japan — would not be able to do so again.

Six cities would be considered “marginal,” while 14 would be deemed “unreliable” — meaning the right conditions for snow and athlete safety cannot be met.

But that won’t necessarily happen if the world takes drastic action and follows the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, according to Daniel Scott, the lead researcher for the University of Waterloo’s report. Under that deal, nearly 200 countries agreed to drastically cut their collective greenhouse emissions.

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“Under a low-emissions future in the 2050s even the 2080s, we don’t really see much change in terms of those climate reliable locations,” Scott told NPR. “We pretty much keep all of what we have today.”

The report comes just as the world prepares for the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, starting Feb. 4.

Athletes and coaches surveyed by the researchers said they’re already seeing the effect climate change has on their sports.

“Some of the coaches that did the survey have been coaches in the sport for 30 years,” Scott said. “They’ve traveled the world, back to the same competitions, and they’ve seen that certain competitions don’t happen as regularly or uninterrupted as they used to” because of warmer temperatures.Article continues after sponsor message

Rosie Brennan, a U.S. Olympic cross-country skier, said race organizers rely on technology to work around the climate impact — with varied results. Brennan participated in the 2018 Olympics and plans to compete in Beijing.

“I think the thing that we see now is with warmer weather, there’s less snowfall, so we’re much more reliant on man made snow,” she told NPR. “And man-made snow doesn’t act the same as natural snow. It tends to be much firmer, it gets icier faster and it’s a faster surface.”

That has resulted in devastating injuries to athletes — normally a rarity for Brennan’s sport, she said.

“I think we have seen that in the last few years there’s been a number of World Cup races where people have broken bones from crashing,” she said.

Winter Olympic sports like snowboarding could be at risk thanks to a warming climate, according to a new report.Jonathan Hayward/AP

The future of winter sports could be entirely indoors

The Summer Olympics are also feeling the effects of climate change.

This summer’s Tokyo’s Olympic and Paralympic Games are likely one of — if not the — hottest and most humid Games on record. Daily temperatures reached the high 80s with high humidity that could make it feel more like 100 degrees.

LIVE UPDATES: THE TOKYO OLYMPICS

The Tokyo Games Could End Up Being The Hottest Summer Olympics Ever

But winter sports seem acutely vulnerable to the impact of a warmer world.

During the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, skiers were overheating in the same way a marathon runner would at nearly 90-degree weather, according to Scott.

There may come a point when outdoor games may have to move indoors or be held at a different time of year altogether in order to accommodate higher temperatures, he said.

Thanks to climate change, outdoor winter sports like skiing may go entirely indoors. People dine at a Lebanese restaurant overlooking to indoor ski slope in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in 2012.Kamran Jebreili/AP

Some countries with traditionally hot climates have already adopted indoor ski resorts.

Dubai opened the first indoor ski resort in the Middle East, which has been deemed the “world’s best” — better than even what traditionally wintry conditions like Scotland or Germany can offer — six years in a row.

But Brennan said a major part of why she loves her sport is lost if this becomes the norm.

“The reason I am a skier is because I love being outside,” she said. “I love being in the mountains, I love being in nature. I love being alone on the trail, hearing my own breathing. And none of that is possible when you’re indoors.”

The Globe and Mail

In Louisiana, a vaccine stalemate and a long road ahead

Adrian Morrow, Clinton, Louisiana  January 22, 2022

Jody Moreau knows how bad COVID-19 can be.

The administrator of East Feliciana Parish, a farming and logging community in rural Louisiana, Mr. Moreau caught the coronavirus during its second wave in 2020 and suffered a stroke while working at his desk. A friend of his died just last weekend. One member of the parish council is currently off sick, as are several members of Mr. Moreau’s staff.

He’s fought back, organizing mass-vaccination events, personally delivering supplies of masks to schools, and instituting capacity and distancing rules at meetings.

But the vaccination rate has plateaued at 39 per cent in East Feliciana, about 24 percentage points lower than the United States over all. And Mr. Moreau doesn’t believe it’s practical to keep imposing closings.

“Everybody here has seen somebody die,” he said in an interview at his office in Clinton, the parish seat. “I don’t know what else to do. We can’t keep shutting down schools and government buildings every time someone gets sick. I totally expect COVID is going to be part of our lives for a very long time.”

Mr. Moreau, 52, is not in favour of vaccine mandates, wary they would exacerbate the pandemic’s political divisions in a place where most people oppose such a move.

“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. These horses are hard-headed and stubborn. It is not worth the argument. It’s easier at this point just to provide the water,” he said.

As the Omicron wave crests, this is the stalemate facing the U.S.

The vaccination rate is relatively static and officials from the White House to local governments are, like Mr. Moreau, reluctant to impose additional measures. Anti-vaccination sentiment, meanwhile, is firmly entrenched. The Supreme Court this month blocked President Joe Biden’s attempt to require employees of large companies to be vaccinated.

It is places such as East Feliciana that are increasingly suffering the consequences. The parish has seen 154 deaths in a population of 19,500, a per-capita rate more than double those of Los Angeles and Chicago, and triple that of New Orleans. Out of the 100 U.S. counties with the highest death rates, 95 have populations of fewer than 100,000 people. None contain major cities.

In a country that is approaching 900,000 pandemic deaths, many people have accepted that things won’t be getting better any time soon.

Enjoying the afternoon sunshine on Clinton’s main street during a coffee break, bank teller Kathryn Wheeler said her husband had refused to get vaccinated. But she didn’t mind. She was more weary of non-stop talk of case counts and restrictions.

“I don’t judge anybody for their decisions. It’s their body,” said Ms. Wheeler, 43, who is vaccinated. “You get kind of burned out by hearing about it.”

Outside town at an agricultural supply co-operative, clerk Colby Breaux said there had been a run on ivermectin amid the Omicron surge. The medication, used primarily to treat parasitic worms in livestock, is touted by anti-vaxxers as a COVID cure. There is no proof that it works, and medical officials have pleaded with people to stop taking it because of side-effects including seizures.

Ms. Breaux, 46, herself described vaccines as “dangerous” and “poison” and has refused to get inoculated. All scientific evidence shows COVID-19 vaccines are overwhelmingly safe, and enormously cut the risk of hospital admission and death.

One parish over from East Feliciana, Pastor Tony Spell is waging a legal battle over pandemic safety measures. He was arrested in the spring of 2020 for repeatedly holding services at Life Tabernacle Church during the state’s stay-at-home order. His hope is that the case will go to the Supreme Court, curtailing the power of governments to put in place pandemic restrictions. His entire congregation, he said, is unvaccinated.

“Who are you, as the governor or the president, to tell me what is essential and what isn’t?” Mr. Spell, 43, said before heading into a service with about 200 worshippers one evening this week. “Church is more necessary than the food we eat, the water we drink, the money we have.”

In some places, even the authorities do not want to get vaccinated.

Scott Trahan, head of the local council in Cameron Parish on the other side of the state, said he only got his shots because he wanted to see his grandchildren, and being inoculated would put his son and daughter-in-law at ease. Cameron has a vaccination rate of 17 per cent, among the lowest in the country.

“I really didn’t want to get it,” Mr. Trahan, 57, said. “I don’t trust the government.”

Mr. Trahan, who has lost a cousin to the pandemic and contracted COVID-19 himself during the second wave, said he takes ivermectin weekly. Using a preparation intended for cattle, he initially drank it mixed with chocolate milk. He now applies it topically to his shoulders and legs.

Even officials who wholeheartedly support vaccination balk at further rules. Mr. Biden, for instance, has not implemented vaccine or testing requirements on domestic air travel. Despite case and death rates in Louisiana far higher than Canada’s this month, Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards avoided the vaccine mandates and business closings that Canadian politicians have championed.

Susan Hassig, an epidemiologist at Tulane University in New Orleans, said the U.S. can expect further waves of infections to swamp hospitals and push the death toll ever higher if nothing changes. “I don’t know what it’s going to take for people to recognize that continuing to do the same thing is not going to change the outcome,” she said.

New Orleans is one of the few places to recently tighten its rules. Mayor LaToya Cantrell this month ordered that restaurants, bars, theatres and sporting venues require patrons to show proof of vaccination or a negative test. The city also has an indoor mask mandate.

In the buzzing French Quarter one chilly night this week, neither the pandemic nor the new rules seemed to be keeping people away.

Kelsey Wolf, 27, said letting businesses stay open while requiring vaccinations and masks was the right approach. It allows the leather store she runs to keep operating while ensuring her staff and customers are protected. The vaccination mandate, she said, had already pushed people she knows to get inoculated.

But she wasn’t holding her breath for the end of the pandemic.

“People have such a goddamn hard time being considerate. They don’t want to think about another person,” she said. “I’m believing in nothing right now. I’m just going one day at a time.”

Daily Boulder

Florida Republicans Pass Bill Banning The Word ‘Gay’ In Schools

By Carl Anthony  January 22, 2022

A Republican-led House committee in Florida on Thursday passed a bill that bans discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity in school classrooms.

The Parental Rights in Education bill, also known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, passed Thursday in the House Education and Employment Committee largely along party lines and would bar educators from talking about LGBTQ+ topics, claiming it’s not “age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students.”

The legislation also allows parents to take legal action against their child’s school district and be awarded damages if they believe any of its policies infringe on their “fundamental right to make decisions regarding the upbringing and control of their children,” according to The Hill.

“This bill is about defending the most awesome responsibility a person can have: being a parent,” Florida state Rep. Joe Harding (R), who first introduced the bill, said Thursday. “That job can only be given to you by above.”

Harding’s bill, along with its companion bill introduced Tuesday by Florida state Sen. Dennis Baxley (R), would block teachers in Florida from talking about LGBTQ+ topics in school, which GBTQ+ advocates say will effectively “erase” LGBTQ+ history, culture, and students.

Read the original report on The Hill.

CNN

Woman charged after threatening to bring ‘every single gun loaded and ready’ if her children had to wear masks at school

By Paul P. Murphy January 21, 2022

School superintendent says his district won’t comply with Republican governor’s executive order on masks.

(CNN)Police in Virginia said a woman has been charged after she claimed at a school board meeting she would show up with loaded guns if her children were required to wear masks at school. In the post on the department’s Facebook page, authorities said Amelia King, 42 of Luray, was charged with making an oral threat while on school property Friday afternoon. A magistrate judge released her on a $5,000 unsecured bond.

The board had been debating Covid-19 mitigation measures as the Omicron wave continues to cause significant community transmission, and in light of one of new Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin’s executive orders.

Virginia parents file lawsuit against Gov. Youngkin over executive order ending mask mandates in public schools

On January 15, his first day in office, Youngkin issued an executive order saying parents could decide whether their children had to wear face masks in school.

During the public comment section of the meeting, a response from one of the four Page County residents who spoke turned confrontational.”My children will not come to school on Monday with a mask on,” King told the Board. “Alright? That’s not happening. And I will bring every single gun loaded and ready to… I will call every…”King was then cut off for going over the three-minute time limit, and she replied, “I’ll see y’all on Monday.”In response to the comments, the Page County school superintendent and school board chair put out a statement saying they would not take the comments lightly.”Not only do comments such as these go against everything we wish to model for our students, they go against the very nature of how we as a community should interact with each other,” the statement read. “This kind of behavior is not tolerated from our students, faculty, staff, nor will it be tolerated by parents or guests of our school division.”

5 ways adults can boost kids’ well-being — and their own — as schools return from break in a Covid surge

As a result of the comments, the school board said they would increase police presence at schools on Friday and Monday. “Luray Police Chief Bo Cook is investigating the incident and is in communication with the Commonwealth’s Attorney, as well as state and federal officials,” the statement said. In an email to the board, read aloud at the end of the meeting, King apologized and said she was “mortified.” “I in no way meant to imply all guns loaded as in actual firearms, but rather all resources I can muster to make sure that my children get to attend school without masks,” she purportedly said in the email. “I would never do such a thing; I was speaking figuratively. “King, in the email, said she contacted the Sheriff’s office to explain herself. CNN reached out to King for comment but did not immediately receive a response. During her speech, King noted she has previously spoken at school board meetings and the remarks were not prepared.

Why one expert has evolved on masks in schools

“I like to sound educated and when I go off the cuff, I get really passionate,” she said. “I’m not always able to say exactly what I want to say in the appropriate way.” CNN also reached out to the Luray Police, the Page County Commonwealth Attorney and Gov. Youngkin’s office for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

The Board ultimately decided in a 4-2 vote to “make masking the choice of the parent.” Masks would be required for all staff, and anyone on school buses. However, parents will be required to sign an “opt-out form” if they did not want their children wearing masks in school. The Board will still require students returning from quarantine to be masked, regardless of parent choice.

Sunday Gazette Mail January 16, 2022

Robert Reich January 21, 2022

What can possibly explain Manchin’s and Sinema’s votes against voting rights this week? Why did they create a false narrative that the legislation had to be “bipartisan” when everyone — themselves included — knew bipartisanship was impossible? Why did they say they couldn’t support changing the filibuster rules when only last month they voted for an exception to the filibuster that allowed debt ceiling legislation to pass with only Democratic votes? Why did they co-sponsor voting rights legislation and then vote to kill the very same legislation? Why did Manchin vote for the “talking filibuster” in 2011 yet vote against it now?

I’ve suggested that the answer to all these questions could be found in the giant wads of corporate cash flowing into their campaign coffers. But as I’ve watched the two senators closely and spoken about them with members of Congress as well as Hill staff, I’ve come to the conclusion this isn’t it – or at least not all of it.

The corporate money explanation leaves out the single biggest factor affecting almost all national politicians I’ve dealt with: Big egos. Manchin’s and Sinema’s are now among the biggest.

Before February of last year, almost no one outside West Virginia had ever heard of Joe Manchin, and almost no one outside of Arizona (and probably few within the state) had ever heard of Kyrsten Sinema. Now, they’re notorious. They’re Washington celebrities. Their photos grace every major news outlet in America.

This sort of attention is addictive. Once it seeps into the bloodstream, it becomes an all-consuming force. I’ve known politicians who have become permanently and irrevocably intoxicated by it.

I’m not talking simply about power, although that’s certainly part of it. I’m talking about narcissism – the primal force driving so much of modern America, but whose essence is concentrated in certain places such as Wall Street, Hollywood, and the United States Senate.

Once addicted, the pathologically narcissistic politician can become petty in the extreme, taking every slight as a deep personal insult. I’m told that Manchin asked Biden’s staff not to blame him for the delay of “Build Back Better,” and was then infuriated when Biden suggested Manchin bore some of the responsibility. “You want to understand why Manchin stabbed Biden in the back on voting rights?” one House member told me this week. “It’s because he’s so pissed off at Ron Klain [Biden’s chief of staff].” I’m also told that if Biden wants to restart negotiations with Manchin on “Build Back Better,” he’s got to rename the package because Manchin is so angry he won’t vote for anything going by that name.

Paradoxically, a large enough slight played out on the national stage can also enthrall a pathologically narcissistic politician. Several people on the Hill who have watched Sinema at close range since she became a senator tell me she relished all the negative attention she got when she gave her very theatrical thumbs down to increasing the minimum wage, and since then has thrilled at her burgeoning role as a spoiler.

The Senate is not the world’s greatest deliberative body, but it is the world’s greatest stew of egos battling for attention. Every senator believes he or she has what it takes to be president. Most believe they’re far more competent than whoever occupies the Oval Office. Yet out of one hundred senators, only a handful are chosen for interviews on the Sunday talk shows, only one or two are lampooned on SNL, and very few get a realistic shot at the presidency. The result is intense competition for national attention.

Again and again, I’ve watched worthy legislation sink because particular senators didn’t feel they were getting enough credit, or enough personal attention from a president, or insufficient press attention, or unwanted press attention, or that another senator (sometimes from the same party) was getting too much attention.

Barack Obama didn’t enjoy glad-handing senators, even though he got to the presidency through that august body — which proved a huge handicap when it came to legislating. Bill Clinton would talk to senators (or, for that matter, to almost anyone else) all the time, but Clinton had too much confidence in his own charm to give individual senators the ego boosts they wanted — thereby rubbing the most narcissistic of them the wrong way (Nebraska senator Bob Kerrey voted against Clinton’s healthcare plan because he wanted more attention; New York senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan was lukewarm on it because he felt he wasn’t adequately consulted).

Some senators get so whacky in the national limelight that they can’t function without it. Trump had that effect on Republicans. Before Trump, Lindsay Graham was almost a normal human being. Then Trump directed a huge amp of national attention Graham’s way — transmogrifying Graham into a bizarro creature who’d say anything Trump wanted in order to keep the attention coming.

Not all senators are egomaniacs, of course. I had the good fortune to work closely with the late Paul Wellstone, who was always eager to give others credit while being the first to take any blame. I know several now serving who have their egos firmly in check — including Mark Kelly, Raphael Warnock, Sherrod Brown, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren. Most of the rest lie on an ego spectrum ranging from inflated to pathological.

Manchin and Sinema are near the extreme. As I said, neither had much national attention prior to the last February. But once they got a taste of the national spotlight, they couldn’t let go. They must have figured that the only way they could keep the spotlight focused on themselves was by threatening to do what they finally did this week — shafting American democracy.

Insider

Republicans in 7 states submitted documents falsely certifying the election for Trump. Most State Attorneys General are investigating if it constitutes fraud.

Sarah Al-Arshani January 21, 2022

• A watchdog group found Republicans in 7 states tried to falsely certify the election in favor of Donald Trump.
• Groups in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin forged documents.
• Attorneys General in three of those states told Insider how they’re dealing with it.

Some Attorneys General in states where illegitimate electors tried to falsify documents saying Donald Trump won the majority of votes are investigating and considering charges.

Republican supporters of Trump in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin submitted documents to Congress falsely claiming Trump won the states after the majority of votes actually went to Joe Biden, according to documents obtained by the watchdog group American Oversight in March 2021.

American Oversight requested all 2020 certificates of electoral votes that weren’t already published in the 2020 Electoral College Results.

“The coordinated, multi-state effort to cast doubt on the 2020 election and undermine the electoral vote process tragically led to the violent Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol in which a pro-Trump mob stormed the building and sought to physically block the congressional certification of each state’s real Electoral College votes,” American Oversight said of its findings.

Insider reached out to Attorneys General in each of the states seeking comment on the findings. In Nevada, Attorney General Aaron Ford said his office can’t “confirm or deny the existence of an investigation,” but said the report is on “our radar, and we take seriously any efforts to rob Nevadans of their votes.”

“There has been a sustained effort to invalidate the 2020 election and to downplay the shocking actions that took place afterward. My office cannot and will not accept any efforts to overturn a free and fair election. Voting rights are fundamental to our democratic republic, and we will continue to protect them,” Ford said in a statement.

New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas told Insider the incident is being reviewed.

“Election laws are the foundation of our democracy and must be respected. While review under state law is ongoing, we have referred this matter to the appropriate federal law enforcement authorities and will provide any assistance they deem necessary,” Balderas said.

In a statement to Insider, Pennsylvania Attorney General Joshua Shapiro’s office said while the “rhetoric and policy were intentionally misleading and purposefully damaging to our democracy” after review, they don’t “believe the incident meets the legal standards for forgery.”

“Pennsylvania Republicans made no secret during the 2020 election certification process that they planned to nominate their own slate of electors and submit their own ballots to perpetuate the Big Lie,” the office said. “These “fake ballots” included a conditional clause that they were only to be used if a court overturned the results in Pennsylvania — which did not happen.”

Attorneys General in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin did not respond to Insider’s request for comment.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Assistant District Attorney Matthew Westphal said he’d consulted Attorney General Josh Kaul over whether or not to investigate the 10 Republicans who illegitimately certified the vote for Trump.

Westphal said Kaul’s office or federal prosecutors should handle an investigation. The Journal reported that Kaul previously said the matter should be investigated at the federal level.

In Michigan, Attorney General Dana Nessel told MSNBC: “Under state law, I think clearly you have forgery of a public record, which is a 14-year offense, and election law forgery, which is a five-year offense.”

American Oversight’s findings come before reports in September 2021 that attorney John Eastman had written a six-page memo that was presented to Trump’s legal team just days before the Capitol riot detailing a plan for overturning the 2020 election. That memo included reference to the forged certificates.

On Thursday, CNN and The Washington Post reported members of Trump’s inner circle, including Rudy Giuliani, coordinated the illegitimate elector scheme.

Giuliani has already been subpoenaed by the select House committee investigating the January 6 riot. The select committee is also looking deeper into the illegitimate elector scheme and the role Trump and his affiliates played in it, Politico reported.

“We want to look at the fraudulent activity that was contained in the preparation of these fake Electoral College certificates,” Rep. Jamie Raskin told Politico. “And then we want to look to see to what extent this was part of a comprehensive plan to overthrow the 2020 election.”

Los Angeles Times – Opinion

Column: Kevin McCarthy is a spineless noodle who nonetheless owes us the truth

By Robin Abcarian January 16, 2022

Now that Devin Nunes has slunk off to the Trump-a-verse, is there anyone in Washington who is as transparently cynical, cowardly and dishonest as House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the Republican shape-shifter from Central California?

Here is a man who blamed then-President Trump for inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection … before changing his mind.

A man who was for a bipartisan investigation of the horrible events of that day … before he was against it.

A man who said he was willing to testify before an investigative committee about his conversations with Trump on that terrible day … before he decided not to.

On Thursday, CNN’s Don Lemon described “the duality of Kevin McCarthy — that’s a kind way of putting it.”

And now, because McCarthy is desperately trying to stay on Trump’s right side and become House speaker, McCarthy is threatening to retaliate against House Democrats for pursuing the crucial Jan. 6 investigation, for doing their jobs.

If Republicans do retake the House in November and McCarthy ascends to the top post, he said last week that he would strip Democratic Reps. Adam B. Schiff, Eric Swalwell and Ilhan Omar of their committee assignments.

Why?

Because he would rather retaliate than legislate.

Because Democrats stripped two far-right conspiracy-addled GOP representatives, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona, of their committee assignments for truly despicable behavior.

It wasn’t just Democrats who were repulsed; 11 Republicans joined House Democrats in February to punish Greene for, among other things, supporting violent threats against Democrats. Two Republicans joined Democrats in November in censuring Gosar for promulgating a video depicting him murdering Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) by plunging a sword into her neck.

And, of course, in July, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to seat two of McCarthy’s five picks for the House Jan. 6 committee. She accepted three Republicans and nixed two, the unbearable Jim Jordan of Ohio and Jim Banks of Indiana.

McCarthy, it should be noted, then picked up his marbles and went home. He withdrew from the process entirely and refused to appoint any of his members. In response, Pelosi invited onto the committee two Republicans who have not been cowed by Trump, Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois.

Pelosi, by the way, was not just within her rights as speaker to refuse to seat Jordan and Banks. She essentially had no choice.

Jordan and Banks have both demonstrated zero interest in sussing out the truth about Jan. 6. Both were vocal critics of the committee’s very existence. Nominating them in the first place was simply further proof of McCarthy’s bad faith, fealty to Trump and obstructionism.

Jordan beclowned himself every time he opened his mouth during the House Intelligence Committee’s hearings on the first Trump impeachment. For his performance, Trump awarded him the Medal of Freedom.

But more important, Jordan has no business on the committee because he is a material witness to the events of Jan. 6. And so, for that matter, is McCarthy. Both have refused the committee’s invitation to testify, speciously claiming they have no relevant information to share — as if it’s up to them to make that judgment — that the investigation is an exercise in Democratic partisanship and serves no legitimate legislative purpose.

Contrast that to the House Republicans’ Benghazi hearings spectacle. Recall that McCarthy infamously admitted on national television that they were nothing more than political theater designed to dirty up Hillary Clinton. “Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?” he told Sean Hannity. “But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened, had we not fought.”

The refusal of McCarthy and Jordan to cooperate puts committee members in the uncomfortable position of having to decide whether to issue subpoenas to their own colleagues.

“I wish that he were a brave and honorable man,” Cheney said ruefully of McCarthy last week in an interview with CNN. “He’s clearly trying to cover up what happened. He has an obligation to come forward and we’ll get to the truth.”

At her weekly news conference, Pelosi said McCarthy “has an obligation, as we seek the truth, to help with that.”

Schiff, who used to be friendly with McCarthy, did not mince words: “By his own admission, Kevin McCarthy is a key witness to the events of January 6 and Trump’s response to the violence,” he said by email Friday. “Nevertheless, it should come as no surprise that McCarthy is refusing to cooperate with the Select Committee’s investigation, because McCarthy always puts Donald Trump’s interests ahead of the country. And from the very beginning, Trump and McCarthy have vigorously opposed any effort at accountability.”

Thankfully, the truth about Jan. 6 is already emerging in ways that are beyond the control of Trump lackeys like McCarthy and Jordan.

On Thursday, the Justice Department announced that 11 people, including Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, had been arrested and charged with “seditious conspiracy” in connection with the plot to invade the Capitol to prevent Congress from certifying President Biden’s victory.

Contrary to sweeping Republican efforts to downplay the attempted coup, this was not a spontaneous act by dupes who let Trump goad them into criminal behavior.

According to the federal grand jury indictment, the Oath Keepers, a right-wing militia group that recruited former and current military and law enforcement personnel, conspired to violently thwart the peaceful transfer of power.

The defendants, according to the Justice Department, organized into “teams that were prepared and willing to use force and to transport firearms and ammunition into Washington, D.C.”

The indictment quoted many of the Oath Keepers’ internal communications, many about weapons being stashed just outside Washington. “It will be a bloody and desperate fight,” wrote Rhodes in one. “We are going to have a fight. That can’t be avoided.”

There is no question now, a year later, that anti-democratic conspirators armed to the teeth were prepared to do violence to overturn the results of a fair and fraud-free election.

The fact that they failed does not make the attempt any less grave.

McCarthy needs to tell Americans what he knew, when he knew it and exactly what Trump told him on Jan. 6.

Otherwise, he has made himself into a confederate of the insurrectionists and fools who, as Biden so memorably put it, held a dagger to the throat of our democracy that day.

Abcarian: The brazen, mind-boggling Republican revisionism regarding Jan. 6? It never ends. January 5, 2022

Abcarian: A warning from Adam Schiff: Trump’s assault on democracy is far from over. October 10, 2021

Los Angeles Times

Letters to the Editor: Kevin McCarthy is the stuff dictatorships are made of

January 21, 2022

To the editor: House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield), about whom columnist Robin Abcarian writes so tellingly, is a poster boy for the first law of dictatorial government.

That law is that the first loyalty is not to good government, to a constitution or to the people, but rather to the “dear leader” — in this case former President Trump. It is now evident that not just McCarthy but also the entire Republican Party has adopted this practice and is no longer a political party in the American tradition.

We should understand these facts if we are to save our democracy come voting time.

Thomas Alden, Palm Desert-

..

To the editor: McCarthy will never be speaker of the House. He committed the cardinal sin of speaking against the former Oval Office occupant and then sought atonement.

The problem is that the former occupant has a long memory and never forgives a slight. Indeed, he obsesses about how he can get revenge.

If — and here I don’t concede anything — the party out of power is restored in 2022, look for Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), the current House minority whip, to get the blessing. He lurks in the corners like a reptile waiting to strike its oblivious prey.

McCarthy, with his blind ambition, doesn’t see the danger.

Melissa Verdugo, Rancho Palos Verdes

..

To the editor: My thanks to Abcarian for calling out McCarthy as a spineless liar. But what’s the point? You can’t shame someone who has no sense of shame.

He and a majority of his Republican colleagues have embraced former Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway’s world of “alternative facts.” They are making voting harder for people they don’t like, and making sure the votes are counted by people they do like.

I believe American democracy is in for a rough patch.

Bart Braverman, Indio

CNN

Joe Biden is not failing or flailing

By Kirsten Powers, CNN Senior Political Analyst January 21, 2022

Kirsten Powers is a CNN senior political analyst and NYT bestselling author of “Saving Grace: Speak Your Truth, Stay Centered and Learn to Coexist with People Who Drive You Nuts.” The views expressed in this commentary are her own.

(CNN)Here’s an apparently unpopular opinion: Joe Biden is not failing or flailing. His presidency is not in peril. It’s hard to see this through the blizzard of over-the-top headlines such as, “Biden Can Still Rescue His Presidency,” “How the Biden Administration Lost Its Way” and “Biden’s Epic Failures.”

Kirsten Powers: Everyone needs to take a breath: It’s been one year. These headlines could just as easily read, “Joe Biden Fails to Fix Every Problem in the World in 365 days.”

What drives much of the “presidency in peril” coverage is Biden’s approval ratings. CNN’s poll of polls, released Thursday, found that 41% of Americans approve of the way Joe Biden is handling his job while 54% disapprove.

Low approval ratings are used as a proxy by various political and ideological factions to argue that the president needs to do more of what they want and if he doesn’t, he won’t get reelected. (Spoiler alert: nobody will cast their vote in three years based on how they feel today about Biden). Progressives argue ratings are low because Biden is not progressive enough and moderates and “Never Trump” Republicans argue it’s because Biden is too liberal. It’s become conventional wisdom in the media that Biden’s approval ratings started dropping because of how he handled the Afghanistan withdrawal. But Gallup’s senior editor Jeff Jones told Politico in November that his declining poll numbers began before that, during the Delta Covid-19 variant surge. The fact is, approval ratings are most closely tied to how people feel about their day-to-day lives. Americans are understandably fatigued as we enter the third year of the pandemic and, until the US gets back to some semblance of normal, we should expect Biden’s approval ratings to reflect that frustration. Moreover, gas prices are high and research has shown that presidential approval ratings often track with gas prices, even though the president’s power over these prices is limited. The economic news is mostly good for Biden — unemployment is down and wages are up — but inflation is high and rising. Taken together, this means the day-to-day life of many Americans feels really hard.

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It doesn’t help that the media reinforce the idea that Biden is somehow failing because he hasn’t solved issues that have bedeviled his predecessors over longer periods of time. The New York Times dinged Biden this week, noting that, “The president has not yet succeeded in meeting his own goals for combating climate change,…[hasn’t] delivered on his broader promise for a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented Americans” and has failed “on the central promise he made during the 2020 campaign — to ‘shut down’ the pandemic…”This is bananas, but it’s a fairly typical roundup of the disconnected-from-reality analysis of Biden’s first year.No president has been able to achieve a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, including presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, who were not able to accomplish immigration reform over an eight-year period each. Biden should not be expected to do what they couldn’t, in a single year, in the middle of a global pandemic.Speaking of the pandemic, it’s hard to shut it down when conservative leaders across the country are committed to making sure that doesn’t happen. Biden, for his part, signed into law the historic $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan to ensure broad distribution of vaccines. But he can’t force people to get vaccinated. He did issue vaccination and testing mandates for businesses, but those were rebuked by the Supreme Court. He also isn’t responsible for conservative disinformation and efforts to thwart measures to protect people from Covid by Republican elected officials, which is the primary reason the US is still struggling with the virus in a way that some other industrialized countries aren’t.

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What about Biden’s alleged lack of success in solving the climate change issue in a single year? Biden has taken many steps that are within his authority on climate change such as rejoining the Paris climate accord, canceling the Keystone XL pipeline and undoing many Trump-era anti-climate executive orders. He has pushed climate priorities in his Build Back Better bill which anyone who is sentient knows hasn’t passed because Biden enjoys the slimmest of majorities in the Senate and he couldn’t win over Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia. There is also the fact that Republicans have zero interest in this bill. Republican obstructionism is not Biden’s fault. Biden is not a magician; he is president. He can’t shout “abracadabra” and produce 50 Democratic senators who will support every element of his agenda. There aren’t 10 GOP senators to pull out of a hat to back common sense and patriotic priorities like protecting voting rights. “But he didn’t end the filibuster for voting rights,” is the complaint. Right, because he doesn’t have the votes.

This doesn’t mean that Biden couldn’t have done some things better in his first year. The administration was caught flat-footed by the Omicron variant and failed to deliver on promises to make testing easier and more available to Americans. Biden should have called Sen. Manchin’s bluff on Build Back Better a long time ago and struck a deal if there was one to be had (which is debatable). If Manchin wouldn’t strike a deal, Biden should have moved on to something more achievable like breaking the bill into smaller parts (something he said in his press conference this week he is open to doing).Get our free weekly newsletter

Ultimately, we need to remember that Biden entered the White House during one of the most difficult periods this country has ever faced. “The worst pandemic in 100 years. The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression,” he said during his campaign. “The most compelling call for racial justice since the 60’s. And the undeniable realities and accelerating threats of climate change.” We can now add to that list an attack on democracy by one of the two major political parties. It seems that whatever Biden’s flaws, the country is in a better place than it was when he took office, something that was not a given considering the challenges he was up against. Like all presidents, he is clearly absorbing the lessons of the first year and recalibrating for the next.