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![A man with a plan [that's deeply corrosive to the rule of law]. (photo: Jeff Swensen/Rolling Stone)](https://ecp.yusercontent.com/mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rsn.org%2Fimages%2F001%2F054920-trump-080723.jpg&t=1691431556&ymreqid=ce20d81c-da90-a934-1cba-a800b5013100&sig=qBIgCGhI2PGwVBxbvnfnUA--~D)
The thrice-indicted former president and his allies have long been drawing plans to undo Smith's investigations, as well as to punish everyone involved
Rosters full of MAGAfied lawyers are being assembled. Plans are being laid for an entire new office of the Justice Department dedicated to “election integrity.” An assembly line is being prepared of revenge-focused “special counsels” and “special prosecutors.” Gameplans for making Smith’s life hell, starting in Jan. 2025, have already been discussed with Trump himself. And a fresh wave of pardons is under consideration for Trump associates, election deniers, and — the former president boasts — for Jan. 6 rioters.
The preparations have been underway since at least last year, with Trump being briefed on the designs by an array of attorneys, political and policy advisers, former administration officials, and other allies. The aim is to build a government-in-waiting with the hard-right infrastructure needed to turn the Justice Department into an instrument of Trump’s agenda, according to five sources familiar with these matters and another two people briefed on them.
Trump’s spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on this story.
One idea that has caught thrice-indicted former president’s attention in recent months is the creation of the so-called “Office of Election Integrity,” which would be a new unit inside the Justice Department. It would be tasked not only with relitigating Trump’s lies about his 2020 election loss, but also with aggressively pursuing baseless allegations of election “fraud” (including in Democratic strongholds) in ways that Trumpist partisans believe the department has only flirted with in the past.
This idea was recently pitched to Trump by a longtime Republican activist and an attorney who’s known the ex-president for years, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter. (Republican officials have also begun voicing their own support for state-level offices of election integrity. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis made the proposal a reality in his state. Officials in Tennessee, Missouri, and Wisconsin have proposed the offices, and the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank, proposed a similarly named office.)
And when it comes to Special Counsel Smith’s office — which just handed Trump his third indictment, this one related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election — the former president and his fellow travelers already know what they want: They want the FBI and DOJ to name names.
This year, close advisers to Trump have begun the process of assembling lists of the names of federal personnel who have investigated the former president and his circle for years, and are attempting to unmask the identities of all the DOJ attorneys and others connected to Smith’s office. The obvious purpose of this, according to one source close to Trump, is to “show them the door on Day 1 [if Trump’s reelected]” — and so “we know who should receive a subpoena” in the future.
Such subpoenas would of course be instrumental in Trumpland’s vows to its voters that, should he return to power, Trump and his new attorney general will launch a raft of their own retaliatory “special counsel” and “special prosecutor” probes to investigate-the-investigator, and to go after their key enemies. As it were, Jeffrey Clark, a former DOJ official and a central figure in Trump’s efforts to subvert the legitimate 2020 presidential election results, has been on Trump’s informal shortlist for plum assignments, including even attorney general, in a potential second administration.
Sources familiar with the situation tell Rolling Stone that Trump and his close ideological allies — working at an assortment of MAGA-prone think tanks, advocacy organizations, and legal groups — are formulating plans for a wide slate of “special prosecutors.” In this vision, such prosecutors would go after the usual targets: Smith, Smith’s team, President Joe Biden, Biden’s family, Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI director Christopher Wray. But they’d also go after smaller targets, from members of the Biden 2020 campaign to more obscure government offices.
“There are almost too many targets to keep track of,” says one Trump adviser familiar with the discussions. Trump and members of his inner orbit have already outlined possible legal strategies, examining specific federal statutes they could wield in a Republican-controlled Justice Department to go after Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, who delivered Trump’s first indictment of this year.
The FBI’s investigation of over a thousand rioters who breached and trashed the Capitol on Jan. 6 — officially the largest criminal investigation in Justice Department history — is another area where Trump has stated he would like to reverse course. “I am inclined to pardon many of them. I can’t say for every single one because a couple of them, probably, they got out of control,” Trump told host Kaitlan Collins during a CNN town hall in May.
When the broader topic of possible second-term pardons has come up behind closed doors, Trump has at times said that such pardons should be signed at the start of the term, not saved for the later on, according to those who’ve heard him discuss it since last year. Aside from the rioters themselves, Trump has also privately floated issuing a wave of pardons to higher-ranking figures who were scrutinized in Special Counsel Smith’s two main investigations.
“This would be like hitting the delete-key on all of DOJ’s work on these investigations,” a person intimately familiar with the conversations told Rolling Stone in March. In the past several months, when confidants have quipped to Trump that he may have to “pardon yourself,” should he return to the Oval Office, the ex-president has sometimes simply smirked and replied that they’ll have to wait and see.
Another major focus of some of these counter-probes would be “grand jury violations,” says one person familiar with the matter. The counter-probe of those alleged “violations” is the surest sign yet that in a second Trump administration, the Justice Department would seek to investigate the special counsel’s use of grand juries in the Mar-a-Lago and January 6 cases. (Indeed, Trump has already vowed to sic a special counsel on President Biden if he beats him in 2024.)
Some of these “special prosecutors” wouldn’t even be based out of the Justice Department, as special counsels typically are. In some of these private Trumpworld legal plans, some of the “special counsels” would be based out of places like the White House. This idea is nearly identical to the controversial position that Trumpist lawyer and conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell tried to convince then-President Trump to give her in the aftermath of the 2020 election.
Some lawyers and operatives close to Trump have pitched themselves for these kinds of roles, telling either Trump or some of his closest advisers that they’d be more than happy to take the gig in Trump’s possible return to power in 2025.
And along with having dreams of sweeping retribution and purges, the upper ranks of Trumpworld have spent years putting together projects to vet and prepare a new generation of appointments — for “special prosecutor” posts, as well as much else — and administrative talent.
In this informal vetting for Justice Department candidates, former senior Trump aides and well-connected activists have sought lawyers with a track record of loathing DOJ, particularly what they deem its supposedly “liberal,” “left-wing,” or “Marxist” elements. Between these different Trump allies, different private spreadsheets have been created in recent years, some laying out dozens of possible contenders, while some include upwards of a hundred names, sources with direct knowledge of the situation say. Former top Trump White House policy adviser Stephen Miller and other key Trump diehards have contributed names to several of these lists.
Rolling Stone has reviewed one of these internal spreadsheets that has circulated among Trump lieutenants, and the roster is heavy on individuals connected to America First Legal, the Center for Renewing America, and other Trump-backing entities.
Prominent allies of the former president are open about plans to tie the Justice Department more tightly to the White House.
“I recall talking to a senior official in the Trump administration, who said after all of [these investigations] are over, we’ve got to think of a way to bring the Justice Department back into the government,” says Tom Fitton, president of the conservative nonprofit Judicial Watch and a close ally of the former president.
The Justice Department has typically enjoyed a degree of insulation from White House control, a norm aimed at avoiding the politicization of prosecution. But Fitton argues that the department should be more “responsive” to a president’s priorities, a belief that Trump and various influential conservatives embrace enthusiastically. “Is the Justice Department going to operate as an entity outside the White House as opposed to an entity that’s controlled by the president, as the Constitution requires?” he says.
Putting it another way: “What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them,” Russ Vought, a former top Trump official who heads the Center for Renewing America, told The New York Times in a story published last month.
“I think there’s an argument that what the Justice Department’s doing to Trump now is criminal,” Fitton tells Rolling Stone, suggesting — of course — that a future administration should launch an investigation into Special Counsel Smith’s work.
Fitton also says the department should revisit Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation into the FBI probe of the Trump campaign in 2016. Durham, he argues, was a “failure” and acted only as “a glorified inspector general.”
Once, Special Counsel Durham was supposed to be Trumpworld’s savior, someone who Trump, his allies on Capitol Hill, and large swaths of conservative media were counting on to expose and imprison “Deep State” foes. But when the Durham probe ended earlier this year with lackluster results for a vengeance-hungry GOP, he became much less a hero and more a cautionary tale to the right.
As one conservative lawyer who has discussed “special prosecutor” ideas with Trump in recent months tells Rolling Stone, the guiding principle of this project is simple: “No more John Durham’s — never again.”
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The USS Paul Hamilton. (photo: Jon Gambrell/AP)
Combined naval patrol appeared to be largest such flotilla to approach US territory and ‘highly provocative’, expert says
The combined naval patrol, which the Wall Street Journal first reported, appeared to be the largest such flotilla to approach US territory, according to experts that spoke to the outlet.
“It’s a historical first,” Brent Sadler, a retired Navy captain and senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told the Journal.
He also said the flotilla’s proximity to Alaska was a “highly provocative” maneuver given Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine and political tensions between the US and China over Taiwan. The flotilla has since left.
The US Northern Command confirmed the combined Chinese and Russian naval patrol, telling the Journal: “Air and maritime assets under our commands conducted operations to assure the defense of the United States and Canada. The patrol remained in international waters and was not considered a threat.”
The command did not specify the number of vessels which made up the patrol or their exact location. But US senators from Alaska said the flotilla in question was made up of 11 Chinese and Russian warships working in concert near the Aleutian Islands.
Four destroyers and a Poseidon P-8 patrol airplane made up the US response to the Chinese and Russian flotilla.
In a statement to the Journal, the spokesperson of the Chinese embassy in Washington DC, Liu Pengyu, said that the patrol “is not targeted at any third party”.
“According to the annual cooperation plan between the Chinese and Russian militaries, naval vessels of the two countries have recently conducted joint maritime patrols in relevant waters in the western and northern Pacific ocean,” Pengyu said. “This action is not targeted at any third party and has nothing to do with the current international and regional situation.”
The Journal reported that the US destroyers sent to track the flotilla were the USS John S McCain, the USS Benfold, the USS John Finn and the USS Chung-Hoon.
Alaska senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan have since responded to the joint Chinese and Russian patrol that came close to the Aleutian Islands by saying they are monitoring the situation closely for their constituents.
Murkowski said: “We have been in close contact with leadership … for several days now and received detailed classified briefings about the foreign vessels that are transiting US waters in the Aleutians.
“This is a stark reminder of Alaska’s proximity to both China and Russia, as well as the essential role our state plays in our national defense and territorial sovereignty.”
Sullivan echoed the sentiments of his fellow Republican Murkowski, saying: “The incursion by 11 Chinese and Russian warships operating together – off the coast of Alaska – is yet another reminder that we have entered a new era of authoritarian aggression led by the dictators in Beijing and Moscow.”
He went on to compare the situation to one last September, when a single US coast guard cutter spotted a total of seven Chinese and Russian naval ships near Alaska.
“Last summer the Chinese and Russian navies conducted a similar operation off the coast of Alaska,” Sullivan said. “Given that our response was tepid, I strongly encouraged senior military leaders to be ready with a much more robust response should such another joint Chinese-Russian naval operation occur off our coast.
“For that reason, I was heartened to see that this latest incursion was met with four US Navy destroyers, which sends a strong message … that the United States will not hesitate to protect and defend our vital national interests in Alaska.”
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Shere Dore, a volunteer with Food Not Bombs, preparing a plate of food in Houston. (photo: Evan Garcia/Reuters)
Houston Volunteers Fight Tickets for Serving Meals to Homeless People
Amanda Holpuch, The New York Times
Holpuch writes: "A Food Not Bombs chapter faces $23,500 in fines for serving meals to homeless people in violation of a city ordinance."
A Food Not Bombs chapter faces $23,500 in fines for serving meals to homeless people in violation of a city ordinance.
The Houston Police Department has issued at least 47 tickets to volunteers for the group, Houston Food Not Bombs, since March for violating a city ordinance that restricts meal donations.
The ordinance is not new.
It was enacted in 2012 and bars people and organizations from holding events where food is given free to five or more people in need, on public or private property, without approval from the property owner.
When the ordinance was passed, Annise D. Parker, then the mayor, designated the plaza in front of the central Houston Public Library for Food Not Bombs volunteers, and the group was able to continue providing meals there.
Now, the city says there has been an increase in harassment outside the library because of the meal donations, which happen four times a week after the library closes. The city has said that it plans to continue issuing tickets and that the group could serve platters of food somewhere else.
Paul Kubosh, a lawyer for Food Not Bombs volunteers, said that he had asked the city to prove an increase in harassment and that the tickets unfairly targeted the volunteers. Each ticket carries a penalty of up to $500, he said.
On Thursday, a judge dismissed eight tickets after the police officers who issued them did not appear in court, Mr. Kubosh said. The city plans to refile the dismissed cases, including one against an 87-year-old volunteer, he said.
The city attorney, Arturo G. Michel, said in an emailed statement that Houston would continue to “vigorously pursue” ordinance violations.
“It is a health and safety issue for the protection of Houston’s residents,” he said.
The mayor of Houston, Sylvester Turner, said on Friday that the city was not opposed to groups that feed homeless people but that the meal donations were discouraging visitors to the library.
“After people provide the food, they leave, but those who are homeless camp around the library and stay,” he said.
The city is funding food donations through a different charity at a parking lot outside a courthouse and jail, about a half mile from the library, and invited Food Not Bombs to serve meals there.
Shere Dore, a Food Not Bombs volunteer in Houston, said in May that the group decided not to move to that location in part because the people served spend much of their day at the library to escape bad weather and to charge devices such as cellphones, the television station ABC13 reported.
In a separate legal action, a Food Not Bombs volunteer, Phillip Picone, filed a federal lawsuit challenging the ordinance for violating his rights to free speech and free exercise of religion.
His lawyer has also asked the court to temporarily stop enforcement of the food ordinance. In its response, the city said Mr. Picone could donate meals somewhere else. The case remains pending.
Mr. Picone, 66, has been volunteering since 2011 with Houston Food Not Bombs, which has been serving homeless people and families experiencing food insecurity. He said there were about 150 to 200 people who come by each night for home-cooked meals provided by volunteers.
He said that Houston Food Not Bombs, which started in 1994, did not want to move to the location suggested by the city for several reasons. Most of the people whom the group helps are homeless and are likely to have had previous interactions with law enforcement, so serving food next to the city jail could deter the group’s ability to reach people.
“Food Not Bombs really fills a need that’s been needed to be filled for a long time, and the city is just now in 2023 trying to offer what it says is a solution,” he said. “How many years, how many decades have you waited? So, no, we don’t have the trust in them to really do it.”
Houston Food Not Bombs said that the city ordinance needed to be abolished because “people need to be allowed to go out with no advance notice or application process and find homeless people” and give food wherever they are.
Food Not Bombs is an international group that says its vegetarian and vegan meal donations are a protest against war and poverty.
The group has more than 1,000 chapters worldwide, according to its website, and several chapters have challenged laws that restrict the group’s activities.
In Fort Lauderdale, Fla., the Food Not Bombs chapter there challenged a city ordinance that restricted food giveaways.
A federal appeals court ruled in the group’s favor in 2021, saying that the city could not regulate the group’s food sharing because doing so violated the group’s First Amendment rights.
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Wild horses gallop on the Fort McDermitt Paiute-Shoshone Indian Reservation on April 25, 2023, near McDermitt, Nev.(photo: Rick Bowmer/AP)
Wild Horse Education, a nonprofit seeking to protect the horses, has sued the Bureau of Land Management and is seeking a court order to temporarily halt the roundup halfway between Reno and Salt Lake City.
Among other things, it says the agency is violating its own safety standards that prohibit roundups in extreme heat and the use of helicopters to assist in the capture of the animals when foals are present.
More than 260 foals are among the 2,643 animals that have been rounded up for transport to government holding pens since July 9, the agency said on its website Saturday. Several-hundred more are expected to be gathered before the roundup ends Aug. 22.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Dina Titus, of Nevada, has introduced a bill that would outlaw the use of helicopters under any circumstances to assist wranglers on horseback chasing the mustangs into traps — makeshift corals on the high-desert range.
She urged the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee this week to expedite a hearing on her proposal due to the horse deaths, including one with a broken leg that was chased for 35 minutes before it was euthanized.
“Despite BLM's directive to `humanely capture' wild free-roaming horses and burros ... the use of helicopters routinely creates frightening and deadly situations for horses as demonstrated in recent weeks,” Titus said.
“These horses have suffered through a host of tragic injuries, ranging from broken necks, broken legs and even dehydration due to the oppressive triple digit heat,” she wrote in a letter to the committee chairman, Republican U.S. Rep. Bruce Westerman, of Arkansas, and ranking U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz.
"Without meaningful reforms, BLM's operations will continue to kill off these icons of the West in completely avoidable circumstances," she wrote.
So far, U.S. District Judge Larry Hicks in Reno has declined to grant the Aug. 1 request for a temporary restraining order to halt the Nevada roundup. But on Friday, he put the agency on notice it has until 4 p.m. Monday to formally respond to the allegations of illegal mistreatment of the animals.
He set a hearing for Wednesday to hear more detailed arguments if necessary from lawyers on both sides.
Nevada is home to nearly two-thirds of the 68,928 wild horses the bureau estimated on March 1 were roaming federal lands in 10 Western states stretching from California to Montana.
The bureau said in a court filing Wednesday that its latest roundup, which began July 9 between Elko and Ely near the Utah border, is a “crucial gather” because overpopulated herds are seriously damaging the range.
It said the estimated 6,852 horses there is nearly 14 times what the land can ecologically sustain. It says roundups typically have a mortality rate of less than 1%.
Critics say the real purpose of the removals is to appease ranchers who don’t want horses competing with their livestock for precious forage in the high desert, where annual precipitation averages less than 10 inches (25 centimeters).
Wild Horse Education's motion for a temporary restraining order says there's no legitimate reason to conduct the current roundup in extreme heat with helicopters when foals are present, "especially when the BLM has plenty of time to conduct this gather in a humane manner as the law requires.”
“Without injunctive relief, plaintiffs will continue to be permanently and irrevocably harmed in witnessing the atrocious and horrific sights of wild horses and burros dying due to the inhumane handling, extreme heat and use of helicopters during foaling season."
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Former President Donald Trump speaks as the keynote speaker at the 56th Annual Silver Elephant Dinner hosted by the South Carolina Republican Party on Aug. 5 in Columbia, S.C. (photo: Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images/NPR)
The Justice Department charged Trump with four criminal counts related to allegations that he attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, which he lost. In federal court in Washington, D.C., last week, Trump pleaded not guilty.
Federal prosecutors are now asking District Judge Tanya Chutkan to issue a protective order in the case.
That would bar Trump and his attorneys from improperly using any evidence — which may include sensitive and highly confidential information — that prosecutors share with the defense team before trial.
On Saturday, Chutkan denied a request from Trump's attorneys for more time to respond to the request for a protective order, leaving them until 5 p.m. Monday to reply to the Justice Department's proposal and suggest any changes.
Chutkan said she would decide whether to schedule a hearing on the proposal after reviewing the defense's response.
What is a protective order?
Long before a criminal case goes to trial, prosecutors have to share what's called "discovery" with the defense.
That could include potential evidence, such as grand jury documents and witness statements, and it may contain personal identifying details and other confidential information.
Stanford Law School professor David Sklansky said protective orders are commonly used in criminal cases to shield sensitive information about investigative tactics, cooperating witnesses or national security.
"It's a case-by-case decision by the judge about whether there's reason to fear that disseminating information could be harmful to the public, to national security, to potential witnesses," he said.
Sklansky added that a protective order in this case would not be intended to "silence Trump" or prevent him from talking about the case, but rather an effort to "protect the use of information that's provided in discovery."
Legal experts say a person could receive a warning or be held in contempt of court for violating a judge's protective order.
The DOJ says it will protect sensitive information in the case against Trump
In their motion for a protective order, Special Counsel Jack Smith and prosecutors Molly Gaston and Thomas Windom argued that it would allow the Justice Department to release discovery material to the defense quickly and give Trump expedient access to information that could be used in his defense.
The prosecutors said the order would also shield any "sensitive and confidential" information included in discovery from public view.
That is particularly critical in this case, they argued, because Trump has "previously issued public statements on social media regarding witnesses, judges, attorneys, and others associated with legal matters pending against him."
Prosecutors pointed to a post Trump made on Truth Social on Friday that read: "IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I'M COMING AFTER YOU!"
"If the defendant were to begin issuing public posts using details—or, for example, grand jury transcripts—obtained in discovery here, it could have a harmful chilling effect on witnesses or adversely affect the fair administration of justice in this case," the motion reads.
Government attorneys say the proposed protective order is "consistent with other such orders commonly used in this District and is not overly restrictive," and that Trump's legal team could ask the judge to modify it at any point during the case.
A Trump campaign spokesperson on Saturday said the Truth Social post is "the definition of political speech" and not aimed at anyone involved in the election case against him.
An attorney for Trump slams the prosecution's proposal
On Saturday, Trump's attorneys John Lauro and Todd Blanche asked Judge Chutkan to be able to respond to the prosecution's request by Thursday rather than Monday, but their request was denied.
In their motion for an extension, the attorneys said a few more days would allow them and the Justice Department to "meaningfully confer—and potentially resolve—this dispute without Court intervention."
Defense attorneys said Trump was "prepared to confer in good faith regarding an appropriate protective order" but may ask for a hearing on the proposal if the two sides failed to reach a compromise.
Publicly, though, Lauro made pointed criticisms of the proposed protective order during his appearances on various political TV talk shows Sunday morning.
"This is an attack on you and members of the press," Lauro told ABC This Week anchor George Stephanopoulos. "What the Biden administration is trying to do is prevent the press from learning about exculpatory and helpful information — evidence — that the people have a right to know about," Lauro added.
Trump says he'll ask for a new judge and a change of venue
The protective order isn't the only legal issue at play.
Trump said in another social media post on Sunday that his defense team would immediately ask "for recusal of this judge on very powerful grounds," though he didn't specify what those grounds would be.
The former president said he wouldn't be able to get a fair trial under the current judge.
Born in Kingston, Jamaica, District Judge Tanya Chutkan got her law degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and later worked for the District of Columbia Public Defender Service and in private practice. She was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in 2014.
Trump also said his defense team would request a change of venue and ask that the case be moved outside of Washington, D.C. Lauro previously said they would seek a trial in West Virginia.
Republican rivals respond to Trump's indictment
The latest indictment against Trump comes as candidates campaign for the GOP nod in the 2024 presidential election.
Trump remains the Republican front-runner, but other candidates, including his former Vice President Mike Pence, have criticized Trump for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election won by Joe Biden.
Trump, in turn, has lashed out at those critics. He called Pence "delusional" in a social media post Friday evening.
On Sunday morning, Pence again accused Trump of asking him to interfere in the election.
"President Trump was wrong then, and he's wrong now. I had no right to overturn the election," Pence said on CNN's State of the Union. "The American people deserve to know that President Trump asked me to put him over my oath to the Constitution, but I kept my oath and I always will."
Also appearing on the show was former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a former federal prosecutor who said he believes Trump could get a fair trial in D.C.
"I believe jurors can be fair," said Christie, a former supporter of Trump's who's criticized his attempts to cast doubt on the 2020 election results. "I believe in the American people, and I believe in the fact that jurors will listen fairly and impartially."
Another GOP candidate, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, also weighed in on the indictment, telling NPR on Saturday that no one is above the law.
"I've always said that Donald Trump was morally responsible for what happened on Jan. 6, and now he's been charged with criminal conduct in regard to that," he said.
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The trucking industry has been under pressure over the last year from rising interest rates and higher fuel costs, which it has struggled to pass on to shippers. (photo: Charlie Riedel/AP)
A pandemic-era lifeline that the Trump administration predicted would turn a profit for the federal government failed to keep Yellow afloat.
After monthslong negotiations between Yellow’s management and the Teamsters union broke down, the company shut its operations late last month, and said on Sunday that it was seeking bankruptcy protection so it can wind down its business in an “orderly” way.
“It is with profound disappointment that Yellow announces that it is closing after nearly 100 years in business,” the company’s chief executive, Darren Hawkins, said in a statement. Yellow filed a so-called Chapter 11 petition in federal bankruptcy court in Delaware.
The downfall of the 99-year-old company will lead to the loss of about 30,000 jobs and could have ripple effects across the nation’s supply chains. It also underscores the risks associated with government bailouts that are awarded during moments of economic panic.
Yellow, which formerly went by the name YRC Worldwide, received the $700 million loan during the summer of 2020 as the pandemic was paralyzing the U.S. economy. The loan was awarded as part of the $2.2 trillion pandemic-relief legislation that Congress passed that year, and Yellow received it on the grounds that its business was critical to national security because it shipped supplies to military bases.
Since then, Yellow changed its name and embarked on a restructuring plan to help revive its flagging business by consolidating its regional networks of trucking services under one brand. As of the end of March, Yellow’s outstanding debt was $1.5 billion, including about $730 million that it owes to the federal government. Yellow has paid approximately $66 million in interest on the loan, but it has repaid just $230 of the principal owed on the loan, which comes due next year.
The fate of the loan is not yet clear. The federal government assumed a 30 percent equity stake in Yellow in exchange for the loan. It could end up assuming or trying to sell off much of the company’s fleet of trucks and terminals. Yellow aims to sell “all or substantially all” of its assets, according to court documents. Mr. Hawkins said the company intended to pay back the government loan “in full.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment after the filing.
Yellow estimated that it has more than 100,000 creditors and more than $1 billion in liabilities, per court documents. Some of its largest unsecured creditors include Amazon, with a claim of more than $2 million, and Home Depot, which is owed nearly $1.7 million.
Yellow is the third-largest small-freight-trucking company in a part of the industry known as “less than truckload” shipping. The industry has been under pressure over the last year from rising interest rates and higher fuel costs, which customers have been unwilling to accept.
Those forces collided with an ugly labor fight this year between Yellow and the Teamsters union over wages and other benefits. Those talks collapsed last month and union officials soon after warned workers that the company was shutting down.
After its bankruptcy filing, company officials placed much of the blame on the union, saying its members caused “irreparable harm” by halting its restructuring plan. Yellow employed about 23,000 union employees.
“We faced nine months of union intransigence, bullying and deliberately destructive tactics,” Mr. Hawkins said. The Teamsters union “was able to halt our business plan, literally driving our company out of business, despite every effort to work with them,” he added.
In late June, the company filed a lawsuit against the union, asserting it had caused more than $137 million in damages by blocking the restructuring plan.
The Teamsters union said in a statement last week that Yellow “has historically proven that it could not manage itself despite billions of dollars in worker concessions and hundreds of millions in bailout funding from the federal government.” The union did not immediately respond to a request for comment after Yellow’s bankruptcy filing.
“I think that Yellow finds itself in a perfect storm, and they have not managed that perfect storm very well,” said David P. Leibowitz, a Chicago bankruptcy lawyer who represents several trucking companies.
The bankruptcy could create temporary disruptions for companies that relied on Yellow and might prompt more consolidation in the industry. It could also lead to temporarily higher prices as businesses find new carriers for their freight.
“Those inflationary prices will certainly hurt the shippers and hurt the consumer to a certain extent,” said Tom Nightingale, chief executive of AFS Logistics, who suggested that prices would likely normalize within a few months.
In late July, Yellow began permanently laying off workers and ceased most of its operations in the United States and Canada, according to court documents. Yellow has retained a “core group” of about 1,650 employees to maintain limited operations and provide administrative work as it winds down. Yellow said it expected to pay about $3.4 million per week in employee wages to operate during bankruptcy, which “may decrease over time.” None of the remaining employees are union members, the company said.
The company also sought the authority to pay an estimated $22 million in compensation and benefit costs for current and former employees, including roughly $8.7 million in unpaid wages as of the date of filing.
Yellow had readily accessible funds of about $39 million when it filed for bankruptcy, which it said would be insufficient to cover its wind-down efforts, and it expected to receive special financing to help support the sale process and payment of wages.
Jack Atkins, a transportation analyst at the financial services firm Stephens, said that Yellow’s troubles had been mounting for years. In the wake of the financial crisis, Yellow engaged in a spree of acquisitions that it failed to successfully integrate, Mr. Atkins said. The demands of repaying that debt made it difficult for Yellow to reinvest in the company, allowing rivals to become more profitable.
“Yellow was struggling to keep its head above water and survive,” Mr. Atkins said. “It was harder and harder to be profitable enough to support the wage increases they needed.”
The company’s financial problems fueled concerns about the Trump administration’s decision to rescue the firm.
It lost more than $100 million in 2019 and was being sued by the Justice Department over claims that it defrauded the federal government during a seven-year period. Last year it agreed to pay $6.85 million to settle the lawsuit.
Federal watchdogs and congressional oversight committees have scrutinized the company’s relationships with the Trump administration. President Donald J. Trump tapped Mr. Hawkins to serve on a coronavirus economic task force, and Yellow had financial backing from Apollo Global Management, a private equity firm with close ties to Trump administration officials.
Democrats on the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis wrote in a report last year that top Trump administration officials had awarded Yellow the money over the objections of career officials at the Defense Department. The report noted that Yellow had been in close touch with Trump administration officials throughout the loan process and had discussed how the company employed Teamsters as its drivers.
In December 2020, Steven T. Mnuchin, then the Treasury secretary, defended the loan, arguing that had the company been shuttered, thousands of jobs would have been at risk and the military’s supply chain could have been disrupted. He predicted that the federal government would eventually turn a profit from the deal.
“Yellow had longstanding financial problems before the pandemic, was not essential to national security and should never have received a $700 million taxpayer bailout from the Treasury Department,” Representative French Hill, a Republican from Arkansas and member of the Congressional Oversight Commission, said in a statement last week. “Years of poor financial management at Yellow has resulted in hard-working people losing their jobs.”
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Climate tipping points remain a topic of debate in the scientific community. (photo: Leila REgister/NBC News)
The arguments illustrate scientists’ uncertainty about the next phases of climate change and just how to characterize the risk of extreme — hopefully unlikely — events as real-world climate disasters are taking place.
A new study last week predicted the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, could pass a tipping point and collapse as soon as 2025. The bold prediction, which portends a future that could upend weather across the Atlantic Ocean, prompted news headlines fretting over “climate chaos,” “devastation” coming “ahead of schedule” and a “real-life Day After Tomorrow.”
Is AMOC on track to run amok? The risk of collapse remains a topic of hot debate and scientists are in disagreement over whether it is already slowing down or if it could be nearing a tipping point. Direct analysis of AMOC dates back to 2004 — too short a period to be certain of its trajectory.
It’s a debate with considerable stakes. The arguments illustrate scientists’ uncertainty about the next phases of climate change and just how to characterize the risk of extreme — hopefully unlikely — events as real-world climate disasters are taking place. The higher humans push temperatures, the less certain scientists are about where the climate is heading or if there are tripwires beneath humanity’s feet.
The term “tipping point” can be confusing — it’s often used interchangeably to describe sudden disruptions, irreversible shifts or feedbacks that rapidly amplify climate change.
Scientists are concerned the West Antarctic ice sheet could collapse and cause extreme, irreversible sea level rise or that Amazon forest dieback could metastasize Earth’s lungs, among other tipping points.
But some researchers worry that media fixation on tipping points in which there’s less confidence, like the recent AMOC study, could be a distraction when the perils of climate change are already in plain view.
“The focus on whether those changes will be abrupt or not or reversible or not … is missing the bigger picture,” said Kyle Armour, an associate professor in the departments of oceanography and atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington. “We have good reason to worry. We don’t have to think about the exotic tipping point.”
He said there already are robust predictions that AMOC will slow down because of human emissions. He thinks most climate change impacts are far more likely to play out in a steadier, harmful fashion — in line with human emissions.
AMOC describes a series of ocean currents that cycle water in the Atlantic Ocean. In general, currents push warm water northward, where a small portion becomes sea ice. The remaining water gets colder, saltier and dense. It sinks to depths in the North Atlantic and then slowly travels southward.
When it comes to weather, AMOC transports heat to Europe and also determines the location of a belt of precipitation in Central America, said Spencer Jones, a visiting assistant professor in physical oceanography at Texas A&M University.
A rapid halt to AMOC would cause rapid cooling in the North Atlantic, warming in the Southern Hemisphere and extreme changes in precipitation.
Climate models have long predicted AMOC would slow. A collapse would trigger extreme change — perhaps three to four times bigger, Jones said.
Scientists began directly measuring aspects of AMOC in 2004. The new study uses sea surface temperatures dating back to 1870 to estimate change over a longer period of time, and suggests with 95% confidence that the current could collapse between 2025 and 2095.
“We estimate a collapse of the AMOC to occur around mid-century under the current scenario of future emissions,” wrote co-authors Peter and Susanne Ditlevsen, countering a United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that said collapse was unlikely this century.
Some experts said the recent study adds a new angle to other evidence suggesting collapse could happen this century.
Stefan Rahmstorf, a professor of physics of the oceans at Potsdam University in Germany, wrote that standard climate models are “underestimating risk” and that multiple methods of analyzing past climates suggest that a risk of collapse needs to be “taken very seriously.”
In an email to NBC News, Tim Lenton, a professor at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom and founder of the Global Systems Institute, said the new study makes “important improvements to the method of providing early warning of a climate tipping point directly from data.”
But others are more skeptical of the research’s bold conclusions and reliance on a simple model.
“Proxies have to be taken with a grain of salt,” according to Eleanor Frajka-Williams, a physical oceanographer and climate scientist at the University of Hamburg in Germany, who said the science on how closely sea surface temperatures correspond to AMOC changes is unsettled and the new research risks simplifying a complex system for an overconfident prediction. She did note that the IPCC recently downgraded its confidence in the prediction that AMOC would not collapse by 2100.
Scientists have been directly tracking AMOC with sensors for about two decades, but it will likely take another 10 years before they can say for sure that the circulation system is slowing down, she said.
Some scientists aren’t sure that AMOC has a tipping point at all. There is evidence that AMOC has changed abruptly in the distant past, but researchers like Armour are unconvinced that it is likely in the near future.
“We’re just not in that climate anymore and we haven’t been for thousands of years. The drivers of AMOC right now are different,” he said. “What we do know is AMOC will slow with global warming in the future, but we haven’t yet seen the slowing and there’s no way to know if there’s an abrupt change or not.”
From Armour’s perspective, centering media conversation on uncertain predictions of systems where it’s not clear that tipping points exist could risk pushing people toward climate doomerism or could cost scientists credibility later on.
“We don’t have good evidence for anything being irreversible in the climate system except for ecosystems and ice sheets,” he said of large-scale physical climate systems. “We often find it’s much more complex than we think, and the complexity tends to reduce the likelihood of tipping points.”
Whether or not AMOC is heading for a slowdown or a frightening collapse, the solution remains the same.
From a policy perspective, “it doesn’t matter whether the AMOC is going to collapse. There are going to be hugely bad climate impacts if we don’t act today,” Jones said.
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