Live on the homepage now!
Reader Supported News
"In 2016, I declared, I am your voice. Today, I add, I am your warrior, I am your justice, and for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution." Anyone who wants to understand how Fascist models of leadership can find expression in our own time need only read this passage from former president Donald Trump's speech at the recent Conservative Political Action Committee meeting held in Maryland.
Trump's CPAC speech brings forth a century of rhetoric and agendas that have been used to destroy democracy, conjuring threats that are meant to build support for authoritarian action and leadership, starting with the idea of the head of state as a vengeful victim.
“What did Italy need? An avenger!... It was necessary to cauterize the virulent wounds...and eliminate evils which threatened to become chronic," Fascist leader Benito Mussolini wrote in his autobiography, striking a similar note to Trump as he explained why he had declared dictatorship in 1925.
Ever since Il Duce came to power a century ago, strongman leaders have proclaimed their unique ability to lead their people to greatness, including by righting the wrongs internal and external enemies supposedly perpetrate against the nation. In the process, the strongman absorbs the blows delivered by those enemies, putting his well-being at risk as he battles to save the nation and protect all that is cherished and dear.
The focus on victimhood sets up any repressive action by the state as self-defense. It justifies the literal weaponization of government, with violence used against enemies "for the good of the nation." The "public safety laws" that jailed leftists and transformed Italy into a police state in the 1920s upheld this fiction.
And Nazi policies did not just make good on Adolf Hitler's vows to punish elites who had "stabbed Germany in the back" by accepting the draconian terms of the Versailles Treaty (which held Germany responsible for all moral and material damages incurred during World War One). They also targeted groups that Hitler identified as threats to Germany’s survival in the future. These included Jews ("black parasites of the nation"); Bolsheviks (the “scum of humanity”); and war profiteers and international capitalists— the forerunners of the "globalists" Trump regularly denounces, including in this CPAC speech.
When such leaders feel their power is threatened, or are staging a comeback after having been voted out of office, they focus on gaining control of public institutions to exact revenge. This is one meaning of Trump’s declaration that "we're going to finish what we started.” If he returns to the White House, he will punish all who did not collaborate with his attempt to overthrow the government.
Trump's well-honed victimhood persona is the star of the CPAC speech, and he invokes a dizzying array of enemies who want to "kill America" and do him in as well. "A sick and sinister opposition, the radical left, communists, the bureaucrats, the fake news media, the big special interests," as well as "Antifa thugs," and "corrupt intelligence agencies."
Fascist leaders pose as pure souls who risk everything to defend the nation. Trump followed suit at CPAC by presenting himself as an innocent and honest man who had never tangled with the law before "corrupt Democratic prosecutors" funded by "the George Soros money machine" sought to stop his "an epic struggle to rescue our country."
"I had a beautiful life before I did this..."I didn't know the word subpoena, I didn't know the word grand jury. I didn't know that they want to lynch you for doing nothing wrong." Luckily for his followers, Trump is tenacious. "We're going to complete the mission, we're going to see this battle through to ultimate victory. we're going to make America great again."
But why stop at America? The true Fascist avenger fixes the world. "I will have the disastrous war between Russia and Ukraine settled. It will be settled quickly. I will get the problem solved. I will get it solved in rapid order—it will take me no longer than one day. I know what to say to each of them. I got along well with all of them. I got along well with Putin."
In fact, as Trump remarks, had he been in office now, as fearsome and powerful as a mountain, "Russia would have never pulled the trigger. This is the most dangerous time in the history of our country and Joe Biden is leading us into oblivion...Biden is a criminal and nothing ever seems to happen to him."
With this incitement to violence against a sitting president, Trump's CPAC speech reaches its peak. Trump offers Americans no policy ideas, but rather a classic Fascist cocktail of negative emotions, satisfying promises of revenge, and a sense of heroism and power.
Like Mussolini and Hitler before him, Trump knows that the strongman must be everything to his people. His devoted followers must be so bonded to him that no other leader is possible in their minds. Only he can save them. "I am your warrior, I am your justice, and for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution."
References:
Benito Mussolini, My Autobiography (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1928), 205. Adolf Hitler, speech in Salzburg, August 1920, in Neil Gregor, “Hitler,” in Mental Maps in the Era of Two World Wars, eds. Steven Casey and Jonathan Wright (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 189; Hitler, “Rathenau und Sancho Pansa,” Völkischer Beobachter, March 13, 1921.
READ MORE 
The U.S. Department of Justice is recommending three dozen 'remedial measures' to improve the Louisville Metro Police Department. (photo: J. Tyler Franklin/LPM)
ALSO SEE: A Louisville Police Officer Let His Dog Attack a 14-Year-Old
Black Child Who Was Not Resisting.
Federal investigators found the Louisville Metro Police Department has an extensive pattern of violating civil rights, conducting unlawful searches and discriminating against Black people and people with behavioral health disabilities.
The 90-page report released Wednesday details a list of issues federal investigators uncovered during a two-year investigation of LMPD that began in April 2021, a year after the police killing of Breonna Taylor and in the wake of protests that followed.
Garland was in Louisville Wednesday to announce the findings of the investigation.
He said the DOJ and city officials have agreed to work toward a consent decree to usher in future identified reforms. City officials signed an agreement in principle committing Louisville to work with DOJ officials, community members, police officials and other stakeholders to address the issues investigators identified, Garland said. He said the agreement permits the DOJ to negotiate a legally binding consent decree with an independent monitor.
The investigation aimed to determine if LMPD engages in a pattern or practice of violating the Constitution or federal law. Investigators found the police did just that.
Investigators said in their report that police in Louisville have practiced “an aggressive style of policing that it deploys selectively, especially against Black people, but also against vulnerable people throughout the city.”
Among the findings:
- “LMPD uses excessive force, including unjustified neck restraints and the unreasonable use of police dogs and tasers.
- LMPD conducts searches based on invalid warrants.
- LMPD unlawfully executes search warrants without knocking and announcing.
- LMPD unlawfully stops, searches, detains, and arrests people during street enforcement activities, including traffic and pedestrian stops.
- LMPD unlawfully discriminates against Black people in its enforcement activities.
- LMPD violates the rights of people engaged in protected speech critical of policing.
- Louisville Metro and LMPD discriminate against people with behavioral health disabilities when responding to them in crisis.”
The police department’s response to domestic violence and sexual assault, including allegations against LMPD officers, is deficient and raises “serious concerns” about whether the agency engages in gender bias in providing police service to women, the report found.
Officer misconduct goes unnoticed, leadership is inadequate and the result is an erosion in community trust, the report states.
The findings are based on police data, documents, thousands of hours of police body camera review and hundreds of interviews with police officers, city officials and community members, according to the report.
“The cumulative effect of Louisville Metro’s and LMPD’s violations takes a heavy toll. It takes a toll on community members who regularly experience these injustices. It takes a toll on those officers and civil servants who serve the community daily with care and impartiality,” according to the report.
History of violations
Since the investigation began, several LMPD officers have faced criminal charges in federal and state court.
Garland in August 2022 charged four officers who were directly involved in Breonna Taylor’s killing. She was shot by police in her home in March 2020 during a late night raid connected to a broader narcotics investigation that focused on her ex-boyfriend.
Garland said the officers violated Taylor’s civil rights when they falsified the search warrant without sufficient probable cause to search the 26-year-old Black woman’s apartment in Louisville’s South End.
City officials agreed to pay Taylor’s family $12 million to settle a civil wrongful death lawsuit in September 2020. The deal also made the unprecedented promise of police policy reforms including an early warning system to flag potentially problematic officers as well as a policy to improve oversight of search warrants.
DOJ suggests remediation
Garland noted police and city leaders have made a range of changes following outrage over Taylor’s killing, including banning no-knock warrants and expanding community violence prevention programs. He said they’ve also taken steps to improve officer health and well-being. But there’s more to do, he said.
Garland said federal investigators identified 36 ways Louisville Metro police and city officials can begin repairing the broken agency.
The measures outline a widespread overhaul of key elements of policing — like executing search warrants, working with confidential informants, and improving traffic stops and protest response using data analysis to help identify systemic issues.
Investigators say police in Louisville should also revise its use-of-force policy with more emphasis on de-escalation techniques, and implement a reporting and review apparatus for use-of-force incidents.
Police also need more civilian oversight and remove “unnecessary burdens” that discourage citizen complaints. Garland said the report is calling for more support of the city’s Office of Inspector General and civilian review board, both of which were created in 2020 and lack subpoena power. The inspector’s general office has tried for months to improve participation by LMPD officers through an information-sharing agreement, which was not finalized as of last month.
Internal police investigations also need improvement, with more staff, training, better documentation, investigators found.
‘A painful picture’
Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg said the report brings back a lot of painful memories from the past few years.
“Our city has wounds that have not yet healed and that’s why this report, this moment, are so important and so necessary,” he said.
Greenberg said he knew when he took office he’d need to embrace a reform effort of the city’s beleaguered police agency.
He said the examples of abuse cited in the report are infuriating, especially against Black people, women and children.
“Abuses by the same people that were supposed to protect them,” he said
Greenberg said he expects people will be surprised and horrified to hear tales of officers betraying residents’ trust. But some, he said, will see it as confirmation of their own experiences with police over the years.
“The United States Department of Justice is essentially saying ‘Yes, you were right, and you deserve better,’” he said.
Greenberg promised the city will make changes and progress “toward improvement and reform” and ensure Louisville police follow the law.
He said a swath of changes are coming to the police department, but did not provide any specifics.
“This report paints a painful picture of LMPD’s past,” he said. “We have a lot of hard work ahead.”
READ MORE 
An officer stomping on a suspect who is already being held on the ground. (photo: Cuyahoga County Prosecutor)
So many officers have been charged, the city had to ask the state for reinforcements.
The indictments bring to 16 the number of law enforcement officers in East Cleveland who have been charged in the last seven months. So many cops have been sidelined that the City Council made an emergency request for reinforcements from the state police and county sheriff.
“Make no mistake There has been a cancer growing in the East Cleveland Police Department,” Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley said at a press conference.
“We are doing our best to remove every tentacle of that cancer, so this department can rebuild and grow to put itself in a position to hire officers who will enforce the law as well as follow the law. This is a sad day for all of law enforcement.”
O’Malley released video of the incidents that led to the indictments—essentially a supercut of sometimes gleeful brutality against helpless men.
The disturbing footage showed an officer stomping on a suspect who was already being held on the ground by another officer; an officer kicking someone who was on their knees in the back; officers punching a suspect on the ground while yelling “Get his ass!” and then congratulating themselves for a “nice little ass whooping.”
Other video showed a cop jumping out of a car, attacking a man on the ground and kicking his groin; an officer tasing a man on the ground with his hands up; a sergeant hitting a man in the head three times; officers breaking an arrestee’s phone and then gleefully discussing attacking him; a cop repeatedly tasing a suspect who was on the ground and already handcuffed.
Cops were also shown punching a man in handcuffs who was already bleeding from the head and had a broken pelvis. The prosecutor said he had been hit by the police car.
“People in these videos were giving up, they were showing their hands, they were not threats,” O’Malley said.
Four of the officers indicted Wednesday were already facing charges. Two of them were charged in September with felony theft, dereliction of duty and interfering with civil rights. Two others were charged with robbing six people of cash, guns, and drugs while on patrol.
The former East Cleveland police chief, Scott Gardner, was charged last year with stealing from the city and not paying taxes.
The cops and ex-officers indicted yesterday were identified as Nicholas Foti, Ian McInnes, Kyle Wood, John Hartman, Tristan Homan, Brian Stoll, Tyler Mundson, Laurice Mans, Brian Parks, Daniel Toomer, Tre Dehart Robinson.
“We had to remove the bad actors, and we continue to investigate. This is not over,” O’Malley said.
READ MORE 
Crews clean oil that spewed out of the Keystone pipeline in Washington County. The EPA expects the cleanup to continue for months. (photo: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency)
Regulators want to know the risks that flawed welding or shifting ground could pose for more breaks on the Keystone, which has spilled repeatedly since 2011.
So the U.S. Department of Transportation ordered Canadian company TC Energy to lower the pressure for crude oil along another 1,200 miles of its pipeline.
Federal officials also ordered a review of how the company handles geologic hazards such as unstable soil and said more spills and “serious harm” are likely if the pipeline operation doesn’t improve.
“Continued operation (without change) is or would be hazardous to life, property or the environment,” the order said.
The order comes during an ongoing investigation into the country’s second-biggest inland spill of a Canadian tar sands product, called dilbit, in north-central Kansas in December.
TC Energy says bad welding played a role in what the company has described as an “instantaneous rupture.” More than 500,000 gallons of crude oil gushed out on the night of Dec. 7, raining down on native prairie and cropland and pouring into a tributary of the Little Blue River.
Bad welding caused other Keystone spills in the past, too — a fact cited by federal regulators in their decision on Tuesday. The one in Kansas was the pipeline’s worst spill yet.
The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration — part of the US Department of Transportation — also said that TC Energy had been monitoring the area for shifting ground before the 3-foot-wide pipe burst.
Unstable soil and ground movement are dangerous for pipelines. The agency says TC Energy was required to mitigate any such problems under its federal permit for the pipeline.
Workers responding to the spill witnessed that the pipeline was under improper stress, the agency said.
“It is not clear whether the pipe segment has been under stress since construction (in 2011) or if land movement in the area may have more recently induced or increased stress,” the agency said.
The Keystone burst at the base of a ridge in Washington County. Landowners say they worried from the start about the company running pipe up the ridge’s slopes and they want to know if the hill played a role in the rupture.
But federal regulators have not said whether that specific aspect of the topography played a role in the improper stress.
They do, however, point out that the Keystone crosses drinking water sources, populated areas and sensitive ecological regions in more than half a dozen states.
In Kansas, the oil poured into Mill Creek, a winding stream that was moving slowly during a particularly dry year. It did not affect drinking water for humans, though landowners had to move livestock away from the newly toxic creek.
But the pipeline also crosses big waterways in Kansas, such as the Kansas River that provides drinking water to about 800,000 people in northeastern Kansas.
After the December spill, regulators immediately slapped a lower pressure rule on nearly 100 miles of the Keystone in Kansas and Nebraska.
Tuesday’s order lowers the pressure limit for another 1,200 miles of pipe, southward to Oklahoma, eastward to Illinois and northward to the Canadian border.
The order cites “indications that TC Oil’s operating, maintenance, and/or integrity management programs may be inadequate to address the repetitious pattern of failures” on the Keystone since 2011, including flawed welding and the risks posed by shifting soil.
It gives the company two months to review how it handles geologic hazards and whether shifting earth factored into the Dec. 7 spill. The company must hire an independent contractor for the review, which also has to investigate whether land movement could be stressing other points of the Keystone system.
In an email, TC Energy said Wednesday that it is reviewing the federal order and that it will comply.
“Our commitment to the safe operations of our system is unwavering,” the email said.
The new order also requires TC Energy to file reports on welding quality along most of the rest of its pipeline system within the U.S.
The Keystone pipeline system carries tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, to U.S. facilities. It runs through North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska, then forks as shown on this map. One leg runs southward through Kansas to Oklahoma and Texas and another cuts eastward through Kansas to Missouri and Illinois.
TC Energy initially estimated that 588,000 gallons of crude oil spilled in Kansas. It later lowered the estimate to 543,000 gallons. However, the EPA is sticking to the original figure, which it says matches the agency’s independent calculations.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency expects the cleanup will continue for months to come.
TC Energy estimates that the cleanup and related work will cost $480 million. It’s unclear whether that figure includes the taxpayer money spent by state and federal agencies that responded to the oil spill — part of which the company will be forced to repay.
READ MORE 
Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens, center, speaks to reporters about the Hinds County Public Safety Initiative on May 4, 2022, in Jackson, Miss. (photo: Rogelio V. Solis/AP)
In recent years, just under 40 bills have been introduced in various state legislatures that give local prosecutorial powers to state-level officials.
Since the mid-2010s, dozens of cities across the country have elected prosecutors who enacted criminal justice reforms. Several have faced recall battles or other attempts to remove them from office. While at least one of the recall bids has succeeded, the efforts have largely failed. Facing losses at the ballot box, Republicans and police unions pushing a return to “tough-on-crime” policies are turning instead to state legislatures to advance their aims.
“Those committed to ensuring that only poor Black people get prosecuted, and that police officers who cause harm go free, are lashing out, trying to undermine the will of the voters by removing people who won’t go along with the old, out-of-touch criminal legal system,” said Jessica Brand, a progressive strategist who advises reformist prosecutors around the country. “This is a nation-wide assault on democracy.”
In January, the Local Solutions Support Center and the Public Rights Project, a nonprofit that advocates for civil rights and economic and environmental justice, released a report tallying bills introduced in legislative sessions between 2017 and 2022. The authors found that nearly 30 bills had been introduced in 16 states during that period.
“Although only five preemption laws have passed,” the report says, “this new trend is part of a larger movement by reactionary states to use preemption to thwart criminal justice reform and undermine the will of local constituents calling for this change.”
With at least nine additional bills have introduced this year, including one in a new state, Mississippi, totals rose to 37 bills in 17 states.
The federal system provides no legal protection for cities against state lawmakers who want to step in to stop a certain policy, leaving cities with progressive leanings at the mercy of conservative state officials.
In some cases, the power to recall an elected official serves a purpose — for instance, in North Carolina, which does not have a statute for recalling an elected official, an elected sheriff was indicted for attempted murder and refused to step down — but recalls can also be easily exploited for political purposes. In Florida, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis removed an elected attorney, Andrew Warren, because he pledged not to prosecute women who sought abortions. This week, DeSantis moved to suspend another prosecutor over his handling of a criminal case.
Likewise, critics say that state legislatures are abusing their statutory authority by trying to rip power away from prosecutors.
Reformist prosecutors have come to office and undertaken policy changes like reducing or ending cash bail, declining to charge people in nonviolent drug possession cases, holding police accountable for misconduct, and addressing wrongful convictions. Conservative politicians, however, have painted these reformers as harbingers of lawlessness, blaming them for a spike in homicides — although that spike has also impacted areas with traditionally “tough-on-crime” prosecutors.
The new rash of legislative efforts to strip prosecutors of their power has sometimes come before reforms are even enacted. The district attorney in Polk County, Iowa, has been on the job for eight weeks, and state lawmakers are already trying to give her powers to the attorney general.
“All of these changes seem to be in direct response to policy preferences before anything has even happened,” said John Pfaff, a scholar of criminal justice at Fordham University School of Law. “This is clearly not a response to a failure of policy on the ground. This is a direct rebuke to voters saying what they want.”
Republican lawmakers in Texas have introduced four bills that would prohibit prosecutors from declining to charge certain offenses or refusing to seek the death penalty in capital cases and would allow the attorney general to fine and seek removal of prosecutors who decline to pursue certain charges. One of the bills would prohibit elected prosecutors from adopting policies to limit criminal enforcement of laws related to voting and elections — laws that have become politicized following former President Donald Trump’s false claims of mass election fraud.
Another Texas bill would establish a council to monitor prosecutors and grant it the power to petition for prosecutors’ removal for “incompetency or misconduct.” The bills would apply to elected prosecutors across the state.
Georgia lawmakers have introduced two bills to take away power from prosecutors. One would make it easier to recall an elected prosecutor and another would prohibit prosecutors from using blanket policy guidelines, like declining to charge for drug possession or ending cash bail for nonviolent offenses. Another proposes an oversight commission for elected prosecutors appointed by the governor and grants the power to discipline, remove, and force elected prosecutors and solicitor generals to retire.
A bill in Iowa would give the attorney general power to prosecute any criminal charge without first receiving a request from the county attorney.
Mississippi is one place where conservative state-level officials are looking to rein in prosecutors from Democratic local officials, particularly in Hinds County, where majority-Black Jackson is located and Jody Owens holds the district attorney’s seat. One proposed bill would create a separate court system and police force for a district in Jackson, with prosecutors and public defenders appointed by the attorney general.
Jackson would become the only county in the state to not elect its own prosecutors and judges. The proposal has come under fire for giving white state officials the power to appoint officers and administer a separate judicial system for a heavily Black city. The bill passed the Mississippi State House last month largely along party lines.
Another bill in Missouri would allow the governor to appoint a special prosecutor to handle cases in any jurisdiction if the governor determines that “a threat to public safety and health” exists. The original version of the bill targeted the circuit attorney in St. Louis County, Kim Gardner, a reform-minded prosecutor who was elected in 2020 on promises to end cash bail and hold police accountable.
Gardner has been the target of attacks from high-ranking Republican officials, including Trump, and several bills targeting her office failed in previous sessions. The Missouri attorney general moved last week to remove Gardner from office over her handling of a case in which the defendant was released on bond and caused a car accident that led a teenage girl to have her legs amputated. Gardner’s office, however, has no power to assign or revoke bond.
Questions about the constitutionality of targeting one specific office led lawmakers to expand the bill to apply to any elected prosecutor in the state. (Police unions in Missouri are also backing another bill that would take power over the city’s police department away from a progressive mayor and give it instead to the state’s Republican governor.)
Of the at least nine bills introduced so far this year, bills in Mississippi and Missouri passed their state Houses, and one bill in Georgia has passed its state Senate. Last year, a bill in Virginia was voted down in committee, and the other bills have not yet moved toward a vote. (None of the bills’ sponsors responded to requests for comment.)
Part of the reason so few bills have become law is that even DAs who may not be part of the reform movement see these measures as a threat to their autonomy. Prosecutors are motivated to protect their own power and are willing to create coalition with ideological opponents to fight those who might seek to take it away. The county attorney’s association in Iowa, for instance, is opposing the bill there.
Conservative attacks on reform DAs tend to claim that their voting base are white progressives voting to impose lawlessness in Black communities, but that’s not the case, Pfaff said. A new paper he’s working on finds that reform-minded DAs generally find the most support in Black communities with high levels of gun violence. Lawmakers introducing bills to strip prosecutorial authority tend to represent suburban white voters.
“White liberal voters seem less open to reformers than Black communities are,” Pfaff said, but state legislatures are most influenced by white moderates and conservatives who hail from suburban and rural areas. “That’s part of what’s leading to this preemptive push you’re seeing in a lot of these red states.”
READ MORE 
President Biden faces pressure from Republicans, who won control of the House last fall, to make steep cuts in federal spending. (Photo: Pete Maravich/New York Times)
The president’s proposals, included in the budget he will release on Thursday, are expected to heavily feature tax increases on corporations and high earners.
Mr. Biden’s plans, which will be detailed as part of his budget blueprint, are expected to rely heavily on a familiar batch of tax increases on corporations and high earners along with savings from some spending reductions. These include efforts to save money on federal health care programs by expanding legislation he signed last year that allows Medicare to negotiate the price of certain prescription drugs.
The president faces pressure from Republicans, who won control of the House last fall, to alter the nation’s fiscal path. House Republicans have refused to raise the nation’s debt limit, which caps how much money the federal government can borrow, unless Mr. Biden agrees to steep cuts in federal spending.
To help increase federal revenues and reduce the nation’s reliance on borrowed money, Mr. Biden will announce a new 25 percent tax on American households worth more than $100 million that would apply to both their earned income and the unrealized gains in the value of their liquid assets, like stocks, an administration official said. He proposed a similar tax last year but at a lower rate, 20 percent.
Mr. Biden will also call for quadrupling a tax on stock buybacks that was approved as part of a sweeping tax, health care and climate bill he signed last year. He will renew his longstanding call to roll back former President Donald J. Trump’s tax cuts for high earners and to partially reverse his cuts for corporations, by raising the corporate income tax rate to 28 percent from 21 percent. And he will once again call for raising a tax rate on multinational corporations’ income earned overseas.
White House officials said this week that the budget would include an increase and expansion of an investment tax on high earners, which would be directed to the Medicare trust fund. That tax proposal, plus the proposed savings from additional Medicare negotiations on prescription drugs, would reduce deficits by about $900 billion on net, according to Treasury Department estimates shared by the White House.
The president is also expected to continue proposing some tax increases to offset the cost of portions of his agenda that have not yet passed Congress. That agenda includes efforts to expand access to child care and reduce its cost, provide federally guaranteed paid leave for workers, establish universal prekindergarten and enable students to attend community college for free.
Mr. Biden’s plans to trim the deficit are unlikely to mollify Republicans. He has refused to negotiate over the debt limit and has said he will not cut benefits for Social Security or Medicare, two popular safety net programs. But he has said repeatedly that he is open to reducing deficits by raising taxes on corporations and the rich.
The total of nearly $3 trillion was first reported by The Associated Press. It is an increase from the deficit reduction that Mr. Biden previewed in his State of the Union address, saying that “the plan I’m going to show you is going to cut the deficit by another $2 trillion” without cutting “a single bit of Medicare or Social Security.”
The federal government has run deficits every year since 2000, spending more money than it receives in tax revenue. The deficit ballooned under President Donald J. Trump after the onset of the pandemic recession, which spurred Congress to approve trillions of dollars in relief for individuals, businesses, and state and local governments. Mr. Trump also signed tax cuts into law that are projected to add $2 trillion to deficits over the course of a decade.
The nation’s borrowing levels remained elevated in 2021 under Mr. Biden, who signed a $1.9 trillion economic aid package soon after taking office, but declined last year. They are set to rebound in the years to come and rise above $2 trillion by 2032, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Republicans have ruled out raising taxes to reduce deficits. They have joined Mr. Biden in saying cuts to Medicare and Social Security are also off the table. That appears to leave little room for agreement in ways to bring down future debt.
But both Mr. Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California have expressed optimism that they can find some sort of agreement on fiscal policy.
“I believe we have common ground,” Mr. McCarthy told reporters on Wednesday. “It won’t be in taxes. But I think we could find ways to grow this economy.”
READ MORE 
The large marble butterfly is now locally extinct in some places. (photo: Rick and Nora Bowers/Alamy)
A legal quirk leaves officials in at least a dozen states with little or no authority to protect insects. That’s a growing problem for humans.
To make matters worse for insects, they have also been sidelined legally in some states, with unintended but serious repercussions. The reason? According to many state statutes, insects are not considered wildlife.
Bees, butterflies and beetles pollinate plants, enrich soils and provide a critical protein source for species up the food chain. The United States Forest Service puts it simply: “Without pollinators, the human race and all of earth’s terrestrial ecosystems would not survive.”
Ecologically they are “the little things that run the world,” in the words of the biologist E.O. Wilson.
But those little things are increasingly threatened. Scientists are reporting alarming declines in many species. Some insects appear especially vulnerable to climate change’s supercharged droughts and heat, which hit them hard in addition to chronic pressures like disappearing habitat, widespread pesticides and light pollution.
At the same time, conservation officials in at least 12 states — Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming — have their hands tied, legally speaking, when it comes to protecting insects. The creatures are simply left out of state conservation statutes, or their situation is ambiguous.
“State agencies are really at the forefront of conservation for wildlife,” said Scott Black, executive director of the Xerces Society, a nonprofit group that advocates for insect conservation. “But in these states where they can’t work on insects, or in some cases any invertebrates, they don’t. So, you see things just languish.”
The problem may stem in part from the intention of state agencies when they were created roughly a century ago: To protect wild species from getting hunted or fished to extinction. And, to be clear: Bugs are not totally unregulated. Agricultural departments control for invasive species or those that damage crops, but that typically entails killing them. Some do pollinator education, too.
Sometimes, aquatic insects come under the purview of state wildlife agencies. Other times, help may come once insects are struggling enough to be on the road to federal protection under the Endangered Species Act. But often, there’s nobody in charge of conservation.
In Arizona, for example, state statute defines wildlife as “all wild mammals, wild birds and the nests or eggs thereof, reptiles, amphibians, mollusks, crustaceans and fish, including their eggs or spawn.” Insects are absent. So Jeff Sorensen, the manager of the invertebrate wildlife program at the state Game and Fish Department, which would otherwise include insects, focuses on the categories that are designated: crustaceans and mollusks.
“It’s unfortunate that an entire group of animals, insects, are not being given the same level of attention and management abilities,” he said.
States that do have authority over insect conservation can take measures like protecting certain habitats and creating action plans to restore threatened species. Washington State, for example, requires cities and counties to avoid a net loss to vulnerable insects from new developments.
But even in states that are empowered to protect insects, they tend to be a low priority compared with mammals, birds, fish and even less charismatic vertebrates like reptiles and amphibians. Moreover, officials sometimes face restrictions on their ability to include insects on state endangered species lists. In September, for instance, it took a California Supreme Court ruling to confirm that they could be listed. The catch: Given the constraints of state statutes, they have to be lumped in with fish. (The chief justice took care to point out that the ruling didn’t mean bumblebees are now actually fish under the law.)
In large part, state agencies remain focused on species that are hunted and fished, according to state workers and scientists. “I have talked to agency leadership in some states who don’t even know that an insect is an animal,” said Ross Winton, an invertebrate biologist at the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department who leads a new working group on invertebrates and pollinator conservation through the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies.
The lack of attention becomes even more stark when you consider the magnitude of the conservation challenge. Insects represent a huge share of animal species — by some estimates, 80 percent. They’re particularly hard to monitor, given their small size and vast diversity.
Some states do appear to be waking up to the plight of insects.
A bill introduced last month in Nevada seeks to expand the definition of wildlife to include non-pest insects in need of conservation. In Colorado, a new state law has mandated a study on protecting native pollinators. But across the states without insect authority, officials are often reluctant to broach adding it, Mr. Winton said.
Money is a major obstacle. Without increased funding, adding insects to an already overloaded conservation caseload can feel impossible, state employees say.
A federal bill that would have provided an additional $1.4 billion annually to state and tribal wildlife agencies could have acted as a catalyst for more insect conservation, but it died last year in the Senate.
Seven of the states without insect conservation authority are in the West, which has felt the effects of climate change intensely. Insects are especially vulnerable to these changes, scientists say, in part because they can easily dry out. Research suggests that steady butterfly declines in the region are linked to worsening heat and drought, among other factors.
The large marble butterfly, a species found in many Western states, may be a case in point. While it thrived through the 1980s, even adapting to new host plants, its populations in many monitored sites have since crashed. The once-abundant species is now locally extinct in some places. Scientists can’t say why for certain, but they suspect pesticide use, habitat loss to development and agriculture, and climate change.
“These climate swings have become so intense and wide ranging, like the megadrought, you can’t hide,” said Matt Forister, an insect ecologist at the University of Nevada, Reno.
As the troubles of insects become more apparent, some states are coming up with workaround solutions. In Utah, for example, the top insect authority is arguably Amanda Barth, an ecologist at Utah State University who leads the state’s rare insect conservation program under a 2020 memorandum of understanding with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources.
“But I’m not an authority,” she clarified. “I can speak for the state in a lot of ways, but I can’t make rules.”
Ms. Barth’s position is politically delicate enough that her email signature states explicitly that she’s an employee of the university. When states move to protect insects, they often face backlash from industries like farming and development that stand to lose money.
She says she has to keep it “transparent that the Division of Wildlife Resources is not acting outside of its authority by dedicating resources or personnel to this program.”
Still, Ms. Barth is determined to replace her ecological despair with action, and she’s proud of the various efforts she has underway. There’s the citizen-science project that has recorded thousands of observations of native insects. There’s work on federal lands, where agencies like the Bureau of Land Management have authority over insects. There’s the conservation agreement to protect a rare and endemic beetle, the coral pink sand dunes tiger beetle, from declining so much that it needs protection under the federal Endangered Species Act.
“I like to call them creative solutions,” Ms. Barth said.
But such partnerships also reflect limitations. Ms. Barth leads a monarch butterfly and native pollinator working group with other Western states through the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, a nonprofit group. One of the benefits: They can make suggestions about conservation of western monarchs, which have declined about 90 percent since the 1980s, that they would not have the authority to offer within their own states.
“It’s a group effort, it provides us cover because most of the states in the working group don’t have management authority over insects,” Ms. Barth said. “We’re trying to pool our resources and kind of split the bill.”
Among the working group’s projects: Creating blueprint language that states can choose to adopt to bring insects into the fold.
“They matter,” she said. “It’s a culture shift.”
Follow us on facebook and twitter!
PO Box 2043 / Citrus Heights, CA 95611
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.