Showing posts with label ANGER. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ANGER. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 28, 2024

Trump Goes On Shockingly Obscene Rant Against MSNBC Host

 

SALUTNG PLANES, SALUTING TO AMAZING GRACE, WAVING TO NO CROWD 

AT NASCAR.....SLURRED WORDS, INCOHERENT SPEECH....


Farron Balanced

487K subscribers


Donald Trump shared a video with shockingly obscene language attacking an MSNBC host over the weekend. Trump did not create the video nor was he featured in it, but he shared it to his account nonetheless. The video shows a pro-Trump lunatic heckling MSNBC host Joe Scarborough with viciously obscene language and mental images, while Scarborough just laughed it off and walked away. This isn't making Trump look better, and if anything it shows just how filled with rage he has become. Farron Cousins explains what happened. Link - https://www.rawstory.com/trump-joe-sc... Listen to our videos in an audio format by subscribing to our podcast: https://farronbalanceddaily.buzzsprou... Don't forget to like, comment, and share! And subscribe to stay connected! Connect with Farron on Twitter:   / farronbalanced   *This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.



Friday, May 17, 2024

Informed Comment daily updates (05/17/2024)

 

ISRAEL DOES NOT WANT TO LIVE IN PEACE! 

REPUBLICANS CONTINUE TO SUPPORT GENOCIDE 

S. Africa v. Israel on Rafah Genocide: Endgame in which Gaza is utterly Destroyed for Human Habitation

S. Africa v. Israel on Rafah Genocide: Endgame in which Gaza is utterly Destroyed for Human Habitation

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – South Africa returned to the International Court of Justice in the Hague on Thursday over the Israeli invasion of Rafah, which its attorneys alleged is a further act of genocide in Gaza. South Africa had laid out its initial case in January. The court will take months to come to […]

How Israel is Carving up and Reoccupying Gaza

How Israel is Carving up and Reoccupying Gaza

By Rabia Ali | – ( Middle East Monitor ) – As Israel shows no signs of stopping its devastating assault on the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the question now is what it plans to do with the besieged enclave. The growing fear among Palestinians is that after inflicting all this death and destruction […]

The Forever Wars, MAGA and the Loneliness of Anger

The Forever Wars, MAGA and the Loneliness of Anger

( Tomdispatch.com) – An acquaintance who hails from the same New Jersey town as I do spends his free weekends crawling through the woods on his stomach as part of a firearms training course, green camouflage paint on his face and a revolver in his hand. He considers this both a way to have fun […]

Old posts you may have missed

From Campus Climate to Middle East Climate Emergency

The Race to End Fossil Fuel Production

Israel’s Assault on Rafah risks making Victory against Hamas more Elusive

Gaslit to Death: Giving Cover to Israel’s Rafah Atrocity with Phony Gaza Numbers Game

The Arsenal of Genocide: the U.S. Weapons That Are Destroying Gaza

Democracy Versus Autocracy on America’s Campuses

Trump’s Dangerous ‘State of Exception’: SCOTUS must not Allow Presidential Immunity



Friday, July 8, 2022

RSN: FOCUS: Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner | Are You Angry?

 

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News anchor and journalism Dan Rather. (photo: Getty)
FOCUS: Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner | Are You Angry?
Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner, Steady
Excerpt: "Anger is potent. It can be a tool for good and for evil. It can lead to progress, and it can pave a spiraling path to the breakdown of society."

“If you are angry today, I’m here to tell you to be angry. I’m furious. I’m furious that yet more innocent lives were taken by gun violence.”

– Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, in the wake of the July 4 mass murder at a Highland Park Independence Day parade.

Anger is potent. It can be a tool for good and for evil. It can lead to progress, and it can pave a spiraling path to the breakdown of society.

How leaders deal with anger — their own and the population’s at large — has helped shape the course of human history. Anger can be stoked, and it can be quelled; it can be channeled, and it can burst forth uncontrollably. It can be marshaled to fix our problems, or it can be weaponized toward explosive violence and destruction.

We live in angry times. And this fervor is tearing at our national fabric. It cannot be ignored and explained away. It and its root causes must be confronted.

Much has been written about the anger Donald Trump tapped into and amplified in his rise to the presidency. The propaganda and lies that Fox News and other right-wing media outlets spew forth are meant to keep viewers engaged through anger. Much has been made of the grievances, real and imagined, of Trump voters who say they have been left behind. Of course, we should never overlook the long shadow race continues to play in deepening the societal fissures that have been ripe for exploitation.

But anger is not limited to one side of our political divide. And I don’t think the role it has played in the forces opposing Trump and the broader Republican movement has received enough attention, although that is starting to change.

In electing Joe Biden to the presidency, America chose in overwhelming numbers a man whose political identity is the antithesis of a hothead. Here is a man who has faced unspeakable personal tragedies and maintained, at least in his public persona, a seemingly unquenchable optimism.

For all the differences between our current president and the man with whom he served as vice president, both President Biden and President Obama have been seen as steadying figures whose natural instinct is to calm rather than enrage. And to calm is a critical role of a president — except when anger is required. It is a delicate balance, but one that is necessary for both the governance of the nation and a president’s personal political fate.

A large swath of the electorate hoped that after the chaotic presidency of Donald Trump, America could return to a more tranquil path. To be sure, a deep current of anger has remained on the political left at myriad social ills — from racial injustice to income inequality to the assault on our democracy. This is natural and important. But at the political process level, there was hope among many Democrats and their supporters that with congressional majorities — desperately slim as they may have been — and the presidency, progress could be possible.

We don’t need to rehash in detail all that has transpired since Election Day 2020. It’s enough to say that whatever anger existed on the political left a few years ago has only magnified, and in recent weeks it has exploded in intensity, driven by still more mass shootings, grim revelations about the insurrection, and the Supreme Court's multiple extremist rulings, including throwing out the constitutional protections for women to determine the fate of their own bodies.

Naturally, much of the fury has been directed at the justices and other Republican politicians who are the lead actors of regression. There has also been ongoing fury at Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema for refusing to get rid of the filibuster for voting rights, gun regulations, or abortion rights. But increasingly, that ire has also been directed at President Biden, members of his administration, and other senior Democratic leaders in the House and Senate.

The politically savvy understand that there is little President Biden can do legislatively with the current membership of the Senate. But there is a general sense that he is failing to grasp the urgency and desperation of the moment. In short, why isn’t he angrier? With so much at stake, with such intransigence on the part of the Republicans, with the justices taking away existing rights, with an anti-democratic movement swelling at the state level, why doesn’t President Biden sound like Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, whose quote began this post?

I suspect that for many Democrats, it feels as if the president isn’t hearing them. It’s not like the anger is hidden from view or wasn’t predictable.

We have written many times in this forum about the headwinds Democrats face in the midterm elections, but we have also said that a mobilized response to outrages such as the abortion ruling can shuffle the dynamics. In this formulation, anger is the motivating force that allows the party to potentially hold the House and gain seats in the Senate, as improbable as that outcome might seem at the moment.

Are President Biden and other Democratic leaders out of step with where a large part of the country is? Will this tone doom the party’s chances in November? Or, as many of their supporters suggest, is this Democratic infighting and criticism counterproductive?

Perhaps Biden will grow angrier in his statements, especially as the criticism intensifies and the midterms draw near. Perhaps he will stand back and let the candidates on the ballot run on anger, including, if necessary, anger at him for not doing enough.

In the end, the only long-term salve is for there to be results. Action can quench anger. That requires political power. And that will mean winning elections. At this point, it seems to many that harnessing Democratic anger is the party’s best chance at beating the odds.

Are you angry? Do you think that anger should direct the Democrats' election efforts? Do you wish the president and others were angrier? Or do you think that there is enough anger out there and so a calm demeanor is the best response to holding the nation together on a road to progress?



Look up his classmates. Both Hillary Clinton and Robert Reich went to law school with him. Robert Reich recently commented and I can't easily locate the article, but he said Hillary was always asking questions, prepared to comment and Clarence Thomas was mostly silent. 

There have always been suggestions that his admission was 'affirmative action' which explains his hatred of the provision. Read about his history. His family didn't have the $$$ to provide the education he received.


When he was head of EEOC, there were a lot of complaints about its failures and backups of complaints that you can surely find elsewhere.

excerpt:

"Thomas chaired the EEOC from 1982 to 1990. Journalist Evan Thomas once opined that Thomas was "openly ambitious for higher office" during his tenure at the EEOC. As chairman, he promoted a doctrine of self-reliance and halted the usual EEOC approach of filing class action discrimination lawsuits, instead pursuing acts of individual discrimination.[52] He also asserted in 1984 that black leaders were "watching the destruction of our race" as they "bitch, bitch, bitch" about Reagan instead of working with the Reagan administration to alleviate teenage pregnancy, unemployment and illiteracy.[53]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Thomas



Hillary Clinton Says Justice Thomas Was a ‘Person of Grievance’ and ‘Anger’ When They Were at Yale Law, Believes ‘Women Will Die’ as a Result

AARON KELLERJun 28th, 2022

In an appearance on CBS Mornings, former presidential candidate and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (D) shared several of her personal opinions about Justice Clarence Thomas in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision on Friday to overrule Roe v. Wade.

When asked by host Gayle King about Thomas’s concurring opinion to “reconsider past rulings on contraception and same-sex marriage,” Clinton verbalized her thoughts of Thomas dating back to the days they were both in law school.

“Justice Thomas has sort of floated this out there about contraceptive rights — contraception — and about same-sex marriages, but other justices have pushed back to say, no, he’s really sort of on his own with that,” King asked Clinton. “You don’t believe that?”

“He may be on his own, but he’s signaling — as he often did — you know, people — I went to law school with him,” Clinton answered. “He’s been a person of grievance for as long as I’ve known him. Resentment. Grievance. Anger. And he has signaled, ah, in the past to lower courts, to state legislatures — find cases, pass laws, get them up. I may not win the first, the second, or the third time, but we’re going to keep at it.”

“So you’re saying people people pay attention to this?” King continued in a clip from the broadcast posted online by CBS.

“Yes,” Clinton replied. “The people he is speaking to, which are the — you know — right wing, very conservative judges and justices and state legislatures. And the thing that is — well, there are so many things about it that are deeply distressing — but women are going to die, Gayle. Women are going to die.”

Clinton graduated from Yale Law School in 1973; Thomas graduated from the same institution in 1974.

Clinton’s comments stand in stark contrast to those of fellow SCOTUS Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who recently extolled Thomas’s virtues as a friend at a speech before a liberal legal group:

Justice Thomas is the one justice in the building that literally knows every employee’s name. Every one of them. And not only does he know their names, he remembers their family names and histories. He is a man who keeps — cares deeply about the court as an institution, about the people who work there, but about people. That’s why I can be friends with him and still continue our daily battles over our difference of opinion in cases.

Thomas has posited that so-called substantive due process — the legal theory that the word “liberty” in the Fourteenth Amendment is a wellspring of fundamental rights not fully articulated or described elsewhere in the Constitution — is “an oxymoron that lacks any basis in the Constitution.”  He has suggested that some rights currently enshrined in the Court’s substantive due process might — or might not — find homes in other portions of the Constitution.  That’s if future litigants prime the pumps of the judicial system and tee up the correct plaintiff and the correct facts for such a review.


https://youtu.be/lO76FbMRwxE


https://lawandcrime.com/supreme-court/hillary-clinton-says-justice-thomas-was-a-person-of-grievance-and-anger-when-they-were-at-yale-law-believes-women-will-die-as-a-result/



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Shinzo Abe, Former Japanese Leader, Assassinated by Man With Improvised Firearm
Michelle Ye Hee Lee and Julia Mio Inuma, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "Former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, a towering political figure at home and abroad, died after being shot at a campaign event Friday, doctors said, shocking a nation where firearms laws are among the world's strictest and gun violence is rare."

Former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, a towering political figure at home and abroad, died after being shot at a campaign event Friday, doctors said, shocking a nation where firearms laws are among the world’s strictest and gun violence is rare.

Abe, 67, was stumping for a fellow politician from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in Nara, near Osaka, on Friday morning when a gunman opened fire with what police described as a homemade gun.

Hidetada Fukushima, head of the emergency center at the Nara Medical University Hospital, said Abe had no vital signs when he arrived there at 12:20 p.m. Friday. Despite efforts to save him, including a transfusion, Abe died of blood loss less than five hours later.

The assassination of Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, and a staunch U.S. ally, sent shock waves throughout the country ahead of elections for the upper house of parliament on Sunday.

Police arrested a suspect, a 41-year-old man from Nara named Tetsuya Yamagami, and seized a gun. Yamagami was a member of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force for three years, defense officials told Japanese media.

Footage of the event showed that while Abe was giving a speech, one gunshot was fired from behind him, creating a plume of smoke. He turned around and looked over his left shoulder and then a second shot was fired, with another plume of smoke. Abe fell forward to the ground and the gunman was apprehended.

Doctors said there were two wounds on Abe’s neck area, near his chest. According to Nara police, the second gunshot caused both wounds, raising questions about what type of gun and ammunition were used.

Videos showed a chaotic scene with Abe, unmoving, lying on the ground as attendees yelled for an ambulance.

Yamagami admitted to attempting murder, and said he wanted to attack Abe because he believed Abe was connected to a group that he hated, police said, declining to name the group. Police found multiple hand-made guns at Yamagami’s home. The gun he used Friday was nearly 16 inches long.

Abe, who came from a prominent political family, was the youngest person to become prime minister of postwar Japan. His popularity soared after he resigned from office in 2020, and he remained a power broker who frequented campaign events to support other LDP politicians.

At an emotional news conference after Abe’s death, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida praised his former colleague as “a dear friend who loved this country.”

“To lose such a figure in this manner is absolutely devastating,” he said.

Kishida said Sunday’s upper house election would continue as planned but with enhanced safety measures, saying it was important to protect the democratic process and not allow violence to change its course.

“Elections are the foundation of democracy, which we must defend. We cannot give in to violence. For this reason, we will continue to fight the election campaign until the very end. I hope the people of Japan will think about and work hard to protect this democracy,” Kishida said.

Earlier, appearing close to tears, the prime minister described the attack as a “despicable and barbaric act.”

Japanese media reported that the suspect had told police that he was frustrated with Abe and aimed his firearm with the intent to kill the former conservative leader.

Abe oversaw a period of relative stability as prime minister from 2012 to 2020, raising Japan’s global image and emphasizing a strong alliance with the United States, even as then-U.S. President Donald Trump tested long-standing relationships with allies. The pair forged a close personal relationship and often played golf together.

But as a Japanese nationalist, Abe was sometimes a polarizing figure. He made several visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, a memorial that recognizes war criminals, among others, prompting fury from some of Japan’s neighbors, especially China, that suffered under the country’s imperial militarism.

Abe focused on reviving Japan’s stagnating economy through a package dubbed “Abenomics,” and he sought to expand Japan’s military defenses. Controversially, he tried to modify the country’s pacifist postwar constitution; even after leaving office, he continued to push for Japan to increase its defensive capabilities, most recently suggesting after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that Japan should discuss a nuclear “sharing” program similar to NATO members.

Earlier, Abe had led the country from 2006 to 2007 but stepped down because of chronic ulcerative colitis, the same condition that led to his resignation in 2020.

Abe’s maternal grandfather, former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, survived an assassination attempt in 1960 when he was stabbed in the thigh during a reception at the Prime Minister’s office.

Foreign leaders expressed sympathies as they reacted with horror to the events in Nara.

In a statement before Abe’s death, the White House said it was “shocked and saddened to hear about the violent attack.” “We are closely monitoring the reports and keeping our thoughts with his family and the people of Japan,” it said.

China’s Foreign Ministry extended condolences to his family. Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen said Abe was “not only my good friend, but also Taiwan’s most staunch friend.” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was “utterly appalled and saddened.” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was “deeply distressed.” The Kremlin said it “strongly condemned” the attack on “a patriot who defended Tokyo’s interests.”

There has not been an attack against a Japanese politician in many years. In 2007, Ito Itcho, the mayor of Nagasaki, died after a gunman shot him. Before that, a gunman fired at Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa at a hotel in 1994, but he was unharmed.

Kishida, who was campaigning in Yamagata when the shooting occurred, canceled his campaign schedule Friday and headed back to Tokyo.

Firearms are strictly regulated in Japan, and gun violence is most often associated with the yakuza, the Japanese criminal network. Last year, eight of the 10 shootings in Japan were related to the yakuza, according to the National Police Agency, resulting in one death and four injuries.

Anyone trying to obtain a gun in Japan needs to apply for a permit, attend a class on gun safety and laws, and pass a written test. There is a full-day training course on safe shooting and practicing techniques. There are multiple rounds of checks and verification on the gun owner’s background and health, including information about their family, mental health, personal debt and criminal record. The gun must be registered with and inspected by police.



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Tuesday, April 19, 2022

REPACKAGING ANGER - WILL 'R' VOTERS EVER FIGURE OUT THAT THEY'RE BEING MANIPULATED?

 

The RIGHT never addresses ISSUES or SOLUTIONS. 
Do "R" voters ever THINK about it? 

Do "R" voter NOTICE or just blindly follow the PROPAGANDA? 



The Right's Political Strategy Against LGBTQ People Is Just Repackaging Anger About Masks and Critical Race Theory

David Mack/BuzzFeed

The Right's Political Strategy Against LGBTQ People Is Just Repackaging Anger About Masks and Critical Race TheoryProtesters carry signs at a rally held in opposition to anti-LGTBQ bills being considered at the statehouse in Indianapolis, on Feb. 16, 2022. (photo: Michael Conroy/AP)

“They’ve stopped trying to pretend that they’re doing anything other than coming after LGBTQ people because they don’t like us.”

In state legislatures across the US, Republicans have been pushing a suite of anti-LGBTQ laws with concerted speed in recent months. From Texas to Florida, Alabama to Utah, lawmakers have targeted trans people in youth sportsmedical care for trans children, and LGBTQ discussion in classrooms.

For those fighting against these laws, the onslaught has been overwhelming.

“It feels relentless and never-ending at this moment, which I haven’t felt in quite some time,” said Ricardo Martinez, CEO of Equality Texas. “It feels like we’re being attacked from many places. It feels like we’re being erased, or people are trying to erase us from schools.”

But these LGBTQ advocates are also clear-eyed when it comes to the political strategy they’re up against — one that centers on classrooms. Schools have been the subject of intense political fights since the start of the pandemic as angry parents vented about masks or vaccines at once sleepy school board meetings. Conservative strategists then weaponized that anger in nonsense fights over critical race theory, leading to school board elections that were suddenly fiercely partisan. Now, LGBTQ activists say, the same playbook is being used yet again.

“Folks have learned about what was most effective from previous cycles,” said Melanie Willingham-Jaggers, executive director of GLSEN, a national group advocating for LGBTQ students. “They’ve taken those little bits of what had been successful and gained traction, and they’ve pumped it full of steroids and they’ve unleashed it on all of us.”

“It’s a classic case of ‘We’ll throw this at the wall and see if it sticks.’ And when they do, they’re gonna run with it and they’re gonna keep going,” said Allison Scott, the director of impact and innovation at the Campaign for Southern Equality. “And they found that going after LGBTQ children and schools is something that they can make stick.”

Adam Polaski, CSE’s communications director, said the pandemic had served as a “throughline” or connecting theme in right-wing strategy, particularly when it comes to “activating” parents who attend school board meetings and hear discussions about curriculum that they also object to.

“You’re there to complain about the pandemic and complain about school closures or whatever…but you have this extreme and very engaged group of people who go and then they get activated on all the other issues too,” Polaski said.

Right-wing activists have been open about how influential schools and board meetings have been in engaging parents on issues beyond the pandemic. In an interview with BuzzFeed News last year, Sherronna Bishop, a right-wing activist in Colorado who previously served as campaign manager for Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert, also said that listening in on their children’s remote learning had shocked many parents.

“We started seeing what curriculum they were learning, we started hearing the lessons that were being taught to them, and we started realizing that we don’t really align with a lot of what’s being taught to them,” Bishop said.

Tim Miller, a gay man who served as communications director for Jeb Bush’s 2016 presidential bid before quitting the Republican party in 2020, said his old colleagues on the right were energized and inspired by Glenn Youngkin’s successful bid for the Virginia governorship last year on a campaign that emphasized parental sway over schools and curriculum.

“They see school and this frame of ‘We’re going to protect children from all this liberal propaganda that's being pushed in schools’ as a winning message,” Miller said. “And so it all kind of ties together: the COVID school closings, the CRT hysteria, and now these ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bills.”

In at least one state, the link between CRT and anti-LGBTQ policies is quite literal. Ohio House Bill 616 is overwhelmingly concerned with banning CRT and the 1619 Project in schools, but also sandwiches in restrictions on teachings about sexual orientation and gender identity.

“[Republicans] have been, as a strategic matter, pretty good at tying this all together, and having it support that broader message that they're looking at protecting kids. It’s preposterous, but I think that message is working,” Miller said. “And I think that’s why the gays just kind of got sucked up in this.”

As part of this recent legislative push, transgender Americans have come under the most intense assault — and the pace is quickening. In 2020, there were 79 bills introduced in state houses that targeted trans people, according to Cathryn Oakley, state legislative director and senior counsel at the Human Rights Campaign. Last year, that number jumped to 150 bills.

“This year, we’re at about 140 — and it’s just April,” Oakley said. “This will be the most anti-transgender legislative session of all time in the state legislatures.”

Polaski, with the CSE, said the number and nature of states going after LGBTQ people has also surprised him.

“It almost feels like the shift this year has been that some states where folks are like, ‘Oh, but they wouldn't pass anything anti-LGBT’ suddenly are,” said Polaski, pointing to Florida and its gay-friendly cities like Miami, Orlando, and Tampa. “It’s waking people up into the idea that, ‘Oh, the anti-LGBT sentiment hasn’t gone away.’”

What feels different for Oakley now is that she thinks her opponents have abandoned any pretense that their laws are designed to protect people, as they did by spreading the myth about trans women being predators in bathrooms.

“They crossed a line several years ago, but they have just crossed another line somehow,” Oakley said. “They’re no longer trying to mask the cruelty that is motivating them. They’ve stopped trying to pretend that they’re doing anything other than coming after LGBTQ people because they don’t like us.”

Things are certainly getting uglier. Suddenly, gays are again being equated to pedophiles, a disgusting trope that was revived when Christina Pushaw, press secretary to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, wrote on Twitter last month that his Parental Rights in Education Act was an “Anti-Grooming Bill.” The grooming term was suddenly everywhere, from Fox News to Congress.

Soon, people were arguing that merely being out as a teacher was a threat to children. “These are the people teaching your kids,” the right-wing Twitter account @LibsOfTikTok wrote to its 600,000 followers about a video of a fifth-grade teacher who told his class he was gay. “Any teacher who comes out to their students should be fired on the spot.”

The suggestion that gay people prey on children in order to “convert” them is not only a false claim but also a tired one that stretches back decades. The New York Times has dubbed it “vintage homophobia.” But much as the classroom strategy has been replicated and repackaged, so too have old anti-gay slurs.

“These are words that were used in the ’70s that were effective in messaging back then. I’m not surprised they’re being used now because a lot of the strategy is being replicated,” said Martinez, the Equality Texas CEO. “It’s meant to scare people. It’s meant to go back to the message of protection. You’re protecting someone from some scary bogeyman. It’s another fictitious moral emergency. It’s used to make people more afraid than they are right now.”

All of this is happening at a time when Americans’ support for LGBTQ people is at historic highs, but that context is important for understanding the aim behind this “nasty, drive-by homophobia,” Slate legal writer Mark Joseph Stern has argued.

“It seems to me that casual mockery of gay people and their families is on the rise among the conservative media figures whose job is to restore a cultural environment in which anti-gay legislation is deemed acceptable,” Stern said. “We are backsliding on gay rights with truly shocking speed.”

Both Miller and Oakley said they suspected that much of the ugliest rhetoric was directed at the Republican party’s die-hard fringes, as well as winking to believers of QAnon, the collective delusion that claims to be aimed at protecting children from secret sexual abuse by the powerful.

“If you incentivize making the most outrageous attacks on the libs,” Miller said, “and then a debate comes up where there’s discussion of grooming and pedophilia, obviously it’s going to be a popular attack for Republicans to use because their voters are rewarding them when they are as nasty and mean as possible to their perceived enemies.”

And while that may play well in the short term, it could backfire with the broader electorate.

“I think that by saying the quiet part out loud, they’ve abandoned any effort to sort of persuade a white suburban mom,” Oakley said. “I think it’s going to backfire because for lots of folks who maybe did have questions about what is fair for a 14-year-old trans girl who wants to play lacrosse — those people are going to be like, ‘Oh, the QAnon people are behind us? OK, maybe I’ll just not worry about this.’”

In the meantime, the five LGBTQ activists and organizers who spoke with BuzzFeed News for this story all stressed the critical need to educate people about LGBTQ issues and particularly what being transgender does and does not mean.

“Being gay is not contagious, being trans is not contagious, being nonbinary is not contagious,” Willingham-Jaggers of GLSEN said. “But what we are seeing legislatively is this assertion that ‘As a parent, I get to tell my child who to be,’ and that’s heartbreaking.”



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RSN: Susanne Sternthal | Manifesto Published in Russian Media Reflects Putin Regime's Ruthless Plans in Ukraine

 

 

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A woman cries as residents listen to a Ukrainian service member speaking on April 2, 2022, after a convoy of military and aid vehicles arrived in the formerly Russian-occupied Kyiv suburb of Bucha, Ukraine. (photo: Vadim Ghirda/AP)
Susanne Sternthal | Manifesto Published in Russian Media Reflects Putin Regime's Ruthless Plans in Ukraine
Susanne Sternthal, The Conversation
Sternthal writes: "Shortly after footage emerged of the carnage Russian troops left behind in the town of Bucha, Ukraine, an article was published April 4, 2022, in one of the largest Russian state-run media companies."

Shortly after footage emerged of the carnage Russian troops left behind in the town of Bucha, Ukraine, an article was published April 4, 2022, in one of the largest Russian state-run media companies.

The article called for even more bloodshed in Ukraine.

Written by journalist and Kremlin-aligned political operative Timofey Sergeytsev and published in RIA-Novosti, the article answers the question posed by its headline: “What should Russia do with Ukraine?”

The answer, Sergeytsev writes, is total annihilation. He writes that “all who have associated themselves with Nazism should be liquidated and banned.”

Sergeytsev urges Russian soldiers to be merciless and force Ukraine to its knees and calls for more of the same inhumane tactics that took place in Bucha and the towns of Mariupul and Berdyansk.

As an academic focusing on Russian government, politics and society, I believe the article demonstrates what is foremost on the mind of President Vladimir Putin’s regime.

The silencing of independent Russian media

Sergeytsev’s piece merits close attention because RIA-Novosti is one of the three largest news agencies in Russia and has a mass circulation. It functions as a loyal mouthpiece of the Russian government and has an inordinate impact on what Russians see and hear about the war in Ukraine.

This is the result of the Russian government’s ever tightening control over independent media since 2000, when Putin became president. In his first year in power, Putin shut down companies of media businessman Vladimir Gusinsky.

Since then, Putin has used what is known as the Roskomnadzor, the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information technology and Mass Media, a federal agency that monitors and censors Russian mass media and decides which need to be shut down.

In 2022 alone, Putin closed the last remaining independent sources of information in Russia: liberal radio station Ekho Moskvy, online television channel TV Rain, bilingual news site Meduza and Novaya Gazeta, whose editor, Dmitry Muratov, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021.

The Russian government not only has total control over all media, but it dictates what can be seen and heard. The war in Ukraine, for instance, can only be referred to as “a special military operation.” Anyone who calls it a “war” is subject to a prison term of 15 years.

Given where it appeared, Sergeytsev’s article must have been published with the knowledge and approval of the Russian government.

Who is Sergeytsev?

Sergeytsev is an experienced Russian political operative who worked on behalf of the Russian government to prop up pro-Russian Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma in 1991. He also supported Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, whose questionable election victory, promoted by Putin, resulted in Ukraine’s Orange Revolution of 2004.

Sergeytsev is also a member of the Russian far right Zinoviev Club, named after Alexander Zinoviev. Zinoviev was a champion of Josef Stalin as a model leader, the murderous dictator who ruled the Soviet Union from 1928 to 1953.

Given this pedigree, it’s not surprising that it was Sergeytsev who wrote the answer to the question about what Russia should do about Ukraine.

A fight against Nazis?

In the invented world he describes in his article, Sergeytsev accuses both Ukraine’s former President Petro Poroshenko and current President, Volodymyr Zelensky, of using “total terror” against the Russian “anti-fascists in Odesa, Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Mariupol and other Russia cities.”

As for the Donbass regions of Donetsk and Lukhansk in Ukraine’s east, where pro-Russian separatists have fought Ukraine over the past eight years, Sergeytsev says they have been bravely rebelling “against Ukrainian Nazism.”

Sergeytsev calls for the destruction of all “Nazis that have taken up arms” and that they “should be destroyed to the maximum on the battlefield.”

He includes the Ukrainian armed forces, the national battalions, the territorial defense forces and “a significant part of the masses, which are passive Nazis” and “are also guilty.”

All “are equally involved in extreme cruelty against the civilian population, equally guilty of the genocide of the Russian people, and do not comply with laws and customs of war,” Sergeytsev writes.

In this piece of bald disinformation, Sergeytsev further writes that the majority of Ukrainians have been drawn to the Nazi politics of their government and “this fact is the basis of the policy of denazification.”

The idea of Zelensky, the only Jewish president outside of Israel, subscribing to Nazi ideology along with his government has nothing to do with reality.

Russian propaganda

Sergeytsev’s choice of words, such as “de-Ukrainization” and “denazification,” are terms calling for the destruction of Ukraine. In his April 4 article of 1,700 words, Sergeytsev uses the word Nazi 69 times.

In order to achieve the ultimate goal of “de-Ukrainization,” Sergeytsev calls for a rejection of Ukrainian ethnicity and the peoples’ right to self-determination.

Echoing Putin, Sergeytsev writes that Ukraine has never been a nation state, adding that its attempts at becoming independent have led to “Nazism.”

Sergeytsev calls on all of Ukraine’s elite to be “liquidated” and “the social swamp which actively and passively supports it should undergo the hardship of war and digest the experience as a historical lesson and atonement.”

The constant use of the word “Nazi” triggers a visceral reaction among the Russian population. During World War II, the Soviet Union suffered horrible atrocities at the hands of the Nazis. In one example, the Nazi blockade of Leningrad lasted from September 1941 until January 1944, a total of 900 days. An estimated over 1 million people died from systematic starvation.

Using the word “Nazi” is bearing fruit for the Kremlin.

The independent polling center Levada showed in late March polls, one month into the invasion, that 83% of Russians approved of Putin.

But despite Russian media efforts to falsely portray Ukrainians as Nazis, there have been reports of Russian soldiers captured by Ukrainian military confused by the purpose of the war, saying they couldn’t find any Nazis or fascists.

Old and new boundaries

In addition to calling for the need for “de-Ukrainization,” Sergeytsev writes that Ukraine “must be returned to its natural boundaries.”

These boundaries were the ones formed between 1765 and 1783 after Russia’s Empress Catherine the Great defeated the Turks, annexed Crimea and incorporated the entire southern part of today’s Ukraine known as Novorossiya into the Russian empire.

Sergeytsev says that the five regions in western Ukraine, which he refers to as the “residual Ukraine in a neutral state,” are not likely to become part of the pro-Russian territories and will remain hostile to Russia. “The haters of Russia will go there,” he writes.

For Sergeytsev, compromising with the United States, NATO and other Western nations is not an option.

The reason, Sergeytsev concludes, is because the “collective West itself is the designer, source and sponsor of Ukrainian Nazism.”

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Ukraine Says Russian Strikes Kill at Least 7 in Lviv, Western City of Refuge From WarUkrainian authorities said the Russians hit three warehouses and a car service station in Lviv. (photo: Jewan Abdi/BBC)

Ukraine Says Russian Strikes Kill at Least 7 in Lviv, Western City of Refuge From War
Phil McCausland and Dan Gallo, NBC News
Excerpt: "At least seven people were killed Monday after missiles struck the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, Ukrainian officials said."
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Examining Nearly Two Decades of Taxpayer-Funded Border OperationsAttorney General Greg Abbott, left, and Gov. Rick Perry. (photo: Bob Daemmrich/Texas Tribune)

Examining Nearly Two Decades of Taxpayer-Funded Border Operations
Lomi Kriel, Perla Trevizo and Andrew Rodriguez Calderón, ProPublica
Excerpt: "In October 2005, Texas Gov. Rick Perry traveled to the border city of Laredo and announced Operation Linebacker, a new initiative that he said would protect the state's residents from terrorist groups such as al-Qaida."
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The Right's Political Strategy Against LGBTQ People Is Just Repackaging Anger About Masks and Critical Race TheoryProtesters carry signs at a rally held in opposition to anti-LGTBQ bills being considered at the statehouse in Indianapolis, on Feb. 16, 2022. (photo: Michael Conroy/AP)

The Right's Political Strategy Against LGBTQ People Is Just Repackaging Anger About Masks and Critical Race Theory
David Mack, BuzzFeed
Mack writes: "In state legislatures across the US, Republicans have been pushing a suite of anti-LGBTQ laws with concerted speed in recent months."

“They’ve stopped trying to pretend that they’re doing anything other than coming after LGBTQ people because they don’t like us.”

In state legislatures across the US, Republicans have been pushing a suite of anti-LGBTQ laws with concerted speed in recent months. From Texas to Florida, Alabama to Utah, lawmakers have targeted trans people in youth sportsmedical care for trans children, and LGBTQ discussion in classrooms.

For those fighting against these laws, the onslaught has been overwhelming.

“It feels relentless and never-ending at this moment, which I haven’t felt in quite some time,” said Ricardo Martinez, CEO of Equality Texas. “It feels like we’re being attacked from many places. It feels like we’re being erased, or people are trying to erase us from schools.”

But these LGBTQ advocates are also clear-eyed when it comes to the political strategy they’re up against — one that centers on classrooms. Schools have been the subject of intense political fights since the start of the pandemic as angry parents vented about masks or vaccines at once sleepy school board meetings. Conservative strategists then weaponized that anger in nonsense fights over critical race theory, leading to school board elections that were suddenly fiercely partisan. Now, LGBTQ activists say, the same playbook is being used yet again.

“Folks have learned about what was most effective from previous cycles,” said Melanie Willingham-Jaggers, executive director of GLSEN, a national group advocating for LGBTQ students. “They’ve taken those little bits of what had been successful and gained traction, and they’ve pumped it full of steroids and they’ve unleashed it on all of us.”

“It’s a classic case of ‘We’ll throw this at the wall and see if it sticks.’ And when they do, they’re gonna run with it and they’re gonna keep going,” said Allison Scott, the director of impact and innovation at the Campaign for Southern Equality. “And they found that going after LGBTQ children and schools is something that they can make stick.”

Adam Polaski, CSE’s communications director, said the pandemic had served as a “throughline” or connecting theme in right-wing strategy, particularly when it comes to “activating” parents who attend school board meetings and hear discussions about curriculum that they also object to.

“You’re there to complain about the pandemic and complain about school closures or whatever…but you have this extreme and very engaged group of people who go and then they get activated on all the other issues too,” Polaski said.

Right-wing activists have been open about how influential schools and board meetings have been in engaging parents on issues beyond the pandemic. In an interview with BuzzFeed News last year, Sherronna Bishop, a right-wing activist in Colorado who previously served as campaign manager for Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert, also said that listening in on their children’s remote learning had shocked many parents.

“We started seeing what curriculum they were learning, we started hearing the lessons that were being taught to them, and we started realizing that we don’t really align with a lot of what’s being taught to them,” Bishop said.

Tim Miller, a gay man who served as communications director for Jeb Bush’s 2016 presidential bid before quitting the Republican party in 2020, said his old colleagues on the right were energized and inspired by Glenn Youngkin’s successful bid for the Virginia governorship last year on a campaign that emphasized parental sway over schools and curriculum.

“They see school and this frame of ‘We’re going to protect children from all this liberal propaganda that's being pushed in schools’ as a winning message,” Miller said. “And so it all kind of ties together: the COVID school closings, the CRT hysteria, and now these ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bills.”

In at least one state, the link between CRT and anti-LGBTQ policies is quite literal. Ohio House Bill 616 is overwhelmingly concerned with banning CRT and the 1619 Project in schools, but also sandwiches in restrictions on teachings about sexual orientation and gender identity.

“[Republicans] have been, as a strategic matter, pretty good at tying this all together, and having it support that broader message that they're looking at protecting kids. It’s preposterous, but I think that message is working,” Miller said. “And I think that’s why the gays just kind of got sucked up in this.”

As part of this recent legislative push, transgender Americans have come under the most intense assault — and the pace is quickening. In 2020, there were 79 bills introduced in state houses that targeted trans people, according to Cathryn Oakley, state legislative director and senior counsel at the Human Rights Campaign. Last year, that number jumped to 150 bills.

“This year, we’re at about 140 — and it’s just April,” Oakley said. “This will be the most anti-transgender legislative session of all time in the state legislatures.”

Polaski, with the CSE, said the number and nature of states going after LGBTQ people has also surprised him.

“It almost feels like the shift this year has been that some states where folks are like, ‘Oh, but they wouldn't pass anything anti-LGBT’ suddenly are,” said Polaski, pointing to Florida and its gay-friendly cities like Miami, Orlando, and Tampa. “It’s waking people up into the idea that, ‘Oh, the anti-LGBT sentiment hasn’t gone away.’”

What feels different for Oakley now is that she thinks her opponents have abandoned any pretense that their laws are designed to protect people, as they did by spreading the myth about trans women being predators in bathrooms.

“They crossed a line several years ago, but they have just crossed another line somehow,” Oakley said. “They’re no longer trying to mask the cruelty that is motivating them. They’ve stopped trying to pretend that they’re doing anything other than coming after LGBTQ people because they don’t like us.”

Things are certainly getting uglier. Suddenly, gays are again being equated to pedophiles, a disgusting trope that was revived when Christina Pushaw, press secretary to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, wrote on Twitter last month that his Parental Rights in Education Act was an “Anti-Grooming Bill.” The grooming term was suddenly everywhere, from Fox News to Congress.

Soon, people were arguing that merely being out as a teacher was a threat to children. “These are the people teaching your kids,” the right-wing Twitter account @LibsOfTikTok wrote to its 600,000 followers about a video of a fifth-grade teacher who told his class he was gay. “Any teacher who comes out to their students should be fired on the spot.”

The suggestion that gay people prey on children in order to “convert” them is not only a false claim but also a tired one that stretches back decades. The New York Times has dubbed it “vintage homophobia.” But much as the classroom strategy has been replicated and repackaged, so too have old anti-gay slurs.

“These are words that were used in the ’70s that were effective in messaging back then. I’m not surprised they’re being used now because a lot of the strategy is being replicated,” said Martinez, the Equality Texas CEO. “It’s meant to scare people. It’s meant to go back to the message of protection. You’re protecting someone from some scary bogeyman. It’s another fictitious moral emergency. It’s used to make people more afraid than they are right now.”

All of this is happening at a time when Americans’ support for LGBTQ people is at historic highs, but that context is important for understanding the aim behind this “nasty, drive-by homophobia,” Slate legal writer Mark Joseph Stern has argued.

“It seems to me that casual mockery of gay people and their families is on the rise among the conservative media figures whose job is to restore a cultural environment in which anti-gay legislation is deemed acceptable,” Stern said. “We are backsliding on gay rights with truly shocking speed.”

Both Miller and Oakley said they suspected that much of the ugliest rhetoric was directed at the Republican party’s die-hard fringes, as well as winking to believers of QAnon, the collective delusion that claims to be aimed at protecting children from secret sexual abuse by the powerful.

“If you incentivize making the most outrageous attacks on the libs,” Miller said, “and then a debate comes up where there’s discussion of grooming and pedophilia, obviously it’s going to be a popular attack for Republicans to use because their voters are rewarding them when they are as nasty and mean as possible to their perceived enemies.”

And while that may play well in the short term, it could backfire with the broader electorate.

“I think that by saying the quiet part out loud, they’ve abandoned any effort to sort of persuade a white suburban mom,” Oakley said. “I think it’s going to backfire because for lots of folks who maybe did have questions about what is fair for a 14-year-old trans girl who wants to play lacrosse — those people are going to be like, ‘Oh, the QAnon people are behind us? OK, maybe I’ll just not worry about this.’”

In the meantime, the five LGBTQ activists and organizers who spoke with BuzzFeed News for this story all stressed the critical need to educate people about LGBTQ issues and particularly what being transgender does and does not mean.

“Being gay is not contagious, being trans is not contagious, being nonbinary is not contagious,” Willingham-Jaggers of GLSEN said. “But what we are seeing legislatively is this assertion that ‘As a parent, I get to tell my child who to be,’ and that’s heartbreaking.”


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InfoWars Files for Bankruptcy in the Face of Lawsuits Over Sandy Hook Shooting DenialInfowars host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones rallies pro-Trump supporters outside the Maricopa County Recorder's Office, on Nov. 5, 2020, in Phoenix. (photo: Matt York/AP)

InfoWars Files for Bankruptcy in the Face of Lawsuits Over Sandy Hook Shooting Denial
Joe Hernandez, NPR
Hernandez writes: "The media outlet InfoWars filed for bankruptcy in Texas on Sunday in the face of mounting legal pressure over comments made by founder and host, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones."

The media outlet InfoWars filed for bankruptcy in Texas on Sunday in the face of mounting legal pressure over comments made by founder and host, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

Jones, who's repeatedly called the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut a hoax, has been sued several times by the victims' family members and others for defamation and emotional distress. Twenty children and six educators were killed in the attack.

His comments and similar ones made by other InfoWars employees are the primary cause of the "financial distress" now facing InfoWars and its related holding companies, according to the chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of Texas.

InfoWars, which described itself in court records as a "conspiracy-oriented website and media company," said it had $50,000 or less in assets and between $1 million and $10 million in liabilities.

Jones, InfoWars and related holding companies have so far spent $10 million on legal fees and costs, the filing said.

Courts in Connecticut and Texas have found Jones liable in several defamation cases brought by Sandy Hook families and others, though damages have not been determined in either case.

In its filing, InfoWars said that there is a "substantial likelihood" that once damages are determined in the Texas case, which is scheduled to begin jury selection next week, there will be nothing left for the Connecticut plaintiffs given the companies' "limited cash on hand."

InfoWars is also a defendant in several other lawsuits, including one involving an article written about the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Fla., and another alleging that Jones diverted some of his assets to companies owned by himself or family members.

It was unclear what effect the bankruptcy filing would have on InfoWars. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NPR.

The companies are asking the court to consider their application on an emergency basis by April 22.

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Cameroonians Win Temporary Protected Status After Outcry Over A group of migrants from Cameroon at the El Chaparral border crossing in Tijuana, Mexico. The Biden administration announced on Friday that it would offer temporary protected status to nationals of Cameroon. (photo: Mauricio Lima/NYT)

Cameroonians Win Temporary Protected Status After Outcry Over "Double Standard" for Ukrainians
Associated Press
Excerpt: "The Homeland Security Department said Friday it will temporarily shield people from deportation back to Cameroon, saying extreme violence between government forces and armed separatists in the African nation made it unsafe for them to return."
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CO2 Pipelines Are Coming. A Pipeline Safety Expert Says We're Not Ready.Pipeline construction. (photo: Larry Lee/Construction Photography/Avalon/Getty Images)

CO2 Pipelines Are Coming. A Pipeline Safety Expert Says We're Not Ready.
Emily Pontecorvo, Grist
Pontecorvo writes: "A year ago, a different kind of pipeline project was announced in the Midwest."

Companies want to build pipelines to capture and store carbon, but a new report warns that regulators aren’t prepared.


A year ago, a different kind of pipeline project was announced in the Midwest. Most pipelines pick up oil or gas from a well and deliver it to customers who burn it, emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This one would run almost in reverse. A company called Summit Climate Solutions planned to capture carbon dioxide from ethanol refineries in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, and the Dakotas, and then transport it via the proposed pipeline to a site in North Dakota where the CO2 would be buried deep underground.

In the months since, two more companies have proposed similar CO2 pipeline projects in the Midwest, and another wants to expand an existing pipeline in the South. The sudden boom is being driven by federal and state incentives for carbon capture and storage, or CCS, as well as a new low-interest loan program for CO2 pipelines passed by Congress last year and general support from the Biden administration to grow the “carbon management” industry in an effort to reduce carbon emissions.

But as the number of pipeline proposals multiplies, a new report commissioned by the Pipeline Safety Trust, a nonprofit advocacy group, warns that CO2 pipeline regulations aren’t up to the task of keeping communities safe.

“The country is ill prepared for the increase of CO2 pipeline mileage being driven by federal CCS policy,” writes report author Richard Kuprewicz, an independent pipeline safety consultant hired by the Pipeline Safety Trust. “Federal pipeline safety regulations need to be quickly changed to rise to this new challenge, and to assure that the public has confidence in the federal pipeline safety regulations.”

Pipeline safety is overseen by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, or PHMSA, a subdivision of the U.S. Department of Transportation. The agency began regulating carbon dioxide pipelines in 1991. Today, there are just over 5,000 miles of CO2 pipelines in the U.S., most of which deliver CO2 to oil fields, where companies pump it underground to stimulate oil production. But researchers assert that capturing carbon dioxide from industrial facilities and sucking CO2 directly from the air will be essential tools to tackle climate change. In order to deliver that CO2 to sites where it can be permanently sequestered underground, they estimate the U.S. could need between 30,000 and 65,000 miles of pipeline.

The most concerning finding in the new report, according to Bill Caram, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, is that regulations for assessing the potential impacts of a CO2 pipeline rupture were not developed specifically for CO2. Every pipeline developer has to identify potential “high consequence areas” where an accidental release would have significant negative impacts on human health or the environment. High consequence areas for oil and gas pipelines are well defined, but the report notes that CO2 has different considerations and likely a much larger radius of concern. CO2 is heavier than air, and a plume of CO2 can travel for miles, depending on wind and terrain, and settle into low-lying areas. The report warns that such an event would be difficult for people in the vicinity and first responders to detect, since CO2 is colorless, odorless, and nonflammable.

“If I had to pick one finding of the report that would keep me up at night as a public safety advocate, it’s that one,” said Caram.

The residents of Satartia, Mississippi, learned this the hard way in 2020 when a CO2 pipeline ruptured and a plume of CO2 settled over the town, causing people to feel dizzy, nauseous, and disoriented. Many passed out. Forty-nine people went to the hospital. PHMSA has yet to release an incident report detailing the cause of the rupture.

“That incident happened over two years ago,” said Caram. “It’s crazy that communities are being asked to bear the burden of the risk of these pipelines when this report sits unreleased with all these unanswered questions.”

In addition to urging PHMSA to update how potential impact areas are assessed, the Kuprewicz report recommends that PHMSA require pipeline operators to inject an odorant into CO2 pipelines, as is standard for natural gas pipelines, to help alert the public to potentially dangerous leaks. It proposes new requirements for informing and training local officials and emergency responders on the unique dangers posed by a CO2 release. It also recommends setting purity standards for the CO2 transported by pipelines, as impurities can introduce additional risks.

A spokesperson for PHMSA did not comment on the missing Satartia report or the concerns raised in Kuprewicz’s report. But the agency did say it was reviewing his findings and working on new measures to strengthen safety standards for CO2 pipelines, as the White House instructed PHMSA and other agencies that oversee CCS projects to do in interim guidance put out in February.

Similar to Kuprewicz, the White House guidance calls for CO2 pipeline-specific emergency planning and training. It cites a need for new tools to monitor and improve safety but stops short of describing which tools are needed. It also notes that the impacts of climate change, like flooding and storms, should be taken into account in the design, construction, and maintenance of CO2 pipelines.

Lee Beck, global director for carbon capture at the Clean Air Task Force, a nonprofit that advocates for CCS deployment, said the Pipeline Safety Trust report “provides important insights and raises really important questions.” But from her perspective the Biden administration’s guidance document shows it “is well aware of what needs to be done to ensure regulatory safety.” Beck also noted that since 2010, there have only been 66 reported CO2 pipeline incidents and no reported fatalities. According to PHMSA data, the incident rate per mile of CO2 pipeline in 2020 was about half that of crude oil pipelines.

But Caram is concerned that PHMSA does not have the funding or capacity to effectively make new rules. “I would consider them a notoriously underfunded and understaffed agency,” he said.

Rory Jacobson, the deputy director of policy at the nonprofit Carbon180, also raised this issue. “Ultimately, PHMSA will need Congress to enhance its regulatory capacity, funding, and jurisdiction to effectively and lawfully oversee the implementation of newly-passed carbon management policies,” he said in an email. Carbon180 advocates for policy to support carbon removal, a category of climate solutions designed to suck carbon directly out of the atmosphere, some of which would utilize CO2 pipelines.

Other pipeline proponents emphasized the industry’s track record on safety. “PHMSA and the natural gas and oil industry have decades of experience ensuring the safe transportation of CO2,” said Robin Rorick, the vice president of midstream policy at the American Petroleum Institute, in a statement. The oil and gas industry group has been a key player in developing regulations for CO2 pipelines, since oil companies buy CO2 for enhanced oil recovery. Rorick did not comment on the report’s findings.

Jesse Harris, a spokesperson for Summit Carbon Solutions, the company that is developing the Midwest carbon dioxide pipeline, said that PHMSA “clearly specifies multiple layers of protection for CO2 pipeline operations to ensure public safety.” He added, “We look forward to continuing to meet and in many cases exceeding all local, state, and federal requirements.”

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Special Coverage: Ukraine, A Historic Resistance
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