16 December 20
Why We Fear Very Bad Fundraising Days
It doesn’t take many good days of fundraising to pay all of RSN’s bills for the entire month. But a really bad day of fundraising just frays everyone’s nerves and kicks the can down the road towards the end of the month.
Today is starting out looking like a very bad day of fundraising.
Why?
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
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16 December 20
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Jeff Weaver | Democrats Can't Keep Clinging to the Center
Jeff Weaver, Jacobin
Weaver writes: "If Democrats want to win in Georgia and the midterms, they must appeal to the most progressive part of our party: young people, not Republicans."
Democrats focused more on courting GOP voters than younger voters in the last election, former Bernie Sanders senior staffer Jeff Weaver argues. The strategy was a disaster, damaging downballot Democrats across the country — and it could backfire even more when Trump is gone.
hile the curtain falls on Donald Trump’s desperate and frivolous post-election lawsuits, Democrats are rightly asking how they were able to beat Trump but could not regain control of the Senate and maintain or increase their margin in the House. At a time when Democrats should be dispassionately examining the lessons learned from 2020, some in the conservative wing of the party are instead using this opportunity to attack the party’s growing progressive wing.
Soon after the election, centrists began arguing that Democrats lost House seats and most key Senate races because terms like “defund the police” and “socialism” turned off too many moderate voters — despite Joe Biden getting far more votes for president than any presidential candidate in history. In their telling, Biden was Teflon while promising to raise taxes on the wealthy and make major investments in fighting climate change, but centrists who lost House seats and failed in Senate bids were dragged down by Republican name-calling and red-baiting.
On its face, the story is incongruous. In fact, it is so nonsensical that one of the standard-bearers of the “the Left dragged us all down” crowd, former CIA officer and Blue Dog Coalition representative Abigail Spanberger, actually won a higher percentage of the vote in 2020 than she did in 2018.
So, what’s really going on?
Much of the answer lies in the very strategy chosen to elect Biden and oust Trump.
In 2020, Democrats did not focus on winning back working-class voters in the two-hundred-plus counties that shifted from Barack Obama to Trump four years ago — and they won back only a tiny fraction of those locales. Instead, Democrats adopted a strategy aimed at replacing the blue-collar segment of the Obama coalition with suburban voters and anti-Trump Republicans — which succeeded at the top of the ticket but created the weakest Democratic coattails in six decades.
Democrats’ Strategy Boosted GOP Turnout, Which Hurt Downballot
Tens of millions of dollars were spent by Democratic groups to turn out Republicans who could no longer stomach Trump. Coupled with a surprisingly effective turnout operation by the GOP machine, 15 million more Republicans voted in 2020 than in 2016, while Democratic turnout only increased by 6 million votes.
It is difficult to know how effective Democrats’ focus on swinging GOP voters was, given that Trump consolidated the Republican vote percentage-wise from 2016 to 2020 — going from 90 percent support to 94 percent support among GOP voters. That said, an analysis of 2016 and 2020 exit polls shows Biden did get almost a hundred thousand more Republican votes than Hillary Clinton did in 2016, because the overall size of the electoral pie was much bigger.
It is an open question whether those Republican votes would have come to Biden without the enormous cost of Republican outreach by pro-Biden groups — Trump may have made himself so toxic that those voters would have gone to Biden anyway, and there is evidence that some of the strategies to court GOP voters were ineffective.
What can be said, however, is that the substantial increase in Republican turnout overall — again driven by both pro-Trump and pro-Biden aligned groups — had what should have been the expected effect down the ballot: a big GOP swing in races beneath the presidential contest.
Some House Democrats who had won by small margins in the 2018 “Blue Wave” did not survive, and Senate candidates went down to defeat in states that Trump won.
In Iowa, according to exit polls, the percentage of the electorate that identified as Democrat fell from 31 percent in 2016 to 26 percent in 2020, while the percentage identifying as Republican rose from 34 percent to 36 percent.
In North Carolina, the percentage of the electorate identifying as Democrat fell from 35 percent to 34 percent, while the Republican share rose from 31 percent to 37 percent. There’s an obvious lesson here: turning out Republicans — even if they hate Trump — benefits Republicans downballot.
Contrast that with the biggest surprise of the night, in Georgia, where Biden was the first Democrat to win the state since 1992 and Democrat Jon Ossoff outperformed Senate candidates in Iowa and North Carolina. In Georgia, the percentage of the electorate who identified as Democrat was stable from 2016 to 2020, at 34 percent, while the Republican total only rose from 36 percent to 38 percent. That is a much smaller shift in the electoral composition to Republicans when compared to Iowa or North Carolina.
Focus on Young Voters, Not Republicans
So why were Democrats successful in Georgia and not in Iowa or North Carolina, even in face of a shift, albeit marginal, in the Republicans’ favor in the Peach State? The numbers are clear: Georgia went blue due to the overwhelming turnout among young voters.
Nationally, young voters were 17 percent of the electorate, and they voted overwhelmingly for Biden. In Georgia, young voters were 20 percent of the electorate, and they supported Biden by 13 points over Trump.
Put another way, Biden won the under-thirty vote in Georgia by more than 129,000 votes. That is more than ten times his winning margin of 12,640 votes across the entire state. If young voters in Georgia were the same percentage of the electorate as they were nationally, Biden would have received 19,500 fewer votes — and lost.
In Iowa and North Carolina, young voters were only 16 percent and 15 percent of the electorate, respectively. One can only imagine the impact if the king’s ransom spent to woo Republicans had instead been focused on progressive youth.
Young voters are not the future of the Democratic Party. They are our present.
A Lesson That Should Have Been Learned After 2008
The critical importance of young voters in turning red states to blue should have already been learned.
In 2008, youth turnout was the highest since 1972, and in that year, President Obama won both Indiana (the first Democrat to do so since 1964) and North Carolina, but he only carried the eighteen-to-twenty-nine age demographic in each. For the record, the only age cohort Biden carried in his Arizona win was also voters under thirty. But it’s a lesson that keeps being forgotten, as party leaders and electeds overreact to Republican name-calling.
Republicans are always going to attack. That’s the nature of politics. The panic over “defund the police” and “socialism” among centrists is really no different than when so many Democrats retreated from a fair estate tax because Republicans yelled “death tax.” Political contests are called campaigns for a reason. Like a military campaign, your enemy gets to shoot back. That’s not cause to cower in your foxhole. It’s cause to deliver more intense and overwhelming fire in response.
In politics, effective return fire is not touting résumés and projecting competence. It’s bold and broadly popular substantive policies that address the systemic inequities of all kinds in our society.
Democrats should be mindful that the referendum to raise the minimum wage got 61 percent of the vote in Florida, while Democrats were going down in defeat.
If turning out anti-Trump Republicans as a short-term strategy was effective in winning the White House — and that is a big if — it was certainly worth it. After all, one would be hard-pressed to find a Democrat who would trade control of the Senate for a Trump-controlled White House.
The point moving forward, however, is simple: as attention focuses on Georgia and inevitably turns to the 2022 midterms, attempting to rely on anti-Trump Republicans with Trump out of office is a loser, especially in downballot races.
Anti-Trump Republicans without Trump are, well, just Republicans. But young voters will still be there, waiting to be inspired with bold policies that will ensure broad-based prosperity, opportunity, and inclusion. So will blue-collar voters, including the black and Latino men that Democrats lost ground with this cycle.
If hand-wringing centrists win the day, Democrats can expect losses in Georgia and a tough cycle in 2022. If Democrats learn the real lessons of 2020, we can build the type of electoral coalition that has shown its unique power in turning red states blue.
In case the point is lost on anyone, if Democrats want to win in Georgia and the midterms, they must appeal to the most progressive part of our party: young people, not Republicans.
Republican senator Kelly Loeffler of Georgia. (photograph: Reuters
Wall Street Donates Millions to Back Perdue and Loeffler in Georgia Senate Race
Peter Stone, Guardian UK
Stone writes: "Billionaire Republicans on Wall Street have been opening their wallets to try and protect David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler's Senate seats in January 5's high-stakes runoff in Georgia against two Democrat challengers."
Two super Pacs are planning to spend about $80m on ads and other efforts backing the Republicans.
Among donors are top finance CEOs Stephen Schwarzman, of Blackstone Group, and Kenneth Griffin, of Citadel LLC, who have donated millions to the Senate Leadership Fund super Pac which is supporting Perdue, according to campaign finance records.
Last month, Schwarzman, who briefly was the chair of Donald Trump’s strategic and policy forum, contributed $15m and Griffin donated $10m to the Pac; while earlier in the year, the Pac received $20m from Schwarzman and $25m from Griffin.
Separately, a fundraising committee backing both Republican senators that launched last month has surpassed its goal of raising $35m to oppose Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. This committee is also being helped by fundraising on Wall Street including Schwarzman, Griffin and others, say two GOP sources.
The Georgia runoff will determine which party controls the Senate – and consequently how much political power Joe Biden’s administration will have to push its agenda.
If Ossoff and Warnock win, the Senate would be split 50-50, giving Democrats control since Vice-President elect Kamala Harris would have a tie breaking vote.
With the stakes so high, reports show that over $400m on ads has been spent or booked so far in Georgia by the candidates’ campaigns, their parties and outside backers.
As fundraising and spending on ads in Georgia has increased, it looks as though the two senators and their supporters are on track to have a distinct edge over their Democratic challengers.
Analysis from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) shows that securities firms, insurance and real estate companies have historically been the top donors to Perdue and Loeffler.
Elected in 2014, Perdue has raked in about $4.4m from securities, investment and real estate companies from 2015-2020, making the sector his leading campaign funder, CRP data shows.
Loeffler, who was appointed in late 2019 to fill the seat of a retiring senator with health problems, has this cycle pulled in over $1.1m from these firms, or more than other sectors donated, says CRP.
“Perdue and Loeffler’s money from Wall Street and real estate towers over every other sector that supports them in the 2020 cycle,” said Sheila Krumholz, the executive director of CRP. “On top of money to the candidates, conservative outside groups are also raking in cash from major financial interests for the Georgia Senate runoffs in an attempt to keep these seats – and the Senate – for the GOP.”
Perdue’s top 10 donors, meanwhile, have included executives from insurer AFLAC and Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs which, respectively, gave him $92,000 and $88,000, according to CRP.
Loeffler’s 10 leading donors have included $114,650 from Intercontinental Exchange, a company her husband Jeffrey Sprecher runs; $29,450 from AFLAC; and $22,500 from Blackstone Group.
The Senate Leadership Fund, which boasts close ties to Senate majority Leader Mitch McConnell, has drawn its largest financial industry checks from Schwarzman and Griffin.
Other finance sector mega donors to the super Pac include the CEOs of Charles Schwab Corp which gave $6.3m, plus Elliott Management and Stephens Inc, both of which chipped in $4m.
Overall, CRP data revealed that donations from finance, insurance and real estate sectors totaled close to $126m to the super PAC which raised close to $400m in the election cycle.
Democrats
Democrats on Wall Street, meanwhile, have been supporting a big Pac backing Ossoff and Warnock, though have so far been outmatched in donations.
The pro-Democrat Senate Majority Pac, which is expected to spend millions of dollars in the runoffs, before 3 November raked in big money from two financial giants, receiving $10.2m Renaissance Technologies, and $5m from Paloma Partners, according to CRP.
Overall, however, as of 23 November, the Senate Majority Pac had just $2.1m left to spend, while the Senate Leadership Fund had $60.8m, according to CRP.
Perdue and Loeffler’s strong support from financial industry leaders seems partly attributable to their industry ties. An ex-CEO of Dollar General whose net worth was estimated last year at $16m, Perdue used to be on the board of Cardlytics, a financial tech company.
Loeffler’s husband Sprecher, chairs the New York Stock Exchange and leads global exchange operator ICE. The couple’s net worth has been pegged by Forbes at $800m.
Both senators, though, have been dogged by ethical issues involving significant stock trading during the pandemic’s early stages which sparked federal inquiries into potential illegal insider trading.
Perdue, who is the most prolific stock trader in the Senate, drew scrutiny from the justice department due to his well timed and profitable stock trading in Cardlytics: Perdue sold about $1m worth of his Cardlytics stock in January. Investigators looked at a personal email he received before the stock sale and whether he had learned early of a major management shift, the New York Times reported.
DoJ reportedly opted not to charge Perdue with any illegal trading, but the issue has roiled his runoff campaign and may have influenced his decision not to appear at a debate with Ossoff earlier this month.
Loeffler too was embroiled in an inquiry into possible insider trading during the pandemic: she dumped millions of dollars in stocks soon after she received a private briefing from health officials on the new threat in January.
DoJ investigated her trades and those of some other members, but told Loeffler in March it was not pursuing charges.
Still, the stock trading issue has surfaced in the runoffs: when the moderator at her debate with Warnock last Sunday pressed Loeffler about whether Senators should be allowed to trade stocks she avoided answering, calling the controversy about her trading a “conspiracy” and “left wing media lie”.
The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service is said to be behind a series of major breaches at U.S. federal agencies and private companies. A federal cybersecurity program failed to detect the signs. (photo: Pavel Golovkin/AP)
How Hackers, Probably Russian, Infiltrated the Federal Government
Sara Morrison, Vox
Morrison writes: "Hackers reportedly linked to the Russian government managed to hack into multiple US government agencies in what could be the largest hack of government systems since the Obama administration - or perhaps ever."
Malware inserted into third-party software may have given hackers access to various government systems for months. It went undetected until last week, when a cybersecurity company that makes hacking tools discovered that its own systems were breached. Security agencies are currently assessing exactly which departments were breached and what information was accessed. So far, the Commerce Department has confirmed it was hacked, and the Treasury and State Departments, Department of Homeland Security, parts of the Pentagon, and the National Institutes of Health are reported to have been affected. There will likely be more.
We don’t have a lot of other details yet, but here’s what we do know.
According to anonymous officials, the hackers are a Russian group called Cozy Bear, also known as APT29. It was also behind the hack of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign staffers during her 2016 campaign, as well as the 2014 hack of the White House and State Department’s unclassified networks. Cozy Bear is also believed to be behind recent attacks on various organizations developing Covid-19 vaccines. The group is linked to Russian intelligence, although Russia has denied any involvement — a position it maintains now.
“Malicious activities in the information space contradicts the principles of the Russian foreign policy, national interests and our understanding of interstate relations,” the Russian Embassy said in a statement. “Russia does not conduct offensive operations in the cyber domain.”
The US government has not officially stated which group or country it believes is behind the hack. Consistent with the Trump administration’s downplaying of Russian cybersecurity threats, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Breitbart Radio News on Monday: “It’s been a consistent effort of the Russians to try and get into American servers, not only those of government agencies but of businesses,” then adding “we see this even more strongly from the Chinese Communist Party, from the North Koreans as well.”
The hacks are believed to have begun last March through a network monitoring software called Orion Platform, which is made by a Texas company called SolarWinds. SolarWinds says it has more than 300,000 customers around the world, including the American military, the Pentagon, the Department of Justice, the State Department, the Commerce and Treasury Departments, and more than 400 Fortune 500 companies (the webpage with this listing was showing an error message by Monday afternoon).
But not all of those clients used the Orion Platform. SolarWinds believes fewer than 18,000 customers were potentially affected, according to the Washington Post. The hackers were somehow able to insert malware into software updates which, once installed, gave hackers access to those systems. FireEye, a cybersecurity company that was also a victim of the SolarWinds hack, has named this malware “SUNBURST”. (Microsoft has named it “Solorigate.”) FireEye revealed last week that it was attacked “by a nation with top-tier offensive capabilities,” and was reportedly the first to discover the hack — not, apparently, the government agencies charged with protecting the nation’s cybersecurity infrastructure.
SolarWinds has now released software updates that fix the vulnerability and apologized “for any inconvenience caused.”
The Commerce Department has confirmed a breach of one of its agencies but has not specified which one was hit. Citing anonymous sources, Reuters reported on Sunday that the National Telecommunications and Information Administration was the affected agency, and that hackers have had access to staff emails for months. The Treasury Department, State Department, Department of Homeland Security, and National Institutes of Health are also believed to have been affected, but have yet to publicly acknowledge the breaches. How extensive the hacks were or which systems were affected in those departments has also not been made public.
The government has been sparing with its statements so far, only saying that its security agencies are investigating. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued an emergency directive on Sunday to federal civilian agencies to disconnect affected products from their networks immediately.
“The NSC is working closely with CISA, FBI, the intelligence community, and affected departments and agencies to coordinate a swift and effective whole-of-government recovery and response to the recent compromise,” National Security Council spokesperson John Ullyot said in a statement.
David Xol of Guatemala hugs his son Byron as they were reunited at Los Angeles International Airport in January. The father and son were separated 18 months earlier under the Trump administration's 'no tolerance' migration policy. (photo: Ringo H.W. Chiu/AP)
Immigrant Advocates Urge Biden to Quickly Rectify the Trauma of Family Separation
Priscilla Alvarez, CNN
Alvarez writes: "Immigrant advocacy groups, who for years scrambled to identify and reunite families separated at the US-Mexico border, are now preparing for the incoming administration and steps to rectify the trauma experienced by parents and children."
Last week, immigrant advocacy groups met with the Joe Biden transition team on family separation and next steps as part of a series of ongoing listening sessions, according to a source familiar with the meeting. Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden's pick to lead the Department of Homeland Security, has also met with immigration leaders, among other groups, according to another source familiar with the discussions.
Immigrant advocacy groups hope Biden's administration can work toward restoring trust with the families who've grown increasingly skeptical of the US since having their kids taken from them.
"It's going to take a long time for families to trust the government if they're not seeing action," said Cathleen Caron, executive director at Justice in Motion, which is leading the on-the-ground efforts to locate the deported parents who were separated from their children.
Advocates have been putting together a list of recommendations on how the government can work to rectify the consequences of family separation and address the situation in a thoughtful and holistic manner, according to Conchita Cruz, a co-executive director of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, which represents separated families.
The so-called "zero tolerance" policy -- which called for the criminal prosecutions of every adult illegally crossing the border and, as a result, the separation of thousands of families -- became a flashpoint during the Trump administration. The policy came to encapsulate the lengths President Donald Trump was willing to go to in order to deter migrants from coming to the US, regardless of their circumstances, and it revealed the disarray that ensues when agencies are unprepared.
Biden has condemned the policy, calling it "criminal" during a presidential debate in October. "Their kids were ripped from their arms and separated. And now they cannot find over 500 sets of those parents and those kids are alone. Nowhere to go. Nowhere to go. It's criminal. It's criminal," he said.
Since 2018, when the "zero tolerance" policy was implemented, court filings and watchdog reports have continued to shed light on the consequences of family separation, revealing the information withheld by the US government and the hundreds of parents who have yet to be reunited with their children.
"We're starting from the premise that this is one of the low points of the last four years, one of the worst ongoing atrocities that needs to be rectified," said Tom Jawetz, the vice president of immigration policy at Center for American Progress.
Finding parents
One of the first expectations of the incoming administration, Caron said, is scrubbing agencies to ensure there's no information or data that's been held back that could be helpful to identifying and locating families.
A recent court filing in an ongoing family separation case also revealed that the Trump administration would hand over information from the Executive Office for Immigration Review, an agency under the Justice Department that oversees the US immigration court system. That database will provide needed phone numbers and addresses to locate additional families.
But beyond assuring that all family details have been provided, groups stressed that a Biden administration should focus on rectifying the damage done, leaving the process of locating families up to the groups that have worked on the issue.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which has led litigation against the Trump administration over family separation, outlined five steps the incoming administration should consider taking when tackling the issue.
Those steps include allowing the parents and children who were separated and then deported to return to the United States, as well as giving some type of legal status to those families that were separated and creating a victims fund to help families with trauma and medical needs.
"Finally and importantly, while we of course welcome any help the Biden administration can give us to find the remaining families (now the parents of 628 children), that is not where we would like to see the new administration concentrate its efforts," said Lee Gelernt,an attorney at the ACLU. "I am confident that we will ultimately find the families, but only the government can reunite the families and provide them with legal status in the United States."
Gelernt said that through the litigation they've learned of nearly 5,500 separations since July 2017.
Task force
Advocate groups have also called for accountability and transparency to fully account for the "zero tolerance" policy and its ramifications, as well as factoring in the input of parents who were separated from their children.
Biden has pledged to sign an executive order to form a task force that will focus on reuniting separated families. While the creation of a task force has been welcomed, immigrant advocate groups caution that it shouldn't supplant the efforts of the last two years.
"We need to make sure we're using all our resources to support those efforts, rather than thinking the task force can itself serve as search and rescue," Jawetz said, adding that the task force could play a useful role in providing a "single focus for inter-agency efforts that will have White House involvement."
"Task force is great, but we don't want it to be a stall tactic or take too long," Caron echoed. "We need a focal point in the government to be able to have the conversations with."
Speaking virtually at an American Business Immigration Coalition summit this month, Mayorkas nodded to the restrictionist policies of the Trump administration, saying that "we must stop vilifying these communities," and he cited the family separation policy.
"There is no more powerful and heartbreaking example of that inhumanity than the separation of children from their parents," he said.
A protester holds a sign up across the street from the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. (photo: Austen Leake/AP)
Trump Administration Has Executed More Americans Than All States Combined, Report Finds
Ed Pilkington, Guardian UK
Pilkington writes: "Donald Trump has added a morbid new distinction to his presidency - for the first time in US history, the federal government has in one year executed more American civilians than all the states combined."
The execution spree was a first in US history and stands contrary to the declining trend in death penalty practices
In the course of 2020, in an unprecedented glut of judicial killing, the Trump administration rushed to put 10 prisoners to death. The execution spree ran roughshod over historical norms and stood entirely contrary to the decline in the practice of the death penalty that has been the trend in the US for several years.
The outlier nature of the Trump administration’s thirst for blood is set out in the year-end report of the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC). In recent years, the annual review has highlighted the steady withering away of executions, all of which were carried out by individual states.
That pattern continued at state level in 2020, heightened by the coronavirus pandemic which suppressed an already low number of scheduled executions. Only five states – Alabama, Georgia, Missouri, Tennessee and Texas – carried out judicial killings. And only Texas performed more than one, producing the lowest number of executions by the states since 1983.
States carried out seven executions to the federal government’s 10. Despite the rash of federal killings, that still amounted to the fewest executions in the US since 1991.
Against that downward path, the actions of the Trump administration stand out as a grotesque aberration.
“The administration’s policies were not just out of step with the historical practices of previous presidents, they were also completely out of step with today’s state practices,” said Robert Dunham, DPIC executive director and lead author of its year-end report.
Part of the story was Trump’s willful refusal to take the coronavirus seriously. Unlike death penalty states, the federal government insisted on proceeding with executions. As a result, there was an eruption of Covid-19 cases at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana which the DPIC report notes infected at least nine members of execution teams.
But the overwhelming story of the federal executions in 2020 was the disdain shown by the Trump administration towards established norms, and its determination to push the death penalty to the limits of decency even by standards set by those who support the practice.
Since Trump lost the election on 3 November, the federal government has put to death three prisoners: Orlando Hall, Brandon Bernard and Alfred Bourgeois. The last time a lame-duck president presided over an execution was in 1889, when the Grover Cleveland administration killed a Choctaw Indian named Richard Smith.
All three Trump lame-duck executions involved black men. As the DPIC review points out, racial disparities remain prominent in the roll call of the dead, as they have for decades, with almost half of those executed being people of color.
The review exposes other systemic problems in the Trump administration’s choice of prisoners to kill. Lezmond Hill, executed in August, was the only Native American prisoner on federal death row. His execution ignored tribal sovereignty over the case and the objections of the Navajo Nation which is opposed to the death penalty.
The subjects of the federal rush to the death chamber included two prisoners whose offenses were committed when they were teenagers. Christopher Vialva was 19 and Bernard 18: they were the first teenage offenders sent to their deaths by the US government in almost 70 years.
The sharp contrast between the Trump administration’s aggressive stance and the dramatic reduction in executions at state level is underlined by the annual review of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (TCADP), also released on Wednesday.
Texas, traditionally the death penalty capital of America, carried out three executions this year, down from nine in 2019. The most recent was on 8 July. Billy Joe Wardlow was 18 in 1993 when he committed robbery and murder.
“The fact that state legislators, juvenile justice advocates, neuroscience experts and two jurors from Wardlow’s trial had called for a reprieve based on what we know now about adolescent brain development make the circumstances of his arbitrary execution even more appalling,” said Kristin Houlé Cuellar, TCADP executive director.
There was some good news. In March, Colorado became the 22nd state to abolish the death penalty. Louisiana and Utah have not executed anybody in 10 years.
Joe Biden, the president-elect, has vowed to eliminate the death penalty. But until he enters the White House on 20 January Trump remains in charge. Three more federal inmates are set to die – including the only woman on federal death row – before he is done.
Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai arrives at a magistrate court this spring. Lai has been arrested multiple times this year, most recently earlier this month. (photo: Anthony Kwan/Getty Images)
Hong Kong Democracy Activist Jimmy Lai Denied Bail
Matthew S. Schwartz, NPR
Schwartz writes: "Democracy activist Jimmy Lai, a prominent Hong Kong media mogul charged with violating a new and controversial national security law, was denied bail Saturday."
Lai, who publishes a tabloid newspaper that's critical of China, is one of the most high-profile people charged with colluding with a foreign country under a controversial new national security law. China's ruling Communist Party has been taking its most prominent critics into custody as it attempts to suppress the pro-democracy movement there.
The law, passed earlier this year by an elite body within China's legislature, criminalizes four types of activity: secession, subversion of state power, terrorism and collusion with foreign entities. The text of the law, imposed by fiat on Hong Kong, was revealed publicly only after it passed.
The 73-year-old Lai was one of several journalists arrested earlier this month, accused of violating terms of their office building's lease. On Friday, government officials announced he would be charged with violating the national security law. At his court appearance on Saturday, a judge denied his request for bail and adjourned the case until April, according to Lai's paper, the Apple Daily.
Prosecutors had requested the postponement, saying it would give time for police to investigate more than 1,000 posts on Lai's Twitter account. Specifically, Lai is accused of requesting that a foreign country or institution "impose sanctions on blockade, or engage in other hostile activities" against China or Hong Kong, the Apple Daily reported. He could face a maximum punishment of life in prison.
Lai has publicly commemorated the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown in Beijing and has encouraged his followers to fight for the end of one-party rule in Hong Kong. "Yes, it'll be dangerous," he tweeted last month. "But let us not be afraid and fight on! The greater the danger, the more effective we can arouse the world attention."
Lai has already been arrested multiple times this year related to his involvement in demonstrations against China's Communist Party. His case has gained international attention, sparking comments by prominent U.S. politicians. Vice President Pence said on Twitter that the charges against Lai "are an affront to freedom loving people" everywhere. Pence called Lai a "hero" who has stood up for democracy and the rights of Hong Kong residents, adding: "#FreeJimmyLai."
"Hong Kong's National Security Law makes a mockery of justice," U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted. Lai's only "crime" was "speaking the truth about the Chinese Communist Party's authoritarianism and fear of freedom," Pompeo said, urging charges be dropped.
This NASA image shows Venus' orange atmosphere. (photo: Aphelleon/Getty Images)
Venus Was Once More Earth-Like, but Climate Change Made It Uninhabitable
Richard Ernst, The Conversation
Ernst writes: "We can learn a lot about climate change from Venus, our sister planet."
Venus currently has a surface temperature of 450℃ (the temperature of an oven's self-cleaning cycle) and an atmosphere dominated by carbon dioxide (96 percent) with a density 90 times that of Earth's.
Venus is a very strange place, totally uninhabitable, except perhaps in the clouds some 60 kilometers up where the recent discovery of phosphine may suggest floating microbial life. But the surface is totally inhospitable.
However, Venus once likely had an Earth-like climate. According to recent climate modeling, for much of its history Venus had surface temperatures similar to present day Earth. It likely also had oceans, rain, perhaps snow, maybe continents and plate tectonics, and even more speculatively, perhaps even surface life.
Less than one billion years ago, the climate dramatically changed due to a runaway greenhouse effect. It can be speculated that an intensive period of volcanism pumped enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to cause this great climate change event that evaporated the oceans and caused the end of the water cycle.
Evidence of Change
This hypothesis from the climate modelers inspired Sara Khawja, a master's student in my group (co-supervised with geoscientist Claire Samson), to look for evidence in Venusian rocks for this proposed climatic change event.
Since the early 1990s, my Carleton University research team — and more recently my Siberian team at Tomsk State University — have been mapping and interpreting the geological and tectonic history of Earth's remarkable sister planet.
Soviet Venera and Vega missions of the 1970s and 1980s did land on Venus and take pictures and evaluated the composition of the rocks, before the landers failed due to the high temperature and pressure. However, our most comprehensive view of the surface of Venus has been provided by NASA's Magellan spacecraft in the early 1990s, which used radar to see through the dense cloud layer and produce detailed images of more than 98 percent of Venus's surface.
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