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The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, "The Borowitz Report."
Harland Dorrinson, who has treated countless people who have paid off porn stars, said that many of his patients have been experiencing “acute anxiety and stress” during the past week.
The porn-star compensators, who represent roughly twelve per cent of the U.S. population, believe that their basic constitutional right to silence an adult-film performer with a financial emolument “is in jeopardy like never before,” he said.
“These are individuals who have taken great comfort in their ability to pay off porn stars, and suddenly they feel as though the rug has been pulled out from under them,” he said. “They’re in a lot of pain right now.”
As the country heads into a Presidential-election year, the millions who have paid off porn stars could emerge as “a force to be reckoned with,” a leading political scientist warns.
“Republicans have been casting around for a kitchen-table issue that can energize a wide swath of voters,” Davis Logsdon, of the University of Minnesota, said. “The God-given right to pay off your porn star could be that issue.”
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Republican U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker and his wife Julie attend a U.S. midterm runoff election night party in Atlanta, Dec. 6, 2022. (photo: Alyssa Pointer/Reuters)
Herschel Walker's wife initially opposed Walker running for Senate, sources told The Daily Beast, until she saw an opportunity to make a lot of money.
It was risky, many people advised. They knew that the secrets lurking in Walker’s past could damage his very profitable brand. And there was no telling if he’d win or lose.
But according to five former campaign officials and advisers, Walker’s wife, Julie Blanchard, quickly became his Senate bid’s most vocal champion, only changing her tune after she saw an opportunity to turn a tidy personal profit from official campaign business.
Blanchard’s plan, according to these campaign sources, was to collect a commission from the campaign’s media buys. Essentially, these sources said, Blanchard believed she could strike an agreement with a media company that employed a friend of hers—and then collect a percentage of the profit through a private agreement.
“It was clear from that point that Julie was going to be in charge,” one former adviser told The Daily Beast, echoing staff observations in numerous news reports. “The dangerous thing is she had no idea about what the fuck she was doing. She’s also got the worst political instincts of anyone I’ve ever met, and that’s a dangerous combination. It was clear she was just motivated by, ‘How can I control it? What are the ways I can make money?’”
But Blanchard’s gambit never came to fruition, these sources said, largely because the campaign shot down her attempts to carry out the scheme, but also because she never struck an agreement with the media company.
Blanchard—who dated Walker for more than a decade before marrying him in March 2021, about five months before he announced his candidacy—was a powerful and ubiquitous campaign figure from the start. But her inexperienced advice more often than not made things more difficult for the campaign.
Blanchard, believing Walker could take 50 percent of the Black vote, wanted the campaign to sink money into urban radio, three sources told The Daily Beast. Experienced GOP operatives pointed out that poll after poll showed there was little hope of making inroads with Black voters, and that the money was better spent wooing other demographics.
“Julie wanted Cardi B on the campaign trail,” another staffer previously told The Daily Beast, referring to the liberal hip-hop star from the Bronx. “The person who sings ‘Wet Ass Pussy,’ and you want to bring her on the campaign trail to appeal to conservatives, just because she tweeted that we’re in a recession?”
(Walker ultimately claimed 8 percent of the Black vote, according to CNN exit polls.)
But it was only after Blanchard’s concerns that a Senate campaign would damage Walker’s earning potential were allayed that she appeared to morph from a cautionary voice of reason into a fierce advocate for his Senate run, according to two people with direct knowledge of those early discussions.
Both Walker and Blanchard were concerned that the demands and legal restrictions that come with running a campaign for federal office would tighten their cash flow, according to the five campaign sources. All five sources have knowledge of internal campaign discussions but would only speak to The Daily Beast under the condition that their names not be printed.
One of the chief concerns, all of these sources said, was the inevitable hit to Walker’s public speaking engagements and endorsement deals. Those gigs had provided the couple with a steady stream of income for years, and neither of them wanted to see it dry up—during the campaign, or potentially after.
And Walker officials and outside advisers were warning Walker from the start about potential conflicts.
“He gets paid to talk about himself and be a brand ambassador, but he wouldn’t have that opportunity as a candidate for office,” a former adviser told The Daily Beast. “If you win, you won’t have it as a senator, and if you lose, you won’t have it because you’ll be tarnished.”
“There were a few concerns about that,” another official said, referencing the speeches. “First, the campaign had no ability to control what he said and there was a chance his remarks would be recorded. Second, there were scheduling challenges with a Senate campaign. Finally, it couldn’t be risked that he appear to use paid speeches to advance a campaign.”
The couple, however, mostly disregarded this advice. Three campaign sources said that Walker and Blanchard—who had long acted as Walker’s business manager—just grew increasingly furtive about his public appearances.
Walker’s financial disclosures showed that his speaking gigs continued through summer 2022, though the regularity waned a bit. In the months before announcing his candidacy in Aug. 2021, Walker reported nine payments for paid speaking appearances, totaling $236,000. In the same approximate time frame for 2022, he reported seven gigs, for $221,000.
Blanchard additionally had more general fears about Walker jumping into the race, four of the people said, most specifically that certain skeletons in Walker’s closet would come out.
“She was absolutely adamant that he not run in the first place,” a former Walker adviser told The Daily Beast. “Adamant.”
But according to two sources with direct knowledge of discussions in the campaign’s formative days, once Blanchard understood the amount of money the campaign would raise, she changed her mind.
“In a meeting one day, she suddenly made clear to us that she thought she would be able to get points off of the media buys,” one source said, claiming that Blanchard had planned to funnel kickbacks to one of her companies. “If this was going to be a $100 million operation, then in her mind she deserved to get some of that money.”
Four of the sources said Blanchard made repeated attempts to direct campaign contracts to ICON International, who employed a friend she knew from her days selling billboard ads at CBS Outdoor more than a decade ago. But while that friend—Andy Campbell—had media experience, neither he nor his company had experience in the political sphere, according to the four people.
“We kept telling her that it just didn’t make any sense to hire them for this,” a former top adviser told The Daily Beast.
The campaign never contracted with Campbell or ICON, opting instead for trusted political firms, as reflected in the campaign’s filings with the Federal Election Commission. However, on Dec. 18, 2022—12 days after Walker conceded his run-off defeat to Democratic opponent Raphael Warnock—Campbell received a $5,500 payment for “advertising” during the run-off.
Walker and Blanchard didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment.
Reached for comment, Campbell told The Daily Beast that he was “totally unaware” of Blanchard’s alleged plan. He added that it seemed “implausible” that Blanchard, with her own media background, would think she could take a commission from an international company like ICON. He also emphasized that ICON never conducted any business with the campaign.
But Campbell did acknowledge performing an independent review of campaign media strategy on Blanchard’s behalf. That review, he said, took place in the weeks before November’s general election—not, as the campaign’s expense report says, during the run-off.
“We have been best of friends for years. Julie asked me to check their buys to see my opinion on the quality of their work as a media professional,” Campbell told The Daily Beast. “They were using outdated Nielsen books, and I told Julie they should use accurate ratings books.”
Campbell continued that he made some station recommendations “for her media company to change based on updated information.”
“I never bought any media for their campaign or ever planned to,” he wrote in one text message. “It was just a suggestions/changes for her media firm to make.”
Campaign finance expert Brendan Fischer, deputy executive director of watchdog group Documented, told The Daily Beast that kickbacks to a candidate’s spouse could violate the ban on personal use of campaign funds, and might also constitute a reporting violation.
“Campaign funds cannot be used for anybody’s personal benefit,” Fischer said. “Candidates must tread cautiously when hiring family members or friends. Any payments to family members must be for fair market value.”
Fischer added that violations would depend on the facts of each case, such as whether the vendor typically pays referral fees, and if the commission tracks with similar referrals.
“But if the vendor doesn’t typically offer referral fees, then paying a kickback to the candidate’s spouse would likely violate the ban on personal use of campaign funds,” Fischer said.
Either way, despite Blanchard’s wishes, the plan didn’t work, and therefore, there never was any kickback.
The campaign’s final FEC reports show a $158,000 debt to Texas-based media contractor Scott Howell, as well as around $74,000 to a company called Battleground Connect, for text messaging services. Battleground Connect is owned by Walker’s campaign manager, Scott Paradise, and is among a handful of vendors the campaign hired for the service.
Campbell’s independent audit reflects some of the paranoia that Blanchard and Walker both exhibited about the campaign’s contracting decisions, as described by all five sources. They appeared to endorse and even intensify that paranoia in each other.
“They would just fuel their own worst instincts,” a former adviser told The Daily Beast, an observation the other sources echoed in interviews. “It was just the worst possible scenario.”
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Leonard Leo, a rightwing legal activist, is said to have been the chief curator of supreme court nominees when Donald Trump served as president. (photo: Carolyn Kaster/AP)
A watchdog complaint filed with the IRS presents an accounting of the money paid to Leonard Leo’s for-profit businesses
Leo is a hugely influential figure said to have been the chief curator of supreme court nominees when Donald Trump was US president. The devout Catholic is a staunch opponent of abortion rights.
The Campaign for Accountability, a non-profit watchdog organisation based in Washington, has called for an investigation into seven non-profit groups linked to Leo that it said may be misusing millions of dollars for the personal benefit of insiders – a violation of their tax-exempt status.
On Wednesday, the watchdog filed an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) complaint dissecting six years of filings from the Leo-affiliated organisations and presenting an accounting of more than $73m paid to his for-profit businesses.
The document concludes that Leo “caused” several recently formed non-profits “to pay him (directly or indirectly) more than $73m over a six-year period from 2016 through 2021”.
It adds that there is some evidence to suggest Leo’s for-profit businesses, BH Group and CRC Advisors, which received millions of dollars for alleged consulting, research or public relations services, “may have either not have provided those services at all or may have provided services at a level not commensurate with the payments received”.
The non-profits are the Rule of Law Trust, 85 Fund (formerly known as the Judicial Education Project), Concord Fund (formerly known as the Judicial Crisis Network), Federalist Society for Law … Public Policy Studies, Freedom and Opportunity Fund, Wellspring Committee and Marble Freedom Trust.
Last month the Politico website reported that Leo’s personal wealth rocketed at the same time that he hit new heights in political fundraising. The article said spending by Leo’s aligned non-profits on his for-profit business “demonstrates the extent to which his money-raising benefited his own bottom line”.
The Campaign for Accountability also charts a considerable boost in Leo’s own finances in recent years.
Between 2006 and 2016, it says, he earned between $305,000 and $435,000 annually as an employee of the Federalist Society, a group founded in 1982 to challenge what conservatives perceived as liberal dominance of courts and law schools. He appeared to live an upper-middle-class lifestyle consistent with those wages and bought a $710,000 home in McLean, Virginia.
But from 2016 Leo began “living more lavishly” and, in 2018, paid off the 30-year mortgage on his McLean house, according to the IRS complaint. Later that year he bought a $3.3m summer home with 11 bedrooms in Mount Desert, Maine. And in 2021, he bought a second home in Mount Desert for $1.65m.
The complaint observes that Leo “had a reputation for wearing fine tailored suits and gold jewelry, as well as an intimate familiarity with the best and most expensive wines and restaurants in every major city in the world”.
The Campaign for Accountability has written to the attorney general of Washington DC referring the non-profits for potential investigation and enforcement action. Although the non-profits are based outside Washington, most conduct business inside the capital.
Michelle Kuppersmith, executive director of Campaign for Accountability, said it was asking for the tax exempt status of the groups to be revoked. The IRS does not approve of “using nonprofits as basically laundromats to wash money through in a tax exempt way and then out the other end to two private entities”, she added.
“We’re hopeful that the IRS and/or the DC AG [attorney general] will take up this complaint and use the evidence that we’re presenting, which is very carefully thought out and laid out in legal language with all of the relevant statutes that we believe are being violated, along with a lot of the background to provide the evidence as to why.”
Leo rose to become the Federalist Society’s co-chair and oversaw its expansion of influence at the expense of the more liberal American Bar Association, in part through the effectiveness of his fundraising to back conservative judicial nominees.
After the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, Leo drew up a list of 11 potential supreme court nominees to help Trump win over conservative and evangelical voters. All three eventually chosen during the Trump presidency – Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – were on the list and voted to overturn the Roe v Wade ruling on abortion.
After Trump’s victory in the 2016, Leo took time away from the Federalist Society to work as an advisor to the president.
Last year it emerged that the Marble Freedom Trust received a $1.6bn donation to promote conservative causes ahead of last year’s midterm elections. Leo defended the influx of money by claiming that it merely levelled the playing field against Democrats bankrolled by liberal donors.
Kuppersmith commented: “He certainly is committed to the cause and after many years of working on it, he is reaping the benefits of his success but in a way that most people do not get to.”
Leo, who is chairman of CRC Advisors, rejected the self-enrichment allegations. He said in a statement: “We put our clients’ money to work more effectively than any other enterprise of its sort, as the media has confirmed numerous times.”
Leo sought to turn the tables by claiming that the Campaign for Accountability was itself created by a liberal “dark money” network run by the consulting firm Arabella Advisors. “Does Campaign for Accountability plan to ask the IRS to investigate Arabella Advisors and its web of nonprofits that have received hundreds of millions of dollars from a foreign billionaire seeking to influence US elections? Of course not, they are part of it.”
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Manuel Oliver, father of Joaquin Oliver speaks next to his wife and David Hogg, survivor of the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, June 11, 2022. (photo: Joshua Roberts/Reuters)
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to go from Tennessee to Florida, which brings up this meme that has been going around. It’s a picture of a pile of books, and it says, “Never in recorded history has a 4-year-old found his father’s loaded book and accidentally killed his younger sister, but we ban books.”
So, from Tennessee to Florida to Capitol Hill. On Wednesday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Republicans want to see all the facts before proposing any new gun legislation in the wake of the latest school shooting. That prompted a heated confrontation between New York Congressmember Jamaal Bowman and Kentucky Republican Congressmember Thomas Massie, just off the House floor, where Bowman accused Republicans of refusing to save children’s lives.
REP. JAMAAL BOWMAN: They’re cowards! A 9-year-old — three 9-year-olds. Are they going to those funerals? No, they never go to the funerals. They never go to the scene of the mass shootings. And it’s not just in schools. It’s in Black and Brown communities every day.
AMY GOODMAN: Republican Thomas Massie responded to Bowman, saying, quote, “There’s never been a school shooting in a school that allows teachers to carry,” unquote. In 2021, Kentucky Congressman Massie tweeted a photo of himself and six family members, his kids, holding assault-style rifles, with the caption, “Merry Christmas! ps. Santa, please bring ammo.”
This comes after Manuel Oliver, father of Joaquin, one of 17 people killed in the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, was arrested at a hearing last week in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, after he and his wife Patricia spoke out during a subcommittee hearing on the Second Amendment that was chaired by Texas Republican Pat Fallon. Florida Democrat and committee member Maxwell Frost tweeted a video of Oliver, quote, “being arrested for speaking out at a committee hearing. Manny is a hero. He didn’t deserve this.”
PATRICIA OLIVER: What are you going to say about Joaquin? What are you going to tell me about Joaquin? He got shot four times. He destroyed his head. And his blood, everywhere. And that’s right for you. [inaudible]
POLICE OFFICER 1: Back up! Or you’re going to jail next!
POLICE OFFICER 2: Back up!
POLICE OFFICER 1: Move out!
POLICE OFFICER 2: Back up!
POLICE OFFICER 1: Move out!
AMY GOODMAN: So, the video shows Capitol Police pushing Patricia Oliver away as they pin her husband Manny to the ground outside the hearing room.
Well, Manny Oliver joins us now from his home in Parkland, Florida. He co-founded the gun reform group Change the Ref and engaged in countless protests for action on gun control. He’s an artist, and much of what he does is murals and art and resistance. His new op-ed for The Daily Beast is headlined “Arrest Gun-Loving Members of Congress—Not Grieving Fathers.”
Manny Oliver, welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s been five years since you lost Guac and so many lost their loved ones in Parkland. And now week after week — I think, in 2023, there is a mass shooting at a school alone every single week in this country. What are you calling for?
MANUEL OLIVER: Well, I’m calling for a different reaction from us, from you, from our neighbors. This is our situation that at some point is going to hit either directly or indirectly. Every time we see someone being shot, there is an immediate circle of people that is also being hurt — mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters.
So, I think it’s time to really have something so we can stop the absurd debate with representatives, that we already know are not willing to do anything, and then have like a nationwide strike, educational strike, from all levels of education. This is for the teachers, their place of work. And they don’t feel safe.
The kids have drills. Our kids train how to survive these shootings. And it’s even worse than that. You have to — I want people to understand that what happened on that school in Nashville, probably the kids thought it was a drill. So, put that in your heads, and now let me know if it deserves us to do something more extreme or not.
AMY GOODMAN: The kids thought it was a drill. That’s what you’re saying, Manny?
MANUEL OLIVER: That is exactly what I’m saying, because it’s — this terrorizing possibility, predictable — it’s not even a possibility. There’s a big chance that it could happen. It’s not like a lottery. It’s really easy to happen, because we have so weak gun laws. And the kids are being traumatized on a weekly basis. Every day, they need to go out for a drill. Our kids have been training how to survive these shootings. And guess what. We are about to hear from someone that we need to train them better. In other words, “It’s their own fault. They did not train enough. We need to arm teachers.” So, because everything is absurd, we need something to negotiate. We need power. And we need people to stand up. This is not about lighting up a candle.
AMY GOODMAN: Manny, you’re calling for an education strike across the country. Explain what you want to see happen.
MANUEL OLIVER: Well, I am sick of going to the Capitol Hill buildings, knocking doors, and explaining, with my pain, with our suffering, that this is not good. They already told us that they won’t do anything, and we have seen it happening for decades. So, I think that big changes, when society needs them and it’s required for them — and this is what we’re seeing this week — need extreme solutions.
So that’s why I’m asking for the power of the educators to get on board. We can stop this from happening. We can really demand things. There’s nothing that I can demand now. I don’t have the power to demand to politicians, which negligence is not going to move anywhere. So, we need to get together, seriously. Otherwise, this will vanish, like Parkland vanished, like Santa Clarita vanished, like Uvalde vanished. And we cannot allow that to happen. I’m sick of this, and I will do everything that it takes. Everything that it takes. I’m flying to Tennessee tomorrow, by the way. And we have an event on Monday at 10:30.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, Manny Oliver, your response to the congressman, where you were arrested last week, and the police officers? We see Patricia, your wife, demanding change in the hearing room, and then you being tackled outside and them pushing her away. We have 20 seconds.
MANUEL OLIVER: Well, that’s the norm at this point. It’s irrelevant. Getting arrested is something that happened to me a couple of times. But I don’t regret that, because I made my point. Now, I can point at that chairman and say — tell him that “You have done nothing. My wife, Patricia, works every day on protecting your kids, so you should be following everything that we do.” We’re on the right side, Amy. We’re on the right side of this battle.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Manuel Oliver, we thank you so much for being with us. And again, our condolences. Manny is co-founder of the gun reform group Change the Ref, father of Joaquin, one of 17 people killed five years ago in the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. We’ll link to your piece in The Daily Beast.
Happy birthday to Mike Burke! I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for joining us.
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Idaho Attorney General candidate Rep. Raul Labrador delivers his acceptance speech during the Idaho Republican Party 2022 General Election Night Celebration at The Grove Hotel in Boise, Idaho, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2022. (photo: Kyle Green/AP)
Idaho’s attorney general Raúl Labrador issued a legal opinion last week that said state law prohibits medical providers from referring a patient across state lines to undergo an abortion, or from prescribing abortion pills for a patient to pick up across state lines.
“Preventing health care providers from referring patients out of state to get an abortion? Extreme, unprecedented, and unconstitutional. Attorney General Labrador, we’ll see you in court,” Planned Parenthood said on Twitter.
The ACLU also said it’s suing Labrador “for threatening health care providers who exercise their First Amendment right to give patients information about out-of-state abortion care.”
“Labrador’s interpretation is unprecedented and amounts to a clear threat that Idaho will seek to punish individuals for speech and conduct related to abortions that take place in states where abortion is legal,” Planned Parenthood Great Northwest said in a Wednesday filing in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Idaho, Southern Division.
Labrado’s opinion “depends on the assertion that Idaho law punishes abortions performed outside of Idaho,” which the plaintiffs contend isn’t the case, the filing continues.
The lawsuit comes after Republican Idaho Gov. Brad Little on Wednesday signed into law a new bill that makes it a crime for an adult to aid a minor in undergoing an abortion or obtaining abortion pills out-of state without parental permission.
Planned Parenthood has also said it plans to challenge the new law. Idaho’s abortion laws are some of the most restrictive nationwide.
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Workers invade the Centorial building that houses BlackRock's office in Paris on April 6, 2023. (photo: Aurelien Morissard/AP)
Videos shared on social media showed protesters entering the Centorial office block, located near the Opéra Garnier opera house, holding red flares and firing smoke bombs.
About 100 people, including representatives of several labor unions, were on the ground floor of the building for about 10 minutes, chanting anti-reform slogans. BlackRock’s office is located on the third floor.
“The meaning of this action is quite simple. We went to the headquarters of BlackRock to tell them: the money of workers, for our pensions, they are taking it,” Jerome Schmitt, spokesman for French union SUD, told CNN affiliate BFM-TV. BlackRock declined to comment.
Nationwide protests against the French government’s plan to raise the retirement age for most workers from 62 to 64 have now entered their 11th day. The government triggered special constitutional powers last month to push the controversial legislation through parliament without a vote.
The changes mean that, from 2027, people will have to work longer to receive full state pension benefits.
BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, has played no part in the pension reforms. But workers targeted the company because of its work for private pension funds, according to protester Françoise Onic, a school teacher who spoke to Reuters.
The government has said the pension legislation is necessary to prevent a looming funding deficit, but the reforms have angered workers at a time of rising living costs. French inflation fell last month from a record in February, thanks to a sharp slowdown in energy price rises, but food price inflation accelerated.
Representatives of CGT, France’s biggest confederation of unions and a key player in the protests, have denounced capitalism as the cause of many problems.
Rolling strike action in the country has caused huge disruption to transport services, schools and businesses since the start of the year. At least 80 people were arrested and 123 police officers injured during protests on March 23, which saw demonstrators setting fires, launching smoke bombs and damaging property.
France’s interior ministry said 11,500 law enforcement officers would be deployed across the country on Thursday.
The country’s new retirement age will still be below the norm in Europe and in many other developed economies, where the age at which full pension benefits apply is 65 and is increasingly moving towards 67.
State pensions in France are also more generous than elsewhere. At nearly 14% of GDP in 2018, the country’s spending on state pensions is larger than in most other countries, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
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A ConocoPhillips oil drilling pad on Alaska's North Slope. (photo: Erin Schaff/The New York Times)
Scientists say nations must stop new oil and gas projects to avoid climate catastrophe. But after the Biden administration greenlit the $8 billion Willow project, ConocoPhillips is racing ahead.
It’s been just days since the Biden administration approved an $8 billion project to drill for oil in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, the nation’s single largest expanse of untouched wilderness. But the oil giant ConocoPhillips is already in motion, massing equipment and flying in workers and provisions to this vast frozen flatland 250 miles above the Arctic Circle.
In Nuiqsut, a village of about 500 people and the closest town to the site of the drilling project, the only hotel is booked solid. It’s the Kuukpik Hotel, a row of metal trailers that also hosts the cafeteria that serves as the only restaurant in town — in fact, the only one for hundreds of miles. Sitting in the cafeteria on a recent Wednesday (“Steak Night” at the Kuukpik) oil workers from California, Oklahoma and other parts of Alaska said they were excited by the years of employment promised by the project, known as Willow.
“I can probably retire on it,” one man said.
The boomtown mind-set stands in stark contrast to the remoteness. People stopped by Nuiqsut’s one-room post office to chat, then hustled back to their pickups to avoid the whipping, frosty winds. For fun, teenagers on snowmobiles drove along empty streets, towing younger kids tethered to sleds behind them. The mayor headed to the small airport to pick up the medicine and supplies that arrive once a day on a six-seater from Deadhorse.
While scientists have warned that nations must stop approving new oil and gas drilling or face a perilous future on a dangerously heated planet, the people involved in the Willow project are eager to get going.
Executives at ConocoPhillips are building an operation to last generations with, perhaps, an eye toward even further expansion inside the reserve at a later date. Like other oil giants that earned record profits in 2022, the company is betting that any pivot away from fossil fuels will take place in a distant future.
A transition to renewable energy is going to take a long time, said Connor Dunn, a ConocoPhillips manager in Alaska. “There is going to be a significant need for U.S. domestic oil production for a great many decades to come,” he said.
ConocoPhillips has years of expertise at drilling in the Arctic, one of the most hostile environments for nearly any activity imaginable. During a recent visit, temperatures hovered around 4 degrees Fahrenheit, a welcome improvement over winter temperatures that might top out around 40 degrees below zero.
The company’s main oil field installation in the region, Alpine, looks from afar like a glowing spaceship on ice. It is essentially a self-contained town encompassing an air strip, a few roads, a processing facility, a power plant and a three-story operations center that serves as a home base for workers.
The expectation is that Willow eventually will look like Alpine.
But even as ConocoPhillips gears up to build Willow, it faces complications on a planet that is dangerously warming because of the burning of fossil fuels. Average temperatures in the Arctic are increasing about four times as fast as the rest of the globe, and the permafrost is thawing faster than expected.
The effects can be seen throughout the region that surrounds the reserve: in flooded ice cellars that can no longer preserve caribou and whale meat. In homes along the coast that are sinking into the ground, and in telephone poles now tilting from erosion. And it can be seen on the ice roads traveled by the oil company, which are growing thinner and melting earlier in the season.
“We don’t have the normal snow covering that we should have at this point in the year,” Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, Nuiqsut’s mayor, said as she drove across the frozen Colville River and pointed to vegetation poking out from the snow.
Changes like these will make drilling in the Arctic, already one of the most expensive places in the world to extract oil, only costlier.
Global warming presents other economic challenges as well. Will there be demand for the oil in years to come, as renewable power like solar and wind becomes cheaper and more widespread? This is perhaps ConocoPhillips’s biggest gamble.
At the earliest, the crude would begin flowing in about six years. By that time, the Biden administration hopes that demand for oil will have plummeted because of federal investments to encourage use of renewable energy and to encourage a transition to electric vehicles.
The threat that demand for oil will hit a peak, and then decline, is a risk that all oil companies take as they begin new drilling, said Roger Marks, a longtime petroleum economist in Alaska.
“The stone age did not come to an end for a lack of stone,” Mr. Marks said, making the point that he expected the same would be true with oil. “That’s the long-term risk these companies face with electric cars and wind and hydro and everything else,” he said. “Eventually oil is going to go away, even if there’s still some to produce.”
ConocoPhillips is the only company that is drilling inside the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, 23 million acres set aside in 1923 by the federal government as an emergency oil supply for the Navy. Despite its name, the reserve is an important habitat for migratory birds, caribou and brown bears, among other species. The Arctic Ocean off its coast is home to beluga whales, polar bears, walruses and several species of ice seals.
Willow will consist of as many as 199 wells spread across three drill sites, which the company believes could produce nearly 600 million barrels of oil over 30 years. That would make it the largest oil project in the United States.
Elevated pipelines seven feet above ground would carry oil from the drill sites to existing pipes at the Alpine site, eventually connecting with the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which stretches 800 miles from Alaska’s North Slope to Valdez in southern Alaska.
Burning all that oil could release nearly 254 million metric tons of carbon emissions. On an annual basis, that would translate into 8.4 million metric tons of carbon pollution, equal to adding nearly two million cars to the roads each year.
Bryan Thomas, the station chief at the Barrow Atmospheric Baseline Observatory, which is run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said greenhouse gas emissions that are rising into “uncharted territory” mean shrinking sea ice and changing weather patterns.
Still, projected emissions from Willow would be a small fraction of the 5.6 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emitted annually by the United States, the second biggest polluter on the planet after China. ConocoPhillips and the Biden administration both say that if Willow were not permitted, supply to meet demand would just shift to oil drilling elsewhere.
ConocoPhillips has about a month to take the first step in the Willow project, which is to open a gravel mine and construct a gravel road, before spring temperatures melt the ice roads, making the tundra swampy and impassable for construction vehicles.
Environmental groups, which call Willow a “carbon bomb,” are suing to stop the project. On Monday, a federal judge denied their request to block work while they pursue the legal challenge. “When do you get off fossil fuels?” said Abigail Dillen, the president of Earthjustice, which is leading the lawsuit against the project. “After you destroy one of the most important and fragile ecosystems for wildlife in the world, or before?”
Refrigerating the Permafrost
The thaw is coming. The short winter construction season helps to make Alaska’s North Slope one of the most expensive places to drill for crude oil in the country, said Mr. Marks, the petroleum economist.
To keep the permafrost sturdy, ConocoPhillips uses thermosyphons, tall metal tubes filled with a refrigerant that are partly buried in ground to keep it frozen. Climate change is, of course, worsening the problem of a thawing permafrost.
Thermosyphons, which have been used in the Arctic for decades to protect roads and buildings, will also be installed on the platforms for rigs that will pull up oil — oil that, when burned, will produce the emissions that scientists say will cause the ground to thaw more rapidly.
To drill profitably in the North Slope, the oil fields have to be “giant,” Mr. Marks said. Although the Biden administration reduced the size of ConocoPhillips’s original plan, Willow will have a footprint of almost 500 acres and at its peak could generate about 180,000 barrels of oil a day.
Oil from Willow is expected to help the 46-year-old Trans Alaska Pipeline, whose daily flow has dropped to fewer than a half-million barrels from two million barrels in 1988, a rate so slow that it leads to periodic buildup of ice and paraffin wax inside the pipeline.
The benefits to Alaska, which remains dependent on fossil fuel revenues because it has no statewide sales tax or personal income tax, will be somewhat limited. Willow is on federal land, which means that Washington will receive royalties but that Alaska will be able to collect only oil-production taxes, which would be offset by company tax deductions for expenses. For a few years, until the oil starts flowing, Willow could even have a small negative impact on state revenues.
ConocoPhillips has been drilling in Alaska for half a century, and executives said the company had conquered the unique challenges posed by the harsh conditions. “We have the existing infrastructure, we have the existing work force, which is why the economics of this stuff works,” Mr. Dunn said.
Several economists said prices would need to be about $30 per barrel for ConocoPhillips to profit from Willow. That’s comparable to other oil operations in United States, where prices have been well above $30 per barrel during most of the past 20 years.
A Blessing and a Curse
One of the biggest beneficiaries of the Willow project will be the North Slope Borough, which includes the eight communities across the northernmost part of the United States. About 95 percent of the borough’s annual $410 million budget comes from local taxes on oil and gas operations.
Oil money pays for a range of things, including a new basketball floor at the recreation center in Utqiagvik and heating bills for Nuiqsut residents. Oil revenues also are likely to help pay for a sea wall to protect Utqiagvik against the Arctic Ocean, which is fast encroaching because of climate change caused by burning oil and gas.
“We are blessed and cursed at the same time,” said Sam Kunaknana, 55, one of the few residents in Nuiqsut, along with the mayor, Ms. Ahtuangaruak, who has joined a lawsuit to stop Willow.
Sitting in his living room while his girlfriend cut fresh caribou into strips for jerky, Mr. Kunaknana said the oil industry had hurt fishing, changed caribou migration patterns, made it harder to hunt and harmed the air quality in the village. “My biggest worry is how many of my grandchildren are going to need medicine to help them breathe,” he said.
Most Alaska Native groups see Willow as an economic engine. The Kuukpik Corporation, which owns and manages much of the land around Willow on behalf of Alaska Native groups, receives royalties from nearby drilling. Many residents receive annual dividends.
George Sielak, 63, and Leonard Lampe Sr., 54, are Kuukpik board members who were children when their families resettled Nuiqsut. They lived in tents until permanent housing was built and recalled the years without flush toilets. “We grew up without hardly anything,” Mr. Lampe said. “All we have is oil and gas.”
Mr. Lampe said that he considered climate change a serious threat but that it shouldn’t be solved by eliminating the only significant source of income in a region where goods must be flown in or sent by ship, and where a gallon of milk costs $13.
Few of Willow’s projected 2,500 construction jobs or 300 permanent jobs will go to Nuiqsut residents, in part because the work schedule interferes with the subsistence hunting and fishing that is central to the Inupiaq community here, several residents said. But the North Slope Borough job postings in the village’s post office advertise nearly $30 an hour for waste collectors, well-paying jobs that indirectly result from oil and gas operations.
n you want a job, there’s a job.”
Riding in a van across the blindingly white territory, Mr. Dunn and five other ConocoPhillips employees said that they understood that fossil fuels are heating the planet and that they wanted to be part of the transition to clean energy. In the meantime, they are betting on oil.
“We all hope and want to see that energy transition in an orderly fashion,” Mr. Dunn said. “We look at it as, demand is there. Demand is a huge part of it, and we take that sole risk. If that demand is not there, we’ve taken that sole risk.”
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