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Andy Borowitz | McConnell Says Corporations Should Follow His Lead and Not Get Involved in Government
Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
Borowitz writes: "Senator Mitch McConnell urged the nation's largest corporations to follow his example and not get involved in governing the country."
The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, "The Borowitz Report." 
enator Mitch McConnell urged the nation’s largest corporations to follow his example and not get involved in governing the country.
Speaking to reporters, the Senate Minority Leader said that he “could have easily used my position over the years to make the country a better place, but I have wisely resisted that temptation.”
“Whether it was giving Americans affordable health care or passing stronger gun laws, I have been careful not to influence the government to accomplish things,” he said. “I wish corporations would follow my lead.”
He urged the C.E.O.s of major companies to spend a day with him in Washington to “see how getting nothing done is done.”
McConnell cut short his remarks to reporters, saying that he had to return to his office to get to work on not improving the country’s infrastructure.
Joe Biden speaks after meeting with leaders from Georgia's Asian-American and Pacific Islander community in Atlanta following shootings in the city. (photo: Patrick Semansky/AP)
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Biden to Tackle Gun Violence With Executive Actions on 'Ghost Guns' and Pistols
Maanvi Singh, Guardian UK
Singh writes: "The Biden administration has unveiled several executive actions designed to curb gun violence, in the aftermath of the mass shootings in Atlanta and Boulder."
President will also nominate a gun control advocate to direct the ATF, and encourage Democrats in Congress to pass more reforms
he Biden administration has unveiled several executive actions designed to curb gun violence, in the aftermath of the mass shootings in Atlanta and Boulder. The administration is also planning to nominate David Chipman, a former federal agent and gun control advocate, to direct the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The actions include a directive that the justice department, within the next month, issue proposed regulations on “ghost guns” – unregistered firearms that can be assembled from parts.
Joe Biden will also direct the justice department to clarify regulations to ensure that pistols fitted with stabilizing braces, which essentially transform them into rifles, will be regulated under the National Firearms Act. Pistols are cheaper, and easier to carry across state lines, whereas rifles are more regulated. The suspect in the Boulder shooting used a pistol fitted with a brace that looks and operates like a rifle, and uses the same ammunition as the infamous AR-15, but isn’t regulated like a rifle under current laws.
And the president will ask various agencies to direct more resources to community violence prevention measures, and call on the justice department to develop model “red flag” laws – which allow family members to petition courts to take firearms away from people who are deemed a threat – for states to take up and adopt. Several states, including Colorado, already have red flag laws on the books.
Officials said that these new measures are only a start, and that the administration will encourage Democrats in Congress to pass more gun control reforms and consider other executive actions to reduce gun violence.
Biden, who as vice-president was in charge of steering the Obama administration’s gun violence prevention efforts, promised ambitious reforms while campaigning for the presidency. In the run-up to the 2020 elections, he vowed to enact legislation requiring background checks for all gun sales, ban online firearms sales and ban the manufacture and sale of assault weapons and high capacity magazines – and regulate or buy back those already in circulation. Gun control advocates were disappointed at the president’s lack of immediate, early action after taking office – but welcomed Wednesday’s announcement.
“President Biden promised to take action on gun violence in his first 100 days in office, and today he delivered,” said former representative Gabby Giffords, who became a prominent anti-gun violence advocate after surviving a mass shooting in Tucson in 2011. “These executive actions help address a crisis that devastates communities across the country on a daily basis.”
Naming Chipman as ATF director could be another step toward more comprehensive gun control. The post has been vacant since 2015. But Chipman faces an uphill battle in the Senate. Although Democrats have a slim majority, even moderates may be weary of Chipman’s strong positions against all assault weapons and in favour of other restrictions.
As a special agent for the ATF, Chipman investigated gun-trafficking operations and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. He later left the agency, and worked with Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun violence prevention advocacy group, and ShotSpotter, a company that specializes in gunshot detection technology used by police. He now works as a policy adviser at Giffords, the former congresswoman’s gun control non-profit.
Getting gun control legislation passed through the Senate will be even more difficult, with Republicans staunchly opposed to legislation. After the mass shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school in 2012, Biden failed to push through major gun control legislation. Although Democrats had a majority then, the bill failed to garner enough support to overcome a filibuster. Democrats have an even narrower lead in the Senate now.
Dr. Martin Tobin told jurors in the murder trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin that the way George Floyd was restrained effectively shut down his left lung. Floyd died in police custody last May. (photo: AP)
Chauvin Trial: Medical Expert Says George Floyd Died From a Lack of Oxygen
Bill Chappell, NPR
Chappell writes: "Dr. Martin Tobin, a pulmonary specialist who works in critical care, testified Thursday that George Floyd died from a lack of oxygen, bolstering the prosecution's argument that former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin caused Floyd's death last May."
Tobin is appearing as an expert witness for the prosecution. He says the state asked him to review documents and videos depicting the circumstances of Floyd's death. Tobin watched some of those videos hundreds of times, he said.
"Have you formed an opinion to a reasonable degree of medical certainty on the cause of Mr. Floyds death?" prosecutor Jerry Blackwell asked.
"Yes, I have," the doctor replied. "Mr. Floyd died from a low level of oxygen, and this caused damage to his brain that we see. And it also caused a PEA [pulseless electrical activity] arrhythmia that caused his heart to stop."
Prosecutors say Chauvin killed Floyd by pressing his knee on his neck for about nine minutes. But Chauvin's defense attorney says that Floyd was experiencing a drug overdose and had an underlying heart condition.
Last year, the Hennepin County medical examiner's office ruled Floyd's death was a homicide, saying his heart and lungs stopped functioning "while being restrained" by police. But it also noted "other significant conditions," including fentanyl intoxication and recent methamphetamine use as well as heart disease.
Four factors led to Floyd's low oxygen level, Tobin says:
- his prone position on the street;
- the handcuffs that pulled his arms back;
- a knee on his neck;
- a knee on his back and down his side.
"All of these four forces are ultimately going to result in the low tidal volume, which gives you the shallow breaths" that can't effectively bring oxygen into the lungs, Tobin said.
Hennepin County Medical Examiner Dr. Andrew Baker is expected to take the stand Friday, as member station Minnesota Public Radio reports.
Prosecutors say Chauvin and two other officers restrained Floyd for 9 minutes and 29 seconds, before he was moved onto an ambulance gurney. Chauvin kept his left knee in the area of Floyd's neck "for the vast majority of the time" as three officers held Floyd down on the asphalt, Tobin said.
His analysis was helped, he said, by an artist's computer rendering of the scene that was created by all the available video sources. Tobin said he focused on the first five minutes and three seconds of video, because "that is up to the time that we see evidence of brain injury."
Chauvin's right knee seems to have alternated between resting on Floyd's back and on his arm and "rammed into Mr. Floyd's left chest," Tobin said. He said that both placements would have an "extremely similar" effect on someone's ability to breathe in the position Floyd was in.
Tobin told the jury that the officers made it harder for Floyd to breathe when they pushed the handcuffs into Floyd's back and raised his wrists higher as he lay on the street.
"It's like [Floyd's] left side is in a vise. It's totally being pushed in, squeezed in from each side," he said, clasping his hands tightly together to illustrate his point. The effect directly interfered with Floyd's ability to breathe and rendered his left lung almost entirely unable to operate, Tobin said.
Floyd resorted to trying to lift his right shoulder to help get air into his lungs, Tobin said, referring to images from a bystander video. But, he added, "the shoulder is a very ineffective way of breathing," adding that "it's what you have to do when everything else is failing."
Recordings from police body cameras have shown that Floyd told officers "I can't breathe" nearly 30 times as they restrained him. At one point, Chauvin is heard telling Floyd to stop talking, because "it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen."
Tobin is a professor in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine, and affiliated with Edward Hines Jr. VA Hospital, both in the suburbs of Chicago. He has written a highly regarded textbook on respiration and is a researcher in clinical medicine who has published hundreds of papers.
All of his work, Tobin told the jury, is related to breathing, including apnea. As Blackwell noted the doctor's esteem in the medical community, Tobin said he has given lectures in more than 30 countries and most U.S. states.
Tobin testified as Chauvin's trial enters a new technical phase, with prosecutors expected to call a string of medical experts to testify about how Floyd died in police custody. The former police officer is facing murder and manslaughter charges.
Tobin told the court he isn't being paid to appear in the Minneapolis trial.
"When I was asked to do the case, I thought I might have some knowledge that would be helpful to explain how Mr. Floyd died," Tobin said, "and since I'd never done this type of work in this nature before, I decided I didn't wish to be paid for it."
Student activists carry posters and shout slogans as they march against climate change in New Delhi on March 19. (photo: Altaf Qadri/AP)
Intelligence Forecast Sees a Post-Coronavirus World Upended by Climate Change and Splintering Societies
Shane Harris, The Washington Post
Harris writes: "U.S. intelligence officials have little comfort to offer a pandemic-weary planet about where the world is heading in the next 20 years. Short answer: It looks pretty bleak."
On Thursday, the National Intelligence Council, a center in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that creates strategic forecasts and estimates, often based on material gathered by U.S. spy agencies, released its quadrennial “Global Trends” report.
Looking over the time horizon, it finds a world unsettled by the coronavirus pandemic, the ravages of climate change — which will propel mass migration — and a widening gap between what people demand from their leaders and what they can actually deliver.
The intelligence community has long warned policymakers and the public that pandemic disease could profoundly reshape global politics and U.S. national security. The authors of the report, which does not represent official U.S. policy, describe the pandemic as a preview of crises to come. It has been a globally destabilizing event — the council called it “the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II — that “has reminded the world of its fragility” and “shaken long-held assumptions” about how well governments and institutions could respond to a catastrophe.
At the same time, the pandemic accelerated and exacerbated social and economic fissures that had already emerged. And it underscored the risks from “more and cascading global challenges, ranging from disease to climate change to the disruptions from new technologies and financial crises,” the authors write.
In language that will resonate with just about anyone who has tread water in the past year, the authors write of a “looming disequilibrium between existing and future challenges and the ability of institutions and systems to respond.”
Within societies, fragmentation is increasing — political, cultural, economic — and “large segments of the global population are becoming wary of institutions and governments that they see as unwilling or unable to address their needs,” the report says.
The effects of the pandemic will linger, and could shape future generations’ expectations of their governments, particularly as a warming world leads to new human conflicts, including, in the most dire scenario, global food shortages that spawn mass violence.
Global power was contested long before the pandemic, and those trends haven’t abated.
The report sees the international stage as largely being shaped by a rivalry between China and the United States, along with its allies. No single state is poised to become the dominant global force, the authors write. And competing powers will jockey for position, leading to “a more conflict-prone and volatile geopolitical environment.”
Technology, with all its potential to boost economies and enhance communication, also may aggravate political tension — as it already has.
People “are likely to gravitate to information silos of people who share similar views, reinforcing beliefs and understanding of the truth,” the report concludes.
Prediction is an inherently risky business, and intelligence practitioners are quick to emphasize that they can’t see the future. But the National Intelligence Council imagines five scenarios on a kind of sliding scale that may help tell us where the world is turning as we approach 2040.
On the rosiest end, a “Renaissance of democracies” ushers in a new era of U.S. global leadership, in which economic growth and technological achievements offer solutions to the world’s biggest problems and Russia and China are largely left in the dust, authoritarian vestiges whose brightest scientists and entrepreneurs have fled to the United States and Europe.
At the dark end of the future is “tragedy and mobilization,” when the United States is no longer the dominant player, and a global environmental catastrophe prompts food shortages and a “bottom-up” revolution, with younger people, scarred by their leaders’ failures during the coronavirus pandemic, embracing policies to repair the climate and tackle long-standing social inequality. In this scenario, a European Union dominated by green parties works with the United Nations to expand international aid and focus on sustainability, and China joins the effort in part to quell domestic unrest in its cities affected by famine.
In between those extremes, the report imagines three other possibilities: China becomes a leading state but not globally dominant; the United States and China prosper and compete as the two major powers; and globalization fails to create a single source of influence, and the world more or less devolves into competing blocs, preoccupied with threats to their prosperity and security.
The present has a lot of say over the future. And there, the authors find reason for alarm.
“The international system — including the organizations, alliances, rules, and norms — is poorly set up to address the compounding global challenges facing populations,” the authors write.
But the pandemic may offer lessons on how not to repeat recent history. The authors note that although European countries restricted travel and exports of medical supplies early in the crisis, the European Union has now rallied around an economic rescue package. That “could bolster the European integration projecting going forward.”
“Covid-19 could also lead to redirection of national budgets toward pandemic response and economic recovery,” they add, “diverting funds from defense expenditures, foreign aid, and infrastructure programs in some countries, at least in the near term.”
But overall, the pandemic leaves the authors with more questions than answers — and humbled.
“As researchers and analysts, we must be ever vigilant, asking better questions, frequently challenging our assumptions, checking our biases, and looking for weak signals of change,” they write.
Their work is not all doomsaying. The forces shaping the world “are not fixed in perpetuity,” the authors say. Countries that exploit technology and planning, particularly those that plan ahead for the seemingly inevitable consequences of climate change, will be poised to best manage the crisis. And countries that harness artificial intelligence could boost productivity and expand their economies in ways that let government deliver more services, reduce debt and help cover the costs of caring for aging populations.
Ultimately, the societies that succeed will be those that can adapt to change, but also forge social consensus around what should be done, the authors write. In a splintering world, that may be the hardest scenario to imagine.
Facebook has no plans to inform the 530 million users whose personal details were leaked online. (photo: iStock)
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Facebook Does Not Plan to Notify Half-Billion Users Affected by Data Leak
Elizabeth Culliford, Reuters
Culliford writes: "Facebook Inc did not notify the more than 530 million users whose details were obtained through the misuse of a feature before 2019 and recently made public in a database, and does not currently have plans to do so, a company spokesman said on Wednesday."
Business Insider reported last week that phone numbers and other details from user profiles were available in a public database. Facebook said in a blog post on Tuesday that “malicious actors” had obtained the data prior to September 2019 by “scraping” profiles using a vulnerability in the platform’s tool for synching contacts.
The Facebook spokesman said the social media company was not confident it had full visibility on which users would need to be notified. He said it also took into account that users could not fix the issue and that the data was publicly available in deciding not to notify users. Facebook has said it plugged the hole after identifying the problem at the time.
The scraped information did not include financial information, health information or passwords, Facebook said. However, the collated data could provide valuable information for hacks or other abuses.
Facebook, which has long been under scrutiny over how it handles user privacy, in 2019 reached a landmark settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over its investigation into allegations the company misused user data.
Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, the European Union’s lead regulator for Facebook, said on Tuesday it had contacted the company about the data leak. It said it received “no proactive communication from Facebook” but was now in contact.
The July 2019 FTC settlement requires Facebook to report details about unauthorized access to data on 500 or more users within 30 days of confirming an incident.
The Facebook spokesman declined to comment on the company’s conversations with regulators but said it was in contact to answer their questions.
A de-miner searches for landmines in Afghanistan. (photo: AP)
Nobel Peace Prize Winner Jody Williams Slams Biden Admin for Claiming Landmines Are a "Vital Tool"
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "The Biden administration is facing criticism from human rights groups for leaving in place a Trump-era policy allowing military commanders to use landmines across the globe."
he Biden administration is facing criticism from human rights groups after it announced this week it will leave in place a Trump-era policy to allow military commanders to use landmines across the globe. A Pentagon spokesperson described landmines as a “vital tool in conventional warfare” and said restricting their use would put American lives at risk, despite Biden’s campaign promise to promptly roll back Trump’s policy. Jody Williams, recipient of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, says landmines were invented “in order to maim people” and have a devastating impact on children, women and the elderly around the world. “It is an indiscriminate weapon that has no place on this planet.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.
The Biden administration is facing criticism from human rights groups for leaving in place a Trump-era policy allowing military commanders to use landmines across the globe. On Monday, a Pentagon spokesperson issued a statement describing landmines as a, quote, “vital tool in conventional warfare” and said restricting their use would put American lives at risk. Amnesty International criticized the Biden administration’s stance, saying it’s “deadly and dangerous.”
In 2014, President Obama banned the military from using landmines anywhere except the Korean Peninsula. But last year, President Trump’s Defense Secretary Mark Esper lifted the restrictions on the use of landmines. On Monday, State Department official Stanley Brown confirmed Trump’s policy remains in effect.
STANLEY BROWN: So, right now that policy is in effect, as you all know, and we haven’t had any discussions yet in the administration on changing the policy. So, basically, it removed the geographic restriction of Korea, and now geographic commanders can decide the use of landmines, which is a pretty high bar. So, no decision has been made, and no study has been done yet.
AMY GOODMAN: So, the next day, on Tuesday, as criticism grew over the issue, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby claimed the military is now reviewing the Trump policy. As a candidate, Joe Biden had vowed to promptly roll back what he described as Trump’s “deeply misguided decision.”
We’re joined now by Jody Williams. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her work with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. She led the organizing efforts for the landmark Mine Ban Treaty, which prohibits the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of anti-personnel mines. More than 160 nations have signed the treaty, but the United States has refused to. Jody Williams is also co-founder of the Nobel Women’s Initiative. She’s joining us from Fredericksburg, Virginia.
Jody, welcome back to Democracy Now! There’s a new administration, but, as of Monday, they said they weren’t changing the policy. Then, because of great outcry around landmines, on Tuesday they said they would review it. Talk about the U.S. and landmines.
JODY WILLIAMS: Well, as you know — and thank you for having me back. It has been a long process trying to get the United States to join 164 nations and join the treaty. It’s perplexing, to say the least. The U.S. has not used, it hasn’t exported, it hasn’t produced for decades. There have been multitudinous reviews under various presidents. So, to have President Biden decide now to have another review is quite mind-boggling. And it is, as Amnesty and others said, a deadly and, I would say, retrograde policy to not immediately move back to the Obama position.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Jody Williams, can you explain what the effects of these landmines are and who — what groups are most vulnerable? Children are, in some places, one in five people who are injured by landmines, and up to 85% of children who are injured by landmines die before they reach the hospital. Could you talk about that, why that’s the case, why children are the most vulnerable, and in what countries landmines are the most widespread?
JODY WILLIAMS: Sure. Landmines were invented, if you will, in order to maim people. The thought behind that was if you had a unit of soldiers and a soldier stepped on a mine and got blown up, it would upset — freak out — the rest of the soldiers in this unit. It would take more blood, more operations to help that person.
So, when you think about children, how small they are — and stepping on a landmine or picking it up has a devastating effect on kids, older people, women. It is an indiscriminate weapon that has no place on this planet and no place in the ground, in riverbanks where women go and wash clothes, areas where kids play. The fact that President Biden had said he would immediately turn back Mr. Trump’s confused policy and is now having another review is very disturbing.
Mines are being used now still in Afghanistan, also in Myanmar, a few other countries. I think it’s about five these days. But many countries are still clearing the mines that had been laid decades ago. It’s a tedious and long-term process to clear landmines.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And in addition to the U.S., Jody Williams, of course, there are other countries that have refused to sign the so-called Ottawa Convention, which limits the use of landmines. Could you explain — talk about what those countries are and where it’s known that those countries have deployed landmines, among them Russia, China, India, Pakistan, etc.?
JODY WILLIAMS: It is true that they have not signed. On the other hand, the pressure of the stigmatization of landmines has had an impact on their policy, except for Pakistan and India. China stopped producing for export back in the '90s. Russia has not used them or exported them, either. And this is one of the reasons, when we talk about ban treaties, that they're so important, is that when the whole world, in essence, is saying that a weapon is illegal, indiscriminate, should be banned, the pressure on countries that don’t sign is significant. When India and Pakistan, when their relations get more tense, sometimes along the border they place mostly anti-vehicle mines. But when tensions go down, they remove them. At least they do that. But they should join the treaty, too.
AMY GOODMAN: As a presidential candidate, Joe Biden vowed last year to reverse Trump’s policy. In February of 2020, Biden issued this statement to Vox. He said, “The Trump administration’s reversal of years of considered decisions by Democratic and Republican presidents to curtail the use of landmines is another reckless act by a president ill-suited to serve as commander-in-chief. It will put more civilians at risk of being injured by unexploded mines, and is unnecessary from a military perspective. As president, I will promptly roll back this deeply misguided decision.” That was Joe Biden a year ago. So, how do you have then, on Monday, the Pentagon spokesperson defending the continued use of landmines, and then, because of outcry on Tuesday, the Pentagon says, “OK, we’ll review this”?
JODY WILLIAMS: Certainly is a contradiction and something that those of us who have fought against landmines for decades do not understand. It was fully expected that President Biden would roll back the policy fairly immediately.
I’ve been reading some of the statements of others about it, and Senator Leahy from the great state of Vermont still contends that Biden will reverse the policy. I would suggest to Senator Leahy and others who support banning landmines that they pressure him to do it now and not do another military review. When I heard about the review, I actually — “laugh” is not the right word, but I was, like, totally confused, because it’s been reviewed time and time and time again. How many more reviews does one need to do to know that those weapons have no place on this planet?
AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you something, Jody. Right now there’s this issue of landmines. The U.S. won’t sign onto the treaty and says it will continue the policy that Trump promoted, so landmines can be placed beyond Korea. And that’s another question: Why even in Korea? And at the same time, you have the U.S. being criticized by so many countries around the world for blocking agreements that would allow countries to get vaccines cheaply. So, the U.S. will not be a part of ensuring the world can get vaccines, but stands there with those who are pushing landmines around the world.
JODY WILLIAMS: It is mind-boggling. Again, I can’t quite imagine what President Biden is thinking. It is seriously confusing. Let me say, though, the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines is putting tremendous pressure on the president and everybody in the administration to change that policy.
You know, the U.S., under Mr. Trump, as we all know, tried to withdraw from every international treaty, especially those dealing with weapons. And Mr. Biden had talked about multilateralism and working with the world community and bringing us back into, you know, the international community in a leadership role. You cannot lead from the rear. If you want to really be a leader, you need to deal with the global community, not just your own. So, hopefully, our pressure will get him to change his mind and ban them now.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, you deal with the issue of killer robots. We don’t have much time, but we don’t want to skip over this critical area that not a lot of people know about. What are killer robots, and what’s happening with them now?
JODY WILLIAMS: Killer robots are a marriage of artificial intelligence and lethal weapons. You take the drone that can fly on its own, at least there is still a human being who sees the target and makes the decision to hit the target. A killer robot has no human being in the loop. They are programmed. They are set free. And then they make the life-and-death decision over human beings — a machine. Some in the campaign have called it death by machine. It’s terrifying.
The U.S. has already tested some intelligent munitions that can communicate with each other once they’ve been fired from an aircraft. And I honestly cannot understand the moral and ethical position of this country that it is OK to allow machines to kill people. It’s mind-boggling.
AMY GOODMAN: We just have 30 seconds, but you wrote, “Why do we glorify violence and war and make peace seem the folly of fools?”
JODY WILLIAMS: I think about that all the time. You make a lot of money in war. Peace seems like something for, you know, feather-headed liberals and tree huggers like myself from Vermont. But war is — you know, it’s made heroic. It is not heroic. It is devastating. It is death. It is destroyed civilization. It is insane in this planet today, where we see, with the coronavirus, that everything affects everything. It is time to stop war. It is time to work together — together, excuse me — around the planet for the greater good of us all, is my view.
AMY GOODMAN: Jody Williams received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her work to ban landmines with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. She’s co-founder of the Nobel Women’s Initiative.
Next up, the American Civil Liberties Union is warning a lot can go wrong with “vaccine passports.” We’ll find out how. Stay with us.
Michael Regan is the first Black man to serve as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. (photo: Caroline Brehman/AP)
First Black Man to Lead EPA Reveals Personal Challenges of Environmental Racism
Anagha Srikanth, The Hill
Srikanth writes: "The Biden administration has given the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) a much-needed 'clean slate,' said Michael Regan, the department's new chief, just as the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic on the environment are becoming more clear."
After Trump, the EPA chief sees a "clean slate."
he Biden administration has given the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) a much-needed “clean slate,” said Michael Regan, the department’s new chief, just as the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic on the environment are becoming more clear.
“I was deeply concerned as I watched the previous administration,” Regan told The Guardian. “We all witnessed a mass exodus of scientists and qualified people the agency needs. I was really concerned coming into the job as to how morale would be and how much of a setback it would be to tackle the challenges before us.”
Regan started his career at the EPA during the Clinton administration and spent eight years at the Environmental Defense Fund before becoming the secretary of North Carolina's Department of Environmental Quality, where he became known for prioritizing environmental justice. But his education began with his lived experience growing up in the state.
“During days of high ozone and high pollution I did suffer respiratory challenges,” he told The Guardian. “I’ve been keenly aware of the impact of pollution from an early age and what that means, from lost school days or from preventing me enjoying the outdoors with my grandfather and father. That’s always been part of my knowledge base.”
As the first Black man to lead the EPA, Regan understands the urgency of climate change, punctuated by recent extreme weather events.
“We definitely feel the responsibility. We aren’t going to shrink away from our obligations,” he told The Guardian. “We are going to apply our statutory authority to solve as much of this problem [climate change] as we can as an agency. Yes, we have to revisit bad decisions, but the goal isn’t to get back to neutral: we have to make up for lost time. We are leaning in.”
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