This “Climate-Friendly” Fuel Comes With an Astronomical Cancer Risk

Story by by Sharon Lerner • Thursday

by Sharon Lerner

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The Environmental Protection Agency recently gave a Chevron refinery the green light to create fuel from discarded plastics as part of a “climate-friendly” initiative to boost alternatives to petroleum. But, according to agency records obtained by ProPublica and The Guardian, the production of one of the fuels could emit air pollution that is so toxic, 1 out of 4 people exposed to it over a lifetime could get cancer.

“That kind of risk is obscene,” said Linda Birnbaum, former head of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. “You can’t let that get out.”

That risk is 250,000 times greater than the level usually considered acceptable by the EPA division that approves new chemicals. Chevron hasn’t started making this jet fuel yet, the EPA said. When the company does, the cancer burden will disproportionately fall on people who have low incomes and are Black because of the population that lives within 3 miles of the refinery in Pascagoula, Mississippi.

ProPublica and The Guardian asked Maria Doa, a scientist who worked at the EPA for 30 years, to review the document laying out the risk. Doa, who once ran the division that managed the risks posed by chemicals, was so alarmed by the cancer threat that she initially assumed it was a typographical error. “EPA should not allow these risks in Pascagoula or anywhere,” said Doa, who now is the senior director of chemical policy at Environmental Defense Fund.

In response to questions from ProPublica and The Guardian, an EPA spokesperson wrote that the agency’s lifetime cancer risk calculation is “a very conservative estimate with ‘high uncertainty,’” meaning the government erred on the side of caution in calculating such a high risk.

Under federal law, the EPA can’t approve new chemicals with serious health or environmental risks unless it comes up with ways to minimize the dangers. And if the EPA is unsure, the law allows the agency to order lab testing that would clarify the potential health and environmental harms. In the case of these new plastic-based fuels, the agency didn’t do either of those things. In approving the jet fuel, the EPA didn’t require any lab tests, air monitoring or controls that would reduce the release of the cancer-causing pollutants or people’s exposure to them.

In January 2022, the EPA announced the initiative to streamline the approval of petroleum alternatives in what a press release called “part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s actions to confront the climate crisis.” While the program cleared new fuels made from plants, it also signed off on fuels made from plastics even though they themselves are petroleum-based and contribute to the release of planet-warming greenhouse gases.

Although there’s no mention of discarded plastics in the press release or on the EPA website’s description of the program, an agency spokesperson told ProPublica and The Guardian that it allows them because the initiative also covers fuels made from waste. The spokesperson said that 16 of the 34 fuels the program approved so far are made from waste. She would not say how many of those are made from plastic and stated that such information was confidential.

All of the waste-based fuels are the subject of consent orders, documents the EPA issues when it finds that new chemicals or mixtures may pose an “unreasonable risk” to human health or the environment. The documents specify those risks and the agency’s instructions for mitigating them.

But the agency won’t turn over these records or reveal information about the waste-based fuels, even their names and chemical structures. Without those basic details, it’s nearly impossible to determine which of the thousands of consent orders on the EPA website apply to this program. In keeping this information secret, the EPA cited a legal provision that allows companies to claim as confidential any information that would give their competitors an advantage in the marketplace.

Nevertheless, ProPublica and The Guardian did obtain one consent order that covers a dozen Chevron fuels made from plastics that were reviewed under the program. Although the EPA had blacked out sections, including the chemicals’ names, that document showed that the fuels that Chevron plans to make at its Pascagoula refinery present serious health risks, including developmental problems in children and cancer and harm to the nervous system, reproductive system, liver, kidney, blood and spleen.

Aside from the chemical that carries a 25% lifetime risk of cancer from smokestack emissions, another of the Chevron fuels ushered in through the program is expected to cause 1.2 cancers in 10,000 people — also far higher than the agency allows for the general population. The EPA division that screens new chemicals typically limits cancer risk from a single air pollutant to 1 case of cancer in a million people. The agency also calculated that air pollution from one of the fuels is expected to cause 7.1 cancers in every 1,000 workers — more than 70 times the level EPA’s new chemicals division usually considers acceptable for workers.

In addition to the chemicals released through the creation of fuels from plastics, the people living near the Chevron refinery are exposed to an array of other cancer-causing pollutants, as ProPublica reported in 2021. In that series, which mapped excess cancer risk from lifetime exposure to air pollution across the U.S., the highest chance was 1 cancer in 53 people, in Port Arthur, Texas.

The 1-in-4 lifetime cancer risk from breathing the emissions from the Chevron jet fuel is higher even than the lifetime risk of lung cancer for current smokers.

In an email, Chevron spokesperson Ross Allen wrote: “It is incorrect to say there is a 1-in-4 cancer risk from smokestack emissions. I urge you avoid suggesting otherwise.” Asked to clarify what exactly was wrong, Allen wrote that Chevron disagrees with ProPublica and The Guardian’s “characterization of language in the EPA Consent Order.” That document, signed by a Chevron manager at its refinery in Pascagoula, quantified the lifetime cancer risk from the inhalation of smokestack air as 2.5 cancers in 10 people, which can also be stated as 1 in 4.

In a subsequent phone call, Allen said: “We do take care of our communities, our workers and the environment generally. This is job one for Chevron.”

In a separate written statement, Chevron said it followed the EPA’s process under the Toxic Substances Control Act: “The TSCA process is an important first step to identify risks and if EPA identifies unreasonable risk, it can limit or prohibit manufacture, processing or distribution in commerce during applicable review period.”

The Chevron statement also said: “Other environmental regulations and permitting processes govern air, water and handling hazardous materials. Regulations under the Clean Water, Clean Air and Resource Conservation and Recovery Acts also apply and protect the environment and the health and safety of our communities and workers.”

Similarly, the EPA said that other federal laws and requirements might reduce the risk posed by the pollution, including Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s regulations for worker protection, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act and rules that apply to refineries.

But OSHA has warned the public not to rely on its outdated chemical standards. The refinery rule calls for air monitoring only for one pollutant: benzene. The Clean Water Act does not address air pollution. And the new fuels are not regulated under the Clean Air Act, which applies to a specific list of pollutants. Nor can states monitor for the carcinogenic new fuels without knowing their names and chemical structures.

We asked Scott Throwe, an air pollution specialist who worked at the EPA for 30 years, how existing regulations could protect people in this instance. Now an independent environmental consultant, Throwe said the existing testing and monitoring requirements for refineries couldn’t capture the pollution from these new plastic-based fuels because the rules were written before these chemicals existed. There is a chance that equipment designed to limit the release of other pollutants may incidentally capture some of the emissions from the new fuels, he said. But there’s no way to know whether that is happening.

This “Climate-Friendly” Fuel Comes With an Astronomical Cancer Risk© Provided by ProPublica

A redacted section of an EPA consent order covering plastic-derived fuels. The agency withheld basic information on the grounds that it is confidential business information.

Under federal law, companies have to apply to the EPA for permission to introduce new chemicals or mixtures. But manufacturers don’t have to supply any data showing their products are safe. So the EPA usually relies on studies of similar chemicals to anticipate health effects. In this case, the EPA used a mixture of chemicals made from crude oil to gauge the risks posed by the new plastic-based fuels. Chevron told the EPA the chemical components of its new fuel but didn’t give the precise proportions. So the EPA had to make some assumptions, for instance that people absorb 100% of the pollution emitted.

Asked why it didn’t require tests to clarify the risks, a spokesperson wrote that the “EPA does not believe these additional test results would change the risks identified nor the unreasonable risks finding.”

In her three decades at the EPA, Doa had never seen a chemical with that high a cancer risk that the agency allowed to be released into a community without restrictions.

“The only requirement seems to be just to use the chemicals as fuel and have the workers wear gloves,” she said.

While companies have made fuels from discarded plastics before, this EPA program gives them the same administrative break that renewable fuels receive: a dedicated EPA team that combines the usual six regulatory assessments into a single report.

The irony is that Congress created the Renewable Fuel Standard Program, which this initiative was meant to support, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and boost the production of renewable fuels. Truly renewable energy sources can be regenerated in a short period of time, such as plants or algae. While there is significant debate about whether ethanol, which is made from corn, and other plant-based renewable fuels are really better for the environment than fossil fuels, there is no question that plastics are not renewable and that their production and conversion into fuel releases climate-harming pollution.

Under the EPA’s Renewable Fuel Standard, biobased fuels must meet specific criteria related to their biological origin as well as the amount they reduce greenhouse gas emissions compared with petroleum-based fuels. But under this new approach, fuels made from waste don’t have to meet those targets, the agency said.

In its written statement, Chevron said that “plastics are an essential part of modern life and plastic waste should not end up in unintended places in the environment. We are taking steps to address plastic waste and support a circular economy in which post-use plastic is recycled, reused or repurposed.”

But environmentalists say such claims are just greenwashing.

Whatever you call it, the creation of fuel from plastic is in some ways worse for the climate than simply making it directly from fossil fuels. Over 99% of all plastic is derived from fossil fuels, including coal, oil and gas. To produce fuel from plastics, additional fossil fuels are used to generate the heat that converts them into petrochemicals that can be used as fuel.

“It adds an extra step,” said Veena Singla, a senior scientist at NRDC. “They have to burn a lot of stuff to power the process that transforms the plastic.”

Less than 6% of plastic is recycled in the U.S. Much of the rest — hundreds of millions of tons of it — is dumped in the oceans each year, killing marine mammals and polluting the world. Plastic does not fully decompose; instead it eventually breaks down into tiny bits, some of which wind up inside our bodies. As the public’s awareness of the health and environmental harm grows, the plastics industry has found itself under increasing pressure to find a use for the waste.

The idea of creating fuel from plastic offers the comforting sense that plastics are sustainable. But the release of cancer-causing pollution is just one of several significant problems that have plagued attempts to convert discarded plastic into new things. One recent study by scientists from the Department of Energy found that the economic and environmental costs of turning old plastic into new using a process called pyrolysis were 10 to 100 times higher than those of making new plastics from fossil fuels. The lead author said similar issues plague the use of this process to create fuels from plastics.

Chevron buys oil that another company extracts from discarded plastics through pyrolysis. Though the parts of the consent order that aren’t blacked out don’t mention that this oil came from waste plastics, a related EPA record makes this clear. The cancer risks come from the pollution emitted from Chevron’s smokestacks when the company turns that oil into fuel.

The EPA attributed its decision to embark on the streamlined program in part to its budget, which it says has been “essentially flat for the last six years.” The EPA spokesperson said that the agency “has been working to streamline its new chemicals work wherever possible.”

The New Chemicals Division, which houses the program, has been under particular pressure because updates to the chemicals law gave it additional responsibilities and faster timetables. That division of the agency is also the subject of an ongoing EPA Inspector General investigation into whistleblowers’ allegations of corruption and industry influence over the chemical approval process.

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Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner| A Year of War

 

25 February 23

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Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner| A Year of War
Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner, Substack
Excerpt: "A year can fly by. It can also last forever. These competing views of time feel especially relevant as we assess the one-year anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine."   

A year can fly by. It can also last forever.

These competing views of time feel especially relevant as we assess the one-year anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

What has transpired over the last 12 months is an unmitigated human tragedy — one measured in death and dismemberment, rape and retaliation, hardship and horror. War is hell. It always has been and always will be. But the war being waged by Russian forces, some of whom are now convicts released from prison and sent to the frontlines, is a special circle of hell.

It is as much a form of terrorism as it is warfare — including the targeting, torture, and wanton murder of civilians. Vladimir Putin and other architects of this depravity could eventually face prosecution for war crimes.

But if you had said a year ago that today Kyiv would remain an independent Ukraine’s vibrant capital; that its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, would be hailed with comparisons to wartime leaders like Winston Churchill; and that the once vaunted Russian armed forces would be revealed to be a fourth-rate power (except for their nuclear arsenal), most experts in military and European affairs would have thought you were dreaming.

It’s a remarkable story, even if the ending has yet to be written. While the war defies an easy narrative, the Ukrainians, through courage, determination, resilience, and inventiveness, have proven the doubters wrong and exposed Putin as an inept bully.

Inept bullies, however, can still be very dangerous. And while besides all the sorrow there is much to be proud of and thankful for on this anniversary, the fates of the war, of Europe, and of the world remain in flux. What happens next on the battlefield will shape events around the globe.

These are dangerous and unstable times. The future could be a lot brighter. It could also be much worse. That’s what’s at stake in this conflict.

A determined alliance has rallied to Ukraine’s defense — primarily Europe, the United States, and other democracies like Canada, Australia, and Japan. They argue that the significant investment in direct financial aid and weapons systems to Ukraine should be considered a down payment on global stability. It is a free world order versus autocracy.

The rationale is that if it weren’t Ukraine fending off Putin’s territorial ambitions, someone else would have to rebuff them. Recent history lends some credence to this conclusion, as Putin’s previous misbehavior in places like Crimea was not suitably challenged.

Some observers believe that the unity of NATO and other democracies in response to Russia could act as a deterrent for China’s saber rattling and more formidable military. This conclusion is more problematic. If Ukraine is causing China to rethink their calculus in places like Taiwan, what lessons are they drawing? Are they more skittish about using military force or emboldened? Recently, China has shown an increasing interest in publicly backing Putin, although they don’t seem to have crossed a line yet of providing lethal military aid. What are we to make of that? It is clear that there is a lot of back-channel communication taking place between the United States and China on this issue, although relations between the two powers are particularly fraught at the moment.

When you pull back from Europe and consider the global community, the neat lines between the allies of Ukraine and those of Russia become blurred. India in particular seems to be straddling the fence. In a recent nonbinding United Nations resolution calling for Russian withdrawal, India abstained, along with China and 30 other countries ranging from South Africa to Vietnam to Bolivia.

In the U.S., political divisions exist around American support for Ukraine. While there are some apologists for Putin on what is considered the political far left, most of the Kremlin’s U.S. cheerleaders are on the political right. There are also many Republicans who are fierce proponents of aid to Ukraine. This debate will likely play out in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, and it might complicate President Biden's goal of securing additional aid for Ukraine.

All this adds up to a very dynamic and unknowable state of affairs. Biden deserves a lot of credit for standing up to Putin and rallying support for Ukraine. NATO is stronger than it’s been in decades. Autocrats have been put on notice. And none of this would have been possible without the courage, tenacity, and sacrifice of the Ukrainian people.

But the price of freedom is steep, in treasure as well as blood. How long will Ukraine’s allies support the war effort financially? Will we consider rolling back recent tax cuts in order to pay for a defense of democratic values? With Republicans controlling the House of Representatives, that seems unlikely. But it’s also fair to say that many Democrats are unlikely to support tax increases to pay for the war.

Also, for all the focus on Europe, the rest of the world is becoming more unstable. China in particular is flexing its power, not only in Asia but also in influence campaigns from Africa to Oceana to Latin America.

How much can the United States protect the world order? What are the limits to our power — military, diplomatic, and economic? What is our will? How fatigued are we by our existing alliances and commitments? To what crises are we not giving enough attention? North Korea? Iran? Something we are not yet predicting?

These are but a few of the urgent questions on this solemn anniversary, one in which the biggest unknown is who will win the war and what peace might look like.

The world is inherently complicated. Each era has its challenges and tragedies. But those who support the forces of freedom and democracy ultimately have more reasons for hope today than seemed possible a year ago. That is a victory in and of itself. But we cannot delude ourselves. A long, difficult, and costly road stretches ahead.

To make this progress last will take a lot more work and determination, more blood and treasure. But one other truth we know is that the Ukrainians have it in them to do this. And for that they deserve our gratitude and support.

READ MORE 

A police cruiser parked outside a synagogue. (photo: The Conversation)

Today Is the "National Day of Hate": How Did We Get Here?
Rae Hodge, Salon
Hodge writes: "Cities across the country are on alert today following police warnings of an uptick in 'domestic violent extremist messaging' from emboldened neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups who are organizing a 'National Day of Hate.'"  

Fox News ramped up its anti-Black History Month coverage just as cities ready to counter neo-Nazis in the streets

Cities across the country are on alert today following police warnings of an uptick in "domestic violent extremist messaging" from emboldened neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups who are organizing a "National Day of Hate."

Hate groups have been instructed to drop banners, place stickers and flyers, and spread racist and antisemitic graffiti in cities across North America during the last Saturday of Black History Month. The very public displays of hate are being encouraged just as incidents targeting Jewish Americans for harassment and violence have escalated. According to the Jewish media outlet Forward, "A man charged with shooting two Jewish men as they left morning services in an Orthodox area of Los Angeles on consecutive days last week attached a photo of a Goyim Defense League flyer in an email to classmates about two months before the attack." Members of that same group, the Goyim Defense League, were recently spotted harassing attendants of the Chabad of South Orlando.

“Leave our country go back to Israel”
“Heil hitler” “sir do you think you should be put in an oven”

These “GDL” nazi animals have been terrorizing & targeting Jews & Jewish communities with impunity

Police are refrained from doing anything. This needs to be stopped pic.twitter.com/WGJrt9GZjE

— Baruch Sandhaus (@BaruchSandhaus) February 22, 2023

The neo-Nazi groups' plans come at the end of a monthlong campaign of racist and anti-Black media coverage by the right-wing's main media outlet, Fox News. As watchdog group Media Matters charted, the network — which was also recently revealed to have knowingly lied to viewers in the lead-up to a Confederate-flag-waving mob attacking the Capitol on January 6 —has published or aired a new story that advances anti-Black narratives every day during Black History Month.

"Although Fox has aired a few Black history month segments," Media Matters noted, "more airtime was spent pushing racist rhetoric...Fox figures have spread anti-Black narratives, accusing President Joe Biden's administration of anti-white racism; fear-mongering about critical race theory being taught in K-12 schools as a part of a so-called "woke" liberal agenda; and undermining the existence of and harm done by systemic racism."

The stories almost always follow the same formula: If a person of color decries an act of racism, a member of the Fox commentariat or guest labels that person of color a racist.

On Friday, Fox gave the Missouri Attorney General air-time to accuse a Black St. Louis prosecutor of "injecting race" into a dispute after the prosecutor suggested the attorney general's push to have her removed from office may be racially motivated. On Thursday, Fox's Brian Kilmeade gave North Korean defector and racism denialist Yeonmi Park free reign to talk about how getting mugged by a Black woman in Chicago was "crazier than North Korea." On Wednesday, Texas Republican Rep. Lance Gooden took to Fox to suggest California Democratic Rep. Judy Chu — the US' first Chinese American Congresswoman — is a Chinese spy "playing the race card."

Here are 7 other things that can get you called a racist by the network:

01

Keep Nazis out of the US military

Feb. 5: According to Mark Levin, who hosts a weekly Fox News program, "anti-white racism" is what a sweeping range of Americans participate in when they call for reform against injustice. On his show "Life, Liberty & Levin" — which has all the thrill of a basement-filmed public access TV spot but sadly none of the glamour —Levin opened the floor to his guest, the Hoover Institution's Victor Davis Hanson, who lamented the number of ways white men have suffered now that Disney, American Airlines, and Stanford University have diversity and inclusion initiatives. Hanson's plaintive comments extended to the Pentagon's recent attempts to increase recruitment and diversity in the military -- specifically by clamping down on previously documented hotbeds of racist behavior, and "hunting out supposed white rage and white supremacy in the ranks."

02

Student loan forgiveness

Feb. 5: On that same broadcast, Levin didn't let President Joe Biden off the hook for what he believes is racist action. Noting that Black students hold a disproportionate amount of educational debt, Levin suggested this made Biden's student loan forgiveness plan "racist."

03

Study the history of the U.S.

Feb. 14 — What list of damning moments in anti-Black Fox News narratives would be complete without a mention of Tucker Carlson? In an appearance with Carlson, the fallen-from-grace comedian and producer of right-wing non-sequiturs Roseanne Barr offered viewers a perfect example of how anti-Black racism and antisemitism are often bundled together by extremists in modern rhetoric when she claimed that critical race theory is "nothing but Nazism" and "antisemitism."

Barr went on to fantasize that critical race theory "is based on Jews being white and all the trouble caused by white people. They mean Jews, and I know they do." Barr absurdly insisted "white racism" means "Jewish control" and that it's a narrative pushed to "divide the population."

04

Mentioning past acts of racism

Feb. 10: Fox' Lisa Kennedy Montgomery -- the white former MTV VJ who stumbled from alt-music to alt-right -- makes the list for her appearance on Fox's "Outnumbered" where she called Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg "a cracker who only wants to racially divide the country further.

What, you might ask, prompted this remark from the paling former personality? Buttigieg noted that the creation of the U.S. interstate highways system disproportionately displaced Black residents during its construction, and even cleaved in half Black neighborhoods.

Fox's Julie Banderas then jumped in to accuse Democrats of "politicizing … and using once again another woke agenda to basically punish those who don't believe the same rhetoric that they are spewing."

05

Fighting discrimination

Feb. 9: It's almost unfair to include Fox' Laura Ingraham in this list. Her contributions to anti-Black news media bias over the years are so substantial that they should more rightfully be recorded in their own section — like Pete Rose's batting average. But worth noting here is a moment on Ingraham's prime-time TV show, where she criticized the University of South Florida for sharing resources with students about racial diversity and inclusion support, including anti-racism resources and counseling services.

This was simply too much for Ingraham, who offered the floor to her guest to right-wing activist Chris Rufo, who claimed the school was engaged in "cult programming" and aimed to "make [kids] left-wing activists."

06

Crediting Black people for building the U.S.

Feb. 7: It wasn't enough for Fox' Jesse Watters to joke about getting a check for slavery reparations because he's "1% Black." The co-host of "The Five" took a moment to pause his tirade about the dangers of Black cartoon characters in Disney movies to hand-waive the forced labor of enslaved Black people who built early U.S. infrastructure. Watters, instead, lauded those who "financed" that infrastructure: white enslavers.

"When you say, 'Who build something?' Well, who designed it, who was the architect, who financed it? Labor's just a part of it. So, if we're going to have a conversation about reparations -- which I'm open to it since I'm 1% Black -- I might get a check. You have to talk about it accurately," Watters told viewers.

07

Calling out racism (but only if you're a person of color)

Feb. 20: Calling out racism isn't racist. In fact, when a group composed exclusively of people of color are discussing racist remarks made by another person of color, that's about the least amount of racism you can get in a soundbite. And yet, the Fox News commentariat repeatedly demonstrates that those moments are where it thinks white opinions are most necessary. When Daily Beast contributor Wajahat Ali was asked whether sharing an ethnic heritage with Nikki Haley compels him to support her, Ali replied with a devastating roast of Haley's politics.

"To quote Zora Neale Hurston, 'Not all skinfolk are kinfolk.' Nikki Haley instead is the Dinesh D'Souza of Candace Owens. She's the alpha Karen of brown skin. And for white supremacists and racists, she's the perfect Manchurian candidate. And instead of applauding her, I am just disgusted by people like Nikki Haley who know better -- whose parents were the beneficiaries, as Asha said, of the 1965 immigration and nationality act -- which passed thanks to those original BLM protesters and the Civil Rights Act," Ali said.

Ali's made the comments during an appearance with MSNBC Mehdi Hasan and fellow guest Asha Rangappa of the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs.

Fox' Lisa Kennedy Montgomery called the comments "disgusting" and "overt racism."

Fox News' habit of policing black and brown people's intra-group racism conversations isn't new. In April of 2021, it used the same bit to accuse Black Twitter users of racism when many criticized South Carolina's Republican Sen. Tim Scott. The network's latest use of this tactic comes after Haley, in her Feb. 15 campaign kickoff speech, falsely accused President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris of calling America racist.

"Every day we're told America is flawed, rotten, and full of hate. Joe and Kamala even say America is racist. Nothing could be further from the truth."

Biden and Harris have, in prior remarks, discussed the impact of -- and the need to uproot -- long-embedded systemic racism still left within US institutions even after post-Jim Crow reforms.

READ MORE 

On Feb. 3, the train pulling 150 cars through the village left the rails and toppled over. (photo: Gene J. Puskar/AP/Shutterstock)

Bomb Train: Calls Grow for New Laws on Rail Safety After Toxic Disaster in East Palestine, Ohio
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "Residents of East Palestine, Ohio, continue to demand answers about how a Norfolk Southern train carrying toxic chemicals derailed February 3, releasing hazardous materials into the air, water and soil." 

ALSO SEE: Revealed: The US Is Averaging

One Chemical Accident Every Two Days

Residents of East Palestine, Ohio, continue to demand answers about how a Norfolk Southern train carrying toxic chemicals derailed February 3, releasing hazardous materials into the air, water and soil. The National Transportation Safety Board has released a preliminary report on the accident, blaming a wheel bearing failure for the crash and saying the derailment was “100% preventable.” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who has faced widespread criticism over his response to the disaster, visited the village on Thursday for the first time since the derailment, a day after former President Trump also visited East Palestine. For more, we speak with Emily Wright, development director of River Valley Organizing, who lives a few miles from the derailment site; Gregory Hynes, the national legislative director at SMART, the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers; and reporter Topher Sanders, whose latest ProPublica story details how Norfolk Southern officials are allowed to order train crews to ignore safety alerts.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg finally visited East Palestine, Ohio, Thursday for the first time since a Norfolk Southern train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed earlier this month, blanketing the town with a toxic brew of spilled chemicals and gases. Buttigieg has faced widespread criticism for his response to the bomb train disaster in East Palestine, where residents fear their health has been put at risk from the spill and a controlled burn of the chemicals.

Buttigieg’s trip came a day after former President Trump visited East Palestine. Trump criticized President Biden for going to Ukraine this week instead of the site of the train derailment in Ohio. Trump made no mention of why he rescinded an Obama-era rule that would have required more sophisticated brakes on trains carrying hazardous materials. On Thursday, Buttigieg accused Trump of siding with the railroad companies while he was president.

TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY PETE BUTTIGIEG: They got their way on a Christmas tree of regulatory changes that the last administration made on its way out the door in December of 2020. I think they’re getting their way on the fines being too low. I’m sorry, but if the biggest fine we can charge on a violation is $250,000 or less, and that’s an egregious hazmat violation that gets somebody killed, that is not enough for a multibillion-dollar company.

AMY GOODMAN: Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s visit to East Palestine, Ohio, came as the National Transportation Safety Board released a preliminary report on the train derailment, blaming a wheel bearing failure for the crash. NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy described the derailment as “100% preventable.”

JENNIFER HOMENDY: But I can tell you this much: This was 100% preventable. We call things accidents. There is no accident. Every single event that we investigate is preventable. So, our hearts are with you.

AMY GOODMAN: The Norfolk Southern train that derailed had 141 cars and stretched for two miles. There were just three crew members on board.

We’re joined now by three guests. Topher Sanders is a reporter at ProPublica covering railroad safety. His new article is headlined “A Norfolk Southern Policy Lets Officials Order Crews to Ignore Safety Alerts.” Gregory Hynes joins us from Washington, D.C. He’s national legislative director at SMART, the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers. And Emily Wright is on the ground in the East Palestine area in Ohio. She’s development director for River Valley Organizing in Columbiana County.

We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Let’s start right there on the ground, Emily. A lot of visitors this week, right? You had former President Trump. You had Pete Buttigieg. But the question is: What’s actually happening on the ground right now? Can you talk about how people are feeling, what their questions and demands are?

EMILY WRIGHT: Yes. Last night we had a town hall with independent scientists and environmental legal experts, lawyers, and a retired fire chief, Sil, who was a hazmat trainer for decades. And people were very, very happy that someone was just listening to them and answering their questions. People’s questions are, you know: What is Norfolk Southern going to do right now to help us? Because a lot of them are involved — we’re not doing any type of class-action lawsuit or anything like that. We’re just offering free legal clinics, that are going to be coming up, for people to get unbiased advice that is not soliciting. But people are concerned about: Do they make decisions now, because they don’t have the money and they need the money? Do they wait to make decisions? Are their families safe? You know, they have — 50% of the people that were at the meeting last night raised their hand that they have well water. And at this point, the only — they’re still getting the instruction to drink bottled water, because they’re not completely sure it’s safe. So, everybody just really wants questions answered. And I think everybody is not really looking at even the high-profile visits. They more just want action.

You know, we give — a lot of people are pointing fingers right now, but everybody is pretty disgusted with everybody. I mean, you talked about how Trump rolled back those safety regulations. Then we have two years of the Biden administration where they had a chance to reinstate those, and they didn’t. And so people are upset with all political officials right now. They’re upset that our governor and our House representative came and took a sip of water in East Palestine as a political stunt and, you know, said the water is safe. But people are waking up in the same area, in the same homes with rashes and nausea and asthma symptoms in the morning from just being exposed to all of the surface and soil contaminants right now. So, you know, there were a lot of people that are visibly upset and really feel like — really feel like they’re not being represented on all levels — local, state and federal government.

So, people are going to be taking action. They’re going to be writing letters, making calls. We’re going to be doing more petitions, because this is — unfortunately, our safety in Appalachia is something that can change from administration to administration. So what we’re going to push for at River Valley also is change at a congressional level. We need laws made. We need things that can’t be taken away by executive order or, you know, placed by that. So, that’s what we’re really pushing for, is lasting change from this. And it needs to be bipartisan. Everybody needs to get at the table with this.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you held a town hall last night. Tonight, I know Erin Brockovich is holding a meeting, who took on PG&E, Pacific Gas and Electric, what, 30 years ago for contamination in California. On Wednesday night, CNN hosted its own town hall meeting in East Palestine. This is one local resident, Jim Stewart, addressing the Norfolk Southern CEO, Alan Shaw.

JIM STEWART: I came home the other day. I put the garage door up. I got — we pulled in the garage, got out of the car, put the garage door down. As soon as we got out of that car, the smell came back to us. Right away, instant headache. You know, I’m 65 years old, a diabetic, AFib heart, heart disease, everything. Now, did you shorten my life now? I want to retire and enjoy it. How are we going to enjoy it? You burned me. We were going to sell our house. Our value went poof. Do I mow the grass? Do I — can I plant tomatoes next summer? What can I do? I’m afraid to. You know, and it’s in the air. Every day I cough, three — a little cough here, a little cough there. I’ve never had that, you know? I got rashes on my cheeks and all of my arms from the derail — I don’t call it a derailment; I call it a disaster.

AMY GOODMAN: Emily Wright, talk about what people are feeling. I mean, he’s diabetic. He’s 65 years old. This was the participant in the CNN town hall, challenging the Norfolk Southern CEO. And what about his presence on the ground, the head of Norfolk Southern, Alan Shaw, who says Norfolk Southern won’t be leaving anytime soon?

EMILY WRIGHT: Yeah, that statement was almost verbatim most things we heard last night. This is actually a really good time to highlight something new that’s come up. So, we’re all aware that a health clinic was established for these people to go to. So, they were told, if they have these symptoms after the burn and the spill, to go to the free health clinic. And it was, I believe, through the Health Department, Ohio, and health department in our own. And this is not a clinic. People are not being treated. This is 100% — I have everything to back this up, but it is a — just for background, I’m a registered nurse, and I’ve worked in the medical field for 20 years before this. So I can tell you that this is not an actual treatment clinic. This is a documentation and referral station. So, there’s no doctors. There’s no lab tests, so no blood and urine tests. There’s no diagnoses, and there’s no real assessment. It’s just usually a nurse. They have some type of toxicologist that may be there. And they refer you to somewhere. So there’s no actual treatment.

So these people are not only not receiving that, but we have several people that have come out this week to tell us that home health agencies aren’t coming to these homes because they’re worried about being exposed. And we have people that are, you know, bedridden, sick. One person, you know, they asked to remain anonymous, but they have a child that has total care needs. And they can’t get home health to come out and take care of their child. And it’s really been a struggle. So, these are real things happening on the ground.

And as far as, you know, for Alan Shaw, there is nothing that he can say that’s going to make this better, that he’s willing to say, because this is what Norfolk Southern does. They come in. They have these things. They poison us. They keep it — they try to sweep it under the rug. And they think that we’re all just stupid enough here — you know, we’re all just hilljack enough — to sit back. But I can tell you, from the meeting last night, that people are very angry, and they are ready to take action with not only policy changes, but they’re ready to take action and make sure Norfolk Southern really does pay, not just cleans up, not just gives us some money, but they actually pay, because these people have lost everything, their property value. They don’t understand if their homes are safe or not, like he said about mowing his grass, you know, with dioxin that falls on the ground after these things. We had Stephen Lester talking last night at our town hall about this. And, you know, people are scared — they mow their grass — because they’re walking outside or in their homes or sitting on their couches, and they’re noticing that they’re feeling shortness of breath or sick because the particulates are coming up.

So, people are not being properly taken care of, and it’s not enough. It’s a good first step that the EPA forced Norfolk Southern to clean this up right. It’s a good step that they’re going to monitor that. But it’s not enough. It’s the first step. And instead of finger-pointing right now, what I would really like everyone to do is get on the ball of doing immediate change through, you know, this administration and through the Transportation Department, and then working on congressional change, because we’re tired of the finger-pointing. You know.

AMY GOODMAN: Emily, I want to bring in Gregory Hynes, who’s national legislative director at SMART, the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers. So, Greg, this description of this train, we’re talking about February 3rd, passed through three temperature sensors as it was going along, two-mile-long train. The sensors are designed to alert problems like the hot bearing that eventually failed that day. But the only sensor, called a hot box detector, that registered a sufficiently high temperature to sound the alarm was the one less than a mile from the accident site, according to the NTSB initial report. Two-mile-long train, at least 20 of the cars are filled with toxic chemicals. And there are only three workers, engineers, conductors on board? The guy driving the train, a conductor — I’m not sure; you’ll have to correct me on the titles — and a trainee? How is this possible? As people saw, miles before, the wheels were on fire.

GREGORY HYNES: Well, first let me say that my heart goes out to the people of East Palestine with this terrible accident.

And the detectors that you speak of, there are no regulations requiring the railroads to have detectors at all, and there are no regulations requiring the railroads to calibrate and maintain those detectors. So, it’s — we’re part of the NTSB investigation, so there’s only certain things I can say. But the crew was not alerted with any problem from the previous detectors. The detector that did find a problem, it happened pretty close to the same time that the derailment happened.

And as far as the crew members, there was a conductor, an engineer and a trainee. But most — all the Class I railroads in America currently have a minimum of two people on the crew. And they just happened to have an extra one because they had a trainee. Now, the railroads want to go to single-person crews and then no-people crews. That’s their goal. And they fight tooth and nail in Washington, D.C., to not have any additional regulations and to roll back the regulations that they do have.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, this is astounding. These trains go on for miles. And aren’t they supposed to spend a certain amount of time inspecting each car that has toxic chemicals?

GREGORY HYNES: Well, yes, absolutely. There’s supposed to be Class I brake air tests on all the cars. And the railroads have rolled back regulations on doing inspections and air brake tests, as well. They’ve laid off 30% of their workforce in the last five years. It’s all about adhering to the wishes and whims of Wall Street and lowering their operation ratio. The other thing that people aren’t talking about, as well, are, the employees that they do have, NS recently cut their training program in half, so they only get half the training that they used to get. I mean, they’re rolling the dice, all the Class I railroads. And the thing that I would like to highlight is that nothing has changed with the freight railroads in America since this accident happened. They’re not taking any action to change anything. The only way they’re going to change anything is if they’re forced to.

AMY GOODMAN: In fact, a derailment took place outside of Detroit with the same company. Let me bring in Topher Sanders to this conversation. Topher is a reporter at ProPublica covering railroad safety. You just wrote this piece, “A Norfolk Southern Policy Lets Officials Order Crews to Ignore Safety Alerts.” Explain what you found. Give us background on all of this, and also the overall picture of the major railroad conglomerates in the United States. There are like seven of them, right?

TOPHER SANDERS: Yes, Amy. Yes. So, a team of us reporters at ProPublica started looking into various aspects of the derailment, and the policies and the kind of internal operation rules of Norfolk Southern became very interesting to us. And we were able to learn about this one particular policy where, some years ago, they created something called the Wayside Detector Help Desk. And it’s basically a team of personnel that review data coming from these hot boxes that you mentioned earlier. And that team, they’re not dispatchers. They kind of understand data, and they understand some of the workings in the workings of the train. They can make determinations that when crews receive certain alerts from these hot boxes, that that crew, if they deem it necessary based on information that they have, that’s really opaque and unclear based on the policy, they can tell that crew to mush on. They can tell that crew to ignore that alarm that’s coming from the hot box or coming from the dragging equipment detector, or whatever kind of detector it is, and say, “Continue on, because we have information that otherwise tells us it’s safe for you to do so.”

AMY GOODMAN: So, let me ask about what has been found and the number of derailments that there are. Over the past 20 years, overheated bearings have led to 416 derailments, according to the Federal Railroad Administration data on train accidents. Most have not been nearly as catastrophic as what happened in East Palestine. Is the federal railroad administration able to regulate hot box detectors? Does it require railroads to report data on how they perform? And how has the regulation of trains — its direct relation to lobbying in Washington?

TOPHER SANDERS: There is no requirement for the Class Ones reporting data related to hot boxes. All that information, as mentioned earlier by one of your other guests, is kind of held tightly within each organization. There’s no rules or regulations about having the hot boxes or what those thresholds should be.

One of the key things that came out of the preliminary report, that I think everyone should pay attention to and be very keenly attuned to, is the idea that the thresholds that should trigger alarm and concern for a crew on any given class of railroad are wildly different. So, on one railroad, that temperature threshold could be x, and another railroad, that temperature threshold could be 20, 30, 40 degrees different. And in this case, they were obviously trending hot. They went from about 60-or-so degrees above ambient temperature on that wheel bearing to 100 degrees above ambient on that particular bearing, between two detectors before they got to East Palestine. But that 60-degree change — that 40-degree change, that wasn’t enough for Norfolk Southern to determine that that needed to be dealt with at that moment, despite what we all saw on that security camera, that there was a fiery glow under the train 20 miles before the derailment. And so, the chair of the NTSB forthrightly said that, yes, considering what these thresholds should be and whether or not there needs to be some uniformity around these thresholds on these temperature gauges is definitely something they’ll be looking into.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, Topher, ProPublica has also learned that Norfolk Southern disregarded a similar mechanical problem on another train months earlier that jumped the tracks in Ohio, a train that was headed to Cleveland. What happened? What happened in the city of Sandusky, where thousands of gallons of some kind of molten paraffin wax was dumped?

TOPHER SANDERS: Yes, that’s candle wax, by the way. And it was molten at the time, so it would have been quite, quite dangerous, catastrophic, had that actually made contact with anyone when it derailed.

So, what happened there was the Wayside Desk, as it was explained to us, actually receiving data about the same kind of issue, saw something trending hot on the train, a wheel trending hot, a bearing trending hot. They did instruct that train to stop, but — and they brought out a mechanic to review the issue and see what was going on. And surprisingly, they were able to look at this train, something that had a trending hot mechanism, and they told this crew to mush on. After they did stop the train, looked at it, they said, “OK, mush on.” We’re having some indication that maybe that’s not what the crew wanted to do. And they went four miles down the track and derailed and spilled thousands of gallons of hot molten paraffin wax onto the city of Sandusky, after data was given to them that maybe should have indicated that they needed to take that engine out of commission. And out of an abundance of caution and safety, that’s the move that should have taken place, based on the experts and the union officials that we’ve spoken to.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Greg Hynes, you’re with the union. I want to talk more about the workers, the rail strike that just was threatened, and the Biden administration or President Biden signing off on a law that says that they couldn’t strike, what their issues were then, and if you see any relation to what’s happening right now, and specifically when it comes to East Palestine, where you have these three workers who are on the train, what you think needs to happen. The Republicans are having a heyday right now. They’re saying, of course, this happened under Biden. Buttigieg, Biden didn’t go there. But Trump went. It was Trump who signed off on a deregulation of the trains, caving to the lobbyists. Could Biden, in one fell swoop, just reverse what Trump did and go back to the Obama-Biden administration rules, that were supposed to go into effect, sadly, from 2014, this year, in 2023?

GREGORY HYNES: Well, all of the waivers that were put forward during the Trump administration should be looked at, the ones that were granted, many of them within minutes of being asked for. And the two-person crew rule, which was the minimum staffing rule, was done during the Obama administration, and it was ready to be released at the end of his term. The Trump administration came in. He appointed a retired railroad CEO to head up the FRA, who decided that we don’t need any regulations on crew staffing and just basically got rid of the entire rulemaking. And not only that, but he said, by FRA taking no action on crew staffing, we’re going to preempt all the states who have passed two-person crew laws, meaning that we’re not going to do anything about it, and we’re not going to allow any of the states to do anything about it.

The current administration has revisited the crew staffing rule. It’s already had its public comment period. It’s already had a hearing. And there were over 13,000 comments submitted. They’ve taken all that information in, and they are going to be releasing a crew staffing rule. But I agree with you that all the regulations, waivers that have been granted through the Trump administration should all be reevaluated.

AMY GOODMAN: And what about the threatened strike, especially around issues of, like, sick days, that railroad workers — and this is in the time of the pandemic — can’t take off sick days?

GREGORY HYNES: Well, it’s still that way. And as far as the strike goes, it was never about money. It was about quality of life and safety, because of this business model that the railroads are running and operating under, which they just want to cut precision scheduled railroading. They don’t want to allow people to take time off. They want to work you to the end, over and over again. They find loopholes in the hours of service so that people never get time off. And our members were just, “We can’t live like this. We can’t live like this. We’re gone from our families all the time. If we have a problem in our home, we can’t take off without the threat of being fired.” I mean, it’s really a strong-arm system. And the strike was never about money; it was about safety and quality of life.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, 30 seconds, back to Emily Wright, on the ground in Columbiana County, where East Palestine is. What you’re demanding right now?

EMILY WRIGHT: We’re demanding first that the Norfolk Southern Corporation, you know, basically pay — and not just pay for this, but change their practices in every way, like Greg was just discussing. It’s absolutely ridiculous, the staffing. There’s no need. It’s a multibillion-dollar corporation. There’s no need for it.

AMY GOODMAN: Have posted record profits this year.

EMILY WRIGHT: Record profits. And, two, we’re demanding policy change. We don’t care the letter behind your name. We’re demanding policy change now. And we’re also demanding congressional move on this so we have lasting changes.

AMY GOODMAN: Emily Wright, we want to thank you for being with us, development director for River Valley Organizing in Columbiana County, Ohio; Greg Hynes, national legislative director at SMART, the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers; and Topher Sanders. We’ll link to your pieces at ProPublica, as you continue to cover railroad safety.

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A left-leaning advocacy group called the Fairness Project has created a playbook for using ballot initiatives to go around GOP-led state legislatures. (photo: Mark Henle/The Republic)

This Group Gets Left-Leaning Policies Passed in Red States. How? Ballot Measures
Laura Benshoff, NPR
Benshoff writes: "One side effect of political division in the states - blue states getting bluer and red states getting redder - is that some policies don't have a chance of getting passed by partisan state legislatures, even if a majority of voters back them." 

One side effect of political division in the states — blue states getting bluer and red states getting redder — is that some policies don't have a chance of getting passed by partisan state legislatures, even if a majority of voters back them.

But a left-leaning advocacy group called the Fairness Project has created a playbook for using ballot initiatives to go around GOP-led state legislatures.

Since 2016, it has backed successful initiatives to raise the minimum wage and expand Medicaid in at least nine states run entirely or mostly by Republicans at the time of the vote. (It also works in Democratically led states.)

Now, it's one of several groups gearing up to put abortion rights on the ballot in 2024. But the recent success of such measures in Republican-led states has drawn criticism from lawmakers and helped fuel a raft of attempts to curb ballot measures.

Ballot measures are expensive and time-consuming

When Missouri-based minimum wage advocates wanted to run a statewide ballot initiative in 2017, they turned to the Fairness Project.

"We're sort of figuring things out as we go, and the Fairness Project is a particular expert on this tactic," says Missouri Jobs with Justice political director Richard Van Glahn.

Kansas City and St. Louis had tried hiking their minimum wages, but those efforts were overruled by state lawmakers. A ballot initiative would raise the minimum wage across the state — if voters approved it.

But winning takes "more than just motivated people with clipboards," says Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project.

Citizen-initiated ballot measures to change laws or state constitutions are possible in nearly half of U.S. states. To qualify for the ballot, petitions must gather thousands of signatures. Some campaigns then spend tens of millions of dollars to raise awareness among voters.

The high cost of campaigns often means they can act as policy vehicles for corporate interests, such as apps employing gig workers or sports betting companies.

The Fairness Project, the brainchild of a California-based health care workers union, was created with the idea of using ballot measures to address quality-of-life issues, SEIU-UHW president Dave Regan tells NPR.

"We need to speak to the common good," he says.

Money and messaging help sway conservative voters

To do that, the Fairness Project partners with local advocacy organizations and national nonprofits to provide the technical expertise needed to run a ballot campaign.

That means surveying voters early in the process to gauge whether an issue has enough public support to succeed, and helping to set up signature-gathering. The group also vets the language of the proposed constitutional amendment or statute to make sure it can withstand legal challenges, says Hall.

When it comes to public messaging, the Fairness Project tests which narratives will sway the largest number of voters. For example, talking about bringing voters' federal tax dollars back to their state may get more votes for Medicaid expansion than talking about it as a benefit program.

"Folks who can separate these issues from their partisan identity are the folks that get us over the finish line in these conservative states," says Hall.

Financing is another part of the process. The Fairness Project sometimes contributes directly to the state-level campaigns that they work with, but is rarely the largest donor, according to campaign finance records. Other financial backers of the measures include dark money groups, progressive nonprofits or, in the case of Medicaid expansion, business and health care associations.

The Fairness Project, which operates as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit "social welfare" organization, does not have to disclose its funders or all of its activities, drawing criticism from a right-leaning research group that investigates environmentalist and union spending.

Communications and digital strategy director Alexis Magnan-Callaway declined to share a list of Fairness Project funders with NPR, but says unions, foundations and individuals "contribute to our work."

Abortion has shaken up the ballot measure space

Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion last year, all state ballot measures affirming abortion rights have been approved, and all of those to restrict the right have been rejected.

The Fairness Project was involved with a $40 million campaign to pass Prop 3 in Michigan last year, which codified abortion rights in that state. It's now exploring such measures in several more states where abortion is restricted or banned.

These plans come as state legislatures move to clamp down on the ballot process. Lawmakers in at least four states — Ohio, Florida, Idaho and Missouri — have recently introduced or advanced measures to make citizen-initiated measures more difficult to run or to pass. Last year, 11 state legislatures introduced or advanced bills that would introduce new barriers.

In Missouri, Republican state Rep. Mike Henderson told his colleagues during a recent session that the state constitution has become too easy to edit.

"I believe that the Missouri constitution is a living document, but not an ever-expanding document," he said. Henderson also argued that citizens of Missouri may not understand what they're voting on, and that such campaigns can be intentionally misleading.

The state House of Representatives later approved a resolution he proposed, which calls for raising the threshold to pass citizen-initiated ballot measures from a simple majority to 60%. However, Democrats have called the measure itself misleading, because it opens with language about only allowing U.S. citizens to vote, something already enshrined in the Missouri constitution.

"The effort to curtail the initiative process seems to me like a purely political power play," says David Kimball, a political scientist at the University of Missouri - St. Louis.

He says lawmakers are likely trying to head off future abortion rights ballot measures, and want to keep the power to make laws, or introduce constitutional amendments, for themselves.

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Deborah Dorbert looks at a 12-week scan of her second child, taken well before she found out there were complications with the pregnancy. (photo: Thomas Simonetti/WP)

Her Baby Has a Deadly Diagnosis. Her Florida Doctors Refused an Abortion.
Frances Stead Sellers, The Washington Post
Sellers writes: "Deborah Dorbert is devoting the final days before her baby's birth to planning the details of the infant's death."  

Florida abortion ban includes exception for fatal fetal abnormalities. But her doctors told her they could not act.

Deborah Dorbert is devoting the final days before her baby’s birth to planning the details of the infant’s death.

She and her husband will swaddle the newborn in a warm blanket, show their love and weep hello even as they say goodbye. They have decided to have the fragile body cremated and are looking into ways of memorializing their second-born child.

“We want something permanent,” Deborah said. Perhaps a glass figurine infused with ashes. Or an ornament bearing the imprint of a tiny finger. “Not an urn,” she said, cracking one of the rare smiles that break through her relentless tears. “We have a 4-year-old. Things happen.”

Nobody expected things to happen the way they did when halfway through their planned and seemingly healthy pregnancy, a routine ultrasound revealed the fetus had devastating abnormalities, pitching the dazed couple into the uncharted landscape of Florida’s new abortion law.

Deborah and Lee Dorbert say the most painful decision of their lives was not honored by the physicians they trust. Even though medical experts expect their baby to survive only 20 minutes to a couple of hours, the Dorberts say their doctors told them that because of the new legislation, they could not terminate the pregnancy.

“That’s what we wanted,” Deborah said. “The doctors already told me, no matter what, at 24 weeks or full term, the outcome for the baby is going to be the same.”

Florida’s H.B. 5 — Reducing Fetal and Infant Mortality — went into effect last July, soon after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a half-century constitutional right to abortion.

The new law bans abortion after 15 weeks with a couple of exceptions, including one that permits a later termination if “two physicians certify in writing that, in reasonable medical judgment, the fetus has a fatal fetal abnormality” and has not reached viability.

It is not clear how the Dorberts’ doctors applied the law in this situation. Their baby has a condition long considered lethal that is now the subject of clinical trials to assess a potential treatment.

Neither Dorbert’s obstetrician nor the maternal fetal medicine specialist she consulted responded to multiple requests for comment.

A spokesman for Lakeland Regional Health, the hospital system the doctors are affiliated with, declined to discuss Dorbert’s case or how it is interpreting the new law. In an emailed statement, Tim Boynton, the spokesman, said, “Lakeland Regional Health complies with all laws in the state of Florida.”

The combination of a narrow exception to the law and harsh penalties for violating it terrifies physicians, according to Autumn Katz, interim director of litigation at the Center for Reproductive Rights, who has been tracking the implementation of abortion bans across the country.

Florida physicians who violate the new law face penalties including the possibility of losing their licenses, steep fines and up to five years in prison. As a result, Katz said, they “are likely to err on the side of questioning whether the conditions are fully met.”

The Dorberts’ hopes of having a second child came closer to reality last August when Deborah, 33, discovered she was pregnant.

“Everything was great,” Deborah said, recalling how she exercised regularly, ate well and watched in excitement as her pregnancy blossomed. A scan at 11 weeks, 6 days shows a recumbent fetus, buoyed in her womb.

At a mid-November appointment with her obstetrician, Deborah listened to the whoosh whoosh of her baby’s heartbeat and scheduled her next ultrasound for the following week — the anatomy scan that checks the development of fetal organs.

The day before Thanksgiving, Deborah drove with her son to the strip of medical offices across from the hospital where Kaiden had been born four years earlier and parked outside the low-slung, ocher Women’s Care building.

She was ready to introduce Kaiden to his younger sibling.

Deborah pulled up her T-shirt and folded down her yoga pants, baring her skin for a daub of warm gel. The technician slid her wand across Deborah’s swelling abdomen, calling out the baby’s features so that Kaiden could follow along on the black-and-white screen: There’s the baby’s head. There are the hands.

Then her expression changed. The technician excused herself and left the room. When she returned with the obstetrician, Deborah braced herself.

More pictures. More worried frowns. And then a wrenching explanation.

The baby was no longer buoyed in ample amniotic fluid, Deborah’s doctor gently told her. The kidneys were not developing properly, failing to produce the liquid that protects the fetus and promotes the development of vital organs. She didn’t think the baby would survive without a transplant, and she urged Deborah to follow up quickly with a specialist in maternal fetal medicine.

Deborah left carrying the scan stamped with the fetus’s gestational age — 23 weeks, 0 days. The ultrasound report lists a range of abnormalities, not only of the kidneys but also of the heart and stomach consistent with the diagnosis of “oligohydramnios,” or lack of amniotic fluid.

Deborah called Lee away from his new job as an noninjury adjuster for an insurance agency and met him at a park by one of the many lakes that dot Polk County. They cried and walked and wondered whether there could be some simple explanation. Perhaps Deborah’s water had broken prematurely.

Deborah was admitted later that day to Lakeland Regional Hospital for tests, including another ultrasound that showed the fetus had no kidneys.

On the Wednesday after Thanksgiving, Deborah had an appointment with a maternal fetal medicine specialist. A third ultrasound, now at 24 weeks gestation, confirmed the earlier findings, Deborah said, and the specialist told them that the condition was incompatible with life. This doctor also gave the diagnosis its common name: Potter syndrome.

He told them that some parents choose to continue to full term; others terminate the pregnancy through surgery or by inducing preterm labor, she recalled. He said he would begin contacting health-system administrators about the new law, and stepped out of the room to give the couple privacy to mull over their options.

Before they left, Deborah and Lee decided they would like to terminate the pregnancy as soon as they could. She recalls the doctor saying the termination, which would be performed by her obstetrician, might be possible between 28 and 32 weeks.

Ever since the condition was identified more than 75 years ago by Edith Potter, a pioneering perinatal specialist, Potter syndrome has been considered a doubly lethal diagnosis. Without working kidneys, newborns are unable to rid their bodies of deadly toxins and go into renal failure. Without amniotic fluid in the womb, they are born unable to breathe.

“The real problem is underdeveloped lungs,” said Jena L. Miller, a specialist in fetal intervention at Johns Hopkins Hospital and principal investigator in the clinical trial investigating treatment of the syndrome. In healthy fetuses, she said, the spongelike organs expand in the womb, practicing breathing by inhaling amniotic fluid.

Babies with Potter syndrome often die before they are born when their umbilical cords become trapped between their bodies and the wall of their mother’s uterus. Those that survive the birth process typically suffocate within minutes or a matter of hours.

The choices are stark for parents whose babies’ severe defects are typically detected on anatomy scans midway through pregnancy. Apart from the clinical trial, which closed enrollment last July before Deborah discovered she was pregnant, and a few physicians who are experimenting with replacing amniotic fluid, there are no treatment options.

The couple said they decided on preterm induction as soon as possible out of concern for Deborah’s physical and mental health, worries about the baby suffering, and their desire to begin the grieving process.

Already, routine conversations were becoming difficult. “It’s ‘Yes, I’m pregnant,’ but ‘No’ at the same time,” Deborah says.

A chance encounter in the grocery store aisle with her former obstetrician prompted a delighted exclamation about Deborah’s changing shape — “You’re having a second!” — followed by a distressing explanation of what was going on.

She decided against attending Lee’s office Christmas party for fear of the questions that might come up.

As her body changes, even family outings on their favorite hiking trails bring the threat of well-meaning wishes to Kaiden: “You gonna be a big brother, Buddy?”

The 4-year-old, who hands Deborah tissues to stanch her tears, believes he will soon have a younger sibling and that it will be a sister.

“We haven’t taken that leap to tell him,” Deborah said.

For much of the time, her pregnancy is disconcertingly normal, though she has stopped going in for regular checkups to escape the company of expectant mothers. Deborah can feel the baby pushing against her ribs and hips and deep into her pelvis, causing pain that she believes comes from the lack of fluid cushioning the baby. On occasion she pushes back, mother and child adjusting to the give-and-take of life together.

In December, Deborah says, she texted the coordinator at the maternal fetal medicine office regularly, hoping to schedule an induction by Christmas. The response stunned her: After consulting health-system administrators about the law, the specialist concluded Deborah would have to wait until close to full term, around 37 weeks gestation, she recalled the coordinator telling her.

The doctor made his determination after having “legal/administration look at the new law and the way it’s written,” the coordinator reiterated to Deborah in a recent text message she shared with The Post. “It’s horribly written,” the text continued.

For Deborah, that meant resigning herself to a two-month wait, during which her anxiety and depression built.

Deborah and Lee drove across the state to join Deborah’s Catholic family at her parents’ house in Melbourne on Christmas Eve — a multigenerational gathering with a carnival set up outside for the grandchildren. It was a distraction, Deborah recalls, from her private pain.

But Deborah’s parents, Peter and Cindy Rogell, say they worry about her, the fourth of seven children. Their son’s wife is also expecting a baby around Deborah’s due date: twin pregnancies — their 16th and 17th grandchildren — that prompted parallel excitement at the outset and are now progressing along divergent paths.

Peter Rogell has pondered the meaning of the life his daughter is carrying, forcing him to confront his own concerns about abortion. He has felt the baby move.

“I asked her, ‘Would you mind if I put my hand on your stomach?’ I wanted to feel the life,” Rogell said. “It’s hard to comprehend there won’t be life.”

Seeing his daughter’s ongoing suffering, he has come to share Deborah and Lee’s mounting frustration with the long wait, weighing it against his prayers that, somehow, the doctors messed up and that the baby will survive.

“I believe in life and all that. But [when] two doctors, three doctors say this is this, they should be able to terminate early to save the mental life of the mother,” Rogell said. “I’m sure Debbie’s going to be changed.”

During an appointment in early January, Deborah said her obstetrician, after consulting other experts, told her that she had also concluded that termination at this stage would not be possible. The doctor pointed out that states like California and New York have fewer restrictions.

The Dorberts say they wondered briefly about traveling, but they have left Florida only a handful of times since Kaiden was born and were daunted by the costs. Deborah had stopped working at Publix after Kaiden was born, and Lee, 35, is only recently reemployed after losing his job during the pandemic. They felt uncertain about finding new doctors to terminate an already traumatic pregnancy. And they worry about potential legal repercussions.

Deborah didn’t pay much attention to the laws when they were enacted, never believing she would want an abortion. But that has changed.

“It makes me angry, for politicians to decide what’s best for my health,” she said. “We would do anything to have this baby.”

They have resolved to wait in Lakeland, still confused by the law that is determining her care.

“We have never really understood,” Lee Dorbert said. “We were told there was an exception,” he said, recalling conversations with their doctors. “Obviously not enough of an exception in some cases.”

The Florida law does not clearly explain how viability should be interpreted.

Kelli Stargel, a former Republican state senator and longtime Lakeland resident who was one of the bill’s key sponsors, said the law was written to permit abortions when there is no chance of survival.

“If the baby has a fatal fetal abnormality and cannot survive outside the womb, it can be terminated at any point in the pregnancy,” Stargel said. “It was my intention not to require a woman to maintain a pregnancy when doctors agree the baby is not viable.”

But, she said, if medical professionals and lawyers disagree, that will be decided in the court system.

David Berger, Deborah’s primary-care physician who learned of her diagnosis at her annual telehealth checkup in January, said the risk to Deborah increases as the pregnancy continues, with no additional benefit to the fetus.

Despite the repeat ultrasounds that told them so much about the fetal abnormalities, the Dorberts have never learned the baby’s sex. Each time, the baby’s legs were crossed or the umbilical cord was in the way.

But they have already picked out names: Milo if it is another boy, and Malia for a girl — “What Daddy wanted,” Deborah says.

For now, the Dorberts’ second child is Baby M.

In early January, the parents met by Zoom with staff members from Nemours Children’s Health, which offers pediatric specialty care at Lakeland Regional Health, to discuss Baby M’s short life. The couple listened to the options, grateful to be given some choice again. They have decided to provide comfort, or palliative, care rather than trying to prolong Baby M’s life on a ventilator or with other extreme interventions.

“That’s been very important to us, understanding that we do have that control back at least in some of these decisions,” Lee said.

They have invited Deborah’s parents to join them at the hospital to meet Baby M, just as they met Kaiden when he was born. And they know Baby M may be deformed by having been compressed inside Deborah’s uterus for several months, with a flattened face, widespread eyes, club feet and contracted arms and legs.

Peter Rogell keeps praying that Baby M may be a Miracle Baby.

He’s read about at least one — the child of a congresswoman who survived despite being diagnosed with Potter syndrome after a physician replaced the missing amniotic fluid with injections of saline solution.

The story raised hopes for families in similar predicaments and paved the way for the clinical trial, now underway in nine specialized centers around the country. The trial was no longer open to new participants by the time Deborah received the diagnosis.

This month, researchers released initial results for 18 babies, who, like Deborah’s, were missing both their kidneys. With their amniotic fluid replenished through regular infusions, their lungs were able to develop enough for most to survive at least two weeks after birth.

The promising results represent only the first step for extremely vulnerable newborns who still need kidney transplants and other high-tech care, said Miller, the study’s principal investigator. Since then, many have suffered serious complications, including strokes, or died, she said.

“What is super challenging about the trial is that it opens a Pandora’s box for many issues,” she said. “Will this still be a lethal disease?”

Florida’s 15-week ban is currently being appealed before the state Supreme Court. Meanwhile, state legislators have indicated they may tighten restrictions, and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) suggested he would sign a six-week ban.

“We’re for pro-life,” the Republican governor said at a recent Tallahassee gathering. “I urge the legislature to work, to produce good stuff, and we will sign.”

The high-tech clinical advances and high-stakes legal challenges may change outcomes in the future for parents whose fetuses are diagnosed with Potter syndrome. But not for the Dorberts, who are navigating the remaining days with caution, aware that even the most mundane event can transform into an ordeal.

Recently, during a visit from Deborah’s parents, the couples ventured out for dinner. At the barbecue restaurant, Rogell spotted two other heavily pregnant women and saw his daughter looking over at them.

He wondered what Deborah was thinking, but couldn’t bring himself to ask.

READ MORE 

Soldiers loyal to Capt. Ibrahim Traore, Burkina Faso's junta leader. (photo: Kilaye Bationo/AP)

Nick Turse | How Many More Governments Will American-Trained Soldiers Overthrow?
Nick Turse, Rolling Stone
Turse writes: "There have been at least seven coups led by soldiers who trained with Americans forces in Africa in recent years and the security situation only seems to be getting worse." 

There have been at least seven coups led by soldiers who trained with Americans forces in Africa in recent years and the security situation only seems to be getting worse

One year ago, Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Damiba was a military leader on the rise. The 41-year-old officer had just overthrown Burkina Faso’s democratically-elected government and was about to be sworn in as the West Africa’s nation’s new president. Wearing a red beret and military fatigues, he appeared on TV and threw down a gauntlet. “To…gain the upper hand over the enemy, it will be necessary… to rise up and convince ourselves that as a nation we have more than what it takes to win this war,” he said.

Just nine months later, an upstart underling—34-year-old Captain Ibrahim Traore—decided Damiba did not have what it takes to win the war and toppled him. Traore, now the youngest world leader, recently shored up his popularity by ordering a withdrawal of French forces fighting a long-running Islamist insurgency by groups linked to al-Qaeda and Islamic State in Burkina Faso.

When Damiba seized power last year, U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) admitted that the United States had mentored him over many years. Damiba’s putsch was just the latest in a recent spate of coups in West Africa by U.S.-trained officers. But when Rolling Stone asked AFRICOM if Traore was the latest to follow in this tradition, they couldn’t say. “We are looking into this,” said Africa Command spokesperson Kelly Cahalan, noting the command needed to “research” it. “I will let you know when I have an answer.”

Four months later, AFRICOM still hasn’t provided an answer. In fact, the U.S. government appears unwilling to address its role in mentoring military officers who have sown chaos in the region; men who have repeatedly overthrown the governments the U.S. trains them to prop up.

For decades, U.S.-trained officers —from Haiti’s Philippe Biamby and Romeo Vasquez of Honduras to Egypt’s Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi and Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq of Pakistan— have overthrown U.S.-allied governments all over the world. Rarely, however, have so many coups been so concentrated in a region over such a short period of time.

Last fall, after returning from a trip, alongside other top State Department and Pentagon officials to the Sahelian states of Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger, Ambassador Victoria Nuland was upbeat. “We went to the region in force. We were looking, in particular, at how the U.S. strategy towards the Sahel is working. This is a strategy that we put in place about a year ago to try to bring more coherence to our efforts to support increased security,” she said during an October conference call with reporters.

After Rolling Stone pointed out that U.S.-trained military officers had conducted seven coups in these same countries—Burkina Faso, three times; Mali, three times; and Mauritania, one time—since 2008, Nuland was less sanguine. “Nick, that was a pretty loaded comment that you made,” she replied. “Some folks involved in these coups have received some U.S. training, but far from all of them.”

The fact is the leaders of all of these coups have received significant U.S. training. Before Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Damiba overthrew Burkina Faso’s president last year, for example, he twice participated in an annual U.S. special operations training program known as the Flintlock exercise. He was also previously accepted into a State Department-funded Africa Contingency Operations Training and Assistance course; twice attended the U.S.-sponsored Military Intelligence Basic Officer Course-Africa; and twice participated in engagements with a U.S. Defense Department Civil Military Support Element.

In 2014, another U.S.-trained officer, Lt. Col. Isaac Zida—schooled via a Joint Special Operations University counterterrorism training course at Florida’s MacDill Air Force Base and a military intelligence course that was financed by the U.S. government—seized power, during popular protests against a presidential power-grab, in Burkina Faso. The next year, yet another coup in that country installed Gen. Gilbert Diendéré, another prominent Flintlock attendee.

Col. Assimi Goïta, worked with U.S. Special Operations forces for years, participating in both Flintlock exercises and a Joint Special Operations University seminar at MacDill Air Force Base—and also headed the junta that overthrew Mali’s government in 2020. After staging the coup, Goïta stepped down and took the job of vice president in a transitional government charged with returning Mali to civilian rule. But less than a year later, he carried out his second coup.

Similarly, in 2012, Captain Amadou Sanogo, who learned English in Texas, received infantry-officer basic training in Georgia, and underwent military intelligence schooling in Arizona, and overthrew Mali’s democratically elected government. “America is a great country with a fantastic army,” he said after the coup. “I tried to put all the things I learned there into practice here.” In 2008, the Pentagon-funded Stars and Stripes reported that Gen. Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, the leader of a coup against Mauritania’s elected president, had also “worked with U.S. forces.”

Why did these officers who were trained by the United States to defend their governments topple them instead? If Nuland has any idea, she won’t say. “You need to talk to them about why they are overthrowing their governments,” she told Rolling Stone, referring to the coup-makers.

The State Department isn’t the only arm of the U.S. government with its head in the sand. U.S. Africa Command or AFRICOM, which provides most of the training to African officers, doesn’t know how many coups its charges have conducted nor does it keep a list of how many times it’s happened. “AFRICOM does not maintain a database with this information,” Africa Command spokesperson Cahalan told Rolling Stone. “AFRICOM does not actively track individuals who’ve received U.S. training after the training has been completed.”

“Moving forward, the United States should ensure military coups are never seen by its partners as a viable option. That should include keeping track of the military officers it trains in order to identify them in the event of a coup,” said Sarah Harrison, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group and formerly associate general counsel at the Defense Department’s Office of General Counsel, International Affairs, who noted that such information could be used to improve future trainings and to immediately suspend military assistance in the event of a coup. “If the U.S. government is ignoring the fact that it trained putschists, that would reflect a broader problem of a lack of long-term strategic thinking for its counterterrorism policies.

“While security training gives the United States access, which some argue results in influence, to foreign militaries, I have concerns that such efforts are not coupled with comparably strong diplomatic policies to address failing, corrupt, or predatory civilian governments that the militaries are intended to be subordinate to,” Harrison told Rolling Stone. “Of course, the United States does not want to be in the business of state-building, but when it gets so closely involved in the development of security forces, to ignore the contexts in which they are situated and whether such efforts will actually have lasting and positive change is futile.”

Coups aren’t the only unintended consequences or “blowback” stemming from U.S. efforts to mentor foreign troops. Lauren Chadwick of the Center for Public Integrity found that, according to U.S. government documents, at least 17 foreign officers schooled via the U.S. International Military Education and Training program between 1985 and 2010 were implicated in criminal and human rights abuses. An open-source study by the non-profit Center for International Policy also identified 33 U.S.-trained foreign military officers who committed human rights abuses.

More recently, reports emerged that elite Afghan commandos, trained by Navy SEALs and Army Green Berets, were being recruited by the Russian military to fight in Ukraine. Former Afghan general Abdul Raof Arghandiwal told the Associated Press that the Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary force, was coordinating the effort.

On our conference call, Nuland also inadvertently drew attention to the fact that while the United States had trained Mali’s Goita, his government had thrown in with the Russians making, as she put it, “some very bad choices in inviting Wagner forces to be part of their security mix.” She said the result of this involvement, which reportedly began in December 2021, has been “violence and terror going up.”

Nuland’s assessment, however, ignored the fact that security trends have been in a free fall for years, despite the U.S. pouring more than a billion dollars of security assistance—in the form of equipment, training, and weapons—into Mali and its neighbors in West Africa over the last two decades. As Rolling Stone reported in October, the Pentagon’s own Africa Center for Strategic Studies chronicled catastrophic security failures that predate significant Russian involvement in the region. “The western Sahel has seen a quadrupling in the number of militant Islamist group events since 2019,” reads a recent Pentagon report. “This violence has expanded in intensity and geographic reach.”

In fact, the Africa Center found violent events linked to militant Islamist groups in the Sahel jumped from 76 in 2016 to a projected 2,800 for 2022, a 3,600 percent increase. The spike in fatalities stemming from these attacks has been almost as extreme, rising from 223 to 7,052 over that same span. Despite this record of failure, America’s playbook for the region remains largely unaltered with the United States continuing to provide security assistance—just as it has for almost two decades—as terrorist violence escalated, deaths rose, insecurity increased, and coups proliferated. “So what we wanted to do in the countries that we’re working well with is talk about how we strengthen our support,” Nuland said. “In Burkina, in Niger, and in Mauritania, we are working very closely with those militaries, with their gendarmerie, with their counterterrorist forces to support them in their effort to push back and protect their populations from this poison in Mali.”

Analyst Sarah Harrison sees this stay-the-course policy as a recipe for further disaster. “Throughout four presidential administrations, foreign policy officials have leaned heavily on these counterterrorism tools despite evidence that they’re not working—and in some cases, could be prolonging conflict or making the situation worse,” she told Rolling Stone. “In many unstable countries where the U.S. fixates on counterterrorism approaches, what the local population is really suffering from is a lack of resources.

“It’s cliché to talk about ‘root causes’ in conflict prevention and mitigation, but that’s what it comes down to. What people are in need of is strong economies, healthcare, education, infrastructure —which depends on resources. More military training and transfers of weapons aren’t going to solve those problems.”

READ MORE


People look at a dead, 35-foot humpback whale, in Lido Beach, New York, Jan. 31, 2023. A recent spate of whale deaths along the east coast have fueled misinformation about offshore wind development. (photo: Seth Wenig/AP)

Dead Whales on the East Coast Fuel Misinformation About Offshore Wind Development
Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky and Kaitlyn Radde, NPR
Excerpt: "A dozen dead whales have washed up on New York and New Jersey beaches since December. It's part of a years-long trend in whale deaths up and down the east coast. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is trying to figure out what's going on." 

Adozen dead whales have washed up on New York and New Jersey beaches since December. It's part of a years-long trend in whale deaths up and down the east coast. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is trying to figure out what's going on.

The deaths have led some protesters to call for an end to offshore wind development, saying — without evidence — the sound of the boats and underwater surveying might confuse the whales. Some of those protesters are with the environmental group Clean Ocean Action, but some represent at least one conservative group that opposes offshore wind development.

The Marine Mammal Commission, a federal agency charged with protecting marine mammals, said the deaths are "not new, nor are they unique to the U.S. Atlantic coast."

Sixteen humpback whales alone have stranded along the Atlantic coast this winter. However, the Commission notes "there is no evidence to link these strandings to offshore wind energy development." Many of the deaths are attributed to being hit by ships or getting caught in fishing nets.

NPR host Mary Louise Kelly talks to Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky, a data reporter with member station WNYC, about the whale deaths along the east coast and how they're contributing to misinformation about wind energy.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Tell us more about what's going on.

We've had a number of dead whales washing up on our beaches in the last few months. The most recent one we reported on was just last week in Queens, which had large wounds on its body. NOAA says that's likely from a vessel strike. That's been the case for at least one other whale that washed up recently.

How long has this been happening?

NOAA has been tracking what they call unusual mortality events since 2016. That's the term for when they notice that marine mammals are dying in unexpected ways or significant numbers. Right now on the east coast, they're seeing these events for humpback whales, North Atlantic right whales and minke whales. A lot of these whales die getting struck by ships or tangled up in nets. But it's not 100%.

Over the weekend, there was a rather large protest in New Jersey over the whale deaths. The protesters were calling for a stop to offshore wind development in the area. Is there a connection between whale deaths and offshore wind?

Experts say there isn't.

"At this point, there's no evidence to support speculation that noise generated from wind development surveys could potentially cause mortality of whales," Kim Damon-Randall, director of the NOAA Fisheries Office of Protected Resources, told WNYC.

But some groups — and local politicians — have tried to link the deaths to the wind energy prep work being done in New York and New Jersey waters.

They claim the sound of the boats might confuse the whales, even though the wind surveying is actually less noisy than fossil fuel exploration.

What do we know about the protest groups? Are they environmentalists?

My colleague Nancy Solomon found that some of the people making this claim do belong to an environmental group, but others are just anti-wind power. She discovered that one organization, Protect Our Coast NJ, is connected to a conservative think tank with a long history of opposing clean energy.

If it's likely not offshore wind development, what's driving this spike in whale deaths?

There's no one answer, but experts have some theories. One is that whales may be following prey into waters with more boat traffic, Damon-Randall says.

Damon-Randall says another reason might be climate change. In response to warming oceans, "we are seeing populations move around and go into areas that they haven't historically been in," she says.

There may be more of some whales than there were before. Local humpbacks in particular are no longer considered endangered because of their population growth. More whales can mean more vessel strikes.

What's being done about the vessel strikes and net entanglements that are happening to whales?

NOAA will keep tracking the whale deaths. Large boats are also being instructed to go slow around major ports in the area during winter and spring to reduce the odds of vessel strikes. NOAA is trying to extend those rules to include smaller boats, too.

As for the anti-wind advocates, two Republican congressmen from New Jersey have proposed pausing the offshore wind development and are looking into how it got approved in the first place. But New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy says the work will continue.

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