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s the White House moves closer to endorsing the G20's bipartisan infrastructure deal, progressive Democrats are making clear they won't get on board without a guarantee.
Why it matters: Left-leaning Democrats want a commitment the Senate will also act on a reconciliation bill — and some are insisting they vote on one first. They fear getting left behind as lawmakers from both parties increasingly sign on to the G20 framework.
- Members of Congress who favor bold climate and child care action see the partisan reconciliation process — and its reduced, 51-vote requirement to pass legislation — as the best means for achieving those aims.
Between the lines: Progressive Democrats are exerting as much pressure as they can before President Biden takes an official position on the G20 bill.
- The general view among many lawmakers and aides is that most Democrats will be "good soldiers" — as one Senate Democratic aide put it — and get on board if the president endorses the deal.
- But some progressives are saying they won't give their support without conditions.
What they're saying: "There's only one deal to be made here, not two separate deals," Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) told Axios.
- "And that deal may have a bipartisan portion that covers some subset of what needs to be done on infrastructure, but we've got to have an agreement on the whole package, and that means we need every Democrat committed to moving through reconciliation."
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said: "It's going to be either both or nothing. There will not be a bipartisan bill unless there's a major reconciliation bill."
- Sanders said he doesn't think Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) would put a bipartisan bill on the floor without guaranteeing he'll also offer a reconciliation bill.
- "Most progressives believe that the Senate ... needs to pass the reconciliation bill before the House votes for the bipartisan bill, and we can vote on them both together," Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) told Axios' Andrew Freedman.
What we're hearing: Schumer's team knows these lawmakers need assurances to move forward, and that they will ultimately have to give them some. They don't know yet in what form.
- Remember: Schumer is up for re-election in 2022 and could face a challenge from a more progressive candidate — such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
What isn’t getting enough attention: How the House ultimately factors into this.
- It’ll be incredibly difficult for Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to wrangle her chamber's progressives on a standalone bill not addressing the more ambitious climate and family provisions.
- And House Democrats have only a five-seat majority — leaving Pelosi little wiggle room.
Be smart: "In my view, 60 to 70 House members won't support it if it doesn't have climate in it, unless they pass the reconciliation simultaneously," Khanna told Axios.
- "It's not personal," Khanna said. "It's institutional; we simply can't trust that the Senate will deliver on a reconciliation, and to take the word of the institution."
Former officer Derek Chauvin. (photo: MPR News)
Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill, who presided over Chauvin’s murder trial, will hand down the sentence two months after a jury reached guilty verdicts on charges of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in Floyd’s May 25, 2020, death.
Video taken by a bystander of Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck — depriving Floyd of oxygen — played a key role in helping the jury decide to convict the former officer.
The most serious offense, second-degree murder, carries a penalty of up to 40 years in prison, according to Minnesota law. The other charges, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter, can result in imprisonment of up to 25 years and 10 years, respectively. Per Minnesota sentencing guidelines, Chauvin’s sentence on each count will likely be measured concurrently.
The presumptive, or average, sentence for a first-time offender — which Chauvin is in this case — convicted of second-degree murder, according to the guidelines, is 12-and-a-half years. Cahill has the discretion to determine how much jail time Chauvin will receive, legal experts told Yahoo News, and the sentence will likely fall somewhere between the presumptive sentence and the legal maximum.
Whether the sentence Cahill hands down will satisfy observers and supporters of Floyd and his family, particularly those who want to see Chauvin receive a lengthy term, remains to be seen. Civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, who represented Floyd’s family in a civil suit, plans to hold a news conference, along with members of the family, after the sentencing.
“Severe is going to be in the eye of the beholder,” Eric Anderson, a trial attorney and former prosecutor in California who closely followed Chauvin’s trial, told Yahoo News. “I don’t think he’s going to get the maximum, but I think there is a good chance that he will get above 12 years.”
Anderson cited the aggravating factors in the case, which are essentially elements of the crime that warrant a severe sentence, against Chauvin. After the verdict, the state filed a memo on April 30 requesting an aggravated sentence. Among the factors listed in the memo was that Chauvin treated Floyd “with particular cruelty” by pressing his knee into Floyd’s neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds, despite Floyd’s pleas that he could not breathe.
Another factor, according to the memo, was that Chauvin “abused his position of authority” as a police officer.
“He was in a position of authority,” Anderson said. “He was dealing with a victim who was particularly vulnerable, because at the time Mr. Floyd is handcuffed and he's on the ground, surrounded by cops, he's in their custody and care.”
Chauvin’s attorney, Eric Nelson, pushed back against the state’s request, arguing that Floyd was not particularly vulnerable and was “well over six feet tall, muscular, and weighed in excess of two hundred pounds,” according to Nelson’s memo, which echoed arguments he used at trial.
Nelson’s arguments failed to sway Cahill, who ruled in a May 11 court order that Chauvin did abuse his authority, treat Floyd with cruelty and committed the crime in the presence of children (two bystanders who witnessed Floyd’s death were under the age of 18).
“Most of us are assuming that Chauvin is not going to get the presumptive status of 12-and-a-half years,” David Schultz, a visiting professor at the University of Minnesota Law School and professor at Hamline University, told Yahoo News. “I think it’s going to be closer to 40.”
Earlier this month, Nelson asked the court for a probationary sentence, limiting Chauvin’s incarceration to time served (Chauvin has been in prison since the verdict was reached on April 20), according to court documents. Such an outcome is highly unlikely, Schultz said, although Cahill could give Chauvin credit for the time he’s already served.
“The odds of probation I would say are practically nil,” Schultz said, due to the fact that Cahill found that the facts support the aggravating factors against Chauvin.
Before Chauvin is sentenced, he will have the opportunity to address the court. It’s unknown if he’ll decide to speak, but whatever he says probably won’t have any bearing on Cahill’s decision, Schultz said.
“I’m not sure there’s much that Chauvin can say at this point that’s going to change the outcome,” Schultz said.
Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley. (photo: AP)
he top US general repeatedly pushed back on then-President Donald Trump's argument that the military should intervene violently in order to quell the civil unrest that erupted around the country last year. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley often found he was the lone voice of opposition to those demands during heated Oval Office discussions, according to excerpts of a new book, obtained by CNN, from Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender.
Titled "Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost," the book reveals new details about how Trump's language became increasingly violent during Oval Office meetings as protests in Seattle and Portland began to receive attention from cable new outlets. The President would highlight videos that showed law enforcement getting physical with protesters and tell his administration he wanted to see more of that behavior, the excerpts show.
"That's how you're supposed to handle these people," Trump told his top law enforcement and military officials, according to Bender. "Crack their skulls!"
Trump also told his team that he wanted the military to go in and "beat the f--k out" of the civil rights protesters, Bender writes.
"Just shoot them," Trump said on multiple occasions inside the Oval Office, according to the excerpts.
When Milley and then-Attorney General William Barr would push back, Trump toned it down, but only slightly, Bender adds.
"Well, shoot them in the leg—or maybe the foot," Trump said. "But be hard on them!"
The new details about how Milley and a handful of other senior officials were forced to confront Trump's increasingly volatile behavior during the final months of his presidency only add to an already detailed portrait of dysfunction inside the White House at that time.
It also underscores the level of tension between Trump and top Pentagon officials leading up to the presidential election last November.
CNN has reached out to Trump about the claims in Bender's book. A spokesperson for Milley declined to comment.
At times, Milley also clashed with top White House officials who sought to encourage the then-President's behavior.
During one Oval Office debate, senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller chimed in, equating the scenes unfolding on his television to those in a third-world country and claiming major American cities had been turned into war zones.
"These cities are burning," Miller warned, according to the excerpts.
The comment infuriated Milley, who viewed Miller as not only wrong but out of his lane, Bender writes, noting the Army general who had commanded troops in Iraq and Afghanistan spun around in his seat and pointed a finger directly at Miller.
"Shut the f--k up, Stephen," Milley snapped, according to the excerpts.
'What we have, Mr. President, is a protest'
CNN previously reported that concerns within the Pentagon about Trump's potential to make unpredictable decisions during the campaign and beyond reached a boiling point last September.
While Milley was among those who were particularly distressed about Trump's attacks on senior Pentagon leaders, he was said to be on good terms with the President.
Still, Milley made a concerted effort to stay in Washington as much as possible during those final months. A significant concern for Milley at the time was how to advise Trump if he decided to invoke the Insurrection Act in the wake of civil unrest -- a move that would have military force on the streets against civilians.
Ultimately, Trump never invoked the Insurrection Act but repeatedly suggested doing so during the end of his tenure -- putting Milley and former Defense Secretary Mark Esper in a complicated situation each time.
Both Milley and Esper were deeply opposed to the idea when Trump first suggested it last June following protests against police brutality and racial injustice in the wake of George Floyd's death.
According to Bender, Milley viewed the unrest around Floyd's death as a political problem, not a military one.
He told the President there were more than enough reserves in the National Guard to support law enforcement responding to the protests. Milley told him that invoking the Insurrection Act would shift responsibility for the protests from local authorities directly to the President, according to the excerpts obtained by CNN.
Milley spotted President Abraham Lincoln's portrait hanging just to the right of Trump and pointed directly at it, Bender writes.
"That guy had an insurrection," Milley said. "What we have, Mr. President, is a protest."
Milley offers public rebuke of Republicans lawmakers
Those comments have taken on new relevance months after the January 6 attack, when pro-Trump rioters stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying President Joe Biden's electoral win.
Trump's Republican allies in Congress have staunchly opposed any efforts to investigate the former President's role in fueling the insurrection, with some simply denying there was anything violent about the protests that day.
Recently, some of those same lawmakers have also criticized the Department of Defense's diversity efforts and alleged embrace of the "critical race theory."
While testifying publicly before the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday, Milley, who remains in his post as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, offered a forceful rebuke of Republican members over their comments related to both issues.
Responding to a question from Rep. Mike Waltz of Florida about the appropriateness of a seminar at the United States Military Academy at West Point called "Understanding Whiteness and White Rage," Milley said: "I want to understand White rage. And I'm White. And I want to understand it."
Tying the question to the January 6 insurrection, Milley asked: "What is it that caused thousands of people to assault this building and try to overturn the Constitution of the United States of America? What caused that? I want to find that out. I want to maintain an open mind here."
Milley called it "offensive" that service members were being called "quote, 'woke' or something else, because we're studying some theories that are out there."
Rev. Jesse Jackson, second from right, and Bishop William Barber II, second from left, stand outside the Hart Senate Office building in Washington, blocking the street, Wednesday, June 23, 2021. (photo: AP)
he Rev. Jesse Jackson and social justice activist the Rev. William Barber were arrested Wednesday during protests to urge Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to end the filibuster and pass a sweeping voting rights bill, according to CNN.
Jackson, a civil rights icon, and Barber, a social justice activist, were two of 21 people overall who were arrested this week near the U.S. Supreme Court for obstructing and crowding, according to the network.
Barber participated in the "Moral March on Manchin and McConnell” rally with the nonprofit organization group the Poor People’s Campaign at the steps of the Supreme Court. The demonstration aimed to put pressure on Manchin and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to end the filibuster.
There has been increased pressure on moderate Democrats including Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) to end the legislative filibuster after Republican legislatures across the country introduced bills that would tighten voting restrictions following the 2020 election.
Progressive Democrats have called on their moderate colleagues to nix the filibuster before GOP lawmakers blocked the For The People Act, this week, a major piece of voting legislation that would affect federal elections.
In a video, both activists were seen marching toward the Hart Senate building where Capitol police officers began to warn demonstrators that were engaging in “illegal demonstration activates,” according to CNN.
Afterward, authorities began to escort the protesters to the sidewalk.
Barber told CNN's Chris Cuomo that new voting restrictions would hurt all Americans.
"When you start rolling back voter registration, rolling back early voting, undermining mail in balloting, putting limits on people even being able to get water, doing racist gerrymandering, class-based gerrymandering, you hurt Black people, you hurt white people, you hurt Asians, Natives, Latinos, young people and the disabled."
The Hill has reached out to Manchin, McConnell and the Capitol Police for comment.
'Towers of Light' 9/11 Memorial. (photo: Anthony Quintano)
Victims' families are looking to prove that Saudi nationals helped support two of the hijackers
ormer Saudi officials will be questioned over their alleged links to the 9/11 attacks in court depositions this month, by lawyers acting on behalf of families of the victims, the Guardian reported on Thursday.
The victims' families are seeking to prove that Saudi nationals helped support two of the 9/11 hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, and that the support was coordinated by a diplomat in the Saudi embassy in Washington.
The three Saudis being questioned are Omar al-Bayoumi, Fahad al-Thumairy and Musaed al-Jarrah, the Guardian reported.
Bayoumi is a former civil servant working in civil aviation who was officially a student in California.
The lawsuit filed by the victims' families alleges that he was acting as a Saudi agent in 2000 and 2001. Bayoumi claimed he was only a passing acquaintance with Mihdhar and Hazmi, who were part of the team that flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon.
Thumairy was a Saudi consular official in Los Angeles and the imam of the King Fahad Mosque there. Bayoumi is said to have visited him before meeting Mihdhar and Hazmi.
Thumairy has claimed never to have met the hijackers, but witnesses told FBI agents they had seen him in their company. After the 9/11 attacks, his diplomatic visa was withdrawn on suspicion that he could be linked to terrorist activity.
Jarrah was a mid-level diplomat at the Washington embassy in 1999 and 2000, and his identity was not publicly known until May 2020 when FBI deputy director Jill Sanborn accidentally disclosed it in a court filing.
Bayoumi was questioned earlier this month, while Jarrah's deposition took place last week. Thumairy will be questioned next week, according to The Guardian.
Declassify information
Last September, a US judge ordered Saudi Arabia to make 24 current and former officials, including a former ambassador to the US, available for questioning in the lawsuit.
While the contents of the depositions are being kept secret, the families are mounting a renewed push to make Washington remove the gag on evidence in the court case against Riyadh and release the results of an investigation, codenamed Operation Encore, into Saudi complicity in the attacks. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals.
The Saudi embassy in Washington did not respond to Middle East Eye's request for comment by the time of publication.
However, Riyadh has long denied involvement in the attacks, in which almost 3,000 people died as hijacked jetliners crashed into New York's World Trade Center, the Pentagon outside of Washington, and a field in western Pennsylvania.
The depositions come as members of Congress have also been pushing for the US government to release more information around allegations that Riyadh was involved in the attacks.
Earlier this month, congressmen Ted Deutch and Thomas Massie pressed FBI director Christopher Wray for the release of long-secret documents during a House Judiciary Committee hearing.
"We are working very hard on trying to declassify as much information as we can, and to share as much information as we can," Wray said.
French troops in Mali. (photo: Redux)
hey had come to celebrate. Around 100 people were gathered on the outskirts of the village of Bounti in Mali, West Africa, for a wedding in January. Some sat on mats in the shade of trees and drank tea. The feast was about to be served when French fighter jets appeared in the sky, says Madabbel Diallo, 71, a shepherd who was one of the guests.
A short time later, Diallo heard an explosion and then another. The next thing he remembers is lying on the ground, badly injured. His legs were bleeding. He saw people with limbs torn to shreds. One man’s entrails were seeping out of his body. Helpers who rushed to the site from the village took Diallo to the clinic in the nearest town.
Speaking of the attack several days later over the phone, he was still in a state of shock. His cousin, Mamoudou Diallo, also wounded in the attack, was lying in the bed next to him. Three of his nephews were dead. "People collected severed arms, legs and heads, threw them into a hole and buried them,” he said.
"They Came with Planes and Bombed Us"
Twenty-two people died in the French attack on Bounti. The French government insists that the victims were exclusively Islamist terrorists, against whom France is waging war in Mali. But Madabbel and Mamoudou Diallo as well as six other witnesses from Bounti who DER SPIEGEL interviewed independently, contradict that account. "There weren’t any jihadists there,” says Madabbel Diallo. "No one had weapons, not even a knife.” Aliou Barry, a farmer, says: "We were celebrating a wedding. And they came with planes and bombed us.”
Investigators from the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Mali, known as MINUSMA, hold a similar view. Their investigation report states that although three of the victims belonged to the jihadist group Katiba Serma, all others were civilians. François Lecointre, chief of the French defense staff, speaks of "manipulation,” and says that drone footage would exonerate his soldiers. But the army is refusing to release those images on account of military secrecy.
The incident in Bounti sheds light on a conflict that is largely taking place far away from the public eye. The French military has been deployed in Mali for more than eight years. But what began in January 2013 as a targeted offensive against Islamist insurgents, primarily in northern Mali, has turned into one of the longest wars in France's recent history.
Paris has deployed more than 5,000 troops in Mali and neighboring countries – one-third of its total troops abroad – as part of Operation Barkhane. Despite their presence, the jihadists have managed to spread across much of the Sahel – in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. French President Emmanuel Macron has called on other countries, including Germany, to become more involved in the hunt for terrorists. After its withdrawal from Afghanistan, Mali will be the largest foreign deployment of the Bundeswehr, Germany’s armed forces, with around 1,000 German soldiers currently participating in the Minusma mission. The Germans are also training Malian soldiers on behalf of the European Union. The mandate granted by German parliament, though, explicitly excludes German forces from participating in active combat as part of Operation Barkhane.
The French government wants to stop the advance of the Islamists in Mali, and to stem the flow of irregular migrants to Europe. But when it comes to the details of the operation, Paris is tight-lipped, with even allies receiving but scant information.
DER SPIEGEL and the online portal The New Humanitarian spent months reporting on the Barkhane mission. The reporters traveled to Mali on several occasions, accompanied soldiers in action, met with witnesses and reviewed internal documents as well as publicly available data. Their research shows that, in some cases, French soldiers and their Malian allies may have violated international law.
Frustration with the Government
Mali is to France what Afghanistan is to the United States – a seemingly endless war that is difficult to win – and one that repeatedly claims innocent victims. According to data from the NGO Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), around 8,000 civilians have been killed in attacks from various sides since 2013.
In Gossi, a town in northeastern Mali, French soldiers are patrolling alongside their Malian counterparts on an April afternoon. They are wearing bulletproof vests and carrying rifles as they stop vehicles to check documents. "We want to show presence,” says Benjamin, a French officer. A teenager starts shaking as he is stopped on his bicycle by the security forces. "What’s wrong?” Benjamin asks in French. "Why are you afraid?” The boy looks at him with uncertainty. The Malian soldiers are also at a loss. They come from different parts of the country and don’t speak the language of some of the people in Gossi. A local resident finally rushes to help. "He’s a kid, that’s why he’s scared,” he says. The soldiers scroll through the boy’s mobile phone and let him go.
In most cases, French soldiers are sent to Mali for three to four months as part of the Barkhane operation. Many of them are young, and they often find it difficult to properly assess the situation on the ground.
The French, with their armored vehicles, fighter jets and drones, are militarily superior to their opponents. But those are of little use when it comes to the everyday reality of war. As with the Americans and their allies in Afghanistan, the French repeatedly succeed in killing extremists, but not in bringing lasting peace to the region.
Some of the Islamist groups that control parts of the Sahel have links to the Islamic State or al-Qaida. More importantly, the groups are firmly anchored within the population and are able to leverage the frustration that many Malians feel toward the central government.
The government in Bamako is considered weak and prone to corruption. Just recently, the military overthrew the government in a putsch for the second time in nine months. Mali is now being ruled by Army Colonel Assimi Goïta.
Criticism of the deployment is growing in both France and Germany, and politicians from several German parties are demanding the withdrawal of German troops. But German Chancellor Angela Merkel wants to continue the mission. "We believe that our presence on the ground is still important,” Merkel said last Monday, following a joint meeting of government ministers from Germany and France.
France's involvement in Mali began with a 2013 request from the country's rulers for help when jihadists closed in on Bamako. The French only intended to stay in the country for a few weeks, but the former colonial power was drawn deeper and deeper into the conflict. And the longer the fighting went on, the greater the losses. More than 50 French soldiers have died since the beginning of the war – as have an incomparably greater number of Malians.
Idrissa Maiga, a farmer from central Mali, lost his wife and three children in 2013 during a rocket attack that he attributes to the French. He has sought compensation, but in vain. Maiga turned to the authorities and media in Mali and France. "All they told me was that France is not responsible for deaths in Mali,” he says.
The government in Paris doesn’t like to talk about the civilian casualties of its war on terrorism. According to the French Defense Ministry, only seven civilians have been killed in direct attacks by French soldiers since 2013. However, reports from Mali indicate that the true death toll is many times higher. Investigations into these cases are difficult even for other nations stationed in Mali, such as Germany.
Since France is acting largely on its own with Operation Barkhane, it isn’t accountable to any of its UN partners. The Bundeswehr, for example, has "no knowledge of its own” regarding the attack on Bounti. And no one in Berlin, right up to German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer wants to comment on the critical UN report out of consideration for the government in Paris. The German Defense Ministry issued a terse statement on the matter, saying an evaluation of the incident is not possible. "A robust mission like Barkhane is needed to establish a basic level of security, even if some people in our country don’t like it,” Kramp-Karrenbauer said in a recent video chat with the Bundeswehr’s Mali commanders and members of the German parliament.
There is evidence, though, that the French military is deliberately keeping its civilian casualties a secret. One internal Barkhane document viewed by DER SPIEGEL reveals that French soldiers shot and killed a man on a motorcycle in a village in central Mali who they mistakenly believed to be a suicide bomber. Rather than holding the soldiers accountable, France paid money to the bereaved. Malian anthropologist and government adviser Bréma Ely Dicko warns that a failure to come to terms with possible war crimes is driving recruits into the arms of the jihadists.
Paris is trying to get the Malian military more involved in the operation. The French say they have trained 18,000 Malian soldiers since 2014. But Mali’s armed forces remain poorly equipped, disorganized and are often outmatched by the jihadists.
Observers regularly accuse Malian soldiers of human rights violations. The French military and the German armed forces claim they also want to train their Malian allies to improve their interactions with civilians. "We explain to them that you can’t clear dirt with dirt,” says Serge Camus, the Barkhane commander in Gossi. Still, it seems that more civilians were killed by security forces than by terrorists in the Sahel last year.
The Malian military maintains a base in Boulkessi, a village on the border with Burkina Faso – a base which has been fortified by the French army. And yet more civilians have died in and around Boulkessi than in any other region of Mali as a result of attacks by the Malian army – 153 people in the past three years alone, according to data from the NGO ACLED.
Tidiani Diallo, a teenager from Boulkessi, watched as Malian soldiers invaded his hometown in 2018, allegedly to avenge the death of a comrade. He claims that they shot people at random, arrested the village leader and the imam, and said: "We told you that if one of us died, we would kill 20 of you.”
Protectors and Occupiers
In January, French and Malian soldiers conducted a joint operation in villages near Boulkessi. They raided several houses, apparently on the search for terrorists. Four men were arrested. One witness claims that Malian soldiers threw the men "like a sack of rice” into a vehicle. A day later, two of them were found dead on the side of the road. A third returned home after two weeks in custody and the fourth is still missing. All of Boulkessi’s residents have since fled.
The dark side of the French mission in Mali is largely out of the public’s view. Meanwhile, the Malian armed forces are seldom held accountable for possible war crimes. And some people in Mali are growing increasingly angry about the military operation. Earlier this year protests against France were held in Bamako: Some no longer see the French soldiers as protectors, but as occupiers.
It’s likely that President Macron is looking for a way to at least reduce the deployment. In recent years, he has had to stand in front of the coffins of French soldiers again and again. Following the most recent putsch, it has been even more difficult to justify the mission politically. In a recent interview, Macron stated more clearly than he has before that he would not support a government that lacks democratic legitimacy.
A boat works to collect oil that has leaked from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead in the Gulf of Mexico on April 28, 2010, near New Orleans, Louisiana. (photo: Chris Graythen/Getty)
ichael White is the kind of person who doesn’t get the point of dry land. Born and bred on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, he’s never pursued a career, or a life, too far away from the waters he fished and sailed on as a young boy.
Now, he’s taken his lifelong passion to a charming extreme, captaining an old-school paddle boat called the Betsy Ann and selling tickets to tourists to see the Biloxi coastline up close.
On lucky days, visitors taking the Betsy Ann get a chance to see ospreys soaring through the sky and even dolphins, but White knows that spotting wildlife isn’t a given. The Gulf ecosystem has been consistently devastated by nutrient pollution, extreme hurricanes and, over a decade ago, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the biggest in U.S. history.
“It was unbelievable… the oil was thick, heavy and gooey like peanut butter,” said White. “We were filling eight 40-yard dumpsters with oil a day for four months straight.”
White traveled to Southern Louisiana to assist with clean-up after the spill, an event that then-President Barack Obama called the nation’s worst environmental disaster due to its devastating effects on seabirds and marine ecosystems.
Over a three-month period beginning on April 20, 2010, over 200 million gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico because of a catastrophic blowout and explosion that rocked the Deepwater Horizon, an offshore oil rig 41 miles off the Louisiana coast operated by British Petroleum, killing 11 workers and injuring 17 others.
In Biloxi, the effects of the disaster on seabirds and sea fronts are mostly gone except in the memories of residents. But the measures designed to prevent a similar disaster lay in the hands of a federal court in Louisiana, Interior Department officials in Washington and lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
Former President Donald Trump’s administration weakened many of the drilling safety measures adopted under Obama after the disaster. Most notably, Trump partially repealed a federal regulation that required increased testing and monitoring of underwater drilling equipment and well-control operations.
As over 80 operators continue to drill and pump oil in the Gulf today under the weakened regulation, environmental activists are in federal court in New Orleans trying to get Trump’s partial repeal thrown out.
Although President Joe Biden has put the partial repeal on a long list of Trump administration actions to review, it’s unclear whether his administration will simply try to revert to the Obama well safety regulation, or try to strengthen it.
There’s always the potential for something catastrophic to happen like “another Deepwater Horizon spill,” said Chris Eaton, a senior attorney with Earthjustice and a lead counsel in the case challenging Trump’s partial repeal, which remains in effect. “It’s important to make sure that to the extent that there is oil and gas development still happening, that it’s done safely.”
Megan Baldino, a spokeswoman for BP, said the Deepwater Horizon accident “forever changed” the company.
“We will never forget the 11 people who lost their lives or the damage that occurred as a result of this tragedy. In 2010, we committed to becoming a safer company and helping restore the Gulf of Mexico region economically and environmentally,” she said in a statement. “Since the accident, BP has strengthened its safety management systems, and the lessons we learned have become the foundation for our culture of care. We have shared our lessons with the industry and regulators around the world, including by participating in global forums. We continue to honor our commitments and remain keenly aware that we must always put safety first.”
The Campaign to Criminalize ‘Ecocide’
As the litigation over the Trump rollback proceeds, another group of lawyers working as part of a campaign to make “ecocide” an international crime is poised to release its definition of that offense—systematic destruction of the environment—on Tuesday. If ultimately adopted by the International Criminal Court in the Hague in a process that could take years, ecocide would become the fifth crime within the court’s jurisdiction, alongside genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes of aggression.
The United States is not a member of the court, and any future prosecution of this new crime would only be prospective, meaning executives from British Petroleum could not face criminal proceedings related to the Deepwater Horizon spill.
Beyond its legal definition, the term “ecocide,” first coined to describe the U.S. military’s use of the toxic defoliant Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, is gaining currency as a way to describe the global impacts of climate change and a range of destructive environmental practices, including deepwater drilling.
Polly Higgins, the late Scottish barrister who began the movement to criminalize ecocide more than a decade ago, wrote in her 2012 book, “Earth Is Our Business”:
”The Deepwater Horizon spill was an obvious example of a tragedy born of a history of decisions to cut costs to ensure a lean operation unburdened by too many safety regulations. Various environmental regulations do not add up to a law that prohibits ecocide: BP [executives] were free to destroy a vast tract of sea and its inhabitants without having to pay the true price for the damage to many species. What was valued was protection of their business, even where that caused damage to others. Intrinsic values, such as caring for the community of fishermen adversely affected by the pollution, was not a primary consideration. Intrinsic values, such as the well-being of the fish, was not a primary consideration.”
Still Unknown Effects on the Environment
Scientists estimate that more than 1 million seabirds were killed as a direct result of the oil spill. A study found that bottlenose dolphins living in particularly hard hit Barataria Bay, Louisiana, suffered 46 percent more failed pregnancies than normal and an estimated 800 died.
Abby Darrah, a biologist at the Audubon Mississippi Coastal Bird Stewardship Program, said that the potential long-term effects on seabirds and marine life are unclear.
“There have been some studies done on seabirds that ingested fish that have been exposed to oil,” said Darrah. “There’s a lot of unknown effects in the long term that we just don’t know.”
The spill’s damages to the Gulf economy are staggering. Estimates of the loss in the Gulf coastal economy due to decreased tourism were projected up to $22.7 billion through 2013.
White said that, even though the amount of oil reaching Mississippi wasn’t extreme, Biloxi businesses, including hotels and restaurants, suffered for years due to the lack of visitors.
But in the Southern Louisiana marshes, White also saw just how much oil there was in areas hit the hardest.
“We came up with a neat little deal where we took an excavator, you know, a big, long-arm excavator and put a giant squeegee on it,” White said. “We would squeegee all of that oil up and then all the marsh grass that we just cut, mix it all together so that we could grab it and put it in dumpsters.”
The Blowout Preventer Systems and Well Control Rule
The Deepwater Horizon exploded, caught fire and ultimately sank after rig operators misread pressure in the oil well and took ineffective steps to control a surge of oil and gas before a massive piece of equipment called a blowout preventer failed to seal the well.
After the disaster, Obama convened a group of experts, the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, to examine the causes behind the Deepwater blowout and to make safety recommendations that would ensure such a disastrous spill would never happen again.
The commission ended up developing over 25 detailed recommendations to make offshore oil drilling safer, including whistleblower protections for those who expose safety hazards on oil rigs. But many of the commission’s proposals were never implemented.
“We got a lot of blowback from the industry because one of the conclusions in our report was that this was a systemic problem,” said Terry D. Garcia, a commission member and former deputy administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “The fact remains that not BP, not Chevron, not Exxon, none of these companies had the ability to respond when the incident occurred. They didn’t have the capability of dealing with and containing the spill.”
When presented with the recommendations, Congress moved slowly and never passed legislation to improve offshore oil safety. It was up to Obama and his executive agencies to ensure some form of government oversight be put in place.
One of the most important actions happened in 2016, when an Interior Department agency created under the Obama administration, called the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) finalized the Blowout Preventer Systems and Well Control Rule.
The rule significantly tightened safety requirements on underwater drilling equipment and well-control operations, including requiring that onshore personnel monitor drilling in real time. This would put more expert eyes on the operations and guard against mistakes, like a faulty pressure test conducted by the Deepwater crew.
A pivotal process when drilling for oil in deep water and layers of earth is to maintain a balance of pressure within a well. Workers insert drilling mud, a thick, heavy fluid, while drilling to balance the pressure from the massive layers of rock squeezing in on the well. Mismanaging pressure in the well can result in gas and salt water kicking back up the well, resulting in a blowout.
The rule attempted to minimize mistakes in the drilling process by implementing a safe pressure margin that could only be waived in exceptional circumstances, which ensures that a safe pressure is maintained in the well and leaves room for error so that corrective measures can be taken if sudden changes in pressure occur.
When workers finish drilling, they insert cement into the well to maintain pressure and ensure that oil and gas from the reservoir below are not driven up into the well. In the Deepwater Horizon blowout, the cement job failed to effectively block out those fluids.
The rule mandated increased oversight in identifying and fixing faulty cement jobs like the one that caused the loss in the balance of pressure at the Deepwater. It also required the drill team to ensure that well cement jobs are sufficient before taking further actions and to obtain BSEE approval before taking any remedial actions for an inadequate cement job.
According to Don Boesch, a professor of marine science at the University of Maryland and a commission member, one of the most important aspects of the initial disaster was the failure of the blowout preventer.
“It was apparent back in 2010 that the blowout preventer didn’t work,” said Boesch. “If you have a vital piece of equipment, you have to make sure it’s inspected regularly, ensure that it’s working correctly.”
Blowout preventers are the last line of defense when fluids shoot up the well. A massive piece of machinery composed of huge pistons and shear rams, blowout preventers can close wells for a short period of time or seal them for good if a well is hopelessly compromised.
The rule attempted to make blowout preventers foolproof to the point that they could close or seal the well at any time. It required they have redundant shear rams, sufficient hydraulic power on the seafloor, “autoshear” and “deadman” systems capable of shearing and sealing a well when connection to the rig is lost, and a mechanism to center the drill pipe for cutting.
Testing of vital systems was also improved, setting minimum standards for inspection such as requiring reports for blowout preventers each year and a complete breakdown inspection with a government safety expert every five years. Any equipment failures had to be reported directly to BSEE.
Finally, if a spill did occur, the rule required that operators have the ability to deploy containment equipment quickly to avoid the months of continual oil spilling that happened after the Deepwater accident.
Trump Rolled Back the Obama Rule Before it Took Effect
When the rule was finalized, BSEE gave the industry until 2019 to comply. But the Trump administration announced in May 2019 that it was rolling back the Obama well safety rule, weakening many of its provisions before they ever took effect.
For example, the partial repeal eliminated the required onshore monitoring requirements and made it easier for companies to get waivers so they would not have to adhere to the default safe-drilling margin. It also changed the system of independent safety inspection by government and BSEE officials, allowing the industry to conduct inspections with its own auditors.
The Trump administration and the oil industry said that the partial repeal gave oil drillers greater flexibility while still using the most up-to-date safety technology and practices. When the partial repeal was made public, the Interior Department estimated that the changes were expected to save the oil industry about $824 million over 10 years.
“The safety of our workers, our operations and our communities, along with protection of the environment, is the oil and natural gas industry’s number one priority. The revisions strengthen the rule and enhance a robust regulatory framework to ensure updated, modern, and safe technologies, best practices, and operations,” a spokesperson for the American Petroleum Institute said in a recent interview.
But with severe stressors on the economics of the oil and gas industry, including the fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic and consistently falling oil prices before a recent rally, environmentalists are worried that the industry could put cutting costs over safety without tougher regulation.
Beyond the Deepwater Horizon disaster, there are thousands of spills that occur every year, “especially in the Gulf of Mexico, where most of the drilling is occurring,” said Devorah Ancel, a senior attorney with the Sierra Club. “That could be prevented or avoided if the more stringent safety regulations are put in place.”
The Next Move in Court Belongs to the Biden Administration
The environmental activists suing in federal court to block the Trump administration rollback argued that Trump’s Interior Department disregarded the extensive evidence that went into the original rule and failed to consider how the rollbacks could harm offshore safety and the environment. The case has dragged on, with the Biden Justice Department just now assuming representation of the Interior Department.
While the Biden administration has put the Well Control Rule on its list of agency actions for review, the Justice Department will presumably drop its defense of the Trump rollback. But more than that will be required to finally put the Obama rule into effect.
Attorneys involved on both sides of the case say there are some aspects of the Trump rollback, involving small language fixes and technical matters, they would like to retain. The Biden administration could also use the opportunity to try to strengthen the Obama rule.
Whatever the administration decides, the attorneys say it’s almost certain that a new rule repealing most of the Trump rollback will have to be put forward and undergo the standard comment period and review process before it takes effect.
The Justice Department has been given a stay by the judge until June 25 to review its strategy and produce documents detailing the process behind the Trump administration’s rollback.
A spokesperson for the Interior Department said the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement is “reviewing the rule to determine if revisions are warranted” and has tentatively scheduled publication of a new proposed rule in September.”
Biden has focused his fight to reduce climate change on phasing out fossil fuels, but drilling in the Gulf of Mexico will continue as that transition takes place, making the safety of offshore rigs critically important.
“As much as some people would like to phase out fossil fuels, it’s going to be likely that we’re drilling and producing oil in the Gulf for at least a couple of decades,” said Boesch, the former Deepwater commission member. “We should be sure that it’s as safe as possible, particularly in an economic business model where the industry is going to be winding down.”
Back in Biloxi, White says he’s been a supporter of oil for a long time. He worked fixing pipeline leaks underwater in the Gulf of Mexico years ago and sees fossil fuels as a necessity for the economy and, more directly, for operating his riverboat.
But with powerful business interests still pumping and drilling oil not too far away in the Gulf waters, he thinks it’s only a matter of time before another devastating spill happens.
“These oil and gas companies I’ve worked for over the years, it’s always safety, safety, safety, safety, until the dollar’s involved,” White said. “I’m sure a spill will happen again.”
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