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ight Senate Democrats broke from the majority of their party on Friday to vote against a proposal from Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont to raise the minimum wage to $15, joining all 50 Republicans in the upper chamber to reject it. Their defections put the measure on course to fail.
Sanders' proposal defied a ruling from the Senate parliamentarian that a minimum wage increase could not be included in President Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus package.
At least seven of the eight Democrats, which includes an independent who caucuses with Democrats (Angus King), are millionaires. Collectively, these lawmakers are worth more than $43 million. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which has seen billionaires add $1.3 trillion to their net worths, these wealthy lawmakers rejected raising wages for American workers.
Here are the eight Senate Democrats who voted against raising the minimum wage to $15, along with their individual net-worths based on the latest available information (the numbers come from Open Secrets, a non-profit research group that tracks money in politics):
The federal minimum wage currently stands at $7.25 an hour. The last time it was raised was 2009, though some individual states have raised minimum pay above the federal rate.
There were 392,000 workers earning the federal minimum wage as of 2019, while 1.2 million earned less, according to an April 2020 Bureau of Labor Statistics report.
It now seems likely that if Biden hopes to make good on his campaign pledge to raise the minimum wage to $15, he'll have to bring it up via other legislation in the future.
Those who oppose raising the minimum wage — with Republican lawmakers among the most vocal opponents — often cite concerns that it would hurt businesses or employment.
"Boosting the federal minimum wage would lift millions out of poverty and serve as a huge additional pandemic stimulus boost for the entire economy," Chuck Collins, the Director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies, told Insider labor reporter Juliana Kaplan in February. "We have seen how many frontline essential workers are poorly paid and most vulnerable. Boosting their pay is both morally right and economically smart."
A leader of the far-right group separately said he had been in touch with Roger Stone, but an official said it was not the same contact investigators found through electronic communications records.
member of the far-right nationalist Proud Boys was in communication with a person associated with the White House in the days just before the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, according to a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation.
Location, cellular and call record data revealed a call tying a Proud Boys member to the Trump White House, the official said. The F.B.I. has not determined what they discussed, and the official would not reveal the names of either party.
The connection revealed by the communications data comes as the F.B.I. intensifies its investigation of contacts among far-right extremists, Trump White House associates and conservative members of Congress in the days before the attack.
Biden Signals Support to Replace War Power Authority Aamer Madhani, Associated Press Madhani writes: "President Joe Biden on Friday signaled support to replace decades-old authorizations for the use of military force in the Middle East, a little more than a week after he relied on the authorizations to carry out a retaliatory airstrike against Iranian-backed militia in eastern Syria." READ MORE
Pipeline workers. (photo: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg/Getty Images)
A pipeline worker went on Fox News this week to talk about how Biden cancelling Keystone XL cost him his job. Fox failed to mention he was recruited by a prominent climate denial organization.
laid-off Keystone XL pipeline worker who was interviewed on Fox News appeared on the network thanks to a group that has disputed the science of climate change, spent decades fighting against the green economy, and is closely affiliated with the Republican Party.
Jason Jernigan, who is with Pipeliners Local Union 798, had recently commented on Facebook about the pipeline from Alberta to Texas. A fellow worker was making the rounds on Fox criticizing the Biden administration for cancelling Keystone, and Jernigan chimed in online: he too had lost work because of that decision.
After his Facebook comment, Jernigan said a man who works for a group called Americans for Tax Reform got in touch. “I woke up one day and had a private message on my phone,” Jernigan told VICE News. “He’d seen my comment. He had a list of 10, 20 people and he reached out to us and asked if we’d be interested in submitting a 30-second video to him.”
Jernigan had never heard of Americans for Tax Reform, but agreed to create a short video. “Three days later, I woke up again and I had two emails from Fox, an email from Fox Business; I had texts on my phone, a private message, and they were all wanting me to get a hold of them,” he said. Jernigan said he did three interviews with the network in total.
In a Fox segment that aired this week, host Dana Perino introduced Jernigan by saying that “President Biden’s decision to kill the Keystone pipeline has cost thousands of American workers good-paying jobs. Now one of them has a message for the Biden administration.”
“I spent my whole life learning this craft and this skill and it’s not as easy as somebody might think or people might think to just start all over at 45 years old,” Jernigan said during the Fox interview.
Americans for Tax Reform is an anti-tax organization founded in 1985 by Grover Norquist, a conservative activist whom the New York Timesonce called “one of the Republican Party’s most influential policy strategists.”
The group, which has reportedly received millions of dollars in donations from Koch Industries, Exxon, and other industry groups, has been active in the fight against climate regulations for decades, including a campaign in the late 1990s with the American Petroleum Institute to convince the public that climate change isn’t real. It more recently supported Donald Trump’s 2017 decision to withdraw from the Paris climate treaty, and is currently fighting efforts to bring in a national tax on U.S. carbon emissions.
Americans for Tax Reform is now running a campaign where it’s “collecting personal testimonials of Americans hit by President Biden’s executive actions.” The group didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Americans for Tax Reform posted Jernigan’s video on Feb. 25. The video was then reposted on Twitter by the Daily Caller, where it has more than 33,000 views.
Jernigan’s most recent Fox interview was picked up by several other conservative outlets, including Breitbart, the site co-founded by former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, which ran a piece entitled “Laid-Off Pipeline Worker: Joe Biden ‘Has Taken My Livelihood from Me’. The Washington Examineralso did a story on Jernigan.
Creating content designed to flood conservative media and make the public second-guess efforts to fight the climate emergency is a tactic that Americans for Tax Reform has used many times, said Lisa Graves, founder of True North Research, a corporate watchdog group that tracks climate disinformation.
“This is part of their playbook, which is to try to scare people and make them think that policies to mitigate climate change are going to destroy jobs,” Graves said, “when in fact the proposals that are on the table by the Biden administration are about building new jobs.”
Biden’s rejection of a key permit for Keystone XL is part of a series of federal actions that he says will fight climate change and build a “clean energy future that will create millions of good-paying union jobs.”
But Jernigan has yet to be won over by those promises. He said if the administration is serious about transitioning workers like him into the green economy, it would need to back that up with action. “I haven’t been offered a job,” he said. “I haven’t been sent a contract, I haven’t been sent an application, I haven’t been told where I can get an application.”
Haitians gather in the streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to stage a demonstration against President Jovenel Moïse, who refuses to step down. (photo: Sabin Johnson/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
Haiti’s corrupt, US-backed president is facing massive demonstrations after refusing to step down. US intervention has stifled Haitian democracy and impoverished its people — and the protests are an effort to fight back.
ince February 14, thousands of Haitians have taken to the streets every weekend in the capitol of Port-au-Prince and elsewhere to protest President Jovenel Moïse’s refusal to abdicate power. Moïse, who was elected with the backing of the United States in November 2016, has exploited a supposed loophole in Haiti’s constitution stating that the duration of the president’s term is five years. The constitution clarifies that terms must begin in February, but Moïse insists that his election in November — the delay stemming from previous US meddling — entitles him to more time in office. Thousands of Haitians disagree, but their demonstrations have been met with police violence, leaving dozens dead.
The rallying call of Haitian demonstrators has been, “Where is the Petrocaribe money?” Ostensibly a simple question of accounting, it points to the depth of corruption in Haiti under Moïse and his predecessor, Michel Martelly, who have squandered or stolen billions of dollars’ worth of oil and funds provided by Venezuela as part of Petrocaribe, a program meant to support regional development.
The combination of corruption and repression has critics branding Moïse and Martelly “neo-Duvalierists,” in reference to Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier and Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, the father-son dictators who ruled Haiti from 1957 to 1986. The Duvalierists stand in contrast to Fanmi Lavalas, a social-democratic party founded by Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who became Haiti’s first democratically elected president in 1991 — before being deposed by a US-backed coup later that year.
Jacobin contributor Arvind Dilawar spoke with Kim Ives, an editor at Haiti Liberte, about the current protests, the government’s brutal response, and the United States’ ongoing complicity in the repression of the Haitian people. Their conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.
AD: What was the spark that set off the current protests?
KI: The latest protests stem from Moïse not stepping down on February 7, 2021, as Article 134.2 of Haiti’s 1987 Constitution dictates. He had been making it clear that he was not going to step down in the months leading up to the date, but it came to pass in a very belligerent way. The people did not pour out on February 7 precisely, expecting maybe that he would step down at some point, but he did not. Every weekend since, the demonstrations are growing in size, and the tone is becoming sharper.
There is a little contradiction in Article 134, which says that the president will serve five years. But there is a clarification in 134.2 that, in fact, he will have to start his term on February 7 of the year of the election. So even though the election took place on November 20, 2016, that constitutional article insists that he start the clock on February 7.
There have been constant demonstrations throughout the presidency of Moïse, as there were for his predecessor, Michel Martelly. There were on the order of eighty-four demonstrations per month during the end of 2020, which is saying something, given that COVID was in place. So we could say that it wasn’t exactly “the spark,” but the straw that broke the camel’s back.
I don’t see these demonstrations subsiding as they have periodically in the past. Heightened demonstrations have been taking place since July 2018, when Moïse had to drastically hike fuel prices in the country due to the fact that Petrocaribe oil and money were no longer flowing into the country. The IMF, who had to step in to fill the breach, said, you have to hike the gas prices or you’re not going to get a loan. So they did. And that really began the past two and a half years of demonstrations on an almost weekly, if not daily, basis.
AD: Are there larger structural problems that have kept the Haitian people seething?
KI: The Martelly government was shoehorned in by then secretary of state Hillary Clinton in January 2011, when she traveled to Haiti to basically read the Riot Act to then president René Préval and tell him that he had to put Martelly in the runoff. He had come in third, according to the Electoral Council, so she overrode the Electoral Council and said, no, Martelly is going to be in the runoff, and he won.
That marked the beginning of neo-Duvalier rule in the county, after twenty years of alternating Lavalas [party] and semi-Lavalas rule, between Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his sometimes-called “twin,” [René] Préval. The US ushered in this neo-Duvalierist group, who brought with it all the hallmarks of Duvalierism: corruption, repression, lavish excess, complete insensitivity to the people’s demands, and complete openness to US, French, and Canadian imperialism doing as they wish in the country. In fact, that was their slogan: “Haiti is open for business” — which, not coincidentally, was the slogan of Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier in the early 1980s, before his overthrow. The people of Haiti have essentially been demonstrating since the arrival of the Haitian Bald-Headed party, as Martelly called his party.
This is the backdrop to all the demonstrations, which have been against corruption and repression, primarily. But the demonstrations became more ferocious and larger in 2018, because the spigot that the Petrocaribe fund that Venezuela was providing Haiti was turned off. At one point, Martelly’s prime minister said that 94 percent of the government’s special projects were being funded by the Petrocaribe fund. When that money all disappeared, Moïse, who had made all sorts of fantastic promises to the people — that they would, in the space of eighteen months, have 24-7 electricity, etc. — was left with an even more angry population.
AD: How bad is corruption in Haiti?
KI: The largest part of it, which really has become the background for this movement, is the money stolen from the Petrocaribe fund. This became the call shortly after the gas hike in July 2018, which began on social media after an artist put up a picture of himself saying, where is the Petrocaribe money?
The Venezuelans gave Haiti $4 billion worth of cheap oil, about twenty thousand barrels a day. Haiti only had to pay 60 percent upfront, and 40 percent went into this capital fund, which was supposed to pay for clinics and hospitals and schools and roads and anything that would benefit the Haitian people.
But instead of being used for that, it was pilfered and misspent and embezzled into a myriad of fake projects — from invisible stadiums to fake food distribution programs to fake home-building programs, etc. On the order of $1.7 billion disappeared in this manner, by the Martelly government. That corruption, that embezzlement of the Petrocaribe funds, is the rock that is sticking in the craw of the Haitian people.
It should be said that Haiti also reportedly received some $13 billion worth of funds for earthquake rebuilding. Ironically, they used in Haiti the same slogan they’re using [in Washington] today, “Build Back Better,” but it did not go to building back better. Not only was it frittered away and intercepted by various middlemen and NGOs, but what did get through to Haiti also seems to have been misspent by the Martelly government, which received the lion’s share of that as well.
That, though, has not been as much in the people’s consciousness as the Petrocaribe funds, which was a more appreciated solidarity fund than the earthquake fund, which was headed by Bill Clinton — which Haitians felt, almost from the get-go, was probably not going to end up doing much for them.
AD: How has the Haitian government responded to the protests?
KI: Very fierce repression. Moïse, in November, returned to service Léon Charles, who was in charge of the Haitian National Police right after the coup d’état against Aristede on February 29, 2004. His reign was characterized by very bloody and fierce repression against the rebellious masses of, primarily, Cité Soleil and Bel Air, Port-au-Prince’s two largest slums. Moise brought him back, and he has lived up to his past record — and has even been given new powers. Moïse, who has been ruling by decree since January 13, 2020, has also decreed a new Gestapo force, the National Intelligence Agency, which gives its agents the power not just to spy on the public, but to arrest them, and even kill them, because its agents are armed. On top of that, they cannot be prosecuted, they have complete immunity.
This is a force very similar to the Tonton Macoute of the Duvalier dictatorship. The Tonton Macoute had the same extrajudicial powers. They were the eyes, ears, and fists of the Duvalier dictatorship and allowed it to stay in power for three decades.
That repression has been on display in the past weeks. Dozens of demonstrators have been killed in the past months of demonstrations. Sometimes they’re hit by tear gas grenades in the head, and others have been shot by police forces who apparently act as snipers, shooting into the demonstrators.
In addition, another decree made it an act of terrorism to carry out certain forms of demonstration and street protest. This gives the so-called legal framework for the severe police repression — even though the decrees themselves are completely illegal, because, as even the US State Department has said in their dismay over the optics of this, the decrees are supposed to be used for caretaking questions and not for creating legislative initiatives of this nature.
On top of it, part of this decree mania that Moïse has exhibited has been to not only form his own new, handpicked Electoral Council, which he proposes will hold the election in the coming year, but to rewrite the constitution. Again, these are all tactics that Francois Duvalier in the early 1960s employed to establish his presidency for life.
AD: What do you think will be the results of the current protests?
KI: I will be surprised if Moïse can stay in power until February 7, 2022, as he intends to. This really is the unstoppable force meeting the immovable object right now.
The US seems to be having a little bit of doubt. Julie Chung, the assistant secretary of state for Western Hemispheric Affairs, tweeted last month that she was alarmed by the authoritarian and undemocratic moves of the government. But they stopped short of saying that they were pulling any support. They seem to be keeping the same basic policy that the Trump administration had, which is to encourage Moïse to hold elections — which he was supposed to have held in 2018 and ’19 — and pass the sash and repopulate the parliament and the mayor’s offices throughout Haiti. (There are right now only eleven elected officials in the country: Moïse and ten senators.)
The Biden government has certainly got to be seeing the size of these demonstrations. The other factor is that, as the demonstrations grow in size and ferocity, the US Congress is putting increasing pressure on the Biden administration, saying that Moïse should step down and be replaced by a provisional government.
Will all that pressure push the US to remove him? The reasons why they might balk are because the last time there was a civilian transition, the president elected was Aristide, a liberation theologian priest and anti-imperialist that the US did not approve of in any way and carried out a coup d’état against him eight months after his inauguration in 1991. Secondly, the very important role that Haiti is playing in the anti-Venezuela campaign of Washington. For those two reasons, they may feel that they should just ride out the storm, continue to pump money to him.
The other thing we have to fear, especially with the hawks and warmongers who are now populating the Biden administration, is yet a third foreign military intervention in Haiti — of course, probably dressed up as a “humanitarian” intervention. This would be like throwing a rock into a hornet’s nest, because the Haitian people, I can say without any equivocation, are fed up with foreign military occupations.
It’s already known that the western monarch has plummeted in population by 99.9 percent and was recently denied protection by the U.S. Endangered Species Act. But the study revealed lesser-known species, like the Boisduval’s blue and California’s state insect, the California dogface butterfly, are heading toward extinction.
“The declines across species are so ubiquitous,” says study leader Matthew Forister, a biology professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. “They’re all suffering.”
The scientists focused on what is likely butterflies’ biggest danger: climate change.
More than 200 cities across the U.S. are experiencing warmer fall seasons, with the biggest autumn temperature increases in the Southwest. In Arizona, for instance, fall temperatures have risen by 0.2 degree Fahrenheit every decade since 1895. That may be why the west coast lady, a vibrant orange-and-black butterfly, has declined at a rate of 3 percent a year in the state.
“We’ve been really focused on the [warming of] spring for a couple of decades now,” Forister says, but “warming at the end of the season is a really negative impact.”
Falling numbers, warmer falls
To find out where butterflies are in free fall, researchers pored over four decades’ worth of academic and community science data in 70 locations, from Seattle to Santa Fe to Tucson. The data drew mostly from observational sightings of butterflies.
The team relied on three datasets: one academic; one from the crowdsourcing data site iNaturalist, a joint project of the California Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Geographic Society; and one from the North American Butterfly Association.
The study locations, a mix of urban and wild, revealed butterflies were vanishing even in pristine areas. California’s Castle Peak, one of the more remote butterfly watching spots, is one of the homes of the anise swallowtail, which has dwindled significantly in number—though not as dramatically as other species.
As for why warming falls are so detrimental, it may be connected to butterflies’ hibernation-like diapause in the fall. Warmer temperatures could be forcing the insects, most of which live around a year, to stay awake longer and starve.
In other words, they’re “getting old and crunchy and dying sooner,” says study co-author Katy Prudic, an entomologist and assistant professor of citizen and data science at the University of Arizona School of Natural Resources and the Environment.
An elegant call to action
Conservation biologist Scott Hoffman Black, executive director of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, called the study “elegant” in its combination of academic and community data.
“It adds to our growing understanding of what’s going on with insects and insect decline across the globe,” says Black, who wasn’t involved in the study. “The overall conclusion that climate is a major driver when it comes to butterfly decline is the important takeaway from this paper.”
There’s also a lot individual citizens can do to protect butterflies and other insects at home, such as planting native vegetation and avoiding pesticides. “It doesn’t matter whether you have a little tiny yard or you manage a national park,” he says. (Learn more ways you can help pollinators at home.)
“Without all those people who are interested in taking pictures and watching butterflies and spending time in nature,” Prudic says, “this study wouldn’t have been able to happen.”
Oh, baby! First right whale calf of season spotted in Cape Cod Bay
Eric Williams Cape Cod Times
Mar 5, 2021
There's a baby in Cape Cod Bay! Not to worry, though: It's the first North Atlantic right whale calf of the season.
An aerial surveillance team from the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown spotted the wee cetacean on Wednesday, in the company of its mom, known to researchers as "Millipede." According to a press release from the center, the calf is believed to be about three months old and already has a few miles under its belt.
“By any accounting, this little whale has already beaten the odds,” said Dr. Charles “Stormy” Mayo, director of the CCS Right Whale Ecology Program, in the release. “To reach Cape Cod Bay, Millipede and her calf, the hope for the future of this critically endangered species, had to complete a perilous 1200-mile journey through busy coastal waters. They are now in a small bay that is relatively safe from threats, but in weeks or days they will leave the protected confines of the bay and continue their travels north in more risky waters.”
The duo is a bit ahead of schedule. “We weren’t expecting to sight a mom-calf pair this early in our season since we typically first see them arrive in late March/early April," said Brigid McKenna, Center for Coastal Studies right whale researcher and aerial observer, in the release.
And the whale bambino seems to be doing well. “(The) calf appeared to be quite healthy and independent — it spent more than 40 minutes far from its mother, which is something we do not see often at this age,” said McKenna.
On the same day, the aerial survey team spotted 57 right whales in Cape Cod Bay and over 100 have been seen this season. The entire population of the critically endangered species is estimated at 356 individuals, and ship strikes and entanglements are always a risk.
“The large number of right whales that have entered Cape Cod Bay, combined with the sighting of the first mother/calf pair of the year, demonstrates what we have seen over the last several decades, the increasing importance of Cape Cod Bay as a feeding and nursery ground for the last right whales,” Mayo said in the release.
Each day — somehow — RSN is literally rescued by a handful of donors. Sometimes they are very small donors and sometimes much larger. But it’s always a “few people” that take a moment out of their day to lend their support.
Donald Trump’s chances of staying out of prison just took a nosedive.
ast month Donald Trump got several pieces of bad news re: avoiding prosecution for his cornucopia of alleged crimes. First, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office hired Mark Pomerantz, the guy who successfully put away John Gotti and others involved in organized crime. Worse, his tax returns were finally handed over to the D.A.’s office after the Supreme Court rejected his bid to keep them under lock and key, a development he reacted to with the tone of a guy who’s committed all manner of fraud and is terrified to get caught. Now the team working around the clock to put him away has apparently zeroed in on the Trump Organization employee who knows where all of his financial bodies are buried, and the possibility of his talking is presumably keeping Trump awake at night.
The Washington Postreports that Cyrus Vance’s office is “delving deeply into the personal and financial affairs” of Allen Weisselberg, the longtime chief financial officer of the Trump Organization. The questioning is being led by Pomerantz, with the goal of flipping Weisselberg and convincing him to become a witness against Trump. (During his years as a mob prosecutor, Pomerantz undoubtedly got who knows how many people to “snitch.”) Per the Post:
Vance’s focus on Weisselberg has included questions related to two of his adult children, a tactic that could be an effort to increase pressure on the elder Weisselberg. One of Weisselberg’s sons also works for the Trump Organization, where he manages the company’s Central Park ice rinks. Another Weisselberg son works for a company that has extended loans to the Trump Organization.... Typically, efforts to flip witnesses have two parts: First, prosecutors work to build evidence that a witness may have their own legal liabilities. They then try to convince the witness to save themselves by turning on a higher-up. The person with knowledge of the case said investigators were trying to “cast a wide net...looking to shake the tree a little bit.”
In this case prosecutors have scrutinized Weisselberg’s work in helping to assess the value of Trump buildings as the company sought to obtain loans or property tax reductions, people familiar with the investigation said. They have also asked about a Trump-owned luxury apartment where Weisselberg’s son Barry lived for several years. The exact nature of Vance’s interest in the apartment is not known, but if Barry Weisselberg, who manages Trump’s ice skating rinks, got the apartment rent-free, that might be considered a fringe benefit of his job and subject to income tax. Two people with knowledge of the district attorney’s probe said the team has also been analyzing the finances of the cash-only skating rink where Barry Weisselberg works. At the same time investigators have asked detailed questions about Allen Weisselberg’s financial history and his feelings about Trump, according to people familiar with the investigation.
The D.A.’s criminal investigation, which began in 2018, initially focused on the hush money payments made to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal in the run-up to the 2016 election, but has since expanded to include possible crimes like insurance and tax fraud. Weisselberg has kept Trump’s books since the ’80s and became CFO of the family business in 2000, once describing himself in a deposition as Trump’s “eyes and ears...from an economic standpoint.” Or as a former Trump employee put it to the Post, “Allen is in charge of everything.”
In addition to asking questions about Weisselberg’s financial history, lifestyle, and relationship with Trump, investigators have reportedly been focusing on the Trump Parc East building where Weisselberg’s son Barry lived for several years; last year his ex-wife told Bloomberg that they lived there for free, believing at the time that it was a wedding present from Donald and Melania Trump. (IRS rules state that an apartment provided for free by an employer typically is subject to income tax, and a person familiar with the matter told the Post that prosecutors have been analyzing Barry Weisselberg’s tax returns.) Additionally, attorneys from Vance’s office have asked witnesses about more than $270 million in loans made to the Trump Organization by Ladder Capital, which employs Weisselberg’s other son, Jack Weisselberg. It’s not clear at this time what testimony, if any, Allen Weisselberg has provided to the D.A.’s office, although the bad news for Trump is that he does not appear opposed to talking:
In the past...Weisselberg has provided testimony to government investigations into Trump’s financial dealings. In 2017, Weisselberg spoke to investigators for a New York attorney general investigation of Trump’s charity, the Donald J. Trump Foundation. He told them that the charity’s board never met, that the charity had “no policy” for determining whether its spending followed nonprofit laws, and that the charity had been co-opted by Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, in violation of a ban on mixing charities and politics. The attorney general later used Weisselberg’s testimony against Trump, in a lawsuit that ended with a New York judge ordering Trump to pay a $2 million penalty.
And Weisselberg also accepted a deal from federal prosecutors focused on [Michael] Cohen’s hush money payments, in which Weisselberg testified about others in exchange for immunity for himself. Prosecutors were interested in the Trump Organization’s reimbursement of Cohen for the hush money payments…Cohen later pleaded guilty to two felony counts related to those payments.
Vance declined the Post’s request for comment, as did the Trump Organization and Mary Mulligan, an attorney for Weisselberg. Jack Weisselberg told the Post he was declining to comment on both his and his brother Barry’s behalf. A person familiar with the Trump Organization said the company is confident its “practices for assessing the value of property fall within industry norms for New York City,” and that Weisselberg will remain loyal.
he Senate on Friday voted to reject a proposal sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to raise the federal minimum wage to $15.
Seven Democrats and one Independent who caucuses with Democrats voted against it. The vote has yet to be gaveled closed, though it appeared every senator had cast their vote by 12:15 p.m.
Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), Chris Coons (D-Del.) Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Angus King (I-Maine.) voted to sustain a procedural objection — a budget point of order — against the wage increase.
Coons’s vote was especially surprising as he is one of President Biden’s closest allies in the Senate, but he and Carper also represent a business-friendly state.
The Senate voted 58 to 42 against an attempt to waive a procedural objection against adding the wage provision to the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill.
The overwhelming vote raises doubts whether Biden will be able to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 at any point in his first term.
Until Friday’s vote, Manchin, an emerging powerbroker in the 50-50 Senate, had been the only Senate Democrat to openly state his opposition to a nationwide $15 wage standard. Manchin instead favors setting it at $11 an hour and indexing it to inflation.
With eight members of the Democratic caucus voting against it on procedural grounds, it’s hard to see Biden getting his priority anytime soon. Instead, he is likely going to have to compromise on raising the federal minimum wage, which has not been increased since 2009, to some amount below $15
Biden reiterated his strong support for it during a conference call with Senate Democrats last week and invited them to keep working on the wage increase.
“The president wants us to move forward right now on COVID relief but he has made clear he supports an increase in the minimum wage 100 percent,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), an outspoken proponent of a $15 minimum wage, told reporters after the call.
Friday’s minimum wage vote came shortly after news broke that centrists Democrats had forced their leaders to accept a significant reduction in weekly unemployment benefits.
Democrats announced Friday morning they were near a deal to set the weekly unemployment benefit at $300 a week instead of the $400 a week favored by Biden and included in the House-passed relief deal.
In a concession to liberals, the emerging unemployment benefits agreement would exempt up to $10,200 in benefits received in 2020 from taxes and extend the boost to federal unemployment benefits to Oct. 4 instead of Aug. 29, the end date set by the House.
Moderate Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) also voted for the procedural objection to Sanders’s $15 per hour minimum wage amendment.
Every other Senate Republican voted the same way.
Some Democrats expressed uneasiness about Sanders’s proposal to raise tipped wages earned by restaurant workers at a time when many restaurants are struggling to stay open during a drop in business because of the pandemic.
The vote was largely symbolic after the Senate parliamentarian ruled last week that a provision raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025 violated the Byrd Rule and could not be included in the relief package that Democrats plan to pass with a simple-majority vote under special budget rules.
Proponents of the $15 per hour wage may take some solace in the fact that Friday’s vote was on waiving a budget point-of-order objection to the amendment rather than a straight up-or-down vote on the amendment itself — leaving Democrats who voted no some wiggle room to vote yes in the future.
Because the parliamentarian ruled the wage increase violated the Byrd Rule, it would have stopped the entire relief package from passing with a simple-majority vote if it were successfully added.
But the procedural objection — which would have required 60 votes to waive — could have been sustained by Republican votes alone in the 50-50 Senate, indicating Democratic centrists are sending a message.
ressure is building on President Biden, a longtime backer of traditional Washington rules, to do away with the filibuster and other procedures, as Democrats press him to seize what could be a fleeting moment of power to enact a progressive agenda.
Liberals have long pushed for sweeping changes like expanding the Supreme Court, ending the electoral college and banning gerrymandering. But as Biden faces a critical stretch of his presidency, even moderate Democrats are urging more immediate changes — particularly rewriting the filibuster, so that at the very least fewer bills need 60 votes to pass the Senate.
Democrats increasingly worry that popular pieces of Biden’s agenda will hit a wall in the Senate, including his plans for climate change, immigration, gun control, voting rights and LGBT protections. Failing to enact them, they fear, could be a political disaster for Democrats as well as a substantive one.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), a centrist, said Wednesday she wants to “get rid of the filibuster,” her toughest comments to date on the matter. By Thursday, Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) announced via social media that she, too, now wants to abolish the filibuster, because “the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the filibuster has long been the enemy of progress.”
Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), also a moderate, told The Washington Post he could envision the Senate changing the filibuster if bills are floundering. “We’ve got to figure out whether leadership on both sides wants to have obstruction, or if they want to come together and try to get some things done,” Tester said.
For the moment, Democrats do not have the votes to fully abolish the filibuster altogether, which allows a senator to block a bill by refusing to yield the floor unless at least 60 senators overrule the speaker. Some Democrats, like Sen. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.), oppose repeal. (“Never!” he shouted recently at a journalist who asked.) So advocates are looking for ways to limit the filibuster instead of ending it — and hoping Biden weighs in.
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) warned that if Democrats fail to pass a popular agenda because of arcane Senate rules, the party will suffer in the midterm elections. “It will be a Democratic Party Armageddon in 2022 if we sit here on our butts and say, ‘Oh, we’re sorry, we’re not as determined to get our agenda passed as Republicans were,’ ” said Merkley, who is spearheading an overhaul effort.
But Republicans say such changes would create a free-for-all in the Senate and contend Democrats are threatening to toss the rules to gain an unearned political advantage.
“The same party that wants to change Senate rules when they lose a vote, pack the Supreme Court when they lose a case and throw out the electoral college every time they lose the White House now wants to forcibly rewrite 50 states’ election laws from Washington, D.C.,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said recently on the Senate floor, speaking in opposition to a Democratic election bill.
He added, “Millions of American voters elected 50 Republican senators and a whole lot of House Republicans to make sure that Democrats play by the rules — not rewrite the rules.”
As the presidential campaign unfolded and the depth of many Democrats’ dissatisfaction became clear, Biden softened his vociferous opposition to changing Washington’s rules. In July, he conceded that his approach to the filibuster would “depend on how obstreperous they [Republicans] become.” After resisting proposals to expand the Supreme Court, he promised a commission to look into reforming it.
Now that Biden is president, such middle positions could be harder to sustain. Biden faces a choice, some activists say, between ruling mostly via executive fiat — which permits modest accomplishments at best — and pulling down the structural obstacles.
For now, the White House is keeping its option on the table.
“One thing that is nonnegotiable is him delivering for the American people,” said Emmy Ruiz, the White House political director. “The number one priority here is to get this agenda, this bold agenda, passed through Congress.”
A White House official, not authorized the discuss the administration’s legislative approach, said that the “strategy is adjusting every single day,” reiterating Biden’s position that the filibuster is not sacrosanct while the agenda is.
But with Democrats potentially losing their narrow House or Senate majorities in 2022 — the president’s party usually fares poorly in midterms — the Democrats’ window for change may be short-lived.
The vulnerability of Biden’s agenda became clear last week when a proposed minimum wage increase ran into a procedural hurdle and was removed from his coronavirus relief package. Some Democrats, and many activists, saw that as a warning sign for the rest of Biden’s agenda.
The concern exists even though Biden is on the cusp of passing a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, the second-largest stimulus bill ever to go through Congress. Biden may struggle to repeat that feat with measures that do not fit as easily into “reconciliation,” a maneuver allowing a bill to pass the Senate with a simple majority instead of 60 votes.
Biden will have just two more opportunities to use reconciliation before the midterms, and only budget-related bills qualify. It is the Senate parliamentarian who decides whether a bill fits under reconciliation, and while her advice can be ignored, Democrats so far have chosen to abide by her rulings.
“It’s not an ideal procedure to get things done, but politically this is the only palatable path right now to progress on key issues,” said Ben LaBolt, a former aide in the Obama administration.
Some liberals in Congress sent a letter this week to Biden and Vice President Harris urging them to sidestep the parliamentarian’s decision on the minium wage, a move that has historical precedent.
“There is an institutional deference that maybe would have been fine in times past, but a defense of the status quo is inadequate to the challenges of our time,” said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.). “We have to follow the rule of law, but we don’t have to defer to traditions and norms.”
Without such changes, Senate rules force advocates into a tortuous process of making sometimes circuitous arguments for why their bills fit reconciliation.
Kerri Talbot, deputy director of the Immigration Hub, a pro-immigrant organization, said reconciliation may be the best hope for passing a citizenship measure for at least some of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. “We think we can qualify, due to the economic impact of providing a path to citizenship,” Talbot said. “Ultimately it’s a big boon for the economy, but in the short run there are some costs involved as well.”
Advocates and 100 lawmakers have asked Biden to consider legalizing at least 5 million undocumented immigrants via budget reconciliation. Three people with detailed understanding of Senate rules, however, said it is unlikely that a broad immigration plan would pass the parliamentarian’s muster.
Immigration activists are preparing for that eventuality. “We have to understand that the ruling of the Senate parliamentarian is not the end of the story,” said Carlos Rojas Rodriguez, who was among 150 supporters and ex-staffers of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) who wrote Sanders last week urging him to use reconciliation.
If the Senate parliamentarian disagrees, Rojas Rodriguez said Democrats should overrule her.
Merkley, the senator from Oregon, said he is seeing steadily more receptiveness from his colleagues for ending the filibuster. In 2009 when he first joined the Senate, the push for change was “a very lonely journey,” he said, but now “there’s been a massive shift.”
Proponents are casting about for reform proposals that could win over the last few votes for change. For example, a current Democratic bill to overhaul elections is expected to attract no Republican support, prompting some Democrats to suggest an exception to the filibuster for civil rights and voting matters.
Biden’s climate agenda, a top priority for the party’s liberal wing and many young voters, also would probably struggle to attract 60 Senate votes, nor would it easily qualify for reconciliation. One lobbyist familiar with Biden’s plan said “the whole thing, basically” would be unlikely to meet the reconciliation test without being “substantially redrafted.”
Some lawmakers believe that if a stack of popular bills passes the House but cannot get through the Senate, it would put critical pressure on Senate Democrats to consider revamping their system.
“The longer the Senate doesn’t function as it used to, pressure will keep building for changes that would allow overwhelmingly popular policies to move forward,” said Phil Schiliro, who headed legislative affairs in the Obama White House.
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has sidestepped questions about how Biden’s agenda could make it through the currently configured Senate.
“The bottom line is we’re going to come together as a caucus and figure out a way to get the bold action that the American people demand,” Schumer said recently. “We will put bills on the floor. We’re not going to be the legislative graveyard.”
Biden is uniquely situated to push a major change to the Senate proceedings, some Democrats say, because of his credibility as a Senate institutionalist. He served in the chamber for more than three decades and frequently speaks of it with affection.
In his previous stint in the executive branch, Biden showed flexibility. He supported the Obama administration’s push to end the filibuster on most judicial nominations, lobbying his former colleagues to make the change, said Ed Pagano, who was a legislative affairs aide in the White House at the time.
But Biden is also on the record defending Senate traditions like the parliamentarian’s rulings, saying in a 2005 floor speech that heeding them had “been the practice for 218 years.”
As for killing the filibuster — that, he warned at the time, would be “a fundamental power grab by the majority party.”
U.S. border agents take part in an operation to find illegal migrants at International Bridge Paso del Norte-Santa Fe in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, Mexico, July 1, 2019. (photo: Herika Martinez/AFP)
ACLU Asks Homeland Security to Take Action on Complaints of Abuse, Misconduct by US Border Agents Julia Ainsley, Merritt Enright and Didi Martinez, NBC News Excerpt: "Lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union are calling on the Department of Homeland Security to address allegations of abuse and misconduct against migrants by Customs and Border Protection personnel during the Trump administration in 2019 and 2020."
epublicans have launched a series of misleading and racially charged attacks against a pair of prominent civil rights leaders in a transparent effort to block Joe Biden’s nominees from top slots in the Justice Department.
Vanita Gupta, an Indian-American woman who is Biden’s nominee for associate attorney general, and Kristen Clarke, a Black woman whom Biden picked to head the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, have faced increasingly nasty attacks seeking to paint them as cop-hating, anti-Semitic reverse racists.
Republicans have faced heat for seeking to block a number of Biden’s BIPOC female appointees from senior administration posts. But it’s more than that: Their attacks against Gupta and Clarke are aimed at keeping a pair of civil rights veterans from two of the most powerful civil rights positions in the federal government at a time of surging white supremacist violence, a tidal wave of new vote-suppressing GOP state-level legislation, and a GOP legal push to further dismantle the Voting Rights Act that’s made it all the way to the Supreme Court.
“It always comes down to race. And that’s what’s motivating the opposition to these two nominees,” said the Campaign Legal Center’s Gerry Hebert, who has worked with both Gupta and Clarke for years.
“Kristen Clarke and Vanita Gupta are both experts on voting rights, both have served in the DOJ previously, so they don’t have to learn the ropes,” Hebert continued. “If the GOP’s strategy is to try to restrict voting rights as much as possible, then delaying these two nominees from taking office is totally consistent with that. That's what's likely motivating the opposition.”
The Coming Attacks
Republicans telegraphed their coming attacks on Gupta and Clarke during the hearings to confirm Merrick Garland as attorney general.
But it’s also long been clear that some Republicans simply don’t want the laws enforced with zeal. Since Ronald Reagan’s presidency, GOP administrations haven’t enforced civil rights laws with nearly the zeal that Democrats have. Multiple GOP senators complained that Obama’s Justice Department was “politicized” during Garland’s confirmation hearings, conveniently ignoring President Trump’s reign.
Both Gupta and Clarke are DOJ veterans—Clarke served during President George W. Bush's administration, and Gupta served during the Obama administration.
During Garland’s Monday confirmation vote, Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn said he found it “particularly troubling” that Garland had defended the pair.
“One need not look very far back into their respective records to find evidence that they are all about politics in the Justice Department,” he said. “Calls to defund the police, as recently as June of last year. Calls to eliminate qualified immunity for law enforcement. All of these should be nonstarters for anyone assuming a position in law enforcement.”
Gupta has never supported defunding the police—her opponents cite a comment from 2019 where she said additional resources should be spent on other priorities rather than hiring more police officers to make that false claim. And Democrats, and some Republicans, support ending qualified immunity, which shields police from repercussions.
Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee spent five full minutes grilling Garland not on his own remarks but on things he claimed that Gupta and Clarke had said.
That included a selective quote of Gupta that implied she’d called all Republicans bigots when she’d been specifically talking about how if justices didn’t enforce civil and voting rights laws, they could abandon minorities to “the mercy of people and institutions driven by hate, bigotry, and fear of any threat to the status quo.” He then accused Clarke of “anti-Semitic comments,” and claimed that as an adult she declared, as he put it, “that one racial group is superior to another” (she was a teenager and was clearly being sardonic, not literal).
“I'm a pretty good judge of what an anti-Semite is, and I do not believe she is an anti-Semite,” Garland fired back.
The exchange was highlighted by the conservative Breitbart News:
Lee cited those remarks—and Garland’s refusal to distance himself from them—as a reason he’d changed his mind and decided to vote against Garland’s confirmation.
These GOP attacks follow a well-worn pattern. Gupta was acting head of the DOJ’s civil rights division for three years because Republicans blocked President Obama’s appointment of Debo Adegbile with similar race-baiting attacks that painted him as an anti-police radical. Clarke would be the first woman to be confirmed to her position because Republicans ran the same playbook to block Lani Guinier, President Clinton’s Black, female nominee, in the 1990s.
Gupta’s hearing is first, so has drawn more concentrated fire from conservatives: She’s scheduled for Tuesday, alongside Lisa Monaco, Biden’s nominee for deputy attorney general. Gupta most recently headed The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, previously was acting head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division in the Obama administration, and before that was with the American Civil Liberties Union. That’s given her a long track record of fighting against discrimination and for voting rights and criminal justice reform—positions that some Republicans find anathema.
The conservative Judicial Crisis Network has spent more than $800,000 on ads calling Gupta a “dangerous appointee” who “supports defunding police,” even though that’s not true—she literally said that the opposite, that police reform alone wouldn’t fix all underlying problems and talked up investing in Black and Brown communities. That ad also accuses her of supporting reduced sentences for white supremacists, basing the ludicrous claim on her support for ending the death penalty.
As nasty as the attacks against Gupta are, some Republicans may vote for her. Only five Republican state attorneys general signed onto a letter that called for Biden to rescind Gupta’s nomination on Monday— a number the Judicial Crisis Network said it was “surprised and disappointed” wasn’t higher.
And she has bipartisan support. A group of anti-Trump Republicans including Bill Kristol are running ads that say she “has a record of building bridges across partisan divides.” She also has support from the Americans for Tax Reform’s Grover Norquist, as well as from Mark Holden, the former vice president of Koch Industries, and Michael Chertoff, who was Secretary of Homeland Security under president George W. Bush.
Gupta even has backing from the country’s largest police union, the Fraternal Order of Police, who endorsed President Trump in both of his elections.
“She always worked with us to find common ground even when that seemed impossible. Although in some instances our disagreements remain, her open and candid approach has created a working relationship that is grounded in mutual respect and understanding,” FOP national president Patrick Yoes wrote.
Looming Confirmation Battle
Clarke looks like she may face stiffer opposition from the GOP, though because her nomination is still a ways off it’s unclear exactly how tough that will be. Clarke’s nomination paperwork has yet to be submitted, and the Judiciary Committee typically waits 28 days after that, so she likely won’t get a hearing until April. Democrats also may look to pair her with another nominee—and since there are no other pending nominations to the DOJ, that could further delay her hearing.
Clarke, a DOJ veteran and former head of the New York attorney general’s civil rights bureau, most recently headed the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. She has yet to face paid advertising attacks, but it’s clear that conservatives are coming for her, too. And they’ve gone all the way back to college to attack her, skipping right over her quarter-century career to use out-of-context quotes to paint her as anti-Semitic and anti-white.
Fox News’ Tucker Carlson kicked off the attacks with an early January segment tying her to anti-Semitic professor her group invited to campus, and selectively quoting a letter she co-authored that aimed at parodying others’ racist work.
“In a sane country, Kristen Clarke should be under investigation by the Civil Rights Division, not running it,” he said.
The Russian propaganda publication RT called her a “black supremacist.” The New York Post ran a scathing op-ed that accused her of having an “ugly history of hate.”
The attacks come from Clarke’s time as a 19-year-old sophomore. Two conservative Harvard professors had just released a deeply controversial book, The Bell Curve, that used disparate IQ scores to argue Black and Hispanic people were, on average, less intelligent than white and Asian people. The book was a huge success—and made some in Harvard’s Black and Hispanic student body feel like they didn’t belong on campus.
Clarke headed the Harvard Black Students Association, and organized a series of protests.
“A lot of Black students on campus... felt the book was a personal attack on them and their right to be at elite educational institutions,” Joshua Bloodworth, who was on the BSA board with Clarke and remains a friend, told VICE News. “Kristen was wise enough to realize that there were a lot of people because this was being said by Harvard professors who were questioning whether they should even be there, and getting depressed. She wanted to provide a space to refute that.”
The group accepted speaking offers from a pair of Black professors to refute the book. One was Wellesley College’s Tony Martin, who had written a anti-Semitic screed titled “The Jewish Onslaught.” Bloodworth said no one at the BSA knew about Martin’s anti-Semitic views until he arrived on campus.
Clarke defended him after his speech.
“Professor Martin is an intelligent, well-versed Black intellectual who bases his information on indisputable fact,” she said.
In a January interview with The Forward, a liberal Jewish publication, Clarke said it “was a mistake to accept his offer to come and to defend him.”
The quotes that Martin and other conservatives have circulated to argue Clarke is a Black supremacist are simply bad-faith attacks. She wrote an obviously satirical letter mocking the book that included over-the-top pseudoscientific claims like “Melanin endows Blacks with greater mental, physical and spiritual abilities.”
Clarke told The Forward the letter was “meant to express an equally absurd point of view—fighting one ridiculous absurd racist theory with another ridiculous absurd theory.”
A number of Jewish organizations have defended Clarke, including the Anti-Defamation League, the country’s largest organization that combats anti-Semitism.
“Clarke will bring much needed and well-rounded experience in the defense of civil rights to the position of Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt wrote in a late February letter to the Judiciary Committee.
The only recent example conservatives have found to argue Clarke is anti-Semitic is a letter she signed that defended Women’s March head Tamika Mallory when she came under credible accusations of anti-Semitism in 2019. Clarke told The Forward that she did so because of “a grave concern about seeing another woman of color marginalized and silenced.” They haven’t actually found any quotes from Clarke herself to suggest she’s anti-Semitic—just guilt by association.
It’s not certain if the GOP the attacks will work against Clarke—or Gupta. But it’s crystal clear what they’re trying to do.
Special Parliamentary Commission Thursday asked Venezuela's National Assembly (AN) to order Juan Guaido and 61 of his collaborators to appear in court over corruption scandals.
The president of the Commission that investigates damages against Venezuela between 2016-2021, Jose Brito, informed that the list of opposition members called to appear before justice includes Guaido's 37 self-proclaimed "diplomatic representatives" abroad.
Brito also requested the NA for a 45-day extension to continue investigating the corruption scheme led by Guaido, who is accused of illegally appropriating the assets of CITGO Petroleum Corporation, a subsidiary of Petroleum of Venezuela (PDVSA) in the United States.
"We have never had in our history corruption events like those committed by Juan Guaido and his gang. They enriched themselves with the nation's resources," Venezuelan Comptroller Elvis Amoroso recalled.
"The sentences against corrupt politicians must be more severe to compensate the patrimonial damage they do to the country," he stressed and urged lawmakers to modify the laws that sanction acts of corruption and mafias.
In 2020, the Venezuelan judicial system received 216 requests for actions against Guaido to uncover the corruption network he leads.
This U.S.-backed opposition politician is also being investigated for appropriating the Colombia-based Monomeros company, the Venezuelan money blocked in international banks, and humanitarian aid sent to the country.
hen Grand Canyon National Park was established a century ago, the Colorado River running through it was treated as an afterthought. In the decades following, states scrambled to squeeze every drop of water out of the Colorado for farming and drinking, with a cascade of huge dams constructed along its course.
Native fish like suckers and chubs, found nowhere else in the world, were replaced with invasive catfish and bass that were more attractive for anglers. In time, the mighty river that had once carved out one of America’s most iconic landscapes was reduced to a trickle, no longer able to fulfill its destiny of reaching the sea.
What happened to the Colorado is a powerful example of a river’s decline, but it’s hardly an exception. Around the world, rivers, lakes, and wetlands have increasingly come under similar assault from poorly planned dams, pollution, habitat loss, sand mining, climate change, and the introduction of invasive species.
The result, as laid out this week in a report by 16 conservation organizations, is that freshwater ecosystems have become the most degraded in the world, with fish populations pushed to the brink. There are more kinds of freshwater fish—18,075 and counting—than there are fish species living in the oceans and seas. Freshwater vertebrate populations have declined by 86 percent since 1970—twice the rate experienced within terrestrial or marine ecosystems—and almost a third of freshwater fish species are now threatened with extinction.
Yet it’s a crisis that has received far less attention than other environmental emergencies—like deforestation or plastic pollution—despite human reliance on freshwater systems for drinking water, food, and sanitation. As for river protection, it has long been seen as part of terrestrial protection; protect the land and you’ll protect the river that runs through it, the thinking has been, even though overwhelming evidence suggests that such an approach generally does not work.
But now there are signs of change, with freshwater issues becoming more prominently featured on the conservation agenda. While a steady release of studies continue to expose the sorry state of affairs, the ecological and economic benefits of maintaining healthy rivers are increasingly clear, scientists say, as are the solutions for how to do it. They warn, however, that things need to move fast if we are going to save ecosystems crucial to the survival of both animals and humans.
“Humanity is intimately tied to the health of freshwater ecosystems,” says Kathy Hughes, a freshwater specialist with the World Wildlife Fund in the United Kingdom, and the lead author of the new report. “Freshwater biodiversity is our canary in the mine and if freshwater ecosystems can no longer support thriving biodiversity, then it's a sure sign that they're not good for humanity either.”
Year of the river
Historically, protected areas have been designed for terrestrial ecosystems and their species, with little, if any, consideration given to the freshwater habitats in them. This is in part because of the complexity of rivers, which can flow into and out of protected or managed areas, through different landscapes and sometimes even countries.
“It’s a lot easier to draw a line around a piece of land or in the ocean than it is to do it for a river,” says John Zablocki, a biodiversity expert with the Nature Conservancy who spearheads an international network of freshwater scientists devising new ways of thinking about river protection.
He points out that rivers that run through protected land areas are often not protected from upstream impacts, something that was starkly illustrated in a study published in Conservation Letters last year. It showed that there are 1,249 large dams located inside protected areas, and more than 500 dams planned or under construction within protected areas worldwide.
“We have to get away from thinking about land first and rivers second,” says Zablocki, whose organization is working with multiple municipalities in the Western Balkan nation of Montenegro, where the government recently designated the lower reaches of the highly biodiverse Zeta River as a nature park.
Another movement is focused on providing legal protection for rivers. In 2017, New Zealand became the first country to grant a specific river legal rights the same as those of humans, meaning that in a court of law, they’re treated like living entities. Since then, Bangladesh has done the same with all of its rivers, while the city of Toledo, Ohio, passed what’s known as the Lake Erie Bill of Rights to protect its shores, making it one of several cities in the United States to pass legislation recognizing the rights of nature.
“We’re going to need a multi-tiered approach to keep rivers healthy and free-flowing,” says Michele Thieme, the lead freshwater scientist at the World Wildlife Fund in the United States. “There’s not going to be one silver bullet.”
With freshwater scientists hoping that 2021 could be the year of the river, some influential conservationists who have previously not focused on freshwater issues may be taking a keener interest, including the Campaign for Nature, the $1 billion initiative funded by Switzerland’s Wyss Foundation and supported by the National Geographic Society, which aims to conserve 30 percent of the planet in a natural state by 2030.
The campaign specifically targets lands and oceans, without mentioning rivers. But that could soon be changing, according to its director, Brian O’Donnell. “All the reports describing the freshwater biodiversity crisis have provided a wake-up call for us and made it clear that explicit representation of freshwater areas needs to be part of the equation going forward,” O’Donnell says.
Devastating loss
While fresh water makes up less than one percent of Earth’s flowing water, it is home to 10 percent of all known species, including a third of all vertebrates.
Among the more unusual freshwater varieties are Africa’s elephant fishes, which communicate through electrical signals, and the Amazon’s spraying characins, which lay their eggs on land. Freshwater systems are also home to around 270 species of turtles, more than 1,300 species of crabs, and around 5,700 species of dragonflies.
Conservationists say at least 80 freshwater fish species have gone extinct since counts were first taken, and 16 in the last year alone. The real number of extinctions, however, is certain to be much higher, since threats to fish are growing and many species are poorly monitored.
Perhaps most shocking is the loss of “mega-fishes”—so called because of their enormous size—whose populations have declined by 94 percent since 1970, including many species of now-critically endangered sturgeon.
Also cited in the report are recent studies showing that only one-third of large rivers in the world remain free-flowing—meaning they have not been dammed or disrupted by humans—and that wetlands have declined globally by nearly 70 percent since 1900, three times the rate of forests.
“This almost inconceivable loss has occurred largely within our lifetime,” Hughes says.
A study published in Science last week showed that rivers in which fish populations have escaped serious damage from human activities now make up just 14 percent of the world’s river basins, with western Europe and North America worst off.
The lead author of that study, Guohuan Su of the University of Toulouse in France, notes that almost all of us live in river basins, since all of Earth’s land mass— excluding some deserts where it never rains and the poles—are part of river basins. “You could say we live in the arms of the rivers, and we’re cutting them off,” he says.
Many conservationists maintain that political and economic motives routinely trump biodiversity concerns when it comes to decision-making about rivers. “Very rarely is the full value of ecosystems factored into the planning for dams, for example,” says Ian Harrison, a freshwater specialist with Conservation International, and a contributor to the report released this week.
Increasingly, research shows that taking into account fisheries and the ecological health of rivers is good business, says Denielle Perry, a water resource geographer at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. “Protecting rivers is a low-cost investment with a high return, especially when you consider the ecosystem services they provide for free.”
Monster fish
One reason freshwater fisheries receive less attention than their marine counterparts may be because they are concentrated in low-income countries that may not be considered important because they don’t export much fish. Just 16 nations, mostly in Asia and Africa, account for 80 percent of the world’s reported wild freshwater catch of 12 million tons per year, though that total is likely to be vastly underestimated, since many catches by subsistence fishers in countries from Congo to Cambodia are not documented.
For at least 200 million people around the world, freshwater fish provide their primary source of animal protein, according to the new report.
These fish may also be hampered by an image problem. While big, charismatic animals on land and in the oceans have attracted conservation resources, few freshwater fish have garnered the same attention.
“We can see and appreciate the way a gorilla cares for its young or marine turtles come up on the beach to lay their eggs, but we don’t have that connection with freshwater fish, which often live in murky rivers out of sight,” says Zeb Hogan, a fish biologist at the University of Nevada, Reno, and a National Geographic Explorer.
Hogan, who leads a USAID-sponsored research project called Wonders of the Mekong, has worked in Southeast Asia’s Mekong region for more than 20 years. He has witnessed the near disappearance of some of the world’s largest freshwater fishes, including the Mekong giant catfish and giant barb, along with the continuous deterioration of the river, which originates on the Tibetan Plateau and runs through six countries before emptying into the South China Sea.
In the last couple of years, the decline appears to have accelerated, with Mekong water levels dropping to historic lows, threatening fish and the livelihoods of many of the 60 million people living along the river. The situation, observers say, has been caused in large part by Chinese dams built in the upper watershed, which sometimes withhold the water critical for fish to complete their lifecycles downstream, as well as drought exacerbated by climate change.
Those developments have forced at least some decision-makers into rethinking their development plans. Cambodia, for example, late last year announced a 10-year moratorium on the building of new dams on the main part of the Mekong.
Freshwater scientists say the UN Convention on Biological Diversity conference, scheduled for this fall in Kunming, China, must produce a new global biodiversity agreement that pays as much attention to protecting and restoring the world’s rivers, lakes, and wetlands as its forests and oceans.
“Now is the decision point,” says Harrison, of Conservation International. “If we don’t make the right investments for our freshwater ecosystems, it’s going to be too late. The ship will have sailed, and we won’t be able to turn around.”
ight Senate Democrats broke from the majority of their party on Friday to vote against 
member of the far-right nationalist Proud Boys was in communication with a person associated with the White House in the days just before the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, according to a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation.
laid-off Keystone XL pipeline worker who was interviewed on Fox News appeared on the network thanks to a group that has disputed the science of climate change, spent decades fighting against the green economy, and is closely affiliated with the Republican Party.
ince February 14, thousands of Haitians have taken to the streets every weekend in the capitol of Port-au-Prince and elsewhere to protest President Jovenel Moïse’s refusal to abdicate power. Moïse, who was elected with the backing of the United States in November 2016, has exploited a supposed loophole in Haiti’s constitution stating that the duration of the president’s term is five years. The constitution clarifies that terms must begin in February, but Moïse insists that his election in November — the delay stemming from previous US meddling — entitles him to more time in office. Thousands of Haitians disagree, but their demonstrations have been met with police violence, leaving dozens dead.
utterflies are not only ephemerally beautiful, they’re crucial pollinators for a variety of important food crops and flowers. And in the western U.S., they’re disappearing—fast.
ast month Donald Trump got several pieces of bad news re: avoiding prosecution for his cornucopia of alleged crimes. First, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office 
he Senate on Friday voted to reject a proposal sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to raise the federal minimum wage to $15.
ressure is building on President Biden, a longtime backer of traditional Washington rules, to do away with the filibuster and other procedures, as Democrats press him to seize what could be a fleeting moment of power to enact a progressive agenda.
epublicans have launched a series of misleading and racially charged attacks against a pair of prominent civil rights leaders in a transparent effort to block Joe Biden’s nominees from top slots in the Justice Department.
hen Grand Canyon National Park was established a century ago, the Colorado River running through it was treated as an afterthought. In the decades following, states scrambled to squeeze every drop of water out of the Colorado for farming and drinking, with a cascade of huge dams constructed along its course.
