28 March 22
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On domestic issues such as his signature Build Back Better Act, desperately needed voter rights protection legislation, preservation of Roe v. Wade and do-or-die progress on climate change, Biden has chosen to throw in the towel rather than risk confrontation with his political adversaries, some within his own party at every turn. The net result is that we are poised to see the greatest rollback of social progress in US history on his watch, in fact in his first term. But in the international arena the stakes could be exponentially higher.
Vladimir Putin now chooses this moment to launch the most violent and aggressive assault on Western Europe since World War II. He has made two big gambles. One was that taking Ukraine would be as easy as taking Crimea. He has lost that gamble already. The second bet was that Biden and NATO could be frozen into inaction with a nuclear threat. That bet he won.
We have no idea what active duty Pentagon commanders are advising, that’s classified. But retired military commanders are speaking out publicly and they are almost categorically urging a more robust response on an urgent basis. Predictably Biden and NATO are ignoring them.
In Warsaw Biden spoke powerfully, but carried no stick at all. From a public relations standpoint the trip was an efficient presentation. The images of NATO leaders standing in unity, Biden visiting US troops and comforting refugees were transported around the world. But there were no announcements of new defense aid to embattled Ukrainian fighters. Biden spoke passionately about horrors of the war raging across the border, but had no new news for the Ukrainian officials about the weapons they pleading for and dying for the lack of.
Putin is Provoked
It would seem that the great fear of Western leaders is provoking Putin and that a great price may be paid to avoid doing so. All as Putin’s full military contingent ravages the second largest country in Europe. But Putin is already undeniably provoked. At least in his own mind and that is the only mind that matters to Putin. Putin knows full well that the U.S. and NATO allied nations are supplying weapons to Ukrainian fighters and that those weapons are decimating his army. We are doing it, he knows we are doing it and we are feeling his wrath. He is provoked, there is no un-ringing of that bell.
If Biden or other NATO leaders had any remaining misconceptions about mollifying Putin by at least pretending to stay out of the war raging on their doorstep those misconceptions were, or should have been shattered by the cruise missile strikes in Lviv, 200 miles to the east of Warsaw as they were speaking. The West may not want war with Putin, but Putin wants war with the West and the West can only ignore it for so long.
Ukraine is Defending Europe
There exists at this moment an East-West divergence of urgency within the NATO alliance. The Western continent mainly the United States, Canada and arguably Iceland are earnest, conscientious members to be sure, they do not however feel the same visceral degree of urgency that members on NATO’s eastern flank feel in light of unfolding events.
The closer you move within the NATO alliance to the Ukrainian war zone the greater the sense of urgency for real-time defensive solutions. Poland made headlines in Western media by offering to facilitate the transfer of 40 year old Russian Made Mig-29 fighters to Ukraine. It was the U.S. that blocked the transfer. There are a lot of sub-plots there but it clearly highlighted the divergence of urgency between the U.S. and Poland. The U.S. is on the other side of world from Ukraine, Poland is on the other side of the border. It says a lot.
The U.S. White House and its spokespersons present a lot of reasons for not providing more sophisticated arms to Ukraine. Some technical, some political. The real reasons may actually be unspoken or clandestine, as is the U.S. tradition. One thing is clear, NATO is still determined to perpetuate the charade to the world and to themselves that they are not directly involved in this conflict. When in fact they know better. In any case Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians are right, they are fighting a battle for their lives and for everything the U.S. and NATO officials say they stand for. NATO is talking the talk, Ukraine is paying the price with the blood and lives of its sons and daughters.
The Test
The Russian cruise missile attack on the petroleum facility in Lviv as NATO officials gathered in Warsaw was more than just a message to NATO Heads of State gathered some 200 miles away. It was a probe, a test. What Putin wanted to know was how would NATO leaders react to a direct threat to their territory and more to the point, to their lives? There was no reaction at all, NATO leaders remained mute and inert. You can be certain Putin has noted that.
A great deal is being made about Biden’s curiously offhanded call for the end of Putin’s grip on Russian power. But what Biden did not say, what no NATO Head of State said was far more troubling. Not a word was spoken by any NATO official about an immediate plan to stop the slaughter of innocent men, women and children in Ukraine by invading Russian forces. When will NATO stop protecting its own interests and start formulating a plan to protect everything they say they stand for? The clock is ticking and innocent people are dying in staggering numbers.
Marc Ash is the founder and former Executive Director of Truthout, and is now founder and Editor of Reader Supported News. On Twitter: @MarcAshRSN
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.
Mariia Rodionova, a survivor of the attack at the Mariupol theater, in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, on Thursday. (photo: Wojciech Grzedzinski/WP)
Its walls were thick and sturdy. People had packed into the basement, foyer and the dressing rooms backstage in the hope of escaping Russia’s bombardment of Mariupol, Ukraine’s coastal city that President Vladimir Putin appears set on seizing at any cost.
“We thought maybe they’d see there were kids there and not bomb it,” said Alexiy, 34, who left with his wife and 7-year-old son the day before an apparent Russian attack March 16 left parts of the building in ruin, leaving some people badly injured and officials struggling to determine a possible death toll.
“They even tied a white flag to the top of the building,” he said. Like many people interviewed by The Washington Post, he spoke on the condition that only one name be published because of security concerns.
The fate of the hundreds of civilians sheltering in the building has gripped the world since Ukrainian officials accused Russia of bombing the building. Secretary of State Antony Blinken referenced the theater — with the words “children” in Russian painted on the floor outside — when he accused Moscow of war crimes earlier this week.
The Post spoke to seven people who were in the theater building in the 24 hours before it was hit in what Ukrainian authorities said was a Russian strike.
Two of the three people present at the time of the blast said that the basement, crammed with families with young children, was unscathed and people were able to flee afterward. They also said that those in the three-level foyer at the front of the building survived. But concerns remain for those in the backstage area, the main hall and the kitchen, which were all heavily damaged.
The lack of communications in Mariupol has hindered the flow of information. Ukrainian forces also have lost control of the area around the theater, preventing any rescue efforts or evidence gathering that could aid in investigations for possible war crimes.
Lyudmyla Denisova, Ukraine’s human rights commissioner, has said police records show 1,300 people were registered in the building. But in the 48-hours before the strike, evacuations had begun.
On Friday, as the first videos emerged from the aftermath of the strike, the Mariupol City Council said it believed that as many as 300 people had been killed, citing eyewitness accounts.
Eyewitnesses say they are only guessing. But amid an information vacuum, the accounts give some indication to the potential toll. Their testimonies are impossible to independently verify, but those interviewed by The Post provided similar details of daily life at the theater, its layout, the days before the attack and the aftermath.
'Under this rubble’
The main hall, which was obliterated in the attack, had been deemed too dangerous to sleep in because of its exposed roof and huge chandelier. A video posted to Telegram on Friday, and verified by The Post, showed a mound of rubble.
“Under this rubble there may be a lot of people,” said the person filming.
One survivor, Mariia Rodionova, 27, who had been sleeping there despite the danger, said that around 50 people were in that part of the building. She said she went outside to get water for her dogs just moments before the strike.
She said she heard a whistling noise. Then, a man grabbed and covered her, pushing her to the wall outside by the front entrance, she recalled.
“Debris was over us,” she said in an interview after fleeing to Zaporizhzhia, about 135 miles northwest of Mariupol.
She thought her eardrum had ruptured from the deafening sound. “There was a man with his face down in a pool of blood,” she said. “Next to him was a woman trying to wake him up.”
She said she desperately tried to find a way into the hall to get to her dogs and her first aid kit. “I went around a couple of times,” she said. She said she became panicked.
“I didn’t know where to go,” she said. “To go into a bomb shelter, what’s the point? It was a shelter. I just understood I had to leave.”
She walked to Melekyne, 12 miles down the coast, and eventually got a bus out.
‘It was families’
Bogdan Tymoshchuk, 17, who was staying in a dressing room backstage with his mother, estimated that there were around 100 people still there when he left in a convoy just an hour before the attack.
“It was families,” he said.
They had been sleeping in the small dressing rooms. “We don’t know what happened to them,” he said by phone after fleeing to Lviv in western Ukraine.
Those staying at the theater describe a chaotic scene in the days leading up to the attack. The battle closed in and people started to risk escape, tying white flags to vehicles crammed with people and chancing it on the treacherous road out.
The theater had been one of three locations people had been told to gather. From here, they were to leave the city on humanitarian “green corridors” agreed with the Russians, officials said. The numbers swelled as word spread. At the peak there was barely space to lie down at the theater, survivors and others said.
But no help ever came. After the Ukrainian front lines collapsed — bringing the fight into the city — people began to self-organize to get out themselves.
“The explosions were getting closer,” said Alexiy.
He said the first group of around 20 cars left the theater on March 14. Another left that evening.
“We were scared we’d get shot on the way,” he said.
Finally, word came from the first group. They had made it safely. Alexei and others left early March 15.
Those without cars were desperate to get a ride out. Tymoshchuk had tried all day on March 15. He managed the following day, squeezing into a car with 10 people.
“There was constant fighting, constant bombing,” he said.
Still more came
As people left, others were still arriving at the theater.
Vladislav, 27, got there on the morning of the bombing to check if it would be a safer spot for his family.
“We knew there was food there,” he said. Police and military dropped off supplies. There was a fire hydrant that people used for water. They cut down a nearby fence for firewood to cook on.
“I thought it wouldn’t be possible for someone to bomb that place,” said Vladislav. He said he was 30 feet inside the main door when the blast hit at around 10 a.m.
“I just heard the bang,” he said. He ended up on the floor — not sure if he instinctively took cover or was knocked down by the explosion.
“I followed people out,” he said. A video posted online on Friday showed people covered in dust on a stairwell in the theater, including a woman carrying a young baby.
“We went into the basement from the other side,” said Vladislav. “It wasn’t damaged.”
He waited 15 minutes in the basement before fleeing on foot to Melekyne.
Nadezhda, who had moved to the shelter on March 8 after her neighborhood was heavily shelled, was in the basement at the time of the attack.
“Saying the basement was filled to the brim, doesn’t do it justice,” she said. At first she slept on the third floor of the foyer with her daughter. They moved to the basement March 15.
When the blast hit, her son-in-law and daughter had just been preparing to get some water. Her son-in-law was tying his shoe and was knocked over from the force of the blast. The air filled with dust. The basement door blew out.
“I was panicked,” she said.
She ventured outside, where she was met with a scene of horror. She and others tried to help treat the wounded with makeshift bandages made from strips of material. She said that there were body parts scattered around. A man had part of the back of his leg ripped off.
She tried to make a tourniquet, and said she helped as much as she could but had to stop. “I heard screams constantly, you could go crazy for it,” she said.
Coal power plant. (photo: NYT)
The Grant Town power plant is also the link between the coal industry and the personal finances of Joe Manchin, the Democrat who rose through state politics to reach the U.S. Senate, where, through the vagaries of electoral politics, he is now the single most important figure shaping the nation’s energy and climate policy.
Manchin’s ties to the Grant Town plant date to 1987, when he had just been elected to the West Virginia Senate, a part-time job with base pay of $6,500. His family’s carpet business was struggling.
Opportunity arrived in the form of two developers who wanted to build a power plant in Grant Town, just outside Manchin’s district. Manchin, whose grandfather went to work in the mines at age 9 and whose uncle died in a mining accident, helped the developers clear bureaucratic hurdles.
Then he did something beyond routine constituent services. He went into business with the Grant Town power plant.
Manchin supplied a type of low-grade coal mixed with rock and clay known as “gob” that is typically cast aside as junk by mining companies but can be burned to produce electricity. In addition, he arranged to receive a slice of the revenue from electricity generated by the plant — electric bills paid by his constituents.
The deal inked decades ago has made Manchin, now 74, a rich man.
Although the fact that Manchin owns a coal business is well known, an examination by The New York Times offers a more detailed portrait of the degree to which Manchin’s business has been interwoven with his official actions. He created his business while a state lawmaker in anticipation of the Grant Town plant, which has been the sole customer for his gob for the past 20 years, according to federal data. At key moments over the years, Manchin used his political influence to benefit the plant. He urged a state official to approve its air pollution permit, pushed fellow lawmakers to support a tax credit that helped the plant, and worked behind the scenes to facilitate a rate increase that drove up revenue for the plant — and electricity costs for West Virginians.
Records show that several energy companies have held ownership stakes in the power plant, among them major corporations with interests far beyond West Virginia. At various points, those corporations have sought to influence the Senate, including legislation before committees on which Manchin sat, creating what ethics experts describe as a conflict of interest.
As the pivotal vote in an evenly split Senate, Manchin has blocked legislation that would speed the country’s transition to wind, solar and other clean energy and away from coal, oil and gas, the burning of which is dangerously heating the planet. With the war in Ukraine and resulting calls to boycott Russian gas, Manchin has joined Republicans to press for more American gas and oil production to fill the gap on the world market.
But as the Grant Town plant continues to burn coal and pay dividends to Manchin, it has harmed West Virginians economically, costing them hundreds of millions of dollars in excess electricity fees. That’s because gob is a less efficient power source than regular coal.
Manchin declined an interview request. His spokesperson, Sam Runyon, did not respond to detailed questions about his business interests or about whether those interests affected his actions as a public official. Senate ethics rules forbid members from acting on legislation to further their financial interests or those of immediate family members. There is no indication that Manchin broke any laws.
In the past, Manchin has repeatedly said he has acted to protect valued industries in West Virginia, which ranked second in coal production and fifth in natural gas in 2020, according to federal data. He has defended his personal business ties to the Grant Town plant, telling the Charleston Gazette in 1996, “I did it to keep West Virginia people working.”
This account is based on thousands of pages of documents from lawsuits, land records, state regulatory hearings, lobbying and financial disclosures, federal energy data and other records spanning more than three decades. The Times also spoke with three dozen former business associates, current and former government officials, and industry experts.
The documents and interviews show that at every level of Manchin’s political career, from state lawmaker to U.S. senator, his official actions have benefited his financial interest in to the Grant Town plant, blurring the line between public business and private gain.
The private company behind Manchin’s millions
Manchin and his wife owned assets worth between $4.5 million and $12.8 million in 2020, according to Senate financial disclosure forms, which provide only a range with few specifics. Manchin, who drives a silver Maserati Levante, reported dozens of assets, including bank accounts, mutual funds, real estate and ownership stakes in more than a dozen companies.
But the bulk of Manchin’s reported income since entering the Senate has come from one company: Enersystems, which he founded with his brother Roch in 1988, the year before the Grant Town plant got a permit from the state of West Virginia.
Enersystems is now run by Manchin’s son, Joseph Manchin IV. In 2020, it paid the elder Manchin $491,949, according to his filings, almost three times his salary as a U.S. senator. From 2010 through 2020, Manchin reported a total of $5.6 million from the company.
Manchin describes Enersystems in disclosure forms as a “contract services and material provider for utility plants.”
The privately held company has no website. Its headquarters consist of a cluster of small rooms on the ground floor of a brick office complex in Fairmont, West Virginia, that bears Manchin’s name. It has just two employees, according to filings with the West Virginia secretary of state.
When a reporter recently visited, Manchin’s son was the only person there. “We’re not doing interviews,” he said. “No comment.”
Data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration shows that Enersystems supplies a specific type of coal burned to generate electricity. And since 2002 — as far back as that data goes — Manchin’s company has had just one customer: The Grant Town power plant.
Mountains of gob
The community of Grant Town was built around one of the largest underground coal mines in the world. But since the mine closed in 1985, every other business has shuttered, along with the school. Many of the buildings have been condemned.
Despite its struggles, the community had something valuable to outsiders: mountains and mountains of gob.
Gob, an acronym for “garbage of bituminous,” is waste coal — low-quality material dug from a mine that is mixed with rock and clay, making it harder and less efficient to burn. For decades, dark gray gob piled up on the ground outside coal mines in West Virginia, barren heaps often reaching several stories high.
But in 1978, worried about the country’s dependence on foreign oil, Congress passed a law to encourage alternative energy sources. That led to the opening of several gob-burning plants, including Grant Town.
The developers who planned the Grant Town plant created American Bituminous Power Partners, or AmBit, to build the plant. AmBit signed a long-term contract with the local utility, Monongahela Power, to buy the electricity it produced from gob.
But before AmBit could start construction, federal agencies raised environmental concerns. The company got help from Manchin.
‘He was pretty smooth about it’
Manchin grew up in politics. His father and grandfather both served as mayor of his hometown. His uncle, A. James Manchin, was West Virginia’s treasurer. Manchin’s father was close friends with Arch Moore Jr., a three-term West Virginia governor whose daughter, Shelly Moore Capito, is currently the state’s Republican U.S. senator.
Those ties helped Manchin get things done, said Jack Spadaro, then a supervisor for West Virginia and neighboring states with the U.S. Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, which regulates coal mines.
“He could control a bloc of votes in northern West Virginia,” Spadaro said. “If you got the Manchins behind you, you could really do something.”
Manchin used that influence on behalf of AmBit.
The Environmental Protection Agency was concerned the Grant Town plant would be too close to an existing coal-burning plant, resulting in excessive levels of sulfur dioxide, a threat to human health and plant life, according to documents obtained through a public records request.
Dale Farley, the West Virginia state official in charge of issuing air pollution permits at the time, recalled in an interview that Manchin approached him about approving the Grant Town plant. “He was pretty smooth about it,” said Farley, now 72 and retired. “But he let it be known that he was definitely interested in the project going forward.”
Farley struck an agreement with Monongahela Power, also called Mon Power, to limit emissions from the nearby plant, allowing the Grant Town plant to proceed. He informed the EPA, copying Manchin on the letter, and issued the permit for Grant Town. (Manchin’s intervention was reported by the Charleston Gazette in 1996.)
Had he known at the time that Manchin planned to have a financial relationship with the plant, “it would have bothered me,” Farley said.
Guaranteed income
After helping to win the permit for the plant, Manchin began to profit from it.
On Oct. 5, 1989, one of Manchin’s companies, Transcon, bought an old coal mine in Barrackville, 5 miles south of Grant Town, for $380,000, according to records in the Marion County Courthouse. That same day, he sold the property and its gob piles to AmBit for $500,000 — a profit of $120,000.
But Manchin was not only a supplier of fuel to the Grant Town plant. He also got a share of its revenue.
Shortly before the plant opened, he signed another deal with AmBit, involving yet another old coal mine that Manchin owned, this one south of Farmington, Manchin’s hometown. He leased that mine, along with the gob on that property, to AmBit. In return, AmBit agreed to pay not just rent to Manchin, but also 1% of the gross revenue from electricity generated by burning gob from Manchin’s old coal mine, according to a copy of the lease at the courthouse.
Those terms, while not unheard of, were generous to Manchin, said Stefanie Hines, a lawyer who teaches at West Virginia University and specializes in mineral rights. “These aren’t deals you give to everybody,” Hines said.
Once the Grant Town plant opened, Manchin urged his fellow state lawmakers to back a tax credit for power plants that burn gob, according to an account at the time in the Charleston Gazette. It passed the following year.
Just three plants in the state burned gob; Grant Town was one of them. At the time, Manchin dismissed suggestions of self-dealing, noting that he had broken no rules.
As the Grant Town plant continued to buy Manchin’s gob, his political ambitions grew. He was elected secretary of state, in 2000. Four years later, Manchin rode a landslide into the governor’s mansion in Charleston. From that position, he helped the power plant win an even more coveted prize.
Higher prices, greater burden
Shortly after the Grant Town plant began burning gob, AmBit said the operating costs were higher than expected, and the company was going to need more money for the electricity it was supplying to Manchin’s constituents.
Company executives sought approval from the West Virginia Public Service Commission, which balked, in part because the utility, Mon Power, opposed the request.
In 2006, with Manchin now occupying the governor’s office, AmBit again sought a rate increase. But this time, Mon Power supported its request.
The change in position followed Manchin’s involvement, according to people involved at the time.
AmBit enlisted help from Stanley Sears, whose company, Horizon Ventures, owns the land on which Grant Town sits. Sears knew Manchin and his family, and paid the governor a visit.
“Mr. Joe Manchin assigned his chief of staff, Mr. Larry Puccio to our — to help us,” Sears said, according to testimony that Sears gave in 2018 as part of a legal dispute between Horizon and AmBit. “Larry Puccio intervened with Monongahela Power Company and their lobbyists.”
After that meeting, Sears testified, Mon Power supported the rate increase.
The Public Service Commission, led by a Manchin appointee, approved it.
The consequences of that rate increase turned out to be enormous. Since 2016 alone, Grant Town has cost Mon Power $117 million more than it would have spent to buy that power from other sources, according to documents filed last year with the Public Service Commission. The utility had little choice but to buy the electricity; its contract with Grant Town doesn’t expire until 2036.
Puccio didn’t respond to requests for comment. Reached by phone, Sears declined to comment. A spokesperson for Mon Power, Will Boye, said the utility “put the request in front of regulators and other stakeholders who could evaluate whether the rate increase and preservation of Grant Town were in the best interests of customers and the state.”
The extra costs were passed on to residents, burdening ratepayers in one of the poorest states in the nation.
Once in the Senate, business improves
After Manchin ascended to a position where he could influence national policy, his family business began earning more revenue from AmBit.
In the middle of his second term as governor, Manchin handily won a special election in 2010 to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by the death of Robert Byrd. From a seat on the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Manchin had an ability to shape federal policy governing oil, gas and coal.
He became one of the most vocal opponents to the EPA’s proposed limits on emissions of mercury and other hazardous substances from power plants. The mercury regulations, which eventually took effect, were particularly threatening to plants such as Grant Town, because gob generates more mercury per kilowatt of electricity when burned than traditional coal, according to Lisa Evans, senior counsel at environmental advocacy group Earthjustice.
Manchin also sought to protect coal plants from more stringent regulation of coal ash, which gob-fired plants generate in higher volumes than conventional coal-burning facilities. He sponsored legislation in 2016 that gave regulatory authority over coal ash to states, rather than allowing federal regulators to dictate terms.
Manchin easily won a full Senate term in 2012 and reelection in 2018, and became a top recipient of campaign contributions from the mining, oil and gas industries.
Meanwhile, AmBit increasingly bought its fuel from Manchin’s company, to the point that it got 80% of its coal waste from the Manchin family business in 2020, compared with one-quarter when he first entered the Senate.
Reached by phone, AmBit’s executive director, Kenneth Niemann, agreed to answer written questions for this article but then did not respond to them.
Hidden ties to large corporations
On the surface, Manchin has a business relationship with a single power plant in West Virginia.
But determining the players behind AmBit, owner of the Grant Town power plant, is a bit like handling a set of Russian nesting dolls.
At various points, three major companies — Edison International, NRG Energy and Tokyo-based Sumitomo — owned a significant share of AmBit, through a series of holding companies that had the effect of obscuring their involvement, records show.
And although all three companies partly owned the Grant Town plant, which was paying Manchin, their representatives lobbied the Senate on dozens of bills handled by the committees on which Manchin sat, according to Senate lobbying disclosure forms. Lobbyists are not required to identify specific pieces of legislation or name lawmakers with whom they meet.
Asked if Sumitomo or its subsidiaries had lobbied Manchin or his staff from 2010 through 2020, Sumitomo spokesperson Amy Babcock said, “No, not to our knowledge.” A spokesperson for NRG, Laura Avant, said the company’s lobbying “was not targeted” at Manchin during 2014 when NRG owned a stake in the Grant Town plant.
Edison would not say whether it had lobbied Manchin while the company owned part of the Grant Town plant. “Edison International has a responsibility to work with legislators on policies that best serve our customers,” said Jeffrey Monford, a spokesperson for Edison. “We abide by all rules around those communications.”
Runyon, the spokesperson for Manchin, would not say whether Manchin had ever been lobbied by Sumitomo, NRG or Edison while those companies owned a stake in Grant Town. “Throughout the entirety of Senator Manchin’s public service career, he has always been in full compliance with ethics and financial disclosure rules,” Runyon said in a statement.
Manchin’s ties to AmBit left him in a complicated position, according to Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis who specializes in government ethics. He was in a position to help craft, support or block legislation that affected Edison, NRG or Sumitomo. At the same time, through their ownership of the Grant Town plant, those companies had influence over decisions that could affect Manchin’s income.
Manchin’s case demonstrates the need to tighten ethics rules, Clark said. “We care where the income stream comes from,” she said. “What you don’t want is essentially members of Congress to own companies that then become methods or mechanisms for the Sumitomos of the world to get in good with members of Congress.”
Stopping Biden’s climate bill
In 2020, Manchin’s power reached new heights.
Joe Biden was elected president in part on a promise to address climate change. Making good on that pledge hinges on moving legislation through a Senate that is split 50 Republicans to 48 Democrats and their two Independent allies. With Republicans unanimously opposed to most legislation introduced by Senate Democrats, any single Democrat can stop a bill by withholding support.
Last summer and fall, Manchin blocked the spending bill that contained Biden’s climate proposals, which had included penalties for power companies that did not reduce their coal use.
But as those negotiations were underway in Washington, a different dispute was unfolding in West Virginia — one that may have affected Manchin’s incentives for ultimately opposing the federal climate bill.
For years, AmBit had warned that tighter greenhouse gas regulations could shutter the Grant Town plant. The company said it needed cash partly as a cushion against any new government limits on pollution. In May, AmBit asked Mon Power to cancel the remainder of its contract, which expires in 2036, in exchange for a payment from Mon Power of as much as $200 million or more. That would allow Mon Power to find another source of electricity, maybe at a lower cost, and AmBit could try to find another customer for electricity from its Grant Town plant.
The stakes for Manchin were high. Grant Town was the only remaining power plant in his state that burned gob. If new federal climate rules put Grant Town out of business, his company would have no other potential customers for its waste coal.
Mon Power refused the request for a buyout. So AmBit turned to the Public Service Commission, asking it to force Mon Power to reconsider. In November, just as discussions between Manchin and the White House over the climate bill were reaching their peak, the commission held a hearing in Charleston to consider AmBit’s request.
In a filing to the commission, Richard Halloran, a founder and owner of AmBit, said failing to get a buyout “will give us less protection against the anti-fossil fuel (coal) sentiment and legislation and taxation.” (Halloran declined to comment.)
The commission’s chair, Charlotte Lane, expressed skepticism, noting that just a few years had passed since the commission had granted the company its latest rate increase. “Now you’re back,” Lane said, according to the transcript. “I am somewhat perplexed at what you are doing.”
On Dec. 29, the commission rejected AmBit’s request and, with it, the chances of a financial buffer against tighter climate rules for Manchin’s most important customer.
Ten days before the Public Service Commission announced its decision, Manchin said in a statement that he could not support Biden’s bill, effectively dooming it.
Runyon, the spokesperson for Manchin, did not directly respond to a question about whether Manchin’s ties to Grant Town influenced his decision to oppose the bill. “From the beginning, Senator Manchin has clearly articulated the reasons he could not support [the legislation] — rising inflation, the global pandemic and geopolitical unrest around the world,” Runyon said in a statement.
But among the reasons Manchin gave at the time was the bill’s effect on the power sector.
“We have invested billions of dollars into clean energy technologies so we can continue to lead the world in reducing emissions through innovation,” Manchin said in December. “But to do so at a rate that is faster than technology or the markets allow will have catastrophic consequences.”
The statement made no mention of Manchin’s ties to Grant Town.
A Ukrainian serviceman stands in a heavily damaged building in Stoyanka, Ukraine. (photo: Vadim Ghirdă/AP)
Ukrainian general says Moscow unable to ‘swallow’ country but faces guerrilla warfare if it tries to divide it
In comments that raise the prospect of a long and bitter frozen conflict, Gen Kyrylo Budanov, who foretold of Russia’s invasion as far back as November, warned of bloody guerrilla warfare.
The prediction came as Leonid Pasechnik, the leader of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic in easternUkraine, said: “I think that in the near future a referendum will be held on the territory of the republic, during which the people will … express their opinion on joining the Russian Federation.”
Budanov said he believed Putin had rethought his plan for full occupation since failing to swiftly take Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and overthrow Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s government. “It is an attempt to create North and South Korea in Ukraine,” he said of the new Kremlin strategy.
Officials in Kyiv said they expected troops attacking the capital and the embattled city of Kharkiv to move east within two weeks.
In other developments:
- The French president, Emmanuel Macron, called for calmer language as he distanced himself from Joe Biden’s speech in Poland on Saturday in which the US president called for Putin to be removed from power.
- Zelenskiy told a group of Russian journalists that Ukraine was prepared to discuss adopting a neutral status as part of a peace deal with Russia but it would have to be guaranteed by third parties and put to a referendum.
- The Kremlin said it was “not up to the president of the US and not up to the Americans to decide who will remain in power in Russia,” as US officials sought to backtrack on Biden’s comments.
- Vadym Denysenko, a Ukrainian interior ministry adviser, said Russia was trying to destroy Ukrainian fuel and food storage depots, as firefighters battled for 13 hours to put out a blaze in the western city of Lviv after multiple missile attacks on Saturday night.
- Zelenskiy urged the west to hand over military hardware that was “gathering dust” in stockpiles, saying his country needed just 1% of Nato’s aircraft and 1% of its tanks. “We’ve already been waiting 31 days,” he said. “Who’s in charge of the Euro-Atlantic community? Is it really still Moscow, because of intimidation?”
- Ukraine enjoyed its most significant counteroffensive success so far as it retook the city of Trostyanets, unblocking a resupply road from the besieged regional capital, Sumy, to Poltava.
- The United Nations human rights office said at least 1,119 civilians had been killed and 1,790 wounded in the war, with 15 girls and 32 boys, as well as 52 children whose sex was as yet unknown, among the dead. The true figures were likely to be considerably higher, the UN said.
Western officials are determined to prevent Putin from normalising a division in Ukraine. Korea was divided along the 38th parallel north from 1945 until 1950, and has been divided since 1953 along the military demarcation line.
Shortly before the start of the war in Ukraine, Russia’s president recognised the two eastern self-proclaimed republics of Luhansk and Donetsk over which Kyiv has been in conflict with pro-Russian forces since 2014.
Putin launched his so-called “special military operation” on 24 February, claiming he was acting in defence of the Russian-speaking people in the eastern Donbas region.
Budanov said he was convinced the Russian president was seeking to split Ukraine despite the attack in the west, only the third major assault there since the war began.
He said: “Putin is already changing the main operational directions – towards the south and the east. There is reason to believe that he is considering a ‘Korean scenario’ [for Ukraine]. That is, trying to impose a dividing line between the unoccupied and occupied regions of our country. In fact, it is an attempt to create North and South Korea in Ukraine. After all, he is definitely not able to swallow the entire country.”
Russia has been bogged down in the besieged south-eastern port city of Mariupol in its attempts to create a land corridor between Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014, and Donbas.
Budanov said he did not believe Mariupol would fall soon and that Russian troops would face guerrilla tactics even if it did manage to defeat the experienced Azov battalion in the flattened city.
He said: “The occupiers will try to unite the occupied territories into a single quasi-state entity, which will oppose independent Ukraine. We are already seeing attempts to create ‘parallel’ authorities in the occupied territories and force people to give up the hryvnia [Ukraine’s national currency].
“They may want to bargain at the international level. However, the resistance and protests of our citizens on the occupied territories, counterattacks by the armed forces and gradual liberation – significantly complicate the implementation of enemy’s plans.
“In addition, the season of total Ukrainian guerrilla safari will soon begin. Then there will be one relevant scenario left for the Russians – how to survive.”
Oleksii Arestovych, an adviser to Zelenskiy, echoed the intelligence chief’s analysis. “Within a week or two, Russia will withdraw troops from Kyiv and Kharkiv regions and send them to Donbas,” he said. “They realised that they will not be able to take over the big cities; they will announce the completion of the first phase of the ‘special operation’ and the beginning of the second – the ‘liberation of Donbas’.”
Arestovych continued: “They now have three tasks: to surround our troops in Donbas, to completely occupy Mariupol and the south. If they lose Kherson [a city west of Mariupol], their entire Mariupol occupation will collapse. And that’s all. There will be no capture of Kyiv, Kharkiv or Odesa.”
Elsewhere, in Kharkiv the authorities reported 44 artillery strikes and 140 rocket assaults in a single day, including on a nuclear research facility. In Kyiv, the authorities warned that Russians were increasingly disguising themselves as civilians to engage in sabotage.
Saturday’s missile attacks on Lviv, in the west of Ukraine close to the Polish border, were said by Ukrainian officials to have been a message of Russian defiance for Biden, who had been speaking in neighbouring Poland, and an attempt to hit Ukrainian fuel and military hardware supplies.
The two targets of the attacks were a fuel depot and a factory used for repairing tanks, anti-aircraft systems and radar stations. Both were close to apartment blocks and only a mile from the Unesco world heritage-protected city centre.
One witness, Dmitry Leonov, 36, an IT worker, said the ground shook and people were thrown to the ground by the force of the blasts at the tank factory. The windows of a local school were said to have been smashed by the force.
The Lviv emergency services chief, Khrystyna Avdyeyeva, said the fire at the fuel depot was finally put out after 13 hours at 6.49am on Sunday. Of those responsible for launching the missiles, which came from Crimea, up to 1,000 miles away, she said: “Let them burn in the same hell. But our heroes will not be there, so nobody will survive.”
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Oscars. (photo: Getty Images)
On the most shocking moment in Academy Awards history
The exchange was, without hyperbole, the most shocking moment in Oscars history. It made the pronouncement of thewrong Best Picture winnerin 2017, or David Niven’s pinpoint mockery of anonstage streaker, seem like no big deal. Rock stayed calm but appeared stunned, stating, “Will Smith just smacked the shit out of me,” and standing motionless for what felt like hours. The sound dropped out of the U.S. broadcast feed, though the camera did cut to Smith verbally rebuking him. Maybe even more surreal was the effort to then get the show back on track. Questlove emotionally accepted an award for his documentary,Summer of Soul, immediately afterward, and other categories soon followed, but the mood in the Dolby Theatre was reportedlyquite tense .
It was unsettling enough that Smith, one of the most famous actors alive, had done such a thing, even if you’re armed with the context that Jada Pinkett Smithhas alopecia. But even stranger was that he was widely expected to take the spotlight again in about 15 minutes to receive a Best Actor trophy for hisperformance inKing Richard,as the father of Serena and Venus Williams. And indeed he did, standing on stage in tears and delivering a speech that was emotional, uncomfortable, and undeniably riveting.
“Richard Williams was a fierce defender of his family,” Smith said, referring to his character. “In this time in my life, I am overwhelmed by what God is calling on me to do and be in this world.” He noted that his fellow nominee Denzel Washington had come over to counsel him after the incident, saying, “In your highest moment, be careful. That’s when the devil comes for you.” Smith apologized to the Academy and his fellow nominees (not, seemingly, to Rock, who hasmade funof Pinkett Smith on the Oscars stage before), but there was defensiveness to his words, too. “Art imitates life. I look like the crazy father, just like Richard Williams. But love will make you do crazy things.”
The moment will surely be dissected for years on end, both in the context of Oscars history and Smith’s career, coming as it did on a night that was supposed to be the pinnacle of his career, a true Hollywood coronation. Though it might be presented as a low point for the Academy Awards, it was also a completely compelling one, a particularly violent reminder of the strange possibilities of live television. After a year when the Oscars have dreamed up new gimmicks to draw in more viewers, this ceremony will now be defined by a moment nobody could have planned.
President of the Metis community, Cassidy Caron, speaks to the media in St. Peter's Square after their meeting with Pope Francis at The Vatican, Monday, March 28, 2022. (photo: Gregorio Borgia/AP)
"While the time for acknowledgement, apology and atonement is long overdue, it is never too late to do the right thing," Cassidy Caron, president of the Metis National Council, told reporters in St. Peter's Square after the audience.
This week's meetings, postponed from December because of the pandemic, are part of the Canadian church and government's efforts to respond to Indigenous demands for justice, reconciliation and reparations — long-standing demands that gained traction last year after the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves outside some of the schools.
Francis has set aside several hours this week to meet privately with the delegations from the Metis and Inuit on Monday, and First Nations on Thursday, with a mental health counselor in the room for each session. The delegates then gather Friday as a group for a more formal audience, with Francis delivering an address.
Caron said Francis listened intently as three of the many Metis survivors told him their personal stories, and showed sorrow but offered no immediate apology. Speaking in English, he repeated the words Caron said she had emphasized in her remarks: truth, justice and healing.
“I take that as a personal commitment,” Caron said, surrounded by Metis fiddlers who accompanied her into the square. “We hope that in committing to us, committing to real action, the church can finally begin its own pathway towards meaningful and lasting reconciliation."
Caron was wearing a traditional handmade beaded jacket that was made for the audience, and members of the Metis delegation presented Francis with a pair of red, beaded moccasins.
The moccasins were being presented “as a sign of the willingness of the Metis people to forgive if there is meaningful action from the church," the group explained in a note. The red dye “represents that even though Pope Francis does not wear the traditional red papal shoes, he walks with the legacy of those who came before him, the good, the great and the terrible.”
In a statement issued after Francis met with the Metis and then the Inuit delegation, the Vatican said each meeting lasted about an hour “and was characterized by desire on the part of the pope to listen and make space for the painful stories brought by the survivors.”
More than 150,000 native children were forced to attend state-funded Christian schools from the 19th century until the 1970s in an effort to isolate them from the influence of their homes and culture, Christianize and assimilate them into mainstream society, which previous governments considered superior.
The Canadian government has admitted that physical and sexual abuse was rampant, with students beaten for speaking their native languages. That legacy of abuse and isolation has been cited by Indigenous leaders as a root cause of epidemic rates of alcohol and drug addiction on reservations.
Nearly three-quarters of the 130 residential schools were run by Catholic missionary congregations.
Last May the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc Nation announced the discovery of some 215 gravesites near Kamloops, British Columbia, found using ground-penetrating radar. It was Canada’s largest Indigenous residential school, and the discovery of the graves was the first of numerous, similar grim sites across the country.
Even before the sites were discovered, Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission specifically called for a papal apology to be delivered on Canadian soil for the church’s role in the “spiritual, cultural, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse of First Nations, Inuit, and Metis children in Catholic-run residential schools.”
Francis has committed to traveling to Canada, though no date for a visit has been announced.
“Primarily the reconciliation requires action. And we still are in need of very specific actions from the Catholic Church,” said Natan Obed, president of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, who led the Inuit delegation. He cited the reparations the Canadian church has been ordered to pay, as well as justice for victims of a Catholic Oblate priest accused of multiple cases of sexual abuse who is currently living in France.
“It goes beyond just opening the doors to records, it also goes towards a general willingness to use church resources to help in any way possible,” Obed told the AP.
As part of a settlement of a lawsuit involving the government, churches and the approximately 90,000 surviving students, Canada paid reparations that amounted to billions of dollars being transferred to Indigenous communities.
The Catholic Church, for its part, has paid over $50 million and now intends to add $30 million more over the next five years.
The Argentine pope is no stranger to offering apologies for his own errors and what he himself has termed the “crimes” of the institutional church.
During a 2015 visit to Bolivia, he apologized for the sins, crimes and offenses committed by the church against Indigenous peoples during the colonial-era conquest of the Americas. In Dublin, Ireland, in 2018, he offered asweeping apology to Irish womenand others who were sexually and physically abused over generations by church officials.
That same year, he met privately with three Chilean sex abuse survivors whom he had discredited by backing a bishop they accused of covering up sexual abuse. In a series of meetings over the course of a week that echo those scheduled for the Canadian delegates,Francis listened, and apologized.
Phil Fontaine was national chief of the Assembly of First Nations in 2009 when he led an Indigenous delegation to meet with Pope Bendict XVI. At the time, Benedict only expressed his “sorrow at the anguish caused by the deplorable conduct of some members of the church.” But he didn't apologize.
Standing outside St. Peter’s Square, Fontaine said a full papal apology “would be a tremendous boost to these efforts by thousands of survivors that are still looking for healing. They’re definitely anxious to see true reconciliation come about, but reconciliation will not be achieved without the truth.”
Australia's Great Barrier Reef has experienced four mass bleaching events in the last seven years, like this one in 2017. Scientists warn repeated bleaching makes it tough for corals to recover. (photo: Brett Monroe Garner/Getty Images)
Now, it looks likethe fourth mass bleachingin the last seven years is unfolding.
Abnormally hot ocean temperatures, as high as 7 degrees Fahrenheit above average, have stressed the reef in recent weeks even though autumn normally means cooler conditions. Scientists with Australian government agencies say some parts of the reef are experiencing severe bleaching as a result.
Back-to-back bleaching events are expected to become more common as the climate gets hotter, but it's happening sooner than expected in Australia – a worrying sign that thevast majority of the world's coral reefs are at risk of disappearing.
"Climate change is a whole host of bad things for corals," says Emily Darling, director of coral reef conservation at the Wildlife Conservation Society. "If they're getting bleached and dying off every year or two years, there's simply not enough time in between these massive bleaching events for coral reefs to have any chance at meaningful recovery."
Repeated bleaching leaves no time to recover from heat stress
When temperatures rise, corals lose their crucial roommates: the marine algae that live inside coral and produce their primary source of food. Those algae give corals their vibrant colors, but get expelled during periods of heat stress, causing the corals to bleach and turn white.
Bleached corals aren't necessarily goners, though.
"If the water temperature decreases, bleached corals can recover from this stress," said David Wachenfeld, chief scientist of Australia's Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, in anupdate on the reef's health.
Forecasts show ocean temperatures will likely remain above average for the next few weeks, though, increasing the risk that some corals will die off. The reef has been experiencing extreme heat since November, which was the warmest November on record for the Great Barrier Reef.
"The coral have been experiencing some pretty extreme heat stress for longer than they ever have," says Derek Manzello, coordinator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration'sCoral Reef Watch.
Even corals that recover are harmed, since periods of stress can hurt their ability to reproduce. After mass bleaching in 2016 and 2017, large parts of the Great Barrier Reef lost half of their live corals. Then another bleaching event hit in 2020.
"You're essentially killing off all your super sensitive corals," says Manzello. "What's really bad about that is that the most sensitive corals are usually the ones that are most responsible for building the reef. Those are the corals that grow the fastest."
Marine species and millions of people depend on coral reefs
Reefs around the world are experiencing similar climate-related damage. A worldwide assessment found that between 2009 and 2019,14 percent of the world's corals died.
A quarter of marine species depend on coral reefs at some point in their lives, as do millions of people who depend on reefs for food, jobs and shoreline protection from storm surges.
Scientists are racing to find ways to give corals a fighting chance, like searching for reefs that could act as refuges because they experience naturally cooler water. Others are breeding heat-resistant corals that could be used to restore reefs.
Still, if countries don't reduce fossil fuel emissions over the next decade, studies show the outlook for coral reefs is grim. Even if the world can limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius,70 to 90 percent of coral reefs are likely to die off.
"We need to really learn from these bleaching events," Darling says. "We need to change business as usual. We need to take action on climate change."
Special Coverage: Ukraine, A Historic Resistance
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