RSN: 2020: The "Darkest Winter in Modern History."

16 May 20

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2020: The "Darkest Winter in Modern History."

Brian Naylor, NPR
Naylor writes: "Rick Bright, a career government scientist-turned-whistleblower, told a congressional panel Thursday that without a stronger federal response, the coronavirus threatens to make 2020 the 'darkest winter in modern history.'"

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U.S. State Department Inspector General Steve Linick leaves after holding a briefing with lawmakers on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., October 2, 2019. (photo: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images)

ALSO SEE: Trump's Firing of Steve Linick an 'Unlawful Act of
Retaliation' for Pompeo Inquiry, Democrats Say

State Department Inspector General Becomes the Latest Watchdog Fired by Trump
Zachary Cohen, Manu Raju, Jennifer Hansler, Veronica Stracqualursi, Kylie Atwood and Vivian Salama, CNN
Excerpt: "President Donald Trump on Friday fired State Department Inspector General Steve Linick, the latest in a series of dismissals of independent government watchdogs that have come in the wake of the President's acquittal on articles of impeachment earlier this year."
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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, walks past the Statuary Hall ahead of floor debate on a record $3 trillion coronavirus response package Friday to fund the fight against the pandemic and provide emergency payments to millions of Americans. (photo: Olivier Douliery/AFP/Getty Images)

House Approves $3 Trillion Proposal for New Coronavirus Aid
Claudia Grisales, Kelsey Snell and Susan Davis, NPR
Excerpt: "House lawmakers on Friday approved a Democratic proposal to provide $3 trillion in coronavirus relief which would include a new wave of help for state and local governments, workers and families."
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Immigrant children in a detention center. (photo: Ross D. Franklin)

Indefinite Detention or Family Separation? US Forced Immigrants to Choose, Lawyers Say
Amanda Holpuch, Guardian UK
Holpuch writes: "US officials gave dozens of detained immigrant parents an ultimatum - allow your children to be released from detention without you or face indefinite detention together, according to legal representatives from the country's three family detention centers."
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House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-CA, speaks on proxy voting and the House COVID-19 stimulus bill, during a social-distanced press conference at the U.S. Capitol on Friday. (photo: Kevin Dietsch/UPI)

With Move to Remote Voting, House Alters What It Means for Congress to Meet
Nicholas Fandos, The New York Times
Fandos writes: "The House of Representatives acted on Friday to allow remote voting and virtual hearings. The vote untethered Congress from its mandate to come together physically."
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An undated picture, likely taken in the 1930s, shows the Old City of Jerusalem. (photo: AFP)

Nakba: The Forgotten 19th Century Origins of the Palestinian Catastrophe
Joseph Massad, Middle East Eye
Massad writes: "The Nakba, Palestinians' loss of their lands and homes, arguably began in the 1880s with the arrival of the first Zionist Jewish colonists, who evicted Palestinians from land the colonists had purchased from absentee landlords."
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Pollution from a factory. (photo: Science Focus)

States Sue Trump EPA for Suspending Environmental Regulations During Pandemic
Tiffany Duong, EcoWatch
Duong writes: "On Wednesday, nine states sued the Trump administration over the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) decision to temporarily relax various environmental regulations during the coronavirus pandemic."

The move has been called an implicit "license to pollute," according to The Hill, and allegedly violates numerous federal pollution laws as well as the EPA's duty to protect the environment.

The states' complaint challenges a March 26 EPA memo in which the agency put forth a new, relaxed policy. Polluters are allowed, at their sole discretion, to stop monitoring and reporting air emissions and water pollution levels during the outbreak.

The memo was produced by the EPA's compliance director, Susan Parker Bodine, three days after she received a request from the American Petroleum Institute to halt pollution enforcement, reported the San Francisco Chronicle.

In the memo, Bodine announced that the new, relaxed policies would be retroactive to March 13, when President Trump declared a state of emergency regarding COVID-19. Due to outbreak-related "potential worker shortages" and "travel and social distancing restrictions," companies could decide for themselves when it would no longer be practical to monitor pollution and report it to federal, state and local agencies, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Bodine said businesses should try to follow reporting and monitoring regulations but that noncompliance would not be penalized if caused by coronavirus, reported the San Francisco Chronicle. She did not indicate how the EPA could learn of any violations or dangerous emissions if reporting isn't required, the news report added.

Similarly, the regulation change is "temporary," but no end date is indicated in the memo. And, while companies are required to document their noncompliance, critics fear the environmental damage will already be done, reported The Hill.

EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said that the EPA recognized that challenges created by COVID-19 "may directly impact the ability of regulated facilities to meet all federal regulatory requirements," reported the San Francisco Chronicle.

Wheeler also said the agency would still "expect facilities to comply with their obligations under the law" unless, of course, Covid-19 made it "impracticable," reported Bloomberg Law.

The states' lawsuit, filed in New York federal court, alleges that the EPA lacks the legal authority to "effectively waive critical monitoring and reporting obligations" that alert the public to environmental and health hazards, reported Bloomberg Law. It also argues that the EPA failed to properly weigh the public health impacts the relaxed policy will have amid the coronavirus pandemic, reported Reuters.

"Rather than exercising enforcement discretion as authorized by law, EPA issued a broad, open-ended policy that gives regulated parties free rein to self-determine when compliance with federal environmental laws is not practical because of Covid-19," the complaint stated.

The enforcement suspensions will lead to more chemical spills and "likely will result in increased air and water pollution," endangering residents who live nearby, downwind or downstream, the suit added, reported the San Francisco Chronicle.

The states also argued that the EPA failed to demonstrate both the need for the drastic change and any rationale for bypassing the traditional notice and comment period required for new rules, reported The Hill. The Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act both require companies to monitor and report emissions to the EPA, and the agency has therefore exceeded its authorities under both regulations, the complaint says, reported The Hill.

"The Trump Administration cannot give industries the green light to ignore critical environmental and public health laws, especially during a public health crisis," said New York Attorney General Letitia James, reported Bloomberg Law.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said, "The Trump Administration is trying to use the current public health crisis to sweep environmental violations under the rug," reported The Hill.

"What's worse, the Administration is doing so even as evidence grows that communities exposed to air pollution are at increased risk from coronavirus," he added, reported The Hill.

The EPA would not comment on the litigation, but told The Hill that "the EPA temporary policy is a lawful and proper exercise of the Agency's authority under extraordinary circumstances." In the same statement, the EPA noted, "This is not a nationwide waiver of environmental rules."

The EPA was also sued on April 16 by environmental groups seeking to require the agency to determine when companies stopped complying with environmental laws and to immediately notify the public, reported the San Francisco Chronicle.

The nine states filing the complaint are California, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Virginia. The suit alleges that the regulation rollback, if allowed to persist, will force states to try to "fill EPA's enforcement shoes at a time when they are increasingly strapped for resources, or risk the health of our residents," reported the San Francisco Chronicle.

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RSN: Billy Easley and Neema Singh Guliani, ACLU | Our Privacy Is on the Clock

15 May 20

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ON A BINGE TO SAVE RSN NOW - CHIP-IN! - Of the 280,000 readers who have visited RSN already this month only 243 have clicked the donation link in the newsletter and made a donation. We have to do better, you have to do better. Now is the time. / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News

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Billy Easley and Neema Singh Guliani, ACLU | Our Privacy Is on the Clock

Billy Easley and Neema Singh Guliani, The Hill
Excerpt: "Important issues sometimes divide our nation, but one area where most of us share common ground surrounds is the belief that warrantless secret spying on Americans is unjust."
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Dr. Rick Bright arrives to testify before a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee in Washington in May 2020. (photo: Shawn Thew/Getty)

Ousted Whistleblower Dr. Rick Bright Issues Stark Warning: "We Don't Have a Plan"
Dareh Gregorian, NBC News
Gregorian writes: "An ousted top Health and Human Services official testified Thursday before Congress that the Trump administration's timeline for a coronavirus vaccine is likely too optimistic - and that there's 'no plan' to mass produce and distribute one."

EXCERPT:

Bright also said he had warned the administration about shortages of personal protective equipment, and he faulted President Donald Trump and senior officials for having minimized the outbreak early on — with, he said, deadly consequences.

"I believe Americans need to be told the truth," Bright said. "We did not forewarn people. We did not train people. We did not educate them on social distancing and wearing a mask as we should have in January and February. All those forewarnings, all those educational opportunities, for the American public could have had an impact in further slowing this outbreak and saving more lives."

On developing a vaccine, Bright warned lawmakers that even if one could be ready, there's no strategy for mass production.

"If you can imagine the scenario this fall or winter, maybe even early next spring, when the vaccine becomes available, there's no one company that can produce enough for our country or for the world. It's going to be limited supplies," Bright said. "We need to have a strategy and plan in place now to make sure that we can not only fill that vaccine, make it, distribute it, but administer it in a fair and equitable plan.

"We do not have that yet, and it is a significant concern," he said.

Trump told Fox Business on Thursday that "I think we will have a vaccine by the end of the year," and he suggested that the military would help distribute it.

"Our military is being mobilized so at the end of the year we will give it to a lot of people very rapidly," he said.

Bright testified that he raised red flags about the lack of N95 masks in the national stockpile in January — which helped lead to a shortage in protective equipment for health care workers. As a result, he said, "lives were endangered, and I believe lives were lost."

"Not only that, we were forced to procure the supplies from other countries without the right quality standards, so even our doctors and nurses in the hospitals today are wearing N95-marked masks from other countries that are not providing the sufficient protection that a U.S.-standard N95 mask would provide them," he said.

Bright also warned that the administration needs to develop a comprehensive, well-implemented national response plan heading into the fall. Without one, he said, the coronavirus outbreak could combine with the seasonal flu later this year to create "the darkest winter in modern history."

"Our window of opportunity is closing," Bright said in his opening remarks. "If we fail to develop a national coordinated response, based in science, I fear the pandemic will get far worse and be prolonged, causing unprecedented illness and fatalities."

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, who Bright says ignored his warnings about the country's preparedness, said Bright's information is outdated.

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Jared Kushner. (photo: Drew Angerer/Getty)

In March, Jared Kushner Convinced Trump Not to Ramp Up Coronavirus Testing Out of Fear It Would Hurt Stock Market
Luke Darby, GQ
Excerpt: "The president's son-in-law allegedly claimed that too many tests and ventilators might hurt the stock market."
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Wall Street rallied on Friday after the government reported the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression. (photo: Spencer Platt/Getty)

The Economy Is in Free Fall but Wall Street Is Thriving
Jesse Eisinger, ProPublica
Eisinger writes: "The economy is in free fall but Wall Street is thriving, and stocks of big private equity firms are soaring dramatically higher. That tells you who investors think is the real beneficiary of the federal government's massive rescue efforts."
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People protest shutdown order from Wisconsin's governor. (photo: Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP)

Wisconsin Supreme Court Ruling Striking Down Democratic Governor's Stay-at-Home Order "Throws State Into Chaos"
Sam Levine, Guardian UK
Levine writes: "A conservative majority on the Wisconsin supreme court struck down a stay-at-home order from the state's Democratic governor on Wednesday, further illustrating the remarkable amount of power Republicans have in the state and the way they have been able to curb the authority of their Democratic rivals."

EXCERPT:

In Wisconsin, conservatives hold a 5-2 majority on the state supreme court, and all but one of the conservative justices voted to strike down the order on Wednesday, saying Tony Evers, the Democratic governor, didn’t follow proper procedure when he issued the order. Some businesses immediately opened after the ruling and some bars were flooded with patrons.

“Republican legislators have convinced four justices to throw our state into chaos,” Evers said in a statement.

In a remarkable passage in a concurring opinion, Justice Rebecca Bradley drew comparisons between the case and Korematsu v United States, the 1946 US supreme court decision allowing the internment of Japanese-Americans during the second world war. She cited the case “to remind the state that urging courts to approve the exercise of extraordinary power during times of emergency may lead to extraordinary abuses of its citizens”.

Since 2012, Republicans have held significant majorities in both chambers of the state legislature, in large part because they drew boundaries for districts at the beginning of the decade that gave them a severe political advantage. They have maintained that advantage even though the state is extremely competitive politically – Trump narrowly won the state in 2016, but Evers and other Democrats swept statewide races in 2018.

Republicans have been trying to strip Evers of power even before he took office. During a 2018 lame duck session, Republicans quickly passed laws that stripped Evers and the state’s incoming attorney general of some of their power. The move was ultimately upheld by the state supreme court in a 4-3 vote along partisan lines.

The state supreme court also voted along partisan lines last month to override a last-minute order from Evers to cancel in-person voting for the state’s 7 April election. The decision was widely seen as a partisan effort to boost Kelly, who was on the ballot, but he wound up losing handily to Karofsky.

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Families of the victims of 9/11 have long sought to make public the role Saudi Arabia played in supporting the hijackers. (photo: Andrew Kelly/Reuters)

FBI 'Mistakenly Reveals Saudi Official Linked' to 9/11 Hijackers
Al Jazeera
Excerpt: "The Federal Bureau of Investigation has accidentally disclosed the name of a Saudi diplomat suspected of directing support to two al-Qaeda hijackers in the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States."

Mistake was made in a declaration by an FBI official in response to lawsuit by families of 9/11 victims, report says.

The mistake about the identity of the Saudi embassy official was made in a declaration by an FBI official in response to a lawsuit by families of 9/11 victims who accuse Saudi Arabia's government of involvement in the attacks, the report said on Tuesday.

Michael Isikoff, the chief investigative journalist at Yahoo News who was the first to notice the apparent mistake, told Al Jazeera he knew right away the disclosure was "a slip-up".

"When I noticed that the declaration included this information, I contacted the FBI for comment. Because I knew that the justice department and the Trump administration had been going to extraordinary length to keep all of this under wraps," he said.

"In fact, both Attorney General William Barr and the Acting Director of the National Intelligence Richard Grennell had filed motions with the court saying that any information relating to the Saudi embassy official and all internal FBI documents about this matter were so sensitive; they were state secrets, that means if revealed they could cause damage to the national security."

The declaration by Jill Sanborn, the assistant director of the FBI's counterterrorism division, was filed in April but unsealed late last week, according to Yahoo News.

Mussaed Ahmed al-Jarrah was mistakenly named in the declaration, an error that Yahoo News said was also confirmed by a senior US government official.

Al-Jarrah was a mid-level Saudi foreign ministry official who was assigned to the Saudi embassy in Washington, DC in 1999 and 2000.

He was in charge of supervising the activities of Ministry of Islamic Affairs employees at Saudi-funded mosques and Islamic centres in the US, according to the report.

In a portion of the filing describing the material sought by lawyers for the families of 9/11 victims, Sanborn refers to a partially declassified 2012 FBI report about an investigation into possible links between the al-Qaeda hijackers and Saudi government officials, Yahoo News said. That probe initially focused on two individuals, Fahad al-Thumairy, a cleric, and Omar al-Bayoumi, a suspected Saudi agent.

A redacted copy of a three-and-a-half page October 2012 FBI "update" about the investigation said that FBI agents had uncovered "evidence" that al-Thumairy and al-Bayoumi had been "tasked" to assist two hijackers by another person whose name was blacked out. This prompted the lawyers for the families of the 9/11 victims to refer to this individual as "the third man".

Describing the request by the lawyers to depose that person under oath, Sanborn's declaration said in one instance that it involved "any and all records referring to or relating to Jarrah", according to Yahoo News.

This represented the first public confirmation that the so-called "third man" was an accredited Saudi diplomat. But all of the FBI evidence the agents had gathered about al-Jarrah and his communications about the two attackers remain under seal, the report said.

It is unclear how strong the evidence is against al-Jarrah, whose whereabouts remain unknown. But the disclosure appears likely to revive questions about Saudi Arabia's potential links to the 9/11 plot and highlights the extraordinary efforts by US government officials to prevent internal documents about the issue from becoming public, Yahoo News said.

"This shows there is a complete government cover-up of the Saudi involvement," Brett Eagleson, a spokesman for the families, told the news outlet. "This is a giant screw-up."

Yahoo News said it contacted the Department of Justice on Monday, but officials notified the court and withdrew the FBI's declaration from the public docket.

"The document was incorrectly filed in this case," the docket now reads, said the report.

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers involved in the 9/11 attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people, were Saudi citizens.

The Saudi government has repeatedly denied any involvement in the attacks in which al-Qaeda-affiliated men hijacked and crashed planes into New York's World Trade Center, destroying the towering buildings and sending plumes of debris shooting through the most populous US city.

A third aircraft struck the Pentagon just outside of Washington, DC, and a fourth plane crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. 

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Mindo harlequin toad. (photo: Jose Vieira)

Harlequin Found: 'Extinct' Toad Rediscovered After 30 Years
John R. Platt, The Revelator
Platt writes: "New research reveals that the Mindo harlequin toad is alive - if not exactly well."

The Mindo harlequin toad, last seen in Ecuador in 1989, was feared a victim of the amphibian-killing chytrid fungus. Have other lost species survived, too?

f the Mindo harlequin toad had a yearbook photo, its caption might have read “most unlikely to be rediscovered.” The tiny, Christmas-colored species was declared “possibly extinct” two years ago, after not being seen in its Ecuadorian habitat since 1989. It and several other species from the same region have long been feared lost to the amphibian-killing chytrid fungus, which has already caused dozens of extinctions around the globe.

But you know what yearbook photo captions are like: They’re destined to be proven wrong.

And that’s what’s happened with the Mindo harlequin toad (Atelopus mindoensis). New research reveals that the long-lost species is alive — if not exactly well.

The rediscovery came as a surprise, since no one was looking for the lost toad.

“The team was not looking for Atelopus or even expecting them,” explains Alejandro Arteaga, president of Tropical Herping and the senior author of the paper announcing the species’ rediscovery. “The cloud forests where it lives are the most thoroughly documented in the country, and no one had seen them in 30 years.”

Instead, the research team — including experts from the Tropical Herping, the University of New Brunswick and other institutions — was on a private reserve documenting other Ecuadorian frog species. There, on a narrow path next to a creek, they saw a single juvenile frog sleeping on a leaf about a foot and a half off the ground. Upon inspection, they realized it bore the distinctive red-and-green coloration, elongated noses and mitten-like webbed fingers that had previously been used to describe the Mindo harlequin toad.

Amazed by what they’d found, the researchers returned to the site for a second visit and found five more frogs on the opposite side of the creek, including three juveniles and two adult males.

Arteaga wasn’t present for the discovery, but the team quickly conveyed photographs — they just didn’t let him know in advance what the pictures contained.

“My friends actually videotaped my reaction, as they knew I was going to be blown away,” Arteaga reports. “They were right. It took me several minutes to even realize that I was seeing an actual living Mindo harlequin toad. It was one of the happiest moments of my life.”

And there was more good news: Skin tests on two of the juveniles revealed no sign of Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, the fungus behind the chytrid crisis. That doesn’t necessarily mean the fungus isn’t present in the reserve, or that other frogs or toads there aren’t affected, but it was another welcome discovery.

And while the rediscovery doesn’t indicate a very populous species, it does reveal that enough of them exist to keep breeding.

However, their survival remains precarious. The private reserve — the exact location of which remains undisclosed — has pristine waters and lacks predatory invasive trout that have caused amphibian declines in other parts of Ecuador, but that could change. The researchers caution that trout could easily make their way to the reserve, as could the pesticides currently being used upstream. Humans could also carry the Bd fungus or other infectious diseases to the habitat.

Now that the toad has been rediscovered, the real work begins. “We’ve already sent a proposal to obtain funding for monitoring and helping establish an ex situ conservation ‘backup’ colony,” Arteaga says. The paper also recommends intense additional searches both in the private reserve and throughout the toad’s historic range, as well as education programs to help local peoples understand the species and conduct citizen-science efforts to help assure its survival.

And, of course, this provides an incentive to see what other presumed-extinct harlequin toad species might still exist.

“After the rediscovery, we have started a ‘rescue mission’ project seeking to find the remaining 12 species that are still lost,” Arteaga says. Several other Atelopus species have been rediscovered in the past few years ago, so hope remains eternal.

Just like yearbook photos.

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