06 December 20
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Backing Trump, Some Ex-Military Officers Spread Conspiracies, Urge Martial Law
Greg Myre, NPR
Myre writes: "O'Grady, who headed the group Veterans for Trump during the campaign, is just one of several prominent, retired military officials who have promoted some of the most outlandish election conspiracy theories and, in some cases, voiced approval for martial law."
he first time Scott O'Grady made a splash in the news the Air Force pilot had been shot down on a mission over Bosnia in 1995. He survived in the woods by eating leaves, grass and bugs for six days before he was rescued. He returned to the U.S. a hero, was welcomed by President Bill Clinton and appeared on the cover of Time magazine.
He's in the news again, this time for different reasons.
The White House on Monday nominated O'Grady to be assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs at the Pentagon.
But in a review of his public statements, CNN found that O'Grady called former President Barack Obama and some military generals "sworn socialists" in a radio interview. On Twitter, he endorsed a tweet that called former Defense Secretary James Mattis a "traitor." And he has backed multiple conspiracy theories, retweeting the baseless claim that Hillary Clinton and George Soros somehow helped facilitate foreign interference in last month's election.
O'Grady's nomination still requires Senate confirmation. Even if he clears that hurdle, he's almost certain to be replaced when President-elect Joe Biden becomes commander in chief next month.
O'Grady, who headed the group Veterans for Trump during the campaign, is just one of several prominent, retired military officials who have promoted some of the most outlandish election conspiracy theories and, in some cases, voiced approval for martial law.
In many cases, Trump has rewarded their loyalty.
The best-known figure is Michael Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general and Trump's first national security adviser. Flynn lasted less than a month in that job and later pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. Trump pardoned him on Nov. 25.
Less than a week later, on Dec. 1, Flynn tweeted his support for the right-wing group, We The People, which called on Trump to "immediately declare a limited form of Martial Law, and temporarily suspend the Constitution and civilian control of these federal elections, for the sole purpose of having the military oversee a re-vote."
"We are at the point where we can only trust our military to do this because our corrupt political class and courts have proven their inability to act fairly and within the law," the group said in a statement.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Mark Milley, has insisted the U.S. military will not be involved in politics.
"We have established a very long, 240-year tradition of an apolitical military that does not get involved in domestic politics," Milley told NPR in October. "We want to ensure that there is always civilian leadership, civilian control of the military, and we will obey the lawful orders of civilian control of the military."
However, retired military members are free to express their opinions, and in recent years, they have been doing so far more openly. Hundreds of former military and other national security officials signed letters supporting Biden or Trump this year.
Now, some former officers have gone way beyond taking a partisan stance. In some cases, they've made unfounded accusations of treason against their political rivals and have called for suspending the Constitution they once pledged to defend.
Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney recently made the bogus claim that U.S. special operations forces were killed in Germany when they tried to take over a CIA computer facility in Germany. He alleged, without any evidence, that the CIA was concealing information about vote fraud that flipped ballots from Trump to Biden.
The claim was swiftly debunked, yet McInerney has continued to insist it's true.
McInerney flew more than 400 combat missions in Vietnam and served at the Pentagon as the Air Force assistant vice chief of staff in the 1990s. After he retired, he became a military analyst for Fox News, consistently advocating hawkish positions. He was dropped by Fox in 2018 after he said that North Vietnamese torture "worked" on the late Arizona senator John McCain when he was held prisoner for more than five years.
In a recent email to the Military Times, McInerney wrote that Trump "won in a landslide and the Dems left so many footprints that this TREASON must be stopped!!!" He added: "This will be the last free election we have and I predicted it on 2 Nov on the Steve Bannon Show!"
In August, Trump appointed retired Army Brig. Gen. Anthony Tata as the acting undersecretary of defense for policy. Tata did not require Senate confirmation because he's serving in an acting capacity. Tata hasn't been involved in controversies during his brief time in the position, but his appointment has come under sharp criticism for previous remarks.
He called Obama a "terrorist leader" with "Islamic roots" in 2018 tweets. He speculated that Obama may have negotiated a nuclear agreement with Iran because it would help that country "crush Israel." He later deleted those tweets, but CNN captured them in a screenshot.
People hold signs during a rally in support of the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, in San Diego, on June 18. (photo: Sandy Huffaker/AFP/Getty Images)
A Federal Court Just Reinstated DACA, and the Implications Go Far Beyond Immigration
Ian Millhiser, Vox
Millhiser writes: "Late Friday afternoon, a federal district judge ordered the Trump administration to fully reinstate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which allows nearly 700,000 undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children to live and work there."
A federal judge handed immigrants a big win — and gave President-elect Biden a potential crisis.
ate Friday afternoon, a federal district judge ordered the Trump administration to fully reinstate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which allows nearly 700,000 undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children to live and work there.
The case is Batalla Vidal v. Wolf. Judge Nicholas Garaufis, who handed down the order, said the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) must “post a public notice, within 3 calendar days of this Order ... that it is accepting first-time requests for consideration of deferred action under DACA” because the department’s ostensible leader tried to limit the DACA program without having the authority to do so.
The ruling is the latest blow to the Trump administration’s attempts to end the program. In 2017, Trump’s DHS issued a memo that sought to wind down the DACA program, but the Supreme Court ruled last June that DHS’s initial attempts to end it were void because the department did not adequately explain why it was doing so.
Rather than fully reinstating DACA following the Supreme Court’s order, however, DHS issued a new memo in July signed by Undersecretary of Homeland Security’s Office for Strategy, Policy, and Plans Chad Wolf — and the lawfulness of this July memo was the central issue in Batalla Vidal. “I have concluded that the DACA policy, at a minimum, presents serious policy concerns that may warrant its full rescission,” Wolf wrote in that memo.
The memo directs “DHS personnel to take all appropriate actions to reject all pending and future initial requests for DACA,” and it provides that current DACA beneficiaries may only receive one-year renewals of their DACA status, rather than the two-year extensions they would have received prior to this memo.
Wolf, moreover, purported to be far more than a mere undersecretary in his memorandum. In November of 2019, President Trump named Wolf acting Secretary of Homeland Security, and Wolf signed his July memo as “Acting Secretary.” This distinction matters because as undersecretary, Wolf lacks the power to make changes to DACA, but the Secretary of Homeland Security does have the authority to make such changes.
Judge Garaufis ruled in mid-November that Wolf “was not lawfully serving as Acting Secretary of Homeland Security under the Homeland Security Act (‘HSA’) when he issued the July 28, 2020 memorandum,” thereby cutting the legs out from under Wolf’s attempt to water down the DACA program. If Wolf is not the acting secretary, then his July memo is void.
The order Garaufis handed down on Friday lays out some of the consequences of the judge’s mid-November decision. “Because Mr. Wolf was without lawful authority to serve as Acting Secretary of OHS, the Wolf Memorandum is VACATED,” Garaufis wrote in his most recent order.
So the good news for DACA-eligible immigrants is that, barring a decision from a higher court blocking Garaufis’s most recent order, those immigrants will soon be able to obtain DACA status. And even if the order is blocked, President-elect Joe Biden has also pledged to fully reinstate DACA once he takes office on January 20.
Nevertheless, the future of DACA remains uncertain. For one thing, the Supreme Court’s June decision blocking the Trump administration’s initial attempts to end the program was a 5-4 decision, with the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the majority. Since then, Trump has replaced Ginsburg with the far more conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett. And even before Barrett arrived at the Supreme Court, several members of the Court had signaled that they thought DACA is illegal.
So there’s a reasonable likelihood that the Court’s new 6-3 Republican majority will strike down the DACA program even as Biden tries to preserve it.
The logic of Garaufis’s November opinion — that presidents have only limited authority to make acting appointments — could also come back to bite Biden, especially if Republicans control the Senate and, with it, the power to block Biden’s nominees.
Chad Wolf is not the acting Secretary of Homeland Security
The core issue in the Batalla Vidal case turns on whether Wolf was lawfully appointed acting secretary, and therefore is empowered to make changes to the DACA program.
Garaufis’s opinion holding that Wolf was not lawfully appointed is fairly straightforward. The Homeland Security Act provides that, if DHS’s top job becomes vacant, the deputy secretary shall act as secretary. If both jobs are vacant, then “the Under Secretary for Management shall serve as the Acting Secretary if by reason of absence, disability, or vacancy in office, neither the Secretary nor Deputy Secretary is available to exercise the duties of the Office of the Secretary.” A sitting secretary, moreover, “may designate such other officers of the Department in further order of succession to serve as Acting Secretary.”
Currently, DHS’s top ranks are a bit a of ghost town. All three of the top jobs are vacant. Kirstjen Nielsen, the last person to serve as a Senate-confirmed Secretary of Homeland Security, resigned in April of 2019. Before she left, however, she did lay out the order of succession that should apply if the top three jobs at DHS became vacant.
If all top three jobs were vacant, Nielsen determined, then the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency should become secretary — but this job has been vacant since the spring of 2019. Next in line would be the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) — a job that, until recently, was filled by Christopher Krebs.
Trump fired Krebs in mid-November after Krebs refuted false claims by Trump and some of Trump’s allies that Biden somehow stole the 2020 election. But Krebs still was in his job as head of CISA in July, when Wolf handed down his DACA memo. That means that Krebs, not Wolf, should have been the acting secretary in July.
It’s worth noting that, even with Krebs out of the picture, Wolf still is not next in line to be acting secretary. After Krebs is the DHS’s undersecretary for science and technology, but this position is vacant and the job is currently being done by a “Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Under Secretary for Science and Technology.” The next person in line after that is the undersecretary for intelligence and analysis, but that position is vacant as well, and the relevant office is held by an acting official. Eighth in line is the commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection, but that position is also vacant and there, too, the office is led by an acting official.
Ninth in line is the administrator of the Transportation Security Administration. The TSA actually does have a Senate-confirmed leader — David Pekoske was confirmed to lead the TSA in 2017 — and he still holds that office. So it would appear that Pekoske, not Wolf, should currently be serving as acting secretary of DHS.
Judge Garaufis’s order is bad news for Biden if Republicans try to sabotage his administration
As this litany of vacant offices and acting officials suggests, the courts have thus far been fairly tolerant of President Trump’s attempts to bypass the Senate and fill top jobs with acting officials. But Judge Garaufis’s order suggests that tolerance may be coming to an end just as Biden is preparing to take office.
We do not yet know who will control the Senate at the beginning of the Biden administration. Currently, Republicans hold a 50-48 seat majority in the incoming Senate, with two seats to be determined in a January 5 Georgia runoff election. If Democrats win both of those seats, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’s tiebreaking vote will give them a narrow majority in the Senate.
But if Republicans prevail in either Georgia race, then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) will continue to lead the Senate, and Republicans will have the power to block any Biden nominee to any Senate-confirmed job.
Biden, meanwhile, may find himself unable to staff his administration if Republicans choose to sabotage his presidency. While the Department of Homeland Security has a rigid order of succession for its top job, most agencies are governed by the Federal Vacancies Reform Act (FVRA) when a Senate-confirmed position becomes vacant.
Under the FVRA, the president may temporarily fill a vacant, Senate-confirmed job with an acting appointee. But the president cannot fill the job with just anyone — typically the acting appointee must either be currently serving in a Senate-confirmed job, or be currently serving as a senior civil servant.
Thus, if a vacancy arises in the middle of a presidency, that’s typically no big deal. After the first year of a new presidency, the president will normally have appointed hundreds of individuals to Senate-confirmed jobs. So that gives the president a deep bench of officials to slide into acting roles as they are needed.
But, at the beginning of Biden’s presidency, he won’t be able to rely on existing Senate-confirmed officials to serve as acting secretaries if the Senate refuses to confirm his nominees. With rare exceptions, the only people in Senate-confirmed jobs when Biden takes office will be Trump appointees.
Biden could potentially fill the vacant jobs with civil servants — that is, with senior career officials in the relevant agencies — but that could prevent Biden from naming a Cabinet that shares his political and policy vision.
The FVRA imposes rigid limits on just how long an individual may serve in an acting role. Under many circumstances, the tenure of an acting official is limited to just 210 days after a vacancy arises. So even though Biden could fill many jobs temporarily with civil servants, many of those acting appointments will expire just seven months into his presidency.
As mentioned above, the courts haven’t exactly been rigorous in enforcing these restrictions under President Trump, but they now seem likely to take a new interest in enforcing laws like the FVRA once Biden takes office. A 6-3 Republican Supreme Court is unlikely to bend the law in order to help a Democratic president — and really, the law is quite clear that Biden does not have a limitless power to make acting appointments.
A tremendous amount, in other words, is potentially at stake in the Georgia Senate runoffs. Those races could determine whether the Biden administration is able to perform many of the most basic functions of government — starting with actually getting people into top jobs within the administration.
Eddie Benton in 1971. (photo: Walter Green/AP)
American Indian Movement Co-Founder Benton-Banai Dies at 89
Amy Forliti and Felicia Fonseca, Associated Press
Excerpt: "Eddie Benton-Banai, who helped found the American Indian Movement partly in response to alleged police brutality against Indigenous people, has died. He was 89."
Benton-Banai died Monday at a care center in Hayward, Wisconsin, where he had been staying for months, according to family friend Dorene Day. Day said Benton-Banai had several health issues and had been hospitalized multiple times in recent years.
Benton-Banai, who is Anishinaabe Ojibwe, was born and raised on the Lac Courte Oreilles reservation in northern Wisconsin. He made a life of connecting American Indians with their spirituality and promoting sovereignty, and was the grand chief, or spiritual leader, of the Three Fires Midewiwin Lodge. Day said he was someone people looked to for guidance in the religious practice of the Anishinaabe Ojibwe people — and he gave countless babies their traditional names.
Benton-Banai’s place in the American Indian Movement, a grassroots group formed in 1968, can be traced to his launch of a cultural program in a Minnesota prison, said co-founder Clyde Bellecourt.
Bellecourt was in solitary confinement when he heard someone whistling “You are My Sunshine,” and he looked through a tiny hole in his cell and saw Benton-Banai, a fellow inmate, recognizing him as an Indigenous man.
Bellecourt said Benton-Banai approached him about helping incarcerated Indigenous people, and they started the prison’s cultural program to teach American Indians about their history and encourage them to learn a trade or seek higher education. Bellecourt said that Benton-Banai thought they could do the same work in the streets, and the program morphed into the American Indian Movement, an organization that persists today with various chapters.
“It started because I met Eddie in jail,” Bellecourt said. “Our whole Indian way of life came back because of him. … My whole life just changed. I started reading books about history of the Ojibwe nation… dreaming about how beautiful it must have been at one time in our history.”
One of the group’s first acts was to organize a patrol to monitor allegations of police harassment and brutality against Native Americans who had settled in Minneapolis where it’s based. Members had cameras, asked police for badge numbers and monitored radio scanner traffic for mention of anyone who they might recognize as Indigenous to ensure their rights weren’t being violated — similar to what the Black Panthers were doing at the time, said Kent Blansett, an associate professor of Indigenous studies at the University of Kansas who has written about the movement.
The group called out instances of cultural appropriation, provided job training, sought to improve housing and education for Indigenous people, provided legal assistance, spotlighted environmental injustice and questioned government policies that were seen as anti-Indigenous.
“Anything they could find that they could insert a Native presence and voice, they were there to do,” said Blansett, a Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Shawnee and Potawatomi descendant.
At times, the American Indian Movement’s tactics were militant, which led to splintering in the group. In one of its most well-known actions, the group took over Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in 1973 to protest U.S. and tribal governments. The 71-day occupation turned violent, and two people died in a shootout.
As the movement broadened nationally, Benton-Banai kept his work more local and focused on cultural and traditional teachings, and education. His roots in the group often got overshadowed by more powerful personalities in the movement, including Russell Means, Dennis Banks and John Trudell, said Akim Reinhardt, a history professor at Towson University in Maryland.
“It’s a shame, because clearly when we listen to the people who were there, they all mention him,” said Reinhardt, who has written broadly about the movement.
Lisa Bellanger, executive director of the National American Indian Movement and Benton-Banai’s former assistant, said he was instrumental in the group’s work using treaties to protect the rights of Indigenous people. He was also part of a team that pushed for the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978, she said, as government policies stifled or outlawed religious practices. The law safeguarded the rights of American Indians to practice their religion and access sacred sites.
Bellanger said Benton-Banai also helped launch the International Indian Treaty Council, which advocates for the rights of Indigenous nations to govern themselves, and for the protection of tradition, culture and sacred land.
In addition to his activism work, Benton-Banai was a father figure.
“We could always go to him with questions,” Bellanger said. “We could run crying to him if we needed to. We had that personal faith and trust and love in him, at a time that was crucial for young girls.”
Day said Benton-Banai was raised by his grandparents and grew up speaking Ojibwe.
“He had a very solid spiritual foundation to his traditional and Indigenous learning, and that’s what made him, I believe, who he was,” she said.
His book, “The Mishomis Book” is touted as the first of its kind to offer Anishinaabe families an understanding of spiritual teachings.
Benton-Banai also founded a school in St. Paul in 1972, called the Red School House, which — along with its sister school in Minneapolis — fueled a broader movement to provide alternative education for Indigenous children so they could learn while maintaining their spiritual and cultural practices, Day said. They were known as survival schools.
Bellecourt said American Indian Movement’s philosophy of using the sovereignty and spirituality of Indigenous people as a strength can be attributed to Benton-Banai’s leadership.
“I considered him our holy man,” he said.
Supporters applaud US President Donald Trump. (photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
Trump Is Worried That He May Be Prosecuted in New York After He Leaves Office
Eliza Relman and Jake Lahut, Business Insider
Excerpt: "President Donald Trump on Wednesday voiced his concerns about the prospect of being prosecuted by New York officials after he leaves the White House."
resident Donald Trump on Wednesday voiced his concerns about the prospect of being prosecuted by New York officials after he leaves the White House. He made the remarks in 46-minute speech that he videotaped and posted on Facebook.
"Now I hear that these same people that failed to get me in Washington have sent every piece of information to New York so that they can try to get me there," Trump said in the middle of his speech, which focused on his baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. "It's all been gone over, over, and over again."
He added: "They want to take not me but us down. And we can never let them do that."
The president faces a slew of legal issues on the federal and state levels once he's out of office on January 20. New York Attorney General Letitia James is conducting a civil investigation into the Trump Organization's business practices. And a federal court filing from Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance suggested he was conducting an investigation into Trump and the Trump Organization on suspicion of bank and insurance fraud, The New York Times reported.
Trump was also named "Individual-1" in a filing by the Southern District of New York when his former attorney Michael Cohen was charged with making hush-money payments. And a lawsuit from two attorneys general alleged he violated the Constitution's emoluments clause. His inaugural committee also faces a lawsuit alleging it schemed to funnel nonprofit money into the Trump family business.
From the Russia investigation to his impeachment, Trump has used the term "witch hunt" to describe almost any investigation into himself or his business, including when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the formation of a committee to oversee the federal pandemic response.
He's also never shied away from going after anyone involved in litigation against him.
Trump once accused a judge of Mexican heritage of being in "absolute conflict" while presiding over a civil fraud case on Trump University. Then a presidential candidate, Trump said Judge Gonzalo Curiel was biased because of the campaign pitch for a wall along the US-Mexico border.
In 2018, he also called the special counsel Robert Mueller "disgraced and discredited" and went on to describe his team of investigators as "thugs."
Yet the nature of the investigations Trump is facing at the state level in New York may explain why he went to a new level on Wednesday, particularly in how he outlined what could happen to him upon leaving office.
The president is likely less concerned about federal suits and investigations. He has consulted with advisers about granting his three eldest children, his son-in-law, and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani preemptive pardons, The Times reported. There's also a possibility Trump could grant himself a pardon or leave office before Biden's inauguration and have Vice President Mike Pence, who would assume the presidency in the interim, pardon him instead.
These pardons would apply only to federal charges.
"Trump will face no peril at the federal level because Biden is not going to waste his important political capital and resources going after President Trump," Alan Dershowitz, an attorney who helped defend Trump during his impeachment trial, told Business Insider's Dave Levinthal recently.
But, Dershowitz added, "The New York authorities will stop at nothing to go after him."
Pending regulatory approval for the first vaccine means the first Americans could be vaccinated outside of clinical trial by mid-December. (photo: Evgeniya Matveets/Getty Images)
Employers Debate Whether to Require COVID-19 Vaccine for Workers
Alex Gangitano, The Hill
Gangitano writes: "Companies will soon face a tough decision about whether to require their employees to get vaccinated for COVID-19 as a condition for returning to work."
READ MORE
Cuban flags. (photo: Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters)
Havana Syndrome: 'Directed' Radio Frequency Likely Cause of Illness
Sam Jones, Guardian UK
Jones writes: "The mysterious symptoms that have afflicted American diplomats stationed in Cuba, puzzling scientists and intelligence agencies alike, are most likely to have been caused by 'directed, pulsed radio frequency energy,' according to a report commissioned by the US government."
First official explanation of illness that affected US diplomats in Cuba says ‘pulsed’ energy may have led to unexplained symptoms
he mysterious symptoms that have afflicted American diplomats stationed in Cuba, puzzling scientists and intelligence agencies alike, are most likely to have been caused by “directed, pulsed radio frequency energy”, according to a report commissioned by the US government.
Those suffering from Havana syndrome, as the condition has become known, have complained of headaches, nausea, dizziness, blurred vision and other ailments.
Possible explanations have included everything from mosquito fumigation to noisy crickets.
But a report from National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, commissioned by the State Department, suggests the involvement of radio frequency energy.
“After considering the information available to it and a set of possible mechanisms, the committee felt that many of the distinctive and acute signs, symptoms, and observations reported by state department employees are consistent with the effects of directed, pulsed radio frequency energy,” the report concludes.
Researchers did not identify the source of the energy – nor a possible culprit – but they said western and Soviet studies going back decades offered “circumstantial support for this possible mechanism”.
The report says that while psychological and social factors could play a part in Havana syndrome, they did not explain “the acute initial, sudden-onset, distinctive, and unusual symptoms” and signs.
“However, the significant variability and clinical heterogeneity of the illnesses affecting state department personnel leave open the possibility of multiple causal factors including psychological and social factors,” said the researchers.
“These factors could exacerbate other causes of illness and cannot be ruled out as contributing to some of the cases, especially some of the chronic symptoms or later in the course of illness in some cases.”
US and Canadian embassy staff posted to Cuba began complaining of hearing loss, speech problems, nosebleeds and other unexplained symptoms in 2016.
Some said they had heard high-pitched chirping like that of crickets, while others reported hearing a grinding noise or experiencing a ringing in their ears.
The incidents led the US state department to expel two Cuban diplomats from Washington in 2017.
Donald Trump blamed the episodes on the Cuban government, saying: “It’s a very unusual attack, as you know. But I do believe Cuba is responsible.”
The Cuban authorities have flatly denied any involvement but said they treated the matter “with utmost importance”, adding: “Cuba has never, nor would it ever, allow that the Cuban territory be used for any action against accredited diplomatic agents or their families, without exception.”
The report committee said it had been left with a number of concerns.
“Even though it was not in a position to assess or comment on how these state department cases arose – such as a possible source of directed, pulsed radio frequency energy and the exact circumstances of the putative exposures – the mere consideration of such a scenario raises grave concerns about a world with disinhibited malevolent actors and new tools for causing harm to others, as if the US government does not have its hands full already with naturally occurring threats,” it said.
The committee recommended that more research be conducted and said it was worried about the possibility of new cases among US staff working overseas – and about the government’s ability to recognise and respond to such cases effectively.
The report concluded that future cases would require “a well-coordinated, multi-disciplinary, science-based investigation and effective interventions”.
In October, the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, said “significant US government resources” had been deployed to investigate the syndrome and its causes.
“We are pleased this report is now out and can add to the data and analyses that may help us come to an eventual conclusion as to what transpired,” a state department source told the New York Times.
Visitors pose by an unofficial thermometer in Death Valley National Park, August 17, 2020. (photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images)
From Alaska to California, the Climate Is Off-Kilter in the West
Jonathan Thompson, High Country News
Thompson writes: "In September, President Donald Trump visited fire-ravaged California and declared that the wildfires that had already burned across millions of acres were the result of forest mismanagement, not a warming climate."
“When trees fall down after a short period of time, they become very dry — really like a matchstick. No more water pouring through, and they can explode,” he said. “Also leaves. When you have dried leaves on the ground, it’s just fuel for the fires.”
Trump is right about one thing: Global warming isn’t the only reason the West is burning. The growing number of people in the woods has increased the likelihood of human-caused ignitions, while more than a century of aggressive fire suppression has contributed to the fires’ severity. In addition, unchecked development in fire-prone areas has resulted in greater loss of life and property.
Yet, much as California Governor Gavin Newsom told Trump, it’s impossible to deny the role a warming planet plays in today’s blazes. “Something’s happening to the plumbing of the world,” Newsom said.“And we come from a perspective, humbly, where we submit the science is in and observed evidence is self-evident that climate change is real, and that is exacerbating this.”
The accompanying graphic includes a few examples of the evidence Newsom mentioned. But then, you only have to step outside for a moment and feel the scorching heat, witness the dwindling streams, and choke on the omnipresent smoke to know that something’s way off-kilter, climate-wise.
But during his September stop outside Sacramento, California, under a blanket of smoke, Trump merely grinned and shrugged it off, again asserting that scientists don’t know what’s happening with the climate. And, anyway, he said: “It’ll start getting cooler. You just watch.”
- Lewistown, Montana, (70 degrees Fahrenheit) and Klamath Falls, Oregon, (65 degrees) set high-temperature records for the month of February.
- California had its driest February on record.
- In April, parts of southern Arizona and California saw the mercury climb past 100 degrees Fahrenheit for multiple days in a row, shattering records.
- Nome, Alaska, experienced its warmest May since record-keeping began in the early 1900s.
- Seven large fires burned across more than 75,000 acres in Arizona during May, and in early June, lightning ignited the Bighorn Fire in the Santa Catalina Mountains near Tucson, ultimately torching 120,000 acres. A week later, the Bush Fire broke out in Maricopa County and became the fifth largest in the state’s history.
- On July 10, Alamosa, Colorado, set a temperature record for a daily low (37 degrees Fahrenheit). Later that day, it set another record for the daily high (92 degrees).
- Phoenix, Arizona, set an all-time record for monthly mean temperature in July (98.3 degrees), only to see that record fall in August (99.1 degrees Fahrenheit). The temperature in the burgeoning city exceeded 100 degrees on 145 days in 2020 — another record.
- Westwide in August, 214 monthly and 18 all-time high-temperature records were tied or broken, including in Porthill, Idaho (103 degrees), Mazama, Washington (103 degrees), and Goodwin Peak, Oregon (101 degrees).
- By the end of October, Phoenix had experienced 197 heat-associated deaths — about five times the yearly average during the early 2000s.
- In Death Valley National Park, the mercury hit 130 on August 16, breaking the previous all-time record set in 2013.
- Across the Western U.S., hundreds of monthly and all-time high-temperature records were broken in August, including in several places in Idaho and Washington, where the mercury climbed above 100 degrees.
- Warm temperatures in Alaska caused ice on the Chukchi Sea to melt, leaving record-tying amounts of open sea.
- During monsoon season (June through August), Phoenix received just 1 inch of rain, or about 37 percent of average, and then received no precipitation at all in September or October.
- Grand Junction, Colorado, experienced its driest July and August on record. On July 31, lightning ignited the nearby Pine Gulch Fire, which grew to 139,000 acres, making it (briefly) the largest in state history, only to be eclipsed by the 207,000-acre Cameron Peak Fire in the northern part of the state.
- Colorado’s wildfire season was not only its most severe on record, but most of the fires also burned far later in the year than normal. In mid-October, when Colorado’s mountains would normally be covered with snow, the East Troublesome Fire west of Boulder tore through high-elevation forests and homes to become the state’s second-largest fire ever. Shortly thereafter, the Ice Fire broke out at nearly 10,000 feet above sea level in what was once known as the “asbestos forest” near Silverton, burning over 500 acres.
- A dry thunderstorm that generated more than 8,000 recorded lightning strikes hit Central and Northern California in late July, igniting multiple megafires. The resulting August Complex became the largest fire in state history, and together with the SCU Lightning Complex, the LNU Lightning Complex, and the North Complex fires, it burned across more than 2 million acres, destroyed 5,000 structures and killed 22 people.
- Smoke from California’s fires spread across the region, causing particulate matter to build up to levels that were hazardous to health and significantly diminishing solar energy output.
- In September, several fires were sparked in Oregon’s tinder-dry forests. Fueled by high winds, they went on to burn more than 1 million acres and 4,000 homes.
- In August the Rio Grande in New Mexico shrank to the lowest mean monthly flow since 1973. Other rivers in the region, including the Colorado, Green, and San Juan, ran at far-below-average levels throughout the summer.
- As of early November, Lake Powell’s surface elevation had declined by 35 feet since the same date in 2019, and summer hydroelectric output from Glen Canyon Dam’s turbines was 13 percent below the previous summer’s.
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