07 May 20
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V (Formerly Eve Ensler) | Touch Saved Me From Loneliness. What Will We Become Without It?
V (formerly Eve Ensler), Guardian UK
V writes: "So much of my life and the lives of so many women is found through touch. We touch our babies, we hold them to our breasts and bellies, we wash our aging mothers' bodies and comb and braid our daughters' hair. We massage and we pet and we soothe and we tickle. We do this with each other."
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Participants in the 32nd annual Kingdom Day Parade in Los Angeles, Jan. 16, 2017. (photo: Ronen Tivony/AP)
Trump Vows Complete End of Obamacare Law Despite Pandemic
Devlin Barrett, The Washington Post
Barrett writes: "President Trump said Wednesday he will continue trying to toss out all of the Affordable Care Act, even as some in his administration, including Attorney General William P. Barr, have privately argued parts of the law should be preserved amid a pandemic."
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Officials fear the arrival of a former top aide to Vice President Mike Pence could undercut Defense Secretary Mark Esper. (photo: Drew Angerer/Getty)
Trump Sent a Political Ally to the Pentagon to Vet Officials' Loyalty
Jack Detsch and Robbie Gramer, Foreign Policy
Excerpt: "In another move aimed at consolidating control over policy and messaging, the Trump administration is sending a White House loyalist to serve in a key Defense Department policy role that officials are worried is aimed at weeding out civilians not loyal to the president, Foreign Policy has learned."
Michael Cutrone, who has been detailed as Vice President Mike Pence’s top national security aide for South Asia, is set to arrive at the Pentagon to serve in a behind-the-scenes role vetting Defense Department officials for loyalty to the president, according to two current administration officials.
Some officials fear that the arrival of Cutrone and other planned personnel moves at the Pentagon could undercut Defense Secretary Mark Esper as the White House has looked to put in place more defense officials loyal to the president, headlined by the reported pick of retired Army Brig. Gen. Anthony Tata as the agency’s top policy official, who caught President Donald Trump’s eye as a Fox News commentator.
“He is pushing to replace and remove civilians in OSD that are not aligned with the White House,” one current senior administration official told Foreign Policy of Cutrone’s plans to reshuffle officials in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. “Esper has no say in who the key people are going into senior positions.”
In the months since his impeachment trial in the Senate, Trump has purged officials considered independent and appointed political loyalists to a number of senior positions, ousting the U.S. government’s top oversight official, Glenn Fine, last month and nominating a permanent successor in his place for his day job at the Pentagon. Trump also fired the intelligence community’s top oversight official, Michael Atkinson, in April, who told lawmakers about the whistleblower complaint over the White House’s hold of military aid to Ukraine that launched an impeachment inquiry.
It was not immediately clear when Cutrone, who is leaving his career-track position as a CIA analyst to become a political appointee, will take on his new role as principal deputy assistant secretary for international security affairs. He replaces Dave Trulio, the former chief of staff for the Pentagon’s undersecretary for policy, who filled the job temporarily before leaving the department this year.
Officials say the new job would allow Cutrone to scrutinize Pentagon staffing without a public-facing side to his job. The Pentagon told Foreign Policy in a statement that it had “no personnel announcement with regard to that person or that position, and we don’t have any information about any other speculation” in the story.
A White House official told Foreign Policy that Cutrone was selected as a recognized national security professional to help lead the portfolio, which includes overseeing policy for NATO bloc nations, Africa, and the Middle East.
This latest personnel move has drawn concern from veteran Pentagon officials, who fear that the few remaining appointees in place empowered to push back on underdeveloped policy ideas will be removed from their posts or undermined, marking much tighter White House control than it had under former Defense Secretary James Mattis, who was close to many of the agency’s political appointees.
Kathryn Wheelbarger, a former Senate Armed Services Committee staffer for Sen. John McCain, permanently holds the role set for Cutrone but has been serving as an acting assistant secretary for international affairs for more than 18 months.
The White House official told Foreign Policy that the move would not impact Wheelbarger, who was sent forward this year as the Trump administration’s intended nominee for undersecretary of intelligence.
But the current senior administration official told Foreign Policy that Wheelbarger’s ties to McCain, a noted Trump critic, and Mattis were preventing the administration from putting her up for any confirmation. Politico reported in March that Wheelbarger’s nomination had been held up amid concerns from some Trump aides she was not sufficiently loyal to the president.
“She’s the only person holding down the fort, and she’s vulnerable. She has no top cover,” said Bilal Saab, who was until recently a senior advisor on Middle East issues at the Pentagon.
“Points of resistance to really bad policy ideas keep evaporating one after the other,” added Saab, now a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.
Defense officials believe Cutrone is taking cues on staffing issues from Pence’s office, where he served for nearly three years. Other former colleagues who worked with Cutrone said he was not an ideologue and had carved out a reputation as an expert on Afghanistan and other South Asia issues. “In the Pence office, there wasn’t a fealty box to check,” said one person familiar with Cutrone, who has been detailed to the vice president’s office since 2017.
Most of the ranks of those officials are already appointees tapped by Trump. But in spite of that, there has been a more concerted focus by the Trump administration to remove appointees seen as close with former Defense Secretary Mattis, who pushed back on the president’s treatment of NATO allies, withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, and abrupt exit from the counter-Islamic State mission in Syria, prompting the retired Marine Corps general to resign as Pentagon chief in December 2018.
“It’s becoming a bit of a purge,” said Jim Townsend, a former Pentagon policy official during the Obama administration. He said that as the administration stacks the Pentagon with a fresh wave of appointees who may not have as much defense policy experience, it can create friction between them and the civil service and military staffers. That, in turn, can throw sand in the gears of the policymaking process. “Some of these true believers … they might not know how to work with the bureaucracy, they might not know the issues as well, and they’re feeling the pressure from the bosses,” he said.
Cutrone will be talking to deputy assistant secretaries, the key issue area managers for Pentagon policy, to vet for appointees not aligned with the White House, the senior administration official said.
Surprising many, Cutrone helped nix the appointment of Seth Jones, a well-respected former advisor to U.S. special operations forces in Afghanistan who was set to become the Pentagon’s top policy official to the war-torn country, by pointing attention to the think tank expert’s contributions to non-Trump-aligned political candidates, officials familiar with the matter say. Jones declined a request to comment for this story.
The sidelining of Jones comes as more appointees close to Trump have made headlines, including Lou Bremer, a former Navy SEAL about whom the White House filed notice of its formal intent to nominate as assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict—a role that has been left without a Senate-confirmed appointee for almost a year. Former officials said Owen West, the last full-time appointee to hold that role, his acting successor Mark Mitchell, and fired Undersecretary of Defense for Policy John Rood were part of a Mattis-aligned contingent that pushed back on “more extreme” White House policy positions.
Simone Ledeen, another political loyalist, also recently took over as deputy assistant secretary for Middle East affairs. Ledeen has served in positions at the Pentagon and Treasury Department in the past and as an executive at an international bank. Her father, Michael Leeden, is a prominent conservative foreign-policy thinker who advised the Pentagon and State Department during the George W. Bush administration.
It is not clear whether Cutrone or the White House has identified other civilians for potential cuts, as the president has stepped in to appoint more loyalists to the Pentagon after Rood departed in February after staunchly opposing many of Trump’s initiatives, including up-tempo strikes against Iranian targets and the withholding of U.S. military aid for Ukraine that eventually triggered an impeachment inquiry.
Even amid the coronavirus pandemic, the Pentagon has looked to keep the pace of nominations moving forward. On Thursday, the Senate Armed Services Committee will host Kenneth Braithwaite, Trump’s former ambassador to Norway and a personal friend of Esper, for a confirmation hearing to be the next Navy secretary. He will face questions from the Senate alongside James Anderson, tapped to be the Pentagon’s No. 2 policy official, and Gen. Charles Q. Brown, nominated to be Air Force chief of staff.
Along with announcing his intent to nominate Bremer on Monday, Trump also said the administration would tap Shon Manasco as undersecretary of the Air Force, Michele Pearce to be Army general counsel, and John Whitley to be the Pentagon’s director of cost assessment and program evaluation.
But with lawmakers already squeezed into a tight legislative calendar by the coronavirus pandemic, former officials are worried that the administration could be pushing through too many unseasoned bureaucrats into high-level Pentagon roles.
“The end of the administration is not when the seasoned, cool hands come in,” said Townsend, the former Pentagon official. “It’s when they’re cramming people in.”
New York governor Andrew Cuomo. (photo: Noam Galai/Getty)
Cuomo Extends NY Eviction Moratorium Through August, Announces Agricultural Buyback Program
Zack Budryk, The Hill
Budryk writes: "New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) announced Thursday that a statewide moratorium on evictions would be extended through August 20 due to the coronavirus pandemic."
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New inmates in an observation cell block exited their cell one or two at a time and donned face masks to receive their lunch trays at St. Louis County jail in Duluth, Minnesota, April 28, 2020. (photo: Alex Kormann/Star Tribune)
ALSO SEE: New Model Shows Reducing Jail Population Will
Lower COVID-19 Death Toll for All of Us
America's Crowded Prisons Are About to Create a Coronavirus Crisis in Rural America
Tana Ganeva, The Intercept
Ganeva writes: "For the past several decades, rural America's economic lifeline has been the construction and operation of prisons and immigrant detention centers, both public and for-profit."
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U.S. soldiers inspect the site where an Iranian missile hit at Ain al-Asad air base in Anbar province, Iraq, January 13, 2020. (photo: John Davison/Reuters)
Trump Vetoes Senate Bill Barring Him From Launching War on Iran Without Congressional Authorization
Gino Spocchia, The Independent
Spocchia writes: "President Donald Trump has vetoed legislation that limited a president's ability to wage war against Iran without the approval of Congress."
On Wednesday, Mr Trump said that he vetoed the Iran war powers resolution because it was “insulting” to the presidency.
In a statement, he argued that the nonbinding legislation “purported to direct me to terminate the use of United States Armed Forces in hostilities against Iran.”
Congress passed the Iran war powers resolution in the aftermath of the US killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, amid widespread concerns about tensions between the US and Iran.
At the time, the resolution – which was introduced to Congress by Democratic Senator Tim Kaine – showed bipartisan support for reigning-in president Trump’s war-making powers.
“This was a very insulting resolution, introduced by Democrats as part of a strategy to win an election on November 3 by dividing the Republican Party,” said Trump in the White House statement on Wednesday. “The few Republicans who voted for it played right into their hands.”
In another White House memo, reported CNN, the president said “This indefinite prohibition is unnecessary and dangerous”.
“The resolution implies that the President’s constitutional authority to use military force is limited to defense of the United States and its forces against imminent attack. That is incorrect,” Trump said on Wednesday.
Trump continued: “We live in a hostile world of evolving threats, and the Constitution recognises that the President must be able to anticipate our adversaries’ next moves and take swift and decisive action in response. That’s what I did!”
Congress is not expected to override the president’s veto during a vote on Thursday, as Republicans hold a 53-to 47-seat majority in the US senate.
Mr Kaine on Wednesday called on senators to vote with him to override the veto, saying on Twitter: “I urge my colleagues to join me in voting to override his veto—Congress must vote before sending our troops into harm’s way.”
The resolution was passed by the House of Representatives in March and the Senate in April, with the support of a small number of Republicans.
Navajo Generating Station, a 2250 megawatt coal-fired power plant located on the Navajo Indian Reservation near Page, Arizona. (photo: Janice and Nolan Braud/Alamy)
Building a Just and Renewable Future on the Navajo Nation
Grist and Marguerite Casey Foundation
Excerpt: "When the smokestacks of the Navajo Generating Station wheezed their final puffs and the coal plant at last closed its doors in 2019, more than 400 workers lost their jobs. Upwards of 90 percent of them were Diné (Navajo)."
Upwards of 90 percent of them were Diné (Navajo). For the Navajo Nation, which had leased the land on which the generating station was built, the November shuttering of the plant also meant losing $30 to $50 million in annual revenue.
The generating station’s 13 terawatt-hours of yearly electricity production had been fueled by lumps of coal from Peabody Energy’s Kayenta Mine, a surface mine a short train ride away. Without the plant burning its coal, there was no longer a need for the mine either. It, too, would close, and with it went more jobs. These losses are felt even more acutely in the age of COVID-19, when employment and economic stability are ever more uncertain.
But in this difficult and dramatic end of a nearly 50-year era, Robyn Jackson sees an opportunity. Jackson is the climate and energy outreach director at Diné Citizens Against Ruining our Environment (Diné CARE), a Navajo-led environmental justice organization. To her and others, the closure represents a new chance to invest in clean energy on a meaningful scale.
Perhaps more importantly, it’s an opportunity to hear from the voices regularly excluded from the kinds of policy-making processes that determine an economy’s energy mix: voices from frontline communities most heavily hit by the pollution and environmental degradation that are generated along with the power.
In the face of energy-sector tumult, Diné CARE — along with partner groups like Tó Nizhóní Ání (Sacred Water Speaks) and Black Mesa Water Coalition — are calling for a just transition to a clean-energy economy rooted in Diné Fundamental Law and values. Called the Navajo Equitable Economy initiative, the plan and its organizers envision a future of clean water and water rights, transition assistance from utilities, renewable electricity generation, and, ultimately, a Navajo-led energy sector that diversifies the Navajo economy.
Voices in the sacrifice zone
“Over the years, our communities have been sacrificed to meet the energy demands of other cities in the West,” Jackson says, referring to the huge swathes of Arizona, Nevada, and California that had been powered by the generating station before it closed.
“We’re in the sacrifice zone,” says Carol Davis, the executive director of Diné CARE. She points to the disproportionate rates of poverty, unemployment, and poor health outcomes in the communities with which her organization works. They stand in sharp contrast to the wealth generated through fossil-fuel extraction — and in the face of the pandemic, one hears an eerie echo in her words.
For Diné CARE and its collaborators, the job, now, is to ensure a just transition comes to pass. But with the novel coronavirus currently ripping across the Navajo Nation — at the time of writing, Window Rock had reported more than 2,000 cases of COVID-19 — the gears of bureaucracy are coming to a grinding halt, and the inequities of the status quo have been thrown again into stark relief. Grassroots groups are shifting their attention to donating food and sewing masks for communities often without access to running water or the internet. And much of Diné CARE’s organizing has long relied on face-to-face communication, not least in public meetings.
In the late 1980s, the group’s founding members organized the local community in Dilkon, Arizona, to stop the development of a medical waste incinerator and dump that had been previously approved by the local tribal government. In 1990, the group would go on to co-found the Indigenous Environmental Network, an alliance of Native-led environmental justice groups committed to environmental activism and community organizing.
Since then, Diné CARE has championed a wide range of related efforts, from blocking an asbestos dump in Huerfano, New Mexico; to rallying for reforestation in the Chuska Mountains on the Colorado Plateau; to amending the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to expand just compensation for local uranium miners’ health conditions.
“All of these things took a lot of organizing, a lot of working with communities,” Jackson says.
In the wake of the Navajo Generating Station and Kayenta Mine closures, the seeding of a Navajo Equitable Economy represents the group’s next chapter. And the playbook going forward remains the same.
Diné CARE’s board is composed of people from across many different Navajo Nation communities, and all the group’s efforts begin as grassroots campaigns to give voice to those not heard by federal or tribal governments.
“The big thing is to try to empower our people to speak for themselves,” Jackson says.
The possibility
The new year brought new momentum for the clean-energy movement. Speaking before the Los Angeles City Council in February, Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez argued for building out a reinvigorated partnership around renewables. (The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, or LADWP, was a former part-owner of the Navajo Generating Station but sold its stake to Salt River Project, the plant’s operator, in 2016.)
“We want to be the leaders in renewable energy in Indian Country,” Nez said. “And we are already moving forward on that path by creating a solar project on the Navajo Nation that generates 55 megawatts of electricity.”
The project in question represents an experiment in utility-scale solar on the Navajo Nation. Wholly Navajo-owned, the Kayenta Solar facility consists of two solar farms, with a third under construction. In a recent op-ed for the Arizona Daily Sun, Jackson cited a study that found “the Navajo Nation has the most renewable energy potential of any tribal lands in the United States.” And though LADWP gave up its ownership stake in the coal plant, it still owns the relevant transmission lines, so advocates argue making the switch to a clean energy partnership will be easier than most.
The Los Angeles city council would go on to vote in favor of the partnership, beginning with commissioning a feasibility study of replacing coal-fired power sources with clean energy. Under its 2019 sustainability plan, Los Angeles has committed to being 55 percent renewable by 2025. The vote represents a significant step in the right direction for just-transition advocates. In a recent statement, Jessica Keetso of Tó Nizhóní Ání called 100-percent-renewable plans “the only option to re-establish good-faith relations between states and tribes.”
In this manner, the Navajo Equitable Economy initiative is about more than the energy sector — it’s also the latest referendum on fairness and respect for indigenous communities and sovereignty. And with two more coal plants on or near the Navajo Nation scheduled to shutter over the next 11 years, it’s a referendum to which regulators and policymakers will return again.
For now, a hold
Today, though, with public comment periods tabled or moved to Zoom — and many organizers operating in emergency mode — some of the necessary coalition-building, reclamation, and transition efforts have stalled. “The whole closure process is suspended for COVID,” Davis says. “The agencies were gearing up to comply with reclamation standards. They need a reclamation plan in place.” Now, much of that work has come to a halt, she says, and a group that relies on grassroots organizing, community contact, and public testimony is retooling its efforts for the era of social distancing.
In the meantime, legal appeals march on. The Navajo Nation is currently seeking $62 million from Tucson Electric Power, one of the owners of the Navajo Generating Station: $100,000 for every megawatt of capacity the utility owned across three plants that have either closed or are slated for decommissioning. And while the Arizona Corporation Commission, the state’s regulatory body for utility companies, told utilities to prepare to offer transition funding to affected communities upon closure, the degree to which they’ll step up remains an open question. “It’s a hard ask,” David says, “but we think it’s due.”
Diné CARE and its organizing collaborators will continue to make the hard asks. In the present moment of great uncertainty, communities the world over have found themselves faced with similar energy and equity challenges — what Jackson would describe as opportunities. A global price war along with the economic effects of the coronavirus have roiled and tanked oil markets; analysts expect 2020 to see the largest drop in demand for fossil fuels ever. The shocks to the energy sector have given some cause to ask whether the pandemic will spur permanent changes in the world’s energy mix. In this respect, the closure of the Navajo Generating Station — and the difficult conversations unfolding around it today — offer a window into a debate that may only become more salient in other communities.
“It was the hope of our past leaders that our nation’s natural resources and raw materials would lead to local investment, the creation of jobs through factories and industries outside the energy sector, infrastructure improvements, paved roads, access to running water and energy, ultimately culminating in a stronger economy and enriching the quality of life for all Diné people,” said Keetso, of Tó Nizhóní Ání, in a recent testimony to the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission. Referring to the coal economy, she said: “This is no longer an acceptable economic driver and no longer an acceptable energy source.”
In the coming months, as communities grieve and the world recovers, her words will be put to a new test.
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