03 January 20
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Trump and UFOs: The Greatest Hits
Matt Stieb, New York Magazine
Stieb writes: "Though Trump is hardly a true believer and didn't live up to the expectations that he'd blurt out everything the government knows on the subject (he often seemed more bored than excited by the whole thing), he did crack open the door on certain secrets."
s part of his anti-malarkey platform, Joe Biden has promised a return to presidential norms — a net positive for many Americans who don’t want their president to issue war threats on Twitter and dog whistle to white supremacists. But for those whose policy priorities are focused on the great beyond, a return to business as usual may not be such a welcome prospect: At least during the Trump years, one could expect the occasional comment from the president on UFOs.
In part because Trump (coincidentally) presided over a halcyon age of UFO developments, and in part because he’s prone to saying whatever’s on his mind, aliens had a good four years in the news cycle. Though Trump is hardly a true believer and didn’t live up to the expectations that he’d blurt out everything the government knows on the subject (he often seemed more bored than excited by the whole thing), he did crack open the door on certain secrets. Below is a chronology of Trump’s most notable UFO moments.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders says she will “circle back” on Trump’s UFO beliefs.
In December 2017, the New York Times reported on the existence of a $22 million Pentagon program that investigated unidentified aerial phenomena from 2007 until 2012, one of the biggest breaks ever in the pursuit to get the federal government to acknowledge purported UFO programs. Days later, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders could neither confirm nor deny if Trump cared about the development. “Somehow that question hasn’t come up in our back-and-forth over the last couple days. But I will check into that and be happy to circle back.” It made sense that aliens hadn’t come up in conversation, as it was a busy month for Trump, who was encouraging the good people of Alabama to vote for a credibly accused child predator.
Trump says “we’re watching” the skies for aliens.
In 2019, senators were reportedly “coming out of the woodwork” to be briefed on extraterrestrial developments after the Times reported in June of that year that Navy pilots were seeing unidentified aircraft off the eastern seaboard on an almost-daily basis in 2014 and 2015.
“I want them to think whatever they think,” Trump said of the Navy pilots in an interview that month, sounding more like a supportive parent than the commander-in-chief. “I did have one very brief meeting on it,” he added. “But people are saying they’re seeing UFOs. Do I believe it? Not particularly.”
Trump, the first sitting president to admit to a briefing on aliens, did so quite casually, suggesting that either the evidence is sparse or, perhaps, he’s constitutionally incapable of paying attention to something that does not directly involve him. Nevertheless, he did display his showman’s flair in promoting this space race, telling George Stephanopoulos that “we’re watching” for aliens, “and you’ll be the first to know.”
That’s one “hell of a video.”
In April 2020, the Pentagon officially released three infrared videos featuring unidentified flying objects traveling at high speeds and making near-impossible turns. “As I got close to it … it rapidly accelerated to the south, and disappeared in less than two seconds,” explained retired U.S. Navy pilot David Fravor, who recorded one of the encounters. “This was extremely abrupt, like a ping pong ball, bouncing off a wall. It would hit and go the other way.”
Trump, despite being a big fan of expansive executive power when it benefits him, made it sound like he didn’t have the clearance to learn more about the clips. “I just wonder if it’s real,” he said. “That’s a hell of a video.”
Two months later, he played coy again in an interview with his eldest son on Father’s Day. When Donald Trump Jr. asked his father if he would ever tell the public about an alleged incident at Roswell in 1947, Trump said, “I won’t talk to you about what I know about it, but it’s very interesting.”
Trump vows to “take a good, strong look” at UFOs.
Days after contracting the coronavirus, Trump said in an interview that he would “take a good, strong look” at a government program on UFOs.
In the interview, which took place on Fox News on October 11, Trump said that he had only heard about the Pentagon’s August announcement of a task force to investigate UFOs “two days ago,” again suggesting his overall lack of interest on the subject — a curious incuriousness, considering that there’d been a classified briefing ahead of that task force detailing “off-world vehicles not made on this earth.”
A former Israeli space official thinks Trump knows more than he’s letting on.
Granted, Trump is letting on very little.
In an interview in early December, Haim Eshed, the former head of the Israeli Defense Ministry’s space directorate, gave a sprawling interview to the nation’s Yediot Aharonot newspaper. Among other claims, he said that aliens “have asked not to publish that they are here [because] humanity is not ready yet.” The respected professor and former general added that he believed Trump knew of their existence and was “on the verge of revealing” the blockbuster details, but was asked not to, so that “mass hysteria would not break out.” Eshed also claimed there “is an agreement between the U.S. government and the aliens. They signed a contract with us to do experiments here.” The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
And officials fear Trump could spill state secrets once he’s out of office.
The president hasn’t been stellar about keeping classified information under wraps, accidentally confirming the open secret that the U.S. has nuclear weapons in Turkey, and informing Bob Woodward that “we have stuff that you haven’t ever seen or heard about” in a conversation about the nuclear stockpile. According to legal and national security officials who spoke with the Washington Post, there’s worry that Trump will be even less careful with his words once he sets off on his next career venture. “A knowledgeable and informed president with Trump’s personality characteristics, including lack of self-discipline, would be a disaster,” Jack Goldsmith, the former head of the Office of Legal Counsel under George W. Bush, told the paper. Goldsmith added that it was luck for the security apparatus that Trump “hasn’t been paying attention.”
And it’s quite possible that Trump won’t ever think about UFOs again, unless the topic slips onscreen during one of his daily binges of television news.
But in the past few decades, several retired military and political figures have come out during their retirements with new information on government research around UFOs, including former CIA directors John Brennan and Roscoe Hillenkoetter, former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and Canadian Defense Minister Paul Hellyer. Considering the sense of relaxation Trump clearly feels at Mar-a-Lago — where he has previously discussed matters of national security in the open — it’s not too far-fetched to imagine the ex-president admitting to extraterrestrial life on Earth while enjoying a well-done steak, spilling ketchup and state secrets all over the nice white tablecloth.
For the GOP, Democracy Is Now Up for Debate.
Cameron Peters, Vox
Peters writes: "In the wake of a Saturday announcement by 11 Republican senators that they plan to formally object to the results of the 2020 presidential election, the Senate GOP conference has descended into infighting over whether to get behind efforts to overturn the election."
Sens. Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney, and Pat Toomey all came out with strong statements pushing back against the doomed — but alarmingly undemocratic — scheme to reject Biden electors on Saturday.
“The egregious ploy to reject electors may enhance the political ambition of some, but dangerously threatens our Democratic Republic,” Romney said in his first public response to the plan Saturday. “The congressional power to reject electors is reserved for the most extreme and unusual circumstances. These are far from it.”
The effort — led by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and backed by at least 10 other current and incoming Republican senators, some of whom were elected in the same election they are currently disputing — argues that Congress cannot certify President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, as it is scheduled to do on January 6, because “allegations of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election exceed any in our lifetimes.” The senators also proposed “an emergency 10-day audit of the election returns in the disputed states.”
They join Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, who was first to announce his plan to object to the certification of Pennsylvania’s electoral votes last week, and has so far led an internecine clash against colleagues like Toomey, who represents Pennsylvania in the Senate.
“Millions of voters concerned about election integrity deserve to be heard. I will object on January 6 on their behalf,” Hawley said on Twitter last month.
In response to a Toomey statement Saturday pointing out that Hawley and Cruz’s efforts stand in direct opposition to “the right of the people to elect their own leaders,” Hawley released a letter defending his decision and calling for his colleagues to “avoid putting word into each other’s mouths.”
“Instead of debating the issue of election integrity by press release, conference call, or email,” Hawley wrote, “Perhaps we could have a debate on the Senate floor for all of the American people to judge.”
Hawley’s statement — as well as that of Cruz and his allies — leaves out a few salient details, however.
Specifically, the “irregularities” they cite have been litigated at length, in Pennsylvania and every other battleground state in the country. In the two months since Election Day, President Donald Trump and his Republican allies have filed, and lost, at least 60 election-related lawsuits at all levels of the state and federal court systems alleging voter fraud and other improprieties, and they have failed to prove their case at every turn.
What’s more, recounts in battleground states like Georgia and Wisconsin — both won by Biden — have turned up no evidence of large-scale fraud or irregularities that could have affected the results of the election. And in all 50 states and Washington, DC, the election results have been carefully reviewed by state officials and certified as accurate.
All of the senators planning on objecting to certification do little to address where voters’ concerns about election integrity originate. As MSNBC’s Chris Hayes pointed out on Twitter Saturday, Republican leaders “spent months lying to people, telling them the election was stolen and now turn around and cite the fact that many people believe them as evidence!” The same is true of the unsubstantiated allegations brought by Hawley, Cruz, and the other signatories of Saturday’s statement.
The back-and-forth between Toomey and Hawley highlights exactly how far the GOP has drifted. An ever-growing swath of the Republican Party, led by Hawley, Cruz, and Trump, appears to be perfectly willing to overturn the results of a free and fair election by rejecting Biden electors on January 6 — just as long as it allows their party to hold the White House.
Ultimately, it won’t work. Even were the plan to get universal Republican support — and statements by Murkowski, Romney, and Toomey, among others, demonstrate that it won’t — actually rejecting a state’s slate of electors requires a majority in both chambers of Congress, which the GOP lacks.
As Vox’s Andrew Prokop explained in December,
If at least one House member and one senator object to the results in any state, each chamber will hold a vote on the matter. For the objection to succeed, both the House and the Senate must vote in favor of it. Otherwise, it fails. (And since Democrats will control the new House, any objection to Biden’s win will surely fail in that chamber.)
Democrats will also hold 48 seats in the Senate on January 6 — meaning only three Republicans would have to refuse to participate in efforts to overturn the election in order to end any objection. And more than three Republican senators have registered their contempt for Hawley and Cruz’s scheme.
Consequently, the most Hawley and the Cruz coalition can achieve by objecting is a protracted certification process on January 6 ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s January 20 inauguration.
Many GOP leaders are giving up on democracy
Futile though the GOP plan to hand Trump an unelected second term in office may be, it has found widespread acceptance throughout the party. Beyond the dozen Republican senators who have bought in, a sizable majority of the House GOP conference — as many as 140 members, according to Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert — also plans to participate in the effort.
And top Trump officials such as chief of staff Mark Meadows — a member of Congress until last year — are on board too.
“We’re now at well over 100 House members and a dozen Senators ready to stand up for election integrity and object to certification,” Meadows tweeted Saturday. “It’s time to fight back.”
None of this is new for Trump, of course. Even aside from the steady drumbeat of voter fraud allegations emanating from his Twitter feed since losing reelection, baseless fraud claims have been a favorite tactic of his in the face of defeat. In 2016, after losing the Iowa caucuses to then-presidential candidate Cruz, Trump tweeted “Ted Cruz didn’t win Iowa, he stole it. That is why all of the polls were so wrong and why he got far more votes than anticipated. Bad!”
From his perch in the White House, though, Trump has a much larger megaphone — and a base that’s more fervent than ever. While senators like Hawley and Cruz prepare to object to certification in Congress on January 6, Trump has been promoting a “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington, DC the same day. The event will be just the latest of a series pro-Trump protest since Election Day: The last major Washington protest took place in early December 2020, and resulted in at least four stabbings as violent hate groups like the Proud Boys descended on the city.
For Trump and his allies in Congress, however — some of whom are thought to have their eyes on a 2024 presidential run if Trump cedes the field — that kind of damage appears secondary.
“America is proud of Josh [Hawley] and the many others who are joining him,” Trump tweeted Thursday. “The USA cannot have fraudulent elections!”
Treasury secretary nominee Janet Yellen speaks during an event to name President-elect Joe Biden's economic team in Wilmington, Delaware. (photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Washington Has Been Lucrative for Some on Biden's Team
Kenneth P. Vogel and Eric Lipton, The New York Times
Excerpt: "President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s choice for Treasury secretary, Janet L. Yellen, collected more than $7 million in speaking fees over the past two years from major corporations and Wall Street banks that have a keen interest in the financial policies she will oversee after her expected confirmation to lead the Treasury Department."
Janet Yellen, the president-elect’s pick for Treasury secretary, collected more than $7 million in speaking fees over the past two years. Antony J. Blinken and Avril Haines did well, too.
Ms. Yellen’s paid speaking appearances — which included $992,000 from the investment bank Citi for nine appearances — were among the lucrative payments from a range of Wall Street, Big Tech and corporate interests to three prominent prospective members of the incoming Biden administration.
The payments, revealed in disclosure statements covering the previous two years and released on New Year’s Eve, have caused consternation among progressive activists concerned about the influence of special interests around Mr. Biden, who they see as part of a Democratic establishment that has not sufficiently embraced liberal priorities.
Nancy Pelosi. (photo: Reuters)
New Congress Convenes to Elect House Speaker and Swear in Lawmakers
Felicia Sonmez, Donna Cassata, Mike DeBonis and Paul Kane, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "The 117th Congress convened Sunday at noon, as prescribed in the Constitution, with the surging coronavirus pandemic forcing changes in traditional oath-taking and votes. Shadowing the proceedings was the effort by dozens of Republicans to subvert the outcome of the election of Joe Biden as the next president."
“To say the 117th Congress convenes at a challenging time would indeed be an understatement. From political division to a deadly pandemic to adversaries around the world, the hurdles before us are many, and they are serious,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said after he and 31 other senators were sworn in. “But there is also plenty of reason for hope.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the only woman to serve as speaker, is seeking reelection to the post, with the pandemic presenting a formidable challenge to getting enough Democrats to show up and cast their ballots for the California Democrat.
Democrats are poised to have the narrowest House majority of either party in 20 years, beginning the session with a 222-to-211 advantage.
Larry King. (photo: Gregg Deguire/Getty Images)
Larry King Hospitalized With COVID-19
Charu Sinha, New York Magazine
Sinha writes: "Larry King has been hospitalized with COVID-19, CNN and ABC News confirmed. The talk-show host has reportedly been hospitalized for more than a week at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in L.A., according to CNN."
King, who is 87 years old, previously suffered from a major heart attack in 1987, lung cancer in 2017, and a stroke in 2019. King also has Type 2 diabetes. “Larry has fought so many health issues in the last few years and he is fighting this one hard too, he’s a champ,” a source close to King’s family told ABC News. King is reportedly in isolation at the hospital and, because of COVID-19 protocols, unable to receive visits from family.
On December 30, the Argentine Senate voted 38 to 29 in favour of legalising elective abortion until the 14th week. (photo: Flor Guzzetti/Reuters)
The Argentine Women Who Fought for Legal Abortion - and Won
Natalie Alcoba, Al Jazeera
Alcoba writes: "The road to legalising abortion in Argentina is paved with the sweat, tears and devotion of women who spent much of their lives fighting for change."
Pioneering women who spent decades fighting for abortion rights in Argentina look back at their victorious struggle.
They are revered as “las historicas” – the pioneering activists, lawyers and doctors who occupied the lonely space on street corners in the 1990s, waving placards that demanded women have the right to determine the fate of their bodies.
On Wednesday, the Argentine Senate voted 38 to 29 in favour of legalising elective abortion until the 14th week, with one abstention.
Some of those warriors did not get the chance to see their labour bear fruit: like Dora Coledesky, an activist, lawyer, and longtime champion for women’s rights who is signalled out as the main driver behind the campaign in its early days.
She passed away in 2009, and her granddaughter Rosana Fanjul is a key member of the legalisation campaign.
Those who were able to witness history are now legends to the “marea verde” – or green wave, as the young pro-choice masses are known. They have the lessons of struggle imprinted on their bodies. Their collective experience, the alliances they fostered and the manner in which they built consensus offer clues into how to sew a feminist revolution.
“My children when they were younger would say, the only thing you talk about is abortion. Can’t you talk about something else?” recalled Alicia Cacopardo, 83, laughing. “Well, we got here.”
The retired doctor formed part of the commission for the right to abortion in 1988.
She had just moved her practice out of a hospital in Buenos Aires and into neighbourhoods where she saw first hand the way illegality hit poor women harder. “The clandestine circuit worked perfectly in Argentina, paying for everything. That difference was so incredible,” she said.
Cacopardo would attend twice a month gatherings outside El Molino, a famous and since shuttered coffee shop within eyeshot of the National Congress in Buenos Aires. There, women would hand out pamphlets about their proposal and how the issue was treated by other countries.
“There were those who were in favour and those against, and debates would break out there on the street corner. Of course, it was nothing like the green wave that you see now, but there were a lot of people who supported us,” said Cacopardo.
Street protests
The street is without question a protagonist in the Argentine feminist struggle.
The women who searched for their disappeared children and grandchildren during the last military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983, known as Las Madres and Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, famously held weekly marches in front of the government house, demanding answers from a regime that silenced its critics.
The symbol of their struggle was a white scarf worn around their heads; for the legal abortion campaign, the symbolic scarf has turned green.
“Our mobilisation is our presence,” said Nina Brugo, 77, a longtime labour lawyer and member of the campaign to legalise abortion. “A fundamental point is to take to the street.”
So too have been the National Gatherings of Women held every year since 1986 in a different city in Argentina. They feature 70 odd workshops on a rainbow of topics. Those who cannot afford somewhere to stay are given space to camp, or put up in schools. Some 600,000 people attended the last one in the city of La Plata in 2019.
“That’s where we formed all the networks, all the alliances, because women came from all walks of life and across the country,” said Brugo. “There’s someone who doesn’t know how to read next to someone who has a doctorate – their voices have the same value in the workshops. That has been marvellous.”
It was at one of the gatherings, in the coastal city of San Bernardo in 1990, that Brugo was approached by Coledesky, who was gathering signatures in favour of legal abortion.
Brugo had accompanied women who had aborted but at that time she did not see it as a right yet. At that same gathering, she listened closely to the experiences shared by Brazilian women who proposed September 28 as a day for legal abortion in Latin America.
On that date in 1871, Brazil declared that all children born to enslaved people were free. “They wanted to equalise the freedom of the womb with the right to abortion,” Brugo said. “That impacted me.” After that, she sought out Coledesky and added her signature to the cause.
Setting strategies
Marta Alanis started to feel and call herself a feminist around 1991, when she met Brazilian feminist theologian Ivon Gebara and the social justice group Catholics for the Right to Decide in Uruguay.
Alanis went on to co-found the Argentine chapter and occupy a central role in the abortion legalisation campaign. “Not all women were in favour of the right to abortion in the gatherings of women – the debate was there,” recalled Alanis.
“I remember that in the year 1997, in the national gathering in San Juan, that was the first time Catholic women were sent by the church leadership to block the debate and it generated a great unease,” she said.
In 2003, they held the first assembly on the right to abortion in order “to define strategies”.
When the women who had been sent by the church arrived, they were told that if they did not have strategies to contribute they were not welcome.
That 2003 gathering is where the green scarf was born. In 2005, the campaign to legalise abortion was officially launched. It presented its first project, with the signature of one legislator, in 2007, and eight times after that.
It was debated by the National Congress for the first time in 2018, marking a turning point for a society that had spent so long looking the other way. It passed the lower house of deputies, but failed in the Senate that time – a devastating loss, but one which did not deter, and if anything fuelled, the conviction to be back.
“The campaign, like all things that are human, has had tensions,” said Alanis.
“But we have never split. And that speaks to a form of building collectively as feminists. It’s building in a way that is horizontal, where all the voices have space, and without a hierarchy. It’s very different from a political party or a syndicate.”
‘Great satisfaction’
It was a cacophony of voices on the night of the Senate vote, as tens of thousands of people – young women, in particular – poured into the square around the National Congress, decked in green. It was a far cry from the clutch of women who stood outside El Molino, all those years ago.
“The square has become for me a place of great emotion,” said Nelly Minyersky, 91, a lawyer and fixture in the movement. She heads up a masters programme at the University of Buenos Aires law school. “Although it’s a great mystery to me, I’ve turned into someone that young people really love,” she said.
Knowing that, and considering the dangers of COVID-19, she stayed away from the square for the final vote, watching it instead from inside the Senate alongside Alanis and Dora Barrancos, a renowned historian and adviser to President Alberto Fernandez.
The three walked arm-in-arm along the side streets of the imposing building, with the festive sound of the street in the distance.
For Minyersky, like for so many of her friends, approval does not mean the work is done. Making sure people know about the law – and making sure it is enforced – are on her to-do list.
“One thing that really fills me with emotion is the way we found such a beautiful reflection in young people,” said Minyersky. “That is a great satisfaction. That the ideas that you generate do not stay in you, but that future generations keep developing and perfecting them. They are taking the baton.”
Gray langur sitting on ancient ruins, Ancient City of Sigiriya, Sri Lanka. (photo: Nick Brundle/Moment/Getty Images)
503 New Species Identified in 2020, Including Endangered Monkey
Emily Denny, EcoWatch
Denny writes: "A lungless worm salamander, an armored slug and a critically endangered monkey were a few of 503 new species identified this year by scientists at London's National History Museum."
"Once again, an end of year tally of new species has revealed a remarkable diversity of life forms and minerals hitherto undescribed," Dr. Tim Littlewood, executive director of science at the museum, told the National History Museum. "The Museum's collection of specimens provide a resource within which to find new species as well as a reference set to recognize specimens and species as new."
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the museum was closed to the public for part of the year. Yet, scientists, researchers, curators and associates continued to study the species' forms and structures and share their findings with the rest of the scientific community, Ken Norris, head of life sciences at the Natural History Museum, told CNN.
"You're asking whether or not that new specimen is sufficiently different from anything else that's been seen before to be regarded as a new species," he said. "So you're describing it for the first time."
As biodiversity rapidly declines across the globe, identifying new species comes with a time constraint, Littlewood noted in an article by the National History Museum.
"In a year when the global mass of biodiversity is being outweighed by human-made mass it feels like a race to document what we are losing," he shared.
Since 1900, the abundance of native species in land-based habitats has decreased by at least 20 percent, according to findings outlined in a United Nations Report. Over 40 percent amphibian species, nearly 33 percent reef-forming corals and over a third of all marine animals are threatened.
"503 newly discovered species reminds us we represent a single, inquisitive, and immensely powerful species with the fate of many others in our hands," Littlewood added.
Among the hundreds of species identified was a monkey called the Popa langur, found on the extinct Mount Popa volcano in Myanmar. According to the National History Museum, the skin and skull of the monkey were collected over 100 years ago.
Scientists analyzed the coloration of the Popa langur's skin and bones and sampled its genetics to compare it to related species.
"Monkeys are one of the most iconic groups of mammals, and these specimens have been in the collections for over a hundred years," Roberto Portela Miguez, the senior curator in charge of mammals at the museum and involved in identifying the new species, told the National History Museum. "But we didn't have the tools or the expertise to do this work before."
The Popa langur is considered to be critically endangered with only 200 to 260 individuals remaining in the wild, according to The Guardian. As Myanmar rapidly develops, the monkeys are threatened by decreased forest habitats and increased hunting.
Naming the species, Miguez thinks, will help in its conservation. "The hope is that by giving this species the scientific status and notoriety it merits, there will be even more concerted efforts in protecting this area and the few other remaining populations," he told the National History Museum.
"It has been a good year for discovering more amphibian and reptile species," The Guardian reported, noting the scientist's identification of a crested lizard from Borneo, two new species of frog and nine new snakes.
"At the moment we think that as a basic guess maybe 20% of life has been described in some shape or form," Norris told CNN, expecting to identify hundreds of new species in the new year.
"Our understanding of the natural world's diversity is negligible and yet we depend on its systems, interconnectedness and complexity for food, water, climate resilience and the air we breathe," Littlewood told the National History Museum. "Revealing new and undescribed species not only sustains our awe of the natural world, it further reveals what we stand to lose and helps estimate the diversity we may lose even before it's discovered."
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