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22 October 20
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The Trump Campaign Reportedly Blew $1 Billion on Private Jet Rides, Trump Properties, and Don Jr.'s Shitty Book
Bess Levin, Vanity Fair
Levin writes: "One of the great myths that propelled Donald Trump into the White House in 2016 was that he was a genius businessman who would use his singular negotiating skills to restore America's so-called greatness."
Now it can’t even afford to air ads in key swing states.
In reality, he was a total failure who put six companies into bankruptcy and only did well for himself playing the part of a successful businessman on TV (and using multimillion dollar losses to basically never pay taxes). Of course, Trump never told supporters that their savior nearly went broke due to a series of very bad business decisions, just like his campaign hasn’t tweeted about the fact that it’s strapped for cash after blowing most of its money on legal fees, Trump properties, private jet rides, and his eldest son’s book.
The Associated Press reports that despite having raised over $1 billion since 2017, the president’s reelection campaign has “set a lot of it on fire.” One of the biggest tells is that Joe Biden and his Democratic allies are expected to outspend Trump and the GOP by more than 2-to-1 on ads in the final days of the campaign, reportedly because Trump just doesn’t have the cash:
On Monday, the firm Medium Buying reported Trump was canceling ads in Wisconsin; Minnesota, which Trump had hoped to flip; and Ohio, which went for Trump in 2016 but now appears to be a tight contest. It’s a reversal from May, when Biden’s campaign was strapped for cash and [former campaign manager Brad] Parscale ominously compared the Trump campaign to a “Death Star” that was about to “start pressing FIRE for the first time.”
Trump is now in a position that’s virtually unthinkable for an incumbent president, said Travis Ridout, codirector of the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks advertising spending. “Advertising obviously isn’t everything. But we do think ads matter for a couple percentage points in a presidential race. And it’s just not a good sign for the Trump campaign,” Ridout said.
Where the campaign has dropped major money on advertising, it might as well have put the cash through an industrial shredder for all the impact it made. In January, Trump spent $10 million on a Super Bowl ad when he didn’t even have a Democratic challenger, in a pointless pissing contest with Mike Bloomberg. Last fall, he dropped $250,000 on an ad that ran during Game 7 of the World Series, after the booing against him reached “almost 100 decibels” during Game 5. The campaign also sunk $1.6 million on TV ads in the Washington, D.C., media market—where he received a humiliating 4% of the vote in 2016 and has no chance of winning in 2020—so Trump could gaze adoringly at himself during Fox News commercial breaks. Additionally, Parscale reportedly purchased “a fleet of luxury vehicles“; surrogates were flown on private jets; and it wouldn’t be a Trump operation if the candidate wasn’t charging his own campaign to stay at his properties to the tune of more than $7.4 million since 2017. “They spent their money on unnecessary overhead, lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-famous activity by the campaign staff and vanity ads,” Mike Murphy, a Republican consultant, told the AP. “You could literally have 10 monkeys with flamethrowers go after the money, and they wouldn’t have burned through it as stupidly.”
Naturally, money also went toward legal fees ($38.7 million), merchandise ($35.2 million), and relocating the Republican National Convention after a fight with North Carolina’s governor over coronavirus safety measures. And obviously donors must have known six-figures worth of their contributions would be put toward the first son’s crack at literature:
Nearly $100,000 [was] spent on copies of Donald Trump Jr.’s book Triggered, which helped propel it to the top of the New York Times bestsellers list.
Meanwhile, $310 million can’t be accounted for because it went through limited liability firms, which is precisely the amount of sketchy one should expect from Team Trump. And while campaign manager Bill Stepien insisted that money is not an issue, donors seem to be growing suspicious about whether their money is in good hands:
Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam, recently donated $75 million to Preserve America, a new pro-Trump super political action committee that is not controlled by Trump World political operatives. One of the reasons the group was founded in August is because there is deep distrust among some GOP donors that the existing pro-Trump organizations would spend the money wisely, according to a Republican strategist with direct knowledge of the matter.
Did Trump throw a massive hissy fit during his interview with Lesley Stahl?
It definitely sounds like it!
President Donald Trump abruptly ended a solo interview with CBS News’ 60 Minutes Tuesday and did not return for an appearance he was supposed to tape with Vice President Mike Pence, according to multiple sources familiar with what happened. After camera crews set up at the White House on Monday, Trump sat down with host Lesley Stahl for about 45 minutes on Tuesday before he abruptly ended the interview and told the network he believed they had enough material to use, according to two sources.
Later, the president—late of ignoring the pandemic, refusing to wear a mask, and contracting the virus through total fault of his own—tweeted what appears to be a surreptitiously recorded video of Stahl not wearing a mask, which is definitely something someone who’s confident in how their interview went does:
Incidentally, Stahl had COVID-19 in May and recovered from it, which, according to the president, should make her immune.
Mitch McConnell warns White House to avoid stimulus deal before election
Why would the GOP rush to get much needed aid out to Americans affected by the pandemic when it could fuck with Democrats for sport for a few more weeks?
Prospects for an economic relief package in the next two weeks dimmed markedly on Tuesday after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) revealed that he has warned the White House not to strike an agreement with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi before the the November 3 election. In remarks at a closed-door Senate GOP lunch, McConnell told his colleagues that Pelosi (D-Calif.) is not negotiating in good faith with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and any deal they reach could disrupt the Senate’s plans to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court next week. Republicans have voiced concerns that a stimulus deal could splinter the party and exacerbate divisions at a time when they are trying to rally behind the Supreme Court nominee. The comments were confirmed by three people who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss them.
McConnell’s attempted intervention came as Pelosi and Mnuchin continued negotiating over the roughly $2 trillion economic relief package. Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said the “conversation provided more clarity and common ground as they move closer to an agreement.” But no deal can become law without McConnell’s blessing, and his direct warning to the White House imperils the chances of any bill becoming law in the next two weeks.
As the Washington Post notes, a poll released Tuesday showed overwhelming support for a stimulus package, so it makes sense that McConnell would want to avoid doing something Americans actually want. “The recovery has slowed and without more help it is at risk of backsliding. Neither the virus nor the economic damages it has wrought are gone, and policymakers would be making a serious mistake to act as if they were,” Adam Ozimek, chief economist at Upwork, told the Post.
Voters cast their ballots at an early voting site in North Charleston, South Carolina, on Oct. 16. (photo: Logan Cyrus/Getty)
A Guide to In-Person Voting vs. Mail-In Voting
Cynthia Gordy Giwa, ProPublica
Gordy Giwa writes: "In the rush to respond swiftly to the pandemic, every state has changed something about its voting process."
READ MORE
Protesters rally against Ice outside City Hall in Seattle. Human rights advocates says there has been a significant acceleration of deportations linked to the possibility that Ice could soon be under new management. (photo: Karen Ducey/Getty)
ICE Officers 'Used Torture to Make Africans Sign Own Deportation Orders'
Julian Borger, Guardian UK
Borger writes: "US immigration officers allegedly tortured Cameroonian asylum seekers to force them to sign their own deportation orders, in what lawyers and activists describe as a brutal scramble to fly African migrants out of the country in the run-up to the elections."
Cameroonians say officers choked, beat and threatened to kill them, as lawyers tell of pre-election removal drive
Many of the Cameroonian migrants in a Mississippi detention centre refused to sign, fearing death at the hands of Cameroonian government forces responsible for widespread civilian killings, and because they had asylum hearings pending.
According to multiple accounts, detainees were threatened, choked, beaten, pepper-sprayed and threatened with more violence to make them sign. Several were put in handcuffs by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers, and their fingerprints were taken forcibly in place of a signature on documents called stipulated orders of removal, by which the asylum seekers waive their rights to further immigration hearings and accept deportation.
Lawyers and human rights advocates said there had been a significant acceleration of deportations in recent weeks, a trend they see as linked to the looming elections and the possibility that Ice could soon be under new management.
“The abuse we are witnessing, especially right now against black immigrants, isn’t new, but it is escalating,” said Christina Fialho, executive director of an advocacy group, Freedom for Immigrants (FFI). “In late September, early October of this year, we began to receive calls on our hotline from Cameroonian and Congolese immigrants detained in Ice prisons across the country. And they were being subjected to threats of deportation, often accompanied by physical abuse.”
“The reality is that Ice operates in the shadows. They thrive in secrecy,” Fialho added. “We know that the US government is deporting key witnesses in an effort to silence survivors and absolve Ice of legal liability.”
A plane carrying 60 Cameroonian and 28 Congolese asylum seekers was quietly flown out of Fort Worth Alliance airport in Texas on 13 October to deliver them to their home countries. The charter plane did not release a flight plan, but it was tracked by immigration rights group Witness at the Border, which said it stopped in Senegal, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo and then Kenya before flying back to Texas.
The Cameroonian deportees were from the country’s English-speaking minority, which has been the target of widespread abuses, including extrajudicial killings, by government security forces seeking to crush a separatist movement. The Trump administration cut the country’s trade privileges at the beginning of this year because of the persistent abuses.
Most of the deportees on the flight had testified that they had suffered detention without charge and torture at the hands of the Cameroonian military, and had relatives who had been killed. They were detained for questioning on arrival in Douala, but some were freed after their families paid bribes, and have since gone into hiding.
As for the others, the lawyer Evaristus Nkongchu said: “We have no knowledge of what happened to those that were deported. We know they arrived, but we haven’t heard what happened after they arrived at the airport.”
The Cameroonian embassy in Washington did not reply to several requests for comment.
Detainees and their lawyers have been told there will be another deportation flight in the coming days, possibly as early as Friday.
‘I kept telling him, “I can’t breathe”’
Cameroonians are routinely denied asylum or parole in the US immigration court system, which is run by the justice department.
Victims, family members, lawyers and human rights activists have described a range of coercive measures used by Ice on Cameroonian detainees at the Adams county correctional centre in Mississippi to make them sign their own deportation orders.
A complaint filed by FFI and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) cites eight cases of forced signatures or fingerprints on stipulated orders of removal.
One of those involved, identified by the initials BJ, said that on 27 September, Ice officers “pepper-sprayed me in the eyes and [one officer] strangled me almost to the point of death. I kept telling him, ‘I can’t breathe.’ I almost died.”
“As a result of the physical violence, they were able to forcibly obtain my fingerprint on the document,” BJ said.
Another detainee, known as DF, said that he was ordered to sign his deportation order by an Ice agent on 28 September.
“I refused to sign. He pressed my neck into the floor. I said, ‘Please, I can’t breathe.’ I lost my blood circulation. Then they took me inside with my hands at my back where there were no cameras,” DF said. According to his account, he was then taken to a punitive wing of the Adams county centre, known as Zulu, and subjected to further assault.
“They put me on my knees where they were torturing me and they said they were going to kill me. They took my arm and twisted it. They were putting their feet on my neck. While in Zulu, they did get my fingerprint on my deportation document and took my picture,” he said. DF was one of the detainees on the 13 October flight to Douala. It is unclear what has happened to him since.
A third detainee, CA, said he was forced to the ground, sat on, handcuffed and pepper-sprayed. “I was crying, ‘I can’t breathe,’ because they were forcefully on top of me pressing their body weight on top of me. My eyes were so hot ... I was dragged across the ground,” he said. “The officers told me to open my eyes. I couldn’t. My legs and hands were handcuffed. They forcefully opened my palm. Some of my fingers were broken. They forced my fingerprint on to the paper.”
CA was taken off the 13 October flight, but still faces deportation.
A brief reprieve
Two Cameroonians were taken off the 13 October deportation flight at the last moment after the intervention of human rights advocates through the office for civil rights and civil liberties in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), but they have been told by Ice agents it will not save them from deportation.
Patrick, a detainee who has been told he is on the deportation list, said he has not been able to sleep knowing that Ice agents could come for him at any time, and that for him, deportation could well be a death sentence.
“I live in worry because I don’t know what awaits me. I don’t even know what the next day is going to look like, and will I be taken back home,” Patrick (a pseudonym) told the Guardian in a call from a detention centre. He did not want his name used because of the risk to his surviving family members.
His lawyer, Ruth Hargrove, said: “He actually has a very strong case for asylum, but the problem is he may die before he gets his hearing, because he was supposed to be on that plane that went out last week, and his Ice officer just guaranteed that he will be on the next flight.”
An Ice spokeswoman, Sarah Loicano, confirmed that a formal complaint over use of force against the Cameroonian detainees had been submitted to the DHS inspector general.
Loicano added: “That said, in general, sensationalist unsubstantiated allegations, particularly those made anonymously and without any fact-checkable specifics, is irresponsible, and should be treated with the greatest of scepticism.”
“Ice is firmly committed to the safety and welfare of all those in its custody. Ice provides safe, humane, and appropriate conditions of confinement for individuals detained in its custody,” she said.
For those who have already been deported, any reforms to Ice would be too late, and they are currently in no position to give evidence about their treatment in the US.
The Texas-based sister of one of the deportees who escaped into hiding after the 13 October flight to Douala, told the Guardian: “My brother ran away to America thinking that you will be safe here in another culture. But they sent him back and right now he has no life. He’s hiding in the bush. What can you do in the bush?”
Democratic Senate candidate Jaime Harrison addresses supporters at a drive-in rally on October 17, 2020, in North Charleston, South Carolina. (photo: Cameron Pollack/Getty)
How South Carolina Became One of 2020's Most Unexpected Senate Battlegrounds
Li Zhou, Vox
Zhou writes: "South Carolina is the Senate battleground that no one saw coming."
The historically Republican state is now competitive, as Sen. Lindsey Graham defends his seat from Jaime Harrison.
In a state where no Democrat has won a Senate seat for more than two decades, former South Carolina Democratic Party Chair Jaime Harrison has fielded an incredibly strong challenge to incumbent Sen. Lindsey Graham, a high-profile Trump ally. Although early polling had Harrison lagging Graham by as much as 17 percentage points in February, some recent surveys show the two lawmakers with an even split in support.
The support he’s gotten has surprised many — including Harrison himself.
“I’m amazed by it,” he told Vox. “I got into this race because I knew I had a shot, but not in my wildest dreams did I imagine a campaign growing like this campaign has grown.”
Longtime South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), whom Harrison previously worked for as a congressional staffer, has echoed this sentiment. “Not a single soul alive believed when he announced for the Senate that he would be sitting here 30 days out, 48-48,” Clyburn said in an early October interview with Politico.
By raising a staggering amount of money, and positioning himself as a moderate with close ties to the state, Harrison has been able to garner strong support from Democrats and independents, as well as a sliver of moderate Republicans. And now Graham faces one of the closest races of his political career.
Graham has acknowledged this by making appeals for donations during several Fox News appearances, and campaign spokesperson T.W. Arrighi seemed to project a mixture of optimism and realism in a statement to Vox: “Make no mistake — our internal polling has us on track for a victory in November, but Senator Graham is fighting for every vote as he never takes anything for granted.”
Overall, the contest between Harrison and Graham could hinge on voters who split their ticket between the presidential and Senate races. President Donald Trump is still expected to win in South Carolina — even if it’s by much narrower margins than he did in 2016, when he was ahead by 15 points. This means some Trump voters would likely need to defect from Graham — in favor of either Democrats or a third-party candidate — for Harrison to edge out the longtime Republican lawmaker.
That scenario, Winthrop University pollster Scott Huffmon says, is “Harrison’s narrow path on a Nepalese cliff.”
How Harrison closed a double-digit polling gap, briefly explained
Harrison’s strength as a candidate and his ties with national Democrats (he’s an associate chair of the Democratic National Committee) are among the factors that have helped him launch a robust campaign that’s attracted millions in donations from both inside and outside the state. As of September, Harrison had raised $85 million compared to Graham’s $58 million, and that advantage has translated to a huge presence on television and in digital advertising.
Harrison’s massive fundraising haul has been critical in establishing him as a formidable challenger in part because it has allowed him to quickly go from being less well-known to having wide name recognition across the state.
“Jaime Harrison has done what no Democratic candidate has successfully been able to do, and that is raise enough money to take the fight to Lindsey Graham in every part of South Carolina,” says Anton Gunn, a strategist and former state political director for President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign.
Harrison tells Vox this support has been driven by grassroots energy. “We have gotten thousands of volunteers, I think we’re on [14,000] or 15,000 people who signed up to volunteer for our campaign. We’ve gotten well over a million contributions,” he said. As the Guardian reported, both Harrison’s and Graham’s campaigns have seen a high proportion of their contributions coming from out of state.
Experts also note that Harrison began putting out advertising early in the year — months before Graham began mounting a comparable effort on the air — enabling him to introduce himself to voters by focusing on his background, family, and values. Throughout his campaign, Harrison’s messaging has emphasized his ties to South Carolina and policies that relate to the state, like rural broadband access, rather than his partisan affiliation or opposition to Trump. A native South Carolinian who grew up in Orangeburg with a single mother, Harrison frequently talks about his personal connection to the state.
He’s also taken more moderate positions broadly, shying away from support for Medicare-for-all and the Green New Deal and noting that he wouldn’t back eliminating the filibuster, for now. “It’s about opening a Pandora’s box, and the question is, there may be short-term political gains, but are we comfortable with long term repercussions for that?” he said.
As the focus on health care has grown during the pandemic, Harrison has instead emphasized the need for Medicaid expansion. Graham, meanwhile, has continued to oppose the Affordable Care Act and has said he would prefer a system that involved block grants to states, which he says would give South Carolina more flexibility.
Because of the effects of the coronavirus, health care is a top issue for many voters. “The Trump administration’s failure to address Covid-19 early and emphatically weighs on the minds of far too many South Carolinians.” said Democratic strategist Lauren Harper, who’s also the spokesperson for the Lindsey Must Go super PAC. “That failure has exacerbated the need for quality and affordable health care here in our state.”
Broadly, in his messaging, Graham has characterized Harrison as being tied to the “far left,” while emphasizing his own commitment to what he has referred to as “law and order.” The senator has made it clear that he opposes criminal justice reforms like defunding the police (which Harrison has also said he’s against). And Graham has argued that he not only has strong connections to the state but has brought South Carolina federal funding for projects like the development of the Port of Charleston.
Harrison has been able to counter Graham’s campaign rhetoric so successfully, according to Furman University political science professor Danielle Vinson, because his ideological positioning and personal story make him an “ideal Democratic candidate for South Carolina.”
“He’s not too far left; he knows the state really well having been the South Carolina Democratic Party chair,” Vinson says.
The coalition of voters Harrison needs include independents, moderate Republicans, and ticket splitters
Because of the political stance he’s taken, Harrison has been able to connect with Democrats as well as a strong segment of independents and a small group of moderate Republicans who are likely turning away from President Donald Trump. To win, he’ll need massive turnout from Democratic base voters — including the Black voters who comprise 60 percent of the Democratic electorate in South Carolina.
“We have to have the turnout that we had in 2008,” said Gunn. That year, 65.2 percent of Black voters nationally turned out, compared to 59.6 percent in 2016, according to the Pew Research Center.
Per a September Quinnipiac poll of the state, Harrison has the backing of 97 percent of Democrats, 54 percent of independents, and 5 percent of Republicans. Gunn estimates that the state usually falls 55-45 in favor of Republicans, so securing GOP voters — especially moderate Republican women who may be moving away from both Trump and Graham — is vital for Harrison. Concerns about the president’s handling of the pandemic, as well as his rhetoric, are among the factors turning these voters toward Democratic candidates.
Cook Political Report’s Jessica Taylor has noted, too, that Democratic candidates for federal office have historically capped out at 48 percent of the vote in South Carolina, meaning eking out even an improvement of a few percentage points among swing voters could secure the race for Harrison.
There are some other trends in the state that could raise that 48 percent cap Democrats have struggled to surpass in the past. Among them is an influx of new residents who have moved from other left-leaning places. “New folks from other parts of the country that tend to be a little more blue are moving to South Carolina,” says College of Charleston political science professor Gibbs Knotts. “That’s been something that Democrats have been able to tap into.”
In addition to garnering the support of all these groups, Harrison will also have to convince some Republicans who are still aligned with Trump to break with Graham and split their ticket.
It’s unclear how Graham’s weakness with conservative voters will affect the race
One of the biggest variables in the race is the bloc of conservative voters who support Trump but still aren’t that excited about Graham.
Graham — like Republicans in some of the other contested races — is feeling the pressure from both wings of the GOP. On the conservative side, there are voters who think he still doesn’t back Trump enough, despite his staunch defenses of the president’s controversial Supreme Court nominees: first during a fiery moment in Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings in 2018, and more recently in the hearings for nominee Amy Coney Barrett.
Graham, before Trump’s election, had been viewed as a more moderate figure in the Senate who aligned himself closely with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), which many conservatives in the state weren’t happy about. “Five years ago, certain elements of the Republican Party were burning him in effigy because of his affiliation with McCain,” says Chip Felkel, a Republican strategist who’s also an adviser for the Lincoln Project.
There’s a question of whether these conservative voters’ concerns with Graham are still so strong that they’ll split their ticket: If they do, experts think a small fraction could vote for third-party for Constitution Party candidate Bill Bledsoe, though they’re less likely to cross over to Democrats.
“I don’t think there will be a lot of people who will vote for Trump and not Graham,” says Felkel. “I think there are some former Tea Party members — now Trump enthusiasts — who might choose to vote third party, but I don’t think there will be a lot of them.”
Concerned that support for him would lead to Harrison winning the election, Bledsoe dropped out of the race in early October and endorsed Graham, saying, “President Trump has asked that conservatives stand together and reelect Lindsey Graham in order to help make America great again, and I agree.”
But because his exit came so late, Bledsoe’s name will still appear on the ballot. Harrison, hoping to take advantage of this fact, has recently put out advertising aimed at swaying this segment of conservative voters in favor of Bledsoe, including digital ads arguing that he is “too conservative” for South Carolina. Given how close the Senate race has shaped up to be, any narrow gains made from this strategy could potentially be decisive.
Graham has tried to avoid this scenario himself by shoring up his conservative bona fides, and proving his closeness to Trump — most recently playing a prominent role in the advancement of Barrett’s nomination, which is a top priority for the president and many Republican voters.
And, in fact, Arrighi, Graham’s spokesperson, highlighted Graham’s push to seat Barrett as one of his key achievements, saying, “Senator Graham is fighting for South Carolina, helping families and businesses get through the pandemic, and working to ensure a conservative Supreme Court with Judge Amy Coney Barrett as the newest member.”
Barrett’s confirmation process, too, has highlighted the role a Republican majority plays in the Senate. If Republicans were to keep their majority, they’d be able to obstruct Democratic bills in a potential Biden administration, and continue advancing judges in a Trump administration. This could be a reason that some conservative voters ultimately back Graham, even if they don’t fully agree with his record.
With just a few weeks to go, this race is poised to be close to the very end. “I think it’s going to be razor-thin margins,” said Gunn. “It’s not going to be a blowout either way.”
Terrence Floyd, brother of George Floyd, reacts at a makeshift memorial honoring George Floyd in Minneapolis on Monday, June 1, 2020, at the spot where Floyd was taken into custody. (photo: Lucas Jackson/Reuters)
Derek Chauvin, Ex-Officer in George Floyd Case, Gets 3rd-Degree Murder Charge Dismissed
David K. Li, NBC News
Li writes: "A Minnesota judge on Thursday dropped a third-degree murder charge against former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in the case of George Floyd, a Black man who died in police custody in May."
READ MORE
Derek Henio, Randy Chatto, Vernard Martinez and Jimmie Begay, from left, pose for a photo in front of the Ramah Chapter House, where they stage deliveries of supplies to at-risk residents on the Ramah Navajo Indian Reservation. (photo: Jasper Colt/USA TODAY)
'Still Killing Us': The Federal Government Underfunded Health Care for Indigenous People for Centuries. Now They're Dying of COVID-19
Dennis Wagner and Wyatte Grantham-Philips, USA TODAY
Excerpt: "Melvina Musket stared at her dying father through the cellphone screen. His mouth hung open, his eyes were clamped shut and a beard covered his chin. She heard nurses crying in the background."
In reservation areas of New Mexico, health care is underfunded. In this six-part series, USA TODAY investigates links between racism and COVID-19.
elvina Musket stared at her dying father through the cellphone screen. His mouth hung open, his eyes were clamped shut and a beard covered his chin. She heard nurses crying in the background.
“Jesus is waiting for you,” she told him.
Musket, 52, had never seen her father with facial hair. Benjamin Musket, 80, was a former Marine, a retired machinery mechanic, a basketball coach and a board member at their church. He didn’t do beard
The family had been cautious when the pandemic arrived. Four generations of Muskets lived on a sheep ranch in McKinley County, New Mexico, and her father was an elderly diabetic on dialysis. They didn’t shop at their local stores, where too many people neglected to wear masks, instead driving nearly five hours roundtrip to Albuquerque for groceries. When they returned home, they wiped down every purchase and took showers.
The novel coronavirus came all the same. One day in May, Benjamin Musket started coughing. Twelve hours later, he was gasping.
In town, the understaffed Gallup Indian Medical Center, run by the federal government’s Indian Health Service, was filled with cases. When the staff saw Benjamin Musket had a heart infection and COVID-19, they flew him to a hospital in Albuquerque, over 100 miles away. A few weeks later, he was dead.
In the days after Benjamin Musket became ill, nearly everyone in the family tested positive.
Melvina Musket was hospitalized with a high fever. The medical center staff put cold compresses under her arms to cool her down.
Her mother was admitted to a hospital in Albuquerque, where she fell into a nonresponsive fog. Melvina Musket’s brother begged the hospital staff: “I can’t lose my mom this week; I already lost my dad.”
On June 11, their mother died, five days after her husband.
“We didn’t even know how profoundly sick they were,” Melvina Musket said. “It was just too much for their bodies.”
Few places in the world have been as scarred by the coronavirus pandemic as McKinley County, New Mexico. By September, the county ranked first in the state and sixth nationally for COVID-19 deaths per capita.
Roughly 74% of McKinley County’s 71,367 residents are non-Hispanic Native American, mostly Navajo and Zuni. The majority of land within the county’s borders is part of the Navajo Nation reservation. The Navajos, who call themselves Diné, are descendants of people who outlived colonization, smallpox, massacres and resettlement. They take pride in a history of resilience.
Then came the Big Cough, or Dikos NtsaaÃgÃÃ-19, as coronavirus is known among Diné tribal members.
The federal government, which oversees health care for Native Americans under treaty obligations, used a modified influenza plan to address the pandemic. And as the COVID-19 crisis began to overwhelm McKinley County, medical experts and others say federal authorities were slow to respond, a judgment call that cost lives and fueled the spread.
This failure was no accident, experts said. It was the direct result of centuries of systemic racism that has left McKinley County’s health care system chronically underfunded, understaffed, ill-equipped and outdated. And all in a community grappling with multigenerational housing, preexisting medical conditions, substance abuse and poverty, where many live without running water, electricity or enough food for their daily nutritional needs.
During the peak of the pandemic, doctors at the Gallup Indian Medical Center were forced to reuse personal protective equipment. An emergency room and intubation tents were set up in the parking lot. Mothers in labor were diverted to other hospitals to make room for coronavirus patients.
As the federal facility filled up, some overflow patients went to the one private hospital in the area, which also was overcrowded, prompting nurses and doctors at one point to protest in the street against unsafe conditions. For weeks, critical care patients were flown daily to better-equipped facilities in Albuquerque. Delayed medical care can, in some instances, lead to complications or death.
“I am sure if the federal government had intervened a lot quicker, things would have been a lot better. It’s obvious there was a lack of support,” said Jonathan Nez, president of the Navajo Nation.
The U.S. Civil Rights Commission, National Indian Health Board, Government Accountability Office, congressional committees and tribal leaders warned for decades that Native American health care was anemic and primed for catastrophe. Yet, year after year, Congress failed to allocate cash to meet the medical need. Centuries after the United States traded land for health care and other services with sovereign, Native nations, federal officials spend nearly three times as much per person on non-Indian medical care than on health services for Indigenous people.
More recently, when Congress passed a $2.2 trillion economic stimulus package to help the country get through the beginning of the pandemic, only $714 million was earmarked for the Navajo Nation. That amounts to $4,552 per each Diné on the reservation, compared with $6,703 per capita in stimulus funding nationwide. And most of the money didn’t arrive until months later.
“It’s really an unbelievable chain of oppression — it’s still squeezing us, it still has its grip,” said Anna Marie Rondon, executive director of the New Mexico Social Justice and Equity Institute in McKinley County.
“And it’s still killing us.”
After decades of health woes, coronavirus spread easily
Jamie Barboan could barely hear her mother over the sounds of an oxygen machine.
Whoosh-gush. Whoosh-gush. Whoosh-gush.
The noise dominated their phone calls, overwhelming her mother’s soft mumbles.
Barboan, 44, knew the equipment was helping her mom stay alive. But she worried she would hear the sound for the rest of her life.
Barboan’s mother, a certified nursing assistant, was the first in the family to be hospitalized for COVID-19. The virus then spread to Barboan's father and younger brother, sending all three to the Gallup Indian Medical Center. They received dedicated care there, but the facility was soon filled with COVID-19 cases. Barboan’s mother and brother were transported to hospitals in Albuquerque. Officials quarantined her father in a local motel.
Her brother, Andreas Tolth, was 39. She thought he would be OK. He never drank or smoked. He loved horror movies and always took care of his family.
But she had heard others warn, “Once they’re in the hospital, you won’t see them (again).”
For Tolth, that was the heartbreaking truth. After a month-long battle, he died from the coronavirus in July.
“Our hopes were so high,” Barboan said. “Then all of a sudden, one day you get the phone call that they’re not here no more — and it hurt.”
Her parents recovered from the illness but had lost a son.
“They still cry,” she said. “They still struggle.”
The Navajo reservation is the biggest in the nation at 27,000 square miles. It sprawls across Arizona, Utah and New Mexico, from the Grand Canyon to Monument Valley. It’s a vast, arid outback of red mesas, occasional villages and bone-jarring dirt roads leading to sheep ranches.
COVID-19 spread like a high desert wind in McKinley County, one of the nation’s poorest and unhealthiest communities — with high rates of alcohol-related deaths, diabetes and food insecurity, and where many tribal members live with three or four generations in a single-family dwelling.
These underlying medical conditions combine to increase risk for severe illness from COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“It’s a constant cycle of poverty that we deal with. Every single day we have to fight for survival,” said Krystal Curley, a Diné who is executive director of Indigenous Lifeways, a collaboration of nonprofits that support Indigenous communities.
Perhaps nowhere are the disparities more visible than in Gallup, McKinley County’s seat and only incorporated city. The town, nearly surrounded by tribal lands, is known as “The Indian Capital of the World.” The Gallery of Nations Pow Wow is held here, along with the Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial and several major rodeos.
As COVID-19 flourished in McKinley County in mid-April, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham issued an order for bar closures.
The move may have set the stage for the explosion of cases, according to Kevin Foley, who heads the town’s detox center. Surrounding reservations prohibit alcohol. With bars set to shut down, Foley said, tribal members came to drink in Gallup, home to more liquor stores per capita than just about any place in the nation.
Foley, executive director at Na’Nizhoozhi Center, a 30,000 square-foot, cinder-block building, said 98 people arrived at the center that night to sleep off the hours of drinking. They were given metal-framed beds in large common rooms. Although screening for fevers had begun already, sickness crept inside.
Some staffers got sick or quit, forcing the detox center to shut down during the third week of April. At least 21 clients tested positive and were transported to Rehoboth McKinley Christian Health Care Services, Gallup’s other medical center. More clients who had been exposed to coronavirus were sent to motels or the streets. Homelessness is also a risk factor for COVID-19, according to the CDC.
Gallup’s two medical facilities filled as the virus spread. The hospitals are across the street from one another. The Indian Medical Center, with 99 beds, serves Native American patients under the federal government’s obligation to tribes. Rehoboth McKinley operates a private, nonprofit facility with 60 beds.
“We got hit hard and heavy all at one time,” Gallup Mayor Louis Bonaguidi said. “I’ve lost a few friends myself.”
At the Rehoboth McKinley hospital, terminal patients were hooked up to several IVs with multiple drip lines. Hospital chaplain Kris Pikaart said she saw 50 patients die during the first six months of the pandemic, mostly of symptoms related to coronavirus. There were so many drip lines that Pikaart would get tangled in them.
As the crisis grew, Pikaart set up final phone and video calls with families, becoming a conduit in the human tragedy.
The first fatality, in March, sticks with her: A young woman with several children, gravely ill and alone, refused for days to speak with her family. Then, near the end, the woman cried and said, “I want to talk with my kids.”
“She proceeded to tell each one goodbye and gave them instructions on how they should live without her,” Pikaart said. “She rolled out this beautiful, beautiful goodbye.”
It was, Pikaart said, the bravest thing she had ever witnessed.
As spring turned to summer, death came to more McKinley County homes.
For Gabriella Lee’s family in Gallup, it began with four days of coughing, sneezing. Then came the body aches.
Lee’s uncle got sicker and sicker until he could barely breathe. At the Gallup Indian Medical Center, staff put him on a ventilator and then flew him to an Albuquerque hospital for more care.
There, he spoke about an imminent recovery and going out with his wife and son for a “big old steak dinner” once he felt better. He lasted four more days.
The family gathered to say goodbye on video via Facebook Live. He was unconscious. A nurse held the phone to his ear as his relatives gave their final words.
“We said we loved him and everything, how we’re going to miss him,” said Lee. “And he never came home after that.”
Broken promises of health care funding
After the Civil War, when the United States had wrested New Mexico and California from Mexico and miners and ranchers continued moving West, the Diné’s ancestral homeland was besieged by a renewed campaign of violence.
Under an order from U.S. Army Maj. Gen. James H. Carleton, villages were burned, livestock was butchered, water sources were destroyed and more than 10,000 Navajos and Apaches were rounded up, starting in 1864.
The prisoners were forced on an up to 450-mile death march known as The Long Walk. Along the way, 200 succumbed to exhaustion and died. An estimated 1,500 more died at the internment camp from sickness and starvation.
Four years later, the federal government proposed a deal: The United States would provide basic services such as health care, housing and education — if it could keep much of the Diné lands. The 1868 Treaty between the United States of America and the Navajo Tribe of Indians allowed the Diné to return to only a portion of their ancestral homelands. The exchange was one of hundreds of American Indian treaties that have been ratified since 1778.
From the start, government officials refused to honor it.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the federal government passed legislation to terminate its legal obligations to tribes and launch an assimilation policy with Native peoples moving away from reservations and perceived dependence. In 1955, Indian Health Service began to oversee health care on tribal lands.
Two decades later, Congress reversed course, abandoning the assimilation model. The Indian Self-Determination and Education Act recognized tribal sovereignty and enabled Native nations to run their own hospitals, schools, police departments and other programs, funded by the federal government. About half the Indian country health care programs today are tribally operated. But still, the money did not come.
“The underfunding has specifically been in areas that would have helped the Navajo Nation deal with the pandemic,” said U.S. Sen. Tom Udall, D-New Mexico, vice chair of the Committee on Indian Affairs.
Ramah Chapter, one of 110 governmental sub-units of the Navajo Nation partly located in McKinley County, sued the federal government in 1990 for inadequate funding of tribal services. That litigation and dozens of parallel suits dragged on for almost three decades before ending last year. The plaintiffs won a series of Supreme Court decisions. All told, the federal government paid out roughly $2 billion to U.S. tribes and their organizations.
It wasn’t enough to make up for the decades of decay that left Indian health care starved for hospitals, supplies and staffing, said Lloyd Miller, who represented co-plaintiffs in the Ramah case.
“One of the terrible, continuing consequences to the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on Navajos is the historic underfunding of the entire Indian health system,” he said.
Today, Indian Health Service serves 2.56 million American Indians and Alaska Natives across 574 federally recognized tribes in 37 states.
At the end of March, Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act that designated $8 billion for tribes, including $714 million for the Navajo Nation.
Most of the money was delayed, and all of it came with red tape and restrictions.
CARES Act money, for example, can only be used to cover expenses “incurred due to the public health emergency." Tribes have until Dec. 30 to spend it — and even today, activists on the Navajo Nation stress that the money has still not trickled down to the communities that need it most.
The National Indian Health Board and tribal leaders contend the constraints are unrealistic. It’s impossible to provide effective COVID-19 relief without addressing overarching infrastructure, they said — and you can’t build a hospital, water lines or housing by late December.
They also said addressing the health care disparities within the Navajo Nation will cost far more than $714 million, with a planned replacement of the Gallup Indian Medical Center estimated to cost most of that amount, or $550 million. Providing safe drinking water and basic sanitation for everyone on the reservation would cost another $700 million, according to Indian Health Service.
“Is it any wonder we are in the space we are now?” said Dr. Mary Owen, president of the Association of American Indian Physicians and a member of Alaska’s Tlingit band. “Everybody says, ‘You have to make do with what you got.’ Do we? Really? Well, then, give us back those lands.”
Gregory Smithers, a history professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who studied the coronavirus assault on tribes, said infection rates, suffering and deaths are ultimately a result of systemic racism, from historical subjugation to contemporary poverty.
“They really weren’t ready for this type of storm ... and the reason they weren’t ready is because of generation after generation of neglect,” Smithers said. “The virus isn’t waiting for governments to get their medical facilities ready.”
Joseph Kalt, co-director of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, said while there’s a public perception that Indians live on the public dole, the opposite is true. Indigenous people get fewer federal dollars for services than other Americans because they lack political clout. With Native Americans comprising fewer than 2% of the U.S. population, tribal members have little power at the polls, he said. And more than a dozen states have no reservations at all.
“If you’re a member of Congress in one of those states,” Kalt said, “what do you care?”
Shortage of doctors and nurses made pandemic worse
As the county's coronavirus outbreak peaked in April and May, federal authorities converted the gymnasium at Miyamura High School to a field hospital for patients who were improving.
Patients struggled to walk to the bathrooms in the locker room. Volunteers placed chairs along the way as rest stops and posted encouraging signs in English and Diné: “Gramps, you got this.”
Two older patients walked laps around the football field with their oxygen tanks, determined to build strength and go home to their families, said Sanjay Choudhrie, incident commander at the gym.
The gym never housed more than 10 patients at a time because a decision was made to assign nearly all available doctors and nurses to the two area hospitals.
“From the get-go, our problem was a shortage of medical staff,” Choudhrie said.
The Gallup Indian Medical Center was also short on resources. At one point, patient flights to Albuquerque were taking off hourly, with Indian Health Service paying for each trip and costly medical care.
Doctors said they provided the best care they could. Families with loved ones in local hospitals were called frequently with updates. And over 1,000 COVID-19-positive outpatients have been quarantined at area hotels and motels since March, where they’ve received both complex physical and mental health care, according to Dr. Jennie Wei and Dr. Mia Lozada of Gallup Indian Medical Center.
“I can't say we were perfectly ready, but we were building our system and learning as we went,” said Dr. Jonathan Iralu, the Indian Medical Center’s epidemiologist and chief clinical consultant for infectious diseases at Indian Health Service. “People did an amazing job. ... We were able to take on this huge public health threat. And I think it's inspired people.”
The hospital is the largest run by Indian Health Service for the Navajo area, handling 5,800 Native American inpatients and 250,000 outpatients each year. But the facility is outdated and undersized. Local officials said there has been talk of building a replacement medical center for two decades.
Even in better times, crucial health services were not offered. For example, the 50-year-old medical center has no dialysis center despite the fact that adult tribal members suffer from diabetes at nearly three times the rate of white, non-Hispanics. Diabetics are among the highest-risk coronavirus patients.
In 2018, the Gallup facility’s accreditation was threatened based on failures in multiple categories that posed “a threat to patients.” Among them: transfusion errors, medical labeling, use of safety alarms on medical equipment, risk of hospital-borne infections and hygiene. The medical center addressed the issues, and accreditation was granted.
Michael Weahkee, director of Indian Health Service and an enrolled member of the Zuni Tribe, described the Gallup hospital as a "dilapidated structure" that is nearly five times older than the average non-Indian medical facility.
Weakhee said IHS funding levels are 49 percent of what would be equitable using Medicare and Medicaid spending as a benchmark. Asked if the chronic under-funding of indigenous healthcare constitutes systemic racism, Weakhee replied, "The federal government resources its priorities, and Indian healthcare has not been a priority."
"We're doing the very best we can with resources provided to us," said Weakhee, who is married to a Dinè and was born in New Mexico just north of McKinley County.
Laura Hammit, director of infectious disease prevention with Johns Hopkins University’s Center for American Indian Health, said Indian Health Service and Navajo Nation employees were buying supplies with their own money, making PPE on days off and delivering provisions to tribal members in remote areas as the virus peaked in May.
"It is really unfair to chronicle their response as anything other than heroic,” said Hammit, who is based in Gallup and helped fight the Navajo Nation outbreak. “If we want to point a finger anywhere, it needs to be at the federal government."
Dr. Phillip Smith, 70, spent most of his career as a national Indian Health Service administrator before retiring to head Utah’s Monument Valley Health Clinic, which also got hit hard by COVID-19. He said Gallup Indian Medical Center has long lacked lab support, supplies, repairs and technology.
Smith, who is Diné, said his diabetic sister, Florence Dick, tested positive for COVID-19 while staying in a Gallup nursing home. The Indian Medical Center quarantined her in a motel until her condition deteriorated and she was sent to a hospital in Albuquerque, where she died within days.
“We grew up together,” Smith said softly, recounting her death.
Hospital unprepared for surge in COVID-19 cases
The Navajo elder lay in his hospital deathbed and stared at the phone. About 20 members of his family lined up outside their hogan, a traditional dwelling, to pay respects through the screen.
When the last relative had said goodbye, the man died.
It was a “miracle moment,” said Pikaart, the chaplain at Rehoboth McKinley Christian Hospital who arranged the call.
For six months, Pikaart has been surrounded by critical illness and death.
High-flow oxygen pumps made it difficult to hear feeble patients even when they shouted. Pikaart knew she should stay six feet away to protect herself, but she couldn’t resist leaning in two inches away from patients’ faces to catch their final words.
“It was the only way I could hear them,” she said. “And they have things to say.”
As she helped patients and families, others on the Rehoboth McKinley hospital staff were overwhelmed by the patient surge, according to Dr. Rajiv Patel, who supervised the hospital’s eight-bed intensive care unit.
Patel said 17 nurses were laid off in March before the outbreak, leaving a staff short on experience to deal with the pandemic. The hospital has about 520 employees, according to David Conejo, the medical center’s former chief executive.
One night in early May, a ventilator alarm went off during the graveyard shift. The staff, unfamiliar with the device, couldn’t figure out what was wrong, Patel said. When Patel arrived the next morning, he said he discovered the patient’s tracheal tube had shifted and wasn’t delivering oxygen into the lungs.
The tube was reinserted. Two days later, the alarm problem recurred — and so did the confusion.
“That’s when I decided we had to transfer people out. For this to happen twice was just unacceptable,” Patel said. “We were kind of in over our heads.”
The ICU was mostly shut down. All but one patient in the unit were flown to hospitals in Albuquerque.
The man with ventilator woes remained, too ill for travel.
Given the patient’s precarious health, Patel said it is unclear whether flawed medical care contributed to his demise, “but it didn’t help.”
A “statement of deficiencies” report by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, obtained by USA TODAY, describes repeated problems with a “maladjusted” ventilator tube that slipped out of the patient’s windpipe “rendering it useless for hours. The patient died in the following days.”
Patel, whose wife is Diné, resigned citing safety concerns. Other employees cast a no-confidence vote against Conejo, who was subsequently fired, according to court records.
Ina Burmeister, a Rehoboth McKinley spokesperson, said 15 contract nurses were laid off after the CDC recommended hospitals delay elective surgeries and other non-essential procedures because of the outbreak. Burmeister did not respond to questions about the patient’s death or Conejo’s dismissal, but she said under new management “we have strengthened internal controls and implemented new administrative policies to ensure the clinical quality.”
In a federal lawsuit against the hospital and some employees challenging his firing, Conejo alleges the Rehoboth McKinley board directed the nurse layoffs, and he blamed subordinates, including Patel, for accepting an overload of COVID-19 patients from the detox center.
In an interview, Conejo reiterated those points and portrayed himself as the victim of a “mutiny” by self-interested employees.
Medical officials got no clarity from federal authorities as the pandemic arrived in Gallup in March, Conejo said. Training was offered at a command center, he said, but after the session was over an instructor told him: “You realize I’m making all this up, don’t you?”
Conejo said about 20 key hospital employees got infected, were quarantined or quit, which compounded the staffing crisis.
At that point, Conejo said, he became the fall guy: “As soon as the shit hits the fan, everybody says, ‘The CEO did it.’ ”
Tribal members work to save their own
Randy Chatto navigated the long, dirt roads until he found it: a red, mobile-home-like structure in the middle of open desert. He hopped out of his truck and called out a Navajo greeting: “Yá'át'ééh!”
Gilbert Martinez, a Navajo elder, has lived alone in this home for years. He has no running water and the closest store, a gas station market, is miles away. Freshly returned from herding his sheep, he was happy to see Chatto, mostly because he had run out of food and water that day.
Since February, Chatto and his team have worked with local nonprofits like Navajo and Hopi Families COVID-19 Relief Fund and McKinley Mutual Aid to bring supplies to people who live in Ramah Navajo land — where Chatto is from — in areas so remote that some die en route to the hospital.
Diné prophecies have for generations told of a devastating illness that would require the community to come together. Many tribal members said these stories predicted COVID-19.
After the pandemic hit, young children wrapped up bundles of medicine for their elders. Diné in other states sent medical supplies and food to relatives on the reservation. As for community leaders like Chatto, he said he knew better than to wait for federal relief.
“We said, ‘We have to start helping our people,’” Chatto said. “Time is crucial and lives are at stake."
Ira Vandever, incident commander for Baca-Prewitt Chapter of the Navajo Nation, said it was the community response — not government relief — that saved lives.
“That’s just resiliency — that’s just a reaction of our own culture to get through this,” he said. “We’ve been dealing with diseases and [injustice] since 1492, when Columbus came. And we’re still here.”
Diné activists like Dr. Crystal Lee, CEO and founder of United Natives, a nonprofit aimed at supporting Native American youth, stress the power of turning to the community for culturally competent answers while recognizing the need that persists.
“A lot of our solutions are within ourselves, within our communities,” said Lee, pointing, for example, to an intertribal quarantine site United Natives co-created as part of COVID-19 relief. “But what if we have the knowledge without any resources?"
Other volunteers from across the United States stepped in to make up for the lack of health care.
Doctors and nurses from the University of California-San Francisco, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, New Mexico’s Medical Reserve Corps, the state’s National Guard and elsewhere rushed to McKinley County to bolster medical staff and deliver supplies.
Gary Morsch, an emergency doctor from Olathe, Kansas, recognized the pandemic threat early and founded a nonprofit known as COVID Care Force. After bringing volunteer medical workers to New York City in early April, the former Army physician shifted to Gallup and Shiprock later in the month. Morsch said his teams filled in for doctors and nurses at Gallup Indian Medical Center who were sick or quarantined, helped remaining staffers who were exhausted and monitored patients in motels and nursing homes.
“It was tough – busy, busy, busy,” Morsch said, referring to conditions at the Indian Medical Center. “Every room was full.”
As money and resources arrived, the Navajo Nation and New Mexico adopted get-tough policies to enforce lockdowns and pandemic protections. Gallup was locked down May 1, with roads leading into town closed and nonessential businesses shuttered for 10 days. In the first two weeks of May, Navajo police issued nearly 500 citations to curfew violators, according to The Arizona Republic.
But, in recent weeks, cases have increased on and surrounding Navajo Nation land.
“Our health care system on the Navajo Nation cannot handle another large surge in cases,” Nez said in an Oct. 3 press release.
And for many families, the Big Cough has already wrought its destruction.
After Melvina Musket’s parents died, it wasn’t easy for family members to arrange a double funeral. There were so many deaths in McKinley County, the cemetery staff couldn’t immediately provide a date for the burial. As a safety precaution, there would be no service.
“None of the people at the funeral home wanted to touch him,” Musket said of her father.
When the time came, the family gathered at the Rehoboth Cemetery, a barren tableau of white crosses and sagebrush right outside Gallup. Only 10 mourners were allowed; other family and friends stood at the graveyard entrance, six feet apart and wearing masks.
In Navajo culture, when someone dies, there is a long wake where people gather, tell stories, eat, pray and make donations. But in light of COVID-19, that wasn’t possible. Musket placed onto the casket a small Bible her grandmother had given to her parents when they wed. The casket was covered with earth. Flowers were heaped on top.
The U.S. could go from climate laggard to climate leader. (photo: iStock)
How the US Could Lead on Climate Change - in 8 Simple Steps
Grist
Excerpt: "Imagine a green future for a hot second (no pun intended). The United States and the rest of the world have taken substantive action to slow (and even reverse) climate change. Crisis averted!"
How the U.S. could go from climate laggard to climate leader — in 8 simple steps
magine a green future for a hot second (no pun intended). The United States and the rest of the world have taken substantive action to slow (and even reverse) climate change. Crisis averted! You’re probably envisioning a lot of the following: snazzy yet affordable electric cars, smog-free city skylines, and an electrical grid powered by sweet, sweet, renewable energy.
Well, you likely don’t need the staff of Grist to tell you that the nation is nowhere near approaching that eco-friendly dreamscape.
In fact, the U.S. is currently on a path away from that green dream. Bigly. The Trump Administration is in the process of finalizing the country’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. (It will shortly become the only one in the world that contributes more than 2 percent of global emissions without being a member of the landmark climate pact). Emissions have been on the rise again after years of incremental dips — slowed this year only because of a deadly pandemic. And the nation’s most vulnerable communities are routinely forced to reckon with environmental contaminants, extreme weather, and industrial pollution.
If a couple of intrepid aliens dropped by to observe a Congressional hearing on climate change, knowing that humanity’s survival hinged on finding a solution to rising temperatures, they would hurry back to their home planet under the impression that Earth was doomed.
It doesn’t have to be this way. That green dream could be a reality — and for the most part, we know what we need to do to bring it to life.
Below, you’ll learn about eight tools lawmakers could leverage to make America great on climate change. These are interventions that already exist, and concern everything from your home to your local transportation system.
All we need to do is reach out and grab them.
Ditch the gas guzzlers
In a world of Priuses, Leafs, Bolts, and a growing number of Teslas, you’d think that the national average for gas mileage would be higher than it is: a measly 26 miles per gallon.
That’s not very efficient. And it’s partly why, in 2018, transportation produced nearly 30 percent of the U.S.’s global warming emissions — more than energy or any other sector, with most of it coming frompassenger cars and trucks.
The good news: The vast majority of Americans say they want the federal government to increase fuel efficiency standards for all types of vehicles.
In the short term, hybrids and plug-in hybrids are available to satisfy the needs of those who want — and can afford — more efficient rides. They easily meet or surpass California’s stricter fuel-efficiency standards, with some models reaching over 56 mpg.
Eventually, if the federal government follows California’s lead, our roads could be filled entirely with electric vehicles. Emissions-free autos are already beginning to take off, with sale prices falling and current models able to go as far as 141 miles using the same amount of energy in one gallon of gasoline.
But fully electric vehicles still make up less than 2 percent of annual car sales. An analysis from the International Energy Agency found that policies like fuel mandates could drive EVs to make up 30 percent of all U.S. auto sales by 2030 — an impressive rise, but still not enough to meet the most aggressive climate targets.
Proposals do exist to better meet the moment. In a report released this summer, the Democratic House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis proposed that the federal government create an ambitious greenhouse gas emissions standard for light-duty vehicles and trucks to reduce pollution by at least 6 percent each year for five years, beginning in 2026. The Environmental Protection Agency already has the authority to do this under the Clean Air Act.
The House committee also recommended action from Congress, where lawmakers could establish a zero-emissions vehicle sales standard, requiring all vehicles sold to be emissions-free by 2035. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign has floated a similar sales standard for light- and medium-duty vehicles, which would complement “annual improvements” for larger automobiles.
Not-so-extreme makeover: home edition
Little-known fact: Buildings are responsible for just over a third of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. About 10 percent of all emissions come from directly inside them, such as whenever we fire up a gas stove for a meal or flip on the heat to keep warm. Not only that but burning fossil fuels inside our homes isn’t great for our health.
Like trading in your beat-up Chevy Impala for an all-electric Bolt, there’s a straightforward solution: Replace boilers and hot water heaters with electric heat pumps. Swap gas-powered stoves for snazzy new induction cooktops.
Improving energy efficiency is also a way to cut down on emissions from buildings. Whether your heating system is powered by electricity or gas, or if you live in an old, drafty house that needs insulation, you’re probably using more energy than you need to — both the heat and your dollars are slipping through the cracks. (For low-income Americans, the cost-burden of an inefficient home can be as high as 26 percent of their earnings.) Sealing up cracks and helping people replace old appliances would lighten the load on their wallets while cutting emissions and, most crucially, reducing demand on the electric grid so we can actually meet all our energy needs with clean sources.
So where do we start? Congress could increase funding for the Weatherization Assistance Program that helps low-income households pay for energy-efficiency upgrades. It could also strengthen efficiency standards for buildings and appliances, and increase and extend tax credits for retrofits.
Most of the action will likely happen at the state and local level, through incentives, rebates, and pilot programs that help people cover the cost of all these upgrades, along with new laws and updated building codes designed with an eye to increased energy efficiency.
Get on the bus!
If the U.S. starts taking climate change seriously, we’ll have to become much less dependent on cars (even if they are more efficient). A staggering 75 percent of Americans drive alone to work. And even before the pandemic hit, ridership on buses, trains, and subways appeared to be on the decline. According to the American Public Transportation Association, 45 percent of Americans couldn’t use public transportation even if they wanted to — because of where they live.
Taking climate change seriously will require a redesign of our country’s transportation infrastructure. In other words, we’ll have to find a way to get people out of their cars. In the early 2020s, that will mean taking public money away from building new highways that encourage people to drive more, and using it to expand the country’s existing bus, train, and subway systems, especially for rural communities and areas that have traditionally been denied transit access. Do all this, and by 2030, the majority of Americans will live within walking distance of public transportation.
Sound like a plan? It’s one devised by the advocacy group Transportation for America as a way to meet international climate targets. Activists see public transit as a huge opportunity — not only to slash emissions from the country’s biggest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions, but also to create jobs and fuel the American economy. One analysis found that every $1 billion invested in transit can generate $5 billion in economic returns, creating and supporting roughly 50,000 jobs. According to the Blue Green Alliance, fixing up our existing road and transit systems could generate 6.6 million jobs within 10 years.
So how do we arrive at the future that Transportation for America and others envision? The Biden campaign has proposed using federal funds to provide all Americans in cities of more than 100,000 people with “quality public transportation” by 2030. In a report this summer, House Democrats recommended at least doubling annual funding for new transit projects and implementing a minimum emissions-per-mile performance standard for vehicles traveling on the National Highway System. If a state’s emissions exceed those standards, it would have to use its federal highway money toward projects to decrease emissions.
No fossil-fuel worker left behind
If and when the nation ditches fossil fuels, what happens to the nearly one million people who work in the oil and gas industry? It’s a reasonable question, and one that’s become a sticking point that Republicans, fossil fuel lobbyists, and some unions often leverage to derail much of the talk about expanding the country’s renewable energy.
Right now, the systems to help fossil fuel workers find jobs in the green energy sector aren’t in place yet. But roadmaps to accomplish such an evolution do exist.
In June, a group of 80 local, regional, and national organizations published the National Economic Transition Platform, a raft of policy recommendations for federal policymakers designed to help fossil fuel workers shift to a green-energy economy. The plan recommends putting former coal miners to work on cleaning up coal sites and abandoned mines and restoring local water resources, as well as creating new jobs in energy efficiency retrofits for residential and commercial buildings.
There’s been some discussion of this issue in Congress, as well. Senator Tammy Duckworth from Illinois, a Democrat, introduced a bill this July that simultaneously seeks to revitalize communities devastated by the decline of coal and restore the surrounding environment. The Marshall Plan for Coal Country Act would also boost the federal minimum wage to $15 and provide Medicare for coal workers who have lost their jobs.
Joe Biden’s latest climate plan picks up where Duckworth’s bill leaves off. He proposes creating a Task Force on Coal and Power Plant Communities, which would help the families who wind up out of work in a clean-energy transition access federal funds for recovery efforts, partner with community colleges for training opportunities, and find jobs repairing local infrastructure. Biden’s plan also calls for an entirely new class of jobs and job training in climate-resilient industries (think: coastal restoration, sustainable infrastructure design, and tree planting in cities).
On the campaign trail in 2016, President Trump accused Democrats of abandoning oil, gas, and coal workers. But polling shows people are open to building a green economy, as long as it doesn’t leave Americans behind.
Protection for the day after tomorrow
More and more Americans are waking up to the fact that we’re going to need to shore up our homes, neighborhoods, and communities against the effects of planetary warming. Low-income and vulnerable minority areas already dealing with the fallout from extreme weather are going to need even more help.
Each region of the U.S. faces its own unique set of disasters. And a simple formula can help states prepare for what’s coming: Plan + funding = protection. In other words, state governments need to figure out how to protect their residents, and the federal government needs to do what it does relatively well: dole out disaster-relief dollars.
Some states are already leading the way. This summer, North Carolina passed the NC SECURE Act, which streamlines the funding and permitting of projects that store floodwater and reduce the risk of inundation. The legislation calls for a mix of federal disaster relief funds and state dollars to create a grant program to prioritize natural solutions to flooding, like restoring wetlands and directing water to green space that can soak up floodwaters.
Virginia is planning to use money generated from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic’s cap-and-trade program, to fund climate resilience projects. The commonwealth joined the initiative this year and expects to generate $100 million annually from the program, with $45 million of it slotted for coastal resilience and community flood preparedness.
Even when funding flows after a disaster, plenty of people are left out. For example, there are 90,000 fewer Black New Orleanians now than there were before Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005. And a survey of post-Hurricane Harvey Houston showed 50 percent of lower-income respondents said they weren’t getting the help they needed, compared to 32 percent of higher-income respondents.
Thus, a truly equitable plan to beef up disaster preparedness should allocate a certain portion of the funds to the nation’s most vulnerable communities.
Greening the grid
The U.S. still runs on dirty power. Fossil fuels provide 63 percent of the country’s electricity. In some states, like West Virginia and Wyoming, the grid is powered almost entirely by coal.
The solution, according to some policymakers, is obvious: The federal government should require power companies nationwide to draw their energy from clean energy sources (think wind, solar, nuclear, geothermal, and hydropower). Thirty states and three territories already mandate the use of renewables in the electricity grid. And — surprise surprise! — they also tend to have lower carbon emissions than their neighbors. But most of them set a relatively low bar for renewable generation, aiming to make it 15 to 25 percent of their overall energy mix.
A new generation of advocates wants to raise it much, much higher: They want all of the country’s electricity to come from pollution-free sources by 2035. Biden has thrown his support behind the goal, amid pressure from youth activists and his former rival, Senator Bernie Sanders. The House climate crisis committee aims to erase emissions from electricity slightly less aggressively, by 2040.
Hitting either of these goals would mean a lot more solar panels and wind turbines nationwide — and a lot fewer coal and natural gas plants. But here’s the rub: Simply setting a target for clean energy won’t be enough.
To fully kick dirty-but-reliable fossil fuels off the grid, we need new technology for storing energy for long periods of time and new methods for generating high heat for industrial processes, like cement manufacturing. That’s why spending big bucks on research and development is key. Biden’s plan, for example, invests $400 billion over the next decade on solving these problems.
Then there’s a third tool in the clean energy Swiss army knife: tax incentives. The credits the wind and solar industry rely on to finance new projects are about to expire. House Democrats want to extend those incentives for a few more years — and eliminate some of the tax breaks that give oil and gas companies an unfair advantage and keep fossil fuel prices competitive with renewables. Other policy wonks have suggested reviving an Obama administration program that offered grants instead of tax credits to really kick the renewable industry into high gear.
Price carbon out
Once upon a time, putting a price on the carbon content of fossil fuels — much like we tax cigarettes or alcohol — was the policy of choice for both Democrats and Republicans hoping to curb dangerous climate change. According to economists, the government could just slap on an extra cost for burning fossil fuels, and then step back and watch emissions plummet.
Nowadays, taxing carbon isn’t quite as popular. Democrats prefer to focus on big spending and regulations, while a lot of Republicans ignore the overheating planet entirely. Those Republicans who do accept the reality of climate change, however, still tend to be fans of pricing carbon: James A. Baker, George P. Shultz, and other old-school Republicans have released a comprehensive carbon tax plan that has won support from corporations and economists alike.
A tax on carbon pollution could play a big role by helping to cut emissions across the economy — not just from the electricity grid. Proposals floating around Congress suggest taxing carbon dioxide emissions at $15 per ton (equivalent to about $0.13 per gallon of gas), and then ratcheting the price up every year.
The only sticking point is what to do with all of that cash collected. A carbon tax would provide hundreds of billions of dollars in government revenue every year — and legislators are divided over how best to use it. Because some of the costs would fall on taxpayers — through, for example, a price hike at the pump — policymakers have suggested a “revenue-neutral” tax, where per-capita proceeds would be returned to households or offset by decreases in the income tax. Others suggest reinvesting the revenue into the development of clean energy technologies, like solar and wind, or supporting communities that have been hard hit by fossil fuel pollution.
If the tax is high enough, it could be critical to cutting America’s carbon footprint. Forty countries around the world have managed to implement some form of carbon pricing, and even though many have yet to fulfill their promise, a carbon tax in the U.K. has helped emissions in that country reach their lowest levels since 1890.
Make vulnerable communities resilient
The U.S. doesn’t have a great track record of protecting people living in places choked by pollution and more likely to get hit hard by extreme weather. Entrenched structural systems, think redlining and being ignored by local politicians, lead to more pollution winding up in low-income enclaves and neighborhoods of color — and leave them vulnerable to the consequences of a warming climate.
A few policy changes could make these frontline communities resilient. Governments at all levels can, for example, pass laws to reduce methane emissions from natural gas operations, which would improve air quality and slow climate change. (Methane is a more harmful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.) It would be a boon to public health.
Take the populations living along the Gulf Coast, for example. Just this summer, industrial coastal cities in the South were hit with hurricanes and tropical storms that brought torrential rain and a series of floods. Hurricane Laura, a category 4 storm, pummeled the petrochemical hub of Port Arthur, when it made landfall over Texas at the end of August.
Many low-income communities of color were left with the option of either weathering the storm at home despite being warned to evacuate, or leaving their homes and risk being exposed to COVID-19 and thick air pollution. Shutting down plants in preparation for potential storms isn’t enough to keep those communities safe — nearby chemical plants and oil refineries continue to spew harmful chemicals in the process of going offline.
Environmental justice organizations have been laying out ways to protect at-risk residents. A focus on clean energy and resilience measures, from seawalls to community evacuation protocols, would not only limit the risk from future storms in vulnerable neighborhoods but also reduce their exposure to pollution. In his climate plan, Joe Biden promised to invest historic levels of funding toward clean energy, aggressively limit methane pollution from the oil and gas industry, and ensure vulnerable communities benefit from a shift to a green economy.
Imagine a country where climate change isn’t the crisis it absolutely is right now — and all residents can feel safe to breathe and move around, inside and outside their neighborhoods.
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