17 March 23
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They’re even blaming Silicon Valley Bank’s failure on it
Seriously.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) calls Silicon Valley Bank “one of the most woke banks.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis charges that Silicon Valley Bank’s focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion “diverted from them focusing on their core mission.”
Fox News host Tucker Carlson says diversity and inclusion standards are why “big banks are now increasingly incompetent.”
What seems to have incensed these Republicans is Silicon Valley Bank’s announcement last summer that it would be providing mortgages to lower-income homebuyers and using hiring practices that promote diversity. Of course, there’s zero evidence that these initiatives contributed to the bank’s collapse.
DeSantis, by the way, seems to be focusing his entire upcoming presidential campaign on his opposition to wokeness. “We are not going to surrender to woke,” he said. “Florida is the state where woke goes to die.” In late February, under pressure from trustees appointed by DeSantis, the New College of Florida voted to abolish the office that oversees the school’s diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
Hence, today’s Office Hours question: Is “woke” capitalism becoming Republicans’ new racist dog whistle?
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Ouko, mother of Irvo Otieno, holds a portrait of her son. (photo: Daniel Sangjib/AP)
Family members of Irvo Otieno were shown video of the encounter, as prosecutors charged 3 hospital workers with murder. Seven deputies already had been charged.
“My son was treated like a dog, worse than a dog,” Otieno’s mother, Caroline Ouko, tearfully told reporters outside the Dinwiddie County Courthouse. “I saw it with my own eyes in the video. He was treated inhumanely, and it was traumatic, and it was systemic.”
Otieno’s brother, Leon Ochieng, said the video undermined claims made by attorneys for some of the deputies that Otieno was acting aggressively and had to be subdued.
Two lawyers for Otieno’s family, who watched the video with them, said the three hospital workers dressed in blue uniforms could be seen joining the deputies in brown — putting their weight on him as he lay prone on the hospital floor for 11 minutes, handcuffed, his feet shackled. They called on the Justice Department to investigate.
“What I saw was a lifeless human being without any representation, no [regard] for his human life,” Ochieng said, his voice breaking. “At what point do we consider mental illness a crime?”
Ouko said her 28-year-old younger son, whom she described as an aspiring hip-hop artist, was suffering from a mental health problem when police took him into custody at her Henrico County home on March 3.
He died of asphyxiation at the hospital three days later, after the seven deputies applied their body weight to him, Dinwiddie County Commonwealth’s Attorney Ann Cabell Baskervill said earlier this week.
Baskervill released a statement Thursday announcing charges against the three hospital workers but did not detail their alleged roles in the death on March 6.
“He’s face down, handcuffed, with leg irons, and you say, ‘My God, why?’” said attorney Ben Crump, who has provided legal services to the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other unarmed Black people who were killed by law enforcement officers. “It is so unnecessary, it is so unjustified. And you keep searching in your heart for which one of them would have the humanity to say that, ‘Eleven minutes is far too long to have him down, with the weight of our bodies and knees on his neck.’”
The hospital workers charged are: Darian M. Blackwell, 23, of Petersburg; Wavie L. Jones, 34, of Chesterfield; and Sadarius D. Williams, 27, of North Dinwiddie. They were transported to the Meherrin River Regional Jail in Brunswick County and were being held without bond. Attorneys for them were not listed in records online.
Baskervill’s statement said “additional charges and arrests are pending.” It also said she was “not able” to publicly release the video to “maintain the integrity of the criminal justice process at this point.”
Caleb Kershner, an attorney for one of the sheriff’s deputies, Randy Boyer, said his client was “100 percent” innocent.
“We’re all very, very shocked and surprised,” Kershner said, calling the second-degree murder charge an “extreme measure.”
“It appears as if we have a death in custody — very unfortunate circumstance,” Kershner said. “And that’s a pretty serious charge to levy against law enforcement officers who were moving someone from a prison cell to Central State, when someone dies in custody.”
Kershner said he had received only limited information about the case, but had met with his client on Thursday. The defense attorney said Otieno had received what he assumed was a sedative shot around the time of his death.
Holding a framed photo of her smiling son dressed in a suit and tie, Ouko left it to the family’s two attorneys to detail what they saw in two videos Baskervill allowed them to watch.
One showed Otieno in his Henrico County jail cell, the other at the hospital. Crump and Mark Krudys, another attorney for Otieno’s family, alleged that Otieno was mistreated at the jail and the hospital. The videos were taken by surveillance cameras at both locations, not body-camera footage, Krudys said.
Krudys said the family chose not to watch most of the jail video, which was in some ways more graphic than the images from the hospital, where the scrum of deputies and workers obscured Otieno.
He said the jail video showed Otieno naked, surrounded by feces and handcuffed, when five deputies “force rushed” him against a metal bed and hard wall.
“I’m sorry to say this in front of the family, but the public needs to know: He’s carried out by the arms and legs, almost upside down, like an animal,” Krudys said, adding that the deputies then transported him to Central State. Mentally ill patients in the Richmond area are treated at that hospital.
The videos had no sound, so it was not clear what was said, but one of the deputies appeared to be laughing at one point, Krudys said.
Personnel from the Henrico County Sheriff’s Office went to the hospital just before 4 p.m. on March 6 to admit Otieno as a patient, the prosecutor has said. About 3½ hours later, the state police were called to investigate his death, Baskervill said.
Investigators from the state police “were told he had become combative during the admission process,” Baskervill said in a statement Tuesday. “Otieno, who was physically restrained, died during the intake process,” she said.
The prosecutor identified the deputies, all who live in Virginia, as Jermaine Lavar Branch, 45, of Henrico; Boyer, 57, of Henrico; Dwayne Alan Bramble, 37, of Sandston; Bradley Thomas Disse, 43, of Henrico; Tabitha Renee Levere, 50, of Henrico; Brandon Edwards Rodgers, 48, of Henrico; and Kaiyell Dajour Sanders, 30, of North Chesterfield.
The Henrico County police department, which is separate from the sheriff’s office, said that on March 3 Otieno was identified and approached as a “potential suspect” in a possible burglary.
The family’s lawyers indicated that the burglary allegation was an outgrowth of his mental health issue, which his mother said periodically afflicted him since he was student at Freeman High School. She declined to say if he had been diagnosed with a specific mental illness.
The lawyers suggested that Otieno’s mental state led him to take or gather solar lights from a neighbor’s home, leading the neighbor to make a complaint to police. At least 10 police officers responded to his mother’s home, although the lawyers said it was not clear if they were responding to the neighbor’s complaint or to a request for mental health help from Otieno’s mother.
“There was a huge show of force,” Krudys said. “And he went peacefully.”
Officers took him to a Henrico County hospital for evaluation, but later moved him to the county jail, where he was charged with assault on a law enforcement officer, disorderly conduct in a hospital and vandalism, the Henrico police said.
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Pedestrians pass by a billboard with an image of Russia's President Vladimir Putin and lettering "Strong president - Strong Russia!" in Simferopol, Crimea. (photo: AFP)
The Kremlin is deploying new tactics by drawing on favorite themes and conspiracy theories of rightwing Republicans
Moscow’s disinformation messages have included widely debunked conspiracy theories about US bioweapon labs in Ukraine, and pet themes on the American right that portray the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, as an ally in backing traditional values, religion and family in the fight against “woke” ideas.
Further, new studies from thinktanks that track disinformation have noted that alternative social media platforms such as Parler, Rumble, Gab and Odysee have increasingly been used to spread Russian falsehoods since Facebook and Twitter have imposed more curbs on Moscow’s propaganda.
Other pro-Russian messages focused on the economic costs of the war for the US have been echoed by Republicans in the powerful far-right House Freedom Caucus such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, Scott Perry and Paul Gosar, who to varying degrees have questioned giving Ukraine more military aid and demanded tougher oversight.
Since Russia launched its invasion last February, the Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Trump ally – turned influential far-right podcaster – Steve Bannon have promoted some of the most baseless claims that help bolster the Kremlin’s aggression.
For instance, Bannon’s War Room podcast in February 2022 featured an interview with Erik Prince, the wealthy US founder of Blackwater, where they both enthused that Putin’s policies were “anti-woke” and praised Putin’s homophobia and transphobia.
Last month too on the anniversary of Moscow’s invasion, Carlson revved up his attacks on US support for Ukraine claiming falsely that Biden’s goal had become “overthrowing Putin and putting American tanks in Red Square because, sure, we could manage Russia once we overthrow the dictator”.
Analysts who track Russia’s disinformation see synergies between the Kremlin and parts of the US right that have helped spread some of the biggest falsehoods since the start of the invasion.
“Russia doesn’t pull even its most outlandish narratives out of thin air – it builds on existing resentments and political fissures,” Jessica Brandt, a policy director at the Brookings Institution who tracks disinformation and foreign interference, told the Guardian.
She added: “So you often have a sort of harmony – both Kremlin messengers and key media figures, each for their own reasons, have an interest in dinging the administration for its handling of the Ukraine crisis, in amplifying distrust of authoritative media, in playing on skepticism about the origins of Covid and frustration with government mitigation measures.”
“That was the case with the biolabs conspiracy theory, for example, which posits that the Pentagon has been supporting the development of biological weapons in Ukraine. The Charlie Kirk Show and Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, among others, devoted multiple segments to the claim. It’s not so much that we’re witnessing any sort of coordination, but rather an alignment of interests.”
Brandt also noted that Russia had an “interest in promoting authentic American voices expressing views that align with the Kremlin’s foreign policy goals. And that’s why you often see them retweet Americans that make these arguments.”
Likewise, two reports issued separately last month by the Alliance for Securing Democracy and the Atlantic Council, reveal how Russian state media have shifted some messaging themes and adopted new tactics with an eye to undercutting US backing for Ukraine.
The Alliance report documented a shift in messaging in the US and Europe from directly defending Russia’s invasion to stressing the energy and economic impacts that it was having, themes that seem to be resonating with some Republican politicians.
In the first six months of the war, Alliance data revealed that Russia-linked accounts on Twitter mentioned “Nazi” in more than 5,800tweets.
But in the following six months from August 2022 through January 2023, “the number of ‘Nazi’ tweets dropped to 3,373 – a 42% decline”. Likewise, mentions of Nato by Russian-linked accounts on Twitter dropped by roughly 30% in the second six-month period.
By contrast, in the most recent six-month period the report said that “tweets mentioning both ‘energy’ and ‘Ukraine’ increased by 267%, while tweets mentioning ‘cost of living’ increased 66%” compared to the first six months of the war.
In another twist, Bret Schafer, who leads the Alliance’s information manipulation team, told the Guardian: “In response to restrictions and crackdowns by major tech platforms, accounts and channels affiliated with Russian state media outlet RT, which has been banned entirely on YouTube, have fanned out across alternative social media and video sharing platforms like Rumble and Odysee that have less restrictive content moderation policies and that allow RT to operate without labels or restrictions.
“Those platforms also tend to cater to audiences who are not necessarily pro-Russian, but are certainly more apt, based on the other videos found on those platforms, to oppose continued support for Ukraine.”
Despite Moscow’s disinformation offensive and the $100bn plus in military and financial assistance that has flowed to Ukraine in one year, the ex-Republican House member Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania said that “most GOP members still support Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression”.
But Dent stressed that “the hardest edge of the Bannon-Carlson wing of the Maga movement in Congress is more sympathetic to Russian arguments and has an isolationist view of American foreign policy. There are some members who are less willing to push back against autocrats. There are others too who find common cause with Russia’s professed socially conservative orientation.”
Those voices are especially loud in the Freedom Caucus which is wielding growing influence with the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, who has said he will not support a “blank check” for Ukraine and this week declined the invitation of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to visit Kyiv.
Freedom Caucus member Greene from Georgia at the recent CPAC conference said flatly: “We’ve done enough.”
Democrats are especially worried about the embrace of pro-Kremlin disinformation by the American right.
The Democratic senator Chris Murphy blasted US conservatives for echoing Kremlin propaganda and traced its roots back to ex-president Donald Trump, who at the start of Russia’s invasion lauded Putin as “savvy” and a “genius”. Murphy said Trump’s “admiration for Putin” has “turned into a collective rightwing obsession”.
Murphy noted that among the obsessed on the right are Donald Trump Jr, whom he follows on social media, and who is “relentlessly making fun of Zelenskiy online”.
Meanwhile, Putin’s own words and propaganda have lately shifted as he has tried to influence opinion in the US and the west, and blunt Russian dissent.
“Millions of people in the west understand they are being led to a real spiritual catastrophe,” Putin railed last month in a wildly hyperbolic speech that homed in on “the destruction of families”, and related themes.
Russia experts warn that Putin’s rhetoric and Kremlin messaging on these themes is far removed from the reality in Russia.
“One of the glaring mistakes of far-right propagandists is to view Vladimir Putin as some kind of defender of Christendom, of family values and as a protector of the white race,” said Ariel Cohen, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. “They repeat the Kremlin talking points and get excited about the Russian ‘gay propaganda’ law. Nothing could be further from reality.
“Today Russia is the leader in Europe of high divorce rates, HIV infections, and low church attendance and practice.”
Senator Murphy expects Putin to count “on the [American] right wing to advance Russian propaganda and exploit our internal divisions.”
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Dozens of bison from a mountain park outside Denver have been transferred to several tribes from across the Great Plains. (photo: AP)
Following ceremonial drumming and singing and an acknowledgement of the tribes that once occupied the surrounding landscape, the bison were loaded onto trucks for relocation to tribal lands.
About a half-dozen of the animals from Colorado will form the nucleus of a new herd for the Yuchi people south of Tulsa, Oklahoma, said Richard Grounds with the Yuchi Language Project.
The herd will be expanded over time, to reestablish a spiritual and physical bond broken two centuries ago when bison were nearly wiped out and the Yuchi were forced from their homeland, Grounds said.
He compared the burly animals' return to reviving the Yuchi's language — and said both language and bison were inseparable from the land. Bison were “the original caretakers” of that land, he said.
“We've lost that connection to the buffalo, that physical connection, as part of the colonial assault,” Grounds said. “So we're saying, we Yuchi people are still here and the buffalo are still here and it's important to reconnect and restore those relationships with the land, with the animals and the plants.”
The transfers also included 17 bison to the Northern Arapaho Tribe and 12 to the Eastern Shoshone Tribe — both of Wyoming — and one animal to the Tall Bull Memorial Council, which has members from various tribes, city officials said.
Wednesday’s transfer came two weeks after U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland issued a bison conservation order meant to further expand the number of large herds on Native American lands. Haaland also announced $25 million to build new herds, transfer more bison from federal to tribal lands and forge new bison management agreements with tribes, officials said.
American bison, also known as buffalo, have bounced back from near-extinction in the 1880s but remain absent from most of the grasslands they once occupied.
Across the U.S., 82 tribes now have more than 20,000 bison, and the number of herds on tribal lands have grown in recent years. The animals have been transferred to reservations from other tribes, from federal, state and local governments and from private ranches.
Tens of millions of bison once roamed North America until they were killed off almost entirely by white settlers, commercial hunters and U.S. troops. Their demise devastated Native American tribes across the continent that relied on bison and their parts for food, clothing and shelter.
The animals transferred to the tribes Wednesday descend from the last remnants of the great herds. They were under care of the Denver Zoo and kept in a city park before being moved to foothills west of Denver in 1914.
Surplus animals from the city's herd were for many years auctioned off, but in recent years city officials began transferring them to tribes instead, said Scott Gilmore, deputy executive director of Denver Parks and Recreation.
Gilmore said the land acknowledgement statement read out loud during Wednesday's ceremony underscored the historical importance of the area to the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Ute and dozens of other tribes that once lived in the area. But he added those were just “words on a piece of paper.”
“What we're doing is putting action to those words for Indigenous people. Buffalo are part of the land, they are part of their family," Gilmore said. "They are taking their family members back to their ancestral home.”
To date, 85 bison from Denver have been transferred to tribes and tribal organizations. City officials said the shipments will continue through 2030.
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Executives at First Republic Bank sold stock before its share price crashed. (photo: Reuters)
The banking executives sold $11.8 million worth of stock in the company over the last two months, with First Republic Executive Chairman James Herbert II selling $4.5 million worth of his shares since the start of 2023, per the Journal.
Combined, First Republic’s chief credit officer, president of private wealth management and chief executive sold $7 million worth of company stock.
First Republic’s insider sales appear to have gone largely unnoticed, as it is now the only S…P 500 company that reports such sales to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) instead of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Signature Bank, which collapsed on Sunday, was also exempted from filing with the SEC.
First Republic Bank’s stock plummeted more than 50 percent this week, as panic ensued over the widely-reported failures of other regional banks, including Signature Bank and Silicon Valley Bank.
Amid concerns of a potential run on First Republic, some of the largest U.S. banks — including Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley — agreed to help stabilize the bank’s balance sheets on Thursday with $30 billion in deposits.
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U.S. soldiers patrol the town of al-Qahtaniyah in Syria's northeastern Hasakeh province near the Turkish border on March 14, 2022. (photo: AFP)
It’s a significant symbolic move, but US troops are still there, and other parts of the forever war continue.
On Thursday, the Senate held a procedural vote to repeal the 2002 and 1991 authorizations for the use of military force in Iraq. It passed 68-27, teeing up a floor vote next week. The Biden administration supports the repeal, but the measure has a tougher path in the House.
It is significant that lawmakers would remove a piece of the scaffolding of America’s forever wars in the Middle East and would prohibit a future president’s abuse of the legislation. It also shows that Congress is willing to exercise its constitutional powers when it comes to war. The bipartisan effort is commendable.
But it’s not enough.
The repeal of the 2002 authorization for the use of military force won’t address two major ongoing dynamics that ensure that, even as President Joe Biden has ended the forever war in Afghanistan and has curtailed drone strikes, the war on terrorism continues.
First, the post-September 11 authorization that Congress approved in 2001 as the basis for US global counter-terrorism operations remains on the books and endures as the legal framework for ongoing US military efforts. It has been used in at least 22 countries. It’s the justification for the current presence of US service members in Syria and Somalia, thanks to the White House’s expansive interpretation of Al-Qaeda’s associated forces that now includes ISIS and militant groups that didn’t yet exist when the authorization was passed. But it’s been more difficult to muster consensus about sunsetting this 2001 authorization, as it’s been used more broadly, including by the Biden administration.
Second, it’s not likely to affect the 2,500 US troops in Iraq. The official combat mission there has been over for more than a decade, and they’re training and assisting Iraqi troops under security cooperation agreements and possibly under the 2001 authorization. But the contours of US security assistance are amorphous and can lead to a creeping mission. Experts say there isn’t great clarity on the full range of US operations in Iraq right now.
The Biden administration said Thursday that the repeal of the 1991 and 2002 AUMFs “would have no impact on current US military operations.”
Still, even if the repeal is insufficient, it matters, and it will set guardrails for future US presidents. Lawmakers are finally addressing these longstanding authorizations that have the potential for misuse by the executive branch. As Katherine Ebright of the Brennan Center for Justice put it, “Congress has the responsibility, has the power, to weigh in on matters of war and peace, and it does not do that often enough.”
The war on terrorism continues thanks to a broad legal framework
America’s initial 1991 war in Iraq is so old that I’ve found memorabilia from the time — like Desert Storm trading cards — stacked in antique stores. But the 1991 authorization for the intervention is still in effect.
Same with Congress’s 2002 authorization to use military force in Iraq, the text of which begins with a lengthy preamble about Saddam Hussein. It empowers the president to use military force against Iraq largely in the context of decades-old United Nations resolutions regarding Hussein’s purported weapons of mass destruction, which the Bush administration lied about to justify the invasion and were never found. It’s difficult to say that’s relevant today given that the US military intervention there ousted Hussein so long ago.
But in January 2021, then-President Donald Trump, with some controversy, used the authorization as the basis for the assassination of the leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Qassem Soleimani, who at the time was in Iraq.
Trump authorized the strike on Soleimani without consulting Congress — and it shows why a repeal is significant. “It’s removing a potentially dangerous tool that may be misused by a future administration, particularly to fight Iran in the Middle East,” said Brian Finucane of the International Crisis Group. “So it’s preventing potential future mischief by an administration interested in doing an end-run around Congress.”
Sens. Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Todd Young (R-IN) introduced the repeal in the Senate. The measure is being championed by progressives and conservatives, as well as veterans groups, faith-based groups, peace groups, government oversight groups, and transparency groups, according to Heather Brandon-Smith of the Friends Committee on National Legislation. “There’s a huge coalition of organizations who support this repeal,” she told me.
One reason that it has taken so long for Congress to repeal the Iraq war authorization is that legislative efforts have been coupled with the 2001 authorization that the US is still using in many countries. Last week when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was considering the bill, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) added an amendment to repeal the 2001 authorization, but it was voted down by 20 other senators. Other amendments may be added, but Kaine expects they won’t stall the repeal.
Because the executive branch does not rely on the Iraq authorizations to conduct ongoing operations, it won’t make an operational difference, according to Finucane, who previously worked in the State Department’s Office of the Legal Adviser. “This is really the lowest of low-hanging fruit,” he told me, “The much more significant reforms will come with respect to the 2001 AUMF, where there’s currently no real movement from either the executive branch or Congress to reform that long-outdated war authorization for the war on terror.”
Nevertheless, the repeal vote might spur a bigger discussion of the fact that there are US troops in Iraq, Syria, and Somalia — ongoing operations that don’t get mentioned by President Biden but stand in glaring contrast to his commitment to ending endless wars.
Maybe by reminding Congress and the American public that these authorizations can come off the books, there can be a renewed focus on the more difficult task of repealing, sunsetting, or reforming the 2001 authorization for the use of military force.
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The ConocoPhillips venture is supposed to secure energy independence and Alaskan prosperity. It probably won't achieve either. (photo: IncomeI)
The ConocoPhillips venture is supposed to secure energy independence and Alaskan prosperity. It probably won’t achieve either.
The Willow project’s champions have stressed the need for the U.S. to achieve energy independence in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Senator Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, said last month that Willow could help “reduce our energy imports from some of the worst regimes in the world.” Mary Peltola, a Democratic representative and Alaska Native who was elected to Congress last year, said just last week that the project could “make us all safer in a world that has grown more unpredictable after Russia invaded Ukraine.”
There’s no doubt that the Willow project, led by ConocoPhillips, represents the largest new Alaskan oil project in decades. At full capacity, it could increase total oil production in the state by more than a third. But experts told Grist that the energy and economic benefits of the project are smaller and less certain than its boosters have suggested. Not only will the Willow project provide an insufficient substitute for Russian oil, but it will also deliver an ambiguous mix of costs and benefits to Alaska state coffers, which have long relied on fossil fuel revenue that is increasingly hard to come by — even with new drilling in the Arctic.
It’s not clear how much the Willow project would help replace Russian oil supplies. First there’s the matter of timing: The project will not deliver its first barrels until 2028 or 2029, and it will take even longer for all three well pads that the Biden administration approved to start producing at full capacity. It’s possible the global oil supply picture will look very different by then: Western countries may have access to new sources of oil, like recent offshore projects in places like Guyana, and where crude prices will be is anyone’s guess.
Second, the particular kind of oil that Willow will produce isn’t a perfect substitute for the oil that the U.S. once bought from Russia. The chemistry of petroleum beneath Alaska’s North Slope is different from both light shale oil and the heavier oil that tends to come from places like Russia and Venezuela, so it will need to be blended with other oil in order to enter domestic refineries, which are mostly designed to refine specific types of crude. That’s why the United States kept importing oil even after the fracking boom began, and it’s why much of Willow’s oil wouldn’t replace imports from other countries.
“Alaska remains an important energy state, but it will not make or break the nation’s energy independence in the coming decades,” Phil Wight, an assistant professor of history and northern studies at the University Alaska Fairbanks, told Grist.
Indeed, the federal Bureau of Land Management’s own analysis found that Willow’s effect on the global energy market and American energy independence will be muted. According to the Bureau’s final environmental impact statement, only around half of the oil produced from the project will replace foreign imports from tankers and pipelines, with around 30 percent replacing other oil extracted in the United States.
Furthermore, the project’s position on the North Slope of Alaska will constrain potential demand for the new crude from refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast, since it would need to travel through the Panama Canal to get there. The top domestic markets for the oil will be California, Oregon, and Washington, three states that are all making aggressive attempts to promote electric vehicles and transition away from fossil fuels. Given that some estimates suggest electric vehicles could make up the majority of U.S. passenger car sales by 2030, it’s difficult to gauge how much West Coast demand there will be for Willow’s oil over the coming decades.
Even if ConocoPhillips does find buyers on the West Coast and overseas, Willow’s overall impact on oil prices will likely be small. According to the Bureau’s model, Willow will lower global oil prices by about 20 cents a barrel for as long as it operated at peak capacity. As of late Wednesday, the Brent oil benchmark was trading at around $75 a barrel.
“It’s hard to say that this will make a dent in either prices or supply,” said Chanda Meek, a professor of political science at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
The project’s economic impact within Alaska isn’t clear-cut, either, despite what the state’s politicians say.
Alaska is the third most oil-reliant state in the nation, behind Wyoming and North Dakota. According to the state’s own estimate, nearly 85 percent of the state budget comes from oil revenues. Taxes on oil have funded the construction of new buildings and hospitals, and oil prices affect how much funding public schools get. Alaskans, who don’t pay an income or sales tax, also get a check every year from a pot of money called the Permanent Fund Dividend, which is funded by oil royalties. (Each check topped more than $3,000 last year, the highest amount residents have ever received.)
But this picture is changing. In 1988, Alaska’s trans-Alaska pipeline, or TAPS, was pumping a tremendous amount of petroleum from Prudhoe Bay on the North Slope to Valdez on the state’s southern coast — approximately 2 million barrels a day. Now, however, depleted reserves within Alaska and the competing fracking boom in the Southwest’s Permian Basin have made the state’s oil less relevant — Alaska is currently pumping less than a quarter of the oil it was moving in the 1980s. Alaskan oil production hit a 40-year low in 2020.
That’s why the Alaska congressional delegation lobbied the Biden administration long and hard to approve the Willow project.
“Willow is finally reapproved, and we can almost literally feel Alaska’s future brightening because of it,” Murkowski said after the Biden administration announced its decision. “We are now on the cusp of creating thousands of new jobs, generating billions of dollars in new revenues, improving quality of life on the North Slope and across our state, and adding vital energy to TAPS to fuel the nation and the world.”
Experts in Alaskan economic policy say those assertions don’t hold up under scrutiny, and the Willow project is unlikely to bring back the kind of economic security oil provided the state a few decades ago.
Some estimates say Alaska could see $6 billion in revenue from the Willow project, but that payout is years away. In the short term, the state may actually see a decrease in revenue. Because the project is on federal land, the state can only collect production taxes on the project and can’t collect royalties on the oil produced there. More importantly, ConocoPhillips can use a carve-out in the state’s tax law to write off its expenses for this project against the taxes the company pays on its other oil developments in the state. One analysis, conducted by the governor’s office in 2018, forecast that the state wouldn’t see a positive economic impact from the Willow project until 2026 and that the development would result in up to $1.6 billion in negative revenue through 2025 — a 6 percent decrease to the state’s overall revenue. An analysis from this year, conducted by Alaska’s Department of Revenue, says the project wouldn’t become “cash flow positive” for the state until 2035.
While the state would see negative revenue from the project’s first years of operation, municipalities will admittedly see more immediate positive benefits. Production taxes from the project are earmarked as grant programs for local communities, especially in the North Slope borough. The Department of Revenue’s recent analysis shows the North Slope will get $1.3 billion through 2053, and the cash will start flowing in the coming months. Communities impacted by the project will get an additional $3.7 billion over the next three decades.
Of course, the communities closest to drilling face a complex and sobering set of tradeoffs. The Alaska Native Village of Nuiqsut is going to be virtually surrounded by oil fields as a result of the approval of Willow, which threatens the subsistence hunting and fishing that has long sustained the town’s households. Nuiqsut’s mayor has been vocally opposed to the Willow project, and local tribal leaders passed a resolution opposing it in 2019.
Zooming out, Wight said, the project signals to Alaskans, oil companies, and the rest of the world that the United States believes there will still be a market for Conoco’s oil three decades from now. At that time, however, the world’s governments should be completing a transition to clean energy. Indeed, President Biden recently signed a law that puts the nation on track to slash emissions 50 percent by 2030. How can that be the same world that needs 600 million new barrels of oil from Willow?
“We have the policy to build a renewable energy future,” Wight told Grist. “It’s much less clear how a managed decline of fossil fuels is going to happen.”
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