11 May 21
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How Close Are We to Criminal Charges for Donald Trump?
Dahlia Lithwick, Slate
Lithwick writes: "It's 2021, but there's still an awful lot of stuff from 2016 onward yet to be litigated. We know that, absent legal consequences, it could all just happen again - the criming and the pardons, the lying, the self-dealing - maybe in 2022, maybe in 2024."
Former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara on accountability, Rudy, and the death of truth.
t’s 2021, but there’s still an awful lot of stuff from 2016 onward yet to be litigated. We know that, absent legal consequences, it could all just happen again—the criming and the pardons, the lying, the self-dealing—maybe in 2022, maybe in 2024. On a recent episode of Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick spoke with Preet Bharara, who served as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York until he was famously fired by Donald Trump in 2017. Bharara now hosts the podcast Stay Tuned With Preet, which became required listening for the Trump legal resistance, and authored the book Doing Justice: A Prosecutor’s Thoughts on Crime, Punishment, and the Rule of Law. We spoke about accountability for the Trump administration, Rudy Giuliani, and the death of truth. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Dahlia Lithwick: Let’s start at the very beginning of the resistance, which is you getting fired by Donald Trump.
Preet Bharara: If we could pause right there for a moment, because you said resistance.
You hate that word.
Well, I don’t call myself a resister. I don’t consider myself to be part of whatever is called resistance. I don’t mean anyone any disrespect, but what I care about is the rule of law, and the justice system, and equality before the law, which I think people of all shades of ideology have generally cared about, and I call them like I see them. I don’t identify with any particular capital-R “Resistance.”
Before we let it go, can you tell me what capital-R “Resistance” signals to you?
I think for some people—and I’m not saying this is what it means, and people should call themselves whatever they want to call themselves—it can signify a sort of automatic, knee-jerk, “everything that Trump or anybody associated with Trump, says, does, thinks, feels is automatically wrong.” I think that’s largely the case, but I also like to think of myself as an independent thinker.
I do think that rule of law, and justice, and what happens at the Justice Department, and what lawyers do happens on a different axis from the axis of right-left, Democrat-Republican. It’s on an axis that, I think you’re saying, is really lashed to truth, law, other values that are separate from purely political values. One of the things I want to get at is this question of what you do when that is completely politicized. In other words, when that truth-seeking, justice-seeking function really just flattens out into a left-right, good-bad. But let’s start with you getting fired, because I’m really curious what you would have done had you stayed on. If you hadn’t been summarily fired right out the chute, what would have been your posture on this question of how long you hang out and try to do your best and when you just bolt?
Donald Trump gets elected. U.S. attorneys traditionally leave, with some period of transition. I was preparing to leave, but then in my case, Donald Trump asked to meet with me, implored me to stay on for another term. I agreed to do that not because I thought of myself as some mitigator, but I thought of myself as someone who had an independent role where I wasn’t directly reporting to the president of the United States. Barack Obama told all of us, which has been the tradition before Trump and I think since he’s left office, that United States attorneys are appointed by the president, confirmed by the Senate, but they operate, as should most officials in the Justice Department, independently from political pressure.
When I met with Donald Trump and agreed to stay on, it was under the understanding that we would remain independent—some people call us the “sovereign district of New York”—and I wouldn’t be meddled with by the president. We’re not a policy arm of the government. We’re a legal office that does criminal cases and defends against civil cases. I didn’t see any conflict between doing my job as I had done it for 7½ years before and continuing to do so while Donald Trump was the president. I often say, “You know how many times Barack Obama called me? Zero,” and that’s how it should be between the president and the United States attorney.
What would it have been like if I had stayed? I don’t think it would have been tenable. Even if I had not been fired, at some point as I think back, Trump would’ve continued to do the thing that he was doing, which was trying to cultivate some side relationship at the same time that my office had jurisdiction over and was being asked to investigate various things, including violations of the emoluments clause.
As we’ve seen, there have been other things that have gone on with respect to the president. At some point, I think not that much after I was fired, I would have probably had to go, either because I was being meddled with or because perhaps the office would have been asked to take some position that we didn’t think was right. I don’t know that it would’ve lasted long anyway.
To the extent anyone thinks about Trump anymore, it’s gleefully imagining his criminal exposure in the after times, both in New York and elsewhere in the country. I gather he’s facing what, 29 lawsuits, three criminal investigations, like a lot.
A whole bunch.
His tax returns are in the hands of Cyrus Vance Jr., the district attorney of Manhattan. They’re working to flip folks in the Trump organization. I wonder what piece of that you’re watching or are you just watching all of it? What do you expect to see in terms of accountability and having some sense that there is some closure to any of this?
People often, particularly if they’re not lawyers, conflate some of these legal challenges that the former president faces with the civil cases. There’s not that much that we know about by way of criminal investigations. The one that we know about most directly and most prominently is the one you mentioned, the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into Trump’s finances and business dealings.
I don’t know because I’ve not been in the grand jury, I’ve not interviewed the witnesses. Cy Vance doesn’t call me up and tell me stuff, but there is some signaling going on. Cy Vance is not running for reelection. Vance is, as they say, a lame duck. As a lame duck, he’s done certain things, including hiring an outside forensic accounting firm, which is not super unusual but it’s not that common. He’s done something else that is less common, which is hire an outside lawyer, Mark Pomerantz, who’s a very distinguished, well-respected lawyer in New York. I’m not going to put too much weight on it, but it seems like the kind of move you make when you believe that there’s going to be a charge or there’s a good likelihood of a charge, because it’s a pretty public thing to do. It also risks alienating people in your own office. It’s just a gut feeling that I have that taking these actions indicates to me that that office believes there’s a decent likelihood of a charge, and so that’s the one I’d be watching.
It doesn’t sound farfetched to think, “Well, when it suited him, Donald Trump inflated the value of his holdings. Otherwise he understated the value of his holdings.” Both of which can incriminate him criminally and subject him to exposure. That all sounds like it makes sense. There’s also the reporting that Michael Cohen, his former lawyer who was prosecuted by SDNY, has met with prosecutors and investigators with the DA’s office like a gazillion times.
All of those things, again, they’re not dispositive, but they all indicate to me that it’s a very serious undertaking. They’re taking it very seriously. They’re spending a lot of resources on it, and you don’t do that if it’s a long shot, I don’t think.
Is there anything that you feel is urgent and exigent that should have been looked at and that should be investigated and that slipped through the cracks somehow? Do you feel as though these handful of criminal investigations and the civil suits he’s facing kind of get us there in terms of accountability?
There’s two categories of things that I think about. One is stuff we don’t know. I find it hard to believe we know the full scope and landscape of the things that Donald Trump did behind the scenes that were improper, unethical, and perhaps criminal because there’s not been an excavation. I don’t know if there are people who are thinking about doing that excavation, and I don’t know if there are people who are thinking about coming forward.
Trump still strikes fear in the hearts of people who would betray him—that’s elected officials and perhaps also people in his Cabinet. He hasn’t lost that power yet. I had assumed at some point that there might be the possibility of people coming forward and saying, “You don’t know the half of it.” You know, what he did with respect to DHS, what he did with respect to this, that, or the other thing, and how many other enforcement actions he tried to interfere with. There’s that category, the stuff we don’t know about, which I’ve just got to believe there is something there.
Then the other stuff that’s big ticket that happened out in the open for which there was an attempt to hold him accountable: the “Big Lie” of the election, his involvement in the incitement of the riot and the insurrection on Jan. 6, the stuff he did with the interference in the election in Georgia. I don’t know if he’ll get any accountability there. I don’t know that the administration has the interest and stomach to do something there, especially when there’s an interest in moving on.
It’s a little bit hard because on all these issues where people want to hold Trump accountable, there are arguments that he has been careful enough with his language, that it’s not clear, 100 percent galloping over the criminal line, although there’s a good argument to be made that he did. With respect to the secretary of state in Georgia, he did not say directly and openly in recorded fashion, “I want you to make up votes to get me the 11,000 some that I want.” Similarly with the insurrection, he did populate his words with the phrase, “Do it peacefully,” because some staffer must have said, “You got to say that one time, Mr. President.” He didn’t say, “Hit Capitol Police officers over the head with a fire extinguisher, beat them up, break windows, go into Nancy Pelosi’s office. I want you to chant, ‘Hang Mike Pence.’ ” But he did enough that reasonable people like me and you would say he should be held accountable for those things. In everything he does, he figures out a way to signal what he wants without outright saying it.
I tend to agree with those people who liken him to a mob boss who doesn’t have to say the words. Historically, it’s been very hard to prosecute the mob boss for these precise reasons.
Let’s get to the great, luminous, searing, scorching crazy of Rudy Giuliani. Before we dig in, can you just remind us what Giuliani is probably on the hook for, this influence campaign to get Ukraine to dig up dirt on Hunter Biden? What’s the backstory?
He was part and parcel of this campaign to do a number of things: try to encourage officials in Ukraine, not necessarily to investigate Hunter Biden and his role in a company, Burisma, with respect to corruption, but just to announce an investigation. Because as I think reasonable people understand, what Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani, his henchman, were looking for was a political victory. They didn’t really care about corruption.
Also, what we’re seeing now, sort of a redux of the Ukraine affair, is the involvement of Giuliani trying to get the Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch fired, and the New York Times reporting suggests that that’s one of the central things that the Southern District investigators are looking at and whether he was violating FARA, the Foreign Agents Registration Act, by lobbying or doing things at the behest of a foreign government without registering as an agent. All that stuff is swirling around. The fall of Rudy has been something to watch. It’s been a sight to behold, and it’s been, among other things, sad.
I think you know better than anyone that Rudy was not a clown show his entire career. He has this long and storied career as a serious attorney. That’s what’s sad is that he’s turned into Sidney Powell and Lin Wood overnight.
It’s funny, he’s adopted the playbook that every prosecutor is familiar with. That is your targets, your subjects, the people you charge, they never send you flowers or chocolates, but they will attack you. They will say you’re political. They will call you every name in the book. I mean, Rudy has taken to saying that the people of the Southern District are jealous of him because they haven’t made the kinds of groundbreaking cases that he made.
Nobody remembers your cases, Rudy. The people who are in that office today, almost all of them, who are probably working on these matters were not born at the time that Rudy got his two-year sentence against Michael Milken. He’s resorted to this kind of crazy rhetoric because that’s all he has. It is the case that he had a certain kind of mean streak and hyperaggressive approach to crime—broken windows, the squeegee guys—when he was mayor and when he was U.S. attorney and that he has an explosive personality. There’s lots of negative things about him and a lot of people didn’t like him for those reasons. But the straight-out crazy, nonsensical nature of some of the things he says and does now, that is new.
What is going to get us to the truth part of how we have shared norms and values?
It will not surprise you to know I don’t have an answer to that question.
No, I know. I don’t either.
Look, let’s take Jan. 6. We can’t get agreement because we need political agreement on forming a bipartisan, equally allocated commission to get to the truth of what happened. That’s how little there is agreement on what the truth is and whether people want accountability. This is the saddest thing of everything. It’s not the lack of accountability for people who may have done bad things. That’s not good. I don’t mean to be overly dramatic, but for large segments of the population, the death of truth—I don’t know what you do about that. I mean, people would say that unless you had a videotape of Donald Trump committing a crime, like stabbing a person on Fifth Avenue or shooting a person on Fifth Avenue, famously, it’s not that they would necessarily forgive him. They wouldn’t believe it.
We are on the cusp of deepfakes becoming a big problem in this country, and I think it’s an underestimated problem. That’s just going to be another way for people to never be confronted with contrary evidence because everything can be manufactured, everything can be made up. We’ve always known there’s a subset of the population who thinks that the moon landing was faked, that 9/11 was faked, that the Earth is flat, etc. It’s not tiny; it’s not 1 percent. There’s some percentage of people who think that, and they have been empowered, and that’s maybe the greatest tragedy of the Trump administration.
Garry Kasparov, who speaks very wisely and sagely about these issues having had the experience of the Soviet Union, says the damage is not done when somebody says, “The truth is X,” and some liar says, “The truth is Y.” The damage is done when somebody says, “The truth is X,” and the other person says, “There’s no such thing as truth.” They don’t even say, “Y is correct.” They just say, “You have no idea, and you can’t believe anything, but follow me,” and people follow that guy.
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren greets Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders at a 2017 Our Revolution rally in Boston. (photo: Steven Senne/AP)
Warren, Sanders Call for Expanding Food Aid to College Students
Elissa Nadworny, NPR
Nadworny writes: "Democrats in the House and Senate are introducing legislation Tuesday that would make pandemic-related food benefits for college students permanent. The push is being led by Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent."
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Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (photo: EPA)
Thirty People Dead as Netanyahu Vows to Intensify Gaza Attacks
Oliver Holmes, Guardian UK
Holmes writes: "Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to increase the intensity of attacks on Gaza, after a day of ferocious confrontations that left 30 people dead as Israeli jets and Palestinian militants traded airstrikes and rockets."
Medics on both sides put death toll at 28 Palestinians and two Israelis after day of fierce confrontation
enjamin Netanyahu has vowed to increase the intensity of attacks on Gaza, after a day of ferocious confrontations that left 30 people dead as Israeli jets and Palestinian militants traded airstrikes and rockets.
As medics on both sides put the death toll at 28 Palestinians, including 10 children, and two Israelis, the Israeli prime minister said there would be no pause. “It was decided that both the might of the attacks and the frequency of the attacks will be increased,” he announced.
The attacks began on Monday evening, when after weeks of intense violence in Jerusalem, Hamas, the Islamist group that rules inside Gaza, fired a barrage of rockets towards the holy city, believed to be the first time it had targeted Jerusalem in more than seven years.
Israel’s military said it had killed 15 Hamas “operatives” and a battalion commander in its airstrikes. Residents in Gaza City reported bombings on high-rise buildings, as families spent the night cowering in basements, and on Tuesday evening a 13-storey tower housing the offices of top Hamas officialswas hit by an Israeli airstrike and collapsed around an hour after residents and those living nearby were told to evacuate. It was not immediately clear if there were casualties.
Gaza health officials earlier said seven members of a single family, including three children, had died in an explosion. It was not clear if the blast was caused by an Israeli airstrike or a rocket that landed short.
Medics in Israel said more than 25 civilians were being treated following rocket fire, including those wounded from broken glass and shrapnel. Militants had fired at least 250 rockets toward Israel, many of which were intercepted but some made direct hits on apartment buildings. One hit an empty school. The national ambulance service, Magen David Adom, said rocket strikes killed two women in the southern city of Ashkelon on Tuesday afternoon.
Israel said it was sending troop reinforcements to the Gaza frontier and mobilising 5,000 reserve soldiers, leading to fears of a wider confrontation. Previous flare-ups have lasted a few days, with resolutions mediated through indirect talks.
In recent weeks, there has been a sharp escalation in anger over Israel’s half-century occupation and its ever-deepening military grip over Palestinian life. In Jerusalem, hundreds of Palestinians have been wounded in near-nightly protests that escalated over the weekend and spread to other areas of Israel and the occupied West Bank.
Israeli police have responded with stun grenades and rubber-coated bullets. On Monday morning, despite calls for calm from the US, Europe and elsewhere, officers in riot gear stormed into al-Aqsa mosque – the third holiest site in Islam – and faced off with worshippers. Hamas threatened action and began firing rockets on Monday evening.
In a statement issued earlier on Tuesday, the Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, said the rocket attacks would continue until Israel stopped “all scenes of terrorism and aggression in Jerusalem and al-Aqsa mosque”.
Israel and Hamas have fought three wars, which were largely seen as failures for both sides, with Hamas still in power and Israel continuing to maintain a crippling blockade.
Instead of full-scale conflict, the enemies have engaged in regular on-off battles just shy of war over the past few years. After each round, both sides claim they have scored points over the other and then an uneasy status quo is restored.
Netanyahu has sought to show Israelis that he can keep them safe by not letting the violence spiral while also batting away criticism from his political partners on the far right, who accuse him of a tacit alliance with Hamas and an unwillingness to use greater force.
Israel’s longest-serving leader is facing an especially precarious moment, with the 71-year-old’s personal freedom at stake while under criminal corruption charges and his political future also hanging in the balance.
Last week, the opposition leader, Yair Lapid, was tasked with forming a government after Netanyahu failed to do so, leaving the prime minister facing a fresh challenge.
One prominent Israeli columnist, Ben Caspit, wrote on Tuesday that the recent violence may play in Netanyahu’s favour as Lapid has been attempting to negotiate a deal with an Arab party in Israel, called the United Arab List, to form a government. With such high tensions, those negotiations appear in doubt.
“It’s not certain Netanyahu himself is shedding any tears,” wrote Caspit. “At the end of the day, Netanyahu’s strategic alliance with Hamas has proven its worth. Not for Israel’s benefit, but for Netanyahu’s.”
Jerusalem has long been the centre of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, with its religious sites revered by Christians, Jews and Muslims. Al-Aqsa mosque is built on a compound that is the holiest site in Judaism, known to Jews as the Temple Mount.
Palestinians have complained of what they say are unnecessarily severe restrictions on nightly gatherings during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Meanwhile, anger had been mounting for weeks among Palestinians around an Israeli court case on whether Israeli authorities are able to evict dozens of Palestinians from a majority-Arab Jerusalem neighbourhood and give their homes to Jewish settlers.
That ruling, due on Monday, was delayed but a provocative annual parade by thousands of Israeli nationalists in the city went ahead the same day. Jerusalem Day celebrates Israel’s capture of the entire city, including the Old City and Palestinian neighbourhoods, from Jordanian forces in 1967.
Ayman Odeh, an Israeli politician from the country’s Arab minority, tweeted a video of Israeli nationalists dancing and singling at the Temple Mount’s Western Wall on Jerusalem Day as a fire – apparently started during earlier confrontations – roared on the al-Aqsa mosque compound above . “Shocking,” he wrote in Hebrew.
Senior church leaders in Jerusalem criticised the “coordinated provocation of rightwing radical groups” that have contributed to violence in the city. In a joint statement, the 13 patriarchs and heads of churches of various Christian denominations said events over recent days “violate the sanctity” of Jerusalem as a holy city, and undermined the safety of worshippers. They called for intervention by the international community “to put an end to these provocative actions”.
Fate Winslow at a restaurant on Dec. 17, 2020, the day of his release. (photo: Faith Canada/Intercept)
ALSO SEE: How a Man Serving Life Without Parole
for $20 of Weed Gained His Freedom
Fate Winslow, Freed in December From a One-Time Life Sentence for Pot, Has Been Murdered
Tana Ganeva, The Intercept
Ganeva writes: "Faith Canada was 10 years old when her father, Fate Winslow, was locked up on charges related to a $5 pot deal."
Winslow was released after 12 years in prison following a change in Louisiana law.
aith Canada was 10 years old when her father, Fate Winslow, was locked up on charges related to a $5 pot deal. Now 22, she wouldn’t get to see him as a free man until this past December, when a change in Louisiana drug laws led to his release. He had spent the past four months acclimating to his newfound freedom. Last week, she called her father’s cellphone to confirm plans they had made for Thursday, but he didn’t pick up.
In 2008, when Winslow was living on the streets, an undercover police officer approached him and asked for “a girl.” Winslow declined to find him a sex worker. Then the cop asked him for pot. Winslow rode off on his bike and found a white dealer he knew. The dealer gave him the weed — $20 dollars’ worth — and Winslow returned to the officer, who gave him $5 for his role in the deal.
Even though the officers later found their marked $20 bill on the white dealer, they arrested Winslow, who is Black, not the dealer. He went to trial. Because he had priors — all nonviolent and years apart — he was sentenced to life without parole. At Louisiana State Penitentiary, a prison complex better known as Angola which sits atop a former slave plantation, Winslow made 80 cents a week cleaning the dorms. Meanwhile, pot entrepreneurs made millions selling the same drug that landed him in prison. “We both [know] no money no justice that’s just the way the world is,” he wrote to The Intercept in 2018. On his 80-cent-per-week salary, he had to make do with the prison food. But for his 50th birthday, Deedee Kirkwood, a California-based activist who’d struck up a friendship with him, put money in his commissary so that he could treat himself to a little bit of peanut butter to celebrate his fifth decade.
When Covid-19 tore through the prison last year, Winslow reported that the men were not given protection.
“Today all the guards showed up to work with masks on to protect themselves from us, when it is us that needs protection from them,” he wrote in April. “No caution for human life, no compassion, no Love.”
Last summer, Louisiana changed a law related to post-conviction sentencing. After the Innocence Project New Orleans took on his case, Winslow’s lawyer, Jee Park, successfully argued that he’d had inadequate representation when he was sentenced. A judge resentenced him to 12 years — the time he had already served — and Winslow walked out of Angola last December.
“I am so full of joy. I never thought this day would come!” he told The Intercept a few days after his release. He was looking forward to spending the holidays with his family, including a 9-year-old grandson — his son’s child — who he’d never met.
On Wednesday morning, Faith Canada got a phone call from her aunt. Her father was dead. He’d been gunned down while sitting in his car, along with a woman who had been sitting in the passenger seat.
“My roommate, when I broke down, she was right there, holding me when I was screaming,” said Canada, who organized a GoFundMe to raise money for her father’s funeral expenses and support his family. “We don’t know nothing yet. That’s all I was told, they found him and impounded the car.”
As of Monday afternoon, the Shreveport Police Department has not reached out to her about its investigation, Canada said. A spokesperson with the police department told The Intercept they don’t give out information on homicide investigations. In 2017, the department faced local criticism for its low homicide clearance rate; the prior year, Shreveport saw 46 homicides but made just 11 arrests.
“So unbelievably tragic. Rest In Peace sweet Fate,” Kirkwood, the activist, wrote to The Intercept.
“Fate was a survivor: he survived the poverty he grew up in and 12 years in maximum-security prison on a life sentence for marijuana. In prison, Fate could see how unfair and unjust his sentence was, but he kept his hope and his humor intact,” wrote Park, his attorney at the Innocence Project New Orleans, in an email, noting that he was “bursting with joy” when he was freed in December. “Those 4 ½ months of freedom were absolutely precious, and we are heartbroken and angry that his time was cut so short.”
Canada described the challenge of losing her father for the second time. “I just got him back. It hasn’t even been five months. You all just took my dad for a second time, but this time, he can’t come back,” she said. “I’m never going to hear his voice again or see his big smile.”
She’s had a nonstop headache since she heard the news, no appetite. “I can’t eat, I’m throwing everything up,” she said. “I can’t understand how someone can do that to my dad.”
Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett arrive at the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol, January 20, 2021. (photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
The Supreme Court Is Facing a Showdown Over Abortion This Week
Ian Millhiser, Vox
Millhiser writes: "The Supreme Court has been sitting on a potentially very significant abortion case for the last two months, one that the Court's rules say it should dismiss."
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The sign reads, 'Lucas did not die, he was killed,' Cali, Colombia, May 2021. (photo: Twitter/9582VFidel)
Colombia: Man Shot Eight Times in Anti-Government Protests Dies
teleSUR
Excerpt: "Authorities at the San Jorge Hospital confirmed the brain death of Lucas Villa, a citizen who was shot while protesting against Colombia's President Ivan Duque and his tax reform."
This yoga teacher is remembered for his dances amid massive mobilizations that were carried out peacefully in Pereira.
Villa did not present any neurological reaction after suspending sedation. The patient has global general ischemia. He is still connected to a respirator and there is nothing to be done," hospital Director Juan Restrepo informed.
According to the medical report, it only remains to wait for the young man's heart to stop beating. Villa's family began to receive psychological support shortly before the news was released.
"Lucas did not die, he was killed by the Uribist dictatorship camouflaged as a genocidal democracy. The corrupt and cowardly government will pay for this crime," Colombian activist Wilson Tovar tweeted.
"They have stolen our hope with violence. Who can be happy amid so much blood? How do you explain to the world that those who should take care of the people are the ones who are killing us! Someone help us," singer-songwriter Ana Lucia added.
The young demonstrator was admitted to the hospital on May 5 after being shot eight times by unknown men. The violent incident occurred during a peaceful demonstration against President Duque in Risaralda Department.
Villa was a youth leader and activist. He was studying Sports Science at the Technological University of Pereira (UTP) and was a yoga teacher. The young man is remembered for his dances in the middle of the mobilizations and for promoting that the national strike was carried out peacefully.
Coral reefs in the Atlantic Ocean are the most threatened by the climate crisis, according to a new study. (photo: Wild Horizons/Universal Images Group/Getty Images)
Reducing Our Emissions Is the 'Only Hope' for Coral Reefs, Study Warns
Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch
Rosane writes: "Unless we act now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the world's coral reefs will stop growing by the end of the century."
nless we act now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the world's coral reefs will stop growing by the end of the century.That's the warning from a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Monday, which analyzed how the world's reefs would fare under a low, medium and high emissions scenario.
"Our work highlights a grim picture for the future of coral reefs," study lead author and Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington marine biologist Christopher Cornwall told ABC News.
Scientists have long known that the climate crisis threatens coral reefs in two major ways. First, the increase of carbon dioxide in the ocean leads to a process called ocean acidification, which makes it harder for corals to form calcium carbonate skeletons, a process known as calcification. Secondly, warming ocean temperatures increase the risk of coral bleaching, when corals expel the algae that give them food and color. The warming can also interfere with the calcification process.
But there's more. A certain type of algae known as calcifying red algae, or coralline algae, acts as adhesive binding reefs together and can even form its own reefs, Cornwall explained in a Victoria University of Wellington press release.
"While corals are highly susceptible to ocean warming, coralline algae are more vulnerable to ocean acidification. Coral reef growth is also dictated by the removal of this calcium carbonate through either bioerosion — living organisms eating the reef — or the dissolution of sediments that help fill in the cracks between larger pieces of calcium carbonate," Cornwall explained. "Both processes are likely to accelerate under ocean acidification and warming. However, no one study had put these processes together quantitatively previously."
Monday's study sought to fill in this research gap by looking at calcification, bioerosion and sediment erosion rates for 233 areas on 183 reefs worldwide. Forty-nine percent of the reefs studied were in the Atlantic Ocean, 39 percent in the Indian Ocean and 11 percent in the Pacific Ocean. The researchers then used models to determine what would happen to the reefs in 2050 and 2100 based on low, medium or worst-case emissions scenarios.
The news is grim. By 2100, the rate of carbonate production on the reefs will decline by 76 percent under a low emissions scenario, 149 percent under a medium emissions scenario and 156 percent under a high emissions scenario, the study found.
While 63 percent of reefs would continue to grow under a low-emissions scenario by 2100, 94 percent of them would begin to decline as soon as 2050 in the worst-case scenario. Under both the medium and high emissions scenario, reef growth would not be able to keep pace with sea level rise by the end of the century.
This would be a devastating blow for the marine biodiversity and human livelihoods that reefs support, ABC News pointed out. Furthermore, the decline of reefs would deprive coastal areas from an important protection against rising sea levels and surges from more extreme storms.
"The only hope for coral reef ecosystems to remain as close as possible to what they are now is to quickly and drastically reduce our CO2 emissions," Cornwall told ABC News. "If not, they will be dramatically altered and cease their ecological benefits as hotspots of biodiversity, sources of food and tourism, and their provision of shoreline protection."
The research also looked at which reefs would be most vulnerable, and found that Atlantic Ocean reefs, which are already more damaged, would be worse off compared to Pacific Ocean reefs. The researchers also predicted that coral bleaching would be the lead cause of these declines.
"We are already observing global shifts in coral assemblages and severely reduced coral cover due to mass bleaching events. It is very unlikely corals will suddenly gain the heat tolerance required to resist these events as they become more frequent and intense," Cornwall said in the press release.
