10 November 22
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Apart from specific issues and candidates that motivated voters on Tuesday, two contrasting parties continue to emerge in America – one, pro-democracy; the other, anti-democracy or neofascist.
The hallmarks of the neofascist party are its cruel nastiness and unwillingness to abide by election results. In other words: Trumpism.
Both were on full display election night as Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake assailed the “cheaters and crooks” whom she claimed were running elections, “BS and garbage,” “incompetent people,” “propagandists,” and “fake media.”
And as Rep. Andy Biggs joked that Nancy Pelosi was “losing the gavel but finding the hammer,” a crude reference to the attack on Pelosi’s husband that left him with a fractured skull.
Other GOP candidates and flaks hurled similar insults -- “Merrick Garland needs some new pantyhose,” “Beto [O’Rourke] is a furry,” Sen. Mark Kelly is a “little man” whose “ears don’t match,” President Biden is a “lost child” with a “very dirty diaper,” Democrats are “lunatics.”
Contrast this feculence with Tim Ryan’s graceful concession speech in the Ohio senate race (I’ve pasted the live version below).
We have too much hate, we have too much anger, there’s way too much fear, there’s way too much division, and we need more love, we need more compassion, we need more concern for each other. These are the important things. We need forgiveness, we need grace, we need reconciliation. … I have the privilege to concede this race to J.D. Vance because the way this country operates is that when you lose an election you concede and you respect the will of the people. We can’t have a system where if you win it’s a legitimate election and if you lose, someone stole it. … We need good people who are going to honor the institutions of this country…. The highest title in this land is citizen, and we have an obligation to be good citizens.
Or with John Fetterman’s humble remarks after the senate race in Pennsylvania was called for him — when, wiping away tears, he told cheering supporters “I'm not really sure what to say right now, my goodness. I am so humbled, thank you so much …. This campaign has always been about fighting for anyone that ever got knocked down that got back up.”
Fetterman had been knocked down last May with a near-fatal stroke — which invited ridicule from Trumpists such as Trump Jr., who told a Sunday-night crowd at a rally in Miami that “if you're going to be in the United States senator, you should have basic cognitive function. It doesn't seem that unreasonable to have a working brain … We're up against a Democrat party today that doesn't believe that a United States senator should not have mush for brain."
Gratuitous cruelty, derision, nastiness — they are one of a piece with authoritarianism because they feed off the same anger and fear. They also fuel the hate and paranoia that are causing Americans to distrust our electoral system and one another. And they can fuel violence.
When I was a kid I was bullied by other kids because I was so short. I remember the ridicule and the cruelty. The worst of the bullying, I later learned, came from kids who were bullied at home, often by abusive parents.
So many Americans feel bullied by the system today — bullied by employers, landlords, hospitals, insurance companies, debt collectors, government bureaucracies, and the like — that they’re easy prey for Trumpism.
This isn’t to excuse these people, but only to explain the likely source of their rage, and how the Trumpists are channeling it.
And why it’s so important to stop all forms of bullying in modern America — not only because such bullying is morally wrong but because its poison spreads throughout our society.
The results of the midterm elections could have been far worse. The extreme grotesqueries of the Trumpist right were soundly defeated — Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, Maine gubernatorial candidate Paul LePage, New Hampshire Senate candidate Don Bolduc, and Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels (who promised if elected that no Democrat could ever win Wisconsin again). Most election-denying candidates for secretary of state were defeated.
As of Wednesday evening, Kari Lake was trailing her Democratic rival for Arizona governor, Katie Hobbs, by a hair. Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (the freshman MAGA Republican from Colorado) was fighting to keep her seat,
But Marjorie Taylor Greene was reelected, as was Andy Biggs, and many other election-deniers. And Trump himself seems intent on launching another run on the White House (and on American democracy) within the week.
Not as bad as it could have been, but deeply concerning nonetheless.
We are still on the brink.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison acknowledges the crowd after speaking about reproductive rights in St. Paul, Minnesota, Oct. 22, 2022. (photo: Abbie Parr/AP)
Keith Ellison defends his progressive mantle in Minnesota’s attorney general race after attacks from all sides.
This year, Ellison found himself caught between his reputation as a progressive attorney general who doggedly pursued lawsuits against corporate criminals, and a Democratic Party attacked for failing to uphold an ambiguous notion of law and order — despite the bona fides of its tough-on-crime president.
Ellison’s prosecution of the police officers responsible for the murder of George Floyd spurred attack ads supported by Minnesota law enforcement groups and Republican super PACs. As The Intercept reported earlier this week, police unions spent some $300,000 against Ellison. His opponent, Republican Jim Schultz, also seized on Ellison’s support for a ballot measure that would have created a Department of Public Safety in Minneapolis as a testament to his weak stance on crime.
Despite the GOP onslaught, Ellison was buoyed by over $4 million in ad spending from allied groups including the People’s Lawyers Project — Minnesota’s extension of the Democratic Attorneys General Association — and a smattering of local and national unions whose workers he has labored to protect. “This is a very clear contrast as to who you’re gonna get: a consumer advocate, a worker’s advocate — or a hedge fund Wall Street lawyer,” Ellison said during an October debate with Schultz.
As the first Muslim member of Congress, Ellison was subjected to unrelenting GOP abuse targeting his faith. One member, Rep. Virgil H. Goode Jr., R-Va., even advocated for preventing Muslims from joining Congress in the wake of Ellison’s electoral success. Through nearly two decades of racist and Islamophobic vitriol, Ellison ascended the progressive ranks, becoming vice chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus before launching a bid for chair of the Democratic National Committee.
The prospect of a progressive Muslim at the helm of the DNC proved too much for the party’s old guard. Another smear campaign, this time orchestrated by members of his own party, attacked Ellison for his Muslim faith and human rights advocacy on behalf of Palestinians. With the backing of party mainstays in the Clinton and Obama camps, Tom Perez defeated Ellison by 30 votes. A coup purging the DNC of Ellison allies and relegating him to an impotent seat as deputy chair ensued, but Ellison maintained his progressive convictions, leaving Congress to successfully run for Minnesota attorney general in 2018.
As Ellison opened up a fundraising edge, outside Republicans, including the Republican Attorneys General Association, went in big on the race. But in their haste to do so, they attracted a serious accusation that they violated campaign finance laws explicitly banning coordination between super PACs and campaigns. According to a complaint submitted by the Democratic Farmer Labor Party, some of the $800,000 in super PAC-funded ads attacking Ellison were signed off on by a registered agent of his opponent — amounting to illegal coordination with an outside group.
Schultz’s campaign described the complaint as a “desperate attack.” But George Soule, vice chair of the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board, determined there was some merit to the DFL’s claim that the ad buy violated the $2,500 campaign contribution limit for donations. A decision from the board on whether to open a formal investigation will take weeks, rendering the impact any violations may have had on the race moot.
As The Lever noted last week, the race also served as a referendum on corporate power and consumer protection. Schultz, a corporate lawyer hailing from the world of hedge funds, has opposed Ellison’s legal action on consumer price gouging, affordable housing, fossil fuel company oversight, and private equity predation. The Harvard-educated Schultz made clear his intention to cut funding for the attorney general’s corporate prosecution division in a move sure to please his hedge fund clients.
Democrats also feared that, with Schultz atop the attorney general’s office, his prior role as a board member on the Human Life Alliance — a radical anti-abortion group — would imperil Minnesotans’ access to abortion. Ellison, following Democrats’ national strategy, hammered his opponent on his prior pro-life advocacy in the context of the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Despite affirming his politics as pro-life, Schultz backed away from the issue, hedging on its importance in the race.
Before polls closed on Tuesday, Ellison wrote, “My opponent’s vision: fear + division. That’s not my vision. MNs are greater than that. We’re strongest when we stick together and help everyone do better. We know everybody counts, everybody matters. No exceptions.”
Four states voted to end slavery. (photo: AP)
A renewed abolitionist movement closed 13th Amendment ‘loopholes’ that allow slavery as punishment for a crime. But a confusingly worded amendment to Louisiana’s constitution sparked fears that the measure could do the opposite of what it intended, Alex Woodward reports
Many state constitutions include similar language, meaning a devastating “loophole” has effectively kept slavery alive with forced labour in prisons across the US.
That exception remains in 20 states, allowing incarcerated workers “to be exploited, underpaid, and excluded from workplace safety protection laws,” according to a report from the American Civil Liberties Union and the University of Chicago Law School Global Human Rights Clinic.
This year, voters in Alabama, Oregon, Tennessee and Vermont have voted to remove slavery language in their state constitutions, a victory for a renewed slavery abolition movement campaigning to close those loopholes in every state and strike out exceptions in the 13th Amendment.
But voters in Louisiana rejected a similar amendment after facing an unlikely opponent: the state lawmaker who championed the measure in the first place.
The proposal was rejected by roughly 61 per cent of Louisiana voters, with 39 per cent of voters in support.
Louisiana’s constitution currently states that “slavery and involuntary servitude are prohibited, except in the latter case as punishment for a crime.”
The amendment proposed changing that language to “slavery and involuntary servitude are prohibited” but that it “does not apply to the otherwise lawful administration of criminal justice.”
Democratic state Rep Edmond Jordan said he feared that the proposed wording would end up doing the opposite of what his measure intended.
“The way that the ballot language is stated is confusing. And the way that it was drafted it could lead to multiple different conclusions or opinions,” he said in a statement.
Public policy nonprofit group Council for a Better Louisiana, which urged voters to reject the amendment, said it is “an example of why it is so important to get the language right when presenting constitutional amendments to voters.”
State legislators are preparing to introduce another attempt with clarified language that could end up on Louisiana ballots as early as next year.
The Abolish Slavery National Network, which has led the End the Exception campaign to remove slavery language from state constitutions, continued to call on voters to support the amendment.
A statement from the group and others who supported the amendment told voters “do not be confused” by the proposal, arguing that “the otherwise lawful activity of the criminal justice system” in place of “except” would not allow for the expansion of slavery.
“This amendment is only a first step in dismantling this aspect of what we consider an extremely predatory system,” the groups said in a statement last month.
Curtis Davis – who spent nearly 26 years in Louisiana State Penitentiary, the site of a former plantation fueled by slave labour that is now among the largest maximum security prisons in the country – is the executive director of the Decarcerate Louisiana and an organiser with the End the Exception coalition.
In a call with reporters last month, he called arguments against the Louisiana amendment “disingenuous at best and intellectually dishonest at worse.”
“The clear legislative intent of this initiative is to remove slavery and involuntary servitude from the constitution,” he said. “Our opponents of our initiative have orchestrated a confusion campaign to mislead voters about the meaning of the bill.”
He said that opposition to the amendment has suggested that an activist judge could sentence people to slavery and “say that that’s actual lawful activity of the criminal justice system,” but that disregards wording in the bill that probits slavery.
“If slavery and involuntary servitude are prohibited, period, than the otherwise lawful activity of the criminal justice system would be something other than the two outlawed parts of our amendment,” he said.
Incarcerated workers in Louisiana prisons earn as little as 2 cents an hour, according to a report from the American Civil Liberties Union and the University of Chicago Law School Global Human Rights Clinic.
But every incarcerated person at Angola, a vast majority of whom are Black, begins their work in the fields, where enslaved people worked hundreds of acres of crops before the property began functioning as a prison in 1880.
Field labourers, supervised by correction officers on horseback, have few chances of promotion to other work, with virtually no access to water, rest or restrooms, according to the report.
And it has been a lucrative business for the state, the report found. A poultry processing plant relied on incarcerated workers to avoid shutting down during the Covid-19 pandemic. A commodities trader bought nearly $2.5m worth of corn and soybeans from the state’s prison industry between 2017 and 2020. And livestock auction companies purchased at least $5m in livestock raised by prison labourers within that same time period.
Today, roughly 800,000 of the more than 1.2 million people incarcerated in state and federal prisons are forced to work, generating roughly $11bn annually.
“Even though slavery was abolished, it truly was just a transfer of ownership from chattel slavery and private ownership to literally state-sanctioned slavery,” Abolish Slavery National Network organiser Savannah Eldrige said in a statement to The Independent. “People ask us, why do we call this slavery? Because that is exactly what it is.”
The Abolish Slavery National Network said the group “looks forward to having a new ballot initiative in front of Louisiana voters as soon as possible so they can finish what they started and abolish slavery in the state once and for all,” according to a statement from the group.
Alabama, Oregon, Tennessee and Vermont join Colorado, Nebraska and Utah to remove similar slavery language in their state constitutions.
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The Board of Health in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, tried to fight Verizon over a 4G tower. (photo: Patrick Dodson/ProPublica)
The wireless industry is rolling out thousands of new transmitters amid a growing body of research that calls cellphone safety into question. Federal regulators say there’s nothing to worry about — even as they rely on standards established in 1996.
Like many people, Bobbie Orsi had never paid close attention to questions about the health effects of cellphone technology. She mostly viewed it as an issue that had long ago been put to rest. But after becoming the chair of Pittsfield’s Board of Health as the complaints emerged, Orsi, a 66-year-old registered nurse who had spent much of her career in public health, decided to educate herself. She combed through a stack of research studies. She watched webinars. She grilled a dozen scientists and doctors.
Over several months, Orsi went from curious, to concerned, to convinced, first, that radio-frequency emissions from Verizon’s 115-foot 4G tower were to blame for the problems in Pittsfield, and second, that growing evidence of harm from cellphones — everything from effects on fertility and fetal development to associations with cancer — has been downplayed in the United States.
Orsi and the Pittsfield board decided to try to do something about Verizon’s tower. They quickly discovered that they would get no help from federal regulators. The Federal Communications Commission, which has responsibility for protecting Americans from potential radiation hazards generated by wireless transmitters and cellphones, has repeatedly sided with the telecom industry in denying the possibility of virtually any human harm.
Worse, from Orsi’s perspective, federal law and FCC rules are so aligned with the industry that state and local governments are barred from taking action to block cell towers to protect the health of their citizens, even as companies are explicitly empowered to sue any government that tries to take such an action. It turned out that Verizon, in such matters, has more legal rights than the people of Pittsfield.
Still, the lawyers for Orsi and her colleagues thought they saw a long-shot legal opening: They would argue that the FCC’s exclusive oversight role applied only to approving cell tower sites, not to health problems triggered after one was built and its transmitters switched on. In April 2022, the Pittsfield Health Board issued an emergency cease-and-desist order directing Verizon to shut down the tower as a “public nuisance” and “cause of sickness” that “renders dwellings unfit for human habitation.” (Several families had abandoned their homes.) The order was the first of its kind in the country. It was, Orsi said, “a gutsy move — maybe naively gutsy.”
Almost as quickly as the battle began, it ended. On May 10, Verizon sued the city in federal court. The company contended that the Pittsfield residents’ medical complaints were bogus. And, in any case, Verizon argued, the cease-and-desist order was barred because federal law gave the FCC the sole power to regulate wireless-radiation risks. Fearing a hopeless and costly David-and-Goliath battle, Pittsfield’s City Council refused to fund the fight. A month later, the Board of Health withdrew its cease-and-desist order.
But it was a signal of a growing fear — other cities have fought cell sites only to be forced to back down — and evidence of a striking shoulder-to-shoulder partnership between a federal agency and the industry it is supposed to regulate. The build-out of a new generation of wireless networks, known as 5G, is amping up the stakes of this conflict for localities across America. It will require an estimated 800,000 new base stations, including both towers and densely spaced “small cell” transmitters mounted on rooftops and street poles. That means nearly tripling the current number of transmitters, and many of them will be placed close to houses and apartments.
The FCC has held firm to its position that there’s no reason for concern. In a statement for this article, a spokesperson said the agency “takes safety issues very seriously” but declined to make officials available for on-the-record interviews.
The FCC is an improbable organization to serve the role of protecting humans. It specializes in technical issues that make the communications system function, not in health and safety. “At the FCC, they feel like this is really not their problem,” said Edwin Mantiply, who dealt with cellphone-radiation issues before retiring from the agency four years ago. “It’s not their job to do this kind of thing. They might have a token biologist or two, but that’s not their job.” The result, Mantiply said, was that in situations where the science isn’t black and white — and it isn’t when it comes to cellphones — the agency tended to listen to the telecom industry, which vehemently insists that cellphones are safe. “They don’t really want to deal with uncertainty,” Mantiply said of the FCC.
In the view of Mantiply and a rising number of scientists, there’s more than enough evidence about cellphone risks to be concerned — and some of the strongest evidence comes from the federal government itself. In 2018, a massive, nearly-two-decade study by the National Toxicology Program, part of the National Institutes of Health, found “clear evidence” that cellphone radiation caused cancer in lab animals. “We’re really in the middle of a paradigm shift,” said Linda Birnbaum, who was director of the NTP until 2019. It’s no longer right to assume cellphones are safe, she said. “Protective policy is needed today. We really don’t need more science to know that we should be reducing exposures.”
The FCC rejected the need for any such action when it reviewed its standards on cellphone radiation in 2019. The agency decided it would continue to rely on exposure limits it established in 1996, when Motorola’s StarTAC flip phone was considered cutting edge.
The way the FCC went about reexamining its standards so dismayed a federal appeals court that, in 2021, it excoriated the agency for what it called a “cursory analysis.” The court accused it of “brushing off” evidence of potential harm and failing to explain its reasoning. The agency’s “silence,” the court said, left unclear whether the government even “considered any of the evidence in the record.” The appeals court ordered the agency to revisit the adequacy of its safeguards.
All this has left Orsi frustrated. Petite and intense, she has been through these sorts of fights before. Years ago, with the eventual support of the Environmental Protection Agency, she helped push General Electric to clean up the toxic chemicals it had dumped in Pittsfield.
Now she feels powerless. “The Board of Health has a mandate to protect the citizens of Pittsfield,” she said. “But the bottom line is the FCC has made it impossible for us to do anything. If a company can come in and do something to make people sick, and the Board of Health has no authority to act, that’s ludicrous.”
To see how completely the U.S. telecom industry has prevailed in the rhetorical war over cellphone safety so far, consider this example. In February 2019, near the end of a hearing largely devoted to extolling the wonders of 5G technology, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., asked representatives of two wireless industry trade groups what sort of research the industry was funding on the biological effects of 5G, which remains largely untested. “There are no industry-backed studies, to my knowledge, right now,” replied Brad Gillen of the CTIA (originally called the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association). “I’m not aware of any,” replied Steve Berry of the Competitive Carriers Association.
Wireless companies maintain that cellphones and base stations operating within the FCC’s exposure limits pose no proven risk. A CTIA spokesperson wrote in a statement, “The consensus of the international scientific community is that radiofrequency energy from wireless devices and networks, including 5G, has not been shown to cause health problems.” Included in that list was the National Cancer Institute. The spokesperson also said the industry is in favor of additional science. (Verizon itself declined to comment on the record for this article.)
In a September 2021 meeting with Pittsfield’s Board of Health, for example, Verizon’s chief expert was a University of Pittsburgh theoretical physics professor named Eric Swanson. He testified that wireless radiation is far too weak to cause cancer or any of the problems the Pittsfield residents were reporting. He suggested they have psychological problems.
Fears of radio-frequency radiation, Swanson declared in the videotaped meeting, are based entirely on “fringe opinion,” backed only by cherry-picked evidence. Swanson said he’d spotted one such study on “an Alex Jones website” and voiced exasperation: “This is the kind of stuff I have to deal with.” Concerns about wireless radiation, he said, are at odds with the overwhelming scientific consensus. “All international bodies,” he said, “declare cellphones to be safe.”
The FCC has been similarly scornful. In a June 2020 Washington Post op-ed, Thomas Johnson, general counsel for the agency during the administration of President Donald Trump, wrote: “Conjectures about 5G’s effect on human health are long on panic and short on science.” Johnson has since decamped to a law firm that represents telecom companies. (Johnson declined requests for comment.)
“It’s a slog at the moment to convince people this isn’t just crazy stuff,” said Louis Slesin, an MIT-trained environmental policy Ph.D. and the editor of Microwave News, an industry newsletter that has chronicled the wireless-radiation debate for four decades. “This is part of the organized campaign to devalue the science, with the government as a co-conspirator. The other really important factor is nobody wants to hear this because everybody loves the technology. If you shut down people’s phones, the country would come to a stop.”
But a growing body of international research asserts that there is reason to worry about harms — many of them unrelated to cancer — from wireless radiation. Henry Lai, an emeritus professor of bioengineering at the University of Washington, has compiled a database of 1,123 peer-reviewed studies published since 1990 investigating biological effects from wireless-radiation exposure. Some 77% have found “significant” effects, according to Lai. By contrast, an earlier review by Lai found that 72% of industry-sponsored studies reported no biological effects.
One branch of research has studied radiation impacts on test animals, mostly rats and mice, but also guinea pigs, rabbits and cows. Another has examined epidemiological patterns, looking for health effects on human groups, such as heavy long-term cellphone users or people living near cellphone towers. Studies have found impacts on fertility, fetal development, DNA, memory function and the nervous system, as well as an association with an array of cancers. Several investigations reported a significantly increased risk of brain tumors, called gliomas, among the heaviest cellphone users. And the International Agency for Research on Cancer, an arm of the World Health Organization, in 2011 classified wireless radiation as “possibly carcinogenic to humans.”
Individual studies underline the value of simple precautions, which include using a headset or speaker and keeping the phone away from direct contact with your body. In 2009, Ashok Agarwal, director of research at the Cleveland Clinic’s American Center for Reproductive Medicine, found that exposing human semen to cellphone radiation for an hour caused a “significant decrease” in sperm motility and viability, impairing male fertility. He advises patients to avoid carrying phones in their pants pockets.
Epidemiological studies show a rise in behavioral disorders among children whose mothers were heavy cellphone users while pregnant, while lab research found hyperactivity and reduced memory in mice exposed in the womb to cellphone radiation. “The evidence is really, really strong now that there is a causal relationship between cellphone radiation exposure and behavior issues in children,” said Dr. Hugh Taylor, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Yale School of Medicine and past president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. The period of fetal brain development is a “very vulnerable time,” he said.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has written that the FCC’s safeguards “do not account for the unique vulnerability and use patterns specific to pregnant women and children.” It urged the agency to adopt measures “protective of children,” warning that their thinner skulls leave them “disproportionately impacted” by cellphone radiation, and called for better consumer disclosure about exposure risks.
Both the FCC and Food and Drug Administration websites dismiss the existence of any special health risk to children. And the agencies don’t counsel people to limit their exposure. Instead they list safety steps, while insisting they’re really not necessary. The FCC’s “Wireless Devices and Health Concerns” page, for example, notes that “some parties” recommend safety measures, “even though no scientific evidence currently establishes a definitive link between wireless device use and cancer or other illnesses.” It then states, in bold: “The FCC does not endorse the need for these practices.” Only then does it list “some simple steps that you can take to reduce your exposure” to radio-frequency energy from cellphones.
Efforts in the U.S. to promote awareness of wireless-radiation risks have sparked fierce industry resistance. In 2014, the CDC added this modest language to its website: “Along with many organizations worldwide, we recommend caution in cellphone use.” An influential industry consultant emailed the CDC within days, as a public-records request later revealed, complaining that “changes are truly needed” in the CDC’s language. The agency quickly softened its warning, which now says: “Some organizations recommend caution in cellphone use.”
The industry’s main trade group, CTIA, has beaten back local consumer-disclosure measures. For example, in 2015, CTIA sued Berkeley, California, after its City Council passed an ordinance requiring retailers to post a safety notice warning customers that carrying a cellphone tucked in a pocket or bra might expose them to excessive radiation. (This was based on FCC guidelines, typically buried in small-print information included with new phones, that phones shouldn’t be kept in direct contact with the head or body.) A five-year legal battle, including a trip to the U.S. Supreme Court, ensued. It ended after the FCC weighed in, saying the ordinance interfered with its exclusive authority by “over-warning” consumers and frightening them “into believing that RF emissions from FCC-certified cellphones are unsafe.” With that, the judge ruled against the city.
“The industry doesn’t want you to pay any attention to that stuff because that just creates anxiety among users,” said Joel Moskowitz, director of the Center for Family and Community Health at the University of California-Berkeley, who advised the city in its fight. “They want you to think these devices are perfectly safe.”
By contrast, more than 20 foreign governments have adopted protective measures or recommended precautions. France requires new phones to be sold with headsets and written guidance on limiting radiation exposures; it also bans phones marketed to small children and ads aimed at anyone younger than 14. Greece and Switzerland routinely monitor radio-frequency radiation levels throughout the country. Britain, Canada, Finland, Germany, Italy, India and South Korea urge citizens to limit both their own exposure and cellphone use by children. The European Environment Agency does too, noting: “There is sufficient evidence of risk to advise people, especially children, not to place the handset against their heads.”
When the FCC’s rules on radio-frequency emissions from phones and transmitters were adopted 26 years ago, just 1 in 6 Americans owned cellphones, which they typically used for short periods. Today, 97% of adults own a cellphone, and they use the device for an average of five hours a day. More than half of children under 12 own a smartphone.
Then and now, the FCC’s rules targeted just one health hazard: the possibility that wireless radiation can cause immediate “thermal” damage, by overheating skin the way a microwave oven heats food. Most experts agree that risk is nonexistent under any but the most unusual circumstances.
Meanwhile, the FCC doesn’t even consider “biological” impacts: the possibility that wireless exposure, even at levels well below the FCC limits, can cause an array of human health problems, as well as harm to animals and the environment. The FCC’s approach matches the industry’s long-standing position: that wireless radiation is simply too weak to cause any nonheating damage.
Of course, the wireless industry has every incentive to take this position. Going back to the 1990s, the industry has recognized the financial peril posed by health concerns over radiation, and it has pressed the public and government to reject them altogether.
In 1994, for example, Motorola swung into action when it learned of troubling research by Lai and a University of Washington colleague, Narendra Singh, who found that two hours of exposure to modest levels of wireless radiation damaged DNA in the brains of lab rats. Such changes can lead to cancerous tumors.
Motorola’s then-PR chief described a strategy to discredit the findings in a pair of memos that were later leaked to Microwave News. Motorola’s approach would serve as a template for the industry’s response to troublesome research over the three decades that followed. The researchers’ methodology would be challenged for raising “too many uncertainties” to justify any conclusions. The scientists’ credibility would be questioned and their findings dismissed as irrelevant. Finally, friendly academics, “willing and able to reassure the public on these matters,” would be recruited to rebut the findings. (At the time, Motorola defended its conduct as the “essence of sound science and corporate responsibility” and affirmed that there was “a sound scientific basis for public confidence in the safety of cellular telephones.”)
Doubters in the government would be neutralized too. As the FCC moved toward adopting wireless-radiation limits in 1996, EPA officials, whose experts had conducted the most extensive government research on wireless-radiation risk, affirmed their concern about possible biological harm in a presentation to the FCC. They urged the FCC to follow a two-stage strategy: to meet a looming congressional deadline by first setting interim limits covering known thermal effects; then to commission a group of experts to study biological risks and develop permanent exposure guidelines.
But the FCC never pursued “Phase 2.” Instead, just months later, Congress completed a multiyear defunding of the EPA’s wireless-radiation group, sidelining the agency from researching the issue. This left most independent study of the issue to scientists in other countries. At the EPA, a lone radio-frequency radiation expert named Norbert Hankin remained, periodically rankling the wireless industry by publicly rebutting “the generalization by many that the [FCC] guidelines protect human beings from harm by any or all mechanisms.”
Going forward, the FCC, which has no in-house health or medical expertise of its own, would increasingly rely on the FDA and industry-influenced technical organizations. (The FDA itself has collaborated with the CTIA, the wireless industry trade group, to study cellphone safety. That research found “no association” between exposure to “cell phones and adverse health effects.”)
Still, there was enough concern among government scientists from multiple agencies that, in 1999, the FDA asked the NTP to “assess the risk to human health.” The NTP conducts detailed lab studies, typically on rodents, to evaluate environmental hazards. Its findings, widely regarded as the gold standard for toxicology work, routinely prompt federal public-health actions.
The FDA requested that the NTP conduct its own animal experiments, which were “crucial” to assess cancer risk because of the long delay between human exposure to a carcinogen and a tumor diagnosis. As an FDA memo put it, “There is currently insufficient scientific basis for concluding either that wireless communication technologies are safe or that they pose a risk to millions of users.”
The NTP study was the biggest the agency had ever conducted and lasted over a decade. It used an unusually large number of rats and mice — some 3,000 — and involved both setting up a lab in Chicago and designing and constructing special radiation-exposure chambers for the rodents in Switzerland. The final report was released in November 2018.
The results were dramatic. The study found “clear evidence” of rare cancerous heart tumors, called schwannomas, in male rats; “some evidence” of tumors in their brains and adrenal glands; and signs of DNA damage. The percentage that developed tumors was small, but, as the study’s authors noted earlier, “Given the extremely large number of people who use wireless communication devices, even a very small increase in the incidence of disease resulting from exposure” could have “broad implications for public health.”
The federal government’s scientists had spoken. But the parts of the government charged with following the science and protecting people responded (in the case of the FCC) by publicly ignoring the results or (in the case of the FDA) pooh-poohing them. The study changed nothing, said Dr. Jeffrey Shuren, director of the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, and the chief official advising the FCC on wireless issues, in a statement at the time of the study’s release. Shuren disputed several key findings and asserted that the study “was not designed to test the safety of cellphone use in humans,” even though his own agency had commissioned it specifically for that reason. He added: “We believe the existing safety limits for cellphones remain acceptable for protecting the public health.” (An FDA spokesperson said Shuren declined to comment.)
The NTP findings, combined with similar results that year from the Ramazzini research institute in Italy and other studies, demanded a strong response, according to three long-time former government experts who spoke to ProPublica. “It should have been the game-changer,” added Moskowitz, the Berkeley public-health researcher.
The former government officials believe the NTP findings should have led to a detailed statistical risk assessment by federal health agencies, spelling out the possible incidence of cancer in the general population; development of stricter FCC limits to address biological risks; prominent user warnings detailing simple steps people should take to minimize their exposure; and dramatically increased research funding.
None of that happened. “Their conclusion was, ‘Oh, there was nothing going on,’” said Birnbaum, the NTP’s then-director and a toxicologist. “Many of us found that very hard to believe.”
Today Birnbaum, who retired in 2019 after 40 years with government health agencies, is tempered in her assessment of the evidence. “Do I see a smoking gun? Not per se. But do I see smoke? Absolutely. There’s enough data now to say that things can happen.” Birnbaum said the NTP results should have triggered a consumer advisory akin to “the black-box warning on a drug, to say this has been associated to possibly cause cancer.”
Even as the NTP study was happening, the FCC in 2013 had been prodded by a Government Accountability Office report to review its radio-frequency exposure limit, unchanged since 1996. “We recognize that a great deal of scientific research has been completed in recent years and new research is currently underway, warranting a comprehensive examination,” the FCC wrote, in opening its inquiry.
Over the six years that followed, 1,200 comments poured into the FCC’s docket, including scores of studies (and a briefing on the NTP findings); appeals for stronger protections signed by hundreds of international scientists; and 170 personal accounts of “electro-sensitivity” radiation sickness, similar to the complaints in Pittsfield, resulting from neighborhood cell towers. An Interior Department letter voiced concern about the impact of radiation from towers on migrating birds, noting that the FCC’s limits “continue to be based on thermal heating, a criterion now nearly 30 years out of date and inapplicable today.”
The FCC was overwhelmed by the flood of comments, according to Mantiply, the agency official most involved in radio-frequency issues during this period. “We didn’t have the resources to even read all the comments,” he told ProPublica.
Mantiply thought higher-ups were ignoring the issue. “There was really nothing being done on it,” he said. “The inquiry was just on a back burner, and the back burner was turned off.” So Mantiply, a soft-spoken physical scientist, decided to take action. In 2017, as the FCC’s review of its wireless standards entered its fourth year, he said, he and three colleagues proposed hiring an outside consulting firm to conduct an environmental assessment, a detailed formal examination, of the submissions on the radiation safety limits. But their boss, Julius Knapp, the head of the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology, summarily rejected the proposal, according to Mantiply. “He said, ‘No, we’re not going to do that.’ He let us know in no uncertain terms. He just rejected it in a single meeting.”
(Knapp, who is now retired, declined to comment on the record. FCC officials, through a spokesperson, declined requests to discuss the matter. Former FCC engineer Walter Johnston, one of the colleagues Mantiply identified as backing his proposal, said he didn’t remember it ever being presented as a “formal recommendation.”)
Mantiply’s proposal came at a time when the Trump White House and FCC commissioners were aggressively promoting 5G. FCC leadership was “not really thrilled with us pushing these inquiries,” Mantiply said. “They just felt like it’d get a lot of attention, that it would be in The Washington Post.”
On his final day at the FCC in August 2018, as he was retiring after 42 years in government, Mantiply raised the issue with FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel during a brief courtesy visit. “Don’t dismiss all this stuff because you’re hearing from industry, and they’re dismissing it,” Mantiply told her. “There’s uncertainty, and we don’t know what’s going on. It’s a very, very difficult problem.” Rosenworcel, he said, listened politely.
Fifteen months later, the FCC voted unanimously to shut down its review after six years. There was no need to change anything, the commissioners concluded. After examining the record, the FCC declared in a written order, it had seen no evidence that the science underlying its standards was “outdated or insufficient to protect human safety.”
The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., disagreed. Responding to a pair of lawsuits filed by the Environmental Health Trust and other activist groups, the court ruled in August 2021 that the FCC had failed to meet “even the low threshold of reasoned analysis” in finding that its limits “adequately protect against the harmful effects of exposure to radiofrequency radiation unrelated to cancer.” (The FCC had responded sufficiently to fears that wireless radiation causes cancer, the judges wrote.)
It was a striking rebuke, given the judiciary’s practice of offering agency decisions a high degree of deference, especially on technical matters. The court wrote that it was taking “no position in the scientific debate” on wireless radiation’s effects, but it was scornful of the FCC’s heavy reliance on three “conclusory” statements from the FDA about safety. In oral argument, one judge also challenged the FCC’s claim that an interagency working group was closely monitoring concerns about wireless exposure on the FCC’s behalf; in fact, the group hadn’t met since 2018.
The FCC’s actions, the court wrote, waved off any concern about protections for children and ignored “substantive evidence of potential environmental harms.” And the FCC had said nothing about the potential impacts of the many technological changes, including 5G, that had taken place since 1996. “Ultimately,” the court wrote, “the Commission’s order remains bereft of any explanation as to why, in light of the studies in the record, its guidelines remain adequate.”
With that, the court sent the issue back to the FCC, for either a fresh review of its 26-year-old standard or better explanations to justify it. In the 15 months since, the FCC, now led by Rosenworcel, who was elevated by President Joe Biden, has taken no formal action.
In its statement to ProPublica, the FCC said it is exploring “next steps” with its “federal partners.” However, the FDA, the FCC’s chief partner on health concerns, said in its own statement that it is not currently working with the FCC on any response to the court ruling. There’s been no visible sign of any preliminary FCC steps, according to four lawyers and representatives of the environmental groups that brought the court challenge.
In the past few years, with the appearance of more neighborhood cell towers and transmitters, pressure has begun to rise on this issue beyond environmental groups, longtime activists and officials in liberal jurisdictions. In November 2020, a bipartisan state commission in New Hampshire charged with investigating 5G issued a detailed report concluding that wireless radiation “poses a significant threat to human health and the environment.” Among its recommendations: that all new cell towers be at least 1,640 feet (500 meters) from any residence, school or business. And in April, Mark Gordon, the Republican governor of Wyoming, wrote to Rosenworcel, urging the agency to reexamine its radiation limits based on “current scientific research” to make sure “the health and safety of our citizens is prioritized.”
In Pittsfield, Orsi and her colleagues on the board have grown resigned to their inability to take action against Verizon. Reactions have varied around town. One group of affected neighbors is waging its own separate long-shot legal battle with the company. Others are coping with dark humor. Before Halloween, the local daily suggested dressing up as a cellphone tower to “strike fear in the heart of your neighbors.” Nobody in Pittsfield is holding out hope that the federal government will intervene.
“It’s very natural for the FCC to listen to the industry,” said Mantiply, the former agency staffer. “That’s their audience and who they deal with most of the time.” But, he added, “They’re answering to industry more than anything.”
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Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert arrives to the U.S. Capitol for a House vote on March 18. (photo: Tom Williams/Getty)
Boebert could lose her Colorado House race. It would be a stunning upset.
Boebert was trailing Democrat Adam Frisch by less than 100 votes as of Thursday morning in the House race for Colorado’s Third District, which includes much of the western half of the state.
The closeness of the race is surprising given the district’s Republican lean and polling that heavily favored Boebert ahead of Election Day. A loss for her would suggest that voters are fed up with the controversy and antics that Boebert has trafficked in since taking office, and would be a notable rebuke of one of former President Donald Trump’s most vocal and bombastic backers in Congress. It also would nod to concerns expressed by her constituents — some of whom have said that she seems to care more about her celebrity than addressing issues in the district, including funding for infrastructure, which would bolster steel jobs in the area.
During her tenure in the House, Boebert, previously a gun rights activist, has spent much of her time on attention-grabbing stunts including Islamophobic comments targeting Rep. Ilhan Omar, attempts to carry a gun throughout the Capitol, and heckling President Joe Biden during his State of the Union address. She’s faced scrutiny for these actions as well as for controversial social media posts advancing false and dangerous theories suggesting that LGBTQ people “groom” children.
Frisch, a moderate businessman and former Aspen city council member, has attempted to appeal to voters tired of what he described as the “angertainment” Boebert provides. He’s also leaned into qualms constituents have had about the focus Boebert has put on her own image versus delivering for the district. A Frisch win would be a surprising pick-up for Democrats in a place that Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan political analysis firm, has rated as Solid Republican.
His ability to unseat a high-profile and far-right lawmaker would also signal that there are still limits to the controversial approach that Boebert, and others such as former Rep. Madison Cawthorn, have taken to politics.
How Boebert’s race got so close
Polling up until this point had Boebert as the likely winner: FiveThirtyEight’s predictive model, for example, gave Frisch a 3 in 100 chance of taking the district.
And while it’s still possible that Boebert could eke out a victory, the unexpected tightness of this election suggests that she’s facing significant backlash from certain voters since getting elected just two years ago.
In that timeframe, Boebert has fielded pushback from her constituents for the stunts she’s pulled as well as her ultra-conservative approach to policy. Boebert has supported hardline immigration policies that would bring back the “remain in Mexico” program as well as proposals to preserve expansive gun rights. She’s also garnered criticism for evangelizing QAnon conspiracy theories on social media, sharing updates about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, and calling for a Christian takeover of government. Plus, certain residents haven’t been satisfied with how responsive she is to their day-to-day policy needs.
Frisch, Boebert’s centrist Democratic opponent, has argued that Boebert’s interest in elevating her own profile as a social media influencer and television commentator surpasses her commitment to representing the district — calling out the fact that none of the bills she’s sponsored have passed. He’s also sought to sway Republican voters by stressing that he’d work across the aisle if he were elected and by promising to join a bipartisan group of lawmakers known as the Problem Solvers Caucus.
“I have this calm belief that that 40 percent of the Republican Party wants their party back,” Frisch has said.
This race could potentially take longer to settle, depending on if Boebert requests a recount. In Colorado, a recount is automatically triggered if candidates are within 0.5 percentage points of one another, and any candidate can request one if the margin is bigger than that.
A Boebert loss would add to Trump’s not-so-great election week
If Boebert loses, it would deal another blow to Trump this week.
Already, several of the high-profile candidates he’s backed, including Pennsylvania Senate candidate Mehmet Oz and House candidates Bo Hines and John Gibbs have lost their elections. Some of his picks, including Ohio Senate candidate and author J.D. Vance, were successful, but the overall picture hasn’t necessarily been a strong one for Trump. That’s been the case even as some of his potential 2024 rivals — like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) — had solid showings themselves.
Boebert’s struggles follow those of Cawthorn earlier this year. Much like Boebert, Cawthorn drew attention for his far-right views and a number of high-profile scandals, including trying to carry a firearm through airport security and claiming that colleagues had invited him to an orgy. He ultimately lost his primary because members of his own party turned against him and backed an alternative candidate.
If Boebert is defeated, that would be the latest development to signal that Trump’s support can only go so far, and that many voters aren’t willing to support contentious lawmakers who don’t deliver results.
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Attenders say actions of Egyptian authorities are threatening their participation at conference. (photo: Getty)
Attenders say actions of Egyptian authorities are threatening their participation at conference
Problems reported by attenders include overt surveillance, control of their meetings by conference staff and problems with accommodation.
International civil society participants, all of whom requested anonymity for their protection, told the Guardian how uniformed or plainclothes conference staff supposedly on hand to provide security, technical, or cleaning assistance to delegates, seemed preoccupied with surveilling them and controlling their activities rather than providing support.
“Just talking about the word activism means you are very quickly surrounded by people eavesdropping on you,” said one. Conference staff, he said, repeatedly surrounded civil society delegates to create an atmosphere of discomfort if they mentioned the word activism in conversation, or tried to discuss it with colleagues.
“Mentioning activism in conversation means you get ‘cleaners’ and technical staff coming over to you. Even on foreign government stands, the ‘cleaners’ will come up and listen,” he said.
The problems described by visiting attenders mirror many of the everyday problems that Egyptian civil society activists describe facing over the past decade, as the Egyptian authorities and in particular the country’s sprawling security forces institute a broad crackdown on independent organisations of all kinds.
Surveillance and intimidation of activists as well as the looming threat of arrest are common, while independent groups, from anti-torture organisations to unions, face raids and arrest by the security forces, now equally brazen about targeting activists abroad or disrupting their activities.
Veteran Egyptian activists welcomed the opportunity for the world to understand more about how they are regularly treated. “Once Egypt was selected as hosts, some people wanted to campaign against it or choose a different location, we said no don’t do that. Then some voices from outside Egypt wanted to call on activists to boycott the Cop in Egypt because of the human rights situation, we pleaded with them not to do that. Because we needed this – we needed the attention, we needed the solidarity, we needed the camaraderie,” said Hossam Bahgat, the head of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. Bahgat has been harassed by the Egypt state for a decade for his human rights work through arrests and trials, and is banned from leaving Egypt.
For those who attended the conference, especially high-profile Egyptian activists, the surveillance was overt. One delegate provided a photo of a suspected plainclothes member of the Egyptian security services openly filming Sanaa Seif, the sister of the jailed British-Egyptian hunger strike Alaa Abd el-Fattah, with his phone when she held a press conference at Cop27. The pro-government MP Amr Darwish attempted to disrupt Seif’s press conference.
A member of civil society from Egypt said the surveillance and intimidation was “signalling to everyone that we have to behave, or else. It’s really very hard,” he said. “Unlike other Cops, everyone seems to feel afraid due to this surveillance. There’s less activity, you don’t feel the spirit of the event, a push for climate activism and against the big polluters.”
He added that he was concerned about the number of Egyptian security officials present inside the Cop27 conference centre and “blue zone” official area, when the space is normally controlled by the UN body that oversees the conference. The result, he added, was that groups felt unable to freely discuss climate activism or liaise with like-minded groups – the reasons they were attending in the first place. “Everyone is afraid, and this huge security presence is forcing people to self-censor,” he said.
Another visitor described how pressure from security guards at Cop27 had affected their ability to move freely during the conference. “One of our group described their suspicion today that security guards were standing close by and seemingly recording people talking. For a short period, these guards followed them wherever they went,” they said.
“We also held a meeting in a room that we had been assigned to, but we attempted to move to a more public open part of the venue to converse instead because the guards were so attentively sitting right behind us. They told us we had to stay in the room and keep talking there. It felt very invasive.”
Some attenders have reported problems even before getting to Egypt. A climate activist from Europe said that when he tried to check into his Egyptair flight he was told there was a problem and that he needed to face further questions.
At the airport, the activist said, he was questioned by a manager for Egyptair, a state-owned company, about petitions he had previously signed calling for improved human rights in the country. “He said that I was dealing with matters of national interest to Egypt and that he wanted to know what I will be doing in Egypt, what I will be doing there, and if I will be meeting troublemakers,” the activist said.
The manager eventually allowed the man to board the flight but warned him that if he did anything to “intervene” in Egypt he would be banned from the country. “It was disturbing and quite unpleasant,” said the activist.
Attenders of Cop27 have also reported being extorted by hotels for more money after booking rooms. One activist who arrived in Sharm el-Sheikh was told he must pay an extra $1,800 (£1,580) for his week’s stay at his hotel if he was attending Cop27, despite already having paid the previously agreed the $1,000 asking price. Unable to pay this extra charge, the man has opted to stay in his hotel as a tourist, rather than attend the conference.
A document circulated by the Egyptian Hotel Association, seen by the Guardian, requests that five-star hotels in Sharm el-Sheikh charge a minimum of $500 a night for delegates. Three-star hotels should charge $200 a night, the document states. A Nigerian civil society activist tweeted that some Cop27 delegates were forced to sleep in the bus station because they were unable to afford unexpected price increases, while others complained that their hotels had been cancelled.
One youth delegate, who was invited by the Egyptian sports ministry to attend Cop27 with her organisation, told the Guardian that she had burst into tears after five hours of waiting for a hotel room in the lobby with other attenders shortly after arriving in Sharm el-Sheikh, and that many of those she waited with slept on sofas in the hotel lobby or on the floor. She described the problems with accommodation as “a massive roadblock” to being able to participate in the conference.
“It’s super demotivating,” she said. “It feels like we’re literally worthless and it doesn’t matter if we sleep on the streets. It demonstrates that this is all just for show.”
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Electric vehicle charging station in Los Angeles, California. (photo: Getty)
Proposition 30 would have taxed the state’s wealthiest residents to subsidize EVs, charging infrastructure and wildfire protection. But public support flagged after Gov. Newsom became the face of the opposition.
Official ballot materials said Proposition 30 would provide funding for programs to reduce air pollution and prevent wildfires by increasing tax on personal income over $2 million. The roughly 35,000 Californians who make more than $2 million would have been required to pay an additional 1.75 percent on income above that amount.
The tax on these high-income earners—0.08 percent of Californians—would raise about $3.5 billion to $5 billion annually, according to the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office.
A statewide poll conducted in September by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California, or PPIC, found that 55 percent of likely voters would vote yes on Prop 30, 40 percent would vote no and 5 percent weren’t sure.
Then ads featuring Newsom calling Prop 30 a “trojan horse” started hitting TV and computer screens. “Fellow Californians, I need to warn you about Proposition 30, one company’s cynical scheme to grab a huge taxpayer-funded subsidy,” Newsom said in one TV spot. The words “Warning” and “Don’t Be Fooled”appeared in big letters behind the governor.
“Prop 30 is being advertised as a climate initiative but in reality it was devised by a single corporation to funnel state income taxes to benefit their company,” he said.
The “single corporation,” excerpted text behind Newsom made clear, is Lyft, the measure’s top funder. Ride-sharing companies like Lyft must electrify 90 percent of the miles driven by their fleets by 2030, as part of the state’s climate targets.
Newsom’s campaign against Prop 30 worked. A month after his ad blitz, support for the measure dropped to 41 percent, with 52 percent opposed and 7 percent undecided, a statewide PPIC poll found just one month after finding majority support.
The main thing that happened to boost the no side between the two polls was a governor with favorable approval ratings coming out against the proposition, said PPIC president and CEO Mark Baldassare. And most of what the no side had to say came from the governor saying, “I’m against this, we’ve already taken care of this, don’t be fooled.”
Once people hear things like “Don’t be fooled,” even for things they support, it’s relatively easy for them to vote no, Baldassare said.
It doesn’t matter if they’re in favor of electric vehicle funding and taxing millionaires, he added. “If there’s any sense that there’s either confusion or uncertainty on the voters’ part for initiatives, it’s really easy for people to say no. That’s why historically only about a third of initiatives pass.”
Eighty percent of Democrats were supporting Prop 30 in the first PPIC poll before the governor came out against it, Baldassare said. “I think that just raised doubts for enough people, and gave them reason to pause and think, ‘Why do I want to support this?’”
Leading the Opposition
Newsom tops the list of opposition funders, with his ballot committee and campaign donating more than $1.8 million to defeat the measure, according to state campaign finance filings.
Lyft donated the lion’s share of the $50 million supporting the proposition, along with members of a clean air coalition led by California Environmental Voters with support from the state Democratic Party.
Despite the opposition’s rhetoric, nothing in the language of the proposition steers money toward Lyft, said Bill Magavern, policy director for the Coalition for Clean Air, which backed Prop 30. “That is a hoax that was perpetrated by the opposition. There was nothing in there to favor a special interest.”
Someone who drives for Lyft right now is eligible for a rebate to buy an EV like anyone else, said Magavern. “The measure would not have changed that.”
Plus, the money for vehicle rebates would have gone to the California Air Resources Board, or CARB, which regulates greenhouse gases, and the agency would then have discretion over how to spend it, Magavern said.
What’s more, supporters say, it wasn’t Lyft but environmental groups that came up with the idea for the proposition, which they did long before the ride-hailing company got involved.
Several environmental groups began serious discussions a few years ago about putting a measure on the ballot, Magavern said, “to really do the job of cleaning up transportation in California.”
Transportation accounts for about half of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions, almost 80 percent of toxic nitrogen oxide pollution and 90 percent of particulate pollution from diesel engines, according to the state energy commission. Nitrogen oxide and particulate matter cause serious health problems by damaging the lungs and heart.
Prop 30 guaranteed at least half of the vehicle and infrastructure funding would go to disadvantaged and low-income Californians, said Magavern. A “huge reason” for the coalition’s support, he said, was to help those who are most harmed by air pollution and climate change and “are usually last in line for the clean mobility they need.”
“We’ve been looking for a long time for a steady, reliable source of funding for incentives to replace our dirty old engines and trucks and buses and cars with zero emission engines,” Magavern said. “And Prop 30 offered the opportunity to do that, and really to go a long way towards ending air pollution in California.”
The Santa Rosa-based nonprofit Climate Center was among those discussing the potential of a ballot measure in 2020. Lyft wasn’t involved until after CARB enacted the zero-emission vehicle rule for ride-hailing services, said Woody Hastings, the center’s energy program manager.
Hastings said he was disappointed to see a popular governor engage in a campaign “that was misleading at best.”
Beyond implying that the proposition would funnel money to Lyft, opposition materials indicated that there would be a tax impact for a broad swath of people. “That also was not true,” he said, and sowed confusion and uncertainty.
It’s true that Lyft would benefit indirectly from funding that helps drivers in their fleets transition to electric vehicles, said Ryan Schleeter, The Climate Center’s communications director. “But more electric cars on the road for ride-sharing services is also good for the rest of us.”
A major focus for The Climate Center has been to find ways to generate funding for programs that meet both air quality and climate goals equitably, he said. “California has a good track record on deploying climate solutions and clean energy and innovating. But we don’t have a very good track record of doing so equitably.”
Some have speculated that the reason Newsom opposed the measure had more to do with his plans to run for higher office and the fact that wealthy donors opposed it.
When asked about supporters’ claims that the governor misrepresented what the proposition would do, his staff did not address specific questions but instead shared information about Newsom’s programs to transition to zero-emission vehicles, or ZEVs.
“The Governor has spearheaded a $10 billion ZEV package to make these vehicles more affordable and accessible than ever before, providing the most robust financial assistance programs in the nation,” said Alex Stack, Newsom’s deputy communications director.
Toward a Clean Energy Future
One of the groups joining Newsom in opposing Prop 30 was the California Teachers Association. They argued that the measure “puts a special interest lock box” on the new revenues from taxing high-income earners. Such taxes are normally the largest source of funding for California’s K-12 schools and community colleges, CTA president Toby Boyd argued in opposing Prop 30.
Boyd did not respond to a question for comment. But observers say it’s unclear how the measure would have affected revenues allocated to other programs.
PPIC’s Baldassare worries about what message Prop 30’s failure sends to voters. The governor is saying “I’ve got this,” yet California is far from its goal of transitioning to zero-emission vehicles. Barely 18 percent of new cars sold are zero-emitting vehicles in California, less than 5 percent in the nation.
Yet the rejection of Prop 30 has left voters confused about what the priorities should be.
Climate change policy is something Democratic and labor constituencies have very strong feelings about, he said. “So when you have a no vote like this, what does it say about the path forward when there’s divided loyalties around an issue as important as electric vehicles?”
“It’s absolutely untrue for the governor to say, ‘We got this,’” said Hastings, when it will require dramatic changes to avoid severe impacts from a changing climate.
The Climate Center’s approach to the climate crisis is to adhere to the latest science, Hastings said, and that means reducing greenhouse gases by more than 40 percent by 2030. He applauded the governor for allocating budget resources to the problem but added, “it’s definitely not enough.”
California will soon be the world’s fourth largest economy, with a massive amount of heavy-duty and long-haul traffic to import and export goods, Hastings said. “We need all hands on deck with full funding.”
And that means more funding for clean emission vehicles, with transportation accounting for roughly half the greenhouse gas emissions in the state. Prop 30 would have provided a significant funding mechanism toward that effort, Hastings said.
The failure of Prop 30 condemns Californians to continue to have “by far the worst air pollution in the entire country,” Magavern of the Coalition for Clean Air said. “We’ve had summers of horrendous wildfires, and smog and particle pollution, and Prop 30 was a chance to take us to a clean air future.”
Instead, Magavern said, “we’re going to continue to be plagued by smoke and soot and smog in our air, which means thousands of people will die unnecessarily every year in California from air pollution. We could have stopped that.”
Undaunted, Hastings vows to keep fighting for a clean energy economy to ensure a livable, sustainable planet.
“We’re not giving up,” he said. “We want to come back with either another ballot initiative or another push for additional budget allocations to keep the ball rolling.”
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