POLITICO NIGHTLY: What comes next for the Trump Org.?

 

BY MYAH WARD Presented by INDICTED — It’s official: The Trump Organization has been charged with criminal conspiracy, grand larceny, falsifying business records and tax fraud, and its longtime CFO, Allen Weisselberg, was escorted into a Manhattan courtroom this afternoon, where he pleaded not guilty to a variety of financial crimes that carry significant prison sentences. The indictments, which allege the tax-fraud scheme ran over the course of at least 15 years, come after prosecutors spent more than two years probing the financial records of the Trump family-owned company. Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance brought the charges, working alongside New York Attorney General Letitia James. Both officials are Democrats, which is sure to provide fuel for former President Donald Trump’s claims that the investigation is politically motivated. Earlier today, the Trump Organization accused Vance of using Weisselberg as a “pawn in a scorched earth attempt to harm the former President.” Trump Tower, home to the Trump Organization, stands along Fifth Avenue in New York City. | Spencer Platt/Getty Images Nightly chatted with POLITICO’s Betsy Woodruff Swan over Slack to break down the charges, and what today’s news may mean for Trump. Why does this matter? Depending on how things go, it could do serious damage to Trump’s business interests. A criminal conviction could result in steep fines, loss of liquor licenses and long-term reputational damage, among other problems. And regardless of whether the company is convicted, banks and other financial institutions may be loath to continue doing business with Trump Org. because of the indictment. It’s a real problem for the company. Did anything about the indictment surprise you? The fact that this is Vance’s team’s opening salvo has left some observers underwhelmed. Vance has eight years of Trump’s tax returns, and has put a large and well-resourced team of prosecutors on this case. Many people were expecting more (including charges against the former president himself). The conduct as alleged is obviously egregious. But — so far! — it hasn’t lived up to some people’s expectations. That said, the investigation is ongoing and more charges could come. Here’s what Ben Wittes — who runs Lawfare blog for the Brookings Institution and follows Trump’s legal woes very closely — told me: “If you had told me a year ago when this stuff was at the Supreme Court that this is what it would ultimately be about, I would have said, ‘Oh.’” With the charges not mentioning Trump or his family members, what is the risk for the former president? It’s honestly hard to say. The rest of the probe is a bit of a black box. But there’s always risk when your company as a whole is indicted. How much of this do you think is about getting Weisselberg to cooperate with prosecutors? And how likely do you think he is to flip? Weisselberg cooperation: I’ve heard different things from different people on the specifics of the strategy. How likely is he to flip? He’s facing the rest of his life in prison, based on the charges they’ve brought. That’s a much longer potential sentence than some were expecting, and certainly puts him under real pressure. Did the indictment tell us anything more about Vance’s strategy, or how he’s handling the case? It’s notable for what’s not in it: Nothing on hush money payments, nothing on manipulation of property values, nothing on shady foreign business partners, nothing on illegal activity related to Trump’s personal taxes. So that means that either indictments related to those topics may be forthcoming, or they’re off the table altogether. Do your sources have any predictions about what may be next? Sadly no! People are all over the place. We have more about the far reaching consequences of the indictment, including a piece about business risks to the Trump Organization, a look at how House Democrats lament their lack of power and an explainer on the tight connection between the former president and his organization . Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. We won’t be publishing on Monday, July 5. But we’ll be back and better than ever Tuesday, July 6. Reach out with news, tips and ideas for us at mward@politico.com, or on Twitter at @MyahWard. A message from AARP: Millions of family caregivers are struggling to provide care for their older parents and spouses. Many are sacrificing their income, tapping into life savings, and taking on debt to keep their loved ones safe—at home and out of nursing homes that could put their lives at risk. Family caregivers are reaching their breaking point. Congress must pass the Credit for Caring Act now to give caregivers some of the relief they desperately need. Learn more.   WHAT'D I MISS? — Cheney joins Dems on Jan. 6 probe, defying McCarthy threat: Speaker Nancy Pelosi has chosen GOP Rep. Liz Cheney to join the Democrat-led investigation of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack , a rare cross-aisle elevation of one of Trump’s most prominent conservative critics. The select committee on the insurrection will be helmed by Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who had previously crafted a bipartisan plan to establish an outside commission to lead the probe into the Jan. 6 violence. After Senate Republicans blocked the investigation, the House Democratic majority opted to create a new panel, which won just two Republicans on the floor on Wednesday. — Biden, DeSantis survey Surfside collapse scene: This morning, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis praised Biden’s federal response to the collapse of a condo building in the coastal Miami suburb of Surfside — providing a moment of bipartisan bonhomie between the leader of the Democratic Party and a rising star within Trump’s GOP. Speaking at a command briefing near the site of the deadly disaster, DeSantis — seated beside Biden — said the president had “recognized the severity of this tragedy from day one, and you’ve been very supportive.” — Supreme Court sides with Arizona on voting restrictions: The Voting Rights Act sustained another blow at the Supreme Court today, as the justices took a narrow view of when a state’s voting practices can be held to violate the rights of minorities. In a pair of high-profile cases from Arizona, the justices split 6-3 along ideological lines, with the conservative majority concluding that a disparate impact on minority groups would typically not be enough to render voting rules illegal under the act. — California elections chief certifies Newsom recall election: California’s elections chief certified the gubernatorial recall today, setting up a September 14 election to consider whether Gov. Gavin Newsom should remain in office. It officially marks the state’s second-ever gubernatorial recall after the 2003 ouster of then-Gov. Gray Davis, whom voters replaced with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.   SUBSCRIBE TO WEST WING PLAYBOOK: Add West Wing Playbook to keep up with the power players, latest policy developments and intriguing whispers percolating inside the West Wing and across the highest levels of the Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today.     ON THE ECONOMY SEARCHING HARD OR HARDLY SEARCHING? Friday morning, the federal government will release its much-anticipated June jobs report — a key gauge of where exactly the labor market stands after months of disappointing numbers. Economists predict that the U.S. added around 700,000 jobs in June — which would be up from 559,000 in May, but still much lower than the unrealized forecasts from months ago projecting gains of at least 1 million. What explains month after month of disappointing jobs numbers? Many Republicans have endorsed a straightforward answer: boosted unemployment benefits are keeping would-be employees from taking jobs, leading to a worker shortage — and there is some evidence for that, like a recent WSJ report that states where GOP governors have ended the supplemental payment are seeing their labor market bounce back quickly. But a new study by the job-listing website Indeed suggests that reality may be a bit more complicated. Just roughly 10 percent of job seekers — both employed and jobless workers — were “urgently” looking for work in late May and early June, according to Indeed’s survey of 5,000 Americans. And among those who were urgently looking, more than 20 percent said they didn’t want to start work immediately. Why? Fears related to Covid-19 topped the list of respondents’ explanations for their lack of urgency. The number two reason? Employed spouses. Having a financial cushion came in third, and UI payments was at the bottom of the list, cited by less than 10 percent of respondents. Myah talked with Nick Bunker, Indeed’s economic research director for North America, about how this survey compares to other economic data, and what questions he was left with after seeing the responses. This conversation has been edited. What surprised you about the data? One was that sort of urgency mismatch, or just the extent to which lots of jobseekers right now are willing to be pretty patient. Even among people who are actively and urgently searching for a job, about 20 percent don’t want to start a job immediately. That sort of displays the mismatch, as so many employers want to urgently and quickly staff up. It wasn’t quite “surprising,” but Covid continues to be a concern — not only the [health] fears, but when it comes to the milestones people want to see before starting a job or entering into employment — particularly vaccinations. That was not only just for themselves, but for other people they’re frequently in contact with at work — coworkers or customers. It’s [about] their perceptions of how others they interact with are handling the end of the pandemic and post-pandemic life. Do you think the way people responded — citing UI payments at the bottom of the list — was honest? It’s a survey, so we depend on what people say. But if you see, one of the answers was [that respondents had] an increased financial cushion. You can imagine UI possibly contributing that way indirectly: that maybe if they’ve saved large chunks of it, they have this financial cushion and that’s why they might not be searching urgently right now. There has been a lot of extra saving during the pandemic, and lots of that is folks at the top of the income distribution, but there have been savings by people at the bottom as well. And yes, that savings could get spent as people celebrate what seems to be the end of the pandemic, but it also could be that people just keep that savings, or use it to maybe wait out the labor market a little bit to see what things look like in the fall. The UI benefit could go away tomorrow, but they may have savings that could support them in the next couple weeks or months or maybe even longer. What are your thoughts about how this survey data compares to other economic data? The WSJ, for example, had a report showing that states that cut some UI payments have seen increased employment. Part of the reason why we did this survey was to better understand what’s happening on the supply side of the labor market. Demand is really high. The gap we were trying to fill in was: Why does the labor force participation rate continue to be so low? Why, even if people are looking, are they not jumping into jobs right now? Our goal is to complement the publicly available data from the government, which really is the gold standard. What questions did the data leave you with that you’re hoping to dig into next? Will we see, maybe in a couple months as time moves on, the sort of collapse of people saying that they’ll take a job? I’ll be looking at the share of job seekers who want to start a job immediately. Does that pick up? What happens to job-searching among the employed? Are people who already have a job more actively searching for jobs, assuming that demand for work continues to pick up?       ASK THE AUDIENCE Nightly asks you: Last summer, before July Fourth, we asked you how the pandemic changed your holiday . After a year of surges, vaccines and variants, we want to know: How are you celebrating July Fourth this year? Is the pandemic still affecting your usual plans? Send us your answers using our form, and we’ll include select responses in our Friday edition. AROUND THE WORLD TAX MUNDI — The world’s largest economies agreed today to sweeping changes to the global tax system, despite staunch opposition from low-tax nations like Barbados, Ireland and Hungary. Four officials at the talks told POLITICO that 130 countries had signed on to the deal, which the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development announced soon after. The initiative aims to introduce a global tax for the world’s 100 biggest companies and set an international minimum effective corporate tax rate of at least 15 percent. Nine countries, mostly offering low corporate tax regimes, opposed setting the minimum rate, the people added, speaking on the condition of anonymity. All G-20 countries — including the U.S., China and France — backed the deal, and their finance ministers are scheduled to approve the agreement on July 9. Many of the details within the deal, such as possible exemptions for the financial industry and manufacturing, were left out of the current pact and will now be hammered out ahead of an October deadline.   JOIN FRIDAY FOR A PLAYBOOK INTERVIEW WITH ANITA DUNN: Anita Dunn, a senior White House adviser to President Biden and one of the most influential women in Washington, will join Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza to discuss the administration’s legislative priorities, including getting the massive infrastructure plan through Congress, the latest on efforts to get 70% of U.S. adults vaccinated against Covid, and preparations for the White House’s first big public event on Independence Day. Don’t miss this Playbook Live event, REGISTER HERE.     NIGHTLY NUMBER $3 trillion The amount by which the federal budget gap will widen this year, nearly triple the annual shortfall recorded just two years ago as the pandemic continues to grow the deficit, the Congressional Budget Office said in its latest 10-year projections released today. FROM THE HEALTH DESK TO BE SPOOKED, OR NOT TO BE SPOOKED — Should you be freaking out about the Delta variant? Probably not if you’re fully vaccinated. But, as health care reporter David Lim reports in the latest POLITICO Dispatch, it could cause some problems down the road — especially in areas with lower vaccination rates. Listen to the latest POLITICO Dispatch podcast PARTING WORDS #FREEBRITNEY INVITED TO THE HILL — Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida and a handful of other Republicans have invited pop star Britney Spears to testify before Congress about her conservatorship. “You have been mistreated by America’s legal system. We want to help,” Gaetz wrote in a letter to Spears dated Wednesday. “The United States Congress should hear your story and be inspired to bipartisan action. What happened to you should never happen to any other American.” Gaetz said he and fellow Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), Burgess Owens (Utah) and Andy Biggs (Ariz.) have been following her conservatorship battle with “deep concern” and stand with the pop star. Rumors about Spears’ discontent with her conservatorship spread for years online and trended with the #FreeBritney hashtag. But last week, Spears spoke directly about the issue herself in court, describing her conservatorship as “abusive.” Spears’ father, Jamie Spears, has been the legal manager of his daughter’s multimillion-dollar estate since 2008. He was also the conservator “of her person” until 2019, when he stepped back from this part of the legal agreement for his own health reasons. Since then, Jodi Montgomery, a private professional fiduciary, has been in charge of Spears’ person. A message from AARP: Family Caregivers Need Help Now Caring for loved ones shouldn’t lead to bankruptcy and financial ruin. But that is exactly what is happening for too many family caregivers. The financial strain of caregiving is immense, and it is unacceptable that more isn’t being done to provide support for them. That’s why AARP is fighting for America’s 48 million family caregivers and their loved ones who depend on their care to survive. Family caregivers nationwide spend over one-quarter of their income, on average, providing this essential care. Congress must pass the Credit for Caring Act to help alleviate some of the financial strain of caregiving. Tell Congress to act now to help protect family caregivers from financial devastation. Tell Congress to pass the Credit for Caring Act.   Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam Chris Suellentrop @suellentrop Tyler Weyant @tweyant Myah Ward @myahward   FOLLOW US

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RSN: BREAKING | The Supreme Court Has Opened the Floodgates to Voter Suppression

 

 

01 July 21

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BREAKING | The Supreme Court Has Opened the Floodgates to Voter Suppression
Robert Barnes, The Washington Post
Barnes writes: "The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld two Arizona voting restrictions that a lower court had said discriminated against minority voters, a ruling that suggests that it will be harder to challenge a spate of new laws passed by state legislatures in the aftermath of the 2020 election."

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote the opinion in the 6 to 3 ruling, which divided the court along ideological lines. Voting rights experts said the decision could make it harder to challenge some of the new voting restrictions being passed by state legislatures around the country.

The court was considering the shield provided by the Voting Rights Act (VRA), first passed in 1965 to forbid laws that result in discrimination based on race.

The cases involved two voting regulations from Arizona that are in common use across the country. One throws out the ballots of those who vote in the wrong precinct. The other restricts who may collect ballots cast early for delivery to polling places, a practice then-President Donald Trump denounced as “ballot harvesting.”

Even the Biden administration had concluded that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit had erred in condemning the Arizona laws. So the outcome was not a surprise.

But the greater impact will be how VRA relates to an outpouring of new laws enacted by state legislatures that have changed voting procedures, and on the drawing of congressional and legislative districts after the 2020 Census.

Alito wrote that the majority declines to “announce a test to govern all … claims involving rules, like those at issue here, that specify the time, place, or manner for casting ballots.”

But he said certain “guidelines” should be considered, such as the size of the burden imposed by a challenged rule; the disparities imposed on different racial and ethnic groups and the opportunities for voting provided by a state’s entire system for voting.

Also: “One strong and entirely legitimate state interest is the prevention of fraud,” Alito wrote. “Fraud can affect the outcome of a close election, and fraudulent votes dilute the right of citizens to cast ballots that carry appropriate weight. Fraud can also undermine public confidence in the fairness of elections and the perceived legitimacy of the announced outcome.”

Reacting to Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud, Republican-led legislatures are racing to enact laws that cut back on easements to voting implemented in part because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Even if investigations by Trump’s Justice Department and other Republican officials failed to substantiate the charges, they say changes are needed to ensure public confidence in election outcomes

Democratic lawyers are challenging changes in the South and Midwest. Attorney General Merrick Garland has filed a complaint about changes made to Georgia’s voting laws.

Justice Elena Kagan wrote a stinging dissent, saying the court was undermining the intent of the VRA by weakening the protections in Section 2.

“The majority writes its own set of rules, limiting Section 2 from multiple directions,” wrote Kagan, joined by Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor.

“Wherever it can, the majority gives a cramped reading to broad language. And then it uses that reading to uphold two election laws from Arizona that discriminate against minority voters.”

She added: “What is tragic here is that the Court has (yet again) rewritten — in order to weaken — a statute that stands as a monument to America’s greatness, and protects against its basest impulses.”

The liberal Brennan Center for Justice said that at least 880 bills proposing election law changes have been introduced in 49 states. Of these, at least 28 bills with expansive provisions have been signed into law in 14 states.

In 2013, the Supreme Court made it harder for civil rights groups to challenge such changes. It effectively eliminated the requirement that states proven to have discriminated against minorities in the past receive advance approval from a panel of federal judges or the Justice Department before changing their laws.

The court was examining a part of the voter protection law called Section 2, which was amended in 1982 to prohibit any voting practice that “results in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.”

It most often has been employed against jurisdictions that rig election lines to dilute minority voters’ impact. But after the decision in Shelby County v. Holder, civil rights groups are using it to challenge restrictions they say place a heavier burden on minority groups.

Lower courts are working through how to apply the law in these new challenges.

In Arizona, Democrats challenged the two provisions on out-of-precinct voting and ballot collection. A district judge held a trial and upheld them. A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit agreed with that decision on a 2-to-1 vote.

But a larger panel of the 9th Circuit stepped in, and said that the way the provisions were applied in Arizona disproportionately affected Black and Hispanic voters.

Those judges said that the state changed locations of voting places more often in minority communities, leading to voter confusion, and that the rates of discarded out-of-precinct (OOP) votes were far higher in Arizona than in other states. Arizona throws out the entire ballot, even if some races — for governor, for instance — are not affected by the voter’s precinct location.

Democrats said that between 2008 and 2016, Arizona discarded 38,335 OOP ballots in general elections, all of which were cast by registered, eligible voters.

The judges said the ban on collecting ballots was intentionally passed to harm minority voters, who they said were more likely to be homebound or disabled and also lacking reliable means to vote in person. Native Americans had in the past been served by community or political leaders who collected early vote ballots, the court said.

“There is no evidence of any fraud in the long history of third-party ballot collection in Arizona,” Judge William A. Fletcher wrote. The court’s 6-to-5 ruling that the discrimination was intentional is a rarity in federal court reviews of state actions.

Arizona countered that it makes exceptions for ballot-handling by family and household members and caregivers, and that nothing prevents Arizona from taking action to prevent fraud.

In an unusual letter to the Supreme Court, the Biden administration somewhat reluctantly agreed that Arizona’s laws do not violate Section 2.

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RSN: Norman Solomon | The Empire Strikes Back at the Left in Buffalo and Cleveland

 

 

01 July 21

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RSN: Norman Solomon | The Empire Strikes Back at the Left in Buffalo and Cleveland
Norman Solomon, Reader Supported News
Solomon writes: "The two biggest cities on the shores of Lake Erie are now centers of political upheaval. For decades, Buffalo and Cleveland have suffered from widespread poverty and despair in the midst of urban decay. Today, the second-largest cities in New York and Ohio are battlegrounds between activists fighting for progressive change and establishment forces determined to prevent it."

For Buffalo’s entrenched leaders, a shocking crisis arrived out of the blue on June 22 when socialist India Walton won the Democratic primary for mayor, handily defeating a 15-year incumbent with a deplorable track record. “I am a coalition builder,” Walton said in her victory speech that night. But for the city’s power brokers, she was a sudden disaster.

“This is organizing,” Walton said as rejoicing supporters cheered. “When we organize, we win. Today is only the beginning. From the very start, I said this is not about making India Walton mayor of Buffalo – this is about building the infrastructure to challenge every damn seat. I’m talking about committee seats, school board, county council. All that we are doing in this moment is claiming what is rightfully ours. We are the workers. We do the work. And we deserve a government that works with and for us.”

To the people running City Hall, the 38-year-old victor seemed to come out of nowhere. Actually, she had come out of grassroots activism and a campaign that focused on key issues like “food access,” “pandemic recovery,” education, climate, housing and public safety. And for corporate elites accustomed to having their hands on Buffalo’s levers of power, there would not be a GOP fallback. Mayor Byron Brown had appeared to be such a shoo-in for a fifth term that no Republican bothered to run, so India Walton will be the only name on the November ballot.

Alarm sirens went off immediately after election night. The loudest and most prominent came from wealthy (net worth $150 million) real-estate developer Carl Paladino, a strident Trump supporter and former Republican nominee for governor, who became notorious in 2016 for racist public comments about Michelle and Barack Obama. Walton’s victory incensed Paladino, who made it clear that he vastly preferred the black incumbent to the black challenger. “I will do everything I can to destroy her candidacy,” Paladino said, and he urged fellow business leaders in Buffalo to unite behind Brown as a write-in candidate.

In with Paladino while keeping him at arm’s-length, Brown announced on Monday evening that he will mount a write-in campaign to stay in the mayor’s office. Brown cited among his mayoral achievements “the fact that the tax rate in Buffalo is the lowest it’s been in over 25 years.” Then he began scaremongering.

“I have also heard from voters that there is tremendous fear that has spread across this community,” Brown said. “People are fearful about the future of our city. They are fearful about the future of their families. They are fearful about the future of their children. And they have said to me that they do not want a radical socialist occupying the mayor’s office in Buffalo City Hall. You know, we know the difference between socialism and democracy. We are going to fight for democracy in the city of Buffalo. The voters have said that they don’t want an unqualified inexperienced radical socialist trying to learn on the job on the backs of the residents of this community. We will not let it happen. It will not stand.”

Such attacks, with McCarthyite echoes of Trumpism, are likely to be at the core of Brown’s strategy for winning the general election. But he’ll be in conflict with the formal apparatus of his party in Buffalo. After the write-in campaign announcement, the chair of the Erie County Democratic Party issued an unequivocal statement about India Walton, “to strongly affirm once again that we are with her, now and through the general election in the fall.” It added: “Last Tuesday, India proved she has the message and the means to move and inspire the people of Buffalo. It was a historic moment in Western New York politics. The voters heard her message and embraced her vision for the city’s future, and we look forward to working with her and her team to cross that final finish line on November 2.”

Two hundred miles away, in northeast Ohio, the clash between progressives and corporatists has been escalating for several months, ever since Rep. Marcia Fudge left a Congressional seat vacant when she became President Biden’s HUD secretary. Early voting begins next week, and the district is so heavily Democratic that the winner of the August 3 primary is virtually certain to fill the vacancy this fall.

On Tuesday, the No. 3 Democrat in the House, Rep. Jim Clyburn, went out of his way to be emphatic that he doesn’t want the frontrunner in the race, progressive stalwart Nina Turner, to become a colleague in Congress. Though nominally endorsing Turner’s main opponent, Shontel Brown, the clear underlying message was: Stop Turner.

Clyburn went beyond just making an endorsement. He provided some barbed innuendos via an interview with the New York Times, which reported comments that say something about Clyburn’s self-concept but nothing really about Turner. “What I try to do is demonstrate by precept and example how we are to proceed as a party,” he said. “When I spoke out against sloganeering, like ‘Burn, baby, burn’ in the 1960s and ‘defund the police,’ which I think is cutting the throats of the party, I know exactly where my constituents are. They are against that, and I’m against that.”

In fact, Democrats are overwhelmingly in favor of programs being championed by Turner, none more notably than Medicare for All, a proposal that Clyburn and many of his big funders have worked so hard to block. “Clyburn has vacuumed in more than $1 million from donors in the pharmaceutical industry – and he previously made headlines vilifying Medicare for All during the 2020 presidential primary,” the Daily Poster pointed out on Wednesday.

The corporate money behind Clyburn is of a piece with the forces arrayed against Turner. What she calls “the commodification of health care” is a major reason.

In mid-June, Turner “launched her television spot entitled ‘Worry,’ in which she talks about how her family’s struggle to pay health care bills led her to support Medicare for All,” the Daily Poster reported. “The very next day, corporate lobbyists held a Washington fundraiser for Turner’s primary opponent, Shontel Brown. Among those headlining the fundraiser was Jerome Murray – a registered lobbyist for the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers Association, which has been backing a nationwide campaign to reduce support for Medicare for All.”

Whether Clyburn’s endorsement will have significant impact on the voting is hard to say, but it signaled that high-ranking Democrats are more determined than ever to keep Turner out of Congress if they possibly can. His move came two weeks after Hillary Clinton endorsed Brown, who has also received endorsements from the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Joyce Beatty, and the chief deputy whip of House Democrats, Rep. Pete Aguilar. On the other hand, a dozen progressive members of the House have endorsed Turner, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ro Khanna, Rashida Tlaib and Jamaal Bowman, as well as Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Carmen Yulín Cruz, the former mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico – who, like Nina Turner, was a national co-chair of the Sanders 2020 presidential campaign – is a strong supporter of Turner for Congress. This week, summing up the fierce opposition from power brokers who want to prevent a Turner victory, Cruz used words that equally apply to the powerful interests trying to prevent India Walton from becoming the next mayor of Buffalo: “They’re afraid of a politician that can’t be bought.”

---

Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and the author of many books including, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2016 and 2020 Democratic National Conventions. Solomon is the founder and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

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RSN: FOCUS: Exxon Oil Lobbyist in Sting Video Identifies 11 Senators 'Crucial' to Its Lobbying

 

 

01 July 21

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FOCUS: Exxon Oil Lobbyist in Sting Video Identifies 11 Senators 'Crucial' to Its Lobbying
Josh Siegel, Washington Examiner
Siegel writes: "A senior official with U.S. oil and gas giant ExxonMobil was captured on video revealing the identities of 11 senators 'crucial' to its lobbying on Capitol Hill, including a host of Democrats."

The footage was obtained by Unearthed, an investigative unit of environmental group Greenpeace UK, which posed as headhunters to obtain the information from Exxon lobbyist Keith McCoy.

Among the senators listed as allies, McCoy calls Joe Manchin the “kingmaker” on energy issues because of his status as a Democrat representing West Virginia, a key natural gas-producing state. McCoy says he speaks with Manchin’s staff every week. Manchin is also chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

McCoy also named Sens. John Barrasso of Wyoming, the top GOP member of the Energy Committee, and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, the Republican ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee.

Other lobbying targets of Exxon include centrist Democrats Sens. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Jon Tester of Montana.

McCoy also singles out Sen. Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, as an important contact because of his close relationship with President Joe Biden.

Other Exxon contacts are up for reelection in 2022, McCoy notes: Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire and Mark Kelly of Arizona.

McCoy also name-checks traditional Republican allies John Cornyn of Texas, Steve Daines of Montana, and Marco Rubio of Florida.

In the leaked video, McCoy also suggested that Exxon is only publicly supporting a carbon tax to appear to be environmentally friendly with little consequence because it sees the policy as politically impossible to pass and thus unlikely to affect the company. Exxon is one of many large oil and gas companies and their lobby groups that have endorsed the concept of a carbon tax as preferable to mandates and regulations.

“I will tell you, there is not an appetite for a carbon tax. It is a non-starter. Nobody is going to propose a tax on all Americans,” McCoy said. “And the cynical side of me says, 'Yeah, we kind of know that. But it gives us a talking point. We can say, 'Well, what is ExxonMobil for? Well, we’re for a carbon tax.'”

Among other revelations, McCoy acknowledges Exxon “aggressively” fought against climate science in the past to protect its oil and gas business and joined “shadow groups” to push back against the science underpinning global warming.

“We were looking out for our investments. We were looking out for our shareholders,” McCoy said.

And he claims that Exxon lobbied Congress to limit climate provisions in infrastructure negotiations over Biden’s American Jobs Plan and to focus on roads and bridges.

“If you lower that threshold, you stick to highways and bridges, then a lot of the negative stuff starts to come out,” McCoy said. “Why would you put in something on emissions reductions on climate change to oil refineries in a highway bill?”

Exxon CEO Darren Woods issued a statement Wednesday afternoon condemning the lobbyist's comments and apologizing for them, specifically those "regarding interactions with elected officials."

Woods stressed Exxon's "firm commitment" to supporting carbon pricing to address climate change.

McCoy posted his own apologetic statement declaring himself "deeply embarrassed" and saying his comments "clearly do not represent ExxonMobil’s positions on important public policy issues."

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