30 June 22
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President Zelenskiy and Ukraine want it finished by winter, but Russia still holds the balance of power
Russia has been making gains. Its eastern Ukraine offensive slowly grinds forward by destroying everything in its path, and there is a growing realisation in the west that there will be no early end to the conflict. But the war is dragged out even further by Russia successfully deterring Ukraine’s western backers from providing it with the weapons systems it needs – including more ammunition, drones, jammers, radars, and means of intercepting Russia’s long-range missile strikes like the ones seen over recent days.
Military support to Ukraine from the US, the UK and their allies has incrementally expanded in scope, taking on more powerful offensive systems such as longer-range artillery. But the biggest constraint on providing Ukraine with war-winning equipment is still the fear of how Russia will respond. Critics of the current level of western support say this restraint is an example of the US and others self-deterring, out of fear of provoking escalation. But the reality is far simpler.
Russia’s continuing campaign of threats and bluster is having the intended effect: causing Moscow’s adversaries to hesitate. The pervasive notion that provoking Russia would lead to disastrous consequences is a key victory for Moscow. Successfully dissuading the west from providing Ukraine all the support it needs to turn the tide of the war confirms once again for Vladimir Putin that Russia’s military inferiority to the west can be overcome through leveraging western fear.
In fact, the west’s clearly stated fear of escalation proves to Russia that threats work, regardless of how implausible they may be or how often they have been shown to be empty. By now it’s a tediously repetitive cycle of promises of nuclear annihilation for whoever has most recently upset Russia’s propagandists – for example Russian state TV recently discussed attacking the Netherlands. Russia’s nuclear threats will continue for as long as they are effective in preventing Ukraine being provided with war-winning military support.
The G7 may have made the right noises about support for Ukraine continuing “for as long as it takes”, but Ukraine’s biggest challenge remains trying to persuade its international backers to match words with deeds.
In addition there is a striking mismatch of aims and priorities between the two sides. While Russia has clearly laid out what it wants from the war – the extinction of Ukraine as an independent nation and the restoration of Russian imperial power over its neighbours – Ukraine’s western backers are confused and divided over how they want the war to end, and what they want to happen to Russia as a result.
All of this buys Russia time. President Zelenskiy has told the G7 he wants the war to be over by winter. There’s a good reason for that deadline. Europe is still far from weaning itself off Russian energy, and a painful winter of even higher fuel prices will drive home for Europeans the true cost of supporting Ukraine in this conflict.
But it’s not just energy that Russia can exploit to induce third countries to argue for peace at Ukraine’s cost. Food blackmail of the rest of the world through Russia’s naval blockade is another tactic bringing success – Ukraine has claimed that it is under pressure to surrender from states in Africa and Asia who are alarmed at their grain supply being cut off.
Russia is also suffering the costs of its war, in the form of fallout from economic sanctions. But the degradation of Russia’s economy and industry will not take place fast enough to influence the short-term progress of the conflict.
In military terms too, Russia may be able to outlast Ukrainian resilience and western patience. Authoritative assessments say Russia is running out of trained military manpower. But as with so much else, this is a less definitive challenge for Russia than it would be for other powers. Traditional Russian indifference to the scale of casualties incurred in pursuit of war aims is manifesting in its willingness to throw half-trained or untrained reserves and levies into the fight, including those drafted by force from occupied territories (yet another war crime to add to Russia’s catalogue).
It is these larger forces of economic, military and political power that will determine the outcome of the war, not individual operations’ success or failure – such as the capture of Severodonetsk, which has transfixed western audiences for weeks. Russia seems confident in where that balance of power lies.
Ukraine’s own forces remain committed to the fight. But for that to continue, they must remain convinced that they have a reasonable chance of success in preventing Russian victory. Each refusal by western partners to provide the means to hold or regain Ukrainian territory makes that chance recede a little further.
For as long as Europe and the US are hesitant and reticent about providing Ukraine with the weapons it needs to bring the conflict to a conclusion – or at the very least to inflict sufficient damage on Russia’s forces that Putin‘s perception of winning is finally challenged – it is hard to see how any swift end to the war will go in Ukraine’s favour. In the meantime, the savage attacks on civilians and essential infrastructure in Ukraine will continue.
ALSO SEE: Hutchinson's Bombshell Jan. 6 Testimony Sways
Legal Experts and Conservative Media
Ex-White House aide’s revelations could fuel investigation of whether Donald Trump was part of a conspiracy or incited violence.
David Laufman, a former senior Justice Department lawyer now in private practice, said Hutchinson’s testimony “contained credible nuggets of information that would support” prosecutors viewing Trump as an investigative target in a seditious conspiracy investigation. Other legal experts broadly agree that the hearing made it more likely that the former president could become a target of the Justice Department probe — although opinions vary on what charges could be considered. Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti said he thought Hutchinson’s information could support an investigation into whether Trump could be charged with incitement to violence.
For months, Attorney General Merrick Garland has refused to say whether Jan. 6 prosecutors are eyeing Trump’s conduct as he and close allies tried to overturn President Biden’s election victory. But in recent days, federal agents have served search warrants and subpoenas, and conducted interviews around the country that show the investigation is moving closer to Trump’s inner circle.
Hutchinson’s account, Laufman said, could take them a step further.
“This witness provided credible testimony under oath, attributing foreknowledge of the impending violence to the president,” said Laufman, who represents some of the U.S. Capitol Police officers injured in the Jan. 6 attack. “Whether at the end of the day the department can conclude it can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump joined a conspiracy remains to be seen, because there may well be an extraordinarily high bar for prosecutors and department leadership to satisfy that standard.”
Unlike in a potential criminal case, the Jan. 6 congressional hearings do not include cross-examination of witnesses or the high legal standard that prosecutors face. In addition, the committee did not offer any witness corroboration for Hutchinson’s descriptions of conversations involving Trump or senior aides and advisers.
Trump, in a statement, denied her version of events.
Still, Hutchinson described incidents that paint a damning portrait of Trump in his final days as president, lashing out at those around him and privately agreeing with those who stormed the Capitol. They included two moments from Jan. 6 in which Trump appeared unfazed — or even cheered — by the prospect of violence.
Hutchinson said she was standing near Trump for a conversation shortly before he began speaking to a crowd on the Ellipse, in which he expressed frustration that the crowd wasn’t bigger. Told that some people on the National Mall didn’t want to go through magnetometers to get closer to the stage — a standard Secret Service security measure at events featuring the president — Trump erupted in anger, she said.
“I overheard the president say something to the effect of, ‘I don’t f-ing care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me. Take the f-ing mags away,’ ” Hutchinson testified.
Later that day, the crowd stormed the Capitol as Vice President Mike Pence presided over a joint session of Congress to certify the Biden win. Hutchinson said she was back at the White House by then and witnessed a conversation between her boss, Mark Meadows, and White House counsel Pat Cipollone.
Cipollone tried to persuade Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, to get the president to publicly call for an end to the rioting as parts of the mob chanted “Hang Mike Pence,” Hutchinson said.
Meadows, she testified, replied “something to the effect of, ‘You heard him, Pat. He thinks Mike deserves it. He doesn’t think they’re doing anything wrong.’ ”
The former aide also testified that Cipollone strenuously argued against efforts by Trump and Meadows to have Trump go with the crowd to the Capitol that day. She said the lawyer warned: “We’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable if we make that movement happen.”
Meadows’s lawyer, George Terwilliger, said that in his judgment Hutchinson’s testimony “would not withstand a basic cross examination and, if that is correct, it is unlikely to stand the test of time either.”
Hutchinson testified to the committee that Cipollone thought the president might be charged with obstruction if he went to Congress. “He was also worried that it would look like we were inciting a riot or encouraging a riot to happen up at the Capitol,” she said in a taped deposition played Tuesday as part of the nationally televised hearing.
Mariotti, now a lawyer in Chicago, said he doubted Hutchinson’s testimony advances any potential case against Trump for seditious conspiracy, the charge levied against some members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers extremist groups in connection with the riot. But her testimony could put federal prosecutors closer to reaching the high legal bar required for charging someone with incitement to violence, he said.
“This testimony made it plausible that the Justice Department might find sufficient evidence that Trump knew his crowd would immediately break the law, a legal standard known as ‘imminent lawless action.’ I think there’s enough there,” Mariotti said. “But I still think there’s work for the prosecutors to do to prove what active steps he took. Today’s testimony did not speak to whether or not he conspired with others to storm the Capitol, but it’s certainly very significant.”
After the hearing concluded, Hutchinson’s lawyers, Jody Hunt and William Jordan, issued a statement on her behalf, saying that while she “did not seek out the attention accompanying her testimony today, she believes that it was her duty and responsibility to provide the Committee with her truthful and candid observations of the events surrounding January 6. Ms. Hutchinson believes that Jan. 6 was a horrific day for the country, and it is vital to the future of our democracy that it not be repeated.”
Laufman, the former Justice lawyer, said the department probably would want to interview Hutchinson in light of her congressional testimony.
He also said texts sent to prospective committee witnesses and released during the hearing by Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) point to possible witness tampering — though a lot depends on who sent and received those messages. The committee did not reveal that information.
“[A person] let me know you have your deposition tomorrow,” one of the messages read. “He wants me to let me you know that he’s thinking about you he wants you to know that you’re loyal and you’re going to do the right thing when you go in.”
An unidentified witness described receiving messages for the committee: “What they said to me is, as long as I continue to be a team player, they know that I’m on the team, I’m doing the right thing, I’m protecting who I need to protect, you know, I’ll continue to stay in good graces in Trump World. And they have reminded me a couple of times that Trump does read transcripts and just to keep that in mind as I proceeded through my depositions and interviews with the committee.”
“Depending on who the unnamed parties are … those types of communications are certainly classic witness tampering, efforts to intimidate future testimony by witnesses before Congress who are sworn to tell the truth,” Laufman said. “Those kinds of statements could have been taken out of a Mario Puzo screenplay of ‘The Godfather.’ ”
Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.) said the panel won’t tolerate witness tampering. “We haven’t had a chance to fully investigate it or fully discuss it, but it’s something we’re looking at.”
Ultimately, Laufman said, the question of witness tampering may be a “sideshow” to the larger questions of criminal conduct raised by the publicly known evidence. “It’s a target-rich environment right now,” he said.
By using publicly disclosed data, the DIA - and other agencies - can circumvent laws around warrants for requesting location data from phone companies. (photo: iStock)
How companies help one another to follow our every step — literally
By using publicly disclosed data, the DIA — and other agencies — can circumvent laws around warrants for requesting location data from phone companies, which are supposed to safeguard personal information.
This practice had been going on for over two and a half years prior to the memo’s release, and is now often used by the Department of Homeland Security, the Internal Revenue Service and other agencies.
While the focus in the past was on the government and how access to this type of data can be used to jeopardize the privacy of American citizens and harm Constitution-granted privacy rights, little was publicly known about individuals and companies that supply such data to agencies and anyone able to fit the bill.
Enter Twitter, Zignal Labs and Anomaly Six. An amazing, eye-opening piece by The Intercept alleges how, when working in unison, these companies can track not only your Twitter TWTR, -1.12% posts and usernames, but also your past and present locations — reportedly up to a point of accuracy of several feet.
In the article, it’s shown how Anomaly Six presented its pitch to Zignal Labs, proposing the following workflow: Anomaly Six would supply its “unmatched” GPS tracking capabilities. Zignal Labs would then use its tech stack to analyze Twitter’s data firehose, which provides the company with a torrent of data, consisting of every tweet posted in real time. This type of analysis would help Zignal Labs and their clients discern not only who tweeted what, but also who accompanied them at the time of the tweet, their past and their present location. (Zignal Labs has acknowledged that Anomaly Six “demonstrated its capabilities” to it, but it never “delivered Anomaly Six” to its customers.)
Twitter’s role in the mix was to simply turn on the spigot. After all, a lot of money was on the table. (Twitter has said its terms of service prohibit “conducting or providing surveillance or gathering intelligence.”)
According to the article, to prove that its technology worked, Anomaly Six demonstrated how it can track anyone — from members of special forces in the Russian military to individual U.S. government agents — from their workplace all the way back to their home address. (Anomaly Six has said it “cares about American interests, natural [sic] security and understands the law.”)
It’s a chilling article, but one I strongly recommend you read. It did a great job of demonstrating just how much power these kinds of companies have. Their clients include governments and government agencies, as well as private entities, and really, anyone wealthy enough to foot the bill.
If you think the only problem here is the government bulldozing your constitutional privacy rights, you’re only half wrong — your privacy is already non-existent. It’s been this way since you first turned on your smartphone and logged into a social-media platform.
Lost privacy is just one piece of the puzzle. When private startups and data brokers have access to this level of data, you can be sure that not only is there no privacy, but there is also no free flow of information. For example, let’s look at what Zignal Labs does:
On its homepage, the company allows its clients to “leverage narratives” and “detect — and take control of — threatening narratives before they emerge.”
Espionage isn’t just tracking individuals or their communication. It’s also shaping that same information to fit your own purposes. Companies like Zignal Labs sift through petabytes of data on an average day, analyzing communications on prominent social networks, identifying trending topics and then using whatever tools they have at their disposal to help clients shift the narrative toward whatever interest fits their agenda.
Some of the data brokers and narrative influencers rely on bots. As much as they are hated, bots are a powerful tool of deception, as they create a false notion of popularity and “community stance” on topics that tend to sway the undecided and uninformed. To do their task, bots need to be numerous and act in a coordinated manner.
This could be one of the reasons behind Twitter’s reluctance to disclose the number of bots currently running on the platform, as that could not only drive down advertising funds, but also uncover just how many corporate, Twitter-allowed bots are on the platform, manipulating masses and sowing dissent and narratives implanted by its clients.
But what does all this mean? For an average netizen, it means that privacy — or what’s left of it — died a long time ago. Information — and news — is being bought and sold, and the concept of a well-informed citizenry is being trivialized.
The U.S. still has a Constitution and controls, and a functioning democracy. But look at modern-day China and how the Chinese Communist Party deals with citizens, their individuality and their mindset. We don’t want a Western flavor of the same regime — different arguments, the same outcome.
How to safeguard your privacy, anonymity and security
If you’re a privacy seeker, you can still have some of it, at the great cost of convenience. Simply read this piece about privacy, anonymity and security and use it as your starting point. Be aware that it’s becoming slightly outdated, but it still has the vital information you need to keep your whereabouts from prying eyes.
What about staying safe from misinformation permeating the web? While I haven’t written a technical guide on it, here’s some common-sense tips that I often employ in my work. You may find it handy:
Question everything. Give everyone a chance to explain their case, and remember: It’s not about who is speaking the words, but what is being said. Nowadays, reputation is not a guarantee of integrity or honesty, so don’t rely too much on it.
Instead, do your own research, keep a critical mindset and get to the real source of information whenever you can. Dissect studies, instead of relying on simplified regurgitations. Getting to and talking directly to authors is even better. You would be surprised just how many scientists and experts are happy to discuss — and explain — their findings.
Get educated on topics you seek to research. Knowledge is readily available for those who seek it. Make friends with professionals, academics and experts. In a sense be your own investigative journalist, and even then, remain skeptical. The truth is never black and white, and it’s often much more complex than we are led to believe.
Don’t let any company’s or NGO’s PR influence you. Open financial statements and reports instead and follow the money. This speaks more about a company’s vested interests than any marketing campaign ever will.
Finally, be ready to be wrong. Admit your mistakes. Learn from falling for your own preconceptions, and it will help you peel away yet another layer from your everyday reality.
You may be surprised by what you find. Good luck.
A plane like the kind used by Elevated Access pilots. (photo: Courtesy of Midwest Access Coalition)
It was once the stuff of dystopian fiction. In a post-Roe America, it’s reality
A companion managed to book a rental car and get the patient to Kansas, where she expected to have a medication abortion. “When she got to Kansas,” Dreith says, “She was too far along for them to do a medication abortion. They rescheduled her because they didn’t have appointments that day for a surgical… which pissed me the fuck off because you had this person come all the way from Oklahoma, and now you’re turning them around?”
Midwest Access Coalition was ready to reimburse the patient for a second rental car so she could make the return trip to Kansas, but then her companion bailed. The patient, old enough in the state’s eyes to be forced to carry her unwanted pregnancy to term, was not old enough to rent a car. “She could not get a rental car, so she was freaking out,” Dreith recalls. That’s when Dreith turned to Mike, a volunteer with Midwest Access Coalition who’d been quietly preparing for a moment like this one for several months.
A soft-spoken Midwesterner, Mike (whom Rolling Stone has agreed to only identify by his first name to protect his identity) has been an amateur pilot for more than a decade. It’s an expensive pastime; pilots like himself, he says “sometimes do what we call the $100 hamburger, where we’ll fly from our home airport to a nearby airport that has a restaurant” just to have lunch. After Donald Trump’s election in 2016, Mike started thinking about how he could put his pilot’s license to better use. Last fall, around the time Texas’ abortion snitch law went into effect, he floated the idea of airlifting patients out of abortion deserts to his colleagues at MAC. “I’ve been in this work for about 15 years,” Dreith says, “and it’s one of the few really innovative solutions I’ve heard of.”
Small propeller planes offer several advantages to a patient seeking abortion care in post-Roe America: They can pick you up at any of the regional airports found in virtually every county in America, ferry you across state lines, and return you home within a few hours. In an era in which zealous state legislatures are contemplating laws that would criminalize helping patients travel to receive abortion care, flying private has another advantage: no flight manifests. “There’s no TSA security,” Mike says. “Nobody’s asking you who you are, why you’re there at the airport. It’s as private as you can get, about as safe as you can get without having to sit down on an airplane with a whole bunch of people.”
Last year, Mike reached out to Air Care Alliance, an umbrella organization for nonprofits run by volunteer pilots who lend their equipment and experiences to, for example, airlift supplies or assist evacuations during natural disasters. They connected Mike with another pilot who was interested in the same work. In April, they incorporated as Elevated Access, a coalition of volunteer pilots who are making themselves and their planes available to help transport patients in need of abortion or gender-affirming care to states where they can get those services.
Elevated Access’s website went live on a Friday. That Monday, a draft of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe leaked. In the weeks since, more than 200 pilots have applied to volunteer with Elevated Access. The group is now vetting each one, a process that includes inspecting their flying credentials, their social media accounts, and conducting interviews with two references. “We also ask for some personal statements about their beliefs around abortion and gender-affirming care,” Mike says. Once a volunteer pilot makes it through the vetting process — 67 of them have so far — he or she may be contacted when a patient in need of transportation approaches a nearby abortion fund for help.
The chaos unleashed by the court’s decision last week is likely to increase demand for their services as patients in states where abortion is now banned are scrambling to find appointments in neighboring states and transport to those appointments over longer distances. Dreith is seeing it happen: two weeks ago, a client in Iowa was left in the lurch when the state supreme court abruptly struck down abortion protections: “The Lyft was enroute to pick her up when she called me and said Planned Parenthood just called and canceled her appointment.” Dreith was able to find a new appointment for her in Minnesota, but she doesn’t know if the client, who has since stopped communicating, will end up using it.
Flying private would make sense for that client, if she resurfaces, but it doesn’t make sense in every instance. If, for example, someone in metropolitan Austin needs to fly to an appointment in a city like Denver, it’s much quicker and less expensive to fly commercial. Elevated Access is likely to be most useful for patients located in rural areas — like, for instance, Cameron County, Texas, 680 miles from the closest clinic in New Mexico — or anti-abortion states surrounded by other anti-abortion states, like Louisiana, where the median distance to the nearest clinic is 539 miles. Or between two major cities with no direct flights, like Oklahoma City and Kansas City.
“This isn’t a nonprofit that’s set up to use every day,” Dreith says. “It is for those cases where I have done everything in my power to get them reasonable accommodations for their travel, whether it be a volunteer driver, a commercial airplane, a bus ticket, a train ticket, an Uber, Lyft, whatever — I’ve looked into all those resources and either the cost is too great, or the duration of time someone would have to travel is so egregious.”
The second trip to Kansas was shorter than the first: the flight time was roughly three hours total, instead of the ten it would have taken to drive. The fuel cost for the four-seat, single-engine propeller plane was somewhere between $500 and $600, as opposed to more than $1,000 Dreith calculated it would have been for a two-leg commercial flight and the overnight lodging necessary because of the airline’s flight schedule. (For now, the fuel cost for an Elevated Access flight is borne entirely by the pilot. The group, a 501c3, has applied for an exemption from the FAA that would allow their pilots to be reimbursed for fuel, but they are waiting on approval.)
None of this is ideal. For all the advantages of light aircraft travel, it still takes a huge amount of courage to board a small propeller plane with a virtual stranger and fly across state lines to receive routine medical care. But it is a practical solution to a problem — a problem that in any reasonable society wouldn’t exist at all. A problem that would have been unimaginable even just six years ago.
“Unfortunately, in practical support for abortion care, in this moment, we are all giving up a little bit of control,” Dreith says. “We’re all relying on each other. People are so desperate to get the care that they need and want and deserve that they’ll, you know, do a lot of things to access that care.”
Mike appreciates that. Even as he is working hard to scale Elevated Access up to meet demand in a post-Roe America, he hopes his organization becomes obsolete as quickly as possible. “Long term vision is: we don’t exist,” he says.
The decision scales back a ruling from 2020 that said a large chunk of eastern Oklahoma remains a Native territory. (photo: Patrick Semansky/AP)
The state can prosecute non-Native Americans for crimes committed on tribal land when the victim is Native, the United States Supreme Court rules.
The five-to-four decision on Wednesday cut back on the high court’s ruling from 2020 that said a large chunk of eastern Oklahoma remains a Native territory.
The first decision left the state unable to prosecute Native Americans accused of crimes on tribal lands that include most of Tulsa, the state’s second-largest city with a population of about 413,000.
A state court later ruled that the Supreme Court decision also stripped the state of its ability to prosecute anyone for crimes committed on tribal land if either the victim or perpetrator is Native American.
That would have left the federal government with sole authority to prosecute such cases, and federal officials had acknowledged that they lack the resources to prosecute all the crimes that have fallen to them.
But the high court’s new ruling said the state also can step in when the victims are tribal members.
“The State’s interest in protecting crime victims includes both Indian and non-Indian victims,” conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the court.
Since the 2020 decision, about 43 percent of Oklahoma is now considered “Indian country”, and the issue of the state’s ability to prosecute those crimes “has suddenly assumed immense importance”, Kavanaugh wrote.
In a dissent joined by the court’s three liberal members, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that the decision “allows Oklahoma to intrude on a feature of tribal sovereignty recognized since the founding”.
The case highlighted the already strained relationship between Native tribes in Oklahoma and Republican Governor Kevin Stitt.
The case stemmed from a state court decision to throw out the conviction against Victor Castro-Huerta, who is not Native American. Castro-Huerta was charged by Oklahoma prosecutors with malnourishment of his disabled five-year-old stepdaughter, a member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.
Castro-Huerta has since pleaded guilty to a federal child neglect charge in exchange for a seven-year prison term, though he has not been formally sentenced yet.
The Supreme Court case involved the Muscogee reservation, but later rulings upheld the historic reservations of other Native American tribes in Oklahoma, including the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Quapaw and Seminole nations.
The Cherokee Nation is the country’s largest Native American tribe by population with about 400,000 citizens, about 261,000 of whom live in Oklahoma.
“The exercise of state jurisdiction here would not infringe on tribal self-government. In particular, a state prosecution of a crime committed by a non-Indian against an Indian would not deprive the tribe of any of its prosecutorial authority,” Kavanaugh wrote in the majority opinion.
“That is because, with exceptions not invoked here, Indian tribes lack criminal jurisdiction to prosecute crimes committed by non-Indians such as Castro-Huerta, even when non-Indians commit crimes against Indians in Indian country.”
Justice Neil Gorsuch, a conservative appointee of President Donald Trump who joined the court’s liberal minority in this case, delivered the dissent, accusing the majority of committing “astonishing errors” ignoring the rules established by Congress on tribal sovereignty.
“The real party in interest here isn’t Mr. Castro-Huerta but the Cherokee, a Tribe of 400,000 members with its own government,” Gorsuch wrote. “Yet the Cherokee have no voice as parties in these proceedings; they and other Tribes are relegated to the filing of amicus briefs.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders is calling for fines on airlines that are canceling and delaying flights. (photo: Getty)
"All over this country, airline passengers are growing increasingly frustrated by the massive increase in flight delays, cancellations, and outrageously high prices they are forced to pay for tickets, checked bags and other fees," Sanders wrote in a letter to Buttigieg.
"Thousands of flight disruptions have left passengers and crew members stranded at crowded airports from one end of the country to the other forcing them to miss weddings, funerals, and business meetings and ruining family vacations that have been planned for months in advance."
With air travel demand surging, airlines have been struggling to keep up, due in part to a pilot shortage. When faced with problems such as inclement weather, many airlines have been forced to cancel flights entirely.
In his letter to Buttigieg, Sanders calls on the DOT to require airlines to refund passengers for flights delayed over an hour, impose fines on airlines for flights delayed over two hours, and impose fines on airlines for scheduling flights they are unable to properly staff.
"Taxpayers bailed out the airline industry during their time of need. Now, it is the responsibility of the airline industry and the Department of Transportation to ensure, to the maximum extent possible, that the flying public and crew members are able to get to their destinations on time and without delay," Sanders wrote.
Buttigieg himself has not been spared from travel woes — he told NPR in mid-June that he too had a flight canceled. In a June 16 meeting with airline executives, Buttigieg said he received assurances that airlines are taking extra steps to ensure smooth operations for the Fourth of July weekend, but was still concerned about disruptions.
A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket with Boeings CST-100 Starliner spacecraft launches from Space Launch Complex 41 on May 19, 2022, in Cape Canaveral, Florida. (photo: Joel Kowsky/NASA)
Using a 3D atmospheric chemistry model, researchers from University College London (UCL), Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Cambridge examined the stratospheric ozone and climate impact rocket launches and re-entry had in 2019, as well as the effects of predicted space tourism based on the contemporary billionaire space race, according to a UCL press release.
The findings of the research, “Impact of Rocket Launch and Space Debris Air Pollutant Emissions on Stratospheric Ozone and Global Climate,” were published in the journal Earth’s Future.
The research team found that when rockets introduce soot — which is made up of black carbon particles — straight into the upper atmosphere, their heat retention is 500 times greater than the total of all aircraft and surface soot sources, which leads to a much bigger effect on the climate, UCL said.
“Soot particles from rocket launches have a much larger climate effect than aircraft and other Earth-bound sources, so there doesn’t need to be as many rocket launches as international flights to have a similar impact,” said Associate Professor in Physical Geography at UCL Dr. Eloise Marais, who was co-author of the study, as reported by The Independent.
Currently, the total ozone loss from rockets is fairly minor, but projected space tourism growth shows the possibility that the upper stratospheric ozone layer could be further depleted in the spring in the Arctic, since spacecraft contaminants and the heating caused by rocket re-entry are especially damaging to the stratospheric ozone layer, the UCL press release said.
“Rocket launches are routinely compared to greenhouse gas and air pollutant emissions from the aircraft industry, which we demonstrate in our work is erroneous,” Marais said in the press release.
In order to calculate their findings, details on the chemicals from all 103 worldwide rocket launches in 2019 were gathered by the research team, as well as space junk and reusable rocket re-entry data. Expositions by Blue Origin, SpaceX and Virgin Galactic were also used, and the researchers created a future scenario of a robust space tourism industry.
The team found that after only three years of launches by space tourism rockets, the warming caused by the additional emissions was more than twice that of present-day rockets. This is because of the hybrid synthetic rubber fuels used by Virgin Galactic and kerosene used by SpaceX.
“These findings demonstrate an urgent need to develop environmental regulation to mitigate damage from this rapidly growing industry,” the researchers wrote.
The researchers also found that the effect on the stratospheric ozone layer of regular daily or weekly rocket launches associated with space tourism might jeopardize the recovery that resulted from the implementation of the Montreal Protocol — a 1987 ban on ozone-depleting substances, said the UCL press release.
“The only part of the atmosphere showing strong ozone recovery post-Montreal Protocol is the upper stratosphere, and that is exactly where the impact of rocket emissions will hit hardest. We weren’t expecting to see ozone changes of this magnitude,” said UCL Department of Geography Research Fellow Dr. Robert Ryan, who was co-author of the study, as the press release stated. “This study allows us to enter the new era of space tourism with our eyes wide open to the potential impacts. The conversation about regulating the environmental impact of the space launch industry needs to start now so we can minimise harm to the stratospheric ozone layer and climate.”
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