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Hunter Walker | A Plot to Overturn an American Election
Hunter Walker, Talking Points Memo
Walker writes: "The messages you are about to read are the definitive, real-time record of a plot to overturn an American election."
TPM Has Obtained Explosive Evidence Uncovered By The January 6 Select Committee
The messages you are about to read are the definitive, real-time record of a plot to overturn an American election.
TPM has obtained the 2,319 text messages that Mark Meadows, who was President Trump’s last White House chief of staff, turned over to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. Today, we are publishing The Meadows Texts, a series based on an in-depth analysis of these extraordinary — and disturbing — communications.
The vast majority of Meadows’ texts described in this series are being made public for the very first time. They show the senior-most official in the Trump White House communicating with members of Congress, state-level politicians, and far-right activists as they work feverishly to overturn Trump’s loss in the 2020 election. The Meadows texts illustrate in moment-to-moment detail an authoritarian effort to undermine the will of the people and upend the American democratic system as we know it.
The text messages, obtained from multiple sources, offer new insights into how the assault on the election was rooted in deranged internet paranoia and undemocratic ideology. They show Meadows and other high-level Trump allies reveling in wild conspiracy theories, violent rhetoric, and crackpot legal strategies for refusing to certify Joe Biden’s victory. They expose the previously unknown roles of some members of Congress, local politicians, activists and others in the plot to overturn the election. Now, for the first time, many of those figures will be named and their roles will be described — in their own words.
Meadows turned over the text messages during a brief period of cooperation with the committee before he filed a December 2021 lawsuit arguing that its subpoenas seeking testimony and his phone records were “overly broad” and violations of executive privilege. The committee did not respond to a request for comment on this story. Since then, Meadows has faced losses in his efforts to challenge the subpoena in court. However, that legal battle is ongoing and is unlikely to conclude before next month, when the incoming Republican House majority is widely expected to shutter the committee’s investigation. Earlier this year, Meadows reportedly turned over the same material he gave the select committee to the Justice Department in response to another subpoena. These messages are key evidence in the two major investigations into the Jan. 6 attack. With this series, the American people will be able to evaluate the most important texts for themselves.
Meadows has not, thus far, responded to multiple requests for comment. The texts Meadows provided to the select committee encompass the period from election night in 2020 through President Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2021. It is not clear which, if any, texts Meadows withheld from the committee, but the text message log offers multiple hints it is only a partial record of his conversations. There are discussions that clearly lack prior context and messages where participants indicate there is further communication taking place on encrypted channels.
But despite the seeming gaps, Meadows’ text record is still incredibly revealing. Some of the contents of the log were published in “The Breach,” a book about the Jan. 6 attack that I co-wrote with Denver Riggleman, a former Republican congressman and senior technical adviser to the committee. In our book, Riggleman described how he and his fellow committee investigators dubbed Meadows’ text log “the crown jewels” because they served as the “road map to an insurrection.” Along with the text messages that appeared in “The Breach,” some of Meadows’ messages have also been revealed by media outlets. The Washington Post published his exchanges with Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Some of Meadows’ conversations with Fox News personalities and other members of the media were disclosed by the select committee. CNN and I have published Meadows’ conversations with some Republican members of Congress including; Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY), Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). Additionally, CNN has published Meadows’ texts with Fox News personality Sean Hannity and his messages from the period directly surrounding the Jan. 6 attack. However, there’s more. So much more.
TPM is kicking off this series with an exclusive story showing that the log includes more than 450 messages with 34 Republican members of Congress. Those texts show varying degrees of involvement by members of Congress, from largely benign expressions of support for Trump to the leading roles played by Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Jody Hice (R-GA), Mo Brooks (R-AL), and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in the plot to reverse Trump’s defeat. We reached out to all these legislators, and will be detailing their roles and responses to our questions in the first installment of the series, which is coming later today.
Committee investigators received the text messages from Meadows’ legal team without names associated with the individual texts, only phone numbers. They tied phone numbers to individuals based on law enforcement databases of public records and their own intelligence work. For these stories, we are relying on the identifications of those texting with Meadows that were made by the committee’s investigators. We have indicated where we were able to independently confirm their work through our own public records searches and reporting. The text message contents received by the committee contained tokens that replaced emojis and certain punctuation. They also include many typos and grammatical errors. Other than replacing tokens where they seemed to clearly be standing in for apostrophes, we have strived to present these texts in their original format as received by the committee. TPM has conducted an in-depth review of Meadows’ entire text log with a team of reporters and editors working over five weeks.
Much of the undemocratic attempt to reverse Trump’s defeat played out in the public eye. Lawyers allied with Trump and his campaign launched a failed legal blitz that sought to challenge the election results based on questionable evidence. Republican politicians and activists staged months of rallies around the country to protest the vote. It all culminated on Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump appeared at a rally on the Ellipse and urged his die-hard supporters to “fight like hell” as his loss was being certified at the U.S. Capitol. Thousands of Trump supporters, including many who marched directly to the Capitol from Trump’s speech, stormed into the building, smashed windows, and fought brutally with law enforcement, leading to multiple deaths and a brief interruption in the electoral certification. That evening, surrounded by National Guard troops and broken glass, 147 Republicans voted to overturn the results
Meadows’ text log shows what the scheme to subvert the 2020 election looked like behind the scenes. It reveals the roots of the violence and its key enablers in Washington. The messages show the plot began well before Jan. 6 and continued afterward. They are essential documentation of a dark day in American history.
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'It’s a bad, bad feeling,’ said Johnny Traweek, who was held in a Louisiana prison past his release date. 'Every day, I’m getting up and thinking I’m going to get out.’ (photo: Verónica G. Cárdenas/NYT)
Some Prisoners Remain Behind Bars in Louisiana Despite Being Deemed Free
Glenn Thrush, The New York Times
Thrush writes: "About 200 to 250 inmates are held beyond their legal release dates in any given month, with the average additional time lasting around 44 days in 2019."
About 200 to 250 inmates are held beyond their legal release dates in any given month, with the average additional time lasting around 44 days in 2019.
The judge told Johnny Traweek he had served his time, seven months, for hitting someone with a saucepan in a drunken fight, then suggested he could be released from the Orleans Parish prison by midnight.
Mr. Traweek began giving away his jailhouse comforts — a blanket, two orange sweatshirts, ramen, soda. Then he waited out the final hours of May 2, 2018, his last legal day behind bars.
Midnight came, midnight went. Around 4 a.m., Mr. Traweek was lying in bed, eyes open, when the staff summoned inmates for predawn breakfast. He would repeat that routine, including the sleepless nights, 19 more days because the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections did not process his paperwork in a timely manner.
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Valerii Hnedov demonstrates how his captors threatened to sever his ear with scissors, on Nov. 19, 2022. (photo: Francis Farrell/The Kyiv Independent)
Waterboarding, Electrocution and a Kidnapped Son: Ex-General Tells of Torture in Kherson
Francis Farrell, The Kyiv Independent
Farrell writes: "Standing in line in liberated Kherson for a box of pasta and canned goods with a handsome black dog on a lead, Valerii Hnedov doesn't look like someone who only three weeks prior was languishing in a Russian torture chamber."
Standing in line in liberated Kherson for a box of pasta and canned goods with a handsome black dog on a lead, Valerii Hnedov doesn't look like someone who only three weeks prior was languishing in a Russian torture chamber.
Cutting a proud figure at well over six feet tall, the 72-year-old Hnedov was amicable and quick to invite conversation.
"Of course I'm happy the Russians are gone, they took so much from me," he told the Kyiv Independent. "My son has disappeared, we haven't heard from him in a month, since we were both in the Hole (prison) together.”
Hnedov, a former Soviet intelligence officer, spent six weeks in near unlivable conditions in Russian custody during the occupation of Kherson. In this time, he was subjected to numerous brutal torture methods, including electrocution and waterboarding, while his family members were pressed to pay a ransom for his release.
Hnedov's story is as extraordinary as it is commonplace. Testimonies of extreme brutality at the hands of Russian troops never fail to horrify, but mountains of evidence from liberated territories have shown that extrajudicial arrests, beatings, and other forms of torture were the rule rather than the exception in occupied Ukraine.
Local prosecutors say they have found four locations so far in Kherson where Ukrainians were tortured. Speaking to locals on the streets of the city, it's difficult to find someone who doesn't know of a friend or family member who was taken.
Hnedov spoke in depth with the Kyiv Independent in his apartment in central Kherson. With electricity yet to be restored, the flat was dark bar the kitchen, flooded by golden sunlight streaming in through thin curtains. Broken furniture, personal belongings piled up chaotically, and empty spaces once occupied by home appliances show the telltale signs of Hnedov's encounter with Russian occupation.
Unwanted intruders
Hnedov was born in Kherson, but has lived a life beyond the imagination of most of his fellow residents. In his younger years, Hnedov served for decades as a general in the Soviet Union's military intelligence agency, from East Germany and the war in Afghanistan to Yemen and Yugoslavia, where he met his wife Tetiana.
When Russia invaded Ukraine's eastern Donbas region in 2014, Hnedov came out of retirement for six months to lend his vast expertise to independent Ukraine as a volunteer reconnaissance consultant.
"My wife was very much against me going, so I told her I was just going to work as a guard, which I was, wasn't I?" he joked. "I was a guard, I was guarding my homeland, Ukraine."
When Russian troops occupied Kherson in the first days of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, Hnedov knew that a man with a background like his own would be an early target for arrest.
First, however, they came for his stepson Rostyslav, a 22-year-old trainee officer in the Naval Academy of Ukraine. As Hnedov understands it, one evening in April, Rostyslav was drinking with friends when he began showing off with a personal firearm that Hnedov had kept, against the law, from his time in service.
"I've been told his friends betrayed him to the Russians," he said, "and that he was taken near Kakhovka," a town on the other side of the Dnipro River, still under occupation.
Over summer, masked men without insignia began to conduct unannounced raids on Hnedov's apartment, searching for more hidden weapons.
"The first time, they called me from Rostyslav’s telephone and greeted me as if it were him waiting outside," Hnedov recalled. "I was over the moon, I rushed to open the front door, and there they stood, at least half a dozen men. They put me up against the wall and headed straight up the stairs."
Hnedov had kept one of his old service pistols hidden in his apartment, which the intruders found only on their sixth raid, after throwing most of his belongings out onto the street.
On this day, recalled by Hnedov as being around Sept. 18, the masked men did away with formalities, breaking down the apartment's steel door by force. In his testimony, this was when he was first tortured, in his own home, right before the arrest.
In describing his torture, Hnedov is fond of physical reenactment. "Here, let me hold your hand down like this, but imagine my hand is a hot iron, that's what they used," he demonstrated.
"Now imagine a rubber mallet in my other hand, and I'm shouting at you: 'Where is the gun, you bastard! What's that, you can't hear, or are you staying silent on purpose, b*tch?" Hnedov's impression of the masked Russian intruder is uncanny; his voice swells in anger as he raises his arm to emulate a blow to the head with the mallet.
"Then, they took a plastic pipe, and continued to beat me over the head," he said. Hnedov's fake anger gives way to childish giggling. "Problem was, my head turned out to be stronger than the pipe."
Finally, he was arrested, with a black plastic bag placed over his head and hands bound by tightly-drawn cable ties. "'You're coming with us' is all they said," Hnedov recalled.
Into the Hole
Hnedov was taken by car to an unknown location, known informally as the Hole, a term for makeshift prisons ubiquitous throughout the former Soviet Union. "I have no idea where it was in the city," he said. "Maybe it was some important building at some point, I remember the mosaic floors in one room."
When Hnedov was first brought in, still unable to see anything because of the bag, a meeting was arranged with his son in an interrogation room. Unable to see Rostyslav through the bag, the exchange was brief yet agonizing.
"I heard his voice," Hnedov recalled. "'Dad, you taught me to tell the truth,' he said. 'Yes, I taught you to tell the truth,' I said. 'But before you speak, you need to think, a word is not a sparrow, once you let it out you cannot catch it again.'"
Then, Hnedov was taken down a narrow, dark staircase for his own personal interrogation, which came with another round of torture. Before the interrogator began to question Hnedov, he had a disclaimer to add.
"'We don't give a f*ck what happens to you,' they told me. 'You could die in five minutes and we will drag you out of here and throw you in the Dnipro, or on the roadside outside the city. We won't bury you, you'll just lie there and rot.'"
Here, in a practice matching testimonies all over the liberated territories, electric shocks were the instrument of choice, this time administered with a modified defibrillator.
With two men pinning Hnedov down by the spine, and one holding his head, naked wires were attached to each of his legs, through which the shock was administered.
Diving into his memories of torture by electric shock, Hnedov again manages to inconceivably recall the humorous.
"As soon as they released this excruciating current, I bit one of the guys in the ear!" he said. "I swear to God, I had no control over myself, it was pure reflex."
"I guess that's why he was holding my head down... still got him though."
Hnedov was electrocuted two more times in that session, with his captors changing the position of the wires periodically. "By the third time, my heart was beating like this, completely out of time," he said, rapping his knuckle on the table to demonstrate.
Routine cruelty
Hnedov was held with the bag over his head and in the plastic handcuffs for the first five days of his imprisonment. "If the bag came off, they would make you regret it," he said. "One would stand on your hands, while the other beat you over the head."
As has been recorded in testimonies of life in makeshift prisons across occupied Ukraine, conditions in the Hole were miserable for the six weeks Hnedov spent there.
Five prisoners, including two women, were kept in a tiny room with only one children's mattress between them. They were fed three spoonfuls of porridge every five days, and forced to relieve themselves into one plastic bottle, which stood in the corner and was rarely emptied on time.
There were no windows in the room, just a light bulb that was on 24 hours a day. "We had no way of knowing if it was day or night," he said, "apart from by the rule that we were forbidden from sleeping during the day."
It soon became clear that there was no information Hnedov could provide that would be of any use to the Russians. Failing that, they instead hoped to use him for personal material gain. "The second time they took me into the interrogation room, they told me they were thinking about releasing me," he said.
Using Hnedov's phone, confiscated upon his arrest, his captors called his daughter, who lives in Germany. She was given the option to free her father from captivity, but only at a price, a $480,000 ransom. "My daughter told them clearly that she doesn't have that kind of money," he said. "Then they tried the same thing with my niece in Israel but with the same result, they were quite disappointed."
Not losing hope that his family would change their mind, the Russians forced Hnedov to sign a document saying he was treated well in custody and had no legal complaints against his faceless hosts.
The conversation was accompanied by another round of beatings and electrocution. When Hnedov initially refused to sign the statement, one of the captors snipped at Hnedov's ear with scissors, threatening to cut it off entirely.
The use of family members as bait or blackmail was a common theme among Hnedov's fellow inmates. "There was one young man, Kostya, he was held longer than any of us," he said. "They were after his father, and using him as a hostage."
The third and last time Hnedov was tortured in the Hole, his captors had a new method in store for him, a form of waterboarding affectionally known since Soviet times as the "elephant." With Hnedov lying on his back, a gas mask was placed tightly over his head. The tube connecting the mask to the respirator (the "trunk") was raised up and filled with water, which flooded the mask.
For Hnedov, experience in captivity during his service helped him endure the treatment, but didn't make it any more pleasant. "I was in a trance," he said. "I knew that if I swallowed, I would be a dead man, and if I held out until the end, the result would be the same, but at least my body wouldn't be full of water."
"I kept telling myself, I didn't survive everything the Arabs put me through (in Yemen) just to die here at the hands of some Russians."
By this time, the Russians were no longer bothered with the formalities of questioning. "They were just trying to terrify me," he said. "By the end the only thing they were saying to me was 'Remember, we didn't touch you here, we didn't take anything. You came here on your own will.'"
Liberation
Much in thanks to his own physical endurance, 72-year-old Hnedov did eventually make it out of the Hole after six weeks of imprisonment. "Without saying a word, they came for me in the cell, put the bag back over my head, wrapped me in some industrial netting, and threw me in the back of a car."
Dropped off in the dark of night in the city center, Hnedov rolled out of the netting and made the short walk home, where his wife Tetiana was waiting. "I called out to her from the yard and she burst out the front door," he recalled. "Hugs, kisses, I love you my dear – it was all there."
Hnedov was freed from Russian captivity on Oct. 29, less than two weeks before his native Kherson was itself liberated. More importantly, it was Tetiana's birthday.
With liberation came euphoria and a great sense of relief for Hnedov. Still, as much as his past life may have prepared him, this nightmare will not leave him soon.
"Do you remember your own mother and father, could you erase them from your memory?" he asked. "Well how could I possibly erase this, I'm a human being, not a computer."
"I've been witness to a lot of death in my life; I once had to take a man to the morgue who had been cut clean in half in battle," he said. "I just don't want my children to go through the same thing."
Hnedov's daughter was safe overseas, and he and Tetiana hope to be able to see her soon. The same cannot be said about Rostyslav, from whom Hnedov has heard nothing since their brief exchange through black plastic on the first day in the Hole. All hope is not lost, but for now, Hnedov and his wife can only see him through grainy photos left on Tetiana’s phone.
In the circumstances, Hnedov's endless reserves of human positivity are nothing short of extraordinary. "I'll explain why," he said, disappearing to the kitchen to retrieve a crisp, fresh apple.
"Look at this, take a bite, it's clean I promise," he said. "Delicious, isn't it? Because it comes from our land, it's Ukrainian. How can I not love this life of mine, at home in my dearest Ukraine?"
"That's all there is to it. Bon Appétit!"
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Gov. Kate Brown, seen in her office at the state capitol on Feb. 3, 2022, wants to end the use of the death penalty in Oregon. (photo: Kristyna Wentz-Graff/OPB)
Oregon Governor Commutes Sentences of Everyone on Death Row in State
Andrew Selsky, Associated Press
Selsky writes: "Oregon Gov. Kate Brown announced Tuesday that she is commuting the sentences of all of the state’s 17 inmates awaiting execution, saying their death sentences will be changed to life in prison without the possibility of parole."
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown announced Tuesday that she is commuting the sentences of all of the state’s 17 inmates awaiting execution, saying their death sentences will be changed to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Brown, a Democrat with less than a month remaining in office, said she was using her executive clemency powers to commute the sentences and that her order will take effect on Wednesday.
“I have long believed that justice is not advanced by taking a life, and the state should not be in the business of executing people — even if a terrible crime placed them in prison,” Brown said in a statement.
Rep. Vikki Breese-Iverson, leader of the minority Republicans in the Oregon House of Representatives, accused Brown of “a lack of responsible judgment.”
“Gov. Brown has once again taken executive action with zero input from Oregonians and the Legislature,” Breese-Iverson said in a statement. “Her decisions do not consider the impact the victims and families will suffer in the months and years to come. Democrats have consistently chosen criminals over victims.”
In her announcement, Brown said victims experience “pain and uncertainty” as they wait for decades while individuals sit on death row.
“My hope is that this commutation will bring us a significant step closer to finality in these cases,” she said.
Oregon has not executed a prisoner since 1997. In Brown’s first news conference after becoming governor in 2015, she announced she would continue the death penalty moratorium imposed by her predecessor, former Gov. John Kitzhaber.
So far, 17 people have been executed in the U.S. in 2022, all by lethal injection and all in Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, Missouri and Alabama, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Like Oregon, some other states are moving away from the death penalty.
In California, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom imposed a moratorium on executions in 2019 and shut down the state’s execution chamber at San Quentin. A year ago, he moved to dismantle America’s largest death row by moving all condemned inmates to other prisons within two years.
In Oregon, Brown is known for exercising her authority to grant clemency.
During the coronavirus pandemic, Brown granted clemency to nearly 1,000 people convicted of crimes. Two district attorneys, along with family members of crime victims, sued the governor and other state officials to stop the clemency actions. But the Oregon Court of Appeals ruled in August that she acted within her authority.
The prosecutors, in particular, objected to Brown’s decision to allow 73 people convicted of murder, assault, rape and manslaughter while they were younger than 18 to apply for early release.
Brown noted that previously she granted commutations “to individuals who have demonstrated extraordinary growth and rehabilitation” but said that assessment didn’t apply in her latest decision.
“This commutation is not based on any rehabilitative efforts by the individuals on death row,” Brown said. “Instead, it reflects the recognition that the death penalty is immoral. It is an irreversible punishment that does not allow for correction.”
The Oregon Department of Corrections announced in May 2020 it was phasing out its death row and reassigning those inmates to other special housing units or general population units at the state penitentiary in Salem and other state prisons.
Oregon voters reinstated the death penalty by popular vote in 1978, 14 years after they abolished it. The Oregon Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional in 1981 and Oregon voters reinstated it in 1984, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
A list of inmates with death sentences provided by the governor’s office had 17 names.
But the state Department of Corrections’ website lists 21 names. One of those prisoners, however, had his death sentence overturned by the Oregon Supreme Court in 2021 because the crime he committed was no longer eligible for the death penalty under a 2019 law.
Officials in the governor’s office and the corrections department did not immediately respond to an attempt to reconcile the lists.
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Dugongs, which feed on seagrass, are close to extinction in east Africa and New Caledonia, according to IUCN research. (photo: vkilikov/Alamy)
Marine Life Hit by ‘Perfect Storm’ as Red List Reveals Species Close to Extinction
Patrick Greenfield, Guardian UK
Greenfield writes: "Illegal and unsustainable fishing, fossil fuel exploration, the climate crisis and disease are pushing marine species to the brink of extinction, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature red list."
Unsustainable human activity putting dugongs, abalone shellfish and pillar coral at risk of disappearing, says latest IUCN update
Illegal and unsustainable fishing, fossil fuel exploration, the climate crisis and disease are pushing marine species to the brink of extinction, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list, with populations of dugongs, abalone shellfish and pillar coral at risk of disappearing for ever.
Marine life is facing a “perfect storm” of human overconsumption, threatening the survival of some of the world’s most expensive seafood, according to the conservation organisation, which publishes the most up-to-date information on the health of wildlife populations on Earth.
From South Africa to Australia, 20 of the world’s 54 abalone species are now threatened with extinction, according to the first IUCN scientific assessment of the species group. In east Africa and New Caledonia, dugongs – marine mammals that largely feed on seagrass – are close to extinction, damaged by oil and gas exploration, bottom-trawling, chemical pollution and mining.
The information comes as countries negotiate this decade’s biodiversity targets for protecting the planet at Cop15, with draft proposals to take radical action on species extinction this decade.
“Today’s IUCN red list update reveals a perfect storm of unsustainable human activity decimating marine life around the globe. As the world looks to the ongoing UN biodiversity conference to set the course for nature recovery, we simply cannot afford to fail,” said Dr Bruno Oberle, IUCN director general. “We urgently need to address the linked climate and biodiversity crises, with profound changes to our economic systems, or we risk losing the crucial benefits the oceans provide us with.”
Those at risk include the endangered Omani abalone, found off the Arabian peninsula, which has disappeared from more than half its range due to pollution from agricultural and industrial runoff, which causes harmful algal blooms. On the west coast of South Africa, poaching by criminal networks, many connected to the international drugs trade, has devastated populations of the perlemoen abalone.
In the western Indian ocean, fewer than 250 mature dugongs are left, with fewer than 900 in New Caledonia.
“Strengthening community-led fisheries governance and expanding work opportunities beyond fishing are key in east Africa, where marine ecosystems are fundamental to people’s food security and livelihoods,” said Evan Trotzuk, who led the east Africa red list assessment of the mammals.
“Further, the creation of additional conserved areas where dugongs live, particularly around Bazaruto Archipelago national park [in Mozambique], would also empower local communities and other stakeholders to find, implement, and benefit from solutions that halt long-term declines in dugong abundance, as well as in seagrass extent and quality,” he said.
The pillar coral, found from the Caribbean to the Yucatan peninsula, was also part of the most recent round of IUCN red list assessments and has been moved from vulnerable to critically endangered after its population shrank by more than 80% across its range since 1990. The decline was caused by disease, bleaching from the climate crisis and fertiliser runoff.
There are 150,388 species that have been assessed by scientists for the IUCN red list, of which 42,108 are threatened with extinction. More than 1,550 of the 17,903 marine animals and plants analysed are at risk of disappearing for ever, with global heating affecting at least 41% of threatened marine species.
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Protesters vandalize the entrance of CTC TV Channel of Cuzco during a protest demanding the dissolution of the Congress and to hold democratic elections rather than recognising Dina Boluarte as Peru's President, after the ouster of Peruvian leader Pedro Castillo, in Cuzco, Peru December 13, 2022. (photo: Paul Gambin/Reuters)
Peru’s Castillo Calls New President a ‘Usurper’ as Protest Death Toll Reaches Seven
Marco Aquino and Adam Jourdan, Reuters
Excerpt: "As Peru careers from one political crisis to another, the country has exploded in protest, with at least seven dead in the last week and the smoke of fires and tear gas hanging over city streets. A way out seems distant."
As Peru careers from one political crisis to another, the country has exploded in protest, with at least seven dead in the last week and the smoke of fires and tear gas hanging over city streets. A way out seems distant.
The spark of the current unrest was the ouster and arrest of leftist leader Pedro Castillo after he tried to dissolve Congress illegally. It followed a months-long standoff where lawmakers impeached him three times, the final time removing him from office.
Peru has been one of the economic stars of Latin America in the 21st century, with strong growth lifting millions out of poverty. But the political turmoil is increasingly threatening to derail its economic stability, with ratings agencies warning of downgrades, blockades impacting major mines in the world's no. 2 copper producer, and protesters demanding Congress and new president Dina Boluarte step down.
For those watching closely it should be little surprise. Voters are fed up with the constant political infighting that has seen six presidents in the last five years and seven impeachment attempts.
The heavily fragmented unicameral Congress is loathed - with an approval rating of just 11%, according to pollster Datum. That is below Castillo's, which despite a string of corruption allegations was 24% just before he was removed.
"The Peruvian people are just exhausted from all the political machinations, the crime, uncertainty and stalling growth," said Eric Farnsworth, a vice president at the Council of the Americas and Americas Society.
He said Boluarte's pledge to hold early elections in April 2024 could help calm things in the short run, but that would not solve entrenched issues of a divided electorate and infighting between the presidency and Congress.
"It's a toxic soup, with a weak president, a dysfunctional Congress, the deposed president seeking to generate a popular resistance to his legitimate removal, an agitated populace, and little vision from anyone on how to get out of this mess."
Peru's constitution makes it relatively easy for an unhappy legislature to initiate an impeachment, while a lack of dominant political parties - the largest, Popular Force, controls just 24 of 130 seats - means agreement is thin on the ground. Corruption has also been a frequent problem.
The only way many Peruvians feel they can make their voices heard is in the street. In recent days, protesters have blocked roads, set fires, and even taken over airports. Police have come under criticism from human rights groups for use of firearms and teargas. At leave seven people, mostly teenagers, have died.
There are echoes of protests in 2020, when thousands took to the streets after the impeachment and ouster of popular centrist leader Martin Vizcarra, who was succeeded by Congress leader Manuel Merino. After two died he also was forced to resign.
Castillo, less popular but with a support base in rural regions that helped him to a narrow election win last year, has looked to stoke things from jail, where he is being held while he is investigated over accusations of rebellion and conspiracy.
On Monday, he called Boluarte, his former vice president, a "usurper" in a written letter to the Peruvian people where he claimed to still be the country's legitimate leader.
"What was said recently by a usurper is nothing more than the same snot and drool of the coup-mongering right," he wrote, adding a call - long popular among a younger generation of Peruvians - for a new constitution.
"The people should not fall for their dirty games of new elections. Enough abuse! A Constituent Assembly now! Immediate freedom!" he wrote.
Boluarte, a former member of Castillo's far-left party who fell out with its leader and criticized Castillo after his attempt to dissolve Congress, has called for calm around the country and pledged a government of all stripes. But she faces a tough reality, caught between protesters and a hostile parliament.
With the recent history of Peruvian leaders littered with impeachment and jail, it is questionable whether Boluarte can hang on until new elections are held.
"Dina Boluarte is a murderer. Five people have died, and they say nothing. Nothing matters to her, she is shameless, treacherous," said Guadalupe Huaman, a Castillo supporter protesting with a Peruvian flag and hard hat in Lima.
Cutting Peru's outlook to negative and threatening a potential downgrade, ratings agency S…P said in a report on Monday that there seemed to be little to be hopeful about.
"The way Peru's most recent change in power occurred reflects heightened political deadlock, and it increases risks ahead," it said.
Farnsworth voiced similar concerns. While Peru had a history of volatile politics, it was unclear how things would resolve this time, he said.
"I think this time is somehow different," he said. "There is no real path forward it seems."
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Electrical work. (photo: Jane Tyska/Digital First Media/The Mercury News/Getty Images)
PG&E Cuts Thousands of Workers Ahead of Winter Wildfire Maintenance
Blanca Begert, Grist
Begert writes: "The layoffs spell danger for fire season."
The layoffs spell danger for fire season.
Pacific Gas … Electric, California’s private utility company that maintains a monopoly over electric service in the state, let go of thousands of contractors and employees across multiple trades over the last month.
Union leaders told members that the layoffs were due to overspending, and that as Pacific Gas … Electric, or PG…E, overruns its budget towards the end of the year, the company decided to push back fourth-quarter work into the new year.
Workers let go include vegetation management inspectors, tree trimmers, electrical linesmen, and pole testers — all work that is critical to wildfire mitigation.
“[We] do annual maintenance to ensure fire safety and have deadlines to get it done,” said a vegetation management inspector in the north Bay Area who requested anonymity. “By pushing back fourth-quarter work, [the crews] are falling behind one to two months.” The delay could be costly: Winter is often the best time to prune trees, when cracks and deadwood are more visible and trees are not actively growing.
According to reports from the state’s Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety, PG…E is already far behind on work orders for line maintenance. “That’s a major safety concern,” said Mark Toney, executive director of TURN, a utility ratepayer advocacy group, adding, “I keep getting calls from hospitals and housing projects that can’t get connected to the grid.”
The private utility, one of the largest in the country, has played a notorious role in sparking some of the largest fires in the state, including the Dixie Fire in 2021 and the Camp Fire in 2018, the deadliest fire in California history. In 2019, PG…E filed for bankruptcy after announcing a $13.5 billion settlement with California wildfire victims. In April of last year, it was put under a period of “enhanced oversight and enforcement” by the California Public Utilities Commission due to concerns that PG…E wasn’t clearing trees away from power lines fast enough, raising the risk of fallen branches sparking another fire. But the commission voted to lift the probation last week, saying that the company had made progress.
“They should be moved up the ladder of probation,” not have their restrictions removed, said Toney. “They keep causing fires and failing inspections.”
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers 1245, or IBEW 1245, the union that represents PG…E workers, provided no comment on the layoffs. But workers who attended a union meeting on Thursday said leaders referenced the job losses as “large and unprecedented,” said that workers laid off across crafts numbered in the thousands, and that decisions were being made by PG…E upper management because of budget constraints.
The utility has been at work burying, or undergrounding, 10,000 miles of overhead power lines in high-fire risk districts as part of its wildfire mitigation plan, a labor intensive and pricey undertaking that will cost an estimated $25 billion.
Toney and other rate payer advocates have criticized the initiative as a way for the utility to invest in capital projects that increase shareholder returns while neglecting the work that is really needed. “I am concerned that they are diverting money from basic operations, maintenance, and repairs and putting it into undergrounding and other capital projects that create profit,” said Toney. He added, “It’s hard to understand how they’re running out of cash with these double digit rate increases,” referring to the utility’s proposal to hike rates by about 20 percent in 2023, after a similar jump in 2022.
In a statement to Grist, PG…E said that the company was cutting back contractors based on the amount of work that needs to be done and that they typically use contractors as a flexible resource that they ramp down at the end of the year.
“Overall, we have reduced the number of contractors working for PG…E in recent weeks due to several factors, including completing or nearly completing the 2022 work plans these contractors had supported,” said PG…E spokesperson Matt Nauman. He also said that snow in the mountains has caused some work to stop for the season and that PG…E is looking to bring more of its tree work in-house by hiring 150 vegetation management inspectors as employees. Currently almost all the tree work is done by contractors.
The crews have been told they can likely expect to return to work in January and February, but according to another vegetation management contractor who was let go and was at the union meeting on Thursday (but who asked not to be named), “many groups weren’t given a set return date” and “‘no guarantees’ was emphasized at length.” Rex Casteel, who cleared hazard logs in the town of Paradise after the devastating Camp Fire, added that while this is only his fifth winter, he has never encountered anything like this work stoppage before.
“They saved money at the end of this year, but they are going to be squeezing their workforce to get compliance done next year,” said one worker.
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